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                    THE

              CATHOLIC WORLD.

                     A

             MONTHLY MAGAZINE

                    OF

      GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.


                VOL. XIII.
         APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1871.


                NEW YORK:
      THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
             9 Warren Street.

                  1871.


             JOHN ROSS & CO.,
        PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS,
          27 ROSE ST., NEW YORK.




CONTENTS.


      Albertus Magnus Vindicated, 712
      America's Obligation to France, 836
      Ancients, the Writing Materials of the, 126
      Animas, Las, 353
      Animals, Love for, 545

      Bishop Timon, 86
      Bordeaux, 158
      Brébeuf, Memoir of Father John, 512, 623

      Carlyle and Père Bouhours, 820
      Catholic Associations, Spirit of, 652
      Catholicity and Pantheism, 554
      Cayla, A Pilgrimage to, 595
      Cecilia, Saint, 477
      Church, The, Accredits herself, 145
      Church, What our Municipal Laws owe to the, 342
      Civilization, Origin of, 402

      Dion and the Sibyls, 56
      Doña Fortuna and Don Dinero, 130
      Döllinger, The Apostasy of, 415

      Education and Unification, 1
      Education, On Higher, 115
      Egbert Stanway, 377
      Egyptian Civilization according to the most Recent Discoveries, 804
      England, The Serial Literature of, 619
      Europe's Future, 76

      Flowers, 305
      Froude and Calvinism, 541
      France, America's Obligation to, 836
      Future, The Present and the, 452

      Galitzin, The Mother of Prince, 367
      Geneva, The Catholic Church in, 847
      Genzano and Frascati, 737
      Good Gerard of Cologne, The, 797
      Gottfried von Strassburg's Hymn to the Virgin, 240

      _Independent_, A Word to _The_, 247
      Infallibility, 577
      Ireland, Ancient Laws of, 635
      Ireland, The Lord Chancellors of, 228
      Irish Martyr, An, 433
      Italian Guarantees and the Sovereign Pontiff, 566

      Laws, Municipal, and the Church, 342
      Letter from Rome, 134
      Letter from the President of a College, 281
      Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius, 772
      Locket, The Story of an Algerine, 643
      Lourdes, Our Lady of, 98, 255, 396, 527, 662, 825
      Lucas Garcia, 785

      Mary Benedicta, 207
      Mary Clifford's Promise Kept, 447
      Mexican Art and its Michael Angelo, 334

      On Higher Education, 115
      Our Lady of Guadalupe, 189
      Our Lady of Lourdes, 98, 255, 396, 527, 662, 825
      Our Northern Neighbors, 108

      Page of the Past and a Shadow of the Future, A, 764
      Pantheism, Catholicity and, 554
      Pau, 504
      Père Jacques and Mademoiselle Adrienne, 677
      Present and the Future, The, 452
      Protestantism, Statistics of, in the U. S., 195

      Reformation, The, Not Conservative, 721
      Rome, How it Looked Three Centuries Ago, 358
      Rome, Letter from, 134

      Saintship, False Views of, 424
      Santa Restituta, Legend of, 276
      Sardinia and the Holy Father, 289
      Sauntering, 35
      Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert, 274
      Scepticism of the Age, The, 391
      Secular, The, Not Supreme, 685
      Shamrock Gone West, The, 264
      Sor Juan Inez de la Cruz, 47
      Spanish America, Dramatic Moralists in, 702
      Statistics of Protestantism in the U. S., 195
      St. Januarius, Liquefaction of the Blood of, 772

      The Church Accredits Herself, 145

      Unification, Education and, 1

      What Our Municipal Laws Owe to the Church, 342
      Writing Materials of the Ancients, 126

      Yorke, The House of, 15, 169, 317, 461, 604, 746


POETRY.

      "Amen" of the Stones, The, 168
      A Pie IX., 684

      Disillusioned, 489

      Gualberto's Victory, 96

      King Cormac's Choice, 413

      On a Great Plagiarist, 206

      Rose, The, 571

      Saint John Dwarf, 357
      Sancta Dei Genitrix, 771
      Sonnet, 603
      St. Francis and St. Dominic, 745
      St. Francis of Assisi, 133
      St. Mary Magdalen, 511

      The Cross, 14
      The True Harp, 594
      To the Crucified, 352

      Vespers, 275

      Warning, The, 125


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

      Allies' St. Peter, 860
      Anderson's Historical Reader, 855
      Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 573

      Barker's Text-Book of Chemistry, 142
      Bret Harte's Poems, 144

      Caddell's Never Forgotten; or, The Home of the Lost Child, 853
      Catechism Illustrated, The, 854
      Clement's Hand-Book of Legendary and Mythological Art, 143
      Coleridge's Theology of the Parables, 432
      Conyngham's Sarsfield, 143
      Curtius's History of Greece, 575
      Cusack's History of Kerry, 855

      Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, 573

      Elia; or, Spain Fifty Years Ago, 141

      Fairbanks's History of Florida, 857
      Familiar Discourses to the Young, 288
      Fifty Catholic Tracts, 430
      Folia Ecclesiastica, 144

      Gaskin's Irish Varieties, 142
      Glosswood, The Countess of, 288

      Hamilton's Golden Words, 860
      Heaven, The Happiness of, 286
      Hefele on the Christian Councils, 718
      Hemenway's Vermont, 857
      Higginson's Sympathy of Religions, 286
      Holy Exercise of the Presence of God, 854
      Holmes on Mechanism in Thought and Morals, 139
      Historical Gazetteer, 857

      Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library, 573

      Jesus and Jerusalem, 140

      Kellogg's Arthur Brown, 143
      Keon's Dion and the Sibyls, 429

      La Grange's Thecla, 432
      Lallemant's Spiritual Doctrine, 287
      Lebon's Holy Communion, 573
      Life and Writings of De Montfort, 141
      Life of St. Gertrude, 859

      Martyrs Omitted by Foxe, 575
      Meditations on the Litany of the Most Holy Virgin, 431
      Miles's Truce of God, 574
      Moran's Life of Archbishop Plunkett, 574, 858,
      Mrs. Stowe's Pink and White Tyranny, 859
      Mulrenan's Sketch of the Church on Long Island, 854

      Natural History of New York, 432

      Oakeley's Priest on the Mission, 719

      Perrone's Divinity of Christ, 286

      Rome and Geneva, 283
      Russell's My Study Windows, 427

      Seelye on Roman Imperialism, 141
      Sestini's Manual of Geometrical Analysis, 856
      Seton's Romance of the Charter Oak, 288
      Starr's Patron Saints, 853
      Stowe's Little Pussy Willow, 144
      Sullivan's Prayers and Ceremonies of the Mass, 144
      Synchronology of Sacred and Profane History, 144

      Vaughan's Life of St. Thomas Aquin., 427

      Weiss's American Religion, 720
      West's State of the Dead, 574
      Whipple's Literature and Art, 430
      Wonders of European Art, 576
      Wonders of the Heavens, 432

      Young's Catholic Hymns and Canticles, 719

       *       *       *       *       *




      THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

      VOL. XIII., No. 73.--APRIL, 1871.[1]


UNIFICATION AND EDUCATION.[2]


The Hon. Henry Wilson, recently re-elected senator in Congress from
Massachusetts, may not be distinguished as an original thinker or
as a statesman of commanding ability, but no man is a surer index
to his party or a more trustworthy exponent of its sentiments and
tendencies, its aims and purposes. This gives to his article in
_The Atlantic Monthly_, indicating the policy to be pursued by the
Republican party, a weight it might not otherwise possess.

Mr. Wilson is a strong political partisan, but he is above all
a fervent Evangelical, and his aim, we presume, is to bring his
political party to coincide with his Evangelical party, and make each
strengthen the other. We of course, as a Catholic organ, have nothing
to say of questions in issue between different political parties so
long as they do not involve the rights and interests of our religion,
or leave untouched the fundamental principles and genius of the
American system of government, although we may have more or less to
say as American citizens; but when either party is so ill-advised
as to aim a blow either at the freedom of our religion or at our
federative system of government, we hold ourselves free, and in duty
bound, to warn our fellow-citizens and our fellow-Catholics of the
impending danger, and to do what we can to avert or arrest the blow.
We cannot, without incurring grave censure, betray by our silence the
cause of our religion or of our country, for fear that by speaking we
may cross the purposes of one or another party, and seem to favor the
views and policy of another.

Mr. Wilson's _New Departure_ is unquestionably revolutionary,
and therefore not lawful for any party in this country to adopt.
It is expressed in two words, NATIONAL UNIFICATION and NATIONAL
EDUCATION--that is, the consolidation of all the powers of
government in the general government, and the social and religious
unification of the American people by means of a system of universal
and uniform compulsory education, adopted and enforced by the
authority of the united or consolidated states, not by the states
severally each within its own jurisdiction and for its own people.
The first is decidedly revolutionary and destructive of the American
system of federative government, or the division of powers between a
general government and particular state governments; the second, in
the sense proposed, violates the rights of parents and annihilates
the religious liberty secured by the constitution and laws both of
the several states and of the United States.

The general government, in our American political system, is not the
national government, or any more national than the several state
governments. The national government with us is divided between a
general government having charge of our relations with other powers
and internal matters of a general nature and common to all the
states, and particular state governments having charge of matters
local and particular in their nature, and clothed with all the powers
of supreme national governments not expressly delegated to the
general government. In the draft of the federal constitution reported
by the committee to the convention of 1787, the word _national_ was
used, but the convention finally struck it out, and inserted wherever
it occurred the word _general_, as more appropriately designating the
character and powers of the government they were creating. It takes
under our actual system both the state governments and the general
government to make one complete national government, invested with
all the powers of government. By making the general government a
supreme national government, we make it the source of all authority,
subordinate the state governments to it, make them hold from it,
and deprive them of all independent or undivided rights. This would
completely subvert our system of government, according to which the
states hold their powers immediately from the political people, and
independently of any suzerain or overlord, and the general government
from the states or the people organized as states united in
convention. A more complete change of the government or destruction
of the federative principle, which constitutes the chief excellence
and glory of our system, it would be difficult to propose, or even to
conceive, than is set forth in Mr. Wilson's programme.

Mr. Wilson, however, is hardly justified in calling the revolution
he proposes a "New Departure." It has been the aim of a powerful
party, under one name or another, ever since 1824, if not from
the origin of the government itself. This party has been steadily
pursuing it, and with increasing numbers and influence, ever since
the anti-slavery agitation seriously commenced. At one time, and
probably at all times, it has been moved chiefly by certain business
interests which it could not advance according to its mind by state
legislation, and for which it desired federal legislation and the
whole power of a national government, but which it could not get
because the constitution and the antagonistic interests created by
slave labor were opposed to it. It then turned philanthropist and
called in philanthropy to its aid--philanthropy which makes light
of constitutions and mocks at state lines, and claims the right
to go wherever it conceives the voice of humanity calls it. Under
the pretext of philanthropy, the party turned abolitionist, and
sought to bring under the action of the general government the
question of slavery manifestly reserved to the states severally,
and which it belonged to each to settle for itself in its own way.
A civil war followed. The slaves were emancipated, and slavery
abolished, professedly under the war-power of the Union, as a
military necessity, which nobody regrets. But the party did not
stop here. Forgetful that the extraordinary war-power ceases with
the war, and military necessity can no longer be pleaded, it has,
under one pretext or another, such as protecting and providing for
the freed-men and reconstructing the states that seceded, continued
to exercise it ever since the war was over, and by constitutional
amendments of doubtful validity, since ratified in part under
military pressure by states not yet reconstructed or held to be
duly organized states in the Union, it has sought to legitimate it,
and to incorporate it into the constitution as one of the ordinary
peace-powers of the government.

The party has sometimes coincided, and sometimes has not strictly
coincided, with one or another of the great political parties
that have divided the country, but it has always struggled
for the consolidation of all the powers of government in the
general government. Whether prompted by business interests or by
philanthropy, its wishes and purposes have required it to get rid of
all co-ordinate and independent bodies that might interfere with,
arrest, or limit the power of Congress, or impose any limitation on
the action of the general government not imposed by the arbitrary
will of the majority of the people, irrespective of their state
organization.

What the distinguished senator urges we submit, therefore, is simply
the policy of consolidation or centralization which his party has
steadily pursued from the first, and which it has already in good
part consummated. It has abolished slavery, and unified the labor
system of the Union; it has contracted a public debt, whether
needlessly or not, large enough to secure to the consolidation of
the powers of a national government in the general government the
support of capitalists, bankers, railroad corporators, monopolists,
speculators, projectors, and the business world generally. Under
pretence of philanthropy, and of carrying out the abolition of
slavery, and abolishing all civil and political distinctions of
race or color, it has usurped for the general government the power
to determine the question of suffrage and eligibility, under the
constitution and by the genius of our government reserved to the
states severally, and sends the military and swarms of federal
inspectors into the states to control, or at least to look after,
the elections, in supreme contempt of state authority. It has
usurped for the general government the power of granting charters of
incorporation for private business purposes elsewhere than in the
District of Columbia, and induced it to establish national bureaus
of agriculture and education, as if it was the only and unlimited
government of the country, which it indeed is fast becoming.

The work of consolidation or unification is nearly completed, and
there remains little to do except to effect the social and religious
unification of the various religions, sects, and races that make up
the vast and diversified population of the country; and it is clear
from Mr. Wilson's programme that his party contemplate moulding the
population of European and of African origin, Indians and Asiatics,
Protestants and Catholics, Jews and pagans, into one homogeneous
people, after what may be called the New England Evangelical
type. Neither his politics nor his philanthropy can tolerate any
diversity of ranks, conditions, race, belief, or worship. A complete
unification must be effected, and under the patronage and authority
of the general government.

Mr. Wilson appears not to have recognized any distinction between
unity and union. Union implies plurality or diversity; unity excludes
both. Yet he cites, without the least apparent misgiving, the fathers
of the republic--Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jay, and
Madison--who were strenuous for the union of the several states, as
authorities in favor of their unity or consolidation in one supreme
national government. There were points in which these great men
differed among themselves--some of them wished to give more, some of
them less, power to the general government--some of them would give
more, some of them less, power to the executive, etc., but they all
agreed in their efforts to establish the union of the states, and not
one of them but would have opposed their unity or consolidation into
a single supreme government. Mr. Wilson is equally out in trying, as
he does, to make it appear that the strong popular sentiment of the
American people, in favor of union, is a sentiment in favor of unity
or unification.

But starting with the conception of unity or consolidation, and
resolving republicanism into the absolute supremacy of the will
of the people, irrespective of state organization, Mr. Wilson can
find no stopping-place for his party short of the removal of all
constitutional or organic limitations on the irresponsible will of
the majority for the time, which he contends should in all things
be supreme and unopposed. His republicanism, as he explains it,
is therefore incompatible with a well-ordered state, and is either
no government at all, but universal anarchy, or the unmitigated
despotism of majorities--a despotism more oppressive and crushing to
all true freedom and manly independence, than any autocracy that the
world has ever seen. The fathers of the republic never understood
republicanism in this sense. They studied to restrict the sphere of
power, and to guard against the supremacy of mere will, whether of
the monarch, the nobility, or the people.

But having reached the conclusion that true republicanism demands
unification, and the removal of all restrictions on the popular
will, Mr. Wilson relies on the attachment of the American people to
the republican idea to carry out and realize his programme, however
repugnant it may be to what they really desire and suppose they
are supporting. He knows the people well enough to know that they
do not usually discriminate with much niceness, and that they are
easily caught and led away by a few high-sounding phrases and popular
catchwords, uttered with due gravity and assurance--perhaps he does
not discriminate very nicely, and is himself deceived by the very
phrases and catchwords which deceive them. It is not impossible. At
any rate, he persuades himself unification or consolidation can be
carried forward and effected by appeals to the republican instincts
and tendencies of the American people, and secured by aid of the
colored vote and woman suffrage, soon to be adopted as an essential
element in the revolutionary movement. The colored people, it is
expected, will vote as their preachers direct, and their preachers
will direct as they are directed by the Evangelicals. The women
who will vote, if woman suffrage is adopted, are evangelicals,
philanthropists, or humanitarians, and are sure to follow their
instincts and vote for the unification or centralization of
power--the more unlimited, the better.

But the chief reliance for the permanence in power of the party of
consolidation is universal and uniform compulsory education by the
general government, which will, if adopted, complete and preserve
the work of unification. Education is the American hobby--regarded,
as uneducated or poorly educated people usually regard it, as a sort
of panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to. We ourselves,
as Catholics, are as decidedly as any other class of American
citizens in favor of universal education, as thorough and extensive
as possible--if its quality suits us. We do not, indeed, prize so
highly as some of our countrymen appear to do the simple ability to
read, write, and cipher; nor do we believe it possible to educate
a whole people so that every one, on attaining his majority, will
understand the bearing of all political questions or comprehend the
complexities of statesmanship, the effects at large of all measures
of general or special legislation, the bearing on productive industry
and national wealth of this or that financial policy, the respective
merits of free trade and protection, or what in a given time or given
country will the best secure individual freedom and the public good.
This is more than we ourselves can understand, and we believe we are
better educated than the average American. We do not believe that
the great bulk of the people of any nation can ever be so educated
as to understand the essential political, financial, and economical
questions of government for themselves, and they will always have to
follow blindly their leaders, natural or artificial. Consequently,
the education of the leaders is of far greater importance than the
education of those who are to be led. All men have equal natural
rights, which every civil government should recognize and protect,
but equality in other respects, whether sought by levelling downward
or by levelling upward, is neither practicable nor desirable. Some
men are born to be leaders, and the rest are born to be led. Go where
we will in society, in the halls of legislation, the army, the navy,
the university, the college, the district school, the family, we
find the few lead, the many follow. It is the order of nature, and
we cannot alter it if we would. Nothing can be worse than to try to
educate all to be leaders. The most pitiable sight is a congressional
body in which there is no leader, an army without a general, but
all lead, all command--that is, nobody leads or commands. The best
ordered and administered state is that in which the few are well
educated and lead, and the many are trained to obedience, are willing
to be directed, content to follow, and do not aspire to be leaders.
In the early days of our republic, when the few were better educated
than now and the many not so well, in the ordinary sense of the term,
there was more dignity in the legislative, judicial, and executive
branches of the government, more wisdom and justice in legislation,
and more honesty, fidelity, and capacity in the administration. In
extending education and endeavoring to train all to be leaders, we
have only extended presumption, pretension, conceit, indocility, and
brought incapacity to the surface.

These, we grant, are unpopular truths, but they, nevertheless, are
truths, which it is worse than idle to deny. Everybody sees it, feels
it, but few have the courage to avow it in face of an intolerant and
tyrannical public opinion. For ourselves, we believe the peasantry
in old Catholic countries, two centuries ago, were better educated,
although for the most part unable to read or write, than are the
great body of the American people to-day. They had faith, they had
morality, they had a sense of religion, they were instructed in the
great principles and essential truths of the Gospel, were trained to
be wise unto salvation, and they had the virtues without which wise,
stable, and efficient government is impracticable. We hear it said,
or rather read in the journals, that the superiority the Prussian
troops have shown to the French is due to their superior education.
We do not believe a word of it. We have seen no evidence that the
French common soldiers are not as well educated and as intelligent as
the Prussian. The superiority is due to the fact that the Prussian
officers were better educated in their profession, were less
overweening in their confidence of victory, and maintained better
and severer discipline in their armies, than the French officers.
The Northern armies in our recent civil war had no advantage in the
superior education of the rank and file over the Southern armies,
where both were equally well officered and commanded. The _morale_
of an army is no doubt the great thing, but it does not depend on
the ability of the common soldier to read, write, and cipher; it
depends somewhat on his previous habits and pursuits--chiefly on the
officers. Under the first Napoleon, the Prussians were not superior
to the French, though as well educated. Good officers, with an able
general at their head, can make an efficient army out of almost any
materials.

It is not, therefore, for political or military reasons that we
demand universal education, whether by the general government or
under the state governments. We demand it, as far as practicable,
for other and far higher reasons. We want it for a spiritual or
religious end. We want our children to be educated as thoroughly as
they can be, but in relation to the great purpose of their existence,
so as to be fitted to gain the end for which God creates them. For
the great mass of the people, the education needed is not secular
education, which simply sharpens the intellect and generates pride
and presumption, but moral and religious education, which trains up
children in the way they should go, which teaches them to be honest
and loyal, modest and unpretending, docile and respectful to their
superiors, open and ingenuous, obedient and submissive to rightful
authority, parental or conjugal, civil or ecclesiastical; to know and
keep the commandments of God and the precepts of the church; and to
place the salvation of the soul before all else in life. This sort
of education can be given only by the church or under her direction
and control; and as there is for us Catholics only one church, there
is and can be no proper education for us not given by or under the
direction and control of the Catholic Church.

But it is precisely education by the Catholic Church that Mr. Wilson
and his party do not want, do not believe in, and wish to prevent
us from having even for our own children. It is therefore they
demand a system of universal and uniform compulsory education by
the authority and under the direction of the general government,
which shall effect and maintain the national unification proposed,
by compelling all the children of the land to be trained in national
schools, under Evangelical control and management. The end and aim
of the _New Departure_, aside from certain business interests, is
to suppress Catholic education, gradually extinguish Catholicity in
the country, and to form one homogeneous American people after the
New England Evangelical type. Of this there can be no reasonable
doubt. The Evangelicals and their humanitarian allies, as all their
organs show, are seriously alarmed at the growth of Catholicity in
the United States. They supposed, at first, that the church could
never take root in our Protestant soil, that she could not breathe
the atmosphere of freedom and enlightenment, or thrive in a land of
newspapers and free schools. They have been disappointed, and now
see that they reckoned without their host, and that, if they really
mean to prevent the American people from gradually becoming Catholic,
they must change fundamentally the American form of government,
suppress the freedom of religion hitherto enjoyed by Catholics, and
take the training of all children and youth into their own hands. If
they leave education to the wishes and judgment of parents, Catholic
parents will bring up their children Catholics; if they leave it
to the states separately, Catholics in several of them are already
a powerful minority, daily increasing in strength and numbers, and
will soon be strong enough to force the state legislatures to give
them their proportion of the public schools supported at the public
expense.

All this is clear enough. What, then, is to be done? Mr. Wilson, who
is not remarkable for his reticence, tells us, if not with perfect
frankness, yet frankly enough for all practical purposes. It is to
follow out the tendency which has been so strengthened of late,
and absorb the states in the Union, take away the independence of
the state governments, and assume the control of education for the
general government, already rendered practically the supreme national
government;--then, by appealing to the popular sentiment in favor of
education, and saying nothing of its quality, get Congress, which
the Evangelicals, through the party in power, already control, to
establish a system of compulsory education in national schools--and
the work is done; for these schools will necessarily fall into
Evangelical hands.

Such is what the distinguished Evangelical senator from Massachusetts
calls a "New Departure," but which is really only carrying out
a policy long since entered upon, and already more than half
accomplished. While we are writing, Mr. Hoar, a representative
in Congress from Massachusetts, has introduced into the House of
Representatives a bill establishing a system of national education
under the authority of the general government. Its fate is not
yet known, but no doubt will be, before we go to press. The
probabilities are that it will pass both Houses, and if it does, it
will receive the signature of the President as a matter of course.
The Evangelicals--under which name we include Congregationalists,
Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, Baptists, and Methodists, etc.--all
the denominations united in the Evangelical Alliance--constitute,
with their political and philanthropic allies, the majority in
Congress, and the measure is advocated apparently by the whole
Evangelical press and by the larger and more influential republican
journals of the country, as any number of excerpts from them now
before us will satisfy any one who has the curiosity to read them.
We did think of selecting and publishing the more striking and
authoritative among them, but we have concluded to hold them in
reserve, to be produced in case any one should be rash enough to
question our general statement. There is a strong popular feeling in
many parts of the country in favor of the measure, which is a pet
measure also of the Evangelical ministers generally, who are sure to
exert their powerful influence in its support, and we see no reason
to doubt that the bill will pass.

But while we see ample cause for all citizens who are loyal to
the system of government which Providence enabled our fathers to
establish, and who wish to preserve it and the liberties it secures,
to be vigilant and active, we see none for alarm. The bill, if
it passes, will be manifestly unconstitutional, even counting
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as valid parts of the
constitution; and there may be more difficulty in carrying it into
effect than its framers anticipate. It is part and parcel of a New
England policy, and New England is not omnipotent throughout the
Union, nor very ardently loved; not all the members of the several
evangelical denominations will, when they understand it, favor the
revolution in the government Mr. Wilson would effect. There are in
those denominations many men who belong not to the dominant party,
and who will follow their political rather than their denominational
affinities; also, there are in them a large number, we should hope,
of honest men, who are not accustomed to act on the maxim, "the end
justifies the means," loyal men and patriotic, who consider it no
less disloyalty to seek to revolutionize our government against the
states than against the Union, and who will give their votes and all
their influence to preserve the fundamental principles and genius of
our federative system of government, as left us by our fathers, and
resist, if need be, to the death the disloyal policy of unification
and education proposed by Mr. Wilson.

The Southern states are reconstructed and back now in their place
in the Union, and will not be much longer represented by Northern
adventurers, or men of little ability and less character, but very
soon by genuine Southern men, who, while strictly loyal to the Union,
will speak the genuine sentiments of the Southern people. The attempt
to New-Englandize the Southern people has not succeeded, and will not
succeed. When to the Southern people, who will never acquiesce in
the policy of unification, we add the large number of people in the
Northern states who from their political convictions and affinities,
as well as from their conservative tendencies, will oppose
consolidation, we may feel pretty sure that the policy Mr. Wilson
presents as that of the Republican party will not be adopted, or if
adopted will not be permitted to stand. As not wholly inexperienced
in political matters, and looking at the present state of parties and
temper of the nation, we should say that Mr. Wilson, as a party man,
has committed a blunder, and that, if he has fancied that his _New
Departure_ is fitted to strengthen his party as a political party,
and to give it a new lease of power, he has miscalculated. Nothing
in our judgment would be more fatal to the continuance of his party
in power than for it boldly and unequivocally to accept Mr. Wilson's
programme. There is such a thing as reaction in human affairs, and
reactions are sometimes very powerful.

The educational question ought not to present any serious difficulty,
and would not if our Evangelicals and humanitarians did not wish
to make education a means of preventing the growth of the church
and unmaking the children of Catholics, as Catholics; or if they
seriously and in good faith would accept the religious equality
before the state which the constitution and laws, both of the Union
and the several states, as yet recognize and protect. No matter what
we claim for the Catholic Church in the theological order--we claim
for her in the civil order in this country only equality with the
sects, and for Catholics only equal rights with citizens who are not
Catholics. We demand the freedom of conscience and the liberty of our
church, which is our conscience, enjoyed by Evangelicals. This much
the country in its constitution and laws has promised us, and this
much it cannot deny us without breaking its faith pledged before the
world.

As American citizens, we object to the assumption of the control
of education, or of any action in regard to it, by the general
government; for it has no constitutional right to meddle with it,
and so far as civil government has any authority in relation to
it, it is, under our system of government, the authority of the
states severally, not of the states united. We deny, of course,
as Catholics, the right of the civil government to educate, for
education is a function of the spiritual society, as much so as
preaching and the administration of the sacraments; but we do not
deny to the state the right to establish and maintain public schools.
The state, if it chooses, may even endow religion, or pay the
ministers of religion a salary for their support; but its endowments
of religion, when made, are made to God, are sacred, and under the
sole control and management of the spiritual authority, and the
state has no further function in regard to them but to protect the
spirituality in the free and full possession and enjoyment of them.
If it chooses to pay the ministers of religion a salary, as has been
done in France and Spain, though accepted by the Catholic clergy
only as a small indemnification for the goods of the church seized
by revolutionary governments and appropriated to secular uses, it
acquires thereby no rights over them or liberty to supervise their
discharge of their spiritual functions. We do not deny the same or an
equal right in regard to schools and school-teachers. It may found
and endow schools and pay the teachers, but it cannot dictate or
interfere with the education or discipline of the school. That would
imply a union of church and state, or, rather, the subjection of the
spiritual order to the secular, which the Catholic Church and the
American system of government both alike repudiate.

It is said, however, that the state needs education for its own
protection, and to promote the public good or the good of the
community, both of which are legitimate ends of its institution.
What the state needs in relation to its legitimate ends, or the ends
for which it is instituted, it has the right to ordain and control.
This is the argument by which all public education by the state is
defended. But it involves an assumption which is not admissible.
The state, having no religious or spiritual function, can give only
secular education, and secular education is not enough for the
state's own protection or its promotion of the public good. Purely
secular education, or education divorced from religion, endangers
the safety of the state and the peace and security of the community,
instead of protecting and insuring them. It is not in the power of
the state to give the education it needs for its own sake, or for
the sake of secular society. The fact is, though statesmen, and
especially politicians, are slow to learn it, and still slower to
acknowledge it, the state, or secular society, does not and cannot
suffice for itself, and is unable to discharge its own proper
functions without the co-operation and aid of the spiritual society.
Purely secular education creates no civic virtues, and instead of
fitting unfits the people for the prompt and faithful discharge of
their civic duties, as we may see in Young America, and indeed in
the present active and ruling generation of the American people.
Young America is impatient of restraint, regards father and mother
as old-fogies, narrow-minded, behind the age, and disdains filial
submission or obedience to them, has no respect for dignities,
acknowledges no superior, mocks at law if he can escape the police,
is conceited, proud, self-sufficient, indocile, heedless of the
rights and interests of others--will be his own master, and follow
his own instincts, passions, or headstrong will. Are these the
characteristics of a people fitted to maintain a wise, well-ordered,
stable, and beneficent republican government? Or can such a people be
developed from such youngerlings? Yet with purely secular education,
however far you carry it, experience proves that you can get nothing
better.

The church herself, even if she had full control of the education
of all the children in the land, with ample funds at her command,
could not secure anything better, if, as the state, she educated
for a secular end alone. The virtues needed for the protection of
the state and the advancement of the public or common good, are and
can be secured only by educating or training the children and youth
of a nation not for this life as an end, but for the life to come.
Hence our Lord says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice,
and all these things shall be added unto you." The church does not
educate for the secular order as an end, but for God and heaven; and
it is precisely in educating for God and heaven that she secures
those very virtues on which the welfare and security of the secular
order depend, and without which civil society tends inevitably to
dissolution, and is sustained, if sustained at all, only by armed
force, as we have seen in more than one European nation which has
taken education into its own hand, and subordinated it to secular
ends. The education needed by secular society can be obtained only
from the spiritual society, which educates not for this world, but
for the world to come. The virtues needed to secure this life are
obtained only by seeking and promoting the virtues which fit us for
eternal life.

This follows necessarily from the fact that man is created with a
spiritual nature and for an immortal destiny. If he existed for this
life only, if he were, as some sciolists pretend, merely a monkey or
a gorilla developed, or were like the beasts that perish, this indeed
would not and could not follow, and the reconciliation of the nature
and destiny of man with uniform human experience would be impossible.
We should be obliged, in order to secure the peace and good order
of society, as some unbelieving statesmen do not blush to avow, to
educate in view of a falsehood, and take care to keep up the delusion
that man has a religious nature and destiny, or look to what is false
and delusive for the virtues which can alone save us from anarchy and
utter barbarism. Yet what would serve the delusion or the falsehood,
if man differs not by nature from the dog or the pig? But if man
has really a spiritual nature and an immortal destiny, then it must
necessarily follow that his real good can in no respect be obtained
but in being educated and trained to live for a spiritual life, for
an immortal destiny. Should not man be educated according to his
spiritual nature and destiny, not as a pig or a monkey? If so, in his
education should not the secular be subordinated to the spiritual,
and the temporal to the eternal? We know well, experience proves it,
that even the secular virtues are not secured when sought as the end
of education and of life, but only in educating and living for that
which is not secular, and in securing the virtues which have the
promise of the life of the world to come.

All education, as all life, should be religious, and all education
divorced from religion is an evil, not a good, and is sure in the
long run to be ruinous to the secular order; but as a part of
religious education, and included in it, secular education has its
place, and even its necessity. Man is not all soul, nor all body,
but the union of soul and body; and therefore his education should
include in their union, not separation--for the separation of soul
and body is the death of the body--both spiritual education and
secular. It is not that we oppose secular education when given in
the religious education, and therefore referred to the ultimate end
of man, but when it is given alone and for its own sake. We deny
the competency of the state to educate even for its own order, its
right to establish purely secular schools, from which all religion
is excluded, as Mr. Webster ably contended in his argument in the
Girard will case; but we do not deny, we assert rather, its right to
establish public schools under the internal control and management of
the spiritual society, and to exact that a certain amount of secular
instruction be given along with the religious education that society
gives. This last right it has in consideration of the secular funds
for the support of the schools it furnishes, and as a condition on
which it furnishes them.

Let the state say distinctly how much secular education in the public
schools it exacts, or judges to be necessary for its own ends, and so
far as the Catholic Church has anything to do with the matter it can
have it. The church will not refuse to give it in the schools under
her control. She will not hesitate to teach along with her religion
any amount of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography,
music, and drawing, or the sciences and the fine arts, the state
exacts and provides for; nor will she refuse to allow it to send,
if it chooses, its own inspectors into her schools to ascertain if
she actually gives the secular education required. Let it say, then,
what amount of secular education it wants for all the children of
the land, and is willing to pay for, and, so far as Catholics are
concerned, it can have it, and of as good quality, to say the least,
as it can get in purely secular schools, and along with it the
religious education, the most essential to it as well as to the souls
of all.

But the difficulty here, it is assumed, is that the spiritual
society with us is divided into various denominations, each with its
distinctive views of religion. That, no doubt, is a damage, but can
be easily overcome by bearing in mind that the several divisions
have equal rights, and by making the public schools denominational,
as they are in Prussia, Austria, France, and to a certain extent in
England, where denominational diversities obtain as well as with
us. Where the community is divided between different religious
denominations, all standing on a footing of perfect equality before
civil society, this is the only equitable system of public schools
that is practicable. If the state does not adopt it, it must--1, let
the whole business of education alone, and make no public provision
for it; 2, establish purely secular, that is, godless schools,
from which all religion is excluded, to which no religious people
can be expected to consent, and which would ruin both public and
private virtue, and defeat the very purpose of all education; or,
3, it must practically, if not theoretically, recognize some one
of the several denominations as the state religion, and remit the
education of childhood and youth to its management and control, as
is virtually the case with our present public schools, but which
would be manifestly unjust to all the others--to non-evangelicals, if
evangelicalism is made the state religion, or to the Evangelicals,
if a non-evangelical denomination be established as the religion of
the state. The only way to be just to all is, as everybody can see,
to recognize in practice as well as in profession the equal rights
of all denominations in the civil order--make the public schools
denominational, and give to each denomination that asks it for the
sake of conscience its fair and honest proportion, to be as to their
internal economy, education, and discipline under its sole control
and management.

Mr. Wilson proposes for our admiration and imitation the Prussian
system of public schools, and though we do not know that it is
superior to the Austrian or even the French system, yet we think
highly of it. But, what the Evangelical senator does not tell us,
the Prussian system is strictly the denominational system, and each
denomination is free and expected to educate in its own schools its
own children, under the direction of its pastors and teachers,
in its own religion. The Prussian system recognizes the fact that
different communions do exist among the Prussian people, and does
not aim to suppress them or at unification by state authority. It
meets the fact as it is, without seeking to alter it. Give us the
Prussian system of denominational schools, and we shall be satisfied,
even if education is made compulsory. We, of course, protest against
any law compelling us to send our children to schools in which our
religion cannot be freely taught, in which no religion is taught, or
in which is taught in any shape or degree a religion which we hold to
be false or perilous to souls. Such a law would violate the rights
of parents and the freedom of conscience; but with denominational
schools compulsory education would violate no one's conscience and
no parental right. Parents ought, if able, to have their children
educated, and if they will not send their children to schools
provided for them by the public, and in which their religion is
respected, and made the basis of the education given, we can see no
valid reason why the law should not compel them. The state has the
right, perhaps the duty, in aid of the spiritual society and for its
own safety and the public good, to compel parents to educate their
children when public schools of their own religion, under the charge
of their own pastors, are provided for them at the public expense.
Let the public schools be denominational, give us our proportion of
them, so that no violence will be done to parental rights or to the
Catholic conscience, and we shall be quite willing to have education
made compulsory, and even if such schools are made national, though
we should object as American citizens to them, we should as Catholics
accept them. We hold state authority is the only constitutional
authority under our system to establish schools and provide for them
at the public expense; but we could manage to get along with national
denominational schools as well as others could. We could educate in
our share of the public schools our own children in our own way, and
that is all we ask. We do not ask to educate the children of others,
unless with the consent or at the request of parents and guardians.

The Prussian system of denominational schools could be introduced
and established in all the states without the least difficulty,
if it were not for Evangelicals, their Unitarian offshoots, and
their humanitarian allies. These are religious and philanthropic
busybodies, who fancy they are the Atlas who upholds the world,
and that they are deputed to take charge of everybody's affairs,
and put them to rights. But they forget that their neighbors have
rights as well as themselves, and perhaps intentions as honest and
enlightened, and as much real wisdom and practical sagacity. The
only obstacle to the introduction and establishment of a just and
equitable system of public schools comes from the intolerant zeal of
these Evangelicals, who seek to make the public schools an instrument
for securing the national, social, and religious unification they
are resolved on effecting, and for carrying out their purpose of
suppressing the church and extirpating Catholicity from American
soil. They want to use them in training our children up in the way of
Evangelicalism, and moulding the whole American population into one
homogeneous people, modelled, as we have said, after the New England
Evangelical type. Here is the difficulty, and the whole difficulty.
The denominational system would defeat their darling hope, their pet
project, and require them to live and let live. They talk much about
freedom of conscience and religious liberty and equal rights; but the
only equal rights they understand are all on their side, and they
cherish such a tender regard for religious liberty, have so profound
a respect for it, that they insist, like our Puritan forefathers, on
keeping it all to themselves, and not to suffer it to be profaned or
abused by being extended to others.

Prussia, though a Protestant country, does not dream of making the
public schools a machine either for proselytism or unification.
She is contented to recognize Catholics as an integral part of her
population, and to leave them to profess and practise their own
religion according to the law of their church. Our Evangelicals would
do well to imitate her example. We Catholics are here, and here we
intend to remain. We have as much right to be here as Evangelicals
have. We are too many to be massacred or exiled, and too important
and influential a portion of the American people to be of no account
in the settlement of public affairs. We have votes, and they will
count on whichever side we cast them; and we cannot reasonably be
expected to cast them on the side of any party that is seeking to
use its power as a political party to suppress our church and our
religion, or even to destroy our federative system of government, and
to leave all minorities at the mercy of the irresponsible majority
for the time, with no other limit to its power than it sees proper to
impose on itself; for we love liberty, and our church teaches us to
be loyal to the constitution of our country.

The wisest course, since there are different religious denominations
in the country, is to accept the situation, to recognize the fact,
acquiesce in it, and make the best of it. Any attempt to unmake,
by the direct or indirect authority of the state, Catholics of
their faith or any denomination of its belief, is sure to fail.
Each denomination is free to use Scripture and reason, logic and
tradition, all moral and intellectual weapons, against its rivals,
and with that it should be contented. Whatever may be the rightful
claims of the church in the theological order, she is contented with
the civil protection of her equal rights in the political order. She
asks--with the wealth, the fashion, the public opinion, the press,
nine-tenths of the population of the country, and the seductions
of the world against her--only "an open field and fair play." If
she does not complain, her enemies ought to be satisfied with the
advantages they have.

We have entered our protest against a party programme which threatens
alike the genius of the American government and the freedom of
religion, for so much was obviously our duty, both as Catholics and
citizens. We are aware of the odds against us, but we have confidence
in our countrymen that, though they may be momentarily deceived
or misled, they will, when the real character of the programme we
have exposed is once laid open to them, reject it with scorn and
indignation, and hasten to do us justice.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.

[2] _New Departure of the Republican Party._ By Henry Wilson. _The
Atlantic Monthly_, Boston, January, 1871.




THE CROSS.


      In weary hours to lonely heights
        When thou hast travelled sore,
      A sorrowing man hath borne his cross
        And gone thy way before.

      Thine eyes cannot escape the sign
        On every hand that is
      Of him who bore the general woe,
        Nor knew a common bliss.

      But men, remembering his face,
        Dreamed of him while they slept,
      And the mother by the cradle side
        Thought of his eye, and wept.

      Now haunts the world his ghost whose fate
        Made all men's fates his own;
      So for the wrongs of modest hearts
        A myriad hearts atone.

      Oh! deeply shall thy spirit toil
        To reach the height he trod,
      And humbly strive thy soul to know
        Its servant was its God.

      Only earth's martyr is her lord;
        Such is the gain of loss:
      And, looking in all hearts, I see
        The signal of the cross.




THE HOUSE OF YORKE.


CHAPTER I.

GENEALOGIES.

Under a thickly-branched tree in the northern part of one of the
southern counties of Maine is a certain gray rock, matted over with
dim green lichens that are spotted with dead gold. From under this
rock springs a sparkling little stream. It is no storied fountain,
rich with legends of splendor, poetry, and crime, but a dear, bright
little Yankee brook, with the world all before it. That world it
immediately proceeds to investigate. It creeps through thready
grasses and russet pine-needles; it turns aside, with great respect,
for a stone no larger than a rabbit; and when a glistening pitchy
cone drops into it, the infant river labors under the burden. When
the thirsty fawn comes there to drink, nearly the whole rivulet flows
down its throat, and the cone is stranded high and dry; what there
is left flows southward. A sunbeam pierces the scented gloom, creeps
down a tree-trunk, steals over a knoll of green-and-brown tree-moss,
which then looks like a tiny forest on fire, over yellow violets,
which dissolve in its light, over a bank of rich dark mould veined
with the golden powder of decayed pine-trees, moist and soft, and
full of glistening white roots, where the flowers push down their
pearly feet. Over the bank, into the water, goes the sunbeam, and the
two frolic together, and the stream dives under the gnarled roots,
so that its playmate would believe it lost but for that gurgle of
laughter down in the cool, fresh dark. Then it leaps up, and spreads
itself out in a mirror, and the elder-tree, leaning over to look at
the reflection of its fan-like leaves and clusters of white flowers,
gets very erroneous ideas concerning its own personal appearance;
for the palpitating rings that chase each other over the surface of
the water make the brown stems crinkle, the leaves come to pieces
and unite again, and the many flowers in each round cluster melt all
together, then twinkle out individually, only to melt again into that
bloomy full moon. Over this shimmer of flowers and water big bees
fly, buzzing terribly, dragon-flies dart, or hang, purple-mailed,
glittering creatures, with gauzy wings, and comical insects dance
there, throwing spots of sunshine instead of shadow down to the leafy
bed. Then the brook flows awhile in a green tranquil shadow, till,
reaching the interlaced roots of two immense trees that hold a bank
between them, it makes a sudden, foamy plunge the height of a stag's
front. She is a bride then, you may say--she is Undine, looking
through that white veil, and thinking new thoughts.

Now the bear comes down to drink and look at his ugly face in the
deepening wave, foxes switch their long tails about the banks, deer
come, as light-footed as shadows, drink, and fling up their short
tails, with a flit of white, and trot away with a little sniff, and
their heads thrown back, hearing the howl or the long stride of the
wolf in pursuit. Rabbits come there, and squirrels leap and nibble in
the branches above. Besides, there are shoals of pretty, slim fishes.

So through the mellow gloom and sunny sparkle of the old forest, the
clear brook wanders, growing wiser, and talking to itself about many
things.

Presently the wild creatures withdraw, sunburnt children wade across
from bank to bank, grassy clearings abound, there are farm-houses,
and cows with tinkling bells; and then comes a bridge, and boats
dance upon the water, and the stream is a river! Alas for the Indian
name it brought up out of the earth with it, and lisped and gurgled
and laughed to itself all the way down--the name spiked with _k_'s
and choky-looking _gh_'s, rough to the eye, but sweet in the mouth,
like a hazel-nut in the burr. The white settlers have changed all
that.

Now, indeed, the young river puts on state, and lets people see that
it is not to be waded through; and when they build a dam across,
it flows grandly over, in a smooth, wine-colored curve. Times are
changed, indeed, since the little gray birds with speckled breasts
looked with admiration at its first cascade, since the bear, setting
down his great paw, clumsily splashed the whole stream up over
his shaggy leg. There are farms to keep up appearances before,
mill-wheels to turn, and ships to bear up. Pine-cones, indeed!
Besides, a new and strange experience has come to it, and its bosom
pulses daily with the swelling of the tides. And here one village
street, with white houses, follows its course a mile or so, and
another street with white houses comes down to its bank from the
west, crosses over, and goes up eastward. This town, with its two
principal streets forming a cross near the mouth of the river, a
white cross at the end of a silver chain--shall we call it Seaton?
It is a good enough name. And the river shall be Seaton River, and
the bay into which it flows shall be Seaton Bay. But the ocean that
makes the bay, and drinks the river, shall be Atlantic still.

We have spoken!

We follow the road that follows the stream on its eastern bank, cross
West Street, get into a poor, dwindling neighborhood, leave the
houses nearly all behind, go over two small, ill-conditioned hills,
and find at our right a ship-yard with wharves, at our left a dingy
little cottage, shaped like a travelling-trunk, and not much larger
than some. It stands with its side toward the dusty road, a large,
low chimney rises from the roof, there is a door with a window at
each side of it. One can see at a glance from the outside how this
house is divided. It has but two rooms below, with a tiny square
entry between, and a low attic above. Each room has three windows,
one on each of the three outer walls.

The kitchen looked toward the village through its north window.
Opposite that was a large fireplace with an ill-tempered, crackling
fire of spruce-wood, throwing out sparks and splinters. It was April
weather, and not very warm yet. In the chimney-corner sat Mr. Rowan,
sulkily smoking his pipe, his eyes fixed on the chimney-back. He
was a large, slouching man, with an intelligent face brutalized by
intemperance. Drunkard was written all over him, in the scorched
black hair, not yet turning gray, in the dry lips, bloated features,
and inflamed eyes. He sat in his shirt-sleeves, waiting impatiently
while his wife put a patch in his one coat. Mrs. Rowan, a poor,
faded, little frightened woman, whom her female acquaintances called
"slack," sat near the south window, wrinkling her brows anxiously
over the said patch, which was smaller than the hole it was destined
to fill. The afternoon sunshine spread a golden carpet close to
her feet. In the light of it one could see the splinters in the
much-scoured floor, and a few fraggles in the hem of Mrs. Rowan's
calico gown.

At the eastern window sat Edith Yorke, eleven years of age, with a
large book on her knees. Over this book, some illustrated work on
natural history, she had been bending for an hour, her loose mop of
tawny hair falling each side of the page. So cloistered, her profile
was invisible; but, standing in front of her, one could see an oval
face with regular features full of calm earnestness. Bright, arched
lips, and a spirited curve in the nostrils, saved this face from the
cold look which regular features often give. The large, drooping
eyelids promised large eyes, the forehead was wide and not high, the
brows long, slightly arched, and pale-brown in color, and the whole
face, neck, hands, and wrists were tanned to a light quadroon tint.
But where the coarse sleeve had slipped up was visible an arm of
dazzling whiteness. Outside the window, and but two rods distant,
hung a crumbling clay bank, higher than the house, with a group of
frightened alder-bushes looking over the top, and holding on with all
their roots. Some day, in spite of their grip--the sooner, perhaps,
because of its stress--the last frail hold was to be loosed, and the
bushes were to come sliding down the bank, faster and faster, to
pitch headlong into the mire at the bottom, with a weak crackling of
all their poor doomed branches.

Presently the child looked up, with lights coming and going in
her agate-colored eyes. "How wonderful frogs are!" she exclaimed
involuntarily.

There was no reply.

She glanced at her two companions, scarcely conscious of them, her
mind full of something else. "But everything is wonderful, when you
come to think of it," she pursued dreamily.

Mr. Rowan took the pipe from his mouth, turned his forbidding face,
and glowered at the girl. "You're a wonderful fool!" he growled; then
resumed his pipe, feeling better, apparently, for that expression
of opinion. His wife glanced up, furtive and frightened, but said
nothing.

Edith looked at the man unmoved, saw him an instant, then, still
looking, saw him not. After a while she became aware, roused herself,
and bent again over the book. Then there was silence, broken only by
the snapping of the fire, the snip of Mrs. Rowan's scissors, and the
lame, one-sided ticking of an old-fashioned clock on the mantelpiece.

After a while, as the child read, a new thought struck up. "That's
just like! Don't you think"--addressing the company--"Major
Cleaveland said yesterday that I had lightning-bugs in my eyes!"

Without removing his pipe, Mr. Rowan darted an angry look at his
wife, whose face became still more frightened. "Dear me!" she said
feebly, "that child is an idjut!"

This time the long, fading gaze dwelt on the woman before it went
back to the book again. But the child was too closely ensphered in
her own life to be much, if at all, hurt. Besides, she was none of
theirs, nor of their kind. Her soul was no dying spark struggling
through ashes, but a fire, "alive, and alive like to be," as children
say when they wave the fire-brand, winding live ribbons in the air;
and no drop of their blood flowed in her veins.

The clock limped over ten minutes more, and the patch was got into
its place, after a fashion, botched somewhat, with the knots on the
outside. Mr. Rowan took the coat, grumbled at it, put it on, and
went out, glancing back at the child as he opened the door. She was
looking after him with an expression which he interpreted to mean
aversion and contempt. Perhaps he mistook. May be she was wondering
at him, what sort of strange being he was. Edith Yorke was very
curious regarding the world she had got into. It seemed to her a
queer place, and that she had at present not much concern in it.

Her husband out of the way, Mrs. Rowan took her knitting-work, and
stood a moment at the north window, gazing up toward the town, with a
far-away look of blunted expectancy, as if she had got in the habit
of looking for help which never came. Then she drew a long sigh,
that also a habit, and, resuming her chair, began to knit and to
rock herself, letting her mind, what there was left of it, swing to
and fro, unmeaningly and miserably, to the sound of the clock as it
ticked. "O dear! O dear!"--that was what the ticking always said to
this poor soul. As she sat, the afternoon sun, sinking lower, crept
about her feet, climbed to her lap, got hold of her knitting, and ran
in little bright flashes along the needles, and snapped off in sparks
at the ends, so that she seemed to be knitting sunshine.

This woman was what remained at forty of a pretty, flaxen-haired
girl of eighteen, who had captivated handsome Dick Rowan, for he
had been handsome. A faded rag of a woman she was, without hope or
spirit, all the color and life washed out of her in a bitter rain
of tears. The pink cheeks had faded, and only the ghost remained of
that dimple that had once seemed to give meaning to her smiles. The
curly hair was dry and thin, and had an air of chronic untidiness.
The blue-gray eyes were dim and heavy, the teeth were nearly all
gone. The pretty, chirping ways that had been captivating when youth
covered their silliness--oh! where had they gone? She was a weak,
broken-hearted, shiftless little woman, and her husband hated her. He
felt wronged and cheated by her. He was more disappointed than Ixion,
for in this cloud there had never even been a goddess. If she had
sometimes turned upon him, when he acted like a brute, and scorned
him for it, he would have liked her better; but she shrank, and
cowered, and trembled, made him feel himself ten times the brute she
dared not call him, yet gave him nothing to resent. "Gentle, is she?"
he cried out once in a rage. "She is not! She is weak and slavish. A
person cannot be gentle who cannot be something else."

So the poor woman suffered, and got neither pity nor credit from the
one who caused her suffering. It was hard; and yet, she was nobler
in her misery than she would have been in happiness. For sorrow gave
her now and then a touch of dignity; and when, stung with a sudden
perception of her own nothingness, she flung her desperate hands
upward, and called upon God to deliver her, a certain tragical power
and beauty seemed to wrap her round. Mrs. Rowan happy would have been
a trivial woman, meaning no great harm, because meaning no great
anything; but the fiery furnace of pain had scorched her up, and what
remained was pure.

When the two were alone, Edith dropped her book, and looked across
the room at her companion. Mrs. Rowan, busy with her own sad
thoughts, took no notice of her, and presently the child glanced
past her, and out the window. The view was not bad. First came
the dusty road, then the ship-yard, then the river sparkling, but
rather the worse for sawdust and lath-edgings that came down from
the lumber-mills above the village. But here all that was sordid
came to an end. The meanness and misery on the hitherward bank were
like witches, who cannot cross running water. From the opposite bank
rose a long, grassy hill, unmarred by road or fence. In summer-time
you could see from far away the pinkness of the wild-roses that had
seen fit to bind with a blooming cestus the dented waist of this
hill. Behind them was a green spray of locust and laburnum trees,
then dense round tops of maples, and elms in graceful groups,
half-hiding the roofs and gables of Major Cleaveland's house--the
great house of the village, as its owner was the great man. Behind
that was a narrow rim of pines and spruces, making the profile of
an enchanted city against the horizon, and above that a vast hollow
of unobstructed sky. In that space the sunsets used to build their
jasper walls, and calm airs stretch long lines of vapor across, till
the whole west was a stringed instrument whereon a full symphony of
colors played good-night to the sun. There the west wind blew up
bubbles of wry cloud, and the new moon put forth her gleaming sickle
to gather in the sheaf of days, a never-failing harvest, through
storm and sunshine, hoar-frost and dew. There the pearly piles of
cumuli used to slumber on summer afternoons, lightnings growing in
their bosoms to flash forth at evening; and there, when a long storm
ended with the day, rose the solid arch of cerulean blue. When it had
reached a certain height, Edith Yorke would run into the south room,
and look out to see the rainbow suspend its miraculous arch over
the retreating storm. This little girl, to whom everything was so
wonderful when she came to think of it, was a dear lover of beauty.

"O dear! O dear!" ticked the clock; and the barred sunshine turned
slowly on the floor, as if the ugly little house were the hub of a
huge, leisurely wheel of gold.

Edith dropped her book, and went to Mrs. Rowan's side, taking a stool
with her, and sitting down in the midst of the sunshine.

"I'm afraid I shall forget my story, Mrs. Jane, unless I say it over
again," she said. "And, you know, mamma told me never to forget."

Mrs. Rowan roused herself, glad of anything which could take her mind
from her own troubles. "Well, tell it all over to me now," she said.
"I haven't heard it this long time."

"Will you be sure to correct me if I am wrong?" the child asked
anxiously.

"Yes, I will. But don't begin till I have taken up the heel of this
stocking."

The stitches were counted and evened, half of them taken off on to a
thread, and the other half, with the seam-stitch in the middle, knit
backward once. Then Edith began to repeat the story confided to her
by her dead mother.

"My grandpapa and grandmamma were Polish exiles. They had to leave
Poland when Aunt Marie was only a year old, and before mamma
was born. They couldn't take their property with them, but only
jewels, and plate, and pictures. They went to Brussels, and there
my mamma was born, and the queen was her godmother, and sent the
christening-robe. Mamma kept the robe till she grew up; but when
she was in America, and was poor, and wanted to go to a party, she
cut it up to make the waist and sleeves of a dress. Poverty is no
disgrace, mamma said, but it is a great inconvenience. By-and-by,
they left Brussels, and went to England. Grandpapa wanted some way to
get money to live on, for they had sold nearly all their pictures and
things. They stayed in England not very long. Countess Poniatowski
called on grandmamma, and she had on a black velvet bonnet with red
roses in it; so I suppose it was winter. Then one day grandpapa took
mamma out to walk in a park; so I suppose that was summer. There were
some gentlemen in the park that they talked to, and one of them, a
gentleman with a hook nose, who was sitting down on a bench, took
mamma on his knees, and started to kiss her. But mamma slapped his
face. She said he had no right to kiss people who didn't want him
to, not even if he were a king. His name was the Duke of Wellington.
Then they all came to America, and people here were very polite to
them, because they were Polish exiles, and of noble birth. But they
couldn't eat nor drink nor wear politeness, mamma said, and so they
grew poorer and poorer every day, and didn't know what they would do.
Once they travelled with Henry Clay two weeks, and had quite a nice
time, and they went to Ashland and stayed all night. When they went
away the next day, Mr. Clay gave mamma and Aunt Marie the little mugs
they had had to drink out of. But they didn't care much about 'em,
and they broke 'em pretty soon. Mamma said she didn't know then that
Mr. Clay was a great man. She thought that just a mister couldn't
be great. She had always seen lords and counts, and grandpapa was a
colonel in the army--Colonel Lubomirski his name was. But she said
that in this country a man might be great, even if he wasn't anything
but a mister, and that my papa was as great as a prince. Well, then
they came to Boston, and Aunt Marie died, and they buried her, and
mamma was almost nine years old. People used to pet and notice her,
and everybody talked about her hair. It was thick and black, and
it curled down to her waist. One day Doctor Somebody, I can never
recollect his name, took her out walking on the Common, and they
went into Mr. John Quincy Adams's house. And Mr. Adams took one of
mamma's curls, and held it out, and said it was long enough and large
enough to hang the Czar with. And she said that they might have it
all if they'd hang him with it. And then poor grandpapa had to go
to Washington, and teach dancing and fencing, because that was all
he could do. And pretty soon grandmamma broke her heart and died.
And then after a little while grandpapa died. And, after that, mamma
had to go out sewing to support herself, and she went to Boston, and
sewed in Mr. Yorke's family. And Mr. Yorke's youngest brother fell in
love with her, and she fell in love with him, and they married each
other in spite of everybody. So the family were awfully angry. My
papa had been engaged ever since he was a little boy to Miss Alice
Mills, and they had put off getting married because she was rich, and
he hadn't anything, and was looking round to see how he should get a
fortune. And the Millses all turned against him, and the Yorkes all
turned against him, and he and mamma went off, and wandered about,
and came down to Maine; and papa died. Then mamma had to sew again to
support herself, and we were awfully poor. I remember that we lived
in the same house with you; but it was a better house than this, and
was up in the village. Then mamma's heart broke, and she died too.
But I don't mean to break my heart, Mrs. Jane. It's a poor thing to
do."

"Yes!" sighed the listener; "it's a poor thing to do."

"Well," resumed the child, "then you kept me. It was four years ago
when my mamma died, but I remember it all. She made me promise not to
forget who my mother was, and promise, with both my hands held up,
that I would be a Catholic, if I had to die for it. So I held up both
my hands, and promised, and she looked at me, and then shut her eyes.
It that all right?"

"Yes, dear!" Mrs. Rowan had dropped her knitting as the story went
on, and was gazing dreamily out the window, recalling to mind her
brief acquaintance with the fair young exile.

"Dick and I grew to be great friends," Edith continued rather
timidly. "He used to take care of me, and fight for me. Poor Dick!
He was mad nearly all the time, because his father drank rum, and
because people twitted him, and looked down upon him."

Mrs. Rowan took up her work again, and knit tears in with the yarn.

"And Dick gave his father an awful talking-to, one day," Edith
went on, still more timidly. "That was two years ago. He stood up
and poured out words. His eyes were so flashing that they dazzled,
and his cheeks were red, and he clinched his hands. He looked most
splendid. When I go back to Poland, he shall be a general in the
army. He will look just as he did then, if the Czar should come near
us. Well, after that day he went off to sea, and he has not been back
since."

Tears were running down the mother's cheeks as she thought of her
son, the only child left her of three.

Edith leaned and clasped both her hands around Mrs. Rowan's arm,
and laid her cheek to them. "But he is coming back rich, he said he
would; and what Dick said he'd do he always did. He is going to take
us away from here, and get a pretty house, and come and live with us."

A hysterical, half-laughing sob broke through the listener's quiet
weeping. "He always did keep his word, Edith!" she cried. "Dick was a
gallant lad. And I trust that the Lord will bring him back to me."

"Oh! he'll come back," said Edith confidently, and with a slight air
of haughtiness. "He'll come back himself."

All the Christianity the child had seen had been such as to make the
name of the Lord excite in her heart a feeling of antagonism. It is
hard to believe that God means love when man means hate; and this
child and her protectors had seen but little of the sunny side of
humanity. Christians held aloof from the drunkard and his family, or
approached them only to exhort or denounce. That they had any kinship
with that miserable man, that in his circumstances they might have
been what he was, never seemed to occur to them as possible. Dick
fought with the boys who mocked his father, therefore he was a bad
boy. Mrs. Rowan flamed up, and defended her husband, when the Rev.
Dr. Martin denounced him, therefore she was almost as bad as he.
So shallow are most judgments, arraigning effects without weighing
causes.

Nor did Edith fare better at their hands. She was to them a sort
of vagabond. Who believed the story of her mother's romantic
misfortunes? She was some foreign adventuress, most likely. Mr.
Charles Yorke, whom they respected, had married a native of Seaton,
and had two or three times honored that town with a short visit. They
knew that he had cast off his own brother for marrying this child's
mother. Therefore she had no claim on their respect.

Moreover, some of the ladies for whom young Mrs. Yorke had done
sewing had not the pleasantest of recollections connected with her.
A poor person has no right to be proud and high-spirited, and the
widowed exile was a very fiery woman. She would not sit at table with
their servants, she would not be delighted when they patronized her,
and she would not be grateful for the scanty wages they gave her.
She had even dared to break out upon Mrs. Cleaveland when that lady
had sweetly requested her to enter her house by the side door, when
she came to sew. "In Poland a person like you would scarcely have
been allowed to tie my mother's shoes!" she cried. The lady answered
suavely, "But we are not in Poland, madam;" but she never forgave the
insolence--still less because her husband laughed at it, and rather
liked Mrs. Yorke's spirit.

These were the ladies whom Edith had heard talk of religion; so she
lifted her head, dropped her eyelids, and said defiantly, "Dick will
come home himself!"

"Not unless the Lord lets him come," said the mother. "Oh! no good
will come to us except by him. '_Unless the Lord build the house,
they labor in vain that build it: unless the Lord keep the city, he
watcheth in vain that keepeth it._'"

"I don't think you have much to thank him for," remarked the child
quietly.

"I will thank him!" the woman cried out in a passion. "I will trust
him! He is all the hope I have!"

"Well, well, you may!" Edith said soothingly. "Don't let's talk about
it any more. Give me the scissors, and I'll cut the fraggles off the
hem of your gown. Suppose Dick should come home all of a sudden, and
find us looking so! I hope he will let us know, don't you? so that we
can put our best clothes on."

The best clothes in question were a black bombazine gown and shawl,
and an old-fashioned crape bonnet and veil, all sewed up and hidden
away under Edith's bed in the little dark attic, lest Mr. Rowan, in
one of his drunken frenzies, should destroy them. These articles were
the mourning which Mrs. Rowan had worn seven years before, when her
last daughter died. With them was another bag, belonging to Edith,
equally precious to its owner, but from other reasons. There was
a scarlet merino cape, lined with silk of the same color, both a
little faded, and a faded crape scarf that had once been gorgeous
with red and gold. In the innermost fold of this scarf, wrapped
in tissue-paper, and tucked inside an old kid glove of remarkable
smallness, were two locks of hair--one a short, thick wave of
yellow-brown, the other a long, serpentine tress of ebony blackness.

While they talked, the door of the room opened, and Mr. Rowan looked
in. "Aren't we going to have any supper to-night?" he demanded.

Edith fixed a look on him that made him shrink out, and bang the door
behind him. His wife started up, glanced at the clock, and went about
her work.

"Let me help you, Mrs. Jane," the child said.

"No, dear. There isn't much to do, and I'd rather do it." Mrs.
Rowan's voice had a sepulchral sound, her head being deep in the
fireplace, where she was putting one hook into another on the crane,
to let the tea-kettle down. She emerged with a smooch of soot on her
hair and forehead, and began flying round bringing a table into the
middle of the floor, putting up the leaves, spreading the cloth,
taking down the dishes, all with trembling haste. "If you want to
knit a few times across the heel of that stocking, you may. But be
careful not to knit too tightly, as you almost always do. You can
begin to narrow when it's two of your forefingers long."

Edith took the knitting, and went to her favorite chair in the back
window. The room had grown smoky in consequence of Mrs. Rowan's
piling of soft wood on to the fire, and hurrying about past the
fireplace, so she pushed up the window, and fastened it with a wooden
button fixed there for the purpose. Then she began to knit and think,
and, forgetting Mrs. Rowan's directions, pulled the yarn so tightly
over her fingers that she worked a hard, stiff strip across the heel,
into which the looser knitting puckered. The child was too much
absorbed to be aware of her mistake, and it did not matter; for that
stocking was never to be finished.

While she dreamed there, a deeper shadow than that of the clay bank
fell over her. She looked up with a start, and saw Mr. Rowan standing
outside the window. He had placed himself so as to avoid being seen
by any one in the room, and was just turning his eyes away from her
when she caught sight of him.

"Lean out here!" he said. "I want to speak to you."

She leaned out and waited.

"What makes you stare at me the way you sometimes do?" he asked
angrily, but in a low voice, that his wife might not hear. "Why don't
you say right out what you think?"

"I don't know what I do think," replied Edith, dropping her eyes.

"You think that I am a wretch!" he exclaimed. "You think I am a
drunkard! You think I abuse my wife!"

She neither answered nor looked up.

He paused a moment, then went on fiercely. "If there is anything I
hate, it is to have people look at me that way, and say nothing. If
you scold a man, it looks as if you thought there was something in
him that could tell black from white; and if you are impudent, you
put yourself a little in the wrong, and that helps him. He isn't so
much ashamed of himself. But when you just look, and say nothing, you
shut him out. It is as much as to tell him that words would be thrown
away on him."

"But," Edith objected, much at a loss, "if I answered you back, or
said what I thought, there would be a quarrel right off."

"Did I fight when Dick gave me such a hauling-over before he went
away?" the man questioned in a rough tone that did not hide how his
voice broke, and his blood-shot eyes filled up with tears. "Didn't
I hang my head, and take it like a dog? He said I had acted like a
brute, but he didn't say I was one, and he didn't say but I could be
a man yet, if I should try. Wasn't I sober for three months after he
went away? Yes; and I would have kept sober right on if I had had
some one to thorn and threaten me. But she gave up, and did nothing
but whimper, and it maddened me. When I ordered her to mix my rum for
me, she did it. I should have liked her better if she had thrown it,
tumbler and all, into my face."

"You'd better not find fault with her," said Edith. "She's a great
deal better than you are."

The child had a gentle, sincere way of saying audacious things
sometimes that made one wonder if she knew how audacious they were.

The man stared at her a moment; then, looking away, answered without
any appearance of anger, "I suppose she is; but I don't think much of
that kind of goodness when there's a hard job to be done. You can't
lift rocks with straws. I'm sorry for her; but, for all that, she
aggravates me, poor thing!"

He leaned back against the house, with his hands in his pockets, and
stared at the clay bank before him. Edith looked at him, but said
nothing. Presently he turned so suddenly that she started. "Girl," he
said, "never do you ridicule a man who has been drinking, no matter
what he does! You may hate him, or be afraid of him, but never laugh
at him! You might as well look down into hell and laugh! Do you
know what it is to be in the power of rum? It is to have serpents
twining round you, and binding you hand and foot. I've gone through
the streets up there with devils on my back, pushing me down; wild
beasts tearing my vitals; reptiles crawling round me; the earth
rising up and quaking under my feet, and a horror in my soul that no
words can describe, and the men and women and children have laughed
at me. Perhaps they were such shallow fools that they didn't know;
but I tell you, and you know now. Don't you ever dare to laugh at a
drunkard!"

"I never will!" Edith cried out, in an agony of terror and pity. "O
you poor man! I didn't know it was so awful. O you poor man!"

Mr. Rowan had stopped, gasping for breath, and, with his patched
sleeve, wiped off the perspiration that was streaming down his face.
Edith tore off her little calico apron with such haste as to break
the strings. "Here, take this!" she said, reaching it out to him.

He took it with a shaking hand, and wiped his face again; wiped his
eyes again and again, breathing heavily.

"Couldn't you be saved?" she asked, in a whisper. "Isn't there any
way for you to get out of it?"

"No!" he said, and gave her back her apron. "No; and I wish that I
were dead!"

"Don't say that!" the child entreated. "It is wicked; and perhaps you
will die if you say it."

The drunkard raised his trembling hands, and looked upward. "I wish
to God that I were dead!" he repeated.

Edith shrank back into the room. She was too much terrified to listen
to any more. But after a moment he called her name, and she leaned
out again. His face was calmer, and his voice more quiet. "Don't
tell her what I have been talking about," he said, nodding toward
the room. "I would sooner tear my tongue out by the roots than say
anything to her."

"I won't tell," Edith promised.

"Supper's ready," Mrs. Rowan announced, coming towards the window.
She had heard her husband's voice in conversation with Edith, and
wondered greatly what was going on.

Mr. Rowan turned away, with a look of irritation, at sound of her
timid voice, walked round the house, and came sulkily in to his
supper.

Their meals had always been comfortless and silent; but now Edith
tried to talk, at first with Mrs. Rowan; but when she saw that the
woman's tremulous replies, as if she did not dare to speak in her
husband's presence, were bringing an uglier frown to this face, and
that he was changing from sullen to savage, she addressed her remarks
and questions to him. Mr. Rowan was a surveyor, and a good one,
when he was sober, and he was a man of some general information and
reading. When he could be got to talk, one was surprised to find
in him the ruins of a gentleman. Now his answers were surly enough,
but they were intelligent, and the child, no longer looking at him
from the outside, questioned him fearlessly, and kept up a sort of
conversation till they rose from table.

It was Mr. Rowan's custom to go out immediately after supper, and
not come home till late in the evening, when he would stagger in,
sometimes stupid, sometimes furious with liquor. But to-night he
lingered about when he had left the table, lighted his pipe, kicked
the fire, wound up the clock, and cursed it for stopping, and
finally, as if ashamed of the proposal even while making it, said to
Edith, "Come, get the checker-board, and see if you can beat me."

She was quick-witted enough, or sensitive enough, not to show any
surprise, but quietly brought out the board, and arranged the chairs
and stand. It was a square of board, rough at the edges, planed on
one side, and marked off in checks with red chalk. The men were bits
of tanned leather, one side white, the other side black. She placed
them, smiled, and said, "Now, I'm ready!"

Mrs. Rowan's cheeks began to redden up with excitement as she went
about clearing the table, and washing the dishes, but she said
nothing. She had even tact enough to go away into the bedroom,
when her work was done, and leave the two to play out their game
unwatched. There she sat in the falling dusk, her hands clasped on
her knees, listening to every sound, expecting every moment to hear
her husband go out. The three curtains in the room were rolled up to
the very tops of the windows, and, in their places, three pictures
seemed to hang on the smoky walls, and illumine the place. One was
a high clay bank, its raw front ruddy with evening light, its top
crowned with a bush burning like that of Horeb. The second was a hill
covered with spruce-trees, nothing else, from the little cone, not
a foot high, to the towering spire that pierced the sky. Some faint
rose-reflections yet warmed their sombre shadows, and each sharp
top was silvered with the coming moonlight. The third window showed
a deserted ship-yard, with the skeleton of a bark standing on the
stocks. The shining river beyond seemed to flow through its ribs,
and all about it the ground was covered with bright yellow chips and
shavings. Above it, in the tender green of the southwestern sky, a
cloud-bark freighted with crimson light sailed off southward, losing
its treasure as it went. These strong, rich lights, meeting and
crossing in the room, showed clearly the woman's nervous face full
of suspense, the very attitude, too, showing suspense, as she only
half-sat on the side of the bed, ready to start up at a sound. After
a while she got up softly, and went to the fireplace to listen. All
was still in the other room, but she heard distinctly the crackling
of the fire. What had come over him? What did it mean?

Presently there was a slight movement, and Edith's voice spoke out
brightly: "Oh! I've got another king. Now I have a chance!"

The listener trembled with doubt and fear. Her husband was actually
sitting at home, and playing checkers with Edith, instead of going
out to get drunk! He could not mean to go, or he would have gone at
once. She longed to go and assure herself, to sit down in the room
with him, but could scarcely find courage to do so. She held her
breath as she went toward the door, and her hand faltered on the
latch. But at last she summoned resolution, and went out.

The lamp was lighted, the checker-board placed on the table beside
it, and the two were talking over the slackening game. Edith had a
good head for a child of her age, but her opponent was an excellent
player, and she could not interest him long. She was trying every
lure to keep him, though, and made a new tack as Mrs. Rowan came
in, relating an experience of her own, instead of questioning him
concerning his. "I want to tell you something I saw last night in my
chamber," she said.

Edith's chamber was the little dark attic, which was reached by a
steep stairway at one side of the fireplace.

"I was in bed, wide awake, and it was pitch dark. You know you put
the cover over the skylight when it rained, the other day, and it has
not been taken off. Well, instead of shutting my eyes, I kept them
wide open, and looked straight into the dark. I've heard that you
can see spirits so, and so I thought I might see my mamma. Pretty
soon there was a great hole in the dark, like a whirlpool, and after
a minute there was a little light down at the bottom of it. I kept
on looking, just as if I were looking down into a deep well, and
then there came colors in clouds, sailing about, just like clouds in
the sky. Some were red, others pink, others blue, and all colors.
Sometimes there would be a pattern of colors, just like figures in a
carpet, only they were blocks, not flowers. I didn't dream it. I saw
it as plainly as I see the fire this minute. What do you suppose it
was, Mr. Rowan?"

He had listened with interest, and did not appear to find anything
surprising in the recital.

"I don't know much about optics," he answered; "but I suppose
there is a scientific reason for this, whether it is known or not.
I've seen those colors--that is, I did when I was a child; and De
Quincey, in his _Opium Confessions_, tells the same story. I don't
believe that grown people are likely to see them, for the reason that
they shut their eyes, and their minds are more occupied. You have to
stare a good while into the dark, and wait what comes, and not think
much of anything."

"Yes," said Edith. "But what do you guess it is?"

Mr. Rowan leaned back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his
head, and considered the matter a moment, some finer intelligence
than often showed there kindling behind his bloated face.

"I should guess it might be this," he said. "Though the place appears
at first to be dark, there are really some particles of light there.
And since there are too few of them to keep up a connection in their
perfect state, they divide into their colors, and make the clouds you
saw. I don't know why particles of light should not separate, when
they have a great deal to do, and not much to do it with. Air does."

"But what made them move?" Edith asked. "They were never still."

"Perhaps they were alive."

She stared, with scintillating eyes.

Mr. Rowan gave a short, silent laugh. He knew that the child was
only questioning in order to keep him. "No reason why not," he said.
"According to Sir Humphry Davy, and some other folks, I believe, heat
isn't caloric, but repulsive motion. It isn't matter, but it moves,
goes where nothing else can, passes through stone and iron, and can't
be stopped, and can't be seen. Now, a something that is not matter,
and yet is powerful enough to overcome matter, must be spirit. Heat
is the soul of light; and if heat is spirit, light is alive. _Voilà
tout!_"

He had forgotten himself a moment in the pleasure of puzzling his
questioner; but catching his wife looking at him with an expression
of astonishment, he came back to the present. The smile died out of
his face, and the frown came back.

"Don't you want to play _solitaire_?" Edith struck in desperately.

He made a slight motion of dissent, but it was not decided; so she
brought out the pack of soiled cards, and laid them before him.
There was a moment of hesitation, during which the heart of the wife
throbbed tumultuously, and the nerves of the child tingled with an
excitement that seemed to snap in sparks from her eyes. Then he
took the cards, shuffled them, and began to play. Mrs. Rowan opened
a book, and, holding it upside down, so as to hide her face, cried
quietly behind the page. Her husband saw that she was crying, cast
a savage glance at her, and seemed about to fling the cards down;
but Edith made some remark on the game, leaned toward him, and laid
her head lightly on his arm. It was the first time in all their
acquaintance that she had voluntarily touched him. At the same time
she reached her foot, and pushed Mrs. Rowan's under the table. Mrs.
Rowan dropped her book, turned her face away quickly, and said, with
an effort of self-control rare for her: "Why, it's nine o'clock! I'll
go to bed, I think; I'm tired."

Nobody answering, or objecting, she went away, and left her husband
still over his cards.

"Isn't it about your bedtime?" he said presently to Edith.

She got up slowly, unwilling to go, yet not daring to stay. Oh!
if she were but wise enough to know the best thing that could be
said--something which would strengthen his resolution, and keep him
in. It was not yet too late for him to go out; for, when every safe
and pitiful door is closed, and slumber seals all merciful eyes, the
beacon of the grog-shop shines on through the night, and tells that
the way to perdition still is open, and the eyes of the rum-seller
yet on the watch.

"How glad I shall be when Dick comes home!" she said. "Then I hope we
can all go away from here, and wipe out, and begin over."

She could not have said better, but, if she had known, she could have
done better. What he needed was not an appeal to his sentiments, but
physical help. Words make but little impression on a man while the
torments of a burning, infernal thirst are gnawing at his vitals. The
drunkard's body, already singed by the near flames of the bottomless
pit, needed attending to at once; his soul was crushed and helpless
under the ruins of it. If an older, wiser head and hand had been
there, started up the failing fire, and made some strong, bitter
draught for him to drink, it might have done good. But the child did
not know, and the sole help she could give was an appeal to his heart.

It is as true of the finest and loftiest natures, as of the
perverted, that they cannot always conquer the evil one by spiritual
means alone. Only spirits can do that. And often the tempter must
laugh to see the physical needs, which were made to play about our
feet like children, unnoticed when the soul speaks, starved till they
become demons whose clamorous voices drown the spirit's fainting
cries.

But this man's demon was indulgence, and not denial. He was not
hovering on the brink of ruin, he was at the bottom, and striving
to rise, and he could not endure that any eye should look upon his
struggles.

"D-- you! will you go to bed?" he cried out fiercely.

Edith started back, and, without another word, climbed the narrow
stair to her attic. Before closing the trap-door, she looked down
once, and saw Mr. Rowan tearing and twisting the cards he had been
playing with.

He stayed there the whole night, fighting desperately with such
weapons as he had--a will broken at the hilt, the memory of his son,
and the thought of that dear little girl's tender but ineffectual
pity. As for God, he no longer named him, save in imprecation. The
faith of his orphaned childhood had gone long ago. The glare of the
world had scorched it up before it had fairly taken root. That there
might be help and comfort in the church of his fathers never entered
his mind. "Drink! drink!" that was his sole thought. "If I only had
some opium!" he muttered, "or a cup of strong black coffee! I wonder
if I could get either of 'em anywhere?"

The day was faintly dawning when he staggered to the window, tore
down the paper curtain, and looked out for some sign of life. At the
wharf opposite lay a vessel that had come up the evening before, and
he knew by the smoke that the cook was getting breakfast there.

"I'll go over and see if I can get some coffee or opium," he
muttered, and pulled his hat on as he went out the door.

"I'll ask for nothing but coffee or opium," he protested to himself,
as he shut the door softly after him.

Alas! alas!


CHAPTER II.

WIPING OUT, AND BEGINNING ANEW.

The next morning was a gloomy one for the two who had nursed that
trembling hope overnight, but they did not say much about it.
Mrs. Rowan's face showed the lassitude of long endurance. Edith's
disappointment was poignant. She was no longer a looker-on merely,
but an actor. The man had confided in her, had tacitly asked her
sympathy, and his failure gave her a pang. She cast about in her
thoughts what she should do, having a mind to put her own young
shoulder to the wheel. Should she go in search of him, and give him
one of those scoldings which he had acknowledged his need of? Should
she lead him home, and protect him from abuse?

"Hadn't I better go up to the post-office?" she asked, after
breakfast. "I haven't been there this good while, and there might be
a letter from Dick."

Mrs. Rowan hesitated: "Well, yes." She disliked being left alone, and
she had no expectation of a letter. But it seemed like slighting her
son to make any other reply to such a request. Besides, the village
boys might be hooting her husband through the streets, and, if they
were, she would like to know it. So Edith prepared herself, and went
out.

The ship-yard was full of business at this hour, and two men were
at work close to the road, shaving a piece of timber. Edith looked
at them, and hesitated. "I've a good mind to," she thought. She had
never gone into the ship-yard when the men were there, and had never
asked any one a question concerning Mr. Rowan. But now all was
changed, and she felt responsible. "Have you seen Mr. Rowan anywhere,
this morning?" she asked, going up to the man nearest her.

He drew the shave slowly to him, slipped off a long curl of
amber-colored wood from the blade, then looked up to see who spoke.
"Mr. Rowan!" he repeated, as if he had never heard the name before.
"Oh! Dick, you mean. No, I haven't seen him, this morning. He may be
lying round behind the timbers somewhere."

The child's eyes sparkled. Child though she was, she knew that the
drunkard was more worthy of the title of gentleman than this man was,
for he was rude and harsh only when he suffered.

"Little girl," the other called out as she turned away, "your father
is over there on board of the _Annie Laurie_. I saw him lying there
half an hour ago, and I guess he hasn't stirred since."

"He isn't my father!" she flashed out.

The two burst into a rude laugh, which effectually checked the thanks
she would have given for their information. She turned hastily away,
and went up the road to the village.

Mrs. Rowan finished her work, and sat down in the west window to
watch. She was too anxious and discouraged to knit, even, and so did
not discover the tight little strip of work around the stocking-heel.
It was employment enough to look out for Edith; not that she expected
a letter, but because she wanted company. She was conscious of some
strength in the child, on which she leaned at times. As for Dick,
she had little hope of good news from him, if any. She had no part
in Edith's rose-colored expectations. Dick in peril from storm, foe,
or sin; Dick dying untended in foreign lands; Dick sinking down in
cold, salt seas--these were the mother's fancies.

After half an hour, a small figure appeared over the hills between
the house and the village. Mrs. Rowan watched it absently, and with
a slight sense of relief. But soon she noticed that the child was
running. It was not like Edith to run. She was noticeably quiet, and
even dignified in her manners. Could she have seen or heard anything
of Mr. Rowan at the village? The heart of the wife began to flutter
feebly. Was he lying in the street? or engaged in a drunken quarrel?
She leaned back in her chair, feeling sick, and tried to gather
strength for whatever might come to her.

Edith was near the house, now running a few steps, then walking, to
gather breath, and she held her arm above her head, and swung it, and
in her hand was a letter!

Away went all thought of her husband. In two minutes Mrs. Rowan had
the letter in her hand, had torn it open, and she and Edith were both
bending over it, and reading it together. It had been lying in the
post-office a week. It came from New York, and in a week from the
date of it Dick would be at home! He was on board the ship _Halcyon_,
Captain Cary, and they were to come down to Seaton, and load with
lumber as soon as their East Indian freight should be disposed of. He
had met Captain Cary in Calcutta, Dick wrote, and, having done him a
service there, had been taken on board his ship, and now was second
mate. Next voyage he would sail as first mate. The captain was his
friend, would do anything for him, and owned half the ship, Major
Cleaveland owning the other half; so Dick's fortune was made. But,
he added, they must get out of that town. He had a month to spare,
and should take them all away. Let them be ready to start on short
notice.

Having read this joyful letter through once, they began at the
first word and read it all through again, dwelling here and there
with exclamations of delight, stopped every minute by a large tear
that splashed down from Mrs. Rowan's eyes, or a yellow avalanche of
Edith's troublesome hair tumbling down as she bent eagerly over the
letter. How many times they read that letter would be hard to say;
still harder to say how many times they might have read it, had there
been no interruption.

A crowd of men were approaching their door--close upon them, and
darkening the light before they looked up. "Had Dick come, and were
the neighbors welcoming him?" was the first thought.

In her haste, Edith had left the outer door ajar, and now heavy feet
came tramping in without any leave being asked; the inner door was
pushed open, and--not Dick, but Dick's father was brought in and laid
on the floor. This was not the first time he had been brought home,
but never before had he come with such a retinue and in such silence,
and never before had these men taken off their hats to Mrs. Rowan.

"We've sent for the doctor, ma'am," one of them said; "but I guess
it's no use."

"I wouldn't have ordered him off, if I hadn't thought he was steady
enough to go," said another, who looked very pale. "The captain was
expected on board every minute, and it would be as much as my life is
worth if he found a man drunk there."

"He slipped on a plank, and fell," some one explained.

Their talk was, to the bewildered woman, like sounds heard in a
dream. So were Edith's passionate words as she ordered the men away.
The one who had refused the dead man any better title than "Dick" was
just coming in at the door, staring right and left, not too pitiful
even then to be curious regarding the place he was in. "Go out!" she
said, pushing the door in his face.

Some way, still in a dream, they were got rid of, all but two. Then
the doctor came, and looked, and nodded his decision--"All over!"

A dream! a dream!

The bedroom was set in order, the silent sleeper laid out there,
every stranger sent out of the house and locked out, and then Mrs.
Rowan woke up. It was a terrible awakening.

Madame Swetchine comments upon the fact that the thought of death is
more terrible in an arid existence than in the extremes of joy and
sorrow. It is true not only of those who die, but of the survivors.
We go out more willingly on a difficult journey when we have been
warmed and fed; we send our loved ones out with less pain when they
have been thus fortified. It is the same, in a greater degree, when
the journey is that one from which the traveller never returns. It
adds a terrible pang to bereavement when we think that our lost one
has never been happy; how much more terrible if he has never been
honored!

Of her husband's future Mrs. Rowan refused to think or to hear,
though she must have trembled in the shadow of it. It might be that
which made her so wild. She would allow no one to come near or speak
to her save Edith. Those who came with offers of help and sympathy
she ordered away. "Go!" she cried. "I want nothing of you! I and mine
have been a byword to you for years. Your help comes too late!"

She locked them out and pulled the curtains close, and, though
people continued to come to the door through the whole day, no one
gained admittance or saw a sign of life about the house. Inside sat
the widow and the child, scarcely aware of the passage of time. They
only knew that it was still day by the rays of sunlight that came in
through holes in the paper curtains, and pointed across the rooms
like long fingers. When there was a knock at the door, they started,
lifted their faces, and listened nervously till the knocking ceased,
as if afraid that some one might force an entrance. One would have
fancied, from their expression, that savages or wild beasts were
seeking to enter. They never once looked out, nor knew who came.

Still less were they aware of Major Cleaveland standing in his
cupola, spy-glass in hand, looking down the bay to see if that cloud
of canvas coming up over the horizon was the good ship _Halcyon_
coming home after her first voyage. Down-stairs he came again, three
stairs at a jump, as joyful as a boy, in spite of his forty years,
gave directions for the best dinner that the town would afford,
ordered his carriage, and drove off down the river-road.

The _Halcyon_ was the largest vessel that had ever been built at
Seaton, and as its launching had been an event in the town, so its
first arrival was an incident to take note of. When Major Cleaveland
drove down to the wharf where Mr. Rowan had that morning lost his
life, more than a hundred persons were assembled there waiting for
the ship, and others were coming. He stepped over to the Rowans'
door, and knocked twice, once with his knuckles, and again with his
whip-handle, but received no answer. "I would force the door, but
that Dick is coming," he said. "It is a shame to let the poor soul
shut herself up alone."

Soon, while the crowd watched, around the near curve of the river,
where a wooded point pushed out, appeared the tip, then the whole of
a bowsprit garlanded with green wreaths, then the leaning lady in her
gilded robes, with a bird just escaping from her hand, then the ship
rode gracefully into sight on the incoming tide.

A ringing shout welcomed her, and a shout from all hands on board
answered back.

Foremost of the little group on the deck stood a man of gigantic
stature. His hair was coarse and black, he wore an enormous black
beard, and his face, though scarcely middle-aged, was rough and
scarred by the weather. Everybody knew Captain Cary, a sailor worthy
of the old days of the Vikings, broad-shouldered, as strong as a
lion, with a laugh that made the glasses ring when he sat at table.
He was a plain, simple man, but grand in his simplicity. By his side
stood a youth of twenty, who looked slight in comparison, though
he was really manly and well grown. He had sea-blue eyes, quick,
long-lashed, and as bright as diamonds; his face was finely moulded,
ruddy, and spirited; his hair, that glistened in the sunlight, was
chestnut-brown. A gallant lad he was, the very ideal sailor-boy. But
his expression was defiant, rather than placid, and he did not join
in the hurrahs. The welcoming applause was not for him, he well knew.
They were no friends of his who crowded the wharf. He had some bitter
recollections of slight or injury connected with nearly every one of
them. But he was no longer in their power, and that gave him freedom
and ease in meeting them. The time had gone by when he could look
upon these country folks as final judges in any matter whatever, or
as of any great consequence to him. He had seen the world, had won
friends, had proved that he could do something, that he was somebody.
He was not ashamed of himself by any means, was young Dick Rowan.
Still, it was no pleasure to him to see them, for it brought back the
memory of sufferings which had not yet lost their sting.

All this shouting and rejoicing was as the idle wind to the mourners
across the way. Their fears of intrusion set at rest, since no one
had attempted to force an entrance to the house, they no longer took
notice even of the knocking at the door. Both had fallen into a sort
of stupor, induced by the exhaustion of long weeping, the silence
and semi-darkness of their rooms, and the removal of what had been
the daily tormenting fear of their lives. There was no longer any
need to tremble when a step approached, lest some one should come in
frenzied with drink, and terrify them with his ravings and violence.
Mrs. Rowan sat by her husband's side, leaning back in her chair, with
closed eyes and clasped hands, only half-alive. Edith lay on the
kitchen-floor, where she had thrown herself in a passion of weeping,
her arms above her head, her face hidden, and her long hair veiling
her. The weeping was over, and she lay silent and motionless. Neither
that shouting over on the wharf, nor Major Cleaveland's loud knocking
with his whip-handle, had made the slightest impression on her.

But at sunset came one who would not be denied. He tried the lock,
and, finding it fastened, knocked gently. There was no answer. He
knocked loudly, and still there was no reply. Then he set his knee
against the rickety panel, took the knob in a strong grasp, and
wrenched the door open. Stepping quickly into the little entry, he
looked to right and left, saw the girl lying, face down, on the
floor, and the woman sitting beside her dead, both as still as the
dead.

Something like a dream came into the half-swoon, half-sleep in which
Edith Yorke lay. She heard a slight cry, then a stifled sob, and
words hurriedly spoken in a low voice. Then there was a step that
paused near her. She put her hair back with one hand, and turned her
face listlessly. The curtain had been raised to let in the light, and
there stood a young man looking down at her. His face was pale with
the sudden shock of grief and distress, but a faint indication of a
smile shone through as she looked up at him.

Her first glance was a blank one, her second flashed with delight.
She sprang up as if electrified. "O Dick! O Dick! How glad I am!"

The world moved rightly at last! Order was coming out of chaos; for
Dick had come home!

He shook hands with her rather awkwardly, somewhat embarrassed by the
warmth of her welcome. "We're to go right off," he said. "Captain
Cary will help us."

"Yes, Dick!" she replied, and asked no questions. He knew what was
right. With him had come all help, and strength, and hope.

The next morning, long before dawn, they started. A boat was ready at
the wharf, and Captain Cary and Dick carried out the dead in a rude
coffin that had been privately made on board the _Halcyon_. "They
shall not stare at our poor funeral, captain," Dick had said; "and I
will not ask them for a coffin or a grave."

"All right!" his friend had answered heartily. "I'm your man.
Whatever you want to do, I'll help you about."

So the watch on the _Halcyon_ was conveniently deaf and blind, the
boat was ready in the dark of morning, the coffin carried out to it,
and Mrs. Rowan and Edith helped in after. When they were in their
places, and the captain seated, oars in hand, Dick went back to the
house, and stayed there a little while. No questions were asked of
him when he came away, bringing nothing with him, and he offered no
explanation, only took the oars, and silently guided their boat out
into the channel. The banks on either side were a solid blackness,
and the sky was opaque and low, so that their forms were scarcely
visible to each other as they sat there, Mrs. Rowan in the bows near
her son, Edith beside Captain Cary, who loomed above her like a
mountain of help.

Presently, as they floated around the point that stood between the
village and the bay, a faint blush of light warmed the darkness
through, and grew till the low-hung clouds sucked it up like a sponge
and showed a crimson drapery over their heads. It was too early for
morning light, too fierce, and, moreover, it came from the wrong
direction. The east was before them; this sanguinary aurora followed
in their wake. It shone angrily through the strip of woods, and sent
a long, swift beam quivering over the water. This fiery messenger
shot like an arrow into the boat, and reddened Mrs. Rowan's hands,
clasped on the edge of the coffin. By the light of it, Dick saw all
their faces turned toward him.

"The house was mine!" he said defiantly.

The captain nodded approval, and Edith leaned forward to whisper,
"Yes, Dick!" But Mrs. Rowan said not a word, only sat looking
steadily backward, the light in her face.

"I'm glad of it!" sighed Edith to herself. She had been thinking
since they left the house how people would come and wander through
it, and peer at everything, and know just how wretchedly they had
lived. Now they could not, for it would all be burnt up. She sat and
fancied the fire catching here and there in their poor little rooms,
how the clock would tick till the last minute, even when its face
was scorched and its glass shivered, and then fall with a sudden
crash; how the flames would catch at the bed on which the dead man
had lain, the mean paper curtains, the chair she had sat in, Mrs.
Rowan's little rocking-chair, at the table where they had sat through
so many dreary meals. The checker-board would go, and the cards with
which Mr. Rowan had played the night before, and the knitting-work
with the puckered heel, and her apron that the drunkard had wiped his
ghastly face with. The shelves in the little closet would heat, and
blacken, and redden, and flame, and down would come their miserable
store of dishes, rattling into the yawning cellar. Fire would gnaw at
the ceiling, bite its way into the attic, burn up her books, creep
to the bed where she had lain and seen rainbow colors in the dark,
spread a sheet of flame over the whole, rise, and burst through the
roof. She saw it all. She even fancied that each long-used article of
their scanty plenishing, worn away by human touch, constantly in the
sight of human eyes, would perish with some human feeling, and send
out a sharp cry after them. The crackling of flames was to her the
cries of burning wood. But she was glad of it, for they were going to
wipe out and begin anew. There seemed to her something very grand and
exceedingly proper in it all.

When their boat glided from the river into the bay, others besides
themselves became aware of the conflagration, and the village bells
rang out a tardy alarm. Dick laughed bitterly at the sound, but said
nothing.

"They were sorry for you, Dick," the captain said. "I heard a good
many speak of it. They would have been glad to do your family any
kindness. I don't blame you for coming off; but you mustn't think
there was no kind feeling for you among the folks there."

"Kindness may come too late, captain," the young man answered. "I
would have thanked them for it years ago, when I had nowhere to turn
to, and hadn't a friend in the world; now I don't thank them, and I
don't want their kindness. Even if I would take it at last, neither
they nor you have any right to expect that I will run to take the
hand that has struck me so many blows the first time it is held out.
I don't trust 'em. I want proofs of good-will when I've had proofs of
ill-will."

"Dick is right, captain," his mother interposed in a weary tone. "You
can't judge of such things if you haven't felt them. It's easier to
hurt a sore heart than a sound one."

Within an hour they reached one of those desolate little sandy
islands with which the bay was studded; and now the faint spring dawn
was breaking, and the heavy masses of cloud lifting and contracting,
pale reaches of sky visible between. By the cold glimmer they scooped
out a grave, and placed the coffin in it. The water washed the shore,
and a chilly, sighing wind came up from the east.

As the first shovelful of earth fell on the coffin, Mrs. Rowan
caught back the captain's arm. "Don't cover him out of sight without
some word spoken over him!" she implored. "He was once young, and
ambitious, and kind, like you. He would have been a man if he hadn't
had bad luck, and then got into bad company. He was more wretched
than we were. O sir! don't cover him out of sight as if he were a
dog."

The sailor looked both pained and embarrassed. "I'm not much used
to praying, ma'am," he said. "I'm a Methodist, but I'm not a
church-member. If there was a Bible here, I would read a chapter;
but--there isn't."

Dick walked off a little way, turned his back, and stood looking at
the water. Mrs. Rowan, kneeling on the sand-heap beside the grave,
wept loudly. "His father was a Catholic," she cried. "I don't think
much of Catholics; but, if poor Dick had stood by his religion, he
could have had a priest to say some word over him. I wouldn't have
minded having a priest here. He'd be better than nobody."

Captain Cary was a strict Methodist, and he felt that it would never
answer to have the absence of a Catholic priest regretted. Something
must be done. "I could sing a hymn, ma'am," he said hesitatingly;
and, as no one objected, he straightened himself, dropped his spade,
and sang, to the tune of the "Dead March in Saul,"

      "Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb,
        Take this new treasure to thy trust,
      And give these sacred relics room
        To slumber in the silent dust,"

singing the hymn through.

In a confined place the sailor's voice would have been too powerful,
and, perhaps, would have sounded rough; but in open air, with no wall
nearer than the distant hills, no ceiling but the sky, and with the
complex low harmony of the ocean bearing it up and running through
all its pauses, it was magnificent. He sang slowly and solemnly, his
arms folded, his face devoutly raised, and the clouds seemed to part
before his voice.

When the hymn was ended, he remained a moment without motion or
change of face, then stooped for his shovel, and began to fill in the
grave.

While listening to him, Edith Yorke had stood in a solemn trance,
looking far off seaward; but at sound of the dropping gravel, her
quiet broke up, like ice in spring. She threw her arm, and her loose
hair with it, up over her head, and sobbed behind that veil. But her
tears were not for Mr. Rowan. Her soul had taken a wider range, and,
without herself being aware of it, she was mourning for all the dead
that ever had died or ever should die.

The first sunbeam that glanced across the water showed a feather of
smoke from a steamer that came up through the Narrows into the bay,
and the row-boat, a lessening speck, making for the wharf. Twice a
week, passengers and freight were taken and left at this wharf, three
miles below the town.

TO BE CONTINUED.




SAUNTERING.


      Saunterer (from _Sainte Terre_), a pilgrim to holy lands or
      places.--THOREAU.

"They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks are indeed mere
idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the
good sense, such as I mean," says Thoreau. I found the Holy Land in
Paris, the city of fashion and gaiety, and where _le suprême bonheur_
is said to be amusement. Every church is a station of the divine
Passion, and to every votary therein could I say:

                        "I behold in thee
      An image of him who died on the tree.
      Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns."

Before these churches, consecrated to some sweet mystery of the
Gospel or bearing the hallowed names of those who had put on the
sacred stole of Christ's sufferings, I always stopped. I was like
Duke Richard, in the _Roman du Rau_:

      "Whene'er an open church he found,
      He entered in with fervent means
      To offer up his orisons;
      And if the doors were closed each one,
      He knelt upon the threshold stone."

And one might well kneel upon the threshold stone of these ancient
churches, feeding mind and soul with sacred legends of the past
embodying holy truths which are depicted on the outer walls, as at
the north door of Notre Dame de Paris, the arch of which contains
in many compartments representations of a diabolic pact and of a
deliverance effected by our potent Lady, which is related in a
metrical romance composed by Ruteboef, in the time of St. Louis.
Saladin, a magician, wears a cap of pyramidal form. And what a mine
of legendary and biblical lore all over these venerable walls!
Sermons in stones come down to us from the stonen saints in their
niches and the bas-reliefs which speak louder than human tongues. The
first stone of this edifice was laid by Charlemagne, and the last
by Philip Augustus. How much this fact alone tells! And there is
the Porte Rouge, an exquisite specimen of the Gothic style of the
fifteenth century, the expiatory monument of Jean-sans-Peur after the
assassination of the Duke of Orleans. In the arch are the Duke and
Duchess of Burgundy, in the attitude of supplication, one on each
side of our Saviour and the Blessed Virgin. It is an eternal _Libera
me de sanguinibus, Deus_.

And then the Portail du Milieu, with the last judgment in the ogive,
the angels sounding the last trump, the dead issuing forth from their
graves, the separation of the righteous from the wicked, the great
Judge with the emblems of the crucifixion, the Virgin and the loved
apostle John, and, finally, a glimpse of the joys of heaven and the
horrors of hell. Yes, one could linger here for days before this
_Biblia pauperum_, were there no more powerful attractions within.
And this is not the only church the very exterior of which is full of
instruction.

In the porch of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois is the statue of a maiden
holding in one hand a breviary and in the other a lighted taper. By
her is a demon with a pair of bellows, vainly trying to blow out the
light--symbol of faith and prayer. This is the statue of one who
deserves to be ranked in history with Joan of Arc on account of her
heroism, for twice she saved Paris by her courage and her prayers.
Would that she might once more have intervened to save the capital
of fair France from the invader! St. Genevieve is placed thus at the
entrance of the church of St. Germain to remind us of his connection
with her history.

When St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, and St. Lupus, the learned
Bishop of Troyes and the intimate friend of Sidonius Apollinaris,
were on their way to Britain to combat the heresy of Pelagianism,
they passed through the village now called Nanterre, about two
leagues from Paris. All the inhabitants of the place poured forth
to meet them and obtain their benediction. St. Germain noticed in
the crowd a little girl with a face as radiant as an angel's. His
prophetic instinct told him she was destined to be a chosen vessel
of God's grace, and, when she expressed a wish to be the spouse of
Christ, he led her with him to the church, holding his apostolic
hands upon her head during the chanting of the vesper service. He
afterward suspended a bronze medal, on which was a cross, from
her neck, in remembrance of her consecration to God, bidding her
henceforth give up all ornaments of silver and gold. "Let them who
live for this world have these," said he. "Do thou, who art become
the spouse of Christ, desire only spiritual adorning." Dr. Newman
says it was a custom, even among the early Christians, to wear
on the neck some token of the mysteries of their religion. Long
after, in memory of this event, the Canons of St. Genevieve, at
Paris, distributed upon her festival a _pain bénit_ on which was an
impression of this coin.

Eighteen years after, St. Germain again passed through Nanterre, once
more on his way to Britain. He had not forgotten Genevieve. At the
age of fifteen, she had received the virgin's veil from the hands of
the Bishop of Paris. Her parents dying, she went to Paris to reside
with her godmother. Here she suffered that persecution so often the
lot of those who live godly lives. Those who outstrip their fellows
even on the path of piety are objects of envy, and they who leave
the beaten track of everyday religion are derided. St. Genevieve
was visited at Paris by the holy Bishop of Auxerre, who saluted her
with respect as a temple in which the divine Presence was manifest.
Her life was one of prayer and penance. She used to water her couch
with her tears, and when the adversary of our souls extinguished the
taper that lighted her vigils she rekindled it with her prayers.
When Attila, king of the Huns, threatened Paris, she besought the
inhabitants not to leave their homes, declaring that Heaven would
intervene to save them. The barbarians, in effect, were dispersed by
a storm, and betook themselves toward Orleans. In the church of St.
Germain there is a chapel dedicated to St. Genevieve, with a painting
representing her haranguing the inhabitants of Paris.

When Childeric besieged Paris, and sickness and famine were carrying
off the inhabitants, St. Genevieve laid aside her religious dress,
took command of the boats that went up the Seine for succor, and
brought back a supply of provisions. And when the city had to
surrender, the conquerer treated her with marked respect, and Clovis
loved to grant her petitions. The remains of paganism were rooted
out of Paris through her influence over him and Clotilda, and the
first church built on the spot that now bears her name, but then
dedicated under the invocation of Sts. Peter and Paul. In that
church was the shepherdess of Nanterre buried beside Clovis and
Clotilda. St. Eloi wrought a magnificent shrine for her remains,
but it was destroyed at the Revolution, and the contents publicly
burned. A portion of her relics is now enshrined at the Pantheon.
I found lights burning there, and flowers and wreaths, and votive
offerings, and the sweet-smelling incense of prayer rising from a
group of people praying around. But the magnificence of the Pantheon
is miserably depressing, as Faber says. How much more I delighted in
the interesting church of St. Etienne du Mont, where is the curious
old tomb of St. Genevieve! There too were lights and ex-votos, and an
old woman sat near the tomb to dispense tapers to those who wished to
leave a little gleam of love and prayer behind them. Once what lights
and jewels blazed around such shrines, and what crowds of devout
pilgrims! Now, a few dim tapers, a few prayerful hearts, light up the
place.

      "Now it is much if here and there
      One dreamer, by thy genial glare,
      Trace the dim Past, and slowly climb
      The steep of Faith's triumphant prime."

Now the world seems to begrudge the temple of the Most High the
silver and the gold that belong to him. And jewels are not to be
thought of. Such wealth must be kept in circulation, that is, on
Prince Esterhazy's coat, I suppose, and by ladies of fashion. The
world nowadays is like Julian the Apostate, who was displeased at
the magnificence of the chalices used in the Christian churches. For
me, I love these offerings from time to eternity, as Madame de Staël
says. Let all that is most precious be poured out at the feet of the
Saviour, and let no one murmur if such offerings are crystallized. I
took pleasure in looking at some splendid vessels of the sanctuary at
Notre Dame, and thought:

      "Never was gold or silver graced thus
                  Before.
      To bring this body and this blood to us
                  Is more
          Than to crown kings,
          Or be made rings
      For star-like diamonds to glitter in.

      When the great King offers to come to me
                  As food,
      Shall I suppose his carriages can be
                  Too good?
          No! stars to gold
          Turned never could
      Be rich enough to be employed so.

      If I might wish, then, I would have this bread,
                  This wine,
      Vesselled in what the sun might blush to shed
                  His shine
          When he should see--
          But till that be,
      I'll rest contented with it as it is."

In my saunterings I frequently lingered before the tower of St.
Jacques de la Boucherie, the highest in Paris, and the most perfect
specimen of Gothic architecture. The remainder of the church was
demolished at the Revolution. The tower was saved by the artifice
of an architect, who besought the crowd to imitate the enlightened
English revolutionists, who destroyed their churches, but preserved
the towers to be converted into shot-houses! In this church crowds
used to assemble to hear Bourdaloue thunder, as Madame de Sévigné
expresses it. I fancy I can hear that uncompromising preacher ringing
out like a trump in the presence of the Great Monarch, "Thou art
the man!" This exclamation should have appealed to the heart of the
people, and saved the church he loved from profanation.

This church was built by the alms of pious people. Nicholas Flamel
built the portal in 1388, which he covered with devout images and
devices, which were regarded, even by the antiquaries of the last
century, as symbols of alchemy. This Flamel was a benefactor to many
churches and hospitals of Paris, which he took pleasure in adorning
with carvings in which he made all things tributary, as it were, to
the worship of God. At first a simple scrivener, he became painter,
architect, chemist, philosopher, and poet. He certainly had the
fancy of a poet, and wrote in durable materials. He left by his will
nineteen chalices of silver gilt to as many churches.

These churches and religious houses are all connected with the
history of the city. Paris owed its extension on the north side of
the Seine to the school in the Abbey of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois,
which was famous at an early age. There were four great abbeys around
Paris in the time of the third dynasty--St. Lawrence, St. Genevieve,
St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, and St. Germain des Près. These were
surrounded by their dependencies, forming villages which gradually
extended till they united to enclose the city, then chiefly confined
to the island. The poor loved to live near these abbeys. St. Germain
des Près, besides providing for the poor in general, used privately
to support several destitute families who were ashamed of their
poverty. The old abbots of this monastery were both lords spiritual
and temporal in the suburbs on that side of the city. This abbey
was a monument of repentance. Digby says when it was rebuilt in the
year 1000 the great tower and the portals were left as before. The
statues of eight kings stood at the entrance, four on the right hand
and four on the left. One of them held a scroll on which was written
the tragical name of Clodomir. And another, with no beatific circle
around his head, held an open tablet on which were the first and last
letters of the name Clotaire. These were the statues of the murderer
and his victim.

The square tower of the monastery, built in the time of Charlemagne,
contributed greatly to the defence of the house against the Normans.
A stout old monk, Abbon, conducted the defence, and proved himself
on this occasion a valiant defender of the walls of Zion. Perhaps it
was his skilful hand that wrote an Homeric poem on the siege of Paris
by the Normans in the year 885. If not by him, it was by a monk of a
similar name.

The Pré aux Clercs, now the Faubourg St. Germain, took its name from
being a place of recreation for the students of this abbey. One of
the scholars, Sylvester de Sacy, so learned in the Semitic languages,
ascribed the bent of his mind to the aid and encouragement given him
by one of the monks who took his constitutional in the abbey gardens
at the same time as the boy, then only twelve years old.

The library belonging to this abbey was celebrated in the middle
ages, and there were monks of literary eminence in the house.
Dacherius was the librarian when he composed his _Spicilegium_.
Usuard compiled a martyrology. They had a printing press set up
immediately after the invention of printing, which gives one a
favorable idea of their mental activity. Most of these old monastic
libraries were accessible to all; that of the Abbey of St. Victor
was open to the public three days in the week; and there were public
libraries attached to some of the parish churches. In the time of
Charles V., rightly named the Wise, he ordered the Royal Library
of Paris to be illuminated with thirty portable lamps, and that a
silver one should be suspended in the centre for the benefit of those
students who prolonged their researches into the night. The numerous
collections of books in Paris made that city very attractive to
certain minds even in the middle ages. Richard de Bury, Bishop of
Durham, in England, who established the first public library in that
country, used to resort to Paris for fresh supplies. "O blessed God
of gods in Sion!" he exclaims, "what a flood of pleasure rejoices our
heart whenever we are at liberty to visit Paris, that paradise of the
world, where the days always seem too short and too few through the
immensity of our love! There are libraries more redolent of delight
than all the shops of aromatics; there are the flowering meadows of
all volumes that can be found anywhere. There, indeed, untying our
purse-strings, and opening our treasures, we disperse money with
a joyful heart (evidently the truth, for he paid the Abbot of St.
Albans fifty pounds weight of silver for thirty or forty volumes),
and ransom with dirt books that are beyond all price. But lo! how
good and pleasant a thing it is to gather together in one place the
arms of clerical warfare, that there may be a supply of them for us
to use in the wars against heretics, should they ever rise up against
us!"

What would this book-loving prelate have done had he foreseen that
the church would one day be accused of being a foe to progress
and to the diffusion of knowledge! This bishop, who lived in the
thirteenth century, was the Chancellor and High Treasurer of England,
and celebrated for his love and encouragement of literature. He had
libraries in all his palaces, and the apartment he commonly occupied
was so crammed with books that he was almost inaccessible. He was
said to breathe books, so fond was he of being among them. None but a
genuine lover of books would give such amusing directions for their
preservation. "Not only do we serve God," says he, "by preparing new
books, but also by preserving and treating with great care those we
have already. Truly, after the vestments and vessels dedicated to our
Lord's body, sacred books deserve to be treated with most reverence
by clerks. In opening and shutting books, they should avoid all
abruptness, not too hastily loosing the clasps, nor failing to shut
them when they have finished reading, for it is far more important to
preserve a book than a shoe." He then goes on to speak of soiling
books; of marking passages with the finger-nails, "like those of
a giant;" of swelling the junctures of the binding with straws or
flowers; and of eating over them, leaving the fragments in the book,
as if the reader had no bag for alms. Waxing warm over the idea, he
wishes such persons might have to sit over leather with a shoemaker!
And then there are impudent youths, who presume to fill up the broad
margins with their unchastened pens, noting down whatever frivolous
thing occurs to their imagination! And "there are some thieves, too,
who cut out leaves or letters, which kind of sacrilege ought to be
prohibited under the penalty of anathema." The bishop had evidently
had some sad experience with his cherished tomes. His testimony
respecting the appreciation of books by the monks of his time is
valuable. Remember the age, reader--that period of deepest darkness
just before the dawn! "The monks who are so venerable," says he in
his _Philobiblion_, "are accustomed to be solicitous in regard to
books, and to be delighted in their company, as with all riches, and
thence it is that we find in most monasteries such splendid treasures
of erudition, giving a delectable light to the path of laics. Oh!
that devout labor of their hands in writing books; how preferable
to all georgic care! All things else fail with time. Saturn ceases
not to devour his offspring, for oblivion covereth the glory of the
world. But God hath provided a remedy for us in books, without which
all that was ever great would have been without memory. Without shame
we may lay bare to books the poverty of human ignorance. They are
the masters who instruct us without rods, without anger, and without
_money_. (The bishop had evidently forgotten those fifty pounds of
silver, and many more besides!) O books! alone liberal and making
liberal, who give to all, and seek to emancipate all who serve you.
You are the tree of life and the river of Paradise, with which the
human intelligence is irrigated and made fruitful."

But I did not always linger at the doors of churches, studying the
walls and pondering on their history. The true Catholic knows that
these magnificent churches are only vast shrines enclosing the great
Object of his adoration and love. M. Olier, when travelling, never
saw the spire of a church in the distance without calling upon all
with him to repeat the Tantum Ergo. He used to say: "When I see
a place where my Master reposes, I have a feeling of unutterable
joy." This feeling comes over every one at the first glimpse of that
undying lamp before the tabernacle, "that small flame which rises and
falls like a dying pulse, flickering up and down, emblematic of our
lives, which even now thus wastes and wanes."

The very first act on stepping into a church completely changes the
current of one's thoughts. The holy water, the sign of the cross,
dispel the remembrance of material things and recall devout thoughts
of the Passion.

      "Whene'er across this sinful flesh of mine
          I draw the holy sign,
      All good thoughts stir within me, and collect
          Their slumbering strength divine."

The _bénitiers_ at St. Sulpice are two immense shells, given to
Francis the First by the Republic of Venice; but for all that, the
_eau bénite_ seemed just as holy, and I made the sign of the cross
just as devoutly.

For devotion, I prefer the largest churches, because the seclusion
is more perfect, as at Notre Dame. Behind some pillar or in the
depths of some dim chapel, one can find perfect solitude where he
can be alone with God. Alone with God! that in itself is prayer. The
world-weary soul finds it good simply to sit or kneel with clasped
hands in the divine Presence.

      "My spirit I love to compose,
      In humble trust my eyelids close
        With reverential resignation,
      No wish conceived, no thought expressed,
        Only a sense of supplication."

Joubert says the best prayers are those that have nothing distinct,
and which thus partake of simple adoration; and Hawthorne asks:
"Could I bring my heart in unison with those praying in yonder church
with a fervor of supplication but no distinct request, would not
that be the safest kind of prayer?" Surely every devout soul feels
that "prayer is not necessarily petition," and what is technically
known as the prayer of contemplation is the very inspiration of such
churches. In this temple of silence, man seems to be brought back to
his primeval relations with his Creator.

What mute eloquence in these walls! What an appeal to the imagination
in the calmness! Earthly voices die away on the threshold, and
peace, dovelike, broods over the very entrance. A daily visit to
such a temple gives life a certain elevation. The very poor who come
here to pray must acquire a certain dignity of character. How many
generations have worshipped beneath these arches! The saints have
passed over the very pavement I tread. I recall St. Louis, who, out
of respect to our Lord, had laid off his shoes and divested himself
of his royal robes, bearing solemnly into this church the holy Crown
of Thorns. And great sinners, too, are in this long procession of the
past. There is Count Raymond of Toulouse, barefoot, and clad only in
the white tunic of a penitent, coming to receive absolution from the
papal legate before the grand altar.

When one recalls the popes, cardinals, and other dignitaries of the
church, the kings and queens and knights of the olden time who have
been here, one almost shrinks from entering such a throng of the
mighty ones of the earth. It seems as if he were elbowing the Great
Monarch or the gallant Henry of Navarre.

On the galleries around the nave were formerly suspended the
flags and standards taken in war, and it was in allusion to this
custom that the Prince of Conti, after the victories of Fleurus,
Steinkerque, and La Marsaille, made an opening in the crowd around
the door of the church for the Marechal de Luxembourg, whom he held
by the hand, by crying: "Place, place, messieurs, au tapissier de
Notre Dame!"--"Room, room, gentlemen, for the upholsterer of Notre
Dame!"

It is charming to see the birds flying about in the arches of this
church, as if nature had taken its venerable walls to her bosom. It
made me think of the old hermits of the middle ages, living with
the sea-birds in their ocean caves. Like St. Francis, the canons of
Notre Dame say the divine office with their "little sisters, the
birds;" and the bird is the symbol of the soul rising heavenward on
the wings of prayer. We, like the birds, build our nests here for a
few days. Blessed are we if they are built within the influences of
the sanctuary which temper the storms and severities of life. It is
only in the clefts of the rocks that wall in the mystic garden of the
church that there is safety for the dovelike soul.

In the transept is the altar of Our Lady, starry with lamps.
Above her statue is one of her titles, appealing to every
heart--Consolatrix afflictorum! To this church M. Olier came, in
all his troubles, to the altar of Mary. There is also a fine statue
of her over the grand altar, formerly at the Carmes. No church is
complete without an altar of the Blessed Virgin. Wherever there is a
cross, Mary must be at its foot, as at Calvary, directing our eyes,
our thoughts, our hearts, to him who hangs thereon.

      "O that silent, ceaseless mourning!
      O those dim eyes! never turning
        From that wondrous, suffering Son!

      "Virgin holiest, virgin purest,
      Of that anguish thou endurest
        Make me bear with thee my part."

In traversing Paris, one passes many private residences of interest
which have a certain consecration--the consecration of wit and
genius. I cannot say I ever went so far as Horace Walpole, who never
passed the Hôtel de Carnavalet, the residence of Madame de Sévigné,
without saying his Ave before it, much as I admire her _esprit_,
and though she was the granddaughter of St. Jane de Chantal, the
foundress of the Nuns of the Visitation. Walpole thought the house
had a foreign-looking air, and said it looked like an ex-voto raised
in her honor by some of her foreign votaries. It was once an elegant
residence, with its sculptured gateway and Ionic pilasters, and
its court adorned with statues. In the day of the _spirituelle_
letter-writer, it was the resort of the learned and the refined;
now, O tempora! it is a boarding-school, and the _salon_ of Madame
de Sévigné (the temple of "Notre Dame de Livry," to quote Walpole
again, if it be not profanity) is converted into a dormitory. Truly,
as Bishop de Bury says, "all things pass away with time," but the wit
and genius she embodied in her charming letters are eternal.

In one of the upper stories of a house in the Rue St. Honoré lived
Joubert, the Coleridge of France. His keeping-room was flooded with
the light he loved, and from it, as he said, he saw a great deal of
sky and very little earth. There he passed his days among the books
he had collected. He rigorously excluded from his library all the
books he disapproved of; unwilling, as he said, to admit an unworthy
friend to his constant companionship. To this room he attracted
a brilliant circle of conspicuous authors and statesmen by his
conversational talents, and there he wrote his immortal _Pensées_. He
said he left Paris unwillingly, because then he had to part from his
friends; and he left the country unwillingly, because he had to part
from himself. Writing from that sunny room, he says: "In many things,
I am like the butterfly; like him, I love the light; like him, I
there consume my life; like him, I need, in order to spread my wings,
that there be fair weather around me in society, and that my mind
feel itself surrounded and as if penetrated by the mild temperature
of indulgence." But he wrote graver and more profound things there.
One of his friends said of him that he seemed to be a soul that by
accident had met with a body, and was trying to make the best of it.
And he, ever indulgent to the faults of others, said of his friends,
"When they are blind of one eye, I look at them in profile."

The Abbaye aux Bois is interesting from its association with Madame
Récamier and her circle. Her rooms were in the third story and
paved with tiles, and they overlooked the pleasant garden of the
monastery, and, when lit up with wit and genius, they needed no other
attraction. Among her visitors there were Sir Humphry Davy, Maria
Edgeworth, Humboldt, Lamartine, Delphine Gay, Chateaubriand, etc.
They must have been like the gods, speaking from peak to peak all
around Olympus. Lamartine read his _Méditations_ there before they
were given to the public. Chateaubriand thus speaks of the room:
"The windows overlooked the garden of the abbey, under the verdant
shade of which the nuns paced up and down, and the pupils played. The
top of an acacia was on a level with the eye, sharp spires pierced
the sky, and in the distance rose the hills of Sèvres. The rays of
the setting sun threw a golden light over the landscape and came in
through the open windows. Some birds were settling themselves for
the night on the top of the window-blinds. Here I found silence and
solitude, far above the tumult and turmoil of a great city."

To the church of the abbey, a plain, unpretending structure, Eugénie
de Guérin went every day to Mass during her first visit to Paris.
There, too, were the bans of her brother Maurice published, and there
he was married.

The house of Madame Swetchine, in the Rue St. Dominique, must be
regarded with veneration. There was no austerity about the _salon_
of this remarkable woman. It was adorned with pictures, bronzes, and
flowers, and in the evening it was illuminated with a profusion of
lamps and candles, giving it a festive air. And then the great lights
of the church, always diffusing their radiance and aroma in that
favored room, Lacordaire, De Ravignan, Dupanloup, De la Bouillerie,
etc. To have found one's self among them must have seemed like being
among the prophets on Mount Carmel. They all loved to officiate and
preach in her beautiful private chapel, which was adorned with a
multitude of precious stones from the Russian mines, gleaming around
the ineffable presence of the Divinity. Mary, too, was there. On the
base of her silver statue was her monogram in diamonds, which Madame
Swetchine had worn as maid of honor to the Empress Mary of Russia.

These circles, and many others I could recall, are now broken up for
ever. We have all heard and read so much of those who composed them
that they seem like personal friends. We linger around the places to
which they imparted a certain sacredness, and follow them in thought
to the world of mystery and eternal reunion, thanking God that the
great gulf from the finite to the infinite has been bridged over by
the Incarnation.

One morning, I went to the church of the Carmelites. A tablet on the
wall points out the spot where the heart of Monseigneur Affre was
deposited--the heart of him who gave his life for his flock. Around
it were suspended some wreaths. On one, of immortelles, was painted,
in black letters, _A mon Père_, the offering of one of his spiritual
children. Wishing to have some objects of devotion blessed, I went
into the sacristy (I remembered Eugénie de Guérin speaks of going
into that sacristy), where I found one of the monks prostrate in
prayer, making his thanksgiving after Mass. Enveloped in his habit,
his bald head covered by a cowl, he looked like a ghost from the dark
ages. Not venturing to approach the ghostly father, I made known my
errand to a good-natured-looking lay brother, who conveyed it to that
part of the cowl where the right ear of the monk might reasonably be
supposed to be, which brought back the holy man to earth, causing me
some compunction of conscience. The brother spread out my articles,
brought the ritual and the stole, and the father, throwing back
his cowl, murmured over them the prayers of holy church, and then
disappeared into the monastery. Presently I heard the voices of the
monks saying the office, which they do, like nuns, in choir and
behind a curtained grate, so they are not seen from the church.

This monastery may be compared to the Roman amphitheatre where the
early Christians were thrown to the wild beasts. Here indeed was
fought the good fight, and the victors rose to heaven with palms in
their hands. I know of nothing more sublime and thrilling in the
annals of the church than the massacre of about two hundred priests
that took place here on the second of September, 1792. I cannot
refrain from giving a condensed account of it by one of the writers
of the day: "For some weeks there had been assembled and heaped
together two hundred priests, who had refused to take the schismatic
oath, or had nobly recanted it. During the first day of their
incarceration, these loyal priests had been inhumanly imprisoned
in the church. The guards in their midst watched to prevent their
having the consolation of even speaking to each other. Their only
nourishment was bread and water. The stone floor was their bed. It
was only later that a few were permitted to have straw beds. These
priests, whom martyrdom was to render immortal, had at their head
three prelates whose virtues recall the primitive days of the church.
Their chief was the Archbishop of Arles, Monseigneur du Lau. He had
been deputed to the states-general; his piety equalled his knowledge;
and his humility even surpassed his merit. The day after the
memorable 10th of August he had been sent to the Carmelite monastery
(then converted into a prison) with sixty-two other priests.
Notwithstanding his age (he was over eighty) and his infirmities,
he refused all indulgences that were not also extended to his
brother-captives. For several days a wooden arm-chair was his bed as
well as his pontifical throne. Thence his persuasive words instilled
into those around him the sentiments of ineffable charity that filled
his own heart, and when his exhausted voice could no longer make
itself heard, his very appearance expressed a sublime resignation.

"Two other bishops, brothers, bearing the name of De la
Rochefoucauld, one the Bishop of Beauvais, and the other of Saintes,
also encouraged their companions in misfortune by their words and
by their example. The Bishop of Saintes had not been arrested, but,
wishing to join his brother, he made himself a prisoner. There were
members of every rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy: M. Hébert, the
confessor of the king who wrote to him at the beginning of August,
'I expect nothing more from man, bring me therefore the consolations
of heaven;' the general of the Benedictines, the Abbé de Lubusac,
several of the curés of Paris, Mr. Gros, called the modern Vincent
of Paul, and priests brought from various places, holy victims whom
the God of Calvary had chosen to associate with his sufferings, and
judged worthy of the most glorious of all deaths--that of martyrdom.

"For more than two days, the wretches who hovered around their
enclosure had filled the air with cries of blood, and predicting that
the sacrifice was about to take place. One said to the Archbishop of
Arles: 'My lord, on the morrow your grace is to be killed.' These
derisive insults recalled to the holy captives the judgment-hall
of their divine Master, and like him they bore them in silence,
forgiving and praying for their enemies.

"On the second of September they could no longer doubt that their
last hour had arrived. The hurried movements of the troops, the cries
in the neighboring streets, and the alarm-guns they heard made them
somewhat aware of the sinister events that were passing without.
At the dawn of day they had gathered together in the church. They
made their confessions to each other, they blessed one another, and
partook of the Holy Eucharist. They were singing the Benediction
together at about five in the evening when the ominous cries came
nearer. Then two holy hymns succeeded the prayers for the dying.
All at once the jailers entered, and began calling the roll, which
already had been done three times that day. The prisoners were then
ordered into the garden, which they found occupied by guards armed
with pikes and wearing the _bonnet rouge_. The murderers filled
the courts, the halls, and the church, making the venerable arches
re-echo to the noise of their weapons and their blasphemies. The
priests, one hundred and eighty-five in number, were divided into
two groups. About thirty, among whom were the bishops, rushed toward
a little oratory at the extremity of the garden, where they threw
themselves upon their knees, recommending themselves to God. They
embraced each other for the last time, and began saying the vespers
for the dead, when suddenly the gates were flung open, and the
assassins rushed in from various directions.

"The sight of these holy priests upon their knees arrested their
fury for an instant. The first who fell under their blows was Father
Gerault, who was reciting his breviary regardless of their cries.
That breviary, pierced with a ball and stained with blood, was
discovered on the spot at the restoration of the Carmelites, and
it is preserved as a precious relic. Then the Archbishop of Arles
was demanded. While they were seeking him through the alleys, he
was exhorting his companions to offer to God the sacrifice of their
lives. Hearing his name called, he knelt down, and asked the most
aged of the priests to give him absolution; then, rising, he advanced
to meet the assassins. With his arms crossed upon his breast and
his eyes raised toward heaven, he uttered in a calm voice the same
words his divine Master addressed to his enemies: "I am he whom
you seek." The first stroke of the sword was upon his forehead,
but the venerable man remained standing; a second made the blood
flow in torrents, but still he did not fall; the fifth laid him on
the ground, when a pike was driven through his heart. Then he was
trampled under the feet of the assassins, who exclaimed, 'Vive la
nation!'

"The general massacre then ensued. While the unfortunate priests,
with the instinct of self-preservation, were flying at random through
the garden, some screening themselves behind the hedges and others
climbing the trees, the murderers fired at them, and, when one of
them fell, they would rush upon his body, prolong his agony, and
exult over his sufferings. About forty perished in this manner. Some
of the younger priests succeeded in scaling the walls and hiding
themselves; but, remembering they were flying from martyrdom and that
their escape might excite greater fury against their companions,
they retraced their steps and received their reward! The Bishop of
Beauvais and his brother were in the garden oratory with thirty
priests. A grating separated them from the murderers, who fired upon
them, killing the greater number. The Bishop of Beauvais was not
touched, but his brother had a leg broken by a ball.

"For an instant this horrid butchery was suspended. One of the
leaders ordered all the priests into the church, whither they were
driven--even the wounded and dying--at the sword's point. There
they gathered around the altar, offering anew to their Saviour the
sacrifice of their lives, whilst their executioners, calling them out
two by two, finished their butchery more promptly and completely. To
each one life was offered on condition of taking the revolutionary
oath. They all refused, and not one escaped. Whilst these assassins
added blasphemous shouts to their murderous strokes, whilst they
demolished the crosses and the tabernacles, the holy phalanx of
priests, which death was every moment lessening, kept praying for
their murderers and their country. The two bishops were among the
last executed. When it came to the turn of the Bishop of Beauvais, he
left the altar upon which he had been leaning, and calmly advanced to
meet his death. His brother, whose wound prevented his walking, asked
for assistance, and was carried out to his execution. It was eight
in the evening when the last execution took place. Over four hundred
priests were massacred in different parts of Paris at this period,
besides many isolated murders."

The constancy of these martyrs has made many do more than exclaim
with Horace Walpole: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Catholic!" He
says, in a letter dated October 14, 1792: "For the French priests, I
own I honor them. They preferred beggary to perjury, and have died or
fled to preserve the integrity of their consciences. It certainly
was not the French clergy but the philosophers that have trained up
their countrymen to be the most bloody men upon earth."

In 1854, this monastery, where flowed the blood of martyrs and which
had echoed with their dying groans, resounded with the strains of _O
Salutaris Hostia!_ on the festival of Corpus Christi, and priests
bore the divine Host through the alleys of the garden where, sixty
years before, had rushed those who were swift to shed blood. An altar
had been erected under the yew-tree where the Archbishop of Arles
fell. Children scattered flowers over the place once covered with
blood. Well might the pale-lipped clergy tearfully chant in such a
spot:

      "THE WHITE-ROBED ARMY OF MARTYRS PRAISE THEE!"

Every age has its martyrs. They are the glory of the church, and
their blood is its seed. The church must ever suffer with its divine
spouse. Sometimes its head--the Vicar of Christ-is crowned with
thorns; sometimes its heart bleeds from a thrust in the very house
of its friends; and, again, its feet and hands are nailed in the
extremities of the earth.

And every follower of Christ crucified has his martyrdom--a martyrdom
of the soul, if not of the body. The sacred stigmata are imprinted
on every soul, that embraces the cross, and no one can look upon him
who hangs thereon, with the eyes of faith, without catching something
of his resemblance. Suffering is now, as when he was on earth, the
glorious penalty of those who approach the nearest to his Divine
Person.

      "Three saints of old their lips upon the Incarnate Saviour laid,
      And each with death or agony for the high rapture paid.
      His mother's holy kisses of the coming sword gave sign,
      And Simeon's hymn full closely did with his last breath entwine;
      And Magdalen's first tearful touch prepared her but to greet
      With homage of a broken heart his pierced and lifeless feet.
      The crown of thorns, the heavy cross, the nails and bleeding brows,
      The pale and dying lips, are the portion of the spouse."




SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ.


So little is known of Spanish American literature that any fresh
report from its pages seems to have the nature of a revelation.
Our acquaintance with Heredia, Placido, Milanes, Mendive, Carpio,
Pesado, Galvan, Calderon, is slight or naught; yet these poets are
most interesting on account of the countries, peoples, and causes
for which they speak eloquently, even if we deny that they add
greatly to the genuine substance of our literary possession. Less
question, however, can be entertained of the importance of some older
names whose fame made for itself a refuge in the Spanish churches
and cloisters of the New World long before revolutionists took to
shooting the Muses on the wing. In the seventeenth century lived
and wrought Cabrera, Siguenza, and Sor or Sister Juana Ines. They
belonged to a country which claimed for awhile as its scholars,
though not as its natives, Doctor Valbuena, author of the very
well-known epical fantasy called _The Bernardo_, and Mateo Alaman,
who wrote the famous story of _Guzman de Alfarache_. Juan Ruiz
de Alarcon, one of the most remarkable dramatic poets of a great
dramatic age, was a native of that same country, Mexico. Siguenza, as
mathematician, historian, antiquary, and poet, has been well esteemed
by Humboldt and the scholars of his own race. It is much to say that
the land which produced an artist as great as Cabrera also gave birth
to a scholar and poet as renowned in her day and as appreciable in
ours as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Among all these celebrities, who
would have been eminent in any time among any people, this Mexican
nun of the seventeenth century holds a place of her own. Looking back
upon the past with all our modern light, we cannot but regard her as
one of the most admirable characters of the New World.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was born at San Miguel de Nepantla, twelve
leagues from the city of Mexico, in the year 1651, and died at the
age of forty-four. When but three years old, she was able to read,
write, and "cipher," and at eight she wrote a prologue for the feast
of the Holy Sacrament. Once she cut her hair, and would not allow it
to grow till she had acquired the learning she proposed to herself,
seeing no reason why a head should be covered with hair that was
denuded of knowledge, its best ornament. After twenty lessons, it was
said, she knew Latin, and so great was her desire to learn that she
importuned her parents to send her to the University of Mexico in
boy's clothes. When seventeen years of age, and a cherished inmate
of the Viceroy Mancera's family, she amazed a large company of
the professors and scholars of the capital by tests of her various
erudition and abilities. Notwithstanding her beauty and fortune, her
rank and accomplishments, and the life of a gallant and brilliant
court, she determined at that early age to retire to a cloister, and
in a few years became known as Sor Juana of San Geronimo, a convent
of the city of Mexico. After this appeared her poems, _The Crisis_
and _The Dream_, in the latter of which she writes much of mythology,
physics, medicine, and history, according to the scholastic manner
of her time. With these and her subsequent poetic writings, such as
her sonnets, loas, romances, and autos, she had rare fame, and won
from some of her admirers the enthusiastic titles of "The Phœnix of
Mexico," "Tenth Muse," and "Poetess of America." The writer has an
old volume before him bearing literally this title-page: "Fama, y
Obras Posthumas del Fenix de Mexico, y Dezima Musa, Poetisa de la
America, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Religiosa Professa en el Convento
de San Geronimo, de la Imperial Ciudad de Mexico. Recogidas y dadas a
luz por el Doctor Don Juan Ignacio de Castorena y Ursua, Capellan de
Honor de su Magestad, y Prebendado de la Santa Iglesia Metropolitana
de Mexico. En Barcelona: Por Rafael Figuero. Año de MDCCI. Con todas
las licencias necessarias." Thus it appears we owe to the Prebendary
Castorena the edition of the posthumous works of Sor Juana given to
the light in 1701, six years after her death.

But, whether as the sister or the mother of a convent, Juana Ines de
la Cruz was more than a mistress of vain learning or unprofitable
science. Her daily assiduous exercise was charity, which at last so
controlled her life and thoughts that she gave all her musical and
mathematical instruments, all the rich presents which her talents
had attracted from illustrious people, and all her books, excepting
those she left to her sisters, to be sold for the benefit of the
poor. Though she had evidently prized science as the handmaid of
religion, the time came when her verses upon the vanity of learning
reflected a mind more and more withdrawn from the affairs of this
world to the contemplation of the next. When an epidemic visited the
Convent of San Geronimo, and but two out of every ten invalids were
saved, the good, brave soul of Madre Juana shone transcendently.
Spite of warnings and petitions, and though all the city prayed for
her life, Madre Juana perished at her vigil of charity--the good
angel as well as muse of Mexico.

Of the enthusiasm created by her genius, we have abundant and
curious proofs. Don Alonzo Muxica, "perpetual Recorder of the City
of Salamanca," wrote a sonnet upon her having learned to read at the
age of three, when "what for all is but the break of morn in her was
as the middle of the day." Excelentissimo Sir Felix Fernandez de
Cordova Cordona y Aragon, Duke of Seffa, of Væna and Soma, Count of
Cabra, Palomas, and Olivitas, and Grand Admiral and Captain-General
of Naples, speaks of her in a lofty poetic encomium as for the third
time applauded by two admiring worlds of readers, and praises her
persuasive voice as that of a sweet siren of thought. Don Garcia
Ribadeneyra, with the grandiose wit of his day, says in a decima
that this extraordinary woman surpassed the sun, for her glorious
genius rose where the sun set, that is to say, in the West; and Don
Pedro Alfonso Moreno argues piously that St. John the Baptist's three
crowns of Virgin, Martyr, and Doctor were in measure those of Madre
Juana, who was from early years chaste, poor in spirit, and obedient,
according to the vow of religious women. Don Luis Verdejo declares
that she transferred the lyceums of the Muses to Mexico, and that
the light of her genius is poured upon two worlds. Padre Cabrera,
chaplain of the Most Excellent Duke of Arcos, asserts that the
Eternal Knowledge enlightened Juana in all learning. "Only her fame
can define her," writes one of her own sex; and when the Poetess of
the Cloister wrote with her own blood a protestation of faith, it was
said of this "Swan of erudite plume" that she wrote like the martyr
to whose ink of blood the earth was as paper. Her gift of books to
be sold in order to relieve the poor inspired Señora Catalina de
Fernandez de Cordova, nun in the Convent of the Holy Ghost in Alcara,
to say thus thoughtfully:

      "Without her books did Juana grow more wise,
      As for their loss she studied deep content.
      Know, then, that in this human school of ours,
      He only is wise who knows to love his God."

At thought of her death, Don Luis Muñoz Venegas, of Granada, wonders
that the sun shines, that ships sail, that earth is fair, that all
things do not grieve her loss, whose happy soul in its beatitudes
enjoys the riches of which death has robbed the world--sweetness,
purity, felicity. Fray Juan de Rueda, professor of theology in the
college of San Pablo; Licentiate Villalobos of San Ildefonso, and
Señor Guerra, fellow of the same college; Advocate Pimienta, of the
Royal Audience, and Bachelor Olivas, a presbyter; Syndic Torres,
Catedratico or Professor Aviles, Cavalier Ulloa, have all something
to say in Spanish or Latin on the death of our poetess. Doctor Aviles
imagines the death of Sor Juana to be like that of the rose, which,
having acquired in a brief age all its perfection, needed not to live
longer. Don Diego Martinez suggests beautifully that the profit which
other excellent minds will derive from the posthumous writings of the
poetess will be like the clearness which the stars gain by the death
of the sun. Mingled with these honest tributes of admiration is much
extravagance of comparison; but they prove at least that Sor Juana
was regarded by the learned of her day as a woman of astonishing
powers.

Amid all her studies and labors, we read that Sister Juana was
constant in her religious devotions, and faithful to the least rules
of her order. But her conscientious spirit, moved by a letter of
Bishop Fernandez of Puebla, determined her at length to renounce the
exercise of her talents for the strictest and purest ascetism. Hence,
one of her Mexican critics is led to say that we have only the echoes
of her songs, only the shades of her images, inasmuch as her sex
and state, and the reigning scholasticism, were not convenient for
the true expression of her thoughts. The noble, ascetic literature
of Spain, respecting which it is with reason boasted that the world
contains nothing of the kind more valuable, discredits in good part
this supposition. Moreover, the recognition of Sor Juana's work and
genius was, as we have seen, not inconsiderable. The world is still
in its infancy as regards religious ideality, and, spite of the
highest evidences, often refuses to believe that thoughts fed from
the divine source can fulfil the true poem of life, be it written
or acted. What the thoughts of Sor Juana were like in her ordinary
religious life we understand partly from a number of daily exercises
and meditations which have come down to us. Here are specimens of
these compositions:

    EXERCISE.

    On this day, at seeing the light come forth, bless
    its Author who made it so beautiful a creation, and
    praise him with a submissive heart; not only because
    he created it for our good, but because he made it a
    vassal to his mother and our mediatrix. Go to Mass with
    all possible devotion, and those who can, let them fast
    and give thanks to God. Thou shalt sing the canticle
    _Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino_ and the verse
    _Benedicite lux_. Understand that not only the just
    ought to praise God, who are themselves as light, but
    the sinners who are as darkness. Consider yourselves
    such, every one of you, and mourn for having added to
    the original transgression, darkness upon darkness,
    sins upon sins. Resolve to correct thyself; and that
    Mary's purest light may reach you, recite a _Salve_,
    and nine times the _Magnificat_, face to the ground,
    and fly from all sin this day, even the shadow thereof.
    Abstain from all impatience, murmurings, repinings, and
    suffer with meekness those evils which are a repugnance
    to our nature. If it be a day of discipline of the
    community, that is enough, but if not, it shall be
    especially made so. Those who do not know how to read
    Latin shall recite nine _Salves_ mouth to the ground,
    and shall fast if they are able, and if not, they shall
    make an act of contrition, so that the Lord may give
    them light for his timely service, even as he gave them
    material light by which to live.

    MEDITATION.

    If we look at the properties of the firmament, what
    more assimilates to the miraculous constancy of Mary,
    whom neither those steeped in original sin could make
    fall, nor the combats of temptation make stumble!
    But still, amid the torrents and tempests of human
    miseries, between the troubles of her life, and the
    painful passion and death of her most holy Son and our
    most beloved Saviour; amid the waves of incredulity in
    the doubts of his disciples; among the hidden rocks
    of the perfidy of Judas, and the uncertainty of so
    many timid souls--ever was her constancy preserved.
    Not only was she firm, but beautiful as the firmament,
    which (according to the mathematicians) hath this other
    excellence, that it is bordered by innumerable stars,
    but has only seven planets which are fixed and never
    move. Thus, holiest Mary was not only most pure in her
    conception, transparent and translucent, but afterwards
    the Lord adorned her with innumerable virtues which
    she acquired, even as the stars which border that most
    beautiful firmament; and she not only had them all,
    but had them fixed, all immovable, all in order and
    admirable concert: but if in the other children of
    Adam we see some virtues, they are errant--to-day we
    have them, to-morrow they are gone--to-day is light,
    to-morrow darkness. We will rejoice in her prerogative,
    and say unto her:

    OFFERING.

    Honored Lady, and crown of our human being, divine
    firmament where the stars of virtue are fixed, give
    their benign influence to us, thy devoted ones, that
    by thy favor we may cure ourselves and acquire them;
    and that light which thou dost partake of the Sun of
    Righteousness, communicate it to our souls, and fix in
    them thy virtues, the love of thy precious Son, and
    thy sweetest and tenderest devotion, and of thy happy
    husband, our patron and advocate, St. Joseph.

These compositions doubtless give us a better idea of the interior
thought of Mexican monasticism than some yellow-covered speculations.
In that life grew the finest genius, the greatest woman, perhaps the
most remarkable character in all respects that Mexico ever produced.
Considering the time and place in which she wrote, the New World
has scarcely produced her superior among women of genius. Up to the
nineteenth century America had, doubtless, no, literary product
comparable to the poems of Sor Juana Ines. What Cabrera, was to the
art, Sor Juana seems to have been to the literature of her country;
and both these workers of genius gave their powers to the service of
religion. It is here worthy of remark that not only were the greatest
painter and poet of Mexico studious servants of the church, but that
its most celebrated scientist was the Jesuit Siguenza y Gongora,
author of a funeral eulogy of Sor Juana Ines, whom he knew and
appreciated, for he, too, was a poet. Without social helps, without
emulation, such as is ordinarily understood, such proofs of her high
intelligence as we possess have come to light. Perplexed as it was
with the mannered erudition of the schools, her poetry nevertheless
reveals noble sensibility and thought in superior forms. Thus she
sings in her verses entitled "Sentiments of Absence:"

      "Hear me with eyes,
      Now that so distant are thine ears;
      Of absence my laments;
      In echoes from my pen the groans;
      And as can reach thee not my voice so rude,
      Hear thou me deaf, since dumbly I complain."

This is like a voice of the Elizabethan age; but what _woman_ even of
that day has left us so rare a record of poetry and piety combined as
the nun of San Geronimo, she who lived in 1670 in far-off, outlandish
Mexico? What chapter of literature would seem too good to entertain
this Tenth Muse, to whom we owe such sonnets as these:

TO A PAINTER OF OUR LADY, OF MOST EXCELLENT PENCIL.

      If pencil, although grand in human wise,
      Could make a picture thus most beautiful,
      Where even clearest vision not refines
      Thy light, O admirable--yet in vain:
      How did the author of thy sovereign soul
      Proportion space to his creation fair!
      What grace he painted, and what loveliness!
      The scope more ample, greater was the hand.
      Was found within the sphere of purest light
      The pencil, schooled within the morning-star,
      When thou wert dawned, Aurora most divine?
      Yea, thus indeed it was; but verily
      The sky has not paid back thy cost to him
      Who spent in thee more light than it has now.

THE LOVERS.

      Feliciano loves me, and I hate him;
      Lizardo hates me, and I do adore him;
      For him who does not want me, do I cry,
      And him who yearns for me, I not desire.
      To him who me disdains, my soul I offer,
      And him who is my victim, I disdain.
      Him I despise who would enrich my honor,
      And him who doth contemn me, I'd enrich.
      If with offence the first I have displeased,
      The other doth displease by me offended--
      And thus I come to suffer every way;
      For both are but as torments to my feelings--
      This one with asking that which I have not,
      And that in not having what I'd ask.

THE ROSE.

      Celia beheld a rose that in the walk
      Flourished in pride of springtime loveliness,
      And whose bright hues of carmine or of red
      Bathed joyfully its delicate countenance--
      And said: Enjoy without the fear of fate
      The fleeting course of thy luxuriant age,
      Since will not death be able on the morrow.
      To take from thee what thou to-day enjoyest;
      And though he come within a little while,
      Still grieve thou not to die so young and fair:
      Hear what experience may counsel thee--
      That fortunate 'tis to die being beautiful,
      And not to see the woe of being old.

THE DECEPTION.

      This that thou seest, a deception painted,
      Which of art's excellence makes display,
      With curious counterfeit of coloring,
      Is an insidious cheating of the sense.
      This, wherewithin has flattery pretended
      To excuse the grim deformity of age,
      And vanquishing the rigor hard of time
      To triumph o'er oblivion and decay;
      Is but the shallow artifice of care,
      Is as a fragile flower within the wind;
      It is a useless guard 'gainst destiny;
      It is a foolish and an erring toil;
      'Tis labor imbecile, and, rightly scanned,
      Is death, is dust, is shadow, and is naught.

These rude translations give but a poor idea of the poet's
expression, but they allow the height and quality of her intellect to
be understood. In one of her most thoughtful poems, the _Romance on
the Vanity of Science_, she argues against self-seeking knowledge,
and the perils to which genius exposes itself by too much seeking its
own devices. This poem is so representative and remarkable that we
must give it entire quotation:

ROMANCE.

        Finjamos que soy feliz,
      Triste pensamiento un rato;
      Quizá podreis persuadirme,
      Aunque yo sé lo contrario.

          Feign we that I am happy,
            Sad thought, a little while,
          For, though 'twere but dissembling,
            Would thou couldst me beguile!

        Que, pues solo en la aprension
      Dicen que estriban los daños;
      Si os imaginais dichoso.
      No sereis tan desdichado.

          Yet since but in our terrors
            They say our miseries grow,
          If joy we can imagine,
            The less will seem our woe.

        Sirvame el entendimiento
      Alguna vez de descanso;
      Y no siempre esté el ingenio
      Con el provecho encontrado.

          Must our intelligences
            Some time of quiet find;
          Not always may our genius
            With profit rule the mind.

        Todo el mundo es opiniones,
      De paraceres tan varios,
      Que lo que el uno, que es negro,
      El otro prueba que es blanco.

          The world's full of opinions,
            And these so different quite.
          That what to one black seemeth
            Another proves is white.

        A unos sirve de atractivo
      Lo que otro concibe enfado;
      Y lo que este por alivio
      Aquel tiene por trabajo.

          To some appears attractive
            What many deem a bore;
          And that which thee delighted
            Thy fellow labors o'er.

        El que está triste, censura
      Al alegre de liviano;
      Y el que está alegre, se burla,
      De ver al triste penando.

          He who is sad condemneth
            The gay one's gleeful tones;
          He who is merry jesteth
            Whene'er the sad one groans.

        Los dos filosofos griegos
      Bien esta verdad probaron,
      Pues, lo que en el uno risa,
      Causaba, en el otro llanto.

          By two old Greek wiseacres
            This truth well proved appears;
          Since what in one caused laughter,
            The other moved to tears.

        Célebre su oposicion
      Ha sido, por siglos tantos,
      Sin que cúal acertó, esté
      Hasta agora averiguado.

          Renowned has been this contest
            For ages, without fruit,
          And what one age asserted
            Till now is in dispute.

        Antes en sus dos banderas
      El mundo todo alistado,
      Conforme el humor le dicta,
      Sigue cada cúal su bando.

          Into two lists divided
            The world's opinions stand.
          And as his humor leads him
            Follows each one his band.

        Uno dice, que de risa
      Solo es digno el mundo vario;
      Y otro, que sus infortunios
      Son solo para llorarlos.

          One says the world is worthy
            Only of merriment;
          Another, its distresses
            Call for our loud lament.

        Para todo se halla prueba
      Y razon en que fundarlo;
      Y no hay razon para nada,
      De haber razon para tanto.

          For all opinions various
            Some proof or reason's brought,
          And for so much there's reason
            That reason is for naught.

        Todos son iguales jueces
      Y siendo iguales, y varios.
      No hay quien pueda decidir
      Cúal es lo mas acertado.

          All, all are equal judges,
            And all of different view,
          And none can make decision
            Of what is best or true.

        ¿Pues sino hay quien lo sentencie,
      Por qué pensais vos, errado,
      Que os cometió Dios á vos
      La decision de los casos?

          Then since can none determine,
            Think'st thou, whose reason strays,
          To thee hath God committed
            The judgment of the case?

        ¿O por que, contra vos mismo,
      Severamente inhumano,
      Entre lo amargo, y lo dulce
      Quereis elegir lo amargo?

          O why, to thyself cruel,
            Dost thou thy peace reject?
          Between the sweet and bitter,
            The bitter dost elect?

        ¿Si es mio mi entendimiento,
      Por qué siempre he de encontrarlo
      Tan torpe para el alivio,
      Tan agudo para el daño?

          If 'tis mine my understanding,
            Why always must it be
          So dull and slow to pleasure,
            So keen for injury?

        El discurso es un acero
      Que sirve por ambos cabos;
      De dar muerte por la punta,
      Por el pomo de resguardo.

          A sharp blade is our learning
            Which serves us at both ends:
          Death by the point it giveth,
            By the handle, it defends.

        ¿Si vos sabiendo el peligro
      Quereis por la punta usarlo,
      Que culpa tiene el acero
      Del mal uso de la mano?

          And if, aware of peril,
            Its point thou wilt demand,
          How canst thou blame the weapon
            For the folly of thy hand?

        No es saber, saber hacer
      Discursos sutiles, vanos,
      Que el saber consiste solo
      En elegir lo mas sano.

          Not is true wisdom knowing
            Most subtle speech and vain;
          Best knowledge is in choosing
            That which is safe and sane.

        Especular las desdichas,
      Y examinar los presagios,
      Solo sirve de que el mal
      Crezca con anticiparlo.

          To speculate disaster,
            To seek for presages,
          Serves to increase affliction,
            Anticipates distress.

        En los trabajos futuros
      La atencion sutilizando.
      Mas formidable que el riesgo
      Suele fingir el amago.

          In the troubles of the future
            The anxious mind is lost,
          And more than any danger
            Doth danger's menace cost.

        ¡Que feliz es la ignorancia
      Del que indoctamente sabio,
      Halla de lo que podece
      En lo que ignora sagrado!

          Of him the unschooled wise man
            How happy is the chance!
          He finds from suffering refuge
            In simple ignorance.

        No siempre suben seguros
      Vuelos del ingenio osados,
      Que buscan trono en el fuego,
      Y hallan sepulcro en el llanto.

          _Not always safe aspire
            The wings that genius bears,
          Which seek a throne in fire,
            And find a grave in tears._

        Tambien es vicio el saber
      Que si no se va atajando,
      Cuanto menos se conoce
      Es mas nocivo el estrago.

          And vicious is the knowledge
            That seeking swift its end
          Is all the more unwary
            Of the woe that doth impend.

        Y si vuelo no le abaten
      En sutilezas cebado,
      Por cuidar de lo curioso
      Olvida lo necesario.

          And if its flight it stops not
            In pampered, strange deceits,
          Then for the curious searching
            The needful it defeats.

        Si culta mano no impide
      Crecer al arbol copado,
      Quitan la sustancia al fruto
      La locura de los ramos.

          If culture's hand not pruneth
            The leafage of the tree,
          Takes from the fruit's sustainment
            The rank, wild greenery.

        ¿Si andar a nave ligera,
      No estorba lastre pesado;
      Sirve el vuelo de que sea
      El precipicio mas alto?

          If all its ballast heavy
            Yon light ship not prevents,
          Will it help the flight of pinions
            From nature's battlements?

        En amenidad inutil,
      Que importa al florido campo.
      Si no halla fruto el otoño
      Que ostente flores el mayo.

          In verdant beauty useless,
            What profits the fair field
          If the blooming growths of springtime
            No autumn fruitage yield?

        ¿De que le sirve al ingenio
      El producir muchos partos,
      Si a la multitud le sigue
      El malogro de abortarlo?

          And of what use is genius
            With all its work of might,
          If are its toils rewarded
            By failure and despite?

        Yá esta desdicha, por fuerza
      Ha de seguirle el fracaso
      De quedar el que produce.
      Si no muerto, lastimado.

          And perforce to this misfortune
            Must that despair succeed,
          Which, if its arrow kills not,
            Must make the bosom bleed.

        El ingenio es como el fuego,
      Que con la materia ingrato,
      Tanto la consume mas,
      Cuanto el se ostenta mas claro.

          Like to a fire doth genius
            In thankless matter grow;
          The more that it consumeth,
            It boasts the brighter glow.

        Es de su proprio señor
      Tan rebelado vasallo,
      Que convierte en sus ofensas
      Las armas de su resguardo.

          It is of its own master
            So rebellious a slave,
          That to offence it turneth
            The weapons that should save.

        Este pesimo ejercicio,
      Este duro afan pesado,
      A los hijos de los hombres
      Dió Dios para ejercitarlos.

          Such exercise distressful,
            Such hard anxiety,
          To all the sad world's children
            God gave their souls to try.

        ¿Que loca ambicion nos lleva
      De nosotros olvidados,
      Si es para vivir tan poco,
      De que sirve saber tanto?

          What mad ambition takes us
            From self-forgetful state,
          If 'tis to live so little
            We make our knowledge great?

        Oh! si como hay de saber,
      Hubiera algun seminario,
      O escuela, donde á ignorar
      Se enseñara los trabajos!

          Oh! if we must have knowledge,
            I would there were some school
          Wherein to teach not knowing
            Life's woes, should be the rule.

        ¡Que felizmente viviera,
      El que flotamente cauto;
      Burlara las amenazas
      Del influjo de los astros!

          Happy shall be his living
            Whose life no rashness mars;
          He shall laugh at all the threatenings
            Of the magic of the stars!

        Aprendamos á ignorar
      Pensamientos, pues hallamos,
      Que cuanto añado al discurso,
      Tanto le usurpo á los años.

          Learn we the wise unknowing,
            Since it so well appears
          That what to learning's added
            Is taken from our years.

We may dispute, in some respects, the drift of Sister Juana's
philosophy; but we cannot question the poetic wisdom of many of her
reflections. How true it is that in a multitude of reasons one finds
no reason at all; that the rank overgrowth of knowledge does not
bear the best fruit; that genius, allied with base substance, grows
brighter, by a kind of self-consuming; that wisdom can sometimes
find refuge in ignorance! No one, be his fame what it may, has
stated a grand and touching truth with better force than appears in
Sor Juana's grave misgiving with regard to the genius "which seeks
a throne in fire, and finds a sepulchre in tears." Is not this the
history, at once sublime and pathetic, of so many failures of the
restless intellect? Sor Juana knew how to preach from such a text,
for she was a rare scholar, and mistress of verse, and religious
woman. The variety of her literary employments was considerable, in
comparison with the bulk of Mexican verse and prose, notwithstanding
the old-fashioned manners of her cloistered muse. She wrote, in
addition to sonnets and romances, the dramatic religious pieces
called loas and autos, among which we find dialogues and acts
entitled "The Sceptre of St. Joseph," "San Hermengildo," and "The
Divine Narciso." Her poetic moods were not, it appears, limited to
hymns and to blank-verse; indeed, she had the qualities of a ripe
poet--humor, fancy, imagination, able thought, and, if anything else
should be added, doubtless the reader will find it in the ideality of
a sonnet so superb as the one in praise of Our Lady. Of her religious
tenderness we have a fine example in the following lines from "El
Divino Narciso," which have been compared by a Mexican critic to
the best mystical songs of St. John of the Cross and other Spanish
ascetics. They convey the appeal which the Shepherd of Souls makes to
a soul which has strayed from the flock:

      O my lost lamb,
      Thy master all forgetting,
      Whither dost erring go?
      Behold how now divided
      From me, thou partest from thy life!

      In my tender kindness,
      Thou seest how always loving
      I guard thee watchfully,
      I free thee of all danger,
      And that I give my life for thee.

      Behold how that my beauty
      Is of all things beloved,
      And is of all things sought,
      And by all creatures praised.
      Still dost thou choose from me to go astray.

      I go to seek thee yet,
      Although thou art as lost;
      But for thee now my life
      I cannot still lay down
      That once I wished to lose to find my sheep.

      Do worthier than thou
      Ask these my benefits,
      The rivers flowing fair,
      The pastures and green glades
      Wherein my loving-kindness feedeth thee.

      Within a barren field,
      In desert land afar,
      I found thee, ere the wolf
      Had all thy life despoiled,
      And prized thee as the apple of mine eye.

      I led thee to the verdure
      Of my most peaceful ways,
      Where thou hast fed at will
      Upon the honey sweet
      And oil that flowed to thee from out the rock.

      With generous crops of grain,
      With marrowy substances,
      I have sustained thy life,
      Made thee most savory food,
      And given to thee the juice of fragrant grapes.

      Thou seekest other fields
      With them that did not know
      Thy fathers, honored not
      Thy elders, and in this
      Thou dost excite my own displeasure grave.

      And for that thou hast sinned
      I'll hide from thee my face,
      Before whose light the sun
      Its feeble glory pales;
      From thee, ingrate, perverse, and most unfaithful one.

      Shall my displeasure's scourge
      Thy verdant fields destroy,
      The herb that gives thee food;
      And shall my fires lay waste,
      Even from the top of highest mountains old.

      My lightning arrows shall
      Be drawn, and hunger sharp
      Shall cut the threads of life,
      And evil birds of prey
      And fiercest beasts shall lie in wait for thee.

      Shall grovelling serpents show
      The venom of their rage,
      By different ways of death
      My rigors shall be wrought;
      Without thee by the sword, within thee by thy fears.

      Behold I am thy Sovereign,
      And there is none more strong;
      That I am life and death,
      That I can slay and save,
      And nothing can escape from out my hand.

Our last quotation from Sister Juana's poems will be one of those
tributes which, in verse or prose, she so often paid to the Blessed
Virgin. It is a song taken from her villancicos, or rhymes for
festivals. The literary manners of her time seem to have obscured
the native excellence of her thought, but the buoyant style of the
following lines meets with little objection from her modern Mexican
critic:

      To her who in triumph, the beautiful queen,
      Descends from the airs of the region serene;
      To her who illumines its vaguest confine
      With auroras of gold, and of pearl and carmine;
      To her whom a myriad of voices confessed
      The lady of angels, the queen of the blest:
      Whose tresses celestial are lightly outborne
      And goldenly float in the glory of morn,
      And waving and rising would seek to o'erwhelm
      Like the gulfs of the Tibar an ivory realm:
      From whose graces the sunlight may learn how to shine,
      And the stars of the night take a brilliance divine,
      We sing thee rejoicing while praises ascend,
      O sinless, O stainless! live, live without end.

The scarcity of the poems of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, even in
her native land, is cause for wonder, but not if we first remark
that still greater marvel--the long-continued discomposure of
Mexican society. It is one hundred and seventy years since the
parchment-bound book, from which we have drawn a number of facts
in the life of the _Poetisa_, was published. Our impression of the
rarity and age of her printed works, as derived from acquaintance
with educated Mexicans in their own country, tempts us to doubt
whether they have been issued in any complete shape during the
present century. For a good portion of the extracts we have presented
we are indebted to an intelligent and scholarly review prepared in
Mexico, two years ago, by Don Francisco Prinentel, the author of a
number of books on the races and languages of Mexico. Outside of the
monastic or rich private libraries of that country, it is doubtless
a task of much difficulty to find the poems of Sor Juana. For this
reason we are disposed to excuse the able American historian of
Spanish literature for omitting everything in relation to her except
the mere mention of her name as a lyrical writer. It is hoped,
however, that this notice of her life and works, probably the first
which has appeared in the United States, will supply the omission
of what should be a chief fact in any American notice of Spanish
literature. The claim which we make for Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,
as regards the literature of the New World, is not short of the very
highest.




DION AND THE SIBYLS.

A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING
THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.


CHAPTER XXIV.

At the golden gate of the Temple courtyard, a Roman legionary soldier
(detailed as body-servant to the General Paulus) met him. The soldier
was leading a small, wiry Tauric (or really Tartar) horse. Paulus,
twisting a lock of the animal's mane in his left hand, and taking
up with the little finger thereof the loop of the bridle, sprang
into the ephippia. The soldier smiled, as the still handsome and
youthful-looking legatus settled himself on the back of his steed.

"Why are you smiling, my man?" quoth Paulus good-humoredly.

"It was like the spring I saw you take years ago at Formiæ, when
I was a boy, upon the back of the horse Sejanus, which no man, my
general, ever rode save you," replied the soldier.

"Ah!" said Paulus, smiling sadly; "were you there? I fear I am not so
agile now. We are all passing away."

"Just as agile still, my general," returned the legionary, in a
cordial tone; "but about twice as strong."

"Away! begone!" cried Paulus, laughing; "I am growing old." And
shaking the reins, he waved a salute to Longinus, turned his pony
round, and rode away again into the valley westward, while the
centurion entered the city by the golden gate, and repaired under the
walls of the Temple to Fort Antonio, where he was detailed as officer
of Pilate's guard that night.

Paulus, meanwhile, rode slowly on his way, between the Kedron Brook
and the walls of Jerusalem, till he came to the Pool of Siloam.
There, he turned south, galloped to a fort which was near, turned
back again to his right, or northward, followed the valley of Hinnom
at a walking pace, looking up at the white and dazzling buildings on
Mount Zion.

As he slowly passed them, he speculated which could have been David's
palace. He saw Herod's plainly enough. On his right he noticed the
aqueduct from Solomon's Pool, and followed its course as far as the
Tower of Hippicus northward. There he entered the city by the Gate of
Gennath, and followed the valley of the Cheesemongers (or Tyropæon
hollow) until he came to Ophal.

In the middle of a very narrow street in this low and crowded
quarter, where the Romans afterward under Titus were repulsed,
he met a file of people, some mounted, some on foot, led by a
richly-dressed, haughty-looking, burly man, riding a mule.

So narrow was the street that either Paulus would have had to go
back as far as the Tower of Marianne, or the richly-dressed and
haughty-looking man about one-quarter of the distance, to the
bridge between the street of the Cheesemongers and the court of the
Gentiles. Paulus, always full of courtesy, amenity, and sweetness,
was in the very act of turning his small Tauric horse, when the burly
man in rich dress, who led the opposing file, called out, "Back! low
people! Back, and let Caiaphas go by!"

"And who is Caiaphas?" demanded Paulus, instantly facing round again
and barring the way.

"The high-priest of Jerusalem," was the answer, thundered forth in
rude and minatory tones.

"I respect," said Paulus, "and even revere that holy appellation;
but he who uses it at this moment, for some present purpose, has
flung against me, who am a Roman general, the mandate of _Back, low
people_. Where are the low people? I do not believe that I am a low
person. Where, then, are the low people?"

"Come on," cried the imperious voice of Caiaphas.

He himself, being the file leader, began then to move forward, till
he came immediately in front of the traveller who had so courteously
spoken to him.

"If you want," said Paulus, "to pass me at once, I must get into the
ditch, or throw you into it; which do you prefer?"

"I prefer," quoth Caiaphas, "that you should throw me into the
ditch, if you either dare or can."

"Sir," says Paulus, "I am sorry for the sentiment you express, or at
least imply. But I will stand up against your challenge of throwing
you into the ditch, because I both could do it, and dare do it, as
a Roman soldier, only that there is ONE among you who has come to
settle all our disputes, and who has a divine right to do so. For
his sake I would rather be thrown into that drain by you--soldier,
officer, general, and Roman as I am--than throw you into it."

"Let me pass," cried Caiaphas, purple with rage.

Paulus, whose behavior at Lake Benacus against the Germans, and
previously at Formiæ, and afterward in the terrible Calpurnian House
on the Viminal Hill, the reader remembers, made no answer, but,
riding back to the Tower of Marianne, allowed the high-priest and
his followers there to pass him; which they did with every token of
scorn and act of contumely that the brief and sudden circumstances
allowed. Caiaphas thus passed on to his country-house at the
southwest-by-south of Jerusalem, where he usually spent the night.

Paulus then put his pony into a gallop, and soon reached the bridge
across the Tyropæon into the courtyard of the Temple, commonly called
the courtyard of the Gentiles. Such was the nervous excitement caused
by his recent act of purely voluntary, gratuitous, and deliberate
self-humiliation, that he laughed aloud as he rode through the Temple
yard, coasting the western "cloisters," and so reaching Fort Antonio.

There his servant, the Roman legionary, who had before met him at the
golden gate, and whose name was Marcus, was awaiting him.


CHAPTER XXV.

That night the palace of Herod the tetrarch resounded with music,
and all the persons of rank or distinction in Jerusalem were among
the guests. The entertainment would have been remembered for years
on account of its brilliancy; it was destined to be remembered for
all ages, even till the day of doom, on account of its catastrophe,
chronicled in the books of God, and graven in the horror of men.

Paulus, unusually grave, because experiencing unwonted sensations,
and anxious calmly to analyze them, was assailed for the first time
in his life by a feeling of nervous irritability, which originated
(though he knew it not) in his having suppressed the natural desire
to chastise the insolence of Caiaphas that morning. He sat abstracted
and silent, not far from the semi-royal chair of Herod the tetrarch.
His magnificent dress, well-earned military fame, and manly and grave
beauty (never seen to greater advantage than at that period of life,
though the gloss of youth was past) had drawn toward him during the
evening an unusual amount of attention, of which he was unconscious,
and to which he would have been indifferent.

The "beauty of the evening," as she was called (for in those days
they used terms like those which we moderns use, to express our
infatuation for the gleams of prettiness which are quenched almost
as soon as they are seen), had repeatedly endeavored to attract his
attention. She was royal; she was an unrivalled dancer. Herod, who
began to feel dull, begged her to favor the company with a dance,
_sola_. Thereupon the daughter of Herodias looked at Paulus, to whom
her previous blandishments had been addressed in vain (he was well
known to be unmarried), and heaved a fiery sigh. The mere noise of
it ought to have awakened his notice, and yet failed to accomplish
even that small result. Had it succeeded, he was exactly the person
to have regarded this woman with a feeling akin to that which, some
two-and-twenty years before, she herself (or was it Herodias? they
age fast in the East) had waked in the bosom of his sister under the
veranda in the bower of Crispus's inn, leading out of the fine old
Latian garden near the banks of the Liris.

She proceeded to execute her _ballet_, her _pas seul_, her dance of
immortal shame and fatal infamy. Cries of delight arose. The creature
grew frantic. The court of Herod fell into two parties. One party
proclaimed the performance a perfection of elegance and spirit. The
other party said not a word, but glances of painful feeling passed
among them. The clamorous eulogists formed the large majority. In the
silent minority was numbered Paulus, who never in his life had felt
such grave disgust or such settled indignation. He thought of his
pure and innocent Esther--alas, _not_ his! He thought that, had it
been his sister Agatha who thus outraged every rudimentary principle
of the tacit social compact, he could almost find it in his heart to
relieve the earth of her.

Thus pondering, his glance fell upon Herod the tetrarch. The tetrarch
seemed to have become delirious. He was laughing, and crying, and
slobbering, and clapping his hands, and rolling his head, and
rocking his body on the great state cushion under the canopy, where
he "sat at table." While Paulus was contemplating him in wonder and
shame, the wretched dancer came to an end of her bounds. Indecency,
scientifically accidental, had been the one simple principle of the
exhibition. Herod called the practised female before him, and, in the
hearing of several, bade her demand from him any reward she pleased,
and declared upon oath that he would grant her demand. Paulus heard
the answer. After consulting apart with her mother, she reapproached
the tetrarch, and, with a flushed face, said that she desired the
head of a prisoner upon a dish.

"What prisoner?"

"John," said she.

Paulus gazed at the miserable tetrarch, "the quarter of a king," not
from the height of his rank as a Roman general, but from the still
greater height which God had given him as one of the first, one of
the earliest of European gentlemen. He knew not then who John was.
But that any fellow-creature in prison, not otherwise to be put to
death, should have his head hewn off and placed upon a dish, because
a woman had tossed her limbs to and fro in a style which pleased a
tetrarch while it disgraced human society, appeared to Paulus to be
less than reasonable. What he had said, the tetrarch had said upon
oath.

A little confusion, a slight murmuring and whispering ensued, but
the courtly music soon recommenced. Paulus could not afterward tell
how long it was before the most awful scene he had ever witnessed
occurred.

A menial entered, bearing, on a large dish, a freshly-severed human
head, bleeding at the neck.

"It was not a jest, then," said Paulus, in a low voice to his next
neighbor, a very old man, whose face he remembered, but whose name he
had all the evening been trying in vain to recall--"it was not a base
jest, dictated by the hideous taste of worse than barbarians!"

"Truly," replied the aged man, "these Jews are worse than any
barbarians I ever saw, and I have seen most of them."

Paulus recognized at these words the geographer Strabo, formerly his
companion at the court of Augustus.

At a sign from Herod, the menial carrying the dish now approached the
daughter of Herodias, and presented to her the bleeding and sacred
head. She, in turn, took the dish and offered it to Herodias, who
herself bore it out of the room with a kind of snorting laugh.

Paulus rose slowly and deliberately from his place near the tetrarch,
at whom he steadily looked.

"This, then," said he, "is the entertainment to which you have
invited a Roman legatus. You are vexed, people say, that Pilate,
the Roman governor of this city, could not honor your birthday by
his presence in your palace. Pilate's local authority is of course
greater than mine, for I have none at all; but his real, permanent
rank, and your own real, permanent importance, are contemptible by
the side of those which a Roman soldier of such a family as the
Æmilian has gained on the field of battle; and it was a high honor to
yourself to succeed in bringing me hither. And now, while disgracing
your own house, you have insulted your guests. What is the name of
the man you have murdered because a woman dances like a goat? What is
his name?"

The tetrarch, astonished and over-awed, replied with a bewildered
look:

"What authority to rebuke me, because I took my brother's wife, had
John?"

"John who?" asked Paulus, who from the outset had been struck by the
name.

"He who was styled John the Baptist," said the tetrarch.

The words of another John rang in Paulus's memory; and he exclaimed:

"What! John the Baptist? John the Baptist, yea, and more than a
prophet--John the Angel of God! Is this he whom you have slain?"

"What had he to say to my marriage?" answered Herod, through whose
purple face a livid under-color was penetrating to the surface.

"Why," exclaimed Paulus, "the holy books of your own nation forbade
such a marriage, and John could not hear of it without rebuking you.
I, although a Gentile, honor those books. Out upon you, impious
assassin! I ask not, where was your mercy, or where your justice; but
where has been your sense of common decency, this evening? I shall
never cease to lament that I once stood under your roof. My presence
was meant as an honor to you; but it has proved a disgrace to myself."

Taking his scarlet cloak, he flung it over his shoulders, and left
the hall amid profound silence--a silence which continued after he
had quitted the courtyard, and begun to descend from Mount Zion
to the labyrinth of streets branching downward to the Tyropæon
Valley. In one of these, under a bright moonlight, he met again that
same beautiful youth whom he had seen in the morning when he was
descending the Mount of Olives.

"Stay!" cried Paulus, suddenly stopping in his own rapid walk. "Said
you not, this morning, that he who was called 'John the Baptist' was
more than a prophet? Herod has this moment slain him, to please a
vile woman. The tyrant has sent the holy prophet out of life."

"Nay; into life," replied the other John; "but, brave and noble
Roman--for I see you are both--the Master, who knows all things, and
rejoices that John has begun to live, grieves as well."

"Why grieves?" inquired Paulus, musing.

"Because," replied the other John, "the Master is verily man, no less
than _He is Who is_."

"What, then, is he?" asked Paulus, with a look of awe.

"He is the Christ, whom John the Prophet, now a witness unto death,
had announced."

Hereupon the two went their several ways, Paulus muttering: "_The
second name in the acrostic._"

But, really, he had ceased to care for minor coincidences in a huge
mass of convergent proofs all gaining possession of his soul, and
taking alike his will and his understanding captive--captive to the
irresistible truth and the equally irresistible beauty of the message
which had come. The immortality of which he was an heir, the reader
has seen him long since believing; and long since also rejecting both
the pantheism of the philosophers and the polytheism of the vulgar.
And here was a great new doctrine authoritatively establishing all
that the genius of Dionysius had guessed, and infinitely more;
truths awful and mysterious, which offered immediate peace to that
stupendous universe that is within a man, while assuring him of
power, joy, and honor to begin some day, and nevermore to end.

He had not been in Jerusalem long before he learnt much of the new
teaching. He had secured for his mother, close to the Fortress
Antonio, where he himself lodged, a small house belonging to a widow
who, since her husband's death, had fallen into comparative poverty.
The Lady Aglais, attended still by her old freedwoman, Melena, was
allowed the best and coolest part of this house entirely to herself,
with a staircase of their own leading to the flat roof. There they
passed much of their evenings after the sun had set, looking at the
thickly-built opposite hills, the mansions on Zion, or down into
the Tyropæon from which the hum of a great multitude came, mellowed
by the distance, and disposing the mind to contemplation. Many
wonderful things, from time to time, they heard of him who was now
teaching--things some of which, nay, the greater part of which, as
one of the sacred writers expressly declares, never were recorded,
and the whole of which could not be contained in the libraries of
the world. It may well, then, be imagined in what a situation Paulus
and his mother were--having no interest in disbelieving, no chair
of Moses to abdicate, no doctorial authority or pharisaic prestige
inciting them to impugn the known truth--in what a situation they
were, for accepting or declining what was then offered.

After twenty years of separation, a trace of Esther had been
recovered by Paulus. One evening, his mother was on the flat roof of
her residence awaiting his customary visit, when her son appeared and
alarmed her by his pallor. He had seen Esther on foot in a group of
women at the Gate of Gennath, going forth into the country, as he was
entering the city on horseback. Aglais smiled sadly, saying: "Alas!
dear son, is that all? I long since knew that she still lived; but I
would not disturb your mind by the useless intelligence."

"Scarcely altered," murmured Paulus abstractedly, "while I am quite
old. Yes, she must now be past thirty; yes, near thirty-five."

"As to that," said the mother, "you are thirty-eight, and scarcely
seem twenty-nine. Old Rebecca, the mistress of this house, who lives
still in the ground-story, as you are aware, has told me much about
Esther."

"She is married, I suppose," said Paulus, with a look of anxiety.

"No," replied Aglais. "She has had innumerable offers (spite of her
comparative poverty), and has declined them all."

"But what boots it?" exclaimed Paulus.

"Old Josiah Maccabeus is dead," said Aglais. And here mother and son
dropped the subject by mutual consent.

The dreadful days, closed by the most awful day the world has
known--closed by the ever-memorable and tremendous Friday--came and
went. On the Saturday, Paulus met Longinus, who said he had been
on Mount Calvary that afternoon, and that he, Longinus, was now
and ever henceforth a disciple of him who had been crucified. The
Sunday came, and brought with it a prodigious rumor, which, instead
of dying out, found additional believers every day. The disciples,
most of whom had shown themselves as timid as they were known to be
ignorant, now seemed transformed into new characters, who loudly
affirmed that their Master had risen from the dead by his own power;
and they were ready to face every torment and all terrors calmly in
the maintenance of this fact, which they predicted would be received
and acknowledged by the whole world. And, indeed, it was no longer
a rumor, but a truth, attested by the only witnesses who could by
possibility know anything about it, either for or against; and whose
earthly interests it would have been to deny it, even while they knew
it to be true--witnesses who, if they knew it to be false--and they
certainly knew whether it were true or false (this much was granted,
_and is still granted_, by all their opponents)--could have had no
motive, either earthly or unearthly, for feigning that they believed
it.

So pregnant is this simple reasoning, that a man might ponder it
and study it for a whole month, and yet find fresh strength and an
ever-increasing weight in the considerations which it suggests; not
even find a flaw if he made the one month twelve. Paulus's mind
was determined, and so was his mother's. The son sought that same
beautiful youth whom he had seen twice before; told him the new
desire, the new belief, which had made his mother's and his own heart
glad; and by him they were baptized as Christians, disciples of him
that had been crucified--by that fair youth, I say, who was to be
known for ever among men as "Saint John the Evangelist."

"After all, mother," said Paulus, when they were returning together
to her dwelling, "it is not so very mysterious; I mean that
difficulty about the lowliness of our divine Teacher's chosen place
among men. Because, see you, if the builder of those glorious stars
and that sublime firmament was to come at all amongst us, he would
be certain to take the lowest and smallest lot, lest we should deem
there was any difference as before him. We are all low and small
together--the earth itself, I am told, being but a sort of Bethlehem
among the stars; but, anyhow, we are but mites and emmets on a blade
of grass in his sight, and had he taken a great relative place amidst
us, it might countenance the lie and the delusion of our silly pride.
That part of it is to me not so mysterious, although I don't wonder
at the Jewish notion that their Messiah was to have been a great
conquering prince--that is probably what the Antichrist will be. It
would suit the blindness of vanity better."

As he spoke the words, they heard a quick footstep behind, and
were overtaken by Longinus, who, saying he had just heard of their
reception, greeted them with every demonstration of rapturous
affection.

"Now," pursued he, walking by their side, "good for evil to Master
Paulus's family. Forgive the apparent intrusion, dear general, if I
mention that I happen to know the story of your youthful love, as all
the world have witnessed your fidelity to an unavailing attachment.
But learn from poor Longinus that Esther Maccabeus is now a disciple;
and the Christian maiden can wed, under a still holier law, the brave
Gentile whom the Jewess was bound to refuse."

With this he turned into an alley under the court of the Gentiles,
and disappeared.


CHAPTER XXVI.

One still and sultry evening, the decline of a brooding day in
spring, two persons were sitting on the flat roof of a house in
Jerusalem. They were the Athenian Lady Aglais and her son, the
comparatively youthful Roman General Paulus--he who has so largely
figured, even from his gallant boyhood, in the events and affairs we
have been recording.

It was the 30th of March, and a Wednesday--the first of all
Easter-Wednesdays--the first in that new and perpetual calendar by
which, throughout the fairest regions of earth, among all enlightened
nations and civilized races, till the crash of doom, time was for
evermore to be measured.

A servant, carrying a skin-cask slung over his shoulders, was
watering the flowers, faint with thirst; and these, arranged in
fanciful vases, which made an artificial garden of the housetop,
shook their drooping heads under the fresh and grateful shower, and
seemed to answer it with smiles of a thousand blooms and rays. As
the man stole softly to and fro about the roof, now approaching the
lady and her son, now receding, he seemed, in spite of the foreign
language in which they spoke, and in spite of the low and hushed tone
they observed, to follow, with intense and breathless though stealthy
excitement, the tenor of their conversation; while his figure, in the
last evening rays, cast a long, shifting shadow that streaked with
black the yellow flood to its farthest limit, climbed the parapet,
broke upon its grail-work of balusters, and then was beheaded, for it
flung off its head out of sight into empty space, leaving the calm
bright air unblotted above the stone guard-wall.

An occurrence took place of which (that Wednesday evening) Paulus
and his mother were witnesses--an occurrence in dumb show, the
significance of which they were destined, only after several
years, to learn; yet the incident was so singular, so strange, so
impressive--it was such a picture in such a quarter--that when,
long subsequently, the explanation came, they seemed to be still
actually assisting in person at the scene which, while they beheld
it, they had no means of understanding. We are going, in one moment,
to relate that occurrence; and we must here request the reader to
grant us his full belief and his confidence when we remark that, in
comparison of his amusement, his profit, and that mental gallery of
pictures to be his henceforth (which we try to give to all who honor
these pages with a perusal), we feel the sincerest contempt for any
mere display of scholarship or learning. For this reason, and this
reason alone, and certainly from no scantiness, and still less from
any lack of authorities, we shall almost disencumber our narrative
of references to the ancient writers and recondite documents (such
as the _Astronomic Formula of Philip Aridæus_) which establish as
positive historical facts the more striking of the occurrences still
to be mentioned. In one instance the intelligent reader will discern
that the most sacred of all evidence supports what we have to record.
But if we were to show with what nicety of precision much profane,
yet respectable and even venerable, testimony accords with the
passage here meant in the Acts of the Apostles, and how abundantly
such testimony corroborates and supplements the inspired account,
this book would cease to be what it aims at being, and would become a
historical treatise of the German criticism school.[3]

Satisfied, therefore, with the footnotes below (at which the reader
will oblige us by just glancing, and which are appended, in perfect
good faith and simple honesty, as implying no more than we could
make good), we will avoid boring those who have a right to, and who
expect, the conclusion of a straightforward story at our hands.[4]

Paulus and his mother were conversing, as has been described,
in Greek, while the serving-man, despite his ignorance of that
language, had the air of half-following the drift of what they said,
and of catching the main purport of it with wonder and awe. There
was, indeed, at that moment, only one topic in all Jerusalem. He
who, less than a week ago, had been crucified, and with the time
of whose coming (as much as with all the particulars of his life,
teaching, works, and death) the old prophecies were found more and
more startlingly, circumstantially, unmistakably, the more they were
studied, questioned, and canvassed, to agree, point by point, down
to what would seem even trivial details (indicated as if merely to
emphasize the incommunicable identity of the Messiah)--he had himself
stated, distinctly and publicly, that, by his own power, he would
rise from the dead in three days; that, in three days after, he
should be "lifted up" and be made "a spectacle for men and angels;"
in three days after they should have destroyed it, he would rebuild
the holy temple of his body. And now these rumors--these minute,
these positive accounts--had he, then, really reappeared, according
to his word and promise? Was it possible? Was it the fact?

Many had, on the previous Friday night, stated that, of a verity,
they had seen their deceased parents and relatives. Again, on the
Saturday, many declared, amid awe-stricken groups of listeners, that
the unknown land had sent them its visitants, in various places,
under various aspects, to startle the guilty city; which, after
killing the King's messenger-servants, had just killed the King's
Son, who had come, as had been a thousand times announced, in the
very fulness, the exact maturity of days, to deliver the final
embassy to men.

On that Wednesday evening, there was, in truth, but one theme of
conversation, one subject of thought, all through Jerusalem, and
already far beyond Jerusalem; among poor and rich, high and low,
natives and strangers, the robbers of the Syrian hills and Arabian
deserts, the dwellers in the city, the travellers on the roads and at
the inns, among Sadducees, Pharisees, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and
barbarians.

No wonder, then, if the humble serving-man, as he watered the
flowers, penetrated the drift of the mother's and the son's
discussion. For him and such as he was the message. The poor Syrian
had once, for a while, rendered occasional out-door service to the
family of Lazarus; and he had known Lazarus in three states--had
known him living, dead, again alive. After days of death in that
fierce climate, where inanimate flesh putrefies fast, he had beheld
Lazarus, at the call of one upon whose lineaments he gazed, at the
time, with unconscious adoration, come forth, not merely from death,
but from incipient decomposition, back into balmy life--back to the
"vita serena."

Now, was he who, in that instance, had allowed it to be perceived and
felt that he was really the Lord of life, whom death and rottenness
were manifestly unable to disobey--was he himself, as his disciples
declared he was, living again among them, since the morning of
the last Sunday (the _feria prima_), according to his own public
prediction and distinct promise? Was he not? Was he?

Aglais and Paulus had heard more than one circumstantial account of
this, his reappearance, according to that, his promise. By this one
and by the other he had been met. They had gazed upon him, spoken
to him, heard him in reply, touched him, in such a place, on that
bridge, that road, in such a garden. He had walked conversing with
them, had sat with them at meat, had broken bread with them, as was
his wont, had then vanished.

Where was his body, over which the Pharisees had set their guard
of soldiers? Not in the grave. No; but where? Had the Pharisees
accounted for it? Could they tell what had become of it? Could the
soldiers? The disciples could, and they did.

"Mother," said Paulus, "do you know what those soldiers say? One of
them once served in a legion which I commanded. Do you know what they
say?"

"You mean," replied Aglais, "about their inability to hinder the
abstraction. What?"

"That an act to which they are the only witnesses could not be
stopped by them, because of it they were not witnesses, being buried
in sleep."

"Consistent," said the Greek lady. "Yes; but a much weightier fact
is that expectation of the disciples, to prevent the realization of
which the Pharisees set their guard."

"What expectation? And why weightier? What can be weightier?" asked
the general.

"That their Master would keep his word, and fulfil his prediction of
rising from the tomb on the third day. If they saw him again alive
within the promised time, they and the people would worship him as
God; but, if the Pharisees could show the body on the third day, or
could even account for it, that belief would die."

"Clearly," answered Paulus, "the disciples expected to see him again
on and after the third day, waiting for his word to be fulfilled."

"Now, Paulus," pursued Aglais, "suppose this expectation of theirs
not fulfilled; suppose that not one of those waiting for his word was
conscious of any reason for believing it to have been realized--"

Paulus interrupted his mother.

"There is only one possible way in which they could be induced to
believe it realized--namely, that he should be seen again alive."

"Quite so," she resumed. "But suppose that he has not been seen;
suppose that not one of those who expected to see him again has thus
seen him. How would they then feel on this Wednesday morning?"

"They would feel that the expectation which he had solemnly and
publicly authorized them to depend upon was idle and vain; they would
not and could not by any possibility feel that they had, in this
great particular, reason to consider his word to have been kept. They
would be discouraged to the very last degree. They would, of course,
hide themselves. I would do so myself, and I believe I am no coward.
In short, they would feel no reason to hope in his protection, or to
expect that his other and still mightier promises concerning their
own future eternal life would by him be realized. They would not
incur any inconvenience, or brave any danger, or take any trouble, or
risk any loss--"

It was Aglais's turn to interrupt.

"Now, is this their attitude?" she inquired.

"The reverse, the opposite, the contradictory of their attitude."

The lady continued in a low tone: "If, expecting, upon his own
assurance, that some among them should see him," she asked, "not one
of them had seen him, would they, at this moment, have any motive
for bringing upon themselves the tortures, insults, shame, and death
which he underwent, and all this in order to induce others to believe
apparitions and a resurrection which in their own hearts they did
not themselves believe, and for believing which they were, moreover,
conscious that they possessed no ground, no reason, no pretext?"

A sweet, ringing, vibrant voice at their side here said:

"And in order by deliberate circumstantial lying, of an awful and
blasphemous kind, to please the God of truth; and to compensate
themselves by his protection above, in a future life, for the
present and immediate destruction which they are incurring among the
Pharisees and the men of power here below!"

Looking round, they beheld Esther of the Maccabees.

Never had she seemed to Paulus so beautiful; but there was a marked
change; for, however intellectual had always been the translucent
purity of that oval brow, through which, as through a lamp of
alabaster, shone the vivid mind within, there was now the mysterious
effluence of "that Essence increate" who had come to abide in, and
had strangely transfigured the appearance of, the faithful-souled
Hebrew maiden. And when Paulus, after she had embraced his mother,
abstractedly took her hand, his heart was lifted upward with a
species of wonder; and, without adverting to it, he was asking
himself to what marvellous kingdom she had become heiress, in what
supernal court of everlasting joy and unassailable prerogatives
was this beautiful creature destined to live, loving and beloved,
adorning almost the glories which she reflected, dispensed, and
multiplied, as if from some holy, mysterious, and spiritual mirror.

"O dear Lady Aglais! and O legatus!" she said, with a gesture amazing
in its expressiveness and pathetic fervor (she had brought the
finger-tips of both hands together under the chin, and then lowered
them with the palms outward toward her hearers, and so she stood
in an attitude of the utmost grace and dignity combined, like one
appealing to the candor and good faith of others)--"O dear friends!
I was just now passing through my own garden on my way hither, when,
under the fig-tree (where he used to sit poring over the holy books
of our people), I beheld my dead father, but standing, and not in
his old accustomed wicker-chair; and he gazed upon me with large,
earnest eyes; and as he stood, his head almost touched the leaves
of that hollow, embowering fig-tree; and he was pale, so extremely
pale as he was never during life; and he called me: 'Esther,' he
said, and his voice sounded far away. Ah! my God, from what a huge
distance it seemed to come! And lo! lady, and thou, legatus, he said
these words to me: 'I have been in the vast, dim house, and have seen
our Father Abraham; and I have seen our great Lawgiver, and all our
prophets, excepting only two, Elias and Enoch; and I asked, Where
were they? And in all the dim, vast house none answered me, but the
forefinger was pressed to the silent lips of those who there waited.
And, suddenly, there was the noise of innumerable armies coming
swiftly from afar--but your ears are mortal and your eyes veiled,
and were I even permitted to tell you that which shook, beyond this
little world, the large world and its eternal thrones, your mind
would not at present understand my words. Enough, Esther, that I have
been allowed to renew to you, in my own behalf, and that of others
among our people who have been called before you to the vast, dim,
silent city, the exhortation which our ancestor Judas Maccabeus
sent with offerings to the high-priest; namely, that you will pray
for our spirits. Our innumerable company has just been thinned; the
glorious Judas Maccabeus, our ancestor, and that holy mother of the
Maccabees, and almost all who were waiting with me in the dim, vast
kingdom of expectation, have gone for ever; and I, and a few, have
been commanded to expect yet a little time; until the incense of holy
prayer shall have further gone up in the presence of the Great White
Throne.'"

Esther paused, her eyes dilated, and stood a moment with the hands
again brought together; and so perfect a figure of truthfulness,
and such an impersonation of sincerity, she looked, that the
Jewish servant, who understood not a word of the tongue in which
she addressed the Greek lady and her son, gazed at her; his work
suspended, his cask held high in air, with all the marks of one who
heard and accepted some sacred and unquestionable revelation.

"Go on, dear child," said Aglais. "What passed further?"

"I asked the pale image what this meant, that he should term the
condition in which he is waiting and has yet to wait a little
time--that vast, dim condition--'a house,' 'a city,' and 'a kingdom.'
'The dwellers,' he replied, 'are watched in that kingdom by silent
protectors, mighty and beautiful, whose faces, full of a severe, sad
love, are the torches and the only light those dwellers ever see; and
the vast, dim city has a sunless and a starless sky for its roof,
under which they wait; and that sky is the ceiling which echoes the
sighs of their pain; and thus to them it has been a kingdom, and a
city, and a house; and, until the ninth hour of last Friday, they
were numerous as the nations of men!' 'And at the ninth hour of that
day, I asked, 'O my father! what occurred when so many departed, and
you and a small number were left still to wait?' And he gazed at me
for an instant with a wan and wistful look; then, lo! I saw nothing
where he had been standing under the fig-tree.

"But it was at the ninth hour of the last Friday the Master had
expired by the side of the penitent who was that very day to be with
him in paradise!" cried Aglais.

At Esther's arrival, Paulus and Aglais had both risen from a kind of
semicircular wicker settle which occupied one of the corners of the
roof; and they now, all three, when Esther had finished her strange,
brief narrative, leaned silent and musing against the parapet;
where, under the shade of a clustering rhododendron, they had a view
westward (drawn, as people are who ponder, toward whatever object is
most luminous) of the towers and palaces and pinnacles of the Holy
City, then reddening in the sunset. One word respecting the spot
where the little group was thus collected, and (among modern, and
especially western, nations) concerning its peculiar scenic effects.

The roof was an irregular parallelogram, protected on all sides
by a low, thick parapet, at two opposite corners of which, in the
diagonals, were two doors of masonry, bolted with massive round bars
of iron, or left open; thus excluding or admitting communication with
the contiguous houses. The writer, many years ago, saw such parapet
doors on the house-tops of modern Algiers; nor was the arrangement
unknown in the more famous Eastern cities of antiquity, where the
roofs glowed with plants in vases. When, on some public occasion,
the passages were opened, the richer inhabitants, far above the
noise, dust, squalor, sultriness, and comparative darkness of the
narrow and noisome streets, could stroll and lounge for miles, in
mid-air, among flowers; could cross even flying and embowered bridges
(of which a privileged number possessed the keys, like those who have
keys to the gardens of our squares); and so Dives, unseen of Lazarus,
but seeing far down all things little and supine, could wander
through parterres of bloom, and perfumed alleys, and shrubberies of
enchantment, with effects of sunlight sprinkled, so to speak, with
coolness and with shadows, soothed out of the noonday fierceness
into tints various and tender; unsoiled of the stains and pains that
stained and pained the poor sordid world below; until the hearts
of those who thus promenaded amid circumstances of such delicious
refinement and luxury, bearing and hearing news, and exchanging
civilities, were "lifted up," and became even like to the heart of
Nabuchodonosor the king. Sometimes the pecten-beaten dulcimer, or
the fingered lyre of six strings, made long-forgotten airs of music
beguile the declining day, and linger for hours longer, ravishing the
night under the stars of the Syrian sky. Such the scene.

But none of the roof-doors were open that Wednesday evening.
Something ailed the Holy City. Out of the hushed heavens, mysteries
and a stern doom were brooding over Jerusalem. Already the fermenting
germ of those dreadful factions which were to tear to pieces, with
intestine rage, the whole Jewish body, while the city was writhing
in the vain death-struggle against Titus, a few years later, had
begun to make itself sensible to the observant. A fierce hatred of
the Romans and an insane eagerness to re-establish the old Jewish
independence had taken possession of certain youthful fanatics; and
"possessed" indeed they seemed. On the one side, the Roman officers
of the garrison, from Pilate down, had received anonymous warnings,
in the wildest style, requiring them to withdraw from Jerusalem
within a given time, or they should be all executed in the streets,
as opportunity might occur; on the other, the prefect of Syria had
been earnestly requested by Pilate to strengthen the garrison; while
in the city itself the soldiers were strictly admonished to keep
to their quarters, to avoid late hours, and to hold no intercourse
when off duty with the inhabitants. Leaves of absence were stopped.
A few legionaries had been already murdered in the neighborhood
of wine-shops, in the small winding alleys, and in places of evil
repute, and no efforts succeeded in identifying the perpetrators.

But these were only the feeble and evanescent symptoms, destined to
disappear and reappear, of a political and social phase which was not
to become the predominant situation until another situation should
have exhausted its first fury. This, the first, was to be the war
of the Synagogue against the disciples of the Messiah, whom those
disciples went about declaring to have risen from the tomb, according
to his distinct promise; whom they went about declaring to have been
already seen, and heard, and touched by themselves, again and again.

No wonder, then, if Aglais and Paulus and Esther had discussed in
hushed tones and in Greek the wonders and various portents attendant
upon the supreme and central fact--that Resurrection of the Master
which absorbed their whole hearts and minds, leaving no room for
any other interest therein at this tremendous epoch--the grand
turning-point of human destinies and of our whole planet's history.

From the parapet against which they were leaning, they now gazed in
silence upon the splendid scenes below and opposite. Across a maze of
narrow streets they saw the mansions, the pinnacles, the towers, and
that great supernal "Temple of God," all so soon to perish violently,
in a general, a complete, and an irreversible destruction. They saw
the play of light and shadow upon one long tree-lined side of Herod's
proud palace; they saw the ripple of quivering leaves reflected
upon the white colonnades (and their tessellated, shady floors) of
Pilate's fatal house; and, while revolving thoughts and questions of
unspeakable importance and solemnity, they all three suddenly beheld
an acted picture, a passing scene, voiceless to them, yet impressive,
which blent itself into their recollection of other scenes, never to
be effaced from the memory of mankind, which, not a week before, had
been under those very colonnades enacted.

A woman in the attire of a Roman matron came quickly forth upon the
first-story balcony in the house of Pontius Pilate, and, leaning over
the rail, waved her hand with an imperative gesture to some one below.

She was followed into the balcony more slowly by a man wearing the
grand costume of an ancient Roman military governor, who held in his
hand a sealed and folded letter, tied with the usual silk string.
The man was evidently Pilate himself. He looked long and gloomily at
the letter, and seemed to be plunged in thought. He even let what he
carried fall at his feet, and did not appear to be aware of this
for some moments. It was the woman who picked up the letter, and
gave it back into his hand. Then Pilate leaned over the balustrade,
in his turn, and spoke to a man below in military costume, who was
mounted on a powerful horse, and seemed to be equipped for travel.
The soldier saluted, looking up, when he was addressed, and saluted
again when his superior had ceased speaking; whereupon Pilate dropped
the letter (a large and heavy dispatch), which the soldier caught and
secured under his belt, inside the tunic, or "sagum," immediately
afterward riding away at a canter. Our three friends saw Pilate, his
head bent and his eyes on the ground, slowly and ponderingly re-enter
the house by a screen-door, the same through which he had come out
upon the balcony; but the lady, clasping her hands a little in front
of her forehead, gazed into the heavens with a face ashy pale, and
with eyes from which tears were streaming.

It is a well-known and for centuries universally received tradition,
besides being a fact recorded by one most respectable and trustworthy
author (who, besides, was not a Christian, but a Jew)--a fact
without which the allusions to it in various ancient authorities,
together with Phlegon the Chronologer's subsequent recital of
Tiberius's extraordinary conduct, would be unintelligible and
unaccountable--that Pontius Pilate, harassed by the unappeasable
reproaches of his wife, and stung by something within his own bosom
which allowed him peace no more, until (sleepless, and unable again,
unable for ever, to sleep) he bequeathed, some years afterward, by
an awful death, whether intentional or not, his name to a great
Alpine hill, a hill not thenceforth named, or to be named, while
time and mountains last, by any name but "Pilate's" among distant
and then barbarous nations--it is well known, I say, that Pilate
sent to Tiberius Cæsar a long and minute relation concerning the
life, the death, and the disappearance from the tomb of him whom
he had scourged, and whom the Jews had crucified, together with a
notice of the supernatural wonders wrought by him; his previous
notorious announcement of his own intended resurrection; the directly
consequent and equally notorious precautions taken to hinder it;
the disappearance, in spite of this, of the body; the testimony of
the soldiers that they were witnesses _to_ the abstraction, which
they were unable to stop, because they alleged that they were not
witnesses _of_ it (being buried in sleep); that, in fact, their
testimony proved nothing save the body's disappearance from the
massively-sealed tomb (which would have stood a small siege); the
failure of the Synagogue to account for the body; the account of it
by the disciples; and, finally, the admissions of the Pharisees that
all their prophets had become unexplainable if this was not their
Messiah, yet that such a conclusion was to them impossible, because
he was to have been their king, and a conquering king, and to have
founded an empire extending through all nations and tongues; their
stern and ever-growing disaffection to the Roman rule; the universal
amazement, excitement, and anxiety arising from the circumstance
that, while neither the Synagogue nor the soldiers could throw any
light upon what had become of the body, the disciples of him who
had predicted his own resurrection explained the event openly and
fearlessly by stating that they had again and again met him since the
previous _feria prima_; that they cared for no protection except his
alone; that the dead was once more among them--living, and henceforth
immortal--their Master and God; the ultimate Judge of this world, and
the foretold Founder of an everlasting kingdom! Pilate added several
strange and astounding particulars.

This, in a general way, is known; and it is likewise known that
Tiberius Cæsar was so deeply impressed by the dispatch of the
Jerusalem governor, arriving in his hands about the same moment, as
we shall find in the next chapter, when a strange incident (_narrated
by Plutarch_) took place, that he suddenly convened the senate in a
formal indiction, _and proposed to them to raise a temple to Christ,
and to rank him solemnly among the gods of the empire_! But not such
nor of such acknowledgments was to be the kingdom of the "jealous"
and the only God.

Aglais, Paulus, and Esther had assisted at a memorable pantomime.
They had beheld the mounted soldier who rode with a memorable letter
to the sea-coast; they had seen the vain effort of him who had
offered the people a choice between Barabbas and "the desired of
nations," to call the great of the earth into his perplexities, to
quiet his awakened conscience, to turn aside from the dread warnings
whispered to his soul, to lull--by futile means--an all too late
remorse.


CHAPTER XXVII.

In our last chapter, Paulus and his Athenian mother had obtained,
through Esther's recital of her waking dream or vision, one little
glimpse at that prison, that place of detention, which she had termed
(as she herself had heard it termed) "the dim, vast house," "the
vast, dim city," and the "dim, vast kingdom."

The vague notion she could give of that scene of immurement cannot
be expected to prove interesting to so large a number, as Mr.
Pickwick has cause to feel an interest in his glimpses of the "Fleet
Prison," once famous in London. But such interest as the former
house of detention commands is of a different kind, and those who
may experience it are a different class. Plato (as a great critic
observes) has been translated from age to age into some dozen great
modern languages, in order that he might be read by about a score of
persons in each generation. But that score are the little fountains
of the large rivers that bear to the sea the business of the world.
Few are directly taught by Kant, Sir William Hamilton, John Stuart
Mill, Cousin, or Balmez; but the millions are taught and think
through those whom _they_ have taught to think. Between the good and
evil originators or conservators of ideas, and the huge masses who
do all their mental processes at third hand, stand the interpreters;
and these listen with bent heads, while they hold trumpets which are
heard at the extremities of the earth.

Paulus lingered in Jerusalem. Weeks flew by. Spring passed into
summer; summer was passing into autumn; and still, from time to time,
as, in the evenings, mother and son sat among the flowers on the flat
roof, Esther would join them.

One night, she had hardly appeared, when Longinus the centurion
followed her, bearing a letter for Paulus, which, he said, had
just arrived at Fort Antonio, by the hands of an orderly, from the
governor. The letter was from Dionysius of Athens, now _l'un des
quarante_, a member of that great Areopagus of which the French
Academy is partly a modern image; and it was written immediately
after his return from a tour in Egypt, and a cruise through the
Ægean Sea, among the famous and beautiful Greek Islands, to resume
his duties as a teacher of philosophy and a professor of the higher
literature at Athens.

Paulus, after a word with his mother and Esther, desired Longinus
to favor them with his company. Sherbets and other refreshments
were brought. They all sat down on the semicircular wicker settle
at the corner of the roof, under the bower-like branches of the
large rhododendron; a small lamp was held for Paulus by the Jewish
serving-man, and Paulus read the letter aloud to that sympathetic
group. Extracts we will give, in the substance, concerning two
occurrences. The first, as the reader sees, the listening circle
learned from Dionysius; but _we_ have it in reality from Plutarch,
upon whose narrative Eusebius and many other weighty authorities and
grave historians have commented.

The captain and owner (for he was both) of the vessel in which Dion
sailed back from Egypt to Athens was an Egyptian of the name of
Thramnus (some call him Thamus). He said that a very weird thing had
happened to him in his immediately previous trip, which had been from
Greece to Italy. Dion was at the time at Heliopolis, in Egypt, with
his friend, the celebrated philosopher Apollophanes, who, though
(like Dion himself) only between twenty and thirty, had already (in
this also resembling Dion) obtained an almost world-wide fame for
eloquence, astronomical science, and general learning. When Thramnus
had neared the Echinades Islands, the wind fell, a sudden calm came,
and they had to drop anchor near Paxos. The night was sultry; every
one was on deck. Suddenly, from the lonely shore, a loud, strange
voice hailed the captain: "Thramnus!" it cried. None answered. Again,
louder than human, came the cry, "Thramnus!" Still none answered. For
the third time, "Thramnus!" was thundered from the lonely coast. Then
Thramnus himself called out: "Who hails? What is it?" Shrill and far
louder than before was the voice in reply: "When you reach the Lagoon
of Palus, announce then that the Great Pan is dead."

Thereupon, everything became silent, save the sluggish wash of the
waves under the vessel's side. A sort of council was at once held on
board; and first they took a note of the exact date and the hour.
They found that it was exactly the ninth hour of the sixth _jeria_,
or day, in the month of March, in the fourth year (according with
Phlegon's corrected and checked astronomical chronology) of the two
hundred and second Olympiad: in other words, this, being translated
into modern reckoning, means, six in the afternoon of Friday, the
25th of March, in the thirty-third year of our Lord.

Dion breaks off in his letter here to remark: "You will learn
presently what happened to me and to Apollophanes, and to the whole
renowned city of Heliopolis, at the same hour exactly of that same
day; and it is the coincidence between the two occurrences which has
fixed them so deeply in my mind."

Well; he proceeds to say that Thramnus, having asked his passengers,
who happened to be unusually numerous, whether they considered he
ought to obey this mysterious mandate, and having suggested himself
that, if, on their reaching Palus, or Pelodes, the wind held fair,
they should not lose time by stopping, but if the wind were there
to fail, and they were forced to halt at that place, then it might
be no harm to pay attention to the injunction, and see what came
of it, they were all unanimously of his opinion. Thereupon, as
though by some design, in the midst of a calm the breeze sprang up
freshly again, and they proceeded on their way. When they came to the
indicated spot, all were again on deck, unable to forget the strange
incident at Paxos; and, on a sudden, the wind fell, and they were
becalmed.

Thramnus, accordingly, after a pause, leaned over the ship's side,
and, as loudly as he could, shouted that _the great Pan was dead_. No
sooner had the words been pronounced than all round the vessel were
heard a world of sighs issuing from the deep and in the air, with
groans, and moanings, and long, wild, bitter wailings innumerable, as
though from vast unseen multitudes and a host of creatures plunged in
dismay and despair. Those on board were stricken with amazement and
terror. When they arrived in Rome, and were recounting the adventures
of their voyage, this wild story sent its rumor far and near, and
made such an impression that it reached the ears of Tiberius Cæsar,
who was then in the capital. He sent for Thramnus and several of the
passengers, as Plutarch records for us, particularly one, Epitherses,
who afterward, at Athens, with his son Æmilianus, and the traveller
Philip, used often to tell the story till his death. Tiberius, after
ascertaining the facts, summoned all the learned men who chanced then
to be in Rome, and requested their opinion.

Their opinion, which is extant, matters little. The holy fathers
who have investigated this occurrence are divided in their views.
It must be remembered that Plutarch relates another truly wonderful
fact universal in its range, as being notoriously simultaneous
with the singular local adventure above described--the sudden
silence of Delphi, and all the other famous pagan oracles, from the
8th day before the Kalends of April, in the 202d Olympiad, at six
P.M. At that hour, on that day (March 25, Friday, Anno Domini 33),
those oracles were stricken dumb, and nevermore returned answers
to their votaries. Coupling these phenomena together, in presence
of a thousand other portents, the holy fathers think, one party of
them, that the enemy of man and of God, and that enemy's legions,
were grieving and wailing, at the hour which Plutarch specifies
(the time of evening, and on the very day, when our Lord died), at
the redemption just then consummated; others, that the Almighty
permitted nature "to sigh through all her works," in sympathy with
the voluntary sufferings of her expiring Lord.

"Now, hearken," proceeded Dion in his letter, "to how I was occupied,
hundreds of miles away, in Heliopolis, at the time, the very hour of
the very day, when so wild and weird a response came from the powers
of the air and the recesses of the deep to those who shouted forth,
amid a calm on the silent breast of the Ægean Sea, that the great Pan
('the great All,' 'the universal Lord,' as you, my friends, are aware
it means in Greek) had died!

"I had gone out, shortly before the sixth hour on this sixth day,
to take a stroll in the tree-shaded suburbs of Heliopolis, with
my friend Apollophanes. Suddenly, the sun, in a horrible manner,
withdrew its light so effectually that we saw the stars. It was
the time of the Hebrew Pasch, and the season of the month when the
moon is at the full, and the period of an eclipse, or of the moon's
apparent conjunction with the sun, was well known not to be then;
independently of which, two unexampled and unnatural portents,
contrary to the laws of the heavenly bodies, occurred: first, the
moon entered the sun's disc _from the east_; secondly, when she
had covered the disc and touched the opposite diameter, instead of
passing onward, _she receded_, and resumed her former position in the
sky. All the astronomers will tell you that these two facts, and also
the time of the eclipse itself, are equally in positive deviation
from the otherwise everlasting laws of the sidereal or planetary
movements. I felt that either this universal frame was perishing or
the Lord and Pilot of nature was himself suffering; and I turned to
Apollophanes, and, 'O light of philosophy, glass of science!' I said,
'explain to me what this means.'

"Before answering me, he required that we should together apply the
astronomical rule, or formula, of Philip Aridæus; after doing which
with the utmost care, he said: 'These changes are supernatural; there
is some stupendous revolution or catastrophe occurring in divine
affairs, affecting the whole of the Supreme Being's creation.'

"You may be sure, my friends, that we both took a careful note of
the hour, the day, the week, month, year; and I intend to inquire
everywhere whether in other lands any similar phenomena have
appeared; and what overwhelming, unexampled event can have taken
place on this little planet of ours to bring the heavens themselves
into confusion, and coerce all the powers of nature into so awful a
manifestation of sympathy or of horror."

He ended by conveying to Aglais and Paulus the loving remembrance of
the Lady Damarais.

Aglais and her son and Esther were spell-bound with amazement when
this letter had been read; and Paulus exclaimed:

"What will Dion say when he hears that we also saw this very darkness
at the same moment; that the veil of the Temple here has been rent in
twain; and that he who expired amid these and so many other portents,
Esther, and in the full culmination of the prophecies, is again
living, speaking, acting, the Conqueror of death, as he was the Lord
of life?"

"Let us go to Athens; let us bring our friends, the Lady Damarais and
our dear Dion, to learn and understand what we have ourselves been
mercifully taught."

So spoke Aglais, offering at the same time to Esther a mother's
protection and love along the journey. Paulus was silent, but gazed
pleadingly at Esther.

It was agreed. But in the political dangers of that reign, Paulus,
owing to his fame itself, had to take so many precautions that much
time was unavoidably lost.

Meanwhile, he had again asked the Jewish maiden to become his wife.
Need we say that this time his suit was successful? Paulus and Esther
were married.

Christianity in the interim grew from month to month and from year
to year, and our wanderers had but just arrived at last in Athens in
time to hear, near the statue of "the unknown God," while Damarais,
the friend of Aglais, and Dion, the friend of them all, stood
near, a majestic stranger, a Roman citizen, him who had sat at the
feet of Gamaliel, the glorious Apostle of the Gentiles, who had
been "faithful to the heavenly Vision," though he had not seen the
Resurrection, explain to the Athenians "him whom they had ignorantly
worshipped." And when the sublime messenger of glad tidings related
the circumstances of the Passion, the scenes which had been enacted
in Pilate's house (so well remembered by them), the next day's dread
event, and when he touched upon the preternatural accompaniments
of that final catastrophe, and described the darkness which had
overspread the earth from the sixth hour of that day, Dionysius,
turning pale, drew out the tablets which he carried habitually,
examined the date of which, at Heliopolis, he and Apollophanes had
jointly made note, and showed symptoms of an emotion such as he had
never before experienced.

He and Damarais, as is well known, were among the converts of Saint
Paul on that great occasion. How our other characters felt we need
not describe.

Yielding to the entreaties of their beloved Dionysius, they actually
loitered in Greece for a few years, during which Christianity had
outstripped them and penetrated to Rome, where it was soon welcomed
with fire and sword, and where "the blood of martyrs became the seed
of Christians." Esther shuddered as she heard names dear to her in
the murmured accounts of dreadful torments.

Resuming their westward course, how Paulus rejoiced that he had in
time sold everything in Italy, and was armed with opulence in the
midst of new and strange trials! They gave Italy a wide offing,
and passing round by the south of Germany, with an armed escort
which Thellus (who had also become a Christian, and had, while they
were in Greece, sent for Prudentia) commanded, they never ceased
their travels till they reached the banks of the Seine; and there,
undiscernible to the vision of Roman tyranny in the distance, they
obtained, by means of the treasures they had brought, hundreds of
stout Gaulish hands to do their bidding, and soon founded a peaceful
home amid a happy colony. Hence they sent letters to Agatha and
Paterculus.

Two arrivals from the realms of civilization waked into excitement
the peaceful tenor of their days. Paulus himself, hearing of the
death of Paterculus, ventured quickly back to Italy, in the horrible,
short reign of Caligula, and fetched his sister Agatha, now a widow,
to live with them. Later still, they were surprised to behold arrive
among them one whom they had often mourned as lost to them for ever.
It was Dionysius. He came to found Christianity in Gaul, and settled,
amidst the friends of his youth, on the banks of the Seine. Often
they reverted, with a clear light, to the favorite themes of their
boyhood; and often the principal personages who throughout this story
have, we hope, interested the reader, gathered around that same
Dionysius (who is, indeed, the St. Denis of France), and listened,
near the place where Notre Dame now towers, to the first Bishop
of Paris, correcting the theories which he had propounded to the
Areopagus of Athens as the last of the great Greek philosophers.[5]

One other arrival greeted, indeed, the expatriated but happy
settlement. Longinus found his way among them; and as the proud
ideas of a social system upon which they had turned their back no
longer tyrannized over Aglais or Paulus, the brave man, biding his
time and watching opportunities, found no insurmountable obstacles
in obtaining a fair reward for twenty years and more of patient and
unalterable love. He and Agatha were married.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] If any one should feel astonished at our insisting not only upon
the exact day, but the very hour, when certain things occurred,
let him or her remember that the calculation of eclipses, passing
backward from one to another (as though ascending the steps of a
staircase), reaches and fixes the date--yes, the precise minute of
day--when incidents took place between which and us the broad haze of
twice a thousand years is interposed.

[4] For the rest, in support of the matters we have too briefly to
recount, we could burden these pages with voluminous, and some of
them most interesting and beautiful, extracts from both heathen
and Christian works of classic fame and standard authority; with
passages of direct and indirect evidence from Josephus, Phlegon,
Plutarch, Saint Dionysius (our own true hero, the Areopagite of
Greece, the St. Denis of France) [_ad Apollophanem_, epis. xi., and
_ad Polycarpum Antistidem_, vii.]; Tertullian (_Cont. Jud._, c. 8);
St. Augustine (_Civ. Dei_, lib. 14); St. Chrysostom (_Hom. de Joanne
Baptista_); the Bollandists, Baronius, Eusebius, Tillemont, Huet, and
a host of others.... But our statements will not need such detailed
"stabilitation," because the facts, being notorious among scholars,
will be impugned by no really educated man or thoroughly competent
critic.

[5] The Roman Breviary thus speaks of St. Dionysius:

"Dionysius of Athens, one of the judges of the Areopagus, was versed
in every kind of learning. It is said that, while yet in the errors
of paganism, having noticed on the day on which Christ the Lord was
crucified that the sun was eclipsed out of the regular course, he
exclaimed: 'Either the God of nature is suffering, or the universe
is on the point of dissolution.' When afterward the Apostle Paul
came to Athens, and, being led to the Areopagus, explained the
doctrine which he preached, teaching that Christ the Lord had risen,
and that the dead would all return to life, Dionysius believed with
many others. He was then baptized by the apostle and placed over the
church in Athens. He afterward came to Rome, whence he was sent to
Gaul by Pope Clement to preach the Gospel. Rusticus, a priest, and
Eleutherius, a deacon, followed him to Paris. Here he was scourged,
together with his companions, by the Prefect Fescennius, because he
had converted many to Christianity; and, as he continued with the
greatest constancy to preach the faith, he was afterward stretched
upon a gridiron over a fire, and tortured in many other ways; as
were likewise his companions. After bearing all these sufferings
courageously and gladly, on the ninth of October, Dionysius, now more
than a hundred years of age, together with the others, was beheaded.
There is a tradition that he took up his head after it had been cut
off, and walked with it in his hands a distance of two Roman miles.
He wrote admirable and most beautiful books on the divine names, on
the heavenly and ecclesiastical hierarchy, on mystical theology; and
a number of others."

The Abbé Darras has published a work on the question of the
identity of Dionysius of Athens with Dionysius, first Bishop of
Paris, sustaining, with great strength and cogency of argument, the
affirmative side. The authenticity of the works which pass under his
name, although denied by nearly all modern critics, has been defended
by Mgr. Darboy, Archbishop of Paris.--ED. C. W.




EUROPE'S FUTURE.

FROM THE GERMAN.


To be able to form a correct judgment regarding the future of Europe,
there are several points and theories which must be previously
considered. First on the list comes--


I.

THE RACE THEORY.

"The key to the success of the Prussian arms in the contest with
France is found in the decadence of the Latin and the virility
of the German race. The Latin peoples are corrupt; their star is
waning; their moral vigor is gone; while the German nations are still
young and fresh. German culture, German ideas, German muscle and
energy, are taking the place of the decrepit French civilization.
The German victories are but the outward expression of this
historical process. We are on the threshold of a new epoch in the
history of civilization--of a new period which we can appropriately
call the German era." Such is the theory which now possesses the
German mind, and is expressed in the newspapers, pamphlets, on the
railroads, and in the inns all through Germany, with great national
self-complacency. Even many Sclavonians and Italians adopt this
view. The conquest of the Latin by the Germanic races; the downfall
of the former; the world-wide sovereignty of the latter--these are
high-sounding phrases which have a dramatic effect and are popular in
Germany. But do they express a truth? Are they philosophically and
historically correct in view of the actual condition of political and
social life? In the first place, what and where are the Latin races
about which we have been hearing so much during the past ten years?
The southern inhabitants of the Italian peninsula can lay no claim
to Latin origin; for it is well known that they were anciently Greek
colonies, which have since intermarried with Romans, Spaniards, and
Normans. The Lombards of the north of Italy are mostly of Celtic and
not of Latin origin, since they inhabit the ancient Gallia Cisalpina.
The old Iberians of Spain were not Latins; and they are now mixed
with Gothic, Moorish, Celtic, and Basque blood. As for France, its
very name imports that the Latins gave a very small contingent
towards forming a nation which is certainly of Celtic and German
origin, and many of whose provinces are purely of German race, as
Alsace and Lorraine. Where, then, shall we find the Latin races?

There are none properly so-called. Looking at the origin of
languages, we may, indeed, speak of Latin, or, rather, of Roman
nations. In this regard, we may class the Italians, Spaniards,
Portuguese, and French together, on account of the Roman element
prevailing in their tongues, in opposition to the Scalavonic-German,
the Celtic-Anglo-Saxon-Danish-Norman forming the world-wide English,
the Scandinavian, and the pure Sclavonic families. Does this theory
mean that nations of the same tongue should all be politically and
socially united, flourish for a period, and then perish together?
Understood in this way, the race theory would have few defenders.
It may be true that nations, like individuals, must live a definite
period--rise, flourish, and decay. It is true, historically, that
every nation has an era of prosperity and an era of decadence. But
when we come to the question of universal sovereignty, we may ask,
When did the Roman nations ever exercise it? Each of them has had
its golden age of literature, art, science, and material prosperity;
but none of them has had, for any length of time, the sovereignty of
Europe. Not Italy, for instance, unless we go back to the days of
old Rome, and then we have not an Italian but a specifically Roman
supremacy. Not Spain, for although she exercised great power beyond
the ocean, and for a time possessed a preponderating influence in
Europe, from the reign of Charles V. to the first successor of Philip
II., yet who could call the accidental union of so many crowns on the
head of a Hapsburg prince a universal sovereignty for Spain? Lastly,
France had her age of glory during the reign of Louis XIV., whose
influence, or that of the Napoleonic era, cannot be denied. Yet what
gaps separate the reign of the great King from that of the great
Emperor! Great as was France under Louis XIV. and Bonaparte, she
fell to the second rank of nations during the Restoration and under
the July dynasty. As leader in the Revolutionary movement, she has
always controlled Europe, even in her periods of political weakness,
from the days of the encyclopædists to the present time. Even Germany
acknowledges the sway of French literature, politeness, and taste.
Victorious Berlin copies the fashions and manners of conquered
France, as ancient Rome, after conquering Athens, became the slave of
Athenian civilization.

Germany, too, must have already passed the period of her maturity,
according to the race theory; for, under the Saxon Othos, under the
Hohenstaufens, and Charles V., until the Thirty Years' War broke
the strength of the empire, she was superior even to France. Does
not German genius in its peculiar walks rule the world now? German
science, German music? Does not England, usually considered as
belonging to the German race, rule the commerce of the world? And
was not her political influence on the Continent until recently
all-powerful?

No! political sovereignty can be explained by no race theory. From
the fall of the first Napoleon until 1848, England with the powers
of the "Holy Alliance," or rather with Austria and Russia, held the
first place in European politics. From the beginning of 1848 until
the Crimean war, England and Russia were in the foreground; after
that war it was France and England; now it is Prussia. These are but
examples of the political fluctuations which follow each other in
continual change, and are seldom of long duration.

And do not the champions of the German race theory see that there
is a laughing heir behind them in the Sclavonic supremacy? Once
admitting the race theory, we must confess that the Panslavist argues
well when he says: "The Roman nations are dead; the German are on the
point of dying. They once conquered the world; their present effort
is the last flicker of the expiring light which points out the road
to us. After them comes our race, with fresh vigor on the world's
scene. Europe's future is Panslavism."

The whole theory is radically false. There are no more primitive
races to take the place of the old ones. The Germans are as old as
the Romans; or, rather, the Romans were simply Germans civilized
before their brethren. Russia alone is young in Europe, but she has
nothing new to give us; and physical force, without a new social or
moral system accompanying it to establish a conquest, never prevails
long. We cannot, therefore, judge of Europe's future by this theory
of races.

The power of regeneration must be sought for elsewhere.


II.

LIBERALISM.

One would have thought that the sanguinary war of 1870 should have
dispelled the illusions of liberalism for ever. By liberalism, we
mean that party which believes in the principles of 1789, whose ideal
is to have the middle classes, or _bourgeoisie_, the ruling power,
to have society equally divided, to have an atheistical state, and
to obtain eternal peace through unlimited material progress, which
would identify the interests of nations. Liberalism, rationalism, and
materialism are different names for the same system. A state without
God, sovereignty of capital, dissolution of society into individuals,
united by no other bond than the force of a liberal parliament
majority under the control of wealth; material prosperity of the
middle classes, founded on gain and pleasure, with the removal of all
historical traditions, all ecclesiastical precepts--such is the dream
of this "shopkeepers' system." Has not the present war dispelled the
dream of happiness arising from mere material prosperity? We doubt
it. Notwithstanding the many hard lessons which the liberal school
has received since the days of Mirabeau and the Girondins, from the
lawyers of the July dynasty to Ollivier, it never seems to grow
wiser. It is superficial, never looks into the essence of things. It
is in vain to charge the present misfortunes of two great nations on
the illiberalism of Napoleon and Bismarck, and thus exalt the merits
of liberalism; for liberalism or mere material prosperity was at
the bottom of all their plans. From 1789 to 1870, France, with few
exceptions, was governed by liberalism; and the revolutions begat
the natural consequences of this system in anarchy and military
despotism. France during this period has made the most wonderful
material progress.

We read lately in a liberal journal that the only remedy for the
rejuvenation of states was "the inviolability of the individual,
and respect for the popular will." Always the same emptiness of
phraseology with these impracticable dabblers in philosophy. What
will you do if the infallible "popular will" refuses to recognize
the inviolability of individuals? Cannot these gentlemen see that
their system merely opens the door for socialism? They take away
religion, and teach the epicurean theory of enjoyment; they destroy
constitutional forms of government, and base authority on the
ever-shifting popular whim. Socialism comes after them, and says,
"You say there is no God, and I must have pleasure. I have counted
myself, and find that I am the majority; therefore, I make a law
against capital and property. You must be satisfied, for you are my
teacher, and I merely follow out your principles to their logical
consequences."


III.

SOCIALISM.

A new era is dawning. Not a mere political period, but a complete
social change, for the actual order of things is disorder, a compound
of injustice and abuses. We must have fraternity and equality.
Away with the nobles; away with the wealthy classes; away with
property; all things must be in common. The happiness of Europe
will never be realized until socialism reigns supreme. Such is the
socialistic theory. But does not every one see that its realization
is impossible, and brings us back to barbarism? The right of property
is essential to society. It is contrary to nature to expect that
mankind will give up this right to please a whim of drones--a system
according to which the lazy and indolent would have as much right
to property as the industrious and hard-working. If all is to be
common property, who will work, who will strive to acquire, whose
ambition will be aroused, whose interest excited for the attainment
of something in which he will have no right or title? And in fact,
both liberals and socialists use words which they do not mean; they
are far more despotic when they get power than those whom they are
continually attacking. At the Berne Congress of 1868, a socialist
orator said: "We cannot admit that each man shall choose his own
faith; man has not the right to choose error; liberty of conscience
is our weapon, but not one of our principles!" By error he meant
Christianity. In fact, ultra-radicalism is simply ultra-despotism.
Men blamed the despotism of Napoleon III.; but look at the despotism
of Gambetta, and remember the despotism of Robespierre and the "Reign
of Terror." Destroy religion, and you have nothing left but egotism.
Man becomes to his brother-man either a wolf or a fox.

Socialism may indeed have its day in Europe's future. The logic of
liberalism leads to it; but it will be a fearful day of disorder
and revolution; a sad day for the wealthier classes; but still only
a day. Earthquakes are possible, and sometimes they engulf cities;
but they pass away, and quiet returns. New vegetation springs up on
the ruins. If socialism ever gains Europe, it will vanish in virtue
of the _reductio ad absurdum_; therefore its mastery can never be
permanent.


IV.

THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY OF EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.

Since neither the race theory, nor liberalism, nor socialism, can
enable us to solve the problem of Europe's future, let us pass to
other considerations, glance rapidly over the past, study the present
external and internal condition of the continent, in order to be able
to form a judgment on the subject which we are discussing.

The French Revolution of 1789 had its effects all over Europe.
In France since that date, liberalism, anarchy, and Byzantinism
have held alternate sway. The Bonaparte invasions carried through
the rest of Europe the liberal principle of secularization
with the _Code Napoléon_. The writings of the philosophers and
encyclopædists, and Josephism, had prepared the way. The reaction of
1815 was based on Masonic theories of philanthropism and religious
indifferentism. The Emperor Alexander and the Holy Alliance were
infected with these views. The revolutionary movement in Germany,
Italy, and Spain has since been simply against office-holders and
the police. The influence of religion has been ignored. Palmerston
was the _coryphæus_ of the liberals, and during his time English
diplomacy played into the hands of all the irreligious and
revolutionary elements in Europe. This unprincipled system was
finally represented by Napoleon III., in whose diplomacy the theory
of "non-intervention," of "nationalities," of "sovereignty of the
people," were put forward as the types of the perfection of modern
society. In point of fact, they are mere words used as a cloak to
cover up Macchiavellism.

The "balance of power" theory, of purely material import, ruled in
1815, but it soon gave way before the influences of the "liberal"
doctrines of humanitarianism and the race system. Religious
convictions and Christian institutions were ignored in politics,
and a system of police substituted in their place. Greece received
its king in consequence of this system which has prevailed in the
external relations of Europe since 1830. In 1848, the revolutions
and insurrections in Europe were merely premature appearances
of the socialistic element in liberalism. Napoleon III., by his
Macchiavellian policy, which Guizot has happily termed "moderation
in evil-doing," coerced them. He gave all the sanction of French
power to the principles of the liberal school which he was supposed
to represent. On the principle of "non-intervention," he prevented
the interference of Austria and Spain in favor of the Holy See. He
protected the seizure of Naples and Sicily; approved the invasion of
the Papal States, and substituted, in the place of dynastic right
and popular right, the colossal delusion of the _plébiscite_. On the
nationality theory, he allowed Austrian power to be destroyed, and
founded, in opposition to all French interests, Italian and German
unity.

Although very defective since it ignored the full claims of religion,
still there was a fixed public law in Europe from 1815 to 1859.
Respect for the minor powers; the sentiment of the solidarity of
thrones against the efforts of Carbonarism and the cosmopolitan
revolutionary party; and regard for treaties, characterize that
period. The traditions of the people were respected; and treaties
repressed avarice or ambition; and there was real peace in
Europe--the peace of order, according to the beautiful expression of
St. Augustine. It is true, far-seeing minds saw the threatening cloud
on the horizon of the future, and knew that the system of 1815 did
not rest on the right foundations. Still, even mere external forms
are a protection.

But since 1859 law or treaties no longer seem to bind. There seems
to be nothing fixed in the public law of Europe. All is whim; might
instead of right, sentiment instead of principle. Powers can no
longer unite, for they cannot trust each other. Instead of all being
united to protect the individual state, now all are hostile to each
other. Italy insists on unification in spite of law and right, and
to gain her purpose depends to-day on Prussia; yesterday, it was
on France. She hates Austria, and Austria acts as if she did not
perceive the hatred, and will not interfere lest she might offend
the liberals. Vienna is in dread of Berlin and St. Petersburg; St.
Petersburg is in dread of Berlin. England looks jealously at Russia,
who, meanwhile, is arming in grim silence, and with occasional
manifestations of her old predilections. France counts now for
nothing. Prussia, which fifteen years ago was allowed merely by the
favor of Austria to sit in the congress of the great powers, is now
the only great military power in Europe. We say military, for it
is not the real, the hidden power. As in the Greek mythology grim,
inexorable fate ruled above all the gods, so the head lodge of the
secret societies makes of the Prussian leaders its blind tools;
Italy obeys it; Napoleon was its slave; Austria, its sacrifice; and
now Prussia also must bend the knee. Such is Europe ten years after
the Franco-Austrian war: the Europe of Metternich, Nesselrode, and
Wellington.


V.

THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.

The revolution has changed the internal policy of states as well as
their external relations. Forty years ago, Donoso Cortes remarked
that England was endeavoring to introduce its constitution into
the Continent; and that the Continent would try to introduce its
different governmental systems into England. We are now witnesses of
the truth of this observation. Democratic ideas are gaining ground
in Great Britain; and bureaucracy, with its centralizing tendencies,
is replacing the English theory of self-government. Military
conscriptions, along with universal suffrage, will come next. Owing
to the extension of the franchise, the House of Commons is losing its
aristocratic character, and the House of Lords its influence. England
will go the way of France.

We see what the liberal system begotten of the revolution has caused
in France. An enervated, un-self-reliant, disunited generation,
without traditions, organization, consistency, faith, or true
patriotism, is its result. The decrees of the _Code Napoléon_
concerning inheritances have broken up families; the departmental
system has destroyed the provincial peculiarities in which lies
the people's strength; the system of common lodging-houses for the
laboring classes has destroyed respect for authority, and afforded
ready material for the purposes of despotism or secret societies.

In Italy and Spain, we see the same spectacle. The French, led
into Italy by the first Napoleon, brought thither the principle of
centralization and a revolutionary code. After Napoleon's downfall,
the restored princes allowed too much of his system to remain. This
arose from a want of judgment. The ancient municipalities were
destroyed, even to some extent in the States of the Church; Piedmont
receiving most of the poison, and thus becoming the hearth of the
revolution. Constitutionalism, anarchy, and military governments in
Spain prove the working of revolutionary doctrines. The old freedom
of that Catholic country, the growth of centuries, gives way before a
nominal liberty, but a real despotism.

In Germany, too, centralization carries the day. This country had the
good fortune to be composed of several independent states, without
any great central power, and the provincial spirit consequently
remained strong. But now two un-German words, "unification" and
"uniformity," expressing un-German tendencies, are carrying the
Germans into despotism. Germany will be Prussianized, and Prussia
Germanized, say the unificators; but all will, in the end, be
compelled to give way before the republicans and socialists. The high
schools of Germany are all infected with the revolutionary doctrines
and Masonic ideas.

What shall we say of Austria? Thanks to "liberalism," it
has disappeared, and is now a dualism in its government and
tri-parliamentary in its system.

The licentiousness of the press helps to destroy everything stable in
governments. Journals without principle, honor, or religion, filled
with scandals, edited by adventurers, whose only object is to make
money and serve faithfully their owners, issue their thousands of
copies daily to corrupt the public mind. Evil spreads more rapidly
than good, and consequently the influence of the religious press is
weak compared to that of the revolutionary papers, subsidized by the
agents of secret societies or by the unprincipled men of wealth, who
readily purchase the aid of corrupted minds to help on their ambition.


VI.

THE POSITION OF THE CHURCH UNDER THE LIBERAL SYSTEM.

Governments have therefore ceased to be Christian, and have become
"liberal," that is, infidel. According to liberalism, religion is the
private affair of each individual. Civil society should recognize
no dogma, no worship, no God. We know well that this principle,
from its very intrinsic absurdity, cannot be practically carried
out. For instance, God will be recognized when it is necessary to
swear fidelity to a constitution, and the external forms of religion
will be invoked at the opening of a new railroad or a session of
parliament. But in principle the liberal state ignores all positive
religious belief. Its only dogma is that a law passed by a majority
of voters remains a law until the next majority abrogates it. This
system is called "separation of church and state," or "a free church
in a free state." Then follow broken concordats--in France and
Bavaria, broken by organic articles; in Baden, Piedmont, Austria, and
Spain, destroyed by the will of the prince and cabinet ministers.
Then follows a usurped educational system, in which the rights of
the family and church are disregarded. In all of these states, more
or less, there is a public persecution of the church; a repression
of her rights; enthrallment of her ministers; invasion of her
privileges. God is in heaven, consequently the church should confine
herself to the sanctuary; that is to say, God does not trouble
himself about the conduct of nations, politics, legislation, or
science. These are all neutral affairs, over which his authority does
not extend, and therefore the church has nothing to do with public
life. So say the liberals. They take from God and give it to Cæsar,
the modern civil divinity, all that is his, except one thing which
it is impossible for them to take from him, and that is conscience.
They endeavor to estrange conscience from God more and more by
education, by the press, and by public opinion manufactured by the
leaders of the secret societies. Hence all the talk about "liberty of
conscience." For the same end, they talk of toleration, but they mean
simply indifference, which hence becomes the shibboleth of the party
which the church unceasingly opposes.

This is, in a few words, the actual condition of the church in
European society. It is an unnatural condition. Even Macchiavelli
says: "Princes and republics which would remain sound must, before
all things, guard the ceremonies of religion and keep them ever in
honor. Therefore, there is no surer sign of the decay of a state than
when it sees the worship of the Most High disregarded." Macchiavelli
spoke from the lessons of experience and as a mere utilitarian. Our
modern utilitarian politicians have not his capacity or penetration.
They are mere superficial observers of fact, and cannot see that the
_summum utile_ is the _summum jus_. This fault lies in ignoring the
assistance of the supernatural order--in their erroneous opinion
that there is no absolute truth. The church is not a hospital for
diseased souls; Christianity is not a mere specific for individual
maladies; but as our Lord has taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come
... on earth as it is in heaven," so must revealed truth pervade the
earth; percolate through civil society, not merely in its individual
members, but in all its natural relations, family, municipal, and
state. This is what the church has taught Europe, and only by
conforming with this teaching can Europe stand. Since Christianity
came into the world, the Christian state is the normal condition of
political governments, and not an ideal impossible of realization.
Undoubtedly, human weakness will always cause many aberrations from
the rule. But the question is not regarding this point, but as to the
recognition of the rule. The sin against the Holy Ghost is the most
grievous of all sins. Our Lord, always so mild and forbearing toward
human passions, is unflinchingly stern against malicious resistance
to truth, and this has been precisely the great evil of our time ever
since 1789. In the early ages, individuals and nations fell into many
errors, but they never touched the sacred principles of religion.
Liberalism and Freemasonry have caused the denial of truth itself.

"Must we, then, fall back into the darkness of the middle ages?"
Such a question, while it shows little knowledge of the middle ages,
exhibits likewise a spirit of unfairness in discussion. For our
purpose, it suffices to show the latter. What would we think of a man
who, on being told that our faith should be childlike, should say to
the priest, "Must I, then, become a child again?" Plainly, we would
say to him: Good friend, you talk nonsense; for you know well that
you cannot get again your infant body, nor blot out the knowledge
and experience acquired in a life of thirty years. But was not the
sun the same four years ago as it is now? Do not two and two make
four now as long ago? Did you not eat and drink when you were a child
as you do now? Some things are always true in all places and times;
and therefore we do not want to bring you back into the middle ages
merely because we want to give the church that position which God has
assigned to her.

"Then you want to saddle a theocracy on the back of the nineteenth
century?" Let us understand each other. In a certain sense, a
theocracy must be the aim of every rational being. God has appointed
two orders to govern men: they are church and state, neither of which
must absorb the other. Theocracy is not a government of priests, as
those imagine who have before their eyes the Hindoo civil systems.
Let us for a moment forget these catchwords, "middle ages" and
"theocracy," and go to the marrow of the subject.

The church is the guide of consciences; not the arbitrary teacher of
men, but the interpreter of revelation for them. St. Thomas likens
the office of the Vicar of Christ to that of the flag-ship of a
fleet, which the other vessels, that is, the secular governments
must follow on the open sea in order to reach the common haven of
safety. Each vessel has its own sails moves in its own way, and
is managed by its own mariners. The church never interferes in the
appropriate sphere of the secular power. But she warns; she advises;
she corrects all civil authority when it deviates from the truth
and opposes the revealed order. Her authority over the state is not
direct, but indirect; she teaches, but she cannot coerce; she _must_
teach, for political and social questions necessarily have relations
with dogmatic and moral subjects. The church must condemn wrongs, no
matter by whom perpetrated, whether by states or individuals. This is
all the theocratic power the church claims. A Christian state will
respectfully hear her warning voice, and thus avoid the danger; while
a pagan state shuts its ears, despises the church's admonitions, and
plunges into the abyss.

Modern paganism in civil governments has brought Europe into her
present miserable condition. Can she get out of it, or is European
society hopelessly lost?


VII.

EUROPE'S FUTURE.

The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 is one of the most important events
in the history of Europe. The prostration of France is no indication
that she will never rise again, for in 1807 Prussia was in a worse
condition than France is now. In 1815, and until the past few years,
Prussia was last in the list of the great powers, though now she is
the first. France, then, in a few years may rise again to her full
power. There are no more fresh, uncivilized races to come into Europe
to take the place of those which are now said to be decaying. We have
shown that liberalism has reached its acme, been found wanting, and
is dying. Its efforts in Italy, Spain, Germany, Vienna, and Pesth are
but the last convulsions of an expiring system. The natural child of
liberalism--socialism--must also disappear before the common sense of
mankind. What remains? Will there be in Europe the alternate anarchy
and despotism of the Central American republics without any end? Must
we despair of Europe's future? No, a thousand times no! We look to
the future with hope and consolation.

Common sense and religion will win the day; Christianity has still
the regenerating power which she showed in civilizing the barbarians.
Christianity has been the principle of national life since the
Redeemer established it as a world religion. The spiritual life
must be renovated by truth and morality. Christianity is both. We
Christians hope, therefore, for the conversion of the popular mind;
we begin even now to perceive signs of regeneration, renovation,
renewed energy, and vigor in mental convictions and civic virtues.

God's punishments are proofs of his mercy. He chastises to convert.
The first punishment of France, in 1789, was not enough to teach her
to repent. Louis XVIII. came to the throne a free-thinker instead of
a Christian. The prostrate armies of Metz and Sedan are the result
of corrupting and enervating infidelity. God chastises ambition and
pride in nations as well as in individuals. The Republic has shown
itself incapable, because it possessed neither honor, principle, nor
religion. The victories of Prussia are a blessing of God for France.
The Prussian army is but the instrument which God has used to punish
a culprit nation--a revolutionary, irreligious, and frivolous system
of government. Victorious Germany, too, will be taught to reflect
when it sees the blood of its thousands of slaughtered sons, and the
miseries which the war has entailed on its once happy families. Wars
teach unruly nations to reflect. Will the present war suffice to
humble Europe, and cause her to reflect? We know not; but God will
send other chastisements if this one avails nothing. Dark clouds are
already rising in the East, which may soon burst over Austria and
Germany. The rod of God's anger will be felt by Austria again, for
her lessons of 1859 and 1866 have been forgotten. They have only made
her throw herself more fondly into the arms of the devil. In Italy,
the secret societies will yet avenge on the house of Savoy the blood
of the defenders of the Vicar of Christ.

But the German empire has been re-established under a Prussian
emperor. Yes, but this is only an episode in the actual crisis of the
world. A Protestant emperor of Germany is entirely different from
a German emperor. The old German emperors represented the idea of
the Christian monarchy; the Protestant emperor in Berlin represents
modern Cæsarism. His empire cannot last long, for history tells
us that empires of sudden and accidental growth lose rapidly the
power which they as rapidly acquired. But is not Prussia's triumph
the triumph of Protestantism in Europe? Such a question is easily
answered: Protestantism as a positive religion no longer exists
in Prussia or elsewhere; and Protestantism as a negation exists
everywhere, perhaps more in some Catholic lands than in Prussia.
On the battle-fields of Wörth and Gravelotte, the Catholic Church
was not represented by France, and Lutheranism by Prussia. Catholic
Bavarians, Westphalians, and Rhinelanders fought for Prussia, and
would be astounded to hear that they were fighting for heresy.
Priests and Sisters of Charity accompanied them to battle. Who,
on the other hand, would call the Turcos Catholics? Or the French
officers, who never heard Mass, and who curtailed the number of
Catholic chaplains to the minimum? Were the French soldiers, who
drilled on Sundays instead of going to church, on whose barracks,
in some cases, was written, "No admission for policemen, dogs, or
priests"--were they the Catholic champions? No; the Christian soldier
in France first appeared, in this war, with Charette and Cathelineau
in the Loire army, demoralized and destroyed, however, by the mad-cap
radical, Gambetta, and his infidel associates. In fact, the Prussian
army was more Catholic than the French. The latter must be won
back to religion from the enervating influences of Freemasonry and
Voltairianism before it can regain its prestige. The only hope for
France is in her zealous clergy, in the vigor of the old Catholic
provinces, and in her humiliations, which ought to bring repentance.

The rustling of Catholic renovation is heard all over Europe. The
rising generation will bring Italy back to the church. The spirit
of the Tyrol and of Westphalia is spreading through Germany. The
Ultramontanes in Saxony, Bohemia, Steyermark, show the energy of
this renovation. The peasantry of Austria and of a large portion of
Germany are still uncorrupted. Hungary is steadfast in the faith.
The seizure of Rome by the Sardinian robbers has roused the Catholic
heart of the world and helped on the cause of regeneration. Where the
Catholic faith was supposed to be crushed, lo! it has raised its head
defiantly.

The deceived nations want peace, freedom, order, and authority.
These blessings infidelity and liberalism have taken away. The people
are beginning to see that the old yet ever young Apostolic Church
alone can guarantee them. They will turn to Rome, where lives the
Vicar of Him who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life;" to
Rome freed again from the barbarians; to Rome become Roman again
when it has ceased to be Sardinian; to Rome will the people look for
peace and order. It is Rome that tells men that Christ is Lord of
the world; that he conquers; that he governs. The social dominion
of Christ will again be established. We shall see again Christian
states founded on Christian principles and traditions, with Christian
laws and rulers. Whether these rulers will be kings or presidents
we know not; but they will in either case consider themselves as
mere delegates of Jesus Christ, and of his people, not as Byzantine
despots or representatives of mob tyranny. They will understand
that statesmanship does not consist in giving license to the
wicked[6] and forging chains for the good. We shall have Christian
schools, Christian universities, Christian statesmen. Ye liberals
in name, well may ye grow pale! The future of the world belongs to
the principles of the Syllabus, and this future is not far off. We
conclude with the words of Count de Maistre: "In the year 1789, the
rights of man were proclaimed; in the year 1889, man will proclaim
the rights of God!"

FOOTNOTE:

[6] "The art of governing men does not consist in giving them license
to do evil."--_Père Lacordaire._




BISHOP TIMON.[7]


We hope the day may come before many years when historians will see
in the records of the struggles, misfortunes, and triumphs of the
church a theme for the employment of brilliant pens as tempting as
they now find in the clash of armies and the intrigues of statesmen.
Scholars have devoted to our records the patient investigation of
years; the general history of the church has been summarized for
popular reading in most of the principal modern languages; and
for the use of theologians and students there are elaborate and
costly collections. Individual biographies of saints and preachers
innumerable have been written for the edification of the devout.
Sketches of local church history, more or less complete, have
occasionally appeared--sketches, for instance, like _The Catholic
Church in the United States_, by De Courcy and Shea; Shea's _History
of the Catholic Missions_ among the Indian tribes of America, and
Bishop Bayley's little volume on the history of the church in New
York. But a work of a different kind, broader in its design than
some of these excellent and useful publications, more limited in
scope than the dry and costly general histories, still awaits the
hand of a polished and enthusiastic man of letters. Why should not
the same eloquence and learning be devoted to the religious history
of the great countries of the globe that Macaulay, and Motley, and
Froude have expended upon the political revolutions of states and
the intricate dramas of diplomacy? Why should not some glowing pen
do for the pioneers of the cross what Prescott did for the pioneers
of Spanish conquest in the new hemisphere? Properly told, the church
history of almost any country of the world, of almost any period
in Christian times, would be a narrative not only of religious
significance, but of thrilling interest. No men ever passed through
more extraordinary adventures, considered even from a human point
of view, than the missionaries who penetrated into unknown lands or
first went among unbelieving nations. No contest between hostile
kingdoms or rival dynasties ever offered a more tempting theme for
dramatic narrative and glowing description than the contest which
has raged for eighteen centuries and a half, between the powers of
light and the powers of darkness, in all the different quarters of
the civilized world. Think what a brilliant writer might make of such
a subject as the church history of Germany! Think what has yet to be
done for the churches of England and Ireland and France, when the
coming historian rescues their chronicles from the dusty archives of
state and the gloom of monastic libraries, and causes the old stories
to glow with a new light, such as Gibbon threw upon the records of
the declining empire!

We doubt not the literary alchemist _will_ come in time, and melt
down the dull metals in his crucible, and pour out from it the
shining compound which shall possess a popular value a hundredfold
beyond that of the untransmuted materials. Nowhere, perhaps, will
the labor be more amply repaid than in America. Nowhere will
the collection of materials be less arduous and the result more
brilliant. Our church history begins just when that of Europe is
most perplexing, and to an investigator with time, patience, and a
moderate revenue at his command, it offers no appalling difficulties.
In a great part of America, the introduction of the Catholic religion
is an event within the memory of men still living. The pioneers
of many of the states are still at work. The first missionaries
of some of the most important sees are but just passing to their
reward. There are no monumental slanders upon our history to be
removed; no Protestant writers have seriously encumbered the field
with misrepresentations. Industrious students of our own faith have
already prepared the way; scattered chapters have been written with
more or less literary skill; the store-houses of information have
been discovered and partly explored; and every year the facilities
for the historian are multiplied. And certainly the theme is rich in
romantic interest and variety. From the time of the monks and friars
who came over with the first discoverers of the country down to the
present year of our Lord, when missionaries are perilling their lives
among the Indians of the great West, and priests are fighting for
the faith against the cultivated Protestants of the Atlantic cities,
the Catholic history of the United States has been a series of bold
adventures, startling incidents, and contests of the most dramatic
character. In the whole story there is not a really dull chapter. The
Catholic annals of America abound also with that variety which the
historian needs to render his pages really attractive; and among the
great men who would naturally be the central figures of such a work,
there is the widest difference of character, the most picturesque
divergence of pursuits and personal peculiarities. Group together
the most distinguished of the Christian heroes who have illustrated
our chronicles, and you have what an artist might call a wonderfully
rich variety of coloring. There are the simple-minded, enthusiastic
Spanish Franciscans, following the armies of Cortez and Pizarro,
and exploring the strange realms of the Aztecs and the Incas. There
is the French Jesuit, building up his Christian empire among the
Indians of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. There is the gentle
Marquette, floating in his bark canoe down the mighty river with
whose discovery his name will ever be associated, and breathing his
last in the midst of the primeval wilderness. There are Jogues and
Brebœuf, suffering unheard-of torments among the Iroquois; Cheverus,
the polished and fascinating cardinal, winning the affection of
the New England Puritans; England, conciliating the Huguenots and
Anglicans of the South. The saintly Bruté, most amiable of scholars,
most devout of _savans_, is a quaint but beautiful character around
whom cluster some of our most touching associations. Bishop Dubois,
the "Little Bonaparte" of the Mountain; Gallitzin, the Russian
prince who hid the lustre of his rank among the log-cabins of the
Alleghanies; Hughes, the great fighting archbishop, swinging his
battle-axe over the heads of the parsons; De Smet, the mild-mannered
but indomitable missionary of the Rocky Mountains--these are
specimens of our leaders whose place in history has yet to be
described by the true literary artist. Several have been made the
subject of special biographies, but none have yet appeared in their
true light as the central figures of an American church history.

The book which suggests these remarks is a contribution of materials
for the future historian, and as such we give it a cordial welcome.
Mr. Deuther, it is true, is not a practised writer, and is not
entirely at his ease in the use of our language. But he has shown
great industry in the collection of facts, and has rescued from
oblivion many interesting particulars of the early career of Bishop
Timon in a part of the United States whose missionary history is
very imperfectly known. Thus he has rendered an important service to
Catholic literature, and earned full forgiveness for the literary
offences which impair the value of his book as a biography. The
episcopacy of the estimable man whose life is here told was not
an especially eventful one, and except in one instance attracted
comparatively little public notice. The most conspicuous men,
however, are not always the most useful. Bishop Timon had a great
work to perform in the organization and settlement of his new
diocese, and he did it none the less efficiently because he labored
quietly. The best known incident of his official life--the lamentable
contest with the trustees of the Church of St. Louis in Buffalo--is
not one which Catholics can take any satisfaction in recalling; but
it had a serious bearing upon the future of the American Church, and
its lessons even now may be reviewed with profit. Bishop Kenrick in
Philadelphia, Bishop Hughes in New York, and Bishop Timon in Buffalo
have between them the honor, if not of destroying a system which
had done the church incalculable injury, at least of extracting its
evil principle. Mr. Deuther gives the history of this warfare at
considerable length, and with an affluence of documents which, though
not very entertaining to read, will be found convenient some time or
another for reference. We presume that most people will be interested
rather in the earlier chapters of the biography, and to these we
shall consequently give our principal attention.

John Timon was of American birth but Irish parentage. His father,
James, emigrated from the county Cavan in the latter part of 1796
or the beginning of 1797, and settled at Conewago,[8] in Adams
County, Pennsylvania, where, in a rude log-house, the subject of
this biography was born on the 12th of February, 1797, the second
of a family of ten children. The father and mother seem to have
been remarkably devout people, and from an anecdote related by Mr.
Deuther we can fancy that the lavish beneficence which characterized
the bishop was an hereditary virtue in the family. Mr. James Timon
called, one day, upon a priest whom he had known in Ireland, and,
taking it for granted that the reverend gentleman must be in want of
money, he slipped into his hand at parting a $100 bill, and hurried
away. The priest, supposing Mr. Timon had made a mistake, ran after
him, and overtook him in the street. "My dear friend," said the
generous Irishman, "it was no mistake. I intended it for you." "But,"
said the clergyman, "I assure you I am not in want; I do not need
it." "Never mind; there are many who do. If you have no use for the
money yourself, give it to the poor." The Timon family removed to
Baltimore in 1802, and there John received his school education,
such as it was. As soon as he was old enough, he became a clerk in
a dry-goods shop kept by his father; and Mr. Deuther prints a very
foolish story to the effect that he was so much liked by everybody
that by the time he was nineteen "he had become a toast for all
aged mothers with marriageable daughters," and had refused "many
eligible and grand offers of marriage," which we take the liberty of
doubting. From Baltimore the family removed, in 1818, to Louisville,
and thence in the following spring to St. Louis. Here prosperity at
last rewarded Mr. Timon's industry, and he accumulated a considerable
fortune, only to lose it, however, in the commercial crisis of 1823.
In the midst of these pecuniary misfortunes, John Timon suffered
a still heavier loss in the death of a young lady to whom he was
engaged to be married. Mr. Deuther's apology for mentioning this
incident--which he strangely characterizes as an "undeveloped
frivolity" in the life of a bishop of the church--is entirely
superfluous; he would have been a faithless biographer if he had not
mentioned it. We may look upon it as a manifestation of the kindness
of divine Providence, which called the young man to a higher and
more useful life, and designed first to break off his attachment to
all the things of this world. He heard and obeyed the call, and, in
the month of April, 1823, became a student of the Lazarists at their
preparatory seminary of St. Mary's of the Barrens, in Perry County,
Missouri, about eighty miles below St. Louis.

The Lazarists, or Priests of the Mission, had been introduced into
the United States only six years before, and their institutions,
founded, with great difficulty, in the midst of a poor and scattered
population, were still struggling with debt and discouragement. The
little establishment at the Barrens was for many years in a pitiable
condition of destitution. When Mr. Timon entered as a candidate not
only for the priesthood, but for admission to the congregation, it
was governed by the Rev. Joseph Rosati, who became, a year later,
the first Bishop of St. Louis. The buildings consisted of a few
log-houses. The largest of them, a one-story cabin, contained in
one corner the theological department, in another the schools of
philosophy and general literature, in a third the tailor's shop,
and in the fourth the shoemaker's. The refectory was a detached
log-house; and, in very bad weather, the seminarians often went to
bed supperless rather than make the journey thither in search of
their very scanty fare. It was no uncommon thing for them, of a
winter's morning, to rise from their mattresses, spread upon the
floor, and find over their blankets a covering of snow which had
drifted through the crevices of the logs. The system upon which
the seminary was supported was the same that prevails at Mount St.
Mary's. For three hours in the day the students of divinity were
expected to teach in the secular college connected with the seminary,
and for out-of-door exercise they cut fuel and worked on the farm.
Mr. Timon, in spite of these labors, made such rapid progress in
his studies that, in 1824, he was ordained sub-deacon, and began to
accompany his superiors occasionally in their missionary excursions.

They lived in the midst of spiritual destitution. The French pioneers
of the Western country had planted the faith at St. Louis and some
other prominent points, but they had left few or no traces in the
vast tracts of territory surrounding the earlier settlements, and to
most of the country people the Roman Catholic Church was no better
than a sort of aggravated pagan imposture. Protestant preachers used
to show themselves at the very doors of the churches and challenge
the priests to come out and be confuted. Wherever the Lazarists
travelled, they were looked at with the most intense curiosity. Very
few of the settlers had ever seen a priest before. The Catholics,
scattered here and there, had generally been deprived, for years, of
Mass and the sacraments, and their children were growing up utterly
ignorant of religion. Mr. Timon was accustomed to make a regular
missionary circuit of fifteen or twenty miles around the Barrens
in company with Father Odin, afterward Archbishop of New Orleans.
The duty of the sub-deacon was to preach, catechise, and instruct.
Sometimes they had no other shelter than the woods, and no other food
than wild berries. At a settlement called Apple Creek, they made a
chapel out of a large pig-pen, cleaning it out with their own hands,
building an altar, and so decorating the poor little place with
fresh boughs that it became the wonder of the neighborhood. In 1824,
Messrs. Odin and Timon made a long missionary tour on horseback. Mr.
Deuther says they went to "New Madrid, _Texas_," and thence as far
as "the Port of Arkansas." New Madrid, of course, is in Missouri,
and the Port of Arkansas undoubtedly means Arkansas Post, in the
State of Arkansas, which could not very well be reached by the way of
Texas. Along the route they travelled--where they had to swim rivers,
flounder through morasses, and sleep in the swamps--no priest had
been seen for more than thirty-five years. Their zeal, intelligence,
graceful and impassioned speech, and modest manners, seem to have
made a great impression on the settlers. They had the satisfaction of
disarming much prejudice, receiving some converts, and administering
the sacraments; and, after an interesting visit to an Indian tribe
on the Arkansas River, they returned to the Barrens. About this time
(in 1825), Mr. Timon was promoted to the priesthood and appointed a
professor at the seminary. His missionary labors were now greatly
increased. Mr. Deuther tells some interesting anecdotes of his tours,
which curiously illustrate the state of religion at that time in
the West. One day, Father Timon was summoned to Jackson, Missouri,
to visit a murderer under sentence of death. With some difficulty
he got admission to the jail, but a crowd of men, led by a Baptist
minister named Green, who was also editor of the village newspaper,
entered with him. The prisoner was found lying on a heap of straw and
chained to a post. The hostile mob refused to leave the priest alone
with him; but, in spite of their interference, Father Timon succeeded
in touching the man's heart and preparing him for the sacraments.
While they were repeating the Apostles' Creed together, the minister
pushed forward and exclaimed, "Do not make the poor man lose his soul
by teaching him the commandments of men!" and this interruption was
followed by a violent invective against Romish corruptions.

"Mr. Green," said the priest, "not long ago, I refuted all these
charges before a public meeting in the court-house of this village,
and challenged anybody who could answer me to stand forth and do so.
You were present, but you made no answer. Surely this is no time for
you to interfere--when I am preparing a man for death!"

Mr. Green's only reply was a challenge to a public controversy next
day, which Father Timon immediately accepted. The minister then
insisted upon making a rancorous polemical prayer, in the course
of which he said: "O God of mercy! save this man from the fangs
of Antichrist, who now seeks to teach him idolatry and the vain
traditions of men."

"Gentlemen," exclaimed the priest to the crowd which now filled the
dungeon, "is it right that, in a prayer to the God of charity and
truth, this man should introduce a calumny against the majority of
Christians?"

How far the extraordinary discussion might have gone it would be
hard to guess, had not the sheriff turned everybody out and locked
the jail for the night. The next morning, the debate took place
according to agreement, the district judge being appointed moderator.
After about three or four hours' speaking, Mr. Green gave up the
battle and withdrew. Father Timon kept on for an hour and a half
longer, and the result is said to have been a great Catholic revival
in the community. The prisoner, who had steadily refused to accept
the ministrations of any but a Catholic clergyman, was baptized
immediately after the debate.

On another occasion, Father Timon carried on a debate with a
Protestant clergyman--apparently a Methodist--in the court-house at
Perryville. The Methodist was easily worsted, but there was soon to
be a conference meeting some eighteen miles off, and there he felt
sure the priest would meet his match.

"Do you mean this as a challenge?"

"No; I don't invite you. I only say you can go if you choose."

Father Timon refused to go under these circumstances; but, learning
afterward that a rumor was in circulation that he had pledged
himself to be on the ground, he changed his mind, and reached the
scene of the meeting--which was in the open air--just after one of
the preachers had finished a discourse on Transubstantiation and
the Real Presence. "There is a Romish priest present," this orator
had said, "and, if he dares to come forward, the error of his ways
will be pointed out to him." So Father Timon mounted a stump, and
announced that in a quarter of an hour he would begin a discourse on
the Real Presence. This was more than the ministers had bargained
for. They had been confident he would not attend. They surrounded
him, in considerable excitement, and declared that he should not
preach. Father Timon appealed to the people, and they decided that he
should be heard. He borrowed a Bible from one of his adversaries, and
with the aid of numerous texts explained and supported the Catholic
doctrine. The discussion was long and earnest. The preachers at last
were silenced, and Father Timon continued for some time to exhort the
crowd and urge them to return to the true church. Which was, to say
the least, a curious termination for a Methodist conference meeting.

One of the most serious difficulties which the pioneer missionaries
had to encounter was the want of opportunities of private converse
with people whose hearts had been stirred by the first motions of
divine grace. The log-dwellings of the settlers rarely contained
more than one room, and that often held a pretty large family. Many
anecdotes are told of confessions made among the cornstalks in the
garden, or under the shadow of the forest, or on horseback in the
lonely roads. On one occasion Father Timon had been summoned a long
distance to visit a dying man. The cabin consisted of a single room.
When all was over, the wife of the dead man knelt beside the body
and made her confession, the rest of the family and the neighbors,
meanwhile, standing out-doors in the rain. Then the widow was
baptized into the church, and, as the storm was violent and the hour
past midnight, Father Timon slept on the bed with the corpse, while
the rest of the company disposed themselves on the floor.

Ten years had been passed in labors of this kind, when, in 1835,
letters arrived from Paris, erecting the American mission of the
Lazarists into a province, and appointing Father Timon visitor.
He accepted the charge with great reluctance and only after long
hesitation. It was indeed a heavy burden. The affairs of the
congregation were far from prosperous. The institution at the Barrens
was deeply in debt. The revenues were uncertain. The relations
between the seminary and the bishop were not entirely harmonious.
Several priests had left the community, and were serving parishes
without the permission of their superiors. To restore discipline
would be an invidious task on many accounts. But, having undertaken
the office, Father Timon did not shrink. He saved the college and
seminary from threatened extinction; he brought back his truant
brethren; he revived the spirit of zeal and self-sacrifice; he
restored harmony; he greatly improved the finances. In a short time,
he made a visit to France, and returned with a small supply of money
and a company of priests. On Christmas Eve, in 1838, he sailed
for Galveston, in order to make a report to the Holy See upon the
condition of religion in the republic of Texas. He found the country
in a sad state of spiritual destitution. The only priests were two
Mexicans at San Antonio, who lived in open concubinage. There were no
churches. There were no sacraments. Even marriage was a rite about
which the settlers were not over-particular. Father Timon did what
little he could, on a hurried tour, to remedy these evils; but a year
or two later he came back as prefect apostolic, accompanied by M.
Odin, and now he was able to introduce great reforms. Congregations
were collected, churches begun in all the largest settlements, and
the scandals at San Antonio abated. Firm in correction, but gracious
in manner, untiring in labors, insensible to fear, making long
journeys with a single companion through dangerous Indian countries,
struggling through swamps, swimming broad rivers--the prefect and
his assistant, M. Odin, travelled, foot-sore, hungry, and in rags,
through this rude wilderness, and wherever they passed they planted
the good seed and made ready the soil for the husbandmen who were to
come after them. In the principal towns and settlements they were
invariably received with honor. The court-houses or other public
rooms were placed at their disposal for religious services, and the
educated Protestant inhabitants took pains to meet them socially and
learn from them something about the faith. We find in the account of
these tours no trace of the acrimonious polemical discussions which
used to enliven the labors of the missionaries at the Barrens. There
was little or no controversy, and the priests were invited to explain
religious truth rather over the dinner-table than on the rostrum. At
the request of Mr. Timon, M. Odin was soon afterward appointed vicar
apostolic of Texas, and sent to continue the work thus happily begun.

It was in 1847 that Mr. Timon was removed from the Western field
and consecrated first Bishop of Buffalo. When he had disposed all
his affairs and made ready for his departure, his worldly goods
consisted of a small trunk about half-full of scanty clothing. He had
to borrow money enough to pay his way to New York. But meanwhile some
friends, having heard of his poverty, replenished his wardrobe, and
made up a purse of $400 for his immediate needs. He was consecrated
in the cathedral of New York by Bishops Hughes, Walsh, and McCloskey,
on the 17th of October, and reached Buffalo five days afterward. It
was evening when he arrived. An immense crowd of people--it is said
as many as 10,000--were in waiting for him at the railway station.
There were bands of music, banners, and flambeaux, a four-horse
carriage for the bishop, and a long torchlight procession to escort
him home. It is reported--but the biographer gives the story with
some reserve--that, after the _cortége_ had gone some distance,
the humble bishop was discovered, valise in hand, trudging afoot
through the rain and mud, behind the coach in which he was supposed
to be riding. In after-times he must have sadly compared the cordial
greeting of his flock on this night with the trials, the insults, the
persecutions, which he had to bear from some of the very same people
during almost the whole of his episcopate. We shall not enlarge upon
the history of these sad years. The scandals which arose from the
factious and schismatical spirit of the trustees of the Church of
St. Louis in Buffalo are too recent to have been forgotten by our
readers. The troubles began while Bishop Timon was still a humble
missionary in Missouri. They had been quelled by the firmness of
Bishop Hughes, but they broke out again very soon after the creation
of the new diocese, and Bishop Timon suffered from them to the end
of his life. Having no cathedral and no house, he lodged when
he first arrived with the pastor of St. Louis's, but he had been
there only a few weeks when the trustees, in their mad jealousy of
possible invasion of their imaginary rights, requested him to find
a home somewhere else. This brutal behavior was the beginning of a
long warfare. Those who may care about studying it will find the
necessary documents in Mr. Deuther's book. Let us rather devote the
short space remaining at our disposal to a description of some of
the charming traits of character of the holy man who crowned a life
of incessant labor with an old age of suffering. From the moment of
his elevation to the episcopal dignity, the sacred simplicity of his
disposition seems to have daily increased. If the anecdote of his
behavior at the torchlight reception is not true, it is at any rate
consistent with his character. Bishop Hughes declared that the Bishop
of Buffalo was the humblest man he had ever known. Though he was
very neat and precise in everything relating to the service of the
sanctuary, rags of any kind seemed to him "good enough for the old
bishop," and it was only by stealth, so to speak, that his friends
could keep his wardrobe tolerably well supplied. In his visits to the
seminary it was his delight to talk familiarly with the young men.
At the orphan asylum the children used to ride on his back. Visiting
strange churches, he would kneel in the confessional like any other
penitent. In his private and official intercourse with his clergy, it
was not unusual for him to beg pardon with the utmost humility for
fancied acts of injustice. On one occasion he had slightly rebuked
a priest for some irregularity. Satisfied afterward that the rebuke
had not been deserved, he invited the priest to dinner, placed him
at the head of the table, treated him with marked distinction, and
afterward, taking him to his own room, in the presence of another
bishop, threw himself upon his knees and begged to be forgiven. In
the course of a visitation to a disturbed parish, a member of the
congregation he was addressing publicly spat in the bishop's face.
He took no notice of the occurrence, but went on with his remarks.
"Never shall I forget," wrote the late distinguished Jesuit, Father
Smarius, "the days of the missions for the laity and of the retreats
for the clergy which I had the pleasure to conduct in the cathedral
of Buffalo during the three or four years previous to his holy
demise. The first to rise in the morning and to ring the bell for
meditation and for prayer, he would totter from door to door along
the corridors of the episcopal residence, with a lighted candle in
his hand, to see whether all had responded to the call of the bell
and betaken themselves to the spot marked out for the performance of
that sacred and wholesome duty.... And then, that more than fatherly
heart, that forgiving kindness to repentant sinners, even such as had
again and again deservedly incurred his displeasure and the penalties
of ecclesiastical censures or excommunications. 'Father,' he would
say, 'I leave this case in your hands. I give you all power, only
save his soul.' And then, that simple, child-like humility, which
seemed wounded by even the performance of acts which the excellence
and dignity of the episcopacy naturally force from its subjects and
inferiors. How often have I seen him fall on his aged knees, face
to face with one or other of my clerical brethren, who had fallen
on theirs to receive his saintly blessing!" He took great pains to
cultivate the virtue of humility in his clergy. A proud priest he
had little hope for. To those who complained of the hardships of
the mission, he would answer, "Why did you become a priest? It was
to suffer, to be persecuted, according to the example laid down by
our Lord Jesus Christ." In the strictness with which he tried to
watch over the spiritual welfare of his clergy, and changed their
positions when he thought the good of their souls required it, his
rule was like that of the superior of a monastery rather than the
head of a diocese. He was filled to a remarkable decree with the
spirit of prayer. He began no labor, decided no question, without
long and fervent supplication for the divine assistance. On occasions
of festivity or ceremony, he loved to steal away to the quiet of
the sanctuary, and under the shadow of a column in the cathedral
to pass long hours in meditation. In travelling he was often seen
kneeling in his seat in the cars. His household was always ordered
like a religious community. The day began and ended with prayer and
meditation in common. The bishop rose at five, and in the evening
retired early to his room--not to sleep, but to pass most of the
night in devotion, study, and writing. Up to the very close of his
life he used to set out in the depth of winter to visit distant
parishes unannounced, starting from the house before any one else
was awake, and trudging painfully through the snow with his bag in
his hand. Religious communities, when they assembled for morning
devotions, were often surprised to find the bishop on his knees
waiting for them. By these sudden visits he was sometimes enabled to
correct irregularities, which he never suffered to pass unrebuked;
but he used to say that in dealing with others he would rather be too
lax than too severe, as he hoped to be judged mercifully by Almighty
God.

Mr. Deuther, in attempting to show that the bishop had to conquer
a naturally quick temper, has created an impression, we fear, that
this saintly man was irascible if not violent in his disposition.
It is most earnestly to be hoped that no one will conceive such an
utterly wrong idea. Mr. Deuther himself corrects his own unguarded
language, and it is only necessary to read the book carefully to see
that he does not mean what at first glance he seems not to say, but
to imply. Nobody who knew Bishop Timon will hesitate to call him one
of the kindest and most amiable of men; whatever faults he may have
had, nobody will think of mentioning a hot temper as one of them.
The sweetness of his disposition was in correspondence with the
tenderness of his heart. The patience with which he bore the sorrows
of his episcopate was equalled by the keenness with which he felt
them. Toward the close of his life several anonymous communications,
accusing him of cruelty, avarice, injustice, and many other
faults--of cruelty, this man whose heart was as soft as a woman's--of
avarice, this charitable soul, who gave away everything he had, and
left himself at times not even a change of linen--of injustice, this
bishop who pardoned every one but himself--were sent him in the form
of printed circulars. So deeply was he wounded that his biographer
is assured that the incident hastened his death; he never was the
same man afterward. At the end of the next diocesan synod he knelt
before his priests, and, in a voice broken by tears, asked pardon of
every one present whom he might have in any manner treated unjustly.
He died on the 16th of April, 1867, after a rapid but gradual decay
whose termination he himself was the first to foresee, and his last
hours were as beautiful and inspiring as his years of holy labor.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _The Life and Times of the Right Rev. John Timon, D.D._, First
Roman Catholic Bishop of Buffalo. By Charles G. Deuther. Buffalo:
published by the Author.

[8] Mr. Deuther incorrectly calls this Conevago.




GUALBERTO'S VICTORY.


      A mountain-pass, so narrow that a man
      Riding that way to Florence, stooping, can
      Touch with his hand the rocks on either side,
      And pluck the flowers that in the crannies hide--
      Here, on Good Friday, centuries ago,
      Mounted and armed, John Gualbert met his foe,
      Mounted and armed as well, but riding down
      To the fair city from the woodland brown,
      This way and that swinging his jewell'd whip,
      A gay old love-song on his careless lip.
      An accidental meeting--yet the sun
      Burned on their brows as if it had been one
      Of deep design, so deadly was the look
      Of mutual hate their olive faces took,
      As (knightly courtesy forgot in wrath)
      Neither would yield his enemy the path.
      "Back!" cried Gaulberto. "Never!" yelled his foe.
      And on the instant, sword in hand, they throw
      Them from their saddles, nothing loth,
      And fall to fighting with a smothered oath.
      A pair of shapely, stalwart cavaliers,
      Well-matched in stature, weapons, weight, and years,
      Theirs was a long, fierce struggle on the grass,
      Thrusting and parrying up and down the pass,
      Swaying from left to right, till blood-drops oozed
      Upon the rocks, and head and hands were bruised;
      But at its close, when Gualbert stopped to rest,
      His heel was planted on his foeman's breast;
      And, looking up, the fallen courtier sees,
      As in a dream, gray rocks and waving trees
      Before his glazing eyes begin to float,
      While Gualbert's sabre glitters at his throat.

      "Now die, base wretch!" the victor fiercely cries,
      His heart of hate outflashing from his eyes.
      "Never again, by the all-righteous Lord,
      Shalt thou with life escape this trusty sword!
      Revenge is sweet!" And upward flash'd the steel,
      But e'er it fell--dear Lord! a silvery peal
      Of voices, chanting in the town below,
      Rose, like a fountain's spray, from spires of snow,
      And chimed, and chimed, to die in echoes slow.

      In the sweet silence following the sound,
      Gualberto and the man upon the ground
      Glared at each other with bewildered eyes.
      And then the latter, struggling to rise,
      Made one last effort, while his face grew dark
      With pleading agony: "Gualberto! hark!
      The chant--the hour--you know the olden fashion--
      The monks below intone Our Lord's dear Passion.
      Oh! by this cross"--and here he caught the hilt
      Of Gualbert's sword--"and by the blood once spilt
      Upon it for us both long years ago,
      Forgive--forget--and spare your fallen foe!"

      The face that bent above grew white and set,
      The lips were drawn, the brow bedew'd with sweat,
      But on the grass the harmless sword was flung,
      And, stooping down, the generous hero wrung
      The outstretched hand. Then, lest he lose control
      Of the but half-tamed passions of his soul,
      Fled up the pathway, tearing casque and coat,
      To ease the throbbing tempest at his throat--
      Fled up the crags, as if a fiend pursued,
      Nor paused until he reached the chapel rude.

      There, in the cool, dim stillness, on his knees,
      Trembling, he flings himself, and, startled, sees
      Set in the rock a crucifix antique,
      From which the wounded Christ bends down to speak:
      "_Thou hast done well, Gualberto. For my sake
      Thou didst forgive thine enemy; now take
      My gracious pardon for thy years of sin,
      And from this day a better life begin._"

      White flash'd the angels' wings above his head,
      Rare subtile perfumes thro' the place were shed;
      And golden harps and sweetest voices pour'd
      Their glorious hosannas to the Lord,
      Who, in that hour and in that chapel quaint,
      Changed, by his power, by his sweet love's constraint,
      Gualbert the sinner into John the saint.




OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.

PART SIXTH.


I.

The enemies of "superstition" had lost a good deal of ground in
their desperate struggle against the events which for the last ten
or twelve weeks had scandalized their distressed philosophy. As it
had become impossible to deny the existence of the fountain whose
pure streams were flowing before the eyes of the amazed people, so it
was becoming impossible to continue denying the reality of the cures
which were being worked, continually and in many places, by the use
of this mysterious water.

At first the incredulous had shrugged their shoulders at the report
of these cures, taking the simple course of denying them out-and-out,
and refusing to make any examination. Then some skilful persons had
invented several false miracles, to enjoy an easy triumph in refuting
them. But they had very soon been confounded by the multiplicity of
these wonderful cures, of which a few have been mentioned. The facts
were evident. They became so numerous and so striking that it was
necessary, however painful it might be, either to acknowledge their
miraculous nature or find some natural explanation for them.

The free-thinkers, then, understood that, unless they were willing
either to surrender or to deny in the face of complete evidence, it
was absolutely necessary to take up some new line of tactics.

The most intelligent of the clique, indeed, saw that things had
already gone too far, and perceived the grave error which they
had committed at the outset in denying prematurely and without
examination facts which had afterward become patent and perfectly
well established, such as the appearance of the fountain, and the
cures of a great number of many who were notoriously incurable by
natural means, and who were now to be seen going about the streets
of the town in perfect health. What made the mistake worse and
almost irreparable was that these unfortunate denials of the most
well-attested events were authentically and officially recorded in
all the newspapers of the department.


II.

The greater part of the cures effected by the Massabielle water
had a character of rapidity, nay, even of instantaneousness, which
clearly showed the immediate action of sovereign power. There were
some, however, which did not present this evidently supernatural
appearance, being accomplished after baths or draughts repeated a few
or many times, and in a slow and gradual manner--resembling somewhat
in their mode the ordinary course of natural cures, though in reality
different.

In a village called Gez, near Lourdes, a little child of seven years
had been the subject of one of these cures, of a mixed character,
which, according to one's natural inclination, might be attributed
to a special grace of God or to the unaided forces of nature. This
child, named Lasbareilles, had been born entirely deformed, with a
double curvature of the back and breast-bone. His thin and almost
withered legs were useless from their extreme weakness; the poor
little boy had never been able to walk, but was always either sitting
or lying down. When he had to move, his mother carried him in her
arms. Sometimes, indeed, the child, resting on the edge of the table
or helped by his mother's hand, could manage to keep himself up and
to take a few steps; but it was at the cost of violent efforts and
immense fatigue. The physician of the place had professed himself
unable to cure him; and the disease being organic, no remedy had ever
been resorted to.

The parents of this unfortunate child, having heard of the miracles
of Lourdes, had procured some of the water from the grotto; and in
the course of a fortnight had applied it on three different occasions
to the body of the little fellow without obtaining any effect. But
their faith was not discouraged on that account; if hope was banished
from the world, it would still remain in the hearts of mothers. A
fourth application was made on Holy Thursday, the first of April,
1858. That day the child took several steps without assistance.

The bathings from that time became more and more efficacious, and the
health of the patient gradually improved. After three or four weeks,
he became strong enough to walk almost as well as other people. We
say "almost," for there was still in his gait a certain awkwardness,
which seemed like a reminiscence of his original infirmity. The
thinness of his legs had slowly disappeared together with their
weakness, and the deformity of his chest was almost entirely
gone. All the people of the village of Gez, knowing his previous
condition, said that it was a miracle. Were they right or wrong?
Whatever our own opinion may be, there is certainly much to be said
on both sides of the question.

Another child, Denys Bouchet, of the town of Lamarque, in the canton
of Ossun, had also been cured of a general paralysis in very much the
same way. A young man of twenty-seven years, Jean Louis Amaré, who
was subject to epileptic fits, had been completely though gradually
cured of his terrible malady solely by the use of the water of
Massabielle.

Some other similar cases had also occurred.[9]


III.

If we were not acquainted with the wonderfully varied forms which
supernatural cures have assumed since the Christian era, we might
perhaps be inclined to believe that Providence had thus disposed
things at this moment to cause proud human philosophy to catch
itself in its own nets, and to destroy itself with its own hands.
But let us not think that there was in this case such a snare on the
part of God. He lies in ambush for no one. But truth in its normal
and regular developments, the logic of which is unknown to human
philosophy, is of itself an eternal snare for error.

However this may be, the _savants_ and physicians of the country
hastened to find in these various cures, the cause of which was
doubtful, though their reality and progressive nature were well
ascertained, an admirable opportunity and an excellent pretext to
effect that change of base which the increasing evidence of facts
made absolutely necessary.

Ceasing, therefore, to ascribe these cures to such a commonplace
cause as imagination, they loudly attributed them to the natural
virtues which this remarkable water, which had been discovered by the
merest chance, undoubtedly possessed. To give this explanation was of
course equivalent to recognizing the cures.

Let the reader recall the beginning of this story, when a little
shepherdess, going out to gather some dead wood, claimed to have seen
a shining apparition. Let him remember the sneers of the great men of
Lourdes, the shrugging of shoulders at the club, the supreme contempt
with which these strong-minded individuals received this childish
nonsense; what progress the supernatural had made; and how much
incredulity, science, and philosophy had lost, since the first events
which had so suddenly occurred at the lonely grotto on the banks of
the Gave.

The miraculous had, if we may use such an expression, taken the
offensive. Free thought, lately so proud and confident in its
attacks, was now pursued by facts and obliged to defend itself.

The representatives of philosophy and science were none the less
positive, however, and showed as much disdain as ever for the popular
superstition.

"Well, be it so," said they, affecting a tone of good humor and the
air of good faith. "We acknowledge that the water of the grotto
cures certain maladies. What can be more simple? What need is
there of having recourse to miracles, supernatural graces, and
divine intervention to explain effects similar to, if not even
exactly the same as, those of the thousand springs which, from
Vichy or Baden-Baden to Luchon, act with such efficacy on the human
system? The Massabielle water has merely some very powerful mineral
qualities, like those which are found in the springs of Barèges or
Cauterets, a little higher up in the mountains. The grotto of Lourdes
has no connection with religion, but comes within the province of
medical science."

A letter, which we take at random from our documents, presents better
than we could the attitude of the _savants_ of the neighborhood
regarding the wonders worked by the Massabielle water. This letter,
written by an eminent physician of that region, Dr. Lary, who had
no faith whatever in the miraculous explanations of the cures, was
addressed by him to a member of the faculty:

                                     "OSSUN, April 28, 1858.

    "I hasten, my dear sir, to send you the details which
    you ask of me in regard to the case of the woman Galop
    of our commune.

    "This woman, in consequence of rheumatism in the left
    hand, had lost the power of holding anything with it.
    Hence, if she wished to wash or carry a glass with this
    hand, she was very apt to drop it, and she was obliged
    to give up drawing water from the well, because this
    hand was unable to hold the rope. For more than eight
    months she had not made her bed and had not spun a
    single skein of thread.

    "Now, after a single journey to Lourdes, where she
    made use of the water internally and externally, she
    spins with ease, _makes her bed, draws water, washes
    and carries the glasses and dishes, and, in short, uses
    this hand as well as the other_.

    "The movements of the left hand are not yet _quite_ as
    free as before the illness, but 90 per cent. of the
    power that had been lost before the use of the water
    from the grotto at Lourdes has been restored. The woman
    proposes, however, to go again to the grotto. I shall
    ask her to pass your way that you may see her, and
    convince yourself of all that I have said.

    "You will find, in examining her case, an incomplete
    anchylosis of the lower joint of the forefinger. If the
    repeated use of the water of the grotto destroys this
    morbid condition, it will be an additional proof of its
    alkaline properties.[10]

    "In conclusion, I beg you to believe me yours very
    faithfully,

                                                "LARY, M.D."

This explanation, once admitted and considered as certain in
advance, the doctors were less unwilling to accept the cures worked
by the water of the grotto; and from this period they set to work
to generalize their thesis, and to apply it almost without any
distinction to all cases, even to those which were marked by the
most amazing rapidity, which could by no means be ascribed to the
ordinary action of mineral waters. The learned personages of the
place got out of this difficulty by attributing to the water of the
grotto extremely powerful properties, such as had been previously
unknown. It mattered little that they discarded all the laws of
nature in their theories, provided that heaven got no profit thence.
They willingly admitted the preternatural in order to get rid of the
supernatural.

There were among the faithful some perverse and troublesome persons,
who by impertinent remarks interfered with the profound conclusions
of the scientific coterie.

"How," they said, "is it that this mineral spring, so extraordinarily
powerful that it works instantaneous cures, was found by Bernadette
when in a state of ecstasy, and came after her accounts of certain
celestial visions, and apparently in support of them? How did it
happen that the fountain sprang out precisely at the moment when
Bernadette believed herself to hear a heavenly voice telling her to
drink and bathe? And how is it that this fountain, which appeared
suddenly under the eyes of all the people in such very unusual
circumstances, yields not ordinary water, but a water which, as you
yourselves acknowledge, has already cured so many sick persons whose
cases had been abandoned as hopeless, and who have used it without
medical advice, and merely in the spirit of religious faith?"

These objections, repeated under many different forms, provoked the
free-thinkers, philosophers, and _savants_ exceedingly. They tried
to evade them by answers which were really so poor and miserable
that they ought, one would think, to have hardly presented a good
appearance even in their authors' eyes; but then, to find any others
was no doubt very difficult.

"Why not?" said they. "Coffee was discovered by a goat. A shepherd
found by chance the waters of Luchon. It was also by accident
that the ruins of Pompeii were brought to light by the pickaxe of
a laborer. Why should we be so much surprised that this little
girl, while amusing herself by digging in the ground during her
hallucination, should have come upon a spring, and that the water
of this spring should be mineral and alkaline? That she imagined
at the moment that the Blessed Virgin was before her, and that
she heard a voice directing her to the fountain, is merely a
coincidence, entirely accidental, but of which superstition tries to
make a miracle. On this occasion, as on the others, chance has done
everything, and has been the real discoverer."

The faithful were not, however, moved by this sort of argument.
They had the bad taste to think that to explain everything by
accidental coincidence was to do violence to reason under the
pretext of defending it. This irritated the free-thinkers, who,
though acknowledging at last the reality of the cures, deplored more
than ever the religious and supernatural character which the common
people insisted upon giving to these strange events; and, as was
natural under the circumstances, they were inclined to resort to
force to stop the popular movement. "If these waters are mineral,"
they began to say, "they belong to the state or to the municipality;
people should not use them except by the advice of a doctor; and an
establishment for baths should be built at the spot, not a chapel."

The science of Lourdes, forced to assent to the facts in this case,
had arrived at the state of mind just described when the measures of
the prefect, relative to the objects deposited in the grotto, and the
attempt to imprison Bernadette under the pretext of insanity, were
announced--this attempt, as we have seen, having been defeated by the
unexpected intervention of the curé, M. Peyramale.


IV.

A certain and official basis for all these theses of the desperate
adherents of the medical theory was still a desideratum. M. Massy
had already bethought himself of asking such a basis from one of the
most wonderful and indubitable sciences of the age--namely, that
of chemistry. With this view, he had applied, through the mayor of
Lourdes, to a chemist of some distinction in the department--M.
Latour de Trie.

To show, not in detail by the examination of each special case, but
once for all, that these cures which were rising up as formidable
objections were naturally explained by the chemical constitution
of the new spring, seemed to him a masterstroke; and he considered
that, in accomplishing it, he would lay science and philosophy under
obligation, not to mention also the administration, represented by
the minister, M. Rouland.

Seeing that it was impossible to have Bernadette arrested as insane,
he urged the analysis, which was to show officially the mineral
and healing qualities of the water. It was becoming imperatively
necessary to get rid of the intrusive supernatural power which,
after having produced the fountain, was now curing the sick people,
and threatening to pass all bounds. Though its abominable influence
should continue strong in many quarters, a really official analysis
might be of great service.

The chemist of the prefecture, therefore, set to work to make this
precious investigation of the water from Massabielle, and, with a
good conscience, if not with perfect science, he found at the bottom
of his crucibles a solution perfectly agreeing with the explanations
of the doctors, the reasonings of the philosophers, and the desires
of the prefect. But was truth also as well satisfied with it as the
prefecture, the philosophers, and the faculty? At first, perhaps,
this question was not proposed, but it lay in store for a future
occasion. But, not to consider this for the present, let us see
what was this analysis which M. Latour de Trie, chemist of the
administration, addressed officially, on the 6th of May, to the mayor
of Lourdes, and which the latter immediately forwarded to the Baron
Massy:

    "CHEMICAL ANALYSIS.

    "The water of the grotto of Lourdes is very clear,
    without smell or decided taste. Its specific gravity is
    very nearly that of distilled water. Its temperature at
    the spring is 15° Cent. (59° Fahr.)

    "It contains the following elements:

    "1st. Chlorides of sodium, calcium and magnesium in
    abundance.[11]

    "2d. Carbonates of lime and of magnesia.

    "3d. Silicates of lime and of alumina.

    "4th. Oxide of iron.

    "5th. Sulphate and carbonate of soda.

    "6th. Phosphate (traces).

    "7th. Organic matter--ulmine.

    "The complete absence of sulphate of lime in this water
    is also established by this analysis.

    "This remarkable peculiarity is entirely to its
    advantage, and entitles it to be considered as very
    favorable to digestion, and as giving to the animal
    economy a disposition favorable to the equilibrium of
    the vital action.

    "We do not think it imprudent to say, in consideration
    of the number and quality of the substances which
    compose it, that medical science will, perhaps, soon
    recognize in it special curative properties which
    will entitle it to be classed among the waters which
    constitute the mineral wealth of our department.

    "Be pleased to accept, etc.

                                        "A. LATOUR DE TRIE."

The civil order is not so well disciplined as the military, and,
through misunderstanding, false steps are occasionally taken in
it. The prefect, in the multitude of his avocations, had omitted
to give his orders to the editors of the official newspaper of the
department, the _Ere Impériale_, so that, while the chemist of the
prefecture said white, its journalist said black; while the former
was recognizing in the spring at Lourdes one of the future medical
and mineral treasures of the Pyrenees, the latter was calling it
dirty water, and joking about the cures which had been obtained.

"It is needless to say," he wrote on the precise day on which M.
Latour de Trie sent in his report--that is, on the 6th of May--"that
the famous grotto turns out miracles in abundance, and that our
department is inundated with them. At every corner you will meet with
people who tell you of a thousand cures obtained by the use of some
dirty water.

"The doctors will soon have nothing to do, and the rheumatic and
consumptive people will have disappeared from the department," etc.

Notwithstanding these discrepancies, which might have been avoided,
it must be acknowledged that Baron Massy was, on the whole, attentive
to his business. On the 4th of May, at about noon, he had delivered
his address to the mayors of the canton of Lourdes, and given his
orders. On the 4th of May, in the evening, the grotto had been
stripped of the offerings and _ex-votos_. On the morning of the 5th,
he had ascertained the impossibility of having Bernadette arrested,
and had abandoned this measure. On the 6th, in the evening, he
received the analysis of his chemist. Fortified with this important
document, he waited the course of events.

What was about to take place at Lourdes? What would happen at the
grotto? What would be done by Bernadette, whose every movement was
watched by the Argus eyes of Jacomet and of his agents? Would not
the fountain at the grotto disappear in the coming hot weather,
and thus put an end to the whole business? What attitude would the
people assume? Such were the hopes and anxieties of the Baron Massy,
imperial prefect.


V.

At the grotto the miraculous fountain continued to flow, abundant and
clear, with that character of quiet perpetuity which is generally
found in springs coming from the rock.

The supernatural apparition did not cease to assert its existence,
and to prove it by benefits conferred.

The grace of God continued to descend visibly and invisibly upon the
people, sometimes quick as the lightning which flashes through the
clouds, sometimes gradual like the light of dawn.

We can only speak of those graces which were external and manifest.

At six or seven kilometres (four miles) from Lourdes, at Loubajac,
lived a good woman, a peasant, who had formerly been accustomed to
labor, but whom an accident had for eighteen months past reduced to
a most painful inaction. Her name was Catherine Latapie-Chouat. In
October, 1856, having climbed an oak to knock down some acorns, she
had lost her balance, and suffered a violent fall, which caused a
severe dislocation of the right arm and hand. The reduction--as is
stated in the report and the official statement, which are now before
us--though performed immediately by an able surgeon, and though
it nearly restored the arm to its normal state, had nevertheless
not prevented an extreme weakness in it. The most intelligent and
continuous treatment had been ineffectual in removing the stiffness
of the three most important fingers of the hand. The thumb and first
two fingers remained obstinately bent and paralyzed, so that it was
impossible either to straighten them or to enable them to move in the
least. The unfortunate peasant, still young enough for much labor,
for she was hardly thirty-eight, could not sew, spin, knit, or take
care of the house. The doctor, after having treated her case for a
long time without success, had told her that it was incurable, and
that she must resign herself to give up the use of that hand. This
sentence, from such a reliable authority, was for the poor woman the
announcement of an irreparable misfortune. The poor have no resource
but work; for them compulsory inaction is inevitable misery.

Catherine had become pregnant nine or ten months after the accident,
and her time was approaching at the date of our narrative. One
night she awaked with a sudden thought or inspiration. "An interior
spirit," to quote her own words to myself, "said to me as it were
with irresistible force, 'Go to the grotto! go to the grotto, and
you will be cured!'" Who this mysterious being was who spoke thus,
and whom this ignorant peasant--ignorant at least as far as human
knowledge is concerned--called a "spirit," is no doubt known by her
angel guardian.

It was three o'clock in the morning. Catherine called two of her
children who were large enough to accompany her.

"Do you remain to work," said she to her husband. "I am going to the
grotto."

"In your present condition it is impossible," replied he; "to go to
Lourdes and return is full three leagues."

"Nothing is impossible. I am going to get cured."

No objection had the least effect upon her, and she set out with her
two children. It was a fine moonlight night; but the awful silence,
occasionally broken by strange and mysterious sounds, the solitude of
the plains only dimly visible, and seemingly peopled by vague forms,
terrified the children. They trembled, and would have stopped at
every step had not Catherine reassured them. She had no fear, and
felt that she was going to the fountain of life.

She arrived at Lourdes at daybreak, and happened to meet Bernadette.
Some one telling her who it was, Catherine, without saying anything,
approached the child blessed by the Lord and beloved by Mary, and
touched her dress humbly. Then she continued her journey to the rocks
of Massabielle, where, in spite of the early hour, a great many
pilgrims were already assembled and were on their knees.

Catherine and her children also knelt and prayed. Then she rose, and
quietly bathed her hand in the marvellous water.

Her fingers immediately straightened, became flexible, and under her
control. The Blessed Virgin had cured the incurable.

What did Catherine do? She was not surprised. She did not utter a
cry, but again fell on her knees, and gave thanks to God and to Mary.
For the first time for eighteen months, she prayed with her hands
joined, and clasped the resuscitated fingers with the others.

She remained thus for a long time, absorbed in an act of
thanksgiving. Such moments are sweet; the soul is glad to forget
itself, and thinks that it is in Paradise.

But violent sufferings recalled Catherine to the earth--this earth of
sighs and tears, where the curse pronounced upon the guilty mother
of the human race has never ceased to be felt by her innumerable
posterity. We have said that Catherine was very near her confinement,
and as she was still upon her knees she found herself suddenly seized
by the terrible pains of childbirth. She shuddered, seeing that there
would be no time to go even to Lourdes, and that her delivery was
about to occur in the presence of the surrounding multitude. And for
a moment she looked around with terror and anguish.

But this terror did not last long.

Catherine returned to the Queen whom nature obeys.

"Good Mother," said she simply, "you have just shown me so great a
favor, I know you will spare me the shame of being delivered before
all these people, and at least grant that I may return home before
giving birth to my child."

Immediately all her pains ceased, and the interior spirit of whom she
spoke to us, and who, we believe, was her angel guardian, said to her:

"Do not be alarmed. Set out with confidence; you will arrive safely."

"Let us go home now," said Catherine to her two children.

Accordingly she took the road to Loubajac, holding them by the hand,
without intimating to any one her critical state, and without showing
any uneasiness, even to the midwife of her own village, who happened
to be there in the midst of the crowd of pilgrims. With inexpressible
happiness she quietly traversed the long and rough road which
separated her from home. The two children were not afraid of it now;
the sun was risen, and their mother was cured.

As soon as she returned, she wished still to pray; but immediately
her pains returned. In a quarter of an hour she was the mother of a
third son.[12]

At the same time, a woman of Lamarque, Marianne Garrot, had been
relieved in less than ten days, merely by lotions with the water
from the grotto, of a white eruption which had covered her whole
face, and which for two years had resisted all treatment. Dr.
Amadou, of Pontacq, her physician, was satisfied of the fact, and
was an incontestable witness of it subsequently before the episcopal
commission.[13]

At Bordères, near Nay, the widow Marie Lanou-Domengé, eighty years
old, had been for three years a sufferer from an incomplete paralysis
in the whole left side. She could not take a step without assistance,
and was unable to do any work.

Dr. Poueymiroo, of Mirepoix, after having ineffectually used some
remedies to restore life in the palsied parts, though continuing his
visits, had abandoned medical treatment of the case.

Hope, however, is with difficulty extinguished in the hearts of the
sick.

"When shall I get well?" the good woman would say to Dr. Poueymiroo,
every time that he came.

"You will get well when the good God sees fit," was the invariable
reply of the doctor, who was far from suspecting the prophetic nature
of his words.

"Why should I not believe what he says, and throw myself directly on
the divine goodness?" said the old peasant woman one day to herself,
when she heard people talking of the fountain of Massabielle.

