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                                  THE

                            CATHOLIC WORLD.


                                   A

                           MONTHLY MAGAZINE

                                  OF

               GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.


                              VOL. XVII.

                   APRIL, 1873, TO SEPTEMBER, 1873.


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

                                 1873.




CONTENTS.


  “Abraham”—“Abron”—“Auburn,” 234

  Abuse of Diplomatic Authority, An, 130

  Antiquities of the Law, 69

  Appeal to Workingmen, 751

  Art, Necessity _versus_, 558

  Art Pilgrimage through Rome, An, 808


  Bolanden’s The Russian Idea, 27, 161

  Bolanden’s The Trowel or the Cross, 308, 473

  Bread-Winner, Woman as a, 223

  Brittany: Its People and its Poems, 252, 537

  Bruté, Memoirs of the Rt. Rev. S. G., 711


  Casgrain’s The Canadian Pioneers, 687

  Casgrain’s Picture of the Rivière Ouelle, 103

  Chapman’s The Evolution of Life, 145

  Charlevoix, Shea’s, 721

  Charities, Public, 1

  Chartres, 834

  Church and State in Germany, 513

  Civilization? What is, 486

  Conciliar Decrees on the Holy Scriptures, 195

  Country Life in England, 319


  Darwinism, More about, 641

  Dick Cranstone, 392

  Diplomatic Authority, An Abuse of, 130

  Domestic Festivities, English, 630

  Dubois’ Madame Agnes, 78, 182, 330, 446, 591, 731


  Early Marriage, 839

  Education, Home, 91

  Empire, The, 606

  England, Country Life in, 319

  English Domestic Festivities, 630

  Erckmann-Chatrian, Mme. Jeannette’s Papers, 566

  Error Rectified, An, 144

  Evening at Chamblay, An, 765

  Evolution of Life, The, 145


  Fiske’s Myths and Myth-Makers, 209

  Fontainebleau, 241, 382

  For Better—For Worse, 257, 408


  Germany, Church and State in, 513

  Grapes and Thorns, 362, 498, 655, 792


  Heaven, 220

  Holy Scriptures, Conciliar Decrees on the, 195

  Home Education, 91


  Indians of Ysléta, The, 422


  Jerome Savonarola, 289, 433, 577

  Jesuits in Paris, The, 701

  John Baptist de Rossi, and his Archæological Works, 272

  Joseph in Egypt, a Type of Christ, 77


  Koche, King of Pitt, 545


  Lace, Something about, 56

  Laughing Dick Cranstone, 392

  Law, Antiquities of the, 69

  Legend of S. Christopher, A, 278

  Legend of S. Martin, A, 137

  Life, The Evolution of, 145


  Madame Agnes, 78, 182, 330, 446, 591, 731

  Madame Jeannette’s Papers, 566

  Marriage, Early, 839

  Memoirs of a Good French Priest, 711

  Middlemarch and Fleurange, 775

  More about Darwinism, 641

  My Cousin’s Introduction, 171

  Myths and Myth-Mongers, 209


  Necessity _versus_ Art, 558


  Palais Royal, The, 113

  Paris, The Jesuits in, 701

  Peace, 157

  People and Poems of Brittany, 252, 537

  Philosophical Terminology, 463

  Picture of the Rivière Ouelle, The, 103

  Poet and Martyr, 40

  Political Principle for the Social Restoration of France, The, 348

  Present Greatness of the Papacy, The, 400

  Public Charities, 1


  Ramière’s The Political Principle of the Social Restoration of France,
       348

  Records of a Ruin, The, 113

  Reminiscence of San Marco, A, 707

  Rome, An Art Pilgrimage through, 808

  Rossi, John Baptist de, and his Archæological Works, 272

  Russian Idea, The, 27, 161


  Sales, S. Francis de, 171

  San Marco: A Reminiscence, 707

  Savonarola, Jerome, 289, 433, 577

  Scholars _en Déshabillé_, 844

  Shakespearian Excursus, A, 234

  Shea’s Charlevoix, 721

  Something about Lace, 56

  Southwell, F. Robert, 40

  Stories of Two Worlds, The, 775


  Terminology, Philosophical, 463

  Travellers and Travelling, 676, 822

  Trowel or the Cross, The, 308, 473


  Unity, 307


  What is Civilization? 486

  Woman as a Bread-Winner, 223

  Workingmen, Appeal to, 751


  Ysléta, The Indians of, 422


POETRY.

  Angel and the Child, The, 570


  Beati qui Lugent, 271


  Christe’s Childhoode, 472


  Dante’s Purgatorio, 24, 158, 304

  Dies Iræ, 221


  Marriage Song, 462

  May Carol, A, 407

  Mother of God, 710

  Music, 807


  Sonnet: The Poetry of the Future, 399

  Sonnet: To the Pillar at S. Paul’s, Rome, 590

  Sonnet: To the Ruins of Emania, 750


  Temple, The, 764

  To a Child, 426

  To a Friend, 497

  To be Forgiven, 821

  To the Sacred Heart, 536


  Virgin Mary, The, to Christ on the Crosse, 39


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

  Augustine, S., Harmony of the Evangelists, etc., 855

  Augustine, S., On the Trinity, 855

  Alcott’s Aunt Jo’s Scrap-Book, 142

  Amulet, The, 575


  Bagshawe’s Threshold of the Catholic Church, 572

  Bateman’s Ierne of Armorica, 427

  Begin’s La Primauté et l’Infaillibilité des Souveraines Pontifes,
      etc., 576

  Bolanden’s, The Progressionists, and Angela, 281

  Brady’s Irish Reformation, 573

  Brady’s State Papers on the Irish Church, 573

  Brann’s Truth and Error, 142

  Brothers of the Christian Schools during the War, The, 430

  Burke’s Lectures and Sermons, 718


  Caddell’s Wild Times, 284

  Catechism of the Holy Rosary, 428

  Church Defence, 280

  Conscience’s The Amulet, 575

  Conscience’s The Fisherman’s Daughter, 575

  Constance and Marion, 432


  Deaf Mute, The, 288

  Devere’s Modern Magic, 575

  Directorium Sacerdotale, 574

  Doctrine of Hell, 571

  Donnelly’s Out of Sweet Solitude, 720


  Ernscliff Hall, 288

  Elements of Philosophy, 427

  Estcourt’s Anglican Ordinations, 856


  Filiola, 288

  Fisherman’s Daughter, The, 575

  Formby’s Catechism of the Holy Rosary, 428


  Garside’s The Prophet of Carmel, 858

  Gaume’s Sign of the Cross in the XIXth Century, 429

  Gaume’s Suema, 428

  God Our Father, 143

  Greatorex’s Homes of Ober-Ammergau, 288


  Hare’s Memorials of a Quiet Life, 431

  Herbert’s Wilfulness, 285

  Hill’s Elements of Philosophy, 427

  Humphrey’s Mary magnifying God, 428

  Hundred Meditations on the Love of God, A, 574


  Ierne of Armorica, 427

  Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library, 430

  Isabelle de Verneuil, 430


  King and the Cloister, The, 430


  Laboulaye’s Poodle Prince, 431

  Landroit’s Sins of the Tongue, 719

  Landroit’s The Valiant Woman, 858

  Life and Letters of a Sister of Charity, 142

  Life of Dorié, 281

  Life of Vénard, 281

  Limerick Veteran, 719

  Lunt’s Old New England Traits, 720


  McGee’s Sketches of Irish Soldiers, 860

  Mary magnifying God, 428

  Marshall’s Church Defence, 280

  Marshall’s My Clerical Friends, 138

  Meditations on the Blessed Virgin, 860

  Meline’s Two Thousand Miles on Horseback, 286

  Meyrick’s Life of S. Walburge, 855

  Mericourt’s Vivia Perpetua, 575

  Money God, The, 282

  Mulloy’s A Visit to Louise Lateau, 574

  Munro’s Lectures on Old Testament History, 858


  Nesbits, The, 283


  Old New England Traits, 720

  Only a Pin, 574

  Out of Sweet Solitude, 720


  Palma’s Particular Examen, 860

  Peter’s Journey, etc., 285

  Potter’s Rupert Aubrey, 859

  Primauté, La, et l’Infaillibilité des Souveraines Pontifes, etc., 576

  Proceedings of the Convention of the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union,
      287

  Progressionists, The, and Angela, 281


  Quinton’s The Money God, 282


  Reverse of the Medal, The, 288


  Sainte-Germaine’s Only a Pin, 574

  Sermons for all the Sundays and Festivals of the Year, 428

  Sign of the Cross in the XIXth Century, 429

  Snell’s Isabelle de Verneuil, 430

  Sœur Eugénie, 142

  Southwell’s Meditations, 574

  Stewart’s Limerick Veteran, 719

  Suema, 428

  Sunday-School Library, 430

  Sweeney’s Sermons, 428


  Taylor’s Lars, 430

  Thebaud’s The Irish Race, 432, 718

  Thompson’s Hawthorndean, 430

  Threshold of the Catholic Church, 572

  Truth and Error, 142

  Two Thousand Miles on Horseback, 286


  Valuy’s Directorium Sacerdotale, 574

  Visit to Louise Lateau, A, 574


  Walworth and Burr, Doctrine of Hell, 571

  Wild Times, 284

  Wilfulness, 285

  Winged Word, A, etc., 572

  Wiseman’s Essays, 431, 575

  Wiseman’s Lectures on the Church, 143




THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVII., No. 97.—APRIL, 1873.


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev.
I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.




PUBLIC CHARITIES.


MODERN civilization has no higher or more important question to
deal with than that of ameliorating the condition of the poor, the
unfortunate, the ignorant, and the vicious. Governments are and can
be engaged in no more appalling work than that of legislating wisely
in regard to these classes, and in seeing that not only are their
inevitable wants provided for and the public interests protected,
but also that their rights are secured in fact as well as in theory,
and that the instruments employed in these exalted spheres of public
administration are suited to their purpose, and are guarded against
degenerating from means of amelioration into agencies of oppression,
cruelty, and injustice.

There are two chief motives which lead to the care and provision for
the unfortunate members of the social body—charity on the one side,
and philanthropy on the other. Religion inspires every motive for this
great and holy work, and of all the virtues which religion inspires,
charity is the highest, purest, and best. Charity is the love of God,
and of man for God’s sake. That God of charity has revealed to us that,
of faith, hope, and charity, the greatest is charity; that he that
giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord; that he who performs works of
charity to the least of the human race performs them _ipso facto_ to
the Lord, creator and ruler of the universe; and that the eternal doom
of every human being at the last dread day will be decided by this
great test. Christianity itself, like her divine founder, is charity.
The church of God, like her Lord and Spouse, is charity. She is imbued
with and reflects his divine essence, which is charity. Charity arises
from no statute or arbitrary decree, which might or might not be made
according to the option of the legislator; it is the essence and motive
of all good. It exists in the very nature of things. And as the love
of God by man is the first and necessary relation of the creature to
the Creator, and as our fellow-creatures exist from God, and in and
by him, it is only through God and in him that we love them. Thus
charity is no human sentiment or affection, like philanthropy or the
natural love of our neighbor and brother; it is a supernatural virtue,
springing from God, and sustained by his grace. The man who does not
love his neighbor cannot love God, but rejects his love and violates
the first law of his being. Every word and act of our divine Saviour,
while engaged on earth in establishing his church, proves this, if
there be need of external proof. Even after his work on earth was done,
and he had ascended to his Father, he speaks to us through the mouth of
S. Paul: “If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not
charity, I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. And if
I have prophecy, and know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and have
all faith, so I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am
nothing. And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and
should give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me
nothing.”[1]

Philanthropy, on the other hand, is the love of man for the sake of
man; in other words, humanitarianism. It is a human affection springing
from natural motives. To alleviate human sufferings, and promote human
pleasures and enjoyments, are its aims. Its object is the body rather
than the soul, earth rather than heaven, time rather than eternity. Its
motive power is sentiment or feeling rather than reason or religion.
It is a sensitiveness to all human suffering, because suffering or
pain is repulsive to human nature. Philanthropy is a virtue in the
natural order, springing from human motives, and not a supernatural
virtue springing from religious motives and inspired by divine grace.
Philanthropy is good in itself, for our human nature still remains;
nature and grace are not antagonistic, and may co-exist; nature is
dependent on grace to raise it to the supernatural state and transform
it into charity. Charity includes philanthropy, as the greater includes
the lesser. Philanthropy without charity is earthly in its aims,
frequently rash and sometimes unjust in its measures, tyrannical in the
exercise of power, and not unfrequently barren in its results.

Now, the church and the state are the organized representatives of
these two virtues, the divine and the human. The church is a divine
kingdom, and cultivates the divine virtue of charity; the state is a
human kingdom, and cultivates the human virtue of philanthropy. The
church is a supernatural body, and practises the supernatural virtue
of charity; the state exists in the natural order, and practises the
natural sentiment of philanthropy. The church is of heaven, and her
greatest jewel, charity, is of heaven; the state is of earth, and the
greatest of her merits is philanthropy, which is of earthly birth.
The church is eternal, so is charity; the state is temporal, as is
philanthropy. The church is of God, God is charity, so the church is
charity; the state is of man, so is philanthropy. The rewards of the
one are eternal; of the other, temporal. Charity is a Christian virtue,
and can violate no other Christian virtue in adopting her measures;
she cannot make the end justify the means; but philanthropy is a human
virtue, and stops at no means necessary to attain its end. Abuses are
not necessarily the results of philanthropy, for philanthropy, guided
by even human reason, is capable of respecting the rights of God and
men, and, when guided by supernatural grace, is exalted to charity.[2]

What we have chiefly to deal with in this article are institutions of
benevolence, which are either wholly public property, and such as,
though conducted either by private individuals or by incorporated
boards of citizen managers, yet receive large shares of the public
funds for their foundation, buildings, or current support, and thus
become, to that extent, public institutions, and as such liable to be
inquired into and criticised by the state and its citizens who pay the
taxes thus expended.

The state in our times and in almost every country undertakes the
restraint and custody of the persons of idiots, lunatics, drunkards,
and other persons of unsound mind, for their safety; of paupers, for
their maintenance; and of minors, unprovided with natural guardians,
for purposes of their education, reformation, and maintenance. It is
not for us to discuss at length in this article the right of the state
in any country to _educate and reform_ minors, or, in other words,
to assume the place of teacher and priest; for it cannot undertake
to educate without assuming the place of teacher, and still less can
the state undertake the work of reformation without usurping the
sacred functions of the sacerdotal office. Our faith, our reason, and
our convictions teach us that such offices belong not to the state,
but to the church. The state can establish places of restraint and
punishment, and support and maintain them, both for the protection
of the public, for the safety of the individuals themselves, and for
purposes of philanthropy. Having done this, it is the duty of the
state to leave free the consciences of its wards and prisoners, and
to give every facility to the ministers of every church and religious
persuasion to have free and unrestricted access to the children and
prisoners belonging to those respective churches or persuasions. We
claim this for ourselves as Catholics, and we leave the sects, the
Jews, and every other society of religionists to claim the same for
themselves. We are willing to make common cause with them for the
attainment of our rights. That it is a charity for the state, or, more
correctly speaking, a work of humanity, to assume the temporal care
and provision for those unfortunate members of society who, either by
their own fault, by the visitation of Providence, or by misfortune,
are unable to take care of themselves, we are not disposed to deny at
present, though even this belongs primarily to the religious duties
of the individual, and, therefore, comes within the province of the
church; and we know how well the church discharged this duty before
the Reformation, and is doing it now. Yet we do not deny to the sects,
to all men, and to the state, the right to perform good deeds and to
practise the broadest philanthropy. Such at least seems to be one of
the accepted works of government. We therefore accept such institutions
and works as we find them, and we will view them in the same light
in which our fellow-citizens generally regard them. As citizens, as
Americans, we feel the same interest in them, experience the same
pride in them, and, as a question of property and public right, we
hold them as a common heritage, in which we have the same interest and
authority as our fellow-citizens. We are, therefore, equally interested
in their proper management and good government, and we yield to none
in our desire to promote their prosperity and success. There is no
part of public administration more sacred or important, no function
of the state so momentous, no public responsibility so awful, as
this. Accepting them, as we do, as a part of our common property and
united work, we shrink not from any effort for their good government
and success, and, if need be, for their improvement, reformation,
and correction. When properly conducted, we have nothing but praise
for them; and if, on the other hand, they are mismanaged, the funds
extravagantly applied; if they are made the instruments of cruelty,
perversion, or despotism; if in them or any of them religious liberty
is violated, and systems of proselytizing are carried on against
Catholic children, or the children of the sects, or those of the Jewish
Church, we as Catholics and as American citizens will speak out freely
and boldly in denouncing them. We are not disqualified from doing this,
either as citizens or Catholics; not as citizens, because they belong
to us as much as to other citizens; our money is there with that of
others; and the Constitution gives us liberty of speech and of the
press, and guarantees to us “the right to assemble and petition for
the redress of grievances”;[3] not as Catholics, for we have as such
the experience of eighteen hundred years of the most exalted works of
charity; and because we claim for ourselves no special privilege over
others, but are willing to concede to all what we claim for ourselves.
No clamor will deter us from the exercise of this right, or from the
performance of this duty. And whilst we cannot yield our rights to any
one sect of Protestantism, we are equally determined, while respecting
the rights of all Protestants, not to yield our constitutional rights
to all the sects of Protestantism combined under the false and
deceptive name of unsectarianism. We do not believe in _ex-parte_ and
sham investigations of public abuses in respect to public institutions,
and we do not belong to, and are determined not to be deluded by,
whitewashing committees of investigation and amiable grand juries. We
are ever ready to praise, yet we shrink not from administering censure.

The theory upon which governmental institutions are founded, and those
established by private citizens or boards are assisted is, that of
protecting society from a large, idle, ignorant, vicious population,
by providing the means for the temporal relief and social improvement
and correction of these classes, so as to bring them to the age of
self-support in the case of children, to punish criminals, relieve
the poor, and thus gradually return them all to society as sober,
enlightened, honest, industrious, and thrifty citizens. For these
purposes heavy taxes are laid on the citizens, immense piles of
buildings are erected at the public expense, and such institutions are
annually maintained or aided at enormous cost to the people. In our
November, 1872, number, while admitting and praising the philanthropic
motive which sustains these institutions, we regarded them “as really
nuisances of the worst kind, so far as Catholic children are concerned,
on account of their proselytizing character. Moreover,” we said, “in
their actual workings they violate the rights both of parents and
children, and we have evidence that these poor children are actually
sold at the West, both by private sale and by auction. The horrible
abuses existing in some state institutions are partly known to the
public, and we have the means of disclosing even worse things than
those which have recently been exposed in the public papers.” It is
difficult to perceive the success of such institutions as ameliorating
or reformatory agents, for our public press is loaded every day with
evidences of the enormous increase of crime and pauperism, and with
dissertations on the causes of such increase. The public are naturally
slow in believing that such institutions, upon which so much treasure
has been spent, are failures. Such a reflection is an unpalatable one;
it is humiliating to our pride, and damaging to the boasted progress
of the XIXth century. It crushes our self-esteem to know that, of all
places needing correction, our Houses of Correction need correction
most; and that, of all institutions calling for the stern hand of
reform, there are none that need so much reformation as our schools
of reform. A religious paper called _The Christian Union_ has given
strong proof of its dislike to have the public eyes opened to these
unpalatable truths, and we do not think we should have returned so
soon to this subject but for a rather disingenuous article in that
paper, couched in terms not calculated to convince the public that it
derived its name from the practice or spirit of the virtue of Christian
union, which, while challenging us to expose these wrongs and abuses,
declared but too great a willingness to believe “that these charges,
so frequently made in Roman Catholic journals, have already received
thorough investigation and perfect refutation.”

We complain that our Catholic children in institutions which are
supported in whole or in part by public funds—funds, therefore, in
which we have a common property with our fellow-citizens—instead of
being allowed the instruction and practice of their Catholic religion,
are taught Protestantism in its, to us, most offensive form, and are
thus exposed to the almost certain loss of their faith. The facts
upon which we base the charge have never been denied, but, on the
contrary, they are openly admitted and announced. Protestants deny
that they proselytize Catholic children so as to make them members
of any distinctive sect, but they admit that Catholic teaching
and practices are rigidly excluded, and yet that the children are
taught a certain religion. Is it not evident that, if such religious
instruction produces any result, it is to make these children cease
to be Catholics, to become non-Catholics, to take the Bible as their
only rule of faith, to reject the infallible teachings of their own
church, and to accept the teachings of the institutions as all that is
necessary for them to know? This is proselytism of the most offensive
kind; our children are either made _liberal Christians_, or are placed
in circumstances which inevitably lead to their joining one or other of
the distinctive forms of Protestantism or lose all religion whatever.
Wherever a chaplain is employed, he is either a Methodist minister,
such as Rev. Mr. Pierce in the New York House of Refuge, or he is a
Baptist, Episcopalian, or other sectarian minister. In many of these
institutions, the religious instruction is under the direction of a
lay superintendent, as in the Providence School of Reform. And here
we beg to give a piece of testimony showing how incompetent laymen are
for religious instruction in public reformatories. The witness under
examination was at the time one of the trustees of the Providence
Reform School:

 “Q. Have you any knowledge in relation to the distribution of
 religious books among the pupils, and their being taken away?

 “A. I don’t of my own knowledge; I furnished once one book of a
 religious character, and one only; I furnished it to the _officer
 having in charge the devotional exercises_ on the girls’ side; I
 gave that to the officer for his own use; it was given to him in
 consequence of considerable religious feeling that there was existing
 among the girls at the time; the girls were holding among themselves
 what they called prayer-meetings; the _gentleman having in charge the
 devotional exercises said he felt utterly incompetent to conduct the
 devotions in suitable words_,” etc.

Religious liberty is openly and positively denied in the New York House
of Refuge, as will be seen from their own “Report of Special Committee
to the Managers of the House of Refuge,” 1872; from which it appears,
at pp. 21, 22, that the religion of the house consists in “Christian
worship in simple form, and Gospel lessons in Sunday-schools,” and that
the “inmates are brought into the _same_ chapel for public worship,”
and that “the whole regimen of the house,” including of course the
religious part, “is devised and pursued with careful attention to
the _wants of the inmates, but is not submitted to the control of
themselves or their friends_.” As Americans we have been taught from
our infancy that liberty of conscience is the dearest right of the
American citizen. We learned in our college days that even “Congress
shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof”; but we now learn that what the
highest legislative power in the nation, and what no state legislature,
can do, the managers of the New York House of Refuge have done and
are now doing: they have made a law respecting the establishment of a
religion in the House of Refuge, a public institution—a religion which
they have called variously “Christian worship in simple form,” “Gospel
lessons,” “Unsectarianism,” “The Broad Principles of Christianity”—and
have forbidden the free exercise of any other religion. Even if all
Christians were united in this worship and in these principles, have
Jewish citizens no rights under the Constitution? As citizens of the
State of New York, we have learned from the state constitution and
Bill of Rights “that the free exercise and practice of religious
profession and worship without discrimination or preference shall
_for ever be allowed to all mankind_.” Chancellor Kent, in his
_Commentaries on American Law_, says that “_the free exercise_ and
enjoyment of religious profession and worship may be considered as one
of the _absolute rights of individuals_, recognized in our American
constitutions and secured to them by law.”[4] And Story, in his
_Commentaries on the Constitution_, maintains in equally strong terms
“the freedom of public worship according to the dictates of one’s
conscience.”[5]

But we are now told by the Managers of the House of Refuge that
“delinquency has, under the law, worked some forfeiture of rights, and
that neither the delinquents nor their friends for them can justly
claim, while under sentence of the courts, equal freedom with the rest
of the community who have not violated the law.”[6] Such was the
answer given by American citizens, constituting the Board of Managers
of the New York House of Refuge, to the committee of American citizens
sent by the Catholic Union to demand liberty of conscience and freedom
of religious worship for the Catholic children in the Refuge! Either
this answer means that the children in the House of Refuge are not a
portion of _mankind_, or that religious freedom is one of the rights
forfeited by delinquency, or the Board of Managers have proclaimed
themselves guilty of the grossest violation of the rights of man and
of God. We presume these gentlemen will not admit either the first
or the third of these alternatives; indeed, they almost say in terms
that a commitment to the House of Refuge works a forfeiture of that
religious liberty guaranteed to all mankind. We know delinquency under
the law suspends the civil rights of the delinquent while in prison,
such as the right to hold public office or administer a private trust;
but it does not work even a forfeiture of property except in the case
of an outlawry of treason. These are all the forfeitures worked by the
highest crimes known to the law. Religion is not a civil right; no
crime can forfeit it; no power on earth can extinguish it. The greatest
of public malefactors, the murderer and the traitor, enjoy it even on
the scaffold: does the child whose only offence is poverty or vagrancy
forfeit it? In the sacred names of Liberty and Religion, what sort of
_Refuge_ is this to stand on American soil?

The Children’s Aid Society is another New York institution largely
supported by public funds. We learn from its Nineteenth Annual Report,
1871, that one of its objects is to shelter in its lodging-houses the
orphan and the homeless girls and boys, and labor incessantly to give
them the “_foundation ideas of morals and religion_” (p. 5). Alluding
to the _Italian_ School, No. 44 Franklin Street, the report says: “We
have _conquered the prejudices and superstition of ignorance_, and
_converted_ into useful citizens hundreds of this unfortunate class.”
With such a programme of unsectarian conversion, the leading feature
in which is indifferentism in religion, the immediate forerunner of
infidelity and agrarianism, it is no wonder that the report immediately
proceeds: “So much so, indeed, that the Italian government,” that same
godless government which is so ferociously waging war on Catholicity,
“has taken a deep interest in our institution” (p. 28).

It is only necessary to read these reports to be convinced that the
system either leads to materialism, the religion of worldly prosperity
and thrifty citizenship, or to some form of Protestant sectarianism.
The system of “emigration” pursued by such institutions, by which
children are sent out West and placed with anybody and everybody who
will take them, completes the work commenced in the East. On pages
54-56 of the report last quoted is related the case of a youth sent
East, who “cannot speak of his parents with any certainty at all”; it
matters not what religion they were of, the son is now _preparing for
the ministry_ of one of the sects. His letter also recites a similar
case in reference to another boy “who was sent out West.” It is certain
that he is not preparing for the Catholic ministry, for his impressions
of a miracle are thus expressed: “To be taken from the gutters of New
York City and placed in a college is almost a miracle.” The story of
young “Patrick,” p. 59, whose education was obtained at the Preparatory
School at Oberlin and at Cornell University, is significant. On page
60 is told the story of an _Irish_ orphan girl sent to Connecticut, and
placed with “an intelligent Christian woman, who means to do right.”
On page 63 is told the history of a little boy sent to Michigan, who
is well pleased with toys and new clothes, “like all other children;
he has a splendid new suit of clothes just got, and _he attends church
and Sabbath-school_.” A similar case is related at page 65, of a
little girl sent to Ohio, and we shall show below what has become of
little girls sent to that state. These are some of the model cases of
which this unsectarian society makes a boast in its report. It is a
significant fact that, of the 8,835 who came under the influences of
this society in one year, 3,312 were of Irish birth, and it may be
estimated with certainty that a considerable proportion of the other
children of foreign, as well as many of home birth were Catholics.
The number of children born in Ireland who were sent West during the
year was 1,058. This institution received for the furtherance of these
unsectarian objects the sum of $66,922.70 in this year from our public
funds.

We have also before us the Twentieth Annual Report of the New York
Juvenile Asylum, 1871, which proves the proselytizing character of
this public-pap-fed unsectarian institution. “The children that are
entrusted to us are at the _most susceptible period of life_,” etc.,
“when their destiny for time, if not _for eternity_, may be fixed” (p.
9). “They must be drilled into systematic habits of life in eating,
sleeping, play, study, work, and _worship_” (p. 10). To “attend church”
(p. 21), and “the evening worship,” and religious services generally,
are frequently recurring duties of the children. In this institution
the children of foreign birth during the year were 3,648, and of these
1,981 were born in Ireland. Of course we cannot say how many of the
children of home birth were the children of Irish and Catholic parents.
We have, alas! but too much certainty that a large proportion of the
children are Catholic. We casually met recently with an interesting
proof of this in _Scribner’s Magazine_, November, 1870, in an account
given by a visitor to the Juvenile Asylum. In the evening the visitor
was invited to see the girls’ dormitory as the girls were going to bed.
She writes: “All the children were saying their prayers. I noticed that
several of them made the sign of the cross as they rose.” Touching
evidence of their traditional faith and parental teaching! a simple
but sublime tribute to holy church! an earnest sign of love and hope
for those sacraments which came to us through the cross, but which,
like that cross itself, were not a part of the religion, worship, and
practice of this unsectarian asylum.

In the list of model examples presented in the report of the Western
agent will be seen the usual proselytizing influence of such
institutions. The cases either show mere material or worldly advantage,
or the embrace of pure sectarianism. On page 50 is related the case
of a little girl, who “scarcely remembers her parents,” of whom it is
related that “she is a member of the Presbyterian Church.” Two other
girls are indentured to members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The
“church and Sunday-school” are prominent features in nearly every case.
The amount received during the year by this _unsectarian_ institution
from our public funds was $62,065.24..

The Five Points House of Industry, which received, from 1858 to
1869, the sum of $30,731.69. from our Board of Education, states
in its charter, among the objects for which it was incorporated,
the following: “III. To imbue the objects of its care with the pure
principles of Christianity, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures,
without bias from the distinctive peculiarities of any individual
sect.” This means that the children belonging to distinctive religious
denominations, instead of being allowed to follow the distinctive
tenets, and practise the worship, in which they were reared, are
deprived of this right, and, as respects the Catholic children, they
are to reject and exclude every tenet and devotion distinctively
Catholic. How far even this profession of unsectarianism is carried
into practice will be discovered from the _Monthly Record_ of the Five
Points House of Industry for April and May, 1870, p. 302, giving an
account of the dedicatory exercises:

 “The services consisted of an opening anthem by the children, followed
 by a prayer by _Rev._ Dr. Paxton, asking a blessing upon the House and
 its objects.

 “This was followed by a hymn; a statement of the affairs of the
 institution, by _Rev._ S. B. Halliday; a recitative by the children;
 a statement as to city missions, by _Rev._ G. J. Mingins; a short
 discourse on the ‘Union of Christian Effort,’ by _Rev._ H. D. Ganse; a
 discourse on the ‘Lights and Shadows of Large Cities,’ by _Rev._ John
 Hall, D.D.; and, finally, a roundelay given by the children.”

How far the pledge given in the charter of this establishment, “without
_bias_ from the distinctive peculiarities of any individual sect,”
is carried out is further seen from the following extract from a
letter addressed by the president to the Rev. John Cotton Smith, a
prominent minister of the Episcopalian sect: “Between your church and
the institution the most kind and harmonious _co-operation_ has ever
existed. They will ever cherish a most pleasing remembrance of the
relations that have subsisted between them.”[7]

We might have alluded to the “Howard Mission and Home for Little
Wanderers,” founded by that arch-proselytizer, the Rev. W. C. Van
Meter, which during seven years _disposed of_ 7,580 “little wanderers”
of this city, in an unsectarian manner; but want of space forbids
our doing so. But the _animus_ pervading this and other unsectarian
institutions is exhibited to us now in the fact, that this reverend
has transferred the field of his labors from the Five Points to the
city of Rome, the centre and headquarters of Catholicity. He has there
established a mission and home for the little Romans. We do not stand
alone in our opinion that such institutions are nuisances for Catholic
children, and we quote the closing words of a letter recently addressed
to the Rev. Mr. Van Meter by the editor of the _Voce della Verita_, at
Rome:

 “Now, dear sir, excuse me if I remind you, that although a very
 ignorant person, ‘when I was a little boy,’ I also went to school,
 and learned a few things about your country. I remember to have heard
 it said that misery and ignorance abounded there, and that many
 hundreds of thousands of your compatriots knew of no other God than
 the almighty dollar. Why do you not go back and teach in Nebraska
 or Texas, and leave us alone? You might positively do some good
 there—now you are a—well, let me tell the truth—a _nuisance_. By
 your homeward voyage, you will benefit both your own country and
 ours.”[8]

Another complaint that we make against our semi-governmental charities
relates to the violation of the rights of parents and children, in the
sale of these children at the West. This pernicious practice of exiling
and transporting children from New York to the West is still in full
vigor amongst these institutions. How can we boast of our charities,
when their main feature consists in shifting the burden from our own
shoulders to those of others, and they are strangers? It is in vain
that we claim these children as the wards and _protégés_ of society
and of our city, if we repudiate the duties and responsibilities of
our guardianship. Against this cruelty and injustice we protest in the
names of civilization and Christianity. The institutions whose reports
we have referred to not only admit, but they boast of this outrage upon
the rights of parents and of children. One of them, the Children’s Aid
Society, refers to this branch of operations, “its Emigration System,”
as the “crown” of all its works. The number of children thus exiled
from the state by this society and transported to distant regions,
during the year of the report referred to, was 3,386; the whole number
since 1854 was 25,215. More than half the 3,386 were sent to Ohio, and
to the distant states of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas,
and Nebraska. Of one little boy thus exiled, who was separated from his
parents at the age of eight years, the Western agent reports: “I think
his mother would scarcely know him.” He reports that the mistress to
whom another was “disposed of” writes of him: “Indeed, I don’t know
what I should do without him, for he saves me a great many steps. I
wish we could find out about his brother and sister, he often cries
about them.”

Exile and transportation of children is also practised by the Five
Points House of Industry. They have obtained extraordinary powers for
this purpose from the Legislature. For while the Commissioners of
Public Charities and Correction, a purely governmental institution,
possess the power of indenturing children to citizens of the state of
New York and adjoining states only, the Five Points House of Industry
has received the power to send them anywhere and everywhere. But the
Commissioners of Public Charities and Correction send the poor children
they get into their power to the most remote states in violation of the
express law of the case. For instead of confining their indentures to
citizens of New York and the adjoining states, as the law directs, they
send them indiscriminately to every state, even the most distant. We
ask those public servants by what fiction of law they make California
and Texas _adjoin_ New York?

The New York Juvenile Asylum has also a “regular agency at Chicago, by
which the work of indenturing children at the West is conducted.”[9]
The total number of children sent West during fifteen years, from 1857
to 1871 inclusive, is 2,206, and the annual average, 147-1/15 (p. 47).

The extent to which this _crowning_ cruelty of our non-sectarian
institutions is carried, is appalling. We have only cited the
cases of the three whose reports happened to be before us. But we
have been informed, unofficially, and we think the statement can
be made good, that there are in the city of New York no less than
twenty-eight _charitable_ institutions engaged in this cruel practice
of transporting our New York children to the West and other remote
parts, and the average number of these little exiles per week is about
two hundred, making about ten thousand every year. What untold abuses
and hardships must result from this barbarous practice! However noble,
generous, and philanthropic may be the motives of the citizen-managers
of these institutions, they cannot attend in person to the details or
even the general management of their work. Not only are their houses in
the city confided to the management of hired and salaried agents and
servants, but the work of transporting children to the West is confided
generally to the same class of agents, and we intend to show how this
_charitable_ function is discharged. They are actuated by no higher
motives than usually actuate their class. The love of God, and of man
for God’s sake, is not the spirit that inspires their labors and guides
their steps. Corruption and infidelity to duty have stalked brazenly
into the public service everywhere; what reason have we for claiming
an exemption in favor of those who find profitable employment in the
administration of public charities?