Accordingly, she sent some one to Lourdes to get at the spring itself
a little of this healing water.

When it was brought to her, she was much excited.

"Take me out of bed," said she, "and hold me up."

They took her out, and dressed her hurriedly. Both the actors and
spectators in this scene were somewhat disturbed.

Two persons held her up, placing their hands under her shoulders.

A glass of water from the grotto was presented to her.

She extended her trembling hand toward the quickening water and
dipped her fingers in it. Then she made a great sign of the cross on
herself, raised the glass to her lips, and slowly drank the contents,
no doubt absorbed in fervent and silent prayer.

She became so pale that they thought for the moment that she was
going to faint.

But while they were exerting themselves to prevent her from falling,
she rose with a quick and joyful movement and looked around. Then she
cried out with a voice of triumph:

"Let me go--quick! I am cured."

Those who were holding her withdrew their arms partially and with
some hesitation. She immediately freed herself from them, and walked
with as much confidence as if she had never been ill.

Some one, however, who still had some fear of the result, offered her
a stick to lean on.

She looked at it with a smile; then took it and contemptuously threw
it far away, as a thing which was no longer of use. And from that
day, she employed herself as before in hard out-door work.

Some visitors, who came to see her and to convince themselves of the
fact, asked her to walk in their presence.

"Walk, did you say? I will run for you!" And, true to her word, she
began to run.

This occurred in the month of May. In the following July, the people
pointed out the vigorous octogenarian as a curiosity, as she mowed
the grain, and was by no means the last in the hard labors of the
harvest.

Her physician, the excellent Dr. Poueymiroo, praised God for this
evident miracle, and subsequently, with the examining commission,
signed the procès-verbal on the extraordinary events which we have
just related, in which he did not hesitate to recognize "the direct
and evident action of divine power."[14]

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] We think it well to say that no one of these cures, except that
of Denys Bouchet, whom the physicians had pronounced absolutely and
constitutionally incurable, was declared to be miraculous by the
episcopal commission which will be mentioned further on. For these
cures, the 10th, 11th, and 16th _procès verbaux_ of the commission
may be consulted. Whatever the probability of divine intervention may
be in such cases, the church before proclaiming a miracle requires
_that no natural explanation of the fact should be possible_, and
sets aside, without affirming or denying, every case in which this
condition is not found. She is content to say _Nescio_.

We shall hereafter have occasion to speak of the work of the
commission.

[10] The patient was, in fact, entirely cured at the second visit to
Lourdes.

[11] The presence of chloride of sodium (common salt), to say nothing
of the others, _in abundance_, without a decided taste in the water,
is a little mysterious. The original reads: "Chlorures de soude, de
chaux et de magnésie: abondants."--NOTE BY TRANSLATOR.

[12] The reader will perhaps like to see the reports of the episcopal
commission on this case:

"Hardly had Catherine Latapie-Chouat plunged her hand into the water,
than she felt herself to be entirely cured; her fingers recovered
their natural suppleness and elasticity, so that she could quickly
open and shut them, and use them with as much ease as before the
accident of October, 1856.

"From that time she has had no more trouble with them.

"The deformity of the hand of Catherine Latapie, and the
impossibility of using it, being due to an anchylosis of the joints
of the fingers, and to a complete lesion of the nerves or the flexor
tendons, it is certain that the case was a very serious one; as also
by the uselessness of all the means of cure used during eighteen
months, and by the avowal of the physician, who had declared to this
woman that her condition was irremediable.

"Nevertheless, in spite of the failure of such long and repeated
attempts, the employment of various active healing agents, and
the statement of the physician, this severe lesion disappeared
immediately. Now, this sudden disappearance of the infirmity, and
restoration of the fingers to their original state, is evidently
beyond and above the usual course of nature, and of the laws which
govern the efficacy of its agents.

"The means by which this result has been brought about leave no
doubt in this respect, and establish this conclusion incontestably.
In fact, it has been averred(a) that the Massabielle water is of
an ordinary character, without the least curative properties. It
cannot, then, by its natural action, have straightened the fingers of
Catherine Latapie and restored their suppleness and agility, which
had not been accomplished by the scientific remedies which were so
various and used for so long a time. The wonderful result, then,
which the mere touch of this water immediately produced, cannot be
ascribed to it, but we must rise to a superior cause, and do homage
for it to a supernatural power, of which the water of Massabielle has
been, as it were, the veil and inert instrument.

"Besides, if ordinary water had been possessed of such a prodigious
power, Catherine Latapie would have experienced its effect long
before by the daily use which she made of it in washing herself and
her children; for she had daily employed for this purpose water
exactly similar to that at the grotto."--_Extract from the 15th
procès-verbal of the commission._

(a): This was, in fact, authentically averred, the administrative
analysis to the contrary notwithstanding, at the time of the
_procès-verbaux_ of the commission.

[13] We will also give the conclusions of the commission on this
point.

"An eruptive affection of this sort might not of itself have a
very grave character, nor threaten serious danger or disastrous
consequences. Still, that from which Marianne Garrot had suffered
would indicate by its duration, by its resistance to the treatment
which had been prescribed and faithfully followed, and by its
continual and progressive spreading, a very decidedly malignant
character, the inoculation, so to speak, of a deeply seated _virus_,
to expel which would require long and persevering attention, with a
patient continuance of the treatment already adopted or of some other
more appropriate and effectual one.

"The rapid though not instantaneous disappearance of the white
eruption from the face of the patient is very different from the
usual effect of chemical preparations; for the first lotion produced
a perceptible improvement or partial cure _instantaneously_, which
was advanced by the second, made four days afterward; and without the
aid of any other remedy, these two lotions accomplished a complete
restoration in a few days by a gradual and rapid progress.

"Now, the liquid the employment of which produced this speedy effect
was nothing but water, without any special properties, and without
any relation or appropriateness to the disease which it overcame;
and which, besides, if it had possessed any such qualities, would
long before have produced the effect through the daily use which the
patient made of it for drinking and washing.

"This cure cannot, then, be ascribed to the natural efficacy of
the Massabielle water, and all the circumstances, as it would
seem--namely, the tenacity and activity of the eruption, the
rapidity of the cure, and the inappropriateness of the element which
brought it about--concur to show in it a cause foreign and superior
to natural agents."--_Extract from the 15th procès-verbal of the
commission._

[14] Ninth procès-verbal of the commission.




OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBORS.


In the adjustment of differences to which conflicting interests or
a spirit of rivalry may give birth, governments, like individuals,
are prone to satisfy themselves with conventions limited to matters
immediately in dispute. They are like medical doctors, who treat
symptoms as the malady to be cured, and, satisfied with alleviating
present pain, leave its causes to war against mortal life, until
disease becomes chronic and incurable.

Whether the labors of the Joint High Commission, now sitting in
Washington, will be of this description, remains to be seen; but
such, it appears to us, has been the character of treaties or
conventions affecting commercial relations with our Canadian and
provincial neighbors. They seem not to have been founded upon any
intelligent consideration of the wants of contracting parties,
but, presupposing that there must be conflicting interests, are
devised to prevent rival industries from merging in unfriendliness
and strife. We ask, then, whether these rival interests have
legitimate existence. The answer to this question will be derived
from an examination of the statistics of the two countries--their
agricultural and other products--their climatic and social
conditions, and the commercial relations actually subsisting between
them, as well as those which both sustain to other countries and
peoples.

The productions of a country are properly classified according to the
sources whence they are derived.

We have, then, five distinct classes of products, namely: The
natural productions of the sea, the earth, the forest, and the
results of industry applied to agriculture and manufactures.

Let us now turn to the map of British America. Beginning at the east,
the waters of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence are rich
in fisheries. They yield salmon, mackerel, codfish, haddock, ling,
herring, and oysters, in great abundance. Newfoundland has not enough
of agriculture to save its own population from absolute suffering
when there is a failure in the catch of fish along its shores. It
possesses rich though undeveloped deposits of copper, iron, and other
ores. Prince Edward Island, in the centre of the mackerel fisheries,
is, perhaps, more favored by nature than the other maritime
provinces. Every acre of its surface may be reckoned as arable land.
Its agriculture, always limited to the growth of hay, oats, potatoes,
and turnips, is only partially developed, though even now yielding
a considerable surplus for export. Its forests are exhausted of
timber. And though, from habit, its people still continue to build
wooden ships to send "home" for sale, they are obliged to import
the material for their construction. The southern part of Nova
Scotia contains a considerable portion of good farm lands; yielding
the invariable crops of hay, oats, potatoes, and turnips. In some
districts, apples and pears, of excellent quality, are grown in
abundance. The eastern portion, especially the island of Cape Breton,
is rich in coal, lime, freestone, and marble; all so placed as to be
easily accessible to commerce. Even now, despite protective duties
on colonial products, the streets of some of our Atlantic cities are
lighted with gas from Nova Scotia coal.

Gold has been found in sufficient quantity to afford opportunity
for speculation, but not for profit. The yield for 1867 was 27,583
oz. = $413,745; for 1868, 20,541 oz. = $308,115. The same amount of
capital applied to the growing of potatoes would doubtless afford
a much larger return. Coal is the most important mineral product;
and its chief market is found in the United States. The net amount
mined in one year was 418,313 tons; sold for home consumption and
to neighboring colonies, 176,392 tons; sent to the United States,
241,921 tons.

New Brunswick offers the same agricultural products as the
neighboring provinces of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. A
great part of its territory, like the northern part of Maine, is
cold, rocky, and inarable. But its forests yield large quantities
of pine lumber, oak, beech, maple, and other valuable woods, and
bark for tanning leather. This source of wealth is, however, rapidly
failing. The forests begin to give evidence of exhaustion. St.
John already asks what shall be her resource when the lumber is
gone. Formerly, ship-building was a large interest in these lower
provinces. But from the growing scarcity of ship timber, as well as
from the more general use of iron vessels, it has been declining from
year to year.

We see, then, what these provinces can now contribute to commerce;
and we also see their prime deficiency. They cannot supply their
people with bread. That comes from Canada and the United States.
But Canada does not want their mackerel or other fish, their oats,
potatoes, turnips, or hay. She wants money; and for want of a nearer
market, the surplus oats must be sent upon a very doubtful venture
across the ocean, the mackerel to the United States, and the dried
fish to the West Indies and Brazil, to get money to pay for Canadian
bread. But time is money. It is more than money--it is life. And when
we take into account the loss of time in going to and fro across
the ocean, and the great expenditure of unproductive labor that is
required by this selling to Peter on one side of the world to pay
Paul on the other, we cannot help believing that the poor provincial
pays a high price for bread to eat and clothes to wear, as well
as for the various products of other lands which, from being only
conveniences, have become the necessaries of life.

We come now to the Province of Quebec--prior to the Dominion, called
Canada East. Nearly all her territory lies north of the forty-sixth
parallel of latitude. Need we say that agriculture, save for the few
and slender productions of cold climates, is here impossible? For
nearly seven months of the year the greater part of her rivers and
harbors are closed to commerce by bars of impenetrable ice. The soil,
and every industry relating to it, is under the dominion of frost.

The forests of timber may be accessible despite the snows of
winter, and in the early spring her people may hunt seals along the
coasts of Labrador; but during the long period of actual winter,
her agriculturists, nearly her whole industrial population, must
be employed upon indoor labor, or be left to hibernate in positive
idleness. It is simply impossible that agriculture can ever be a
successful industry in so rigorous a climate as that of Quebec.

Going westward through what was once called Canada West, now the
Province of Ontario, we find a peninsula bounded by the St. Lawrence
River, Lake Ontario, and Lake Erie, on the south and east; and by
Lakes St. Clair and Huron, with their connecting straits, on the
west. This peninsula, south of 45° N., comprises the wheat-growing
lands of Canada east of Lake Winnipeg. Its area is something less
than that of the State of New York. It produces good crops of wheat
and other cereals, and nearly all vegetables and fruits grown
in our northern and northwestern states. Farther west, we have
the valleys of the Saskatchewan and its tributaries, capable of
producing cereals, grasses, potatoes, and other vegetables. But our
information, derived from missionaries and others long resident in
that region, induces the belief that it is mere folly to regard a
country in whose streams the fish lie torpid, and where the snow-fall
is not enough to protect the land from killing frosts, in winter, as
suited to the growth of cereals for export, or as capable of giving
bread to any considerable population.

Much has been said and written concerning the territory lying on the
Pacific coast. We believe it is well ascertained that the climate
of British Columbia west of the mountains--we might well add the
southeast coast of Alaska--is as mild as that of the state of New
York. Unfortunately, it is very much more moist; so much more that
it never can become a good agricultural country. The reason is so
obvious that one is hardly disposed to question the assertion. The
vast accumulations of ice and snow in and immediately north of
Behring Strait, and on the high mountain range lying on the east side
of this territory, must produce intense cold when the wind blows from
the north and east. When the warm air comes from the southwest,
the whole atmosphere must resemble a vapor-bath. Seeds may readily
germinate, but can they produce ripe crops?

We have recently discussed this subject with a friend who has had
intimate personal acquaintance with this coast for more than ten
years, and we but reiterate his assertion in saying that, north of
Oregon, agriculture is not a safe reliance for the support of a
colony. We do not doubt that hay, oats, and potatoes will grow there.
It is well known that they may grow where the sub-soil is everlasting
ice. But we know that agriculture cannot be profitable either there
or where the heats of summer last just long enough to melt the snows
on adjacent mountains and convert the soil to mud. There must always
be an excess of moisture to contend with in maturing crops. Our
information as to the fact is positive. But suppose that, in process
of time, by the clearing of forest lands, and other causes incident
to the peopling and cultivation of the soil, these difficulties were
overcome. Does any one believe that the products of the land could
be carried by rail and inland waters through a distance of three
thousand miles, and two or three thousand more by sea, and, after
successive reshipments, at last pay the producer--save in cumulation
of expenses added to the original cost of goods received in return?
If, then, this far western country should ever have an excess of food
or other commodities, they must find a readier market than either the
far-off country of eastern Canada or more distant lands can afford.
Its trade must be with the neighboring states of Washington, Oregon,
and California. Will the people, on either side, long consent to pay
tribute to government officials for the privilege of exchanging the
fruits of their toil?

Were they really of different races--distinct in language, manners,
and customs beyond the degree that always makes the dwellers in one
village imagine its "excellent society" a little superior to that of
the neighboring hamlet--we might say, yes! But knowing, as we do,
that they are by race, by conditions of soil and climate, and by
reason of mutual interests, but one people, we do not believe it.

Let us now glance at the map of the United States. Leaving out Maine,
northern New Hampshire, and Vermont, in the northeast; the narrow
belt north of the 48th parallel, between Lake Superior and the
Pacific Ocean, in the northwest; Florida, Louisiana, and Southern
Texas in the south; the whole vast area between the 32d and 46th
parallels of latitude, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean--in
extent equivalent to three-fourths of all Europe--is suited to the
production of wheat, rye, barley, Indian corn, oats, hay, potatoes,
and every fruit found in temperate climates. There are no frosts
to render agriculture a mere speculative enterprise; no bonds of
ice to close the ports to commerce. Seed-time and harvest may be
counted upon as certainly as the succession of seasons. Can there
be a doubt that here the material interest forming the basis of all
others is agriculture? We have no exact data for a comparison of the
several products of the United States and British America; but for
our immediate purpose it is quite unnecessary to present tables of
statistics. We refer only to chief products. First--of those common
to both countries, the productions of the United States are to the
productions of Canada and the Lower Provinces as 13 to 1. The whole
agricultural products of the United States, excluding those of
orchards, vineyards, and gardens--which would present a still wider
difference--are to those of Canada as 15 to 1. The annual yield of
Indian corn in the United States is worth upwards of $800,000,000,
or about five times the entire value of the agricultural product
of British America. If we include in the comparison the values of
animals and animal products, orchards, vineyards, and gardens, the
proportion is something nearer 30 to 1, while the breadth of improved
land is not as 10 to 1. And this while the breadth of our improved
land is not more than one-thirteenth of our territory--though double
the whole area of Great Britain and Ireland--and while any great
expansion of agriculture in Canada is forbidden by the conditions
of soil and climate. Are not these considerations sufficient to
show the absurdity of persistence in the development of _rivalry_
in agricultural and commercial interests? Do we not see that in the
United States agriculture is legitimately the greatest industrial
interest, and that in Canada it is not? And we may well ask why the
industrial population of Canada should not be employed in utilizing
its timber and other products of the forest and the mine, or,
where material is more readily found in the neighboring country,
using the forces so abundantly provided by their inland waters and
mines of coal, as well as by the muscle half-wasted for want of
use, in supplying fabrics which they now import, and pay for by
the scanty labors of just half the time that God has given them?
These considerations are in some degree applicable to New England.
The difference is, that New England knows it, and acts upon the
knowledge.

Manufacturing is the appropriate industry of cold climates. When this
is acknowledged, hibernation ceases. The people are no longer forced
to eke out a meagre existence in winter upon the slender profits
of toil spent in contention with chilling winds and frosts. True,
Canada--a small part of it--produces bread for export. We know it:
and we also know that every loaf costs twice as much, in human toil,
as the better loaf yielded by the more generous soils and genial suns
of Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, New York, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and
California. Canada produces good beef, mutton, pork, and, of course,
the raw materials for manufactures incident to these products. But
the herdsmen on the plains of Illinois, Iowa, Florida, and Texas
would grow rich in selling beeves, swine, and sheep for the cost of
their keeping through a Canadian winter!

On the other hand, we see, in some parts of our own country, whole
communities of people engaged in mechanical industries, while the
earth calls for tillage. Even in our more populous territories,
enough of what should be fruitful lands to yield subsistence to a
larger population than Canada will ever contain, lies fallow and
neglected. But our commercial relations are adverse to the proper
adjustment of industrial pursuits.

The Canadians dare not rely upon their neighbors for bread to eat,
any more than those neighbors would venture to build their workshops
and factories in Canada. The more venturesome try to obviate the
difficulty, to some extent, by illicit trade; but all the obstacles
to legitimate commerce--to the conveniences of living--remain; and
they must remain as long as the American and Canadian producers have
to pay tribute to Cæsar on exchanging the fruits of their labors.
Reciprocity treaties may modify, but they cannot remove, this great
obstacle to prosperous trade.

Treaties regulating trade cannot so change the industries of the
two countries as to confine large agricultural enterprises to the
soil and climate that would insure success, nor send the artisan,
now living on rich uncultivated lands, to till the earth. What means
the extraordinary emigration from Canada to the States? And how can
we account for the sudden expansion of manufacturing industries in
Montreal and other Canadian towns? It means that, while governments
are discussing treaties for reciprocal trade, their people are
practising reciprocal emigration--but with a difference. The Canadian
becomes an American citizen--the American very rarely a British
subject. We recollect two incidents in our own experience apropos to
the matter under consideration.

Some two years ago we passed a summer in the "Lower Provinces."
In the parlor of our hotel, we fell into conversation with an
intelligent man of business who proved to be a commercial traveller
from Canada. His specialty was boots and shoes. On mentioning that
Lynn, in Massachusetts, was the great shoe factory of "the States,"
his reply was, "Yes! the head of our firm is from Lynn." Lynn had
gone to Montreal to employ Canadian hands in turning Canadian
leather into boots and shoes to supply colonial markets. "The head
of our firm," like other heads of firms, had solved the problem of
appropriate industry as far as he was concerned. He had learned where
material, and hands to work it, were cheapest, and he was utilizing
them. He had emigrated to employ the cheap labor that could not
emigrate. At another time, we met a well-dressed mechanic who was not
at _home_. His home was in "the States." He was only visiting his
birthplace and kindred. In reply to the remark that the high wages
which had enticed him to the States were only high in sound, since
greenbacks were at a great discount, and food, clothing, and rent at
inflated prices, his reply evinced a perfect understanding of the
whole question, as it affected him and the class to which he belonged.

"True," said he, "I am paid in greenbacks; but I have a better house,
better food, and better clothes than I ever had before. And at the
end of the year, my surplus greenbacks are worth more, _in gold_,
than I could get for a year's labor in this colony."

Here are two parties whose interests are reciprocal, whose social
conditions are essentially the same, who live in juxtaposition to
each other, but with broad ocean between them and other countries
and peoples, frittering away material interests, wasting revenues
that of right should be employed for their advancement in social
life, to gratify a spirit of antagonism where even rivalry should
be deemed insane. But is there no remedy for these disorders in our
political economy? We think there is a very obvious one; and if we
may not say, "What God has joined together, let not man put asunder,"
because the parties are not agreed, we can and do say, the sooner
they are agreed, the better for both. We would say to Canada, do not
waste your time and strength in trying to effect impossibilities.
Let us see your many rivers alive with the artisans who can send to
the market something else than ship-timber and deals. Let us see
the smoke of the forge and the foundry rise in proximity to your
mines of coal. We want all that you can make, and have no fear that
you will in any degree impair the prosperity of our own industrial
people. And we will pay you in bread, better and cheaper than you can
get from your colder and less fruitful lands. And when your coarser
materials are wrought into shape for export, we have skilled labor,
nearer than Britain, to receive your surplus products and fashion
them into the thousand fabrics which only skilled labor can supply.

We have no desire to see your wheat-fields fail or to decry their
products in the market. We only say that they are too limited for
dangerous competition with ours. And we further say, that if you
will but develop other and more legitimate industries, so that your
wheat-growing districts cannot feed your people, we will be sure to
have bread enough and to spare. And you may be also sure that all
your efforts will not so overstock the markets we can offer as to
make trade languish, when the thousands now peopling this continent
shall become millions, though the Old World should want nothing that
you can give. And, then, you have but a doubtful road to the markets
of the Old World. For half the year your highway to the ocean and
to other lands must be across our territory. Intercolonial railways
through unsettled and unproductive countries will not answer the
demands of commerce. They will not pay; and, if they would, the
interests served ought not to be so burdened where access may be had
to readier and cheaper lines of communication.

Does all this imply annexation? Call it what you will. As one of your
Canadian statesmen said to the people of a lesser province, "If you
do not want us to annex you, we are willing that you should annex
us." If you are more conservative than we are, a little conservatism
will do us no harm; and the interests you would conserve would be
quite as safe under the eagle's beak as under the lion's paw. If one
be a bird, the other is surely a beast of prey; and we believe that
harmless folk have less to apprehend from one alone than from the
jealous rivalries of both.

Of one thing we feel assured: the time is not far distant when
the people of this northern half of America will have to adopt a
policy so distinct from that of the older nations of Europe that
self-preservation will demand a union of power where there is now an
evident identity of interests.

It were well that this union should be preceded by such guarantees
of existing rights and privileges as might, without specific and
just conventions, be open to subsequent question and dispute. And it
were also well for governments to direct the march which necessity
compels their people to make, rather than incur the risk of finding
themselves at variance with those for whose greater good civil
government is designed. We do not purpose to discuss the origin
or foundation of civil government. It is enough for us to know
that man requires and God wills it; and that, in the absence of
other and higher sanctions, the best evidence of his will is found
in the intelligent, honest consent of the governed. Does any one
doubt what the more intelligent and honest people of Canada and the
United States require? We do not ask what may be the _rôle_ of the
political adventurer, the office-seeker, the government speculator
or tuft-hunter. We always know that the end of all their loyalty or
patriotism is self. But we ask what is needed for the greater good
of the people. Not alone the people of to-day or to-morrow, but of
the future as well. How the people of to-day esteem the policy of
their lawgivers, may be known by their conduct under it. And the
army of government revenue officers and detectives on either side
along the frontiers of Canada and "the States" offers sufficient
evidence of the esteem in which the laws of trade are held. We know
not which is the more corrupt--the law-breakers or the agents of
the law; but we do know, from the notoriety of the fact, that the
commercial relations now existing between the Canadas and the States
are, in effect, so demoralizing, to commercial people and commercial
interests, that the laws which propose to govern them were better
abrogated than left to offer a premium to chicanery and fraud.

We are neither alarmists nor political propagandists. We have no
greedy desire for our neighbor's goods, no fanatical wish to impose
our political dogmas or theories upon the people of other states. We
but behold and see what is before and around us--and, seeing it, we
only give utterance to belief that has grown and strengthened, until
scarcely a doubt remains, when we say that we believe the ultimate
union of the United States and British America to be inevitable. The
time may be more or less distant, the occasion and the means may be
as yet undreamed of; but the event seems as certain as the coming of
the morrow's sun while the shades of evening gather over and around
us. If, unfortunately, war should take the place of peaceful union,
the calamity would hardly be less to us than to Canada.

By peaceful union, existing rights of the weaker party are made
secure. By war, they are jeopardized and may be lost. But to us, as
well as to them, war would be a calamity of such fearful magnitude,
that we are constrained to look with hope to the time when the
conflicting interests of the Old World shall have no power to disturb
the peaceful relations that should always exist between ourselves and
our neighbors.




ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION.

SECOND ARTICLE.


The whole scope of the subject properly comprised under the title
"Higher Education" obviously includes all that belongs to every kind
of institute of learning above common schools. We have selected
this title in order to leave freedom to ourselves to discourse upon
any part of the subject we might think proper, although in our
first article we limited our remarks to a class of schools intended
for that which is more strictly to be designated as intermediate
education. We have a few additional remarks to offer upon the same
part of our subject, after which we will proceed to throw out a few
suggestions upon some of its remaining and still more important
portions. We are not attempting to treat these topics fully and
minutely, and our observations will be, therefore, brief and
desultory.

In regard to the course of studies to be pursued in intermediate
schools, it is a question of great practical moment how to arrange
the several branches to be taught to the pupils in such a way as to
prepare them most efficiently for the future occupations of their
lives. The course common to all ought to be made up of those studies
which are alike necessary or important to all. In addition to these
common studies, certain special branches should be taught, or the
distinct branches of the common course more extensively carried
out, for distinct classes of pupils, varying these optional studies
according to the different occupations for which they are preparing.
For instance, a moderate quantity of mathematics and a rudimental,
general course of instruction in physical sciences are sufficient for
all, except those who will need greater knowledge and practice in
them for use in their profession. It is useless to attempt, in these
days, education on the encyclopædic principle. The common and solid
basis of all education once laid, the more specific it becomes, the
better; and for want of good sense and skill in selecting studies,
apportioning the relative time and labor given to them, and directing
them to a definite end, very great waste and loss are incurred in
education.

One other most important point, which we merely notice, is the
propriety of providing the most thorough instruction in the modern
languages, especially the French, which can more easily be done, as
we suppose, in the schools of which we are speaking, that no time
whatever, or at most but a moderate amount, is given to the ancient
languages. Without going further into details, it is obvious that
schools of the intermediate class have an unlimited sphere in which
they can give any kind and degree of instruction belonging to the
most extensive and liberal education, deducting the classics, and
stopping short of the university, properly so called. Nor is there
any reason why, if we had universities in the highest sense of the
term, the pupils of these schools should not afterward enjoy all the
privileges they offer which do not require a knowledge of the ancient
languages. We will not say anything on the vexed classical question.
Did it seem to be practicable, we should strongly favor making the
study of Latin a part of the education of all who go beyond the
common rudiments, as well girls as boys, to such an extent that they
could understand the divine offices of the church. For all other uses
or advantages, we are inclined to think that many pupils who occupy
a great deal of time in gaining a very imperfect smattering of Latin
and Greek, might better spare it for other studies.[15]

However the question may be eventually settled in regard to the
classics as a part of general education, it is certain that they must
retain their place in the education of the clergy, and of at least a
select portion of those who are destined for other learned pursuits
and professions. We shall speak more fully about this part of the
subject a little further on. Before leaving the topic of English
education, however, we have one or two supplementary observations to
make, suggested by the remarks of other writers which we have come
across since we began writing the present article.

F. Dalgairns, in an article which he has published in the
_Contemporary Review_, has expressed himself in a manner quite
similar to our own respecting the necessity of a return to the
scholastic philosophy. His remarks have given us great pleasure,
and they furnish one more proof of the tendency toward unity in
philosophical doctrine among Catholics which is daily spreading and
gaining strength. One observation of his on this head is specially
worthy of attention. He says that it is necessary, if we desire to
teach the scholastic philosophy to those who have received or are
receiving a modern or English education, to translate and explain
its terms in the best and most intelligible English. A mere literal
translation from Latin text-books will not answer the purpose.
This is very true, and we cannot refrain from expressing the wish
that the health and occupations of F. Dalgairns may permit him to
write an entire series of philosophical essays, like the one he
has just published on the _Soul_, to which we have just referred.
Indeed, we know of no one better fitted by intellectual aptitude for
metaphysical reasoning and mastery of the requisite art as a writer,
to prepare a manual of philosophy for English students.

The _Dublin Review_ has repeated and sanctioned the observations of
F. Dalgairns, and has added something to them equally worthy to be
noticed--to wit, that our Catholic text-books of logic need to be
improved by incorporating into them the results of the more careful
and thorough analysis of the laws of logic which has been made by
several English writers. It is very true that, although the English
metaphysic is a sorry affair, there have been several very acute
logicians among modern English thinkers; as, for instance, Mr. Mill,
Mr. De Morgan, and Sir William Hamilton. We suppose that the _Dublin
Review_ intends to designate the doctrine of what is technically
called the "quantification of the predicate" made known by the two
authors last mentioned, simultaneously and independently of each
other, as a real discovery in logical science, and an addition to
Aristotle's laws. We hope the matter will be further discussed,
and that not only English and American writers interested in the
subject of philosophical teaching will give it their attention, but
Continental scholars also. For our own part, our _rôle_ at present
is the modest one of giving hints and provoking discussion, and we
therefore abstain from going any deeper than a mere scratch of the
rich soil we hope to see well dug and planted before long.

From another and very different quarter, we have found within a day
or two a corroboration of several opinions we expressed in our first
article. Prof. Seeley, of the University of Cambridge, England, in a
little volume of essays, noticed by us in another place, advocates
the teaching of logic in English schools, dwells on the importance of
teaching history after a better method, and sketches out a plan of
improving the instruction given in medium schools and universities,
which is well worthy of being read and thought over by those who have
the direction of education.

But we will turn now to another and still higher department of
education, which embraces the courses of study proper to the
university and the schools which are preparatory to it. Beginning
with that branch of study which must undoubtedly still continue to
form an essential and principal branch of the strictly collegiate
education, the classics, we do not hesitate to say that this branch,
instead of being less, ought to be more thoroughly and completely
cultivated. In so far as Latin is concerned, it is evident that those
who aim at anything more than the degree of knowledge requisite for
understanding better the modern languages, and the terms which are in
common use derived from Latin, or, perhaps, for a more intelligent
appreciation of church offices, ought to master the language fully,
together with its classical literature. The reasons which prove this
statement apply with tenfold force to ecclesiastics, for whom Latin
ought to be a second mother-tongue. It is not necessary to give these
reasons, for they are well known and fully appreciated by all who are
concerned with the collegiate or ecclesiastical education of Catholic
youth.

The question of Greek is a distinct one. For those who study the
classics for the sake of their intrinsic value as works of art, Greek
has the precedence of Latin in importance. It is evident, therefore,
that a most thorough and extensive course of Greek is necessary for
students of this class. Whether such a course ought to be made a
part of the obligatory collegiate curriculum of studies, or merely
provided for a select class who may choose to enter upon it, we leave
to the discretion and judgment of the learned. Undoubtedly, we ought
to have a certain number of accomplished Grecians among our men of
letters. It is necessary in the interests of ecclesiastical learning
that we should have thorough Greek scholars among our clergy. For
all useful purposes, however, the value of the amount of Greek
actually learned by the majority is exceedingly small, and not to
be compared with the practical utility of a knowledge of any one of
several modern languages, for example, the German. A clergyman,
for instance, who does not aspire to become a learned philologist,
but only to make himself acquainted with the labors of the best
commentators on the Scripture, will not find it very necessary to
be able to read the Septuagint or the Greek New Testament. As for
Hebrew, whatever can be learned by a short and superficial course
will be almost useless. If he desires to read Aristotle, Plato, or
the Greek fathers, for the sake of their sense and ideas, he can do
so in the Latin translations without any fear of being led into any
erroneous interpretation. The point we are driving at is, that the
thorough study of Latin is the most essential thing to be secured in
a _classical_ course. Philosophy; a moderate course of mathematics;
the English language and literature; the physical sciences, and the
modern languages, especially the French, are the other essentials
of a complete collegiate course. Whatever time remains will be most
usefully employed in the study of history and of modern political
and social questions, branches which are certainly essential to
a complete liberal education, though for many, or perhaps most,
students their thorough cultivation may have to be postponed until
after their college course is finished. The improvement of the
collegiate education in all these branches, requires, of course,
a corresponding improvement in the preparatory schools, since the
school and college depend on each other. It is our opinion, in which
we are sure that the men most experienced in these matters concur,
that those who begin their schooling at the earliest suitable age
need to be well trained in an excellent preparatory school until
the age of seventeen, before they are fit to profit fully by a high
collegiate course. Those who begin later must enter college at a
more advanced age, unless they can make up by diligence for lost
time, or be content with a shorter course of study. The raising of
the conditions for entering college, which can be done gradually,
must improve the preparatory schools, and the improvement of these
schools will in turn benefit the colleges, by furnishing them with
subjects fitted for a higher course of studies.

In saying this, we beg to disavow any intention of undervaluing or
finding fault with the colleges and schools at present existing,
or the learned and laborious corps of teachers employed in them.
They deserve the highest meed of praise and gratitude, and we may
well congratulate ourselves on the truly vast work which has been
accomplished, at great cost and by dint of great efforts, in the
cause of Catholic education in this country. But our motto should
ever be, like that of the past generations of laborers in this great
cause, "Upward and onward!" We trust, therefore, that all we may say
in favor of improvement will be taken as an encouragement and not as
a fault-finding criticism--as a friendly suggestion, and not as a
presumptuous attempt at dictation.

We have now reached the proper place for speaking of the great
necessity of a Catholic University in the United States. A
well-conducted college for undergraduates is not a university,
though it is often dignified with that name; but is merely one of
the principal constituent parts of a university. In regard to the
proper constitution, nature, and conduct of a university, much has
been written, of late, both in Europe and America. In Europe, those
who write on the subject either consider the subject of improvement
or reform in universities already existing, or the demands existing
in various quarters for the foundation of new ones. These last are
chiefly among Catholics, who are extremely alive to this necessity
in several countries, but especially in Germany and England. The
foundation of a great Catholic University for Germany at the spot
which is most appropriate for such a grand undertaking, on account
of its hallowed and scholastic memories, Fulda, has been determined.
We hope that the efforts to make the Catholic University of Dublin
completely successful, and to found another in England, may speedily
produce their desired result. In this country, the heads of the
older Protestant colleges are considering what measures can be taken
to raise these institutions to the level of the universities of
Europe. Among the papers which we have read from different quarters
on this subject, those of Professor Seeley, of Cambridge, and of one
or two professors of Yale College, writing in the _New Englander_,
have especially attracted our attention; and we may have occasion
to reproduce some of their remarks or suggestions in the present
article. Among the Catholics of the United States, the Germans have
manifested what looks like the most serious disposition which has
yet shown itself for taking the actual initiative in the movement.
We rejoice to see it, and hope they may go on. They are a most
respectable body; their energy, wealth, and power of organized
action are great. Germany is full of young ecclesiastics of the best
education, who are sighing for employment, and competent to fill
chairs in all the departments except that of English literature.
We have but one precaution to suggest, in case this enterprise
is undertaken, which is: that proper care be taken to secure the
entire subordination of the corps of governors and teachers to the
hierarchy and the Holy See, and to ascertain the strict orthodoxy
of the persons called to fill the professorial chairs. We want no
followers of Hermes, Döllinger, or any other leader of a German sect
in philosophy or theology; and persons of that class whose _rôle_ is
played out at home, might be the very first to look out for a new
field in which to practise their manœuvres, in a German University
in the United States, if they saw a chance of securing in it the
desirable position of professors--a position which has special
attractions for the German mind.

The _Advocate_ of Louisville has recently spoken out very strongly on
the need of a Catholic University in this country; and the topic is
frequently broached in conversation, as, indeed, it has been for the
last fifteen years. Let the Germans go forward and take the lead if
they are able and willing; but this will not lessen the necessity of
the same action on the part of the other Catholics of the country,
who, we may hope, will be stimulated by the example of a body of men
so much smaller in number than themselves. When the time comes for
action in this matter, the direction of it will be in higher hands
than ours; but, meanwhile, we will indulge ourselves in the at least
harmless amusement of sketching an ideal plan of the university as it
lies in our own imagination, and of the possible method of making it
a reality.

A university is a corporation of learned and studious men who are
devoted to the acquisition and communication of science and art
in all their higher branches. It may be more or less complete and
extensive. In its greatest extension it ought to comprise one or
more colleges for undergraduates, schools of all the special
professional studies, and a school of the higher and more profound
studies in every department of literature and science. It must have
a permanent body of learned men residing within its precincts, whose
lives are entirely devoted to study and instruction. It must have
a vast library; museums of science and antiquities; a gallery of
painting, sculpture, and all kinds of artistic works; a complete
scientific apparatus, a botanical garden, magnificent buildings,
beautiful chapels, and a grand collegiate church, with its chapter
of clergymen and perfectly trained choir. It should have, also, a
great publishing-house, and issue regularly its periodical reviews
and magazines, as well as books, of the first class of excellence
in the several distinct departments of science and letters. It must
be richly endowed, and well governed, under the supreme control
and direction of the hierarchy and the Holy See. A plan combining
the chief distinctive features of the Roman University, Oxford,
Louvain, and the best universities of France and Germany, with some
improvements, would represent the full and complete idea we have in
our mind.

When we come to the practical question. What could be done now, at
once, toward the beginning of such a colossal undertaking? it is by
no means so easy to solve it as it is to sketch the plan of our ideal
university. We do not fancy, of course, that such a grand institution
as this we have described, or even one similar to the best existing
European universities, can be created in a hurry by any speedy or
summary process. But if it is commenced now, can it not be brought
to completion by the beginning of the twentieth century? It seems to
us that in the year 1900 or 1925 we shall need not one only, but
three grand Catholic universities in the United States. That we can
and ought to begin the work of founding one without delay, we have
no doubt. The difficulty is, however, in pointing out a sensible
and feasible method of doing well what many or most of us are ready
to acknowledge ought to be done quickly. Let us suppose that the
requisite authority and the necessary funds are confided to the hands
of the proper commission, who are to lay the first stones in the
foundation of a university. How should they proceed, and what should
they first undertake? As these high powers exist only potentially and
in our own imagination, we can be certain that they will not take
offence if we presume to offer them our opinion and advice.

What is the first and most obvious want which we seek to satisfy
by founding a university? It is the want of a collegiate system of
education and discipline superior to the one already existing in
our colleges, and equal to any existing elsewhere. The first thing
to be done, then, is to select some already existing college, or to
establish a new one, as the nucleus of the future university. We will
suppose that some one of our best colleges can be found which has the
requisite advantages of location, etc., making it an eligible place
for a great university. Let measures be taken to place the grade of
education and instruction in this college at the highest mark. The
first of these measures must be to give it a corps of professors
and tutors fully equal to their task, and to make the position of
these professors a dignified, honorable, and permanent one. Another
measure of immediate necessity would be the total separation of the
college from the grammar-school, and the establishment of a system
of discipline suitable not for boys but for young men. The mere
announcement by sufficiently high authority that such a system would
be inaugurated in a college, would draw at once within its walls
students enough eager to begin a thorough course of study, to secure
the success of the experiment. At first, the course of study already
in vogue might be carried on, merely adding to it such branches as
would not presuppose a previous preparation not actually possessed
by the students. For admission to the class of the next year to
come, the conditions might be raised one grade higher, and thus by
successive changes, previously made known, the maximum standard
might be reached without inconvenience or injustice to any; and the
grammar-schools would be enabled and obliged to prepare their pupils
expressly for the examination they would have to pass for admittance
into the college. The college thus properly planted and cultivated
would grow of itself in due time to maturity and perfection. Nothing
more is wanted than a good system, fit men to administer it, plenty
of money, and a body of youth fit and desirous to be instructed and
educated in the best manner. The library, the scientific cabinets,
the philosophical apparatus, the buildings, grounds, and other
exterior means and appliances, should be provided for as speedily and
amply as circumstances would permit.

The second great want, in our opinion, is the provision for
ecclesiastical students of the advantages for education which can
only be completely furnished by a university, and which cannot,
therefore, be fully enjoyed at separate ecclesiastical seminaries.
The Little Seminary is only a superior kind of grammar-school, even
though it gives instruction in the ancient languages and some other
branches to the same extent with a college. The Grand Seminary is,
strictly speaking, a college for instruction in theology, although
it includes a year or two of that study of philosophy which is only
introductory to the theological course. A thorough university course,
in which all the instruction preparatory to theology should be
finished, would give a more complete and thorough education to young
ecclesiastics, fit them much better for their professional studies,
and prepare them much more efficaciously for the high position
which belongs, by all divine and human right, to the priesthood.
This is the way in which the clergy, both secular and regular, were
trained during the Middle Ages. The system of separate training
came in afterward, and has been kept up by a sort of necessity,
chiefly because the universities have become so secularized as to be
dangerous places. We have touched, in these last words, the tender
spot, which we well know must be handled delicately. The great
argument for secluding young ecclesiastics in seminaries entirely
separate from secular colleges is, that their morals, their piety,
their vocation, are otherwise endangered. We reply to this by a
suggestion intended to do away with the objection to a university
life, and at the same time to show how its advantages may be secured.
Let both systems be combined. Let there be a college exclusively
intended for young ecclesiastics, in which they shall be kept under
the discipline of the Little Seminary, at the university. The Little
Seminary will then take its place as a separate grammar-school for
boys who are intended for the ecclesiastical state. From this school
they can pass, not before their seventeenth year, to the college at
the university, and they will have seven years still remaining in
which to finish their education, before they arrive at the canonical
age for ordination to the priesthood. It seems to us that the
separate college is a sufficient security for the morals, piety, and
vocation of any young man above seventeen years of age who is fit
to be a priest in this country outside of the walls of a monastery.
Moreover, we are speaking about a model Catholic university, which,
we should hope, would not be so extremely dangerous a place for young
men. We have never heard that Louvain is considered in that light
by the clergy of Belgium, and the glimpse we had of a large body of
the Louvain students at Malines during the session of the Congress
of 1867, gave us the most favorable impression of their virtuous
character.

The university should also be the seat of the principal Grand
Seminary, and of a school of Higher Theology. The reasons for
locating the place of education for ecclesiastics at a university
apply to all the grades of their distinct schools above that of the
grammar-school with nearly equal force, and they are very weighty in
their nature. They concern in part the professors and in part the
students. So far as the former are concerned, it is evident that
they would derive the greatest advantage from the facilities for
study and intercourse with learned men afforded by the university,
and would exercise the most salutary influence over the professors
in the departments of philosophy and secular science. One great end
of the university is to collect together a great body of learned men
devoted to the pursuit of universal science; and it is obvious that
this cannot be successfully accomplished unless the ecclesiastical
colleges are included within the corporation.

In regard to the students, it seems plain enough that all that
part of their course which precedes theology can be much more
thoroughly carried on at a university of the highest class than at
a Little Seminary, especially if these seminaries are numerous and
therefore necessarily limited in numbers and all kinds of means for
improvement. A concentration of the endowments, the instructors,
and the pupils in one grand institution, makes it possible to give
a much better and higher kind of education, and saves a great deal
of labor besides. It is especially, however, in relation to the
lectures on physical science, and the cultivation of other general
branches distinct from the routine of class recitations, that the
university has the advantage over the seminary. The students of
theology, moreover, can receive great benefit from lectures of this
kind, and from the libraries, museums, cabinets, etc., which a
great university will possess, as well as from the greater ability
and learning which men chosen to fill the chairs of sacred science
in such an institution are likely to have, in comparison with
those who can be made available for giving instruction in many of
the smaller seminaries. Over and above all these advantages for
actually gaining a greater amount of knowledge, there is the immense
advantage to be gained of bringing up together and binding into one
intellectual brotherhood our most highly educated Catholic youth.
There is something in the atmosphere and the surroundings of a
great university which quickens and enlarges the intellectual life;
brightens the faculties; trains the mind for its future career, and
fits it to act in society and upon men. The alma mater is a centre
of influences and associations lasting through life. The learned
men residing there, and their pupils in all professions, are bound
together by sacred ties, which are not only a cause of pleasure to
them in future years, but of great power for good in the community.
Such a university as we have described would in twenty-five years
produce a body of alumni who would intellectually exert a great
influence over the Catholic community throughout the United States,
and make themselves respected by all classes of educated men. The
clergy ought to retain the first place and a commanding influence
among this body of educated Catholics. For this purpose, it seems to
us that they ought to be educated with them, and look to the same
university as their alma mater.

We see no reason, moreover, why the religious orders and
congregations should not share and co-operate in the labors and
advantages of this great enterprise. The smaller congregations find
the suitable education of their postulants a difficult task. One or
more colleges at a university, where these students could reside
by themselves, under their own rule and superior, but receiving
their instruction from the university professors, would solve this
difficulty. The older and more numerous religious societies have
greater facilities for educating their students, and are governed
by their own old and peculiar traditions. We will not presume so
far as to give them any suggestions from our modern brain in regard
to matters in which they have the experience of from one to six
centuries. It strikes us, however, as a very pleasing and quite
mediæval idea, that our proposed grand university, which we may as
well make as splendid as possible while it remains purely ideal,
should have its Dominican, Jesuit, Sulpician, and Lazarist colleges.
There is no reason why such colleges should not make constituent
parts of the university, each one having its own laws and regulating
its own internal affairs according to its own standards.

We will say nothing about the law, medical, scientific, and artistic
schools which a university ought to have to make it complete.

We have only attempted to show how a university might be started
on its career. Once really alive and in motion, the rest would be
more easily provided for. Undoubtedly, a vast sum of money would
be requisite for such an undertaking. Our wealthy Catholics would
have to exercise a princely liberality, and the whole mass of the
people would be obliged to contribute generously for many years in
succession. We must admire the remarkable instances of princely
liberality in the cause of general education recently given by Mr.
Peabody, Mr. Cornell, and a considerable number of other wealthy
gentlemen in the United States, whose benefactions to colleges and
schools have been frequent and munificent. Let us have one-twentieth
part of the money expended on education by other religious or learned
societies, and we will show again what we did in former ages, when we
founded Oxford, Cambridge, St. Gall, Bec, Paris, Salamanca, Fulda,
Louvain, Cologne, Pavia, Padua, Bologna, and the other famous schools
of the middle ages. What more important or more glorious work can
be proposed to the Catholics of the United States than this? We
know what our Catholic youth are, for we have spent much time in
giving them both scholastic and religious instruction. What can be
more ingenuous, bright, and promising than their character--more
capable of being moulded and formed to everything that is virtuous
and noble? They contain the material which only needs the proper
formation to produce a new and better age, which we fervently hope
is already beginning to dawn. As the Alcuins, Lanfrancs, and other
illustrious fathers of education in former times were among the
principal agents in producing epochs of new life, so those who take
up their work now in our own country, and throughout Christendom,
will be among the principal benefactors of the church and the human
race, and deserve for themselves a most honorable crown.

Our topic in the present article has led us to present almost
exclusively and in strong light the advantages to be derived from a
university and from university education, in relation both to the
ecclesiastical state and secular professions. To prevent mistake,
we add in conclusion, that we do not desire or anticipate the
suppression or merging into one institution of all our colleges and
seminaries. It is scarcely possible that all the students of this
vast country should be educated in one place. The necessity for other
colleges and seminaries will of itself create or continue them.
The university will give them an example and model to follow, will
furnish those not already amply provided for from the bosom of old
and learned religious orders with professors, will give those who
desire it a chance to complete their studies after leaving college
by residing for a time within its walls, and will reign as a queen
among lesser institutions, giving tone, character, and uniformity
to the scientific and literary community of Catholic scholars
throughout the country. There are doubtless certain respects in
which the universities of Europe must always have an advantage over
any institution we can hope to found in this new country. Some,
or even many, will always have a longing for a residence abroad
in these ancient seats of learning, which they may and ought to
gratify, when it lies in their power to do so. Above all other
places, Rome must ever draw to her those who desire to drink faith,
piety, and knowledge from their fountain-head. And, if a better age
is really coming, not only will the Pope necessarily be secured in
a more tranquil and firm possession of his temporal kingdom in all
the extent which he justly claims, that he may govern the church
with all the plenitude of his supremacy, but also that the wealth
and prosperity of the Roman Church may give to her institutions
of learning an amplitude and splendor which they have never yet
attained. Planets are nevertheless necessary as well as a sun in a
system, and so also are satellites. However ample and extensive the
provisions made at Rome may be for educating a select portion of
the clergy of all countries, they can never make it unnecessary to
provide also in every country for the best and highest education of
its own clergy. So far as we can see, every reason and consideration
cries out imperatively for the speedy foundation of a Catholic
University in the United States.

FOOTNOTE:

[15] Prof. Seeley advocates the plan of devoting a part of the time
during the last two years at English schools to Latin. The proper
study of English must also include in it an analysis of the Latin
element, and an explanation of the derivation of words of Latin
origin.




THE WARNING.


      Ye nations of earth, give ear, give ear,
        From Holy Writ comes the warning true,
      The voice of the ancient captive seer
        Through the dim-aisled centuries reaches you.

      Thus saith the seer: "Ye have lifted high
        Against his altar your impious hand;
      From the Lord's spoiled house is heard the cry,
        'Destruction swift to this guilty land.'"

      But a deeper than Belshazzar's wrong
        Veils the light of these mournful years,
      And many an eye in the saintly throng
        Turns from the earth bedimmed with tears.

      The Holy City by promise given,
        A precious dower to the spotless bride,
      Is trodden by feet outlawed, unshriven,
        And her streets with martyrs' blood are dyed.

      The crown that ever has fallen as light
        On holy brows, from the Hand above,
      Has been torn away by sinful might
        From him whose rule was a father's love.

      The deed was by one; the sin by all;
        By ay, or by silence, ye gave assent;
      Ye saw the shrine to the spoiler fall,
        Nor hand ye lifted, nor aid ye lent.

      O nations of earth! give ear, give ear,
        From Holy Writ comes the warning true,
      The voice of the ancient captive seer,
        From the far-off ages, speaks to you!




WRITING MATERIALS OF THE ANCIENTS.


It is curious to remark the various and apparently incongruous
substances which men, in their efforts to preserve knowledge
or transmit ideas, have used as writing materials. The animal,
vegetable, and mineral kingdoms have each and all been laid under
contribution. In every land and in every age, stone and marble have
been employed to perpetuate the remembrance of the great deeds of
history. Inscriptions cut in jasper, cornelian, and agate are to
be met with in every collection of antiquities. A cone of basalt
covered with cuneiform characters was found some years since in the
river Euphrates, and is now preserved in the Imperial Library of
Paris, side by side with the sun-baked bricks on which the Babylonian
astronomers were wont during seven centuries to inscribe their
observations on the starry heavens.

The Romans made books of bronze, in which they engraved the
concessions granted to their colonies; and they preserved on tablets
and pillars of the same durable material the decrees and treaties of
the senate, and sometimes, even, the speeches of their emperors.

"The Bœotians," says the learned Greek geographer Pausanias, "showed
me a roll of lead on which was inscribed the whole work of Hesiod,
but in characters that time had nearly effaced."

"Who will grant me," cries Job, "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 else be graven with an instrument in
flintstone?" (xix. 23 24.)

Tanned skins were likewise employed for writing purposes by the
Asiatics, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Celts. In the Brussels
library there is to be seen a manuscript of the Pentateuch, believed
to be anterior to the ninth century, written on fifty-seven skins
sewed together, and forming a roll more than thirty-six yards long.

The custom of writing on leathern garments appears to have been
prevalent during the middle ages. The great Italian poet, Petrarch,
used to wear a leathern vest, on which, while sitting or sauntering
near the shaded margin of the fountain of Vaucluse, he would note
each passing thought, each poetic fancy. This precious relic, covered
with erasures, still existed in 1527.

We read, too, of a certain abbot who strictly enjoined his monks, if
they happened to meet with any of the works of St. Athanasius, to
transcribe the precious volumes on their clothes, should paper be
unattainable.

The use of prepared sheep-skin, that is, parchment, dates from
about a hundred and fifty years before the Christian era; its Latin
name, _pergamena_, is very evidently derived from Pergamos, but
whether because invented there, or because it was more perfectly
prepared in that city than elsewhere, is a question not yet decided.
Besides white and yellow parchment, the ancients employed purple,
blue, and violet. These dark shades were intended to be written on
with gold and silver ink. Several very beautiful manuscripts of
this description are to be seen in the Imperial Library of Paris.
Parchment manuscripts were sometimes of great size; thus, the roll
containing the inquiry concerning the Knights Templars, which is
still preserved in the archives of France, is full twenty-three yards
long.

Parchment became very scarce during the invasions of the barbarians,
and this scarcity gave rise to the custom of effacing the characters
of ancient manuscripts in order to write a second time on the skin.
This unfortunate practice, most prevalent among the Romans, and
which was continued until the invention of rag paper, has occasioned
the loss of many literary and scientific treasures. The primitive
characters of some few of these doubly-written manuscripts, or
palimpsests, as they are called, have been restored by chemical
science, and several valuable works recovered; among others, for
instance, Cicero's admirable treatise on the Republic.

Even the intestines of animals have been used as writing material.
The magnificent library of Constantinople, burnt under the Emperor
of the East, Basiliscus, is said to have contained, among its other
curiosities, the Iliad and the Odyssey, traced in letters of gold on
the intestine of a serpent. This rare specimen of caligraphy measured
one hundred and twenty feet.

The most ancient inscribed characters we possess are upon wood. A
sycamore tablet containing an engraved inscription was discovered,
about thirty years since, in one of the Memphis pyramids; the
learned Egyptologist who deciphered it pronounced it to have been in
existence some five thousand nine hundred years! The Chinese, also,
before they invented paper two thousand years ago, wrote upon wood
and bamboo. Many oriental nations still make books of palm-leaves, on
which the characters are scratched with a sharp-pointed instrument.
The Syracusans of bygone times used to write their votes on an
olive-leaf. The modern Maldivians trace their hopes, fears, and
wishes on the gigantic foliage of their favorite tree, the makareko,
of which each leaf is a yard long and half a yard wide. The Imperial
Library of Paris, rich in all that is rare and interesting, possesses
several ancient leaf manuscripts, some beautifully varnished and gilt.

In Rome, before the use of bronze tables and columns, the laws were
engraven on oak boards. "The annals of the pagan high-priests," says
a French writer, "which related day by day the principal events of
the year, were probably written with black ink on an _album_, that
is, a wooden plank whitened with white-lead. These annals ceased a
hundred and twenty years before Christ, but the use of the _album_
was kept up some time longer." The Romans also wrote their wills on
wood.

Linen cloth covered with writing has been found in most of the
mummy-cases that have been opened. The Egyptian Museum in the Louvre
contains several rituals on cloth. The Sibylline Oracles were traced
on cloth. The first copy of the Emperor Aurelian's journal that was
made after his death was written on cloth, and is still preserved in
the Library of the Vatican. On cloth were written also some of the
edicts of the first Christian emperors.

No certain epoch can be ascribed to the fabrication of paper from
the papyrus reed. The celebrated French _savant_, Champollion the
younger, discovered during his travels in Egypt several contracts
written on papyrus, which by their date must have been drawn up
seventeen hundred years B.C.

Egypt appears to have kept the monopoly of the papyrus paper trade.
The principal manufactories of it were situated at Alexandria, and
so important an article of commerce did it become that a dearth of
papyrus was the cause of several popular disturbances in some of
the great cities of Italy and Greece. Under the Emperor Tiberius, a
scarcity in the supply produced so formidable a riot in Rome, that
the senate was compelled to take measures similar to those necessary
in years of famine, and actually had to name commissaries, whose duty
it was to distribute to each citizen the quantity of writing-paper he
absolutely required.

The papyrus reed seems indeed to have been ancient Egypt's greatest
material blessing, for not only was it the principal article of
foreign commerce and source of immense wealth in the form of paper,
but it was also of the most extraordinary utility to the poorer
classes. Household utensils of every description were fabricated from
its roots; boats were constructed of its stem; roofing, sail-cloth,
ropes, and clothes were made of its bark; and from the appellation
of "eaters of papyrus," often applied to the Egyptians by the
Greeks, some have thought that it was a common article of food. How
extraordinary does it then seem that a plant of such inestimable
value should ever have disappeared from a land which derived such
benefits from it. Nevertheless, it is a singular fact that the
papyrus is no longer to be found in Egypt; recent travellers assure
us that not a stalk is to be seen at the present day in the Delta.
Sicily alone now possesses the beautiful reed.

We are ignorant of the exact period of the introduction of the
papyrus paper into Greece and Italy, but Pliny has left us copious
details concerning the manipulations it underwent among the
Romans. Sizing was then, as it is now, one of the most important
operations in paper-making. The membranous covering of the stem of
the papyrus reed was far from being of a firm, compact texture, and
the Alexandrian factories probably sent it forth very imperfectly
prepared. The best quality of paper was made by gluing together,
with starch and vinegar, two sheets of papyrus, one transversely
to the other, and then sizing them. These sheets were sometimes of
considerable dimensions; documents have been discovered written on
paper three yards in length.

Those true lovers of literature, art, and science, the Athenians,
raised a statue to Philtatius--to him who first taught them the
secret of sizing paper!

It is a curious fact that, about thirty years since, the vegetable
size used by the ancient Egyptians was introduced, with some slight
improvement, as a new discovery, into the paper manufactories of
France, and has now almost entirely abolished the use of animal size
in that country for all purposes connected with the fabrication of
paper.

About the fourth century, the Arabs made Europe acquainted with
cotton paper, just then invented in Damascus, thereby causing a
great diminution in the papyrus trade. A long struggle ensued
between the rival productions, which was only put an end to at the
commencement of the twelfth century, by the invention of paper
manufactured from flaxen and hempen refuse. The papyrus disappeared
at once and completely; soon forgotten by commerce, but immortal in
the remembrance of poets and sages--immortal as the pages of Cicero
and Virgil, whose sweet and eloquent thoughts were first traced on
Egypt's reed.

Until the present time, this flaxen and hempen rag paper has
been produced in sufficient quantities for the necessities of our
civilization, but as civilization increases, and as education becomes
more general, especially among the masses of Europe, it is evident
that the supply of rags will be inadequate to the demand, and wood
will most probably again be brought into requisition, as in the age
of Pericles.

Not, however, in the form of the ancient tablets, but transformed
by mechanical and chemical science into sheets of white and pliant
paper; or the numerous fibrous plants of Algeria, Cuba, and other
tropical countries will be turned to account, and no longer permitted
to waste their usefulness on the desert air. Even now, in France,
among the Vosges Mountains, there is a paper manufactory where wood
is manipulated with the most complete success. And some few years
since, a newspaper paragraph informed the civilized world that a
process of making paper from marble had been discovered by a canny
Scotchman of Glasgow! It is not, indeed, impossible that the marble
painfully hewn and engraven by our forefathers to perpetuate the
memory of a bloody struggle or of some vain triumph, may in time to
come, by the magic power of modern science, become a sheet of snowy
tissue, whereon the fair, slight hand of beauty shall trace the
dainty nothings of fashionable life!

The tablets so continually mentioned by ancient writers must be
noted. They were made of parchment, thin boards, ivory, or metal,
prepared to receive ink, or coated with wax and written on with a
stylus, or sharp-pointed pencil. In the Fourth Book of Kings we read:
"I will efface Jerusalem as tables are wont to be effaced, and I
will erase and turn it, and draw the pencil over the face thereof."
Herodotus and Demosthenes speak of their tablets. In Rome, they were
used not only as note-books and journals, but also for correspondence
in the city and its environs, while the papyrus served for letters
intended to be sent to a distance. The receiver of one of these notes
not unfrequently returned his answer on the same tablet. Made of
African cypress and highly ornamented and inlaid, they were given
as presents, precisely as portfolios, souvenirs, and note-books are
nowadays. On the wax-covered tablets was generally traced the first
rough copy of any document, to be afterward neatly written out either
on papyrus or parchment. These wax-covered tablets were used in
France until the beginning of the last century.

Two-leaved tablets were called diptychs, and were sometimes of
extraordinary cost and beauty. The Roman consuls and high magistrates
were accustomed, on their first appointment to office, to present
their friends with ivory diptychs, exquisitely engraved and carved,
and ornamented with gold.

Ancient ink was composed of lamp-black and gum-water. Pliny says that
the addition of a little vinegar rendered it ineffaceable, and that
a little wormwood infused in it preserved the manuscript from mice.
This ink was used until the twelfth century, when our present common
ink was invented.

Not only black, but also red, blue, green, and yellow inks were
employed in antiquity. Sepia ink and Indian ink are mentioned by
Pliny. Red ink, made from a murex, was especially esteemed, and
reserved for the emperor's exclusive use, under pain of death to all
infringers of the privilege. Gold and silver inks, principally used
from the eighth to the tenth centuries, were also prized; writers
in gold, termed chrysographers, formed a class apart among writers
in general. The Imperial Library of Paris possesses several Greek
Gospels, and the _Livre des Heures_ of Charles the Bold, entirely
written in gold. Few manuscripts are extant written in silver; the
most celebrated are the Gospels, preserved in the Upsal Library.

The stylus, a dangerous weapon when made in iron, and proscribed
by Roman law, which required it to be of bone; the painting brush,
used still by the Chinese; the reed, which was cut and shaped like
our modern pen, and with which some oriental nations write even now;
and the feather pen, which is mentioned by an anonymous writer of
the fifth century, were the general writing implements of antiquity
and the middle ages. Metallic pens are also supposed to have been
known; the Patriarchs of Constantinople were accustomed to sign their
official acts with a silver reed, probably of the form of a pen.

Some paintings found in Herculaneum give evidence that the ancients
were accustomed to make use of most, if not of all the various
conveniences with which modern writers surround themselves. The
writing-desk, the inkstand, the penknife, the eraser, the hone,
and the powder-box were well-known. They do not seem, however, to
have had the habit of sitting up to a table to write, but rested
their tablet or paper on their knee, or on their left hand, as the
orientals do at the present day.




DOÑA FORTUNA AND DON DINERO.[16]

FROM THE SPANISH OF FERNAN CABALLERO.


Well, sirs, Doña Fortuna and Don Dinero were so in love that you
never saw one without the other. The bucket follows the rope, and Don
Dinero followed Doña Fortuna till folks began to talk scandal. Then
they made up their minds to get married.

Don Dinero was a big swollen fellow, with a head of Peruvian gold, a
belly of Mexican silver, legs of the copper of Segovia, and shoes of
paper from the great factory of Madrid.[17]

Doña Fortuna was a mad-cap, without faith or law, very slippery,
uncertain, and queer, and blinder than a mole.

The pair were at cross purposes before they had finished the
wedding-cake. The woman wanted to take the command, but this did not
suit Don Dinero, who was of an overbearing and haughty disposition.
Why, sirs! my father (may glory be his rest!) used to say that if the
sea were to get married he would lose his fierceness. But Don Dinero
was more proud than the sea and did not lose his presumption.

As both wished to be first and best, and neither would consent to be
last or least, they determined to decide by a trial which of the two
had the more power.

"Look," said the wife to the husband, "do you see, down there in
the hollow of that olive-tree, that poor man so discouraged and
chop-fallen? Let's try whether you or I can do more for him."

The husband agreed, and they went right away, he croaking, and she
with a jump, and took up their quarters by the tree.

The man, who was a wretch that had never in his whole life seen
either of them, opened eyes like a pair of great olives when the two
appeared suddenly in front of him.

"God be with you!" said Don Dinero.

"And with his grace's worship also," replied the poor man.

"Don't you know me?"

"I only know his highness to serve him."

"You have never seen my face?"

"Never since God made me."

"How is that--have you nothing?"

"Yes, sir; I have six children as naked as colts, with throats
like old stocking-legs; but, as to property, I have only _grab and
swallow_, and often not that."

"Why don't you work?"

"Why? Because I can't find work, and I'm so unlucky that everything I
undertake turns out as crooked as a goat's horn. Since I married, it
appears as though a frost had fallen on me. I'm the fag of ill-hap.
Now, here--a master set us to dig him a well for a price, promising
doubloons when it should be finished, but giving not a single
_maravedi_[18] beforehand."

"The master was wise," remarked Don Dinero. "'Money taken, arms
broken,' is a good saying. Go on, my man."

"I put my soul in the work; for, notwithstanding your worship sees me
looking so forlorn, I am a man, sir."

"Yes," said Don Dinero, "I had perceived that."

"But there are four kinds of men, señor. There are men that are men;
there are good-for-naughts; and contemptible monkeys; and men that
are below monkeys, and not worth the water they drink. But, as I was
telling you, the deeper we dug, the lower down we went, but the fewer
signs we found of water. It appeared as if the centre of the world
had been dried. Lastly, and finally, we found nothing, señor, but a
cobbler."

"In the bowels of the earth!" exclaimed Don Dinero, indignant at
hearing that his ancestral palace was so meanly inhabited.

"No, señor!" said the man deprecatingly; "not in the bowels; further
on, in the country of the other tribe."

"What tribe, man?"

"The antipodes, señor."

"My friend, I am going to do you a favor," said Don Dinero pompously;
and he put a dollar in the man's hand.

The man hardly credited his eyes; joy lent wings to his feet, he was
not long in arriving at a baker's shop and buying bread, but, when he
went to take out his money, he found nothing in his pocket but the
hole through which his dollar had gone without saying good-by.

The poor fellow was in despair; he looked for it, but when did one
of his sort ever find anything? No; St. Anthony guards the pig that
is destined for the wolf. After the money he lost time, and after
time patience, and, that lost, he fell to casting after his bad luck
every curse that ever opened lips.

Doña Fortuna strained herself with laughing. Don Dinero's face turned
yellower with bile, but he had no remedy except to put his hand in
his pocket and bring out an _onza_[19] to give the man.

The poor fellow was so full of joy that it leaped out of his eyes.
He did not go for bread this time, but hurried to a dry-goods store
to buy a few clothes for his wife and children. When he handed the
_onza_ to pay for what he had bought, the dealer said, and stuck to
it, that the piece was bad; that no doubt its owner was a coiner of
false money, and that he was going to give him up to justice. On
hearing this, the poor man was confounded, and his face became so hot
that you might have toasted beans on it; but he took to his heels
and ran to tell Don Dinero what had happened, weeping the while with
shame and disappointment.

Doña Fortuna nearly burst herself with laughing, and Don Dinero felt
the mustard rising in his nose.[20] "Here," said he to the poor man,
"take these two thousand reals; your luck is truly bad; but if I
don't mend it, my power is less than I think."

The man set off so delighted that he saw nothing until he flattened
his nose against some robbers. They left him as his mother brought
him into the world.

When his wife chucked him under the chin and said it was her turn,
and it would soon be seen which had the more power, the petticoats or
the breeches, Don Dinero looked more shame-faced than a clown.

She then went to the poor man, who had thrown himself on the ground
and was tearing his hair, and blew on him. At the instant the lost
dollar lay under his hand. "Something is something," he said to
himself; "I'll buy bread for my children, for they have gone three
days on half a ration, and their stomachs must be as empty as a
charity-box."

As he passed before the shop where he had bought the clothes, the
dealer called him in, and begged of him to overlook his previous
rudeness; said that he had really believed the _onza_ to be a bad
one, but that the assayer, who happened to stop as he passed that
way, had assured him that it was one of the very best, rather over
than under weight, in fact. He asked leave to return the piece, and
the clothes besides, which he begged him to accept as an expression
of sorrow for the annoyance he had caused him.

The poor man declared himself satisfied, loaded his arms with the
things; and, if you will believe me, as he was crossing the plaza,
some soldiers of the civil guard were bringing in the highwaymen that
had robbed him. Immediately, the judge, who was one of the judges
God sends, made them restore the two thousand reals without costs
or waste. The poor man, in partnership with a neighbor of his, put
his money in a mine. Before they had dug down six feet they struck a
vein of gold, another of lead, and another of iron. Right away people
began to call him Don, then "You Sir," then Your Excellency. Since
that time Doña Fortuna has had her husband humbled and shut up in her
shoe, and she, more addle-pated and indiscriminating than ever, goes
on distributing her favors without rhyme or reason, without judgment
or discretion--madly, foolishly, generously, hit or miss, like the
blows of the blind stick; and one of them will reach the writer, if
the reader is pleased with the tale.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Madame Fortune and Sir Money.

[17] The Bank of Madrid.

[18] Less than a farthing.

[19] A gold piece valued at sixteen dollars.

[20] Was becoming angry.




ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.


      My brothers, ye are sad, and my sisters, ye are poor,
      But once was holy poverty the cloak that angels wore;
      My fathers, ye are lame, and my children, pale ye be,
      But in every face, by his dear grace, that blessed Lord I see
      Who brother is and father is, and all things, unto me.

      In the sigh of sick men's prayers, in the woeful leper's eye,
      In the pangs of wicked men, in the groans of them that die,
      Thy voice I hear, thine eye I see, thy thought doth hedge me in.
      Oh! may thy sinner bear thy stripes for them that toil in sin,
      And with thy ransomed suffering ones find me my choicest kin.

      For, whether down to pious rest on these bare stones I lie,
      Or if at last upon thy cross triumphantly I die,
      The joy of thee, the praise of thee, is more than all reward;
      For holy misery doth most with heavenly bliss accord:
      All ways are sweet, all wounds are dear, to them that seek the Lord.

      I made a harp to praise the Lord with ever-glorious strain;
      I tuned a harp to praise my God, and all its strings were pain:
      Its song was like to fire, but sweet its keenest agony,
      And thus in every tune and tear its burden seemed to be,
      "So great is the joy that I expect, all pain is joy to me."

      Through all the weary world do I an exiled orphan roam,
      Yet for thy sake were desert cave a palace and a home;
      And birds, and flowers, and stars are lights to read thy Scripture
          by,
      And earth is but a comment rude unto thy wondrous sky,
      The which to reach, my soul must teach earth's body how to die.

      With thy wayfaring ones my crust I've broken by the brooks,
      When flowers were as our children fair, our comrades were the oaks,
      And wildest forests for thy praise were churches, choirs, and
          clarks--
      Such house and kindred doth he find who to thy wisdom harks.
      Praise ye the Lord, ye spirits small--my sisters sweet, the larks!

      The untented air is home for me who in thy promise sleep,
      Or wake to find thee ever nigh, and still my sins to weep;
      And holy poverty's disguise is pleasant to thine eye;
      Yea, richer garb was never worn, that treasures may not buy,
      Since thou hast clad me with thy love, and clothed me with the sky.

      Oh! could I for one moment's light thy heavenly body see,
      All joy were pain, all pain were joy, all toil were bliss to me.
      I would give mine eyes for weeping, and my blood should flow like
          wine,
      To purchase in that sight of bliss one blessed look of thine,
      Who hath ransomed with a crown of pain this sinful soul of mine!

      My brethren, ye are poor, but as children ye are wise,
      Who wander through the wilderness in quest of paradise.
      O little children! seek the Lord, wherever he may be,
      Whose blessed face by his dear grace on every side I see,
      Who brother is, who father is, and all things, unto ye.




LETTER FROM ROME.


                                        ROME, Jan. 21, 1871.

Four months have gone by since the Italian troops entered Rome
through the breach made by the cannon of Cadorna, four months since
a new light dawned upon the Eternal City, and its regenerators set
about the accomplishment of their aspirations. What has been the
development of this third life of Rome--_la terza vita_, as Terenzio
Mamiani has been pleased to style it--in this its primal stage? The
child is father to the man--the seed produces the tree and its fruit.
So, too, do the beginnings of a political state give an index of its
future, fix the causes that are to produce the results of the future.
The history of these four months, then, must be looked on with
interest, and pondered with care.

The present century is universally considered an age of progress, and
it was in the name of progress that the forces of Victor Emmanuel
entered the capital of Christianity. Progress implies motion from one
state or condition to another more perfect: the simplicity of this
statement cannot be gainsaid, and we shall assume it as uncontested.
The party of progress took possession of Rome in the interest of
progress. Has Rome progressed during these months since the 20th of
September? Has she gone from her past state to one more perfect?
Facts must speak; and facts we give. One thing at a time.

Abundance and cheapness of food are the first essentials in the
well-being of a state, and necessarily connected with this is the
facility of obtaining it. We cannot say that food is scarce in
Rome; but the absolute and the relative cheapness have undergone a
decided change, to the disadvantage of the poorer as well as the
wealthier classes, since the 20th of September. The _mocinato_,
or so-called grist-tax, extending even to the grinding of dried
vegetables, chestnuts, and acorns, has sent up the price of bread.
Salt has risen at least a cent per pound. The further application
of the system of heavy taxation is not likely to make other
articles of prime necessity cheaper. And while this state of things
exists, the facility of obtaining food has become much less for the
poorer classes. The causes of this are to be sought in the want of
employers. It is the universal complaint that there is no work.
Before the coming of the present rulers, the army of the Pope,
composed in great part of young men of some means, spent a great deal
among the people. This source of gain ceased with the disbandment of
the Papal troops, for it is notorious _lippis et tonsoribus_, that
the men of the present contingent have barely enough daily allowance
to keep body and soul together. Besides this, ecclesiastics spent
their revenues, fixed by law and sure, with a liberal hand. Now, when
they find difficulty in getting even what they cannot be deprived of;
now that confiscation hangs over their heads with menacing aspect;
now that religious orders are called on to make immense outlays
to send their young men to places of safety--in one case to the
extent of six thousand dollars--it would be foolish to expect them
to sacrifice what is necessary for themselves; though, to do them
justice, they are always willing to share their little with the poor.
Dearth of foreign ecclesiastics, and of foreigners in general, is
another source of distress, and this is directly a consequence of
the invasion. The result of all this is that there is more misery in
the city of Rome than has been seen for many a day--beggars are more
numerous in the streets, and needy families, ashamed to beg, suffer
in silence or pour their tale of woe into the ear of the clergy, who
always are honored with the confidence of the poor and afflicted.
Surely this state of things is not an improvement on the plenty which
characterized the rule of the pontiffs. We cannot say Rome in this
respect has moved into a better sphere--that she has progressed.

Security of person and property is another essential object of the
attention of every state. No state that cannot guarantee this is
deserving of the name of having a good government. Under the Papal
rule, it is well known that not only in Rome did good order prevail,
as the immense multitude present at the Œcumenical Council can
attest, but that also on the frontiers of the territories governed
by the Pope, after the withdrawal of the French troops from Veroli
and Anagni, the energy displayed by the Roman delegate was such as
to liberate completely the provinces from the bands sprung from the
civil strifes of southern Italy. The city of Rome itself was a model
of good order and of personal safety. Now things are changed. Only
a few days ago, a "guardia di pubblica sicurezza" was stopped in
the streets and robbed of his watch and _revolver_. There is not a
day that has not in the daily papers its record of thefts and acts
of personal violence. Only a few days ago, there was a sacrilegious
robbery in the Church of St. Andrea della Valle. On the 8th of
December there was rioting with bloodshed in Rome. A band of young
students under the charge of a religious were stoned on Sunday,
January 15. On the 16th, the Very Rev. Rector of the "Ospizio degli
Orfanelli" was struck with a stone. It would be easy to multiply
examples, but those we have given are quite enough to show that
progress in security of person and property has not been attained
since the 20th of September, 1870.

Then public morality in the centre of Christianity could not fail
to be at a far higher standard, now that the regeneration of the
city of Rome has been accomplished. What bitter illusions fortune
delights in dispensing to those that trust her! Before the entrance
of Italian statesmen into Rome, vice and immorality did not dare
raise their heads--they could not flaunt themselves on the public
ways. Now there is a change, and the moral order of Italy has entered
through the breach at the Porta Pia. We say no more, the subject is a
delicate one, and we therefore refrain from penning facts notorious
in Rome. Surely, none who has received even an elementary training
in virtue will deem this state of things progress--an elevation to a
higher and more perfect state.

But the King of Italy came to Rome to protect the independence of the
Sovereign Pontiff, to save him from the bondage of foreign hordes.
Now, as the Pope is principally a spiritual sovereign, it is his
spiritual power that most needs protection; consequently, the King of
Italy and his faithful servants have been most zealous in preventing
acts or publications that would tend to diminish the respect due to
the Holy Father.

Incomprehensible, but true--the very opposite has taken place! We
have at hand the satirical paper, the _Don Pirlone Figlio_, of
January 19. On its first page is a ridiculous adaptation of the
heading used by the cardinal vicar in his official notifications to
the faithful. The same page has an article grossly disrespectful
to the Sovereign Pontiff, and insulting to the Belgian deputation,
who have just come on to present the protest of their countrymen,
and their contributions. The Holy Father is styled Giovanni Mastai
detto Colui ex-disponibile anche lui; the members of the deputation
are given ridiculous names; and the contributors of Peter Pence are
blackbirds caught in a cage; finally, a ridiculous discourse is
put in the mouth of the Pope, concluding with a benediction. The
illustration represents Pius IX. with a boot in his hand, in the act
of giving it to the Emperor of Germany, who figures as a cobbler.
Such are the illustrations and articles one sees exposed to the
public day by day. When we who have seen Rome under far different
circumstances witness these things, is it at all strange that we
refuse to see "the general respect shown to ecclesiastics in the
exercise of their sacred functions," even though on the faith of a
Lamarmora it be asserted to exist? Can we be blamed for thinking that
anything but progress in veneration of religion has been the result
of the taking of Rome?

After this, any of the advantages arising from the occupation of Rome
can have no weight sufficient to warrant much attention--for they
must be, as they are, material and of a low order--chiefly regarding
facility of communication and despatch in business matters, things
desirable in themselves, but, it would seem, purchased at a fearful
sacrifice.

Is this state of things to continue? Is the Italian kingdom on such
a permanent basis that the Papacy has no hope of a change that may
give it back its possessions? Or can the kingdom of Italy be brought
to make restitution of what it has seized, without itself undergoing
destruction? A word in reply to each of these queries. And first, is
this state of things to continue?

When we consider who the Sovereign Pontiff is, and consult the
opinions of men famed for their foresight and statesmanship, it
is difficult to deny that the restoration of the Pontiff to his
rights is very possible. Napoleon Bonaparte, although he afterwards
made Pius VII. his prisoner, left recorded his opinion that it was
impossible that the Pope should be the subject of any one sovereign,
and that it was providential the head of the church had been
given the possession of a small state to secure his independence.
M. Thiers, in commendation of whom we need say nothing, as his
reputation is world-wide, has clearly and forcibly proclaimed this
very opinion. In the debates on the temporal power in the French
Senate, in 1867, his voice was heard calling on France to protect
Rome, and it was his energy forced from the hypocritical government
of his country the famous word, uttered by Rouher, that struck
terror into Italy--"_Jamais_." One would imagine that now Rome has
fallen, and France is reduced to the verge of desperation, no man
of "liberal" political views would be foolhardy enough to risk his
reputation by reiterating an opinion like this. Yet, strange to
say, there is one who has been willing to run the risk, and that in
the very Chamber of Deputies at Florence. Only a few weeks ago, the
Deputy Toscanelli, a liberal, and, we learn, a free-thinker, with
a courage, a strength of argument, and flow of wit that gained the
respect and attention of the house, almost in the words of M. Thiers
gave the same opinion. In the days of the last of the Medici, said
the distinguished deputy, there was a court-jester riding a spirited
horse down the Via Calzaioli, in Florence. The horse got the better
of his rider, and started off at full speed. "Ho! Sor Fagioli," cried
out one of the crowd, "where are you going to fall?" "No one knows or
can know," was the jester's answer, as he held on with both hands.
Just so is it with the government; it has mounted a policy that is
running away with it, and neither it nor any one else knows where it
is going to fall. The government has gone to Rome, and in Rome it
cannot stay; it cannot hold its own face to face with the Pope. "I
give you, then, this advice: leave Rome, declare it a free city under
the protection of the kingdom of Italy." So much for the opinions of
political men of eminence; we will examine the question for a moment
on its intrinsic merits.

We know the Sovereign Pontiff in his official capacity of teacher of
the whole church is infallible in declarations regarding faith or
morals. But in other matters of policy, of fact, he has no guarantee
against error beyond what is afforded him by the use of the means
which he has at hand, the information of his advisers, and especially
of the Sacred College of Cardinals. Suppose for a moment this
means of information is done away with, or made a vehicle of untrue
statements. Suppose unworthy men are artfully intruded on the Pope,
and act in accordance with instructions received from the rulers of
Italy. Imagine Italy at war or on bad terms with the United States
or England. A crafty statesman sees an opportunity of putting in a
position to aid him in one or the other country an able man, through
the influence of some high ecclesiastic, whose good opinion will
have great weight with men of standing or with the people. The whole
matter is artfully carried out. There is an understanding between
the Italian statesman and his American or English friend; both act
cautiously and avoid alarming susceptibilities. The affair works
well. Persons around the Pope are made to drop a word incidentally in
praise of the virtue and ability of the one whom it is intended to
raise to power. The Pope in his relations with the bishops of foreign
countries, speaking of the prospects of the church in good faith,
speaks also to the ecclesiastic of whom we have made mention, and
in favorable terms, of the person in question. Who that knows human
nature can fail to see the thorough nature of the influence thus
used? The crafty originators are the ones to blame, and the harm done
is effected in perfect good faith by the unconscious instruments of
their design. To show we are not building on our fancy, we turn to
the pages of a man whose name all revere--Cardinal Wiseman. In his
_Recollections of the Last Four Popes_, he speaks of the character of
Pius VII.:

    "When no longer a monarch, but a captive--when bereft
    of all advice and sympathy, but pressed on close by
    those who, themselves probably deceived, thoroughly
    deceived him, he committed the one error of his life
    and pontificate, in 1813. For there came to him men
    'of the seed of Aaron,' who could not be expected to
    mislead him, themselves free and moving in the busiest
    of the world, who showed him, through the loopholes
    of his prison, that world from which he was shut out,
    as though agitated on its surface, and to its lowest
    depths, through his unbendingness; the church torn to
    schism, and religion weakened to destruction, from what
    they termed his obstinacy. He who had but prayed and
    bent his neck to suffering was made to appear in his
    own eyes a harsh and cruel master, who would rather
    see all perish than loose his grasp on unrelenting but
    impotent jurisdiction.

    "He yielded for a moment of conscientious alarm; he
    consented, though conditionally, under false but
    virtuous impressions, to the terms proposed to him for
    a new concordat. But no sooner had his upright mind
    discovered the error, than it nobly and successfully
    repaired it." (Chap. IV.)

Such are the words of a man writing after years of intercourse with
the first men of Europe. They are instructive words--for human nature
is ever the same. There are men still in Italy who follow out closely
the principles of Macchiavelli--to whom everything sacred or profane,
no matter what veneration may have surrounded it, is but the means
to self-aggrandizement and the satisfaction of ambition. It is for
the nations of the world to say whether they are willing to allow the
existence of the permanent danger to themselves, arising from the
subjection of the spiritual head of the church to any crowned head or
even republic whatsoever. Perhaps, of the two, the latter would be
the more to be dreaded. The Roman mobs that drove Eugenius IV. from
Rome, and pelted him as he went down the Tiber, or made many another
Pope seek safety in flight, could be easily gotten together again, as
the present residents of the Eternal City know only too well.

We answer, then, our first query, and say that this state of things
cannot last. Time, the great remedy of human ills, will solve this
question, and establish the See of Peter on a perfectly independent
basis--independent of all sovereign control, even if this be not done
shortly through the armed interference of European powers.

It is hardly necessary to inquire whether the Italian kingdom is so
firmly constituted that no hope of restoration of the Pope is to be
seen. For ourselves, we think there are indications that point to a
speedy dissolution of this state on the first breaking out of a war
between Italy and any great power. Her policy is to avoid entangling
alliances, and this she is following out, striving to propitiate the
Emperor of Germany for her leaning towards France. The first army
that will enter the peninsula to aid the Pope will shiver Italy to
fragments. The southern provinces have too lively a recollection of
the days of plenty under their kings, and too painful an impression
of heavy taxation and proconsular domination of the Piedmontese race,
to hesitate between submission to them and the regaining their own
autonomy, which will make Naples again one of the queenly capitals of
the world.

One index of the general discontent or indifference is the small
number of those who vote at the elections in proportion to those
who are inscribed on the electoral lists. The motto proposed by the
_Unità Cattolica_, the foremost Catholic journal of Italy--"_Neither
elected nor electors_"--has been adopted and acted upon by very many
throughout the country. We feel no difficulty in saying that the
majority of the Italians are not with the House of Savoy, nor are
they in favor of United Italy. The ruling power has the government
and the command of the army, a fact that quite accounts for the
existing state of things.

Our third question, whether the kingdom of Italy can be brought to
make restitution of the territories it has seized, without itself
undergoing destruction, remains to be answered. We believe it cannot,
unless half-measures--always more or less dangerous--be adopted. The
late spoliation is not more criminal than the first, and no amount of
_plébiscite_ can make it legitimate, no more than--to use the words
of the able editor of the _Unità Cattolica_--the popular approbation
of the condemnation of Jesus Christ legitimized the crucifixion.
The claim, then, to restitution extends to the whole of the former
provinces, justly held by the Popes to supply them with the revenue
needed to make them independent of the precarious contributions of
the Peter Pence, and which was none too large for that purpose.

Whatever may come, we know the future of the church is in the hands
of One in whose holding are the hearts of princes and peoples. What
we have to do is to pray earnestly for our spiritual head, aid him
by our means, console him with our sympathy, and give him whatever
support, moral or other, it be in our power to offer. And while we
do so, it is a joy to us to know we have lessened the grief of his
hardships by what we have done hitherto, even gladdened the hours of
his captivity. A few days ago, speaking to the Belgian deputation,
Pius IX. said: "Belgium gives me very often proofs of her fidelity.
Continue in the way in which you are walking; do not allow your
courage to fail. What is happening to-day is only a trial, and the
church came into existence in the midst of trials, lived always
amid them, and amid them she will end her earthly career. It is our
duty to battle and stand firm in the face of danger.... We have an
Italian proverb which says: It is one thing to talk of dying; quite
another to die. People speak very resignedly of persecutions, but
sometimes it is hard to bear them. The world offers to-day a very
sad spectacle, and particularly this our city of Rome, in which we
see things to which our eyes have not been accustomed. Let us all
pray together that God may soon deliver his church, and re-establish
public order, so deeply shaken. Your efforts, your prayers, your
pious pilgrimages, all tend to this end, and I therefore bless them
with all my heart." May the words of the Holy Father find an echo
in our hearts; let us not lose courage, but keep up our efforts, so
happily begun, and never rest till wrong be righted, until we see the
most sublime dignity and power on earth freed from the surroundings
that would seek to make it as little as themselves.




NEW PUBLICATIONS.


    MECHANISM IN THOUGHT AND MORALS. An Address
    delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of
    Harvard University, June 29, 1870. With Notes and
    Afterthoughts. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: James
    R. Osgood & Co. 1871.

Dr. Holmes is a Benvenuto Cellini in literature, and everything he
produces is of precious metal, skilfully enchased, and adorned with
gems of art. The present address is no exception to the general
rule, but rather an unusually good illustration of it. It is a
remarkably curious piece of work, containing many interesting facts
and speculations derived from the author's scientific studies on the
mechanism of the brain. There is nothing in it positively affirmed
which is necessarily materialistic, as far as we can see; rather, we
should say that its doctrine stands on one side of both materialism
and spiritualism, and can be reconciled with either. It can be
explained, if we have understood it correctly, in conformity with
the Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy, in such a way as not
to prejudice the truth of the distinct and spiritual nature of the
soul. The author, indeed, appears more inclined to that belief than
the opposite, although we are sorry to find him expressing himself
in so hesitating and dubious a manner. When he passes from thought
to morals, he gets out of his element, and displays a flippancy and
levity which may pass very well in humorous poetry, but are out of
place in treating of graver topics. His remarks on some points of
Catholic doctrine are so completely at fault as to show his entire
incompetency to meddle with the subject at all. His language in
regard to the Council of the Vatican and Pius IX. is more like that
of a pert and vulgar student of Calvinistic divinity than that of
an elegant and refined Cambridge professor. "But political freedom
inevitably generates a new type of religious character, as _the
conclave that contemplates endowing a dotard with infallibility_
has found out, we trust, before this time" (p. 95). Dr. Holmes has
apparently profited by his close observations among that class of
the female population of Boston who are wont to thrust their bodies
half out of their windows, and "exhaust the vocabulary, to each
other's detriment." We congratulate him, and the learned Society of
Phi Beta Kappa, on the choice sentence we have quoted above. We trust
those Catholics who are disposed to think that we can make use of
Harvard University as a place of education for our youth, will take
note of this sample of the language they may expect to hear in that
and similar institutions, and open their eyes to the necessity of
providing some better instruction for their sons than can be had at
such sources. Notwithstanding our high appreciation of Dr. Holmes's
genius, and the great pleasure we have derived from his works, we
regret to say that we must consider his influence on young people
grievously detrimental. In virtue of a reaction from Calvinism, he
has swung into an extreme of rationalism the effect of which is
checked in his own person by the influence of an unusually good heart
and an early religious education, but in itself is sure to overthrow
all reverence, faith, and moral principle. The whole effect of this
address on the minds of young men tends to a most pernicious result,
and encourages them, with a kind of thoughtless gaiety, to rush
forward in a career of mental and moral lawlessness.


    JESUS AND JERUSALEM; OR, THE WAY HOME. Books for
    Spiritual Reading. First Series. Boston: Patrick
    Donahoe. 1871.

Here we have a plain, practical, but very attractively and charmingly
written book of spiritual reading for everybody. It emanates from
the Convent of Poor Clares, Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland, who
are anything but poor in intellectual gifts and religious zeal. We
suppose it is from the pen of the gifted authoress of the _History
of Ireland_ and several other works of the highest literary merit.
The idea of the volume is apparently taken from the "Parable of a
Pilgrim" in F. Baker's _Sancta Sophia_, of which it is a minute
paraphrase and commentary. Its minuteness, diffuseness, and fluency
of style are, in our opinion, great merits, considering the end and
object of the book. It is easy reading, explains and enlarges on each
topic at length and in detail with great tact and discretion, and is
eminently fitted to help a person in the acquisition and practice of
the homely, everyday Christian virtues. Its bread is of fine quality,
broken up fine. It is eminently adapted for the young and simple,
timid beginners, and persons living an everyday busy life, and also
for the sick, the suffering, and the afflicted. At the same time,
a professor of theology, or even a bishop, may read it with great
profit and satisfaction. We recommend this book with more than usual
earnestness, and we trust the good Sisters of Kenmare will keep on
with their series, which must certainly produce an extraordinary
amount of good.


    ELIA; OR, SPAIN FIFTY YEARS AGO. Translated from
    the Spanish of Fernan Caballero. New York: Catholic
    Publication Society.

Fernan Caballero is the _nom de plume_ of Madame de Baer, who is now
an aged lady, though still in the full possession of her intellectual
powers. We admire the old Spanish character, customs, faith, and
chivalry. Mme. de Baer is their champion, and the enemy of the
revolution which has desolated that grand old Catholic country. This
is one of her stories written to that point, and we trust it will
find even here many a reader who will sympathize with the author,
and help to neutralize the poison, too widely spread, of modern
liberalism--the deadly epidemic of Spain and all Europe. It is a
very suitable book for school premiums, and ought to be in every
library. Other persons, also, will find it a lively and entertaining
book, with a strong dash of the peculiar quaintness usually found in
Spanish stories.


    ROMAN IMPERIALISM, AND OTHER LECTURES AND ESSAYS. By
    J. R. Seelye, M.D., Professor of Modern History in
    the University of Cambridge. (Author of "Ecce Homo.")
    Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1871.

These essays are cleverly and agreeably written. Their topics are
very miscellaneous, but all of them important and interesting. Those
on "Liberal Education in Universities," "English in Schools," "The
Church as a Teacher of Morality," and the "Teaching of Politics," are
especially worthy of attention. Some of the writers of the "Broad
Church," to which Prof. Seelye belongs, are quite remarkable for
their honorable candor, largeness of mind, originality of thought,
and, in certain respects, approximation to Catholic views. We like to
read them better than most other Protestant writers, and often find
their writings instructive. We have seldom seen a book written by a
Protestant in which a Catholic can find so many things to approve of
and be pleased with, and so few in which he is obliged to differ from
the author, as the present volume.


    LIFE AND SELECT WRITINGS OF THE VEN. LOUIS MARIE
    GRIGNON DE MONTFORT. Translated from the French by a
    Secular Priest. London: Richardson. 1870.

The Ven. Grignon de Montfort was a priest of noble birth, who lived
and labored in France as a missionary, and became the founder of two
religious congregations, during the eighteenth century. He was a
person of great individuality of character and many peculiar gifts
and traits, which made his life quite a salient one, if we may be
allowed the expression. His talents for poetry, music, and the arts
of design, and a marked poetic fervor in his temperament, gave a
certain zest and raciness to his career as a missionary, and were a
great help to his success. His character was chivalrous and daring,
and his sanctity shows a kind of exaltation, a sort of gay mockery
of danger, contempt, privation, and suffering, which it almost takes
one's breath away to contemplate. His life was very short, but his
labors, persecutions, and services were very great. He is best
known in modern times by his extraordinary devotion to the Blessed
Virgin. It is altogether probable that ere long the process of his
canonization will be completed, and a decree of the Vicar of Christ
enroll his name among the saints. Those who are capable of profiting
by an example, and by writings of such sublime spirituality, will
find something in this book seldom to be met with even in the Lives
of Saints.


    A TEXT-BOOK OF ELEMENTARY CHEMISTRY, THEORETICAL AND
    INORGANIC. By George F. Barker, M.D., Professor of
    Physiological Chemistry in Yale College, New Haven,
    Conn. Charles C. Chatfield & Co. 1870.

Chemical science, as Prof. Barker remarks in his preface, has indeed
undergone a remarkable revolution in the last few years; and the
text-books which were excellent not long ago are now almost useless,
as far as the theoretical part of the subject is concerned. And
though, in all probability, more brilliant discoveries as to the
internal constitution of matter, the formation of molecules, and the
nature of the chemical adhesion of atoms are in store than any yet
made, still the conclusions recently attained on these points maybe
considered as well established, and can by no means be considered
as crude speculations, to be overthrown to-morrow by others of no
greater weight. Chemistry seems, at present, to promise better than
ever before to solve the problem of the arrangement of the ultimate
material elements, though, perhaps, the laws of the forces which
connect them, and the nature of the molecular movements, will be
rather obtained from other sources.

Prof. Barker's book is an admirable exponent of the science in its
present state. The first quarter of it is devoted to an explanation
of the principles of theoretical chemistry, and it is this, of
course, which is specially interesting and important at present,
though the remainder will be found much easier reading. The work is
one, however, which is meant to be studied, rather than merely read,
containing a great deal of information, and giving much material for
mental exercise throughout. It would not have been easy to put more
valuable matter in its few pages, and its merits as a text-book are
very great. The type is very clear, and the illustrations numerous
and excellent.


    VARIETIES OF IRISH HISTORY. By James J. Gaskin. Dublin:
    W. B. Kelly. New York: The Catholic Publication
    Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.

If Mr. Gaskin had not stated in his preface that "the present work
is, in great part, based on a lecture delivered by the author before
a highly influential, intelligent, and fashionable audience," we
would have anticipated, from the title of his book, something not
only interesting but instructive relating to Irish history. But
knowing very well what pleases a highly fashionable audience in the
dwarfed and provincialized capital of Ireland, this announcement
was enough to satisfy us that his conception of what makes history
was neither very lucid nor comprehensive. It is unnecessary to say
that, within the shadow of Dublin Castle, any rash man who would
be unthinking enough to write or speak seriously about the history
of Ireland--that protracted tragedy upon which the curtain has not
yet fallen--would soon be voted a bore, or something worse, by
the fashionable people who are privileged once or twice a year to
kiss the hand of the representative of royalty. But the author is
evidently too well bred to commit such a solecism, and accordingly,
under a very attractive exterior, he treats us to all sorts of
gossip, from the doings of _Gra na' Uile_, a sort of western Viqueen,
to the murder of Captain Glas, a Scotch privateersman. The intervals
between these two great historical events is filled up with the mock
regal ceremonies that used to be observed annually on the island
of Dalkey; reminiscences of Swift, Dr. Delaney, Curran, and other
distinguished men of the last century, which, though not new, are
pleasant to read; and some correct and elaborate descriptions of
scenery in the suburbs of Dublin, which will not be without interest
to those who have visited that part of Ireland. The _Varieties_ is
not a book which will find much favor with historical students, but
for railroad and steamboat travellers, who wish to read as they
run, and as a book for the drawing-room, being light in style and
handsomely illustrated, it will be found entertaining and agreeable.


    A HAND-BOOK OF LEGENDARY AND MYTHOLOGICAL ART. By Clara
    Erskine Clement. With Descriptive Illustrations. New
    York: Hurd & Houghton.

The best thing we can say about this book is that it affords another
striking proof that the Catholic Church is the genius of all true
poetry and art. One-half of the volume is devoted to sketches of
the lives of Catholic saints, the other half being equally divided
between legends of German localities and the gods and goddesses of
Greece and Rome. We look in vain for some notice of works of art or
poetic legend to which Protestantism, with its heroes, or modern
Rationalism, with no heroes, has given inspiration. The authoress,
however, is not a Catholic, for she calls us "Romanists," a vulgar
term, the use of which, she ought to know, we consider as impertinent
and insulting.

False legends and true biographies of our saints are strung together
without discrimination. This we would not complain of so much, if, as
she would seem to imply, they are both illustrated by art; but the
instances in which these apocryphal and unworthy stories have been
chosen by the painter or sculptor as fitting subjects are exceedingly
rare, and where they are, as in the case of Durer's painting of "St.
John Chrysostom's Penance," which is reproduced by the authoress
(shall we say with her in the preface, "to interest and instruct her
children"?), they bear evidence of an art degraded in inspiration
and debased in morals.


    SARSFIELD; OR, THE LAST GREAT STRUGGLE FOR IRELAND. By
    D. P. Conyngham. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

This short historical novel has been written for two purposes--to
disprove the correctness of the saying, attributed to Voltaire,
that the Irish always fought badly at home, and to illustrate, in a
popular manner, the struggle between James II. and his son-in-law,
the Prince of Orange. With due respect to the author, we submit that
too much importance has already been attached to Voltaire's _ipse
dixit_ with regard to the fighting qualities of the Irish. It is of
little importance, indeed, what that gifted infidel has said about
anything or anybody, as it is pretty well understood in our day that
among his numerous failings veracity was not very conspicuous. Mr.
Conyngham has, however, succeeded very creditably in accomplishing
his main object, and presents us with a succinct and truthful view of
the rival forces which, for three years, contested for the English
crown on the soil of Ireland. There is very little plot in the story,
the principal interest centring in the acts of Sarsfield and other
well-known historical personages; but the narrative of the war is
well sustained, and the author's conception of the inner life of his
principal characters is in the main correct and natural.


    ARTHUR BROWN. By Rev. Elijah Kellogg. Boston: Lee &
    Shepard.

This is one of that class of books for boys full of hair-breadth
escapes and improbable incidents. It is the first of _The Pleasant
Cove Series_, which means five more just like this. The fact that the
characters have been introduced in a former "series," and are to be
carried forward through the coming five volumes, renders the story a
little obscure at times. This, however, will not prevent boys who
enjoy tales of perilous sea voyages and marvellous encounters from
finding this volume interesting and amusing.


    PRAYERS AND CEREMONIES OF THE MASS; or, Moral,
    Doctrinal, and Liturgical Explanations of the Prayers
    and Ceremonies of the Mass. By Very Rev. John T.
    Sullivan, V.G. Diocese of Wheeling, W. Va. New York: D.
    & J. Sadlier & Co. 12mo. 1870.

The subject and nature of this little book are sufficiently expressed
in its title. The position of the Very Reverend author, and
approbations by the Archbishop of New York and the Right Reverend
Bishop of Wheeling, testify to its sound doctrine and usefulness as a
book of instruction.


    LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston:
    Fields, Osgood & Co.

_Pussy Willow_ is a charming girl and a charming woman, but we think
that it is not often that nature accomplishes so much even with
the aid of country air and simple, healthful habits and pleasures.
However, we must not forget the fairy's gift, of always looking at
the bright side of things. Pity we had not more of us this gift! But
the girls must read for themselves.


    FOLIA ECCLESIASTICA, ad notandum Missas persolvendas
    et persolutas, pro clero ordinata et disposita.
    Neo-Eboraci et Cincinnatii: sumptibus et typis
    Friderici Pustet.

This little memorandum book will be found quite useful for the
purpose designed. Besides the pages appropriated to the record of
Masses, there are also "Indices Neo-Communicantium, Confirmandorum,
Confraternitatum," etc., etc.


    SYNCHRONOLOGY OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN SACRED AND
    PROFANE HISTORY, FROM THE CREATION OF MAN TO THE
    PRESENT TIME. Third edition. Revised. Boston: Lee &
    Shepard. New York: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham. 1 vol.
    8vo.

Before its republication, this work should have been placed in the
hands of a competent editor. As it is now, it is very objectionable,
and loses all its value. Here is one quotation, taken at random.
Under the year 1362, we read: "Pope Urban V. at Avignon; beautifies
the city of Rome; presents the _right arm_ of Thomas Aquinas to
Charles V. of France as an _object of worship_."


    POEMS. By Bret Harte. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1871.

We have read this unpretending little volume with much interest.
The author is a true poet, and has the merit of originality quite
as much as of descriptive power. His more serious poems display a
high appreciation of the beautiful and the romantic, and there is a
Catholic tone about them. Those in dialect, with the other humorous
pieces, are equally pleasing in their way. The former, particularly,
reflect a side of life which is generally supposed the least poetical
of all. Mr. Bret Harte has "gathered honey from the weed."


CORRIGENDUM.--In the article "Which is the School of Religious
Fraudulence," in our last number, p. 791, col. 2, near the middle,
the sentence beginning, "It is no mark of falsity, therefore, in any
document," should be thus concluded: "that it occurs there, unless it
occurs there alone and nowhere else."


BOOKS RECEIVED.

    From JNO. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: A Circular Letter
    on the Temporal Power of the Popes; addressed to the
    clergy and laity of the Vicariate Apostolic of North
    Carolina. By the Right Rev. James Gibbons, D.D.

    From the YOUNG CRUSADER Office, Boston: Protests of
    the Pope and People against the Usurpation of the
    Sovereignty of Rome by the Piedmontese Government.

    From P. J. KENEDY. New York: The Life of St. Mary of
    Egypt. To which is added the Life of St. Cecilia and
    the Life of St. Bridget.

    From PETER F. CUNNINGHAM, Philadelphia: The Acts of the
    Early Martyrs. By J. H. M. Fastré, S.J.

    From LEYPOLDT & HOLT, New York: Across America and
    Asia. By Raphael Pumpelly. Fifth edition. Revised.--Art
    in the Netherlands. By H. Taine. Translated by J.
    Durand.

    From PATRICK DONAHOE, Boston: The "Our Father." Being
    illustrations of the several petitions of the Lord's
    Prayer. Translated from the German of the Rev. Dr. J.
    Emanuel Veith, by the Rev. Edward Cox, D.D.

    From ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston: Ad Clerum: Advice to a
    Young Preacher. By Joseph Parker, D.D.




      THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

      VOL. XIII., No. 74.--MAY, 1871.[21]


THE CHURCH ACCREDITS HERSELF[22]


Archbishop Manning's pastoral letter to his clergy on the first
council, _The Vatican and its Definitions_, to which are appended
the two constitutions the council adopted--the one the _Constitutio
de Fide Catholica_, and the other the _Constitutio Dogmatica Prima
de Ecclesia_--the case of Honorius, and the Letter of the German
bishops on the council, though containing little that is new to our
readers, is a volume which is highly valuable in itself, and most
convenient to every Catholic who would know the real character of the
council and what is the purport of its definitions. Few members of
the council were more assiduous in their attendance on its sessions
or took a more active part in its deliberations than the illustrious
Archbishop of Westminster, and no one can give a more trustworthy
account of its dispositions or of its acts. We are glad, therefore,
that the volume has been republished in this country, and hope it
will be widely read both by Catholics and non-Catholics.

The character of the book and of the documents it contains renders
any attempt by us either to review it or to explain it alike
unnecessary and impertinent. The pastoral is addressed officially
by the Archbishop to his clergy; the constitutions or definitions
adopted by the Holy Synod declare, by the assistance of the Holy
Ghost, what is, and always has been, and always will be the Catholic
faith on the matters defined; and we need not say that we cordially
accept it as the word of God, and as the faith which all must accept
_ex animo_, and without which it is impossible to please God. What
the council has defined is the law of God, and binds us as if spoken
to us directly by God himself in a voice from heaven. He speaks to
us by his church, his organ, and her voice is in fact his voice,
and what we take on her authority we take on his authority, for he
assists her, vouches for her, and commands us to believe and obey her.

There are, indeed, enemies of the faith who pretend that Catholics
believe solely on the authority of the church as an organic body;
but this is a misapprehension. We believe what is revealed on the
veracity of God alone, because it is his word, and it is impossible
for his word to be false; and we believe that it is his word on
the authority or testimony of the church, with whom the word is
deposited, and who is its divinely commissioned keeper, guardian,
witness, and interpreter. The word of God is and must be true, and
there is and can be no higher ground of faith or even of knowledge
than the fact that God says it. Nothing can be more consonant to
reason than to believe God on his word. Certainly, it is answered,
if we have his word; but how do I know that what is proposed to me
as his word is his word? We take the fact that it is his word on the
authority of the Catholic Church; we believe it is his word because
she declares it to be his word. It is permitted no one to doubt the
word of God is conceded; but whence from that fact does it follow
that I am not permitted to doubt the word of the church? Or why
should I believe her testimony or her declaration rather than that of
any one else?

To this question the general answer is, that she has been divinely
instituted, and is protected and assisted to bear true witness to
the revelation which it has pleased God to make, to proclaim it,
declare its sense, and condemn whatever impugns or tends to obscure
it. Supposing she has been instituted and commissioned by our
Lord himself, for this very purpose, her authority is sufficient
for believing whatever she teaches and declares or defines to be
the word of God is his word or the truth he has revealed; for the
divine commission is the divine word pledged for her veracity
and infallibility. This is plain enough and indubitable; but how
am I to know or to be assured that she has been so instituted or
commissioned, and is so assisted?

There are several answers to this question; but we would remark,
before proceeding to give any answer, that the church is in
possession, has from the moment of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon
the apostles on the day of Pentecost claimed to be in possession of
the authority in question, and has had her claim acknowledged by the
whole body of the faithful, and denied by none except those who deny
or impugn authority itself. Being in possession, it is for those who
question her right to show that she is wrongfully in possession. They
are, to use a legal term, the plaintiffs in action, and must make out
their case. Every one is presumed in law to be innocent till proven
guilty. The church must be presumed to be rightfully in possession
till the contrary is shown. They who question her possession must,
then, adduce at least _prima facie_ evidence for ousting her before
she can be called upon to produce her title-deeds. This has never
been done, and never can be done; for, if it could be done, some of
our able and learned Protestant divines would, in the course of the
last three hundred years and over, have done it. There is, then, in
reality no need, in order to justify the faith of Catholics, to prove
by extrinsic testimony the divine institution and commission of the
church to teach all men and nations all things whatsoever God has
revealed and commanded to be believed.

But we have no disposition to avail ourselves just now of what some
may regard as a mere legal technicality. We answer the question by
saying the church is herself the witness in the case, and accredits
herself, or her existence itself proves her divine institution,
commission, and assistance or guidance.

The church was founded by our Lord on the prophets and apostles,
being himself the chief corner-stone. This is asserted here as
a simple historical fact. Historically, the church has existed,
without any break or defect of continuity, from the apostles down
to our times. Its unbroken existence from that time to this cannot
be questioned. It has been a fact during all that period in the
world's history, and too momentous a fact to escape observation.
Indeed, it has been the one great fact of history for over eighteen
hundred years; the central fact around which all the facts of history
have revolved, and without which they would be inexplicable and
meaningless. This assumed or granted, it must be conceded that she
unites as one continuous fact, in one body, the apostles and the
believers of to-day. She is a continuous fact; a present fact during
all the period of time that has elapsed between the apostles and us,
and therefore is alike present to them and to us. Her existence being
unbroken, she has never fallen into the past; never been a past fact;
but has always been and is a present fact; and therefore as present
with the apostles to-day as she was on the day of Pentecost, when
they received the Holy Ghost; and therefore presents us not simply
what they taught, but what they teach her now and here. She bridges
over the abyss of time between our Lord himself and us, and makes
us and the apostles, so to speak, contemporaries; so that, as it
is our Lord himself we hear in the apostles, so it is the apostles
themselves that we hear in her.

This continuity or unity of the church in time is a simple
historical fact, and as certain as any other historical fact, and
even more so, for it is a fact that has never fallen into the past,
and to be established only by trustworthy witnesses or documents. By
it the church to-day is and must be as apostolic and as authoritative
as in the days of the apostles Peter, James, and John. Individuals
die, but the church dies not; individuals are changed, as are the
particles of our bodies, but the church changes not. As in the human
race individuals pass off, but the race remains always the same;
so in the church individuals pass away, but the church remains
unchanged in all its integrity; for the individuals die not all at
once, and the new individuals born in their places are born into
the one identical body, that does not die, but remains ever the
same. No matter, then, how many generations succeed one another in
their birth and death, the body of the church is subject to no law
of succession, and remains not only one and the same church, but
always the one and the same present church. The church of to-day
is identically the church of yesterday, the church of yesterday is
identically the church of the day before, and thus step by step back
to the apostles; on the other hand, the church in the time of the
apostles is identically the church of their successors down through
all succeeding generations of individuals to us. There has never been
an interval of time when it was not, or when it lost its identity as
one and the same body. The church is precisely as apostolic now as it
was in the beginning, or as were the apostles themselves.

Now, if we suppose our Lord communicated the whole revelation to
the apostles either by his personal teaching or by the inspiration
of the Holy Ghost, then he communicated it to her, and she is an
eye and ear witness to the fact of revelation in the same sense
that the apostles were, and her historical identity with the
apostles makes her a perpetual and contemporary witness to the fact
of revelation and to what is revealed. What misleads not a few on
this point is that they regard the church as a mere aggregation of
individuals, born and dying with them, or succeeding to herself with
the succession of each new generation of individuals. But this is no
more the case with the church than with the human race itself, or
with any particular nation that has an historical existence through
several generations. In all historical bodies the generations overlap
one another, and no generation of individuals is either aggregated
to the body or segregated from it all at once. The body does not die
with the receding nor is it born anew with the acceding generation.
The church, indeed, is an organism, not a mere aggregation of
individuals, but even if it were the conclusion would not follow; for
though the individuals are successively aggregated or affiliated,
they are aggregated or affiliated to her as a persistent body, and
though they pass off successively, they leave the body standing, one
and identical. This is the simple historical fact. The church, as
an ever-present body, remains one and the same identical body amid
all the successive changes of individuals, and is just as much the
depositary of the revelation and an eye-witness of the facts recorded
in the Gospels, as were the apostles themselves.

We say, then, the church is herself the witness, and a competent
and credible witness, to her own divine commission to teach and
declare the word of God which he has revealed, and no better, no more
competent or credible witness is needed or, in fact, conceivable.
She is competent because she is the identical apostolical body, the
contemporary and the eye-witness through the successive ages of the
facts to which she testifies. She is a credible witness, because even
as a human body it would be hardly possible for her either to mistake
or to misrepresent the facts to which she testifies, since they are
always present before her eyes, since, however her individual members
may change, she herself knows no change with lapse of time, and no
succession. She could not forget the faith, change it, or corrupt it,
because there is at all times in her communion an innumerable body
of living witnesses to its unity, purity, and integrity, who would
detect the change or alteration and expose it. It is not with her as
it would be with a book having a limited circulation. Copies of the
book could easily be altered or interpolated without detection; but
the living testimony of the church, spread over the whole world and
teaching all nations, cannot be interpolated or corrupted. It is on
the fidelity of the church, her vigilant guardianship, and uniform
testimony that we depend for our confidence in the genuineness and
authenticity of our copies of the sacred writings, and it is worthy
of note that in proportion as men throw off the authority of the
church, and reject her traditions, they lose that confidence, and
fail to agree among themselves what books, if any, are inspired;
so that without the testimony of the church the Holy Scriptures
themselves cease to be an authority in matters of faith.

In human tribunals the supreme court is presumed to know the law
which constitutes it, and it defines its own jurisdiction and powers.
It declares the law of which it is the depositary and guardian,
and though the judges have only their human wisdom, learning, and
sagacity, it is remarkable how few mistakes through a long series of
ages they commit as to what is or is not the law they are appointed
to administer, and nearly all the mistakes they do commit are due to
the changes the legislature makes in the law or in the constitution
of the court. Why should the church be less competent to judge of the
law under which she is constituted, and to define her jurisdiction
and powers? And since her constitution, as well as the law she
administers, changes not, why should she be less exempt, even as a
human court, from mistakes in interpreting and declaring the law,
than the supreme court of England or the United States? What higher
authority can there be to judge of her own constitution and the law
given her to administer than the church herself?

The church received her constitution in the commission given to the
apostolic body with whom she is one and identical, and the law or
revealed word in the reception of it by the apostles. Being one and
identical body with them, she has received what they received, and
knows what they knew, is taught what they were taught, understands
it in the same sense that they did, and has the same authority to
interpret and declare it that they had. If they were commissioned
to teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever our Lord
commanded them, she is commissioned in their commission to do the
same. If he promised them his efficacious presence and assistance
to the consummation of the world, he made the promise to her; if he
made Peter the prince of the apostles, the father and teacher of all
Christians, and gave him plenary authority to feed, rule, and govern
the universal church, he made the successor of Peter the visible
head of the church, and gave him the same authority. The church,
being the apostolic body persisting through all times, knows what the
apostles received, knows therefore both her own constitution and the
law deposited with her, and is as competent to judge of them as the
apostles were, and has full authority to interpret and declare both,
and it is to her, as to the supreme court of a nation, to judge what
they are, and to define her constitution, jurisdiction, and powers.

The objection which many make to this conclusion arises from their
confounding the authority of the church to interpret and define the
law--and, as a part of the law, her own constitution, jurisdiction,
and powers or functions--with the authority to make the law: a
mistake like that of confounding the supreme court of the United
States with Congress. The church, like the court or the supreme
executive, may make her own rules and orders--what are called the
orders and rules of court, for the purpose of carrying out the intent
of the law--but she no more makes the law than does the civil court
make the law under which it is constituted, and which it administers.
God alone is the lawgiver or lawmaker, and his revealed word is the
law--the law for the human reason and will, and which binds all men
in thought, word, and deed. We want no church, as the supreme judge
of the law, to tell us this, for it is a dictamen of reason itself.
It is the revealed word of God, which again is only his will, the
will of the supreme Lawgiver--that is the law under which the church
is constituted, and which she guards, interprets, and declares,
whenever a question of law arises. She does not make the law; she
keeps, interprets, declares, and defends or vindicates it. Even with
only human wisdom, she can no more make the law, or declare that to
be law which is not, than the supreme civil court can declare that to
be civil law which is not civil law. The objection, therefore, is not
well taken.

The law, it is agreed on all hands--that is, the revelation, whether
written or unwritten--was deposited with the apostles, then it was
deposited, as we have seen, with the church identical with the
apostolic body. Now, she knows, as the apostles knew, what she
received, the law committed to her charge, and, as she is constituted
by the law she has received, she knows, and cannot but know, her
own constitution and powers, also what promises, if any, she has
received from her divine Lawgiver and Founder. The promises of God
cannot fail; and if he has promised her his assistance as an immunity
from error she knows it, and knows that her judgments of law, or
in matters of faith, are through that assistance infallible. Of
all these questions she is the divinely constituted judge. She is
the judge of the law constituting her, of her own appointment and
commission, and of her rights, powers, and jurisdiction, no less
than of the law or revelation committed to her charge, for all this
is included in the law. If she defines that in her commission is
included the promise of the divine assistance to protect her from
error in interpreting and declaring the law--that is, the faith,
the revealed word of God--then of all this she judges infallibly,
and she is the infallible authority, not for believing what God has
revealed--for that is believed on the veracity of God alone--but
for believing that what she teaches as his revealed word is his
revealed word, and therefore the law we are to obey in thought,
word, deed, as the supreme court is the authority for defining its
own constitution and powers, and what is or is not the law of the
state. Say we not, then, truly that the church is her own witness and
accredits herself? Say we not truly, also, that she is the faithful
and infallible witness to the fact of revelation, and teacher and
judge of what God has or has not revealed? The fact, then, that
the church defines that she is the divinely appointed guardian and
infallible teacher and judge of revelation, is all we need to know in
order to know that it is God we believe in believing her.

None of the sects can apply this argument to themselves; for no one
of them can pretend to be the identical apostolical body, or to span
the distance of time from the apostles to us, so as to be at once
their contemporary and ours. They all have either originated too
late or have died too soon for that. Not one of them can pretend to
have originated in the apostolic communion, and to have existed as
one continuous body down to us. There were sectaries in the lifetime
of the apostles, but they were not in the apostolic communion, but
separated from it; and there is, as far as we know, no sect in
existence that originated in apostolic times. Some of the Gnostic
sects sprang up at a very early day, but they have all disappeared,
though many of their errors are revived in our day. The Nestorian and
Jacobite sects still subsist in the East, but they were born too late
to be of apostolic origin, and our modern Unitarians are not the old
Arians continued in one unbroken body. The Lutheran and Calvinistic
sects are of yesterday, and they and their numerous offshoots are
out of the question. The poor Anglicans talk of apostolic succession
indeed, but they separated or were cut off from the apostolic body
in the sixteenth century, and, with all the pretensions of a few
of them, are only a Protestant sect, born of the Reformation, as
the greater part of them strenuously contend. There is something in
people's instincts; and it is worthy of note that no people who have
cast off the authority of the Holy See have ever ventured to assume
as their official name the title of APOSTOLIC. Even the schismatic
Greeks, while they claim to be orthodox, do not officially call their
church apostolic; and the American Anglicans assume only the name of
Protestant Episcopal. _Protestant apostolic_ would strike the whole
world as incongruous, and very much as a contradiction in terms.

Let the argument be worth little or much, the only body claiming
to be the church of Christ that has or has had an uninterrupted
historical existence from the apostles to us, is the body that is
in communion with the See of Rome, and recognizes the successor of
Peter in that see as the Vicar of Christ, the teacher of the nations,
supreme pastor of the faithful, with plenary authority from our Lord
himself to feed, rule, and govern the universal church. The fact is
too plain on the very face of history for any one who knows history
at all to deny it. Nor, in fact, does any one deny it. All in reality
concede it; and the pretence is that to be in communion with that see
is not necessary in order to be in communion with Christ, or with the
universal church.

But this is a question of law or of its interpretation, and can
itself be determined only by the supreme court instituted to keep,
interpret, and declare the law. The court of last resort has already
decided the question. It is _res adjudicata_, and no longer an open
question. The court has decided that _extra ecclesiam, nulla salus_,
or, that out of communion with the church there is no communion with
Christ; and that out of communion with the Holy See there is no
communion with the universal church, for there is no such church.
Do you appeal from the decision of the court? To what tribunal? To
a higher tribunal? But there is no higher tribunal than the court
of last resort. None of the sects are higher than the church, or
competent to set aside or overrule her decisions. Do you appeal to
the Bible? But this were only appealing from the law as expounded by
the church or the supreme court to the law as expounded by yourself
or your sect. Such an appeal cannot be entertained, for it is an
appeal, not from an inferior court to a superior, but from the
highest court to the lowest. The law expounded by the individual
or the sect is below, not above, the law expounded and declared
by the church. The sect has confessedly no authority, and the law
expounded and applied by the sect is no more than the law expounded
and applied by the private individual; and no private individual is
allowed to expound and apply the law for himself, but must take it
as expounded and applied by the court, and the judgment as to what
the law is of the court of last resort is final, and from it, as
every lawyer knows, there lies no appeal. To be able to set aside or
overrule the judgment of the church, it is necessary, then, to have
a court of superior jurisdiction, competent to revise her judgments
and to confirm or to overrule them. But, unhappily for those who are
dissatisfied with her judgments, there is and can be no such court to
which they can appeal.

There might be some plausibility in the pretended appeal from the
church to the Bible, if the church had not the Bible, or if she
avowedly rejected its divine authority; but as the case stands,
such an appeal is irregular, illegal, and absurd. The church has
and always has had the Bible ever since it was written. It was,
as we have seen, originally deposited with her, and it is only
from her that those outside of her communion have obtained it or
their knowledge of it. She has always held and taught it to be the
divinely inspired and authoritative written word of God, which
none of her children are allowed to deny or question. There is no
opposition possible between her teaching and the Bible, for the
Bible is included in her teaching, and consequently no appeal from
her teaching to the Bible. It would be only an appeal from herself
to herself. The only appeal conceivable in the case is from her
understanding of the sacred Scriptures or the revealed word of God
to--your own; but as you at best have confessedly no authority to
expound, interpret, or declare the law, your understanding of the
written word can in no case override or set aside hers.

The Reformers, when they pretended to appeal from the church to the
Bible, mistook the question and proceeded on a false assumption.
There never was any question between the church and the Bible; the
only question there was or could be was between her understanding
of the Bible and theirs, or, as we have said, between the Bible
as expounded by the church and the Bible as expounded by private
individuals. This the Reformers did not or would not see, and this
their followers do not or will not see to this day. Now, count the
authority of the church for as little as possible, her understanding
cannot be below that of private individuals, and the understanding of
private individuals can never override it, or be a sufficient reason
for setting it aside. The Reformers had recognized the church as the
supreme authority in matters of faith, and the question was not on
admitting her authority as something hitherto unrecognized, but on
rejecting an authority they had hitherto acknowledged as divine. They
could not legally reject it except on a higher authority, or by the
judgment of a superior court. But there was no superior court, no
higher authority, and they could oppose to her not the authority of
the Bible, as they pretended, but at best only their private opinion
or views of what it teaches, which in no case could count for more
than her judgment, and therefore could not overrule it or authorize
its rejection.

It is all very well to deny the divine commission and authority of
the church to expound the word and declare the law of God; but a
denial, to serve any purpose, or to be worth anything, must have a
reason, and a higher reason than has the affirmation denied. One
can deny only by an authority sufficient to warrant an affirmation.
It needs as much reason to deny as to affirm. The authority of the
church can really be denied only by opposing to her a truth that
disproves it. A simple negation is nothing, and proves or disproves
nothing. Yet the Reformers opposed to the church only a simple
negation. They opposed to her no authority, no affirmative truth,
and consequently gave no reason for denying or unchurching her.
Indeed, no individual or sect ever opposes either to the church or
to her teaching anything but simple negation, and no one ever makes
an affirmation or affirms any truth or positive doctrine which she
does not herself affirm or hold and teach. Every known heresy, from
that of the Docetæ down to the latest development of Protestantism,
simply denies what the church teaches, and affirms nothing which she
does not herself affirm, as Catholics have shown over and over again.
These denials, based as they are on no principle or affirmative
truth, are gratuitous, and count for nothing against the church or
her teaching. Who would count the denial by a madman that the sun
shines in a clear sky at noonday?

The simple fact is that whoever denies the church or her judgments
does it without any authority or reason but his own private opinion
or caprice, and that is simply no authority or reason at all. It is
not possible to allege any authority against her or her teaching.
Men may cavil at the truth, may by their sophistries and subtleties
obscure the truth or involve themselves in a dense mental fog, so
that they are unable to see anything distinctly, or to tell where
they are or in what direction they are moving. They may thus imagine
that they have some reason for their denials, and even persuade
others that such is the fact; but whenever the fog is cleared away,
and they have _easted_ themselves, they cannot, if they have ordinary
intelligence, fail to discover that the truth which in their own
minds they opposed to her or her teaching is a truth which she
herself holds and teaches as an integral part of her doctrine, or
as included in the depositum of faith she has received. Do you say
there is truth outside of the church; truth in all religions; in all
superstitions, even? Be it so; but there is no truth outside of her
in any religion or superstition that she denies or does not recognize
and hold, and hold in its unity and catholicity. There may be facts
in natural history, in physics, chemistry, in all the special
sciences, as in the several handicrafts, that she does not teach;
but there is no principle of science of any sort that she does not
hold and apply whenever an occasion for its application occurs. None
of the special sciences have their principles in themselves, or do or
can demonstrate the principles on which they depend, and from which
they derive their scientific character. They all depend for their
scientific character on a higher science, the science of sciences,
which the church and the church alone teaches. The principles of
ethics, and therefore of politics as a branch of ethics, all lie in
the theological order, and without theology there is and can be no
science of ethics or politics; and hence we see that both, with those
who reject theology, are purely empirical, without any scientific
basis. An atheist may be moral in his conduct, but if there were no
God there could be no morality; so may an atheist be a geometrician,
but if there were no God there could be no geometry. Deny God, and
what becomes of lines that may be infinitely projected, or of space
shading off into immensity, on which so much in the science of
geometry depends? Nay, deny God, and what would become even of finite
space? Yet without the conception of space, which is in truth only
the power of God to externize his acts, geometry would be impossible.
All the special sciences are secondary, and are really science only
when carried up to their first principles and explained by them. What
more absurd, then, than the attempt of scientists to prove by science
there is no God, or to oppose science to the theology of the church,
without which no science is possible?

We need but look at the present state of men's minds to see how the
world gets on without the church. Never were men more active or
indefatigable in their researches: they send their piercing glances
into all subjects, sacred and profane; they investigate the heavens
and the earth, the present and the past, and leave no nook or corner
of nature unexplored, and yet there is not a principle of ethics,
politics, or science that is not denied or called in question. In the
moral and political world nothing is fixed or settled, and moral and
intellectual science, as well as statesmanship, disappears. Doubt and
uncertainty hang over all questions, and the distinctions between
right and wrong, just and unjust, as well as between good and evil,
are obscured and well-nigh obliterated. The utmost confusion reigns
in the whole world of thought, and "men," as a distinguished prelate
said to us the other day, "are trying the experiment of governing the
world without conscience." All this proves what we maintain, that
they who deny the church, or reject her teaching, have no truth to
oppose to her, no reason for their denial, and no principle on which
they base their rejection of her authority. Their rejection of the
church and her teaching is purely gratuitous, and therefore, if not
sinful, is at least baseless.

This much is certain, that it is either the church or nothing. There
is no other alternative. Nothing is more absurd than for those
who reject the church and her teaching to pretend to be Christian
teachers or believers. They cannot believe the revelation God has
made on the veracity of God alone, for they have no witness, not
even an unassisted human witness, of the fact of revelation, of
what God has revealed, or that he has or has not revealed anything,
since they have no witness who was the contemporary of our Lord and
his apostles--they were none of them born then--and they have no
institution that dates from apostolic times, and that has continued
without break down to the present. In fact, what they profess to
believe, in so far as they believe it at all, they believe on the
authority of the church, or of that very tradition which they reject
and deny to be authority. They agree among themselves in their
doctrinal belief only when and where they agree with the church;
whenever and wherever they break from Catholic tradition, preserved
and handed down by her, they disagree and fight with one another,
are all at sea, and have neither chart nor compass. Do they tell us
that they agree in the essentials of the Christian faith? Yet it is
only so far as they follow Catholic tradition that they know or can
agree among themselves as to what are or are not essentials. There is
a wide difference between what Dr. Pusey holds to be essential and
what is held to be essential by Dr. Bellows. Nearly the only point
in which the two agree is in rejecting the infallible authority of
the successor of Peter; and, in rejecting that authority, neither
has any authority for believing what he believes, or for denying
what he denies. Deny the church, and you have no authority for
asserting divine revelation at all, as your rationalists and radicals
conclusively prove.

But, happily, the other alternative saves us from all these logical
inconsistencies. The church meets every demand, removes every
embarrassment, and affords us the precise authority we need for
faith, for she is in every age and every land a living witness to the
fact of revelation, and an ever-present judge competent to declare
what God reveals, and to teach us what we have, and what we have not,
the veracity of God for believing. She can assure us of the divine
inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures, which without
her tradition is not provable; for she has received them through
the apostles from our Lord himself. She can enable us to read them
aright, and can unfold to us by her teaching their real sense; for
the Holy Ghost has deposited with her the whole revelation of God,
whether written or unwritten. Outside of her, men, if they have the
book called the Bible, can make little or nothing of it, can come to
no agreement as to its sense, except so far as they inconsistently
and surreptitiously avail themselves of her interpretation of it.
They have no key to its sense. But she has the key to its meaning
in her possession and knowledge of all that God reveals, or in the
divine instruction she has received in the beginning. The whole word
of God, and the word of God as a whole, is included in the depositum
she has received, and therefore she is able at all times and in all
places to give the true sense of the whole, and of the relation to
the whole of each and every part. In her tradition the Bible is a
book of divine instruction, of living truth, of inestimable value,
and entitled to the profoundest reverence, which we know it is not in
the hands of those who wrest it from her tradition, and have no clue
to its meaning but grammar and lexicon.

The notion that a man who knows nothing of the Christian faith,
and is a stranger to the whole order of Christian thought and
life, can take up the Bible, even when correctly translated into
his mother-tongue, and from reading and studying it arrive at an
adequate knowledge, or any real knowledge at all, of Christian truth
or the revelation which God has made to man, is preposterous, and
contradicted by every day's experience. Just in proportion as men
depart from the tradition of faith preserved by the church, the
Bible becomes an unintelligible book, ceases to be of any use to the
mind, and, if reverenced at all, becomes, except in a few plain moral
precepts, a source of error much more frequently than of truth. One
of the most precious gifts of God to man becomes instead of a benefit
a real injury to the individual and to society. Our school-boards
may, then, easily understand why we Catholics object to the reading
of the Bible in schools where the church cannot be present to
enlighten the pupil's mind as to its real and true sense. It is the
court that keeps the statute-books, and interprets and applies the
law, whether the _lex scripta_ or the _lex non scripta_.

The church, existing in all ages and in all nations as one identical
body, is a living witness in all times and places, as we have said,
of the fact that God has revealed what she believes and teaches,
and is through his assistance a competent and sufficient authority
for that fact, and to interpret and declare the revealed law, as
much so, to say the least, as the supreme court of a nation is
to declare what is the law of the state. The objection made by
rationalists and others to believing on the authority of the church,
or to recognizing her authority to declare the faith, is founded on
the false assumption that the church makes the faith, and can make
anything of faith she pleases, whether God has revealed it or not. We
have already answered this objection. The church bears witness to the
fact of revelation, and declares what is or is not the faith God has
revealed, as the supreme court declares what is or is not the law of
the state; but she can declare nothing to be of faith that is not of
faith, or that God has not revealed and commanded all men to believe,
for through the divine assistance she is infallible, and therefore
cannot err in matters of faith, or in any matters pertaining in
any respect to faith and morals. Since she cannot err in declaring
what God has revealed and commanded, we are assured that what she
declares to be revealed is revealed, or to be commanded is commanded,
and therefore we know that whatever we are required to believe as
of faith, or to do as commanded of God, we have the authority of
God himself for believing and doing, the highest possible reason
for faith, since God is truth itself, and can neither deceive nor
be deceived; and the highest possible law, for God is the Supreme
Lawgiver. It is they who reject the church or deny her authority
that have only an arbitrary and capricious human authority, and who
abdicate their reason and their freedom, and make themselves slaves,
and slaves of human passion, arrogance, and ignorance. The Catholic
is the only man who has true mental freedom, or a reason for his
faith. His faith makes him free. It is the truth that liberates; and
therefore our Lord says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall
be free indeed." Who can be freer than he who is held to believe and
obey only God? They whom the truth does not make free may fancy they
are free, but they are not; they are in bondage, and abject slaves.

The church in affirming herself is not making herself the judge
in her own cause, is not one of the litigants, as some pretend,
for the cause in which she judges is not hers, but that of God
himself. She is the court instituted by the Supreme Lawgiver to
keep, interpret, and declare his law, and therefore to judge between
him and the subjects his law binds. She, in determining a case of
faith or morals, no more judges in her own cause than the supreme
court of a nation does in defining its own jurisdiction, and in
determining a case arising under the law of which it is constituted
by the national authority the judge. She has, of course, the right,
as has every civil court, to punish contempt, whether of her orders
or her jurisdiction, for he who contemns her contemns him who has
instituted her; but the questions to be decided are questions of law,
which she does not make, and is therefore no more a party to the
cause litigated, and no more interested or less impartial, than is
a civil court in a civil action. Indeed, we see not, if it pleases
Almighty God to make a revelation, and to set up his kingdom on
earth with that revelation for its law, how he can provide for its
due administration without such a body as the church affirms herself
to be, nor how it would be possible to institute a higher or more
satisfactory method of determining what the law of his kingdom is,
than by the decision of a court instituted and assisted by him for
that very purpose. In our judgment, no better way is practicable, and
no other way of attaining the end desired is possible. We repeat,
therefore, that the church meets every demand of the case, and
removes every real difficulty in ascertaining what is the faith God
has revealed, as well as what is opposed to it, or tends to obscure
or impair it.

It is agreed on all hands, by all who hold that our heavenly Father
has made us a revelation and instituted a church, that the Church of
Rome, founded by Saints Peter and Paul, was in the beginning catholic
and apostolic. If she was so in the beginning, she is so now; for she
has not changed, and claims no authority which she has not claimed
and exercised, as the occasion arose, from the first. She is the
same identical body as she has been from the beginning. All the
sectarian and schismatical bodies that oppose or refuse to submit
to her authority acknowledged her authority prior to rejecting it,
and were in communion with her. The change is not hers, but theirs.
They have changed and gone out from her, because they were not of
her, but she has remained ever the same. Take the schismatic Greeks.
They originally were one body with her, and held the successor of
Peter in the Roman See as primate or head of the whole visible
church. They got angry or were perverted, and rejected the authority
of the Roman Pontiff, and have never even to this day ventured to
call themselves officially the Catholic or the Apostolic church. The
men who founded the Reformed Churches so-called--Anglican among the
rest--were brought up in the communion of the Catholic Church, and
acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, and the Church of
Rome as the mother and mistress of all the churches. The separation
was caused by their change, not by hers. She held and taught at
the time of the separation what she had always held and taught,
and claimed no authority which she had not claimed from the first.
Evidently, then, it was they and not she that changed and denied what
they had previously believed. She lost individuals and nations from
her communion, but she lost not her identity, or any portion of her
rights and authority, as the one and only church of Christ, for she
holds from God, not from the faithful. She has continued to be what
she was at first, while they have gone from one change to another,
have fallen into a confusion of tongues, as their prototypes did at
Babel; and Luther and Calvin could hardly recognize their followers
in those who go by their name to-day.

In the very existence of the church through so many changes in the
world around her, the rise and fall of states and empires, assailed
as she has been on every hand, and by all sorts of enemies, is a
standing miracle, and a sufficient proof of her divinity. She was
assailed by the Jews, who crucified her Lord and stirred up, wherever
they went, the hostility of the people against his holy apostles
and missionaries; she was assailed by the relentless persecution
of the Roman Empire, the strongest organization the world has ever
seen, and the greatest political power of which history gives any
hint--an empire which wielded the whole power of organized paganism;
she was driven to the catacombs, and obliged to offer up the holy
sacrifice under the earth, for there was no place for her altars on
its surface. Yet she survived the empire; emerged from the catacombs
and planted the cross on the Capitol of the pagan world. She had
then to encounter a hardly less formidable enemy in the Arian
heresy, sustained by the civil power; then came her struggle with
the barbarian invaders and conquerors from the fifth to the tenth
century--the revolt of the East, or the Greek schism; the great
schism of the West; the Northern revolt, or the so-called Reformation
of the sixteenth century; and the hostility since of the greatest and
most powerful states of the modern world; yet she stands erect where
she did nearly twenty centuries ago, maintaining herself against all
opposition; against the power, wealth, learning, and refinement of
this world; against Jew, pagan, barbarian, heretic, and schismatic,
and preserving her identity and her faith unchanged through all
the vicissitudes of the world in the midst of which she is placed.
She never could have done it if she had been sustained only by
human virtue, human wisdom, and human sagacity; she could not have
survived unchanged if she had not been under the divine protection,
and upheld by the arm of Almighty God. The fact that she has lived on
and preserved her identity, especially if we add to the opposition
from without the scandals that have occurred within, is conclusive
proof that under her human form she lives a divine and supernatural
life; therefore that she is the church of God, and is what she
affirms herself to be.

Believing the church to be what she affirms herself to be; believing
the Roman Pontiff to be the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ
on earth, the father and teacher of all Christians, we have no fear
that she will not survive the persecution which now rages against
her, and that the Pope will not see his enemies prostrate at his
feet. Through all history, we have seen that the successes of her
enemies have been short-lived, and the terrible losses they have
occasioned have been theirs, not hers. It will always be so. Kings,
emperors, potentates, states, and empires may destroy themselves by
opposing her, but her they cannot harm. See we not how the wrongs
done to the Holy Father by Italian robbers, obeying the dictates of
the secret societies, some of which, like the _Madre Natura_, date
almost from apostolic times, are quickening the faith and fervor of
Catholics throughout the world? Not for centuries has the Holy Father
been so strong in the love and devotion of his faithful children as
to-day. Never is the church stronger or nearer a victory than when
abandoned by all the powers of this world, and thrown back on the
support of her divine Spouse alone.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.

[22] _The Vatican Council and its Definitions._ A Pastoral Letter to
the Clergy. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. New York: D.
& J. Sadlier. 1871. 12mo, pp. 252.




BORDEAUX.


One of the first objects that strikes the mariner ascending the
Garonne towards Bordeaux is the ancient tower of St. Michel. I
visited it the very morning after my arrival in that city. It is the
belfry of a church of the same name, but is separated from it, being
about forty yards distant. It was built in 1472, and is two hundred
and fifty feet high. Formerly, it was over three hundred feet in
height, but the steeple was blown down by a hurricane on the 8th of
September, 1768. The view from the top is superb. Before you, like
a map, lies the whole city--a noted commercial centre from the time
of the Cæsars--encircling a great bend of the river. The eye is at
first confused by the mass of roofs, spires, and streets, but in a
moment singles out the great cruciform churches of St. André, Ste.
Croix, and St. Michel. They lie beneath like immense crosses with
arms stretched out--a perpetual appeal to heaven. Such remembrances
of Calvary must ever stand between a sinful world and the justice of
Almighty God. How can he look down upon all the iniquity of a great
city, and not feel the silent _Parce nobis_ of these sacred arms
extended over it, repeating silently, as it were, the divine prayer,
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Oh! what
a love for the Passion dwelt in the heart of the middle ages which
built these churches. Absorbed in the thought, I lost sight of the
city. Its activity, its historical associations, the fine buildings
and extensive view, all disappear before the cross. Bordeaux is
generally thought of only as a wine-mart, but it also has holier
associations. "Every foot-path on this planet may lead to the door of
a hero," it is said, and very few paths there are in this Old World
that do not bring us upon the traces of the saints--the most heroic
of men, who have triumphed over themselves, which is better than the
taking of a strong city. They it was that made these great signs of
the cross on the breast of this fair city, hallowing it for ever.

Beneath the tower of St. Michel is a _caveau_, around which are
ranged ninety mummies in a state of preservation said to be owing to
the nature of the soil. Why is it that every one is enticed down to
witness so horrid a spectacle? Dust to dust and ashes to ashes is
far preferable to these withered bodies, and a quiet resting-place,
deep, deep in the bosom of mother earth till the resurrection.
Edmond About says the twelfth century would have embroidered many a
charming legend to throw around these bodies, but the moderns have
less imagination, and the guardian of the tower, who displays them
by the light of his poor candle, is totally deficient in poesy. Had
this writer been at Bordeaux on the eve of All Souls' day, he would
have been invited at the midnight hour, "when spirits have power,"
to listen to the lugubrious cries and chants that come up from the
_caveau_, where, as the popular voice declares, these ninety forms
are having their yearly dance--the dance of death! I wonder if the
mummy next the door, as you gladly pass out into the upper air, has
his hand still extended like an _au revoir_.... Yes, there is one
place where we shall meet, but not in this repulsive form. May we all
be found there with glorified bodies!

The church of St. Michel is older than the tower, having been built
in the twelfth century. It is of the Gothic style, and one of those
antique churches that speak so loudly to the heart of the traveller
from the New World--one in which we are penetrated with

                        "An inward stillness,
      That perfect silence when the lips and heart
      Are still, and we no longer entertain
      Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
      But God alone speaks in us, and we wait
      In singleness of heart that we may know
      His will, and in the silence of our spirits
      That he may do his will, and do that only."

The ancients had a deep meaning when they represented the veiled Isis
with her finger on her hushed lips. The soul profoundly impressed by
the Divine Presence is speechless.

In one of the side chapels is the tomb of an old bishop of the middle
ages, in a niche of the wall. On it he lies carven in stone, with
the mitre on his head, and clad in his pontifical vestments, and his
hands folded in prayer.

                      "Still praying in thy sleep
        With lifted hands and face supine,
      Meet attitude of calm and reverence deep,
        Keeping thy marble watch in hallowed shrine."

The cathedral of St. André is another of these venerable monuments of
the past. Founded in the fourth century, destroyed by the barbarians,
restored by Charlemagne, and again ruined by the Normans, it was
rebuilt in the eleventh century, and consecrated by Pope Urban II.,
in 1096. I went there at an early hour to offer up my thanksgiving
for the happy end of this stage of my journey. The canons were just
chanting the hours, which reverberated among the light arches with
fine effect. Masses were being offered in various chapels, and there
were worshippers everywhere. I was particularly struck with the
devout appearance of a venerable old man in one of the dimmest and
most remote chapels, enveloped in a hooded cloak, with the capuche
drawn over his head. He looked as if his soul, as well as his body,
was almost done with time.

Through all these aisles and oratories, which whispering lips filled
with the perfume of prayer streaming through the old windows came the
morning sun,

      "Whose beams, thus hallowed by the scenes they pass,
      Tell round the floor each parable of glass."

I can still see the purple light filling the chapel of the Sacred
Heart and ensanguining the uplifted Host.

      "A sweet religious sadness, like a dove,
      Broods o'er this place. The clustered pillars high
      Are roséd o'er by the morning sky:
      And from the heaven-hued windows far above,
      Intense as adoration, warm as love,
      A purple glory deep is seen to lie.
      Turn, poet, Christian, now the serious eye,
      Where, in white vests, a meek and holy band,
      Chanting God's praise in solemn order, stand.
      O hear that music swell far up and die!
      Old temple, thy vast centuries seem but years,
      Where wise and holy men lie glorified!
      Our hearts are full, our souls are occupied,
      And piety has birth in quiet tears!"

And all the worshippers in this church were turned toward the holy
East, whence cometh the Son of Man. The glory of the Lord came into
the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the East.
I like this orientation of churches now too much neglected. The old
symbolic usages of the church should be perpetuated. This turning
to the East in prayer was at one age the mark of a true believer,
distinguishing him from those who had separated from the church.
True, some of the old basilicas at Rome and elsewhere have their
altars at the west, but, according to the ritual of such churches,
the priest turns toward the people, thus looking to the East.
Cassiodorus and others say that our Lord on the cross had his face
toward the west. So, in directing our thoughts and hearts to Calvary,
it is almost instinctive to look to the East.

      "With hands outstretched, bleeding and bare,
      He doth in death his innocent head recline,
      Turning to the west. Descending from his height,
      The sun beheld, and veiled him from the sight.
      Thither, while from the serpent's wound we pine,
      To thee, remembering that baptismal sign,
      We turn and drink anew thy healing might."

Let us, then, place, as Wordsworth says,

                    "Like men of elder days,
      Our Christian altar faithful to the east,
      Whence the tall window drinks the morning rays."

While I was lingering with peculiar interest before a monument to
the memory of Cardinal de Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, and
afterward Archbishop of Bordeaux, whose memory is revered in the Old
World and the New, I heard a chanting afar off, and, looking around,
saw through the open door a funeral procession coming hastily along
the street toward the church, and singing the _Miserere_--coming,
not with mournful step and slow, as with us, but like the followers
of Islam, who believe the soul is in torment between death and
burial, and so lay aside their usual dignified deportment and hurry
the body to the grave. But in France the funeral _cortége_ does not
necessarily include the relatives, and I felt this very haste might
be typical of their eagerness to commence the Office of the Dead.
Anyhow, I forgave them when, in the chapel draped in black, I saw
them devoutly betake themselves to prayer during the Holy Sacrifice.
I, too, dropped my little bead of prayer for the eternal rest of one
whose name I know not, but which is known to God.

      "Help, Lord, the souls which thou hast made,
            The souls to thee so dear;
      In prison for the debt unpaid,
            Of sins committed here."

The confessionals seemed to be greatly frequented the day I was at
St. André's--those sepulchres into which rolls the great burden of
our sins. There

      "The great Absolver with relief
      Stands by the door, and bears the key,
      O'er penitence on bended knee."

What non-Catholic has not felt, at least once in his life, as if
he would give worlds for the moral courage to lay down the burden
of memory at the feet of some holy man endowed with the power of
absolving from sin! Almighty God has made his church the interpreter
between himself and his creatures; hence the peculiar grace a holy
confessor has to meet the wants of the human heart laid bare before
him. Zoroaster told his disciples that the wings of the soul, lost
by sin, might be regained by bedewing them with the waters of life
found in the garden of God. It is only the consecrated priest who
has the power of unsealing this fountain to each one of us. These
confessionals are distributed in the various chapels, everywhere
meeting the eye of the parched and sin-worn traveller who would

      "Kneel down, and take the word divine,
      ABSOLVO TE."

Of course there is a Ladye Chapel in this church, as in all others.
Jesus and Mary, whose names are ever mingled on Catholic lips, the
first they learn and the last they murmur, are never separated in
our churches. Devotion to the Virgin has grown up through the
church, beautifying and perfuming it like the famous rose-bush in
the Cathedral of Hildesheim in Germany--the oldest of all known
rose-bushes. It takes root under the choir in the crypt. Its age
is unknown, but a document proves that nearly a thousand years ago
Bishop Hezilo had it protected by a stone roof still to be seen.
So with devotion to our Mystical Rose--_quasi plantatio rosæ in
Jericho_--its roots go down deep among the foundations of the church;
saints have protected and nourished it, and all nations come to sit
under its vine and inhale its perfume.

      "Blossom for ever, blossoming rod!
        Thou didst not blossom once to die:
      That life which, issuing forth from God,
        Thy life enkindled, runs not dry.

      "Without a root in sin-stained earth,
        'Twas thine to bud salvation's flower,
      No single soul the church brings forth
        But blooms from thee, and is thy dower."

What a safeguard to man is devotion to Mary Most Pure! It is like the
Pridwin--the shield of King Arthur--on which was emblazoned the Holy
Virgin, warding off the strokes of the great enemy of souls.

There are some poetical associations connected with Bordeaux: among
others, the memory of the troubadours who enriched and perfected the
Romance tongue, but whose songs at last died away in the sad discord
of the Albigensian wars. Here the gay and beautiful Eleanor of
Aquitaine held her court of love, gathering around her all the famous
troubadours of her time, and deciding upon the merits of their songs.
Among these was her favorite, Bernard de Ventadour, chiefly known to
fame by being mentioned by Petrarch. Eleanor herself was a musician
and a lover of poetry--tastes she inherited from her grandfather,
William, Duke of Aquitaine, generally called the Count de Poitiers,
one of the earliest of the troubadours whose songs have come down to
us. Around this charming queen of love and song gathered the admiring
votaries of _la gaia sciencia_, like nightingales singing around the
rose, all vowing, as in duty bound, that their hearts were bleeding
on the horns!

Poor maligned Eleanor was too gay a butterfly for the gloomy court
of Louis VII. She wanted the bright sun of her own province in which
to float, and the incense of admiring voices to waft her along. She
herself was a composer of _chansons_, and is reckoned among the
authors of France. She dearly loved Bordeaux, her capital, and was
adored by its people. Here she was married with great pomp to Louis,
after which the Duke of Aquitaine laid aside his insignia of power,
and, assuming the garb of a hermit, went on a pilgrimage to St. James
of Compostella, and devoted the remainder of his life to prayer and
penance in hermitage on Montserrat, by way of preparation for death.
It is well to pause awhile before plunging into the great ocean of
eternity.

These pilgrimages to Compostella were exceedingly popular in that
age, and hospices for the pilgrims to that shrine were to be found in
all the large cities and towns. There was one at Auch, and another
at Paris in the Rue du Temple, which was particularly celebrated and
served by Augustinian nuns. And here at Bordeaux was the Hospice of
St. André for the reception of the weary votary of St. Jago.

"Here comes a pilgrim," says one of Shakespeare's characters. "God
save you, pilgrim. Where are you bound?"

"To St. Jacques le Grand. Where do the palmers lodge, I beseech you?"

        "Eftsoones unto an holy hospitall
      That was forby the way, she did him bring,
      In which seven bead-men that had vowed all
      Their life to service of high heaven's King,
      Did spend their daies in doing godly thing;
      Their gates to all were open evermore,
      That by the wearie way were travelling,
      And one sate wayting ever them before
      To call in comers-by, that needy were and pore."

Digby says the hospitality and charity of these hospices had their
origin in the bishops' houses. Fortunatus thus speaks of Leontius
II., Archbishop of Bordeaux, who, in accordance with the apostle's
injunction, was given to hospitality:

      "Susceptor peregrum distribuendo cibum.
      Longius extremo si quis properasset ab orbe,
      Advena mox vidit, hunc ait esse patrem."

That the devotion of the middle ages is yet alive in the church is
proved by the influx of pilgrims at the shrine of St. Germaine of
Pibrac, at Notre Dame de Lourdes, and a thousand other places of
popular devotion. So great is the number of pilgrims to Lourdes,
drawn by the brightness of Mary's radiant form, that the railway
between Tarbes and Pau was turned from its intended direct line in
order to pass through Lourdes. In one day the train from Bayonne
brought nine hundred, and at another time over a thousand pilgrims.
And as for the continued charity and hospitality of the church,
witness the monks of St. Bernard and of Palestine, known to all the
world. How disinterested is genuine Catholic charity, done unto the
Lord and not unto man! Some suppose the good works practised among
us is by way of barter for heaven, but they little know the spirit
of the church. Charity is one expression of its piety, which, in its
highest manifestations, is devoid of self-interest. Listen to John
of Bordeaux, a holy Franciscan friar, who, after quoting a saying
of Epictetus, that we generally find piety where there is utility,
says: "He does not come up to the standard of pure Christianity:
he pretends that piety takes its birth in utility, so that it is
interest that gives rise to devotion. Yes, among the profane, but
not among Christians, who, acquainted with the maxims of our holy
religion, have no other end but to serve God for his love and for his
glory; forgetting all considerations of their own advantage, they
aspire to attain to that devotion which is agreeable to him without
any view to their own interest."

And in these practical times another holy writer, Dr. Newman, says
in the same spirit: "They who seek religion for culture's sake,
are æsthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which
religion adds to culture, because they can never have the religion.
To seek religion for the present elevation, or even the social
improvement it brings, is really to fall from faith which rests
in God, and the knowledge of him as the ultimate good, and has no
by-ends to serve."

But to return to the romantic associations of this land of the vine,
we recall the celebrated old romance of Huon of Bordeaux, which
contains some delightful pictures of the age of chivalry. Here is one
which I have abridged, showing how the religious spirit was inwoven
with the impulses of the knightly heart. The Emperor Thierry, furious
because his nephews and followers had been slain by Huon, seized upon
Esclarmonde (Huon's wife) and her attendants, and threw them into
a dungeon, there to await death. Huon, greatly afflicted at this,
disguised himself as a pilgrim from the Holy Land, and set out for
Mayence, where the emperor lived. He arrived on Maunday-Thursday,
and learned that it was the custom of the emperor to grant the
petitions of him who first presented himself after the office of
Good Friday morning. Huon was so overjoyed at this information that
he could not sleep all that night, but betook himself to his orisons,
imploring God to inspire and aid him so he might again behold his
wife. When morning came, he took his pilgrim staff and repaired to
the chapel. As soon as the office was ended, he contrived to be the
first to attract attention. He told the emperor he was there to
avail himself of the custom of the day in order to obtain a grace.
The emperor replied that, should he even demand fourteen of his
finest cities, they would be given him, for he would rather have one
of his fists cut off than recede from his oath; therefore to make
known his petition, which would not be refused. Then Huon requested
pardon for himself and for all of his who might have committed some
offence. The emperor replied: "Pilgrim, doubt not that what I have
just promised, I will fulfil, but I beg you right humbly to tell me
what manner of man you are, and to what country and race you belong,
that you request such grace from me." Huon then made himself known.
The emperor's face blanched while listening to him, and for a long
time he was unable to speak. At last he said: "Are you, then, Huon
of Bordeaux, from whom I have received such ills--the slayer of my
nephews and followers? I cannot cease wondering at your boldness
in presenting yourself before me. I would rather have lost four of
my best cities, have had my whole dominions laid waste and burned,
and I and my people banished for three years, than find you thus
before me. But since you have thus taken me by surprise, know in
truth that what I have promised and vowed I will hold good, and, in
honor of the Passion of Jesus Christ, and the blessed day which now
is, on which he was crucified and dead, I pardon you all hatred and
evil-doing, and God forbid that I should hold your wife, or lands, or
men, which I will restore to your hands." Then Huon threw himself on
his knees, beseeching the emperor to forgive the injury he had done
him. "God pardon you," said the emperor. "As for me, I forgive you
with right good will," and taking Huon by the hand, he gave him the
kiss of peace. Huon then said: "May it please our Lord Jesus Christ
that this guerdon be returned to you twofold." Then the prisoners
were released, and, after a sumptuous entertainment, the emperor
accompanied Huon and his noble lady on their way back to Bordeaux.

Bordeaux is interesting to the English race, because, among other
reasons, it was for about three hundred years a dependency of the
English crown, being the dowry of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married
Henry II. after her divorce from Louis le Jeune. We associate the
city, too, with Froissart and the Black Prince, who held his court
here. Richard II. was born hard by at the Château de Lormont.
And Henry III. came here to receive his son's bride, Eleanor of
Castile, and gave her so extravagant a marriage feast as to excite
the remonstrances of his nobles. The country prospered under the
English government. The merchants had especial privileges granted
them by Eleanor, and their wines then, as now, found a ready market
in London. Bordeaux in particular increased wonderfully, and outgrew
its defensive walls. The church of St. Michel dates from the time
of English domination, and in that quarter of the city may be seen
old houses, one story projecting beyond the other, and the whole
surmounted by a pyramidal roof, said to be of English origin, and
such as are to be seen in some of the oldest streets of London.

Eleanor always used her influence for the benefit of her people. The
most ancient charter of privileges granted the Gascon merchants was
given by her on the first of July, 1189.

The English seem to have taken their war-cry from the old dukes of
Aquitaine who charged to the sound of "St. George for the puissant
duke." A devotion to St. George was brought from the East by the
Crusaders. Richard I. placed himself and his army under the special
protection of this saint, who, the redoubted slayer of the dragon and
the redresser of woman's wrongs, appealed to the tenderest instincts
of the chivalric heart. St. George's remains were brought from Asia
by the Crusaders, and a large part is enshrined at Toulouse, in the
great basilica of St. Sernin. The crest of the dukes of Aquitaine was
a leopard, which the kings of England bore for a long time on their
shields. Edward III. is called a valiant pard in his epitaph.

These old dukes of Aquitaine seem always to have gone to extremes
either as sinners or saints. Eleanor's grandfather, as I have said,
was one of the earliest of the troubadours. He was distinguished
for his bravery, his musical voice, and his manly beauty. His early
life was such as to incur the censure of the bishop, but he ended
his career in penitence, and the last of his poems is a farewell _á
la chevalerie qu'il a tant aimée_ for the sake of the cross. He was
one of the first to join the crusades at the head of sixty thousand
warriors, but he lost his troops and gained neither glory nor renown.

The term Aquitaine was given this country by Julius Cæsar on account
of its numerous rivers and ports. The ancient province of this name
extended from the Loire to the Pyrenees. In the time of the Roman
dominion, Bordeaux was its capital under the name of Burdigala. The
origin of the city is uncertain. Strabo, who lived in the first
century, mentions it as a celebrated emporium. Some suppose its first
inhabitants to have been of Iberian origin. The real history of the
city commences about the middle of the third century, when Tetricus,
governor of Aquitaine, assumed the purple and was proclaimed emperor.
About the same time St. Martial preached in this region. But the
pagan divinities were still invoked in the time of Ausonius. In
the annals of the Council of Arles, in 314, Orientalis, Bishop of
Bordeaux, is mentioned.

The intellectual superiority of the Romans was always even more
potent than the force of their arms. Barbarism disappeared before
the splendor of their civilization. Burdigala under their dominion
felt the influence of this superiority, and rose to such a degree
of magnificence and luxury as to be a theme for Ausonius, St.
Jerome, and Sidonius Apollinaris. The remains of buildings at
Bordeaux belonging to this epoch give an idea of its prosperity and
importance. There is still an arena in ruins, commonly called the
Palais-Gallien, but the most remarkable Roman monument of the city
was a temple called _Piliers de Tutelle_, which, partly ruined, was
demolished in 1677, by the order of Louis XIV., for the construction
of a quay. Schools were established at Bordeaux at an early day.
We learn from St. Jerome that in his time the liberal arts were
in the most flourishing condition here. In the time of the Roman
dominion, there were universities at Bordeaux, Auch, Toulouse,
Marseilles, Trèves, etc. The edicts issued for their benefit showed
the importance attached to their prosperity by the government. The
college of Bordeaux furnished professors for Rome and Constantinople.
Valentinian I. chose Ausonius, a native of Bordeaux, to superintend
the education of his son Gratian. When the latter became emperor, he
made his old tutor a Roman consul (A.D. 379). The poems of Ausonius
are still admired, but there is much in them that is reprehensible.
They were translated into French by M. Jaubert, a priest at Bordeaux,
who lived in the last century.

That the wines of Aquitaine were already celebrated in the fourth
century is shown by the writings of Ausonius

      "Ostrea
      Non laudata minus, nostri quam gloria vini."

St. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, lived at this time. He was born at
Bordeaux in the year 353, and was descended from a long line of
illustrious senators. One of the several estates he owned near the
city still bears the name of _Le Puy Paulin_, puy being a word from
the _langue Romaine_, perhaps synonymous with the Latin word podium.
One of the public squares of Bordeaux also bears the same name.
Paulinus possessed great elevation of mind and a poetical genius,
which he cultivated under Ausonius, for whose care he expresses
his gratitude in verse. But Ausonius was magnanimous enough to
acknowledge that Paulinus excelled him as a poet and that no modern
Roman could vie with him.

In his early life Paulinus held dignified offices under government,
but his intercourse with St. Delphinus, bishop of Bordeaux, inspired
him with a love for retirement, in which his wife, a Spanish lady of
wealth, participated. They passed over into Spain, and spent four
years there in the retirement of the country, but not as anchorites.
He seemed to have given up all of life but its sweetness when he
composed the following prayer: "O Supreme Master of all things,
grant my wishes, if they are righteous. Let none of my days be sad,
and no anxiety trouble the repose of my nights. Let the good things
of another never tempt me, and may my own suffice to those who ask
my aid. Let joy dwell in my house. Let the slave born on my hearth
enjoy the abundance of my stores. May I live surrounded by faithful
servants, a cherished wife, and the children she will bring me."

While in Spain they lost their only son, whom they buried at Alcala,
near the bodies of the holy martyrs Justus and Pastor. This loss
weaned them completely from the world. Their Spanish solitude had
been a garden of roses, but now they chose the lily as their emblem,
and resolved to lead a monastic life. Paulinus received holy orders,
and they both sold all they possessed and gave the money to the
poor. This drew upon Paulinus the contempt of the world. Even his
own relatives and former slaves rose up against him, but to all
their invectives he only replied: "O beata injuria displicere cum
Christo." "O blessed scorn that is shared with Christ." Ausonius,
in particular, was grieved to see the extensive patrimony of
Paulinus cut up among a hundred possessors, and reproached him in
bitter terms for his madness. But if the world rejected him, he was
received with open arms by such men as St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and
St. Augustine. His devotion to St. Felix, whose tomb he had visited
in his childhood, induced him to fix his residence near Nola in
Campania. Here he lived close by the church where his favorite saint
was enshrined. He had put on the livery of Christ's poor ones, and
contented himself with his cell and garden-plot. And his meekness
and sanctity, joined to his talents as a writer, drew upon him the
admiration of the world. Persons of the highest rank from all parts
went to see him in his retreat, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine
testify. In his seclusion he writes poems that have all the delicacy
and grace of Petrarch. He describes the church of his loved saint,
whose life and miracles he is never weary of dwelling on, as hung
with white draperies and gleaming with aromatic lamps and tapers; the
porch is wreathed with fresh flowers, and the cloisters strewn with
blossoms; and pilgrims come down from the mountains, marching even
at night by the light of their torches, bringing their children in
sacks, and their sick on litters, to be healed at the tomb; for all
the world, a picture of an Italian shrine of these days.

He loved the humblest duties of the sanctuary. "Suffer me to remain
at thy gates," he says. "Let me cleanse thy courts every morning, and
watch every night for their protection. Suffer me to end my days amid
the employments I love. We take refuge within your hallowed pale and
make our nest in your bosom. It is herein that we are cherished, and
expand into a better life. Casting off the earthly burden, we feel
something divine springing up within us, and the unfolding of the
wings which are to make us equal to the angels." These words sound as
if coming from the cloistered votary of the middle ages, or even of
the nineteenth century; the same is the spirit of the church in all
ages.

The writings of St. Paulinus show his devotion to the saints and
their relics, a belief in the efficacy of prayers for the dead, and
in the doctrine of the Real Presence. What can be more explicit, for
instance, than these lines on the Holy Eucharist?

      "In cruce fixa caro est, quâ pascor; de cruce sanguis
      Ille fluit, vitam quo bibo, corda lavo."

He adorned the walls of his church with paintings and composed
inscriptions for the altar, under which were deposited the relics of
St. Andrew, St. Luke, St. Nazarius, and others, and sings thus:

      "In regal shrines with purple marble graced,
      Their bones are 'neath illumined altars placed.
      This pious band's contained in one small chest
      That holds such mighty names within its tiny breast."

After fifteen years of retirement, St. Paulinus was made bishop of
Nola. Shortly before he died, as the lamps were being lighted for the
Vesper service, he murmured,

      "I have trimmed my lamp for Christ."

The prosperity of Bordeaux under the Romans was interrupted by the
invasion of the barbarians that swept down from the north, bringing
ruin and desolation to the land. For nearly a century the city
remained in the power of the Visigoths, who, being Arians, persecuted
the Catholic inhabitants. Sidonius Apollinaris deplores the injury
done to learning by their invasion, but perhaps the decline of
learning was partly owing to a growing distaste for pagan literature
among Christians. The barbarians were finally routed by Clovis in
507, and he took possession of Bordeaux. Charlemagne made Aquitaine
a kingdom for his son Louis le Débonnaire. Louis, son of Charles le
Chauve, was the last king of Aquitaine. When he ascended the throne
of France, it resumed its former rank as a duchy.

The college of Guienne was founded here in the middle ages. In the
sixteenth century, it had, at one time, twenty-five hundred pupils.
The famous George Buchanan, whom everybody knows, because his head
adorns the cover of _Blackwood's Magazine_, but who is more spoken
of than read, taught in this college three years. He came here in
1539. Among his pupils was the great Montaigne, who passed most of
his life at Bordeaux and is buried in the church of the Feuillants.
As Buchanan was somewhat given to hilarity and loved the flavor of
Gascon wines, this city probably had its attractions for him. In his
_Maiæ Calendæ_, full of gaiety and merry-making, he speaks of the
grapes of the sandy soil of Gascony:

      "Nec tenebris claudat generosum cella Lyæum,
      Quem dat arenoso Vasconis uva solo."

One vintage season, Buchanan went to Agen to enjoy it at the
residence of his friend, the celebrated Julius Scaliger, who had
been a professor at the college of Guienne, but was now settled as a
physician at Agen.

Among the other literary celebrities of Bordeaux is Arnaud Berquin,
whose charming writings are still popular. His _Ami des Enfants_ was
crowned by the French Academy in 1784. And Montesquieu was born at
the château of La Brède near Bordeaux, whence he took his title of
Baron de la Brède.

Bordeaux is now the finest city in France after Paris, and it ranks
next to Lyons in importance. Perhaps I cannot do better than quote
what a popular French author of the day says of it:

    "Bordeaux is five miles long and has one hundred and
    fifty thousand inhabitants: plenty of room for few
    people. But the entire population does not breathe at
    its ease. If the grass be growing in the streets and
    squares of the new town, there is some stifling felt
    in the old districts. The Jews, chapmen, brokers, and
    marine store men live in a dirty and unhealthy hive,
    and their shops form no straight line along the narrow
    and unpaved streets. You may still see a quantity of
    those paunchy, hunchbacked, and decrepit houses, which
    form the delight of romantic archæology, and you need
    only go to Bordeaux to form an accurate idea of old
    Paris. In the new town all is vast, rectilinear, and
    monumental: the streets, squares, avenues, esplanades
    and buildings rival the splendor of what we are taught
    to admire in Paris. The Grand Thèâtre, containing only
    twelve hundred persons, has the imposing aspect of a
    Colosseum and a staircase which might be transferred
    with advantage to our Opera. The cafés are truly
    monuments, and I saw a bathing establishment which bore
    a strong resemblance to a necropolis. All this grandeur
    dates from Louis XV. and Louis XVI. The population
    of Bordeaux is one of the prettiest specimens of the
    French nation. The women possess more expression than
    freshness, but with good hair, good eyes, and white
    teeth, a woman cannot but look well. The men have a
    sharp look, a lively mind, and brilliancy of language."

One of the glories of Bordeaux is the bridge across the Garonne built
by order of Napoleon the Great. It has seventeen arches, and there is
an interior gallery communicating from one arch to another which is
accessible.

There are some fine pictures in the Musée des Tableaux--a Perugino,
and others by Titian, Vandyke, Rubens, etc. Some excellent artists
have been formed in the School of Design, among whom is Rosa Bonheur.
But the people in general are more fond of music and the drama than
the other fine arts.

The commerce of Bordeaux is extensive, but is surpassed by that of
Havre, perhaps because there is too much of the _laisser-aller_ in
a more southern temperament. Nevertheless, the city is progressing.
The port, says the author already quoted, is a third edition of the
Thames at London and the Golden Horn at Constantinople.




THE "AMEN" OF THE STONES.

FROM THE GERMAN.


      Blind with old age, went Beda forth to preach
      The blessed Gospel to the world, and teach
      The listening crowd of village and of town.
      A peasant school-boy led him up and down,
      Proclaiming aye God's word with youthful fire.

      Rather in childish folly than in scorn,
      The lad the trusting graybeard led, one morn,
      Down to a vale where massive stones around
      Were strewed. "A congregation fills the ground,"
      He said, "and, lo, they wait to hear thee, sire."

      Up rose the aged pilgrim, took the text,
      Turned it, explained it, and applied it next,
      Implored, exhorted, prayed, and, ending, bowed his head,
      And to the listening crowd the Pater Noster said.

      When he had ended, from the circling stones
      The cry went forth, as if in human tones,
      "Amen, most reverend father!" and again
      The circling stones in concert cried, "Amen!"

      The boy shrank back, remorseful, on his knees,
      Confessed his fault, and sought to make his peace.
      "Mock not God's word," the old man to him said.
      "Know that, though men were mute to it, and dead.
      The very stones will witness. 'Tis a living word,
      And cutteth sharply, like a two-edged sword.
      And if all human hearts to stones should turn,
      A human heart within these stones would burn."




THE HOUSE OF YORKE.


CHAPTER III.

DIEU DISPOSE.

The early morning of Mr. Rowan's burial had been heavy and dark; but
as they left the island a shower of golden light broke through the
clouds, the water sparkled on all sides, and the sighing air became a
frolic breeze. Dick and the captain brightened, and exchanged a few
words in seamen's phrase complimenting the weather. Mrs. Rowan also
roused herself, brushed the sand from her clothes, arranged the folds
of her veil, and even smoothed her hair. The poor creature's vanity
was dead, but at the prospect of meeting strangers it gave a slight
post-mortem flicker. Out it went, though, the next instant, on the
breath of a sigh. What did it matter how she looked? But she glanced
anxiously at Edith.

The child had put on her mother's red cape and drawn it up over her
head, and she still held it there, one slim hand pulling the folds
close together under her chin. That she might appear outlandish did
not trouble Edith. Indeed, she claimed the right to be so on account
of her foreign blood. But when she noticed Mrs. Rowan's attention to
her own toilet, and met her glance, she pushed the cape off her head,
and, putting her arms up, began to smooth her hair and plait it into
a long braid. It was rich, long hair, not given to wilful ringlets,
but would curl when in the mood. Now the wind blew little curls out
about her face, and the risen sun steeped the tresses in a pale flame.

The braid finished, she tossed it back, and caught it lightly into a
loop, the motion revealing a pair of round white arms, to which the
hands and wrists looked like colored gauntlets. Then she unfolded
her precious Indian relic of tarnished red and gold, and bound it
straightly about her head, half-covering the forehead, so that the
long, fringed ends hung behind, and a loose fold fell over each ear.

Beholding her in that guise, Captain Cary thought that she looked
fitter for some oriental scene than for this crude corner of a crude
land. "She might be a stolen child stained with gypsy-wort," he said
to himself.

But she was Gypsy only in color. No wild fires burned in her face;
her cool eyes looked out calm and observant; her mouth was gently
closed. The very shape of her features expressed tranquillity.

The sailor found himself much interested in this little girl.
Besides that her appearance pleased him, his good-will had been
bespoken; for on one of those days when their ship had lain becalmed
in southern waters, Dick had told him all her story. Listening to
it, half-asleep, as to something that might be fact and might be
fancy, all the scene about him had entwined itself with the history
and with the heroine's character. The solid golden day, shut down
over a sea whose soft pulses told of perfect repose; the wide-eyed,
radiant night, which seemed every moment on the point of breaking
into music far and near, a fine, clear music of countless sweet bells
with almost human tongues--they formed the background on which her
image floated. Seeing her did not dispel but rather strengthened the
illusion. Something golden in her hair, something tranquil in her
face, something expectant in her eyes--all were like.

The rough giant of a sailor mused tenderly over this as he sent their
boat forward with powerful strokes, and watched Edith Yorke bind on
her Egyptian _coiffure_.

They did not row to the wharf, where the steamer had already
arrived, but to a place a few rods above, where the sea had taken
a good semicircular bite out of the land. Here a straggling bit of
dilapidated woods had been allowed to remain by the vandals who had
turned all the rest to grass and pasture, and a mossy ledge broke the
teeth of the soft, gnawing waves.

Edith stepped lightly on shore. She was young, healthy, brave, and
ignorant, and pain, though it called forth her tears, was stimulating
to her. That pang had not yet come which could cut her heart in twain
and let all the courage out.

"You are spry," Captain Cary said, smiling down upon her.

She smiled faintly in return, but said nothing.

Mrs. Rowan needed assistance at either hand. She had been broken by
pain.

They stood awhile in the grove, Dick and the captain making some
business arrangements. The _Halcyon_ was to remain four weeks at
Seaton, and it was agreed that Dick should have that time to get his
mother settled. Then the ship would touch at New York, where he would
embark for the East again.

While they lingered, a large yellow coach, loaded with passengers,
rattled past amid clouds of dust.

"There is no hurry," Dick said. "It will take an hour to get the
freight off and on. But you needn't wait, captain. They'll be looking
for you at the village."

The others drew near to Captain Cary at that, holding his hands and
trying to utter their thanks.

"Oh! it's nothing," he said, much abashed. "I haven't done anything
to be thanked for. Good-by! Keep up your courage, and you will come
out first-rate. There's nothing like grit."

A subsiding ripple tossed his boat against the shore. At that hint
he stepped in, dallied with the rope, then said, with a perfectly
transparent affectation of having only just thought of it: "Oh!
I've got a ring here that Edith is welcome to, if she will wear it.
I brought it home for my niece; but the child is dead. It won't fit
anybody else I know."

Mrs. Rowan immediately thanked him, and Edith smiled with childish
pleasure. "You are very kind, Captain Cary," she said. "I always
thought I would like to have a ring."

Dick alone darkened; but no one noticed it. He had meant to do
everything for her; and here was a wish which she had never expressed
to him, and he had not known enough to anticipate.

The captain drew a tiny box from his pocket, and displayed a small
circlet in which was set a single spark of diamond. Edith extended
her left hand, and the sailor, leaning over the boatside, slipped the
ring on to her forefinger.

"Good-by, again!" he said then hastily, and gave each of them a grasp
of the hand. Dick could take care of himself; but the other two,
putting out their tender hands impulsively, grew red in the face
with pain at the grip of his iron fingers. The next instant his boat
shot out into the bay. They looked after him till he glanced back
and saluted them with a nod, and two arches of spray tossed from his
oars; then turned and climbed the shore, Dick assisting his mother,
Edith following.

"Good-by, trees!" said the child, glancing up. "Good-by, moss!"
stooping to gather a silken green flake and a cluster of red-topped
gray. The prettiest cup had a spider in it, and she would not disturb
it. "Good-by, spider!" she whispered, "I'm never coming back again."

She had friends to take leave of, after all--not human friends, but
God's little creatures, who had never hurt her save in self-defence.

When they reached the wharf, there was no one in sight but the men
who trundled the freight off and on. At the upper end of the wharf
there was a small building used as office and waiting-room. The
passage to the boat being obstructed, Dick sent his mother and Edith
there, while he went on board to get tickets. They went to the door
of the waiting-room, hesitated a moment on seeing it occupied, then
went in, and seated themselves in a retired corner.

The party who were already in possession glanced at the new-comers,
and immediately became oblivious of them. This party were evidently
the members of one family. Some indefinable resemblance, as well as
their air of intimacy, showed that. An elderly gentleman walked up
and down the floor, his hands clasped behind his back, and a lady not
much over forty sat near, surrounded by her three daughters. At a
window, to which the mother's back was turned, looking up toward the
village, stood a young man whose age could not be over twenty-three.
The ages of the daughters might vary from sixteen to twenty. They
formed rather a remarkable group, and were attractive, though the
faces of all expressed more or less dissatisfaction. That of the
young man indicated profound disgust. The elder lady had a sweet and
melancholy expression, and appeared like an invalid. The youngest
daughter, who sat beside her, was as like her mother as the waxing
moon is like the waning. She was pretty, had clinging, caressing
ways, a faint dimple in her left cheek, splendid auburn hair, and
gray eyes. They called her Hester. On the other hand sat the eldest
daughter, a rather stately, self-satisfied young woman, whose
attentions to her mother had an air of patronage. This was Melicent.
She was rather fair, neutral in color, and excessively near-sighted.
The second daughter stood behind her mother, and was very attentive
to her, but in an absent way, often doing more harm than good by her
assistance. "My dear Clara, you are bundling the shawl all about
my neck! My love, you pull my bonnet off in arranging my veil!
Why, Clara, what are you doing to my scarf?" Such remarks as these
were constantly being addressed to her. Clara was a dark brunette,
with small features, a superb but not tall figure, and large gray
eyes that looked black. Her coal-black hair grew rather low on the
forehead, straight black brows overshadowed her eyes and nearly met
over the nose, and an exquisitely delicate mouth gave softness to
this face which would otherwise have been severe. She seemed to be a
girl of immense but undisciplined energy, and full of enthusiasm.

The gentleman who paced the floor was slightly under-sized and thin
in figure, thin in face, too, dark, and sallow. The very look of him
suggested bile and sarcasm. But let him speak for himself, since
he is just now on this subject. "Bile, my dear," he said to his
wife--"bile came into the world with original sin. I am not sure that
bile is not sin. It is Marah in a pleasant land. It is a fountain of
gall in the garden of paradise. It poisons life. Doctors know nothing
whatever about bile, and liver-medicines are a superstition. He who
shall discover a way to eradicate bile from the system will be a
great moral reformer. Every sin I ever committed in my life took its
rise in my liver. I believe the liver to be an interpolation in the
original man. We should be better without it."

The gentleman who spoke had a wide, thin mouth, very much drawn down
at the corners and nowise hidden, the gray moustache he spared in
shaving being curled up at the ends. His manner was that of a person
who would scarcely brook contradiction. His speech was clear and
emphatic, and he pronounced his words as if he knew how they were
spelt. A long, delicate aquiline nose had a good deal to do with his
profile, as had also a pair of overhanging eyebrows. From beneath
these brows looked forth a pair of keen gray eyes, with countless
complex wrinkles about them. The chin was handsome, well-rounded,
and, fortunately, not projecting. A projecting chin with an aquiline
nose is one of the greatest of facial misfortunes. Caricature can do
no more. The forehead was intellectual, and weighty enough to make it
no wonder if the slight frame grew nervous and irritable in carrying
out the behests of the brain hidden there. The head was crowned by
a not inartistic confusion of gray hair which seemed to have been
stirred by electricity.

"I am sorry, madam, that I cannot compliment the climate of your
native state," he remarked after a pause. "The spring is a month or
six weeks behind that of Massachusetts, and the fall as much earlier.
The travelling here is simply intolerable. It is either clouds of
dust, bogs of mud, or drifts of snow. I quite agree with the person
who said that Maine is a good state to come _from_."

"We all know, Charles, that the climate of Massachusetts, and
particularly of Boston, surpasses that of any other part of the
world," the lady replied with great composure.

The gentleman winced very slightly. He was one of those who
constantly make sarcastic observations to others, but are peculiarly
sensitive when such are addressed to themselves. In his society, one
was frequently reminded of the little boy's complaint: "Mother, make
Tommy be still. He keeps crying every time I strike him on the head
with the hammer."

"Here will be a chance to practise your famous English walks,
Melicent," the father said. "I presume the old chaise is dissolved.
I remember it twenty years ago nodding along the road in the most
polite manner. By the way, Amy, did you ever observe that in genuine
country places people leave their defunct vehicles to decay by the
roadside? I am not sure that there is no poetry in the custom. The
weary wheels crumble to dust in view of the track over which they
have rolled in life, and are a _memento mori_ to living carriages. It
is not unlike the monument of Themistocles 'on the watery strand.'"

"Papa," exclaimed Hester, "why didn't you say tired wheels? You
started to."

"Because I detest a pun."

Melicent, who had been waiting for a chance, now spoke. "You don't
mean to say, papa, that we shall have no carriage?"

A shrug of the shoulders was the only reply.

The young woman's face wore a look of dismay. "But, papa!" she
exclaimed.

"Wait till the pumpkins grow," he said with a mocking smile. "I will
give you the largest one, and your mother will furnish the mice. I
don't doubt there are mice, and to spare."

"You don't mean that we must walk everywhere?" his daughter cried.

"Dear me, Melicent, how persistent you are!" interrupted Clara
impatiently. "One would think there was no need of borrowing
trouble."

The elder sister gazed with an air of superiority at the younger. "I
was speaking to papa," she remarked with dignity.

The father frowned, the mother raised a deprecating hand, and the
imminent retort was hushed. Clara went to her brother, and, leaning
on his arm, whispered that, if Mel were not her own sister, she
should really get to dislike her.

"How silent you are, Owen," said Hester, looking around at him. "All
you have done to entertain us so far has been to make faces when you
were sick. To be sure, that made us laugh."

"A sea-sick person may be the cause of wit in others, but is seldom
himself witty," was the laconic reply.

The speaker was a slim, elegant youth, with golden tints in his
light hair, with rather drooping and very bright blue eyes, and a
beautiful, sensuous mouth.

Edith Yorke watched this party with interest, and the longer she
looked at the elder gentleman the better she liked him. His manner of
addressing the ladies suited her inborn sense of what a gentleman's
manner should be. There was no contemptuous waiting before answering
them, no flinging the reply over his shoulder, nor growling it out
like a bear. Besides, she half-believed--only half, for her eyes were
heavy with weeping and loss of sleep--that he had looked kindly at
her. Once she was sure that he spoke of her to his wife, but she did
not know what he said. It was this: "My dear, do you observe that
child? She has an uncommon face."

The lady glanced across the room and nodded. She was too much
preoccupied to think of anything but their own affairs. But her
husband, on whom these affairs had the contrary effect of driving
him to seek distraction, approached Edith.

"Little girl," he said, "you remind me so much of some one I have
seen that I would like to know your name, if you please to tell it."

"My name is Edith Eugénie Yorke," she replied, with perfect
self-possession.

He had bent slightly toward her in speaking, but at sound of the name
he stood suddenly upright, his sallow face turned very red, and he
looked at her with a gaze so piercing that she shrank from it. "Who
were your father and mother?" he demanded.

"My mother was Eugénie Lubormirski, a Polish exile, and my father
was Mr. Robert Yorke, of Boston," said Edith. Her eyes were fixed
intently on the gentleman's face, and her heart began to beat quickly.

He turned away from her and resumed his walk, but, after a minute,
came back again. "Your father and mother are both dead?" he asked in
a gentler tone.

"Yes, sir."

"You have no brothers nor sisters?"

"No, sir."

"Who takes care of you?"

"Mrs. Jane Rowan," Edith replied, laying her hand on the widow's lap.

He bowed, taking this for an introduction, a cold but courteous bow.

"May I ask, madam," he inquired, "what claim you have on this child?"

Mrs. Rowan had shown some agitation while this conversation was going
on, and when Edith put out her hand, she grasped it as if meaning
to hold on to the child. Her reply was made in a somewhat defiant
tone. "When Mrs. Robert Yorke died, she asked me to have pity on her
daughter, and keep her out of the poor-house. I have taken care of
her ever since. The Yorkes had turned them off."

The gentleman drew himself up, and put out his under lip. "Thank you
for the information," he said bitterly. Then to Edith, "Come, child,"
and took her hand.

She allowed him to lead her across the room to his wife.

"Mrs. Yorke," he said, "this is my brother Robert's orphan child!"

There was a slight sensation and a momentary pause; but the lady
recovered immediately. "I am glad to see you, dear," she said in a
kind voice. "Who is that person?" she added to her husband, glancing
at Mrs. Rowan.

The widow was staring at them angrily, and seemed on the point of
coming to take Edith away by force.

"One who has taken care of the child since her mother's death, Amy,"
he answered. "She has no claim on my niece, and will, of course, give
her up to us. The little girl is named for my mother. Robert was
always fond of mother."

There was a pause of embarrassed silence.

"You must perceive that there is no other way," Mr. Yorke continued
with some state. "Aside from natural affection and pity for the
child's friendless condition, an Edith Yorke must not be allowed to
go about the country like a Gypsy with a shawl over her head."

"It is just as papa says," Melicent interposed, and immediately took
Edith by the hand and kissed her cheek. "You are my little cousin,
and you will go home and live with us," she said sweetly.

Miss Yorke's manner was very conciliating; but her suavity proceeded
less from real sweetness than from self-complacency. She prided
herself on knowing and always doing what was _comme il faut_, and
took great pleasure in being the mould of form.

"I shall go with Dick! I am going to live with Dick!" Edith cried,
snatching her hand away. A blush of alarm overspread her face, and
she looked round in search of her protector. At that moment he
appeared in the door, paused in surprise at seeing where Edith was,
then went to his mother.

"The Yorkes have got her," Mrs. Rowan said to him, breathless with
excitement. "That is Mr. Charles Yorke. I knew him the moment I set
eyes on him."

Dick wheeled about and faced them. Edith, too proud to run away,
looked at him imploringly.

Then Miss Melicent Yorke arose, like the goddess of peace, adjusted
her most impregnable smile, and sailed across the room. "I am Miss
Yorke," she said brightly, as though such an announcement would be
sure to delight them. "Of course, the dear little Edith is my cousin.
Is it not the strangest thing in the world that we should have met in
such a way? I am sure we shall all feel deeply indebted to you for
having protected the child while we knew nothing of her necessities.
Of course, we should have sent for her directly if we had known. But,
as it is, we have the pleasure of meeting you."

Pausing, Miss Yorke looked at the two as if they were the dearest
friends she had on earth and it gave her heartfelt joy to behold
their countenances.

Dick choked with the words he would have uttered. He felt keenly the
insolence of her perfectly confident and smiling address, yet knew
not how to defend himself. If a man had been in her place, he could
have met his airy assumption with a sufficiently blunt rebuff; but
the young sailor was chivalric, and could not look a woman in the
face and utter rude words. His mother's emotion did not prevent her
replying, and, fortunately, to the point.

"Do you mean to say," Mrs. Rowan exclaimed, "that you are going to
take Edith away from us without leave or license, after we have
supported her four years without your troubling yourselves whether
she starved in the street or not?"

For a moment, Miss Yorke's social poniard wavered before this broad
thrust, but only for a moment. "Every family has its own private
affairs, which no one else has either the power or the right to
decide upon," she said smilingly. "All I need say of ours is that,
if Mr. Yorke, my father, had known that his brother left a child
unprovided for, he would have adopted her without delay. He did not
know it till this minute, and his first thought is that there is
only one proper course for him. His niece must be under his care,
as her natural protector, and must have the advantages of education
and society to which she is entitled. I am sure you would both be
friendly enough to her to wish her to occupy her rightful position.
As for any expense you may have gone to on her account, papa--"

"Stop there, madam!" Dick interrupted haughtily. "We will say no
more about that, if you please. As to Edith's going with you, she
shall choose for herself. I don't deny that it seems to be the proper
thing; but allow me to say that it was my intention to give her a
good home and a good education, such as no girl need be ashamed of. I
will speak to Edith, and see what she thinks about it."

He turned unceremoniously away from Miss Yorke's protestations, and
went to the door, beckoning Edith to follow him. As he looked back,
waiting for her, he saw that the whole family had gone over in a body
to talk to his mother.

Edith clasped the hand he held out to her, and looked up into his
face with large tears flashing in her eyes.

"I wouldn't leave you if they would give me all the world!" she
exclaimed.

He smiled involuntarily, but would not take advantage of her
affectionate impulse. He saw clearly that her true place was with
her relatives. They could do for her at once what he could do only
after years of weary labor. Perhaps they could do at once what he
could never do. But it was hard to give her up. Down in the bottom
of his heart was a thought which he had never fully acknowledged the
presence of, but of which he was always conscious: he had meant to
bring the child up to be his wife some day, if she should be willing;
to load her with benefits; to be the one to whom she should owe
everything. But with the pang it cost him to put this hope in peril
came the glimpse of a possibility how far more triumphant! Following
his own plan, he should be hedging her in; giving her up now would
be making her free choice, if it should fall on him, an infinitely
greater boon. Besides, and above all, it was right that she should go.

Dick leaned back against the wall of the building, and folded his
arms while he talked to her. At first Edith broke into reproaches
when she learned that he meant to give her up, but immediately an
instinct of feminine pride and delicacy checked the words upon her
lips. It was impossible for her to press her society on one who
voluntarily relinquished it. She listened to her sentence in silence.

"So you see, Edith," he concluded, "we must make up our minds to
part."

She perceived no such necessity, but did not tell him so. "Then I
shall never see you any more!" she said in a whisper, without looking
up.

Dick's eyes sparkled with resolution through the tears that filled
them. "Yes, you will!" he exclaimed. "I mean to do the best I can for
mother and myself, and you shall not be ashamed of us. And however
high they may set you, Edith, I'll climb! I'll climb! I won't be so
far off but I can reach you!"

The coach had taken its first load of passengers to the village, and
now came down to bring those who were to take the steamer and carry
the Yorkes back. It was time to go on board. Dick stepped to the door
of the waiting-room. "Come, mother!" he said. "Edith and I will see
you to your state-room, and then I will bring her back. She is to go
with her uncle."

He was not surprised to see that his mother had been completely
talked over by Edith's relations, and that, though tearful, no
opposition was to be expected from her. They seemed to be the best
of friends; and when the widow rose to take leave of them, Mr.
Yorke himself escorted her to the boat. In fact, it was all very
comfortably settled, as Miss Yorke observed to her mother when they
had taken their seats in the coach.

When Edith and Dick appeared again, hand in hand, Mr. Yorke stood at
the coach-door, waiting to assist his niece to her place.

"How picturesque!" Clara Yorke exclaimed, as the two stepped over
the planks and came toward them. "It is like something out of the
_Arabian Nights_. He is Sindbad, and she is one of those princesses
who were always getting into such ridiculous situations and
difficulties. The child is absurd, of course, but she is lovely; and
the young man is really very fine--of his kind."

Sindbad and his princess were both very pale. "Sir," the sailor said,
presenting the child to her uncle, "I hope she will be as happy with
you as I and my mother would have tried to make her."

As he released her hand, Edith's face suddenly whitened. All her
little world was slipping away from beneath her feet.

Mr. Yorke was touched and impressed. He liked the young man's
dignity. "I must compliment you, sir, on your honorable conduct in
this affair," he said. "Let us hear from you; and come to see us
whenever you are in our neighborhood."

Dick Rowan, in his turn, would have been touched by this unexpected
cordiality, had not a slight raising of Miss Melicent Yorke's
eyebrows neutralized its effect. The young woman thought that
her father was really condescending unnecessarily. That faint,
supercilious surprise checked the young man's gratitude, and he was
turning away with a cold word of thanks, when Mrs. Yorke called him
back. She was leaning from the carriage, and held out her hand to him.

"Good-by, Mr. Rowan!" she said aloud. "You need not fear that we
shall not cherish this orphan whom you have kindly protected so
far, and you need not fear that we shall try to make her forget
you. Ingratitude is the vice of slaves. I am sure she will never be
ungrateful to you."

"Thank you!" Dick said fervently, melted by the kind smile and
tremulous sweetness of tone. It was none of Miss Melicent's
exasperating affability.

"And I have a favor to ask," she added, leaning still further out,
and lowering her voice so that only he could hear. "I take for
granted that you will write to my niece. Will you allow her to let me
read your letters?"

Dick blushed deeply as he stammered out another "Thank you!" It was a
delicately given warning and kindly given permission. It showed him,
moreover, that the lady's soft eyes had looked to the bottom of his
heart. At that moment he was glad that the ring on Edith's finger was
Captain Cary's gift, not his.

"I would like to see the steamboat just as long as it is in sight,"
Edith said faintly.

Her uncle immediately gave orders to the driver to take them round to
a place from which they could look down to the entrance of the bay.

The boat steamed out over the water, glided like a swan down the bay,
and soon disappeared around a curve that led to the Narrows. Edith
gazed immovably after it, unconscious that they were all watching
her. When it was no longer visible, she closed her eyes, and sank
back into Mrs. Yorke's arms.


CHAPTER IV.

THE OLD HOME.

Mrs. Charles Yorke was a native of Seaton; her maiden name, Arnold.
Her mother had died while Amy was quite young, and in a few years the
father married again. This marriage was an unfortunate one for the
family; and not only the daughter but many of Mr. Arnold's friends
had tried to dissuade him from it. Their chief argument was not that
the person whom he proposed to marry was a vulgar woman whom his lost
wife would not have received as an acquaintance, but that she was in
every way unworthy of him, and would be a discreditable connection.
They met the fate which usually awaits such interference. Truth
itself never appears so true as varnished falsehood does. Mr. Arnold
was flattered and duped; and the end of the affair was that Amy had
the misery of seeing his deceiver walk triumphantly into her mother's
sacred place. Nor was this all. In a moment of weakness, the father
betrayed to his new wife the efforts that had been made to separate
them, and she half-guessed, half-drew from him every name. From that
moment her instinctive jealous dislike of her step-daughter was
turned to hatred.

Had the young girl been wise, she would have known that her
only proper course was to withdraw from the field; but she was
inexperienced and passionate, and had no better adviser than her
own heart. Had she been a Catholic, she could have found in the
confessional the confidant and counsel she needed; but she was not.
In Seaton there were no Catholics above the class of servants and
day-laborers. She was left, therefore, completely to herself, and
in the power of an unscrupulous and subtle tormentor. Miserable,
indignant, and desperate, the young girl descended to the contest,
and at every step she was defeated. She called on her father for
protection; but he saw nothing of her trials, or was made to believe
that she had herself provoked them. It was the old story of adroit
deceit arrayed against impolitic sincerity. But, happily, the
contest was not of long duration.

Amy was not a person to remain in a position so false and degrading.
There came a time when, quite as much to her own surprise as to
theirs, she had nothing more to say. But their surprise was that she
contended no longer, hers that she had contended so long. The way was
clear before her, and her plans were soon made. Her father had an
unmarried cousin living in Boston, and this lady consented to receive
her. Only on the day preceding her departure did she announce her
intentions. The sufferings she had undergone were a sufficient excuse
for her abruptness. She had become too much weakened and excited to
bear any controversy upon the subject. Besides, the parting from
her father, if prolonged, would have been unbearable. She must tear
herself away.

He sat a moment with downcast eyes after she had communicated to him
her design. His face expressed emotion. He seemed both pained and
embarrassed, and quite at a loss what to say. In fact, his wife had
proposed this very plan, and was anxious that Amy should go, and he
had entertained the project. Therefore he could not express surprise.
For the first time, perhaps, a feeling of shame overcame him. He was
obliged to deceive! His pride, revolting at that shame, made him
impatient. Unwilling to acknowledge himself in the wrong, he wished
to appear injured.

"If you mean to deprive me of my only child, and would rather live
with strangers than with your own father, I will not oppose you," he
said. "But I think you might have shown some confidence in me, and
told me your wishes before."

Amy's impulse had been, at the first sight of his emotion, to throw
herself into his arms, and forgive him everything, or take upon
herself all the blame. But at these words she recoiled. Her silence
was better than any answer could have been.

"I don't blame you, child," her father resumed, blushing for the
evasion he had practised. "It would be cruel of me to wish you to
stay in a home where you cannot live in peace. I am grieved, Amy, but
I can do nothing. What can a man do between women who disagree?"

"Find out which is wrong!" was the answer that rose to her lips, but
she suppressed it. She had already exhausted words to him. She had
poured out her pain, her love, her entreaties, and they had been to
him as the idle wind. She had been wronged and insulted, and he would
not see it. She turned away with a feeling of despair.

"At least, let us part as a father and daughter should," he said in a
trembling voice.

She held out one hand to him, and with the other covered her face,
unable to utter a word; then broke away, and shut herself into her
chamber. There are times when entire reparation only is tolerable,
and we demand full justice, or none.

So they parted, and never met again, though they corresponded
regularly, and wrote kind if not confidential letters. The only
sign the daughter ever had of any change of opinion in her father
regarding the cause of their separation was when he requested her to
send her letters to his office and not to the house. After that they
both wrote more freely.

In her new home, Amy did not find all sunshine. Miss Clinton was
old and notional, and had too great a fondness for thinking for
others as well as herself. Consequently, when the young lady favored
the addresses of a poor artist who had been employed to paint her
portrait, there was an explosion. With her father's consent, Amy
married Carl Owen, and her cousin discarded her. There was one year
of happiness; then the young husband died, and left his wife with an
infant son.

In her trouble, Mrs. Owen made the acquaintance of Mrs. Edith Yorke,
who became to her a helpful friend; and in little more than a year
she married that lady's eldest son, Charles. From that moment her
happiness was assured. She found herself surrounded by thoroughly
congenial society, and blest with the companionship of one who was
to her father, husband, and brother, all she had ever lost or longed
for. Mr. Yorke adopted her son as his own, and, so far from showing
any jealousy of his predecessor, was the one to propose that the boy
should retain his own father's name in addition to the one he adopted.

As daughters grew up around them, he appeared to forget that Carl was
not his own son, at least so far as pride in him went. Probably he
showed more fondness for his girls.

Mr. Arnold died shortly after his daughter's second marriage, and his
wife followed him in a few years. By their death Mrs. Yorke became
the owner of her old home. But she had no desire to revisit the scene
of so much misery, and for years the house was left untenanted in the
care of a keeper. Nor would they ever have gone there, probably, but
for pecuniary losses which made them glad of any refuge.

Mr. Charles Yorke appreciated the value of money, and knew admirably
well how to spend it; but the acuteness which can foresee and make
bargains, and the unscrupulousness which is so often necessary to
insure their success, he had not. Consequently, when in an evil hour
he embarked his inherited wealth in speculation, it was nearly all
swept away.

Creditors, knowing his probity, offered to wait.

"Why should I wait?" he asked. "Will my debts contract as the cold
weather comes on? I prefer an immediate settlement."

Not displeased at his refusal to profit by their generosity, they
hinted at a willingness to take a percentage on their claims.

"A percentage!" cried the debtor. "Am I a swindler? Am I a beggar?
I shall pay a hundred per cent., and I recommend you in your future
dealings with me to bear in mind that I am a gentleman and not an
adventurer."

A very old-fashioned man was Mr. Charles Yorke, and a very hard man
to pity.

Behold him, then, and his family _en route_ for their new home.

We have said that the two principal streets of the town of Seaton
crossed each other at right angles, one running north and south along
the river, the other running east and west across the river. These
roads carried themselves very straightly before folks, but once out
of town, forgot their company manners, and meandered as they chose,
splintered into side-tracks, and wandered off in vagabond ways. But
the south road, that passed by the Rowans', was the only one that
came to nothing. The other three persisted till they each found a
village or a city, twenty-five miles or so away. Half a mile from
the village centre, on North Street, a very respectable-looking
road started off eastward, ran across a field, and plunged into
the forest that swept down over a long smooth rise from far-away
regions of wildness. Following this road half a mile, one saw at the
left a tumble-down stone wall across an opening, with two gates,
painted black in imitation of iron, about fifteen rods apart. A
little further on, it became visible that an avenue went from gate
to gate, enclosing a deep half-circle of lawn, on which grew several
fair enough elms and a really fine maple. After such preliminaries
you expect a house; and there it is at the head of the avenue, a
widespread building, with a cupola in the centre, a portico in front,
and a wing at either side. It is elevated on a deep terrace, and
has a background of woods, and woods at either hand, only a little
removed.

To be consistent, this house should be of stone, or, at least, of
brick; but it is neither. Still, it would not be right to call it a
"shingle palace;" for its frame is a massive network of solid oaken
beams, and it is strong enough to bear unmoved a shock that would
set nine out of every ten modern city structures rattling down into
their cellars. When Mrs. Yorke's grandfather built this house, in the
year 1800, English ideas and feelings still prevailed in that region;
and in building a house, a gentleman thought of his grandchildren,
who might live in it. Now nobody builds with any reference to his
descendants.

But Mr. Arnold's plans had proved larger than his purse. The park
he meant to have had still remained three hundred acres of wild,
unfenced land, the gardens never got beyond a few flowers, now choked
with weeds, and the kitchen-garden, kept alive by Patrick Chester,
Mrs. Yorke's keeper. As for the orchard, it never saw the light. Mrs.
Yorke's father had done the place one good turn, for he had planted
vines everywhere. Their graceful banners, in summer-time, draped the
portico, the corners of the house, the dead oak-tree by the western
wing, and swept here and there over rock, fence, or stump.

Back of the house, toward the right, was a huge barn and a granary;
the eaves of both under-hung with a solid row of swallows' nests. On
this bright April morning, the whole air was full of the twirl and
twitter of these birds, and with the blue glancing of their wings
some invisible crystalline ring seemed to have been let down from
the heavens over and around the house, and they followed its outline
in their flight. But the homely, bread-and-butter robins had no such
mystical ways. They flew or hopped straight where they wanted to go,
and what they wanted to get was plainly something to eat. One of them
alighted on the threshold of the open front-door and looked curiously
in. He saw a long hall, with a staircase on one side, and open doors
to right and left and at the furthest end. All the wood-work, walls,
and ceilings in sight were dingy, and rats and mice had assisted
time in gnawing away; but the furniture was bright, and three fires
visible through the three open doors were brighter still. Redbreast
seemed to be much interested in these fires. Probably he was a bird
from the city, and had never seen such large ones. Those in the
front rooms were large enough, but that in the kitchen was something
immense, and yet left room at one side of the fireplace for a person
to sit and look up chimney, if so disposed.

"_Bon!_" says the bird, with a nod, hopping in, "the kitchen is the
place to go to. As to those flowers and cherries on the floor, I am
not to be cheated by them. They are not good to eat, but only to walk
on. I am a bird of culture and society. I know how people live. I am
not like that stupid chicken."

For a little yellow chicken, without a sign of tail, had followed the
robin in, and was eagerly pecking at the spots in the carpet.

The bird of culture hopped along to the door at the back of the hail,
and paused again to reconnoitre. Here a long, narrow corridor ran
across, with doors opening into the front rooms, and one into the
kitchen, and a second stairway at one end. Three more hops brought
the bird to the threshold of the kitchen-door, where a third pause
occurred, this one not without trepidation; for here in the great
kitchen a woman stood at a table with a pan of potatoes before her.
She had washed them, and was now engaged in partially paring them
and cutting out any suspicious spots that might be visible on the
surfaces. "It takes me to make new potatoes out of old ones!" she
said to herself with an air of satisfaction, tossing the potato in in
her hand into a pan of cold water.

This woman was large-framed and tall, and over forty years of age.
She had a homely, sensible, pleasant, quick-tempered face, and the
base of her nose was an hypothenuse. Her dark hair was drawn back and
made into a smooth French twist, with a shell comb stuck in the top
a little askew. It is hard to fasten one of those twists with the
comb quite even, if it has much top to it. This comb had much top.
The woman's face shone with washing; she wore a straightly-fitting
calico gown and a white linen collar. The gown was newly done up and
a little too stiff, and to keep it from soil she had doubled the
skirt up in front and pinned it behind, and tied on a large apron.
For further safeguard, the sleeves were turned up and pinned to the
shoulder by the waistbands. At every movement she made these stiff
clothes rattled.

This woman was Miss Betsey Bates. She had lived at Mr. Arnold's when
Miss Amy was a young girl, had left when she left, and was now come
back to live with her again.

"Just let your water bile," Betsey began, addressing an imaginary
audience--"let your water bile, and throw in a handful of salt; then
wash your potatoes clean; peel 'em all but a strip or two to hold
together; cut out the spots, and let 'em lay awhile in cold water;
when it's time to cook 'em, throw 'em into your biling water, and
clap on your lid; then--"

Betsey stopped suddenly and looked over her shoulder to listen, but,
hearing no carriage-wheels nor human steps, resumed her occupation.
She did not perceive the two little bipeds on the threshold of the
door, where they were listening to her soliloquy with great interest,
though it was the chicken's steps that had attracted her attention.
That silly creature, dissatisfied with his worsted banquet, had
hopped along to the robin's side, where he now stood with a hungry
crop, round eyes, and two or three colored threads sticking to his
bill.

Betsey's thoughts took a new turn. "I must go and see to the fires,
and put a good beach chunk on each one. There's a little chill in the
air, and everybody wants a fire after a journey. It looks cheerful.
I've got six fires going in this house. What do you think of that? To
my idea, an open fire in a strange house is equal to a first cousin,
sometimes better."

Here a step sounded outside the open window behind the table, and
Pat Chester appeared, a stout, fine-looking, red-faced man, with
mischievous eyes and an honest mouth. Curiously enough, the base of
his nose also was an hypothenuse. Otherwise there was no resemblance
between the two. Betsey used to say to him, "Pat, the ends of our
noses were sawed off the wrong way."

"Who are you talking to?" asked Pat, stopping to look in and laugh.

"Your betters," was the retort.

"I don't envy 'em," said Pat, and went on about his business.

"And I must see to them clocks again," pursued Betsey. "The idea of
having a clock in every room in the house! It takes me half of my
time to set 'em forward and back. As to touching the pendulums of
such clocks as them, you don't catch me. But I do abominate to see
one mantelpiece a quarter past and another quarter of at the same
time."

Here a little peck on the floor arrested Betsey's attention, and,
stretching her neck, she saw the chicken, and instantly flew at it
with a loud "shoo!" With its two bits of wings extended and its head
advanced as far as possible, the little wretch fled through the hall,
peeping with terror. But the robin flew up and escaped over Betsey's
head. "Laud sakes!" she cried, holding on to her comb and her eyes,
"who ever saw a chicken fly up like that?"

Wondering over this phenomenon, Betsey went up-stairs and replenished
the fires in three chambers, and set some of the clocks forward and
others back, then hurried down to perform the same duties below
stairs. Just as she set the last hour-hand carefully at nine o'clock,
Pat put his head in at the dining-room window. "It's time for 'em to
be here," he said, "and I'm going down to the gate to watch. I'll
give a whistle the minute they come in sight."

Immersed in her own thoughts, Betsey had jumped violently at sound
of his voice. "I do believe you're possessed to go round poking your
head in at windows, and scaring people out of their wits!" she cried,
with a frightened laugh. "Here I came within an ace of upsetting
this clock or going into the fire."

Pat laughed back--he and Betsey were always scolding and always
laughing at each other--muttered something about skittish women, and
walked off down the avenue to watch for the family.

"I believe everything is ready," Betsey said, looking round. She took
off her apron, took down her skirt and sleeves, and gave herself
a general crackling smoothing over. Then suddenly she assumed an
amiable smile, looked straight before her, dropped a short courtesy,
and said, "How do you do, Mrs. Yorke? I hope I see you well. How do
you do, sir? How do you do, miss? I wonder if I had better go out
to the door when they come, or stand in the entry, or stay in the
kitchen. I declare to man I don't know what to do! How do you do,
ma'am?" beginning her practising again, this time before the glass.
"I hope I see you well. To think of my not being married at all, and
her having grown-up children!" she said, staring through the window.
"The last time I saw her, she was a pretty creature, as pale as a
snow-drop. Poor thing! she had a hard time of it with that Jezebel.
She never said anything to me, nor I to her; but many a time she has
come to me when that woman has been up to her tricks, and held on to
me, and gasped for breath. 'O my heart! my heart!' she'd say. 'Don't
speak to me, Betsey, but hold me a minute!' It was awful to see her
white face, and to feel her heart jump as if it would tear itself
out. That was the way trouble always took hold of her."

She mused a moment longer, then broke off suddenly, and began anew
her practice. "How do you do, ma'am? I hope I see you well."

Presently a loud, shrill whistle interrupted her. Betsey rushed
excitedly into the kitchen, dashed her potatoes into the kettle,
tied on a clean apron that stood out like cast-iron with starch, and
hovered in the rear of the hall, to be ready for advance or retreat,
as occasion might demand.

The old yellow coach came through the gate, up the muddy avenue,
and drew up at the steps. The two gentlemen got out first, then the
young ladies, and all stood around while Mrs. Yorke slowly alighted.
She was very pale, but smiled kindly on them, then took her son's
arm, and went up the steps. Mr. Yorke stopped to offer his hand to
a little girl who still remained in the coach. "My sakes!" muttered
Betsey. "If it isn't that Rowan young one!"

"Mother dear," said the son, "it is possible to make a very beautiful
place of this."

She looked at him with a brightening smile. "You think so, Carl?"
She had been anxiously watching what impression the sight of her old
home would make on her family, and exaggerating its defects in her
own imagination, as she fancied they were doing in theirs. Their
silence so far had given her a pang, since she interpreted it to mean
disappointment, when in truth it had meant solicitude for her. They
thought that she would be agitated on coming again to her childhood's
home after so long an absence. So she was; but her own peculiar
memories gave precedence to that which concerned those dearest to her.

"Besides, mother," Owen continued, "this spot has a charm for me
which no other could have, however beautiful: it is _yours_."

That word conveyed the first intimation Mrs. Yorke had ever received
that her son felt his dependence on a stepfather. But the pain the
knowledge caused her was instantly banished by the recollection that
the cause of his uneasiness was now removed.

"My great-grandfather had ideas, though he did not carry them out,"
remarked Melicent. "If he had built his house of stone, it would have
done very well. It is astonishing that he did not. But the earlier
settlers in this country seemed to revel in wood, probably because it
had been to them in the Old World a luxury. With heaps of stones at
hand, they would persist in building their houses of logs."

At this point Betsey rushed out to welcome Mrs. Yorke. The sight of
that pale face which seemed to be looking for her, and the slight,
clinging form that used to cling to her, quite overcame her shyness.

"You dear creature, how glad I am to see you once more!" she cried
out. And, seizing the lady by the shoulders, gave her a resounding
kiss on the cheek.

"Please do not touch Mrs. Yorke's left arm. It gives her
palpitation," said the son rather stiffly.

Young Mr. Owen had an invincible repugnance to personal
familiarities, especially from inferiors.

"Dear Betsey, this is my son," the mother said proudly, looking at
her manly young escort, as if to see him anew with a stranger's
admiring eyes. "Carl has heard me speak of you many a time, my old
friend!"

Betsey immediately dropped a solemn courtesy. "I hope I see you well,
sir!" she said, remembering her manners.

"This must be Betsey Bates!" cried Miss Melicent, coming forward with
great cordiality. "Mamma has spoken of you so often I knew you at
once."

Miss Yorke did not say that she recognized Betsey by her nose,
though that was the fact. The impression left on the woman's mind
was of something highly complimentary, that some air expressive of
honesty, faithfulness, and affection, or some subtile personal grace
not universally acknowledged, had led to the recognition.

On the threshold of the door, Mrs. Yorke turned to receive her
husband. She could not utter a word; but her face expressed what she
would have said. In her look could be read that she placed in his
hands all that was hers, regretting only that the gift was so small.

One saw then, too, that Mr. Yorke's sarcastic face was capable of
great tenderness. As he met that mute welcome, a look of indulgent
kindness softened his keen eyes, gave his scornful mouth a new shape,
and lighted up his whole countenance. But he knew better than allow
his wife to yield to any excitement of feeling.

"Yes, Amy!" he said cheerfully, "I think we shall make a very
pleasant home here. Now come in and rest."

They went into the sitting-room at the left of the hall, and Mrs.
Yorke was seated in an arm-chair there between the fire and the
sunshine, and they all waited on her. Hester, kneeling by her mother,
removed her gloves and overshoes, Clara took off her bonnet and
shawl, and Melicent, after whispering a word to Betsey, went out with
that factotum, and presently returned bearing a tin cup of coffee on
which a froth of cream still floated.

"I've taken a cup, mamma," she said, "and I can recommend it. And
breakfast will be ready in two minutes."

Owen Yorke, missing one of the company, went out, and found Edith
standing forlorn in the portico, biting her quivering lips, and
struggling to restrain the tears that threatened to overflow her
eyes. For the first time in her life the child felt timid and
disconcerted. She was among her own people, and they had forgotten
her. At that moment she longed passionately for Dick Rowan, and would
have flown to him had it been possible.

"Come, little Gypsy!" he said. "You're not going to run away, I hope?
Did you think we had forgotten you? See! I have not."

Owen Yorke's face was very winning when he chose, and his voice
could express a good deal of kindness. Edith looked at him steadily
a moment, then took the hand he offered, and went into the house
with him. As they entered, Mrs. Yorke rose to give the child an
affectionate welcome to her new home, and the daughters gathered
about her with those bright, profuse words which are so pleasant even
when they mean so little.

A folding-door opened from the sitting-room into the dining-room,
which occupied the front half of the west wing, and here a breakfast
was set out that dismayed the eyes of those who were expected to
partake of it. There was a fricassee which had cost the lives of
three hens of family, and occasioned a serious squabble between Pat
and Betsey; there was a vast platter of ham and eggs, and a pyramid
of potatoes piled so high that the first time it was touched one
rolled off on to the cloth. Poor Betsey had no conception of the
Yorke ideal of a proper breakfast.

"The good creature has such a generous heart!" Mrs. Yorke said,
checking with a glance the titter which her two younger daughters had
not tried to restrain. "And I am sure that everything is delicious."

Taking a seat at the table, Edith recollected that a trial awaited
her. It was Friday; and abstinence from meat on that day was the
one point in her mother's religion which she knew and practised.
Otherwise she was as ignorant of it as possible.

Owen Yorke, sitting opposite, watched her curiously, perceiving
that something was the matter. He noticed the slight bracing of the
muscles of her face and neck, and that she drew her breath in like
one who is preparing for a plunge, and kept her eyes steadily fixed
on Mr. Yorke. Edith's way was to look at what she feared.

"Some of the chicken, little niece?" her uncle asked pleasantly.

"No, sir, I do not eat meat on Friday. I am a Roman Catholic," the
child answered with precision. And, having made the announcement
thus fully, shut her mouth, and sat pale, with her eyes fixed on Mr.
Yorke's face.

A smile flashed into Owen Yorke's eyes at this reply. "Little
Spartan!" he thought.

Edith did not miss the slight contraction of the brows and the
downward twitch of the corners of the mouth in the face she watched;
but the signs of displeasure passed as quickly as they came. "Then
I am afraid you will make a poor breakfast," Mr. Yorke said gently.
"But I will do the best I can for you."

There was a momentary silence; then the talk went on as before. But
the family were deeply annoyed. It seemed enough that they should
have to take this little waif, with they knew not what low habits
and associates, or what unruly fires of temper inherited from her
mother, without having an alien religion brought into their midst.
Catholicism as they had seen it abroad appealed to their æsthetic
sense. It floated there in a higher atmosphere, adorned with all
that wealth and culture could do. But at home they preferred to keep
it where, as a rule, they found it--in the kitchen and the stable.

After they had returned to the sitting-room, Mr. Yorke called Edith
to him. She went trembling; for, in spite of himself, her uncle's
face wore a judicial look. The girls, who were just going up-stairs,
lingered to hear what would be said, and Owen took his stand behind
Mr. Yorke's chair, and looked at the child with an encouraging smile.

"Were the family you lived with Catholics, my dear?" the judge began.

"No, sir. Only Mr. Rowan was when he was a little boy."

"And Mr. Rowan wished to make a Catholic of you?" Mr. Yorke said, his
lip beginning to curl.

The child lifted her head. "Mr. Rowan had nothing to say about me,"
she replied. "It was my mother."

A slight smile went round the circle. They quite approved of her
reply.

"But you cannot recollect your mother?" Mr. Yorke continued.

"Oh! yes," Edith said with animation. "I remember how she looked, and
what she said. She made me hold up my hands, and promise that I would
be a Roman Catholic if I had to die for it. And that was the last
word she ever said."

Mr. Yorke gave a short nod. To his mind the matter was settled.
"_N'est ce pas?_" he said to his wife.

She bowed gravely. "There is no other way. It is impossible to ask
her to break a promise so given. When she is older, she can choose
for herself."

"Well, you hear, girls?" Mr. Yorke said, looking at his daughters.
"Now take her, and make her feel at home."

Miss Yorke was dignified and inscrutable, Hester unmistakably cold,
but Clara took her cousin's hand with the utmost cordiality, and
was leading her from the room, when Edith stopped short, her eyes
attracted by a cabinet portrait in oils that stood on a shelf near
the door. This portrait represented a young man, with one of those
ugly, beautiful faces which fascinate us, we know not why. Careless,
profuse locks of golden brown clustered around his head, steady,
agate-colored eyes followed the beholder wherever he went, and seemed
at once defying him to escape and entreating him not to go, and the
sunshine of a hidden smile softened the curves of the mouth and chin.

Edith's eyes sparkled, her face grew crimson, and she clasped her
hands tightly on her breast.

"That is your father's portrait, my dear," Mrs. Yorke said, going to
her. "Do you recognize it?"

The child restrained herself one moment, then she ran to the picture,
clasped her arms around it, and kissed it over and over, weeping
passionately. "It is mine! It is mine!" she cried out, when her aunt
tried to soothe her.

"You are right, dear!" Mrs. Yorke said, much affected. "I am sure no
one will object to your having the portrait. You may take it to your
own chamber, if you wish."

Edith controlled herself, wiped her eyes, and put the picture down.
"Dear Aunt Amy," she said, "you know I want it; but I won't take it
unless you and Uncle Charles are quite willing."

It was touching, her first acknowledgment of kinship, and expression
of trust and submission. They cordially assured her of their
willingness, kissed her again in token of a closer adoption, and
smiled after her as she went off with her father's portrait clasped
to her heart.

Melicent and Hester still lingered. Melicent remembered faintly her
Uncle Robert's marriage, and the disagreeable feeling in the family
at that time. It had left on her mind a prejudice against "that
Polish girl," and a shade of disfavor toward her daughter. But she
said nothing.

"It will be so disagreeable having a Catholic in the family!" Hester
complained.

"Hester, listen to me!" her father said severely. "I want no bigotry
nor petty persecutions in my family. Your Cousin Edith has as good
a right to her religion as you have to yours; and if either should
find herself disagreeably situated, it is she, for she is alone.
Don't forget this; and don't let there be anything offensive said, or
hinted, or looked. I mean to be consistent, and allow others the same
freedom which I claim myself. Now, let me hear no more of this."

Hester took refuge in tears. It was her sole argument. She was one
of those soft creatures who require to be petted, and have a talent
for being abused. Possibly, too, she was a little jealous of this new
member of the family.

"Melicent, will you lead away this weeping nymph, and dry her tears?"
the father said impatiently. "Common sense is too robust for her
constitution."

The sisters went up-stairs, and Owen followed them presently, and
climbed to the cupola. Leaning on the window-sill there, he looked
off over the country. The horizon was a ring of low blue hills, with
a grand amethyst glittering to tell where the sea lay. Through the
centre of this vast circle glimmered the river, silver, and gold,
and steel-blue, and the white houses of the town lay like a heap of
lilies scattered on its banks. Everywhere else was forest.

Shadows of varying thought swept over the young man's face as he
looked off, and drew freer breath from the distance. "Henceforth my
shield must bear a martlet," he muttered. "But whither shall I fly?"

That was the problem he was studying. He had come to this place only
to see his family settled, and collect his own thoughts after their
sudden fall from prosperity; then he would go out into the world,
and work his own way. It was not pleasant, the change from that life
of noble leisure and lofty work which he had planned, to one where
compulsory labor for mere bread must occupy the greater part of
his time; but it was inevitable. And as he looked abroad now, and
breathed the fresh air that came frolicking out of the northwest,
and remembered how wide the world is and how many veins in it are
unwrought, his young courage rose, and the plans he had been building
up for that year crumbled and ceased to excite his regret.

Only a few months before their change of circumstances, his mother
had been won to consent that he might visit Asia. He had meant to go
north, south, east, and west, in that shabby, glorious old land, make
himself for the nonce Tartar, Chinese, Indian, Persian, what not, and
get a look at creation through the eyes of each. This young man's
sympathies were by no means narrow. He had never been able to believe
that God smiles with peculiar fondness on any particular continent,
island, peninsula, or part of either, and is but a stepfather to
the rest of the world. He was born with a hatred of barriers. He
sympathized with Swift, who "hated all nations, professions, and
communities, and gave all his love to individuals." Or, better than
Swift, he had at least a theoretical love for mankind unfenced. He
did not have to learn to love, that came naturally to him; he had to
learn to hate. But he was a good hater. Take him all in all, Carl
Owen Yorke was at twenty-one a noble, generous youth, of good mind
and unstained reputation; and it was no proof of excessive vanity in
him that he believed himself capable of taking any position he might
strive for.

"My dear Minerva tells me that I have in me some of the elements of
failure," he said. "I wonder what they are?"

This "dear Minerva" was Miss Alice Mills, Mr. Robert Yorke's deserted
_fiancée_. She and Owen were very close friends. It was one of those
friendships which sometimes grow up between a woman whose youth
is past and a youth whose manhood has scarcely arrived. Such a
friendship may effect incalculable good or incalculable harm, as the
woman shall choose.

"Well," he concluded, not caring to puzzle over the riddle, "she will
explain, I suppose, when she writes. And if anybody can get at the
cube-root of the difficulty, she can."

Meantime, while the son was musing, and the daughters were selecting
their chambers, and making up a toilet for Edith, Mr. Yorke had sent
for Patrick Chester in the sitting-room, and was questioning him
concerning Catholic affairs in Seaton. They did not seem to be in a
flourishing condition.

There was no priest settled there, Patrick said; but one came over
from B---- once in two months, and said Mass for them. They had no
church yet, but a little chapel, what there was left of it.

"What do you mean by that?" his master asked.

"Why, sir, some of the Seaton rowdies got into the chapel, one night,
not long ago, and smashed the windows, and broke up the tabernacle,
and destroyed the pictures entirely. And they twisted off the
crucifix, though it was of iron, two inches wide and half an inch
thick. The devil must have helped the man that did it, savin' your
presence, ma'am."

"Are they vandals here?" demanded Mr. Yorke.

"There are some fine folks in Seaton," said Pat, who did not know
what vandals are. "But the rowdies have everything pretty much their
own way."

"And is there no law in the town?" asked Mr. Yorke wrathfully.

"There's a good many lawyers," said Pat, scratching his head.

"You mean to say that there was no effort made to discover and punish
the perpetrators of such an outrage?" exclaimed his master.

"Indeed there was not, sir!" Pat answered. "People knew pretty well
who did the mischief, and that the fellow that broke off the crucifix
was taken bleeding at the lungs just after; but nobody molested 'em.
It wouldn't be well for the one who would lift his voice against the
Seaton rowdies. Why, some of 'em belong to as wealthy families as
there are in town. They began with a cast-iron band years ago, and
everybody laughed at 'em. All the harm they did was to wake people
out of sleep. Then they broke up a lecture. It was a Mr. Fowle from
Boston, who was preaching about education. And then they did a little
mischief here and there to people they didn't like, and now they
are too strong to put down. And, indeed, sir, when it's against the
Catholics they are, nobody wants to put 'em down."

Mr. Yorke glanced at his wife. She did not look up nor deny
Patrick's charges. She was a little ashamed of the character of her
native town in this respect; for at that time Seaton was notorious
for its lawlessness, and was even proud of its reputation. No great
harm had been done, they said. It was only the boys' fun. They were
sorry, it is true, that a respectable lecturer should have been
insulted; but that a Catholic chapel should be desecrated, that was
nothing. They did not give it a second thought.

"Well, Patrick," Mr. Yorke resumed, "my niece, Miss Edith Yorke, is a
Catholic, and I wish her to have proper instruction, and to attend to
the services of her church when there is opportunity. Let me know the
next time your priest comes here, and I will call to see him. Now you
may go."

TO BE CONTINUED.




OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE.


The story and celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe are not so
familiar to Catholics, or so well appreciated by others, as to render
useless or uninteresting, especially in this month of Mary, an
account of her veneration in Mexico. What this actually, veritably
is, no writer, so far as we are aware, has yet undertaken to show--at
least, from such literary evidences of popular conviction as best
illustrate the subject. How anything supernatural could shine or
blossom in a land of wars, robbers, Indians, is an old doubt,
notwithstanding that revelations have taken place in countries
which needed them less than did the once idolatrous Aztecs. Let us
now endeavor to make clear what the true nature of the miracle of
Guadalupe is; to exhibit its real veneration by means of testimonies
borrowed from the worthiest Mexicans; and to prove that the faith of
Guadalupe is not shallow, but long and well-established, widespread,
and sincere.

Here follows a brief history of the renowned miracle of Tepeyac. In
1531, ten years after the conquest, the pious and simple Indian, Juan
Diego, was on his way to the village of Guadalupe, near the city of
Mexico, there to receive the instructions of some reverend fathers.
Suddenly, at the hill of Tepeyac appeared to him the Blessed Virgin,
who commanded her amazed client to go forthwith to the bishop, and
make known that she wished a church to be built in her honor upon
that spot. Next day the Blessed Virgin returned to hear the regret of
Juan Diego that he could not obtain the ear of the bishop. "Go back,"
said the Holy Lady, "and announce that I, Mary, Mother of God, send
thee." The Indian again sought his bishop, who this time required
that he should bring some token of the presence and command of his
patroness. On the 12th of December, Juan Diego again saw Our Lady,
who ordered him to climb to the top of the barren rock of Tepeyac and
there gather roses for her. To his great astonishment, he found the
roses flourishing on the rock, and brought them to his patroness, who
threw them into his tilma or apron, and said: "Go back to the bishop
and show him these credentials." Again came the Indian before the
bishop, and, opening his tilma to show the roses, lo! there appeared
impressed upon it a marvellous image of the Blessed Virgin. The
bishop was awestruck and overcome. The miraculous occurrence was made
known and proved. Processions and Masses celebrated it, and its fame
spread far and wide. A large new cathedral was erected on the hill of
Guadalupe, and multitudes from all parts flocked thither. Specially
noteworthy is the fact that the new shrine to Our Lady was erected in
the place where once the Indians worshipped their goddess Totantzin,
mother of other deities, and protectress of fruits and fields. The
marvellous picture was found impressed upon the rudest cloth, that
of a poor Indian's apron, the last upon which to attempt a painter's
artifice--and hence the greater wonder, the artistic testimony
regarding which is something formidable and wonderful in itself.

What is known in Mexico as the Day of Guadalupe is extraordinary as
a popular manifestation. On the 12th of December every year, fifteen
or twenty thousand Indians congregate in the village of that name to
celebrate the anniversary of the Marvellous Apparition. The whole way
to the famous suburb is crowded with cabs, riders, and pedestrians of
the poorest sort, a great number of them bare-footed. All day there
is an ever-moving multitude to and from the village, and, indeed, the
majority of the inhabitants of the city of Mexico seem to be included
in the parties, families, and caravans of strangely contrasted people
that wend their way to the shrines on the hill. The most numerous
class of pilgrims are the saddest and the most wretched--we mean
the ill-clad, ill-featured, simple, devoted Indians. On them the
luxuries of the rich, the passions of the fighters, the intrigues of
politicians, have borne with ruinous effect. Drudging men and women;
hewers of wood and drawers of water; bare-breasted peasants, with
faces dusky and dusty, the same who any day may be seen on Mexican
roads carrying burdens of all sorts strapped to their backs; children
in plenty, bare, unkempt, untidy, and sometimes swaddled about their
mothers' shoulders; numerous babes at the breast, half-nude--these
are some of the features in a not overdrawn picture of the primitive
poverty which assembles at Guadalupe, and, in fact, in every Mexican
multitude whatsoever. Perhaps nowhere outside of Mexico and the race
of Indians can such a problem of multitudinous poverty be seen. Its
victims are those over whom the desert-storms of wars and feuds
innumerable have passed, and, spite of all their wanderings as a
race, they yet wear the guise and character of tribes who are still
trying to find their way out of a wilderness or a barren waste. Let
enthusiasts for self-willed liberty say what they will, wars of fifty
years are anything but conservative of happiness, cleanliness, good
morals, and that true liberty which should always accompany them.
However fondly we cherish our ideals of freedom, we must yet bear
in mind the wholesome, wholesale truth of history, that no actual
liberty is reached by the dagger and guillotine, or by massacre, or
is founded on bad blood or bad faith. Those who lately celebrated
the execution of Louis XVI. and the intellectual system of murder
established by Robespierre, and not totally disapproved by Mr.
Carlyle, have good reason to be cautious as to how they offend this
menacing truth.

A cathedral and four chapels are the principal structures of the
picturesque hillside village of Guadalupe. By a winding ascent among
steep, herbless rocks, tufted here and there with the thorny green
slabs of the cactus, is reached at some distance from the cathedral
the highest of the chapels, which contains the original imprint of
the figure of Our Lady. Looking up to the chapel from the crowd
at the cathedral may be seen a striking picture, not unlike what
Northern travellers have been taught to fancy of the middle ages,
but the elements of which are still abundant in the civilization of
Europe. It is simply the curious crowd of pilgrims going up and down
the hill, to and from the quaint old chapel, built perhaps centuries
ago. The scene from the height itself is charming and impressive.
The widespread valley of Mexico--including lakes, woods, villages,
and a rich and substantial city, with towers and domes that take
enchantment from distance--is all before the eye in one serene view
of landscape. In the village there is a multitude like another
Israel, sitting in the dust or standing near the pulquerias, or
moving about near the church door. As Guadalupe is for the most part
composed of adobe houses, and as its mass of humble visitors have
little finery to distinguish their brown personages from the dust out
of which man was originally created, the complexion of the general
scene which they constitute can only be described as earth-like and
earth-worn. Elsewhere than in a superficial glance at the poverty
of Guadalupe we must seek for the meaning of its spectacle. Is this
swarming, dull-colored scene but an animated fiction? No--it is the
natural seeking the supernatural. And the supernatural--what is it?
It is redemption and immortality, our Lord and Our Lady, the angels
and saints.

The cathedral is a building of picturesque angles, but, except that
it is spacious, as so many of the Mexican churches are, makes no
particular boast of architecture. A copy of the marvellous tilma,
over the altar, poetically represents Our Lady in a blue cloak
covered with stars, and a robe said to be of crimson and gold, her
hands clasped, and her foot on a crescent supported by a cherub. This
is the substance of a description of it given by a traveller who
had better opportunities for seeing it closely than had the present
writer during the fiesta of Guadalupe in 1867. Whether the original
picture is rude or not, from being impressed upon a blanket, he has
not personal knowledge, though aware that it has been described as
rude. Nevertheless, its idea and design are beautiful and tender.
Everywhere in Mexico it is the favorite and, indeed, the most lovely
presentment of Our Lady. Like a compassionate angel of the twilight,
it looks out of many a shrine, and, among all the images for which
the Mexican Church is noted, none is perhaps more essentially ideal,
and, in that point of view, _real_. Where it appears wrought in a
sculpture of 1686, by Francisco Alberto, on the side of San Agustin's
at the capital, it is, though quaint, very admirable for its purity
and gentleness. Time respects it, and the birds have built their
nests near it. The various chapels in and about the city dedicated
to Our Lady of Guadalupe are recognized by the star-mantled figure.
The Baths of the Peñon, the cathedral at the Plaza, the suburb
of Tacubaya, have each their pictorial witnesses of the faith of
Guadalupe; and to say that its manifestation abounds in Mexico
is but to state a fact of commonplace. Rich and poor venerate the
tradition of the Marvellous Appearance, now for three centuries
celebrated, and always, it seems, by multitudes.

What else is to be seen at Guadalupe besides its crowd and its
altar is not worthy of extended remark. The organs of the cathedral
are high and admirably carved; over the altar's porphyry columns
are cherubim and seraphim, all too dazzling with paint and gold.
Here, as in other places of Spanish worship, the figures of the
crucifixion have been designed with a painful realism. Outside of
the church a party of Indians, displaying gay feathers, danced in
honor of the feast, as their sires must have done hundreds of years
ago. Inside it was densely crowded with visitors or pilgrims, and
far too uncomfortable at times to make possible the most accurate
observation of its ornaments. But it may be well to repeat that the
church is divided into three naves by eight columns, and is about two
hundred feet long, one hundred and twenty feet broad, and one hundred
high. The total cost of the building, and, we presume, its altars,
is reckoned as high as $800,000, most of it, if not all, contributed
by alms. The altar at which is placed the image of Our Lady is said
to have cost $381,000, its tabernacle containing 3,257 marks of
silver, and the gold frame of the sacred picture 4,050 castellanos.
The church's ornaments are calculated to be worth more than $123,000.
Two of its candlesticks alone weighed 2,213 castellanos in gold, and
one lamp 750 marks of silver. To Cristobal de Aguirre, who, in 1660,
built a hermitage on the summit of Tepeyac, we owe the foundation of
the chapel there. It was not, however, until 1747 that Our Lady of
Guadalupe was formally declared the patroness of the whole of Mexico.

Of the many celebrations of Mexico, none are altogether as
significant as that of Guadalupe. It has become national, and, in a
certain sense, religiously patriotic. Maximilian and Carlota, the
writer was informed, washed the feet of the poor near the altar of
Our Lady, according to a well-known religious custom. The best men
and women of Mexico have venerated the Marvellous Appearance--which,
however amusing it may be to those who are scarcely as radical
in their belief in nature as conservative in their views of the
supernatural, is but a circumstance to the older traditions which
have entered into the mind of poetry and filled the heart of worship.
What of the wonderful happenings to the great fathers of the
church and the mediæval saints, all worshippers of unquestionable
sublimation? Say what you please, doubt as you may, saints, angels,
miracles, abide, and form the very testament of belief. There is not
a Catholic in the world who does not believe in miracle, whose faith
is not to unbelievers a standing miracle of belief in a miracle the
most prodigious, the most portentous; and yet to him it has only
become natural to believe in the supernatural. The Mexicans venerate
what three centuries and uncounted millions have affirmed, whence it
appears that their veneration is not a conceit or humbug, but at root
a faith. How can this be more clearly illustrated than by quoting the
following very interesting poem of Manuel Carpio, Mexico's favorite,
if not best modern poet:

THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE.

      The good Jehovah, dread, magnificent,
      Once chose a people whom he called his own.
      And out of Egypt in a wondrous way
      He brought them in a dark and troublous night,
      And Moses touched the Red Sea with a rod,
      And the waves parted, offering them a path.
      His people passed, but in the abyss remained
      Egyptian horse and rider who pursued.
      Marched on the flock of Jacob, and the Lord
      Spread over them his all-protecting wings,
      As the lone eagle shields her unfledged young.
      He gave them lands, and victories, and spoils--
      Glad nation! which the Master of the heavens
      Loved as the very apple of his eye.
      But now this people, seeing themselves blessed
      By him whose slightest glance they not deserved,
      Erected perishable images
      In homage unto strange and pagan gods.
      The Lord in indignation said: "They wished
      To make their Maker jealous with vain gods.
      Bowing in dust the sacrilegious knee
      Before the dumb creation of their hands.
      Well, I will sting their hearts with jealousy,
      Showing myself to all unhappy lands
      Without employing vail or mystery."
      He said it, and his solemn word fulfilled,
      Convoking from the farthest ends of earth
      Nations barbarian and civilized--
      The Gaul, the Scandinavian, Roman, Greek,
      And the neglected race of Mexico,
      Whom the Almighty Sovereign loved so well
      The holy truth he would reveal to them--
      So that the hard hearts of his people should
      Be softened. Yet his mercy was not full:
      Down from the diamond heavens he bade descend
      The Virgin, who with mother's sorrowing care
      Nursed him in Bethlehem when he was a child.

      Near to the tremulous Tezcoco lake
      Rises a bare and solitary hill.
      Where never cypress tall nor cedar grows,
      Nor whispering oak; nor cooling fountain laves
      The waste of herbless rocks and sterile sand--
      A barren country 'tis, dry, dusty, sad,
      Where the vile worm scarce drags its length along.

      Here is the place where Holy Mary comes
      Down from her home above the azure heavens
      To show herself to Juan, who, comfortless,
      Petitioned for relief from troubles sore.
      Sometimes it chances that a fragrant plant
      In the dense forest blooms unseen, unknown,
      Though bright its virginal buds and rare its flowers;
      So doth the modest daughter of the Lord
      Obscure the moon, the planets, and the stars
      Which all adorn her forehead and her feet,
      When lends she the poor Indian her grace
      In bounty wonderful to all his kind.
      She tenders him the waters and the dew,
      Prosperity of fruits and animals,
      A heart of sensible humility,
      And help unfailing in his future need.
      The Angel of America resumes
      Her radiant flight. With grateful ear he heard,
      Twice did he wondering kneel, and twice again
      He kissed the white feet of the holy maid.

      But did not end God's providence benign:
      The Almighty wished to leave to Mexicans
      His Mother's likeness by his own great hand,
      In token of the love he had for us.
      He took the pencil, saying: "We will make
      In heaven's own image, as we moulded man.
      But what was Adam to my beauteous one?"
      So saying, drew he with serenest face
      The gentle likeness of the Mother-maid.
      He saw the image, and pronounced it good.

      Since then, with the encircling love of heaven,
      A son she sees in every Mexican.
      Mildly the wandering incense she receives,
      Attending to his vow with human face;
      For her the teeming vapors yield their rain
      To the green valley and the mountain side,
      Where bend and wave the abundant harvest fields,
      And the green herbs that feed the lazy kine.
      She makes the purifying breezes pass,
      And on the restless and unsounded seas
      She stills the rigor of the hurricane.
      The frighted people see the approach of death
      When the broad earth upon its axis shakes,
      But the wild elements are put to sleep
      With but a smile from her mild countenance.
      And she has moved the adamantine heart
      Of avarice, who saw decrepit age
      Creep like an insect on the dusty earth,
      To ope his close-shut hand, and bless the poor.
      She maketh humbly kneel and kiss the ground
      No less the wise than simple. She the great,
      Dazzled by their own glory, doth advise
      That soon their gaudy pageant shall be o'er,
      And heaven's oblivion shall dissolve their fame.

      How often has the timid, trembling maid
      Upon the verge of ruin sought thy help,
      Shutting her eyes to pleasure and to gold
      At thought of thee, O Maiden pure and meek!
      Centuries and ages will have vanished by,
      Within their currents bearing kings and men;
      Great monuments shall fall; the pyramids
      Of lonely Egypt moulder in decay;
      But time shall never place its fatal hand
      Upon the image of the Holy Maid,
      Nor on the pious love of Mexico.

Manuel Carpio, who wrote this, his first poetic composition, in 1831,
when forty years of age, was a scholar and professor, and in 1824 a
congressman. He made the Bible, we are told, his favorite study; and
certainly it supplied him with the themes for his best poems. But he
was not the only poet of Mexico who bore earnest witness to the faith
of which we speak. Padre Manuel Sartorio, who wrote about the time
of Iturbide, deprecates the idea of preferring a capricious doubt
respecting "la Virgen de Guadalupe" to a constant belief founded in
tradition. In the following lines the nature of his own belief is
fully attested:

      "Of Guadalupe, that fair image pictured
      Unto the venerating eye of Mexico;
      With stars and light adorned, the figure painted
      Of a most modest Maiden, full of grace;
      What image is it? Copy 'tis divine
      Of the Mother of God.
             *       *       *       *       *
      And what assures me this? My tender thought.
      Who the design conceived? The holiest love.
      Who then portrayed it? The eternal God."

In other lines on the same subject, Sartorio speaks of the Lady of
Guadalupe as "the purest rose of the celestial field," and pays
special respect to her image in the Portal of Flowers, of which there
is a tradition, not vulgar, of having spoken (hay tradicion no vulgar
de haber hablado) to the Venerable Padre Zapa, in order to instruct
the Indians, as relates Cabrera, "Escudo de Armas de Mexico, numero
923." Who this Cabrera may be we are not aware, and cannot affirm
that he is identical with the great painter Cabrera, whose belief in
Our Lady of Guadalupe was so distinct and positive.

One other poet of Mexico we shall summon to give testimony. It is
Fray Manuel Navarrete, who wrote a series of poems, well-known to his
countrymen, called "Sad Moments." He was also the author of a number
of tributes to the fame of Carlos IV. and Ferdinand VII., and seems
to have possessed more influence, if not more merit as a poet, than
Padre Sartorio. From a posthumous volume, bearing date of 1823, we
take the following lines, the allusions of which sufficiently explain
at what time they were written:

TO THE MOST HOLY VIRGIN UNDER THE INVOCATION OF GUADALUPE.

      From her eternal palace, from the heavens,
      One day descended to America,
      When in its worst affliction, the great Mary,
      Its sorrows to maternally console.
      Behold in Tepeyac how watchfully
      She frustrates the designs of heresy,
      How she extinguishes the fire that flames
      From the far French unto the Indian soil!
      What matter, then, if proud Napoleon,
      With his infernal hosts the world appalling,
      Seeks to possess the land of Mexico?
      To arms, countrymen: war, war!
      For the sacred palladium of Guadalupe
      Protects our native land.

      The deity of peace have painters skilled
      Portrayed with bounteous grace and elegance,
      Painting a virgin who with fair white hands
      An offering of tender blossoms bore.
      Thus were their pencils' finest excellences
      A promise and foreshadowing of this,
      The image of Our Lady, which in heaven
      Received its colors. Thus beheld it he,
      The fortunate Indian, at Tepeyac,
      That bare and desolate hill, a miracle,
      That unto day has been perpetuate.
      Now while the world's ablaze with lively war,
      Seems that affrighted peace has taken refuge
      Within the happy households of our land.

How sadly, how oddly, sounds in modern ears this felicitation of a
poet that peace, which has left the greater part of the world, has
taken refuge in Mexico! Evidently our Fray Navarrete did not foresee
the results of the war begun by the clerical revolutionist Hidalgo.
But whatever may have been the political bias of this religious
writer, he retains the esteem of his countrymen as one of the fathers
of their fragmentary literature.

Our last witness is Miguel Cabrera, the great Mexican painter, whose
merits have with reason been compared by an Italian traveller, the
Count Beltrami, to those of Correggio and Murillo. Altogether, as
carver, architect, and painter, the New World has not produced the
equal in art of this extraordinary man, who wrought almost without
masters or models, without emulation or fitting aid and recompense,
and whose worth has yet to be made well known to the continent which
he honored. But our object now is to lend the weight of this preface
to the following statement of the Mexican writer, Señor Orozco y
Berra:

    "Cabrera wrote a short treatise dedicated to his
    protector Sr. Salinas [Archbishop of Mexico] with
    the title of _The American Marvel, and Conjunction
    of Rare Marvels, observed with the direction of the
    Rules of the Art of Painting, in the Miraculous
    Image [prodigiosa imagen] of Our Lady of Guadalupe
    of Mexico_. It is a small book in quarto, printed in
    1756 by the press of the college of San Ildefonso, and
    containing thirty pages, with dedication, approbations,
    and license at the beginning, and the opinions of
    various painters at the end. The reason given for
    this writing was the invitation made by the abbot and
    council of the college to the best known painters of
    Mexico, in order that, after examining the painting on
    cloth of Our Lady of Guadalupe, they might declare if
    it could be the work of human hands. Cabrera was one of
    those who joined in the examination, and in his book he
    undertakes to show that _the Virgin is not painted in a
    manner artificial and human_."




STATISTICS OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE UNITED STATES.


Under the term _Protestantism_, it is intended to comprise all
persons of any religious sect, denomination, or church in this
country, except Catholics, Jews, and Chinese. So numerous are the
divisions and subdivisions that our limits will permit us to present
only the name of each, with perhaps a word as to its distinctive
features, its numbers at different periods, and its average annual
increase for a given period. The given period thus selected is the
twenty-five years and upward preceding the year 1868; because the
statistics of all the denominations which are accessible, are at
present more complete up to that date than they have yet become up to
any subsequent year, or even up to the present date. The statistics
are taken entirely from Protestant sources, and chiefly from official
documents published by the respective denominations. The final
results are then brought together, and compared with the results
presented by the Federal census of the population at different
periods.

1. The name "Lutheran" was given to the first Protestant
denomination, in order to designate the followers of Martin Luther.
A part of the members of the denomination in this country have
recently changed their name to "Evangelical Lutheran Church."

The statistics, chiefly official, of the denomination for a series of
years have been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1823           175         900       40,000
      1833           240       1,000       60,000
      1841           418       1,371      145,408
      1842           424       1,371      166,300
      1850           663       1,604      163,000
      1859         1,134       2,017      203,662
      1862         1,419       2,672      284,000
      1863         1,418       2,533      269,985
      1864         1,543       2,765      292,723
      1865         1,627       2,856      312,415
      1866         1,644       2,915      323,825
      1867         1,750       3,112      332,155
      1868         1,792       3,182      350,088
      1869         2,016       3,330      376,567
      1870         2,211       3,537      392,721

The average annual increase during a series of years (ending always
with 1867) has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 44 years     36          50        6,640
      In 26   "       51          67        7,182
      In  8   "       77         124       16,061

2. The German Reformed denomination made its appearance, soon after
the Lutheran, in the German part of Switzerland, and sprang out of
a dispute between Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther concerning the
import of the words, "This is my body," "This is my blood."

The following table shows their growth in this country since 1820:

                  Ministers.   Churches.  Members.
      1820            68         389       14,400
      1830            84         353       17,189
      1840           123         416       17,760
      1850           231         786       58,799
      1860           391       1,045       92,684
      1862           421       1,122      100,691
      1864           460       1,134      107,394
      1866           475       1,162      109,258
      1867           491       1,152      110,408
      1868           505       1,181      115,483
      1869           521         --       117,910

The average annual increase during a series of years has been as
follows:

                  Ministers.   Churches.  Members.
      In 47 years      9          16        2,043
      In  7   "       14          15        2,532

3. The "United Brethren in Christ" are the fruits of a "reformation"
in the German Reformed denomination--a sort of Methodistical
offshoot. The statements of their numbers are as follows:

                  Ministers.  Societies.  Members.
      1842           500        1,800      65,000
      1866           789        3,297      91,570
      1867           837        3,445      98,983
      1868           864        3,663     108,122

The average annual increase during twenty-five years has been as
follows:

                  Ministers.  Societies.  Members.
      In 25 years     13          66        1,319

4. The "Moravians," or United Brethren, are a distinct denomination
from the preceding one. As known in this country, they descended from
a colony of dissenters, who were first gathered on his estate in
Upper Alsatia, in 1772, by Count Zinzendorf.

Their numbers have been stated as follows:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1842            24        6,000
      1867            --        6,655
      1868            --        6,768

Their annual average increase of communicants has been in twenty-five
years 26.

5. The "Dutch Reformed Church," as it was known until 1867, when the
name was changed to "Reformed Church in America," is a descendant of
the Dutch Reformed Church of Holland.

The following table shows the growth of this denomination since 1820:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1820            71         105        9,023
      1830           132         197       15,579
      1840           230         245       23,782
      1850           293         292       33,553
      1860           387         370       50,427
      1862           419         429         --
      1863           446         422       53,007
      1865           436         427       54,286
      1866           447         434       55,917
      1867           461         444       57,846
      1868           469          --       59,508
      1869           493         464       61,444

The average annual increase of the denomination at different periods
has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 47 years     8½          7         1,039
      In 7    "       10         10         1,060

6. The Mennonites derive their name from Menno Simon, born in
Friesland A.D. 1495. He was contemporary with Luther, Bucer, and
Bullinger. He obtained a great number of followers. In 1683, the
first of them came over to this country, others soon followed.

Their number has been estimated as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1843           235        260        30,000
      1860            --         --        35,000
      1862           260        312        37,360
      1867            --         --        39,110

The average annual increase in members in twenty-four years has been
380.

7. The Reformed Mennonite Society was first organized in 1811. The
members ascribe their origin to the corruptions of the Mennonites.
The reform extended into several counties of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and
New York, but their doctrines are regarded as too rigid for general
acceptance.

In 1860, their numbers were estimated at about 11,000.

The average annual increase has been about 200.

8. The denomination known as the "German Evangelical Association"
first appeared in one of the Middle States, about the year 1800.

This denomination is now regarded as German Methodists, and their
numbers have been as follows:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1843           250        15,000
      1859            --        33,000
      1862            --        46,000
      1863           386        47,388
      1365           405        50,000
      1866           473        54,875
      1867           478        58,002

The average annual increase of the denomination in twenty-four years
has been 1,791.

9. The "Christians," or "Christian Connection," profess not to owe
their origin to the labors of any one man, like the other Protestant
sects. They rose almost simultaneously in different and remote parts
of this country, without knowledge of each other's movements.

The new organizations of this denomination held their twenty-third
annual convention in June, 1868. The number of organizations was one
hundred and sixty.

The numbers of the denomination have been stated as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1844         2,000       1,500      325,000
      1866         3,000       5,000      500,000

The average annual increase of members has been as follows:

      In 22 years       7,594 members.

The "Church of God," as it exists by that name in the United States,
is a religious community, who profess to have come out from all human
and unscriptural organizations, and to have fallen back upon original
grounds, and who wish, therefore, to be known and called by no other
distinctive name.

This denomination exists in Ohio and Pennsylvania and the Western
States, and their numbers have been stated as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1843           83         125        10,000
      1860          140         275        14,000
      1866           --         360        32,000

The average annual increase has been as follows:

                      Churches.  Members.
      In 23 years        10        960

11. The denominations thus far noticed are chiefly of German origin.
The next class contains those of Scottish origin. Among these the
Presbyterian holds the first place in age and numbers. The first
organization here was made in 1706, and known as the Presbytery of
Philadelphia. Their first synod was convened September 17, 1718.

The first General Assembly met in 1789, and a more efficient and
extensive development ensued. In 1810, a division arose, and the
formation of the "Cumberland Presbyterian" organization. But the most
extensive division took place in 1838, by which a body was organized
and known as the "New School," while those who remained were
designated as "Old School" Presbyterians. The split thus made has
continued for thirty years, but is now ostensibly removed by measures
of reunion.

The statistics of the "Old School" Presbyterians for the year 1863
first show the effect of the separation of the Southern portion
during the war. The report of numbers has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1843          1,434       2,092     159,137
      1850          1,860       2,512     200,830
      1860          2,577       3,487     279,630
      1861          2,767       3,684     300,874
      1863          2,205       2,541     227,575
      1865          2,201       2,629     232,450
      1866          2,294       2,608     239,306
      1867          2,302       2,622     246,330
      1868          2,330       2,737     252,555
      1869          2,381       2,740     258,903
      1870[23]      4,234        --       446,561

        [23] Old and New School united.

The statistics of the Southern division are given as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1865           811        1,277      83,821
      1867           850        1,309      80,532
      1868           837        1,298      76,949
      1870           840        1,469      82,014

The average annual increase of the denomination previous to the
division caused by opposite views on political questions was as
follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 18 years     74          89        7,874

The average annual increase of the whole denomination (North and
South) to 1868 has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 25 years     70          78        6,958

12. The division of the Presbyterian Church was entirely consummated
in 1840, by the meeting of a General Assembly representing the
seceders, or "New School."

Subsequently, the loss of the Southern churches by the "Old School"
denomination, and the increase of the anti-slavery sentiment in the
Northern portion, suggested a reunion with the "New School" soon
after the outbreak of the recent war. At length, in 1868, one General
Assembly met in Albany, while the other was in session in Harrisburg,
Pa. A plan of union was mutually prepared, which, on being approved
by the local presbyteries, went into effect in 1870.

The statistics of the "New School" Presbyterians have been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1839          1,171       1,286     100,850
      1860          1,527       1,483     134,463
      1861          1,558        --       134,760
      1862          1,555       1,466     135,454
      1863          1,616       1,454     135,894
      1865          1,694       1,479     143,645
      1866          1,739       1,528     150,401
      1867          1,870       1,560     161,538
      1868          1,800        --       168,932
      1869          1,848       1,631     172,560

The average annual increase in twenty-eight years has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 28 years     24          10        2,167

13. The "General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church" is the
title of a denomination which claims to be a direct descendant of the
"Reformed Presbyterian Church" of Scotland.

The statements of the numbers of this denomination have been as
follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1842            24          44        4,500
      1861            56          --        7,000
      1862            56          91          --
      1866            --          --        7,918
      1867            66          91        8,324
      1868            77          --        8,487
      1870            86          --        8,577

The average annual increase in twenty-five years has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 25 years     1¾           2          153

14. The "Synod of Reformed Presbyterians" was formed by certain
persons who separated from the Reformed Presbyterians (General
Synod), principally on the ground that they were of opinion that the
constitution and government of the United States are essentially
infidel and immoral. The separation took place in 1833.

The few statements relative to the numbers of this denomination have
been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1861            59          78        6,650
      1866            60          --        6,000

The average annual decrease during the last half-dozen years has been
108.

15. Another division is the "Associate Presbyterian Church." This is
located chiefly in the Middle and Western States. The members of the
denomination claim to be a branch of the Church of Scotland.

In 1858, the Associate Reformed and the Associate churches reunited
under the name of "United Presbyterian Church in North America."

The statistics of the Associate Presbyterian denomination after 1859
are merged in those of the United Presbyterians, and have been as
follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1844           106         210       15,000
      1861           444         669       57,567
      1863           470         683       54,758
      1864           513         698       57,691
      1865           516         659       58,265
      1866           539         686       58,988
      1867           558         717       63,489
      1868           541         735       65,612
      1869           565         726       65,624
      1870           553         729       66,805

The average annual increase of the denomination during the six years
subsequent to the union, ending in 1867, has been as follows:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      In 6 years      19        1,000

The statistics of the "Associate Synod of North America"
above-mentioned have been as follows:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1861            49        1,130
      1867            11          778

16. Another order of Presbyterians in this country is known as the
"Associate Reformed Church." Since 1822, the denomination has existed
in three independent divisions, the Northern, the Western, and the
Southern. These divisions are quite small in numbers, and their
growth has been insignificant. They have been stated as follows:

The Associate Reformed Synod of New York in 1843 had 34 ministers and
43 congregations. In 1867, it had 16 ministers and 1,631 members.

The Associate Reformed Synod of the South in 1843 had 25 ministers
and 40 congregations; and in 1867, estimated at 1,500 members.

The Associate Synod of North America in 1867 had 11 ministers and 778
members.

The Free Presbyterian Synod, consisting, in 1861, of 41 ministers
and 4,000 members, had previously separated from the New School
Presbyterian denomination, but was reunited and absorbed after the
outbreak of the recent war.

17. The Independent Presbyterian Church in South and North Carolina
consisted, in 1861, of 4 ministers and about 1,000 members.

18. Another denomination of Presbyterians remains to be noticed.
It is called the "Cumberland Presbyterians" and first appeared in
Kentucky in the year 1800. In 1829, there were four synods and the
first General Assembly of the denomination was held. During the
recent war the Southern churches were not reported in the Assembly,
and there are no complete statistics of that period.

The numbers of the denomination have been stated as follows:

              Synods.  Presby.  Min.  Conversions.
      1822       1       --      46      2,718
      1826       1       --      80      3,305
      1827       1       --     114      4,006
      1833       6       32      --      5,977
      1843      13       57      --        --

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1860           927       1,188       84,249
      1867         1,000     estimated    100,000
      1870         1,116         --        87,727

The average annual increase in 55 years, from 1812 to 1867, has been
1,819.

19. Another large class of denominations is known by the name of
"Baptists." They are divided into ten separate sects: Baptists;
Free-Will Baptists; Seventh-Day Baptists; German Baptists or
Brethren; German Seventh-Day Baptists; Free Communion Baptists; Old
School Baptists; Six-Principle Baptists; River Brethren; Disciples of
Christ, or Campbellites.

An estimate of the numbers of the regular Baptists at different
periods, made by themselves, presents the following results:

                  Ministers.  Churches. Communicants.
      1842         6,000       9,000       750,000
      1859         7,150      11,606       925,000
      1862           --          --        966,000
      1863         7,952      12,551     1,039,400
      1865         7,867      12,702     1,040,303
      1866            --      12,675     1,043,641
      1868         8,346      12,955     1,094,806
      1869         8,695      12,011     1,121,988
      1870         8,787         --      1,221,349

The average annual increase of the denomination during twenty-five
years has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 25 years     94         158       13,796

20. The "Free-will Baptist Connection" made its first organized
appearance in this country in 1780. In 1827, a General Conference was
organized to represent the whole connection. The statements of their
numbers have been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches. Communicants.
      1842           898       1,057        54,000
      1850         1,082       1,252        56,452
      1859           947       1,170        56,600
      1862            --         --         58,055
      1863         1,049       1,277        57,007
      1865            --         --         56,783
      1866         1,063       1,264        56,288
      1867         1,100       1,276        59,111
      1868         1,161       1,279        61,244
      1869         1,141       1,375        66,691

The average annual increase of the denomination during the last
twenty-five years has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 25 years      8          9          204

21. The "Seventh-Day Baptists" are so-called because they differ from
all other Protestant denominations in their views of the Sabbath.
They have gradually spread in the Eastern, the Central, and some
Northwestern and Southern States.

Little is known of their numbers, but they have been stated as
follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches. Communicants.
      1842            40         50          6,000
      1850            43         52          6,243
      1858            50         56          6,736
      1863            77         66          6,686
      1865            --         --          6,796
      1866            73         68          7,014
      1867            --         68          7,038
      1869            --         75          7,129

The annual average increase of the denomination has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 25 years      1⅓          ¾          41

22. There is a denomination of German Baptists which has assumed
for itself the name of "Brethren," but they are commonly called
"Dunkers" or "Tunkers" to distinguish them from the Mennonists.
They have also been called "Tumblers" from the manner in which they
perform baptism, which is by putting the person head forward under
water (while kneeling), so as to resemble the motion of the body in
the act of tumbling.

In 1843, their larger congregations contained from two to three
hundred members; but little was then known among themselves of their
numbers. Their subsequent statistics have been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1859           150        160         8,700
      1862            --         --         8,200
      1863           100        200        20,000
      1866           150        200        20,000
      1867            --         --        20,000

A membership of 20,000 has been stated for this denomination during
the last half-dozen years without increase or diminution.

23. The "German Seventh-Day Baptists" first made their appearance in
Germany in 1694. From these, after their organization in the United
States, sprang the Seventh-Day branch. Their numbers in 1860 were
estimated at:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1860           187         1,800

24. A society designated as "Free-Communion Baptists" arose in
1858 in McDonough Co., Illinois, and organized a quarterly meeting
conference. At the quarterly meeting in 1859, one preacher, four
licentiates, a few small churches, and 104 members were reported.

25. The "Old School," or Anti-mission, Baptists were formerly a
portion of the regular Baptists, above-mentioned. They are opposed to
the academical or theological education of their ministers, and to
Bible, missionary, and all other voluntary societies of like nature.

Their numbers have been stated as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1860           475       1,750       62,000
      1862            --          --       60,000
      1863           850       1,800       60,000
      1864            --          --       63,000
      1865            --          --       60,000
      1867            --       1,800      105,000

The average annual increase of this denomination during seven years
by these statements has been 6,143.

25. The denomination called "Six-Principle Baptists" originated in
Rhode Island as early as 1665. They are distinguished from other
Baptists by deducing their peculiarities from the first three verses
of the sixth chapter of Hebrews.

Their numbers have been estimated as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1860            16          18        3,000

Recent statements put their numbers about the same, and there
probably has been no important increase.

27. The "River Brethren" is an organization in Pennsylvania and other
states, so-called to distinguish them from the German Baptists or
Brethren above-mentioned.

Their meetings are generally held in dwelling-houses, or barns fitted
up with seats; in other respects, they are similar to the German
Brethren.

Their numbers have been stated as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1860            65          80        7,000

More recent statements make no important alteration in these numbers.

28. The "Disciples of Christ," or, as the denomination is often
called, "Baptists," "Reformed Baptists," "Reformers," "Campbellites,"
etc., originated in the early part of the present century. The first
advocates were Thomas and Alexander Campbell in Pennsylvania.

The statements of their numbers have been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1842           --          --       200,000
      1850           848       1,898      218,618
      1863         1,500       1,800      300,000
      1867           --          --       300,000

The average annual increase, according to these statements, has been
in twenty-one years, in members, 4,762.

29. The first appearance of the Puritans, since known as
"Congregationalists," was in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's
reign. The first church formed upon Congregational principles was
that established by Robert Browne in 1583. The denomination is the
largest in New England, and exists in small bodies in a number of the
states.

Their numbers are stated to be as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1742         1,150       1,300      160,000
      1850         1,687       1,971      147,196
      1858         1,922       2,369      230,093
      1861          --          --        259,119
      1862         2,643       2,884      261,474
      1863         2,594       2,729      253,200
      1864          --         2,856      268,015
      1865         2,761       2,723      263,296
      1866         2,919       2,780      267,453
      1867         2,971       2,825      278,362
      1868          --         2,951      291,474
      1869          --         3,043      300,362

The average annual increase of this denomination during the last
twenty-five years has been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      In 25 years     73          61        4,734

30. The denomination of "Unitarians" arose in this country from a
division of opinion among Congregationalists on the divinity of
Christ. Their statistics contain no report of the membership. All who
are respectable and orderly members of the society are admitted to
the sacraments if they desire to be.

Their numbers for a series of years have been estimated at 30,000.

                  Ministers.  Societies.  Members.
      1830            --         193        --
      1840            --         200        --
      1850           250         244        --
      1860           298          --        --
      1863            43         260     30,000
      1864           326         250        --
      1867           370         300        --

The average annual increase has been estimated for a series of forty
or more years at about one per cent., or 300.

31. The denomination of "Universalists" first made its appearance
in England about 1750. In Gloucester, Massachusetts, the first
Universalist society was formed in 1779. No statistics of the
denomination contain the "membership" like those of other
denominations, as to believe is to become a member. The active
members have been estimated in 1850 at 60,000, although the
population among which Universalism exists to the exclusion of other
denominations may be ten times greater.

                  Ministers.  Societies.  Members.
      1842           646        990          --
      1850           700        918        60,000
      1859           724        913          --
      1865[24]       496        681          --
      1867           523        732        80,000
      1868           588        792          --
      1869           520        844          --

        [24] Incomplete.

Average annual increase in twenty years, 1,000.

32. The Protestant Episcopal Church is a well-known offshoot of the
church established by the British Parliament in England.

Their numbers and growth have been as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1859         2,030       2,111      135,767
      1862         2,270       2,327      160,612
      1863         1,772       1,617      111,093[25]
      1864         1,895       1,741      143,854[25]
      1865         2,467       2,322      154,118
      1866         2,530       2,305      161,224
      1867         2,600       2,370      178,102
      1868         2,736       2,472      194,692
      1869         2,762       2,512      200,000

        [25] Southern States not reported.

The average annual increase during the last nine years has been as
follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
                      78          40        6,536

33. Another large class of denominations is embraced under the
general term "Methodism." The first denomination, out of which all
the others have sprung, was an offshoot of the Church of England,
known in this country as the Protestant Episcopal Church.

The statistics of the denomination have been as follows:

                  Preachers.   Members.
      1773            10         1,160
      1783            83        13,740
      1793           269        67,643
      1803           393        86,734
      1813           700       214,307
      1823         1,226       312,540
      1833         2,400       599,736
      1843         4,286     1,068,525
      1850         3,716       629,660[26]
      1859         6,502       971,498
      1862           --        942,906
      1863         5,885       923,394
      1864           --        928,320
      1865         6,121       925,285
      1866         6,287     1,032,184[27]
      1867         8,004     1,146,081
      1868         8,481     1,255,115
      1869         8,830     1,298,938

        [26] Separation of South in 1845.
        [27] Centenary year.

The average annual increase since the separation of the South, and
during seventeen years, has been 30,377. Since the close of the war
conferences have been organized in eight of the Southern states, and
100,000 members gained from the church South.

34. A secession took place in 1830 from the Methodists, and the
persons who composed it assumed the name of the "Methodist Protestant
Church." Its statistics have been as follows:

                Travelling preachers.     Members.
      1830                83                5,000
      1842                --               53,875
      1850               740               64,219
      1854                --               70,018
      1858             2,000               90,000

In 1866, a convention was held in Cincinnati to unite the Methodist
Protestants, the Wesleyan Connection, the Free Methodists, the
Primitive Methodists, and some independent Methodist congregations,
under the name of the "Methodist Church." The union was joined by few
save the Northern conferences of the Methodist Protestant body, who
now compose the Methodist Church; the Southern conferences retain the
original name of Methodist Protestant. Their numbers in 1867 were
estimated at 50,000; in 1869, they were estimated at 72,000.

There has been no actual increase in those now indicated by this name
in twenty-five years preceding 1868.

35. The "Methodist Church" is composed of the Northern conferences of
the Methodist Protestant Church which, in attempting to form a union
with others in 1866, caused a split among themselves. Their report,
made in 1867, states as follows:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1867           625        50,000
      1869           624        49,030

This is strictly an increase of the Methodist Protestants, but
appears under a new name. It is an average annual increase of 2,000.

36. Out of the original separation of the Methodist Protestants from
the Methodist Episcopal another denomination sprang up, under the
name of the "True Wesleyan Methodists."

The denomination has increased very slowly since its organization, as
appears by the following statements:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1843           300        20,000
      1850           500        20,000
      1860           565        21,000
      1867            --        25,000
      1869           220        20,000

Average annual increase in twenty-five years, 200.

37. The African Methodist Episcopal Church owes its origin to the
prejudice against the colored members and attendants of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. In the early days of the latter, this prejudice was
so deep that the colored persons were not unfrequently pulled from
their knees while at prayer in the church, and ordered to the back
seats.

This denomination has greatly increased by the addition of
emancipated slaves. Its statistics are as follows:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1842            --        15,000
      1860            --        20,000
      1864            --        50,000
      1865           405        50,000
      1866            --        70,000
      1867         1,500       200,000
      1869         1,500       200,000

The average annual increase in twenty-five years has been 7,500.

38. The operation of the same prejudice against color in New York
gave rise to the "Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church." Its
statistics show a large increase recently at the South, and are as
follows:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1842            --         4,000
      1860            --         6,000
      1864            --         8,000
      1866            --        42,000
      1867           300        60,000
      1869            --       164,000

The average annual increase of the denomination has been 2,008.

39. The "Methodist Episcopal Church, South," is the second largest
body of Methodists in the United States. It arose from a division of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, in accordance with resolutions of the
General Conference in 1844.

The membership of this denomination has been reduced by the war, by
the invasion of its territory by the Northern Methodist Episcopal,
and by the African and Zion churches. Its statistics are as follows:

                  Ministers.   Members.
      1850         1,500       465,553
      1860         2,408       699,164
      1866         3,769       505,101
      1867         3,952       535,040
      1869 presents no important change.

The average annual increase in seventeen years has been 4,087.

40. The "Free Methodist Church" originated in 1859, and consisted
of a few congregations in New York and other Northern states. Its
statistics have been as follows:

                  Preachers.   Members.
      1864            66         3,555
      1866            85         4,889
      1868            94         6,000

The average annual increase in two years has been 617.

41. The "Western Primitive Methodist Church" held its twenty-second
annual conference in New Diggings, Wisconsin, 1866. The subject of
union with other non-episcopal bodies was favorably considered. Their
numbers were in 1865 as follows: Preachers, 20; members, 2,000.

42. The "Independent Methodist Church" organized its first
congregation in New York City in 1860. The third annual session of
its conference was held in 1864, and a movement made toward union
with other non-episcopal bodies.

43. The "Friends," or "Quakers," arose in England about 1647, under
the preaching of Mr. George Fox. The numbers of this denomination are
estimated at 100,000, comprised in eight yearly meetings.

44. A division took place during the first quarter of the present
century among the Friends, under Mr. Elias Hicks. A distinct and
independent association was made under his name. Their numbers are
estimated at 40,000.

45. The "Shakers," or United Society of Believers, are a small
denomination which first made its appearance in this country in 1776.

Their statistics have been as follows:

                  Preachers.   Members.
      1828            45         4,500
      1860            --         4,713

They are found in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York,
Kentucky, Connecticut.

46. The "Adventists," or "Second Adventists," owe their rise in the
United States to Mr. Wm. Miller, of Low Hampton, New York.

In 1859, they were estimated to comprise about 18,000 persons, and
in 1867 about 30,000, exclusive of members of other denominations.
Average annual increase in eight years, 1,500.

47. The "New Church," or "Swedenborgians," accept as their rule
of faith and discipline the Holy Scriptures as interpreted by Mr.
Emanuel Swedenborg.

Their numbers in the United States have been estimated as follows:

                  Ministers.  Churches.   Members.
      1850            42         30        3,000
      1862            57         49        5,000

Average annual increase in twelve years, 166.

48. Modern "Spiritualism" made its appearance in Western New York
about twenty years ago. It came at first in the form of rappings,
knockings, table-tippings, and other noisy demonstrations, for
the purpose of attracting general attention. The believers held
conventions and public meetings, but adopted no form or plan of
organization. Great numbers in all denominations are supposed to
approve more or less of their views; but the number of separate
public adherents is estimated at 165,000.

49. The "Mormon Church," or "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints," was first organized in the town of Manchester, New York, on
April 6, 1830, by Mr. Joseph Smith, of Vermont. The fortunes of the
church thus started have been variable in New York, Ohio, Missouri,
and Illinois, until persecution has compelled her to withdraw to the
wilderness of Utah. Their number is stated to be 60,000. The average
annual increase in twenty-five years, 2,000.

50. Four miles from Oneida, Madison County, New York, is located an
organized community the members of which call themselves "Christian
Perfectionists." It was started by Mr. John F. Noyes, a native of
Brattleboro, Vermont.

They have now a community in Oneida, Wallingford, Conn., New Haven,
Conn., and New York, which consisted of 255 members in 1867. This is
an average annual increase of 10.

51. The "Catholic Apostolic Church," or "Irvingites," originated from
the views of Mr. Edward Irving, preached in London in 1830.

There are about a half-dozen of these congregations in this country,
estimated to contain 250 members.

A number of small nuclei of perhaps future denominations exists in
different states, which it is unnecessary to mention.

A recapitulation of the preceding statistics presents the following
results:

                                          Church      Average
                                          Members     Annual
                                            in       Increase
                                           1867.    in 25 y'rs.

      1. Lutherans                        332,155      7,182
      2. German Reformed                  110,408      3,431
      3. United Brethren                   97,983      1,319
      4. Moravians                          6,655         26
      5. Dutch Reformed                    57,846      1,261
      6. Mennonites                        39,110        380
      7. Reformed Mennonites               11,000        200
      8. Evangelical Association           58,002      1,791
      9. Christian Connection             500,000      7,954
      10. Church of God                    32,000        960
      11. O. S. Presbyterians             246,350      6,958
      12. N. S. Presbyterians             161,538      2,167
      13. Reformed Presbyterians
          (General Synod)                   8,324        153
      14. Synod of Reformed
          Presbyterians                     6,000         --
      15. Associate and United
          Presbyterians                    63,489      1,000
      16. Associate Reformed Presbyterians  3,909         80
      17. Free Presbyterians                1,000         --
      18. Cumberland Presbytr'ns.         100,000      1,819
      19. Baptists                      1,094,806     13,796
      20. Free-Will Baptists               59,111        204
      21. Seventh-Day Baptists              7,038         41
      22. Dunkers                          20,000        500
      23. German Seventh-Day Baptists       1,800         30
      24. Free-Commun. Baptists               104         --
      25. Anti-Mission Baptists           105,000      6,143
      26. Six-Principle Baptists            3,000         --
      27. River Brethren                    7,000         80
      28. Disciples (Campbellites)        300,000      4,762
      29. Congregationalists              278,362      4,734
      30. Unitarians                       30,000        300
      31. Universalists                    80,000      1,000
      32. Protestant Episcopal            194,692      6,536
      33. Methodist Episcopal           1,146,081     30,377
      34. Methodist Protestant             50,000         --
      35. Methodist Church                 50,000      2,000
      36. True Wesleyan                    25,000        200
      37. African Methodist               200,000      7,500
      38. Zion African Methodist           60,000      2,008
      39. Methodist Epis. (South)         535,040      4,087
      40. Free Methodist                    4,880        617
      41. Western Primitive Methodist       2,000         40
      42. Independent Methodists              800         --
      43. Friends, or Quakers             100,000      1,000
      44. Hicksites                        40,000        400
      45. Shakers                           4,713         60
      46. Adventists                       30,000      1,500
      47. Swedenborgians                    5,000        186
      48. Spiritualism                    165,000      8,000
      49. Mormon Church                    60,000      2,000
      50. Christian Perfectionists            255         10
      51. Catholic Apost. Church              250         10
                                        ---------    -------
            Total                       6,396,110    134,802

Thus the whole number of members of Protestant churches in the United
States in 1867 was 6,396,110. The average annual increase of this
membership during the preceding twenty-five years has been 134,802.

The population of the United States according to the usual census and
that of the Bureau of Statistics for 1867, has been as follows:

      1840             17,069,453
      1850             23,191,876
      1860             31,443,322
      1867             36,743,198
      1870 incomplete officially.

The average annual increase in twenty-seven years has been 728,509.

If we deduct from the population of the United States in 1867 the
number of persons who were members of Protestant churches, there
will remain 30,347,088 persons in the United States in 1867 who were
not members of Protestant churches, who made no public profession of
faith in their doctrines, and who did not partake of their sacraments.

If we suppose the church-membership of Protestant denominations to
increase at the same average annual rate during the next thirty-three
years, until the year 1900, that increase will amount to 4,448,466.
If this increase is added to the number of church-members in 1867,
the membership of all the Protestant churches in the year 1900 will
be 10,844,576.

If we suppose the population of the United States to increase in the
same average annual rate during the next thirty-three years, until
the year 1900, that increase will amount to 24,040,797. This amount
added to the population of 1867 will make the population in 1900
reach the number 60,784,945, of whom 49,940,419 will not be members
of any Protestant church, nor make a public profession of faith in
their doctrines, nor partake of their sacraments.

It may be said that the average annual increase of Protestantism for
twenty-five years subsequent to 1867 will be numerically greater
than for the previous twenty-five years. So will also be numerically
larger the average annual increase of the population for a like
period, but the relative proportion of the denominations to the
population would remain unchanged.




ON A GREAT PLAGIARIST.


      Phœbus drew back with just disdain
        The wreath: the Delphic Temple frowned:
      The suppliant fled to Hermes' fane,
        That stood on lower, wealthier ground.

      The Thief-God spake, with smile star-bright:
        "Go thou where luckier poets browse,
      The pastures of the Lord of Light,
        And do--what I did with his cows."[28]

                                             AUBREY DE VERE.

FOOTNOTE:

[28] He stole, killed, and ate the whole of Apollo's herd, before he
was a day old! See Homer's _Hymn to Mercury_.




MARY BENEDICTA.


We were at school together. We little dreamed, either of us, in those
mischief-loving days of frolic and fun, that she was one day to be a
saint, and that I would write her story.

Yet look well at the face. Is there not something like a promise of
sainthood on the pure, white brow? And the eyes, blue-gray Irish
eyes, with the long, dark lashes throwing a shadow underneath,
"diamonds put in with dirty fingers," have they not a spiritual
outlook that speaks to you with a promise--a revelation of some
vision or growth of some beauty beyond what meets your gaze? Yet,
though it seems so clear in the retrospect, this prophetic side of
her beauty, I own it, never struck me then.

I am going to tell her story simply, with strict accuracy as to the
traits of her character--the facts of her life and her death. I shall
tell the bad with the good, neither striving to varnish her faults
nor to heighten, by any dramatic coloring, the beautiful reality of
her virtues. The story is one calculated, it seems to me, to be a
light and a lesson to many. The very faults and follies, the strange
beginning, so unlike the end, all taken as parts of a whole in the
true experience of a soul, contain a teaching whose sole eloquence
must be its truth and its simplicity.

I said we were at school together, but, though in the same convent,
we were not in the same class. Mary (this was her real Christian
name) was a few years older than I. Her career at this time was one
of the wildest that ever a school-girl lived through. High-spirited,
reckless, setting all rules at defiance, she was the torment of her
mistresses and the delight of her companions. With the latter, her
good-nature and good temper carried her serenely above all the little
malices and jealousies that display themselves in that miniature
world, a school; and, at the same time, her spirit of independence,
while it was constantly getting her into "scrapes," was so redeemed
by genuine abhorrence of everything approaching to meanness or deceit
that it did not prevent her being a universal favorite with the nuns.
One in particular, who from her rigorous disciplinarianism was the
terror of us all, was even less proof than the others against the
indomitable sweet temper and lovableness of her rebellious pupil.
They were in a state of permanent warfare, but occasionally, after a
hot skirmish carried on before the public, viz., the second class,
Mother Benedicta would take the rebel aside, and try privately
to coax her into a semblance of apology, or mayhap a promise of
amendment. Sometimes she succeeded, for the refractory young lady
was always more amenable to caresses than to threats, and was,
besides, notwithstanding the war footing on which they stood, very
fondly attached to Mother Benedicta, but she never pledged herself
unconditionally. This was a great grievance with the mistress. She
used to argue, and threaten, and plead by the hour, in order to
induce Mary to give her "word of honor," as the phrase was amongst
us, that she would observe such and such a prohibition, or obey such
and such a rule--silence was the chronic _casus belli_--but all to
no purpose.

"No, sister, I promise you to try; but I won't promise to do or not
to do," she would answer, undefiantly, but quite resolutely.

It was a common thing for Mother Benedicta to say, after one of
these conferences which ended, as usual, in the cautious, "I'll try,
sister," that, if she could once get Mary to promise her outright to
mend her ways, she would never take any more trouble about her. "If
she pledged her word of honor to be a saint, I believe she would keep
it," observed the nun, with a sigh.

I mention this little incident advisedly, for, though at the time we,
in our wisdom, thought it must be pure perversity on the part of our
mistress that made her so pursue Mary on the subject, considering
that we were all in the habit of pledging our words of honor any
given number of times a week with no particular result, I lived to
see that in this individual instance she was guided by prophetic
insight.

She never succeeded, however, in inducing Mary to commit herself
during the four years that she was under her charge. It was war
to the end; not to the bitter end, for the strife did not weaken,
nay, it probably strengthened the enduring attachment that had
sprung up between them. By way of sealing irrevocably and publicly
this attachment on her side, Mary added the nun's name to her own,
and even after she left school she continued to sign herself Mary
Benedicta. When the time came round for frequenting the sacraments,
it was the sure signal for a quarrel between the two belligerents.
There was no plea or stratagem that Mary would not have recourse
to in order to avoid going to confession. Yet withal she had a
reputation in the school for piety--a queer, impulsive sort of
piety peculiar to herself, that came by fits and starts. We had an
unaccountable belief in the efficacy of her prayers, and in any
difficulty she was one of those habitually appealed to to pray us out
of it; not, indeed, that we were actuated by any precise view as to
the spiritual quality of the prayers, only impressed vaguely by her
general character, that whatever she did she put her heart in and
did thoroughly. Mother Benedicta used to say that her devotion to
the Blessed Sacrament would save her. But this devotion consisted,
as far as we could see, in an enthusiastic love for Benediction; and
as Mary was passionately fond of music, and confessed a weakness
for effective ceremonial, Mother Benedicta herself occasionally had
misgivings as to how much of the devotion went to the object of the
ceremony and how much to its accessories, the lights, the music, and
the incense. At any rate, once over, it exercised no apparent control
over her life. The rules of the school she systematically ignored;
the rule of silence she looked upon with special contempt as a
bondage fit for fools, but unworthy of rational human beings. To the
last day of her sojourn in the school, she practically illustrated
the opinion that speech was of gold and silence of brass, and left it
with the reputation of being the most indefatigable talker; the most
unruly and untidy subject, but the sweetest nature that ever tried
the patience and won the hearts of the community.

When she was about eighteen, her father sent her to the Sacré Cœur,
in Paris, to complete her education, which, in spite of considerable
expense on his part, and masters without end, was at this advanced
period in a sadly retrograde state, the little she had learned at
school in Ireland having been assiduously forgotten in the course
of a year's anarchical holiday, when reading of every sort and even
her favorite music were set aside for the more congenial pastimes of
dancing, and skating, and flying across country after the hounds.

I was then living in Paris, and Mary was placed under my mother's
wing. We went to see her on the _Jours de Parloir_, and she came
to us on the _Jours de Sortie_. But it did not last long. As might
have been expected, the sudden change from a life of excitement and
constant out-door exercise to one of seclusion and sedentary habits
proved too trying to her health, and after a few months the medical
man of the convent declared that he was not prepared to accept the
responsibility of taking charge of her, and strongly advised that she
should be sent home.

We communicated this intelligence to her father, begging at the same
time that before he came to remove her she might be allowed to spend
a month with us. The request was granted and Mary came to stay with
us.

That we might lose as little as possible of each other's company
while we were together, she shared my room. We spent the mornings at
home; I studying or taking my lessons, she reading, or lolling about
the room, watching the clock, and longing for the master to go and
set me free, that we might go out.

My mother, who only in a lesser degree shared my affection for
Mary, and was anxious to make her visit as pleasant as possible,
took her about to all the places best worth seeing in the city--the
picture-galleries, the palaces, the museums, and the churches. The
latter, though many of them, even as works of art, were amongst the
most interesting monuments for a stranger, Mary seemed thoroughly
indifferent to. When we entered one, instead of kneeling a moment
before the sanctuary, as any Catholic does from mere force of habit
and impulse, she would just make the necessary genuflexion, and,
without waiting for us, hurry on round the building, examine the
pictures and the stained glass, and then go out with as little delay
as might be. This did not strike my mother, who was apt to remain all
the time at her prayers, while I walked about doing the honors of the
church to Mary; but it struck me, and it pained and puzzled me.

She was too innately honest to attempt the shadow of prevarication
or _pose_ even in her attitude, and her haste in despatching the
inspection of every church we entered was so undisguised that I saw
she did not care whether I noticed it or not. Once, on coming out
of the little church of St. Genevieve, one of the loveliest shrines
ever raised to the worship of God by the genius of man, I said rather
sharply to her, for she had beaten a more precipitate retreat than
usual, and cut short my mother's devotions at the tomb of the saint:

"Mary," I said, "one really would think the devil was at your heels
the moment you enter a church, you are in such a violent hurry to get
out of it."

She laughed, not mockingly, with a sort of half-ashamed expression,
and turning her pure, full eyes on me.

"I hate to stay anywhere under false appearances," she said, "and I
always feel such a hypocrite kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament! I
feel as if I would choke if I stay there over five minutes."

I felt shocked, and I suppose I looked it.

"Don't look at me as if I were possessed of the devil," she said,
still laughing, though there was a touch of sadness, it struck me,
in her voice and face. "I mean to be converted by-and-by, and mend my
ways; but meantime let me have my fun, and, above all, don't preach
to me!"

"I don't feel the least inclined," I replied.

"I suppose you think I'm gone beyond it. Well, you can pray for me.
I'm not gone beyond the reach of that!"

This was the only serious conversation, if it deserves the name,
that we had during the first week of her visit. She enjoyed herself
thoroughly, throwing all the zest of her earnest nature into
everything. The people and their odd French ways, the shops and
their exquisite wares, the opera, the gay Bois with the brilliant
throng of fashion that crowded round the lake every day at the hour
of promenade--the novelty of the scene and the place altogether
enchanted her, and there was something quite refreshing in the spirit
of enjoyment she threw into it all.

One evening, after a long day of sight-seeing, we were invited by a
friend of hers to dine at the _table d'hôte_ of the Louvre. It was
the _grande nouveauté_ just then, and Mary was consequently wild to
see it. We went, and during dinner the admiration excited by her
beauty was so glaringly expressed by the persistent stare of every
eye within range of her at the table that my mother was provoked
at having brought her and exposed her to such an ordeal. But Mary
herself was blissfully unconscious of the effect she was producing;
indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say she was unconscious
of the cause. Certainly, no woman ever had less internal perception
or outward complacency in her beauty than she had. This indifference
amounted to a fault, for it pervaded her habits of dress, which were
very untidy, and betokened a total disregard of personal appearance.
The old fault that had been one of Mother Benedicta's standing
grievances was as strong as ever, and it was all I could do to get
her to put on her clothes straight, and to tie her bonnet under her
chin instead of under her ear, when she came out with us.

But to return to the Louvre. It had been settled that after dinner we
should walk across to the Palais Royal, and let Mary see the diamond
shops illuminated, and all the other wonderful shops; but during
dinner she overheard some one saying that the Emperor and Empress
were to be at the Grand Opera that night. Her first impulse was to
take a box and go there. But my mother objected that it was Saturday,
the opera was never over before midnight, and consequently we could
not be home and in bed before one o'clock on Sunday morning.

With evident disappointment, but, as usual, with the sweetest good
temper, Mary gave way. Her friend then proposed that, before going
to the Palais Royal, we should walk on to the Rue Lepelletier, and
see the Emperor and Empress going in to the Opera. There was no
difficulty in the way of this amendment, so it was adopted.

On coming out of the Louvre, however, we found, to our surprise
and discomfiture, that the weather had been plotting against our
little programme. The ground, which was frozen dry and hard when
we drove down from the Champs Elysées less than two hours before,
had become like polished glass under a heavy fall of sleet; the
horses were already slipping about in a very uncomfortable way, and
there was a decided disinclination on the part of pedestrians to
trust themselves to cabs. Fate had decreed that Mary was not to see
the Emperor on any terms that night. It would have been absurdly
imprudent to venture on the macadam of the boulevards, and increase
the risk of driving at all by waiting till the streets were so
slippery that no horse could keep his footing on them. There was
nothing for it but to go straight home, which we did, the horse
snailing at a foot-pace all the way.

It was a memorable night this one of which I am chronicling a trivial
recollection--trivial in itself, but weighty in its consequences.

It was the 14th of January, 1858.

We went to bed, and slept, no doubt, soundly. None the less soundly
for the thundering crash that, before we lay down, had shaken the
Rue Lepelletier from end to end, making the houses rock to their
foundations, shattering to pieces every window from garret to cellar,
and reverberating along the boulevards like the roar of a hundred
cannon. The noise shook half Paris awake for that long night. The
people, first merely terrified, then lashed to a frenzy of horror and
of enthusiasm, rushed from their houses, and thronged the boulevards
and the streets in the vicinity of the Opera. In the pitch darkness
that followed simultaneously with the bursting of Orsini's bombs, it
was impossible to know how many were murdered or how many wounded.
There had been a great crowd of _curieux_ and strangers as usual
waiting to see their majesties alight--the street was lined with
them. Were they all murdered, blown to the four winds of heaven, in
that explosion that was loud enough to have blown up half Paris? Of
course, popular fear and fury exaggerated the number of the victims
enormously, and the night resounded with the shrieks and lamentations
of women, the plunging and moaning of horses, wounded or only
frantic with terror, and the passionate cries of _Vive l'Empereur!_
intermingled with curses on the fiends who, to secure the murder of
one man, had sacrificed the lives of hundreds.

While this ghastly tumult was scaring sleep and silence from the city
close to us, we slept on, all unconscious of the cup of trembling to
which we had stretched out our hand, and which had been so mercifully
snatched away from us.

It was only next morning, on going out to Mass, that the _concierge_
stopped us to tell the news of the attempt on the Emperor's life.

And we had been vexed and felt aggrieved with the rain that drove us
home, and prevented our going to stand amongst those _curieux_ in the
Rue Lepelletier!

Mary did not hear of it till we met at breakfast. I never shall
forget the look of blank horror on her face as she listened to the
account of what had happened on the very spot where we had been so
bent on going.

Although this attack of Orsini's comes into my narrative simply as a
datum, I cannot resist making a short digression toward it.

Most of my readers will remember the singular stoicism displayed by
the Emperor at the moment of the explosion. One of the horses was
killed under his carriage, which was violently shaken by the plunging
of the terrified animals, and a splinter from one of the bombs,
flashing through the window, grazed him on the temple. In the midst
of the general panic and confusion of the scene, the equerry rushed
forward, and, taking the Emperor by the arm, cried hurriedly:

"Come out, sire! Come out!"

"Let down the steps," observed his master with unruffled _sang
froid_, and quietly waited till it was done before he moved.

He entered the Opera amidst deafening cheers, and sat out the
representation as coolly, and to all appearances with as much
attention, as if nothing had occurred to disturb him, now and then
quietly drawing his handkerchief across the splinter-mark on his
forehead, from which the blood was oozing slightly.

Next day a solemn Te Deum was celebrated at the Tuileries. The
Empress wished the little prince, then a baby in arms, to be
present at the thanksgiving for her own and his father's miraculous
preservation. The child was carried into the Salle des Maréchaux,
where the court and the Corps Diplomatique were assembled, and
immediately put out his hands, clamoring for his father to take him.
The Emperor took him in his arms, and the child, looking up at his
face, noticed the red mark on the temple.

"Papa _bobo_!"[29] he lisped, and put up his little hand to touch it.

The hard, sphynx-like face struggled for a moment; but the child's
touch had melted the strong man. He clasped him to his heart, and
literally shook with sobs.

These details, which were probably never written before, were told to
me by one who was present at the attempt the previous night, and at
the Te Deum Mass next day.

That night, when we were alone, Mary and I talked over the diabolical
crime that had within four and twenty hours shaken the whole country
like an earthquake, and over the merciful interposition that had
arrested us on our way to what might have been for us, as it was for
many, a certain and horrible death. Mary, though she said little on
this latter point, was evidently very deeply impressed, and what she
did say carried in it a depth of religious emotion that revealed her
to me in quite a new light.

It was agreed that she would go to confession next day, and that we
were to begin a novena together in thanksgiving for our preservation.

"Mary," I said impulsively, after we had been silent a little while,
"why have you such a dislike to go to the sacraments? I can't
understand how, believing in them at all, you can be satisfied to
approach them so seldom."

"It isn't dislike; it is _fear_," she answered. "It's precisely
because I realize so _awfully_ the power and sanctity of the Blessed
Sacrament that I keep away. I believe so intensely in it that,
if I went often to holy communion, I should have to divorce from
everything, to give up my whole life to preparation and thanksgiving.
I know I should. And I don't want to do it. Not yet, at any rate,"
she added, half-unconsciously, as if speaking to herself.

I shall never forget the effect her words had on me, nor her face as
she uttered them. The night was far spent. The emotions of the day,
the long watch, and perhaps the flickering of our bedroom candle
that was burning low, all conspired to give an unwonted pallor
to her features that imbued them with an almost ethereal beauty.
I always think of her now as she sat there, in her girlish white
dressing-gown, her hands locked resting on her knees, her head thrown
back, and her eyes looking up, so still, as if some far beyond were
breaking on her gaze and holding it transfixed.

Nothing broke on mine. In my dull blindness I did not see that I was
assisting at the beginning of a great mystery, a spectacle on which
the gaze of angels was riveted--the wrestling of a soul with God: the
soul resisting; the Creator pleading and pursuing.

She left us at the end of January to return home. We parted with many
tears, and a promise to correspond often and pray for each other
daily.

For a time we did correspond very regularly--for nearly a year.
During this period her life was an unpausing whirl of dissipation.
Balls, visits, operas, and concerts during the season in town were
succeeded in the country by more balls, and hunting, and skating, and
the usual round of amusements that make up a gay country life. Mary
was everywhere the beauty of the place, the admired of all admirers.
Strange to say, in spite of her acknowledged supremacy, she made no
enemies. Perhaps it would have been stranger still if she had. Her
sweet, artless manner and perfect unconsciousness of self went for
at least as much in the admiration she excited as her beauty. If she
danced every dance at every ball, it was never once for the pleasure
of saying she did it, of triumphing over other girls, but for the
genuine pleasure of the dance itself.

Her success was so gratuitous, so little the result of coquetry on
her side, that, however much it might be envied, it was impossible to
resent it.

I am not trying to make out a case for Mary, or to excuse, still
less justify, the levity of the life she was leading at this time.
My only aim is to convey a true idea of the spirit in which she was
leading it--mere exuberance of spirits, the zest of youth in the gay
opportunities that were showered upon her path. She was revelling
like a butterfly in flowers and sunshine. The spirit of worldliness
in its true and worst sense did not possess her; did not even touch
her. Its cankerous breath had not blown upon her soul and blighted
it; the worm had not eaten into her heart and hardened it. Both were
still sound--only drunk; intoxicated with the wine of life. She went
waltzing through flames, like a moth round a candle; like a child
letting off rockets, and clapping hands with delight at the pretty
blue blaze, without fear or thought of danger. There was no such
thing as premeditated infidelity in her mind. She was not playing
a deliberate game with God; bidding him wait till she was ready,
till she was tired of the world and the world of her. No, she was
utterly incapable of such a base and guilty calculation. She had
simply forgotten that she had a soul to save. The still, small voice
that had spoken to her in earlier days, especially on that night of
the 15th of January, stirring the sleeping depths, and calling out
momentary yearnings toward the higher life, had altogether ceased
its pleadings. How could that mysterious whisper make itself heard
in such a din and clangor of unholy music? There was no silent spot
in her soul where it could enter and find a listener. But Mary did
not think about it. She was inebriated with youth and joy, and had
flung herself into the vortex, and raced round with it till her head
reeled. On the surface, all was ripple and foam, rings running round
and round; but the depths below were sleeping. The one, the visible
hold that she retained on God at this time was her love for his poor.
Her heart was always tender to suffering in every form, but to the
poor especially. As an instance of this, I may mention her taking
off her flannel petticoat, on a bitter winter's day, to give it to
a poor creature whom she met shivering at the roadside, and then
running nearly a mile home in the cold herself.

After about a year our correspondence slackened, and gradually broke
down altogether. I heard from her once in six months, perhaps.
The tone of her letters struck me as altered. I could not exactly
say how, except that it had grown more serious. She said nothing
of triumphs at archery meetings or of brushes carried off "at the
death;" there seemed to be no such feats to chronicle. She talked of
her family and of mine, very little of herself. Once only, in answer
to a direct question as to what books she read, she told me that she
was reading Father Faber, and that she read very little else. This
was the only clue I gained to the nature of the change that had come
over her.

At the expiration of about two years, a clergyman, who was an old
friend of her family, and a frequent visitor at the house, came to
Paris, and gave me a detailed account of the character and extent of
the change.

The excitement into which she had launched on returning home, and
which she had kept up with unflagging spirit, had, as might have been
expected, told on her health, never very strong. A cough set in at
the beginning of the winter which caused her family some alarm. She
grew thin to emaciation, lost her appetite, and fell into a state of
general ill-health. Change of air and complete rest were prescribed
by the medical men. She was accordingly taken from one sea-side place
to another, and condemned to a _régime_ of dulness and quiet. In
a few months the system told favorably, and she was sufficiently
recovered to return home.

But the monotony of an inactive life which was still enforced, after
the mad-cap career she had been used to, wearied her unspeakably.
For want of something better to do, she took to reading. Novels,
of course. Fortunately for her, ten years ago young ladies had not
taken to writing novels that honest men blush to review, and that
too many young ladies do not blush to read. Mary did no worse than
waste her time without active detriment to her mind. She read the
new novels of the day, and, if she was not much the better, she was
probably none the worse for it. But one day--a date to be written in
gold--a friend, the same who gave me these particulars, made her a
present of Father Faber's _All for Jesus_. The title promised very
little entertainment; reluctantly enough, Mary turned over the pages
and began to read. How long she read, I cannot tell. It might be
true to say that she never left off. Others followed, all from the
same pen, through uninterrupted days, and weeks, and months. She
told me afterward that the burning words of those books--the first
especially, and _The Creator and the Creature_--pursued her even in
her dreams. She seemed to hear a voice crying after her unceasingly:
"Arise, and follow!"