But, as the _Christian Union_ demands further proof than is accessible
to the public, we will produce some additional evidence, although we
think we have already shown enough to condemn this system; and the tone
of that journal’s article leads us to believe that if an angel from
heaven disclosed to its view the same corruption and oppression which
we see in this branch of public administration, it would still cling to
its idols.

Now we have before us a letter, dated September 23, 1872, addressed by
a clergyman at Tiffin, Ohio, to a clergyman in the East, from which we
quote:

 “In answer to your request concerning those children brought on some
 four or five years ago from the East to be disposed of, I might say
 with prudence, that to several counties of Ohio had been brought
 car-loads of children from three years on to twelve and thirteen years
 old, and offered to the _public_ to take one or more; for they who
 offered the children said those who would take them had to pay the
 expenses of bringing them to the place. For some children the man said
 the expense would be fifteen dollars, for others more, others less.
 This is the way the affair was carried on for some time.”

The gentleman to whom the foregoing letter was addressed, and who
sent it to us, gives also his own testimony on this public traffic in
innocent human beings. His letter is dated September 25, 1872, and
reads as follows:

 “At that time,” some four or five years ago, “I was on a trip to
 Tiffin. Delayed for a short time at Clyde, I asked some questions of
 the baggage-master. Three little girls were near him, and I asked him:
 ‘Are these your daughters?’ A. ‘No, I bought them?’ ‘Bought them! how?
 from whom?’ A. ‘Oh! from the ministers. They bring car-loads of these
 little ones every few weeks, and sell them to any one who wants them.
 I gave $10 for this one, $12 for the next, and $15 for the oldest. I
 had not the money, but I borrowed it from the tavern-keeper, and paid
 for the girls. Lately there was another load of them. There was a very
 fine girl. I wanted her. But the minister said, ‘No; I have promised
 her to a rich man in Forrest, who will pay more than you.’ After some
 further conversation of a similar character, the train came in sight,
 and I left. The next day I was speaking of the circumstance at table.
 Rev. Mr.—— remarked that he knew the baggage-master well, and that
 what he said was true. He added, ‘Within the last month there was a
 sale of some thirty of these children in our Court House. One of my
 parishioners, Mr.——, came along as the sale was about over. A little
 boy was standing before the Court House crying; the German asked him,
 ‘What is the matter?’ He said, ‘That man wants to sell me, and no one
 will buy me.’ The boy was bought by the German for $10. I had heard
 such transactions described in one of his lectures by F. Haskins.
 But I scarcely realized how fearful such conduct is until I heard a
 description of these sales from persons who had seen them.”

Such, indeed, is the “crowning” work of some of the charitable
institutions of New York! Is this the fulfilment of the Gospel of
charity, or of the Sermon on the Mount, or of the broad principles of
Christianity? Perhaps, rather, it is the Rev. Mr. Pierce’s _elastic_
system of religion.[10] Compare these humiliating facts with the
self-congratulatory reports on “Emigration” of the Children’s Aid
Society, which in 1871 sent three hundred and seven of these little
wards of the city to the same state of Ohio.[11] At page 10 we read:

 “Every year we expect that the opposition of a very bigoted and
 ignorant class will materially lessen this _the most effective of our
 charitable efforts_. We have surpassed, however, owing to the energy
 of our Western agents, the results of every previous equal period, in
 the labors of the past year.

 “Crowds of poor boys have thronged the office or have come to the
 lodging-houses for a ‘chance to go West’; great numbers of very
 destitute but honest families have appealed to us for this aid, and
 our agents have frequently conveyed parties of a hundred and more.
 The West has received these children _liberally_ as before; and there
 has been less complaint the past year than usual of bad habits and
 perverse tempers. The larger boys are still restless as ever, and
 inclined to change their places where higher inducements are offered.
 But this characteristic they have in common with our whole laboring
 class.”

Again:

 “Emigration.—This department has worked most successfully the past
 year. A larger number has been removed from the city than ever before.”

It would seem, however, that the experience of the New York Juvenile
Asylum, though still persevering in this traffic as a good work, has
not been as satisfactory as that of the Children’s Aid Society. We will
give an extract from the Twentieth Annual Report, showing even from the
mouths of those who practise it as a good work what a crying evil this
is, and confirming the extracts we have given in reference to the sales
of children in Ohio:

 “Removing and replacing children is one of the important functions
 of the agency. Our children are first placed on trial, and in nearly
 every company some have to be replaced over and over again before they
 are permanently settled. But even after indentures have been executed,
 new _developments_ often compel removals. Such are the weaknesses
 of human nature, and such the instability of human affairs, that,
 without provision to meet the exigencies consequent upon them, _cases
 of extreme hardship and inhumanity would be frequent_. They who have
 not had experience in this kind of work are not apt to realize, and it
 is often difficult to persuade them of, _the imperative need of such
 provision_. _Children will not unfrequently get into improper hands in
 spite of every precaution, and in many cases success is more or less
 problematical._ Death of employers also, and change of circumstances,
 are often the occasion of removals. _Not a month goes by that does not
 furnish cases where, but for timely attention, suffering, mischief,
 and irreparable evil would result._ A little familiarity with the
 field work of this agency would convince its most obdurate opponent
 that _to leave children without recourse among strangers in a strange
 land is an unjustifiable procedure_.”

Apart from the inhumanity of this procedure, from its unchristian
character, from its proselytizing effects, we protest against it in the
name of law, of right, and of human liberty. The common law of England
is our heritage, and by that common law “no power on earth, except
the authority of parliament, can send any subject of England out of
the land against his will; no, not even a criminal. The great charter
declares that no freeman shall be banished unless by the judgment of
his peers or by the law of the land; and by the _habeas corpus_ act
it is enacted that no subject of this realm who is an inhabitant
of England, Wales, or Berwick shall be sent into Scotland, Ireland,
Jersey, Guernsey, or other places beyond the seas.”[12] Chancellor
Kent, in his _Commentaries on American Law_ (ii. 34), claims the same
proud privilege as one of the absolute rights of American citizens,
and, while declaring that “no citizen can be sent abroad,” states that
the constitutions of several of the states of our confederacy contain
express provisions forbidding transportation beyond the state.

We come now to the last and not the least painful task, which the
_Christian Union_ insists upon our undertaking; it relates to “the
horrible abuses existing in some of our state institutions.” And
here, as in the preceding remarks, we must confine ourselves to a
portion only of the mass of materials before us, and, in fact, confine
ourselves to a single institution; for, if such things exist in a
single case, this is enough to prove not only the possibility, but also
the probability of the same thing in others, and to dispel the fatal
blindness which can see nothing defective either in their constitution
or management. We must pass over the charges recently preferred against
the New York House of Refuge, relating to improper food, of excessive
labor, of cruel punishments, employment of unfit and incompetent agents
in the management of the institution, and of religious intolerance.
While we think that the evidence produced on the trial of the boy,
Justus Dunn, for killing one of the officers of the Refuge, goes far
to substantiate most of the charges preferred, we have, in common with
the community, but little respect for the whitewashing certificate
given by the grand-jury, who made a flying visit to the institution,
by invitation, on an appointed day. Of course the officers put their
house in order, and failed not to put their best foot foremost, on
this preconcerted occasion. The managers placed no reliance on this
acquittal, for they courted another soon afterwards. The second
investigation by the State Commissioners of Charity was very little
better; it was _ex parte_ on all the charges except that of religious
intolerance, and the Refuge was acquitted on all the charges except
this last.

We must also pass over, for want of space, the revolting case which
occurred at the New York Juvenile Asylum in June last, in which one of
the inmates of the asylum, a colored girl, instead of finding there
an asylum from temptation and seduction, fell a victim to the lust
of one of the officers of the institution, who fled precipitately on
discovery of the fact.[13] We must pass over, for the same reason, the
investigations recently conducted at St. Louis, which are far from
showing a satisfactory result for the management and conduct of public
reformatories. We must confine ourselves now to a single institution—a
case in which the evidence is replete with horrible abuses, cruelties,
improprieties, and wrongs. While we would be sorry to apply the maxim,
_ex uno disce omnes_, we can but regard this case as a general warning
to our people to beware of regarding as good everything in the moral
order that goes under the much-abused name of _reform_.

The Providence School of Reform is an institution supported by funds
received both from the state of Rhode Island and from the city of
Providence. Its object seems to be the temporal, social, and moral
reformation of juvenile delinquents of both sexes. Some time prior to
1869, it had been the subject of the gravest charges and investigation,
which tended to show that, so far from having been in all its
departments and workings a school of reform, it had in some instances
become a school for vice and immorality. The whitewashing process,
that facile and amiable way of avoiding disagreeable complications,
prevented the accomplishment of any change for the better. But in
1869 the charges against the institution took a more definite form,
and were signed and presented by thirty-one citizens of Providence to
the corporate authorities—citizens of the first respectability and
standing. The Board of Aldermen of the city of Providence, headed by
the Mayor, undertook the investigation, and the evidence is contained
in two large volumes in one, extending over eleven hundred and
forty-two pages.[14]

The charges were the most serious ones that could be brought against an
institution, especially against one professing _reform_, and had their
origin with citizens without distinction of creed. Their true character
and extent can only be understood by a perusal of them:

 “First. That vices against chastity, decency, and good morals have
 prevailed in the school, and have been taught and practised by
 teachers as well as by pupils; that these vices have existed both in
 the male and female departments, and that the children usually leave
 the school more corrupt than when they entered it.

 “Second. That teachers have used immodest and disgusting language in
 the presence of children, and have addressed females in an indecent
 manner by referring to their past character, and by calling them vile
 and unbecoming names.

 “Third. That modes of punishment the most cruel and inhuman have been
 used in said school, such as knocking down and kicking the pupils, and
 whipping them when naked, and with a severity not deserved by their
 offences.

 “Fourth. That young women are said to have been kicked, knocked down,
 dragged about by the hair of the head, and otherwise brutally treated,
 but more especially that all modesty and decency have been outraged
 by stripping them to the waist and lashing them on the naked back;
 taking them from their beds and whipping them in their night-dresses;
 tying their hands and feet and ducking them; and by other forms of
 punishment which no man should ever inflict upon a woman.

 “Fifth. That names of children committed to said school have been
 changed and altered by the officers of the said institution.

 “Sixth. That children have been apprenticed to persons living in
 remote sections of the country, and who have no interest in taking
 proper care of them, and that a needless disregard to the rights and
 feelings of their parents has often been evinced by the officers of
 the school.

 “Seventh. That the goods of said school are reported to have been used
 dishonestly for purposes for which they were not intended, and that
 the state of Rhode Island is said to have been charged with the board
 of children who were living at service and were no expense to said
 school.

 “Eighth. That a spirit of proselytism and of religious intolerance
 has prevailed in the school, as is shown in the fact that children of
 different creeds are compelled to attend a form of worship which is
 contrary to the conscientious convictions of a large majority of them;
 which is directly in conflict with the spirit and letter of our state
 constitution, which ensures to the inhabitants thereof the liberty
 of conscience, in the following language: ‘No man shall be compelled
 to frequent or to support any religious worship, place, or ministry
 whatever, except in fulfilment of his own voluntary contract;’ and
 that the children of said school are denied the use of books and all
 religious instruction in the religion of their choice.”

Although there is evidence in the volume of _Investigation_ before us
tending to sustain the “fifth” and “seventh” charges, we yet except
those two charges from our remark, when we say that the other six
charges, constituting the gravamen of the prosecution, are not only
sustained in whole or in part by nearly one hundred witnesses, but,
with all deference to the five aldermen out of ten who found most of
them _not proved_, we think that no unbiassed reader of the heavily
laden and sad volume before us, no true philanthropist, no man of true
charity, can fail to pronounce the word _guilty_ as to all or some
part of every one of the first, second, third, fourth, seventh, and
eighth charges. We are sorry to be forced to the conviction that the
testimony is overwhelming. There are cases of punishment cruel in the
extreme—some have called them inhuman, and even brutal—inflicted on
about sixty boys; and, while nearly every page shows this, we refer
particularly to pages 112, 123, 172, 234, 238, 274, 279, 280, 281, 289,
290, 295, 318, 364, 366, 375, 379, 383, 387, 388, 402, 403, 410, 414,
416, 419, 421, 425, 432, 437, 440, 446. See evidences more particularly
referring to the use of the loaded whip, page 378; the strap, the cat,
the strings, 286, 339; the butt, 492; blood drawn, 364, 485; terrorism,
239, 269, 270, 305, 371, 418, 424, 425, 492; whipping little boys over
the knuckles with a bunch of keys, 146, 147; kicking, 447, 485, 526,
and 323 of vol. ii.; boys struck on the head with a hammer, 331, 379;
profanity and indecency, 280, 302, and page 135 of vol. ii.; Catholic
books taken away from Catholic children, 308, 309, 310; state of Rhode
Island charged with board of children who had been put out of the
institution, 307, which was regarded as “an error of the head and not
of the heart,” 327 of vol. ii.

There are also detailed in the _Investigation_ cases of about thirty
girls punished in a cruel and revolting manner. For girls lashed,
bodies striped and bruised, see pages 18, 19; a girl struck, caught
by the throat, pounded, and dragged by the hair of the head, 23; a
girl struck with fist, and black eye, 55; a girl stripped to the
waist of all her clothes, except undergarment, and whipped with
cat-o’-nine-tails, and body marked, 93; another girl dragged by the
hair, 95; a girl ducked, 102; a girl boxed until her nose bled, and
water dashed on her, 102; a girl chased, kicked, and held under flowing
water, 108; a girl dragged by the hair, kicked, and ducked, 219, 220;
another girl dragged by the hair and kicked, 228; another lashed black
and blue, 229; a girl lashed on the back after she had gone to bed,
338; another girl whipped with the straps, and kicked, 344; another
girl stripped to the waist, leaving only undergarment on, and whipped
with a knotted strap, 360; a girl ducked, 272. A mother is refused
permission to see her child, who was whipped, and refused information
as to whither the child was transported. The mother said: “I will
travel Rhode Island through, and I will travel Connecticut through,
but what I will find her. I have not seen her for the last six or
eight years, and a mother’s nature goes beyond any mortal thing in
this world. A mother wants to see her child. I could not get anything
from them,” 374. Another girl is stripped like the others, and lashed,
marked, and scarred on the back, 395. A witness, at page 396, says:
“I saw—— stripped with her dress down; she was badly bruised on the
shoulder; I did not see any blood, but I saw the bruises were pretty
bad bruises; there were scars clear across her shoulders; you could not
see scarcely a piece of plain flesh on her shoulders.” At page 443, a
former inmate testifies to the treatment received by another inmate: “I
saw him shower her and strike her; he knocked her against the building
with his fist, and the blood ran out of her nose and ears while she
was by the fence, while he stood there punishing her.” At page 454,
we read an extract from the testimony of a Mrs. Bishop: “Q. Were you
ever kicked or beaten in the school by——? A. Yes, sir. I was punished
up-stairs because I could not learn my lesson. I had had no schooling
at that time; I could not do much reading; he punished me up-stairs; I
told him I could not learn it, unless he could let a girl come up and
help me; I was told to kneel down; I looked around, and he kicked me
across the aisle; he pulled me by my dress, and kicked me across the
aisle, and twice across the room; I was put up-stairs before devotions
were to come off; I said I was going to tell my mother; he said I could
not see my folks again if I did tell her; he was going to give me two
hundred dollars if I had not said anything; I was sick after this
kicking; he carried me home himself away from the school; I could not
move nor stir; I could not move one eye; I walked on crutches after it;
it affects me now; affects my gait, so I can’t walk all the time; I
have to hire my work done part the time now; when there comes a storm,
I can’t move, I have to sit still in the house; sometimes I have to
lie in bed, because it affects me so; I was thirteen years old at that
time.” A girl, a new-comer only three days in the school, is ducked,
strapped, and locked up two days for laughing in school, p. 629, and
further ill-treated, 639. Another girl dragged by the hair, pounded,
and dreadfully bruised, 661. Girls ducked and whipped at night, 678.
Girls called names of supreme contempt by teachers in allusion to their
past lives, 684, 737, and 39, 71, 317, of vol. ii. A girl taken up at
night, and whipped in her night-clothes by male officer, 693. A girl
is pulled over the desk by the hair, for not singing, 705. A girl is
imprisoned and fed on bread and water for twenty-three days, 320 of
vol. ii.

For instances of girls whipped on the naked back by men, see pp. 61,
339, 630; girls kicked by men, 318, 328, 345, 348, 354, 360, 631; same
proved by defence, 41 of vol. ii.; girls dragged by the hair by men,
231, 347, 348, 636; girls struck with fist by men, 347, 349; black eye
given, 350; marks on bodies, 360, 367, 395, 719; girls taunted about
their former lives, 86, 96, 100, 397, 687, 737, and 317 of vol. ii.;
terrorism, 269, 270, 305, 371, 424, 425, and 41 of vol. ii.; girls
ducked by men, 92, 94, 97, 102, and 295 of vol. ii.

The first charge, the most serious that could be brought against
a school of _reform_—“crimes against chastity, decency, and good
morals”—is fearfully sustained. One of the employees, a man of years,
who had become notorious for his vulgarity and indecency in both the
male and female departments, to both of which he had access, is caught
_flagrante delicto_. The partner of his sin was one of the female
inmates, who was sent there to be _reformed_, and they were detected
by other female inmates of this school of reform (page 75). And again,
_horribile dictu_, a _teacher_ in the same nursery of _reform_ lived,
“month in and month out,” in criminal conversation with one of the
inmates of the female department (pages 63, 76), and the appalling fact
is again proved by the defence (ii. 322). But, more shocking than all
this, not only were immodest and indecent conversations held by an
employee with the boys and girls, but another fiend in the flesh, an
officer of the Providence School of Reform, introduced among the boys
and taught them habits the most immoral and disgusting, destructive at
once of their souls and bodies, of their manhood, and of their temporal
and eternal happiness. This fact is proved solely by the defence at
page 321 of vol. ii. The offender was dismissed, but the school still
exists! Where are Sodom and Gomorrah?

The evidence for the defence consists chiefly of denials and
_non-mi-ricordos_ by the officers and employees; but some of the
charges are proved by the defence itself, and some of the most damning
evidence against the institution came from this very quarter. The mayor
and one of the aldermen declined to take any part in the decision,
because they were members of the board of trustees. Three other
aldermen refused to sign the decision, and gave decisions of their
own, finding portions of the charges true. Five out of ten of the
judges sign the decision, which, while finding most of the charges _not
proved_, strongly inculpates the institution on several of the charges.
In it is stated that two instances have occurred of offences against
chastity, decency, and good morals, on the part of officers and female
inmates, page 384 of vol. ii.; that knocking down was practised, though
alleged to have been in self-defence; and that boys were whipped on the
bare back, 384 of vol. ii.; that girls have had their dresses loosened
and removed from the upper part of the back and shoulders, leaving only
the undergarment on, and thus punished by the (male) superintendent;
and in a very few cases during the past nine years, when they have, in
violation of the rules of the school, made loud noises and disturbances
in the dormitories at night, they have been punished in their
night-clothes (by a male officer) in the presence of a female officer,
page 385 of vol. ii.; ducking is admitted, page 385.

One of the dissenting aldermen in his decision says: “Being fully
aware that the class of inmates sent to this school require a strong
and efficient discipline, and not feeling competent to say what that
discipline should be, yet I cannot resist the conviction that the
punishments described have a tendency to _degrade rather than to
elevate_, not only the one who receives, but the one who administers
them.” “I therefore feel bound to protest against such punishments,
and earnestly hope that some better mode of discipline will speedily
be adopted by the managers of this institution” (p. 394, vol. ii.).
The superintendent stated on oath that, in case a child sick and _in
extremis_ required a Catholic priest to be sent for, he would first
go and seek the advice of three or four of the trustees before he
would admit, even under such circumstances, a Catholic or any other
clergyman; and on this subject the same alderman remarked: “In my view,
any superintendent of this institution who would hesitate to allow the
consolations of religion to be administered in the form desired by
the child, under such circumstances, should be promptly relieved from
duty,” page 396 of vol. ii. Another alderman says: “I am of opinion
that cruel and unnecessary punishment has been inflicted. I do not
suppose that striking with the clenched fist, kicking, or dragging by
the hair of the head has been common, but I think it has occurred in
some instances,” page 397; and he mentions the case of an “unfortunate
girl who seems to have suffered every form of discipline known to this
school, from being _ducked_ to being ‘pushed under the table with the
foot.’ If it be said she was vile, I would ask how she came to be? She
was but six or seven years of age when she entered this institution.
No one is wholly bad at that tender age. She remained under its care
and influences for _nine years_, and, if she is vicious and dissolute,
why is she so? If, on the other hand, she was insane, is it not painful
to reflect that such punishments were inflicted on an irresponsible
child?” (p. 399.) One of the trustees actually resigned a year before
the investigation, rather than be connected with such scenes; he
started an investigation, but it seems to have done no good; and such
was the condition of things at the time of this first investigation
that the assistant superintendent offered to give one hundred dollars
to a friend to shield him from being called as a witness.

The religious instruction given in this institution is _of course_
unsectarian; everything distinctively Episcopalian is denied to
Episcopalian children, everything distinctively Baptist is denied to
Baptist children, everything distinctively Methodist is denied to
Methodist children, everything distinctly Presbyterian is denied to
Presbyterian children, and everything distinctly Catholic is denied to
Catholic children. Nothing whatever is said tending “to keep children
in the faith to which they belonged when they entered the school.” “Q.
Does not the system of religious instruction tend to bring the children
to that form of religion which gives to each person the private
judgment and interpretation of the Scriptures? A. We hope it tends to
make them better. Q. Does it not tend to have them choose their own
Bible and their own interpretation of it as the source and principle
of religion? A. I should hope that it tends to have them accept the
Bible. Q. Do you teach them the doctrine of the private interpretation
of the Scripture? A. No, sir, not at all. Q. As I understand it, all
the religious instruction they get is simply reading from the Bible,
and no interpretation. They can interpret it just as they please.
A. They can interpret it just as they please. Sometimes one speaker
comes, and sometimes another” (page 234, vol. ii.) ... “Q. Now state
the afternoon services on Sunday? A. One of the trustees (they all
alternate except the mayor) procures a speaker for Sunday afternoon
to address the scholars. Q. Of what class are those speakers—of any
particular or of all classes? A. Since I have been there, I think every
denomination has been represented or been invited to speak? Q. Are
they particularly members of churches, or laymen, lawyers, doctors,
or anybody who will give a moral address to the children? A. I could
not speak with certainty of the professions. We often have clergymen,
perhaps oftener than any other class, but not unfrequently men of other
professions, and many times those following no profession to speak in
connection with others. We often have more than one speaker—sometimes
half a dozen. Q. These are business men of the city? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do
you have lawyers sometimes? A. I think all professions are represented.
Q. Do you have ministers if you can get them? A. Yes, sir.” And yet in
this unsectarianism the most direct sectarianism prevailed. “Q. Do you
know what version of the Bible is used? A. It is the common English
translation. Q. (By the mayor) It is the ordinary Bible, is it not?
A. Yes, sir. (By Mr. Gorman) The _Douay_ is the ordinary one. (By
Mr.——) We call that an _extraordinary_ one” (page 62, vol. ii.).

Now, we have the Bible without comment, but ministers, lawyers,
doctors, and business men are called in every Sunday, sometimes half
a dozen at one time, to give the comments, each according to his own
view. Every religious denomination was invited, but it does not appear
that any Catholic ever accepted the invitation; for, if he accepted, he
would leave his Catholicity outside until he finished his unsectarian
discourse. There may be something in common with all the sects which
sometimes may be called general Protestantism, though they profess to
call it unsectarianism; but one thing we know is common to them all,
and this something is opposition to Catholicity, and the dodge of
unsectarianism is adroitly invented in order to exclude Catholics from
enjoying equal rights with Protestants in matters relating to public
education and public charities. The state must let religion alone, and
unsectarians must desist from their disguised effort to unite church
and state in this country, while it has so strenuously opposed their
union in every Catholic country. They know that Catholics can take no
part in unsectarian teachings, but they would like us to do so, for in
proportion as we did so would we cease to be Catholics. The Catholic
view was so admirably expressed by the late Bishop Fitzpatrick, of
Boston, in his letter in the Eliot School difficulty, that we must give
it to our readers:

 “I. Catholics cannot, under any circumstances, acknowledge, receive,
 and use, as a complete collection and faithful version of the inspired
 books which compose the written Word of God, the English Protestant
 translation of the Bible. Still less can they so acknowledge, accept,
 or use it, when its enforcement as such is coupled expressly with
 the rejection of that version which their own church approves and
 adopts as being correct and authentic; and yet this is required of
 them by law. The law, as administered, holds forth the Protestant
 version to the Catholic child, and says, ‘Receive this as the Bible.’
 The Catholic child answers, ‘I cannot so receive it.’ The law, as
 administered, says you must, or else you must be scourged and finally
 banished from the school.

 “II. The acceptance and recital of the Decalogue, under the form and
 words in which Protestants clothe it, is offensive to the conscience
 and belief of Catholics, inasmuch as that form and those words
 are viewed by them, and have not unfrequently been used by their
 adversaries, as a means of attack upon certain tenets and practices
 which, under the teachings of the church, they hold as true and sacred.

 “III. The chanting of the Lord’s Prayer, of psalms, of hymns
 addressed to God, performed by many persons in unison, being neither
 a scholastic exercise nor a recreation, can only be regarded as an
 act of public worship—indeed, it is professedly intended as such in
 the regulations which govern our public schools. It would seem that
 the principles which guide Protestants and Catholics, in relation
 to communion in public worship, are widely different. Protestants,
 however diverse may be their religious opinions—Trinitarians, who
 assert that Jesus Christ is true God, and Unitarians, who deny he
 is true God—find no difficulty to offer in brotherhood a blended
 and apparently harmonious worship, and in so doing they give and
 receive mutual satisfaction, mutual edification. The Catholic cannot
 act in this manner. He cannot present himself before the Divine
 presence in what would be for him a merely simulated union of prayer
 and adoration. His church expressly forbids him to do so. She
 considers indifference in matters of religion, indifference as to the
 distinction of positive doctrines in faith, as a great evil which
 promiscuous worship would tend to spread more widely and increase.
 Hence the prohibition of such worship; and the Catholic cannot join in
 it without doing violence to his sense of religious duty.”

Non-sectarianism is the plea upon which those public institutions
justify their interference with the religious rights of their inmates.
They argue that, because this system is acceptable to Protestants of
every sect, therefore it must be acceptable to Catholics. Whereas,
on the contrary, what is called unsectarianism is the concentration
of sectarianism. Unsectarianism is made up of all those points upon
which the sects concur, and is therefore pre-eminently sectarian. It
is either that or simple deism; for if you take away the distinctive
tenets of Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and of all
the distinct sects, there remains nothing but deism. This involves,
and will inevitably lead to, the denial of revelation; and the very
Scriptures themselves, which Protestantism claims as the sole source of
religious teaching, must and will inevitably, if non-sectarianism long
prevails, be cast away. Is the teaching of deism alone inoffensive to
Christians? The teaching of a few points, even if agreed upon by all,
would be, on account of its exclusiveness, as sectarian as any other
religious system—indeed more so; and is subject to an objection not
applicable to the others, in that it conceals its true nature, and
assumes a false name: whereas the Catholic Church and the avowed sects
proclaim their distinctive and exclusive character, and in this at
least are truthful and honest. If religious teaching resolves itself
into latitudinarianism, it then constitutes a new sect in itself. A
perfect neutrality, as long as anything positive is taught, is an
impossibility. This very selection, which makes up this professed
unsectarianism, is an anti-Catholic principle. It proclaims the right
of man to determine all things in religion by his own private judgment,
and in this consists the distinctive feature of Protestantism.

We have thus shown that non-sectarianism, as a system of religious
teaching, is an impossibility. We now propose to show that in our
schools, asylums, reformatories, etc., it is in practice, as well as
in theory, an impossibility. We will show this, too, by Protestant and
unsectarian authority. At p. 264, vol. ii., _Providence Reform School
Investigation_, we read from the testimony of a Protestant Episcopal
trustee, who resigned on account, in part, of this impossibility:

 “Q. Didn’t you know that no sectarian instruction was admitted inside
 that institution? A. I don’t know what you call sectarianism. It is
 pretty hard to say down in that school. We have had everything taught
 and preached there. Q. Was not this an Episcopal book? A. It was a
 book of devotions and prayers—a work by a divine of the English
 Church. It was an Episcopal book. Q. Do you mean to say that a book of
 Episcopal exercises is or is not a sectarian work? A. I am a member of
 the Episcopal Church; we do not call ourselves a sect. Q. Didn’t you
 know at the time you gave this book to the teacher that it was against
 the rules of the school to have the doctrines of the true church given
 out there, or of any church? A. I had never supposed it was against
 the rules of that institution, and I should have been unwilling to
 have sat for one hour as its trustee if I had supposed that I was
 myself forbidden to pray, or to advise others to pray there, through
 Jesus Christ, our Lord; and if the prayers I indicated, marked, and
 numbered in that book are prayers forbidden in the Providence Reform
 School or any other school, I have for the first time to learn what
 is sectarianism. They are prayers which every Christian, whether he
 belongs to any one of the various organizations of Christians in
 this or any other country or not, would, I think, be willing to use
 morning, noon, and night. Q. Didn’t you know that the by-laws place
 religious instruction exclusively under the care of the superintendent
 of the school” [who is a layman]?

The Hon. John C. Spencer, Secretary of State and Superintendent of
Schools in 1840, said in his report to the New York Legislature:
“There must be some degree of religious instruction, and there can be
_none_ without partaking more or less of a _sectarian character_. _The
objection itself proceeds from a sectarian principle_, and assumes the
power to control that which it is neither right nor practicable to
subject to any denomination. Religious doctrines of vital interest will
be inculcated.”

Another who has discussed this question of sectarianism with force and
great plainness of speech is the Rev. Dr. Spear, of Brooklyn, in the
columns of the _Independent_, thus:

 “It is quite true that the Bible, as the foundation of religious
 belief, is not sectarian as between those who adopt it; but it is
 true that King James’ Version of the Holy Scriptures is sectarian as
 to the Catholic, as the Douay is to the Protestant, or as the Baptist
 Version would be to all Protestants but Baptists. It is equally true
 that the New Testament is sectarian as to the Jew, and the whole Bible
 is equally so as to those who reject its authority in any version....
 There is no sense or candor in a mere play on words here. It is not
 decent in a Protestant ecclesiastic, who has no more rights than the
 humblest Jew, virtually to say to the latter: ‘You are nothing but
 a good-for-nothing Jew; you Jews have no claim to be regarded as
 a religious sect, or included in the law of state impartiality as
 between sects which Protestants monopolize for their special benefit.
 Away with your Jewish consciences! You pay your tax bills, and send
 your children to the public schools, and we will attend to their
 _Christian_ education.’ It is not decent to say this to any class of
 citizens who dissent from what is known as Protestant Christianity.
 It is simply a supercilious pomposity of which Protestants ought to
 be ashamed. It may please the bigotry it expresses, but a sensible
 man must either pity or despise it. In the name of justice we protest
 against this summary mode of disposing of the school question in
 respect to any class of American citizens. It is simply an insult.”

Again, Dr. Anderson, President of the Rochester University, one of the
first men in the Baptist Church in these United States, addressing the
Baptist Educational Convention in the city of New York, says:

 “_It is impossible for an earnest teacher to avoid giving out
 constantly religious and moral impulses and thought. He must of
 necessity set forth his notions about God, the soul, conscience, sin,
 the future life, and Divine Revelation._

 “If he promises not to do so, he will fail to keep his word”—these
 are true words—“or his teachings in science, or literature, or
 history will be miserably shallow and inadequate. Our notions of God
 and the moral order form, in spite of ourselves, the base line which
 affects all our movements and constructions of science, literature,
 and history. Inductions in physics, classifications in natural
 history, necessitate a living law eternal in the thought of God.”

These gentlemen speak of religious instruction, only inasmuch as it
is connected with the education of youth, and yet their logical minds
showed them the absurdity of unsectarianism. What, then, could they
have said of visionary men attempting direct teaching of religion
without sectarianism?

The following extract is too pertinent to our subject and too clever
to be omitted, as an illustration of the impossibility of teaching
religion upon the unsectarian system:


“UNSECTARIANISM.”

SOME OF THE DIFFICULTIES OF A TEACHER IN A MIXED SCHOOL.

  (From the New Orleans Morning Star.)

 We find the following in our San Francisco contemporary, the _Pacific
 Churchman_, taken originally from the _London Church Review_, an organ
 of the Church of England. The editor of the _Churchman_ remarks that
 “with some changes it will equally apply to some of our _un_-sectarian
 schools.” As far as the _Churchman_ goes against _un_-sectarian
 schools in this country, we are with it. This seems to be one scene
 taken from others. Considering that it conveys a good argument for us,
 our readers will excuse the term “Romanism,” thrown in as a reproach.
 We quote:

 The schoolroom of a boarding-school. Time, the hour of religious
 instruction. Bible to be read and explained without inculcating
 the dogmas of any particular denomination. Teacher certificated,
 unsectarian, highly conscientious. Class consisting of children from
 thirteen down to six or seven, and of various grades, from respectable
 poor to gutter children. Schoolroom and teacher span new. Teacher a
 little nervous. Children—some looking curiously about them, some
 disposed to loll and idle, some attentive. Teacher opens the great
 Bible, and begins to read St. Matthew ii., as being a narrative likely
 to interest the auditory, and easy to explain in an undenominational
 sense. First, however, a little preliminary explanation is necessary.

 _Teacher._ You must know, my dear children, that Joseph and Mary
 were two very good people who lived a very great many years ago in a
 country far away from London, and I am going to read to you about them
 and their son (reads slowly verse 1. of the chapter).

 _Ragged Arab_ (not accustomed to observe much ceremony). Please, sir,
 who’s that?

 _Teacher_ (aghast, and wishing to gain time). Whom do you mean, my boy?

 _Arab._ That there Jesus.

 _Teacher_ (aside). [How can this question be answered in an
 undenominational sense? This is the religious difficulty, full blown.
 If I say “a good man,” that will hardly do, for I know several of the
 boys are the children of the church people and Romanists; and if I say
 “the son of God,” that won’t do, for Tommy Markham is a Unitarian, or,
 at any rate, his parents are; besides, such a dogmatic statement is
 sectarian.] (Aloud.) I will explain all about him when I have finished
 the chapter.

 Continues to read. The class listens with various degrees of attention
 until the 11th verse is finished, and then—

 _A Boy._ Please, sir, who’s Mary? The mother of the little baby,
 wasn’t she?

 _Teacher._ Yes; she was his mother.

 _Boy._ Oh! and what does “wusshupped” mean?

 _Teacher._ It means paying great respect, kneeling down and bowing, as
 we should to God.

 _Another Boy_ (better taught than boy No. 1, and jumping at once to a
 sectarian conclusion). Then, that there baby was God, sir?

 _Tommy Markham_ (stoutly). No, that he wasn’t!

 _Teacher._ Silence, boys, the lesson cannot go on if you talk and
 quarrel. (Struck by a bright idea.) You know that a great many people
 believe that he was God; but some do not; but we must not quarrel
 because we do not all think alike.

 _First Boy_ (disagreeably curious). Well, but what do _you_ think,
 master?