Suddenly, but irrevocably, the whole aspect of life was changed to
her. She began to look back upon the near past, and wonder whether
it was she herself who had so enjoyed those balls and gaieties, or
whether she had not been mad, and imagined it, and was only now in
her right mind. The most insuperable disgust succeeded to her love of
worldly amusement. She cared for nothing but prayer and meditation,
and the service of the poor and suffering. An ardent longing took
possession of her to suffer for and with our Divine Master. Yielding
to the impulse of her new-born fervor, she began to practise the most
rigorous austerities, fasting much, sleeping little, and praying
almost incessantly. This was done without the counsel or cognizance
of any spiritual guide. She knew of no one to consult. Her life
had been spiritually so neglected during the last two years that
direction had had no part to play in it. There was nothing to direct.
The current was setting in an opposite direction. The supernatural
was out of sight.

Under cover of her health, which, though it was fairly recovered,
still rendered quiet and great prudence desirable, Mary contrived to
avoid all going out, and secretly laid down for herself a rule of
life that she adhered to scrupulously.

But this could not go on long. As she grew in the ways of prayer,
the spirit of God led her imperceptibly but inevitably into the sure
and safe high-road of all pilgrims travelling toward the bourn of
sanctity and aiming at a life of perfection.

The necessity of a spiritual director was gradually borne in upon
her, as she said to me, while at the same time the difficulty of
meeting with this treasure, whom St. Teresa bids us seek amongst ten
thousand, grew more and more apparent and disheartening.

Her father, a man of the world and very little versed in the
mysteries of the interior life, but a good practical Catholic
nevertheless, saw the transformation that had taken place in his
daughter, and knew not exactly whether to be glad or sorry. He
acknowledged to her long after that the first recognition of it
struck upon his heart like a death-knell. He felt it was the signal
for a great sacrifice.

Mary opened her heart to him unreservedly, seeking more at his hands
perhaps than any mere father in flesh and blood could give, asking
him to point out to her the turning-point of the new road on which
she had entered, and to help her to tread it. That it was to be a
path of thorns in which she would need all the help that human love
could gather to divine grace, she felt already convinced.

Her father, with the honesty of an upright heart, confessed himself
inadequate to the solving of such a problem, and bravely proposed
taking her to London to consult Father Faber.

Mary, in an ecstasy of gratitude, threw her arms round his neck, and
declared it was what she had been longing for for months. Father
Faber had been her guide so far; his written word had spoken to her
like a voice from the holy mount, making all the dumb chords of her
soul to vibrate. What would he not do for her if she could speak to
him heart to heart, and hear the words of prayer-inspired wisdom from
his own lips!

They set out in a few days for London; but they were not to get
there. The promise that looked so near and so precious in its
accomplishment was never to be fulfilled. They had no sooner reached
Dublin than Mary fell ill. For some days she was in high fever; the
medical men assured the panic-stricken father that there was no
immediate cause for alarm; no remote cause even, as the case then
stood; the patient was delicate, but her constitution was good,
the nervous system sound, although shaken by the present attack,
and apparently by previous mental anxiety. The attack itself they
attributed to a chill which had fallen on the chest.

The event justified the opinion of the physicians. Mary recovered
speedily. It was not judged advisable, however, to let her proceed
to London. She relinquished the plan herself with a facility that
surprised her father. He knew how ardently she had longed to see the
spiritual guide who had already done so much for her, and he could
not forbear asking why she took the disappointment so coolly.

"It's not a disappointment, father. God never disappoints. I don't
know why, only I feel as if the longing were already satisfied; as if
I were not to go so far to find what I'm looking for," she answered;
and quietly set about preparing to go back home.

But they were still on the road of Damascus. On the way home, they
rested at the house of a friend near the Monastery of Mount Melleray.
I cannot be quite sure whether the monks were giving a retreat for
seculars in the monastery, or whether it was being preached in the
neighboring town. As well as I remember, it was the latter. Indeed, I
doubt whether women would be admitted to assist at a retreat within
the monastery, and, if not, this would be conclusive. But of one
thing I am sure, the preacher was Father Paul, the superior of La
Trappe. I don't know whether his eloquence, judged by the standard
of human rhetoric, was anything very remarkable, but many witnesses
go to prove on exhaustive evidence that it was of that kind whose
property it is to save souls.

To Mary it came like a summons straight from heaven. She felt an
imperative desire to speak to him at once in the confessional.

"I can give you no idea of the exquisite sense of peace and security
that came over me the moment I knelt down at his feet," she said, in
relating to me this stage of her vocation. "I felt certain that I had
found the man who was to be my Father Faber."

And so she had.

All that passes between a director and his spiritual child is of so
solemn and sacred a nature that, although many things which Mary
confided to me concerning her intercourse with the saintly abbot
of La Trappe might prove instructive and would certainly prove
edifying to many interior souls, I do not feel justified in repeating
them. If I were even not held back by this fear of indiscretion, I
should shrink from relating these confidences, lest I should mar
the beauty or convey a false interpretation of their meaning. While
she was speaking, I understood her perfectly. While listening to
the wonderful experiences of divine grace with what she had been
favored, and which she recounted to me with the confiding simplicity
of a child, her words were as clear and reflected her thoughts as
luminously as a lake reflects the stars looking down into its crystal
depths, making the mirror below a faithful repetition of the sky
above. But when I tried to write down what she had said while it
was quite fresh upon my mind, the effort baffled me. There was so
little to write, and that little was so delicate, so mysteriously
intangible, I seemed never to find the right word that had come
so naturally, so expressively, to her. When she spoke of prayer
especially, there was an eloquence, rising almost to sublimity,
in her language that altogether defied my coarse translation, and
seemed to dissolve like a rainbow under the process of dissection.
The most elevated subjects she was at home with as if they had been
her natural theme, the highest spirituality her natural element.
The writings of St. Teresa and St. Bernard had grown familiar to her
as her catechism, and she seemed to have caught the note of their
inspired teaching with the mastery of sainthood. This was the more
extraordinary to me that her intellect was by no means of a high
order. Quite the contrary. Her taste, the whole bent of her nature,
was the reverse of intellectual, and what intelligence she had was,
as far as real culture went, almost unreclaimed. Her reading had
been always of the most superficial, non-metaphysical kind; indeed,
the aversion to what she called "hard reading" made her turn with
perverse dislike from any book whose title threatened to be at all
instructive. She had never taken a prize at school, partly because
she was too lazy to try for it, but also because she had not brain
enough to cope with the clever girls of her class. Mary was quite
alive to her shortcomings in this line, indeed she exaggerated
them, as she was prone to do most of her delinquencies, and always
spoke of herself as "stupid." This she decidedly was not; but her
intellectual powers were sufficiently below superiority to make her
sudden awakening to the sublime language of mystical theology and her
intuitive perception of its subtlest doctrines matter of great wonder
to those who only measure man's progress in the science of the saints
by the shallow gauge of human intellect.

"How do you contrive to understand those books, Mary?" I asked her
once, after listening to her quoting St. Bernard _à l'appui_ of some
remarks on the Prayer of Union that carried me miles out of my depth.

"I don't know," she replied with her sweet simplicity, quite
unconscious of revealing any secrets of infused science to my
wondering ears. "I used not to understand them the least; but
by degrees the meaning of the words began to dawn on me, and the
more I read, the better I understood. When I come to anything very
difficult, I stop, and pray, and meditate till the meaning comes to
me. It is often a surprise to myself, considering how stupid I am in
everything else," she continued, laughing, "that I should understand
spiritual books even as well as I do."

Those who have studied the ways of God with his saints will not share
her surprise. In our own day, the venerable Curé d'Ars is among the
most marvellous proofs of the manner in which he pours out his wisdom
on those who are accounted and who account themselves fools, not
worthy to pass muster amongst men. But I am anticipating.

Her meeting with Father Paul was the first goal in her new career,
and from the moment Mary had reached it she felt secure of being led
safely to the end.

Those intervening stages were none the less agitated by many interior
trials; doubts as to the sincerity of her vocation; heart-sinkings
as to her courage in bearing on under the cross that she had taken
up; misgivings, above all, as to the direction in which that cross
lay. While her life-boat was getting ready, filling its sails, and
making out of port for the shoreless sea of detachment and universal
sacrifice, she sat shivering; her hand on the helm; the deep waters
heaving beneath her; the wind blowing bleak and cold; the near waves
dashing up their spray into her face, and the breakers further out
roaring and howling like angry floods. There were rocks ahead, and
all round under those foaming billows; sad havoc had they made of
many a brave little boat that had put out to sea from that same
port where she was still tossing--home, with its sheltering love and
care; piety enough to save any well-intentioned soul; good example
to give and to take; good works to do in plenty, and the body not
overridden by austerities against nature; not starved to despondency;
not exasperated by hunger, and cold, and endless vigils, and prayer
as endless. It was a goodly port and safe, this home of hers. See
how the deep throws up its prey on every side! Wrecks and spars, the
shattered remnants of bold vessels, and the lifeless bodies of the
rash crew are everywhere strewn over the waters. "Take heed!" they
cry to her as she counts the records one by one. "This is an awful
sea, and bold must be the heart, and stout and iron-clad the boat
that tempts the stormy bosom. We came, and perished. Would that we
had never left the port!"

Mary never argued with the storm. She would fall at the feet of Him
who was "sleeping below," and wake him with the loud cry of trembling
faith, "Help me, Master, or I perish!" and the storm subsided.

But when the wind and the waves were hushed, there rose up in the
calm a voice sweet and low, but more ruthlessly terrible to her
courage than the threatening fury of ten thousand storms. She was
her father's oldest and darling child; she had a brother, too, and
sisters, all tenderly loved, and cousins and friends only less dear;
she was a joy and a comfort to many. Must she go from them? Must she
leave all this love and all the loveliness of life for ever?

Mary's vocation, notwithstanding its strongly marked supernatural
character, was not proof against these cruel alternations of
enthusiastic courage, and desolate heart-sinkings, and bewildering
doubts. Nay, they were no doubt a necessary part of its perfection.
It was needful that she should pass through the dark watch of
Gethsemani before setting out to climb the rugged hill of Calvary.

All this history of her interior life she told me _viva voce_ when we
met. In her letters, which were at this period very rare and always
very uncommunicative, she said nothing whatever of these strifes and
victories.

But her adversaries were not all within. A hard battle remained to
be fought with her father. His opposition was active and relentless.
He had at first tacitly acquiesced in her consecration to God in a
religious life of some sort; but he believed, as every one else did,
that to let her enter La Trappe would be to consign her to speedy
and certain death; and when she announced to him that this was the
order she had selected, and the one which drew her with the power of
attraction, that she had struggled in vain to resist, he declared
that nothing short of a written mandate from God would induce him to
consent to such an act of suicide. In vain Mary pleaded that when
God called a soul he provided all that was necessary to enable her
to answer the call; that her health, formerly so delicate when she
was leading a life of self-indulgence, was now completely restored;
that she had never been so strong as since she had lived in almost
continual abstinence (she did not eat meat on Wednesday, Friday, or
Saturday); that the weakness of nature was no obstacle to the power
of grace, and there are graces in the conventual life that seculars
did not dream of, nor receive because they did not need them.

In answer to these plausible arguments, the incredulous father
brought out the laws of nature, and reason and common sense, and the
opinion of the medical men who had attended her in Dublin, and under
whose care she had been more or less ever since. These men of natural
science and human sympathies declared positively that it was neither
more nor less than suicide to condemn herself to the rule of St.
Bernard in the cloister, where want of animal food and warmth would
infallibly kill her before the novitiate was out. They were prepared
to risk their reputation on the issue of this certificate.

Mary's exhaustive answer to all this was that grace was always
stronger than nature; that the supernatural element would overrule
and sustain the human one. But she pleaded in vain. Her father was
resolute. He even went so far as to insist on her returning to
society and seeing more of the world before she was divorced from it
irrevocably. This check was as severe as it was unexpected. Though
her disgust to the vanities of her former life continued as strong
as ever, while her longing for the perfect life grew every day more
intense and more energizing, her humility made her tremble for her
own weakness. Might not the strength that had borne her bravely so
far break down under the attack of all her old tempters let loose on
her at once? Her love of pleasure, that fatal enemy that now seemed
dead, might it not rise up again with overmastering power, and, aided
by the reaction prepared by her new life, seize her and hold her more
successfully than ever? Yes, all this was only too possible. There
was nothing for it but to brave her father, to defy his authority,
and to save her soul in spite of him. She must run away from home.

Before, however, putting this wise determination into practice, it
was necessary to consult Father Paul. His answer was what most of
our readers will suspect:

"Obedience is your first duty. No blessing could come from such a
violation of filial piety. Your father is a Christian. Do as he
bids you; appeal to his love for your soul not to tax its strength
unwisely; then trust your soul to God as a little child trusts to its
mother. He sought you, and pursued you, and brought you home when you
were flying from him. Is it likely he will forsake you now, when you
are seeking after him with all your heart and making his will the
one object of your life? Mistrust yourself, my child. Never mistrust
God." Mary felt the wisdom of the advice, and submitted to it in a
spirit of docility, of humble mistrust and brave trust, and made up
her mind to go through the trial as an earnest of the sincerity of
her desire to seek God's will, and accomplish it in whatever way he
appointed.

She had so completely taken leave of the gay world for more than a
year that her reappearance at a county ball caused quite a sensation.

Rumor and romance had put their heads together, and explained after
their own fashion the motive of the change in her life and her total
seclusion from society. Of course, it could only be some sentimental
reason, disappointed affection, perhaps inadequate fortune or
position on one side, and a hard-hearted father on the other, etc.
Whispers of this idle gossip came to Mary's ears and amused her
exceedingly. She could afford to laugh at it as there was not the
smallest shadow of reality under the fiction.

Her father, whose parental weakness sheltered itself behind the
doctors and common sense, did not exact undue sacrifices from her.
He allowed her to continue her ascetic rule of life unmolested,
to abstain from meat as usual, to go assiduously amongst the poor,
and to devote as much time as she liked to prayer. There were two
Masses daily in the village church, one at half-past six, another at
half-past seven. He made a difficulty at first about her assisting at
them. The church was nearly half an hour's walk from the house, and
the cold morning or night air, as it really was, was likely to try
her severely. But after a certain amount of arguing and coaxing Mary
carried her point, and every morning long before daybreak sallied
forth to the village. Her nurse, who was very pious and passionately
attached to her, went with her. Not without hesitating, though. Every
day as regularly as they set out Malone entered a protest.

"It's not natural, Miss Mary, to be gadding out by candle-light in
this fashion, walking about the fields like a pair of ghosts. Indeed,
darlin', it isn't."

The nurse was right. It certainly was not natural, and, if Mary had
been so minded, she might have replied that it was not meant to be;
it was supernatural. She contented herself, however, by deprecating
the good soul's reproof and proposing to say the rosary, a proposal
to which Malone invariably assented. So, waking up the larks with
their matin prayer, the two would walk on briskly to church.

Once set an Irish nurse to pray, and she'll keep pace with any saint
in the calendar. Malone was not behind with the best. The devout old
soul, never loath to begin, when once on her knees and fairly wound
up in devotion, would go on for ever, and, when the two Masses were
over and it was time to go, Mary had generally to break her off in
the full tide of a litany that Malone went on muttering all the way
out of church and sometimes finished on the road home.

But if she was ready to help Mary in her praying feats, she highly
disapproved of the fasting ones, as well as of the short rest
that her young mistress imposed on herself. Mary confessed to me
that sleep was at this period her greatest difficulty. She was by
nature a great sleeper, and there was a time when early rising,
even comparatively early, seemed to her the very climax of heroic
mortification. By degrees she brought herself to rise at a given
hour, which gradually, with the help of her angel guardian and a
strong resolve, she advanced to five o'clock.

During this time of probation, her father took her constantly into
society, to archery meetings, and regattas, and concerts, and balls,
as the season went on. Mary did her part bravely and cheerfully.
Sometimes a panic seized her that her old spirit of worldliness was
coming back--coming back with seven devils to take his citadel by
storm and hold it more firmly than ever. But she had only to fix her
eyes steadily on the faithful beacon of the Light-house out at sea,
and bend her ear to the Life-bell chiming its _Sursum Corda_ far
above the moaning of the waves and winds, and her foolish fears gave
way.

No one who saw her so bright and gracious, so gracefully pleased with
everything and everybody, suspected the war that was agitating her
spirit within. Her father wished her to take part in the dancing,
otherwise he said her presence in the midst of it would be considered
compulsory and her abstention be construed into censure or gloom.
Mary acquiesced with regard to the square dances, but resolutely
declined to waltz. Her father, satisfied with the concession, did not
coerce her further.

So things went on for about a year. Father Paul meantime had had
his share in the probationary action. He knew that his patient's
health was not strong, and taking into due account her father's
vehement and up to a certain point just representations on the
physical impossibility of her bearing the rule of St. Bernard, he
endeavored to attract her toward an active order, and used all his
influence to induce her to try at any rate a less austere one before
entering La Trappe. Animated by the purest and most ardent love for
the soul whose precious destinies were placed under his guidance,
he left nothing undone to prevent the possibility of mistake or
ultimate regret in her choice. He urged her to go and see various
other convents and make acquaintance with their mode of life. Seeing
her great reluctance to do this, he had recourse to stratagem in
order to compel her unconsciously to examine into the spirit and
rule of several monastic houses that he held in high esteem. One in
particular, a community of Benedictines, I think it was, he thought
likely to prove attractive to her as uniting a great deal of prayer
with active duties toward the poor, teaching, etc., and at the same
time of less crucifying discipline than that of Citeaux. He gave her
a commission for the superioress, with many excuses for troubling
her, and begging that she would not undertake it if it interfered
with any arrangement of her own or her father's just then.

Mary, never suspecting the trap that was laid for her, made a point
of setting out to the convent at once. The superioress, previously
enlightened by Father Paul, received her with more than kindness,
and, after discussing the imaginary subject of the visit, invited her
to visit the chapel, then the house, and finally, drawing her into
confidential discourse, explained all about its spirit and manner of
life.

Mary, in relating this circumstance to me, said that, though the
superioress was one of the most attractive persons she ever met, and
the convent beautiful in its appointments, rather than enter it she
would have preferred spending the rest of her days in the dangers
of the most worldly life. Everything but La Trappe was unutterably
antagonistic to her. Yet, with the exception of Mount Melleray she
had never seen even the outside walls of a Cistercian convent, and
the fact of there not being one for women in Ireland added one
obstacle more in the way of her entering La Trappe.

When Father Paul heard the result of this last _ruse_, he confessed
the truth to her. Noways discouraged, nevertheless he persisted in
saying that she was much better fitted for a life of mixed activity
and contemplation than for a purely contemplative one, and he
forbade her for a time to let her mind dwell on the latter as her
ultimate vocation, to read any books that treated of it, even to pray
specially that she might be led to it. To all these despotic commands
Mary yielded a prompt, unquestioning obedience. She was with God like
a child with a schoolmaster. Whatever lesson he set her, she set
about learning it. Easy or difficult, pleasant or unpleasant, it was
all one to her cheerful good-will. Why do we not all do like her?
We are all children at school, but, instead of putting our minds to
getting our lesson by heart, we spend the study-hour chafing at the
hard words, dog-earing our book, and irreverently grumbling at the
master who has set us the task. Sometimes we think in our conceit
that it is too easy, that we should do better something difficult.
When the bell rings, we go up without knowing a word of it, and stand
sulky and disrespectful before the desk. We are chided, and turn
back, and warned to do better to-morrow. And so we go on from year
to year, from childhood to youth, from youth to age, never learning
our lesson properly, but dodging, and missing, and beginning over
and over again at the same point. Some of us go on being dunces to
the end of our lives, when school breaks up, and we are called for
and taken home--to the home where there are many mansions, but none
assuredly for the drones who have spent their school-days in idleness
and mutiny.

To Father Paul, the childlike submission and humility with which Mary
met every effort to thwart her vocation were no doubt more conclusive
proof of its solidity than the most marked supernatural favors would
have been.

At last her gentle perseverance was rewarded, grace triumphed over
her father's heart, and he expressed his willingness to give her up
to God.

In the summer of 1861, we went to stay at Versailles, and it was
there that I received from Mary the first definite announcement of
her vocation. She wrote to me saying that, after long deliberation
and much prayer and wise direction, she had decided on entering
a convent of the Cistercian order. As there was no branch of it
in Ireland, she was to come to France, and she begged me to make
inquiries as to where the novitiate was, and to let her know with as
little delay as possible. I will not dwell upon my own feelings on
reading this letter. I had expected some such result, though, knowing
the state of her health, it had not occurred to me she could have
joined, however she might have wished it, so severe an order as that
of the founder of Citeaux.

I had not the least idea where the novitiate in France was; and, as
the few persons whom I was able to question at once on the subject
seemed to know no more about it than I did myself, the hope flashed
across my mind that there might not be a convent of Trappistines at
all in France. But this was not of long duration.

We had on our arrival at Versailles made the acquaintance of a young
girl whom I shall call Agnes. My mother was already acquainted with
her parents and other members of the family; but Agnes had either
been at school or absent visiting relations, so from one cause or
another we had never met till now. She was seventeen years of age, a
fair, fragile-looking girl, who reminded most people of Schaeffer's
Marguerite.

Agnes had a younger sister at the Convent of La Sainte Enfance, not
far from her father's residence, and she asked me one day to come
and see this sister and a nun that she was very fond of. I went,
and, being full of the thought of my sweet friend in Ireland, I
immediately opened the subject of Citeaux with the pretty talkative
little nun who came to the parlor with Agnes's sister.

"What a singular chance!" she exclaimed, when I had told as much of
my story as was necessary. "Why, we have at this moment a community
of Cistercian nuns in the house here! Their monastery is being
repaired, and in the meantime we have permission from the bishop to
harbor them. See," she went on, pointing to a row of windows whose
closed _Persiennes_ were visible at an angle from where we sat, "that
is where our mother has lodged them. You can speak to the prioress,
if you like, but of course you cannot see her."

I was more struck by the strange coincidence than overjoyed at being
so near the solution of my difficulty. I could not, however, but take
advantage of the opportunity. Sister Madeleine, which was the little
nun's name, ran off to ask "our mother's" permission for me to speak
with their Cistercian sister, and in a few minutes returned with an
affirmative.

I was led to the door of the community-room, and, through a little
extempore grating cut through the panel and veiled on the inside, I
held converse with the mother abbess.

A few words assured me that Sister Madeleine had been mistaken in
supposing her guests to be the daughters of St. Bernard. They were
Poor Clares--an order more rigorous, even, than the Trappistines;
bare feet, except when standing on a stone pavement or in the open
air, when the rule is to slip the feet into wooden sandals, are added
to the fasting and perpetual silence of Citeaux. Of this latter
the abbess could tell me nothing--nothing, at least, of its actual
existence and branches in France, though she broke out into impulsive
and loving praise of its spirit and its saintly founder, and the rich
harvest of souls he and his children had reaped for our Lord.

Here, then, was another respite. It really seemed probable that, if,
in a quarter so likely to be well informed on the point, there was no
account to be had of a Trappistine convent, there could not be one in
existence, and Mary, from sheer inability to enter La Trappe, might
be driven to choose some less terrible rule.

Mary meantime had set other inquirers on the track of St. Bernard,
and soon learned that the novitiate was at Lyons. The name of the
monastery is _Notre Dame de toute Consolation_.

After some preliminary correspondence with the abbess, the day was
fixed for her to leave Ireland and set out to her land of promise.

She came, of course, through Paris. It was three years since we had
met. I found her greatly altered; her beauty not gone, but changed.
She looked, however, in much better health than I had ever seen her.
Her spirits were gone, but there had come in their place a serenity
that radiated from her like sunshine. We went out together to do some
commissions of hers and the better to escape interruption, for this
was in all human probability to be our last meeting on earth, and we
had much to say to each other.

We drove first to Notre Dame des Victoires, where, at her constantly
recurring desire, I had been in the habit of putting her name down
for the prayers of the confraternity, and we knelt once again side by
side before the altar of our Blessed Lady.

From this we went to the Sacré Cœur, where Mary was anxious to see
some of her old mistresses and ask their prayers. Perseverance in her
vocation, and the accomplishment of God's will in her and by her,
were the graces she was never weary asking for herself, and imploring
others to ask for her. Her greediness for prayers was only equalled
by her intense faith in their efficacy. She could not resist catering
for them, and used to laugh herself at her own importunity on this
point.

The sister who tended the gate gave us a cordial greeting; but, when
she heard that Mary was on her way to La Trappe, her surprise was
almost ludicrous. If her former pupil had said she was going to be a
Mohammedan, it could not have called up more blank amazement than was
depicted in the good sister's face on hearing her say that she was
going to be a Trappistine.

The mistress of schools and another nun, who had been very kind to
her during her short stay at the Sacred Heart, came to the parlor. I
was not present at the interview, but Mary told me they were quite as
much amazed as the _sœur portière_.

"It only shows what a character I left behind me," she said, laughing
heartily as we walked arm in arm. "My turning out good for anything
but mischief is a fact so miraculous that my best friends can hardly
believe in it!"

It was during this long afternoon that she told me all the details of
her vocation which I have already narrated. She seemed transcendently
happy, and so lifted by grace above all the falterings of nature as
to be quite unconscious that she was about to make any sacrifice.
She was tenderly attached to her family, but the pangs of separation
from them were momentarily suspended. Her soul had grown strong in
detachment. It had grown to the hunger of divine love. Like the
Israelites, she had gone out into the desert where the manna fell,
and she had fed upon it till all other bread was tasteless to her.

When I expressed surprise at seeing her so completely lifted above
human affections, and observed that it would save her so much
anguish, she answered quickly, with a sudden look of pain:

"Oh! no it will save me none of the suffering. That will all come
later, when the sacrifice is made. But I always seem to have
supernatural strength given me as long as it remains to be done. I
took leave of Father Paul and my dear old nurse, and all the friends
that flocked to say good-by, almost without a tear. I felt it so
little that I was disgusted with myself for being so heartless while
they were all so tender and distressed; but when it was all over,
and the carriage had driven out on the road, I thought my heart would
burst. I didn't dare look back at the house, lest I should cry out to
them to take me home. And I know this is how it will be to-morrow."

"And have you thought of the possibility of having to come home after
all?" I asked.

"Yes, I have a great deal of it. It is possible my health may fail,
or that I may have mistaken the will of God altogether in entering La
Trappe," she answered, with a coolness that astonished me.

"What a trial that would be!" I exclaimed. "What a humiliation to
come out, after making such a stand about entering!"

She laughed quite merrily.

"Humiliation! And what if it were! I don't care a straw if I go into
ten convents, and come out of them one after another, so long as I
find out the right one in the end. What does anything signify but
finding out God's will!"

There was no mistaking the perfect sincerity of her words. It was as
clear as sunlight--the one thing necessary, the one thing she cared
one straw about, was finding out the will of God. Human respect
or any petty human motive had simply gone beyond the range of her
apprehension.

"And the silence, Mary?" I said, smiling, as the memory of her old
school-day troubles came back on me. "How will you ever keep it?
To me it would be the most appalling part of the discipline of La
Trappe."

"Well, is it not odd?" she replied. "It is so little appalling to
me that I quite long for it. Sometimes I keep repeating the words,
'Perpetual silence!' over and over to myself, as if they were a
melody. It was it, I think, that decided me for La Trappe instead
of Carmel, where the rule allows them to speak during recreation. It
seems to me the hush of tongues must be such a help to union with
God. Our tongues are so apt to scare away his presence from our
souls."

We came home to dinner. While we were alone in the drawing-room, she
asked me to play something to her. She had been passionately fond of
the harp, and stood by me listening with evident pleasure, and when I
was done began to draw out the chords with her finger.

"Does it not cost you the least little pang to give it up for
ever--never to hear a note of music for the rest of your life, Mary?"
I said.

"No, not now. I felt it in the beginning; but the only music that has
a charm for me now is silence."

We parted, never to meet again, till we meet at the judgment-seat.

On her arrival at Lyons, the fatigue and emotions of the journey told
on her. An agonizing pain in the spine to which she was subject after
any undue exertion obliged her to remain at the hotel, lying down on
the sofa nearly all day.

The following morning, her father took her to the monastery. Like
Abraham, he conducted his child to the mount of sacrifice, and with
his own hand laid the victim on the altar; but no angel came to
snatch away the sacrificial knife and substitute a meaner offering
for the holocaust. He left her at the inner gate of La Trappe.

She wrote to me some weeks after her entrance.

"I was less brave at parting with my beloved ones than I ought to
have been," she said; "but, on account of the pain that kept me lying
down in the midst of them nearly all the previous day, I had not
been able to pray as much as usual, and so I had not got up strength
enough for the trial-time. I seemed to have let go my hold on our
Lord a little and to be leaning on them for courage; but, when I had
been a few hours before the Blessed Sacrament, the pain calmed down,
and I began to realize how happy I was. I am in great hopes that I
have found the will of God."

One trifling incident which gave innocent delight to Mary I must not
omit to mention.

She was asked on entering what name she wished to bear in religion,
and on her replying that she had not thought of one and would rather
the prioress chose for her, "Then we shall call you Mary Benedicta,"
said the mother. "The saint has no name-sake amongst us at present."

The only thing that disappointed her in the new life was the mildness
of the rule and the short time it allotted for prayer!

It may interest my readers and help them to estimate the spirit of
the novice to hear some details of the rule that struck her as too
mild.

The Trappistines rise at 2 A.M. winter and summer, and proceed to
choir, chanting the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin. Mass,
meditation, the recital of the divine office, and household work,
distributed to each according to her strength and aptitude and to the
wants of the community, fill up the time till breakfast, which is
at 8. The rule relents in favor of those who are unable to bear the
long early fast, and they are allowed a small portion of dry bread
some hours sooner. I think the novices as a rule are included in
this dispensation. The second meal is at 2. The food is frugal but
wholesome, good bread, vegetables, fish occasionally, and good, pure
wine. Fire is an unknown luxury, except in the kitchen. The silence
is perpetual, but the novices are allowed perfect freedom of converse
with their mistress, and the professed nuns with the abbess. They
converse occasionally during the day amongst each other by signs.
They take open-air exercise, and perform manual labor out-of-doors,
digging, etc. In-doors, they are constantly employed in embroidering
and mounting vestments. Some of the most elaborately wrought
benediction-veils, copes, chasubles, etc., used in the large churches
throughout France, are worked by the Trappistines of Lyons.

They retire to rest at 8. Their clothing is of coarse wool, inside
and outside.

Mary described the material life of La Trappe as in every sense
delightful; the digging, pealing potatoes, and so forth, as most
recreative and not at all fatiguing. After her first Lent, she wrote
me that it had passed so quickly, she "hardly knew it had begun when
Easter came."

Her only complaint was that it had been too easy, that the
austerities, "which were at all times very mild," had not been more
increased during the penitential season.

My third letter was on her receiving the holy habit.

"I wish you could see me in it," she said. "I felt rather odd at
first, but I soon grew accustomed to it, and now it is so light and
pleasant. I am so happy in my vocation I cannot help being almost
sure that I have found the will of God."

This was the burden of her song for evermore: to find the will of
God! And so in prayer and expectation she kept her watch upon the
tower, her hands uplifted, her ears and her eyes straining night and
day for every sign and symbol of that blessed manifestation. She kept
her watch, faithful, ardent, never weary of watching, rising higher
and higher in love, sinking lower and lower in humility. She had set
her soul like a ladder against the sky, and the angels were for ever
passing up and down the rungs, carrying up the incense of the prayer,
which, as soon as it reached the throne of the Lamb, dissolved in
graces, and sent the angels flying down earthward again.

The world went on; the wheel went round; pleasure and folly and sin
kept up their whirl with unabating force. All things were the same
as when Mary Benedicta, hearkening to the bell from the sanctuary,
turned her back upon the vain delusion, and gave up the gauds of time
for the imperishable treasures of eternity. Nothing was changed. Was
it so indeed? To our eyes it was. We could not see what changes were
to come of it. We could not see the work her sacrifice was doing,
nor measure the magnitude of the glory it was bringing to God. Poor
fools! it is always so with us. We see with the blind eyes of our
body the things that are of the body. What do we see of the travail
of humanity in God's creation? The darkness and the pain. Little
else. We see a wicked man or a miserable man, and we are filled
with horror or with pity. We think the world irretrievably darkened
and saddened by the sin and the misery that we see, forgetting the
counterpart that we do not see--the sanctity and the beauty born of
repentance and compassion. We see the bad publican flaunting his
evil ways in the face of heaven, brawling in the streets and the
market-place; we do not see the good publican who goes up to the
temple striking his breast, and standing afar off, and sobbing out
the prayer that justifies. We forget that fifty such climbing up to
heaven make less noise than one sinner tearing down to hell. So with
pain. When sorrow crushes a man, turning his heart bitter and his
wine sour, we find it hard to believe that so much gall can yield any
honey, so much dark let in any light. We cannot see--oh! how it would
startle us if we did--how many acts of kindness, how many thoughts
and deeds of love, are evoked by the sight of his distress. They
may not be addressed to him, and he may never know of them, though
he has called them into life; they may all be spent upon other men,
strangers perhaps, to whom he has brought comfort because of the
kindliness his sorrow had stirred in many hearts. Some miser has been
touched in hearing the tale of his distress, and straightway opened
his purse to help the Lazarus at his own door. A selfish woman of the
world has foregone some bauble of vanity and given the price to a
charity to silence the twinge that pursued her after witnessing his
patient courage in adversity. There is no end to the small change
that one golden coin of love, one act of heroic faith, one chastened
attitude of Christian sorrow, will send current through the world.
It would be easier to number the stars than to count it all up. But
the bright little silver pieces pass through our fingers unnoticed.
We do not watch for them, neither do we hear them chime and ring as
they drop all round us. We do not listen for them. We listen rather
to the wailing and the hissing, hearkening not at all to the rustle
of angels' wings floating above the din, nor to the sound of their
crystal tears falling through the brine of human woe and lamentation.

One more virgin heart is given up to the Crucified--one more victory
won over nature and the kingdom of this world. One more life is being
lived away to God in the silence of the sanctuary. Who heeds it? Who
sees the great things that are coming of it?--the graces obtained,
the blessings granted, the temptations conquered, the miracle of
compassion won for some life-long sinner, at whose death-bed, cut off
from priest or sacrament, the midnight watcher before the tabernacle
has been wrestling in spirit, miles away, with mountains and seas
between them. Only when the seven seals are broken of the Book in
which the secrets of many hearts are written shall these things be
made manifest, and the wonders of sacrifice revealed.

Mary Benedicta was drawing to the close of her novitiate. So far her
health had stood the test bravely. She had passed the winters without
a cough, a thing that had not happened to her for years. The pain
in her spine that had constantly annoyed her at home had entirely
disappeared.

Every day convinced her more thoroughly that she had found her true
vocation, and that she was "doing the will of God." Her profession
was fixed for the month of December. She wrote to me a few lines,
telling me of her approaching happiness, and begging me to get all
the prayers I could for her. Her joy seemed too great for words. It
was, indeed, the joy that passes human understanding. I did not hear
from her again, nor of her, till one evening I received a letter from
Ireland announcing to me her death.

Till within a few days of the date fixed for her vows, she had
been to all appearance in perfect health. She followed the rule
in its unmitigated rigor, never asking nor seemingly needing any
dispensation. She attended choir during the seven hours' prayer,
mental and vocal, every day. There were no premonitory symptoms
of any kind to herald in the messenger that was at hand. Quite
suddenly, one morning, at the first matins, she fainted away at her
place in the choir. They carried her to the infirmary, and laid her
on a bed. She recovered consciousness after a short time, but on
attempting to rise fell back exhausted. The infirmarian, in great
alarm, asked if she was suffering much. Mary smiled and shook her
head. Presently she whispered a few words to the abbess, who had
accompanied her from the choir, and never left her side for a moment.
It was to ask that she might be allowed to pronounce her vows at once.

Was this, then, the summons? Yes. She was called for to go home. The
joy-bells of heaven rang out a merry peal. The golden gates turned
slowly on their hinges. The Bridegroom stood knocking at the door.

A messenger was dispatched in haste to the archbishop for permission
to solemnize her profession at once. Monseigneur Bonald granted it,
and sent at the same time a special apostolic benediction to the
dying child of St. Bernard.

That afternoon Mary pronounced her vows in the presence of the
Blessed Sacrament, and surrounded by the sisterhood, weeping and
rejoicing.

An hour later, summoning her remaining strength for a last act of
filial tenderness, she dictated a few lines of loving farewell to her
father. Then she was silent, calm, and rapt in prayer. Her eyes never
left the crucifix. The day past and the night. She was still waiting.
At daybreak the Bridegroom entered, and she went home with him.

FOOTNOTE:

[29] A French child's word for _hurt_.




THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND[30]


The most indefatigable student of the history of Ireland is, at
some time or another, sure to become wearied of, if not positively
disgusted at, the interminable series of foreign and domestic wars,
base treachery, and wholesale massacre which unfortunately stain the
annals of that unhappy country for nearly one thousand years; and
were it not that the study of profane history is a duty imposed upon
us not only as an essential part of our education, but as a source
rich in the philosophy of human nature, there are few, we believe,
even among the most enthusiastic lovers of their race or the most
industrious of book-worms, who would patiently peruse the long and
dreary record of persistent oppression and unfaltering but unavailing
resistance.

The few centuries of pagan greatness preceding the arrival of St.
Patrick, seen through the dim mist of antiquity, appear to have been
periods of comparative national prosperity; and the earlier ages of
Christianity in the island were not only in themselves resplendent
with the effulgence of piety and learning which enshrouded the land
and illumined far and near the then eclipsed nations of Europe, but
were doubly brilliant by contrast with the darkness that subsequently
followed the repeated incursions of the merciless northern Vikings,
to whom war was a trade, and murder and rapine the highest of human
pursuits.

The ultimate defeat of those barbarians in the early part of
the eleventh century brought little or no cessation of misery
to the afflicted people; for, with the death of the Conqueror,
the illustrious King Brian, in the moment of victory, no man of
sufficient statesmanship or military ability appeared who was
capable of uniting the disorganized people under a general system
of government, or of compelling the obedience of the disaffected
and semi-independent chiefs. The evils of the preceding wars were
numerous and grievous. The husbandman was impoverished, commerce had
fled the sea-ports before the dreaded standard of the carrion Raven,
learning had forsaken her wonted abodes for other climes and more
peaceful scenes, and even the religious establishments which had
escaped the destroyer no longer harbored those throngs of holy men
and women formerly the glory and benefactors of the island. It was in
this disintegrated and demoralized condition that the enterprising
Anglo-Normans of the following century found the once warlike and
learned Celtic people; and as the new-comers were hungry for land and
not overscrupulous as to how it was to be obtained, the possession of
the soil on one side, and its desperate but unorganized defence on
the other, gave rise to those desultory conflicts, cruel reprisals,
and horrible butcheries which only ended, after nearly five hundred
years of strife, in the almost utter extirpation of the original
owners.

Had the Norman invasion ended with Strongbow and Henry II., or had
it been more general and successful, as in England, the evil would
have been limited; but as every decade poured into Ireland its
hordes of ambitious, subtle, and landless adventurers, who looked
upon Ireland as the most fitting place to carve their way to fame
and fortune, new wars of extermination were fomented, and the wounds
that afflicted the country were kept constantly open. To facilitate
the designs of the new-comers, the mass of the people were outlawed,
and the punishment for killing a native, when inflicted, which was
seldom, was a small pecuniary fine. The efforts of the "Reformers"
to convert by force or fraud the ancient race and the bulk of the
descendants of the original Anglo-Normans, who vied with each other
in their attachment to the church, perpetuated even in a worse form
the civil strife which had so long existed between the races, and
terminated, at the surrender of Limerick, in the complete prostration
of the nation. But it was only for a while. The extraordinary revival
of the faith in Ireland, and its substantial triumphs in recent
years, almost make us forget and forgive the persecutions of "the
penal days," and not the least of these auspicious results is the
appearance of the noble book before us, written by a distinguished
gentleman of the legal profession of the ancient race and religion.

In his voluminous work, Mr. O'Flanagan, avoiding all matter foreign
to his subject, and touching as lightly on wars and confiscations as
possible, while relating succinctly and carefully the lives of the
numerous lord chancellors of Ireland, necessarily gives us a history
of English policy and legislation in that country in an entirely new
form, and fills up in its historical and legal records a hiatus long
recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. In ordinary histories, we
see broadly depicted the effects of foreign invasion and domestic
broils: in the _Lives_, we are permitted to have a view of the most
secret workings of the viceregal government and of the managers of
the so-called Irish Parliament; of the causes which governed British
statesmen in their treatment of the sister kingdom, and the motive of
every step taken by the dominant faction of the Pale, supported by
the wealth and power of a great nation, to subdue a weak neighboring
people, who, though few in numbers, isolated and disorganized,
possessed a high degree of civilization and a vitality that rose
superior to all defeat. The book has also this advantage, that, while
it supplies the links that bind causes with effects and develops in a
critical spirit the true philosophy of history, it neither shocks our
sensibilities uselessly with the perpetual narration of mental and
physical suffering, nor tires us with vain speculations on what might
have been had circumstances been different. The author is content to
accept the inevitable, and deals exclusively with the subject in hand.

The partial success of Strongbow in conjunction with the Leinster
troops induced Henry II. to project a visit to Ireland, partly
from a fear that his ambitious subject might be induced by the
allurements of his newly acquired greatness to forget his pledge
of fealty and allegiance, and partly in the hope that his presence
with an armed retinue would so overawe the native princes that their
entire submission would follow as a matter of course. He therefore
landed at Waterford, in 1172, and after visiting Lismore, where
a provincial synod was being held, entered Dublin on the 11th of
November of that year. But though he remained in that city during the
greater part of the winter, surrounded by all the pomp of mediæval
royalty, his blandishments were only partly successful in winning
any of the prominent chieftains to acknowledge his assumed title
of Lord of Ireland. He rested long enough, however, to establish
a form of provincial government for the guidance and protection
of the Anglo-Normans, and such of the Irish of Dublin, Kildare,
Meath, Wexford, and of the surrounding counties as acknowledged
his jurisdiction, and these became what was long afterwards known
as the English Pale. The head of this system was the personal
representative of the monarch, appointed and removed at his pleasure,
and called at various times lord deputy, viceroy, chief governor,
and lord-lieutenant, and in case of his absence or death a temporary
successor was to be chosen by the principal nobles of the Pale,
until his return or the appointment of his successor by the king. In
the year 1219, during the reign of Henry III., the laws of England
were extended to the Anglo-Norman colony, and a chancellor in the
person of John de Worchely was appointed to assist the viceroy in the
administration of the laws and public affairs.

The office of chancellor, or, as he was afterwards styled, lord high
chancellor, was known to the Romans, and many of its peculiar duties
and powers are directly derived from the civil law. In England, its
establishment may be considered as contemporary with the Norman
conquest, and from the first it assumed the highest importance in the
state. "The office of chancellor or lord keeper," says Blackstone,
"is created by the mere delivery of the great seal into his custody,
whereby he becomes the first officer in the kingdom and takes
precedence of every temporal peer. He is a privy counsellor by virtue
of his office, and, according to Lord Ellismore, prolocutor of the
House of Lords by prescription. To him belongs the appointment of all
the justices of the peace throughout the kingdom. Being formerly,
usually, an ecclesiastic presiding over the king's chapel, he became
keeper of his conscience, visitor in his right of all hospitals
and colleges of royal foundation, and patron of all his livings
under the annual value of twenty pounds, etc. All this exclusive
of his judicial capacity in the Court of Chancery, wherein, as in
the Exchequer, is a common law court and a court of equity."[31] In
Ireland, while the chancellor exercised the same functions within
a more contracted sphere, his political power and duties were more
directly and frequently felt. The viceroys, particularly those of
the early periods, were generally soldiers expressly deputed to
hold the conquests already gained, and to enlarge by force of arms
the possessions of the Anglo-Norman adventurers. They were little
skilled in the arts of government, and, from their short terms and
frequent removals, knew little of and cared less for the people
they were temporarily sent to govern.[32] The chancellors, on the
contrary, were the reverse, being from the first up to the reign of
Henry VIII., with a few exceptions, ecclesiastics, generally men well
versed in law and letters, and having been usually at an early age
selected from the inferior ranks of the English clergy and promoted
to the highest positions in the church in Ireland, as a preliminary
step to their appointment to the most important judicial and
legislative office in the colony, they had every inducement to become
familiar with its affairs and with the dispositions and influence of
the people among whom their lot in life was cast. "Learned men were
those chancellors," says O'Flanagan, "for the most part prelates of
highly cultivated minds, attached to the land of their birth, while
exercising important sway over the destinies of Ireland."

For the first two hundred years after the creation of the office of
chancellor, very little can be gleaned by the author of the _Lives_,
except the mere names, date of patents, and a few dry facts usually
connected with well-known historical events. The destruction by fire
of St. Mary's Abbey in Dublin, at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, and of the Castle of Trim, in both of which valuable
public records were kept, accounts to some extent for this paucity
of materials, while, as he says, "others were carried out of the
country, and are met with in the State Paper Office, the Rolls
Chapel, Record Office, and British Museum, in London; others are
at Oxford. Several cities on the Continent possess valuable Irish
documents, while many are stored in private houses, which the recent
commission will no doubt render available"--a sad commentary upon the
way in which everything relating to the history of the country has
been neglected by that government which so frequently parades its
paternal inclinations.

The want of judicial business during this period was amply
compensated for by repeated but vain efforts to reconcile the
different factions into which the colonists of the Pale were divided,
and to prevent the followers of the rival houses of Ormond and
Kildare from open warfare whenever the slightest provocation was
offered by either side. While the power of England was expended in
foreign wars or in the internecine struggles of the Roses, her grasp
on the dominion of Ireland was becoming every day more relaxed, and
it was only by the judicious pitting of one party against another, by
alternate threats and bribes, that even the semblance of authority
could be maintained at all times. Thus, in 1355, Edward III., writing
to the Earl of Kildare, uses the following emphatic words:

    "Although you know of these invasions, destructions,
    or dangers, and have been often urged to defend
    these marches jointly with others, you have neither
    sped thither nor sent that force of men which you
    were strongly bound to have done for the honor of an
    earl, and for the safety of those lordships, castles,
    lands, and tenements, which, given and granted to your
    grandfather by our grandfather, have thus descended to
    you. Since you neither endeavor to prevent the perils,
    ruin, and destruction threatening these parts, in
    consequence of your neglect, nor attend to the orders
    of ourselves or our council, we shall no longer be
    trifled with," etc.

This was strong language, but fully justified by the unsettled
condition of affairs in and outside the Pale. Chancellor de Wickford,
Archbishop of Dublin, who was appointed in 1375, found that his
sacred calling and official dignity were no protection to him even
in the vicinity of the capital, and was therefore allowed a guard of
six men-at-arms and twelve archers, while the lord treasurer had the
same number. Nor was this precaution taken against the Irish enemy
alone, for we find that Thomas de Burel, Prior of Kilmainham, when
chancellor, while holding a parley with De Bermingham at Kildare,
was, with his attendant lords, taken prisoner. The lay noblemen were
ransomed, but the prior was kept a prisoner only to be exchanged for
one of the De Berminghams then confined in Dublin Castle. This family
seem to have held the judicial officers somewhat in contempt, for
we read at another time that Adam Veldom, Chief Chancery Clerk, was
captured by them and the O'Connors, and obliged to pay ten pounds in
silver for his release. When John Cotton, Dean of St. Patrick's, was
appointed chancellor in 1379, and commenced his tour, accompanied by
the viceroy, from Dublin to Cork, he was allowed for his personal
retinue, independent of his servants and clerks, not very formidable
opponents, it is to be presumed, "four men-at-arms armed at all
points, and eight mounted archers," a circumstance which shows that
the Irish and many of the Anglo-Irish of the country had very little
reverence for the person of even an English chancellor.

In 1398, Dr. Thomas Cranley was sent over to Dublin as its archbishop
and chancellor of the colony, and from his high position and known
ability it was expected that he would not only remedy the disorders
of the Pale, but bring back the great lords to a sense of their
duty to the king, and devise measures for the collection of his
revenues, which these noblemen did not seem inclined to pay with
the alacrity befitting obedient subjects. After several years of
fruitless endeavors to effect these objects, he was obliged to write
to King Henry IV. for funds to support his son, who was then acting
as viceroy. "With heavy hearts," says the chancellor, speaking for
the privy council, "we testify anew to your highness that our lord,
your son, is so destitute of money that he has not a penny in the
world, nor can borrow a single penny, because all his jewels and his
plate that he can spare of those that he must of necessity have, are
pledged and be in pawn. All his soldiers have departed from him,
and the people of his household are on the point of leaving him."
And he further significantly adds, "For the more full declaring of
these matters to your highness, three or two of us should have come
to your high presence, but such is the danger on this side that not
one of us dare depart from the person of our lord." This was indeed
a sad condition for the son of the reigning monarch and his council
to find themselves in, while the Talbots, Butlers, and Fitzgeralds
were feasting on the fat of the land surrounded by thousands of their
well-paid followers. Again, in 1435, when Archbishop Talbot was
chancellor, the council through that prelate addressed a memorial to
the king, in which the following remarkable passage occurs:

    "First, that it please our sovereign lord graciously
    to consider how this land of Ireland is well-nigh
    destroyed and inhabited with his enemies and rebels,
    insomuch that there is not left in the northern parts
    of the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare,
    that join together out of subjection of the said
    enemies and rebels, scarcely thirty miles in length and
    twenty miles in breadth, as a man may surely ride or
    go, in the said counties, to answer to the king's writs
    and to his commandments."

This extraordinary admission, made two hundred and sixty-six years
after the landing of the Normans, would be almost incredible did
it rest on less weighty authority. This was the time for the Irish
people to have regained their freedom, and, had they had half as much
of the spirit of nationality and organization as they possessed of
valor and endurance, a decisive blow might easily have been struck
that would have for ever ended the English power in their island. But
the propitious moment was allowed to pass, and dearly did they pay in
after-times for their supineness and folly.

The dissensions were not confined to the natives. The quarrels and
bickerings of the nobles and officials of the Pale seemed to invite
destruction. Rival parliaments were held; viceroys who were attached
by policy or affection to the houses of York and Lancaster contended
in the Castle of Dublin for the legitimacy of their respective
factions; and even the Lord Chancellor Sherwood, Bishop of Meath,
and the members of the privy council, whose office and duty it was
to preserve the peace between all parties, were found the most
turbulent; "the chancellor and chief-justice of the king's bench
requiring the interposition of the king to keep them quiet, while the
Irish so pressed upon the narrow limits of the English settlements
that the statute requiring cities and boroughs to be represented by
inhabitants of the same was obliged to be repealed upon the express
ground that representatives could not be expected to encounter, on
their journeys to parliament, the great perils incident from the
king's Irish enemies and English rebels, for it is openly known how
great and frequent mischiefs have been done on the ways both in the
south, north, east, and west parts, by reason whereof they may not
send proctors, knights, nor burgesses."[33] Such was the condition of
Ireland in A.D. 1480, just three centuries after the advent of Henry
II. to her shores.

One of the principal duties of the Irish lord chancellors, even to
the very moment of its extinction, was the management of the Irish
parliament. The body that for so many centuries bore that pretentious
title, but which never spoke the voice of even a respectable minority
of the people, is said to have owed its origin to the second Henry,
though according to Whiteside, who follows the authority of Sir John
Davies, no parliament was held in the country for one hundred and
forty years after that king's visit.[34] Except in an antiquarian
point of view, the matter is of little importance, as such gatherings
in Ireland, even more so than those of England, could not at that
time be called either representative or deliberative bodies, for
their members were not chosen by even a moiety of the people, and
they were mere instruments in the hands of the governing powers,
who moulded them at will when they desired to impose new taxes or
unjust laws on the people, ostensibly with their own sanction. From
the days of Simon de Montfort to those of George IV., the English
parliamentary system has been an ingeniously devised engine of
general oppression under the garb of popular government.

Of the ancient parliaments, the most famous was that held at Kilkenny
during the chancellorship of John Trowyk, Prior of St. John, in
1367, at which was passed the statute bearing the name of that
beautiful city. Though the name only of the chancellor, who doubtless
was the author _ex officio_, has come down to us, that delectable
specimen of English legislation is doubtless destined to survive
the changes of time, and expire only with the language itself. It
prohibited marriage, gossipred, and fostering between the natives
and the Anglo-Irish under penalty of treason, also selling to the
former upon any condition horses, armor, or victuals, under a like
penalty. All persons of either nationality living in the Pale were
to use the English language, names, customs, dress, and manner of
riding. No Irishman was to be admitted to holy orders, nor was any
minstrel, story-teller, or rhymer to be harbored. English on the
borders should hold no parley with their Irish neighbors, except by
special permission, nor employ them in their domestic wars. Irish
games were not to be indulged in, but should give place to those of
the English, as being more "gentlemanlike sports." Any infraction
of these provisions was to be punished with rigor, for, says the
preamble to the act, "many of the English of Ireland, discarding the
English tongue, manners, style of riding, laws, and usages, lived
and governed themselves according to the mode, fashion, and language
of the Irish enemies," etc., whereby the said "Irish enemies were
exalted and raised up contrary to reason." This enactment is perhaps
without a parallel in the history of semi-civilized legislation, if
we except that passed at a parliament held at Trim in 1447, and for
which we are indebted to no less a person than the Archbishop of
Dublin, lord chancellor at that period. It enacts "that those who
would be taken for Englishmen (that is, within the protection of law)
should not wear a beard on the upper lip; that the said lip should be
shaved once at least in every two weeks, and that offenders therein
should be treated as Irish enemies." As no provision was inserted
in the statute providing for the supply of razors, or mention made
of the appointment of state barbers, we presume it soon became
inoperative.

By such penal legislation it was weakly supposed the evils of the
country could be cured most effectually, but, unfortunately for the
lawmakers, it was easier to pass statutes than to enforce them. On
the mass of the people they had no effect whatever, except, perhaps,
to bind them faster to their ancient laws and customs, and he would
have been a bold officer indeed who would have attempted to carry
them out, even among the Anglo-Irish families outside of the Pale;
for we find that, at a parliament held in Dublin in 1441, under the
supervision of Archbishop Talbot, a strong request was made to the
king to furnish troops for the defence of the colony, the privy
council having some time previously represented "that the king
should ordain that the Admiral of England should, in summer season,
visit the coasts of Ireland to protect the merchants from the Scots,
Bretons, and Spaniards, who came thither with their ships stuffed
with men of war in great numbers, seizing the merchants of Ireland,
Wales, and England, and holding them to ransom."[35]

The selfish but sagacious policy of Henry VII. had done so much
to remedy the evils inflicted on England by the wars of the Roses
that when his son, Henry VIII., ascended the throne in 1509, he
found a united and contented people, a well-filled treasury, and a
subservient parliament. The character of this notorious ruler is too
well known to need comment, and the effects of his crimes are still
perceptibly felt by the country that had the misfortune to have given
him birth. His influence on Irish affairs, though more disastrous
in its immediate results, has happily long since been obliterated.
Dr. Rokeby, Bishop of Meath, and afterward Archbishop of Dublin,
first appointed chancellor in 1498, was retained in his office by the
new king. He is represented as a man of marked piety and learning,
but he would have been unfitted to fill an office under the English
crown had he allowed any scruples of conscience to stand between him
and the behests of his royal master. What these were may be judged
from a passage in a private letter from Henry to his viceroy. "Now,"
he writes, "at the beginning, political practices may do more good
than exploits of war, till such time as the strength of the Irish
enemy shall be enfeebled and diminished; as well by getting their
captains from them, as by putting division among them, so that they
join not together"[36]--an advice eminently suggestive, but by no
means new, for the policy of arraying the Irish against each other
had been practised long before with fatal effect. Rokeby held the
great seal for twenty-one years, and his long term was marked by his
successful efforts to reconcile the hostile Anglo-Irish factions, his
negotiations with the native chiefs, for the purpose of inducing them
to acknowledge the sovereignty of Henry, and the consequent extension
of the functions of the courts over the greater part of the island.
The success of the first and last of these measures was mainly due to
the personal efforts of the lord chancellor, and the submission of
the Irish party resulted from the loss of the battle of Knocktough,
in 1504, and the favorable promises held out by the chancellor
and viceroy, inducements, it is needless to say, which were never
fulfilled. He was succeeded by the two St. Lawrences, father and
son, of whom nothing notable is recorded, but that they were laymen
and natives of the soil; and by Archbishop Ingle, who, however, held
office for but one year.

The next ecclesiastical chancellor was Dr. Alan, commissioned in
1528. This distinguished official was remarkable not only for his
great mental capacity, but as a not unfavorable sample of the English
political churchmen of the era immediately preceding the so-called
"Reformation"--men who, by their laxity of faith and worldly
ambition, paved the way for the subsequent grand march of heresy and
immorality. Born in England in 1476, he studied with credit both at
Oxford and Cambridge, and at an early age entered the priesthood. His
varied acquirements and experience of mankind gained him, in 1515,
the degree of doctor of laws and the confidence of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, then Lord Chancellor of England, by whom he was
sent to Rome on a special mission. On his return, he was appointed
chaplain to Cardinal Wolsey, and judge of his legantine court. In
both capacities he appears to have given satisfaction, particularly
in the latter, in which he materially assisted the ambitious cardinal
in suppressing certain monasteries, and appropriating the revenues,
it is more than suspected, to his own and his patron's use. For these
services he was rewarded with the archbishopric of Dublin and the
Irish chancellorship. His two great vices, avarice and the love of
intrigue, became now fully developed. When not begging for increase
of salary or emoluments, he was writing scandalous letters to his
friends at the English court, complaining of the conduct of the
viceroy, the unfortunate Earl of Kildare, and it was mainly through
his instrumentality, supported by Wolsey, that that nobleman was
called to England and committed to the Tower of London. His next step
was to circulate a false report that the earl had been executed. This
led, as he anticipated, to the rebellion of Kildare's son and deputy,
better known as Silken Thomas, and a number of Irish chiefs with
whom the Fitzgeralds were allied, and, upon its suppression, to the
confiscation of vast estates in Leinster and Munster. But Alan did
not live long enough to behold the result of his sanguinary policy.
Alarmed at the storm he had raised, he endeavored to escape from
the country, but the elements seem to have conspired against him,
for he was cast ashore near Clontarf, and, on being discovered by
some of Thomas's followers, he was put to death. He was succeeded as
chancellor by Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh, who was, however, shortly
after deprived of his office for his unflinching opposition to
Henry's absurd pretensions of being considered "Head of the Church."
It was of this prelate that Browne, the king's Archbishop of Dublin,
wrote to Lord Henry Cromwell, in 1635, "that he had endeavored,
almost to the hazard and danger of his temporal life, to procure
the nobility and gentry of this nation to due obedience in owning
his highness their supreme head, as well spiritual as temporal; and
do find much oppugning therein, especially by his brother Armagh,
who hath beene the main oppugner, and so hath withdrawn most of his
suffragans and clergy within his see and diocese."[37]

Unable to coerce or cajole the Pope, Henry at length threw down the
gauntlet to the Holy Father, and, emboldened doubtless by the ready
submission of the English, resolved to enforce his new ideas of
religion on the people of Ireland. The parliament of that country,
pliant as ever, voted him king of Ireland and head of the church,
and would as willingly have conferred on him any other title, no
matter how far-fetched or absurd, had he desired it. Archbishop
Browne, of Dublin, was a Christian after the king's own heart, and,
in his way, as consistent and as zealous a reformer; and with the
chancellor, Lord Trimblestown, at the laboring-oar, the task of
converting the Irish to the new faith was considered quite easy.
Here and there a stubborn recusant was anticipated, but were there
not monasteries and nunneries enough to be confiscated, and lands
and revenues to be given away, to satisfy those benighted adherents
to the old faith? A grand tour of proselytism throughout the country
was therefore projected, and the lord chancellor, the archbishop, and
the other members of the privy council sallied out, accompanied by
their men-at-arms, procurants, clerks, and retainers, to expound the
Gospel according to King Henry, and to enforce their doctrines, if
all else failed, by the carnal weapons of the lash and halter. They
visited in succession Carlow, Kilkenny, Ross, Wexford, and Waterford,
where they are mindful to acknowledge "they were well entertained."
The archbishop on Sundays "preached the word of God, having very
good audience, and published the king's injunctions and the king's
translation of the _Pater Noster_, _Ave Maria_, the Articles of
Faith, and the Ten Commandments in English," while on week-days
the chancellor took his share of the good work; for, continues the
report, "the day following we kept the sessions there (Waterford)
both for the city and the shire, where was put to execution four
felons, accompanied by another, a friar, whom, among the residue,
we commanded to be hanged in his habit, and so to remain upon the
gallows for a mirror to all his brethren to live truly."[38] This
judicious mixture of preaching and hanging, the Lord's Prayer and the
statute of Kilkenny, it was thought, would have a salutary effect
on the souls and bodies of unbelievers, and was a fitting form of
introducing the Reformation to the consideration of the Irish people.

The war on the faith of the nation having been thus openly and
auspiciously inaugurated, we must henceforth look upon the
chancellors of Ireland not only as the persistent defenders of the
English interest in that country, but as the most dangerous because
the most insidious and influential enemies of Catholicity.

Sir John Alan was appointed chancellor in 1539, and in the following
year we find him at the head of a royal commission for the
suppression of religious houses. The authority to the commissioners
sets forth, with a mendacity never surpassed in a state paper,
and rarely paralleled, even in the worst days of anti-Catholic
persecution, the following pretexts for striking a deadly blow at the
bulwarks of charity, religion, and learning:

    "That from information of trustworthy persons, it being
    manifestly apparent that the monasteries, abbies,
    priories, and other places of religious or regulars
    in Ireland are, at present, in such a state that in
    them the praise of God and the welfare of man are next
    to nothing regarded, the regulars and others dwelling
    there being addicted, partly to their own superstitious
    ceremonies, partly to the pernicious worship of
    idols, and to the pestiferous doctrines of the Roman
    Pontiff, that unless an effectual remedy be promptly
    provided, not only the weak lower order, but the
    whole Irish people, may be speedily infected to their
    total destruction by the example of these persons. To
    prevent, therefore, the longer continuance of such
    religious men and nuns in so damnable a state, the
    king, having resolved to resume into his own hands all
    the monasteries and religious houses, for their better
    reformation, to remove from them the religious men and
    women, and cause them to return to some honest mode of
    living, and to true religion, directs the commissioners
    to signify this his intention to the heads of religious
    houses," etc.[39]

It is unnecessary to say that this measure of wholesale spoliation
was promptly and thoroughly carried out. The thousand ruins that dot
the island attest it, and the title-deeds of many a nobleman's broad
acres bear date no earlier than this edict of the greatest monster
that ever disgraced the British throne.

From this time forth, the lord chancellors found their best passport
to royal favor in devising measures for the destruction of the
popular faith. Being generally needy adventurers, with nothing but
their legal knowledge and facile consciences to begin the world
with, they neither loved the country nor respected the people,
and their titles and wealth depended simply on their zeal for
Protestantism. Of the hundreds of penal laws which disgrace the
statute-book of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, every one
of them owes its inception and enactment to one or another of those
subtle-minded officials who, as the head of the lords, president of
the privy council, and the dispenser of vast judicial and executive
patronage, had a potent influence in all public affairs. They
continued industriously to carry out the designs of Henry during the
successive reigns of his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the Stuarts,
William, Anne, and the House of Brunswick. Even when the fears of
foreign invasion in 1760, and the noble resistance of the fathers
of our republic some years later, had awakened the fears of the
British authorities and induced them to relax somewhat the chains
of the Catholics, the voice of the lord chancellors was still for
war. Apart, however, from this spirit of intolerance which seemed to
be naturally attached to the office, it must be confessed that from
the days of Henry the great seal was held by many able lawyers and
distinguished statesmen, some of whom were not unknown in the world
of letters as authors and liberal patrons of learning and science.
The names of Curwan, Loftus (who founded Trinity College University),
Boyle, Porter, Butler, Cox, Broderick, Bowles, and many others,
occupy honored positions in the legal annals of Great Britain and
Ireland, and their lives, full of incident and variety, are fully and
fairly placed before us by Mr. O'Flanagan.

The treaty of union in 1800, by which Ireland lost her parliament,
and legislatively became a province, deprived the Irish chancellors
of much of their original political power; though, strange as it may
appear, this object was effected mainly through the exertions of Lord
Clare, who at that time held the office. In this man's character,
distinguished as it was for many private virtues, and for every
public vice that it is possible to conceive, were united the good and
bad qualities of all his predecessors, joined to a wonderful mental
capacity which far surpassed them all. Born in Ireland, he was of
English extraction and more than English in feeling, and, though of
an exemplary Catholic stock, he was the son of an apostate clerical
student, a most violent Protestant and a rancorous proscriptionist.
A profound jurist and an upright judge in purely legal matters, his
anti-Catholic prejudices seemed totally to have warped his judgment
whenever the question of religion presented itself, and, though a
steadfast friend in private of those who agreed with or did not care
to differ from him, he never failed to carry into official life the
hatreds and animosities engendered in political struggles or domestic
intercourse. A powerful orator, full of strong legal points, logical
propositions, and keen, and sometimes coarse, sarcasm, he ruled his
party with a rod of iron, and, when persuasion and threats failed, he
hesitated not to use bribes and cajolery. His mental energy was equal
to any amount of labor, and his physical courage was beyond question,
even in a country and age where bravery was ranked among the highest
of virtues. Such was John Fitzgibbon, first Earl of Clare, born near
Dublin in 1749, a man pre-eminently fitted by Providence to adorn
his country and benefit mankind, but who perverted his great gifts
and employed them with too much success in destroying that country's
remnant of independence, and in devising new methods of persecution
for his Catholic relatives and countrymen. He died in the plenitude
of his power in 1802; his name when mentioned is reprobated by all
good men in the nation he betrayed; his title, so ingloriously won,
is extinct; and his bench in Chancery and his seat in the House of
Lords are filled by one of that race and creed which he so cordially
detested and so ruthlessly persecuted.[40] _Sic transit gloria
mundi._

Mr. O'Flanagan brings down his _Lives_ to the time of George IV., but
this latter portion of his valuable collection of biographies belongs
more to the domain of law than of history. Indeed, the entire work
is full of curious and interesting information which will be highly
prized by the legal profession. What the late Lord Campbell has done
so well for the English chancellors, the author has endeavored to
do for those of Ireland, and with equal success, notwithstanding
the scarcity of materials and the loose manner in which the Irish
records have been kept. One of the most attractive features of this
book is the total absence of passion or prejudice in the narrative of
events and estimation of character; but every necessary circumstance
is detailed in a plain, lucid, and intelligible style, and with
something of judicial gravity and impartiality befitting so important
a subject. As far as the author's own political predilections are
concerned--and we suspect that they are by no means intensely
national--the tone of the book may be said to be colorless, a
peculiarity in modern biography which, while it may detract from
its vivacity, will certainly add much weight to its value as an
authority. We are promised a sequel to the chancellors, containing
the lives of the lord chief-justices, which we hope will soon appear,
for the more light that is shed on those darkened pages of Ireland's
history, the better for the cause of truth, justice, and humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] _The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and the Keepers of the Great
Seal of Ireland_, from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen
Victoria. By J. Roderick O'Flanagan, M.R.I.A. Two vols. pp. 555,
621. London: Longmans Green & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society.

[31] _Com. on the Laws of England, p. 429 et seq._

[32] Between 1172 and 1200, Ireland had no fewer than _seventeen_
chief governors. In the thirteenth century, they numbered
_forty-six_; in the fourteenth, _ninety-three_; in the fifteenth,
_eighty-five_; in the sixteenth, _seventy-six_; in the seventeenth,
_seventy-nine_; and in the eighteenth, _ninety-four_.--_O'Flanagan_,
vol. i. p. 293.

[33] O'Flanagan, vol. i. p. 130.

[34] _Life and Death of the Irish Parliament._ By the Right Hon.
James Whiteside, C.J.

[35] Gilbert's _Viceroys of Ireland_.

[36] _State Papers, temp. Henry VIII._

[37] Ware's _Life of Browne_.

[38] _State Papers_, vol. iii. p. 108.

[39] Morrin's _Cal._ vol. i. p. 55.

[40] John O'Hagan, the present Lord High Chancellor of Ireland.




GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG'S GREAT HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.


The period of the German Minnesinger, dating from about the middle
of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century, witnessed
probably the intensest and sincerest devotion to the worship of the
Virgin Mary in the whole history of the Catholic Church. Intense
and sincere pre-eminently, because so expressed in the vast number
of paintings and poems in her glorification whereof we have record.
That whole period, indeed, was one of fervent religious feeling,
stimulated by the Crusades, and naturally choosing the Virgin for
the chief object of worship, as the whole knightly spirit of that
age was one of devotion to woman. The pure love--for Minne is _pure_
love--of woman has never, in the history of literature, been so
exclusively made the topic of poetry as it was during that century of
the Minnesinger; it is the absorbing theme of the almost two hundred
poets of that time, of whom we have poems handed down to us, and its
highest expression was attained in those poems that were addressed to
the woman of all women, Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The German language in the thirteenth century had attained a
development which fitted it pre-eminently for lyric poetry in all its
branches. What it has since gained in other respects it has lost in
sweet music of sound. Furthermore, the true laws of rhythm, metre,
and verse for modern languages, as distinguished from the rules that
governed classic poetry, had been discovered and fixed; rules and
laws the knowledge whereof subsequently was lost, and which it gave
Goethe so much trouble, as he tells us in his autobiography, to find
again. The purity of rhyme has never since in German poetry attained
the same degree of perfection, not even under the skilful hand of
Rueckert and Platen, which the Minnesinger gave to it; and thus
altogether those matters, which constitute the mechanism of poetry,
were in fullest bloom.

Now this mechanism and the wonderful language which it operated
upon being in the possession and under the full control of such men
as were the poets of that day, the result could be only poems of
perfect form, and yet at the same time naïve, earnest, intense, and
enthusiastic in their character. For those poets were not--like those
of our modern poets who have completest control of the mechanism of
poetry, as Tennyson, Swinburne, etc.--poets of a cold, reflective
bent of mind, but they were simple knights, with great enthusiasm in
the cause of the Crusades and of ladies; at the same time gifted with
a wondrous power of versification. A considerable number of them,
some of the best, as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Ulrich von Lichtenstein,
etc., could not even write and read, and had to dictate their poems
to their Singerlein, or sing it to him--for these poets invented a
melody for each of their poems--which Singerlein again transmitted
it in the same manner until, in the course of time, these unwritten
Minnelieder were, as much as possible, gathered together by the
noble knight, Ruediger von Manasse, his son, and the Minnesinger,
Johann Hadlaub, put into manuscript, and thus happily preserved for
future generations.

The songs that these Minnesingers sang are of a threefold character:
either in praise of the ladies, usually coupled with references to
the seasons of the year; or of a didactic character; or, finally, in
praise of the Virgin.

Their form is only twofold: either they are lays or songs proper.
The song or Minnelied proper has invariably a triplicity of form in
each stanza, that is, each stanza has three parts, whereof the first
two correspond with each other exactly, whereas the third has an
independent, though of course rhythmically connected, flow of its
own. The lay, on the contrary, is of irregular construction, and
permits the widest rhythmical liberties.

Of the many Minnelieder addressed to the Virgin we have presented to
us examples of both kinds, lays and songs. Chief among them are a lay
by Walther von der Vogelweide, and the _Great Hymn_ by Gottfried von
Strassburg.

The latter is probably the finest of all the Minnelieder--worldly
and sacred--of that period. Ranking next to these two there is,
however, another poem to the Virgin, not to be classified strictly
under the general title of Minnelieder, but still the production of
a famous Minnesinger, and withal a poem of wondrous beauty, which
for two centuries kept its hold upon the people. This is Konrad von
Wuerzburg's _Golden Smithy_--a poem that is written in the metre
of the narrative poem of that age, namely, in lines wherein every
line ending in a masculine rhyme has four accentuations and every
line ending in a female rhyme has three accentuations, the syllables
not being counted--a metre that Coleridge has adopted in his poem
_Christabel_.

In this _Golden Smithy_ the poet represents himself as a goldsmith,
working all manner of precious stones and gold into a glorious
ornament for the Queen of Heaven, by gathering into his poem all
possible images and similes from the world of nature, from sacred
and profane history and fable, and from all the virtues and graces
of mankind. It is a poem of wonderful splendor, and has a great
smoothness of diction. "If," says the poet in the opening of the
poem, "in the depth of the smithy of my heart I could melt a poem
out of gold and could enamel the gold with the glowing ruby of pure
devotion, I would forge a transparent, shining, and sparkling praise
of thy worth, thou glorious empress of heaven. Yet, though my speech
should fly upward like a noble eagle, the wings of my words could
not carry me beyond thy praise; marble and adamant shall be sooner
penetrated by a straw, and the diamond by molten lead, than I attain
the height of the praise that belongs to thee. Not until all the
stars have been counted and the dust of the sun and the sand of the
sea and the leaves of the trees, can thy praise be properly sung."

But even this poem is far surpassed in beauty every way by Gottfried
von Strassburg's _Great Hymn_. Indeed, Konrad himself modestly
confesses this in his _Golden Smithy_, when he regrets that he does
not "sit upon the green clover bedewed with sweet speech, on which
sat worthily Gottfried von Strassburg, who, as a most artistic smith,
worked a golden poem, and praised and glorified the Holy Virgin in
much better strain."

There is, indeed, a wondrous beauty in this hymn of Gottfried
von Strassburg, a beauty much akin to that of his own Strassburg
Cathedral, which was begun about the same time.

"It is," says Van der Hagen, "the very glorification of love (Minne)
and of Minnesong; it is the heavenly bridal song, the mysterious
Solomon's Song, which mirrors its miraculous object in a stream
of deep and lovely images, linking them all together into an
imperishable wreath; yet even here in its profundity and significance
of an artistic and numerously-rhymed construction; always clear as
crystal, smooth and graceful."

The poem separates into three parts: in the first whereof the poet
exhorts all those who desire to listen to his song of God's great
love to endeavor to gain it by unremitting exertion; and furthermore
to pray for him, the poet, who has so little striven to attain it
for himself. In the second part, the poet calls upon the heavens and
Christ to bend down and listen to his truthful lays in praise of
Christ's sweet mother. Then in the third part begins the praise of
the Virgin, followed by that of her Son, and the poem reaches its
supreme fervor when it breaks out finally in praise of God himself.
Thence it gradually lowers its tone, and finally expires in a sigh.

I suppose it is impossible to give an adequate idea by translation of
the melodious sound of words, the perfect rhythm, and the artistic
gradation of effect which this poem has parts of the poem, and so
selected as to give a general idea of both the manner and the matter
of the poem. The selection opens with the first and ends with the
last verses of the whole poem; but the whole itself being composed of
ninety-four stanzas, it was necessary to take from in the original.
I can say only that I have done my best in the following stanzas,
selected from the various the intermediate ones only specimens.
The imagery may often seem far-fetched, but it must be remembered
that the men of that period likened God and the God-begotten unto
everything on earth and in heaven, for the simple reason that they
deemed it irreverent and impossible to characterize them by any
single predicate or word.

Of the poet himself we know very little. His name indicates him to
have been a citizen of Strassburg. His title Meister (master) shows
that his station in life was that of a citizen and not of a noble
or knight, their title being Herr. He was undoubtedly the foremost
poet of his age, and--together with Wolfram von Eschenbach--was then
and is still so considered. His greatest work is the narrative poem,
_Tristan und Isolde_; but that he left unfinished. We have no other
work of his handed down to us except three or four small Minnesongs.


HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.

      Ye, who your life would glorify
      And float in bliss with God on high,
      There to dwell nigh
      His peace and love's salvation;
      Who fain would learn how to enroll
      All evils under your control,
      And rid your soul
      Of many a sore temptation:
      Give heed unto this song of love
      And follow its sweet story;
      Then will its passing sweetness prove
      Unto your hearts a peaceful dove,
        And upward move
      Your souls to realms of glory.

      Ye, who would hear what you have ne'er
      Heard spoken, now incline your ear
      And listen here
      To what my tongue unfoldeth.
      Yea, list to the sweet praise and worth
      Of her who to God's child gave birth;
      Wherefore on earth
      God as in heaven her holdeth.
      E'en as the air when fresh bedewed
      Bears fruitful growth, so to man
      She bears an ever-fruitful mood:
      Never so chaste and sweet heart's blood,
        So true and good,
      Was born by mortal woman.

      I speak of thee in my best strain:
      No mother e'er such child may gain,
      Or child attain
      So pure a mother ever.
      He chose what his own nature was;
      His glorious Godhead chose as case
      The purest vase
      Of flesh and bone's endeavor
      That woman ever to her heart
      'Tween earth and heaven gave pressure.
      In thee lay hidden every part,
      That ever did from virtue start;
        Of bliss thou art
      The sweetest, chosen treasure.

      Thou gem, thou gold, thou diamond-glow,
      Thou creamy milk, white ivory, oh!
      Thou honey-flow
      In heart and mouth dissolving;
      Of fruitful virtue a noble grove,
      The lovely bride of God above--
      Thou sweet, sweet love,
      Thou hour with bliss revolving!
      Of chastity thou whitest snow,
      A grape of chaste and sure love,
      A clover-field of true love's glow,
      Of grace a bottomless ocean's flow:
        Yea more, I trow:
      A turtle-dove of pure love.

      God thee hath clothed with raiments seven,
      On thy pure body, brought from heaven,
      Hath put them even
      When thou wast first created.
      The first dress Chastity is named,
      The second is as Virtue famed,
      The third is claimed
      And as sweet Courtesy rated.
      The fourth dress is Humility,
      The fifth is Mercy's beauty,
      The sixth one, Faith, clings close to thee,
      The seventh, humble Modesty,
        Keepeth thee free
      To follow simple duty.

      To worship, Lady, thee doth teach
      Pray'r to drenched courage and numbed speech,
      Yea, and fires each
      Cold heart with heavenly rapture.
      To worship thee, O Lady! can
      Teach many an erring, sinful man,
      How from sin's ban
      His soul he still may capture.
      To worship thee is e'en a branch
      On which the soul's life bloometh;
      To worship thee makes bold and stanch
      The weakest soul on sin's hard bench;
        God it doth wrench
      From hell and in heaven roometh.

      Then let both men and women proclaim,
      And what of mother's womb e'er came,
      Both wild and tame,
      The grace of thy devotion.
      Then praise thee now what living lives,
      Whatever heaven's dew receives,
      Runs, floats, or cleaves
      Through forest or through ocean.
      Then praise thee now the fair star-shine,
      The sun and the moon gold-glowing,
      Then praise thee the four elements thine;
      Yea, blessedness around thee twine,
        Thou cheering wine,
      Thou stream with grace o'erflowing.

      Rejoice, then, Lady of the skies,
      Rejoice, thou God-love's paradise,
      Rejoice, thou prize
      Of sweetest roses growing!
      Rejoice, thou blessed maiden, then,
      Rejoice, that every race and clan,
      Woman and man,
      Pray to thy love o'erflowing.
      Rejoice, that thou with God dost show
      So many things in common:
      His yea thy yea, his no thy no;
      Endless ye mingle in one flow;
        Small and great, lo!
      He shares with thee, sweet woman.

      Now have I praised the mother thine,
      O sweet, fair Christ and Lord of mine!
      That honor's shrine
      Wherein thou wast created.
      And loud I'll now praise thee, O Lord!
      Yea, did I not, 'twould check my word;
      Thy praise has soared,
      And with all things been mated.
      Seven hours each day thy praise shall now
      By me in pray'r be chanted;
      This well belongs to thee, I trow,
      For with all virtues thou dost glow;
        From all grief thou
      Relief to us hast granted.

      Thou of so many pure hearts the hold,
      So many a pure maid's sweetheart bold,
      All thee enfold
      With love bright, loud, and yearning.
      Thou art caressed by many a mood,
      Caressed by many a heart's warm blood;
      Thou art so good,
      So truthful and love-burning.
      Caressed by all the stars that soar,
      By moon and sun, thou blessing!
      Caressed by the great elements four;
      Oh! ne'er caressed so was afore,
        Nor will be more,
      Sweetheart by love's caressing!

      Yea, thou art named the God of grace,
      Without whose special power, no phase
      Of life in space
      Had ever gained existence.
      What runneth, climbeth, sneaketh, or striveth,
      What crawleth, twineth, flieth, or diveth,
      Yea, all that thriveth
      In earth and heaven's subsistence:
      Of all, the life to thee is known,
      Thou art their food and banner,
      The lives of all are held alone
      By thee, O Lord! and on thy throne;
        Thus is well known
      Thy grace in every manner.

      God of thee speaking, God of thee saying,
      Teareth the heart its passions flaying,
      And stay waylaying
      The ever-watchful devil.
      God of thee speaking, God of thee saying,
      Much strength and comfort keeps displaying;
      And hearts thus staying,
      Are saved from every evil.
      God of thee speaking, God of thee saying,
      Is pleasure beyond all pleasure.
      It moves our hearts, thy grace surveying,
      To keep with love thy love repaying;
        O'er all things swaying
      Thus shines thy love's great treasure.

      God of thee speaking repentance raises
      When they, who chant thy wondrous praises,
      Use lying phrases:
      So purely thy word gloweth.
      It suffers less a lying mood
      Than suffers waves the ocean's flood,
      So pure and good
      Its changeless current floweth.
      God of thee speaking doth attest
      Pure heart and chaste endeavor,
      It driveth the devil from our breast.
      Oh! well I know its soothing rest,
        It is the zest
      Of thy vast mercy's flavor.

      Ah virtue pure, ah purest vase!
      Ah of chaste eyes thou mirror-glass!
      Ah diamond-case,
      With fruitful virtues glowing!
      Ah festive day to pleasure lent!
      Ah rapture without discontent!
      Ah sweet musk-scent!
      Ah flower gayly blooming!
      Ah heavenly kingdom where thou art!
      On earth, in hell, or heaven!
      Ah cunning o'er all cunning's art!
      Ah thou, that knoweth every part!
        Ah sweet Christ's heart!
      Ah sweetness without leaven!

      Ah virtue there, ah virtue here!
      Ah virtue on many a dark and drear
      Path, far and near!
      Ah virtue e'er befriending!
      Ah thou self-conscious purity!
      Ah goodness, those that cling to thee
      So many be
      Their number has no ending.
      Ah father, mother thou, and son!
      Ah brother both and sister!
      Ah strong of faith as Jacob's son!
      Ah king of earth's and heaven's throne!
        Ah thou alone
      Our friend to-day as yester!




A WORD TO THE _INDEPENDENT_.


"A WORD TO FATHER HECKER.

    "We address you, Reverend Dr. Hecker, in this public
    way because we recognize in you not only the ablest
    defender of the Roman Catholic Church in the United
    States, but also the most progressive and enlightened
    leader of thought in that church. In the words we have
    to speak, we wish to speak not to Dr. Hecker, the
    antagonist of Protestantism, but to Father Hecker, a
    leader of Catholicism. We write in no polemical spirit.
    We have many things against the Church of Rome, and
    have spoken severely of Catholicism as you have of
    Protestantism. But we have also much veneration for
    many things in that church, and a very great admiration
    for some passages in its history. Enthusiastic as you
    are, sir, you cannot revere more sincerely than we
    the self-sacrificing benevolence of St. Francis of
    Assisi, the zeal of St. Francis Xavier, the piety of
    Fénelon and of Lacordaire, the eloquence of Bossuet and
    Massillon, or the courage of Pascal and Hyacinthe.

    "We come to you for help. In all our great cities
    there are sections inhabited almost wholly by Roman
    Catholic people. It is a fact, as well known to you
    as it is to us, that Catholic sections of the cities
    abound in destitution, in ignorance, in vice, in crime.
    Children are here trained by all their surroundings
    to a life of wickedness. In many homes they learn
    profanity from the lips of their mothers, and they are
    familiar with drunkenness from their cradle, if they
    are so fortunate as to have one left not pawned to buy
    the means of drunkenness. We know how many honest and
    hard-working Catholics there are in these sections, and
    we know how many villanous non-Catholics there are. But
    you know as well as any one knows that the Catholic
    population furnishes vastly more than its proportion
    of paupers and criminals. The reform schools, the
    prisons, the alms-houses, are nearly full of Catholics.
    In the Catholic sections of the cities there are
    drinking-saloons, dog-pits, and brothels in abundance.
    The men who keep these places are, in undue proportion,
    Catholics. They receive extreme unction on their
    death-beds, and are buried in consecrated cemeteries
    with the rites of the church. We say these things
    not to wound your Catholic pride, nor to injure that
    church, but to ask one question: Cannot the Catholic
    Church herself do something to mitigate these evils?

    "Protestants plant missions in some of these Catholic
    quarters. We are not sure that these missions are
    always conducted as they should be. Perhaps there may
    be too much of a spirit of proselytism in some of them;
    but, at any rate, there is a sincere desire to make men
    better. Drunkards have been reformed by these missions.
    Women of evil life have been reclaimed. Children have
    been taken from vile homes and taught the ways of
    virtue. Sunday-schools and reading-rooms have been
    established, and have contributed to the culture and
    elevation of adults and children.

    "But you know, sir, how strong is the Catholic
    prejudice against Protestants. Broken windows,
    and sometimes broken heads, have testified to the
    appreciation the Catholic population has of such
    efforts on the part of Protestants. There are whole
    districts from which Protestants are practically
    excluded. For the worse the lives of these people are,
    the more combatively devoted are they to the Catholic
    Church. Of course, we believe that Protestantism is
    better than Roman Catholicism; but since the reaching
    of these people with Protestant missions is not
    possible, we come to you and ask you whether you, who
    have done so much for the enlightenment of the Catholic
    Church through its literature, will not lift up your
    powerful voice to plead with the church to use her
    almost unlimited influence for the regeneration of her
    people.

    "We are never tired of praising Catholic charities.
    But Catholic charities, like many Protestant ones, are
    only half-charities. Of what avail is it that you build
    a House of the Good Shepherd for abandoned women, if
    you do not also take means to mitigate the ignorance
    and the wickedness of the children who are quickly to
    supply the places of those whom you have recovered?

    "We point you to no Protestant example. We know of
    none so good as that of the illustrious St. Charles
    Borromeo. If the great Cathedral of Milan were the
    rudest chapel in Europe, it would yet be one of the
    most glorious of temples. We need not point the
    application of his example to the present subject. If
    the Catholic Church in America had one ecclesiastic of
    ability who possessed half the zeal of the illustrious
    successor of St. Ambrose, this stain upon American
    Catholicism might soon be wiped away. We need not
    remind one so learned in church history as yourself
    of his toilsome labor in the cause of education,
    and of his endeavors, which ceased only with his
    life, to remove ignorance and vice from his diocese.
    In suggesting to you, whose parish has already so
    admirable a Sunday-school, the good that might be
    accomplished by a thoroughly organized Sunday-school
    system, we do not need to suggest that in Sunday-school
    work Catholics are not imitators of Protestants. We are
    proud to trace the history of Sunday-schools to St.
    Charles Borromeo.

    "By helping to improve the moral, intellectual, and
    religious character of the lower class of American
    Catholics, you can do more than by all your eloquent
    arguments to make Protestants think well of the mother
    church. Americans are very practical, and a good
    chapter of present church history enacted before their
    eyes will have more weight with them than all the old
    church history your learning can dig from the folios of
    eighteen centuries."

We depart from our usual course to reprint the above rather, long
article, which appeared some time ago in the _Independent_, one of
the leading Protestant papers of the country, not because of its
intrinsic merits or special untruthfulness, nor yet for its assumed
knowledge of the views and duties of the reverend gentleman to whom
it is so pointedly addressed, but because we consider this a fitting
time and place to answer the invidious attacks which, under one guise
or another, are so constantly being made on the church in America
by those who are neither able to meet openly our arguments, nor to
arrest covertly the astonishing progress which our holy religion
is happily making in every part of this republic. These assaults
sometimes take the form of wholesale and mendacious assertion and
passionate appeal to blind prejudice and unreason; while sometimes,
like the one before us, they assume the thin disguise of personal
courtesy and general charity to all men. The former are perhaps the
more manly, the latter have the merit of permitting us, without loss
of self-respect, to reply to them. The object in either case is the
same: a vain endeavor to stem the tide of Catholicity which, in a
succession of great waves, as it were, is fast spreading over the
land, and an attempt to make our faith an object of aversion to those
of our countrymen not yet in the church, by associating it with all
that is impoverished, illiterate, and immoral.

It is true, as the writer says, that the Americans are a practical
people; but we are not by any means a very reflective people, and are
very apt to judge hastily of others without sufficiently considering
the various causes which underlie the surface of society, or the
effects which may be produced on a people less fortunate than
ourselves by ages of misrule and persecution. Knowing this national
failing very well, the writer in the _Independent_ adroitly seeks
to hold the Catholic Church responsible for the faults and vices
of a certain class of nominal Catholics in our midst, when he is
fully aware that these very vices, so far from being the growth of
Catholic teaching, are not only in absolute contradiction to it, but
are the direct and logical results of an elaborate system of penal
legislation, designed to produce the very degradation of which he
complains, and persistently carried out to its furthest limit by the
leading Protestant power of Europe.

Take New York, for instance. Here the church is practically the
growth of but half a century. There are some among us whose
Catholic ancestors came to this country in the last or even in the
seventeenth century; others who have sought refuge from the doubts
and uncertainties of Protestantism in the peaceful bosom of mother
church; but by far the greater number are immigrants of this century,
and their children, who, glad to flee from famine and persecution
with nothing but their lives and faith, have sought refuge on our
shores from the tyranny of a hostile government, which the world
has long recognized as both insincere, oppressive, and illiberal,
but which, by virtue of its assumed leadership in the Protestant
revolt called the Reformation, wantonly and tenaciously continued
to persecute its subjects who dared to profess their devotion to
the faith of their fathers. Any one, be he lawyer or laymen, who
reads the penal acts of the parliaments of England, Scotland, and
Ireland from the reign of Henry VIII. downward, must be satisfied
that a more complete network of laws for the purpose of beggaring,
degrading, and corrupting human nature has never been devised. Some
of them, in fact, are almost preternatural in their ingenuity; and
the wonder is how any class of people coming under their operation
could, for any length of time, retain even the semblance of
civilization. Everything that it was possible to take by legislation
from the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland was taken, every
advantage arising from the possession of land or the acquisition
of commercial wealth was denied them, and the avenues to honor and
distinction were, and are partially so to this day, closed against
them, generation after generation. That many of the descendants of
these persecuted people who have come among us are uneducated is
true, that they are generally poor is a fact patent to every one; but
it ill becomes the _Independent_ to taunt them with their ignorance
and their poverty, knowing, as it does, that it was Protestantism,
of which it is the expounder and the eulogist, that has robbed them
of their birthright, and striven, with some success, it seems, to
plunge their souls in darkness. Is it fair or generous to hold these
people up to public contumely because of the scars they have received
in their unequalled struggle for the freedom of conscience and
nationality; is it just or American to try to steal from those who
seek an asylum on our soil that for which they have imperilled and
lost all else--their faith, which is to them dearer than life itself?
Or is it more in keeping with all our ideas of true manhood and
republican liberty that while we extend one arm to shield the victim
of oppression, the other should be stretched forth in reprobation of
his plunderer and persecutor? If they have vices--and what people
have not?--let a share of the blame at least be laid at the doors of
those who designedly and continually debarred them from all means
of enlightenment and every incentive to virtue, instead of being
attributed to the influence of the church.

And yet, in view of the gloomy history of these people--a chapter
in the annals of England which the best of her Protestant statesmen
are endeavoring to efface from the popular memory--the writer in
the _Independent_ appears to be surprised at what he calls Catholic
prejudice against Protestant missions. No man, we are safe in saying,
has less prejudice against his fellow-man than the American Catholic,
in all the usual intercourse of life; but when a person under the
garb of charity invades the sanctity of his home simply to abuse
his religion, or waylays his children in the streets and inveigles
them into mission-houses and Sunday-schools by the proffer of a loaf
or a jacket, for the purpose of telling them that their fathers'
faith is rank idolatry, is it not too much to expect that he will
remain unmoved and uncomplaining? The writer should recollect that
the class of so-called missionaries who infest the quarters of our
poorer fellow-Catholics are not new to those people. They have seen
their counterparts long ago in Bantry and Connemara, in the fertile
valleys of Munster and on the bleak hills of Connaught, in the dark
days of the great famine, when the tract distributer followed hard on
the heels of the tithe-proctor and the bailiff, tendering a meal or a
shilling as the price of apostasy. If heads are occasionally broken,
they are not the heads of those who attend to their own affairs and
let their neighbors attend to theirs, but of some intermeddling
tract-scatterer, whose salary depends upon the number of copies
he can force into the hands of Catholics without regard to their
wishes or feelings. The provocation emanates from them, and they
must take the consequences. If the law permits us to inflict summary
chastisement on the burglar who enters our house to take our goods,
shall we have no remedy against him who prowls about our doors to
steal our children and abuse our faith?

If Protestant missions were properly conducted, they would have
none of these difficulties to contend with. But are they properly
conducted? The writer in the _Independent_ seems to have some doubts
on this point. We have none. Whoever will take the trouble to attend
the Bible-classes, prayer-meetings, day-schools, and Sunday-schools
of the Howard Mission and its adjuncts, will be satisfied that they
are nothing but ingeniously contrived machines for the purpose of
proselytizing Catholic children. Abuse of Catholicity of the most
unqualified and vulgar kind forms the staple of the instructions
there from beginning to end. Even the material relief is diverted
to this purpose. The poor half-starved lad, as he eats his food,
swallows it down with a draught of no-popery cant, and the ragged
little girl, as she dons some cast-off garment, has her young mind
polluted by aspersions on the name of her whom Holy Writ declared
should be called blessed by all nations. We have before us a
periodical issued from the Howard Mission, under the superintendence
of a Rev. W. C. Van Meter, which is as full of that canting,
snivelling, anti-Catholic spirit as ever characterized the days of
God-save-Barebones or of John Wesley's unlettered disciples. As a
specimen of the veracity of this modern apostle to the Fourth Ward,
and for the benefit of the _Independent_, which has some doubts as to
whether Protestant missions are properly conducted, we extract the
following prominent article from its pages:

    "PROTESTANTISM _vs._ ROMANISM.--In the Protestant
    countries of Great Britain and Prussia, where 20 can
    read and write, there are but 13 in the Roman Catholic
    countries of France and Austria. In European countries,
    1 in every 10 are in schools in the Protestant
    countries, and but 1 in 124 in the Roman Catholic. In
    six leading Protestant countries in Europe, 1 newspaper
    or magazine is published to every 315 inhabitants;
    while in six Roman Catholic there is but 1 to every
    2,715. The value of what is produced a year by industry
    in Spain is $6 to each inhabitant; in France, $7½;
    Prussia, $8; and in Great Britain, $31. There are about
    a third more paupers in the Roman Catholic countries of
    Europe than in the Protestant, owing mainly to their
    numerous holidays and prevailing ignorance, idleness,
    and vice. Three times as many crimes are committed in
    Ireland as in Great Britain, though the population is
    but a third. There are six times as many homicides,
    four times as many assassinations, and from three to
    four times as many thefts in Ireland as in Scotland.
    In Catholic Austria, there are four times as many
    crimes committed as in the adjoining Protestant kingdom
    of Prussia."[41]

Now, we ask, is the man or men who penned and circulated this
atrocious calumny likely to command the respect of any class of
Catholics, learned or ignorant? He or they knew, or ought to have
known, that it contains several deliberate falsehoods. Take, for
example, the portion of the extract relating to Great Britain and
Ireland. By referring to the report of "Her Majesty's Inspector of
Schools, August 31, 1868," we find that in England and Wales the
average attendance at all the schools in the kingdom was 1,050,120,
in Scotland 191,860, and in Ireland, at the model schools alone,
354,853, or nearly twice as many as in Scotland, and, in proportion
to the population, one-seventh more than in England. From the
official report of the statistics of crime in the same year (the
latest published reports that have reached us), there were convicted
of crime in England 15,003, in Scotland 2,490, and in Ireland 2,394.
Of those sentenced in England, 21 were condemned to death, 18 to
penal servitude for life, and 1,921 for a term of years. In Scotland,
one was condemned to death, and 243 to penal servitude, while in
Ireland none were condemned to death, and but 238 to penal servitude.
We find also that in England alone 118,390 persons are reported as
belonging to the criminal classes known to the authorities, and but
23,041 in Ireland; and while the former country has 20,000 houses of
bad character, the latter has 5,876. The number of paupers in each
of the three countries shows even a greater disparity. England in
1868 had, exclusive of vagrants, 1,039,549, or one in every twenty of
the population; Scotland, 158,372, or one in every 19; and Ireland,
74,254, or one in every 80![42]

If it were not foreign to our present purpose, we could prove that
the managers of the Protestant missions are equally untruthful in
their invidious comparisons instituted between other countries,[43]
but we have shown enough to convince any impartial person that they
are not fit to be entrusted with the care of youth of any class, much
less of Catholic children. If the supporters of the _Independent_
are sincere in their desire to benefit the destitute, the needy, and
the vicious, let them first remove all suspicion of proselytism from
their charities by appointing proper persons to administer them.
If they have conscientious scruples against co-operating with the
various Catholic charitable societies, who know the poor and are
trusted by them, there are other ways of dispensing their bounty
judiciously than by tampering with the poor people's faith, and
their charity will then become a blessing to the giver as well as
to the receiver. Then let them, above all things, advocate a fair
and impartial distribution of the public school funds. It is well
known that the Catholics as a body are far from being rich, and that
while they are struggling hard to sustain their own schools, they
are heavily taxed for the support of those to which they cannot
consistently send their children, and from which, in many instances,
the offspring of the rich alone receive any benefit. Can we not
in this free democracy have laws regulating education at least as
equitable as those of Austria and Prussia--countries which we
are pleased to call despotic? Help us to the means to educate our
children in our own way, as we have a right to do, and you will see
how the stigma of ignorance and its consequences will be removed from
the fair forehead of this great metropolis. We ask not charity, we
simply want our fair share of that public money which is contributed
by Catholic and Protestant alike for educational purposes, and the
liberty to apply it with as much freedom from state interference as
is enjoyed in the monarchies of Europe.

The writer in the _Independent_ assumes, with a coolness approaching
impertinence, that the clergyman whom he addresses knows that the
Catholic population "furnishes more, vastly more, than its proportion
of paupers and criminals." He knows no such thing, nor does any
right-minded man in the community know it. That there are many and
grave crimes committed by nominal Catholics is, alas! too true,
but that many such are perpetrated, to any appreciable extent, by
the hundreds of thousands of practical Catholics in this city, no
sane man believes. Poor and ignorant, if you will, without capital,
business training, or mechanical skill, many thousands of our
immigrants are from necessity obliged to make their homes in the
purlieus of our great cities. Disappointed in their too sanguine
expectation of fortune in the New World, some seek solace in
intoxication, and in that condition commit acts of lawlessness which
their better nature abhors. But much as the commission of crime in
any shape is to be regretted and reprehended, it must be admitted
that most of the offences are comparatively trivial in their nature
and consequences, and few, even of the darkest, are the result of
premeditated villany. In searching over the criminal records of
our state and country, we seldom find a contrived infraction of the
law by the class to which the writer so ungraciously alludes. A
gigantic swindle, a scientific burglary, a nicely planned larceny,
an adroit forgery, a diabolical seduction, or a deliberate and
long-contemplated murder by poison or the knife, is seldom committed
by that class, but by those who were reared in as much hostility
to Catholicity as the writer of the _Independent_ himself. This
higher grade of crime, this "bad pre-eminence," we might with some
show of justice ascribe to the effects of the laxity of Protestant
morals, but we have no desire to do so here; and with even much
more truthfulness might we charge the sects who teach that marriage
is merely a civil contract with the responsibility of those other
vices which, striking at the very foundations of society and the
sanctity of the family, are more lasting in their consequences and
more demoralizing in their immediate effects, than all the others
put together. The columns of this same virtuous _Independent_ have
obtained an unenviable notoriety by spreading the most shameful and
corrupting doctrines on this vital subject. But we have no wish to
retort: the records of our divorce courts will prove that this class
of criminals is made up almost exclusively of non-Catholics.

The writer in the _Independent_, throughout his appeal, assumes a
tone of superior knowledge and a lofty contempt for details that
might mislead some into the belief that the Catholic body of this
city was an inert and helpless mass. He asks, "Will you not lift
up your powerful voice to plead with the church to use her almost
unlimited influence for the regeneration of her people?" Does the
writer know, or has he attempted to ascertain, all that the church
has done and is doing in this city, as in every other, for the
"regeneration of her people"? If he does not, by what right does
he assume that the voice of any one man or any number of men is
required to _plead_ with the church to do her duty? If he be ignorant
of his subject, then by what authority does he take upon himself
the office of mediator between the church and the people? If he be
not in ignorance, then his carefully worded sentences and smoothly
turned compliments merely cover, without concealing, a tissue of base
insinuations, beside which downright falsehood were rank flattery.

Let him look at what the church has done in New York in the past
generation! Forty churches and chapels have been built, with a
capacity, it is said, to seat fifty-six thousand persons, but really
equal to the accommodation of five times that number, as in every
church the divine service is offered up at least three times each
Sunday, and all are attended beyond the greatest capacity of the
building. To many of our churches is attached a free day-school for
boys and girls, and invariably a Sunday-school--thronged weekly by
the youth of both sexes, to listen to the instruction and counsel
of competent teachers. Every parish has its St. Vincent de Paul
Society, counting hundreds and in some cases thousands of members,
whose aim it is to visit the sick, the afflicted, and the needy; and
its temperance society, the strength of which may be judged by the
long line of stalworth men we see parading our streets on festal
occasions. Colleges, schools, and convents there are in great numbers
for the teaching of the higher branches of education. Hospitals
for the sick and afflicted, asylums for the blind, the orphan, the
foundling, and the repentant sinner, a reformatory for erring youth,
and a shelter for old age. Almost every conceivable want of weak
humanity has its appropriate place of supply among our charitable
institutions.

All this grand system of charities is, however, lost on the writer in
the _Independent_. His special attention is directed to the "dense
Catholic sections." Well, we will take the Fourth Ward, which is
blessed with the Howard Mission and the beneficent supervision of
Mr. Van Meter. St. James's Church is situated in this ward, and its
parish embraces all the Protestant missions so-called, and most of
their offshoots. Upon personal inquiry, we find that there is erected
in this parish a magnificent and spacious school-house, at a cost
of _one hundred and twenty thousand_ dollars, attended daily during
week-days by upwards of _fourteen hundred_ boys and girls, taught by
twenty-two teachers of both sexes. The tuition is entirely free, the
expenses amounting to about twelve thousand dollars annually, being
sustained by the voluntary contributions of the parishioners. The
Sunday-schools of this church are attended by _twenty-five hundred_
children, about one-half of whom, being employed during the week,
are unable to attend the day-schools. Then there is an industrial
school, attended by between one and two hundred poor children, mostly
half-orphans, who are provided with dinner every day, and to whom
are given two entire suits of new clothing every year, on July 4th
and Christmas Day. In addition to these there is a branch of the St.
Vincent de Paul Society, numbering several hundred members, forty
of whom are constantly on duty, visiting the sick, counselling the
erring, helping the needy, and performing other works of charity.
This society alone expends annually at least five thousand dollars.
Besides, there are two temperance societies, numbering nearly _nine
hundred men_, who not only discourage intemperance by their example,
but seek by weekly meetings, lectures, and other popular attractions
to win others to follow in their footsteps. Now, these are facts
easily verified by any one who may wish to do so, and may be taken as
a fair specimen of the gigantic efforts which the church is making in
every parish in this city for the conservation of the morals and the
education of her people. St. James's Parish may be said to contain
the largest proportionate number of our poorer brethren, who, though
heavily taxed as tenement holders and retail purchasers of all the
necessaries of life, contributing of course their quota to the public
school fund, can yet afford, out of their scanty and often precarious
means, to educate and partly feed and clothe over _fifteen hundred
children_. Can the _Independent_ show any similar effort on the part
of any of the sects?

The writer in the _Independent_ says, "We come to you for help."
What sort of help? If it is assistance to prop up the decaying
Protestant missions which have so long been sources of discord and
bad feeling among our Catholic fellow-citizens, profitable only to
their employees, we respectfully decline: if he is in truth and all
sincerity desirous to devote a part of his leisure time and means
to improve the condition of his less fortunate fellow-beings in the
denser populated portions of the city, we cannot advise him to do
better than to consult the pastor of St. James's or of any of the
churches in the lower wards, who will give him all the help required
for the proper disposal of both. And, in conclusion, let us suggest
to him that no amount of politeness will justify the violation of the
commandment which says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against
thy neighbor."

FOOTNOTES:

[41] _The Little Wanderer's Friend_, January, 1871.

[42] _Thom's Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland_, for 1870, pp. 713-721.

[43] See CATHOLIC WORLD for April, September, and October, 1869, and
April, 1870.




OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.


VI.

The press of Paris and of the provinces was beginning to discuss the
events at Lourdes; and public attention far outside the region of the
Pyrenees was gradually being attracted to the Grotto of Massabielle.

The measures of the prefect were loudly applauded by the infidel
papers and as vehemently condemned by the Catholic ones. The latter,
while maintaining a due reserve on the subject of the reality of the
apparitions and miracles, held that a question of this nature should
be decided by the ecclesiastical authorities, and not summarily
settled according to the will of the prefect.

The innumerable cures which were taking place at the grotto, or even
at distant places, continually drew an immense number of invalids and
pilgrims to Lourdes. The Latour de Trie analysis, and the mineral
properties claimed for the new spring by the official representative
of science, added yet more to the reputation of the grotto, and made
it attractive even to those who depended for their cure only on the
unaided powers of nature. Also, the discussion, by exciting men's
minds, added to the throng of the faithful there assembled another of
the curious. All the means adopted by the unbelievers turned directly
against the end which they had proposed to themselves.

By the irresistible course of events, then--a course fatal in the
eyes of some, but providential in those of others--the crowd which
the authorities had been trying to disperse was continually assuming
larger and larger proportions. And it increased the more, because, as
ill luck would have it, the material obstacles which the frosts of
winter had produced had gradually disappeared. The month of May had
returned; and the beautiful spring weather seemed to invite pilgrims
to come to the grotto by all the flowery roads which traverse the
woods, meadows, and vineyards in this region of lofty mountains,
green hills, and shady valleys.

The provoked but powerless prefect watched the growth and spread
of this peaceable and wonderful movement, which was bringing the
Christian multitudes to kneel and drink at the foot of a desolate
rock.

The measures already taken had, it is true, prevented the grotto from
looking like an oratory, but, substantially, the state of things
remained the same. From all sides people were coming to the scene of
a miracle. Contrary to the hope of the free-thinkers, the fear of the
faithful, and the expectations of all, absolutely no disturbance or
breach of the peace occurred in this extraordinary concourse of men
and women, old and young, believers and infidels, the curious and
the indifferent. An invisible hand seemed to protect these crowds
from mutual collision as they daily thronged by thousands to the
miraculous fountain.

The magistracy, represented by M. Dutour, and the police, personified
in M. Jacomet, looked at this strange phenomenon with astonishment.
Was their irritation all the greater on his account? We cannot say;
but for some dispositions extremely fond of authority, the spectacle
of a multitude so wonderfully orderly and peaceable, is certainly
anomalous and revolutionary, if not even insulting. When order
preserves itself, all those functionaries whose only business is
to preserve it feel a vague uneasiness. Being accustomed to have a
hand in everything in the name of the law, to regulate, to command,
to punish, to pardon, to see everything and everybody depend on
their person and office, they feel out of place in the presence of
a crowd which does not need their services, and which gives them no
pretext for interfering, showing their importance, and restraining
its movements. An order which excludes them is the worst of all
disorders. If such a fatal example should be generally followed, the
_procureurs impériaux_ would no longer have a sufficient reason for
their existence, the commissaries of police would disappear, and even
the prefectoral splendor would begin to wane.

Baron Massy had indeed been able to order the seizure of every
object deposited at the grotto; but there was no law recognizing
such deposits as criminal, and it was impossible to forbid or punish
them. Hence, in spite of the spoliations of the prefect, the grotto
was often brilliantly lighted by candles, and filled with flowers and
votive offerings, and even with silver and gold coins contributed for
the building of the chapel which the Blessed Virgin had required.
The pious faithful wished in this way--though it were an ineffectual
one--to show the Queen of Heaven their good-will, zeal, and love.
"What matter is it if they do take the money? It will have been
offered all the same. The candle will have given its light for a
time in honor of our Mother, and the bouquet will for an instant
have perfumed the sacred spot where her feet rested." Such were the
thoughts of those Christian souls.

Jacomet and his agents continued to come and carry everything off.
The commissary, much encouraged after having escaped the dangers
of the 4th of May, had become very scornful and brutal in his
proceedings, sometimes throwing the object seized into the Gave
before the scandalized eyes of the faithful. Sometimes, however, he
was obliged in spite of himself to leave a festal appearance at the
holy place. This was when the ingenious piety of its visitors had
strewn the Grotto with innumerable rose-leaves, and it was impossible
for him to pick up the thousand remains of flowers which formed its
brilliant and perfumed carpet.

The kneeling crowds continued meanwhile to pray, without making any
reply to this provoking conduct, and let matters take their course;
showing an extraordinary patience, such as God alone can give to an
indignant multitude.

One evening, the report was spread that the emperor or his minister
had asked for the prayers of Bernadette. M. Dutour raised a shout of
triumph, and prepared to save the state. Three good women, who, as it
seems, had made such a statement, were brought before the court, and
the _procureur_ demanded that they should be treated according to all
the rigor of the French law. Notwithstanding his indignant eloquence,
the judges acquitted two and condemned the other only to a fine of
five francs. The procureur, dissatisfied with this small amount,
insisted upon his suit, and made a desperate appeal to the imperial
court at Pau, which, smiling at his anger, not only confirmed the
acquittal of the two, but also refused to sustain the very small
judgment pronounced against the third culprit, and dismissed the
charge altogether.

We mention this little occurrence, though an insignificant one in
itself, to show how keenly the judges were upon the watch, and how
carefully they searched for some offence, for some opportunity to be
severe, since they employed their time in prosecuting poor simple
women whose innocence was soon after declared by the imperial court.

The people still continued quiet, and afforded no pretext to the
authorities for making an attack upon them in the name of the law.

One night, under cover of the darkness, unknown hands tore up the
conduits of the miraculous spring, and covered its waters with
heaps of stone, earth, and sand. Who had raised this vile monument
against the work of God, what impious and cowardly hands had secretly
committed such profanation, were not known. But when the day broke,
and the sacrilege became known, a sullen indignation, as might
have been foreseen, pervaded the multitudes who were collected at
the place, and that day the people filled the streets and roads
in agitation like that of the sea when it foams and roars under
a violent wind. The police, magistracy, and _sergents-de-ville_
were on the watch, spying and listening, but they could not report
a single lawless action or seditious word. The divine influence
which maintained order among these enraged multitudes was evidently
invincible.

But who, then, was the author of this outrage? The judges and police,
in spite of their active and zealous endeavors, did not succeed in
detecting him. Hence it happened that some evil-minded persons dared
to suspect the police and judiciary themselves (though evidently
with great injustice) of having tried by this means to produce some
disorders, in order to have an occasion to proceed with rigor.

The municipal authority most earnestly exculpated itself from all
connivance in the affair. That very evening, or the next day, the
mayor gave orders to replace the conduits, and to clear the floor
of the grotto of all the rubbish with which the fountain had been
obstructed. The mayor's policy was to not assume personally any
decided position, but to keep things as they were. He was ready to
act, but always as a subordinate, upon the prefect's orders and
responsibility.

Sometimes the people, fearing that they would not be able to control
their feelings, took precautions against themselves. The association
of stone-cutters, numbering some four or five hundred, had planned
to make a great but peaceful demonstration at the grotto, and to go
there in procession singing canticles in honor of their patron feast
of the Ascension, which came that year on the 13th of May. But,
feeling their hearts indignant and their hands unsteady under these
proceedings of the authorities, they distrusted themselves, and gave
up the idea. They contented themselves with relinquishing on that day
in honor of our Lady of Lourdes the ball they were accustomed to give
every year to conclude their festival.

"We intend," said they, "that no disturbance, even though
unintentional, and no entertainment not approved by the church, shall
occur to offend the eyes of the Holy Virgin who has deigned to visit
us."


VII.

The prefect perceived all the time, more and more, that coercion
of any ordinary kind was impossible for him on account of this
surprising quietness, this peace as irritating as it was wonderful,
which maintained itself without exterior force in these great
collections of people. There was not even an accident to disturb
it. He was therefore obliged either to retrace his steps in the
course which he had thus far pursued, and to leave the people quite
alone, or to come to open violence and persecution by finding some
pretext for the imposition of arbitrary restraints upon them. It was
necessary either to recede or to advance.

On the other hand, the variety and suddenness of the cures which had
been worked seemed to many good people rather poorly explained by the
therapeutic and mineral properties ascribed to the new spring. Doubts
were raised as to the strict accuracy of the scientific decision
which had been given by M. Latour de Trie. A chemist of the vicinity,
M. Thomas Pugo, claimed that this water was in no way extraordinary,
and had not of itself any healing properties whatsoever; and in this
he was sustained by several other very capable professors in the
province. Science was beginning to assert the entire incorrectness
of the De Trie analysis; and the rumors to this effect had become so
strong that the municipal council of Lourdes took cognizance of them.
The mayor could not refuse to gratify the general desire to have a
second analysis made of the water from the grotto. He, therefore,
without consulting the prefect (which seemed to him useless on
account of the conviction entertained by the latter of the accuracy
of the results of M. Latour), procured from the municipal council a
vote authorizing him to obtain a new and definitive analysis from
Prof. Filhol, one of the principal chemists of our day. The council
at the same time voted the funds required for the due compensation
of the celebrated _savant_.

M. Filhol was a man of authority in modern science, and his decision
would evidently not be open to appeal.

What would be the result of his analysis? The prefect was not chemist
enough to tell; but we think we cannot be much mistaken in thinking
that he must have been somewhat uneasy. The verdict of the eminent
professor of chemistry of the faculty of Toulouse might, in fact,
disturb the combinations and plans of M. Massy. Haste was becoming
imperative, and on this ground especially it was necessary to fall
back or press forward.

In the midst of such various passions and complicated calculations,
people had not failed to subject Bernadette to some new trials as
useless as the preceding ones.

She had been preparing to make her first communion, and made it on
Corpus Christi, the 3d of June. This was the very day on which the
municipal council of Lourdes requested M. Filhol to analyze the
mysterious water. Almighty God, entering into the heart of this
child, made also the analysis of a pure fount, and we may well
believe that he must have admired and blessed, in this virginal soul,
a most pure spring and a most transparent crystal.

Notwithstanding the retirement in which she preferred to hide
herself, people continued to visit her. She was always the innocent
and simple child whose portrait we have endeavored to present. She
charmed all those who conversed with her by her candor and manifest
good faith.

One day, a lady, after an interview with her, wished, in a moment of
enthusiastic veneration easily conceivable by those who have seen
Bernadette, to exchange her chaplet of precious stones for that of
the child.

"Keep your own, madam," said she, showing her modest implement of
prayer. "You see what mine is, and I had rather not change. It is
poor, like myself, and agrees better with my poverty."

An ecclesiastic tried to make her accept some money; she refused.
He insisted, only to be met by a refusal so formal that a longer
resistance seemed useless. The priest, however, did not yet consider
his case as lost.

"Take it," said he; "not for yourself, but for the poor, and then you
will have the pleasure of giving an alms."

"Do you, then, make it yourself for my intention, M. l'Abbé, and that
will do better than if I should make it myself," answered the child.

Poor Bernadette intended to serve God gratuitously, and to fulfil
the mission with which she had been entrusted without leaving her
honorable poverty. And yet she and the family were sometimes in want
of bread.

At this time the salary of the prefect, Baron Massy, was raised
to 25,000 francs. Jacomet also received a gratuity. The Minister
of Public Worship, in a letter which was communicated to several
functionaries, assured the prefect of his perfect satisfaction,
and, while commending all that he had so far done, he urged him to
take energetic measures, adding that, at all costs, the grotto and
miracles of Lourdes must be put an end to.[44]

On this ground, as well as on all the others, it was necessary
either to retreat or to advance.

But what could be done?


VIII.

The plan of the divine work was gradually being developed with
its admirable and convincing logic. But at that time no one fully
recognized the invisible hand of God directing all the events,
manifest as it was, and M. Massy least of all. The midst of the
_mêlée_ is not the best position from which to judge the order of
battle. The unfortunate prefect, who had set out upon the wrong
track, saw in what occurred only a provoking series of unpleasant
incidents and an inexplicable fatality. If we remove God from certain
questions, we are very likely to find in them something inexplicable.

The progress of events, slow but irresistible, was overthrowing
successively all the theses of unbelief, and forcing this miserable
human philosophy to beat a retreat and to abandon one by one all its
intrenchments.

First, the apparitions had occurred. Free thought had at the outset
denied them out-and-out, accusing the seer of being only a tool, and
of having lent herself to carry out a deception. This thesis had not
stood before the examination of the child, whose veracity was evident.

Unbelief, dislodged from this first position, fell back on the theory
of hallucination or catalepsy. "She thinks she sees something; but
she does not. It is all a mistake."

Providence meanwhile had brought together from the four winds its
thousands and thousands of witnesses to the ecstatic states of the
child, and in due time had given a solemn confirmation to the truth
of Bernadette's story by producing a miraculous fountain before the
astonished eyes of the assembled multitudes.

"There is no fountain," was then the word of unbelief. "It is an
infiltration, a pool, a puddle; anything that you please, except a
fountain."

But the more they publicly and solemnly denied it, the more did
the stream increase, as if it had been a living being, until it
acquired prodigious proportions. More than a hundred thousand litres
(twenty-two thousand gallons) issued daily from this strange rock.

"It is an accident; it is a freak of chance," stammered the infidels,
confounded and recoiling.

Next, events following their inevitable course, the most remarkable
cures had immediately attested the miraculous nature of the fountain,
and given a new and decisive proof of the divine reality of the
all-powerful apparition whose mere gesture had brought forth this
fountain of life under a mortal hand.

The first move of the philosophers was to deny the cures, as they
had before denied Bernadette's sincerity and the existence of the
fountain.

But suddenly these had become so numerous and indubitable that their
opponents were obliged to take yet another step in retreat, and admit
them.

"Well, granted; there are some cures certainly, but they are natural;
the spring has some therapeutic ingredients," cried the unbelievers,
holding in their hands some sort of a semblance of chemical analysis.
And then instantaneous cures, absolutely unaccountable upon such a
hypothesis, were multiplied; and at the same time, in various places,
conscientious and skilful chemists declared distinctly that the
Massabielle water had not any mineral properties, that it was common
water, and that the official analysis of M. Latour de Trie was meant
simply to please the prefect.

Driven in this way from all the intrenchments in which, after their
successive defeats, they had taken refuge; pursued by the dazzling
evidence of the fact; crushed by the weight of their own avowals; and
not being able to take back these successive and compulsory avowals,
publicly registered in their own newspapers, what remained for the
philosophers and free-thinkers to do? Only to surrender humbly to
truth. Only to bow the head, bend the knee, and believe; only to do
that which the ripe grain does when its cells begin to fill.

"The same change has taken place," says Montaigne, "in the truly
wise, as in the stalks of wheat, which rise up and hold up their
heads erect and proud as long as they are empty, but, when they are
full and distended with the ripe grain, begin to humble themselves,
to bend toward the ground. So men, when they have tried and sounded
all things, ... renounce their presumption and recognize their
natural condition."

Perhaps the philosophers of Lourdes had not an intellect open or
strong enough to receive and hold the good grain. Perhaps pride made
them inflexible and rebellious to manifest evidence. At any rate,
with the happy exception of some who were converted, that change did
not come to them which has come to those who are truly wise, and they
continued to keep the lofty and proud attitude of the empty stalks.

Not only did their attitude remain thus, but their impiety, after
being disgracefully pursued from one quibble, sophism, or falsehood
to another, and finally driven against the wall, suddenly unmasked
itself and showed its real face. It passed, as we may say, from the
domain of discussion and reasoning, which it had been trying to
usurp, to that of intolerance and violence, which was its proper home.

Baron Massy, who was perfectly informed as to the state of public
feeling, understood with his rare sagacity that, if he took arbitrary
measures and resorted to persecution, he would have a considerable
moral support in the exasperation of the unbelievers, who were
defeated, humiliated, and furious.

He also had been defeated as yet in the contest similar to, if not
exactly the same as, theirs, which he had been carrying on against
the supernatural. All his efforts had come to nothing.

The supernatural, beginning at the base of a desolate rock and
announced only by the voice of a child, had entered upon its course,
overthrowing all obstacles, drawing the people with it, and gaining
to itself on the way enthusiastic acclamations, prayers, and the
cries of gratitude from the popular faith.

Once more, what remained to be done?

One course yet remained: to resist evidence, and to make an attack
upon the multitude.


IX.

In the midst of all these turns of fortune, the question of the
prefectoral stables had become more and more exciting, and greatly
increased the prefect's exasperation. The month of June had come. The
season at the watering-places was beginning, and would soon bring
to the Pyrenees bathers and tourists from all parts of Europe, and
show them the disturbance which the supernatural was making in the
department governed by Baron Massy. The instructions of M. Rouland
were becoming most urgent, and pointed to summary proceedings. On the
6th of June, M. Fould, the Minister of Finance, stopped at Tarbes
on his way to his summer residence, and had a long interview with M.
Massy. It was rumored that this conference related to the events at
the grotto.

The act of drinking at a spring upon the common land of the town
could not be considered as in itself an offence against the law. The
first thing to be done by the opponents of superstition was therefore
to find a pretext for so regarding it. Arbitrary proceedings have not
in France the official right which they enjoy in Russia or Turkey,
but need a cover of law.

The able prefect had an idea on this subject as ingenious as it was
simple. The site of the Massabielle Cliffs belonging to the town of
Lourdes, the mayor, as its administrator, could prohibit any one from
visiting them, for or even without any reason whatever, in the same
way as any private owner of land forbids at his pleasure the trespass
of others upon it. Such a prohibition, publicly announced, would turn
each visit to the grotto into a formal crime.

The plan of the baron hinged upon this idea; and, having hit upon it,
he decided to act it out and play the despot.

Accordingly, on the following day, the mayor of Lourdes was
instructed to issue the following order:

"The mayor of the town of Lourdes, _acting under the instructions
addressed to him by the superior authorities_, and under the laws of
the 14th and 22d of December, 1789, of the 16th and 24th of August,
1790, of the 19th and 22d of July, 1791, and of the 18th of July,
1837, on Municipal Administration;

"And considering that it is very desirable, _in the interest of
religion_, to put an end to the _deplorable_ scenes now presented at
the Grotto of Massabielle, at Lourdes, on the left bank of the Gave;

"Also, that _the care of the local public health devolves upon the
mayor_, and that a great number, both of citizens and strangers, come
to draw water from a spring in the aforesaid grotto, _the water of
which is suspected on good grounds to contain mineral ingredients_,
making it prudent, before permitting its use, to wait for a
scientific analysis to determine the application which may be made of
it in medicine; and,

"Also, that the _laws subject the working of mineral springs to a
preliminary authorization by government_:

"Issues the following

    DECREE.

    "1. It is forbidden to draw water at the aforesaid
    spring.

    "2. It is also forbidden to pass through the common
    land known as the bank of Massabielle.

    "3. A barrier will be put up at the entrance to the
    grotto to prevent access; and

    "Posts will be set bearing these words: 'It is
    forbidden to enter this property.'

    "4. All transgressions of this decree will be
    prosecuted according to law.

    "5. The Commissary of Police,

    "The Gendarmerie,

    "The Gardes Champêtres,

    "And the authorities of the commune,

    "Are entrusted with the execution of this decree.

    "Signed in the mayor's office at Lourdes, on the 8th of
    June, 1858.

                                      "The Mayor, A. LACADÉ.

    "Approved:

          "The Prefect, O. MASSY"


X.

It was not without some hesitation that M. Lacadé consented to sign
and undertake to execute this decree. His character, somewhat
wanting in decision and inclined to compromise, necessarily
disinclined him to such a manifest act of hostility against the
mysterious power which hovered invisibly over the events which had
centred round the grotto at Lourdes. On the other hand, the mayor, as
was very proper, enjoyed the exercise of his office, and perhaps had
even a little undue fondness for it; and his alternative was either
to become the instrument of the prefectoral violence or to resign
the honors of the mayoralty. Although perhaps not really trying,
the situation was certainly embarrassing for the chief-magistrate
of Lourdes. M. Lacadé hoped, however, to conciliate all parties by
requiring M. Massy, as a condition of his signature, to insert at the
head of the decree, at the very outset, the words, "Acting under the
instructions addressed to him by the superior authorities," as above.

"In this way," said the mayor to himself, "I assume no responsibility
before the public or in my own eyes. I have not taken the initiative,
but remain neutral. I do not command, but only obey. I do not give
this order, but receive it. I am not the author of this decree, I
only execute it. All the blame rests upon my immediate superior, the
prefect."

Coming from a soldier in a regiment drawn up for battle, such
reasoning would have been irreproachable.

Having reassured himself on this principle, M. Lacadé took measures
for the execution of the prefectoral edict, having it published and
put on the walls in all parts of the town. At the same time, under
the protection of an armed force and the direction of Jacomet,
barriers were put up around the Massabielle rocks, so that no one,
except by breaking through or climbing over them, could reach
the grotto and the miraculous fountain. Posts with notices, as
prescribed by the decree, were also set up here and there at all
points of entrance to the common land which surrounded the venerable
spot. They prohibited trespass under pain of prosecution. Some
_sergents-de-ville_ and _gardes_ kept watch day and night, being
relieved hourly, to prepare _procès-verbaux_ against all who should
pass these posts to kneel in the vicinity of the grotto.


XI.

There was at Lourdes a judge of the name of Duprat, who was as
violently opposed to the supernatural as Jacomet, Massy, Dutour, and
others of the constituted authorities. This judge, not being able
under the circumstances to sentence the delinquents to anything more
than a very small fine, contrived an indirect method to make the
fine enormous and truly formidable for the poor people who came to
pray before the grotto, and to beg from the Blessed Virgin, one the
restoration of health, another the cure of a darling child, a third
some spiritual favor or consolation under some great affliction.

M. Duprat then imposed upon each offender a fine of five francs.
But, by a conception worthy of his genius, he united under a single
sentence all who disregarded the prefectoral prohibition, either by
forming a party together, or even, as it would seem, by visiting the
grotto in the course of the same day; and he made each liable to
the whole amount of the fine. Thus, if one or two hundred persons
came in this way to the rocks of Massabielle, each one of them was
responsible not only for himself, but also for the others, that is,
to the extent of five hundred or a thousand francs. And as the
individual and original fine was only five francs, the decision of
this magistrate was without appeal, and there was no way to correct
it. Judge Duprat was all-powerful, and it was thus that he used his
power.


XII.

Such an outrageous interference in the important question which had
for some months been pending on the banks of the Gave implied on the
part of the authorities not only the denial of the supernatural in
this particular case, but also that of its possibility. If this had
been admitted for an instant, the measures of the administration
would have been entirely different; they would have had for their
object the examination, not the suppression, of the controversy.

One thing had been absolutely certain, namely, the cures; whether
they had been brought about by the mineral qualities of the water, by
the imagination of the patients, or by miraculous intervention, these
cures were indubitable, and officially recognized by the infidels
themselves, who, not being able to deny them, merely tried to explain
them on some natural principle.

The faithful and perfectly trustworthy witnesses to the efficacy of
the water in their own cases could be counted by hundreds. There was
not a single one who reported that its effects had been prejudicial.
Why, then, all these prohibitory measures, these barriers put up,
this menacing armed force, these persecutions? And why, if such
measures were proper, should not the principle be carried out
further? Why not close every place of pilgrimage where a sick person
has been restored to health, every church where any one has received
an answer to prayer? This question was in every mouth.

"If Bernadette," said one, "without saying anything about visions and
apparitions, had simply found a mineral spring possessing powerful
healing virtues, what government would ever have forbidden sick
people to drink of it? Nero himself would not have gone so far; in
all countries, a reward would have been given to the child. But here
the sick people kneel and pray, and these liveried subalterns, who
crouch before their masters, do not like to have any one prostrate
himself before God. This is the real reason. It is prayer which is
persecuted."

"But shall we allow superstition?" said the free-thinkers.

"Is not the church able to take care of that and to guard the
faithful against error? Let her act in her own province, and do not
make an œcumenical council out of the prefecture, and an infallible
pope out of a prefect or a minister. What disorder has been caused by
these events? None whatever. What evil has occurred to justify your
precautionary measures? Absolutely none. The mysterious fountain has
only done good. Let the believing people go and drink of it, if they
please. Leave them their liberty to believe, to pray, to be healed;
the liberty to turn to God and to ask from heaven consolation in
their grief. You who demand free thought, let prayer also be free."

But neither the anti-christian philosophy nor the pious prefect of
Hautes Pyrenees would consent to notice this unanimous protest, and
the severe measures were continued.

The intolerance of which the enemies of Christianity so unjustly
accuse the Catholic Church is their own ruling passion. They are
essentially tyrants and persecutors.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTE:

[44] This letter of M. Rouland, the text of which, in spite of all
our efforts, we have not been able to procure, was communicated to
several persons, and all the correspondence before us mentions it,
giving it in the same terms which we have just used.




THE SHAMROCK GONE WEST.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "ROMANCE OF THE CHARTER OAK."


About a generation ago, there might have been seen moving across
the Wabash Valley, Indiana, one of those heavy-built wagons, with
broad canvas tops, known in the West as prairie schooners. The
wheels, which had not been greased since they left New Hampshire,
were creaking dolefully, and the youth who urged on the jaded team
declared that the sound reminded him of the frogs in his father's
mill-pond. Attached to the rear of the wagon was a coop, containing
a rooster and half a dozen hens, evidently suffering from their long
confinement; while underneath the coop, swinging to and fro, as if
keeping time to the music of the wheels, was a bucket.

Nat Putnam held the reins with a tight grip, his eyes were fixed
straight in front of him, and his steeple crowned hat, which
looked as if it might have been a legacy from one of his Puritan
forefathers, was placed as far on the back of his head as possible,
so as not to obstruct the view. He was perhaps twenty-one or two
years of age; but it would have been rash to gauge his wisdom by
the date of his birth. If ever there was a Yankee hard to outwit,
it was our friend, and his mother had often declared that her boy
could see through a stone wall. The very shape of his nose, which was
not unlike an eagle's beak, warned you to be on your guard when you
were making a trade with him; while his face, spotted all over with
freckles, could readily assume every expression from highest glee to
deepest melancholy; thus enabling him to fill whatever post in life
might be most congenial, were it circus clown or ruling elder.

"Mr. Putnam, when are we going to halt?" inquired a female voice,
which seemed to come from the interior of the wagon. Before the
youth answered, the speaker had placed herself at his side and was
gazing at him with a woeful look. Poor thing! well might she ask the
question. Ever since he had picked her up in the State of New York,
he had kept travelling on and on, until Mary O'Brien thought he was
never going to stop. Her father, who had been with them the first
week of the journey, had died, and Nat had only tarried long enough
to bury the old man, and let the daughter say a few prayers over his
grave.

"Don't find fault," he replied. "The spirit moves me to keep pushing
West; the further I go, the better I feel. This everlasting woods
must come to an end by-and-by, and when we reach the open country
you'll not grumble."

"But I'm quite worn out," pursued Mary; "and my shamrock is tired
too. If you'd only rest and make a home, and let me plant it! The
jolting of the wagon and the want of sunlight is killing it. Poor
shamrock!" Here she left the seat, but presently returned, carrying
a box filled with earth, in which was a little three-leafed clover.

"See," she exclaimed, "how different it looks from a month ago. 'Tis
drooping fast." As she spoke she gave the plant a kiss. Her companion
glanced at her a moment, then with a smile of pity, "How old are
you?" he asked.

"Eighteen."

"Humph! I guess you're out of your reckoning. If you were that old,
you'd chuck that piece of grass away and take to something serious.
There's my Bible, why don't you read a chapter now and then? 'Twould
instruct you, and keep me from getting rusty--a thing I'd deeply
regret, for I may take to exhorting if farming don't pay."

"Throw my shamrock out of the wagon! Why, Mr. Putnam, 'twas father's,
and he brought it all the way from Tipperary. I'm going to keep
it--as long as I live, I am. It may wither, but I'll never throw it
away."

"Well, well, as you like. But I repeat--why can't you read the Bible
once in a while, instead of wasting your time playing with a lot of
dried peas? Do they come from Tipperary, too?"

"Oh! these are my beads," she replied, taking her Rosary from her
pocket; "and it's praying I am, when you see me slipping these little
round things through my fingers."

"Praying! Then you must have prayed a heap. Are you in earnest?"

"I am."

"Well, can't your spirit be moved without using them peas, or beads
as you call them? It seems to me they must bother you."

"I use 'em, sir, to keep count, or I mightn't say all the Hail Marys
and Our Fathers." Here Nat started, and lifting his sandy eyebrows,
"Aha!" he exclaimed. "So! Indeed! Then 'twas keeping a tally of
your prayers? Well, now, there's something in that. I really didn't
believe you were so 'cute. The devil couldn't say that you hadn't
been square on your devotions when you'd kept a strict tally."

The girl smiled, then, bowing her head, seemed to be whispering
something to the shamrock.

"Different from other gals!" thought Putnam, as he glanced at the
pale face and long, raven hair, which without braid or ribbon flowed
down until it rested on the bottom of the wagon. "Yes, different from
other gals! Can't quite make her out. She ain't a child, yet seems
like one. Keeping a tally of her prayers is the first sign of her
being 'cute. But that's a beginning anyhow. I'll educate her little
by little. Oh! if she'd only take to the Bible." Here he gave the
reins a jerk, then asked Mary to read him a chapter from the Book of
Proverbs.

"I can't read," she frankly replied.

"Can't read! Can't read! That I won't believe. Why, there's Jemima
Hopkins, in Conway, where I come from, that not only reads, but has
started on a lecturing tour; and she ain't--let me see; she was born
the year of the comet--no she ain't a day over fourteen."

"Well, I'm not Jemima Hopkins."

"No, that you ain't; Jemima is a prodigy."

"And I'm a goose."

"But don't own it," said the youth. "Talk as little as possible, and
then the world may not find it out. Why, I know a chap in Conway that
passes for 'larned,' and all 'cause he has the toothache every time
he's asked to make a speech. You see, he puts on a wise look, holds
his tongue, and has so humbugged the folks that they call him Uncle
Solomon."

"Well, I don't want to be taken for what I'm not," rejoined Mary, a
tear trickling down her cheek.

"What ails you now?" exclaimed Nat. "Oh! how different you are from
Jemima Hopkins!" The girl made no response, but sighed, "Father,
father."

"The old man's underground," pursued the youth, in as soft a voice
as he could assume. "Crying won't bring him back. Dry your eyes, and
vow to smash to atoms every whiskey-bottle that ever comes within
your reach. I suspect his constitution was undermined by habits of
intemperance.

"Father didn't drink in Ireland," sobbed the girl. "'Twas at that
horrid grog-shop in New York he got the habit."

"Pure fountain water," murmured Nat, rolling his eyes toward the
heavens, "what a blessed thing thou art! Those who give thee up for
alcohol make a poor swap." Then suddenly fixing his gaze on the young
woman, "Mary," said he, "I never but once tasted liquor. 'Twas at a
cattle show year afore last; and do you know what happened? I paid
two hundred and fifty dollars for a horse that was foundered and
kicked so bad I couldn't drive him home. Now that's something I'd
never have done if my head had been clear; but 'twas a lesson--a good
lesson, and I told Jemima Hopkins (who got wind of it--women find out
everything) to make her first lecture on temperance."

The young woman, who seemed not to have been listening to this
episode in his history, was now moaning piteously for her father, nor
did she cease until her companion in an agitated tone bade her keep
quiet. "Your lamentations," he said, "are horrible to listen to."

"Don't you love your father?" spoke Mary, gazing at him through her
tears. "Wouldn't you cry if he were dead?"

"Cry if he were dead!" repeated the youth with a shudder. "Oh! why
did you ask me that question? You're a strange being. Who gave you
power to look into my heart? Do you know that I quarrelled with
the old man, and left without saying good-by, and every mile I've
travelled his last look has haunted me? 'I am near the grave,' he
said, 'don't abandon me. Attend the mill, 'twill soon belong to you.'
But I laughed in his face. 'The mill,' said I, 'is out of repair, and
only fit to shelter rats and swallows; while the soil won't yield
more than fourteen bushels of corn to the acre.' And then I turned my
back on him."

"When he's dead, you'll be sorry for that," said the girl. "Write
home and ask his forgiveness. Do, before it's too late."

"Home!" murmured the youth as he drove along. "Home!" Oh! what
memories were awakened at the sound of that word which spoke in a
thousand magic whispers! He was again a little boy seated on his
father's knee, in the old house at the foot of Mount Kearsarge,
listening to stories of the Revolution. The wind was howling--the
snow coming in through the key-hole and under the door--a fearful
night to be out. But what did he care about the tempest? He was safe
on his father's knee.

"Mary," said Putnam, just as they reached the foot of a hill, "I'll
take your advice, and write home the first chance I get. And I'll
tell the old man that I'm sorry for the hard words I used. I'll ask
him, too, to follow me-for I'm going to halt by-and-by; and I'll make
him as comfortable as if he were in New Hampshire."

"Do," said the young woman; "'twill bring God's blessing on you."

Here he placed the reins in her hands, then, telling her that he was
going to reconnoitre and find which was the best way to get over the
hill, he left the wagon with a lighter heart than he had known in
many a day.

A little climbing brought him to a spot where the ground was again
level, but where the timber was thicker and the wagon would have hard
work to get along; and he was wondering if the everlasting forest was
never coming to an end, when he was startled by a rustling noise,
and, looking round, saw a wild turkey dart off her nest, while at
the same instant ever so many young ones, which appeared as if only
just hatched, began scattering in every direction. "I'll catch this
fellow," said Nat, running after the nearest bird, "and make him a
present to Mary." But, young as it was, the little thing managed
to reach a clump of hazel-bushes about thirty yards distant, into
which, its pursuer dashed only a step behind, and in his excitement
Nat kept straight on, nor did he stop until he found himself clear
of the thicket. But there he came to a sudden halt, and for almost a
minute stood as if rooted to the earth. Was the scene which had burst
upon him a vision of paradise? The forest had ended, the hill sloped
gently to the west, and before him like a boundless sea, fired by the
rays of the setting sun, lay the prairie of Illinois. Then he shouted
for Mary, who with impatient step hastened up the hill, wondering
what was the matter, and who arrived just as he was beginning to sing
_Old Hundred_. The glorious view brought tears of joy to her eyes,
for she felt sure Nat had at length found a spot where he would be
willing to settle down and make a home, and, clasping her hands, she
likewise offered up a prayer of thanksgiving.

"Isn't this ahead of anything you ever dreamed of?" exclaimed the
youth, when he had finished the hymn. "I've heerd Parson Job at
camp-meeting trying to picture heaven; but, although I'd not have
dared say it aloud, yet really I never felt as if I'd care a straw
about such a place as he described--fellows with wings and harps
skipping around, and singing hallelujahs for all eternity without
ever getting out of breath. But here is a country I can imagine like
the home of the blest."

"Heaven is more beautiful than this," rejoined his companion. "Yet
'tis a glorious country. Oh! settle here, do, and give my shamrock
rest."

"As you say," continued Nat, patting her cheek, and at the same time
piercing her through with his sharp gray eyes. "You're my 'Blessing.'
I owe you more than I ever can pay. When you made me promise to
write home and ask the old man's forgiveness, a load heavier than
a millstone was taken off my heart. You ain't as larned as Jemima
Hopkins, and you ain't 'cute--though keeping a tally of your prayers
is something, and shows what you may become by proper education--but,
ignorant as you are, there's still a great deal in you." Here he
left her, and went back for the wagon, which, after not a little
difficulty, he managed to bring across the hill; then, having chosen
a spot near a spring of water, he unhitched the horses, while Mary
let out the fowls, who clapped their wings as if they were mad; nor
did the rooster stop crowing until the hens--anxious to make their
nests--gathered round him, and forced him to hold his tongue and be
serious.

As it was sunset, Putnam could do little more than reconnoitre the
vicinity of the camping-ground, so, shouldering his rifle, he walked
off, leaving the girl to prepare the evening meal.

But Mary had scarcely lit the fire when he came running back, and
pointed out to her a figure on horseback, advancing along the
prairie. "It may be an Indian," said he. "If he's peaceful, I'll read
him a chapter in the Bible; if he's ugly, I'll shoot."

In about a quarter of an hour the stranger had approached near enough
for them to discover that he was a person of their own race, with
long, white hair, and a cross hanging at his side; so, throwing down
the gun, Nat shouted welcome. The traveller, although astonished to
hear a human voice, did not draw rein, but kept on up the hill, and
in another moment the youth had grasped his hand and was giving it a
hearty shake.

"So soon!" exclaimed the Jesuit missionary--for such was the
character of the new-comer. "Already! Oh! you Americans are a great
people. In a few years you will be across the continent."

"Well, I've fetched up here," said Putnam, grinning. "Not that the
spirit didn't move me to push further West; but yonder gal--my
'Blessing,' as I call her--urged me to stop."

Here the priest glanced at Mary, then remarked:

"Your sister, I suppose, or wife?"

"I haven't any sister," replied the youth, "and ain't 'spliced' yet.
She's a gal I picked up as I was coming through York State. Her
father was with her, and I took him along too; but he died in a few
days, and I buried him on the roadside, and as she had no home I told
her she'd better stick to me. She's awful green, but for all that she
has her good points, and has made me happier than I've been in a
long time."

With this Nat beckoned to Mary, who, as soon as she discovered
in whose presence she was standing, fell on her knees, while the
missionary gave her his blessing.

That evening the youth, true to his promise, wrote an affectionate
letter to his father, which the Jesuit assured him he would deliver
with his own hand. "And I will bring you an answer," said the latter,
"for I shall pass this way on my return to the mission, which I hope
to reach before winter sets in."

The next morning, when Putnam awoke, he found that the priest had
already departed.

"That," said the youth, "is a point in his favor. The early bird
catches the worms. So, Mary, he was one of your preachers? First I
ever saw."

"I hope you liked him," rejoined the girl.

"Well, his coming so handy to take my letter did bend me toward him;
yet I don't think I ever could sit still under his preaching."

"And why not?"

"'Cause he's a papist. I've heerd enough about 'em."

To this the young woman made no response, but gazed sorrowfully at
her companion a moment, then turned her eyes toward the West. The
scene was enchanting. The breeze, which had risen with the dawn, was
coming joyously over the prairie, brushing aside the mist, gathering
up the perfume of ten thousand flowers, and touched Mary's lips
like a breath from the Garden of Eden. And as it played with her
raven hair, and brought the roses to her cheeks, Nat could not help
thinking she was as fair as any lass he had ever met in New Hampshire.

"Yet she don't seem to know it," he said. "She's very green about
her beauty." A herd of deer were feeding only a short distance
away--in every direction the grouse dotted the plain--while circling
round and round, in bold relief against the azure sky, was an eagle.

The whole of this day and the next, Putnam kept hard at work felling
trees to build a log-house, while the girl remained near the wagon,
plying her needle, watching her shamrock, which already showed signs
of renewed life, and gathering the eggs, which the hens insisted on
laying every hour, so as to make up for lost time.

At length, when he had cut down trees enough, he bade Mary follow him
out on the plain, having first filled her apron with stakes--for what
purpose she could not imagine.

"What on earth are you doing?" she exclaimed, after having walked by
his side almost an hour.

"Can't you guess?" he said, halting abruptly. "Are you so green as
all that?"

"Upon my word," replied the girl, "your conduct is distressing; yes,
it frightens me to see you turning and twisting in every direction,
driving these pieces of wood into the ground, and counting on your
fingers. Oh! what'll become of me if you've gone mad?"

"Mad! Ha! Jemima Hopkins wouldn't have said that. Jemima--"

"Was born the year of the comet," interrupted his companion,
laughing, "and I'm only a goose."

"Well, don't own it if you are; I'll educate you. And now here goes
the first lesson." With this he lifted his forefinger, then shutting
one eye, "You must know we won't be long in such a beautiful spot
without company. My wagon-tracks will lead many to Illinois who
wouldn't have stirred from the shadow of Mount Kearsarge if I hadn't
set the example. Me-thinks even now I hear 'em cracking their whips
and bidding good-by to the old folks in Conway. They'll come, too,
from other parts of New Hampshire; ay, by the score and hundred
they'll come. Now, such being the case, why not have a town laid out
by the time they arrive? And right here where we stand shall be our
mansion: 'cause, you perceive, it's a corner-lot. While yonder, on
t'other corner--so as to be handy in case of rain--I'll get 'em to
build the meeting-house; and oh! won't I be proud when it's finished!
And what a fine rooster I'll put on the steeple!"

"No, put a cross," said the young woman, "or I'll not go inside of
it."

"What! a cross, emblem of popery, on this virgin soil, where there's
never been one seen, unless 'twas that which your preacher carried
yesterday? No, indeed! I've heerd enough about popery."

"I'll pray God to enlighten you," said the girl, at the same time
heaving a sigh.

"Well, the more light I get, the less I'll want a popish emblem on
top of the meeting-house." Here Nat struck his forehead, then gazing
at Mary with an expression of anger, "Have you come so far with me,"
he said, "to quarrel at last? Bah! you are a goose." With this he
turned on his heel and walked off, muttering to himself and evidently
very much excited.

Poor Mary did not open her lips again that day, but helped build the
log-house with the greatest good-will. Nor did Putnam address her a
single word. In fact, it was not until a week had gone by and the
dwelling was almost finished that he so far recovered from his ill
humor as to speak to her in a friendly way.

"Mary," said he, looking proudly up at the mud-plastered chimney,
"this is a good beginning. The first house is always the hardest to
erect; and you've worked like a beaver. Tell me, now, are you still
of the same mind about the cross? Will you stay away from meeting
unless I give up my point?"

"I will," replied the girl firmly. "I want a Catholic Church, or none
at all."

"Is my 'Blessing' in earnest?"

"Yes, and praying hard that God may open your eyes to the truth."

"Open my eyes! Well, you're the first mortal ever insinuated that
Nat Putnam wasn't wide-awake. But enough; there's a split between us
nothing can mend. Alas!" Here he walked off to the hill muttering,
"What a pity! what a pity! Ignorant as she is, there's yet something
about her which goes to my heart. I love Mary O'Brien. I might even
ask her to become my wife, if she hadn't such foolish notions about
religion. But not content with making the sign of the cross afore
every meal, she actually wants one put on top of the meeting-house.
What an idea! A cross! A thing never seen on this virgin soil till
that old preacher came along."

For more than an hour the youth wandered about the hillside,
lamenting Mary's obstinacy and superstition, until at length he heard
her blowing the horn for dinner.

"Let her blow," he said, "I'm in no humor to eat anything. I'll just
lay down and take a nap." With this he threw himself on the ground,
and was about settling his head on a comfortable spot, which seemed
as if intended by nature for a pillow, when he gave a start and rose
to his feet. "As I live," he cried, "this is a grave! And if there
isn't a cross at one end of it!--and some thing carved upon the
wood--what can it be?" Here he stooped, and, after brushing away a
little moss which partly covered the knife-cuts, spelt out the words,

    "May his soul rest in peace!"

"Well, now, this does beat all," he continued. "Who'd 'ave believed a
cross had got to this place ahead of me? And there's something about
the epitaph which makes me feel solemn. I wonder how long since these
words were cut. Perhaps for years and years only the deer and eagles
have gazed upon them. Perhaps since the day the corpse was buried, no
lips but mine have spoken over this lonely grave, 'May his soul rest
in peace!'"

For a few minutes the youth lingered by the mound, wrestling with
himself--for he was conscious that a change was coming over him--then
wended his way back to the cabin, resolved to be frank with Mary, and
confess that a cross had got here before Nat Putnam.

He had arrived within a couple of paces of the door, which was
half-open, when, hearing her speaking, he stopped. "She is praying,"
he said. "What a fine voice she has! Better than Jemima's." Then,
softly advancing, he discovered her kneeling on the floor, her hands
clasped, and her cheek wet with tears. In an earnest tone she was
asking God to pardon her father his many sins of intemperance; then
with equal fervor, she began to pray for the speedy return of the
missionary, bringing Putnam a blessing and forgiveness from his aged
parent.

At these words the youth trembled with emotion, and bursting into the
room, "Mary, Mary," he cried, "I take back all I said. I laughed when
you made the sign of the cross, and I called you ignorant. But you're
more larned than Nat Putnam. Your prayer, a moment ago, stirred me
up as I never was stirred at camp-meeting. It made me feel as when
through the dark clouds I see blue sky peeping out. Praying for the
dead! O God! if your preacher comes back and tells me father is dead,
I can do one act of reparation--pray for his soul. And but for you,
I'd not have written home; but for you, black remorse would have gone
on eating deeper and deeper into my soul--and remorse is hell."

"Mr. Putnam," said the young woman, who, startled by his wild look,
had risen to her feet, "my prayers have been heard."

"Yes, they have. I am a Catholic, and vow that our first
meeting-house shall have a cross upon it. O my 'Blessing!' never can
I be grateful enough to the Almighty for throwing you in my path!"

"It seemed an accident," pursued the girl, "yet it may indeed have
been God's work. If it has proved for the good of your soul, it,
perhaps, has saved mine. I cannot tell you how I was tempted when
I lived in the city of New York. Why, one night, when I was out
looking for father, somebody whispered in my ear that I might live
in splendor if I chose. The tenement-house where we lodged seemed to
hold as many people as there are in the whole of Tipperary. Father
and I, with a score of others, slept in a damp room underground. Oh!
when I think of those days, it is like a horrid dream."

"Well, why don't them people follow my tracks? There's land enough
here, dear knows. Yes, let 'em all come; only they must leave whiskey
behind. I want this to be a temperance settlement." Then, after a
pause, "But, Mary, I wonder if amongst them I'd find another like
you, my 'Blessing'?" With this, he rose, and was about to throw his
arms round her neck, when he checked himself; then, after fumbling
a moment in his pocket, went out to where her shamrock was blooming,
and, close by it, he put in the ground a pumpkin-seed. Happy were the
June days which followed. With what a light heart did Mary watch the
youth at work!

"He's a strange being," she would say; "different from any I ever met
in the Old Country. But, for all that, he is good; and when Father De
Smet returns I'll have him baptized, and then there'll be no firmer
Catholic than Nat Putnam."

And the young man--how shall we describe his feelings as, hour after
hour, he follows the plough?

"I'm making a home," he would say, "for my 'Blessing.' How she leans
upon me! If I were to die, what would become of her? She don't know
enough to give lectures, like Miss Hopkins. Oh! if I could only mix
her and Jemima together. Yet she's pretty handy at the needle, and
since she's overhauled my things I ain't lost a button. And yet my
suspenders, darn 'em, do give awful jerks once in a while."

One morning, while he was thus silently praising Mary's skill in
the art of sewing, he stopped, gave a groan, then, letting go the
handle of the plough, "Wrong!" he exclaimed. "There goes one! Rip!
whew!" and, as he spoke, he grabbed a button out of the furrow. For
more than a minute the youth examined it thoughtfully, turned it
over and over, put it to his eye; then, with a grin, "No," he said,
"Mary didn't sew this on; the thread sticking to it ain't the kind
she uses. Ah! Jemima Hopkins! Jemima Hopkins! 'tis some of your work.
Yes, I remember; 'twas just afore you started off lecturing, and when
your head was full of big words. O Jemima Hopkins!"

And so the summer passed away. The corn came up magnificently, and
when it was in all its glory, with the west wind shaking the tassels,
Putnam would call Mary out to admire it. "It looks," he would say,
"like a regiment of militia on parade." The pumpkin-seed which he had
planted was now well above ground, and creeping slowly but steadily
round and round the shamrock. Once the girl was tempted to pull the
vine up, but, on reflection, it occurred to her that she had better
not. And she was right; for under its broad leaves her little plant
found shelter from the scorching rays of the sun; and when the
thunder-storms burst over the prairie, the shamrock would have been
crushed by the great rain-drops, which fell thicker and faster than
ever she had known them fall in Ireland, but for the same kindly
protector.

One evening, toward the middle of September, Nat came home from
work at an earlier hour than usual. He appeared troubled; there was
evidently something on his mind; and, when the girl asked what was
the matter, he scratched his head, devoured her a moment with his
sharp, gray eyes, then, turning on his heel, walked off to a log near
the door. There he seated himself, and, after musing awhile, beckoned
her to approach.

The young woman obeyed, not, however, without some misgiving. "Mr.
Putnam," she thought, "has got tired of living so long in one place,
and is anxious to move further west. Alas!"

In another moment she was seated near him and gazing anxiously in his
face. He returned her look only for an instant, then coughed, and,
rolling up his eyes, "'Tis a solemn thing to do," he murmured. "But I
can't help it, and wouldn't if I could. I've felt it coming over me
ever since the day she persuaded me to write home to father. Jemima
Hopkins would grab at me like a sunfish at a worm in April if I gave
her a chance; but this girl is so innocent-like that really I don't
know how to begin. And then her very dependence on me, the solitude
of this spot, makes her kind of sacred, and I dread lest even words
of purest love might give her offence."

"Well, Mr. Putnam," said Mary, interrupting his soliloquy, "you're
not going to move away? Don't make my shamrock travel any further.
Speak! Oh! I feel so anxious."

At these words, Nat cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles, then,
in a voice singularly agitated for one of his temperament, "Mary," he
began, "I am never going to move from this spot. You are fond of it,
and that's enough." At this unexpected announcement the girl clapped
her hands. "But," he went on, "I am not contented; there is yet
something wanting to make me perfectly happy."

"And, pray, what is it, sir? I know I am very green, but tell me if
the fault be mine; tell me, and I promise to do all I can to please
you."

"Well," he pursued, raising his hand and pointing at the pumpkin-vine
which circled round the shamrock, "do you see yonder plant almost
hiding, and at the same time protecting, the smaller one?"

"I do."

"Well, now, Mary, suppose you be the shamrock, and let me be the
vine?"

As he spoke, he gazed earnestly at her. A faint blush crimsoned the
girl's cheek. She seemed a little startled; and when she replied,
"Yes, I will be your shamrock!" it was in a voice low and scarce
above a whisper.

"Well done!" cried Nat, tossing his hat in the air. "Well done! As
soon as the priest comes, we'll have the knot tied."

That very evening, the missionary arrived, bringing Putnam news
from home, which, although sad indeed, was yet not unmingled with
consolation. His father was dead, but the last words he had spoken
were words of forgiveness to the youth who had abandoned him in his
old age. The Jesuit remained at the log-house almost a fortnight,
instructing the convert in the faith, and, before he departed, the
latter had the happiness of serving a Mass offered for the repose of
his father's soul.

"This never would have happened but for you, my 'Blessing,'" said
Nat, pressing Mary's hand. "Those who will follow me to this
enchanting spot may laugh at my becoming a Catholic, but 'twill be
because they are ignorant. Your religion has in it something sublime;
it reaches across the grave, and, by our prayers, gives us a hold
upon those who have gone before us. Father! father!" Here his voice
failed, and for a minute or two he wept. At length, mastering his
grief, he turned to the priest and signified that he was ready for
the marriage ceremony to begin. It was short; but while it lasted,
a song-sparrow (the first the youth had heard since he arrived in
Illinois) alighted upon the window-sill and piped a joyous carol.
Often had he heard the bird at his home near the foot of Mount
Kearsarge, and now its sweet notes fell on his ear like the voice of
a spirit come all the way from the Saco Valley to wish him happiness
on his wedding-day.

That evening, he took his wife and the priest to visit the mound on
the hillside, and around it they knelt and offered a prayer for the
unknown whose dust lay beneath.

As they sauntered back to the cabin, Putnam expressed a lively hope
that all his friends in New Hampshire would emigrate to the West.
"And when Jemima arrives," he said, closing one eye and looking at
his wife with the other, "you'll see something worth seeing; for
she's awful smart, and when we get arguing together it's diamond cut
diamond. But I'll convert her; oh! I will."

"No doubt," rejoined Mrs. Putnam, "the discussion will be animated
and interesting, for you have a clear head and a ready tongue, while
Miss Hopkins was born the year of the comet; but believe me, husband
dear, it is praying, not arguing, brings into the fold those who are
out of it."

"That must be so," he continued, "for you never argued with me, and
yet now I'm a Catholic. O happy day when Nat Putnam met Mary O'Brien!
And while I will strive by every honest means to improve my worldly
condition, I will remain true to the faith. Illinois is a wilderness
now, but they're coming, Mary, they're coming; and, before your raven
hair turns gray, a city will stand on this prairie; and opposite
our corner-lot shall be a church with a cross upon it--a Catholic
church. And 'twill be thanks to you, my 'Blessing;' yes, thanks to
the shamrock gone West."




SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS OF THE DESERT.


An aged monk said to a brother who was tempted by evil spirits: When
the evil spirits begin to talk to thee in thy heart, do not reply to
them; but arise, pray, and do penance, saying: Son of God, have mercy
on me. But the brother said to him: Behold, O father, I do meditate,
and there is no compunction in my heart, because I do not understand
the meaning of my words. And he replied: Yet do thou meditate; for
I have heard that Abbot Pastor and other fathers have spoken this
proverb: The charmer knows not the meaning of the words which he
says, but the serpent hears, and knows the virtue of the charm, and
is humbled and subjected to the enchanter. So also with us, even
though we be ignorant of the meaning of what we say, yet the evil
spirits, hearing, tremble and depart.

       *       *       *       *       *

Abbot Pastor said: The beginning of evils is to distract the mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Abbot Elias said: I fear three things. One, when my soul shall depart
from the body; the second, when I shall come before God; the third,
when sentence shall be pronounced upon me.

       *       *       *       *       *

Archbishop Theophilus, of holy memory, when he was about to die,
said: Blessed art thou, Abbot Arsenius, because thou hast ever had
this hour before thy eyes.




VESPERS.

    [The term Vespers is derived from Vesper, the star that
    appears toward sunset, the time appointed by ancient
    usage for the recital of the Evening Song.--_Hierugia._]


      Evening quiet overspreads the sky:
      Vesper rises clear and liquidly.
        Star of prayer! whose ray
          Brings spirit-whispers,
        Brings the saintly hour
          Of holy vespers.

      Not a bell, perchance, of prayerful cry,
      Yet the pious foot comes mindfully!
        O'er the flinty street,
          Or daisied meadow,
        Glides, from near or far,
          The Christian shadow!

      Evening quiet overspreads the soul:
      Restful rites the restless pulse control.
        Now the tuneful waves
          Of organ tremble;
        Now the tuneful prayers
          God's choir resemble!

      Words of ancient plaint, flung long ago
      From a kingly harp's melodious throe;
        Words to her, who oped
          Of Christ the vision,
        Gabriel words--still serve
          Their music-mission!

      Now the censer's aromatic breath
      Wreathes th' abode of One who smiles on death!
        Now the portals ope--
          Ah! dread appearing!
        Christian, veil thy glance,
          A God revering!

      --Changed to flesh and blood my daily food:
      Changed the bread and wine to flesh and blood!
        Yet, my God, forgive
          If reason falter:
        Faith, alone, sustains me
          At thine altar!

                                      RICHARD STORRS WILLIS.




THE LEGEND OF SANTA RESTITUTA.


Ischia is one of the gems of the Bay of Naples, and fortunately one
of the least known and least visited of the tourist-haunted island
group.

The Monte Epomeo rises in its midst, a mass of tufa rock, perforated
here and there by _fumarole_, that is, openings through which
volcanic exhalations are constantly sending forth their thin blue
threads of hazy smoke to mingle with the blue and hazy atmosphere
that veils the whole island in a fairy and gossamer robe. Two or
three villages are built upon the low girdle of sand that lies at
the foot of the mountain; on one side of the island are ledges of
rock where the vine grows, on the other is a projection, or rather
a separate rock, on which is built a state-prison. Only one road
passes through Ischia, and no wheels ever leave their marks there,
save when a royal visitor brings a modern carriage with him. The
inhabitants walk barefoot, and the strangers ride donkeys, or are
carried in open sedan-chairs, called "portantine." The women lounge
about at their cottage-doors, spindle in hand, their heads curiously
bound up in silken handkerchiefs, and their ears weighed down by huge
ear-rings. There is a wonderful and unspeakable charm hanging over
the place; the beauties that elsewhere in Italy hardly surprise you,
seem to hold you spell-bound here. The sea is now blue, now green,
now purple, always of an intense color, and seemingly an inverted
firmament, where the white fishing-smack sails stand for clouds,
and the little silver-crested wavelets for stars. The air is very
pure, yet warm and balmy, and, when the storm visits the island,
even the lightning must make itself more softly beautiful than
elsewhere, for it is often seen in rose and violet colored flashes,
making the heavens like to a vault of opal. The myrtle grows on the
mountain-side, and the oleander blooms lower down, the vines climb
from the water's edge to the roofs of the few rustic hotels the
island boasts, and among all these beauties are hidden springs of
medicinal water and hot sea-sands, all of them much used by Italians
chiefly in the shape of baths. The sand-bath is a hole within four
shanty-like plank walls, and the patient has himself buried in it up
to his neck for the time prescribed.

Of course, much is said to strangers concerning the beauty of the
sunrise from the top of Epomeo. But, as usual, when you go to see
the sun, you find him behind sulky curtains of gray-white clouds
that roll like another sea between the blue unseen Mediterranean
and the bright purple heaven above. Still, this, too, is beautiful,
though coldly so, and very unlike the lovely western sunrise over
the Atlantic. But the glory of Italy is in her sunsets, and toward
evening sea and mountain, tufa rock and yellow sand, put on a
marvellous robe, a veritable "coat of divers colors," and life seems
to breathe and sigh in things that before seemed lifeless.

Ischia, like all Italian localities, has its patron saint; they call
her _Santa Restituta_.

When persecution was raging in Egypt, in the third century, says the
simple legend, the body of a young maiden, with a millstone tied
round her neck, floated across the sea and rested in a creek on the
south side of the island. The creek is called after the martyr to
this day, and above it are rocks whose black mass literally overhangs
and roofs in part of the bay. Just where her body rested, in a
sandy, barren place, lilies grew up and continued to bloom; they are
there now, and are very peculiar as well as very lovely, a sort of
cross between the lily and the iris, with delicate pointed petals,
five in number, and a tall smooth stem with very little verdure.
Not only do these flowers grow nowhere else in the island or out of
it, but they will not even grow in a land of their own sandy soil
if transplanted with a quantity of it elsewhere. The millstone that
was round the saint's neck is said to be embedded in a wall in the
neighborhood of her church: there _is_ such a stone, whether the
same or not no one can tell. Later on, a church was erected over the
remains of the martyr, and she was chosen patroness of the island. A
very curious Byzantine figure, gilt all over and nearly life-size,
was made in wood and placed over the altar. In one hand, she was
pictured as holding a book of the Gospels, and, in the other, a
full-rigged vessel. When the south of Italy was invested by Saracen
hordes, Ischia did not escape pillage, and of course, judging the
most precious things to be in the church, as they always were in
Catholic times, the marauders rushed to Santa Restituta's shrine, and
attempted to carry off the golden statue, as they believed it to be.
The statue, naturally, was a movable one, and used to be carried in
procession on certain stated occasions. But now it remained rooted
to the spot, and no effort of the stalwart infidels could move it a
hair's-breadth from its pedestal. In rage and disappointment, one
of them struck at it savagely with his scimetar, and a mark upon
its knee still attests this outrage. The sacrilege was promptly
punished, for the men themselves now found they were unable to
move, and remained invisibly chained at the foot of the miraculous
image. If they were released, the legend does not say; let us hope
that they were freed by faith, and that conversion followed this
strange sign. The statue remained immovable ever since, and another
image was made to be carried in procession, with the addition of
the miraculously riveted Saracens, in a small painted group on the
same stand as the figure itself. Whether the legend be absolutely
true or only partly so, whether fact and figure be mixed together,
and things spiritual typified under tangible forms, it is not for us
to decide, but the simple faith of the happy islanders is certainly
to be admired, and even to be envied. They have yearly rejoicings,
fireworks, processions, songs, and services, and a military parade
of what national guards they can muster, to celebrate their saint's
anniversary; they are proud of her, and point out her statue and tell
her history to strangers with the same enthusiasm with which soldiers
speak of a favorite general.

And, if my surmise be true, they have had her celebrated in art by no
less a painter than Paul de la Roche, whose "Martyre" is well known
all over Europe as one of the chastest, truest, and most reverent as
well as most beautiful representations of martyrdom. He has painted
a fair maiden in a white robe, and her hands tied with a cruel rope
in front. The long, golden hair is gently moved, like a strange and
new sea-weed, by the rippling water that flows over it; the cord cuts
into the flesh of the white, delicate hand, and the water seems
reverently eager to pour its coolness into the wounds and to stay the
cruel fever in them; the face is that of an angel that is looking
on the Father's countenance in highest heaven; a coronal of light
rests, like a sun-touched cloud, just above her head, and in the dark
background a large mass of overhanging rock, just like the rocks of
Ischia, frown down upon the sea-green bay, and shadows of muffled,
lurking figures are seen watching the floating wonder from above.

If the painter had not Santa Restituta in his mind, the coincidence,
at least, is curious. Yet it is true that so many blessed saints died
this death that he may have meant to portray a typical rather than
an individual representation in this picture, which is one of his
masterpieces.

There is another floating figure, with golden hair and folded hands,
which is more familiar to most people than this one, and, though the
comparison is strange, I cannot help introducing it here. I mean
the figure of Tennyson's _Elaine_, whom Gustave Dore has made his
own in his unapproachable illustration of the _Idyls of the King_,
but whose history and especially whose death has been the source
of many a painter's inspiration. I hardly know one more touching
object in all modern poetry, save that more solemn and more dignified
one that closes the idyl of _Guinevere_, and whose calm sublimity
almost touches the divine. But though the analogy of the "Lily Maid
of Astolat" borne down the river to the oriel-windowed palace of
Arthur's Queen to that other lily maid, the virgin-martyr of Egypt,
be brought to mind by the likeness in both cases of the floating
waters and the unbound hair; yet here the analogy ends, for we see
that as far as heaven is from earth, so far are these two beautiful
figures removed one from the other. Both died for love, both died
pure; but the love of the one was such as, once quenched in death,
would never live again, for she would be "even as the angels;" while
the love of the other not only did death not quench, but would make
tenfold more ardent, as she would "follow the Lamb whithersoever he
goeth," and sing "the new canticle" no man could sing but those "who
were purchased from the earth."

Tennyson's _Elaine_ is a figure of earth in earth's most sinless form
and most innocent meaning, yet still earthly, still imperfect, still
embodying the idea of man's natural weakness and inherent decay. Paul
de la Roche's "Martyre," or Ischia's Santa Restituta, is a figure of
heaven, an already glorified soul, who, having conquered the flesh,
the world, and the devil, having offered her body to God "a living
sacrifice," and having "put on immortality," has passed beyond our
understanding and beyond our criticism into that region of bliss
whose very dimmest ray would be unbearable glare to our eyes, and the
full vision of which would bring a blessed and a painless death in
its inevitable train.

It has been the fashion of our days to think lightly of legends and
traditions of saints, to ridicule their so-called _inventors_, and
pity their supposed _victims_. On the other hand, we see families
clinging to certain versions of certain facts relative to their long
descent and the doughty deeds of their world-famed forefathers;
we see nations dwelling complacently on marvellous explanations
concerning their origin, and proudly pointing to distant feats of
knightly prowess performed by northern Viking and Frank or Vandal
chief; we see tradition already growing up like irrepressible vines
around the memory of great men buried perchance but yesterday, and
even around the persons of living men to whom the wheel of fortune
or the rarer gift of genius has given a temporary prominence; and
is it strange that Catholics should love to repeat similar legends
concerning _their_ forefathers, the founders of _their_ spiritual
nation, _their_ forerunners in the kingdom of heaven? We, too, have
in our faith a family pride, a national pride, and a pride born of
personal friendship and attachment for some of God's living saints,
his yet uncrowned champions. We are all one family, we all call to
God "Abba," that is, Father; we are "the sons of God" and the "joint
heirs with Christ." We cannot help rejoicing over the glory of one of
our brethren or sisters; we cannot help being proud of their virtues
and seeking to perpetuate and honor their memory. We are all one
nation, too, for there is but one Head, one Lord, one Christ; and in
the history of the saints we learn the history of the church, our
state, our country, our kingdom. And among _our_ great men, whom no
wheel of fortune but the divine decree of Providence has lifted to
pre-eminence among us, and with whom, for the most part, holiness and
humility take the place of genius--is it strange we should single out
some of whom, having known them, we willingly speak and hear little
details told, and treasure them up, and weave them into heart-poems
for our children's children? So grows tradition, and a mind that
has no place in it for tradition's evergreen vines to spread their
beautiful network is but a misshapen likeness of the mind that
God created in Adam, and endowed with sympathetic tenderness and
appreciative discrimination.

Some among us have had the happiness to be brought into contact with
men greatly favored by God. And who that had daily seen his humble,
hidden convent-life, that sweet soul-poet and child-like priest,
Frederick Faber, could fail to accumulate concerning him loving
traditions, and what our descendants may hereafter call fond and vain
legends? And who that had once heard the voice of Henry Newman, the
leader of the school of thought of our days in the simple converse
he loves best, or in the plain instructions to his school-children
at catechism, could help treasuring up such a recollection as more
precious by far than a token of royal friendship, or the memory of
some unexampled intercourse with state minister or powerful diplomat?
There are others who have lived or are living in the same cold,
beliefless days as ourselves, and whose presence, either tangible
through personal acquaintance or reflected through their sermons or
their books, is a perpetual fragrance, which we seek ever to keep
alive in the garden of our hearts by heaping up and stowing away
in our minds all manner of details belonging to their useful and
everyday lives.

Pius IX. and Montalembert, and the Curé d'Ars, and Father Ignatius
Spencer, and the Père de Ravignan; Lacordaire and the convert Jew,
Hermann, the musician and Carmelite who has but lately passed away,
and will be remembered, let us trust, even as the Fra Angelico of the
nineteenth century; Mother Seton and the Sœur Rosalie; Thomas Grant,
the saintly Bishop of Southwark, who meekly laid down his burden in
the City of the Catacombs when his Lord called him from the Council
of the Vatican to the foot of the throne; and Henry Manning, and
John Hughes, and others yet whose names are known only to a few
friends on earth, but widely known among the hosts of heaven, sons of
Benedict and daughters of Scholastica, all these are among the chosen
ones whose names cannot but be speedily wreathed in legendary and
traditional history. And even if it happens that some detail lovingly
told comes to be exaggerated, and have accessories linked to it by
earnest--if indiscreet--zeal, shall that be accounted as a crime
and a malicious distortion of truth? An error of love can be surely
forgiven by mothers who are proud of their battle-stained sons; by
children who worship the mother that taught them, and the father who
guided and corrected them; by soldiers who tell round the camp-fire
of the iron men who led them to victory, or who bore with them and
for them an equally glorious captivity and defeat; by sick men who
do not forget the "Sister's" care; by all, in a word, who have a
heart wherewith to be grateful, a mind wherewith to admire, a memory
wherewith to give honor.

What is true of the saints of to-day is so, and was so from the
beginning, of the saints of long ages ago. And if their history has
come down to us woven of fact and legend both, it is thus only the
more historical to us, for it tells us the history of the church's
love for her glorified children, as well as the record of the real
life of those children themselves. Santa Restituta has thus led us
far from Ischia's scarcely known beauties and simple island shrine,
but she now leads us back to her own sanctuary by the thought here
suggested, that, even as many hidden saints walk among us now, so
there are many hidden nooks of the earth, like her sea-girt home,
where faith is still the daily bread of the people, and where an
almost primeval innocence reigns under the protection of that happy,
childlike ignorance which, according to modern civilization, is the
root of all evil.

Hidden saints are like to these little inclosed gardens of faith;
their hearts are valleys sequestered from the glare of the world's
unbelief and the world's selfishness; their souls are as rock-bound
creeks where lilies grow and wavelets ripple over golden sands; with
them, too, the sunset of life is ever the most glorious hour, as it
is with Ischia's myrtle-clad rocks and vine-crowned cottages.

Santa Restituta, pray for us, and, if we are not worthy to be of the
number of the saints ourselves, suffer us to be the historians, the
biographers, the poets of such saints as those who are known only
by name in one remote corner of God's universe, or of such other
saints of whom glimpses are now and then revealed to us by the very
simplicity and utter unguardedness of their sweet and undefiled
nature.




A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE.


    [We have received and publish the following letter with
    great pleasure, and it is to be hoped that others will
    take up the same subject, and express their views upon
    it. Perhaps we may even venture to suggest the project
    of a convention or congress of heads of colleges under
    the auspices of the prelates, in order to discuss and
    resolve on useful measures connected with Catholic
    education.]

DEAR MR. WORLD:

You have a talent for evoking thought. The excellent paper on higher
education, which you published in your issue for March, has set me
a-thinking; and as I hold you to be a wise counsellor, I hope you
will allow me to communicate my poor thoughts to you. I want to talk
to you about some of the difficulties of Catholic education in the
United States.

By the way, the subject of your article was working at the same
time in several minds. I read in the _Galaxy_ for March a long
dissertation, full of idolatry for Germany, on higher education; and
the students of St. John's College, Fordham, New York, celebrated
Washington's birthday by a series of splendid speeches on the same
theme. Would you, Mr. WORLD, feel complimented if I should exclaim,
"Les beaux esprits se rencontrent"?

Well, then, in the matter of college education--for that is what I
have been thinking on--as in a multitude of other matters, Catholics
in this country owe eternal gratitude to their clergy. If we have
any colleges at all, to whom do we owe them? To the zeal and
self-sacrifice of our Christian Brothers, of our priests and our
bishops. I think that all our colleges were established by churchmen,
whether secular or regular. It were, perhaps, invidious to mention
names--but we ought not to withhold a deserved and willing tribute of
praise from the heroic men who gave us our colleges. We say heroic,
for these men were truly such. Lengthy reflection is not necessary
in order to justify the epithet. What a mountain of obstacles had
to be cleared away to purchase the site of these colleges, to build
them, to man them, to govern and carry them on! Education is a noble
and fertile subject to speak about. It is an immense blessing to
be really educated. But what an amount of toil and anxiety does
not this delicious fruit cost those who seek to bestow it on our
children! How many harassing days and nights have not the faithful
superior, professors, and prefects of a college to spend in the
exercise of their several functions! All the world knows that boys
are not a very inviting material to work on. They are unreasoning,
ungrateful, thoughtless, inconstant; often weak, lazy, perverse, and
incorrigible. Many of them act in college as though they went there
to torment everybody--or, at most, for the benefit of the officers,
and not at all for their own good. Of course, if boys were merely to
be taught lessons, much of the trouble connected with their education
could be avoided. But Catholic colleges mast make moral men and
Christians--and that, as we all know, is a difficult task, for the
young heart is very wayward. Then, too, what heartburns with fathers
and mothers and guardians! How little pecuniary compensation for the
educator! Yet our clergy, be it said to their undying honor, have
nobly braved, outfaced, all these privations and humiliations. They
are doing so even at this day. Let them refuse to sacrifice their
time, talents, health, and temporal weal, and we ask whether there is
in the United States a single Catholic college which would not have
to suspend operation to-morrow? We must remember that our colleges
are not endowed. In a financial point of view, they depend almost
entirely on the fees of their students. Commonly, too, they have more
or less of standing debts, for which yearly interest must be paid.
Were the presidents, professors, and prefects of such houses to exact
fat salaries in return for their sublime abnegation, what, Catholic
Americans, would be the fate of all your colleges? Do you often think
of this when, amid the ease and luxury of your drawing-rooms and
dinner-tables, you run down this college, sneer at that other, and
wonder why a third does not do this, that, and the other thing in
the shape of improvement? You have colleges because your clergy are
willing to sacrifice their time and tastes, to submit to drudgery, to
wear out their very lives, and live and die in poverty. All praise to
you, Catholic priests and bishops, to you religious orders of these
United States.

These remarks go to prove that our first difficulty in the walks of
higher education is the slender means of our colleges.

In the next place, it appears to your unworthy correspondent
that very little is done to put an end to this precarious and
from-hand-to-mouth existence. What generosity does the laity show to
our colleges? People contribute munificently to convents, asylums,
churches, etc.; but how many make donations to colleges; how many
found prizes, medals, or scholarships in them? Very few, at least
so far as my knowledge goes. Colleges, like poor bears in winter,
are supposed to live on their own fat. No one asks them whether they
are in debt, in need of money, would not accept of a collection of
books, minerals, philosophical apparatus, or anything of that kind.
No one says: Wouldn't you allow me to build you a good gymnasium,
an exhibition hall, give you an organ for your chapel, or transfer
to you some of my shares in this or that lucrative business? No,
dear colleges, be comforted. Live on as best you can. The result
is that these institutions can never fully shake off their debt,
they can make but little material improvement, or, if they attempt
improvements, it must be at a snail's pace. Even graduates will
forget the wants of Alma Mater, and despise her for her blameless
penury, just as some gross-natured upstarts scorn their poor parents
and friends. What a different spectacle we should soon witness in our
colleges were gentlemen of means to show their zeal for education,
and follow the wholesome example of Protestants by bestowing upon
our seats of learning a portion of their wealth! Progress would then
be possible, college bills could be lightened entirely or at least
partially, gratuitous education might be granted to deserving young
men. As things now stand, charity is out of the question for most of
our colleges. We must endeavor to beget and promote in our people
this enlightened and patriotic spirit toward our colleges.

Difficulty number three: Many persons take a narrow view of
education. Some act upon what may be called the system of the three
R's, that is readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic. They fancy their sons
educated when they can read, write, and cast up accounts. Others may
raise their eyes a little higher, but in the end, like the old Romans
laughed at by Horace, they value education only in so far forth as
it is a money-making machine. Few are broad-minded enough to see
in education a development of the entire man, and, as a necessary
inference, a slow and gradual process. In consequence of the errors
afloat on this head, parents will not allow time sufficient for the
education of their children. They force colleges to crowd an immense
circle of studies into a short space. The consequences are not
flattering. The mind cannot be thoroughly developed, and education
degenerates into ill-digested instruction. Depth is lost. Your paper,
which led me to think upon all these topics, speaks very sensibly
about philosophy. But how, I ask, can anything like a deep, serious,
thorough course of philosophy be taught in one year? Still, that is
all our young men get, and that is all the generality of parents
will concede. Look at our colleges--how many graduates of the first
year return to study a second? Were it not better to give no degree
until the close of the second year? The diploma once obtained,
though it is only a cowardly sheep-skin, fills our young graduates
with valor, and makes them fancy that they are fit to play roaring
lion all the country over. Every college should devote at least two
years of its course to the study of philosophy. Education without
a sound philosophy must always be a mere broken shaft, a truncate
cone, an abortion. We ought to organize a crusade for the welfare of
philosophy in our colleges. I was right glad, Mr. WORLD, to hear
you advocating the study of this crowning branch of education, and
insisting, I think, upon sound scholasticism. Scholastic philosophy,
that is the philosophy.

My next difficulty shall be proposed in the form of a question: Could
not our Catholic colleges come to an understanding, so as to have
in all of them about the same programme and the same text-books?
At present, there is a very great divergence on these points. For
instance, what a multitude of grammars we have, and what wretched
things for boys some of these grammars are! They lack method and
logic, they dive too deep into philosophy, and are too learned and
philosophical. Banish philosophy and philology to their proper
spheres. When grammars of the dead languages were much more modest
and unpretending, Latin and Greek were better known, better written,
if not also better spoken. What I say of grammars applies with equal
force to many other books now used in our colleges. A convention of
our college authorities for the discussion of these topics might do
as much good as many other conventions, if not far more.

Parents and guardians have a great share in the troubles experienced
by colleges. Nowadays, boys decide almost everything with respect
to their education. It is they who make choice of their college,
determine whether they shall study, how long and what they shall
study. All that parents seem to have to say or do in the matter is
to obey their whimsical offspring. I can understand that there is
no use in forcing a lad to study what he reasonably cannot learn;
but I cannot see why the management of his education should be given
over to him in fee-simple. This violation of the fourth commandment
throws honest colleges into a dilemma. On the one hand, they would
like to keep their students, and, on the other, they feel bound
to make those students work. But the young lord of his destinies
often does not wish to study, and, if he is urged to do so, he
grows dissatisfied, says the officers are too cross, and leaves the
institution. Should he not be urged, he will idle away his time,
annoy everybody, learn nothing, and finally, by his ignorance and
bad conduct, injure the reputation of his college. Parents, when
they send their sons to college, should not forget that these sons
are not immaculately perfect. They need a strong dose of discipline.
They must be taught by word and deed that they have to study and
to obey. The word of college authorities should weigh more in the
balance than that of weak, lazy, and roystering young lads. If these
ideas prevailed somewhat more than they do, and were acted up to,
colleges would have an easier task to perform, their task would be
better performed, and the education given to boys would be more
vigorous. There is too much womanish fondness, too much indulgence,
shown to boys in these days. We live in an age of feeling, of likes
and dislikes. Energetic, self-controlling, strong manhood is on the
wane. Magnificent men could be made out of our American boys. I love
them dearly. Their character is full of fine traits. They are clever,
generous, open, and manly. Why should they be emasculated by false
kindness and compliance?

Once in college, let us subject these boys to solid and stiff
examinations. Those who fail, if they are in the graduating class,
should not graduate that year, no matter what great man or great
woman may intercede, scold, or shed tears in their behalf. No
_prædeterminatio physica_ should settle on the gentlemen of the
graduating class. Because they happen to be in that class, their
graduation must not become a fated necessity. No doubt, it is a very
nice sight at the close of the year, on the annual commencement day,
to behold a large number of young gentlemen receiving their diplomas.
The heart of Alma Mater throbs with gladness at the beautiful
spectacle. But it is a much nicer thing for Alma Mater to have to
say that her diploma is deserved, and that she tells no lie to the
public when she asserts that her graduate is _bonæ spei et rite
probatus_. Then the diploma is a testimony to worth: it is an honor
to possess it. If undergraduates miss their examination, put them
down mercilessly into the class below that in which they fail. By
this process you will lose a few boys, but you need not regret them.
For, first, they were either idlers or stupid fellows. In the next
place, you can raise the standard of your classes, you will make your
pupils work seriously, get a good name for your college, and end by
having more students. Sensible people will always send their children
to institutions that insist upon hard study and rid themselves of
idlers.

Another difficulty which I must notice regards the action, or
rather inaction, of the state. It is a pity that our government,
with all its fuss about education, does so little real honor to
higher education. What is the necessity or emolument of a diploma
from a college? I think that, without a diploma, I can occupy any
position in the gift of the country, save perhaps that of officer
in the regular army or navy. In one way, the state is too much of a
busybody; in another, it does not fulfil its office in regard to
education. But I do not wish to open the question, to-day, on the
office of the state in education.

One of the gravest obstacles in the way of higher education arises,
I think, from our colleges themselves. It is this: our colleges are
too numerous. With the exception of some boys from Spanish America,
we receive no pupils from other countries. At home, the number of
Catholics who can afford a college education for their children
is limited. Supposing, then, all our colleges patronized, it is
impossible that any of them should reach a respectable figure in the
number of its attending pupils. Besides, it must be no easy task to
find competent professors and directors for so many colleges. If we
had fewer colleges, each one would have a larger number of pupils,
and be more fully provided with all that is necessary for education.
Yet there appears to be a stronger desire to open new colleges than
to perfect those actually in existence. Why do we thus weaken and
scatter our forces? Why do we render success and large, grand centres
of learning next to impossible? Grammar-schools, or schools in
which boys are prepared for college, should be multiplied, but not
colleges. Then our colleges would resemble a university more than
they do to-day. It is a great plague for them to be obliged to do
at once the work of the grammar-school and of the college properly
so-called. They are burdened with a crowd of children, who are no
companions for young men, and lessen the dignity of a college. And
now, Mr. WORLD, let me end these remarks by asking: When shall we see
each diocese in the Union possessing a _petit séminaire_? When shall
we see arise in our midst a noble Catholic university?

      Yours, etc.




NEW PUBLICATIONS.


    ROME AND GENEVA. Translated from the French. With an
    introduction by M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of
    Baltimore. 8vo. Pamphlet. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co.

We always knew that the Archbishop of Baltimore is an able writer
of the more solid kind of essays, but were not before aware how
gracefully he can use his pen in description. In his preface to the
pamphlet whose title is given above, he draws a very pretty and
graphic picture of Geneva, the ancient headquarters of Calvin, and
in right, though not in possession, the See of St. Francis of Sales.
Some interesting, curious, and gratifying facts in connection with
that city are mentioned by the archbishop. He tells us that half
the population of the city and canton is Catholic, and of the other
half only one-tenth is Calvinistic. John Calvin's house is a convent
of Sisters of Charity. The gloomy heretiarch and his companions are
unhonored and almost unknown in the city which was once called the
Rome of Protestantism, but which is now a sort of temporary centre
of Catholic activity in Europe, while the Holy City is desecrated
by the rule of the Lombard usurper. The pamphlet itself is a letter
addressed by a young law-student of Geneva to our old friend the
eminent romance-writer, Merle d'Aubigné and one of his _confrêres_,
both of whom, it appears, seized the occasion of the absence of
the bishop at the Council to make a feeble assault on the church.
It is a manly, sensible letter, more interesting as a specimen of
what a young student can achieve in a polemical combat with veteran
antagonists than from anything new or peculiar in its arguments.
The youthful champion uses his sling and pebble with skill and
dexterity, although he had not so hard a skull as that of Goliath of
Gath to crack. Our young gentlemen who are training for professional
life ought to be interested to see how he does it, and the noble,
chivalrous spirit of faith and honor which is manifest in the letter
is one we desire to see extended as much as possible among these
generous youth who are able to do as much for the cause of truth.


    THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS. An address delivered at
    Horticultural Hall, Boston, February 6, 1870. By Thomas
    Wentworth Higginson.

"Our true religious life begins when we discover that there is an
inner light, not infallible, but invaluable, which lighteth every man
that cometh into the world. Then we have something to steer by, and
it is chiefly this, and not any anchor, that we need." These are the
two opening sentences of the above lecture. If an "inner light, not
infallible" is all that our author has "to steer by," we beg, for
our part, not to enter on board the ship of which he is the captain.
In this case, it is not the "inner light, not infallible" that is
invaluable, but the anchor, unless one would foolishly expose himself
to certain shipwreck.

If this be man's plight, then let him keep silence until he finds
something that will give him certitude. For what else can an erring
guide lead to than error? It is the blind leading the blind into the
ditch.

Think, too, of the absurdity of the author's pretensions, with such
a guide, to criticise all religions in order to give to the world
"_the_ religion"!--"the religion of all ages!"

These free-religionists who talk so much about the value of reason
have yet to learn its true value and the great dignity of the human
soul. If the author's premise be true, it is an insult to our common
sense to read his lecture.


    THE HAPPINESS OF HEAVEN. By a Father of the Society of
    Jesus. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 372. Baltimore: John Murphy &
    Co. 1871.

We might perhaps appropriately designate this work as "The Popular
Theology of Heaven:" _theology_, because it is strictly accurate in
its dogmatic teaching; _popular_, because the whole subject, without
being lowered, is brought within the sphere of the popular mind. We
might call it also the "Spiritual Geography of Heaven," since it
gives us such a knowledge as we can have at this distance of the
promised land which we must hope one day to inhabit. We are told what
is that beatific or happy-making vision of God which is the essential
bliss of the elect; what is the light of glory by means of which the
soul sees God; what are the occupations of heaven, the social joys
of the blessed; the qualities and enjoyments of the glorified body
and senses; the degrees of beatitude, yet the complete and satiating
happiness of each individual, without envy or jealousy, without
regret of the past or fear for the future. The book presents an
elegant appearance, and is brought out in Messrs. Murphy & Co.'s best
style.


    DE DOMINI NOSTRI JESU CHRISTI DIVINITATE. 3 vols.
    Turin: Marietti. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1870.

To the many excellent volumes which Father Perrone has contributed
during his long career to the theological library, he has now made in
the work before us an addition in no way inferior to his previous
writings. It is a work addressed to the learned alone, and in the
language of the learned; but it is one which they will prize very
highly, not only for its depth of theological lore, but also for its
peculiar fitness to the present time. Its subject is the fundamental
dogma of Christianity--now so much attacked and, we may add, outside
of the Catholic Church so little believed--the Divinity of Jesus
Christ, which it proves and defends against the infidels, the
rationalists, and the mythics of our day.

In the first volume, we have the proofs drawn from the pages of the
Old Testament; in the second, those furnished by the New Testament.
The third volume establishes the Divinity of Christ on evidence drawn
from the institution of the church, and, in particular, from the
institution of the Roman Pontificate. The author demonstrates how
the promises made by the Redeemer to his church, the characteristic
marks by which he distinguished her, the gifts with which he enriched
her, give evidence of a Divine Author and Founder. A most convincing
argument springs from the Primacy conferred on St. Peter and his
successors in the See of Rome, since God alone could have established
and maintained throughout the ages and the nations of the earth so
exalted a dignity, together with the prerogatives which befit its
possessor.

Of all the works produced in our day on this important subject, Fr.
Perrone's is without doubt the most satisfactory, because the most
forcible, learned, and exhaustive.


    THE SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE OF F. LOUIS LALLEMANT, S.J.
    Preceded by some Account of his Life. Translated from
    the French. Edited by F. W. Faber, D.D. New Edition.
    London: Burns, Oates & Co. For sale by the Catholic
    Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.

F. Lallemant was one of the brightest lights of the Society of
Jesus, and occupies in French spiritual literature a place analogous
to that of F. Alvarez in the Spanish. This book, of which a new
edition has been lately published, is now well known in England
and the United States through the translation which was brought
out under the auspices of F. Faber. It ranks among the best of
modern times, and even deserves to be classed with the works of
the celebrated authors of past ages. The pietistic mystics among
the Protestants, and even some Catholics, prepossessed by certain
unfounded prejudices, have accused the Jesuits as the enemies of
interior spiritual piety. There was never a more unfounded charge.
The present work is one signal proof, among many others, that strict
orthodoxy in doctrine, unswerving fidelity to the teaching of the
Roman Church, and accurate theological science, so far from having
quenched spirituality in the Society of Jesus, have only given it
purity and illumination. The writings of the thoroughly orthodox
masters of the spiritual life are, beyond all comparison, superior,
in respect to their insight into the mysteries of faith and their
knowledge of the higher paths of the ascent toward union with God, to
any of those who have fancied themselves illuminated with a private
and personal light of the Holy Spirit, which they have thought
should supersede the infallible teaching of the church. F. Lallemant
is specially remarkable for his skill and accuracy in pointing out
the perfect harmony which must always exist between the genuine
interior guidance of the Holy Spirit in the soul and the exterior,
divinely-appointed, infallible guidance of authority to which it
must always be subordinate. The _Spiritual Doctrine_ is orthodox
and precise in its teaching without being dull or dry; fervent and
spiritual without any tinge of vague or visionary enthusiasm; clear,
judicious, and practical in its treatment of every topic; void
of all wordy declamation and vapid sentimentalism; addressing the
will and the heart through the intellect; clothing the thoughts and
feeling of a saint in the style and language of a scholar. It is just
the book for the more intellectual and educated class of readers,
provided they have some desire for solid Christian virtue and piety.


    THE ROMANCE OF THE CHARTER OAK. By William Seton. 2
    vols. 12mo. New York: P. O'Shea. 1871.

To weave into a story interesting incidents of colonial life in the
state of Connecticut, during the reign of James II. of England,
is the intention of these two volumes. The delineation of that
remarkable incident in Connecticut history, the seizing of the state
charter from under the very eyes of the British authorities, and its
secretion for many years in the famous Charter Oak, and the picture
of the regicide Goffe living in perpetual fear of detection are well
drawn.

The story in some respects shows a pen not yet perfectly at home in
this kind of writing; but no one who takes an interest in our early
colonial history can fail to find in reading these volumes both
pleasure and much useful historical information.


    FAMILIAR DISCOURSES TO THE YOUNG. Preceded by an
    Address to Parents. By a Catholic Priest. 1 vol. 18mo.
    New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren
    Street. 1871.

The reproduction, in America, of this work, originally written in
Ireland, will prove to be a benefaction in many a homestead. This is
the work of a man who thoroughly knows his subject. It is a book for
the time, free alike from the doubtful stories of too many writings
of the same kind and the tedious dryness that meets the youthful eye
in most books of instruction. We wish a hearty God-speed to this
valuable accession to our English Catholic literature. No Catholic
family in the land should be without a copy of this book. It will be
worth more than its weight in gold to those who read it; and to those
who practise the lessons of wisdom it contains it will be their glory
on earth and their crown in heaven.

It is a book that ought to be encouraged on missions and by all
priests having charge of congregations.


    THE COUNTESS OF GLOSSWOOD. A Tale. Translated from the
    French. 1 vol. 16mo. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1871.

We have here a touching but 'ower sad' tale of the life of a Scotch
Covenanter who, being found in arms against his king Charles II., is
condemned to death, but has his sentence changed by the interposition
of a friend to a life of hard labor in the Cornish mines. His wife,
the Countess of Glosswood, will not leave her husband, but with her
infant daughter follows his hard fortune, all communication with
the world outside of mining life being forbidden by his sentence.
But the good God, in compensation for their desolate lives, sends
them the priceless gift of faith, through the instrumentality of
a Catholic priest, disguised as a miner that he may win souls for
Christ, in times when to be known as a priest was to give one's
self up to certain death. The countess had been taught to regard
the Catholic Church with hatred and terror, and the agony of mind
through which she must pass in learning to love what she had before
hated is forcibly described; and the gentle way in which she is led
step by step toward the light by the devoted priest cannot fail to
give satisfaction to the earnest reader. The doctrine of indulgences
was, of course, a terrible stumbling-block in her way, and Father
Deymand's explanation is specially clear and convincing. The book
comes to us in an attractive dress, with tinted paper and good type.




      THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

      VOL. XIII., No. 75.--JUNE, 1871.[45]

SARDINIA AND THE HOLY FATHER.[46]


The volume giving the call and proceedings of the meeting held last
January at the Academy of Music, in this city, in celebration of
Italian unity, especially the occupation of Rome and the suppression
of the Papal government, is handsomely printed, and does credit
to the taste and skill of our New York book-makers; but it is
a sad book, and almost makes one despair of civil society and
natural morality. Nothing can be more sad and discouraging to all
right-minded men than to see a large number of the most distinguished
and influential men of a great nation-statesmen, politicians, judges,
lawyers, officers of the army, ministers of religion, journalists,
poets, philosophers, scholars, professors and presidents of colleges
and universities--assisting, by their presence, addresses, letters,
or comments, to applaud events notoriously brought about by fraud,
craft, lying, calumny, and armed force, in contravention of every
principle of international law and of public and private right. It
is a sad thing for our republic when so many of its representative
men, whose names are recorded in this volume, can endorse the fraud
and violence by which the Sard king has effected what he calls the
unity of Italy, and congratulate him on his successful sacrilege
and spoliation in the Roman state; and the only consolation left us
is that, with a solitary exception, no Catholic name appears on the
list, and all the sympathizers are Protestants, and all, or nearly
all, prominent adherents of the same dominant political party.

To the unity of Italy, under some circumstances, we might not
seriously object. It is true, we hold small states are more favorable
to the growth of intelligence, the development of elevated and strong
personal character, to individual liberty, to social well-being, to
the moral progress of the people, than huge centralized states or
empires, which can be governed only despotically, and in which there
is so great a distance between power and the people that personal
and affectionate relations between the governors and the governed,
and which do so much to soften the asperities of authority and to
render obedience willing and cheerful, are, for the most part,
impracticable. But if the several independent Italian states that
have been absorbed by Sardinia to form the new kingdom of Italy had
freely and of their own accord given their consent to the absorption,
and no craft, fraud, violence, or disregard of public or private
right had been resorted to in order to effect it, we might doubt its
wisdom, but we could not object to it on the ground of international
law or of natural justice. We, of course, defend the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope; but if the Pope had, _motu proprio_, without
coercion, the show or the threat of coercion, given his consent
to the absorption of the Roman state in a united Italy, we should
have nothing to say against it, for it would have been the act of
the Roman state, no public or private right of justice or morality
would have been violated, and no blow struck at the equal rights of
independent states or nations, at the authority of the sovereign
power of a state to govern it, or to the duty of obedience to it.

But it is well known that such is not the case either with the
Holy Father or the several other Italian sovereigns that have been
dispossessed and their states absorbed by Sardinia in order to
effect Italian unity. In every case, the absorption was effected
by violence and force, without and against the consent of the
sovereign authority. The Pope refused his assent to the absorption
of the ecclesiastical state, and said, to the demand to surrender
it, "_Non possumus_." The Roman people, without the Pope, gave no
assent--had no assent to give or to withhold; for, without the Pope,
they were not a state or a sovereign people. It matters not whether
plebiscitums can or cannot be alleged, for a plebiscitum, where there
is a legitimate government, cannot be taken without its authority,
especially not against its authority; for without its authority it
would be a legal nullity, and against it it would be revolutionary
and criminal. Nor would it help the matter for the absorbing state
to invade with its armies the state to be absorbed, overthrow the
legitimate government, take forcible possession of the territory,
and then call upon the population to decide their future condition
by a plebiscitum, so long as a legitimate claimant to the government
remains living. This was the case in the Roman state and in the other
independent Italian states that have been absorbed. As a plebiscitum
before the conquest is treasonable and not permissible, after the
conquest it is a mockery, for the fate of the state is decided,
however the population may vote.

Let us look the facts in the face, and see by what deeds and on
what principles the unity of Italy has been effected. Sardinia,
aided by France and Prussia, made an unprovoked war on Austria, and
wrested from her the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and appropriated it
to herself. Neither she nor her allies had any just cause of war
against Austria, or even of offence, except that sire wanted to get
possession of all Italy. France wanted the left branch of the Rhine
for her boundary, and Prussia wanted to absorb the rest of Germany.
There was no other reason for the war. The several independent Ducal
states fell with Austria, with whom they were closely allied, and
were invaded and taken possession of by the Sard king. The Kingdom
of the Two Sicilies was invaded by Garibaldi and his filibusters,
backed--covertly at first, openly at last--by the Sard government,
conquered, because the Neapolitan king listened to the insidious
advice and deceitful promises of Imperial France, said to have been
given not to offer any serious resistance, taken possession of and
appropriated as the highwayman appropriates the traveller's purse.
The Æmilian provinces of the Roman state, prepared for insurrection
by the secret societies and Sardinian emissaries, were invaded by the
Sardinian forces and appropriated by the House of Savoy. Finally, the
Roman state was invaded by the same Victor Emmanuel, with too strong
a force for the Papal government to resist, its sovereign declared
deposed, its government suppressed, and its territory and people
annexed to the so-called kingdom of Italy.

This simple recital of facts tells the whole story. Sardinia, aided
by the arms and diplomacy of France and Prussia, by the foreign
policy of the Whigs and Radicals of Great Britain, the intrigues of
the secret societies, the money and co-operation of the Protestant
propaganda, the malcontents and malefactors of all the states of
Italy, and adventurers and miscreants from all nations of the earth,
has succeeded, without any right, without having received any offence
or provocation, in the violation of every principle of international
law and every precept of morality or natural justice, in absorbing
every Italian state, and effecting the unification of the whole
peninsula under her own royal house. These are the facts, stated in
their simplest form, without passion and without exaggeration.

These facts, being public and notorious, must be as well known to
those distinguished American sympathizers who addressed the meeting
or wrote letters of approval to the committee that called it as they
are to us. We dare not so insult the intelligence of such eminent
men as to suppose, for a moment, that they did not know what they
sympathized with, or that, in applauding the unity of Italy, they
were ignorant of the craft, violence, and robbery that had been
resorted to in order to effect it. What, then, must we and all
right-minded men think of their own principles, of their religion,
their politics, or their sense of justice? Does their Protestantism
or their hatred of the Papacy justify, approve the violation of
international law, the equal rights of sovereign states, the sacred
rights of property, public and private, the principles of natural
justice the basis of the state and of all legitimate authority,
without which not even natural society itself can subsist? Does it
authorize them to applaud unprovoked war and conquest, and public
and private robbery? If so, how can they justify their Protestantism
or their hatred of the Papacy? If they cannot assert either without
denying all public and private right and trampling on all laws, human
and divine, how can they regard either as defensible?

There is no mistaking the real character of the acts by which the
sovereign states of Italy have been suppressed by Sardinia and her
allies, and the present unification of Italy effected; and it only
adds to their atrocity that it was done in part by exciting the
populations, or a portion of them, to insurrection and rebellion
against their respective sovereigns. There is nothing meaner or more
unjustifiable than for one sovereign to tamper with the fidelity
of the subjects of another, especially in time of profound peace
between the two states. If persisted in, it is a justifiable
cause of war. International law, or the law of nations, makes all
sovereign states equal in their rights, without regard to the form of
government, size, race, language, or geographical position; and the
law of ethics, at least, requires each sovereign state to respect,
and to cause its subjects to respect, the authority of every other
sovereign state over its own subjects, as it requires every other
to respect its authority over its subjects. The rule is, no doubt,
often violated, but it is none the less sacred and binding on that
account. It is equally wrong for the citizens of one state to attempt
to seduce the citizens of another state from their allegiance.
International law, national law, municipal law, as well as the moral
law, know nothing of the doctrine, so eloquently preached by the
ex-Governor of Hungary, of "the solidarity of peoples."

Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr., an able lawyer, reputed to be well versed
in the law of nations, and who affects, in his elaborate letter
to the committee, to argue the question as it affects Catholics
with fairness and candor, appears to have some doubts whether the
invasion of the Roman state by the Sardinian troops, the deposition
and virtual imprisonment of its sovereign in his own palace, and
the annexation of its territory and inhabitants to the dominion of
the House of Savoy, is really a violation of international law; but
he evidently, besides arguing the question on a collateral issue,
takes a juridical instead of an ethical view of international
law, and considers it only so far as it enters into the national
jurisprudence, and is enforcible by the nation through its own
courts on its own citizens. Yet he cannot be ignorant that there are
violations of international law which cannot be taken cognizance
of by the national jurisprudence, and which may be, and often
are, justifiable causes of war. The basis of international law is
the law of justice, or _droit naturel_, as it is the basis of all
natural ethics. There may be treaty or conventional agreements
between nations, which must be considered whenever the case comes
up juridically, or the law is to be juridically enforced, but these
cannot abrogate or modify the law of justice, the _jus gentium_
of the Roman jurists, which is the principle and foundation of
all law. Acts in contravention of justice, St. Augustine and St.
Thomas after him tell us, are violences rather than laws, and are
nullities. International law applies justice to the mutual relations
of sovereign states, precisely as ethics does to the relations of
individuals. It declares all sovereign states equal in their rights,
the territory of each to be sacred and inviolable, and that no one
is permitted to do to another what it would not have another to do
to it. The rule is plain and practicable, and under it Mr. Dana's
doubts ought to vanish. For one sovereign state to invade with its
armies another, suppress its government, and absorb its territory and
population, without any provocation or any offence given, but merely
because it wants it to complete and round off its own territory,
as Sardinia has done to the Roman or ecclesiastical state, is too
manifestly a violation of international law to leave any doubt on any
mind that does not hold the principle of all law to be that might
makes right.[47]

No doubt certain untenable theories of popular sovereignty and
certain alleged plebiscitums have had something to do with blinding
the eyes of our American sympathizers to the atrocity of the acts
they applaud. But plebiscitums cannot be pleaded when taken without
the order or assent of the sovereign authority, if there is a
sovereign authority, as we have already said. In the case of every
Italian state absorbed, there was a sovereign authority, and the
plebiscitum taken was not by its order or assent, but against its
positive prohibition. It is idle to say that the people of these
several states gave their consent to be absorbed, for except as the
state, represented by its sovereign authority, there is no people
with a consent either to give or to withhold. The people, no doubt,
are sovereign in the constitution and government, but not otherwise,
for otherwise they have no existence. A people or population of a
given territory wholly disorganized, without constitution or laws,
and deprived of all government, must necessarily, for simple
preservation, reorganize and reconstitute government by conventions
or plebiscitums as best they can; but when they have reconstituted
government or the state, their sovereignty merges in it. The people
of the United States and of the several states can amend the
constitution, but only constitutionally, through the government. The
notion which has latterly gained some vogue, that there persists
always a sovereign people back of the government and constitution,
or organic people, competent to alter, change, modify, or overturn
the existing government at will, is purely revolutionary, fatal to
all stable government, to all political authority, to the peace and
order of society, and to all security for liberty, either public or
private. We see the effects of it in the present deplorable condition
of France.

The resolutions reported by the committee and adopted by the meeting,
and which Dr. Thompson in his address tells us "are constructed on a
philosophical order of thought," attempt to place "the temporal power
of the Pope within the category of all earthly human governments,
and bound by the same conditions and subject to the same fortunes."
This may be successfully disputed. The Roman or ecclesiastical state
was a donation to the Holy See or the Church of Rome. Gifts to the
church are gifts to God, and when made are the property, under him,
of the spirituality, which by no laws, heathen, Jewish, or Christian,
can be deprived of their possession or use without sacrilege. They
are sacred to religious uses, and can no longer, without the consent
of the spirituality, be diverted to temporal uses, without adding
sacrilege to robbery. Whoso attacks the spirituality attacks God. The
property or sovereignty of the Roman state vests, then, in the Holy
See--hence it is always called and officially recognized as the state
of the church--and not in the Pope personally; but in him only _ex
officio_ as its incumbent, as trustee, or administrator. Hence the
Pope denied his right to surrender it, and answered the Minister of
Sardinia, _Non possumus_. The temporal power of the Pope is therefore
not within the category of all earthly human governments, but is
the property of the spirituality. Victor Emmanuel, in despoiling
the Pope, has despoiled the Holy See, the spirituality, usurped
church property, property given to God, and sacred to the religious
uses. The deed which our eminent jurists and Protestant divines
sympathize with and applaud, strikes a blow at the spirituality, at
the sacredness of all church property, of Protestant churches as well
as of Catholic churches--at the sacredness of all eleemosynary gifts,
and asserts the right of power when strong enough to divert them from
the purposes of the donors. These Protestant ministers assert in
principle that their own churches may be despoiled of their revenues
and funds without sacrilege, without injustice, by any power that
is able to do it. They defend the right of any one who chooses to
divert from the purpose of the donors all donations and investments
to found and support hospitals, orphan asylums, retreats for the aged
and destitute, asylums for idiots, deaf-mutes, the blind, the insane,
public libraries, schools, colleges, seminaries, and academies, peace
societies, tract societies, home and foreign missionary societies,
and Bible societies; they not only defend the right of the state
in which they are placed to confiscate at its pleasure all funds,
revenues, and investments of the sort, but the right of any foreign
state to invade the territory in time of peace, take possession of
them by armed force, as public property, and to divert them to any
purpose it sees proper. Did the learned divines, the eminent jurists,
who approve the resolutions ever hear of the speech of Daniel Webster
and the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the
famous Dartmouth College case? Or are they so intent on crushing the
Papacy that they are quite willing to cut their own throats?

But the fact of the donation to the Holy See is denied. Be it so.
Certain it is that the Roman state never belonged to the Sard
kingdom; that the church has always claimed it, had her claim allowed
by every state in the world, has possessed the sovereignty, not
always without disturbance, for a thousand years without an adverse
claimant; and that is sufficient to give her a valid title by
prescription against all the world, even if she have no other, which
we do not admit--an older and better title than that of any secular
sovereign in Europe to his estates. Every sovereign or sovereign
state in Europe is estopped by previous acknowledgment, and the
absence of any adverse claimant with the shadow of a right, from
pleading the invalidity of the title of the Holy See. The Roman state
is therefore ecclesiastical, not secular.

Whether Père Lacordaire ever said, as Dr. Thompson asserts, that
"in no event could the people be donated," or not, we are not
authentically informed; but if he did, he said a very foolish and a
very untrue thing. The people cannot be donated as slaves, nor could
any of their rights of property or any of their private or public
rights be donated. Every feudal lawyer knows that. The donation,
grant, or cession could be and was only the right of government and
eminent domain, or the right the grantor possessed; but that could
be ceded as Louisiana was ceded by France, Florida by Spain, and
California by Mexico, to the United States. In the cessions made
to the Holy See, no right of the people to govern themselves or to
choose their own sovereign was ceded, for the people ceded had had
no such right, and never had had it. The sovereign who had the right
of governing them ceded his own right to the church, but no right
possessed or ever possessed by the people or inhabitants of the
territory. International law knows no people apart from the sovereign
or government. The right of self-government is the right of each
nation or political people to govern itself without the dictation
or interference of any foreign power, and is only another term for
national independence. What was Pepin's or Charlemagne's, either
could cede without ceding any right or possession of the people. So
of the donations or cessions of that noble woman, the protectress of
St. Gregory VII., the Countess Matilda. If Père Lacordaire ever said
what he is reported to have said, he must have forgotten the law to
which he was originally bred, and spoken rather as a red republican
than as a Catholic theologian, statesman, or jurist.

But waiving the fact that the sovereignty of the Roman state
has a spiritual character by being vested in the Holy See, and
granting, not conceding, that it is in "the category of all earthly
sovereignties," its right is no less perfect and inviolable, and the
invasion and spoliation of the Roman state by Sardinia, as of the
other Italian states, are no less indefensible and unjustifiable on
any principle of international law or of Christian or even of heathen
ethics; for one independent state has no right to invade, despoil,
and appropriate or absorb another that gives it no just cause of
war. Nor is the act any more defensible, as we have already shown,
if done in response to the invitation of a portion, even a majority,
of the inhabitants, if in opposition to the will of the legitimate
authority. Such invitation would partake of the nature of rebellion,
be treasonable, and no people has the right to rebel against their
sovereign, or to commit treason. Men who talk of "the sacred right
of insurrection," either know not what they say, or are the enemies
alike of order and liberty. The people have, we deny not, the right
to withdraw their allegiance from the tyrant who tramples on the
rights of God and of man, but never till a competent authority has
decided that he is a tyrant and has forfeited his right to reign,
which a Parisian or a Roman mob certainly is not. How long is it
since these same gentlemen who are congratulating Victor Emmanuel
were urging the government, leading its armies, or fighting in the
ranks, to put down what they termed a rebellion in their own country,
and condemning treason as a crime?

But the Romans and other Italians are of the same race, and speak
the same language, we are told. That they are of the same race
is questionable; but, suppose it, and that they speak the same
language. They are no more of the same race and speak no more the
same language, than the people of the United States and the people
of Great Britain; have we, on that ground, the right to invade Great
Britain, dethrone Queen Victoria, suppress the Imperial Parliament,
to annex politically the British Empire to the United States, and to
bring the British people under Congress and President Grant?

But as Italy is geographically one, it ought, we are told again, to
be politically one. The United States, Canada, and Mexico, including
Central America and British Columbia, are geographically one; but
will any of the honorable or reverend gentlemen who addressed the
meeting, or wrote letters to the committee that called it, contend
that we have, therefore, the right unprovoked, and simply because it
would be convenient to have them politically a part of our republic,
to invade them with our armies, suppress their present governments,
and annex them to the Union?

"Rome is the ancient capital of Italy, and the Italian government
wishes to recover it, and needs its prestige for the present kingdom
of Italy." But in no known period of history has Rome ever belonged
to Italy; Italy for ages belonged to Rome, and was governed from and
by it. Never in its whole history was Rome the capital of an Italian
state, or the seat of an Italian government. She was not the capital
of any state; she was herself the state as long as the Roman Empire
lasted, and as such governed Italy and the world. The empire was not
Roman because Rome was its capital city, but because Rome was the
sovereign state itself, and all political power or political rights
emanated, or were held to emanate, from her; and hence the empire was
Roman, and the people were called Romans, not Italians. If you talk
of restoration, let it be complete--recognize Rome as the sovereign
state, and the rest of the world be held as subject provinces. Italy
was never the state while Rome governed, nor has the name Italy
at all times had the same geographical sense. Sometimes it meant
Sicily, sometimes the southern, other times the northern, part of the
peninsula--sometimes the heel or the foot, and sometimes the leg, of
the boot.

It might or it might not be desirable for the pretended kingdom of
Italy to have Rome for its capital, or the seat of its government,
though we think Florence in this mercantile age would be far more
suitable. But suppose it. Yet these Protestant ministers must know
that there is a divine command that forbids one to covet what is
one's neighbor's. Achab, king of Israel, wanted Naboth's vineyard,
and was much troubled in spirit that Naboth would not consent to
part with it either for love or money. His queen, the liberal-minded
Jezebel, rebuked him for his dejection, and, fearing to use his power
as king of Israel, took measures in his name that Naboth should be
stoned to death, and the vineyard delivered to Achab. It was all very
simple and easily done; but we read that vengeance overtook the king,
fell heavily on him, his household, and his false prophets; that
Jezebel fled from the Avenger, was overtaken and slain, and "the dogs
came and licked up her blood." There is such a reality as justice,
though our American sympathizers with the liberal and enlightened
Jezebel seem to have forgotten it.

Dr. Stevens, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania,
rejoices at the spoliation of the Pope, the absorption of the Roman
state, and the unification of Italy, because "Italy is thus opened to
liberal ideas, and Rome itself unlocked to the advancing civilization
and intelligence of the nineteenth century." Which advancing
civilization and intelligence are aptly illustrated, we presume,
by the recent Franco-Prussian war, the communistic insurrection
in Paris, the prostration of France, the nation that has advanced
farthest in liberal ideas and nineteenth-century civilization. We
have here on a fly-sheet a specimen of the liberal ideas to which
Italy is opened, and of the sort of civilization and intelligence
to which Rome is unlocked. We extract it for the benefit of Bishop
Stevens and his brethren:

    "Religions said to be revealed," these free-thinkers
    tells us, "have always been the worst enemy of mankind,
    because by making truth, which is the patrimony of all,
    the privilege of the few, they resist the progressive
    development of science and liberty, which can alone
    solve the gravest social problems that have tormented
    entire generations for ages.

    "Priests have invented supernatural beings, made
    themselves mediators between them and men, and go
    preaching always a faith that substitutes authority for
    reason, slavery for liberty, the brute for the man.

    "But the darkness is radiated, and progress beats
    down the idols and breaks the chains with which the
    priesthood has bound the human conscience. Furiously
    has raged the war between dogma and the postulates of
    science, liberty and tyranny, science and error.

    "The voice of justice, so long silenced in blood by
    kings and priests conspiring together, comes forth
    omnipotent from the secret cells of the Inquisition,
    from the ashes of the funeral pile, from every stone
    sanctified by the blood of the apostles of truth.
    People believed the reign of evil would last for
    ever, but the day is white, a spark has kindled a
    conflagration. Rome of the priests becomes Rome of the
    people, the Holy City a human city. She no longer lends
    herself to a hypocritical faith, which, by substituting
    the form for the substance, excites the hatred of
    people against people solely because the one worships a
    God in the synagogue and the other in the pagoda.

    "The association of free-thinkers is established here
    most opportunely to give the finishing stroke to the
    crumbling edifice of the priesthood, founded in the
    ignorance of the many by the astuteness of the few.
    Truth proved by science is our creed; respect for our
    own rights in respecting the rights of others, our
    morality.

    "It is necessary to look boldly in the face the monster
    which for ages has made the earth a battle-field,
    to defy him openly and in the light of day. We shall
    therefore be true to the programme of civilization,
    in the name of which the _world has applauded the
    liberation of Rome_ from the Pope, and we call upon
    all who love the moral independence of the family,
    prostituted and enslaved by the priest, upon all who
    wish a country great and respected, upon all who
    believe in human perfectibility, to unite with us under
    the banner of science and justice.

    "To Rome is reserved a great glory--that of initiating
    the third and most splendid epoch of human civilization.

    "Free Rome ought to repair the damage done to the
    world by sacerdotal Rome. She can do it, and she must
    do it. Let the true friends of liberty be associated,
    and descend to no compromise, no bargain with the most
    terrible enemy the human race has ever had."[48]

This programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome is not
an inapt commentary on the letter of the Bishop of Pennsylvania,
and is a hearty response to the sympathy and encouragement given
them in their work of destruction by the great and respectable New
York meeting. It at least tells our American sympathizers how their
friends in Rome understand their applause of the deposition of the
Pope from his temporal sovereignty and the unity of Italy. Are they
pleased with the response given them?

There may be a difference between the free-thinkers and their
American friends; but the chief difference apparently is, that the
free-thinkers are logical and have the courage of their principles,
know what they mean and say it frankly, without reticence or
circumlocution, while their American sympathizers have a hazy
perception of their own principles, do not see very clearly whither
they lead, and are afraid to push them to their last logical
consequences. They have not fully mastered the principles on which
they act; only half-know their own meaning; and the half they do
know they would express and not express. Yet they are great men and
learned men, but hampered by their Protestantism, which admits no
clear or logical statement, except so far as it coincides with the
free-thinkers in regarding the Papacy as a monster, which must, in
the interests of civilization and liberty, be got rid of. Yet we
can discover no substantial difference in principle between them.
The deeds and events they applaud have no justification or excuse,
save in the atrocious principles set forth by the free-thinkers. We
are willing to believe these distinguished gentlemen try to persuade
themselves, as they would fain persuade us, that it is possible to
war against the Papacy without warring against revealed religion or
Christian morals, as did the reformers in the sixteenth century;
but these Roman free-thinkers know better, and tell them that they
cannot do it. They understand perfectly well that Christianity as a
revelation and an authoritative religion and the Papacy stand or fall
together; and it is because they would get rid of all religions that
claim to be revealed or to have authority in matters of conscience,
that they seek to overthrow the Papacy. They attack the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope only as a means of attacking more effectually
his spiritual sovereignty; and they wish to get rid of his spiritual
sovereignty only because they wish to rid themselves of the spiritual
order, of the law of God, nay, of God himself, and feel themselves
free to live for this world alone, and bend all their energies to
the production, amassing, and enjoying the goods of time and sense.
It is not the Pope personally, or his temporal government as such,
that they call the worst enemy of mankind, or the "monster that for
ages has made the earth a field of blood," but revealed religion,
but faith, but the supernatural order, but the law of God, the
spiritual order, which the Pope officially represents, and always and
everywhere asserts, and which his temporal power aids him to assert
more freely and independently. They recognize no medium between
the Papacy and no-religion. They disdain all compromise, admit no
_via media_, neither the Anglican _via media_ between "Romanism"
and dissent, nor the Protestant _via media_ between the Papacy and
infidelity. They war not against Protestantism, though they despise
it as a miserable compromise, neither one thing nor another; they
even regard it with favor as a useful and an efficient ally in their
anti-religious war.

The free-thinkers in Rome and elsewhere present the real and true
issue between the Papacy and its enemies, and give the real meaning
of the atrocious deeds which have effected the deposition of the
Pope, the absorption of the state of the church, and the unity
of Italy under the House of Savoy. They present it, too, without
disguise, in its utter nakedness, so that the most stolid cannot
mistake it; precisely as we ourselves have uniformly presented it.
The issue is "the Papacy or no-religion," and the meaning of the
deeds and events the New York meeting applauded is, "Down with the
Papacy as the means of putting down religion and emancipating the
human conscience from the law of God!" How does the Protestant
Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, and his brother Protestant
Episcopal bishops among the sympathizers with Italian unity, like
the meaning or the issue, when presented truly and honestly, and
they are forced to look it squarely in the face? What does Mr.
Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, think of
it? He is the president of an evangelical--perhaps we should say
fanatical--association, whose object is to procure an amendment to
the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, so that the
republic shall be made to profess, officially, belief in God, in
Christ, and the supernatural inspiration of the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments. What says he to the assertion that "religions
said to be revealed have always been the worst enemy of mankind"? Yet
his name appears among the sympathizers with Italian unity. Do these
gentlemen know what crimes and atrocities they applaud, and what is
the cause with which they express their sympathy? Or, like the old
Jews who crucified the Lord of Life between two thieves, are they
ignorant of what they do?

These Roman free-thinkers only give us the programme of the secret
societies, who have their network spread over all Europe, and even
over this country; of the Mazzinis and Garibaldis, of the Red
Republicans and Communists, who have instituted a new Reign of
Terror in Paris, who are filling the prisons of that city while we
are writing (April 7) with the friends of order, with priests and
religious, plundering the churches, entering and robbing convents
and nunneries, and insulting and maltreating their peaceful and
holy inmates, banishing religion from the schools, suppressing the
public worship of God, and drenching the streets in the blood of the
purest and noblest of the land, all in the name of the people, of
liberty, equality, and fraternity--the programme, in fact, of the
whole revolutionary, radical, or so-called liberal party throughout
the world. The realization of civil liberty, the advancement of
science, the promotion of society, truth, and justice, are--unless,
perhaps, with here and there an individual--a mere pretext to dupe
simple and confiding people, and gain their support. The leaders and
knowing ones are not duped; they understand what they want, and that
is the total abolition of all revealed religion, of all belief in the
spiritual order, or the universal, eternal, and immutable principles
of right and justice, and the complete emancipation of the human
intellect from all faith in the supernatural, and of conscience from
all the law not self-imposed.

Are our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel in his war on the
Pope, with the unity of Italy, and the revolutionary party throughout
Europe, and with which the Protestant missionaries on the Continent
in Catholic nations are in intimate alliance, really dupes, and
do they really fancy, if the Papacy were gone, the movement they
applaud could be arrested before it had reached the programme of
the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome? We can hardly believe it.
Europe was reorganized, after the fall of the Roman Empire, by the
Papacy, and consequently on a Christian basis--the independence of
the spiritual order, and the freedom of religion from secular control
or intermeddling, the rights of conscience, and the supremacy of
truth and justice in the mutual relations of individuals and of
nations. No doubt the Christian ideal was far from being practically
realized in the conduct of men or nations; there were relics of
heathen barbarism to be subdued, old superstitions to be rooted out,
and fierce passions to be quelled. The Philistines still dwelt in
the land. In reorganized Europe there was no lack of great crimes
and great criminals, followed often by grand penances and grand
expiations; society in practice was far from perfect, and the good
work that the church was carrying on was often interrupted, retarded,
or destroyed by barbarian and heathen invasions of the Normans from
the North, the Huns from the East, and the Saracens from the South.

But the work was renewed as soon as the violence ceased. Under
the inspiration and direction of the Papacy and the zealous and
persevering labors of the bishops and their clergy, and the monastic
orders of either sex, assisted not unfrequently by kings and
emperors, secular princes and nobles, the Christian faith became
the acknowledged faith of all ranks and classes, individuals and
nations. Gradually the old heathen superstitions were rooted out, the
barbarisms were softened if not wholly subdued, just and humane laws
were enacted, the rights of individuals and of nations were defined
and declared sacred and inviolable, schools were multiplied, colleges
established, universities founded, intelligence diffused, and society
was advancing, if slowly yet surely, towards the Christian ideal.
If men or nations violated the immutable principles of justice and
right, they at least recognized them and their duty to conform to
them in their conduct; if the law was disobeyed, it was not denied
or so altered as to sanction men's vices or crimes; if marriage was
sometimes violated, its sacredness and indissolubility were held
to be the law, and nobody sought to conform it to the interests of
lust or lawless passion; if a feudal baron wrongfully invaded the
territory of his brother baron, or oppressed his people, it was
acknowledged to be wrong; in a word, if the conduct of men or nations
was bad, it was in violation of the principles which they held to
be right--of the law which they owned themselves bound to obey. The
conscience was not perverted, nor ethics and legislation made to
conform to a perverted conscience.

But in the sixteenth century, bold, base, and disorderly men rose
not only in acts of disobedience to the Pope, which had been no rare
thing, but in principle and doctrine against the Papacy; declared
it a usurpation, hostile to the independence of sovereigns and the
Bible; denounced the Papal Church as the mystery of Babylon, and
the Pope as the man of sin. The sovereigns listened to them, and
the people of several nations believed and trusted them, cast off
the Papacy, and interrupted the progress in manners and morals, in
society and civilization, which had been going on from the sixth
century to the sixteenth under the auspices of the Popes. The
reformers, as they are called, no doubt really believed that they
could cast off the Papacy and retain the church, Christianity,
revealed religion, in even greater purity and efficiency. Yet the
experiment, it must be conceded, has not succeeded. The church, as an
authoritative body, has been lost with the loss of the Papacy. The
Bible, for the want of a competent and authoritative interpreter,
has ceased to be authority for faith, and has been made to sanction
the most various and contradictory opinions. Faith itself has been
resolved into a variable opinion, and the law of God explained so as
to suit each man's own taste and inclination. Religion is no longer
the recognition and assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual
order, the rights of God, and the homage due to our Maker, Redeemer,
and Saviour; nothing eternal and immutable is acknowledged, and truth
and justice, it is even contended, should vary from age to age, from
people to people, and from individual to individual.

The state itself, which in several anti-Papal nations has undertaken
to supply the place of the Papacy, has everywhere failed, and must
fail, because, there being no spiritual authority above it to declare
for it the law of God, or to place before it a fixed, irreversible,
and infallible ideal, it has no support but in opinion, and
necessarily becomes dependent on the people; and, however slowly or
reluctantly, it is obliged to conform to their ever-varying opinions,
passions, prejudices, ignorance, and false conscience. It may retard
by acts of gross tyranny or by the exercise of despotic power the
popular tendency for a time, but in proportion as it attempts it,
it saps the foundations of its own authority, and prepares its own
overthrow or subversion. If in the modern non-Catholic world there
has been a marked progress in scientific inventions as applied to
the mechanical and industrial arts, there has been an equally marked
deterioration in men's principles and character. If there is in our
times less distance between men's principles and practice than in
mediæval times, it is not because their practice is more Christian,
more just or elevated, for in fact it is far less so, but because
they have lowered their ideal, and brought their principles down to
the level of their practice. Having no authority for a fixed and
determined creed, they assert as a principle none is necessary,
nay, that any creed imposed by authority, and which one is not free
to interpret according to one's own private judgments, tastes, or
inclination, is hostile to the growth of intelligence, the advance
of science, and the progress of civilization. The tendency in all
Protestant sects, stronger in some, weaker in others, is to make
light of dogmatic faith, and to resolve religion and morality into
the sentiments and affections of our emotional nature. Whatever is
authoritative or imposes a restraint on our sentiments, affections,
passions, inclinations, fancies, whims, or caprices, is voted
tyrannical and oppressive, an outrage on man's natural freedom,
hostile to civilization, and not to be tolerated by a free people,
who, knowing, dare maintain their rights.

Take as an apt illustration the question of marriage, the basis of
the family, as the family is the basis of society. In the Papal
Church marriage is a sacrament, holy and absolutely indissoluble
save by death, and the severest struggles the Popes engaged in with
kings and emperors were to compel them to maintain its sanctity.
The so-called reformers rejected its sacramental character, and
made it a civil contract, and dissoluble. At first, divorces were
restricted to a single cause, that of adultery, and the guilty party
was forbidden to marry again; but at the pressure of public opinion
other causes were added, till now, in several states, divorce may
be obtained for almost any cause, or no cause at all, and both
parties be at liberty to marry again if they choose. There are, here
and elsewhere, associations of women that contend that Christian
marriage is a masculine institution for enslaving women, though it
binds both man and woman in one and the same bond, and that seek
to abolish the marriage bond altogether, make marriage provisional
for so long a time as the mutual love of the parties may last, and
dissoluble at the will or caprice of either party. No religious or
legal sanction is needed in its formation or for its dissolution.
Men and women should be under no restraint either before or after
marriage, but should be free to couple and uncouple as inclination
dictates, and leave the children, if any are suffered to be born,
to the care of--we say not whom or what. Say we not, then, truly,
that without the Papacy we lose the church; without the church, we
lose revealed religion; and without revealed religion, we lose not
only the supernatural order, but the moral order, even natural right
and justice, and go inevitably to the conclusions reached by the
free-thinkers in Rome. One of the greatest logicians of modern times,
the late M. Proudhon, has said: "One who admits the existence even of
God is logically bound to admit the whole Catholic Church, its Pope,
its bishops and priests, its dogmas, and its entire cultus; and we
must get rid of God before we can get rid of despotism and assert
liberty."

Let our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel and the unity of
Italy look at modern society as it is, and they can hardly fail to
see that everything is unsettled, unmoored, and floating; that men's
minds are everywhere shaken, agitated by doubt and uncertainty;
that no principle, no institution, is too venerable or too sacred
to be attacked, no truth is too well established to be questioned,
and no government or authority too legitimate or too beneficent
to be conspired against. Order there is none, liberty there is
none; it is sought, but not yet obtained. Everywhere revolution,
disorder--disorder in the state, disorder in society, disorder in
the family, disorder in the individual, body and soul, thoughts and
affections; and just in proportion as the Papacy is rejected or its
influence ceases to be felt, the world intellectually and morally,
individually and socially, lapses into chaos.

We describe tendencies, and readily admit that the whole non-Catholic
world has not as yet followed out these tendencies to their last
term; in most Protestant sects there are undoubtedly those who assert
and honestly defend revealed religion, and to some extent Christian
doctrines and morals; but, from their Catholic reminiscences and
from the reflected influence of the Papacy still in the world by
their side declaring the truth, the right, the just, for individuals
and nations, and denouncing whatever is opposed to them, not from
Protestant principles or by virtue of their Protestant tendencies;
and just in proportion as the external influence of the Papacy has
declined and men believed it becoming old and decrepit, has the
Protestant world been more true to its innate tendencies, developed
more logically its principles, cast off more entirely all dogmatic
faith, resolved religion into a sentiment or emotion, and rushed into
rationalism, free religion, and the total rejection of Christian
faith or Christian morals, and justified its dereliction from God
on principle and at the command of what it calls science--as if
without God there could be any science, or anybody to cultivate it.
The Protestant world has no principle of its own that opposes this
result, or that when logically carried out does not lead surely and
inevitably to it. The principles held by Protestants that oppose it
and retain many of them from actually reaching it are borrowed from
the Papacy, and if the Papacy should fall they would fall with it.

Now we ask, and we ask in all seriousness, the learned jurists, the
distinguished statesmen, the able editors, the eminent Protestant
divines, poets, and philosophers, who took part in or approved the
great sympathy meeting, where but in the Papacy are we to look for
the nucleus or the principle of European reorganization, for the
spirit that will move over the weltering chaos and bid light spring
from the darkness, and order from the confusion? We know they look
anywhere but to the Papacy; to the Parisian Commune, to Kaiser
William and Prince Bismarck, to Victor Emmanuel, to Mazzini, and to
Garibaldi--that is, to the total abolition of the Papacy and the
Catholic Church. But in this are they not like the physician who
prescribes, as a cure to the man already drunk, drinking more and
more deeply? Are they not like those infatuated Jews--we are writing
on Good Friday--who demanded of Pilate the release, not of Jesus
in whom no fault was found, but of Barabbas, who was a robber! Can
Barabbas help them? Will he help re-establish the reign of law,
and teach men to respect the rights of property, the rights of
sovereigns, and the duties of subjects?

We say not that the Pope can reorganize Europe, for we know not the
secret designs of Providence. Nations that have once been enlightened
and tasted the good word of God, and have fallen away, lapsed into
infidelity, and made a mock of Christ crucified, cannot easily, if
at all, be renewed unto repentance and recover the faith they have
knowingly and wilfully cast from them. There is not another Christ
to be crucified for them. We have no assurance that these apostate
European nations are ever to be reorganized; to be saved from the
chaos into which they are now weltering; but if they are, we know
this, that it can be only by the power and grace of God, communicated
to them through the Papacy. There is no other source of help. Kings
and Kaisers cannot do it, for it is all they can do to keep their
own heads on their shoulders; the mob cannot do it, for it can only
make "confusion worse confounded;" the popularly constituted state,
like our own republic, cannot do it, for a popular state, a state
that rests on the popular will, can only follow popular opinions, and
reflect the ignorance, the passions, the fickleness, the selfishness,
and the basenesses of the people; science and philosophy cannot
do it, for they are themselves disorganized, in a chaotic state,
uncertain whether man differs from the brute, whether he has a soul,
or is only a congeries of matter, and whether he is or is not
developed from the monkey or the tadpole; atheism cannot do it, for
it has no positive principle, is the negation of all principle, and
effective only for destruction; Protestantism cannot do it, for it
is itself chaos, the original source of the evil, and contains as
its own no principle or organite from which a new organization can
be developed. We repeat, then, if there is any hope, it is in the
Papacy, which rests on a basis outside of the world, and speaks with
divine authority; and the first step to reorganization must be the
re-establishment of the Holy Father in the full possession of his
rights. Whether there is faith enough left on earth to demand and
effect his restoration, remains to be seen.

Certain it is, let men say what they will, the Pope is the only
sovereign power on earth at this moment that stands as the defender
of the rights of independent governments, of international law, the
equality of sovereign states without regard to size, race, language,
or geographical position--the sole champion of those great, eternal,
and immutable principles of justice on which depend alike public
liberty and individual freedom, the sanctity and inviolability of the
family, the peace and order and the very existence of society. If the
kings and rulers of this world are with him, or dare utter a feeble
whisper to encourage and sustain him, the people are opposed, or cold
or indifferent, and pass him by, wagging their heads, saying in a
mocking tone, "He trusted in heaven, and let heaven save him."

It were little short of profanity to indicate the contrast between
his sublime attitude and the abject and servile attitude of these
distinguished countrymen of ours. They but prove themselves slaves
to the spirit of the age, and only reflect popular ignorance and
passion, and follow the multitude to worship at the shrine of
Success, and to trample on the wronged and outraged. He dares
arraign the fierce and satanic spirit of the age, to face the
enraged multitude, to defy popular opinion or popular passion, to
proclaim the truth it condemns, to defend the right it tramples
under foot, and uphold the scorned and rejected rights of God, and
the inviolability of conscience. It were an insult to truth and
justice, to moral greatness and nobility, to dwell on the contrast.
His attitude is that of his Master when he trod the wine-press alone,
and of the people none were with him. It is grand, it is sublime,
beyond the power of mortal man, unless assisted with strength from
above. No man, it seems to us, can contemplate his attitude, firm
and inflexible, calm and serene, without being filled, if he have
any nobility or generosity of soul, or any sense of moral heroism or
true manliness in him, with admiration and awe, or feeling that his
very attitude proves that he is in the right, and that God is with
him. Let our American sympathizers with his traducers and persecutors
behold him whom they calumniate, and, if they are men, blush and hang
their heads. Shame and confusion should cover their faces!

FOOTNOTES:

[45] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.

[46] 1. _The Unity of Italy._ The American Celebration of the Unity
of Italy, at the Academy of Music, New York, Jan. 12, 1871; with the
Addresses, Letters, and Comments of the Press. New York: Putnam &
Sons. 1871. Imp. 8vo, pp. 197.

2. _Programma Associazione dei Libri Pensatori in Roma._ _La
Commissione._ Roma, Febbraio, 1871. Fly-sheet.

[47] The question, Mr. Dana really argues, is, whether Catholics in
other than the Roman state have, under the law of nations, a right to
insist that by virtue of their donations, or what the law treats as
eleemosynary gifts, they shall continue to be vested in the Holy See?
The answer must be founded on the acknowledged principle of law, that
all gifts of the sort must be invested and appropriated according to
the will of the donors; and in the interest of all Catholics in the
Holy See, as the mistress and mother of all the churches, Catholics
throughout the world have an ethical right that their gifts shall
be invested and appropriated to the purposes for which they are
given; but we doubt if their right can be juridically asserted, under
international law, in the courts of the usurping state, or of any
other state, since the state of the church is suppressed. But there
can be no doubt, from the relation of all Catholics to the Holy See,
the invasion of her rights and despoiling her of possessions, whether
absolute or only fiduciary, gives to all Catholic powers the right
of war against the invader and despoiler. At the order of the Holy
Father, Catholics throughout the world would have the right, even
without the license of their temporal sovereigns, to arm for the
recovery and restoration to the Holy See of the possessions or trusts
of which she may be despoiled, because these possessions and trusts
belong to the spirituality, and the Holy Father has plenary authority
in spirituals, and is the spiritual sovereign, not the temporal
sovereign, of all Catholics. If Italian Catholics had understood
that the Roman state belonged to the Holy See, and therefore to the
spirituality, they would have understood that no order of their
king could bind them to obey him in despoiling the Roman state, or
in entering it against the order of the Pope, for in spirituals the
spiritual sovereign overrides the temporal sovereign.

[48] Le religioni dette rivelate sono state sempre il più grande
nemico della umanità, poichè facendo del vero, patrimonio di tutti,
il privilegio di pochi, si opposero allo sviluppo progressivo
della scienza e della libertà, le sole capaci di risolvere i più
gravi problemi sociali, attorno a cui da secoli si agitano intere
generazioni.

Il sacerdote ha inventato degli esseri sopran-naturali, e fattosi
mediatore fra questi e gli uomini va predicando ancora uda fede, che
sostituisce l'autorità alla ragione, la schiavitù alla libertà, il
bruto all'uomo.

Però la tenebra si è diradata, ed il progresso abbatte gl'idoli e
svincola l'umana coscienza dalle catene, di cui i sacerdoti l'aveano
cinta.

Accanita ferve la lotta fra il dogma ed i postulati della scienza,
tra la libertà e la tirannide, fra la scienza e l'errore.

La voce della giustizia, fatta tacere nel sangue da re e preti
assieme congiurati, è risorta onnipotente dai penetrali della
inquisizione, dalle ceneri dei roghi, da ogni pietra sanctificata
dal sangue degli apostoli della verità. Si credeva durasse eterno
il regno del male, però l'alba è diventata giorno, la favilla si
è fatta incendio. Ora Roma del prete diviene Roma del popolo, la
città santa città umana. Non più si presti fede a credenze ipocrite,
che sostituendo la forma alla sostanza suscitarono odi tra popoli
e popoli, sol perchè gli uni adoravano un dio nella sinagoga e gli
altri nella pagoda.

L'associazione dei liberi pensatori si stabilisce qui opportunamente
per dare l'ultimo colpo al crollante edificio sacerdotale, fondato
nella ignoranza dei molti e per l'astuzia dei pochi. Le verità
provate dalla scienza costituiscono la nostra sola fede, il rispetto
al diritto proprio nel rispettare il diritto altrui, la nostra morale.

E d'uopo guardare arditamente in faccia quel mostro secolare, che
della terra ha fatto un campo di battaglia, sfidarlo all'aperto ed
alla luce del giorno. Saremo così fedeli al programma della civiltà,
in nome della quale il mondo ha applaudito alla liberazione di Roma
dal Papa.

Noi facciamo appello a quanti amano davvero l'indipendenza morale
della famiglia, prostituita e fatta schiava dal prete--a quanti
vogliono una patria grande e rispettata--a quanti credono alla umana
perfettibilità--uniamoci tutti sotto la bandiera della scienza e
della giustizia.

A Roma è riservata una gran gloria--quella d'iniziare la terza e più
splendida epoca dell'incivilimento umano.

Roma libera deve riparare ai danni arrecati al mondo dalla Roma
sacerdotale. Essa può far lo, essa deve farlo. I veri amici della
libertà si associino, e non iscendano a patti sol nemico più
terribile che abbia avuto l'umana famiglia.

          ROMA, Febbraio, 1871. LA COMMISSIONE.




FLOWERS.


I.

      To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
        To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
      Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
        And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
        To climb the trackless mountain all unseen
      With the wild flock that never needs a fold,
        Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean--

Is a pleasure accorded to few only of the dwellers upon earth;
seldom indeed to the few who could best appreciate the privilege.
A large portion of the sum total of human existence is spent in
cities. Outside of these, the wants of life, best supplied by
the co-operation of numbers, gather people together in towns and
villages. Travelling is generally such only as may be needful in the
exercise of trades and professions, with a view to their ultimate
end, the accumulation of wealth; or such as exhausted energies demand
to fit them for further toil. The invalid, it is true, seeks to
revive his failing powers in far-away balmy climates and delicious
scenes--and there is a love for his birthplace in the heart of many a
wanderer which leads him back time after time to the old homestead,
and invests it with countless charms, although bleak and barren its
surroundings may be--but to how few individuals it is given, in the
fulness of their health and mental faculties, to rove abroad at will
through the beauties and sublimities of creation--to look on her
rolling oceans and broad lakes; her foaming cataracts and stupendous
mountains; on the luxuriant loveliness of the torrid zone, and the
icy wonders of the north!

Yet such things always make part of the expectancies, the bright
anticipations of youth--the day-dreams, crushed down at last by
hard realities. For to generation after generation the story of
life is strangely the same. Its general events unfold themselves
in a succession marked for each one with singular uniformity; a
uniformity, indeed, so susceptible of calculation that on it are
based many of its most extended speculations.

Pecuniary interests generally push their claims first and most
boldly, because least to be evaded. Then come the petty edicts of an
artificial social existence, which command and receive submission
before their presence is even suspected, and though their power
be neither recognized nor acknowledged. Gradually the turning
kaleidoscope of time shows more sombre colors; the path to be trodden
is made visible--the mind bends itself to the narrow way--earthly
happiness seeks its realization in a circumscribed sphere--and so,
one by one, the winged thoughts lower their circle of flight, and the
dreamer ceases to dream.

But the love of nature is implanted too deeply in the heart of man to
be ever entirely eradicated; and the sentiment finds for itself an
expression coextensive with its existence in the universal love of
flowers. They have a charm for the eye and soul welling from a deeper
source than those graceful forms and brilliant colors, for they are a
portion of the great universe. They are a link, and an important one,
and the one most exquisitely fashioned, in the mighty chain which
holds beside them not only the everlasting hills, but

      "Planets, suns, and adamantine spheres."

Year after year they return to us with a beauty which never palls,
to make us wiser, and better, and happier; and as punctually they
meet from each true heart a greeting fitly due to their fairy
manifestations of the same boundless Power which called forth those
mightier, sublimer forms of matter so often placed beyond our reach.

Flowers, when mention is made of them in the Old Testament, are
consecrated (so to say) by the most lofty associations; they typify
virtue--happiness--the Deity himself. When the inspired writer would
fain depict in language level to our humble capacity pleasures of
which we can have not the most distant idea--the pleasures of man's
first terrestrial paradise--he calls it a garden; as the word best
embodying to us happiness sinless and complete; and the Deity in the
same sacred volume prompted

      "The flower of the field, and the lily of the valley,"
      (Cant. ii.)

as the most appropriate figures of his own divine holiness. Flowers
with lamps of fine gold made part of the decorations of Solomon's
temple. The Scriptures were originally written in the land of bold
imagery and under a burning sun, where herbage and water constitute
wealth; consequently, we find throughout its pages rich pastures and
flowing streams suggested themselves as emblems of rewards not only
in this world, but of those beyond the grave. Again, the brief span
of life, and the uncertainty of all earthly possessions, are imaged
by the fading flower and the withered grass; and the prophets in
their denunciations of the wicked constantly compare them, in the
desolation of utter abandonment, to a garden without water.

Asia has always been the especial land of flowers; from the
rose-gardens which Semiramis[49] planted at the foot of Mount
Bajistanos, 800 B.C., to the fragrant gardens now to be seen in
almost every oriental city. The fame of these rose-gardens extended
so far that Alexander the Great, on his Eastern expedition, turned
a long way from his course to visit them. The city which Solomon
founded, Tadmor in the wilderness (Palmyra), about midway between the
Orontes and Euphrates, was celebrated, and indeed derived its name,
from the abundance of a magnificent species of palm-tree which grew
there. This tree (the _Borassus_ of Lin.) yields a liquor seducing
and pernicious, and in taste resembling weak champagne.[50] The ruins
of this city and its surroundings are described by travellers as
exceedingly imposing. The city of Susa (in Scripture, Susan), in a
district lying on the Persian Gulf, was in ancient days the residence
of the Persian kings; their summers being spent at Ecbatana, in the
cool mountainous district of Media. The name Susa signifies a lily,
and is said to have been given on account of the great quantity and
beauty of these flowers which grew in its vicinity. The fertility
of the land of Bashan is mentioned in Scripture, and its oaks are
coupled with the cedars of Lebanon. Media also is mentioned by old
writers; and Carmania, north of the Persian Gulf, boasted of vines
bearing clusters more than two feet long.

China in modern times calls herself the flowery kingdom, but she
is not the only one; in many other parts roses are extensively
cultivated for the purpose of distilling from them the ottar
(_attah-gul_) of commerce; and the landscape is often converted for a
hundred acres into one great rose-garden. It has been estimated that
one-half of all the varieties of roses scattered over our gardens
were originally brought from Asia; and perhaps, counting the fields
planted there for distillation, it may be said that one-half of all
in actual bloom adorn that quarter of the globe. Yet the simple wild
roses of Asia, like our own wild roses, are very inconspicuous little
flowers; it is only under the skilful hand of the florist that each
one of those many varieties develops its own peculiar beauties, and
we obtain the cultivated roses of the garden. The Afghan province of
Turkistan is, in some parts, at the present day famous for its roses.
_Balkh_, the modern capital, is so exceedingly hot that each spring
the inhabitants in a body leave it for the little village of Mezar;
and Mezar boasts of the most beautiful roses in the world--a fragrant
red rose which they name _gul-i-surkh_. This peculiar variety grows
on the pretended tomb of Ali (whose real monument is at Nedjef).
They say that these roses will flourish in no soil but that of
Mezar--an experiment (they say) which has been repeatedly tried and
failed. Mr. Vambéry, who was there in 1864, says, "They are certainly
more lovely and fragrant than any I ever saw."

Mr. Vambéry was sent in 1863, by the Hungarian Academy, on a
scientific mission to Central Asia. At Teheran he assumed the dress
of a dervish and the name of Hadji Rechid, and in this character
he joined a company of twenty-four pilgrims, "ragged and dirty,"
who were on their return from Mecca to their far-away home in the
northeast. They never penetrated his disguise--and with them he
traversed an extent of country never before visited by a European.
They travelled mostly by night, to avoid the excessive heat. Of
course much natural landscape was lost, but we are struck with
the abundance of flowers and gardens along this route. One which
he mentions is not fascinating, but that was an exception; before
leaving Teheran, he visited two European friends near there, and
found "Count G---- in a small silk tent in a garden like a caldron;
the heat was awful! Mr. Alison was more comfortable in his pleasant
garden at Guhalek."

When the pilgrims resumed their journey at Teheran, such as were
rich enough hired a camel for two, as partners. Mr. Vambéry soon
loaned his animal to a "dirty friend," and joined the pedestrians,
who, like true believers--followers of the Prophet--buried all care
in one word, _kismet_.[51] As they tramped on (he says), "When their
enthusiasm had been sufficiently stimulated by reminiscences of the
gardens of Mergolan, Namengan, and Kholand, all began with one accord
to sing a telkin (hymn), in which I joined by screaming as loud as I
was able Allah ya Allah!"

The gardens at Tabersi, a place where they rested, were very
beautiful, also there were "abundance of oranges and lemons, tinted
yellow and red with their dark-green leaves." From scenes of
luxuriant vegetation they passed into the desert of Turkistan, which
extended on all sides, far as eye could reach, like a vast sea of
sand, on one side slightly undulating in little hills, like waves
in a storm, on the other side level as a calm lake. Not a bird in
the air, nor a crawling thing on the earth; "traces of nothing but
departed life in the bleaching bones of man or beast who had perished
there!" But mark how rapid the transition once more to beauty and
fertility! On emerging from this desolation and reaching the frontier
of Bokara, they had only proceeded half an hour through a country
resplendent with gardens and cultivated fields when the little
village of Kakemir lay before them.

Bokara (the city) is at this day the Rome of Islam. There is a small
garden not far from it whose fame is widely extended; for in it
stands the tomb of Baha-ed-din, the national saint of Turkistan,
second in sanctity only to Mahomet. Pilgrimages are made to this tomb
and garden from the most remote parts of China; and the people of
Bokara go every week. About three hundred asses ply for hire between
the garden and the city. It is considered a miraculous devotion in
these animals that, while they go thither with the greatest alacrity,
only the most determined cudgelling can turn them homeward--but
then, asses may have rural proclivities.

Samarcand is the most beautiful city in Turkistan; magnificent in
her splendid gardens, and in the tale of past glory told in her
ruins. Two of the lofty domes which greet the eye of the stranger
as he approaches are associated with Timour--the one is his mosque,
the other his tomb, where the warlike Tartar rests among flowers. If
we can picture the many lofty edifices with their imposing domes,
and then suppose the whole intermixed with closely planted gardens,
we shall have a faint idea of the loveliness in the first view of
Samarcand. The way from Samarcand to Karshi, south, lies for the last
two miles entirely through gardens.[52]

In Karshi is a large garden called Kalenterkhane--literally, beggar's
house; but we would rather translate it pilgrim's house. The words
are somewhat synonymous there, where the most saintly pilgrims to the
tomb of the Prophet subsist on alms. But this is a lovely garden on
the bank of the river, with walks and beds of flowers; and here the
_beau monde_ of Karshi are to be seen daily from about two o'clock
until past sunset. In different parts of the place the Samovins
(gigantic Russian tea-kettles) are constantly occupied in furnishing
their customers, gathered around them in circles two and three deep,
with the national beverage, tea.

We have a slight glimpse of tropical flowers in a greenhouse, but
nothing of their native beauty and abundance; for what a poor
representative of its class is that dwarfed and solitary specimen,
faded in color and deficient in the perfume of a hot climate! Then
how can imagination fill out the entire landscape--when vines and
trees cluster together, and twist their dark leaves and a thousand
such blossoms into one sweet mass? Then the nard grass; and the spicy
chandan, which old books say once covered the mountains of Malaya;
and the groves of catalpa--not the catalpa of our latitude, but that
which opens under an Indian sky, which the bee seeks before all other
blossoms! The morning-glory (Ipomea) here has no fragrance, but one
which grows wild in Southern Asia gives out a perfume like cloves.

One thing we remark in Asia is the quantity of flowers cultivated
in cities, even the largest and most densely populated; in those of
China especially, flowers are a household necessity. In most other
lands--certainly in ours--they are associated with life in the
country, or, at least, they are the pleasant privilege of the little
village. Flowers in a city are luxuries only within reach of the
wealthy. A bouquet bought in the market-place is a rare excess of
floral expenditure, and it must needs be trimmed and watered until
the last leaf withers. The dweller in a labyrinth of brick walls is
happy if he can, one time in a year, escape to grass and gardens, and
refresh memory that such things exist; but in Asiatic cities flowers
are a part of life. A modern traveller says:

    "After an interesting passage up the river to Canton,
    the stranger enters the suburbs of the city. Here
    he is surprised to see the number of flowers and
    flowering-plants which everywhere meet his eyes ...
    every house-window and courtyard is filled with them."

The home of Ponqua-qua, a retired Chinese merchant and mandarin,
was crowded with flowers and sweet shrubs. Besides a greenhouse
of choice plants, and the customary garden, his banqueting-hall
opened on a grove of orange-trees and camellias, all covered with
singing-birds. In years long past, the same tastes prevailed. Sir
John Chardon, who was in Persia in 1686, dwells on delicious city
gardens of "roses, lilies, and peach-trees." And further back still,
in A.D. 1086, lived Atoz, a celebrated Chinese statesman and writer.
In a description of his villa and grounds, he enumerates hedges of
roses and pomegranate-trees--banks of odoriferous flowers--bamboo
groves with gravel walks, willows and cedars, with the added treasure
of a library of 5,000 volumes.[53]

       *       *       *       *       *

In almost all pagan countries some certain flowers, either real or
imaginary, receive a sort of veneration from being associated with
supernatural and invisible things. Oftentimes the plant so honored is
a tree, as the _Soma_ of the Hindoos (the Persian _Homa_), which was
"the first tree planted by Ahura-marda by the fountain of life. He
who drinks of its juice can never die." In the Hindoo _Mahabharet_,
the mountain Mandar, the occasional abode of the deities, is covered
with a "twining creeper;" and India boasts a vine well befitting to
deck the home of the gods! It is the Bengal _banisteria_ of Linnæus,
the most gigantic of all climbers. Its blossoms are pale pink shaded
with red and yellow--so beautiful and so fragrant that it has gained
the native name "delight of the woods." Another mountain, Meroo--a
spot "beyond man's comprehension"--is adorned with trees and
celestial plants of rare virtue.

The _Pelása_ (Butea frondosa) is held in great veneration; it gave
name to the plain Plássey, or more properly Pelássey. It is named in
the _Vedas_, in the laws of Menu, and in Sanscrit poems. Few plants
(says Sir W. Jones) are considered more venerable and holy. There was
a famous grove of it once at Crishnanagar.

The oriental _Nauclea_ gives an odor like wine from its gold-colored
blossoms, hence it was called Halipriga, or beloved of Halin, the
Bacchus of India.

The _ash-tree_ is very conspicuous in the fables of the _Edda_, and,
as some part of the Scandinavian creed is said to have been carried
thither from Asia, we may speak of it here. In the fifth fable of the
prose _Edda_, the first man was named Aske (ash-tree), and the first
woman Emla (elm-tree). We ask, Why these two especial trees? But see
further--they were created by the sons of Bore from two pieces of
wood found floating in the waves--and, behold, a sensible reason!

An _ash-tree_ is in the palace of the gods; it typifies the universe.
Its ramifications are countless--penetrating all things--and under
its branches the gods hold council. But this ash-tree in various
shapes is almost the only green leaf in Scandinavian mythology.
Whatever else Sigge (Odin) carried thither from Asia, he left behind
the countless (and some beautiful) flower legends. Or did they die in
the icy north--and in their place spring up that machinery of blood
and fierce passions which made Valhalla not the flower-clad mountain
of oriental climes, but a battle-ground, where life was renewed only
to be again pleasurably extinguished, and where boar's meat and mead
was joy sufficient?

       *       *       *       *       *

Flowers seem literally to pervade almost all oriental literature,
ancient and modern. They inspire kings to lay aside care and enact
the poet. In the middle of the last century, one of the Chinese
emperors, Kienlong, distinguished himself by a long poem, in which
he painted the beauties of nature and his admiration of them. He was
contemporary with Frederick the Great, who also, as his French friend
sneeringly informs us, always travelled with a quire of foolscap in
his pocket. On which of the monarchs the muses smiled most kindly,
no Chinese critic is here to tell. See-ma-kung, a Chinese statesman,
wrote a book called the _Garden_--and very many similar might be
named.[54]

What can express the softer emotions of the soul as well as flowers?
The oriental lover can find no sweeter name for the object of his
passion than "My rosebud!" Her form is the young palm-tree, her brow
the white jasmine, her curling locks sweet hyacinths; her grace is
the cypress; she is a fawn among aromatic shrubs!

      "Roses and lilies are like the bright cheeks of beautiful maidens,
      In whose ears the pearls hang like drops of dew!"

Listen to a song from the Schar-Namah of Fedusi, one of the most
celebrated Persian poets. In the original, the lines rhyme in
couplets; this is only an extract. One can scarce think of the maiden
as walking the earth. Surely she must have reclined on some rose, or
floated round some lily!

    "The air is perfumed with musk, and the waters of the
    brooks, are they not the essence of roses? This jasmine
    bending under the weight of its flowers, this thicket
    of roses shedding its perfume, seem like the divinities
    of the garden. Wherever Menisched, the daughter of
    Afrariab, appears, we find men happy. It is she who
    makes the garden as brilliant as the sun; the daughter
    of an august monarch, is she not a new star? She is the
    brilliant star that rises over the rose and jasmine.
    Peerless beauty! her features are veiled, but the
    elegance of her figure rivals the cypress. Her breath
    spreads the perfume of amber around her; upon her cheek
    reposes the rose. How languishing are her eyes! Her
    lips have stolen their color from the wine, but their
    odor is like the essence of roses."--_Translated from
    Sismonde de Sismondi._

Nor is it only love which levies this tribute on flowers. We subjoin
an extract from Mesihi, another poet whose fame is world-wide: Mesihi
the irresistible!--who paints in many a lyric, with graphic touch,
the fascinations of beauty, and in the concluding verse of one of
them (with happy self-complacency) thus soliloquizes:

      "Thou art a nightingale with a sweet voice,
      O Mesihi! when thou walkest with the damsels
          Whose cheeks are like roses!"

In the following subject, flowers would be expected, but in the long
poem of which this is only a part they are truly--the whole:


ODE TO SPRING.

    Thou hearest the song of the nightingale, that the
    vernal season approaches. The spring has spread a bower
    of joy in every grove; where the almond-tree sheds its
    silver blossoms.

              Be cheerful; be full of mirth;
      For the spring soon passes away, it will not last.

    The groves and hills are again adorned with all sorts
    of flowers. A pavilion of roses as a seat of pleasure
    is raised in the garden; who knows which of us will
    live when the fair season ends?

              Be cheerful; etc., etc.

    Again the dew glitters on the leaves of the lily like
    the water of a bright scymitar. The dew-drops fall
    through the air on the garden of roses; listen to me
    if thou wouldst be delighted.

              Be cheerful; etc., etc.

    The time is past when the plants were sick, and the
    rosebud hung its head on its bosom. The season comes in
    which mountains and steeps are covered with tulips.

              Be cheerful; etc., etc.

    Each morning the clouds shed gems over the rose
    gardens. The breath of the gale is Tartarian musk. Be
    not neglectful of duty through too great love of the
    world.

              Be cheerful; etc., etc.

                           _Mesihi, trans. by Sir W. Jones._

Flowers are beautiful--but such a profusion of them in print is not
congenial to our northern tastes, despite other testimony in the
enthusiasm of some oriental scholars. Of course, for those who are
so happy as to read the originals there is a charm which is lost in
translation--but there is good reason why we fail to sympathize.
Hemmed in by cold and snow half the year, thought, passion, and deep
feelings seek expression through channels not made of things visible;
and their tides are not the less deep and strong because less
demonstrative. The passionate and imaginative literature of the East
is the outpourings of the soul under circumstances widely different
from those under which similar effusions here (and some of the most
impassioned and eloquent, too) have been penned. Each calls forth
different tropes and figures--and if it is difficult for the one side
to stir up imagination to untiring flights through rose-gardens,
equally would the poet of Negaristan find it impossible to picture
the charms of his mistress, and die of love or despair, before a
coal-fire in the lamp-light.

Who can hear of roses without calling up an image of the nightingale,
or, in Eastern phrase, the Bulbul? The mutual loves of the two
(for roses can love there) have made the theme of tales and songs
without number. Whether the story is fact or fiction--whether the
bird really pours forth its most thrilling notes in the atmosphere
of that perfume, may be a disputed point with "outside barbarians,"
but with native writers the belief is fully accepted. Here, again,
the repetition is wearisome; and here, again, it is pleasant to
blame--not our lack of imagination, but our peculiar surroundings;
for, alas! our vault empyrean is colorless or cloudy; the melodious
Bulbul a thing to dream of; and the song, generally, only a prosaic
translation!

The southwestern part of Asia is the land of spices, frankincense,
and myrrh. It is also the land of sweet flowers, although few modern
travellers say much about them. One reason, perhaps, is that the
extreme heat obliges the stranger to rest most of the day, and night
is for stars, not flowers.

But who ever associates flowers with Arabia? Is it the prolonged
and baleful influence of that little wood-cut map which monopolized
a whole page in infantile geography--the map which presents Arabia
arrayed in dots, which we were then and there informed meant desert?
Or is it the omnipresent muffled figures, camels, and tents which
typify Arabia in all books devoted to juveniles? Whatever the cause,
Arabia and Arabians always come to mind sandy and wandering.

Not so the Arabia which Niebuhr traversed in the last part of the
last century, with most ample opportunities for information.

Arabia, he writes, enjoys almost constant verdure. It is true,
most of the trees shed their leaves, and annual plants wither and
are reproduced; but the interval between the fall of old leaves
and the reappearance of others is so short that it is scarcely
observable.[55]

Here are found most of the plants of two zones. On the high lands,
those of Europe and Northern or rather Middle Asia; on the plains,
those of India and Africa, not precisely identical with those of
Europe, but a different species or variety. Delicious and abundant
also are all kinds of tropical fruits; and so plentiful the melons
that they serve as food for their camels. From Arabia were also first
brought many of those plants which we cultivate as curiosities rather
than for beauty--the _cactus_ tribe. One of the most remarkable has
its stem expanded to a globular form, about the size of a man's
head; this rests on the earth, and from it proceed branches bearing
flowers. In seeking for the most showy flowers, we must turn to
their forest trees. Their forests are not very extensive, and such
as they have are rarely seen by strangers, being quite distant from
the usual course of travel. But the majestic height of the trees,
covered with bright-colored and fragrant blossoms, are in marked
contrast to our own forest trees, whose flowers, generally, can
scarcely be distinguished from the leaves. One kind, the _keura_,
is so very fragrant that a small blossom will perfume an entire
apartment. Among small sweet plants is the _panicratum_, something
like the sea-daffodil, of the purest white; an _hibiscus_, of the
most brilliant red; and the _moscharia_, which gives from leaves and
flowers the perfume of musk. But a catalogue of their names alone
would exceed our limits.

    "With these glorious blossoms," says Mr. Niebuhr,
    "the peasantry retain the ancient custom of crowning
    themselves on certain days of joy and festivity."

There is poetry in this custom. "It is said that this nation alone
has produced more poets than all others united" (_Sismondi_). Arabia
shares more than flowers with the rest of Asia; she, too, joins to
them poetry. Her people have the same fertile imagination, aversion
to the restraints of cities, love of freedom and of nature, quick
feelings and ardent passions, which make the true poet. The day is
past--even so long past that they have forgotten it--when all this
found expression in compositions, which we read now, and marvel at
their rich inventions and glowing imagery; but, nevertheless, they
are poets still! A distinguished French author writes:

    "Through the whole extent of the Mohammedan dominions,
    in Turkey, Persia, and even to the extremity of India,
    a numerous class of Arabs, both men and women, find
    a livelihood in reciting these tales to crowds who
    delight to forget their annoyances in the pleasing
    dreams of imagination. In the coffee-houses of the
    Levant, one of these men will gather a silent crowd
    around him, whom he will excite, by his tale, to terror
    or pity; but more frequently he will picture to his
    audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which
    are the patrimony of Eastern imaginations. The public
    squares of cities abound with these story-tellers,
    who fill up, too, the dull hours of the seraglio.
    Physicians recommend them often to their patients, to
    soothe pain or induce sleep; and those accustomed to
    the sick modulate their voices and soften their tones
    as slumber steals over the sufferer."

Seven of the most remarkable old Arabian poems, written in gold,
are hung in the Caaba, or Temple, at Mecca; and the authors show
themselves not in the least degree behind other orientals in heaping
up flowers and metaphors.

Flowers were once held, in Arabia, of high importance in science.
Next to the sciences of mathematics, they valued that of medicine;
and many volumes were written on their medical plants. Somewhere
about the year 941, Aben-al-Beïther made a botanical tour over Europe
and Asia, and a part of Africa, and, on his return, published a
volume _On the Virtues of Plants_. Still earlier than this, in 775,
Al-Mansour, the second prince of the Abassides, invited a Greek
physician to his court, and obtained through him translations of many
learned Greek works on medicinal plants. Such are flowers in Asia.

It is no wonder that, where nature has lavished her choicest
productions, and all classes delight in cultivating them, flowers
have increased _ad infinitum_. No wonder their brilliant hues
inspired a native poet to sing:

      "A rainbow has descended on the garden."
                                                   _Mesihi._


II.

The little colony who passed from Asia to Egypt and first peopled
that portion of the Mediterranean shore, in that time so long
past--time without a date--must have carried with them many of their
native plants; for several found indigenous only in India are found
cultivated there. Among others is the Nymphæ nelumbo, the Lotus. This
bore in India a sacred character; the Hindoo fable taught that the
little god of love, their Cupid, was first seen floating down the
Ganges on a lotus leaf. In very many ways this flower is interwoven
with the Hindoo creed, or introduced in their literature--as in the
following. It is part of a sublime _Hymn to Narayena_, in which that
great Invisible is thus addressed:

      "Omniscient spirit! whose all-ruling power
        Bids from each sense bright emanations beam,
        Glows in the rainbow, sparkles in the stream,
      Smiles in the bud, and glistens in the flower
        That crowns each vernal bower!"

--and the radiant being, dazzling and beautiful, who springs to life
and typifies the material universe,

                  "Heavenly pensive on the lotus lay,
      That blossomed at his touch, and shed a golden ray."[56]

In Egypt, when carried thither, it naturally retained a sort of
sacred character. It is represented in their paintings and sculptures
more frequently than any other plant; in scenes of festivity and
processions, where it is twined with other flowers into wreaths
and chaplets; and also in sacred scenes. Mr. Wilkinson describes a
painting found at Thebes, in which is represented the final judgment
of a human being:

    "Osiris is seated on a throne, as judge of the dead.
    He is attended by Isis and Nepthys, and before him are
    the four Genii of Amenti, standing on a _Lotus_. Horus
    introduces the deceased whose actions have been weighed
    in the scales of Truth."

Lotus buds have been often found in the old tombs. It was also
introduced into their architecture. The most favorite capital for
a column was a full-blown water-plant, supposed to be the papyrus,
with a bud of the same, or a lotus bud. A large variety of it called
Lotomelia is cultivated there still in gardens.

Within the last few years, some information has been gathered
relating to the domestic life of the early Egyptians, which was
previously only conjecture. To use the words of Sir J. G. Wilkinson:
"It has been drawn from a comparison of the paintings, sculptures,
and monuments still existing, with the accounts of ancient authors."

On fragments of stone in different degrees of preservation, taken
from the ruins of temples, tombs, and dead cities, are found
representations of those who once stood here, surrounded by all the
wealth and glory, the luxuries and magnificence of which this is the
wreck. Cut in lines which time has not all effaced, or traced in
colors which centuries have scarcely dimmed, we see here master and
slave, kings, priests, and people, in all the occupations of ordinary
life--a half-obliterated record of the pursuits, customs, habits,
and tastes of a nation so remote that their place in the past cannot
be even conjectured. We only know, from unmistakable evidence, that
they came originally from Asia, and lived thus in the land of Egypt.
Looking at these fragments of their skilful workmanship, thought goes
back to an era almost fabulous! For who can call up even in fancy
that period, when the Nile ran through its primitive landscape, and
no foot of man had pressed its shore! When no cities stood in that
fertile valley, and the first stone of the first pyramid was not
yet laid! What a space of time must have elapsed between the first
landing and the accomplishment of all these mighty labors! There is a
mist over it all, gathered through uncounted centuries; and although
science and research have thrown some light, it is not much more than
the flickering torch with which one walks at midnight; a little is
revealed near at hand, but all beyond is darkness.

Nevertheless, so much of interest is connected with Egypt that the
least added knowledge is of value; for not only is it mentioned by
the most ancient profane writers as mysterious in antiquity even
to them, but it is the land of the Old Testament. Mounds of ruins,
great in height and extent, on a branch of the Nile, yet mark the
place of _Tanis_,[57] the _Zoan_ of Scripture, where, according
to the Psalmist, Moses wrought those miracles which ended in the
exodus of the Jews. On paintings found at Thebæ, the _No-Ammon_ of
Scripture, are representations of slaves engaged in making bricks,
with taskmasters superintending them; and although these may not be
Jews, for brick-making was a universal menial occupation, it carries
us back to the days when "bricks without straw" were demanded. The
departure of the Israelites from bondage, B.C. 1491, was in the
reign of Thotmes III., the Pharaoh of Scripture, which records his
destruction in that day, when,

    "Pharaoh went in on horseback with his chariots and
    horsemen into the sea; and the Lord brought back upon
    them the waters of the sea, ... neither did so much as
    one of them remain, ... and they (the Israelites) saw
    the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore."

It is remarkable that a drawing found at Thebes represents his son
Amenoph, who succeeded him, as coming to the throne a mere child,
under the guidance of his mother. But we digress too far.

Among other things learned by patient research, we perceive the
admiration of the early Egyptians for flowers, and the care with
which they cultivated them. "Flowers are represented on their
dresses, chairs, boxes, boats, on everything susceptible of
ornamentation; and flowers and leaves are painted on the linen found
preserved in the tombs" (_Wilkinson_).

Pliny, in enumerating the flowers of ancient Egypt, says the myrtle
is the most odoriferous; the reason, doubtless, for its being so
often placed, as now found, about the dead. At present it is only
cultivated in gardens. The other plants Pliny names as indigenous
are the violet, rose, myosotis, clematis, chrysanthemum, and indeed
nearly the whole catalogue of a modern garden. Figures on their
paintings are decked with crowns and garlands of anemone, acacia,
convolvulus, and some others. In the old tombs are found date-trees,
sycamores, and the tamarisk.

There is a design at Thebes which represents the funeral procession
of one evidently of rank. There are cars covered with palm branches,
then female mourners, other personages, and next a coffin on a sledge
decked with flowers.

In another very extensive and elaborate painting a similar procession
is represented as crossing the _lake of the dead_, and going from
thence to the tombs. The first boat contains coffins decked with
flowers; in another is a high-priest, who offers incense before a
table of offerings; another boat contains female mourners, others
male mourners, and others chairs, boxes, etc.

    "Gardens are frequently represented in the tombs of
    Thebes and other parts of Egypt, many of which are
    remarkable for their extent." (_Wilkinson._)

To better understand an ancient Egyptian garden, we will first look
at their dwellings. In some few cities where the size and something
like a plan can be distinguished, the streets are seen, some of
them wide, but more very narrow. Their houses, garden-walls, public
places, all but the temples, were of brick. The plan of the houses
was similar to what now prevails in warm climates; the principal
apartments were ranged round a courtyard, with chambers above them.
In this court were a few trees, some boxes of flowering-plants, and
a reservoir of water. Their houses were generally three stories in
height.

    "Besides these town-houses, the wealthy Egyptians had
    extensive villas, containing spacious gardens, watered
    by canals communicating with the Nile. They had also
    tanks of water in different parts of this garden, which
    served for ornament, and also for irrigation when the
    Nile was low. On these the master of the place amused
    himself and friends by excursions in a pleasure-boat."

Such a scene is represented in an old painting. The company are
seated in the boat under a canopy; while slaves, or at least menials,
walk along the bank and drag it after them, in a way similar to our
canal navigation.

    "So fond were the Egyptians of trees and flowers, and
    of gracing their gardens with all the profusion that
    could be obtained, that they exacted a tribute of
    rare productions from the nations tributary to them;
    foreigners from distant countries are represented as
    bearing plants, among other presents, to the Egyptian
    kings."[58]

To ancient Egypt we are doubtless indebted for the invention of
artificial flowers, now so prominent in female attire. They were made
there first from the papyrus, the plant of which paper was made.
Some old writer relates that, when Agesilaus was in Egypt, he was
so charmed with a kind of crowns and chaplets which he saw in use
there, formed to resemble flowers, that he carried many of them home
with him to Sparta. They were perhaps imitated in Greece and became
universal, yet retained the name of the inventors; for Pliny says:

    "Sic coronis e floribus receptis paulo mox sabiere quæ
    vocantur Ægyptiæ, ac deinde hibernæ, quum terra flores
    negat, ramento e comibus tincto."--_Plin._ xxi. 3.

Everything that pictures the domestic life of this people has such
great interest that it is difficult to avoid digression. Every record
of it expresses wealth and their peculiar tastes. Walls are profusely
covered with various designs, doors are stuccoed to imitate costly
wood, and their carved chairs have furnished symmetrical copies to
modern art. Interspersed with these things, we have these traces of
their flowers and gardens--a story of their rural pleasures in that
day of glory, when they built the pyramids--that day which has no
date! The hieroglyphics carved in stone, on which they doubtless
securely relied for fame and a name to the end of time, yet cover
the walls still standing of their superb temples; they are traced on
tombs--on urns--on the rocks which surround cities--on the sarcophagi
of the dead, even on the very linen which envelopes them--but they
speak in a lost language! We comprehend only one brief epitaph--that
a numerous and opulent people have entirely disappeared.

In the middle ages, Egypt was still noted for flowers and valuable
aromatic shrubs and herbs. Cyrene in the north part was remarkable
for the beauty of its adjacent country, which even then, says a
writer, bore traces of having been in former times a perfect
flower-garden.

In the time of Julius Cæsar, roses must have received particular
attention and extensive cultivation, for we read that a ship-load
of the most fragrant was sent as a gift to Cæsar. He received them,
however, with the graceless remark that he could show finer ones in
Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] _Diod._ ii. 13

[50] Sir W. Jones.

[51] "It is a sin to think of the future."

[52] Mr. Vambéry's _Central Asia_.

[53] _Olivier de Sèvres._ Introduction to edition of 1804

[54] See translation by Sir W. Jones. London edition, 13 vols.

[55] Niebuhr's _Arabia_, vol. ii.

[56] Translation of Sir W. Jones.

[57] Anthon's _Anc. and Mediæval_, p. 735.

[58] See illus. Lond. ed. of Sir T. G. Wilkinson's _Anc. Egyp._




THE HOUSE OF YORKE.


CHAPTER V.

NEW FRIENDS

Enough is not only as good as a feast, it is better; and a little
less than enough is better yet. How dear is that affection in which
we have something to forgive! How charming is that beauty where the
defects serve as indices to point out how great the beauty is! How
wholesome is that salt of labor which gives a taste to leisure! For
since the time of Eve, the point of perfection, save with God, has
been the point of decay; and profuse wealth has often deprived its
possessor of great riches.

What we arrive at by this preamble is that the Yorkes had been
unconsciously suffering from the apathy of satisfied wants, and were
now delighted to find that comparative poverty brings many a pleasure
in its train.

"Mamma," Clara exclaimed, "I do believe there is a certain pleasure
in making the best of things."

It was the morning after their arrival, and the young woman was
standing in a chair, driving a nail to hang on a picture. She had
begun by groaning at sight of the wall, a white stucco painted over
with brown flower-pots, holding blossoming rose-trees. But the cord
of the frame matched those roses, and in some unexplained way the
picture looked well on that background.

Mrs. Yorke, looking on, smiled at the remark. "There is a very
certain pleasure in it, my dear," she said; "and I am glad that you
have found it out."

Clara considered, gave the nail another blow, evened the picture, and
contemplated it with her head on one side. It was an engraving of Le
Brun's picture of Alexander at the camp of Darius. "Mamma," she began
again, "I think that Alexander the Great ought to have had another
name after the adjective."

"What name, child?"

"Goose! Why didn't he, instead of crying for more worlds to conquer,
try to get at the inside of the one he had conquered the husk of? Why
did not he study botany, geology, and--poverty?"

"You are right, Clara," the mother replied. "Excess is always
blinding. Why, we might have our whole house covered with
morning-glories, yet never see the little silver tree that stands
down in a garden of light at the bottom of each."

Clara clapped her hands with delight. "But fancy the house covered
from top to bottom with morning-glories all in bloom! It would be
magical!"

"Fancy yourself falling out of that chair," suggested Mrs. Yorke.

The girl stepped down, and walked thoughtfully toward the door. "How
odd it is," she said, pausing on the threshold, and looking back; "I
never see one truth, but immediately I perceive another looking over
its shoulder. And the last is greater than the first."

"It is perhaps an example of truth which you see at first," Mrs.
Yorke said. "And afterward you perceive the truth itself."

Clara went slowly toward the stairs, and her mother listened after
her, expecting to hear some philosophical remark flung down over the
balusters. Instead of that, she heard a loud call to Betsey that the
hens and chickens were all in the parlor, screams of laughter at the
scene of their violent expulsion, then a clear lark-song as Clara
finished her ascent.

Up-stairs, Melicent and Hester were busy and cheerful, quiet, too,
till Clara came. She soon created a breeze, and sounds of eager
discussion came down to their mother's ears. They were laying plans
for the summer. They would have company down from Boston, and, when
winter came, would each in turn visit the city. They would have more
help in the house; and, in order to pay for it, would write for
publication. Every one else wrote; why not they? Indeed, Melicent
had appeared in print, a friendly editor having taken with thanks
some sketches she had written between drive and opera. "What is worth
printing is worth paying for," she said now; "and I shall feel no
reluctance in announcing that in future my Pegasus runs for a purse."

Clara had never been before the public; but she had reams of paper
written over with stories, poems, plays, and even sermons. She caught
fire at everything, and, in the first excitement, dashed off some
crude composition, but seldom or never went over it coolly. Melicent,
to whom alone she showed her productions, had discouraged her. "You
are like Nick Bottom, and insist on doing everything," she said. "It
is a sign of incompetence."

Miss Yorke was one of those hyper-fastidious persons who establish
a reputation for critical ability simply by finding fault with
everything. Clara, on the contrary, was supposed to have a defective
taste, because she was always admiring, and searching out hidden
beauties.

But now at least Melicent condescended to admit that her sister might
be able to accomplish something in a small way, and it was agreed
that they should broach the subject to the assembled family that very
evening.

At this encouragement, Clara rejoiced. "You see," she exclaimed,
"I've been afraid that I might gradually grow into one of those
lugubrious Dorcases who go round laying everybody out."

Edith, following her aunt and cousins about, rejoiced in everything.
To her, this house, with its rat-holes and its dingy paint and
plaster, was superb. The space, the sunshine, the air of elegance in
spite of defects, the gentle voices and ways, all enchanted her. She
found herself at home. Her own room was the last bubble on her cup
of joy. They had given her the middle chamber over the front door,
with a window opening out on to the portico, and each of the family
had contributed some article of use or adornment. Mrs. Yorke gave an
alabaster statuette of the Blessed Virgin, Mr. Yorke a Douay Bible,
Melicent hung an engraving of the Sistine Madonna where Edith's first
waking glance would fall upon it, Clara gave an olive-wood crucifix
from Jerusalem, with a shell for holy water, Hester brought an ivory
rosary, and Carl a missal in Latin and French, which she must learn
to read, he said.

They covered the floor with a soft Turkey carpet, set up a little
iron bed, and draped it whitely, and put a crimson valance over
the lace curtain of her window. The sisters worked sweetly and
harmoniously in fitting up this bower for their young cousin, and
were pleased to see her delight in what to them were common things.
When she gratefully embraced each one, and kissed her on both cheeks,
they felt more than repaid. Clara blushed up with pleasure at her
cousin's caress.

"The little gypsy has taking ways," Carl thought; and he said, "If
you kiss Clara that way many times, she will have roses grow in her
cheeks."

Then Edith went down-stairs to her aunt, and Carl went out to assist
his father.

Mr. Yorke was no exception to the general cheerfulness. He found
himself more interested, while planning his summer's work with
Patrick, than he had ever been while engaged in the finest landscape
gardening, with an artist at his orders. Early in the morning he
had captured two boys who were loitering about, and they willingly
engaged themselves for the day to pick up wheel-barrow loads of small
stones, and throw them into the mud of the avenue.

"Mr. Yorke has got himself into business," Patrick remarked to Carl.
"That avenue has a wonderful appetite of its own."

Carl repeated this observation to his father. "And I think Pat is
right," he added. "See how complacently that mud takes in all you
throw to it. It seems to smile over the last load of pebbles."

Mr. Yorke put up his eye-glasses. He always did that when he wished
to intensify a remark or a glance. "I intend to make these avenues
solid, if I have to upset the whole estate into them," he remarked.

Mrs. Yorke sat in a front window holding an embroidery-frame, and
Edith occupied a stool at her feet. The child had told all her story;
her recollections of her mother, her life with the Rowans, of Captain
Cary, and her ring. But of Mr. Rowan's burial she said nothing. That
was to remain a secret with those who had assisted.

When Mrs. Yorke occasionally dropped her work, and sat looking out
at her husband and son, Edith caressed the hand lying idly on that
glowing wool, and held her own slender brown fingers beside those
fair ones, for a contrast. She could not enough admire her aunt's
snow-drop delicacy, rich hair, and soft eyes.

Mr. Yorke was too much engrossed to notice his wife; but Carl looked
up now and then for a glance and smile.

"Do you recollect anything that happened when you were a little girl,
Aunt Amy?" Edith asked.

The lady smiled and sighed in the same breath. "I was this moment
thinking of a tea-party I had on that large rock you can just see at
the right. I had heard my father read _Midsummer-Night's Dream_, and
my fancy was captivated by it. So I invited Titania, Oberon, and all
the fairies, and they came. It was an enchanting banquet. The plates
were acorn-cups, the knives and forks were pine-needles, the cakes
were white pebbles, and we drank drops of dew out of moss vases."

"I've read that play too," Edith said brightly. "Mr. Rowan had it.
And I read about Ariel. But I didn't like Caliban nor Bottom, and I
think it was a shame to cheat Titania so. Do you remember anything
else?"

"Yes. When I was five or six years old, my father brought home a new
map of the State of Maine, and hung it on that wall opposite. It was
bright and shining, and had the name in great letters across the
whole. My father held me up before it in his arms, and said I should
have a silver quarter if I would tell him what the great letters
spelt. How I tried! not so much for the silver, though I wanted it,
as for the honor of success, and to please my father. But I couldn't
make less than two syllables of it. To me M, A, I, N, E, spelt Mainé.
But my father gave me the quarter. I suppose he thought that the
language, and not I, was at fault."

"I don't see why letters should be put into words when they are not
needed there," Edith remarked. "I would like to have them left out.
It makes a bother, and takes time."

The child did not know that she was uttering revolutionary
sentiments, and that the reddest of red republicanism lurked in her
speech.

Mrs. Yorke mused over her embroidery, set a golden stitch in a
violet, drew it too tightly, and had to loosen it.

"Oh!" Edith exclaimed, her memory catching on that thread. "That
makes me recollect that I knit a tight strip into the heel of Mr.
Rowan's stocking, and I can see just how it looked. But I didn't know
it then."

There was a sound of wheels, and Mrs. Yorke looked up to see a
carriage drawn by a pair of greys coming up the avenue. Major
Cleaveland had lost no time in calling on his neighbors.

Mr. Yorke went down to meet his visitor, the road being too
penitential for travel, and the two walked up together. They had
known each other by sight in Boston, where the major spent his
winters, but had no farther acquaintance. Now they met cordially,
and stood a while talking in the portico before going in to see the
ladies. Major Cleaveland was fresh-faced, pleasant-looking, and
rather pompous in manner. A deep crape on his hat proclaimed him a
widower. Indeed, Mrs. Cleaveland had not long survived young Mrs.
Yorke, and the two had, ere this, let us hope, amicably settled the
question of precedence.

The visit was an agreeable one to all, though it was evident that the
visitor felt more at ease with the ladies than with his host. He was
slightly disconcerted by Mr. York's piercing eyes, aquiline nose,
and emphatic mode of speech, and on the whole found him rather too
dominant in manner. It appeared that there were to be two lords in
Seaton instead of one.

We doubt if the most amiable of Bengal lions would be altogether
pleased at seeing his proper jungle invaded by even the politest of
Nubian lions; and we may be pretty sure that the lioness would hear
in private more than one remark detrimental to the dignity of that
odious black monster with his desert manners. And in return, it is
not unlikely that the African desert-king might sneer at his tawny
brother as rather an effeminate creature. It is not the lionesses
alone who have rivalries. Certain it is that, when Major Cleaveland
had gone, and the ladies chose to praise him very highly, Melicent
pronouncing him to be a superior person, Mr. Yorke saw fit to greet
the remark with one of his most disagreeable smiles.

"Don't you think so, papa?" asks Melicent.

"He has intellectual tastes, but no intellectual power," answered
"papa" most decidedly. "He has glimmerings."

But for all that, the call was a pleasant one, the gentleman
lingering half an hour, and then going with reluctance. The presence
of Edith had caused him a momentary embarrassment. He was not sure
that it would be delicate to remember having ever seen her before,
and yet her smiling eyes seemed to expect a recognition. But Mrs.
Yorke brought her forward immediately. "Edith tells me you are an
acquaintance," she said, "and that you have been very kind to her."

Before going, Major Cleaveland placed his pews in the meeting-house
at their disposal, and offered to send a carriage for them the next
morning. "I have two of the best pews in Dr. Martin's church," he
said, "and since my boys went away to school, there has been no one
but myself to occupy them. There is room in each for six persons; and
I sit in one, and put my hat in the other. Of course, we look like
two oases in a red velvet desert. Do come, ladies, and make a garden
of the place."

They all went out to the portico with him when he took leave, and he
went away charmed with their cordiality, and with several new ideas
in his mind. One of the first effects of this enlightenment was that
the major appeared at meeting the next day without a crape on his hat.

It was a fatiguing day, that Saturday; but at sunset their labors
were over, all but arranging the books. The boxes containing these
Mr. Yorke had brought into the sitting-room after tea, and the young
people assisted him. He classified his library in a way of his own.
Metaphysical works he placed over science, since "metaphysics is only
physics etherized," he said. One shelf, named the Beehive, was filled
with epigrams and satires. History and fiction were indiscriminately
mingled. Mr. Yorke liked to quote Fielding--"pages which some droll
authors have been facetiously pleased to call the history of England."

"There are certain time-honored lies which every intelligent and
well-informed person is expected to be familiar with," he said. "Not
to know Hume, De Foe, Fox, Cervantes, Froude, Le Sage, etc., argues
one's self unknown."

In a corner of the case was the Olympus where Mr. Yorke's especial
intellectual favorites were placed--among them Bolingbroke, Carlyle,
Emerson, and Theodore Parker. "They are fine pagans," he said of the
two last.

Mrs. Yorke mused in the chimney-corner, her head resting on her hand,
the smouldering fire throwing a faint glow up in her face. Edith sat
by a table looking over William Blake's illustrations of Blair's
_Grave_--a set of plates that had just been sent them from England.
The daughters took books from the boxes, and called their names;
Carl, mounted on steps, placed the upper ones; and Mr. Yorke did
everything they did, and more. He scolded, ordered, commented, and
now and then opened a book to read a passage, or give an opinion of
the author.

"Don't put Robert Browning beside Crashaw!" he cried out. "You might
as well put Lucifer beside St. John."

"Why, I thought you admired Browning, papa," Melicent said.

"So I do; but half his lustre is phosphorescent. It is a spiritual
decay, and the lightnings of a superb mind. But Crashaw is an angel.
Edith must read him."

Looking at such a library, a Catholic remembers well that the serpent
still coils about the tree of knowledge, hisses in the rustling of
it, and poisons many a blossom with his breath. Worse yet, though
the antidote is near, few or none take it. Those for whom slanders
against the church are written, never read the refutation. How many
who read in Motley's _Dutch Republic_ that absolutions were sold in
Germany at so many ducats for each crime, the most horrible crimes,
either committed or to be committed, having an easy price--how
many of those readers ask if it be true, or glance at a page which
disproves the slander? Who on reading Prescott looks to the other
side to see exposed his insinuations, his false deductions from true
facts? How many of those countless thousands who have been nurtured
on the calumnies of Peter Parley, drawing them in from their earliest
childhood, have ever read a page on which his condemnation is
written? And later, in the periodical literature of the day, with a
thousand kindred attacks, how many of those who, within a few months,
have read in the _Atlantic Monthly_ Mrs. Child's impertinent article
on Catholicism and Buddhism, stopped to see that her argument,
such as it was, was directed less against the church than against
Christianity itself? or looked in Marshall's _Christian Missions_ to
find that the resemblance is simply a reflection of the early labors
of the only missionaries who have ever influenced Asia--the faint
echoes of "the voice of one crying in the wilderness"?

But it is vain to multiply names. "The trail of the serpent is over
them all."

The books in their places, Mr. Yorke seated himself to look over a
casket of precious coins and rings. "Wouldn't you think that papa was
dreaming over some old love-token of his boyhood?" whispered Clara to
her brother.

Her father had fallen into a dream over an old ring with a Latin
posy in it; and what he saw was this: a blue sky, jewel-blue, over
Florence, in whose air, says Vasari, "lies an immense stimulus to
aspire after fame and honor." He saw a superb garden, peopled with
sculptured forms, and three men standing before an antique marble. It
is Bertoldo, Donatello's pupil, young Michael Angelo, and Lorenzo the
Magnificent, the glory of Florence, whose face all the people and all
the children love; and they are walking in the gardens of San Marco,
the art-treasury of the Medici. Farther off, moving slowly under the
trees, with his hands behind his back, and his eagle face bent in
thought, is the learned and elegant Poliziano. Suddenly he pauses, a
smile flashes across his face, he brings his hands forward to clap
them together, and goes to meet the three who have respected his
seclusion. "How now, Poliziano," laughs the duke, "do we not deserve
to hear the result of those musings which we were so careful not
to intrude upon?" And the scholar, whose epigrams no less than his
Greek and his translations are the pride of the court, bows lowly,
and repeats the very posy engraved on this ring over which Mr. Yorke
now dreams in the nineteenth century, in the woods of Maine, in April
weather.

The bright Italian picture faded. Mr. Yorke sighed and put the
magical ring away, and took up a volume of Villemain's _Histoire de
la Littérature Française_, turning the leaves idly.

Melicent made a slight movement, and begged to be heard. "We girls
have been talking matters over to-day," she said, "and would like
to submit our plans to you. We have divided the house-work into
three parts, which we take in rotation. One is to be lady's-maid and
companion for mamma, another is to make the beds and dust all the
rooms, and the third will set the table, wash the china and silver,
and trim the lamps."

Mr. Yorke looked up quickly as his daughter began, but immediately
dropped his eyes again, and sat with a flushed face, frowning
slightly. It was his first intimation that his daughters had not only
lost society and luxury, but that their personal ease was gone. They
would have to perform menial labors.

"I think your arrangement a very good one, Melicent," Mrs. Yorke
replied tranquilly. She had all the time seen the necessity. "But the
post of lady's-maid will be a sinecure. However, let it stay. It will
be a time of leisure for each."

"Cannot Betsey do the work?" Mr. Yorke asked sharply.

"Why, papa!" Clara cried out, "Betsey can scarcely spare time out of
the kitchen to do the sweeping. When we come to making butter, we
girls will have to help in the fine ironing."

"I can churn!" Mr. Yorke exclaimed desperately.

"My dear!" expostulated his wife.

"I churned once when I was a boy," he protested; "and the butter
came."

They all laughed, except Hester, who affectionately embraced her
father's arm. "Why shouldn't the butter come when you churn, dear
papa?" she asked.

"You must have been in very good humor, sir," said Carl slily.

"We don't mean to do this sort of work long," Melicent resumed.
"There is no merit in doing servile work, if one can do better.
Clara and I will write, and so pay for extra help. I think"--very
indulgently--"that, with practice, Clara may make something of a
writer. I shall write a volume of European travels. On the whole,
looking at our reverses in this light, they seem fortunate. Living
here in quiet, we can accomplish a literary labor for which we should
never otherwise have found time."

"That is true," Mr. Yorke said; but his look was doubtful and
troubled. "Still, Melicent, I would not have you too confident.
I would advise you to try a story. It would be more likely to
sell. Europe _réchauffée_ has become a drug in the market, and our
experiences abroad were pretty much what those of others are. A
vagabond adventurer would have a much better chance of catching
public attention."

Edith gazed in awe at her companions. She was in the midst of people
who made books! She saw them face to face. So might pretty Psyche
have gazed when first her husband's celestial relatives received
her, when she saw Juno among her peacocks, Minerva laying aside her
helmet, Hebe pouring nectar. This, then, is Olympus!

"If you write a story, do take one suggestion from me, Melicent,"
Carl said. "Pray give your hero and heroine brushes to dress their
hair with. Have you observed that even the finest characters in books
have to use a broom? The hair is always _swept_ back."

Miss Yorke did not notice this triviality. She was looking rather
displeased.

"I don't want to discourage you, daughter," her father went on.
"But you must recollect that it is one thing to give a sketch to
an editor, who is a friend, and dines with you, and another thing
to offer him a book, which he is expected to pay for. Then he must
look to the market and his reputation. Some of the finest writers in
the world have described these very scenes which you would describe.
Can you tell more of Rome than Madame de Staël has? or paint a more
enchanting picture of Capri than that of Hans Andersen? If not, you
run the risk of reminding your reader of Sidney Smith's reply to the
dull tourist who held out his walking-stick, boasting that it had
been round the world. 'Yes; and still it is a stick!' says Sidney."

Miss Yorke held her head very high, and her color deepened. "I will
then put my MS. into the fire," she said in a quiet tone, casting her
eyes down.

Her father gave an impatient shrug. "Not at all!" he replied. "But
you will take advice, and try to think that you are not above
criticism."

"Clara has an idea," Carl interposed. He had been bending over some
papers with his younger sister. "She also turns to travels, but very
modestly. She calls them gleanings, and her motto is from De Quincey:
'Not the flowers are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers.'
Here is the preface. Shall I read it?"

"Oh! I am afraid of papa!" Clara cried, blushing very much. But
Mr. Yorke, who only now learned that his second daughter was also
a scribbler, laughingly promised to be lenient; and she suffered
herself to be persuaded. They all looked kindly on her, even
Melicent, in spite of her own mortification; and Carl read:

"I do not presume to write a volume descriptive of European travel.
Many, great and small, have been in that field, some reaping wheat,
others binding up tares. These leaves are offered by one who gathered
a few nodding things which no one valued, seeing them there, but
which some one may, if fortune favor, smile at, since they grew
there. One such might say: You're but a weed; but you grew in a chink
of crumbling history; I know where, for I measured the arch, and
sketched the colonnade. And I recognize the green leaves of you, and
the silver thread of a root, with a speck of rich old soil clinging
yet. And, _à propos_, I saw there a child asleep in the shade, with a
group of spotted yellow lilies standing guard, as if they had sprung
up since, and because she had closed her eyes, and might change to a
group of tigers if you should go too near. She had long eyelashes,
and she smiled in her sleep.