 [Terrible dilemma! Teacher hesitates. At length, desperately]—

 _I_ think he was God.

 _Boy._ Don’t yer _know_ it?

 _Teacher_ (aside). [Perverse youth. Pest take his questions and him
 too! If I’d known what “unsectarian” teaching involved, I’d sooner
 have swept a crossing. What _will_ the Board say? Why, the very
 essence of our principle is to _know_ nothing and think anything. But
 you can’t make the boys reason.] (Aloud.) My dear boy, it is very
 difficult to say what we know. I can only teach you what I think, and
 teach you how to be good and do what is right, and obey all that God
 tells you to do in this Holy Book.

 _A Boy_ (interrupting, _sans cérémonie_). Did God write that there
 book?

 _Teacher._ Yes; and he tells us what we are to do to get to heaven;
 and his son came, as you see, as a little child, and when he grew up,
 he preached and told us how we ought to love one another, and all we
 ought to do to lead a good life.

 _Boy_ (interested). And was he a _very_ good chap?

 _Teacher_ (a little shocked). Yes, of course; you know he
 was—[pauses; his haste had almost betrayed him into a dogmatic
 explanation, and the forbidden word “know” had actually passed his
 lips].

 _Another Boy_ (with vexatiously retentive memory). You said afore,
 master, that he was God, and the gentlemen wusshupped him—was he
 _reelly_ God?

 _Teacher_ (boldly, taking the bull by the horns). Yes.

 _Boy._ And did God’s mother wusshup him too, master?

 _Teacher._ You must not call her the mother of—[interrupts himself;
 recollects that it is as sectarian to deny to the Blessed Virgin the
 title of Mother of God as to bestow it upon her; continues]: yes, she
 worshipped him too; but I want you to learn about the things that he
 told us to do.

 _Another Boy_ (doggedly). But we wants to know fust who he be, ‘cause
 we ain’t to do jist what a nobody tells us; only, if that there
 gentlemen be God, there’s somethin’ in it, ‘cause I’ve ‘eard parson
 say, at old school, where I was once, that what God said was all right.

 _Teacher_ (aside). [Certainly that poor Arab has got the root of
 denominational education. It is, I begin to think, a failure to
 attempt the teaching of morality without first making manifest what
 that morality is based upon, and the moment you come to _that_ you are
 in for denominationalism at once. (Wipes his brow and continues)—

 Of course, my boy, you must know why it is right to tell the truth and
 do what is right, but then if I tell you God commanded all this and
 read to you what his Son said about it, there is no need for troubling
 so much about—about—

 _Boy_ (interrupting). Oh! but I likes to ax questions, and it ain’t no
 sort of use you telling us it’s wrong to lie—nobody at ‘ome ever told
 me _that_—if yer don’t say who said it, ‘cause I ain’t bound to mind
 what _you_ say, is I?

 [_Teacher_ checks the indignant “Indeed you are” that rises to his
 lips, arrested by the terrible and conscientious thought whether it
 be not a new and strange form of denominationalism for the teacher
 to make his own dictum infallible in matters of morality. Would not
 this be to elevate into a living, personal dogma an unsectarian
 teacher?—a singular clash, surely. Teacher shivers at the bare idea.
 Soliloquizes: How can I meet this knock-down reasoning? These Arabs
 are so rebellious, so perverse; why must they ask so many questions,
 and require to know the why and wherefore of everything? (Glances at
 the clock.) Ah! thank my stars, the time is almost up! but this dodge
 won’t do every time. I’m afraid I shall have to give up the whole
 thing as a bad job.] (Aloud.) We have only five minutes more to-day,
 lads, so you must let me finish the chapter without asking any more
 questions.

 (Boys relapse into indifferent silence. Curtain falls.)

In conclusion, we insist that the state shall obey its own
constitution, and let religion alone. In purely state institutions,
the consciences must be left free, and no experiments with religion
can be tried. Every child in such institutions must enjoy liberty of
conscience and free access to its own ministers and sacraments.

If any sect undertakes to help the state to do its work, by
establishing reformatories, protectories, and asylums for its own
children, excluding all other religions and the children of other
religions, we shall not object to its receiving a just _per capita_
from the state; and under this system we claim the same and no more for
purely Catholic institutions doing the work of the state in respect to
Catholic children. If, however, sectarian, unsectarian, or non-Catholic
institutions receive support from the state, and receive the children
of the Catholic Church and of other persuasions, they must be conducted
upon the same principle with state institutions, and in them “no law
respecting the establishment of a religion” must be made or enforced,
but the most perfect liberty of conscience must prevail. We ask no
special favors for ourselves or our church; all we claim is perfect
equality before the law and the state, and the full benefit of that
fair play which we extend to others.




DANTE’S PURGATORIO.

CANTO SEVENTH.

 [Still among souls, on the outside of Purgatory, who have delayed
 repentance, Dante, in this Canto, is conducted to those who had
 postponed spiritual duties from having been involved in state affairs.
 The persons introduced are the Emperor Rodolph, first of that Austrian
 house of Hapsburg, Ottocar, King of Bohemia, Philip III. of France,
 Henry of Navarre, Peter III. of Aragon, Charles I. of Naples, Henry
 III. of England, and the Marquis William of Monferrat. To know more
 of these men the curious reader must consult more volumes than we
 have space to mention in this magazine. He may spare much research,
 however, and find the most accessible information by turning to
 the interesting notes which Mr. Longfellow has appended to his
 translation.—TRANS.]


  THREE times and four these greetings, glad and free,
    Had been repeated, when Sordello’s shade
  Drew from embrace, and said: “Now, who are ye?”
    And thereupon my Guide this answer made:
  “Ere to this mountain those just souls, to whom
    Heavenward to climb was given, had guided been,
  My bones Octavian gathered to the tomb.
    Virgil I am, and for none other sin
  But want of faith was I from heaven shut out.”
    Like one who suddenly before him sees
  Something that wakes his wonder, whence, in doubt,
    He says, _It is not_; then believing, _’Tis!_
  Sordello stood, then back to him without
    Lifting his eyelids, turned and clasped his knees.
  “O glory of the Latin race!” he cried,
    “Through whom to such a height our language rose,
  Oh! of my birthplace everlasting pride,
    What merit or grace on me thy sight bestows?
  Tell me, unless to hear thee is denied,
    Com’st thou from hell, or where hast thou repose?”

VIRGIL.

  He to this answered: “Grace from heaven moved me,
    And leads me still: the circles every one
  Of sorrow’s kingdom have I trod to thee.
    My sight is barred from that supernal Sun,
  Whom I knew late, and thou desir’st to see,
    Not for I did, but for I left undone.
  A place below there is where no groans rise
    From torment, sad alone with want of light,
  Where the lament sounds not like moan, but sighs.
    The little innocents whom Death’s fell bite
  Snatched, ere their sin was purified, are there:
    And there I dwell with guiltless ones that still
  The three most holy virtues did not wear,
    Though all the rest they knew, and did fulfil.
  But if thou knowest, and may’st us apprise,
    Tell us how we most speedily may find
  Where Purgatory’s actual entrance lies.”

SORDELLO.

    “We have,” he answered, “no set place assigned;
  Around and upward I am free to stray;
    My guidance far as I may go I lend:
  But see how fast already fails the day!
    And in the night none ever can ascend:
  Best, then, we think of some good resting-place.
    Some souls there be, removed here to the right,
  Whom, if thou wilt, I’ll show thee face to face,
    And thou shalt know them not without delight.”
  “How, then,” said Virgil—“should a soul aspire
    To climb by night, would other check be found?
  Or his own weakness hinder his desire?”
    And good Sordello drew along the ground
  His finger, saying: “Look! not even this line
    May’st thou pass over when the sun hath gone:
  Not that aught else, though, would thy power confine,
    Save want of light, from journeying upwards on:
  Darkness makes impotent thy will. By night
    One may go back again, and grope below,
  And, while the horizon shuts the day from sight,
    Wander about the hillside to and fro.”
  My Master then, as ‘twere in wonder, spake:
    “Then lead us thitherward where thou hast said,
  That we in lingering shall such pleasure take.”
    Nor had we forward far advanced our tread,
  When I perceived that on the mountain-side
    A valley opened, just like valleys here.
  “We will go forward,” said our shadowy guide,
    “Where on the slope yon hollow doth appear;
  There let us wait the dawning of the day.”
    ‘Twixt steep and level went a winding path
  Which led us where the vale-side dies away
    Till less than half its height the margin hath.

  Gold and fine silver, ceruse, cochineal,
    India’s rich wood, heaven’s lucid blue serene,[15]
  Or glow that emeralds freshly broke reveal,
    Had all been vanquished by the varied sheen
  Of this bright valley set with shrubs and flowers,
    As less by greater. Nor had Nature there
  Only in painting spent herself, but showers
    Of odors manifold made sweet the air
  With one strange mingling of confused perfume.
    And there new spirits chanting I descried—
  “Salve Regina!”—seated on the bloom
   And verdure sheltered by the dingle side.

SORDELLO.

  “Ere yon low sun shall nestle in his bed”
    (Began the Mantuan who had brought us here),
  “Desire not down among them to be led;
   You better will observe how they appear,
  Both face and action, from this bank, instead
    Of mixing with them in the dale. That one
  Who sits the highest, looking, ‘mid the throng,
    As though some duty he had left undone,
  Who moves his lips not with the rest in song,
    Was Rodolph, Emperor, he who might have healed
  Those wounds which Italy have so far spent
    That slow relief all other helpers yield.
  The other, that on soothing him seems bent,
    Once ruled the region whence those waters are
  Which Moldau bears to Elbe, and Elbe the sea.
    His name was Ottocar, and better far,
  Yea, in his very swaddling-robe, was he
    Than Vincislaus, his big-bearded son
  Whom luxury and ease have made so gross.
    And he of slender nose, who, with the one
  So bland of aspect, seems in consult close,
    Died flying, and in dust his lilies laid.
  Look! how he beats the breast he cannot calm:
    Mark too his mate there sighing, who hath made
  For his pale cheek a pillow of his palm!
    One is the Father of that pest of France,
  Father-in-law the other: well they know
    His lewd, base life! this misery is the lance
  That to the core cuts either of them so.
    And he so stout of limb, in unison
  Singing with him there of the manly nose,
    Of every virtue put the girdle on;
  And if that youth behind him in repose
    Had after him reigned in his Father’s stead,
  Virtue from vase to vase had been well poured,
    Which of the other heirs may not be said.
  Frederic and James now o’er those kingdoms lord,
    In whom that better heritage lies dead.
  Rarely doth human goodness rise again
    Through the tree’s branches: He hath willed it so
  Who gives this boon of excellence, that men
    Should ask of him who can alone bestow.”

  “Not more these words of mine at Peter glance
    Than him he sings with (of the large nose there)
  Whose death Apulia mourneth, and Provènce,
    So ill the tree doth with its stock compare!
  Even so much more of her good lord his wife
    Constance yet vaunts herself, than Margaret may,
  Or Beatrice. That king of simplest life,
    Harry of England, sitting there survey
  All by himself: his branches are more blest!
    The one who sits there with uplifted gaze
  Among the group, but lower than the rest,
    Is Marquis William, in whose cause the frays
  Of Alexandria have with grief oppressed
    Both Monferrato and the Canavese.”




THE RUSSIAN IDEA.

FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

“We must obey the emperor rather than God.”


I.

A GOOD MOTHER.

THE Baroness Olga von Sempach was respected, wealthy, benevolent, and
therefore loved by the poor. When, in the summer, she visited her
estates in Posen, to breathe for some months the healthy country air,
the poor of that place would exclaim: “Our mother has come again!”

The baroness had, however, seemed lately to be greatly depressed, and
her sad countenance had excited the sympathy of every one.

“Our mother is sick,” said the poor. “Her face is pale, and her kind
eyes look as though she wept often. We will pray for our benefactress,
that God may preserve her to us.”

And in the hours of want and suffering, many hands were raised in
supplication to heaven for their mother Olga; but the eyes of the
noble lady continued to be dim with weeping, and her sorrow seemed to
increase daily.

She was sitting, one morning, in a room of her palace; her hands
were clasped together, and she gazed absently before her, while tear
after tear streamed down her cheeks. Opposite to her on the wall
hung a crucifix, upon which she would often fix her eyes; but her
sufferings seemed to be those of the spirit rather than of the body.
The affliction of soul, as seen in her distressed face, had something
sublime and venerable in it, for it was the grief of a mother.

The sound of approaching footsteps are heard. The baroness made
an effort to conceal her agitation; she wiped away her tears, and
endeavored to receive with a smile the young man, who, upon entering,
saluted her.

“I am rejoiced, dear Edward, that you have come to visit us at our
retired summer-residence,” said she. “The invigorating air of the
country will be of great service to you. Your incessant application to
study is injurious to health, and you must therefore remain with us for
several weeks.”

He hardly seemed to hear her words of welcome, so lost was he in
astonishment at the appearance of his noble hostess.

“I must ask your pardon, gracious lady, for having disturbed your quiet
household last night at such a late hour,” said he; “but the train was
delayed, and I could not find a carriage to bring me here.”

“No formal excuse is necessary, Edward! Have you spoken yet with my
son?”

“Only a few words. He is writing to his betrothed.”

These latter words made such an impression upon the baroness that it
seemed as though a sword had pierced her heart. The emotion did not
escape the observation of the young gentleman, and, together with her
sad aspect, convinced him that her son was in some way the cause of her
unhappiness.

“O sorrowful mother that I am!” she exclaimed, “to see my Adolph, my
only child, rushing into certain misfortune, perhaps into eternal ruin,
and I unable to help or save him—how it pains and terrifies me!”

Her lips trembled, and she found difficulty in preserving her
self-command.

“You alarm me, dear baroness! Why should Adolph fall into such deep
misery because of his marriage as you seem to predict? He loves
Alexandra truly and sincerely. He praises her noble qualities, her
magnificent beauty, her accomplishments, and therefore I see every
prospect of a happy life for them both.”

“Alexandra is beautiful, very beautiful!” replied the baroness sadly;
“but this exterior beauty, perishable and worthless as it is, unless
united with nobility of mind as well as virtue, blinds my son.
Alexandra’s personal loveliness prevents him from seeing the ugliness
of her heart, mind, and spirit.”

The young professor seemed really perplexed. He knew that the baroness
was an admirable judge of character, and he loved his friend.

“Adolph wrote to me in his last letter that Alexandra is the daughter
of a Russian nobleman named Rasumowski, who fills the distinguished
position of governor of a province in Poland. I should think that the
daughter of a man to whom the Russian government has confided such a
trust would resemble her father.”

“She is his counterpart,” replied the Baroness von Sempach; “and her
father is the incorporate spirit of the Russian form of government;
he is imperious, proud, tyrannical, and utterly destitute of feeling.
You know the inhumanities practised by Russia upon Catholic Poland. An
endless succession of oppressive laws completely crushed the unhappy
Poles, from whom everything was taken—liberty, religion, property,
and life. In this atmosphere of cruel tyranny and injustice Alexandra
has grown up. From her childhood she has breathed an air which has
stifled all the gentle emotions of the heart. In a word, Alexandra is
a thorough Russian. How, then, can my son, with his respect for the
rights of man, with his enthusiastic love of freedom with his studious
disposition of mind, and his warm heart—how can he be happy in the
possession of such a wife? Never! A terrible awakening, bitter sorrow,
and lasting misfortune will soon poison the life of my child.”

“I believe you, dear madame! Why have you not expressed your fears to
Adolph?”

“I have done so often and urgently; but his blind passion for Alexandra
makes him deaf to all my representations.”

“If,” said Edward, after some reflection, “we could only succeed in
letting Adolph have a closer insight into Alexandra’s nature and
spiritual life, I am sure that he would turn with aversion from her.”

“But in this lies the difficulty, dear Edward. The Russians understand
well how to conceal by an artificial gloss of refinement their real
spiritual deformity.”

“Notwithstanding all this, the mask must be torn from the face of the
Russian lady, in order to save Adolph. I know what to do! My plan will
succeed!” exclaimed the professor.

“What do you intend doing, Edward?”

“I will enlighten my friend Adolph in regard to Russian manners. Do not
question me any further, dear madame, but confide in me!” said he, with
a cheerful face. “Wipe away your tears, and have courage, noble mother!”

He bowed and then sought the presence of his host. Adolph, a stately
young man with a kind face and the expressive eyes of his mother, had
just concluded a letter to his betrothed.

“Have you at last finished writing?” asked Edward. “You lovers never
know when to stop. I wonder what you have to say to each other day
after day?”

“A heart that loves is inexhaustible,” replied Adolph. “I could write
ten letters a day, and not say all I wish.”

“I know it,” said Edward, nodding his head.

“What do you know?”

“The readiness of love to make sacrifices,” replied his friend.

Adolph laughed aloud.

“The idea of your understanding what it is to love! When you begin to
love, the world will come to an end!” he exclaimed good-humoredly. “As
the city of Metz has inscribed over her gates, so also can you write
upon your forehead, ‘No one has ever conquered me.’ Although you speak
with great wisdom about many things, you know nothing of love.”

“But I am of the opposite opinion,” said Edward, looking with his
brilliant eyes at the laughing face of his friend. “Your love is about
six months old, but mine has lasted for ten years; it commenced when I
was sixteen. My love has been put to the test, and is still as enduring
as it was in the beginning. Your young love of only six months’
duration must, however, be tried as yet. How will it be when ten years
have passed away, and Alexandra’s beauty has faded? My beloved, on the
contrary, never grows old. She is always young and beautiful, like her
Father, the eternal fountain of all knowledge—like God; for my beloved
is—Knowledge.”

“You malicious fellow, to remind me of Alexandra’s future wrinkles! I
do not care, however, for my betrothed is at present the handsomest
girl living.”