"I do not claim to be an artist, O travelled reader! but I stretch a
hand to touch the artist in you."

"That isn't bad," Mr. Yorke said immediately. "And your motto is very
pretty. I am glad to have you familiar with De Quincey. He is good
company. He is a man who does not overlook delicate hints, and he is
respectful and just to children. He annoys me sometimes by a weak
irony, and by explaining too much; but, I repeat, he is good company."

Immediately Clara passed from the deeps to the heights. Her bosom
heaved, her eyes flashed. She felt herself famous.

"Now let us hear a chapter of the gleanings," said her father.

"Why, I haven't written anything but the preface," Clara was forced
to acknowledge.

Mr. Yorke smiled satirically. Clara was notable in the family for
making great beginnings which came to nothing.

"But I have other things finished," she said eagerly, and brought
out a poem. All her fears were gone. She was full of confidence in
herself.

We spare the reader a transcription of this production.
Mephistopheles had a good deal to do with it, and it was probably
written during some midnight ecstasy, when the young woman had been
reading Faust. It was meant to be very fearful; and as the authoress
read it herself, all the terrible passages were rendered with
emphasis.

Mrs. Yorke listened with a doubtful face. The reading was quite out
of her gentle mental sphere; and Carl's hand shaded his eyes, which
had a habit of laughing when his lips did not. Mr. Yorke, with his
mouth very much down at the corners, his eyes very much cast down,
and his eyebrows very much raised, glanced over a page of the book in
his hand.

"I chanced to-night across the first touch of humor I have seen
in Villemain," he said. "He quotes Crébillon: _'Corneille à pris
le ciel, Racine la terre; il ne me restait plus que l'enfer. Je
m'y suis jetté à corps perdu.' 'Malheureusement,'_ says Villemain,
_'malheureusement il n'est pas aussi infernal qu'il le croit.'_"

Without raising his face, Mr. Yorke lifted his eyes, and shot at the
poetess a glance over his glasses.

Instantly her face became suffused with blushes, and her eyes with
tears.

Mrs. Yorke spoke hastily. "I am sure, papa, the dear girls deserve
every encouragement for their intentions and efforts. I am grateful
and happy to see how nobly they are taking our troubles; and I cannot
doubt that, with their talents and good-will, they will accomplish
something. But it is too late to talk more about it to-night. You
must be tired, and my head is as heavy as a poppy. Shall we have
prayers?"

She rose in speaking, went to the table, and, standing between her
two elder daughters, with an arm round the neck of each, kissed them
both, tears standing in her eyes. "If you never succeed in winning
fame, my dears," she said, "I shall still be proud and fond of you.
Your sweet, helpful spirit is better than many books."

The Yorkes had never given up, though they had often interrupted,
the habit of family devotion. Now it was tacitly understood that
the custom should be a regular one. So Hester brought the Bible and
prayer-book, and placed them before her father, and her sisters
folded their hands to listen.

"I think we should have Betsey in," Mrs. Yorke said; and Melicent
went to ask her.

Betsey and Patrick were seated at opposite sides of a table drawn up
before the kitchen fireplace, where a hard-wood knot burned in a spot
of red gold. One of the windows was open, and through it came a noise
of full brooks hurrying seaward, and a buzzing, as of many bees, that
came from the saw-mills on the river. Betsey was darning stockings,
and Pat reading the _Pilot_.

"We are to have prayers now," Melicent said, standing in the door.
"Will you come in, Betsey?"

Betsey slowly rolled up the stocking, and stabbed the darning-needle
into the ball of yarn. "Well, I don't care if I do," she answered
moderately. "It can't do me no great harm."

Melicent gave her a look of surprise, and returned to the
sitting-room, leaving the doors ajar.

"Come, Pat," said Betsey, "put away that old Catholic paper, and
come in and hear the Gospel read. I don't believe you ever heard a
chapter of it in your life."

"No more did St. Peter nor St. Paul," answered Patrick, without
lifting his eyes from the paper. He had been reading over and over
one little item of news from County Sligo, where he was born. The old
priest who had baptized him was dead; and with the news of his death,
and the description of his funeral, how many a scene of the past came
up! He was in Ireland again, poor, but careless and happy. His father
and mother, now old and lonely in that far land, were still young,
and all their children were about them. The priest, a man in his
prime, stood at their cottage door, with his hand on little Norah's
head. They all smiled, and Norah cast her bashful eyes down. Now the
priest was white-haired, and dead, and little Norah had grown to be
a careworn mother of many children. The man was in no mood to hear
taunts. Read the Gospel? Why, it was like reading a gospel to look
back on that group; for they were true to the faith, and poor for the
faith's sake, and they had lived pure lives for Christ's love, and
those who had died had died in the Lord.

"But Peter and Paul wrote," answered Betsey. "And what they wrote is
the law of God. You'll never be saved unless you read it."

"Many a one will be damned who does read it!" retorted Patrick
wrathfully. "What's the use of reading a law-book, if you don't keep
the law?"

"Oh! if you're going to swear, I'll go," Betsey replied with dignity,
and went. But she took care to leave the doors ajar behind her.

It was true, Patrick did not read the Bible much; but he knew the
Gospels and Psalms in the prayer-book, and was as familiar with the
truths of Scripture as many a Bible student. But he had heard it so
be-quoted by those who were to him not much better than heathen, and
so made a bone of contention by snarling theologians, that he did not
much care to read the book itself. He could not now avoid hearing it
read without leaving the room; and he would not have had them hear
him show that disrespect to them.

Mr. Yorke's voice had a certain bitter, rasping quality, which, with
his fine enunciation, was very effective in some kinds of reading.
In the sacred Scriptures it gave an impression of grandeur and
sublimity. Patrick dropped his paper, and listened to the story of
the martyrdom of St. Stephen. He knew it well, but seemed now to
hear it for the first time. He saw no book, he heard a voice telling
how the martyr stood before his accusers, with "his face as the face
of an angel," and flung back their accusation upon themselves, till
"they were cut to the heart," and "gnashed with their teeth at him."

"Faith!" he muttered excitedly; "but he had them there!"

As Mr. Yorke went on with the story, and the saint, looking
steadfastly upward, declared that he saw the heavens open, and
the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, Patrick rose
unconsciously to his feet, and blessed himself. To his pure faith and
unhackneyed imagination the scene was vividly clear. He heard the
outcry of the multitude, saw them rush upon their victim, drive him
out of the city and stone him, till he fell asleep in the Lord.

"'And a young man named Saul was consenting to his death,'" said the
voice.

"Glory be to God!" exclaimed Patrick, taking breath.

The prayer that followed grated on his feelings. The reader lost his
fire, and merely got through this part of the exercises. Evidently,
Mr. Yorke did not believe that he was praying. Neither did Patrick
believe that he was.

The next morning Major Cleaveland's carriage came to take them to
what they called church. Melicent and Clara had already set out to
walk. Carl stayed at home with Edith, and only Mr. and Mrs. Yorke
and Hester drove. They overtook the others at the steps of the
meeting-house, and found Major Cleaveland waiting in the porch for
them.

Mrs. Yorke was one of those sweet, unreasoning souls who fancy
themselves Protestant because they were born and trained to be called
so, but who yield as unquestioning an obedience to their spiritual
teachers as any Catholic in the world. She unconsciously obeyed the
recommendation, "Don't be consistent, but be simply true." Absurdly
illogical in her theology, she followed unerringly, as far as she
knew, her instincts of worship, and the opinions that grew naturally
from them. It would be hard to define what her husband thought and
believed of Dr. Martin's sermon. He did not find it a feast of
reason, certainly; but he swallowed it from a grim sense of duty,
though with rather a wry face. The young ladies knew about as much of
theology as Protestant ladies usually do, and that is--nothing. They
left it all to the minister; and, provided he did not require them to
believe anything disagreeable, were quite satisfied with him.

Coming home, they entertained their brother with a laughing account
of their experience. The major had escorted Melicent to her seat, to
the great amusement of the two sisters following. For Miss Yorke,
sublimely conscious of herself, and that they were the observed of
all observers, had walked with a measured tread, utterly irrespective
of her companion; and the major, equally important, and slightly
confused by his hospitable cares, had neglected to modify his usual
short, quick steps. The result was, as Clara said, that "they chopped
up the aisle in different metres," thus oversetting the gravity of
the younger damsels following. Then their minds had been kept on
the rack by an old gentleman in the pew in front of them, who went
to sleep several times, following the customary programme: first
a vacant stare, then a drooping of the eyelids, then a shutting
of them, then several low bows, finally a sharp, short nod that
threatened to snap his head off, followed by a start, and a manner
that resentfully repudiated ever having been asleep.

"Poor old gentleman!" Mrs. Yorke said. "The day was warm, and Dr.
Martin's voice lulling. How could he help it?"

"But, mamma," Clara answered, "he could have pinched himself; or I
would have pinched him cheerfully."

A good many people called on them that week, and the family were
surprised to find among them persons of cultivated minds. Beginning
by wondering what they were to talk about with these people, they
found that they had to talk their best.

They had made the mistake often made by city people, taking for
granted that the finest and most cultivated minds are to be found
in town. They forgot that city life fritters away the time and
attention by a thousand varied and trivial distractions, so that deep
thought and study become almost impossible. They neglect to observe
that cities would degenerate if they were not constantly supplied
with fresh life from the country; that the fathers that achieve are
followed by the sons that dawdle, that the artist gives birth to the
dilettante. 'Tis the country that nurses the tree which bears its
fruit in the city. But, also, the country often hides its treasures,
and the poet's fancy of "mute, inglorious Miltons" is as true as it
is poetical.

In the country painting and sculpture and architecture are, it is
true, only guessed at; but they have nature, which, as Sir Thomas
Browne says, "is the art of God;" and books are appreciated there as
nowhere else. The country reader dives like a bee into the poet's
verse, and lingers to suck up all its sweetness; the city reader
skims it like a butterfly. In the country the thinker's best thought
is weighed, and pondered, and niched; in the city it is glanced at,
and dismissed. In those retired nooks are women who quote Shakespeare
over their wash-tubs, and read the English classics after the cows
are milked, while their city sisters ponder the fashions, or listen
to some third-rate lecturer, whose only good thought is, perhaps, a
borrowed thought.

Still, all honor to that strong, swift life which grinds a man as
under a millstone, and proves what is in him; which sharpens his
sluggishness, breaks the gauze wings of him, and forces him out of a
coterie and into humanity.

One day Dr. Martin called. Mrs. Yorke and her daughters, with Carl,
were out searching for May-flowers, and there was no one at home to
receive him but Mr. Yorke and Edith. Dr. Martin and the child met
with great coldness, and instantly separated; but the two gentlemen
kept up a conversation, though neither was quite at his ease. They
needed a gentler companionship to bring them together. The minister
was a man of good mind and education, and a kind heart; but his
prejudices were strong and bitter, and the presence of that little
"papist" disconcerted him. He soon took occasion, in answer to Mr.
Yorke's civil inquiries respecting the churches in Seaton, to give
expression to this feelings.

"We have, of course, a good many papists, but all of the lowest
class," he said; "I have tried to do something for them; but they are
so ignorant, and so enslaved by their priests, that it is impossible
to induce them to listen to the Gospel."

Mr. Yorke drew himself up. "Perhaps you are not aware that my niece,
Miss Edith Yorke, is a Catholic," he said in his stateliest manner.

Edith, standing in a window near, had not made a sound; but she
looked at the minister, and fired at him two shots out of her two
eyes. He in turn raised himself with an offended air at Mr. Yorke's
reproof.

"I was certainly not aware that your sympathies were with the
papists, sir," he said.

"Neither are they," was the cold reply. "But I profess to be a
gentleman, and I try to be a Christian. One of my principles is never
to insult the religious beliefs of another."

"But," objected the minister, stifling his anger, "if you never
attack their errors, you lose the chance of enlightening them."

"Doctor," Mr. Yorke said with a slight laugh, "I don't believe you
can ever enlighten a man's mind by pounding a hole in his head."

And so they dropped that part of the subject. But Mr. Yorke thought
it best to define his own position, and thus prevent future mistakes.

"I believe in God," he said. "A man is a fool who does not. And I
believe that the Bible was written by men inspired by him. But there
is no one thing in it for the truth of which I would answer with my
life. It is the old fable of the divinity visiting earth wrapped
in a cloud. Somewhere hidden in the Bible is the truth, but I see
it as in a glass darkly. I think as little about it as possible.
To study would be to entangle myself in a labyrinth. It is natural
and necessary for man to worship; but it is neither natural nor
reasonable for him to comprehend what he worships. To take in the
divine, your brain must crack."

The minister perceived that argument was useless, and shortly after
took leave.


CHAPTER VI.

BOADICEA.

Within a few weeks came a letter from Mrs. Rowan to Edith. It is
not natural for people to write in their own way--that comes with
education and practice; but this letter breathed the writer's very
self. It radiated a timid distress. She had surprising news to tell.
Instead of being in a tenement of her own, among plain people whom
she would feel at ease with, she was installed as housekeeper in
what seemed to her a very magnificent establishment. Mr. Williams,
her employer, was an importing merchant, and his family consisted of
a daughter, eighteen years of age, and an awful sister-in-law who
lived in the next street, but visited his house at all hours of day
or evening, superintending minutely his domestic arrangements. This
gentleman knew Major Cleaveland well, and had for many years had
business relations with Captain Cary. Indeed, it was their sailor
friend who had procured the situation for her, and insisted on her
taking it. She had refused as long as she could, but Dick himself
joining against her, she had finally yielded. Mr. Williams was very
kind. He had assured her that he did not want a city housekeeper, but
some quiet, honest countrywoman to be in the house with his daughter,
and see that the servants did not rob him.

At the conclusion of this letter, Mrs. Rowan added that Dick sent his
respects, at which Edith's heart sank with disappointment. Where was
the hearty affection, the eager remembrance she had looked for?

The child would have been less indignant had she known what
pains Dick was really taking for her sake. He had searched out,
and borrowed or bought all the printed correspondence of famous
letter-writers that were to be had for love or money, and was
studying them as models. He had also invested extravagantly in
stationery, and was striving to bend his clear, clerkly penmanship to
something more elegant and gentlemanlike. Even while she was accusing
him of forgetfulness, he was carefully copying his tenth letter to
her.

But still, Edith was not to blame, though she was mistaken. Affection
has no right to be silent.

After a few days, however, came his farewell before sailing for the
East. Over this note, Edith shed bitter tears, as much for the manner
as for the matter of it. For Dick, with an eye to Mrs. Yorke as a
reader, had composed a very dignified epistle after the manner of
Doctor Johnson. Poor Dick! who could have written the most eloquent
letter in the world, if he had poured his heart out freely and
simply.

The child had scant time allowed her for mourning, for her studies
began immediately. The family were all her teachers, and she began
at once with music and languages. The common branches were taught
indirectly. Geography she learned by looking out on the maps places
mentioned in their reading or conversation. History she learned
chiefly through biography. For arithmetic, some one gave her every
day a problem to solve. She added up household expenses, measured
land, laid out garden-beds, weighed and measured for cooking. Her
study was all living: not a dead fact got into her mind. She read
a great deal besides, travels, all that she could find relating to
the sea, and poetry. As her mind became interested, she settled
once more into harmony with herself, and her feelings grew quiet.
The impression left by Dick's strange behavior after their parting
faded away, and she remembered only his last fervent protestation:
"I'll climb, Edith, I'll climb!" How it was to be, and what it really
meant, she knew not; but the old faith in him came back. "What Dick
said he'd do, he always did."

She associated him with all she read or heard of foreign lands and
waters. He had sailed through phosphorescent seas by night, under
wide-eyed stars, while the waves tossed in fire from his prow, and
trailed in fire in his wake. He had lain in the warm southern ocean,
where the tides are born, had held his breath during that pause when
all the waters of the earth hang balanced, and swung his cap as he
felt the first soft pulse of the infant tidal wave that was to grow
till its rim should cast a wreath of foam on every shore from the
North Pole to the South. Palms and the banyan-tree, pines almost
huge enough to tip the earth over, each in turn had shaded his head.
His venturesome feet had trod the desert and the jungle. Jews and
Moslems had looked after him as he sauntered through their crowded
bazaars--the bright-eyed, laughing sailor-boy! Norsemen had smiled as
they saw his hair blown back and his face kindled by the tempest. It
was always Dick to the fore of everything.

On one of those spring mornings, Carl, wandering through the woods,
came out into the road in front of an old school-house that stood at
the edge of the village. The door was open, and showed a crowd of
children at their studies inside. On the green in front of the door
lay a log, and on the log sat a deplorable-looking little man. He
was neither young nor old, but seemed to be stranded on some bleak
age which time had forgotten. His clothes were gentlemen's clothes
cut down and patched. A hat that was too large for him reached from
his forehead to his neck. It was not crushed, but it was shabby,
and drooped sorrowfully in the brim. His hair was thin and long,
and patted down. Tears rolled over his miserable face as he sat and
looked in at the children saying their lessons in a long class. He
did not cover his face in weeping, but lifted his eyebrows, wiped the
tears occasionally, and continued to gaze.

Carl was one of the last persons in the world to intrude on another,
or allow any intrusion on himself, but after a moment's hesitation he
ventured to approach this pitiful little figure, and ask what ailed
him.

The man showed no surprise on being addressed, but poured out his
grief at once. His name was Joseph Patten, he was poor and had a
large family, and was obliged to receive town help. As a condition
of that help, he must give up one of his children to be bound out to
work, or adopted into a family. The parents were allowed to choose
which child they would part with, and "Joe," as he was called by
everybody, was now trying to make up his mind. His story was told in
a whimpering voice, and with many tears, and the listener was quite
as much provoked to laugh as to weep.

"It isn't easy to part with your own flesh and blood, sir," said Joe.
"There's Sally, my oldest girl, named for her marm. She helps about
the house. My wife couldn't get along without Sally. The next one
is Joseph. He's named for me; and I don't want to give up the child
that's named for myself, sir. Then John, he's got the rickets, and
is used to be fed and taken care of. You couldn't expect a man to
send away a child that's got the rickets, and let him drop all his
food before he gets it to his mouth. Then Betsey, she's named for my
mother. How am I going to send away the child that's named for my own
mother, when she's dead and gone, and let her live among strangers?
Jane, she's homesick; she cries if she is out of her marm's sight
a minute. She'd cry herself to death if she was to be carried off.
Then there's Jackson, named for General Jackson. You don't suppose I
could give away a child that's named for General Jackson! And George
Washington, named for the father of his country. Why, I could do
without any of 'em sooner than I could without George Washington. And
Paul, he's named for the 'postle Paul. It would be a sin and a shame
to give away a boy that's named for the 'postle Paul. And Polly,
she's the baby. You can't give a baby away from its own mother."

There had been several other children who had died, chiefly from
unwholesome little fevers, to which they seemed addicted.

Carl was unable to assist the man in his choice; but he comforted him
somewhat by promising to visit his family soon, and left him weeping,
and gazing through the door at his children.

That same afternoon Carl and Melicent went out to visit Joe Patten's
family. It had occurred to the young woman that she might be able to
train one of the pauper's boys for a house-servant, and thus benefit
them and her own family at the same time.

The Pattens lived directly back of the Yorkes' place, about half a
mile farther into the woods, and their house had no communication
with the public ways save by a cart-road. Joe's sole income was
derived from the sale of little snags of wood that he hauled into the
village, and exchanged for groceries. In Seaton wood was a drug in
the market. A man must cut his beech and maple into clear split logs,
and season it well, if he expected to get two dollars a cord for it.

The walk through the woods was a pleasant one, for nature was
stirring all alive about them. This nature was no Delilah of the
tropics, and to one who loved a bold and gorgeous beauty it was
poor. But for those who like to seek beauty in her shyer, hidden
ways, it had a delicate and subtle charm. The profuse snowy bloom of
wild-cherries showed in a cloud here and there against the red or
salmon-colored flowers of maples and oaks. Silver birches glimmered
through their shining foliage, like subsiding nymphs, and the
tassels of the larch swung out their brown and gold. Violets blue
and white opened thickly in wet places, sisterhoods of snowdrops
stood with their drooping heads tenderly streaked with pink,
little knubbles of land were covered thickly with old and young
checkerberry--"ivry-leaves" the children called them, drops of gum
oozed through the rough bark of spruce and hemlock, brooks rushed
frothing past, and birds were returning to their nests or building
new ones.

Soon they heard sounds of human life through the forest quiet, the
loud voice of a scolding woman and a confused babel of children's
voices.

Carl smiled mockingly. "A troop of dryads, probably," he remarked.

Suddenly they came out close to a small log-house that stood in an
irregular clearing; and now the scolding and the babel were plain to
be heard.

"I'll lick you like a sack if you don't bring some dry sticks to get
supper with!" cried a woman's voice, and at the same instant a ragged
little boy bounded from the door, helped, apparently, by some outward
application, and ran for the woods, his bare feet seeming insensible
to sticks and stones. Then, all at once, there was silence, and
clusters of two-colored heads in the windows, and peeping from the
door. The visitors had been discovered. As they approached the
door, a large, wild-eyed Boadicea came to meet them, and invited
them in with great ceremony and politeness. She had an unwholesome,
putty-colored skin and black hair and eyes. In one corner sat Joe,
with the baby in his arms, and his hat on his head. This he removed,
half-rose, and performed a salution which was more a courtesy than a
bow. But he uttered not a word. "In this house clearly,

      'Madame d'Acier est le père,'"

thought Carl.

With a sweep of the arm she banished the children all into one
corner of the room (the house contained but one room), brought two
strip-bottomed chairs, from one of which her husband had meekly fled
at her approach, and, dusting them off with her apron, invited her
visitors to be seated.

"You must excuse the confusion reigning in my poor mansion," she said
with great suavity, and a very good accent. "Children are always
disorderly. Sarah!" raising her voice, "bring the besom and sweep up
the embers."

Melicent turned a look of dismay on her brother, who was taken with a
slight cough. Sarah, otherwise Sally, came bashfully out from behind
her father, where she had been crouching on the floor, and swept up
the hearth with a brush broom.

The poor woman, anxious to do all honor to her visitors, and, also,
to show them that she was above her circumstances, knew no other
way than by using the largest words she could think of. Her idea
of polite conversation was to make it as little as possible like
anything she was accustomed to.

Melicent stated her errand at once, and the mother, with many
thanks, and lamentations on her misfortunes, called the little ones
forward, and placed them at the lady's disposal. She stopped in her
compliments to dart a threatening look toward the door, where the
boy who had been "named for the 'postle Paul" stood with his burden
of dry sticks. He dropped them instantly, and came forward, and his
mother as instantly resumed her smiling face. She could change her
expression with remarkable facility.

Melicent fancied this boy at once, and promptly concluded a bargain
to give a week's trial to him and his eldest sister. They were to go
to "the hall," as Mrs. Patten politely called it, the next day, and
begin their training. They would work for their food and clothing,
and perhaps, after a while, when she should think them worthy, they
might receive wages.

This settled, Miss Yorke and her brother departed, followed by
Mrs. Patten's compliments to the door, and stared after by all the
children. Joe's only movement on their going was to perform another
courtesy like that with which he had received them.

"Poor souls! they are delighted to have their children with us," said
Melicent, when they were out of hearing. "But I hope the mother won't
come to see them often. Betsey says she is half-crazy."

"I respect her for it!" Carl exclaimed. "You can see that she has
some talent and ambition, and that she has read some, though she is
absurdly ignorant of the ways of the world. With such a husband, such
a troop of children, and such poverty, I repeat I respect her for
being crazy. She can't have a person to speak to but her own family,
immured in those forest solitudes, as she says."

Mrs. Patten looked after them as long as she could see them, her
face glowing with pride. Then she went into her house, went to the
fireplace, and withdrew a pair of iron tongs that lay with red-hot
tips in the coals there. "There is no need of them now," she said
exultingly.

These tongs had been kept red during the last week for the better
reception of any town officer who should venture to come for one of
her children. Mrs. Patten did not by any means propose to submit
tamely. Then she turned tragically, and faced her husband with a look
of withering contempt.

"I was meant to be such a lady as that!" she exclaimed, with a
grand gesture of the arm in the direction where Melicent Yorke had
disappeared. "And yet, I sacrificed my birthright--fool that I
was!--to marry you, Joe Patten!"

Joe shrank, and hugged the baby up to him. "I know you did, Sally!"
he said deprecatingly--"I know you did!"

"And you never knew enough to appreciate me!" she continued in a
tragic tone.

"I know I never did," answered Joe in a trembling voice--"I know it,
Sally."

"Learn to respect me, then!" she said, drawing herself up. "Call me
Mrs. Patten!"

"Yes, I will, I do, I have," whimpered Joe. "I--"

"Hold your tongue!" commanded his wife. "Paul, bring me those chips."
And she proceeded to get supper.

Poor Sally Patten was not nearly so cruel as she appeared. In truth,
she had never laid the weight of her hand upon her husband. But,
then, he was always afraid she would.

TO BE CONTINUED.




MEXICAN ART AND ITS MICHAEL ANGELO.


The society of Mexico has become a ruin in which it is necessary
to search with some labor to discover monuments of literature and
art. Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, though for her time an extraordinary
woman, is unknown to the greater portion of the continent of whose
letters she seems to have been the true morning star. Of Siguenza,
mathematician, philosopher, historian, antiquary, and of Velasquez
Cardenas, the astronomer and geometrician, the world knew little
until Humboldt praised their remarkable talents. Not without a shrug
of surprise, we imagine, did the readers of half a century ago accept
his assurance that "M. Tolsa, professor of sculpture at Mexico, was
even able to cast an equestrian statue of King Charles the Fourth;
a work which, with the exception of the Marcus Aurelius at Rome,
surpasses in beauty and purity of style everything which remains in
this way in Europe." Miguel Cabrera, a greater artist than Tolsa, and
the most vigorous imaginative genius which Mexico has produced, has
yet to be adequately recognized in America. The art of our northern
republic boasts the names of Trumbull, Stuart, Allston, Inman,
Vanderlyn, Sully, Neagle, Hamilton, Rothermel, Church, Crawford,
Powers, Akers, Greenough, Hosmer, and others; but we doubt if among
all these can be found an artist as praiseworthy as was this Mexican
Cabrera. Do we exaggerate? No; we are addressing a practical public,
much in love with its own works and ways and ideals, and not too well
disposed to imagine the difficulties of a Mexican artist one hundred
and thirty years ago.

But, first, let us describe, so far as we may, the scene and
circumstances of his artistic labors. Mexico, as compared with our
northern cities, is a wonderfully old-fashioned capital. The walls
of its houses have been built to last till doomsday, and its doors
are like doors of castles. Many of its flat fronts boast stuccoed
ornaments: all are painted with tints ranging from yellow to pink
and pale blue--colors of art which, as applied in particular cases,
are seldom at once tolerable to a foreign eye, but which find their
reason in necessity as well as taste, and partly in the dull,
unlovely character of the building material. This is often a kind
of lava-stone or tezontle, a stone the volcano itself seems to have
supplied for the purpose of resisting earthquake, and which defies
the insidious action of Mexican damps. The churches are instances
of colored architecture. La Profesa is yellowed; the cathedral's
chapel is browned. San Domingo, San Agustin, and, in fact, all the
Mexican churches are tinted more or less, the favorite hue being
a mild and not offensive yellow, qualified by white plasters. One
remembers gratefully that neutral tint which makes a long range of
Mexican houses, with their balconies and tasteful awnings, quaint
and elegant letterings of signs, and flags hung out at shop-doors,
so picturesque, so pleasant, and so characteristic. The perspective
of a Mexican street, especially toward the close of the day, enjoys
a repose of many colors well blended with such lines of substantial
houses as cannot but impress the eye of the musing stranger. Their
architecture, so simple and massive, but so different from a certain
wide-awake familiarity which is written upon the houses of the
North, best assimilates in his view with some mood of twilight.
Yet, seen at dawn or at dusk, or under the moon, the city of Mexico
never loses its one decided charm of picturesqueness. It was this
exceeding quality which doubtless delighted the eye of Humboldt when
he praised Mexico as one of the finest of cities. He had, perhaps,
beheld from its cathedral's steeple a most unique capital--a city
set not on a hill, but in one of the dreamiest of valleys near one
of the dreamiest and shallowest of lakes, with Popocatapetl and
Ixtaccihuatl, snow-crowned and heaven-seeking, for monuments of its
guardian valley.

In such a scene, Cabrera and his contemporary artists did their work.
Their school was the church. What this church was in their day the
splendid traditions of art found even now in its corridors and near
its altars bear faithful witnesses. Something from their hands has
gone into every community of Mexico, and, if war has spared one-half
the relics of her art as it existed one hundred and fifty or two
hundred years ago, the republic is still fortunate in one respect.
The cathedrals of Puebla and Mexico, and La Profesa, were perhaps
the chief homes of that genius of painting which was manifested not
merely in one, but in a number of Mexicans. Who are the artists of
the exceedingly fine pictures which may be seen in the church at
Puebla the stranger rarely ascertains. The tradition that Velasquez,
the great pupil of Murillo, and Cabrera, the native Mexican, sowed
the religion of the New World with their pencils some centuries
ago, supplies him with the morsel of vague knowledge with which he
reluctantly leaves a building full of rich and curious shrines.
Mexico is to all appearances singularly deficient in a proper memory
of her noblest painters. Go into one of the city's oldest churches,
and your friendly guide, though he be a priest, may not be able to
tell you who painted the saints on the walls and the heads of the
apostles on the shrines. The information possessed outside of the
church respecting its treasures of art has, under stress of various
revolutions, dissipated into vague generalities. Three or four
remarkable names are known, and a few famous pictures; but who can
at once point out to us the masterpieces of any of the five or six
painters whose works are worth remembering, or tell us near what
shrines, outside of the capital itself, we are likely to find rare
pictures? Nevertheless, art is almost the chief boast of Mexico,
aside from its natural endowments, though, like so much else in a
land subject to all manner of vicissitudes, the boast is to some
extent shadowy and unsubstantial. In successive revolutions, it is
conjectured, those true homes of fine art, the convents, have been
despoiled, and the saints and angels of their galleries sent hither
and thither, to be kept by natives or to be sold to foreigners as
Joseph was sold by his brethren. Another spoliation, and perhaps a
searching and sweeping one, is said to have taken place under the eye
of the French during their mercenary intervention. How or by whom
robbed and mutilated in the last half-century of wars, Mexican art is
but the wreck of what it was. That so much of it still survives is a
proof of its original abundance and vitality.

But, notwithstanding the whirlwinds of revolution, art in the
country of Cabrera has retained a number of impregnable and
indestructible asylums. Altar ornaments of gold or silver may have
been stolen from the cathedral, but apparently no sacrilegious
criminal has ever carried away its pictures. These treasures of
the church are set fast in their places round the shrines, so
closely and plentifully that, wherever they are most congregated,
the altar-places seem walled and tiled with them. Not all of them
are worthy of Cabrera or Xuarez or Ximenez, let alone Murillo and
Velasquez; but all have their value as portions of a chapter in
art the like of which is not to be seen elsewhere on the American
continent. Confused and perplexed as the real beauties of many of
these paintings are by the endless bedizenments of altars, it is
impossible to ignore or conceal the richness, delicacy, and even
tenderness which belong to their best specimens. The extravagance of
gilding, the wilderness of carved flourishes, which the taste of the
sixteenth century placed at the back of the altars, do not form the
best repository for the subdued beauty which a noble picture acquires
with age. The great back altar-wall of the cathedral is from floor
to roof one mass of most ingenious carving and gilding, out of which
what seem to be pious aborigines, associated with warriors and saints
on the same background, blossom in paint and gold. Our modern and
practical tastes do not easily give room to an ornamentation as loud
and prodigal as figures in this great recess; but it is nevertheless
a rare and meritorious work in its way. Other shrines display the
same gilding in an inferior degree; and we must divest ourselves
of some prejudice, artistic and otherwise, before we appreciate
the merit of extreme elaboration in their ornaments, and discover,
notwithstanding this lavish wealth of surrounding decoration, the
modest worth of the best pictures of the church.

The cathedral is well constituted to be the ark and refuge of
religious art. It is about 428 feet long and 200 wide, while its
general height is almost 100, that of its towers being nearly 200
feet. These dimensions argue an interior vast enough to enclose three
or four such churches as we may see on Broadway, without taking into
account its large adjoining chapel. Its exterior is a congregation of
heavy masses crowned by great bell-shaped towers, but wanting a grand
unity and exaltation. Nevertheless, the charm of picturesqueness
which belongs to so many solid monuments of the sixteenth century has
rested upon this cathedral, in spite of its dinginess and heaviness;
and a view of it under the magic of a moonlight which Italian skies
could not more than rival is one of the finest of a series of
Mexican lithographs. Gothic height, space, and freedom are the prime
qualities of the cathedral's interior. Not less than twenty-two
shrines are there visible in an extent of two aisles and twenty
arches, the columns of which are each quintupled. The high porphyry
columns, the range of the apostles, the burst of gilded glory,
and the outspread angels over the principal altar are exceedingly
impressive, notwithstanding an exuberance of colors. The choir,
altogether the best architectural feature of the great building,
rises rather toward the middle of the church, and up from the floor,
in a high and luxurious growth of oaken carvings and embellishments.
Inside is the assembly of the saints, finely panelled. Cherub and
seraph are busy apparently with the superb organ-pipes, and make
merry overhead with all the instruments of an orchestra, while impish
faces beneath them seem to be out of temper. The nobleness of the
choir as a work of art is, in great part, due to its gravity, though
it is as ingenious, perhaps, as anything of the kind need be, without
seeking comparison with the mightiest fancies of the Old World.

Even to an ordinary observer it is plain that the old cathedral is
well endowed with pictures. The pure olive-faced Madonna, over the
nearest and most popular altar, is said to be Murillo's; it may
be Velasquez's. She is a mild, meek lady, with a boy in her lap,
veritably human in feature. Out of the rich shade of a great old
artist's mood cherubs seem to swarm upon them. In the fine gloom of
Vespers, when only the face of the Madonna is seen, the religious
mildness of this picture is especially venerable. Other altars have
many curiosities, more or less associated with art. There is at one
a Man of Sorrow, sitting and leaning in wretched plight; at another,
a sallow and agonized Redeemer on the cross; and painted statues and
crucifixes only less realistic and distressful than these are common
throughout the church. The ghostly figure of what may be a dead saint
is laid out in wax, as upon a bed, at one shrine, and elsewhere what
seems to be a dead Redeemer is altared in a glass case. In the chapel
the artistic character of the cathedral is repeated, save that its
high altar-columns, its cross-bearing angel, its splendidly-rayed
apotheosis of the Blessed Virgin, its statues of Moses and John the
Baptist, have a more modern workmanship. The Madonna, in lady-like
wax, with a crown upon her head, and holding daintily a babe in
her arms, is the principal figure of one of the auxiliary shrines,
though not the best specimen of an art in which Mexicans excel,
and which, as represented in a black-robed figure of the Mother of
Sorrows, is sometimes admirable and religiously effective. These
instances, though but a few of the numberless curiosities of wood
and wax amid which the painters have found their abiding home, will
serve to illustrate the very mixed artistic complexion of the Mexican
cathedral. The statues and paintings are of all sorts, colors, and
styles. But the shadowy picture of a sad, nunlike face of Our Lady
of Sorrows; the quaint-hooded countenance of the Blessed Virgin,
apparently wrought in tapestry of the middle ages; or that of our
Lord, after he had been scourged, plainly apprise us that the
sincerity of art, first consecrated by the church, has become a part
of its own consecration. These are sacred pictures, truly. Weary and
wretched, his head bound with thorns, our Lord leans in agonized
contemplation, while an apostle looks up to him in tears. The
elements of this exquisite painting are gloom and pathos developed
out of Murillo-like colors and shadows. Another painting, equally
reverend, pursues the same theme and mood. To whose genius do we owe
them? Perhaps to Velasquez, of whose works the church, it is said,
possesses a noble number; perhaps to Cabrera. Who shall decide? One
of the fathers or cathedraticos might tell us, but which father and
which professor? The condition of topsy-turvy succeeding a revolution
is not favorable to the pursuit or the memory of art; and, as we have
hinted, the proper rediscovery of Mexican art must be a matter of
unselfish and laborious search. Mexico does not, perhaps, even yet
know its proper historian.

Yet some thing we do know of Cabrera. The fine head of St. Peter,
pointed out to the writer by a padre of San Hypolito, is by him.
One of three immense canvases in the sacristy of the cathedral is
also his surprising handiwork. It is a pictorial homage to the Pope,
wherein the successor of St. Peter, gray and grave, sits on the
topmost seat of a ponderous car of triumph, which is pushed by giants
of the faith led by heroes and saints. What seems to be the genius of
history has a seat in the van, and disporting cherubs hover on flank
and rear, while the aged Pope is being ministered to or counselled
by a saint or apostle. This picture, perhaps the largest, though
not necessarily the best, painted by Cabrera, is very remarkable
for its vigor and variety of form. The other great canvases are by
Xuarez and Ximenez, both Mexican painters of genius. One represents
the victory of Michael celebrated by the angelic powers; the theme
of the other appears to be the reception of the Holy Lady in heaven.
Pictures of this extensive character are certainly calculated to
display the energy of artists, but not always to develop the highest
expression of religion. There can be no question of the vigor of
these paintings, especially of Cabrera's; but probably we shall have
to seek among smaller canvases and less complicated subjects the true
masterpieces of Cabrera, Xuarez, and Ximenez. Some years ago they
might have been found in the Convent of La Profesa or of St. Dominic,
or, perhaps, in the Academy of San Carlos; but where are they now?
That academy, once, doubtless, the finest of its kind in America, and
still among the best, does contain, it is true, some master paintings
by Xuarez, Rodriguez, Joachim, Ludovicus, bearing date after the
close of the sixteenth century; but these do not give us assurance of
being the best examples of what was done about Cabrera's time. The
walls of San Carlos, we may remark in passing, contain a very large,
melodramatic descent from the cross by Baltasar de Chaue, and a
beautiful Shepherd Boy, by Ingies, whose simplicity recalls the fact
that the Lute Player, one of the few genuine Murillos said to be in
the country, is in the possession of a Mexican club.

But what of Cabrera? Alas! that the walls of San Carlos should
tell us little or nothing; that the padre who guides us through La
Profesa knows about as much! The poor muse of painting has been a
good-for-nothing these many years, a wretched Cinderella sitting
at a ruined hearthstone, or, rather, sweeping up the rubbish in
the corridors of confiscated and despoiled convents. La Profesa,
however, is an asylum of art. As it now stands, it is a fine old
church, whose rigid and antiquated countenance many a praying Mexican
woman knows for that of a mother. Nothing of its ample, simple,
sturdy architecture has crumbled in the last two centuries. Its
plateresco--the "frolic fancy" which sixteenth-century art put upon
the front of churches, and of which the _façade_ of the cathedral
presents an immense example, entangling cherubs and bewildering
saints in the ingenuity of its small sculptures--still remains
intact. The apostles are in their niches, and "Nuestro Señor" is
invoked in a text cut on the outside walls. Not many years ago,
La Profesa was not merely a church, but, as its name indicates, a
house for religious women, and that, too, one of the richest and
most extensive in Mexico. Many courts, many corridors and fountains,
and some pleasant gardens, with eaves-haunting birds to remind one
of St. Francis's gossips, the sparrows, were no doubt among the
possessions of this convent as of other convents in the capital,
from whose now deserted walks and cells one may hear the flow of
fountains and the song of birds. But a few corridors of the many that
belonged to the house have been left to the church out of a general
ruin made necessary for the cutting of a wide street through what was
once a vast building or number of buildings. These corridors and the
church itself were in 1868 visited by the writer in company with a
courteous young padre, but he could learn comparatively little of the
unmistakable riches of art deposited there. Who painted the superb
heads of the apostles framed in an altar near the sacristy? Cabrera
or Velasquez? The padre did not know. As we entered the first of the
wide, heavy stone corridors, two old men, looking like pensioners,
were saying their prayers aloud before a shrine of Our Lady of
Guadalupe. We stood opposite a mammoth scene of the crucifixion,
wherein Christ and the thieves are most painfully individualized on
the gloom of Calvary. Age and neglect had seemingly eclipsed the
larger portion of this canvas, and left no shade of the painter's
identity in the mind of our student of the cloister. In another
ill-lighted corridor were paintings by Cabrera, Xuarez, Ximenez,
Joachim, Correa, Rodriguez, and some others, all Mexicans, it is
said, and evidently men of decided gifts. Here was a picture by
Xuarez of the Saviour in apparition among the apostles--a presentment
in tenderest and most luminous colors of ethereal gentleness.
The finest picture in the gallery, entitled St. Luke, might have
been by a pupil of Murillo, but really the padre could not tell.
Another corridor more neglected than the rest seemed to be a very
charnel-room for art--a place for the rags and lumber of unhung,
undusted, unrestored pictures. The distracted church has been a sorry
sexton for its dead painters. After all, the best efforts are not
certain of immunity from the outrages of time and ignorance. Well
enough if the great unseen critic applauds.

Nowadays the common visitor to La Profesa searches not at all for
Cabrera, but looks at a dome brilliantly painted with scenes from the
life of the Saviour by the Spanish Mexican Clavel. Except the dome
of Santa Teresa's by Cordero, there is perhaps nothing of the kind,
at least in the three principal cities of Mexico, to compare with
Clavel's work. Cordero, whose picture of Columbus at court received
all the honors of an exhibition in the palace of Prince Poniatowski
at Florence, and who has received high encomiums from his brother
artists in Italy, is by some regarded the best of existing Mexican
artists. Like the two Coras, who, with Tolsa, appear to be the most
noted of the sculptors of Mexico, Cordero is a native of the country.
To Jose Villegas Coras, who was born in 1713, the city of Puebla owes
those statues of our Lord and Our Lady, which one of his admirers
declares have a sublimity of expression and a grace in details not
easy to find in the best schools of Europe. Jose Zocarias Coras, his
nephew, was less an idealist, says his critic, but more faithful to
nature, and is distinguished by his sculptures of the "Crucified," in
which are exhibited a profound agony. The two statues which crown the
towers of the cathedral are also the work of the younger Coras, who
died in 1819, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. The work of these
men was ill-requited, like so much else in Mexican life and industry.
The writer is not able to speak of them upon personal or from a very
common knowledge of their sculptures; but it is well to note them
here as artists who are thought worthy of a place in that scarce and
not too steady literature, Mexican biography. It may serve others who
visit Mexico to know that, in the latest phase of art at the capital,
Clavel, Rebull, Cordero, and the sculptor Islas, with some others,
have distinguished themselves.

Let us now speak freely of Cabrera, the father and master of Mexican
art--of him whose pictures are at once so numerous and so scarce,
whose fame is so well-founded, yet of whose life so little is
known. The first important fact in his biography is, that, like the
greatest ruler which the country has produced, its greatest artist
was an Indian--a Zapotec Indian, too, from the native country of
Benito Juarez, Oaxoca. The next is that, under the patronage of the
Archbishop Salinas, he painted those many admirable pieces which are
the reproachful glory of his country. According to a modern Mexican
writer, Señor Orozco, works of Cabrera may be found in the churches
of Mexico and Puebla especially, and in the convents of San Domingo
and La Profesa, but we have seen under what circumstances. His
masterpieces, if we may credit the intelligent opinion reported by
Señor Orozco, are contained in the sacristy of the church at Tasco,
where a whole life of the Blessed Virgin is portrayed, the scene
of the Nativity being distinguished by its light and freshness of
color. The same writer assures us that Cabrera wrote a treatise on
the celebrated picture given to the Indian Juan Diego during the
Marvellous Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and in it he concurs
with other painters of his day in affirming that the miraculous
painting, which he had examined carefully in the light of art, is
not the work of human hands. This is the judgment of an Indian artist
respecting a wonderful revelation made to one of his race, and,
however it may be viewed by those who discredit all supernaturalism
of a later date than eighteen hundred years ago, gives the stamp of
conviction to the faith of Guadalupe. What the opinion of Cabrera was
worth in a question of art, what the artist himself should be worth
in the estimation of mankind, is signified to us in the following
extraordinary notice of his genius by Count Beltrani, an Italian
traveller:

    "Some pictures of Cabrera are called _American
    wonders_, and all are of eminent merit. The life of St.
    Dominic, painted by him in the cloister of the convent
    of that name; the life of St. Ignatius, and the history
    of the man degraded by mortal sin and regenerated by
    religion and virtue, in the cloister of La Profesa,
    present two galleries which in nothing yield to the
    cloister of Santa Maria la Nueva di Florencia, and
    the Campo Santo of Pisa. I hazard even saying that
    Cabrera alone, in these two cloisters, is worth all the
    artists joined who have painted the two magnificent
    Italian galleries. Cabrera possesses the outlines of
    Correggio, the animation of Domenichino, and the pathos
    of Murillo. His episodes--as the 'Angels,' etc.--are of
    rare beauty. In my conception, he is a great painter.
    He was, moreover, an architect and sculptor; in fine,
    the Michael Angelo of Mexico."

What say our American pilgrims to Italy of this report of an Italian
pilgrim in America? Here, then, was an Indian Michael Angelo of
whom few artists of the New World know anything whatever. We need
not strain an objection that Count Beltrani's dictum may be an
exaggeration, for there are not many travellers who care to praise
Mexico, and very few to overpraise her--at least, in respect to art.
The fact remains that the country which gave birth to Sor Juana Inez
de la Cruz, perhaps the most remarkable character in all American
letters, also had for its native the greatest painter of the New
World, and one of the most singularly meritorious in an age when
great painters were numerous. In judging of Cabrera, we must fairly
consider the time, the place, the elements in which he wrought;
for schools, masters, models, emulation, royal encouragement, and
proper recompense and fame were all denied to him, in a greater
or less degree. Cloistered as a great artist must necessarily be
at any time, he would have felt, perhaps, especially abandoned in
far-off Mexico in the sixteenth century. That Cabrera did suffer this
abandonment the facts of his life attest. Yet, to speak a literal
truth, Cabrera has no biography. It is not known when he was born
or when he died, and, says a Mexican writer, "we only know that he
lived in the eighteenth century by the dates of his paintings."
Alas! for fame; alas! for genius!--and this, too, in the eighteenth
century! We know more of Shakespeare, more of Lopé, more of Sor
Juana, more of Alarcon--he, too, was born in Mexico, yet we know
his birthday--than of Cabrera, who could not have died more than a
hundred and twenty-five years ago, and respecting whom it was said:
"There is hardly a church of the republic which does not contain some
work of his distinguished pencil." Alas! for work and worth! How much
of all this may have perished or vanished beneath the storms of the
last fifty miserable years of Mexican life, overridden by swaggering
pronouncers, stolen by intervening robbers, the torch of genius
extinguished in the dust raised by defiant nobodies. Yet Cabrera
survives, as few artists can, a veritable wreck of matter. Happily
for him, it may be, his only biography is in his works; and they are
full of life, and of life better than his own, yet in some respects
received into it--lives of saints, apostles, angels, the Blessed
Virgin, and the Divine Redeemer. Let these speak for his life to men,
and commend his work to the unseen Master.




"THE SERIOUS, TOO, HAVE THEIR 'VIVE LA BAGATELLE.'"


      Gay world! You may write on my heart what you will
        If your laugh-shaken fingers but trace
      The dream, or the jest, with that fairylike quill
        That ciphers the wood-sorrel's vase!

      Fair world! You may write on my heart what you will;
        But write it with pencil, not pen:
      You are fair, and have skill; but a hand fairer still
        Soon whitens the tablet again!

                                             AUBREY DE VERE.




WHAT OUR MUNICIPAL LAW OWES TO THE CHURCH.


The wisdom and bravery of our forefathers having at length enabled
them to sever the ties which had bound the original thirteen colonies
to Great Britain, their experience, knowledge, and foresight were
called into requisition to form a government for the new nation,
and adopt a code of laws which, avoiding the complex and erroneous
features of those of the Old-World countries, the necessary result
of centuries of contradictory legislation, would confirm to the
people their newly-acquired liberties, and guarantee to every
citizen not only justice from the state, but, in their relations
with each other, ample protection for life and liberty, property and
reputation. As a foundation for this new system of jurisprudence,
the statesmen of the Revolution selected the English code almost in
its entirety, partly because the late colonists had been familiar
with its workings on either side of the ocean, but mainly because
they considered it, comparatively, at least, humane and liberal, and
the most suitable for a free government. Many statutes and customs
peculiar to monarchies were at the time necessarily omitted, and
several enactments have since been passed by our national and local
legislatures liberalizing ancient laws, as intended to keep pace with
the rapid development of our industrial resources, which, from time
to time, creates new and complicated relations between individuals.
Still, to all intents and purposes, our body of laws is fundamentally
identical with that of England in the last century, is founded on
the same general principles, and has the same origin and history.
Therefore, in speaking of the jurisprudence of our republic, we also
speak of that of Great Britain, for whatever applies to one as a
whole equally applies to the other.

Our municipal law, consisting of the common law (_lex non scripta_)
and the statute law (_lex scripta_), springs from three distinct
sources, each of which in its degree has materially contributed its
share to the general stock which goes to make up our legal system,
which, for completeness and enlightenment of spirit, may well
challenge the admiration of mankind. These three sources are--the
ancient common law of England, the civil law of the Roman Empire, and
the canon law of the church. Though originating at distinct periods
and places, and intended primarily to operate on diverse elements,
the provisions of these three codes have in process of time become
so interwoven, one with the other, in the body of the English law,
that it is often difficult and sometimes impossible to discriminate
between them.

The common law, in its general acceptation, is composed of the
ancient customs of England, beyond which the memory of man runneth
not to the contrary, of reports of cases and decisions of judges
thereon, and of the writings of persons learned in the law. Sir
William Blackstone, the celebrated author of the _Commentaries on
the Laws of England_, is by universal consent the greatest expounder
of the common law. With the legal profession, his opinions have a
force little less binding than that of a positive enactment, while
his definitions, whether borrowed from his predecessors or his own
creation, are accepted by the learned of all classes as the most
comprehensive and satisfactory in the language on this branch of
study. Unhappily for posterity, but more unfortunately for his own
reputation, Blackstone lived and wrote in an age when it was the
fashion to introduce into every department of English literature the
most absurd calumnies against the church, and to advance the most
preposterous claims in favor of the so-called Reformation. The wild
fanaticism and lust of plunder with which that stupendous rebellion
against God's authority was inaugurated had in a great measure
subsided in the middle of the last century, and it behooved those of
its advocates who attempted to look back into the past to justify
present crimes by maligning their Catholic ancestors, or, when that
could not be hazarded, by imputing the worst of motives for the
best of actions. The great commentator, with all his perspicacity
and legal acumen, was nor above resorting to this dishonest method
of bolstering a sinking cause, and hence we find in his otherwise
invaluable work that he loses no opportunity, in or out of season,
to ignore the transcendent merits, misrepresent the conduct, and
misconstrue the intentions of the ecclesiastics of the early and
middle ages of the church, who, in their time, had done so much to
reduce our laws into something like system, and make them conform
in justice and equity as much as possible to those revealed by the
Creator. Surrounded by the mists of doubt and dissent, the emanation
of a hundred jarring creeds, he failed to see beyond the horizon of
his own generation, or to perceive the reflux of that wave of heresy
which, in the sixteenth century, submerged England, and threatened
to inundate the whole of Europe. As an expounder of law, Blackstone
still holds a position in the front rank of our jurists, but so
warped are his views by the prejudices of the epoch in which he lived
that, before the enlightened spirit of our time, he is gradually but
surely losing his vantage-ground as an impartial authority, even
on questions upon which he is really most reliable. Another defect
in the writings of this able professor, but one of much lesser
importance, is his constant tendency to exaggerate the merits of
the Anglo-Saxon lawgivers, and to attribute to them the credit of
originating many laws which were wholly unknown in England till many
years after the conquest; but as we have the authority of Hallam for
saying that his knowledge of ancient history was rather superficial,
we may attribute this fault more to a deficiency of historical
knowledge than to a wilful intention to deceive.

The civil law is founded principally on the ancient regal
constitutions of Rome, on the laws of the twelve tables, the statutes
of the senate and republic, the edicts of the prætors, the opinions
of learned lawyers, and on imperial decrees. So numerous, however,
had these various enactments become, and so contradictory in terms
and penalties, that the study of them was the labor of a lifetime,
altogether beyond the ability of the great mass of the governed
to overcome. It was therefore found necessary in the reign of
Theodosius, about A.D. 438, to codify them, and, by rejecting all
superfluous matter, to greatly reduce their bulk. About a century
later, under the Emperor Justinian, they were again submitted to a
similar process, the Institutes being reduced to four books, and the
Pandects, containing over two thousand cases and opinions, to fifty.
To these were added a new code, being a continuation of that of
Theodosius, the novels or decrees of that emperor and his successors,
as well as those of Justinian himself. These taken together formed
the _corpus juris civilis_ of the Eastern and Western Empires. It is
in the new code and the novels that we first begin to perceive the
influence of the church in civil legislation. From the time of the
conversion of Constantine, the emperors, with one or two exceptions,
were the fast friends, and, in matters spiritual, the obedient
children of the pontiffs. The laws of pagan times, particularly those
respecting distributive justice and the domestic relations, were
utterly unsuited for the government of a Christian people, and, as
the church was recognized as the sole arbiter of right and wrong in
the abstract, it is natural to expect that the Christian emperors
before and after Justinian not only conformed to the dicta of the
church in their decrees and decisions, but frequently consulted
their spiritual advisers on matters affecting conscience in their
twofold capacity of legislators and judges. Justinian in particular
appears to have borrowed many of his ideas of temporal law from the
church, for we find him paraphrasing or adopting bodily many of the
canons of the early councils.[59] Hence we easily perceive that much
of the more modern portion of the _corpus juris civilis_, though
bearing the impress of imperial authority, is in reality little more
than a copy of the rules laid down previously for the spiritual and
social guidance of the children of the church, and that those grand
principles and delicate distinctions which are as true to-day as
in the time of the apostles, and are as applicable to our advanced
state of civilization as they were then, are simply the result of
the infusion of the spirit of Christianity into the civil polity
of a once pagan people. Thus we find the Institutes or Elements of
Justinian commencing with the solemn invocation, "In the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ," and ending with the equally edifying aspiration,
"Blessed be the majesty of God and our Lord Jesus Christ," and in
harmony with this pious disposition we find among other laws relating
to the rights of the church the following: "Those things which have
been consecrated by the pontiffs in due form are esteemed sacred;
such as churches, chapels, and all movable things, if they have been
properly dedicated to the service of God, and we have forbidden
by our constitution that these things should be either aliened or
obligated unless for the redemption of captives."[60] A novel of
Valentinian, in A.D. 452, in recognizing the right of bishops to try
cases of only temporal concern where the parties were in orders,
extends their jurisdiction over laics who have power to "oblige
themselves to obey the sentence of the bishop," which sentence, if
necessary, was to be enforced by the civil authorities.[61]

The church did not conform, either in her discipline or her doctrine,
to the rules or underlying principles of the civil law, but on the
contrary subjected that law to the most rigid examination and the
most careful analysis, expurgating what was opposed to justice and
retaining all that she found in consonance with divine truth; and
as the Roman civil law was at that period a rule for all civilized
nations, this may be considered her first great human gift to
mankind, equal if not superior to her subsequent culture of the
arts, sciences, and literature. Admitting, then, the harmony which
existed between the Roman laws and the teachings of the church, we
are not surprised to find that when, in the eleventh century, a copy
of Justinian, discovered at Amalphi, Italy, was published, it was
eagerly received by European nations, adopted in whole or in part by
all Christendom, and that it to-day forms the main foundation of the
jurisprudence of all enlightened peoples.[62]

About the time of the revival of the study of the Roman civil law,
Gratian, an Italian monk, published in three volumes, arranged in
titles and chapters after the manner of the Pandects, a collection
of the decrees of the general councils of the church, a digest of
the opinions of the fathers, and the decretals and bulls of the Holy
See. Other collections had been previously made by ecclesiastics in
Spain and elsewhere, but none were found to be complete or reliable.
However, as Gratian's work was itself far from perfect, Pope Gregory
IX. authorized Raymond de Pennafort, a learned divine, to compile a
new collection, which was published by authority of his Holiness,
A.D. 1234, under the title of _Decretalia Gregorii Noni_. It was
divided into five books, and contained all that was worth preserving
of Gratian, with the subsequent rescripts of the Popes, especially
those of Alexander III., Innocent III., Honorius III., and Gregory
IX. "In these books," says Hallam, "we find a regular and copious
system of jurisprudence, derived in a great measure from the civil
law, but with considerable deviation and possible improvement."[63]
Boniface VIII., sixty years afterwards, published a sixth part,
known as _Sextus Decretalium_, divided also into five books, in the
nature of a supplement to the other five, of which it follows the
arrangement, and is composed of decisions promulgated after the
pontificate of Gregory IX. New constitutions were added by Clement
V. and John XXII., under the titles respectively of _Clementine_ and
_Extravagantes Johannis_, and a few rescripts of later pontiffs are
included in a second supplement, arranged like the _Sextus_, and
called _Extravantes Communes_. Up to the Council of Pisa, in A.D.
1409, these books constituted the whole of the canon law or _corpus
juris canonici_, and though principally intended for the government
of ecclesiastics, were often applied to temporal purposes, in law and
equity, when neither the civil nor common law met the requirements
of a disputed point. The study of the canons had been encouraged
from the first in the colleges and schools of Europe, but, upon the
publication in a systematical form in the eleventh century, it became
universal, and with the Roman civil law constituted an essential
branch of clerical education. At first the Canonists and Glossators,
as the professors of civil law were called, formed separate but not
antagonistic schools, but in the thirteenth century Lanfrancus, a
professor of Bologna, united the study of both laws, a custom which
has since been generally adopted.

As we have before remarked, Sir William Blackstone would fain have us
believe that every principle of English common law originated with,
and was recognized by, the Anglo-Saxons from the remotest period of
their history, but there is neither fact nor probable suspicion to
sustain those unqualified statements of our partial commentator. The
Romans, who held possession of Britain for more than four hundred
years, may have left on the vanquished people of that country some
impress of their laws, but the Britons themselves, soon after the
departure of the legions, were driven to the mountains of Wales by
the Angles and Saxons, and for centuries held no intercourse with
the victorious intruders. These latter, the outpourings of the woods
and swamps of the north, are represented by all reliable historians
as the veriest barbarians, illiterate and idolatrous, and altogether
incapable of conceiving or appreciating the broad principles of free
government or the varied regulations which control the intercourse
and commerce of man with man, such as we find in civilized society;
much less those which affect the conduct of household relations,
which, originating in the church, could only have been properly
expounded by her ministers. The Danes, who subsequently invaded
and for many years held possession of the larger portion of the
island, were little less barbaric, nor can we trace to them any
well-recognized custom or fundamental principle of our present laws.
"In the barbarous specimens of legislation due to the era of Saxon
and Danish rule," says a late able writer on this subject, "the few
texts of Roman law which occur appear to us traceable through the
Papal canons. How faint is the impression which even the Anglo-Saxon
laws have left upon our system? We have still the local court and
the local officers, and some of the rude democratic elements of
judicial procedure and constitutional law have been nurtured into
real civilized liberty, but happily for us, the harsh and partial
regulations savoring of original Teutonic savageness which awarded
the various penalties of crime have passed away, and the ancient
absence of all expressed regulation in many most important points
has been supplied by the legislation of more enlightened times
and more cultivated men."[64] After the arrival of St. Augustine,
towards the close of the sixth century, the gradual evangelization
of the island of Britain necessitated the abolition of the heathen
customs, the basis of the Anglo-Saxon legislation, such as it was,
and the introduction of a new code of government. The primitive
ignorance of the inhabitants and the subsequent decline of learning
consequent on the repeated incursions of the Northmen, had the effect
of limiting whatever knowledge was still possessed in the country
to the ecclesiastics, who, amid the most adverse circumstances, and
very often at the sacrifice of their lives, fed the torch of learning
and kept its brilliancy undimmed when all around was darkness. They
became not only the makers but the dispensers of the law, for, though
surrounded on all sides by anarchy and ignorance, they had still the
guidance of their canons and some acquaintance with the elaborate
code of the empire. The clergy, admits Blackstone, "like the Druids,
their predecessors, were proficient in the study of the law."

This marked and beneficial interference of the ministers of the
church in the legislative and judicial affairs of newly converted
nations not only arose out of political and social necessity, but
may be considered as a logical sequence of the establishment of
Christianity itself. "The arbitrative authority of ecclesiastical
pastors," says Hallam, "if not coeval with Christianity, grew up
very early in the church, and was natural and even necessary to an
isolated and persecuted society, accustomed to feel a strong aversion
to the imperial tribunals, and even to consider a recurrence to them
as hardly consistent with their profession; the early Christians
retained somewhat of a similar prejudice even after the establishment
of their religion. The arbitration of their bishops still seemed a
less objectionable mode of settling differences, and this arbitrative
jurisdiction was powerfully supported by a law of Constantine
which directed the civil magistrate to enforce the execution
of episcopal awards."[65] Justinian went even further than his
illustrious ancestors, for he not only gave the bishops in the first
instance, without the consent of the parties, the power of trying
temporal causes in which the defendant was an ecclesiastic, but the
episcopal order was absolutely exempted by him from all secular
jurisdiction.[66]

If such clerical intrusion into the province of the civil magistrate
was not only tolerated but encouraged in the best and most Catholic
days of the Western and Eastern empires, how much more salutary must
it have been in its effects among the semi-civilized and turbulent
Saxons and Northmen! Unfortunately, scarcely any record is left to
us of the labors of the priesthood in this direction during those
centuries which preceded the Norman conquest, for the compilations of
Alfred and Edward the Confessor are irreparably lost; but here and
there we catch a glimpse of their presence legislating or deciding
causes. Thus, as early as A.D. 787, at a provincial council held
at Calcluith, a place long obliterated from the map of England, it
was solemnly enacted "that none but legitimate princes should be
raised to the throne, and not such as were engendered in adultery or
incest." "But it is to be remarked," says Hallam, "that, although
this synod was strictly ecclesiastical, being summoned by the Pope's
legate, yet the kings of Mercia and Northumberland, with many of
their nobles, confirmed the canons by their signatures."[67] Another
instance of clerical legislation is to be found in the canons of
the Northumbrian clergy, and that one of peculiar interest to
students of law and history, presenting, as it does, the first germ
of that glory of English law not inaptly called the palladium of
the subject's liberty--trial by jury.[68] "If a king's thane," says
the canon, "deny this (the practice of heathen superstition), let
twelve be appointed for him, and let him take twelve of his kindred
or equals (_maga_) and twelve British strangers, and if he fail let
him pay for his breach of law twelve half-marcs; if a landholder (or
lesser thane) deny the charge, let as many of his equals and as many
strangers be taken for him as for a royal thane, and if he fail let
him pay for his breach of law six half-marks; if a ceorl deny it,
let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as
for the others, and if he fail let him pay twelve oræ for his breach
at law."[69] This quasi-jury system appears to have been applied
to other cases, for we learn from the history of Ramsey, published
in Gales's _Scriptores_, that a controversy relating to some land
between the monks and a certain nobleman was brought into the county
court, when each party was heard in his own behalf, and after its
commencement it was referred by the court to thirty-six thanes,
equally chosen by both sides.[70]

The invasion and speedy conquest of Britain by the Normans not
only overturned the Saxon dynasty, and reduced the people of that
and the Danish race remaining in the country to a condition of
absolute servitude, but introduced a new language and completely
revolutionized the municipal laws of the entire nation. The sacrifice
of human life incident to the conquest was small in comparison to
the amount of misery, wretchedness, and degradation entailed on the
vanquished for centuries afterwards by the conquerors-men gathered
from every quarter of Europe, whose fortunes were at their swords'
points, and whose fidelity and support were only to be purchased by
the fruits of plunder and spoliation. Still, it must be admitted
that the conquest had its advantages, and very great ones. From
the departure of the Romans until the arrival of William, England
proper cannot be said to have enjoyed any appreciable respite from
foreign wars or domestic dissensions. The Britons, deprived of the
powerful protection of the legions, were constantly harassed by
their rapacious neighbors from the north side of the Tweed, and in
trying to escape from them they fell into the clutches of their false
allies, the Angles and Saxons, and narrowly escaped extermination.
These latter were no sooner settled in the country than they
established as many monarchies as they had chiefs, and, having for
a time no foreign foe to contend against, readily turned their
arms against each other on the slightest provocation. Weakened and
distracted, they soon fell an easy prey to the piratical Northmen,
who, under Canute and his successors, fastened on the fair lands of
the middle and northern portions of the island and on the contiguous
sea-ports a grip so tenacious that all the subsequent efforts of the
Saxon monarchs could not unloosen it. This diversity of race and
traditional forms of government naturally gave birth to laws and
customs entirely at variance with each other in letter and spirit,
and what was binding in one section was unknown or disregarded in
another. The Normans, with the thoroughness of genuine conquerors,
disregarded all such local distinctions, and reduced the entire
native population to a level, thane and ceorl alike being made to
endure the same burdens of servitude and compelled to obey implicitly
the will of their new masters.

But the Normans were Christians, at least by profession, and boasted
of a species of rude chivalry which prevented them from imitating
the excesses of their pagan predecessors. While greedy enough for
the secular lands of the defeated Saxons, they seldom interfered
with churches or institutions of learning and charity; on the
contrary, they were wise enough to protect the one and encourage the
other in every manner possible consistent with their design of total
subjection. They introduced generally the new system of feuds and a
foreign hierarchy, it is true, but they did not deprive the people of
the consolations of religion, and they gave to the country for the
first time unity, the necessary precursor of rational freedom, and a
national government with uniform laws, which, if born amid the clash
of arms, rested its principal claims to support on the ways of peace.

The feudal system, though burdened with its aids, reliefs, seisin,
wardship, and many other equally onerous conditions, was for that
time the best and in fact the only proper form of government
for England, and it is mainly to its uniform establishment by
the conquerors, and to the judicious statesmanship of her great
ecclesiastical lawyers, who subsequently gradually mitigated its
harsher features, that the past and present greatness of that country
is to be traced. The theory that the sovereign, representing the
majesty of the nation, was the owner of all the lands of the kingdom,
and that directly or indirectly all the occupiers of the soil were
his tenants, holding by right of fealty and service, gave to the
people what they so long wanted, a centre of unity and a common
authority to which they could look for redress and protection.
Besides, the system had become so general on the Continent, and had
proved so admirable a machine for defence or aggression, that its
adoption by the new Anglo-Norman kingdom had become a political
necessity.

Though sadly behind many of her sister nations in the arts of
government, England was not at the time of the conquest altogether
deficient in the knowledge of civil or common law. On the contrary,
she had many eminent professors of both. The monks of Croyland
and Spaulding were distinguished as jurists, and Egelbert, Bishop
of Chichester, is said, even by Norman authorities, to have been
thoroughly acquainted not only with the canons and what was then
known of the Roman civil law, but with "all the ancient laws and
customs of the land."[71] The Normans, however, preferring to place
their own countrymen in positions of trust and influence, invited
from the Continent many learned bishops and professors, to whom
they gave the charge of the principal sees and universities, and
these, having been trained in the schools of Italy and France,
soon substituted the study of the clearer and more equitable
regulations of the lately-revived civil law for the illogical and
conflicting customs of the natives. Thus the Pandects of Justinian
were introduced into England by Vicarius, professor of canon law
at Oxford, A.D. 1138, and he was succeeded by Accorso, a doctor of
the civil law. Bishop Grosseteste wrote a treatise in favor of the
study of Roman law, and Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, founded
a professorship in Oxford to promote the same object. Of the latter
prelate, it is said that he was accustomed to retain in his house
"several learned persons famous for their knowledge of law, who spent
the hours between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and
debating causes."[72]

The conquerors of the Anglo-Saxons, though by no means deficient
in the scholarship and accomplishments of that rude age, were too
intent on retaining by force the possessions they had won by the
strong arm, to cultivate the arts of peace, and, consequently, the
framing of the laws, the judicial authority, and even the pleading
of causes, necessarily devolved on the ecclesiastics. Hallam, a
writer equally prejudiced with Blackstone, though a much better
historian, is forced to admit that "the bishops acquired and
retained much of their ascendency by a very respectable instrument
of power--intellectual superiority. As they alone were acquainted
with the art of writing, they were naturally entrusted with political
correspondence and the making of the laws."[73] And it was well for
the conqueror and conquered alike that it was so, for to them, and
them alone, was given the skill and authority to restrain with one
hand the ruthless oppressions of the lawless barons, and with the
other to alleviate the sufferings of a down-trodden people. To the
wisdom that proceeds from long communion with the works of great and
good men they joined the authority of the church, which they failed
not to call into requisition when persuasion and reasoning equally
failed. To them we owe every successful effort that was made in the
middle age of England's history, either against the tyranny of the
crown or the injustice of the nobles. _Magna Charta_, that famous
instrument, which, like our own constitution, is so frequently talked
about and so little understood, issued from the fertile brain of
Archbishop Langton, and was signed by every bishop and abbot in the
land.[74] It was they who took up the serf, educated and ordained
him, and made him not only the equal but in many cases the superior
of his late master. They also regulated the alienation and descent
of lands, and by their introduction of fines and recoveries, uses
and trusts, and other forms of conveyance, not only abolished many
of the worst evils of feudalism, but even, according to Blackstone,
"laid the foundation of modern conveyancing." For many centuries they
were the confidential advisers of kings, their trusted ambassadors
abroad, and their names always appeared first in every writ summoning
a council or parliament to legislate for the welfare of the realm,
and the laws thus made were regularly dispensed in the county courts
by the bishops and the civil magistrates sitting together with equal
jurisdiction.

But it was in the court of chancery that the wisdom, clemency,
and equity of the bishops of those days shone with the greatest
brilliancy. This was a court of extraordinary jurisdiction, unknown
in England before the conquest and unparalleled in contemporary
nations. The chancellor and his assistants, almost without exception,
up to the time of Wolsey, were ecclesiastics. Their decisions,
resting upon conscience alone, though unsupported by express statute
or even in contravention of its letter, had all the force of legal
enactments, and formed, collectively, the basis of much of our modern
remedial legislation, as well as an unerring rule for the guidance
of our highest civil justices. The affairs of married persons,
infants, idiots, corporations, bankrupts, testators and intestates,
grantors and grantees of land, and of nearly every conceivable
condition of life, are even at the present day within the special
and almost exclusive jurisdiction of our courts of equity. In the
words of a distinguished English lawyer, "It gives relief for and
against infants, notwithstanding their minority, and for and against
married women, notwithstanding their coverture. All frauds and
deceits for which there is no redress at common law, all breaches
of trust and confidence, and unavoidable casualties, by which
obligors, mortgagors, and others may be held to incur penalties and
forfeitures, are here remedied. This court also gives relief against
the extremity of unreasonable engagements entered into without
consideration, obliges creditors who are unreasonable to compound
with an unfortunate debtor, and makes executors, etc., give security
and pay interest for money which is to be long in their hands.
The court may confirm the title to lands, though one has lost his
writings, render conveyances which are defective through mistake or
otherwise good and perfect. In chancery, copyholders may be relieved
against the ill-usage of their lords, enclosures of land which is
common may be decreed, and this court may also decree the disposition
of money or lands given to charitable uses, oblige men to account
with each other," etc.[75]

A system of laws like that of Chancery, so comprehensive and so
equitable, defined and administered by a long succession of the most
upright and enlightened men of the land, could not but have left
a deep impression on the entire jurisprudence of the people who
profited by its protection--an impression, indeed, that neither the
mental obliquity of the fanatic nor the sophistry of the pedant has
been able to obliterate. "So deep hath this canon law been rooted,"
says Lord Stairs, "that even where the Pope's authority is rejected,
yet consideration must be had to these laws, not only as those by
which the church benefices have been erected and ordered, but as
likewise as containing many equitable and profitable provisions,
which because of their weighty matter and their being once received
may more fitly be retained than rejected."[76]

Had the prelates and priests of the Saxon and Norman periods done
nothing for our law but what we find in the decisions of their equity
courts, they would have conferred upon us an incalculable blessing,
one equally calculated to liberalize the spirit of legislators,
enlighten the understanding of jurists, and make government what
it was designed to be, a shield for the weak and helpless, and a
terror to the wicked and dishonest. But, as we have seen on the
authority of writers conspicuous for their anti-Catholic bigotry,
they did infinitely more. Statesmen as well as lawyers, they framed
most of our best statutes as well as adjudicated upon them, and they
originated or perfected every feature in our entire code which has
stood the test of time, and enlarged civilization from trial by jury
to the unqualified right of every man to dispose of his property as
seems best to himself. They have thus placed us under obligations
which we can only in part repay by transmitting their maxims
unimpaired to our descendants, and by, at length, doing justice to
their memories. And now, as we believe that the world is growing
wiser as it is growing older, when time has healed many of the
wounds inflicted during the great schismatic revolt of the sixteenth
century, and, uninfluenced by passion or unawed by power, the scales
of prejudice are falling from the eyes of those who through the fault
of their fathers are aliens to the truth, it is not too much to hope
that they will neither be ashamed nor afraid to acknowledge how much
they are indebted to the church and her ministers for the generally
admirable system of laws under which we live--laws which are at once
our highest boast and best protection.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] _Vide 131, Nov. Justinian._

[60] Doctor Harris's translation, p. 49. London, 1814.

[61] Lib. ii. tit. 35.

[62] According to some authorities, a copy of the Pandects was
discovered at Amalphi, in the middle of the twelfth century, and was
first given to the world by two Italian lawyers. D'Israeli, in his
_Curiosities of Literature_, says: "The original MS. of Justinian's
Code was discovered by the Pisans accidentally when they took a city
in Calabria. That vast code of laws had been in a manner unknown from
the time of that Emperor. This curious book was brought to Pisa, and,
when Pisa was taken by the Florentines, transferred to Florence,
where it is still preserved." The Code, Pandects, and Institutes are
still received as common law in Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland,
and Scotland in their entirety, and partly so in France, Spain, and
Italy.

[63] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 201.

[64] _Encyclopædia Metropolitana._ London, 1846

[65] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 146.

[66] _Nov. Just. 123_, c. 21-23.

[67] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 149.

[68] Sir William Jones, a learned scholar and able jurist, was of
opinion that the invention of trial by jury could be traced to the
ancient Greeks, while Blackstone pretends that the credit of it is
due to the Saxons who brought the custom with them to England; but
Hallam and other superior authorities maintain that the canon quoted
in the text is the first germ on record of this great distinguished
feature of English common law, and that it was not till long after
the advent of the Normans that it assumed its present systematic form.

[69] _Wilkins_, p. 100.

[70] P. 415.

[71] _Ingulph_, p. 36. Nicholl's _Lit. Anec._ vol. i. p. 28.

[72] Peter of Blois, _Epist._ vol. i. 3. Paris, 1519.

[73] _Middle Ages_, p. 150.

[74] The continued encroachments of the crown on the rights of the
barons and their tenants led to an armed league against John I., the
leading spirit of which was the intrepid Archbishop of Canterbury
and the General, Robert Fitzwalter, who took the title of "Marshal
of the Army of God and of Holy Church." The result was a timely
concession of the king, which was granted in the form of a Great
Charter. The importance of many of the liberal guarantees set forth
in that instrument has departed with the special evils that gave
rise to them, but many of a more general nature and such as related
to cheap, speedy, and impartial justice, have become integral parts
of the British Constitution. As to the document itself, D'Israeli
relates the following curious circumstance: "Sir Thomas Cotton one
day at his tailor's discovered that the man was holding in his hand,
ready to cut up for measures, an original _magna charta_, with all
its appendages of seals and signatures. He bought the curiosity for
a trifle, and recovered in this manner what had been given over for
lost. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided and died
in this country. An original _magna charta_ is preserved in the
Cottonian Library; it exhibits marks of dilapidation, but whether
from the invisible scythe of time or the humble scissors of a tailor
I leave to archæological inquiry."

[75] _Enc. Brit._, art. "Law," p. 413.

[76] _Institutes_, b. 1, tit. 1, § 14.




TO THE CRUCIFIED.[77]


    See how fond science, with unwearied gaze,
        Eyes on the sun's bright disk each fiery vent,
        And from his flaming crown each ray up-sent
    Searches, as miners, in their furnace-blaze--

    Seek trace of gold. But who to thee doth raise
        His eyes the while? Who, with true heart intent,
        Scans thy sharp crown, thy bosom's yawning rent,
    And peers into its depths with love's amaze?

    Let me, at least, come near the abysmal side,
        And reach out to the heart which throbs within.
        I am oppressed with woe and shame and sin;
    Oh! suffer me within that cleft to hide!
        There glows the fire which purifies each stain;
        There burns the love which bids me live again.

FOOTNOTE:

[77] Thoughts suggested by reading, in _Nature_, an account of the
solar eclipse of December, 1870.




LAS ANIMAS[78]


_Don Fernan._ Uncle Romance, I am coming in, although it don't rain.

_Uncle Romance._ Welcome, Señor Don Fernan. Your worship comes to
this, your house, like the sun, to illumine it. Has your worship any
commands?

_Don F._ I am hungry for a story, Uncle Romance.

_Uncle R._ Story again! Señor, does your worship think that my yarns
are like Don Crispin's titles, that were past counting? Your worship
must excuse me; I'm in a bad way to-day; my memory is broken-winded,
and my wits are heavier than bean-broth. But, not to disappoint your
worship, I'll call my Chana.[79] Ch-a-a-a-na! Sebas-ti-a-a-na! What
ails the woman? She is getting to be like the Marquis of Montegordo,
who remained mute, blind, and deaf.[80] Ch-a-a-na!!

_Aunt Sebastiana._ What do you mean, man, by bawling like a cowherd?
Oh! Señor Don Fernan is here. God be with you, señor! How is your
worship?

_Don F._ Never better, Aunt Sebastiana; and you are well?

_Aunt S._ Ay! no, señor; I'm fallen away like a lime-kiln.

_Don F._ Why, what has been the matter with you?

_Uncle R._ The same that ailed the other one who was sunning herself:

      "_Una vieja estaba al sol
      Y mirando al almanaque:
      En cuando en cuando decia,
      'Ya va la luna menguante.'_"

      "An old woman was sunning herself
      And studying the almanac:
      From time to time she said,
      'The moon is waning already.'"

_Aunt S._ No, señor, it isn't that. God and his dear mother do not
take away our flesh, but the child when he is born, and the mother
when she dies; and my son--my own life--

_Uncle R._ There, Chana, don't mention Juan, the big hulk, with more
ribs than a frigate.[81]

_Aunt S._ Don't believe it, señor; he just talks to hear himself,
and don't know what he's saying. That boy of mine is more gentle and
reasonable; he wouldn't say scat to the cat. He has served in the
army six years, and has got his lights snuffed.[82]

_Uncle R._ His lights are those of midnight. He entered the uniform,
but the uniform hasn't entered him.[83]

_Don F._ But what is the trouble, Aunt Sebastiana?

_Aunt S._ Señor, he can't get work.

_Don F._ Oh! I'll give him work, if you'll tell me a story.

_Aunt S._ My man, here, would do it better. Your worship knows that
he has the name of being such a good story-teller. He never wants
for a tale.

_Don F._ That is true; but to-day he's not in a talking mood.

_Aunt S._ If I hadn't--

_Uncle R._ Come, come, woman, don't keep his worship in expectation,
like a watch-dog. A story, and a good one; for you could talk if you
were under water.

_Aunt S._ Would your worship like to hear about the _animas_?

_Don F._ Without delay. Let us hear about the _animas_.

_Aunt S._ There was once a poor woman who had a niece that she
brought up as straight as a bolt. The girl was a good girl, but very
timid and bashful. The dread of what might become of this child, if
she should be taken away, was the poor old woman's greatest anxiety.
Therefore, she prayed to God, night and day, to send her niece a kind
husband.

The aunt did errands for the house of a gossip of hers that kept
boarders. Among the guests of this house was a great nabob, who
condescended to say that he would marry if he could find a girl
modest, industrious, and clever. You may be sure that the old woman's
ear was wide open. A few days afterwards, she told the nabob that he
would find what he was looking for in her niece, who was a treasure,
a grain of gold, and so clever that she painted even the birds of the
air. The gentleman said that he would like to know her, and would
go to see her the next day. The old woman ran home so fast that she
never saw the path, and told her niece to tidy up the house, and to
comb her hair, and dress herself, the next morning, with great care,
for they were going to have company.

When the gentleman came, the next day, he asked the girl if she knew
how to spin.

"Spin, is it?" answered the aunt.

"She takes the hanks down like glasses of water."

"What have you done, madam?" cried the niece when the gentleman had
gone, after giving her three hanks of flax to spin for him. "What
_have_ you done? And I don't know how to spin!"

"Go along," said the aunt, "go along, for a poor article that will
sell well, _and don't set your foot down_,[84] but let it be as God
will."

"Into what a thorn-brake you have put me, madam!" said the niece,
crying.

"Well, see that you get out of it," answered the aunt; "but these
three hanks must be spun, for your fortune depends upon them."

The poor girl went to her room in sore distress, and betook herself
to imploring the blessed souls, for which she had great devotion.

While she prayed, three beautiful souls, clothed in white, appeared
to her, and told her not to be troubled, for they would help her in
return for the good she had done them by her prayers; and, taking
each one a hank, they changed the flax into thread as fine as your
hair in less time than would be worth one's while to name.

When the nabob came, the next day, he was astonished to see the
result of so much diligence united with so much skill.

"Did I not tell your worship so!" exclaimed the old woman, beside
herself with delight.

The gentleman asked the girl if she knew how to sew.

"And why shouldn't she?" answered the aunt with spirit. "Pieces of
sewing are no more in her hands than cherries would be in the big
snake's mouth."[85]

The gentleman then left her linen to make him three shirts, and, not
to tire your worship, it happened just as it had the day before; and
the same took place on the day after, when the nabob brought a satin
waistcoat to be embroidered; except that, when, in answer to her many
tears and great fervor, the souls appeared and said to the girl,
"Don't be troubled, we are going to embroider this waistcoat for
you," they added, "but it must be upon a condition."

"What condition?" inquired the girl anxiously.

"That you ask us to your wedding."

"Am I going to be married?" said the girl.

"Yes," answered the souls, "to that rich man."

And so it turned out, for, when the gentleman came, the next day, and
saw his waistcoat so exquisitely wrought that it seemed as though
hands of flesh could not have touched it, and so beautiful that to
look at it fairly took away his eyesight, he told the aunt that he
wanted to marry her niece.

The aunt was ready to dance for joy. Not so the niece, who said to
her: "But, madam, what will become of me when my husband finds out
that I don't know how to do anything?"

"Go along! _and don't make up your mind_," answered the aunt. "The
blessed souls that have helped you in other straits are not going to
desert you in this."

On the wedding-day, when the feasting was at its height, three old
women entered the parlor. They were so beyond anything ugly that the
nabob was struck dumb with horror.

The first had one arm very short, and the other so long that it
dragged on the ground; the second was humped and crooked; and the
eyes of the third stuck out like a crab's, and were redder than a
tomato.

"Jesus, Maria!" said the astonished gentleman to his bride, "who are
those three scarecrows?"

"They are three aunts of my father," she replied, "that I invited to
my wedding."

The nabob, who was mannerly, went to speak to the aunts and find them
seats.

"Tell me," he said to the first, "what makes one of your arms so
short and the other so long?"

"My son," answered the old woman, "it was spinning so much that made
them grow that way."

The nabob hurried to his wife and told her to burn her distaff and
spindle, and to take care that she never let him see her spin.

He immediately asked the second old woman what made her so humpbacked
and crooked.

"My son," she answered, "I grew so by working all the while at my
broidery-frame."

With three strides the gentleman put himself beside his wife, and
said to her: "Go this minute, and burn your broidery-frame, and take
care that in the lifetime of God I do not catch you with another."

Then he went to the third old woman, and asked her what made her eyes
look so red and as if they were going to burst?

"My son," she answered, giving them a frightful roll, "this comes of
continual sewing, and of keeping my head bent over the work."

Before the words were out of her mouth, the nabob was at his wife's
side: "Go," said he, "gather all your needles and thread, and throw
them into the well, and bear in mind that the day I find you sewing,
I will sue for a divorce. The sight of the halter on another's neck
is warning enough for me."

_Aunt S._ And now, Señor Don Fernan, my story is ended; I hope that
it has pleased you?

_Don F._ Ever so much, Aunt Sebastiana; but what I learn from it
is, that the souls, notwithstanding that they are blessed, are very
tricky.

_Aunt S._ Now, señor, and is your worship going to insist upon
doctrine in a romance, as if it were an example? Why, stories are
only to make us laugh, and grow better without precept or name of
lesson. God will have a little of all.

_Don F._ True, Aunt Sebastiana; and what you express with your simple
good sense is more wholesome than the critical reverence of the
overstrict. But, uncle, I am not going without another to correspond
with this, and it is your turn now. If, as I think you have told me
that you were on other occasions, you are a devotee of San Tomas,[86]
here are some Havanas as an offering to his saintship.

_Uncle R._ Not to disoblige your worship.

_Don F._ But I must have the story; I want it for a purpose.

_Uncle R._ By which your worship means to say that, without an
_ochavo_, you can't make up the _real_.[87] Well, let me think. Since
the talk is about _animas, animas_ it is. Their sodality in a certain
place had for mayordomo a poor _bread-lost_[88] of a member, one of
those who are always like the sheep that misses the mouthful.[89]
He was without a cloak, and went with teeth chattering and limbs
benumbed with cold. What does he do but go and order himself a cloak
made, and, without so much as saying _chuz_ or _muz_,[90] or by
your leave, sirs, take money from the funds of the _animas_ to pay
for it. When it came home, he put it on, and went into the street
as consequential and _high-stomached_ as those rich folks recently
raised from the dust. But at every step he took, some one gave the
cloak a jerk, and though he kept a sharp lookout he could not see
who. The instant he drew it up on the left shoulder, down it slid
from the right, causing him to keep a continual hitch, hitch. You
would have thought he had a thorn in his foot.

As he went along, pestered and chap-fallen, trying to make out what
it could mean, he met a gossip of his, who was mayordomo to the
_Hermandad del Santísimo_.[91] This fellow was stalking loftily,
filling the street with his air that said, _Get out of the way, I am
coming_. After "How d'ye do?" this one asked the other, "What is the
matter, comrade, that you seem so down at the mouth lately?"

"Matter enough!" answered he of the souls, pulling his cloak up on
the right shoulder while it slipped off from the left. "Know that
in the beginning of the winter I found myself in difficulties. I
had sown a _pegujar_[92] without seeing the color of wheat. My wife
brought me two boys, when, with the nine I had already, one would
have been too many; the delivery cost her a long sickness, and me
the eyes of my face. In few, I was just stuck to the wall like a
star-lizard, and hungrier than an ex-minister. I had to borrow money
of the souls to get this cloak; but what the seven ails it I don't
know, for, whenever I put it on, it seems as though somebody was
giving it a pull here and a jerk there. Two rudder-pins couldn't hold
it fast to my shoulders."

"You did wrong, my friend," responded the steward of El Santísimo.
"If, like me, you had taken a loan of a great powerful and _giving_
personage, you wouldn't have to go about as you do, chased and
persecuted for the debt. If you borrow of miserable destitute
wretches, what can you expect but that the poor things will try to
get back their own when they need it so much?"

FOOTNOTES:

[78] "The Souls"--generally said of souls in purgatory.

[79] Diminutive for Sebastiana.

[80]

      "El Marques de Montegordo
      Que se quedó mudo ciego y sordo."

Said of those who do not wish to speak, see, or hear.

[81] Very obstinate.

[82] _Tiene las luces espabiladas._ He has his lights snuffed,
_i.e._, wits brightened--a common expression.

[83] _Ha entrado en la casaca pero la casaca no ha entrado en él._
Though he has put on soldier clothes, he hasn't gained wit by a
soldier's experience.

[84] _Dejarse ir_, rule of rustic grammar, literally equivalent to
"don't commit yourself."

[85] The _Tarasca_, or mammoth snake--an immense frame covered with
canvas, and painted to resemble a snake--which is carried in front of
the procession on the feast of Corpus Christi.

[86] Saint Thomas is the patron of smokers.

[87] A little more than a farthing, as if he had said, "Without the
farthing, you can't make the fip."

[88] _Pan perdido._

[89] _Oveja que bala bocado pierde._ The sheep that baas misses a
mouthful.

[90] Without saying _chuz_ or _muz_--without saying anything.

[91] Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament.

[92] Field hired of the town.




SAINT JOHN DWARF.


      One day a hermit father in God,
      Planting in earth a pilgrim's rod,
      For holy obedience did pray
      Dwarf John to water it every day.

      From the far river daily brought
      Silent John his water-pot;
      As 'twere a soul's task done for God,
      For three long years he watered the rod.

      When lo! the dry wood forth did shoot,
      And bear of obedience flower and fruit!
      Water thy barren heart with tears,
      And the same shall happen in good three years.




HOW ROME LOOKED THREE CENTURIES AGO.[93]


Let us suppose a company of travellers through Italy--strangers from
foreign climes, England, Germany, and France--reaching Rome at the
period of the accession of Sixtus V. to the throne of St. Peter.
Approaching the Eternal City by the road from the north, they find
themselves before the Porta del Popolo.

Let us go in with them, and through their eyes see the Rome of that
day.

On entering the gates, they pass into an open place of irregular
shape. A large convent occupies nearly the entire eastern side,
which, with the graceful _campanile_, or bell-tower, of Santa Maria
del Popolo, and the high houses with wide portals between the Corso,
the Ripetta, and the Babuino, are the only edifices visible. The
obelisk is not yet placed there by Sixtus V., and the two little
churches with their heavy cupolas, so well known to the modern
tourist, and the other buildings now seen there--the work of Pius
VII. and the architect Valadier--did not then exist. The Piazza del
Popolo was then less symmetrical, but more picturesque. Wayfarers on
horseback and on foot pass to and fro; muleteers arrive and depart,
driving before them lines of mules and beasts of burden. In the
centre of the place women are washing at a circular basin. Idlers
follow and gaze at the strangers while they make their declaration to
the _bargel_, or public authority, and submit their effects to the
examination of the custom officials. These preliminaries through, our
travellers may pass into the city by a street leading around the base
of the Pincian Hill, by another going toward the Tiber, both of which
have long ceased to exist, or by the well-known Corso. Some find
their way to the then celebrated and already venerable hostelry,


THE BEAR,

widely known and greatly in vogue ever since the reign of Sixtus IV.
Its peculiar octagon pillars fix the period of its construction.
Strange to relate, this patriarch of hotels, which has seen four
centuries and twenty generations of travellers pass over its head and
through its halls, has continued in existence, and is still open as
a tavern in Rome to this day. True, its guests are now no longer, as
they were in the sixteenth century, such personages of distinction
as foreign prelates, noted scholars, philosophers like Montaigne,
and, soon afterward, the earliest known tourists. Its inmates and
frequenters of the nineteenth century are now country traders, cattle
dealers, and wagoners.

Others of our travellers who intend to make a longer stay in Rome
seek out the houses in the neighborhood of the Pantheon or the
Minerva, nearly all of which are let out to strangers in rooms or
suites. These apartments are luxuriously fitted up and ornamented
with the then famous Cordova leather hangings, and richly sculptured
and gilded furniture. Everything is brilliant to the eye, but the
nineteenth century tourist would have found fault with the lack of
cleanliness and the stinted supply of fresh linen.

With yet others of these travellers, let us enter


THE CORSO,

the Via Lata of the ancient Romans. There is no sign of business
on it at this early day. But few of the aristocracy have as yet
transferred their residences here, but it already wears an air of
life and animation, and is well filled at the hours of the promenade.

We pass along between vineyards and vegetable gardens. A single large
edifice just completed strikes the stranger's attention. It is the
magnificent Ruspoli palace, built by Rucellai, the Florentine banker,
upon the designs of his countryman Ammanati.

Now we reach the Via Condotti, to-day well-known to every American
who ever saw Rome. Let us turn into it to the left, and traverse it
to the Piazza della Trinita (now Piazza di Spagna), whence we may
scale the hill above and obtain a commanding view of the entire city.

In doing this, we pass through the then worst quarter of Rome,
physically and morally, for the triangle formed by the Corso, the Via
Condotti, and the Babuino was at once of the most evil repute and the
most unhealthy in all Rome. In this quarter were sure to break out
all the epidemics which at that period occasionally decimated the
population of Rome. Seeking to mount


THE PINCIAN HILL,

the traveller of that day might have looked in vain for the broad
flight of easy marble steps we now see there, and he ascended by a
steep and narrow staircase. On reaching the summit, he found himself
on the _collis hortulorum_ of the Romans, and saw it still covered
with vineyards and tilled fields, and the comparatively modern
innovation of the garden of the Villa Medici. The elegant world of
Rome in 1585 had to content themselves with taking their promenade
and their enjoyment of the evening air about the Porta del Popolo,
and knew naught of the charming promenade, the delightful walks, the
purer breeze, and the beautiful view which later generations enjoy on
the hill above it.

The great painters of the succeeding age who came to Rome, the
Carracci, the Domenichinos, the Guidos, and the Salvator Rosas, were
the first to discover the attractions of the Pincian Hill, and,
braving custom, lack of accommodation, the bad neighborhood, and
the unhealthy contiguity of the quarter below, were the first to
establish themselves upon it. This was the foundation of the modern
Pincian settlement.

Some years ago, the writer of this article occupied apartments in
the first house to the right on reaching the summit of the Pincian
steps. The tradition of the house ran to the effect that these
rooms had been occupied by Salvator Rosa; and if, as they say, he
selected them for the sake of their view of the setting sun, he chose
well, for all the sunsets of Rome may there be seen to the best
advantage. As an American, however, views of the setting sun in Italy
were not specially attractive to us, and we always regretted for
Salvator Rosa's sake that he had never seen a transatlantic sunset,
compared with which those at Naples and Rome are tame spectacles.
The traditional "beauty of an Italian sunset" is one of the many
English provincialisms we have adopted and believed in along with
numerous other errors embalmed in the literature of England. But we
forget that we are standing on the Pincian in 1585. All is silent and
deserted around us, and Rome is spread out at our feet.

To the left are the salient points, the seven hills--for the Pincian
was not one of them--the towers of the Capitol, the ruins of the
palace of the Cæsars in the Farnese gardens on the Palatine, the
belfry of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline, the Quirinal, as yet
without the imposing mass of the pontifical palace. The Rospigliosi
palace was not yet built, but the villa of Cardinal Sforza is seen,
the same afterward known as the Barberini palace. We turn our eyes
upon the lower city--inhabited Rome--and with difficulty make out
but three or four cupolas. On the other hand, we see a perfect
forest of towers on every side, some of them of prodigious size. On
the left bank of the Tiber, many of these towers have of late years
disappeared, but the Trastevere, as might be expected, is still
full of them--so full, indeed, that a distant view of that quarter
presents the appearance of a comb turned teeth upward. At that
period, these towers were the universal appendage of an aristocratic
dwelling. San Gemiguiano near Sienna is the only city in all Italy
which has preserved them to this day.

As our stranger of three hundred years ago looks over Rome and
listens to the confused noises which meet his ear, he is struck
with the rarity of the sound of bells and with the small number of
churches discernible. The great Catholic reaction consequent on the
Reformation had for fifty years moved souls, but had not yet begun
to move the stones. It is the following era which is to imprint
upon Rome the architectural marks of the church triumphant. Later
in the day, when our strangers shall have descended into the city
and entered the churches, they will be struck with the barrenness of
their interiors, and with the absence of paintings. They are probably
ignorant of the fact that in Italy, during the middle ages, there
was but one altar in a church, that there alone Mass was celebrated,
that the mosaics and frescoes came in with architectural innovation,
and that only toward the end of the sixteenth century were altars and
oil-paintings multiplied with the side chapels.

And yet this comparative quiet of the city was animation itself,
compared with the sights and sounds discernible from the same point
at the period when the popes returned to Rome from Avignon.


ROME IN 1400.

The residence of the Cæsars was covered with fields, vineyard,
and pasture. The Pantheon, the Coliseum, some ruins, and detached
columns alone arose over the surrounding waste as witnesses of former
grandeur.

It was at this period that the Forum received the name of "The
Cow Pasture" (Campo Vaccino). A remnant of life yet remained in
the plain extending between the Tiber, the Pincian Hill, and the
Capitoline, but the total population of Rome was reduced to 17,000
souls, the great majority of them huddled together and crowded in
hovels clustered under the shadow of the baronial and aristocratic
strongholds. High battlemented towers filled the city. Of the scores
in the Trastevere, that of the Auguilara family exists to this day.
On the Tiberine island arose the Frangipani towers, on the left bank
those of the Orsini, from the Porta del Popolo to the Quirinal those
of the Colonna, while the towers of the Mellini and the Sanguigni may
still be seen on the site of the stadium of Domitian.

Of all the seven hills of Rome, one only had not fallen into the
hands of the barons. The Capitoline was still held by the people. But
commerce, industry, and the arts had all disappeared. Rome had long
been cut off from connection with the active world, and when the work
of material revival and rebuilding began, not only architects and
sculptors, but stone masons and carpenters had to be brought in from
Tuscany and Umbria.


AN ARCHITECTURAL RETROSPECT.

Under the pontificates of Sixtus IV. and his two successors,
Pintelli, a pupil of Brunellesco, ornamented Rome with such monuments
as San Pietro _in Montorio_, the façade of St. Peter, and the Sistine
Chapel. He brought to his work the boldness and taste of his master,
who had made profound study of the monuments of ancient Rome.

This was the period of the first _renaissance_, with its charms
and imperfections, at once timid and capricious, imitating the
models of antiquity in their details, but utterly mistaking the
proportions which are the essential, while succeeding brilliantly in
the accessories and ornaments borrowed from the ancients and used in
profusion with some endeavor to adapt them to the ideas and needs of
the period. The fundamental principle of architecture, which requires
that the exterior should express or respond to the use for which the
interior is destined, was unknown to Pintelli.

To break the monotony of the lines, the façade of any given building
was, as it were, framed, decoration was freely used, and the object
was to please the eye, no matter by what means. At that day, the
architect was also the painter, and the majority of artists were
both. The first _renaissance_ obtained its apogee toward the year
1500. In the nature of things it had then outlived its day, and a
change became indispensable at the risk of degradation.

Fortunately Bramante was ready to answer the call. He was from
Umbria, and Raphael was his nephew. He had studied in the north of
Italy, where, amid plains devoid of stone, the architect was forced
to use brick. Hence the novelty of combination introduced by him in
Rome, whose inexhaustible stone quarries were such ancient monuments
as the Coliseum. It is from the absence of heavy building-stone and
the contrast of the German taste of the Longobards with the Byzantine
style of Ravenna that the Lombard style is begotten. It brought
with it precisely what the _renaissance_ most needed, namely, its
exquisite sentiment of proportions, and it forms the transition
between the two schools of the _renaissance_, the latter of which
formed the golden era of architecture in Italy.

Its reign in Rome has left indelible traces. Its productions--and
among them are the court of St. Damas, the Belvedere, the galleries
of the Vatican, the Giraud palace--were the pride of the age.
They taught the comprehension of proportions, the calculation of
perspective, the culture of harmony of detail and _ensemble_,
reformed false taste, and created an epoch in profane architecture.
With increase of public security, even the Roman barons began to
understand that the greatest beauty of the architectural art
might be found elsewhere than in a high tower or a battlemented
block-house. Even the _mezzo-ceto_, or middle class, began to
contract a taste for something beyond the absolutely necessary,
and sought to adorn even their modest habitations. A private
dwelling-house built at this period and exclusively _bramantesque_
may still be seen in Rome on the _strada papale_, opposite the
_Governo Vecchio_. It yet bears the date of its construction (1500)
and the name of its builder.

After the death of Bramante appeared Raphael, Michael Angelo, Giulio
Romano, and Balthasar Peruzzi, who, prodigal of their treasures of
genius, created a golden age.

Romano's Villa Madama became the type of the country-seat; Peruzzi's
Farnesina, that of the modern palace. Raphael, more as painter than
as architect, composed the designs of the palace Vidoni. It was the
great epoch of the culture of simplicity in grandeur, of disdain for
the small and the superfluous, of faithful and noble expression of
the idea conceived.

The models of antiquity were still followed, but they were
transformed. The architect translated modern conceptions into
the sonorous but dead and strange language of the old Romans. In
interior ornamentation, however, the artist could give free rein to
his inspirations, and throw off the trammels of the severe rules
scrupulously followed as to the façade and the general composition of
the design. Alas! it was here they planted the germs of degeneration
and decay. Public taste--never a safe guide--seized upon and clung
to these prodigalities of an exuberant and fantastic imagination
supposed to be inexhaustible. At Florence, in his work on the chapel
of the Medicis, Michael Angelo was the first to enter this flowery
but treacherous path.

We see and admire these niches, windows, and ornaments, charming
indeed to the eye, but which have no _raison d'être_. It was at a
later period, under the pontificate of Paul III., that the painter
of the "Last Judgment" and the sculptor of "Moses" revealed himself
at Rome, as an architect stamped his work on the Farnese palace,
and astonished the world by reconstructing St. Peter's. Soon this
style gained the upper hand. Simplicity yielded to riches; logic to
caprice; unrestricted liberty succeeded the voluntary curb which the
great masters of the epoch had imposed upon themselves. Presently
came pauses. Halts were made. As in all human affairs, action and
reaction succeeded. Not so much in details as in _ensemble_, Vignoli
in Rome, Palladio at Vicenza, and to a certain degree Scamazzi in
Venice, brought back architecture to the sobriety of the commencement
of the century.

But the death of Michael Angelo appeared to have completely
demoralized the architects who survived. For thirty years he had
reigned supreme. In him alone had the popes confidence; and upon
architects employed by them, they imposed the obligation of following
him. Piero Ligorio, architect of St. Peter, was dismissed because he
manifested an intention to put aside Michael Angelo's plans. In thus
officially guarding the manes of the dead master, they apparently
hoped to transfer his genius to those who succeeded him. But it was a
sad and fatal mistake.

The amount of building effected in Rome during the last third of the
sixteenth century has never, probably, been exceeded. In examining
the productions of that epoch, the struggle between the servile
imitators of Buonarotti and the men of progress, desirous, but
through lack of originality incapable, of emancipating themselves,
is readily discerned. But let us leave this retrospect, descend the
steps of the Pincian Hill, and, traversing the Piazza di Spagna and
the Via Condotti, enter


THE CORSO AGAIN,

at the points where to-day's tourist sees the Via della Fontanella,
by which he goes toward the bridge of St. Angelo, on his way to St.
Peter's. Here our travellers of 1585, passing under the arch of
Marcus Aurelius, which separated the Corso into two distinct parts,
and was afterwards swept away by Alexander VII. to straighten and
widen the thoroughfare, find themselves really in Rome. On either
side are solidly built houses without windows or balconies, covered
with frescoes, and so high that the sun reaches the pavement only
at mid-day. Looking down the Corso, the traveller perceives at its
extremity, above the _palazetto_ of St. Mark, the battlemented
convent of _Ara Cœli_, and the tower of the Capitol. Leaving the
Colonna place and the Antonine column to the right, our travellers
soon reach the place and palace of St. Mark, with its immense
battlemented façades, surmounted by a colossal tower built of stone
almost entirely taken from the Coliseum. With the exception of some
few modifications in the windows of the façade fronting on the Via
del Gesú, and in the roof of the tower which formerly projected,
this palace--now known as the Austrian--to-day appears to us as the
traveller saw it three hundred years ago. Near by is the Church and
Convent of the Apostles, where in after-years were shown the cells
occupied by the two friars who became respectively Sixtus V. and
Clement XIV. (Ganzanelli). When the monks of this convent called
in a body upon Sixtus V. to felicitate him on his accession, the
cook of the community went up alone to the pope at the close of
the audience. "Holy Father," said he, "you doubtless remember the
wretched repasts of which you partook when with us?" Sixtus replied
that the expression "wretched repasts" perfectly described the meals
in question. "Well," continued the cook, "the cause was the want of
good water--give us water."

Sixtus declared that this was the only reasonable demand yet made of
him, and immediately ordered the construction in the ancient court
of a beautiful fountain, which, although much injured by time, yet
exists.

Still progressing towards the Capitol, our travellers pass the
_Gesú_. In the small house adjoining it Ignatius Loyola died, and
St. Francis Borgia has but lately expired there. And now they
ascend to the Capitol by the _cordonata_ of Michael Angelo. Looking
still onward, they catch a glimpse of the Forum (_Campo Vaccino_),
enlivened only by droves of browsing cattle and here and there a
searcher of buried antique statues. Beyond the Arch of Titus all is
silent solitude.

The modern, active, living


ROME OF THAT DAY

was within the triangle bounded by the Corso, the Tiber, and the
Capitol. Our travellers turn their faces towards the St. Angelo
Bridge, and approach it by long, narrow, and crooked streets, nearly
corresponding with the Via Giulia and the Monserrato which we to-day
traverse. This was the Faubourg St. Germain of the period, full of
palaces, but stately and silent. The strangers find the activity,
movement, display, and exuberant activity of Rome in the street now
known as the _Banchi_, then lined with the residences of wealthy
bankers, in the rich Spanish quarter beyond the Piazza Navona, in the
_Tordinone_ and _Coronari_.

From the rising to the setting of the sun, throngs of people fill
these badly paved thoroughfares, which are more thickly lined with
palaces as they approach the bridge. Our strangers are impressed with
the great crowd of people, and are of the opinion that it exceeds
that of the Marais in Paris, and is second only to the throngs
they saw in Venice. About the Pantheon and the Minerva are the
houses already mentioned where travellers and visitors to Rome find
furnished suites of apartments--the Fifth Avenue and St. Nicholas
Hotels of the period. A few years later (1595), on beholding this,
the Venetian ambassador writes that "Rome has reached the apogee of
its grandeur and prosperity."

With difficulty a passage through the crowd is effected, and the
task is rendered even dangerous by the large number of carriages in
circulation.

In 1594, there were eight hundred and eighty-three private carriages
in the city. They were almost an essential. The great St. Charles
Borromeo said, "There are two things necessary in Rome--save your
soul and keep a carriage." And a singular-looking carriage it was
to our eyes. In shape resembling a cylinder open at both ends, with
doors at either side, knocked and tossed about in a sort of basket on
four clumsy wheels. The elegants and beaux of the day usually had an
opening in the top of the vehicle through which, as they progressed,
they admired fair ladies at their windows. "They make an astrolabe
of their carriage," thundered a preacher in denunciation of the
practice. The crowd increases as the St. Angelo Bridge is approached,
and it equals the human pressure of the period of the jubilee as
described by Dante:[94]

      Come i Roman, per l'esercito molto,
        L'anno del giubbileo, su per lo ponte
      Hanno a passar la gente modo tolto;

      Che dall' un late tutti hanno la fronte
        Verso 'l castello, e vanno a Santo Pietro;
      Dall' altra sponda vanno verso 'l monte (Giordano).

                              _Dante_, _Inferno_, ch. xviii.

No ladies are seen. They seldom go out, and then only in carriages.
We find the modern Italians highly demonstrative. Their ancestors
were more so, as our travellers noticed at every step. Men meeting
acquaintances in the street exchanged profound bows. Friends embraced
"with effusion." People threw themselves on their knees before those
of whom they had favors to ask.


DINNERS AND BANQUETS

for invited guests were sumptuous and of long duration. The culinary
art of that epoch--as we learn from a work of Bartholomew Scarpi, the
_Grand Vatel_ of the sixteenth century and head cook of the saintly
Paul V., whose personal meals cost sixty cents a day, but who, in
state receptions, entertained magnificently--was something wonderful,
according to our modern ideas. For grand dinners, there were four
courses. The first consisted of preserved fruits and ornamented
pastry, from which, on being opened, little birds flew out, making it
literally a _vol au vent_. Then came the other courses composed of a
multitude of the most diverse dishes, poultry with all the feathers
on, capons cooked in bottles, meat, game, and fish, alternating with
sweet dishes in confused pell-mell, utterly subversive of all our
modern gastronomic ideas. Some dishes were prepared with rose-water,
and substances the most heterogeneous and contradictory were mingled
in the same preparations. The sublimity of the style was to effect
the sharpest possible contrast of materials and odors.

The wines most in favor were the heady wines of Greece, the Malvoisy,
and the great Neapolitan brands, the Lachrima and the _Mangiaguerra_,
described as black in color, powerful, spirituous, and so thick that
it could almost be cut. So, at least, reports the Venetian Bernardo
Navagero, writing from Rome in 1558: "E possente e gagliardo, nero e
tantospesso che si potria quasi tagliare."

Before the dessert, the cloth was removed, the guests washed their
hands, and the table was covered with sweet dishes, highly perfumed,
preserved eggs, and syrups.

Both before and after the repast, distinguished guests used what
we would now call finger-bowls and mouth-glasses, demonstratively
and even noisily. On arising from table, bouquets of flowers were
distributed among the guests. From contemporaneous statements as to
the cost of various entertainments of that period, we should judge
that the Roman provision supply was much cheaper than we to-day find
it in those marvels of modern architecture, the Washington and Fulton
Markets. Thus, for instance, a wedding-supper, given by a Roman
nobleman (Gottofredi), and which was at the time (1588) noted for
its beauty as well as its extravagance, cost five hundred crowns,
equivalent, allowing for the difference in specie values, to about
nine hundred dollars of our money.


THE HORSE-RACES ON THE CORSO,[95]

during the carnival, are, of course, witnessed by our travellers.
These races were formerly one of the traditional holiday amusements
of the Piazza Navona, which is on the site of a Roman amphitheatre,
and they were transferred to the Corso by Paul II. (1468). Seated
in the small room of the corner of the Palazetto of St. Mark,
whose windows command a view of the entire length of the Corso,
this good-natured pontiff, who was fond of promoting the innocent
amusement of his subjects, witnessed the running, and had the
_barberi_ (little horses) stopped at that point. The poor governors
of Rome have ever since borne and still bear the servitude of this
tradition. Four hundred years have gone by since Paul II. sat at the
window on the Corso, but to this day the Governor of Rome, clothed
in the official robes, whose cut and fashion have not varied a line
in all that time, must, in the very same room and at the very same
window, witness the running and have the horses stopped at the same
points. Under Gregory XIII. these races had somewhat degenerated.
Buffaloes of the Campagna, as well as horses, were run, and races
were even made for children and for Jews. Sixtus V. reformed all this
and made new regulations, which, with slight modifications, are to
this day in force.


LITERATURE AND THE THEATRE.

At the period of which we treat, there existed a decided taste for
the drama--such as it then was--but it was a taste exercised under
difficulties. During the carnival of 1588, permission was obtained,
as a great favor, from Sixtus V. to allow representations by the
Desiosi troupe, at that time the most celebrated in Italy. But the
license was hampered with the following conditions:

_First._ The representations should take place in the daytime.

_Second._ No woman should appear on the stage.

_Third._ No spectator should be admitted with arms about his person.

Such a public edifice as a theatre was at that time unknown in
Italy. True, many princes had halls constructed in their palaces for
dramatic representations, and the Olympic Academy of Vicenza erected
a building for the purpose, which was completed on the designs of
Palladio.

As for the dramas represented, it is easy to understand their
inferiority when we know that Guarini's _Pastor Fido_ gained a
reputation not yet entirely lost, by reason not of its merit, but
because of the inferiority of every dramatic production of the time.

The costumes, decorations, and _mise en scène_ formed the main
attractions, but the plays themselves loudly proclaimed the decay
of literature. They possessed neither originality, invention, nor
poetry. When we contemplate our own elevated and purified stage
of the present period, with its bouffe, Black Crook, blondes, and
brigands, how profoundly should we not pity the benighted Italians of
1585!

About this time, the first edition of Tasso's _Jerusalem Delivered_
made its appearance. Issued without the author's consent, it was both
defective and incorrect. In spite of the enmity of the Grand Duke
Francis and, what was more to be feared, of the opposition of the
Della Cruscan Academy, the _Jerusalem_ at once achieved an immense
success--a success purely due to its beauty of diction. Contemporary
criticisms of Italian poets whose names have since become immortal
read strangely now. Tasso was sneered at, Ariosto's merit seriously
contested, and Dante absolutely condemned.

"This poet," says Giuseppe Malatesta, a distinguished writer of
that day, "has borrowed the wings of Icarus to remove himself as
far as possible from the vulgar, and, by dint of searching for
the sublime, he has fallen into an obscure sea of obscurities. He
is both philosopher and theologian. Of the poet he has only the
rhyme. To measure his hell, his purgatory, his paradise, one needs
astrolabes. To understand them, one should constantly have at hand
some theologian capable of commenting upon his text. He is crude and
barbarous; he strives to be disgusting and obscure when it would
really cost him less effort to be clear and elegant, resembling
in this certain great personages who, possessed of an admirable
calligraphy, nevertheless, through pure affectation, write as
illegibly as possible."

FOOTNOTES:

[93] The materials for this article are found in the learned work of
Gregorovius (_Geschichte der Stadt Rom_), the publication of which,
commenced at Stuttgardt in 1859, is not yet fully completed; in Baron
Hübner's _Life of Sixtus V._; Burckhardt's _Cicerone in Italy_; and
Von Reumont's classical work on _Middle Ages Rome_.

[94]

      Even as the Romans, for the mighty host,
      The year of jubilee, upon the bridge,
      Have chosen a mode to pass the people over.

      For all upon one side towards the castle
      Their faces have and go into St. Peter's;
      On the other side they go towards the mountain.

                                  _Longfellow's Translation_


[95] The reader will, of course, remember that these were races of
horses without riders.




THE MOTHER OF PRINCE GALITZIN.[96]


In presenting our American Catholic readers with a notice of the
_Life of the Princess Amelia Galitzin_, it would be sufficient
apology to mention that this illustrious lady was the mother of the
great religious pioneer of Pennsylvania--that worthy priest whose
services in the cause of Catholicity in our country have endeared his
name to the American church and have kept his memory still alive in
the filial love born of a new generation whose fathers he evangelized.

But even if this apostle-prince had never landed on American shores;
never sacrificed an opulent position and a brilliant career, to labor
as a humble missionary in the wild western forests of Pennsylvania;
never indelibly engraved his name, as he has done, on that soil, now
teeming with industrial and religious life, there is that in the life
of the princess, his mother, which would amply recommend it to our
interested attention.

Her career was beyond the common run of lives. It was wonderful
in its blending of the ordinary with the extraordinary. It is the
story of a great, strong mind--a high-principled soul, entrammelled
in circumstances commonplace, disadvantageous, and entirely
beneath it, struggling for ascendency to its own level above them.
A notice, then, of her life possesses a double interest for our
readers--its own intrinsic interest, and that which it borrows from
the foreshadowing of the great and useful life spent in our country,
with which we have already been made acquainted, and of which, we are
glad to learn, we are soon to have a more extended account.

The Princess Amelia Galitzin was born at Berlin, in August, 1748. Her
father, the Count de Schmettau, a field-marshal of Prussia, was a
Protestant. Her mother, the Baroness de Ruffert, was a Catholic. This
difference in the religion of the parents led to the understanding
that the children of the marriage should receive, according to their
sex, a different religious education. Amelia, the only daughter,
was destined, then, to be educated in the Catholic faith. For this
purpose she was sent, at the early age of four years, to a Catholic
boarding-school at Breslau.

It seems that at this establishment the religious as well as the
secular training was sadly defective; for, at the end of nine years,
the young countess left the _pensionnat_ with no instruction,
little piety--even that little of a false kind--and with but one
accomplishment, a proficiency in music, the result of the cultivation
of a great natural talent. As for literary acquirements, she scarce
could read or write. Another school was now selected for her, and
this selection reveals the negligent character of her mother, who,
from failing to use a wise discretion, or to exert that softening
and moulding influence that mothers hold as a gift from nature, may
be held accountable for the troubled darkness and painful wanderings
of mind that afflicted her daughter in her curious after-career. At
thirteen she was placed at a kind of day-college, in Berlin, directed
by an atheist. Such a step would have been a dangerous experiment,
even with a child of the most ordinary mind, whose impressions
are easily effaceable, but with the self-reliant spirit and keen
intellect that were destined to be developed in Amelia, it was more
than dangerous, it was a ruinous trial. The results of her eighteen
months' attendance at this school were not immediately apparent,
at least they were but negatively so. At scarcely fifteen years of
age, she left this atheist school to become a woman of the world, by
making what is technically called her entrance into society. What
that entailed on a member of a noble house, and in a gay capital
like Berlin, especially the Berlin of the eighteenth century, we
may well surmise. There was another feature in its society worth
attention, beyond the stereotyped round of _lévées_, _soirées_, and
midnight revels of high life. The great dark cloud of incredulity
had just settled on sunny France. France then stood at the head
of the western nations. A reflection of her brilliancy was found
in surrounding societies. Imitation of her tastes, literary and
material, was deemed no disgrace. Even her quick, dancing, musical
language was ludicrously set, by fashion, to the rough, guttural
tones of the Teutonic tongue--so great was her fascinating influence.
No wonder, then, that the thick shadows of that dark cloud in which
she had shrouded her faith should have fallen heavily around her.
They fell on Prussia, and fell heaviest when Voltaire became the
guest of Frederick. The fœtid, contagious atmosphere floated in
on the society of her capital. To be rational was the rage, when
rational meant incredulous. Statesmen became skilled in the new
philosophy. Since the king had turned philosopher, grand ladies
suddenly found themselves profoundly intellectual and controversial,
and their drawing-rooms became like the _salons de Paris_--no longer
the frivolous halls of pleasure, the depots for the lively gossip of
the _niaiseries_ of life, but private school-rooms, inner circles in
aid of the grand revolt of reason against God which had already begun
throughout Europe.

In such society, then, did this young girl, fresh from an atheist
school, find herself at the age of fifteen, with no arm of a
Christian to do battle for her soul; neither the "shield of faith"
nor "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." But,
happily, that society was not immediately to possess her young heart.
An _ennui_--a nameless weariness--intensified by a morbid self-love,
now settled on her mind. And it was in this trial that her defective
instruction first began to tell against her. The only relic of its
early impressions left her was a confused notion of the horrors of
hell and the power of the devil, which now rose before her but to
increase her misery. Beyond that, she believed in nothing, hoped for
little in this life, and saw not the next. True, she accompanied her
mother to Mass on Sunday, but to her it was as an idle show. She
understood as little about the ceremonies as about the text of the
delicately-bound French prayer-book she was obliged to hold in her
hand. She could find nothing in what she knew or saw of religion to
fill the void that caused the weariness of her heart. She determined
to seek relief in reading. Her father's library was scant. So she
sent rather a confiding request to the proprietor of a neighboring
reading-room to supply a young lady who was anxious to improve
herself with useful books. This gentleman's ideas of improvement and
utility were somewhat singular, for he forthwith dispatched a large
packet of sensational romances. With the same confiding spirit she
accepted the selection, and novel after novel she fairly devoured,
devoting night and day to her new occupation. That the frivolities
of a gay society had no attractions for her as a resource in her
extremity, that they could not "minister to her mind diseased,"
shows a soul of no ordinary mould, and shows, too, that it was not
through the senses, but through the intellect, that its cravings were
to be allayed. Comparative peace of mind returned, for she made her
reading a very preoccupying labor by keeping a diary of its results
and impressions. Music, always her favorite pastime, she now made her
recreation.

She was just beginning to taste the sweets of living in a little
peaceful, busy world within herself, when a young lady, who had
been an intimate friend of hers, was admitted to a share in her
occupations. This resulted in not only breaking her utter isolation
from society, but in leading her to mingle in it once more. The
calm of the previous months was not entirely undisturbed. At
intervals the thoughts of her utter irreligiousness would conjure
up again those appalling images of Satan and hell, and their
recurrence became more frequent as she relented in her labors.
But now in the gay drawing-room assemblies she met many ladies of
her own rank who, professing to be Catholics, did not hesitate to
express freely, in their brilliant conversations, the sentiments of
incredulity which filled her own mind. In their example she found
her self-justification. She believed it fashionable to think and
act as other ladies, and so, dismissing what she now deemed her idle
fancies, she permitted herself undisturbed to glide into the easy way
of unbelief.

But an unseen mercy followed on her path, and soon again cast before
her warning signs of her danger. Her fears of the supernatural grew
again; and this time, in spite of every example, in spite of every
effort to treat them as fancies that could be laughed away, they
increased to such an extent that her health became endangered. Once
more she formed a plan of escape from her terrors of mind and the
weariness they entailed--this time an unaccountable and for her
an unexpected one. She resolved to devote herself to meditation,
that, as she said in her journal, "by force of thought she might
raise herself to union with the Supreme Being," and thus neutralize
the effects of the frightful pictures of eternal punishments which
wearied her imagination. We cannot help seeing in this effort a noble
struggle of a great mind, untutored in childhood, and left in early
youth without guidance or encouraging support.

She immediately entered on her new project, and made great and
persevering efforts; but she groped in the dark and made little
progress in meditating. Yet these efforts were not wholly unavailing.
She succeeded by her bare strength of thought in impressing deeply
and thoroughly on her mind the dignity of a highly moral life, which
led her to the conviction that everything gross or vile was utterly
unworthy of the noble soul that dwelt within us.

What child of sixteen have we ever known or heard of whose young life
presents a history of mind so curious and so wonderful? Few even
of riper years have ever displayed a mere, bare natural power of
soul at once so strong and so refined as that which led Amelia to so
beautiful a conclusion.

Be that as it may, it was for her a saving result in the change that
was now about to come over her position in life. It was arranged at
this time, by her parents, that the young countess should join the
court, in the capacity of lady robe-keeper to the wife of Ferdinand,
Prince of Prussia, brother to Frederick II.

If we called the court society of that epoch gilded corruption,
we believe we would be epitomizing the detailed chronicle of its
character. Yet, armed with her high-souled conviction, Amelia glided
untainted through its seductions and scandals, though her youth and
beauty and the affectionate simplicity of her manners made her the
object of much attention.

From the character of her mind we may well imagine that she had
little relish for her new duties. To any one of a high order of
intellect, and consequent intellectual aspirations, the mean,
material duties of arranging a wardrobe, sorting dresses, seeing them
set out in their respective turns, and changed with every changing
fashion--in a word, being a mere waiting-maid to any one, no matter
of what rank, must necessarily be irksome and distasteful. And though
we will not draw the exaggerated sarcastic picture that Lord Macaulay
gives of Frances Burney's life at the court of England, yet the fact
that the young countess stole many an hour from her irksome post
and still more wearying ceremonious court-pleasures to enjoy the
instructive conversation of elderly men of known literary tastes and
acquirements, gives us full ground for at least compassionating her
in a position so evidently unbefitting her gifted and aspiring mind.

In her twentieth year she accompanied the princess on a summer
trip to the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa. It was during their
residence at the former place she first met and received the
addresses of the Prince Dmitri Galitzin. The story of their love does
not seem to possess anything above the ordinary interest, and even
extended over a much shorter period than is usual before marriage.
All we learn about it is, that the match seemed very advantageous in
the eyes of her protectress the princess and her brother, General
Count de Schmettau (her mother, long extremely delicate, having died
during her residence at the court), and that the marriage ceremony
was performed with great _éclat_ in August of the same year in which
the proposal had been made and accepted.

Almost immediately after her marriage she had to set out with her
husband for the court of St. Petersburg, of which he was an attaché.
Her sojourn, however, in the Russian capital was very brief, for soon
after his arrival the prince was sent as ambassador to the Hague, in
Holland. Five years previously he had filled the same post at Paris,
where he became the intimate friend of Voltaire and Helvetius. For
the latter he paid the expenses of the publication of his famously
infamous work, _De l'Esprit_. He himself seems to have been quite
a _littérateur_. He contributed, while in Paris, to the _Journal
des Savants_, and published two or three works of a scientific and
political character. But to return.

A new life now opened for Amelia at the Hague. She became the star of
the brilliant society that daily filled the halls of the palace of
the Prince Ambassador of Russia; she lived in courtly splendor, and
received the flattery of homage that queens might have coveted.

She had now resided two years in Holland, and had given birth to two
children, a daughter and a son. It may be naturally expected that
now the duties of a mother would bring her life and her mind to the
level of ordinary interest. Not so. The routine duties of her station
had all along been tasteless to her. The constant round of pleasures
which engaged her, the flatteries she received, in which meaner
minds would have loved to live and revel, had for her no soothing
or beguiling influence; not even the total change of existence and
occupation which married life induces wrought any change upon her
spirit. An aching void was still within her heart, and, seeing
nothing around her with which to fill it, she began to pine away. At
length a strong inclination seized her, one of those yearnings for
some one project which swallows all our thoughts and to which all
else must yield; we may call it a humor precisely in Ben Jonson's
sense:

      "When some one peculiar quality
      Doth so possess a man that it doth draw
      All his effects, his spirits, and his powers
      In their confluxions, all to run one way,
      This may be truly said to be a humor."

This humor was nothing less than entire abandonment of the world and
its cares. Notwithstanding the obligations of her married life or
those of her position in society, she determined to retire to some
solitary spot, and there engage her mind in hard study of difficult
and dry subjects.

Alarmed for her health, and probably deriving little comfort from
such a moody consort, her husband consented to her retiring to live
in a small country villa a few miles from the Hague. She engaged a
distinguished professor of the city, named Hemsterhuys, to give her
lessons in Greek, with a view to following under his guidance, too, a
course of Greek philosophy.

Strange to say, the moment she entered with ardor on this uninviting
task, her mind became completely calmed, and she felt a peace and
contentment which for years she had not known.

Besides the seeking of her own peace of mind, the resting the
weariness of her heart, she had another object in view--to prepare
herself to be doubly the mother of her children by imparting to them
herself a thorough education. In the six years that she toiled in
this seclusion, this was the great sustaining motive of her labors.

When the children grew to the years of discretion, she relented in
her harder studies to devote herself with no less assiduity to their
early instruction. Everything was made subservient to that end. Even
the recreations requisite for herself, and the amusements necessary
for them, the pleasure excursions away from home, all were designed
to open and mature their young minds.

But in these respects Holland had but poor resources. One quickly
wearies of its changeless lowlands. It can boast of no wild scenery
which grows new at every gaze and invites repeated visits, and it
has few places of any peculiarly instructive interest. It was this
consideration that determined the princess to remove to the more
picturesque and favored land of Switzerland, where her husband owned
a country-house near Geneva.

Her preparations for this change of residence were nearly completed,
when news reached her of the projects of the Abbé de Furstenberg for
a reform in the method of public instruction.

This Abbé de Furstenberg was one of the most remarkable men of that
day in Germany.

Of noble birth, he received a thorough civil and ecclesiastical
education, and at the age of thirty-five found himself chief
administrator, spiritual and temporal, of the principality of
Münster, under the prince-bishop. His administration was attended
with most marked success, and had brought the little state to an
unequalled degree of prosperity, not only religious and political,
but even commercial and military. His latest labor was his
educational reform regarding the method of teaching. To mature this
scheme, he had studied, consulted, and travelled much during seven
years. When, at length, he published the result of his researches,
it was received far and near with much applause, whose echoes
had now reached the Princess Amelia in Holland on the eve of her
departure for Switzerland. She at once indefinitely deferred this
journey, and resolved to lose no time in making the acquaintance
of this accomplished ecclesiastic, in order to master under his
own guidance the details of this new method of instruction. For
this purpose, in the May of the year 1779, she set out for Münster,
intending to pay only a short visit. She remained nineteen days, and,
though the greater part of the time was spent in the company of the
learned abbé, she found it impossible in so short a space to take
in the result of his experience. This, and probably a certain charm
which his great conversational powers exercised over her, made her
determine to return again, and, with the permission of her husband,
remain a whole year in Münster before setting out for Switzerland.
Consequently, in the same year, she took leave of her husband and her
old preceptor Hemsterhuys, purposing not to return to the Hague,
but to pursue her Swiss project after her year's sojourn at Münster.
But this programme was never to be carried out. Any one who has ever
felt the influence of our affections on our plans and schemes--how
plastic they are beneath them, how readily they yield in their
direction--will easily divine the cause of this. In fact, so strong
had grown this intellectual friendship between the princess and the
Abbé de Furstenberg that every idea of going to Switzerland yielded
before it; so much so that, before the end of the year, she had
purchased a house in Münster, and engaged a country-château for the
summer months of every year.

All this time she had kept up a frequent correspondence with her
husband and her old professor, and she had made them promise to come
and spend as long a time as they could spare every summer at her
country-seat.

She was yet in the unchristian portion of her life. In her
conversation and communications with Hemsterhuys, she had worked
out a complete scheme of natural virtue and happiness, which she
embodied in a work entitled _Simon; or, The Faculties of the Soul_.
While we must admit that this is a curious specimen of a mere human,
religionless view of a virtuous and happy life, yet we cannot allow
that it could have been drawn up had not some faint remembrances
of early Christian teaching still lingered in the mind of the
authoress; much less can we grant that it could have been realized
in any life without the sustaining aid of divine grace. Even if it
were practicable, its practicability would, from its very character,
be necessarily limited to a few rarely gifted minds; consequently,
lacking the generalizing principles of the truly Christian code,
which makes a life of Christian virtue accessible to all, the lowly
and the great, the rude and the wise alike, it is assuredly a failure.

She now applied herself with great assiduity to her children's
education. Not content with imparting the mere rudimentary portion,
she aimed at giving them a higher and more thorough course of
instruction than most of our graduating colleges can boast. It was a
bold task for a woman, but the order of her day at Münster shows us
how little its difficulty could bend the will or weary the mind of
one who could unswervingly follow the regulations it contained.

The household rose early every morning. Some hours were devoted to
study before breakfast, and soon after the lessons of the day began.
To these she gave six hours daily. With the exception of classic
literature and German history, for which she engaged the services of
the two distinguished professors, Kistermaker and Speiskman, she gave
unaided all the other lessons.

She had competent persons to superintend the studies of the young
prince and his sister while she was engaged in her own, but she
reserved the teaching exclusively to herself. She very often spent
entire nights in preparation for the morrow's instruction. After the
labors of the day, she always devoted the evenings to conversation.
It was then she received the visits of Furstenberg and a number of
his literary friends, among whom was the Abbé Overberg, with whom
she was afterwards to be so intimately related. Her old friend
Hemsterhuys sometimes made one of the party, and he was the only one
of her guests at that time who was not a Catholic.

This was the beginning, the nucleus of that brilliant literary
circle which, a little later, became so famous throughout Germany.

Invitations to the literary _soirées_ of the princess soon began to
be coveted as no common honor. The most distinguished Protestant
authors and _savants_ sought introduction to that Catholic society,
and even infidels who did not openly scoff at religion were soon
found among its members. It would have been a sight of curious
interest, standing aside unseen in that drawing-room on any evening
of their reunions, to watch that strangely mingled crowd. The
Princess Amelia is evidently the ruling spirit, and the marks of
respect and homage which her distinguished visitors pay her on their
arrival tell plainly that her presence is not the least among the
attractions of that pleasant assembly. Scattered through the room
are men of the most varied minds and opposite views. There were many
there who had already acquired literary notoriety of no mean degree.
There were many more, the history of whose minds would have been the
story of the anxious doubts and bold speculations of unbelief which
swayed society in the waning of the eighteenth century.

In the charm of that literary circle, Jacobi found rest from his
restless scepticism. There Hamann could quiet his troubled mind.
The cold infidelity of Claude thawed in the presence of venerable
ecclesiastics and before the influence of their dignity and learning.
Even Goethe himself confessed that the pleasantest hours of his life
were passed in the society of the Princess Galitzin. During three
years, these reunions were a literary celebrity.

Though the princess had not allowed her mind to be tainted by the
impious philosophy of her time, and had formed, with the assistance
of Hemsterhuys, a better philosophical system of her own, founded
on the idea of the divinity, yet in all her views she was completely
rationalistic, rejecting all positive religion. And she had to
confess, too, the defectiveness of her system in its practical
bearing on her life; for at this time she complained feelingly, in
one of her letters, that instead of growing better, according to her
idea of virtue and happiness, she was daily growing worse.

In the spring of 1783, she fell dangerously ill. Furstenberg took
this first opportunity to persuade her to taste of the consolations
of religion, and to try the virtue of the sacraments of the church.
But, though he actually sent her a confessor, she declined his
services, alleging that she had not sufficient faith, promising,
however, at the same time, that, if her life were spared, she would
turn her thoughts seriously to the subject of religion. It was
spared, and she kept her promise; but it was a long time before her
reflections took any definite shape or had any practical result. This
was undoubtedly owing to a want of direction, and we cannot divine
why, among so many distinguished clerical friends, one was not found
to do her this kindly office. Yet so it was, and, most likely, the
fault was all her own.

The time had now come when her children were of an age to receive
religious instruction; and, this being a part of the self-imposed
task of their education, she determined not to shrink from it.
But what to teach them, when she herself knew nothing, was a most
perplexing question. Hitherto her own researches only plunged her
into a restless uncertainty of soul which betrayed itself even in her
sleep. Her conscience would not allow her to impart to her children
her own unbelief, nor yet permit her to instruct them in a religion
of whose truth she herself was not convinced. She relieved herself
from this perplexity by deciding not so much to instruct them in any
religion as to give them a history of religion in general, abstaining
from any comments that might betray her own incredulity, or be an
obstacle to the choice she intended they should subsequently make for
themselves.

To fit herself for this task, she commenced the study of the Bible.
This was the turning-point in her destiny; she held in her hands,
at length, what was designed to be for her the instrument of divine
grace. Long years ago, when a child, at the Breslau boarding-school,
it had been remarked that, when nothing else could curb her proud and
self-willed nature, an appeal to her affections never failed of its
effect. That tenderness of her young heart was to be her salvation.

She opened the sacred text to seek there only dry historic facts,
which she was to note down and relate to her children. For aught
that concerned herself, the study was undertaken with a careless,
incredulous disinterestedness. But as she went on and on through
the sacred volume, and the sublime character of the Almighty was
unfolded before her in all the beauty and tendernesses of his
mercies, and shining in all the brightness of his wisdom, her soul
was moved, her heart was deeply touched; she bowed down before the
omnipotent Creator, and, for the first time, felt herself a creature.
She read on still; she came to the Gospel, that record breathing
love--compassionate, prodigal love--on every page, and before its
charm her heart melted, her pride of intellect faded away, her life
came before her as a useless dream, and her tears flowed fast upon
the sacred page; for now she not only felt what it was to be a
creature, but had realized what it was to be _saved_.

Her work now became a labor of love. She not only taught her
children, but she instructed herself. With her usual intrepidity
of intellect, she was soon acquainted with every mystery of our
holy religion, and with every duty of the Catholic life. From the
knowledge to the fulfilment of her duty was always with Amelia an
easy step; consequently, she began immediately to prepare herself for
a general confession. After a long and serious examination of her
whole life, she at length made it, on the feast of St. Augustine,
1786, and, a few days later, approached the holy communion, for the
first time, with feelings of deep and tender devotion.

From this moment, a complete change was wrought in her whole manner.
Her habitual melancholy gave way to a cheering serenity, which was
as consoling as it was agreeable and charming to all around her. Her
children and her many friends were greatly struck with the visible
effects which divine grace had so evidently produced in her soul.

She now wished, for her more rapid advancement in perfection, to
place her conscience entirely under the direction of the saintly Abbé
Overberg. She was not content to have him merely as her confessor,
but she wished to enter on the same relations--to have the same
intimate friendship with him--as existed between St. Vincent de Paul
and Mme. de Gondi, St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal,
St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa. Though she had written to him
several times on the subject of her direction, yet she never dared
fully to propose her project to him, lest he might reject her request
altogether. However, she took courage at last, and, to her great
joy, she was not disappointed.

This holy priest took up his residence in her palace in 1789, and
remained there, in the capacity of chaplain, even after her death.

In the following year, Hemsterhuys, her old friend and preceptor,
died; and in this year, also, the young Prince Dmitri, having
finished an education which would have fitted him for any position
or profession in life, took leave of his mother, to commence, in
accordance with the fashion, his post-educational travels. For what
particular reason he turned his steps toward the New World does not
appear. It was during the voyage that he resolved to embrace and
profess the Catholic faith. But Providence had designed for him more
than a visit to the United States; his life and his labors in our
country have made the name of Galitzin a familiar and much-loved word
to American Catholics.

In 1803, the husband of the princess died suddenly at Brunswick.
This loss she felt most keenly. He had ever been to her a good and
indulgent husband, yielding, with even an abundance of good nature,
to all her plans, and never interfering with the various projects of
her life. We may suppose, too, that her grief was deepened as his
unexpected death suddenly blighted all her hopes for his conversion.

But sore trials of another kind yet awaited her. The property of the
prince, which, by the marriage contract, should have reverted to
her in trust for her children, was seized by his relatives. Penury
threatened her for a time, but her appeal was, at length, heard by
the Emperor Alexander, and the property was restored.

Meanwhile, she began to suffer from a painful malady which produced
hypochondria. The patient, plaintless manner in which she bore her
pains; above all, the calm of mind which she preserved in that
terrible physical malady which poisons every pleasure and clouds
every brightness of life, shows what a high state of perfection she
had already attained. Religion was now her solace and her succor.
By the perfection of her resignation to the divine will, she not
only succeeded in concealing from her friends her painful state, by
joining cheerfully in every conversation and pastime; but she cheered
the melancholy and depression of others without once evincing that
she herself was a victim to its living martyrdom.

With equal fortitude, she was bearing at the same time yet a harder
trial. It is always wounding enough to our feelings to have our
actions misappreciated, our whole conduct misunderstood, by persons
merely indifferent to us. But what is there harder to endure in life
than to be misunderstood by those to whom we were once tenderly
devoted, to whom we were bound in the closest friendship of intimacy,
and to bear their consequent coldness and slights, and sometimes
cruel wrongs? Yet this pang was added to the other trials of Princess
Amelia. But her great charity checked every human feeling. She
was never heard to complain of any neglect, or even the annoying
treatment of false friends, and she never sought to soothe the
sorrow of her tender heart by any human consolations. In a letter
regarding the Abbé de Furstenberg, she described beautifully the
rule of charity she followed in this sorest of her trials. Whenever
the memory of her slighted friendship would send a pang through her
soul, her love of God was her first resource; then she resolved never
to intensify the sorrow of the moment by indulging in any dreams
of the imagination with regard to an irremediable past, or in any
speculations whatever on the subject which would strengthen her
sorrow or tend to an uncharitable feeling.

Thus, in these purifying trials, were passed the last years of her
life; and when, at length, the gold of her merits was made pure
enough in the crucible to be moulded into her crown of glory, she
rested from her sorrows.

In 1806, she died the death of the holy, and, at her own request, she
was buried beneath the chapel of her country-house at Angelmodde,
near Münster.

Were we right in saying that her life displays the struggle of a
great soul for its own level above disadvantageous circumstances?
She struggled above the sad defects of early training, then above
the commonplace routine of ordinary lives in the world, and finally
above the clouds of infidelity and ignorance of divine things, to the
bright, clear atmosphere of the faith, where the love of her ardent
heart was sated, and her yearning aspirations found their lasting
rest.

It may be, too, that we now have an easier clue to the wonderful
character of the Apostle of Western Pennsylvania since we have become
better acquainted with the _mother of Prince Galitzin_.

FOOTNOTE:

[96] _Particularités de la Vie de la Princesse Amelie Galitzin._ Par
Theod. Katerkamp Münster. 1828.

_La Princesse Galitzin et les Amis._ Schücking: Cologne. 1840.




EGBERT STANWAY.


If Germany was the cradle of the Reformation, England can claim
to have been its nurse, and to have fostered in it many phases
even at present unknown to the land of its originators. In its
last-born and perhaps most dangerous outgrowth, Ritualism, we see
the English spirit that was already timidly visible long before, now
fully flowering in delusive self-existence, uniting in this novel
combination the cherished independence of Rome, that Englishmen are
taught instinctively to regard as the only palladium of national
freedom, and those æsthetic aspirations which come down to them, we
venture to think, as instinctively, from their forefathers of "Merrie
England" and the "Island of Saints."

But if there are in the English character great capabilities for
evolving unthought-of theories out of stern dogmatic codes, there is
also a strange power of assimilation by which it can engraft upon
itself the alien modes of thought of other lands, and yet infuse into
them something that is not their own--something that renders them
unspeakably more attractive and, withal, more hopelessly earnest.

Such a power was most likely to have been encouraged and developed
in Egbert Stanway by his almost foreign education and most sensitive
and contemplative nature. The love of German philosophy and German
literature had descended to him from his father, who had been a
disciple and a friend of Goethe, and who had early sent him to the
university at Heidelberg, where the boy still was at his father's
death. The weird old city, with its castle overlooking the rushing
Neckar, and its antique houses enshrined by woods of chestnut, was
the earliest home he could remember, and as, during his holidays from
the school where he had been preparing for university initiation, he
had never left Germany, it was almost as a foreigner and a stranger
that he visited Stanway Hall to attend his father's funeral.

The evening he arrived, the gloom of the old house, and the
long shadows creeping round it, the hooting owl in the dark fir
plantations, and the grim and spreading cedars nearly touching the
hall-door, everything he saw, in fact, seemed to make a most painful
impression on his sensitive mind. The old servants crowded round
him in affectionate and mournful welcome, for they remembered the
little fair-haired child that used to prattle so merrily through
the house many years ago, and they thought they saw in his face the
same expression that had melted their hearts within them as they
had gazed on the child's dead mother the night he was born. One of
his guardians, a cousin of his father's, a kind, grave man, with
grizzling hair and soldier-like bearing, came and took his hand in
silence, and led him to the low, wide dining-room where the coffin
lay under its heavy velvet pall. There, in the gloom that the few
tall candles near the bier could hardly brighten, he told the son how
his father had fallen from his horse while returning at night from a
distant farm where he had been to see the sick tenant, and relieve
him from the rent that was due and which his family could not meet.
Egbert's face glowed as he lifted it from the coffin against which he
had been resting his forehead, and as he said in faltering accents:

"So like him! I am glad he died like that."

The words were simple, but the old soldier could not refrain from the
tears that his own narrative had not yet forced from him. The child's
comment unlocked his heart, and after a few moments' silence he said:

"My boy, you will try to live like him, and try to do your duty
like him. You know you will soon have power in your hands: use it
as he did. In a few years you will be your own master; even now
you are master of this house and this estate. Never forget the
responsibilities you will have. Always be kind to your servants, and
just to your tenants, and charitable to the poor. Be loved as your
father was, so that, when you die, you may be regretted as he is."

Egbert pressed his guardian's hand in silence, and presently knelt
down by the coffin. There was a wreath of cypress on it, and he
broke off a little twig and hid it in his bosom. His lips seemed to
move--was he praying, or thinking half aloud? The old man's hand was
on his shoulder, and he felt its pressure weighing him down. When
he stood up again, he said nothing, only motioned his guardian to
the door, and followed him. There were a few relations, mostly men,
gathered before the fire in the drawing-room, and as the boy came in
there was a general welcome of silent sympathy, and then a pause.
Some few spoke in whispers, but the gloom was too deep to be broken.
There seemed in the dead man's son more dignity and manliness than
is usual, even under such circumstances, in one so young, and there
was deference and surprise as well as pity in the looks that were
bent on the boy of sixteen, to whom nearly all were strangers, and to
whom his own home and his own household were themselves but new and
strange associations.

As night came on, every one disappeared noiselessly from the room,
Egbert himself having left it at an earlier hour. He had gone out
into the summer moonlight to roam through the grounds he scarcely
remembered, and to be alone with his own thoughts that would not
let him sleep. The tall formal evergreens that skirted the broad
terrace threw their shadows across the many flights of ornamental
steps leading to the flower-garden; the scent of the heliotrope and
mignonnette in the borders was wafted on the cool breeze that came
from the sedge-encircled pond where the water-fowl played and hid in
the rushes; the smooth-stemmed beeches stood like columns of silver
in the moonlight, supporting their vaulted arches of interlacing
leaves; the rooks cawed solemnly from their restless homes as the
soft wind blew the branches backward and forward across the mossy
mound; squirrels made cracking noises as they chattered in careless
gaiety on the slender twigs of the spruce-fir; and hares and rabbits
scudded away with terror-impelled swiftness as they heard human
footfalls on the dewy grass.

The tall church-spire seemed to speak when the bell tolled out the
hours through the night, and Egbert gazed longingly toward it, not
as one who answers a well-known voice, but rather as one who strives
painfully to guess the meaning of words he would gladly understand
and yet cannot fathom.

"Oh!" he thought, "my father knows now all _I_ wish to know; but
he cannot come and tell me, and I shall have to live on, perhaps
as long as he did, and never know what I seek, and never find the
satisfaction and peace I look for. If _I_ too could die, and know all
at once!"

He thought, too, of the ceremony that would take place in that church
to-morrow, and of the cold, damp vault his father's body would be
laid in. And so great was the horror of this to his mind that the
beauty of the night turned to hideousness for him, and its wooing
sounds were changed into ghoul-like beckoning. Tears would not come
to relieve his heart, and he felt as if an icy grasp were upon him,
crushing out his young life, his father, he could only think of as
he was, mute and helpless, not as he once had been, a true guide and
monitor; his home, where was it? his duty, to what dreary fields
of thankless labor might it not carry him? his friends, who were
they? friends of yesterday? friends of the family, perhaps, but that
was conventional friendship to him--or friends to him as the young
landlord, but that was interested friendship!

And then came back a rush of Heidelberg memories, of the reckless
young companions of his scarce-begun career, of the kind old
professor, Herr Lebnach, and of his child-daughter Christina, of
rambles among the chestnut woods, when the band had done playing
in the castle gardens, and of two or three darker and more solemn
rambles when he had gone to follow a dead comrade to his self-made
grave.

The chill morning dew roused him at last, just when a faint-breaking
light was to be seen over the fir-planted hill behind the house, and
he went in and threw himself, all dressed, on his bed in the dim
haunted-looking room he remembered as his nursery in days so long
past that he could remember nothing else of them. The sun rose and
gilded the many-hued flower-garden, and lighted red fires in the
diamond-paned windows on the east side of the house, and sent long
arrows of light into the tapestried and wainscoted chambers where
the guests slept; it took the church-steeple by storm, and poured in
floods of molten gold through the stained-glass windows of chancel
and clerestory; it flashed through the dark beech grove, and blinded
the uneasy rooks whom it roused to a new and jangling chorus; it
threw rosy sparks across the pond, on the margin of which floated the
water-lily and nestled the forget-me-not; and, lastly, it penetrated
the sombre curtains of the darkened dining-room, and, braving death
on his throne, threw a coronal of light on the very cypress wreath
on the bier. And had it not a royal right, nay, a God-given mission,
so to do? For the morning of the resurrection is ever near, and each
morning's sun is its fit representative and the forerunner of its joy.

The same consoling ray that would not leave the dead alone in death's
own shadow shone on the boy's fair curls as he bent, half in sorrow,
half in slumber, over the hidden coffin. Soon, very soon, that coffin
would not be there in the dear sunshine. It would be away in the
darksome earth, in a lonely vault, with no one save the bats to make
any moan over it, and, if ever the sun's darts made their way to
it through low, grated air-holes or widening cracks in the stone,
they would be pale and spectral themselves, like torches in a deadly
atmosphere, like phantom lights over the quaking bog.

The hours wore on, and the time came for the funeral. Again there
was a gathering together of friends and relatives, and a marshalling
of tenants and servants, a whispering among the awed assemblage, and
the boy asked once to have the pall lifted and the lid removed.
In silence it was done, and in silence Egbert Stanway came near,
and laid his right hand on his father's cold, calm forehead. His
lips seemed to move, and a deeper expression of mingled sorrow and
resolution settled upon his features; and thus, without a tear, he
took leave of the best friend and best lover he had ever had on
earth. He seemed much quieter after this, and the funeral procession
now started on its way to the church, Egbert walking next the coffin
as chief mourner.

The next day, he was far on his road to Heidelberg.

       *       *       *       *       *

Four years passed by. Egbert Stanway was high in honors at the
university, renowned among the reading set as an indefatigable
scholar, beloved by his favorite professor, Herr Lebnach, and his no
longer child-daughter, courted by all the best men, and respected by
all the worst, in the old city of Heidelberg. Having resolutely set
his face against duelling and all kinds of brawls, and even against
all innocent-seeming meetings that, nevertheless, were likely to end
in brawls, he had yet not acquired the unenviable notoriety of a
misanthrope, and, though many called him proud, still none called him
churlish. Herr Lebnach used often to gather a few real friends about
him, and there was generally some musical banquet provided for his
delicate and discriminating guests.

His room was one of those that are dreamt of, but seldom seen, homely
and artistic at once, quaint and suggestive as one of the mysterious
dens of those sages whom modern times have called sorcerers and
tamperers with arts forbidden. There stood on one side a great oak
book-case, massive and plain, filled with huge folios, and smaller
books laid carelessly across their dust-covered edges, old tomes that
looked black enough for magic, though they might contain nothing
more than medical lore and visionaries' dreams; over the carved
mantelpiece, where a dark stove hid itself in the wide space it could
not fill, was an array of pipes, meerschaum silver-mounted, and rare
wood cunningly wrought; pipes of tarnished Eastern splendor, and
calumets of Indian workmanship; a real old spinning-wheel, where
Gretchen might have sat as she sang of her demon-lover Faustus,
stood in one corner, and a collection of antique armor hung on all
the spaces on the wall that were not occupied by medical portraits
and angel-crowded tryptichs in twisted golden frames. Here, in one
oak-carved case, was Venetian ruby glass and old Dresden ware, and
there, on the quaint low tables, lay illuminated missals of the
thirteenth century, alongside of dainty woman's embroidery-frames,
and the last new pamphlet on the last new philosophical
incomprehensibility. Then, as the dim light of the lamp flashed when
some motion was made near the long table by the stove, there appeared
on the other side of the room a great organ, with golden pipes and
carved case--a world within a world, the kingdom of music enshrined
within the surrounding kingdom of science and of literature. The
treble manual, with its tiers of smooth white notes sheathing the
melodies a moment's touch might set free, shone under the golden
arbor of the spreading pipes, and beneath the dark carved garlands of
oak-leaves and hanging fruit and sporting beasts, that seemed only as
petrified embodiments of the thoughts that had once been living and
breathing in those keys.

A girl sat by the organ, her hair seeming to have caught the golden
reflection of the music-laden pipes, and her slender fingers the
litheness of those easily-moulded keys. Beside her was a large
basket, where balls of wool mingled with half-finished garments
of domestic mystery, while in her own hands she held a piece of
knitting. A kitten played at her feet, and now and then tangled the
long thread that fell from her work. Egbert Stanway sat quite close,
one hand resting on the organ-notes, reading aloud by the dark light
of one little candle in the fixed organ candlestick.

A few men began to drop in, but the reading was not interrupted, for
the room was large, and the professor was sitting not far from the
door. Some came in with rolls of white music; some with instruments
tenderly imprisoned in warmly-lined cases; some, again, with
their hands unoccupied, but their large pockets bursting with the
treasures of meerschaum and tobacco; some thoughtful, student-like,
long-haired; some gay and rubicund, as if dinner were but a late
and cherished memory; some young and uneasily conscious of the
stranger by the organ. Presently one came in who was neither student
nor professor, but long-haired and quaint-looking nevertheless,
with iron-gray locks, straight and wiry, strongly-marked features,
tall, spare figure, and almost kingly demeanor, so mixed was it of
haughtiness and courtesy.

Christina rose and signed to her companion to close the book. She
went forward, and said a few words of blushing welcome to the royal
stranger, and then turned to Egbert, saying:

"_Mein herr_, this is my father's young friend who was so anxious to
know you."

He put out his hand with kind eagerness, and, as he did so, Egbert
noticed the long, slender, nervous fingers, like iron sheathed in
age-tinted ivory.

"I am very glad to see you, Herr Stanway," he said, "and very glad to
see you here, for I have no better friend than Christina's father."

The girl fell back as he spoke, and passed through the room,
speaking, now and then, to the bearded guests, who all smiled at her
like the Flemish saints in the old pictures of the Maiden-mother and
her mystic court; and made her way to an inner apartment where a
grand piano occupied most of the space, and round the walls of which
were many brackets with bronze and marble busts of sages and poets,
philosophers and musicians, gleaming out, ghost like, against the
heavy crimson draperies that fell round window and doorway.

The stranger was still talking to Egbert in German when the sounds of
tuning instruments in the next room drew his attention. He took the
young man's arm, and hurried in, casting a glance over the sheets of
music scattered on the piano. A flush of pleasure and surprise came
over his countenance; they were headed, "Overture--St. Elizabeth."
Egbert looked across to Christina, but she was busying herself with
a refractory violoncello-case, whose huge fastenings would not open,
and whether or no she saw the maestro's puzzled air remained a
mystery both to the young man and to his companion, whose glance had
followed his own, as if half-guessing what it meant.

Herr Lebnach struck his friend on the shoulder as he approached the
wondering musician.

"You must forgive my boldness," he said; "in fact, I can only call it
smuggling. I got a copy from a pupil of yours--one whose enthusiasm
was stronger than his sense of obedience; but, of course, this is
all among friends-it shall go no further. Indeed, if you wish it, I
will burn the manuscript after the performance."

"No, no, dear friend," returned the composer; "it will be publicly
performed and given to the world in a month or two, and I am glad you
should have the first-fruits."

The amateur orchestra was in a state of nervous delight at these
words, and as the maestro took the baton in his hand there was a hush
that said far more than words could have embodied. Christina and
her father and Egbert sat aloof near the doorway, and a few others
gathered in silent groups round the room. The music came forth, at
last, like the rush of an elfin cavalcade out of darksome caverns and
cloven rocks of unimagined depth, wild and weird, like the cry of the
storm-tossed sea-gulls among the reverberating crags of foam-washed
granite. It was the music of delirium, the music of madness, the
music of despair. It was the voice of a soul that had lost its way in
a labyrinth of dreams so fantastic that they had thrown a spell over
its returning footsteps, and so made it for ever an enchanted exile
among their mazy paths. It was unintelligible, yet full of meaning;
unapproachable, yet full of allurement; impregnable, yet full of
sympathy. Later on, in great cities, and before critical audiences,
it was held to be the music of a maniac, while it lacked the charm or
the interest of Shakespeare's maniac-heroes and their too-faithful
rhapsodies; and even now, though the performance was a labor of love,
it was not without difficulty that many phrases were interpreted.

Christina seemed to think more of the composer than of his work, and
more of his pleasure in seeing his music appreciated than of his
actual skill in composition. Indeed, her father and Egbert shared
her feelings, as was apparent from their careful watching of the
conductor's face rather than of the performers' bows. But when the
long piece was over, and every one started forward to congratulate
and be congratulated, there was a general appearance of satisfaction
at having mastered something that was no little difficulty, and
offered such a grateful and acceptable homage to one whose heart
seemed to value it so highly. Soon there was a hush again, and
Christina glided to the piano, where the maestro was now sitting.

"You will not refuse to reward us now, will you?" she said.

A smile and a soft chord were the speedy answer; and now the piano
spoke and wailed, pleaded and wept, as the strong, supple fingers
swept its astonished keys. It seemed as if there were within it an
imprisoned and hitherto dumb spirit, whose voice was now unshrouded
and allowed full power over the hearts of those who had scarcely
before suspected its hidden existence. Far different from the
tempestuous overture was this soft and swift blending of chords in
garlands of sweet sound. Flowers were dropping around the feet of
the artist; clouds of faintly-suggested and dream-like fancies were
fanning the air around his head; a spell, as of Eastern languor,
was slowly deadening the senses of the listeners to any other
sound save that of the marvellous melody the piano was sighing
forth, when, with a wild toss of the head and a sudden bending
forward of the body, the maestro changed the key, and burst into a
half-triumphant, half-defiant pæan--a chant of patriotic and maddened
enthusiasm--which soon merged into the last movement of his impromptu
and the last appeal of every Christian to the God that made him; a
solemn, dirge-like hymn, full of unspoken sadness, full of expressed
confidence, a lifting up of the soul above everything of earth, a
consecration, a supplication, a thanksgiving, and a sacrifice.

Never before had Egbert heard anything like that prayer; never after
was he destined to hear it again.

Christina drew a long sigh, as if such beauty were too heavenly to be
gazed upon without pain, and turning to the young man:

"I am glad," she said, "I cannot play the piano. One could not dare
to touch the instrument after that, unless it were to destroy it!"

"You are right," he answered slowly and musingly; "but where can he
have learnt the things he puts into his music?"

"In his prayers, Herr Stanway."

A dark shade of melancholy passed over Egbert's face; there was pain
at the implied rebuke, and a vague sorrow, as for something lost, in
that fugitive expression, but the music chased it away as the violins
were tuning up again for Beethoven's "Septet."

So the evening wore away, and chorus and concerted piece followed
fast upon one another, till the musicians were so excited they could
hardly speak. The maestro conducted all through, and as he shook
his hair like a mane about his eyes and swayed to and fro in the
intensity of his enthusiasm, Egbert whispered to Christina:

"He is the magician of music, is he not?"

When all was over, and some of the guests had left in singing groups
that would probably serenade the town for the rest of the night, the
great artist called the young Englishman, and asked him to show him
the way home.

"I am somewhat of a stranger here, my friend, and there is no one
whose company I would more gladly ask under the pretence of wanting a
guide home."

As soon as they were out of the house, he turned suddenly on his
companion, and, lingering so as to stay for a few moments in the full
moonlight, he said:

"And so you are the betrothed of my old friend's daughter?"

A start and a blush that he could not repress were Egbert's first
answers to this abrupt but not unkind question, yet the old man saw
that his arrow had perhaps overshot the mark.

"Is it not so?" he said again, but doubtfully now.

"No, _mein herr_," replied Egbert, with slow and sorrowful composure;
"and I fear it never will be."

"You fear, dear friend? Therefore you hope?"

"I _have_ hoped, but I see now how useless it must ever be for me to
think of her except as a friend."

"Can I do anything for you that _her_ own favor could not do?"

"I have never asked her for anything, and I never shall, and it
suffices that she knows as well as I do what the reason of my silence
is."

"Then she does know that you love her?"

"She knows it as the angels do--if there be angels!"

"If! What do you mean?"

"Only this, that, if there are angels, they are not more remote from
me than she is."

"You speak in riddles. I have no wish to force your confidence, my
friend; but I have known that child from her cradle, and I cannot
help being interested in anything concerning her."

"O _mein herr_! I have nothing to conceal; you misunderstand me. She
is a Catholic; that is why she is so far from me."

"And you are a Protestant? But so is her father."

"No, I am not a Protestant, though I am English."

"Ah! perhaps you have no settled outward form of religion?"

"That is it. But, if I _were_ Protestant, she would not marry me."

"In a few years, dear young friend, you may think differently. I was
very like you once, only far worse; yet, you see, I too am a Catholic
now."

The young man shook his head in silence. They had journeyed through
the dark winding streets very near to the maestro's temporary home,
and the old artist turned now solemnly and affectionately to his
companion, putting his hand on his shoulder:

"Herr Stanway," he said, "I may never see you again, and you must
forgive an old man for speaking so plainly to you; but I cannot bear
to leave Heidelberg, where your friends and mine have made me so
happy, without trying to do something towards _your_ happiness, and,
I am sure, towards _hers_. Do not, for Heaven's sake, give way to
those foolish and yet wrecking tendencies of the young men of your
day. Stand by religion, for I tell you by experience she is the best
philosopher, as well as the best comforter; she is the only friend
for the student, as well as for the priest; and, above all, she is
the only guardian for the home, and the only giver of true peace.
Remember that as an old man's advice, and, if you trust to the word
of one who has run the round of all pleasures without finding true
ones till very late, you will save yourself the long struggle of
experience that wears the body and sears the mind, and leaves you in
your old age but a shattered wreck to carry back to the feet of him
who sent you forth a perfect man. Will you remember this, dear young
friend?"

"I will try to do so," Egbert answered slowly, with intense but
hopeless yearning to be able to do so. He kissed the hand of the old
man whose words seemed to him but a mortal record of that other one
written in notes of fire on the awakened instrument at Christina's
home, and the artist took him in his arms and embraced him as a son.
They parted, the one to go to his peaceful rest, the other to turn
for consolation and for calm to the wild woods above the castle,
whence through vistas could be seen the silver-flashing river, with
here and there its dark semblances of reversed houses, and spires,
and turrets. "My father! my father!" thought the young man, "why can
you not tell me what you know--why can you not assure me of all I
long to believe, yet cannot? _She_ has often said that the dead are
all of her faith when they reach God's throne, and that they believe
in it even more firmly, if possible, than those of her creed do on
earth--because to them evidence has been given. Perhaps to some the
evidence is eternal fire--if that exist! But surely, he who made this
earth so fair, he who gave us this solemn night-beauty to enjoy, and
a mind fitted to admire it, he cannot have meant to bind us to cruel,
unyielding formulas. If one heart feels its love go out to him in
one way, and another in a different way, why should not both be as
welcome to him as is the varied beauty of the many different-tinted
and different-scented flowers? Who has been to God's feet and learned
his secrets, and come back to tell us with certainty that he loathes
one heart's worship, and accepts another's? Not till I have such an
assurance will I, or can I, if I would, go to Christina, and say, 'I
am a Catholic.'"

And so the specious and seemingly religious poison worked on and
cankered his heart, notwithstanding the solemn warning of his
new-found friend, whose voice, he should have known it, was near akin
to that of the spirit-witness he was but now invoking.

The night was very lovely, and reminded him of that one preceding his
father's funeral, when already wandering dreams of a self-revealed
faith were turning him away from the belief in a just and personal
God. The Church of England Catechism, which he had learnt by heart as
a child, the teachings of a zealous Episcopalian clergyman who had
prepared him for confirmation in Germany itself, rushed back upon his
memory as he looked on the symbolic beauty of the dying night; but in
the dawn that already stirred the birdlings in their nests and shot
pale darts of virgin light across the purple-blue heaven, he could
see no emblem of truer life coming to his soul nor any sign of silent
joy offering itself to his weary heart. And yet the dawn was shining
into a little flower-scented chamber, and striking a sweeter perfume
from the silent prayer of its occupant than it could draw even from
the fragrant blossoms of the golden lime and the starry pendent
clusters of flowering chestnut gathered in the large earthen vases
near the window.

That prayer was for Egbert, but he could not feel it yet.

       *       *       *       *       *

Night again, summer again, but a year has passed, and the German
student is now an English landlord. To-morrow he will assume the
duties of his new position; to-day he received the first-fruits of
its honors.

The customary rejoicings attendant on a "coming of age" in Old
England had been duly gone through; there had been banqueting in
the hall, and feasting in the dining-room; healths had been drunk
and speeches had been made, and every one was supposed to be in a
superlative state of happiness. Probably every one was--that is,
according to their kind, and to their capability of enjoyment. Egbert
alone seemed thoughtful and preoccupied; his assembled relations
thought him reserved and cold; some said a foreign education could
be no good to an Englishman, and he would never be popular in the
country; others thought he would marry abroad, some said he would
turn Roman Catholic, and the sporting squires wondered whether he
would ride and would subscribe to the hunt.

Contrary to the expectation of the marriageable young ladies of the
neighborhood, there was no ball included in the programme of the
birthday _fêtes_, and the guests who were not staying at the house
all left towards dark, lighted on their way by the last explosions of
the fantastic fireworks that had been introduced as a _finale_ to the
rejoicings. After dinner, Egbert and his guardian, the one we alluded
to in the beginning of this tale, sauntered out on the terrace,
talking in a desultory way about the little incidents of the day.

"You gave us so little time, my dear boy," he said presently, "to
make your acquaintance over again, considering the time you have been
abroad, that I feel almost as a stranger to you."

"I should not like ever to be a stranger to _you_," replied Egbert;
"but I own I felt a shrinking from coming here at all, much more upon
such an occasion, and to meet such people."

"You have grown fastidious, I am afraid."

"I have led a very quiet life for the last few years, and I feel much
older than I am, and quite different from all the young people, both
men and girls, I have met to-day; and, to tell you the truth, I felt
shy, so I delayed coming to the last moment. But if _you_ will stay
when the house is quiet again, I am sure we shall understand each
other."

"With all my heart, my dear fellow; your father was my earliest
friend, and I should like his son to be as my own."

"I am glad you are alone in the world, Charles, if you will allow me
that cousinly freedom; for I own I should have been scared at a bevy
of ladies, and probably committed some dreadful solecism, and have
got myself ostracized for ever."

"Well, well; it will all come in time, no doubt; and now tell me all
about your life at Heidelberg."

Could Charles Beran have looked back at that life, and known what was
called back to existence by his careless question, perhaps he might
have asked it less carelessly, and been less astonished at the effect
it produced. His cousin grew pale.

"My dear boy," he added hurriedly, "if there is any painful
recollection I have stirred up without knowing it, pray forgive me."

"No," answered Egbert slowly, "I have no _painful_ recollection
in all my life, not even my father's death (Beran looked at him
anxiously); for nothing has happened to me without making me sadder
and wiser, that is, teaching me more and more that I know nothing."

His companion did not answer. Egbert was getting beyond him, but he
pressed his hand to show him that, whatever he might mean, he had
one to sympathize with, even if he could not share, his sorrow.
Egbert understood the wistful, loving sign of the old man whose happy
disposition most fortunately kept him ignorant of the paths of gloom
through which he himself was passing, and went on to tell him, in
general terms, of his outward life and habits at Heidelberg. He made
no concealment of his intimacy with the family of his old professor,
but simply and truthfully said that, on account of her religion,
Christina, he felt sure, could never be his wife.

"Perhaps," interrupted the old man, "it is better so, and Providence
meant you to marry an English wife, and think more of your property
and your own country."

Egbert smiled at this innocent pressing of Providence into the
upholding of a mere actional prejudice; and said, unconsciously using
the endearing phraseology of his adopted language:

"I knew you would think so, dear friend; but do you fancy that,
coming from the feet of an angel, one would be likely to rush into
the arms of a child of earth?"

"My dear fellow, you have grown _too_ German by far! Excuse me, but
this will never do for England, you know."

"I am afraid England will not do for me," Egbert replied, laughing;
"that is, if England is to mean Englishmen and Englishwomen.

"Oh! you will think differently when you have mixed with them a
little; we really must try and cure you."

"Well, you can try, if you like. Perhaps we had better go in and
begin with the assembled company around that piano," said the young
man, as he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to a white-robed girl
attitudinizing before a splendid instrument, which, I think, could it
have spoken, would have begged to be delivered from the attacks of
unmusical school-girls on the matrimonial lookout.

But every one was tired now, even school-girls and croquet-playing
young gentlemen--and heir-huntresses, and heiress-hunters, and
diggers after coronets, and the various other pliers of unhallowed
trades--so Egbert was soon left to himself again, which with him
always meant a long night-ramble in the whispering woods.

The English beauty of his own unknown possessions was new to him; it
was also sad, for it was associated with the memory of his father's
funeral; but, because of its very sadness, it was the less new, the
more familiar. Across the flower-garden, across the terraced lawn
dotted with rare trees from Rocky Mountain gorges and California
valleys, across the network of gravel paths, he walked thoughtfully
over to where an old ruin stood, with its mantle of ivy, shrouding
crumbled wall and broken buttress, climbing over scutcheon and carven
doorway, and flinging its tendrils like falling lace across the tall
mullioned windows. This gray ruin had been a house once, but now it
was disused and had fallen into decay. Opposite, only parted from
it by a shrubbery, was the church where Egbert's father was buried,
and to the left stretched a wide and long quadrangle with walls
of coral-berried yew, and hedges of trailing rose and honeysuckle
within, enclosing a tract of wild, rank grass, and little, nestling,
creeping flowers hidden among the tall tufts. In the centre stood a
sun-dial, lichened over in brown and yellow patches, catching the
moonbeams now, as if it were a solitary tombstone in a desecrated
graveyard. The long shadows from church and ruin stretched themselves
across the lonely enclosure; the sweetbrier gave forth soft perfume
that carried on its breath some remembrance of the Heidelberg limes
and chestnuts; falling twigs made a ghost-like rustling in the tall
trees beyond, and the voice of the night seemed to say to the young
man's heart, "Peace is nigh."

Egbert wandered on till he came to the sun-dial; he leaned upon it
and looked around. His thoughts were deep and sad, but something
within him seemed changed--he himself knew not what. "Is it my
father's spirit calling me, or Christina's heart sending me some
heavenly message? Is it that I am going to die, or to live and
know God?" Such were the flitting thoughts that sped like restless
wanderers through his mind, and all night through, as he walked
backward and forward in the yew quadrangle, and then by the edge of
the beech-shadowed pond, these same thoughts pursued him, and shaped
themselves to his fancy into the whispering of the ever-quivering
leaves and the trembling of the unrestful grass.

It was dawn again before he left the grounds, and he had scarcely
been asleep a few hours when a hasty message came to him that a poor
woman from the village was asking for him in great distress, and was
sure he would not refuse to see her. It seemed that she came to say
her little girl was taken suddenly ill, and the doctor thought she
would not live. Egbert had specially noticed this little one, and
played with her during the preceding day, when the school-children
were enjoying their share of the day's delight; and, without the
slightest hesitation, he followed the poor mother to her cottage,
where he found a whole nest of children; some old enough to look
sorry and frightened, some hardly able to do aught else than crow and
laugh and give trouble to the elder ones. Up-stairs in a poor little
garret lay the sick child, rocked on the knees of its eldest sister,
and looking very pinched and white and mournful. A Catholic priest
was in the room, and there were a few rude prints and a crucifix on
the walls. The little one was very silent, but the mother said it had
asked piteously for the "pretty gentleman" to bring it some flowers.
Egbert took its hand and stroked its small, thin face. The child was
not pretty, but it had that patient, confiding look that always stirs
the heart, that prematurely yet unconsciously sad expression that is
a thousand times more winning and more touching than beauty. For this
very reason had Egbert noticed it the day before, and asked its name
and age with an interest that made all its companions jealous.

As he bent down to it, it said something he could not make out, and
turning to the mother for explanation, "She says, sir," answered the
poor woman, "would you please say a prayer?" The young man reddened
and looked at the priest. Again the child spoke. The priest said to
Egbert: "She has a fancy for it. Will you not say an Our Father for
her?"

He had chosen a prayer on which there could be no controversy, he
thought, and was surprised when Egbert, instead of the Lord's Prayer,
began a beautiful and impromptu supplication. For some time he went
on, and the child listened bewildered; but as he stretched his hand
towards her, and drew her head upon his arm, she said with a soft,
childish accent, as if recovering from an unintelligible surprise:
"No; say the Hail Mary."

The priest saw his head suddenly droop, and his fair hair touch the
child's darker locks; his voice sank, and sobs came instead of words;
then there was silence.

"Say the Hail Mary," said the child.

Egbert never raised his head, but in a broken voice he said the
prayer as the little one directed, and the Our Father directly after.
But the priest noticed that he said it as Catholics do, omitting the
superadded words of the Protestant liturgy.

A few moments after, the child's father came in; he had been sent for
from his work.

It was not long before God counted another angel in his train, and
the mother one treasure less upon earth.

Egbert left the cottage with the priest, promising to send flowers
for the little one's coffin, and to return to see it one more in the
evening.

He was silent for some minutes, his companion watching him in
appreciative sympathy, half-guessing the truth, and giving thanks to
God for his double accession to his church in one and the same hour.
At last the young man said:

"Mr. Carey, you were surprised I knew your prayers?"

"I own I was, Mr. Stanway, but I was happy to see you did."

"I know more than them, and I always thought that, could I make any
form of faith my own, it would be yours."

"And what you saw this morning has, I think, induced you to do so?"

"I will tell you the truth, Mr. Carey. Up to this morning I could not
bring myself to any tangible belief; at this moment, thank God, I
think I may venture to say I am a Catholic."

"My dear Mr. Stanway, this is indeed happy news. And see the
instrument God has chosen for your conversion!"

"I have only one more question to ask you. I have studied the
Catholic faith a long time; I may say I have loved it long, and, now
that I feel it to be the faith of my understanding as well as of my
heart, may I not be received at once?"

"Of course, if you will only come to my house, and we will have a
few moments' conversation. I have no doubt you can be made one of us
before to-night."

The priest's house was a humble little cottage beyond the village
green, and it had indeed needed all the Oxford scholar's taste to
make its evangelical poverty the type rather of voluntary detachment
than of necessary want.

Here, in a modest little room, whose only ornaments were two or three
Düsseldorf prints and a book-case of theological and controversial
books uniformly bound, Egbert and Carey sat down for a short time,
that a few questions might satisfy the latter's judgment as to the
propriety of at once receiving the new convert. He rose at last, and
pointed to a temporary confessional that stood in one corner. Egbert
was soon prepared, and every ceremony was rapidly performed. The
priest could not help noticing the look of perfect peace that seemed
to be the expression of the young man's predominant frame of mind. As
he was still fasting, Egbert pleaded hard to be allowed to receive
communion directly after baptism, and, after a moment's hesitation,
the request was granted. He then paid another visit to the poor
cottage where God had wrought this marvellous change in him, and
reverently kissed the tiny white forehead of the little angel who had
gone before him. And from that hour, there was not one in the village
that would not have died for the "dear, kind gentleman that never
said one hard word to a poor man." That day was remembered long years
after, when the children of the girl he had seen nursing her little
sick sister followed his own honored remains to their last earthly
abode, and when another and a less kind master had come to reign over
Stanway Hall.

Meanwhile, in the great dining-room where the guests were assembled
for breakfast, conjectures were rife about the absent host, and
laughing questions were put about his idleness on his too-romantic
morning wanderings, until Mr. Beran, who also came in rather late,
dispelled the whole mystery by an explanation consisting of one word,
itself a mystery to many there present--business; and a courteous
apology from Egbert, who hoped his friends would consider Mr. Beran
as his delegate for the house. A few portly matrons and unmusical
school-girls looked rather black at this substitution; but against
fate what avails impatience? and against Beran, what availed black
looks?

But when at luncheon Egbert did not appear, and when at dinner he
came in with a saddened, grave demeanor, the discontented ones
thought it really was time to throw up the game and go to other and
more tempting hunting-grounds. So the party broke up the next day,
and Egbert and his Cousin Charles were free again. The old man was
soon made acquainted with what had taken place, and two days after
both he and the young lord of the hall followed the little child's
funeral to the Catholic cemetery.

But Egbert's heart was not yet satisfied. Heidelberg's memories were
with him night and day, and it was not many weeks before he started
for his German home with his new English friend as companion. He had
not cared to trust his precious news to the slender certainty of
foreign posts. He wanted to see the very first glimmering of the
expression he knew it would call forth on one ever-dreamt-of face,
and the journey was to him a ceaseless preparation for a joy that
would come suddenly after all.

Leaving Beran at the "Golden Kranz-Hof," he walked through the
darkling streets, past the silent _platz_, up to the old house he
knew and loved so well. He never rang, for the door was open, and the
next moment he stood in the organ-room. It was empty--so was the next
apartment. A fear came over him, and he covered his face with his
hands.

Presently the door opened, and Herr Lebnach came in, looking aged and
haggard. There was no surprise on his face as he saw his pupil and
friend. "I knew thou wouldst come," he said simply.

"Is she--" began Egbert, fearing to shape his dread in words.

"No; come to her. She has asked for thee. Didst thou not get my
letter?"

"Letter! No, I came of my own accord."

"God be thanked! she will be _so_ happy!"

And this was his welcome! this the home he had been journeying
to! Christina was lying in a small iron bed by the window, a vase
of golden-lime blossoms on the table near her, and a prayer-book
beside it. Her hands were clasped carelessly on her knees, and her
head propped up very high with pillows. Egbert took her white,
cold fingers in his, and knelt down by the bed. She only said his
name--it was the first time she had ever done so.

"Christina," he said at length, "I came to tell you something. Your
faith is mine now."

A faint cry, and a pale, momentary flush, and then a long look in
silence.

"My God, I thank thee! My prayer is answered!" So she spoke after a
few minutes.

"And I came to ask you something also," continued Egbert. "Do you
love me as I always hoped you did?"

"Egbert," she answered solemnly, "I loved you from the first time I
saw you; but, when I found you did not love and know the dear God, I
offered my life to him for your conversion, and he has answered me."

Egbert told her briefly the circumstances that had occurred. A few
days passed, and one evening, when the red sunset was firing the
casement, and her father, her lover, and Charles Beran, were around
her, she suddenly said, taking the two former by the hand:

"God is calling me--do not forget me. Your blessing, dearest father!
O Egbert!"

And so died Egbert's first and only love.

Strangers often asked, when they came to see the beautiful Catholic
Church adjoining Stanway Hall why it was dedicated to the virgin
martyr St. Christina.




THE SCEPTICISM OF THE AGE.


The strong current of scepticism which set in during the eighteenth
century extends into the nineteenth. Among the lower strata of
society, among the dwellings of the poor--long the last refuge of
religion--and especially among the factories and workshops, this
scepticism has made various inroads on the ancient foundations
of faith. By the sulphurous glare of the ominous flashes which
momentarily relieve the clouded European horizon, we often catch
glimpses of the horrors that are steadily accumulating in the lowest
social depths. A powerful Christian current, whose volume has as
usual increased with persecution, runs evidently by the side of this
scepticism, but the latter, nevertheless, preponderates, and it is
therefore not surprising that the barometric mean of our civilization
should be such a low one.

The frivolous scepticism of the Voltairean school, now almost extinct
in the French army, still survives among a majority of the political
and military leaders of the other Latin nations, as, for instance,
in Spain and Piedmont. For this reason the noble Spanish people,
in spite of their hereditary virtues and high spirit, are still
accursed with mediocre party leaders, while statesmen like the pious
and chivalrous Valdegamas are only too rare. In Piedmont, unbelief,
leagued with Italian cunning and rapacity, has during the last
years borne blossoms which may well make us blush for our boasted
civilization. "The proclamation of Cialdini and Pinelli" (one of
which calls the Pope a clerical vampire and vicegerent of Satan),
observed Nicotera, speaking in the National Assembly of the conduct
of these generals in Naples and Sicily, "would disgrace a Gengis-Khan
and an Attila!" "Such acts," exclaimed Aversano, alluding to the same
subject in the Italian Parliament, "must disgrace the whole nation
in the eyes of the world!" "It is literally true," said Lapena,
President of the Assizes at Santa Maria, "that in this second half of
the nineteenth century a horde of cannibals exists in our beautiful
Italy!"

Other nations may perhaps thank God with the Pharisee in Scripture
that they are not like the Italians. But if they have not gone to
the length of fusillading defenceless priests (the case of Gennaro
d'Orso, _Gazette du Midi_, February 1, 1861)--if they have never
trodden under foot the crucifix--if their mercenaries have never
raised blasphemous hands against the consecrated Host (_Giornale di
Roma_, January 24, 1861)--in short, if other European nations have
not yet been guilty of such atrocities as the Italians, very few have
much cause to pride themselves upon their godliness and piety. Even
in Germany, the fanaticism of infidelity has brought men close to
the boundary-line which divides a false civilization from barbarism,
and in some cases this line has already been crossed. At Mannheim
the cry, "Kill the priests, and throw them into the Rhine!" was
raised in 1865. In many parts of Southern Germany, the members of
certain religious orders have been grossly ill-treated by an ignorant
and brutal populace. "It is but too true," says the Archbishop of
Freiburg, in his pastoral of May 7, 1868, "that the servants of the
church are often exposed to insult and violence."

Ascending from the levels of ordinary life into the higher regions of
civilization, science, and art, we discover that the scepticism of
the last century has made more progress among our philosophers and
poets. It is especially among the former that this scepticism seems
to have gained ground, for materialism ranks lower in the scale of
intelligence than the deification of the human mind. This return to
the atomic theory of Epicurus is calculated rather to stupefy than
to enlighten, for Humboldt remarks that a multiplicity of elementary
principles is not to be met with even among the savages. Materialism
is utterly incapable of elevating the heart, and destroys therefore
a branch of civilization quite as essential as intellectual culture
itself. Where all this tends to, how it brutalizes man and degrades
him below the animal, how it obliterates every distinction between
good and evil, how it robs our accountability of all meaning,
how it makes the savage state with its attendant ignorance and
barbarism our normal condition, has been forcibly pointed out in
Haeffner's admirable treatise on _The Results of Materialism_. "The
materialist," says Haeffner, "virtually tells man: You are wrong to
set yourself in aristocratic pride over the other brutes; you are
wrong to claim descent from a nobler race than the myriads of worms
and grains of sand that lie at your feet; you are wrong to build your
dwelling above the stalls of the animals: descend, therefore, from
your grand height, and embrace the cattle in the fields, greet the
trees and grasses as equals, and extend your hand in fellowship to
the dust whose kindred you are."

As in modern philosophy, so the scepticism of the preceding century
is equally manifest in modern poetry. "No department of human
activity," observes a profound thinker of the present day, "is so
feeble and occupies so low a moral standpoint as poetry, through
which all the demoralization of the eighteenth century has been
transmitted." It is a sort of confessional, from which we publish
to the world our own effeminacy and degradation--not to regret and
repent, but to defend and make parade of them. What we feel ashamed
to say in simple prose, we proclaim boldly and complacently in
rhyme. If a poet soars now and then to virtue, it is generally only
virtue in the ancient heathen sense. Hence it comes that, when a
political storm impends in the sultry atmosphere of the Old World,
the night-birds and owls of anarchy fill the air with their cries. In
times of peace they luxuriate in our modern political economism with
the law of demand and supply, by whose agency human labor has been
reduced to a mere commodity. In literature they preach the evangel of
materialism under the flimsy guise of so-called popularized science,
and even the school has been perverted into an institution whose sole
object seems to be to supply labor for the white slave mart.

Those who desire to behold the fruits which spring from this
unchristian culture of material interests should go to England for
an illustration. Though the Anglican sect is the state religion,
infidelity has made nowhere greater progress than in that country.
Its principal church, St. Paul's, London, gives no evidences of
Christianity. The interior does not address itself like Paul to
the Areopagus, but like the Areopagus to Paul, for it inculcates
an unadulterated heathenism. The first monument that arrests the
attention of the visitor is dedicated to the pagan Fama, who consoles
Britannia for the loss of her heroic sons. The next monument belongs
to the heathen goddess of Victory, who crowns a Pasenby; while a
Minerva calls the attention of budding warriors to La Marchand's
death at Salamanca. Then come a Neptune with open arms, Egyptian
sphinxes, the East India Company seal. When the principal religious
edifice of a nation is thus turned into a heathen temple, the people
themselves must become heathenized, and this we find to be so here.
In Liverpool 40, in Manchester 51, in Lambeth 61, in Sheffield 62
per cent. profess no religion at all. So says the London _Times_ of
May 4, 1860. In the city of London thousands and tens of thousands
know no more of Christianity than the veriest pagans. In the parish
of St. Clement Danes, on the Strand, the rector discovered an
irreligiousness incredible to believe (_Quarterly Review_, April,
1861). For generations hundreds and thousands of coal miners have
lived in utter ignorance of such a book as the Bible. In answer
to the question whether he had ever heard of Jesus Christ, one of
them replied: "No, for I have never worked in any of his mines."
Innumerable facts attest that civilization retrogrades in a ratio
with this deplorable religious ignorance. "Among all the states
of Europe," remarked Fox in the House of Commons (Feb. 26, 1850),
"England is the one where education has been most neglected."
The justice of this observation is fully sustained by the report
presented in May of the same year by the board of school trustees
of Lancashire: "Nearly half the people of this great nation," say
they, "can neither read nor write, and a large part of the remainder
possesses only the most indispensable education." Out of 11,782
children, 5,805 could barely spell, and only 2,026 could read with
fluency. Out of 14,000 teachers, male and female, 7,000 were found
grossly incompetent for their positions. Among the troops sent to the
Crimea, no more than one soldier in every five was able to write a
letter home.

A glance at a few statistics will clearly show that moral
deterioration keeps even pace with the intellectual. From 1810 to
1837, the number of criminals has annually increased, in certain
districts, from 89 to 3,117; from 1836 to 1843, the average number
of persons arrested each year in the manufacturing districts of
York and Lancaster increased over 100 per cent., and the number of
murderers 89 per cent.; from 1846 to 1850, the number of criminals
in the Dorset district increased from 726 to 1,300, giving, in a
population of 115,000 souls, 1 criminal to every 60 individuals. In
London, the number of persons arrested in 1856 amounted to 73,260,
whence it appears that about 1 inhabitant in every 40 passes through
the hands of the police. Of the 200,000 criminal offences tried each
year before the English tribunals, one-tenth part are committed by
children, and 50,000 by persons less than twenty years of age. In
London alone, 17,000 minors are yearly tried, which is 1 inhabitant
in every 175; whereas the ratio for Paris is only 1 inhabitant in
every 400. Mayhew computes that £42,000 are stolen during the year in
the metropolis; and the London _Examiner_ lately deplored that there
should be less danger in crossing the great desert than in passing
through some of the more remote suburbs of London at night. The
story of a Professor Fagin, who gave private lessons in stealing,
has often been regarded as a canard; but we read, in the _Morning
Chronicle_, an advertisement in which one Professor Harris announces
a similar course of instruction, and even promises his pupils to
take them, for practice, to the theatres and other places of public
resort. Among these startling fruits of British civilization must
be included the 28 cases of polygamy which occurred in London in a
single twelvemonth; the 12,770 illegitimate children born, during
1856, in the workhouses alone; the children market, held openly in
a London street every Wednesday and Thursday, between the hours of
six and seven, where parents exhibit their offspring for sale, or
hire them out for infamous purposes. Such being the condition of an
overwhelming majority of the people, it is no longer difficult to
credit the existence of the new race which is now said to be growing
up in England--a race whose civilization Dr. Shaw contrasts, rather
disparagingly, with that of the African and the Indian. "After a
careful investigation," says Dr. Shaw, "I have been forced to arrive
at the conclusion that, while the moral, physical, intellectual, and
educational status of the lowest English classes is about on the same
level with that of the savage, they rank even below him in morals and
customs."

And what has England, politically considered, done for the cause of
civilization since cotton achieved its great triumph over corn? As
one of the great powers of the Christian world, she has virtually
abdicated. For national right and justice, for really oppressed
nationalities, she has long ceased to upraise her voice or her arm.
It is only when some Manchester cotton-lord suffers an injury in his
pocket that her fleets threaten a bombardment. She is an asylum
for the refuse of all nations, and freely permits the torch of the
incendiary to be cast into the dwellings of her neighbors. Her
literature, philosophy, religion, as well as her industry, trade,
and diplomacy, are intended to hand the nations completely over to
materialism. Wherever England's policy predominates, there virtue and
simplicity, happiness and peace, disappear from the earth, and out
of the ruins rises an arrogant and inordinate craving for the goods
of this world. British influence has destroyed Portugal, weakened
Spain, distracted Italy, and impaired the moral prestige of France.
Her religious apathy encourages a degrading heathenism. Britain's
political economy has inaugurated in Europe not only a serfdom of
labor, but a serfdom of mind. The Scotchman, Ferguson, predicted that
thought would become a trade, and Lasalle remarks that it has already
become one in the hands of most English scholars. And these are the
results of our much-vaunted civilization!

The pernicious example set by England in philosophy, poetry, and
letters has unfortunately found but too many imitators on the
Continent of Europe and elsewhere. Our literature is at present in
the same condition in which it was in the days of Sophists and Greek
decadence. When God desires to punish a civilized people--remarked
some years ago an eloquent French pulpit orator--he visits them
with such a swarm of unbelieving scholars as the clouds of locusts
which he inflicted upon ancient Egypt. Men of perverse heads and
corrupted hearts generate, in centuries which are called enlightened,
a darkness upon which the goddess Genius of Knowledge sheds uncertain
flashes, resembling the lightning which relieves the evening sky on
the approach of a storm: The Sophists of ancient Greece were such
heralds of impending wrath and desolation, and this class of men
closely resemble the majority of our modern literati. If we compare
the atheistic, material tendencies of a Protagoras, Antiphon, or
Œnopides with our present progressive science; if we recall the time
when Prodikus or Critias, in their efforts to destroy the religion
of Greece, represented it as an invention of selfishness or of the
ancient lawgivers; if Hippias offered himself to lecture on every
conceivable subject, just as prominent writers now undertake to
discuss all topics; if the latter again cloak their designs under the
same phraseology; in short, when all this is once more re-enacted,
then the parallel between that age and our own will be found almost
perfect. The same class of scholars flourished in both eras; in both
they claimed to be the high-priests of truth, although they are no
more entitled to this honor than those whom Lucian describes leading
the Syrian goddess on asses about the land. We live, in fact, in the
days of a declining civilization, and nothing but a speedy return to
the cardinal principles of Christianity can save us from relapsing
into barbarism.




MATER CHRISTI.


      Mother of Christ--then mother of us all:
        Mother of God made man, of man made God:[97]
        The thornless garden, the immaculate sod,
      Whence sprang the Adam that reversed the fall.
      Mother of Christ the Body Mystical;
        Of us the members, as of him the Head:
        Of him our life, the first-born from the dead;[98]
      Of us baptized into his burial.[99]
      Yes, Mother, we were truly born of thee
        On Calvary's second Eden--thou its Eve:
      Thy dolors were our birth-pangs by the tree
        Whereon the second Adam died to live--
      To live in us, thy promised seed to be,
        Who then his death-wound to the snake didst give.

FOOTNOTES:

[97] "God became man that man might become God."--_St. Augustine._

[98] Col. i. 18.

[99] Rom. vi. 4.




OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.

PART VII.


I.

The clergy still kept away from the grotto and aloof from all share
in the movement. The orders of Mgr. Laurence were strictly observed
throughout the diocese.

The people, cruelly harassed by the persecuting measures of the
administration, turned with anxiety toward the authority charged by
God with the conduct and defence of the faithful. They expected to
see the bishop protest energetically against the violence offered to
their religious liberty. A vain hope! His lordship kept absolutely
silent, and let the prefect have everything his own way. Shortly
afterward, M. Massy caused to be circulated in print a report that he
acted according to agreement with the ecclesiastical authority; then
astonishment became general, for the bishop did not publish a line in
contradiction.

The heart of the people was troubled.

Hitherto the ardent faith of the multitude had been at a loss to
explain the extreme cautiousness of the clergy. At the present
juncture, after so many proofs of the reality of the apparitions,
the springing up of the fountain, and so many cures and miracles,
this excessive reserve of the bishop during the persecution of the
civil power seemed to them like a defection. Neither respect for his
private character nor even his office could restrain the popular
murmurs.

Why not pronounce upon the matter, now that the elements of certainty
were flowing in from all quarters? Why not, at least, order some
inquiry or examination to guide the faith of all? Were not events
which might suffice to overthrow the civil power and raise a sedition
worth the attention of the bishop? Did not the prelate's silence
justify the prefect in acting as he did? If the apparition were
false, ought not the bishop to have warned the faithful and nipped
error in the bud? If, on the other hand, it were true, ought he not
to have set his face against this persecution of believers, and
courageously defended the work of God against the malice of men?
Would not a mere sign from the bishop, even an examination, have
stopped the prefect from entering upon his course of persecution?
Were the priests and the bishop deaf to all the demands for
recognition which came from the foot of this rock, ever to be
celebrated as the place where the Mother of our crucified God had set
her virginal foot? Had the letter succeeded in killing the spirit,
as among the priests and Pharisees of the Gospel, so that they were
blind to the most striking miracles? Were they so occupied with the
administration of church affairs, so absorbed by their clerical
functions, that the almighty hand of God outside the temple was for
them an affair of little account? Was this time of miracles and
persecution a proper season for the bishop to take the last place,
as in processions?

Such was the clamor that arose and daily swelled from the crowd.
The clergy were accused of indifference or hostility, the bishop of
weakness and timidity.

Led by events and the natural bent of the human heart, this vast
movement of men and ideas, so essentially religious in spirit,
threatened to become opposed to the clergy. The multitude, so full of
faith in the Trinity and the Blessed Virgin, seemed about to go where
the divine power was plainly manifest, and to desert the sanctuary,
where, under the priestly vestment, the weaknesses of men are too
often to be found.

Nevertheless, Mgr. Laurence continued immovable in his attitude
of reserve. What was the reason that made the prelate resist the
popular voice, so often taken for the voice of Heaven? Was it divine
prudence? Was it human prudence? Was it shrewdness? Or was it mere
weakness?


II.

It is not always so easy to believe, and in spite of the striking
proof, Mgr. Laurence still retained some doubts, and hesitated to
act. His well-instructed faith was not as quick as the faith of the
simple. God, who shows himself, so to speak, to souls who cannot
pursue human studies, is often pleased to impose a long and patient
search upon cultivated and informed minds who are able to arrive at
truth by the way of labor, examination, and reflection. Even as the
Apostle St. Thomas refused to believe the testimony of the disciples
and the holy women, so Mgr. Laurence desired to see with his own
eyes and touch with his own hands. Exact, and far more inclined to
the practical than to the ideal, by nature distrustful of popular
exaggeration, the prelate belonged to that class who are chilled
by the passionate sentiments of others, and who readily suspect
self-deception in anything like emotion or enthusiasm. Although at
times he was startled by such extraordinary events, he so feared to
attribute them rashly to the supernatural that he might have put off
his acknowledgment of their true source until it was too late, were
it not that his natural bent had been well tempered by the grace of
God.

Not only did Mgr. Laurence hesitate to pronounce judgment, but he
could not even make up his mind to order an official inquiry. As a
Catholic bishop penetrated with the external dignity of the church,
he feared to compromise it by engaging prematurely to examine facts
of which he himself had insufficient personal knowledge, and which,
after all, might have no better foundation than the dreams of a
little peasant and the illusions of poor fanatical souls.

Of course the bishop never had counselled the measures taken by the
civil power, and warmly disapproved them. But, since the wrong had
been committed, was it not prudent to draw from it an accidental
good? Was it not well--if, perchance, there were some error in the
popular stories and belief--to abandon the pretended miracle, and
allow it to sustain single-handed the hostile examinations and
persecution of M. Massy, the free-thinkers, and scientists leagued
together against superstition? Was it not proper to wait, and not to
hasten a conflict with the civil power which might prove entirely
unnecessary? The bishop privately answered after this manner all who
pressed him to interfere: "I deplore as much as you the measures
which have been taken; but I have no charge of the police, I have
not been consulted with regard to their proceedings, what then can
I do? Let everybody answer for his own acts.... I have had nothing
to do with the action of the civil power in reference to the grotto;
and I am glad of it. By-and-by the ecclesiastical authority will
see if it is necessary to move." In this spirit of prudence and
expectation, the bishop ordered his clergy to preach calmness and
quiet to the people, and to employ all means to make them submit
to the prohibitions of the prefect. To avoid all disturbance, not
to create any new difficulties, and even to favor, out of respect
for the principle of authority, the measures adopted in the name of
government, and to let events take their course, seemed to the bishop
by far the wisest plan.

Such were the thoughts of Mgr. Laurence, as is manifest from his
correspondence about this time. Such were the considerations which
determined his position and inspired his conduct. Perhaps, if he
had possessed the strong faith of the multitude, he would have
reasoned otherwise. But it was well that he reasoned and acted
as he did. Because, if Mgr. Laurence, with the prudence becoming
a bishop, looked from the standpoint of possible error, God with
infinite wisdom saw the certainty of his own acts and the truth of
his work. God willed that his work should undergo the test of time,
and should affirm itself by surmounting without human aid the trials
of persecution. If the bishop had from the start believed in the
apparitions and miracles, could he have refrained from a generous
outburst of apostolic zeal and energetic interference in behalf of
his persecuted flock? If he really had believed that the Mother
of God had appeared in his diocese, healing the sick and demanding
a temple in her honor, could he have balanced against the will of
heaven the pitiful opposition of a Massy, a Jacomet, or a Rouland?
Certainly not. With what an ardent faith he would have set himself
with mitred brow and cross in hand against the civil power, as St.
Ambrose of old met the emperor at the church-door of Milan! Openly
and at the head of his flock, he would have gone without fear to
drink at the miraculous fountain, to kneel in the place sanctified by
the footsteps of the Blessed Virgin, and to lay the corner-stone of a
magnificent temple in honor of Mary Immaculate.

But in thus defending the work of God at that time, the prelate would
have infallibly weakened it in the future. The support which he gave
it at the start would hereafter render it suspected as emanating
from man and not from God. The more that the bishop kept aloof from
the movement, the more rebellious or even hostile he may be showed
to have been to the popular faith, so much the more clearly is the
supernatural manifested by its triumph, singly and in virtue of its
truth, over the hatred or neglect of all that bears the name of power.

Providence resolved that so it should be, and that the great
apparition of the Blessed Virgin in the nineteenth century should
pass through trials, as did Christianity, from its very birth. He
wished that universal faith should commence among the poor and
humble, in the same way as, in the kingdom of heaven, the first
were last and the last first. It was then necessary, according to
the divine plan, that the bishop, far from taking the initiative,
should hesitate the longest, and finally yield last of all to the
irresistible evidence of facts.

See how, in his secret designs, he had placed at Tarbes on its
episcopal throne the eminent and reserved man whose portrait we have
just sketched. See how he had kept Mgr. Laurence from putting faith
in the apparition, and maintained him in doubt in spite of the most
striking facts. Thus, he confirmed in the prelate that spirit of
prudence which he had bestowed upon him, and left to his episcopal
wisdom that character of long hesitation and extreme mildness which,
in the midst of their excitement, the people could not comprehend,
but whose providential usefulness and admirable results the future
was about to manifest to the eyes of all.

The people had the virtue of faith, but in their ardor they wished to
force the clergy into premature interference. The bishop possessed
the virtue of prudence, but his eyes were not yet opened to the
supernatural events which were taking place in the sight of all.
Complete wisdom and the just measure of all things were then as ever
in the mind of God alone, who directed them toward the end and made
use both of the ardor of the people and the prelate. He willed that
his church, represented by the bishop, should abstain from taking an
active part, and keep out of the struggle until the supreme moment,
when she was to step forward as the final arbiter in the debate and
proclaim the truth.


III.

Less calm and less patient than the bishop by their very nature,
and now carried away by enthusiasm at sight of the miraculous cures
which took place daily, the people could not bear themselves so
indifferently toward the measures of the administration.

The more intrepid, braving the tribunals and their fines, broke
through the barriers, and, flinging their names to the guards, went
to pray before the grotto. Among these same guards many shared the
faith of the crowd, and commenced their watch by kneeling at the
entrance to the venerable spot.

Placed between the morsel of bread which their humble employment
procured and the repulsive duty which was demanded by it, these poor
men, in their prayer to the Mother of the weak and needy, cast all
the responsibility upon the authority which controlled their acts.
Nevertheless, they strictly fulfilled their duty and reported all the
delinquents.

Although the impetuous zeal of many believers caused them to expose
themselves willingly in order to invoke the Blessed Virgin in the
place of her apparition, nevertheless the jurisprudence of M. Duprat,
whose fine of five francs could be raised, as we have explained, to
enormous sums, was sufficient to terrify the great mass. For most of
them, such a condemnation would have been utter ruin.

And yet a great number endeavored to escape the rigorous surveillance
of the police. Sometimes the faithful, respecting the barriers where
the guards were stationed, came to the grotto by secret paths. One of
the number watched and gave notice of the approach of the police by
an appointed signal. It was with the utmost difficulty that the sick
could be transported to the miraculous fountain. The authorities,
being notified of these infractions, doubled the number of sentries
and intercepted all the paths.

Still, many swam across the Gave to kneel before the grotto and drink
at the holy fountain. Night favored such infractions, and they
multiplied continually in spite of the vigilance of the police. The
influence of the clergy was greatly lessened and almost compromised
on account of the reasons which we have set forth.

In spite of the efforts which they made to carry out the orders of
the bishop, the priests were powerless to calm the general agitation
or to cause their flock to respect the arbitrary measures of the
civil power. "We ought to respect only that which is respectable,"
such was the revolutionary motto which everywhere found echo. The
personal ascendency of the curé of Lourdes, who was so universally
loved and venerated, began to give way before popular irritation.

Order was threatened by the very means that were taken to maintain
it. The people, wounded in their most cherished beliefs, wavered
between violence and submission. While on one hand petitions to the
emperor were signed in all parts demanding the withdrawal of the
orders of the prefect in the name of liberty of conscience, on the
other hand the planks which closed the grotto were several times torn
off during the night and thrown into the Gave. Jacomet vainly strove
to find out these believers, so wanting in respect for the civil
power as to abandon themselves without shame to a crime hitherto
unknown to our laws, nocturnal prayer with trespass and breach of
enclosure.

Sometimes they prostrated themselves at the stakes which formed the
boundary of the forbidden ground--a mute protest against the measures
of the government, and a mute appeal to Almighty God.

On the day which saw the sentence of the tribunal of Lourdes set
aside by the court of Pau with reference to several women who were
prosecuted for innocent conversation about the grotto, and two
others who were acquitted, then an enormous crowd gathered around
the stakes, they shouted victory, and passed the barriers in compact
masses without a word in answer to the cries and efforts of the
police. The latter, disconcerted by the recent check at Pau and
overpowered by the multitude, gave way and let the torrent pass.
The following day orders and remonstrances from the prefect came
to comfort them and to prescribe a stricter watch. The force was
increased. Threats of dismissal were bruited by the agent of the
government, and vigilance redoubled.

Sinister reports of imprisonment absolutely false, but cleverly
circulated, were readily accepted by the multitude. The real
penalties not being sufficient, it was necessary to resort to
imaginary ones in order to make a stronger impression on the souls of
the faithful. By such means they succeeded in hindering for a time
any renewal of the open infractions of the law.

Occasionally, unfortunate victims of blindness or palsy from a
distance, who had been abandoned by the physicians and whose ills God
alone knew how to cure, would come to the mayor and entreat him with
clasped hands to give their lives one last chance at the miraculous
spring. The mayor was inflexible, showing in his execution of the
prefect's orders that energy of detail by which feeble natures so
often deceive themselves. He refused in the name of the superior
authority the desired permission.

The greater number then went along the right bank of the Gave to a
point opposite the grotto. Here on certain days an immense throng
collected, beyond the reach of the prefectoral power; for the land
belonged to private parties, who believed that the benediction of
Heaven would fall upon the footprints of the pilgrims, and gladly
permitted them to kneel upon their land, and to pray with eyes turned
toward the place of the apparition and the miraculous fountain.

About this time, Bernadette fell sick, affected by her asthma and
also fatigued by the number of visitors who wished to see and speak
with her. In hopes of quieting souls by removing every cause of
agitation, the bishop availed himself of this circumstance to advise
Bernadette's parents to send her to the baths of Cauterets, which are
not far from Lourdes.

It would serve to withdraw her from those conversations and inquiries
which served to increase popular emotion. The Soubirous, alarmed at
her state, and observing the bad effect of these continual visits,
confided Bernadette to one of her aunts who was about to go to
Cauterets, and who undertook the care and expenses of her little
niece. The cost of such a visit is considerably less at that time of
the year than any other, as the baths are almost deserted. The rich
and privileged come later in the season. Here, as an invalid seeking
repose and quiet, Bernadette used the waters for two or three weeks.


IV.

As the month of June draws to a close, the fashionable watering
season begins in the Pyrenees. Bernadette returned to her home at
Lourdes. And now, tourists, bathers, travellers, and scientific men
from a thousand different parts of Europe began to arrive at the
various thermal stations. The rugged mountains, so wild and lonely
during the rest of the year, were peopled with a throng of visitors
belonging for the most part to the higher social class of the great
cities.

By the close of July, the Pyrenees became suburbs of Paris, London,
Rome, and Berlin.

Frenchmen and foreigners met in the dining-halls, jostled one another
in the _salons_, rambled among the mountain-paths, or rode in every
direction, along the streams, over the ridges, or through the flowery
and shaded valleys.

Ministers worn out by labor, deputies and senators fatigued by
too much listening or speaking, bankers, politicians, merchants,
ecclesiastics, magistrates, writers, and people of the world, all
came to provide for their health, not only at the famous springs, but
in the pure and bracing mountain air, which gives energy to the pulse
and fills the mind with vigor and activity.

This motley society represented all beliefs and disbeliefs, all the
philosophic systems, and all the opinions under the sun. It was a
microcosm. It was an abridged edition of Europe--that Europe which
Providence thus wished to place in presence of his supernatural
works. Nevertheless, as of old in Bethlehem he showed himself to the
shepherds before his manifestation to the Magian kings; so at Lourdes
he first called the humble and the poor to behold his wonders, and
only after them the princes of wealth, intelligence, and art.

From Cauterets, from Barèges, from Luz, from St. Sauveur, strangers
hastened to Lourdes. The city was filled with rattling coaches,
drawn, according to the custom of the country, by four powerful
horses, whose harness and trappings are of many colors and adorned
with strings of little bells. The greater proportion of the pilgrims
paid no attention to the barriers. They braved the law and went into
the grotto, some out of motives of faith, and others led by mere
curiosity. Bernadette received innumerable visits. Everybody wished
to see and could see the persons who had been miraculously cured. In
the _salons_ at the baths, the events which we have recounted formed
the universal topic of conversation. Little by little, public opinion
began to be formed, no longer the opinion of an insignificant nook at
the foot of the Pyrenees, and extending only from Bayonne to Toulouse
or Foix, but the opinion of France and Europe, now represented among
the mountains by visitors of all classes, of every intellectual
shade, and from every place.

The violent measures of Baron Massy, which vexed curiosity as much as
piety, were highly censured by all. Some said that they were illegal,
others that they were misplaced, but all agreed that they were
utterly inadequate to suppressing the prodigious movement of which
the grotto and the miraculous spring were the centre.

The evidences of this total inefficiency drew upon the prefect severe
criticism from those who shared his horror of the supernatural,
and who at the start would have loudly applauded his policy. Men
in general, and free-thinkers in particular, judge the acts of
government rather by their results than by philosophic principles.

Success is the most certain means of winning their approval;
failure, a twofold misfortune, since universal blame is added to the
humiliation of defeat. M. Massy was subject to this double mishap.

There were circumstances, however, which put the zeal of the police
and even the official courage of M. Jacomet to a rude test.
Illustrious personages violated the enclosure.

What was to be done in such embarrassing cases?

Once they suddenly halted a stranger, of strongly marked and powerful
features, who passed the stakes with the manifest intention of going
to the Massabielle rocks.

"You can't pass here, sir."

"You will soon see whether I can or cannot pass," answered the
stranger, without for a moment arresting his progress towards the
place of the apparition.

"Your name? I will enter a complaint against you."

"My name is Louis Veuillot," replied the stranger.

While the process was being drawn up against the celebrated writer,
a lady crossed the limits a short distance behind him, and went to
kneel before the planks that shut up the grotto. Through the cracks
of the palisade she watched the bubbling miraculous spring and
prayed. What was she asking of God? Was her prayer directed towards
the past or the future? Was it for herself or others, whose destiny
had been confided to her? Did she ask the blessing of Heaven for one
person or for a family? Never mind!

This lady did not escape the watchful eyes of him who represented at
once the prefectoral policy, the magistracy, and the police.

Argus quitted M. Veuillot, and rushed towards the kneeling figure.

"Madame," said he, "it is not permitted to pray here. You are caught
in open violation of the law; you will have to answer for it before
the police court. Your name?"

"Certainly," replied the lady; "I am Madame l'Amirale Bruat,
governess to his highness the Prince Imperial."

The terrible Jacomet had, above all things, a respect for the
social hierarchy and the powers that be. He did not pursue the
_procès-verbal_. Such scenes were often renewed. Certain of the
_procès-verbaux_ frightened the agents, and may possibly have
frightened the prefect himself.

A deplorable state of things: his orders were violated with impunity
by the powerful, and cruelly maintained at the expense of the weak.
He had two sets of weights and measures.


V.

The question raised by the various supernatural occurrences, by the
apparitions--true or false--of the Blessed Virgin, by the breaking
out of the fountain, and by the real or imaginary cures, could not
remain for ever in suspense. Such was the conviction of everybody.
It was necessary that the matter should be submitted to severe and
competent inquiry.

Strangers, who spent but a short season in the place, who had not
witnessed from the first the miraculous events, and who could not
form a conviction from personal knowledge, as could the inhabitants
of the surrounding country, amid the various accounts and opinions
that were to be heard from all quarters, were unanimous in their
astonishment at the apparent indifference of the clergy. And, while
they blamed the inopportune meddling of the civil power, they
also censured the prolonged inaction of the religious authority,
personified in the bishop.

The free-thinkers, interpreting the hesitation of the prelate to
their own advantage, felt confident of his final verdict. The
partisans of Baron Massy began to announce an entire accord between
the sentiments of the bishop and those of the prefect. They cast the
entire responsibility of the violent measures upon Mgr. Laurence.

"The bishop," they said, "might, by a single word, have put a stop
to this superstition. It was only necessary for him to deliver his
judgment on the matter. But in default of his action, the civil
authority has been forced to proceed."

But in view of the evidence for the miracles, the faithful considered
the final judgment as certainly favorable to their belief.
Moreover, a great number of strangers who had no conviction nor
party prejudices, sought to be relieved of their uncertainty by a
definitive examination. "Of what use," said they, "is religious
authority if not to decide such matters, and to fix the faith of
those whom distance, or lack of documents, or other causes, prevent
from examining and settling the question for themselves?"

Continual demands reached the ears of the bishop. The murmur of the
crowd was swelled by the voice of those that are usually styled the
"enlightened class," although their lesser lights sometimes cause
them to lose sight of brighter ones. Everybody demanded a formal
inquest.

Supernatural cures continued to manifest themselves. Hundreds
of authentic affidavits of miraculous cures, signed by numerous
witnesses, were daily received at the bishop's palace.[100]

On the 16th of July, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
Bernadette heard again within herself the voice which had been silent
for some months, and which no longer called her to the Massabielle
rocks, then fenced and guarded, but to the right bank of the Gave,
to the meadow where the crowd knelt and prayed beyond reach of
_procès-verbaux_ and annoyance of the police. It was now eight
o'clock in the evening.

Scarcely had the child prostrated herself and commenced to recite
her beads, when the divine Mother appeared to her. The Gave, which
separated her from the grotto, had no existence for her ecstatic
vision. She saw only the blessed rock, quite close to her, as
formerly, and the immaculate Virgin, whose sweet smile confirmed all
the past and vouched for all the future. No word escaped her heavenly
lips. At a certain moment she bent towards the child as if to take a
long farewell. Then she re-entered paradise. This was the eighteenth
apparition: it was to be the last.

In a different or opposite sense, strange facts now took place which
it is necessary to notice. On three or four occasions, certain women
and children had, or pretended to have, visions similar to those of
Bernadette.

Were these visions real? Was diabolical mysticism endeavoring to
mix with the divine in order to trouble it? Was there at the bottom
of these singular phenomena a mental derangement or the ill-timed
trickery of naughty children? Or was there a hostile hand secretly at
work pushing forward these visionaries in order to cast discredit on
the miracles at the grotto? We cannot tell.

The multitude, whose eyes were fixed on all the details, and who
eagerly sought to draw conclusions from what they already knew, were
less reserved in their judgment.

The supposition that the false visionaries were incited by the
police immediately took possession of the public mind as being
very consistent with the policy of the authorities. The children
who pretended to have had visions mingled their accounts with most
extravagant incoherencies. Once they scaled the barrier which
enclosed the grotto, and, under pretence of offering their services
to the pilgrims, of procuring the water for them, and of touching
their beads on the rock, they received and appropriated money.
Strange to say, Jacomet did not interfere with their proceedings,
although it would have been quite easy to have arrested them. He
even affected not to notice these strange scenes, ecstasies, and
violations of the enclosure. From this surprising behavior of the
shrewd and far-sighted chief, everybody concluded the existence
of one of those secret plots of which the police, and even the
administration, are sometimes thought capable.

"Baron Massy," so they said, "sees that public opinion is withdrawing
from him, and, convinced that open violence is insufficient to put
a stop to these events, has sought to dishonor them in principle by
encouraging the false visionaries, full accounts of whom we shall
soon see in the journals and the official reports. _Is fecit cui
prodest._"

Whatever might have been the truth of these suspicions, perhaps
incorrect, such scenes could not but disturb the peace of souls. The
curé of Lourdes, moved by these scandals, immediately expelled the
pretended seers from the _catechisme_, and declared that, if similar
occurrences took place in the future, he would not rest until he had
exposed their true instigators.

The position and threats of the curé produced a sudden and radical
effect. The pretended visions ceased at once, and nothing more was
heard of them. They had only lasted four or five days.

M. Peyramale notified the bishop of this occurrence. M. Jacomet, on
his part, addressed to the authorities an exaggerated and romantic
statement, of which we will have future occasion to speak. This
audacious attempt of the enemy to destroy the true nature and honor
of the movement only added to the reasons which called peremptorily
for action on the part of the bishop. Everything seemed to indicate
that the moment for interference had come, when the religious
authority should set about examining and giving sentence.

Men of distinction in the Catholic world, such as Mgr. de Salines,
Archbishop of Auch; Mgr. Thibaud, Bishop of Montpellier; Mgr. de
Garsignies, Bishop of Soissons; M. Louis Veuillot, chief editor of
the _Univers_; and persons less widely celebrated, but of national
reputation, such as M. de Rességuier, formerly a deputy; M. Vène,
chief engineer of mines, and inspector-general of thermal waters in
the Pyrenees; and a great number of eminent Catholics, were at that
time in the country.

All had examined these extraordinary facts which form the subject
of our history; all had interrogated Bernadette; all were either
believers or strongly inclined to believe. They tell of one of the
most venerated bishops, that he was unable to control the emotion
awakened by the _naif_ statement of the little seer. Gazing upon
the open brow which had received the glance of the ineffable Virgin
Mother of God, the prelate could not restrain the first movement of
piety. The prince of the church bowed before the majesty of that
humble peasant.

"Pray for me; bless me and my flock," he cried, choked with emotion,
and sinking on his knees.

"Rise! rise! my lord! It is yours to bless her," said the curé of
Lourdes, who was present, and instantly seized the bishop's hand.

Although the priest had sprung forward quickly, Bernadette had
already advanced, and, all abashed in her humility, bowed her head
for the blessing of the prelate.

The bishop gave it, but not without shedding tears.


VI.

The entire course of events, the testimony of such grave men, and
their evident conviction after examining, were facts which made a
lively impression on the clear and sagacious mind of the Bishop of
Tarbes. Mgr. Laurence thought that the time had now come to speak,
and he came forth from his silence. On July 28, he published the
following orders, which were immediately known throughout the entire
diocese, and produced intense excitement; for every one understood
that the strange position which he had hitherto assumed was now about
to have its solution:


    "ORDER OF HIS LORDSHIP THE BISHOP OF TARBES,
    CONSTITUTING A COMMISSION TO REPORT ON THE AUTHENTICITY
    AND NATURE OF CERTAIN FACTS WHICH HAVE, FOR SIX MONTHS,
    BEEN TAKING PLACE ON OCCASION OF A REAL OR PRETENDED
    APPARITION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN IN A GROTTO SITUATED
    WEST OF THE TOWN OF LOURDES.

    "Bertrand-Severe-Laurence, by the mercy of God and the
    apostolic favor of the Holy See, Bishop of Tarbes.

    "To the clergy and faithful of our diocese, health and
    benediction in our Lord Jesus Christ.

    "Facts of grave importance, and intimately connected
    with religion, have been occurring at Lourdes since the
    eleventh of last February. They have stirred our whole
    diocese, and their fame has been re-echoed in foreign
    parts.

    "Bernadette Soubirous, a young girl of Lourdes,
    fourteen years of age, has had visions in the
    Massabielle grotto, situated west of that town. The
    Blessed Virgin has appeared to her. A fountain has
    risen on the spot. The water of this fountain, having
    been drunk or used as a wash, has operated a great
    number of cures, which are considered miraculous.
    Many persons have come from parts of our own and from
    neighboring dioceses to seek, at this fountain, the
    cure of various diseases, invoking the Immaculate
    Virgin.

    "The civil power has been alarmed by this. The
    ecclesiastical authority has been urged by all parties,
    since the month of March, to make some declaration
    concerning this improvised pilgrimage. We have delayed,
    up to the present time--believing that the hour was
    not come for us to deal successfully with this matter,
    and also that, to give due weight to our judgment, it
    would be necessary to proceed with wise moderation, to
    distrust the prejudices of the first days of popular
    enthusiasm, to allow agitation to quiet itself, to
    give time for reflection, and to procure light for an
    attentive and clear investigation.

    "Three classes appeal to our decision, but with
    different views:

    "First are those who, refusing all examination, see in
    the events at the grotto, and in the cures attributed
    to its water, only superstition, jugglery, and deceit.

    "It is evident that we cannot, _à priori_, share
    their opinion without serious examination. Their
    journals have, from the start, cried, and loudly too,
    superstition, fraud, and bad faith. They have affirmed
    that the affair of the grotto has had its rise in
    sordid and guilty cupidity, and have thus wounded
    the moral sense of our Christian people. The plan of
    denying everything and of accusing intentions seems
    to us very convenient for cutting off difficulties;
    but, on the other hand, very disloyal to sound reason,
    and more apt to irritate than to convince. To deny
    the possibility of supernatural facts is to follow a
    superannuated school, to abjure Christianity, and to
    proceed in the ruts of the infidel philosophy of the
    last century. We, as Catholics, cannot take counsel
    in such a matter with those who deny God's power
    to make exceptions to his own laws, nor even join
    them in examining whether a given fact is natural or
    supernatural, knowing in advance that they proclaim
    the impossibility of the supernatural. By this, do
    we shrink from thorough, sincere, and conscientious
    discussion enlightened by advanced science? By no
    means. On the contrary, we desire it, with all our
    heart. We wish these facts to be submitted to the
    severest tests of evidence compatible with sound
    philosophy, and, accordingly, to determine whether they
    are natural or divine, that prudent men, learned in
    the sciences of mystical theology, medicine, physics,
    chemistry, geology, etc., etc., be invited to the
    discussion, in order that science shall be consulted
    and give her sentence. And we desire, above all, that
    no means be neglected to ascertain the truth.

    "Another class neither approve nor condemn the events
    which are everywhere recounted, but suspend their
    judgment. Before pronouncing definitely, they wish to
    know the views of competent authority, and earnestly
    ask for them.

    "Finally, a third and very numerous class have become
    thoroughly, though perhaps prematurely, convinced. They
    impatiently look to the bishop to pronounce immediately
    on this grave affair. Although they expect from us a
    decision favorable to their own pious sentiments, we
    know their obedient spirit well enough to be assured
    that they will agree with our judgment, whatever that
    may be, as soon as it is known.

    "It is, therefore, to enlighten the piety of so many
    thousands of the faithful, to correspond with an
    urgent public appeal to settle the uncertainty and
    quiet the agitation of souls, that we yield to-day to
    instances repeated and continued, from all parts. We
    desire light on facts in the highest degree important
    to the faithful, the worship of the Blessed Virgin,
    and religion itself. To this end we have resolved
    to institute in our diocese a permanent commission
    for collecting and reporting upon the facts which
    have occurred, and which may hereafter occur, at or
    concerning the grotto of Lourdes, in order to make
    known their character and supply us with the means
    indispensable to arriving at a true judgment.


    "WHEREFORE,

    "The holy name of God having been invoked,

    "We have ordered and hereby order as follows:

    "Art. I. A commission is hereby instituted in the
    diocese of Tarbes, to examine the following points:

    "1. Whether cures have been worked by drinking, or by
    bathing with the water of the grotto of Lourdes; and
    whether these cures can be explained naturally or are
    to be attributed to something above nature.

    "2. Whether the visions which are said to have been
    seen by the child Bernadette Soubirous have been real;
    and, in the latter case, whether they can be explained
    naturally or are to be invested with a supernatural
    character.

    "3. Whether the object which is said to have appeared
    manifested its intentions to the child; whether she has
    been charged to communicate them, and to whom; and what
    were the said intentions or demands.

    "4. Whether the fountain which is now running in the
    grotto existed before the alleged visions of Bernadette
    Soubirous.

    "Art. II. The commission will present for our
    consideration only facts established by solid evidence,
    concerning which it will prepare minute reports
    containing its own judgment on the matter.

    "Art. III. The deans of the diocese will be the
    principal correspondents of the commission.

    "1. They are desired to call attention to facts which
    have taken place in their respective deaneries.

    "2. The persons who are allowed to testify concerning
    such acts are:

    "3. Those who, by their science, can enlighten the
    commission.

    "4. The physicians who have had charge of the sick
    before their cure.

    "Art. IV. After having received notices, the commission
    will proceed to examination. Evidence must be rendered
    under oath. When investigations refer to localities,
    at least two members of the commission must visit the
    spot.

    "Art. V. We earnestly recommend the commission to
    invite to its sessions men well versed in the sciences
    of medicine, physics, chemistry, geology, etc., in
    order to hear them discuss the difficulties which may
    arise on points familiar to them, and in order to learn
    their opinion. The commission will neglect no means of
    acquiring light and arriving at the truth, whatever
    that may be.

    "Art. VI. The commission shall be composed of nine
    members of our chapter, the superiors of the great and
    little seminaries, the superior of the missionaries of
    our diocese, the curé of Lourdes, and the professors of
    dogmatic and moral theology and physics of the great
    seminary. The professor of chemistry in our little
    seminary shall be often consulted.

    "Art. VII. M. Nogaro, canon-arch-priest, is hereby
    named president of the commission. The Canons
    Tabariés and Soulé are named vice-presidents. The
    commission will appoint for itself a secretary and two
    vice-secretaries from its own number.

    "Art. VIII. The commission will immediately enter
    upon its labors, and meet as often as it shall deem
    necessary.

    "Given at Tarbes, in our episcopal palace, under our
    sign and seal, and the countersign of our secretary,
    July 28, 1858.

                                  "✠ BERTRAND-SRE,
                                          "Bishop of Tarbes.

                    "By command, FOURCADE,
                                         "Canon-Secretary."

His lordship had scarcely issued this order when he received a letter
from M. Rouland, Minister of Public Worship, entreating him to
interfere and arrest the movement.

In order to comprehend the full meaning of this letter, it will be
necessary for us to turn back a short distance.


VII.

Whether the police or administration had incited the false
visionaries or were the innocent victims of universal suspicion, it
is impossible to know with certainty; it is still more impossible
to establish either opinion by authentic documents. In such cases
the proof, if there be any, is always destroyed by interested hands.
There are, consequently, no other means of getting at the truth,
except the general appearance of things and the unanimous sentiment
of the contemporary public, sometimes assuredly just, though often
tinged by passion or infected with error. In view of this chaotic
state of the elements, the historian can only relate facts both
authentic and alleged, express his own doubts and scruples, and leave
the reader to determine upon the most probable explanation.

Whatever the cause or hidden hand might have been which pushed
forward two or three little ragamuffins to make seers of them, M.
Jacomet, M. Massy, and his friends felt bound to magnify and spread
their silly story. They endeavored to attract the attention of
the people, and withdraw it from such grave events as the divine
ecstasies of Bernadette, the bursting forth of the fountain, and
the miraculous cures which had laid hold of popular faith. When the
battle had been lost on one point, these able strategists sought to
lure the enemy on to a field surrounded by ambuscades and mined in
advance; in short, to make a diversion.

The sudden disappearance of the false visions and visionaries before
the threatened scrutiny of M. Peyramale upset, for several days at
least, the fond hopes of the free-thinking strategists. The common
sense of the public remained firm on the true ground of controversy,
and did not permit itself to be deceived. The enlightened intellect
of Minister Rouland did not fare so well. What follows will explain
how this independent spirit was overthrown.

MM. Jacomet and Massy were striving against a triumphant and
irresistible force, and taxed the utmost resources of their genius to
make out of these slight events a final pretext for repairing their
losses and reassuming an offensive part. They sent to the Minister of
Public Worship an exaggerated and fantastic account of these childish
scenes.

Now, by an illusion barely conceivable in a politician acquainted
with ordinary practice, M. Rouland placed blind confidence in their
official reports. He was not without faith, although injudicious,
one may say, in selecting the object of his trust. The philosopher
Rouland had no faith in Our Lady of Lourdes asserting herself by
cures and miracles, but he had perfect faith in Massy and Jacomet.
These two gentlemen made him believe that, under the shadow of the
Massabielle rocks, children officiated as priests, that the people,
represented by creatures of dishonest life, crowned them with laurels
and flowers, etc., etc.

They did not disguise the uselessness of violent measures against the
general excitement of spirits. According to their account, material
force was vanquished and the civil authority completely brought to
naught. The religious authority alone could save the day by energetic
action against the popular belief. Desperate as to their own straits,
and little considering the dignity of a Christian bishop, they
presumed to think that strong pressure from the upper heights of
the administration could force Mgr. Laurence to condemn what had
transpired and to follow their views. Accordingly they signified to
the minister their judgment that the solution of all difficulties
would be the direct interference of the prelate.

This was to push his excellency in the direction towards which, as is
well known, he naturally inclined, viz., to mix himself in religious
questions, and to foster the desire of making out a programme for the
bishops.

The minister, although he had once been _procureur-general_, did not
think of asking how it was that the police had not prosecuted in the
courts the profanations which they reported. The strange abstinence
of the magistracy in view of the pretended disorders did not occasion
him the slightest suspicion.

Accepting with more than ministerial candor the romance of the police
and the prefect, and imagining that he saw the whole truth; moreover,
believing himself nothing less than a theologian, and, because
Minister of Public Worship, something more than an archbishop, M.
Rouland settled the whole affair in his cabinet, and wrote to Mgr.
Laurence a letter, in all respects a worthy mate of the one he had
formerly addressed to the prefect, and which we have cited. It was
strongly impregnated with the same official piety, and whilst we read
it to-day by the light of true history, we cannot restrain a smile
at the manner in which rulers are sometimes hoodwinked and mocked by
their inferior agents. Indeed, it is not without a sad irony that
one sees the following letter written by the very minister who, in
a short time, was to sign the permission to build a splendid church
on the Massabielle rocks in eternal memory of the apparition of the
Blessed Virgin Mary:

    "My lord," wrote M. Rouland, "the recent advice which
    I have received about that affair at Lourdes seems
    to me calculated to afflict deeply the hearts of all
    sincerely religious men. This blessing of rosaries by
    children, these public demonstrations in the first
    ranks of which are to be seen women of doubtful
    character, this coronation of the visionaries, and
    other grotesque ceremonies which parody the rites of
    religious worship, will not fail to open a free avenue
    of attack to Protestant and other journals, unless the
    central authority interferes to moderate the ardor of
    polemics. Such scandalous scenes degrade religion in
    the eyes of the people, and I feel it my duty again
    to call your most serious attention to them.... These
    deeply to be regretted demonstrations seem to me of
    such a character as to summon the clergy from the
    reserve which it has hitherto maintained. On this point
    I can do no more than to make a pressing appeal to
    the prudence and firmness of your grace _by demanding
    if you do not think it proper to rebuke publicly such
    profanity_. Receive, etc.,

      The Minister of Public Instruction and Worship,

                                                  "ROULAND."


VIII.

This missive reached Mgr. Laurence just after he had issued the
ordinance already known to the reader, and had appointed a commission
to examine the extraordinary works wrought by the hand of God.

Although singularly astonished and indignant at the fantastic
account so gravely offered by the good minister as the truth itself,
nevertheless, the bishop answered his letter in measured terms.
Without expressing a complete judgment, in order not to hasten a
premature solution of the matter, he rehabilitated the facts which
had been so shamefully misrepresented. He set forth with great
frankness the line of conduct which he and his clergy had pursued,
until events had got to such a pass that it was necessary to
interfere and order a commission of inquiry. To the minister, who,
without knowledge or examination, had said, "Condemn," he answered,
"I will examine."

    "Monsieur le Ministre," wrote the prelate, "great was
    my amazement on reading your letter. I also am informed
    as to what takes place at Lourdes, and, as a bishop,
    deeply interested in reproving all that can harm
    religion and the faithful. Now, I can assure you that
    no such scenes as you describe exist, and, if there
    have been any occurrences worthy of regret, they have
    been transitory and have left no traces behind them.

    "The facts to which your excellency alludes transpired
    after the grotto was shut up, and after the first week
    in July. Two or three children of Lourdes pretended to
    have visions, and behaved extravagantly in the streets.
    The grotto being then shut up, as I have said, they
    found means to get into it, and to offer their services
    to visitors stopped at the barricades, in order to
    touch their chaplets on the rock inside the grotto, and
    to appropriate the offerings received from them. One of
    them who was most remarkable for his eccentricities was
    a choir-boy in the church of Lourdes. The curé rebuked
    and drove him out of the _catechisme_, and excluded him
    from the service of the church.[101] The disorder was
    only transitory, and amounted only to the mischief of a
    few boys, which ceased as soon as it was reprehended.
    Such are the facts which _overzealous_ persons have
    magnified into permanent scenes.

    "I would be much gratified, M. le Ministre, if you
    would seek a fair statement of what has occurred from
    honorable persons who have remained here for some time
    in order to make personal observations of places, and
    to interrogate the child who is said to have had the
    vision. Such are Mgrs. the bishops of Montpellier
    and Soissons, Mgr. the Archbishop of Auch, M. Vène,
    inspector of thermal waters, Madame l'Amirale Bruat, M.
    L. Veuillot, etc., etc.

    "The clergy, M. le Ministre, have up to this time
    maintained a complete reserve with regard to the
    occurrences at the grotto. The clergy of the town
    have shown a most admirable prudence. They have never
    gone to the grotto to give credit to the pilgrimage,
    nor, on the other hand, favored the measures of
    the administration. Nevertheless, they have been
    represented to you as encouraging superstition. I do
    not accuse the head magistrate of the department,
    whose intentions have always been good; but in this
    matter he has had an exclusive confidence in his
    subordinates.

    "In my reply to the prefect, dated 11th of last April,
    which has been submitted to your perusal, I offered
    my hearty concurrence with the magistrate in order to
    bring this affair to a happy conclusion. But I have
    not been able to do what was desired of me, namely, to
    condemn from the pulpit, without examination, inquiry,
    or apparent reason, the persons who go to pray at the
    grotto, and to forbid all approach to it, especially
    when no disorder had been noticed, although on certain
    days the visitors amounted to thousands. Moreover,
    while the church has always some motive for her
    prohibitions, and while I myself was not sufficiently
    posted as to facts, I was also certain that amid the
    general excitement my words would have passed unheeded.

    "The prefect, during the council of revision at
    Lourdes, on May 4th, caused the chief of police to
    remove the religious emblems left at the grotto, and,
    in an address to the mayors of the canton, stated
    that he had taken this measure by agreement with the
    diocesan bishop, an assertion which was repeated a few
    days afterward by the official organ of the prefecture.
    I was informed of this measure only by the journals and
    the curé of Lourdes.

    "I hastened to write to the latter to cause the
    prefect's order to be respected. I made no complaint
    at that time or afterward of having been made an
    apparent party to a measure of which I had been left in
    ignorance. Although numerous letters were addressed to
    me entreating me to disclaim any share in it, I have
    refrained from adding any difficulty to the situation.

    "After the religious objects had been removed from
    the grotto, we might have hoped to see the number of
    visits diminish, and the pilgrimage, so inconsiderately
    improvised, brought to an end. It was not so, however.
    The public rightly or wrongly pretended that the
    water from the grotto worked marvellous cures. The
    concourse became more numerous, and crowds came from
    the neighboring departments.

    "On the 8th of June, the mayor of Lourdes issued a
    prohibition forbidding all access to the grotto. This
    was stated to be in the interest of religion and
    public welfare. Although religion might have been
    encouraged by it; and, again, although the bishop had
    not been consulted, he published no reclamation against
    these assertions; he kept silence for reasons above
    stated.

    "You see, M. le Ministre, by these details, that the
    reserve of the clergy has not been complete in this
    matter; it has been, in my judgment, prudent. When
    able, I have lent my aid to the measures of the civil
    authority, and, if they have not met with success, it
    is not the bishop who is to blame.

    "To-day, yielding to the petitions which have been
    addressed me from all quarters, I have concluded that
    the time has come when I can interest myself to good
    purpose in this affair. I have named a commission
    to collect the elements necessary for me to form a
    decision on a question which has moved the whole
    country around us, and which, judging from reports,
    seems likely to interest the whole of France. I am
    confident that the faithful will receive it with
    submission, since they are aware that no effort will be
    spared to get at the truth. The commission having been
    at work for some days, I have determined to render my
    ordinance public by having it printed, in hopes that it
    may help to calm spirits until the decision shall have
    been made known. I shall soon have the honor of sending
    your excellency a copy.

                  "I am, etc.,

                                  "B. S., Bishop of Tarbes."

Such was the letter from Mgr. Laurence to M. Rouland. It was clear
and decisive, and left nothing to be said by either party. The
Minister of Public Worship did not reply. He re-entered his former
silence. This was very wise. Perhaps, however, it would have been
wiser for him never to have come out of it.


IX.

At the very moment when Mgr. Laurence, in the name of religion,
ordered an inquiry into the unwonted events which the civil authority
had condemned and persecuted and wished to reject _à priori_,
without condescending even to examine; on the very same day on
which the bishop's letter was mailed for the minister, M. Filhol,
the illustrious professor of the faculty of Toulouse, delivered the
final verdict of science on the water from the grotto of Lourdes.
The conscientious and perfectly thorough labor of the great chemist
reduced to nothing the official analysis of M. Latour de Trie, the
expert of the prefecture, about which Baron Massy had made such a
noise. M. Filhol testifies as follows:

"I, the undersigned, Professor of Chemistry to the Scientific Faculty
of Toulouse, Professor of Pharmacy and Toxicology to the School of
Medicine of the same city, and Knight of the Legion of Honor, certify
that I have analyzed the water from a spring in the neighborhood of
Lourdes. From this analysis it appears that the water of the grotto
of Lourdes is of such composition that it may be considered good
for drinking purposes, and of a character similar to that which
is generally met with among those mountains whose soil is rich in
calcareous matter.

"_The extraordinary effects which are said to have been produced
by the use of this water cannot, at least in the present state of
science, be explained by the nature of the salts whose existence in
it is detected by analysis._[102]

"_This water contains no active substance capable of giving it marked
therapeutic qualities._ It can be drunk without inconvenience.

      "TOULOUSE, August 7, 1858.

                                     "(Signed) FILHOL."[103]

Thus, all the pseudo-scientific scaffolding, on which the
free-thinkers and wise counsellors of the prefect had painfully
built their theory of the extraordinary cures, on the examination of
this celebrated chemist toppled and fell. According to true science,
the water of the grotto was by no means mineral water, and had no
healing property. Nevertheless, it did heal. Nothing was now left for
those who had so rashly put forward imaginary explanations, but the
confusion of their attempt and the impossibility of withdrawing their
public acknowledgment that cures had been effected. Falsehood and
error were taken in their own net.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[100] We find in a letter of Dr. Dozous, who had followed closely the
course of events, a list of the various chronic maladies of which he
testifies the extraordinary cure by the water of the grotto.

"Continual headache; weakness of sight; amaurosis; chronic neuralgia;
partial and general paralysis; chronic rheumatism; partial or general
debility of the system; debility of early childhood. In these cases
the healing action was so sudden, that many who had not previously
believed in the reality of such cures were forced to accept them as
real and incontestable.

"Diseases of the spine; leucorrhea, and other diseases of women;
chronic maladies of the digestive organs; obstructions of the liver,
and bile.

"Sore-throat; deafness from feebleness of the auricular nerves,"
etc., etc.

[101] Every one will understand the reserve which prevents the bishop
from mentioning the universal suspicion at Lourdes, Cauterets,
Barèges, and Tarbes, of the secret action of the police in the affair
of the visionaries.

It would have been somewhat difficult for the prelate to say to the
minister: "The pretended scandal, which you lament and magnify out of
all natural proportion to the point of making it a pure romance, is
nothing more nor less than yourself in the persons of your agents."

[102] Letter from M. Filhol to the Mayor of Lourdes, transmitting his
analysis.

[103] We give complete details of the analysis contained in the
report of M. Filhol. The eminent chemist continues:

I certify to having obtained the following results:

    PHYSICAL AND ORGANOLEPTIC PROPERTIES OF THIS WATER.

    It is clear, colorless, odorless: it has no decided
    taste. Its density is scarcely greater than that of
    distilled water.

    CHEMICAL PROPERTIES.

    The water of the grotto of Lourdes acts as follows,
    with reagents:

    With _Red Tincture of Turnsol_.--It becomes blue.

    _Lime-water._--The mixture becomes milky; an excess of
    the water of grotto redissolves the precipitate first
    formed.

    _Soapsuds._--It becomes very cloudy.

    _Chloride of Barium._--No apparent action.

    _Nitrate of Silver._--Slight white precipitate, which
    partly dissolves in nitric acid.

    _Oxalate of Ammonia._--Scarcely any sensible action.

    Submitted to the action of heat in a glass retort
    communicating with a receiver, the water yielded a
    gas partly absorbed by potassa. The portion thus left
    undissolved was partly absorbed by phosphorus; finally,
    there remained a gaseous residuum possessing all the
    properties of nitrogen. At the same time that this gas
    was disengaged, the water was slightly clouded and
    precipitated a white deposit, slightly tinged with
    red. Treated with hydrochloric acid, this deposit was
    dissolved, producing a lively effervescence.

    I saturated the acid solution with an excess of
    ammonia; this reagent caused the precipitation of
    several light flakes of a reddish color, which I
    carefully separated. These flakes washed with distilled
    water I treated with caustic potash, which took nothing
    from them. I washed the flakes again, and dissolved
    them in chlorhydric acid; then I further diluted the
    solution with water, and submitted it to the action
    of several reagents, whose effects I will proceed to
    indicate:

    _Yellow Cyanide of Potassium and Iron._--Blue
    precipitate.

    _Ammonia._--Reddish brown precipitate.

    _Tannin._--Principally black.

    _Sulpho-Cyanide of Potassium._--Blood-red color.

    The liquid, separated from the flaky deposit, gave
    with oxalate of ammonia an abundant white precipitate.
    Having separated this precipitate by a filter, I
    threw phosphate of ammonia into the clear liquid;
    this reagent determined the formation of a new white
    precipitate.

    I evaporated to dryness five litres of the water,
    and treated the dry residuum with a small quantity
    of distilled water in order to dissolve the soluble
    salts. The solution thus obtained was turned blue
    by red tincture of turnsol. I again evaporated the
    solution thus obtained, and poured alcohol over the dry
    residuum; this being set on fire, gave a pale yellow
    flame, such as is produced by salts of soda. I again
    dissolved the residuum in a few drops of distilled
    water, and mixed the solution with chloride of platina;
    a slight canary-colored precipitate was formed in the
    mixture.

    Having acidulated two _litres_ of the water of the
    grotto of Lourdes with chlorhydric acid, I evaporated
    it to dryness, and found the residuum taken by the
    acidulated water to be but partly dissolved. The
    insoluble part presented all the appearance of silica.

    I submitted to evaporation ten _litres_ of the water
    of the grotto of Lourdes, in which I found a very pure
    carbonate of potassa had been previously dissolved. The
    result of the evaporation was moistened with boiling
    alcohol, and, again evaporated to dryness, the residuum
    was heated to a dull red.

    The product of this operation was dissolved, after
    cooling, in a few drops of distilled water, and mixed
    with a little starch paste. Carefully treating this
    mixture with weakly chlorated water, I saw the liquid
    take a blue tint.

    Submitted to distillation, the water of the grotto of
    Lourdes gives a slightly alkaline distilled product.

    From these facts it follows that the water of the
    grotto of Lourdes holds in solution:

    1. Oxygen.

    2. Nitrogen.

    3. Carbonic acid.

    4. Carbonates of lime, of magnesia, and a trace of
    carbonate of iron.

    5. An alkaline carbonate or silicate, chlorides of
    potassium and sodium.

    6. Traces of sulphates of potassa and soda.

    7. Traces of ammonia.

    8. Traces of iodine.

    The quantitative analysis of this water, made according
    to the ordinary methods, gives the following results:

      Water, 1 kilogramme.

                                                 Centig.
      Carbonic acid                                 8
      Oxygen                                        5
      Nitrogen                                     17
      Ammonia                          traces.

                                             Gr. millig.
      Carbonate of Lime                          .096
        "          Magnesia                     0.012
        "          Iron                traces.
        "          Soda                   "
      Chloride of Sodium                        0.008
       "          Potassium            traces.
      Silicate of Soda, and traces of Silicate
      of Potassa                                0.018
      Sulphates of Potassa and Soda, traces.
      Iodine                           "
                                                -----
                                                0.134




KING CORMAC'S CHOICE.[104]

A LEGEND OF THE BOYNE.


      Beside the banks of Boyne, where late
        The dire Dutch trumpets blared and rang,
      'Mid wounded kernes the harper sate,
        And thus the river's legend sang:

      Who shall forbid a king to lie
        Where lie he will, when life is o'er?
      King Cormac laid him down to die;
        But first he raised his hand, and swore:

      "At Brugh ye shall not lay my bones:
        Those pagan kings I scorn to join
      Beside the trembling Druid stones,
        And on the north bank of the Boyne.

      "A grassy grave of poor degree
        Upon its southern bank be mine
      At Rossnaree, where of things to be
        I saw in vision the pledge and sign.

      "Thou happier Faith, that from the East
        Slow travellest, set my people free!
      I sleep, thy Prophet and thy Priest,
        By southern Boyne, at Rossnaree."

      He died: anon from hill and wood
        Down flocked the black-robed Druid race,
      And round the darkened palace stood,
        And cursed the dead king to his face.

      Uptowering round his bed, with lips
        Denouncing doom, and cheeks death-pale,
      As when at noontide strange eclipse
        Invests gray cliffs and shadowed vale;

      And proved with cymball'd anthems dread
        The gods he spurned had bade him die:
      Then spake the pagan chiefs, and said,
        "Where lie our kings, this king must lie."

      In royal robes the corse they dressed,
        And spread the bier with boughs of yew;
      And chose twelve men, their first and best,
        To bear him through the Boyne to Brugh.

      But on his bier the great dead king
        Forgot not so his kingly oath;
      And from sea-marge to mountain spring,
        Boyne heard their coming, and was wroth.

      He frowned far off, 'mid gorse and fern,
        As those ill-omened steps made way;
      He muttered 'neath the flying hern;
        He foamed by cairn and cromlech gray;

      And rose, and drowned with one black wave
        Those twelve on-wading; and with glee
      Bore down King Cormac to his grave
        By southern Boyne, at Rossnaree!

      Close by that grave, three centuries past,
        Columba reared his saintly cell;
      And Boyne's rough voice was changed at last
        To music by the Christian bell.

      So Christ's true Faith made Erin free,
        And blessed her women and her men;
      And that which was again shall be,
        And that which died shall rise again.

      He ceased: the wondering clansmen roared
        Accordance to the quivering strings,
      And praised King Cormac, Erin's Lord,
        And Prophet of the King of kings.

                                             AUBREY DE VERE.

FOOTNOTE:

[104] According to the old Irish chronicles, Cormac, King of all
Ireland, renounced the worship of idols about two centuries before
the arrival of St. Patrick, having received in a vision the promise
of the true faith.




THE APOSTASY OF DR. DÖLLINGER.


The formal and public act of renunciation of the Catholic faith by
Dr. Döllinger which has been looked for as a probable event for
many months past, has at length been made. In itself, such an act
cannot be regarded by any sound Catholic as of any moment whatever to
religion or the church. It is only one suicide more, which destroys
an individual, but does not hurt the stability of the church, whose
life is in God, and, therefore, immortal. It may have more or less
of accidental importance, however, on account of its effect upon
certain persons who are weak or ill-instructed in the faith, and the
use which may be made of it by the enemies of the church. We think it
proper, therefore, to make some explanations concerning the past and
present acts and opinions by which Dr. Döllinger has gradually but
surely approached and finally reached his present position of open,
declared rebellion against the infallible authority of the Catholic
Church.

Dr. Döllinger has been living, until a recent period, upon the
reputation which he had acquired during his earlier career as a
professor and an author, supported by his high rank in the church
as a mitred prelate, and in the state as a member of the Bavarian
House of Peers. His great intellectual gifts and extensive learning
in the department of history have never been questioned, and he was
deservedly honored through a long course of years as one of the chief
ornaments and ablest advocates of the Catholic religion in Germany.
The relative superiority very commonly assigned to him, however, we
are inclined to think, is only imaginary. Even in history he has met
with some very severe defeats from antagonists more powerful than
himself, and in philosophy and theology he has never shown himself to
be a master. He is now an old man, seventy-three years of age, having
spent above forty years of this period in his professorial chair at
the University of Munich. During the earlier part of his life, as
is proved by unimpeachable testimony, he was a strict Ultramontane
in his theology. The gradual progress by which he went slowly down
the declivity towards his present position we cannot pretend to
trace accurately. It is certain, however, that no public expression
of opinions having a heterodox tendency, on his part, excited any
general notice before the year 1861. Even then, although the murmur
of dissatisfaction which has been growing louder ever since began to
be heard, and the sure Catholic instinct began to make its wounded
susceptibilities known, the substantial orthodoxy and loyalty of Dr.
Döllinger were not questioned or even doubted. This is proved by the
language used by the editor of _Der Katholik_ at that time, in which
he says that the book which had given offence, namely, the celebrated
"Church and Churches," "is imbued with the genuine color of sincere
Catholic faith and immovable fidelity to the church _and her supreme
head_."[105] From that date to the present time, these first
indistinct intimations of what now appears as a full-blown heresy
can be seen in their successive stages of clearer manifestation in
the writings and acts of Dr. Döllinger. The language used by him
is ambiguous, and generally capable of being understood in a good
sense, and his steps are cautious. There is nothing to compromise him
seriously, before the time of the intrigues which went on under his
direction for the purpose of defeating the Vatican Council. Looking
back, however, upon the dark ways in which he has been walking, and
the dark sayings which he has been uttering, in the light which his
present open declaration of rebellion casts behind him, everything
becomes clear and apparent to the day. There is a continuity and
a logical sequence manifest in those ambiguous utterances, when
explained in a schismatical and heretical sense, which they otherwise
could not have. The acts and expressions of Dr. Döllinger's disciples
in Germany, France, and England appear in their coherence and in
their relation to the instruction which they received from their
master. Moreover, a series of historical facts, in connection with
the University of Munich and with Dr. Döllinger himself, show
themselves in their proper bearing; and among other things of this
kind, the secret end and object of the famous scientific congress
of Munich become perfectly manifest. In a word, Dr. Döllinger has
had an idea which has gradually supplanted the Catholic idea in his
mind, and for the sake of which he has at last sacrificed the last
lingering remnant of honor, conscience, loyalty, and divine grace in
his soul, and stooped so low as to write his name at the bottom of
that long and infamous list of traitors and heretics against whom
none have ever pronounced sterner sentence of condemnation than
himself. This great idea has been nothing less than the reunion of
Christendom on a basis of compromise between the Catholic Church and
the Eastern and Western sects, excluding the supremacy of the Roman
Church and Pontiff. This is no new idea of Döllinger's. The only
thing which was new and original in it was the particular scheme or
plan of operation for carrying it into effect. Even this was not
originated by Döllinger himself, but first planted in the mind of
Maximilian II., King of Bavaria, during his youth, by Schelling. When
this able and enterprising prince ascended the throne, he undertook
the extraordinary task of effecting a universal intellectual and
moral unification of Germany, of which Munich should be the radiating
centre. The union of the different religious confessions formed a
principal part of this plan. Moreover, Germany was to become the
mighty power, after being united in herself, to bring all the rest
of Christendom into unity in a perfect Christian civilization, which
would then extend itself triumphantly through the rest of the world.
The great lever by which this mighty work was to be accomplished
was to be a society of learned men and able statesmen, directed by
the sovereign authority of the king himself. The gathering point
for these learned men was naturally the University of Munich, and
from the chairs of this university would proceed that teaching and
influence which should train up a body of disciples ready to sustain
and carry out in their various professions and posts of influence
the grand project conceived in the philosophic brain of Schelling
and eagerly adopted by his royal pupil. As a matter of course, those
professors of the university who were thoroughly loyal to Rome must
either submit to the royal dictation or be removed. Phillipps and
several other distinguished professors sacrificed their places to
their conscience. Döllinger submitted. This was the fatal rock on
which he split, the one which has caused injury or total shipwreck
in every age of the church to so many eminent ecclesiastics. It was
necessary to choose between unconditional loyalty to the spiritual
sovereignty of the Pope, or subserviency to the usurpation of the
temporal prince. This was the real question from the outset, and
hence Dr. Döllinger's utter abjuration of the Papal supremacy is but
the last logical consequence of this weak yielding at the beginning.
Bossuet yielded to Louis XIV. in a similar manner. But Bossuet was a
thoroughgoing theologian, priest, and bishop. He yielded against the
grain, and his heart was always Roman and on the side of the Pope.
Therefore Bossuet only marred but did not destroy his character and
work as a great bishop and a great writer. His Gallicanism is only
a single flaw in a majestic statue. But in the case of Döllinger,
the German, the ambitious scholar, the courtier has predominated
over and finally cast out entirely the Catholic, the theologian,
and the priest. He has not been a passive tool, but a most active
and energetic master-workman in carrying out the plan of Schelling
and Maximilian. Nevertheless, he has been cautious, secret, and
indirect in his method of working, not attacking openly, but
artfully undermining the citadel of the faith, throwing out hints
and scattering seeds which he left to germinate in other minds, in
his published works, and chiefly intent upon privately initiating
certain chosen persons into his doctrines. In this way, a subtle and
deadly poison has long been spreading its baleful influence among a
certain class of intellectual Catholic young men not only in Germany,
but also in France and England. Thank God! this secret poisoning by
concealed heresy has been stopped. The poison is now openly exposed
to view, and advertised as a pleasant refrigerant or gentle purgative
medicine, but is likely to deceive no one who is in good faith, for
its color, taste, and smell betray it; and whoever has made his head
dizzy for awhile by hastily swallowing a few drops by mistake is
likely to be trebly cautious for the future.

We have already described in general terms the Munich heresy, but we
will make a more precise and analytical statement of its principal
component elements. As we have already said, it proposes certain
principles and methods for the reconstruction of Christendom. First,
the Catholic Church must be reformed in doctrine and discipline.
The Œcumenical Councils as far back as the Seventh are to be set
aside. The authority of any Œcumenical Council is only final in
so far as it is a witness of the traditional belief of the whole
body of the faithful. The authority of the decisions of the Holy
See must be set aside, and the supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff
be reduced to a mere patriarchal primacy. The state is completely
supreme and independent. Sacred and secular science are exempt from
all control except that of the dogmas of faith. When the Catholic
Church is purified in doctrine and discipline, the other portions of
Christendom are to be united with it in one grand whole, combining
all that is good in each one of them, and itself more perfect than
any. The supreme and ultimate judgment in regard to religious
dogmas is in the universal Christian sentiment or consciousness,
enlightened and directed by men of science and learning.

To certain minds, there is something specious and high-sounding about
this theory. It is, however, a mere Russian ice palace, which melts
when the direct rays of the sun fall upon it. It is essentially
no better than the doctrine of Huss and Luther. It is very nearly
identical with that of Dr. Pusey. It is old Protestantism revamped,
and varnished with a mixture of rationalism and orientalism. The
supreme authority of the Holy See being set aside, and the decrees
of general councils submitted to the judgment of the great body of
the clergy and people, where is the rule of faith? Pure Protestantism
gives us, in lieu of the infallible teaching authority of the
living church, the Bible, interpreted by the private judgment of
each individual. The Munich theory gives us the Bible and apostolic
tradition, interpreted by the public judgment of the aggregate
mass of the faithful. But how is the individual to determine what
that judgment is? The historical and other documents by which the
common and universal tradition of all ages can be ascertained are
voluminous. Moreover, it is a matter of controversy how these
documents are to be understood. Only the learned can fully master and
understand them. The common people must, therefore, be instructed
by the learned. But the learned do not agree among themselves.
What, then, is left for the individual, except a choice among these
learned doctors or among several schools of doctors which one he will
follow? This choice must be made by his private judgment, and, if
not a blind following of a leader or a party, it must be made by a
careful examination of the evidences proving that this or that man,
Dr. Döllinger, for example, thoroughly understands the Scripture,
the Fathers, and ecclesiastical history, and truly interprets them.
Is there any hope of unity by such a method? Is there any hope of
any individual, even, arriving at certainty by it? It is a return
at last to the old Protestant principle of private judgment, with a
substitution of something far more difficult than the Bible in place
of the Bible which Luther substituted for the church.

Practically it amounts to this: Dr. Döllinger is the greatest and
wisest of men; he knows all things. Take his word that so much and
no more is the sound orthodox doctrine handed down from the apostles
and believed in all ages, and you are right. Let the Pope and the
bishops and the whole world believe and obey Dr. Döllinger. It is
Luther's old saying repeated by a man of less strength and audacity,
but equally absurd and insupportable pride. _Sic voleo, sic jubeo:
stet pro ratione voluntas._[106] Pius IX. and the bishops in the
Vatican Council, so far from complying with the modest desires of Dr.
Döllinger, have condemned the very radical idea of his heresy, and
all other heresies cognate with it, have crushed his conspiracy, and
blown away into thin air the painted bubble of a reformed Catholic
Church, and a reunion of Christendom on a basis of compromise.
There was no alternative for Dr. Döllinger and his partisans except
submission to the decrees of the council, or to the anathema by which
they were fortified. Ample time for reflection and deliberation was
allowed him, and now, seven months after the solemn promulgation of
the decrees of the Council of the Vatican, he has deliberately and
coolly refused submission, thereby openly and manifestly cutting
himself off from the communion of the Catholic Church. His manner of
doing it is a signal illustration of the ridiculous attitude which
a man of sense is often driven to assume when he has given himself
up to the sway of pride. He desires the Archbishop of Munich to
permit him to be heard in his own defence before a council of German
bishops, or a court formed from the Cathedral Chapter. If this is
to be considered as an appeal from the Council of the Vatican to
another tribunal, whose decision he is willing to submit to as final,
nothing can be more absurd. An appeal from the supreme tribunal to
an inferior court is certainly something unheard of either in civil
or canon law. The dogmas denied and rejected by Dr. Döllinger have
been thoroughly examined and discussed in a general council. Judgment
has been pronounced, and the case is closed for ever. The Archbishop
of Munich and the German prelates are bound by this judgment, have
assented to it, and have proclaimed it to their subjects. They have
no authority to bring it under a new examination, or reverse it,
in a judicial capacity. If they sit in judgment on Dr. Döllinger,
or any other individual impeached of heresy, that judgment is
their paramount law, according to which they must decide. The only
questions which can come before them in such a case are, whether the
person who is a defendant before their court has contravened the
decisions of the Vatican Council by word or writing, and whether he
is contumacious in his error. It can scarcely be supposed that a man
who refuses submission to a general council and the Holy See could
have any intention or disposition to submit to a national council
or an episcopal court. The only alternative supposition is that he
desired to prolong the controversy, to gain time, to inflame the
minds of men, to create a party and inaugurate a schism. Really and
truly, his demand amounts to this: "The majority of the bishops
of the Catholic Church, having been misled by their theological
instruction, have made an erroneous decision in a matter of dogma. I
therefore request the bishops of Germany to permit me to give them
better instruction, and persuade them to recall their adhesion to
that decision. If that cannot be done, I request the Archbishop of
Munich to do me that favor." The silliness of such a demand is only
equalled by its effrontery. Dr. Döllinger must be very far gone
indeed in pride to fancy that the Archbishop of Munich or the German
prelates could think for an instant of making themselves his docile
disciples, or entertain the thought of following him into schism and
heresy. It is an act of parting defiance, the impotent gesture of a
desperate man, whose last stronghold is crumbling under his feet, but
who prefers to be buried under its ruins rather than to repent and
return to his allegiance.

The appeal to German national sympathy and prejudice is worthy of
a man whose worldly and selfish ambition has extinguished the last
spark of genuine Catholic feeling in his bosom. It is a cry for
sympathy to the bad Catholics, the Protestants, and the infidels of
Germany. It is a repetition of that old saying of Caiphas against
Jesus Christ, "The Romans will come and take away our place and
nation." Nothing can be more unhistorical than the assertion that
Papal supremacy wrought division in the past German Empire, or
more contrary to sound political wisdom than the assertion that
the same threatens division in the German Empire of the present.
Martin Luther sowed the dragon's teeth from which sprang civil war,
disastrous foreign war, internal dissension, and all the direful
miseries which have come upon Germany since his inauspicious
rebellion against the Holy See. The so-called Reformation turned the
Protestant princes against the Emperor, stirred up the revolt of the
peasants, inspired the treachery which opened the gates to Gustavus
Vasa, and instigated that alliance with Louis XIV. which lost
Lorraine and Alsace to Germany. That infidel liberalism which is the
legitimate offspring of the revolt against Rome is the most dangerous
internal enemy which the present empire has to fear. It is summed up
in the list of errors condemned by Pius IX. in his Encyclical and
Syllabus. On the contrary, the complete restoration of Catholic unity
and Papal supremacy in Germany would bring back more than the glories
of the former empire, and renew the epoch of Charlemagne.

As for the vain and feeble effort of two or three cabinets to
prohibit the promulgation of the decrees of the Vatican Council, it
is too absurd to argue about, and too harmless to excite any alarm
or indignation. Neither is there any danger that Dr. Döllinger's
apostasy will cause any serious defection among the Catholic people
of Germany. The professors of the University of Munich have been
appointed by the king. Some are Protestants, others are infidels,
and others have been hitherto Catholics in profession, but followers
of the heresy of Janus in their heart. There are many laymen and
some clergymen of the same sort among the professors of Germany,
and a certain number of persons in other walks of life, whose
faith has been undermined and corrupted. We have always expected
that the Council of the Vatican would cause a considerable number
of defections from the communion of the church. But we have no
expectation that this defection of individuals will consolidate into
a new concrete heresy. John Huss and Martin Luther have exhausted
the probabilities of pseudo-orthodox reformation. Its race is run.
The time for heresy is past. Organized opposition to the Catholic
Church in these days must take a more consistently anti-Christian
form. Pius IX. and Garibaldi represent the only two real parties.
Döllinger is nobody, and has no place. That a great many baptized
Catholics have totally renounced the faith is undoubtedly true. But
the Catholic people who still retain the principles and the spirit
of their traditional faith are with Pius IX. This is true of the
Bavarian and other German popular masses, as well as of the people
of other nations. The German prelates, the clergy, the nobility, are
strong and enthusiastic in their allegiance to the Holy See. The
orthodox theologians and _savants_ can wield the ponderous hammer of
science with as much strength of aim as any of the scholars who have
been fostered in the sunshine of royal favor. The boast made by Dr.
Döllinger at the Congress of Munich of the pre-eminence which Germany
will gain in Catholic theology and sacred science will probably be
in part fulfilled, though not in the sense which he had in his mind.
It will be fulfilled, not by men who bid a haughty defiance to the
saints and doctors of the church, who utter scornful words against
the scholars of other nations, who are governed by narrow-minded
national prejudice and unreasoning obstinacy, and who are faithless
in their allegiance to their spiritual sovereign, while they are
servilely obsequious to a temporal monarch. It will be done by true,
genuine Catholics, the legitimate offspring of the great men who
founded, governed, taught, and made illustrious the old church and
empire of Germany in past ages.

The gist of the entire quarrel of Dr. Döllinger with the Archbishop
of Munich consists in an appeal from the supreme authority in the
church to the principle of private judgment. In form, it is an appeal
to the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, but this is only an appeal
to Dr. Döllinger's own private interpretation of the true sense of
Scripture and the Fathers. It is the same appeal which heretics and
schismatics have made in all ages: Arius, Nestorius, Pelagius, Huss,
Luther, Cranmer, Photius, Mark of Ephesus, the Armenian schismatics
of Constantinople, and all others who have rebelled against the Holy
See. It is the essence of Protestantism, and in the end transforms
itself into rationalism and infidelity. The ancient heretics, the
Oriental schismatics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, Unitarians,
all have a common principle, all are Protestants. That principle
is the right of private judgment to resist the supreme authority
of the Catholic Church. So long as private judgment is supposed
to be directed by a supernatural light of the Holy Spirit, and
to possess in Scripture and tradition, or in Scripture alone, a
positive revelation, Protestantism is a kind of Christianity. When
the natural reason is made the arbiter, and the absolute authority
of the doctrine of Jesus Christ as taught by the apostles is denied,
it is a rationalistic philosophy, which remains Christian in a
modified and general sense until it descends so low as to become
simply unchristian and infidel. The Catholic principle which is
constitutive of the Catholic Church as a body, and of each individual
Catholic as a member of it, is the principle of authority. There is
no logical alternative between the two. One or the other must be
final and supreme, the authority of the church or the authority of
the individual judgment. If the authority of the church is supreme,
no individual or aggregate of individuals can reject or even question
its decisions. It is the Catholic doctrine that authority is supreme.
The church is constituted by the organic unity of bishops, clergy,
and people, with their Head, the Bishop of Rome, the successor of
St. Peter. He is the Vicar of Christ, and possesses the plenitude of
apostolic and episcopal authority. His judgment is final and supreme,
whether he pronounces it with or without the judicial concurrence of
an œcumenical council. This has always been the recognized doctrine
and practice of the church. It is nothing more or less than Papal
supremacy as existing and everywhere believed, as much before as
after the Council of the Vatican. The word "infallibility," like
the words "consubstantial" and "transubstantiation," is only the
precise and definite expression of that which has long been a dogma
defined under other terms, and always been contained in the universal
faith of the church based on Scripture and apostolic tradition.
The first Christians were taught to obey implicitly the teachings
of St. Peter and the apostles, because they had received authority
from Jesus Christ. There was nothing said about infallibility,
because the idea was sufficiently impressed upon their minds in a
more simple and concrete form. Their descendants, in like manner,
believed in the teaching of the successors of the apostles because
they had inherited their divine authority. Whoever separated from
the Roman Church and was condemned by the Roman Pontiff was at once
known to have lost all authority to teach. The teaching of the
bishops in communion with the Roman Church, and approved by the Roman
Pontiff, was always known to be the immediate and practical rule
of faith. Whoever taught anything contrary to that was manifestly
in error, and, if contumacious, a heretic, who must be cast out of
the church, however high his rank might be. Moreover, the Roman
Pontiff decided all controversies, and issued his dogmatic decrees
to all bishops, who were required to receive and promulgate them
under pain of excommunication. This unconditional obedience to an
external authority evidently presupposes that the authority obeyed is
rendered infallible by the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost.
Hence, the express and explicit profession of the infallibility of
the church as a dogma of faith has been universal ever since it
has been made a distinct object of thought and exposition. It is
nothing more than a distinct expression of one part of the idea
that the church has divine and supreme authority to teach, with a
corresponding obligation on the faithful to believe her teaching. In
like manner, the divine and supreme authority of the Pope to teach
includes and implies infallibility, as the vast majority of bishops
and theologians have always held and taught. The erroneous opinion
that the express or tacit acquiescence of the bishops is necessary
to the finality of pontifical decrees in matters pertaining to faith
and doctrine, was tolerated by the Holy See until the definitions of
the Council of the Vatican were promulgated. The infallibility of
the church itself produces this agreement of the episcopate with its
head. In fact, therefore, and practically, the pontifical decrees
were always submitted to by good Catholics, and the Holy See did
not formally and expressly exact any more than this as a term of
Catholic communion. Dr. Döllinger and others of the same stamp took
advantage of this toleration of an illogical and erroneous opinion
to undermine the doctrine of Papal supremacy and the authority of
œcumenical councils. The Pope cannot possess the supreme power of
teaching and judging, they argued, without infallibility. He is
not infallible, therefore, he is not supreme. Moreover, the only
certain criterion by which we know that a council is œcumenical
is the sanction of the Pope. If he is not infallible, he may err
in giving this sanction. Thus, the way was opened to dispute the
authority of the Councils of Trent, Lateran, Florence, etc., and to
rip up the whole texture of Catholic doctrine, just so far as suited
the notions of these audacious innovators. The event has proved how
opportune and necessary was that distinct and precise definition
of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff which has for ever shut
out the possibility of sheltering a fundamental heresy like that of
Döllinger behind an ambiguous expression. There is now no more chance
for evading the law and remaining ostensibly a Catholic. The law
is clear and plain. All dogmatic decrees of the Pope, made with or
without his general council, are infallible and irreformable. Once
made, no pope or council can reverse them. There is no choice left
to the prelates about enforcing them on their clergy and people. No
clergyman holds his position, and no one of the faithful is entitled
to the sacraments, on any other terms than entire submission and
obedience. This is the Catholic principle, that the church cannot
err in faith. She has declared it to be an article of faith that the
Roman Pontiff, speaking _ex cathedrâ_ as the supreme doctor of the
church, is infallible. It is therefore a contradiction in terms for a
person who denies or doubts this doctrine to call himself a Catholic.
We cannot too constantly or earnestly impress this truth on the
minds of the Catholic people, that the rule of faith is the present,
concrete, living, and perpetual teaching of that supreme authority
which Christ has established in the church. We believe, on the
veracity of God, by a supernatural faith which is given by the Holy
Ghost in baptism, those truths which the holy church proposes to our
belief. The church can never change, never reform her faith, never
retract her decisions, never dispense her children from an obligation
she has once imposed on them of receiving a definition as the true
expression of a dogma contained in the divine revelation. To do so,
would be to destroy herself, and fall down to the level of the sects.
The idle talk of writers for the secular press, whether they pretend
to call themselves Catholics or not, about the church conforming
herself to liberal principles and the spirit of the age is simply
worthy of laughter and derision. No Catholic who has a grain of
sense will pay any heed to opinions or monitions coming from such an
incompetent source. The church is the only judge of the nature and
extent of her own powers, and of the proper mode of exercising them.
The pontiffs, prelates, pastors, priests, and theologians of the
church, are her authorized expositors and interpreters, her advocates
and defenders. Those who desire to be her worthy members, and those
who wish to learn what she really is, will seek from them, and from
them only, or from authors and writings which they have sanctioned,
instruction in the true Catholic doctrine. The unhappy man whose
defection has called forth these remarks has lost his place in the
Catholic hierarchy, and henceforth he is of no more account than any
other sectarian of past times or of the present. The ecclesiastical
historian will record his name in the list of the heretics of the
nineteenth century, and his peculiar ideas will pass into oblivion,
except as a matter of curious research to the scholar.

FOOTNOTES:

[105] See the second volume of this periodical for 1861, and also the
number for March, 1870.

[106] Thus I will, thus I command: let my will stand for a reason.




FALSE VIEWS OF SAINTSHIP.


We often hear the saints spoken of as men of another race and stature
than ourselves, splendid masterpieces of perfection meant to be
admired from a distance, but certainly not to be copied with loving
and minute care.

Now, this is a mistake--the most fatal mistake for ourselves; for we
thus tie down our faculties to commonplace life, and refuse to give
them the wider scope that nature herself meant for their exercise;
the most unfortunate mistake for religion, because in making her
heroes inaccessible and almost unnatural, we deter others from
laudable efforts, and attach to our faith the stigma of present
sterility.

Not only can each one of us become a saint, and that by a simple and
ordinary course of life, but the canonized saints themselves bear
witness that they reached heaven in no other way, and attained their
crowns by no other means. The saint, be assured of it, is the truest
gentleman, the pleasantest companion, and most faithful friend.

He is no morose misanthrope, no disenchanted cynic; he is a man with
all the natural feelings of humanity, all the amiable traits of
good-fellowship, all the nameless graces of good society. There is no
pleasing, amenity of human intercourse, no rational exchange of human
sentiments, no harmless relaxation of a refined mind, that need be
foreign to his nature, and a stranger to his heart.

All men prize honor and straight-forwardness; they welcome
cheerfulness and vivacity; they admire a strong will; love of nature
and art, sympathy with suffering and with poverty, zealousness in the
cause of learning, are all passports to their favor, and incline them
to seek the friendship and trust the advice of those in whom these
qualities shine.

Now, if we show them that canonized saints and great men well known
in the annals of the church have always been distinguished by these
traits, will they refuse to admit that the more a man loves his God,
the fitter he is to win human sympathy and command human imitation?

The saints have not seldom been unfairly treated, and chiefly by
their overzealous biographers; for their holiness has been distilled
into such ethereal and miraculous abstractions that we no more dream
of grasping it as a means of encouragement than we do of seizing for
nourishment upon the summer clouds whose lovely shapes entrance our
eyes in the western heavens.

Every one of the saints had an individual character, touching
weaknesses of disposition and innocent partialities of nature. Every
one of them went to heaven by a separate road, and his specialty of
human and natural character alone determined that road. Some were
kings and emperors, princes and popes, and great men of the earth;
they had to wear soft garments and ermine robes, and spend much time
in the display their state required. Now, many sanctimonious persons
would have us believe that such display is absolutely and in itself
wrong, and can under no circumstances be allowable. The church
thinks otherwise, and more generously, and has canonized these men.

Some were beggars or servants, mechanics or husbandmen; passed their
days in menial pursuits, and apparently had their minds occupied only
by the sordid necessities of their humble degree. Many presumptuous
people like to tell us that servile work deteriorates the mind, that
beggary is invariably a criminal state, that poverty dwarfs the
understanding and hardens the heart. The church thinks otherwise, and
more charitably, and these too she has canonized.

Again, some were statesmen and scholars, and the wranglings of
courts, the tumult of embassies, the disputes of universities, were
the daily atmosphere they breathed. Some officious persons tell us
plainly that solitude is the only nurse of holiness, and that, with
these surroundings, it is impossible to live unbewildered by the
world's noise and untainted by the world's corruption. The church
thinks otherwise, and more liberally, and has canonized these men
also.

No station in life is too low or too high for God to look upon, and
therefore not too low nor too high for God's saints to thrive in.

The secret of saintship lies in the power of a man to fashion his
surroundings, and mould the circumstances attendant on his lot in
life, till he makes them into a ladder wherewith to climb to heaven.

Suppose a man is born to high destinies, and a great fortune: they
are ready-made instruments in his hand for the glory of God and the
good of his neighbor. Let him recollect that Jesus was of a royal
race, and was visited by Eastern kings.

Suppose, on the contrary, he is born poor, and sees no means of
future advancement all his life: there again are his weapons chosen
for him to fight the good fight. Let him remember that Jesus was born
in a stable, and lived in a carpenter's shop.

If a man is clever, intellectual, talented, his road to heaven lies
in the good use he makes of these gifts of mind; if he is cheerful,
good-humored, well-bred, his road to heaven lies in the charitable
use he makes of his natural attractiveness; if he is placed in
circumstances that grievously try his temper and his patience,
long-suffering, resignation, and gentleness will be the evident path
for him; if surrounded by difficulties and occupying a responsible
position, discretion and delicacy will be his appointed road.

There is no forcing the spiritual life; it grows out of the natural
life, and is only the natural life, shorn of self and self-love,
supernaturalized.

Life is a battle; we all have to fight it, but even in a material
combat, what general would arm all his soldiers alike? Are there not
cavalry and infantry, lancers and riflemen? Do not some wield the
sword, others man the guns? So in the combat whose promised land is
paradise; we fight each with diverse weapons, and our one thought
should be, not to envy others their arms, but do effectual service
with our own. Men fight one way, women another. Both can fight as
well; but only by using their own weapons.

There is an old French fable that speaks of the frog who sought to
swell himself to the size of the ox, forgetting that he could be
as happy and as useful in his small fish-pond as the larger animal
in his spacious meadow. He _would_ not be a frog, but of course he
_could_ not become an ox, so he died of his effort, and the world
counted one worker less. Just so do some of us act when we sigh over
the life of some great saint of old, and, putting down the book in
sentimental admiration as barren as it is useless, cry out, "If only
_I_ could be an Augustine, a Theresa, a Thomas Aquinas!" To such
might we answer: "Do you know why they were saints? Because they
acted up to the lights they had. If _you_ act up to your inferior
but no less true lights, you too will be a saint." If Augustine,
and Theresa, and Thomas Aquinas had spent their lives in sterile
sentimentality, calling upon the dead saints before them, where
would _they_ have been, and who would have heard of their names?
At that rate, there would have been no saints at all after the
twelve apostles, and even they would have sat down in profitless
discouragement because their holiness could not equal that of the Son
of God!

Did not the Creator say to all things living, vegetable or animal,
"Increase and multiply," and "Let the earth bring forth the green
herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-tree bearing fruit _after
its kind_"? In that one commandment lies the secret spring of the
energy and fruitfulness of every created thing, spiritual no less
than temporal. Let each one of us bear fruit _according to his
kind_, and God will be satisfied. Augustine and Gregory, Thomas
and Bonaventure, Francis of Assisium and Francis of Sales, Charles
Borromeo and Vincent of Paul, Philip Neri and Ignatius Loyola, were
men, very _men_, and, had they not been men, they could not have
been saints. We mean, their sanctity would have been other than
it actually was; it would have been even as the holiness of the
angels, the untempted steadfastness of pure spirits. Had they been
born as the Blessed Virgin, immaculate in the very initial moment
of existence, they would not have been the saints they are, the
imitable, human, weakling beings we yearn over and love with a
natural and sympathetic love.

Nature, whatever people may say of her, is not contrary to grace:
not in this sense at least, that she is the field, and grace the
plough. The plough does not alter the earth it furrows; it only
prepares it, stirs it, turns its better surface uppermost, and
displays its richest loam to receive the grain. As neither rain, nor
dew, nor manure can turn one soil into another, so can no efforts of
overstrained piety, no devices of ambitious perseverance, re-create
the soul and portion it anew. As God made us, so we stand: by taking
thought, we cannot add to our stature one cubit, neither can we force
a foreign growth to bloom on the low-lying lands of our soul. One
sort of grain grows best in one sort of earth. Would any husbandman
dream of planting the wrong grain in it? God is a husbandman, and
shall he do less well than mortal man, and shall he endeavor to
force one soil to bear the crop it cannot nourish? No, no! God gave
us one nature as well as the graces he plants therein, and we may
trust to him to see the harvest reaped. It is men, it is ourselves,
who interfere with our sowing and reaping time; it is ourselves, who
ambitiously seek to grow grain we can never rear, or it is others who
maliciously sow tares in a soil they too quickly overrun. Then the
world will see in us her saints, men going simply through the round
of their daily duties, very unostentatiously, very quietly, never
boasting, because to have time to boast they must needs leave off
their work; never lamenting, because to lament they would have to
leave off their prayer; but letting their nature fill itself to the
brim with God, and, when it is full, letting it quietly overflow to
their neighbor.

That sounds very simple, does it not? Yes, because everything that
belongs to God is simplicity itself, and the more simple a man is,
the nearer God he is.

All the great men and women whose names stud the calendar of the
church owed their greatness to their simplicity, and the words of the
greatest saint that ever lived, the words of her, were they not the
simplest ever found on record: "Be it done unto me according to thy
word"?

Saints of our timid generation, saints of our half-hearted century,
saints of our hitherto barren civilization, start up, and fill the
plains and the valleys of all lands, fill the offices of the city
and the homes of the citizens, fill the church, the courts, the
universities, fill the lowly serried ranks of the poor, fill the more
burdened and more responsible phalanx of the noble and the rich!




NEW PUBLICATIONS.


    THE LIFE OF ST. THOMAS OF AQUIN. By Father Vaughan,
    O.S.B. London: Longmans, Brown, Green & Co. Vol. I. For
    sale by The Catholic Publication Society, New York.

This is a good stout volume, like St. Thomas himself. It is a book
for its outward appearance such as we seldom see. We have many
well-printed books, but this one is remarkable for its large, clear
type, which makes it pleasant and easy to read. The subject is one
of the greatest interest and importance. The life and times of St.
Thomas have a peculiar charm about them, aside from the history
of his genius, and of his philosophical and theological system.
The two together make a theme which far surpasses in grandeur and
attractiveness even the history of the majority of great saints.
St. Thomas is the great doctor of the church. His intellectual
sway is something without a parallel. The study of his works is on
the increase, and he is likely to acquire even a greater and more
universal sway than he enjoyed before the Reformation. We have never
before had a really good biography of St. Thomas in English. Father
Vaughan has taken hold of the work with zeal and ability. It is only
half published as yet, but the first volume presents so large a
portion of the angelic doctor's life before us that we can estimate
its value as well as if we had the whole. An analysis of some of
the principal works of St. Thomas is given by F. Vaughan, and he
endeavors to present to the reader a picture of the times when he
lived, as well as to describe the events of his personal history.
Every student should have this book. It is indeed a wonderful thing
to see such a specimen of genuine old monastic literature issuing
from the English press. It makes us hope that England may yet become
once more the merrie Catholic England of the olden time.


    MY STUDY WINDOWS. By James Russell Lowell, A.M.,
    Professor of Belles-Lettres in Harvard College. Boston:
    James R. Osgood & Co. 1871.

Met with in the pages of a review or magazine, Mr. Lowell's prose
is always sure to be more or less pleasant reading. His wit, his
refinement, and a certain something which we are only unwilling
to call his delicacy of appreciation, because, in spite of his
generally acknowledged merits as a critic, he seems to us not
always perfectly reliable in that capacity, always find him willing
and amused readers. But when he shuts up too much of his work at
once between a pair of covers, and gives whoever will a too easy
opportunity of comparing him with himself, we doubt whether even
his admirers--a class in which we are not unwilling to include
ourselves--do not find him a little wearisome, and discover in him
a poverty of suggestion and a timidity of thought which gibbet him
as a book-maker, although, being in a measure counterbalanced by
an abundance of lighter merits, they would have left him an easy
pre-eminence over most of his contemporaries as a magazinist. Nor,
if we may for once adopt a method of criticism from which our author
himself is not averse, and trust our instinct to read between the
lines, is Mr. Lowell altogether free from a suspicion that such may
possibly be the case--and that, as affecting his own culture and
habit of mind also, it was a far-reaching mistake in our Puritan
ancestors to cut themselves quite asunder from the traditions of
the past before they came here to establish free thinking and free
religion along with a free government. However it may be with
government, neither thought nor faith seems to flourish well without
having its roots in the past. Like their transcendentalist sons, our
New England progenitors were themselves "Apostles of the Newness,"
and simply antedated them by a few generations in the experiment
of throwing overboard a great deal of valuable freight, and trying
to right themselves by laying in a supply of useless ballast. The
sentiment which they dignified by the name of trust in Providence
appears nowadays under a less equivocal disguise as self-reliance;
and while it produces certain easily appreciable results both in
society and literature, it makes instability, a want of solidity, and
an absence of germinative force permanent characteristics of both of
them. Not, however, to make an essay on a sufficiently suggestive
topic, but to confine ourselves to the particular matter in hand,
it is perhaps Mr. Lowell's _thin-skinnedness_ as an author, and a
characteristic modesty as to the value of his utterances, none the
less apparent for being put carefully out of sight, which give him,
to our thinking, his best claim to the liking of his readers--while
at the same time it is a modesty so well justified by the actual
state of the case as to explain why it is that one is always more
ready to accept with satisfaction what he has to say about an author
whose claims have been tested by more than one generation of critics,
than to trust him for a thoroughly reliable estimate of a literary
workman of to-day. Even in the former case one inclines to believe
that he may sometimes feel a just preference for his own opinions in
contradistinction to those of Mr. Lowell--who is not, for instance,
likely to elicit much intelligent sympathy with his verdict on the
poetical merits of the "Rape of the Lock." By far the pleasantest
portions of the present volume are the three opening essays, in which
Mr. Lowell quite forgets that he is a critic, or, at least, that he
is a critic of books. The essays on Carlyle and Thoreau contain also
a good deal of sound, if not particularly subtle, criticism; and
in general, although the book does not show Mr. Lowell in his most
characteristic vein, it pleases us all the better on that account, as
giving us what substance there is in his thought, with much less than
ordinary of the technical brilliancy which wearies quite as often as
it entertains.


    DION AND THE SIBYLS. A Classic Christian Novel. By
    Miles Gerald Keon, Colonial Secretary, Bermuda, author
    of "Harding the Money-Spinner," etc. New York: Catholic
    Publication Society. 1871. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 224.

_Dion and the Sibyls_ is a work of uncommon merit, and may be
classed, in our opinion, with _Fabiola_ and _Callista_, which is the
highest compliment we could possibly pay to a romance of the early
period of Christian history. The Dion of the story is Dionysius the
Areopagite in his youth, and before his conversion. The Sibyls are
introduced in reference to their predictions of a coming Saviour of
mankind. The object of the author is to exhibit the fearful need
which existed in heathen society for a divine intervention, and the
general, widespread desire and expectation of such an event at the
time when our Lord actually appeared on the earth. This is done by
means of a plot which is woven from the personal history of a nephew
of Lepidus the Triumvir, a young Roman noble of Greek education, and
an intimate friend of Dionysius, who came to Rome with his mother
and sister at the close of the reign of Augustus, to claim the
sequestrated estate of his father, one of the generals who helped to
win the battle of Philippi. The appeal of the young Paulus Æmilius
Lepidus to Augustus at a time when the latter was visiting the
wealthy Knight Mamurra at his superb villa at Formiæ, and a plot of
Tiberius Cæsar to carry off Agatha, the young man's sister, afford
an occasion of describing the principal persons of the Roman court.
This is done in a graphic and masterly manner. The representation of
the aged Augustus is something perfect in its kind. The portraits
of Tiberius, Germanicus, Caligula, then a child, the royal ladies,
Sejanus the Prætorian prefect, Velleius Paterculus, Thellus the chief
of the gladiators, and a number of other persons representing various
classes of Romans, are admirably and vividly drawn. The breaking of
the ferocious Sejan horse by the young Æmilius at the public games of
Formiæ is a scene of striking originality and power. The campaign of
Germanicus against the Germans is also well described. In fact, Mr.
Keon makes the old Roman world reappear before us like a panorama.
He shows himself to be a thorough and minute classical scholar and
historian on every page and in every line. But beyond and above all
this, he exhibits a power of philosophical reasoning, and an insight
into the deepest significance of Christianity, which elevate his
thrilling romance to the rank of a work of the highest moral and
religious scope. The description of the demons by the Lady Plancina
is an original and awfully sublime conception surpassing anything in
the _Mystique Diabolique_ of Görres. The author's great masterpiece,
however, is the argument of Dionysius on the being of One God before
the court of Augustus, a piece of writing of which any professed
philosopher might be proud.

The history of Paulus Æmilius, who is really the hero of the work,
brings him at last to Judæa at the time of the murder of St. John
the Baptist, and the closing scenes of the life of our Lord. This
gives the author the opportunity of describing a momentary glimpse
which the brave and virtuous Roman was favored with of the form and
countenance of the Divine Redeemer, as he was passing down the Mount
of Olives. Mr. Keon undertook a difficult task, one in which many
have failed, when he ventured on introducing the august figure of our
Lord into his picture. We are fastidious in matters of this kind,
and not easily satisfied by any attempt at giving in language what
sculptors and painters usually fall short of expressing in marble and
on canvas. Mr. Keon's bold effort pleases us so much that we cannot
help wishing he would try his hand at some more sketches of the same
kind. We should like to see some scenes from the evangelical history
and the Acts of the Apostles produced under an ideal and imaginative
form with an ability equal to that which our author has displayed in
his pictures of the Augustan age. The success of Renan's _Life of
Jesus_ is due not so much to the popularity of his detestable and
absurd theories, as to the attraction of his theme and the charm of a
vivid, lifelike representation of the scenes, manners, and events of
the period when our Lord lived and taught in Judæa. A similar work,
produced in accordance with the true Catholic idea of the august,
divine person of the Son of God made man, would do more to counteract
the poison of the infamous infidel literature of the day in the
popular mind than any grave argumentative treatise. We pronounce Mr.
Keon's _Dion and the Sibyls_ without hesitation to be a dramatic and
philosophical masterpiece, and we trust that he will not allow his
genius to lie idle, but will give us more works of the same sort.
Whether the vitiated taste of the novel-reading world will appreciate
works of so classical a stamp, we are unable to say. But all those
who relish truth conveyed through the forms of the purest art will
thank Mr. Keon for the pleasure he has given them, if they shall, as
we did, by chance take up his book and peruse it attentively, and
will concur with us in wishing that a work of so much merit and value
might be better known and more widely circulated.


    LITERATURE AND LIFE. Edwin P. Whipple. Enlarged
    Edition. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1871.

The essays contained in this volume are ten in number: Authors in
their Relations to Life; Novels and Novelists; Wit and Humor; The
Ludicrous Side of Life; Genius; Intellectual Health and Disease; Use
and Misuse of Words; Wordsworth; Bryant; Stupid Conservatism and
Malignant Reform.

Of these the first six were originally delivered by Mr. Whipple as
popular lectures many years ago, and were collected and published in
1849.

The last four articles are later productions of the author, and are
first published together in this enlarged edition of his early work.

In a somewhat extended notice of Mr. Whipple's essays on the
"Literature of the Age of Elizabeth" more than a year ago, we pointed
out some of his excellences and defects as they appeared to us. Both
are perhaps even more apparent in this book.

Its style is marked by that command of expression for which the
author is always so remarkable, and is at the same time clear,
pointed, and unaffected.

Yet the essays sometimes bear marks of the object for which they
were written, and one cannot help wishing that the author had not
been so evidently restricted in the materials he used and in the
characteristics of his style by the necessity of their adaptation to
the audience of lecture-goers to which they were addressed.

The distinctively critical essays are the best, and it is in literary
criticism that Mr. Whipple is always most at home.

His appreciative estimates of the genius of Dickens and of Wordsworth
have, we think, been very seldom equalled in force and justice by any
of the numerous criticisms of those authors which have been published.

Those who are familiar with Mr. Whipple's essays will be glad to see
them republished in so elegant and convenient a form, and those who
are not cannot now do better than to make their acquaintance.


    FIFTY CATHOLIC TRACTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. First
    Series. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9
    Warren Street. 1871

The wish so often expressed of seeing "The Catholic Tracts" in a
book form has been met by this volume. The variety of its contents
makes it a book for circulation among all classes of society. Short,
popular, and conclusive answers are given on questions of the day,
making it of great value as a work of actual controversy, while not
a few of the tracts are instructive and devotional, rendering it
equally important to Catholics.

The volume is printed on good paper, and its price brings it
within the reach of every one. We recommend it to the attention of
clergymen, and the confraternities, sodalities, and Rosary societies,
as a book for distribution among a reading and thinking people
seeking after religious truth. We give the preface entire:

    "In the spring of 1866, the Catholic Publication
    Society issued its first tract. Since that time it has
    published fifty tracts on different subjects. More than
    two and one half millions (2,500,000) of these short
    and popular papers have been sold and circulated. This
    is sufficient evidence of their value and popularity.

    "Some of the ablest writers in our country have
    contributed to this work. Although we have never given
    the names of the authors, we feel at liberty to say
    that eminent prelates and learned theologians--men who
    have a world-wide reputation--have written many of
    these tracts. A well-written tract often costs more
    labor than an essay or an article for a magazine.

    "Nor have these tracts been written and circulated
    without good effect. We know of Protestants converted
    and received into the church by their means. Countless
    prejudices against our religion have been removed, even
    when persons have not been led to become Catholics.
    Their minds have been thus prepared for accepting the
    truth at some future day. In addition to this, we
    must remember that many of the tracts are written for
    the instruction of Catholics. Numerous letters from
    those in charge of hospitals, asylums, and prisons,
    in various sections of our country, bear testimony to
    their value in this respect.

    "An objection is sometimes made to the word 'tract.'
    We do not altogether like the word ourselves. If any
    friend can suggest a better, we will cheerfully adopt
    it. Until then, we must continue to use it. Surely
    Catholics have a right to any word in the English
    language. Sometimes an objection is made to the tract
    form of publication. Those who have scruples on this
    score are relieved by the publication of this volume.
    These tracts now form a book. No one can fairly object
    to the matter it contains.

    "We trust, therefore, that they who find benefit from
    this little volume of tracts will endeavor to increase
    its circulation. To the clergy we recommend Tract 50 as
    one intended to place before them a practical method of
    circulating Catholic literature among their people. We
    cannot close without expressing the strong desire to
    see this volume spread over the length and breadth of
    our land."


    MEDITATIONS ON THE LITANY OF THE MOST HOLY VIRGIN.
    By the Abbé Barthe. Translated from the French by a
    Daughter of St. Joseph. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham.
    1871.

This handsome work supplies a want long felt. It contains meditations
on each phrase of the Litany from the _Kyrie eleison_ to the _Agnus
Dei_. These meditations are of suitable length for May devotions, and
are admirable for their solidity no less than for their piety. The
Abbé Barthe is an honorable Canon of Rodey (France); and we cannot do
better than quote the letter of his bishop. He says: "I rejoice that
a priest of my diocese ... has given to learned and Christian France
a work which will be widely diffused, and which will make the august
Mary loved, admired, and venerated in these lines, when, more than
ever, we need to place ourselves under her glorious protection."

There are also letters of commendation from Cardinal Giraud,
Archbishop of Cambria, and his grace the Archbishop of Paris, to
which is added the approbation of the Bishop of Philadelphia.

May this "Monument to the Glory of Mary" (as it is called) meet in
this country with the circulation it deserves, and be the means of
spreading wide and deep the love and worship of her whose Immaculate
Conception is our patronal feast.


    THE WONDERS OF THE HEAVENS. By Camille Flammarion. From
    the French, by Mrs. Norman Lockyer. With forty-eight
    illustrations. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1871.

To those who take a delight in reading about the planets and
stars, this work will prove both instructive and interesting. The
illustrations are very fine, and the work is got up in uniform style
with the other volume of "The Library of Wonders," noticed in these
pages before, of which it is one of the series.


    THECLA; or, The Malediction. By Madame A. R. De La
    Grange. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: P. O'Shea.

This is an interesting story descriptive of a family living in the
Roman province of Cappadocia in the fifth century, giving quaint
pictures of life in those early days, and lovely glimpses of the
natural beauties of the country. The object of the tale is to
illustrate the special judgments of Almighty God on disobedient
children and an overindulgent parent, who out of a weak fondness
put no restraints upon her children in their youth. The terrible
retribution that follows a parent's curse, and the remorse and
bitterness of heart that must be the portion of neglectful parents,
are well portrayed by Madame De La Grange. The volume will be an
excellent addition to our Sunday-school libraries.

We would suggest to the publisher the propriety of a thinner and
better paper. It does not look seemly to print books on common
paste-board.


    THE THEOLOGY OF THE PARABLES. By Father Coleridge,
    S.J. With an Arrangement of the Parables, by Father
    Salmeron. London: Burns, Oates & Co. For sale by The
    Catholic Publication Society.

This is a paper of no great length, but of great service to the
cause of faith. It is in every respect worthy of the pen of Father
Coleridge. He sets before us the parables in quite a new light, as
meant to teach us the ways of God to men. Why our Lord chose the
parabolic form of teaching and why he said so much about his Father
are shown with great force and clearness.


    NATURAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK. PALÆONTOLOGY. Vol. IV.
    Part. I. Albany: Printed by C. Van Benthuysen & Sons.
    March, 1867.

This is a continuation of Professor Hall's able researches on the
fossils of this state. It contains descriptions and figures of
the Brachiopoda of the Helderberg, Hamilton, Portage, and Chemung
groups. The plates are admirably executed, like those in the previous
volumes, and the name of the author is a sufficient proof of the
accuracy and value of the descriptions which they illustrate. The
work is a solid and valuable contribution to science.


BOOKS RECEIVED.

    From JOHN MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: The Child's
    Prayer and Hymn Book. For the use of Catholic
    Sunday-schools.--The Expiation. A Drama in Three Acts.
    Translated from the French by James Kehoe. Paper.

    From J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia, Pa.: The
    Virginia Forest. A Handbook of Travel in Virginia.
    By E. A. Pollard. 1 vol. 16mo, paper.--History of
    Florida from its Discovery by Ponce de Leon in 1512,
    to the Close of the Florida War in 1842. By George R.
    Fairbanks. 1 vol. 12mo.--The Conservative Reformation
    and its Theology: as Represented in the Augsburgh
    Confession, and in the History and Literature of the
    Evangelical Lutheran Church. By Charles P. Krauth D.D.
    1 vol. 8vo.




      THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

      VOL. XIII., No. 76.--JULY, 1871.[107]


AN IRISH MARTYR.


Towards the close of the year 1645, the venerable oratorian, Father
Peter Francis Scarampo, who had spent two years in Ireland on a
special mission from the Holy See, was permitted to resign his
position and return to Rome. He was accompanied thither by five
young students whose relatives desired that they should complete
their theological studies in the colleges of the Eternal City. Of
these, the most distinguished for early proficiency and gentleness of
disposition was a youth named Oliver Plunket, then in his sixteenth
year, having been born at Loughcrew, county of Meath, in 1629, a near
relative and protégé of the Bishop of Ardagh, Doctor Patrick Plunket,
and closely connected by ties of kindred with some of the noblest
families of Ireland, and with many distinguished ecclesiastics at
home and on the Continent. Father Scarampo had borne himself so
wisely and with so much charity and discretion while in Ireland,
that his departure was regarded as a public misfortune, and his
retiring footsteps were followed to the sea-coast by thousands of
pious and grateful people; and, though his humble spirit would not
allow him to accept the distinguished post of Papal Nuncio, and so
remain among them, he never ceased to remember their hospitality
and long-suffering and to befriend their cause at Rome upon all
occasions. On the young men entrusted to his care he bestowed every
possible favor, and especially on young Plunket, in whom he took
a fatherly interest up to the day of his untimely death on the
plague-stricken Island of St. Bartholomew, even to the extent of
defraying that student's expenses for the first three years of his
novitiate.

Soon after his arrival in Rome, Oliver Plunket entered the Irish
College of that city, then under the charge of the Jesuit Fathers,
and for eight years devoted himself with great industry and success
to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and theology, subsequently
attending the usual course of lectures on canon and civil law in the
Roman University. Previous to his appointment to the See of Armagh,
the Rector of the Irish College, in response to an enquiry of the
Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, presented the following honorable
testimony of the character and abilities of the future Primate:

    "I, the undersigned, certify that the Very Reverend
    Dr. Oliver Plunket, of the diocese of Meath, in
    the province of Armagh, in Ireland, is of Catholic
    parentage, descended from an illustrious family; on
    the father's side, from the most illustrious Earls of
    Fingal; on the mother's side, from the most illustrious
    Earls of Roscommon, being also connected by birth with
    the most illustrious Oliver Plunket, Baron of Louth,
    first nobleman of the diocese of Armagh; and in this
    our Irish College he devoted himself with such ardor
    to philosophy, theology, and mathematics, that in the
    Roman College of the Society of Jesus he was justly
    ranked among the foremost in talent, diligence, and
    progress in his studies; these speculative studies
    being completed, he pursued with abundant fruit the
    course of civil and canon law under Mark Anthony
    de Mariscotti, Professor of the Roman Sapienza,
    and everywhere and at all times he was a model of
    gentleness, integrity, and piety."

Having at length received his ordination in 1654, Dr. Plunket was
obliged by the rules of the college either to proceed forthwith on
the Irish mission or to obtain leave from his superiors to remain to
further perfect his studies. He chose the latter course, and at his
own request the General of the Society of Jesus, to whom he applied,
permitted him to enter San Girolamo della Charità, where for three
years he quietly devoted himself to the accumulation of knowledge and
the duties of his sacred calling. Marangoni, in his life of Father
Cacciaguerra, speaks of Doctor Plunket's conduct while in that
secluded retreat in the following eulogistic terms:

    "Here it is incredible with what zeal he burned for the
    salvation of souls. In the house itself, and in the
    city, he wholly devoted himself to devout exercises;
    frequently did he visit the sanctuaries steeped with
    the blood of so many martyrs, and he ardently sighed
    for the opportunity of sacrificing himself for the
    salvation of his countrymen. He, moreover, frequented
    the Hospital of Santo Spirito, and employed himself
    even in the most abject ministrations, serving the poor
    infirm, to the edification and wonder of the officials
    and assistants of that place."

The disturbed condition of his native country has been alleged as
the cause of Dr. Plunket's delay in Rome, and this in itself would
be sufficient reason, if we reflect that at that time the soldiers
of Cromwell were in full possession of every nook and corner of
it, and that hundreds of priests, left without congregations, were
obliged to fly for their lives to the Continent, or to seek refuge
in mountains and morasses; but it is more than probable that the
young ecclesiastic had an additional motive for remaining longer in
the Holy City, and, having a forecast of his future eminence in the
church, and of the vast benefits he was capable of rendering to the
cause of religion and his country, desired, as far as possible, to
qualify himself for the glorious task to which he was afterwards
assigned at the fountain-head of Catholicity, before undertaking a
labor which he must have known would be accompanied by many trials
and dangers.

But even from the seclusion of San Girolamo his fame as an
accomplished and profound scholar soon spread to the outer world,
and in 1657 Dr. Plunket was appointed professor of theology and
controversy in the College of the Propaganda, a position which he
held with great credit for twelve years, until his departure from
Rome. Though thus occupied in the responsible and laborious duties of
his professorship, he was also consultor of the Sacred Congregation
of the Index and of other congregations. In the performance of the
high trusts thus imposed upon him, the young professor was frequently
brought in contact with many of the most exalted personages of
the Roman Court, some of whom subsequently filled the chair of
St. Peter, from all of whom he experienced the greatest kindness
and repeated proofs of affection, as he frequently mentions with
gratitude in his correspondence. Still the confidence reposed in
him and the companionship of so many holy and erudite men failed to
satisfy the cravings of his soul or reconcile him to his enforced
exile. Of a highly sensitive and even poetic nature, his patriotism
and attachment to his family were second only to his love for
learning and religion, and his mind was constantly tormented by the
accounts daily received in Rome of the barbarities practised on his
compatriots and co-religionists by the licentious soldiery of the
English Commonwealth. In writing to Father Spada, in 1656, on the
occasion of the death of his friend and counsellor Father Scarampo,
he exclaims in the bitterness of his spirit:

    "God alone knows how afflicting his death is to me,
    especially at the present time, when all Ireland is
    overrun and laid waste by heresy. Of my relations, some
    are dead, others have been sent into exile, and all
    Ireland is reduced to extreme misery: this overwhelmed
    me with an inexpressible sadness, for I am now deprived
    of father and of friends, and I should die through
    grief were I not consoled by the consideration that I
    have not altogether lost Father Scarampo; for I may say
    that he in part remains, our good God having retained
    your reverence in life, who, as it is known to all,
    were united with him in friendship and in charity
    and in disposition, so as even to desire to be his
    companion in death, from which, though God preserved
    you, yet he did not deprive you of its merit."

But, notwithstanding his own afflictions, he was ever ready to succor
by his slender purse and powerful influence such of his destitute
young countrymen who sought an opportunity in Rome to procure an
education, of which they were so systematically deprived at home;
and it was doubtless from a just perception of his great repute and
thorough acquaintance with ecclesiastical affairs in Rome that, in
the early part of 1669, he was requested by the Irish bishops to
act as their representative at the Papal Court, an office which he
cheerfully accepted and filled to the entire satisfaction of his
venerable constituency.

But he was not long allowed to occupy this subordinate position in
connection with the church in Ireland, nor even to retain his chair
in the Propaganda. He had now entered on his fortieth year, his mind
fully developed and stored with all the sacred and profane learning
befitting one called to a higher destiny, and his soul imbued with
a zeal so holy and so far removed from worldly ambition that no
temptation was likely to overcome his faith, and no persecution,
no matter how severe, to shake his constancy. He was therefore
appointed Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, to
succeed Dr. Edmond O'Reilly, recently deceased in Paris. Like the
great apostle of his country, of whom he was about to become the
spiritual successor, he had spent a long probation in the society of
men remarkable for the purity of their lives and the extent of their
knowledge, and as St. Patrick longed to revisit the land of his
adoption, he also yearned to be once again among the Irish people.
Yet his appointment to the primacy of Ireland was neither sought nor
anticipated by Dr. Plunket at this time, as we learn from a letter
from the Archbishop of Dublin to Monsignor Baldeschi, Secretary of
the Propaganda, in which he says:

    "Certainly, no one could be appointed better suited
    than Dr. Oliver Plunket, whom I myself would have
    proposed in the first place, were it not that he had
    written to me, stating his desire not to enter for
    some years in the Irish mission, until he should have
    completed some works which he was preparing for the
    press."

The names of many clergymen distinguished for piety, devotion, and
learning had been forwarded to Rome, from which to select a fitting
successor to Dr. O'Reilly; but, while their various merits were under
discussion, the Holy Father, Clement IX., it is said, simplified the
matter by suggesting Dr. Plunket as the person best qualified to
fill the vacant see, and to govern by his experience and force of
character the hierarchy, and, through it, the priesthood of Ireland.
The views of the Pope met with unanimous approval, and, the selection
being thus made, it was out of the power of Dr. Plunket, no matter
how diffident he might have been of his own abilities to fill so
elevated a position, to decline. We have seen how this important
decision of the Sacred Congregation was viewed by Dr. Talbot, of
Dublin, and his opinions seemed to have been shared by all the
bishops and priests in Ireland. Dr. O'Molony, of St. Sulpice, Paris,
afterwards Bishop of Killaloe, writes:

    "You have already laid the foundations of our edifice,
    erected the pillars, and given shepherds to feed the
    sheep and the lambs; but, now that the work should
    not remain imperfect, you have crowned the edifice,
    and provided a pastor for the pastors themselves,
    appointing the Archbishop of Armagh, for it is not
    of the diocese of Armagh alone that he has the
    administration, to whom the primacy and guardianship of
    all Ireland is entrusted. One, therefore, in a thousand
    had to be chosen, suited to bear so great a burden.
    That one you have found--one than whom none other
    better or more pleasing could be found; with whom (that
    your wise solicitude for our distracted and afflicted
    country should be wanting in nothing) you have been
    pleased to associate his suffragan of Ardagh, a most
    worthy and grave man."

The Bishop of Ferns, also, in addressing the Secretary of the Sacred
Congregation, says: "Applauding and rejoicing, I have hastened
hither from Gand, to the Most Reverend and Illustrious Internunzio
of Belgium, to return all possible thanks to our Holy Father, in the
name of my countrymen, for having crowned with the mitre of Armagh
the noble and distinguished Oliver Plunket, Doctor of Theology;"
and Dr. Dowley, of Limerick, adds, "Most pleasing to all was the
appointment of Dr. Plunket, and I doubt not it will be agreeable to
the government, to the secular clergy, and to the nobility."

These warm expressions of esteem and regard, if known to the new
primate, must have inspired him with renewed courage to accept the
grave responsibilities imposed upon him, and truly, if ever man
required the support of friends to nerve him to encounter dangers
and unheard-of opposition, he did. But he seems to have had within
himself a courage not of this world, but superior to all earthly
considerations. It is recorded on the very best authority that, when
about to leave Rome, he was thus accosted by an aged priest, "My
lord, you are now going to shed your blood for the Catholic faith."
To which he replied, "I am unworthy of such a favor; nevertheless,
aid me with your prayers, that this my desire may be fulfilled."[108]
The condition of the country to which the primate was hastening
fully justified this prophecy. It was to the last degree forlorn and
full of discouragement. The sufferings of the Irish people at this
period defy description; and were it not that we have before us the
penal acts of parliament, numerous authenticated state papers, and
the published statements of some of the highest officials of the
crown and the agents of the Commonwealth, we would be inclined to
believe, if only for the credit of human nature, that the relation
of the atrocities at this time perpetrated by English authority
on the Catholics of Ireland was the work of some diseased mind
that delighted in horrors and revelled in the contemplation of an
imaginary pandemonium. The Tudors and the Stuarts as persecutors
of Catholics were bad enough, but their ineffectual fires paled
before the cool atrocity and sanctimonious villany of the followers
of Cromwell; men, if we must call them such, who, arrogating to
themselves not only the honorable title of champions of human
liberty, but claiming to be the exemplars of all that was left of
what was pure and holy in this wicked world, perpetrated in the name
of freedom and religion a series of such deeds of darkness that not
even a parallel can be found for them in the annals of the worst days
of the Roman emperors. So deep indeed has the detestation of the
barbarities of Cromwell taken root in the popular mind of Ireland,
that, though more than two centuries have elapsed since his death,
his name is as thoroughly and as heartily detested there to-day as
if his crimes had been committed in our own generation. Previous to
the Reformation, though wars were frequent and oftentimes bloody
between the English invaders and the natives, they were generally
conducted in a certain spirit of chivalry and with some degree of
moderation, which usually characterize hostile Catholic nations even
in times of the greatest excitement. Churches and the nurseries of
learning and charity were respected, or, if destroyed through the
stern necessities of warfare, were apt to be replaced by others. But
the followers of the new religion knew no such charitable weakness,
for from the first they seemed actuated, probably as a punishment for
their sin of wilful rebellion against the authority of God's law,
with an unquenchable hatred of everything holy, and a craftiness in
devising measures to destroy the faith and pervert the minds of the
Catholics so preternatural in its ingenuity that we can only account
for it by supposing it the emanation of the enemy of mankind. That
any people stripped of all worldly possessions, debarred so long
from religious worship and the means of enlightenment, outlawed by
the so-called government, ensnared by the spy and the magistrate,
and ground to dust beneath the hoofs of the trooper's horse, should
not only have preserved their existence and the faith, but have
multiplied amazingly, both at home and abroad, is one of the most
remarkable incidents in all history, as well as one of the strongest
proofs of the enduring and unconquerable spirit of Catholicity.

There were probably at this time in Ireland nearly a million and a
half of Catholics, though Sir William Petty estimates their number
at about 1,200,000; the native population having been fearfully
reduced by the late war and the pestilence and famine which succeeded
it, by the emigration of forty or fifty thousand able-bodied men
to Spain and other countries, and by the deportation of an equal
number of women and children, as slaves, to the West Indies and the
British settlements on our Atlantic coast. Yet, notwithstanding the
immense loss of life occasioned soon after by the Williamite war,
the constant drain on the adult male population in the latter part
of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries,
to fill up the decimated ranks of the Catholic armies of Europe,
amounting, it is said, to three-quarters of a million, the periodical
famines to which the peasantry were constantly exposed, and the
great famine of 1846-7 and 1848, which swept away at least two
millions, the Irish Catholics of to-day and their descendants in all
quarters of the globe number at least fifteen million souls. It is
a singular and interesting fact that the Irish Catholics resident
in London out-number the entire population of the city of Dublin;
that in the cities and towns of England and Scotland there are more
Catholics of Irish birth than existed in every part of the world two
hundred years ago; and that, while the children of St. Patrick count
nearly five millions on the soil which he redeemed from paganism,
many more millions of them and their descendants born within the
present century are planting the cross of Christ everywhere in
America and Australasia. This indestructibility of the Irish race
seems to have raised an insurmountable barrier against the designs
of the reformers. James I. having planted part of Ulster with some
success, the Long Parliament determined to follow his example on a
more comprehensive scale, and to utterly exterminate the people who
persisted in adhering to their ancient faith. Accordingly, in 1654,
all Catholics were ordered under the severest penalties to remove
before a certain day from the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and
Munster, and take up their abodes in Connaught, the least fertile
and most inaccessible division of the island. In their front a
strip of land some miles in width, following the sinuosity of the
sea-coast, and another in their rear along the line of the Shannon,
were reserved for the victors and protected by a cordon of military
posts, the penalty of passing which, without special license, was
death. Thus encompassed by the stormy Atlantic and the broad river,
with an inner belt of hostile settlements, it was fondly hoped that
the remnant of the gallant Irish nation, completely segregated from
the world, would speedily perish, unnoticed and unknown, among the
sterile mountains of the west. A more diabolical attempt on the lives
of a whole people is not to be found recorded in either ancient or
modern history, and, to do but justice to the canting fanatics who
conceived the plan, no means were left untried to carry it out to a
successful issue. But Providence, with whose designs the Cromwellians
assumed to be well acquainted, decreed otherwise, and no sooner
had their leader sunk into a dishonored grave, and the legitimate
sovereign been restored to the throne, than every part of the country
swarmed again with Catholics, who seemed to spring, as if by magic,
from the very soil. The people, it was found, had actually increased
in numbers, and the clergy, who it was supposed had been effectually
destroyed by expatriation, famine, or the sword, still amounted to
over sixteen hundred seculars and regulars, as devoted as ever to
the spiritual interests of their flocks.

The restoration of Charles II. in 1660 was hailed by the Catholics
as a favorable omen. They had faithfully supported his father, and
had lost all in defending his own cause, and hence they naturally
expected, if not gratitude, at least simple justice. But Charles was
a true Stuart. Opposed to persecution from a constitutional love of
ease and pleasure, as much as from any innate sense of right, he
had neither the capacity to plan a reform nor the manhood to carry
out the tolerant designs of others. He was, moreover, weak-minded,
vacillating, and insincere, more disposed to conciliate his enemies
by gifts and honors than to reward his well-tried friends by the
commonest acts of justice. The greatest favor that the Catholics
could obtain was a toleration of their worship in remote and secret
places, and even this qualified boon was dependent on the whim of the
viceroy, and was soon withdrawn at the command of parliament.

But the evils of the English Protestant system did not stop here.
The death or involuntary exile of most of the Irish bishops and the
dispersion of the clergy created a relaxation of ecclesiastical
discipline, particularly among the regulars, and the impossibility of
obtaining proper religious instruction at home, and the difficulty of
procuring it elsewhere, necessarily lowered the standard of education
among the priests of all ranks. Left for the most part to their own
guidance, and only imperfectly trained for the ministry, many friars,
particularly of the Order of St. Francis, so illustrious for its many
distinguished scholars and eloquent preachers, were disposed to rebel
against their superiors when the least restraint was placed upon
their irregular modes of living, and some were found base enough
to lend the weight attached to their sacred calling to further the
designs of the worst enemies of their creed and country. Ormond and
other so-called statesmen, while avowing unqualified loyalty to their
sovereign and a secret attachment to the church, were insidiously
betraying the one by placing him in a false position before Catholics
and Protestants, while vainly endeavoring to strike a blow at the
other by using these apostates to create a schism in her ranks. In
the latter scheme they signally failed, and their defeat was mainly
due to the untiring energy and profound foresight of the Archbishop
of Armagh during the ten years of his administration. The very
announcement of Dr. Plunket's appointment seems to have struck terror
into the secret enemies of the church in Ireland, and to have given
new hope to the friends of religion. This event occurred on the 9th
of July, 1669, when the bulls for his consecration were immediately
forwarded to the Internunzio at Brussels. Dr. Plunket was desirous
of receiving the mitre in Rome, and even made a strong request to
be granted that privilege, but the prudential motives which induced
the Sacred Congregation to select Belgium in the first instance
still remained, and the favor was reluctantly refused. As his first
act of obedience, the archbishop bowed cheerfully to this decision,
and after presenting his little vineyard, his only real property,
and a few books to the Irish College, he bade a final adieu to his
Roman friends in the following month, and commenced his homeward
journey--his first step to a glorious immortality. He arrived during
November in the capital of Belgium, and was cordially welcomed by the
Internunzio, who was not unacquainted with his extensive learning
and unaffected piety. At the request of that prelate, the Bishop of
Ghent consented to administer consecration to Dr. Plunket, and the
solemn ceremony was duly performed on the 30th of November, in the
private chapel of the episcopal palace in that ancient city. Dr.
Nicholas French, Bishop of Ferns, one of the few persons present on
the occasion, thus describes it:

    "I present a concise narrative of the consecration
    of the most illustrious Archbishop of Armagh. His
    excellency the Internunzio wrote most kind letters
    to the bishop of this diocese requesting him to
    perform it, and he most readily acquiesced. But I,
    on receiving this news, set out at once for Brussels
    to conduct hither his Grace of Armagh, bound by
    gratitude to render him this homage. A slight fever
    seized our excellent bishop on the Saturday before the
    Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, which had been
    fixed for Dr. Plunket's consecration; wherefore that
    ceremony was deferred till the first Sunday in Advent,
    on which day it was devoutly and happily performed in
    the capella of the palace, without noise, and with
    closed doors, for such was the desire of the Archbishop
    of Armagh. Remaining here for eight days after his
    consecration, he passed his time in despatching letters
    and examining my writings."

After this short delay, the Primate continued his journey, stopping
long enough in London to see his friends at the English court, and
to present his credentials to the Queen, who was a devout Catholic,
and who received him with great cordiality. He had also leisure to
become somewhat conversant with the policy and views of the leading
public characters in the English capital, and to study the workings
and temper of the parliament. After a tedious and fatiguing journey,
he at length landed in Ireland, in March, 1670, having been absent
from that country a quarter of a century, where he was joyously
received by his numerous relatives and friends. Great was the
change which had been wrought in his life during those twenty-five
years, but, alas! how much greater had been the alteration in the
circumstances of his countrymen. As a lad he had left them in the
full enjoyment of their religion in almost every part of the island,
their nobility in the possession of their estates, the peasantry and
farmers prosperous, the clergy respected and freely obeyed, and all
full of hope for the future, and sanguine of yet attaining their
independence. As an archbishop and primate, he returned to find
nothing but desolation and ruin, sorrow and dejection. The nobility
had either been banished or reduced to the condition of mere tenants
on their own property, so that only three Catholic gentlemen in the
province of Armagh, which embraces eleven dioceses, held any real
estate; the original cultivators of the soil who had been spared by
the sword and had not been transported or compelled to emigrate were
formed into bands of plunderers, and infested the highways under the
name of _tories_, while such as remained of the bishops and clergy
were to be found only in bogs and mountains or in the most obscure
portions of the larger towns and cities.

Undaunted by the scenes of woe and destruction around him, the
Primate, like a diligent servant of God, had no sooner set foot on
his native soil than he proceeded to the performance of his pastoral
labors. Writing to Cardinal Barberini, Protector of Ireland, an
account of his journey from Rome, he says:

    "I afterwards arrived in Ireland in the month of
    March, and hastened immediately to my residence; and
    I held two synods and two ordinations, and in a month
    and a-half I administered confirmation to more than
    ten thousand persons, though throughout my province
    I think there yet remain more than fifty thousand
    persons to be confirmed. I remarked throughout the
    country, wherever I went, that for every heretic there
    are twenty Catholics. The new viceroy is a man of
    great moderation; he willingly receives the Catholics,
    and he treats privately with the ecclesiastics, and
    promises them protection while they attend to their
    own functions without intriguing in the affairs of
    government."

The nobleman here alluded to was Lord Berkeley, who held office in
Ireland for a few years, and under whose politic and tolerant, if
not very sincere, administration the Catholics enjoyed at least
comparative security. Personally, he, as well as his successor,
Lord Essex, entertained a very high respect for the primate, and
treated him with great kindness, when it was possible to do so
without incurring the displeasure of the ultra-Protestant faction.
Indeed, Archbishop Plunket, well aware of the difficulties which
constantly beset his path, and feeling the futility of defying the
government authorities, set his mind from the first to conciliate
those whom he knew had the power to thwart or second his efforts,
without yielding anything of his episcopal dignity or compromising
his character as an ardent patriot. His long probationary course in
Rome and his intimate association with so many of the best and most
accomplished minds at the Papal court must have eminently qualified
him for dealing with the leading British officials in Ireland. In his
voluminous correspondence with the Holy See, he frequently alludes to
his interviews with the lord-lieutenant and other noblemen, and to
the judicious use he was able to make of his influence with them for
the benefit of his less fortunate or more demonstrative brethren in
the ministry. In a letter addressed to Pope Clement, dated June 20,
1670, he says:

    "Our viceroy is a man of great moderation and equity:
    he looks on the Catholics with benevolence, and treats
    privately with some of the clergy, exhorting them to
    act with discretion; and for this purpose he secretly
    called me to his presence on many occasions, and
    promised me his assistance in correcting any members of
    the clergy of scandalous life. I discover in him some
    spark of religion, and I find that many even of the
    leading members of his court are secretly Catholics."

Again, to Dr. Brennan, his successor as Irish agent, he writes:

    "In the province of Armagh, the clergy and Catholics
    enjoy a perfect peace. The Earl of Charlemont, being
    friendly with me, defends me in every emergency.
    Being once in the town of Dungannon to administer
    confirmation, and the governor of the place having
    prevented me from doing so, the earl not only severely
    reproved the governor, but told me to go to his own
    palace, when I pleased, to give confirmation or to say
    Mass there if I wished. The magistrate of the city of
    Armagh, having made an order to the effect that all
    Catholics should accompany him to the heretical service
    every Sunday, under penalty of half-a-crown per head
    for each time they would absent themselves, I appealed
    to the president of the province against this decree,
    and he cancelled it, and commanded that neither clergy
    nor Catholic laity should be molested."

It is not, however, to be supposed from these isolated instances of
toleration that the new primate was allowed the full exercise of
his functions in the land of his nativity, and where his flock so
vastly outnumbered their opponents. On the contrary, we learn from
a letter of Lord Conway to his brother-in-law, Sir George Rawdon,
that even before Dr. Plunket reached Ireland orders had been issued
by the lord-lieutenant for his arrest as being one of "two persons
sent from Rome, that lie lurking in the country to do mischief;" and
even when he had taken possession of his see, his labors for the
most part were performed in secret or in the night time. This was
more particularly so after 1673, when the persecution was renewed
against the Catholics, that we have his own authority and that of his
companion in suffering, Dr. Brennan, Bishop of Waterford, for saying
that at the most tempestuous times he was obliged to seek safety by
flight, and frequently to expose himself to the horrors of a northern
winter and almost to starvation in order to be amid his people, and
ready to administer spiritual consolation to them.

    "The viceroy," he says, writing in January, 1664, "on
    the 10th or thereabouts of this month, published a
    further proclamation that the registered clergy should
    be treated with the greatest rigor. Another but secret
    order was given to all the magistrates and sheriffs
    that the detectives should seek out, both in the
    cities and throughout the country, the other bishops
    and regulars. I and my companions no sooner received
    intelligence of this than, on the 18th of this month,
    which was Sunday, after vespers, being the festival
    of the Chair of St. Peter, we deemed it necessary to
    take to our heels; the snow fell heavily mixed with
    hail-stones, which were very hard and large; a cutting
    north wind blew in our faces, and the snow and hail
    beat so dreadfully in our eyes that to the present we
    have been scarcely able to see with them. Often we were
    in danger in the valleys of being lost and suffocated
    in the snow, till at length we arrived at the house of
    a reduced gentleman, who had nothing to lose; but for
    our misfortune he had a stranger in his house, by whom
    we did not wish to be recognized; hence we were placed
    in a large garret without chimney and without fire,
    where we have been during the past eight days. May
    it redound to the glory of God, the salvation of our
    souls, and the flocks entrusted to our charge!"

So great indeed was the danger of discovery at this time, and so
watchful were the emissaries of the law, that he was compelled to
write most of his foreign letters over the assumed signature of "Mr.
Thomas Cox," and was usually addressed by that name in reply. He even
tells us that he was sometimes obliged to go about the performance of
his duties in the disguise of a cavalier with cocked hat and sword.

Dr. Plunket is represented by his contemporaries as a man of
delicate physical organization, highly sensitive in his temperament,
and disposed naturally to prefer the seclusion of the closet to
the excitement and turmoil of the world. The contrast between the
scholastic retirement in which he had spent so many years of his
life, and the circumstances by which he now found himself surrounded,
must have been indeed striking, but like a true disciple he did
not hesitate a moment in entering on his new sphere of usefulness.
Shortly after his arrival in Dublin, on the 17th of June, 1670,
he called together and presided over a general synod of the Irish
bishops, at which several important statutes were passed, as well
as an address to the new viceroy declaring the loyalty and homage,
in all things temporal, of the hierarchy of Ireland to the reigning
sovereign. Two synods of his own clergy had already been held, and
in September following a provincial council of Ulster met at Clones,
which not only reaffirmed the decrees of the synod of Dublin, but
enacted many long required reforms in discipline and the manner
of life of the clergy. In a letter from the assembled clergy of
the province of Armagh, date October 8, 1670, and addressed to
Monsignor Baldeschi, they thus speak of the untiring labors of their
metropolitan:

    "In the diocese of Armagh, Kilmore, Clogher, Derry,
    Down, Connor, and Dromore, although far separated from
    each other, he administered confirmation to thousands
    in the woods and mountains, heedless of winds and
    rain. Lately, too, he achieved a work from which great
    advantage will be derived by the Catholic body, for
    there were many of the more noble families who had
    lost their properties, and, being proclaimed outlaws
    in public edicts, were subsequently guilty of many
    outrages; those by his admonitions he brought back
    to a better course; he moreover obtained pardon for
    their crimes, and not only procured this pardon for
    themselves, but also for their receivers, and thus
    hundreds and hundreds of Catholic families have been
    freed from imminent danger to their body and soul and
    properties."

But the good pastor was not contented with these extended labors
among the laity. To make his reforms permanent and beneficial,
he felt that he should commence with the clergy, who as a body
had always been faithful to their sacred trust, but, owing to
the disturbed state of the country for so many years past, had
been unable to perform their allotted duties with that exactness
and punctuality so desirable in the presence of a watchful and
unscrupulous enemy. He therefore ordained many young students, whom
he found qualified for the ministry, and, taking advantage of the
temporary cessation of espionage consequent on the arrival of Lord
Berkeley, he established a college in Drogheda, in which he soon had
one hundred and sixty pupils and twenty-five ecclesiastics, under the
care of three learned Jesuit fathers. The expenses of this school he
defrayed out of his slender means, never more than sixty pounds per
annum, and frequently not one-fifth of that sum, with the exception
of 150 scudi (less than forty pounds sterling), annually allowed by
the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda. When, in 1674, the penal laws
were again put in force in all their original ferocity of spirit, the
college was of course broken up; but Dr. Plunket in his letters to
Rome was never tired of impressing on the minds of the authorities
there the necessity of affording Irish students more ample facilities
for affording a thorough education. His suggestions in regard to the
Irish College at Rome, by which a larger number of students might
be accommodated without increased expense, though not acted upon at
the time, have since been carried out, and it was principally at his
instance that the Irish institutions in Spain, previously monopolized
by young men from certain dioceses of Ireland only, were thrown open
to all.

In the latter part of 1671, we find Dr. Plunket on a mission to the
Hebrides, where the people, the descendants of the ancient Irish
colonists, still preserved their Gaelic language, and received him
with all the gratitude and enthusiasm of the Celtic nature. In 1674,
notwithstanding the storm of persecution then raging over the island,
he made a lengthy tour through the province of Tuam, and in the
following year we have a detailed report of his visitation to the
eleven dioceses in his own province, every one of which, no matter
how remote or what was the personal risk, he took pains to inspect,
bringing peace and comfort in his footsteps, and leaving behind him
the tears and prayers of his appreciative children.

If we add to this multiplicity of occupations the further one of
being the chief and almost only regular correspondent of the Sacred
Congregation of Propaganda in the three kingdoms, we may presume that
the primate's life in Ireland was fully and advantageously occupied.
The number of his letters to Rome on every subject of importance is
immense, when we consider the difficulty and danger of communication
in those days. He was also in constant correspondence with London,
Paris, and Brussels, and, though he sometimes complains of the
weakness of his eyesight, caused doubtless by exposure and change
of climate, he frequently regrets more his poverty, which did not
enable him to pay the postage on all occasions. At one time, indeed,
he avers that all the food he is able to procure for himself is "a
little oaten bread and some milk and water."

The last important act of the primate was the convocation of a
provincial synod at Ardpatrick, in August, 1678, at which were
present the bishops or vicars-general and apostolic of all the
dioceses of Ulster. Many decrees of a general and special nature were
there passed with great solemnity, and upon being sent to Rome were
duly approved. It was upon this occasion that the representatives
of the suffragan diocese of Armagh, deeply impressed and edified as
they were by the labors and sanctity of their archbishop, addressed
a joint letter to the Sacred Congregation, eloquently describing the
extent and good effect of his constant solicitude for his spiritual
charge.

    "We therefore declare (say those venerable men) that
    the aforesaid Most Illustrious Metropolitan has labored
    much, exercising his sacred functions not only in
    his own but also in other dioceses; during the late
    persecution he abandoned not the flock entrusted to
    him, though he was exposed to extreme danger of losing
    his life; he erected schools, and provided masters
    and teachers, that the clergy and youth might be
    instructed in literature, piety, cases of conscience,
    and other matters relating to their office; he held two
    provincial councils, in which salutary decrees were
    enacted for the reformation of morals; he, moreover,
    rewarded the good and punished the bad, as far as
    circumstances and the laws of the kingdom allowed;
    he labored much, and not without praise, in preaching
    the word of God; he instructed the people by word and
    example; he also exercised hospitality so as to excite
    the admiration of all, although he scarcely received
    annually two hundred crowns from his diocese; and he
    performed all other things which became an archbishop
    and metropolitan, as far as they could be done in this
    kingdom. In fine, to our great service and consolation,
    he renewed, or rather established anew, at great
    expense, correspondence with the Holy See, which, for
    many years before his arrival, had become extinct. For
    all which things we acknowledge ourselves indebted
    to his Holiness and to your Eminences, who, by your
    solicitude provided for us so learned and vigilant a
    metropolitan, and we shall ever pray the Divine Majesty
    to preserve his holiness and your Eminences."

Had the distinguished body of ecclesiastics who thus voluntarily
testified to the merits of their archbishop anticipated the awful
catastrophe that was soon to remove him from them and from the world,
they could not have epitomized his career in more truthful and
concise language for the benefit of posterity. The end, however, was
now at hand. In the same year that the provincial synod was held, the
persecution against the Catholics, intermittent like those of the
early ages of the church, broke out with redoubled violence. Forced
to the most extreme measures by the parliament, the English court
sent the strictest orders to Ireland to have arrested and removed
from the country the entire body of the bishops and the clergy. The
statute of 2d Elizabeth, declaring it _præmunire_ or imprisonment
and confiscation for any person to exercise the authority of bishop
or priest in her dominions, was revived, and liberal rewards for
the discovery of such offenders were publicly offered, to stimulate
the energy of that class of spies known as "priest-hunters." Dr.
Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, was arrested and thrown into prison,
where during a long confinement he languished and finally died. Dr.
Creagh, Bishop of Limerick, the Archbishop of Tuam, and several of
the inferior clergy, were also imprisoned and subjected to many
annoyances and indignities previous to being expelled the kingdom.
Dr. Plunket, who hoped that the storm would soon blow over, while
prudently seeking a place of safety in a remote part of his diocese,
frequently avowed his determination never to forsake his flock until
compelled to do so by superior force. Learning, however, of the
dangerous illness of his relative and former patron, Dr. Patrick
Plunket, he cautiously left his concealment, and hastened to Dublin,
to be with the good old bishop during his last moments, and it was
in that city, on the 6th of December, 1679, that he was discovered
and apprehended by order of the viceroy. For the first six months
after his arrest he was confined in Dublin Castle, part of the time a
close prisoner, but, as the only charge openly preferred against him
was, to use the expression of one of his relatives, "only for being
a Catholic bishop, and for not having abandoned the flock of our
Lord in obedience to the edict published by parliament," and as the
punishment for this at the worst was expatriation, his friends did
not fear for his life. They were not aware then that a conspiracy had
been formed against him by some apostate friars under the patronage
of the infamous Earl of Shaftesbury, the leader of the English
fanatics, with the object of accusing him of high treason, and thus
compassing his death. On the 24th of July following, he was sent
under guard to Dundalk for trial; but so monstrous were the charges
of treason against him, and so thoroughly was his character for
moderation and loyalty known to all, that, though the jury consisted
exclusively of Protestants, his accusers dared not appear against
him, and he was consequently remitted back to Dublin. But his enemies
on both sides of the Channel were thirsting for his blood, and, in
October, 1680, he was removed to London, ostensibly to answer before
the king and parliament, but, actually, to undergo the mockery of
a trial in a country in which no offense was even alleged to have
been committed, where the infamous character of his accusers was
unknown, and where he was completely isolated from his friends. The
result could not be doubtful. Without counsel or witnesses, in the
presence of prejudiced judges and perjured witnesses, and surrounded
by the hooting of a London mob, he was found guilty, and, on the
14th of June, 1681, he was sentenced to be executed at Tyburn, a
judgment which was carried out on the 11th of July following, with
all the barbaric ceremonies of the period. During the trial and on
the scaffold, his bearing was singularly noble and courageous, so
much so, indeed, that many who beheld him, and who shared the violent
anti-Catholic prejudices of the hour, were satisfied of his perfect
innocence. He repeatedly and emphatically denied all complicity in
the treasonable plots laid to his charge, but openly declared that
he had acted as a Catholic bishop, and had spent many years of his
life in preaching and teaching God's word to his countrymen. His life
in prison between the passing and the execution of the sentence is
best described by a fellow-prisoner, the learned Benedictine, Father
Corker, who had the privilege of being with him in his last hours.
In his narrative, he says:

    "He continually endeavored to improve and advance
    himself in the purity of divine love, and by
    consequence also in contrition for his sins past;
    of his deficiency in both which this humble soul
    complained to me as the only thing that troubled him.
    This love had extinguished in him all fear of death.
    _Perfecta charitas foras mittit timorem_: a lover
    feareth not, but rejoiceth at the approach of the
    beloved. Hence, the joy of our holy martyr seemed still
    to increase with his danger, and was fully accomplished
    by an assurance of death. The very night before he
    died, being now, as it were, at heart's ease, he went
    to bed at eleven o'clock, and slept quietly and soundly
    till four in the morning, at which time his man,
    who lay in the room with him, awaked him; so little
    concern had he upon his spirit, or, rather, so much
    had the loveliness of the end beautified the horror
    of the passage to it. After he certainly knew that
    God Almighty had chosen him to the crown and dignity
    of martyrdom, he continually studied how to divest
    himself of himself, and become more and more an entire
    and perfect holocaust, to which end, as he gave up his
    soul, with all its faculties, to the conduct of God,
    so, for God's sake, he resigned the care and disposal
    of his body to unworthy me, etc. But I neither can nor
    dare undertake to describe unto you the signal virtues
    of this blessed martyr. There appeared in him something
    beyond expression--something more than human; the most
    savage and hard-hearted people were mollified and
    attendered at his sight."

About two years afterward, this pious clergyman, upon being
liberated, disinterred the body of the late primate, and had it
forwarded to the convent of his order at Lambspring in Germany;
the trunk and legs he had buried in the churchyard attached to that
institution, and the right arm and head he preserved in separate
reliquaries. The former is still preserved in the Benedictine
Convent; the latter is in Dundalk, in the Convent of St. Catharine
of Sienna, a nunnery founded by the favorite niece of the martyred
prelate.

Dr. Plunket's judicial murder was the source of great grief to the
friends of the church throughout Europe, and even many contemporary
Protestant writers expressed their regret at his unmerited
sufferings, while the unfortunate agents of his death, becoming
outcasts and wanderers, generally ended their lives on the scaffold
or in abject poverty, bemoaning their crimes, to the pity and horror
of Christendom. The memory of Dr. Plunket, one of the most learned
and heroic of the long line of Irish bishops, is sacredly and
lovingly preserved in his own country and in the general annals of
the church; and let us hope, in the language of the Rev. Monsignor
Moran, who has done so much by his researches to perpetuate the name
and fame of his glorious countryman, "that the day is not now far
distant when our long-afflicted church will be consoled with the
solemn declaration of the Vicar of Christ, that he who, in the hour
of trial, was the pillar of the house of God in our country, and who
so nobly sealed with his blood the doctrines of our faith, may be
ranked among the martyrs of our holy church."

FOOTNOTES:

[107] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.

[108] Marangoni: _Life of the Servant of God_, Father Buonsignore
Cacciaguerra.




MARY CLIFFORD'S PROMISE KEPT.


It was the day after a storm. The morning had been cool, almost
cold; banks of cloud were piled up on the horizon; the summits of
the friendly Franconias were shrouded; the White Mountains were
invisible, and the wind whistled and howled, reminding one of "the
melancholy days" to come. By afternoon, however, there was a change.
Every cloud had magically disappeared, the wind had gone down,
fields and young maples seemed to have renewed their early green,
and everything stood out in clear relief, bathed and steeped in
September sunshine. Not a red-letter day, but a golden day; one to be
remembered.

I believe I shall remember it all my life, even if there should be
days as bright and far happier in store for me. I was in an open
buggy with a gentleman named Mr. Grey, I driving and he calling my
attention to one thing after another, and both of us rejoicing in
a light-hearted way in the sun, and sky, and yellow leaves, and
roadside trees laden with crimson plums; in the golden-rod, and
purple asters, and the bee-hives, and picturesque, bare-footed,
white-headed children; and in ourselves and each other, and in our
youth and strength; and in the sunny present, and the mysterious,
enchanted future.

"I never knew the animal go so well before," said Mr. Grey; "you seem
to understand how to make him do his best. Only remember that the
faster we go, the sooner we shall get home. Will you not sacrifice
your fancy for fast driving, to my enjoyment of the drive? Give me
time to realize how much I enjoy it."

"You always seem to feel as if stopping to think about it will make
the time go slower," I said.

"It does to me, I assure you, at least at the moment. Yet I do not
find, in looking back, that this past month has flown any less fast,
for all my little arts to detain it. Here comes the stage, crowded as
usual, inside and out. I wonder whether we make a part of the picture
to them, and whether they will remember us with it? The mountains
before them--look back, Miss Clifford, and see; that crimson maple on
your side of the road; and this green hill with its firs and rocks on
mine."

I laughed. "I don't believe they will ever think of us again."

"Then they are not appreciative. Don't think I mean to take any of
their supposed notice to myself, except so far as I am with you. To
me, all the rest, all that we can see and admire, is the frame, the
setting as it were, to your face. It has been so ever since I came
here."

I found this somewhat embarrassing, of course, though Mr. Grey spoke
in a simple, matter-of-fact way, that had the effect of veiling the
compliment. He did not seem to expect an answer, and continued,
"That reminds me of 'In Memoriam.' Do you recall the lines about the
'diffusive power'?"

"No; I don't know what you mean. Repeat them, won't you?"

"I have no doubt you will find them familiar, yet I will repeat
them, because I like them so much." And he recited these lines, which
I write down, because they bring before me the whole scene, and I
seem to hear again the low voice and the appreciating accent with
which he spoke:

      "Thy voice is on the rolling air;
        I hear thee where the waters run:
        Thou standest in the rising sun,
      And in the setting thou art fair.

      "What art thou, then? I cannot guess;
        But, though I seem in star and flower
        To feel thee some diffusive power,
      I do not therefore love thee less.

      "My love involves the love before;
        My love is vaster passion now;
        Though mixed with God and nature thou,
      I seem to love thee more and more.

      "Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
        I have thee still, and I rejoice,
        I prosper, circled with thy voice;
      I shall not lose thee, though I die."

"Can you imagine feeling so about any one?" asked Mr. Grey.

"I can imagine it. Do you suppose that Mr. Tennyson's friend was
really so much to him?"

"Perhaps," he said gravely. "I'll tell you, Miss Clifford, what I
think about that. It is not right to feel so about anybody, because
that is exactly the way we ought to feel about God. Don't you see
that it is? If everything reminded us of him, it would be just right."

"I can't believe it would be possible to make God so personal to us.
We think naturally of what we know and have seen, not of what we
merely believe in."

"Ah! but God may be 'personal to us,' as you say. You forget that he
is near us, with us, and even in us. That would be the only way, it
seems to me, of loving him with our mind, and soul, and strength,
because we can't help loving all this beauty in everything. Just as
Tennyson says,

      'My love involves the love before,
      I seem to love thee more and more.'"

There was a bough of deep-red leaves overhead, and I looked longingly
at it, for they were just the color that I liked to wear in my hair;
yet I did not want to ask for it, lest Mr. Grey should think that I
had not been attending to him. He must have seen the look, though,
for he jumped out of the buggy and ran up the bank to get the branch.
I stopped the horse, thinking, as I watched the capturing of the
prize, "I might have known my wish would be anticipated. Every one
but he waits to be asked and thanked." When he came back, I told him
I was tired of driving, and asked him to take the reins.

"May I spin the drive out?" he asked. "You are not in a hurry to have
it over, are you? Do you know it is the only time we have ever driven
together?"

"Why, I thought we had taken a great many other drives. What are you
thinking of?"

"We have driven often, as you say, with parties of other people, but
have we ever taken a drive by ourselves before?"

"No," I returned; "you are right."

"It is a part of the whole," continued he. "I have been in a kind of
dream for a month. I dread the awakening, though everything reminds
me of it now. It has been a new experience to me, this boarding
with other people and seeing them so familiarly. There is no way
of getting into easy and friendly relations with others in a very
short space of time so effective as this; and, as the household has
happened to be a very pleasant one, I have enjoyed the experiment
greatly; though it is strange to think that I may never see any of
our number again."

"You are really very flattering, Mr. Grey," I said, a little hurt.
"Then I am never to see you again! I am glad you have given me
warning, or I might have invited you to visit us in Boston, next
winter."

"You are kind, very kind," he answered hastily; "nothing would give
me greater pleasure than to meet you, but I shall not be in America
next winter. I hope to be in Rome."

"Really!" I exclaimed. "Why are you going to Rome? To be a priest?"

"No, I am not so fortunate as to have that vocation. I am going
abroad to try to find a wife, singular as it may appear."

"It does seem strange that a man with such strong American feelings
as you should wish to have a foreign wife."

"I want to marry a Catholic," he said, switching off the tops of the
golden-rod with the whip.

"And are there no Catholic wives to be obtained here?" I asked,
smiling.

"No doubt; though I have not yet found the one I am looking for.
Among converts there are girls who suffer for their faith, who
are called upon to make sacrifices, to lose position, and the
approbation, even the affection, of their friends. 'It is so odd!'
they say, 'so unnecessary, to break away from early associations,
and from forms of worship which have been sufficient for all their
friends--and very good people too--and embrace a foreign religion.'
Haven't you heard such remarks?"

I acknowledged that I had, adding, "And I don't wonder at it."

"Among these brave girls," he continued, not noticing my remark, "one
meets heroism, fervor, and a practical recommendation of the religion
for which they are proud to suffer; but I also want to see what I
shall find in other countries--women who have grown up in a Catholic
atmosphere, and acquired their faith unconsciously, as the breath of
their lives. These have developed into beautiful forms of grace and
piety, as delicate as flowers, and, like them, breathing innocence
and purity such as no other education can give or even preserve."

"Do you mean to say that innocence and purity cannot be found among
Protestant girls?" I asked sarcastically.

"I am sure I hope they can," he answered earnestly; "yet do not be
offended if I say, not in the same degree. You cannot conceive,
Miss Clifford, of the beauty of a soul which has been guarded and
sustained from infancy by the graces and sacraments of the church,
and has kept its baptismal whiteness without stain. It is not often
found, even within the church, and is, I believe, nearly impossible
outside it."

"I hope you'll find this angel next winter. Please let me know when
you discover her, for I should like to see her."

He was silent, and as I was thinking about a good many things, we
drove on very quietly for some time.

It may seem strange that I should remember so well what Mr. Grey
said to me that golden September afternoon, and as I think I know
the reason of it, I will write it down as frankly as I have written
the description of our drive so far, and as I mean to put down all I
recall of it to the end.

Mr. Grey had boarded for a month in the same house with me and
my sister, and a dozen other people, all of whom we met for the
first time. My sister and I were the only persons whose society he
seemed to seek, and as she, not being strong, was obliged to keep
quiet, I had seen more of him than any one else. He was very polite
and pleasant to every one, and the whole household liked him;
yet he never talked to the other ladies as he did to me, nor paid
them the same watchful little attentions. He thought me pretty,
and had a curious, unconscious way of alluding to it that did not
seem offensive like common flattery, and there was a delicacy and
appreciation about his treatment of me that was original and very,
very pleasant.

True, he was a Catholic, and a very devout one, having his religious
books and papers always with him, and talking of his faith with
real enjoyment to any one who showed the smallest interest. Rose,
my sister, had talked with him once or twice, and to her he very
soon expressed his disapproval of marriage between Catholics and
non-Catholics (as he called them), and declared his determination
never to marry at all if he could not have a Catholic wife. Rose had
alluded to this in my presence, so he knew that I understood what his
intentions were. On account of this understanding, there was more
freedom and less constraint in our intercourse than would otherwise
have been; and as he was a gentleman, and an educated one, I found
great pleasure in being with him and in his sympathy. His attentions,
unobtrusive, thoughtful, and constant, were not only acceptable to
me, but in that short month I had come to depend upon them more than
I was aware of, forgetting that when they ceased it would be harder
for me than if I had never received them.

Mr. Grey had never talked to me exactly in the way that he did that
afternoon, and because I thought it unusual I have been able to
recall what he said in nearly his very words.

We were on our way home, walking up a long hill, when he said:

"I have thought a good deal of you lately, and of a feeling I have
had about you from the first--as if it were a great merit in you to
be so lovely, and sweet, and charming, and that any one who felt and
appreciated your loveliness as I have owed you a kind of debt, as it
were, which it would be an honor and a happiness to try to pay."

His face was turned from me, and he trailed the whip-lash in the
road, while I, leaning back, could not help looking at him, and,
because I did not know what to say, I laughed.

He continued: "Yet with that thought came the realization of its
injustice; for you cannot help your prettiness, and you are clever
because it is natural to you; and I thought, 'Now, if I am just, I
shall pay my debt not to her, who did not make herself, but to God,
who made her. I shall love not only the beauty, but also the Giver
and Perfecter of it.' Would not that be better, Miss Clifford?"

"Yes, I suppose so. I understand what you mean. Only, then, why have
you been so good to me?" I had to look away, for my voice trembled
and my eyes were suddenly full of tears.

"Why? Because it has made me happy, and I have been unjust; because
I have said to myself, 'This is a dream--a sweet and charming dream.
Soon I shall wake and go back to real life; for the present, let me
be weak and enjoy it.'"

The glory of the sunshine was departing, the hills were in deep
shadow, and the slanting rays were no longer warm and cheering. Mr.
Grey wrapped my shawl round me, just as I remembered that I had one
in case I should need it.

When I could speak steadily, I remarked: "Something that you have
said makes me think of the parable of the talents. It has always
perplexed me. Will you tell me if you think I have a talent, and what
I am to do with it? I don't want to bury it in the ground."

"Your talents are clear enough, I am sure," he answered. "Your power
of pleasing and making yourself loved is one."

"And what am I to do with it?"

"Why, do good with it. You have done me good."

"Ah! but that is because you are good, not because I am," I said
sadly.

"I am not good, though perhaps the _reason_ why you have done me good
lies more with me than you. I don't suppose--forgive me for saying
it--that your beauty was given you only to win men's hearts, because
that does not make them happy, or better."

"You are thinking, I suppose, of Mr. Falconer. I am sure I did not
want him to fall in love with me, and make such a fuss. It was very
uncomfortable."

"And don't you think you might have helped it? Really, now, Miss
Clifford?"

"Well, yes, I might perhaps have stopped him if I had been rude and
disagreeable to him."

"I don't believe you are ever that to any one. You try to please
everybody."

"There! that is just it!" I exclaimed. "Why, isn't that using my
talent, taking for granted I have it? What ought I to do with it?"

"I know what a Catholic girl would think of, because Catholics
are taught in all things to acknowledge God, and to refer all to
him. Think what this gift of beauty is--the key to all hearts;
it challenges and receives love as soon as seen. Don't you feel
instantly attracted by a beautiful face, and turn with pleasure and
affection toward the possessor, before she has given any evidence of
other claims to be loved?"

"Yes; and for a person who can't help wanting to please and to be
loved, it is an advantage, isn't it?"

"It is more than that, it is the gift of God; and therefore intended
for good. The saints were in the habit of saying, 'God created all
this beauty in order to lead me to love him.' Now, if a woman thinks
of this, she will not prize her beauty for the purposes of vanity,
but to lead her admirers to something higher than herself. I grant
you this is not common, nor would a woman think of it, unless she had
been taught to think of God as the first principle of her life. But I
will not preach any more."

"You remind me of my little 'Mrs. Barbauld.' How long it is since I
have thought of it! 'The rose is beautiful; but he that made the rose
is more beautiful than it. It is beautiful; he is beauty.'"

"I have been unusually serious, perhaps because I have felt the
end of the dream drawing very near. I am going away the day after
to-morrow."

The sunset clouds had faded away, and the stars were coming out
above our heads. We had reached the top of one more long hill, and
there was the little meeting-house before us, and we saw beyond our
own white cottage, with a light in the parlor-window, showing that
tea-time was passed. Mr. Grey spoke again.

"Have you enjoyed this drive?"

"I have very much."

"Have I said anything to hurt or offend you?"

"No, indeed, Mr. Grey. On the contrary, you have given me something
to think about. No one ever spoke to me in this way before."

"And do you think you shall be likely to remember this afternoon? and
with pleasure?"

"I shall not be likely to forget it."

"Well, then, I have an odd fancy, and it is this. I want you to
promise me, after I have left this beautiful place and you, that you
will write a description of this drive, as if to an unknown third
person, with the details and necessary explanations. I will do the
same. Then, if we meet again, you can read mine and I yours, if we
like, and look back to this time. Will you promise?"

I considered a minute, and then said, "I think I can see that such a
description will not be an easy thing to me; yet, if it is your wish,
of course, Mr. Grey, I promise."

"We may meet after many years, you an old lady and I an old man; and
these accounts will bring back to us this perfect day, and all that
we have seen and felt."

I looked at him and smiled. "Mr. Grey, I have been invited to spend
a year abroad with some friends, and my father says I may go if I
choose. We may meet next winter, in Rome."

       *       *       *       *       *

And in Rome we did meet, sure enough--that Rome to which "all roads
lead." I began to take one of those roads soon after Mr. Grey's
departure. I found it a road "so plain that a fool could not err
therein," a "path of peace." And when we stood side by side in the
Rome of the Seven Hills, he made up his mind to share the seventh
sacrament with a "convert girl."




THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.

TRANSLATED FROM THE "CARITA."


I.

So great and painful are the sufferings and terror now weighing upon
the nations of Europe that, setting every other subject aside, it is
toward that the mind necessarily turns, and we will accordingly lay
before our readers the deeply rooted convictions we entertain, not
merely in reference to the year gone by, but to that on which we are
just entering. These convictions take within their scope the present
most deplorable and shameful condition of Europe, and a future that
cannot be very far distant. But which of these subjects shall we
undertake to discuss? Or, were we to satisfy the necessity there
seems for the treatment of both, should we be thereby exceeding the
limit of our obligation as journalists? Nothing is easier, nothing
more agreeable in our case, than to satisfy both the one and the
other. For, if we place before our readers our reflections on the
present and future of the Christian nations of Europe, we shall be
at the same time defining and specifying the principal field of our
studies.

I will then examine into the reasons of the present condition of the
church and of civilization, and I will do so with a mind as free
as may be from prejudice and the heat of passion. After judging of
events by the great laws of history, I will endeavor to trace out
the path which ideas and facts must follow at no distant period. My
words will indeed be addressed in an especial manner to the true
children of the church, but I do not doubt that they will indirectly
reach some who are removed and even separated from us. Neither do I
deny that I am animated by the hope of helping to sustain the courage
of my brethren, so that each one may be able to say to himself,
_Modicæ fidei quare dubitasti_.


II.

Towards the close of the year 1869, and the commencement of the year
that followed, two solemn utterances resounded through Europe and
agitated the nations of the universe. The first of these proceeded
from the Roman Pontiff, the convener of the Œcumenical Council; the
other was the cry of modern civilization, proclaiming its own power
and its ideas of universal progress. Both utterances were of solemn
import, but the one was in contradiction to the other. The first, or
that of the Pontiff, with all the weight of his divine authority,
laid open to view the true principles of the other, and strove to
reclaim it to Christ with the new and more effulgent light of truth
and the more ardent fire of charity. Such words ought indeed to have
found an echo and penetrated through every fibre of the universe, for
they were in substance the language of love; from love they came,
and to love they tended. Had they thus been accepted by the nations,
we should not have had now so many sufferings to undergo, nor been
menaced by a future still more calamitous. The other utterance,
that of modern civilization, inspired by the idea that it was an
invincible and independent power, spurned the thought not merely
of supernatural aid, but even of supernatural authority. Moreover,
in proof of its power, it collected then under distinct heads all
the evidences of the progress of the present age, proffering them
as an infallible guarantee of new and still greater progress in
the immediate future. Thousands listened with credulity to such
language, and, opening their hearts to glorious dreams of the future,
exulted over the hopes they had conceived with a joy whose folly
was unquestionable, though it would be hard to pronounce whether it
proceeded most from impiety or pride. It is, however, a satisfaction
to speak with boldness and candor, calling things by their right
names: such joy was foolish, because it was at once both proud and
impious. The words of the Supreme Pontiff were derided, and abuse and
calumnies of every description were heaped with a lavish hand on the
acts of the Œcumenical Council.

Now, assuming the active opposition of these two powers, what
consequences must result from it in the domain of facts? The problem
is unquestionably an important one, and we must treat it by first
going back and tracing it downward from first principles.


III.

The decree of the Pope when summoning an Œcumenical Council may be
defined as the supreme exercise of his authority; and the council
so assembled is the greatest and most universal act of the power of
good with which the church has been invested; she who is the City of
God, yet a pilgrim upon earth. Reasoning on these same questions, a
year ago, I recollect having thus expressed myself: "Assuming that
the life of the Catholic Church is _charity_ both in its source and
its organization, and that the Papacy is the central seat of charity;
what, then, is the Œcumenical Council, that supreme act of the Papacy
and the church? The answer is not difficult: it is the supreme act
of charity peculiar to Catholicity, and is therefore that power of
supernatural love which is alone strong enough to combat with and put
to flight the gigantic and many-sided egotism of the times we live
in."

Now, such an act of this all-powerful charity did the church initiate
on the 8th day of December, 1869--a day that will live for ever
in the memory of posterity, and never fail to be spoken of with
blessings. To the eyes of Catholics, the Council of the Vatican
appeared--and such it is--a new and living fountain of hope. It
seemed as if the yearnings of three centuries and many generations
were at last to be gratified by this council. It seemed, in a special
manner, as if the tendencies and wants of the nineteenth century
converged toward this council, like rays to a common centre. And
here, the better to understand the truth of these sentiments, we
trust it will not be unacceptable to our readers if we lay before
them what we ourselves--partakers in and witnesses of the universal
conscience--published on the very day on which the Œcumenical Council
opened in the Vatican:

    "And, in truth, what is the council in relation to
    the nineteenth century? It is the desire of all, a
    something longed and sighed for by all minds and all
    hearts, the ideal of the noblest and most generous
    aspirations that now assert their sway over the spirit
    of man. Nor is it that only, but it is likewise what
    was needed to meet the most urgent and widespread
    want of our age. It will doubtless appear strange
    to very many that the council should be styled the
    desire of all men, but such is nevertheless the fact;
    consciously or unconsciously, all longed for it: all,
    those who hail it and those who curse it, those who
    believe in it and those who despise it. Yes, all; he
    who exalts our age, and he who bewails its errors, he
    whose heart is rejoiced, and he who sheds tears over
    the events of our century; princes and people, the
    priesthood and the laity, religion and civilization,
    faith and science. Assuredly, were any additional proof
    necessary to demonstrate to conviction, by the evidence
    of reason and history, that the Papacy is the heart of
    humanity, the heart in which all the aspirations of
    humanity converge and unite, here would be the proof
    in the summons that convened this Œcumenical Council.
    For, from the various and opposite judgments passed
    upon our age, some in adulation, others in blame, one
    thing is evident, and all agree in admitting it, that
    the tendencies of our age are directed by a twofold
    attraction toward union and liberty. These guiding
    influences are in themselves most powerful, noble, and
    exalted, because they mirror the infinite, absolute,
    and supreme unity of God. Liberty is the image and
    proof of the Infinite Being, for he alone is truly
    free, and the spirit which tends by love toward him
    is adorned with liberty, and possesses the power of
    reducing its free will to act. Union is the shadow and
    effect of the divine union, because the one God, one
    Truth, one Good, one Beauty, can alone sweetly and
    strongly bring into accord the wills and understandings
    of men, and cause them to harmonize in the limitless
    range of space, and the vicissitude and diversity of
    time."

Now, two such qualities and tendencies of humanity, acting in an
especial manner, or, in other words, more powerfully and universally
than ever before, rule over and exalt our age. He who should say that
these two tendencies, naturally common to all men, all times, and
all places, had become the passions of the age, and even its most
ardent passions, would express our ideas on this subject, and give an
adequate description of the times in which we live.

Liberty, then, and union, are the cry from every quarter, the
thought, desire, hope, strength, and occupation of all intellects,
of all classes, of everything that belongs to man, from the highest
to the lowest. Trades, business, and commerce cry aloud for
liberty, and for union with liberty. The free co-operation of the
industrial arts and workmen's societies, of societies of merchants
and banking-houses, are ideas and facts so common in these days that
the dominion of the two tendencies referred to above is clearly
made manifest in the lower order of civilization. And this order,
quickened by such ideas and making use of such aids, becomes the
instrument of new liberty and still greater union. Thus, the power
of steam triumphing over the obstacles of matter, and the speed of
electricity overcoming the resistance of space and time, favor the
free expansion of nation toward nation, and make, I might almost say,
one single society out of the most distant nations.

Rising from this lower order of civilization, the industries of every
kind, to what is far nobler, that of science, we observe the same
aspirations, perhaps more universally diffused and more passionate
in degree toward liberty and union. Freedom of thought, freedom of
education, freedom of speech and of the press, seem to be the idols
of the day; for, strange to say, freedom of the intellectual life is
deemed by very many not as the dowry of science, but the fundamental
principle of all human instruction. There exists, also, with this
desire for intellectual freedom, a craving after union. Scientific
congresses, either general or confined to some particular branch of
knowledge, succeed each other at no distant intervals, sometimes in
one place and sometimes in another, so as to unite men of intellect
whom distance of space had kept asunder. The literary journals,
whose number is so great as to excite amazement, have become the
arena for the free diffusion of thought; they keep alive the work of
the scientific congresses, and spread its knowledge--spreading it
in such a manner as to complete the intellectual union of the human
race, by making the speculations of the great men of science familiar
to the most ordinary intellects.

Turning our gaze from the industrial and intellectual to the moral
life, that is to say, to the life of society, the two aspirations
appear stronger and more manifest; so strong and manifest that we
might be tempted to call them insane and mischievous. To the cry
of liberty, the civilized nations of earth respond with transport,
and rise in rebellion against whatever can be shown to be in any
way opposed to freedom. Never in previous times were such social
changes witnessed, so unexpected, so general, so profound, and
carried through with so much enthusiasm, as those just enacted and
initiated with the cry of liberty. The political organization of
nations, the administrative control of provinces and municipalities,
have all been regulated by the principle of free election, freedom of
vote and opinion. The slavery of man to man, a lamentable relic of
paganism, has been abolished in many places by legal enactment, and
is universally looked on with more repugnance than heretofore. After
the hard-fought battles in North America on the question of slavery,
the negroes there have been raised to the dignity of freemen.

No less vigorous and resistless has been the tendency toward social
union. The principle of nationality has traversed all Europe with
the rapidity of lightning, kindling as it passed the minds of men,
exciting and agitating them in a wonderful manner. Even as we
write, the cry for unions still more comprehensive--the union of
races--strikes upon our ears.

It is, then, an indisputable fact, a fact whose evidence is clear
to all and is admitted by all, that the aspirations of our age are
towards union and liberty.

We shall therefore hail the council as the final goal of these
aspirations of the human race. And yet, in saying this, we have not
stated all that the council implies; for it serves also to satisfy
an essentially human want that equals those twofold aspirations,
or, to speak more correctly, is still stronger and more universal
than they. What, then? Shall it be said that the aspirations and
wants of the human mind are not directed to the same object? Most
assuredly; the end, but not the immediate object, is the same. They
proceed from different impulses: the one arises from the tendencies
of the age, but without any regard to the good or evil qualities
inherent in such tendencies; the other is the result of a vice that
modifies and corrupts such tendencies, a vice that may prove fatal
to nations, alluring them by the cry of liberty and union to slavery
and desolation. The want we refer to argues a vice to be corrected,
an infirmity to be healed, a danger to be shunned, express it as we
will; but let us not deny the fact, a most sad and painful one, for
which the council furnishes a sovereign and most efficacious remedy.

But what, it will be asked, is this vice which degrades the noble
aspirations for liberty and union, and causes such misery to nations?
It is the rejection of authority--a rejection absolute and unlimited,
that has penetrated into every relation of human life. The better,
however, to make our sentiments clear on this subject, and to bring
under consideration, not the existence of such a vice, but the cause
that produced it, we must trace the question back to its source.

The fundamental dogma of the Protestant Reformation gave birth at the
same instant to a double negation--the rejection of liberty and of
union--so that the servitude of the human will and individualism were
exalted to the dignity of a principle. It seems like a contradiction
that the basis of Protestantism, namely, private interpretation,
which is the rejection of a supreme authority, should have led in
its consequences to servitude. But the contradiction disappears
when we reflect that so necessary is authority to man that he will
bow to fatalism or force if he has no legitimate authority to which
to turn. History bears evidence that two centuries and a half of
debasing servitude and cruel separations followed. Such a long period
of slumber must necessarily have had an awakening; for the innate
tendencies of humanity may for a time grow faint or dormant, but they
can never be extinguished. Moreover, should they, for any length of
time, be checked in their natural expansion, this necessity grows to
gigantic proportions, till it sweeps before it every obstacle like a
torrent in its impetuous course. Such was the result to be expected,
and which really took place, at the close of the eighteenth century.
But the minds of men having been seduced by the sophistries of the
Reformation, the new era of liberty and union must of necessity
reflect its deceitful philosophy. Therefore, liberty and union, when
they arose, cast aside the principle of authority, as Protestantism
had done at its first appearance. Liberty rejected religion to become
atheistical, and fraternity or union affiliated itself to pantheism.

And, in truth, atheism and pantheism--two systems that harmonize
because they are convertible--have penetrated into and made conquests
in every condition of life. Fourierism and the abuse of industrial
unions, while rejecting authority, have touched materialism on the
one side and communism on the other, and are the atheistic and
pantheistic forms of labor. Freedom of speculation, by spurning
at every authoritative principle, has ended in rationalism; the
systematizing of science has fallen into pantheism or syncretism;
rationalism and syncretism are the atheistic and pantheistic forms
of the intellectual life. The modern code of morality and justice,
by stripping liberty and the brotherhood of mankind of legitimate
authority, have ended in naturalism and socialism, the atheistic and
pantheistic forms of society.

Now, these two vices, atheism and pantheism, the leading errors of
the day, have changed the universal movement toward liberty and union
into matter for the deepest and keenest sorrow. In the midst of the
immense riches that our age has been accumulating through its free
and associated industries, there seems to be nothing that man touches
that can cheer or console him in the solitude of his heart, and, free
lord as he is of matter, yet he feels himself its slave, because he
has made it the grave of his noblest aspirations. It might almost
be said that matter, subjugated in so many ways by the liberty and
union existing among men in these days, was secretly tyrannizing over
and dividing them, denying man's authority over it because man has
himself cast off the true and supreme authority raised over him. In
the same manner, in the life of thought all our knowledge is felt to
be, as was said of old, but vanity, and a vanity that crushes and
keeps us asunder from one another. Many, yes, very many, agree in
crying loudly for liberty and the union of intellect, but theirs are
merely outward words--words which do not respond to the real life
of man's intellectual powers. We shall proclaim openly that it is a
falsehood, and a falsehood by which man strives to deceive himself,
and, if possible, conceal his sorrow. Without fear of error, we can
say that modern science tyrannizes in secret over the intellects of
men, and divides them, because liberty and the union of intellects
rejected or rather usurped the supreme control over the minds of
men. Rationalists and pantheists cannot deny this; we appeal to
the truthful testimony of their own consciences and of history; we
appeal to the candid avowal of Frederick Schelling. Is it not true
that, beneath the pompous appearances of liberty and union, the
inner powers of thought are under the grievous yoke of so-called
systems, and, in addition, are slaved and tormented by secret and
constant doubts? Is it not true that great differences exist among
men of intellect, who reject to-day what was believed yesterday,
and that there is no agreement whatever in the greatest and most
important principles? To sum up: the intellectual life of the
nineteenth century has neither interior liberty nor union, because
with Protestantism it has denied the principle which could alone give
freedom and unity to the minds of men, and this denial is the only
instance of that liberty and union of which it makes so great a boast.

Neither in regard to the moral and social life of nations is the case
in any way different. From the atheistical liberty of an independent
morality has resulted the interior servitude of the will, which means
the truly despotic empire of passions most degrading to the mass
and the individual and the despotic atheism of states. And from the
pantheistic union exhibited in the practice of centralization and the
theory of socialism, there resulted a sanguinary war in the heart of
Christendom: a war of the state with the church, of the people with
monarchy, a war of everything in subjection against everything in
authority. Hence we see in the most civilized countries the despair
of its noblest citizens, men like the younger Brutus and Cato;
hence the despondency of the higher station, blended with scorn and
indignation; hence the frantic aims of the populace breaking forth
into rebellion; hence the enormous standing armies; hence amidst the
shouts for liberty and fraternity the nations are arming, and every
citizen is enrolled a soldier.

If such, then, is the condition of the age and the ferment in the
minds of men, if such is the condition of the populations, what,
let us ask, is at present the great, the urgent want of mankind?
To contradict the sentiment of union and liberty would be madness;
to contradict the atheism of liberty and the pantheism of union is
wisdom and true charity, and therein safety is to be found; for,
take away pantheism from union, and atheism from liberty, there
will remain union and true liberty both exteriorly and interiorly.
And assuming that the deadly principles of atheism and pantheism
sprang from Protestantism, which rejected the Papacy, the supreme
personification of power, the return to authority, the true and only
source of liberty and union, is the great and universal want of the
present age.


IV.

To satisfy so great a want, the City of God, exercising the most
perfect act of its power of goodness and love, convoked the Council
of the Vatican. But in opposition to the City of God in its exercise
of this supreme act of love and goodness, stands the City of Satan,
which has always combated it, and will continue to do so to the end
of time. It was, therefore, an easy matter to predict that the City
of Satan would assuredly put forth its utmost powers of evil in
opposition to that supreme effort of the church of Christ. Such a
conclusion would be warranted both by reason and history. By reason,
inasmuch as humanity may well be likened to a battle-field, wherein
the powers of good and evil contend for mastery, falsehood, and
truth, the old Adam and the new, Cain and Abel, Satan and Christ,
so that a state of warfare may be said to be the law of this life;
and as no real progress can be made but as the result of a hard-won
victory, it follows logically that our own age, being subject to
the same law, must pass through a terrible conflict. History bears
evidence to the same effect, how at critical times the whole powers
of evil rose up in terrible conflict against the great undertakings
of the church. And I will add that as the work of the Vatican
Council was to bring to light in a special manner the naturalism
of modern civilization, which deduces its origin from atheism and
pantheism, and afterwards to strengthen and exhibit in a clearer
light the supreme authority of the Pope, so, on the other hand,
modern civilization had to put forth all the strength it derived from
naturalism to crush the Papacy.

All this might have been and was foretold. Two periods are to be
distinguished in the brief existence of the Vatican Council: they are
those which correspond to the two sessions which the Pope presided
over in person. The first was directed specially against those
monster errors from which naturalism springs; the second, after not a
hasty but a long and comprehensive discussion, decreed the universal
supremacy of the papal authority, the supremacy of his teaching,
that is, the infallibility of the Pope, when he speaks (to use the
language of the schools) _ex cathedrâ_. You might have said, then,
that the great task of the council was ended, and time will perhaps
show that you would not have judged amiss.

However, the City of Satan was meanwhile no idle spectator, but
exerted its powers in many and various ways, yet so that it may be
said with truth that two of these corresponded singularly to the
two important periods of the council. In the first place, there was
witnessed a great and portentous gathering of free-thinkers from
all countries of the earth, and to this was assigned the title of
_Anticouncil_, to signify in the most open way possible the war
which the naturalism of the day is waging against the church and the
Papacy. But this gathering failed to accomplish anything, so that,
as was justly said, the infant cries of the new-born _Anticouncil_
were also the last gasp of its mortal agony. In vain, besides, were
all the efforts of the irreligious press, its sarcasms and calumnies;
in vain the intrigues of anti-christian diplomacy. In vain, too, was
that last effort, those appeals of discord flung into the camp of the
assembled bishops. Nor do I say all when I affirm that such guilty
efforts accomplished nothing against the council. I might have added,
and I do so without hesitation, that they shed additional lustre on
it. For, if they prove nothing else, they prove at least these two
truths: first, that all the efforts of the world and hell shall not
prevail against the church; _et portæ inferi non prevalebunt adversus
eam_; secondly, that the freedom and fulness of discussion that took
place in the council before defining dogmatically was greater than
its adversaries expected or even desired. A new proof, were any
such needed, that the church of Christ is neither an opponent nor a
weakener of the powers of human reason, but is the harmonizer of the
human element with the divine, of science with faith, of liberty with
supernatural authority.

This was the first great effort of the adversaries of the council,
but there soon followed a second. Peaceful opposition having failed,
it was easy to foresee that modern civilization would change its
mode of warfare, and instead of moral force would call to its aid
physical force and violence. But for this it was necessary that some
opportunity be given, and the invasion of Rome by ruffian bands
as contemplated was too hazardous an undertaking, so long as the
French eagle cast the shadow of its protection over the Vatican.
The opportunity wanted was not long in presenting itself. Strange
coincidence! At the very time when papal infallibility was added
to the dogmas of faith, and almost on the very day, war broke out
unexpected between France and Prussia. How Satan must have exulted
with ferocious joy at that terrible hour! Such a war seemed to supply
his city with the means of renewing its assaults on the City of God.

The Prussian minister Bismarck, the chief representative of modern
civilization, had been for a long time in closest alliance with the
double atheism of authority and modern liberty, that is to say, with
the autocracy of Russia and modern revolution, which both desired
the triumph of the German arms. In consequence of this alliance,
France came single-handed into the contest, while Prussia drew with
her all Germany. The Northern armies won astonishing victories, and
their allies shared in the advantages of them. Preponderance in the
East was again made practicable to the atheism of authority, and the
atheism of liberty took possession of Rome--Rome from whose walls,
through a blunder or a crime, the French government had withdrawn
its troops. As a consequence, the Pope was stripped of his temporal
power, and the council suspended.

This was the result of the war against the Papacy; this was the
crowning effort of the City of Satan against the City of God--an
effort in relation to which modern civilization showed more clearly
than before both its character and the end at which it aimed. All the
organs of the press that have sold themselves to the false spirit
of the age--and their number is very great--all with unanimity
of sentiment and in one chorus extolled the shameful outrage to
the skies, and made it the subject of a senseless triumph. And
what deserves notice, in as far as it goes to show the truth of
our opinions, is that all pronounced this exploit as the greatest
victory of modern civilization against Catholic superstition and the
theocracy of the middle ages.

Was it a real victory? And will it be lasting? Will it be in our
power, reverentially and with due timidity, to withdraw a little the
veil that covers the designs of Providence in reference to these
facts, and predict the future? The answer to these questions cannot
be briefly given, and must therefore form the subject of a future
article. Nevertheless, to close this article and prepare the minds
of our readers for what is to follow, I think it necessary to draw
a conclusion from the matters discussed, and it is this: that our
brethren in the faith have no reason in the world to be astonished
at the painful events happening in these times. Such things were
necessary--so necessary were they that we ourselves, a year ago,
ventured to predict this contest, when the political atmosphere was
still unclouded, and all around breathed an air of peace. "This new
year," said we on the first day of January, 1870, "will be doubtless
one of the most memorable of all recorded in history. In it, not two
ages, but two great eras meet and trace broadly their distinction
one from the other--an era that is closing, and one that is about to
begin. And in this same year, a momentous struggle will correspond to
the meeting of the two eras--the struggle of two contrary principles
which aim at the conquest of the human race. The two eras are, that
of Protestantism religious and civil, and that of Christian revival
in all the orders and relations of the Catholic Church. The two
principles are egotism and charity--egotism, which begot and animates
Protestantism, and charity, which is the life of Catholicity." The
conflict, fierce, terrible, and waged under different forms, was a
necessity; why, then, be astonished that what was to take place has
really happened? Is not the spouse of _him who espoused her with
his sacred blood_ sent forth to combat? Had this conflict not taken
place, we should have been tempted to say that it would be necessary
to call in question the great law of human history--_progress through
suffering_.

Away, then, with astonishment, which would be folly! Away with vain
fears! The church has combated and overcome all the moral force
brought to bear against the Papacy and the council, and shall it
tremble before brute force? Is not the first victory a most certain
pledge of the second?




THE HOUSE OF YORKE.


CHAPTER VII.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

One Saturday evening in June, the Seaton mail-coach, with two
passengers, drove out of the city of Bragon on its way eastward.
Both these passengers were gentlemen, and both young. One was large
and light-complexioned; the other, slight and dark. The large one
had a hard, white face, whose only expression seemed to be a fixed
determination to express nothing. Such a look is provoking. Let us
read a little of the man in spite of himself. People have no right to
shut themselves up in that way. One would say immediately that he is
what is called a very good man, one of those good men whom we praise,
and avoid: that is, he does not offend against the decalogue nor the
revised statutes. But there is a law radiant with a tenderer glory,
dropped, verse by verse, through the Scriptures, taught constantly by
the church, attested to human hearts by the very need of it, and that
law he keeps not. One wonders at such a man, and, in softer moods,
fancies pitifully that he aches under that icy coating, and that down
in the depths of his heart some little unfrozen spring perpetually
troubles his repose by its protesting, half-stifled murmur. One is
also exasperated by him. "In his society," as Miss Clara Yorke said
afterward, "one's thoughts and feelings become all puckered up." He
is indeed a powerful moral astringent.

As if conscious of our observation, he turns stiffly away, and
looks out of the window at his elbow, entertaining his mind with a
view of the spiders that hang from the beams of the covered bridge
through which they are driving. We are not to be baffled, however,
but can pursue our scrutiny. He has large, heavy white hands, his
broadcloth is of the finest, and in the breast-pocket of his coat is
a manuscript sermon. He would like to have us listen to that sermon,
but will not.

The gentleman who sits at this person's left is as different as could
well be. He has a thin face, a long nose inclining slightly upward
toward the end, and haggard, bright eyes. His forehead is high, and
all the hair is brushed straight back from it, and falls on his neck.
He has a small mouth, with lips so vividly red that they seem to be
painted. In his breast-pocket is a bottle of laudanum, which seems to
be very much at home there.

These gentlemen had never met before they stepped into the coach
together; and it would be safe to say that they had no ardent
desire to meet again. They were very slow, indeed, to improve the
opportunity afforded them to form an acquaintance, and probably would
have maintained a very formal demeanor toward each other, had not
circumstances forced them into a most undignified intimacy. There had
been a succession of pouring rains, and the roads were frightful,
heavy with mud, and full of pitfalls. After the coach got out of
the town and into the woods, their situation became very trying to
the passengers. To say nothing of the pain of bumps and bruises,
their dignity and sense of propriety were constantly being outraged
by their being thrown into each other's arms, or having their
heads knocked violently together. Under such difficulties, silence
became impracticable. Apologies became necessary, and exclamations
irrepressible. He of the sermon never said anything worse than "Bless
me!" but the other had occasionally to stifle an ejaculation which
would not have been so pleasant to hear.

The coach was due at Seaton at four o'clock in the morning; but
as hours passed, and still their motion was chiefly lateral and
perpendicular, their prompt arrival receded from a probability to a
possibility, and thence became impossible. They had started at nine
o'clock; and at three of the next morning they yet lacked nearly a
mile of reaching the half-way house where they were to change horses.
At that point one of the wheels suddenly slipped into a deep rut.
The four steaming horses strained and tugged till they started the
coach, when it immediately gave a lee-lurch, and went into a hole
at the other side. At the same moment, something, whatever it is
which holds horse and carriage together, snapped, and the quadrupeds
started off on their own account, leaving the coach and the bipeds to
follow at their leisure. The driver, having the reins in his hands,
was of course pulled off the box; but the road received him softly.
The passengers need have suffered no damage, but that the tall one,
having, curiously enough, the impression that they were being run
away with instead of from, jumped out of the coach with more haste
than discretion. The spot he sank into was the rut from which the
front wheel had just been drawn, and the result was that he emerged
upon the roadside in a deplorable masquerade, being clad in a
complete domino of well-mixed clay and water. Moreover, his ankle was
quite severely sprained.

"You'll have to walk to the half-way house, gentlemen," the driver
said, calmly wiping the mud from his face. He had been over that
road too many times to be much disturbed at any mishap of the kind.
Having spoken, he shouldered the mail-bags, and started in advance.
It was full three minutes before the other passenger appeared, and,
when he did, his face was perfectly grave, though very red. He threw
a blanket he had found inside out into the road, and stepped on to
it. He next reached in and got a cushion, with which he completed
the bridge across the mud, then walked over them as unstained as
Queen Elizabeth over Raleigh's mantle, and stepped dry-shod in the
neatest of boots on to the rim of the delicate moss that spread its
carpet all along the roadside under the trees. Having landed safely,
he turned toward his companion, who was trying to wash himself in a
brook and scrape his clothes with sticks. "I should advise you, sir,"
he said, "to come right on to the house, and get a complete change of
clothing. It is useless to try to clean those."

The other was speechless, and seemed too much stupefied to do
anything more than obey.

Morning was just breaking, cloudless and beautiful, the forest was
fresh with June, and through it could be heard the elfish laughter of
brooks. While the travellers had through the night been racked and
tormented, conscious only of misery and mud, all around them nature
had reposed in her loveliness and purity, with her birds sweetly
nestled, her flowers dewwashed, her streams crystal-clear. Their
road had been like a foul thread woven across a beautiful web.

When they reached the half-way house, the tall traveller was in a
perfectly abject state. His pride had quite disappeared, his dignity
was nowhere to be seen. He allowed himself to be arrayed in a suit
of rough farming-clothes a good deal too short, in which he beheld
himself without a smile, and humbly begged his fellow-traveller to
bear a message from him to his expecting friends in Seaton. Not only
his toilet, but his sprained ankle would prevent his proceeding on
his journey for some hours at least. His name was Conway; he was a
Baptist minister, and was expected to preach in Seaton that day.
Would the gentleman be so good as to send word to the church, as
soon as he arrived, that their looked-for candidate had met with an
accident? He was not personally acquainted with any one in Seaton,
therefore could not direct him, but presumed that the driver could.

The gentleman with the bright eyes cordially promised, then asked for
breakfast and a clothes-brush, and the other withdrew to rest.

"There's not time to cook anything but coffee and fish," the landlord
said. "Passengers never stop here to breakfast; and the driver is
going on in fifteen minutes. But I'll do the best I can for you."

In ten minutes all was ready. The traveller brushed his clothes
scrupulously, combed his hair back in a silken wave, bathed his face
and hands, gave himself one more look to be sure that his toilet was
correct, then seated himself at table. The principal dish before him
was an eel fried in sections, then carefully put together, and coiled
round the plate.

"Not much of a breakfast," the landlord said. "But we haven't any
market here."

"Sir!" exclaimed the traveller in a deep voice, "I asked for fish,
and you give me a serpent! I would as soon--I would sooner eat of an
anaconda than an eel."

"I'm sorry you do not like it, sir," the man replied. "If we raised
anacondas here, you should have one; but we don't."

The traveller drank his coffee, and found it not bad. "I will try to
do without snakes, this morning," he remarked.

There were twelve miles yet to travel; but the road improved slightly
as they went on. Still it was tedious work; and when at last they
drove into the town, it was past ten o'clock, and the bells were
ringing for Sunday service.

When the coach reached the post-office, in the centre of the
town, the traveller jumped out, and asked to be directed to the
Universalist meeting-house. "And please send word to the Baptist
people of the accident which befell their minister," he said. "It
will be impossible for me to do so now."

The driver promised, and directed the stranger. "Go over the bridge
here, and up the hill, and you will come to a white meeting-house
with green blinds," he said.

The traveller hastily followed the direction, and soon came to a
house answering the description given. The congregation were all in
their seats; and as the new-comer breathlessly entered, he heard a
voice from the pulpit. "My beloved brethren," the voice said, "I am
sorry to inform you that the minister who was to have preached for us
to-day will not probably come. The stage has not come in, and has,
most likely, met with an accident. But since you have all gathered
together here to-day, it seemed to me a pity that you should go away
without hearing the word of life. I have therefore brought a volume
of sermons by the reverend--"

Here the deacon stopped at sight of the stranger hurrying up the
aisle, made an awkward gesture, took out his pocket-handkerchief,
and, finally, descended sheepishly at one side of the pulpit as our
belated traveller went up the other.

The minister seated himself on the red velvet sofa, which in the
temple occupied the place of an altar, fumbled a while in the
hymn-book for a hymn he could not find, wiped his heated face,
finally read at random. Presently there was heard from the gallery
over the entrance the faint twang of a tuning-fork, then a man's
voice feeling for the key, which he had to transpose from A to C.
Pouncing upon it at length in a stentorian _do_, he soared gradually
up through dominant to octave, the choir caught their parts, and the
hymn began. Unfortunately, however, in their haste they had selected
a common metre tune for a long metre hymn, as they discovered at the
end of the second line, where they found themselves in difficulty by
reason of two syllables which were unprovided for by the music, yet
could not well be left out.

While they were extricating themselves, and finding a more fitful
tune, the minister took breath, and looked round on his congregation.
They disappointed him. He had been informed that his hearers were
to be the young, progressive spirits of the town; and these looked
anything but young and progressive. They were nearly all old and
antiquated, and their faces struck a chill through him. They seemed
to be the faces of people who believe that one of the chief pleasures
of heaven consists in looking over the celestial battlements and
witnessing the torments of the condemned, rather than of those who
hold the comfortable doctrine of universal salvation. Stern, fateful,
stolid, they sat there, not even provoked to a passing smile by the
ludicrous _contretemps_ of the choir. The minister frowned. He was
tired, he had been irritated by his travelling companion, and now he
was bitterly disappointed. Seaton was a growing town that would soon
be a city, and he had looked forward with pleasure to the prospect of
being settled there. There seemed nowhere else for him to go, and he
was not rich, and he was homeless. The sight of this congregation,
which he saw at once he could never reconcile himself to, disturbed
him greatly. Moreover, in his haste he had forgotten to take his
morning dose of laudanum; and, altogether, but for a glimpse he got
of two faces near the pulpit, he might have marched down, and left
the deacon to read as many sermons as he chose. These two reconciling
faces belonged to Miss Melicent Yorke and her brother Owen, who were
visiting the different Seaton churches. The fair, tranquil face of
the lady, her delicate dress, her folded hands, even the wreath of
violets that rested on her flaxen hair, all made a pleasant picture
for the cultivated glance that swept over it. Of Owen he saw only the
top of the head, and the hand that covered his face. But his attitude
showed that he was hiding a laugh; and anybody who could laugh in
that congregation was balm to the minister's eyes. In those two he
felt sure of sympathy.

The hymn over, the minister read a psalm and repeated the Lord's
Prayer.

The congregation listened with lengthening faces. In fact, the
disapprobation was mutual. In the first place, they were shocked
that the candidate for their pulpit should travel on the Lord's day;
in the next place, his looks and manners were too little like those
of their former pastor, the Rev. Jabez True; thirdly, they had never
before had the Our Father foisted on them for a prayer. They were
accustomed to hear a long and explicit address to the Deity, in which
their wishes and thoughts were explained to him, and their praises
and thanks duly meted out--a prayer which they could talk about
afterward. Elder True had been gifted in prayer, and would sometimes
pray half an hour without a moment's hesitation. It was certainly a
very shabby thing to put them off with the Lord's Prayer.

Then came the sermon. Only two persons present knew that the text
was from the Koran. It was a story of a certain good man who had a
plantation of palm-trees, to which he used to call the poor, and give
them such fruit as the knife missed or the wind blew off. He died;
and his sons felt too poor to give anything away. So they agreed to
come early in the morning, and gather the fruit when the poor could
not know. But in laying their plans, they omitted to add, "If it
please God!" In the night a storm passed over the garden, and in the
morning it was as one where the fruit had all been gathered.

There are various ways in which such a text could be treated. Our
speaker, changing his plan at the last minute, irritated by the cold
and unsympathizing faces about him, and by his personal discomforts,
chose to enforce this thought: there are those who fancy that all
the fruits of grace are theirs, that they are the elect, and that
those outside of their walls shall perish with hunger while they are
feasting. Behold, the whirlwind of the wrath of God shall sweep away
the good they only seem to have, and leave them poorer than Lazarus.
It was a forced interpretation; but the speaker was dextrous, and
made himself appear consecutive even when he rambled most. With
passionate vehemence, he denounced those sanctimonious souls who
mistake a curvature of the spine for humility, and a nasal twang for
an evidence of grace. "I love not," he said, "those cold and heavy
souls that never take a generous fire. One wonders if they ever will
burn--under any future circumstances. They flatter themselves that
they are good and just and reasonable because they are emotionless.
It is not so. No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue safe
that is not enthusiastic. Is the diamond less fine because it is
brilliant? Has the sea no depth because it sparkles on the surface?
Would the cannon-ball go further flung by the hand than it does when
shot from the cannon's mouth? Is truth always a mountain crowned
with snow? It may be a volcano. A strong and sweet thinker has said,
'The wildest excess of passion does not injure the soul so much as
respectable selfishness does;' and he says rightly. I protest against
the apotheosis of phlegm. There are many phases of good, and each has
his way; but, for my part, I prefer the faults of heat to the faults
of cold. The former are often generous faults, the latter never so.
The faults of the former are on the surface, and can neither be
denied nor hidden; those of the latter are deep-rooted, and may be
and often are mistaken for virtues. Who were the great saints? Look
at the reckless Magdalen, the vehement St. Paul, the hasty St. Peter.
St. John of the Cross quotes as an axiom in theology the saying that
God moves all things in harmony with their constitution; and the
history of the world shows that, when he wanted to kindle a grand and
holy conflagration, he took for workers combustible men and women.
Among the apostles, the only one who was cold and calculating enough
to count money and think of the purse when the Lord was near enough
to set all their hearts on fire was Judas, and not the worst Judas in
the world either. For since his time many a pretended follower has
weighed the Holy One in a balance, and sold him for a price, and has
lacked the after-grace to hang himself."

"Let us pray!"

It was only when Miss Yorke and her brother rose, that the astonished
and scandalized congregation understood that the sermon was really
over, and they were to stand up and listen to a prayer.

The minister spoke in a voice yet vibrating with excitement: "O Lord
God of morning and evening, of storm and sunshine, of the dew that
bathes the violet and the frost that cracks the rock--God of the
east and the west, and all that lies between them--God of our souls
and our bodies, of bliss and of anguish--O God, who alone rewardest
failure, who for thy mantle, which eludes our grasp, givest us thy
hand to clasp--may all thy creatures adore thee! Our praise goes up
like the note of the small bird in the branches; but thou hast made
us weak. All power is thine! Our hearts swell and break at thy feet
as the waves break upon the shore; but thou hast set our limit. Space
is in the hollow of thy hand! We lift our eyes toward thee, and their
gaze is baffled; but thou, who seest all things, hast sealed their
vision. Glory and honor and power be unto thee, inscrutable Wisdom,
for ever and ever. Amen!"

"And he calls that a prayer!" thought the congregation.

"Why, it is like a Catholic prayer!" whispered Melicent to her
brother. "And he quotes St. John of the Cross, and the Koran, and
_Ecce Homo_. He must be an eclectic minister."

The congregation went out with very glum faces, and scattered to
their various homes. Only the deacon waited in the porch, as in duty
bound, to invite the minister home to dinner.

"I suppose you will go home with me, Brother Conway," he said,
freezingly.

"Conway!" echoed the minister. "You mistake, sir! My name is
Griffeth."

The deacon stared. "We were expecting the Reverend John Conway to
preach to-day, as a candidate for our pulpit," he said, eyeing Mr.
Griffeth suspiciously. "Do you come in his place?"

An expression of perplexity, instantly succeeded by one of poignant
amusement, passed over the minister's face. Then he became grave. "It
seems that I have come in his place," he said, "but most unwillingly.
Brother Conway met with an accident which delayed him. He sent his
regrets to you by me, and hopes he may be here this afternoon.
Good-morning, sir! I will not burden your hospitality to-day."

The deacon's face cleared. It was a blessed relief to find that they
would have no more to do with this man.

The stranger crossed the portico to where Melicent and Carl still
lingered, having overheard this conversation. "I beg your pardon!" he
said. "But will you have the kindness to tell me of what denomination
the church is in which I have been preaching?"

"It is Baptist," Carl replied; "of the kind, I think, they call
'Hard-shelled.'"

"God be praised!" ejaculated the minister. "I have got into the wrong
pulpit!"

Melicent immediately insisted on his going home with them. "We can at
least protect you from the Hard-shells until your own friends find
you," she said.

The invitation being cordially given, and seconded by Carl, the
minister thankfully accepted it, and they started on their homeward
way. "My blunder is likely to give great offence to one-half the
town, and great amusement to the other half," he said, as they went
along. "I am truly thankful to find a refuge from both."

Mrs. Yorke received her unexpected guest with the greatest kindness;
Mr. Yorke, with the greatest courtesy. It was one of the pleasantest
families in the world to visit. Not easily accessible to everybody,
nor quick to form intimacies, whomever they did receive, they made at
once at home. There was a charming ease in their company. Your sole
reminder that they understood the proprieties of life was the fact
that they never sinned against them.

Seated in the midst of the family, who gathered about him, the
minister related the adventures of the last twenty-four hours to his
smiling auditory. Only two persons present were grave. Edith could
perceive nothing ludicrous in the circumstances. It was a most sad
and uncomfortable fact that Minister Conway should have got into the
mud, she thought; and, as to preaching in the wrong pulpit, that
seemed to her a very awful mistake. The other solemn face belonged
to little Eugene Cleaveland, five years old, Major Cleaveland's
youngest son. The child was a pet of the Yorkes, and always stayed
with them when his father was away from home. He had quite adopted
them as his relatives. Mr. and Mrs. Yorke were his aunt and uncle.
The others were all cousins. Leaning on Clara's lap, quite unmindful
of her caressing hand in his hair or on his cheek, he gazed with
large, bright black eyes at the minister, drinking in every word, and
thinking his own thoughts.

"Isn't your God as good as their God is?" he asked suddenly in the
the first pause.

"We have all the same God, my child," the minister replied; and
immediately added to the others, "I perceive that we had better
change the subject, lest the little ones should be scandalized. I
fancy I even read reproof in the eyes of your niece, madam. And, by
the way, she looks like some solemn, medieval religious."

"It is odd she should suggest that thought to you," Mrs. Yorke said.
"The child is a Catholic. Come, my dear, and show Mr. Griffeth what
a pretty prayer-book you have. It was given me by a very lovely and
zealous French lady whom I knew in Paris. I thought it would do Edith
most good."

Edith approached the minister with hesitation, half-pleased with him,
half-doubtful. But while he talked pleasantly to her, glancing over
the book without a sign of prejudice, explaining and praising here
and there, her doubts were forgotten. What the child instinctively
felt was, that the man had no religious convictions; but, her reason
being undeveloped, she could not understand what he lacked. When
he learned that she was half-Polish, he delighted her by telling
how, in the glorious days of Poland, when the nobles heard Mass,
they unsheathed their swords at the Gospel, to show that they were
ready on the instant to do battle for the faith, and he promised
to procure for her a little handful of earth from the sacred soil
of Praga. He then repeated and translated for her an anonymous hymn
to the Holy Innocents, written in the fourth century, and, at Mrs.
Yorke's request, copied it into the prayer-book. It was this:

      "Salvete, flores martyrum,
      Quos lucis ipso in limine,
      Christi insecutor sustulit,
      Ceu turbo nascentes rosas.
      Vos, prima Christi victima,
      Grex immolatorum tener,
      Aram ante ipsam, simplices,
      Palma et coronis luditis."

Miss Yorke presently excused herself with the smiling announcement
that she must prepare the dessert for dinner, and Clara went out to
gather flowers for the dinner-table, taking Eugene Cleaveland with
her.

They roamed about the edge of the woods, finding wild-roses and
violets; they ventured into wet places for the blue flower-de-luce;
they gathered long plumes of ferns, and in a dusky cloister where a
brook had hidden one of its windings, they found a cardinal-flower
lighting the place like a lamp.

Suddenly the little boy cried out, and began to dance about. There
was a bug gone away up in his jacket, he declared.

Clara searched him, but found nothing.

"There's nothing on you, little dear!" she said. "Come home, now. It
is dinner-time, and you must help me to arrange the flowers. There is
no bug, child; it is all your imagination."

"Does my imagination wiggle?" he cried indignantly. "There!"

The last exclamation referred to a creeping at his throat; and out
hopped an active little frog, which had been circumnavigating the
child ever since he pulled the last blue lily.

They went homeward with their baskets of flowers, and encountered on
the way Boadicea Patten with her baby in her arms. She had come to
see her son and daughter, and was trying to keep out of sight of the
front windows, where she saw a stranger.

Clara Yorke immediately seized upon the infant. No baby ever escaped
her caresses; and this one the young ladies had taken under their
especial charge. They supplied its wardrobe, and went to see it, or
had it come to them every week. It was a pretty child, bright, white,
and well-mannered, with a lordly air of taking homage as if it were
due.

When Clara entered the parlor, she found only the gentlemen and Edith
there; but that did not prevent her insisting on her little one being
received with enthusiasm. She called attention to the wonderful
dimpled shoulders and elbows, pulled its eyelids down pitilessly to
display the long lashes, uncurled its yellow locks and let them creep
back into rings again, and crowned it with violets, quoting Browning:

      "Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
      As those were all the little locks could bear."

Then she consigned the child to her brother. "I have domestic cares
to attend to," she said, "and you must amuse my beauty while I am
gone. 'What must you do?' Talk to it, of course. 'What shall you
say?' Why, Owen, do not be stupid! Say whatever you can think of that
is suited to the darling's capacity. Come, Eugene, we have important
affairs on hand."

Carl looked at his charge with immense good-will and not a little
perplexity, and it stared back solemnly at him, waiting to be
entertained. Something must be said.

"What is your opinion concerning the origin of ideas?" asked the
young man, at length, with great politeness.

Instantly the little face brightened with delighted intelligence;
the lips became voluble in a strange language, and the dimpled hands
caught at Carl's sunny locks.

"Oh! for an interpreter," he exclaimed. "If we had an interpreter, we
could confound the _savants_. Clara," to his sister just returning,
"what is this little wretch saying?"

"He is saying that he loves everybody in the whole world!" she cried,
catching the babe in her arms, and half-stifling it with kisses.
"And, now, please come to dinner."

"It is not a bad solution," mused the minister, as he and Carl went
out last. "Perhaps love is the root from which our ideas grow.
Undoubtedly the kind of ideas a person has depends on the nature and
degree of his loving."

"You see that here we stand not upon the order of our going," Clara
laughed back from the doorway; "or, rather, we follow the style of
ecclesiastical processions, and place the principal person last."

There was a cluster of yellow violets by Mr. Griffeth's plate. His
eyes often turned on them, and always with a grave expression. "They
remind me of a brother I have lost," he said at length to Mrs. Yorke.
"Philip used to paint flowers beautifully, and a bunch of yellow
violets was the last thing he painted. If you were not new-comers in
Seaton, I should think it possible that you might have seen or heard
of him. He went to school here to an old minister, Mr. Blake, the
predecessor, I believe, of Dr. Martin."

"Philip Griffeth!" Mrs. Yorke exclaimed, blushing with surprise,
"Why, I went to school with him. I recollect him perfectly. This
is my native place, Mr. Griffeth. Yes, Philip was the favorite of
every one, teacher and pupils. He used to help me with my Virgil.
Mr. Blake made us all study Latin, and the boys had to study Greek.
The minister thought that no person should be admitted into polite
society who did not know one at least of these languages. I recollect
him, a small, pompous man, with an air of fierceness very foreign to
his character. He wished to be thought a stern and fateful personage,
while in truth he was the softest man alive. When he used to come to
our house, and extend his awful right hand to me, I always knew that
the left hand, hidden behind his back, held a paper of candy."

The discovery of this mutual friend formed a strong tie between the
minister and his new acquaintances, so that they seemed quite like
old friends. The family pressed him to stay till evening, when they
would send for some of his people to come for him; and he, nothing
loth, consented.

"But, I warn you," he said to the young people, when they had
returned to the parlor, "that, unless you allow me to see you often,
this hospitality will be a cruel kindness. I should find it harder to
lose than never to have had your society. I could not console myself
with less than the best, as this pretty rustic did," taking up an
illustrated copy of _Maud Müller_ that lay at his elbow. "But what a
perfect thing it is!" he added.

Mrs. Yorke was just passing through the room on her way to take an
afternoon _siesta_. She paused by the table, and glanced at the
book. "It is perfect all but the ending," she said; "that is too
pre-Raphaelite for me. Doubtless it would have happened quite so; but
I do not wish to know that it did."

"But should not art be true to nature?" asked Mr. Griffeth. He liked
to hear and see the lady talk. Her gentle ways and delicate, pathetic
grace, all charmed him.

"Art should be true to nature when nature is true to herself," she
replied. "I am not a pre-Raphaelite. I believe that the mission of
art is to restore the lost perfection of nature, not to copy and
perpetuate its defects. Otherwise it is not elevating; and what it
makes you admire chiefly is the talent which imitates, not the genius
which sees. I believe that genius is insight, talent only outsight.
My husband defines genius as artistic intuition. Why should the poet
have cheated us into loving a fair, empty shape? If the girl had
been disappointed, and had lived apart and lonely to the end of her
days, the picture would have been lovely and pathetic. But now it is
revolting."

"I agree with mamma," Miss Yorke interposed. "If Maud Müller had
married the judge, she would never have appreciated him. If she had
been capable of it, she could not have condescended to the other
after having seen him."

"I should believe," the minister said, "that, if she had possessed
true nobleness of soul, she could not have so lowered herself, even
if she had seen nothing better. To my mind, people rise to their
proper level by spontaneous combustion, needing no outward spark,
women as well as men. The philosophy of the Comte de Gabalis may be
very true as to gnomes, sylphs, and salamanders; but for women I
think that such radical changes never occur. That theory belongs to
those men who, as Mrs. Browning says, believe that 'a woman ripens,
like a peach, in the cheeks chiefly.'"

"So we have disposed of poor Maud Müller," said Mrs. Yorke. "I
repent me of having been so harsh with the sweet child. Let us say
that the poet wronged her; that in truth she faded away month by
month, and grew silent, and shadowy, and saint-like, not knowing what
was the matter with her, but feeling a great need of God's love; and
so died."

With a sigh through the smile of her ending, Mrs. Yorke passed
noiselessly from the room. The shadows of the vine-leaves seemed to
strain forward to catch at her white dress, and the sunlight dropping
through turned her hair to gold. Then shadow and sunlight fell to the
floor and kissed her footsteps, missing her.

Mr. Yorke was out walking about his farm, inquiring of Patrick how
many months it took in that country for plants to get themselves
above ground; if green peas were due early in September; if cucumbers
were not in danger of freezing before they arrived at maturity; if
their whole crop, in short, did not promise to give them their labor
for their pains; and making various other depreciatory comments which
his assistant inwardly resented. The young people sat in the parlor
and improved their acquaintance. Soon they found themselves talking
of personal matters and family plans, especially those relating to
Owen.

Mr. Griffeth strongly urged his remaining in Seaton. "I think it
would be better to remain if you should conclude to study law," he
said. "You could pursue your studies here without the distractions
of a city life, and you could begin practice with a clearer field.
You would at once be prominent here, but in the city there would be a
crowd of able and experienced practitioners in your way."

"'I would rather be second in Athens than first in Eubœa,'" Carl
objected.

"Undoubtedly!" was the immediate response. "But you might save time
by trying your wings in Eubœa before essaying your flight in Athens."

The sister eagerly seconded the proposal, delighted with any plan by
which they could keep their brother with them and yet not injure his
prospects. Carl listened with favor. His new friend had completely
captivated him; and, sure of such congenial companionship, Seaton
appeared to him a tolerable place to live in.

"Of course, I am not quite disinterested," Mr. Griffeth said. "I
want you to stay. But, also, it does seem to me well. The place is
promising. I am told that it has some superior people, and that it is
growing rapidly. My own coming was a chance, and already I rejoice in
it. One impulse pushed me toward the south, another toward the north:
obeying a philosophical law, I came east, and here I shall stay. I
recognized a Providence in it. May not you the same?"

"Oh! do stay, Owen," Hester said, laying her hand on his arm.

"What can I do when the evening star pleads with me?" said Carl with
a smile. When he was pleased with his youngest sister, he called her
Hesper.

"And you know, Carl, you promised to teach me to spell, this summer,"
said Clara. "I cannot spell!" she confessed to the minister.

"Madam, I congratulate you!" he replied.

"But it is not ignorance," she said, blushing very much. "English
spelling is nothing but memory, you know. Now, my memory is situated
in my heart, not my head, and it retains only what I love or hate.
You do not expect me to be fond of vowels and consonants, or
enamored of poly-syllables, surely."

The minister protested that he was always enchanted to meet with an
educated person who could not spell. It was, he said, the mark of a
mind which catches so ardently at the soul of a word that it misses
the form. "I have no doubt," he said, "that you might talk with a
person a hundred times, and comprehend his character perfectly, yet
not be able to tell the color of his eyes nor the shape of his nose.
You could also go unerringly to a place you had once visited, though
you could not direct a person there. You do not gather your knowledge
like corn in the ear, but in the golden grain; and when anybody wants
the cob, you have to go searching about in waste places for it."

Mr. Yorke came in, and presently Mrs. Yorke, with a little
sleep-mistiness hanging yet about her.

"Where have you been, auntie?" cried Eugene Cleveland, running to
her. He had his hands full of dandelion curls, which he began hanging
in her ears, having thus adorned the young ladies.

"I have been to the land where dreams grow on trees," she said softly.

"Mr. Griffeth says that I am a little man," the child announced, with
an air of consequence. The remark had been made an hour before, and
was not yet forgotten. The lad had indeed an exceedingly good opinion
of himself, and never forgot a word of praise.

Clara called him to her. "You are no more a man," she said, "than
potato-balls are potatoes."

He sobered instantly, and went about for some time with a very
forlorn countenance. After awhile, when she had forgotten the
remark, he came back to her. "Cousin Clara, do potato-balls ever
grow into potatoes?" he asked anxiously.

In the evening the Universalist deputation arrived, and took their
minister away with them.

"Now, Pat, you mark my words," said Betsey, as she saw the family
stand on the moonlight veranda to watch their visitor down the
avenue: "that man will marry one of the Yorke girls."

Betsey considered the speedy marriage of the young ladies a
consummation devoutly to be wished.

Patrick was still smarting under the insults offered to his garden,
and would not in any case have hailed the alliance of a minister
with the family. "Oh, bali! they wouldn't look at him!" he replied
crossly. "A rogue of a minister, with his nose in the air!"

"I have eyes in my head," said Betsey with dignity.

"And a bee in your bonnet," retorted the man.

Betsey went into the house, banged the door behind her, and began
setting the kitchen to rights with great vigor. She swept up the
hearth so fiercely that a cloud of ashes came out and settled on
the mantelpiece, and put the chairs back against the wall with an
emphasis that made them rattle.

Patrick put his head in at the door, prudently keeping his body out,
and looked at her with a deprecating smile. "Now, Betsey!" he said.

"You needn't speak to me again, to-night," she exclaimed, looking
severely away from him. "You've said enough for one time."

"And what have I said to you, Betsey?"

She faced him. "I wonder if in your country it is considered a
compliment to tell a woman that she has a bee in her bonnet," she
said.

"Ah! is that where you are?" said Pat, coming half into the room. "I
never meant the least harm in my life. And, sure, Betsey, did ye ever
see a bonnet without a _b_?"


CHAPTER VIII.

FATHER RASLE.

One summer morning, Mr. Yorke appeared at the breakfast-table with
a very sour face. He was bilious, and he had not slept well. Even
Hester's cooing ways failed to mollify him.

"Why, you are feverish, papa," she said. "Your hand is hot and dry."

He moved his chair impatiently. "Yes, your mother insisted on my
taking charcoal instead of calomel, and I think she must have slily
administered a lucifer-match with it: I radiate heat."

Mrs. Yorke took these complaints very quietly. She knew that nothing
could be further from her husband's heart than to be dissatisfied
with anything she did. "We were disturbed by that fearful noise," she
said quietly, taking her place at the table.

Owen began to laugh. The Seaton "cast-iron band" had been out the
night before, and the young man found himself very much amused by it.

"Do you like lawlessness, sir?" demanded Mr. Yorke.

"That depends on what the law is," the son replied pleasantly.

"Well, sir, in this case it is the law of common decency, of respect
for the clergy, and courtesy to strangers. Father Rasle, the
Catholic priest, came here yesterday, and that Babel of cow-bells,
and sleigh-bells, and mill-saws, and tin trumpets, and wooden drums,
and I know not what else, was before his door. I call it a shameful
outrage."

"So do I," Owen replied promptly. "I had no idea what it meant."

The young ladies all exclaimed indignantly; but Edith dropped her
eyes and was silent. Theology was nothing to her, and as yet her
faith had no life in it. She was deeply ashamed of that religion
which all seemed to scoff at save those who tolerated it for her
sake. Only her promise held her to it. That the voice of the people
is not always, is very seldom, the voice of God, she could not be
expected to know; neither could she be expected to love that church
which as yet she had heard spoken of only by its enemies. She did not
dream of forsaking the religion of her mother; but her constancy to
it seemed to her of the same nature as Mrs. Rowan's constancy to her
drunken husband.

After breakfast, her uncle bade her dress to go with him to call on
Father Rasle. She obeyed, though with a shrinking heart. She had
heard priests spoken of in the street and by the school-children with
contempt and reviling, and her impression was that they must be very
disagreeable persons to meet. But the religion was hers, and she must
stand by it, never confessing to a doubt nor allowing any one to
reproach it unchallenged by her. And if she stood by the religion,
she must stand by the priest.

Father Rasle, being only a missionary there, had no house in Seaton,
but stopped with a decent Irish family. It was a poor place, and the
room in which he received Mr. Yorke and his niece was as humble as
could well be imagined. But there needed no fine setting to show that
he was that noblest object on earth, a Christian gentleman. His age
might have been a little over forty, and his manner was almost too
grave and dignified, one might think at first; but it soon appeared
that he could be genial beyond most men.

Mr. Yorke presented his niece, and, before explaining their errand,
apologized for the insult that had been offered the priest the night
before.

"Oh! I certainly did not expect the honor of a serenade," said Father
Rasle, laughing pleasantly. "But, if it gratified them to give
it, I am not in the least offended. It is, perhaps, a loss to me
that I did not care; for I might have derived some profit from the
mortification. On the contrary, I own to you, sir, that I enjoyed
that concert. It was the most laughable one I ever heard."

Mr. Yorke looked at the speaker in astonishment. Here was a kind of
pride, if pride it could be called, which he could not understand.
In such circumstances, his own impulse would have been to shoot his
insulters down instantly. What he despised he wanted to crush, to rid
the earth of, to spare himself the sight of; what the priest despised
he pitied, he wished to raise, to excuse, to spare God and the world
the sight of. It was admirable, his visitor owned, but inimitable by
him.

Not being able to say any more on the subject, he then stated Edith's
case. "You will know what she needs," he concluded, "and I shall see
that she follows your directions."

The father questioned his young catechumen, and found her in a state
of the most perfect ignorance. "The child is a heathen!" he said,
in his odd, broken English, his smile taking the harsh edge off the
words. "She must study the catechism--this little one--and see how
much of it she will have to say to me when I come here again in a
month. I will then prepare her for her first confession."

Edith uttered not a word, except to answer his questions. She was not
sure whether she liked him or not; she was only certain that he did
not offend her.

There was a little more talk, then Mr. Yorke rose to go, cordially
inviting the priest to visit him. As they were going, "I think,
Edith," he said, "that you should kneel and ask Father Rasle's
blessing."

She knelt at once, for her mother's and her uncle's sake, with a
murmured, "Please to bless me, sir!" But when he had given the
blessing, laying his hand upon her head, and looking down into
her face with that expression of serious sweetness, she felt a
dawning sense of reverence and confidence, and perceived dimly some
sacredness in him.

She went to Mass the next day in the little chapel that had been
desecrated. The picture-frames still hung on the walls, with the rags
of the stations in them. There was enough left to show how Christ the
Lord had suffered, and this new insult was but a freshening of the
original text. Mr. Yorke sat on the bench beside his niece, and she
stood, or knelt, or sat with the rest, not in the least understanding
what it all meant, but impressed by the gravity and earnestness of
those around her. When Mass was over, the priest, who had seen them,
sent for them into the sacristy. He had some books for Edith, and
wanted to point out the lessons she was to learn first.

"And I have a present for you," he said, giving her an ormolu
crucifix, with a broken foot that showed marks of violence. "This is
the crucifix that was torn from our tabernacle. I want you to keep
it; and whenever you are called upon to suffer, and feel disposed
to complain, look at this, and remember that our Lord was not even
allowed to hang upon his cross in peace."

She took the crucifix from his hand silently, and held it against
her breast as she went out. She did not propose to endure suffering;
she desired and looked for happiness; but something in this relic
stirred her to a strange pity, mingled with anger. The idea that lay
behind it was to her dim and vague; but, failing to grasp that, she
would have defended with her life the symbol of that monstrous wrong
and that heart-breaking patience. Reaching home, she went directly
to her own chamber and hung the crucifix beneath the picture of her
father, then stood and looked at it awhile. There was a wish in her
heart to do something--to offer some reparation to the real Sufferer
behind this image of pain. She kissed with soft lips the broken foot
of the cross, and a tear fell where she kissed. She took it down,
and pressed the rough edge against her bosom till the sharp points
pierced the skin and brought a stain of blood. Then, hearing some
one call her, she hastily replaced it, and brought as an offering to
it a precious bouquet of ribbon-grasses, that Carl had gathered that
morning to fasten in her hair. She had meant to keep it because of
some sweetness with which it was offered, but now she gave it up to
that unseen Patience and Love. Her instinctive action proved that
the feeling and precept of the church only sanctifies, but does not
change the impulse of a pure and tender nature.

Meantime, the child was being discussed down-stairs.

"I observe that Edith has an inclination to stay alone a good deal,"
Mr. Yorke said, "and I do not wish to have that encouraged. It is not
a wholesome disposition. Her father was a visionary, her mother was a
visionary, and she is--"

"A vision!" concluded Mrs. Yorke, as Edith appeared, with the
thoughts of the last few hours still in her eyes and on her lips.

About that time, Carl received a letter from Miss Mills which he
read many times. "You ask my advice," she wrote, "and you tell me
that I know better than you know yourself. I would not claim so much
as that, but I think I may tell you something more clearly than you
yourself perceive it, or confirm you in some thought which you doubt
or wish to doubt. As to your choice of a profession and staying in
Seaton for the present, you might well try the experiment; but I
cannot express any great confidence as to the result. It is almost
a disadvantage to you that your powers are so various. There are a
good many things which, with application, you could do excellently;
whether you have any specialty remains to be proved, and will be hard
to prove; for, in order to find that out, you must concentrate your
powers, and that you hate to do. If this world were but a playground,
then you would have nothing to do but follow in the trail of every
new beauty which calls you; but life is earnest, and you must
work, or you not only lose what you might accomplish, but you lose
yourself. You are one of those whom the devil finds worth fighting
for, and, lacking faith to your armor, you have all the more need of
labor. _Qui laborat orat_, might have a sort of truth even for one
without faith.

"Let me warn you against two dangers: one is, that you may be injured
by flatterers. Not that you like flattery in itself, but it will
soothe your painful sense of not having reached your own ideal. It
will seem to you that your best must have transpired at least, and
that you must have done better than you thought. Not so; receive that
soothing praise only when you have striven hard, even though you
failed, but never when you have tried weakly or not at all. What the
flatterers like in you is not your best, but your worst. They have no
wish for you to rise above them; they praise you to keep you low.

"I warn you, too, against your excessive love for the beautiful, in
which you are an ultra-pagan. The infinite beauty is alone worthy of
that passion with which you seek and admire; and infinite beauty is
infinite truth. Seek truth first, and you will always be rewarded by
the vision of beauty; but, if you seek beauty first, you will find to
your sorrow, possibly to your ruin, that it is often but the mask of
falsehood.

"Lay aside some of your fastidiousness, my dear friend, and take up
your life strongly with both hands. Do something, even if it should
prove to be the wrong thing. Wrong work done honestly prepares us
for right work. Strengthen your will, and be manly, as a man should
be. Discipline yourself, and you will escape much pain and loss of
time, for, let me assure you, Carl, you need either an immensity of
resolution or an immensity of suffering.

"My lecture is done, and I am Minerva no longer. My thoughts follow
you with solicitude and indulgence. On the night after you left,
which you spent on the sea, I went to the quiet chapel near me, and
placed you under the protection of _Stella Maris_. But life has waves
and gulfs more fearful than those of the sea, and my prayers for you
do not cease with the end of your journey.

"Look well at Robert Yorke's child, remembering what the story of my
life is; and then, if you think that I could love her, kiss her on
the forehead for me, and tell her that I send a loving greeting."

Owen folded the letter, and hid it in his bosom. He had been walking
in the woods, and he returned thoughtfully homeward. The afternoon
was sultry and still. The low brooks hissed along like white flames,
the branches drooped over the birds that murmured, and the flowers
hung wilted. All about the house was silent as he entered. Going
through the kitchen, he saw Betsey sitting in the northern window
reading a novel. Betsey was the most romantic soul alive, and, having
got hold of _David Copperfield_, was crying her eyes out over poor
little Dora. Passing on to the sitting-room, he found his father
sitting asleep in a deep wicker-chair, a copy of _Religio Medici_
lying open on his knee. The quiet tone of the book, familiar by many
readings, had lulled him into a pleasant slumber, and his hand had
dropped with the finger pointing to a passage on which he had closed
his eyes: "I love to love myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to
an _O altitudo_!" From that the reader had gone out into the mystery
of sleep with a smile lingering on his face.

"It is the castle of indolence," muttered Owen, stepping noiselessly
on. He paused at the foot of the stairs and listened. No sound came
down. His sisters, in white wrappers, each with a pillow under her
head, were lying on the cool matting in the north chamber, too much
exhausted to talk. He went out into the portico, and stood there a
moment, seeing no one. Then, turning, he beheld Edith asleep on a
bench in the shadow of the vines, her arms thrown up over her head.
Smilingly he approached her, literally to obey the command of his
friend, and look well to see if his uncle's deserted mistress could
love his uncle's child. She was fair enough to love, for all the
roughness of her former life had passed away. The bloom of the lily
was in her face, warmed now to a rose by the heat, and her hair had a
shine of gold.

"Dear little cousin," he said, "a friend of yours sends loving
greeting."

She stirred, her face grew troubled, and she started up with a cry:
"Dick, come back. I did not mean to!"

She sighed on seeing Owen. "I was dreaming that I had hurt Dick, and
he was going away angry," she said.

"Are you, then, so fond of him?" Carl asked, seating himself by her.

"O Carl!" she said earnestly, "you have no idea how fond he is of me."

"And you of him, then, of course," said Carl.

"Why, of course!" she echoed, with a look of surprise. "If I were
to do anything to Dick to make him unhappy, I should never forgive
myself, never! I have written him a letter to-day, and told him I
want him to be a Catholic."

"You have!" said Carl with a faint smile. "Do you think he will obey
you?"

"Oh! yes," she said confidently; "I told him some good reasons why he
should."

And may I ask what the good reasons were, Edith?" was the smiling
question.

"Why, in the first place, I want him to."

"Excellent!" laughed the young man. "The doctors couldn't do better."

Edith blushed deeply. "No; the good reasons were the reasons why I
wanted him to," she said.

TO BE CONTINUED.




SAINT CECILIA.

HER INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.

FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.


While the great men who have dreamed of distinguishing their names
die and are forgotten, or at least, as Juvenal said of Alexander,
become the idle theme of a rhetorical recitation, those who in this
world have lived and suffered for God leave behind them, through all
ages, an immortal memory.

The work for which each of us has been sent into the world has
been conspicuously accomplished by the saints. This makes them our
rightful masters; and, while we rarely imitate them, we can at
least understand that such heroism must elevate the soul, and we
admire them all the more that we feel ourselves unable to follow in
their steps. Nor is such a recognition a useless sentiment. From
the mansion of glory whence they see all things, the saints never
cease to interest themselves in the affairs of the world, and among
the dogmas of the Catholic Church which our estranged brethren have
rejected, the communion of saints is one of the most touching and
sublime.

There is indeed between the two worlds, visible and invisible, a
strange but undeniable communication. Each of us, in investigating
his own soul, will find there certain phenomena which have their
origin neither in ourselves nor in the outer world: sadness from
no apparent cause, inexplicable sensations of internal happiness,
bursts of enthusiasm or sudden inspirations which Plato attributed
to superior intelligences. Many of us, recalling some miraculously
escaped danger, and profoundly touched by this heavenly protection,
will bear willing witness, unless checked by dread of worldly
criticism, to this influence of the saints and angels on our human
career. "The people," with the good sense which so happily inspires
them (at least, where the sophists have not succeeded in corrupting
them)--"the people" believe in it; and when the peasant or the poor
working-woman gives a name in baptism to the child just entering on
the struggles of life, she believes, in her simple, lucid faith, that
she is securing a patron for it. It is not in vain, they say, that a
young girl is called Mary; surely she will the more readily share in
the sweetness, the self-denial, the incomparable purity, of the Queen
of Virgins; the name of Agnes will be a pledge of innocence; that of
Theresa promises a heart of fire; that of Cecilia, a soul gentle yet
strong, eager for harmony; while the name of Francis recalls heroic
isolation; those of Paul and of John, indefatigable zeal and perfect
charity. If it is not always thus, it is because the human soul is
free to resist grace; but these occasional rebellions do not prevent
a harmony between heaven and earth as mysterious as it is sure.

These thoughts have frequently passed through our mind; but one day
last October, while visiting the church of St. Cecilia in Rome, they
monopolized it.

In such moments, we persuade ourselves very easily that we can
express them in writing. Undoubtedly, they are not new; but, if the
life of this great saint, one of the glories of Rome, is well known,
it is a story which will bear repetition: really fine old melodies
never lose their charm, and, if they thrill one human soul with a
divine emotion, who will complain of hearing them again?


HISTORY OF SAINT CECILIA.

In the year 250 after Christ, in the reign of Septimus Severus, at a
time when the Roman Empire was still the most formidable power of the
world, there lived in Rome a young girl who will be famous when the
imperial glories shall be forgotten.

Beauty, the reflection of heaven in the human countenance; grace,
mysterious charm whose origin is invisible; modesty, that exquisite
reserve of a virgin soul; nobility, precious perfume of the past;
and, above all, the power of loving, the most magnificent and the
most powerful present of the Creator to the created: all these gifts
were united in the daughter of Cæcilius. It was an illustrious
family: in the records of the Republic it counted eighteen consuls
and several conquerors, nor had it degenerated under the Empire.

To-day, when the traveller, weary from a day spent in the galleries
of Rome, setting forth from the city towards sunset, wanders
pensively down the long Appian Way, while he contemplates with
emotion the outlines of the aqueducts with their broken arches,
the Sabine mountains gilded by the light, and all that celebrated
landscape of the environs of Rome, majestic and melancholy as a
fallen queen, he finds upon his right, rising like a great tower,
the tomb of Cæcilia Metella. There slept of yore the long-forgotten
ancestress of her who will render immortal, for time and for
eternity, the name of Cæcilius.

Cecilia was eighteen. The Roman poor knew her charity. Often had they
seen her in the caves of the martyrs alone, or only accompanied by
a faithful servant. Her father, although he respected her religion,
did not share it: he hoped, indeed, at a suitable time to marry his
daughter to some distinguished husband, and to see himself, through
her, live again in her beloved children. But Cecilia had raised her
heart above this world, and night and day prayed that the palm of
virginity she had dreamed of should not be taken from her.

He whom her parents had chosen for her seemed not unworthy of the
honor. Though still a pagan, Valerian possessed at least those
natural gifts which prepare the soul for faith, hope, and charity,
the supernatural gifts of Christ crucified. Nevertheless, who can
express the fears of the young Christian? Had not God accepted all
her heart as she had offered it? Could a pagan understand this
mystery, and would not this union of the soul with an invisible
spouse seem a strange folly to a man still living in the world of the
senses? More than one Christian soul has felt these chaste doubts.
It is honorable to hesitate before making for a mortal a sacrifice
for which a young girl sometimes can never console herself. Cecilia
felt these terrors most acutely, but she loved God well enough to
feel perfect confidence in him. So she poured forth her whole soul in
prayer, and, against all hope, trusted in his aid.

So, when, towards evening, already married in the eyes of the world,
she found herself alone with her husband, she said to him in that
incomparable conversation whose charm has come down to us in her life:

"There is a secret, Valerian, that I wish to confide to you. I have a
lover, an angel of God, who watches over me with jealous care. If you
preserve inviolate my virginity, he will love you also as he loves
me, and will overpower you with his favors."

Much astonished, Valerian wished to know this angel.

"You shall see him," said Cecilia, "when you are purified."

"How shall I become so?"

"Go to Urban. When the poor hear my name, they will take you to his
sanctuary: he will explain to you our mysteries."

Drawn by an unknown power, the young man consented to go. We know
the result of this decision--his interview with the Pope in the
catacombs, his conversion, and his baptism. Still dressed in his
white robe, he returned to Cecilia. He could now understand the love
of the angels, and its perfect beauty. In future, he loved Cecilia as
his sister in God, to whom belong the heart and mind.

In those Christian ages others loved as he did. Undoubtedly most of
them carried their secret with them to the tomb; but among those
whose genius has made them famous, Dante had his Beatrice; Petrarch
sang of Laura: and these pure loves, unknown to the ancient pagans,
and scoffed at by our modern pagans, will remain an ornament to the
soul, an act of faith in its immortality, and for us who read their
history a breath of heaven on earth.

No one knows what conversation took place, in those hours of rapture
and prayer, between this pair, whose marriage was to be perfected in
heaven; what thanksgivings they rendered to God, who in a moment
transforms hearts: nor would it be easy to describe. Of all the arts,
music alone might perhaps dare to attempt it, and the revelation
would require the genius of Handel or Beethoven.

In his ardent zeal, Valerian, like Cecilia, understood the value of
the soul.

So, when the beloved brother Tiburtius sought them, what eloquence
they displayed to prove to him that his gods were only idols! Subdued
by the mysterious charm of the Christian virgin, conquered by the
eagerness of the convert, Tiburtius also wished to see the angel who
watched over Cecilia. If for this it was necessary to be purified,
purified he would be; and thus became the first conquest of his
brother, who had besought God for it.

Such souls were too beautiful for pagan Rome. In the absence of
Septimus Severus, Almachius, the governor, summoned Valerian and
Tiburtius before his tribunal. The two young patricians avowed their
faith in Christ, to the great scandal of the worldly and prosperous.
Valerian went to his martyrdom as to a triumph. He went to wait for
Cecilia in heaven.

Tiburtius did not forsake him. On the Appian Way, four miles from the
city, they were beheaded for having dared to worship a different God
from those of the Empire. Cecilia piously reclaimed their bodies,
and prepared to rejoin them. Called in her turn to answer for her
conduct, she disconcerted the judge. Before such purity, innocence,
and heroism, entreaties, artifices, and threats failed; the daughter
of Cæcilius, convicted of loving the poor and a crucified God, was
instantly confined in the bath-room of her own house, there to be
suffocated in a hot vapor bath. But in the midst of this fiery
atmosphere she remained uninjured. The stupefied jailers related how
they had discovered her singing the praises of God. Such a delusion
could but provoke Almachius. The executioner was summoned. With a
trembling hand, he inflicted three wounds on the neck of the virgin
martyr, without succeeding in severing the head. Then, terrified
himself, he fled. Stretched on the flags, bathed in her blood,
Cecilia lived three days. The Christians gathered round her. She was
able to bid farewell to the poor, to whom she had bequeathed her
property. Then, feeling her strength fail, while Urban was in the
act of giving her his blessing, she drew her robe around her, and,
turning her face away, gave back her soul to God.

According to her last desire, the Pope transformed the house that
had witnessed her martyrdom into a church. The bath-room became a
chapel; and by its arrangement bears witness to-day to the truth of
the saint's life. One can still see the mouth of the pipes which let
in the vapor, covered with a grating; and on the same flags where the
Roman virgin expired, the kneeling Christian can ponder in his heart
the example of heroism that she has given to the world. He who has
not had the good fortune to pray on the tombs of the martyrs cannot
appreciate the strength one finds there, or what precepts their
relics give forth. The martyrs are the incontrovertible witnesses of
the value of faith, of the power of love; and it is said that their
beatified spirits lend to these bones, which were their bodies, an
all-powerful eloquence.

The remains of the young girl were taken down into the catacombs of
St. Callixtus, and remained there six centuries. After the invasion
of the Lombards, most unhappily, all trace was lost of them till, in
822, the place where they were hidden was revealed to Pope St. Pascal.

The long-sought coffin was placed in the basilica of St. Cecilia,
which had been repaired by the Pope's care. It was placed under the
high altar. And even in our day the custodian points out to the
pilgrim a curious fresco of the thirteenth century, representing
the apparition of the saint to the sleeping Pope. In 1599, Cardinal
Sfondrate ordered the tomb to be opened with solemnity. To the great
delight of Christian Rome, the corpse of the Roman virgin, respected
by centuries, appeared, miraculously preserved.

The chaste folds of her dress were restrained by a girdle. At her
feet were found the blood-stained cloths which had bound her wounds;
and her arms, thrust forward, still seemed to serve as a veil. Three
fingers of her right hand were open, only one of the left, as if
even in dying she had wished to avow her belief in one God in three
persons. Finally, so that she might not give to the world her last
look, but think only of Christ, her spouse, by a supreme effort she
had turned her head aside.

Thus she reposes on her bier of cypress; thus extended on the flags
she had died; and thus a great artist has faithfully represented her
to us. The celebrated statue of Etienne Maderno, lying on its side,
full of modesty and of grace, seems the dying virgin herself; and the
whiteness of the marble, which so resembles the paleness of death,
adds yet more to the illusion. Seen in this honored place, in this
house which was the saint's and has become God's, this masterpiece
of Christian sculpture, admirably executed and in exquisite taste,
touches the heart profoundly.


THE INFLUENCE OF ST. CECILIA ON LITERATURE.

Such a beautiful story could not fail to be repeated. As long as the
persecutions lasted, to strengthen their courage, the faithful passed
from mouth to mouth these details which had been so affectionately
collected. So great, indeed, was the enthusiasm for the memory of
Cecilia that she obtained the great and rare honor of being mentioned
in the canon of the Mass with Saints Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha,
Lucy, Agnes, and Anastasia. Thus for fifteen centuries, throughout
the Catholic world, wherever the holy sacrifice is celebrated, her
name is invoked; and, truly immortal, each hour, each moment perhaps,
her memory rises from earth to heaven with incense and with prayer.

Her acts, chronicled in the fifth century, have since then been
the subject of several works. We shall only mention the Greek
translation of Simeon Metaphrastes, the verses of St. Adhelme and
of the Venerable Bede in England, the works of Flodoard at Rheims,
and Rhoban Maur. Then, during that magnificent efflorescence of
philosophy and Catholic literature, we see Victor de Beauvais
relate the story of St. Cecilia;[109] Albert the Great, St. Thomas
Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, preaching several sermons in her honor. In
the fifteenth century, the eloquent St. Vincent Ferrer recited her
praises; but the Reformation came soon after, and it is only in Italy
now that they think of the glories of St. Cecilia.

In vain her history is its own defence; in vain may it claim in its
favor the imposing testimony of Christian tradition, in the East as
in the West, during fourteen centuries; in vain the liturgies of
the churches of Rome, of Milan, of Toledo, of Greece, and of Gaul
have inserted in the office for the 22d of November fragments of
the text; in vain even the discovery of her body testified anew to
its veracity. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, the
Jansenist school rejected it.

The historical works on the first centuries of Christianity which
during the last forty years have been undertaken in France and
Germany, by tracing out the original sources with scrupulous care,
and taking advantage of monuments, have dealt justly with this
excessive criticism.

But error is more prone to spread than easy to uproot. Launoy, that
"great demolisher of saints," who, in attacking the most poetic
beliefs of the faithful, strayed into the road to rationalism, made a
school. Even now Feller's _Dictionary of Universal Biography_, and,
following him (for these works usually copy each other), those of
Michaud and of F. Didot, have repeated, on the authority of Tillemont
and of Baillet, that the authenticity of the life of St. Cecilia is
very doubtful, although the arguments cited in support of this thesis
had been successfully refuted by Laderchi early in the eighteenth
century,[110] and annihilated for ever twenty years ago by R. P. Dom
Guéranger, in his excellent book on St. Cecilia.[111]

The touching story of St. Cecilia must also inspire poets. Without
mentioning the ancient hymns to be found in the Italian, Spanish,
and Gallic liturgies, several poems in her honor may be quoted. At
the time of the Renaissance, Baptiste Spagnuolo made it the subject
of a real epic poem, where we find, as in the _Æneid_, the speeches
of Venus and Juno, and the conspiracies of the inhabitants of Olympus
against common mortals. The god of pagan love, accompanied by his
mother, comes sadly to Juno to complain of the disdain of Cecilia,
who wishes to remain a virgin. Forgetting her resentment, the wife
of Jupiter inspires the father of Cecilia with the idea of uniting
his daughter to a pagan. Foiled in their attempt by the conversion of
Valerian, the angry goddess instigated Mars to suggest to Almachius
the plan of drowning in blood this Christian band, rebels against the
Olympian gods. Among the nine hundred verses may be found some fine
ones, but we must confess that these unfortunate pagan reminiscences,
so popular in the sixteenth century, ruin the poet's work for us.

Happily, the Roman virgin was to have her life, her death, and her
glories sung in poems of purer inspiration. Angelus Tangrinus,
priest of Monte Cassino,[112] wrote on this subject a long
epithalamium,[113] which lacks neither grace of expression nor of
thought.

The English poet Pope has also written an ode to St. Cecilia. The
poem is elegantly versified, but cold and unmarked by any Christian
feeling. The classic author recalls the magical effect of music in
all ages, nor has he forgotten the adventure of Eurydice; he speaks
with complacency of the Styx and of Phlegethon, of Ixion and of
Sisyphus, of Proserpine and the Elysian Fields. Finally, feeling a
pang of remorse, and remembering that he had dedicated his ode to
a virgin martyr, he asserts that the poets must instantly abandon
Orpheus and proclaim Cecilia the queen of music; for if the musician
of Thrace drew by his music a spirit from hell, Cecilia by hers
raised the soul to heaven.[114]

Very recently, Count Anatole de Ségur has published a dramatic poem,
which seems to us the finest homage that poetry has yet offered to
St. Cecilia. The style pure and musical, the interest sustained
and engrossing, it merits the praises which the best judges have
bestowed on it;[115] and we should willingly quote some verses of
this exquisite book,[116] did we not prefer to leave our readers the
pleasure of perusing it as a whole.


THE INFLUENCE OF SAINT CECILIA ON THE FINE ARTS.

We have seen the story of St. Cecilia inspire eloquence and poetry,
but it was destined to exercise a still greater influence on the
fine arts. There are, indeed, some general rules for these intimate
relations between art and holiness that it would be well to remember.
Besides, we may say that the saints were themselves powerful artists.
Who has sought the ideal more eagerly than these indefatigable lovers
of heavenly things? But they have not contented themselves with
seeking infinite beauty in an abstract form; they have endeavored,
as far as it was possible to human weakness, to realize it in their
lives. As the sculptor cuts into a block of marble to render it
into beautiful forms, they, with obstinate labor, have sought to
model their souls, to render them more pure, less unworthy of God.
The contemplation of martyrdom, so habitual to the first Christians,
gave them that serene dignity now become so rare. As a bride
prepares herself for the bridegroom, so did these souls of virgins,
of mothers, of the young and of the old, endeavor, day by day, to
grow in grace in the eyes of Jesus Christ, till the blade of the
executioner harvested them for heaven. The soul, grown beautiful,
transfigures in its turn the body which it animates, and the living
mirror of the countenance reflects strength and gentleness, peace and
ardent zeal, purity and ecstatic rapture. Thus we may fairly conclude
that Christianity has offered to artists, through the saints, not
only the perfection of form, but a type of human beauty elevated by
an ever-constant love.

But why was St. Cecilia singled out from such an innumerable band
of the beatified to become especially dear to artists? Many others,
gifted with all worldly advantages, in all the radiance of youth and
beauty, died, like her, virgins and martyrs, without attaining her
distinction. We will examine later the motives of the musicians in
taking her for their patron. As for the artists, they had no long
discussion on the causes of this secret sympathy. Each one, when he
dreamed of heaven, painted Cecilia, saying to himself, probably,
that there was not in the world a young girl's face which could so
perfectly express the rapture of the soul listening to ineffable
harmony.

It would require time to glance even hastily over the long gallery
of pictures of which our saint has been the subject. We will only
mention the most celebrated. It is probable that many, scattered
through the many galleries of Europe, have escaped us; but we wish
only to discuss those which we have appreciated with our own eyes,
and, also, the limits of this article would prevent our attempting to
mention all.

In order to preserve some regularity in this examination, and that
it may not become an adventurous journey through all ages and
countries in search of pictures of St. Cecilia, we will separate
these works into three classes, and, according to their nature and
their predominant tendencies, we will class them, one by one, in the
sensualistic, rationalistic, and mystical schools.[117] Nevertheless,
we must say that here, as in all other classification, the confines
of each class are very apt to mingle with each other. Sometimes,
indeed, in the same picture one figure will express sensuality and
the others religious emotion.[118]

But let us render judgment on the entire effect of the picture and
its predominant tendency. We must repeat here that in all artistic
works we note two things: first, the idea of the artist, and, in
consequence, the order of psychological effect--sensual pleasures,
spiritual joy, or heartfelt rapture--which the picture gives rise
to in the souls of those who behold it; secondly, the execution,
the dexterity, more or less perfect, with which the idea has been
expressed, and, consequently, the greater or less satisfaction felt
by connoisseurs, whom a special education has fitted to appreciate
the technical merits or faults of a picture. These are two widely
different points of view; and, to be just, one should specify from
which standpoint a picture is judged, for it might easily happen that
the spirit of a picture would be really beautiful and the execution
very feeble; the coloring perhaps unpleasing, the perspective faulty,
or even the drawing incorrect.

First, The sensual school. Among the greatest geniuses, Rubens,
perhaps, falls oftenest into sensualism. It is to the senses, indeed,
that he usually addresses himself; hence the vividness of his
coloring, the brilliancy of the flesh, which seems palpitating with
life and ready to rebound under the critic's finger. But, indeed,
except "The Descent from the Cross" and "The Elevation of the Cross,"
nothing could be less religious than most of his religious pictures.
In vain his "St. Cecilia" passionately raises her eyes; her plumpness
and her dress wake only worldly thoughts. Others may admire the
intensity of the flesh tints, the lustre of the robes. We think such
exuberant health little suited to the young Christian who watched
and fasted the more entirely to give herself up to prayer. As for
the pouting cherubs which frolic round her, they are not adapted for
inspiring heavenly aspirations.

But let us look no longer to the sensual school for a type of
beauty which it cannot give us. Let us see how St. Cecilia has been
understood by those artists who, without troubling themselves much to
express Christian ideas, have, at least, endeavored to satisfy the
intelligence and to appeal to the mind through the eyes.

Second, The rationalistic school. Of all the painters whom we class
under the name of the rationalistic school (that is, spiritual
without being Christian), Domenichino is the most celebrated, or, at
least, the one who has consecrated the most important works to the
glory of St. Cecilia. His frescoes in the church of St. Louis des
Français, at Rome, are considered classics. There we see St. Cecilia
distributing, from the terrace of her house, her garments to a crowd
of poor people, who, in picturesque groups, are disputing over them.
Then, Almachius, on his judgment-seat, commanding, by an imperative
gesture, the saint to sacrifice to the idols. But she expresses
with dignity her horror; and it is in vain for the priests to offer
a goat, and in vain incense smokes on a tripod before a statue of
Jupiter. Here Cecilia dies, surrounded by kneeling women; some
watching her, others putting the blood from her wounds into vases
by the aid of sponges. In the meanwhile, the Pope, Urban, gives her
his blessing, and an angel brings her, from heaven, a crown and a
palm. In yet another fresco, an angel presents crowns to Cecilia and
Valerian. And last, on the ceiling is painted the apotheosis of the
saint supported in the arms of angels, and borne to heaven.[119]

But Domenichino's picture in the great gallery of the Louvre is more
generally known than the frescoes of St. Louis. Here St. Cecilia
is standing, and while she sings the glories of God, accompanying
herself on a violoncello, an angel offers her a music-book. But she
does not heed it, and raises to heaven eyes that seem just melting
in tears. Undoubtedly the head is truly dignified and inspired, but
we must regret that the religious sentiment is not more manifest in
this fine picture, for without the nimbus round the head one might
take the saint for a sibyl.[120]

Guido, with his usual grace, has represented Cecilia dying, lying on
her side, as in Maderno's statue. She has, however, her arms crossed
upon her breast, and the head is not turned aside; two women staunch
her bleeding wounds with cloths, and in the background an angel holds
a palm, which he hastens to give her.

To Annibal Carracci is usually attributed the St. Cecilia which
is to be found in the Museum of the Capitol at Rome. At all
events, one easily recognizes, by a certain shade of naturalism,
a work of the Bologna school. As before, the saint is singing and
accompanying herself on an organ; but here, we see beside her the
Blessed Virgin holding the infant Jesus in her arms, and a Dominican
priest--expressive faces, apparently enraptured with the celestial
concert.

The majority of French artists, above all in the reign of Louis
XIV., belong to the rationalistic school. Their composition is
clever, their drawing correct, the style dignified, sometimes almost
theatrical. They are indeed almost always natural, but with the
exception of some of Lesueur's, one rarely perceives in their works
the inspiration of a superhuman emotion. There are in the galleries
of French art in the Louvre two pictures which do not contradict
these observations. Jacques Stella, who lived during the first half
of the seventeenth century, has left us a St. Cecilia. She is
standing playing on an organ, her eyes modestly lowered, while two
angels are singing at her side. She wears a wreath of roses in her
hair; but, more charming than inspired, resembles the portrait of a
young girl of the age of Louis XIII. with a taste for music.

Mignard's picture is, however, more celebrated. Of finished
execution, perfect in detail, so that even the glimpse of landscape
seen through the pillars of the portico is treated with great care,
it inspires artists with admiration also by the beauty of its
coloring. The saint, richly dressed, and wearing a large turban,
which gives her a very oriental look, is seated playing on the harp.
No wonder that this picture pleased the king, or that he desired it
to adorn his collection. Unfortunately, all this magnificence fails
to move us. We see the Persian sibyl executing a prelude to her
oracles, but nothing reminds us of Rome and the early martyrs, and
neither in the piteous figures nor in those up-raised eyes can we
trace any Christian feeling.[121]

Third, the mystical school. Beyond the region of the senses and of
that which usually bounds the human spirit, opens the supernatural
and divine world. One cannot enter here without a pure heart, and
to enjoy its beauty we must by prayer and humility, those two wings
of the soul, rise above ourselves and transitory things. Thus the
mystical school of art, disdained by hypercritical connoisseurs,
requires a sort of moral preparation, and might write above its
door, as a salutary warning, "Let none enter here save him who loves
God entirely." It is here that we must finally seek the type of St.
Cecilia in all its supernatural beauty: a human face illuminated by
ecstasy.

We shall only mention, for the satisfaction of antiquaries, the
St. Cecilia of Cimabue at the entrance to the magnificent Uffizi
Gallery at Florence. This also is a type of the Byzantine virgin,
not however without a certain majesty in its stiffness. Far more
celestial is the impression left on us by the St. Cecilia of
blessed Fra Angelico da Fiesole, in that wonderful picture of the
"Incoronazione della Vergine," which so worthily commences the great
gallery of the Louvre. Cecilia is in the foreground, close to St.
Magdalen, recognizable by her long golden hair. Entirely absorbed in
the contemplation of Christ, and indifferent to the world, she turns
away, so that one sees only the long blue mantle and the crown of
roses, emblems of virginity, which encircles her head. Nevertheless,
the lost profile which we can only glance at is not without grace,
and suggests a countenance radiant with love and purity.

To the mystical school also may be attributed five little pictures by
Pinturicchio in the gallery at Berlin, which were much admired by Dom
Guéranger. Undoubtedly, Pinturicchio has none of Cimabue's stiffness;
we willingly acknowledge his ease and natural grace; but how far he
is from the angelic touch of Beato, or the perfection of Raphael!

Perhaps Bologna contains the largest array of fine pictures. In the
chapel of St. Cecilia, behind St. Giacomo Maggiore, ten admirable
frescoes represent the entire history of St. Cecilia. By the hand
of Francesco Francia himself, we have her marriage with Valerian,
and her funeral; six other scenes were painted by his pupils, G.
Francia, Chiodarolo, and Aspertini. The two representing Pope Urban
instructing Tiburtius, and the virgin distributing her property to
the poor, are considered Lorenzo Casta's masterpieces. But it is to
the Museum one must turn to admire the St. Cecilia of Raphael, one
of the most beautiful of pictures, and certainly the most splendid
homage offered by art to the Roman virgin. It was to be seen in
Paris from 1798 till 1815, when it was taken back to Bologna; and
it is well worth a voyage across the Alps. Letting fall the organ
she still retains in her hands, St. Cecilia stands, seeming to
listen in ecstasy to the concert of angels, contemplating this
transporting choir, which the artist has revealed in the yawning
skies. At her side stand St. John, St. Paul, St. Magdalen, and St.
Augustine; at her feet lie the broken instruments of earthly music.
Apparently Raphael wished to recapitulate on this sublime page the
highest precepts of philosophy. Here is typified by the instruments
of pleasure the world of the senses, whose bonds we must break and
free ourselves from. But if it is well to know something of this
material world, the realm of the human intellect, it is necessary
sometimes to know, like Cecilia, how to raise one's self still
higher and prepare to listen to the ineffable music of the soul.
Do we accuse ourselves of being sinners? Here is Magdalen with her
vase of ointment, and behind her Augustine. They may well inspire us
with hope, they also have experienced the temptations of the senses
and the proud rebellions of the will, but there they stand to prove
that humility and penitence may conquer these. Do you say that,
obliged to lead an active life, you daily find yourself overwhelmed
by a thousand cares? Behold St. Paul, the apostle of nations, who
also experienced pain, labor, shipwrecks, and dangers of all kinds;
nevertheless, leaning on his sword, he meditates. Finally, are you
philosophers or theologians? Behold St. John, the master of you
all. Radiant, he contemplates the enraptured saint, and seems to
say, "Forget yourselves for a space; turn from the sound of human
words; like Cecilia, listen to the celestial harmonies of the Word.
Look at this young girl. She has known how to find love, peace, and
happiness."[122]

According to M. Passavant,[123] it was also the history of St.
Cecilia, and not the martyrdom of St. Felicitas, as is usually
believed, which formed the subject of Raphael's fresco, formerly to
be admired in the chapel "De la Magliano" at Trastavere. In 1830, an
unknown vandal of a proprietor bethought himself of cutting a huge
gash through the centre in order to place a "pew, where he could hear
Mass without mingling with his servants!" Thus mutilated, the fresco
was transferred to canvas in 1835, and has probably been bought
by some more enlightened connoisseur; but the most enthusiastic
appreciation cannot now repair such outrages.

Among the moderns, we shall only mention, in Germany, the St. Cecilia
of Molitor, whose attitude reminds us much of Raphael's. Certainly it
has not the same nobility of style, but we find there the charming
grace of the Düsseldorf school. In France, we may mention with praise
the St. Cecilia of Paul Delaroche. Seated on an antique chair,
dressed in a robe falling in long folds, the virgin with one hand
restrains her mantle, bordered with a fringe of gold, with the other
she touches a little organ presented to her by two kneeling angels,
under the semblance of pure-faced boys. This sweet picture, full of
poetry and grace, is a happy contrast to some others, and makes us
the more regret the painter of this Christian martyr, so beautiful
and chaste--night brooding on the face of the waters.

But of one art St. Cecilia is especially the patron, and that is
music. Why the Roman virgin was chosen from so many others, would be
very difficult to explain with any precision. The mystic sense of the
tradition which makes Cecilia the queen of harmony is now lost, and
on this point we are reduced to conjectures. Let us hope, however,
that the conjectures we shall advance may seem probable after a
little reflection.

Undoubtedly Cecilia, the daughter of a noble family, enjoying all
worldly advantages and instructed to please, was taught music.
Without doubt, also, she consecrated to God a talent acquired for
worldly ends; and in the meetings of the faithful in the catacombs
she must have taken part in the psalms and canticles. But the most
weighty argument in favor of this glorious patronage which the
Christian ages have ascribed to our saint, is the sentence from her
life incorporated in the Roman Litany: "Cantantibus organis, Cæcilia
Domino decantabat: Fiat cor meum immaculatum ut non confundar."

In January, 1732, a Jansenist critic, otherwise entirely
unknown,[124] remarked, in the _Mercury_ of France, "that the
selection of St. Cecilia as the patron of music was not a good
choice." Indeed, he says, a little farther on, "we can easily see
that this saint was very insensible to the charms of music; for
on her wedding day, while they played on several instruments, she
remained absorbed in prayer."[125] Poor man! he could not get beyond
the outer husks of things, and the material side of art. He did
not know that elevated natures naturally respond to human music by
prayer, that heavenly music. And undoubtedly, he had never heard
those sublime melodies which a loving soul sings to itself, and of
which the most beautiful concerts of this world are but a feeble echo.

But the Christian people had a better inspiration. They understood
that music, and, above all, religious music--the most beautiful of
all, whose highest aim is to free us from the senses and lift us out
of ourselves, in order to raise us to God--might well be protected by
this young girl, whose soul had become like a lyre, from which the
faintest breath will wake harmonious vibrations, and who, virgin and
martyr--while for three days she lay on the bloody flags, seemed in a
long song of love to render back her spirit.

In Rome and Italy, musical societies early placed themselves under
the patronage of St. Cecilia. We find one in France, founded in
1571, at Evreux, "by the choristers of the cathedral church, and
other pious inhabitants of this city, for the purpose of learning
music." Henry III. gave letters patent to the "Society of Madame
St. Cecilia," established at Paris, in the church of the "Grands
Augustins," by zealous artists and amateurs of music. These societies
disappeared with many others in the revolutionary troubles, but
their charitable intentions have been revived. Every year, on the 22d
of November, the Association of Musical Artists gives in the great
church of St. Eustache at Paris a musical mass,[126] whose proceeds
are destined to relieve their sick and poor members. Undoubtedly
one might often wish more religious music. These pretended masses
are far too theatrical to seem much inspired when compared to the
oratorios which Handel and Beethoven have dedicated to St. Cecilia.
Nor is it there that one could find pious meditation. Nevertheless,
we may still rejoice that at a time when materialism has corrupted
so many hearts, these solemnities still attract crowds. Indeed, one
may say of music as Tertullian said of the soul, that it is naturally
Christian. To draw the soul from all that occupies it, weighs on it,
and destroys it, to sustain it by prolonged melody, inspiring dreams
of infinity, is also to elevate it above itself, and gently prepare
it for the broken utterances of prayer.

We know, then, that St. Cecilia is powerful enough in heaven to turn
an idler into yet another Christian. Never in vain was she approached
while on earth, or her memory celebrated since she has reigned in
heaven. She has held her court of littérateurs, poets, painters, and
musicians, men with impassioned hearts, which she has gently drawn
toward heaven. For each she has obtained some special grace. Let
others come; for the treasures she distributes are never exhausted.

In the early Christians who read her history, she inspired love of
purity and a martyr's strength; to the artists who have striven to
represent her, she has revealed a type of beauty unknown on earth.
For the most humble of her servants, she has smiles which heal the
soul wonderfully. Who has inspired more masterpieces? who has been
more loved than this virgin? who is more alive than she, who has been
dead for sixteen centuries? But, martyr to love, she died for Christ.
Is this really dying?

FOOTNOTES:

[109] In his _Speculum Historiale_, lib. iv., chap. 22.

[110] See the notes of Jacques Laderchi in the life of St. Cecilia
published by him, and the long list of memorials which he has
collected in her honor. _Sanctæ Ceciliæ, V. et M., acta_: edidet
Jacobius Laderchius. 2 vols. in 4to, Rome, 1723. The work is very
rare, but may be found in the Imperial Library, Paris.

[111] Justice and gratitude oblige us to acknowledge the great
advantage we have received from Dom Guéranger's book. As well written
as it is learned, it is still the best history of St. Cecilia. But
the learned Benedictine has only touched slightly on the influence of
St. Cecilia on the fine arts, and we have been obliged to fill out
these notes by personal research and observations made in a recent
journey to Italy.

[112] Died 1593.

[113] See Laderchi, op. cit. t. ii., pp. 438-450.

[114] See _Select Works of Alexander Pope_. One vol. in 12mo,
Leipsic, 1848, Tauchnitz edition. "Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's
Day."

[115] He was decorated by the "Académie Française" (Nov., 1869).

[116] _St. Cecilia_, a tragic poem. By Count Anatole de Ségur. One
volume folio, at Amb. Bray's, Paris, 1868.

[117] This is not an arbitrary philosophic division. It corresponds
to the three worlds recognized by the greatest geniuses of antiquity
or of modern times--Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, and Malebranche--the
world of the senses, the world of human thought, and the divine world.

[118] So in Raphael's famous picture, the pearl of the gallery at
Bologna; while its exacted symbolism and heavenly sentiment tempt us
to class it among the masterpieces of the mystic school, it must be
confessed that St. Magdalen has a very _earthly_ look. We know, alas,
how this noble form has been profaned by some artists; the victim,
even after her penitence, of the sensual tastes of the Renaissance,
she remained a courtesan in the eyes of Titian and Correggio; and the
pagans of the sixteenth century have turned our saint into a nymph
lying in a grotto, or standing veiled only by the masses of her long
hair.

[119] The frescoes of St. Louis have been engraved by Landon in his
great book on the life and works of celebrated painters. See _Works
of Domenichino_. 3 vols. in 4to, Paris, 1803.

[120] There are two more pictures of St. Cecilia by Domenichino. One
is in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome; the other was in England at the
beginning of this century. See the engravings already mentioned in
Landon.

[121] In this second school may be classed the pictures of Paul
Veronese and of Garofolo in the Dresden Museum. As for Carlo Dolce's
St. Cecilia, it is far sweeter, and forms the connecting link between
the rationalistic and mystic schools. We have not seen the picture,
which is in the Museum at Dresden, but it has become well-known
through engravings, and has been published by Schulger at Paris.

[122] Raphael has also represented St. Cecilia bearing witness to
Christ at the tomb. This may be seen at the Museum at Naples. Dom
Guéranger considers the type of this picture far higher than any of
the others.--C. F. Vasari, t. iii. p. 166.

[123] Raphael d'Urbin, t. ii., p. 277.

[124] His name was M. Bottu de Toulmont, it appears.

[125] _Dictionary of Plain Chant_, in the _Theological Encyclopedia_
at Migne, 256.

[126] At Brussels this mass is sung in St. Gudule.




DISILLUSIONED.


      I blush that I am England's son!
        Yet deemed her once the inviolate home
      Of matchless freedom nobly won:
        And little thought the hour would come,
      When, freer on an alien strand,
      My soul should scorn its native land.

      How mocks my ear the idle song
        That "Britons never shall be slaves"
      _These_ Britons _have been_ slaves _so long_
        To fraud and falsehood, fiends and knaves,
      They spurn true freedom's very name,
      And, self-duped, revel in their shame.

      O Albion! once the "Isle of Saints,"
        The "Dower of Mary," what thy crime?
      Not sternest pen--not envy's--paints
        The annals of thy golden time
      In aught but glory. Whence the call
      For such a vengeance, such a fall?

      A tyrant's lust, a woman's pride,
        Could rend thee from the parent stem,
      And lay thee wither'd by the side
        Of barren branches--cursed with them!
      Save that thy head was too elate,
      What hadst thou done for such a fate?

      And oh! if thou hadst welcomed back
        The Christless worship of the Celt,
      Thy darkness were of hue less black--
        Were less like Egypt's, "to be felt"!
      'Twere rather twilight of the morn:
      Another day might still be born.

      But no: more hellward yet thy fall!
        To turn and trample in her blood
      The Mother who had brought thee all
        Thou ever hadst of highest good:
      Behold a guilt--ay, deeplier dyed
      Than blinded Juda's deicide!

      And lo! a sleek usurper now--
        Meet tool of perjured royalty--
      Rears shameless her apostate brow:
        Her creed a sham, her claim a lie!
      The children's bread no more divine,
      A hireling throws them husks of swine.

      This vaunted church, they built her stout:
        And if by dint of fellest strife
      She failed to crush and strangle out
        Her foe's imperishable life,
      'Twas not, I ween, from lack of force,
      Or craft of state, or base resource.

      'Twas not that mildness ruled the day,
        And penal codes were voted down;
      And fair the question, fair the play
        From chair and pulpit, bench and crown;
      While forgery disdain'd to vie
      With slander in the dextrous lie.

      But more. As harlots aim to link
        A sister's ruin with their own
      So thou, my England, couldst not drink
        The "cup of devils" quite alone,
      But needs must press it on a shore
      The rival of thy light before.

      And Erin loathed it. There's a prayer
        That kept her then, and triumphs still.
      'Twill take thee more than hate may dare
        To break the Patrick in her will:
      Though treachery _was_ the lurking sin
      That sold the soil thou couldst not win.

      And what, at last, has hate achieved?
        For her, thy victim, such a name
      As points--and must, to be believed--
        To thy long parallel of shame:
      The Isle of Martyrs--peerless gem
      In Rome's thick-rubied diadem.

      Nor this alone. Not vainly fled
        Her patriot sons thy cruel hand;
      Not vainly to the West were led,
        Where the great future's chosen land
      O'er thralless ocean beacon'd fair,
      To find God's mission waiting there.

      Thus, England, has thy baffled rage
        But spread the faith it sought to slay:
      And lo! the nations see thee wage
        The bigot's combat ev'n to-day!
      They cry: "Her very pride is o'er:
      The lion in her wakes no more!"

      Fool-doubly fool! Art thou so strong
        No mightier arm can lay thee low?
      If patient heaven has linger'd long,
        This hour thy last--for weal or woe:
      And what 'twere penance to accord,
      Wilt thou but forfeit to the sword?

      Enough. My heart is too much thine
        To curse thee, though I blush to own:
      Too fondly prized thee as a shrine,
        Too proudly hailed thee as a throne:
      And, turning from the bitter truth,
      Finds sweetness in the dream of youth.

      For memory gathers in that dream
        A fragrance as of morning dew:
      The freshness of the grove and stream,
        When Nature woo'd me first, and knew
      So well to draw me to her breast,
      And wed me to her love's unrest.

      And if henceforth I twine my wreath
        To crown the land where now I sing,
      Content to pray in peace beneath
        The shadow of her eagle's wing;
      'Tis not that charms of clime and scene
      Estrange me from thy gentler mien.

      It is that truth is chainless here,
        And swift her march from shore to shore;
      And little need her children fear
        For coming days--though clouded o'er;
      For God must shape a gracious plan
      Where truth is free, and man is man.[127]

      JULY, 1868.

FOOTNOTE:

[127] Though the above lines were written before the disestablishment
of the State Church in Ireland, their author's indignation has been
little appeased by that extorted act of justice. The measure was
unaccompanied by any attempt at reparation for the past. At the
very least, the old Catholic churches might have been returned to
their lawful owners. And is there any sign to-day of full justice
ever being done or half-done? None--except in the event of divine
vengeance forcing England to kneel to her generous victim and "sue to
be forgiven." Fiat, fiat.




ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION.[128]


Sir John Lubbock, though his name is not euphonious, is, we
understand, an English scientist, highly distinguished and of no
mean authority in the scientific world, as his father was before
him. He certainly is a man of large pretensions, and of as much
logical ability and practical good sense as we have a right to
expect in an English scientist. He, of course, adopts the modern
theory of progress, and maintains that the savage is the type of the
primitive man, and that he has emerged from his original barbarism
and superstition to his present advanced civilization and religious
belief and worship by his own energy and persevering efforts at
self-evolution or development, without any foreign or supernatural
instruction or assistance.

One, Sir John contends, has only to study and carefully ascertain
the present condition of the various contemporary savage tribes,
or what he calls the "lower races," to know what was the original
condition of mankind, and from which the superior races started
on their tour of progress through the ages; and one needs only to
ascertain the germs of civilization and religion which were in their
original condition, to be able to comprehend the various stages of
that progress and the principles and means by which it has been
effected and may be carried on indefinitely beyond the point already
reached. Hence, in the volume before us the author labors to present
us a true picture of the present mental and social condition of
contemporary savages as that of the primeval man. He assumes that the
mental and social condition is that of the infancy of the human race,
and by studying it we can attain to the history of "prehistoric"
times, assist, as it were, if we may be pardoned the Gallicism, at
the earliest development of mankind, and trace step by step the
progress from their first appearance on the globe upward to the
sublime civilization of the nineteenth century--the civilization of
the steam-engine, the cotton spinner and weaver, the steamboat, the
steam-plough, the railway, and the lightning telegraph.

This theory, that finds in the savage the type of the primitive man,
is nothing very new. It was refuted by the late Archbishop Whately,
by the Duke of Argyll in his _Primeval Man_, and on several occasions
by the present writer in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. The facts Sir John
adduces in the support of this theory, as far as facts they are,
had been adduced long ago, and were as well known by us before we
abandoned the theory as untenable, as they are by Sir John Lubbock or
any of his compeers. They may all, so far as they bear on religion,
be found summed up and treated at length in the work of Benjamin
Constant, _La Religion considerée dans sa Source, ses Developpements,
et ses Formes_, published in 1832, as well as in a mass of German
writers. Sir John has told us nothing of the mental and social
condition of savages that we had not examined, we had almost said,
before he was born, and which we had supposed was not known by all
men with any pretension to serious studies. In fact, we grow rather
impatient as we grow old of writers who, because they actually have
learned more than they knew in their cradles, imagine that they have
learned so much more than all the rest of mankind. No men try our
patience more than our scientific Englishmen, who speak always in a
decisive tone, with an air of infallibility from which there would
seem to be no appeal, and yet utter only the veriest commonplaces,
old theories long since exploded, or stale absurdities. We have no
patience with such men as Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Darwin. We are
hardly less impatient of the scientists who in our own country hold
them up to our admiration and reverence as marvellous discoverers,
and as the great and brilliant lights of the age. We love science, we
honor the men who devote their lives to its cultivation, but we ask
that it _be_ science, not hypothesis piled on hypothesis, nor simply
a thing of mere conjectures or guesses.

The modern doctrine of progress or development, which supposes man
began in the lowest savage, if not lower still, is not a doctrine
suggested by any facts observed and classified in men's history,
nor is it a logical induction from any class of known facts, but a
gratuitous hypothesis invented and asserted against the Biblical
doctrine of creation, of Providence, of original sin, and of the
supernatural instruction, government, redemption, and salvation
of men. The hypothesis is suggested by hostility to the Christian
revelation, prior to the analysis and classification of any facts
to sustain it, and the scientists who defend it are simply
investigating nature, not in the interests of science properly
so-called, but, consciously or unconsciously, to find facts to
support a hypothesis which may be opposed to both. Any facts in
nature or in history, natural or civil, political or religious,
that seem to make against Christian teaching, are seized upon
with avidity, distorted or exaggerated, and paraded with a grand
fanfaronade, sounding of trumpets, beating of drums, and waving of
banners, as if it were a glorious triumph of man to prove that he
is no better than the beasts that perish; while the multitude of
facts which are absolutely irreconcilable with it are passed over in
silence or quietly set aside, as of no account, or simply declared to
be anomalies, which science is _not yet_ in a condition to explain,
but, no doubt, soon will be, since it has entered the true path,
has found the true scientific methods, and is headed in the right
direction. Science is yet in its infancy. In its cradle it has
strangled frightful monsters, and, when full-grown, it will not fail
to slay the hydra, and rid the world of all its "chimeras dire." But
while we do not complain that your infantile or puerile science has
not done more, we would simply remind you, men of science, that it is
very unscientific to reason from what you confess science has not yet
done as if it had done it. Wait till it has done it, before you bring
it forward as a scientific achievement.

We confess to a want of confidence in this whole class of scientists,
for their investigations are not free and unbiassed; their minds are
prejudiced; they are pledged to a theory in advance, which makes
them shut their eyes to the facts which contradict it, and close
their intelligence to the great principles of universal reason
which render their conclusions invalid. There are other scientists
who have pushed their investigations as far into nature and history
as they have, perhaps even further, who know and have carefully
analyzed all the facts they know or ever pretended to know, and yet
have come to conclusions the contrary of theirs, and find nothing in
the facts or phenomena of the universe that warrant any induction
not in accordance with Christian faith, either as set forth in the
Holy Scriptures or the definitions of the church. Why are these less
likely to be really scientific than they? They are biassed by their
Christian faith, you say. Be it so: are you less biassed by your
anti-christian unbelief and disposition? Besides, are you able to say
that these have not in their Christian faith a key to the real sense
or meaning of the universe and its phenomena which you have not, and
therefore are much more likely to be right than you? Do you know that
it is not so? There is no science where knowledge is wanting.

The unchristian scientists forget that they cannot conclude against
the Biblical or Christian doctrine from mere possibilities or even
probabilities. They appeal to science against it, and nothing
can avail them as the basis of argument against it that is not
scientifically proved or demonstrated. Their hypothesis of progress,
evolution, or development is unquestionably repugnant to the whole
Christian doctrine and order of thought. If it is true, Christianity
is false. They must then, before urging it, either prove Christianity
untrue or an idle tale, or else prove absolutely, beyond the
possibility of a rational doubt, the truth of their hypothesis. It
is not enough to prove that it may, for aught you know, be true;
you must prove that it is true, and cannot be false. Christianity
is too important a fact in the world's history to be set aside by
an undemonstrated hypothesis. And it is anything but scientific to
conclude its falsity on the strength of a simply possible or even
probable hypothesis, not as yet indeed proved, and of which the best
you can say is that you trust science will be able to prove it when
once it is out of its nonage. You cannot propose it at all, unless
you have scientifically demonstrated it, or previously disproved
_aliunde_ the Christian revelation. So long as you leave it possible
for me to hold the Christian faith without contradicting what is
demonstrated to be true, you have alleged nothing to the purpose
against it, and cannot bring forward your theory even as probable,
far less as scientific; for, if it is possible that Christianity is
true, it is not possible that your hypothesis can be true, or even
scientifically proved. The scientists seem not to be aware of this,
and seem to suppose that they may rank Christianity with the various
heathen superstitions, and set it aside by an unsupported theory or a
prejudice.

Let the question be understood. Christianity teaches us that in the
beginning God created heaven and earth, and all things therein,
visible and invisible, that he made man after his own image and
likeness, placed him in the garden of Eden, gave him a law, that
is, made him a revelation of his will, instructed him in his moral
and religious duty, established him in original justice, in a
supernatural state, under a supernatural providence, on the plane of
a supernatural destiny; that man prevaricated, broke the law given
him, lost his original justice, the integrity of his nature attached
thereto, and communion with his Maker, fell under the dominion of
the flesh, became captive to Satan, and subject to death, moral,
temporal, and eternal; that God, of his own goodness and mercy,
promised him pardon and deliverance, redemption and salvation,
through his own Son made man, who in due time was born of the Virgin
Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, was dead and
buried, and on the third day rose again, ascended into heaven, whence
he shall come again, to judge the living and the dead. This doctrine,
in substance, was made to our first parents in the garden, was
preserved in the tradition of the patriarchs, in its purity in the
synagogue, and in its purity and integrity in the Christian church
founded on it, and authorized and assisted by God himself to teach it
to all men and nations.

According to this doctrine, the origin of man, the human species,
as well as of the universe and all its contents, is in the creative
act of God, not in evolution or development. The first man was not
a monkey or a tadpole developed, nor a savage or barbarian, but
was a man full grown in the integrity of his nature, instructed by
his Maker, and the most perfect man of his race, and as he is the
progenitor of all mankind, it follows that mankind began not in
"utter barbarism," as Sir John asserts, but in the full development
and perfection of manhood, with the knowledge of God and Providence,
of their origin and destiny, and of their moral and religious duty.
Ignorance has followed as the penalty or consequence of sin, instead
of being the original condition in which man was created; and this
ignorance brought on the race by the prevarication of Adam, the
domination of the flesh, and the power of Satan acquired thereby, are
the origin and cause of barbarism of individuals and nations, the
innumerable moral and social evils which have afflicted mankind in
all times and places.

Now, to this doctrine Sir John opposes the hypothesis of the origin
of man in "utter barbarism," and his progress by natural evolution
or self-development. But what facts has he adduced in its support,
or that conflict with Christian teaching, that prove that teaching
false or even doubtful? He has adduced, as far as we can see, none
at all, for all the facts that he alleges are, to say the least, as
easily explained on the supposition of man's deterioration as on the
supposition of progress, development, or continuous melioration.
Some of the facts he adduces _might_, perhaps, be explained on his
hypothesis, if there were no reason for giving them a contrary
explanation; but there is not one of them that must be so explained.
This is not enough for his purpose, though it is enough for ours. He
must go further, and prove that his facts not only _may_ but _must_
be explained on his hypothesis, and can be explained on no other.
If we are able to explain, or he is unable to show positively that
we cannot explain, all known facts in accordance with the Christian
doctrine, he can conclude nothing from them against Christianity or
in favor of his naturalism. We do not, he must remember, rely on
those facts to prove the Christian doctrine, but he relies on them to
disprove it, by proving his hypothesis; and if he cannot show that
they absolutely do disprove it, or positively prove his hypothesis,
he proves nothing to his purpose.

Sir John dwells at great length on the real or supposed rites,
forms, and barbarous customs observed by outlying savage tribes or
nations, but, before he can draw any conclusion from them in favor
of his theory of progress, he must prove that they were primitive.
He knows them only as contemporaneous with what he would himself
call civilized marriage: how then, without having first proved that
the race began in "utter barbarism," conclude from them that they
preceded civilized marriage? One thing is certain, we never find them
without finding somewhere in the world contemporary with them the
civilized marriage. There is no history, historical intimation, or
tradition of any custom or conception of marriage older than we have
in the Book of Genesis, and in that we find the true idea of marriage
was already in the world at the earliest date of history, and the
vices against it are plainly condemned in the Decalogue, contemporary
with these very usages, customs, and notions of savages on which Sir
John dwells with so much apparent delight, and which are barbarous,
and lax enough to satisfy even our women's-rights men; and, so far as
history goes, preceding them, the true idea of marriage as something
sacred, and as the union of one man with one woman, was known and
held, and therefore could not have been, at least so far as known, a
development of barbarian marriages.

The same answer applies to the question of religion. Contemporary
with the savage and barbarous superstitions of the heathen, and
even prior to them, we find practised in its fervor and purity
the true worship of the true God. True religion is not developed
from the impurities and absurd superstitions of the heathen, and
is by no means the growth of the religious sentiment becoming
gradually enlightened and purifying itself from their grossness,
for it is historically as well as logically older than any of them.
Men worshipped God the creator of heaven and earth before they
worshipped the fetish, the elements, or the hosts of heaven. Religion
is older than superstition, for superstition is an abuse of religion,
as the theologians say, by way of excess, as irreligion is its
abuse by way of defect; but a thing must exist and be entertained
before it can be abused. Nothing can be more certain than that
true religion has never been developed from false religions, or
truth from falsehood; for the true must precede the false, which is
simply the negation of the true. Christianity is, if you will, a
development, the fulfilment of the synagogue or the Jewish religion;
Judaism was also, if you will, a development of the patriarchal
religion; but in neither case a self-development; and in neither
case has the development been effected except by supernatural
intervention. It would be absurd to suppose the patriarchal religion
was a development of heathenism, since it is historically prior to
any form of heathenism, and every known form of heathenism supposes
it, and is intelligible only by it. So far was Judaism from being
self-evolved from the superstitions of the heathen, that it was with
the greatest difficulty that the Israelites themselves, as their
history shows, were kept from adopting the idolatry and superstition
of the surrounding nations, which shows that their religion was
not self-evolved, and that it was above the level of the moral and
religious life of the people. Christianity develops and perfects
Judaism, but by supernatural agency, not by the natural progress or
self-development of the Jewish people; for if it had been, the bulk
of the nation would have accepted it, and we know that the bulk of
the Jewish people did not accept it, but rejected it, and continue to
reject it to this day.

We know, also, that the progress of the heathen nations was very far
from raising them to the level of the Christian religion. Traces
of some of its principles and several of its moral precepts may be
found with the Gentile philosophers, as we should expect, since they
pertained to the primitive revelation; but these philosophers were
not the first, but rather the last to accept it. Nowhere amongst the
heathen did any Christian communities spring up spontaneously or
were of indigenous origin. Christianity sprang out of Judea, and the
nations adopted it, in the first instance, only as it was carried
to them by Jewish missionaries. And who were these missionaries?
Humble fishermen, publicans, and mechanics. Who first received
them, and believed their message? Principally the common people,
the unlettered, the poor, and slaves of the rich and noble. "For
see your vocation, brethren," says St. Paul (1 Cor. iv. 26), "that
not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble." Were the fishermen of the Lake Genesareth, and the slaves of
the Roman Empire, we may ask with Mgr. Maret, "the most enlightened
and advanced portion of mankind"? Who dare maintain it, when it is
a question of natural development or progress? Had Christianity
been the natural evolution of the human mind, or the product of the
natural growth of human intelligence and morality, we should have
first encountered it not with the poor, the ignorant, the unlettered
and wretched slaves, but with the higher and more cultivated classes,
with the philosophers, the scientists, the noble, the great generals
and the most eminent orators and statesmen, the _élite_ of Greek
and Roman society, those who at the time stood at the head of the
civilized world. Yet such is not the fact, but the fact is the very
reverse.

The Biblical history explains the origin of the barbarous
superstitions of heathendom in a very satisfactory way, and shows
us very clearly that the savage state is not the primitive state,
but has been produced by sin, and is the result of what we call the
great Gentile apostasy, or falling away of the nations from the
primitive or patriarchal religion. When language was confounded at
Babel, and the dispersion of mankind took place, unity of speech
or language was lost, and with it unity of ideas or of faith, and
each tribe or nation took its own course, and developed a tribal or
national religion of its own. Gradually each tribe or nation lost
the conception of God as creator, and formed to itself gods made
in its own image, clothed with its own passions, and it bowed down
and worshipped the work of its own hands. It was not that they knew
or had known no better. St. Paul has settled that question. "For
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety and
injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice.
Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God
hath manifested it to them. For the invisible things of him, from
the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made: his eternal power also and divinity; so
that they are _inexcusable_. Because when they had known God, they
glorified him not as God, nor gave thanks; but became vain in their
thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; for, professing
themselves wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the
incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible
man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping
things. Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their hearts,
to uncleanness; to dishonor their own bodies among themselves, who
changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the
creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen."
(Rom. i. 18-25.)

St. Paul evidently does not believe Sir John Lubbock's doctrine that
the race began in "utter barbarism," and have been slowly working
their way up to the heights of Christian civilization. He evidently
ascribes the superstitions, and consequently the barbarism, of
the heathen to apostasy. Sir John, of course, does not accept the
authority of St. Paul; but, if he cannot prove St. Paul was wrong, he
is debarred from asserting his own hypothesis, even as probable. If
it is possible to explain the facts of the savage state on the ground
of apostasy or gradual deterioration, the hypothesis of development,
of self-evolution or natural and unaided progress, falls to the
ground as wholly baseless. His hypothesis becomes probable only by
proving that no other hypothesis is possible.

But all the known facts in the case are against our scientific
baronet's hypothesis. Take Mohammedanism. It sprang up subsequently
to both Moses and the Gospel. It is a compound of Judaism and
Christianity, more Jewish than Christian, however, and is decidedly
inferior to either. How explain this fact, if the several races of
men never fall or retrograde, but are always advancing, marching
through the ages onward and upward? Many of the ancestors of the
present Mussulmans belonged to highly civilized races, and some of
them were Christians, and not a few of them Jews. Yet there is always
progress, never deterioration.

But we need not go back to the seventh century. There has been a
modern apostasy, and we see right before our eyes the process of
deterioration, of falling into barbarism, going on among those who
have apostatized from Christianity. The author regards as an evidence
of the lowest barbarism what he calls "communal marriage," that
is, marriage in which the wife is common to all the males of her
husband's family. We do not believe this sort of marriage was ever
anything more than an exceptional fact, like polyandry; but suppose
it was even common among the lowest savage tribes, how much lower
or more barbarous is the state it indicates, than what the highly
civilized Plato makes the magistrates prescribe in his imaginary
Republic? How much in advance of such a practice is the free love
advocated by Mary Wolstonecraft and Fanny Wright; the recommendation
of Godwin to abolish marriage and the monopoly by one man of any
one woman; than the denunciation of marriage by the late Robert
Owen as one of the trinity of evils which have hitherto afflicted
the race, and his proposal to replace it by a community of wives,
as he proposed to replace private property by a community of goods;
or, indeed, than we see actually adopted in practice by the Oneida
Community? Sir John regards the gynocracy which prevails in some
savage tribes as characteristic of a very low form of barbarism; but
to what else tends the woman's-rights movement in his country and
ours? If successful, not only would women be the rulers, but children
would follow the mother's line, not the father's, for the obvious
reason that, while the mother can be known, the father cannot be with
any certainty. Does not free love, the mainspring of the movement,
lead to this? And are not they who support it counted the advanced
party of the age, and we who resist denounced as old fogies or as
the defenders of man's tyranny?

Sir John relates that some tribes are so low in their intelligence
that they have no or only the vaguest conceptions of the divinity,
and none at all of God as creator. He need not go amongst outlying
barbarians to find persons whose intelligence is equally low. He
will search in vain through all Gentile philosophy without finding
the conception of a creative God. Nay, among our own contemporaries
he can find more who consider it a proof of their superior
intelligence and rare scientific attainments that they reject the
fact of creation, relegate God into the unknown and the unknowable,
and teach us that the universe is self-evolved, and man is only a
monkey or gorilla developed.[129] These men regard themselves as the
lights of their age, and are so regarded, too, by no inconsiderable
portion of the public. Need we name Auguste Comte and Sir William
Hamilton, among the dead; E. Littré, Herbert Spencer, J. Stuart Mill,
Professor Huxley, Charles Darwin, not to say Sir John himself, among
the living? If these men and their adherents have not lapsed into
barbarism, their science, if accepted, would lead us to the ideas
and practices which Sir John tells us belong to the lowest stage of
barbarism. Sir John doubts if any savage tribe can be found that is
absolutely destitute of all religious conceptions or sentiments, but,
if we may believe their own statements, we have people enough among
the apostate Christians of our day who have none, and glory in it as
a proof of their superiority to the rest of mankind.

Sir John sees a characteristic of barbarism or of the early savage
state in the belief in and the dread of evil spirits, or what he
calls demonism. The Bible tells us all the gods of the heathens are
devils or demons. Even this characteristic of barbarism is reproduced
in our civilized communities by spiritism, which is of enlightened
American origin. This spiritism, which is rapidly becoming a religion
with large numbers of men and women in our midst, is nothing but
demonism, the necromancy and witchcraft or familiar spirits of the
ancient world. Men who reject Christianity, who have no belief in
God, or at least do not hold it necessary to worship or pay him the
least homage or respect, believe in the spirits, go to the medium,
and consult her, as Saul in his desperation consulted the Witch
of Endor. If we go back a few years to the last century, we shall
find the most polished people on the globe abolishing religion,
decreeing that death is an eternal sleep, and perpetrating, in the
name of liberty, virtue, humanity, and brotherly love, crimes and
cruelties unsurpassed if not unequalled in the history of the most
savage tribes; and we see little improvement in our own century, more
thoroughly filled with the horrors of unprincipled and needless wars
than any other century of which we possess the history. Indeed, the
scenes of 1792-3-4 are now in process of reproduction in Europe.

We must remember that all these deteriorations have taken place in
or are taking place in the most highly civilized nations of the
globe, whose ancestors were Christians, and with persons many of
whom were brought up in the belief of Christianity. Take the men
and women who hold, on marriage and on religion, what are called
"advanced views"--free-lovers and free-religionists--remove them
from the restraints of the church and of the state, not yet up to
their standard, and let them form a community by themselves in which
their views shall be carried out in practice; would they not in two
or three generations lapse into a state not above that of the most
degraded and filthy savages? We see this deterioration going on in
our midst and right before our eyes, as the effect of apostasy from
our holy religion. This proves that apostasy is sufficient to explain
the existence of the savage races, without supposing the human race
began in "utter barbarism." If apostasy in modern times, as we see it
does, leads to "utter barbarism," why should it not have done so in
ancient times?

We might make the case still stronger against the author's
hypothesis, if necessary, by referring to the great and renowned
nations of antiquity, that in turn led the civilization of the
world. Of the nations that apostatized or adhered to the great
Gentile apostasy, not one has survived the lapse of time. To every
one of them has succeeded barbarism, desolation, or a new people.
The Egypt of antiquity fell before the Persian conqueror, and the
Egypt of the Greeks was absorbed by Rome, and fell with her. Assyria
leaves of her greatness only long since buried and forgotten ruins,
while the savage Kurd and the predatory Arab roam at will over the
desert that has succeeded to her once flourishing cities and richly
cultivated fields. Syria, Tyre, Carthage, and the Greek cities of
Europe and Asia have disappeared or dwindled into insignificance,
and what remains of them they owe to the conservative power of the
Christianity they adopted and have in some measure retained. So true
is it, as the Psalmist says, "the wicked shall be turned into hell,
and all the nations that forget God." How explain this fact, if
these ancient nations could by their own inherent energy and power
of self-development raise themselves from "utter barbarism" to the
civilization they once possessed, that they could not preserve it;
that, after having reached a certain point, they began to decline,
grew corrupt, and at length fell by their own internal rottenness?
If men and nations are naturally progressive, how happens it that
we find so many individuals and nations decline and fall, through
internal corruption?

Another fact is not less conclusive against Sir John's hypothesis,
that in all the nations of the heathen world their least barbarous
period known to us is their earliest after the apostasy and
dispersion. The oldest of the sacred books of the Hindus are the
profoundest and richest in thought, and the freest from superstition
and puerilities so characteristic of the Hindu people to-day. The
earliest religion of the Romans was far more spiritual, intellectual,
than that which prevailed at the establishment of the empire and the
introduction of Christianity. Indeed, wherever we have the means of
tracing the religious history of the ancient heathen nations, we find
it is a history of almost uninterrupted deterioration and corruption,
becoming continually more cruel, impure, and debasing as time flows
on. The mysteries, perhaps, retained something of the earlier
doctrines, but they did little to arrest the downward tendency of the
national religion; the philosophers, no doubt, retained some valuable
traditions of the primitive religion, but so mixed up with gross
error and absurd fables that they had no effect on the life or morals
of the people. One of the last acts of Socrates was to require Crito
to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius. If Sir John's hypothesis were
true, nothing of this could happen, and we should find the religion
of every nation, as time goes on, becoming purer and more refined,
less gross and puerile, more enlightened and intellectual, and more
spiritual and elevating in its influence.

The traditions of some, perhaps of all heathen nations, refer their
origin to savage and barbarian ancestors, and this may have been the
fact with many of them. Horace would seem to go the full length of
Sir John's theory. He tells us that the primitive men sprang like
animals from the earth, a mute and filthy herd, fighting one another
for an acorn or a den. Cicero speaks somewhat to the same purpose,
only he does not say it was the state of the _primeval_ man. Yet
the traditions of the heathen nations do not in general favor the
main point of Sir John's hypothesis, that men came out of barbarism
by their own spontaneous development, natural progressiveness,
or indigenous and unaided efforts. They rise, according to these
traditions, to the civilized state only by the assistance of the
gods, or by the aid of missionaries or colonies from nations already
civilized. The goddess Ceres teaches them to plant corn and make
bread; Bacchus teaches them to plant the vine and to make wine;
Prometheus draws fire from heaven and teaches them its use; other
divinities teach to keep bees, to tame and rear flocks and herds, and
the several arts of peace and war. Athens attributed her civilization
to Minerva and to Cecrops and his Egyptian colony; Thebes, hers to
Orpheus and Cadmus, of Phœnician origin; Rome claimed to descend
from a Trojan colony, and borrowed her laws from the Athenians--her
literature, philosophy, her art and science, from the Greeks.
The poets paint the primitive age as the age of gold, and the
philosophers always speak of the race as deteriorating, and find the
past superior to the present. What is best and truest in Plato he
ascribes to the wisdom of the ancients, and even Homer speaks of the
degeneracy of men in his days from what they were at the siege of
Troy. We think the author will search in vain through all antiquity
to find a tradition or a hint which assigns the civilization of any
people to its own indigenous and unassisted efforts.

Sir John Lubbock describes the savages as incurious and little given
to reflection. He says they never look beyond the phenomenon to its
cause. They see the world in which they are placed, and never think
of looking further, and asking who made it, or whence they themselves
came or whither they go. They lack not only curiosity, but the power
of abstraction and generalization, and even thought is a burden to
them. This is no doubt in the main true; but it makes against their
natural progressiveness, and explains why they are not, as we know
they are not, progressive, but remain always stationary, if left to
themselves. The chief characteristic of the savage state is in fact
its immobility. The savage gyrates from age to age in the same narrow
circle--never of himself advances beyond it. Whether a tribe sunk
in what Sir John calls "utter barbarism," and which he holds was
the original state of the human race, has ever been or ever can be
elevated to a civilized state by any human efforts, even of others
already civilized, is, perhaps, problematical. As far as experience
goes, the tendency of such a tribe, brought in contact with a
civilized race, is to retire the deeper into the forest, to waste
away, and finally to become extinct. Certain it is, no instance of
its becoming a civilized people can be named.

In every known instance in which a savage or barbarous people has
become civilized, it has been by the aid or influence of religion,
or their relations with a people already civilized. The barbarians
that overthrew the Roman Empire of the West, and seated themselves
on its ruins, were more than half Romanized before the conquest by
their relations with the Romans and service in the armies of the
empire, and they rather continued the Roman order of civilization in
the several kingdoms and states they founded than destroyed it. The
Roman system of education, and even the imperial schools, if fewer
in number and on a reduced scale, were continued all through the
barbarous ages down to the founding of the universities of mediæval
Europe. Their civilization was carried forward, far in advance of
that of Greece or Rome, by the church, the great civilizer of the
nations. The northern barbarians that remained at home, the Germans,
the Scandinavians, the Sclaves, were civilized by the labors of
Christian monks and missionaries from Rome and Constantinople, from
Gaul, England, and Ireland. In no instance has their civilization
been of indigenous origin and development.

Sir John Lubbock replies to this as he does to Archbishop Whately's
assertion that no instance is on record of a savage people having
risen to a civilized state by its own indigenous and unassisted
efforts, that it is no objection, because we should not expect to
find any record of any such an event, since it took place, if at
all, before the invention of letters, and in "prehistoric times."
We grant that the fact that there is no _written_ record of it is
not conclusive proof that no instance of the kind ever occurred;
but if so important an event ever occurred, we should expect some
trace of it in the traditions of civilized nations, or at least
find some tendencies to it in the outlying savage nations of the
present, from which it might be inferred as a thing not improbable in
itself. But nothing of the sort is found. The author's appeal to our
ignorance, and our ignorance, cannot serve his purpose. He arraigns
the universal faith of Christendom, and he must make out his case by
positive, not simply negative proofs. Till his hypothesis is proved
by positive evidence, the faith of Christendom remains firm, and
nothing can be concluded against it.

But how really stands the question? Sir John finds in the various
outlying savage tribes numerous facts which he takes to be the
original germs of civilization, and hence he concludes that the
primitive condition of the human race was that of "utter barbarism,"
and the nations, or, as he says, the races, that have become
civilized, "have become so by their indigenous and unaided efforts,
by their own inherent energy and power of self-development or
progress." But the facts he alleges may just as well be reminiscences
of a past civilization as anticipations of a civilization not yet
developed; and in our judgment--and it is not to-day that for the
first we have studied the question--they are much better explained as
reminiscences than as anticipations, nay, are not explicable in any
other way. The facts appealed to, then, can at best count for nothing
in favor of the hypothesis of natural progress or development. They
do not prove it or render it probable.

He is able, and he confesses it, to produce no instance of the
natural and unassisted progress of any race of men from barbarism to
civilization, and even his own facts show that barbarous or savage
tribes are not naturally progressive, but stationary, struck with
immobility. Where, then, are the proofs of his hypothesis? He has
yet produced none. Now, on the other hand, we have shown him that,
in all known instances, the passage from barbarism into civilization
has been effected only by supernatural aid, or by the influence
of a previously civilized race or people. We have shown him also
that the Gentile apostasy, which the Bible records and our religion
asserts, sufficiently explains the origin of barbarism. We have also
shown him nations once civilized falling into barbarism, and, in
addition, have shown him the tendency of an apostate people to lapse
into barbarism existing and operating before our very eyes, in men
whose ancestors were once civilized and even Christians. The chief
elements of barbarism he describes exist and are encouraged and
defended in our midst by men who are counted by themselves and their
contemporaries as the great men, the great lights, the advanced party
of this advanced age. Let the apostasy become more general, take
away the church or deprive her of her influence, and eliminate from
the laws, manners, and customs of modern states what they retain of
Christian doctrine and morality, and it is plain to see that nations
the loudest in their boast of their civilization would, if not
supernaturally arrested in a very short space of time, sink to the
level of any of the ancient or modern outlying savage tribes.

Such is the case, and so stands the argument. Sir John Lubbock brings
forward a hypothesis, not original with him indeed, and the full
bearing of which we would fain believe he does not see, for which
he adduces and can adduce not a single well-authenticated fact, and
which would not be favored for a moment by any one who understands
it, were it not for its contradiction of the Biblical doctrine and
Christian tradition. But while there is absolutely no proof of the
hypothesis, all the known facts of history or of human nature, as
well as all the principles of religion and philosophy, with one
voice pronounce against it as untenable. Is not this enough? Nothing
is more certain than Christian faith; no fact is or can be better
authenticated than the fact of revelation; we might then allege that
the hypothesis is disproved, nay, not to be entertained, because it
is contrary to the Christian revelation, than which nothing can be
more certain. We should have been perfectly justified in doing so,
and so we should have done; but as the author appeals to science
and progress to support himself on facts, we have thought it best,
without prejudice to the authority of faith, to meet him on his own
ground, to show him that science does not entertain his appeal,
and that his theory of progress is but a baseless hypothesis,
contradicted by all the known facts in the case and supported by
none; and therefore no science at all.

Sir John's theory of progress is just now popular, and is put forth
with great confidence in the respectable name of science, and the
modern world, with sciolists, accept it, with great pomp and parade.
Yet it is manifestly absurd. Nothing cannot make itself something,
nor can anything make itself more than it is. The imperfect cannot
of itself perfect itself, and no man can lift himself by his own
waistbands. Even Archimedes required somewhere to stand outside of
the world in order to be able to raise the world with his lever.
Yet we deny not progress; we believe in it, and hold that man is
progressive even to the infinite; but not by his own unaided effort
or by his own inherent energy and natural strength, nor without the
supernatural aid of divine grace. But progress by nature alone, or
self-evolution, though we tried to believe it when a child, we put
away when we became a man, as we did other childish things.

Thus much we have thought it our duty to say in reply to the theory
that makes the human race begin in utter barbarism, and civilization
spring from natural development or evolution, so popular with our
unchristian scientists or--but for respect to the public we would
say--sciolists. We have in our reply repeated may things which we
have said before in this magazine, and which have been said by
others, and better said. But it will not do to let such a book as the
one before us go unanswered in the present state of the public mind,
debauched as it is by false science. If books will repeat the error,
we can only repeat our answer.

FOOTNOTES:

[128] _The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man:
Mental and Social Condition of Savages._ By Sir John Lubbock, Bart.,
M.P., F.R.S., etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1871. 16mo, pp. 380.

[129] See _The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex_, by
Charles Darwin.




PAU.


American tourists make a great mistake in not generally including
the Pyrenees in their route of European travel. Unless ordered there
by a physician to repair a wasted or broken-down constitution, they
scarcely think of visiting the most beautiful country perhaps in
the world. Paris is France, and, as the route from Paris to Spain
lies direct, they pass through the Pyrenees, admire them casually,
but rarely pause to examine their beauties and the curiosities of
the quaint old towns embedded in their hills. Since chances of
this nature alone led me to discover what since has remained in my
memory an exquisite picture to be revivified at any moment, I cannot
blame others for following the usual guide-book routes of Europe,
and spending their money freely on places far less worthy their
attention. After a severe typhoid fever of ten weeks in Paris, and
still so feeble that I had to be almost carried to the depot, I set
out on the 5th of January, 1869, accompanied by my nurse, to make
the journey to the Pyrenees, if possible, in a day and a half. We
left Paris at 10.45 A.M., by the Chemin de Fer d'Orléans. Resting
for a few minutes at the historical old towns of Orléans, Tours,
Poitiers, Angoulême, and Livourne, we arrived at Bordeaux at eleven
P.M., where we remained for the night. The next morning at eight
we pursued our journey, passing Dax, so celebrated for its warm
mud-baths, said to be a remedy for rheumatic complaints, and a little
after one P.M. I found my friends awaiting me at Pau. Entering one
of the queer little half-omnibuses that hold six people and their
luggage, I was carried through the oddest of small white streets to
my lodging in the Jurançon, near the villa of my friend.

Never shall I forget my impressions while entering the room prepared
for me, and leaning on the arm of the dear girl who with her mother
and sister had done everything for my comfort. It was the Epiphany,
the day of light; and it seemed as if the soft sunlight that shone
in that pretty room and rested on the fragrant flowers was to me the
foreshadowing of a renewed life and happy future. The air was balmy
as a June day, and from my window rose the glorious Pyrenees. Covered
with their everlasting mantles of snow, they rose proudly to heaven,
as if they defied the clouds above them. A second lower range, with
its varied shades of green and the tropical luxuriance at its base,
completed the picture. Exhausted with my journey, my eyes filled with
tears of joy at all my sweet surroundings, I could have begged my God
there and then to let me sleep for ever.

Day after day I walked my few steps in my balcony and took in this
lovely picture. As yet I had not seen the town; my strength was
insufficient, and I simply rested and recuperated. The climate seemed
to me a strange one for invalids--a queer mixture, as I thought it,
of flannels and sun-umbrellas. The mornings and evenings were cold
and chilly with the air that blew down from the mountains, and the
middle of the day, from eleven until three o'clock, so intensely hot
that it was necessary to be well protected against sun-stroke. Still,
it is the great resort of consumptives, and at almost every turn
one encounters the muffled-up pale countenance of the poor invalid.
But for this one sad feature, the exquisite scenery, the tropical
foliage, the picturesque villas, and the town itself, of white
limestone, rising around its great chateau to the very heavens, with
the merry hum of voices, that greets you on every side, might well
make you imagine you had at last found the fairy dreamland--a country
that realized the fairy ideal of childhood.

This, too, is the land of the troubadour, and the quaint wild music
chanted by the peasantry has a something about it irresistibly
attractive, something one hears nowhere else; now dreamy, now bright,
almost monotonous at times, then suddenly bursting into strains of
sadness in which the whole depths of a life are portrayed. Then there
is the ringing mountaineer song, too, with its clear and measured
cadence, and a certain bravery in its tones which could easily
foretell the difficult mastering of such a people, should it ever
again be required.

The mixture of Spanish merchants and wanderers among the population
gives to their parks and squares a pretty effect. They cross the
Pyrenees with their showy wares, their strings of perfumed beads,
bracelets, necklaces, rosaries, all made of the wood that grows
at the foot of their mountains. Dressed in their own picturesque
costumes, and carrying their merchandise of every imaginable
color--red and bright yellow predominating--they accost you with a
grace which renders them irresistible, and you find yourself rather
poorer for the encounter.

I improved so rapidly in this climate, getting wholly rid of my cough
and gaining twenty-five pounds in little over four weeks, that I
concluded I was well enough to return to Paris, and thence, after
another rest in England, home. I resolved, therefore, to see all that
Pau offered to the sight-seer.

I drove with my kind friends several times to and around the varied
and pretty villas: the primroses peeped at us from under the hedges,
and here and there the rarest tropical trees and plants riveted our
attention--and this in February, when the most of the world was
ice-bound. The snow-capped mountains, however, rising around us on
every side, would not permit us to entirely forget winter. The town
itself, of twenty-one thousand inhabitants, is almost a miniature
Paris, some squares duplicating those of the great city, and the
bridges separating Pau and the Jurançon, though crossing a much
prettier river than the Seine, heightening the resemblance.

The churches are costly and beautiful; one built by the Society of
Jesus, entirely of white marble, and lined with exquisite pictures
and gifts of the wealthy strangers who pass the season at the
different hotels, is a perfect gem in its way.

The hotels, the Place Royale with its music every Thursday--weather
permitting, as say our friends of the Central Park--where crowds walk
up and down and listen to but little, I imagine, are all attractions
for the health or pleasure seeker.

Very odd old houses with gabled roofs, and reminding you of Dutch
pictures, start out occasionally from among the more modern and
fashionable ones, and seem to tell the story of change and decay.

Not unfrequently a merry peasant wedding party, in a whole line
of carriages trumpeting vigorously and raising the dust, pass you
with shouts, and compel your curiosity to recognize and salute the
bride. It is said the strangers with their wealth and fashionable
follies are gradually obliterating these good old Béarnais customs,
through the spirit of emulation they excite in a hitherto perfectly
happy peasantry. Women, however, still walk the streets with their
distaffs, and men knit as they guide the plough. Something of
primeval innocence still remains. Certainly no country was ever more
paradisiacally formed to retain it.

My time was limited, however; I could not stay and study these
people and their customs as I would have wished. I could not visit
the great summer resort, the famed Eaux Bonnes, so beautifully
nestled, they told me, among the higher Pyrenees, but must exert all
the strength I had to see before I left the great monument of Pau,
the grand old


CHATEAU OF HENRY IV.

The street ascends to it, and through an arcade by stone steps to
its park, which is now the everyday public resort. The park extends
all around the chateau, and, crossing a pretty bridge erected over
the Rue Marca, it continues for some miles in an ornamented walk
containing two principal avenues; one so shaded that it is cool all
summer, and the other sunny enough at any time to welcome and warm
the poor invalid who could not exist without his daily walk.

We do not find here the rich and varied architecture so attractive
in other imperial parks, Versailles, for instance; the hand of man
is displaced by that of nature, but the woods of rare trees on
hills that give everywhere the exquisite panorama of the encircling
Pyrenees are more than compensatory for any omissions of art.

The gate of St. Martin greets you as you enter. Built in 1586, it was
formerly the main entrance to the chateau when the drawbridge was
used. Now it leads to the Hôtel de la Monnaie, a dependence inhabited
by the subalterns and furnishers of the palace. Here the money of
Béarn was formerly made. Now we approach a hemicycle containing two
large vases in Medici form of Swedish porphyry, and given to the
chateau of Pau by King Bernadotte, who was born here. The statue of
Gaston Phœbus in white marble, the work of the Baron of Triquety,
towers between them. He stands the guard perpetual of the chateau.

Much of the land belonging to the former park has been divided and
sold, and is now the Place Napoléon. Vestiges, however, of ancient
walls are still allowed to exist, and on the left may yet be seen
the remains of the Hermitage of Notre Dame des Bris, attributed to
William Raymond, ravaged during the religious wars, and entirely
destroyed in 1793.

At the foot of the hill on the north side stood also the Castet
Beziat (in Béarnais dialect, _dearest castle_). And here let me
speak of this odd native patois. It is a mixture of French, Spanish,
and Italian, and is understood only by strangers who know the three
languages, yet it is euphonious and occasionally dignified. The
better class of the peasantry speak both it and a pretty French.
They prolong the syllables more than in Paris, which adds greatly to
the sweetness of the sound. This _Château Chère_ was built after the
model of the Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, by Marguerite
of Valois.

Jeanne d'Albret made it her favorite residence, and here occupied
herself exclusively with the education of her children, Henry IV. and
Catherine, who, after the death of her mother, made it the secret
residence of the Count de Soissons, whom she passionately loved but
could not marry. No trace of this Castet Beziat exists now. But let
us enter the great chateau, and first consider somewhat its origin.
Centule le Bieux was its founder toward the end of the year 982,
and his successors continued the southern portion, but it was not
finished until the time of Gaston Phœbus, who completed also the
great square tower that bears his name, the ramparts and parapets,
and the mill-tower, in order that he might make it his residence.
This mill-tower gave entrance to the Place de la Basse Ville, or
former field of battle, where hand to hand the armed knights decided
their judiciary combats. About 1460, Gaston X., desirous to give his
Béarnais people a truly royal residence, constructed the north and
east portions of the edifice, laid out the park, and decided that
the states of Béarn should be always represented in the halls of the
castle.

In 1527, the Margaret of Margarets, the sister so dear to Francis
I., becoming queen of Navarre by her marriage with Henry II., made
it a true palace of the Renaissance, restoring it entirely and
refurnishing it from top to bottom.

Abandoned later by Henry IV., become king of France, and despoiled
of everything precious it possessed by him and Louis XIII., entirely
neglected by their successors, it fell into the hands of governors,
then was seized by the republicans, who, not contented to sell at
the lowest price and piece by piece the lands of the royal domain,
converted into a tavern and stables the palace that formerly was the
cradle of the great king.

Not until the short reign of Louis XVIII. was any attempt made to
restore the castle to its former condition, a work soon neglected and
abandoned, but recommenced in 1838 by Louis Philippe, who ordered
besides the complete refurnishing of the apartments pretty much as
they are seen to-day.

Napoleon III., however, with his taste for the restoration of all
fallen grandeur that may recall royalty or the Empire, has done all
in his power to produce an almost magic transformation, a complete
resurrection of the old chateau, and at the present time the work
continues under the supervision of the most able architects.

The beautiful exterior that presents itself so commandingly, the
harmony that prevails in every part of the building surrounding
the Court of Honor, the pretty windows opening on the chapel, the
sculptures everywhere newly restored, the incessant labor on the
southern portion, all denote the desire of Napoleon to preserve and
embellish one of the most precious monuments of history.

The letters =G-P= in gold are placed in different parts of the
building. To Gaston Phœbus is accorded the honor of its construction.

You enter the chateau from the town-side by a bridge of stone and
brick, built by Louis XV. to replace the drawbridge that formerly
occupied the site of the present chapel.

Pause on this bridge, and look around you. On either side is a
deep ditch which once defended the entrance of the chateau, now a
magnificent avenue planted with trees and covered with flower-beds.
At your left is the chapel, whose date is 1840. The doors and windows
are elaborately sculptured. In front, you will notice three arcades
constructed in the style of the Renaissance, covered with a terrace
and carved balustrade, which serves for the principal entrance.

On your left and under the portico is the porter's lodge. At
the right in the new building are the bureaus of administration
and service; on the first story, the apartments of the military
commander; on the second, those of the register; and on the third and
last, the housekeeper's rooms for linen, etc.

The Court of Honor arrests your attention by its original form, its
deeply graven sculptures in the niches of the windows and doors
representing the different Béarnais sovereigns, and the statue of
Mars that faces the principal entrance. If these walls could speak,
they would tell how often the Béarnais people have assembled here
with shouts of respect or cries of vengeance, according as the
qualities of their prince called forth the one or the other.

The towers of the chateau are six in number: at the left on entering,
the Tower Gaston Phébus; at the right, the new Tower and Tower
Montauzet; at the lower end, the northwest, the Tower Billères; and
at the southwestern end, the two Towers Mazères.

The tower Gaston Phébus, or donjon, was called the tile tower,
because it is built almost entirely of brick. It has a roof of slate
which was carried off in a terrible storm in 1820.

A balcony faces the church of St. Martin, where the president of the
states of Béarn took his place to proclaim the name of each newly
elected sovereign.

Several illustrious personages have inhabited this tower. Among
others, Clement Marot, the favorite and unfortunate adorer of the
Queen Margaret, and Mademoiselle de Scudery, who passed the summer
here of 1637.

Under the reign of Louis XIV. it was converted into a prison of
state, and so continued until 1822.

Each story is now inhabited and richly furnished, and on the fifth
is a terrace that commands a most imposing view of the surrounding
country.

The tower Montauzet, in the Béarnais dialect, takes its name from the
circumstance that only birds could reach the top; Montauzet meaning
Mount Bird! In truth, it has no staircase, and history tells us that
in case of a siege the garrison ascended it by ladders, which they
drew up after them.

It had its dungeons, terrible wells into which criminals were
lowered. An iron statue armed with steel poniards received them,
clasped them in its arms, and, by ingenious means that the legend
does not explain, murdered them in unspeakable tortures. Henri
d'Albret closed up the entrance to these dungeons, and they were
forgotten until the reign of Louis XV. He caused them to be opened,
and discovered skeletons and iron chains fastened to the walls.

The ground-floor of the tower Montauzet formerly contained a fine
fountain. This will be replaced. The three stories above are occupied
generally by the domestics of the great dignitaries of the crown.

The other towers have nothing of interest. They are named from the
villages they face, and are simply advanced sentinels to defend the
approach of an enemy from the Pyrenees.

As soon as a visitor arrives at the chateau, he is ushered into the
waiting-room called Salle des Gardes, because during the presence of
majesty the valets waited here under the supervision of an officer
of the household. But little furniture is seen, a few old-fashioned
chairs surmounted by lions and the arms of France and Navarre.

From this room we enter the dining-room of the officers of the
service. There is nothing remarkable in its furniture, a long and
very wide table occupying the centre, and comfortable chairs placed
against the wall. Two statues, the one of Henry IV., the other of
Tully, stand on either side of the door, and are singularly imposing.

We pass on to the dining-room of their majesties. This is far more
elegant. Flemish tapestry adorns the walls, which was brought here
from the Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne. It represents
the chase in the different months of June, September, November, and
December. A clock of the time and style of Louis XIV., and a statue
of Henry IV. in white marble, by Francheville, which is said to be
older, and to represent the king more correctly than any other, are
the principal ornaments.

The Staircase of Honor leads us to the first story. It is richly
sculptured with astonishing beauty and skill. Doors lead from it to
the kitchens below, and to the different towers.

We ascend and gain the waiting-room. During the presence of their
majesties, the door-keepers remain here. When the emperor is alone,
he chooses this for his slight repasts.

The most beautiful tapestry covers the walls. The subjects are of all
kinds, mostly rural scenes, in which children or fairies predominate.
The furniture is of oak, and covered with leather.

The reception-room, the largest and most elegant in the chateau,
awaits us next. Here, by order and under the eyes of the cruel
Montgomery, general of Jeanne d'Albret, ten Catholic noblemen were
treacherously murdered. The sun shone in on us through the large
bay-windows, and gilded the richly ornamented stone chimney, and
threw the reflection of the mountain-tops across the floor. We stood,
perhaps, on the very spot where these brave souls had met their death
so many years before, though no trace remained of the horrors of
that day. The guide told the story, and most of our party passed on
to admire the tapestry and the costly vases that lend enchantment to
what should be a chamber of mourning. With all its beauty, I was glad
to escape to the family apartment.

Here, it is said, Queen Margaret presided. Her picture, and those of
Francis I., Henri d'Albret, and Henry IV., formerly graced the walls,
but the hand of vandalism, in 1793, spared not even them. They were
burned with all the other pictures of the chateau. A bronze statue of
Henry IV., when a child, which graces a pretty bracket, and a table,
the gift of Bernadotte, ornament the room.

The sleeping apartments of the emperor and empress follow, furnished
tastefully with Sèvres china ornaments, on which are representations
of Henry IV., Tully, and the Château de Pau, beautifully executed.
The walls are hung with Flemish tapestry; but in the boudoir of the
empress are to be seen six pieces of Gobelin tapestry, so finished
that it was some time before it could be decided they were not
oil-paintings. The subjects are: "Tully at the feet of Henry IV.;"
"Henry IV. at the Miller Michaud's;" "The Parting of Henry IV. with
Gabrielle;" "The Fainting of Gabrielle;" "Henry IV. meeting Tully
Wounded;" "Henry IV. before Paris."

An odd Jerusalem chest, also in this room, is the admiration of
strangers. It is made of walnut, inlaid with ivory, and was brought
from Jerusalem, and purchased at Malta in 1838.

A bath-room of red marble of the Pyrenees is attached to these
apartments, from which we ascend to the second story.

Here are large rooms much in the same style as the others, yet not
quite so elaborate. In 1848, Abd-el-Kadir and his numerous family
occupied this suite. An interesting model of the old chateau is
here shown, executed by a poor man named Saget, who presented it to
the Orleans family at a very low price, hoping, no doubt, another
recompense, which he never received.

A room whose tapestry is devoted to Psyche leads us to a chamber
which formed part of the apartment of Jeanne d'Albret, where it is
said Henry IV. was born, and where his cradle is still preserved.
The bed that Jeanne d'Albret occupied ordinarily is in the room
adjoining, and a quainter piece of architecture cannot be imagined.
It is of oak, richly carved, covered and mounted by a sleeping
warrior and an owl, emblems of sleep and night. In the inner portion,
towards the wall, is the Virgin, on one side, holding the infant
Jesus, and an Evangelist on the other. Very rich cornices, with lion
heads projecting and the framework of the arms of Béarn, complete
the description. How, without steps, they ever got into those beds
is a mystery; the upper berth of a steamer is easy of access in
comparison, but there we have always steps or underberths that serve
the same purpose.

The cradle of Henry IV. is a single tortoise-shell in its natural
state. It must have been a good-sized tortoise that gave its back to
the honor, but he must have been a very little baby to have slept
in such a couch. The cradle hangs very gracefully, supported by six
cords and flags embroidered in gold, with the arms of France and
Navarre. Above is a crown of laurel, surmounted by a white plume of
ostrich feathers, and underneath all a table covered with a blue
velvet cloth.

The chapel and library are the only remaining objects of interest.
The volumes of the library were presented by the emperor a short time
ago, and they are well selected.

There were formerly two chapels, but the older one has been done away
with. The present one was built in 1849, on the site of the old gate
of the drawbridge. The gate is still preserved, and on it a marble
slab that formerly bore this inscription:

        HENRICUS DEI GRATIA
    CHRISTIANISSIMUS REX FRANCIÆ
          NAVARRÆ TERTIUS
      DOMINUS SUPREMUS BEARNI
               1592.

The interior of the chapel has lately been restored and repainted. It
is not remarkable for anything, however. The altar-piece is tawdry,
and not in the usual good taste of the chateau.

We left this again for the beautiful park, roamed through it once
more, and I took my last look at the imposing structure I had studied
with so much interest.

I would advise all who visit Europe to see Pau and the Pyrenees.
Those who do so will certainly say with me that, had they crossed the
ocean for nothing else, they would have been more than compensated.




ST. MARY MAGDALEN.


      The winds of autumn whisper back soft sighing
        To the low breathing of the Magdalen;
      She on her couch of withered leaves is lying--
        Dreams she of days that come not back again?
      No--past and present both within her dying,
        Her earnest eyes upon the page remain;
      While the long golden hair, behind her flying,
        No more is bound with ornament and chain.
      The storm may gather, but she doth not heed;
        Nature's wild music enters not her ears;
      Her soul, that for her Saviour's woes doth bleed,
        One only voice for ever sounding hears:
      "Follow his footsteps who thy sins hath borne,
      And who for thee the thorny crown hath worn."




MEMOIR OF FATHER JOHN DE BRÉBEUF, S.J.[130]


Among the foremost and most distinguished of the Catholic
missionaries of America stands the name of Father John de Brébeuf,
the founder of the Huron Mission. Normandy has the honor of giving
him birth, and Canada was the field of his splendid and heroic
labors; yet the mission of which he was the great promoter was the
prelude to, and was intimately connected with, subsequent missions
in our own country; and at the time of his glorious death, his
heaven-directed gaze was eagerly and zealously turned towards the
country of our own fierce Iroquois, the inhabitants of Northern New
York, amongst whom he ardently longed to plant the cross of the
Christian missions. His labors and those of his companions opened the
northwestern portions of our country, and the great Valley of the
Mississippi, to Christianity and civilization, and the discoveries
and explorations which followed were partly the fruits of his and
their exalted ministry and enlightened enterprise; for, as Bancroft
says, "the history of their labors is connected with the origin of
every celebrated town in the annals of French America; not a cape
was turned, not a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." His fame
and achievements belong to all America, indeed, more truly, to all
Christendom. Saint, hero, and martyr as he was, his merits are a part
of the heritage of the universal church; and while his relics are
venerated on earth, and even the enemies of our religion accord to
him the most exalted praise, Catholics may, with the eye of faith,
behold him in that glorious and noble band of martyrs in heaven,
decked in resplendent garments of red, dyed in their own blood,
passing and repassing eternally, in adoration and thanksgiving,
before the throne of him who was the Prince of Martyrs.

      "It hath not perished from the earth, that spirit brave and high,
      That nerved the martyr saints of old with dauntless love to die.
      In the far West, where, in his pride, the stoic Indian dies;
      Where Afric's dark-skinned children dwell, 'neath burning tropic
          skies;
      'Mid Northern snows, and wheresoe'er yet Christian feet have trod,
      Brave men have suffered unto death, as witnesses for God."

While historians outside of the Catholic Church have marvelled at
such extraordinary virtues and unparalleled achievements as have
been displayed, not alone by a Xavier, but by the missionaries of
our own land, and have extolled them as an honor to human nature,
Catholics may be excused for regarding them as miracles of the faith,
triumphs of the church, and martyrs of religion. It seems strange
that the general historians of the church have bestowed so little
notice upon the planting and propagation of the faith in America. The
history of these events presents to our admiration characters the
most noble, deeds the most heroic, virtues the most saintly, lives
the most admirable, and deaths the most glorious. While the church
of America, in our day, counts her children by millions, what more
inspiring lesson could she place before their eyes than the history
of her early days, when her priests and missionaries were confessors
and martyrs? Of these was the subject of the present memoir.

John de Brébeuf was born in the diocese of Bayeux, in Normandy, March
25, 1593, of a noble family, said to be the same that gave origin to
the illustrious and truly Catholic house of the English Arundels.
He resolved to dedicate himself to the service of God in the holy
ministry, and, with this view, entered the novitiate of the Society
of Jesus, at Rouen, October 5, 1617. Having completed his noviceship,
he entered upon his theological studies. He received subdeacon's
orders at Lisseux, and those of deacon at Bayeux, in September, 1621;
was ordained a priest during the Lent of 1622, and offered up the
holy sacrifice of the Mass for the first time on Lady-day of the same
year. He was, though of the youngest, one of the most zealous and
devoted priests of his order, and, from the time that he consecrated
himself to religion, was given to daily austerities and rigorous
self-mortifications.

Catching the spirit of his divine Master, Father Brébeuf conceived an
ardent thirst for the salvation of souls, and the foreign missions
became the object of his most fervent desire. This chosen field
was soon opened to his intrepid and heroic labors. When Father Le
Caron, the Recollect missionary in Canada, asked for the assistance
of the Jesuits in his arduous undertaking of conquering to Christ
the savage tribes of North America, Fathers John de Brébeuf, Charles
Lallemant, and Evremond Massé, themselves all eager for the task,
were selected by their superiors for the mission. These apostolic
men sailed from Dieppe, April 26, 1625, and reached Quebec after a
prosperous voyage. The reception they at first met was enough to have
appalled any hearts less resolute and inspired from above than were
the hearts of Father Brébeuf and his companions. The Recollects, a
branch of the Franciscan Order, who, through Father Le Caron, had
invited them over, had received at their convent on the river St.
Charles no tidings of their arrival; Champlain, ever friendly to
the missionaries of the faith, was absent; Caen, the Calvinist,
then at the head of the fur-trading monopoly of New France, refused
them shelter in the fort; and the private traders at Quebec closed
their doors against them. To perish in the wilderness, or to return
to France from the inhospitable shores of the New World, was the
only alternative before them. At this juncture the good Recollects,
hearing of their arrival and destitution, hastened from their
convent in their boat, and received the outcast sons of Loyola with
every demonstration of joy and hospitality, and carried them to
the convent. It is unaccountable how Parkman, in his _Pioneers of
France in the New World_, in the face of these facts, related by
himself in common with historians generally, should charge against
the Recollects that they "entertained a lurking jealousy of these
formidable fellow-laborers," as he calls the Jesuits; who, on the
contrary, were the chosen companions of the Recollects, were invited
to share their labors, and with whom they prosecuted with "one heart
and one mind" the glorious work of the missions. The sons of St.
Francis and St. Ignatius united at once in administering to the
spiritual necessities of the French at Quebec, and the latter, by
their heroic labors and sacrifices, soon overcame the prejudice of
their enemies.

From his transient home at Quebec, Father Brébeuf watched for an
opportunity of advancing to the field of his mission among the
Indians. The first opportunity that presented itself was the proposed
descent of Father Viel to Three Rivers, in order to make a retreat,
and attend to some necessary business of the mission. Father Brébeuf,
accompanied by the Recollect Joseph de la Roche Dallion, lost no
time in repairing to the trading post to meet the father, return
with him and the expected annual flotilla of trading canoes from the
Huron country, and commence his coveted work among the Wyandots. But
he arrived only to hear that Father Viel had gained the crown of
martyrdom, together with a little Christian boy, whom their Indian
conductor, as his canoe shot across the last dangerous rapids in
the river Des Prairies, behind Montreal, seized and threw into the
foaming torrent together, by which they were swept immediately into
the seething gulf below, never to rise again. Neither the death of
Father Viel, nor his own ignorance of the Huron language, appalled
the brave heart of Father Brébeuf, who, when the flotilla came
down, begged to be taken back as a passenger to the Huron country;
but the refusal of the Indians to receive him compelled him to
return to Quebec. On the twentieth of July, 1625, he went among the
Montagnais, with whom he wintered, and, for five months, suffered all
the rigors of the climate, in a mere bark-cabin, in which he had to
endure both smoke and filth, the inevitable penalties of accepting
savage hospitality. Besides this, his encampment was shifted with
the ever-varying chase, and it was only his zeal that enabled him,
amid incessant changes and distractions, to learn much of the Indian
language, for the acquisition of the various dialects of which, as
well as for his aptitude in accommodating himself to Indian life
and manners, he was singularly gifted. On the twenty-seventh of
March following, he returned to Quebec, and resumed, in union with
the Recollects, the care of the French settlers. The Jesuits and
Recollects, moving together in perfect unison, went alternately from
Quebec to the Recollect convent and Jesuit residence, on a small
river called St. Charles, not far from the city.

The colony of the Jesuit fathers was soon increased by the arrival of
Fathers Noirot and De la Nouë, with twenty laborers, and they were
thus enabled to build a residence for themselves--the mother house
and headquarters of these valiant soldiers of the cross in their
long and eventful struggle with paganism and superstition among the
Indians. Father Brébeuf and his companions now devoted their labors
to the French at Quebec, then numbering only forty-three, hearing
confessions, preaching, and studying the Indian languages. They also
bestowed considerable attention on the cultivation of the soil. But
these labors were but preparatory for others more arduous, but more
attractive to them.

In 1626, the Huron mission was again attempted by Father Brébeuf.
He, together with Father Joseph de la Roche Dallion and the Jesuit
Anne de Nouë, was sent to Three Rivers, to attempt a passage to the
Huron country. When the Indian flotilla arrived at Three Rivers,
the Hurons were ready to receive Father de la Roche on board, but
being unaccustomed to the Jesuit habit, and objecting, or pretending
to object, to the portly frame of Father Brébeuf, they refused
a passage to him and his companion, Father Nouë. At last, some
presents secured a place in the flotilla for the two Jesuits. The
missionaries, after a painful voyage, arrived at St. Gabriel, or La
Rochelle, in the Huron country, and took up the mission which the
Recollects Le Caron and Viel had so nobly pioneered.

The Hurons, whose proper name was Wendat, or Wyandot, were a powerful
tribe, numbering at least thirty thousand souls, living in eighteen
villages scattered over a small strip of land on a peninsula in
the southern extremity of the Georgian Bay. Other tribes, kindred
to them, stretched through New York and into the continent as far
south as the Carolinas. Their towns were well built and strongly
defended, and they were good tillers of the soil, active traders,
and brave warriors. They were, however, behind their neighbors in
their domestic life and in their styles of dress, which for both
sexes were exceedingly immodest. Their objects of worship were one
supreme deity, called the Master of Life, to whom they offered
human sacrifices, and an infinite number of inferior deities, or
rather fiends, inhabiting rivers, cataracts, or other natural
objects, riding on the storms, or living in some animal or plant,
and whom they propitiated with tobacco. Father Brébeuf had acquired
sufficient knowledge of their language to make himself understood
by the natives, and he was greatly assisted by the instructions and
manuscripts of Fathers Le Caron and Viel. Father Nouë, being unable
to acquire the language, by reason of his great age and defective
memory, returned to Quebec in 1627, and was followed the next year
by Father de la Roche, who had made a brave but unsuccessful effort
to plant the cross among the Attiarandaronk, or Neutrals. The
undaunted Brébeuf was thus in 1629 left alone among the Hurons. He
soon won their confidence and respect, and was adopted into the
tribe by the name of _Echon_. Though few conversions rewarded his
labors among them during his three years' residence, still he was
amply compensated by his success in gaining their hearts, acquiring
their language, and thoroughly understanding their character and
manners. So completely had he gained the good-will of the Hurons,
that, when he was about to return in 1629 to Quebec, whither his
superior had recalled him, in consequence of the distress prevailing
in the colony, the Indians crowded around him to prevent him from
entering the canoes, and addressed him in this touching language;
"What! Echon, dost thou leave us? Thou hast been here now three
years, to learn our language, to teach us to know thy God, to adore
and serve him, having come but for that end, as thou hast shown; and
now, when thou knowest our language more perfectly than any other
Frenchman, thou leavest us. If we do not know the God thou adorest,
we shall call him to witness that it is not our fault, but thine,
to leave us so." Deeply as he felt this appeal, the Jesuit could
know no other voice when his superior spoke; and having given every
encouragement to those who were well disposed toward the faith,
and explained why he should go when his superior required it, he
embarked on the flotilla of twelve canoes, and reached Quebec on the
seventeenth of July, 1629. Three days after his arrival at Quebec,
that port was captured by the English under the traitor Kirk, who
bore the deepest hatred toward the Jesuits, whose residence he would
have fired upon could he have brought his vessel near enough for his
cannon to bear upon it. He pillaged it, however, compelling the
fathers to abandon it and fly for safety to Tadoussac. But Father
Brébeuf and his companions were, together with Champlain, detained
as prisoners. Amongst the followers of Kirk was one Michel, a bitter
and relentless Huguenot, who was by his temperament and infirmities
prone to violence, and who vented his rage especially against the
Jesuits. He and the no less bigoted Kirk found in Father Brébeuf an
intrepid defender of his order and of his companions against their
foul calumnies, while at the same time his noble character showed how
well it was trained to the practice of Christian humility and charity.

On the occasion here particularly alluded to, Kirk was conversing
with the fathers, who were then his prisoners, and, with a malignant
expression, said:

"Gentlemen, your business in Canada was to enjoy what belonged to M.
de Caen, whom you dispossessed."

"Pardon me, sir," answered Father Brébeuf, "we came purely for the
glory of God, and exposed ourselves to every kind of danger to
convert the Indians."

Here Michel broke in: "Ay, ay, convert the Indians! You mean, convert
the _beaver_!"

Father Brébeuf, conscious of his own and his companion's innocence,
and deeming the occasion one which required at his hands a full and
unqualified denial, solemnly and deliberately answered:

"That is false!"

The infuriated Michel, raising his fist at his prisoner in a
threatening manner, exclaimed:

"But for the respect I owe the general, I would strike you for giving
me the lie."

Father Brébeuf, who possessed a powerful frame and commanding figure,
stood unmoved and unruffled. But he did not rely upon these qualities
of the man, though he knew no fear, but illustrated by his example
on this as on every other occasion the virtues of a Christian and a
minister of peace. With a humility and charity that showed how well
the strong and naturally impulsive man had subdued his passions,
he endeavored to appease the anger of his assailant by an apology,
which, while it was justly calculated to remove all cause of offence,
was accompanied with a solemn vindication of himself and companions
from the unjust imputation just cast upon them. He said:

"You must excuse me. I did not mean to give you the lie. I should be
very sorry to do so. The words I used are those we use in the schools
when a doubtful question is advanced, and they mean no offence.
Therefore, I ask you to pardon me."

"Bon Dieu," said Champlain, "you swear well for a reformer!"

"I knew it," replied Michel; "I should be content if I had struck
that Jesuit who gave me the lie before my general."

The unfortunate Michel continued in this way unceasingly to rave over
the pretended insult, which no apologies could obliterate. He died
shortly afterward in one of his paroxysms of fury, and was interred
under the rocks of Tadoussac. It was not permitted to him to execute
his threatened vengeance on the Jesuit, whom he was the first to
insult, and whom he never forgave, though himself forgiven.

Father Brébeuf, together with the truly great and Catholic Champlain,
the governor of Quebec, and with the other missionaries, were carried
prisoners to England, whence they all made their way to France.

Sad at this interruption of their work of love among the benighted
sons of the Western wilds, the missionaries did not despair, but only
awaited the restoration of Canada to France in order to resume their
labors. In the volume of his travels published by Champlain in 1632,
is embraced the treatise on the Huron language which Father Brébeuf
had prepared during his three years' residence with that tribe, and
which, in our own times, has been republished in the _Transactions of
the American Antiquarian Society_, as a most precious contribution to
learning.

The English government disavowed the conduct of Kirk, and Canada was
restored to France during the year 1632. As the conversion of the
native tribes was ever one of the leading features in the policy of
Catholic statesmen in the colonization of this continent, it was
determined to renew the missions which we have seen interrupted. In
selecting missionaries for this task, the choice fell not upon the
Jesuits, nor the Recollects, as might have been expected, but upon
the Capuchins; and it was only when these good fathers represented
to Cardinal Richelieu that the Jesuits had already been laboring
with fidelity and success in that vineyard, and requested that the
missions might be again confided to them, that Fathers Paul Lejeune
and Anne de Nouë, with a lay brother, were sent out in 1632. They
arrived at Tadoussac on the twelfth of July. It soon became Father
Brébeuf's great privilege and happiness to follow them. On the
twenty-second of May, 1633, to the great joy of Quebec, Champlain
returned to resume his sway in Canada, and Father Brébeuf accompanied
him together with Fathers Massé, Daniel, and Devost. Though Father
Brébeuf was not inactive about Quebec, still his heart longed for
the Huron homes and council-fires, and still more for Huron souls.
Shortly afterward, he had the consolation of beholding the faithful
Louis Amantacha, a Christian Huron, arriving at Quebec, followed by
the usual Indian flotilla of canoes. A council was held, sixty chiefs
sat in a circle round the council-fire, and the noble Champlain, the
intrepid Brébeuf, and the zealous Lallemant, stood in their midst. A
treaty of friendship was concluded between the French and the Hurons,
and, in confiding the missionaries to his new allies, Champlain
thus addressed the latter: "These we consider as fathers, these are
dearer to us than life. Think not that they have left France under
pressure of want; no, they were there in high esteem: they come not
to gather up your furs, but to open to you the doors of eternal life.
If you love the French, as you say you love them, then love and
honor these our fathers." This address was responded to by two of
the chiefs, who were followed by Father Brébeuf in his broken Huron,
"the assembly jerking in unison, from the bottom of their throats,
repeated ejaculations of applause." The members of the council then
crowded round him, each claiming the privilege of carrying him in his
canoe. And the Indians from the different towns began now to contend
among themselves for the honor of possessing Father Brébeuf for
their respective settlements. The contest was soon decided in favor
of Rochelle, the most populous of the Huron villages. On the eighth
of August, the effects of Father Brébeuf and of his companions,
Fathers Daniel and Devost, were already on board the canoes, when
another more serious difficulty arose: an Indian murderer had been
arrested by order of Champlain, in consequence of which an enraged
Algonquin chief declared that no Frenchman should enter the flotilla.
The Hurons were ready and anxious to convey the fathers, but they
feared the consequences of a rupture with the Algonquins. The fathers
were thus constrained, to the common sorrow of themselves and their
Hurons, to behold the flotilla depart without them. But the last
scene in this separation was yet more touching. The faithful and
pious Louis Amantacha, overwhelmed with sorrow at the loss of the
fathers, lingered in their company to the last moment, humbly made
his confession, and, for the last time for him, this Christian
warrior received the holy communion from the hands of Father Brébeuf.
Then, having rejoined his companions, the flotilla quickly glided
from the view of those who would have laid down their lives to save
the souls of those benighted and thoughtless voyagers.

Father Brébeuf and his companions returned to labor for a time longer
among the French and Indians in and about Quebec, where their labors
were full of zeal and not without success. It was here that Father
Brébeuf baptized Sasousmat, the first adult upon whom he conferred
that sacrament. While in health, Sasousmat had requested that he
might be sent to France for instruction in the faith, but he was
now overtaken by a dreadful illness, which deprived him of reason.
Father Brébeuf visited him while in this state, and, returning from
his couch to the altar, he offered up for his benefit the holy
sacrifice of the Mass in honor of St. Joseph, the glorious patron
of the country; his prayer of sacrifice was heard in heaven, and
Sasousmat was restored to his mind. Father Brébeuf then instructed
him, and the joyful neophyte ardently and touchingly entreated the
father to baptize him. But the cautious and conscientious priest
deferred the sacrament, to the astonishment of the Indians, whose
habit was to refuse nothing to the sick. One of Sasousmat's Indian
friends said to the father, with great impatience: "Thou hast no
sense; pour a little water on him, and it is done." "No," replied the
priest of God, "I would involve myself in ruin were I to baptize,
without necessity, an infidel and unbeliever not fully instructed."
The patient was afterwards removed to the residence of Notre Dame des
Anges, where he continued to receive the instructions of the father,
and where he grew desperately ill, and was finally in an hour of
danger baptized. At the moment of his decease, a resplendent meteoric
light illumined the death-room, and shone far around about the
country. There was afterwards another adult, named Nassé, a steadfast
friend of the missionaries, who fell dangerously ill, and was nursed
by Father Brébeuf. He too made earnest entreaties to be baptized,
but the father subjected the convert to long delays and probations,
and finally only bestowed the sacrament when death was imminent.
Instances are related in which baptism was refused to adults, even
_in extremis_, where the requisite dispositions were wanting. Such
examples, of which there are not a few recorded in the Jesuit
_Relations_, besides exhibiting the zeal and self-sacrificing labors
of the Catholic missionaries for the salvation of souls, furnish us
with a complete refutation of the wanton calumny that those early
missionary priests were in the habit of bestowing the sacrament
upon entire multitudes of savages without previous instruction or
probation--a calumny now fully refuted by the _Relations_ and letters
of the fathers themselves, who, while they penned the humble story
of their labors, to be transmitted to their superiors in Europe, knew
not that the same would serve as evidence for their own vindication.

With the return of spring, the time again drew near for the
appearance of the usual flotilla of Indian canoes at the trading
post of Three Rivers. On the 1st of July, Fathers Brébeuf and Daniel
repaired to Three Rivers, to procure a passage in the flotilla for
the Huron country, and Father Devost joined them in a few days.
But the canoes were slow in coming in; the Hurons had sustained a
terrific defeat, losing two hundred braves, and the gallant Christian
warrior Louis Amantacha was among the slain. No sooner, however,
had a few canoes arrived, than Father Brébeuf pressed forward to
secure a passage; but the hostile Algonquin and the cautious Huron
discovered innumerable obstacles in the way of his going with them,
and it seemed that he was again to be disappointed in his hopes of
reaching his beloved mission. At length, by the influence of the
French commanders, which was supported as usual by presents, it was
arranged that a passage should be given to one missionary and two
men, and even then Father Brébeuf was left out. He thus describes
his difficulties: "Never did I see voyage so hampered and traversed
by the common enemy of man. It was by a stroke of heaven that we
advanced, and an effect of the power of the glorious St. Joseph,
in whose honor God inspired me to promise twenty masses, in the
despair of all things." At the moment that this vow was made, a
Huron, who had agreed to carry one of the Frenchmen in his canoe,
was suddenly inspired to take Father Brébeuf in his stead. Thus a
passage was secured. But such were the hurry, confusion, and want
of accommodation, that the missionaries were compelled to leave
behind them all their effects, except such as were necessary for
saying Mass. Too glad to be admitted into this vineyard which they
had so long sought, they cheerfully made every sacrifice. With
light and joyous hearts and ready hands, they plied the oar from
morning till night; they recited the sacred office by the evening
fire; they nursed all who fell sick on the voyage with so much
charity and tenderness as to melt the hearts of those savage sons
of the wilderness; at fifty different points, where the passage was
dangerous or obstructed, they volunteered to carry the packages, and
even the canoes, on their shoulders around the portages; and at one
place Father Brébeuf barely escaped a watery grave at a rapid where
his canoe was hurried over the impetuous current. At length, after
much suffering, they reached the shores of the Huron country on the
5th of August, 1634.

The following description of this remarkable journey of the fathers
is from the eloquent and graphic, but not always impartial, pages of
Parkman's _Jesuits in North America_:

    "They reckoned the distance at nine hundred miles; but
    distance was the least repellant feature of this most
    arduous journey. Barefoot, lest their shoes should
    injure the frail vessel, each crouched in his canoe,
    toiling with unpractised hands to propel it. Before
    him, week after week, he saw the same lank, unkempt
    hair, the same tawny shoulders and long, naked arms,
    ceaselessly plying the paddle. The canoes were soon
    separated, and for more than a month the Frenchmen
    rarely or never met. Brébeuf spoke a little Huron,
    and could converse with his escort; but Daniel and
    Devost were doomed to a silence unbroken save by the
    unintelligible complaints and menaces of the Indians,
    of whom many were sick with the epidemic, and all were
    terrified, desponding, and sullen. Their only food was
    a pittance of Indian corn, crushed between two stones
    and mixed with water. The toil was extreme. Brébeuf
    counted thirty-five portages, where the canoes were
    lifted from the water and carried on the shoulders
    of the voyagers around rapids and cataracts. More
    than fifty times, besides, they were forced to wade
    in the raging current, pushing up their empty barks,
    or dragging them with ropes. Brébeuf tried to do his
    part, but the boulders and sharp rocks wounded his
    naked feet, and compelled him to desist. He and his
    companions bore their share of the baggage across the
    portages, sometimes a distance of several miles. Four
    trips, at the least, were required to convey the whole.
    The way was through the dense forest, encumbered with
    rocks and logs, tangled with roots and underbrush, damp
    with perpetual shade, and redolent of decayed leaves
    and mouldering wood. The Indians themselves were often
    spent with fatigue. Brébeuf, a man of iron frame and a
    nature unconquerably resolute, doubted if his strength
    would sustain him to the journey's end. He complains
    that he had no moment to read his breviary, except by
    the moonlight or the fire when stretched out to sleep
    on a bare rock by some savage cataract of the Ottawa,
    or in a damp nook of the adjacent forest.

    "Descending French River and following the lonely
    shores of the great Georgian Bay, the canoe which
    carried Brébeuf at length neared its destination,
    thirty days after leaving Three Rivers. Before him,
    stretched in savage slumber, lay the forest shore of
    the Hurons. Did his spirit sink as he approached his
    dreary home, oppressed with a dark foreboding of what
    the future should bring forth? There is some reason
    to think so. Yet it was but the shadow of a moment;
    for his masculine heart had lost the sense of fear,
    and his intrepid nature was fired with a zeal before
    which doubts and uncertainties fled like the mists
    of the morning. Not the grim enthusiasm of negation,
    tearing up the weeds of rooted falsehood, or with
    bold hand felling to the earth the baneful growth
    of overshadowing abuses; his was the ancient faith
    uncurtailed, redeemed from the decay of centuries,
    kindled with a new life, and stimulated to a
    preternatural growth and fruitfulness."

But Father Brébeuf's trials did not end here, for the ungrateful
Indians, who lived twenty miles below Father Brébeuf's destination,
forgetting all his kindness and sacrifices and despising his
entreaties, abandoned him on this desolate shore. In this distress,
he fell upon his knees and thanked God for all his favors, and
especially for bringing him again into the country of the Hurons.
Beseeching Providence to guide his steps, and saluting the guardian
angel of the land with a dedication of himself to the conversion of
those tribes, he took only such articles as he could in no event
dispense with, and, concealing the rest, started forth in that vast
wilderness, not knowing whither his steps might carry him. Providence
guided those steps: he discovered the site of the former village,
Toanché, in which he had resided three years, and even the blackened
ruins of his cabin, in which, for the same time, he had offered up
the Holy Sacrifice; but the village was destroyed and the encampment
shifted to another place. Striking upon a trail, he advanced full of
hope, and soon he suddenly stood in the midst of his Huron friends,
in their new village of Ihonatiria. A shout of welcome from a hundred
voices--"Echon! Echon!"--greeted the joyous messenger of salvation.
He immediately threw himself upon the hospitality of the generous
chief, Awandoay, from whom he obtained men to go for his packages;
he retraced his weary steps with them, and it was one o'clock in the
morning before all was safely lodged in the village of Ihonatiria.
The other fathers, after suffering similar ill-treatment from the
Indians of the flotilla in whose canoes they came, finally found
their way also, one by one, to Ihonatiria, in great distress.

For some time they partook of the liberal hospitality of Awandoay;
but, Father Brébeuf having decided to make Ihonatiria the mission
headquarters, they now constructed a residence for themselves,
thirty-six by twenty-one feet, in which the centre was their
hall, parlor, and business-room, leading, on the one side, to the
chapel, and, on the other, to what was at the same time kitchen,
refectory, and dormitory. This rude hut--indeed, everything about
the missionaries--awakened the amazement of these simple sons of
the forest. They came in crowds from all parts of the Huron country
to see the wonderful things possessed by the fathers, the fame of
which had spread through the land. There was the mill for grinding
corn, which they viewed with admiration, and which they delighted to
turn without ceasing. There were a prism and magnet, whose qualities
struck them with surprise and pleasure. There was a magnifying-glass
which, to their amazement, made a flea as large as a monster; and a
multiplying lens which possessed the mysterious power of creating
instantly eleven beads out of one. But the clock, which hung on the
wall of the missionary cabin, was to these untutored savages the
greatest miracle of all. The assembled warriors, with their wives
and children, would sit in silence on the ground, waiting an entire
hour for the clock to strike the time of the day. They listened to
it ticking every second and marking every minute of the twenty-four
hours; they thought it was a thing of life; inquired when, how,
and upon what it fed. They called it sometimes the "Day Chief" and
sometimes the "Captain," and expressed their awe of so mysterious and
supernatural a being by the constant cry of "Ondaki! Ondaki!!" "What
does the Captain say now?" was the repeated question. The fathers
were obliged to establish certain regulations for visitors, whose
presence would have left them no time for rest or devotion during the
twenty-four hours, while, at the same time, they availed themselves
of these curiosities for attracting the Indians to the mission cross
before their door and to the first simple lessons in religion. They
thus interpreted the strokes of the clock: "When he strikes twelve
times, he says, 'Hang on the kettle,' and when he strikes four times,
he says, 'Get up and go home.'" The Indians rigidly obeyed these
commands of the little "Day Chief." The crowd was densest at the
stroke of twelve, when the kettle was hung and the fathers' sagamite
passed around; and at the stroke of four, all arose at once and
departed, leaving their good entertainers to say their office and
rosary, study and make notes on the Huron language, write letters
to their superiors, and consult over the plans for conducting the
mission. The fathers also gave some lessons to their Huron friends
on the subject of self-defence and military engineering. The Hurons,
living in constant dread of the Iroquois, were glad to learn a more
perfect way of constructing their palisade forts, which they had been
accustomed to make round, but which the Frenchmen now taught them
to make rectangular, with small flanking towers at the corners for
the arquebusmen. And, in case of actual attack, the aid of the four
Frenchmen, armed with arquebuses, who had come with the missionaries
from Three Rivers, was promised, to enable them to defend their
wives, children, and homes from the unsparing attacks of their
relentless enemies.

The Indian children were the especial objects of the solicitude of
these untiring missionaries. They assembled these frequently at their
house, on which occasions Father Brébeuf, the more effectually
to inspire respect, appeared in surplice and baretta. The _Pater
Noster_ was chanted in Huron rhyme, into which it had been translated
by Father Daniel; and the _Ave_ and _Credo_ and Ten Commandments
were recited. The children were examined in their past lessons, and
instructed in new ones, and then dismissed joyously with presents of
beads and dried fruits. Soon the village resounded with the rhymes of
the _Pater Noster_, and the little catechumens vied with each other
at home in making the sign of the cross and reciting the commandments.

To the adults the fathers earnestly announced Christ crucified,
and endeavored to turn their admiration from the clock and other
curiosities of the mission house, which, as they said, were but
creatures, to the Creator, to heaven, and to the faith. The
first-fruits of the mission were soon gathered; several infants, in
danger of death, were baptized, and several adults were also admitted
into the Christian church through the same regenerating waters.

But the enemies of religion and of truth were jealously watching
these successes, and soon the fathers encountered the same opposition
that always besets the introduction of Christianity into heathen
nations; that is, the jealousy and hatred of the native priests, or
officials entrusted with the matters of religion or the superstitious
rites of the country. These, among our American tribes, were the
medicine men. These wicked sorcerers accused Father Brébeuf and
his companions of causing the drought, of blighting the crops, of
introducing the plague, in fine, of every evil that afflicted the
country or any of the people. The missionaries began to be insulted,
the cross before their residence was turned into a target, and
curses and imprecations greeted them on every side. But the prayers
of the fathers, and especially a novena of masses in honor of St.
Joseph, were soon followed by copious rains, and the medicine-men
were confounded, while the fathers were received with honor and
esteem. The old and young were instructed in the faith, catechetical
classes were opened, and all ages and conditions took pleasure
in contending for the pictures, medals, and other little rewards
which were bestowed upon the studious. On Sundays, the Indians
were assembled at Mass; but, in imitation of the custom which
prevailed in the early church, Father Brébeuf dismissed them at the
offertory, after reciting for them the prayers they had learned. In
the afternoon, catechetical instructions were given, and all were
examined on what they had learned during the week. In August, 1635,
Fathers Pijart and Mercier, then recently arrived from France, came
into the Huron country to join the little missionary band, who were,
even after this increase of their force, kept constantly laboring.

In April, 1636, the missionaries attended the "feast of the dead,"
a great solemnity of the Indians, when the bones of their dead are
taken down from their aerial tombs, and, being wrapped in the richest
furs, and surrounded with various implements, are deposited in the
common mound, amid the songs, games, and dancing of the living.
Father Brébeuf, the courageous champion of the faith, seized upon
this occasion to announce the saving word of truth in the very midst
of the ancient and most cherished rites of a heathen superstition.
He declared that such ceremonies were utterly vain and fruitless
for souls which, like the souls of all in that mound, were lost for
ever; that souls on death went either to a realm of bliss or a world
of woe; that the living alone could choose, and, if they preferred
the former, he and the other fathers were there to show the way.
This speech was accompanied with a present to the assembled chiefs,
a means most effectual in gaining the good-will of the Indians.
The latter offered no opposition to the baptism of their infants,
and expressed themselves as if well disposed towards the faith
preached by the fathers. In December, the mission among the Hurons
was formally consecrated to the Immaculate Conception. Baptism was
administered to nearly thirty of the tribe, amongst whom was one, a
little girl, of singular interest, named Mary Conception. This little
child was remarkable for her love of prayer and her fondness for the
missionaries and whatever pertained to religion; she ran as gaily to
catechism as the other children to their play, and took a singular
pleasure in walking beside the missionary as he was reciting his
office, making the sign of the cross and praying louder whenever he
turned in his walk. In 1635, fourteen baptisms were reported by the
fathers, and in July, 1636, eighty-six, amongst whom was the chief,
who was sincerely converted to the faith. Father Brébeuf made many
excursions to distant villages and families. In October, he visited
the family of Louis de Sainte Foi, who, having been taken to France
by the fathers, was baptized at Rouen, but was now grown cold in his
religion. This visit, in which Father Brébeuf was accompanied by
Father Pijart, rekindled the ardor of the chief, and was the occasion
of announcing the commandments of God to all his family. Devotion to
the Blessed Virgin, appealing as it does to the best natural feelings
of the human heart, as well as to the highest and purest motives of
religion, was easily received, especially among the Indian mothers,
to whom she was proposed for imitation by Father Brébeuf. He composed
for them, and in their own language, beautiful prayers of invocation
to the Mother of God. So great was his proficiency in the Huron
language, that he was able to attach to his relation of this year a
treatise on the language and another on the customs of the Hurons,
the former of which has been published in English.

It was about this time that a delegation of Algonquin braves came to
solicit the alliance of the Hurons against the Iroquois. Failing to
secure their point with the Hurons, the Algonquins next turned to
the missionaries and endeavored to detach them from the Hurons, and
offered, as an inducement to Father Brébeuf, to make him one of their
great chiefs. Father Brébeuf, with a smile, replied, that he had left
home and fortune to gain souls, not to become rich or to gain honors
in war, and dismissed the negotiators as usual with a present.

The removal of the headquarters of the mission from Ihonatiria to
Ossossané had been several times mooted; one day, as Father Brébeuf
was travelling to visit a sick Christian, he was met by the chief
of Ossossané, who so forcibly urged the change that Father Brébeuf
was induced to promise them a compliance with what had been in fact
his previous design. A promise was readily made on the other side
that the villagers of Ossossané would the following year erect
the necessary accommodations for the fathers. When the people of
Ihonatiria heard this, their chief, at daybreak, from the top of his
cabin summoned all his people out to rebuild the cabin of the black
gown. Old and young now went forth to obey the summons, and soon
the work was completed. When the next season for the feast of the
dead came round, a great change was observable in its celebration,
a proof of the influence of Christian sentiments with the people.
The accustomed magnificence was dispensed with, and those who died
Christians were not reburied, even in a separate portion of the
common tomb. The ceremony consisted in nothing more than a touching
manifestation of the affection of the living for their deceased
friends, and the missionaries were too prudent to interfere. In
order to show how earnest our missionaries were for the conversion
of these tribes, it is worth recording that they established a Huron
seminary at Quebec, and during this year Fathers Daniel and Devost
departed from Huronia for Quebec, with several young Hurons destined
for students in this institution. It was also during this year that
Fathers Garnier, Chastelain, and Jogues arrived from France, and
entered this promising vineyard.

Shortly after these arrivals, a contagious fever broke out in the
Huron country, and several of the missionaries were seized with the
malady. It would be impossible, within the space allotted to this
memoir, to detail all their sufferings and privations. The hardy
Brébeuf and the others that were not taken down, became the faithful
and constant nurses of their sick companions, and, when these were
restored, the entire missionary band dedicated themselves to the
nursing and spiritual succor of the afflicted people. Here, again,
the fathers met with the usual obstacles and annoyances from the
native sorcerers. The medicine-men, in whom the Indians had implicit
confidence, especially in sickness, resorted to their usual tricks,
and the villages resounded with horrid superstitious orgies. Many
refused to let the fathers baptize their dying infants. Others,
however, having seen the utter failure of their sorcerers to effect
a single cure, and having observed how the Christian baptism was
frequently followed by a restoration of the body also to health, had
recourse to the missionaries. But in such cases their visits of mercy
were obstructed by the insults, the threats, and ill-usage of the
excited rabble. But, as Bancroft remarks, "the Jesuit never receded a
foot." He pressed forward with love and courage, frequently forcing
his way to the couch of the dying, and encountering threatened death
to save a single soul. In order to propitiate the mercy of Heaven
for this afflicted people, Father Brébeuf assembled a council of the
chiefs of several villages, and succeeded so far as to induce them,
in behalf of themselves and their people, to promise solemnly, in
the presence of God, that they would renounce their superstitions,
embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, conform their marriages to the
Christian standard, and build chapels for the service of the one true
God. With the solemnity of this scene, however, passed away also
their good resolutions. The Indian, ever inconsistent, except in
his attachment to his idols and his hunting-grounds, was soon again
seen raving at the frenzied words and incantations of the sorcerer
Tonnerananont, who professed himself to be a devil incarnate. The
plague continued to rage; not even the frosts of winter arrested its
destructive powers. Night and day Father Brébeuf and his companions
were travelling and laboring for those miserable and inconstant
savages. They went about over the country administering remedies
for the maladies of the body as well as those of the soul. Besides
relieving many by bleeding and other simple remedies, their heroic
labors were rewarded with other fruits far sweeter to them, the
baptism of two hundred and fifty expiring infants and adults. The
bold and fearless advances and the devoted services of the Jesuit
fathers during this season of disease and death may well have called
forth from Sparks the remark that "humanity can claim no higher
honor than that such examples have existed." In the spring the
pestilence abated, and the usual and regular duties and labors of
the mission were resumed. His superior knowledge of the language
devolved upon Father Brébeuf the greater burthen of instructing and
catechising the natives. In May, he called a council of the chiefs of
Ossossané, and reminded them of their promise to build a cabin for
the fathers. The appeal was responded to, and, on the fifth of June,
Father Pijart offered up the Mass of the Holy Trinity at Ossossané,
in "our own House of the Immaculate Conception." On Trinity Sunday,
another happiness was enjoyed by Father Brébeuf, in the baptism of
the first adult at Ihonatiria. This was Tsiwendaentaha, a chief who
had manifested great perseverance in his wish to become a Christian;
he had repeatedly requested and entreated to be baptized, and had
renounced all connection with the medicine-men for three years, and,
what was remarkable among the natives, had only once during that
time manifested any disposition towards a relapse. After prolonged
probation and careful instruction, Father Brébeuf baptized him on
Trinity Sunday, conferring upon him the Christian name of Peter.
The ceremony was surrounded with as much magnificence as the infant
church in that wilderness could bring, and in the presence of immense
crowds of Hurons. The corner-stone of the new church was laid on the
same occasion.

These consolations of the mission were soon succeeded by direful
calamities. Sickness still lingered in the country. Having failed
by their superstitious rites to ameliorate the condition of the
people, the medicine-men now accused the fathers of being the cause
of the pestilence, and even of having a design of destroying the
country. A general outburst of indignation now assailed the holy
men. Everything connected with them or their religion now became
objects of suspicion--the pictures in the chapel, their mission
flag flying from the top of a tree, the Mass in the morning, the
evening litany, the walk of the missionaries by day, and especially
the clock, were successively condemned as demons, and signals of
pestilence and death. It was even rumored that the fathers concealed
in their cabin a dead body, which they brought from France, and
which was now supposed to be the origin of the infection. Goaded
by their fears, and incited by their sorcerers, the Indians rushed
into the missionary residence to seize the mysterious corpse. As
superior, the principal weight of these persecutions fell upon Father
Brébeuf, who endeavored in vain to dispel such vain fears. The
fathers were insulted and threatened with death in their own house. A
general council of chiefs and warriors was held, in which they were
universally accused of causing all the evils of the country. The
courageous Brébeuf stood in their midst to refute their calumnies
and expose their follies. Nothing could appease them. They offered
to spare Father Brébeuf's life if he would deliver up the fatal
cloth in which he had wrapt the pestilence. He indignantly refused
to countenance their superstitions by compliance, but told them to
search his cabin and burn every cloth if they thought proper. He
told them, however, that since they had pressed him so far, he would
give them his opinion as to the origin of their misfortunes, which
he then went on to trace to natural causes and their own foolish
method of treating the sick, and spoke to them of the power of God
and his justice in rewarding the good and punishing the wicked.
Father Brébeuf concluded his remarks amidst shouts and insults, but
without losing his characteristic courage and calmness. Despite his
unanswerable appeal, the assembly thirsted for the blood of at least
one of the missionaries as an experiment, and at any moment one of
those devoted men might have fallen dead under the hatchet of some
enraged savage. Repeated councils were held, and the death of the
strangers was resolved upon. The residence was burned, the stake
prepared, and Father Brébeuf led forth. Having prepared himself for
death, he now, in imitation of the Huron custom, gave the usual
feast, in order to show that he did not shrink from giving his life
in testimony of the faith he had preached to them. Just before the
moment of his execution arrived, Father Brébeuf was summoned to a
council, where, amid insult and interruption, he delivered another
speech in advocacy of the faith, instead of explaining the plague,
and, by one of those sudden changes of temper not unusual in Indian
assemblies, he was acquitted and set free. As he passed from the
wigwam of the council, he saw one of his greatest persecutors fall
dead at his feet, under a stroke from the murderous tomahawk:
supposing that, in the dim light of a far-spent day, the murderer
had mistaken his victim, the future martyr asked: "Was not that
blow meant for me?" "No," replied the warrior; "pass on: he was a
sorcerer, thou art not." His companions were anxiously awaiting the
result; and when he walked into their midst, they received him as the
dead restored to life. They all united in returning thanks to God for
the safety of the superior of the mission, and especially for the
announcement which that apostolic man made to them, that they might
yet hope to remain in that country, and labor for the salvation of
their persecutors.

The firm and uncompromising character of Father Brébeuf is strikingly
illustrated in contrast with the fickleness of the Indians, the
difference between faith and superstition, by another circumstance
which occurred during the prevalence of the pestilence. The Hurons,
after repeated recourse to their medicine-men, whose vile practices
they now saw to be barren of results, resolved to have recourse to
the fathers, whom they invited to attend a council. "What must we
do that your God may take pity on us?" they asked of the Christian
priests. Father Brébeuf immediately answered: "Believe in him; keep
his commandments; abjure your faith in dreams; take but one wife,
and be true to her; give up your superstitious feasts; renounce your
assemblies of debauchery; eat no human flesh; never give feasts to
demons; and make a vow that, if God will deliver you from this pest,
you will build a chapel to offer him thanksgiving and praise."

In the midst of their sufferings and the persecutions they sustained,
these heroic missionaries ceased not a single moment their labors of
mercy and salvation. Themselves outcast and friendless, they visited
and nursed the sick; repulsed, they pressed forward to the bedside
of the dying; reviled for their religion, they still announced its
saving truths; threatened with death, they bestowed the bread of life
eternal upon others, even while the deadly tomahawk glistened over
their heads. Such was the life the early Catholic missionaries led
upon our borders; such, too, were the labors and sacrifices which
preluded others, equally sublime and heroic, within the territory of
our own republic.

Among the converts of Father Brébeuf at Ossossané was Joseph
Chiwattenwha, a nephew on the maternal side to the head chief of
the Hurons. From the time that he listened to Father Brébeuf's
sermon at the "feast of the dead," he had been an earnest and
regular catechumen. He rejected the prevailing superstitions of his
race, and was remarkable for the purity of his morals, his freedom
from the common Indian vice of gambling, and for his rare conjugal
fidelity. Notwithstanding his virtues, and his repeated requests to
be baptized, Father Brébeuf delayed the sacrament, to make sure of
his thorough conversion, and, finally, only conferred it upon him
in a moment of danger. The chief recovered from his illness, and,
calling all his friends together at a grand banquet, he addressed
them zealously in favor of the faith he had embraced. His faith and
zeal were rewarded by the manifest protection of Heaven over himself
and his family during the prevalence of the fever.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTE:

[130] Authorities: _The Jesuit Relations; History of the Catholic
Missions_, by John G. Shea; _The Pioneers of France in the New
World_, and _The Jesuits in North America_, by Francis Parkman;
Bancroft's _History of the United States_, etc., etc.




TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

BY HENRI LASSERRE.


BOOK EIGHTH.

I.

The appointment by the Bishop of a commission of examination, and
the analysis of M. Filhol, deprived Baron Massy, M. Rouland, and
M. Jacomet of all pretext for continuing violent measures, or for
maintaining about the grotto strict prohibitions, barriers, and
guards.

In justification of the restrictions previously made, it had been
said: "Considering that it is very desirable, _in the interest of
religion_, to put an end to the _deplorable_ scenes now presented at
the grotto of Massabielle." Now the Bishop, by declaring the matter
to be of sufficient importance for his intervention, and by taking in
hand the examination of those things which affected the interests of
religion, had deprived the civil power of this motive which it had
made so prominent.

In justification of the prohibition to go and drink at the spring
which had gushed out under the hand of Bernadette, it had been urged
"that the care of the local public health devolves upon the mayor,"
and that this water "is suspected on good grounds to contain mineral
ingredients, making it prudent, before permitting its use, to wait
for a scientific analysis to determine the applications which may
be made of it in medicine." Now, M. Filhol, by his decision that the
water had no mineral properties, and that it could be drunk without
inconvenience, had annihilated in the name of science and of medicine
this plea of "the public health."

If, then, these considerations had been real reasons for the civil
power, and not merely specious pretexts; if it had really been acting
in the "interests of religion and the public health," instead of
being under the sway of evil passions and intolerance; or if, in a
word, it had been sincere instead of being hypocritical, it would now
have had nothing to do but to remove its prohibitions and barriers;
it would have only had to leave the people perfectly free to drink of
this fountain, the perfect harmlessness of which had been attested by
science, and to recognize their right to kneel at the foot of these
mysterious rocks, where for the future the church was to be on the
watch.


II.

But this was not the case. There was a great obstacle to this course,
so clearly indicated by logic and conscience; namely, pride. Pride
was the ruling spirit from one end of the scale to the other, from
Jacomet up to Rouland, including Baron Massy and the philosophical
coterie. It seemed hard to them to retreat and lay down their arms.
Pride never surrenders. It prefers rather to take an illogical
position than to bow to the authority of reason. Furious, beside
itself, and absurd, it revolts against evidence. Like Satan, it says,
"_Non serviam_." It resists, it refuses to bend, it stiffens its
neck, till suddenly it is broken by some contemptuous and superior
power.


III.

There remained for the official and officious foes of superstition
one last weapon to use, one final struggle to make. Though the
battle seemed to be certainly lost in the Pyrenees, perhaps the
lost position might be regained in Paris, and the favor of public
opinion secured throughout France and Europe, before the cosmopolitan
assemblage of tourists and bathers, returning home, should pass their
severe judgments on the other side. This was tried. A formidable
attack was made by the irreligious press of Paris, the provinces,
and other countries, upon the events at Lourdes and the Bishop's
ordinance.

While the generals of the infidel army engaged in a decisive combat
upon this vast scale, the duty of the Prefect of Hautes-Pyrenees,
like that of Kellerman at Valmy, was to hold at all costs his line of
operation, not to recede a single foot from it, and not to capitulate
on any terms. The intrepidity of Baron Massy was well known, and
it was understood that neither arguments nor the most surprising
miracles would prevail over his invincible firmness. He would stand
by his sinking ship to the last. The absurd had in him an excellent
champion.

The _Journal des Débats_, _Siècle_, _Presse_, _Indépendance Belge_,
and various foreign journals, also came manfully to the rescue. The
smallest newspapers of the smallest countries considered it an honor
to serve in this campaign against the supernatural. We find, in fact,
among the combatants, a microscopic sheet called the _Courant_,
published at Amsterdam.

Some, like the _Presse_, by the pen of M. Guéroult, or the _Siècle_,
by those of MM. Bénard and Jourdan, attacked the very idea of
miracles, declaring that they had had their day, that the discussion
of them was no longer admissible, and to examine into a question
which had already been decided by the light of philosophy was beneath
the dignity of free examen. "Miracles," said M. Guéroult, "belong to
a state of civilization which is almost gone by. Though God does not
change, the conception which men form of him changes from age to age,
according to the prevailing standard of morality and intelligence.
Ignorant nations who do not understand the harmony of the laws by
which the universe is governed imagine that they see continual
exceptions to these laws. They think that God appears and speaks to
them, or sends them a message by his angels, almost daily. But as
society becomes more intelligent and better informed, and as the
sciences based on observation come in to counteract the vagaries of
the imagination, all this mythology disappears. Man does not on that
account become less religious, but more so, though in a different
manner. He does not any longer see gods and goddesses, angels and
demons, face to face; but he seeks to discover the divine will as
manifested in the laws of the world. Miracles, which at certain
periods have been necessary to faith and served to convey the most
important truths, have become in our day the bugbear of all serious
conviction." M. Guéroult declared that, if he should be told that the
most remarkable miracle was occurring close by his house on the Place
de la Concorde, he would not take a step out of his way to see it.
"If such occurrences," added he, "can occupy a place for a time among
the superstitious trumpery of the ignorant masses, they only excite a
smile of contempt among enlightened men, among those whose opinion
is sure to be ultimately adopted by all the world."[131]

Other papers valiantly set to work to distort the facts. Though
also attacking miracles in principle, the _Siècle_, in spite of
the enormous yield of twenty thousand and odd litres a day, still
remained, in its capacity of an enlightened and advanced journal, at
the old thesis of hallucination and infiltration. "It seems difficult
to us," said M. Bénard, very gravely, "to see a miracle in the
hallucination of a little girl of fourteen, or in the oozing out of
some water in a cave."

As for the miraculous cures, they were easily disposed of as follows:
"Hydropathic physicians also claim to effect the most extraordinary
cures by means of pure water, but they have not as yet proclaimed
upon the house-tops that these cures are miracles."[132]

But the most curious example of the good faith of the free-thinkers,
or of their sagacity in examining this matter, is to be found in the
Dutch newspaper which we have mentioned above, and whose weighty
narrative was reproduced by the French journals. Let us see how this
friend of enlightenment enlightened the world by his account of the
matter:

"A new manifestation, designed to excite and promote the fervor of
the faithful in the worship of the Blessed Virgin, was imminent.
The deliberations of the bishops on this point had resulted in the
preparation of the famous miracle of Lourdes. It is well known
that the Bishop of Tarbes appointed a commission of inquiry. The
so-called conclusions of the report of the commission, which is
composed of ecclesiastics and persons in the pay of the clergy, were
prepared long before their first session. _The pretended shepherdess
Bernadette is not an innocent peasant, but a highly cultivated city
girl of a very wily character, who has passed several months in
a convent, where she was taught the part she was to play. There,
before a small audience, rehearsals were made long before the public
performance._ As will be observed, nothing was wanting for the
completeness of this comedy, not even the usual rehearsals. If at
any time there is a scarcity of actors at Paris, the places can be
admirably filled from the ranks of the superior clergy. However, the
liberal press has made the matter thoroughly ridiculous, and it is
not improbable that the clergy, in their own interest, will see the
necessity of being prudent."[133] The information of the journals
seems hardly to have been so accurate as that which secured the
simple faith of His Excellency M. Rouland. The public, it is evident,
were treated with no more respect than the minister. This is too
often the way in which the opinion of those whom M. Guéroult called
in his article "enlightened men," alluding, no doubt, to the torrent
of light thrown upon them by the press, is formed.

Another point of attack besides the actual events and the possibility
of miracles was the ordinance of the Bishop of Tarbes. Philosophy,
in virtue of the infallibility of its dogmas, protested against
examination, scientific study, and experiment. "When some crazy
person sends a paper on perpetual motion or the squaring of the
circle to the Academy of Science, the Academy passes to the order
of the day without wasting time in criticising such lucubrations.
And there is no more need of examination in the case of a supposed
miracle. Philosophy, in the name of reason, passes to the order of
the day. To examine the claims of the supernatural facts would be
to admit their possibility and to deny its own principles. In such
matters, proofs and testimony count for nothing. We do not discuss
the impossible, but dismiss it with a shrug." Such was the central
idea of the thousand varied forms assumed by the fiery and excited
polemics of the irreligious press. Vainly did it persist in denial
and perversion; it was afraid to examine. False theories prefer
to remain in the fluctuation and fog of pure speculation. By some
natural instinct of self-preservation, they fear broad daylight, and
do not dare to descend with a steady foot upon the firm ground of the
experimental method. They perceive that only defeat awaits them there.

In this desperate struggle against the evidence of facts and the
rights of reason, the liberal mask of the _Journal des Débats_
unfortunately fell off, and showed the depth of furious intolerance
concealed under its philosophical exterior. The _Journal des Débats_,
by the pen of M. Prévost-Paradol, was terrified in advance at the
great weight which the report of the commission and the decision of
the Bishop were sure to have, and accordingly appealed to the secular
arm, beseeching Cæsar to put a stop to the whole thing. "It is
evident," said he, "that a striking manifestation of divine power in
favor of a religion makes strongly for its individual truth, for its
superiority over others, and its incontestable right to govern souls.
It is then an event of a nature to produce numerous conversions, both
of dissenters and of infidels; in other words, it is an instrument
of proselytism." He showed also the political importance of the
result of the examination. "If this decision is favorable to the
miracle, it will have a tendency to dissolve in that part of France
the equilibrium now existing between the religious and civil powers.
The ministers of a religion in favor of which such prodigies are
authentically asserted are quite different sort of people from those
which the Concordat provides for. They have a very different sort of
authority over the people, and in case of any collision they exert a
very different kind of influence from that of the council of state
and the prefect."

"We have sufficiently shown," said the writer in the _Débats_,
"the importance which the decision of the episcopal commission at
Tarbes must have in various points of view. Now, there is a truth
here which should be remembered, and of which M. de Morny has just
very properly reminded the council-general at Puy-de-Dôme; that is,
that nothing of importance can legally be done in France without
previous authority from the administration. If, as M. de Morny
very justly remarks, one cannot move a rock or dig a well without
the consent of the administration, still less can one without its
consent authorize a miracle or establish a pilgrimage. Any one
who is concerned with religious matters, and especially with the
opening of churches or schools of dissenting bodies, knows that the
administration has not merely one enactment, but twenty or thirty,
which makes it all-powerful in such cases. The meeting of the
commission of the diocese of Tarbes can be prevented or its session
can be dissolved in a hundred different ways by the Concordat, by the
penal code, by the law of 1824, by the decree of February, 1852, by
the central authority, by the municipal authority, by all conceivable
authorities. The decision of this commission can also be annulled by
the legal opposition of the administrative authority to the erection
of a chapel or to the distribution of the miraculous water. The same
authority can prohibit and break up all meetings of the people, and
prosecute the originators of such meetings, etc." Having arrived
at this point, having notified Cæsar and cried "caveant consules,"
the able writer resumed, for form's sake, his garb of liberalism.
"What is our object," said he hypocritically, "in establishing this
preventive right of the administration? Is it to urge them to use it?
God forbid." And thus he crept, by a sort of secret passage, into the
ranks of the friends of liberty.

The provincial journals echoed the sentiments of those of Paris. The
battle became universal. The sergeants, corporals, and privates of
the literary army pressed forward on the steps of the marshals of
free thought. The _Ere Impériale_ of Tarbes charged its blunderbuss
with arguments from Paris, and fired them off at the supernatural
every other day. The little _Lavedan_, also, had picked up a few
grains of powder, rather dampened, it must be owned, by the water of
the grotto, and did its best, aided, according to report, by Jacomet,
to make its weekly penny-pistol effective.

The _Univers_, the _Union_, and the greater part of the Catholic
papers bravely met their universal attack. Powerful talents lent
themselves to the service of the yet more powerful truth. The
Christian press re-established the facts and demolished the miserable
quibbles of philosophic fanaticism.

"Meeting with some unexplained facts to which the faith or the
credulity of the multitude attributes a supernatural character,
the civil authority," said M. Louis Veuillot, "has decided without
information, but also without success, in the negative. The
spiritual authority comes in in its turn; it is its right and
its duty to do so. But before making its judgment, it obtains
information. It institutes a commission, an inquiry to examine the
alleged facts, to study them, and determine their nature. If they
have actually occurred, and are really supernatural, the commission
will say so. If they have not occurred, or if they can be explained
on natural principles, the commission will also acknowledge that such
is the case. What more can our adversaries desire? Do they wish the
Bishop to abstain from this examination, with a double danger before
him, either of failing to recognize a signal favor which Almighty God
would grant to his people, or of allowing a superstition to take root
among them?

"The Bishop must necessarily have observed the strangeness of this
conviction which had become so firm in the popular mind, upon the
word of a poor and ignorant little girl; he must have asked also
how these cures could be accounted for, obtained as they had been
by means of a few drops of pure water, swallowed or externally
applied.... And if there have been in fact no cures, it must be
ascertained why the contrary has been believed. But, supposing that
the water has no mineral ingredient, as is said by the chemists,
and that, nevertheless, the cures are certain, as many sick people
and several physicians attest, we do not see any difficulty in
recognizing in the case something supernatural and miraculous, with
all due respect to the explanations of the _Siècle_."

The vigorous champion contended with all his enemies at once. A
touch of his pen sufficed to demolish the ridiculous idea of denying
the possibility of miracles, and of refusing even an examination to
these startling facts which a multitude had seen with their own eyes
and attested on their knees. "If any one should tell M. Guéroult
that a great miracle had been worked in the name of Christ upon the
Place de la Concorde, he would not go, it seems, to see it. This is
prudent in him certainly, for he is determined to remain incredulous;
and in presence of such a spectacle he would not be so certain of
finding a natural explanation which would dispense him from going to
confession. But he would be still more prudent if he would witness
the miracle and believe, yielding to the testimony which God in his
mercy would thus give him. The people, however, will not care for
his absence, and will not be at all disconcerted to hear that the
thing is not at all extraordinary, and that they are the victims of
delusion. Things would take the same course at Paris as at Lourdes;
a miracle would be proclaimed, and, if there really had been one, it
would have its effect; that is, many men who had not as yet '_sought
to discover the divine will_,' or who have not yet been successful
in their search, would know and fulfil it; they would love God with
their whole heart, soul, and mind, and their neighbors as themselves.
Such is the object which God intends in working miracles; and it is
so much the worse for those who refuse to profit by them.

"Those who reject the supernatural, said an ancient writer, destroy
philosophy. They destroy it indeed, and especially since the advent
of Christianity, because, wishing to take God out of the world, they
have no longer any explanation for the world or for humanity. As to
this God whom they exclude, some deny his existence, that they may
get entirely rid of him; others make of him an inert and indifferent
being, having nothing to require and requiring nothing from men,
whom he abandons to chance, having created them in a freak of his
disdainful power. Some, denying him in their very affirmation, as
if they wished to satiate their ingratitude by doing him a double
injury, pretend to find him in all things, which theory dispenses
them from recognizing and adoring him anywhere in particular.
Meanwhile, around them and even in themselves, humanity confesses
its God. They reply by sophisms which are far from contenting them,
by sarcasms the weakness of which they can hardly conceal from
themselves, and at last their science and reason, driven back to
the absurd, deprive them of their eyes and ears. They destroy all
philosophy.... God, taking compassion on the faith of the weak which
these false teachers would pervert, shows himself by one of those
unusual displays of his power, which is nevertheless _one of the laws
of the world_. They deny it. Look! we do not wish to see!... David
said of the sinner, 'He has promised himself in his heart to sin; he
refuses to understand, that he may not be forced to do well.'

"Ah! no doubt," elsewhere exclaimed the indignant logician, "there is
an unfortunate multitude on whom all these commonplaces can be palmed
off without difficulty; but there are also at Lourdes and elsewhere
some readers whose common-sense is aroused, and who ask what will
become of history, evident facts, and reason in such a system, with
such a determination to deny everything without examination?

"As to preventing the episcopal commission from acting, we doubt if
there are any laws conferring such a power upon the government; if
there are, it will probably wisely abstain from using its power. On
one hand, nothing could be more favorable to superstition than to
do so; the popular credulity would then go astray without restraint,
for there is no law which can oblige the Bishop to pronounce upon a
fact about which he has not been able, and has even been forbidden,
to inform himself.... There is only one course for the enemies of
superstition, that is, to appoint a commission themselves, to make a
counter-examination, and publish its result, in case, of course, that
the one appointed by the Bishop concludes in favor of the miracle.
For if it concludes that the reports are false, or that there is some
illusion, this will not be needed."

The Catholic press, with a reserve truly admirable in the midst of
the excitement of the dispute, refused to decide as to the actual
merits of the case. It did not wish to anticipate the verdict of the
episcopal commission; but confined itself to refuting calumnies,
absurd stories, and sophisms, to defending the historical thesis of
the occurrence of supernatural events, and to claiming in the name of
reason the right of examination and freedom to ascertain the truth.
"The event at Lourdes," said the _Univers_, "is not as yet verified,
nor is its nature determined. It may have been a miracle, it may have
been an illusion. The decision of the Bishop will settle the question.

"For our own part, we believe that we have answered all that has been
seriously or even speciously said about the events at Lourdes. We
shall leave the matter here. It was not right that the press should
be allowed to heap around these facts all the lies it could think
of; but it would not be becoming to give an answer to the abundance
of its scoffing words. Wise men will appreciate the wisdom and good
faith of the church, and as usual, after all the turmoil, truth
will secure for itself in the world its little nucleus of adherents,
'pusillus grex,' which nevertheless is sufficient to maintain its
ascendency in the world."[134]

It is obvious that, in the great polemical question regarding
miracles which was being discussed on the occasion of the events at
Lourdes, the two sides were acting on diametrically opposite plans.

On the one hand, the Catholics appealed to an impartial examination;
on the other, the pseudo-philosophers feared the light. The former
said, "Let us have an examination;" the latter cried, "Let us hear no
more of this matter." The former had for their watchword liberty of
conscience; the latter implored Cæsar to put a violent stop to this
religious movement, and to stifle it, not by the power of arguments,
but by brute force.

Every impartial mind, placed by its views or circumstances outside of
the _mêlée_, could not help seeing with the greatest clearness that
justice, truth, and reason were on the Catholic side. All that was
necessary for this was, not to be blinded by the fury of the contest
or by an immovable prejudice.

Although in the person of a commissary, a prefect, and a minister
the administration had unfortunately taken a very decided part in
this important affair, there still was a man of authority who had
not had anything to do with it, and who was in the conditions of
perfect impartiality, whatever his religious, philosophical, and
political views might be. Whether there had been a manifestation
of the supernatural or not at Lourdes made no difference in his
calculations. Neither his ambition, self-love, doctrines, nor
antecedents were concerned in this question. What mind is there which
in such circumstances cannot be fair, and give justice and truth
their rights? People do not violate justice or outrage truth except
when they think it advantageous to do so, under some strong prompting
of avarice, ambition, or pride.

The man of whom we speak was called Napoleon III., and was, as it
happened, Emperor of the French.

Impassible as usual, silent as the granite sphinxes which watch at
the gates of Thebes, he followed the discussion, observing the turns
of the battle, and waiting for the public conscience to dictate, as
it were, his decision.


IV.

While God was thus leaving his work to the disputes of men, he
did not cease to grant visible graces to the humble and believing
souls which came to the miraculous spring to implore the aid of the
sovereign power of the Virgin Mother.

A child of the town of St. Justin, in the department of Gers, named
Jean-Marie Tambourné, had been for some months entirely disabled in
his right leg. The pains in it had been so severe that the limb had
been twisted; and the foot, turned entirely outward in these crises
of suffering, had come to form a right angle with the other one. His
general health had rapidly deteriorated under this state of continual
suffering, which robbed the poor boy of his sleep as well as of his
appetite. He was in fact sinking into the grave. His parents, who
were tolerably well off, had tried for his cure all the treatments
which had been suggested by the physicians of the neighborhood, but
without success.

They had also had recourse to the waters of Blousson and to medicated
baths. The result had been almost complete failure. Any very slight
and temporary alleviations which were obtained always resulted in a
disastrous relapse.

The parents had at last lost all confidence in the remedies of
science. Tired of medical treatment, they turned their hopes toward
the Mother of God, who, it was said, had appeared at the Massabielle
rocks. On the 23d of September, 1858, the little boy was taken by his
mother to Lourdes, in the public coach. It was a long distance, more
than thirty miles. Having reached the town, the mother hastened to
the grotto, carrying her unfortunate child in her arms. She bathed
him in the miraculous water, praying with fervor to her who has been
pleased to be called in the Litany "Health of the Sick." The child
meanwhile had fallen into a sort of ecstatic state. His eyes were
wide open, his lips apart. He seemed to be gazing at some strange
object.

"What is the matter?" said his mother.

"I see the good God and the Blessed Virgin," answered he.

The poor woman, at these words, felt a great commotion at her heart,
and the sweat stood out upon her face.

The child came to himself.

"Mother," said he, "my trouble is gone. My feet do not ache now. I
can walk, I know I can; I am as strong as ever I was."

Jean-Marie was right; he was indeed cured. He went to the village
of Lourdes on foot, ate and slept there. At the same time that his
pain and weakness ceased, his appetite and sleep returned. The next
day his mother bathed him once more at the grotto, and had a mass of
thanksgiving celebrated in the church at Lourdes. Then they set out
for home; not in the coach this time, but on foot.

When, after spending one night on the road, they reached St. Justin,
the child saw his father, who was on the watch, expecting no doubt
that some carriage would bring back the pilgrims. Jean-Marie
recognized him far off, and ran to him.

The father almost fainted. But his darling was already in his arms.
"Papa," cried he, "the Blessed Virgin has cured me."

The news of this event spread quickly enough in the town, where
everybody knew the child. They flocked from all sides to see him.[135]

The sister of a notary of Tarbes, Jeanne-Marie Massot-Bordenave, had
become, after a long and serious illness, almost entirely crippled
in her feet and hands. She walked only with extreme difficulty.
Her hands, habitually swollen, discolored, and aching, were almost
entirely useless. Her fingers, bent back and stiff, could not be
straightened, and were completely paralyzed. Having gone to see her
brother at Tarbes, she was returning home to Arras, in the canton
of Aucun. She was alone in the inside of the diligence. A flask of
wine which her brother had given her having become uncorked and
overturned, she could not set it up or cork it, so entirely powerless
had her fingers become.

Lourdes was upon the road. She stopped there and went to the grotto.
Hardly had she plunged her hands into the miraculous water, when she
perceived that they were instantly coming back to life. Her fingers
had straightened, and suddenly recovered their flexibility and
strength. Successful perhaps beyond her expectations, she plunged her
feet in the miraculous water, and they were healed like her hands.
She fell upon her knees. What did she say to the Blessed Virgin? How
did she thank her? Such prayers, such bursts of gratitude may be
imagined, but not expressed in words.

She then put on her shoes, and with a confident step returned to the
town.

A young girl was walking in the same direction, coming back from the
woods with an enormous bundle of fagots on her head. It was warm, and
the poor little peasant was bathed in perspiration. Exhausted, she
sat down upon a stone at the side of the road, laying her too heavy
burden at her feet. At this moment Jeanne-Marie Massot passed before
her, returning quickly and joyfully from the fountain of grace. A
good thought occurred to her. She went up to the child.

"My child," said she to her, "our Lord has just granted me a great
favor. He has cured me; he has taken away my burden. And in my turn,
I would like to aid and relieve you."

So saying, Marie Massot took up with her hands restored to life the
heavy fagots which lay on the ground, put them on her head, and
thus returned to Lourdes, whence, less than an hour before, she
had gone out weak and paralyzed. The first-fruits of her recovered
strength had been nobly used; they had been consecrated to charity.
"Freely have you received, freely give," said our Redeemer to his
disciples.[136]

A woman already advanced in age, Marie Capdevielle, of the village
of Livron, in the neighborhood of Lourdes, had also been cured of a
severe deafness which had troubled her for a long time. "I seem,"
said she, "to be in another world when I hear the church-bells, which
I have not heard before for three years."

These cures, and many others, continue to attest irrefutably the
direct intervention of God. He showed his power in restoring
health to the sick, and it was evident that, if he had permitted
persecution, it was because it was necessary to the conduct of his
designs. It rested with him to put a stop to it, and for that purpose
to bend and use as it should please him the wills of the great ones
of the earth.


V.

Polemics on the subject of the grotto had become exhausted. In France
and abroad, public opinion had passed judgment, not indeed on the
reality of the supernatural events, but on the violent oppression
to which all liberty of belief and right of examination were being
subjected to in a corner of the empire. The miserable sophisms of
anti-christian fanaticism and of pseudo-philosophic intolerance
had not held their ground before the cogent logic of the Catholic
journals. The _Débats_, the _Siècle_, the _Presse_, and the common
herd of irreligious sheets kept silence, probably sorry that they had
undertaken this unfortunate contest, and made so much noise about
these extraordinary facts. They had only succeeded in propagating and
spreading everywhere the renown of a host of miracles. From Italy,
Germany, and even more distant lands, people were writing to Lourdes
for some of the sacred water.

At the Bureau of Public Worship, M. Rouland persisted in putting
himself in the way of the most holy of liberties, and in endeavoring
to stop the march of events.

At the grotto, Jacomet and the guards continued to keep watch day and
night, and to bring the faithful up before the courts. Judge Duprat
kept on sentencing them.

Between such a minister to back him, and such agents to carry out
his will, Baron Massy remained bravely in his desperately illogical
situation, and consoled himself with the omnipotence of his arbitrary
will. Continually more and more exasperated by seeing the vain
pretexts of religion and public order with which he had at first
wished to conceal his intolerance slipping through his fingers, he
gave himself up gladly to the bitter satisfaction of practising pure
tyranny. He remained deaf to the universal protest. To all reasoning,
to undeniable evidence, he opposed his own will: "Such is my
determination." It was sweet to him to be stronger single-handed than
all the multitudes, stronger than the Bishop, stronger than common
sense, than miracles, than the God who was manifested at the grotto.

It was at this juncture that two eminent personages, Mgr. de
Salinis, Archbishop of Auch, and M. de Rességuier, formerly of the
deputies, called on the Emperor, who was at the time at Biarritz.
Napoleon III. was receiving at the same time from various quarters
petitions demanding urgently, in virtue of the most sacred rights,
the annulment of the arbitrary and violent measures of Baron Massy.
"Sire," said one of these petitions, "we do not pretend to settle
the question as to the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin, though
almost all the people here, on account of the startling miracles
which they claim to have personally witnessed, believe in the
reality of these supernatural manifestations. But it is certain and
indisputable that the fountain which appeared suddenly, and from
which we are excluded, in spite of the scientific analysis which
asserts its perfect harmlessness, has been hurtful to no one; on the
other hand, it is undeniable that a great number of persons declare
that they have there recovered their health. In the name of the
rights of conscience, which should be independent of all human power,
permit the faithful to go and pray there if they choose. In the name
of humanity, allow the sick to go there for their cure, if they
entertain such a hope. In the name of free thought, suffer the minds
which need information for their study and examination to go there to
unmask error or to discover truth."

The Emperor, as we have said above, was disinterested in the
question, or rather it was for his interest not to waste his power
in fruitlessly opposing the course of events. It was for his
interest to listen to the cry of souls asking for the liberty of
their faith, the cry of minds demanding freedom to study and see for
themselves. It was for his interest to be just, and not to crush, by
an arbitrary act and an evident denial of justice, those who believed
the evidence of their senses, as well as those who, though not yet
believing, still claimed the right to examine publicly the mysterious
occurrences which were occupying the attention of France.

It has been seen what wild romances the honest Minister Rouland had
gravely accepted as incontestable truths. The information which
his benevolent excellency must have given the Emperor could hardly
have given the latter much light upon the subject. The newspaper
discussions, although they had triumphantly brought to light the
right of one party and the unjust intolerance of the other, could not
have given him a perfectly clear idea of the situation. At Biarritz
only did it appear to him in its fulness and complete details.

Napoleon III. was not a very demonstrative sovereign; his thoughts
were seldom plainly indicated by his words; rather by actions. As he
learned the absurd and violent proceedings by which the minister,
the prefect, and their agents had been bringing authority into
disgrace, his dull eye brightened, it is said, with a flash of anger;
he shrugged his shoulders nervously, and a cloud of deep displeasure
passed over his brow. He rang the bell impatiently.

"Take this to the telegraph office," said he.

It was a brief dispatch to the Prefect of Tarbes, ordering him, in
the name of the Emperor, to rescind instantly the decree closing the
grotto at Lourdes, and to leave the people free.


VI.

We are familiar with the discoveries of science with regard to the
wonderful electric spark, which the network of wires covering the
globe carries from one end of the earth to the other in an instant.
The telegraph, as the _savants_ tell us, is the same thing as the
thunderbolt. On this occasion, Baron Massy was entirely of their
opinion. The imperial despatch, falling suddenly upon them, stunned
and bewildered him, as a sudden stroke of lightning would have done
coming down upon his house. He could not believe in its reality.
The more he thought of it, the more impossible it seemed for him to
retrace his steps, to reverse his judgment, or to bear his retreat
publicly. Nevertheless, he had to swallow this bitter draught, or
hand in his resignation and put far away from his lips the sweet
prefectoral cup. Fatal alternative! The heart of a public functionary
is sometimes torn by fearful anguish.

When a sudden catastrophe comes upon us, we have at first some
difficulty in accepting it as definitive, and we continue to struggle
after all is lost. Baron Massy did not escape this illusion. He
hoped vaguely that the Emperor would revoke his decision. In this
hope, he undertook to keep the dispatch secret for some days, and not
to obey. He wrote to the Emperor, and also secured the intervention
of Minister Rouland, who was less publicly but as completely affected
as himself by the unexpected order from Biarritz.

Napoleon III. was as insensible to the protests of the minister as
to the representations and entreaties of the prefect. The judgment
which he had made had been based upon evidence, and was irrevocable.
All these steps had no other result than to show him that the prefect
had dared to set aside his orders and to postpone their execution.
A second despatch left Biarritz. It was couched in terms which
permitted no comment or delay.

Baron Massy had to choose between his pride and his prefecture. He
made the grievous choice, and was humble enough to remain in his
office.

The head of the department resigned himself to obedience.
Nevertheless, in spite of the imperative orders of his master, he
still tried, not to resist, which was evidently impossible, but to
hide his retreat and not surrender publicly.

In consequence of some official indiscretions, and perhaps also by
the account of the gentlemen who had waited on the Emperor, the
purport of the orders from Biarritz was already vaguely known by
the public. It was the topic of general conversation. The prefect
neither confirmed nor denied the prevailing rumors. He instructed
Jacomet and his agents to draw up no more _procès-verbaux_, and to
discontinue the watch. Such a course, coming in connection with the
current reports as to the instructions of the Emperor, ought to
have sufficed (at least such was his hope) to put things in their
normal state, and make the prohibitory decree a dead letter. It was
even probable that the people, restored to liberty, would hasten
themselves to root up and throw into the Gave the posts bearing the
caution against entering upon the common land and within the barriers
which enclosed the grotto.

M. Massy was, however, mistaken in his calculations, plausible as
they may have been. In spite of the absence of the police, in spite
of the reports which were circulating without official contradiction,
the people feared some snare. They continued to pray on the wrong
side of the Gave. The trespasses were as before, generally speaking,
few and far between. No one touched the posts or the barriers. The
_status quo_, instead of disappearing of its own accord, as the
prefect had hoped, obstinately remained.

Considering the character of Napoleon III., and the clearness of the
orders from Biarritz, the situation was dangerous for the prefect,
and Baron Massy was too intelligent not to perceive it. Every moment
it was to be feared that the Emperor would hear of the way in which
he was trying to beat around the bush. He may well have dreaded
continually that some terrible message would arrive setting him aside
for ever, and turning him out in the cold, out from the luminous
realms of functionarism into the exterior darkness in which the
miserable unofficial world is involved.

The end of September had come.

It happened that, during these perplexities, M. Fould had occasion
to make another visit to Tarbes, and even to go to Lourdes. Did he
increase the alarm of the prefect by speaking of the sovereign, or
did the Baron receive some new telegram more crushing than the
others? We do not know. But it is certain that, on the 3d of October,
M. Massy, as if struck down by some unseen hand, became pliable as a
broken reed, and that his arrogant stiffness was suddenly changed to
a complete prostration.

The next day he issued, in the name of the Emperor, an order to the
mayor of Lourdes to repeal the decree publicly, and to have Jacomet
remove the posts and barriers.


VII.

M. Lacadé did not hesitate like M. Massy. This issue freed him at
once from the heavy burden which the mingled desire of pleasing both
the prefect and the people, both the heavenly and earthly powers, had
imposed upon him. By an illusion very common with undecided people,
he imagined that he had always been on the side which now prevailed,
and in this spirit he drew up a proclamation to the following effect:
"Citizens of Lourdes, the day which we have so earnestly desired has
at last come; we have earned it by our wisdom, perseverance, faith,
and courage." Such was the sense and style of his proclamation, the
text of which is unfortunately not extant.[137]

The proclamation was read through the town, with an accompaniment of
drums and trumpets. At the same time the following notice was posted
on the walls:

                    The Mayor of Lourdes,
          Acting upon instructions addressed to him,

                     ORDERS AS FOLLOWS:

    The order issued on the 8th of June, 1858, is revoked.

    Done at Lourdes, at the Mayor's Office, Oct. 5, 1858.

                                       The Mayor, A. LACADÉ.

At the same time, Jacomet and the sergents-de-ville repaired to the
grotto to take away the barriers and posts.

A crowd had already collected there, and was increasing every
moment. Some were praying on their knees, and, endeavoring not to be
distracted by the hubbub around, were thanking God for having put a
stop to the scandal and the persecutions. Others were standing up
talking in a low voice, and awaiting with emotion what was about to
take place. Many of the women were saying their beads. Some held
bottles in their hands, which they wished to fill at the source of
the fountain. Some were throwing flowers over the barriers into
the interior of the grotto. But no one touched the barriers. It
was necessary that those who had publicly placed them there in
opposition to the power of God should come and remove them publicly
in submission to the will of a man.

Jacomet arrived. Although, in spite of himself, he showed some
embarrassment, and though from the paleness of his face his profound
humiliation might have been suspected, still he had not, contrary
to the general expectation, the dejected appearance of one who had
been conquered. Escorted by his subordinates with their hatchets and
pickaxes, he came forward with a bold face. With a seemingly strange
affectation, he wore his full-dress costume. His large tricolor scarf
was wrapped around him and rested upon his parade sword. A vague
tumult, a dull murmur, with some distinct cries here and there,
was heard from the crowd. The commissary took up his position upon
a rock, and signed to the people that he wished to speak. Every
one listened. His words are said to have been to this effect: "My
friends, these barriers which the municipality, to my great regret,
has ordered to put up, are about to be removed. Who has suffered
more than I from this obstacle raised against your piety? I also am
a Christian, my friends; I share your faith. But the official, like
the soldier, has only one duty; it is the duty, often a very painful
one, of obedience. The responsibility does not rest upon him. Well,
my friends, when I saw your admirable patience, your respect for
authority, your persevering faith, I informed the higher authorities.
I pleaded your cause. I said, 'Why prevent them from praying at the
grotto, from drinking at the fountain? They will do no harm.' And
thus, my friends, the prohibition has been removed, and the prefect
and I have resolved to take down these barriers for ever, which were
so displeasing to you and much more so to me."

The crowd maintained a cold silence. Some of the young people
chuckled and laughed. Jacomet was evidently troubled by his want of
success. He gave orders to his men to take away the fence, which was
done without delay. The boards were piled up near the grotto, and the
police came at nightfall to take them away.

There was great rejoicing at Lourdes. All the afternoon crowds were
going and coming on the road to the grotto. Before the Massabielle
rocks immense numbers of the faithful were kneeling. Canticles and
litanies were sung: "Virgo potens, ora pro nobis." The people drank
of the fountain. Faith was free. God had triumphed.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] _Presse_, Aug. 31, 1858.

[132] _Siècle_, Aug. 30, 1858.

[133] _Amsterdaamsche Courant_, Sept. 9, 1858.

[134] The above extracts are from the _Univers_, on various dates in
August and September, 1858.

[135] Twenty-eighth _procès-verbal_ of the episcopal commission.

The following is the report of one of the physicians appointed to
examine this cure:

"The boy Tambourné, at five years of age, showed the symptoms of hip
disease in the first stage; very sharp pains in the knee, duller at
the hip, a turning out of the foot, lameness at first, afterwards
inability to walk without great suffering. The digestive functions
became impaired. He had a repugnance to food, and became very much
reduced. The disease, going through its first period very rapidly,
was threatening sooner or later to put an end to the child's life,
when the idea was formed of taking him to the grotto of Lourdes,
where his cure was effected instantly.

"The complaint of young Tambourné was of the same class as that of
Busquet, but it was more severe, having affected one of the principal
joints. Its indications were already most distressing to the eyes of
the physician who is able to see what the future has in store.

"It is, no doubt, possible to cure hip-disease, by the means and
processes employed by science. Natural sulphurous waters can remove
it; but in no case is it possible for them to operate with the
rapidity of lightning.

"Instantaneousness of action is so much beyond the healing power
by means of which such waters operate, that it may be asserted
that there is a fact in the supernatural order in all the cases of
immediate cure in which a material lesion has been involved. It
hardly needs to be stated that young Tambourné came to the grotto
carried by his mother, and that a few moments afterwards he climbed
a steep slope, walked and ran the rest of the day, without feeling
the least pain, and with as much ease as before the coming on of the
disease, etc."

[136] We give in this note the report of the physicians entrusted
with the examination of this case by the episcopal commission. It is
remarkable for its circumspection. It does not dare to pronounce in
favor of a miracle; but such a reserve in so striking a case gives to
the reports in which miraculous power is recognized an authority yet
more incontestable and conclusive.

"Mlle. Massot-Bordenave, of Arras, aged fifty-three, was afflicted
in the month of May, 1858, with a malady which deprived her feet and
hands of part of their power and mobility. Her fingers were much
bent.... Her bread had to be cut for her. She went on foot to the
grotto, bathed her hands and feet, and went away cured.

"It cannot be denied that all the _prima facie_ indications in this
case are in favor of the intervention of some supernatural cause;
but examining it with attention, we shall see that this view is
opposed by several well-founded objections. Thus, the beginning
of the trouble was hardly four months before; its character was
not alarming, being a weakness of convalescence, a diminution of
energy in the extensor and flexor muscles of the fingers and toes.
Let the nervous power flow into these muscles, under the influence
of a strong moral stimulus, and they would resume their functions
immediately. Now, may we not admit in this case that the imagination
may have become exalted by the religious sentiment, and by the hope
of becoming the recipient of a favor from heaven?"

[137] A great part of the papers relating to the grotto of Lourdes
were kept by the Lacadé family instead of being left in the archives
of the mayoralty. We endeavored in vain to get at these precious
documents. The Lacadé family say that they have been burned.

TO BE CONTINUED.




MR. FROUDE AND CALVINISM.


The Robert-Houdin of modern English writers, and author of that
popular serial novel grimly entitled _The History of England_,
appears to be only at home in an element of paradox, and in the
clever accomplishment of some literary _tour de force_. _Calvinism:_
An Address delivered at St. Andrews, March 17, 1871, by James Anthony
Froude, M.A.,[138] is his latest performance.