“I will not deny the fact,” said Edward. “And if you will introduce
me into the much-to-be-envied atmosphere which the beautiful Russian
breathes, you will oblige me and my beloved very much.”

“I do not understand you!”

“I wish, in other words, to know something of Russian affairs by means
of my own observations,” replied Edward. “I would like to make a study
of her government for the benefit of the Germans.”

“For the benefit of the Germans?”

“Yes, indeed; for it is a well-known fact that the Russian system of
government is to be gradually introduced into the German Empire. A
beginning has already been made by enacting the famous law against the
Jesuits and kindred orders. Alexandra’s father is the highest official
of his district. Through him I could easily obtain a peep into state
matters, if you would recommend me.”

“With the greatest pleasure, my friend!” exclaimed Adolph, springing
from his chair in joyful surprise. “We will go together. I will
introduce you myself to the governor, and, while you labor in the
interest of your ever-youthful beloved, I will devote myself to
Alexandra.”


II.

THE PLETI.

Two days later, the friends were sojourning in the Rasumowski palace,
a stately building, formerly the property of a noble Polish family
whose only son now languished in Siberia. When the guests arrived, the
governor was absent, but his daughter received them with the greatest
hospitality. Edward found the youthful Russian lady very beautiful in
appearance, but his keen eyes soon detected beneath the surface of
her charming exterior a spirit of such moral deformity that he became
really alarmed in regard to the fate which threatened his friend if he
persisted in uniting himself to such a being.

“Oh! what joy! What an agreeable surprise!” exclaimed Alexandra.
“It is, in truth, an imperial joy! And papa also will be imperially
delighted to see you and your friend.”

“Is your father absent, Alexandra?” asked Adolph.

“Only for a few hours. He is with a distinguished gentleman from
Berlin. I expect him any moment, and his surprise will be really
imperial.”

The professor seemed astonished at her language. He availed himself of
the first suitable opportunity to satisfy his desire for knowledge.

“Pardon me, mademoiselle; you use the word imperial in a manner which
is incomprehensible to me—you speak of a really imperial joy, of a
truly imperial surprise. Will you permit me to ask you why you make use
of this peculiar expression?”

“If you had ever travelled through the holy Russian Empire,” she
replied, with a haughty look, “you would know that we use the word
imperial in the same sense as you in Germany say divine. Are you amazed
at that?”

“Indeed, mademoiselle,” answered the professor calmly, “I never
imagined that the words imperial and divine could be synonymous, for
the reason that there is an infinite difference between the emperor and
God.”

“That is your view of the subject, but we think differently in our holy
empire,” replied the arrogant beauty. “In Russia, the emperor is the
most exalted of beings; he is the autocrat of all Russia, and upon his
dominions the sun never sets. If we wish to express the highest degree
of joy, of surprise, of pleasure, or of beauty”—and she threw her head
proudly back—“then we say an imperial joy, an imperial pleasure, an
imperial beauty!”

“I am greatly indebted to you for this interesting explanation,” said
the professor, bowing low.

At this moment, the sound of an approaching carriage was heard.

“They have arrived!” said Alexandra. “What a pity that our
distinguished visitor from Berlin makes it necessary for papa to absent
himself so often!”

“Your company, dear Alexandra, is a charming substitute for your
father’s absence,” said Adolph von Sempach.

Two loud male voices in animated conversation resounded through the
corridor. Alexandra ran to open the door of the salon.

“Papa, who do you think is here? You will be delighted.”

“Who is it? Can it be Prince von Bismarck?” replied a rough voice, and
the governor entered the room. He was an elegantly dressed gentleman,
of stout appearance, and wore a light mustache; but his rubicund
countenance, which plainly betokened an unrestrained appetite, was
almost repulsive, on account of the cruel look in his eyes. The visitor
from Berlin followed him; he was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a
bald head, sharp eyes, a heavy mustache, which overshadowed an ugly
mouth, and with features not less disagreeable than were those of the
Russian.

“Oh, Baron von Sempach? Is it possible!” exclaimed the governor,
pressing the hand of his future son-in-law. “It is really imperial!”

“My friend Edward Beck, Professor of History,” said Adolph, introducing
his travelling companion.

The untitled name seemed to displease the Russian, for he looked almost
with contempt at the stranger, and returned his bow with a scarcely
perceptible nod of the head. Von Sempach noticed this reception of his
friend, and, although very angry, hastened to pacify the ill-humor of
his proud host.

“I must inform you, governor,” said he, in a whisper, “that my friend
Edward Beck occupies a distinguished social position; and not only
that—he is the owner of vast estates, and the possessor of two
millions of guilders.”

“I feel highly honored at your presence in my house, Herr Beck,” said
the now polite Russian. “Allow me to introduce to you my esteemed
guest, Herr Schulze, of Berlin.”

The tall Prussian made a desperate effort to smile, and to force his
rigid, military figure to return the professor’s bow.

“The visit of my friend to your country has, at the same time, a
scientific object in view,” said Adolph. “He desires to learn something
of Russian affairs by personal observation. You will therefore oblige
me very much, Governor Rasumowski, if by means of your high official
position you consent to further his wishes in this respect.”

“What a happy coincidence!” replied the governor, with a significant
glance at the gentleman from Berlin. “Herr Schulze has come for the
same purpose. He also seeks to inform himself in regard to the glorious
administration of state and social affairs in our holy empire; but of
course with a different motive from that of Herr Beck, whose researches
are of a purely historical nature.”

“The knowledge of which I am in pursuit is for practical ends,” said
Herr Schulze, assuming a learned air. “I wish to examine and see if the
admirably constructed machinery of the Russian government cannot be
introduced with advantage into the new German Empire.”

“I am rejoiced to hear you speak as you do,” replied Beck; “for your
opinion in regard to the policy now in force throughout the new German
Empire corresponds with mine. Since the last Diet, it has become
evident to me that in future Germany must be governed as Russia now
is. The map of Europe,” he added, with a meaning smile intended for
Rasumowski, “would then not only have a Russian Poland, but also a
German Russia.”

“Rejoice at such a beneficial change, gentlemen!” exclaimed the
governor. “All nations can learn from and profit by the example of
our holy Russian Empire. In no country upon earth is there a stronger
government, and nowhere has the absurd idea of liberty taken less root,
than in the immense territory of the czar. Of course, in Germany,
some little concessions must be made at first, until an iron-bound
constitution, like that of Russia, can be formed—above all, the
inferior German princes must be set aside.”

“The beginning has been already made; it is only necessary to continue
our efforts,” replied the Berlin gentleman.

“See with what regularity everything proceeds with us,” asserted
Rasumowski. “All the wheels of state are controlled by the will of one
man, of our gracious sovereign, the emperor”—and he made a reverence
before the marble statue of the czar. “Whoever does not obey the will
of the sovereign will be surely crushed into atoms.”

A servant announced dinner. The party entered the dining-room, where
a magnificent banquet was served. The whole attention of Adolph was
absorbed by Alexandra, and Edward saw with deep regret his burning
passion for a creature who was unworthy of his noble-minded friend.

“As I said before, gentlemen, with us everything moves with
regularity,” said Rasumowski. “We do not permit the least
contradiction. The word liberty has no meaning with us; for
unconditional obedience is with us the fundamental law of the empire,
and whoever does not wish to obey must go to Siberia.”

“As far as I can understand, there does not exist in Russia any
fundamental law of state,” said Beck. “Or am I wrong?”

“No; you are right. We know nothing about it. The sovereign law is the
will of the emperor. Nothing but what the emperor commands has legal
power. The meeting of Deputies, Chambers, and of Diets is unheard of in
Russia. The almighty will of the czar answers instead of it. All laws
and decrees, no matter how long they have existed, can be abolished
by the emperor with one stroke of the pen. To him, as the sovereign,
everything belongs: the country and the people, the peasants and the
nobility, the church and the state. In fact, it can be said that the
only fundamental law of state in the holy Russian Empire is absolute
obedience to the will of the czar.”

“Excellent!” said Schulze. “If we had only made the same progress in
our new German Empire!”

“It is to be questioned whether this manner of government can be
introduced into Germany,” replied Beck. “There the people have a will
which makes itself heard in the Chambers.”

“Bah! of what account are the Diet and the Chambers?” exclaimed Schulze
contemptuously. “Acknowledge candidly, Herr Beck, what a miserable
_rôle_ our Chambers have recently played. Is not the will of the
chancellor the only law? Is not everything possible to the diplomatic
wisdom of Bismarck? Do the Deputies, Chambers, or Diet dare to
contradict the all-powerful minister? No! They only make such laws as
are pleasing to their master. Therefore I am right when I say that the
people no longer have a voice in the new German Empire. Wait a little
while, and the antiquated folly of Chambers and Diets will be also
abolished.”

“Your view is not entirely correct,” said Adolph von Sempach. “A strong
party in the Diet is opposed to the designs of Bismarck.”

“Yes, the ultramontanes!” answered Schulze. “But we are prepared for
them; we will conquer this rebellious set, so hostile to the empire!”
he exclaimed, with an angry flash of his eyes. “The ultramontanes in
Germany form only a rapidly disappearing minority, and this rabble, so
dangerous to the state, will soon be exterminated. Liberalism reigns
supreme in the new German Empire; Bismarck depends upon its support.
Every right-thinking man will see that in a well-organized state but
one will must be paramount, and not two or even three wills. The
emperor alone must rule. Therefore away with the will of the people,
away with the will of the church! The form of the Russian government
alone is sound; for here the emperor is the head of the state and of
the church. The civil officers rule according to the command of the
emperor—in a word, everything is done, as the governor has correctly
remarked, with regularity. And whoever does not obey will be sent to
the mines of Siberia.”

Von Sempach, whose countenance gave evidence of his disapproval, wished
to reply, but, at a sign from his friend, he remained silent.

“Yes, indeed, Siberia is a splendid place!” exulted the Russian. “The
new German Empire must also have a Siberia, to which her rebellious
subjects can be sent.”

“If German affairs continue to shape themselves so closely after the
example of Russia, we will undoubtedly have a Siberia very soon,” said
the professor, with an ambiguous smile.

“Without Siberia, what would we have done with the unruly Poles?”
exclaimed the charming daughter of the governor. “There in the mines,
in want and misery, the wretches can do penance for their presumption,
and repent for having disobeyed the Emperor of Russia.”

At hearing her remarks, all color forsook Adolph’s face; he looked
with amazement at his beautiful betrothed. Beck, however, noticed with
secret delight the impression she had made upon his friend.

“I am really anxious to learn,” said he, “how the people of the holy
Russian Empire live, and if they are so supremely happy.”

“You shall have proofs of it this afternoon,” said the governor. “We
will drive in half an hour to a village in the vicinity of the city.
The village is inhabited by Roman Catholics; but even there you will
find that the will of the emperor is respected.”

All now rose from the table; the guests retired to their rooms; but
Adolph, who seemed greatly depressed, sought the society of his friend.

“How do you like Alexandra?”

“She is, in truth, imperially beautiful,” answered Beck.

“But you heard her cruel remarks about the poor Poles?”

“Yes, I heard what she said, and am not astonished that a Russian lady,
whose father is governor, should think as he does; it is very natural,”
replied the professor.

Adolph appeared to be overwhelmed with sadness.

“Will you not go with us on our tour of inspection?” asked Edward.

“After such a painful exhibition of Alexandra’s sentiments, I need
something to distract my thoughts.”

“Have you noticed that the bust and portrait of the emperor, seated
on his throne, is to be seen in every corridor, chamber, and salon of
the palace?” remarked Edward. “He is like an idol in the house, before
which even the lovely head of Alexandra bows in reverence. This fact is
of the highest interest to me. Man must have a god, a sovereign being,
to serve. In Russia, the emperor is this sovereign; and Almighty God
in heaven is, as the Russians imagine, the vassal of the emperor; for
bishops, priests, and popes can only teach and preach that which the
imperial sovereign commands and permits. And such a sovereign is to sit
upon the throne of the new German Empire! A glorious prospect for us!”

“Ridiculous nonsense!” exclaimed the young nobleman. “The German nation
would never submit to such a yoke of tyranny. Germans will never become
slaves!”

“Do not be too confident, Von Sempach! A keen observer has said that
the Germans are a most servile people.”

“But they never will be the slaves of a Russian czar,” replied Von
Sempach. “The German people, two years ago, gave ample proofs of what
they can do. Like our imaginary Michael,[16] who for a long time
allowed himself to be kicked about and abused, but who suddenly shook
off his lethargy, and fought like a lion, so will it be with Germany,
which seems to have fallen into a state of good-humored torpor, during
which cunning men have taken advantage of her apparent indifference to
deprive her gradually of her ancient privileges; but let the Germans
once feel the weight of Russian despotism, and you will see with what
fury they will break loose the chains that bind them.”

Ten minutes later, the carriage of the governor rolled through
the streets of the city. He had given orders to be driven over a
well-paved public road to a neighboring village. At a short distance
from the carriage followed four Cossacks, mounted on small horses from
Tartary. One of them carried in the belt of his sabre a very peculiar
instrument. Attached to a strong wooden handle were nailed seven straps
of leather, which terminated in hard knots. It was commonly called “the
pleti,” and was, by the command of the Emperor Nicholas, used as a
substitute for the notorious knout.

Just as the village became visible behind the rows of trees that
bordered the public road, the governor commanded the driver to stop. In
looking from the window, he had observed, upon a lately cleared space,
a collection of wooden huts which were situated a short distance from
the road.

“What is the meaning of this? Who has dared to build these huts?” he
exclaimed, in amazement.

“They look very much like our barracks in Berlin,” said Schulze. “Some
poor wretches built huts outside of the city because they could not
earn enough to pay house-rent. The fact of their being permitted to
remain so near Berlin is a disgrace to the intelligence of the capital
of the new empire. It will be quite difficult to remove them.”

“I shall not tolerate such things in my district,” said the Russian
abruptly.

The carriage proceeded on its way, and stopped before a handsome house,
the residence of the mayor, who was the only person in the village who
belonged to the Russian state Church. This man had very small eyes and
an immense mustache; and it was evident, from the odor of his breath,
that he had been imbibing freely. When summoned before the governor, he
assumed a most abject appearance, and his form seemed really to shrink
while in the presence of the powerful official.

“What huts are those outside of the village?” said Rasumowski,
addressing him roughly.

“To reply, with your honor’s permission, they are the dwellings of
some poor people who have settled there. They are very orderly, pay
their taxes punctually, and support themselves by mending kettles, by
grinding scissors, by making rat and mouse traps, and such means.”

“Who gave them permission to settle there?”

“The parish, your honor. The ground upon which the huts stand belongs
to the parish.”

“Listen, and obey my orders!” said the governor. “These huts must be
taken down without delay; for the emperor has not given this ground to
peasants, that they may propagate like vermin. If the rabble cannot
rent houses in the village, then they must go further, perhaps to
Siberia, where there is plenty of work in the mines.”

The mayor of the village bowed most obsequiously.

Beck watched his friend Adolph, who seemed greatly revolted at the
inhuman command.

Herr Schulze, of Berlin, on the contrary, looked as though he had heard
something that would prove of incalculable benefit to mankind.

“On what text did the Catholic pastor preach last Sunday?” asked the
governor.

“With the permission of your honor, his sermon was on redemption
through Jesus Christ.”

“Did he make no mention of the emperor?”

“No, your honor.”

“Did he say nothing about the obedience due the emperor?”

“No, your honor.”

“Go at once, and bring the priest before me!”

“I beg pardon, your honor, but he has gone to visit a sick person at
some distance.”

“Then send him to me in the city. To-morrow, at nine in the morning, he
must appear before me, and bring his sermon with him!”

The mayor made an humble obeisance.

“Did the priest presume to say anything about the Pope?”

“No, your honor; since the Roman Catholic priests who preached about
the Pope were sent to Siberia, nothing is said about him.”

“With regard to other matters, how are things progressing in the
village?”

“Admirably, your honor! After the twenty Catholic families were sent
to Siberia, all the inhabitants are willing to die in obedience to our
good emperor. The people are all satisfied; no one wishes to go into
exile.”

“In how many villages of Germany,” said the governor to his guests,
“can you find the people so contented and ready to give their lives
in obedience to our good emperor? The form of government in the holy
Russian Empire works miracles. Now, gentlemen, follow me to the
schoolhouse, so that you may see how Russia educates her subjects.”

They left the mayor’s residence, and crossed the street to the
schoolhouse.

“I must tell you in advance,” observed Rasumowski, “that in Russia we
do not cultivate a fancy for popular education. Our peasants are only
entitled to be taught three things: to obey, to work, and to pay taxes.
In this consists their knowledge; it is the axis around which revolves
our national education.”

He opened the school door. About one hundred children, dirty and poorly
clad, sat upon the benches. The schoolmaster, who had already espied
the arrival of the governor, bowed in fear and trembling.

“How is it with the children of the emperor, teacher? Do you fulfil
your duty in obedience to my orders?”

“I endeavor to do so, your honor.”

“I shall convince myself, and ask some questions from the catechism of
our state religion,” said the governor.

He called up several children, and began to question them, which
questions were as remarkable and as interesting to the professor as
were the answers.

“Who is your sovereign lord?”

“The good emperor of holy Russia.”

“What do you owe to the emperor?”

“Unconditional obedience, love, and payment of taxes.”

“In what does the happiness of a Russian consist?”

“In being a brave soldier of the good emperor.”

“Where does the soul of man go after death?”

“To heaven or to hell.”

“What soul goes to heaven?”

“That soul which always obeys the good emperor and owes no taxes.”

“What soul goes to hell?”

“That soul which was disobedient to the emperor.”

The governor turned towards his guests.

“You have already commenced a system of compulsory education in
Germany,” said he; “but when you succeed in establishing a state
church, and have a catechism of state religion, then will the new
German Empire, like our czar, be able to educate subjects who must obey
him blindly.”

He now turned again to the children.