Always liberal in his assumption of premises, no one need be
surprised that the author should claim Calvinism to have been
"accepted for two centuries in all Protestant countries as the final
account of the relations between man and his Maker," and should
represent that "the Catholics whom it overthrew" assail it, etc.
It will be news to most Protestants, Lutherans and Anglicans in
particular, that Calvinism was thus accepted, and the 'overthrown
Catholics' will be not less surprised. Throughout the address, Mr.
Froude industriously insists upon the false idea that Luther was a
Calvinist. The statement refutes itself in its terms. No argument
is needed to show that Luther's free-will doctrine and Calvin's
predestination were simply irreconcilable. It was not skilful in
Mr. Froude to smother in its very birth his labored vindication of
Calvinistic doctrine by such a presentation as this (p. 4):

    "It has come to be regarded by liberal thinkers as a
    system of belief incredible in itself, dishonoring
    to its object, and as intolerable as it has been
    itself intolerant. To represent man as sent into the
    world under a curse, as incurably wicked--wicked by
    the constitution of his flesh, and wicked by eternal
    decree--as doomed, unless exempted by special grace
    which he cannot merit or by any effort of his own
    obtain, to live in sin while he remains on earth,
    and to be eternally miserable when he leaves it--to
    represent him as born unable to keep the commandments,
    yet as justly liable to everlasting punishment for
    breaking them, is alike repugnant to reason and
    to conscience, and turns existence into a hideous
    nightmare. To tell men that they cannot help themselves
    is to fling them into recklessness and despair. To
    what purpose the effort to be virtuous, when it is an
    effort which is foredoomed to fail--when those that are
    saved are saved by no effort of their own, and confess
    themselves the worst of sinners, even when rescued from
    the penalties of sin; and those that are lost are lost
    by an everlasting sentence decreed against them before
    they were born? How are we to call the Ruler who laid
    us under this iron code by the name of Wise, or Just,
    or Merciful, when we ascribe principles of action to
    him which in a human father we should call preposterous
    and monstrous?"

As types of Calvinism and almost perfect human beings, as men
of grandeur and nobility of character, upright life, commanding
intellect, untainted selfishness, unalterably just, frank, true,
cheerful, humorous, and as unlike sour fanatics as it is possible
to imagine any one, Mr. Froude names William the Silent, Luther,
John Knox, Andrew Melville, the Regent Murray, Coligny, Cromwell,
Milton, and John Bunyan. The Calvinism of all the members of this
remarkably assorted group is at least open to serious question. As
to their supereminent goodness and almost angelic purity, it would
be an easy but not a pleasant task to point out the refutation in
their fatal shortcomings. It may be that Cromwell had "the tenderness
of a woman" in his heart, but no testimony to support that assertion
could possibly be procured in Ireland. It may be that Knox was not a
sour fanatic, that William was all unselfishness, that Coligny was
blameless, and that Milton's wife was mistaken in her estimate of her
husband.

As to the Regent Murray, who was told to his face by John Knox that
his religion was "for his own commoditie," and whom Aytoun[139] has
incarcerated in the immortal amber of his verse as "the falsest
villain ever Scotland bred"--

      "False to his faith, a wedded priest:
        Still falser to the Crown;
      False to the blood, that in his veins
        Made bastardy renown;
      False to his sister, whom he swore
        To guard and shield from harm;
      The head of many a felon plot,
        But never once the arm!
      A verier knave ne'er stepped the earth
        Since this wide world began;
      And yet--he bandies texts with Knox,
        And walks a pious man!"--

we are perfectly satisfied that Robespierre is an accomplished
Christian gentleman beside him, for Robespierre at least never stole
his sister's jewels nor took bribes from his country's enemies.

Then we are treated by the author to a promenade down the path of
ages, amid the wrecks of empires and of systems, and to rhetorically
embroidered sketches, with mention more or less extended of Olympus,
Valhalla, Egyptian idolatry, Buddhism, in which "Zoroaster, like
Moses, saw behind the physical forces into the deeper laws of right
and wrong," Greek theology, the Stoics, "the Galilean fishermen
and the tentmaker of Tarsus," and--Islamism. Of all these, the
last most decidedly brings out Mr. Froude's warmest enthusiasm, and
we find ourselves querying if it is Mohammed's fatalism he so much
admires, for the monotheism of the prophet could hardly be called
Calvinistic, thus making the burning of Servetus a gratuitous waste
of cord-wood. Here we feel bound in justice to say that, although
the men of Galilee and of Tarsus do not appear to excite any very
strong admiration in our author, he nevertheless makes the handsome
concession that he is not "upholding Mohammed as if he had been a
perfect man, or the Koran as a second Bible," and that "the detailed
conception of man's duties was inferior, far inferior, to what St.
Martin and St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Augustine, were teaching
or had taught in Western Europe."

The early Christian church being essentially Catholic, it
does not draw very heavily on either Mr. Froude's enthusiasm
or his admiration, and, in speaking of "the mystery called
transubstantiation" in the twelfth century, he makes an attempt to
sum up Catholicity in a vein partaking of the brutality with which,
in his _History of England_, he has the cool insolence to speak of
the Catholic religion--the religion of Copernicus, Sir Thomas More,
Fénelon, and Dr. Newman--as "a Paphian idolatry."

The Reformation is, of course, introduced with flourish of trumpets.
But the Reformation was essentially Lutheran, and not Calvinistic.
Luther himself, who was, so Mr. Froude assures us, "one of the
grandest men that ever lived on earth," than whom "none more loyal
to the light that was in him--braver, truer, or wider-minded,
in the noblest sense of the word"--this Luther, we say, was as
sincere a believer as Saint Augustine in the real presence--in
transubstantiation, as Mr. Froude has it--a doctrine which, on all
occasions and as far as in him lies, our English writer seeks to drag
in the mud. And yet this Luther, so believing, was, Mr. Froude seeks
to persuade us, a Calvinist.

Calvinism, in practice, was a lovely thing, and Mr. Froude proves
that it was by--John Knox, whom he thus cites: "Elsewhere," says
Knox, speaking of Geneva, "the word of God is taught as purely; but
never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faithfully."

Mr. Froude is, moreover, surprised that Calvinism should have
been called intolerant,[140] and sums up its vindication thus:
"Intolerance of an enemy who is trying to kill you seems to me a
pardonable state of mind."

In the face of this citation, it is almost unnecessary to state that
the name of Servetus does not once occur in the forty-seven pages of
the _Address_, nor is the slightest allusion made to him. And if the
curious reader, unacquainted with the practical working of Calvinism
in Geneva, where God was "obeyed so faithfully," should inquire how
it was that this perfect Christian man, Calvin, wrote his laws in
blood and enforced them with the aid of executioners and torturers;
how it was that he persecuted some men and, under color of law,
assassinated others, he may be referred to these witnesses: _First_.
Jerome Bolsec, exiled for proposing "an opinion false and contrary
to the evangelical religion." _Second._ Peter Arneaux, who, for
saying that Calvin was "a wicked man announcing false doctrine," was
condemned to walk the streets of Geneva in his shirt, a lighted torch
in his hand, bare-headed and bare-footed. _Third._ Henri de la Marc,
exiled for saying that Peter Arneaux was a worthy man, and that,
if Calvin had a spite against any one, he gratified it. _Fourth._
Jacques Gruet, who was beheaded and his head afterward nailed to a
post, for the crime of being the author of placards accusing the
Calvinists of persecution, and for proofs of impiety found in his
private writings when his house was searched. _Finally._ Servetus,
who, for being "a sower of heresies," was, by Calvin's authority,
imprisoned, left there for two months to suffer by hunger and
nakedness, and then brought out and, at the age of forty-four years,
burned alive.

We cannot be certain that Mr. Froude has ever heard of any of these
Protestants martyred for their opinions. If he has heard of them, we
presume he means to vindicate Calvin, and to cover their cases by the
crushing statement at page 43: "It is no easy matter to tolerate lies
clearly convicted of being lies under any circumstances; specially
it is not easy to tolerate lies which strut about in the name of
religion."

The passage is characteristic of Mr. Froude's capacity for ambiguity
and indirection, but he neglects to indicate the tribunal of truth
at which these lies are "clearly convicted." It is a serious matter
for a gentleman of no particular religious principle to say that this
or the other theological conviction is a lie which struts about in
the name of religion; for, in the eye of the theologically convicted,
the most offensively disgusting of all struts is the strut of "no
religion to speak of." Moreover, the author had better have left
unpublished the last member of the sentence we have quoted, because,
in his case, it irresistibly suggests this other phrase: "It is not
easy to tolerate novels which strut about in the name of history."

Thus we know, as matter of record, that Norman Leslie proposed to
Henry VIII. the assassination of Cardinal Beaton for a sum of money,
that the negotiation, at first delayed, was finally closed and
carried out. Leslie got his money, and the cardinal was murdered,
because, as Mr. Froude touchingly relates it, Henry's position
"obliged him to look at facts as they were rather than through
conventional forms."

Mr. Froude presents the hired bravo of Henry VIII. thus: "Norman
Leslie did not kill Cardinal Beaton down in the castle yonder because
he was a Catholic, but because he was a murderer."

Mr. Froude does not appear by his writings to have an unvarying
standard of morality. Apparently incapable of judging actions as they
are, he measures them by his personal like or dislike of the actors.
Always the advocate, never the philosophical historian, he presents
but one side of a case. Certain personages in history are with him
always right, certain others are always wrong. Even the crimes of
the former are meritorious, or, at worse, indifferent, while the
indifferent sayings and doings of the latter are sins of deepest die.
We may see this tendency exemplified in the address before us which
seeks to make Calvinism lovely.

The author says, in plain terms, that it was not more criminal in
a Calvinist to burn a witch than for any other person to invite a
spirit-rapper to dinner.

Of course he expresses the opinion euphuistically and in mellifluous
phrase, but, nevertheless, he does express it. And that our readers
may fully understand that we do not even unintentionally misrepresent
him, we give his words. At page 43, we read:

    "In burning witches, the Calvinists followed their
    model too exactly; but it is to be remembered that they
    really believed those poor creatures to have made a
    compact with Satan. And, as regards morality, it may
    be doubted whether inviting spirit-rappers to dinner,
    and allowing them to pretend to consult our dead
    relations, is very much more innocent. The first method
    is but excess of indignation with evil; the second is
    complacent toying with it."

It is worth while to notice how deftly Mr. Froude handles his
positive and comparative.

For Calvinists to burn people alive is _innocent_, and intercourse
with spirit-rappers is _not very much more innocent_.

With such juggling as this of facts and phrases, the author of
Calvinism has written his _History of England_, the delight of
circulating library subscribers because it is "as interesting as a
novel."

And so it is, for the best of reasons.

FOOTNOTES:

[138] New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

[139] Author of _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_.

[140] Mr. Froude's memory is not always good. In his _History of
England_, vol. ix., p. 307, he tells us: "The guidance of the great
movement was snatched from the control of reason to be made over to
Calvinism; and Calvinism, could it have had the world under its feet,
would have been as merciless as the Inquisition itself. The Huguenots
and the Puritans, the Bible in one hand, the sword in the other,
were ready to make war with steel and fire against all which Europe
for ten centuries had held sacred. Fury encountered fury, fanaticism
fanaticism; _and wherever Calvin's spirit penetrated, the Christian
world was divided into two armies, who abhorred each other with a
bitterness exceeding the utmost malignity of mere human nature_."




LOVE FOR ANIMALS.


      "He prayeth well who loveth well
        Both man, and bird and beast;
      He prayeth best who loveth best
        All things both great and small;
      For the dear God who loveth us,
        He made and loveth all."

In reading the lives of the saints, I have been particularly struck
with their love for, and their power over, the animal world. They
seemed to live nearer the heart of nature than other mortals, and
perceived there diviner harmonies. Perhaps this sympathetic relation
sprang from the belief that, as the whole natural, world participated
in the fall of man, so it has its part in the fruit of our Saviour's
Passion. At least, they believed that animals, in common with man,
received life from God and exist through him. "All creatures," says
Denis the Carthusian, "partake of the divine, eternal, and uncreated
beauty." The saints respected in animals that divine wisdom which
Albertus Magnus tells us, in his book on animals, is to be recognized
in their instinct. Dr. Newman says: "Men of narrow reasoning may
smile at the supposition that the woods and wild animals can fall
into the scheme of theology and preach to the heart the all-pervading
principles of religion; but they forget that God's works have a unity
of design throughout, and that the author of nature and of revealed
religion is one."

Dr. Faber saw throughout creation a threefold manifestation of God,
typifying his being, the generation of the Son, and the procession of
the Spirit.

Sanctity seems to restore man to his primeval relation to nature, and
give him back the power he possessed in Eden over the animal world.
The Holy Scriptures tell us of beasts and birds sent to minister
to the wants of man, and how the very lions reverenced the prophet
Daniel. Animals were submissive to man before his fall, and they
went obediently into the ark at the command of Noah. Such things
are renewed and repeated in the lives of the Christian saints. It
is not more wonderful that a raven should bring St. Paul the Hermit
half a loaf every day for sixty years, and a whole one when visited
by St. Anthony, than that one should feed the prophet. St. Gregory
of Nazianzen relates that St. Basil's grandmother, St. Macrina,
having taken refuge with her husband in the forests of Pontus during
a persecution, was miraculously fed by stags. St. Bega, when a
hermitess in a cave on the Cumberland coast, lived in supernatural
familiarity with the sea-birds and the wolves of Copeland forest, and
they in part supplied her with food. St. Roch is usually represented
with the dog that used to accompany him in his pilgrimages. When St.
Roch had the plague, the dog went daily into the city and returned
with a loaf of bread for his master.

Among the old legends that embody the popular idea of the veneration
of the animal world for holiness, is that of the Flight into Egypt.
It is said the lions and leopards crept out of their lairs to lick
the baby hands of the infant Jesus. When Christians, in the times
of persecution under the Roman emperors, were thrown to the wild
beasts in the amphitheatre, there are many examples of these usually
ferocious animals refusing to touch the holy victims, as in the
well-known instances of Andronicus and Tarchus.

St. Blaise is depicted surrounded by a variety of animals, such
as the lion and the lamb, the leopard and the hind, who seem to
have laid aside their animosity. This saint was obliged, in the
persecution of the reign of Diocletian, to take refuge in a cave of
the mountains. It was the haunt of wild beasts, whose ferocity he so
disarmed that they came every morning, as if to ask his blessing,
says the old legend. One day, he met an old woman in distress for the
loss of her only earthly possession, a pig, which had been carried
off by a wolf. Such power had St. Blaise over the animal world, that
when he ordered the wolf to bring back the pig he obeyed.

Some time after, the woman killed her pig and took a part of it to
St. Blaise, who had been thrown into prison and left without any
food, thereby preventing him from starving.

St. Jerome is represented, in Christian art, with the lion he healed,
and which remained with him. The legend tells us the saint made the
lion guard the ass that brought his fagots from the forest. One day,
the lion went to sleep in the woods, and the ass was stolen. The lion
returned home with drooping head, as if ashamed. St. Jerome made him
bring the fagots in place of the ass, which he did till he discovered
his old friend in a caravan of merchants, whom he so terrified that
they confessed their sin to St. Jerome and restored the ass.

There is a very similar legend of the Abbot Gerasimus, who lived near
the river Jordan.

We are told, in the lives of the fathers of the desert, of one of
them who was carrying provisions across the desert to his brethren.
Wearied with his burden and the long journey, he called to a wild
ass he espied to come and aid him, for the love of Christ. The ass
hastened to his assistance, and bore the father and his load to the
cells of his brethren.

St. Aphraates dispersed the army of locusts that threatened the
country around Antioch.

St. Martin commanded the serpents, and they obeyed him.

And we read how the wolf-hounds, hungry and fierce, that were kept
for the chase, respected St. Walburga when she went, late at night,
to visit the dying daughter of a neighboring baron.

It would almost seem as if these animals recognized, as an able
writer says, the presence of Him who lulled the tempest with a word
in the souls in whom he dwells.

Tradition records the fondness of one of the twelve apostles--the
loved apostle John--for animals. Every one has heard of the tame
partridge he took pleasure in feeding. He was seen tending his bird
by a passing hunter, who expressed his surprise to see the apostle,
so renowned for his age and sanctity, thus employing his time. St.
John asked him if he always kept his bow bent. "That would soon
render it useless," said the hunter. "So do I unbend my mind in this
way for the same reason you unbend your bow--to prevent its becoming
useless." Perhaps he derived his love for animals from his ancestress
Rebecca, who showed the kindness of her nature in offering to water
the camels of the stranger. Eliezer saw it, and began wooing her for
his master's son.

There are numerous instances in which animals instinctively betook
themselves to the saints for protection. A hind, pursued by dogs,
took refuge with St. Giles in his cave near the mouth of the
Rhone. The hunters, following on his track, found the wounded beast
crouching beside the saint, who protected him. The hind remained
with St. Giles, who fed on his milk. This saint is represented in
paintings with the animal beside him. "Ane hind set up beside Sanct
Geill," says Sir David Lindsay.

There is a similar legend about St. Procopius, a hermit, with whom a
hunted hind took refuge.

As St. Anselm was riding to the Manor of Herse, a hare, pursued by
hunters, sought shelter under the housings of his mule. St. Anselm
wept, but the foresters laughed, and the hounds stood around at bay.
The saint said: "This poor hare reminds me of the soul of a sinner
beset by fiends eager to seize their prey." He ordered the hunters
not to pursue the hare, which fled.

So a deer took refuge from hunters in the cell of St. Aventin, a
hermit who lived on an island in the Seine. One night a bear attacked
his hut with furious cries. The saint betook himself to prayer, and
at dawn found the animal, subdued and gentle, lying at his door
licking his paw. The saint saw it was pierced by a thorn, and drew it
out, when the beast went quietly away into the forest. When a person,
who lived for a time with St. Aventin, caught some fish, the saint
threw them back into the river, saying: "Go, little creatures, return
to your element and food and remain there at liberty: my element and
food are Jesus Christ, to whom I wish to return, that in him I may
live for ever."

St. Bartholomew, a hermit of Farne, was so gentle in his movements
that the wild sea-birds were not afraid of him. He allowed no one
to molest them. He tamed an eider-duck, which daily fed out of his
hand. One day, as St. Bartholomew was sitting on the sea-shore, a
cormorant pulled the edge of his garment with its bill. He followed
the bird, and found its young had fallen into a fissure in the rocks.
He rescued them from danger.

St. Helier, a hermit in the isle of Jersey, lived for years on a
barren crag overlooking the sea. Attention was called to the place of
his retreat by the flight of the birds who shared the rock with him,
and he was beheaded by his pagan discoverers.

The marine animals would fawn on St. Cuthbert while he was praying
by night on the island of Farne. The eider-ducks are called by the
islanders to this day "St. Cuthbert's ducks."

So the nuns of Whitby "exulting told"

            "How sea-fowls' pinions fail,
      As over Whitby's towers they sail,
      And sinking down, with flutterings faint,
      They do their homage to the saint."

St. Serf, an old Scottish monk, had a pet ram which he had raised and
used to follow him about. The laird of Tillicoultry stole the animal
and "ate him up in pieces small." Being accused of the theft, the
laird declared on oath that he had neither stolen nor eaten the ram.
Whereupon, so runs the old legend, the ram "bleated in his wayme"!
The saint predicted that no heir born to the estate of Tillicoultry
should succeed to his patrimony, which prediction has been verified
down to our own time. During the last two centuries Tillicoultry
has been in the possession of thirteen different families, and in
no case has the heir born to it become the owner. Lord Colville,
a distinguished soldier of the time of James VI., retired to his
estate of Tillicoultry to spend the rest of his life in retirement.
Walking on the terrace one day, he slipped while looking up at an
old hawthorn tree, and fell down the bank and was instantly killed.
The estate was afterwards sold to the Earl of Stirling, at whose
death it was sold to Sir Alexander Rollo, and so it has passed from
one family to another down to our time. In 1837, it was bought by
Mr. Stirling, who was accidentally killed. His brother, not the born
heir, succeeded him, but sold it in 1842 to Mr. Anstruther, who in
turn sold it to his brother, the present proprietor.

St. Richard, Bishop of Winchester, through excessive tenderness for
the animal world, hardly ever ate any meat. When he saw any lamb
or chicken on his table, he used to say: "We are the cause of your
death, ye innocent ones. What have ye done worthy of death?" He
thought as Frederick Schlegel, who remarks: "The sorrows of beasts
are certainly a theme for the meditations of men, and I could not
agree to the justice of regarding it as a subject unworthy of
reflection, or of permitting sympathy with them to be banished from
the human breast." St. Richard's love extended to the whole natural
world. In the time of his troubles he used to retire to the parsonage
of a country curate, not far from Winchester, to find solace in
communion with nature. His friend loved to look at him walking in the
garden watching the unfolding of the flower-buds or amusing himself
by budding and grafting, forgetful of the wrath of the king and the
number of his enemies. A graft which the owner regarded with great
pride having died, Richard regrafted it. It lived and bore fruit.

Many stories are told of the love of St. Waltheof, Abbot of Melrose,
for animals, and, in particular, of his affection for the old gray
horse which he constantly rode, and used playfully to call Brother
Grizzle (_Frater Ferrandus_). He was even known to discipline
himself for having killed an insect, saying he had taken away the
life of one of God's creatures which he could not restore. His gray
horse was well known in the valley of the Tweed. The humble abbot
rode him, with his own luggage and that of his few attendants slung
on before him, including the boots of his groom. He appeared before
his kinsman, the King of Scotland, in this array. Waltheof's brother
was ashamed of him, but the king was so edified that he knelt to ask
the abbot's blessing, and granted him all his petitions, saying:
"This man hath put all worldly things under his feet, but we are
running after this fleeting world, losing soul and body in the
pursuit."

Sophronius, writing in a more remote age, says: "Going to New
Alexandria, we found Abbot John, who had spent eighty years in that
monastery, so full of charity that he was pitiful also to brute
animals. Early in the morning he used to give food to all the dogs
that were in the monastery, and would even bring grain to the ants
and the birds on the roof."

And, at a later day again, at Citeaux a great number of storks built
their nests around the abbey, and, on going away for the winter,
would hover over the monks working in the fields, as if to ask their
blessing, which was given them.

We are told in the annals of Corby that the novices had an otter
which they kept for a long time in the refectory. And the success of
Friar Baddo in training a dog is spoken of.

There was a peculiar breed of black dogs in the Abbey of St. Hubert
in the Ardennes, called the dogs of St. Hubert.

The birds of Croyland would feed from the hands of St. Guthlac, the
hermit, and alight on his head and shoulders, and the fish would
come up out of the water for the food he gave them.

So a white swan was for fifteen years in the habit of coming up from
the marshes and flying around St. Hugh of Lincoln, and then alighting
to eat from his hand, sometimes thrusting its bill into his bosom.
This swan survived the saint many years, but, after his death,
returned to its old wild habits, avoiding all human beings.

St. Columba used to feed the sea-beaten herons that alighted on the
island of Iona.

The sparrows would descend and eat out of St. Remi's hand.

And the birds would hover around the hermits of Montserrat and eat
from their hands.

Hugo of St. Victor shows his familiarity with the habits of animals
by his allusions to them in his instructions.

Digby relates that in 1507 there was a lamb in the convent of Muri
that used to go to the choir at the sound of the bell and remain
during the chanting of the divine office. When the matin bell rang,
it would run around the corridors and knock its head against the door
of each cell till it had roused the inmate, and, on going to the
choir, if it saw one vacant stall, it would return to the dormitory
and bleat for the missing one.

St. Philip Neri could not bear to witness the slightest cruelty to
animals, and would caution the coachman not to run over one. And even
wild animals would respond to his tenderness by their familiarity
with him, and dogs would leave their masters to follow him. Seeing
one of his congregation tread on a lizard as he was passing through
the court, St. Philip said to him: "Cruel fellow, what has that poor
little animal done to you?" He was greatly agitated at seeing a
butcher wound a dog with his knife. A boy having brought him a bird,
St. Philip through pity ordered it to be let out at the window.
Shortly after, he expressed regret for having given the bird its
freedom, for fear it might die of hunger. Louis, one of his young
penitents, had two little birds which he gave St. Philip. He accepted
them on condition the giver would come every day to see after them,
wishing to exert a good influence over the youth. One day Louis came
and found the saint ill in bed, and one of the birds perched on his
face. It then fluttered around his head, singing very sweetly. St.
Philip asked Louis if he had accustomed the bird to do so. Louis
replied in the negative. St. Philip tried in vain to drive the bird
away, and finally had the cage brought, when it went in as if through
obedience.

Father Pietro Consolini, of the Oratory, tells a curious story of
a good brother who worked in the kitchen. In order to satisfy his
devotion for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, he would put a cat upon
the kitchen table, and order it to keep watch while he was absent.
Then he would go off to church with a peculiar confidence in God. The
cat, as if remembering the submission due to man in his primitive
state of innocence, used to mount the table as desired, and remain
there, as if on guard, till the good brother returned.

St. Anthony of Padua also was full of love for animals, as well as
of nature in general, as he showed by constant allusions in his
sermons. He was always dwelling with delight upon the whiteness and
gentleness of the swans, the mutual charity of the storks, the purity
and fragrance of the flowers of the fields, etc., etc. When preaching
once to sinners who refused to listen to him, he suddenly turned
away from them, and, appealing to the animal world, asked the fish
of the water to hearken to him. The old legend tells how they lifted
their heads in great numbers from the water to listen to his words.

St. Bernard would deliver the bird from the snare of the fowler, and
the wild hare from the hounds.

St. Ignatius Loyola admired the beauty, wisdom, and power of the
Creator in his creatures. He was often rapt in contemplation before
an insect, a flower, or a blade of grass.

St. Francis de Sales so constantly manifests an extraordinary love
of nature in his writings that they have been compared to the sacred
veil of Isis, on which was embroidered all created things. Here is
an extract taken at random from his writings, which lose their rare
_bouquet_ in translating:

"It had been snowing, and there was in the court, at least, a foot
of snow. Jean swept a small space in the centre, and scattered grain
on the ground for the pigeons to eat. They came in a flock to take
their food there with wonderful peace and quietness, and I amused
myself with looking at them. You cannot imagine how much these little
creatures edified me. They did not utter a sound, and those who had
finished their meal immediately made room for others, and flew a
short distance to see them eat. When the place was partly vacated,
a quantity of birdlings that had been surveying them came up, and
the pigeons that were still eating drew up in one corner to leave
the more space for the little birds, who forthwith began to eat. The
pigeons did not molest them.

"I admired their charity, for the pigeons were so afraid of annoying
the little birds that they crowded together at one end of their
table. I admired, too, the discretion of the little mendicants, who
only asked alms when they saw the pigeons were nearly through their
meal, and that there was enough left. Altogether, I could not help
shedding tears to see the charitable simplicity of the doves, and the
confidence of the little birds in their charity. I do not know that
a sermon would have affected me so keenly. This little picture of
kindness did me good the whole day."

And again, in writing to Madame de Chantal on the repose of the heart
on the divine will, he says:

"I was thinking the other day of what I had read of the halcyon,
a little bird that lays on the sea-shore. They make their nests
perfectly round, and so compact that the water of the sea cannot
penetrate them. Only on the top there is a little hole through which
they can breathe. There they lodge their little ones, so if the sea
rises suddenly, they can float upon the waves with no fear of being
wet or submerged. The air which enters by the little hole serves as
a counterpoise, and so balances these little cushions, these little
_barquettes_, that they are never overturned."

There is in the Louvre a charming little picture by Giotto of
St. Francis preaching to the birds. The saint's face, with an
earnest, loving expression, is looking up at the birds, that,
with outstretched necks and half-open beaks, appear to catch his
words. The old legend which this painting illustrates with all the
artist's vividness in presenting a story, is equally charming in
its simplicity. It is as follows: As St. Francis was going toward
Bivagno, he lifted up his eyes and saw a multitude of birds. He said
to his companions: Wait for me here while I preach to my little
sisters the birds. The birds all gathered around him, and he spoke
to them somewhat as follows: "My little sisters the birds, you owe
much to God your Creator, and ought to sing his praise at all times
and in all places, because he has given you liberty, and the air to
fly about in, and, though you neither spin nor sew, he has given you
a covering for yourselves and your little ones. He sent two of your
species into the ark with Noah that you might not be lost to the
world. He feeds you, though you neither sow nor reap. He has given
you fountains and rivers in which to quench your thirst, and trees in
which to build your nests. Beware, my little sisters, of the sin of
ingratitude, and study always to praise the Lord."

As he preached, the birds opened their beaks, and stretched out their
necks, and flapped their wings, and bowed their heads toward the
earth.

His sermon over, St. Francis made the sign of the cross, and the
birds flew up into the air, singing sweetly their song of praise, and
dispersed toward the four quarters of the world, as if to convey the
words they had heard to all the world.

The sympathy of St. Francis of Assisi with nature, both animate and
inanimate, is well known. He has been styled the Orpheus of the
middle ages. Like the Psalmist, he called upon all nature to praise
the Lord: "Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all ye
deeps; fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds which fulfil his word,
mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and
all cattle, serpents and all feathered fowls."

The very sight of a bird incited St. Francis to lift his soul to God
on the wings of prayer. Crossing the lagunes of Venice on his way
from Syria, he heard the birds singing, and said to his companions:
"Let us go and say the divine office in the midst of our brethren the
birds, who are praising God." But finding they diverted his attention
from his office, he said: "My brethren the birds, cease your song
till we have fulfilled our obligations to God." The birds ceased
their song till the saint gave them permission to resume it.

Preaching in the open air, in the environs of Alviano, St. Francis
could not make himself heard on account of the number of swallows. He
stopped and addressed them: "My sisters the swallows, you have spoken
long enough. It is only right that I should have my turn. Listen to
the word of God while I am preaching."

Meeting a young man who had caught a number of doves, he looked on
them with eyes of pity, and said: "O good young man! I entreat thee
to give me those harmless birds, the scriptural emblems of pure,
humble, and faithful souls, so they may not fall into cruel hands and
be put to death." The young man gave them to St. Francis, who put
them in his bosom, and said to them in the sweetest of accents: "O my
little sisters the doves! so simple, so innocent, and so chaste, why
did you allow yourselves to be caught?" He made nests for them in the
convent, where they laid and hatched their young, and became as tame
as hens among the friars.

St. Francis was often seen employed in removing worms from the road
that they might not be trampled on by travellers, remembering that
our Divine Redeemer compared himself to a worm, and also having
compassion on a creature of God.

He revered the very stones he trod on, so that he sometimes trembled
in walking over them, recalling him who is the chief corner-stone of
the spiritual edifice.

He wished the brothers when they cut wood in the forest to leave some
shoots in memory of Him who wished to die for us upon the wood of the
cross.

A flower reminded him of the rod of Jesse which budded and blossomed,
and whose perfume is diffused throughout the world.

He sometimes wished he were one of the rulers of the land, that at
Christmas he might scatter grain by the wayside and in the fields,
that the birds also might have occasion to rejoice on that festival
of joy.

Before his death, St. Francis made a great feast at Christmas, to
which he invited the animals. He prepared a manger in the woods,
in which there was straw, an ox, and an ass. A long procession of
friars, followed by a crowd of people bearing torches and chanting
hymns, descended the mountain. Mass was offered, and St. Francis
preached on the birth of Christ, after which, filled with a holy joy,
he went through the fields bursting forth into a hymn, calling upon
the vines, the trees, the flowers of the field, the stars of heaven,
and the sun, and all his brethren and sisters throughout nature, to
rejoice with him, and to unite with him in blessing their Creator.

A wolf ravaged the environs of Agobio to the great terror of the
people. St. Francis went forth armed with the sign of the cross, and
commanded his brother the wolf, in the name of Christ, to do no more
harm. The wolf, that was making furiously at the saint with distended
jaws, stopped short, and lay down meek as a lamb at his feet. Then
St. Francis laid before the wolf the enormity of his offence in
devouring men made in the image of God, and promised that if he would
henceforth abstain from his ravages he should be fed daily by the
inhabitants. The wolf signified his assent to the arrangement by
placing his paw in that of St. Francis. Then the saint took the wolf
to the market-place, and made known to the people the compact he had
made. They ratified the agreement to feed the wolf daily till the end
of his days, and for two years he went from door to door to get his
food, harming no one, at the end of which time he died, greatly to
the sorrow of all.

Frederick Ozanam says in this legend, which may provoke a smile:
"The animal that preys upon the spoils and lives of men is the
representative of the people of the middle ages, fierce and terrible
when their passions were excited, but never despaired of by the
church, who took their blood-stained hands in her divine ones, and
gently led them on till she succeeded in inspiring them with a horror
of rapine and violence."

St. Francis would salute in a friendly manner the cattle in the
pastures. Once, seeing a lamb among the goats and cattle, he was
filled with pity, and said to his brethren, "So was our sweet
Saviour in the midst of the Pharisees and Sadducees." A merchant
that happened along bought the lamb and gave it to St. Francis. It
was confided to some nuns, who carefully tended it, and of its wool
spun and wove a garment for the saint, who often kissed it tenderly
and showed it to his friends. Going to Rome, St. Francis took the
lamb with him and, when he left, gave it to a pious lady. The lamb
followed her everywhere, even to church. If she did not rise early
enough in the morning, he would strike his head against her bed till
he roused her.

St. Francis would weep if he saw a lamb about to be killed, recalling
Him who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and would sell his very
garments to save it from death.

He loved the ant less than any other insect, because it was so
thoughtful for the morrow. Of the whole animal world, he cared the
most for birds, who loved him too, and at his death joyfully sang his
triumphant entry into heaven. The larks, in particular, assembled at
an early hour on the roof of the cell where the dead saint lay, with
songs of extraordinary sweetness that lasted for several hours.

An infinite number of such examples could yet be cited, but enough
have been given to show how the animal world lays aside its ferocity
in proportion as man returns to his primitive state of innocence.
This is quite in accordance with our idea of the millennium: The wolf
also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with
the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.

If, then, sanctity brings man back to his true relations to the
Deity, and restores him to his primitive relations with nature,
let us work our way back to Eden by our purity, fasts, vigils, and
prayers.




CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.

NO. XI.


RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SUBLIMATIVE MOMENT AND SUBSTANTIAL CREATION.

It will be the aim of this article to point out some consequences
which result from the essence and properties of the supernatural
term, considered respectively to the term of substantial creation.
They go to establish the absolute supremacy of the supernatural term
over substantial creation. We shall give them in as many propositions.

_1st. In the general plan of the cosmos, the supernatural term in
itself and in its application, forming that part of the cosmos which
may be called the supernatural order, takes precedence of substantial
creation, or the natural order._

This proposition is easily proven. The greater the intensity of
perfection in a being, the nobler is the being; or, in other words,
the greater amount of being a thing contains or exhibits, the
higher is the place which it occupies in the ordinate location and
harmony of the cosmos. The principle is too evident to need any
proof, and we assume it as granted. Now, we have shown that the
supernatural term in itself and in its application is by far more
perfect than substantial creation; because it is a higher and more
perfect similitude of Christ and of the Trinity; because it is
the complement and the perfection of nature, and enables it to be
joined with the Theanthropos, and through him to be ushered into the
society of the three divine persons, communicating with their life,
and thus arriving at the palingenesiacal state. Consequently, the
supernatural in the cosmic plan must take precedence of substantial
creation, and in the intention and design of the creator must precede
nature.

_2d. The supernatural is the end of substantial creation, and third
end of the exterior action of the infinite._

In a series of means co-ordinate with each other, and depending one
upon another in order to attain a primary object, that which in force
of the excellence and perfection of its nature precedes others,
is to be considered as end in respect to those means which follow
next to it in dignity of nature; otherwise the means could have no
relation whatever with each other, and the primary end could not be
attained. In a series of means co-ordination implies dependence, and
this dependence is established by the superiority of the one, and
inferiority of the other. Hence the superior means in the series
becomes _end_ respectively to inferior means in the same series. Now,
we have demonstrated that the supernatural term precedes nature in
excellence and intensity of perfection; it becomes, therefore, in the
harmony of the cosmic plan, the end of the substantial moment; as the
Theanthropic moment is end in reference to the supernatural, and as
God's manifestation of his infinite excellence and perfections is the
end of the Theanthropos, and thus the primary end of the cosmic plan
is obtained.

"All things are yours," said St. Paul of those in whom the
supernatural term is realized: "you are Christ's; Christ is God's."

_3d. The supernatural term is the exemplar and type of substantial
creation._

For it is the end which determines and shapes the nature of the
means. The creative intelligence of the infinite, by contemplating
the end which it has in view, and the essential laws of being
residing in his nature, which is _the Being_, shapes and fashions
mentally the nature and properties of the means. Hence it is evident
that, the supernatural term being the end of substantial creation, it
stands towards it as the exemplar and type to its copy.

_4th. The supernatural term is the mediator between the Theanthropos
and substantial creation._

This last proposition is a consequence of the preceding ones. For,
if the supernatural term precedes substantial creation in excellence
and perfection of being, if it is its end and its type, it is
evident that, in the general order and harmony of the cosmos, its
natural place is between the Theanthropos and substantial creation.
Consequently, it is mediator between them. Of course, the intelligent
reader will easily understand that this mediatorship is not one
merely of place and location, but a mediatorship of action; since the
terms here in question are all agents.

These four properties of the supernatural moment, which, we flatter
ourselves, have been demonstrated and put beyond the possibility of
doubt, will enable our readers to see the philosophy of various other
truths held by Catholicity, and denied by rationalism, Pantheism, and
Protestantism.

And, first, the possibility of miracles follows evidently from these
principles.

A miracle is a sensible phenomenon superseding or contrary to the
established laws of corporal creation. A body left to itself by the
ordinary law of gravitation should fall to the ground. Suppose it
should hover between heaven and earth without any support, it would
present a phenomenon contrary to the natural law of bodies. It would
be what is called miracle, from the word _miror_, to wonder or to be
amazed, because our intellect is always astonished when it cannot see
at once the cause of an effect.

The possibility of such phenomena contrary to the established laws of
nature has been denied by Pantheists and rationalists, both for the
same reason, though each draw that reason from a different source.
The Pantheist, who admits that the cosmos is nothing but that primary
indefinite something which is continually developing itself by a
necessary interior movement, denies the possibility of miracles on
the ground that the development of the infinite being necessary,
and being performed according to the necessary laws of being, the
development must necessarily be uniform, and the phenomena resulting
from it always the same.

The rationalist, though not admitting the germinal primary activity
of Pantheism, asserts the absolute immutability of the laws of
creation, and consequently cannot concede the possibility of any
contravention to the results of those laws, without supposing their
total overthrow.

We hold that the possibility of miracles follows clearly from the
properties of the supernatural moment; for, if the supernatural
moment precedes nature in force of its intrinsic excellence and
perfection of being, if it is the end and type of the natural
order, it is perfectly evident that the whole natural order is
dependent upon and subject to the supernatural order by the law of
_hierarchy_; and consequently it is evident that the laws governing
the sensible order are also dependent upon and subject to the
supernatural order, and must have been determined and fashioned in
such a manner as to serve every purpose of that same order.

Hence, if the supernatural term, in order to assert itself before
created spirits, to prove its own autonomy, its necessity, requires
a phenomenon contrary to the established law of sensible creation,
those laws must necessarily give way before their hierarchical
superior, otherwise the whole order of the cosmos would be
overthrown. This consequence is absolutely inevitable; and any one
who has followed us in the demonstration of the intrinsic superiority
of the supernatural term over substantial creation, cannot fail to
perceive it. But to make it better understood we shall enter for a
moment into the very heart of the question.

Let us take, as an example, the law of gravitation. Why do bodies
left to themselves fall to the ground? The natural philosopher, with
a look of profound wisdom, will answer at once, because of the law of
gravitation. Now, if our philosopher claims to give no other answer
but that which is within the sphere of his researches, the answer
is correct; because his science of observation can carry him no
further. But if by the word gravitation he should pretend to give a
satisfactory ultimate reason of the phenomenon of the fall of bodies,
his answer would make a metaphysician laugh. The law of gravitation!
Indeed! But what is that law? Does it exist in the body, or in God?
or has it an existence independent of both? If it exists in the body,
how can it be a general law, when each body is an individuum? If it
exist in God, how is it broken or altered, or destroyed, when the
phenomenon of a miracle affects only a particular body? If it has an
existence independent of both, what is it? Is it a god, or a Platonic
idea, and, if so, whence does it derive the force to assert itself
over God's creation?

These few questions, and many more which we could bring forward, show
that to account for the fall of bodies by the law of gravitation, is
to give no particular or satisfactory reason for the phenomenon.

We have already given one theory, the theory of the most profound
metaphysicians of the world, that no finite beings can act without
the aid of God; that God must really and effectively excite them to
action, aid them during the action until it is accomplished; because
he is necessarily the first and the universal cause. Therefore,
bodies as well as higher beings are absolutely dependent upon God
for their action; and that which natural philosophers call the law
of gravitation, or any other law, such as attraction, repulsion,
and so forth, in itself is nothing more than the action of God upon
bodies. Now, God in acting in and upon bodies has certainly a plan
and an order marked out in his mind, according to which he acts in
and directs them. This order he has derived from the infinite laws of
being, which are his very essence, and consequently, in this sense,
that order is stable and immutable. But it must be borne in mind that
this order marked out in the mind of God, according to which he acts
in and directs bodies, is _not the whole order of the cosmos_. It is
only a part, a moment, and the most inferior of all. Consequently,
it is an order subject to and dependent upon the order of the other
and higher moment, and upon the universal order of the cosmos. Hence
the same divine essence, the eternal model and type of everything,
at the same time that it marks out the order for the acting in and
directing of bodies, subjects it to the order of higher moments, and
to the cosmological, universal order. In the application, therefore,
of this eternal order marked out by his infinite essence, God acts in
and directs bodies according to the stable and immutable order proper
to this moment, until an exception is necessary. But when the order
of higher moments and the universal order demand an exception, the
order of the direction of bodies, being inferior, must necessarily
yield to the superior, and the sensible order must, so to speak, be
suspended for that occasion. We have said, so to speak, because even
then the sensible order is not altered or broken, as rationalism
imagines; it is the application of the general sensible order to a
particular body which is suspended. It is not the objective order,
but the subjective particular realization of it, which is superseded.
Let us take as example the law so often mentioned. The general order
established in the mind of God with regard to acting in bodies is
to make them gravitate toward the centre of the earth. Suppose an
exception of this law becomes necessary to assert the supernatural
order. God, upon that particular occasion, does not apply the general
law in a particular body, but acts in it contrary to that law. Is
the law of gravitation broken or altered in consequence of that
exception? If the law were an essential property of bodies, a natural
consequence of their essence, it would be. But the law in its general
and objective essence exists in God only; it does not exist in the
body; and consequently it cannot be altered by a suspension of its
application in a given case.

Were God to act otherwise than to admit such exceptions in the
subjective application of the order of sensible creation, he would
go against reason, and act contrary to his essence; for in that case
he would prefer a particular and inferior order to the general and
superior order of the whole cosmos. The true principles, then, in the
present matter are the following:

1st. The laws according to which bodies act and are directed do not
exist in bodies, but are an order marked out in the mind of God as
derived from his infinite essence.

2d. This order is an element, and an inferior one, of the universal
order of the whole cosmos, and consequently, by the law of hierarchy,
is subject to that same universal order.

3d. This sensible order is always stable and permanent in itself and
in its objective state, but in its application to particular bodies
is subject to variation when this variation is demanded by a superior
order, or by the universal order of the cosmos.

The reader will observe, after what we have said, how futile is the
argument of rationalists that a miracle is impossible because the
laws of bodies are immutable. Certainly, if the laws exist in the
bodies. But the laws of bodies, as we have said, are nothing more
than the order marked out in the mind of God, according to which
he acts in and directs them, and, this order being universal and
objective, is never changed or altered. Only its application in
particular bodies on a particular occasion is not made, or made in
a contrary sense, because such is the requirement of the universal
order. If this be kept in view, every difficulty will vanish in
reference to this matter; for this is exactly that which prevents
rationalists, from understanding the possibility of miracles--their
want of perception that it is _God_ who acts in every single body.
They imagine a general principle, as if it were self-existing, which
pervades all the bodies, which ought to be destroyed to permit the
exception. Now, this is a mere phantom. It is God, we repeat it, who
applies the order marked in his mind in every single body, which
in his mind _only_ is universal and objectively immutable, but
subjectively, in its application, it need not be constant, except
so long as no exception is required. Our natural philosophers of
the rationalistic school imagine the law of bodies to be a sort of
demigod, stern and immutable, particularly loth of and averse to
being disturbed, and consequently cannot see the possibility of a
miracle.

The second truth which follows from the attributes of the
supernatural moment, is that _prayer governs the universe_.

Prayer, taken in its strictest acceptation, is the universal mode
of action of spirits elevated to the supernatural moment. To
understand this rightly, it is necessary to observe that every
moment of the action of God, considered in its term, is possessed
of a particular mode of action resulting from and befitting its
essence and attributes. Thus, substantial creation, or the whole
aggregate of being included in this moment, acts as it were by
_apprehension and volition_. In spiritual beings, this manner of
acting is strictly and properly so; in inferior beings, like the
brutes, it is less so, but bears a great resemblance to it, for the
animal has apprehensive faculties, though wanting in the power of
generalization and abstraction, and confined within the concrete and
in the individual; and he has also instincts and tendencies leading
toward the object apprehended. The vegetable kingdom acts according
to the same manner, though more materially; for it apprehends the
elements required for its growth from the earth and the atmosphere,
and, assimilating them to itself by an interior force, is able to
develop itself. Every one is aware that the general laws of matter
are those of _attraction and repulsion_, which bear a resemblance,
though a faint one, to the law of apprehension and volition.

Now, the particular mode of acting in persons elevated to the
supernatural moment is by _prayer_, which is composed of various
elements according to various relations under which it is considered.

It may be considered in itself, its essence and nature, and in the
persons to whom it has reference. The persons are the infinite
and the finite. In itself, prayer is divided into two moments--a
deprecatory moment, and a life-giving moment.

A deprecatory moment--because the effect of the prayer, resting
absolutely on the free will of the infinite, cannot be claimed by the
finite as a right, but as an effect of an infinite, goodness yielding
to a supplication; and in this sense it implies the following
elements on the part of the finite:

1st. An acknowledgment, theoretical and practical, of the infinite
as being the absolute and universal source of all good; and of the
absolute dependence of the finite upon the infinite in all things;
this acknowledgment arising in the finite from the consciousness and
feeling of its finiteness both in the natural and the supernatural
order.

2d. A gravitation, natural and supernatural, on the part of this
finite toward the infinite, as the origin and the preserver of the
being in both orders, as the mover of its natural and supernatural
faculties, and as the final complement of both.

3d. A cry to the infinite for the satisfaction of this aspiration.

4th. A firm and unshaken reliance of being satisfied in this
aspiration, founded both on the intrinsic goodness and on the
personal promises of the infinite.

These four elements on the part of the finite are absolutely
necessary to constitute a prayer in its deprecatory sense; and they
are either implicitly or explicitly to be found in every prayer. The
spirit who bows before the infinite must acknowledge theoretically
and practically that God is the Master and Lord of all things, the
infinite eternal source of all being and all perfection; he must
acknowledge and be conscious freely and deliberately that his being
comes from God, and that that same divine action which created and
elevated it must maintain it in existence, aid it in the development
of its faculties, and bring it to its final completion. He must
freely and deliberately yearn after all this, and have firm reliance
that the infinite will maintain his being, aid it in its growth, and
bring it to its full bloom in the palingenesia.

On the part of the infinite, prayer in this same deprecatory sense
implies an action of God existing and aiding the finite in producing
the aforesaid four acts necessary to constitute a prayer.

If we regard prayer in its life-giving moment, it implies two
elements: one on the part of the infinite, the other on the part of
the finite. On the part of the infinite, it implies a real actual
and personal communication, a giving of himself by a personal
intercourse to the finite; and, on the part of the latter, a
personal apprehension of the infinite, and an assimilation of and
transformation into the infinite. We cannot refrain here from quoting
a beautiful page of a French writer in explanation of this last
element: "When man's will, lifted by an ardent desire, succeeds in
putting itself in contact with the supreme will, the miracle of
the divine intervention is accomplished. Prayer, which _renders
God present to us_,[141] is a kind of communion by which man feeds
on grace, and assimilates to himself that celestial aliment of the
soul. In that ineffable communication, the divine will penetrates our
will, its action is mingled with our action to produce but one and
the same indivisible work, which belongs whole and entire to both;
wonderful union of grandeur and of lowliness, of a power eternally
fecund, and of a created activity which is exhausted by its very
duration, of an incorruptible and regenerating element with the
infirm and corruptible elements of our being; union, which believed
in invariably, though conceived in different manner by the savage
tribes as well as by the most civilized nations, has been under
different forms, and in spite of the errors which have obscured it,
the immortal belief of humanity."[142]

Now, we maintain that prayer, understood in all its comprehension,
besides the effect which it produces in its own natural sphere, is
also the hierarchical superior of the action of the whole substantial
creation; and that, consequently, the latter must yield to the
former, whenever they should happen to come in conflict with each
other; and thus, under this respect, it may be said that prayer
governs the world.

This may be proven by two sorts of argument; one as it were exterior,
the other intrinsic to the subject.

The first is drawn from the properties of the supernatural moment.
For, if this moment is superior to substantial creation, if it is
the end and type of it, every one can see that the mode of acting
of elevated spirits--spirits in whom the supernatural moment is
realized and concreted--must necessarily precede and be superior to
the mode of action of substantial creation, and that the latter must
necessarily be subject to the former--unless we abolish and deny the
universal law of hierarchy presiding and ruling over all the moments
of the exterior action of God, and founded on the intrinsic and
respective value of beings. _Actio sequitur esse_ is the old axiom
of ontology. If the being of the supernatural moment is superior to
the being of substantial creation, the mode of action of the first
must also, in force of that axiom, be superior to the mode of action
of the latter. When, therefore, a natural law, a law of substantial
creation, comes in opposition with a true prayer, a prayer made with
all the conditions which its nature requires, the natural law must
yield and give way to prayer.

The second argument is drawn from the essence of prayer as
a life-giving agent. What is prayer in this sense? It is an
actual communication of the finite with the infinite, an actual
participation of the infinite and his attributes; it is a possession
which the finite takes of the infinite, the appropriation, the
assimilation of the infinite. It is the finite transported and
transformed into the infinite. For in it the mind of the finite takes
hold of the mind of the infinite, and is, as it were, transformed
into it; the will and energy of the finite grasps the will and the
almighty power of the infinite, and is changed, as it were, into it;
the person of the finite is united to the person of the infinite, and
is assimilated to him. Now, it is evident that prayer understood in
this sense is no longer an act of the finite alone, but an act of
both the finite and the infinite; it is the result of the energy of
both. Its efficacy and energy therefore must be as superior to the
energy of all substantial creation as the infinite is superior to the
finite. Consequently, it is evident that when a natural law pregnant
with finite energy comes in conflict with a prayer impregnated, so to
speak, with infinite energy, the former must yield to the superior
force of the latter.

Prayer governs the world also in a sense more general than the
one we have hitherto indicated for it. The sum of all the actions
of substantial creation has been so disposed, and is so ruled and
governed, as to be always subject to the sum of all the actions of
the supernatural moment, and this for the same reasons developed
above.

Here it can be seen with how much reason those philosophers who
call themselves rationalists sneer and wax indignant at the fact,
constant in time and place, of the importance which mankind has
attached to prayer for physical reasons, as for rain, for fair
weather, for a good harvest, and the like. They show evidently how
far they are from understanding the sublime hierarchical harmony of
the cosmos, which the simple ones of the earth, who have faith in
God, instinctively feel and acknowledge. For if God did not create
the cosmos at random without a plan or design, he assuredly must have
followed and maintained the necessary relations of things. Now, if
substantial creation and its mode of action is hierarchically--that
is, in comprehension of being--inferior to the supernatural term and
its mode of action, if the latter is the end and type of the former,
and if they are not to be kept apart, but to be brought together into
unity and harmony, and must thus harmoniously act, it is clear to
the rudest understanding that the one mode of action must be subject
to the other, and that consequently, when a prayer is in opposition
with the realization of natural law, the natural law must yield, and
the prayer must prevail.

Nor will it do to say that if such were the case the natural order
would no longer enjoy any stability or permanence, because some
prayer or other might come continually in opposition to it. For
the whole series of actions of substantial creation is marked out
eternally in the mind of the infinite. Likewise the whole series of
actions of the supernatural moment is marked out in the same mind;
they are brought together in beautiful harmony in the same divine
intellect from all eternity. God has foreseen when and how a prayer
would require the suspension of the natural law, and has willed and
decreed it, so that no suspension of natural law, consequent upon
a prayer, can take place which has not been foreseen and arranged
harmoniously from all eternity; and if we could for a moment cast
a glance into the mind of the infinite, we should see an infinite
series of actions of substantial creation; an infinite series of
actions of the supernatural moment; all intertwined in a most
harmonious whole, and the different exceptions here and there only
linking together the two orders, putting them in bolder relief, and
enhancing the beauty and harmony of the whole cosmos. The theory
which we have been vindicating explains also a phenomenon so frequent
and so common in the history of the Catholic Church--the saint who
works miracles, or the _Thaumaturgus_.

A saint is one in whom a certain fulness of the supernatural term
resides, and hence a certain fulness of the particular mode of action
belonging to that moment. A saint can pray well; therefore he can
work miracles, and does oftentimes. Protestantism has not only denied
most of the miracles not recorded in the Bible, but has gone so far
as to deny the possibility of such miracles ever occurring after
the establishment and propagation of Christianity, on the plea that
they are no longer necessary. It was but a logical consequence of
its doctrine of justification. If man is not really made holy in
his justification, if he does not receive in his soul the term of
the supernatural moment as really inherent in him, it is clear he
cannot have or possess the mode of action of that moment, still less
a certain fulness of it. Consequently, neither is he elevated above
substantial creation, nor is his mode of action superior to the
action of that same moment, and therefore he cannot exercise a power
and an efficacy which he has not. In other words, a man justified
according to the Protestant doctrine cannot be a saint intrinsically,
and cannot consequently pray. And how could he work miracles? It was
natural to deny such possibility.

But endow a man with the supernatural term in a certain fulness,
and hence suppose him possessed of a fulness of its mode of action
intrinsically superior in energy to the mode of action of substantial
creation, and you may suppose he is likely to exercise it, and work
miracles oftentimes.

As to the plea of necessity, it is absolutely futile. A miracle would
be necessary even after the establishment of Christianity in all
times and places, which, by the bye, has not been accomplished yet,
if for no other reason, in order to assert and vindicate from time
to time the existence and the supremacy of the supernatural over the
natural.

The third truth emanating from the qualities of the supernatural
moment is that those created persons in whom the term of that moment
is realized are essentially mediators between the Theanthropos and
substantial creation.

The principle follows evidently from the fourth quality essentially
belonging to the supernatural term, that of being mediator between
the other moments, the hypostatic and the substantial.

For if the term of that moment in intensity of being and perfection
hold a place between the other two moments, it is evident that those
in whom the moment is realized must hold the same middle place and
be, consequently, mediators. Hence, it appears how the Catholic
doctrine of the intercession, and, by logical consequence, of the
invocation, of saints, is a cosmological law, as imperative as any
other law of the cosmos. For what does the word mediator mean?
Limiting the question to location or space, it signifies a thing
placed or located between two others; in a hierarchical sense,
confining the question to being and essence, it expresses a thing
in essence and nature inferior to one and superior to another; in
the same sense, confining the question to action and development,
it exhibits a thing in its action and development inferior to the
action and development of one and superior in the same to another.
The person, therefore, in whom the supernatural term is realized
is mediator in the sense of being in essence, nature, attributes,
action, and development, superior to the same things of substantial
creation, and inferior to those of the Theanthropos. Now, as the
cosmos is not governed by the law of hierarchy alone, but also by
the law of unity and communion, and as these laws imply a real
and effective union and communication of being and action between
the terms of the cosmos, it follows that the person in whom the
supernatural term is concreted is in real and effective communication
with the Theanthropos, as inferior, and in real and effective
communication, as superior, with substantial creation; he is in
communication with the former as subject and dependent, with the
latter as superior, and with both as medium; that is, a recipient
relatively to the Theanthropos, as transmitting what it receives from
the Theanthropos relatively to substantial creation; both relations
being exercised by the person elevated in every sense, either as
receiving from the Theanthropos and transmitting to substantial
creation, or as representative of substantial creation before the
Theanthropos.

And as we are speaking of moral persons, that is, free, intelligent
agents, in what can these relations consist but in this, that
elevated persons, acting as mediums, may intercede and obtain favors
for created persons from the Theanthropos, and these may invoke their
intercession in their behalf?

The doctrine, therefore, of the intercession and the invocation of
saints is a cosmological law, resulting from the law of hierarchy,
unity, and communion, and governing the relation of purely created
persons with those elevated to the supernatural moment.

It must be here remarked that the mediatorship of persons elevated
is not confined only to persons in their mere natural state, but it
extends also to persons elevated to the supernatural moment, because
the supernatural term admits of variety of degree, some persons being
endowed with a certain fulness of that moment, some with much less.
Those in whom the fulness is realized are hierarchically mediators
between the Theanthropos and other elevated spirits possessing a less
amount of that term, and can consequently intercede for the latter.

It must be remarked, in the second place, that the law governs the
cosmos not only in its germinal state, but also in its state of
completion and perfection; and we cannot possibly discover or imagine
by what logical process Protestantism, which admits this law in
the germinal and incipient state of the cosmos, denies it to exist
between persons elevated to the state of palingenesia and those
who are yet in the germinal state. This denial, so far as we can
see, could be supported only by the supposition that as soon as an
elevated person reaches its final development, every tie of union,
every bond of intercourse, is immediately broken asunder between him
and other persons living yet in the germinal state of the cosmos. But
how false and absurd this supposition would be is evident to every
one who at all understands the exterior works of God. The cosmos
being measured by time, is essentially successive; in other words,
all the elements of the cosmos cannot possibly reach their final
completion at one and the same time, the law of variety and hierarchy
necessarily forbidding it. It is absolutely necessary, then, that
some elements should reach their final perfection first and some
afterwards, in proportion as they come to take place in the cosmos
successively. If, therefore, by one element of the cosmos reaching
its final development all intercourse were to be broken between it
and all other elements which have not reached so high a condition, it
would follow that the cosmos would never be one, never in harmony,
until all had reached their final completion and the creation of
more elements entirely ceased. It would be a continual disorder and
confusion until the end of the world. Now this is absurd, since unity
and harmony must always govern and adorn God's works. Nor can we see
any intrinsic reason why it should be broken. The only plea alleged
by Protestants in support of this suspension of all communion between
the spirits in palingenesia and those living on earth, is that there
can be no possible means of communication between them. They express
this idea commonly by saying that the saints in heaven cannot hear
our prayers. How philosophical this plea is we leave it to the
intelligent reader to determine. Suppose we had no direct answer to
give to this plea, the absolute necessity of the cosmos being one and
harmonious would make a true philosopher infer that the infinite must
have found a means whereby to keep up this communication, though it
might be unknown to us what that means actually is.

But the direct answer is at hand. The Word of God is essentially the
life of the cosmos. He is the type of all the essences, of all the
natures, of all the personalities, of all the acts composing the
cosmos. The cosmos, in all these respects, is reflected in the Word.
"All that was made in him was life." (St. John.)

Now, all elevated spirits are united to and live in the Incarnate
Word. The spirits or persons in the germinal state are united to his
person by the supernatural essence and the supernatural faculties
of intelligence and of will. This forms the essential union between
them and the Theanthropos. The spirits in the final state are united
to him in the same substantial sense, with the exception that their
supernatural essence has reached its utmost completion, their
supernatural intelligence is changed into intuition, and their
supernatural will has immediate possession of God.

The consequence of these principles is that the spirits in the
germinal state produce acts of invocation to the spirits in the final
state, and these acts are reflected or reproduced in the Theanthropos
as the type and the intelligible objective life of the cosmos.

The spirits in the final state see, by intuition, in the Theanthropos
all those acts of invocation of the spirits in the germinal state,
and thus come to know what the spirits on earth claim from them.
As orator and audience, living in the same atmosphere, can hold
intercourse with each other, because the words uttered by the orator
are transmitted by the air to the ears of his audience, so the
spirits on earth and the spirits in heaven hold intercourse with each
other, because they live in the same medium.

The spirits on earth making acts of invocation to their brethren in
heaven, these acts are reflected or reproduced in the Theanthropos,
and from him reverberate and reach the eyes of the spirits in heaven
living in him, and thus they come to the knowledge of the wants and
prayers of their brethren on earth.

But why such interposition of persons when we could go directly to
the Theanthropos? Does this not detract from the mediatorship of
Christ?

Why, but because the cosmos must be one? Why, but because all the
elements of the cosmos must communicate with each other? And how
can this doctrine detract from the mediatorship of Christ when _he_
is made the source, the origin, the end of everything? If Catholic
doctrine claimed this intercourse independently of the Theanthropos,
it would certainly detract from his mediatorship. But do we not
establish and centre this mediatorship of the saint entirely in the
Theanthropos?

The last truth which follows from the essence of the supernatural
term is what is called the worship of saints. This truth is not only
a cosmological law, but an ontological principle, since, considered
in its simplest and most ultimate acceptation, it implies nothing
more than the duty incumbent on every moral agent to acknowledge,
theoretically and practically, the intrinsic value of being. Suppose
a certain being is possessed of a hundred degrees of perfection, so
to speak, I cannot, without a flat contradiction to my intelligence,
which apprehends it, deny or ignore it; I cannot, without a flat
contradiction to my expansive faculty or will, which is attracted by
it, fail to appreciate it practically. Now, the worship of saints,
against which Protestantism has written and said so much, is founded
entirely on that ontological principle. The saint is possessed
of a certain fulness of the supernatural term. The supernatural
intelligence of other elevated spirits apprehends this fulness, and
the supernatural will of the same spirits cannot fail to value it.
This theoretical and practical appreciation is esteem, and when
expressed outwardly is honor and praise. By the ontological principle
of recognizing the value of being, therefore, it is evident that the
Catholic theory of the worship of saints is not only theologically
lawful, but eminently philosophical. Protestantism, in denying this
worship, follows the same principle without being aware of it.

It starts from its own doctrine of justification, which consists,
as we have seen, not in the interior cleansing of the soul from sin
and in its elevation to the supernatural moment, but in an external
application to it of the merits of Christ. The example of the cloak
is most appropriate. Suppose a man, all filthy and loathsome; cover
him with a rich and splendid cloak, so as to hide the filth and
loathsomeness, and you have an example of Protestant justification.
It is all foreign, outward, unsubjective. Now, apply the ontological
principle of the value of being to a saint of this calibre, and it
is evident that you cannot esteem and value him because he is worth
nothing subjectively, and hence the denial of the worship of saints
is a logical consequence of the Protestant doctrine of justification,
and an application, in a negative sense, of the ontological principle
of the value of beings.

On the contrary, admit the Catholic doctrine of justification,
whereby a man is not only cleansed from sin, but elevated to a
supernatural moment, receiving as inherent in him a higher and nobler
nature and higher and nobler faculties, and it is evident that you
must acknowledge _this_, value, esteem, and honor it.

FOOTNOTES:

[141] Orig. _De Orat._

[142] Gerbet, _Le Dogme Générateur de la Piété Catholique_.




SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS OF THE DESERT.


So that there were in the mountain monasteries like tabernacles, full
of divine choirs of men singing, reading, praying; and so great an
ardor for fasting and watching had his (St. Antony's) words enkindled
in the minds of all that they labored with an avidity of hope and
with unceasing zeal in works of mutual charity, and in showing mercy
to those who needed it, and they seemed to inhabit a sort of heavenly
country, a city shut off from worldly conversation, full of piety and
justice. Who, looking at such an army of monks--who, beholding that
manly and concordant company, in which there was none to do harm,
no whisper of detraction, but a multitude of abstinent men and an
emulation of kind offices, would not immediately break forth into the
words: How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy tents,
O Israel! As woody valleys, as watered gardens near the rivers, as
tabernacles which the Lord hath pitched, as cedars by the waterside
(Num. xxiv. 5, 6)?

       *       *       *       *       *

The disciple of an aged and famous monk was once assailed by
temptation. And, when the old man saw him struggling, he said to
him: Do you wish me to ask God to take away this trial from you?
But he answered: I see and consider, father, that though I wrestle
painfully, yet out of this labor I bear fruit. But ask this of God in
thy prayers, that he may give me patience to endure. And his father
said to him: Now I know, my son, that thou hast made great progress,
and surpassest me.

       *       *       *       *       *

Let no man, when he has despised the world, think that he has left
anything great.--_From the Life of blessed Abbot Antony, by St.
Athanasius._




THE ITALIAN GUARANTEES AND THE SOVEREIGN PONTIFF.


After having been proposed by the government of Italy, recast by the
Chamber of Deputies, amended by the Senate, adopted by the Chamber as
amended, and approved and signed by the King and his ministers, the
project of the guarantees for the Sovereign Pontiff's independence
has become a part of the law of the land. We are perfectly willing
to believe that his majesty, regarding this scheme as promising
the fullest amount of freedom it was possible to obtain from his
parliament for the Head of the Church, signed it with a feeling
of relief; for if we are to credit the rumors, more or less well
founded, one hears in Florence and in Rome, broken tables and
furniture overturned bore witness to the unwillingness of the supreme
authority in the state to permit the violation of the Papal territory
or to accept the plébiscite of the so-called people of Rome. Not so,
however, was it with the legislators of the kingdom. To them the
Papacy has been and is a huge incubus, that disturbs their rest,
frightens them in their dreams, and which can be got rid of in truth
only by their waking up to a sense of what their real duty is. Their
aim has been, in dealing with it, to yield up as little as possible
of their ill-gotten power over the successor of St. Peter, and to
secure themselves as effectually as possible against the only power
they ever feared--his spiritual weapons. This is the criterion by
which we should study these guarantees; by the light of it we propose
to examine them, and to discuss their pretended advantages.

When the Italian government, hurried on by the spirit of revolution,
seized upon Rome during the complications of last autumn that
insured impunity for the moment to the act, they found themselves
face to face with the spiritual ruler of the whole Catholic world,
and with the fixed convictions or invincible prejudices of two
hundred millions of men, who regarded the position in which the
Sovereign Pontiff had been placed as not only against all law,
but also hurtful to their best interests. How were they to deal
with so delicate a question? The situation of Europe might for a
time delay the solution, but eventually there must be an account
given and satisfaction rendered to the Catholic world. The cabinet
hit on the only means it could hope to use with any appearance of
success, and the promises of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sig.
Visconti Venosta, served as a decent pretext to liberal governments
not to interfere actively in the accommodation of things in Italy.
These promises are contained in the despatches sent to different
governments during last winter, and published in the diplomatic
documents laid before the various legislative bodies of Europe
during the past six months. To do the minister justice, he has stood
out successfully against the extreme radical party in parliament
that opposed most violently any idea of concessions such as he had
designed for the independence of the Sovereign Pontiff, and his
appeal to the loyalty of Italy brought down the applause of the
house, and effectually destroyed the influence of his opponents.
Still, even if we attribute to any other feeling than fear of foreign
intervention the measures adopted, they are not for that reason
intrinsically enhanced in value, nor are they anything more than the
most the Italian government is capable or willing to do to protect
the power of the Pope.

That power, be it well understood, is in the eyes of the rulers of
Italy merely a spiritual power, for the temporal, they consider,
was annihilated by the cannon that beat down the walls on the 20th
of September, 1870, and by the plébiscite of the 2d of October
following. How does this law of guarantees confirm the exercise of
that power? We shall see by referring to several of the articles, not
quoting the law at length, as it has already appeared in the public
journals.

Article II. says in the last clause: "The discussion of religious
questions is entirely free."

Article III. says that the Sovereign Pontiff may have his guards
"without prejudice to the obligations and duties resulting from such
guards, from the existing laws of the kingdom of Italy."

Article IV. contemplates the possibility of the government taking
upon themselves the expenses of the museums and library of the
Pontifical palaces.

Article V. says these museums, library, collections of art and of
archæology, are "_inalienable_."

Article VIII. forbids sequestration of papers _merely_ spiritual in
their character.

Article XIII. declares that the ecclesiastical seminaries of Rome,
and of the six suburban sees presided over by cardinals, are to
continue subject to the Holy See, without any interference on the
part of the _scholastic_ authorities of the kingdom.

Article XVI. says: "The dispositions of the civil laws with regard
to the creation and the manner of existence of ecclesiastical
institutions, and the alienation of their property, remain in force."

Article XVII. The recognition of the juridical effects of the
spiritual and disciplinary acts, as well as of any other act of the
ecclesiastical authority, belongs to the civil jurisdiction. Such
acts, however, are void of effect if contrary to the law of the state
or to public order, or hurtful to the rights of private persons, and
are subject to the penal laws if they constitute a crime.

Let us take a cursory glance at these cullings from the "guarantees,"
and see if they conflict at all with the spiritual power of the
Pontiff. Before the twentieth of September, 1870, the whole of the
city of Rome and the dependent provinces were presided over in
spirituals by the Pope, and all of the inhabitants were Catholics,
except a few Jews, treated with charity, though not allowed to make
proselytes. By this decree the door is thrown open to every sect that
chooses to come and try to proselytize the Roman people. They must
see as clearly as we do that the last clause of Article II. deals the
most powerful and insidious blow at the spiritual power of the Pope
in spiritual matters, encouraging his people to spiritual defection,
or at least lessening him in their esteem as a spiritual teacher.
This is too evident to need further dwelling on, and we pass to the
next indictment.

The Pope's guards are to protect him and execute his orders, but
inasmuch as they are not on this account freed from the obligations
of Italian citizens by the tenor of Article III., it is quite easy to
understand how in the course of time elements of discord may arise;
and therefore, in the use of his guards the Pope must conform to the
civil code of the kingdom of Italy, or take the consequences referred
to further on.

Articles IV. and V. regard the library and museums of the Vatican
and of other palaces. The original draught of the project declared
these collections the property of the state. The criticism it excited
on this account brought about the modifications we have here, which
substitute _inalienability_ for the asserted right of property,
without adverting to the fact that such a modification implies
dominion in the one making it, while there is contemplated a possible
taking on themselves by the government of the expenses of these
museums that certainly points to the same idea.

The VIIIth Article forbids the sequestration of papers and documents
of the ecclesiastical authorities _merely_ spiritual in their nature.
The inference is that any other documents not merely spiritual
may be sequestrated; and, as doubts may arise, who is to decide?
Certainly not the church or the Pope, for he is the accused; there is
no umpire; and a strong police force is at the beck of the Italian
government, and the question will be solved readily.

The XIIIth Article, regarding the ecclesiastical seminaries and
colleges, exempts them from the control of the _scholastic_
authorities, but, with regard to their temporal concerns, we are told
in the XVIth Article they must be subject to the civil jurisdiction.
We leave it to our practical men of America to say whether or not
the man who holds the purse-strings and manages the funds has any
influence on the people he pays or are paid through him. In the case
before us the Italian civil authorities are those who pay, having in
many cases the full administration of the funds. We feel tempted to
refer to the case of the Roman College, the funds of which have been
withheld since the first of January, 1871.

The first draught of Article XVII. was too strong. It said openly:
In case of conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical powers,
the supreme civil tribunal of the kingdom was to decide. This was
toned down to suit better rather tender susceptibilities. The result
we have in the clause quoted above, which says the same thing in
other words, and in stronger terms, if we look to the penal sanction
referred to. Here is the whole pith of the matter. "As long as it
is possible for us to get on without dispute," say the government,
"all well; but the moment a question arises, _we_ must solve it."
Moreover, as the legislative authorities have made the law, they can
amend or alter it if they think proper, and there is and can be no
guarantee that they will not.

Such are the disadvantages created by the vexed project, which from
the amount of discussion it has caused, deserves the title of the
_Pons Asinorum_ of the Italian parliament.

There are several points in this law which have some title to be
looked on as advantages, relatively to the condition in which the
Sovereign Pontiff has been placed since the overthrow of his temporal
sovereignty. These are the inviolability of the person of the
Sovereign Pontiff, the payment of the monthly sum of fifty thousand
dollars, the protection of the Conclave as well as of the Pontiff
in the discharge of duty, the immunity of ecclesiastics employed by
him, the postal and telegraphic arrangements, and the abolition of
the royal 'placet' and 'exequatur.' But it is to be remarked that,
on the first place, with regard to some the dignity of the Head of
the Church will not permit him to avail himself of them; then with
reference to others, they are imperatively wrung from the Italian
government by the public opinion of foreign nations; while, lastly,
respecting others, the government will always have it in their power
to exercise a surveillance that renders the concessions more or less
nugatory, and in nowise satisfactory to the people of Catholic and
non-Catholic nations.

But independent of all the above reasons, there are intrinsic motives
that make any code of guarantees worth little more than the paper on
which they are indited. All are agreed that the Head of the Church
must be independent; the Italian government acknowledges it, and
Catholics and non-Catholics proclaim it throughout the world. In what
does this necessary independence consist? It consists essentially in
being free of undue influence from any source whatsoever. Now, such
freedom can be obtained only by restoring the Pope to the condition
in which he was prior to the year 1860. For we can imagine the
several other conditions in which the Pope might be placed.

He may continue as he is at the present moment.

He may be the privileged citizen of a Roman republic.

He may be the sovereign ruler of the city of Rome under the
protection of the Italian government together with other governments
throughout the world.

None of these conditions is a guarantee of his freedom.

In the first place, we suppose him to be in the condition in which
he is at the present moment. The reasons we have given above, the
practical experience had of the protection given to the Pope and
those attached to him, the seizure of the encyclical, and other acts
of which his eminence the Cardinal Secretary of State has complained
publicly, the subjection a salary paid by the Italian government
would bring with it, and the general suspicion to which his acts are
liable, from the influence of the powerful government under which
he lives--all make it impossible that this state of things should
continue.

Nor is it possible that the Sovereign Pontiff should be the
privileged and protected member of a Roman republic. To tell the
truth, the present state of things is preferable to that. Republics,
and particularly a Roman republic, are too liable to commotion, a
mob is too easily excited to violence, a demagogue is too likely to
gain great influence over this city, to make it at all advisable that
the Pontiff should have republicans for his neighbors. A prince has
duties to his people, to his dynasty, and to other nations that check
him, and make him keep order in his realm; whereas the common people
are restrained by no such consideration, and a clamorous hostile
demonstration, with a stoppage of supplies, would very probably be
the answer to any act of the Sovereign Pontiff that did not meet with
their approbation. The vicissitudes of the days of Cola di Rienzi are
there to show how incompatible with the mobile masses of a republic
is the necessarily unbending firmness of a moral ruler. Not much
happier than the foregoing is the idea proposed by the able deputy
of the Italian parliament, Signor Toscanelli, who would have Rome
a free city under the sovereign control of the Sovereign Pontiff
and protected by the Italian government. It would, practically
speaking, be impossible to eliminate all influence on the part of
the government protecting and closely in material contact with the
Roman Curia. Even supposing that the maintenance of the Pope and
his dependents did not come from that government, it would not be
advisable or satisfactory. In this case, the money for the support
of the ecclesiastical authorities would have to come from foreign
nations. Although this would save the Sovereign Pontiff from much
of his subjection to the rulers of Italy, it would still leave him
subject to influence of another kind very undesirable. The point is
a delicate one, but we will treat it with all due consideration for
those concerned. In legislating for mankind, you have no right to
expect heroic actions, and this more particularly if those actions
pertain to the supernatural order. This rule is to be applied to
the Sovereign Pontiffs as to every one else. To their great honor,
the Sovereign Pontiffs have stood nobly firm in the exercise of the
duties of their exalted state; many a one has shed his blood for the
faith, many a one has languished in chains for the good of his flock,
many a one has braved the fury of crowned tyrants for the safety and
well-being of the church of Christ. But above all praise as their
conduct has often been, you have no right to put them in a position
that requires the exercise of such heroic firmness. Now, what is
the condition of a Pope dependent on the precarious contributions
of foreign nations for his support? It is one in which an external
influence is continually at work to check him in the free and
impartial discharge of his duty; it is one in which he is continually
forced to lay aside all human considerations of prudence and throw
himself with fulness of faith on Divine Providence. The position is a
sublime one, but for that very reason no man or body of men have any
right to place him in it. If he sees fit to condemn some cherished
opinion in a nation, the people cool in their devotion to him, and as
the contributions of which we speak are voluntary, the disinclination
to receive his decisions brings with it a disinclination to give
spontaneously what had been so given before, and the direct
consequence of every pontifical act unacceptable is very likely
to be a diminution in the funds that come in for the support of
the Pontiff; in fact, if we may be allowed the expression, these
contributions may be looked on as a kind of spiritual thermometer,
that by their rise or fall indicate the warmth or the coolness of
feeling towards the Pope. In point of fact, it is well known that
not a few prophesied, during the discussions of the question of the
infallibility in the past year, that the passing of the decree would
bring about a decided falling off in the Peter Pence. Notwithstanding
this, the Sovereign Pontiff threw himself upon Providence, and his
hope was not deceived. To the honor of Catholics throughout the world
be it said, the contributions of the Peter Pence of to-day exceed
those of all other epochs, and enable the Holy Father to administer
to the most pressing wants of the flock over which he personally
and directly presides. The hand of Providence is certainly here.
Such manifestations of Providence, however, as we have said, no
one has a right in legislating to look forward to, and therefore
it is absolutely necessary that the Head of the Church should be
the sovereign of a small state, large enough to save him from the
necessity of tutelage, and yielding a yearly revenue sufficient to
maintain him and those he must have around him with the decorum due
to his condition. To this it may be objected, that his subjects will
be deprived of many advantages enjoyed by free nations. We are very
sceptical about these advantages; the progress of Rome under Pius IX.
has been solid and satisfactory; and, on the other hand, the Roman
subjects of the Pontiff will have many advantages to which other
nations are often strangers: the advantage of light taxation, the
advantage of laws repressing immorality, the advantage of peace with
its delightful arts, the advantage of an enlightened protection of
science and of the fine arts, and then the great material advantage
of seeing their city the resort of the cultivated and wealthy classes
of all nations, who flock to Rome to see the successor of St. Peter,
and to enjoy the gorgeous and imposing ceremonial of the church.
For far less advantages than these we deprived the citizens of a
portion of our country of the great privilege of their political
franchise; of all nations we should be the last to find fault with
the infliction of a similar disqualification, of much more apparent
harm than real, and which is compensated for an hundredfold. And this
we say all the more earnestly because, in the case of Rome, it is not
the welfare of a collection of states that is provided for, but the
peace and good order of all nations of the earth.




THE ROSE.


Is there any portion of mankind that has not inhaled the sweet
perfume of this lovely flower? From Borneo to the ruins of the
Parthenon; from Kamschatka to Bengal; from the neighborhood of
Hudson's Bay to the mountains of Mexico; from Cairo to the Cape of
Good Hope, it graces the palace and the chamber, lavishes itself
full-leaved on the processions of Corpus Christi, and serves as a
pretty plaything to the child, who cracks the swollen petals on his
innocent forehead.

Of it the Hebrews made their crowns, and in their solemnities the
high-priest wreathed it around his head.

When the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon, it is said, she tried every
means to assure herself not only of his superior wisdom, but also of
the quickness of his perception. She placed before him one day two
roses, one artificial, but so well made that she defied the king to
distinguish the false one from the real. He sent for a bee, which
naturally alighted on the true one, and thus, without approaching
either, was able to give his decision.

Among the Hebrews, the bridegroom as well as the bride wore a crown
of roses, of myrtle, or of olive.

Mythology assigns to the rose the most illustrious origin. At the
moment when Pallas came out of the brain of Jupiter, the earth
produced the rose, that delight might follow in the wake of wisdom.
White at first, the poets have not quite agreed to what it owed its
many-purpled hues. We are told by some that the exquisite Adonis was
mortally wounded by a boar, and that his flowing blood fell on the
roses, and colored them for ever. According to others, Venus ran to
protect him, and the thorns and briers tore her lovely skin, and
the purple drops fell on a wild rose, dyed it, and consecrated it
for ever in her honor. Such a circumstance was scarcely necessary
to make so perfect a flower sacred to the goddess of beauty. Some
authors say that in the midst of an Olympian fête the goddess Hebe
spilled the embalmed vermilion nectar, and that the white roses
spread their petals to receive the perfume and the color.

Mythology also relates that Love presented to Harpocrates, the god of
silence, the flower that no one had ever seen, and that consequently
had never revealed anything. Hence came the custom of suspending
a rose from the ceiling of the room where families assembled, in
order that discretion, of which it was the symbol, might become the
guarantee of the sacred security of all their conversations. _Sub
rosa_ (under the rose) was a proverb that signified: We can speak
freely, without suspicion.

Venus and Cupid were represented crowned with roses; so, also, Flora,
the goddess of flowers, and Comus, who presided at festivities.

Aglaë, the youngest of the Graces, carried the rosebud in her hand,
the attribute of youth and beauty.

The Graces, the Muses, and Bacchus also received their homage in
crowns of roses; their altars were hung with garlands, and those good
old servants the Penates were sometimes decorated in like manner. Of
all the flowers, the rose was dedicated to the greatest number of
divinities, although nearly all of them had some plant especially
sacred.

The opening hour of day sowed roses in Aurora's path, who at sight
of her father the sun wept tears of joy over her favorite flowers.
So the poets of antiquity explain the drops of dew that tremble and
scintillate on the roses in the morning light. The rose designates
the dawn; and, bathed with dew, it is the emblem of filial piety.

Peace is represented holding a rod of thorns with roses and olive
branches, and the muse Erato, when presiding over lyric poetry, was
always crowned with myrtle and the rose.

The appearance of Christianity gave to the rose another origin,
and we cite the legend. Once, a holy virgin of Bethlehem, falsely
accused and calumniated, was condemned to perish by fire. She prayed
to our Lord, beseeching him to come to her aid, because he knew she
was not guilty of what they reproached her with. The fire went out
immediately; the burning fagots were transformed into red-rose bushes
covered with flowers, and those that were not lit into white ones.
These roses were the first ever seen, and became from that time the
flower of the martyrs.

The rose appeared at a very distant epoch as the emblem of the
Virgin; it was particularly recognized as such by St. Dominic, when
he instituted the devotion of the rosary, in direct allusion to the
life of holy Mary.

Prayer appears always to have been symbolized by roses. There is a
story told of a servant who, having to carry an immense amount of
treasure belonging to his master through a wood, was there awaited
by a band of robbers. On entering the forest, he remembered that he
had that morning omitted his Ave Marias, so he knelt down to say
them. As he prayed, the Virgin placed a beautiful garland on his
head, to which at each Ave she added a rose. The brilliancy around
him became intense, and the whole wood was illuminated. The good man
knew nothing of his beautiful crown of roses, but the robbers saw the
vision and let him pass unharmed.




NEW PUBLICATIONS.


    THE DIVINE LITURGY OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM. Translated
    by H. C. Romanoff. London, Oxford, and Cambridge:
    Rivingtons. 1871.

This is a neat little book, translated, by a Russian, from the
original Greek. The catechism contained in the front is so very
ancient and Catholic that it will be a difficult task indeed for
those members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in England and
America who dream of union with the Greek schism, ever to reconcile
it with the catechism that begins, "What is your name? N. or M."

There is a note at the bottom of page 79, to the effect that, when
the priest signs the elements and says the words, "And make this
bread to be thy Holy Body, and what is in this cup to be thy Holy
Blood," it is supposed that the consecration takes place, or, as the
translator says, _transubstantiation_. This is an error invented
by the modern Greeks and introduced by one Nicholas Cabasilas,
contrary to the Council of Florence and to all Catholic tradition.
For it is the universal teaching and belief that the consecration or
transubstantiation takes place when the priest does what Christ did,
and says the very same words that Christ said: "This is my body; this
is my blood." That is the _form_ of the sacrament of the Eucharist.
The ritualists object to the Roman vestments on the ground that they
are not of the ancient shape. We would like them to look at page
18, and answer this question: Which is the more like the ancient
vestment--the Roman or the Greek? Any candid man would answer that
the former is. The Greek chasubles are cut away in front, the Roman
at the sides. However, we hope that the day will soon come when
these good people will learn that the essence of religion does not
consist in the shape of a chasuble or the cut of a cope, but rather
in a childlike obedience to that Infallible Authority which is able
to regulate matters of discipline and worship as well as to define
matters of faith and morals.


    THE HOLY COMMUNION, ETC. By Hubert Lebon. Translated
    from the French by M. A. Garnett. Baltimore: John
    Murphy. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
    1871.

A delicious book for those who are favored with sensible devotion to
the Blessed Sacrament, while, at the same time, it is so solid that
those who are less favored will find much of it very profitable.


    THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. Fourth
    Series. 6 vols. New York: The Catholic Publication
    Society. 1871.

The contents of this series are as follows: "Tales of Catholic
Artists;" "Honor O'More's Three Homes;" "Sir Ælfric, and other
Tales;" "Select Tales for the Young;" "Tales for the Many;" and
"Frederic Wilmot."

These are very far removed from those tales, selected at haphazard,
too often to be met with in libraries for the young which are
juvenile but in name, the compilers of which are apparently
ignorant of the fact that as much depends on judicious selection
as careful rejection. In external appearance, paper, typography,
binding, and illustration, we have also displayed, in miniature, the
distinguishing characteristic of the works issued by the Publication
Society, liberality of expenditure limited only by the suggestions of
good taste. But, while thus equal in every respect to the preceding
sets, and coming, too, most opportunely just in time for the annual
distributions, there is to this series one great drawback which the
reviewer may, but our boys and girls certainly cannot, overlook--it
contains six volumes only; each of the preceding sets contained
twelve.


    THE STATE OF THE DEAD. By the Rev. Anson West.
    Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.

The only "dead" on whose "state" this work throws any light are those
who, like the author, are dead to the grace of humility. "Fathers,
councils, creeds, and decrees," says he, "are of no account and of no
authority in establishing the doctrines of divine truth"--(Preface,
p. ix.) "We have ignored these," he adds, "and have _deferred to no
one_" (_sic_). And so, forsooth, his own "ipse dixit," the complacent
"we deny" with which he quashes an argument, _are_ "of account and
authority in establishing the doctrines of divine truth." "Divine
truth," indeed! What can he know of that, entombed as he is in his
own self-sufficiency?


    LIFE OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET. By the Rev.
    Patrick Moran, D.D. 8vo, pp. 396. New York: P. O'Shea.
    1871.

This abridged edition of the life, sufferings, and execution of the
celebrated Archbishop of Armagh, taken from the larger work of the
same author published in Ireland some years ago, will be found, from
its intrinsic merits and portable form, to be a favorite and popular
book among the mass of American Catholics. Though relating, in a
concise manner, the leading facts in the life of that persecuted
primate, it is necessarily deficient in many of the features which
made Monsignor Moran's original memoir so valuable an addition to
the historical annals of the reign of the Second Charles of England.
The voluminous correspondence of Dr. Plunket with the Internunzio
at Brussels and the Secretary of the Propaganda; his reports on
the condition of ecclesiastical affairs in Ireland from 1670 till
within a short time of his death; and the decrees of the general
and provincial synods convoked by him, all of which are very fully
reproduced in the original book, are totally or partially omitted
in the compendium before us. Still, we are glad to see an authentic
account of the piety, learning, and heroism of the illustrious
victim of Protestant intolerance placed within the reach of all who
reverence his memory, and especially of those who feel proud in being
able to call him their countryman.


    THE TRUCE OF GOD. A Tale of the Eleventh Century. By
    George H. Miles. 1 vol., 16mo. Baltimore: John Murphy &
    Co. 1871.

The contest between Pope Gregory VII. and Henry IV. of Germany
forms the groundwork of this delightful story, which abounds with
interesting descriptions of feudal times, and gives us, with charming
simplicity, the details of the daily religious life of the people of
those "dark ages," so luminous with the light of faith.

The character of the intrepid, patient Hildebrand is drawn with a
skilful hand, and reminds us that persecution has ever been the lot
of the faithful Vicar of Christ.

The pleasing title of the book brings to our remembrance the fact
that the church of God in those days sanctified to peace a portion
of every week, beginning at sunset on Wednesday and continuing till
Monday morning. All private warfare was forbidden during these days,
under pain of excommunication.

This precept mingles with the thread of the story, which is both
attractive and instructive, leaving upon the mind and heart a most
agreeable impression.

The mechanical portion of the book is beautifully executed, and we
are delighted to see that all the books got out this season by Mr.
Murphy are in the same elegant style.


    THE HISTORY OF GREECE. By Professor Dr. Ernst Curtius.
    Translated by A. W. Ward, M.A., Fellow of St. Peter's
    College, Cambridge, and Professor of History in Owens
    College, Manchester. Vol. I. New York: Scribner. 1871.

Every scholar knows how learned Germans write history. Dr. Curtius
ranks with Mommsen as a historian, and his _History of Greece_, of
which this volume is the first instalment, is to be classed with the
_History of Rome_ by the latter author. We believe that it has the
advantage over it of being complete, and, moreover, its subject is
even more interesting to students and men of letters. It is brought
out in a style of excellence similar to that of Mommsen's _History_,
leaving nothing in that respect to be desired. We hope that the
demand for works of this kind may be sufficient to induce some one of
our great publishing-houses to favor the public with a translation
of Leo's _Universal History_, which is the masterpiece of German
historical works.


    MARTYRS OMITTED BY FOXE: Being Records of Religious
    Persecutions in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Compiled
    by a Member of the English Church. With a Preface by
    the Rev. Frederick G. Lee, D.C.L., F.S.A., Vicar of All
    Saints', Lambeth. London: John Hodges. 1870.

This is a singular and a singularly interesting little volume. It is
Anglican, as the title shows; yet, strange to say, it is made up of
brief but well-written and affectionate memorials of More, Campion,
Arundel, Plunket, and a number of other illustrious martyrs of the
Catholic faith and the supremacy of the Roman Church in England
and Ireland. It is a book which we can unhesitatingly recommend to
Catholics as well as Protestants, and which we should rejoice to see
extensively circulated. We cherish the most unbounded veneration for
these heroic martyrs, and ardently long for the time when they may
be solemnly canonized by the authority of that Holy See for whose
rights they suffered torments and death. The author has our thanks
for his pious tribute to the sacred and holy memory of these blessed
victims of Protestant English cruelty. May it help to bring England
to a penitent recognition of their merits, and bring a blessing from
God to himself.


    THE AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPÆDIA AND REGISTER OF
    IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1870. Vol. X. New York: D.
    Appleton & Co. 1871.

This volume of _Appleton's Cyclopædia_ is certainly, at least
considered as a register of current events, of unusual interest.
No recent year has witnessed events in Europe of such importance
as have occurred in 1870; and the accounts given of them are
sufficiently full. Of course they have been carefully prepared,
and are interesting from the nature of the case. So far as we have
noticed, the proper scope of such a publication has been well
observed, plain statements of facts being given without comment or
apparent prejudice. The statement of the preface, however, that by
the overthrow of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, "liberalism
and authority have been brought to a final issue before the world,"
is somewhat objectionable; as is also, and in a much higher degree,
the introduction of a portrait of the wretched man who, unfortunately
for himself as well as others, is the nominal head of the Italian
kingdom, for a frontispiece. Portraits are also given of two really
distinguished and remarkable men, Generals Von Moltke and Robert E.
Lee.

The results of the United States census of 1870 are given, and full
information as to the present condition and growth of each state. The
scientific information is on the whole valuable and accurate. In the
present intense activity of research in this field, it is of course
impossible to admit into a work of this kind everything of interest
and importance, and nothing besides, and a better selection could
hardly have been made. The volume is very creditable to its able and
enterprising publishers.


    WONDERS OF EUROPEAN ART. By Louis Viardot. Illustrated.
    1 vol. 16mo. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1871.

We have so often spoken in praise of the volumes of this series,
known as "The Library of Wonders," that it is with regret we are
compelled, as in the case of the present volume, to condemn any
of them. But such books as these need careful editing, and in the
volume before us this has evidently been neglected; for on page 88
we find "the idolatries of the Catholic Church," as well as similar
expressions elsewhere, that unfit it for circulation amongst our
Catholic youth. We would most respectfully suggest to the publishers
a little more care in future volumes, if they desire to have these
books placed in Catholic libraries, or given as school and college
premiums, for both of which they are, otherwise, admirably adapted.


The Catholic Publication Society has in press, and will soon publish:
_The Life of Mother Julia_, foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame.
_Familiar Instructions on Mortal Prayer._ By the Abbé Courbon.
Translated from the French, and edited by Rev. W. T. Gordon, of
the Oratory, London. _Light in Darkness: A Treatise on the Obscure
Night of the Soul._ By Rev. A. F. Hewit. THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC
FAMILY ALMANAC FOR 1872. A _Life of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan_,
abridged. A new edition of _Mylius's History of England_, continued
down to the present day and adapted for schools. _Gahan's Church
History_, a new edition, continued down to the present time.

The Catholic Publication Society will also soon publish in one
handsome volume _The Pictorial Bible and Church History Stories_,
being a compendious narrative of sacred history, brought down to
the present times of the church, by Rev. Henry Formby. It will be
copiously illustrated from designs by the most eminent artists, and
will be sold at a price so as to place it within the reach of every
Catholic family in the United States.


We have just received from Messrs. Murphy & Co. an advance copy of
_Patron Saints_, by Miss Starr.


BOOKS RECEIVED.

    From THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY, New York: A
    History of the Christian Councils; from the Original
    Documents, to the close of the Council of Nicæa,
    A.D. 325. By Charles Joseph Hefele, D.D., Bishop
    of Rottenburg, etc. Translated from the German by
    W. R. Clark, M.A. Oxon. 1 vol. 8vo.--The Priest on
    the Mission: A Course of Lectures on Missionary and
    Parochial Duties. By Frederick Canon Oakley, M.A. 1
    vol. 12mo.

    From P. F. CUNNINGHAM, Philadelphia: The Acts of the
    Early Martyrs. By J. A. M. Fastré, S.J. First Series
    and Second Series. 2 vols. 12mo.

    From J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia: Hesperia. By
    Cora L. V. Tappan.--Thistledown. By Esmeralda Boyle.

    From BENZIGER BROS., New York: Euchiridion Sacerdotum
    Curam Animarum Agentum. Compilatum a L. B. V. M.
    Moczygemba.

    From P. O'SHEA, New York: The Catholic Youth's Hymn
    Book; containing hymns of the seasons and festivals
    of the year, and an extensive collection of sacred
    melodies; to which are added an easy Mass, Vespers,
    and Mottets for Benediction. Arranged, with a special
    view to the wants of Catholic schools, by the Christian
    Brothers.

    From CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., New York: Common Sense in
    the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. By
    Marion Harland.

    From P. J. KENEDY, New York: The Life of St. Mary of
    Egypt; to which is added The Life of St. Cecilia and
    The Life of St. Bridget.

    From LEE & SHEPARD, Boston: The Model Prayer: A Course
    of Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. By George C. Baldwin,
    D.D., author of "Representative Women," etc.

    From ROBERTS BROS., Boston: Ad Clerum: Advice to a
    Young Preacher. By Jos. Parker, D.D., author of "Ecce
    Deus."

    From J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: The Child's Prayer and
    Hymn Book, for the use of Catholic Sunday-schools.




      THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

      VOL. XIII., No. 77.--AUGUST, 1871.[143]


INFALLIBILITY.


We propose to treat this topic in a manner somewhat different from
the ordinary one, and which may seem indirect and circuitous. We
hope to come to the point more securely in this way than by the more
direct road, and to drive before us the whole body of outlying,
straggling difficulties and objections. In particular, we intend to
place in a clear, intelligible light the nature, purport, and ground
of the recent definition of the Council of the Vatican, which has
made the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff an article of faith.
It is for this purpose that we have taken up the general topic of
infallibility; and the reason for discussing this general topic
rather than the exclusive question of Papal infallibility alone is,
that the latter cannot be properly explained except in its relation
to the former. The infallibility of the church is a more general
and extensive idea than the infallibility of the Pope. In the order
of time, it was prior to it in the minds of the great mass of the
faithful as a certain truth of the divine revelation, and it was
before it as an article of explicit Catholic faith. The precise
point which many persons have not clearly understood has been, how
it could have been less clearly known and less explicitly believed
by a number of good Catholics before the Council of the Vatican than
after it, especially considering its very great practical importance.
They are puzzled to think that it was not an article of universal,
explicit faith always, as much as the infallibility of the church.
Or, in few and plain words, they do not understand how a council
could define it as an article of faith which must be believed as
a condition of Catholic communion, when it had not been always
proposed as an article of faith, with the obligation of believing
and professing it, to all the faithful everywhere. If it is a new
dogma, how can it be a part of the old Catholic faith handed down
from the apostles, and what authority has a council to create a new
dogma? If it is an old dogma, how could the denial of its certain,
infallible truth have been tolerated, and the judgment of a council
make this denial now, for the first time, to become a heresy, to
which the penalty of an anathema is affixed? The answer to these
questions is plain enough to any one who has a moderate knowledge
of the elements of theology. No council can create a dogma which is
new, in the sense of being a new doctrine, or a new revelation. The
new definitions of the Council of the Vatican are definitions of old
truths, old doctrines, revealed by Jesus Christ and the apostles,
and contained in Scripture and tradition. But some of the truths
proposed by these definitions, although old doctrines, and contained
in the original deposit of faith, are new dogmas in this sense, that
they are more explicit statements of truths implicitly contained in
dogmas previously defined or declared, and that they are now newly
proposed under this more precise and extended form to the faithful,
as revealed doctrines, with the obligation of receiving them as
articles of faith. The dogma of the infallibility of the Roman
Pontiff was contained implicitly in the dogma of the infallibility
of the church, and in the dogma, long since explicitly defined, of
the Papal supremacy; in Scripture and tradition also; and in the
general teaching of the schools of theology, in a more distinct and
express form. Wherefore, as we have said, it is useful and important
to show how it is contained in and related to the general principles
of the essential constitution and infallibility of the church, as
well as to make an exposition of the specific proofs of its truth as
a distinct doctrine from the Scripture, the fathers, and the general
teaching which has prevailed in the church. In this way, a Catholic,
to whom new truths, or truths less clearly and certainly known than
others, have been proposed as a part of the Catholic faith by the
Council of the Vatican, will see that his ideas are not changed but
enlarged, and enlarged not by an addition of extrinsic matter, but by
the growth and development within his own mind of the faith which he
already possessed in its integrity.

Let us begin by defining and clearly comprehending the term
_infallibility_. It is a negative term in its literal meaning.
Fallible means liable to err. Infallible means not liable to err;
and infallibility is the exemption from liability to error. When we
say that the church is infallible, we say, in strictness of meaning,
that the church is not liable to err. Her infallibility is some
kind of immunity from error, which is one of her essential notes.
This immunity from error evidently implies some sort of unerring
possession of truth, and therefore denotes a positive quality or
prerogative, as is frequently the case with terms of a negative
form. What it denotes in Catholic theology we will explain more
fully as we proceed. The positive idea, in which the general notion
of infallibility has its foundation, is one of the first principles
not only of Catholic theology, but of all theology and philosophy.
The unerring and certain possession of some eternal and universal
truths is, and must be, affirmed by all who profess that man has or
can have the knowledge of God and of the relation of his own soul
to him, whether by reason or revelation; that is, by all except
sceptics. With sceptics we wish to have nothing to do, for they are
not entitled to be treated as rational beings. Every rational man
will admit that there is such a thing as wisdom, and that the wise
man possesses it, and therefore knows something in the order of
rational truth. St. Augustine has proved this in a most subtle and
conclusive manner in his short treatise, _Against the Academicians_,
the earliest of his published works, written while he was preparing
for baptism. The wise man, he proves, cannot have the notion of
probability or verisimilitude, unless he has the idea of truth. He
knows, at least, that there is such a thing as truth, otherwise he
could not affirm in a reasonable manner that anything is probably
in conformity with truth, that is, appears to be true, or resembles
truth, which is the meaning of verisimilitude. Moreover, every man
is forced to admit the certain truth of a number of disjunctive
propositions. "I am certain that the world is either one or not, and
if not one, either a finite or an infinite number. Also, that this
world has its order, from a merely physical law of nature, or some
higher power; that it either is without beginning or end, or else
has a beginning and no end, or had no beginning but will have an
end, and numberless other things of the same kind."[144] In the same
manner, we may say: Either the visible world is an illusion or real;
either God exists or he does not exist; Christianity is either true
or false; either Catholicity is genuine or counterfeit Christianity;
either the existence of God, the truth of the Catholic religion, the
infallibility of the Catholic Church, can be proved with certitude,
or they cannot be proved. These disjunctive propositions can be
multiplied indefinitely, and they are only different examples of
that principle of logic called the principle of contradiction,
which it is impossible for any one seriously and intelligently to
deny or even to doubt. Reason, therefore, forces us to affirm that
we know something with unerring certainty, that is, that the human
intellect is at least to this limited extent exempt from liability
to deception or error, and, so far, infallible. The only possible
dispute in philosophy or theology relates to the subject and extent
of infallibility. What truths are known or knowable with infallible
certitude, and where is the infallibility seated which gives this
certitude?

Every man who affirms that God obliges the human conscience to
give a firm and undoubting assent to certain truths, and to obey
certain moral rules, must admit that he also gives the means of
knowing with unerring certainty these truths and moral rules. Even
the probabilist cannot escape this. For he who would act safely on
a probable conscience must have a reflex certainty that he does not
sin in doing so. If we are bound to assent to truth, and to obey
law, of which we have only probable evidence, and this obligation is
certain, we must know with certainty that we are subjectively acting
in a right manner in giving our assent and obedience. A philosopher
who affirms that we have certain knowledge of this truth and this
law is, of course, a more strict infallibilist than the other. Yet
the principle is in common. When a man affirms that God has made a
positive revelation, and that in his revelation he has disclosed
truths and promulgated laws which he binds the conscience of every
one to whom they are proposed to believe and obey, he extends the
principle of infallibility much further. If I am to believe these
truths, especially such as are above reason, with a firm, undoubting
assent, and to be held bound to keep these laws, especially such
as are hard to keep, the revelation must be made to my mind in
such a manner as to give me certainty, without any fear of error.
Whoever admits this must assent also to the following disjunctive
proposition: Either the revelation of God is made known to the
individual mind through the medium of the Catholic Church, or in some
other way. We are not concerned at present to prove the proposition
that the revelation is made known through the church as a medium. Our
argument is immediately directed to those who admit and believe it
already. Therefore, leaving aside all discussion with those who are
not Christians or not Catholics, we merely affirm, as a consequence
from what has been proved, that the principle of infallibility, so
far as Christian faith is concerned, is seated in the church as the
medium of divine revelation. With us Catholics it is unquestioned
that the church is that visible society whose supreme head is the
Pope. Our only object of investigation is the nature, extent, and
more precise seat of that infallibility which the church possesses as
the depository of divine revelation, and the medium of communicating
it to individual minds.

The church is infallible. To make more plain the meaning of this
proposition, let us go back once more to the etymology of the term
infallible. The Latin word from which it is derived is _fallo_,
signifying _deceive_. Infallible signifies incapable of being
deceived or deceiving. The church, as infallible, cannot be deceived
or deceive, respecting that body of truth which has been deposited
in her by the apostles, and which they received from Jesus Christ
and the Holy Spirit. The positive and fundamental truth from which
this negative statement of the inerrancy of the church is derived,
and which it protects, is, that the church, as a visible, organized
society, is the immediate recipient of a certain divine revelation,
and the medium of its transmission and communication. This divine
revelation must be accepted and believed with a firm assent,
excluding all doubt, by each individual. It is a revelation of dogmas
and doctrines, some of which are mysteries above reason, and of laws
which are strictly obligatory. Each individual must receive the
faith and law from the church, of which he is a member by baptism,
with unquestioning submission and obedience of the intellect and
will. But this entire, unreserved faith and obedience could not be
justly exacted, unless the church were divinely enabled to impart
pure, unmixed truth, and to prescribe pure, unmixed holiness to her
members, and divinely secured from imparting or prescribing error
or sin. Authority and obligation are correlative in nature and
extent. As is the obligation, so is the authority. If the obligation
is universal and without reserve, the authority is sovereign and
supreme. If the obligation requires an absolute, undoubting assent
of the mind, and a divine faith, the authority must be infallible.
Whoever is bound to unconditional assent must be secured in immunity
from error in believing. Whoever is authorized to command assent
must be secured in immunity from error in teaching. Supreme and
sovereign authority in teaching, and absolute obedience in receiving
what is taught, require and exact, as a necessary condition,
inerrancy in that society which is constituted on the principle of
this authority and its correlative obedience. The fundamental idea
of the Catholic Church, therefore, contains in it that passive and
active infallibility which belongs to the hierarchy and the faithful
as composing one body under their head, the Roman Pontiff. Wherever
divine and Catholic faith, or certain knowledge derived from faith,
and the obligation of unreserved, complete assent and obedience, are
found, there is the passive infallibility of the church. Wherever
supreme teaching authority is found, commanding this obedience,
declaring or defining this faith, or revealed doctrine, or certain
truth derived from and depending on it, there is the church's active
infallibility in exercise. The influence of those gifts of the Holy
Ghost by which the church is rendered infallible pervades the whole
body of the church, and manifests itself in the most multiform
ways. The church is living and immortal. Her life is divine and
supernatural, and its principle is faith. The faith is, therefore,
the principle of an immortal life, and itself an immortal principle
within the church. Like the principle of animal vitality, it is found
in every part of the organization, but vitalizing each organ and
member in a different way, according to its function. Brain, heart,
lungs, and fingers are vitalized by the same principle, although each
one fulfils a special office. So in the church, the supreme head, the
hierarchy, the laity, are animated by the same divine principle of
faith, and concur in the general functions of the great organic unit,
but each in his own place and in a special office. The result of
their combined and complex action is the perpetuation of the divine
revelation in all times and places until the end of the world. We
have to consider, therefore, a great many other constituent parts,
organs, and members of the body of the church, as well as the head,
in order to understand the relation which the head bears to them and
they to it, and the manner in which its special function influences
and is influenced by the other functions. We can do this only in a
brief and imperfect manner in a short essay, but we will endeavor to
touch upon some of the principal parts of this great and extensive
subject in a manner sufficient for our purpose.

The revelation which proceeded from the Incarnate Word of God was
diffused, in a great variety of ways, by the apostles, and committed
to a great number of various channels for transmission through the
coming ages. They gave it to the faithful by their preaching, they
embodied it in the hierarchy, in the sacraments, in the creed, in the
liturgy, in fasts and festivals, in rites, ceremonies, and worship.
They taught it to their companions and successors in the episcopate
in the most complete and thorough manner. They committed it to
writing, in great part, in their inspired scriptures, and gave their
sanction to other books written under divine inspiration by those who
were not apostles. To use a figure, there are many great rivers by
which the inspired and divine doctrines of the apostles flow through
all parts of the world, and through all the succeeding periods of
time. The great sources of these rivers are, nevertheless, but two:
Scripture and tradition. The Holy Scripture is infallible, as well
the Old Testament, which is proposed anew to Christians by the
church, as the New Testament, in which the clearer and more complete
revelation is contained. Apostolic tradition is infallible, and
therefore Catholic tradition, which is an unerring transmission of
it, is also infallible. The written and oral teaching of the apostles
has come down to us by the numerous great rivers and the smaller
numberless rivulets of Catholic tradition, irrigating the fields and
gardens of the church, and opening the way to intellectual communion
between different countries and centuries. These streams can be
traced back to their sources by the student. The single doctrines
of faith and theology can be traced one by one, and the whole body
of doctrines, as a complete system, can be followed up, through the
expositions, meditations, and commentaries of saints, doctors, and
fathers of the church, to the Holy Scripture. In the same way, the
student can go back to the original tradition. He is not restricted
to one line of argument or evidence, for there are many converging
lines, each one more or less certain and sufficient by itself, and
all, taken together, irresistibly and overwhelmingly conclusive and
convincing. One who is not able to make an investigation of this
kind may, nevertheless, be competent to understand the general and
equally conclusive argument from prescription. He may know enough of
history to be aware that the principal doctrines of the faith were
universally held in the tenth century, still further back in the
fifth, and before that, indefinitely, without any record of a change,
or any adequate cause for such general consent, except the teaching
of the apostles.

Not only are the Scriptures and apostolic tradition infallible
sources of doctrine which is unerringly transmitted, but the
general sense and belief of the faithful is also infallible. The
faithful have received from the beginning the teaching of the divine
revelation by a supernatural sense, a divine gift of faith, so that
the revelation has not remained merely extrinsically proposed to
them, but also received and appropriated by them, in a living manner,
through the inward operation of the Holy Spirit in their minds. This
sense of the faithful is even one of the motives of the definitions
made by popes and councils. It was consulted by Pius IX. when he was
preparing to make his decree respecting the Immaculate Conception,
and it was recognized at the Council of the Vatican as expressed in
the numerous petitions for the definition of papal infallibility. The
body of the faithful cannot lose the faith, or any part of it, or
embrace any heresy as belonging to faith. Their unanimous consent in
doctrine is an infallible evidence of the true faith in itself, and a
note of the true religion. The body of the church is immortal in the
life of faith, and indefeasible in its supernatural existence, and
therefore infallible, as well as the head. It cannot separate from
its head in doctrine. The universal recognition of the Pope by the
church makes it infallibly certain that he is the true and legitimate
Pope, and the universal acceptance of a council as œcumenical makes
it infallibly certain that it is a true council, although it be
certain also, on other infallible motives, that Pope and council are
legitimate. The want of this universal recognition caused for many
years the legitimacy of certain popes to be doubtful in a large part
of Christendom, and of course made the authority of their decrees
doubtful, and would have made the authority of any council convoked
by them as a general council also doubtful. It was the unanimous
agreement of the whole church in recognizing Martin V. as the true
successor of St. Peter, which gave to all the faithful certainty that
he was their lawful head. If a Catholic had no other evidence that
the dogmatic decree of Pius IX. declaring the Immaculate Conception
a doctrine of faith, and the decrees of the Vatican Council defining
the infallibility of the Pope, are valid and binding, except the
universal profession of the faithful that they believe these
doctrines with a divine and Catholic faith, that alone would be
sufficient to give him infallible certainty.

The infallibility of the church in this general sense, which is an
attribute of the whole body or visible society, includes and exacts
the infallibility of the teaching and ruling hierarchy in a special
and particular sense, which is also capable of an independent proof
of its own. The faithful are subject to the hierarchy and dependent
on it for the sacraments, for regulation, and for instruction.
All that life which is diffused throughout the body must exist
in a more immediate and intense action in its highest organs.
An infallible church cannot be subject to a fallible teaching
authority. The apostles were infallible witnesses, teachers, and
judges, in respect to the faith and everything connected with it,
as the original founders of the church under the Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom they were immediately commissioned. The church was made
infallible by participation with them, as they were made infallible
by participation with Christ, who was himself infallible as the Son
of God. The authority of officially declaring the testimony of the
church, of teaching authoritatively its doctrine, of judging in all
controversies, and of punishing all delinquents, was left by the
apostles to their successors the bishops; and the special authority
of St. Peter, as the Vicar of Christ, was transmitted by him to his
successors in the See of Rome. In their prophetical office, as the
immediate organs of the revelation of the Holy Spirit, they left no
successors, for when the faith and law of Christ were once fully
revealed, the necessity of this office ceased. But their official
infallibility was, of necessity, perpetuated in that episcopal
order which inherited the hierarchical dignity and authority of
the Apostolic College. The church is infallible in teaching and
judging, as well as in keeping and professing the deposit of faith,
and accepting what is taught by lawful authority. Every Catholic
knows this to be a fundamental doctrine of the faith. But it is the
_Ecclesia Docens_, the church or assembly of prelates, which is meant
in this proposition. There is no infallibility in fathers, doctors,
theologians, priests, or the faithful generally, which is separate
from or independent of the authority of the episcopate. Even bishops
who separate from the unity of their order by revolting against its
supreme chief, lose all their authority. No matter how many bishops,
priests, and laymen separate from this unity, their whole number
is of no more account than if there were but one, since they are
totally cut off from the church. Tertullian, Apollinaris, Cranmer,
Luther, the whole mass of Oriental schismatics and other seceders,
count for nothing. Those who revolt from the unity of the church lose
the grace of faith, and have no longer any share in the church's
infallibility. The consent of fathers, doctors, theologians, and of
the faithful is infallible, because it represents Catholic tradition,
which is itself a reflection or image of the authoritative teaching
of the apostles and their successors. There is no contradiction
or dissension possible in truth, but only in error. In how may
ways soever the truth infallibly manifests itself, these various
manifestations must always agree with each other. In order that the
official teaching and judgments of the episcopate may always agree
with Scripture, tradition, with each other, with the teaching of
fathers, theologians, doctors, and the consent of the faithful, they
must be infallible. All alike being infallible, they must agree. No
individual, or number of individuals, therefore, can be qualified
to cite either Scripture or tradition against the authority of the
church, any more than to cite the authority of one apostle against
that of another apostle. To do this, is merely to oppose private
judgment, individual opinion, to public, official, and authoritative
judgment, which is destructive of the very principle of authority
and organization. The supreme teacher and judge must decide in all
doubtful and disputed cases, without appeal, what is the doctrine and
law, what is the sense of Scripture, the witness of tradition, the
doctrine of the fathers, the common belief of the faithful.

From this final and decisive authority, and the correlative
obligation of obedience, we derive another and most cogent proof,
that wherever sovereignty in the order of ideas or doctrinal
supremacy resides in the church, it must be there that the active
infallibility of the church is principally seated. A supreme and
final judgment or decree must be an infallible judgment. It is
irretractible, irreformable, irreversible. The church is committed to
it, and bound by it for ever, and that by the law of God. It must be,
therefore, the absolute truth, and whatever tribunal is qualified to
pronounce it to be so, and to exact unlimited assent and obedience
from all the faithful, must be infallible.

We must be careful, however, not to limit the authority to teach, and
to require outward obedience or even inward assent, or the obligation
of submission to authority, to the sphere of infallible declarations
and judgments. In the natural order itself, we are frequently bound
in conscience to assent to things which are only probable, and to
act on the supposition that they are true. Probability is the only
and the sufficient guide of life in most things. Self-evident and
demonstrable truths, and indubitable facts, are comparatively few
in number. Without a basis of certitude, there would be no such
thing as real versimilitude or probability. But with that basis we
can construct a great edifice of beliefs, opinions, and practical
rules, which have more or less of the firmness and stability of
their foundation. The probability of these beliefs is to a great
extent extrinsic--that is, derived from authority which in reason
and conscience we are bound to respect. It is reasonable, and it is
a duty, to receive the instruction of parents, teachers, masters,
with docility; to respect the authority of learned and wise men, of
tribunals, and of the common sense of society. In the supernatural
order it is the same. The authority of the Holy Scripture is not
restricted to that portion of its teaching which the mind perceives
with an absolute certitude. There is a moral obligation on every
student of the Scripture to give its probable sense and meaning
that inward assent which corresponds to the degree of probability
which his mind and conscience apprehend, and which may approach
indefinitely near to certainty. It is the same with tradition,
and with other sources of Catholic doctrine, such as the teaching
of standard authors in dogmatic and moral theology, the official
instructions of confessors, preachers, and pastors of the church,
including those of councils and of the Sovereign Pontiff. Under
this head are to be classed the decrees of the Roman Congregations,
excepting those cases in which the Pope gives them a higher sanction
than the one ordinarily given. There is, therefore, a wide sphere
in which an authority is exercised within the order of ideas which
is legitimate, and to which deference and obedience are due, but
which is not guaranteed to have a complete and perpetual immunity
from all error. We cannot say, therefore, that there cannot be any
exercise of teaching authority in the church which is fallible, but
only that the church cannot be left without any authority except that
which is fallible. To a certain extent, Scripture and tradition may
be ambiguous, doubtful, capable of being interpreted differently;
but we cannot be left altogether in doubt or uncertainty about
their meaning. Catholic schools may have their differences about
dogmatic or moral theology, but they cannot be altogether divided
and dissentient. The common belief of the faithful may shade off
insensibly, so that it is difficult or impossible to draw a precise
line between what is in itself pertaining to faith and that which is
only opinion, but it cannot be in all things indistinct and vague.
The confessor, the pastor, the bishop, the theologian, the father
of the church, may teach something which is erroneous, but this
liability to error cannot be universal. The tribunals of the church,
even, may be obliged to decide upon partial and incomplete evidence
and knowledge of the cause, and afterwards to annul their decisions,
as in the case of the heliocentric theory. But these tribunals cannot
be always and altogether without a higher and more certain rule to
guide them. There must be a supreme and sovereign authority in the
church which is infallible, and which can guide, direct, restrain,
and correct all inferior and fallible exercise of authority. This
sovereign authority is only exercised in the declaration and
definition of doctrine in an irreversible and irreformable manner,
and with an obligation annexed of that assent which excludes even
a hypothetical doubt, or a right of ever withdrawing or modifying
assent. It is this authority which we say must be infallible. And,
moreover, it is impossible to conceive of the real existence of an
authority of this kind which is not infallible. The belief of the
infallibility of the church was therefore contained, from the first,
demonstrably, in the belief of the supreme authority of the church.
Moreover, it has always been distinctly believed and taught, as well
as acted on, in all ages, and has been explicitly declared by the
Council of the Vatican, and, so far as the Pope is concerned, defined
in express terms.

This infallible and perpetual magistracy of the church is exercised
in its ordinary way by the official teaching of the Catholic
episcopate, whose supreme head is the Pope, and of the priests
commissioned by them to teach. It began before the New Testament was
written, and continued for nearly three hundred years before any
œcumenical council was held. It is a great mistake to fancy that
either the Scripture, or the decrees of councils, created the faith.
It existed before them, and was apprehended with a vividness and
distinctness perhaps surpassing anything which has been witnessed in
later periods.

The solemn and special exercise of this magistracy is through the
judgments and definitions of the Holy See, either with or without
the concurrence of œcumenical councils. These solemn acts have
had for their first object to express in definite terms what was
always taught and believed as of the Catholic faith, and to condemn
all opposite errors. Their second object has been to declare and
define revealed truths contained in Scripture and tradition, but
not proposed by the church as of Catholic faith before their solemn
definition. Their third object has been to define truths not
revealed, but so connected with or related to revealed truths,
that they are necessary to the protection of the faith and law
of the church. Many of the judgments belonging to the last two
classes, also, are negative in their form, that is, condemnations of
heretical, erroneous, or otherwise censurable tenets and opinions.
The necessity for making these definitions has been so constant
and frequent during the history of the church, that the principal
doctrines of the faith, and a vast body of doctrine pertaining
to or connected with it, are distinctly and explicitly taught in
the collection of the acts of the Holy See and the œcumenical
councils. It would be, however, a most grievous error to suppose
that everything contained in Scripture and tradition, much less
the whole body of truth which is capable of infallible definition,
has been exhausted, or could be expressed in a certain definite
number of propositions, to which no addition could ever be made. The
fountain is inexhaustible. And, no matter how long time may last, the
church can still proceed to make new and more explicit elucidations
and definitions of that complete and Catholic body of truth which
she has held and taught either explicitly or implicitly from the
beginning. The notion that the church is a merely mechanical medium,
for transmitting a definite and precise number of propositions of
faith, is wholly false. It is the notion of a certain number of
Anglicans, but wholly foreign to the true and Catholic idea. It is
not only heterodox, but rationally untenable and ridiculous. Equally
so is the common Protestant notion of a division among revealed
truths into two classes, the fundamental and non-fundamental, in
the sense in which those terms are used by Protestant theologians.
Undoubtedly, there are mysteries and doctrines which are fundamental
in the sense that they are at the basis of Christianity, and more
necessary to be universally known and explicitly believed than any
others. And, consequently, there are other truths which belong to the
superstructure, to the minor and less principal parts of the system,
or to its finish and ornamentation. But, in the sense to which we
have reference, they are all equal. That is, there is the same
obligation of believing any one revealed truth as any other, because
the authority of God is equally sovereign and majestic in each single
instance. We are bound to believe, implicitly, everything contained
in the written and unwritten word of God. Whatever the church
proposes as a revealed truth we are bound to believe explicitly as a
part of the Catholic faith, as soon as we know it. Whatever else we
know certainly to be contained in the word of God, we are bound to
believe by divine faith. In regard to all that portion of revealed
truth which is not thus clearly made known to us, we are bound to
submit our minds unreservedly to the decisions and judgments which
the church may hereafter make, and in the meantime to adhere to
that which seems to be the truth. A Catholic must not only believe
what the church now proposes to his belief, but be ready to believe
whatever she may hereafter propose. And he must, therefore, be ready
to give up any or all of his probable opinions so soon as they are
condemned and proscribed by a competent authority. Moreover, he must
believe what the church teaches, not simply or chiefly because he
has convinced himself by his own investigations that her doctrines
are really contained in the word of God, but because the infallible
authority of the church proposes them as revealed doctrines. The
latest decisions of the church have, therefore, the same authority as
the earliest. The Council of the Vatican is equally sacred with the
Council of Trent, and the Council of Trent with the First Council of
Nicæa.

It is not necessary to prove to any tolerably instructed Catholic
that this is the only doctrine which has been recognized as
orthodox, or taught with the sanction of the hierarchy, within the
Catholic communion. It is found in all our catechisms and books of
instruction, and preached by all pastors. It is an amazing fact that
some ostensible converts to the church in England, who have lately
renounced their sworn allegiance to her authority, have declared that
they never understood this doctrine. This only shows the depth of
the ignorance of Catholic doctrine which prevails among many of the
most intelligent and educated Protestants, especially those of the
Anglican sect. Priests educated in the faith from their childhood,
cannot easily apprehend such ignorance in persons who apparently hold
Catholic doctrines and are attracted by Catholic ceremonies. They
may, therefore, in some cases presuppose in their catechumens an
understanding of the fundamental Catholic principle which they have
not, and pass them in with a superficial instruction which leaves
them as much Protestants as they were before. It is to be hoped that
greater precaution will be used hereafter in this important matter.
It is also true that a number of nominal Catholics, and, sad to say,
some priests, a few of whom had stood in high repute, have recently
manifested to the world how utterly they had in their secret hearts
thrown off the allegiance due to the authority of the church. But
these examples prove nothing. It is as clear as the sun that the
doctrine we have laid down is the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
It is the doctrine of Bossuet as well as that of Bellarmine, of
Waterworth as well as of Wiseman. No other doctrine has ever been
tolerated in the church, and if any have held or taught any other, at
any time, who have not been personally condemned and excommunicated,
they were still only pretended but not real members of the Catholic
communion. A most signal manifestation of the universal faith of the
church in this doctrine was made in the year 1854. The doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception, which St. Thomas and many other Dominican
writers had opposed without censure, and which the Holy See had
strictly forbidden all theologians to call a dogma of Catholic faith
before the definition, was then proclaimed as a dogma of faith by
Pius IX. with the applause of the whole body of bishops, clergy, and
faithful. Another one has been made within the last year by a number
of bishops, priests, and other Catholics, who have given up their
opinions respecting the infallibility of the Pope, and have received
that doctrine as a doctrine of faith, simply upon the authority of
the Council of the Vatican.

This remark brings us to a part, and a very important part, of our
subject, which we promised at the beginning of this article to treat
of at its close, and thus give a complete view of the doctrine of
infallibility.

The definition of the Council of the Vatican, by virtue of the
foregoing principles, furnishes every one of the faithful with
an infallible motive for believing the infallibility of the Pope
as a dogma of faith, and imposes the obligation of faith on his
conscience. The teaching of the universal episcopate, in accordance
with that definition, furnishes another equally infallible motive.
And so does the universal belief of the faithful, who receive and
submit to that infallible definition of the council. There is,
moreover, such an abundance of proof from the Scripture, and the most
conspicuous monuments of tradition, of the doctrine in question,
that any person of ordinary education is capable of understanding
enough of the evidence in the case to make a reasonable judgment, and
might have done so, even before the case was decided. The fact that
a small number of theologians held a different opinion was really
of no weight at any time, considering the vastly preponderating
weight of the judgment of all the saints, the great majority of
theologians, and almost the entire body of the bishops. Whatever
seeming probability the opinion of this small minority might have had
in the minds of some having been totally destroyed by the judgment of
the council, the reasons from Scripture and tradition gain now their
full force and are seen in their true light. But the purpose we have
had in view, and which we stated at the outset, is not the exhibition
of these specific proofs, but the exposition of the relation of the
new definition to the supremacy itself and the general doctrine
of infallibility; as well as an answer to the question, how the
infallibility of the Pope could have remained so long without an
express definition.

In the first place, as to the supremacy. The Pope is, by divine
right, supreme ruler, supreme teacher, and supreme judge over the
universal church, and over all its priests and members, individually
and collectively. As supreme ruler, he must be infallible; not
indeed in all his particular acts, but in his principles and rules
of government. Otherwise, he might subvert the constitution of the
church, destroy morality, oppress and depose the orthodox prelates,
promote heretics to the highest places, and do in the Catholic
Church what the schismatical Eastern patriarchs have done, and what
Cranmer did in England. By the very supposition, there would be no
authority in the church to control him, and all the prelates and
faithful would be bound to obey him. For, if there is any authority
in the church superior to the Papal authority, the supremacy is in
that authority, and not in the Pope. As supreme teacher, he can
instruct all Christian bishops, as well as laity, in regard to
the doctrine which they must believe, and bind their consciences
to submit to his teaching. It follows from our entire foregoing
argument that infallibility is necessary to the possession and
exercise of such a power. As supreme judge in questions of faith
and morals, his decision must be final and irreversible; for there
is no judge above him except our Lord Jesus Christ himself. But the
final judgments which the whole Catholic Church is bound to accept
must be infallible. Sovereignty, or the possession of the plenitude
of power, when it extends over the realm of mind and conscience,
exacts infallibility. And this has been most lucidly and conclusively
proved, during the recent controversies, by Archbishop Dechamps, Dom
Guéranger, and various other able writers.

The infallibility of the Pope is implicitly contained in and
logically concluded from the infallibility of the church in general,
and of the teaching hierarchy in particular, in substantially the
same way as it is in the supremacy. The church is essentially
constituted by its fundamental principle, which is that of organic
unity under one visible head, the successor of St. Peter. The
vital force of this organic unity is faith, and, as the body is
infallible in faith, and also governed by the head, the head must
be infallible in a higher and more immediate sense; otherwise, the
body of the church would be liable either to become corrupt in faith
by remaining united to a corrupted head, or to cease to be a body
by separating from its head. If we take the church as represented
by another similitude, it is founded, as a building, on the Rock
of Peter; that is, the Roman Church and the succession of Roman
pontiffs. The foundation must be stable and immovable in faith, if
the structure resting upon it has this immovable stability. So,
also, the episcopal hierarchy, whether dispersed or congregated in
a general council, must remain in communion of faith and doctrine
with the Roman Church and Pontiff. The Pope must sanction their
decrees, otherwise they are null and void. Those bishops who separate
from the faith of the Roman Pontiff, no matter how numerous they
may be, fall out of the communion of the church and forfeit their
authority to teach. Evidently, therefore, if the teaching hierarchy
is infallible, the rule and authority which directs and governs it
must be infallible. If a pilot is placed on the flag-ship of a fleet
which has to pass through a dangerous strait, and orders are given to
every ship to follow in his wake, it is evident that the success of
the passage depends on the unerring skill of the pilot. A fallible
head to an infallible hierarchy, a fallible guide to an infallible
church, a fallible supreme teacher, a fallible Vicar of Christ! What
a contradiction in terms! Who can believe that our Lord Jesus Christ
ever constituted his church upon such inconsistent principles? The
supremacy of the Pope and the infallibility of the church plainly
cannot coexist with each other in fact, or be united into a coherent
whole in logic, without the infallibility of the Pope as the term
of union. Yet these two doctrines have always been the constitutive
principles of the Catholic Church.

It is, however, still requisite to answer the question, how any
doctrine different from that defined by the Council of the Vatican
could have existed and been tolerated so long among Catholics, and
how the church could have postponed her definition to this late
period. When we say it is requisite, we mean, merely, requisite in
order to complete the explanation we promised to make. We have no
right to ask reasons of the church, any more than of Almighty God, as
a preliminary to our submission. We are to take with unquestioning
docility whatever instruction the church gives us. Yet, we are
permitted to make investigation of the truths of our religion, in
order to understand them better, to confirm our belief, and to be
ready to answer objections. Therefore, we reply to the question
stated above, first, in general terms, that the infallibility of
the Roman Pontiff has always been held, taught, and acted on by
the supreme authority itself, and practically acknowledged by all
good Catholics; and that its explicit definition was delayed until
the necessity and expediency of such a definition was made clearly
manifest, and the fitting occasion furnished by the providence of God.

The argument will be made more clear if we substitute the term
_irreformable_ in the place of _infallible_. All irreformable
decrees are confessedly infallible, and the question of law and
fact is therefore precisely this: whether the Roman Pontiffs have
ever suffered their dogmatic decrees to be judicially revised by
the bishops, or to remain suspended as to their complete obligatory
force, until the express or tacit assent of the bishops had been
manifested; and whether the church has ever recognized any such right
in the bishops. So far as the Popes are concerned, it is enough to
refer to the unquestionable fact that they have expressly prohibited
appeals from the judgment of the Holy See to an œcumenical council,
from the time of Celestine I. in the fifth century. Martin V. and
Pius II. in the fifteenth century, Julius II. and Paul V. in the
sixteenth century, renewed this prohibition. Clement XI., in the
eighteenth century, condemned the Jansenists, who had appealed from
the Bull _Unigenitus_ to a general council, and pronounced sentence
of excommunication upon all who promoted the appeal, unless they
abandoned it and subscribed to the _Unigenitus_. This sentence was a
general one, including all appeals from the Holy See to an œcumenical
council. It was accepted by the whole church, a small party of
Jansenists only remaining contumacious, and has been incorporated
into the canon law. Moreover, the Holy See has always required the
bishops to receive and promulgate without any judicial examination,
and without delay, all its dogmatic judgments; and they have
submitted to this demand obediently, even those who, like Bossuet,
have held Gallican opinions. The most illustrious and irrefragable
proof of the doctrine of the universal episcopate on this point which
could be given, was really given at the Council of the Vatican. The
monition at the end of the constitution on faith, which plainly
declares the obligation of entire submission to the doctrinal decrees
of the Holy See, was approved by the unanimous vote of all the
fathers, including those belonging to what was called the minority.
The Popes have always claimed and exercised the office of supreme
judges in matters of faith, the episcopate and the whole church
consenting and submitting, and all dissidents being compelled to keep
silence or incur excommunication.

The definition of the Council of the Vatican has not, therefore,
conferred any new rights on the Sovereign Pontiff or enlarged their
exercise. It has only made an explicit statement that the rights
always possessed and exercised by him are declared in the divine
revelation to belong to him _jure divino_, with the guarantee of
infallibility in their exercise, and proposed this statement to all
the faithful with the obligation of receiving it as a part of the
Catholic faith.

It is not very difficult to give satisfactory reasons why this was
not done before. The church does not make definitions without a
positive reason. Ordinarily, she waits until the truth is denied
or disputed. Before the Council of Constance, or rather the period
which immediately preceded that council, the plenary authority of
the Pope had not been called in question except by open schismatics
and heretics. We have the authority of Gerson, the principal author
of Gallicanism, for the assertion that any one who had advanced
his doctrine of the subjection of the Pope to the council before
that time, would have been universally condemned as a heretic. The
Council of Constance was a very irregular, abnormal, and imperfect
council, until the election of Martin V. near its close. It was
rather a congress or states-general of Christendom than a council.
The residence of the popes at Avignon and the subsequent division of
Catholic Christendom into three obediences, had put the pontifical
authority in abeyance and diminished the moral force of the Holy
See. The right and duty of putting an end to this state of things,
and bringing the whole church under the jurisdiction of one certain
and lawful head, had devolved by default upon the bishops, aided
by the influence and authority of the princes, and the counsel of
the principal theologians and priests of the time. Harrassed and
distracted by the difficulties and dangers which beset the church,
a number of leading men whose spirit and intention were good, and
who were devoted to the preservation of Catholic unity, had fallen
into the grievous mistake of seeking a remedy for existing and
threatening disorders in a limitation of the sovereign authority
of the Vicar of Christ. Martin V. obviously did the only thing
prudent or even possible for the moment, in leaving the irregular
and uncanonical decrees which they had passed to die of their own
intrinsic weakness. His successor, Eugenius IV., had too many open
and contumacious rebels and schismatics to deal with, to permit him
to alienate those who had fallen into minor errors, unawares, by a
formal condemnation. At the Council of Florence, the reconciliation
of the Greeks and other Orientals to the Holy See was the object of
paramount importance. At the Fifth Council of Lateran and at the
Council of Trent, the fathers were absorbed by questions of far
greater immediate necessity than that of Gallicanism. Yet the Council
of Lateran came very near defining the Papal infallibility, and the
result of the Council of Trent was to strengthen the pontifical
authority immensely, as may be seen by reading the history of its
final confirmation and promulgation, and examining the bull of
confirmation itself, which effectually sweeps away every vestige
of the irregular legislation of Constance. Between the Council of
Trent and the Council of the Vatican, no other œcumenical council
intervened. The Gallican controversy, as all know, chiefly raged
during the reign of Louis XIV. The Pope refrained from any formal
condemnation of the Gallican tenets, although urged even by that
monarch himself to terminate the controversy by a final judgment;
and, although these opinions were held and advocated by a certain
number of Catholic prelates and theologians from that time until
the Council of the Vatican, they were never branded by any note of
censure by the Holy See. It may seem surprising that such a patient
and cautious method of dealing with errors which have at length been
condemned as heretical should have been pursued; but any one who
knows the whole history of the matter must admire the supernatural
wisdom of this course of conduct. One motive, doubtless, for it, was
respect for Bossuet. But another and more powerful reason was that
the Holy See desired to gain a victory by the means of discussion and
argument, before reverting to the exercise of authority.

And again, it is obvious at first sight that a far greater moral
weight has been given to the final definition, by the fact that the
Sovereign Pontiffs have left the solemn and decisive deliberation
and judgment of a matter which relates to their own highest and most
sublime prerogative, to the bishops of the church assembled in a
general council. It may appear strange to some that the church could
tolerate an error even for a time. But there is a great difference
between those errors which subvert the foundation and rule of
faith, and those which only shake them a little. The errors of the
Jansenists, Febronians, and other rebels against the authority of the
Holy See, were of the first class, and were never tolerated. But the
Gallicans of the school of Bossuet recognized and practised the duty
of obedience to the Holy See. Their error lay rather in an illogical,
indistinct, and imperfect conception of the supreme authority of
the Roman Pontiff, than in a denial of any of its attributes. They
admitted the right of the Pope to issue dogmatic judgments, and the
obligation of bishops and the faithful to receive them with interior
assent and obedience. They acknowledged that these judgments became
judgments of the Catholic Church, and were made irreformable as
soon as the assent of a majority of the bishops was even tacitly
given. As this assent has always been given, not tacitly alone, but
by the most formal and express adhesion, there has never been any
practical divergence in doctrine between orthodox Gallicans and the
more consistent Ultramontanes. St. Augustine himself had said that
it is sometimes the wisest course to tolerate for a time the errors
of those who hold the faith firmly, and err only by an imperfect
knowledge and a confused conception of the truth. The church has not
hesitated or faltered in regard to her own principles, or failed
to act on them with full and distinct consciousness. But it is not
always necessary for her to propose them fully and completely as
articles of divine and Catholic faith to her children. It is for
the church, guided, illuminated, governed, and assisted by the Holy
Spirit, to judge of the time and manner in which she will unfold
and display in all their brilliant majesty the treasures of her
doctrine. She has waited until the nineteenth century to encircle
the brow of the Queen of Heaven with the coronet of her definition
of the Immaculate Conception, and to place in the tiara of the Vicar
of Christ a new jewel by defining his infallibility. From both these
splendid acts, in which her divine authority, her irresistible power,
her infallible wisdom, and her miraculous unity are manifested
with the most radiant lustre, incalculable blessings will flow in
abundance upon her faithful children. Christ is honored in his
Mother and in his Vicar. The serpent's head is crushed anew. Faith
triumphs in her new conquests. The kingdom of God is strengthened and
consolidated, and the kingdom of Satan is shaken to its foundations.
Like the cathedral of Cologne, the superb edifice of theology
approaches to its completion, the new marble rises side by side with
that which is dimmed by the dust of ages, and new pinnacles are
placed upon ancient foundations. This temple is one whose builder
and maker is not man but God, whose designs are formed in eternity,
but realized gradually and successively in time. From the foundation
to the top-stone, the massive solidity, the symmetry and unity of
plan, the harmony of proportions, the perfection of beauty, which
become more clearly evident with every century, disclose the idea
in the infinite mind of the Supreme Architect. The Catholic Church
has been designed and constructed by the same being who designed
and constructed the universe. As the solar system is unerring and
unfailing in its movements, prescribed to it by the immutable law
of its Creator, so is the church unerring and unfailing by the law
of its divine Founder. And as the sun can never cease to be the
unfailing source of light and heat, and the immovable centre of
revolution, while the solar system endures, so the See of Peter must
remain the centre and the source of truth, doctrine, law, unity,
and perpetual movement to the Catholic Church, so long as time
endures. It is this unerring stability of the Catholic Church in
the law prescribed by its founder, Jesus Christ, which is properly
termed infallibility; and, since this stability is communicated to
all the distant and dependent churches under her obedience by the
Roman Church, it is in the Roman Church that infallibility has its
immovable seat and centre.

It is plain from the foregoing argument how false and flimsy is the
pretence of Dr. Döllinger, M. Loyson, and the other rebels against
the Council of the Vatican, that they have been excommunicated for
adhering to the old Catholic faith which they have always held. All
heretics have said the same thing, except those who have openly
averred that they reject the authority of the Catholic Church. This
is what the Arians said, and Arius knew how to play the injured,
persecuted saint and prophet of God, even better than M. Loyson. The
creed of Nice is a new creed, said the Arians and Semi-Arians. So
said the rebels against the Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus, and
Chalcedon. The little Jansenist sect in Holland calls itself the Old
Catholic Church, and its members take the name of Old Catholics. The
allegation is palpably and ridiculously false. The Gallican opinions
were never a part of the Catholic doctrine. The highest claim that
could ever be made for them by their advocates was, that they were
probable opinions not condemned by the supreme authority. The best
theologians have condemned them as erroneous and proximate to heresy.
The Holy See has never shown them the slightest favor, but, on the
contrary, has used all means, except that of express condemnation,
to drive them out of seminaries, to destroy their credit, and to
inculcate the true and sound doctrine. They were tolerated errors.
While they were tolerated, it was possible for good Catholics, and
even learned men, to hold them in good faith; since good and learned
men, and even prelates, are fallible interpreters of both Scripture
and tradition, and may err in reasoning and judgment. But their
temporary toleration gave them no rights, not even those which belong
to received opinions of Catholic schools of theology. There were
good reasons for a purely passive toleration for a time. But none
for the indefinite continuance of such toleration. The silence of an
œcumenical council, viewing all the events which had occurred during
the past two centuries, would have given the advocates of Gallicanism
a plausible pretext to claim for it a positive toleration, a
recognition of its real and solid probability. Moreover, it was
reviving under a new and more dangerous form; numbers of good and
loyal Catholics were beginning to go astray after a so-called
Catholic liberalism, and a clique of secret traitors was plotting
a revolt against the Holy See, disguised under the ambiguities and
reservations of Gallicanism. Error, though it may lie dormant and
not show its dangerous character for a time, sooner or later works
out the conclusions contained in its premises. Gallicanism was an
illogical doctrine, containing implicitly the denial of the papal
supremacy. It was necessary, therefore, to condemn it, and to define
the truth. Those who gave up their opinions in obedience to the
decree of the Vatican acted like Catholics, and like reasonable and
consistent men. As Catholics, they were bound to obey a divine
authority. As reasonable men, they were bound to abandon an opinion
which they had embraced on merely probable grounds, as soon as the
certain truth was made known to them.

Moreover, the malcontents were taught from their childhood, and
some of them have themselves taught, as authors and professors,
the infallibility of œcumenical councils as a doctrine of the
Catholic faith. They have renounced, abjured, and trampled on that
faith, by rebelling against the Council of the Vatican, and bidding
defiance to the authority of their bishops and of the Pope. They
are justly excommunicated. The anathema of the church has smitten
them, and they are doomed to wither and die, and go into oblivion.
As for the Catholic Church and her docile children, they have made
a great act of faith which has had a most salutary effect already,
in strengthening the habit of divine faith, and in illuminating the
intellect with the knowledge of the truth. Its salutary effects in
the future will be still greater. There was never a time when the
continuous and immediate exercise of the supreme teaching authority
of the Vicar of Christ was so necessary and so easy as the present
critical, momentous period. Never a time when it was so necessary for
all the faithful to place an absolute and boundless confidence in
the chair of Peter. God has made known to all men, as a truth of his
divine revelation, the infallibility of that chair, and of his august
Vicar who sits in it. This truth is equally certain with the greatest
mysteries of the faith, the Trinity and the Incarnation. This chair
of Peter can neither be deceived nor deceive us, for its doctrine
rests on the veracity of the Holy Spirit, the author of truth, and in
believing and obeying it we believe and obey Almighty God.

FOOTNOTES:

[143] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.

[144] _Contra Academicos_, lib. iii. § 23.




THE TRUE HARP.


      Soul of the Bard! stand up, like thy harp's majestical pillar!
        Like its golden arch, O heart! in reverence bow thee and bend!
      Mind of the Bard, like the strings be manifold, changeful,
          responsive:
        This is the harp God smites--the harp, man's master and friend!

                                             AUBREY DE VERE.




A PILGRIMAGE TO CAYLA.[145]


                                      CAYLA, August 1, 1867.

MY DEAR FRIEND: In pressing my hand for the last time, when I left
Quebec two months ago, you said, "Do not fail to visit Cayla." I made
you the promise, and to-day I accomplish it. It is from the chamber
itself of Eugénie de Guérin that I write.

You who have such an avowed admiration for the sister of Maurice,
with what rapture you will enjoy the minute details which I have to
communicate! How many times have we asked, after having read the
admirable _Journal_ of Eugénie, after having lived with her the life
at Cayla, what had become of that domestic life which she described
with such exquisite art, and which she caused us to love so much? Who
are now the actual inmates of that antique château? If "Mimi," sweet
"Mimi," is still living? etc. To all these questions I can to-day
reply. On my return to Poitiers from a short visit to the little city
of Airvault, the cradle of my ancestors, I turned my steps toward
Toulouse, where I arrived this morning. The entire city was in a
state of festivity, the streets were all decorated, and filled with
pilgrims, flags waved in every direction, and the façades of the
houses were hung with wreaths of flowers. They were celebrating the
last day of the grand _fêtes_ in honor of St. Germaine Cousin.

The railroad which runs from Toulouse to Alby stops at Gaillac, and
there branches off to the station of Tessounières. Leaving Alby to
the right, I came down to Cahuzac about two o'clock. The terminus
is about half a league from the village. I was obliged to make this
little trip on foot, in company with the mail-carrier, who also took
charge of my valise.

The landscape is hilly and abrupt, and has a savage aspect. The road
winds through the valley, rises and descends between the wooded
mountains, whence peep out here and there some white rocks which
indicate a sterile soil.

At a turn in the road, I perceived on an acclivity Cahuzac, whose
name vibrates so pleasantly on the ears of Eugénie. From there a
carriage conducted me in a few moments to Andillac, a village more
than modest, which appeared on my left, with its poor little church,
where repose the tombs of Maurice and Eugénie, where she came so
often to pray, to weep, to hope, to implore with many tears the
salvation of her brother.

Here the road turns off and climbs a hillside. The guide pointed
with his finger across the trees on the other side of the ravine to
the Château of Cayla, which rises isolated on a graceful eminence.
'Tis a spacious mansion of severe aspect. Nothing distinguishes it
from ordinary structures, except a little tower built on one of its
angles, which gives it a slightly feudal tinge. Notwithstanding the
unobtrusiveness of this manor when seen in its landscape-framing,
the effect is laughing and picturesque, thanks to the prestige of
poetry, that fairy enchantress who has touched every object in this
domain with her golden ring. Here, though the fairy is an angel, it
is Eugénie.

The carriage crossed the ravine, and followed the banks of the St.
Usson, a little stream which turns the parish mill. It then began
the steep ascent to Cayla, and finally stopped before the farm, in
the midst of a crowd of chickens, who were cackling and disporting
themselves, in the sun, on a litter of straw. A servant came up at
that moment from the rabbit-warren on the north side, and politely
invited me into the _salon_, a pretty enough room, opening on the
terrace. Some furniture in modern style, white curtains, some wax
fruit and flowers, a few paintings on the walls, a little picture of
Cayla and its surroundings, on the table a handsome edition of the
works of Eugénie and Maurice; this last the most beautiful ornament
of this home.

The door opened, and a young lady with a distinguished air and dreamy
expression entered. It was Caroline de Guérin, Eugénie's niece, that
dear little "Caro" whom she used to rock on her knees, now married to
M. Melchior Mâzuc, of a noble and wealthy family of Montpellier. She
was soon followed by another person, much older but still sprightly,
dressed very humbly, with an expression of extreme sweetness in her
countenance, and a modesty yet more lovely, with marked features,
lit up by her bright eyes, and a smile uniting extreme delicacy and
benevolence.

I introduced myself as coming from America, from Canada, attracted to
this remote corner of France by the fame of Eugénie.

"Has the reputation of our Eugénie reached that far?" exclaimed Marie
de Guérin, for it was she.

From this moment the conversation did not languish, fed, as it was,
by the thousand nothings around which the halo of poetry has been
thrown by the author of the _Journal_.

Just as I rose to take my leave, M. Mâzuc entered, followed by Madame
de Guérin, the widow of Erembert. They had summoned M. Mâzuc from the
fields, where he had been superintending his vinedressers. He is a
man in the strength of age, an old officer in the army of Algiers,
with a manly face, energetic look, amiable and impulsive character.

"What!" exclaimed he. "You come all the way from America and as
far as our mountains to visit us, and already talk of leaving? No,
no; you must not think of such a thing. You have not seen anything
yet; you must stay and visit the neighborhood, and we will give you
Eugénie's room, and you will find it just as it was at the time
of the _Journal_. Then, here is my brother Nérestan, who has just
returned from Africa, where he filled the office of officer of
colonization; he will entertain you about Algiers, and you can talk
to him of Canada."

"Oh! very well," said M. Nérestan, shaking me cordially by the hand;
"and I will begin at once by telling you that the best system of
colonization that I know of, I found in a book printed in Canada
which accidentally fell into my hands."

They all then urged me with so much politeness to stay that,
conquered by their kind persuasions, I yielded to the pleasure of
remaining.

While awaiting tea, Marie equipped herself without any ceremony in
an old straw hat with a broad brim, and invited me to take a walk
and visit the environs. We were already old acquaintances. We went
out by the door that opens on the terrace, which rests on the crest
of the ravine. Along the wall grew several pomegranate-trees, and
some jasmine in bloom, from which Maurice gathered a bouquet the day
before his death. He walked down here, leaning on the arm of Eugénie,
to warm in the bright sun his limbs already struck with the chill of
death, to bathe his panting breast in the pure warm morning air, and
to contemplate for the last time the beautiful sky of Cayla.

Some stone steps lead to the bottom of the ravine, where the
little stream runs along, shaded by willows, whose rippling has so
often caused that amiable recluse to dream and sing in her little
chamber. Here is the fountain of Téoulé, that is to say, of the
Tile, so-called from the huge tile which serves as a reservoir
for the water from the rock. We crossed the Pontet which leads to
the laundry, where, like the beautiful Nausicaa of old, Eugénie
came sometimes to wash her robes; and which inspired these pretty
reflections:

"A day passed in drying one's linen leaves but little to say. It
is, however, pretty enough to spread out a nice white wash on the
grass, or to see it waving from the lines. You can be, if you wish,
either the Nausicaa of Homer, or one of the princesses of the Bible
who washed the tunics of their brothers. We have a laundry that you
have not seen, at the Moulinasse, large enough and full of water,
which embellishes this recess, and attracts the birds, who love
the coolness to sing in. I write you with clean hands, having just
returned from washing a dress in the stream. 'Tis delightful to wash,
and see the fish pass, the little waves, bits of grass, and fallen
flowers, to follow this, that, and I know not what in the thread of
the stream! So many things are seen by the laundress who knows how
to look in the course of the stream! 'Tis the bathing-place of the
birds, the mirror of heaven, the image of life, a hidden path, a
baptismal reservoir."

A few steps in the meadow, a superb chestnut-tree, three or four
centuries old, spreads its vast shade; old sentinel of the château,
which has seen born and die the generations of De Guérins. The ridge
of Sept-Fonds winds through the trees as far as the top of the hill;
on the neighboring declivity is the little coppice of Buis, with its
pretty little pathway, full of shade and mystery, and where Eugénie
had her little dog buried.

"_July 1st._--He is dead, my poor little dog. I am so sad, I have but
little inclination to write.

"_July 2d._--I have just put Bijou in the warren of the coppice,
among the flowers and birds. I am going to plant a rose-bush there,
and call it the _dog-rose_. I have kept his two little front paws,
which so often rested on my hands, on my feet, on my knees. He was
so nice, so graceful when he lay down, and in his caresses! In the
morning he used to come to the foot of my bed, to lick my feet as I
was getting up; then went to give papa the same greeting. We were his
two favorites. All this comes back to me now. Past objects go to the
heart. Papa regrets him as much as I do; he said he would have given
ten sheep for this poor little dog. Alas! everything must leave us,
or we must leave everything.

"A letter just received has caused me another pang. The affections of
the heart differ like their objects. What a difference the grief for
Bijou, and that for a soul being lost, or at least in danger of it! O
my God! how frightful that is in the eyes of faith!"

Passing before the farm, we cast a glance at the other side of the
valley. Facing us, this mass of green is the Bois du Pigimbert, with
the hamlet of Pausadon, where Vialarette lived, that poor woman whom
Marie and her sister used to visit. More to the left, on the heights,
is the village of Mérix, and below, toward the north, Leutin, where
Eugénie went so frequently to hear Mass.

The road from the warren of the north skirts the base of the hill,
which extends itself in the rear of the old castle. Here, as
elsewhere, all is full of souvenirs.

      "Every tree has its history, every stone a name."

Here Maurice played with his sisters among the branches of the
Treilhon, that old vine-stalk which twines itself round the trunk of
an oak-tree. "Mimi" smiled at the recollection of the slides they
used to take down the side of the ravine. She pointed out a little
underwood of maples; they were small trees about the thickness of
one's arm, and which have nothing in common with the king of our
forests.

A sudden storm coming up obliged us to seek shelter in the mansion. A
few moments before, the sky was serene and blue; now all was obscured
by clouds, the rain came down in torrents, and it began to thunder
and lighten. This southern sky always reminds me of a great child,
changing from smiles to tears with a wonderful facility.

At half-past seven, supper was announced, at which was served the
excellent wine of Cayla. At the side of its father, was little Mâzuc
de Guérin, a child of eighteen months. Oh! that Eugénie could have
caressed this child of "Caro's."

The evening passed delightfully; anecdotes were told, reminiscences
of Cayla, of America, of Algeria, and episodes related by M. Mâzuc of
the wars in Africa, in the mountains of Kabylia. "Mimi" then brought
us back to our present surroundings by relating some interesting
details of the widow of Maurice. She returned from India after the
death of her husband, and died at Bordeaux in 1861.

And the good M. Bories is still living, but struck with a cruel
malady, and is but a mere wreck.

At bedtime I was conducted to my room. A spiral staircase ascends
to the principal story, and leads into the great hall. This is the
stately and solemn apartment of the manor. In it a vast fireplace,
whose mantel is sustained by caryatides in stone; on either side are
the figures of two cavaliers in their armor, rudely sketched. In
former days these walls were covered with the armor of the seignors
of this house; this inlaid floor, to-day so silent, resounded to
the footsteps of armed knights, carrying on the points of their
lances standards and pennons on which the ladies of the castle
had embroidered the proud device of the sires of De Guérin. _Omni
exceptione majores._ It was in this saloon, now so deserted, that
they armed themselves to fight against the Moors and the ferocious
Albigenses, or where they donned their richest armor, their brilliant
helmets of finest steel, and their gilded breast-plates, to cross
their lances in the tournament. At the time of Eugénie, all this
antique splendor had long since passed away. Here as elsewhere,
the Revolution had reaped its harvest of destruction, and the rich
Seignors de Guérin "were now," said she, "only poor squires, striving
to keep the wolf from the door."

On the right side of the hall is a door opening into the chamber of
"Mimi;" on the left, one opening into that of Maurice. At the extreme
end, away back, retired like a cell, hidden like the nest of a bird,
is the little room of Eugénie. It is in this room, and on her table,
that I am now writing to you, surrounded by the same silence, and
lit by the same modest light of her lamp. Before me is her little
chapel in miniature, her crucifix, her _étagère_ of books. Nothing
besides this, neither ornaments nor luxury; nothing except the most
commonplace. But these valueless nothings have become relics; this
little room a chapel, this table an altar. 'Twas from this white and
peaceful cage that the dove of Cayla flew away to the land of dreams,
gathered the celestial flowers of poetry, conversed with the angels,
and sang with her heart. It is here that she prayed, read, wrote her
_Journal_, and those admirable letters to Louise de Bayne, Madame de
Maistre, and Maurice; 'tis here that she wrote her heart's history,
that she lived, that she died; from here that she went to rejoin
Maurice.

I turned over the leaves of the _Journal_, and gave myself up to
its fascinations, where the least object, an insect that flies, a
bird that sings, a ray of light penetrating the blinds, inspired her
with those charming thoughts, those poetical pages, like a harmony
of Lamartine, fine and profound as a passage of La Rochefoucauld.
Her thoughts take at times the most unexpected flights, sublime
transports, like an elevation of Bossuet's.

Never perhaps has there been a more delicate organization, a more
susceptible imagination. Her soul was like an Æolian harp which
vibrates to the slightest breath.

Mlle. de Guérin wrote with a golden pen. I would compare her to
Madame Sévigné, if Madame Sévigné was less frivolous. The latter
amuses and dazzles, the former captivates and touches; the one is as
bright as a lark, the other dreamy as a dove. The first has more
genius, the second more soul. There is more sentimentality in Madame
de Sévigné, in Eugénie de Guérin more sentiment. The writings of one
skim over the surface of the soul, those of the other penetrate it.
We can admire Madame de Sévigné, we love Eugénie de Guérin.

Before me, hanging to the framework of her library, is a picture
of St. Thérèse de Gérard, a present to her from the Baroness de
Rivières. I re-read the passage suggested by this little engraving,
those aspirations toward contemplative life, which reveal such tender
piety, such deep and true devotion. This pure heart turned naturally
toward heaven, like the mariner's needle, which always points to
the north. "She was of those souls," said Mgr. Mermillod, "who in
the midst of our material cares hear the _Sursum Corda_ of the Holy
Church, and who delight in these noble and holy aspirations." "We can
make a church everywhere," says she in some of her writings.

I open the window, and, like her, I contemplate the beautiful
night--the country half-buried in shadows, the myriads of stars,
which, like golden nails, sustain the blue tapestry of heaven. All is
silence, meditation, mystery; a single murmur, that of the stream.

It sings for me, as it formerly did for Eugénie. In looking back
into the past, I ask myself if I have ever spent a sweeter hour or
experienced more vivid emotions.

Adieu, it is midnight. Expect soon a sequel to this letter.

To M. L'ABBÉ L., Quebec.


                                      PARIS, August 9, 1867.

... At five o'clock in the morning, I heard a knock at my door. I
was already up. The previous evening I had made an arrangement with
Mlle. de Guérin to go to Andillac, where I wished to say Mass, and
visit the graves of Maurice and Eugénie.

The cheerful aspect of nature seemed to echo the brightness of my
thoughts. The heights of Mérix were bathed in the rosy hues of
morning; in the sky appeared the first golden threads of the sun; in
the plain the slight fragrance of the dew, perfumed breezes, and the
warbling of the birds.

We saluted in passing the little cross where the brother and sister
took such a tender adieu of each other, where Eugénie preserved so
long the impression that the horse's foot made in the plastic soil.
One Christmas Eve, going to midnight Mass, she gathered, in her
simple piety, some branches covered with hoar-frost from the bushes
which grow along this road, which she wished to place before the
Blessed Sacrament--a scene which she described with so much freshness
and charming grace:

"We all went to midnight Mass, papa in advance--the night was
superb. Never had there been a more beautiful midnight, so much so
that papa put his head out from his mantle several times to look
at the firmament. The ground was covered with hoar-frost, but we
did not feel the cold, and then the air was warmed in front of us
by the torches which our servants carried to light the way. It was
charming, I assure you, and I only wish you could have been with us,
going to church along these roads bordered with little bushes, as
white as if they were all in bloom. The hoar-frost makes beautiful
flowers. We saw a branch so lovely that we wished to make a bouquet
for the Blessed Sacrament, but it melted in our hand. All flowers are
short-lived. I regretted my bouquet: it was sad to see it melt, and
dissolve drop by drop."

Going along, Mlle. de Guérin told me of the last sickness and
death of her sister. Two years before, her health became seriously
affected; it was in vain that the physician sent her to the waters of
Cauterets, to seek the strength which would never more return.

She felt her end approaching; but she did not tremble; in her
complete resignation, there was no place for fear. As she watched
the span of life gradually diminish, she seemed to fold within
herself, like the sensitive plant; wrapped around her the mantle
of holy recollection, in which great souls envelope themselves at
the approach of that supreme contemplation which she foresaw. She
talked but little, prayed much, and smiled rarely. Her little room
had become the cell of a religious; she lived there cloistered, only
leaving it to go to church. Prayer was her recreation, the Holy
Eucharist her food.

"I wish to die after having received the holy communion," said she
a short time before her death. They noticed that she looked often
toward Andillac, where she was going so soon to dwell. The swallow is
compelled to fly away on the eve of winter; the winter of death was
approaching.

She took cold going to Mass on the Epiphany, and returned home
with a fever, which increased rapidly. Inflammation of the lungs
supervened, which hurried her to the portal of death in a few days.
After having received the holy Viaticum, "I can die now," sighed she
with a celestial smile. "Adieu, my dear Marie!" And as she felt the
tears tremble in her eyes, at seeing her so overcome with grief,
she embraced her, and said, while turning her head away to conceal
her emotion, "Ah! do not let us be sad!" as if she was afraid of
weakening the generosity of her sacrifice.

Such was the appointed end of Mlle. Eugénie de Guérin. She died like
a saint, "as the angels would die, if they were not immortals," said
one of her friends.

We arrived at Andillac.

"_Mosou Ritou_"--M. le Curé--"is he in the rectory?" asked Mlle.
de Guérin in patois of the old servant, as she entered with the
familiarity of an habituée.

M. l'Abbé Massol welcomed us cordially, and conversed with me about
a project which he had had in view for some time of rebuilding the
church of Andillac with the offerings of the admirers of Eugénie
de Guérin. The encouraging sympathy which he had received led him
to hope that he would very soon be able to accomplish his purpose,
which will be the honor of the tomb of this pious young girl, and
her aureola by choice: this was indeed the only glory that she
desired.[146]

The actual church of Andillac is really nothing more than a ruin. Its
tottering belfry, roof falling in from age, cracked and crumbling
walls, present the picture of desolation. It is necessary to descend
several steps in order to enter this other Bethlehem, whose sombre,
decayed, and humid aspect sends a chill to the heart. Nothing less
than the most ardent faith, or Eugénie's happy imagination, could
enable a person to breathe in what seems more like a charnel-house
than a church, or cause a ray of brightness and poetry to enter there.

I whispered to Mlle. Guérin that I was going to say Mass for the
illustrious dead of her family; and I had the happiness of giving the
holy communion to the sister of Eugénie. A quarter of an hour passed
in thanksgiving on the prie-dieu where she used to kneel left an
impression never to be forgotten; angel, she conversed here with the
angels, with the Spouse of virgins; she unfolded here to the wind of
eternity those wings of light which detached her every day more and
more from the earth, and which have finally transported her to the
bosom of our Lord.

On leaving the church, Mlle. de Guérin silently opened the gate of
the cemetery. I was face to face with the beloved graves. The morning
sunlight flooded this garden of the dead, as if to remind me of
that other invisible light which illumines the other shore of life
that never fades. A shaft of white marble, the only monument in the
cemetery, marks the grave of Maurice. We read distinctly the mournful
date, _July 19, 1839_. At the side to the right is a simple wooden
cross, one of its arms supporting a crown of immortelles, with this
inscription enclosed in a medallion: _Eugénie de Guérin_, May 31,
1848. In the rear were two iron crosses, one of them marking the
grave of M. Joseph de Guérin, Eugénie's father, and the other that of
Erembert. They died a year apart, 1850 and 1851.

I remained a long time on my knees beside the grave of Eugénie, in
the same place where, overwhelmed by a nameless grief, she wept
torrents of tears, where she probed that terrible mystery of death,
fathomless as her sorrow; and whence she rose at last, crushed for
ever, but resigned, with this sublime cry of a Christian, "Let us
throw our hearts into eternity!" She sleeps now by the side of that
dear Maurice for whom she often wept, until the day when they will
rise together never more to be separated.

Before leaving, Mlle. de Guérin gathered a bouquet of roses and
immortelles from her sister's grave, placed it in my hands, and went
out, without uttering a word.

Adieu, sweet and _blessed Eugénie_! The glory which you did not seek
has sought you, but the aureola which shines over your mausoleum need
not alarm your modesty or your humility. It is pure as your soul,
sweet as your nature, religious as your thoughts, benevolent as your
life. Already it has illumined more than one soul, and strengthened
more than one heart. It will do more: it will rebuild this temple,
whence will arise in your honor the hymn of gratitude. _Pertransiit
benefaciendo!_

On my return to Cayla, I thanked my kind hosts for their gracious
hospitality, commended myself to the prayers of Marie, _the holy_,
and resumed the route to Toulouse.

I have brought you several souvenirs from Cayla, some drawings, one
of Eugénie's autographs, a few flowers, and a bunch of immortelles,
which will be relics for you.

To M. L'ABBÉ L., Quebec.


DATES.

    "M. Joseph de Guérin died in 1851, age 70 years.

    "Madame Joseph de Guérin, née Gertrude de Fontenilles,
    died in 1819.

    "Erembert, born January, 1803, died December 16, 1850.

    "Eugénie, born January 25, 1805, died May 21, 1848.

    "Marie, born August 30, 1806.

    "Maurice, born August 10, 1818, died July 19, 1839."


LATER.

                                          December 20, 1869.

Since my return to Canada, several pleasant little parcels have been
sent me from Cayla, among them three different views of the château,
a map of the parish of Andillac, a photograph of the church, and of
the cemetery in which are the graves of Maurice and Eugénie, the
likenesses of Maurice, Marie, and Caroline de Guérin.

The only picture which exists of Eugénie is a simple pen-and-ink
sketch, scarcely outlined, which was sent me by the editor of
Eugénie's works, M. Trébutien.

Among these precious souvenirs from Cayla, I must also mention an
unpublished letter from Henry V., Count de Chambord, and another
from Cardinal de Villecourt, without counting those addressed to me
by Marie de Guérin, several of which would not do discredit to the
collection of Eugénie's. I will only cite from one of them a short
passage in which she alludes to our young Canadian Zouaves:

"I am so edified to see the devotion of the Canadians to our Holy
Father the Pope. Your young men leave for Rome, as did the crusaders
of old, for Palestine, at this word, _God wills it_. Let us hope that
this plenitude of generosity will not be without a happy result.
Already they have given an example at Mentana; if necessary they will
repeat it...."--_Letter dated January 30, 1868._


LETTER FROM HENRY V., COUNT DE CHAMBORD.

                                   FROHSDORF, June 19, 1864.

I recollect, mademoiselle, having read several years ago, with much
interest, some remarkable extracts from the works of M. Maurice de
Guérin, a young writer cut down in the flower of his age and talents.
I could not, then, fail to welcome with a peculiar satisfaction the
book of Mlle. Eugénie de Guérin, faithful mirror in which is so
constantly reflected the twofold affection that filled her life--the
love of God and her tenderness for her brother, sweet lesson and
touching example of that ardent, lively, and resigned faith which,
in the midst of the sorrows of this world, only finds consolation
in looking toward heaven, where those whom we love here below,
separated from us in an instant by death, are united again never more
to be parted. I must not defer any longer saying to you how much I
appreciate this gift, and, above all, the pious motive which prompted
it--as well as the expressions of devotion and attachment with
which it was accompanied, in your name, as well as in that of your
sister-in-law. To M. Trébutien and his daughter I beg you will also
express my gratitude.

Accept for yourself, with many thanks, the assurance of my very
sincere sentiments.

                                                      HENRI.

TO MLLE. MARIE DE GUÉRIN.


FOOTNOTES:

[145] These letters, from the pen of the well-known Canadian writer,
M. l'Abbé Casgrain, have been translated for THE CATHOLIC WORLD, with
the permission of the author.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

[146] On my return to Canada, a small collection was taken up among
the admirers of Eugénie, which amounted to five hundred francs, and
which has been sent to Mlle. de Guérin.

His Holiness Pius IX., whom we count among the admirers of the
virgin of Cayla, and designated by him in a letter as the _blessed
Eugénie_, has deigned to accord his apostolic benediction, and a
plenary indulgence, to all the benefactors of Andillac. Their names
are inscribed in the archives of the parish, and the holy sacrifice
of the Mass is offered for them four times a year.




SONNET.

ITALIAN "UNIFICATION" IN 1861.


      The land which Improvisatore's throng
        With one light bound would "freedom" improvise,
        Freedom by England dragged from raging seas
      Through centuries of wrestling right and wrong.
      The gamesters crowned, their loaded dice downflung,
        Divide their gains;[147] while--shamelessly at ease--
        Gold-spangled fortune, tinselled to the knees,
      Runs on the tight rope of the state new-strung!
      O liberty, stern goddess, sad and grave,
        To whom are dear the hearts that watch and wait,
      The hand laborious, strenuous as the glaive,
        The strong, staid head, the soul supreme o'er fate,
      With what slow scorn thou turn'st, incensed of mien,
      From mimic freedom's operatic scene!

                                             AUBREY DE VERE.

FOOTNOTE:

[147] Napoleon got Nice and Savoy; Victor Emanuel, the Papal States.
Every wise and religious man must desire that Italy should be free.
The greatest enemy to true and _permanent_ freedom is that false
freedom which divorces itself from justice that it may wed itself to
fortune.




THE HOUSE OF YORKE.


CHAPTER IX.

TWO YEARS AFTER

A heavy heart is a wonderful assistant in acquiring repose of manner,
it weighs so on the impulses and desires, and thus keeps them in
order--fortunately for Mrs. Jane Rowan. On the whole, she behaved
very well in her new situation, and did not fret herself nor the
family too much. By the gentleman of the house and his daughter she
was not treated as a hired servant, but as Mr. Williams's sister
might have been treated, if he had had one to take charge of his
establishment. With the sister-in-law, Mrs. Bond, and the servants,
it was otherwise. The former was one of those persons who merit pity,
from the fact that they can never feel the delight of a generous
emotion. She worshipped the guinea's stamp, but the preciousness of
fine gold she knew not: for her, the guinea might as well have been
made of copper. If she had been born to a servile estate, she would
have remained there, and adorned her position; but she had been
associated with persons of respectability and even of eminence. The
advantages of this association she showed in that the arrogance with
which she treated her supposed inferiors was cold and quiet, and her
subservience to her acknowledged superiors had an air of personal
fondness.

This woman's greatest fear was lest some one should marry her
brother-in-law, in consequence of which she labored incessantly to
remove from him all dangerous acquaintances: her second source of
terror was that her niece might be captivated by some ineligible
person, and the result was that every hovering monsieur and professor
who assisted in educating the young woman was watched as if he had
been a pick-pocket. Helen Williams used to complain bitterly to the
housekeeper of this espionage, and Mrs. Bond used as strenuously
to invoke the aid of the housekeeper in watching; so that the
unfortunate woman was between two fires, and scorched pro and
con. But the great trial of her life was the servants. Over these
potentates she was supposed to exercise some authority, and for some
of their doings she was held responsible; but the fact was that
they laughed her to scorn. As to commanding them, Mrs. Rowan would
as soon have thought of commanding the lancers or the cadets, and
indeed the lancers or the cadets would quite as soon have thought of
obeying her. But through all these mean annoyances, thanks to sorrow,
the quieter, she walked with a gentle patience which saved her from
serious hurt.

Happily, the person on whom her fortunes most depended put her
quite at ease in his regard. Mr. Williams was moderately kind, not
expressively polite, and did not scruple to make her useful. He had
also certain habits which soothed her sense of inferiority, since she
did not consider them polite: he reached across the table sometimes
in a shocking manner to help himself, he bolted his food when he was
in haste, he smoked a pipe in the sitting-room without asking leave,
and, while smoking, habitually assumed a position contrary to the
apparent intention of nature, by placing his feet higher than his
head. There were times when the housekeeper dared to think that she
was almost as much a lady as Mr. Williams was a gentleman. But she
liked him all the better for his deficiencies. She liked him, too,
for the interest he took in her son.

In the fall, Mr. Williams and Major Cleaveland had entered into
partnership, and enlarged their shipping interests, and the former
had said to Mrs. Rowan of Dick, "If the boy continues to do well, we
must give him a ship."

The mother's heart beat high. In two years Dick would come back, and
then perhaps Mr. Williams would remember his promise. That her son
would deserve such favor she never doubted. Young Mr. Rowan had the
power of inspiring every one who knew him with entire confidence.
So the mother set herself to endure and count away the months to
the coming home of her son. The winter melted, and spring came--six
months nearer! The summer glowed, and grew chilly into autumn--only a
year longer! A second winter wore itself away--but six months left!
and what you can have back again in six months, you touch already.
Six months is only twenty-four weeks; and, while you are counting
them, the four have slipped away. What signifies five months? One
sleeps through nearly a third of them, which leaves three months of
conscious waiting. Hearts do not count fractions. Three months--and
now they begin to drag. It is July, and that month has so many days,
and the days have so many hours in them, and the hours are so long.
You begin to fancy that heat dilates time as well as metals. You say
that it is just your luck that the only time in the year when two
months in succession have thirty-one days should be precisely this
time. Good-by to July! I would have spoken you more courteously,
O month of Cæsar! had you not stood between my friend and me. Not
Cæsar's self may do that! Two months now; but much may happen in
that time: kingdoms have been lost and won in less. Fade, O summer
flowers! for ye can bloom again when love is dead. Hasten, O fruitful
autumn! and bring the harvest long waited for. The weeks grow less,
and only one is left; but you dare not rejoice; so much may happen
in a week! Days roll round with an audible jar, as if you heard the
earth buzz on her axis, and only one is left. O God! how much may
happen in a day! The pendulum swings entangled in your heart-strings,
the minutes march like armed men. Merciful Father! hearts have broken
in a minute. Yes; but hearts that were sinking have grown glad in a
minute, shall grow glad, _Deo volente_. The terrible _if_ that held
his skeleton finger up before the face of your hope, that drove sleep
from your eyes, that weighed upon you ceaselessly, shall fade to a
shadow, and the shadow shall disappear in sunshine--_Deo volente!_

The sea was smooth--perhaps the prayers of the mother had smoothed
it; the sky was sunny--it may have been for that mother's sake; and
one blessed tide that came running up the harbor, ripple after ripple
falling on the shore like breathless messengers, brought a ship in
from the East with a precious freight for the owners, and for Mrs.
Rowan a freight more precious than if the ship had been piled for
her mast-high with gold.

A young man's handsome bronzed face looked eagerly through the
rigging, and saw a carriage drawn up close to the wharf, a man
standing beside the open door of it, and a woman's pale face leaning
out. The pale face turned red as he looked, and his mother's hands
were stretched toward him.

"O Dick! my own boy!"

"Jump right in and go home with your mother," said Mr. Williams. "I
want to see the captain."

And this reminds us that we are before our story. Several notable
incidents had occurred in Mrs. Rowan's life before that happy day.
One was that, on the first of September, just a month before, Mr.
Williams had asked her to be his wife. The two were sitting together
after tea, Helen having gone to a concert with her aunt. Mrs. Rowan
was hemming handkerchiefs for Mr. Williams, and thinking of Dick,
wondering where he was and what he might be doing just at that
moment, and Mr. Williams was glancing over the _Evening Post_, and
thinking of himself and his companion.

If the President of the United States, at that time General Taylor,
had sent Daniel Webster as his ambassador to invite Mrs. Rowan to
preside over the White House for him, she could not have been more
astonished.

There was nothing amazing in the manner of the proposal, however. Mr.
Williams had just been reading an editorial on the "Wilmot proviso,"
and, having finished it, took his pipe from his mouth, glanced across
the table on which his elbow leaned, and said quietly, "I've been
thinking that we may as well get married, as we shall probably always
live together. Helen and Dick will some time build nests of their
own, and they won't want either of us. I shall treat you as well as
I always have, and I hope you will be satisfied with that, and I
shall do something for Dick. I'm rather in love with the fellow. I
really cannot see why you should object, though I give you credit for
being surprised. If you had expected me to ask you, I should have
disappointed you. Suppose we should be married before Dick gets home,
for a pleasant surprise for him!"

Mrs. Rowan had dropped her work, and sat staring at Mr. Williams, to
see if he were jesting.

"I am in earnest," he said. "How does the idea strike you?"

"It strikes me"--she stammered faintly, and stopped there.

"So I perceive," was the dry comment with which he put his pipe
between his lips again. "Take time. Don't be in a hurry to answer; I
am not a frantic lover of twenty."

Mrs. Rowan sat with her hands clasped on the pile of handkerchiefs in
her lap, and tried to think. It would be good for Dick, it would be
better for Dick, it would be best for Dick. On Dick's account, she
could not dream of refusing; indeed, she would not have presumed to
refuse, even had there been no Dick in the case. But, for all that,
Mr. Williams's last sentence rang in her ears, and made her eyes
fill. Once upon a time--so long ago!--she was young and pretty, and
then there was somebody handsomer, better educated, more talented
than this man, who was a frantic lover of twenty when he asked her
to be his wife. If she had known better then, been more earnest and
serious, that blossom day of her life had borne good fruit, perhaps,
instead of an apple of Sodom, and her husband might have been still
living. If she had loved him less weakly, she might have saved him.

"Well?" said Mr. Williams, having given her ten minutes by the clock.

She started, and came back to the present. In the pain of the past
she was momentarily strong. "I suppose you know best for yourself,"
she said quietly; "and I have no objection for Dick's sake."

Mr. Williams had been a little afraid of a scene, and her quiet and
the tears in her eyes touched him. "I don't believe you will be sorry
for it, Jane," he said kindly. "I have heard that you have had one
sad experience, and I can promise you that you shall have nothing
like that from me."

A slight shadow, almost a frown, passed over her face. "You are very
kind," she said in a cold voice. "But as to the past, no one is to
blame but me. I stand by the man I married when I was a young girl. I
loved him then and always, and I hope to meet him again. He was too
good for me."

"All right!" replied the merchant cheerfully, but with some surprise.
He had not thought that the widow possessed so much spirit. "We need
not disagree about him. We can enter into a partnership for the rest
of our lives. As to the other world, I'll ask for no mortgages on
that. If you run away with Mr. Rowan when we get there, I won't run
after you. May be somebody else will be claiming me. I'm satisfied,
if you are. We are too old for sentiment."

So saying, he turned again to the _Evening Post_, and pursued his
reading.

Too old for sentiment! She looked at him with eyes in which, for a
moment, a high and shining wonder dilated. Why, if Richard had lived
and prospered, and she had made him happy, she could have run to
meet him with roses of joy in her cheeks, though she were half a
century old. She could have been as watchful of his looks and tones,
as quick to tune her own by them, as when she was a girl. Too old for
sentiment! Well, it takes all sorts of people to make a world, she
thought.

An hour of silence passed, the woman sewing, the man reading. At ten
o'clock Mrs. Rowan rose to go to bed. Mr. Williams looked up. "Let's
see, this is September first," he said. "Suppose we call in the
parson about the tenth?"

She stopped--she and her breath.

"You know we need not bother about a bridal tour," he said. "And I
think we may as well keep our own counsel. When it is all over, I'll
introduce you to Mrs. Bond as a new sister-in-law. Don't be afraid: I
will make her keep the peace. I am a justice, you know."

"Very well," said Mrs. Rowan. "Do as you like."

There was no more said that night; but the next morning Mr. Williams
gave the widow a short lecture on the manner in which he wished her
to conduct herself toward those about her. "You are too humble and
yielding," he said. "Of course, I do not expect you to change your
character; but, recollect, you have me to stand by you. If Sarah Bond
should annoy you, stand your ground. If the servants are impudent,
dismiss them. If anything whatever happens displeasing to you, tell
me the minute I get home, and I will set the matter right."

With that he went.

An hour after, a carriage drew up at the door, and a woman came into
the house, and asked to see Mrs. Rowan. She was a woman of middle
age, and looked nervous and worried.

"I am Miss Bird, Miss Clinton's companion," she announced. "Miss
Clinton wants to see you right away. She has sent the carriage for
you."

"Who is Miss Clinton?" Mrs. Rowan asked; "and what does she want of
me?"

The companion looked at her in astonishment. Not know who Miss
Clinton was! But it must be true that she did not, or she would not
have presumed to ask the other question. "Miss Clinton is one of the
first ladies in Boston," Miss Bird said, with quite a grand air.
"When you go to her, she will probably tell you what she wants."

"Cannot she come to see me?" Mrs. Rowan asked.

This last piece of assumption was from the future Mrs. Williams, not
from Mr. Williams's housekeeper.

"Why, what can you be thinking of?" the woman cried. "Miss Clinton
must be eighty years old, if not ninety. I am not sure but she is a
hundred."

Having ventured so much, after a slight pause, Miss Bird went on.
"And she is like cider, the older she grows, the sourer she grows."

"Oh! then, I will go," Mrs. Rowan said at once. "I didn't know she
was so old."

She did not hurry, however. She arrayed herself deliberately from
head to foot, and came down to find Miss Bird pacing the entry in a
fever of impatience.

"Dear me! do come!" exclaimed that frightened creature, and
unceremoniously pulled Mrs. Rowan into the carriage. "Drive for your
life!" she called out then to the coachman.

"Is anything the matter with Miss Clinton?" inquired Mrs. Rowan
anxiously.

"Oh! bless us!" sighed the companion. "Something is always the
matter with Miss Clinton when she has to wait."

They reached the house--a large, old-fashioned one in a most
respectable locality--entered, and went up-stairs to a sunny parlor
with windows looking into a garden. The four walls of this room were
entirely covered with pictures, the central places being occupied
by four portraits of a lady, the same lady, painted in different
costumes, and at different ages. It was a handsome face, not without
signs of talent. The original of these portraits sat in an arm-chair
near one of the windows. The silvery curls of a wig clustered about
her wrinkled face, a scarlet India shawl was wrapped around her tall,
upright form, and her small hands glittered with rings. On a table at
her elbow were her hand-bell, eye-glasses, scent-bottle, snuff-box,
and _bonbonnière_.

As the two entered the room, the old lady snatched her glasses, and
put them up with a shaking hand. "So you have got here at last!" she
cried out. "Have you been taking Mr. What's-his-name's housekeeper a
drive on the Mill-dam, Bird?"

"I was obliged to wait for Mrs. Rowan," Bird said meekly. "She will
tell you."

"I came as soon as I was ready, ma'am," interposed Mrs. Rowan. "I did
not want to take the trouble to come at all. If you have no business
with me, I will go home again."

Miss Clinton turned and stared at the speaker, noticing her for the
first time.

"I have business with you," she said in a sharp voice, after having
looked the widow over deliberately. "Come here! Bird, bring a chair,
and then go out of the room."

Bird obeyed.

"I want to know about that Yorke girl," the old lady began, when
they were alone. "If you wish to befriend her, you had better tell
me all you know. As for Amy Arnold, she deserves to be poor. I will
not give her a dollar. She was always a sentimental simpleton, with
her fine ideas. Not but fine ideas are good in their place: I always
had them, but I had common sense too. I kept my sentiments, as I keep
my rings and brooches, for ornament; that is the way sensible people
do; but she must pave the common way with hers. Fancy a girl with
absolute beauty, and money in expectation, if she behaved herself,
marrying a poor artist because, forsooth, they had congenial souls!
Congenial fiddlesticks! If I had had the power, I would have shut
her up till she came to her senses. I am thankful to be able to say
that I did box her ears soundly. Fortunately, the fellow died in
a year, and Mr. Charles Yorke took pity on her. Charles Yorke is
a respectable man, but I am not fond of him. I was fond of Robert
till he treated Alice Mills so. Though, indeed, it was an escape for
Alice; for he would have broken her heart. Robert didn't know enough
to love a plain woman.

"The little Pole knew how to make him behave himself. I rather liked
that girl, and I would have done something for them if Alice had not
been my friend. What is the child like? Tell me all about her."

The door opened. "I won't see anybody!" Miss Clinton screamed, waving
the servant away. Then, as he was going, she called him back. "Who is
it? Alice Mills? The very one I want! Show her in!"

Mrs. Rowan looked with eager interest at this visitor, and saw a
lady of medium size, graceful figure, and plain face. Was she plain,
though? That was the first impression; but when she had taken Miss
Clinton's hand, and kissed her cheek tenderly, putting her other hand
on the other cheek, in a pretty, caressing way, and had asked sweetly
of the old lady's health, Mrs. Rowan found her beautiful. So still
and gentle, and yet so bright, was she, all harmony seemed to have
entered the room with her. Even Miss Clinton's harsh face softened
as she looked up at her with a gaze of fondness that had something
imploring in it, and clung to her hand a moment.

"You have come in good time, my dear," she said then, in a voice far
gentler than she had spoken with before. "This is the person who had
charge of Robert Yorke's daughter."

The lady had seated herself close to Miss Clinton's side, with a
hand still resting on the arm of her chair. At this announcement she
turned rather quickly, but with instinctive courtesy, and looked
searchingly at Mrs. Rowan. Then she went to take her hand. "I had
a letter from Edith to-day," she said, "and she mentioned you very
affectionately. I thought when I read it that I would go to see you."

"Ahem!" coughed Miss Clinton harshly. "Come here, Alice! I have sent
for Mrs. What's-her-name to tell us all about the child, so you are
saved the trouble of going to her."

Mrs. Rowan's impulse had been to kiss the gentle hand that touched
hers, but this interruption checked her. Miss Mills went back to her
seat, and the catechism began. It was not a pleasant one. More than
once the widow thought that "one of the first ladies in Boston" was
a very rude and impudent old woman; but for the sake of that sweet
face, which seemed to entreat her forbearance, she answered civilly.

The questioning ended. "Now you may go," said Miss Clinton, and,
turning her back on Mrs. Rowan, began to talk to her friend.

"O my friend! how can you?" exclaimed Miss Mills reproachfully. "You
are so kind, Mrs. Rowan," rising to take leave of her. "I am glad to
have seen you."

Mrs. Rowan's face was crimson. What would Dick say to see his mother
so treated? and what would Mr. Williams say?

"Why, Alice, she is that John Williams's housekeeper," the old woman
said, when Mrs. Rowan had gone.

"And what are you?" was the question which rose almost to the younger
lady's indignant lips. But she suppressed it, and only showed her
disapproval by sitting silent a moment.

"Did you expect me to get up and make a court courtesy?" pursued Miss
Clinton. "Why, I wouldn't do that for you, my dear. And why should
I not tell her to go? I had no more to say to her, and I dare say
she was glad to get away. If people fell in love with me as they do
with you, you soft creature! then I might be sweeter with them; but
they hate me, and so I can afford to be sincere. It saves trouble,
besides."

"If every one practised that sort of sincerity, we should soon lapse
into barbarism," was the quiet reply.

"If you only came here to lecture and scold me, you had better have
staid away," the old woman cried, beginning to tremble.

The other said nothing, only sat and looked steadily at her. With
Alice Mills, charity was a virtue, not a weakness. She beheld with
pain and terror this woman, whose whole life had been one of utter
selfishness, who was going down to the grave with no love in her
heart for God nor her neighbor. She knew that she was the only one
who dared to speak the truth to Miss Clinton, and therefore she
dared not be silent. She knew that she was the only one in whom the
lonely old sinner believed, or whom she could be influenced by; and
it was one of the prayerful studies of her life how best to use
that power. To yield to pity, and refrain from reproof, would be to
encourage faults which had become habitual; so, instead of coaxing
and soothing, she only waited for submission, not to herself, but
to right and justice. The time for Miss Clinton's conversion was so
short, and the progress had been so slow, this friend was almost
tempted to despair. "Final impenitence" seemed to be written in those
hard old eyes, on that bitter old mouth.

Miss Clinton scolded, then complained, then bemoaned herself, finally
submitted. "You know, Alice, I have got so in the habit of ordering
people about, and most people are so slavish, I do not think," she
said, wiping her eyes.

That was all her friend asked--a sense of having done wrong. Then
came the time for soothing, and for bright and cheerful talk.

After such a regimen, it might reasonably be supposed that Miss
Clinton would treat her next visitor with decent civility; and the
immediate happy result of the lesson was that for that day Bird
escaped further abuse.

When, a fortnight later, Miss Mills told the old lady that Mr.
Williams and Mrs. Rowan were married, Miss Clinton was astounded.
"That accounts for her turning so red when I told her to go," she
said. "Well, well, I must be polite to Bird. For anything I know, she
may be engaged to John C. Calhoun."

Mr. Calhoun was one of the old lady's idols.

"Married his housekeeper!" she pursued dreamily. "What a _potpourri_
society is becoming! Though now I think of it, John Williams came
from nothing."

"We all came from nothing, dear," said the other softly, "and soon we
shall return to nothing."

Yes, Mrs. Rowan was married, and quite at home in her new character.
Mrs. Bond had been met in open field, challenged, engaged, and
routed. At present she was at home nursing her wounds; but we may
confidently expect that in time she will hand in her submission to
the powers that be. They were quite willing to wait: their impatience
was not devouring. Their minds were pleasantly occupied about this
time by several things. Dick's return was the principal joyful event.
Besides that, Major Cleaveland was visiting them. He had come up to
superintend the refurnishing of his town-house for the reception of a
bride. His marriage was to take place in a week or two at Seaton, and
his partner, with his new wife and step-son, were invited to go down
and be present at the ceremony. Mrs. Rowan-Williams had hesitated
very much about accepting the invitation, but it was urged by the
bridegroom-elect; Mr. Williams was disposed to go, Dick looked his
desire to go, Edith had written a coaxing letter, and even Hester
Yorke had sent a very pretty note, hoping that they would come. So it
was decided that they should go.

Why should Hester Yorke's invitation be of special consequence,
does any one ask? Having been put off as long as was possible, the
truth must be told at last, though with great dissatisfaction. Miss
Hester Yorke is to be the bride. Instead of fixing his affections on
Melicent, who was twenty years his junior, or Clara, who was twenty
two, nothing would satisfy this man but Hester, the youngest, and
Hester he won.

But it was a good while before he won the father and mother. Mr.
Yorke consented first, rather ungraciously, but Mrs. Yorke did
not yield till the last minute, and then only to her husband's
solicitations.

"If Hester is satisfied to marry a man old enough to be her father,"
he said, "we may as well consent. The age is the only objection."

"Hester is satisfied now," the mother said anxiously; "but she is
only a child. We do not know how it will be ten years hence, when her
character will be more developed. She will then be twenty-eight, and
he fifty. "Oh! I have no patience with these ridiculous widowers!"
And the lady wrung her hands.

"You misjudge Hester, my dear," the husband said. "She has developed
all she ever will. She is no pomegranate in the bud, but a cherry
fully ripened. Have you never observed that whatever is hers is
always perfect in her eyes? She is ready now to maintain to the world
that this is the most beautiful house that ever was built; that
rat-holes are an advantage; that our furniture is the more desirable
for being worn; that our roses are finer than any others, our vines
more graceful, our birds more musical. Why, my dear, she thinks that
I am a beauty!"

A soft little laugh rippled over Mrs. Yorke's lips. "So do I!" she
said.

"That is because you look at me with such beautiful eyes," replied
the gentleman gallantly. It was not often that his personal
appearance was complimented. "But, to return: Hester will be the
same to her husband. Once married to him, she will be absolutely
convinced that there is not to be found his equal. I have no fear
but that, ten years hence, if Major Cleaveland should be placed by
the side of the most magnificent man on earth, Hester would maintain
boldly that her husband was the superior. No; I anticipate no trouble
for a long while. The only disagreeable view I take is, that when
Hester is fifty, the golden middle age for a healthy woman, she will
be nursing a childish old man of seventy-four, instead of having an
equal friend and companion."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the wife, "I cannot possibly weep over what may
happen thirty-two years hence."

And so the matter was settled; and now the Major was doing his utmost
in honor of the event. The house in Seaton had been already put
in perfect order, and the house in town was now, as we see, being
adorned. They were to come there immediately, after a quiet wedding
at Hester's home.

When Major Cleaveland returned to Seaton, a week after the wedding,
he carried two offerings from Mrs. Rowan, one for the bride-elect,
the other for Edith. Hester's present was quite simple, a package of
photographic views taken in the city of Peking, and, seen through
a stereoscope, almost as good as a visit to that city. But Dick's
offering to Edith was an extravagant one: it was a Maltese cross set
with emeralds.

This gift created a warm discussion in the Yorke family, who were
almost unanimous against Edith's accepting it. Carl was especially
indignant. "Edith is almost a young lady," he said; "and the fellow
is presuming in sending her such a present. If he does not know
better, he should be taught." Even Mrs. Yorke was disposed to be
strict. But when they had all spoken, it was found that Edith had a
voice.

They were in the sitting-room with Major Cleaveland, who had just
arrived, and Mrs. Yorke was in the centre of the group. She had
opened the box, and held the cross up glittering against her white
hand. Edith had not touched it. She stood beside her aunt's chair,
and listened while the discussion went on. Her eyes were cast down,
and she seemed perfectly quiet; but, while she listened, into her
usually pale cheeks a color grew, deepening from pink to a glowing
crimson.

"I shall not refuse Dick's present," she said decidedly, when they
came to a pause; and as she spoke up went her eyelids. Finding that
Dick had no other friend but her, that he had enemies, perhaps,
that his feelings were not to be counted, instantly she came to the
rescue. As her glance flashed swiftly around the circle, it was as
though a blade had been swung before their eyes.

"But, my dearest Edith," began Melicent, and then went over the whole
argument again in her most suave and convincing manner.

"I know it all," Edith replied firmly. "I know what people consider
proper about presents; but this is not a common case. I would not
take that cross from Carl, nor from any other gentleman. But Dick is
like no one else to me, and he shall not be hurt nor offended. He
took pains to get the present, and thought a good deal about it, and
brought it over the ocean for me, and was in hopes that I would be
pleased; and I will not disappoint him."

Mrs. Yorke took the girl's hand affectionately, the disputed jewel
dropping in her lap. "I would not hurt his feelings for the world, my
love," she said. "Leave it all to me. I will explain to him so that
he cannot be offended."

"Aunt Amy, no one in the world can explain between Dick Rowan and
me," said Edith, withdrawing her hand. "You have been good to me,
all of you, and I love you, and will obey you when it is right. But
this isn't right: it is only what people who know nothing about it
think proper. Dick was good to me first of all. Mamma used to have
him take care of me when I was a tiny little girl; and, after mamma
died, he did everything for me. If I wanted anything, he got it for
me if he could; and if I broke his playthings and tore his books, he
never scolded me. I remember once I hit him with a stick, and almost
put his eye out; and when I cried, he kissed me and said, 'I know you
didn't mean to, dear,' before his eye had stopped aching. That was
the way he always did. And afterward, when the children laughed at
me, because I was poor and queer, and they threw mud and stones at me
here in the streets of Seaton, Dick fought them, he alone against the
whole. And I never cried but he comforted me. I could not tell all
that he did for me, though I should talk a week. I won't turn him off
now. If he wanted to die for me, I'd let him; for it would be more
than cruel to refuse. So, Aunt Amy, please to give me the cross. I am
going to wear it always."

They were all silent at this first outbreak of her who had often
won from Carl the greeting of Coriolanus to his wife, "My gracious
silence, hail!" No one had the heart to refuse any longer, whatever
might be the consequences of yielding.

Edith took the chain, and hung it about her neck, looking down on the
cross a moment as it rested on her bosom. "Green means hope," she
said.

Carl left the room. No one else said anything. Her address had
struck too near home. They might forget the time when she had been
poor and homeless, but she was not obliged to; and they could not in
conscience quite disentangle her from her past.

"Dearest Aunt Amy, do smile again!" Edith entreated, putting her arms
around Mrs. Yorke's neck. "You are not displeased with me! Don't you
remember you told Dick that ingratitude is the vice of slaves?"

"Dear child, you do as you will with me," her aunt sighed; and so the
dispute ended.

One day of the next week, as the steamer came ploughing up the
Narrows into Seaton Bay, Mrs. Williams and her son sat in a corner of
the deck by themselves. Mr. Williams, slightly sea-sick, was below.
There were not many passengers that day, and no one seemed to have
recognized these two. They sat leaning on the rail and looking off
over the water. It could scarcely be expected that they would not
feel some emotion on such a return to their native town after such a
departure, and Dick held his mother's trembling hand tight in his,
which, indeed, was scarcely steady.

A low, sandy island lay before them, and seemed to toss on the
surface of the bay. "I wish I could go over there before we go home
again," the mother whispered, looking up wistfully into her son's
face.

"No!" he answered. "We shall be commented on and watched sufficiently
as it is. Let the dead past bury its dead. It is a shame and
disgrace. I cannot have it dragged up again."

He spoke firmly, and his mother was silenced. She feared her son in
his rare moods of sternness. They awed her far more than his earlier
passions had. Those she had understood, and could soothe; but now he
was growing out of her knowledge. Besides, she did not dream what
an ordeal his meeting with Edith's family was to be to him. To her
simplicity, Hester's invitation and Edith's allowed intercourse with
them seemed an entire adoption; but he knew better. On the whole, it
was a time above all when he least desired to be remembered of his
father.

As they neared the wharf, they saw Major Cleaveland standing there,
with a tall, slim girl beside him. She wore a black riding-cap and
feather, and a glimpse of scarlet petticoat showed as she gathered
up her riding-skirt. The disengaged hand was flung out with a quick
welcoming gesture as she saw them, and a flush went over her face.

Mr. Rowan drew back to let Mr. and Mrs. Williams land first, and
waited till his mother had received the first greeting. Then he took
Edith's hand, and looked down at her as she looked up at him. Her
eyes sparkled, and she breathed quickly with joy. There was not, he
saw, a cloud over the delight with which she met him.

"Dick," she said ecstatically, after a minute, "I think that you are
perfectly splendid!"

In the old times they had used each other's eyes for mirrors: why not
now?

"You do!" said the young man, tossing his head with a slight laugh.

"Thank you!"

"But you have grown," she pursued, contemplating him with great
admiration. "And have not I grown tall?"

She stood back blushingly to be inspected.

"You're a pretty fair height," Dick said with an air of moderation.

"Come, they're waiting for us. Is this your pony?"

He lifted her to the saddle, then stepped into the carriage, and she
rode alongside. He looked at her, and every nerve in him vibrated
with triumph. She wore his cross on her bosom! They had not thought
how much he had dared to mean by that. "If they let her take the
cross, they will let her take me," he had said. If the gift had been
refused, he would never have seen Edith again.

"It is most beautiful," she said, catching his glance. "I got Father
Rasle to bless it, and I wear it all the time."

Presently Edith began to take notice of Mrs. Williams; and as she
looked, her wonder grew. Mrs. Rowan had possessed only a wisp of
faded hair: Mrs. Williams had a profuse and shining _chevelure_. Mrs.
Rowan's teeth had been few and far between: Mrs. Williams's smile
disclosed two unbroken and immaculate rows of ivory. But for the
lingering lines in the forehead, and the kind eyes, and the simple
ways, Edith would scarcely have recognized her old friend.

It was time for an early dinner when they reached the house, and
Edith was to stay all day, and be hostess. It had been agreed that,
under the circumstances, no hospitable cares could be expected from
their host. His visitors were to use his house as a hotel, and do
quite as they pleased in it. But in the afternoon, Major Cleaveland
insisted that Mr. Rowan should go with him and call upon Hester, who
wished to thank him without delay for the pretty present he had sent
her. Dick would much have preferred remaining where he was; but he
went, and was received with the utmost cordiality by all but Carl,
who was not visible.

But Carl came up in the evening to escort Edith home, and had then
"the honor of making Mr. Rowan's acquaintance" in a remarkably cool
and ceremonious fashion.

"Mother thought you had better come home early, Edith, because we
must all be up early in the morning," he said, after a little very
polite and very constrained talk. "Besides," he added, with a slight
smile, "I believe Patrick does not allow his horse to be out after
nine o'clock. He lent him to me very grudgingly."

The night was one of perfect silence as the two rode homeward under
the stars, and they were not talkative. Scarcely a word was spoken
till they had crossed the bridge, and were riding up North Street.
Then Edith spoke in a low voice:

"Are you tired, Carl?"

"No, thank you. Are you?"

"No."

Then there was silence for a while, till Edith began again:

"Carl, do not you think that Mrs. Williams is pleasant?"

"I did not observe," he replied coolly. "I scarcely heard her speak.
I do not doubt that she is pleasant to you."

"Oh! you talked with Mr. Williams," she said. "Did you like him?"

"Not particularly."

Another silence. They had turned from the public road, and were being
enclosed in the forest.

"How did you like Dick Rowan, Carl?" The question came with a faint
sense of strain in the voice, and it was not answered immediately.

"I hope you will not expect me to be as fond of him as you are," he
said presently. "He may be like a brother to you, but to me he is a
stranger."

"But what do you think of him?" she persisted.

"He is very handsome," Carl said in a quiet tone, "and he looks like
an honest fellow. I have no fault to find with him."

They turned up the avenue, alighted, and went up the steps together.

"Carl," said Edith wistfully, "are you troubled about anything?"

"What should trouble me, child?" he asked, with a touch of kindness
in his voice.

"I do not know," she sighed. "Then are you vexed with me about
anything?"

"No, Edith," he said, "I have no reason to be vexed with any one but
myself. Good-night, dear!"

She echoed the good-night, and went up-stairs, not nearly so happy as
she had expected to be that night.

The next morning the marriage took place. For Hester's sake we will
say that the bride was lovely, and the wedding a pretty one. But we
will not further celebrate Major Cleaveland's anachronistic nuptials.

The Williamses were to leave town in the evening. They dined at the
Yorkes', and went away immediately after dinner. Edith was to walk
down to the hotel with him, and stay there till the stage-coach
should come for him.

"And we will walk the very longest way, Dick," she said. "I have
hardly had a chance to speak to you yet. We have plenty of time, for
they have to go up after their valises."

While Edith ran up-stairs for her hat, Mr. Rowan took leave of the
others, and Mrs. Yorke walked out into the portico with him. The lady
seemed to find difficulty in uttering something which she wished to
say. But when she heard her niece coming, she spoke hastily. "Mr.
Rowan, Edith is but a child!"

His face blushed up. "I do not forget that, Mrs. Yorke," he said;
"but also, I do not forget that she is a child I have many a time
carried in my arms."

"A very headstrong young man!" thought Mrs. Yorke, as she watched the
two go down the steps together.

They went up the road, to strike into East Street, instead of down;
and as the road, after passing the house, ceased almost entirely,
they soon found themselves in a narrow forest track. Over their heads
hung the splendid crimson and gold canopy of maples and beeches
mingled, and vines ran through every glowing tone from garnet-black
up to rose-color, or hung in deep purple masses. The mountain-ash
bent to offer its clusters of red berries, and there was no tiniest
shrub nor leaf but had its gala autumn dress. A blue mist showed
faintly through the long forest reaches, and rich earth-odors rose on
the moist air.

The immense conversation which was to have been held seemed to be
forgotten; scarcely a word was said till they came out into the
eastern road. Then Edith pointed across the way, and said, "Is it not
lovely?" and they stopped a moment to look.

There was a tract of low swampy land there silvered over with mist,
that seemed scarcely to rise a foot above it. Through this mist
showed a fine emerald-green thick with pink and purple blooms, and
over it swam a yellow-bird, in smooth undulations, as if it floated
on a tide.

The two stood there for some time in silence, till that picture was
perfectly painted on the memory of each. Then they walked on into the
village. In a few minutes after they reached the hotel, the coach
came down from Major Cleaveland's with Mr. and Mrs. Williams in it,
the fare-wells were said, and they were gone.


CHAPTER X.

A DESPAIRING CHAPTER.

After all, no person's story can be truly told without beginning
at the creation of the world. Not that we would invoke Darwinian
aid, or inquire into the family peculiarities of the sponge--"O
philoprogenitive sponge!" Nor would we intimate that the soul is
as passive to circumstances as a rudderless ship to wind and wave,
but assert rather that it is like the steamer, the great struggling
creature, with a will at heart. But circumstances are strong, even
very old circumstances, and our ancestors have a word to say, not as
to our final destination, but as to the road by which we shall reach
it. Coarser natures get their bent after the manner commemorated by
the Mohammedan legend: some Eblis of an ancestor spurned their clay
with his foot when the angels had kneaded it, and the dent is long in
filling out; but finer souls are strung like the wind-harp, and from
the long line-gale of ghosts preceding them is stretched now and then
a viewless finger, which sets vibrating some silent inherited chord.
Is it a vanishing and perpetually recurring strain of a Gregorian
chant, breaking awfully into the pauses of a godless life? Is it an
airily riotous Bacchic wreathing the slow minims of a choral? Catch
up the strain and repeat it as you will, all your life shall be a
palimpsest with _Te Deum laudamus_ written largely over the fading
errors; still the merit of good-will is not all your own. Or trip as
your dutiful measure may, tangled in that wild song; the fault is not
all yours. Many a Cassius may claim indulgence on the score of some
rash inherited humor.

Does the reader perceive that we are trying to excuse somebody?

The truth is, Carl has disappointed us. We meant him to be an
exquisite and heroic creation, perfect in every way; and we had a
right to expect that our intentions would be realized; did not we
make him ourself? But just as the clay model was finished, and we
were complacently admiring it, into our _atelier_ stepped the grand
antique mother, Nature. She came with a sound of scornful sweet
laughter, which seemed to roll cloud-wise under her feet, and curl
up around the strong and supple form, and wreathe the wide slope of
her shoulders. "Look you," she said, and pointed her finger, a little
shaken with merriment, "that is not the way _I_ make men. There are
no muscles in those limbs, there is no sight under that brow, there
is no live heart beating in that narrow chest. You have left no
chance for a soul to get into your manikin." So saying, she stretched
her finger yet further, and mockingly pushed it through the skull of
our model; then disappeared, leaving all the air behind her tremulous
with mirth.

Let us hurry over the present of this Carl with a hole in his head,
out of which all his ideal perfections are escaping, but into which
his true soul may some day enter. Outwardly he is studying law,
inwardly he is studying chaos. What books Mr. Griffeth gave him
to read, we know not; but we do know that the sentences were like
smooth, strong fingers untying from him many of the restraints
of his former education. With Theodore Parker, he could call the
sacred Scriptures the "Hebrew mythology," and describe baptism as
"being ecclesiastically sprinkled with water;" and having got so
far--"What," said he, "is the use of Mr. Theodore Parker?" and so
dropped him. The conversations Mr. Griffeth held with him we know
little of, but may presume that they were not profitable. We only
know that they were frequent. The two were constantly together, more
constantly than suited Mr. Yorke, who lost faith in the minister. "He
has no pity," he said. "He seems to have studied theology only to
see how many sins he can commit without losing his soul." But this
disapprobation of his step-father's had no effect on the young man,
who was perfectly infatuated with his new friend. This quiet life of
Carl's had produced a mental stagnation, from which arose all sorts
of miasmata. He dimly knew them as such, but that did not prevent his
breathing and poisoning himself with them. Perhaps he also suspected
that Mr. Griffeth's wings would melt off if he were exposed to a
strong and searching light; but the companionship was fascinating,
and Carl fancied that he had found his like. It was not so; they were
alike only as sharp six and flat seven are; they had identical moods;
but Carl stooped to where his new friend rose.

One of the fine things the young man learned was the use of opium.
"It makes you feel like a god while it lasts," says Mr. Griffeth,
"puts you into a perfectly Olympian state. But I warn you," he added,
with a tardy touch of conscience, "it does not last long, and from
Olympia you sink to Hades."

"And then," says Carl, "you go about as Dante did, with your hands
folded under your mantle, and people stand aside, and whisper about
you. I will take the dark with the bright."

So saying, he measured out the drops, and drank them with the
invocation: "Come, winged enchantment, and bear me wherever thou
wilt."

Reader, didst thou ever see one dear to thee made tipsy with liquor?
and dost thou remember the mingled pain, and pity, and contempt with
which thou didst look on his abasement? A man, a king of the earth,
a brother of saints, a friend of the Crucified, a child of the Most
High, grovelling thus!

One comfort, nature, and not we, made this man fall so. O better
comfort! he is earning mountain-loads of self-contempt, which shall
one day be paid with interest.

Only a few other items have we to record at this time. The young
ladies had made their proposed literary venture--Melicent with signal
failure, Clara with partial success. Publishers had twenty-five
different reasons, each better than the last, why a volume of
European travels would not be at that particular time a fortunate
venture, and were unanimously unable to say at what future period the
prospect would be brighter. Miss Yorke was not entirely blind. She
perceived that her book was a failure, and withdrew it. Whether she
contemplated any other work, her family did not know. She maintained
a profound silence on the subject. They suspected, however, that
she was studying out a novel. Clara's first story, read with great
applause to the family at home, was modestly offered to a respectable
second-class magazine, and accepted, with a request for more. So Miss
Clara occupies the proud position of being independent in the matter
of pocket-money, and an occasional benefactor to the others.

Of more consequence to us is the fact that Father Rasle is now
settled in Seaton, and building a church there. Something else is
also being built in Seaton--a "Native American" society, alias
Know-nothing. This society excited much attention and enthusiasm,
especially in Mr. Griffeth's congregation, and among their friends.
All the young men joined it. It seemed precisely to suit the genius
of Seaton.

Against this party Mr. Charles Yorke fought with all his strength.
It was contrary to the spirit of the constitution, he persisted; it
had nothing in common with the Declaration of Independence. The views
and aims of the party were narrow and bigoted, and their leaders were
ignorant demagogues.

But all that he gained by his denunciations was unpopularity, and
the party prospered yet more. It had not only the young and the
infidel for active members; it had a sly encouragement from Mr.
Griffeth, a cool approval from Doctor Martin, and an earnest help
from the Rev. Mr. Conway, the gentleman whom we left in a soiled
state half-way from Bragon to Seaton. He had preached the next Sunday
with acceptance to his congregation, and was now settled among them.
We may remark that he has not yet forgiven Mr. Griffeth the mistake
about the pulpit, nor will he be convinced that it was a mistake.
In consequence of this obduracy, the two ministers live in a state
of feud, in which their congregations take part, to the slight
disedification of old-fashioned people.

TO BE CONTINUED.




THE SERIAL LITERATURE OF ENGLAND.


Considering the number of periodicals at present published in Great
Britain, the extent of their aggregate circulation, and the range
and variety of topics discussed in their pages, their effect on
the public mind of that country for good or evil can scarcely be
overestimated. A magazine holds a middle place between the legitimate
literature of books and the ephemeral and generally ill-digested
effusions of newspapers, and appeals, especially to the middle
classes, as it were, in science, taste, and art. Business men
who have not time to read long histories or elaborately compiled
scientific works, and indolent ones who have not industry enough to
do so, seek information or pleasure in perusing their periodicals,
while the traveller as he is hurried along over the ocean or the
railroad, and the overwrought student as he closes his ponderous
folio or lays aside his pen, alike find recreation and relief in the
lighter and more mirthful contributions which, judiciously dispersed,
usually grace the pages of our monthly and semi-monthly press. Books,
too, of late have accumulated to such a fearful extent that the
bibliographer finds it impossible to read even a moiety of them to
ascertain their value, and so is forced to form his opinion of them
second-hand by accepting the _dicta_ of the industrious reviewer,
whose decision, when judiciously and intelligently given, thus
becomes of the utmost benefit to authors and readers.

Of late years the number and variety of English magazines have
greatly increased, and we presume the patronage bestowed on them has
kept pace with their growth. We would be glad to be in a position
to say that, in liberality of spirit, fairness and originality,
the improvement is equally apparent; but such is not the case,
and in this respect forms a marked contrast to the progress which
distinguishes a similar class of publications in this and some
European countries. Propriety of expression and artistic construction
of sentences, which have always characterized the composition of
English writers, even of second or third order of ability, remain,
but much of the force, mental grasp, and wide range of view, as
well as profound and exact knowledge, which once distinguished
their criticisms and essays, are wanting. We are aware that the
generation of able men whose genius once illuminated the columns of
_Blackwood_, _Fraser_, _Household Words_, etc., has passed away; but
why have they left us no literary heirs, no worthy successors, to
fill their places and wield their trenchant pens? Has the English
mind deteriorated, or is it that English public taste has become so
corrupted by the unwholesome sweets of the Trollopes, the Braddons,
and like sensationalists, that it rejects the salutary food presented
it by more serious and natural writers? We can hardly believe that
this latter is the efficient cause; for before the era of Griffin,
Dickens, Thackeray, Lever, and many other favorite authors, several
of whose admirable novels and essays first reached the public through
the magazines, the taste of the masses was even more vitiated by the
romances of the last century, hundreds of which were sure to be
found on the shelves of every circulating library in the country.
Neither can we properly attribute this "dearth of fame" to a want
of adequate pecuniary reward; for we are assured that encouragement
in this respect is sufficiently ample, and, compared with that of a
generation ago, might be called munificent. We are, therefore, forced
to the conclusion that there is an actual present deficiency of
mentality among the majority of English writers--another indication,
perhaps, of that decay of the Anglo-Saxon race, so-called, in England
which has been so long and so pertinaciously asserted by her rivals.
It is certainly true that the spirit of money-getting is more and
more engrossing the attention of the people; and, while other and
younger nations, like Russia, Germany, and the United States, are
rapidly growing into immense proportions, both artistic and literary
as well as politically, England, wrapped up mentally in her own
self-conceit, as she is geographically shackled by the four seas, is
sinking into comparative provincialism.

The tone and temper of her writers when treating foreign subjects,
we submit, amply prove this, were all other evidence wanting. Their
views of the affairs of other nations lack fairness, amplitude, and,
not unfrequently, truthfulness, and always seem like those of men who
look upon the broad outer world through the wrong end of a spy-glass.
Can anything be more unjust than the following passage, which we find
_en passant_ in an article on France in the May number of _Blackwood_?

    "There is, however, one cause of hopelessness as
    regards France, and for the life of me I do not see
    how it is to be encountered. Here are the people who
    not only asserted that they were the politest and most
    civilized, but the bravest and boldest in Europe, now
    exhibiting themselves not only as utterly degraded and
    debased, but actually as destitute of courage as of
    morals."

Apart from the want of generosity exhibited by the writer above in
thus ungraciously stigmatizing an unfortunate ally, his estimate of
her condition is exceedingly unfair, and, as he professes in the
article to have been a frequent visitor to her shores in bygone days,
we must attribute his obliquity to something else than ignorance.
In her recent struggle, France showed nothing like cowardice; but,
on the contrary, her children, veterans and recruits, exhibited a
courage and heroism worthy of her proudest days of military glory.
Her signal and rapid overthrow was due to other causes than the
want of bravery of her soldiers. Within the space of about two
hundred days, her badly organized, poorly equipped, and generally
indifferently commanded troops fought seventeen pitched battles and
one hundred and sixty-five general engagements against three-quarters
of a million of the best disciplined troops in Europe. Of the merits
of the quarrel we have nothing to say, but we feel assured that the
troops of Kaiser William would feel little complimented at being told
that their splendid victories were gained over a demoralized and
cowardly nation. As to France being destitute of morals, the contrary
is the fact. It is true that Paris, like London and other large
centres of population, contains much that is immoral and unholy; but
Paris is no longer France, and those best acquainted with the whole
country allege that religion was never more securely enthroned in the
hearts of the people, nor her ministers so much respected, as at the
present moment.

American questions are treated by our transatlantic contemporaries
in a manner somewhat different. Occasionally they speak of us in
impartial and even complimentary terms, but generally in a vein
of lofty patronage, such as an indulgent and much-enduring father
might be supposed to use to his erring but not altogether godless
offspring. If we exhibit a leaning toward Russia, we are forthwith
admonished to beware of encouraging despotism; if we recall our
ancient friendship with France, we are likely to be reminded that
with England we are the same in language, blood, and religion;
but, if there is a treaty favorable to the "mother-country" to be
concocted, or a European coalition adverse to the interests of our
mother aforesaid apprehended, Shakespeare, Milton, and Newton are
resurrected and become our joint inheritance, and Great Britain and
the United States are instantly declared to be two, and the only
two, "free governments in the universe" having a common interest
and a common destiny. Occasionally this maternal surveillance is
varied by an allusion to our social or topographical peculiarities,
really ludicrous from its very absurdity, while it shows, with all
this assumption of superiority, how very inaccurate is the knowledge
of our kind relations. In a late article on the destruction of
the ancient forests, a writer in the _Fortnightly Review_ gravely
protests against "the further destruction of scenery unique in Great
Britain, and, if represented in America at all, but imperfectly
represented by the oak openings of Michigan." Now, if an American
were to talk of the extensive prairies of Caermarthenshire or
the picturesque mountains of Kent, his ignorance of the physical
peculiarities of even those small subdivisions would be apt to evoke
the severe censure of our London critics.

Again, in their reviews of American works, the English magazines,
whether through design or from want of knowing better, usually fall
into serious error in respect to the constituent elements of our
population. They affect to regard the American mind simply as a
mere emanation of that of England, weakened, it is true, by time
and distance, but still worthy of some consideration. How such a
patent fallacy can be tolerated in that country, our nearest European
neighbor as we are her best customer, is incomprehensible. We have,
it is true, generally adopted what was good in her civil polity at
the time of the Revolution, and the majority of us speak her language
as our native tongue; but we are no more English than we are German,
Irish, French, or Spanish in our origin, temperament, habits of
thought, or development of genius. We are all these combined, as
well as something more which only the free spirit of a republic can
call into being, and, if modesty would permit us, we could say with
truthfulness that there is contained within that word "American" all
the best elements of every European race. The latest instance of this
self-deception we recently noticed in _Saint Paul's Magazine_, in
what was otherwise a very excellent notice of Hawthorne's works.

But America has the advantage of the practical arguments of material
prosperity and rapidly developing æsthetic tastes on her side, and is
fast becoming indifferent to adverse criticism. With less fortunate
countries, like Ireland, for instance, the case is altogether
different. The English magazine writers, when at a loss for an
illustration or "an awful example," never hesitate to draw on the
history or pretended history of the sister kingdom for the required
materials. We have before us some dozen periodicals published in
London and Edinburgh, the majority of the articles in which are
either on Irish topics or contain allusions to the affairs of that
unfortunate and misgoverned people, and that, too, as it may be
supposed, in no very partial or eulogistic terms. This unrelenting
hostility to a weak nation, while it may do very well for placemen
and land-agents who live by the griefs and afflictions of others,
is unworthy the chivalrous spirit which should distinguish the true
knight of the quill. We fear, however, that Burke's saying with
regard to the chivalry of the middle ages is equally applicable to
our own times, and that the free lances of the English metropolis,
who will fight in any and every cause, are more in demand than the
earnest searchers after truth and the honest correctors of public
morals.

We argue this from two facts: It is not unusual for the same person
to be employed in writing for two or more publications altogether
opposed in aim and character; and, secondly, from the total absence
of anything like religious sentiment in nearly the entire periodical
press, if we except those published in the direct interests of
Protestantism, and in those it degenerates into absolute bigotry.
We do not say that all the magazines are positively immoral, but
they certainly are negatively so, and in this respect probably more
dangerous to the well-being of society. Take their method of treating
some late publications which have been much spoken of, for example.
We find that Darwin's elaborately nonsensical theory of the origin
of the human race is handled with as much delicacy and seriousness
as if the reviewers had grave doubts in their own minds as to
whether their ancestors had or had not been monkeys, or at least as
if they considered it an open question not yet definitely settled;
while the blasphemies of Renan, instead of eliciting condemnation
and reproof, are carefully and quietly reproduced and laid before
the reader with a gentle caution against their novelty. Still, the
prevailing tone of the English magazines can scarcely be said to be
actively anti-Catholic or unchristian. It partakes more of paganism
in a modified form, which, while not openly violating the laws of
society, practically ignores the interference of Providence in the
affairs of men, like the Universalist preacher whose highest eulogy,
as pronounced by a friend, was that he was perfectly neutral in
politics and religion. The short prose fiction sketches in which the
English periodicals abound and which in artistic merit far excel
ours, are based on the same inamiable sentimentalism--a sort of
polite indifferentism, by which the heroes and heroines are made to
walk through life unconscious that there is a Being to whom the fall
of a sparrow is not unknown, and who directs the destiny of nations
as well as individuals. Fiction, if not the best, is certainly a very
effective medium of communicating correct ideas and pure morality to
the young, and, while it should be read sparingly, cannot in this
age be altogether dispensed with; and therefore it is that too much
care cannot be taken to see that it is not only free from grossness,
but that it is actively and primarily permeated by the spirit of
religion. Where this is not observed, as we regret to find in the
case of the English magazines, mere style of composition, felicity of
diction, and power of description count for nothing. They are simply
evidences of the perversion of the gifts of God, which ought always
and in all places to be used for the greater glory and honor of the
Giver.




MEMOIR OF FATHER JOHN DE BRÉBEUF, S.J.


Well acquainted as was Father Brébeuf, from long study and
intelligent observation, with the character and customs of the
Hurons, he knew thoroughly how to propitiate their favor and regain
their respect. His manly and courageous bearing during the prevalence
of the fever, and his undaunted coolness and fearlessness of death
in the midst of the late persecution, had won for him the admiration
of all the nobler spirits in the tribe. In December, 1637, he gave a
grand banquet, to which were invited the chiefs and warriors of the
country. He there addressed his assembled guests on the necessity of
embracing the true faith. In January of the next year, the head chief
of the Hurons, or Aondecho, as he was called, returned the compliment
by giving a similar banquet, to which Father Brébeuf was invited;
when he came to the banquet, the chief presented him to the assembly,
not as a guest, but as the host of the occasion, addressing them thus:

"Not I, but Echon, assembled you; the object of the deliberation I
know not; but be it what it may, it must, I am convinced, be of great
moment Let all then hearken attentively." The ever-ready and zealous
missionary then addressed the assembly on the same subject--the true
faith. He followed this up with another banquet in February, where
his address was followed by the evident but silent conviction of his
hearers. At its close, the Aondecho arose, and exhorted his warriors
and subjects to yield themselves to the counsels of the fathers. The
deep guttural expression of approval, ho! ho! ho! resounded on all
sides, and the grateful missionaries made their joyful thanksgiving
by chanting the hymn of the Holy Ghost. Then, with one acclaim, the
chiefs and warriors adopted Father Brébeuf into their tribe, and
created him one of the chiefs of the land--a dignity which invested
him with the power of summoning assemblies of the people in his own
cabin.

In the spring of 1638, the fever began to disappear from the country.
Now, too, the first Christian marriage was solemnized. The wife of
Joseph Chiwattenwha had been baptized in March, and the two were
united together in holy matrimony by Father Brébeuf on St. Joseph's
Day. Peter Tsiwendaentaha united with them in approaching the holy
communion.

The public duties of the mission occupied the entire time of Father
Brébeuf. The abandonment of Ihonitiria, in consequence of the recent
scourge, caused Fathers le Mercier, Ragueneau, Garnier, Jogues,
Pijart, and Chatelain to remove that mission to Teananstayaé, the
residence of Louis de Sainte Foi. But they felt great fears about
that place, since its chief had shortly before instigated the
warriors to canvass the murder of the missionaries at Ossossané.
But Father Brébeuf, with characteristic courage and zeal, went to
the village, and as a chief of the nation summoned a council of
the chiefs and warriors. The mission was formally announced on the
spot, and we shall soon see the fathers offering up the Holy Mass at
Teananstayaé. The year before, an Iroquois prisoner had received
baptism there from the hands of Father Brébeuf; and now nearly a
hundred prisoners, condemned to death, were instructed and baptized
by the missionaries on the eve of their execution. About this time
an entire tribe, the Wenrohronons, abandoned by their allies, the
Neutrals, came and threw themselves upon the hospitality of the
Hurons. They were wasting away from the effects of the recent
plague, and the fathers at Ossossané rushed to their relief. They
nursed their sick, instructed and baptized their dying, many of
whom expired with the waters of baptism fresh upon their brows.
The Hurons themselves were moved in favor of a religion capable of
producing such heroic examples; and on the 11th of November, St.
Martin's Day, one entire family, and the heads of two others, were
baptized in health. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, others
were converted and baptized, numbering in all thirty; so that at
Christmas there was assembled, around that rude but holy altar in the
wilderness, a sincere and fervent little congregation of Christians,
adoring and offering their gifts to the infant Saviour.

The missionaries were now distributed in sets of four, consisting
of three of the earlier and one of the recently arrived fathers, at
the various points through the country where missions were located.
Many new missions were opened, and the flying visits to villages
whose missions had been broken up by the persecution were renewed.
Among the new missions now opened was the one already alluded to
at Teananstayaé, or St. Joseph's, whose commencement on New Year's
Day was cheered with fifty baptisms. The indefatigable Brébeuf was
its founder, and with him were associated Father Jogues, whose
Indian name was Ondesson, and Father Ragueneau. The most perfect
system, both as regards the internal regulation of the affairs of
the mission-house and its inmates, and the external labors of the
fathers, was introduced by Father Brébeuf, which enabled them to
perform an almost incredible amount of missionary labor. Among the
natives, an aged chief named Ondehorrea, who was now a Christian, was
of great assistance to them in their labors. He had once repulsed the
fathers from his bed of illness, and, having called in the sorcerers,
he then rejected them, and recalled the fathers, who were at once
at his side. He was soon sufficiently instructed to be baptized,
and at the moment that the saving waters touched his forehead, he
arose suddenly in perfect health, to the amazement of all. He ever
afterwards showed his sincerity as a Christian, and his gratitude
to the fathers, by remaining their constant friend and faithful
assistant.

A curious affair now arose, which will convey to us some idea of
the trials with which those devoted missionaries had to contend. A
woman living in a little village near Ossossané, as she was passing
along one night, saw the moon fall upon her head, and immediately
change into a beautiful female, holding a child in her arms. The
apparition declared herself to be the sovereign of that country and
all the nations dwelling therein, and required that her sovereign
power should be acknowledged by each nation's making a present or
offering. The apparition designated the offering which each nation
should bring, not omitting the French, who were required to present
blue blankets. The woman was taken ill, and demanded that the order
of the divinity should be complied with for her recovery. A council
was accordingly held at Ossossané, to which the missionaries were
invited. They attended, and were bold enough to oppose so wicked a
homage to a false deity. But all was in vain, for the whole country
was in a ferment of excitement. The most abominable orgies known to
savage life were celebrated in honor of this new goddess, and men
were hurrying in all directions to procure the required presents.
Soon all the offerings were collected together, except the blue
blankets of the French, and the missionaries were called upon to
do homage in the manner required of them. They resolutely refused
compliance with such a requisition, and, as may be well imagined,
they immediately became the objects of general indignation. Amid
threats and imprecations, and the glare of the uplifted tomahawk,
those courageous priests refused to let a blanket go from their
cabin, except upon condition of the immediate cessation of all that
was going on, and the dismissal of the woman. These terms were
rejected, the orgies were continued, and peril surrounded the fathers
at every step; still they could not be induced to yield the points.
Fortunately for the missionaries, however, the apparition paid the
woman another visit, and released the French from the unholy tribute.

In September, 1639, new missionaries arrived. Unfortunately, an
Indian in one of the canoes of their flotilla was infected with the
small-pox, and that disease was thus introduced into the country.
The malady began to spread with fearful rapidity, and, as usual,
the origin of this evil, as of all others, was attributed to the
missionaries. Persecution was at once renewed, the cross was
violently dragged down from their houses, their cabins were invaded,
their crucifixes torn from their persons, one of them was cruelly
beaten, and all were threatened with death. So great was their peril
at one time that they calmly prepared themselves for martyrdom. They
were finally ordered peremptorily from the town. In the midst of
these persecutions, the heart of Father Brébeuf was consoled with
a vision: the Blessed Virgin, as the Mother of Sorrows, came to
console her son and to confirm his courage; she appeared to him with
her heart transfixed with swords. At once his resolution was taken;
he remained at his post of danger and of care, and continued his
missionary labors.

In consequence of these repeated persecutions, and the constant
exposure of the fathers to the renewal of them by the malice of the
medicine-men, it was determined to erect a missionary residence apart
from the villages and their vicious population, which might prove a
safe retreat for the fathers in time of trouble, and a convenient
place for instructing the catechumens and others well disposed to
receive the faith. During the years that Father Brébeuf was at
Ossossané, displaying the most heroic zeal and disinterested charity,
he had met with the blackest ingratitude from the persons whom he
had fed by depriving himself of nourishment, and on one occasion he
was ignominiously beaten in public. The other fathers had suffered
similar indignities and maltreatment. While glorying, like the
saints, in these sufferings for the sake of God and his church, he
yet saw the necessity, for the sake of the mission, of a separate
residence. It was this necessity that originated St. Mary's on the
river Wye.

In the various missions whose establishments we have mentioned,
there had been baptized up to the summer of 1640 about one thousand
persons: of these two hundred and sixty were infants, and though some
of them were restored to health, by means apparently miraculous, most
of them went in baptismal purity to swell the ranks of the church
triumphant in heaven. It was about this time that Father Brébeuf
ceased to be superior of the mission, and was succeeded by Father
Jerome Lalemant. The Jesuit, ever true to his institute, passed from
command to obedience with the gladness and alacrity known only to the
humble soldiers of the cross. His career as superior, arduous and
glorious, was also abundant in fruit to the church. He was indeed
the father of the Huron mission. Our eloquent Bancroft, in speaking
of his and his companions' labors to introduce Christianity among
the aborigines of our continent, says that St. Joseph's chapel,
wherein, "in the gaze of thronging crowds, vespers and matins began
to be chanted, and the sacred bread was consecrated by solemn Mass,
amazed the hereditary guardians of the council-fires of the Huron
tribes. Beautiful testimony of the equality of the human race! the
sacred wafer, emblem of the divinity in man, all that the church
offered to the princes and nobles of the European world, was shared
with the humblest of the savage neophytes. The hunter, as he returned
from his wild roamings, was taught to hope for eternal rest; the
braves, as they came from war, were warned of the wrath that kindles
against sinners a never-dying fire, fiercer far than the fires of the
Mohawks; and the idlers of the Indian villages were told the exciting
tale of the Saviour's death for their redemption."

Father Brébeuf, already the founder of so many missions, now starts
out with unabated ardor to open others. Accompanied by Father
Chaumonot, he advanced into the country of the Neutrals, naming the
first town he entered "All Saints." He pushed onward to the Niagara,
to the residence of Tsoharissen, the chief whom all the Neuter towns
obeyed. Hither the calumnies of some hostile Hurons had preceded
him, and represented Echon as the most terrible of sorcerers. The
two missionaries were repulsed on all sides, and in their retreat
from place to place were pursued by the arrows of their enemies.
Still they persevered, and they succeeded in visiting eighteen towns,
preached the Gospel in ten of them, and announced for the first time
the words of truth to at least three thousand souls. During these
labors, the keen eye of Brébeuf saw the importance to New France
of an occupation of the Niagara by missions and trading posts; the
travels of the missionaries would be greatly shortened, the warlike
Iroquois restrained, the Hurons saved from a war of extermination,
and the whole interior continent opened to European civilization
and the faith of Christ. The plan of Father Brébeuf received little
attention at court: a neglect which decided the fate of empires. We
cannot determine precisely how far Father Brébeuf advanced into the
country; only one town received the missionaries, which they called
St. Michael's. They, however, approached as far into the Iroquois
country as was possible; still Bancroft says it is uncertain that he
ever stood upon the territory of our republic.

But the hostile Hurons, not contented with the furious persecution
they had raised against the fathers in their own country, pursued
them into their new mission. Two Huron deputies soon arrived, and
proclaimed a tempting reward for such as would deliver the country
from those devoted men. While the council was engaged in debating
the question of his expulsion or death, Father Brébeuf was making
his examen of conscience in the cabin where he lodged, and suddenly
he beheld a fearful spectre: the figure held three darts, which were
successively hurled against him and his companion, but were averted
by an unseen hand. Presaging evil from the vision, the two fathers
made their confessions to each other, and, thus prepared to die, they
went to rest. They afterward learned from their post, who returned
to the cabin late at night, that the session of the council was long
and stormy; three times the young braves had insisted on butchering
them on the spot, but were restrained by the sachems. But now,
such was the state of the feeling aroused against them, that they
could not advance a step in safety. Turned from every shelter, and
encountering death at every step, they wandered as outcasts over the
country. Believing that their longer continuance was only calculated
to increase the savage hatred of the people against them, and retard
the introduction of the faith, the fathers retreated to the Neuter
town which they had named All Saints. Here they wintered and spent
the time in instructing the people. In the spring, they advanced
as far as Teotongniatou, or St. Williams, where a charitable woman
gave them a shelter. While thus lingering, Father Brébeuf arranged
his Huron dictionary to the Neuter dialect, in which he had made
considerable progress in four months. No sooner had the ameliorating
influences of spring rendered travelling just possible, even to
such travellers as those who had been accustomed for years to brave
every hardship, than Father Brébeuf and his companions started on
one of the most extraordinary journeys on record. Already spent with
fatigues and privations, and pursued by danger, Father Brébeuf had
to remain six days in the woods, sleeping on the snow, and without
a covering or shed over his head. The cold was so intense that the
trees themselves did split with a noise like the crack of a rifle. A
special Providence protected him, for he exhibited no evidence that
he had been cold or exposed. Loaded with the provisions which he was
compelled to carry, as there were no relays on the way, he travelled
two days across a lake of ice; and while thus struggling onward, his
heart and eyes lifted up to heaven, he fell upon the ice. His portly
frame gave such violence to his fall that he was unable to rise from
the ice. After a long time he was lifted up by one of his companions,
and then found that his extremities were palsied, and he could not
lift his feet from the ground. Besides, his collar-bone was broken.
He bore the last in silence, as it was not apparent. This fact was
only discovered two years later by the surgeon who attended him at
Quebec. In vain his companions begged the privilege of drawing him
the remaining thirty-six miles of the journey in a sled, and at
other times to assist him on the way; he declined all their generous
offers, and labored onward, scarcely able to drag one foot after the
other. It was thus he crossed the level country, and when he came
to the mountains, he crept up on his hands and feet, and allowed
himself to slide down on the opposite side, retarding his too rapid
descent with his bruised and aching hands. Thus he completed his
journey, which for love of suffering, patience, and humility compares
with some of the most heroic achievements recorded of the saints.
His companions went forward on other labors, but Father Brébeuf,
while waiting for the next flotilla bound for Quebec, determined to
take what he styled his "repose"--a repose busily spent in making
important arrangements for the missions, which his superior knowledge
of everything relating to them enabled him alone to effect.

On the passage to Three Rivers, Father Brébeuf was accompanied by
Sondatsaa, an exemplary catechumen, and a party chiefly Christians or
catechumens. They arrived at Three Rivers after a narrow escape from
the murderous blades of the Mohawks, who were lying in wait for them.
Finding it impossible for Fathers Ragueneau and Menard to reach their
missions in Huronia without a strong guard, Father Brébeuf proceeded
with Father Ragueneau and Sondatsaa to Sillery, in order to obtain
succor for them. Here, moved by the entreaties of all, and especially
of Sondatsaa himself, and having completed his instruction, Father
Brébeuf consented to baptize that zealous convert. The ceremony was
performed at Sillery, on the 27th of June, with great pomp, and in
the presence of a concourse of Indians. The Chevalier de Montmagny
was godfather to the convert, who received the Christian name of
Charles. He now returned, a Christian, to his own country, bearing in
his little flotilla the two fathers destined for the Huron mission.
While Father Brébeuf was dwelling at Sillery, the next flotilla of
Hurons that came bore its usual freight of calumnies against Echon.
They now accused him of being colleagued with the Iroquois for the
destruction of the Hurons. This renewal of calumny checked, for a
time, his success; but he continued his preparations and arrangements
for the Neuter mission and his endeavors to convert his persecutors
to the faith. He endeavored to persuade some of these Hurons to
remain and winter with him, in order to receive instructions. Two of
them, who were left behind in the chase, were induced to remain, and
Father Brébeuf, after the usual instruction and probation, had the
consolation of receiving these into the one fold of the One Shepherd.
He also succeeded in gaining a number of other Huron converts.
Father Nimont, struck with the happy results of his labors, resolved
to detain him another winter at Sillery. It was during this summer
that Father Jogues came to Sillery for supplies. Here these future
martyrs met in the prosecution of their noble labors; but soon the
unconquerable Brébeuf saw his saintly companion set forth on his
perilous mission over the country infested by the Iroquois, to carry
relief to the Huron missionaries. Himself was soon to follow.

In the spring of 1643, Father Brébeuf proceeded to Three Rivers,
where he was cheered by tidings of Father Jogues. That holy
missionary, in returning from Sillery to bring succor to his
companions in Huronia, had fallen a captive into the hands of the
fierce Iroquois, and his fate was the object of intense anxiety.
Father Brébeuf now learned that he was still living. The bold and
generous Brébeuf arranged with a Huron, who was going out, to wait
for letters to Father Jogues at Fort Richelieu; the father, bearing
the letters, penetrated as far as the fort, but the courage of the
Huron messenger failed; he had passed and was afraid to return, and
the Jesuit was compelled to retrace his steps without succeeding in
conveying a word of comfort and encouragement to his captive brother.
In the spring of 1644, Father Bressani also, in endeavoring to
reach Huronia, fell into the hands of the Iroquois. But the Huron
missionaries must be succored at every hazard, and Father Brébeuf was
now chosen for this perilous enterprise. Setting out in the summer,
with an escort of twenty soldiers given to him by the governor, he
reached the Huron missions in safety on the 7th of September. The
Huron mission had ever been the dearest object of Father Brébeuf's
heart. Restored now to his chosen vineyard, he devoted himself to
the task of converting those tribes with a zeal and an energy worthy
of his former glorious career. Year after year he continued his
heroic labors; and, though our pen cannot follow him, step by step,
through the trials, sacrifices, and exertions which his seraphic love
inspired him to encounter, they were recorded in minutest detail by
angelic pens in heaven. Success crowned the efforts of Father Brébeuf
and his companions. Persecution ceased, and the whole country was
becoming conquered to the faith. In August, 1646, Father Gabriel
Lalemant, full of zeal and courage, was joined with Father Brébeuf in
the mission of St. Ignatius, which embraced the town of St. Louis and
some smaller villages. By this time, the horrid superstitions of the
country had given way to the pure and holy rites of Catholic worship,
and the cross, so lately despised, feared, and hated, had now become
the object of love and veneration. Father Bressani writes: "The faith
had now made the conquest of the entire country." "We might say they
were now ripe for heaven; that naught was needed but the reaping-hook
of death to lay the harvest up in the safe garner-house of paradise."
"Religion seemed at last the peaceful mistress of the land."

Allusion has several times been made to the visions from on high
which were mercifully sent to warn Father Brébeuf of danger
impending, or to sustain him under the extraordinary afflictions,
persecutions, and sufferings which at times seemed to exceed even
his remarkable powers of endurance. Some of these have already been
described. To the Protestant and non-Catholic mind, these miraculous
communications to the saints are but the imaginings of morbid and
diseased intellects. Parkman, in his _Jesuits in North America_,
relates the following visions of Father Brébeuf only to classify them
as psychological phenomena: "It is," he says, "scarcely necessary to
add that signs and voices from another world, visitations from hell
and visions from heaven, were incidents of no rare occurrence in the
lives of these ardent apostles. To Brébeuf, whose deep nature, like a
furnace white-hot, glowed with the still intensity of his enthusiasm,
they were especially frequent. Demons, in troops, appeared before
him, sometimes in the guise of men, sometimes as bears, wolves, or
wild-cats. He called on God, and the apparitions vanished. Death,
like a skeleton, sometimes menaced him; and once, as he faced it with
an unquailing eye, it fell powerless at his feet. A demon, in the
form of a woman, assailed him with the temptation which beset St.
Benedict among the rocks of Subiaco; but Brébeuf signed the cross,
and the infernal siren melted into air. He saw the vision of a vast
and gorgeous palace, and a miraculous voice assured him that such was
to be the reward of those who dwelt in savage hovels for the cause of
God. Angels appeared to him, and more than once St. Joseph and the
Virgin were visibly present before his sight. Once, when he was among
the Neutral nation, in the winter of 1640, he beheld the ominous
apparition of a great cross slowly approaching from the quarter
where lay the country of the Iroquois. He told the vision to his
companions.

"'What was it like? how large was it?' they eagerly demanded.

"'Large enough,' replied the priest, 'to crucify us all.'

"To explain such phenomena is the province of psychology and not of
history. Their occurrence is no matter of surprise, and it would be
superfluous to doubt that they were recounted in good faith and with
a full belief in their reality. In these enthusiasts we find striking
examples of one of the morbid forces of human nature; yet, in
candor, let us do honor to what was genuine in them--that principle
of self-abnegation which is the life of true religion, and which is
vital no less to the highest forms of heroism."

Bancroft, alluding to the same subject, and to the life, austerities,
and self-sacrifice of Father Brébeuf, says: "The missionaries
themselves possessed the weaknesses and the virtues of their order.
For fifteen years enduring the infinite labors and perils of the
Huron mission, and exhibiting, as it was said, 'an absolute pattern
of every religious virtue,' Jean de Brébeuf, respecting even the
nod of his distant superiors, bowed his mind and his judgment to
obedience. Besides the assiduous fatigues of his office, each day,
and sometimes twice in the day, he applied to himself the lash;
beneath a bristling hair-shirt he wore an iron girdle, armed on
all sides with projecting points; his fasts were frequent; almost
always his pious vigils continued deep into the night. In vain did
Asmodeus assume for him the forms of earthly beauty; his eye rested
benignantly on visions of divine things. Once, imparadised in a
trance, he beheld the Mother of him whose cross he bore, surrounded
by a crowd of virgins, in the beatitudes of heaven. Once, as he
himself has recorded, while engaged in penance, he saw Christ unfold
his arms to embrace him with the utmost love, promising oblivion of
his sins. Once, late at night, while praying in the silence, he had a
vision of an infinite number of crosses, and, with mighty heart, he
strove, again and again, to grasp them all. Often he saw the shapes
of foul fiends, now appearing as madmen, now as raging beasts; and
often he beheld the image of death, a bloodless form, by the side of
the stake, struggling with bonds, and at last falling, as a harmless
spectre, at his feet. Having vowed to seek out suffering for the
greater glory of God, he renewed that vow every day, at the moment
of tasting the sacred wafer; and as his cupidity for martyrdom grew
into a passion, he exclaimed, 'What shall I render to thee, Jesus my
Lord, for all thy benefits? I will accept thy cup, and invoke thy
name: and in sight of the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, of the
most holy Mother of Christ and St. Joseph, before angels, apostles,
and martyrs, before St. Ignatius and Francis Xavier, he made a vow
never to decline an opportunity of martyrdom, and never to receive
the death-blow but with joy."

In the eye of Catholic faith, these visions and special revelations
are but the fruits and blessings of a revealed and supernatural
religion. While they do not fall to the lot of us ordinary
Christians, nor are they necessary helps in the little we accomplish
for God and his church, it is difficult to conceive how the saints
and martyrs could have performed their sublime actions, or met their
cruel and unjust deaths for God's sake with a smile--sacrifices
so far above and even repugnant to our nature--without the aid of
these supernatural supports. The dedication of himself to martyrdom,
and the heroic courage and joy with which he met his appalling
fate, could only be achieved in the bosom of a church believing in
miracles, and presenting to her children the crown of martyrdom
as the highest reward attainable by man. The visions of Father
Brébeuf, like other miracles, depend wholly upon the evidence and
circumstances by which they are supported to entitle them to belief.
It was not his habit to disclose them; it was only when commanded by
his superiors that he committed them to writing. They thus rest upon
his solemn written words, and upon their perfect agreement in many
instances with contemporaneous facts transpiring beyond his sight and
knowledge. To suppose him to have been deluded would be to contradict
every quality of mind and character so universally attributed to him
by all Protestant historians.

Father Brébeuf's aspirations for the crown of martyrdom were
prophetic of his appointed and glorious end. But to him all
historians have attributed the most practical views in relation
to the Indian missions, and the coolest and wisest manner of
dealing with them. There was no mere sentimentality in his nature.
He addressed his powerful energies and resources to the actual
conversion of the Indians to Christianity, and we have seen how great
were the results he achieved. But now, alas! a dark cloud was seen
gathering over the happy Christian republic of the Hurons. Already,
during the winter of 1649, the fierce Iroquois hordes, numbering
upwards of one thousand, had secretly passed over a space of six
hundred miles of Huron forests, and on the sixteenth of March they
appeared suddenly before the town of St. Ignatius, while the chiefs
and warriors were absent on the chase, and the old men, women, and
children were buried in sleep. Strongly as the place was fortified,
this overwhelming force carried it by storm, and murdered its
unsuspecting inhabitants. Three only escaped, half-naked, from the
slaughter, and gave the alarm to the village of St. Louis, where
the fathers were then laboring. Here preparations were at once made
to offer a gallant but unequal resistance. The women and children
were sent over forty miles of ice and snow to seek a shelter in
the cabins of the Petuns. The chiefs exhorted the fathers also
to fly, since they could not go to the war. But Father Brébeuf,
with all the heroism of his great soul, answered that there was
something more necessary than fire and steel in such a crisis; it
was to have recourse to God and the sacraments, which none could
administer but they--that he and his companion, the gentle Lalemant,
would abandon them only in death. The two fathers, says Father
Bressani, "now hurried from place to place, exhorting all to prayer,
administering the sacraments of penance and baptism to the sick and
the catechumens, in a word, confirming all in our holy faith. The
enemy in fact remained at the first fork only long enough to provide
for the safe keeping of the prisoners and the safety of those left
as a garrison to guard them. After this they marched, or rather
rushed, directly upon St. Louis. Here none were now left but the old
and sick, the missionaries, and about a hundred braves to defend
the place. They held out for some time, and even repulsed the enemy
at the first assault, with the loss of about thirty killed, but the
number of the assailants being incomparably greater, they overcame
all resistance, and, cutting down with their axes the palisades which
defended the besieged, were soon in possession of the town. Then
putting all to fire and steel, they consumed in their very town, in
their very cabins, all the old, sick, and infirm who had been unable
to save themselves by flight."

What contrasts the events of history present! While this relentless
slaughter was at its height, and the worst passions of the fiercest
of heathens were let loose, the scene of blood, fire, and death
was relieved by the presence of Christian heroes the most gentle,
merciful, and self-sacrificing. They stood in the breach to the last
stroke of the enemy, encouraging the dying Christians to fortitude
and hope, the wounded to patience, and the prisoners to courage
and perseverance in the faith. The palisades of St. Louis finally
were cut away. The infuriate Iroquois swept in, and the whole
surviving garrison, warriors and priests, were all made prisoners
together. The savages rejoiced especially at the capture of such a
prisoner as Father Brébeuf, whom they immediately showed signs of
torturing, when a generous Oneida chief, more magnanimous than the
rest, purchased him from his captors for a large price in wampum. It
seemed as though he was about to be deprived of his coveted crown;
but no! the victors retracted their bargain, and Father Brébeuf was
again seized by his enemies. He and Father Lalemant were stripped,
bound fast, and cruelly beaten, and their nails were torn out. But
lest some change in the tide of war should deprive them of their
prisoners, the latter were all sent, closely bound and tightly
secured, to St. Ignatius. Here, as they entered the town, they were
beaten and bruised by the rabble with sticks and clubs. The large
and conspicuous frame of Father Brébeuf attracted a double share of
blows on his already bruised and lacerated head and body. In the
midst of these cruelties, he was forgetful of himself, and anxious
only that his Christian Hurons, who were now his fellow-prisoners,
should be encouraged and consoled in their extreme danger. From the
stake to which he had been tied, beholding them assembled for the
torture, he lost sight completely of his own greater calamities and
sufferings, and thus he addressed them: "My children, let us lift up
our eyes to heaven in the worst of our torments; let us remember that
God beholdeth all we suffer, and will soon be our reward exceeding
great. Let us die in this faith, and hope from his goodness the
accomplishment of his promises. I pity you more than myself, but
support manfully the little torment that yet remains. It will end
with our lives; the glory which follows will have no end." How great
must have been his consolation when he heard their heroic answer, a
convincing proof that Indians may be truly converted to Christianity,
and possess the constancy to die in the faith. "'Tis well, Echon,"
they cried, "our souls will be in heaven, while our bodies suffer
on earth; entreat God to show us mercy; we shall invoke him to our
latest breath." Enraged at his exhortations and unflinching zeal,
even in death, some Hurons adopted by the Iroquois rushed upon him
and burned his flesh with a fire which they kindled near him, they
cut off his hands, and while Father Lalemant's flesh was cut and
punctured with awls and other sharp instruments, and hot irons placed
under his armpits, they led him forth to torture and death before the
eyes of Father Brébeuf, in order to add to the agonies of the latter.
As Father Brébeuf continued to speak and to exhort his Christians,
and to threaten the vengeance of heaven upon their persecutors,
they cut off his lower lip and nose, and thrust a red-hot iron down
his throat. Even after this, when he saw his superior, the gentle
Lalemant, led out to death, he called out to him with a broken voice
in the words of St. Paul, "We are made a spectacle to the world,
to angels, and to men." Throwing himself at Father Brébeuf's feet,
Father Lalemant was ruthlessly torn away, and in a few moments he
was enveloped in flames at the stake, and his gentle soul preceded
that of the intrepid Brébeuf to heaven. Turning next upon Father
Brébeuf, they threw a collar of red-hot axes around his neck, which
seethed and burned their way into his flesh; he stood, in the midst
of such agonies, erect and motionless, apparently insensible to pain,
intent only on vindicating the faith he had so long and faithfully
announced. His tormentors were awed by his constancy, which seemed to
them a proof that he was more than man. But they again taxed their
ingenuity for new tortures. An apostate Huron, who had been a convert
of Father Brébeuf in the Huron mission, and had since been adopted by
the Iroquois, was the first to signalize the zeal of the renegade. He
proposed to pour hot water on the head of Father Brébeuf, in return
for the quantities of cold water he had poured on the heads of others
in baptism. The suggestion was received with fiendish joy, and soon
the kettle was swung. While the water was boiling, they added fresh
cruelties to their victim's sufferings. They crushed his mouth and
jaw with huge stones, thrust heated iron and stones into his wounds,
and with his own eyes he beheld them devour the slices of flesh which
they cut from his legs and arms. Let us not cut short the appalling
story; for surely, what a martyr bore a Christian may have courage
to Three.'and bringing the scalding water from the caldron, they
poured it over his bruised head and lacerated body amidst shouts and
imprecations, and, as they did so, the high-priests of the occasion
mockingly said to him: "We baptize you that you may be happy in
heaven; for nobody can be saved without a good baptism." By this time
Father Brébeuf's mouth and tongue could no longer articulate, but
even yet by his erect posture, the struggling and brave expression
of his almost expiring eye, and even by his half-formed words, he
encouraged the Christian captives to perseverance, and endeavored
to deter the savages from torturing them by threats of heaven's
vengeance. Again cutting slices from his body and devouring them
before his eyes, they told him that his flesh was good. Some of the
renegade Hurons, more fiendish than even the Iroquois, again mocked
him by saying: "You told us that the more one suffers on earth, the
happier he is in heaven. We wish to make you happy; we torment you,
because we love you; and you ought to thank us for it." They next
scalped him, and even after this they poured the boiling water over
his head, repeating the torture three times; they cut off his feet,
and splitting open his stalworth and generous chest, they crowded
around and drank with exultation the warm blood of the expiring hero.
His eye, firm and expressive to the last, was now dimmed in death,
and at last a chief tore out his noble and brave heart, cut it into
a thousand pieces, and distributed it to the savage cannibals that
crowded around to receive a share of so exalted and unconquerable
a victim. Thus perished of earth, while crowned of heaven, the
illustrious Brébeuf, "the founder of the Huron mission--its truest
hero, its greatest martyr."

The Iroquois, now glutted with carnage, and apprehensive of the
approach of a superior force, retired to their own country. The
fathers from St. Mary's came to St. Ignatius to bestow the last
honors upon the earthly remains of their martyred companions. It
was with difficulty they discovered their burned and mangled bodies
among the mass of slain the victorious Iroquois had left. Their
precious remains were solemnly and sorrowfully carried to St. Mary's,
and affectionately and religiously interred. A portion of Father
Brébeuf's relics were subsequently carried to Quebec. A silver bust,
containing the head of the martyr, was presented by his family to the
Canadian mission, and is still reverently preserved by the convent of
hospital nuns in that city. So great was his reputation for sanctity
that it became a familiar and pious practice in Canada to invoke his
intercession. There are well-attested cases recorded of the wonderful
intervention of heaven in favor of those who invoked his aid as a
saint in heaven.

Among the many virtues which adorned the life and character of
Father Brébeuf may be particularly mentioned his ardent love of
holy poverty and suffering, his purity of soul, his singleness of
purpose, his profound obedience and humility, his zeal and courage,
his love of prayer and penitential austerities, and his generous
longing for the salvation of souls. "The character of Brébeuf,"
says Bancroft, "was firm beyond every trial: his virtue had been
nursed in the familiar sight of death. Disciplined by twenty years'
service in the wilderness work, he wept bitterly for the sufferings
of his converts, but for himself he exulted in the prospect of
martyrdom." "Thus," writes Mr. J. G. Shea in his _History of the
Catholic Missions_, "about four o'clock in the afternoon, after
three hours of frightful torture, expired John de Brébeuf, the real
founder of the [Huron] mission, a man such as the Catholic Church
alone can produce; as a missionary, unequalled for his zeal, ability,
untiring exertion, and steady perseverance; as a servant of God,
one whose virtues the Rota would pronounce heroic; patient in toil,
hardship, suffering, and privation; a man of prayer, of deep and
tender piety, of inflamed love of God, in whom and for whom he did
and suffered all; as a martyr, one of the most glorious in our annals
for the variety and atrocity of his torments." "He came of a noble
race," says Parkman, "the same, it is said, from which sprang the
English Earls of Arundel; but never had the mailed barons of his line
confronted a fate so appalling with so prodigious a constancy. To the
last he refused to flinch, and his death was the astonishment of his
murderers."

Praise has become exhausted on such a subject. Would that we might
hope for some national good from the sublime lesson he has taught us!
The red men are our brothers. The most precious blood of a God-man
was poured out for them as for us; and God's martyrs have joyfully
given their noble lives for their salvation. Might not a Christian
nation, in its power and goodness, yea, in its justice, save at
least the poor remnant of them from further slaughter; and say to
the ever-ready and zealous missionaries of the Catholic Church: "Go,
christianize and save our brothers; we will not slay them more; there
is land enough for us and for them; we confide them to your heroic
charity. We will protect you and them in the peace and good-will of
the Gospel. Go, save our brothers"?




THE ANCIENT LAWS OF IRELAND.


Next to written and well-authenticated historical annals, the
clearest insight that can be afforded us of the civilization, polity,
and social condition of the nations of antiquity is derived from
the study of ancient laws and customs, when their authenticity is
guaranteed by existing contemporary authorities, and they bear in
themselves the intrinsic evidence of adaptability to time, place,
and circumstance, so easily recognized by the antiquarian and the
philologist. Were it possible to conceive the total destruction
of this republic with all its material monuments and historical
literature, nothing being left for posterity but our books of law,
the philosophical student a thousand years hence would be able to
form a pretty correct and comprehensive idea of the state of society
at present existing and of the nature of the institutions under
which we have the good fortune to live. From the large number of
statutes regulating the intercourse of man and man, he would deduce
the fact that we were a commercial and ingenious people; from our
laws relating to real estate, he would necessarily argue that its
ownership was general and its transmission from one to another a
matter of everyday occurrence; and from the few restrictions imposed
on its possession or sale, that the facilities for its acquisition
were comparatively easy and unrestricted; while from the care that
has been taken by our national and local legislatures to guard the
life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizen, he would naturally
conclude that our right to the enjoyment of these inalienable rights
formed the corner-stone of the edifice of our government.

In the same manner, we of this century, looking back to a country so
old as Ireland, one of the most antique of the family of European
nations, by examining the laws framed in the early days of her
dawning civilization, can picture to ourselves, even without the aid
of history, the genius of her inhabitants, and form comparatively
accurate opinions of how much or how little intelligence and natural
sense of justice and the "eternal fitness of things" were exhibited
by them in their efforts to regulate and organize society. Strange
to say, we are partly indebted for this opportunity to the English
government, never very generous in its patronage of Irish interests,
though of course the principal credit is due to that noble band of
Irish scholars, formerly headed by the late lamented O'Curry, Petrie,
and O'Donovan, who by their antiquarian lore, profound knowledge of
their vernacular, and untiring industry, have reconstructed from
the scattered and almost illegible manuscripts deposited in various
libraries the body of the laws of ancient Ireland, and have presented
them to the world in the language in which they were originally
written, with the elaborate glosses of after-years, accompanied by
an accurate English translation. This long-desired work bears the
appropriate and principal title of _Senchus Mor_, or great law, and
contains all the laws that were enforced in Ireland from the fifth
to the seventeenth centuries, if we except a small portion of
the island which was occupied by the Anglo-Norman colony from the
invasion till the reign of James I. That it was admirably adapted
to the wants and dispositions of the people, we can judge by the
affection and tenacity with which the natives so long clung to it, in
despite of all the efforts of the invaders to induce them by force or
fraud to adopt that of the conquerors, and that it was more liberal
and equitable than the harsh restrictions of the feudal system is
proved from the alacrity of the Anglo-Norman lords who resided
without the "pale" in conforming to it in preference to their own
enactments.

Like most of her other blessings, Ireland owed the possession of this
excellent and merciful code to the Catholic Church, for it was in the
eighth or ninth year of the ministration of her great apostle and at
his instance that it was framed as we at present find it, purified
from all the grossness of paganism, and freed from the uncertainty
and doubt which always attach to mere tradition. Up to his time,
law in Ireland had been administered at the discretion of Brehons
or judges, and, being preserved only in the poems of the bards and
_ollamhs_ (professors), was deficient in those essential qualities
of all human legislation, exactness and uniformity. That there were
learned and wise lawgivers in Ireland before the introduction of
Christianity, we know from history and from the introduction to and
the text of the _Senchus_ itself, in which frequent mention is made
of decisions and writings, but they were necessarily the exponents
of that limited sense of justice which the human mind, unaided by
religion, is capable of comprehending. The propagation of the faith
in Europe created a complete and permanent revolution in the laws of
each country successively visited with the light of the gospel, and
while the darkness of paganism vanished before it, the municipal laws
which upheld idolatry were either totally abrogated or modified so as
to conform, as much as possible, to the benign spirit of the church.
The immediate occasion of the revision of the Irish laws is stated to
have been the deliberate murder of one of St. Patrick's servants by a
relative of the reigning sovereign, but the real cause, no doubt, was
the desire of the saint to root out of the judicature of the people
all traces of paganism as effectually as he had erased it from their
hearts.

Accordingly, by virtue of his high office, he summoned a convention
of the learned men of the country, a few years after his arrival, and
proceeded to execute his important reforms. His principal assistants,
we are informed, were Laeghaire, monarch of all Ireland, Corc, and
Dairi, two subordinate kings, whom we may suppose represented the
temporal authority of the nation, and without whose countenance
and support it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to
enforce the new code; Rossa, Dubhtach, and Fergus, those poets and
professors whose duty it had been to preserve and perpetuate the
legal traditions of their race and the decisions of the Brehons;
and two ecclesiastics, Saints Benen and Cairnech. The former of
these bishops, afterward known by the name of Benignus, was one
of St. Patrick's earliest and favorite converts, and eventually
his successor in the primatial see of Armagh, and the latter, a
Briton from Wales, was remarkable alike for his piety and extensive
learning. Thus sustained by the civil arm, and assisted by the advice
and knowledge of men well versed in the common and canon law, the
saint, in addition to his other apostolic labors, succeeded in
leaving to the people he loved so well a harmonious and Christian
code, the spirit of which, like that of all his teachings, sank
deep in the popular heart, and defied the efforts of time and the
ruthlessness of man to eradicate it.

While this code remained the rule of guidance for the mass of the
people, it was sacredly preserved by the Brehons, who, though not
empowered to alter it in any respect, added elaborate commentaries
explanatory of its general or obscure provisions; but when the
country was divided into counties by the conquerors, and their system
took the place of the national one, the manuscripts of the ancient
laws were scattered through the country, in England and on the
Continent, whither they were brought by the exiles.

As early as 1783, Edmund Burke, ever mindful of the fame of his
native country, suggested the propriety of collecting and publishing
in English or Latin those remarkable remnants of former greatness
and wisdom, but it was not till the year 1852 that the English
government, at the repeated solicitation of several distinguished
and influential Irish gentlemen, consented to lend its aid to the
great work, which from its very magnitude was beyond the ability of
any individual or voluntary association to accomplish. In that year,
at the special instance of Doctors Todd and Greaves, both eminent
Protestant clergymen, a commission was issued appointing them and
several other well-known scholars "to direct, superintend, and carry
into effect the transcription and translation of the ancient laws
of Ireland, and the preparation of the same for publication," etc.,
with power to employ proper persons to execute the work. The persons
selected by the commissioners were Dr. O'Donovan and Professor
O'Curry, both thoroughly qualified to perform so momentous and
laborious a labor, and whose conscientious discharge of the duties
so assigned them ended only at their much lamented deaths. With the
patience and zeal of true antiquarians, they set about transcribing
the various MSS. relating to the old laws, deciphering the
half-obliterated characters of the earlier centuries, and rendering
the peculiar phraseology of the Gaelic into modern English. They were
succeeded by W. N. Hancock, LL.D., professor of jurisprudence in
Queen's College, Belfast, and the Rev. Thaddeus O'Mahony, professor
of Irish in the Dublin University, under whose auspices the two
volumes already in print were prepared for publication, having first
received the sanction and approval of the commission. With such
endorsement, we do not wonder that, speaking of the authenticity of
the _Senchus Mor_, O'Curry should have said in one of his admirable
lectures on Irish history, "I believe it will show that the recorded
account of this great revision of the body of the laws of Erin is as
fully entitled to confidence as any other well-authenticated fact in
ancient history."

The principal materials used by the distinguished translators are
thus described in the preface to the first volume:

    "I. A comparatively full copy among the manuscripts of
    Trinity College, Dublin. H. 3, 17.

    "II. An extensive fragment of the first part, 432, of
    the Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum.

    "III. A large fragment of the latter part among the
    manuscripts of Trinity College, Dublin, H. 2, 15.

    "IV. A fragment among the manuscripts of Trinity
    College, Dublin, H. 3, 18."

Of the capacity of the gentlemen above-mentioned to faithfully
transcribe and translate these valuable relics of past legislation
there can be no doubt, nor of the genuineness and authenticity of the
records themselves. They are not, of course, the originals as written
in the fifth century, but are accurate copies, as far as they have
been saved from destruction, made centuries ago by the Brehons and
_ollamhs_, and handed down by them from father to son, for the Brehon
order was hereditary, and from generation to generation, until the
beginning of the seventeenth century. Besides this, by their peculiar
wording and reference to contemporaneous events and opinions, they
bear the undoubted impress of great antiquity, and of having been
intended for the government of a primitive people, who had little or
no intercourse with the outside world. We have thus before us for the
first time a complete body of written fundamental laws, collected
and perfected over fourteen hundred years ago by a segregated and
peculiar race, occupying a remote part of Europe, the only part,
in fact, of the civilized portion of that continent that never
echoed to the tread of a Roman soldier, or bowed before the edicts
of an imperial Cæsar. In reading over the laws of that unique and
ancient people, so unlike all we know of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon
jurisprudence, we find, not without some regret, we must confess,
that the halo of exalted virtue and unsullied purity with which the
poetic fancy of subsequent historians and poets led them to surround
their pagan ancestors, vanishes like the mists of a summer morning,
but we discover also that the epithets, barbarous, ignorant, and
unlettered, so freely bestowed on them by the venal scribes of the
dominant race, rest on no foundation whatever save on the malice
or deficiency of knowledge of the Anglo-Norman authors. In truth,
the Irish of the pagan era seem to have had nearly all the virtues
and failings of their posterity of to-day, the former being brought
more actively into play under the influence of Christianity, and the
latter repressed by the unlimited authority of the Catholic Church
and the judicious regulations of the _Senchus_.

We find this more particularly the case in studying the laws
regulating the domestic relations of the family, which, being the
unit of which society is but an aggregate, is the most vital and
important part of all human enactments. Ample provision is made for
the mutual protection of husband and wife, and the reciprocal rights
and duties of parent and child are clearly and minutely defined;
but we observe with regret that much of this portion of the code
is occupied with provisions for the distribution of property on
the disagreement or separation of married people, and for other
domestic infelicities of a more criminal nature. The prohibition of
an offence in a statute does not necessarily imply the frequency of
the commission of the crime itself; but so much pains are taken to
point out the rights and disabilities of persons cohabiting without
the sanction of lawful wedlock that the conviction is forced upon us
that they were not by any means unnecessary. As an offset to this,
however, we find that a lawful wife was treated with the greatest
indulgence, being in many ways the equal of her husband, and in this
respect the _Senchus_ presents a marked contrast to all the other
European legislation of that time, by which woman was held little
better than a slave, and generally at the mercy of her father
or husband, even in some instances to the taking of her life. We
feel certain that our strong-minded sisterhood who are so manfully
battling for social and political equality will be gratified to learn
that a portion of their principles, at least, were fully recognized
fourteen centuries ago, and for their edification we quote the
following passage from the expressed wisdom of our ancestors:

    "In the connection of equal property, if with equal
    land and cattle and household stuff, and if their
    marriage state be equally free and lawful, the wife
    in this case is called the wife of equal rank. The
    contract made by either party is not a lawful contract
    without the consent of the other, except in cases of
    contracts tending equally to the welfare of both; such
    as the alliance of co-tillage with a lawful tribe when
    they (the couple) have not the means themselves of
    doing the work of ploughing; the taking of land; the
    collection of food; the gathering for the festivals;
    the buying of breeding-cattle; the collecting of
    house-furniture; the collecting of litters of pigs; the
    buying of stacks and other necessaries.... Each of the
    two parties has the power to give refection and feast
    according to their respective dignity."

In case of separation, adequate protection was thrown around the
wife's rights of property. If her property were equal to that of
her husband at the time of marriage, she took an equal moiety of
the collective lands, goods, and chattels, and, in case of dairy
produce and the proceeds of the loom, two-thirds. If the property
had originally belonged wholly to the husband, the wife was entitled
to one-third on her separation, and if it had been her own before
marriage, to two-thirds. Whether these provisions extended to their
mutual claims after death, we are not informed by the glossators,
but it is not improbable that they were, thus creating estates not
unlike the more modern _dower_ and _courtesy_ of the English law.
This equality of married persons was still further extended in the
right of each to the disposal or guardianship of their offspring,
and in their authority to demand in return the assistance of their
children in poverty or decrepitude.

The relations between parent and child were the subjects of careful
and minute legislation. The father was obliged to see that his
daughter was educated in a manner becoming her rank, and, when at
a marriageable age, to procure her a husband of suitable means
and family. In return, she was to give him one-third of her first
marriage gift (_coibhche_), and a certain proportion of other
gifts received after her nuptials. Should the father be dead, his
son, succeeding him as heir, was also obliged to assume the same
responsibility, and received from his sister a proper equivalent at
her marriage. The mother's duty to her son was similar to that of
the father to his daughter, he being required to assist her in her
poverty or old age, and in conjunction with the daughter to provide,
if necessary, for both his parents, an obligation imposed even on
grandchildren. That the father should especially have care of the
daughter and the mother of the son is something very contrary to the
modern ideas of domestic discipline, but it doubtless, in a primitive
state of society, had the advantage of equalizing the stronger and
weaker elements of the family, giving to the woman the benefit of
manly protection, and to the rougher masculine nature a gentler and
more humanizing influence.

Fosterage, though not unknown in other countries, was so general
in ancient and mediæval Ireland as to give it a character almost
peculiar to that island.

It is known to have been of very ancient origin, and to have
originated in the natural relations that existed between the sept
or tribe and its chief, which was one of mutual rights and duties;
for, observes the _Senchus_, "every head defends its members, if it
be a goodly head, of good deeds, of good morals, exempt, affluent,
capable. The body of every head is his tribe, for there is no body
without a head. The head of every tribe, according to the people,
should be the man of the tribe who is most experienced, the most
noble, the most wealthy, the wisest, the most learned, the most
truly popular, the most powerful to oppose, the most steadfast to
sue for profits and be sued for losses." It will thus be easily
understood, particularly by the citizens of a republic, that the
authority of a chief, thus qualified, depended to a great extent
on the affection and good-will of his constituents; and, in order
to create more close relations between himself and them, it was
customary for him to send his children at an early age to be nursed
and trained by some family of his sept. The children thus placed
under tutelage were regarded with equal, if not greater, affection
by the foster-parents than their own. The existence of this custom
may still be traced in Ireland, and well-authenticated instances
of the most self-sacrificing devotion on the part of the natural
child of the foster-parent to his foster-brother or sister form the
theme of many of our best Irish stories and historical romances. The
foster-parent for the time being stood in the place of the actual
parent, and was obliged to feed, clothe, and educate the foster-child
for a certain number of years, males till they had attained the age
of seventeen, and females fourteen years, and the children were
expected in return to compensate, succor, and in some cases support
their foster-parents, as if they were their actual progenitors.

The statutes regulating fosterage occupy a large portion of the
_Senchus_, so far as published, and affords us a fuller and more
accurate knowledge of the social habits and condition of the Gaelic
people in and before the fifth century than any other portion of
the collection, or even all the histories of Ireland extant which
profess to treat of that remote epoch. Fosterage, we are told, was
of two sorts, for affection and compensation. When the latter, the
fosterage price was regulated according to the rank of the chief, and
varied from three cows in the case of the son of an _Og-Aire_, or
lowest chief, to thirty cows for the son of a king. The services to
be rendered for their payments, being food, raiment, and education,
were proportioned to the amount, and seem to have been the subject
of much elaborate legislation, not easily reconcilable to our modern
notions. For instance, in the matter of food, Dr. O'Donovan renders a
very ancient commentary on the first clause of the law of fosterage
as follows:

    "What are their victuals? They are all fed on
    stirabout; but the materials of which it is made,
    and the flavoring with it, vary according to the
    rank of the parents of the children. The children of
    the inferior grades are fed to bare sufficiency on
    stirabout made of oatmeal on buttermilk or water, and
    it is taken with stale (salt) butter. The sons of the
    chieftain grades are fed to satiety on stirabout made
    of barley-meal upon new milk, taken with fresh butter.
    The sons of kings are fed on stirabout made of wheaten
    meal upon new milk, taken with honey."

According to one authority, every foster-child should be provided
with two suits of clothing, in color and quality according to the
rank of his father--blay, yellow, black, and white colored clothes
for the inferior grades, red, green, and brown for the sons of
chieftains, and purple and blue for princes. According to another,
the distinction of rank was indicated in the following manner:

    "Satin and scarlet are for the son of the king of Erin,
    and silver on his scabbards, and brass rings on his
    hurling-sticks; and tin upon the scabbards of the sons
    of chieftains of the lower rank, and brass rings upon
    their hurling sticks.... And brooches of gold having
    crystal inserted in them with the sons of the king of
    Erin and of the king of a province, and brooches of
    silver with the sons of the king of a territory."

The course of instruction to be pursued by the foster-children was
likewise regulated by the degree of the dignity of their parents.
The sons of the "lower classes" were to be employed in "the herding
of lambs, and calves, and kids, and pigs, and kiln-drying and
combing, and wood-cutting," while the girls were expected to learn
the use of the _quern_, or hand-mill for grinding grain, the useful
household art of making bread, and winnowing corn, etc.; the young
chieftains were to be taught horsemanship, shooting, swimming,
and chess-playing, and their sisters, sewing, cutting-out, and
embroidery. We have thus placed before us in all its simplicity,
and upon the best authority, the modes of living prescribed for the
youth of both sexes in Ireland at the time of its conversion to
Christianity--a record valuable to the historian and the antiquarian,
dissipating alike the poetic imaginings of too partial Celtic
chroniclers and the voluntary misrepresentations of the Anglo-Norman
writers. It may be objected that such limited views of education
argued little for the civilization of the race who entertained them;
but when we recall the condition of Western Europe at the time the
_Senchus_ was composed, we may well be surprised at the sound sense
and practical wisdom so often found in its pages. Nor must it be
supposed that the labors of the child ended with the performance of
the tasks thus assigned him. There existed another and correlative
species of tutelage called literary fosterage, which is thus defined
in the "law of social connections":

    "The social connection that is considered between the
    foster-pupil and the literary foster-father is, that
    the latter is to instruct him without reserve, and
    to prepare him for his degree, and to chastise him
    without severity, and to feed and clothe him while he
    is learning his profession, unless he obtains it from
    another person, and from the school of Fenius Forsaidh
    onward this custom prevails; and the foster-pupil is to
    assist his tutor in poverty and to assist him in his
    old age, and the honor price of the degree for which he
    prepares him and all the gains of his art while he is
    learning it, and the first earnings of his art after
    leaving the house of his tutor, are to be given to the
    tutor."

In addition to this excellent and equitable plan of intellectual
culture, we also find in the law of tenures that the sons of tenants
holding church lands were entitled to receive instruction from the
holders of the benefices, which, we may presume, were not necessarily
altogether of a spiritual nature. We thus find that fosterage
constituted one of the most important elements of society, and,
though much condemned by subsequent and partial writers, contained
within itself most of the duties and responsibilities which we now
divide among corporations and individuals under different names.
The importance which ancient Irish lawgivers seemed to attach to
this crude but not altogether unsuccessful attempt to define the
relations of parent and child, employer and employed, master and
scholar--questions still raised in this enlightened age--is shown
in the number of the statutory enactments originally made, and the
elaborate and critical glosses afterward appended to them, the whole
not unworthy the notice of the modern legislator.

The land tenure has always been a subject of doubt and difficulty
in Ireland, and the laws of the _Senchus_ appear to us as little
satisfactory and as hard to be understood as that recently passed in
the British Parliament under the supervision of Mr. Gladstone. It
seems to us, from the careful examination of the different statutes
relating to it, that each chief held the whole of the land of his
tribe in his own name, not, however, in his own right altogether,
but partly as trustee of his tribe, and in this respect the Irish
system differs materially from the feudal, which for centuries
prevailed in all parts of Europe, except in the country of which
we are writing. The tenants were divided into two classes, those
who held by _saerrath_ or _daerrath_, terms for which we can find
no equivalents in the English language. The first class received
from their chief, upon taking the land, and without security,
sufficient cattle to stock the same, for which they were obliged
to return an annual rental in kind, or, at the chief's option, its
value in personal service and labor, such as working on his _dun_
or _rath_, and following him in his wars. This species of tenure,
except in the case of those who held immediately from the king,
could at pleasure be turned into holding by _daerrath_, by which the
tenant gave security for the stock received, and was exempt from
personal and military service. The rents and their manner and time
of payment varied according to circumstances, but always subject to
the above restrictions, and were, of course, the exclusive property
of the landlord or chief for the time being. The restrictions on
the alienation of land, or rather of the good-will of it--for in
fact the fee did not rest in the individual, but in the tribe as
represented by its chief--were many and onerous, including forfeiture
and other penalties, and were generally directed to the exclusion
of members of neighboring or hostile tribes. The agrarian portion
of the ancient code, in fact, while far superior in point of
liberality to that of many of the then existing nations, resembled
more the laws that govern our Indian reservations than those of any
enlightened country of the present day. It was full of fatal and
mischievous errors, and to its baleful operation have been ascribed
many of the evils which centuries before and after the Anglo-Norman
invasion afflicted Ireland. By jealously confining the occupancy of
a certain district to one particular tribe or family, it engendered
a feeling of faction, and what might be called parish patriotism,
which unfortunately have outlived the cause that gave them birth,
and, by persisting in considering the tribal land as indivisible, it
destroyed that high sense of independence and spirit of enterprise
which can only be felt and maintained by him who owns his own farm
and calls no fellow-man master.

The laws relating to distress, or the form of collecting claims,
such as debts, tributes, forfeitures, etc., are the least attractive
and instructive portion of the work, and for dense obscurity and
incomprehensibleness can only be compared to our own Code of
procedure. We gather, however, from them that all civil claims and
damages for injuries were collectable by a short process of the
seizure of the goods and chattels of the defendant, and the retention
of the same on the premises of the plaintiff, or, as in the case
of cattle, in the public pound. After the expiration of a certain
number of days, if the defendant did not replevin his property
or disprove his opponent's claim, the goods became the absolute
property of the creditor. With a humanity, however, which many
suppose to be the growth of our century, the plaintiff should exhaust
first the property upon the possession of which the subsistence of
the defendant's family did not immediately depend, and even some
articles of primary necessity were altogether exempt from seizure.
Imprisonment for debt, however, partially existed, and, when the
debtor had no goods and did not belong to the class of freemen,
he was arrested and compelled to labor for the creditor until the
demands of the latter were fully satisfied.

Such, in brief, is a _résumé_ of the laws contained in the two
volumes of the _Senchus Mor_ already published, and which we hope
soon to hear of occupying a position on the shelves of every library
of reference in the country. Much yet remains of the ancient _Code of
St. Patrick_[148] to be given to the world before the entire work is
completed, and we are assured that this will be done at an early day,
and in as scholarly a manner as the portion before us. We shall look
eagerly for its appearance, not for its practical value as a legal
study, but as a picture of a remote but interesting era and race, and
as an additional evidence of how much the world owes to the Catholic
Church even in the civil and political affairs of life. The science
of true government has been a plant of slow but sure growth, and,
while we enjoy so many of its fruits in our favored land, we must not
forget that the seeds were planted with so much suffering and labor
by the apostolic men who have gone to their rest centuries ago.

FOOTNOTE:

[148] The _Senchus Mor_ was sometimes known as _Cain Patraic_, or
_Patrick's Law_.




THE STORY OF AN ALGERINE LOCKET.


I.

In the sunshine of a May morning stood an old gray house, with a
porch draped in woodbine and sweetbrier. A mass of wisteria climbed
to the very chimneys, and on the lawn a bed of red and golden tulips
swayed with the soft breeze. A wren was building in an acacia and
singing, while a young girl watched his work and sang also, trying
with her fresh soprano voice to catch his melody.

The old house was the homestead of Holly Farm, and the young girl was
Sybil Vaughan, the heroine of a very short story.

"Sybil looks charming in white," thought Miss Mildred, sitting at the
window of the green parlor with her mending-basket beside her; "and
the locket is quite becoming."

It was before the day when every one began to wear medallions, and
the one that hung by a quaint twisted chain from Sybil's neck was a
locket of rich enamel, brought to her from Algeria by a midshipman
cousin, and quite unlike our gewgaw from the Palais Royal.

As we have said, Miss Mildred sat at the window of the green parlor,
raising her eyes now and then from her work to watch her pretty
niece, her adopted daughter. During the seventy years of her life,
she had sat at that same window almost every morning since she was
old enough to work a sampler, or to read a paper in the _Spectator_
or a chapter of _Evelina_ to her mother and younger sisters.

In her girlhood, Holly Farm had been a lonely place, remote from town
and village. The trees, now rising luxuriantly around the house,
were then, like her, in their youth, and revealed whatever might be
passing in the lane below the lawn. At a period of life when young
people gaze abroad in vague expectation of some wonderful arrival
or event that shall alter the current of existence, Mildred Vaughan
had turned longing eyes toward this lawn hour after hour, and she
had thought her morning's watch well rewarded if the old doctor had
trundled by in his high-topped chaise and nodded to her in friendly
greeting.

With a capacity for painting that in these days of potichomania,
decalcomania, and the rest would have passed for originality, if not
genius, she had received one quarter's lessons in oil-painting, and
by dint of studying a few beautiful family portraits had acquired a
keenness of perception that made her hunger for the world of art.
With an earnest love for books, she had been obliged to devote her
time to the care of her younger brothers and sisters. And so, out of
her monotonous life, she had brought into old age an exaggerated idea
of the value of learning and luxury, with a belief in possibilities
and a regret for what might have been generally supposed to belong
exclusively to youth.

This sounds more melancholy than it really was. Miss Mildred had
kept her ideal of happiness fresh and vivid, and that is in itself a
source of keen enjoyment. And, being a devout and trusting soul, she
had framed for herself a prayer out of the thwarted aspiration of her
heart and mind: "I thank thee, Lord, that there are joys so beautiful
on earth, and I thank thee that they are not for me. Thy will is
dearer to me than the realization of any dream."

Every one loved to come to Miss Mildred for sympathy. She believed
in the reality and the durability of their joy, in the depth and in
the cause of their grief. She did not say to the mother who had lost
her little baby, "He is saved from sorrow and sin." She did not say
to the young widow, "You have had the best part of life; later come
trial and vexation of spirit." She knew that in bereavement the balm
often enters with the sting; that the stainless beauty of the thing
we lose is our only earthly consolation for its loss.

A great change had come to Holly Farm since the time when the
doctor's visit was an important event. The sweep of meadow-land west
of the house now served as camping-ground for the --th Regiment,
Massachusetts Volunteers, in which young Henry Vaughan held a second
lieutenancy. Drumming and fifing, the arrival of carriages full of
gayly dressed people to visit the camp, the music of the regimental
band on moonlight evenings, such was the course of daily life on
green slopes which cattle and sheep had once possessed without
dispute, nibbling the grass and drinking from the river in all
contentment.

Indeed, Miss Mildred's standard of events had so naturally changed in
that course of seventy years that, when the little white gate swung
open, and a young man in uniform walked across the lawn, she merely
said to herself: "That must be Captain Adair coming to see Harry. He
walks better than any man I ever saw. The maid's hanging out clothes;
I do hope Sybil will have sense enough to come and speak to him
instead of letting him knock."

Sybil had the amount of sense requisite for the emergency. She led
the way into the green parlor, and, leaving Captain Adair with her
aunt, went to announce the arrival to her brother, who was trying on
his new uniform, and blushed to be caught admiring the epaulettes
before a mirror in the library. There was no need of apology. Sybil
was in full sympathy with the occasion, and returned to the parlor
feeling as proud of her brother's military outfit as he of the beauty
of the sister leaning on his arm.

It was a pleasant meeting. Adair's frank and sympathetic manner had
won its way through Miss Mildred's reserve; and his familiarity with
the world and its ways secured him an easy victory over his young
lieutenant. Sybil was less impressionable than the other two. Her
manners were gentle and courteous to all, but it was not easy to
penetrate her likes and dislikes, or to find out their cause. Just a
trifle uninteresting, she was, poor Sybil, like many nicely poised
young persons before they have enjoyed or suffered keenly. The very
finish of her beauty, of her lovely manners, of her pleasant voice
and accent, left nothing to be desired--no suggestion of anything
beyond. But a soul so brave, so pure and honest as hers deserved to
be developed, and the occasion for development came.


II.

ADAIR'S LETTERS TO HENRY ALLEYNE.

                                    CAMP EVERETT, May, 1861.

I had an adventure yesterday that should have fallen to your lot, my
dear Alleyne, not to that of a prosaic dog like me.

Hearing that my second lieutenant lived near the camp, and that he
could not enter upon his duties for a day or two, I took it into my
head to go and see what stuff he was made of, for, Alleyne, I am
awfully interested in Company B, and in every creature connected with
it. How could I ever have lived in that bore of a city, or slept
within four walls, or used a silver fork! "Going off at half-cock, as
usual," you say? Well, perhaps that is better than never going off at
all. But to return to my story.

I went through a shady lane, leading from the camp to Vaughan's
house. (Vaughan is the second lieutenant and owner of the
camping-ground.) As I drew near the gate, I heard a woman's voice
singing. A little further on came a gap in the trees, and I took a
reconnoissance--such another I can never hope for during my military
career. A low-spreading stone house, covered with vines, stood among
fine old trees. Great bunches of blue blossoms draped the walls, and
on the velvety lawn were clusters of brilliant flowers. Beneath a
tree, honor bright, Alleyne, if ever angels do appear in white gowns
with broad rose-colored sashes, it was an angel that stood beneath
that tree, answering a bird with a voice as fresh, an expression
as natural as his own. I stood there looking and listening--it was
really very fascinating--until I suddenly remembered my errand. Then
I pushed open the gate, and, walking across to the porch, lifted the
bright brass knocker. But the rival of the wren, without letting me
wait the coming of some creature of baser clay, came from among the
trees, and asked if I wished to see Mr. Vaughan.

Now, I had wished to see Mr. Vaughan, and as it would not do to
say on so short an acquaintance that my wishes were too completely
satisfied by the vision before me to leave any want unfulfilled, I
stoutly declared that I did wish to see Mr. Vaughan, and that I was
Captain Adair.

And then she showed your too susceptible friend into a summer parlor,
where the general effect was white and sea-green, and where there
were hanging-baskets of flowers surrounded by vines and soft moss,
and where an elderly lady in a lavender dress, with white lawn apron
and kerchief, sat sewing, and where portraits of rosy-fingered dames
and periwigged gentlemen gazed on us from the walls and read our
destinies--mine must have been too plainly legible on my ingenuous
countenance. And the old lady received me very courteously, and
the maiden went to find her brother, and, when the brother came,
he looked like his sister, and surely never before was lieutenant
greeted by his superior officer with such ineffable tenderness. And
we dined, so far as I could judge, off dishes of topaz and crystal,
heaped high with ambrosia, and soon after dinner I returned to Camp
Everett, and met the colonel going his rounds.

"You come from young Vaughan's, I see," he said. "What impression did
he make upon you?"

"Charming, highly delightful, very promising," I replied, with a
happy combination of diffidence and child-like openness of manner.

He gave me a look out of his shrewd old eyes. "So attractive a person
will be an acquisition to the regiment," he remarked, and let me pass
on to my tent.

I am half-asleep. Good-night!

                                               ROBERT ADAIR.


                                   CAMP EVERETT, June, 1861.

Things go on grandly at the camp, and between ourselves the colonel
has just said that Company B is better disciplined than any other in
the regiment--a compliment I'm very proud of, coming, as it does,
from an old West Point martinet.

And now for the second part of my idyl. Every afternoon, Vaughan
and I go up to his place and smoke awhile in the orchard. Then, by
accident--it is wonderful, the unerring accuracy of accident at
times--we appear at the east window of the green parlor, and there
are Miss Vaughan and her niece, sewing or drawing, and sometimes
Miss Sybil sings, to the accompaniment of a charming Pleyel piano,
canzonets of Haydn in a style as fine, as pure, as exquisite as the
composition. She--Sybil, I mean--has never danced a German or heard
_Faust_! Duly shielded by the presence of aunt or brother, she is
sometimes taken to hear the _Nozze di Figaro_ or to see _Hamlet_,
or to some other unexceptionable afternoon entertainment. I smile
sometimes to see her absolute ignorance of life, and wonder that,
in a village not twenty miles distant from a city where the world
runs riot, this being has sprung into womanhood, unconscious of the
existence of anything less spotless than herself.

This guarded life has given to her manners a certain high breeding
that would keep one at a distance but for her kind, frank nature. No
one can venture to fancy himself distinguished above others.

Do you know what this makes me feel? That hitherto, and I am nearly
twenty-five years old, I have looked at women with a coxcomb's eyes.
Any day, any hour, I feel ready to throw myself on her mercy, but an
instinct tells me that her love must be won by something better than
professions. When I have suffered in the cause she loves well enough
to give her only brother to defend it, then I will speak.

_Noblesse oblige_--I see that in a certain lofty sense this is the
motto of her life, and it shall be mine. Do you remember what our
dear old philosopher used to say in the scientific school? "The
better you begin, the harder is the work before you." And when we
asked what he meant, he only said, "Noblesse oblige." It is true,
whether the _noblesse_ acts upon us in the form of intellectual
strength or of spiritual gifts, or in the old material sense of
inherited rank.

Except the hour spent at Vaughan's each day, and an occasional
visit to my mother in town, I am wrapped up in the affairs of
Company B. The life here is to me most fascinating. You would laugh
to see me with a set of wooden soldiers before me on the little
table in my tent, studying manœuvres, extricating my company from
the most astounding and unheard-of perplexities. The progress of
my lieutenants; the health, morals, and immorals of the company;
the incapacity of our bugler to draw the faintest sound from his
instrument--in short, everything that indicates growth or decay of
discipline in Company B, seems to me a matter of national importance.

One word more about Miss Sybil Vaughan. My mother has seen her, and
sympathizes with me. When she came to visit the camp, I took her
to Vaughan's house to rest. As we left Holly Farm, she gave a sigh
of relief, and said: "Robert, I feel as though I had stepped back
half a century. When I was a girl, young ladies were like Miss Sybil
Vaughan."

One more last word. In your letter you said, with an air of superior
wisdom, plainly expressed in the tails of your letters: "You are in
love."

Of course I am, and I should be a fool if I were not.

                Your friend,
                                               ROBERT ADAIR.


III.

It was June still. The laburnum path was all aglow with blossoms, and
the grape-walk, just beyond, made a shadowy retreat toward evening.
Sybil was sitting there with her work lying on her lap. She had not
sewed three stitches. Why had not Harry come as usual that afternoon
to the east window to get his cup of black coffee? Why--O dear! there
are so many whys in the case, and never an answer anywhere. Why was
there an indefinite air of bustle in the camp as she looked down
on it from her bower? Why was there an undefined sense of stir in
everything?

She watched the sun drop nearer and nearer to the distant hills. The
air was full of saffron light, and heavy with the perfume of flowers.
Nature was so new and fresh in her June loveliness; and life was full
of a promise of coming beauty, as it had never been before to Sybil
in any other of her nineteen Junes. That sense of stir was in her own
soul no less than in external nature.

There came the click of an iron heel upon the gravelled path. Sybil
half-rose from the bench, and then sank back again. Adair stood
before her. "We are ordered off," he said. "We go in an hour. I've
but one moment to stay, for I promised Harry to leave him time to
come and say good-by."

In the white, scared look on Sybil's face he read the right to speak.

But it had all been so hurried, she thought, when he was gone. Oh!
for one of those minutes to return, that she might express to him a
tenth part of the joy and pain, the hope and terror, that filled her
heart. She could remember nothing clearly or in order, and yet she
would have given all the other memories of her happy life to recall
each word as it was spoken. He had asked her to give him something
of her own, a ring, a glove, a ribbon, no matter what. And she had
taken from her neck the medallion, and laid in it a little curl of
her hair, and given it to him; and she had felt his hand upon her
head, and heard him say, "God keep my sweet, innocent love!" And
when she lifted her head he was gone, and she had told him nothing.
It could not be a dream, for on her left hand was the ring he placed
there--one that she had seen him wear, and thought too beautiful a
jewel for a man to have, but now she felt so glad that he had worn
it. He had said this was to be the guard of the wedding-ring that he
would place there as soon as he could get a furlough to come home;
and she had said--yes, thank God! she did remember saying that, at
least--she had said that no one but himself should take off this ring
or put another in its place; yes, thank God! she had said it.

Then Harry had come, too overjoyed at the news of her engagement to
feel the pain of parting. That memory was full of turmoil; mixed,
too, with self-reproach that all other emotion was so lost in her new
joy or pain, whichever it might be called, that Harry's going gave
her no uneasiness.

The sun dropped behind the hills; star after star pierced through the
darkening blue. Stillness lay on the valley below, so lately full of
tramping horses, and shouting men, and shifting lights.

At last she heard her aunt's voice calling her, and roused herself
to go and tell her beautiful story, old as the human race, new as
that very June evening. She wondered that Aunt Mildred understood it
all so well. Short-sighted Sybil! it was you who were beginning to
understand Miss Mildred.

One August day, when a sultry fog held the earth in bondage, and
scarlet geraniums blazed like red pools among the wilted grass, Miss
Mildred pushed open the little white gate, and, with that hurried
step that in old age so poorly simulates speed, hastened across the
lawn. She gave a quick glance into the two parlors which were vacant,
and then went up-stairs, grasping nervously the low hand-rail. In the
upper hall she stopped, and leaned against the balustrade to take
breath, and courage, too. Then, opening the door of Sybil's room,
she stopped on the threshold to see her lying on the floor with a
newspaper crushed in her hand. A bulletin in the village post-office
had told her all: "Found dead on the field, Captain Robert Adair,
--th Regt. Mass. Vols." They lifted Sybil up and laid her on her bed.
She did not "strive nor cry," but in that first grief it pleased God
to measure her power of endurance.

It was not in victory that Adair had fallen, but in one of those
engagements where, humanly speaking, life seems thrown away. But
such thoughts should not disturb the mourners cradled in the
providence of God. He chooses the time and the occasion, and what is
lost in the current of human events he gathers up and cherishes.

Weeks passed away. Letters came--precious in their recognition of
Adair's high integrity, his courage, his compassion; letters, too,
from his mother, far away in her summer home, acknowledging Sybil
as one with her in love and bereavement. But she lay, white and
listless, on her bed, taking little notice of anything except in the
expression of gratitude. Harder than anything else for her aunt to
bear was the pathos of Sybil's resignation.

There came a soft afternoon, early in September, when for the
first time Sybil's easy-chair was placed in the open air, under a
striped awning that made an out-door room on the west side of Holly
Farmhouse. Here she could be sheltered from the direct rays of the
sun, and yet enjoy the trees and flowers.

Great velvet bees hid their heads buzzing in the freshly-opened
cups of the day-lilies; a hummingbird dipped his dainty beak into
the sweet-peas, and then flashed away to hide himself among the
nasturtiums pouring in a golden stream over a broken tree-trunk on
the lawn.

Amid the glow of nature, Sybil looked very wan and frail. She had
begun to think a little now, and her thoughts ran thus: "I am
resigned to God's will. I've not the shadow of a doubt that this
is all right. I am more than willing to die; I am willing to live,
if only there is a thread to hold by--a stone, a stick, a straw to
begin to build my life upon. Other women have borne this and lived.
I've seen them going about among their fellow-creatures, talking,
smiling, laughing, when others talked, and smiled, and laughed. I
have no more sensibility than they. What I have lost was perfect; but
what they had lost was perfect, perhaps, to them. I don't rebel, but
I am dying of pain. It goes on, and on, and on; if it would stop but
for ten minutes and let me take breath, I think I could catch hold of
something on earth and begin to live again. There's that dear Aunt
Mildred coming through the hall. Now, I _will_ give her a free, happy
smile, and lighten her burden if I cannot lighten my own."

Miss Mildred held in her two hands a great vase of spreading
golden-rod, which she set down on the little garden-table. Just where
she had placed it, against a background of dark-green leaves, it made
so beautiful a picture that Sybil uttered an exclamation of surprise
and pleasure. There was a delighted look on her aunt's sweet old
face that made her think: "Here is something to hold on by; here is
something to build on, if only I am generous enough to try."

Miss Mildred arranged the cushions in Sybil's chair, and then took
her hand very gently.

"There is a man in the hall, dear, who brings you a little packet
from Virginia. Can you see him?"

"Yes; at once, if you like. Please let him come out here. I can talk
to him better in the open air."

He came--a shy, elderly man, whom Sybil remembered seeing once at
the camp. He stood awkwardly, shifting his military hat from hand
to hand, till she asked him to sit down near her, and said a few
reassuring words. Then, seeing that he was struggling to conquer his
emotion, she fixed her eyes on the vase of flowers, trying to keep
down the impatience struggling within her.

"My name is Abel, lady," he said, at length. "May be you've heard the
cap'n say as how I couldn't play the bugle, at the camp below there.
The folks all said I couldn't learn, I was so old and dull; but he
allus believed everybody was good for something, he did."

Sybil was leaning forward, breathless to hear more.

"I remember you," she said. "Oh! do go on. Tell me everything--every
little thing about it all."

"Wall, you see, lady, my two boys they was all I had, and they jined
the regiment, and I couldn't live without 'em; and I was hale and
strong, and so I made bold for to jine, too. There was one place left
in the regiment then--the bugler's place, in Company B--and I pled
so hard, the cap'n he said I might try. And, lady, the plaguy thing
used to seem to shut right up when I wanted to make it blow, and the
men used to laugh at me, right out afore my boys. And Abner and John
Henry they felt kind o' cheap, and they kept sayin' to me, 'Father,'
they says, 'it makes us feel kind o' bad to hear you tryin' so hard
and not learnin'; don't you think you'd better give it up?' And says
I, 'No, boys,' says I, 'while there's breath in my body, I won't give
it up till I've conquered that crittur.' And, lady, when the cap'n
see me tryin' so hard and allus comin' to grief, what does he do but
he takes hold himself, and he learns all them signals, and he teaches
on 'em to me. And so I went to the war with my boys, and I nursed
John Henry through a fever, and I kept Abner from fallin' into bad
company; and, lady, if I could have saved the cap'n's life by givin'
my skin inch by inch, I'd have done it; but I couldn't. So I just
held his head against this old heart, and let him breathe his life
away. And I laid him down on the sod as tender as if I'd been his
mother."

"May God reward you! Did he suffer much?"

Tears, such as she had longed for, were pouring from her eyes.

"No, lady; he was gone before the surgeons came on to the field. He
lay quite still, without a moan or sigh; and, now and then, he'd say
a word to me. I was wounded, too, just below the knee. I dropped down
about six feet off from him; and when the retreat came, and I saw as
how I was left behind with the cap'n, didn't I praise the Lord!"

"What did he say to you?"