“Is there a pope in Rome?”

The child who was questioned looked at the teacher, who had become as
pale as death.

“Answer me! Is there a pope in Rome?” repeated the governor.

“No; there is only one emperor, who is at the same time the pope of all
the Russians,” replied the child.

“Schoolmaster, I am satisfied with you,” said Rasumowski approvingly.

“You know that the only things which every good Russian must do is
to work diligently, to pay taxes punctually, and to blindly obey the
emperor. These three things you must impress upon the minds of the
children!”

The governor was about to leave the schoolroom, when he suddenly
stopped, and his face became crimson with anger. He had espied the
portrait of the emperor, which hung in a gilt frame on the wall.
The glass that covered it was broken, and it was soiled with a few
ink-stains.

“Schoolmaster, what is this?” exclaimed the governor furiously.

“Pardon, your honor!” implored the trembling teacher. “A wicked boy
threw his inkstand at the picture.”

“And you, miserable wretch that you are, left it thus disfigured upon
the wall! Follow me!”

The governor, with his guests and the teacher, left the room, and
entered an office where the mayor held his sessions.

“Schoolmaster!” began the governor, “you deserve to be sent to Siberia,
for you Roman Catholics are only fit for the mines. You refuse blind
obedience, and deny the right of the emperor to command in church
affairs; you are constantly rebelling against the empire, and all of
you should, therefore, be sent into exile. For your insolence, however,
in leaving the portrait of our holy emperor in this neglected state,
you will receive ten blows with the pleti.”

He stepped forward to the window, and summoned the Cossack who carried
the instrument of torture.

“Corporal, give ten heavy strokes with the pleti on this teacher’s
back!”

The Cossack seized a bench, and motioned the teacher to stretch himself
upon it.

Von Sempach and Beck, finding it impossible to conceal their
indignation, left the room. In going down-stairs, they heard the
whizzing sound of the lash and the screams of the poor teacher.

“I shall lose my senses,” said Adolph, while waiting at the threshold.
“My God! has Alexandra grown up amid such scenes?”

The professor was delighted to hear this remark.

“It is, indeed, a very demoralizing atmosphere for a woman to breathe,”
said he.

“Can it be that Alexandra has escaped the contaminating influence of
Russian customs? Has _she_ also lost all feeling and the delicacy of
her sex? We must find out, if possible.”

Rasumowski and Schulze approached.

“Ah! gentlemen,” exclaimed the governor laughingly, “the singing of
the pleti caused you to leave! Well, we Russians accustom ourselves to
such things. When, with other practical institutions, the pleti is also
introduced into the new German Empire, then you will learn to think it
as useful an instrument as is the whip in the hands of the cartman.”

“Who drive oxen and donkeys,” added the professor.

“Our new German Empire has already introduced a punishment for the
soldiers, which causes as much pain as the pleti,” said Adolph von
Sempach. “I have read repeatedly in the newspapers that soldiers, while
upon drill, have fallen fainting to the ground. The reason was their
being compelled to carry heavy stones in their knapsacks, until their
strength gave way.”

“It is a Russian invention that you have borrowed from us; we have long
practised it,” asserted Rasumowski.

“And I suppose we have also adopted your severe system of military
arrest, which Count von Moltke justifies by ingeniously remarking that
even in time of peace the soldier owes his health to his country.”

“Yes, it is true we keep up the same strict discipline,” exclaimed the
Russian; “but Moltke should have said that the soldier owes his health
and life to the _emperor_, and not to the _country_. Words are useless;
acts are what we insist upon.”

When leaving the house, there were a number of men, women, and children
outside who awaited the governor. At seeing him, they all fell upon
their knees, and lifted up their hands in supplication.

“Pardon! Mercy! Humanity!” were heard in confused accents.

“Keep quiet!” commanded Rasumowski. “Schulze, what does this mean?”

“Your honor, these are the poor people who live in the huts. They ask
you, for God’s sake, not to destroy their only place of shelter.”

“Asking me to do a thing for God’s sake!” exclaimed the governor
harshly. “If they had asked me to do so for the emperor’s sake, I would
perhaps have granted their request. Begone! Away with you! My orders
are to be obeyed!”

The people, however, did not rise, but burst forth into fresh
lamentations and tears.

“Your honor,” said an old man, “graciously listen to us, as the good
emperor would do, who always wishes to help his people. We built those
huts by permission of the parish, and we strive to make a living in an
honest way. We pay the taxes, and are not in debt to the emperor. If
your honor destroys our huts, whither shall we poor people go? Must we
live with the foxes and wolves in the forests? Is this the will of the
emperor?”

“The emperor desires his subjects to live in comfortable houses, for
which reason the huts must be removed,” answered Rasumowski.

“Your honor, we have no means to build comfortable houses,” replied the
old man. “Look at the little children; they will die if the orders of
your honor are executed.”

“I will hear no more: it is the emperor’s will!” exclaimed the governor.

The words “It is the emperor’s will” had the most disheartening effect
upon the poor people. The haggard, wretchedly-clad assemblage gave way
to despair, but a low murmur was all that was heard.

Rasumowski looked triumphantly at his guests, as if he had said in so
many words: “You see what the will of the emperor can do!”

But the professor was not to be deceived. The suppressed wrath plainly
visible in the faces of the men did not escape him.

A young man rose humbly from his knees, and looked with strangely
glittering eyes upon the governor.

“It is not true!—the emperor does not, cannot wish us to suffer!” he
exclaimed.

Rasumowski looked with astonishment at the bold youth.

“How do you know that it is not the will of the emperor?” he asked.

“The emperor is human, but what you command is inhuman!” answered the
intrepid peasant.

The Russian governor absolutely trembled with anger.

“Fifteen lashes with the pleti—give it to him soundly!” he cried, and
walked towards the carriage, which drove slowly through the village.

Adolph von Sempach sat depressed and silent. What he had seen and
heard did not tend to elevate the character of the beautiful Alexandra
in his estimation, as her remarks concerning the cruelties upon the
unfortunate Poles seemed to prove that she had inherited the barbarous
disposition of her father.

“Do you hear the screams of the insolent fellow?” said the governor.
“The pleti is unfortunately a poor affair—it has not sufficient
swing and force. The old knout was much better; for it was made of
strong leather straps, intertwined with wire. The Emperor Nicholas I.
introduced this new knout, however—and whatever the czar does, is well
done; but if I were consulted, I would bring the old knout again into
use.”

“I fear, governor,” said Beck “that even the new knout or the pleti
would meet with invincible opposition in Germany.”

“You are mistaken,” answered the Russian. “The Germans can also be
subdued—the German neck must bow to him who has the power. Now,
gentlemen, I will show you some evidences of the industry of our
farmers,” he continued, when the carriage had left the village. “Look
at our abundant crops! The German farmer can hardly excel the Russian.
You find everywhere signs of prudent husbandry as well as of diligence
and perseverance.”

Herr Schulze gave a token of assent, the professor knew nothing about
agriculture, and Von Sempach preserved a gloomy silence.

“Do you see that village?” said Rasumowski, pointing in a certain
direction. “All the inhabitants are Roman Catholics, with the
exception of the mayor, of course; but for ten years they have been
without a priest, without divine service, without a church.”

“I think I see a church,” remarked Beck.

“Yes, the church is there, but it has been closed for ten years. The
former Roman Catholic pastor, who persisted in preaching upon the
dignity of man, the liberty of the children of God, and even of the
pope and other dangerous things, was transported to Siberia, and the
church was closed by my command.”

“I admire your eminently practical method,” observed the guest from
Berlin. “We would not dare as yet to do such a thing in the new German
Empire.”

“But it will be done in good time,” replied the Russian.

The carriage, in returning, had by this time reached the outskirts of
the city.

“Ah!” exclaimed Herr Schulze in joyful surprise, “the huts have already
disappeared. I shall write at once to my friends in Berlin, and apprise
them of the expeditious manner in which the Russian government acts.”

TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.


THE VIRGIN MARY TO CHRIST ON THE CROSSE.

  What mist hath dimd that glorious face? what seas of griefe my sun
      doth tosse?
  The golden raies of heauenly grace lies now eclipsèd on the crosse.

  Iesus! my loue, my Sonne, my God, behold Thy mother washt in teares:
  Thy bloudie woundes be made a rod to chasten these my latter yeares.

  You cruell Iewes, come worke your ire, vpon this worthlesse flesh of
      mine:
  And kindle not eternall fire, by wounding Him which is diuine.

  Thou messenger that didst impart His first descent into my wombe,
  Come help me now to cleaue my heart, that there I may my Sonne
      intombe.

  You angels all, that present were, to shew His birth with harmonie;
  Why are you not now readie here, to make a mourning symphony?

  The cause I know, you waile alone and shed your teares in secresie,
  Lest I should mouèd be to mone, by force of heauie companie.

  But waile my soul, thy comfort dies, my wofull wombe, lament thy
      fruit;
  My heart giue teares unto my eies, let Sorrow string my heauy lute.

  —_Southwell._




POET AND MARTYR.[17]




PART FIRST—MARTYR.

  “Hoist up sail while gale doth last,
    Tide and wind stay no man’s pleasure:
  Seek not time when time is past,
    Sober speed is wisdom’s leisure.
  After-wits are dearly bought,
  Let thy fore-wit guide thy thought.”

  “Time wears all his locks before,
    Take thou hold upon his forehead;
  When he flies, he turns no more,
    And behind his scalp is naked.
  Works adjourn’d have many stays;
  Long demurs breed new delays.”

  —_Robert Southwell, 1593._[18]


CONCERNING the writer of these beautiful lines, the English historian,
Stow, makes the following brief mention in his _Chronicle_: “February
20, 1594-5.—Southwell, a Jesuit, that long time had lain prisoner in
the Tower of London, was arraigned at the King’s Bench bar. He was
condemned, and on the next morning drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and
there hanged, bowelled, and quartered.” From this account we are unable
to discover that the man whose judicial murder Stow thus records was
put to death for any offence but that of being a JESUIT,
and of having “long time lain in prison in the Tower of London.”
And yet, in thus stating the case, Stow tells the simple truth; for
Southwell was guilty of no more serious crime than his sacerdotal
character, and of suffering the imprisonment and tortures inflicted
upon him in consequence thereof. For three years previous to his
death he had been in prison and in the Tower, had lain in noisome
and filthy dungeons, and been subjected many times to torture and
the rack. From the high social position of his family, the fame of
his literary accomplishments, his admirable and saintly bearing as a
missionary priest in England, for six long years carrying his life
in his hand while ministering to a scattered flock, obliged to move
from place to place in disguise as though he were a malefactor, and
finally, from the wonderful fortitude and constancy with which he was
said to have suffered torture, his case was very generally known in
London, and deeply commiserated even by many Protestants. So deep and
widespread, indeed, was this sympathy that, when it was determined by
the officers of the crown to try and condemn him on one and the same
day, and execute him the next morning, they withheld from the public
all announcement of his execution, meanwhile giving notice of the
hanging of a famous highwayman in another place in order to draw off
the concourse of spectators. But it availed not, for there were many
who kept so close a watch upon the movements at Newgate, to which
prison he had been removed a few days before his trial, that, when
Southwell was brought out to be drawn on a sled or hurdle to the place
of execution at Tyburn, he was followed by great numbers of people, and
among them many persons of distinction, who witnessed the carrying out
of his dreadful sentence, which was that he should be “hung, bowelled,
and quartered.”

That our readers may understand that our qualification of Southwell’s
execution as a judicial murder is not the result of mere personal
sympathy or of religious prejudice, we will here record the judgment
of several Protestant authorities, who speak out concerning it in a
manner not to be misunderstood. In the valuable _Cyclopædia of English
Literature_, by Chambers, we read concerning Southwell that, after
having ministered secretly but zealously to the scattered adherents
of his creed, “without, as far as is known, doing anything to disturb
the peace of society, he was apprehended and committed to a dungeon
in the Tower, so noisome and filthy that, when he was brought out
for examination, his clothes were covered with vermin. Upon this his
father, a man of good family, presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth,
begging that, if his son had committed anything for which, by the
laws, he had deserved death, he might suffer death; if not, as he was
a gentleman, he begged her majesty would be pleased to order him to
be treated as a gentleman. Southwell after this was somewhat better
lodged, but an imprisonment of three years, with ten inflictions of the
rack, wore out his patience, and he entreated to be brought to trial.
Cecil is said to have made the brutal remark that, ‘if he was in so
much haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire.’ Being at
the trial found guilty, upon his own confession, of being a Romish
priest, he was condemned to death, and executed at Tyburn accordingly,
with all the horrible circumstances dictated by the old treason laws of
England. Throughout all these scenes he behaved with a mild fortitude
which nothing but a highly regulated mind and satisfied conscience
could have prompted.”

Cleveland (_Compendium of English Literature_, p. 88), after stating
the circumstances of Southwell’s imprisonment, trial, and execution,
remarks: “The whole proceeding should cover the authors of it with
everlasting infamy. It is a foul stain upon the garments of the maiden
queen that she can never wipe off. There was not a particle of evidence
at his trial that this pious and accomplished poet meditated any evil
designs against the government. He did what he had a perfect right to
do; ay, what it was his duty to do, if he conscientiously thought he
was right—endeavor to make converts to his faith, so far as he could
without interfering with the right of others. If there be anything to
be execrated, it is persecution for opinion’s sake.”

Allibone, in his _Dictionary of English Literature_, says that
Southwell, “to the disgrace of the English government, suffered as a
martyr at Tyburn, February 21, 1595, after three years’ imprisonment
in the Tower, during which it is asserted he was ten times subjected
to the torture. He was a good poet, a good prose writer, and a better
Christian than his brutal persecutors.”

Old Fuller, in his _Worthies of England_, as might be expected, views
Southwell with a stern English Protestant eye, and thus dismisses
him: “Robert Southwell was born in this county (Norfolk), as Pitsons
affirmeth, who, although often mistaken in his locality, may be
believed herein, as professing himself familiarly acquainted with him
at Rome. But the matter is not much where he was born, seeing, though
cried up by men of his own profession for his many books in verse and
prose, he was reputed a dangerous enemy by the state, for which he was
imprisoned and executed March the 3d, 1595” (vol. iii. p. 187).

Robert Southwell was the third son of Richard Southwell, Esq., of
Horsham, St. Faith’s, Norfolk. The curious in genealogy, while
investigating family lines associated with the Southwell pedigree,
have found connected with it, in degrees more or less near, the names
of Paston, Sidney, Howard, Newton, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Of his
early years there is but slight record, save that, when still very
young, he was sent to Douai to be educated. From Douai he passed to
Paris and thence to Rome, where, in 1578, before he had yet reached
the age of seventeen, he was received into the order of the Society of
Jesus. On completion of his novitiate and termination of the courses
of philosophy and theology, he was made prefect of studies of the
English College at Rome. Ordained priest in 1584, and, as appears
from his letter addressed, February 20, 1585, to the general of the
order, seeking the “perilous” errand wherein his future martyrdom seems
rather to have been anticipated than merely referred to as a simple
possibility,[19] he left Rome on the 8th of May, 1586, a missionary to
his native land, or, in other words, took up his line of march for the
scaffold and for heaven. We have, naturally enough, but scant record
of the young priest’s journey to and arrival in England; for, as the
mere landing in England by a Catholic priest was then a penal offence
punishable with death, Southwell’s return to his native country was
surrounded as much as possible by secrecy. Although yearning to visit
his home and embrace his family, he carefully abstained from going near
them—of doing that which, in his quaint phrase of the day, “maketh my
presence perilous.” But he was aware that his father was in danger of
losing, if he had not already lost, his faith; and these fears were
almost confirmed by the facts that he had formed a marriage with a lady
of the court, and that his wealth gave him entrance to court circles
which were necessarily violently Protestant. Deeply solicitous for his
father’s spiritual condition, he therefore addressed him a letter of
admonition and advice, not less remarkable for its tone of affection
than for its energy and eloquence. We cite it in another place.

HUNTED DOWN.

At a time when, as Mr. Grosart says, “it was a crime to be a Catholic:
it was proof of high treason to be a priest: it was to invite ‘hunting’
as of a wild beast to be a Jesuit,” we cannot reasonably look for many
recorded traces of Father Southwell’s presence and journeyings to and
fro while in England. He could only move in disguise or under the
darkness of night; he was liable to be thrown into prison anywhere on
the merest suspicion of any irresponsible accuser. The few Catholics
who were ready to give him shelter and hospitality did so with the
halter around their necks; for confiscation and death were the penalty,
as they well knew, for “harboring” a priest. It is nevertheless certain
that his refuge in London was the mansion of the Countess of Arundel,
whose husband, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, was imprisoned in the
Tower, and died there, the noblest victim to the jealous and suspicious
tyranny of Elizabeth, _non sine veneni suspicione_, as his epitaph
still testifies.

Hundreds of Southwell’s letters to his superiors still exist, but they
are all from necessity written in such general terms and in so guarded
a manner as to afford but little historical information. Here is one
of them, as given by Bishop Challoner in his _Memoirs of Missionary
Priests_:

1. “As yet we are alive and well, being unworthy, it seems, of prisons.
We have oftener sent, than received, letters from your parts, tho’ they
are not sent without difficulty; and some, we know, have been lost.”

2. “The condition of Catholic recusants here is the same as usual,
deplorable and full of fears and dangers, more especially since our
adversaries have look’d for wars. As many of ours as are in chains
rejoice and are comforted in their prisons; and they that are at
liberty set not their heart upon it, nor expect it to be of long
continuance. All by the great goodness and mercy of God arm themselves
to suffer anything that can come, how hard soever it may be, as it
shall please our Lord; for whose greater glory, and the salvation of
their souls, they are more concerned than for any temporal losses.”