Abel took a little packet from his breast, and laid it in Sybil's
hand. "He says to me, 'Abel,' says he, 'when you can get a furlough
_honorable_,' says he--'for you mustn't go when the country needs you
bad--you take this locket' (a-unhookin' it from his neck) 'to Miss
Sybil Vaughan--her that lives in the stone farmhouse above our old
camp at Holly Farm--and you tell her as how the poor thing tried to
save my life; and she'll see it by the great dent in the gold made by
a bullet. And you tell her as how she's to open it herself, and see
what I put there. And you tell her '--I'm a Methodist, lady, but I'll
tell you word for word what he said."

"Yes, word for word."

"'You tell her,' says he, 'how I pray that Christ and his Blessed
Mother may be her comfort as they are mine; and tell her as how I've
never let a thought enter my mind, since we parted, that she wouldn't
have approved. And tell her,' says he, a-raisin' himself half-way up
from the ground, 'you tell her I love her fond and true, and that
we shall meet in heaven when she's done the work on earth she is so
fit to do. And tell her to comfort my mother. Poor mother!' And
then he put his arm round my neck, and kind o' stroked my cheek, and
he says, soft and low, a few words, and all I heard was, 'Receive
my soul,' and then I kissed him, and laid him down on the turf, and
his face was like as I think it will be in heaven at the great day.
And now I'm goin' to leave you, lady, 'cos I know as how you want to
be alone. And, with your leave, I'll come again, and tell you how
we loved him, and how we cried like babies round the ambulance that
brought him to the camp; and how there was scarce anything left to
send home to his mother, 'cos he used to give his things away to the
sick boys--blankets, and money, and shirts, and all."

Then Abel took Sybil's delicate hand reverently on his broad, brown
palm, and kissed it.

"Lady," he said, "you're the only thing ever I see that was fit to
mate with him."

"You will come again," she said. "As you have no daughter, and there
must be many things needed to make you comfortable during your
convalescence, you will let me see to all that. And you will let me
replace the many things you must have lost or worn out during these
hard three months?"

She spoke beseechingly, looking up into his face like a child
pleading for a toy.

"You shall just wind me round your finger like he did," said Abel. "I
allus thought I'd got grit in me till I seen him, and then it seemed
as though I hadn't no will but his'n."

       *       *       *       *       *

Sybil was alone with the little packet. With trembling fingers she
untied the string and removed the wrappings of paper. There lay
the medallion with its twisted chain. She passionately kissed the
battered enamel that had stood between him and death. Then she
opened the locket. With the silky, yellow curl lay a little lock of
dark-brown hair. She was touching it tenderly, wondering when he had
placed it there for her consolation--whether just before the skirmish
or soon after he left her--when a turn of the locket in the level
rays of the sun showed two words scratched on the inner side with
some rude instrument. She looked closer, and read: "Noblesse Oblige."

When Miss Mildred came to lead her into the house, there was a change
in her face that filled the gentle lady's heart with gratitude. It
was the look of courage that comes to those who recognize the claim
of their high birth as the children of God.




THE SPIRIT OF CATHOLIC ASSOCIATIONS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA.


I.

All societies have aims, more or less remote, which they aspire to
realize. Catholic societies have an object which they also strive
to accomplish. Theirs is the victory of the church over the modern
Islamism, the enemy of all religion and civilization, commonly called
the Revolution. This monster, once obtaining control of the state,
fills nations with ruins, and in its proud ferocity ever threatens
new disorders and fresh streams of blood. Catholic associations, in
order to be victorious, must pass over the dead body of this powerful
enemy. There is no other way. The enterprise is difficult, requires
great courage, absolute generosity, and endurance capable of every
trial. But they will win the day; they will yet sing the hymn of
triumph; for they march to the battle and fight it in the proper
spirit: that is, the Catholic spirit. The victory will be theirs; but
only on conditions.

Reason proves it. The labor of a society must be proportioned to the
end proposed, as the force must be adequate to the effect intended.
It is impossible that an army can win a battle if the necessary
discipline, obedience to officers, and courage be wanting. So with
Catholic associations. Their object, being a religious one, a
crusade which purposes to assure the triumph of Catholic doctrines
and institutions, it is impossible for them to act with vigor, to
bear the fatigue, stand the brunt of their adversaries' onslaught,
conquer their errors, and subdue their forces, unless they are moved,
animated, and fortified by the spirit which is peculiar to Catholic
associations. If they march to the combat with inadequate forces or
lax discipline, they will only become objects of derision to their
enemies.

What is the spirit of Catholic societies? It is the spirit of
faith. Sacred phalanxes of a religion whose foundation is faith;
restorers of principles that are derived from faith; protectors of
institutions based on faith--how can they do battle if their minds
be not animated with the spirit of faith, if their deliberations be
not inspired with it; if their works be not its visible effects? Yes;
the spirit of faith is the peculiar spirit of Catholic associations;
it is their essence, their qualifying property, and the secret power
which impels the Catholic onward to the heroism of virtue. Give us
Catholic associations animated by a spirit of living, fervid faith,
and great acts will not be slow in production. Examples of it may be
seen in the immense and sublime temples erected when the spirit of
faith burned in the breasts of our forefathers, to whom it was only
necessary to propose the plan in order to have it carried out; and
in those chivalrous bands of knights who armed themselves against
Mohammedan fury, and fell pierced by numberless wounds on the ground
given them to defend, but never yielding an inch to the foe.

Catholic associations imbued by a spirit like this need not fear the
power of their adversaries, nor heed their numbers. Faith in the
conflict is the buckler which cannot be broken, the shield which
cannot be pierced, the flag which counts as many victories as the
battles fought under its folds. Let all the members of Catholic
associations march to the contest clothed in this armor, and they
will be invincible. St. Paul advised this to the Thessalonians and
to the Ephesians. This also was the counsel of St. John.[149] What
more do we want? Does not St. John tell us that faith and victory
are synonymous terms? "_For whatsoever is born of God overcometh
the world: and this is the victory which overcometh the world, our
faith._"[150]


II.

It must be remembered, however, that this spirit of faith must
not be a blind spirit, or march to battle with uncertain steps.
Associations actuated by such a spirit prosper slowly; without
purpose, and consequently without success. The reason is plain, for
it is certain that the more thoroughly influenced is a human mind
by a motive, the more earnestly will it strive to obtain an object.
It is, therefore, evident that the spirit of Catholic associations
must be an enlightened spirit, thoroughly knowing what it wants. The
Revolution--great mistress in the arts of hypocrisy, great employer
of every species of argument in its favor through the license of the
press, great seducer by the advantages which it proposes--if it does
not always succeed in catching real Catholics in its net, at least
sows such prejudices in the minds of some as will make them less
hostile to its work or less earnest in the defence of Catholicism,
which is another name for truth and justice. This is the first
danger to be shunned by Catholic associations. The Catholic societies
must not let themselves be seduced by the seductive monsters of the
revolution. The quality and natural goodness of the tree is not known
so well by its leaves as by its fruit. It is, therefore, necessary to
go deeper than the mere extrinsic forms to penetrate the substance of
the work done by the revolution. Oh! how many motives to spur on to
action would Catholics find in such an investigation! A rapid glance
will convince them of this fact.

Observe the religious order. Let the Catholic associate consider, in
this regard, a country in which the revolution has made progress. He
witnesses the most impious and most lamentable scenes; the church
deprived or curtailed of liberty, insulted in her ministers, attacked
by literary barbarians, by trammelling laws, or infamous writings;
her destruction sworn, Christ impugned in his doctrines, derided in
his sacraments, his divinity denied; God excluded from laws, banished
from the school; men grouped in hostility to him, shouting, in full
daylight under the banner of the free-thinkers, like a horde of
savages, "There is no God!"

Pass to the social order. Here a new spectacle of grief is presented.
Every effort is used to take away from the community its common
belief and to plunge individuals into the vortex of incredulity; a
black cloud of practical errors, moving over the nations, abolishing
the restraint of conscience, rendering the populace the slaves of the
vilest and most truculent passions; the basis of all authority, human
and divine, sapped; the most powerful governments crumbling to dust,
and threatening to fall a prey either to perpetual anarchy or brutal
tyranny.

Consider the nature of the means employed. What a sad view! Perpetual
conspiracies, shameless treasons, frauds and deceptions, lies and
calumnies, unmitigated oppression and violence. Furnished with these
weapons, the revolutionary bands war on God, on Christ, and on his
church. The revolution, like a shameless woman, blushes not at its
crimes, but glories in its success.

Consider the results. Every religious conviction blotted out, the
principles of morality annihilated or obscured, authority destroyed,
and consequently a society springing up composed of men without
certainty in regard to their end, without any immutable law to
restrain them, without any bond of affection to unite them. Hence,
we have the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, egotism the
universal law, force and cunning the only arms, and mutual demolition
the consequence. The old French revolution proves it; the modern one
of Paris confirms it. The revolutionary Guéroult himself attests it
in stating that the Parisian insurrection "is disorder, destruction,
self-abandonment, the putrid decomposition of a society without
belief, without compass Or ideal."[151] The results of the revolution
may be summed up in one phrase: it makes men beasts, and society
bestial.

A Catholic association which considers these effects of the
revolution in the light of faith, appreciating the means employed and
the sad results, cannot act remissly. It is not possible; it must
rise in the name of the rights of God, of Christ, of the church; in
the name of that religious belief which is attempted to be taken from
the people, and the principles of moral reason; it must rise full of
shame for society, which tolerates such horrible abuses and crimes.
It will rise to repair these defects with gladness. The spirit of
faith, strengthened by the motives proposed, will spur it on in
its efforts. The Catholic associations of Germany are undoubtedly
energetic; so are those of Austria; but the secret of their force is
found in the fact that the men who lead them are men of strong faith
and of great prudence and intelligence. This is evident from their
congresses, in their speeches and newspapers. Catholic associations
in other lands would do well to imitate them.


III.

The motives just proposed are powerful, but their source is
disagreeable. There are others more pleasant to consider. Among these
latter is the nobility of the end proposed by Catholic associations.
This is not, as has been calumniously stated, to revenge the defeat
of a certain political order, or to satisfy natural restlessness.
Catholic associations, vivified by the true spirit of faith, do not
stoop so low. They aim at things far higher. The name which they
bear, the rules which they profess to follow, the works already
accomplished where they have been established, attest it. Their
particular object is to drag men, made slaves by the revolution, out
of the mire of incredulity and immorality into which false principles
have plunged them. They strive to re-establish society on the true
bases of truth and justice, to restore tranquillity to peoples
disturbed by the passions of party and the fury of false teachers.
They aim to reclaim for God the obedience which is his due, the honor
which belongs to Christ, the rights taken from the church; to give
true liberty--the liberty of the Gospel--to all; to draw men away
from the carnal happiness proposed to them by the revolution; and to
make them seek that beatitude which every rational Christian should
desire. The revolution threatens everything--religion in society and
among individuals; the Catholic associate declares himself their
champion.

Such is the noble aim of Catholic associations; hence the nobleness
of the conflict in which they are engaged. What is this conflict?
It is the struggle of truth against error, of right against might,
of civilization against barbarism, of duty to God, Christ, and his
church against impiety, blasphemy, and injustice. The revolution
means the renewal among men of the revolt of Lucifer and his angels;
the Catholic associations are the faithful cohorts of God and his
Christ. Their war-cry is that of St. Michael: _Quis ut Deus et
Christus ejus?_ Who is like to God and his Christ?

This war-cry has been explicitly recommended in the New Testament.
The words are given by St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and plainly
referred to by St. Paul. "Whoever," says Christ, "confesses me in
the midst of this sinful and adulterous race, whoever makes public
profession of my doctrine, will be recognized by me before the
angels, before the tribunal of my Father in heaven."[152] Does not
the present generation publicly boast of making a divorce between
itself and God and Christ? Giving loose rein to passion under
the specious names of liberty of conscience and the preaching of
licentious doctrines, modern society is plunging into the abyss of
iniquity. Hence, the Catholic associates must rise courageously
in the midst of this generation, confess Christ openly, publicly
affirm his doctrines, and defend them in the face of his enemies.
The Catholic associates must revive the praises of Christ; to them
are his divine promises addressed, to them belong the irrevocable
guarantees of being placed near the throne of his Father. Combating
bravely and bearing themselves like true champions of the religion of
Christ, their fate is not and cannot be doubtful.

Let the Catholic associations, therefore, advance courageously to
the fight, bearing the banner of Christ against the standard of
the revolution. Humanity, liberty, progress, light, are written on
the adverse flag, but they are stolen words. In the mouths of the
revolutionists they are lies. The flag of humanity is not that which
destroys its rights, but that which defends them; nor of _liberty_,
that which makes men slaves of their passions instead of freeing
them; nor of _progress_, that which has no aim, but that which leads
to something definite; nor of light, that which begets obscurity
in the intellect, destroying its most obvious principles, but that
which illuminates intelligence with divine revelation. This latter is
the banner of Catholic associations, consequently it is the flag of
humanity, of liberty, of progress, the standard of light.


IV.

The forces of Catholic associations must act in concert. It is not
enough that their members be vigorous and animated with an ardent
faith. There must be harmony of intelligence among them. Woe to the
society whose members have different principles or contradictory
plans! Like a machine whose wheels do not move harmoniously, ruin
will result. There must be uniformity of principles and thorough
harmony of intelligence if the Catholic associates hope to obtain
great successes.

Harmony in generalities is easy; but not so in particulars. If you
ask a Catholic assembly what it wants, all the members will reply,
"The propagation and triumph of Catholic principles." But if you
descend to particular enquiries, you may meet difficulties that close
the way to success; disputes about fixed principles must therefore be
eliminated from Catholic associations.

These associations are in the first place essentially laic, therefore
it is not their business to decide questions of principle. Their aim
is a practical one, namely, to annul the efforts of the revolution,
to introduce the principles of Catholicity where they do not exist,
and strengthen them where they do. It is not of their competence
to determine them. They are called Catholic, therefore, in case
of doubt, they must recur to the teaching church and accept her
decisions. We repeat: the Catholic associations must keep within the
bounds imposed by their very nature and title, and then there will
be no collision of views, no wasting of precious time in useless
disputes, no schisms and separations; but, with all the force of a
strong faith, they will advance with dignity, security, and success
in their undertakings.

In confirmation of this, we quote an apposite passage from the
discourse pronounced by his eminence, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, in
the general congress of the Catholic associations held at Prague
in 1860. "The object of Catholic associations," says the eminent
prelate, "is to take measures to introduce and assist the teaching,
the principles, the precepts, and the desires of the church in
the schools, in the life of the citizen and of the family, among
merchants and men of business. Their duty is to support the teaching
church by counsel and co-operation. Their duty is also to acknowledge
with joyful mind the doctrines of the church, to follow them, defend
and sustain them."

Who does not admit the great good performed by the Catholic
associations of Germany in the course of the few years during which
they have been established? And if we study the reason of their
success, we shall find it in the undisturbed harmony of their views.
The spirit of "liberal Catholicism" tried to influence them, but in
vain. Their associates, mindful of their title and of their duty to
the pastors of the church, and especially to the Roman Pontiff, obey
his instructions without subtle distinctions and commentaries, and
employ their talents properly in securing their prosperity.

An instance of their Catholic zeal is found in the letter sent to the
Pope by the assembly held at Innsbrück preparatory to the general
congress of the German Catholic societies in 1867. In that letter
we read as follows: "On the 9th, 10th, and 11th of September, with
the consent and approval of the most reverend Bishop of Brixen, the
Catholics of Innsbrück, the capital of the Tyrol, will be gathered
together in order to defend courageously their religion as far as
God and their strength will allow; and, the errors and lies of vain
men being rejected, such errors as your holiness has pointed out
and condemned with fulness of authority in your encyclical letters,
in order also to take salutary counsel required by the character of
the times and circumstances, so as to promote the growth of Catholic
life and charity, under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
An immense war, as you, Holy Father, have expressed it, is waged
against divine revelation, against the Catholic Church, against the
apostolic see, against good morals and Christian charity, the queen
of all the virtues. While this war rages, every Catholic becomes a
soldier of Christ; _but we cannot carry on a good and just war if we
do not cling with all the ardor of our soul to the apostolic see,
fastened to that rock which God has placed in Rome; and if we are not
helped and sustained by your supreme authority and your efficacious
blessing; wherefore, we_ earnestly _desire from our very inmost
hearts to venerate_, follow, and obey you, _the Vicar of Christ_,
you, the chief pastor of the whole flock of the Lord, you, father of
all the faithful. This is the unanimous feeling of all those who will
be assembled in September at Innsbrück; this is the universal desire;
and, all animated by this thought, God will defend the Christian
doctrine and Christian charity."

Let these be the sentiments of all Catholic associations that may
spring up; let this be their programme and the foundation of their
constitution. The spirit of prompt submission to the teaching of
the church should animate them. This is a simple consequence of the
first element of Catholic life. Christ never said to any theologian,
erudite man, learned historian, or particular society, "Be ye masters
of the church, and let her hear you;" but he did say so to the
bishops and to the pope in the person of the apostles and of Peter.
Only one blinded by his own pride can deny this fundamental principle
of the Catholic religion. The spirit of prompt obedience to lawful
authority is the secret which alone will render Catholic societies
capable of success.

But harmony of intelligence is not the only means by which Catholic
associations can manifest their spirit. There must be unity of
feeling and co-ordination of will, elements essential to every
society.


V.

A Catholic association which possesses the spirit of submission to
the teaching church, and possesses harmony of intelligence, is on
the right road, and may hope to prosper in its undertakings. But how
often does it happen that a serious impediment, an insurmountable
barrier, stops the progress of a brave legion and disappoints
the well-founded hopes of victory! Here is a danger which the
best-intentioned Catholic association may encounter; an obstruction,
an invincible barrier, which may arise from the unexpected
disagreement of wills. Agreement of wills is essential as well as
harmony of intelligence.

It is evident that, in order to maintain this agreement, we must
remove the causes which might disturb it. There are two sources of
discord; one arising from the internal relations of a society. The
intellects may agree on the principles to be sustained, and the wills
consent as to the end proposed; but the task is for the members
to choose the same means and put them in practice. Here may arise
the discord. Some project or design is proposed. It is debated.
The dispute waxes warm. Hard words are interchanged. The majority,
of course, carry the project; but the minority may disagree and
refuse to co-operate in its execution. Hence disaffection, schisms,
and secessions in the association. What is the root of all these
troubles? It is, in one word, pride, the root of all schisms. One
thinks himself more learned, of greater rank or of more experience
than the others, therefore he will not be led by their judgment but
by his own self-conceit. The trouble is small in the beginning,
but it may produce disastrous results. What is the remedy? It is to
bring to every discussion the true Catholic spirit of abnegation
and of sacrifice. Whims and prejudices must be laid aside for the
sake of harmony and the noble cause to be defended. Our God is a God
of peace, not of commotion and disturbance. The best plan is not
always that suggested by our weak judgment. Provided the plan of the
majority be a good one, though it may not be the most perfect, still,
for peace sake, let us adopt it, according to the advice of Xavier,
that it is better to accept a unanimous plan, though not the best,
rather than a perfect one which would cause dissensions among our
brethren.

The second cause of dissensions may be in the external relations
of the associates. This would be the more dangerous, because the
occasion of it might be an apparent external good to be effected. The
will of the bishop or of the pastor may not agree with the desire
of the society. In a case of this kind, if the society should act
in spite of the episcopal will or opposed to it publicly, a great
scandal would happen in the diocese, and the society would fall to
pieces. What is the remedy for such calamities? The associates must
have filial reverence and obedience for the pastors of the church.
Then all difficulties will cease. This is required by the very object
of the association, which is to aid the bishops in religious matters;
it is also required by the dignity of the bishops, since the Holy
Ghost has called them to be rulers in the church. His holiness Pius
IX. clearly teaches that this should be the bearing of Catholic
societies toward their pastors, in his answer to the Catholics of
Innsbrück.

Here we may quote what a bishop said in the general congress held to
condemn the proceedings of the so-called German Catholic liberals.
These gentlemen, under the appearance of doing good, had expressed
their usual lamentations about the storms that threatened the church,
the danger to her future freedom, unless the laity were allowed a
greater influence in religious matters; to deny them this influence,
as had been done so far, would be to render them inert and careless
about church matters. Such were the complaints--complaints of the
discontented son who is trying to deprive his mother of complete
control of the house--subtle revolutionary complaints against the
authority of the hierarchy. The Bishop of Brixen, answering them,
said, "What kind of influence do laymen want in the church? To
control dogma? They cannot. Discipline? They cannot. Influence
of the laity is too vague a conception, and, besides, a useless
one. In order that it should produce benefits, its limits should
be determined, its conditions explained. But it is well known
that the chief among them is faithful dependence on the teachings
and authority of the church, since the words of the apostle suit
individuals as well as the whole church: 'The just man lives by
faith.' The life of the church requires nothing but what comes from
faith. Hence, when the church finds a layman who manifests his faith
in his words and actions, she honors him, salutes him with joy as
a co-operator not having belied the words of the apostle of love:
Let us be co-workers of truth, co-operators in propagating and
strengthening it, and in assuring its triumph. In every age there
have been many such men, like our modern Catholic associations, and
for this reason we protect them, salute, esteem them; and the best
proof of our love for them is that we have hastened to come to this
solemn congress of lay associations, assembled to defend Catholic
interests." Thus spoke the learned prelate. In conclusion, a Catholic
society must not touch on dogmatic subjects, nor interfere in affairs
pertaining to ecclesiastical discipline: it should observe proper
respect and obedience toward its bishops, and then the bishops will
aid, bless and sustain it.


VI.

The parts of a machine, in order to act in concert, must be united
according to mechanical laws: so associations must obey the laws of
order. They must have co-ordination of forces. In this consists the
peculiar advantage of association. Each one has its constitution
and by-laws. Let it observe them, adapting them to the wants and
peculiarities of each nation. The difficulty is really not in
enacting laws for it, but to keep them in vigor.

The associates must have the spirit of order. Then the execution of
laws will be easy. Such a spirit will make each member mind his own
position; each officer act in his own sphere without infringing on
the rights of others. The object of the association being to act
with united forces, this purpose cannot be effected by a disorderly
mass of individuals, acknowledging no obedience to a local or
general superior. Each particular society will become jealous of its
neighbor, unless all agree to obey implicitly a central committee.
Private utility and individuality must be sacrificed to the public
good; jealousy, self-love, personal advantage, these three causes
that tend to disrupt the co-ordination of the common forces, must
be sacrificed to the common welfare, and to the end for which the
association was established, as it is an elementary rule of order
that the private must be sacrificed for the public good. For this
reason we consider that society best in which the strictest bonds
are maintained between the members and the centre or head. Does not
union make strength? A necessary consequence is that the force is
proportioned to the union. Baron Stillfried, a name dear to Catholics
by reason of his fervid zeal for religion, rendering an account of
what the Confraternity of the Archangel St. Michael, founded in
Vienna in 1860, had done, confessed that, owing to dissensions among
the members, and the consequent lack of union of forces, the results
had been relatively few. On the contrary, who does not admire the
wonderful success obtained by the Catholic _Casini_ of Austria in
favor of the pontifical cause, owing to their unity of purpose and
union of forces? They obliged the president of the council to receive
their complaints; they obliged the chancellor of the empire to excuse
himself; they moved all the Catholic populations to such a spirit of
action in favor of religion, tied down by the iniquitous laws of the
revolution, that all the journals of the secret societies bellowed
and blasphemed like lunatics, fearing the destruction of their
nefarious designs.

The multiplicity of Catholic interests gives rise to many
associations differing according to the difference of their aims.
Should this diversity have no common bond of union? By no means. Some
have for object matters of essential importance, as, for instance,
the freedom of the church, her right to educate, and the independence
of her head. In regard to these subjects, all the associations should
unite. Is it necessary to prove this? Is it not self-evident?
Associations that would act differently would resemble those Chinese
troops which neglected the defence of the most important posts,
contenting themselves with guarding places of secondary importance.

Catholic societies are not bands of conspirators, they do not excite
rebellions, nor use violence or deceit to gain their purpose. These
arts are left to the revolutionists. Catholics need no weapons but
truth and justice. They must be ready to die for both. But they must
act legally, they must not violate the civil order. Consequently,
they should never undertake a work without first being satisfied of
its lawfulness.

In this way success is certain; for in modern civil society public
opinion rules. If Catholic societies defend religion, who can object?
For public opinion must admit their right to do so, provided they
violate no laws of the state.


VII.

But although legality is required for Catholic associations, they
must not be timid or cowardly. They must be brave and magnanimous.
Christ teaches us to be magnanimous, for he gave his blood and life
for the love of truth and justice; the martyrs in millions died for
the same cause. We must imitate them. No difficulty or obstacle must
balk the zeal of a Catholic association. No fatigue or danger or
sacrifice must be too great for the Catholic associate. The soldier
of Christ must conquer difficulties. The present conflict, said
Monsignor de Ketteler, in the congress of the Catholic associations
of Trèves, needs champions who, for the love of Christ, dare expose
themselves to the attacks of newspapers and demagogues, to calumny
and terms of contempt in parliament and from the rostrum. The
Catholic spirit must be a self-sacrificing and a magnanimous one.
Every associate must be a Catholic before being a politician, a
Catholic before being a man of letters, a Catholic above all things.
He must never be discouraged, but persevere with generous constancy,
in spite of the attacks of enemies, or the seeming want of success of
many of his efforts. Let the Catholic associates remember that they
are fighting under the very eyes of God; and that their struggles,
even though not always successful, are a manifestation of their faith
before men which will be rewarded in heaven.


VIII.

We say this on the supposition that the combined forces of the
association should produce no result. But this supposition is
unfounded. Let the Catholic association remain constant in its
enterprise, and it will make a new step to victory every day. It may
fail in this or that particular measure, but the general cause will
prosper. We know that the heads of the secret societies speak in this
way, but they do so to deceive. We do not, for our words are founded
on solid reasons.

The first is drawn from the nature of the two causes in conflict. The
revolution is the cause of error and injustice; Catholicism is the
cause of truth and justice, consequently the cause of Catholicism is
conformable to the nature of man, formed for the true and the good,
while the cause of the revolution is in contradiction with man's
nature. How can any nature remain long in a state of contradiction
with itself? Passion or ignorance may obscure for a time the human
intelligence, but when the contradiction is felt and known, nature
revolts against it with all its power, and frees itself. Now, as the
associations in the interest of the Catholic faith are striving to
enlighten our intellect with the light of truth, and to repress the
force of passions by inculcating the love of virtue, the necessary
effect of such labor must be that the cause of the revolution will
daily lose ground as the light of truth, becoming more apparent,
shows the falsity of certain principles. The more the Catholic
associations combine in illuminating the human intelligence and
correcting the dormant moral sense of society, the more will the
Catholic cause hasten towards triumph.

Reason teaches this. But revelation offers other proofs, for it gives
us the promises of Christ. These are expressed in those passages
in which our Lord likens his doctrines to the little leaven which
leavens the whole mass; and when he tells his apostles to trust in
him, the conqueror of the world.[153] Let the Catholic associations,
therefore, advance in their work with confidence. They have divine
promises in their favor. The false and iniquitous doctrines of the
revolution will fall to the ground. Its efforts will be in vain, its
success only local or temporary; for the friends of truth and of
human rights will finally conquer. The best instincts of human nature
and the promises of faith are with them.

The Holy Ghost tells us by the pen of St. Paul that truth must
conquer in the end, speaking of the saints "who triumphed over
the powers of earth, closed the mouths of lions, were invincible
in the combat, and conquered their enemies."[154] The children of
the revolution, having a presentiment of their defeat by the new
Catholic associations, have already cried To arms! and in a thousand
ways manifested their fear. Yes, the victorious future belongs to
the Catholic associations. Let them, therefore, arise with courage
grounded on the principles of faith, strengthened by the noble
motives of their enterprise. Harmony of intelligence, the spirit of
submission to the church, agreement of wills, with the spirit of
sacrifice, and of reverence for their pastors, will make them serried
battalions, moving according to law, with magnanimity, constancy,
and confidence in God, irresistible in their attacks. Let them fight
on the battle-field of faith, and the world will soon know that the
proud pomp of the revolution and its thousand war-cries are founded
only on falsehood and deceit.

FOOTNOTES:

[149] 1 Thess. v. 8; Ephes. vi. 11, 17.

[150] 1 John v. 4.

[151] _Bien Public_, n. 82.

[152] Matt. x. 32, 33; Mark viii. 38; Luke xii. 8; Tim. ii. 12.

[153] John xvi. 33; Matt. xiii. 33; John xvii. 20-23.

[154] Heb. xi. 33, 34.




TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

BY HENRI LASSERRE.


PART NINTH.

I.

By reason of the events which we have narrated, M. Massy no longer
felt at home in this part of the earth. The emperor did not fail to
send him to the first prefecture which became vacant in the empire.
By a remarkable coincidence, this prefecture proved to be that of
Grenoble. Baron Massy left Our Lady of Lourdes only to meet Our Lady
of La Salette.

Jacomet also left the department, and was appointed chief of police
elsewhere. Re-established upon his chosen ground, he contributed
with great sagacity to the detection of some dangerous criminals who
had baffled the efforts of his predecessor and the active search of
the police. The crime was a great robbery committed upon a railroad
company, and amounting to several hundred thousand francs. This was
the point of departure in his fortunes as a police agent, his true
vocation. His remarkable ability, appreciated by his superiors,
raised him to a higher place.

The _procureur impérial_, M. Dutour, was also speedily called to
other functions. M. Lacadé still remained mayor, and his shadow will
yet appear once or twice in the latter pages of our story.


II.

Although he had instituted the tribunal of examination towards the
end of July, still, before permitting it to begin its work, Mgr.
Laurence desired a more peaceful state of the public mind. "To wait,"
he thought, "will not compromise God's work, since he holds all time
in his hands." The issue proved that he was right. For after the
stormy discussions of the French press and the violent proceedings of
Baron Massy, the grotto finally became free, and there was no longer
fear of the scandal of seeing police agents arresting the episcopal
commission on its way to the Massabielle rocks in order to fulfil its
duty, and examine the traces of God's finger at the very place of the
apparition.

On the 17th of November, the commission went to Lourdes. They
examined the seer. "Bernadette," says the _procès-verbal_ of the
secretary, "presented herself before us with great modesty, and,
nevertheless, with remarkable confidence. She appeared calm and
unembarrassed in the midst of the numerous assembly, in presence of
distinguished ecclesiastics, whom she had never seen, but of whose
mission she had been made aware."

She described the apparitions, the words of the Blessed Virgin,
the order given by Mary to build a chapel in her honor, the sudden
breaking out of the fountain, the name, "Immaculate Conception,"
which the vision had given to itself. She set forth all that was
personal to herself in this supernatural drama with the grave
certainty of a witness fully convinced, and the humble candor of
a child. She answered every question, and left no obscurity in the
mind of those who interrogated her, no longer in the name of man,
as Jacomet had done, but in the name of the Catholic Church. Our
readers are already aware of the substance of her testimony. We have,
in former pages, narrated events in the order of their date. The
commission visited the Massabielle rocks. It beheld the great volume
of the miraculous fountain. It established, by the testimony of the
neighboring inhabitants, that no spring existed there before the time
when it broke forth in the presence of the multitudes under the hand
of the ecstatic seer.

At Lourdes and in other places they made studious inquiry into the
miraculous cures worked by the water of the grotto.

In this delicate task there were two parts, entirely distinct. Human
testimony determined the facts themselves; but their natural or
supernatural character depended, for the most part, on the verdict of
medical science. The method followed by the tribunal was inspired by
this twofold thought.

Throughout the dioceses of Lourdes, Auch, and Bayonne, the commission
summoned before it the subjects of these singular cures. It
cross-examined the minutest details of their sickness, and their
sudden or gradual restoration to health. It brought in human science
to put those technical questions of which theologians, perhaps, would
not have thought. It summoned the relations, friends, neighbors, and
other witnesses of the different phases of the event, to confirm
evidence. Having once come to a certainty of all details, it
submitted facts to the judgment of two eminent physicians admitted
as colleagues. These physicians were Dr. Vergès, superintendent of
the baths at Barèges, Fellow of the Medical Faculty of Montpellier,
and Dr. Dozous, who had already, out of private interest, given his
attention to several of these strange incidents. Each physician
gave in his report his personal opinion regarding the nature of the
cure, sometimes rejecting the miracle, and attributing the cessation
of disease to certain natural causes; at other times declaring its
utter inexplicability without the action of a supernatural power;
and, lastly, sometimes not arriving at any conclusion, but remaining
in doubt as to the true explanation. Thus prepared by the double
knowledge of facts and the conclusion of science with respect to
them, the commission deliberated, and finally pronounced its judgment
to the bishop, and submitted the evidence.

The commission had not and could not have any preconceived opinions.
Believing on principle in the supernatural, which is always to be
met with in the history of the world, it knew, also, that nothing so
tends to discredit the true miracles of God as false prodigies worked
by men. Equally indisposed to deny or affirm anything prematurely,
having no brief to sustain either for or against the miracle, it was
confined strictly to the task of examination and sought only the
truth. It appealed to every source of light and information, and
acted in full view of the public.

It was as open to unbelievers as to those who believed. Resolved to
discard remorselessly all that was vague or uncertain, and to accept
only incontestable facts, it rejected every declaration based upon
hearsay.

It imposed two conditions upon every witness: first, to testify only
to what came under personal knowledge and observation; secondly,
to state under oath the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.

With such precautions and an organization so prudent and wise,
it would have been impossible for a false miracle to deceive the
judgment of the commission. It would have been impossible, in the
face of the hostile criticism of those who were bent upon combating
and overthrowing every error and even the least exaggeration, to
sustain any doubtful assertion or the miraculous character of any
doubtful fact.

If, then, true miracles, imperfectly proved, failed in obtaining the
sanction of the commission, it is absolutely certain that no false
prodigy could stand before its searching examination.

Whoever had the means of contesting any one of the miracles--not by
vague and general theories, but by facts and personal knowledge--was
thereby summoned to appear against it. Not to do so was to give
up the case, and acknowledge that no formal or intelligible
counter-evidence could be sustained. When passions run high in the
ardor of a long struggle, parties do not let judgment go by default.
To refuse the combat is to accept defeat.


III.

During several months, the episcopal commission visited the houses of
those whom public notoriety designated as objects of the miraculous
cures subjected to its examination. It established the truth of many
miracles. Several of them have already found a place in our history.
Two were quite recent. They had taken place shortly after the prefect
had withdrawn his prohibition and the grotto had been reopened. One
was at Nay, the other at Tartas. Although the recipients of these
heavenly favors were mutually unacquainted, a mysterious bond seemed
to connect both events. Let us relate them in order as we have
personally studied them, and written down what we have heard under
the impressions produced by the living testimony.


IV.

In the town of Nay, where young Henry Busquet had been miraculously
cured a few months before, a certain widow, named Madeleine
Rizan, was at the point of death. Her life had for twenty-four or
twenty-five years been an unbroken series of pain and sorrow. Having
been attacked by the cholera in 1832, her left side had remained
almost entirely paralyzed. She was quite lame, and could only move
a few steps inside her house, and that only by supporting herself
against the walls or furniture. Two or three times a year, in warm
weather, she was able to go to Mass at the parish church of Nay, not
far from her dwelling. She was unable, without assistance, either
to kneel or to rise. One of her hands was totally palsied. Her
general health had suffered no less than her limbs from this terrible
scourge. She frequently vomited blood, and her stomach was unable to
bear solid food.

Beef-tea, soup, and coffee had, however, sufficed to keep up the
flame of life, ever flickering and unable to warm her feeble body.
She often suffered from icy chills. The poor woman was always cold.
Even in the heats of July and August, she always wished to see fire
in the grate, and to have her arm-chair wheeled close to the hearth.

For the last sixteen or eighteen months, her state had been much
aggravated; the paralysis of the left side had become total. The same
infirmity had begun to attack the right leg. Her paralyzed limbs were
greatly swollen, as happens in the case of dropsy.

Madame Rizan left her chair to take to her bed. She could not move,
such was her weakness, and they were obliged to turn her, from time
to time, in her bed. She was almost an inert mass. Sensibility was
gone as well as motion.

"Where are my legs?" she used to inquire, when any one came to move
her. Her limbs were drawn together, and she lay continually on one
side in the form of a Z.

Two physicians had successively attended her. Doctor Talamon had long
since given her up as incurable, and, although he continued to visit
her, it was only as a friend. He refused to prescribe any remedies,
saying that drugs and medicines would prove fatal, or, at best, only
enfeeble her system.

Doctor Subervielle, at the repeated instance of Madame Rizan, had
prescribed some medicines, and, soon finding them utterly useless,
had also given up all hope. Although her paralyzed limbs had become
insensible, the sufferings which this unfortunate woman experienced
from her stomach and head were terrible. Owing to her constantly
cramped position, she was afflicted by two painful sores--one in
the hollow of her chest, and the other on the back. On her side, in
several places, her skin, chafed by the bed-clothes, exposed the
flesh, naked and bleeding. Her death was at hand.

Madame Rizan had two children. Her daughter, Lubine, lived with and
took care of her with the greatest devotion. Her son, Romain Rizan,
had a situation in a business-house at Bordeaux.

When the last hope was gone, and Doctor Subervielle declared that she
had only a few hours to live, they sent in haste for her son, Romain
Rizan. He came, embraced his mother, and received her last blessing
and farewell. Then, obliged to leave by a message peremptorily
recalling him--torn by the cruel tyranny of business from his
mother's death-bed--he left her with the bitter conviction that he
should never see her more. The dying woman received extreme unction.
Her agony went on amid excruciating sufferings.

"My God!" she often murmured, "I pray thee to end my torments. Grant
me to be healed or to die."

She sent to ask the Sisters of the Cross, at Igon, where her own
sister-in-law was superior, to make a novena to Our Lady for her
cure or death. The sick woman also evinced a desire to drink some of
the water of the grotto. One of her neighbors, Madame Nessans, who
was going to Lourdes, promised to fetch some of the water when she
returned. For some time past, she had been watched day and night. On
Saturday, October 16, a violent crisis heralded the near approach
of her last moment. She was continually spitting blood. A livid hue
spread over her worn features; her eyes became glassy. She no longer
spoke, except when forced by excessive pain.

"O my God! how I suffer! O Lord! would that I might die!"

"Her prayer will soon be granted," said Doctor Subervielle as he left
her. "She will die to-night, or at least before the sun is fairly up.
There is only a little oil left in the lamp!"

From time to time the door of her chamber opened. Friends, neighbors,
and priests, the Abbé Dupont and the Abbé Sanareus, vicar of Nay,
entered and softly inquired if she were still alive.

Her friend and consoler, the Abbé Dupont, could not restrain his
tears as he left her. "Before morning she will be dead, and I shall
see her again only in paradise," he said.

Night fell, and solitude gradually took possession of the house.
Kneeling before a statue of the Blessed Virgin, Lubine prayed without
any earthly hope. The silence was profound, and broken only by the
difficult breathing of the invalid.

It was nearly midnight. "My daughter!" cried the dying woman.

Lubine arose and approached the bed.

"What do you wish, mother?" she asked, taking her hand. "My dear
child," answered the dying mother, in a strange voice that seemed to
come from a heavy dream, "go to our friend Madame Nessans, who was
to have returned from Lourdes, this evening. Ask her for a glassful
of the water from the grotto. This water will cure me. The Blessed
Virgin wishes it."

"Dear mother," answered Lubine, "it is too late to go there. I cannot
leave you alone. Besides, everybody is asleep at the house of Madame
Nessans. But I will go early in the morning."

"Let us wait, then." The invalid relapsed into silence. The long
night finally passed.

The joyous bells at last announced the day. The morning Angelus as
it rose carried up to the Virgin Mother the prayers of earth, and
celebrated the eternal memory of her all-powerful maternity. Lubine
hastened to Madame Nessans's, and soon returned with a bottle of
water from the grotto.

"Here, mother! Drink! and may the Blessed Virgin come to your help!"
Madame Rizan raised the glass to her lips, and swallowed a few
mouthfuls.

"O my daughter! my daughter! It is life that I am drinking! Here is
life in this water! Bathe my face with it! Bathe my arms! Bathe my
whole body with it!"

Trembling and almost beside herself, Lubine moistened a piece of
linen with the miraculous water, and bathed her mother's face.

"I feel that I am cured!" she cried in a voice now clear and strong.
"I feel that I am cured!"

Lubine meanwhile bathed with the wet linen the paralyzed and swollen
limbs of the invalid. Trembling with mingled joy and terror, she saw
the enormous swelling disappear under the rapid movement of her hand,
and the stretched and shining skin reassume its natural appearance.

Suddenly, completely, and without transition, health and life revived
beneath her touch.

"It seems to me as if burning pimples were breaking out all over me."
It was, doubtless, the principle of disease leaving for ever under
the influence of a superhuman will. All this was over in a moment.
In a couple of minutes the body of Madame Rizan, apparently in her
agony, bathed by her daughter, recovered the fulness of strength.

"I am cured! perfectly cured!" cried the happy woman. "Oh! how good
the Blessed Virgin is! Oh! how powerful she is!"

After the first burst of gratitude toward heaven, the material
appetites of earth made themselves keenly felt.

"Lubine, dear Lubine, I am hungry. I must have something to eat!"

"Will you have some coffee, some wine, or some milk?" stammered her
daughter, confused by the suddenness and astounding character of the
miracle.

"I want to have meat and bread, my daughter. I have not tasted any
for twenty-four years." There happened to be some cold meat and some
wine near at hand; Madame Rizan partook of both. "And now," said she,
"I want to get up."

"It is impossible, mother," said Lubine, hesitating to believe her
eyes, and fancying, perhaps, that cures which come directly from
God are subject, like other cures, to the degrees and dangers of
convalescence. She feared to see the miracle vanish as suddenly as it
had come.

Madame Rizan insisted and demanded her clothes. They had been for
many months carefully folded and packed in the wardrobe never to be
worn again. Lubine left the room to find them. Soon she re-entered.
But as she crossed the threshold, she uttered a loud cry, and dropped
the garment which she was bringing. Her mother had sprung out of bed,
during her absence, and there she was, before the mantelpiece, where
she kept a statue of the Blessed Virgin, with clasped hands returning
thanks to her all-powerful deliverer.

Lubine, as frightened as if she had beheld one risen from the dead,
was unable to help her mother to dress. The latter, however, put on
her clothes in an instant without any assistance, and again knelt
down before the sacred image.

It was about seven o'clock in the morning, and the people were going
to the early Mass. Lubine's cry was heard in the street by the groups
who were passing under the windows.

"Poor girl!" they said, "her mother is dead at last. It was
impossible for her to survive the night." Several entered the house
to console and support Lubine in this unspeakable affliction, among
others two sisters of the Holy Cross.

"Ah! poor child, your good mother is dead! But you will certainly
see her again in heaven!" They approached the young girl, whom they
beheld leaning against the half-opened door, her face wearing a
stupefied look. She could scarcely answer them.

"My mother is risen from the dead!" she answered, in a voice choked
by strong emotion.

"She is raving," thought the sisters, as they passed by and entered
the room, followed by some persons who had come up-stairs with them.

Lubine had spoken the truth. Madame Rizan had left her bed. There
she was, dressed and prostrated before the image of Mary. She arose,
and said: "I am cured! Let us all kneel down, and thank the Blessed
Virgin."

The news of this extraordinary event spread like lightning through
the city. All that day and the day after the house was full of
people. The crowd, agitated and yet recollected, pressed to visit
the room into which a ray of the all-powerful goodness of God had
penetrated.

Everybody wished to see Madame Rizan, to touch the body restored to
life, to convince his own eyes, and grave upon his memory the details
of this supernatural drama.

Doctor Subervielle acknowledged, without hesitation, the supernatural
and divine character of this cure.

At Bordeaux, meanwhile, Romain Rizan awaited in despair and anguish
the fatal missive announcing his mother's death. It was a great shock
to him when, one morning, the postman brought him a letter addressed
in the well-known hand of Abbé Dupont.

"I have lost my poor mother!" he said to a friend who had just come
to visit him. He burst into tears, and dared not break the seal.

"Take courage in your misfortune. Have faith!" said his friend.

Finally, he opened the letter. The first words which met his eyes
were:

"Deo gratias! Alleluia!

"Rejoice, my dear friend. Your mother is cured--_completely cured_.
The Blessed Virgin has restored her miraculously to health." The Abbé
Dupont then went on to relate the divine manner in which Madame Rizan
had found at the end of her agony life instead of death.

We may easily fancy the joy of the son and of his friend. The latter
was employed in a printing-house at Bordeaux, where was published
the _Messager Catholique_. "Give me that letter," said he to Romain.
"The works of God ought to be made known, and Our Lady of Lourdes
glorified."

Partly by force, and partly by entreaty, he obtained the letter. It
was published a few days afterward in the _Messager Catholique_.

The happy son hastened to Nay at the earliest moment. As he arrived
in the diligence, a woman was waiting to greet him. She ran swiftly
to meet him, and, when he descended from the coach, threw herself
into his arms, weeping with tenderness and joy. It was his mother.

A few years afterward, the author, while searching out the details
of his history, went in person to verify the report of the episcopal
commission. He visited Madame Rizan, whose perfect health and green
old age excited his admiration. Although in her seventy-first year,
she has none of the infirmities which that age usually brings. Of her
illness and terrible sufferings there remains not a trace; and all
who had formerly known her, and whose testimony we gathered, were yet
stupefied at her extraordinary cure.[155] We wished to see Doctor
Subervielle. He had been dead some years.

"But," we asked a clergyman of Nay, who acted as our guide, "the
invalid was attended by another physician, Doctor Talamon, was she
not?"

"He is a very distinguished man," replied our companion. "He was
in the habit of visiting Madame Rizan, not professionally, but as
a friend and neighbor. But after her miraculous cure he ceased his
visits, and did not make his appearance for eight or ten months."

"Perhaps," we rejoined, "he wished to avoid being questioned on the
subject, and being obliged to explain this extraordinary phenomenon,
which would certainly have been out of accord with his principles of
medical philosophy?"

"I do not know how that may have been."

"No matter; I want to see him."

We knocked at his door.

Doctor Talamon is a tall and handsome old man, with an expressive
and intelligent countenance. A remarkable forehead, a crown of white
locks, a glance which betokens positive adherence to opinions, a
mouth varied in expression, and on which a sceptical smile often
plays--these are the features which strike one who approaches him.

We stated the object of our visit.

"It is a long time," he answered, "since all that happened, and, at
the distance of ten or twelve years, my memory supplies but a dim
recollection of the matter about which you inquire; besides, I was
not an eye-witness of it. I did not see Madame Rizan for several
months, and, consequently, do not know by what conditions or agents,
or with what degree of speed or slowness, her recovery was effected."

"But, doctor, did you not have curiosity enough to investigate such
an extraordinary event, of which rumor must have instantly informed
you, especially in this place?"

"The fact is," he answered, "I am an old physician. I know that the
laws of nature are never reversed, and, to tell you the truth, I do
not believe the least bit in miracles."

"Ah! doctor, you sin against the faith," cried the abbé who had
accompanied me.

"And I, doctor, do not accuse you of sinning against faith, but I
accuse you of sinning against the very principles of the science
which you profess."

"How, pray, and in what?"

"Medicine is not a speculative, but an empirical science. Experience
is its law. The observation of facts is its first and fundamental
principle. If you had been told that Madame Rizan had cured herself
by washing with a decoction from some plant recently discovered on
yonder mountain, you would not have failed to ascertain the cure
and to examine the plant, and put the discovery on record. It might
have been as important as that of quinine in the last century. You
would have done the same if the cure had been produced by some new
sulphurous or alkaline substance. But, now, everybody is talking
about a fountain of miraculous water, and you have never yet been
to see it. Forgetting that you are a physician, that is to say,
a humble observer of facts, you have refused to notice this, as
did the scientific academies which rejected steam and proscribed
quinine on some quack principles of their own. In medicine, when
fact contradicts a principle, it means that the principle is wrong.
Experience is the supreme judge. And here, doctor, allow me to say
that, if you had not had some vague consciousness that what I am
telling you is true, you would have rushed to find out the truth, and
would have given yourself the pleasure of showing up the imposture
of a miracle which was setting the whole neighborhood wild with
excitement. But this would have exposed you to the danger of being
forced to surrender; and you have acted like those party-slaves
who will not listen to the arguments of their opponents. You have
listened to your philosophical prejudices, and you have been false to
the first law of medicine, which is to face the study of facts--no
matter of what nature--in order to derive instruction from them.
I speak freely, doctor, because I am aware of your great merits,
and that your keen intellect is capable of hearing the truth. Many
physicians have refused to certify to facts of this nature, for fear
of having to brave the resentment of the faculty and the raillery
of friends of their profession. With regard to yourself, doctor,
although your philosophy may have deceived you, human respect has had
nothing at all to do with your keeping aloof."

"Certainly not," he replied, "but, perhaps, if I had placed myself at
the point of view which you have indicated, I might have done better
by examining the matter."


V.

Long before the occurrences at Lourdes, at an epoch when Bernadette
was not yet in the world, in 1843, during the month of April, an
honorable family of Tartas in the Landes was in a state of great
anxiety. The year before, Mlle. Adèle de Chariton had been married to
M. Moreau de Sazenay, and now approached the term of her pregnancy.
The crisis of a first maternity is always alarming. The medical
men, summoned in haste on the preliminary symptoms, declared that
the birth would be very difficult, and did not conceal their fear
of some danger. No one is ignorant of the cruel anxiety of such a
juncture. The most poignant anguish is not for the poor wife who
is prostrated upon her bed of pain, and entirely absorbed in her
physical sufferings. It is the husband whose heart is now the prey
of indescribable tortures. They are of the age of vivid impressions;
they have entered upon a new life, and begun to taste the joys of
a union which God seems to have blessed; they have passed a few
months full of anticipations of the future. The young couple have
set them down, so to speak, side by side in a fairy pleasure-boat.
The river of life has carried them softly on amid banks of flowers.
Suddenly, without warning, the shadow of death rises before them.
The heart of the husband, expanded with hope for the child so soon
to be born, is crushed by terror for his wife, who may be about to
perish. He hears her accents of pain. How will the crisis end? Is
it to be in joy or bereavement? What is about to issue from that
chamber? Will it be life or death? What must we send for--a cradle or
a coffin? Or--horrible contrast--will both be necessary? Or, worse
still, shall two coffins be necessary? Human science is silent, and
hesitates to pronounce.

This anguish is frightful, but especially for those who do not
seek from God their strength and consolation. But M. Moreau was a
Christian. He knew that the thread of our existence is in the hands
of a supreme Master, to whom we can always appeal from the doctors of
science. When man has passed sentence, the King of heaven, as well as
other sovereigns, holds the right of pardon.

"The Blessed Virgin will, perhaps, vouchsafe to hear me," thought the
afflicted husband. He addressed himself with confidence to the Mother
of Christ.

The danger which had appeared so threatening disappeared as a cloud
upon the horizon. A little girl had just been born.

Assuredly there was nothing extraordinary about this deliverance.
However alarming the danger might have appeared to M. Moreau himself,
the physicians had never given up hope. The favorable issue of the
crisis may have been something purely natural.

The heart of the husband and father, however, felt itself penetrated
with gratitude to the Blessed Virgin. His was not one of those
rebellious souls which demands freedom from all doubt in order to
escape acknowledging a favor.

"What name are you going to give to your little girl?" he was asked.

"She shall be called Marie."

"Marie? Why, that is the commonest name in the whole country. The
children of the laboring people, the servants, are all named Marie.
Besides, Ma_r_ie Mo_r_eau is out of all euphony. The two _m_'s
and two _r_'s would be intolerable!" A thousand reasons of equal
validity were urged against him. There was a general protest.

M. Moreau was very accessible, and easily moved by others; but in
this instance he resisted all counsel and entreaty; he braved all
discontent, and his tenacity was really extraordinary. He did not
allow himself to forget that, in his distress, he had invoked this
sacred name, or that it belonged to the Queen of heaven.

"She shall be called Marie, and I wish her to take the Blessed Virgin
for a patroness. And I tell you the truth, this name will some day
bring her a blessing."

Everybody was astonished at this apparent obstinacy, but it remained
unshaken as that of Zachary when he gave his son the name John.
Vainly did they apply every means of attack; there was no getting by
this inflexible will. The first-born of the family, therefore, took
the name of Marie. The father, moreover, desired that she should be
vowed for three years to dress in white, the color of the Blessed
Virgin. This, too, was done.

More than sixteen years had now passed since this episode. A second
daughter had been born, she was called Marthe. Mlle. Marie Moreau was
being educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Bordeaux. About
the commencement of January, 1858, she was attacked by a disease
of the eyes, which shortly obliged her to give up her studies. She
supposed at first that it was only a cold which would pass off as
it had come; but her hopes were deceived, and her complaint assumed
a most alarming character. The physician in attendance judged it
necessary to consult a distinguished oculist of Bordeaux, M. Bermont.
It was not a cold; it was amaurosis.

"Her case is a very serious one," said M. Bermont; "one of the eyes
is entirely gone, and the other in a very dangerous condition."

The parents were immediately notified. Her mother hastened to
Bordeaux, and brought back her daughter, in order that she might have
at home that care, treatment, and perfect attention which the oculist
had prescribed in order to save the eye which yet remained, and
which was so gravely affected that it could perceive objects only as
through a mist.

The medicines, baths, and all the prescriptions of science proved
useless. Spring and autumn passed without any change for the better.
Indeed, the deplorable condition of the invalid was daily aggravated.
Total blindness was approaching. M. and Madame Moreau decided to take
their child to Paris, in order to consult the great medical lights.

While engaged in hasty preparations for their journey, fearing lest
it might be too slow to escape the danger which threatened their
child, the postman brought them the weekly number of the _Messager
Catholique_. It was about the first of November, and this number of
the _Messager Catholique_ happened to be precisely the one which
contained the letter of Abbé Dupont, and the story of the miraculous
cure of Madame Rizan, of Nay, by means of water from the grotto.

M. Moreau opened it mechanically, and his glance fell upon that
divine history. He turned pale as he read, hope began to awaken in
the heart of the desolate father, and that soul, or rather that
heart, was touched by a gleam of light.

"There," said he--"there is the door at which we must knock. It is
evident," he added, with a simplicity whose actual words we delight
to repeat, "that, if the Blessed Virgin has really appeared at
Lourdes, she must be interested in working miraculous cures to prove
the truth of her apparitions. And this is especially true at first
before the event is not generally believed.... Let us be in a hurry,
then, since in this case the first come are to be the first served.
My dearest wife and daughter, we must address ourselves at once to
Our Lady of Lourdes." Sixteen years had not worn out the faith of M.
Moreau.

A novena was resolved upon, in which all the neighboring friends
of the young girl were to be asked to join. By a providential
circumstance, a priest of the city had in his possession a bottle of
the water, so that the novena could be commenced at once.

The parents, in case of a cure, bound themselves to make a pilgrimage
to Lourdes, and to devote their daughter for a year to the colors
of white and blue, the colors of the Blessed Virgin, which she had
already worn for three years during her infancy.

The novena commenced on Sunday evening, the 8th of November.

Must it be acknowledged? The invalid had but little faith. Her mother
dared not hope. Her father alone had that tranquil faith which the
kind powers of heaven never resist.

All said the prayers together in M. Moreau's room, before an image of
the Blessed Virgin. The mother and her two daughters rose one after
another to retire, but the father remained on his knees.

He thought he was alone, and his voice broke forth with a fervor
which recalled his family, who have given us the account, and who
never can forget that solemn moment without a tremor.

"Blessed Virgin!" said the father--"most blessed Virgin Mary! you
must cure my child. Yes, indeed, you are _bound_ to do it. It is an
obligation which you cannot refuse to acknowledge. Remember, O Mary!
how, in spite of everybody and against everybody, I chose you for her
patron. Remember what struggles I had to give her your sacred name.
Can you, Holy Virgin, forget all this? Can you forget how I defended
your glory and power against the vain reasons with which they
surrounded me? Can you forget that I publicly placed this child under
your protection, telling everybody and repeating that your name would
some day bring a blessing upon her? Can you be unmindful of all this?
Are you not bound in honor--now that I am in misfortune, now when I
pray you for our child and yours--to come to our help and heal her
malady? Are you going to allow her to become blind, after the faith I
have shown in you? No! no! impossible! You will cure her."

Such were the sentiments which escaped in loud tones from the unhappy
father, as he appealed to the Blessed Virgin, and, as it were,
presenting a claim against her, demanded payment.

It was ten o'clock at night.

The young girl, before retiring, dipped a linen bandage in the water
of Lourdes, and, placing it upon her eyes, tied it behind her head.

Her soul was agitated. Without having her father's faith, she said
to herself that, after all, the Blessed Virgin was perfectly able
to cure her, and that, perhaps, at the end of the novena she might
recover her sight. Then doubt returned, and it seemed as if a miracle
ought not to be worked for her. With all these thoughts revolving in
her mind, she could hardly lie still, and it was very late before she
fell asleep.

When morning came, as soon as she awoke, her first movement of hope
and uneasy curiosity was to remove the bandage which covered her
eyes. She uttered a loud cry.

The room about her was filled with the light of the rising day. She
saw clearly, exactly, and distinctly. The diseased eye had recovered
its health, and the eye which before was blind had been restored to
sight.

"Marthe! Marthe!" she cried, "I see perfectly. I am cured!"

Little Marthe, who slept in the same room, sprang out of bed and
ran to her sister. She saw her eyes, stripped of their bloody veil,
black and brilliant, and sparkling with life and strength. The little
girl's heart at once turned toward her father and mother, who had not
yet shared in this joy.

"Papa! mamma!" she cried.

Marie beckoned her not to call them yet.

"Wait! wait!" said she, "until I have tried if I can read. Give me a
book."

The child took one from the table. "There!" said she.

Marie opened the book, and read with perfect ease as freely as any
one ever has read. The cure was complete, radical, absolute, and the
Blessed Virgin had not left her work half-done.

The father and mother hastened to the room.

"Papa, mamma, I can see--I can read--I am cured!"

How can we describe the scene which followed? Our readers can
understand it, each for himself, by entering into his own
imagination. The door of the house had not yet been opened. The
windows were closed, and their transparent panes admitted only the
early light of morning. Who, then, could have entered to join this
family in the happiness of this sudden blessing? And yet these
Christians felt instinctively that they were not alone, and that a
powerful being was invisibly in the midst of them. The father and
mother, and little Marthe, fell on their knees; Marie, who had not
yet arisen, clasped her hands; and from these four breasts, oppressed
with gratitude and emotion, went forth, as a prayer of thanks, the
holy name of the Mother of God: "O holy Virgin Mary! Our Lady of
Lourdes!"

What their other words were, we know not; but what their sentiments
must have been, any one can imagine by placing himself before this
miraculous event, which, like a flash from the power of God, had
turned the affliction of a family into joy and happiness.

Is it necessary to add that, shortly afterward, Mlle. Marie Moreau
went with her parents to thank Our Lady of Lourdes in the place of
her apparition? She left her colored dresses upon the altar, and went
away happy and proud of wearing the colors of the Queen of virgins.

M. Moreau, whose faith had formerly been so strong, was wholly
stupefied. "I thought," said he, "that such favors were only granted
to the saints; how is it, then, that they descend upon miserable
sinners like us?"

These facts were witnessed by the entire population of Tartas, who
shared in the affliction of one of their most respected families.
Everybody in the city saw and can testify that the malady, which had
been considered desperate, was completely healed at the beginning
of the novena. The superior of the Convent of the Sacred Heart at
Bordeaux, the one hundred and fifty pupils who were school-mates
of Mlle. Marie Moreau, the physicians of that institution, have
established her serious condition before the events which we have
related, and her total cure immediately afterward. She returned to
Bordeaux, where she remained two years to complete her studies.

The oculist Bermont could not recover from his surprise at an
event so entirely beyond his science. We have read his declaration
certifying to the state of the invalid, and acknowledging the
inability of medical treatment to produce such a cure, "which," he
observes, "has persisted and still holds. As to the instantaneousness
with which this cure has been wrought," he adds, "it is a fact which
incomparably surpasses the power of medical science. In testimony of
which I attach my signature. BERMONT."

This declaration, dated February 8th, 1859, is preserved at the
bishop's residence at Tarbes, together with a great number of letters
and testimonials from citizens of Tartas, among others that of the
mayor of that city, M. Desbord.

Mlle. Marie continued to wear the colors of the Blessed Virgin up to
the day of her marriage, which took place after she had finished her
studies and left the Sacred Heart. On that day she went to Lourdes
and laid aside her maiden attire to put on her bridal robes. She
wished to give this dress of blue and white to another young girl,
also beloved by the Blessed Virgin, Bernadette.

This was the only present which Bernadette ever accepted. She wore
for several years, indeed until it was worn out, this dress which
recalled the loving power of the divine apparition at the grotto.

Eleven years have since elapsed. The favor accorded by the Blessed
Virgin has not been withdrawn. Mlle. Moreau has always had most
excellent and perfect sight; never any relapse, never the slightest
indisposition.

Excepting by suicide, ingratitude, or abuse of grace, that which God
has restored can never die. _Resurgens jam non moritur._

Mlle. Marie Moreau is now called Madame d'Izaru de Villefort, and is
the mother of three delightful children, who have the finest eyes in
the world. Although they are boys, each bears in his baptismal name
first the name of Mary.


VI.

Miraculous cures were counted by hundreds. It was impossible to
verify them all. The episcopal commission submitted thirty of them
to most rigorous scrutiny. The most severe strictness was shown in
this examination, and nothing was admitted as supernatural, until it
was absolutely impossible to call it anything else. All cures which
had not been almost instantaneous, or which had been occupied by
successive stages, all these were rejected; as also were all which
had been obtained in conjunction with medical treatment, however
unavailing the latter might have been. "Although the inefficacy
of the remedies prescribed by science has been sufficiently
demonstrated, we cannot in this case in an exclusive manner attribute
the cure to a supernatural virtue in the water of the grotto which
was used at the same time." So runs the report of the secretary of
the commission.

Moreover, numerous spiritual favors, singular graces, unlooked-for
conversions, had been reported to the commission. It is difficult to
establish juridically events which have taken place in the closed
recesses of the human soul and which escape the observation of all
without. Although such facts, such changes, are often more wonderful
than the restoration of a member or the healing of a physical
disease, the commission judged rightly when it decided that it ought
not to include them in the solemn and public inquiry with which it
had been charged by the bishop.

In the report to his grace, the committee, by agreement with
the physicians, divided the cures which had been examined into
three categories, with all the carefully gathered details and
_procès-verbaux_, signed by the persons cured and by numerous
witnesses.

The first category included those cures which, despite their
striking and astonishing appearance, were susceptible of a natural
explanation. These were six in number; namely, those of Jeanne-Marie
Arqué, the widow Crozat, Blaise Maumus, a child of the Lasbareilles
of Gez, Jeanne Crassus, Arcizan-Avant, Jeanne Pomiès of Loubajac.

The second list comprised cures which the commission felt inclined to
attribute a supernatural character. Of this number were Jean-Pierre
Malou, Jeanne-Marie Dauber, wife of a certain Vendôme, Bernarde
Soubies and Pauline Bordeaux of Lourdes, Jean-Marie Amaré of
Beaucens, Marcelle Peyregue of Agos, Jeanne-Marie Massot Bordenave
of Arras, Jeanne Gezma and Auguste Bordes of Pontacq. "The greater
number of these facts," says the medical report, "possess all the
conditions to cause them be admitted as supernatural. It will,
perhaps, be found that in excluding them we have acted with too much
reserve and scrupulousness.

"But far from complaining of this reproach, we shall congratulate
ourselves upon it, since in these matters we are convinced that
prudence demands severity."

Under such circumstances, a natural explanation, although in
itself utterly improbable, seemed rigorously possible, and this was
sufficient to prevent the examiners from declaring a miracle.

The third class contained cures which presented an undeniable
and evident supernatural character, fifteen in number. Those of:
Blaisette Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, Jeanne Grassus married to
Crozat, Louis Bourriette, little Justin Bouhohorts, Fabian and
Suzanne Baron of Lourdes, Madame Rizanand, Henry Busquet of Nay,
Catherine Latapie of Loubajac, Madame Lanou of Bordères, Marianne
Garrot and Denys Bouchet of Lamarque, Jean-Marie Tambourné of St.
Justin, Mlle. Marie Moreau de Sazenay of Tartas, Paschaline Abbadie
of Rabasteins, all these were incontestably miraculous.

"The maladies to which those favored by such sudden and startling
cures were subject were of entirely different natures"--we quote from
the report of the commission. "They possessed the greatest variety
of character. Some were the subjects of external, others of internal
pathology. Nevertheless, these various diseases were all cured by a
single simple element, used either as a lotion or drink, or sometimes
in both ways.

"In the natural and scientific order, furthermore, each remedy is
used in a fixed and regular manner; it has its special virtue proper
to a given malady, but is either inefficacious or hurtful in other
cases.

"It is not, then, by any property inherent in its composition that
the Massabielle water has been able to produce such numerous,
diverse, and extraordinary cures, and to extinguish at once diseases
of different and opposite characters. Furthermore, science has
authoritatively declared, after analysis, that this water has no
mineral or therapeutic qualities, and chemically does not differ
from other pure waters. Medical science, having been consulted, after
mature and conscientious examination, is not less decisive in its
conclusions."

"In glancing at the general appearance of these cures," says the
medical report, "one cannot fail to be struck by the ease, the
promptitude, and instantaneous rapidity with which they spring
from their producing cause; from the violation and overthrow
of all therapeutic laws and methods which takes place in their
accomplishment; from the contradictions offered by them to all
the accepted axioms and cautions of science; from that kind of
disdain which sports with the chronic nature and long resistance of
the disease; from the concealed but real care with which all the
circumstances are arranged and combined: everything, in short, shows
that the cures wrought belong to an order apart from the habitual
course of nature.

"Such phenomena surpass the limits of the human intellect. How,
indeed, can it comprehend the opposition which exists:

"Between the simplicity of the means and the greatness of the result?

"Between the unity of the remedy and the variety of the diseases?

"Between the short time employed in the use of this remedy and the
lengthy treatment indicated by science?

"Between the sudden efficacy of the former and the long-acknowledged
inutility of the latter?

"Between the chronic nature of the diseases and the instantaneous
character of the cure?

"There is in all this a contingent force, superior to any that spring
from natural causes, and, consequently, foreign to the water of which
it has made use to show forth its power?"

In view of so many carefully-collected and publicly-certified facts,
so striking in their nature; in view, moreover, of the conscientious
and thorough inquiry made by the commission, together with the formal
and united declarations of medicine and chemistry, the bishop could
no longer remain unconvinced.

Nevertheless, on account of that spirit of extreme prudence which we
have before remarked, Monseigneur Laurence, before giving the solemn
episcopal verdict in this matter, demanded a still further guaranty
of these miraculous cures--the proof of time. He allowed three years
to pass. A second examination was then made. The miraculous cures
still held good. No one appeared to retract former testimony or to
contest any of the facts. The works of him who rules over eternity
had nothing to fear from the test of time.

After this overwhelming series of proofs and certainty, Monseigneur
Laurence at length pronounced the judgment which all had been
awaiting. We give below its general features.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTE:

[155] "All the circumstances connected with this fact," says the
report of the physicians, "stamp it with a supernatural character.
It is impossible to escape from this conviction, if one considers,
on one hand, the chronic nature of the complaint which began in
1834; the force of its engendering cause, namely, the cholera; the
permanence of some of its symptoms in a most important organ of life,
the stomach; the fruitlessness of remedies applied by a competent
physician, M. Subervielle, the gradual prostration of strength,
followed inevitably by dyspepsia, and the enervation resulting from
continual pain; and, on the other hand, if one will couple with
these circumstances the effect produced by natural water, only once
applied, and the instantaneous character of the result."




PÈRE JACQUES AND MADEMOISELLE ADRIENNE.

A SKETCH AFTER THE BLOCUS.


It was just five months since I had left it, the bright, proud
Babylon, beautiful and brave and wicked, clothed in scarlet and
feasting sumptuously. King Chanticleer, strutting on the Boulevards,
was crowing loudly, and the myriad tribe of the Coq Gaulois,
strutting up and down the city, crowed loud and shrill in responsive
chorus--petits crévés, and petits mouchards, and petits gamins, and
all that was _petit_ in that grand, foolish cityful of humanity.
Bedlam was abroad, singing and crowing and barking itself rabid, and
scaring away from Babylon all that was not bedlam. But there were
many in Babylon who were not afraid of the bedlam, who believed that
crowing would by-and-by translate itself into action, into those
seeds of desperate daring that none but madmen can accomplish, and
that, when the bugle sounded, these bragging, swaggering maniacs
would shoulder the musket, and, rushing to the fore, save France or
die for her. No one saved her, but many did rush to the fore, and
die for her. They were not lunatics, though, at least not many of
them. The lunatics showed, as they have often done before, that there
was method in their madness. They cheered on the sane, phlegmatic
brethren to death and glory, while they stayed prudently at home to
keep up the spirits of the capital; they were the spirit and soul of
the defence, the others were but the bone and muscle of it. What is
a body without a soul? The frail arm of the flesh without the nerve
and strength of the spirit? Pshaw! If it were not for the crowing of
King Chanticleer, there would have been no siege at all; the whole
concern would have collapsed in its cradle.

The story of that Blocus has yet to be written. Of its outward and
visible story, many volumes, and scores of volumes, good and bad,
true and false, have been already written. But the inward story,
the arcana of the defence, the exposition of that huge, blundering
machine that, with its springs and levers, and wheels within wheels,
snapped and broke and collapsed in the driver's hand, all this is
still untold. The great _Pourquoi?_ is still unanswered. History will
solve the riddle some day, no doubt, as it solves most riddles, but
before that time comes, other, grander problems of greater import to
us will have been solved too, and we shall care but little for the
true story of the Blocus.

"Yes, monsieur," said my concierge, when we met and talked over the
events that had passed since the first of September, when I fled and
left my goods and chattels to her care and the tender mercies of the
Prussians and the Reds--"yes, monsieur, it is very wonderful that one
doesn't hear of anybody having died of cold, though the winter was
so terrible, and the fuel so scarce. It ran short almost from the
beginning. We had nothing but green sticks that couldn't be persuaded
to burn and do our best. I used to sit shivering in my bed, while
the petiots tried to warm themselves skipping in the porte-cochère,
or running up and down from the _cintième_ till their little legs
were dead beat. O Mon Dieu! je me rapellerai de cette guerre en tous
les sens, monsieur."

"Did many die from starvation," I asked--"many in this neighborhood
that you knew?"

"Not one, monsieur! Not one of actual hunger, though my belief is,
plenty of folks died of poison. The bread we ate was worse than
the want of it. Such an abomination, made out of hay and bran and
oats; why, monsieur, a chiffonier's dog wouldn't have touched it in
Christian times. How it kept body and soul together for any of us is
more than I can understand."

"And yet nobody died of want?" I repeated.

"Not that I heard of, monsieur; unless you count Père Jacques as dead
from starvation. He disappeared one morning soon after he told Mlle.
Adrienne, and nobody ever knew what became of him. They said in the
quartier that he went over to the Prussians; but they said that of
better men than Père Jacques, and besides, what would the Prussians
do with a poor old _toqué_ like Père Jacques, I ask it of monsieur?"

I was going to say that I fully agreed with her, when we were both
startled by a sudden uproar in the street round the corner. We rushed
out simultaneously from the porte-cochère, where we were holding our
confabulation, to see what was the matter. A crowd was collected
in the middle of the Rue Billault, and was vociferously cheering
somebody or something. As a matter of course, the assembly being
French, there were counter-cheers; hisses and cries of "renégat!
Vendu aux Prussiens! drôle," etc., intermingling with more friendly
exclamations.

"Bon Dieu! ce n'est done pas fini! Is the war going to begin again?
Are we going to have a revolution?" demanded my concierge, throwing
up her hands to heaven and then wringing them in despair. "Will the
petiots never be able to eat their panade and build their little
mud-pies in peace! Oh! monsieur, monsieur, you are happy not to be a
Frenchman!"

Without in the least degree demurring to this last proposition, I
suggested that before giving up France as an utterly hopeless case,
we would do well to see what the row was about; if indeed it were a
row, for the cheering, as the crowd grew, seemed to rise predominant
above the hissing. Already reassured, I advanced boldly toward the
centre of disturbance, my concierge following, and keeping a tight
grip of the skirts of my coat for greater security.

"Vive Mlle. Adrienne! Donne la patte Mlle. Adrienne! Vive le Père
Jacques!" The cries, capped by peals of laughter which were suddenly
drowned in the uproarious braying of a donkey, reverberated through
the street and deafened us as we drew near.

With a shout of laughter, my concierge dropped my skirts, and
clapping her hands:

"Comment!" she cried, "she is alive, then! He did not eat her! He did
not sell her! Vive le Père Jacques! Vive Mlle. Adrienne!"

Those of my readers who have lived any time in the quartier of the
Champs Elysées will recognize Mlle. Adrienne as an old friend, and
rejoice to learn that, thanks to the intelligent devotion of Père
Jacques, she did not share the fate of her asinine sisterhood, but
has actually gone through the horrors of the siege of Paris and
lived to tell the tale. Those who have not the pleasure of her
acquaintance will perhaps be glad to make it, and to hear something
of so remarkable a personage.

For years--I am afraid to say how many, but ten is certainly within
the mark--Père Jacques's donkey has been a familiar object in the
Rue Billault and the Rue de Berri, and that part of the Faubourg St.
Honoré and the Champs Elysées which includes those streets. Why Père
Jacques christened his ass Mlle. Adrienne nobody knows. Some say,
out of vengeance against a certain blue-eyed Adrienne who won his
heart and broke it; others say, only love for a faithful Adrienne who
broke his heart by dying; but this is pure conjecture; Père Jacques
himself is reticent on the subject, and, when questioned once by a
curious, impertinent man, he refused to explain himself further than
by remarking, "Que chacun avait son idée, et que son idée à lui,
c'etait Mlle. Adrienne," and having said this he took a lump of sugar
from his pocket and presented it affectionately to his _idée_, who
munched it with evident satisfaction, and acknowledged her sense of
the attention by a long and uproarious bray.

"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Calmons-nous!" said Père Jacques in a tone
of persuasive authority. "Calmons-nous, ma chérie!"--the braying grew
louder and louder--"wilt thou be silent? Uplà, Mlle. Adrienne! Ah,
les femmes, les femmes! Toujours bavardes! La-a-a-à, Mlle. Adrienne!"

This was the usual style of conversation between the two. Père
Jacques presented lumps of sugar which were invariably recognized
by a bray, or, more properly, a series of brays, such as no other
donkey in France or Navarre but herself could send forth; and while
it lasted Père Jacques kept up a running commentary of remonstrance.

"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Sapristi, veux-tu te taire? A-t-on jamais
vu! Lotte, veux-tu en fini-i-i-r!"

Though it was an old novelty in the quartier, it seemed never to have
lost its savor, and as soon as Père Jacques and his little cart, full
of apples, or oranges, or cauliflowers, as the case might be, were
seen or heard at the further end of the street, the gamins left off
marbles and pitch-and-toss to bully and chaff Père Jacques and greet
his _idée_ with a jocular "Bonjour, Mlle. Adrienne." The tradesmen
looked up from their weights and measures, laughing, as the pair went
by.

When provisions began to run short during the Blocus, Père Jacques
grew uneasy, not for himself, but for Mlle. Adrienne. Hard-hearted
jesters advised him to fatten her up for the market; ass-flesh was
delicate and rarer than horse-flesh, and fetched six francs a pound;
it was no small matter to turn six francs in these famine times, when
there were no more apples or cauliflowers to sell; Mlle. Adrienne was
a burden now instead of a help to her master; the little cart stood
idle in the corner; there was nothing to trundle, and it was breaking
his heart to see her growing thin for want of rations, and to watch
her spirits drooping for want of exercise and lumps of sugar. For
more than a fortnight Père Jacques deprived himself of a morsel of
the favorite dainty, and doled out his last demikilog to her with
miserly economy, hoping always that the gates would be opened before
she came to the last lump.

"Voyons, ma fille!" Père Jacques would say, as she munched a bit half
the usual size of the now precious bonbon. "Cheer up, ma bouriquette!
Be reasonable, Mlle. Adrienne, be reasonable, and bear thy trials
like an ass, patiently and bravely, not like a man, grumbling and
despairing. Paperlotte, Mlle. Adrienne! if it were not for thee
I should be out on the ramparts, and send those coquins to the
right-abouts myself. Les gredins! they are not content with drilling
our soldiers and starving our citizens, but they must rob thee of
thy bit of sugar, my pretty one. Mille tonnerres! if I had but their
necks under my arm for one squeeze!"

And, entering into the grief and indignation of her master, Mlle.
Adrienne would set up an agonized bray.

Thus comforting one another, the pair bore up through their trials.
But at last came the days of eating mice and rats, and bread that
a dog in good circumstances would have turned up its nose at a
month ago, and then Père Jacques shook in his sabots. He dared not
show himself abroad with Mlle. Adrienne, and not only that, but he
lived in chronic terror of a raid being made on her at home. The
mischievous urchins who had amused themselves at the expense of his
paternal feelings in days of comparative plenty, gave him no peace
or rest now that the wolf was really at the door. Requisitions were
being made in private houses to see that no stores were hoarded up
while the people outside were famishing. One rich family, who had
prudently bought a couple of cows at the beginning of the Blocus,
after vainly endeavoring to keep the fact a secret, and surrounding
the precious beasts with as much mystery and care as ever Egyptian
worshippers bestowed on the sacred Isis, were forced to give them up
to the commonwealth. This caused a great sensation in the quartier.
Père Jacques was the first to hear it, and the _gamins_ improved
the opportunity by declaring to him that the republic had issued a
decree that all asses were to be seized next day, all such as could
not speak, they added facetiously, and there was to be a general
slaughter of them, a _massacre des innocents_, the little brutes
called it, at the abattoir of the Rue Valois. The fact of its being
at the Rue Valois was a small mercy for which they reminded Père
Jacques to be duly grateful, inasmuch as, it being close at hand,
he might accompany Mlle. Adrienne to the place of execution, give
her a parting kiss, and hear her last bray of adieu. At this cynical
climax, Père Jacques started up in a rage, and seizing his stick, set
to vigorously belaboring the diabolical young torturers, who took to
their heels, yelling and screaming like frightened guinea-pigs, while
Mlle. Adrienne, who stood ruminating in a corner of the room, opened
a rattling volley of brays on the fugitives.

All that night Père Jacques lay awake in terror. Every whistle of
the wind, every creak in the door, every stir and sound, set his
heart thumping violently against his ribs; every moment he was
expecting the dreaded domiciliary visit. What was he to do? Where
was he to fly? How was he to cheat the brigands and save Mlle.
Adrienne? The night wore out, and the dawn broke, and the raid was
still unaccomplished. As soon as it was light, Père Jacques rose
and dressed himself, and sat down on a wooden stool close by Mlle.
Adrienne, and pondered. Since her life had been in jeopardy, he had
removed her from her out-house in the court to his own private room
on the ground-floor close by.

"Que me conseilles-tu, Mlle. Adrienne?" murmured the distracted
parent, speaking in a low tone, impelled by the instinct that drives
human beings to seek sympathy somewhere, from a cat or a dog if they
have no fellow-creature to appeal to, Père Jacques had contracted a
habit of talking out loud to his dumb companion when they were alone,
and consulting her on any perplexing point. Suddenly a bright idea
struck Père Jacques; he would go and consult Mère Richard.

Mère Richard lived in a neighboring court amidst a numerous family of
birds of many species, bullfinches, canaries, and linnets. She had
often suggested to Père Jacques to adopt a little songster by way
of cheering his lonely den, and had once offered him a young German
canary of her own bringing up.

"It's as good as a baby for tricks and company, and nothing so dear
to keep," urged Mère Richard.

But Père Jacques had gratefully declined. "Mlle. Adrienne is company
enough for me," he said, "and it might hurt her feelings if I took up
with a bird now, thanks to you all the same, voisine."

To-day, as he neared the house, he looked in vain for the red and
green cages that used to hang out au troisième on either side of Mère
Richard's windows. The birds were gone. Where? Père Jacques felt a
sympathetic thrill of horror, and with a heavy heart mounted the
dark little stairs, no longer merry with the sound of chirping from
the tidy little room au troisième. He refrained, through delicate
consideration for Mère Richard's feelings, from asking questions,
but, casting his eyes round the room, he beheld the empty cages
ranged in a row behind the door.

But Mère Richard had a donkey. There was no comparison to be
tolerated for a moment between it and Mlle. Adrienne, still their
positions were identical, and Mère Richard, who was a wise woman,
would help him in his present difficulty, and if she could not help
him she would, at any rate, sympathize with him, which was the next
best thing to helping him. But Mère Richard, to his surprise, had
heard nothing of the impending raid on donkeys. When he explained to
her how the case stood, instead of breaking out into lamentations,
she burst into a chuckling laugh.

"Pas possible! Bouriquette good to be eaten, and the republic going
to buy her, and pay me six francs a pound for her! Père Jaques, it's
too good to be true," declared the unnatural old Harpagon.

Père Jacques was unable to contain his indignation. He vowed that
rather than let her fall into the hands of the cannibals, he would
destroy Mlle. Adrienne with his own hand; he would kill any man in
the republic, from Favre to Gambetta, who dared to lay a finger on
her; aye, that he would, if he were to swing for it the next hour!

"Père Jacques, you are an imbecile," observed Mère Richard, taking a
pinch of snuff; "you remind me of a story my bonhomme used to tell of
two camarades of his that he met on their way to be hanged; one of
them didn't mind it, and walked on quietly, holding his tongue; but
the other didn't like it at all, and kept howling and whining, and
making a tapage de diable. At last the quiet one lost patience, and
turning round on the other, 'Eh grand bétat,' he cried, 'si tu n'en
veux pas, n'en dégoute pas les autres!'"

Père Jaques saw the point of the story, and, taking the hint, stood
up to go.

"What did you do with the birds?" he demanded sternly, as he was
leaving the room.

"Sold four of them for three francs apiece, and ate three of them,
and uncommonly good they were," said the wretched woman, with
unblushing heartlessness.

"Monster!" groaned Père Jacques, and hurried from her presence.

All that day he and Mlle. Adrienne stayed at home with their door
and window barred and bolted; but night came, and the domiciliary
visit was still a threat. Next day, however, the little door stood
open as usual, and Père Jacques was to be seen hammering away at the
dilapidated legs of a table that he was mending for a neighbor at
the rate of twenty-five centimes a leg; but Mlle. Adrienne was not
there. Had Père Jacques put an end to his agony by actually killing
her, as he had threatened, and so saved her from the ignoble fate
of the shambles? Or had he, haunted by the phantom of hunger which
was now staring at him with its pale spectral eyes from the near
background, yielded to the old man's love of life, and sold his
friend to prolong it and escape himself from a ghastly death? Most
people believed the latter alternative, but nobody knew for certain.
When Mlle. Adrienne's name was mentioned, Père Jacques would frown,
and give unmistakable signs of displeasure. If the subject was
pressed, he would seize his stick, and, making a _moulinet_ over his
head with it, prepare an expletive that the boldest never waited to
receive. One day he was caught crying bitterly in his now solitary
home, and muttering to himself between the sobs, "Ma pauvre fille!
Mlle. Adrienne! Je le suivrai bientôt--ah les coquins, les brigands,
les monstres!" This was looked upon as conclusive. The monsters in
question could only be the Shylocks of the abattoir who had tempted
him with blood-money for Mlle. Adrienne. When curiosity was thus
far satisfied, the gamins ceased to worry Père Jacques; the lonely
old man became an object of pity to everybody, even to the gamins
themselves; when they met him now they touched their caps, with
"Bonjour, Père Jacques!" and spared him the cruel jeer that had been
their customary salutation of late: "Mlle. Adrienne à la casserole!
Bon appétit, Père Jacques!"

The days wore on, and the weeks, and the months. Paris, wan and pale
and hunger-stricken, still held out. Winter had come, and thrown
its icy pall upon the city, hiding her guilty front "under innocent
snow;" the nights were long and cold, the dawn was desolate, the
tepid noon brought no warmth to the perishing, fire-bound multitude.
No sign of succor came to them from without. In vain they watched and
waited, persecuting time with hope. The cannon kept up its sobbing
recitative through the black silence of the night; through the white
stillness of the day. Hunger gnawed into their vitals, till even
hope, weary with disappointment, grew sick and died.

One morning, the neighbors noticed Père Jacques's door and window
closed long after the hour when he was wont to be up and busy. They
knocked, and, getting no answer, turned the handle of the door; it
was neither locked nor barred, merely closed, as if the master were
within; but he was not; the little room was tenantless, and almost
entirely stripped; the mattress and the scanty store of bed-clothes
were gone; the iron bedstead, a table, a stool, and two cane chairs,
were the only sticks of furniture that remained; the shelves were
bare of the bright pewter tankards and platters that used to adorn
them; the gilt clock with its abortion of a Pegasus bestrid by
a grenadier, which had been the glory of the chimney-piece, had
disappeared. What did it all mean? Had the enemy made a raid on
Père Jacques and his property during the night, and carried away the
lot in a balloon? Great was the consternation, and greater still the
gossip of the little community, when the mysterious event became
known through the quartier. What had become of Père Jacques? Had he
been kidnapped, or had he been murdered, or had he taken flight of
his own accord, and whither, and why? Nothing transpired to throw any
light on the mystery, and the gossips, tired of guessing, soon ceased
to think about it, and, like many another nine days' wonder, Père
Jacques's disappearance died a natural death.

A day came at last when the mitrailleuse hushed its hideous shriek,
the cannon left off booming, the wild beasts of war were silent.
Paris cried, "Merci!" and the gates were opened. The city, like a
sick man healed of a palsy, rose up, and shook herself and rubbed
her eyes, and ate plentifully after her long fast. Many came back
from the outposts who were wept over as dead. There were strange
meetings in many quartiers during those first days that followed
the capitulation. But no one brought any news of Père Jacques.
There were too many interests nearer and dearer to think of, and,
in the universal excitement of shame and vengeance and rare flashes
of joy, he and Mlle. Adrienne were forgotten as if they had never
been. But when, on the day of my return to Paris, my conversation
with my concierge was interrupted by the cheering of the crowd in
the Rue Billault, and when the cause of the hubbub was made known,
the fact that both Père Jacques and his _idée_ were well remembered
and, as the newspapers put it, universally esteemed by a large circle
of friends and admirers, was most emphatically attested. Nothing,
indeed, could be more gratifying than the manner in which their
resurrection was received. The pair looked very much the worse for
their sojourn in the other world, wherever it was, to which they had
emigrated. Mlle. Adrienne's appearance was particularly affecting.
She was worn to skin and bone; and certainly, if Père Jacques,
yielding to the pangs of hunger, had sacrificed his _idée_ to his
life, and taken her to the shambles, she would not have fetched more
than a brace of good rats, or, at best, some ten francs, from the
inhuman butchers of the Rue Valois. She dragged her legs, and shook
and stumbled as if the weight of her attenuated person were too much
for them. Even her old enemies, the gamins, were moved to pity, while
Père Jacques, laughing and crying and apostrophizing Mlle. Adrienne
in his old familiar way, cheered her on to their old home. How she
ever got there is as great a marvel as how she lived to be led there
to-day; for, what between physical exhaustion and mental anxiety--for
the crowd kept overpowering her with questions and caresses--and what
between the well-meant but injudicious attentions of sundry little
boys who kept stuffing unintermitting bits of straw and lumps of
sugar into her mouth, it is little short of a miracle that she did
not choke and expire on the macadam of the Rue Billault.

Many an ass has been lionized before, and many a one will be so
again. It is a common enough sight in these days, but never did hero
or heroine of the tribe bear herself more becomingly on the trying
occasion than Mlle. Adrienne. As to Père Jacques, he bore himself
as well as he could, trying hard to look dignified and unconscious,
while in his inmost heart he was bursting with pride. While he and
Mlle. Adrienne ambled on side by side, some facetious person remarked
that Père Jacques looked quite beside himself. This, indeed, was a
great day for him and his ass. Yet, notwithstanding that his heart
was moved within him and softened towards all men--nay, towards all
boys--he could not be induced to say a word as to where he had been,
or what he had done, or how he and Mlle. Adrienne had fared in the
wilderness, or what manner of wilderness it was, or anything that
could furnish the remotest clue to their existence since the day when
they had separately disappeared off the horizon of the Rue Billault.
Provisions were still too dear, during the first fortnight after the
capitulation, to allow of Père Jacques resuming his old trade of
apples or cauliflowers; besides, Mademoiselle Adrienne wanted rest.

"Pauvre chérie! il faut qu'elle se remette un peu de la vache
enragée," he remarked tenderly, when his friends condoled with him on
her forced inactivity. He would not hear of hiring her out for work,
as some of them proposed. Mère Richard came and offered a fabulous
price for the loan of her for three days, with a view to a stroke
of business at the railway station, where food was pouring in from
London. Père Jacques shook his fist at the carnivorous old woman, and
warned her never to show her unnatural old face in his house again,
or it might be worse for her.




A PIE IX.


      Le Verbe créateur en paraissant sur terre
      Erigea son église, auguste monument.
      Il appela Simon du fameux nom de Pierre
      Et de son édifice en fit le fondement:

      Des volontés du Christ sacré dépositaire,
      Interprète et gardien du dernier Testament
      Pie inspiré d'en haut et par l'église entière
      En achève le dôme et le couronnement.

      Pie obtient en ce jour (glorieux privilége!)
      De régner a l'égal du chef du saint collége.

      Des droits de l'Eternal et de l'humanité
      Contre l'erreur du jour défenseur intrépide,
      Calme au sein des périls, d'une main sûre il guide
      La barque de Céphas au port de Vérité.

NEW YORK, June 17, 1871.




THE SECULAR NOT SUPREME.[156]


Dr. Bellows is the well-known pastor of All Souls' Church, and
editor of the _Liberal Christian_ in this city, a distinguished
Unitarian minister, with some religious instincts and respectable
literary pretensions. As a student in college and the Divinity
School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was full of promise, and a
great favorite of the late Hon. Edward Everett, himself originally
a Unitarian minister and pastor of Brattle Street Church, Boston.
The Hon. E. P. Hurlbut was formerly one of the judges of the Supreme
Court of this state, a lawyer by profession, with a passably clear
head and a logical mind, who knows, if not the truth, at least what
he means, and neither fears nor hesitates to say it. His pamphlet,
as far as it goes, expresses, we doubt not, his honest thought, but
his thought is the thought of a secularist, who admits no order above
the secular, and holds that no religion not subordinate to and under
the control of the civil power, should be tolerated. Both he and Dr.
Bellows are from instinct and education hearty haters of the Catholic
Church; but while he is content to war against her from the point
of view of pure secularism or no-religion, that is, atheism, the
reverend doctor seeks to clothe his hatred in a Christian garb and to
war against Christ in the name of Christ.

Dr. Bellows, as a Liberal Christian, and though a Protestant
hardly allowed by his more rigid Protestant countrymen to bear the
Christian name, has a double battle to fight: one, against the
Evangelical movement, at the head of which is Mr. Justice Strong, of
the Supreme Court, to amend the constitution of the United States
so as to make orthodox Protestantism the official religion of the
republic, which would exclude him and his Unitarian, Universalist,
and Quaker brethren; and the other, against the admission of the
equal rights of Catholics with Protestants before the American state.
Catholics greatly trouble him, and he hardly knows what to do with
them. According to the letter of the constitution of the Union and
of the several states, unless New Hampshire be an exception, they
are American citizens, standing in all respects on a footing of
perfect equality with any other class of citizens, and have as much
right to take part in public affairs, and to seek to manage them
in the interests of their religion, as Protestants have to take
part in them in the interests of Protestantism; but this is very
wrong, and against the spirit of the constitution; for the nation
is a Protestant nation, the country was originally settled by and
belongs to Protestantism, and Catholics ought to understand that
they are really here only by sufferance, that they do not in reality
stand in relation to public questions on a footing of equality with
Protestants, and have really no right to exert any influence in
regard to the public policy of the country not in accordance with
the convictions of the Protestant majority. He tells us, in the
discourse before us and more distinctly still in the columns of the
_Liberal Christian_, not to aspire as citizens to equality with
Protestants as if we had as much right to the government as they
have, and warns us that if we do we shall be resisted even unto blood.

The occasion of his outpouring of wrath against Catholics is that
they have protested against being taxed for the support of a system
of sectarian or godless schools, to which they are forbidden in
conscience to send their children, and have demanded as their
right either that the tax be remitted, or that their proportion of
the public schools be set off to them, to be, as to education and
discipline, under Catholic control. Dr. Bellows allows that the
Catholic demand is just, and that by making it a question at the
polls they may finally obtain it; but this is not to his mind, for
it would defeat the pet scheme of Protestants for preventing the
growth of Catholicity in the country, by detaching, through the
influence of the public schools, their children from the faith of
their parents. Yet as long as any religion, even the reading of the
Bible, is insisted on in the public schools, what solid argument
can be urged against the demand of Catholics, or what is to prevent
Catholic citizens from making it a political question and withholding
their votes from the party that refuses to respect their rights of
conscience and to do them justice? Dr. Bellows says that we cannot
legally be prevented from doing so, but, if we do so, it will be
the worse for us; for if we carry our religion to the polls the
Protestant people will, as they should, rise up against us and
overwhelm us by their immense majority, perhaps even exterminate us.

To prevent the possibility of collision, the reverend doctor
proposes a complete divorce of church and state. He proposes to
defeat the Evangelicals on the one hand, and the Catholics on the
other, by separating totally religion and politics. Thus he says:

    "It is the vast importance of keeping the political
    and the religious movements and action of the people
    apart, and in their own independent spheres, that
    makes wise citizens, alike on religious and on civil
    grounds, look with alarm and jealousy on any endeavors,
    on the part either of Protestants or Catholics, to
    secure any special attention or support, any partial
    or separate legislation or subsidies, from either the
    national or the state governments. I have already told
    you that Protestants, representing the great sects in
    this country, are now laboring, by movable conventions,
    to mould public opinion in a way to give finally a
    theological character to the constitution. In a much
    more pardonable spirit, because in accordance with
    their historical antecedents, their hereditary temper,
    and their ecclesiastical logic, the Roman Catholics in
    this country are, in many states, and every great city
    of the Union, using the tremendous power they possess
    as the make-weight of parties, to turn the public
    treasure in a strong current into their own channels,
    and thus secure an illegitimate support as a religious
    body. It is not too much to guess that more than half
    of the ecclesiastical wealth of the Roman Catholic
    Church in America, against the wishes and convictions
    of a Protestant country, has been voted to it in
    lands and grants by municipalities and legislatures
    trading for Irish votes. The Catholic Church thus has
    a factitious prosperity and progress. It is largely
    sustained by Protestants--not on grounds of charity and
    toleration, or from a sense of its usefulness (that
    were well privately done), but from low and unworthy
    political motives in both the great parties of the
    country. Now that Roman Catholics themselves should
    take advantage of their solidarity as a people and a
    church, and of the power of their priesthood, with
    all uninformed and some enlightened communicants, to
    turn the political will into a machine for grinding
    their ecclesiastical grist, is not unnatural, nor
    wholly unpardonable. But it is fearfully dangerous
    to them and to us. Their success--due to the sense of
    the Protestant strength which thinks it can afford to
    blink their machinations, or to the preoccupation of
    the public mind with the emulative business pursuits
    of the time, or to the confidence which the American
    people seem to feel in the final and secure divorce of
    church and state--their unchecked success encourages
    them to bolder and more bold demands, and accustoms the
    people to more careless and more perilous acquiescence
    in their claims. The principle of authority in
    religion, which has so many temperamental adherents in
    all countries; the inherent love of pomp and show in
    worship, strongest in the least educated; a natural
    weariness of sectarian divisions, commonest among lazy
    thinkers and stupid consciences--all these play into
    the hands of the Romanists, and they are making hay
    while the sun shines.

    "There are no reviews, no newspapers in this country,
    so bold and unqualified; none so unscrupulous and
    so intensely zealous and partisan; none so fearless
    and outspoken as the Catholic journals. They profess
    to despise Protestant opposition; they deride the
    feeble tactics of other Christian sects; they are more
    ultramontane, more Roman, more Papal, than French,
    German, Austrian, Bavarian, Italian believers; they
    avow their purpose to make this a Roman Catholic
    country, and they hope to live on the Protestant enemy
    while they are converting him. They often put their
    religious faith above their political obligation,
    and, as bishops and priests, make it a duty to the
    church for their members to vote as Catholics rather
    than as American citizens. Not what favors the peace,
    prosperity, and union of the nation, but what favors
    their church, is the supreme question for them at every
    election; and American politicians, for their predatory
    purposes, have taught them this, and are their leaders
    in it.

    "Now, as an American citizen, I say nothing against
    the equality of the rights of the Roman Catholics and
    the Protestants; both may lawfully strive, in their
    unpolitical spheres, for the mastery, and the law
    may not favor or disfavor either; nor can anything
    be done to prevent Roman Catholics from using their
    votes as Roman Catholics, if they please. It is
    against the spirit, but not against the letter of the
    constitution. At any rate, it cannot be helped; only,
    it may compel Protestants to form parties and vote as
    Protestants against Roman Catholic interests, which
    would be a deplorable necessity, and lead, sooner
    or later, through religious parties in politics, to
    religious wars. The way to avoid such a horrible
    possibility--alas, such a threatening probability for
    the next generation--is at once to look with the utmost
    carefulness and the utmost disfavor upon every effort
    on the part of either Protestants or Catholics to mix
    up sectarian or theological or religious questions with
    national and state and city politics.

    "Every appeal of a sect, a denominational church,
    or sectarian charity of any description, to the
    general government, or state or city governments, for
    subsidies or favors, should be at once discountenanced
    and forbidden by public opinion, and made impossible
    by positive statute. The Protestant sects in this
    country should hasten to remove from their record any
    advantages whatsoever guaranteed to them by civil
    law to any partiality or sectarian distinction. The
    most important privilege they enjoy by law in most of
    the states is the right of keeping the Bible in the
    public schools. It is a privilege associated with the
    tenderest and most sacred symbol of the Protestant
    faith--the Bible. To exclude it from the public schools
    is to the religious affections of Protestants like
    Abraham's sacrifice of his only son. When it was first
    proposed, I felt horror-stricken, and instinctively
    opposed it; but I have thought long and anxiously upon
    the subject, and have, from pure logical necessity and
    consistency, been obliged to change--nay, reverse my
    opinion. Duty to the unsectarian character of our civil
    institutions demands that this exclusion should be
    made. It will not be any disclaimer of the importance
    of the Bible in the education of American youth, but
    only a concession that we cannot carry on the religious
    with the secular education of American children, at the
    public expense and in the public schools. So long as
    Protestant Christians insist, merely in the strength
    of their great majority, upon maintaining the Bible in
    the public schools, they justify Roman Catholics in
    demanding that the public money for education shall be
    distributed to sects in proportion to the number of
    children they educate. This goes far to break up the
    common-school system of this country, and, if carried
    out, must ultimately tend to dissolve the Union, which
    morally depends upon the community of feeling and the
    homogeneity of culture produced by an unsectarian
    system of common schools."--_Church and State_, pp.
    16-19.

But this proposed remedy will prove worse than the disease. The
state divorced from the church, wholly separated from religion, is
separated from morality; and the state separated from morality, that
is, from the moral order, from natural justice inseparable from
religion, cannot stand, and ought not to stand, for it is incapable
of performing a single one of its proper functions. The church,
representing the spiritual, and therefore the superior, order, is
by its own nature and constitution as independent of the state as
the soul is of the body; and the state separated from the church, or
from religion and morality, is like the body separated from the soul,
dead, a putrid or putrefying corpse. Exclude your Protestant Bible
and all direct and indirect religious instruction from your public
schools, and you would not render them a whit less objectionable
to us than they are now, for we object not less to purely secular
schools than we do to sectarian schools. We hold that children should
be trained up in the way they should go, so that when old they will
not depart from it; and the way in which they should go is not the
way of pure secularism, but the way enjoined by God our Maker through
his church. God has in this life joined soul and body, the spiritual
and the secular, together, and what God has joined together we dare
not put asunder. There is only one of two things that can satisfy us:
either cease to tax us for the support of the public schools, and
leave the education of our children to us, or give us our proportion
of the public schools in which to educate them in our own religion.
We protest against the gross injustice of being taxed to educate the
children of non-Catholics, and being obliged in addition to support
schools for our own children at our own expense, or peril their souls.

We do not think Dr. Bellows is aware of what he demands when he
demands the complete divorce of church and state, or the total
separation of religion and politics. The state divorced from the
church is a godless state, and politics totally separated from
religion is simply political atheism, and political atheism is simply
power without justice, force without law; for there is no law without
God, the supreme and universal Lawgiver. Man has no original and
underived legislative power, and one man has in and of himself no
authority over another; for all men by the law of nature are equal,
and have equal rights, and among equals no one has the right to
govern. All governments based on political atheism, or the assumption
that politics are independent of religion, rest on no foundation, are
usurpations, tyrannies, without right, and can govern, if at all,
only by might or sheer force. To declare the government divorced
from religion is to declare it emancipated from the law of God, from
all moral obligation, and free to do whatever it pleases. It has no
duties, and under it there are and can be no rights; for rights and
duties are in the moral order and inseparable from religion, since
the law of God is the basis of all rights and duties, the foundation
and guarantee of all morality. The state, divorced from religion,
would be bound to recognize and protect no rights of God or man,
not even those natural and inalienable rights of all men, "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This is going further in
the direction of absolutism than go the doctor's dear friends the
Turks, whom he so warmly eulogizes in his letters from the East, for
even they hold the sultan is bound by the Koran, and forbidden to do
anything it prohibits.

Dr. Bellows, doubtless, has no intention of divorcing the state
from morality, and does not see that his proposition implies it. He
probably holds that morality is separable from religion, for with him
religion is simply sentiment or opinion; but in this he falls into
the common mistake of all Liberal Christians, and of many Protestants
who regard Liberal Christians as no Christians at all. Morality
and religion are inseparable, for morality is only the practical
application in the several departments of life of the principles of
religion. Without religion morality has no foundation, nothing on
which to rest, is a baseless fabric, an unreality. Deny God, and you
deny the moral law and the whole moral order, all right, all duty,
all human accountability. The separation of all political questions
from all religious questions, which the reverend doctor demands, is
their separation from all moral questions, and is the emancipation
of the state from all right and all duty, or the assertion of its
unrestricted power to do whatever it pleases, in total disregard of
all moral and religious considerations. Is this the doctrine of a
Christian?

This surely is not the relation of church and state in America, and
derives no support from the American order of thought. With us,
the state is instituted chiefly for the protection of the natural
rights of man, as we call them, but really the rights of God, since
they are anterior to civil society, are superior to it, and not
derived or derivable from it. These rights it is the duty of civil
society to protect and defend. Any acts of the political sovereign,
be that sovereign king or kaiser, nobility or people, contrary to
these antecedent and superior rights are tyrannical and unjust, are
violences, not laws, and the common-law courts will not enforce
them, because contrary to the law of justice and forbidden by it.
The American state disclaims all authority over the religion of its
citizens, but at the same time acknowledges its obligation to respect
in its own action, and to protect and defend from external violence,
the religion which its citizens or any class of its citizens choose
to adopt or adhere to for themselves. It by no means asserts its
independence of religion or its right to treat it with indifference,
but acknowledges its obligation to protect its citizens in the free
and peaceable possession and enjoyment of the religion they prefer.
It goes further, and affords religion the protection and assistance
of the law in the possession and management of her temporalities, her
churches and temples, lands and tenements, funds and revenues for the
support of public worship, and various charitable or eleemosynary
institutions. All the protection and assistance the benefit of which
every Protestant denomination fully enjoys, and even the Catholic
Church in principle, though not always in fact, would be denied, if
the divorce Dr. Bellows demands were granted, and religion, having
no rights politicians are bound to respect, would become the prey of
lawless and godless power, and religious liberty would be utterly
annihilated, as well as civil liberty itself, which depends on it.

The chief pretence with Dr. Bellows for urging the complete divorce
of church and state, is that Catholics demand and receive subsidies
from the state and city for their schools and several charitable
institutions. Some such subsidies have been granted, we admit,
but in far less proportion to Catholics than they to Protestants
or non-Catholics. The public schools are supported at the public
expense, by the school fund, and a public tax, of which Catholics
pay their share, and these schools are simply sectarian or godless
schools, for the sole benefit of non-Catholics. The subsidies
conceded to a few of our schools do by no means place them on an
equality with those of non-Catholics. We by no means receive our
share of the subsidies conceded. The aids granted to our hospitals,
orphan asylums, and reformatories are less liberal than those to
similar non-Catholic institutions. So long as the state subsidizes
any institutions of the sort, we claim to receive our proportion of
them as our right. If the state grant none to non-Catholics, we shall
demand none for ourselves. We demand equality, but we ask no special
privileges or favors. The outcry of the sectarian and secular press
against us on this score is wholly unauthorized, is cruel, false, and
unjust. It is part and parcel of that general system of falsification
by which it is hoped to inflame popular passion and prejudice against
Catholics and their church.

Underlying the whole of the doctrine of this discourse is the
assumption of the supremacy of the secular order, or that every
American citizen is bound to subordinate his religion to his
politics, or divest himself of it whenever he acts on a political
question. This, which is assumed and partially disguised in Dr.
Bellows, is openly and frankly asserted and boldly maintained in
Judge Hurlbut's pamphlet. The judge talks much about theology,
theocracy, etc., subjects of which he knows less than he supposes,
and of course talks a great deal of nonsense, as unbelievers
generally do; but he is quite clear and decided that the state should
have the power to suppress any church or religious institution that
is based on a theory or principle different from its own. The theory
of the American government is democratic, and the government ought
to have the power to suppress or exclude every church that is not
democratically constituted. Religion should conform to politics,
not politics to religion. The political law is above the religious,
and, of course, man is above God. In order to be able to carry out
this theory, the learned judge proposes an important amendment to
the constitution of the United States, which shall on the one hand
prohibit the several states from ever establishing any religion by
law; and, on the other, shall authorize Congress to enact such laws
as it may deem necessary to control or prevent the establishment or
continuance of any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded
on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions. He
says:

    "The following amendment is proposed to Article I.
    of the amendments to the Constitution of the United
    States. The words in italics are proposed to be added
    to the present article:

    "ART. I. _Neither_ Congress _nor any state_ shall make
    _any_ laws respecting an establishment of religion, or
    prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
    freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of
    the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the
    government for a redress of grievances. _But Congress
    may enact such laws as it shall deem necessary to
    control or prevent the establishment or continuance of
    any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded
    on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican
    institutions._

    "It is assumed that there is nothing in the
    constitution, as it stands, which forbids a _state_
    from establishing a religion, and that no power is
    conferred on Congress by the constitution to forbid
    a foreign hierarchical establishment in the United
    States. If such a power be needed, then the proposed
    amendment is also necessary."--_Secular View_, p. 5.

This proposed amendment, like iniquity, lies unto itself, for
while it prohibits Congress and the several states from making
any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof, it gives to Congress full power to
control or prevent the establishment or the continuance--that is,
to prohibit--the free exercise by Catholics of their religion,
under the flimsy pretence that it is a foreign hierarchy founded on
anti-republican principles. The hierarchy is an essential part of our
religion, and any denial of its freedom is the denial of the free
exercise of his religion to every Catholic, and of the very principle
of religious liberty itself, which the constitution guarantees.

We of course deny that the Catholic hierarchy is a foreign hierarchy
or anti-republican, for what is Catholic is universal, and what is
universal is never and nowhere a foreigner; but yet, because its
Supreme Pontiff does not reside personally in America, and its power
does not emanate from the American people, Protestants, Jews, and
infidels will hold that it is a foreign power, and anti-republican.
The carnal Jews held the Hebrew religion to be a national religion,
and because the promised Messiah came as a spiritual, not as a
temporal and national prince, they rejected him. Infidels believe
in no spiritual order, and consequently in no Catholic principle or
authority; Protestants believe in no Catholic hierarchy, and hold
that all authority in religious matters comes from God, not through
the hierarchy, but through the faithful or the people, and hence
their ministers are _called_, not _sent_. It would be useless,
therefore, to undertake to prove to one or another of these three
classes that the Catholic hierarchy is at home here, in America, as
much so as at Rome, and, since it holds not from the people, that
it is not founded on anti-republican or anti-democratic principles.
The only arguments we could use to prove it lie in an order of
thought with which they are not familiar, do not even recognize,
and to be appreciated demand a spiritual apprehension which, though
not above natural reason, is quite too high for such confirmed
secularists as ex-Judge Hurlbut and his rationalistic brethren, who
have lost all conception, not only of the supernatural order, but
of the supersensible, the intelligible, the universal reality above
individual or particular existences.

For Catholics there are two orders, the secular and the spiritual.
The secular is bound by the limitations and conditions of time and
place; the spiritual is above and independent of all such conditions
and limitations, and is universal, always and everywhere the same.
The Catholic hierarchy represents in the secular and visible world,
in the affairs of individuals and nations, this spiritual order,
on which the whole secular order depends, and which, therefore, is
an alien nowhere and at home everywhere. The Catholic hierarchy
is supernatural, not natural, and, therefore, no more a foreigner
in one nation than in another. But it is only the Catholic that
can see and understand this; it is too high and too intellectual
for non-Catholics, whose minds are turned earthward, and have lost
the habit of looking upward, and to recover it must be touched by
the quickening and elevating power of grace. We must expect them,
therefore, to vote the Catholic hierarchy to be in this country a
foreign hierarchy, although it is nowhere national, and is no more
foreign here than is God himself.

The Catholic hierarchy is not founded on democratic principles,
we grant, but there is nothing in its principles or dogmas
antagonistical to republican government, if government at all; but
since it holds not from the people, nor in any sense depends on them
for its authority, non-Catholics, who recognize no power above the
people, will vote it anti-republican, undemocratic, antagonistical to
the American system of government. It is of no use to try to persuade
them to the contrary, or to allege that it is of the very essence
and design of religion to assert the supremacy of an order which
does not hold from the people, and is above them both individually
and collectively, or to maintain in the direction and government of
human affairs the supremacy of the law of God, which all men and
nations, in both public and private matters, are bound to obey, and
which none can disobey with impunity. They will only reply that this
is repugnant to the democratic tendencies of the age, is contrary to
the free and enlightened spirit of the nineteenth century, denies
the original, absolute, and underived sovereignty of the people, and
is manifestly a return to the theocratic principle which humanity
rejects with horror. To an argument of this sort there, of course,
is no available answer. The men who use it are impervious to logic
or common sense, for they either believe in no God, or that God is
altogether like one of themselves; therefore, in no respect above
themselves.

It is very clear, then, if Judge Hurlbut's proposed amendment
to the constitution were adopted, it would be interpreted as
giving to Congress, as the Judge intends it should, the power to
suppress, according to its discretion, the Catholic hierarchy,
and, therefore, the Catholic Church in the United States, and that,
too, notwithstanding the very amendment denies to Congress the
power to prohibit to any one the free exercise of his religion! How
true it is, as the Psalmist says, "Iniquity hath lied to itself."
The enemies of the church, who are necessarily the enemies of God,
and, therefore, of the truth, are not able to frame an argument or
a law against the church that does not contradict or belie itself;
yet are they, in their own estimation, the _enlightened_ portion of
mankind, and Catholics are weak, besotted, grovelling in ignorance
and superstition.

There is little doubt that the amendment proposed by Judge Hurlbut
would, if adopted, effect the object the Evangelical sects are
conspiring with Jews and infidels to effect, so far as human power
can effect it--that is, the suppression of the Catholic Church in the
United States, and it is a bolder, more direct, and honester way of
coming at it than the fair-seeming but insidious amendment proposed
by Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, and
his Evangelical allies. It is now well understood by non-Catholic
leaders that the growth of the church cannot be prevented or retarded
by arguments drawn from Scripture or reason, for both Scripture and
reason are found to be on her side, and dead against them. They see
very clearly that if she is left free with "an open field and fair
play," it is all over with her opponents. They must then contrive in
some way, by some means or other, to suppress the religious freedom
and equality now guaranteed by our constitution and laws, and bring
the civil law or the physical power of the state to bear against the
church and the freedom of Catholics. That it is a settled design
on the part of the leading Protestant sects to do this--and that
they are aided by Unitarians and Universalists, because they know
that Protestant orthodoxy would soon go by the board if the Catholic
Church were suppressed; by the Jews, because they hate Christianity,
and know well that Christianity and the Catholic Church stand or
fall together; and by unbelievers and secularists, because they
would abolish all religion, and they feel that they cannot effect
their purpose if the Catholic Church stands in their way--no one can
seriously doubt. We include the Jews in this conspiracy, for we have
before us the report of a remarkable discourse delivered lately in
the Hebrew synagogue at Washington, D. C., by the Rabbi Lilienthal,
of Cincinnati, entitled "First the State, then the Church," which
is directed almost wholly against the Catholic Church. We make an
extract from this discourse, longer than we can well afford room for,
but our readers will thank us for it:

    "Of all the questions which demand our serious
    consideration, none is of more importance than the
    one, 'Shall the state or the church rule supreme?'
    All over Europe, this question is mooted at present,
    and threatens to assume quite formidable proportions.
    There is but one empire across the ocean in which
    this problem, so far, has been definitely settled by
    virtue of autocratic might and power. It is Russia.
    When, in the seventeenth century, the Patriarch of
    Moscow had died, and the metropolitans and archbishops
    of the Greek Church met for the purpose of filling
    the vacancy, Peter the Great rushed with drawn sword
    into their meeting, and, throwing the same on the
    table, exclaimed, 'Here is your patriarch.' Since
    that time the Czar is emperor and pope at once; and,
    very significantly, the 'Holy Synod,' or the supreme
    ecclesiastical court of Russia, is presided over by a
    general, the representative of the Czar. And hence
    the Emperor Nicholas used to say: State and church are
    represented in me; and the motto ruling the Russian
    government was autocracy, Russian nationality, and the
    Greek Church.

    "But everywhere else in Europe this question agitates
    the old continent. In Great Britain, Gladstone works
    for the enfranchisement of the church; the Thirty
    nine Articles, so renowned at Oxford and Cambridge,
    are going to be abolished, and High Churchmen and
    Dissenters prepare themselves for the final struggle.
    Italy, so long priest-ridden, has inscribed on her
    national banner the glorious words, 'Religious
    liberty,' and means to carry them out to the fullest
    extent, in spite of all anathemas and excommunications.
    Spain, though still timid and wavering, has adopted
    the same policy. Austria has thrown off her concordat,
    and inserted in her new constitution the same modern
    principle; and the German Empire has fully recognized
    the equality of all citizens, without difference of
    creed or denomination, before the courts and tribunals
    of resurrected and united Germany.

    "But daily we hear of the demands of the clergy, made
    in the interests of their church. Since the last
    Œcumenical Council has proclaimed the new dogma of
    Papal infallibility, the bishops want to discharge
    all teachers and professors, both at the theological
    seminaries and universities, who are unwilling to
    subscribe to this new tenet of the Roman Church. The
    Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen even asked for the names
    of all those men who at the last election of members
    for the German Parliament did not vote for those men
    he had proposed as candidates. The government is now
    bound to interfere, but nobody can tell how this coming
    conflict between church and state will be decided.

    "This is the aspect of the old continent. What is the
    prospect in America, in our glorious and God-blessed
    country? Of course, religious liberty, in the fullest
    sense of the word, is the supreme law of the land. It
    is the most precious gem in the diadem of our republic,
    it is warranted and secured by our constitution.

    "The immortal signers of the Declaration of
    Independence; those modern prophets and apostles of
    humanity; those statesmen who thoroughly appreciated
    the bloody lessons of past history, knew but too well
    what they were doing when they entirely separated
    church and state, and ignored all sectarian sentiments
    in the inspired documents they bequeathed to their
    descendants. The denominational peace that heretofore
    characterized the mighty and unequalled growth of
    the young republic bears testimony to their wisdom,
    foresight, and statesmanship.

    "But, alas! our horizon, too, begins to be clouded. The
    harmony that heretofore prevailed between the various
    churches and denominations begins to be disturbed.
    Then we had in the last two years the conventions
    at Pittsburg and Philadelphia. The men united there
    meant to insert God in our constitution, as we have
    him already on our coins, by the inscription, 'In God
    we trust.' They intend to christianize our country,
    against the clear and emphatic spirit and letter of the
    constitution. And I must leave it to the learned judge
    of the Supreme Court of the United States who presided
    over those meetings, to decide whether this future
    Christian country hereafter shall be a Catholic or a
    Protestant country.

    "The Roman Catholic press and pulpit are not slow in
    answering this question. With praiseworthy frankness
    and manliness they declare the intentions of their
    church. Father Hecker says: 'In fifteen years we will
    take this country and build our institutions over the
    grave of Protestantism.... There is, ere long, to
    be a state religion in this country, and that state
    religion is to be Roman Catholic.' Bishop O'Connor, of
    Pittsburg, says: 'Religious liberty is merely endured
    until the opposite can be carried into effect without
    peril to the Catholic world.' The Archbishop of St.
    Louis says: 'If the Catholics ever gain, which they
    surely will, an immense numerical majority, religious
    freedom in this country will be at an end.' And the
    Pope speaks of the 'delirium of toleration, and asserts
    the right to punish criminals in the order of ideas.'

    "This language is plain, unequivocal, and cannot be
    misinterpreted. Still, I am not an alarmist. I have too
    much faith in the sound common sense of the American
    people that they should barter away their political
    birthright for any theological or clerical controversy.
    They are too much addicted to the policy of 'a second
    sober thought,' that, after having first of all taught
    the human race the invaluable blessings of religious
    liberty, they should discard them just now, when the
    whole civilized world is imitating the glorious example
    set by our great and noble sires.

    "But, 'vigilance being the price of liberty,' in the
    face of this assertion it is not only right, but
    an imperative duty, to enlighten ourselves on this
    all-important subject, so that we may take our choice,
    and perform our duties as true, loyal citizens and
    true, loyal Americans."

This is very much to the purpose, and if it shows that the rabbi is
no friend of Protestant Christianity, it shows that his principal
hostility is to the Catholic Church, as the body and support of
Christianity. He exults, as well he may, over the falling away from
the church of the old Catholic governments of Europe, for one of the
chief instruments in effecting that apostasy has been precisely his
Hebrew brethren, the great supporters of the anti-Catholic revolution
of modern times; and his slanders on the Catholic Church are in the
very spirit of the Evangelical Alliance, even to the false charges
he brings against distinguished individual Catholics. The assertion
that "Father Hecker says, 'In fifteen years we will take this country
and build our institutions over the grave of Protestantism,'" as that
other assertion, "There is or ought to be a state religion in this
country, and that state religion is to be Roman Catholic,'" Father
Hecker himself assures us, is false. He never did, nor with his
views ever could, say anything of the sort. Bishop O'Connor, late of
Pittsburg, never did and never could have said, "Religious liberty is
merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without
peril to the Catholic world." We happen to know that his views were
and are very different; and if they were not, he is too shrewd to
commit the blunder of saying anything like what is falsely attributed
to him, or to disclose such an ulterior purpose. We may say as much
of the sentiment attributed to the Archbishop of St. Louis. The
archbishop never uttered or entertained it. Something like what is
ascribed to him was said, many years ago, by Mr. Bakewell, in _The
Shepherd of the Valley_, a paper published at St. Louis, but he was
assailed by the Catholic press all over the country, and, if he did
not retract it, at least endeavored to explain it away, and to show
that he meant no such thing. The archbishop never said it, and was
no more responsible for it than was the Rabbi Lilienthal himself.
No Catholic prelate and no distinguished Catholic layman even has
ever proposed any amendment to the constitution in regard to the
relations of church and state in this country, or has expressed any
wish to have the existing constitutional relations changed, or in
any respect modified. The church is satisfied with them, and only
asks that they be faithfully observed. She opposes the separation of
church and state in the sense of releasing the state from all moral
and religious obligations, for that would imply the subjection of the
church to the state, and prove the grave of religious freedom and
independence, which she always and everywhere asserts with all her
energy against kings, emperors, nobilities, and peoples--against Jew,
Pagan, Mussulman, schismatic, and heretic, and it is for this that
they conspire against her and seek her destruction.

The rabbi says, "First the state, then the church," which is as
absurd as to say, "First man, then God." The state represents
simply a human authority, while the church, or the synagogue even,
represents--the first for the Catholic, the second for the Jew--the
sovereignty of God, or the divine authority in human affairs, and the
rabbi in his doctrine is false alike to Moses and to Christ, and as
little of an orthodox Jew as he is of a Christian believer. Yet he
agrees perfectly with Judge Hurlbut and Dr. Bellows in asserting the
supremacy of the state or secular order, and the subordination of the
spiritual order. We do not know whether the rabbi means to approve
or censure the assumption, by Peter the Great, of the headship of
the Russian Church and his government of it by the sword; but Peter
only acted on the principle, "First the state, then the church," and
the slavery of the Russian Church to the state is only an inevitable
consequence of that principle or maxim. The Russian Church, governed
by the Holy Synod, itself governed by the Czar, presents a lively
image of the abject position religion would be compelled to hold in
every country if the doctrine of the total separation of church and
state, and the independence and supremacy of the state, advocated by
one or another of the three men we are criticising, were to prevail
and to be embodied in the civil code.

But let this pass. It is clear that the rabbi, and therefore the
Jews, so far as he represents them, are to be included in the
great conspiracy against the liberty and equality of Catholics, or
religious liberty recognized and guaranteed by the American states.
Catholics are to be put down and their church suppressed by the
strong arm of power. To prepare the American people for this proposed
revolution in the American system, this suppression of religious
liberty, a system of gross misrepresentation of Catholic faith and
practice, of misstatements, calumnious charges, and downright lying
respecting the church, is resorted to and persisted in as it was by
the reformers in the sixteenth century. "Lie, lie stoutly," Voltaire
said, though it was said long before him; "something will stick." We
do not like to say this, but truth will not permit us to soften our
statement or to use milder terms. There is nothing too harsh or too
false for the anti-Catholic press and the anti-Catholic preachers
and lecturers to say of our holy religion, and nothing can be more
unlike the Catholic Church than their pretended representations of
her--too unlike, indeed, even to be called caricatures, for they
catch not one of her features. Even when the anti-Catholic writers
and speakers tell facts about Catholics or in the history of the
church, they so tell them as to distort the truth and to produce the
effect of falsehood, or draw inferences from them wholly unwarranted.
We must, then, be excused if we sometimes call the systematic
misrepresentation of our religion, our church, and ourselves by its
true and expressive name, even though it may seem harsh and impolite.
The batteries they discharge against the church are not to be
silenced by bouquets of roses.

The public has become too well informed as to Catholic doctrines and
usages to permit the repetition, with much effect, of many of the old
charges and calumnies. Only the very ignorant can be made to believe
that the church is the Babylonian sorceress who makes the nations
drunk with the wine of her fornications; that she is "the mystery of
iniquity"; that the Pope is "the man of sin," or Antichrist; that
our nunneries are brothels, and their vaults are filled with the
skeletons of murdered infants, of which Luther discoursed to his
friends with so much unction in his Tischreden over his pot of beer.
These things are a little out of date, and do not gain the ready
credence they once did. The age is all for liberty, for progress,
for enlightenment; so the anti-Catholic tactics change to suit the
times. James I. of England, as did the politicians of France opposed
to the Ligue, charged the church with being hostile to monarchy and
the divine right of kings. The charge now is that she is opposed to
republicanism, and denies the divine right of the people, or, more
strictly, of the demagogues. She is said to be a spiritual despotism,
the foster-mother of ignorance and superstition, the enemy of science
and of progress, of intelligence and liberty, individual and social,
civil and religious. Her religious houses are dens of cruelty and
tyranny, and if she is permitted to continue and spread her peculiar
institutions over this country, American democracy will be destroyed,
and American liberty be but a memory, etc., etc.

The cry is not now, the truth is in danger, the Gospel is in danger,
religion is in danger, but the republic is in danger, democracy is
in danger, liberty is in danger. The church, the moment she gets the
power, will, it is argued, abolish our political system, establish
a monarchy, abolish religious liberty, and cut the throats of all
heretics and infidels, or send them to the stake to be consumed in
a fire of green wood, as Calvin did Michael Servetus. And there
are not wanting fools enough to believe it or dishonest men enough
to pretend to believe it when they do not, though it is evident
that the republic is likely to pass away, if things go on in the
political world as they are now going, and be succeeded by anarchy
or a military despotism long before the majority of the people will
cease to war against the church as anti-democratic. But the point
to be noted here is that all these charges assume the supremacy of
the secular order, and allege not that the church is false, is not
the church of God, but that she is hostile to democracy or democratic
institutions; in other words, that she does not conform to popular
opinion, for democracy is nothing but popular opinion erected into
law. Now, as we do not believe that popular opinion, inconstant as
the wind, is infallible, or that the secular order is supreme, we are
not sure that it would be a fatal objection to the church even if
what is alleged against her were well founded. The arguments against
the church of this sort are drawn from too low a level to command any
intelligent respect, and they are all based on a false assumption.
Politics are not higher than religion; the state is not above the
church; the secular order is not above the spiritual; and it is only
atheism that can assert the contrary. To a terrible extent, the
supremacy of the secular is the doctrine of our age and country; but
Catholics hold it to be both false and dangerous, as incompatible
with the liberty and independence of religion, with natural morality,
and even with the existence of natural society, as it is with the
sovereignty of God. It is the doctrine of the European revolutionists
and communists, and is sapping the life and threatening the very
existence of our American republicanism--has already reduced our
government to be little else than an agency for promoting the private
interests of business men, bankers, manufacturers, and railroad
corporations. Our elections are becoming a wretched farce, for the
monopolists govern the government, let what party may succeed at the
polls. The State governments cannot control them, and the General
Government just as little.

We will not so dishonor the church or insult religion as to undertake
to refute these popular charges against her, and to prove that her
authority is not incompatible with the existence and salutary working
of republican government. The charges are addressed to ignorance and
prejudice; we take higher ground, and maintain that civil society
can no more dispense with the church, than the body with the soul.
The secular is insufficient for itself, and needs the informing life
and vigor of the spiritual. The political history of France since
1682, especially since 1789, proves it to all men who are capable
of tracing effects to their causes. There is no form of government
more in need of the church than the republican, founded on the modern
doctrine of popular sovereignty, and the maxim, the majority must
rule. The habit of regarding power as emanating from the mass, as
derived from low to high, tends itself to debase the mind, to destroy
that respect for law, and that reverence for authority, without which
no government performs in a peaceable and orderly way its legitimate
functions. The American people see nothing divine, nothing sacred
and inviolable, in their government; they regard law as an emanation
of their own will, as their own creation, and what creator can feel
himself bound to reverence and obey his own creature? We need the
church to consecrate the government, to give the law a spiritual
sanction, to create in us habits of reverence, of submission,
and docility, and to impress us with the conviction that civil
obedience is a moral duty, and that we must be loyal to legitimate
authority for conscience' sake. We need the church to teach us that
in obeying the laws not repugnant to the divine law, we are obeying
not men, which is slavery, but God, which is freedom, and the very
principle of all freedom. We need her to create in us high and holy
aspirations, to produce in us those high and disinterested virtues,
without which civil government is impotent for good, and powerful
only for evil. No man who believes not in the sovereignty of truth,
in the supremacy of right, and feels it not his duty to obey it at
all hazards, has the temper demanded in a republic, and only the
church can create it.

A government built on interest, however enlightened, on sentiment,
however charming, or public opinion, however just, is a house built
on the sand. It rests on nothing fixed and permanent, is without
stability or efficiency, and tends always to fall and bury the people
in its ruins. We see this in our own political history. It would be
difficult to find a government more corrupt than ours, that taxes
the people more heavily, or that does less for the public good, the
advantages we had at the start being taken into the account. The
good that has been done, the great things accomplished, have been
accomplished by the people in spite of the government, and our record
as a nation can hardly put that of Prussia or Russia to shame.

We do not choose to dwell on this aspect of the case, although much
more might be said. We love our country, have been bred to love
republicanism, and have the success of the American experiment at
heart. The evils which the liberals charge to the union of church
and state, and hold the church responsible for, spring, as every
impartial and intelligent student of history knows, not from
the union but from the separation of church and state, and the
unremitting efforts of the civil power to usurp the functions of
the spiritual power, and to make the church the accomplice of its
policy. The terrible struggles of the pope and emperor in the middle
ages had this cause and no other. The pope simply sought to maintain
against the emperor the freedom and independence of the church, the
kingdom of God on earth, that is, true religious liberty. It is to
the partial, in some countries the complete, triumph of the secular
over the spiritual, that we must attribute the unsettled, disorderly,
and revolutionary state of contemporary society throughout the
civilized world, the hatred or contempt of authority both divine
and human, the depression of religion, the decline of intellectual
greatness, the substitution of opinion for faith, a sickly
sentimentalism for a manly and robust piety, free-loveism or divorce
_ad libitum_ for Christian marriage, and the general abasement of
character.

The evils are very real, but the more perfect divorce of the state
from the church would not cure or lessen, but only aggravate and
intensify them; nay, would to all human foresight render them
incurable. The state without religion or moral obligation is impotent
to redress social evils or to elevate society, and Protestantism,
which holds from the people, and depends for its very breath of
life on popular opinion, is no less impotent than the state.
Protestantism, having retained some elements of religion from the
church, may, we readily concede, do something to retard the fall
of a nation that accepts it, but when a Protestant nation has once
fallen, become morally and politically corrupt, rotten to the core,
it has no power to restore it; for it has no principle of life to
infuse into it above and beyond that which it already has. Resting
on human authority, holding from the nation or people, its life is
only the national life itself; and, of course, when the national life
grows weak, its own life grows weak, and when the national life
is extinct, its own life becomes extinct with it. Cut off from the
church of God, and therefore from Him who is "the way, the truth, and
the life," it cannot draw new supplies of life from the Fountain of
Life itself, with which to revive and reinvigorate the fallen nation.

This is wherefore there is no hope for our republic under
Protestantism. There has been a sad falling-off in the virtue,
the honesty, the integrity, the chastity, and public spirit of
our people in the last fifty years. The old habits formed under
Catholic discipline and influences are wearing out, if not worn
out; intellectual culture may be more general, though even
that may be questioned, but it is less generous, thorough, and
profound; meeting-houses may be increased in greater proportion
than the population itself, but theology is less studied--is less
intellectual, less scientific, and is more superficial; and religion
has less hold on the conscience, and less influence on life, public,
private, or domestic; and we may say, generally, that in all save
what belongs to the material order, our republic has a downward
tendency. Now, since Protestantism has nothing more or higher than
the republic, and no recuperative power, how, then, can it possibly
arrest this downward tendency and turn it upward, and save the
nation? Archimedes wanted something whereon to stand outside of the
world in order to move it. This Protestantism has not, for it rests
on the world, and has nothing above the world or outside of it, and
in fact is only the world itself. To every one who understands the
great law of mechanic force, which has its analogue in the great
principle of moral or spiritual dynamics, it is clear that the hope
of the republic is not and cannot be in Protestantism, and there is
just as little in the civil order, for that, divorced from the church
and without any moral obligation, is precisely that which needs
saving. The union of the various Protestant sects in one organic
body, if it were possible, would avail nothing; for the whole would
be only the sum of the parts, and the parts having no supermundane
life, the whole could have none.

Hence we say that whatever hope there is for our republic is in the
growth and predominance of the Catholic Church in the minds and
hearts of the American people; and there is a well-grounded hope for
it only in the prospect that she may before it is too late become the
church of the great majority. The church has what Archimedes wanted,
and Protestantism has not--the whereon to stand outside and above the
world. She lives a life which is not derived from the life of the
world, and is in communion with the Source of life itself, whence
she may be constantly drawing fresh supplies, and infusing into the
nation a life above the national life in its best estate, and which,
infused into the nation, becomes for it a recuperative energy, and
enables it to arrest its downward tendency, and to ascend to a new
and higher life. It is not without a reason, then, founded in the
nature of things, that we tell our countrymen that Protestantism may
ruin the republic, but cannot save it, any more than it can the soul
of the individual; and that, instead of crying out against the church
like madmen, as hostile to the republic, they should rather turn
their eyes toward her as their only source of help, and learn that
she can and will save the republic, if they will only allow her to do
it.

Yet we urge not this as the motive for accepting the teaching of
the church and submitting to her authority and discipline. Our Lord
says to us, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all
these things shall be added unto you," but he does not bid us or
permit us to seek the kingdom of God and his justice for the sake of
"these things," or the _adjicienda_; he forbids us to be solicitous
for them, since it is for them that the heathen are solicitous. The
only motive for a man to become a Catholic, to believe what she
teaches and to do what she commands, is that she is the kingdom of
God on earth, and that it is only in so doing that he can possess
"his justice," please God, or attain to eternal life. Christ did
not come, as a temporal prince, to found--as the carnal Jews,
misinterpreting the prophecies, expected--an earthly kingdom, or to
create an earthly paradise; but he came as a spiritual prince to
establish the reign of his Father on earth in all human affairs, and
over all men and nations, and whatever temporal good is secured is
not the end or reason of his kingdom, but is simply incidental to
it. It is no reason why I should or should not be a Catholic because
the church favors or does not favor one or another particular theory
or constitution of civil government, but the fact that she does
not favor a particular form of civil polity, if it be a fact, is
sufficient reason why I should not favor it, for it proves that such
form is repugnant to the sovereignty of God and the supremacy of his
law. As a matter of fact, however, the church has never condemned
any particular form of civil polity or erected one form or another
into a Catholic dogma, and a man may be a monarchist, a republican,
or a democrat, as he pleases, and at the same time be a good and
irreproachable Catholic, if he hold the political power subordinate
to the divine sovereignty.

The church is necessary to sustain a republican form of government,
but it is also necessary to sustain any other form, as a wise, just,
and efficient civil government. The error of those we are combating
is not in that they are democrats or anti-democrats, but in holding
that the state or secular order is sufficient for itself, can stand
of itself without the aid of religion or the church, has no need of
the spiritual, and has in fact the right to brush religion aside as
an impertinent intermeddler whenever it comes in its way, or seeks
to dictate or influence its policy. This is a gross error, condemned
by all religion, all philosophy, and all experience. It is the old
epicurean error that excludes the divine authority from the direction
or control of human affairs, and in its delirium sings,

      "Let the gods go to sleep up above us."

It is at bottom pure atheism, nothing more, nothing less. It is a
pure absurdity. Can the creation stand without the creator? Can the
contingent subsist without the necessary? Can the body live and
perform its functions without the soul which is its principle of
life; the dependent without that on which it depends? In the whole
history of the world, you will not find an instance of a purely
atheistical state, or a state held to be completely divorced from
the spiritual order. There is no instance in all history of a state
without some sort of religion, even an established religion, or
religion which the state recognizes as its supreme law, and does its
best or worst to enforce. We here, as well as in England, as well as
at any time in any European country, have an established religion
which the law protects and enforces on all its citizens, only it is a
mutilated religion, a religion without dogmas, and called morality.
If not so, whence is it the law punishes murder or arson, and forbids
polygamy, or the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes? Even Jacobins
erect their jacobinism into a religion, and make it obligatory on the
state to persecute, to exterminate all who dare oppose it. Have we
not seen it despoil the Holy See of its independence and possessions,
confiscate the goods of the church, exile holy bishops from their
sees and their country in Italy, and within a few weeks shoot down
the Archbishop of Paris and a large number of priests and religious,
suspend public worship, desecrate and plunder the churches, and
banish all religion but their jacobinism from the schools? No state
tolerates any religion hostile to its own established religion, and
the most intolerant and cruel persecutors in the world are precisely
those who clamor loudest for religious liberty.

There is no such thing as a complete divorce of church and state
practicable in any country on earth. The only question is, Shall the
state be informed and directed by the infallible and holy church of
God, or by the synagogue of Satan? No man who is at all competent
to pass a judgment on the question but agrees with the Syllabus
in condemning not the distinction, but the separation of church
and state; but the forms of the union of the two powers, whose
harmonious action is necessary to the normal state of society, may
vary according to circumstances. In countries where the state refuses
to recognize frankly and fully the freedom and independence of the
spiritual order, it may be necessary to regulate the relation of
church and state by concordats; in others, where the state recognizes
the independence of the spiritual order, and holds itself bound
to protect the rights of the religion adopted by its citizens,
as hitherto with us, no concordats are necessary, for the state
does not claim any competence in spirituals. In this country the
relation between the two powers has, with a few exceptions, been
satisfactory, and the church has been free. But there is on foot a
formidable conspiracy against her freedom, and it is beginning to be
maintained pretty determinedly that the majority of the people, being
Protestant, and the people being the state, have the right and the
duty as the state to sustain Protestantism, and outlaw and suppress
the church.

FOOTNOTE:

[156] 1. _Church and State in America._ A Discourse given at
Washington, D. C., at the installation of Rev. Frederic Hinckley as
Pastor of the Unitarian Church, January 25, 1871. By Rev. Henry W.
Bellows, D.D. Washington, D. C.: Philp & Solomons. 1871. 8vo, pp. 22.

2. _A Secular View of Religion in the State, and of the Bible in the
Public Schools._ By E. P. Hurlbut. Albany: Munsell. 1870. 8vo, pp. 55.




DRAMATIC MORALISTS IN SPANISH AMERICA.


The truth is slowly dawning, at least to curious minds, that the
people of the southern half of our New World have tastes not
dissimilar to our own. Indeed, they seek other arts than those of
revolution, and, here and there, have other stages and actors than
those which represent the _pronunciamiento_, with all its malicious
bombast and insignificant "sound and fury." We can count poets,
novelists, painters, sculptors, scientists in the ranks of the most
distinguished men of our nearest sister republic. Cuba, too, rejoices
in the genius of her philosophic scholar, Caballero de la Luz, and of
her poets, Heredia and Gertrudiz de Avellañeda, with the same spirit
which Mexico brings to her admiration of the scientific versatility
of Siguenza, the quaint ideality of Sor Juana Inez, and the literary
culture of Carpio and Pesado. Nevertheless, such facts as these have
aided but little in forming the common estimate of Spanish-American
peoples, who are to some of us scarcely more than a Bedouin rabble
fighting problematic wild-beasts in the shape of pronouncers, and
struggling through clouds of desert-dust and battle-smoke to the
light of freedom. That great rude reserve of race, the Indians,
without which the business of one-half the continent could not be
carried on, seems to be swept out of our moral consideration as with
a broom; yet we must think hopefully of a race which has produced
an artist so extraordinary as Cabrera and a ruler so enduring and
persistent as Juarez--hopefully, at all events, of their mere
abilities, if mother church does not teach us to look with a
shrewder and kindlier eye upon their moral capabilities. In more than
one country of Spanish America we find Indians among presidents,
judges, governors, congressmen, writers, artists; and this being the
case, historically or actually, why should it be a matter of surprise
that Spanish America, with whatever Old World culture she may possess
in union with native aptitude, should have some claims upon our
attention on the score of taste and intelligence? Part of these
claims we propose to set forth.

The present writer has sat in the orderly theatres of Vera Cruz and
Mexico, and seen performances substantially as good as those of
our northern capitals. The _Zarzuelas_, or operettas, of Barbieri
and Gatzambide were as pleasant in 1868-69 to their hearers in the
southern republic as the French comic opera to New Yorkers, and
nevertheless seemed decent and spirited; besides, the Mexicans had
the good fortune to enjoy Gatzambide's personal direction of his
_Zarzuelas_, and Gatzambide (now deceased) was one of the most
popular musicians of Spain. Another celebrity the Mexicans honored
in the person of José Valero, a gentlemanlike Spanish actor, whose
superior in versatile genius as tragedian and comedian it would
be difficult to find anywhere. Entertainments were plentiful in
Moctezuma's city, though subsisting, so to speak, upon diminished
rations. Round about all these flickering pleasures flowed the
strange dark tide of Mexican life--its ragged multitude, its
concealed miseries, its settled and common melancholy, not to
be dissipated by any class of illusions, not to be shaken off in
a day, or a year, or any brief term of years. Nevertheless, the
misfortunes of a war-worn people found as tasteful and respectable
a solace as their theatres could afford. Their scholars were even
encouraged to revive and celebrate some ancient glories of the
Mexican stage; and at the opening of a season they crowned the bust
of one of the fathers of the Spanish drama, whom with reason they
regard as among the greatest of the small band of very eminent
Mexicans. This laurelled bust was but one of a number to be seen in
the various theatres, in several instances perpetuating the memory
of Mexico's own dramatic authors. On the occasion referred to, poems
by well-known poets--and, among the rest, if the writer remembers
correctly, an eloquent composition by the highly-esteemed blind poet,
Juan Valle--preluded the revival of that celebrated comedy, _La
Verdad Sospechosa_, or, The Truth Suspected.


JUAN RUIZ DE ALARCON.

The author of this play was Alarcon, that thoughtful writer who, on
the Spanish stage, ranks with Lope, Calderon, Moreto, and Tirso.
Strange as it may appear to those who doubt whether any good can
come out of Mexico, he was born and bred in that mysterious country.
What his countrymen do not know of their great artist, Cabrera, they
are able to tell of their chief literary glory--namely, the place
and date of his baptism. Documents found in the royal university of
Mexico established the several facts that Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y
Mendoza was baptized in that city on the 2d day of October, 1572,
and received the grade of licentiate or lawyer from the university.
It was for some time asserted that he was born at Tasco (for whose
church Cabrera is said to have painted extraordinary works); but
Chalco, not far from the capital, has also laid claim to the honor
of his birth. He is represented as short, ugly, and humpbacked. To
improve his fortunes, he sought the literary life of Madrid, but his
first efforts were deemed of little importance. By the year 1621 he
had written eight acted comedies, of which _Las Paredes Oyen_ (The
Walls Hear) is esteemed the best, as also one of the finest in any
language. In spite of his physical imperfections his genius won him
admirers, socially as well as otherwise. In 1628, he became clerk
to the Council of the Indies, and held his office till his death in
1639; so that it seems our author was a contemporary of Shakespeare,
Webster, Jonson, and other great lights of the English drama. His
comedies are lauded as forming a system of practical philosophy,
inasmuch as they give a delightful verification of the proverbial
wisdom of his time, and preach capital sermons from common texts.
"Luck and Labor," "The World's Favors," "No Evil that does not come
for Good," "Before you Marry see what you are about," "The Truth made
Suspicious," are the suggestive titles of some of his dramas, which
appear to have lost nothing of their peculiar excellence by pointing
morals. It was Alarcon who said:

      To kill an enemy is argument
      Of fearing him; but to despise and spare him
      Is greater chastisement, for while he lives
      He is a witness of his own defeat.
      He that kills, victory abbreviates,
      And he that pardons makes it the more great,
      As meanwhile that the conquered lives
      The conqueror goes on conquering.

To give to comedy a conscience and a purpose is the distinguishing
design of Alarcon; but, while the public of Madrid never failed to
perceive the moral of his humor, they could yet heartily laugh at the
wit of his dialogues and the genuine comicality of his situations.
In his plays cool reason walked hand in hand with sentiment and
pleasantry, as they do in some of the most admired comedies of our
own stage. The delight with which the Mexicans witnessed _La Verdad
Sospechosa_ proved that to Alarcon belonged not merely the ingenuity
by which men are amused, but something of that magic by which their
own wit and humor are excited. Alarcon could give logic to a whim,
a fancy, or a passion. In the _Prueba de las Promesas_ his lover
expostulates:

      If Beauty's faithful lover I have been,
      Esteeming though despised; loving, abhorred;
      What law allows to thee, what text approves
      That thou shouldst hate me because I do love thee?

An apology for woman made by a servant in _Todo es Ventura_ (Luck is
Everything) may be translated thus:

      What is it that we most condemn in maids?
      Inconstancy of mind? We taught them so.
      The love of money? It's a thing in taste--
      Or let that righteous fellow throw a stone
      Who is not guilty of the self-same fault.
      Of being easy? Well, what must they do,
      If no man perseveres and all get tired
      At the fourth day of trying? Of being hard?
      Why do we thus complain when we, too, all
      Run to extremes? If difficult our suit
      We hate it, and if easy we despise.

In _Ganar Amigos_ (To Gain Friends) Don Fernando has killed the
brother of Don Fadrique, and seeks and obtains refuge with the
latter, who, however, does not know him. Don Fadrique, though at
length made aware of the truth, faithfully keeps the pledge he has
given the slayer of his brother. Seeing this, Don Fernando gratefully
exclaims:

      The earth whereon thou stand'st shall be my altar.

        _Fadrique._ Rise, sir; give me no thanks, as do I not
      This deed for you, but for my honor's self,
      For I have plighted unto you my word.

In the comedy of _Mudarse por Mejorarse_ (To Change for the Better;
or, more literally, to Change in order to Better One's Self), a
certain Don Garcia, who was to marry Doña Clara, falls in love with
her niece Leonor; whence this dialogue:

        _Leonor._ Is it, perchance, Don Garcia,
      The custom in Madrid to fall in love
      With niece and aunt at one and the same time?

        _Garcia._ At least, if so divine a niece comes there
      As you, the custom is to leave the aunt.

        _Leonor._ A bad one, then.

        _Garcia._                  It is not to be called
      Bad, if such matter be the occasion.

        _Leonor._ How can a reason be for changefulness?

        _Garcia._ One's self to better is the best of reasons.

        _Leonor._ Well, there's a law of constancy: to what
      Doth it oblige, whereunto doth it reach,
      If it be right one beauty to forswear
      For a greater? Constancy's not to love
      Unchangeably the love more beautiful;
      To love the best what firmness do we need?
      He constant is who doth despise the more
      Happy occasion.

        _Garcia._                 I confess, sweet lady
      That's to be constant, but it's to be foolish.

        _Leonor._ Then cannot you in one who'd be discreet
      Have confidence, as change is to be excused
      By gain of fairer subject?

        _Garcia._                        It is clear.

        _Leonor._ Well, be it so; and for I think thee, sir,
      A man judicious, and thou leav'st my aunt
      To make thyself the better so by me,
      Pray do excuse me of thy love, since must
      I give thy suit resistance till I know
      If I've another and a fairer niece.

The discreet Leonor, compromised by the entangling suit of Don
Garcia, is compelled to admit the attentions of a gallant and rich
marquis, with whom at last she falls in love. The following passage
explains the rest:

        _Garcia._                    How, cruel one,
      Hast changed so soon?

        _Leonor._             Yes, for the better.

        _Mencia_ (_aside_). She gave't him, then, with his own flower.

        _Garcia._ Ungrateful, is not thy disdain enough
      Without the aggravation--making him,
      The marquis, better?

        _Leonor._        Wilt deny the improvement?
      Although in blood thou'rt equal, yet between
      Little and ample fortune, and between
      Your worship and your lordship--?

        _Garcia._                       Yea, I grant:
      But what effect hast given thy words,
      Thy promise, tyrant, if thou hast all changed
      By taking better subject? Where's constancy
      If thou hast liked me only when thou couldst not
      _Better_ thyself? She only constant is
      Who doth despise the opportunity.

        _Leonor._ I do confess to thee, Don Garcia,
      That's to be constant, but it's to be foolish.

Here is the "retort courteous" in its most charming humor. The
gallant grace and wit of these dialogues are evidence of the original
art with which Alarcon could make his comedy a study of life, and
compel his auditors to think somewhat after they ceased to laugh.
This is the function of eminent high comedy, though we may not ask
that it shall elaborate a severe or intrusive moral, and though we
admit its possession, as in Shakespeare, of the liveliest poetic
qualities. Another passage, this time from the famous _Verdad
Sospechosa_, wherein Don Beltran reprimands his son, Don Garcia, for
the vice of habitual lying, will further elucidate the method of
Alarcon:

        _Beltran._ Are you a gentleman, Garcia?

        _Garcia._                       --I believe
      I am your son.

        _Beltran._     --And is it, then, enough,
      To be my son to be a gentleman?

        _Garcia._ I think so, sir.

        _Beltran._          --What a mistaken thought!
      Consists in acting like a gentleman
      To be one. What gave birth to noble houses!
      The illustrious deeds of their first authors, sir.
      Without consideration of their births, the deeds
      Of humble men honored their heirs. 'Tis doing
      Good or ill makes gentleman or villain.

        _Garcia._ That deeds give nobleness I'll not deny,
      But who will say birth does not also give it?

        _Beltran._ Well, then, if honor can be gained by him
      Who was born without it, is't not certain that,
      Vice versa, he can lose it who was born
      With it?

        _Garcia._ --'Tis true.

        _Beltran._         --Then if you basely act,
      Although my son, no longer you will be
      A gentleman. So if your habits shame
      You here in town, an ancient crest will not
      Signify, nor noble ancestors serve.
      What is't report says to me? That your lies
      Are all the talk of Salamanca. Now,
      If't affronts noble or plebeian but
      To _tell_ him that he lies, what is't to lie
      Itself? If honorless I live the while
      On him who gave the lie I take not full
      Revenge--is your sword long enough or breast
      So stout that you esteem yourself all able
      To have revenge when all the city says
      You lie? Is't possible a man can have
      Such abject thoughts that unto vice he can
      Live subject without pleasure, without gain?
      A morbid pleasure have the sensual,
      The power of money draws the covetous;
      The taste of viands have the gluttonous;
      A purpose and a pastime hath the gambler;
      The homicide his hate, the thief his aim;
      Fame with ambition cheers the warrior;
      In short, doth every vice some pleasure give
      Or profit--but for lying, what remains
      But infamy and contempt?

Who could preach with more wit a brief sermon like this than Alarcon?
It is no small honor to the dramatist born in Mexico that the great
Corneille, who, if we may credit the biographers of Alarcon, partly
translated and partly imitated _La Verdad Sospechosa_ in his famous
_Menteur_, could avow that he would give two of his best plays to
have invented the happy argument of the Spanish original. Molière
and Voltaire were also among the admirers of the Spanish comedy,
which Corneille at first judged to be the work of Lope de Vega. Of
the general merits of Alarcon, the following estimate by his German
critic, Schack, which we find in a Mexican notice of the dramatist,
will doubtless suffice: "Happy in painting comic characters in order
to chastise vice, as in the invention and development of heroes to
make virtue adorable; rapid in action, sober in ornament; inferior
to Lope in tender respect of feminine creations, to Moreto in
liveliest comedy, to Firso in travesty, to Calderon in grandeur and
stage effect, he excelled all of them in the variety and perfection
of his figures, in the tact of managing them, in equality of style,
in carefulness of versification, in correctness of language." To
this large and discriminating praise we may add George Ticknor's
comprehensive dictum: "On the whole, he is to be ranked with the
very best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the National
Theatre."


SOR JUANA INEZ DE LA CRUZ.

It would not be proper to dismiss from the list of Spanish-American
dramatic writers Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, although the subjects to
which this pious woman yielded her inventive imagination were mainly
or wholly religious. She wrote, be it remembered, in that remarkable
seventeenth century when a muse of religion walked through the scenes
of the stage as well as through the gardens of the convent. Then
were the patriarchs and apostles, the prophets and saints, the chief
personages of a peculiar drama; and events and circumstances of the
divine tragedy inspired such compositions as the Loas and Autos. It
is upon one of these latter compositions that her merit as a dramatic
writer rests; and we are glad to confirm in great part an opinion of
her genius hitherto expressed by us, by here recalling the judgment
of that eminent European critic of Spanish literature, Bouterwek,
the more especially as our own Spanish scholar, Ticknor, seems to
have inflicted such ungracious disparagement upon the subject of our
notice: "Much as Inez de la Cruz was deficient in real cultivation,"
says Bouterwek, "her productions are eminently superior to the
ordinary standard of female poetry.... The poems of Inez de la
Cruz breathe a sort of masculine spirit. This poetic nun possessed
more fancy and wit than sentimental enthusiasm, and whenever she
began to invent her creations were on a bold and great scale. Her
poems are of very unequal merit, and are all deficient in critical
cultivation. But in facility of invention and versification Inez de
la Cruz was _not inferior to Lope de Vega_; and yet she by no means
courted literary fame.... In her dramatic works the vigor of her
imagination is particularly conspicuous. The collection of her poems
contains no comedies properly so-called, but it comprises a series
of boldly conceived preludes (loas) full of allegorical invention,
and it concludes with a long allegorical auto, which is _superior to
any of the similar productions of Lope de Vega_. It is entitled _El
Divino Narciso_, a name by which the author designates the heavenly
bridegroom.... It would be impossible to give a brief and at the same
time intelligible sketch of this extraordinary drama. With regard to
composition, it is very unequal; in some respects offending by its
bad taste, and in others charming by its boldness. Many of its scenes
are so beautifully and romantically constructed that the reader is
compelled to render homage to the genius of the poetess, while at the
same time he cannot but regret the pitch of extravagance to which
ideas really poetic are carried. There is one peculiarly fine scene,
in which human nature, in the shape of a nymph, seeks her beloved,
the real Narcissus, or the Christian Saviour." The pastoral passage,
which in our notice of the writings of Sor Juana we laid before our
readers, would seem to justify the best praises of our literary
historian, Bouterwek. Ticknor, on the other hand, speaks of her as
a remarkable woman, and not as a remarkable poetess; and, upon the
whole, our thanks for the appreciative reburnishing of the ancient
fame of an American genius--which, had it shone in Massachusetts
three hundred years ago, would be deemed a very rare jewel among
Northern scholars--are due rather to the European Bouterwek than
the American Ticknor. The latter observes that she was born at
Guipuzcoa; her Mexican biographer says at San Miguel de Nepantla, not
far from the city of Mexico, one of whose convents she seems to have
directed latterly. Time, place, the inferior standard of feminine
culture, and the prevalence of a false poetic school, may account for
Sor Juana's defects; for the rest, the issue (a large one) is between
Bouterwek and Ticknor.


EDWARD GOROSTIZA.

After Alarcon, the principal lights of the actual Mexican stage are
Gorostiza, Calderon, and Galvan; and, indeed, whatever original
triumph that stage has enjoyed is almost if not quite limited to
these few excellent though not glorious names. We cannot with
propriety name that extraordinary woman, Sor Juana Inez de la
Cruz, in the list of Mexico's dramatists, although, along with
other poetry, she wrote some religious pieces in dramatic form.
Nevertheless, the credit which remains to the literature of the
country, after its few phenomenal names are omitted, is not
inappreciable. Concerning Gorostiza, Madame Calderon de la Barca
wrote: "Don José Eduardo Gorostiza, a native of Vera Cruz, is the son
of a Spanish officer, and when very young went to Spain, where he was
known politically as a liberal. He was distinguished as a writer of
theatrical pieces, which have been and still are very popular. One of
his pieces which we saw the other evening at the theatre--_Con Tigo
Pan y Cebolla_ (With Thee, Bread and Onions)--is delightful." Let us
add to Madame Calderon's brief notice that Gorostiza won the rank of
lieutenant-colonel in the war against Napoleon; that in 1823, while
an exile from Spain in London, he wrote for the _Edinburgh Review_;
and that since then, as minister to England and to the United States,
and as secretary of state and finance, he has been eminent in the
politics of his native land. In 1836, he was made intendant-general
of the army, and during the war between Mexico and the United States
took an active and heroic part in the defence of Churubusco. His
efforts as a director of the poor-house, as a friend of education,
and as the founder of a house of correction, are also deemed worthy
of record. He died in 1851, at the age of sixty-two.

The best known of Gorostiza's comedies are those called _The Intimate
Friend_, _Last Year's Fashions_, _Don Dieguito_, and _Pardon for
All_, the last being mentioned by his biographer as celebrated. In
the play of _Don Dieguito_, which may serve as well as any other
to exhibit the character of Gorostiza's plots, Don Anselmo, a
rich uncle, sends his nephew and heir, Don Dieguito, to Madrid to
complete his education. While there, Dieguito falls in love with
Doña Adelaida, whose father, Don Cleto, is a lawyer. Don Anselmo
goes to Madrid to attend the wedding of his nephew, but does not
like the family of his son's _fiancée_, and, accordingly, he schemes
to break off the match. The mother, Doña Maria, sees from a worldly
point of view the great advantage of her daughter's marriage with Don
Dieguito. But now Anselmo tells her that _he_ intends to marry, which
excites her fear that his nephew will inherit nothing from him. She,
therefore, proposes to her husband that Doña Adelaida shall marry
the uncle, Anselmo, instead of the nephew, Dieguito. Don Simplicio,
a friend of Don Cleto, endeavors to effect a general reconciliation
of interests, and bring about the marriage of the young couple; but,
finding that father and mother alike wish to break off the match,
joins them in insulting the apparently hapless Dieguito. Don Anselmo
at once perceives that his nephew has been fooled, and that the
family of his betrothed would be glad to cast off Dieguito in order
to capture his uncle's wealth. He concludes, therefore, to make his
exit on the very day of the proposed marriage, taking with him his
disenchanted nephew. When the day arrives, he announces that he has
been ruined by the shipwreck of a vessel from Vera Cruz, and that he
is compelled to return to his old business of selling pork, beans,
chocolate, and sausages to make good his loss. Don Dieguito, though
asked to return to his allegiance as a lover, declares that he is no
fool, and prefers a wife who will not speculate at the expense of
good faith, but will look after her children. As Don Anselmo has told
the family of Doña Adelaida that his principal loss is in a cargo of
chocolate, that spirited young lady vows she will not drink chocolate
again; and the play ends in amusing recriminations.


FERNANDO CALDERON.

The next of our dramatists, Fernando Calderon, was born in 1809,
and died at the age of thirty-six, having been a colonel, a state
legislator, a magistrate, and the secretary of the government of
Zacatecas, as well as an industrious writer. The most striking of
his dramas are: _The Tourney_, _Anne Boleyn_, and _The Return of
the Crusader_, which, says one of his admirers, are full of noble
and chivalrous sentiments and spirited action. Calderon's talent
was nothing if not dramatic; for even his lyrics, and especially
his _Soldier of Liberty_, are characterized by a personal fire and
animation. His plays, remarkable for warmth of sentiment, and his
poems, chiefly lyrical, gained for him not only in Mexico, but in
other Spanish-American republics, a degree of favor not often enjoyed
by writers in the southern part of the New World. One of his most
admired passages is the soliloquy of Isabella in _The Tourney_:

      And this is life. Seeing the sable bier
      Profoundest cowardice the mortal moves,
      When is the tomb the sole asylum where
      True peace abides. Where is the life that knows
      Not weight of woe? For ever in torment,
      For ever in tears, so runs our human fate
      From infancy unto decrepit age.
      Child, man, and most unfortunate womankind,
      Pursue the magic and illusory shade
      Which they call happiness, yet never find.
      The gray-beard sad, complaining of his age,
      Youth would enjoy; but, imbecile, forgets
      The tortures that afflict his junior.
      Life is a fever, a remediless fever,
      It is a frenzy violent and mad.
      Alas! its pleasures pass us like a flash,
      Whence follows gloom of soul with rain of tears
      Yet ever springs desire and fervid hope
      To cheat our souls with what can never be.
      Care and vacuity, and ephemeral joy.
      These make themselves our poor reality.
      So fades our youth, and our declining life's
      A dismal light of undeception cast
      Upon the narrow confines of the tomb....
      The black cloth ... and the coffin miserable ...
      Thus darkly flows the tide of life. Alas!
      My end draws near, for which my spirit hopes,
      As the wrecked sailor for a happy shore.
      O cause of all my mourning my heart's balm,
      Not thou, not even thou, wouldst me console:
      None grieve for one that is already dead.
      Albert! Albert! shalt thou o'er my grave
      Pour out thy tears until our patient souls
      Unite within the pure eternity.

With good reason is this thoughtful and feeling soliloquy prized by
Calderon's countrymen, whose vicissitudes have taught them peculiar
sympathy with the tristful mood to which he lends expression. The
tone and style of the passage are tragic in a most dignified sense,
and reflect much credit upon Mexican literature. A supplement to
the views of mortality and eternity set forth in _The Tourney_ is
contained in a fragment written by Calderon in 1825; and as it may
interest a Northern public to know what a Mexican poet thinks of the
future state, we extract from it these hopeful lines:

      Cold and coward spirits
      Shun the thought of death
      With unbelieving fear,
      Vain-thinking that within the grave
      Have love and joy their end.
      Dullards! who believe not
      The eternity divine!
      The disembodied spirit
      Ascends to regions high
      Of freedom and of bliss,
      And love's sweet sentiment,
      A seed sown in our souls,
      Doubt not God's hand doth guard it
      And lead it up to him.
      The soul but breathes in love,
      Which is its essence and its food,
      And without love would die.


RODRIGUEZ GALVAN.

More praiseworthy, in some respects, than any of the modern poets of
Mexico, is Rodriguez Galvan, the last of our trio of dramatists. He
died in 1842, in his twenty-sixth year, after having without social
advantages acquired a high reputation as a lyrical and dramatic
writer. "At eleven years," says his biographer, "he was placed under
the care of his uncle, in a book-store at the capital," and there his
nightly studies made up for the impediments of his daily occupation,
and "his happy disposition and love for work supplied the want of
masters and fortune." An epical fragment entitled "The Fallen Angel,"
and his poems, "The Tomb," and "The Girandole," together with his
dramas, "Muñoz" and "The Viceroy's Favorite," are mentioned as the
most noted of his productions. A specimen of his dramatic style is
the following piece of satire on the modern stage, from _El Angel de
la Guarda_:

      Let's think upon my comedy, and on
      Its plan. Hard, cruel hard, on all who are
      Romantic. Here's a coxcomb come from Rome
      Or Paris; next, an old man, ignorant,
      Foolish, his friend a most judicious fellow;
      A fine romantic maid who weeps and shrieks
      In Turkish; then, three hundred obscene gags
      To make the people laugh; a prudish dame
      Who speaks French badly. Here's the knot.
      And the conclusion? Why, a whistle from
      The second prompter.
                             --Or, I will erect
      Like to a gallows a cadaverous drama
      Shock-full of hangings and adulteries,
      In which _the seven infants_ shall be shown
      The children of a king of Acapulco.
      This nauseous food I'll call a play-romance,
      And I'll divide it into four square parts,
      Which further I'll divide in five full acts,
      The scene in Aragon, the fifteenth century.
      My sources shall be dramas of Dumas
      And Hugo, the immoral ones of course.
      What does it matter? I translate them mine.
      A stupid fellow comes out and drinks in
      Half of a tub of poison--gives the rest
      Straight to his maid, because a vain old man
      Comes with a trumpet-tongue to blow and blow
      In his poor ears. The ignorant hind don't know
      For two hours whether he is dead or not,
      And in the place of calling upon God
      He makes a long discourse. This is the way
      They make our plays, and in this age of taste
      Calderon, Moreto, Alarcon, Lope,
      Are only mules; and in the theatre
      Their works shed slumber by the bucketful.

It would require, perhaps, an intimate knowledge of the Mexican stage
as it was thirty years ago to appreciate the special application of
these lines; but it is plain that the young dramatist conceived a
genuine contempt for a bloodthirsty and iniquitous drama. What, then,
must a writer of his promise and aspirations have felt regarding
that more bitter melodrama acted all round him?--what must any
poet with a tolerable amount of contemplative wisdom have thought
of that political madness of which Mexico has been so long the
victim? Certainly, it robbed them, as it robbed others, of peace
and recompense; but war respects the stage even when it destroys
better institutions, and it is probable that the dramatic culture of
Mexico is as well preserved as any of which it can boast. To Galvan
is ascribed the first effective production on the Mexican stage of
Mexican subjects. Whether the following fable bears a more than
ordinary social meaning, we cannot say; but it is an instance of the
poet's lively manner:

THE SELFISH DOG.

      With pike and lantern at sundown,
      A grim night-watchman of the town
      Follows a lean dog as he flees
      By order of the high police,
      Who persecute the dogs and tramps,
      And take up drinking, murdering scamps,
      But tolerate the robbers. Well,
      What matter? I've my tale to tell.
      The starveling, feeling insecure,
      Because a stranger, poor, demure,
      Said, "Feet, what do I want you for?"
      So, in a princely courtyard door,
      Without "Good-day!" or e'en explaining,
      "I must go in because it's raining,"
      Or sending up his card at all,
      As etiquette requires on call,
      Or does not--really, I don't know--
      He rudely entered. So I'd go
      Myself. But a cur thereabout
      Barked hard at him, "Get out! get out!
      This is a noble's palace, sir,
      A place not meet for starving cur."
      Our friend replies, "My fine-tailed brother,
      But for this night--" "No, no!" says t'other.
      "I am pursued!" "Then leave this ground."
      "I'm dying with hunger." "Wretched hound,
      How can a fine, superior person
      Live tail to tail with a base cur's son?"
      And insult after insult giving,
      He barks with fury past believing,
      This high-born, proud, patrician growler,
      And bullies the plebeian prowler.
      Well, the sad creature, turning tail,
      Escaped, for wonder, else would fail
      My story like a peacock shorn.
      Where now's my moral? Hark, nor scorn:

      Soon after this a dog forlorn
      Lost himself in the chase, and met
      Some wolves whose teeth were sharply set,
      And quite prepared to munch and gobble him.
      All sorts of fearful fancies trouble him,
      When, in this plight, his eye sees plain in
      The kennel of the other canine.
      Lo, what an accident! But these
      Accidents pass for verities
      And mightily the public please.
      Now the patrician barks for aid,
      And t'other dog puts out his head,
      But, seeing 'tis the courtier,
      He shuts the door, that low-bred cur,
      And growls: "Stop there! didst ever see
      A dog of noble family
      With a poor cur keep company?"
      With this the hungry wolves arrive
      And eat the grandee dog alive.

      Has the tale pleased you? No? And why?
      I've spent an hour and half to try,
      Hunting up rhymes--so scarce in Spanish.
      Some opulent fellow, proud and clannish
      Spelling through this little story
      (For reading's not a common glory
      Among the magnates of the day),
      Will, doubtless, furiously say:
      "See what sad insipidity!"
      But some poor dog in misery
      Will raise his head, perhaps, and sigh,
      "The simple fabulist don't lie."
      Now friend and critic both have I.

There is nothing in Galvan's story except his way of telling it,
which is certainly vivacious; but we esteem it for some flashes of
satirical meaning cast upon a state of society of whose animal life
the "hungry dog" is so commonplace an object. Not, however, in his
plays, which, if we may credit his Mexican critic, sometimes reveal a
certain immaturity, did Galvan find his very happiest expression. He
wrote the most touching and charming lyric which, after much search,
we have been able to find in Mexican literature. It was, we are led
to think, in 1842, when, as one of a "legation extraordinary" to
South America, he sailed for Havana, there to die of fever, that he
wrote the tender "Farewell to Mexico" which his countrymen love to
repeat:

      Upon the deck with longing
        I watch the lonely main,
      And on my fate I ponder
        And muse in doubt and pain
      To thee I yield my fortunes,
        O Holy Maid above!
      Adieu, my own dear country,
        Adieu, thou land of love!

      Far in the western waters
        The red sun hides its light,
      And now at last 'tis buried
        Beneath the billows' might.
      The roaring sea announces
        The weary day's decline:
      Adieu, beloved country,
        Adieu, thou land of mine!


AVELLAÑEDA AND MILANES.

There is more of this excellent lyric, but we let it pass in order to
bring to a moment's attention a few of the most distinguished Cuban
and South American dramatic writers. We nowhere discern the evidence
of a luxurious dramatic growth among our tropical contemporaries; but
as, in the most advanced and varied circles of our own literature,
the drama holds but an inferior modern regard, we cannot deem this
fact as peculiarly indicative. Almost chief among the writers of Cuba
is Doña Avellañeda, to whom we owe the novels of _Sab_, the _Baroness
of Youx_, the American romance of _Guatimozin_, and the _Undine of
the Blue Lake_. She wrote four dramas, one of which, her tragedy of
_Alfonso Munio_, is said to have made her famous. For one of her
poems she received a crown of gold laurels from the lyceum of Madrid,
and her Catholic devotion was signally manifested by her poem of the
_Cross_ and her Biblical drama of _Saul_. Surely, a most prolific,
industrious, and vigorous writer was La Avellañeda, as her countrymen
admiringly call her, notwithstanding her Isabellist attachments.
To the name of Avellañeda let us add that of José Jacinto Milanes
as among the ornaments of Cuban literature. His drama of _Conde
Alarcos_, founded upon the celebrated Spanish tradition of the
name, is noted by Ticknor for its passionate energy. Milanes seemed
to delight in the themes and scenes of his own country; but his
usefulness as a writer was cut short, we are informed, by a wasting
infirmity.


SANSON, MAGARINOS, AND MARQUEZ.

Placido Sanson, Magarinos Cervantes, and Señor Marquez are among the
most conspicuous South American dramatists we can now call to mind.
Magarinos Cervantes was born in Montevideo in 1825, and, besides the
novels of _Caramuru_ and _The Star of the South_, has written the
dramas of _Vasco Nuñez_ and the _Two Passions_, besides the comedy of
_Percances Matrimoniales_. He was one of the principal editors of an
artistic and scientific cyclopædia printed in Madrid, and was once
described as the youngest and most productive of well-known South
American writers. Sanson, who was born in Santa Cruz de Teneriffe,
1815, has written ten or eleven dramas, among them _Abenhamet_ and
_Herman Peraza_, and has been an exceedingly industrious editor and
translator. Señor Marquez, who was noticed fifteen years ago as a
young poet of Lima, but twenty-three years of age, yet of exceeding
promise, was known as the author of a drama which derived its title
from the beautiful legend of _The Flower of Abel_.

This flower of dramatic poetry, as its warm admirers regard it,
contains a charming and even what we might call a religious moral.
One of the best known of its Peruvian critics described it as among
the most spiritual creations of the day; a defense of innocence and
charity in a heroic combat against the worldly selfishness which
devours us; and Markham, to whose good taste we are indebted for
information respecting the ancient and modern literature of Peru,
affirms that its plot is original and ingenious, and that it is
full of good passages. Abel, the first victim of selfishness, is
described as "the mysterious messenger of celestial compassion,"
an angel of innocence. The innocent daughter of a proud and aged
veteran becomes the possessor of the angel's flower of Abel--in
other words, the blossom of innocence. This the heavenly visitor
presents to her in a vision, warning her never to lose nor abandon
it, nor let it leave its place in her bosom. But, eventually, the
fair girl loses the flower, and wanders far and wide over the world
in search of it, passing through many dangers, for she is unprotected
and very beautiful. At length, she reaches her mother's grave, and,
wearied and imploring, falls at the feet of an image of the Blessed
Virgin, in whose hands she once more beholds her lost Flower of Abel.
Prostrate before the altar of the Queen of Heaven, the spirit of
Elena abandons the body, and is conducted to the skies by Abel, who
recovers the mysterious flower and the pure soul of the maiden.

Reflecting that our own American dramatic literature can claim not
many successful writers, the portion of Spanish America, in respect
to the dramatists we have described, cannot be deemed contemptible.
We have much yet to learn of our sister republics, painful though
their problem be to democratic thinkers; and we cannot look through a
more necessary and suggestive medium than their literature to become
acquainted with their moral capacities and possibilities.




ALBERTUS MAGNUS VINDICATED.


A most striking embellishment to the text of a literary article is
a deep row of citations at the foot of the page. The effect may be
likened to that of a broad trimming of lace to articles of dress.
A lace of true point enhances the rich appearance of the costliest
tissue, and a common stuff may be so set off by a Nottingham
trimming as to attract the gaze of all who are passing. If unable to
distinguish the true from the false, the gazer is astonished by the
display.

Struck by the deep trimming of an article that appeared in a recent
number of the _American Journal of the Medical Sciences_, we examined
it thoroughly from the beginning to the end. After perusal, we laid
it down with a warm recollection of the speech of the country member
in the Wisconsin legislature, who, after listening to an eloquent
oration filled with classical quotations, arose, and said: "Mr.
Speaker, the honorable gentleman has roamed with Romulus, soaked with
Socrates, ripped with Euripides, and canted with old Cantharides, but
what has all that to do with the laws of Wisconsin?"

It would, however, be entirely out of place in us to call attention
to this article, were it not for a most extraordinary sentence which
it contains, and upon this we feel bound by many considerations,
amongst which our reverence for truth and love of propriety, to make
some observations. The sentence referred to is as follows:

"About the year 1240, at the solicitation of an inquisitive priest,
Albertus Magnus, the Bishop of Ratisbon, wrote a very unepiscopal
work on the _Secrets of Women_. It contains much prurient matter
which will hardly bear translation, and yet was deemed worthy of a
commentary by so devout an ecclesiastic as St. Thomas Aquinas."[157]

In this sentence, in which two great and good men are thus spoken of,
we maintain that there are at least three glaring misstatements: the
first, that the work _De Secretis Mulierum_ was written by the Bishop
of Ratisbon, Albertus Magnus, about the year 1240; the second, that
Albertus Magnus wrote the work--positive affirmation of that fact, as
if there were no doubt of its authenticity; and the third, that St.
Thomas Aquinas ever wrote a commentary on it.

_First Misstatement._--That the work was written about the year 1240,
by Albertus Magnus, Bishop of Ratisbon, and therefore that it was the
production of a bishop, although very unepiscopal in its nature.
We premise a short sketch of his life, compiled from the Protestant
Cave (_Historia Literaria_, Sæculum Scholasticum, §1260): Albertus,
surnamed the Great, a German, was born in the year 1205. He studied
at Padua. In the year 1221, he joined the Friar Preachers. He was
considered the greatest theologian, philosopher, and mathematician
of his day. He excelled especially in mathematics. In the year 1236,
on the death of the general of the order, he governed the same for
two years as vicar. He afterward became provincial of his order in
Germany, fixing his residence at Cologne, where also he taught with
great applause. In the beginning of the year 1260, he was appointed
Bishop of Ratisbon by Alexander IV., and was obliged, against his
will, to undertake that responsibility. He held the same for only
three years, when, wearied out by its duties, he resigned the
dignity, and returned to his beloved monastery of Cologne, where he
spent his old age in the delights of study. He died in the year 1280.
Such is the substance of Cave's biography. Although there is some
doubt as to the date of his birth, all agree that he was made bishop
in the year 1260, and that during that time he had enough to do in
the affairs of his diocese. The work in question, written about the
year 1240, cannot, therefore, be rightly styled unepiscopal. Besides,
all the editions that attribute the work to Albertus say that it was
written by him whilst stopping in Paris. Thus, in the notes added by
some unknown author to the editions of 1601 and 1637 these words are
found: "Ego Albertus morans Parisiis"--"I, Albert, staying in Paris."
The first words of the text are, "Dilecto sibi," etc. As a bishop, we
have no record of his ever having been in Paris, much less stopping
there for a time. As a very old man, it is said that he made the
journey once more from Cologne. After resigning his episcopate, he
always lived and taught at Cologne. We may therefore, with justice,
put down the word _unepiscopal_ as inaccurate.

_Second Misstatement._--The positive affirmation of the fact that
Albertus Magnus was the author of the work on the _Secrets of Women_.
Admitting that our examination has not been as exhaustive as it
might, owing to the want of facility in consulting many authorities
we should have desired to, what we shall produce we hope will be
sufficient to place beyond doubt this one fact, that, if the work
is not wholly to be rejected as that of Albertus Magnus, it must at
least be granted that it is very doubtful. Our opinion is that it is
wholly supposititious. We have not found a single authority which
does not admit that it is doubtful whether Albertus Magnus was the
author of it; and the vast majority of critics and several intrinsic
arguments prove that his name, as the famous one of the age, was
affixed to it to give it notoriety. These propositions we will now
substantiate by negative and positive arguments, some extrinsic and
others intrinsic, drawn from the character of the author and of the
writing in question.

All admit that the authenticity of the work is called in question. We
have consulted at least eighteen distinct authorities in matters of
bibliography, and have not found one making the positive affirmation
of the fact; and some of our authorities, as, for instance, Cave
and Fabricius, refer to every critic of note up to their time (Cave
to no less than three hundred and seventy-two authors). Almost all
positively deny that the work belongs to Albertus Magnus. Some make
no mention of it at all when speaking of his life and labors. Others
say in general that many writings have been ascribed to Albertus, in
order to give them notoriety, which, however, must be rejected as
supposititious. Thus, the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, art. "Albert,"
vol. i., p. 171, says: "A detailed list of Albert's works, the
genuineness of many of which it is impossible to determine, is to be
found in the _Scriptores Ord. Prædicatorum_ of Quétif and Echard."
Moreri, in his grand _Dictionnaire Historique_, has nothing at all
about the book, and yet he speaks at length of Albertus and his
works. Appleton's _American Encyclopædia_ makes no mention of it;
neither does Hallam, who would not have passed by such a book, for
he speaks expressly of Albertus's influence on medical studies.
The Regensburg _Universal Realen Encyclopedie_, edition 1850, art.
"Albertus Magnus," says: "Sehr viele Schrifter wurden ihm später
fälschlich beigelegt"--"Very many works were at a later period
falsely ascribed to him."

These authorities are, however, purely negative. We shall now bring
forward the positive proofs for the same fact: _a._ Critics. _b._
Brunet. _c._ Encyclopædias. _d._ Historians. _e._ Biographies. _f._
Editions.

_a._ _Critics._--It will be enough to bring forward Fabricius, Boyle,
and Cave, all unexceptionable authorities. Fabricius, Lipsiensis
Professor, _Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infimæ ætatis_, after
referring to all the subjects treated of in the twenty-one folio
volumes of the Lyons edition, the only complete one ever published,
speaks of the works which must be rejected, and among them he
places "_Liber de Secretis Secretorum, sive de Secretis Mulierum,
sæpe editus sed suppositus Alberto, qui plus simplici vice in eo
citatur_"--"The book on the _Secret of Secrets_, or on the _Secrets
of Women_, often published but fathered on Albertus, who is more
than once quoted in it." Boyle certainly will not be accused of any
partiality for the great Catholic doctors of scholasticism. In a long
article on Albertus Magnus, he has these words: "I shall particularly
mention some falsities that have been reported about him. It has been
said that he delivered women, and it was taken very ill that a man of
his profession should do the office of a midwife. The ground of this
story is that there was a book under the name of Albertus Magnus,
containing several instructions for midwives, and so much knowledge
of their art that it seemed he could not have been so well skilled in
that trade if he had not exercised it. But the apologists of Albertus
maintained that he is not the author of that book, nor of that _De
Secretis Mulierum_." He here refers to a note in which he explains
as follows: "The book _De Secretis Mulierum_, wrongfully ascribed
to Albertus, is the work of one of his disciples, who is called
Henricus de Saxonia, with whose name it has been printed more than
once. Here are Simler's words: '_Henricus de Saxonia, Alberti Magni
discipuli, liber de Secretis Mulierum impressus Augustæ_,' A.D. 1498,
per Antonium Surg.; and in the _Catalogue of Thuanus's Library_ you
will find, '_Henrici de Saxonia, de Secretis Mulierum, de virtutibus
herbarum, lapidum quorumdam animalium aliorumque_, 12mo, Francof.,
1615.' It is plain that Albertus's name, more famous than that of
Henry, gave occasion to that supposition." Thus far Boyle.

Cave in his _Historia Literaria_ makes no mention of the work as
belonging to Albertus.

_b._ Brunet, the great authority on books and editions, in his
_Manuel du Libraire_, says: "_De Secretis Mulierum_, opus 1478,
in 4o, première édition de cet ouvrage, _mal-à-propos attribué_ à
Albert-le-grand"--"_De Secretis Mulierum_, 1478, 4to, first edition
of this work, wrongfully attributed to Albert the Great."

_c._ _Encyclopædias._--_Edinburgh Encyclopædia_, conducted by David
Brewster, edition of 1832, art. "Albertus Magnus:" "The treatise _De
Secretis Mulierum_, etc., generally ascribed to him, was written by
one of his disciples, Henricus de Saxonia." _Penny Encyclopædia_,
London, 1833: "There are also collections of supposed _secrets_ which
have erroneously been published under his name; among others, one _De
Secretis Mulierum et Naturæ_, printed at Amsterdam, in 1655, which is
believed to have been written by one of his disciples." _Chambers's
Encyclopædia_ rejects the work also as supposititious.

_d._ _Historians._--Natalis Alexander, _Hist. Ecc._, Sæculum
XIII., on "Albertus Magnus," concludes his notice thus: "Liber _De
Mirabilibus_ vanitate et superstitione refertus, Alberto Magno
suppositus est, inquit Debrio, _Disquisitionum Magicarum_, cap. 3.
Librum _De Secretis Mulierum_ nec ipsius est nec docti cujuspiam esse
censuerunt Medici Lovanienses, ut refert Molanus in _Bibliotheca
Sacra_"--"The book _De Mirabilibus_, filled with nonsense and
superstition, has been falsely ascribed to Albertus Magnus, says
Debrio in his work _Essays on Magic_, cap. 3. The Medical Faculty of
the University of Louvain gave as their opinion that the book _De
Secretis Mulierum_ is not his nor that of any learned man, as Molanus
relates in his _Bibliotheca Sacra_."

Raynoldus, in his _Cronaca_, the great continuation of the _Annals
of Baronius_, under the year 1260, paragraph 15th, says: "Hic vero
lectorem diligenter monitum velim plura passim Alberti Magni nomine
scripta circumferri, quæ ab ipso nunquam emanasse exploratum est;
cum magica superstitione sint fœdata, sed ad conciliandum rei vel
frivolæ vel scelestæ auctoritatem, piissimi et sapientis viri nomine
subornati simplicibus obtruduntur"--"We wish here particularly to
warn the reader that there are many writings extant attributed to
Albertus Magnus, which, it is clear, never emanated from his pen; for
they are filled with magical superstition; but to gain some authority
for a trifling or wicked work, they are palmed off on the ignorant
under the name of a most pious and learned man." Prof. Hefele, the
German historian, in an article on Albertus Magnus in Wetzer and
Welte's _Kirchen-Lexicon_, concludes thus: "Dem Albertus sind viele
Bücher unterschoben worden, z. B. _De Alchymia_ und _De Secretis
Mulierum_, u. dgl."--"Many books have been fathered on Albert, _e.g._
_De Alchymia_ and _De Secretis Mulierum_, etc." Cantri, the Italian
historian, in his _Universal History_, expresses the same opinion in
his chapter on the "Natural and Occult Sciences."

_e._ _Biographies._--Feller, in his _Biographie Universelle_, says:
"Enfin, on a lui attribué de ridicules recueils des _Secrets_,
auquels il n'a pas eu la moindre part. On y trouve même des
indécences et des recherches aussi vaines que peu dignes d'une
religeux"--"Finally, a ridiculous collection of _Secrets_ have
been attributed to him, with which he had nothing to do. Even
obscene things are found in this collection, and investigations as
frivolous as they are unworthy of a religious." The French and German
biographies consulted by us agree in this same opinion.

_f._ _Editions._--Dr. Atkinson, in his _Medical Biography_, mentions
all the editions of the work from the first in 1478 to 1760. The
first edition, 1478, is without the name of the place in which it
was printed; and of it we have seen the judgment of Brunet. The
editions of 1480 and 1481 are without the name of either printer or
place. The edition of 1484, Augustæ, comes out with Henry of Saxony
as its author. Those of 1488 and 1498 also. The earliest editions,
therefore, cannot be quoted as making Albertus the author of the
work. It was only the editions of 1600 and those which followed that
ascribed the work to Albertus, and they were almost all printed in
Germany or Holland. Does it not look as if party spirit had much to
do with these editions? The only complete edition of the works of
Albertus is that of the Rev. A. P. Peter Jammy, S.T.D., in twenty-one
folio volumes, printed at Lyons, 1651. This edition contains no
mention of the book.

In the authorities thus far quoted, we have studiously avoided
bringing forward any but those which are universally admitted as
standard. But even should the extrinsic testimony thus far given
not have been all on our side, we think the intrinsic evidence
would be quite sufficient to settle the question. To this point we
will now briefly direct attention. These intrinsic arguments are
drawn from the work itself and from the well-known character of
Albertus Magnus. The book or document was written somewhere about
the year 1240 or 1250, and was first printed in the year 1478. Its
composition shows evidently that it was intended only for the person
to whom it was directed; that it was merely a letter to a friend
in answer to an obscure question proposed by him; in fine, that it
was not a treatise intended for preservation, but merely a familiar
correspondence on the part of the writer to satisfy, as far as he
was able, the inquiries of his friend. Naudé, the critic, makes use
of these two proofs to show that Albertus could not have written
the work. First, Albertus did not name himself in the beginning of
the work. He who commented upon it affirmed without any proof that
Albertus was its author. The text begins with these words: "Delecto
sibi in Christo socio et amico," etc.--"To his beloved companion
and friend in Christ. In the notes added to the edition of 1601 and
1637 these words have been placed as a title: "Ego Albertus morans
Parisiis"--"I, Albert, staying in Paris." The title has been affixed
gratuitously and arbitrarily. The work is therefore anonymous.
Second, Albertus could not have written it, for his own authority is
often made use of. We must remember that the document in question
was only a letter from one friend to another; and it certainly
would be strange for a man to quote his own well-known works at any
time, much less in a familiar correspondence. If he introduced them
at all, it would be in some such form as this: "as you will find
in my work on," etc. The author of this letter quotes Albertus's
authority at least five times. We have verified the following in the
edition of 1637, Argentorati: Page 49: "That this may be understood,
we must note that there are four states of the moon, according to
Albertus in his treatise _De Statu Solis et Lunæ_. Page 69, showing
the impossibility of a universal deluge, the author says: "And we
must know that these things are not imaginary, because Albertus, on
the _Action and Effect of Lightning_, mentions," etc. Page 97, "For
Albertus mentions just as," etc. Page 109, "As Albertus says in his
book on," etc. We do not argue from the fact of the authority of
Albertus being used to prove that he could not have been the author,
but from the manner in which that authority is introduced. The reader
will judge for himself if our inference be correct. But to us the
convincing proof of the falsity of the work is to be drawn from the
character of Albertus himself and the subject matter of the work.
The testimony of antiquity has brought him down to us as venerable
for his piety and goodness as he was illustrious for learning. He
was truly a good man. He was really an exceedingly learned man. The
work ascribed to him could have been written by neither a good man
nor even a moderately well-educated man. There are principles laid
down in it which contradict the first ideas of morality and inculcate
unbridled license. And shall the well-known works on morality of the
great doctor not be allowed to cry out in his defence? Shall we say
that he has not only glaringly contradicted himself, but become the
open advocate of immorality? When the illustrious Protestant critic
Cave tells us that Albertus was considered the greatest theologian,
philosopher, and mathematician of his day, he does but re-echo the
voice of each past generation; and shall we say that he could have
written the work in question, so full of nonsense and superstition,
and contrasting so strongly with his other writings? Is not the
opinion of the Medical Faculty of the University of Louvain more just
when they maintain that the work _De Secretis Mulierum_ is neither
that of Albertus nor indeed of any learned man at all? These few
reflections should be enough to settle the matter. We could bring
forward other and far more convincing reasons in vindication of this
great doctor; but from what has been said, we think we are justified
in placing the positive affirmation of the writer ascribing the work
to Albertus Magnus as a glaring misstatement--as blot number two.

The third misstatement was that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary
on it. We challenge the writer to bring a single authority to prove
that fact. We never heard or saw anything about it before. None of
the great standard critics ever hint at it; so, not to lose patience,
we affirm that it is the most glaring misstatement made--blot number
three, in almost as many lines.

The reader might here naturally ask, Where, then, did the writer
obtain any information on which to base his so positive statements,
so injurious to the characters of two justly celebrated benefactors
of the human race? We have met with but one phrase which could have
suggested the lines in question, and they are taken from a writer who
should not be brought forward as authority in a matter of criticism;
for the scurrilous, filthy, and flippant manner in which he speaks
of authors and books renders him unworthy of an answer. This author
is Dr. James Atkinson, who published a _Medical Biography_, one
volume, A and B, London, 1834. After admitting that the authorship
of the book _De Secretis Mulierum_ is a contested matter, he has
these words: "It may be a question whether the editions (of which
I have one in Gothic characters) of this _Libellus de Secretis
Mulierum_ were not originally written by Albertus, and published with
a commentary (which is annexed to it in my edition) by St. Thomas
Aquinas (although usually 'non est inventus') or Henricus de Saxonia.
Is it possible?" The character of the author Atkinson, as manifested
in his work, and these words themselves, are a sufficient answer
to any proof to be drawn from his authority. We must say candidly
that these are the only words we could find even to suggest the
remarkable lines we have quoted in the beginning of this article; and
we conclude that we might have hoped for the sincerity of Atkinson in
one who shows that, if he has tried to read much, he has read neither
wisely nor well.

FOOTNOTE:

[157] The citation is from _Medical Bibliography_. By James Atkinson.
London. 1854.




NEW PUBLICATIONS.


    A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN COUNCILS.

    From the Original Documents, to the close of the
    Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325. By Charles Joseph Hefele,
    D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Professor of
    Theology in the University of Tübingen. Translated from
    the German, and edited by William R. Clark, M.A. Oxon.,
    Prebendary of Wells and Vicar of Taunton. Edinburgh:
    T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street. 1871. New York: The
    Catholic Publication House, 9 Warren Street.

The merits of Dr. Hefele's great but still unfinished work are well
known and universally appreciated. Certain portions of it rise to the
excellence of a masterpiece, and really exhibit a genius almost, if
not quite, equal to that which is shown in the _Athanasius_ of Möhler
and the _History of the Arians_ by Dr. Newman. We refer especially
to the parts treating of the Arian and semi-Arian controversies, and
of the history of the Council of Constance, with the other synods
preceding and connected with it. We cannot, however, consider the
work of Dr. Hefele as faultless. In our opinion, he has signally
failed in his treatment of the celebrated cases of Liberius and
Honorius. In the present volume there are, as it appears to us, two
manifest errors in regard both to fact and doctrine. The first one
is found in the statement that confirmation by a schismatical or
heretical bishop is invalid, and was judged to be so by Pope Stephen
and the bishops of his time. The second is the assertion that
the baptism of the Paulianists was rejected because of the heresy
professed by them, and not because they had vitiated the baptismal
formula. It is strange that so learned a professor could not see
that, if baptism in the name of the Trinity was made invalid by the
fact that the Paulianists understood by the terms Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost something different from the true, Catholic sense of the
church, the baptism of the Arians, and of all sorts of Unitarians,
would be made invalid by the same reason. Almost all German authors
have a tone and an air as if everything has to be proved from the
beginning anew, and this proof sharply criticised by an infidel
professor in the next room. Dr. Hefele has this air about him
whenever he writes about the constitutive principles of the Catholic
Church, and only loses it when he has fairly plunged into his subject
and become carried away by it. There is, moreover, a perceptible,
though not very deep, tinge of what we may call ante-Vatican theology
in the introduction, although one passage has been corrected by
the author since the council. The learned and illustrious author
was always animated by an orthodox and pious spirit, which he has
manifested by a truly apostolic exercise of his episcopal authority
in sustaining and enforcing the decisions of the Council of the
Vatican. Notwithstanding the accidental defects of his great work,
it is a monument not merely of ecclesiastical learning, but of
sound Catholic doctrine, in which the supremacy of the Holy See,
and the justice of its cause as against all heretics, schismatics,
and rebels, are maintained with victorious logic and overwhelming
evidence. Its critical character makes it especially valuable for
those who are studying the history and constitution of the church,
and we are, therefore, sincerely glad that one volume has been
translated into English and published, and can only hope that the
others may follow.

The translation has been made by a Protestant dignitary and published
by a Protestant firm, as the title at the head of this notice has
already informed our readers. This seems rather odd. We are glad to
see a taste for works like this arising in the educated world, but
can scarcely understand what could induce a Protestant, sincerely and
firmly attached to his own doctrine, to promote their circulation.
The author's motives are, however, his own affair, and the affair
of his own ecclesiastical connection. We have only to criticise the
manner in which he has done his work, and for that we are bound to
accord him great praise. Most judiciously, and to our very great
satisfaction, he has refrained from giving us his own opinions
in prefaces or notes, and has left Bishop Hefele in the state in
which he found him of pure, unadulterated text. The translation is
undoubtedly substantially correct, and, so far as we have seen, exact
and accurate in detail, while at the same time it is smooth, readable
English. We have noticed only one mistranslation, and that is one
which is wholly indefensible. This is the substitution of ROMAN
CATHOLIC for CATHOLIC. We protest against this alteration of Bishop
Hefele's language, and condemn it as contrary to literary honesty,
and a real falsification of the text. The volume is admirably
printed, and is for sale at The Catholic Publication House, and
we most cordially recommend it to the attention of all students of
ecclesiastical history who are unable to read the work in German or
French.


    THE PRIEST ON THE MISSION. A Course of Lectures on
    Missionary and Parochial Duties. By Frederick, Canon
    Oakeley, etc. London: Longmans & Co. New York: The
    Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.

Whoever has the happiness of knowing Canon Oakeley will think he sees
him and hears him talking when he reads this book. Canon Oakeley was
well known many years ago as a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and
one of the most distinguished of the brilliant band of converts from
that university. As a Catholic priest, he has been one of the most
laborious and successful among the parochial clergy of London. His
long experience and eminently practical mind make him unusually well
fitted for writing a work like the present. It is full of admirable
directions and suggestions, among which those on preaching especially
attracted our attention. Canon Oakeley's very remarkable merits as a
writer are too well known to need our commendation. The style of the
present volume is well worthy of the venerable author's best days,
and makes the book delightful reading. We think it is one which even
the most experienced pastors will find useful and interesting, and
which will be found to be of the highest value to young clergymen and
ecclesiastical students.


    CATHOLIC HYMNS AND CANTICLES, TOGETHER WITH A COMPLETE
    SODALITY MANUAL. By Rev. Alfred Young. Sixth edition.
    New York: The Catholic Publication House. 1871.

Father Young's hymn-book, well known to many of our schools and
confraternities for the past eight years, is now enlarged by the
addition of twenty-four hymns to its first edition. The best
thing we can say of the collection is that, of the one hundred and
thirty-one hymns which it contains, not more than half a dozen are
beyond the capacity or unsuited to the tastes of the youth for whom
it was designed. The majority of the melodies are original, and not
to be found in any other book of the kind. Every season and festival
of the year is represented by a choice selection of appropriate
hymns, and the present edition is enriched with the popular
congregational hymns sung in the church of the Paulists during Lent,
and at the meetings of their Rosary and Christian Doctrine Societies.
We have no hesitation in saying that it is the most complete and
satisfactory hymn-book for our schools and sodalities that has been
issued in the English language.


    AMERICAN RELIGION. By John Weiss. Boston: Roberts
    Brothers. 1871.

Precisely what it was that Mr. Weiss proposed to himself in writing
the series of essays which he dignifies by the title of "American
Religion," we do not find it easy to say. He is one of those more
unhappy admirers of Mr. Emerson who, in paying him the ready tribute
of a more or less perfect imitation of the style of his speech
and the manner of his thought, have so far beggared themselves as
to leave their readers in doubt as to what their own thinking and
their own statement might have been, had they in fact retained that
individuality the rights of which it seems now only a part of their
imitation to assert. Mr. Emerson's style, which is the fit expression
of the character of his mind, and in its way perfection, has the
unfortunate peculiarity of being so mannered that the least of his
disciples can successfully, and apparently unconsciously, travesty
it. Just what it was, therefore, that Mr. Weiss had in his mind
concerning the new religion which he desires to see adapted to the
supposed needs of America, we do not know; but through the fog in
which his readers are perforce doomed to flounder, it seems as if
he believes that the three thousand miles of sea-water which lie
between his native land and the Old World were a sufficient layer of
regeneration for those born on the hither side of it. The sense of
sin, the need of an atonement, the efficacy of prayer, are effete
ideas which have served their purpose in the past, but which an
American citizen is better without. Why should Yankee Doodle, who,
as all the world knows, is the latest and fullest expression of what
Mr. Weiss likes to call the "Divine Immanence," bewail sins which
are after all either purely imaginary or the result of a defective
organization for which he is not to blame; or think himself in need
of a mediator with an offended God, when the real truth is that he
has only to step up to the nearest square inch of looking-glass to
behold the Divinity in himself and settle all outlying accounts by
word of mouth? Perhaps we do Mr. Weiss an injustice, and, in the
twelve essays which form this volume, he may have embodied more and
better ideas than the only one which a tolerably attentive reading
has enabled us to gather from them. But to us his book seems likely
to be as barren of suggestion to those who would willingly agree
with him as it is to ourselves. Its prevailing cloudiness is here
and there broken in upon by a sort of inane audacity of expression
when he refers to our Lord and his miracles; but otherwise it offers
an unbroken uniformity of platitude. It betrays, too, an amusing
ignorance of all modes of thought alien to either the orthodoxy or
the rationalism of New England, the provincialism of which is in very
pretty keeping with the significant title which Mr. Weiss has chosen
for his work.




      THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

      VOL. XIII., No. 78.--SEPTEMBER, 1871.[158]


THE REFORMATION NOT CONSERVATIVE.[159]


Dr. Krauth is a man highly esteemed in his own denomination, and,
though neither very original nor profound, is a man of more than
ordinary ability and learning, well versed in Lutheran theology,
and, we presume, a trustworthy representative of it as contained in
the Lutheran symbolical books, and held by the more conservative
members of the Lutheran Church--a church, or sect rather, of growing
importance in our country, in consequence of the large migration
hither from Germany and the north of Europe, and in some respects the
most respectable of all the churches or sects born of the Protestant
Reformation, or, rather, the Protestant revolt and rebellion against
the church of God. Yet he will excuse us if we refuse to follow him
step by step in his exposition of the Lutheran theology, for all that
is true in it we have in the teaching of the Catholic Church, without
the errors and falsehoods Luther mingled with it. It were a waste of
time to study it, unless we were called upon to refute it in detail,
which we are not.

That there is much that is true mingled with much more that is false
in Lutheran theology, we do not dispute, and we readily admit that
Dr. Krauth means to hold, and in his way does hold, most of the
fundamental principles, if not dogmas, of Christianity; but this is
no more than we might say of any other system of false theology, or
of any heathen religion or superstition, ancient or modern, civilized
or barbarous. There is no pagan religion, if we analyze it and trace
it to its fountain, in which we cannot detect most, if not all, of
the great primary truths of the Christian religion, or the great
principles which underlie the dogmas and precepts of the Catholic
Church, and which could have been obtained only from the revelation
made by God himself to our first parents before their expulsion
from the garden. Yet what avails the truth false religion conceals,
mingled as it is with the errors that turn it into a lie? It serves,
whether with the lettered and polished Greek and Roman or the rude,
outlying barbarian, only as the basis of barbarous superstitions,
cruel, licentious, and idolatrous rites, and moral abominations. The
fundamental ideas or principles of civilized society are retained in
the memory of the most barbarous nations and tribes, yet are they
none the less barbarous for that. They lack order, subordination;
neither their intelligence nor their will is disciplined and
subjected to law; and their appetites and passions, unrestrained and
untamed, introduce disorder into every department of life, and compel
intelligence and will, reason itself, to enter their ignoble service,
and as abject slaves to do their bidding. Civilization introduces the
element of order, establishes the reign of law in the individual, in
the family, in the state, in society, which is not possible without a
religion true enough to enlighten the intellect, and powerful enough
over conscience to restrain the passions within their proper bounds,
and to bend the will to submission.

All Protestant sects hold much of truth, but, like the heathen
religions, they hold it in disorder, out of its normal relations and
connections, out of its unity and catholicity, and consequently no
one of them is strong enough to recover the element of order, and
re-establish and maintain the reign of law in any of the several
departments of life, spiritual or secular; for the very essence of
both consists in rejecting catholicity, the only source of order. We
therefore make no account of the principles, truths, or even Catholic
dogmas retained by the various Protestant churches or sects from
Catholic tradition. Held as they are out of unity, out of their
normal relations, and mingled with all sorts of errors and fancies,
they lose their virtue, become the basis of false religion and false
morality, pervert instead of enlightening reason, and mislead,
weaken, and finally destroy conscience. They are insufficient to
preserve faith and the worship of God, and naturally tend to revive
in a lettered nation the polished heathenism of Greece and Rome.
Their impotence is seen in the prevailing disorder in the whole
Protestant world, and especially in the singular delusion of modern
society, that the loss of Catholic truth, Catholic authority,
of spirituality, is a progress in light, liberty, religion, and
civilization--a delusion which counts the revolutions, the civil
commotions, the wars between the people and the government, between
class and class, and capital and labor, the insurrections and
terrible social disorders of the last century and the present, only
as so many evidences of the marvellous advance of the modern world in
freedom, intelligence, religion, and Christian morals. Is not this
the delusion that goeth before and leadeth to destruction?

Dr. Krauth has not advanced so far, or rather descended so low, as
have some of his Protestant brethren. He has strong conservative
instincts, and still retains a conviction that order is necessary,
and that without religious faith and conscience order is not
possible. He has a dim perception of the truth, that unless there
is something in religion fixed, permanent, and authoritative, even
religion cannot meet the exigencies of society or the needs of the
soul; but, a child of the Reformation, and jealous of the honor
of his parentage, he thinks it necessary to maintain that, if
religion must be fixed and permanent, it must at the same time be
progressive; authoritative, and yet subject to the faithful, who
have the right to resist or alter it at will. Hence he tells us, page
viii., "The church problem is to attain a Protestant Catholicity, or
a Catholic Protestantism," and seeks to establish for Lutheranism
the character of being a "conservative reformation." The learned
doctor may be a very suitable professor of theology in a Lutheran
theological seminary, or a proper professor of intellectual and
moral philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, but he seems
either not to have mastered the categories or to have forgotten them.
Contradictory predicates cannot be affirmed of the same subject.
The Lutheran Reformation and conservatism belong to different
categories. That only can be a conservative reform of the church that
is effected by the church herself or by her authority, and which
leaves her authority and constitution intact, by no means the case
with the Lutheran Reformation, which was a total subversion of the
constitution of the church and the denial of her authority. In the
sense of the author, conservative reformation implies a contradiction
in terms.

Logicians, at least those we have had for masters, tell us that of
contradictories one must be false. If there were ever two terms each
the contradictory of the other, they are _Catholic_ and _Protestant_.
One cannot be a Catholic without denying Protestantism, or a
Protestant without denying Catholicity. "Protestant Catholicity"
or "Catholic Protestantism" is as plainly a contradiction in terms
as a square circle or a circular square. If Catholicity is true,
Protestantism is false, for it is simply the denial of Catholicity;
and if the Protestant denial of Catholicity is true or warranted,
then is there nothing catholic, no catholicity, and consequently
no catholic Protestantism. Dr. Krauth has, we doubt not, a truth
floating before his mind's eye, but he fails to grasp it, or to
consider to what it is applicable. "The history of Christianity," he
says, page vii., "in common with all genuine history, moves under
the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires
to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the
progressive, which looks out in hope to a better future. Reformation
is the great harmonizer of the true principles. Corresponding with
conservatism, reformation, and progress, are the three generic types
of Christianity; and under these _genera_ all the species are but
shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three
primary colors. Conservatism without progress produces the Romish and
Greek type of the church; progress without conservatism runs into
revolution, radicalism, and sectarianism; reformation is antithetical
to both--to passive persistence in wrong or passive endurance of
it, and to revolution as a mode of relieving wrong." That is,
reformation preserves its subject while correcting its aberrations,
and effects its progress without its destruction, which, if the
subject is corruptible and reformable, and the reform is effected by
the proper authorities and by the proper means, is no doubt true; and
in this case reformation would stand opposed alike to immobility and
revolution or destruction.

But is the learned and able professor aware of what he does when he
assumes that Christianity is corruptible and reformable, that it
is or can be the subject either of corruption or of reformation?
Intentionally or not, by so assuming, he places it in the category
of human institutions, or natural productions, left to the action
of the natural laws or of second causes, and withdraws it from the
direct and immediate government and protection of God. Not otherwise
could its history be subject to the laws that govern the movement
of all genuine history, be either perfectible or corruptible, or
ever stand in need of being reformed, or of intrinsically advancing.
Christianity itself is a revelation from God, the expression of
his eternal reason and will, and therefore his law, which like
himself is perfect and unalterable. The terms the professor applies,
can apply, then, only to men's views, theories, or judgments of
Christianity, not to Christianity itself, either as a doctrine or an
institution, either as the faith to be believed, or as the law to be
obeyed--a fact which, in the judgment of some, Dr. Newman's theory
of development overlooks Christianity embodied in the church is the
kingdom of God on earth, founded immediately by the Incarnate Word to
manifest the divine love and mercy in the redemption and salvation
of souls, and to introduce and maintain the authority of God and the
supremacy of his law in human affairs. It is not an abstraction, and
did not come into the world as a "naked idea," as Guizot maintains,
nor is it left to men's wisdom and virtue to embody it; but it came
into the world embodied in an institution, concreted in the church,
which the blessed apostle assures us is "the body of Christ," who is
himself Christianity, since he says, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life." Neither as the end nor as the divine institution, neither
as the law nor as the authority to keep, declare, and apply it, then
is the church imperfect, therefore progressive or corruptible, and
therefore reformable. This is the Catholic doctrine, which must be
retained by Protestantism if Protestantism is to be Catholic.

The learned professor either overlooks or virtually denies the
divine origin, character, and authority of the church, or else he
supposes that the divine founder failed to adapt his means to his
end, and left his work incomplete, imperfect, to be finished by
men. From first to last, he treats the church not as the kingdom
of God on earth, but as an institution formed by men to realize or
embody their conceptions or views of his kingdom, its principles,
laws, and authority. He thus makes it a human institution, subject
to all the vicissitudes of time and space. As men can never embody
in their institutions the entire kingdom of God, the church must be
progressive; as whatever is defective may be corrupted by the errors
and corruptions of the faithful, as what is subject to growth must
also be subject to decay, the church may from time to time become
corrupt, and men must be free, as she has need, to reform her. This
manifestly supposes the church is not divine, but simply an attempt,
as is every false religion of men, to realize or embody their
variable conceptions of the divine. If this were not the professor's
view, he could not talk of conservatism, progress, and reformation
in connection with Christianity, nor the correspondence of these
with "the three generic types of Christianity," for these terms are
inapplicable to anything divine and perfect, and can be logically
applied only to what is imperfect and human, to what is perfectible,
corruptible, and reformable. As there is but one God, one Christ,
the mediator of God and men, there can be but one Christianity, and
that must be catholic, one and the same in all times and places.
To suppose three generic types of Christianity is as absurd as to
suppose three Christs or three Gods, generically distinguished
one from another, that is--three Christs or three Gods of three
different types or genera.

Supposing the professor understands at all the meaning of the
scholastic terms he uses, it is clear that he understands by
Christianity the history of which moves under the influence of
two generic ideas--nothing divine, nothing fixed, permanent, and
immutable, the law alike for intellect and will, but the views
and theories or judgments which men form of the works of God, his
word, his law, or his kingdom. Christianity resolved into these
may, we concede, not improperly be arranged under the three heads
of conservatism, progress, and reformation, but never Christianity
as the truth to be believed and obeyed. We do not, however, blame
the Lutheran professor for his mistake; for, assuming his position
as a Protestant to be at all tenable, he could not avoid it, since
Protestants have no other Christianity. They have only their _views_
or judgments of Christianity, not Christianity itself as the
objective reality.

There is progress _by_ Christianity; and that is one great purpose
for which it is instituted; but none _in_ Christianity, because it
is divine and perfect from the beginning. There may be reformation
in individuals, nations, and society, for these are all corruptible,
but none of Christianity itself, either as the creed or as the body
of Christ, for it is indefectible, above and independent of men
and nations, and therefore neither corruptible nor reformable by
them. Not being corruptible or capable of deterioration, the term
conservative, however applicable it may be to states and empires
in the natural order or to human institutions and laws subject to
the natural laws, has no application to Christianity or the kingdom
of Christ, which is supernatural, under the direct and immediate
government and protection of God, an eternal and therefore an
ever-present kingdom, universal and unalterable, and not subject to
the natural laws of growth and decay. Dr. Krauth forgets the law
of mechanics, that there is no motion without a mover at rest. The
movable cannot originate motion, nor the progressive be the cause of
progress, or corruption purify and reform itself. If Christianity or
the church were itself movable, or in itself progressive, it could
effect no progress in men or nations, individuals or society; and
if it could ever become itself corrupt, it could be no principle of
reform in the world, or in any department of life.

The office of Christianity is to maintain on earth amidst all the
vicissitudes of this world the immutable divine order, to recover
men from the effects of the fall, to elevate them above the world,
above their natural powers, and to carry them forward, their will
consenting and concurring, to a blissful and indissoluble union with
God as their supreme good, as their last end or final cause. How
could it fulfil this office and effect its divine purpose, if not
itself free from all the changes, alterations, and accidents of time
and space? Does not the learned professor of theology perceive that
its very efficiency depends on its independence, immovableness, and
immutability? Then the conceptions of conservatism, progress, and
reformation cannot be applied to the church of God, any more than
to God himself, and are applicable only to what is human connected
with her. In applying these ideas to her, the professor, as every
Protestant is obliged to do in principle at least, divests her of
her divinity, of her supernatural origin and office, and places
her in the natural and human order, and subjects her to the laws
which govern the history of all men and nations deprived of the
supernatural and remaining under the ordinary providence of God
manifested through second causes. The professor's doctrine places
Christianity in the same category with all pagan and false religions,
and subjects it to the same laws to which they are subjected.

This being the case, Dr. Krauth, who is a genuine Lutheran, has no
right to call Luther's Reformation a _conservative_ Reformation. It
may or may not be conservative in relation to some other Protestant
church or sect, but in relation to the church of God, or to
Christianity as the word or the law of God, it is not conservative,
but undeniably destructive; for it subverts the very idea and
principle on which the church as the kingdom of God on earth is
founded and sustained. The church on the principles of Luther's
reformation is subject to the authority of men and nations, and,
instead of teaching and governing them, is taught and governed by
them, and instead of elevating and perfecting them, they perfect,
corrupt, or reform it. This is manifestly a radical denial, a
subversion of the church of God, of Christ's kingdom on earth if
it means anything more than a temperance society or a social club.
In this respect, the principle of the Lutheran reformation was the
common principle of all the Protestant reformers, as we may see in
the fact that Protestantism, under any or all of its multitudinous
forms, wherever not restrained by influences foreign to itself, tends
incessantly to eliminate the supernatural, and to run into pure
rationalism or naturalism. How absurd, then, to talk of "_Protestant_
Catholicity, or of _Catholic_ Protestantism"! The two ideas are as
mutually repellent as are Christ and Belial.

The church has, indeed, her human side, and on that side she may at
times be corrupt and in need of reform, that is to say, the heavenly
treasure is _received_ in earthen vessels, and those earthen vessels,
though unable to corrupt or sully the divine treasure itself, may
be unclean and impure themselves. Churchmen may become relaxed in
their virtue and neglect to maintain sound doctrine and necessary
discipline, and leave the people to suffer for the want of proper
spiritual nourishment and care, even to fall into errors and vices
more in accordance with the heathenism of their ancestors than with
the faith and sanctity of the Christian. Moreover, in a world where
all changes under the very eye of the spectator, and new forms of
error and vice are constantly springing up, the disciplinary canons
of the church, and those which regulate the relations of secular
society with the spiritual, good and adequate when first enacted, may
become insufficient or impracticable in view of the changes always
going on in everything human, and fail to repress the growing evil of
the times and to maintain the necessary discipline both of clerics
and laics, and therefore need amending, or to be aided by new and
additional canons. In this legislative and administrative office of
the church, not in her dogmas, precepts, constitution, or authority,
which, as expressing the eternal reason and will of God, are
unalterable, reforms are not only permissible but often necessary.
The councils, general, national, provincial, and diocesan, have
always had for their only object to assist the Papacy in suppressing
errors against faith in enforcing discipline, maintaining Christian
morality, and promoting the purity and sanctity of the Christian
community.

We do not deny that reforms of this sort were needed at the epoch
of the Protestant revolt and rebellion, and the Holy Council of
Trent was convoked and held for the very purpose of effecting
such as were needed, as well as for the purpose of condemning the
doctrinal errors of the reformers; but we cannot concede that they
were more especially needed at that epoch, than they had been at
almost any time previous, since the conversion of the barbarians
that overthrew the Roman empire, and of their pagan brethren that
remained in the old homesteads. Long, severe, and continuous had
been the struggle of the church to tame, humanize, and christianize
these fierce and indocile barbarians, especially those who remained
beyond the frontiers of the empire, and to whom the Roman name never
ceased to be hateful, as it is even to this day with the bulk of the
northern Germanic races. The evils which for eight centuries had
grown out of the intractable and rebellious spirit of these races
in their old homes, and their perpetual tendency to relapse into
the paganism of their ancestors, and which had so tried the faith
and patience of the church, had been in a great measure overcome
before the opening of the sixteenth century, and their morals and
manners brought into close conformity with the Christian ideal. The
church, through her supreme pontiffs and saintly bishops, zealous
and hard-working priests and religious, had struggled successfully
against them; and was even getting the better of the polished Greek
and Roman heathenism, partially revived in the so-called Revival of
Letters, or the Renaissance, and was pursuing, never more steadily
or more successfully, her work of evangelization and civilization;
and we can point to no period in her history since the conversion of
Clovis, king of the Franks, the missionary labors of St. Columbanus
and his colonies of Irish monks in Eastern Gaul and Italy, and of St.
Boniface and his Anglo-Saxon companions and successors in central
Germany and the Netherlands, when reforms were less necessary, or the
bonds of discipline were less relaxed, than at the epoch of the rise
of Protestantism.

But, granting that reforms of this sort were especially needed in the
sixteenth century, who had the right, on conservative and orderly
principles, to propose or to effect them? Certainly not private
individuals on their own authority, except so far as it concerned
their own personal faith and morals, but to the ecclesiastical
authorities of the time, as we see in the Holy Council of Trent.
Reforms, even if needed and proper in themselves, if attempted by
unauthorized individuals on their own responsibility, and carried
out without, and especially in opposition to, the supreme authority
of the church, are irregular, disorderly, and unlawful. A reform
attempted and effected in church or state by unauthorized persons,
and especially against the constituted authorities of either, is
unquestionably an attempt at revolution, if words have any meaning.
Now, was Luther's reformation effected by the church herself, or by
persons authorized by her to institute and carry it on? Was it done
by the existing authorities of the church in accordance with her
constitution and laws, or was it done in opposition to her positive
prohibition, and in most cases by violence and armed force against
her?

There is no question as to the fact. Luther had no authority or
commission from the church to attempt and carry out the reforms or
changes he declared to be necessary; and, in laboring to effect
them, he proceeded not only without her authority, but against
it, just as he does who conspires to overthrow the state or to
subvert the constitution and laws of his country. Luther, then,
was not a conservative reformer, but a decided revolutionist, a
radical, a sectarian, a destructive, and Dr. Krauth counts too much
on the ignorance or credulity of his readers in expecting them to
accept Lutheranism as "conservative reformation." A conservative
reformation, as distinguished from or opposed to revolution, is
a legal, constitutional reformation, effected under the proper
authorities and by constitutional and legal means. Dr. Krauth himself
would despise us or laugh at us if we should concede that such
was Luther's reformation. It was effected by persons unauthorized
to reform the church, against her constitution and laws existing
at the time, and to which they themselves owed strict fidelity
and unreserved obedience. They were conspirators against lawful
authority, against their spiritual sovereign, and their pretended
reform was a revolt, a rebellion, and, as far as successful, a
revolution. It is idle to deny it, or to attempt to defend Luther
and his associates on legal and constitutional principles. The
reform or movement he attempted was without and against law, against
the constitution and canons of the church, and was condemned and
prohibited by the supreme spiritual authority. This is undeniable,
and Dr. Krauth knows it as well as we do, and yet he has the
hardihood to call it a "conservative reformation"!

But the Protestant pretence is that Luther and his associates acted
in obedience to a higher authority than that of popes and councils,
and were justified in what they did by the written word of God
and Christian antiquity. An appeal of this sort, on Protestant
principles, from the decisions of a Protestant sect, might be
entertained, but not on Catholic principles from the decision of the
Catholic Church, for she is herself, at all times and places, the
supreme authority for declaring the sense of the written as well as
of the unwritten word, for declaring and applying the divine law,
whether naturally or supernaturally promulgated, and for judging
what is or is not according to Christian antiquity. Their appeal was
irregular, revolutionary even, and absurd and not to be entertained
for a moment. She authorized no appeal of the sort, and the appeal
could have been only from her judgment to their own, which at the
lowest is as high authority as theirs at the highest. Luther and his
associates did not appeal to a higher law or authority against the
popes and councils, but to a lower, as Döllinger has done in asking
permission to appeal from the judgment of a general council, to that
of a national or rather a provincial council. The appeal to Christian
antiquity was equally unavailable, for it was only setting up their
private judgment against the judgment of the supreme court. The
church denied that she had departed from the primitive church, and
her denial was sufficient to rebut their assertion. In no case, then,
did they or could they appeal to or act on a higher law or authority
than hers. They opposed and could oppose to her judgment, rendered by
popes and councils, of the law or word of God, written or unwritten,
or of Christian antiquity, only their own judgment, which at the best
was no better than hers at the worst.

The simple fact is, there is no defence of the so-called Reformation
on catholic, church, or conservative principles. It sought to reform
the faith, and to change the very constitution of the church, and
wherever it was successful, it proved to be the subversion of the
church, and the destruction of her faith, her authority, and her
worship. Dr. Krauth says that this was not originally intended by
the reformers, and that they had in the beginning no clear views, or
fixed and determined plan of reform, but were carried forward by the
logic of their principles and events to lengths which they did not
foresee, and from which they would at first have recoiled. But this
only proves that they were no divinely illumined and God-commissioned
reformers, that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of,
that they took a leap in the dark, and followed a blind impulse.
If the spirit they obeyed, or the principle to which they yielded,
led them or pushed them step by step in the way of destruction, to
the total denial of the authority of the church, or to transfer it
from the pope and hierarchy to Cæsar or the laity, which we know was
universally the fact, it is clear proof that the spirit or principle
of the Reformation was radical, revolutionary, destructive, not
conservative.

That conservative men among Protestants abhor the radicalism and
sectarianism which the whole history of the Protestant world proves
to be the natural and inevitable result of the principles and
tendencies of the so-called Reformation, we are far from denying;
but whatever of resistance is offered in the Protestant world to
these results is due not to Protestantism itself, but either to
Catholic reminiscences and the natural good sense of individuals, to
the control of religious matters assumed by the civil government,
which really has no authority in spirituals, or to the presence and
constant teaching of the Catholic Church. "What is bred in the
bones will out in the flesh." Everywhere the Protestant spirit,
the Protestant tendency, is to remove farther and farther from
Catholicity, to eliminate more and more of Catholic dogma, Catholic
tradition, Catholic precepts, and to approach nearer and nearer to
no-churchism, to the rejection of all authority in spiritual matters,
and the reduction of the whole supernatural order to the natural.
Faith in the Protestant mind is only a probable opinion, sometimes
fanatically held indeed, and enforced by power, but none the less
a mere opinion for that. The conception of religion as a divine
institution, of the church as a living organism, as a teaching and
governing body, as the kingdom of God, placed in the world as the
medium of divine grace and of the divine government in human affairs,
is really entertained by no class of Protestants, but disdainfully
rejected by all as spiritual despotism, _Romish_ usurpation, or
Popish superstition.

It is useless to say that this is a departure from or an abuse of
the principle of the Protestant Reformation. It is no such thing;
it is only the logical development of the radical and revolutionary
principles which the reformers themselves avowed and acted on,
and which carried them to lengths which, in the outset, they did
not dream of, and from which Dr. Krauth says truly they would,
had they foreseen them, have shrunk with horror. We do not find
that Lutheranism, when left by the civil magistracy to itself, and
suffered to follow unchecked its own inherent law, is any more
conservative or less radical in its developments and tendency than
Calvinism or Anglicanism, that prolific mother of sects, or any other
form of Protestantism. Every revolution must run its course and
reach its goal, unless checked or restrained by a power or influences
foreign to itself, and really antagonistic to it. The reformers
rejected the idea of the church as a kingdom or governing body, or
as a divine institution for the instruction and government of men,
and substituted for it, in imitation of the Arabian impostor, a book
which, without the authority of the church to declare its sense, is
a dead book, save as quickened by the intelligence or understanding
of its readers. Their followers discovered in the course of time that
the book in itself is immobile and voiceless, and has no practical
authority for the understanding or the will, and they cast it off,
some, like George Fox and his followers, for a pretended interior or
spiritual illumination, the reality of which they can prove neither
to themselves nor to others; but the larger part, for natural reason,
history, erudition, and the judgment of learned or _soi-disant_
learned men. Their work has gone on till, with the more advanced
party, all divine authority is rejected, and as man has and can have
in his own right no authority over man, reason itself has given way,
objective truth is denied, and truth and falsehood, right and wrong,
it is gravely maintained, are only what each man for himself holds
them to be. The utmost anarchy and confusion in the intellectual and
moral world have been reached in individuals and sects said to have
"advanced views."

Such have been the results of Dr. Krauth's "conservative reformation"
in the spiritual order, in Christianity or the church. It introduced
the revolutionary principle, the principle of individualism, of
private judgment, and insubordination into the religious order, and,
as a necessary consequence, it has introduced the same principle
into the political and social order, which depends on religion,
and cannot subsist without it. Hence, the great and damning charge
against the church in our day is that by her unchangeableness, her
immovable doctrines, her influence on the minds and hearts, and hold
on the consciences of the faithful, she is the great supporter of
law and order--despots and despotism, in the language of the liberal
journals--and the chief obstacle to the enlightenment and progress
of society, in the same language; but radicalism and revolution
in ours. Hence, the whole movement party in our times, with which
universal Protestantism sympathizes and is closely allied, is moved
by hostility to the church, especially the Papacy. Hence, it and
the Protestant journals of the Old World and the New are unable to
restrain their rage at the declaration of the Papal supremacy and
infallibility by the Council of the Vatican, or their exultation
at the invasion of the States of the Church, their annexation to
the Subalpine kingdom, and the spoliation of the Holy Father by the
so-called King of Italy. Why do we see all this, but because the
revolutionary principle, which the reformers asserted in the church,
is identically the principle defended by the political radicals and
revolutionists?

Having thrown off the law of God, rejected the authority of the
church, and put the faithful in the place of the pope and hierarchy,
what could hinder the movement party from applying the same
subversive principle to the political and social order? The right to
revolutionize the church, and to place the flock above the shepherd,
involves the right to revolutionize the state, and the assertion
of the right of the governed to resist and depose their governors
at will, or at the dictation of self-styled political and social
reformers. Protestantism has never favored liberty, as it claims, and
which it is impotent either to found or to sustain; but its claims
to be the founder and chief supporter of modern liberalism, which
results naturally and necessarily from the fundamental principle of
the reformers, that of the right of the people to resist and depose
the prelates placed over them, cannot be contested. If no man is
bound, against his own judgment and will, to obey the law of God, how
can any one be bound in conscience to obey the law of the state? and
if the people may subvert the constitution of the church, and trample
on her divine authority, why may they not subvert the constitution
of the republic, and trample under foot the human authority of the
civil magistrate, whether he be called king or president? It is
to Protestantism we owe the liberalistic doctrine of "the sacred
right of insurrection," or of "revolution" assumed to be inherent
in and persistent in every people, or any section of any people,
and which justifies Mazzini and the secret societies in laboring to
bring about in every state of Europe an internal conflict and bloody
war between the people and their governments. It deserves the full
credit of having asserted and acted on the principle, and we hold it
responsible for the consequences of its subversive application; for
it is only the application in the political and social order of the
principle on which the reformers acted, and all Protestants act, in
the religious order against the church of God.

The principle of revolution, asserted and acted on as a Christian
principle by the reformers, has not been inoperative, or remained
barren of results, on being transferred to modern political and
civil society. If the reformation, by drawing off men's attention and
affections from the spiritual order, and fixing them on the material
order, has promoted a marvellous progress in mechanical inventions
and the applications of science to the industrial and productive
arts, it has at the same time undermined the whole political order,
shaken every civil government to its foundation, and, in fact,
revolutionized nearly every modern state. It has loosened the bonds
of society, destroyed the Christian family, erected disobedience into
a principle, a virtue even, and reduced authority to an empty name.
It has taught the people to be discontented with their lot, filled
them with an insane desire for change, made them greedy of novelties,
and stirred them up to a chronic war with their rulers. Everywhere
we meet the revolutionary spirit, and there is not a government in
Europe that has any strong hold on the consciences of the governed,
or that can sustain itself except by its army. Even Russia, where the
people are most attached to their emperor, is covered over with a
network of secret societies, which are so many conspiracies against
government, laboring night and day to revolutionize the empire.
Prussia, which has just succeeded in absorbing the greater part of
Germany, and is flushed with her recent triumph over the French
empire and the improvised French republic, may seem to be strong
and stable; but she has the affections of the people in no part of
Germany, which she has recently annexed or confederated under her
headship, and the new empire is pervaded in all directions by the
revolutionary spirit to which it owes its existence, and which may be
strong enough to resist its power, and reduce the ill-compacted body
to its original elements to-morrow.

We need not speak of Austria; she may become hereafter once more
a power in Europe, but she is now nothing. Voltairianism, and the
spirit generated by the Reformation, have prostrated her, and sunk
her so low that no one deigns to do her reverence. In England the
government itself seems penetrated with the revolutionary spirit,
or at least believes that spirit is so strong in the people that it
is unsafe to resist it, and that it is necessary to make large and
continual concessions to it. It is a maxim with the liberals and most
English and American statesmen, or politicians rather, for our age
has no statesmen, that a government is strengthened by timely and
large concessions to popular demands. The government is undoubtedly
strengthened by just laws and wise administration, but in our times,
when the old respect for authority has gone, and governments have
little or no hold on consciences, there is no government existing
strong enough to make concessions to popular demands, or to the
clamors of the governed, without endangering its power, and even
its existence. The Holy Father, Pius IX., in the beginning of his
pontificate, tried the experiment, and was soon driven from his
throne, and found safety only in flight and exile. Napoleon III.
tried it in January of last year, was driven by his people into a
war for which he was unprepared, met with disasters, was defeated
and taken prisoner, declared deposed and his empire at an end by
a Parisian mob, before the end of September of the same year. The
policy of concession is a ruinous policy; one concession leads to
the demand for another and a larger concession, and each concession
strengthens the disaffected, and weakens the power of authority to
resist. But England has adopted the policy, is fully committed to it,
as she is to many false and ruinous maxims, and it will go hard but
she yields to her democracy, and reaps in her own fields the fruits
of the liberalism and revolutionism which she has, especially when
under Whig influence, so industriously sown broadcast throughout
Europe.

We need not speak of our own country. Everybody knows its intense
devotion to popular sovereignty, its hatred of authority, and
its warm sympathy--in words at least--with every insurrection or
uprising of the people, or any portion of the people, to overthrow
the established authority, whether in church or state, they can hear
of, without any inquiry into the right or wrong of the case. The
insurrection or revolutionary party, it is assumed, is always in the
right. There is no more intensely Protestant people on the globe than
the American, and none more deeply imbued with the revolutionary
spirit, in which it is pretended our own institutions originated,
and which nearly the whole American press mistake for the spirit of
liberty, and cherish as the American spirit. What will come of it,
time will not be slow in revealing.

But France, so long the leader of modern civilization, and which she
has so long led in a false direction, shows better than any other
nation the workings of the revolutionary spirit introduced by the
Reformers. She, indeed, repelled, after some hesitation and a severe
struggle, the Reformation in the religious order; but through the
indomitable energy of the princely Guises and their brave Lorraine
supporters, whom every French historian and publicist since takes
delight in denouncing, she was retained in the communion of the
church; but with Henry IV. the _parti politique_ came into power, and
Protestantism was adopted and acted on in the political order. On
more occasions than one, France became the diplomatic and even the
armed defender of the Reformation against the Catholic sovereigns of
Europe. She was the first Christian power to form an alliance with
the Grand Turk, against whom Luther declared to be against the will
of God for his followers to fight, even in defence of Christendom;
she aided the Low Countries in their rebellion against Catholic
Spain, Protestant Sweden, and Northern Germany in their effort to
crush Catholic Austria, and protestantize all Germany; and saw,
without an effort to save her, Catholic Poland struck from the list
of nations. Twice has she with armed force dragged the Holy Father
from his throne, and secularized and appropriated the States of the
Church, and set the example which the Italian Liberals have but too
faithfully followed. Rarely, if ever, has she since the sixteenth
century, by her foreign policy, consulted the interests of the
church any further than they happened to be coincident with her own.
In an evil hour, she forgot the principles which made the glory of
the French sovereigns, and on which Christendom was reconstructed
after the downfall of the Roman Empire of the West, and severed her
politics from her religion. At first asserting with the reformers
and the Lutheran princes the independence of the secular order of
the spiritual, afterwards the superiority of the secular power, and
finally the sovereignty of the people or the governed in face of
their governers, as the reformers asserted the sovereignty of the
faithful in face of the pope and hierarchy, she made her world-famous
revolution of 1789, inaugurated the mob, and has been weltering in
anarchy and groaning under despotism ever since.

The accession of Henry IV., the beau ideal of a king with the French
people, marks a compromise between Catholicity and Protestantism,
by which it was tacitly agreed that France should in religion
profess the Catholic faith and observe the Catholic worship, while
in politics, both at home and abroad, she should be Protestant, and
independent of the spiritual authority. It was hoped the compromise
would secure her both worlds, but it has caused her to lose both, at
least this world as every one may now see. It is worse than idle to
attempt to deny the solidarity of the French revolution with Luther's
rebellion; both rest on the same principle and tend to the same end;
and it is the position and influence of France as the leader of the
civilized world, that has given to the revolutionary principle its
popularity, diffused it through all modern nations, and made it the
_Weltgeist_, or spirit of the age. The socialistic insurrection in
Paris, and which we fear is only "scotched, not killed," is only the
logical development of '93, as '93 was of '89, and '89 of Luther's
revolt against the church in the sixteenth century. Its success would
be only the full realization in church and state, in religion and
society, of what Dr. Krauth calls "the conservative reformation." The
communists deny the right of property, indeed, but not more than did
Protestants in despoiling the church and sacrilegiously confiscating
the possessions of religious houses and the goods of the clergy. No
more consistent and thoroughgoing Protestants has the world seen than
these French socialists or communists, who treat property as theft
and God as a despot.

We do not exult in the downfall of France, in which there are so many
good Catholics and has always been so much to love and admire, any
more than, had we lived then, we should have exulted in the downfall
of the Roman Empire before the invasion of the barbarians. Like
that downfall, it is the breaking up of Christendom, and leaves the
Holy Father without a single Christian power to defend his rights
or the liberty of the Holy See; but it deprives Protestantism of
its most efficient supporter and its great popularizer, and all the
more efficient because nominally Catholic. It is not Catholic but
Protestant and liberal France that has fallen. The Bonapartes never
represented Catholic France, but the principles of 1789--that is,
the revolution which created them, and which they sought to use or
retain as they judged expedient for their own interests. In the last
Napoleon's defeat we see the defeat, we wish we could say the final
defeat, of the revolution. Yet so terrible a disaster occurring so
suddenly to so great a nation, we think must prove the turning-point
in the life and tendencies of the nations of Europe, and pave the way
for the reconstruction of Christendom on its old basis of the mutual
concord and co-operation of the two powers. We think it must lead
the nations to pause and reflect on the career civilization has for
three centuries been running, and open their eyes to the folly and
madness of attempting to found permanent political and social order,
or authority and liberty, on the revolutionary principle of the
Reformation or of 1789. We look for a powerful reaction at no distant
date against the revolution in favor of the church and her divine
authority. It is sometimes necessary to make men despair of the earth
in order to turn their attention to heaven.

But to conclude: we have wished to show Dr. Krauth that the
Reformation in any or all its phases, in its principle and in its
effects, in church and state is decidedly revolutionary. He as a
Protestant has not been able to see and set forth the truth; bound by
his office and position to defend the Reformation, he has considered
what it must have been if defensible, not what it actually was,
and has given us his ideal of the Reformation, not the Reformation
itself. If it does not, he reasons, maintain all Catholic principles
and doctrines it is indefensible; but if it concedes that these
principles and doctrines, were held in their purity and integrity in
their unity and catholicity, by the church Luther warred against,
what need was there of it? Our good doctor must then assume that
they were not so held, that the church had erred both in faith
and practice, and that the Reformation simply restored the faith,
purified practice, re-established discipline, freed the mind from
undue shackles, and opened the way for the free and orderly progress
of the word. All very fine; only there does not happen to be a word
of truth in it. Besides, if it were so, it would only prove that
the church had failed, therefore that Christianity had failed,
and that Christ was not equal to the work he undertook. If Christ
is true, there must always be the true church somewhere, for she
is indefectible as he is indefectible. If the church in communion
with the See of Rome had become corrupt and false, as the reformers
alleged, then some other existing body was the true church, and
Luther and his associates, in order to be in the true church, should
have ascertained and joined it--a thing which it is well known they
did not do, for they joined no other church or organic body, but set
furiously at work to pull down the old church which had hitherto
sheltered them and to build a new one for themselves on its ruins.

We grant the Reformation should have been conservative in order to
be defensible, but it was not so, it was radical and subversive.
It rejected the Papacy, the hierarchy, the church herself as a
visible institution, as a teaching and governing body, and asserted
the liberty of the faithful to teach and govern their prelates and
pastors. It is the common principle of all Protestant denominations
that the church is constituted by the faithful, holds from them,
and the pastor is called not sent. This, we need not say, is the
subversion of all church authority, of the kingdom of God founded
by our Lord himself, and ruling from above instead of from below.
It reduces religion from law to opinion or personal conviction,
without light or authority for conscience. This principle, applied to
politics, is the subversion of the state, overthrows all government,
and leaves every man free to do "what is right in his own eyes." It
transfers power from the governors to the governed, and allows the
government no powers not held from their assent, which is simply to
make it no government at all. It has been so applied, and the effect
is seen especially in France, which, since her revolution of '89,
has had no settled government, but has alternated, as she alternates
to-day, between the mob and the despot, anarchy and military
despotism.

We so apply it, theoretically, in this country; and in the recent
civil war the North was able to fight for the preservation of the
Union only by pocketing for a time its principles and forswearing its
logic. The logic was on the side of the South; the force was on the
side of the North; on which side was the right or the wrong, it is
not our province to decide. We will only add that we do not agree at
all with journals that speak of the issues which led to the war as
being decided by it. War may make it inexpedient to revive them, but
the only issue it ever does or can decide is, on which side is, for
the time, the superior force. We deny not the right of the people to
resist the prince who makes himself a tyrant, if declared to be such
and judicially deposed by the competent authority, but we do deny
their right, for any cause whatever, to conspire against or to resist
the legitimate government in the legal exercise of its constitutional
powers. We recognize the sovereignty of the people in the sense that,
if a case occurs in which they are without any government, they have
the right, in concert with the spiritual power, to institute or
reconstitute government in such way and in such form as they judge
wisest and best; but we utterly deny that they remain sovereign,
otherwise than in the government, when once they have constituted
it, or that the government, when constituted, holds from them and
is responsible to their will outside of the constitution; for that
would make the government a mere agent of the people and revocable at
their will, which is tantamount to no government at all. The doctrine
of the demagogues and their journals we are not able to accept;
it deprives the people collectively of all government, and leaves
individuals and minorities no government to protect and defend them
from the ungoverned will and passions of the majority for the time.

We accept and maintain loyally, and to the best of our ability, the
constitution of our country as originally understood and intended,
not indeed as the best constitution for every people, but because
it is the best for us, and, above all, because it is for us the
law. In itself considered, there is no necessary discord between
it and Catholicity, but as it is interpreted by the liberal and
sectarian journals, that are doing their best to revolutionize
it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the
American people, or as interpreted by the Protestant principle, so
widely diffused among us, and in the sense of European liberalism
or Jacobinism, we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government
at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions
of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the
revolutionary principle of Protestantism, it is sure to fail--to
lose itself either in the supremacy of the mob or in military
despotism--and doom us, like unhappy France, to alternate between
them, with the mob uppermost to-day, and the despot to-morrow.
Protestantism, like the heathen barbarisms which Catholicity subdued,
lacks the element of order, because it rejects authority, and is
necessarily incompetent to maintain real liberty or civilized
society. Hence it is we so often say, that if the American Republic
is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection
of the principle of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the
Catholic principle by the American people. Protestantism can preserve
neither liberty from running into license or lawlessness, nor
authority from running into despotism.

If Dr. Krauth wants conservatism without immobility, and progress
without revolution or radicalism, as it seems he does, he must cease
to look for what he wants in the Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican,
or any other Protestant reformation, and turn his thoughts and his
hopes to that church which converted pagan Rome, christianized and
civilized his own barbarian ancestors, founded the Christendom of the
middle ages, and labored so assiduously, unweariedly, perseveringly,
and successfully to save souls, and to advance civilization and the
interests of human society, from the conversion of the pagan Franks
in the fifth century down to the beginning of the sixteenth century,
and which still survives and teaches and governs, in spite of all
the effort of reformers, revolutionists, men, and devils to cover
her with disgrace, to belie her character, and to sweep her from
the face of the earth. She not only converted the pagan barbarians,
but she recovered even the barbarian nations and tribes, as the
Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians, that had fallen into the Arian
heresy, which like all heresy is a compromise between Christianity
and heathenism, and even reconverted the Alemanni, Frieslanders,
and others who had once embraced the Gospel, but had subsequently
returned to their idols and heathen superstitions. God is with her as
of old, and lives, teaches, and governs in her as in the beginning;
and she is as able to convert the heathen to-day, to reconvert the
relapsed, and to recover the heretical, as she was in the days of
St. Remi, St. Amand, St. Patrick, St. Austin, St. Columbanus, St.
Willebrod, or St. Boniface. She is the kingdom of God, and like him
she cannot grow old, decay, or die. Never had her Supreme Pontiff
a stronger hold on the consciences, the love and affections of the
faithful throughout the world, than he has at this moment, when
despoiled of all his temporalities and abandoned by all earthly
powers, nor ever were her pastors and prelates more submissive and
devoted to their chief. Never did she more fully prove that she is
under the protection of God, as his immaculate spouse, than now when
held up to the scorn and derision of a heretical and unbelieving
world. Dead she is not, but living.

Let our learned Lutheran professor remove the film from his eyes,
and look at her in her simple grandeur, her unadorned majesty,
and see how mean and contemptible, compared with her, are all the
so-called churches, sects, and combinations arrayed against her,
spitting blasphemy at her, and in their satanic malice trying to
sully her purity or dim the glory that crowns her. Say what you will,
Protestantism is a petty affair, and it is one of the mysteries
of this life how a man of the learning, intelligence, apparent
sincerity, and good sense of Dr. Krauth can write an octavo volume
of eight hundred closely printed pages in defence of the Protestant
Reformation.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.

[159] _The Conservative Reformation and its Theology; as Represented
in the Augsburg Confession, and in the History and Literature of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church._ By Charles V. Krauth, D.D., Norton
Professor of Theology in the Evangelical Lutheran Theological
Seminary, and Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the
University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
1871. 8vo, pp. 800.




GENZANO AND FRASCATI.


What is interesting to visitors in Rome, and indeed in all Italy,
is not merely their stay in certain known localities, or their
sight-seeing within a certain beaten track; it is also the casual
observation of less famous and more intimate scenes, and the
residence in less crowded and more attractive, because more peculiar,
neighborhoods.

The curious festival, more carnivalesque than religious, that takes
place every Sunday in August in the Piazza Narona, in Rome, and
during which pedestrians and carriage-goers wade and splash through
a shallow, artificial lake, produced by the regulated overflowing
of the centre-fountain, is a sight unfamiliar to strangers and
tourists, yet none the less a very characteristic sport, and
interesting especially to such as view Rome chiefly in a historic and
antiquarian light. Again, the "Ottobrate," a species of christianized
bacchanalia, an innocent merry-making answering in some sort to our
dear old familiar gathering of "Harvest Home," is a thing more often
heard of than witnessed by flying visitors to the Eternal City. In
October, also, the Holy Father visits different convents, and a few
ladies not unfrequently procure the privilege, through "friends at
court," of following in his train, and thus gaining admittance to
strictly enclosed nunneries, and being present at touching little
ceremonies performed very simply by the Pope himself in the poor,
plain chapels of these voluntary prisoners of love. Sometimes he
says a few words of encouragement and advice; sometimes he gives
benediction while the untutored choir of nuns sing some simple hymn;
sometimes he assembles the community, and gives them his solemn
blessing. There are the "Celestines" (so-called from their blue veil
beneath the black one), whose convent is in a retired street not far
from St. John Lateran, and whose _enclosure_ does not necessitate a
grating, but compels them to wear their veils down while speaking
to strangers, and not to advance further than the threshold of the
inner house-door, while their visitor stands without the line, yet
face to face with them. There are the Dominicanesses, near the Piazza
Trajana, at "San Domenico e Sisto," whose profession is impressively
accompanied by the heart-stirring ceremony of prostration beneath
a funeral pall, while the choir sing the solemn dirge of the _De
Profundis_. When these nuns take the habit and first become novices,
they are asked, at a certain part of the service, whether they choose
the crown of thorns or the wreath of roses, both of which lie before
them on a table. Of course there is but one answer, but, the ceremony
over, the rose, or bridal wreath, replaces for the day the coronal
of thorns. There is a convent of a very severe order, called the
"_Sepolte-Vive_," or "buried alive," whose rule is almost inhumanly
severe, and has never received absolute confirmation from the Holy
See, but only toleration, or permission, for such as feel themselves
drawn to such appalling austerities. They dig their own graves,
and wear fetters on the wrist, and, when in fault, no matter how
slight, a placard on their backs indicating their peculiar failing.
When news is brought to the superioress of the death of a parent or
relation of any one of the sisters, the bereaved one is not told of
her loss, but it is announced that "one among us has lost a member
of her family;" and Masses are offered for the departed without
any further mention of him or her. Again, there is a Carmelite
convent in Rome, I forget where, in which a miraculous crucifix has
been preserved for about fifty years--a strange image, which seems
instinct with life and expression, seems to speak to and look at you,
fascinates the gaze, and stirs the least impressionable heart. It
is not much spoken of even in Rome, that city where marvels are no
longer marvels, and where miracles are more credible than business
negotiations elsewhere; but it is enough that in one of these Papal
October visits to convents, two persons of calm judgment, both
English, both converts, and one the sister of an eloquent and gifted
Anglican divine, saw it, and declared that there was something about
it far beyond the common run of even skilfully carved and elaborately
chiselled masterpieces.

To pass from convents to hospitals, the sight during the evenings
of Holy Week at the "Trinità de Pellegrini" is something not less
interesting than the oft-recounted glories of the Sistine Chapel and
the thrilling rubrics of the Pontifical High Mass at St. Peter's
shrine. Rome is still, in this century, a real centre of pilgrimage;
and what could be a greater proof of the truth of the faith she
teaches than this apparently incredible fact--this _anachronism_ in
the eyes of our enlightened progressists? Men and women, chiefly from
the rural and mountainous districts of Italy, but also from Hungary,
and Germany, and faithful Poland, come begging their arduous way, in
simple faith and fervent love, perfectly undisturbed by doubts they
have never heard discussed, by the "spirit of the age" they have
never dreamt of as being in antagonism with the spirit of the church,
by the childish and wilful gropings after religious reconstruction
which they, if they knew of them, would call madness, and pity as
such. They come with their strange tattered costumes, all incrusted
with dirt, and embroidered into perplexing patterns with accumulation
of unheeded dust, and knock at the door of this gigantic hospital,
where they find a real home and a ready welcome. Other men and women,
chiefly of the higher classes, and, like the pilgrims, of divers
nationalities, come to tend them and offer them literally the same
services Abraham offered to the voyager-angels when they stopped,
travel-stained and foot-sore, at the entrance of his tent. In an
upper hall are laid tables laden with abundant and wholesome food,
of which a portion is reserved by each wanderer for the morrow's
breakfast, and the disposition of which, from personal observation,
I know to be as follows: a small loaf of bread sliced in the middle,
and meat and sauce crammed as tight as possible between the two
halves thus making a substantial but somewhat ungainly sandwich. In
a large room on the lower floor are placed benches against the wall,
with a foot-board running along them, on which are rows of basins,
with the necessary adjuncts of soap and towels. The washing of the
pilgrims' feet is by no means a sinecure, or a graceful make-believe
at biblical courtesies. It is a very real and slightly unpalatable
business; but the grievance is far more the short time allowed to
each person than the washing itself. The unfortunate feet of the
weary pilgrims are more refreshed than thoroughly cleaned by one
layer of soap; and it is to be wished that the time allotted could
be sufficiently extended to allow the work to be well done, since
it is attempted at all. The self-denial of those who undertake this
most praiseworthy and mediæval charity must be enhanced by the fact
that many tourists come to see this done, as a part of their Holy
Week _programme_, and, being mostly curious and carping critics
of English or American origin, their comments are more sarcastic
than encouraging. Here are wildernesses of dormitories, into
which the pilgrims file in slow procession after supper, singing
litanies and hymns. Let any other country point to such a palace of
Christian charity, to such a freely supported and admirably managed
institution, and then it may have claim to talk of progressive
civilization! But instead of this, what do we see but poor-laws, that
treat God's poor as animals, and the state in which God himself chose
to be born, and live, and die, as a crime and a moral shame. "Till
when, O Lord, till when?"

On Christmas night, another beautiful scene takes place in the female
prison, on the "Piazza di Termini," opposite the baths of Aurelian,
between the railway station and the church of the Cistercians, "Santa
Maria degli Loyoli." Yet there is nothing to describe, no gorgeous
ritual, no impressive assemblage, no pageant to take the eye and
divide the attention. Four whitewashed walls, an orderly throng
of uniformly dressed women, a few hymns, in which the voices of
the nuns, in whose charge the prisoners are, lead and predominate;
a plain altar, an unpretending "Presepio," or representation of
the stable of Bethlehem, and that is all. Well! what is there to
say about this? No correspondent could fill a column with these
details; yet they fill the heart of God, and make the heart of his
sinless Mother glad, as she looks down on the repentant woman whose
welfare is so dear to her in whom there is found no spot nor stain
of guilt. And this is very different, no doubt, from the splendidly
illuminated altar in _San Luigi de Francesi_, where the lighted
tapers are pyramidally ranged in dazzling tiers of shining amber
brightness, and where the fragrance of incense struggles hard not to
be overpowered by the sweetness of the hot-house plants blooming in
clusters around the steps and communion rails. Very different, too,
from the artistic and elaborate "Presepio" at _Sant' Andrea della
Valle_, where a veritable stage seems miraculously poised over the
altar, and where all manner of wonderful details of Eastern scenery,
somewhat mixed with prevailing Western conceptions and incongruities
concerning the Orient, are displayed on a magnificent scale for the
edification of the peasantry flocking into Rome from all sides. Very
different, again, from the solemn ritual of "Santa Maria Maggiore"
(though _that_ has been for many years discontinued, on account of
the abuses of which it was the unhappy occasion), the ceremonies
that renewed most vividly the scene of the angels' announcement,
and the pastoral welcome, on the moon-brightened plains round the
stable of Bethlehem, the splendor of decoration gathered about the
precious relic of the rude crib, whose straw, still preserved in this
church, is now more glorious by far than conqueror's coat-of-mail or
emperor's robe of ermine. But what of this difference, after all?
Earth's costliness of display is earthly still, earth's poverty
and nakedness is almost divine, because, whenever earth became the
scene of any of God's choicest wonders, it was always in a state of
destitution, which he ordained beforehand as a mystical preparation.
God fashioned Adam out of common clay, and Eve from a bare rib; his
own birth was in a stable, cold and forlorn, his life in an obscure
artisan's shop, littered with common dust, filled with coarse tools;
his death was on a common gibbet, on a bare mountain. Common animals,
domestic drudges, and beasts of burden surrounded him at the dawn of
his being; common criminals, rough men, coarse-minded gazers, were
around him in his last hour. The only time he rode in any state, it
was upon an ass, not a fancy war-steed with trappings of oriental
magnificence, not even a stately mule, such as became later on a
recognized and legitimate bearer of great dignitaries. The first men
who welcomed him on earth were shepherds; the last who spoke to him
were fishermen. But it is hardly necessary to say more on a theme so
well known and so much canvassed; yet it is not unappropriate to the
frame of mind which this picture of the midnight Mass in the prison
induces and fosters. And just as it would be good for any Christian
country to be able to show a hospital as well managed as the
Pilgrim's Home we have glanced at, so would it be even better could
any one of the nations of Europe point to prisons where repentance
is taught by the rule of the Gospel and not by the regulations of
a board of magistrates, and where confinement for one species of
offence is not turned into a school of graduation for worse offences
still.

The reader will forgive this roundabout introduction to the two
beautiful reminiscences of which this paper is the subject, for these
are both among the class of events described at the beginning as less
famous, but more attractive because more peculiar.

One of them is of a private and purely personal nature, the other of
a public sort, but rarer than reminiscences of Rome usually are.

There is a village about twenty miles from Rome, and two beyond
Albano, the name of which is Genzano, and belongs, I believe, to
the Chigi family, as does Laricia with its wild woods of chestnuts.
It is an ordinary hamlet, with its church standing on a height
to which two side straggling streets lead up, and the front of
which is pretty well hidden by the block of irregular houses that
divide the road-ways. For many generations this village had been
famous for its Corpus Christi procession, and the peculiar way in
which the procession's track was more carpeted than strewn with
flowers. Strangers used to flock to see the floral festival, and
Hans Andersen, in his _Improvisatore_, once gave the most vivid
and picturesque account of it. Perhaps every one has not read
this description, and few in this country at least have seen the
procession. In 1848, the custom was discontinued, owing to the
unsettled state of the country, and the tendency of the Carbonari
to make disturbances at any popular gathering or demonstration,
especially of a religious kind. In 1864, things being somewhat more
stable under the protection of French troops and the promise of
non-intervention on the part of the King of Italy, the festival of
the _Infiorata_, as it is called, was again announced, and all Rome
hurried to see it.

It took place in the evening. No description can do it justice,
especially as its beauty was enhanced by that most hopelessly
indescribable of circumstances--the loveliness of a southern summer's
day. Albano looked from its puny heights over the wide plain that
stretches to Ostia and the sea, covered with dusky gray-green
olive-yards; the blue hills, where the chestnuts grow and overshadow
the ruddy wealth of wild mountain strawberries beneath, rose like
cupolas in the evening sky, that was alive with summer lightnings;
the bright red and blue costumes of the peasant women, with their
little tents of spotless linen squarely poised upon their heads, and
their massive chains of gold and coral vying with their wonderful
sword-shaped hair-pins for quaintness and for richness, stood out in
picturesque relief against the dark background of the common-looking
dwellings; through the bustle and clatter of an Italian crowd, there
could yet be discerned the hush and stillness so familiar to our
Northern hearts, so congenial to our idea of Sabbaths and church
festivals; the noise seemed a distant hum, the whole scene a vision;
and over it all, the spirit of faith that made it what it was, not a
mere idle show to awake idle people, but a living gathering of living
and believing souls, offering nature's purest gifts in their virgin
integrity to the God of love, to _Gesù Sacramentato_, as the Italians
so ingeniously and touchingly say.

Both streets leading up to the church were paved with flowers, in
thick layers, symmetrically portioned out with squares corresponding
to the width of the houses on either side of the road. Patterns of
great delicacy were produced by these flowers, scattered into petals
as they were, and no leaves nor stems carelessly appearing anywhere.
Here, on one large space, were pictured the arms of the Chigi family,
there, the arms of the bishop of the diocese, further still, those
of the Holy See. In the centre of one of the streets, the grand
compartment was taken up by a colored representation of an altar with
candles and a monstrance, and the white Host within. A little lower
down was a tiny fountain, more like a squirt than anything else,
concealed in a mound of soft flower-petals. Patterns of geometrical
figures, of Persian carpets, of fanciful monograms, filled up the
many squares, while all along the sides, and supported by stakes, ran
a low festoon of box-wreaths, guarding the flower-carpet from the
feet of the eager crowd.

From above, from the many balconies and terraces, and from the roofs
of the tall, old-fashioned houses, the people look down and gaze
upon this wonderful tapestry, more elaborate and incomparably more
beautiful than the choicest produce of the looms of Genoa, and Lyons,
and the _Gobelins_--more precious and more fair than the silken
hangings woven of old by the hands of queens and sovereign princesses.

And this is all for an hour! In a few moments, the procession and the
following multitude will have passed over the floral tapestry, and
every trace of its beauty will be gone. But why not? Its beauty is
consecrated, and, when it has ministered to the greater glory of God,
its mission will be over.

Every one knows the incident in the life of Sir Walter Raleigh,
when, walking across a muddy road with his imperious and capricious
sovereign, Elizabeth of England, the gallant courtier's velvet
cloak, costly though it was, was not deemed too rich for a woman's
footstool, and doubtless the graceful homage was considered as very
little beyond an absolute necessity of courtesy. And shall this
display of rarest loveliness and natural treasures, called the
"_Infiorata_," be thought of otherwise than as a cloak thrown beneath
the weary feet of the pilgrim Saviour?

Our Lord walks through many lands, and the way of men's hearts is
very rugged here, very treacherous there, very uneven everywhere.
Let him pause here for a moment, as he rests his feet on the carpet
or cloak spread for him, and let him find in a few faithful hearts
a path ready prepared for him, as fragrant and as beautiful as this
floral "via sacra."

The procession leaves the church by one of the two diverging roads,
and returns by the other. It is a regular Italian procession,
somewhat grotesque in our eyes, unaccustomed to some little
peculiarities, such as winged angels represented by children in
scanty robes of tinselled muslin, and golden paper kites flying
from their shoulders, but on the whole it is edifying in its very
artlessness. There are many monks, walking two-and-two, and bearing
lighted tapers; children in companies and sodalities with gaudy
banners and streamers, priests in black and white, and cross-bearers
and thurifers, and, lastly, the swaying canopy under which is borne
the Lord of nature. While each person in the procession winds his way
among the flower patterns, and carefully spares the perfection of the
design as much as possible, the priest, on the contrary, carries the
Blessed Sacrament right over in the centre of the broad path, and the
crowd pour after him in heaving masses, leaving the track behind them
strewn with remnants of box and olive borders and blended heaps of
crushed flower-petals.

And so the sacred pageant is over. The sky is getting cloudy, and
thunder-drops of almost tropic rain are falling noisily to the earth;
people hurry home, but long before Albano is reached the storm is
already furious, and bursts over the darkening plain. Many are
detained at the inns of the white village whose _gallerie_ of elm and
ilex are so famous round Rome.

By the bye, these _gallerie_ lead from Albano to the neighboring
village of Frascati, an archiepiscopal see, and once the retreat of
the Cardinal of York, the last of the Stuarts. He himself, with his
unfortunate brother, is buried in St. Peter's; but in the village
church of which he was titular archbishop is a tablet to his memory,
recounting his many virtues, and the love and veneration in which his
flock ever held him.

Frascati is the scene of the second reminiscence I have once before
spoken of; one more domestic and more intimate than the last, and
very interesting as being the record of an unusual favor shown to a
foreigner by the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX.

There are a great many villas around Frascati, and one of the
prettiest as well as most historical is the Villa Falconieri, the
whilom abode of Santa Juliana Falconieri, to whom a chapel is
dedicated in the house. The grounds are, as in most Italian villas,
very badly kept (according to Northern ideas), but in their wildness
more beautiful than the trimmest garden of Old or New England.
A winding, steep road, bordered with box, leads to the mansion,
whose wide marble chambers re-echo the few footsteps they ever
bear, and whose best preserved ornaments are some marble busts and
old frescoes. To the front stretches a lawn dotted with Spanish
chestnut-trees, and beyond lies an alley of hoary and gigantic
cypresses that seem the enchanted genii of perpetual silence. There
is a peculiar odor about cypress-trees which can never be forgotten
by one who has been much among these groves of living columns; and
it is a well-known fact that the charm inherent in a familiar odor
is one of the strongest that exists. Not only in this alley, a mile
long, leading up through a maze of thickets to the ruins of Tusculum,
but also in a weird quadrangle planted round a stone-coped pond, do
these trees stand in their stern and sad majesty. Here, again, is
silence, reigning undisputed; the grand path is grassy with weeds;
the little cones drop into it and are never swept away; the brown
branches of the trees fall upon it in autumn, and remain there till
they decay into the soil; the water is stagnant, and the artificial
rock-work in the centre of the pond is neglected and overgrown with
crops of worthless yet not unlovely weeds. A landscape gardener
would form and draw out a new map of these _mismanaged_ acres;
a painter would shout for joy at this picturesque frame for a
historical love-scene, and would transfer the whole to his canvas,
adding only, according to his fancy, the pale moon silvering the
mysterious trees, or the setting sun, in its amethyst radiance,
throwing golden arrows through the glorious openings of the cypress
grove.

This villa of Santa Juliana Falconieri was once let, now many, many
years ago, to an Englishman, a recent convert, and a well-known and
zealous defender of his newly adopted faith. He was not unfrequently
a guest at the neighboring monastery of _Camaldoli_, a beautiful
hermitage embosomed in the woods, and where the white-robed monks
follow a strict and ascetic rule, very different from the lives of
hypocritical holiness that Protestants and _liberators_ would make us
believe is the present type of monastic perfection. One day, when the
temporary owner of the Villa Falconieri was dining at the Camaldolese
convent, the Holy Father, whose summer residence is close by, at a
little village called Castel Gandolfo, overlooking the classic Lake
Nemi, came with his retinue to visit the monks. He also stayed to
dinner, which in Italy and among religious is in the middle of the
day, and, the visit over, he spontaneously proposed to his English
friend to make another halt at his house. A message was sent down in
haste to prepare the villa, and so few were the servants there that
it was not before the cavalcade of the Pope was at the head of the
cypress alley that the end nearest the house was swept and cleaned.
The wife and little daughter were ready to welcome the Holy Father,
as his host introduced him into the pretty, picturesque dwelling.
A throne had been temporarily arranged at the further end of the
drawing-room, and a square of gold-edged velvet placed at the feet.
The "Noble Guard," part of the Pontifical retinue, took their places
around the room, seemingly a living wall, and other ecclesiastical
attendants grouped themselves in various corners. This was an honor
seldom bestowed on any but Roman princes, and then very sparingly, so
that it was all the more a distinguished mark of personal friendship
on the part of the good and fatherly Pope toward his English child.
Not long before, those three, the father and mother and little
daughter, had knelt before the Pope, and the parents had resolved and
promised to embrace outwardly the religion they inwardly believed;
the child had unknowingly played with its father's sword, and
prattled, as unconscious little ones do, in the midst of these grave
events.

Now, the child was not forgotten either, and the Holy Father kept
it near his throne, and bestowed especial attention upon it, even
while he conversed with the steadfast and happy parents. By-and-by,
the Noble Guard were dismissed, and bivouacked outside the house,
under the chestnut-trees, till it was dark. Then lanterns were hung
on the branches and on the tall gates, and a regular illumination
took place. When the Pope left, torches were carried around him
and his _cortége_, all through the woods that cover the ground
between Frascati and Castel Gandolfo. A tablet was put up in the
vestibule or _atrium_ of the villa, with the permission of the owner
of the property, in commemoration of this signal honor conferred
upon a stranger. These details are only a part of the many-sided
recollections of this day, but, such as they are, they come from the
lips of an eye-witness, and we are not conscious that they are in any
degree exaggerated.

Nearly twelve years after this memorable visit, the villa was
revisited by some of the persons who had been its temporary occupants
during that occurrence, and it was found to be in exactly the same
state as before; the dark cypress alley and the quadrangle, the
chestnut-shaded lawn and deserted-looking house, showing no sign of
the lapse of time. The former owner, however--a Cardinal Falconieri,
I believe--was dead, and the property was disputed by two or three
noble families. The chapel of Santa Juliana stood open to the
terrace, accessible from the outside as well as from the narrow inner
passage connecting it with the house; and on one side of its tiny
walls was the picture of the saint's death-bed, representing the
miraculous communion by way of viaticum, when the blessed sacrament
sank into her breast because her sickness was of such a nature as to
prevent her from receiving it into her mouth. Below the picture is a
long explanation of this fact, and a sort of laudatory epitaph in the
saint's honor.

The villa Aldobrandini occupies one of the most prominent positions
in Frascati, and commands attention from its tiers of stone
fountains, raised amphitheatre-like one over the other up the face of
the hill, and arranged so as to let an artificial waterfall spring
down the giant staircase.

Another notable building of this village is the white-walled Capuchin
convent, a nest among the trees and rocks, where the little chapel is
railed off by heavy gates from the poor vestibule, and where lived
once a very good and eloquent monk, Padre Silvestro. He too, like the
old cardinal, died within the years that followed the visit of the
Pope to the Villa Falconieri, but his kindness to little children
and his well-known powers of language alike cause him to live for
ever in the heart and memory of those whose happiness it was to know
him.

He always seemed to the writer the very type of Manzoni's renowned
"Padre Cristofaro," one of the noblest creatures of that author's
world-famed romance, _I Promessi Sposi_.

And with this mention of him and his quiet convent--which is now,
perhaps, a desecrated stable or barrack--let us close this little
sketch of a well-remembered and beloved spot, endeared to us by many
happy hours spent among its hills and woods, and by the memory of one
of God's best and purest creatures, one worthy of more gratitude,
more love, and more appreciation than our poor heart was ever able
to render her. To her, once our guide on earth, now our guardian, we
trust, in heaven, do we dedicate these few mementoes of our happy
companionship in a land whose beauty she always taught us to look
upon as the chosen appanage of the Vicar of Christ, and the Jerusalem
of the new law.




SONNET.

ST. FRANCIS AND ST. DOMINIC.


      Francis and Dominic, the marvels twain
        Of those fair ages faith inspired and ruled,
        When Christendom, alike by darkness schooled
      And light, served God, and spurned the secular chain.
      Strong brother-saints of Italy and Spain,
        The nations, Christian once, whose love hath cooled,
        The sects pride-blind, the sophists sense-befooled,
      Your child-like, God-like lowliness disdain!
      But ye your task fulfilled! All love the one,
        Christ's lover, burning with seraphic fire;
        All light the other, from the cherub choir
      Missioned, a clouded world's re-risen sun;
      Warriors of God! for centuries three at bay
      Those crowned lusts ye kept that gore his church to-day.

                                             AUBREY DE VERE.

ROME--Convent of St. Buonaventura.




THE HOUSE OF YORKE.


CHAPTER XI.

POLEMICS AND THE WEATHER.

It is trite to say that error is most dangerous when mingled with
truth; but never was this saying more applicable than in the case of
the Native American or Know-Nothing party. "America for Americans"
was not all a cry of bigotry and exclusion: the hospitality and
freedom of the nation had been abused, and a reform was needed. But,
unfortunately, it was possible to make the question a religious one.
The fact that the greater part of the crime in cities is committed by
foreigners, and that the majority of foreigners in the country are
at least nominally Catholic, could easily, by a lame syllogism, be
turned against the church. But what matter how lame the syllogism,
when prejudice props it on the one side and malice on the other?

Beside this, the masses of any people crave an occasional popular
commotion to vary the monotony of a peaceful national existence,
and nothing else offered at the time. The advent of this party was,
therefore, _à propos_.

How it used its power, we all know. It was, indeed, less a party
than an army, for its measures were violent, invasive, and illegal.
Its street-preachers, from Gavazzi downward, its pulpit-preachers,
who countenanced their brethren of the mob by more decent but not
less malicious attacks, its floods of foul literature penetrating to
every nook and corner of the land, duping and inflaming the ignorant
while it filled the pockets of irresponsible writers, editors, and
publishers--the "_canaille de la littérature_," as Voltaire called
such--its mobs and riots, its churches destroyed and clergymen
maltreated, its committee of Massachusetts legislators, senators, and
volunteers invading and insulting a community of defenceless women,
all are matter of history. The spectacle was a strange and revolting
one, and it was one which the country is not likely to see repeated
with the same results; for it is incredible that American Catholics
would ever again submit to such a persecution. It is more probable
that, should we once more find our liberties threatened and our
sacred places desecrated, there will be

      "Thirty thousand Cornish men
      To see the reason why."

In this movement, the ambitious town of Seaton was not to be left
behind; but certain circumstances conspired to check for a while any
great demonstration. The utter peacefulness of Father Rasle, and
the undeniably good influence he exercised over his flock, gave no
pretext for overt attack, and the fact that he was prospering and had
built a church could only be cited as dangerous indications. Besides,
Edith Yorke was, quite unconsciously, a shield to the church in her
native town. Her uncle's family assumed steadily that no person
who hoped for any countenance from them would say or do anything
offensive to her. This assumption on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Yorke
would not have had so much effect, but their children were more
powerful. Carl was the idol and hero of the young ladies of the town,
and not for worlds would one of them have seen directed to her that
flashing gaze with which he regarded any person who even remotely
reflected on his "cousin Edith." It did not take much to freeze that
beautiful, laughing face of his when Edith was in question. Melicent
also had a fair, and Clara a large, share of the gallantry of the
town, and the former could disconcert by her haughtiness, the latter
scathe by her passion, any offender against the family dignity. Major
Cleaveland was also a powerful ally. Edith was to him an object of
romantic admiration. He insisted that she ought to have a title, and
used playfully to call her Milady and the Little Countess, and to say
that, though he did not like the Catholic religion for himself or his
family, he liked it for her.

"I naturally associate the thought of her," he said, "with incense,
and lighted altars, and dim, rich aisles." And he quoted:

      "Why, a stranger, when he sees her
      In the street even, smileth stilly,
      Just as you would at a lily.

      "And should any artist paint her,
      He would paint her, unaware,
      With a halo round her hair."

Evidently, Major Cleaveland would not countenance anything likely to
insult the dignity or hurt the feelings of this "radiant maiden";
and Major Cleaveland's countenance was of consequence in the town of
Seaton.

Edith and Edith's religion had yet another protector in Mr. Griffeth.
This gentleman was by far the most popular minister in town,
and drew to himself all the explosive elements there. His manner
of speaking was lively and theatrical, the matter amusing. Those
progressive spirits found it delightful to have a pastor who, when
he did condescend to draw from the Bible, took piquant texts, such
as, _Ephraim is as a cake that is half-baked_. It provoked a smile,
and that was what they wanted. Mr. George MacDonald had not then been
heard of; but Mr. Griffeth already amused his hearers by holding up
for their derision "old granny judgment."

"Do not believe," he said, "that God gives all the pain, and the
devil all the pleasure. Indeed, I do not insist on your believing
that there is any devil whatever."

All this was charming to his hearers, so charming that they did not
absolutely require him to abuse Catholicism. Once only a member of
his congregation gave him a hint on the subject, but the minister's
answer was ready:

"I do not like to say the same things which everybody else is saying.
If you wish to hear anti-Catholic sermons, go to Brothers Martin and
Conway: they will satisfy you. I do not suppose that my silence on
the subject will be interpreted as a leaning toward the Church of
Rome."

"No, sir!" the gentleman answered dryly. "It is more likely to be
looked on as a leaning toward the house of Yorke."

Mr. Griffeth colored, but did not deny the "soft impeachment." It
would have been useless to deny it, for his partiality to the family
was evident, though to which member of it his especial regard was
directed, was not so easy to say. Well for him that it was not, or he
would not, perhaps, have been forgiven.

So Edith stood, surrounded by a guard of devoted hearts, between the
church and harm.

The physical and mental growth of this girl was fair to see. It was
like the slow, sweet unfolding of a rose from the bud, with its
baby lip pushed through the green to the rich and gracious beauty
of the bursting flower. That morning look which belongs to the eyes
of ingenuous youth still shed its calm, clear lustre over hers; her
hair had darkened in tint, so as to be no longer a shadowed gold, but
a gilded shadow; and she shot up like a young palm-tree, slender,
but with the rounded, vigorous strength of an Atalanta. She had that
perfect health which makes mere existence a delight, and she was
perfectly happy, for all her wants were satisfied, and all her wishes
were winged with hope. Friends she took as a matter of course. She
did not think much about them, but loved them quietly, as people do
who never wanted for friends. It is need or the fear of losing which
develops intensity of affection.

What she did think of was: How does the wind blow and the sun shine?
What are the names of those worlds in the sky, and how do they move?
How does the seed sprout and grow, and what makes the flower unfold?
Where do the birds go when they disappear in winter, and how do they
know when to return? How does the snow-flake gather itself into a
star-shape, and what shapes and colors the rainbow?

Her interest took in also another subject kindred to these: What
distant people live on the earth? What do their eyes see? How do
they live? How do they speak? Her mother's native land having been
far away, made all far-away lands seem fair to her; and customs
and speech different from those she had known did not repel, but
attracted.

By some happy providence in her nature or her education, or in both,
the girl's curiosity and love of the marvellous and beautiful took
this direction, and therefore her delights did not wither like weeds
when childhood passed: they grew for ever.

But what was best in Edith Yorke's growth was that she began to
perceive the glories of the church of God, and, as her knowledge
touched here and there at remote points, to guess at the grandeur,
the symmetry, and the perfect finish of the whole structure. She had
been ashamed of her religion, even while she clung to it, because
all the professors of it whom she knew were poor and ignorant, and
because she had seen it mocked by a higher class. She soon learned
that all Catholics were not like those she saw, and that some of the
noblest of earth, persons excelling in rank, wealth, learning, and
virtue, had been devoted children of the church. It was a mean reason
for being better satisfied with it, but it was better than no reason,
and it led upward. What was it that these people found to love
and reverence? She looked to see, and, seeing, she also loved and
reverenced, not because the great did, not because any one else did,
but because what she saw was worthy of such homage. Once attaining
this elevation, it was easy for a nature like hers to be entirely and
enthusiastically on the side of God, and to find a beauty and delight
in the fact that had before repelled her, to rejoice that the poor
and the ignorant, as well as the rich and the learned, had a place
in the arms of this bountiful Mother, and that, while human science
built a laborious track on which to crawl toward the heart of God,
simple human love flew straight there, as the bird flies to its nest.

Father Rasle instructed her thoroughly, particularly in controversy.
She must be able not only to defend herself when attacked, but to
attack, if necessary. As yet, of either attack or defence she had
had no need to think. That there was strife in the world, she almost
forgot. The memory of all that had been miserable in her past life
became as a dream, or was only real enough to keep fresh her love
and gratitude toward her early friends, and to bar all intercourse
between her and the village people. She saw them only when they came
to her uncle's house.

Her life was simple--books, music, and drawing, a little gardening,
and a good deal of riding on horseback. Major Cleaveland had given
her a beautiful saddle-horse, and Carl was her teacher and constant
companion in these rides. Mrs. Yorke, gentle soul! would have fainted
with terror had she seen the reckless manner in which these two flew
over the ground when they were out of her sight.

"You have had no exercise till your cheeks grow red," Carl would
say; and at that challenge Edith would chirrup to her prancing
Thistledown, and they were off on the wings of the wind. Thus
cloistered and fostered, she grew up strong, sweet, and happy, and
with the glance of her clear eyes kept back yet a while many a shaft
that would have been aimed at the church.

One marksman, however, was not dazzled by her. Mr. Conway cried
aloud, sparing not. Denunciation was this man's forte, and he
improved the occasion. It was about this time that Miss Clara Yorke
commented on the astringent qualities of the gentleman's character.

"Why, mamma," Hester Cleaveland said, "he had even the impudence
to come to my house, and exhort me, and to say that we were all in
danger from the influence of Father Rasle and Edith. I got up at
that, and said that, since he had taken the liberty to speak to me in
such a manner of my own family, I should not scruple to excuse myself
from any further conversation with him then or in future. And I made
him one of my most splendid bows, and left him alone; didn't I, you
beautiful creature?"

This question was addressed to a lovely, gray-eyed infant that lay
in the speaker's lap, and was followed by a long and interesting
conversation between the two, the young mother furnishing both
questions and answers, and in that delightful intercourse quite
forgetting Mr. Conway and his impudence. What were all the crabbed
old ministers in the world in comparison to mamma's own baby? Nothing
at all! "Come, Melicent, and see how intelligent his expression is
when I speak to him. He looks right in my face."

"I do not see how he could well help it, if he looks anywhere, since
your face is within an inch of his nose," remarks Melicent dryly.

Hester had at this time been a year married, and was triumphantly,
we must own, a little selfishly happy. There was not in her nature a
particle of malice, but she lacked that sensitive and delicate regard
for the feelings of others less favored than herself, which makes
unselfish persons cautious not to display too much their own superior
advantages. As her father had predicted, Major Cleaveland was to her
the most wonderful man in the world, and as to Major Cleaveland's
youngest son, words could not express his perfections. Their house
was, in some occult way, finer than any other house whatever, their
furniture had a charm of its own, their horses had peculiar qualities
which rendered them more valuable than you would think, their very
bread and butter had an uncommon flavor which distinguished it from
the bread and butter of less fortunate mortals.

The Cleavelands remained in Seaton the first winter after this
baby's birth, greatly to the joy of Hester's family. The winters
passed rather heavily for them, and it was a pleasant break in their
daily life to see Hester's horses turn into the avenue, with a great
jingling of sleigh-bells, and Hester's pretty face smiling out from
her furs behind them. Even Clara, absorbed as she was in the glorious
work of putting the last finishing touches to her first novel--a
novel actually accepted by a publisher, and to be brought out in
the spring--even this inspired person would start up at that cheery
sound, and run down-stairs to chat with her sister, and embrace her
nephew, if he were of the party.

But there were times when no one could come to them, and they could
not go out, but were as close prisoners as though walls of stone
had been built up around them. One might as well have been in the
Bastile as in a solitary country-house in one of those old-fashioned,
down-east snow-storms. One could see them gather on winter days in
a steady purple bank about the horizon, waiting there with leaden
patience for a day or two, perhaps, till all their forces should
come up, or till the air should moderate enough for a fall. There
would be no visible clouds, but a gradual thickening of the air, the
blue losing its brilliancy under the gray film, a flake sidling down
now and then in so reluctant a manner that it seemed every moment
on the point of going up again. Another follows, and another, they
coquette with the earth, seem to talk the matter over in the air,
finally, with a good deal of hesitation, one after another settles,
and presently the storm comes on steadily, and what was a fairy
star of whiteness becomes a thin white veil, then an inch-deep of
swan's-down, then a pile that clogs the feet of men and beasts, and
the wheels or runners of carriages, then an alabaster prison.

It is possible to be in a state of desolation under such
circumstances, and it is possible not to be: that depends on the
people, and on the mood they are in. Some groan over the trial;
some, scarcely less agreeable, sit down and endure it with a most
depressing patience; some shut the world out, and invent expedients
to forget what sort of world it is; others, wider of mind and heart
and clearer of sight, take the storm as it comes, and see all the
enchantment of it. In that vast lily-flower that has curled down over
them, and shut them in for a time, they find a honey that sparkles
like wine. Lean out and catch a flake as it falls; it is a star, a
flower, a fairy dumb-bell, a cross, a globe, always a wonder. Think,
then, of the lavish millions of them!

One whom nature holds close to her heart has sung the snow-storm:

      "Every pine, and fir, and hemlock,
        Wore ermine too dear for an earl;
      And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
        Was ridged inch-deep with pearl."

One such snow in Seaton fell all day quietly, and all night, with a
rising wind, and the next morning they woke in chaos. There was no
up and down out of doors, but only a roundabout. There was a whirl,
and a whiteness that dimmed off into grayness; there were no fences
nor posts; a ghost of a pyramid stood where the barn had been; what
had been trees were white giants coming toward them, apparently. They
opened their windows to brush away the snow that piled up on the
sill, and were blinded and baffled; they opened their doors to go
out, and a solid Parian barrier was laid across the step, knee-high;
they tried to shovel a path, and an angry wind and a myriad of little
hands filled it in again. Patrick and Carl made a desperate effort to
reach the village, and, after struggling as far as the avenue gate,
were glad to get back to the house without being suffocated. At the
door they found Edith catching snow-flakes to look at the shapes of
them, and watching with wonder and delight certain thin, sharp drifts
that a breath would have shaken from their airy poise, but which the
wild wind never stirred even to a tremor.

"If one could only see the shapes of the wind!" she said. "Or is it,
Carl, that the shape of the snow is the shape of the wind?"

Clara shook the snow from her brother's coat, and slyly dropped a
snow-ball down his back; even Melicent forgot her dignity so far
as to sit down in a bank, which enthroned her very prettily. Carl
thereupon called her Mrs. Odin, and Melicent smiled involuntarily at
the idea of being Mrs. Anybody. The mother and father, standing side
by side, watched them smilingly from the window, and remembered how
they used to play in the snow when they were children, and felt young
again for a brief moment.

"But the spectres of rheumatism and sore-throat stand between me and
all that folderol now," Mr. Yorke says, with a half-sigh.

"Yes, dear; but it is pretty to look at," says the wife cheerfully.
"And we elders have the fire, which is more beautiful yet."

They pile wood on the fire. It blazes up, and reddens all the dusky
room, and presently Mrs. Yorke wraps a scarlet mantle about her, and
goes, with a little shiver, almost to the door, and calls out in the
sweetest little bird-call: "Come in, children, come in! You'll take
cold."

"Mother looks and sounds like an oriole in there," says Carl. "Come,
girls!"

They all come in with very red cheeks and bright eyes, Edith running
to show her aunt a large star-flake before it melts. Mrs. Yorke,
bending to examine it, breathes on it, and it changes instantly to a
spot of water on Edith's dark-blue sleeve.

The two young Pattens, who have developed into clever scapegraces,
are pushing each other into drifts at the back-door, and pretending
not to hear Betsey's stern calls to them to come to their work.
When she appears at the door with her hands all ready to administer
summary chastisement, they elude her with the skill of practised
gymnasts or of children used to dodging blows, run under her very
elbows into the kitchen, and are busily and gravely employed by
the time she has turned about and come back. Patrick sets his face
resolutely toward the barn, where are certain quadrupeds to be cared
for, and flounders as if he were himself a quadruped, and becomes a
lessening speck, only the head visible, and finally, when they begin
to think that he is lost, triumphantly pushes the barn-door open, and
is greeted by a neigh from the horse, a shake of the head from the
cow, and a welcoming cackle from the hens.

That evening they had music. Melicent played brilliantly, and Clara
sang them an elfish old song:

      "'Wha patters sae late at our gyle-window?'
        'Mither, it's the cauld sleet.'
      'Come in, come in,' quoth the canny gude-wife,
        'An' warm thae frozen feet.'"

When it came time for prayers, Mr. Yorke read that exquisite chapter
in Job wherein God speaks of the incomprehensible mysteries of power
and wisdom hidden in the things that he has made.

Carl, finding himself bored, leaned back in his chair, and clasped
his hands over the top of his head. The leaning back brought within
his range of vision the fold of a dark-blue gown, the toe of a
small shoe, and a pair of lovely folded hands. He turned his face a
little, and looked at Edith, who had drawn her chair near his, and
as he looked his face softened, and he unconsciously changed his
careless position to one more respectful. He saw her profile, with
the lustrous eyes steady as she listened, and so uplifted as to show
their full size. The firelight played over her quiet face, and made
shine a curve or two of the large braid of hair wound round her head.

When Mr. Yorke read: _Hast thou entered into the store-houses of
the snow, or hast thou beheld the treasures of the hail?_ etc., she
glanced at Carl, and smiled. She had known that he was looking at
her, and was pleased that he should. Carl had a particularly pleasant
way of looking at his cousin which she felt as a flower may feel the
sun. It was as though they were talking together without words, and
he knew her thoughts without the trouble of speech.

When the reading was over, Edith said good-night to each one, kissed
her aunt on both cheeks, and went up to her chamber. The last
good-night was to Carl, who opened the door for her.

"He has beautiful manners," she said to herself as she went
up-stairs. "He says so much without speaking a word. He seemed to say
good-night, but he did not speak. I think that, when we go to heaven,
we shall all talk in that silent way. How odd that Carl and I should
begin now!"

She wrapped a shawl about her, and stood before her crucifix, looking
at it, and recollecting herself before saying her prayers. "When I am
going to speak to Carl or to Dick, or to any one, I think of him. If
I were going to speak to a king, I should think of nothing else, and
my heart would beat quickly. I am going to speak to the One who makes
kings."

She bowed her head with a calm reverence. But that was not what she
wanted. Her heart craved emotion. "I am going to speak to the Son
of God. He was poor, he was despised and rejected. When I was the
poorest, I had my little attic to sleep in, but he had not where to
lay his head. O dear Lord! it was pitiful. I will never, never turn
you out in the cold!"

When Melicent softly entered her room, next to Edith's, and stopped
a moment, hesitating whether to speak to her cousin, she heard her
breathe out as she laid her head upon the pillow, "In the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ, I lie down to sleep!"

Melicent stole noiselessly away from the door. She could not address
any trivial word, even any word of common affection, to one who had
just lain down to sleep in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It made
sleep seem awful and sacred as well as sweet. It made guardian angels
seem possible, even necessary. "How beautiful the Catholic religion
is in some of its forms!" she thought, and, after a moment, knelt,
and said a short prayer that she also might be guarded during the
night, and that the Lord would not refuse to let her also rest in his
name. She felt a sense of safety in having her cousin near, and the
door of Edith's chamber seemed to her like the door of a shrine.

The next morning when they waked, the windows were all of a glitter
with sunshine, and wrought over by the artisans of frostland with
samples of every landscape under the sun--cliffs with climbing
spruce-trees, silvery-sanded deserts with palms, an infinite variety.
The sky was a dazzling clearness. The earth was like a stormy sea
that had suddenly been enchanted into a motionless and ineffable
whiteness; the wave curled over, with the spray all ready to slide
down its back; the hollows were arrested in their sinking, the
ripples frozen in their dimpling.

Then when evening came there was a grand display of northern lights,
that pitched their tents of shifting rose and gold, with flags
flying, and armies marching, and stained the snow with airy blood.

Carl stood in the cupola with Edith and Clara clinging to him, both
a little uneasy, and told them stories of Thor, Odin, the Bifrost
bridge, and Valhalla. What they saw was the Scandinavian gods
carousing, he said; or, no, it was a repetition of that fierce battle
of olden time, when, at night, spectators saw the dead arise from the
field, float up into the air, and fight their battle over again in
the sky, that wild legend that Kaulbach painted on canvas.

"Carl," Edith said hesitatingly, "I think that the truth is more
beautiful than any legend."

"But we do not know the truth about northern lights," he replied,
taking a scientific view of the matter.

She hesitated a moment. She was not used to speaking of what came
nearest to her heart. But Father Rasle had given her a charge:
"Whenever you have a chance to say anything beautiful about God, say
it. That is your duty."

"We know that God made them," she faltered.

"Oh! that spoils the poetry of it!" Carl exclaimed involuntarily.
"Pardon me! but to speak of God is to remind me of long,
sanctimonious faces and disagreeable ways, and of a frowning on
everything graceful and grand and beautiful."

"It isn't right!" she said eagerly, forgetting herself; "for it is
God who has made everything grand and beautiful and graceful. When
you see a fine picture, or a piece of statuary, or read a good book,
you think of the artist, and admire him. Reading a play, the other
day, you said, 'What a soul Shakespeare had!' and I heard you say
once that Michael Angelo was a god; and last night, when Melicent
played a sonata you liked, you exclaimed, 'That glorious Beethoven!'
Why not say, 'That great God!' when you see the northern lights?
Besides, God made Beethoven, and Michael Angelo, and Shakespeare,
and taught them everything they knew. I do really think, Carl, that
the truth is more beautiful than any legend. Why isn't it as fine to
say, '_The God of glory thundereth_,' as to talk about Jove throwing
thunderbolts? I don't see anything very admirable in Jove. And why
isn't it as sublime for the sun to hang and shine, and the world to
go whirling about it, because God told them to, as for Phœbus to
drive the chariot of the sun up the East?"

She turned her face, rosy with earnestness and northern lights, and
looked at him with her shining eyes.

"Why, Edith," he said, "you're going to be a poet!"

She shook her head, and hung it a little bashfully. "No, I am not.
But King David was a poet."

And so the matter dropped. But Edith had spoken her word for God, and
may be it had not been entirely lost.

Perhaps we may be allowed here to say a word in defence of the
weather as a subject of conversation. The assertion that Americans,
and especially New Englanders, commence all acquaintanceships and
all social conversations with an atmospheric exordium, has become
classical, and to mention that on any given occasion the weather was
the subject of conversation is to intend to be facetious. But let us
question the good sense of this mockery. Are not the countless phases
of the many-sided weather as noble, as beautiful, as profitable, and
as harmless topics of conversation as ninety-nine out of a hundred
things which people do talk about? Is a dull or a wicked speech, a
dull or a wicked book, a fashion, a horse, your neighbor's character,
a caucus, a candidate, even a song, or a bit of weather on canvas, a
finer topic?

Ah, the weather!--skies of infinite changes, inexhaustible palette in
which the painter's imagination dips its brush; calms, nature holding
her breath; winds, the nearest to spirit of any created thing;
clouds, the aerial chemists of light; showers, overflowing spray from
fountains suspended in air; rains, the asperges of the skies; fogs,
filmy veils which all the king's men cannot tear aside; droughts,
continents in a fever; cold, the horror of nature, at which the
small streams stiffen and die, the mountains whiten to ghosts, and
even iron shrinks; heat, nature's angel of the resurrection blowing
through the golden sunshine, and calling the flowers out of their
graves, and bringing the birds from afar--would that all the bad, the
uncharitable, the silly, the cold, the complaining talk that on this
earth vexes the ear of heaven could be changed to sweet and harmless
talk of the infinitely-varying weather, and of him who planned its
variety!

After this protest and aspiration, it can be said of the Yorkes,
without any intention of reflecting on their intelligence, that the
weather had a good deal to do with their entertainment, from the
spring round through the circle of flowers and snows, till beside the
melting drift they found the first May-flowers making their rosy act
of faith in the coming summer.


CHAPTER XII.

CARL SEES HIMSELF IN A GLASS DARKLY.

The summer we are thinking of was 1851, and in the June of it Edith
had her sixteenth birthday duly celebrated by the family, and Clara
published her first book, an event of still greater consequence to
them.

In the June of this year, also, the Hon. Mr. Blank came down to
delight and instruct the voters of Seaton. Mr. Yorke was highly
pleased by this announcement. He had known the gentleman in Boston,
and thought him eloquent. It would be pleasant to see and hear a man
of note once more. "Come to think of it, Amy," he said, "we have
been buried here four years, seeing nobody outside of the town. It
will be truly refreshing. We must have him here to dinner or tea,
and we must all go to hear the address. It is to be in a tent on the
fair-grounds."

Mr. Yorke was quite bright and interested. He had been living in
seclusion long enough to appreciate the value of a little excitement.
He called on Mr. Blank at his hotel, the evening of his arrival,
and had a very cordial and agreeable half-hour, talking chiefly of
personal matters, and old friends. Two or three other gentlemen
who were paying their respects to the senator withdrew after a few
minutes, to Mr. Yorke's satisfaction. They were persons whom he did
not at all like.

"I am worn out," Mr. Blank said, leaning back in his chair, and
poising his heels on the back of another chair. "I have made forty
speeches in thirty days. But it pays. The excitement is immense."

Mr. Yorke was rather ashamed to ask what particular issue created
this excitement and palaver. The truth was, he was a little behind
the times. His four years had been years of vegetation, and he
scarcely knew what his old friends were about. He had been so much
engaged in filling up the maw of his avenues, coaxing exotics to
bloom for the first time in his gardens, and reading novels--actually
reading novels--that he was politically in the position of a man
who had had a four years' sleep. He was mortified and astonished
to realize at this moment that he had been going over the Waverley
novels again, when he should have been reading the papers and keeping
the state of the nation in view.

His embarrassment was relieved by a loud shout that rose from a crowd
collected in front of the hotel. The gentleman for whom this applause
was intended took no notice of it, except by an impatient shake of
the head. He sipped a little from a tumbler at his elbow, and calmly
lighted a cigar.

The shouting ceased, and the Seaton band--not the cast-iron band this
time--broke out in their finest style.

"Confound them!" ejaculated the senator. "Do they think I want to
hear their noise? I am tired of Dodworth's and the Germanians; but
this! Why, it's all trombones."

The music ceased, and the shout went up again.

"They will have me out," groaned the hero of the hour. "I've a great
mind to be taken sick. Couldn't you go out and say I'm sick?"

"No, sir," Mr. Yorke said decisively, "I could not."

"Well, couldn't you go out and make a speech for me? You're about
my build. It's easy. I could say it in my sleep. Honored--free and
intelligent people--your beautiful town--glorious cause, etc. Fill it
in as you like."

Mr. Yorke laughed. "I'm about half your build, and my voice is as
much like yours as a crow's is like a nightingale's. Go along.
When you've embarked in this sort of thing, you must take the
consequences."

As another and still more imperative call came up, the honorable
gentleman rose with a yawn, and the two stepped out into the balcony.

"My dear friends," began the speaker in silvery-clear tones, "words
fail me to express the feelings which move my heart when I listen to
this generous welcome." (Applause.)

"Well for you that they do," parenthesized Mr. Yorke.

"Your approval honors you more than it does me," resumed the senator.
"For what am I but the mouthpiece by which you speak, as the
thunder-cloud speaks by the lightning? The mass of the people gather
the truth, and it is their fire which informs the leader, and incites
him to utter it forth. They are the--" (Immense applause.)

"The idiots!" exclaimed the orator. "They have broken into my best
paragraph where it can't be mended. I must wind up."

"The fame of your town has reached me," he went on. "I have heard of
it as a place where freedom is not only loved, but adored, where
oppression is not only hated, but trampled on; and to-day, when
I drove over the distant hills, and saw the white spires of your
churches rising out of the forests, they seemed to me like warning
fingers pointing heavenward, as though the genius of the place bade
me remember that the angelic hosts were witnessing if I and if you
were faithful to the sacred trust placed in our keeping." (Tempests
of applause).

"That always takes," remarked the senator to his companion. "Spires
are trumps."

"My friends, to-night I am but a voice to you, but to-morrow we shall
meet face to face. Let not a man be missing. Seaton expects every
voter to do his duty. Again I thank you for your kind welcome, and
wish you one and all good-night."

"What do they think a man is made of when they call him out to speak
in a fog thick enough to slice and butter?" grumbled the orator,
getting into his chamber again, and dropping the curtain between him
and a second burst of music from the band.

Mr. Yorke raised his eyebrows slightly, and pursed out his under-lip.
"What glorious things have you heard of Seaton, and where?" he
inquired. "I was not aware that it was famous."

The senator finished the contents of his tumbler, and wiped his
moustache carefully. "I have heard that it is an infernally rowdyish
little hole," he answered. "I didn't care about coming here, but it
was in my stumping programme."

Mr. Yorke took leave, and went homeward very soberly. He was
disappointed and depressed, and nature seemed to sympathize with
his mood. The road was muddy, and in the thick fog and darkness
he could scarcely see the path at the side of it. When he turned
into the private way that led to his own house, the trees crowded
about, dripping, uncomfortable, and threatening, as if they had
met to impeach the clerk of the weather, and concert measures for
the putting down of this Scotch mist that was presuming to befog a
free, enlightened New England forest. When he reached the gate, Mr.
Yorke leaned on it a moment. "Oh! for the laws of the Locrians!" he
exclaimed.

"Charles, is that you?" asked a soft voice near.

"Why, Amy!" returned the gentleman, starting.

"I was looking for you," Mrs. Yorke explained, taking her husband's
arm. "I hate to have you come up this road alone."

Her thin dress was damp, her hands cold, her heart fluttering. She
had been walking up and down the avenue for the last hour, listening
for her husband's step. How did she know what might happen to him?
The people were violent, and he was uncompromising and bold. Oh! why
had she consented to return to that place where her youth had been
blighted? No good had ever come to her there, nothing but sorrow.

"O woman, woman! how you do torment yourself!" Mr. Yorke ejaculated.
"You will have it that we are in danger. You will have it that we are
being hanged, drawn, and quartered, if we are ten minutes beyond the
time."

"Would you rather we should care nothing about you?" his wife asked
tremulously.

"No, dear," he answered; "for I know that your fears are in
proportion to your loving."

The next day Mr. Yorke and his daughters went to hear the address.
Edith remained at home with her aunt, who never went into a crowd.
The road, the tent, and all about it were full of people. The
enthusiasm was immense. When the speaker appeared, the audience stood
up, the men shouting, the women waving their handkerchiefs--what
for it would be hard to say. Probably they did not know themselves,
unless they meant to express thus their admiration for success. For
this man was the very embodiment of worldly success. Wealth and
honors had come to him, not unsought, but without toil, and with
little deserving. Success showed forth from his smooth, handsome face
with its bright eyes and ready smile, even from the plump white hand,
at whose wave thousands of voters said yea or nay. His expression
was one of pleasant excitement and self-complacency, such as a man
like him may naturally feel in such circumstances. He was a fluent
speaker, had a musical voice, and a graceful manner.

Mr. Yorke listened to his exordium with great and anxious interest,
and, as from generalities the orator gradually became more specific,
his face darkened. It was, in fact, nothing more than a Know-Nothing
tirade, with the usual appeal to the passions instead of the reason,
and the old hackneyed abuse of the clergy.

Mr. Yorke rose like a tiger. "Come, girls," he said quite audibly. "I
can't listen to any more of this trash."

His daughters followed him quietly; but, their seats being prominent,
they could not get out without exciting attention, and the first to
see them was the speaker. He faltered a little in his speech, and a
faint color rose to his face; but he recovered himself immediately,
and waved his hand to stop the hisses that were beginning to rise.
But he felt the defection. He knew well that he was a politician, not
a statesman, and he would rather have had Mr. Yorke's countenance
than that of any ten other men present.

Mr. Yorke did not dine with the senator that day as he had promised
to. "When I made the engagement, I did not know that you had become a
wire-puller," he wrote briefly, in making his excuse.

Mr. Blank's face paled slightly as he read the note, but he crushed
it carelessly the moment after. "Charles Yorke was always a hunker,"
he remarked.

"Carl, I want you to print a leader from me, this week," Mr. Yorke
said to his son that evening.

We have not said that Carl, having finished his law-studies, instead
of practising, had undertaken the editorship of the Seaton _Herald_.

"I am afraid, sir," the young man replied, "that, if you print your
leaders in the _Herald_, you will have to pay the expenses of the
paper, and insure the office against fire and mobs. At present the
circulation is very small, and I dare not say a word against the
party in power."

This paper was not, indeed, a very prosperous sheet; for the editor
could not lower himself to the majority of the people, and they could
not raise themselves to him. His politics were too little violent,
his tone too gentlemanly, his literary items and extracts too pure
and high in tone.

Major Cleaveland and Hester were taking tea at the homestead, and,
when after tea Edith went up-stairs to read a letter she had just
received from Dick Rowan, there was quite a warm discussion of the
events of the day.

"After all, Mr. Blank is a strong speaker," Major Cleaveland said.

"A strong speaker!" exclaimed his father-in-law. "He is rank, sir!"

The ladies interposed a little.

"I'm not a Know-Nothing," Hester's husband said; "but neither do I
condemn them. Their charges are not all false. The Catholic party
proclaim their theory, which is very fine, and say nothing about
the abuses which creep into their practice; their enemies denounce
the abuses, and give them no credit for their principles. I think
that the gist of the trouble is this: neither party will distinguish
between the church and the clergy. When the body of Catholics will
check their priests the minute they step out of their province or
abuse their power, and when non-Catholics learn not to condemn a
religion for the sins of individual professors, then we shall have
peace."

The ladies and Carl went out into the garden, and left the two
gentlemen to their discussion.

"I often wonder, Carl, that you express no opinion on these
subjects," his mother said. "You must have opinions. I almost wish,
sometimes, that you would argue."

"Which side do you wish me to prove?" he inquired listlessly. "I can
prove either."

She sighed. "How you do need rousing!"

He put his arm around her as they walked up and down the piazza. "My
opinion is, little mother," he said, "that opinions are a bore. Who
wants to be always listening to what other people think on subjects?
Not one thought in a milliard is worth putting into words. I am sick
of words, of gabble, of inanities."

"Yes, my son," she said gently. "But one expects a man to give his
opinion once for all on religious questions."

"It is not a religious question, mother: it is a question of
religions," the young man replied with a sort of impatience. "There
is no greater bore than that same question. Why does not each person
believe what suits him, and hold his tongue about it, and let every
other do the same?"

"But truth! but truth!" said the mother.

Carl shrugged his shoulders. "Everybody thinks he has it shut up in
his cranium."

"What! you renounce religion?" she exclaimed.

"Not at all," he said. "They are so many spiritual gymnasiums where
people exercise their souls. They are very pretty and amiable for
women, and for men who need them; but there are those who do not need
them."

"Carl, you break my heart!" his mother cried out, gazing through
tears into her son's face. The boyish look had gone out of it. There
were weariness and sadness in it, and hardness, too.

Carl was in a bitter mood that day, but he tried to soothe the pain
he had given. "I'll do anything," he said laughingly. "I'll turn
Catholic. I'll go to hear John Conway. I'll read the _Dairyman's
Daughter_. I'll teach a Sunday-school class."

Edith came smiling out through the door. "Such a nice letter from
Dick!" she said, giving it to her aunt. "And see, Carl, here is a
little handful of sand from the Sahara, and here is an orange-blossom
from Sorrento. It looks quite fresh."

Dick Rowan had that delightful way which so few letter-writing
travellers know of making their descriptions more vivid by sending
some illustrations of them. Writing from the south, he would say,
"While you are in the midst of snow, there is a rose-tree in bloom
outside my window. Here is one of the buds." He had emancipated
himself from the letter-writers, and succeeded perfectly in his own
way.

The next afternoon Mrs. Yorke sent for Mr. Griffeth, and saw him
alone. "What have you done to Carl?" she exclaimed. "Are you making
an infidel of him?"

The minister, confounded, tried to excuse Carl and defend himself.

The interview was not a pleasant one, and Mr. Griffeth was glad when
it was over. He went out into the sitting-room where Melicent and
Clara sat; but their constrained manners did not encourage him to
stay long. They suspected the subject of the conversation he had been
holding with their mother.

Edith sat on the piazza outside, studying. Her person was not in
sight as he looked from the window, but a flutter of drapery on
the breeze betrayed her presence. Mr. Griffeth merely bowed to the
sisters in passing, and went out on to the piazza. Edith sat in a low
chair with a book of German ballads on her knees. By her side were a
grammar and dictionary. She was translating, watching thought after
thought emerge from that imperfectly-known language, as stars emerge
from the mists of heaven.

She glanced at the minister with a smile that was less for him than
for the stanza she had just completed.

"Salve!" he exclaimed, bowing lowly.

"I am translating a song from the German," Edith said. "Is not
translating delightful? It is like digging for gold, and finding it.
I have just got a thought out whole."

The song was that beautiful one which has been rendered:

      "The fight is done: and, far away,
        The thundering noise of battle dies;
      While homeward, glad, I wend my way,
        To meet the sunlight of her eyes."

Edith was looking very lovely. The vines curtaining the end of the
piazza where she sat shut her into a green nook to which only the
finest sprinkle of sunshine could penetrate. The light, moving
shadows flecked her white gown, and all the floor of the piazza about
her,

      "Making a quiet image of disquiet,"

and a flickering in her hair. Carl, who was always dressing her out
in some fanciful way, had fastened a drooping bunch of white lilies
in her braids, and the petals, lying against her neck and cheek,
showed the difference between silver-white and rose-white. Her
beaming face made a light in the place.

Mr. Griffeth, stooping to see the poem, laid his hand on the book she
held, and she released it so suddenly that it had nearly fallen to
the floor.

"It is beautiful," he said, reading it aloud. "Can you not fancy
yourself that golden-haired lady, and that some warrior is coming
home to lay his honors at your feet and claim his reward?"

Edith looked away quickly, and let the air take the brightness of her
face. He gazed steadily at her, and wondered for whom the brightness
was, or if it were only a girl's vague romance.

"I like soldiers," she said after a moment, and, though quiet, there
seemed a slight stateliness in her manner. "My grandfather was a
soldier all his life, and was as used to a sword as I am to a fan.
Mamma said that one of his mottoes was, 'Never reckon the forces
of an enemy till after the victory.' It was written in one of her
letters to papa. If I were a man, I should wish to be a soldier."

"I also am a soldier; I fight the devil," the minister said, with a
slight, bitter laugh.

"Do you conquer him?" she asked simply, but with the faintest little
mocking smile.

Mr. Griffeth ignored the question. "You have golden hair, like the
lady of the song," he said hastily. "If I were a soldier, Edith, and
came home to you from battle, would you welcome me as that lady did
her lover?" He touched her hair with his hand as he spoke.

A bright crimson color swept over her face, and she stood up
instantly, drawing away from him, her eyes sparkling. Edith Yorke's
innocence was not of that kind which is divorced from dignity and
delicacy, and smiles at freedoms from everybody.

"Pardon me!" the minister stammered, and at the same moment, to
complete his discomfiture, perceived that the curtain to the window
directly behind them had been drawn aside, and that Mrs. Yorke stood
there, flushed and haughty, with a look in her eyes which he had
never seen there before.

His case was desperate, he knew, but he made an effort to recover. "I
forgot myself," he said; "but I assure you I meant no harm."

"What harm could you have meant, sir?" said the lady, drawing herself
up.

It was not an easy question to answer.

"You have probably made the mistake of supposing that the young
ladies in my family are as free in their manners as those in some
other families you may know. It is a mistake. I have taken care that
their education shall second and confirm what is always the impulse
of a refined nature: to regard such freedoms as offences when coming
from any one but the one chosen to receive all favors."

Mr. Griffeth might apologize, and the apology be civilly received,
but, when he walked away from that house, he felt that he would not
be welcomed in it again. And so the church in Seaton lost a friend
and found an enemy. The next Sunday the most bitter anti-Catholic
sermon of the season was preached from the Universalist pulpit.

A few weeks after came a peremptory letter from Miss Clinton. She
wanted Carl to come up to see her. What was he burying himself in
the country for? Was he raising turnips? Was he going to marry some
freckled dairy-maid? If he was, she did not wish to set eyes on him.
What did they mean by leaving her to die alone, without a relative
near her? It was unnatural! It was a shame! Let Carl come at once. If
he pleased her, she would provide for him.

Miss Clinton's promises were not very trustworthy in this respect,
for she had successively endowed and disinherited every one of her
relatives and friends. But that was no reason why her request should
be refused. She was a lonely old woman, and Carl must go to her.

He consented rather reluctantly, protesting that he would only stay a
week. But, when he got there, it was not so easy to tear himself away.

"A newspaper to edit?" cried the old lady. "What signifies a
newspaper in a little country town? Nobody ever reads it."

"Not when _I_ edit it?" says Carl with a laugh. He found the old lady
amusing.

"No, not even then, Master Vanity," she replies. "Stay here, Carl. It
is miserable to be left alone so. I sha'n't keep you very long. You
shall have any room you choose, and money enough to be respectable,
and you may smoke from morning to night. There is only one thing you
may not do. I won't have a dog in this house, for two reasons: he
might go mad, and he might worry my cat. Will you stay? Old people
live longer when they have young ones about them; and, besides, I'm
lonely. Bird torments me. She hints religion, and reads the Bible
when she thinks I don't see her. I know she is searching out texts
that she thinks will fit my case. I am getting old, Carl, and I
forget a little the arguments against all this superstition. They are
true, but I forget them; and sometimes in the night, or when I feel
nervous, the nonsensical religious stories I have heard come up and
frighten me, and I have nothing to oppose to them. Alice torments
me, too. She is so sure, she _looks_ so much, she goes about with
her religion just like a little child holding its mother's hand,
while I am sure of nothing, and have nothing to lean on but this
stick"--holding out a cane in her shaking hand.

"It must be comfortable to believe so," she went on, after two or
three gasping breaths. "I envy the fools who can. But I can't. My
head is too clear for that. And I want you here, Carl, to remind me
of the arguments that I forget, and to talk to me when I am nervous.
They tell me that you are a free-thinker, and I know that you are
clever. Stay, for God's sake! I suppose there may be a God."

Carl shrank from the wild appeal in that frightened old face; shrank
yet more from the horrible task assigned him. Unbelief, as he had
contemplated it, looked gallant, noble, and aspiring; but this
unbelief seemed like a glimpse into that perdition which he had
denied. In this old scoffer he felt as if contemplating a distorted
image of himself. It was as if he had been asked to commit a crime, a
sacrilege. There was such a crime as sacrilege, he saw.

But he could not refuse to stay.

"Perhaps it would be better for us both to look for arguments against
than for our theories," he said gravely.

Anything, so that he did not leave her, she insisted. Indeed, she
wanted his masculine strength more than anything else. Every one
about feared her, or was tenderly careful of her, but this young man
had already more than once good-naturedly scouted her notions. He was
one to be fearless and tell the truth, and she felt safe with him.
Besides, he was a man, and clever, and it would not hurt her pride
to be influenced by him. If her insensible and selfish heart felt no
longer the necessity of loving, it still felt the equally feminine
necessity of submission and sacrifice. Already in the bottom of her
heart was a faint hope that Carl might insist on having a dog in
the house, and that she might show her dawning fondness for him by
consenting--a greater concession than she had ever yet made in her
life.


CHAPTER XIII.

A RIVAL FOR EDITH.

Dick Rowan came home in the spring of '52 to begin a new life. In
the first place, he was to have a ship of his own. Mr. Williams had
a beautiful ship almost ready to launch, and he was to be the master
of it. He was to name it, too, that had been promised him; but what
name he meant to bestow was as yet a secret to all but himself. What
could it be but the _Edith Yorke_? He had other matters to settle,
too; he must become a Catholic. He had promised Edith that he would,
if, on reading, he found he could do so conscientiously. He had read
a good deal, more than he liked, indeed, and saw nothing to object
to. Besides, the fact that it was Edith's religion and the religion
of his father's boyhood was a strong argument in its favor. There
was one other affair to settle, the thought of which made the color
drop out of his cheeks, and his heart rise in excited throbs. He had
studied it over and over during this last voyage, and his mind was
made up. Edith was almost seventeen years old, and he meant to speak
to her. She must know now, if she ever would, whether she was willing
to be his wife.

Perhaps something said to him by Captain Cary had hastened his
decision. The captain had seen what his studies were, and been vexed
by them.

"You are going too far, Dick," he expostulated. "A man never should
change his religion for a girl's sake. She won't like you any the
better for it. Besides, Dick, I can't help saying it, you are making
a fool of yourself. She will marry Carl Yorke."

Dick stared, reddened, then grew pale. "I think not," he said
decidedly. "Don't say that again, captain."

The first thing to be attended to, then, was his religion. He must be
a Catholic when he met Edith. Besides, if religion gives strength, he
would feel better prepared to put his fortune to the test. He went,
therefore, to a clergyman immediately.

"I do not wish to read any more, sir," he said. "I do not like the
way in which learned men prove their arguments to be true. It is
too ingenious. It always seems to me that the other side could be
just as well proved, if one were clever enough. I am willing to
believe whatever is true. I cannot swear to any doctrine, except the
existence of a God and the divinity of Christ. Those two truths I
would stand by with my life. For the rest, I can only say that I
place my mind and heart passively in the hands of God, and ask him
to direct them. I can do no more, except to say that, if I do not
believe, neither do I disbelieve anything that has been proposed to
me. Perhaps my head isn't a very good one; I dare say it is not. I
certainly do not like subtleties. It seems to me that all necessary
truth may be known and believed by a very ordinary intellect with
very moderate study. What I want in religion is what I find in the
faces of some of the poor people whom I see here at Mass in the early
morning, and I don't believe they got that out of books, or got it
themselves in any way."

"You are right," the priest said. "What you saw in their faces was
faith, a pure gift of God. But you believe baptism to be necessary to
salvation?"

"I am inclined to think so, but not sure," was the reply. "If I were
sure, then I should already have faith, which is what I come to ask
for. If it is necessary, I wish for it."

The priest mused. This was not a very fervent penitent certainly; but
he was a sincere one, and in his fine, earnest face the father read a
latent fervor and power of strong conviction which would be all the
more precious when aroused.

Dick mistook the father's silence for hesitation, and his real
impatience broke out. "I am uneasy, sir," he said; "I wish to be one
thing or another."

The priest looked at him. "What do you mean?"

Dick paused a minute, resting his head on his hand, then raised his
bright, clear eyes.

"What I say to a priest goes no further?" he said interrogatively.

"Your confidence is safe with me."

"Edith said that I should tell you everything," Dick muttered,
half to himself, and for a moment his dreamy eyes seemed to
contemplate the picture his mind held of her saying so. A smile just
stirred his lips, and he went on. "I was born an outlaw, sir. The
conventionalities which keep many people straight had nothing to
do with me. Then I like adventure, and am hard to frighten. I have
been about, and seen all sorts of people believing all sorts of
things, and one sort was as good as another, as far as I could see.
The effect of this is, of course, to make one liberal; but such a
liberality, if a man has not a settled religious belief, unhinges the
principles. There have been times when I have thought that it wasn't
much matter what I did. I had half a mind to run away with Edith, and
turn privateer."

"Who is this Edith?"

"She is a little Catholic girl who was brought up with me, sir. I'm
going to ask her to marry me, and I think she will. She is the only
person in the world whom I depend on, or who has any influence over
me. I believe in her. She is as true as steel. And she believes in
me. I can't fail her, sir. That thought has kept me from harm so far."

"It is a poor reason for being a Catholic," the father said in a
dissatisfied tone. "It is a weak hold on virtue when your motive is
an affection like this."

The young man smiled with a sudden recollection.

"When we were at St. Michael's, last winter, there was a great
storm, and a vessel was wrecked close to the coast. We went down
to the shore to see, but nothing could be done. One man swam to or
was washed to a little rock not far from the shore. There he lay
clinging, with the waves breaking over him. He couldn't have held on
long, and we could not get to him any way. But Captain Cary brought
out a big bow and arrow of his that always reminded me of Ulysses',
for no one but the captain, I believe, could bend it, and, in a lull
of the wind, he shot a little cord over to the man, and the man drew
it out. Hope revived his strength, I suppose, and it seemed as if the
tempest waited for him. We tied a rope to the cord, and a larger rope
to that, and he drew it out, and tied it to the rock, and we saved
him."

The priest smiled. "Very true. We rise, we are saved sometimes by
degrees, and this little hold may be tied to a stronger. Go out into
the church, and make the prayer of the blind man, 'Lord, that I may
receive my sight.' To-morrow morning I will baptize you. I find you
sufficiently instructed."

That evening Dick made a request of the priest. "When men were to be
knighted, in olden times," he said, "they used to keep a vigil in the
church. Now, if by baptism I am to be made fit to enter heaven at
once, changed from a child of the devil to a child of God, why, it is
worth thinking about. It is a great thing to happen in a man's life,
and it happens but once. I would like to keep a vigil in the church.
I could think there better than anywhere else."

The priest hesitated. He hardly knew what to think of this mingled
coldness and fervor.

"Besides," the young man added, "you say that Christ is there
bodily. I would like to watch with him one night. It seems to me
wrong to leave him alone there now, when he is to do so much for me
to-morrow."

The priest consented. "But do not fancy that the Lord is alone,
though his earthly children forsake him," he said. "Doubtless the
place is crowded with angels and archangels."

Dick gazed steadfastly at the priest, and for a moment lost himself.

"Then, perhaps," he began hesitatingly, but broke off there. "No, if
he had preferred the company of angels, he would have remained in
heaven," he said. "It will be no intrusion. He comes here to be with
man."

Night came on, the church was locked, and all was dark save a small
golden flame that burned suspended in air. A watcher sat far back in
one of the seats, but after a while drew nearer, still sitting, not
kneeling. The whole place was full of silence and a sense of waiting.
In the shade, the stations hung unseen, but not unfelt. He had seen
them that day, and they spoke through the dark, "Here he fell! Here
he was struck! Here he was nailed to the cross!"

There was in this darkness and silence such a vacuum of the earthly,
that the heavenly seemed to break through the thin wall of sense and
flow around the soul.

When the priest came in at daybreak, he found his penitent prostrate
before the altar. After Mass was over, the baptism took place.

The father was struck by the countenance of his convert. It wore a
rapt and exalted expression, and he appeared to see nothing of what
was visibly before his eyes.

"God bless you!" he said to Dick on going out of the church. "Come to
see me. And for a while try to think of God entirely, and not of Miss
Edith Yorke."

"Sir," said Dick quietly, "I have thought of Edith Yorke but once
since I entered the church last night; and then it was as though the
Blessed Virgin put her aside and stood in her place."

TO BE CONTINUED.




A PAGE OF THE PAST AND A SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.


It is, perhaps, hardly to be believed, in this new country whose
mental geology grows and changes so quickly that one stratum of
thought and of circumstances is gone even before one has had time
to analyze it--it is, perhaps, hardly to be believed that the
shadow of the penal laws in the mother-country should still cloud
with lingering touches the reminiscences of a yet unfaded life.
Young people whose ideas and education belong to this century can
still remember one of those priests of old--one of those silent
champions--whom the English law made outcasts from their kind, and
fair game for their enemies.

Such a one was James Duckett, the pastor of a scattered flock that
covered the plain of Gresham, of historic memory, to the fort of
Edgehill, the last standpoint of the "lost cause" of the Stuarts.

The way in which his retreat was discovered, by a party of Catholics
from one of the large country-houses of Gloucestershire, was very
amusing as well as interesting.

They were returning from a picnic at a charming old Tudor
manor-house, one of the seats of the Marquis of Northampton, by name
Compton-Wyniatts, and where the family tradition asserts a portion
of the Royalist army to have lain hidden the eve of the terrible
battle of Edgehill. The house is full of holes and hiding-places,
sliding-panels, and trap-doors, great ghostly chambers, and funereal
beds, not to mention the vast cobwebbed garrets which the soldiers
are alleged to have occupied. It has a very deserted appearance, and,
indeed, its owner hardly ever lives there; but it is picturesque in
inverse ratio of its desolation. Just outside the front courtyard is
the lawn, shaded by chestnut-trees, and here the picnic took place.

Returning home, and passing through the hamlet of Brailes, two
miles from Compton-Wyniatts, the party observed some curious things
lying on the roadside hedges. Upon examination, they proved to be
ecclesiastical vestments, and evidently genuine Catholic property,
ritualism being as yet unknown in the country districts of England.
It turned out that they belonged to Mr. Duckett, and the whole party
repaired to Mr. Duckett's house. This was a cottage in a little
garden, with a hay-field between it and the old parish church,
Protestant now, but once the only home these costly vestments should
have known. There was the old man, the priest of the past, in the
homely peasant garb, now abandoned by the peasants themselves, in
coarse blue woollen stockings and a snuff-colored coat, and leather
garters at the knee. Huge-buckled shoes were on his feet, and a
thickly-folded neckcloth was wound stiffly round his throat. I saw
him myself, later on, when the existence of this living relic of the
penal days was better known among the county circle. The lower room
of his cottage, stone-flagged and bare, was a little school where
a few children were taught catechism and reading; the upper rooms
were reached by a steep wooden staircase _outside_ the house. Here
was a "large upper chamber, furnished," and this was the chapel. It
was as cold, and bare, and poor as it could well be; the roughest
workmanship was displayed in the altar, the rails, and the benches.
The raftered and thatched roof that was immediately above was broken
and untrustworthy, and the rain of the last thunder-shower had
discolored both it and the floor below. The small sacristy, off the
chapel, was in the same state of decay and dilapidation; hence the
damage done to the vestments that had been put out in the sun to dry.
Mr. Duckett had treasures here that many modern churches might, and
with reason, have envied. The vestments--especially a white cope and
a gold-embroidered chasuble--were very rich and beautiful, and such
as must have been, no doubt, a gift from some persecuted Catholic
family to the persecuted temple of God. But, better still, there was
a small leaden chalice, said to have been used by many of the martyrs
of Tyburn, by special permission given in consideration of the
difficulty of obtaining gold and silver vessels for sacred purposes,
and of the probable sacrilege and spoliation the known existence of
such vessels would provoke. And, among other things, there was also a
little bell, wide and round, like a low-crowned hat, and four little
clappers inside, making a sweet chime when the bell was shaken. This
was afterwards copied by the modern artificers of Birmingham, but
they could not transmit to their copy the mellow, time-harmonized
tone of the original.

In Mr. Duckett's sitting-room, a small, unpretending, and homely
nook, was the portrait of his revered and beloved patron, Bishop
Bishop, in Mr. Duckett's youth the only and supreme ecclesiastical
authority in England. The priest was an old man now, seventy-five or
thereabouts, but his heart was true yet to his friend and patron,
whose praises he was never tired of repeating. He told, also, how,
although parishes had been formed around him and churches had grown
up at his side, yet once his duties carried him on midnight rides and
to distances of forty or fifty miles, for a sick-call or a promised
and occasional Mass at some one of the many places that claimed his
care. Broadway, a village at the foot of the Coteswold Hills, just
at the edge of the fruitful plain or vale of Gresham, was one of
these stations, and now, as for many long years past, there stands
in its midst the Passionist Monastery of St. Saviour, the novitiate
house for the province of Great Britain. Two hundred Catholics and
a spacious church, model schools under government inspection, and
confraternities of many kinds, have turned the far-off hamlet, where
a few stray and hunted Catholics were hidden, into a very centre of
religion for twenty miles around. Wordnorton, the hunting-box of the
Duc d'Aumale, and Chipping-Campden, a thriving little mission on the
opposite ridge of the Coteswold, are both served from the monastery
at Broadway; and so great is the personal ascendency of the monks,
and so universal their popularity, that they need not fear the letter
of the law, and _do_ often contravene it by walking abroad in their
monastic habit.

Here is one of the changes that have occurred in the straggling field
of Mr. Duckett's early labors; and, while all this is happening
around him, the calm old man waits for his summons in the same homely
and unobtrusive dress he has sanctified by his daily work in the
vineyard of Christ.

It is said, and I believe with truth--at least, I _hope_ so--that
the monastic garb of all religious orders was originally modelled on
the coarse habiliments of the poorest and simplest of mankind--the
shepherds and husbandmen of the hard-working rural districts. If so,
it suggests a very beautiful and a very happy thought, and brings
before our eyes the many parables in which God's church is likened
to a field, a vineyard, an orchard, a garden. Tillers of the soil
and sowers of the grain, reapers of the harvest and fosterers of the
vine, are priests and deacons, bishops and monks; and all through
sacred history runs this touching parallel. Nowhere is religion
without her crown of nature's weaving: the blossoming rod and the
sceptre of Christ's jurisdiction are one.

And so, to return to our friend, the priest and pastor of a forgotten
and happily buried age of persecution, God's voice called _him_ in
time, and among the many who daily wait in the temple's outer court
he was chosen to blossom forth in a higher life, and to wear his robe
of glory in a nobler place than that where he had clothed himself
like the poor and the unnoticed, and only wore by stealth the sacred
garments of his priesthood.

He died in the year 1866, if I mistake not, and his place was filled
by a young man, newly ordained, as if to bear witness how suddenly
one state of things had died away and another had come in its stead,
but also, perchance, to point out to us--too secure in our present
safety--that as quickly as freedom had followed persecution, so we
should be ever ready to see persecution follow freedom.

And in these days, surely, we dare not think such a past as that of
English religious intolerance so far from us as that it should never
draw near us again, and renew itself in many shapes of tyranny and
horror. And this, not only in England, where religious persecution
may suddenly emerge from the apparent extreme of religious
indifference, and where it may be carried on, some day, on members of
all Christian communities, no longer in the name of a state church or
a general catechism, but in the name of rabid hatred to a Creator,
God, and senseless chafing against _any_ constituted authority--not
only, I say, may this happen in England, but in other lands, Eastern
and Western, old and new.

We see it to-day in red-handed France and Judas-tongued Italy; we
may see it elsewhere to-morrow. Persecution is an instinct of the
brute; what is not after its own kind, it has no desire to spare. The
prevailing systems of philosophy--if we may so degrade the word whose
first meaning is love of wisdom--tend to the apotheosis of the brute,
and the negation and indignant repudiation of anything in man above
the brute. When this task shall be completed, and man _educated_ into
the right usage of his newly-discovered nature, what are we to expect
but persecution in one form or another from the new lords of the
creation, the new monarchs of the system of materialistic supremacy?

There is a new and subtle alchemy running through the so-called moral
world, the Areopagus of modern thinkers. Of old, all things might be
resolved into component parts, of which _gold_ was infallibly one;
now, all men must be resolved into perishable parts, of which _each_
one is stamped with the brand of the brute.

It is a sad contrast, and no doubt it would be needless to define
which of the two is the more harmful theory. Let us pass now from
the life of the hidden pastor of an obscure village to an incident,
perhaps hardly better known, in the career of one of the apostles
of a great and glorious city, the same whose comeliness has been so
cruelly brought low, and whose desolation at this moment reminds
one too forcibly of the plaint of the prophet Jeremiah over doomed
Jerusalem.

The Père de Ravignan, whose name is a household word in France, and
whose influence over the young men of his day was something all but
miraculous, was summoned one night to attend a sick-call. A carriage
was in attendance; the two men who had come for him represented
the case as of the greatest urgency, but refused to take him with
them unless he suffered himself to be blindfolded. After briefly
hesitating, he complied with this strange request. The times were
dangerous, revolution was hovering like a storm over the state,
secret societies were in ever-watchful and almost infallibly secure
fermentation. He himself was a well-known man, a representative
man, one whose voice was ever raised uncompromisingly against
the foes of law and order--one whose life was every day exposed,
in consequence of his grand fearlessness of conscience, to the
machinations of hidden and treacherous enemies. A less suspicious man
might have feared a snare in this strange condition of blindfolding
a priest called to a death-bed, but the blood of the old race of
_gentilhommes_ that was fast disappearing, added to the courage of
the consecrated line of God's ministers that never disappears, made
the Jesuit strong in this hour of peril, and he forgot himself to
think only of the sinking soul to whose aid he was summoned. He took
the holy oils and the viaticum with him, and left the house in the
Rue de Sèvres in the carriage that was waiting at the door.

They drove off rapidly; his companions pulled down the blinds, and
effectually shut out any daylight that might straggle in. The motion
of the vehicle, however, and the many sudden jerks it gave, indicated
turnings and corners as being constantly doubled, and even suggested
the not unlikely idea that this was done on purpose, with the object
of confusing the priest's recollection. The two men preserved a dead
silence all the time. At last the carriage stopped; the door was
opened, the Père de Ravignan helped out, and conducted up a wide
staircase; doors were opened and shut, and then the bandage was taken
from his eyes, and he found himself in a large anteroom, handsomely
and massively furnished.

"In the end room of this suite of apartments, you will find the
person who requires your ministry," said one of his guides.

He passed room after room with the windows darkened, and rich
furniture giving a sumptuous air to the large and airy saloons, but
order reigned everywhere. He saw neither sign of confusion nor heard
any sound of sorrow, nothing to indicate the presence of death or
mortal sickness. He began to fear that in truth he had been snared by
secret enemies, and that it was his own death he had to expect as the
_dénouement_ of this solemn masquerade. The last door was reached;
a curtain hung across the entrance, and the chamber was darkened.
One lamp burned in the furthest recess. He looked in vain for signs
of sickness; there were none. The room was a drawing-room, and was
furnished much like the rest. But soon a form rose to meet him,
coming slowly from the luxurious lounge near the solitary lamp. It
was that of a young man, very handsome, and fashionably dressed. He
looked pale and anxious, and his hands trembled slightly as he moved.
Yet sick to death he certainly was not. Was this his executioner, or
some part of the ghastly pageant of his own coming doom? The priest
paused, and the young stranger said, in eager, hollow tones:

"_Mon père_, it is for _me_ that you are here. I am going to die. I
shall be dead within twenty-four hours, but I obtained this favor
that I might first make my peace with God."

"My son, what does this mean?" asked the priest. "You are not ill!"

"No; yet I shall not see to-morrow's sunset. I dare say no more. I
must make my confession."

An hour went by; the solemn mysteries that pass unseen and
undreamt-of by the careless world soothed and comforted the doomed
man. We know nothing further, nor can we ever know aught concerning
this dread interview on the very threshold of invisible death; but,
the priest's duty done, the young man craved his blessing and his
prayers, and took an agonizing farewell of the last human being who
was to show him mercy and promise him forgiveness.

Reluctantly, sorrowfully, the priest parted from the victim, and
wended his way through the splendid rooms, whose beauty now seemed so
baleful, as though it were but the refinement and gloss of cruelty,
the gay mask that hid the torture-chamber.

At the door of the anteroom, the same silent guides were watching
his return, and, again blindfolding him, led him out of the gates
that closed on such strange mysteries, and hid from view such
appalling possibilities of horror.

How many might there have been of these human holocausts, immolated
in silence, perchance without the gracious respite allowed this _one_
victim! How many might there have been, perhaps priests, beguiled by
a lure such as he had thought his own carrying-off to be, and never
allowed to go forth again, as _he_ was being providentially helped
to do! And what other crimes besides silent murder might have taken
place in that mysterious and seemingly demon-guarded house!

These and other thoughts not unlike them must have pressed painfully
on his overstrung mind, as with the same precautions, turnings,
doublings, and joltings the Père de Ravignan was driven back to the
house of his order, the sinister guides in whose hands his life had
helplessly and inevitably lain for several hours preserving yet that
impenetrable silence and seemingly respectful behavior, which in
themselves were enough to shake the courage of most men.

The house was all astir. Every one had been anxious for the safe
return of the superior from his mysterious and perilous errand; for
perilous they had intuitively felt it to be, and had indeed once
attempted at first to follow the carriage. This, however, had been
cleverly frustrated by the well-instructed driver.

Search was made next day by the secret police for any house answering
the only description the priest could imperfectly give; inquiries
were instituted concerning the disappearance of any person answering
the minute description given by the confessor of his young penitent;
but although the police swore that they knew every house, and could
put their finger upon every individual in Paris, yet not a single
trace could be discovered of anything unusual having taken place in
the city.

And there the mystery remained and was forgotten, and came to be
related only as a tale of dread and wonder, and was only known
to few. Even so the secret organization itself, for nothing but
vagueness surrounded its palpable though ever-invisible existence,
and some believed that the _parti prêtre_ invented stories of its
horrors, and others thought they exaggerated the importance of its
influence.

Then came '48, with its wild volcanic outburst all over Europe,
and under the name of freedom a modern _Vehmgericht_ convulsed
and tortured the civilized world. Those who had pooh-poohed its
existence or underrated its strength were the first to crouch before
its explosive power. Persecution began again, for we all know the
story of revolutions, and how the final court of appeal was always
death. What mattered it that the persecutors handled the axe, the
guillotine, or the rifle, instead of the scourges, the _fasces_,
the swords of the Roman lictors? Amphitheatres there were, and wild
beasts to tear the Christians in pieces, although the former were
called public squares, and streets, and gardens, and the wild beasts
were hideous human forms. One Archbishop of Paris in '48 was shot
down--perhaps by chance, but who can tell save only God?--on the
barricades, as he was trying to quiet the infuriate rabble; another
Archbishop of Paris followed him in '71, more foully murdered
in shear demoniac wantonness, because order and authority were
represented in his person, and because to be a child of God was a
burning reproach offered to the godless and soulless Commune.

Thus, two ages of persecution join hands within a short half-century,
and in one life, yet in its prime, two figures are prominently and
personally interwoven: the old peasant priest who almost dreaded to
have the sanctuary lamps lighted for fear of attracting unwelcome
notice, so imbued was he with the idea that before the law a Catholic
must need be a criminal; and the intrepid Jesuit, having secret
dangers in the fulfilment of his ministry, and knowing full well
that, before the self-styled law of lawless _liberty_, to be a priest
is to be nothing better than a dog.

Some talk lightly of these things that are passing as of mere
ebullitions that cannot fail to be quelled; but where is the power
to quell, the power to charm these serpents, to humanize these
savages? Gone from the kings of the earth, who have abjured the aid
of religion, who have expelled her from the schools and colleges,
and repudiated her offices in the most solemn and tender relations
of life. Gone from the philosophers of this century, who control the
thoughts of millions by pandering freely to their passions, and whose
first axiom is that everything that is _natural is right_. Gone from
the timid politicians, whose precarious object is, not the happy and
steady consolidation and progress of the state, but the maintenance
of themselves and their creatures in office, and the increase of
their hoarded fortunes. Gone, too, from the poets and artists, who
should clothe truth and religion in dignified and attractive forms,
but whose dearest aim is but to court popularity by encouraging vice.
Gone, in a word, from all whose mission it is to raise and guide the
people, simply because they find it more profitable to grovel with
and follow them.

And religion stands this day as our divine Lord stood centuries ago
in the Garden of Gethsemani, with lukewarm and timid disciples in
numbers, and with a Judas striving with honeyed words to betray her.
The sword she may not use, nor any earthly weapon; for, if God would
have it so, could he not send her twelve legions of angels? But no;
she stands as he stood, unarmed; and when she preached with the voice
of princes and commanded through the mouth of statesmen, no one
attacked her, even as the Jews did not apprehend Jesus when he taught
openly in the synagogue. But when worldly power was taken away, when
concordats were broken, when heresy rose up in her midst, the enemies
of the church fell upon her, and in their onslaught tore up kingdoms
by the root and trampled order in the dust. The crushed ones look
to her--"they shall look upon him they have pierced"--imploringly,
but _they_ had tied her hands, _they_ had crippled her in the days
of their triumph, and the deluge breaks over them and annihilates
them, while it tosses the church on its turbid waves, and at each
angry toss only lifts the Ark of the Covenant safer and higher toward
heaven.

We may be only at the beginning of a scathing trial: we may be almost
at its end. We have seen the blood of the martyrs flow once more; we
have seen '71 rival '93, and the Mazas Prison reflect the _Massacre
des Carmes_; elsewhere we see the spectre of blood not yet let loose,
but hiding impatiently behind the spirit of sacrilege and spoliation.
Perhaps this is the hour before the dawn; perhaps only the first
watch of the night. But let us not think that the nineteenth century
bears a charmed life, and that we dwellers in it have a prescriptive
right to a safe and easy-going existence. We must be _for_ the
church, _in_ her, _with_ her _of_ her; be hers in spirit and in
truth, "not merely pause and hesitate at the threshold, or linger
within the outer courts." This is the hour of conversions, for the
next may be the hour of martyrdom. And above all, it is the hour for
sound philosophy, that will lead us firmly by the hand into the haven
of faith, and show us that, to be a good citizen, one has need to be
a perfect Christian.

Truth is one; and just as water will rise to its own level, so all
particles of truth will lead to the fountain of truth. The church has
solved all problems, and fulfilled all yearnings, and realized all
ideals long ago; and while men are seeking what they severally want,
the church has offered it to thousands of their forefathers before
they themselves were ever born to seek it.




SANCTA DEI GENITRIX.


      Mother of God! My Queen is simply this.
        For this elected, the eternal Mind
      Conceived her in its infinite abyss--
        With the God-man co-type of human kind.
        And she, when came the wondrous hour assigned,
      Conceiving her Conceiver, girt him round,
        And held in her Immaculate womb confined
      That Essence whom the heavens cannot bound!
      Then brought him forth, her little one, her own;
        And fed her suckling at her maiden breast--
        The only pillow of his earthly rest,
      And still for evermore his dearest throne
      O Lady! what the worship faith allows?
      The Eternal calls thee Daughter, Mother, Spouse!




LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS.


On the nineteenth day of September, there will be gathered together
from five to eight thousand persons in the grand cathedral of Naples,
to witness again an occurrence which, though it has been witnessed
thousands of times already, never fails to fill the beholder with
astonishment and awe. Perhaps one-half of the crowd may be from the
city of Naples itself. A large portion comes from other parts of
Italy. Many are from Austria, Illyria, Hungary, Bavaria, and Prussia,
Russia, England, France, and Spain. Some are from the Western
hemisphere. And Moors, Egyptians, Arabs, and Turks, ever travelling
along the shores of the Mediterranean, are here, too, raising their
turbaned heads among these thousands in the cathedral, as intent and
as filled with emotion as any around them.

The greater part of that crowd believe that they are witnesses of a
deed done by the direct will and power of God--a miracle; and very
naturally their hearts are filled with awe and devotion. Others,
again, are in doubt what to believe on the point; but they have come
to see, and to see exactly for themselves what really does occur.
Others, again, are sure beforehand that it is all a trick. They will
spare no pains to detect the fraud.

What is it they are all assembled to see? The large cathedral in
which they stand fronts on a little square to the north. At the
southern extremity is placed the grand sanctuary and high altar, with
a large and rich basement chapel underneath. On either side of the
church above, there are, as is usual in Italian churches, small side
chapels and altars; but about the middle of the western side a large
archway gives admission to a very large chapel--to-day the centre
of attraction. We might call it a small church. The Neapolitans
name it the _Tesoro_. It is cruciform, and a well-proportioned dome
rises above the intersection of its nave and transept. Towards its
western extremity, and opposite the crowded archway or entrance
from the cathedral, stands its elevated high altar; six other
altars occupy the transept and sides. The main altar stands about
five feet forward, out from the solid stone wall of the building.
Behind that altar, in the massive masonry of the wall, is a double
closet, closed by strong metal doors, and secured by four locks. From
this closet, at nine A.M., is first taken out a metal life-sized
bust, held to contain what remains of the bones of the head of St.
Januarius, bishop and martyr, who was put to death in the year 305.
This bust is placed on the main altar, at the Gospel end. Next, an
old and tarnished silver case is brought out from the other side of
the same closet. All eyes scrutinize it. The front and the back of
it, or, rather, both faces of it, for they are alike, are of heavy
glass, securely fastened to the silver frame. Looking through these
plates of glass, the interior of the case is seen to contain two
antique Roman vials of glass, held securely in their places above
and below by rude masses of soldering, black with age. The vials are
of different patterns, both very common in the museums of Roman
antiquities. The smaller one is empty, save some patches of stain
or pellicle adhering to the interior of its sides. The other one,
which might hold a gill and a half, is seen to contain a dark-colored
solid substance, occupying about four-fifths of the space within the
vial. This substance is held to be a portion of the blood of the same
martyred saint, gathered by the Christians when he was decapitated,
and ever since carefully preserved. Ordinarily it is hard and solid,
as it well may be fifteen hundred and sixty-odd years after being
shed. The case, or _reliquary_, as it is properly called, is borne
to the main altar, and a priest holds it midway between the middle
of the altar and the bust, that is, about a foot from the latter.
Prayers are said; hymns, psalms, and litanies are recited by the
clergy kneeling near. Meanwhile, from time to time the priest moves
the reliquary from side to side, that he may see whether the expected
change of the substance within the vial has taken place or not; and
he presents it to the bystanders crowded around him on the steps
of the altar, that each one in succession may reverently kiss it
and closely scrutinize its condition. At length, after a greater or
smaller lapse of time, perhaps in a few minutes, perhaps only after
several hours, perhaps after many hours, the solid mass within the
vial becomes liquid--perhaps instantaneously, perhaps rapidly, at
times more slowly and gradually, several hours elapsing before the
change becomes complete. Sometimes only a portion of the mass becomes
liquid, the remaining portion floating as a still hard lump in the
liquid portion. This change is what is known as _the liquefaction of
the blood of St. Januarius_, and is what these thousands have crowded
the _Tesoro_ chapel and the cathedral to witness.

[Illustration: RELIQUARY CONTAINING THE VIALS OF THE BLOOD OF ST.
JANUARIUS AT NAPLES.

SCALE--_Nearly one-half natural size_.

A, A, Dark and rough masses of soldering holding the vials in place.
B, B, Stains or pellicles of the blood on the interior of the smaller
vial.]

It has occurred repeatedly each year for centuries back. It occurs in
public under the eyes of thousands. Accounts of it were written by
learned men and by travellers before the invention of printing. In
these latter centuries, accounts of it have been published in Latin,
in Italian, in Polish, in English, French, German, and Spanish--we
presume, in every language of Europe. Some are written by devout
believers in the miracle; some by candid but perplexed witnesses, who
examined for themselves and are afraid to come to a conclusion; while
others that we have seen are filled with such mistakes, both as to
persons and events and to established regulations, that we felt the
writers had themselves seen little or nothing. They had merely got a
hint from one and a suggestion from another, and had filled out the
remainder from the storehouse of their own imagination.

We are privileged to insert a full account, written by an American
eye-witness in 1864. We are unwilling to abbreviate it too much,
although the reader will find in it thoughts we have already
expressed or may hereafter have to dwell on:

    I had for years determined that, if ever I had a
    chance, I would go to Naples to see myself the
    celebrated miracle. This year gave me the desired
    opportunity, and I would not neglect it. Leaving
    Rome by railway, on September 17, I reached Naples
    that evening, and early the next morning went to the
    cathedral to introduce myself, to say Mass, and to
    take a preparatory look. The cathedral is an immense
    semi-Gothic building, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin,
    to St. Januarius, and to other patron saints of the
    city. St. Januarius, a native of Naples, was Bishop
    of Benevento (a city some thirty miles, inland),
    and was apprehended in the days of persecution
    under Diocletian, held in prison, exposed to the
    wild beasts without harm, and finally beheaded near
    Puzzuoli, about five miles from Naples, in the year
    305. His head and body were taken by the Christians,
    and transported--probably by night, certainly in
    secrecy--across the bay to the southern shore, and were
    entombed, between Mount Vesuvius and the sea, on the
    farm of a Christian called Marcian. It was the custom
    of the Christians to gather, as far as they possibly
    could, the blood shed by their martyrs, and, placing
    a portion of it in glass vials, to deposit such vials
    in the tombs. In the catacombs at Rome such vials in
    a niche are the surest sign that a martyr was there
    deposited. You can still see some of them, or fragments
    of them, in the opened vaults or niches of the
    catacombs. The vials within have a thin, dark-reddish
    crust, showing still where the blood reached in the
    glass. A few years ago, a chemical analysis of a
    portion of such crust or pellicle, made by direction
    of his Holiness, fully confirmed this historical and
    traditional statement of its origin. Such vials are
    also to be seen in multitudes in the Vatican and
    other Christian museums, and in the churches to which
    the remains of the martyrs have been transferred. As
    St. Januarius was a prominent Christian, and as his
    martyrdom attracted the earnest attention of all, we
    may and should naturally suppose that his case was no
    exception, and that a portion of the blood was gathered
    in his case, and, as usual, that the vials containing
    it were deposited with the body in the tomb.

    In the year 385, peace having been fully restored,
    and Christian churches built, and things quieted, the
    remains of St. Januarius were solemnly transferred from
    their original resting-place to Naples, and were placed
    in a church or chapel dedicated to him, and situated
    just outside the city walls. _San Gennaro extra muros_
    still stands, though, of course, the first building
    has been replaced by a second, a third, I believe by a
    fourth church. Here, henceforth, near their martyr and
    patron saint, the Neapolitan Christians wished to be
    buried. And when an oath was to be taken with the most
    binding force and obligation, it was administered and
    taken before the altar where lay enshrined the remains
    of this great Neapolitan saint. In course of time--it
    is not precisely known when, or by what archbishop--the
    head of St. Januarius and the _ampullæ_ or vials
    containing his blood were transferred into the city,
    and placed in some church--probably in the cathedral,
    where we know that, eight hundred years ago, they were
    carefully and reverently preserved in the cathedral,
    _Tesoro_ or treasury, as they called the strong,
    vaulted chamber of stone in which the relics of the
    saints were safely kept. The body of the saint was left
    in the church _extra muros_. It was afterwards taken
    to Benevento, thence to Monte Vergine, and in 1497 was
    transferred to Naples, and now lies under the principal
    altar of the subterranean crypt or basement chapel,
    beneath the sanctuary of the cathedral.

    The cathedral itself is, as I said, a large semi-Gothic
    building, over three hundred feet long and one hundred
    and twenty wide, lofty, well-proportioned, and filled
    with columns, frescoes, marbles, statuary, paintings,
    and gilding, very bright and very clean. It fronts on
    a small square to the north. The sanctuary is at the
    southern end. In the west side of the building is a
    large, open archway, about thirty feet broad and forty
    feet high, with a lofty open-work railing of bronzed
    metal, and of very artistic design. A folding-door
    in this railing, of the same material, opens twelve
    feet wide to usher you into another good-sized church
    or chapel, called the new _Tesoro_ or chapel of St.
    Januarius, commenced in 1608, by the city, in special
    honor of the saint, and in fulfilment of a vow, and
    consecrated in 1646. It is nearly in the form of a
    Greek cross, over a hundred feet from east to west, and
    about eighty from north to south. The arms are about
    forty feet wide, and at their intersection a cupola
    rises to over a hundred feet above the level of the
    floor. It is said this chapel cost half a million of
    dollars. If so, the city fathers got the full worth
    of their money in rich marbles, in mosaics, frescoes,
    bronze and marble statues, and in every sort of finest
    decorations. There is a complete service for this
    chapel, entirely distinct from and independent of that
    of the cathedral proper--a dean, twelve chaplains,
    other minor assistants as needed, and a thoroughly
    supplied sacristy. In this _Tesoro_ chapel are no less
    than seven altars; the main one, to the west, opposite
    the entrance from the church, another grand one, and
    two subsidiary ones on either side of the chapel. There
    is also a fine organ. The main altar stands about
    five feet forward from the rear wall of the building,
    leaving thus a commodious passage-way between them.
    In the massive stone wall itself, to the rear of the
    main altar, are two armories, adjoining each other. In
    one of them, that to the south, the relic of the head
    of St. Januarius is kept; in the other, to the north,
    are preserved the vials containing his blood. These
    armories, which I might call a double armory, are in
    the solid masonry, and are closed by strong gilt metal
    doors, about thirty inches broad and fifty inches high,
    each secured by an upper and a lower lock.

    So much I saw at this visit in the cathedral and in the
    chapel. The afternoon I devoted to a visit to Puzzuoli,
    and the scene of the martyrdom of St. Januarius and
    his six companions. On the way, we stopped to look at
    and enter the reputed tomb of Virgil, and we passed
    through the grotto of Posilippo. As the carriage rolled
    on over the smooth macadamized road, the Bay of Naples
    stretched away on our left in all its beauty, smiling
    and rippling in the September breeze, just as it did
    on the day they were beheaded. Before us was Puzzuoli,
    once the beautiful summer resort and watering-place for
    the richest nobles of ancient Rome, often graced by
    the presence of the emperor himself, and still a place
    of pretension. On our right, hills and vineyards and
    olive groves stood now as they stood then. The palaces
    and houses which the saint looked on are all gone; but
    their solid stone foundation walls have not perished,
    and other houses of more modern aspect rise on them.
    The mineral springs at the foot of the hills are still
    the same, and in the same repute; and hundreds are
    still going to them, or meet us returning after their
    baths. Here and there, alongside our smooth modern
    road, we see patches of the old Roman pavement, large,
    irregularly-shaped slabs of hard stone, lying now much
    less evenly than they did when senators, and consuls,
    and prefects, and Roman nobles loved to walk along this
    road, to enjoy the beautiful scene, and to drink in the
    healthful evening breezes that came to them over the
    Mediterranean.

    We reached Puzzuoli, and its narrow, crooked streets
    soon led us to the summit of a knoll or spur of the
    hills, now a little back of the modern city. Here the
    ancients had placed their amphitheatre. Its remains
    are still well preserved. The galleries for the
    dignitaries, the seats for the spectators--it could
    hold 15,000 at least--the arena, where the gladiators
    fought and fell, and where wild beasts tore each other
    or destroyed their human victims, are all still to
    be easily recognized. We entered a cellar or masonry
    chamber under the lofty seats. Here the victims were
    kept until the hour came for thrusting them forth into
    the arena in the centre. It is now a chapel, with
    a single plain altar, at which Mass is celebrated
    from time to time. A votive lamp hangs down from the
    arched masonry above The walls are plain and void
    of ornament. The place needs little decoration. Who
    can kneel there, and not feel his heart swell as he
    remembers St. Januarius and his companions kneeling and
    praying, and awaiting their summons? It came, and they
    were led forth. We went, too, to the arena. Here they
    stood, sustained by the constancy of faith. There is
    the seat aloft of the prefect and his attendants and
    officers, who condemned these Christians to death by
    the wild beasts, and have come to look on the bloody
    drama. There, all around, rising backwards, row above
    row, are the seats, filled then by thousands hoarsely
    screaming, "_The Christians to the lions!_" To their
    voices answered the angry growls and roars of lions and
    panthers, shut in their dens beneath--those recesses in
    the masonry below the lowest, the front rank of seats.
    For one or two days past the beasts have been deprived
    of their food, that they might be more furious and
    eager for the tragedy. Excited by the clamor, maddened
    by hunger, frenzied, too, perhaps by the sight of the
    victims, whom they could see through the bars of their
    doors--for perhaps they had already had experience of
    such feasts--the beasts walked impatiently from end to
    end of their small prisons, glared and growled through
    the bars, or impatiently strove to tear them down. The
    prefect gives the signal: the multitude is hushed in
    silent expectation. The servitors hurry forward to the
    edge of the seats above, and with cords and pulleys
    are lifting upwards the heavy doors in their grooves.
    The iron grates against the stone as it mounts. Soon
    out from below into the arena leap the ravenous wild
    beasts. They rush on, each one intent on seizing a
    victim. They crouch, as is their nature, for a final
    spring, fastening their glaring eyes on the martyrs;
    but they spring not. The eye loses its glare; the
    stiffened mane and bristling hair become smooth, and,
    with moans almost of affection, they draw themselves
    gently over the sand up to the martyrs, and fawn on
    them and lick their feet. There will be no bloody
    tragedy here to-day. God vouchsafes to the prefect
    Timotheus and to these multitudes another proof of the
    saintly character and heavenly authority of these men
    whom they would slay. Some, we may hope, were awed,
    and believed, and returned to their homes with hearts
    yielding to the grace of God; but not so the prefect,
    nor the majority of that crowd. "Sorcery! Witchcraft!
    Chaldean superstition!" they cried. "Away with the
    dangerous magicians! If they can do this, what can they
    not do? Who is safe? Slay them at once!" The prefect
    ordered them to be led out to the top of a neighboring
    hill, and to be beheaded on its summit in the sight of
    all and as a warning to all. We followed the steep and
    narrow old Roman road up which they must have walked.
    The rains have not yet washed away all of the old
    Roman pavement. Vines and olive-trees and flowers of
    richest hues shade it and beautify it now, and were not
    wanting to it in those days of imperial luxury. To our
    martyrs it was the road to heaven. No earthly beauty
    could cheer them as they were cheered by Christian
    faith and the firm hopes of quickly reaching a blessed
    immortality. We reached the spot of execution, the
    level top of a knoll, overlooking some part of the
    city, the beautiful bay, Puzzuoli, and much of the
    neighboring country. A little church stands here now,
    served by a small community of Capuchins, who hold
    the faith of the martyrs, and try to imitate their
    virtues; who seek first the kingdom of heaven and its
    righteousness, and hope that, like the martyrs they
    honor, they may pass from this consecrated spot to the
    abode of bliss. Here the saint and his six companions
    were beheaded. The Capuchins showed us in the church
    a stone, now inserted in the wall and carefully
    preserved, said to have been stained by his blood, and
    still to show the stains. They said, too, that, when
    the blood of St. Januarius liquefies in Naples, these
    stains grow moist and assume a brighter reddish color.
    This I had no opportunity of verifying. Here, too, we
    might almost guess the route down the precipitous sides
    of the hill to the waters of the bay, almost under our
    feet, by which that night the Christians bore the body
    of the saint to their boat. Across the bay, five or
    six miles off, we could see the houses of Torre dell'
    Annunziata, near where they landed with it. A little
    back lay the farm of the Christian where they entombed
    it. A Benedictine monastery from the sixth century
    marked the spot....

    As you may well suppose, night overtook us before we
    got back to Naples. The next morning, I went to the
    cathedral again. It was the 19th of September, the
    festival proper of the saint--the day of his martyrdom
    and entrance into heaven. The exposition of his
    relics, during which the liquefaction usually occurs,
    commences at nine A.M. I was at the door of the chapel
    at half-past eight. I found the chapel already crammed
    and jammed. Still, way was made for me somehow. I went
    to the sacristy, and was then conducted back to the
    chapel, and into the space behind the main altar, in
    front of the armories, to await the hour appointed. Of
    course, the crowd could not yet enter the sanctuary of
    the main altar, much less pass behind the altar. Only
    five or six privileged persons were there. Mass was
    being celebrated at the altar itself. That over, we sat
    and waited, and I asked questions on the all-absorbing
    subject.

    Since the building and opening of this new _Tesoro_
    chapel--that is, since A.D. 1646--the relics are in
    the keeping of the Archbishop of Naples and the city
    authorities conjointly. Everything is regulated by
    the long and minute agreement then entered into by
    all parties. I said each door of the armories has two
    locks. The archbishop keeps the key of one, the city
    authorities the key of the other. The armories cannot
    be approached except through the open chapel, and
    cannot be opened, save by violence, unless both parties
    are present with their keys.

    I was patiently waiting for nine o'clock to strike. Our
    number was increasing. At last there joined us behind
    the altar a tall, thin, gentlemanly man, all in black,
    about forty-five years of age. He was introduced to me
    as Count C----, the delegate to-day on the part of the
    city. He bore a large red velvet purse or bag, with
    gold cords and braiding, very rich in its workmanship.
    Opening its mouth, he drew forth two good-sized,
    long-handled antique keys with complicated wards. They
    were connected by a steel chain, strong and light,
    about fifteen inches in length. The cardinal, Riario
    Sforza, is absent in Rome, driven into exile by Victor
    Emmanuel's government; but before leaving he gave his
    keys in charge to one of the chief ecclesiastics of
    the city in his stead. Accordingly, a canon of the
    cathedral soon appeared, bearing another red velvet
    bag, something like the first, but not so rich, and,
    moreover, somewhat faded. He, too, took out of his bag
    two good-sized, long-handled keys, equally antique
    in their look and complicated in their wards, and
    similarly connected by a steel chain. Count C----
    inserted one of his keys in the lower lock of the
    armory to the south, and turned it. We heard the bolt
    shoot back. The pious-looking canon was short, and
    the upper lock was rather high, so they placed some
    portable steps in position. He ascended them, and
    inserted one of his keys in the upper lock. That bolt
    shot back, too; and he swung the heavy metal door open.
    We looked into the interior of the armory, about two
    feet wide, three and a-half or four feet high, and
    sixteen or twenty inches deep, in the masonry of the
    wall. It was lined with slabs of white marble, and a
    scarlet silk curtain hung down towards the front. A
    thick metal partition divided it from the other armory.
    One of the chaplains of the _Tesoro_ then mounted the
    steps, and took out from the armory a life-sized bust
    of St. Januarius, of silver gilt. A mitre on the head
    of it, and a short cope which had been put on the
    shoulders, designated his episcopal character. In the
    head of this bust are contained the relics of the head
    of the saint.

    We know precisely when this bust was made; for in the
    spring of 1306 an entry was made in the account-books
    of Charles of Anjou, then sovereign of Naples, stating
    how much silver and how much gold from the king's
    treasury had been given to a certain artificer as
    materials, and how much money was paid to him for
    his workmanship, in making this very bust. In making
    it, he modelled the features after a very ancient
    bust of the saint, still existing in Puzzuoli. In the
    archiepiscopal diary, relative to St. Januarius, under
    the date 13th September, 1660, there is a long account
    stating that, it being perceived that the relics inside
    this bust had become somehow displaced--as well they
    might after 355 years--the cardinal archbishop, on that
    day, in the presence of all requisite witnesses, had
    the bust opened by a goldsmith; himself reverently took
    out the relics, and held them in his hands until the
    goldsmith had repaired the damage; that his eminence
    then reverently replaced the relics, properly sealed,
    and had the bust closed as before, and in all this
    carefully observed the prescriptions of canon law.
    Since then, everything has been untouched.

    Four other chaplains, with torches, attended the
    chaplain whom I saw take out this bust, and it was
    borne in procession round to the front of the altar,
    and deposited on the altar itself, just where the
    missal would stand when the Gospel is read. They then
    returned to the armory.

    Count C---- with his second key unlocked the lower lock
    of the other--the northern armory. The little canon
    again mounted the steps, unlocked the upper one, and
    swung back the metal door. We looked into the armory:
    it was just the fellow of the first--size, marble
    lining, red silk curtain, and all. The same chaplain
    then, as before, took out the reliquary containing the
    _ampullæ_ or vials of the blood. I will describe it.
    Conceive a bar or thick plate of silver, about two and
    a-half inches wide and about sixteen inches long, to
    be bent until it forms a ring or circle of about five
    inches diameter. Let a circular plate of glass of the
    requisite diameter be inserted and firmly fastened to
    the edge of the silver ring on one side, and a similar
    plate of glass be also inserted and firmly fastened to
    the other edge. You will thus have, as it were, the
    centre-piece of an ostensory, five inches across and
    two and one-half inches through, with a silver rim, and
    glass plates forming the front and rear. On the top,
    let there be a little ornamental scroll-work, cherubs
    and their wings, and a central stem rising upward, and
    bearing an oval crown three inches by two inches, and
    above that a small elegantly-worked silver crucifix.
    Below the circular rim, attach a round, hollow bar of
    silver, about one inch in diameter and three inches
    long. It will serve as a stem to hold the reliquary by,
    or as a foot which may be inserted into an opening
    fitted to receive it. The reliquary may thus be kept
    upright, whether it be placed on a stand on the altar
    or put away in its armory. This reliquary is strong
    and plain, with very little ornamentation on the
    silver, but that, they say, in very good style. Inside
    this frame, or case, or reliquary, between the front
    and rear glass, and perfectly visible through them,
    stand two _ampullæ_ or vials of glass, both fastened
    to the silver rim at top and at bottom by rough,
    irregular masses of dark soldering. They are held to
    be the identical glass vials in which a portion of the
    blood of St. Januarius was poured at the time of his
    martyrdom, which were laid in his tomb, and, in 385,
    were brought with his body to Naples, and which have
    ever since been carefully and reverently preserved.
    They are of the old Roman patterns and material. One
    may see hundreds of just such vials in the museums of
    Naples and Rome. One of them is long and narrow, like a
    modern vial, yet not so even and symmetrical. The neck,
    too, does not narrow in the manner of modern vials. A
    fillet runs three or four times round it just below
    the neck. Perhaps it was an ornament; more probably
    it was intended by the maker to prevent the little
    vial from slipping when held between the fingers. The
    other _ampulla_ or vial is of a different pattern. Its
    height is the same; the neck is a little higher up,
    and is encircled by a single fillet of an undulating
    curvature. The lower portion swells out until it is two
    inches in diameter, and the vial would hold, I judge,
    about a gill and a-half. In the interior of the first
    _ampulla_, I saw two patches resembling the pellicle
    which I had seen, at Rome, left on the inner surface
    of the glass vases after the martyrs' blood originally
    contained in them had entirely evaporated or passed
    away. The other vial, THE AMPULLA, contains a substance
    ordinarily hard, dark, with a reddish or purple hue,
    and filling ordinarily three-fourths of the space
    within the vial, perhaps a little more. This substance
    is held to be a portion of the blood of St. Januarius,
    still retained in this vial, in which it was originally
    placed on September 19, A.D. 305.

    In this description of the reliquary and the _ampullæ_,
    I have, of course, summed up the result of all the
    careful and scrutinizing observations which I had the
    opportunity of making. I have not been able to learn
    when this silver reliquary or case was made. No entry
    is found settling the point, as in the case of the
    bust. The style of ornamentation on the silver case
    and on the crown would indicate about the same epoch
    of art. But I am inclined to think it the earlier made
    of the two. Charles of Anjou showed himself to be too
    liberal in the matter of the bust to be suspected of
    being a niggard in preparing the reliquary, and those
    coming after him would have felt bound to be guided by
    the example of his liberality. It was probably made
    some time before the year 1300, possibly even by Roger,
    King of Sicily, who visited Naples about A.D. 1140.

    But to go back. As the chaplain took the reliquary out
    from the armory, he examined it, and said, "_E duro e
    pieno_"--"_It is hard and full._" In fact, the larger
    vial, as he showed the reliquary round to each one
    of the eight or ten persons behind the altar, and as
    I most clearly saw it, was filled to the very top, I
    could not be mistaken in that; but whether the contents
    were liquid or solid, I really could not tell. For the
    very fulness prevented any change being visible, at
    least to my eyes, in that uniformly dark mass, even
    if the contents were liquid, although the reliquary
    was moved freely from side to side, held horizontally,
    or even reversed. After we had each one venerated and
    fully examined the reliquary, the canon, with his
    attendants bearing torches, bore it in procession to
    the front of the altar, and showed it aloft to the
    people. I followed immediately behind, and ascended the
    steps of the altar with them. On the platform in front
    of the altar, we were four: 1. The chaplain, holding
    the reliquary in his hands by the stem I have spoken
    of. He stood facing the altar, or leaning over it,
    between the middle and the Gospel end, where now stood
    the bust. 2. In front of the bust, and close to the
    first chaplain, on his left, stood a second chaplain,
    bearing a lighted taper in a silver hand candlestick.
    He would sometimes hold this in such a position, eight
    or ten inches off from the reliquary and behind it,
    that the light from it would shine on the interior,
    so that the observer would not be troubled by the
    reflection of the ordinary light from the surface
    of the plate of glass next to him. 3. Count C----,
    the city delegate, stood at the right of the first
    chaplain, and, therefore, in front of the middle of the
    altar. It is his sworn duty not to lose sight of the
    precious reliquary from the moment the doors of the
    armory are opened at nine A.M., until it is replaced
    there, and duly locked up, about half an hour after
    sunset. He cannot retire from his post at any time,
    unless his place is supplied by an alternate delegate,
    who has been chosen, and who, I was told, had promised
    to come by 11 A.M. 4. Next to Count C----, I stood, or
    rather knelt, until the people crowded so on me that I
    positively had not room to continue in that position.

    The people, now that the Mass had been over for twenty
    minutes or so, had entered the sanctuary, or had been
    introduced into it. They completely filled the space
    within the rails; they stood crowded on the steps; they
    even invaded the platform itself, not a very large one,
    forcing the attendant chaplains, who had borne the
    torches in the procession, and who now remained to join
    with the two chaplains at the altar in the prayers, to
    retire somewhat, and kneel in a group, off at the end
    of the altar; forced the count and myself of necessity
    to stand; and just left a little room for the two
    chaplains to turn in, barely sufficient.

    As I stood up, I could see the crowd. The chapel
    was filled; there are, you know, no pews or seats
    in Italian churches; all were standing as closely
    as possible together. The sanctuaries of the side
    chapels were equally crowded; men stood on the steps
    and platforms of their altars; the very bases of the
    columns were turned to account to afford a lofty
    standing room. And such a crowd! Earnest, intensest
    curiosity was marked on every face. The way it mingled
    with awe and devotion was at times rather ludicrous.
    Hands were clasped in prayer, and heads were bowed,
    and the lips were reciting something most devoutly;
    when up the head would be almost jerked, eye-glasses,
    spectacles, and, a little further off, opera-glasses
    and lorgnettes would be levelled at the reliquary for
    a minute or two; and then down with them, and again at
    the prayers. There were Frenchmen, Germans, Englishmen,
    Spaniards, and Americans; strangers of every nation.
    And these had made their way, of course, closest to the
    altar; at least they predominated in my vicinity. In
    the body of the chapel, the Neapolitans and Italians
    stood. The crowd reached to the railing under the grand
    archway, and beyond that filled the west aisle of the
    cathedral church, and stretched across the nave and
    the east aisle to the chapels opposite. The last stood
    nearly eighty yards off.

    These Neapolitans, too full of faith and brimful
    of devotion on this day, and always exceedingly
    demonstrative in their manner, gave full way to their
    feelings, and were praying aloud or nearly so. The
    common people of Naples have a habit of modulating
    their voices while speaking, running up and down the
    gamut in a way quite novel to us. You heard those
    tones, not inharmonious, from the thousands who were
    praying in various pitches. Some were in groups,
    chanting or half-singing the litanies; some groups
    were reciting the rosary devoutly; others united in
    the acts of faith, hope, and charity; and still others
    in prayers and hymns appropriate for this occasion,
    and in their own Neapolitan dialect. To me it seemed a
    perfect Babel. But no one could for an instant look on
    them, and doubt the earnestness of their faith and the
    intensity of their devotion.

    My attention was soon drawn to one group, or rather
    line, of a score of elderly women, from 50 to 80 years
    of age, strung along outside the sanctuary railing,
    from the centre door of it to the Gospel end. They
    all joined in one chorus. They all spoke so loudly,
    their tones were so earnest and modulated, and their
    position made them so prominent, that I asked who
    they were. I was told they were the ancient matrons
    of certain families in Naples who have ever claimed
    to be the blood-relatives of the saint; and, by right
    of prescription and usage, they occupy that position
    along the altar-rails on occasions of the exposition
    of the relics. They were evidently poor, very poor. It
    touched me to see here a dignity of descent claimed and
    recognized far beyond that based on wealth or worldly
    position--a dignity which nobles might crave in vain,
    and yet from which their poverty and daily drudgery do
    not debar these simple souls. I said they were old.
    Among them and close to them stood younger women and
    girls, other members, I presume, of their families, who
    at present prayed in lower tones, inaudible, or, at
    least, not noticeable, in the crowd of subdued voices
    When they become grandmothers, I presume they will take
    more prominent positions, and feel privileged to pitch
    their voices in shriller tones. I thought at first
    there was one exception. I heard a clear, bell-like,
    treble voice, which generally led their chorus of
    litanies or prayers, and which never seemed to tire.
    But I was mistaken in the supposition. I at last traced
    the voice. It was that of an elderly woman who will
    scarcely see sixty again. She stood in the line, tall,
    thin, emaciated. Her brow was lofty; her eyes clear,
    and blazing with animation; her cheeks sunken in,
    not a tooth left; and, as she spoke, her broad chin
    seemed to work up and down a full inch. She wore a
    clean, old, faded calico gown, without any starch in
    it; and around her head was wound, like a turban, a
    bright, stiffened, red and yellow bandanna, reminding
    me somewhat of the respectable colored _maumas_ I had
    seen in the South. Her voice was clear and sweet, and
    she made free use of it. Others might tire, or rest, or
    suspend their clamorous prayers for a while; but she,
    no, she never tired, and her voice was ever heard among
    the rest, like a clear trumpet stop in a full organ.
    It was delightful, at last, to watch her occasionally,
    as she kept her eyes fixed on the bust of the saint on
    the altar, and every feature of her countenance kept
    changing to express the sense of her words. Were she
    not in church, her hands and arms and whole body, I am
    sure, would have joined in the movements. As it was,
    she confined herself to bowing her head, or turning it
    slowly from side to side, yet always keeping her eyes
    fixed on the altar. I had seen, many times, earnest,
    silent, tearful prayer. Here I witnessed equally
    earnest, _noisy_ prayer. I might come to like it, but
    only after some time and after many trials.

    While this universal hubbub of prayer was filling the
    church, the chaplain, still holding the reliquary
    in his hands by the stem beneath, bent over the
    altar, and, with the other chaplains and those of the
    bystanders who joined in, recited the _Miserere_ and
    other psalms, and the Athanasian Creed, and various
    prayers. His face glowed with the intensity of his
    feelings. He kept his eyes earnestly fixed on the
    reliquary, from time to time moving it over from side
    to side, and examining it. Sometimes he rubbed the
    glass face, front or rear, as necessary, with his white
    pocket-handkerchief, that he might see more clearly
    the interior. Sometimes the other chaplain held the
    candle in a proper position to aid his inspection.
    In about five minutes, he turned round with the
    reliquary to the people, and held it up, with the
    candle behind it, that all might see. He let those
    near look as scrutinizingly as they wished, reached
    it to each one of the ten or fifteen on the platform
    and upper steps to kiss it, and, if they chose, as, of
    course, they did, to examine it, at six or ten inches
    distance. He then turned to the altar as before, and
    the litany of the saints was recited, with some other
    prayers. In about five minutes more, he again turned
    towards the people, and gave the immediate bystanders
    another opportunity to examine the reliquary closely
    as before. Then again to the altar for other psalms,
    hymns, and prayers. This alternation of prayers at
    the altar, holding the reliquary near the bust, and
    of presentations of it to the bystanders and the
    crowd, every five minutes or so, continued for over
    half an hour. But no change was visible. Once he left
    the altar, and making his way--I could not imagine
    how--into the crowd outside the sanctuary in the body
    of the chapel, gave to those to the right and left of
    his route a similar opportunity. On another occasion,
    he went down again; but this time he turned to the
    right, and went along the line of "relatives." How
    their fervor increased, how their demonstrations became
    more energetic, their words more rapid, their chorus
    fuller, their voices louder and shriller! He came back;
    but still no change. The alternations continued as
    before.

    At last, a little after ten o'clock, I saw a change.
    I think I was the very first to perceive it. On all
    the previous times and up to this, the _ampulla_ or
    vial was perfectly full, as I had seen it when first
    taken out of the armory. I now noticed a faint streak
    of light between the substance in the vial and the
    top, or, rather, the mass of solder into which the top
    of the vial entered. I was sure it had not been there
    before. I could scarcely see it now. This time, as
    on several other occasions, the chaplain came twice
    or thrice around the ring of immediate bystanders,
    those at first in front courteously giving way that
    others might in turn come forward. But I, of course,
    retained my place. As he came round the second time,
    and approached me again--I was within the line or
    semi-circle--I saw that the streak of light was now
    clear and unmistakable. It caught the eye of an earnest
    little Frenchman who, for the last half-hour, had been
    pressing against me, at times rather inconveniently.
    He burst right out: "Don't you see the light in it? It
    is changing! It is liquefying!" The chaplain now looked
    at it attentively, moved it from side to side a little,
    rubbed the glasses with his white handkerchief, looked
    again, but went round the circle of bystanders a third
    time. Again he examined it. By this time the streak
    of light had become half an inch broad. He moved the
    reliquary from side to side slowly. We saw the vacancy
    now left above yield and follow his motions, just as
    the air-bubble does in a spirit-level, clearly showing
    the contents of the vial to be _now perfectly liquid_.
    Some looked on in silent awe; some shed tears; some
    cried out, "_Miracolo! miracolo!_" The chaplain waved
    his white handkerchief in signal that it really was so.
    Rose-leaves in quantities were thrown up from the crowd
    outside the sanctuary, and rained down on us. A dozen
    little birds that had been held captive in the baskets
    with the roses were liberated, and rose circling
    upwards to the windows of the dome. The grand organ
    burst out in the _Te Deum_. The vast crowd with one
    voice took up the hymn, almost drowning the full tones
    of the instrument. The bells of the cathedral tower,
    in full chimes, sent the announcement over the city,
    and the hills and valleys around, and over the quiet
    waters of the beautiful bay. All the bells of the other
    churches of Naples chimed in, and quickly the cannons
    of the Castle of Sant' Elmo joined in the chorus with a
    grand national salute.

    Meanwhile, hundreds were approaching the altar to see
    with their own eyes that the blood was liquid, and to
    venerate the relics. Another chaplain now relieved the
    first, and continued to present the reliquary to those
    who were crowding up. I still retained my position. The
    blood continued to diminish in volume, until it sank so
    as to be a full half-inch below the neck of the vial.
    It was perfectly liquid, and, when the reliquary was
    turned or inclined, it ran off the up-raised sides of
    the _ampulla_ at once leaving no more trace behind than
    would so much water.

    After half an hour or so, the bust and the reliquary
    were carried in procession out from the chapel into
    the cathedral. The procession moved down the western
    aisle towards the doors of the church, turned into the
    grand nave, and advanced up to the sanctuary. The bust
    was placed on the high altar, and the canons of the
    cathedral replaced the chaplains of the _Tesoro_ chapel
    in the duty of presenting the reliquary to the people,
    as they approached in undiminished numbers to venerate
    and inspect it.

    At eleven, I said Mass at the altar where I had
    witnessed the liquefaction. After the Mass, I went
    into the church, and spent another half-hour there.
    Thousands pouring in from the streets were still
    flowing in a constant stream towards the high altar. A
    little after twelve, I left....

    Next morning, I said Mass again on the same altar at
    eight A.M., and before nine o'clock was again at the
    doors of the armories. Count C---- came punctually with
    his bag of keys. So did the little canon on the part
    of the archbishop. I was told that the sacred relics
    had remained exposed all day, after I left, on the high
    altar of the cathedral, the blood remaining liquid all
    the time; and that, about dark, they had, according to
    rule, been brought back to the _Tesoro_ chapel, and
    had been locked up, as usual, for the night, in the
    armories. This morning, they were to be again brought
    out. Count C---- and the canon used their keys just
    as yesterday. The bust was taken out, and carried in
    procession to the front of the altar, as before. Then
    the other armory was opened, and the reliquary was
    taken out by the chaplain. "It is hard, and at its
    ordinary level," he said, and showed it to us. The
    blood now stood in the _ampulla_, not, as yesterday,
    filling it, but reaching only to about an inch below
    the neck, leaving about one-fourth of the space within
    unoccupied. It was certainly solid and hard; for he
    turned the reliquary to one side and the other without
    its moving at all. He even held the reliquary upside
    down, and the blood remained a firm and unmoved mass,
    attached to the bottom of the now up-turned _ampulla_.
    It was carried to the altar. We stationed ourselves
    just as yesterday. The sanctuary was filled with
    visitors, but not so crowded as on the former occasion.
    The chapel, too, was not so densely jammed. None were
    forced to stand out in the church for want of room.
    The "relatives" were at their post, and prayed just as
    before; but the miracle having occurred on the feast
    itself, they were satisfied that it would occur, as a
    matter of course, each day of the exposition throughout
    the octave. At least, so I read their countenances,
    which were less nervously anxious than yesterday.

    The chaplain commenced the _Miserere_, the _Deus tuorum
    militum_, and sundry prayers, the clergy joining
    in. Every five minutes or so, he turned to show the
    reliquary to the people, especially, of course, to
    those immediately around the altar.

    In just sixteen minutes after we had reached the
    altar, the first symptom of the coming change showed
    itself. As the chaplain held the reliquary for a moment
    completely reversed, and steady in that position,
    I noticed that the surface of the blood within the
    _ampulla_, now, as he held it, underneath, showed a
    tendency to sag downwards, as if it were softening.
    Soon again, I saw that around the edge, where it
    touched the glass, it had changed color, and was of
    a brighter red than in the middle, and seemed very
    soft, almost liquid. In fact, as he would incline the
    reliquary to one side or another, the entire mass
    within began soon gradually to slide down and occupy
    the lowest position. Still, though soft, it was thick,
    and could scarcely be called liquid. Then, in two or
    three minutes more, it became still softer, until it
    was quite liquid, with a lump, nevertheless, which
    seemed to remain hard and to float in the liquid
    portion. To-day, as the glass was moved, the liquid
    would run off, of course. But, whereas yesterday it
    left the glass quite clear and clean, as water would
    do, now, on the contrary, it left a reddish thick tinge
    behind, which only slowly sank down into the general
    mass. After a while, too, the blood seemed to froth, or
    show bubbles on its surface--_to boil_, as the Italians
    say. I remained over half an hour more to see it, and
    I noticed that at the end of that time the lump had
    disappeared, and all was quite liquid. The frothing
    continued.

    After this, I was invited to go into the sacristy,
    where they showed me the superb ecclesiastical
    vestments belonging to the chapel--the mitres,
    necklaces, chalices, ciboriums, ostensories, and other
    rich jewelry--in great part, the gifts of emperors,
    kings, and other nobles and wealthy ones, who, for
    centuries past, have given them as offerings to this
    sanctuary on occasion of their visits. Finally, I had
    to tear myself away. Returning for a few moments to the
    chapel, I found the crowds still approaching the altar
    to examine and to venerate the relics.

    Reluctantly I left the cathedral, and in a few hours
    a railway-train was bearing me fast and far away from
    Naples.

    I have thus, my dear S----, set forth minutely and at
    length what I saw. They say that in the liquid blood
    one may still sometimes see a small fragment of straw
    floating about. If so, it must have been taken up with
    the blood when it was gathered at the execution of
    the saint, and must have glided unperceived into the
    _ampulla_ when the blood was poured into it that day.
    A young friend with me thought he caught a glimpse of
    it. His eyesight is keen, which, you know, mine is
    not. Anyhow, I did not see it. I need not tell you of
    various other little points of which the Neapolitans
    speak, as I had no opportunity of testing them or
    verifying them myself. I have told you, simply and
    straightforwardly, what fell under my own experience.

Our readers will not regret the length of this account of the
liquefaction, so full and minute in the details. The letter from
which we extract it was written immediately after the visit of
the writer to Naples, from notes made at the time, and while the
impressions left on his memory were still fresh.

It was not necessary, in a letter like that we have made use of,
to enter on the discussion of mooted points of archæology. The
writer simply sets forth the opinions which, after more or less of
examination, he felt inclined to adopt. We say here that there is
a difference among writers as to the year in which the body of St.
Januarius was transferred from the original sepulchre to the church
of San Gennaro _extra muros_, and there is still a graver difference
as to the precise place of the original tomb. Some have held that
the execution took place on a more elevated spot on the same hill
which the letter mentions--about a quarter of a mile distant from
the church of the Capuchins--and that this church marks not the
site of the execution, as the letter holds with the Neapolitan
archæologists, but the site of the first temporary interment, from
which the body was borne to Naples, twelve or fifteen years later
than the year assigned above. These are minor points, on which we may
let antiquaries argue at pleasure.

In another article, we purpose to examine the character of the fact
of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, according to exact
records of its history for several centuries back.

For the present, we close with the latest account of its occurrence
which has fallen under our eye. The _Pall Mall Budget_, of May 26
last, has the following: "The blood of St. Januarius seems to have
been lately in a more perturbed state, if possible, than ever. The
_Libertà Cattolica_ of Naples gives an account of some unusual
appearances presented by this relic, on the 6th inst., one of the
annual occasions on which the holy martyr is honored in the cathedral
of Naples. On the day in question, Saturday, May 6, at a quarter-past
four P.M., the reliquary being brought out of its tabernacle, where
it had remained since the 16th of last December--the feast of the
patronage--it was found partly liquid, as when laid up. It continued
in the same state during the procession (from the cathedral to
the church of St. Clara), and, after thirteen minutes of prayers,
the sign of the miracle was given, the portion which had remained
hard being perceptibly still more dissolved, so as to show that
the miracle had taken place. Gradually, during the kissing of the
reliquary by the congregation at St. Clara, it became entirely
dissolved. On its return to the cathedral, contrary to what had
taken place during the last few years, it was found to be completely
hardened. When carried into the chapel of the _Tesoro_, it dissolved
anew, and now entirely, yet remaining thick and glutinous; and in
that state was laid up, about ten P.M."

TO BE CONTINUED.




LUCAS GARCIA.

FROM THE SPANISH OF FERNAN CABALLERO.

    "In an age when all impressions are effaced by the
    double hammer of civilization and incredulity, it is
    touching and beautiful to see a people preserve a
    stable character and immutable beliefs."


I.

Eastward from Jerez, in the direction of the Sierra de Ronda, which
rises in a succession of terraces, as if to form a suitable pedestal
for the rightly named San Cristóbal, lie the extensive Llanos de
Caulina. A bare and uniform road drags itself for two leagues through
the palmettoes, and makes a halt at the foot of the first elevation,
where a lazy rivulet widens in the sun, and, stagnating in summer,
changes its waters into mire.

On the right is seen the castle of Malgarejo, one of the few Moorish
edifices that time and his faithful auxiliary in the work of
destruction, ignorance, have left standing. Time makes ruins, groups
them, crowns them with garlands, and adorns them with verdure, as if
he desired to have them for places of recreation and rest; but the
barbarian ignorance gives no quarter--his only delight is in dust;
his place of repose, the desert waste; his end, nothingness.

The angles of the castle are flanked by four large towers. These,
as well as the walls of the whole enclosure, are surmounted by
well-formed turrets, perfect still, and without notch or break in
their beautiful uniformity. The castle took its name of Malgarejo
from a knight of Jerez, by whom its reduction was accomplished in a
manner so curious, that we cannot resist the inclination to relate
it, for the benefit of those who are unacquainted with the tales of
partisan exploits that abound in the annals of Jerez.

In the beginning of the thirteenth century, a hundred and fifty
Moors, with their families, occupied the castle. They went clothed
in white, according to the custom of their nation, and mounted gray
horses. Shut up as they were, they procured their subsistence by
foraging the country at night, and carrying to their stronghold
whatever booty they could seize.

Malgarejo resolved to get possession of this formidable place. It
was surrounded, at that time, by a wide moat. This moat--opened by
the Moors for their protection, and afterward serving them for a
sepulchre--no longer exists.

The Christian cavalier had a slave that was a most accomplished
horseman, and to him he promised liberty if he would swear to devote
himself to the proposed undertaking. The slave, agreeing, was
entrusted by his master with a mare of singular agility, and was
directed to train her to leap a ditch, which was to be enlarged, by
degrees, to the width of the one that surrounded the Saracen castle.

This being accomplished, Malgarejo called together his followers,
disguised them as Moors, caused them to cover their horses with white
cloths, and, one night, when the garrison had sallied out upon a
raid, approached the fortress. Those within, taking his host for the
one they were expecting, viewed its approach without suspicion. When
the Christians came nearer, they saw their mistake, and would have
raised the bridge, but the slave of Malgarejo had already leaped the
moat, and cut the cords, so that it could not be lifted; and the
_Jerezanos_ made themselves masters of the castle.

The sight of this stronghold, over which the destroyer Time has
passed leaving as little trace as would the footstep of a bird,
transports the beholder to the past with such vividness of illusion,
that he is surprised not to see the pennon of the half-moon
fluttering above its towers, and misses a snowy turban from behind
every one of its turrets. No fitter place could be found for the
representation of a fight or of a tournament between Moors and
Christians.

The road to Arcos leaves on its left the sleeping stream and the dead
fortress, within whose precinct, like ants in a skeleton, laborers
plying the tools of peaceful husbandry are moving.

Ascending this first step of the mountain, the traveller crosses
other plains, covered as far as the eye can see with rich harvests,
and, finding no nearer inn or stopping-place, takes his siesta at
the grange of La Peñuela, formerly the property of the Carthusian
fathers--an order so pious, so severe, so worthy and respected, that
the country folk still ask each other, "And was there indeed a power
that could, and a hand that would dare to touch such men and such
things?"

As the country rises, it covers itself with olive groves, as if it
would shelter white and ancient Arcos in the pride with which she
preserves her title of city, her venerable privileges, and her state
parchments, in spite of decline, or, better said, in spite of her
still life, in the midst of the progress that waits upon the march of
time--a progress at once gentle, deliberate, and spontaneous.

True to the guerilla traits of her Moorish founders, Arcos appears
to the traveller, wearied with the ascent, alternately advancing
and retiring, until, passing between two high rocks, he enters
unexpectedly into a city so beautiful for situation as to astonish
and delight even those who are rarely moved by the charms of nature
or the enchantments of the picturesque.

One afternoon, in the year 1840 or thereabout, a crowd of people
might have been seen entering a poor-looking house in the barrier of
San Francisco. From this house they had carried, on the previous day,
the body of one who had been its mistress, and the neighbors were
now uniting for the _condolement_ required by the rigorous etiquette
which is observed by the people, and which manifests the instinctive
courtesy and dignity that distinguish them. For all etiquette
and all ceremonial are founded upon these bases, and are not the
ridiculous and superficial things, either in public or private
life, that the revolutionary spirit of the age, and the anxiety to
escape from every rein, material and moral, would make us believe.
Ceremonial and etiquette, in the right acceptation of the words, are
external conduct, disposed so as to give worship to things divine,
consideration and respect to things human.

On entering the house, the women assembled in the parlor of the
mourner's _habitation_.[160] Opposite this room was another, which
had been lent by a neighbor for the accommodation of the men.

Upon a mat in the middle of the apartment first mentioned was
extended a handkerchief, into which each person, as he entered,
threw one or two copper coins, destined for the stipend of the Mass
of San Bernardino. This custom is observed not only among the poor,
but also among those who are well-to-do, for this Mass must be owed
to charity. Let sceptics and rationalists explain this as best suits
them. We look upon it as an act of humility, joined to the desire of
uniting many suffrages. And although we may be more impressed with
terrestrial honors, such as a splendid funeral, a showy catafalque,
and a proud mausoleum, the fervent petition of the heart, the coin
given in charity, the prayers of the church, are better suffrages for
heaven. In a corner of the room, upon a low chair, was the principal
mourner, a little girl of eight years. Wearied with weeping for her
mother, and with remaining so long in one position, she had leaned
her head against the back of the chair, and fallen asleep--for sleep
is a lover of children, and hastens to their relief whenever they
suffer in body or spirit.

"Poor Lucia," said one of the mourners, a kinswoman of the deceased,
glancing at the child, "how she will miss her mother!"

"This was the thorn that poor Ana carried to the grave fastened in
her heart," observed a neighbor.

"But," asked another, "of what did she die?"

"Only the ground that covers her knows what ailed her," answered the
relative, "for Ana did not complain. If she had not been so thin, you
might have drunk her; as yellow as a waxen flower, and so weak that a
shadow could have knocked her down, no one would have thought that
she was on her way to Holyfield."

"She died of a broken heart!" exclaimed an energetic-looking young
matron; "all the world knows it; and because we have an alcalde that
is afraid to strap his breeches to the work and cast out of town with
the devil's sling these trulls of strangers who come among us to set
up drinking-houses, and chouse married men, to their perdition and
the ruins of their families!"

"Yes, yes, the alcaldes have eyes of fishes for all these things,"
said the relative of the deceased, "just as they have owls' eyes
for some others. But they'll get their pay, woman; for though God
consents, 'tis not for ever!"

"Yes," answered the first--"consents to the death of the good, and
lets the bad live, and crow on. God reserves the justice of heaven
for himself. The rod of earthly justice he puts into the hands of
men; and a fine account they'll have to give of the way they use it!
I'd like to break the one our alcalde carries upon his shoulders!"

"Neighbor," said an old woman, "you are more hasty than a spark from
the forge; you attack like the bulls, with eyes shut. Think whom you
are speaking of; and bear in mind that 'evil wounds heal, but evil
fame kills.' Poor Ana was never well after her last confinement.
Death does not come without a pretext: the summer pulled her down,
and September finished her; for 'from friar to friar,[161] God be our
guard!'"

"Of course, Aunt Maria," retorted the young woman, "it's quite proper
for you, because you are aunt to Juan Garcia, and cousin to the
alcalde, to say so; for 'with reason or without it, aid us God and
our kin.' But I tell you that my José is not to set his foot inside
of _La Leona's_[162] gin-shop; and I'll see that he don't! A man may
be as honest as Job, but in 'the house of the soap-maker he that
doesn't fall slips.' And say what you please, you who are a widow,
with the coolness of age in your veins, I shall not go back of what
I have said. 'He that jumps straight, falls on his feet,' and I say,
and resay it: they ought to flay alive the good-for-nothing calamary
of a she-sergeant, with her sentry-box figure, and face darker than
an oil-skin, so full of pock-marks that it looks as if she had fallen
into a bed of chick-peas, and more hair on her lip than a grenadier!
Remember the proverb, 'Salute the bearded woman at a distance!'"

"And her children," said the mourner--"little imps that she keeps so
greasy and neglected! They look like a nest of calamaries."

"But she thinks them little suns," added another.

"Ya!" exclaimed the first who had spoken; "said the black beetle to
her young ones, 'Come hither, my flowers!' and the owl calls hers
'drops of gold.' Who ever saw such a thing, sirs," she continued,
growing excited--"who ever saw anything so wicked as to dupe a
married man, the father of children, ruin him, pull down his house,
and murder his wife by inches! And this is known and permitted! I
tell you, such a thing sinks deep!"

"Yes, it is worse than stabbing with a knife," exclaimed one woman.

"It cries to God!" added another.

"It is a scandal of the monstrous kind," proceeded the first.
"Poor Ana, though I did not see much of her, I loved her well.
Almond-paste is not milder than she was, and as meek and free from
malice as a sheep in the hands of the butcher. O men! men! There is a
curse on them that pull their clothes on over their feet; and that is
the reason our dear Lord would not wear breeches, but always dressed
in a tunic."

"Come, daughter," said Aunt Maria, "nothing is mended by malediction,
nor by spitting out the quinine. Let us pray for the soul of the
departed, for that is what will really benefit her."

These words were the signal for complete silence. Aunt Maria took her
rosary, the rest following her example, and, after saying the act
of contrition and a solemn credo, proceeded to recite the rosary of
souls, repeating three times after the Paternoster, and instead of
the Hail Mary,

      "O Lord, by thy infinite mercy,"

the others answering in chorus,

      "Grant to the souls of the faithful departed peace and glory."

Nothing was now heard in the mourning room of the women but the grave
murmur of the prayers and suppressed sighs of pity and sorrow.

The other parlor presented a very different spectacle. The widower,
serene as a glass of water, and cool as a fresh lettuce, now that
the day of the burial had passed, considered himself dispensed from
the attitude of mourning, and smoked, listening and talking to all,
just as usual, as if death had entered his house and departed without
leaving either trace or impression of his awful presence.

The indifferent ones followed his example, so that, had not all worn
cloaks, no one would have supposed that this was a condolement,
a tribute of love and respect to a life that had ended, and of
sympathy with an overwhelming sorrow. The only figure that appeared
to be in harmony with the object of the reunion was that of a boy
thirteen years old, the son of the deceased, who sat near his father
with his elbows resting on his knees, and his face buried in his
hands, weeping inconsolably.

"What kind of day has it been?" asked the widower.

"Unhealthy," answered one.

"And the sky?"

"Patched; I think the rain is not far off. There was fog this
morning, and 'fog is the rain's sponsor and the sun's neighbor.'"

"The wind will soon sweep the cobwebs from the sky," said a third,
"for it blows from sunset side. The rain is shyer than sixpences."

"No matter," answered the first, "last year it did not rain till All
Saints; and a better year, or another of the same piece, hasn't been
seen since the creation. Laborers, farmers, and tenants all got tired
of gathering, and had more than enough--the barley, in particular,
grew so thick that you couldn't set a spade between the blades."

"The month of January is the key of the year. If the sky does not
open in January, there will be no harvest."

"Hola! Uncle Bartolo!" all exclaimed, as a small, vigorous old man
entered the apartment. "Where do you hail from? where have you been
ever since we missed you from here?"

Uncle Bartolo, after offering to the mourner the usual condolences,
seated himself, and, turning toward his interrogators, replied:

"Where do I come from? The district of Doñana, without varying from
the most direct line. Since the French war ended, and I took the
road, I have been water-carrier[163] to the _You Sirs_.[164] They
have them there in Doñana of all complexions--legitimate, grafted,
cross-breed, and supposititious, even English. _Caballeros!_ Deliver
us; but those Swiss of the French are the ones! Stout fellows;
very white; very ruddy; very fair-haired, and very puffy. But as
to spirit, they have no more than they drink; and grace, they have
not any. They carry their arms like the sleeves of a capote, and
set their feet down like pestles. Whenever I saw those feet that
resembled _jabeques_,[165] I used to say to myself,

      'A good foot and good ear
      Signs of a good beast are.'

For talking, they make use of a kind of jargon that, in my opinion,
they themselves don't understand. These parleys that I don't
comprehend displease me, for I never know whether I am being bought
or sold.

"There was one--the size of a tunny-fish--they called Don 'Turo.[166]
He fell to me. To see him blowing and sweating over those sands made
one pity him, for a league finishes them; the sun offends them; the
heat makes them weak, and dissolves them entirely. That platter face
would persist in doing everything contrariwise, as they do it in his
country. Once he took it into his head to use my clasp-knife to eat
with, and cut himself. With that he got out a medicine-chest as big
as a surgeon's. 'Go along!' said I to myself, 'a spider bit me, and
I bound the wound up in a sheet.' He was as hard-headed as a corner.
Another time he made up his mind that he ought to shoot a partridge,
and, though I told him it was against the law to shoot partridges at
that season, he fired, and would have fired if his father had stood
before the mouth of his gun. He fired and killed an urraca.[167]
'Sir,' said I, 'what has your honor done?' Says he to me, 'Killed
the partridge.' 'Why, sir, it isn't a partridge, it's an urraca.'
'It's all right,' said the big bungler, quite composedly. 'But it
is not right,' answered I; 'the killing of urracas is prohibited.'
'And who prohibits it?' he asked, putting on his face of a lion. 'I
have my license, that cost me three thousand reals.' 'But, sir, that
is for large game--you understand? The urracas mustn't be killed.
You comprehend?' Says he to me, 'In this country of _Santísima
María_'--for, as I have told you already, he said everything
reversed, as they do in his--'in this country there's no end of
privileges, and do the very urracas have them?'

"That question was so foolish, or else meant to be ironical, that
I didn't care to set him right; so I told him, 'Yes, privileges
that were granted to them in very ancient times, by _Doña Urraca_
herself.' He took out a blank-book and wrote that down. 'Let the ball
roll,' said I in my jacket, 'it isn't my business to stop it.'"

"But, Uncle Bartolo, why may they not kill urracas in the district?"
asked a young man.

"Because they are the ones that planted the pine woods," answered
Uncle Bartolo.

"Oh! none of that! you are not talking to platter-face," replied the
youth.

"So I perceive, since his swallow for novelties was too big; and
you--for a blockhead of those who believe only what they see--haven't
any. Nevertheless, sir, that the urracas do plant the pines is a
truth as evident as a house. They open the ripe cones, and pick out
the seeds for food. Being very saving birds, they bury those that
they can't eat; and, being very brainless ones, they forget all
about it and never go back to look for them; and the seeds sprout.
If it were not true, why would the dukes prohibit the killing of
urracas, when they are thicker in the district than sparrows on a
threshing-floor? Therefore, Alonso, no one may say, 'This camel can't
enter the eye of my needle'; for, of two silly birds, the one that
always keeps his bill shut is more silly than the one that has his
always open. But you were a dunce from the beginning; and, as you
grow older, you are gaining upon Blas, that ate horse-beans."

"And at night, uncle, what did those people do with themselves there
in the province?" asked the listeners.

"The Englishmen ate and drank, for their honors are made hollow,
in order that they may always be putting things into their mouths.
That is the reason they are so fat and big. Platter-face told me one
day--with an air as if God had just revealed it to him--that I was
able to go so long without getting tired because I was lean; and that
he would give a thousand dollars, or some such sum, to be as lean as
I. I answered--shouting to make him understand better--'Your worship
has only to eat _gazpacho_[168] to dry up your flesh, and raw onions
and garlic to sharpen your senses."

"And the Spaniards--how did they pass the evenings, Uncle Bartolo?"

"The Spaniards? Talking through the very stitches of their garments;
bawling till you would have thought they were echoes: and quarrelling
about things of the government. For, nowadays, everybody wants to
know everything himself, and to command: the very beetles set up
their tails and complain of a cough. I tell you, sirs, there are no
more such Spaniards as there were in the time of the French war. We
were as one man then, and all of one mind. Now there are moderates
and _extremists_. I, who am an _extremist_ only when it concerns my
gun, my wife, and my children, could wish the devil would fly away
with so much gab. It made me want to say to them: 'Gentlemen, where
there is less tongue, count on more judgment,' and 'so much grass
chokes the wheat.'"

"One night, one of the _You Sirs_ called me, and wanted to know if
I was in the war against Napoleon. 'Yes, sir,' I answered, 'I was a
guerilla.' 'Well, then,' said he, 'you just come here, for I am going
to read you the will he made.'"

"What! did that man make a will, Uncle Bartolo?" asked some of the
oldest of the listeners.

"Yes, and before he died, it is supposed.

"'But, your worship,' I asked, 'what had that kingdom-thief to give
away? Did they not then make him throw up everything he had taken?'

"The _You Sir_ had an open book, and began to read. Gentlemen, that
_soccarron_,[169] in his will, went on distributing everything, his
goods, his arms, his body, and his heart. I was perplexed. 'Well,
what do you think of it, uncle?' said his honor, when he had ended.
'Sir,' I answered, 'from what I can see, that unbeliever thought of
everything; but neither in his life nor in his death did he remember
his soul.'"

"Why did you join the guerillas, Uncle Bartolo?" asked one of the
company.

"What a question!" exclaimed the guerilla, looking at the one who
had asked it, and weaving himself backwards and forwards with much
composure.

"'He that asks does not err,' Uncle Bartolo."

"Yes, but this is a case of 'He that asks does not err, and I ask if
they bury the dead with the deceased?'"

"What I mean is, when did you leave your house, and how did you
happen to fall in with the _partida_?"[170]

"Ya! those are other questions, Lopez. Some French horsemen came
here--they call them _colaseros_ (cuirassiers)--my wife was more
afraid of them than of a contagion, and every time she heard the
clarionets, she would say to me, in a fright, 'They are sounding
the charge.' 'No, wife,' I would tell her, 'they are sounding
the _premonition_.' One day the cornet--they used to call him
_Trompi_--came in tipsy, and insulted my wife. I, who was not
afraid of any three that might come, and never stopped to think of
consequences, said to him, 'Out of here, little soul of a pitcher,
and Barabbas cut a slice from you!' With that he drew his sword,
and would have cut me, but I snatched my knife, and finished him at
once; and then, catching up mantle and blanket, took the wind for the
mountains. I stopped in Benamahoma with the Padre Lovillo--and there
you have it all."

"The Padre Lovillo was the captain of the partida?" questioned a
youth.

"Yes, the Padre Lovillo. _Candela!_ That was a man you could call
a man! No talker--not he; but the words he used were few and good.
If any one wanted to brag of his doings, he would say, 'Let them be
seen, not heard. You understand, cackler? Stabs with steel, not with
the tongue; balls of lead, not of wind.' Sirs, that man was ready for
everything, as you would have declared with two tongues if you had
had them. When we were going to attack the French, he used to say,
'Listen, sons, our fathers died for their country, and we are not to
be less than they.' Then, drawing his sword, he would shout, '_Now_
let us see who has pluck!' and charge like another Santiago,[171] and
we after him, as if he had led us to Paris in France. We felt neither
hunger nor weariness; it was a fight without drum or trumpet, but
it made the Frenchmen shiver. They named us the '_Briganes_[172] of
the Black Mountain,' and were more afraid of us than of the trained
soldiery.

"Don 'Turo, who knew that I had been a _brigan_, called me into the
parlor one evening, and, when he had squeezed himself into a chair,
told me to sit down. I began to wonder where all these Masses were
going to end.[173] Surely, I thought, he cannot want me to clean his
gun! But I waited for the mountain to bring forth, and presently he
asked me to explain the _trafica_[174] of guerilla fighting. When I
saw him come out with that ladder, I got angry, and told him, 'No;'
that my pronouncing was very bad, and his understanding worse. But
all the others insisted, and, not to seem disobliging, I repeated a
very good and well-versed poem, that was going the rounds then."

"And what was it about, Uncle Bartolo?"

"It relates a conversation between Malapart[175] and that Indian,
_Munrá_, Duke of _Ver_."[176]

"Go on, uncle, say it," exclaimed all present.

The following romance, which the old guerilla recited, was very
popular at that time among the people. It owes its humor to the fact
that neither its unlettered composer, nor those who recited it, had
any suspicion that they were giving a caricature. They considered
it a simple and probable account of what would take place between
Napoleon and Murat when they saw their last troops vanquished. Even
the conclusion is in no way inconsistent with their ideas of the
antecedents and characters of the personages:

        _Nap._ How is this, friend _Munrá_!
      Why are you here again?
      Why have you left your capital?
      What sent you out of Spain?
      Speak on, and don't delay;
      We have no time to spare;
      Tell me, in terms exact,
      What has happened there.

        _Mur._ Easy, sir, if you please;
      Sire, do not press me so;
      Only let me get breath,
      I'll tell you what I know.
      But, first, send for a chair,
      That some rest we may take
      While I tell you the tale,
      For, indeed, my legs ache.

        _Nap._ Right, for you have grown fat,
      And glad am I to see
      Proof that the airs of Spain
      So well with you agree.

        _Mur._ Sire, you are mistaken;
      But let the matter go,
      For things of more account
      Your majesty should know.
      And, come to what must come,
      Without any more ado--
      For, believe me or not, sire,
      All I tell you is true.

        _Nap._ Why, what has happened now?
      Good Heavens, man, speak out!
      What have you seen in Spain
      To put you so about?

        _Mur._ Great Emperor of France,
      Your force has been in vain;
      Nor did flatteries avail--
      You cannot conquer Spain.
      No notice will they take
      Of your promises of pay,
      And peace, and rank to all,
      And bull-fights every day.

        _Nap._ But, my soldiers, do not they
      In the mountains still remain?

        _Mur._ Yes, captives they remain
      With their general, _Dupon_,
      And the eagles of France;
      And every sword and gun
      Might as well be a distaff,
      For Castaños and his men
      Have settled their account.

        _Nap._ _Peste!_ Because you tell it,
      The tale I must believe;
      From another I would not
      A word of it receive.
      No doubt, in Zaragoza
      Our cause has better speed,
      In humbling them at last
      We surely must succeed.

        _Mur._ All your force is useless;
      The knaves will not submit.
      If you wish to lose France,
      And make an end of it,
      Send it to Zaragoza,
      It will find a bloody tomb,
      And remain there, buried,
      Until the Day of Doom.

        _Nap._ Can nothing, then, be done
      With those troops of Arragon?

        _Mur._ We have none that on them
      Will venture to advance.

        _Nap._ But Moncey's triumphant
      In the kingdom of Valence?

        _Mur._ Sire, he has dropped his ears,
      And slunk away, ashamed;
      Those Valencians have a way
      Their enemies to tame.
      They mount on swiftest steeds,
      And, running a swift career,
      Unhorse the astonished foe
      Before he is aware.

        _Nap._ It seems, then, that maxims,
      And lying, and caution
      Have failed in that country;
      But who had a notion
      That Spain would be equal
      To France in a contest?
      We now can do nothing
      But send for Funest.[177]

        _Mur._ And how can he get here,
      When the Portuguese men,
      With the Spaniards united,
      Have him closely shut in,
      With sentinels stationed?
      No help can avail him,
      For surrender he must,
      When eatables fail him.
      The best thing to do, is
      To yield to their clamor,
      And give back the king
      That Spaniards all honor.
      Perhaps, sire, if--with him
      Appeased and delighted--
      They will let our troops go,
      Your throne may be righted;
      For upset it they will
      At the rate they are making,
      And cut off your head,
      And from me be taking
      My fine dukedom of _Ver_;
      Or, if we escape, sire,
      The fate I am dreading.
      We'll have to sweep chimneys
      Again for a living.
      I've forgotten the trade,
      And lost my dexterity;
      But you, who were master,
      Would mount with celerity.

        _Nap._ Only a pitiful knave
      Such memories would renew.

        _Mur._ Well, sire, if that don't suit,
      I've another thing in view;
      We'll seek a brighter sphere,
      And a foreign city find,
      Where through the streets we'll rove,
      Crying "Sci-i-issors to gri-ind."

"And which did he do, uncle?" asked one--"sweep chimneys or grind
scissors?"

"_He sweep chimneys!_" exclaimed Uncle Bartolo. "Such people always
fall into feather-beds! They carried him to St. Helena--beyond
Gibraltar--where he had it quite comfortable till he died raving,
after the devil had helped him to make that will."

"Here comes Uncle Cohete," said a man who sat by the window.

"Make him a sign to come in," said the person nearest him, in a low
tone.

Uncle Cohete was a simple, good old man, who acted the merry-andrew
for the purpose of obtaining alms for a religious house of which
he was _demandante_.[178] He could mimic to perfection the songs
of all birds; the near and distant barking of the dog, the mewing
of the cat; and so excelled in imitating the peculiar hiss and
crackling of a kite in the air, as to have obtained the nickname of
_cohete_ (kite), by which he was known. He had, besides, a stock of
simple verses, ballads, riddles, and odd scraps of humor, which he
would repeat with inimitable expression and drollery. The sources
from which he drew his supplies could not be told. This, he had
learned in a town on the Llanura; that, in a village of the Sierra;
another at the fireside of the manse. But, in his mimicry of the
birds, they themselves had been the teachers, aided by unusual
flexibility of organs, and great patience and perseverance on the
part of the disciple. For, in all branches--whether important or
insignificant--perseverance yields great results.

It having been intimated to Uncle Cohete that the company wished him
to tell something diverting, he began by saying _The Commandments of
the Rich Man and the Poor Man_--a collection of ironical precepts,
which enjoyed great popularity at that time--as follows:

    "The commandments of the rich man, nowadays, are five,
    namely:

    "The first. Thou shalt have no end of money.

    "The second. Thou shalt despise all the rest of the
    world.

    "The third. Thou shalt eat good beef and good mutton.

    "The fourth. Thou shalt eat flesh on Good Friday.

    "The fifth. Thou shalt drink both white wine and red.

      "These commandments are included in two:
      Let all be for me, and nothing for you.

    "The commandments of the poor man are five, namely:

    "The first. Thou shalt never have any money.

    "The second. Thou shalt be despised by all the world.

    "The third. Thou shalt eat neither beef nor mutton.

    "The fourth. Thou shalt fast, even if it be not Good
    Friday.

    "The fifth. Thou shalt taste neither the white wine nor
    the red.

      "These commandments are included in two:
      Scratch thyself, and bear everything for the love of God."

"Uncle, did not the son of _Roba-Santos_[179] who is heaping money,
give you an alms?" asked one.

"No, he gave me nothing," answered Uncle Cohete.

"Like father, like son," said Uncle Bartolo.

"Next year, uncle, you will get a pile, for 'when the fields have,
the saints have.'"

"Uncle Cohete, take these two coppers, and tell us _The Commandments
of the New Law_," said the man who had called him in:

    "The commandments of the new law are ten, namely:

    "The first. Let there be no money in Spain.

    "The second. Let the world turn upside-down.

    "The third. Let every one play gentleman.

    "The fourth. Let not a single copper come from America.

    "The fifth. Let there be no end of drafting.

    "The sixth. Let the new law come from abroad.

    "The seventh. Let there be fewer people that are not
    wanted.

    "The eighth. Let them distribute biscuits in Navarra.

    "The ninth. Let every one look out for himself.

    "The tenth. Let all be at variance.

      "These commandments are included in two:
      Some say yes, and others say no."

"Tell us a riddle, uncle."

"Fifty ladies and five gallants: the fifty ask fowl; the five ask
bread," said the old man, of whom nature, and the kind of life he
led, had made the personification of ready and good-humored obedience.

"The Rosary! I knew that," said a little boy. "Tell another."

      "The mantle of Lady Leonor
      Sinks in the river, but covers the shore."

"We give it up, uncle."

"It is the snow, gentlemen."

At this moment they were interrupted by the ringing of the sunset
bell, and, all rising, stood with uncovered heads.

"Will you recite the prayer, Uncle Bartolo," said the widower.

Uncle Bartolo repeated the Angelus, adding a Paternoster for the
deceased. And now the grief of the sobbing child in the corner broke
forth in bitter crying.

"Stop that, Lucas!" said his father. "You have been going on in
that way, hic! hic! like an old woman, for two days. You ought to
have gone into the women's room. Let me hear you crying again! You
understand?"

"Let me tell _you_, Juan Garcia," said Uncle Bartolo, "that you are
the first man I ever heard rebuke the tears of a son for his mother!
You see me, with my years, my beard, and my guerilla life; well, I
remember mine, and weep for her still!

"But, uncle, 'frown, and frown again, of a bad son makes a good one.'
Lucas here is a regular _Marcia Fernandez_,[180] brought up in the
folds of his mother's skirts. I must teach him that men resist, and
do not allow themselves to be overcome by tribulations."

Uncle Bartolo shook his head. "Time and not ointment will cure the
patient. If you had died, his mother would not have been the one to
rebuke your son for the tears he shed over you."

       *       *       *       *       *

Juan Garcia continued his former life, abandoning himself with more
liberty to the wicked woman of whom the friends of his dead wife had
spoken at the _condolement_. She was called _La Leona_ in allusion
to her native island of Leon, where she had married a sergeant, who
was afterward sent to serve in America. Like all bad women, _La
Leona_ was much worse than men of the same class, inasmuch as, in the
subtle organization of woman, the delicacy that is given to her for
good turns into a refinement of evil, and her instinctive penetration
into malignant sagacity. Not satisfied with having attracted to
herself Juan Garcia, who possessed a small patrimony, _La Leona_,
impelled by the bitter envy which a lost woman feels toward one who
is honest, undertook to render him indifferent to his wife, and
succeeded not only in this, but also in causing him to ill-treat
and abandon her. Juan Garcia was a weak man, easily subjugated by
those who knew how to obtain an influence over him, and, by way
of compensating himself for this complaisance, very obstinate and
overbearing in his treatment of others. By degrees, it came to pass
that his mistress would not receive him with favor unless he brought
her, as an offering, the relation of some act of coldness or cruelty
to the victim whose only crime was that of affording, by her right,
and by her silent and prudent endurance, the most patent condemnation
of the conduct of these two, a condemnation all the more ignominious
because of the great purity of manners which prevails in country
places. And in order to gain our assertion credit with those who are
disposed to accuse us of partiality for the country people, we hasten
to say that this purity may naturally be attributed to the wholesome
influence of labor, which, in putting indolence to flight, puts to
flight with it the vices it generates, and to the blessed poverty,
which, being without the means of satisfying them, hinders their
birth. Having convinced utilitarians with these reasons, we will add
to them others of our own; namely, the salutary ideas of morality
and rooted principles of honor that many centuries of Catholicism
have fixed in the hearts of these people--principles renewed, in each
successive generation, by the unchanging zeal that is the property of
religion, and that never wearies or grows lukewarm.

Like all other general rules, the above has its exceptions. Juan
Garcia furnished one. His unkindness, united with the grief and shame
his conduct caused her, had certainly hastened the death of poor
Ana, whose last act of affection as a wife, and duty as a Christian,
had been to forgive him. Alas! the soul of the husband was so deeply
mired that even this saintly death could awaken in it neither pity
nor remorse. Not that he was utterly perverse, but his eyes, like
those of many another in this world of error, were covered by one of
those veils which must fall on the day of God's judgment, when the
light of truth will be the first punishment that awaits the willingly
blind.

His boy and girl remained orphaned and neglected, and would have
been entirely forsaken but for that active charity which makes women
constitute themselves fervent protectors of the helpless and severe
judges of the wrong-doer. The wives of Juan's neighbors took care of
the children, and obliged him to feed and clothe them, freely casting
in his face his evil conduct, while, with imperturbable coolness,
they prescribed to him his obligations.

Ah charity!--some proclaim and others comprehend thee; some would
guide thee, and thou guidest others! Why art thou not found in the
palaces that philanthropy builds for thee? Why dost thou appear in
all thy brightness in the dwellings of the poor, delighting thyself
with the widow's farthing? It is because thou wilt be queen and not a
slave!

The children could not be consoled for the death of their mother.
Isolated as they were, all the sentiments of their hearts became
converted into love for each other, and sorrow for their loss.

Lucas, however, who was five years older than his sister, did his
best to enliven and distract her.

"Don't cry so, Lucia," he said to her one night, not long after the
_condolement_. "Mother will not come back for crying, and you make me
cry. What shall I do to amuse you?"

The child made no answer.

"Shall I sing you a romance?"

Lucia inclined her head in token of assent, and the boy sang in his
clear, sweet voice the following ballad:

        Holy Saviour of La Luz,
      Teach a child's tongue how to tell
      A thing that happened in Seville,
      Right, and worthily, and well.
      Of a mother who lived there,
      And two daughters that she had;
      One was humble, mild, and good,
      The other one was proud and bad.
        They marry with two brothers,
      Who are brothers but in name--
      Under the same roof nurtured,
      But in nothing else the same.
      The younger sells his portion,
      And loses the whole in play;
      The elder follows the plough,
      And works in his field all day.
        Then the younger dies, and leaves
      His wife, all alone and poor;
      Her children weep for bread,
      And she seeks her sister's door,
      Praying, "In God's name, sister,
      And for his sweet Mother's sake,
      Give my little children bread,
      And his word in payment take."
      "Go, Mary," cries the sister,
      "Beggar, take yourself away!
      Was my lot better than yours
      Upon our wedding-day?"
        Weeping and broken-hearted,
      The poor mother turns again;
      To know her cause of sorrow
      The neighbors ask in vain.
        Of the parlor of her house
      She had made a room for prayer
      To our Lady of the Beads:
      And now she enters there,
      And, with her little children,
      Before the altar falls
      Of our sweet princess Mary,
      And on her name she calls.
        Now, homeward in the evening
      The good brother turns his feet;
      Finds table spread and waiting,
      And he sits him down to eat.
      He takes a loaf and breaks it,
      But throws it away again,
      For blood runs out of the bread,
      On his hand he sees the stain.
      Then he takes and breaks another,
      But still the red blood falls--
      "Oh! what is this?" astonished,
      To his trembling wife he calls.
      "Tell me, I say! what is it?"
      For to tell she is afraid:
      "In vain to me, this morning.
      For bread my sister prayed!"
      "And she that, without pity,
      To a sister refuses bread,
      To God's Mother doth refuse it,"
      Then the angry husband said.
        Six loaves the young man gathered,
      And in haste to the abode
      Of his sister and her children
      He straightway took the road.
        The window-shutters were closed,
      And locked were windows and doors;
      But the gleam of many lights
      Shone out through the apertures--
      Shone on six angels of God,
      All kneeling upon the floor
      Round six bodies of mother and children
      That would never hunger more.
        "Farewell, my soul's dear sister,
      And sweet nephews of my heart!
      Though gold I have, and plenty,
      I would gladly give my part
      For yours in the blessed country
      Where sorrow is all forgot,
      And the labor of life exchanged
      For the eternal better lot!"

"And did she let her sister starve to death?" asked the child, her
eyes refilling from her already surcharged heart.

"Yes, yes; she was a good-for-nothing; but don't cry, Lucia, a story
isn't a thing that ever happened."

"If it had never happened, they would not have put it in the
romance," said the little girl.

"They made it up," replied Lucas. "Don't you believe it, dear. When
I am a man and can earn, the least piece of bread I may have, I must
divide with my heart's little sister. You know that before mother
died she put you in my care, and I made her a promise never to
forsake you."

"And will you keep it?"

"So may God give me his glory!"

"And if you ever forget it, I am to sing you this romance, to put you
in mind of what you say now."

"That is so; you must learn it." And the boy set himself to teach his
sister the romance.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[160] A house sometimes contains two or three suites of apartments
for distinct families. Each one forms a habitation.

[161] 28th of August, St. Augustine; 4th of October, St. Francis.

[162] _La Leona_, the lioness.

[163] _Azacan_, water-carrier, said of a servant or very laborious
person.

[164] _Los Usias_, the You Sirs. That is to say, grand folks that
must be treated to the _Usted_ (you), instead of the _tu_ (thou) of
common people.

[165] _Jabeque_, a clumsy three-masted vessel used in the
Mediterranean.

[166] Arturo.

[167] Magpie.

[168] A common dish on the tables of the country people.

[169] Offscouring.

[170] Partisans, or party.

[171] The patron of Spain.

[172] Brigands.

[173] To have misgivings as to the result of anything.

[174] _Tactica_, tactics.

[175] _Mala_, bad; _parte_, part; name given by the Spanish soldiers
to Bonaparte.

[176] Murat, Duke of Berg.

[177] _Funesto._ Nickname given by the Spanish soldiers to Junot.

[178] One who asks alms for charitable purposes.

[179] Rob the saints.

[180] A girl-boy.




THE GOOD GERARD OF COLOGNE.

BY RUDOLF OF EMS, VASSAL AT MONTFORT (THIRTEENTH CENTURY).

COMPILED AFTER THE GERMAN OF CARL SIMROCK.


I.

In the new cathedral at Magdeburg the bells were ringing for the
first time. A large crowd gathered to witness the consecration of the
church, founded and richly endowed by the Emperor Otto the Great. He
went up the aisle before all the people, not, as was then the custom,
to lay down gifts at the new altar of God, but, with erect brow, he
stood, and thus he spoke: "There is no gift in my hand for thee, O
Lord; but when I lift up my eyes, whatever I behold around me is my
gift to thee! This church I built for the glory of thy name, and I
endowed it and made it so great that the sons of kings think it an
honor to bow to its prince-bishop, and serve him. The heathen that
troubled thy people, see I conquered them with my strong arm--the
Wends, the Sarbs, and the Hungarians, they bowed their heads to my
sword, and their knees to thy glory; and I made thy name great in
all the pagan lands, and erected churches and bishoprics to thy
honor. And now show me to-day, O my Lord, that thou hast seen my
foot going in thy path, thou, who wilt give glory from heaven to him
who spreads thy glory on earth." Thus the emperor spoke before all
the people. And lo! a voice sounded from heaven as the voice of an
angel in anger, and it spoke with a voice like thunder rolling in
the mountains: "Otto, king on earth, see, the King in heaven had put
a chair by his side for thee to sit upon it, and thou hast despised
it in thy vanity; he had prepared for thee a crown of glory, and
thou hast taken the crown of pride that made angels fall. He has
heard with little pleasure the thoughts of thy heart, that asks for
the highest place. Know, that place is for him who most serves God
in humility and purity of heart; that is, for the good Gerard, the
merchant in Cologne, whose name is written in the book of life. And
now go and learn from him what is agreeable to God, and then confess
that thy glory is vain and thy doing but little. But know, that not
readily will he speak to thee; well would he lay down his life rather
than let the fame of his righteousness sound up to God by words
from his own mouth." When Otto had heard this, he bowed his head in
shame and was humbled. He mounted his good horse, and with three
of his knights rode over to Cologne. Among the citizens who came to
greet their emperor in the vast hall, Otto saw one, a tall man with
a long white beard and the step of a youth; and when he asked the
bishop who sat by his side who that man was, he received in answer:
"That is the good Gerard, the richest merchant in Cologne." Then the
emperor spoke to all the assembled people: "I came here to ask your
advice, as I am in great need of it. But I was counselled, and even
commanded, not to speak but to one of you, and for that one I choose
thee, O Gerard! Thou seemest to me rich in wisdom and experience."
And Gerard answered, bowing before the emperor: "Shall I go alone to
give my advice, while there are so many worthier ones here?" But all
the people said: "O king! thy choice is good; there is no one in this
hall his equal in wisdom." So the emperor took Gerard by the hand,
and led him to a chamber near by, and locked the door after him, and
they sat down on one couch, Gerard by Otto's side. Then Otto said:
"Gerard, it was to see thee that I came here; pray tell me, how did
it happen that the name 'Good' was given to thee? I would fain like
to know." "O great king!" answered Gerard, "I do not know myself
what that means; there are so many Gerards here; people only gave me
that name to distinguish me from them." "Gerard, thou art deceiving
me!" the emperor called out; but Gerard answered: "Oh! no, great
king, I should deceive thee if I spoke otherwise. Never did I merit
that name, and it was often a burden to me; because, while the world
called me 'the Good,' it reminded me how seldom I did what pleased
God. Often do I send the poor man away with a mean gift, whilst God
gives me riches; I give him sour beer and black bread, I give him
an old gown, whilst many a new one I had, and would not have missed
them. I always have liked to go to church where the service was
shortest, and when I had once prayed with my whole soul, I thought
that would do for half a year. Therefore, O king! do not ask me what
I have done to deserve that high name." The emperor said: "Gerard,
thou must give me a better answer, for I have sure knowledge that
thou hast done a great deed for God's sake, and I came to hear the
account of it from thy own mouth; therefore speak!" "Oh! spare me,"
called out the good man, "spare me, most gracious king!" But Otto
replied: "No, no! thou only awakenest my impatience, and I tell thee
thou must yield to me at the end, if even much against thy will!"
Then prayed the good man in his heart: "O God! look at thy servant!
My king is angry with me, and I cannot resist him any longer. So if
I reckon with thee, O Lord! and praise myself for the little good I
ever did, do not thou turn away thy grace from me, for what I say, I
do it much against my will." And presently he threw himself at the
emperor's feet, saying: "Ten thousand pounds of silver I have in my
cellar, take it and spare me the answer!" "Gerard," said the rich
emperor, "I thought thou wert wiser. Such a speech only excites my
curiosity. And I will tell thee, thou canst reveal me everything,
and it will be no sin to thee--so I swear before God." Then the good
Gerard said, arising from his knees, and sitting down: "God knows my
heart; he knows that, when I do now as my king commands me to do, my
heart is full of grief, and vanity is far from it."


II.

THE GOOD GERARD'S STORY.

"When my father died, he left no small fortune to me, his only heir.
But as I was a merchant, I thought to double and double again my
possessions, and cause my son to be called 'the rich Gerard,' as his
fathers had been called before him. So I left him such fortune as
would be full enough for him, and took all the rest, fifty thousand
pounds of silver, and carried it to my ship, together with food for
three years' voyage. Experienced sailors were in my pay, and my
clerk was with me, to write my accounts and read my prayers. So I
went to Russia, where I found sables in profusion, and to Prussia's
rich amber strand, and from there, by the Sea of the Middle, to the
East, and there I took in exchange silk and woven goods from Damax
and Ninive; and well I thought a threefold gain should be mine. Then
my heart began to long for wife and child, and with great joy I told
the mariners to turn the ship homeward. But a storm arose, and water
and wind were fighting for twelve days and twelve nights, and threw
my ship to an unknown land, where a beach gave us shelter. When the
sun shone again, and the sky looked clear, I saw villages and hamlets
and fertile fields as far as my eyes could reach, and near the sea
a large city with pinnacles and high walls. We went to the port,
and I found it full of merchandise, a rich and stately place, not
unlike the old Cologne. I went on land, for I saw the governor of
the city coming to view the goods in the port, and many a knight and
vassal rode by his side; and I thought to go up to him and ask his
protection. But when I came near him, he approached me with a quick
step, and, greeting me with his hand, he thus spake: 'Welcome the
first one who comes to my market! Thou art my guest, stranger! I see
thou comest from far off, perhaps from the land of the Christians,
who seldom come here, in false fear that I would harm them. But be of
good cheer! I do not harm the merchant, nor need I covet his goods,
for my land is rich, and all the gold and precious stones that it has
in its mountains are mine, and the pearls in the sea, and many a rich
vessel that the storm throws on our coast.' Well was I astonished at
such a greeting; but I accepted gladly; and the governor, Stranamur
by name, gave me the best house, and took care of me that nothing
might harm me. Again and again did he show me his love, and soon
friendship and confidence reigned between us. Presently, he wanted me
to show him the treasures of my ship, and I let it be done readily.
I saw him wonder at their splendor, and with good cheer he said:
'Gerard, I tell thee, thou hast brought riches to this land so great
that nobody can buy them. But I will show thee my treasure now, and
then, if it so please thee, we will exchange; for in this land my
treasure is of no value, while in the land of the Christians it might
bring thee at least a twentyfold gain.' And I answered: 'To seek
gain is the merchant's duty. I did show thee my treasure; now let
me see thine.' Then my host led me by the hand to a hall, and as I
entered with a cheerful mind, hoping to behold the riches of India,
gold and spices, I found the place all empty of joy and filled with
but misery. Twelve young knights were lying here in chains so heavy
that their weight pulled them down to the low couches, and, though
grief and want had disfigured their beauty, I saw they were of noble
blood and sons of high lords, born to govern the world. Then my host
beckoned me to the next hall, where I found again twelve knights in
chains, but old and pale, with venerable figure, and hair and beard
silver-white. Then my host led me away by the hand to the third
hall, and said: 'Behold my most precious goods!' Well, I found there
goods great in riches and beauty, for fifteen lovely maidens were
what he called the precious merchandise. And my heart pained me as
I beheld them, for their loveliness and gentle mind shone amid the
prison walls like stars in the night; and I saw one like their queen,
a moon among the stars. But Stranamur led me away and said: 'Thou
didst behold my goods; shall we exchange? Thou mayest easily get a
rich ransom for each of them, more than one hundred thousand pounds
of silver. In England they were born; William, their king, sent
them over to Norway to bring him home his bride, King Reinemund's
daughter, Irene, whom thou hast seen. Coming home, a storm threw them
on my coast, and so they were mine by right, for after the custom
of this land the strand is mine. And I offer these knights to thee,
together with the fifteen maidens, that thou mayest give me the
treasures I saw on thy ship.' I had good reason to be astonished at
such an offer, for I saw clearly it would be giving my goods for mere
blanks, and so I asked the governor to let me please consider till
the next morning. And when I came to my house I sat down thinking,
and though my heart told me to help the prisoners in their misery,
there was a voice in my mind saying: 'Do not give away the earnings
of thy life for a mere idea'; and well would I have passed that night
without coming to an end, if God in his goodness and grace had not
given his advice in my heart. For I fell asleep, and in my sleep I
heard a voice of God's angel, who spoke to me these words: 'Awake,
Gerard, God's anger is calling thee! Did he not say in his mercy,
"What thou givest to the poorest of my brethren, thou givest unto
me"? What thou givest to the needy ones, thou lendest to the Lord;
and doubt in him is great sin to thee!' Then I awoke and fell on my
knees, and thanked God that he had given me shame and repentance in
my heart, and humbled me so as to save me from sin. The next morning
my host met me at the gate, and with anxiety he asked what it was
my wish to do. And I answered: 'I am willing to make exchange with
thee, O Stranamur! if thou allowest me one thing: give back to the
prisoners their ship and all they brought on it, and give them food
and mariners, and whatever they need to go home.' And the governor
answered: 'Dost thou think me a thief, O Gerard? I thought, friend,
thou knewest me better. Not one penny's worth will I keep from the
prisoners, and theirs shall be whatever is needed for a safe and
speedy voyage.' After that he gave me his hand, and we changed thus
mine and thine. Then the prisoners were told of what had happened,
and they were clothed as became them, and refreshed, and when they
beheld me, their thanks and tears were such that my eyes overflowed,
even against my will. And I saw the women's great beauty, and Irene
their queen, and though the earthly crown was taken from her, there
was the crown of beauty and loveliness on her brow. Then my clerk
read prayers, and we went to sea; the right wind blew in our sails,
and bore us quickly outward. When we came near the coast of England,
I spoke to the knights: 'Tell me, who of you were born in England,
that they may go on their way home now.' And they answered: 'From
Norway only came Queen Irene with two of her maidens; all the rest of
us were born in England.' I said to the knights: 'Go home, then, with
my blessings, noble lords! and if I did what pleased you, think of me
with a friendly heart. Let King William know, and also Reinemund of
Norway, that Queen Irene is in my house and under my protection, and
that I am ready and willing to give her up whenever they claim her.
When I send my messengers to you, pay them back, O knights! what I
left for your sake in the strange land of the heathen, if it so is
convenient to you. Then they thanked me so that I had to hide from
their embraces; and we parted with many tears; and they went their
way, I mine.

"Soon I was home again. My wife and son welcomed me gladly and with
thanksgivings, and after I had told them all, they led Irene to my
house. And Queen Irene lived in my house like one of us for many a
month, and my wife loved her, and all the women of my household and
friendship, and she taught them many a fine art, such as to embroider
with gold and thread of silver and pearl. And God gave his blessing
to my trade, and I prospered. But every day, Irene's loveliness grew
more lovely, and when I saw her so gentle and smiling, I forgot my
losses, and my joy was greater than seventy-fold gain would have
made it. So passed a year, and no message came from Reinemund, nor
from William, the King of England, and I beheld with sorrow that my
queen's mind was grieved, though she hid her tears from our eyes.
That I took to my heart, and said to myself, 'I bought our sweet
queen free from great pain, and now I must see her in greater grief.
There is no one here kindred to her, and, when I am gone, who is
there to be her friend and protector? King William is dead, and so is
Reinemund, the King of Norway, and Irene, their queen, will die of
grief for them! Therefore I spoke to her one day, and I asked her to
listen graciously, and then I said thus: 'Thou must know, O queen!
that there is nothing that gives me so much trouble than the thought
what one day shall become of thee when I am no more. It is clear now,
sorry as I am for it, that thy friends are dead, therefore, I think
it our duty to counsel wisely what is best for thy future, O queen!
As he is considered a wise man who tries to forget what fortune took
from him, so I advise thee, O my daughter! to choose for a husband
one from among my family, that is, my son, as whose wife honor and
ample fortune will not be wanting to thee.' At that, Irene answered
and spoke to me: 'O dear father! I know me no better adviser than
thee in this world; so I will do whatever pleases thee. Only let
me wait one year longer; if till then no tidings have come from
any friends and kindred, thy wish shall be mine!' But the year was
soon past, and no tidings had reached us, neither from England nor
from Norway; and so Irene the queen was to be the merchant's wife.
I ordered the wedding to be prepared with the greatest splendor,
and my mind's only thought was to boast with my riches; and I asked
to the feast many a rich merchant, and nobles and dukes, and our
prince the bishop. So when Pentecost came, that was to be the day of
the wedding, the bishop stood up before the altar, and eleven noble
squires knelt down before him, and the twelfth one, who was Gerard
my son, and the bishop blessed their swords, and they arose as noble
lords and knights. My eye rested on him, and I saw he was happy; he
broke his lance in honor of his bride; he watched for the bell that
should call him again to the altar of God, there to receive Irene
as his wife: what could there be to make his happiness greater and
to hinder him from drinking the cup of bliss? But lo, I beheld one
standing far aside, a stranger with a pale face and his eyes full of
tears; he gazed at Irene, my daughter, and he shuddered, and his arm
was around a column that he might not fall. He was a young man of
great beauty, and his skin was fine and white, but his beard gray,
and his dress that of a beggar. As I saw him so full of woe and
tears, I went up to him, and I asked him the cause of his grief, that
perhaps I might give help and make joy and happiness come back to his
mind. But he would not speak. At last, as I pressed him very much, he
said to me these words: 'Such as thou doest see me here with my hair
gray before the time, I am William, King of England. I went to sea
to meet my bride coming from Norway, where I had sent twelve maidens
and twenty-four knights to escort her over to me. But a storm arose
and threw my ship against the rocks while I was already in sight of
them, the tempest carried me to the shore and I was thus saved, but
not a word I ever heard of the knights, or the maidens, or of Irene
my bride, the King of Norway's daughter. For years and years I have
wandered about in search of her, with my heart full of despair and my
hair and beard gray, till at last I found her to-day, the bride of
another man. What shall I tell thee more? My soul and body are hers
whom I love, and for her sake I will now give them up into death!'
When I heard these words from my guest, him who destroyed all my
joys, I said unto him: 'The Lord has done great things; honor and
fortune he might still give thee back; wait here awhile, and be of
good cheer!' And I sent my valet to him, to attend to all his needs
and wants, but I went to my prince the bishop and told him the wonder
God had shown to us, and asked him to help me with my son Gerard and
teach him a Christian's duty. So I called my son away from the side
of his bride, and after he had heard the tale, so full of marvel, the
bishop asked him: 'Wilt thou then separate, Gerard, what before God
is united?' Then he answered us, and he said: 'What do you think of
me? Shall I give up my love and happiness and rest and peace?' But
the bishop spoke: 'Yes, my son, thou shalt!' And my child began to
cry at these words, and I cried with him, and he put his arms around
my neck and said, 'My father, then let it be so!' and my heart felt
joy at these words. Shall I tell thee what my heart felt when I saw
King William greet his bride? I am old as thou art, O emperor! but
I know not without jealousy thou wouldst have beheld it. And in my
heart I thanked the God of goodness who had given so wise counsel in
my mind that my blessings now were greater than what gold or silver
could ever have bought for me. After that I filled my ship and took
them over to England, and great was the joy of the four-and-twenty
knights on beholding their king and queen, and of the whole people,
and great were their thanks to me, and only with great pain could
I hinder them from bestowing all their riches on me, and making me
a prince and a great man among them. But I will not repeat to thee
all they meant to do to me, and the praises they gave me; for God
knows, in all my life I cannot deserve them. And when I came home,
the people made much of me, and called me 'the good'; though thou
knowest now, as well as I do, that I am not good. It was only by the
angel's voice that my doubts were taken, from me; I was full of fear
to lose my goods, and weak. Besides, I am a sinner and am proud and
vain, so that I have been praising myself before thee, O emperor!
while, couldst thou see my heart, many a fault thou wouldst observe
within."


III.

Before Gerard had finished speaking, the emperor's heart grew large
within him and made his eyes overflow; for tears are a blessing
which God sends from heaven. He felt shame and repentance, and these
two re-created his heart, and his mind was healed from all false
glory. And he said: "Gerard, I tell thee, better a good deal than
silence is what thou hast made known to me; for my heart was sick
with vainglory, and pride overgrew the good deed. I had built a great
house to the Lord, and the thought of that poisoned my heart, so
that it asked for reward. But what I asked has turned against me as
a punishment, for no heart is pure that seeks for glory only. When
I then praised myself at my good deed, God sent me to thee to learn
true humility and charity. Truly thou art good; for thy heart was
not moved by the praise of this world. Thou hast given thy goods for
poor prisoners, thou hast taken the wife from thy son, and refused
the riches of England in humility and charity, only for the sake of
the Lord thy God. Well, my ride to thee has brought me benefit. But
thou, O Gerard! pray the Lord to have mercy upon him that prides in
vainglory; pray for thy emperor to our God in heaven."




EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT DISCOVERIES.

FROM THE CORRESPONDANT.


    PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON THE ANTIQUITY OF EGYPTIAN
    CIVILIZATION.

The most striking fact respecting the Egyptian monarchy is its
antiquity. "Forty centuries look down upon you from these pyramids,"
were the sublime words of Bonaparte; but they do not express enough.
The progress of archæological science shows that the reign of the
Pharaohs began more than three thousand years before Christ. M.
Bunsen gives the date as 4245 B.C., and M. Mariette 5004, but with
some qualifications that should be mentioned. "Egyptian chronology,"
says he, "presents difficulties which no one, as yet, has
surmounted.... To all dates before the time of Psammetichus I. (665
B.C.), it is impossible to give anything but approximations, which
become more and more uncertain as we recede.... This uncertainty
increases in proportion as we go back from the present age; so
that, according to the methods of computation, there may be two
thousand years' difference in assigning the date of the Egyptian
monarchy."[181]

While fully admitting the reasonable qualifications of the learned
director of the Egyptian antiquities, it is no less certain, from
the discoveries already made, that the reign of the Pharaohs extends
back about thirty centuries before the Christian era.

Another characteristic of this ancient nation, which is no less
remarkable, is that it manifests all the signs of civilization
from the beginning. "It is a phenomenon worthy of the most serious
attention," says Champollion-Figeac, "that Egypt possessed in those
remote ages all the civil, religious, and military institutions
indispensable to the prosperity of a great nation, and all the
enjoyments resulting from the perfection of the arts, the advantages
assured by the authority of the civil and religious laws, the
culture of the sciences, and a profound sentiment of the dignity and
destination of man."[182]

"Egyptian civilization manifests itself to us fully developed from
the earliest ages, and succeeding ones, however numerous, taught it
little more,"[183] says M. Mariette.

"What is most extraordinary about this mysterious civilization is
that it had no infancy.... Egypt, in this respect as in so many
others, is an exception to the laws to which the Indo-European and
Semitic races have accustomed us. It does not begin with myths,
heroic exploits, and barbarism."[184] The author we have just quoted
sought in vain, with all his mind and learning, for the cause of
this strange phenomenon. "Egypt," says he, "is another China, mature
and almost decrepit from its birth, and in its monuments and history
there is something at once childlike and old."

This ingenious explanation excites a smile, but not conviction.
Rather than admit revelation--that is to say, the intervention
of the divine agency in the creation of man and the formation of
primitive nations--many learned men of our day prefer to take refuge
in the most singular and inadmissible theories. According to them,
human society must "commence with myths and barbarism," and man
himself with the savage nature of the brutes. But they are forced to
acknowledge that Egypt is a decided exception to this theory.

"The gigantic labors of the Suez Canal in removing the immense
accumulations of sand, so often amassed as if to preserve the
past history of the world, have not revealed a single vestige of
uncivilized men who, before the deluge, were scattered over the rest
of the earth."[185]

To resolve the problem of ancient Egyptian civilization, we propose
an explanation more conformable to the traditions and the dignity
of the human race. It is true, this explanation is not new, for
it was evident to the sages of pagan times a long time before it
was fully unfolded by Christian philosophers. Socrates taught that
"the ancients, better than we and nearer the gods, had transmitted
by tradition the sublime knowledge they had received from them."
Plato adds that "the earliest of mankind, issuing from the hands of
the gods, must have known them as well as we know our own fathers,
and that it is truly impossible not to believe the testimony of the
children of the gods."

What the wise men of Greece perceived through the thick veil of
paganism, we behold clearly by the light of Christianity and the
Holy Scriptures. It seems to us a simple thing to believe that the
Egyptian nation, the first founded, not many centuries after the
deluge, must have been organized according to the principles of the
national law of which the descendants of Noah had not yet lost the
tradition. "If we believe in the truth of the Scriptural accounts,"
says an illustrious promoter of social reforms in England,[186]
"we must also believe that when the families descended from Ham
and Japheth began their long migrations, they bore with them the
religious traditions they possessed in common with the children of
Shem.

"As to those who will not accept the testimony of the book which,
to give it the most unpretending of its august titles, is the most
ancient and most venerable document of human history, we could
reply that the reasoning still remains the same. The progress of
ethnological and philological researches furnishes us with evident
proofs of a continued migration of the Touranian and Aryan races
towards the north and west from places necessarily undefined, but
certainly from the vicinity of the nomad patriarchs. On the other
hand, nothing shows that their traditions have a different source
from that given in the Book of Genesis--the three divisions of Noah's
family. If, then, everything seems to demonstrate the intimate
connection of these primitive races with the Semitic tribes, how
could the descendants of Ham and Japheth have left behind the
irreligious traditions when, for the first time, they left their
brethren?"

The descendants of Ham, ancestors of the first Egyptians, doubtless
preserved, with their religious traditions, the moral principles
that guarantee the existence and perpetuity of domestic life, and
the notions of the arts indispensable to its comfort. "With the
human race," says Bossuet, "Noah preserved the arts; not only those
necessary to life which man knew from the beginning, but those
subsequently invented. The first arts which man learned, apparently
from his Creator, were agriculture, the duties of pastoral life, the
fabrication of clothing, and perhaps the construction of habitations.
Therefore we do not see the rudiments of these arts in the East,
in those regions whence the human race was dispersed. This is why
everything springs from those lands, always inhabited, where the
fundamental arts remained. The knowledge of God and memories of
creation are there preserved."[187]

The ruins of the Tower of Babel still show to what a degree of
advancement the art of building had arrived, and the details given us
in the Bible about the construction of the ark display an amount of
nautical knowledge which must have been transmitted to the skilful
boatmen of the Nile and the bold navigators of ancient Phœnicia.

We will not extend these preliminary observations, which we think
throw sufficient light on the origin of Egyptian civilization, the
incontestable antiquity of which is as enigmatical as that of the
Sphynx to the astonished eyes of the modern Œdipus. A truly learned
man, who shows himself by his _conférences_ in the Rue Bonaparte
thoroughly conversant with the discoveries of contemporaneous
Egyptology, and who is not ashamed to seek light from revelation
as well as from science, has resolved the problem in the following
terms: "There is not, in the first ages of the Egyptian monarchy,
the least trace of the rude beginnings of a nation in its infancy.
Indeed, we should not forget that this country never passed through
the savage state, and that, if the truths revealed to the patriarchs
were adulterated by the race of Ham, they still retained sufficient
light not to remain satisfied with material enjoyments alone."[188]

Let us now endeavor to penetrate, by the light of these principles,
as far as we can into the labyrinth of Egyptian antiquities.

       *       *       *       *       *


BOOK FIRST.

THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.

I.

DOMESTIC REGULATIONS.

The institutions which are the safeguards of family life and of
property are essential to society and the perpetuity of a nation,
and these foundations of the social life seem to have been as firmly
established among the ancient Egyptians as their own pyramids. The
sacredness of the family tie was the result of unity of marriage and
respect to parents, and its perpetuity was assured by the rights of
primogeniture, which were universally admitted from the royal family
down to that of the most humble laborer. This was the fundamental
principle of family life and of society. Therefore we see Pharaoh in
the Holy Scriptures resist all the plagues God sent upon Egypt for
the deliverance of the Israelites; but when the first-born of the
Egyptians were smitten in one night, the king yielded at once, for
the whole nation felt that a blow had been given to the very source
of its existence.

The Egyptian monuments of every age prove that the paternal authority
was universally regarded with great respect. On a great number of
stelæ collected by M. Mariette in the museum of Boulak are these
words:

"Oblation in honor of the head of the house." (Here follows the name.)

"The religious laws of Egypt obliged families on certain days in the
year to present offerings to deceased parents. One stela, consecrated
to the memory of Entef, who lived at the beginning of the twelfth
dynasty, is only a representation of one of these festivals. Entef
is seated beside his wife. His sons and daughters present themselves
before him. Some are saying the prescribed prayers; others bringing
food and perfumes. The last scene depicted is interesting from
the variety of representations. Besides parts of animals already
sacrificed, the servants are bringing live animals."[189]

We may judge of the sentiments of the ancient Egyptians with regard
to paternal authority by the following passages from an ancient
document, the authenticity of which has never been contested:

"The son who receives his father's advice will live to be old.
Beloved by God is obedience. Disobedience is hated by God. The
obedience of a son to his father is a joy,... he is beloved by his
father, and his renown is on the lips of the living who walk the
earth. The rebellious son sees knowledge in ignorance, and virtue
in vice; he daily commits all kinds of frauds with impunity, and
lives thereby as if he were dead. What wise men consider death is
his daily life. He keeps on his way laden with maledictions. A son
docile in the service of God will be happy in consequence of his
obedience...."[190]

We cannot help recognizing in this precious document the moral ideas
of primitive times, the tradition of which is so faithfully preserved
in the Bible. The fourth precept of the Decalogue is found here
almost literally: "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest
be long-lived upon the land."

Upon a mortuary stela described by M. Mariette in his _Notice du
Musée de Boulaq_ (No. 44, p. 72), Maï, the defunct, is seen receiving
the homage of the members of his family. "One of the sons of Maï is
called Men-Nefer. For some unknown reason, his name is erased from
the list of the family, and, in fact, his whole image is hammered
down. Another son likewise incurred this mark of infamy, which is
only given to the proper name of the personage."

Respect to parents naturally leads to that for the aged. "The
Egyptians have this custom in common with the Lacedæmonians," says
Herodotus; "young men, when they meet their elders, turn aside for
them to pass; at their approach they rise from their seats."

The obligations of parents towards their children were strictly
enjoined in ancient Egypt, as is evident from a curious passage from
Diodorus, which, at the same time, shows how the manners and laws
favored the fecundity of marriage, the only source of a robust and
numerous population:

"Parents are obliged to rear all their offspring in order to increase
the population, which is regarded as the chief source of the
prosperity of a kingdom.... They provide for the support of their
children at little expense, and with incredible frugality. They give
them very simple food: the stems of the papyrus which can be roasted,
roots and stems of palustrine plants, sometimes raw, sometimes boiled
and roasted, and as all children go unshod in that temperate climate,
the parents do not estimate the expense of a child before the age of
puberty to be more than twenty drachmæ (a little less than twenty
francs).

"The children of the common people are taught the trade of their
parents, which they are to practise for life, as we have remarked.
Those who are initiated into the arts are alone charged with teaching
others to read."

So simple and natural a system of education must have singularly
favored the fruitfulness of marriage among the masses, and the
number of children was not less among the aristocracy. We see from
the simplest monuments, where the funeral honors rendered to the
head of a family by all his children are painted on a wood panel,
or sculptured on a slab of calcareous stone, that their number,
including both sexes, amounted to eight or a dozen, or even more, and
the more elaborate monuments, indicating distinguished families and
the upper classes, render the same testimony as to the large number
of children in each family--as in the sculpture at Thebes, which
gives a list of nine male children of Rameses Meiamoun, and a greater
number of daughters. In this respect the ancient Egyptian nation
differed from people of modern times.[191]

The inequality that weighed so heavily upon woman among ancient
nations is not found in Egypt. "Women, on the contrary," says M.
Mariette, "held a prominent position in a family. The rights they
inherited were not absorbed in those of their husbands, and they were
transmitted intact to their children. At certain epochs, the family
monuments often named the mother to the exclusion of the father.
In the inscriptions of the ancient empire, conjugal affection is
frequently expressed in a delicate and touching manner." And it has
been remarked, and with reason, that the women who played a great
_rôle_ in the history of the ancient dynasties enjoyed in private
life a liberty of action quite foreign to the manners of most
Oriental nations.[192]

"It is by the social position of woman," says M. de Bonald, "that we
can always determine the nature of the political institutions of a
people. In Egypt, where we find the type of the social organization,
the law submitted the husband to his wife in honor of Isis, which
means that this dependence was inspired by religion and morals,
rather than commanded by law. Neither divorce nor polygamy was known
there."[193]

The elevated condition of woman in Egypt is attested by the
monuments, which show her sharing with her husband in the direction
of the family.[194]

Champollion-Figeac has given us curious details respecting the
private customs of wealthy families, the garb and toilet of the
women and children, and the peculiar characteristics of the Egyptian
race:

"The head was habitually uncovered; the hair curled or plaited; a
woollen mantle was sometimes worn over the tunic, and laid aside
when they entered the temples. The women, besides the tunic, wore
ample vestments of linen or cotton, with large sleeves, plain or
striped, white, or of some uniform color. Their hair was artistically
arranged. Their heads were ornamented with bandeaux, and their ears
and hands with rings. A light slipper was worn on the feet. They
went out with uncovered faces, accompanied by some of the numerous
female servants of the house. Dressed also in ample robes of striped
cloth, these servants had their hair braided and hanging down over
the shoulders. They also wore a large apron, like their dress, with
no jewels or other ornaments, and held themselves in a respectful
posture in the presence of the lady of the house. Girls issuing from
childhood were dressed like their mothers, with the exception of the
ornaments of the head, and children of both sexes wore ear-rings as
their only ornament (or dress) for the first five or six years.

"They were a fine race, tall in stature, generally somewhat slender,
and long-lived, as is proved by the sepulchral inscriptions of those
over eighty years of age. But exceptions to these general statements
are found among the Egyptians as among other nations. We only make a
general statement of the principal features of their physical nature,
according to the monuments, in accord with historical accounts.
Herodotus, who saw Egypt before its complete decadence, declares
that, next to the Lybians, the Egyptians were the healthiest of
people. The great number of mummies of men and women which have been
opened corroborate this testimony."[195]

Bossuet, in his _Discours sur l'Histoire universelle_, gives a bold
sketch of the physiognomy of the Egyptians, and shows the result of
their manly training: "These wise Egyptians," says he, "studied the
regimen that produces solid minds, robust bodies, fruitful women, and
vigorous children. Consequently, the people increased in number and
strength. The country was naturally healthy, but philosophy taught
them that nature wishes to be aided. There is an art of forming
the body as well as the mind.[196] This art, which we have lost
through our indifference, was well known to the ancients, and Egypt
acquired it. For this laudable end, the inhabitants had recourse to
exercise and frugality.... Races on foot, horseback, and in chariots
were practised with admirable skill in Egypt. There were not finer
horsemen in the world than the Egyptians.

"When Diodorus tells us they rejected wrestling as giving a dangerous
and factitious strength, he had reference to the excessive feats of
the athletes, which Greece herself, though she crowned the victorious
wrestler in her games, disapproved of as unsuitable for free persons;
and Diodorus himself informs us that the Mercury of the Egyptians
invented the rules as well as the art of forming the body.

"We must similarly modify the statement of the same author respecting
music. That which the Egyptians despised, according to him, as
tending to lessen courage, was doubtless soft, effeminate music,
which only excites to pleasure and false tenderness. For the
Egyptians, so far from despising music of an elevated character,
whose noble accords exalt the mind and heart, ascribed its invention,
according to Diodorus himself, to their Mercury, as well as the
gravest of musical instruments.[197]

"Among the varied exercises which formed a part of the military
education, and are sculptured on the numerous monuments, are found
complete gymnastic rules. Nothing could be more varied than the
attitudes and positions of the wrestlers, attacking, defending
themselves, receding and advancing by turns, bending down or turning
over, rising up again, and triumphing over the opponents by dint of
strength, art, and skill. In these exercises the wrestlers only wore
a large girdle, that supported and favored their efforts."

A fortunate discovery by M. Mariette enables us to complete the
portrait of the Egyptian race. A statue found in the Necropolis of
Sakkarah, near Memphis, represents a person standing wearing a plain
wig,[198] the arms close to the body. He is walking, with the left
leg advanced. "This fine monument," says M. Mariette, "is at once
a perfect model of the Fellah of the middle provinces of Egypt and
a specimen of the works of art in the ancient kingdom. The person
represented is tall and slender, with a small hand, the eyes wide
open, the nose short and full, the lips somewhat thick, but pleasant
in expression, and the cheeks plump. The breadth of the shoulders is
remarkable. The breast is full, but, like the race itself, the hips
are small, and the lean and muscular limbs seem formed for racing."

II.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE PEOPLE.

The Egyptians, the first to organize a truly civilized society,
were divided into distinct classes, in which the occupations of the
different families were hereditary. The two dominant classes were the
sacerdotal and military. Inferior to them were the agriculturists,
shepherds, merchants, artisans, and boatmen, on whom devolved the
cultivation of the land, the care of the flocks, commerce, the
trades, the means of communication and transportation on the Nile,
and the canals that covered the land.[199]

To understand the strength and permanence of this organization, we
must revert to its origin. The social institutions of ancient nations
in the beginning depended essentially on the family--the foundation
of all society. The children were naturally inclined to follow
the occupations of their parents. The necessity of providing for
their own livelihood as soon as they were able, and the facility of
working under the direction of their fathers, induced them to embrace
the occupation to which they had been accustomed from infancy. It
was thus that not only agriculture, but all the arts, trades, and
sciences, became hereditary in the family. Once having a means of
subsistence, it was natural to endeavor to preserve it. Identity of
interests drew together those who followed the same trades, which
led to the formation of corporations united by ties of blood and
similarity of pursuits.

The Egyptians were probably the first nation to systematically apply
these principles. "They were not allowed," says Bossuet, "to be
useless to the country. The law assigned every one his employment,
which was transmitted from father to son. They could not have two
professions, or change the one they had; but then every employment
was honored. There must be some pursuits and some people of a more
elevated condition, as eyes are needed in the body, but their
brilliancy does not make them despise the feet or the baser parts.
Thus, among the Egyptians, the priests and warriors were particularly
honored; but all trades, even the lowest, were esteemed. It was
considered culpable to despise citizens whose labors, whatever they
might be, contributed to the public welfare. By this means all the
arts were brought to perfection. The honor which tended to develop
them was everywhere manifested, and that was done better to which
they had been accustomed and in which they had been experienced from
childhood.

"But there was one pursuit common to all--the study of the civil laws
and the requirements of religion. Ignorance of religion and of the
regulations of the land was inexcusable in any rank. Each profession
had its own district. No inconvenience resulted from this, as the
country was not extensive, and with so much system the indolent had
nowhere to hide themselves."[200]

We recognize the genius of Bossuet in the clear outlines he has drawn
of the plan of organized labor, suited to the state of things, as
well as the fundamental principles of all society. The respect for
family life and tradition, the maintenance of social harmony and
the grades of society, the protection of honored labor, are all
remembered in this admirable sketch of the political economy of the
ancient Egyptians.

But we must not, nevertheless, conclude that professions were
rigorously hereditary and the castes unchangeable. Ampère proves
the contrary by means of the sepulchral inscriptions discovered
in the tombs contemporary with the ancient dynasties. They show,
in fact, that a great number of marriages were contracted between
persons of different classes. "What destroys the hypotheses of
exclusive professions," says that learned academician, "to which each
family, and consequently each caste, was supposed to be devoted,
is, finding one member of a family in the sacerdotal state, another
pursuing the military life, and the remainder engaged in some civil
profession."[201]

It is true the monuments, a funereal distinction of the upper
classes, never mention the laborer or the artisan; but it is
reasonable to believe that, among a people so regularly organized,
the different classes were governed by the same laws and customs.
In large families, like those of primitive times generally, liberty
of vocation easily harmonized with hereditary professions. One
alone--that of the swineherd--was rigorously hereditary. Those who
pursued this employment were obliged to marry among themselves, on
account of the invincible repugnance felt for the unclean animals
they had charge of. Herodotus says the Egyptian swineherd alone, of
all the nation, could not enter into any temple in the country. No
one would marry their daughters or give their children to them in
marriage. They could only marry among themselves.

III.

DIVISION OF LANDED PROPERTY.

The law concerning the landed property contributed no less than the
hereditary professions to preserve a distinction of classes and
the social gradations. "All the land," says Diodorus, speaking of
the institutions of ancient Egypt, "is divided into three parts.
The first and largest belongs to the priesthood, who are greatly
respected by the native population on account of their religious
functions as well as for their thorough education. Their revenues are
expended for the sacrifices, the maintenance of their subordinates,
and their own wants. The Egyptians think the religious ceremonies
should not be changed, that they should always be performed by the
same functionaries, and that these sovereign counsellors should
be above want. In fact, the priests are the chief counsellors
of the king, whom they aid by their labors, their advice, and
their knowledge. By means of astrology and the inspection of the
sacrificial victims, they foretell the future, and they relate useful
examples of deeds taken from the sacred books. It is not here as in
Greece, where a single man or woman has charge of the sacerdotal
functions. In Egypt, those who are occupied in the sacrifices and
conduct the worship of the gods are numerous, and they transmit their
profession to their descendants. They are exempted from taxes, and
they rank next to the king in position and privileges.

"The second part of the land belongs to the king, the revenues of
which are employed for the expenses of war and the maintenance of the
court. The king rewards merit from his own income, without having
recourse to the purse of any private individual.

"The remaining portion of the land belongs to the soldiers and
all those who are under command of the military leaders. Strongly
attached to their country, on account of the wealth they possess,
they brave all the dangers of war to defend it. It is, in fact,
absurd to entrust the safety of a nation to men who have no interest
in the common welfare. What is especially remarkable, the soldiers,
living thus at their ease, increase the population to such a degree
that the government is able to dispense with foreign troops. And
the children, encouraged by the example of their fathers, eagerly
embrace the military life, and are invincible by their bravery and
experience."[202]

Diodorus, as is known, was a contemporary of Julius Cæsar and
Augustus.

In addition to what Diodorus says of the military class, we will add
the following extracts from Herodotus: "Twelve acres of excellent
land were given, under the first kings, to each head of a family."
(He is speaking of the same class.) And a little further on: "Each
soldier possesses twelve acres of land, exempt from taxation."

This distribution of the landed property is similar to that in France
in feudal times, and which still exists, to a degree, in England,
where the clergy and aristocracy possess the greater part of the land.

The two first classes were exempt from taxation, but the priests
were at all the expense of public worship, and, although the royal
treasury provided for the expenses of war, the soldiers evidently
had to provide, not only their own supplies, and equipment, but also
for the expenses of military organization; and, like our ancient
noblesse, they alone had the glorious privilege of paying a tribute
of blood.

We have not a sufficiently clear knowledge of Egyptian civilization
to state the law of succession with certainty, or how the
preservation of the patrimony of each family was preserved.

Modern publicists, confounding stability with immovableness, have
thought the power of bequeathing property did not exist under the
ancient laws of the East. This opinion seems incompatible with
the nature of the paternal authority, which was carried to a
sovereign degree in the families of primitive times. Does not the
Bible represent the patriarch Jacob on his death-bed disinheriting
Reuben, the oldest of his twelve sons, and giving his inheritance
to Judah? And this scene, so well related in Holy Scripture, took
place in Egypt itself. It is true, the descendants of Abraham had
preserved the traditions of the patriarchal life more perfectly
than the Egyptians, but the latter, as we have seen, also professed
great respect for the paternal authority, the rights of which must
have harmonized with the requirements of the principle of hereditary
professions. A passage from Diodorus seems to decide the question in
this sense: "The legislator regarded property as belonging to those
who had acquired it by their labor, by _transmission_, or by gift."
However this may be, it is certain that all the land, according
to Herodotus and Diodorus, belonged originally to the king, the
priesthood, and the military class. This division of the landed
property must have greatly contributed to the stability which is so
distinctive a characteristic of the Egyptian nation. The hereditary
transmission of the land in the sacerdotal and military classes
effectually assured a solid basis for their preponderance, and at the
same time guaranteed the independence and dignity of the aristocratic
classes. They were thus fully enabled to second the king in the
government, administration, and defence of the country.

IV.

ORGANIZATION OF LABOR.

Ancient Egypt, from an agricultural point of view, is in some
respects worthy of attention. Certain modern writers have supposed
the members of the military class cultivated their own lands, as the
legionaries of ancient Rome, but this supposition is irreconcilable
with the testimony of the ancient historians who visited Egypt.
Herodotus says they were "not allowed to practise any mechanical
art, but were skilled in the art of war, which they transmit from
father to son." This point is settled by the following passage
from Diodorus: "The agriculturists pass their lives in cultivating
the lands, which are leased them at a moderate price by the king,
priests, and warriors."

As to the sacerdotal class, absorbed in the religious observances,
the administration, the study of the laws and the sciences, it was
impossible for its members to engage in the cultivation of the land,
which, as we have seen, they leased. Notwithstanding great research,
no information has been obtained about the economic condition of
the agricultural class. We only know, from the extract quoted
from Diodorus, that the land was leased at a moderate price. The
stability which prevailed in Egypt, and the principle of hereditary
professions, induce us to believe that private estates generally
had a kind of entail, so the same family of husbandmen lived from
generation to generation on the same land. This principle of
stability was eminently favorable to the moral and material welfare
of the family, as well as to the progress of agriculture. Reared
from childhood amid rural occupations, they acquired more experience
in them than any other nation. They perfectly understood the nature
of the soil, the art of irrigation, and the time for sowing and
harvesting, a knowledge they acquired partly from their ancestors and
partly by their own experience. The same observation may be applied
to the shepherds, who inherited the care of their flocks, and passed
their whole lives in rearing them; thus perfecting the knowledge
acquired from their fathers.

The other industrial classes were no less prosperous. They also
inherited their occupations. A celebrated publicist states that "the
Egyptian artisans held no property."[203]

To prove the truth of such an assertion, it must be shown that they
were reduced to a state of slavery: which is formally contradicted
by Diodorus, as we shall see presently, and it is not confirmed by
any of the recently discovered monuments. It may be safely affirmed
that the artisans of ancient Egypt, with the exception of those
attached to the temples or public works, had a complete right over
their trades and the fruit of their labors. The possession of land
was denied them, but there is reason to believe they could own their
dwellings and the little gardens that surrounded them.

Champollion-Figeac, who rivalled his brother in the sciences and
the profound knowledge of the arts and pursuits of ancient Egypt,
represents the people of that country with their "plates of glazed
earthenware, their rush-baskets, and their shoes of papyrus." "The
lower classes," says he in another place, "generally wore a short
linen tunic called a calasiris, confined by a girdle around the hips,
and sometimes with short sleeves trimmed with fringe at the end."

V.

SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE LABORING CLASSES.

Notwithstanding the light which the wonderful discoveries of modern
science have thrown on the history of ancient Egypt, we still lack
precise information respecting the internal organization of the
corporations occupied in manual labor. We only know from Diodorus
that they belonged to the class of citizens--that is, they were
_free_ men. "There are in the kingdom," says he, after having spoken
of the two dominant classes, "three classes of _citizens_: shepherds,
husbandmen, and artisans."

Labor among the ancients was not always a mark of servitude. In
retracing the origin of the ancient nations, as far as the light of
history diffuses its rays, we find agriculture and the industrial
pursuits carried on everywhere by free labor.

The monarchical and aristocratical government contributed not a
little to the maintenance of stability in the artisan families,
by preserving them from the fruitless agitations into which the
working-classes are fatally drawn under democratic governments.
Diodorus shows this admirably in the following passage, to which we
invite the attention of the reader:

"It must be considered that the arts have greatly developed among
the Egyptians, and arrived at a high degree of perfection. It is
the only country in which a workman is not permitted to fill any
public office, or employ himself in any other way than that assigned
him by law or by inheritance. By this restriction, the workman is
not diverted from his occupations either by the jealousy of his
masters[204] or by political affairs. Among other nations, on the
contrary, the artisan is almost wholly absorbed in the idea of making
a fortune, some by agriculture, others through commerce, and some
carry on several trades at once. And in democratic countries, most
of them frequent the popular assemblies and increase disorder by
selling their votes, whereas an Egyptian artisan who should take a
part in public affairs, or worked at several trades at once, would
incur a large fine. Such are the social divisions and political
constitutions the ancient Egyptians transmitted from father to son."

What a contrast between the artisan of the old Greek republics,
"frequenting public assemblies and extending disorder by selling
their votes," and the workman of the Egyptian monarchy, peacefully
pursuing the occupation of his fathers, happy and contented amid
political agitations which must have been very rare under a _régime_
in which traditional customs were religiously observed! Thus, with
the exception of enforced labor on the public works, we are not
unwilling to admit the fidelity of the picture Champollion-Figeac
has drawn of the condition of the laboring classes in ancient Egypt:
"The extraordinary fertility of the soil, the beneficent climate,
the wise laws perfected by experience and sanctioned by time,
the active and benevolent administration, constantly occupied in
promoting and sustaining public order in the country as well as the
city, the inevitable influence of religion upon a people naturally
religious and impressionable--the most religious of men, according to
Herodotus--allow us to believe that the masses in ancient Egypt were
happy, and that, occupied and laborious, modest in their manners and
wishes, they found in labor a source of durable pleasure."

By this wise social organization, which kept each one in his place,
the artisan remained faithfully devoted to his pursuits, as the
husbandman to his labor. They both fully enjoyed the stability
so necessary to success. But, as we shall see, the liberty and
well-being of the workmen of all classes were affected by the
frightful labors imposed on them in the public works.

       *       *       *       *       *


BOOK SECOND.

THE POLITICAL, LEGAL, AND ADMINISTRATIVE INSTITUTIONS.

I.

ROYALTY.

The keystone of the social edifice in the ancient kingdom of Egypt
may be regarded as royalty. The crown was hereditary in the male line
in the order of primogeniture--brother succeeding to brother without
surviving children. In case of no son, the daughter succeeded her
father, and he whom she espoused was the queen's husband, but not the
king.

The king, through the different members of his family, presided in
all the branches of the government and public administration, thus
giving perfect unity and complete monarchical power. "In fact," says
Champollion, "the dignities of the different orders were reserved
for the king's sons by the laws of the country. The oldest son of
Sesostris bore the titles of Fan-bearer of the king's left hand,
Royal Secretary, Basilico-grammatist, and Commander-in-chief of the
Army. The second son was also Fan-bearer of the king's left hand,
Royal Secretary, and Commander-in-chief of the Royal Guard. The third
son added to the two first titles that of Commander-in-chief of the
Cavalry. The same qualifications were also given to other princes,
and seem to have belonged to all the royal generations, as well
as several sacerdotal and civil titles, such as prophets (a class
of priests) of different gods, high-priest of Ammon, and supreme
head of different civil functions." Thus the king concentrated
in his family the most important offices in the army, the civil
administration, and the priesthood.

Finally, the better to consecrate the principle that all power and
dignity had their source in the throne, the principal leaders in the
army and administration received the title of the king's cousin,
relative, or friend.[205]

Such was the real nature of the royal power in the eyes of ancient
Egypt.

"The Egyptians were generally considered the most grateful of men
toward their benefactors. They considered the best guarantee of
society to be a reciprocal interchange of services and gratitude. It
is true, men are more inclined to be useful to others when a real
benefit is to be derived from the gratitude of the obliged. It was
from these motives the Egyptians respected and adored their kings
as if they were gods. The sovereign authority, divinely conferred,
according to their belief, with will and power to diffuse benefits,
was to them a godlike attribute."[206]

While giving the consecration of a divine character to the royal
authority, the wise legislators of old Egypt did not the less take
the precautions, suggested by a profound knowledge of human nature,
of restricting the monarchical power within just limits, of inspiring
the king with virtuous inclinations, and of preventing him from
evil-doing. "In the first place, the kings of Egypt did not lead
as free and independent a life as the kings of other nations. They
could not act according to their own will. Everything was regulated
by law, not only their public, but their daily private life. They
were served, not by bondsmen or slaves, but by the sons of the chief
priests, reared with the greatest care, and more than twenty years of
age. The king, thus served day and night by real models of virtue,
would never be countenanced in any blamable action. For a sovereign
would not be worse than any other man if he had not around him those
who flattered his desires. The precise duties of the king for every
hour of the day and night were fixed by law, and not left to his own
inclinations. His first act in the morning was to read the letters
sent from every direction, that he might be thoroughly informed of
all that had occurred in the kingdom, and act in consequence. Then,
after bathing, putting on magnificent garments, and assuming the
insignia of royalty, he offered a sacrifice to the gods. The victims
were led to the altar; the high-priest, according to custom, stood
near the king, and, in presence of the people, prayed the gods aloud
to preserve the king in health and all other blessings as long
as he fulfilled the laws. At the same time, the high-priest was
obliged to enumerate the virtues of the king, and dwell on his piety
towards the gods and his meekness towards man, representing him as
temperate, just, magnanimous, opposed to lying, loving to do good,
the complete master of his passions, inflicting on the guilty the
least punishment merited, and recompensing good actions beyond their
value. After the addition of similar praises, the priest ended by an
imprecation against all faults committed through ignorance; for the
king, being irresponsible, imputed all his faults to his ministers
and counsellors, on whom was invoked the merited chastisement. The
high-priest acted thus in order to inspire the king with a fear of
the gods, and habituate him to a pious and exemplary life, not by
a bitter exhortation, but by attractive praises of the practice
of virtue. Finally, the king inspected the entrails of the victim,
and declared the favorable auspices. The hierogrammatist read some
sentences and useful accounts of celebrated men from the sacred
books, that the sovereign might select an example by which to
regulate his actions. There was a fixed time not only for audiences,
but for exercise, the bath, and, in short, for every act of life.
The king was accustomed to live on simple food. He was allowed veal
and goose for meat. He could only drink a certain quantity of wine
that would neither produce repletion nor intoxication. In a word, the
prescribed regimen was so regular that it might be supposed ordained
not by legislators, but by the best physicians, aiming only at the
preservation of health.

"It seems strange for a king not to be at liberty to choose his daily
food, and still more so that he could not pronounce a judgment or
take a decision, or punish any one through passion or caprice, or any
other unjust reason, but be forced to act according to the laws fixed
for each particular case. As it was an established custom, the king
could not take offence, and he was not discontented with his lot. On
the contrary, he considered his a very happy life, while other men,
abandoned without restraint to their natural passions, were exposed
to many inconveniences and dangers. He thought himself fortunate
in often seeing other men violate their consciences by persisting
in bad designs, influenced by love, hatred, or some other passion,
while he himself, emulous of living after the example of the wisest
of men, could only fall into venial errors. Animated with such just
sentiments, the king conciliated the affection of his people as that
of his family. Not only the priesthood, but all the Egyptian nation
were less solicitous about their own families and possessions than
about the safety of the king.[207] All the kings mentioned followed
this political _régime_ for a long time, and led a happy life under
these laws. Besides, they conquered many nations, acquired great
wealth, adorned the country with wonderful works and monuments, and
the cities with rich and varied ornaments."[208]

We have thought proper to quote this long passage from Diodorus,
because it clearly shows how the Egyptians regarded the duties and
attributes of royalty. A limited knowledge of their sentiments makes
us feel that Diodorus must have faithfully described the regulations
maintained by the priests from the beginning of this ancient
monarchy. Until the latest times, that is, till the Roman conquest,
the prince, called to the throne by his birth, was enthroned and
consecrated in a general assembly of the priesthood convoked at
Memphis, "in order to observe the legal ceremonies prescribed for the
coronation."[209]

When we examine the sacerdotal order, the influence it exercised over
the king, in keeping him within the limits of moderation and justice,
will be perceived.

The veneration of the Egyptians for their kings led them from the
first to render them divine honors. "Egypt," says M. Mariette, "had a
genuine worship for its kings, whom they styled beneficent gods, and
regarded as the 'Sons of the Sun.'"

"The ureus (the asp) ornamented the brows of all the kings. It is
also found adorning the foreheads of some of the gods. 'The asp does
not grow old,' says Plutarch (Isis and Osiris), 'and, though without
organs of locomotion, it moves with great facility.' The Egyptians
considered it as the emblem of the eternal youth of the sun and its
course in the heavens."

The sentiment of loyalty was carried so far among the Egyptians that
it was considered a duty to obey their kings even in the caprices of
their fantasy and pride. They respected those who were bad while they
lived, reserving the right of judging them after their death.

"What took place at the death of their kings was not one of the
least proofs of their attachment to them, for the honors rendered
to the dead are an incontestable proof of sincerity of affection.
When one of the kings died, all the inhabitants mourned, rent
their garments, closed the temples, abstained from sacrifices, and
celebrated no festivals for seventy-two days. Every one passed the
prescribed number of days in affliction and mourning, as for the
death of a cherished child. During this time preparations were made
for a magnificent funeral, and on the last day they placed the chest
containing the body of the deceased at the entrance of the tomb.
They then proceeded, according to the law, to pass judgment on all
the king had done during his life. Every one had the right of making
his accusation. The priests pronounced a panegyric, relating the
praiseworthy deeds of the king. Thousands of auditors applauded it
if the king's life had been without reproach; if otherwise, they
expressed their disapproval by murmurs. Many kings, through the
opposition of the people, were deprived of suitable burial. This
led their successors to deal justly, not only for reasons already
mentioned, but for fear their bodies might be treated ignominiously
after death, and their memory be for ever cursed."[210]

"There are still to be seen in Egypt," says Champollion-Figeac,
"testimonies significant of this custom. The names of some sovereigns
are carefully effaced from the monuments they had erected during
their reign. They are carefully hammered down even on their tombs."
Among the names of the kings thus condemned after death, Champollion
mentions that of Pharaoh Mandouéi, of the eighteenth dynasty.
Wherever this name stood, on all representations of the king, or on
the edifices he had erected, it is carefully effaced and hammered,
though expressed by the image of the god Mandou, whose name he bore.
The systematic suppression of this king's name on all the public
monuments can only be explained as the result of one of those severe
judgments passed by the Egyptian nation upon wicked kings after their
death.[211]

"There was in Egypt," says Bossuet, "a kind of judgment, quite
extraordinary, which no one escaped.... This custom of judging kings
after their death appeared so sacred to the people of God, that they
always practised it. We see in the Scriptures that wicked kings were
deprived of burial among their ancestors, and we learn from Josephus
that this custom was still kept up in the time of the Asmoneans. It
led kings to remember that, if above human judgment during their
lives, they must be subjected thereto when death reduced them to the
level of ordinary mortals."[212]

Notwithstanding so many wise precautions, the kings of Egypt did
not always pursue the course so clearly marked out by the national
traditions and the interests of the nation. More than one Pharaoh,
intoxicated by sovereign authority, made his subjects experience the
heavy hand of tyranny. The numerous changes of dynasties (thirty-one
are reckoned before the conquest by Alexander the Great) also show
that the nation more than once succeeded in overthrowing the despotic
government of those that abused their power. But, through all changes
of dynasties, and in spite of the struggles of rival families, the
Egyptians always remained faithful to the monarchical principle,
indissolubly attached to its institutions, customs, and manners.
"At no time," says Herodotus, "have the Egyptians been able to live
without kings."

FOOTNOTES:

[181] Mariette, _Notice des principaux Monuments exposés dans les
Galeries provisoires du Musée d'Antiquités Egyptiennes de S. A. le
Vice-Roi, à Boulaq_. Alexandrie. 1864. It may be well to remark
here that the antiquity of the Egyptian nation is by no means
irreconcilable with the Septuagint, as Mgr. Meignan shows in his
learned work on _Le Monde primitif_, pp. 164 and 151. Paris. 1869.
Palmé.

[182] _Egypt ancienne_, by Champollion-Figeac. Paris. 1859.

[183] _Aperçu de l'Histoire d'Egypte depuis les Temps les plus
reculés jusqu'à la Conquête Musulmane._ By Auguste Mariette-Bey,
Director of the Company for the Preservation of Egyptian Antiquities.
Alexandria. 1864.

[184] E. Renan. _Les Antiquités et les Fouilles d'Egypte_ (_Revue des
Deux Mondes_, for April 1, 1865).

[185] H. Dufresne, _Moniteur Officiel_ for July 2, 1867.

[186] Gladstone.

[187] Bossuet, _Discours sur l'Histoire universelle_.

[188] Robiau, _Histoire ancienne du Peuple de l'Orient_, p. 83.

[189] Mariette, _Notice des principaux Monuments du Musée
d'Antiquités Egyptiennes à Boulaq_, P. 75.

[190] Little moral treatise by Phtah-Hotep, who lived in the reign
of Assa-Tatkera, the last king but one of the fifth dynasty--partly
translated by M. Chabas in the _Revue Archéol._, xxix., first series.

[191] Champollion-Figeac, _Egypte ancienne_, 173.

[192] Robiau, _Histoire anc. des Peuples de l'Orient_.

[193] De Bonald, _Thêorie du Pouvoir_, vol. i. p. 253.

[194] Champollion-Figeac.

[195] Champollion-Figeac, _Egypte ancienne_, p. 173.

[196] Diodorus.

[197] Bossuet, _Discours sur l'Histoire univ_. The passage from
Diodorus which inspired the sagacious reflections of the illustrious
Bishop of Meaux is this: "Wrestling and music are not allowed to be
taught, for, according to the Egyptian belief, the daily exercise of
the body gives young men not health, but a transient strength which
is prejudicial. As to music, it is considered not only useless, but
injurious, as rendering the mind of man effeminate."

[198] The large wigs so often found on the monuments of the ancient
monarchy, worn by both sexes, like the turban, were a preservative
against the ardor of the sun's rays.

[199] Herodotus; Diodorus Siculus.

[200] Bossuet, _Histoire universelle_.

[201] _Des Castes et de la Transmission héréditaire des Professions
dans l'ancienne Egypte_: a memoir published in the _Journal
général de l'Instruction publique_, and in Vol. X. of the _Revue
Archéologique_. Ampère proves by this learned _étude_ that "there
were no _castes_ among the ancient Egyptians in the strict sense
of that word, as it is used in India, for example." He very
satisfactorily explains how a slight inexactness in the histories
of Herodotus and Diodorus respecting hereditary transmission in the
class of priests and warriors, "sufficed to found on this inheritance
of pursuits and the separation of classes in Egypt, a theory that
ended by becoming completely erroneous." M. Egger, in speaking of
hereditary professions, says: "It is known that every degree of the
social scale in ancient Egypt rested on this foundation. It was for
a long time believed, according to Herodotus and Diodorus, that
the Egyptian castes were absolutely exclusive; but an interesting
memoir by J. J. Ampère (1848) proves the contrary, and scientific
discoveries daily confirm the truth of his observations." (_Bulletin
de la Société d' Economie Sociale_, June, 1868.)

[202] Diodorus. With the exception of certain fabulous relations,
easily recognized by their mythological character, we consider
as perfectly credible the interesting details Diodorus has left
concerning the manners, laws, and institutions of ancient Egypt. He
had visited that country himself, and did not depend on the testimony
of others. "We give," says he, "the facts we have carefully examined,
which are preserved in the records of the Egyptian priesthood." After
stating that he visited that country under Ptolemy, son of Lagus,
during the 180th Olympiad, he adds: "During our travels in Egypt we
had intercourse with many priests, and conversed with a great number
of Ethiopian envoys. After carefully collecting all the information
we could find on the subject, and examining the accounts of
historians, we have only admitted into our narration facts generally
received." Lib. iii.

[203] M. Troplong.

[204] Probably superintendents is meant.

[205] Champollion-Figeac.

[206] Diodorus.

[207] The ritual of the dead puts the following beautiful words into
the mouth of the deceased, when he justifies himself before the
tribunal of Osiris: "I have spoken ill neither of the king nor my own
father."

[208] Diodorus.

[209] Decree of 196 B.C., found on the Rosetta Stone.

[210] Diodorus.

[211] It could also be explained as the effect of a reaction which
often accompanies a change of dynasty. M. F. Lenormant regards this
judgment of kings as a mere fable. "The king when dead," says he,
"was as much of a god as when living." Doubtless, but the Cæsars were
also during their lives raised to the rank of divinities, which did
not prevent the Romans from killing several. We see no difficulty in
admitting the explicit testimony of Diodorus, corroborated by the
opinion of Champollion the Younger as well as his brother.

[212] Bossuet, _Histoire univ._, ii. 177. The Israelites probably
borrowed this custom from the Egyptians.




MR. CARLYLE AND PÈRE BOUHOURS.


Crying injustice and endless heartburnings are caused in social life
by the falsehoods which malicious or foolish people shelter under the
familiar quotation rubric, "said he" or "said she." For these we may
charitably and to some extent allow uncertainty of human memory to go
in extenuation.

Rising above the circle of cackling gossip, we know that, out of a
dozen witnesses solemnly adjured to testify as to words spoken in
simultaneous hearing of all the twelve, it is rare to find any three
of them agreeing as to the precise form of locution used, even where
they accord as to meaning and signification of the phrase they report.

We pass from the spoken to the written word, and are struck with the
fact that, even in literature and in history, the too common neglect
of conscientious accuracy of citations, in accepting them at second
hand or from a questionable source, is the fruitful cause of wrong
judgment of events, false estimate of men, and uncharitableness
without end.

If it is sought to hold a man responsible for opinions which he
has deliberately written and printed, he is in justice to be held
answerable solely by his own record, neither more nor less. No
occasion is there here for conflicting testimony. If arraigned for
those opinions, let the accusation run--_ipsissimis verbis_--with
what he has written. Otherwise, flaw fatal will be found, and
indictment sternly quashed. _Scripta manent_--his opinions are
recorded, and no subsequent version may be heard from him to vary
the obligation therein assumed. Neither, therefore, in justice, shall
you admit adverse parol testimony in guise of unfriendly gloss or
explanation to hold him responsible for more than he has advanced or
assumed.

With swift instinct, we all mistrust reported verbal utterances
made by a man whose prejudice or whose passion evidently colors his
memory and stimulates his imagination. And, although the excuse of
mistake or misunderstanding is not admissible where the repetition or
citation of printed words is concerned, yet, when a writer is quoted
in the spirit of ridicule, blame, or sarcasm, it should suffice to
put the reader on inquiry. Before he adopts and thereby vouches for
the attributed phrase, let him look well to it that the text is not
tampered with, and that the passage, as given, be not modified--not
to say changed--by omission or addition. A mere comma too much or too
little, as we well know, may make sad havoc with a sentence, and turn
truth into falsehood.

Old authors, and even some few careful writers down to the present
day, show their appreciation of this responsibility in quotation by
intrenching themselves behind an _apud_ in cases where, from any
cause, they are unable to verify the correctness of the passage
cited; thus throwing the burden of proof on the reporter named by
them.

A remarkable instance of the neglect of some such precautions as
are here mentioned may be found in a somewhat familiar citation
made--and, we may add, made celebrated--by no less a literary
authority than Mr. Carlyle.

It occurs in one of his most admirable productions, entitled _The
State of German Literature_.

This essay, which originally appeared, in 1827, as an article in the
_Edinburgh Review_, is rich in literary research and vigorous thought.

It is valuable not only for what it says concerning German
literature, but concerning all literature, and is most generally
enjoyed and best remembered by reason of its eloquent pillorying
and remorseless flagellation of one Père Bouhours, who, as Mr.
Carlyle informs us, propounded to himself the pregnant question: _Si
un Allemand peut avoir de l'esprit?_ Indignantly the great Scotch
essayist thus bursts out upon the unfortunate Frenchman: "Had the
Père Bouhours bethought him of what country Kepler and Leibnitz were
born, or who it was that gave to mankind the three great elements
of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant
religion, it might have thrown light on his inquiry. Had he known the
_Niebelungen-Lied_, and where _Reinecke-Fuchs_, and _Faust_, and the
_Ship of Fools_, and four-fifths of all the popular mythology, humor,
and romance to be found in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, took its rise; had he read a page or two of Ulrich Hutten,
Opitz, Paul Flemming, Logan, or even Lobenstein and Hoffmanswaldau,
all of whom had already lived and written even in his day; had the
Père Bouhours taken this trouble, who knows but he might have found,
with whatever amazement, that a German could actually have a little
_esprit_, or, perhaps, even something better? No such trouble was
requisite for the Père Bouhours. Motion _in vacuo_ is well known to
be speedier and surer than through a resisting medium, especially to
imponderable bodies; and so the light Jesuit, unimpeded by facts or
principles of any kind, failed not to reach his conclusions; and, in
a comfortable frame of mind, to decide negatively that a German could
_not_ have any literary talent."

Now, if Père Bouhours really said what is here attributed to him,
this fulmination, all obvious as it is, cannot be looked upon as
unprovoked, and we may listen with sense of satisfied justice to the
dreadful sentence pronounced upon him, which is substantially that,
incarcerated in the immortal amber of this one untimely joke, the
helpless Jesuit be doomed therein to live; "for the blessing of full
oblivion is denied him, and so he hangs suspended to his own noose,
over the dusky pool which he struggles toward, but for a great while
will not reach." To these remarks Mr. Carlyle adds the very sensible
reflection: "For surely the pleasure of despising, at all times and
in itself a dangerous luxury, is much safer _after_ the toil of
examining than before it."

This condemnation and sentence are based on a detached phrase
separated from its contexts, and Mr. Carlyle fails to tell us in what
connection or in what work was made the unfortunate speech for which
the French writer is thus beaten with many stripes.

Might it not be that, read in its proper relation, his words signify
something very different from the interpretation placed upon them as
here severed? So true is this that what Père Bouhours really wrote
has a very different signification. Investigation demonstrates this
and more, and shows that Père Bouhours not only did not mean to
express what is here attributed to him, but that he did not even use
the words thus thrust upon him as his own.

Indeed, the ill-used Bouhours is introduced and dispatched so very
summarily, that the reader of the Edinburgh essay scarcely obtains
more than a glance of a literary criminal rapidly judged and sent to
swift execution.

Let us see for a moment what manner of man this Bouhours appeared to
the people of his day and generation. As then known, he was a writer
of high reputation (_hors ligne_) and the author of several works,
some of which are still read and republished. We find certain of his
books on the shelves of our largest American libraries, and a few
days since, in looking casually through a catalogue of publications
made (1869) at the Armenian convent in Venice, an interesting
spot well known to American travellers, we noted two editions of
Bouhours's _Christian Meditations_, one in French and one in a
Turkish translation.

Bouhours is also the author of a French translation of the entire New
Testament, which is remarkable for its fidelity and its purity of
diction.

It is the version adopted by Lallemant in his _Reflections on the New
Testament_. He also wrote _Remarks and Doubts concerning the French
Language_, and _Ingenious Thoughts of the Fathers_. His _Manière de
bien Penser_ is held by the best critics to contain much that evinces
acuteness and delicacy of discrimination. Bouhours was always quoted
and referred to by his contemporaries with deference.

His _Life of St. Francis Xavier_ was found worthy of an English
translation by no less a celebrity than the English poet Dryden; and
La Harpe, who is openly unfriendly to Bouhours, says of him, "C'était
un homme lettré qui savait l'Italien et l'Espagnol."

The passage incorrectly cited by Mr. Carlyle occurs in _Les
Entretiens a'Ariste et d'Eugène_, a small duodecimo volume published
in 1671.

These _Entretiens_ or conversations are supposed to be held by two
gentlemen of literary taste, who discuss a variety of subjects
pertaining to polite literature.

One of these topics is the French language, which is assumed to be
the best of all modern languages, possessing, as it does, the secret
of uniting conciseness with clearness, and purity with politeness. On
this question of his native tongue, the patriotism of Père Bouhours
hurries him into terms of excessive praise. The French language, in
his opinion, combines every excellence. The Spanish he characterizes
as a noisy torrent flooding its banks and overspreading the country;
the Italian, as a gentle rivulet; the French, a majestic stream that
never quits its level.

The Spanish, again, he compares to a proud beauty, bold in demeanor
and splendid in attire; the Italian, to a painted coquette, ever
ornamented for effect; the French, to a modest, agreeable lady, who,
if apparently prudish, is neither uncivil nor repulsive. Then, he
adds, our own pronunciation is the most natural and pleasing.

Patriotism of so warm a character as this, after elevating French
language and literature so freely at the expense of the Spanish and
Italian, would hardly be likely to rate the German very high.

Accordingly, in view of the great preponderance of heavy though
learned disquisition over that branch of German literature which
might be classed as polished and witty, Père Bouhours did really
propose the question,

      SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT ETRE BEL ESPRIT?

--a proposition very far from identical with that which is attributed
to him by Mr. Carlyle, namely:

      SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT AVOIR DE L'ESPRIT?

The variation simply being that Bouhours did not, as here alleged,
decide negatively that a German could not have any literary talent,
but queried if a German could be a wit.

Truly a distinction with a difference.

Hallam, seldom incorrect in such matters, presents the matter fairly
in stating that the Père Bouhours "proposed the question whether a
German can by the nature of things possess any wit."

The misrepresentation made is a serious one, and the citation as
corrected deprives Mr. Carlyle's thunder of its noise, and extracts
from his sarcasm all its sting.

We believe it was Thackeray who said that, notwithstanding his
profound respect and deep veneration for the twelve apostles, they
really were not the sort of persons he should care to invite to a
festive dinner party.

Père Bouhours would doubtless, as readily as Mr. Carlyle, concede to
Kepler and Leibnitz all the merit the most enthusiastic German could
claim for these great men as shining lights of science, but would
hardly credit them with the ability to write the _Xenien_ or edit the
_Kladderadatsch_.

When Bouhours published his _Entretiens_, it is very certain that,
if German literature shone in wit, the fact was not known west of
the Rhine. Indeed, Mr. Carlyle himself, a few paragraphs further on,
unconsciously records the fullest vindication of Père Bouhours. With
a patriotism quite as fervent as that of his victim, he informs us
that "centuries ago translations from the German were comparatively
frequent in England," but to support this statement can only cite
_Luther's Table Talk_ and _Jacob Boehme_. Enumeration most scant and
melancholy! The essayist then goes on to say: "In the next century,
indeed, translation ceased; but then it was, in a great measure,
_because there was little worth translating_. The horrors of the
Thirty Years' War had desolated the country; French influence,
extending from the courts of princes to the closets of the learned,
lay like a baleful incubus over the far nobler ruins of Germany; and
all free nationality vanished from its literature, or was heard only
in faint tones, which lived in the hearts of the people, _but could
not reach with any effect to the ears of foreigners_."

But as though not satisfied with a general statement which should
justify Père Bouhours, Mr. Carlyle continues until he makes the
justification clear in terms and specific by dates, telling us: "From
the time of Opitz and Flemming to that of Klopstock and Lessing,
that is, from the early part of the seventeenth to the middle of the
eighteenth century, they [the Germans] had scarcely any literature
known abroad, _or deserving to be known_."

Now, Dominic Bouhours, born in Paris, 1628, asked the famous
question, _Si un Allemand peut être bel esprit?_ in 1671, and died
in 1702. Thus his earthly career was comprised precisely within the
period specified by Mr. Carlyle as that during which the Germans
were without not only _belles-lettres_, but any literature whatever
deserving to be known.

But, going back to the middle ages, Mr. Carlyle, strangely enough
holds Bouhours responsible, because of his want of familiarity with
the _Niebelungen-Lied_, _Reinecke-Fuchs_, and other monuments of
early German literature. "Had he known the _Niebelungen-Lied_" is
asked mockingly. This is hardly just, when we reflect that no one
better than Mr. Carlyle knows that Germany of the Bouhours period was
itself, in the main, ignorant of and profoundly indifferent to the
merits of these remarkable productions. Only long years afterward,
following on ages of oblivion as to their very existence in their own
country, were they brought to light, and it is principally owing to
the exertions of the comparatively new Romantic school that modern
Germany has been made acquainted with the _Niebelungen-Lied_ and
other great middle-age poems.

It is true that Bodmer in Switzerland first put a portion of the
_Niebelungen_ ("Chrimhilde's Revenge") in print, in 1757; but, as Mr.
Carlyle has elsewhere informed us, it was August Wilhelm Schlegel
who "succeeded in awakening something like a universal popular
feeling on the subject," and he refers to this and the like poems as
"manuscripts that for ages have lain dormant," and now come "from
their archives into public view," "a phenomenon unexpected till of
late"--stating that "the _Niebelungen_ is welcomed as a precious
national possession--_recovered after six centuries of neglect_."
From which it would appear that, at his peril, Bouhours, in 1671,
must be familiar with "a precious national possession" of the
Germans, which they themselves, before and after that period, treated
with "centuries of neglect." Being a Jesuit, it is, of course,
eminently proper, according to a time-honored custom in English
literature, that he should be made responsible for everything--the
Spanish Inquisition and Original Sin included.

Mr. Carlyle patriotically closes his eyes to English ignorance and
indifference touching German literature, even when claiming for
Great Britain only a lesser density of ignorance concerning it than
afflicted France.

Writing as late as 1827, he fairly admits that the literature and
character of Germany "are still very generally unknown to us, or,
what is worse, misknown," that its "false and tawdry ware" reached
England before "the chaste and truly excellent," and that "Kotzebue's
insanity spread faster by some fifty years than Lessing's wisdom."
And the British ignorance, it is admitted, is not confined to German
literature. "For what more do we know"--thus Mr. Carlyle clinches the
question--"of recent Spanish or Italian literature than of German; of
Grossi and Manzoni, of Campomanos or Jovellanos, than of Tieck and
Richter?"

Really, when we contemplate the enlightened Englishman of 1827 thus
held up to our gaze, how can we withhold from the abused Frenchman of
1671 our profound admiration?

Now, if, on reflection, Mr. Carlyle estimates the imputation on
German literature of a lack of wit and humor as a serious offence--if
he considers actionable and punishable Father Bouhours's query,

      SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT ETRE BEL ESPRIT?

he need not go back two centuries for a criminal of whom to make
an example. We have in custody for him one of this century--of
this decade--nay, of this very year. He is a living culprit, and,
moreover, a distinguished one. Here is a copy of the words in which
he offends, and, if we are not mistaken, he may be found in Mr.
Carlyle's bailiwick: "There is, perhaps, no nation where the general
standard of wit and humor is so low as with the Germans--no other
people at least are so easily entertained with indifferent jokes"
(_Saturday Review_, London, March 18, 1871).




OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.


PART IX.

VII.

    PASTORAL LETTER OF THE BISHOP OF TARBES, GIVING HIS
    DECISION REGARDING THE APPARITIONS WHICH TOOK PLACE AT
    THE GROTTO OF LOURDES.

    "BERTRAND-SEVERE LAURENCE, by the divine mercy, and the
    favor of the Apostolic See, Bishop of Tarbes, Assistant
    at the Pontifical Throne, etc. To the clergy and
    faithful of our diocese, health and benediction in our
    Lord Jesus Christ.

    "Beloved co-laborers and most dear brethren: In
    all epochs of humanity, marvellous communications
    have taken place between earth and heaven. At the
    commencement of the world, the Lord appeared to our
    first parents to reproach them with their disobedience.
    During the ages which succeeded, we see him conversing
    with the patriarchs and prophets. The Old Testament
    is often nothing more than a history of the heavenly
    apparitions with which the children of Israel were
    favored. These favors did not cease with the Mosaic
    law; on the contrary, they became, under the law of
    grace, more striking, more numerous. In the infancy
    of the church, those times of bloody persecution, the
    Christians received visits from Jesus Christ and the
    angels, who came, sometimes, to reveal to them secrets
    of the future or to deliver them from their chains;
    at other times, to strengthen them for combat. Thus
    it was, according to a judicious writer, that God
    encouraged those illustrious confessors of the faith,
    when the powers of earth united to strangle in its
    cradle that truth which was to save the world.

    "These manifestations from the other world were not the
    exclusive lot of the first centuries of Christianity.
    History attests that they have been continued from age
    to age, for the glory of religion and the edification
    of the faithful. Among these heavenly apparitions,
    those of the Blessed Virgin occupy a prominent place,
    and have been an abundant source of blessing to the
    world. As the traveller journeys over that part of
    the earth which has been the home of Christianity, he
    everywhere meets temples consecrated to the Mother of
    God; and many of them owe their origin to an apparition
    of the Queen of heaven. We already possess one of these
    blessed sanctuaries, founded four centuries ago, on
    account of revelations made to a young shepherdess,
    where thousands of pilgrims repair yearly to kneel
    before the throne of the glorious Virgin Mother Mary to
    implore her for special favors.[213]

    "Thanks be to God Almighty!--for, among the treasures
    of his infinite bounty, he has reserved for us another
    favor. He desires that, in our diocese of Tarbes, a
    new sanctuary should rise to the glory of Mary. And
    what instrument has he made use of to communicate his
    merciful designs? One which would be the very weakest
    in the eyes of the world--a child of fourteen years,
    Bernadette Soubirous, one of the daughters of a poor
    family of Lourdes."

Here the bishop gives a summary of the apparitions. The reader is
aware of them already. Mgr. Laurence then proceeds to discuss the
facts:

    "Such, in substance," he further continues, "is the
    account we ourselves heard from Bernadette, before the
    commissioners assembled to re-examine the affair.

    "Thus, this young girl has seen a being calling herself
    the Immaculate Conception, who, although appearing
    in human form, was neither seen nor heard by any of
    the numerous spectators present at the scene. It was
    consequently some kind of a supernatural being. What is
    to be thought of such an event?

    "You are well aware, dearly beloved brethren, that the
    church exercises a wise deliberation in determining
    supernatural facts, and that she demands certain
    proof before admitting them to be divine. Since the
    original fall, man has been liable to many errors,
    particularly in this matter. If not led astray by
    his reason, now weakened, he has suffered himself to
    become the dupe of the evil one. Who does not know that
    the devil sometimes transforms himself into an angel
    of light, in order to draw us into his snares? Thus
    the beloved disciple warns us not to believe every
    spirit, but to try the spirits if they come from God.
    This trial we have made. The event of which we are
    treating has been, for four years, the object of our
    solicitude; we have followed it throughout its various
    phases. We have consulted the commission, made up of
    pious, learned, and experienced priests, who have
    examined facts, questioned the little girl, weighed
    and deliberated concerning all. We have, also, invoked
    the authority of science, and remain firmly convinced
    that the apparition was supernatural and divine, and,
    consequently, that what Bernadette saw was really and
    truly the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. Our conviction
    is based upon the testimony of Bernadette, but, more
    especially, upon the events which have transpired, and
    which can be explained only by supposing some heavenly
    intervention.

    "The testimony of the little girl affords all the
    security that can be desired. Her sincerity cannot be
    doubted. No one who comes in contact with her can fail
    to admire her childish simplicity, candor, and modesty.
    While everybody is engaged in discussing these marvels,
    she keeps silence; she speaks only when questioned,
    and then relates everything without affectation, and
    with touching ingenuousness. She returns unhesitating,
    clear, and precise answers to the questions which are
    put to her, and conveys the impression of most perfect
    conviction of what she says.

    "Though subjected to rude trials, she has never been
    shaken by threats. The most generous offers she has
    rejected with perfect disinterestedness. Always
    perfectly consistent, she has maintained her original
    statements throughout the numberless examinations
    she has undergone, without adding or withdrawing
    anything. The sincerity of Bernadette is, therefore,
    incontestable. We may add, it is uncontested. Those who
    have opposed her have rendered her this homage at least.

    "But, admitting that she has not intended to deceive
    others, has she not been herself deceived? Has she
    not imagined that she saw something where nothing,
    in fact, existed? Has she not been the victim of a
    hallucination? The good sense displayed in her answers
    reveals an accurate mind, a quiet imagination, and
    a sound judgment, surpassing her age. Her religious
    sentiments have never possessed the character of
    enthusiasm; nothing has been remarked about the
    young girl indicating intellectual disorder, or any
    eccentricity of character, any alteration of the
    senses or morbid affection which predispose her to
    imaginations of this kind. She has had this vision,
    not once, but eighteen times; then, it has appeared
    suddenly, when nothing could have prepared her for what
    was about to take place; and, during the fortnight when
    she daily expected it, she saw nothing for two days,
    though placed in circumstances entirely similar to
    those of the previous occasion.

    "But what took place during the time of these
    apparitions? A complete transformation was effected
    in Bernadette herself. Her countenance assumed a new
    expression, her features were lit up; she saw things
    which she had never seen before, and heard a language
    which she does not ordinarily understand, but of which
    she preserved the memory. These combined circumstances
    do not admit the possibility of hallucination. The
    little girl has really seen and heard a being who calls
    herself the Immaculate Conception; and, since we cannot
    explain this phenomenon naturally, we are forced to
    attribute it to a supernatural cause.

    "The testimony of Bernadette derives additional force,
    its confirmation, we should say, from the wonderful
    events which have accompanied it throughout.

    "If the tree is to be judged by its fruits, we can
    certainly say that the apparition described by the
    little girl is supernatural and divine. For it has
    produced supernatural and divine effects. What,
    then, has happened, dearly beloved? Scarcely was the
    apparition made known, when the news spread with the
    rapidity of lightning. It was known that Bernadette was
    to visit the grotto daily for a fortnight. The whole
    land is astir. Streams of people flow to the place of
    apparition. They await, with religious impatience,
    the solemn hour. And when the girl appears, rapt and
    absorbed in the object of her ecstasy, the witnesses
    of this prodigy, moved and softened, are melted in a
    sentiment of admiration and prayer. The apparitions
    have now ceased, but the throng continues. Pilgrims
    come from distant lands. Every age and rank and
    condition is to be seen kneeling before the grotto.
    What sentiment moves these countless visitors? Ah!
    they come to the grotto to implore the special help of
    the Immaculate Mary. They prove by their recollected
    mien that they breathe the divine atmosphere which
    surrounds these hallowed rocks, already become famous.
    Christian souls are strengthened in virtue; men frozen
    up by indifference are brought back to the practice of
    religion; hardened sinners are reconciled to God when
    Our Lady of Lourdes has been invoked in their behalf.
    These wonders of grace, which are complete and lasting,
    can have no author save God. Do they not strikingly
    confirm the truth of the apparitions? If we now pass
    from effects wrought for the salvation of souls to
    those which concern the healing of bodily ills, how
    many prodigies must we not recount?"

Our readers have not forgotten the breaking forth of the spring, at
which Bernadette drank and washed, before the assembled crowds. It
will be superfluous to repeat these details. The bishop continues:

    "Sick persons have made use of the water, and not
    without success. Many, whose diseases have resisted
    most energetic treatment, have suddenly recovered
    health. These extraordinary cures have been noised
    abroad. Invalids from all quarters have sent for this
    Massabielle water, when unable to transport themselves
    to the grotto.

    "How many infirm have been cured, how many afflicted
    families have been consoled!

    "If we wished to call for their testimony, countless
    voices would be lifted up in acknowledgment of the
    sovereign efficacy of this water. We cannot here
    enumerate all the favors obtained; but what we are
    obliged to say, is, that the Massabielle water has
    cured desperate invalids who had been declared
    incurable. These cures have been worked by the use of
    water devoid of any healing properties, according to
    the acknowledgments of skilful chemists, after rigorous
    analysis. Some cures have been wrought instantaneously,
    others after using the water twice or thrice as a drink
    or lotion. Moreover, these cures are permanent. What
    power has wrought them? Some organic power? Science
    answers negatively. They are, therefore, the work of
    God. But, they refer to the apparitions; these are
    their source; these have inspired the sick people with
    confidence. Hence, there is an intimate connection
    between the cures and the apparitions. The apparition
    is divine, because the cures bear the seal of divine
    power. But that which comes from God is true; and,
    therefore, the apparition which Bernadette saw and
    heard, and which gave itself the name of the Immaculate
    Conception, is the Blessed Virgin herself. Well may we
    cry out: The finger of God is here! _Digitus Dei est
    hic._

    "How, then, can any one fail to admire the economy
    of divine Providence? At the end of the year 1854,
    the immortal Pius IX. proclaimed the dogma of the
    Immaculate Conception. The whole earth re-echoed the
    words of its supreme pastor; Catholic hearts trembled
    with joy, and everywhere the glorious privilege of
    Mary was celebrated by _fêtes_, which will ever remain
    graven in the memory of those who witnessed them. And,
    behold, three years afterward, the Blessed Virgin
    appears to one of our children, and says: I am the
    Immaculate Conception: here will I have a chapel built
    in my honor. Does she not seem to desire to consecrate
    by this monument the infallible oracle of St. Peter?

    "Where will she have this monument erected? At the foot
    of our own Pyrenees, where many strangers meet from all
    parts of the world to seek health at our waters. May we
    not say that she invites the faithful of all nations
    to come and honor her in the new temple which shall be
    built to her?

    "Citizens of Lourdes, rejoice! The august Mary
    condescends to cast upon you her merciful eyes.
    She desires to build beside your walls a sanctuary
    stored with blessings. Thank her for this token of
    predilection; and, since she lavishes her motherly
    tenderness upon you, show yourselves her children by
    imitating her virtues, and by a fixed attachment to
    religion.

    "It is with joy that we acknowledge the fruits of
    salvation which the apparition has already caused to
    spring up abundantly among you. Eye-witnesses of the
    events at the grotto and their happy results, your
    confidence has been as great as your conviction has
    been strong. We have ever admired your prudence and
    docility in following our counsels of obedience and
    submission to the civil authority, when for some weeks
    you were hindered from visiting the grotto, and were
    forced to restrain in your own hearts the sentiments
    inspired by what you had there beheld during the
    fortnight of the apparitions.

    "And you, our well-beloved children, open your hearts
    to hope. A new era of grace and benediction has
    dawned upon you; you are called to share in what has
    been promised to all. In your prayers and canticles,
    henceforth, you will mingle the name of Our Lady
    of Lourdes with the blessed titles of Our Lady of
    Garaison, of Poeylaün, of Héas, and of Piétat.

    "From these sanctuaries the Immaculate Virgin will
    watch over you, and cover you with the shield of her
    protection. Yes, beloved co-laborers and dearest
    brethren, if, with hearts full of confidence, we fix
    our glance upon this 'Star of the Sea,' we shall pass
    without fear of shipwreck through the tempests of life,
    and arrive safely in the haven of eternal bliss.

      "WHEREFORE:

    "Having consulted with our venerable brethren, the
    dignitaries, canons, and chapter of our cathedral
    church;

    "The holy name of God having been invoked; following
    the rules laid down by Benedict XIV., in his work
    on _Beatification and Canonization of Saints_, for
    discerning true and false apparitions; seeing the
    favorable report of the commission charged with the
    examination of the apparition at the grotto of Lourdes,
    and the facts connected with it;

    "Seeing the written testimony of the medical doctors,
    whom we have consulted in reference to the numerous
    cures obtained by use of water from this grotto;

    "Considering, in the first place, that the fact of the
    apparition, whether in regard to the effects produced
    upon her who saw it, or its other extraordinary
    results, cannot be explained by natural means;

    "Considering, secondly, that the cause cannot be other
    than divine, by reason of the effects which have
    followed its operation, such as the conversion of
    sinners and derogation from the fixed laws of nature,
    namely, miraculous cures, which can only come from him
    who is the author of grace and nature;

    "Considering, finally, that our own conviction is
    strengthened by the immense and spontaneous concourse
    of the faithful, which has never ceased at the grotto
    since the first apparitions, and whose only object is
    to implore favors or return thanks for those which have
    been already obtained;

    "In response to the just impatience of our venerable
    chapter, of the clergy and laity of our diocese, and of
    so many pious souls who have long been calling upon the
    ecclesiastical authority for a decision which prudence
    has caused us hitherto to refrain from giving;

    "Desiring, also, to satisfy the wishes of several
    of our colleagues in the episcopate, and of many
    distinguished strangers to our diocese;

    "Having invoked the light of the Holy Ghost, and the
    assistance of the Blessed Virgin,

      WE HAVE DECLARED, AND HEREBY
          DECLARE AS FOLLOWS:

    "Art. 1. We, decide that the Immaculate Mary, the
    Mother of God, really did appear to Bernadette
    Soubirous, on the eleventh of February, 1858, and on
    several days following, altogether eighteen times, in
    the Massabielle Grotto, near the town of Lourdes; that
    this apparition has every guarantee of truth, and that
    the faithful have solid reason for believing it to be
    certain.

    "We submit ourselves humbly to the judgment of the
    Sovereign Pontiff, to whom belongs the government of
    the universal church.

    "Art. 2. We authorize in our diocese the worship of
    Our Lady of the Grotto of Lourdes; but we prohibit any
    particular prayers, any canticle, any book of devotion,
    to be published on this subject without our written
    approbation.

    "Art. 3. In conformity with the desire of the Blessed
    Virgin, several times expressed during her apparitions,
    we propose to build a shrine on the site of the grotto,
    which has now become the property of the Bishop of
    Tarbes.

    "This edifice, on account of its steep and rocky
    foundation, will require great labor and expense.
    We need, therefore, to carry out our design, the
    assistance of the priests and faithful of our own
    diocese, of our country, France, and also from abroad.
    We appeal to all generous hearts, and particularly to
    all persons of every country who are devoted to the
    worship of the Immaculate Virgin Mary.

    "Art. 4. We address with confidence all institutions
    of either sex consecrated to the education of youth,
    to the congregations of the 'Children of Mary,' to the
    confraternities of the Blessed Virgin, and other pious
    societies of our own diocese, and throughout France.

    "This, our pastoral, shall be read and published in
    all the churches, chapels, seminaries, colleges, and
    hospices of our diocese on the Sunday following its
    reception.

    "Given at Tarbes, in our episcopal palace, under our
    seal and signature, and the counter-signature of our
    secretary, January 18, 1862, being the feast of the
    Chair of St. Peter at Rome.

                       "✠ BERTRAND-SRE., _Bishop of Tarbes_.

    "By order, FOURCADE, _Canon-Secretary_."


VIII.

In the name of his see, or, rather, in that of the church, Mgr.
Laurence purchased from the town of Lourdes the grotto and the
surrounding lands, and the whole group of Massabielle rocks. M.
Lacadé was still mayor. He it was who proposed to the municipal
council to cede to the church, the bride of Christ, those places
which had been consecrated for ever by the appearance of his heavenly
Mother. He, also, signed the deed of transfer.

M. Rouland authorized the sale, and also the erection of a church
in perpetual memory of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin to
Bernadette Soubirous, in memory of the fountain and the numberless
miracles which had attested the heavenly visions.

While the vast temple dedicated to the Immaculate Conception was
slowly rising, stone upon stone, Our Lady of Lourdes continued to
shower blessings and graces upon her clients. At Paris and Bordeaux,
in Perigord, Brittany, and Anjou, amid solitary and rural scenes and
in the heart of popular cities, Our Lady of Lourdes was invoked, and
answered with unquestionable signs of her power and goodness.

Before closing our recital and presenting the picture of things as
they now exist, let us narrate two of these divine histories. One of
them forms an episode in the life of the writer of these pages which
nothing can ever efface from his memory. We give it as we wrote it
down nearly seven years ago.


PART X.

I.

During my whole life, I had always enjoyed the blessing of good
sight. I was able to distinguish objects at a great distance, and
also to read with ease when my book was close to my eyes. I never
suffered the least weakness of sight after whole nights passed in
study. I often wondered and rejoiced at the strength and clearness of
my vision. Thus, it was a great surprise and a cruel disenchantment
when in June and July, 1862, I felt my eyesight becoming gradually
weak, unable to work at night, and, finally, incapable of any use,
so that I was obliged to give up altogether reading and writing.
If I chanced to pick up a book, after reading three or four lines,
sometimes at the first glance, I felt such weakness in the upper
part of my eyes as to render it impossible to continue. I consulted
several physicians, and principally the two famous oculists, Desmares
and Giraud-Teulon.

The remedies prescribed by them were of little or no avail. After
a slight rest, and a treatment principally composed of iron, I had
a slight respite, and once read during a considerable portion of
the afternoon. But, the following day, I relapsed into my former
condition. Then I began to try local remedies, applications of
cold water on the ball of the eye, cupping on the neck, a general
hydropathic treatment, and alcoholic lotions around the eyes.
Sometimes I experienced a slight relief from the weariness which
generally oppressed them, but this was only for a moment. In short,
my disease assumed all the appearances of a chronic and incurable
malady.

According to advice, I condemned my eyes to absolute repose. Not
content with putting on blue eye-glasses, I had left Paris, and
was living in the country with my mother, at Coux, on the banks of
the Dordogne. I had taken with me a young person, who acted as my
secretary, writing at my dictation, and who read to me the books
which I wished to consult.

September had arrived. This state had lasted for three months. I
began to be seriously alarmed. I felt a gloomy foreboding which
I dared not communicate to any one. My family shared the same
apprehensions, but likewise shrank from manifesting them. We were
both convinced that my sight was gone, but both sought to reassure
one another, and to conceal our mutual anxiety.

I had a most intimate friend, in whom I had confided from boyhood
all my joys and sorrows. I dictated to my secretary a letter to him,
in which I described my sad condition, and the fears which I had for
the future. The friend of whom I speak is a Protestant, as is also
his wife. This twofold circumstance requires to be mentioned. Grave
reasons prevent me from giving his name. We shall call him M. de ----.

He answered my letter a few days afterward. His letter reached me on
the fifteenth of September, and surprised me greatly. I transcribe it
here, without changing a word:

"MY DEAR FRIEND: Your few lines gave me great pleasure; but, as
I have told you before, I long to hear from you in _your own
handwriting_. A few days ago, as I returned from Cauterets, I passed
through Lourdes (in the neighborhood of Tarbes). I visited the famous
grotto, and heard about the extraordinary things that have been
taking place there, and the cures produced by the waters in cases of
diseased eyes. I earnestly recommend you to try it. If I were like
you, a believing Catholic, and laboring under any illness, I would
certainly try this chance. If it be true that invalids have been
suddenly cured, perhaps your name may swell the number. If it be not
true, where is the risk? I may add that I am personally interested
in this matter. If the experiment succeeds, what an important fact
for me to face! I would be in the presence of a miraculous event, or,
at any rate, an event whose principal witness would be above all
suspicion."

"It appears," he added in post-script, "that it is not necessary to
go to Lourdes itself to take the water there, since you can have
it sent. It is only necessary to ask the curé of Lourdes; he will
forward it without delay. Certain conditions have to be fulfilled of
which I am not perfectly informed, but of which the curé of Lourdes
will tell you. Ask him also to send you the little pamphlet by the
vicar-general of Tarbes, which gives an account of the miracles that
have been most thoroughly proved."

This letter of my friend was well calculated to fill me with
astonishment. His was an exact, positive, and at the same time a
lofty mind, not at all liable to the illusions of enthusiasm, and,
besides, he was a Protestant. Such a piece of advice coming from
him, in such an urgent manner, filled me with amazement. However, I
resolved not to follow it.

"It seems to me," I replied, "that I am to-day a little better. If
this improvement continues, I shall not have need of your proposed
and extraordinary remedy, for which, besides, I have not, perhaps,
the necessary faith."

And here, I must confess, not without a blush, the secret motives of
my resistance.

Whatever I may have said, it was not faith which was lacking; and,
although ignorant of particulars concerning the water of Lourdes,
except through the impertinent remarks of certain ill-disposed
journals, I was certain that the power of God could be manifested
by cures here as well as elsewhere. I will say more: I had a secret
presentiment that if I tried this water, springing, as some said,
in consequence of an apparition of the Blessed Virgin, I should be
cured. But, to tell the simple truth, I feared the responsibility of
such a favor. "If the doctor cures you," I said to myself, "every
account is squared as soon as you have handed him his fee. You will
be in the same condition as everybody else. But if God cures you by a
special act of his providence, it will be quite another affair, and
you will have to amend your life and become a saint. If God gives you
back those eyes of yours with his own hands, how can you ever let
them rest upon objects which draw you away from him? God will demand
his fee; and it will amount to more than the doctor's. You must give
up this and that bad habit, you must acquire such and such virtues,
and others that you know nothing of. How will you do all this? Ah!
this is too hard!" And my miserable heart, fearing its own weakness,
nevertheless resisted the grace of God.

Thus it was I rebelled against the counsel given me to have recourse
to this miraculous intervention--against that counsel which
Providence, ever hidden in its ways, sent me by two Protestants, two
heretics, outside the church. But my struggles and resistance were
vain. An interior voice told me that the hand of man was powerless to
cure me, and that the Master whom I had offended would return me my
sight, and lead me to a new life, if I would make up my mind to use
it well.

Meanwhile, my condition was either stationary or slowly becoming
worse.

In the early part of October, I was obliged to go to Paris. By an
unlooked-for chance, M. de ---- and his wife were there at the same
time. My first visit was to them. My friend was staying at his
sister's, Madame P----, who lived, together with her husband, in
Paris.

"And how are your eyes?" asked Madame de ---- as soon as I had
entered the parlor.

"They are always in the same condition; I begin to fear that they are
gone."

"But why have you not tried the remedy that I proposed? I have a
strange hope that you will be cured."

"Pshaw!" I replied; "I confess that, without precisely denying or
showing myself hostile, I have but little faith in this water and
apparition. It is perfectly possible, I admit; but as I have not
examined the matter, I neither assert nor contest; I wash my hands of
the whole affair, and do not intend to have anything to do with it."

"You have no valid objections," he answered. "According to your
religious principles, you are bound to believe at least the
possibility of such things. Very well, then, what is to prevent you
from making a trial? What is it going to cost you? It can't do you
any harm, for it is nothing but natural water. Now, since you believe
in miracles and in your religion, it seems to me that you ought to
be moved by two Protestants; and I frankly confess that, if you are
cured, it will be a terrible argument against me." Madame de ----
joined her entreaties to those of her husband. M. and Madame P----,
who are Catholics, insisted as warmly. I was driven to my last
entrenchments.

"Well," said I at last, "let me tell you the whole truth. I do not
lack faith, but I am full of weaknesses, faults, and a thousand
miseries which are entwined with the most sensitive fibres of my
nature. Now, a miracle would lay upon me the obligation of giving
up everything and trying to become a saint; and I do not feel equal
to the responsibility. If God cures me, how do I know what he will
ask of me? But if the doctor succeeds, we can settle the matter with
money. You think this is disgraceful, I know; but it is nothing but
the truth. You have supposed that my faith has been wavering. You
have thought that I feared lest the miracle should not succeed. It is
not so. I should be only afraid that it might succeed."

My friends vainly tried to convince me that I was exaggerating the
responsibility of which I spoke.

"You are none the less obliged to seek after virtue now than if
the miracle had been already worked," said M. de ----. "Besides,
supposing the physician does cure you, it will be none the less
a favor from God; and you will have just the same reasons for
struggling against your faults and passions."

This did not seem to me perfectly true; and the logical mind of M.
de ---- probably admitted as much to itself; but he was bent upon
calming my apprehensions and inducing me to follow his advice.

Vainly did I endeavor to combat the pressing earnestness of my host
and his wife, and my friends. I ended by promising to do whatever
they desired.

"As soon as I get a secretary, I will write to Lourdes; but it is too
late at this hour of the day."

"But I will do, will I not?" answered my friend.

"Very well," said I, "come and breakfast with me to-morrow at the
_Café de Foy_. I will dictate the letter after breakfast."

"Why not do it now? We will save one day."

Paper and ink were at hand. I dictated a letter to the curé of
Lourdes. It was posted that evening.

The next day, M. de ---- came to see me. "My dear friend," he said,
"since the die is cast, and you are going to try this experiment,
you ought to go seriously to work, and fulfil the conditions which
are required in order to make a success. You must pray. You will have
to go to confession, and put your mind in the proper state. You know
that all this is a prime necessity."

"You are right," I replied; "I will do as you say. But you must
acknowledge that you are a queer Protestant. The tables are turned;
to-day you are preaching to me my own faith and religion, and I own
the contrast is not much to my advantage."

"I am a man of science," he answered. "It is perfectly natural that
I should wish to see all the conditions carried out, since we have
agreed to try an experiment. I should act in this manner if we were
dealing with physics or chemistry."

I confess, to my shame, I did not prepare myself as my friend had
so wisely advised me. I was in a very poor spiritual condition; my
soul was distracted and turned to evil. I recognized the necessity
of throwing myself at the feet of God; but, as I had not been guilty
of gross and brutal sins, against which nature reacts with such
violence, I delayed from day to day. Man is more rebellious against
the sacrament of penance while he is being tempted, than after he
has been crushed and humbled by the sight of his crime. It is more
difficult to combat and resist than to ask for mercy after defeat.
Who does not know this?

A week passed in this manner. M. and Mme. de ---- inquired daily if I
had heard any news of the miraculous water, or any word from the curé
of Lourdes. Finally, I received a note from him to the effect that
the water had been forwarded by rail, and would shortly reach me.

We awaited its arrival with great eagerness; but, strange to say, my
Protestant friends were much more impatient than I. The state of my
eyes continued the same. It was absolutely impossible for me to read
or write.

One morning, Friday, October 10, 1862, I was waiting for M. de ----
in the Orleans Gallery at the Palais Royal. We breakfasted together.
As I had come to the place of meeting some time in advance of him, I
employed myself in looking about the shops and reading the list of
new books in front of Dentu's library. This was enough to weary my
eyes. They had become so weak that I could not let them rest upon the
largest signs without feeling them overpowered by lassitude. This
little circumstance made me quite sad, as it showed me the extent of
my malady.

In the afternoon I dictated three letters to De ----, and, at four
o'clock, having left him, returned to my lodgings. As I was going
up-stairs, the porter called to me.

"A little box has come for you from the railroad." I entered his
store-room eagerly. There was a small pine box, bearing my name and
address on one end, and on the other these words, doubtless intended
for the custom-house officials, "Natural Water."

It was from Lourdes.

I felt greatly excited; but did not betray any emotion.

"Very well," said I to the porter, "I will take it in a few moments;
I will return shortly." I stepped out again into the street.

"This matter is becoming serious," I said to myself. "De ---- is
right; I must prepare myself. In my present state, I have no right
to ask God to work a miracle. I must set to work to heal my own soul
before I can ask him to heal my body."

Reflecting on these considerations, I directed my steps toward the
house of my confessor, the Abbé Ferrand de Missol, who lived quite
near me. I felt certain of finding him in, for it was Friday, and he
is always at home on that day. So indeed he was upon this occasion.

But several persons were waiting to see him, whose turn would
naturally come before mine. Some member of his family had just
arrived on an unexpected visit. His servant informed me of all this,
and asked me to call again in the evening about seven o'clock.

I resigned myself to my lot.

As I came to the street-door, I paused for an instant. I wavered
between the desire of paying a visit which I had greatly at heart and
the thought of returning home to pray. I was very much inclined to
the distraction, but finally the good inspiration carried the day,
and I returned toward the Rue Seine.

I took from the porter the little box, to which was attached a
notice of the apparition at Lourdes, and, with both in my hand, I
hastened up-stairs. On reaching my room, I knelt down at my bedside
and prayed, all unworthy as I was to turn my eyes toward heaven.
Then I arose. On entering, I had placed the little box and the
pamphlet upon the mantelpiece. I gazed a moment upon the little case
which contained the mysterious water, and it seemed to me that some
great event was about to transpire in this lonely chamber. I feared
to touch with impure hands the wood which contained this hallowed
water, and yet, on the other hand, I felt a lively desire to open
it at once, and not wait until after I had been to confession. This
indecision lasted for a few moments, and ended with this prayer:

"O my God! I am a wretched sinner, unworthy of raising my voice to
you, or of touching that which you have blessed. But this very excess
of misery ought to excite your compassion. My God, I come to you and
to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, full of faith and reliance upon you,
and from the depths I cry to you. This evening I will confess my sins
to your minister, but my faith will not suffer me to wait. Pardon me,
Lord, and heal me. And you, O Mother of Mercy! come to the help of
your unhappy child!"

And, feeling strengthened by my prayer, I opened the box. It
contained a bottle of pure water. I uncorked it, poured some of the
water into a glass, and took a napkin from the drawer.

These commonplace preparations, which I made with care, were
accompanied by a secret solemnity, the memory of which still haunts
me. In that room I was not alone. God was there certainly; and the
Blessed Virgin, whom I had invoked, was also there.

Ardent faith inflamed my soul. When all was ready, I knelt down
again. "O Blessed Virgin Mary!" I cried in a loud voice, "heal my
physical and spiritual blindness." Saying these words, with a heart
full of confidence, I bathed successively both eyes and my forehead
with the napkin which I had dipped in the water. This did not occupy
more than half a minute.

Judge of my astonishment--I had almost said my terror! Scarcely had
I touched my eyes and forehead with the miraculous water than I felt
myself cured, at once, without transition, with a suddenness which I
can compare only to lightning.

Strange contradiction of human nature! A moment before I had trusted
my faith, which promised me a cure; now, I could not believe my
senses, which assured me that the cure had been worked.

No! I did not believe my senses. In spite of the startling effect
which had been wrought upon me, I committed the fault of which Moses
was guilty, and struck the rock twice. I continued to bathe my eyes
and forehead, not daring to open them, not daring to verify my cure.
At the end of ten minutes, however, the strength which I felt in my
eyes, and the absence of all heaviness, left no chance for doubt. "I
am cured!"

So saying, I snatched up a book. "No," said I, "that is not the
book for me to be reading at this moment." Then I took from the
mantelpiece the _Account of the Apparitions at Lourdes_. I read a
hundred and four pages without stopping or feeling the least fatigue.
Twenty minutes before, I could not have read three lines. Indeed, if
I stopped at the hundred-and-fourth page, it was only because it was
thirty-five minutes past five o'clock, and at this hour in October it
is almost dark in Paris. When I laid aside my book, the gas was being
lighted in the shops of the street in which I lived.

That evening, I made my confession to the Abbé Ferrand, and
acquainted him with the great gift which I had received from the
Blessed Virgin. Although in no degree prepared, he wished me to go to
communion the next day, to thank God for such an extraordinary favor,
and to strengthen the good resolutions which it had caused to spring
up in my soul.

M. and Mme. de ---- were, as one may imagine, greatly moved by this
event, in which Providence had assigned them so direct a part. What
did they think of it? What reflections were suggested to their minds?
What took place in the depth of their hearts? That secret belongs
only to them and to God. What little I have been able to make out, I
am not at liberty to publish.

Be this as it may, I know my friend's nature. I left him to his
own thoughts, without urging him to the conclusion. I knew, and
still know, that God has his own time and his own ways. His action
was so manifest throughout the whole affair that I did not wish to
interfere, although my friends have never been ignorant of my desire
to see them enter the only church which contains God in his fulness.

I regret not being able to consider these two beings--so dear to
me--as receiving from the reaction of the miracle of which I had been
the object the first shocks which truth gives to those whom it seeks
to conquer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Seven years have now passed since my miraculous cure. My sight is
excellent. Neither reading nor hard work, even when kept up late at
night, wearies my eyes. God grant me never to use them save in the
cause of right.

FOOTNOTE:

[213] Notre Dame de Garaison.




AMERICA'S OBLIGATIONS TO FRANCE.


The woes and crimes of unhappy France have attracted the mixed
regards of the world; it has become an agreeable and timely diversion
to look away from the distressing picture, to find whatever there
is of compensation in the glories and virtues of her past; and the
occasion is thus created to review our own obligations as a nation
to this now stricken and humbled European power, and to determine
how much we are indebted to France for our own independence and
liberty. Another interest is added to the occasion in the fact
that this part of our history has been but scantily told, and
that, as the writer is persuaded, our national vanity, notoriously
accumulated as it is about everything belonging to the Revolutionary
period, has hitherto prevented a fair and full confession of the
obligations referred to--has diminished the story, if not actually
misrepresented it. But it is a mistaken vanity, the very opposite
of a manly pride. A sentiment of the illustrious Lafayette fits in
here. A citizen of both France and America, he stood between the
two, and spoke happily for each, saying: "Comme un Français, dont
le cœur brûle de patriotisme, je me réjouis du rôle que la France a
joué, et de l'alliance qu'elle a fait. Comme Americain, je reconnais
l'obligation, et je crois qu'en cela consiste la vraie dignité."

The severe truth of history and the constraints of true dignity alike
compel the statement, that but for the French interposition the
cause of the American colonists was likely to be lost; at least,
that our independence would not have been obtained when it was, and
as completely as it was, but for the succors of France. And this
proposition, the writer thinks, may be made out from a summary view
of the history of the period, yet calling attention to some facts
that do not appear hitherto to have been calculated.

Accustomed as we are, in looking back upon the history of our
Revolutionary struggle, to dwell upon its last signal triumphs, and
naturally disposed to measure the preceding events by the conclusion,
it is difficult for us of this day to realize how narrowly it avoided
defeat, and in what extremity it at one time hesitated. In the winter
of 1780, and at a time when the aid of France was most urgently
implored, the American cause was almost at its last gasp. Many of
its leaders had secretly despaired of it, and found it difficult
to impose upon the public the countenance of hope. In a private
letter, Mr. Madison wrote: "How a total dissolution of the army
can be prevented in the course of the winter" [1780-1781] "is, for
any resources now in prospect, utterly inexplicable." There was no
money to pay the troops; and the fact was that the war was no longer
kept up but by ill-digested and dilatory expedients. Meanwhile, the
fate of arms accumulated against the colonists, and the fortunes
of the field were as bad as the embarrassments of the interior
administration. The more Southern States appeared to be already lost
by the irruptions of the enemy upon an indefensible coast; and the
whole army of General Greene was soon to be in full retreat before
Lord Cornwallis through the State of North Carolina.

The two great wants of the colonists, and which had become vital,
were _money_ and a _fleet_. "The sinews of war" were nearly spent.
The paper money of Congress was fast becoming worthless; the resource
to specific requisitions was a mere indirection as long as the states
supplied them by paper emissions of their own; and of this resource
it was prophesied in Congress that "what was intended for our relief
will only hasten our destruction."

The want of a counterpoise to the naval power of England was the
main point of the military situation. Here was a fatal weakness; and
events had progressed far enough to show that the hope of a decisive
field anywhere in the colonies depended upon their maintaining a
naval superiority in the American seas. In weighing the chances
of the war, the configuration of the American territory is to be
studied; and how vulnerable it was from the water had already been
proved by the events of the war. At the time of the Revolution,
the breadth of the American settlements from the Penobscot to
the Altamaha did not average more than a hundred miles from the
sea-line. This jagged strip of territory, traversed by estuaries and
navigable streams, was so accessible to the enemy's vessels, that
his navy might be considered as constantly equivalent to a second
army operating on the flank of that engaged on shore. Wherever
Washington might move, this apparition would cling to him--his flank
constantly threatened, and every movement he made on land compelled
to calculate the possibility of a counter-movement by the English
fleet that hovered on the coast, and might develop an attack with
greater expedition than he could change his front to meet it. It was
the thorn in his side. When the baffled American commander spoke of
retiring into the mountains of Virginia for a last desperate stand,
it was not a rhetorical flourish, as it has generally been accounted,
but a true military appreciation of the situation--the necessity of a
barrier against the naval power of the enemy. If that barrier could
be made on the water by the interposition of a fleet, then he would
be (what he had not hitherto been) free to operate on the land, and
make there a field that might be decisive. But the element of any
such strategic combination was naval supremacy, and, until that was
obtained, he could only hope at best for a desultory warfare, with
constant exposure to a risk that he could neither meet nor avoid.

Now, the two vital wants of America--a foreign loan and a naval
armament--were those which were precisely supplied by France. A
foreign loan of specie, to the amount of twenty-five millions of
livres, was asked of his Most Christian Majesty; and Franklin,
reinforced by Col. Laurens, was instructed to impress the French king
and his ministers with the especial need of a demonstration against
the naval power of England. The succors were granted, and were beyond
the expectations of the colonists. In July, 1780, the first French
expedition, under the command of the Count Rochambeau, landed at
Newport. And from that moment a new hope commenced for America, and
a new inspiration was to bring to sudden buoyancy a sinking cause.
The French force, however, was held inoperative for some time for
the want of a sufficient navy to co-operate; and to this end the
supplications of Congress to the French monarch had been redoubled.
The expedition of Rochambeau consisted of five thousand men. It was
to be reinforced by a fleet from the West Indies; but the orders
had miscarried; and it was more than a year later when the second
instalment of French aid was made available, and the conditions
realized which fixed the last field of the war, and secured that
final victory to which the French aids, by land and by water, were
each indispensable. To this second aid reference will be made in its
order.

Usually, a foreign contingent is not the best of the military
material which a country may afford. The hireling and the adventurer
enter largely into its composition, and its standard of service is
low and suspicious. But this common imputation could not be cast on
the expeditionary corps under Rochambeau. It was of the flower of
the French army, and nobility did not disdain the service of the
infant Republic. The illustrious Lafayette stood by himself, being a
volunteer, and independent of the action of the royal forces. "The
Marquis," as Washington never failed to punctiliously call him, won
all hearts in America; and, though accused by Thomas Jefferson, who,
however, was habitually envious, of having "a canine thirst for
popularity," there is good reason to believe that he was actuated
by a solid attachment to liberty and inspired by generous motives.
Anyhow, he was destined, as we shall see, to perform one of the
most brilliant and critical services of the Revolution. The Count
Rochambeau was never popular in America; his manners were haughty,
and he had a military exclusiveness; but he was an excellent soldier,
and at one time he gave a striking example of his deference to
republican principles in submitting to be arrested, in a group of
his officers, at the hands of a petty county constable, on the
complaint of a New England farmer for some acts of petty "trespass"
on his fields! In his command, landed at Newport, there were names
already illustrious in France, or destined to become so. Of such
names were the Chevalier de Chastellux, performing the duties of
major-general in the expeditionary corps, an encyclopædist and the
friend of Voltaire; Berthier, afterwards risen from the rank of an
under-officer to be a marshal of France and minister of war; the
Count de Ségur, celebrated in literary as well as military life; the
Duke de Lauzun, afterwards a general of the French Republic; the
Count de Dillon, who, a few years later, met a tragic fate at the
hands of the Revolutionary party in France; Pichegru, then a private
in the ranks of the artillery; Matthieu Dumas, subsequently a peer of
France; Aubert-Dubayet, afterwards minister of war under the French
Republic; the Prince de Broglie, afterwards field-marshal, and one of
the victims of the Revolutionary tribunal of 1794, etc.

Of the character of the soldiers we have some pleasant and vivid
contemporary testimony. The idea which the sturdy American colonist,
the backwoodsman with his Tower musket, had formed in advance of
the French soldier, was not altogether a complimentary one. It
was generally a caricature, popular at that day, of a dapper,
ill-contrived individual who made ridiculous mistakes in the English
language, ate frogs, memorable in the lampoon of Hogarth as toasting
one of the amphibious at the end of a rapier, and had but the one
virtue to make amends for his eccentricities--a courage that was
unquestionable, though grotesque and physically inefficient. The
picture was dispelled at the sight of Rochambeau's veterans--men
who equalled in stature and in strength the best that England
could display, who were inured to hardship and fatigue such as
were scarcely supported by the green backwoodsman, and who marched
hundreds of miles with an order and steadiness that never failed
to be admirable. Mr. Madison, who saw these troops file through
Philadelphia, after the fatigues of a march from the banks of the
Hudson River, thus testifies his impressions of the spectacle:
"Nothing can exceed the appearance of this specimen which our ally
has sent us of his army, whether we regard the figure of the men or
the exactness of their discipline."

Such was the brilliancy and the solid worth of the first
contributions of France to her feeble ally. To estimate the motives
and spirit of such aids, what influences ranged an old and brilliant
monarchy by the side of an infant Republic branded with "rebellion,"
and intertwined flags so opposite, it will be well to review the
relations of the parties to an alliance so strange and exceptional.

France had no interests to cultivate in America, no objects of
ambition to secure in a quarter of the world from which she had
deliberately withdrawn. Her flag had not appeared there since
the Treaty of Paris in 1756, and her subsequent cession to Spain
of her possessions on the Mississippi left her, for the present,
disembarrassed of all territorial claims and interests in America.
She had no reason for any affection for the English colonists now
asserting their independence; they were the sons of those who had
fought against her; the traditions of the colonial wars in America
were yet fresh. On the side of the rebel colonists themselves, there
was a suspicion of France--at least, no disposition to expect any
generosity from her in the struggle that was to ensue. So little was
that part expected which she did eventually take in the American
Revolution, that Patrick Henry (incredible as the fact may appear
to those who have read only eulogiums on this person) actually
retreated at the last from the Declaration of Independence, from
fear of France and her co-operation to subdue the colonies. In a
letter to John Adams, written five days after the Virginia Convention
had adopted the famous resolution of the 15th May, 1776, for
independence, he dwells upon the apprehension that France might be
seduced to take sides against the colonies by an offer from England
to divide the territories of America between them. It was an unworthy
suspicion; but Mr. Henry, who had but little originality, and was a
characteristic retailer of popular impressions, was probably in this
imputation upon France the echo of a thought common at the time.

No grounds of sympathy were yet apparent between France and the
struggling colonists; nothing, as far as the men of 1776 should
see, but recollections of old animosity and present causes for
distrust. Even the sympathy of religion, which has proved such a
fruitful source of international friendships and alliances, where
there have been no other points of coincidence, was wanting; instead
of it, a sharp antagonism was the fact. Protestant America, many
parts of it yet fresh with the persecution of Catholics, had no
reason to expect favors from Catholic France. Indeed, when those
favors were given, there was some discontented and ungrateful outcry
that it was a design upon the religion of the colonists; so deeply
sown was the distrust of France. There were those to object that
Congress had attended a Mass, and that the municipal authorities
of Boston had, on some occasion, walked in a Catholic procession.
The traitor, Benedict Arnold, in casting about for reasons to defend
his treason, could find none more plausible, or, in his estimation,
more likely to be received, than that the French alliance was about
to betray the religion of the colonists, and that he, therefore,
had determined to take refuge in Protestant England! Such an appeal
to popular prejudice was doubtless extravagant, even more so than
that of Patrick Henry accusing France; but both show the extent
of estrangement and suspicion which France had to overcome before
she could convince America of her friendship and generosity. And,
unfortunately, as we shall presently painfully see, such suspicion
was never entirely overcome, but was to remain to disfigure the last
page of the history of the Revolution, and to attach to it a story of
permanent disgrace to America.

When the colonies implored the aid of France, through an address
of Congress in November, 1780, the appeal showed an extremity and
temper of the colonists which suggested that almost any price would
be paid for the necessary succors. How far the French monarch might
have availed himself of the necessities of his suppliant ally, had
he been selfish enough to make these the measure of his demands, is
a conjecture almost illimitable. To purchase the aid of Spain, the
American Congress had been willing to retract former resolutions, and
to offer the almost priceless boon of the exclusive navigation of the
Mississippi; and it was only the fatuity and blindness of that power
that had prevented the fatal concession. Was the aid of France worth
less? and was the temper of concession not to be practised upon by
herself?

It has been usual to give a very summary and cold explanation of the
aids which France furnished the American cause, by pointing out its
effect to cripple her powerful and hereditary foe, England; thus
detracting from the generosity of the contribution, and representing
it as a mere move on the diplomatic chess-board which the French
monarch could not do otherwise than make. But this detraction does
not hold good. Admitting the full force of the reasons which it
imputes to France, there is much in her alliance with America that
is yet left unexplained; and there are circumstances which make it
one of the most peculiar and unique examples of generosity recorded
in history. It has not been unusual for powerful nations to assist
the weak on no other ground of sympathy than having a foe in common;
but it has seldom been the case that such aid has been rendered
without the powerful ally exacting terms for her own contribution,
and turning to her own advantage the necessities she has been called
upon to aid. England herself had afforded a precedent for the price
of such concessions. She had asked of the United Provinces, for the
price of her support against Spain, that all her expenses should
be repaid, and that the towns and fortresses of Holland should be
held by her as pledges for the conditions of the alliance. France
would have been sustained by historical example, and by moral right,
in exacting very important concessions for her aid of the American
cause in circumstances in which that aid was deemed vital for the
success of a struggle that already bordered on despair. She asked
nothing. She gave an army and a fleet, and bore all the expenses of
both armaments. She advanced money and replenished the almost empty
treasury of her ally. And she yet enlarged the generosity of her
alliance by devoting her arms, not only to a common operation, but
pledging at the outset the indispensable conclusion of her exertions
in the independence of America and the territorial integrity of
the States. In the Treaty of 1778, "the direct and essential end"
of the alliance was declared to be "the liberty, sovereignty, and
independence, absolute and unlimited, of the United States."

The arms of France were thus given directly to a cause of republican
liberty rather than merely involved in a diplomatic complication.
What reasons could have induced this apparent excess of generosity,
this singular spectacle of the ancient monarchy of the Franks taking
sides with the infant republic of the Anglo-Saxon colonists of
America?

The explanation is that the French aid was a contribution of the
_people_ of France rather than that of its crown. It sprung out of
the popular heart rather than the grace of a kind and munificent
monarch; and it has this circumstance of a tender and imperishable
souvenir to the American people. It was a free love-offering, the
first dedication of their cause in the sympathies of the world.
That republican sentiment which a few years later in France sprang
into such fierce life, was already deeply harbored in the hearts of
her people; and the movement of the American colonists gave it an
opportunity of comparatively safe expression; while all the romance
of such a sentiment found abundant material in the circumstances
of the struggle, the distance of the theatre, its scenery bordered
by savage life, the novelty of a people whose history was entirely
unique, and whose simplicity of manners suggested comparisons with
classical antiquity. The enthusiasm of the French mind seized every
attractive circumstance of the occasion. It was entitled "the
crusade of the eighteenth century." Again, it was adorned with
recollections more antique, and it was said that "the Republic of
Plato" had at last found realization in the midst of a people whose
exclusive situation had been a school for virtues hitherto unknown,
and was to afford an experiment that had until then lingered in the
speculations of philosophy and the dreams of poetry. The simplicity
of American manners was taken as a charming contrast to the court
splendors of Paris and Versailles. It was not only Franklin's cotton
stockings, but every peculiarity of the American citizen became
a picturesque study and the symbol of a new political life. The
memoirs of the Count de Ségur are among the contemporary testimonies
of the rage in the French capital for everything American; and we
are specially told of "cet air antique qui semblant transporter
tout-a-coup dans nos murs, au milieu de la civilisation amollie
et servile au dix-huitième siècle, quelques sages contemporans de
Platon, on des republicains du temps de Caton et de Fabius!"

Of the operations of the allied arms, our space only affords such
a sketch as may give some general idea of the extent and value of
the French aid. Washington had at first proposed, on the arrival of
Rochambeau, to attempt the repossession of New York City, and to
crush there the main body of the British army. But the failure to
arrive of the naval forces expected from Brest and the West Indies
disconcerted the plan; and events were preparing another theatre for
the final catastrophe. The British post and army in Virginia became
the objective point of the allied arms. The long-expected French
fleet was at last assured; it was to make its appearance in the
Chesapeake; and Washington prepared to move his army from the banks
of the Hudson to the distant scene of co-operation. From a temporary
observatory on the heights near Newburg, the anxious commander
watched his army crossing the blue stream; and as he mounted his
horse, to put himself at the head of a march that was to toil over
many hundreds of miles to find a last and effulgent field, far away
in Virginia, he wrung the hand of a French officer who stood in the
group around him, as expressing the new hope that had dawned in his
face, and repledging the alliance that was to win its realization.
And now ensued a combination of circumstances, in each one of which
the French arms determined a crisis, and displayed a dramatic
spectacle.

Lafayette, "the boy" in Cornwallis's estimation, "the tutelary genius
of American independence," as he has been designated by a Virginian
historian and statesman (William C. Rives), was sent forward to
Virginia, to hold in check there the haughty enemy. Washington had
given to this young Frenchman supreme command of the operations in
Virginia. He justified a trust which the pride of the state might
possibly resent, in his own estimate of the qualities of the noble
foreigner. In a private letter to a Congressman of Virginia (Jones)
he wrote: "The Marquis possesses uncommon military talents; is of
a quick and sound judgment; persevering and enterprising without
rashness; and, besides these, he is of a very conciliating temper,
and perfectly sober--which are qualities that rarely combine in
the same person. And were I to add that some men will gain as much
experience in the course of three or four years as some others will
in ten or a dozen, you cannot deny the fact, and attack me upon that
ground." Lafayette was elevated over the heads of both General Wayne
and the Baron de Steuben.

When the Frenchman came to the defence of Virginia, she was well-nigh
conquered. She was open in every direction to the enterprise of
the invader. Her public men were recreant, and under the suspicion
of cowardice. One of her most faithful censors has recorded the
delinquency of the times. In a letter dated the 6th November, 1780,
Judge Pendleton wrote: "We had no House of Delegates on Saturday
last, which, with our empty treasury, are circumstances unfavorable
at this juncture. Mr. Henry has resigned his seat in Congress; and
I hear Mr. Jones intends it. It is also said the governor intends
to resign. It is a little cowardly to quit our posts in a bustling
time." The city of Richmond, for which was to be reserved in history
stains beyond any other American city, was ready to submit tamely
to another occupation. The fact is, painful as the confession may
be to the Virginian of to-day--offending the pride of a state that
has almost invidiously claimed her part in the Revolution--Virginia
had grown reluctant in the war, and disposed to have recourse to
unworthy expedients. She had been prominent in Congress to recommend
the surrender of the navigation of the Mississippi in order to buy
the alliance of Spain. She had twice proposed a dictatorship; and
now, when Cornwallis was advancing, and Mr. Jefferson was resigning
the governorship, and suspicion, as we have seen, had fallen on other
leaders in the "bustling times," no less a person than Richard Henry
Lee, then in retirement at Westmoreland, was willing to surrender the
liberties of Virginia to a dictator as the only resource of safety!
Now, the state had nothing between her and the public enemy than the
twelve hundred bayonets of Lafayette. The address and skill of the
young Frenchman saved the Old Dominion from a subjection that would,
otherwise, have been complete, as far as the swift arms of Cornwallis
could have overrun the state.

Lafayette had retired to the Rapidan as the imposing and triumphant
army of Cornwallis advanced on Richmond. Here, joined by the
Pennsylvania troops under General Wayne and a body of riflemen from
the western part of Virginia, he was able to retrace his steps, and
to press Cornwallis's retreat towards the Chesapeake. Extricating
himself from an unequal engagement at Jamestown, he moved up the
river, and reposed at Malvern Hill--since celebrated as a refuge in
a greater contest of arms. Subsequently, at Williamsburg, he was
joined by the allied forces under Washington and Rochambeau--and then
commenced the combination that was to compass Cornwallis, and to
constitute the last splendid scene of the war.

It was a broad scene. On the 30th of August, 1781, twenty-eight
line-of-battle ships, bearing the flag of France, rode on the
beautiful expanse of the Chesapeake. They had come from the West
Indies. Eight other ships suddenly appeared from the opposite point
of the compass: the French squadron from Rhode Island, which had
entered the Chesapeake, in spite of the efforts of the English
admirals to intercept it. The _Ville de Paris_, the flag-ship of
the French admiral, had held in council the great actors of the
drama--Washington, Rochambeau, and the Count de Grasse; and it only
remained to draw the lines, by sea and land, around the despairing
enemy. The splendid fleet of France was the barrier between
Cornwallis and the succors that Sir Henry Clinton had promised from
New York. It was the element of victory--the apparition of a new
hope risen from the seas. On the other wing of the scene floated the
flags of Washington and Rochambeau. On the land were the splendid
armies of France side by side with the militia of the young republic,
and almost as numerous as the soldiers, a vast concourse of country
people, watching the sublime wonders of a bombardment that laced the
night skies, and enchanted by the music of the French timbrel, an
instrument then unknown in America. Three French commands, those of
the Count Rochambeau, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Marquis de
Saint-Simon, stood on the field of Yorktown.

In this circle, made possible only by the links of the French aid,
went down the flag of Cornwallis and the hopes of England. It
was a memorable scene, and one which brought into strong relief
the assistance of our ally. In a letter to General Washington
from Mr. Jefferson, who had just retired from the gubernatorial
chair of Virginia, the distinguished patriot, after offering his
congratulations, justly wrote: "If in the minds of any, the motives
of gratitude to our good allies were not sufficiently apparent, the
part they have borne in this action must amply evince them." At the
height of its emotions of joy and gratitude, Congress promised a
monument for the scene. It was resolved that it would "cause to be
erected at York, in Virginia, a marble column, adorned with emblems
of the alliance between the United States and his Most Christian
Majesty, and inscribed with a succinct narrative." The pledge to this
day remains unfulfilled; and no monument testifies our early and
imperishable obligations to France, except such as may yet exist in
the hearts of our people.

Here, with the illumination of Yorktown, we would willingly conclude
the history of the Franco-American alliance. But there is a sequel
not to be omitted--a painful story that belongs yet to the justice of
history.

In the negotiations for peace that followed Yorktown, the American
Congress, new and timorous in diplomacy, betook itself to a refuge,
the shallowness of which is especially conspicuous in diplomacy--that
of supposing wisdom in a multitude of counsellors. It constituted
no less than five commissioners to treat at Paris. The selections
were ill; and in some instances the worst that could have been made.
Of the five, Mr. Jefferson did not attend. Mr. Adams was personally
distasteful to the French government. How far Mr. Henry Laurens might
be suspected of undue deference to England might have been judged
from his famous Tower letter, the cringing humiliations of which had
opened the doors of his prison; and it is said that when this letter
was divulged to Congress it would have recalled his commission,
had there not been doubts of the authenticity of the document,
so extraordinary was its tone. But it is justice to add that the
subsequent conduct of Mr. Laurens repelled the charge of partiality
for England; however, the French Government may have had reason to be
displeased at his antecedents. Mr. Jay was of a suspicious temper,
an intrigant rather than a diplomatist; illustrating precisely
that lowest notion of diplomacy, that it is essentially a game of
deceptions--a part that can be performed only with a false face.
Happily, the world has outlived this degrading idea of a really
august office, and has come to question why deception should be
considered more necessary in diplomacy than in any other branch of
public service. Indeed, there is room in diplomacy for the exercise
of the highest abilities, an arena for the busiest and most exacting
competitions of intellectual skill, without calling into requisition
the weapons of chicanery and fraud. There is no political service
that more strongly than the office of the diplomatist tests that
sum of powers which the world calls _character_: the clear, strong
purpose, with its quick and happy selection of opportunities, the
instinct, the tact, and the decisiveness which hold the secret of
what is _greatness_ in history, rather than any amount of learned
accomplishments or any training of the intellectual closet. The
diplomatist must be quick, yet strong and unremitting; he must have
unbounded confidence in himself, without the weakness of vanity; he
must be patient, yet not dilatory; thoroughly imbued with the true
spirit of the French proverb, that "he who learns to wait is master
of his fortune." He must have the faculty of putting things in the
strongest possible light--that best and rarest of rhetorical talents,
the power of _statement_. He must have a nice sense of opportunities;
the delicate touch with the iron will; he must practise what Byron
numbered among the cardinal virtues, "tact"; of all men he must wear
that excellent motto, _suaviter in modo, fortiter in re_. Here,
surely, is a theatre for many virtues and abilities, without calling
to aid the mask and sinister weapons of professional deceit. The
greatest diplomatist of modern times, the unequalled Bismarck, is
said to be remarkable for the bluntness and directness that have
overcome by the very surprises of openness the chicanery of his
opponents. The robustness of his dealings with the finesse of the
old traditional school of European diplomacy reminds one of the duel
in "Peter Simple." A sturdy Englishman engages a master of fence,
and while the latter practises the most scientific attitude and has
his rapier poised according to the figures of the science, he is
infinitely surprised to have it seized in mid-air by the naked hand
of his antagonist, and himself run through the body. Not _secundum
artum_, but a most efficient way of concluding the combat. Of the
open and best school of diplomacy, Franklin at the French court was
a fair representative, the very opposite of Jay. The philosopher of
Pennsylvania has never been justly measured as a diplomatist; he had
been successful beyond all other American envoys; he was now the
Bismarck of the diplomatic collection at Paris, although he unhappily
gave way to the leadership of Jay.

In the negotiations for peace that ensued, Mr. Jay, leading more
or less willingly the other commissioners, was soon over head and
ears in an intrigue with the English ministry; acting on that
lowest supposition of tyroism in diplomacy--that the other party
must necessarily design a fraud, and that a counter-fraud must be
prepared to meet it. Congress had instructed that there should be
made "the most candid and confidential communications upon all
subjects to the ministers of our generous ally, the King of France";
and it took occasion to give a remarkable expression of gratitude to
France, its resolutions declaring "how much we rely on his majesty's
influence for effectual support in everything that may be necessary
to the present security or future prosperity of the United States
of America." Mr. Jay, who had taken the lead in the negotiations,
willingly followed by Adams, "dragging in Franklin," and resisted
to some extent by Laurens proceeded deliberately to violate these
instructions. He had conceived the suspicion that France was secretly
hostile to an early acknowledgment of the independence of America,
and wished to postpone it until she had extorted objects of her own
from the dependence of her ally. It is now known that this suspicion
was wholly imaginary. But Mr. Jay and his colleagues acted upon it,
and were twisted around the fingers of the English ministry to the
extent of treating with them, without giving the French government
knowledge of the steps and progress of the negotiation, thus
contributing to the adroit purpose of England to sow distrust in
the alliance that had humbled her. While the American commissioners
were professing to the French minister that negotiations were yet
at a distance, they had actually signed the provisional articles
of a treaty of peace with the crown of Great Britain. Worse than
this, they had agreed to a _secret_ article, which stipulated a
more favorable northern boundary for Florida, in the event of its
conquest by the arms of Great Britain, than if it should remain in
the possession of Spain at the termination of the war. Spain was at
that time an ally of France; and so it may be imagined how the latter
would be embarrassed by this secret article, and how England might
meditate in it an advantage in disturbing the understanding of France
and America.

Mr. Jay, unconscious that he had been made a catspaw of British
diplomacy, felicitated himself that he had made an excellent bargain
and done an acute thing; possessed as he was with that fatuity of all
deceivers, that omits to calculate the time when the deception must
necessarily become known. When the game that had been played upon
its ally became known to Congress, it plunged that body into the most
painful embarrassment. Mr. Madison, in his diary of the proceedings
of Congress, thus records its impressions: "The separate and secret
manner in which our ministers had proceeded with respect to France,
and the confidential manner with respect to the British ministers,
affected different members of Congress differently. Many of the
most judicious members thought they had all been in some measure
ensnared by the dexterity of the British minister, and particularly
disapproved of the conduct of Mr. Jay in submitting to the enemy his
jealousy of the French, without even the knowledge of Dr. Franklin,
and of the unguarded manner in which he, Mr. Adams, and Dr. Franklin
had given, in writing, sentiments unfriendly to our ally, and serving
as weapons for the insidious policy of the enemy. The separate
article was most offensive, being considered as obtained by Great
Britain, not for the sake of the territory ceded to her, but as a
means of disuniting the United States and France, as inconsistent
with the spirit of the alliance, and as a dishonorable departure from
the candor, rectitude, and plain dealing professed by Congress."

Congress did not extricate itself from the dilemma; it could not
do it. Suppression of what had been done could not be continued;
still less was it possible to make explanations to France; the only
thing to do was to say nothing, and to let the painful exposure work
itself out. The King of France had acted with an openness and an
attention to his allies, the contrasts of which made the exposure one
of great bitterness and shame. The Count de Vergennes had assured
the American commissioners: "The king has been resolved that all his
allies should be satisfied, being determined to continue the war,
whatever advantages may be offered to him, if England is disposed to
wrong any of them." Now, when the articles were brought into council
to be signed, the French monarch could not be other than surprised
and indignant. He put royal restraint upon his speech; but he could
not forbear saying, with a bluntness that must have bruised American
pride, and staggered the self-felicitations of Mr. Jay, that "he did
not think he had such allies to deal with."

The court of France sustained the insult with dignity, and yet with
evidence of a deep sense of wrong. When inquiry was made whether
expostulations would be made to the American Congress, the reply
of M. Marbois was heroic: "A great nation," he answered, "does not
complain; but it feels and remembers."




THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN GENEVA.


I.

In order to understand the events which have lately taken place in
Geneva, and those that are preparing there, it is necessary to cast
a general glance over the past and present state of the Catholic
religion in that little commonwealth.

Most people know what Geneva was prior to the French Revolution:
an independent state, separate from the Swiss Cantons, reduced by
Calvinism to an aristocratic theocracy, and shorn of those ancient
democratic franchises which it had enjoyed before breaking away from
Rome. The dominant principle in its customs and legislation was fear
and hatred of the proscribed worship. A minute and jealous care was
taken to repress the expansion of Catholicism--one exhibition of
which was seen in the strict closing of the city gates on the grand
festivals of the church, and the fine of ten crowns imposed on those
who held intercourse with the Bishop of Annecy on the occasion of
his pastoral visits. Under these circumstances, only a small number
of Catholics clung with heroic constancy to the ancient faith, and
secretly practised their religious duties in the recesses of their
houses. There were in 1759 but two hundred and twenty-seven Catholics
in Geneva--and in this number even Voltaire and his hangers-on were
included.

It was the French Revolution that forced open the gates, up to that
period so carefully closed, of this Protestant Rome. Geneva became
under the Empire a French department, and the Catholic religion in
the persons of the imperial functionaries was officially recognized.
Permission to erect a church was granted; but this first move
toward a less hostile attitude was not taken without the bitterest
opposition from the old Protestant party. In the remodelling of
Europe, after Napoleon's downfall, it was found desirable to
provide against the absorption of Geneva by uniting it to the
Swiss Confederation; but in order to overcome the difficulties of
geographical position, and make such an acquisition of territory
acceptable to Berne, it became necessary to join to Geneva certain
strips of land from the Catholic districts of Gex and Savoy. The
Genevans, who looked with dread upon this annexation, strove to
assure in any case their own supremacy, but the Catholics found
defenders in diplomatic circles, and their cause was protected by the
several treaties of Paris, Vienna, and Turin (1814-1816). In virtue
of these, all civil and political rights were guaranteed to the new
citizens, the Catholic religion was recognized, its exercise in
Geneva permitted, religious freedom solemnly pledged to the annexed
populations, and the expenses of their public worship assumed by the
state.

At this period the Catholics were not over a third of the whole
canton; but they rapidly increased, less, indeed, through conversions
than by immigration. In 1834, there were 25,000 Protestants and
18,000 Catholics. What was the attitude of the Genevan government
then? Power was still in the hands of the old Protestant
aristocracy--the strongest and only organized party, and a singular
admixture of good qualities and defects. The patrician of Geneva
was, indeed, a strange and now fast-disappearing type. Living in
his old town surrounded by ramparts, and in his old society even
more stringently closed, clad in sombre colors, speaking little and
laughing less, vain, stiff in his manners, with a stony cast of
countenance, he was devoid of generous sympathy and largeness of
heart, without, however, being altogether incapable of a certain
pecuniary liberality; benign to his clients, implacable to rivals,
marking out in everything a conventional line, and merciless to the
one who should cross it; a man of letters, but an enemy to literary
liberty, the friend of order, respecting traditions, an ardent
patriot, but of a narrow and exclusive patriotism, he was attached
more to his caste and party than to his country. Often sincerely
pious, this Genevan gentleman of the old school was sometimes a
hypocrite and Pharisee; a formalist himself, he was quick to cast the
first stone at the transgressors of the law. But what was strongest
in this class of men was the Protestant sentiment in its most odious
and intolerant shape. Having seen with displeasure the annexation of
the Catholic districts, and agreed very unwillingly to the religious
liberty insured by treaty, this party found it hard to extinguish
its traditional spirit of bigotry. Every movement of vitality on the
part of Catholics excited distrust, and looked like a revolt; and
proceeding to open acts, it struck successively at the liberty of
instruction, the freedom of the pulpit, and the right of endowment.
The attempt to enforce civil marriage failed only when Sardinia
threatened to intervene. Catholics were eyed with disfavor, and of
the thousand servants of the government, only fifty-nine belonged
to their creed. Finally, if Protestants were obliged to endure the
official existence of the Roman Church, it seemed to them quite
proper to try and make it a state affair. They obtained from the Pope
in 1819 the transfer of jurisdiction over Geneva from the Archbishop
of Chambéry to the Bishop of Lausanne--their secret object being to
subject the Catholic clergy to the direct influence of government,
through the dependence on the state to which the bishops of
Switzerland had long been accustomed, and in particular by using the
conciliatory and somewhat weak character of Monseigneur de Lausanne.

In fact, an agreement was drawn up with the bishop, by which the
civil power was permitted to interfere in the nomination of pastors,
exact from them an oath, publish and circulate episcopal charges.
Soon after, a law made the _placet_ obligatory for all documents
emanating from the diocesan or papal authorities. A few official
honors and some pecuniary advantages were the only compensation made
to Catholics for the prejudice done their liberty. These, however,
struggled perseveringly against all exertions to enthrall them,
and continued in spite of every difficulty to increase and gain
strength. This success they owed chiefly to their courageous pastor,
the Abbé Vuarin, "an admirable man for a conflict," as his friend
Lamennais used to say of him: one whose indefatigable industry,
fearlessness, and devotion to duty made every sacrifice light. He
travelled Europe in the interests of his flock, and Turin, Berne,
Paris, Munich, Rome, heard him defend their cause. He had friends in
all places, and corresponded with popes, kings, and the great men
of his day; and, during the continual hostilities which he carried
on against Protestants, wrote some severe things, for the most part
anonymously, but other times under his own name, wherein the only
subject of regret is too great fieriness and irony. He used to watch
the ballot-boxes while reciting his breviary, which drew from M. de
Maistre the remark, "When I see his way of working, it recalls the
success of the apostles." M. Vuarin had said, "A priest who is named
pastor at Geneva should go, should remain, and should end there";
and, true to his own word, he died there, parish priest, in 1843,
having been appointed under the Empire. Before his time, it was only
now and then that a cassock ventured to appear in Geneva: at his
funeral, two bishops, two hundred priests, and thousands of Catholic
laymen defiled through the streets of the old Protestant city.

It turned out, however, that Catholic progress only irritated the
intolerant spirit of opposition, and at the centennial jubilee of
the Reformation, in 1835, the inflamed passions of the multitude
broke out in insults and deeds of violence against the faith of the
minority. The Protestant Union, a sort of secret society, was formed
to sustain and encourage exclusivism and anti-Catholic feelings; and
when a collective address, signed by the clergy of Geneva, denounced
the movement to the bishop, the council of state, in retaliation,
refused to admit the nomination of any priest who should not have
expressed regret for appending his name to the paper. At M. Vuarin's
death, Geneva was for several years deprived of the ministrations
of his successor, M. Marilley, who had been arrested by the public
officers and conducted to the frontier. Such, in 1846, was the
position of the church: misunderstood in her spirit, the full
measure of her rights withheld, strong only in the energy of her
defenders. Then a political change took place, which considerably
modified the situation.

In the plain on the other side of the Rhone, facing the steep hill
whereon are the dwellings of the Genevan aristocracy, along which
are drawn out the narrow streets of the old town, and on the summit
of which rise the city hall and St. Peter's church--that Acropolis
of Calvinism--extends the democratic and laboring suburb of _Saint
Gervais_. Here for several years a work had been going on whose
gravity the ruling class of Geneva did not comprehend. A radical
and demagogical party, intimately connected with the revolutionists
of other countries, was being organized. Its newspapers, pamphlets,
and the affair of "Young Italy" in 1836 revealed its boldness and
vigorous action. On the occasion of the Sonderbund disturbances
in 1846, the radicals got excited, the Faubourg St. Gervais rose
in tumult, and after a sanguinary struggle the conservatives were
put down, the old town was occupied by the victorious workmen,
and the power of the state passed into the hands of the leaders
of the insurrection--M. Fazy and his friends. The extinction of
the ancient oligarchy was known to be their object. Catholics had
kept aloof from this conflict, feeling little sympathy with the
revolutionary passions of the radicals, whose pretext, moreover, for
rising had been the aid extended by the Genevan government to their
co-religionists of the Sonderbund. But when once in power, the new
party, more astute than its predecessor, understood the importance of
the Catholic element when it came to a question of votes.

M. Fazy, although ultra in politics, had no religious prejudices,
and, neither Catholic nor Protestant, all he cared for was to bring
about the ruin of the Calvinist aristocracy. In so much (as the
Bishop of Lausanne observed in 1849), he was acting to the advantage
of Catholics. After the radicals had destroyed the ramparts of the
old town, Geneva began rapidly to change appearance: entirely new
quarters were soon laid out, strangers came in large numbers, and the
Catholic population visibly increased with the immigration. In 1850,
the canton counted 34,212 Protestants and 29,764 Catholics; ten years
later, the figures stood 42,099 of the latter to 40,069 of the former.

The radicals had the good sense also to respect the liberty of
Catholics; they gave them ground to build another church on, and in
the central part of the new districts, hard by the railway-station, a
Gothic edifice, which people used to call the cathedral-citadel--the
temple of liberty--was erected. Thus little by little the two classes
were drawn together, despite so many profound differences. The
conservatives themselves contributed to this, for the concessions
to Catholics were their chief point of opposition; and in the next
electoral campaign they took for rallying-cry, "Fazy sold to the
papists." Thereupon it became a necessity, if Catholics would keep
their rights, to vote with the radicals; they did so in 1855, and
the conservatives were utterly defeated. Things remained in this
state until 1860, the government continuing to respect Catholic
liberty; the bishop also was allowed to return to Geneva, and Fazy
ably defended him against the narrow prejudices of a few friends.
When the church of Our Lady was finished, the consecration sermon
was preached by the eloquent mouth of the man who to-day exercises
over the faithful of Geneva, although with different qualities, the
influence that M. Vuarin once had. This was the Abbé Mermillod.
Untrammelled by attachments either to person or party, clever, firm,
yet pacific, uniting to the authority of virtue all the charms of
talent and character, his liberal ideas no one could gainsay, and his
devotion to the church the Holy Father has on more than one occasion
publicly recognized. Nevertheless, if the rule of the radicals was
in some respects profitable to Catholics, it was baneful to them
on more than one account. The sources of moral and intellectual
corruption were multiplied in the canton; freemasonry received the
same concessions as religion; the professorships in the academy were
bestowed upon the enemies of every form of Christianity; and all the
while an active proselytism was spreading immoral sentiments and
infidelity among the people. In this state of affairs, the opposition
daily waxed stronger, and after fifteen years of administration, the
radicals were defeated (1861) by the conservatives, rejuvenated and
transformed into an independent party.


II.

The party that now came in was no longer the same old purely
aristocratic one of former times; it had allies among the democrats.
A popular society, known as The String, established in the very
centre of the working Quartier de Saint Gervais, furnished it with
brawny arms and clubs to repel at the polls the violence which the
radicals had initiated. From 1861 to 1864, the independents gained
ground rapidly, and the bloody riots that disturbed Geneva in the
last-named year only served to assure their success. It may be
asked, What did the Catholics do during this political change? They
could not aspire to rule: they were forced to choose between the
Protestant haters of their faith and the radical indifferentists who
treated all religions alike--one might say with equal contempt--but
which had at least the merit of respecting liberty of conscience.
A handful of Catholics, disgusted with the subversive doctrines of
the radicals, sought alliance with the independents; but the mass
remained liege to their first protectors. Some of the leaders, too,
of that party belonged to Catholic families, and were, nominally,
Catholics themselves; whereas all the chief men of the independents
were Protestants.

At this period, a great event in the Catholic life of Geneva took
place. Pius IX. in 1864 raised the Abbé Mermillod to the episcopal
dignity; only by a prudent reserve he did not immediately confer upon
him the title of bishop of that city, but of Hebron _in partibus
infidelium_. In order not to encounter too many obstacles at the
outset, the authorities of the canton were not officially notified
of the fact, which was brought to their knowledge indirectly. The
independents affected to ignore the new arrangement, and consider
Mgr. Mermillod as only the vicar-general of Bishop Marilley. Whenever
he spoke as a prelate, they showed themselves surprised and angry.
The radicals, on their part, saw the establishment of an episcopal
see with the same unconcern as they had witnessed the erection of the
cathedral. And yet a few were provoked; they were principally leaders
from the Catholic ranks, who foresaw the blow their influence would
receive from such a quarter. On the other hand, Mgr. Mermillod's
European reputation flattered the self-love of the Genevans, thus
lessening political and religious repugnances; while his amenity,
conciliatory spirit, the irresistible seduction of his ways, his
political prudence, which caused him to avoid the entanglements of
party strife, helped to surmount many obstacles.

A question of great importance to Catholics soon came up. In 1815,
when parts of Savoy and the Pays-de-Gex were annexed, although the
religious liberty of the new-comers had been diplomatically secured,
Geneva reserved to her own sons, under the modest designation "rights
of property, burghership, and district residence," the enjoyment
of considerable wealth coming from old foundations, and destined
particularly for hospitals and other charitable institutions. The
new-comers had no share in the distribution of these funds: hence
arose the distinction in the community of _elder_ and _younger_
brothers. About the year 1866, a motion was put forward to abolish
this privilege of the ancient citizens, and to induce the new ones to
renounce the treaty stipulations in their favor and come under the
common law. The project fell through at the time, but was finally
adopted in 1868. The Catholics took a liberal and generous stand.
They might regret the international engagements to respect their
religious liberty; they could loudly complain that by a provision of
the bill the independents endowed the Protestant Church with a part
of this appropriation, consequently securing it against loss in the
event of a separation between church and state, whereas nothing was
set apart to defray the expenses of Catholic worship; nevertheless,
the great majority voted to let it pass. God grant that they may not
have been deceived! If they had been organized into a political
party, they could and they should have had inserted some similar
allowance in their favor. For all this, the Catholics, while they
continued to make rapid progress, assumed an attitude of moderation
and straightforward liberality. Mgr. Mermillod openly declared, "The
Catholics have not the preponderance, or the means of obtaining it;
they do not think of it, they cannot have it, they do not desire it.
They have no privileges to petition for, but all more than ever must
love our native Switzerland, which turns now her eyes upon us, and
must cling to our institutions and to that liberty which they secure
us." The bishop's adversaries could not find fault with him, and the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_ was obliged, however unwillingly and tardily,
to acknowledge his liberal tone. And yet this attitude of Catholics
and their progress only excited greater distrust and hatred. The
society of The String raised in its manifestoes the phantom of
ultramontanism, the press insulted them, and they were threatened
in their rights of association, of burial, of instruction, and of
preaching. It is principally at Carouge that they have had to suffer.
This place is under the influence of certain so-called Catholic
radicals, who in truth are more anti-Catholic than the Protestants
themselves. When these people attack the church, the independents
support them; sometimes, however, the latter have known how to
maintain an at least apparent neutrality.

It is chiefly in view of the eventual re-establishment of the
bishopric of Geneva that anti-Catholic prejudices are manifested.
The Protestants understand that _Hebron_ is only a first step, and
they recoil at the idea of having at Geneva itself a Bishop of
Geneva. Several times already the question has been discussed in the
council of state, and the opponents of the church seek in Gallican
and _Josephine_ traditions, in the text of treaties, everywhere, for
reasons to deny to Catholics the right of having a bishop. Common
sense, equity, treaties, all is against them, but prejudice prevails.
The Catholics on their side are determined that they shall have their
own bishop, and this to-day is the great dispute between them and the
Protestants. Mgr. Mermillod acts in all these troubles more like an
apostle than a politician. He is right. He believes in his mission;
and, without being able exactly to point out the course which
Providence will keep, he is convinced that the church will prosper in
Geneva. May his hope be realized! At any rate, the Genevan Catholics
are fortunate to have such a bishop. To conclude, their present
situation is a critical one. It is fraught with dangers and yet full
of hope.




NEW PUBLICATIONS.


    PATRON SAINTS. By Eliza Allen Starr. Baltimore: John
    Murphy & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication
    Society. 1871.

This is an uncommonly interesting and readable book. Lives of saints,
especially of such as those who form its subject, ought, of course,
always to be interesting to Catholics, and even to others; but,
unfortunately, the abundance of facts which are often put in a small
space, and the dry and sometimes unsystematic way in which they are
presented, make them usually, perhaps, unattractive to any except
those who wish to make what is called spiritual reading, and put
them, if not entirely beyond the reach of children, at least much
less useful to them than they might be made, and than they have been
made in the present work. The aim of the author has been to bring out
the lives of the servants of God in their true light, as something
more wonderful than any fairy tales or fictions, as, indeed, they
are; to satisfy the natural desire of the young for the marvellous
with what is not only wonderful but admirable, and to supply the
place of fiction--to some extent, at least--with truth. And in order
that they may answer this end, they are told in an attractive and
conversational way, with occasional digressions and episodes, and
the style is such that, instead of searching about for the most
interesting of the lives to begin with, one begins at once wherever
he may happen to open, and keeps on till it is more than time to
leave off. For, though these sketches seem to have been intended
principally for children and young people, there can be no one who
will not be pleased with them or who is too far advanced and well
informed to profit by them. There are twelve illustrations. The book
is well printed and elegantly bound.


    NEVER FORGOTTEN; OR, THE HOME OF THE LOST CHILD. By
    Cecilia Mary Caddell. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1871.
    For sale by The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren
    Street, New York.

Details of the self-denying lives of those who devote themselves to
works of charity, under the rules of a religious order, are always
interesting to the earnest Catholic. In this attractive volume, we
have a touching record of the devoted lives of the Sisters of the
Good Shepherd, woven with the story of one who came to them dead
in sin, but was brought to life, faith, and peace, by the blessing
of God on their unfailing efforts. There is no charity that calls
more urgently in these times for the countenance and help of pious
souls living in the world than this twofold task undertaken by these
good sisters--the raising of fallen women to lives of purity, and
providing a place of refuge from temptation for destitute young
girls. All other efforts to reform abandoned women seem to bring
forth but little fruit, while the nuns of the "Good Shepherd," both
in this country and abroad, have been instrumental in rescuing a vast
number from lives of infamy, and bringing them to true penance. This
volume is interesting and instructive, and cannot fail to impress the
reader with its truthfulness. May our dear Lord, through its pages,
excite in many souls asking for work in his vineyard, the desire to
assist in bringing back these lost sheep to his fold!


    THE CATECHISM ILLUSTRATED BY PASSAGES FROM THE HOLY
    SCRIPTURES. Compiled by the Rev. John B. Bagshawe,
    Missionary Rector of St. Elizabeth's, Richmond,
    England. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1871.

"This compilation is intended," says the author, in his preface,
"to assist our children in acquiring a better knowledge of Holy
Scripture." But it will also prove useful and suggestive to those who
have to teach children, even should the latter not use it themselves.
Its plan is very simple and good, the most appropriate passages of
Scripture being selected in illustration of the successive questions
and answers of the catechism, and appended to them, the text being
in one column and the illustrations in a parallel one. Such a plan
is, of course, very difficult to carry out with perfect success,
and the author does not claim to have always made absolutely the
most appropriate selection; but one would be very foolish not to
duly appreciate what is good where perfection is evidently next to
impossible. An appendix is added, with references to the principal
texts quoted, which can be used independently.


    THE HOLY EXERCISE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD. In three
    parts. Translated from the French of T. F. Vaubert, of
    the Society of Jesus. St. Louis: P. Fox, Publisher, No.
    14 South Fifth Street. 1871. For sale by The Catholic
    Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.

This is a beautiful little book, and contains a great deal in a very
small space. Its purpose is sufficiently explained by its title: to
make Christians practically familiar with, and constantly attentive
to, the presence of God, surely one of the greatest of all means of
sanctification, and one specially necessary in this age and country,
in which there is such a tendency to distraction and useless
occupation of mind. The translation is good, and the type clear.


    A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
    ON LONG ISLAND. By Patrick Mulrenan, Professor of
    Rhetoric, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. New York: P.
    O'Shea. 1871.

Truly this is a world of disappointments. When this book, handsomely
bound and printed in bold type on delicately tinted paper, was placed
before us, and upon reading the numerous titles of honor which the
author, with more frankness than modesty, had appended to his name,
we hastily came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church on Long
Island had at last found a worthy and erudite historian. Alas for the
vanity of human hopes! Ere we had perused a dozen of its hundred and
thirty pages, we discovered that the brilliant and costly setting,
which we fondly hoped contained a literary gem beyond price, enclosed
nothing but a paltry imitation in paste. Our chagrin was the greater
on account of the importance of the subject, affording, as it does,
many salient points of interest that deserve to be perpetuated in
something like good language and in proper method; but candor compels
us to say that this book seems more like a scrap-book, made up of
slip-shod newspaper paragraphs unartistically retouched and strung
together. And then the reckless scattering of polyglot adjectives,
the continuous recurrence of the same words and forms of expression,
the forgetfulness of facts within the knowledge of most of the school
children of Brooklyn, and the inexcusable ignoring of the simplest
rules of grammar, which characterize this production, are, we venture
to affirm, unparalleled in the history of modern book-making. The
last chapter, however, surpasses all the others in verbosity. In
thus coming before the public as the historian of the Catholics
of Long Island, the author seems to have forgotten that the art of
book-writing can only be learned by years of patient study, and that
the high-sounding phrases which would do well enough for a class
of young students are altogether out of place in the pages of a
book intended to be placed in the libraries of our most intelligent
citizens. Literary vanity is generally a harmless and sometimes an
amusing weakness, but, when gratified at the expense of serious
subjects, it deserves neither encouragement nor the charity of our
silence.


    THE HISTORICAL READER. By John J. Anderson, A.M. 1 vol.
    12mo, pp. 544. New York: Clark & Maynard. 1871.

This work, compiled for the use of schools, has many merits and some
grave defects. The task of culling from the best writers choice
passages descriptive of striking historical incidents is one that
requires much judgment and experience for its proper performance;
while the difficulty of avoiding even the appearance of national
prejudice or religious bias is almost insurmountable. Most of us have
our favorite authors, whose merits we are apt to exaggerate, and
whose peculiar views we too often accept without much investigation.
Professor Anderson is not free from this weakness, though, as a
rule, his selections are made with discretion and fairness. Milton's
eulogy on Cromwell is one of the exceptions, for we hold it not
good that our children should be taught to reverence the memory of
that monstrosity whose hands were so repeatedly imbrued in innocent
blood. Froude's "Coronation of Anne Boleyn" is another, for, as the
readers of The Catholic World well know, very little dependence can
be placed on the historical veracity of that gentleman. But the most
serious mistake of the compiler lies in the fact that only American,
English, Scotch, and French history, with a few passages from ancient
authors, is presented; Ireland, Spain, Germany, and other European
countries being completely ignored. Taking into account the vast
number of children Of German and Irish descent in our public and
private schools, who ought, we think, to be taught something of the
history of their ancestors, we should expect that at least one-half
of this book would be devoted to extracts from the historians of
these races, whose writings are now as accessible to compilers of
history as those of any other nationality. Of Spain, the discoverer
and first colonizer of the New World, we have not a word; and Italy,
the birthplace of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, the
cradle of modern art and poetry, is altogether overlooked. In this
respect, therefore, _The Historical Reader_ is sadly deficient in
universality and completeness. The Vocabulary attached will be found
useful, and the Biographical Index would be more interesting if the
writer had used his adjectives less generously, and more reliable
if he had not insisted on calling Burke a British statesman and
Goldsmith an "English" writer.


    A HISTORY OF THE KINGDOM OF KERRY. By M. F. Cusack.
    Boston: P. Donahoe. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1871.
    8vo, pp. 512.

This latest contribution to the historical literature of Ireland is
in every respect worthy the genius and industry of the accomplished
author of _The Illustrated History of Ireland_, and other works
of an historical and biographical character. Hitherto the remote
county of Kerry has been known to tourists and artists for the
beautiful scenery of the Killarney Lakes, and to the general reader
only as the home of the great orator and politician O'Connell;
for the meagre and antiquated history of the county by Smith has
long since passed into oblivion, and can scarcely be found in any
of those receptacles for worn-out authors, called second-hand book
stores. It remained for Miss Cusack (Sister Mary Frances Clare),
who, of all contemporary Irish writers, seems most imbued with a
passionate desire to produce and reproduce incidents illustrative of
the past glories and sufferings of her native country, to undertake
the task of writing a history of this, in many respects, the most
interesting of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, and it must be
confessed that, considering the unpromising and limited nature of the
subject, she has performed it with wonderful accuracy and success.
The large and handsome volume before us, as a local history, may be
considered a complete narrative of every event connected with Kerry,
from the very earliest period of the traditional epoch down to the
close of the seventeenth century, with occasional glances at the
affairs of adjacent counties, when necessarily connected with those
of her favorite locality. Several, and not the least attractive of
the chapters to a scientific student, are devoted to the geology,
topography, and archæology of Kerry and other kindred topics, in the
preparation of which the author has been assisted by some of the
best scholars in Ireland, whose readiness in thus contributing the
result of long years of study and experience not only does credit to
their generosity and gallantry, but demonstrates that Miss Cusack's
patriotic and charitable efforts are fully appreciated by those who
know her well and are best fitted to appreciate the value of her
labors. The appendix, which is very full, will be found particularly
interesting to such of our readers as derive their descent from
the ancient Kerry families, containing, as it does, a minute
and doubtless correct pedigrees of the O'Connors, O'Donoghues,
O'Connells, O'Mahonys, McCarthys, and other septs whose names are
indelibly associated with the history and topography of the county.

The illustrations of local scenery are passable, we have seen better,
but the letterpress is excellent, and the whole mechanical execution
of the work is worthy of the subject, and very creditable to the
taste and enterprise of the publishers.


    MANUAL OF GEOMETRICAL AND INFINITESIMAL ANALYSIS.
    By B. Sestini, S.J., author of Analytical Geometry,
    Elementary Geometry, and a Treatise on Algebra;
    Professor of Mathematics in Woodstock College.
    Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1871.

"We leave it to the reader," says Father Sestini in his preface,
which, by the way, corresponds to the book in shortness, "to judge
whether, without detriment to lucidity, our efforts to combine
comprehensiveness with brevity and exactness have been successful."
It seems to us that they have. It is impossible to understand
analytical geometry and the calculus, the principles of which are
developed in this work, without patient thought and application of
mind; diffuse explanations may be written, no doubt, which will
enable an ordinary student to master the actual text of his lesson,
but they will not be likely to set his mind to working on its own
account; and the discovery of the meaning of a sentence which seems
obscure, but is only so from the student's want of mental exercise in
these matters, is of more real service, and at the same time gives
more pleasure, than the most copious elucidations. To use these
is like taking a light into a dark place; it shows clearly what
is immediately around, but does not allow the pupils of the eyes
to expand. And without a similar development of the mathematical
faculty, which is probably really more common than is generally
supposed, needing only proper exercise to bring it out, the study of
the science will be comparatively fruitless, and a mere labor instead
of a pleasure.

It is, of course, possible to carry this principle too far, and
make a book which will be incomprehensible without profuse oral
explanations, which will equally prevent a profitable exercise of the
mind. The author seems to have carried it just far enough. No one to
whom the study of the higher mathematics will be profitable at all
can find a better work to set him upon the track and give him a grasp
of the subject than F. Sestini's manual. The expert also, as well as
the student, will be pleased with the neatness of its execution, both
in the mathematical and in the ordinary sense.


    VERMONT HISTORICAL GAZETTEER. A Magazine embracing a
    Digest of the History of each Town, Civil, Educational,
    Religious, Geological, and Literary. Edited by Abby
    Maria Hemenway, compiler of the _Poets and Poetry of
    Vermont_. Burlington. 1870.

New England is the home of American local history, for, of the works
devoted to the annals of cities, counties, and towns, there are more
relating to New England than to all other parts of the United States;
and outside of New England limits the cultivation of local history
is, in many cases, due to natives of that division.

Miss Hemenway has done good service by her gazetteer, which is really
a general local history of the Green Mountain State. Known favorably
already, she has succeeded in obtaining the hearty co-operation of
gentlemen and ladies in all parts of the state, and she thus gives
the history of each county in turn. The history of each church is
given by some one connected with it, and full justice done to all.
In some local histories, the prejudice of the author sometimes leads
him to ignore all but his own church, or give only such notices as
he cannot avoid. We have in our eye a _History of Elizabeth, New
Jersey_, by the Rev. Mr. Hatfield, in which other denominations
than his own are very slightingly treated. There are three Catholic
churches, a Benedictine convent, a House of Sisters of Charity, and
an orphan asylum in the place, yet the reverend author sums up their
history in five lines, and quotes as his authority for their annals
the City Directory.

If any institution, church, or author fails to receive due space
in the _Vermont Historical Gazetteer_, it is not the fault of
Miss Hemenway, who has labored most indefatigably to extract
their history, and given them wherein to lay it before the world,
impartially allowing each to give their own version of affairs. Her
work is, of course, not of equal merit; but it contains many articles
of far more than local interest and value. Her state owes her a debt
of thanks; and in her plan and scheme of the work, as well as in her
untiring industry, she sets an example that may well be imitated in
other states.


    HISTORY OF FLORIDA, FROM ITS DISCOVERY BY PONCE DE
    LEON, IN 1512, TO THE CLOSE OF THE FLORIDA WAR, IN
    1842. By George R. Fairbanks. Philadelphia: J. B.
    Lippincott & Co. 1871.

Mr. Fairbanks is not unknown as an author, and this little volume,
handsomely issued by an eminent publishing-house, would seem to
be a welcome addition, as furnishing, in a compendious form, the
romantic annals of the oldest settled, though not the oldest, state
in the Union. We regret to say that we regret the appearance of the
work. There is such abundance of material accessible to the ordinary
student, even without entering upon the vast manuscript material
which the late Buckingham Smith spent his life in delving, that
exactness is of the utmost necessity.

Mr. Fairbanks evidently quotes his Spanish authors at second-hand,
and must be unfamiliar with the Spanish language. No one at all
conversant with it would quote Cabeza de Vaca, as he repeatedly does,
under the name of De Vaca. Cabeza de Vaca is the family name, meaning
Head of Cow--an odd name, but with its analogy in our Whitehead,
Mulford (mule-ford), Armstrong, etc. To quote him as "Of Cow" is like
citing one of the English names as Head, Ford, or Strong. Quoting
Garcelasso as L'Inca also betrays ignorance. The Spanish article
is El, while the elevation of Menendez Marques to the Marquis de
Menendez is equal to Puss in Boots, who made marquises offhand.

It is not surprising, then, to find the period from 1568 to 1722
embraced in 34 pages, and in those only four references to Barcia,
and these not all correct, though in the 228 pages given by the
Spanish historian of Florida to that period much interesting matter
might have been found.

Nor is his acquaintance with the works that have appeared in English
such as we should expect.

The later portion of the history seems more within his grasp; but
without entering into too great detail, we miss any reference to
Farmer's account of the siege of Pensacola.

Much of the space in the earlier portion is devoted to the French
colony and its bloody extinction by Menendez, and to Gourgues's
attack. In this matter he does not treat the matter as Sparks did
years ago, or Parkman recently. By all these writers, moreover,
some points are overlooked. The piratical character of the French
cruisers, who, after the Reformation, made religion a cloak for their
murders and piracy; the object in selecting Florida, which was to
form a base for operations against Spanish commerce; the long-settled
determination of the Spanish crown to root out any colony planted in
Florida, upon the most plausible pretext the occasion would give;
the overt acts of piracy of the new French colony in Florida; and,
finally, the critical position of both parties, neither of whom,
in case of victory, would have dared to keep any of the enemy as
prisoners.

He takes the De Gourgues account as the French give it, and, with
them, multiplies forts at San Mateo; but we must confess that there
are discrepancies in it which have always excited our distrust,
although the story is accepted generally by French Catholic writers.


    PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY. A Society Novel. By Mrs.
    Harriet B. Stowe. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Mrs. Stowe has given us in this volume, with her usual distinctness
of purpose, a true picture, not overdrawn, of fashionable life
as displayed at our popular watering-places and in many of our
fashionable homes. The author's "views," so pronounced on all
subjects, are generally given with characteristic energy and
earnestness, if not always with discrimination. So graphic are her
descriptions that the reader can see the places she describes, and
has a clear insight into the hearts of her characters.

It is well that one whose writings are always so extensively read
should show up the corrupt condition of manners and morals that
prevail in what is technically called "high life," and in this book
Mrs. Stowe has given an interesting and lifelike picture of the
everyday well-known scandals that are sapping the very foundation of
our existence as a nation.

It is hardly just, however, to put all the folly, all the
extravagance, and all the sin of our demoralized belles and beauty
to the credit of France; poor France has enough of her own to bear.
French morals, French manners, French novels, French literature, and
even the French language are put down in this volume as the source
of all in the morals of this country that is not pure and elevating.
The root of the trouble lies nearer home, and spreads far back to the
childhood of these vain men and women, when they were taught that to
_enjoy themselves_ was the great end for which they were made. "Have
a jolly time in life, honestly if you can, but have the jolly time
any way," is the chief lesson given to the children and young persons
belonging to the world of to-day; and this peoples our places of
public resort with the "fast" and the shameless.

A poetic picture of New England life is Mrs. Stowe's specialty,
and refined, cultivated, quiet Springdale is refreshing after the
flirtations and assignations of the watering-places.

We find in these pages a just and charming tribute to the Irish
character as wife and mother; while the author's views of marriage
are in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church, and
it is no small merit in the book that it strongly advocates the
doctrine, "one with one exclusively, and for ever."


    THE LIFE AND REVELATIONS OF SAINT GERTRUDE. By the
    author of "St. Francis and the Franciscans," etc.
    London: Burns, Oates & Co. Boston; P. Donahoe. 1871.

This is another of the "Kenmare series of books for spiritual
reading." It needs no other recommendation. The profit to be derived
from a devout reading of the revelations of this great saint is
inestimable. They cannot fail to have a lasting influence on the mind
that opens itself to their teaching. If some may object that such a
book as this is too mediæval for the nineteenth century, we answer
that there are plenty of chosen souls who look back to the middle
ages as the millennium of the Church, when earth was nearest heaven.


    ST. PETER: HIS NAME AND HIS OFFICE. By Thomas W.
    Allies, M.A., Author of "The See of St. Peter the Rock
    of the Church," and other Works. 1 vol. 12mo, pp.
    299. London: R. Washbourne; New York: The Catholic
    Publication Society. 1871.

This work, partly drawn from the _Commentary on the Prerogatives of
St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles_, of Passaglia, and partly the
composition of the learned author, was first published in 1852, and
elicited the highest encomiums from the most learned portion of the
Christian world. Its republication at this time, when so much is
said, and so little is actually known, by persons not Catholics, of
the apostolic succession, and the divine power vested in the visible
head of the church, is exceedingly well timed. The book, though
small in compass, contains not only all the leading incidents of
St. Peter's life, but irrefutable proofs of his holy mission and
supremacy in the church. Those who have any doubts of the primacy of
the See of Rome, or who wish to satisfy themselves as to the extent
of the power delegated to our Holy Father, should give Mr. Allies's
book a careful and serious perusal.


    GOLDEN WORDS; OR, MAXIMS OF THE CROSS. By F. H.
    Hamilton, M.A. 1 vol. pp. 78. London: Burns, Oates &
    Co.; New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This beautifully printed little book is, as the author candidly
confesses, made up mainly from selections made from the writings
of the celebrated Thomas à Kempis. To say this is to pronounce the
highest eulogy that can be expressed, for we believe there is no
person who claims to be Christian, and who has read _The Following of
Christ_, but admits that, of all the uninspired writers, its author
is foremost in wisdom, piety, and practical illustration. Though in
large, clear type, this work is so judiciously condensed that any
person can carry it in his pocket, and thus have it at all times for
reference and edification.


The Catholic Publication Society has just published new editions
of _Gahan's History of the Catholic Church_ and _Mylius's History
of England_. Both works are continued down to the present time.
The Society also publishes a new and improved edition of _Fleury's
Historical Catechism_, revised, corrected, and edited by Rev. Henry
Formby. This excellent work is intended as a class-book for schools,
and, if ordered in quantities, the Society is prepared to furnish it
at an extraordinarily low price. The Society has also in the hands of
the binder Fr. Formby's _Pictorial Bible and Church History Stories_.
This work ought to be introduced into our schools.


Mr. P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, has in press _Cineas_, a story
of the time of Nero, the burning of Rome by that tyrant, and the
destruction of Jerusalem. Mr. Donahoe, Boston, announces as in press
a _Compendium of Irish History_, _Ned Rusheen_, and _The Spouse
of Christ_--all by Sister Mary Francis Clare; also, _The Monks of
the West_, by Montalembert; a _Life of Pius IX._, and _Ballads of
Irish Chivalry_, etc., by R. D. Joyce. Messrs. Kelly, Piet & Co.,
Baltimore, announce as in press _Mary Benedicta_ and the _Pearl of
Antioch_. Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore, have just completed their
_Church Registers_, comprising Baptism, Matrimony, Confirmation,
Interments, etc.--in all, three Latin Registers and four _Church
Records_, uniformly bound and put up in neat boxes.

       *       *       *       *       *

A MISTAKE CORRECTED.--Mr. Robert A. Bakewell desires us to correct
a statement which was made in our last number, in the article "The
Secular not Supreme," respecting the views formerly expressed by that
gentleman in _The Shepherd of the Valley_, on the subject discussed
in the aforesaid article. Mr. Bakewell has frequently contradicted
a misquotation and misinterpretation of his language by secular and
sectarian papers, which has made him say that Catholics, if they
ever became a large majority of the people of this country, would
suppress religious liberty. What he really did say was that, in the
event supposed, they would, in accordance with Catholic principles,
restrain by law the teaching of those errors which are subversive of
_natural religion and morality_. Mr. Bakewell states, also, that he
has never retracted the views which he expressed in his published
writings on this subject, and says that they were impugned by two
only of the Catholic newspapers at the time.


BOOKS RECEIVED.

    From GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, New York: The Coolie: His
    Rights and Wrongs, 1 vol. paper.

    From LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., London: Ignatius Loyola and
    the Early Jesuits. By Stewart Rose, 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 548.

    From R. WASHBOURNE, London: The Men and Women of the
    English Reformation, from the Days of Wolsey to the
    Death of Cranmer. Papal and Anti-Papal Notables. By S.
    H. Burke, author of The Monastic Houses of England.
    Vol. 1.

    From BURNS, OATES & CO., London: The Life of St.
    Ignatius Loyola. By Father Genelli, of the Society
    of Jesus. Translated from the German of M. Charles
    Sainte-Foi, and rendered from the French by the
    Rev. Thomas Meyrick, S.J. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 357.--Of
    Adoration in Spirit and Truth. Written in Four Books.
    By John Eusebius Neremberg, S.J., native of Madrid, and
    translated into English by R. S., S.J., in which is
    disclosed the pith and marrow of a spiritual life of
    Christ's imitation, and mystical theology; extracted
    out of the Holy Fathers, and greatest masters of
    spirit, Diadochus, Dorotheus, Climachus, Rusbrochius,
    Suso, Thaulerus, a Kempis, Gerson; and not a little
    both pious and effectual is superadded. With a preface
    by Rev. Peter Galloway, S.J. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 438.


       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber's Note:

_Underscores_ surround italicized words; =Equal signs= surround bold.

Obvious typographical errors were repaired, but legimate archaic
spellings were retained (for example, villany, villanous, stalworth,
reconnoissance, idyl, etc.)

"To Be Continued" on P. 412, 476, 541, and 618 were missing from the
original, and were added to alert the reader to continuations.

P. 51-54, in the article on "Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz," the Spanish
stanzas and their English translations were in opposite columns. For
ease of reading in multiple formats, each English stanza has been
indented below its Spanish original.

P. 633, "Memoir of Father John de Brébeuf": "what a martyr bore a
Christian may have courage to Three.'and bringing the scalding water
from the caldron"--there appears to be text missing between "courage
to" and "Three" in the original publication. Unable to determine what
that text would be.