3. “A little while ago, they apprehended two priests, who have suffered
such cruel usages in the prison of Bridewell as can scarce be believed.
What was given them to eat was so little in quantity, and, withal,
so filthy and nauseous, that the very sight was enough to turn their
stomachs. The labors to which they obliged them were continual and
immoderate, and no less in sickness than in health; for, with hard
blows and stripes, they forced them to accomplish their task how weak
soever they were. Their beds were dirty straw, and their prison most
filthy. Some are there hung up for whole days by the hands, in such a
manner that they can but just touch the ground with the tips of their
toes. This purgatory we are looking for every hour, in which Topcliffe
and Young, the two executioners of the Catholics, exercise all kinds of
torments. But come what pleaseth God, we hope we shall be able to bear
all in him that strengthens us. I most humbly recommend myself to the
holy sacrifices of your reverence and of all our friends. (January 15,
1590.)”

PURSUIT AND ESCAPE.

In a work[20] published so lately as 1871, we catch a few fugitive
glances of Father Robert Southwell. Father Gerard spoke of him at the
time (1585) as “excelling in the art of helping and gaining souls,
being at once prudent, pious, meek, and exceedingly winning.”

A descent was made by the pursuivants upon a house in the country,
where the two fathers happened to be together, and but for the devotion
of the domestics the two missionaries would have been captured. They
escaped, however, and journeyed away together. The peculiar danger
they were then subjected to was that arising from intercourse with the
gentry. Father Gerard tells of a gentleman who violently suspected
him, and adds: “After a day or so he quite abandoned all mistrust, as
I spoke of hunting and falconry with all the details that none but
a practised person could command.” He concludes: “For many make sad
blunders in attempting this, as Father Southwell, who was afterwards
my companion in many journeys, was wont to complain. He frequently
got me to instruct him in the technical terms of sport, and used to
complain of his bad memory for such things; for on many occasions when
he fell in with Protestant gentlemen he found it necessary to speak of
these matters, which are the sole topics of their conversations, save
when they talk obscenity or break out into blasphemies and abuse of the
saints or the Catholic faith.”

With danger of possible arrest at every house and on every road,
followed by swift and barbarous execution, Father Southwell for six
long years carried his life in his hand.

PROTESTANT OPINION.

“Granted,” says his Protestant biographer (Grosart, xlix.), “that
in our Southwell’s years 1588 is included, and that the shadow of
the coming of the Armada lay across England from the very moment of
his arrival; granted that, in the teeth of their instructions, there
were priests and members of the Society of Jesus who deemed they did
God service by ‘plotting’ for the restoration of the old ‘faith and
worship’ after a worldly sort; granted that politically and civilly
the nation was, in a sense, in the throes of since-achieved liberties;
granted that _Mary_, all too sadly, even tremendously, earned her
epithet of ‘Bloody’; granted that the very mysticism, not to say
mystery, of the ‘higher’ sovereignty claimed for him who wore the
tiara, acted as darkness does with sounds the most innocent; granted
nearly all that Protestantism claims in its apology as defence—it
must be regarded as a stigma on the statesmanship and a stain on the
Christianity of the reformed Church of England, as well as a sorrow
to all right-minded and right-hearted, that the ‘convictions’ of
those who could not in conscience ‘change’ at the bidding of Henry
VIII., Elizabeth, or James were not respected; that ‘opinion,’ or,
if you will, ‘error,’ was put down (or attempted to be put down) by
force, and that the headsman’s axe and hangman’s rope were the only
instrumentalities thought of. The State Trials remain to bring a blush
to every lover of his country for the brutal and ‘hard’ mockery of
justice in the higher courts of law whenever a priest was concerned—as
later with the Puritans and Nonconformists.”

FALSE BRETHREN AND THE MAN-HUNTER.

With malignant pursuit that never slackened, and that old peril of
S. Paul, “false brethren,” Southwell’s arrest was, of course, a mere
question of time. His day came at last, after six years of labor and
danger in the field. The circumstances are as follows, from Turnbull,
verified by other authorities. There was resident at Uxenden, near
Harrow on the Hill, in Middlesex, a Catholic family by the name of
Bellamy, occasionally visited by Southwell for the purpose of religious
instruction. One of the daughters, Ann, had in her early youth
exhibited marks of the most vivid and unshakable piety; but having
been committed to the gatehouse of Westminster, her faith gradually
departed, and along with it her virtue: for, having formed an intrigue
with the keeper of the prison, she subsequently married him, and by
this step forfeited all claim which she had by law or favor upon her
father. In order, therefore, to obtain some fortune, she resolved to
take advantage of the act of 27 Elizabeth, which made the harboring
of a priest treason, with confiscation of the offender’s goods.
Accordingly she sent a messenger to Southwell, urging him to meet her
on a certain day and hour at her father’s house; whither he, either
in ignorance of what had happened, or under the impression that she
sought his spiritual assistance through motives of penitence, went at
the appointed time. In the meanwhile, having apprised her husband of
this, as also the place of concealment in her father’s house and the
mode of access, he conveyed the information to Topcliffe, an implacable
persecutor and denouncer of the Catholics, who, with a band of his
satellites, surrounded the premises, broke open the house, arrested
his reverence, and carried him off in open day, exposed to the gaze
of the populace. Topcliffe carried Southwell to his own (Topcliffe’s)
dwelling, and there, in the course of ten weeks, tortured him with
such pitiless severity that the unhappy victim, complaining of it to
his judges, declared that death would have been preferable. A letter,
qualified by Grosart as “fawning, cruel, and abominable,” written by
this human bloodhound, Topcliffe, and addressed to no less a personage
than Queen Elizabeth, reports the capture and torture of Southwell, and
states, with details, how he proposes further to torture him.

The letter is dated Westminster, June 22, 1592, and advises the queen:
“I have him here within my strong chamber in Westminster churchyard
(_i.e._ the gatehouse). I have made him assured for starting or
hurting of himself by putting upon his arms a pair of;[21] and so to
keep him either from view or conference with any but Nicolas, the
underkeeper of the gatehouse.... Upon this present taking of him it is
good forthwith to enforce him to answer truly and directly; and so to
prove his answers true in haste, to the end that such as he be deeply
concerned in his treachery may not have time to start, or make shift
to use any means in common prisons; either to stand upon or against
the wall will give warning. _But if your highness’ pleasure be to know
anything in his heart, to stand against the wall, his feet standing
upon the ground, and his hands put as high as he can reach against the
wall_ (like a trick at Tremshemarn), will enforce him to tell all;
and the truth proven by the sequel....[22] It may please your majesty
to consider, I never did take so weighty a man, if he be rightly
considered.”[23]

The reader will here readily recognize a partial description of one
of the modes of torture then most common in use throughout the reign
of Elizabeth. It seems that it _was_ “her highness’ pleasure” to know
something that was in this poor martyr’s heart, for Southwell was
afterwards again repeatedly tortured. The intimate personal relations
existing between the virgin queen and this man Topcliffe, whose very
name was a stench in the nostrils of Protestants of respectable
behavior, were maintained long after the Southwell capture, as we learn
from the best authority. The cruelty of Elizabeth was only surpassed
by her mendacity, as her mendacity was only exceeded by her mean
parsimony, and when she travelled or made progress from one country to
another it was always at the expense of her good and loyal subjects.
Eventually the announcement of a visit from their good queen, received
outwardly with such declarations as might naturally follow the promise
of the call of a special envoy from heaven, was in reality looked upon
as the coming of a terrible calamity. It was at that time considered at
the English court—where, as we all know, all the civil and religious
virtues had taken refuge—an excellent jest to so direct the course
of the queen’s progress as to make her visits fall at the residences
of well-known Catholic gentlemen. It is only necessary to say that
the anniversary of all such events yet lives in the traditions of the
descendants of such families as that of a day of horror. The royal
retinue treated the house like a captured place, and it was well for
the proprietor if confiscation or death, or both, were not the sole
reward of his generous hospitality.

Mr. Topcliffe gives us valuable information on this point. On the
30th of August, 1578, he writes to the Earl of Shrewsbury: “The next
good news (not in account the highest), her majesty hath served God
with great zeal and comfortable examples; for by her council the two
notorious papists, young Rookwood (the master of Ewston Hall, where
her majesty did lie upon Sunday now a fortnight), and one Downs, a
gentleman, were both committed, the one to the town prison at Norwich,
the other to the county prison there, for obstinate papistry; and seven
more gentlemen of worship were committed to several houses in Norwich
as prisoners; two of the Lovells, another Downs, one Benings, one
Parry, and two others.... Her majesty, by some means I know not, was
lodged at his (Rookwood’s) house, Ewston, far unmeet for her highness,
but fitter for the blackguard; nevertheless her excellent majesty
gave to Rookwood ordinary thanks for his bad house, and her fair
hand to kiss; after which it was braved at. But my lord chamberlain,
nobly and gravely understanding that Rookwood was excommunicated for
papistry, called him before him, demanded of him how he durst presume
to attempt her real presence, he, unfit to accompany any Christian
person; forthwith said he was fitter for a pair of stocks; commanded
him out of the court, and yet to attend her council’s pleasure; and
at Norwich he was committed,”[24] etc. etc. In the beginning of the
letter Topcliffe “joys at her majesty’s gracious favor and affiance in
your lordship—next some comfort I received of her for myself that must
ever lie nearest my own heart.” Tender Topcliffe! But we must have “no
scandal about Queen Elizabeth,” and our most delicate susceptibilities
for the fair fame of the royal virgin may be quieted by the certainty
that the comfort nearest the human bloodhound’s “own heart” was
something substantial—a country house, an estate, or the like.

Lodge says that this Topcliffe was respectably connected, but that
he could only find that he was distinguished as a most implacable
persecutor of Roman Catholics. In a letter of Sir Anthony Standen, in
which he praises the agreeable manners of the Earl of Essex, he writes:
“Contrary to our _Topcliffian_ customs, he hath won more with words
than others could do with racks.” From another letter of the period
it appears that _Topcliffzare_ in the quaint language of the court
signified to hunt a recusant.

But to return to Southwell. Transferred to a dungeon in the Tower,
“so noisome and filthy that, when he was brought out at the end of
the month, his clothes were covered with vermin,” his father wrote
to her majesty Queen Elizabeth the letter we have already mentioned.
This petition was to some extent regarded. A better lodging was allowed
him, and leave accorded his father to supply him with “cloaths and
other necessaries”; and amongst the rest, with books which he asked
for, which were only the Holy Bible and the works of S. Bernard. “The
selection of books,” says Mr. Grosart, “_the_ book of books, and the
father of the fathers, for a poet is very noteworthy; and through all
his weary imprisonment ‘spiritual things,’ not civil or earthly, were
his theme when he discoursed to his sister Mary (Mrs. Bannister) or
others permitted occasionally to visit him.”


TRIAL AND EXECUTION.

We adopt mainly the relation of Southwell’s trial and execution as it
is given by Bishop Challoner, supported by a Latin MS. preserved in the
archives of the English College of S. Omer’s:

“After Father Southwell had been kept close prisoner for three years
in the Tower, he sent an epistle to Cecil, Lord Treasurer, humbly
entreating his lordship that he might either be brought upon his trial
to answer for himself, or at least that his friends might have leave
to come and see him. The treasurer answered that, if he was in so much
haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire. Shortly after
this orders were given that he should be removed from the Tower to
Newgate, where he was put down into the dungeon called _Limbo_, and
there kept for three days.

“On the 22d of February, without any previous warning to prepare
for his trial, he was taken out of his dark lodging and hurried to
Westminster, to hold up his hand there at the bar. The first news of
this step towards his martyrdom filled his heart with a joy which he
could not conceal. The judges before whom he was to appear were Lord
Chief-Justice Popham, Justice Owen, Baron Evans, and Sergeant Daniel.
As soon as Father Southwell was brought in, the lord chief-justice made
a long and vehement speech against the Jesuits and seminary priests,
as the authors and contrivers of all the plots and treasons which, he
pretended, had been hatched during that reign. Then was read the bill
of indictment against Father Southwell, drawn up by Cook, the queen’s
solicitor.”


THEIR FAITH WAS THEIR GUILT.

It would be well to remark here that Protestants nowadays frequently
contend that the missionary priests judicially murdered during the
reign of Elizabeth were not executed on account of their religion,
but because they were stirrers up of sedition and traitors, and were
in every case so proven to be upon their respective trials. The good
people who set up such pretext are sadly in ignorance of the history of
that dark period. So far from asserting the slightest pretence of guilt
on the part of such acts accused of as commonly constitute sedition and
high treason, the statute of Elizabeth under which they were sent to
the gallows only made it necessary to show that they were Englishmen
and Catholic priests, and were arrested in England. The statute, in
fact, enacted substantially that, “if any Jesuit, seminary priest, or
deacon, or religious or ecclesiastical person whatever, born within
the realm, shall come into, be, or remain in any part of this realm,
every such offence shall be taken and adjudged to be high treason.”
The indictment against Southwell was “drawn up by Cook, the queen’s
solicitor,” says the S. Omer MS. Now, “Cook, the queen’s solicitor”
here referred to was no less a personage than the great Coke. Here is
the indictment presented by him in Southwell’s case, from which it will
be seen that the prisoner was charged only with the crimes of, _first_,
being a priest of English birth; _second_, of having remained in the
county of Middlesex:

 “The jury present, on the part of our sovereign lady the queen, that
 Robert Southwell, late of London, clerk, born within this kingdom
 of England; to wit, since the feast of S. John the Baptist, in the
 first year of the reign of her majesty, and before the first day of
 May, in the thirty-second year of the reign of our lady the queen
 aforesaid, made and ordained priest by authority derived and pretended
 from the See of Rome; not having the fear of God before his eyes, and
 slighting the laws and statutes of this realm of England, without any
 regard to the penalty therein contained, on the 20th day of June, the
 thirty-fourth year of the reign of our lady the queen, at Uxenden, in
 the county of Middlesex, traitorously, and as a false traitor to our
 lady the queen, was and remained, contrary to the form of the statute
 in such case set forth and provided, and contrary to the peace of our
 said lady the queen, her crown, and dignities.”

The grand jury having found the bill, Father Southwell was ordered to
come up to the bar. He readily obeyed, and, bowing down his head, made
a low reverence to his judges; then modestly held up his hand according
to custom, and, being asked whether he was guilty or not guilty, he
answered, “I confess that I was born in England, a subject to the
queen’s majesty, and that, by authority derived from God, I have been
promoted to the sacred order of priesthood in the Roman Church, for
which I return most hearty thanks to his divine Majesty. I confess,
also, that I was at Uxenden, in Middlesex, at that time, when, being
sent for thither by trick and deceit, I fell into your hands, as is
well known; but that I never entertained any designs or plots against
the queen or kingdom, I call God to witness, the revenger of perjury;
neither had I any other design in returning home to my native country
than to administer the sacraments according to the rite of the Catholic
Church to such as desired them.”

Here the judge interrupted him, and told him that he was to let all
that alone, and plead directly guilty or not guilty. Upon which he
said, _he was not guilty of any treason whatsoever_. And being asked by
what he would be tried, he said, “By God and by you.” The judge told
him he was to answer, “By God and his country,” which, at first, he
refused, alleging that the laws of his country were disagreeable to the
law of God, and that he was unwilling these poor harmless men of the
jury, whom they obliged to represent the country, should have any share
in their guilt, or any hand in his death. “But,” said he, “if through
your iniquity it must be so, and I cannot help it, be it as you will; I
am ready to be judged by God and my country.” When the twelve were to
be sworn, he challenged none of them, saying that they were all equally
strangers to him, and therefore charity did not allow him to except
against any one of them more than another.

After Coke had presented the case to the jury, they went aside to
consult about the verdict, and in a short time brought him in guilty.
He was asked if he had anything more to say for himself why sentence
should not be pronounced against him? He said: “Nothing; but from my
heart I beg of Almighty God to forgive all who have been any ways
accessory to my death.” The judge having pronounced sentence according
to the usual form, Father Southwell made a very low bow, returning him
most hearty thanks as for an unspeakable favor. The judge offered him
the help of a minister to prepare him to die. Father Southwell desired
he would not trouble him upon that head; that the grace of God would
be more than sufficient for him. And so, being sent back to Newgate
through the streets, lined with people, he discovered, all the way, the
overflowing joy of his heart in his eyes, in his whole countenance, and
in every gesture and motion of his body. He was again put down into
limbo, at his return to Newgate, where he spent the following night,
the last of his life, in prayer, full of the thoughts of the journey he
was to take the next day, through the gate of martyrdom, into a happy
eternity; to enjoy for ever the sovereign object of his love.

We have seen by what device and with what ill success the officials
directing the execution sought, on the next morning, to draw away the
crowd from Tyburn where Father Southwell was to be “hung, bowelled, and
quartered.”


EXECUTIONS UNDER ELIZABETH.

The modern reader generally, and very naturally, supposes that this
sentence, horrible as it is in its simplest form, would be carried
out as stated, that is to say, that, when the condemned man was hung
until dead, his body was then butchered as described. This probably was
the intention of the law, and the latter two of the three incidents
of the executions were intended more as indignities to the remains
of a criminal supposed to be guilty of the greatest of human crimes
than as any part of the means of procuring death. But under the
reign of Elizabeth the cruelty and bestiality of the mode in which
the horrible sentence was carried out had reached its height. As a
general thing, the victim was butchered alive. According to the whim
or the bloodthirstiness of the executioner, the condemned man was
allowed to hang a short time, or he was scarcely swung off before he
was cut down and the hangman was—as he is described in a well-known
phrase—“grabbling among his entrails.” Sometimes the executioner would
spring upon the body as it was swung off, and plunge his knife into the
victim before they reached the ground in their fall together. When a
young priest named Edward Genings was executed, in 1591, the butchery
was superintended by Topcliffe, who adjured the victim to submit and
recant and he should be pardoned. His reply was: “I know not in what I
have offended my dear anointed princess; if I had, I would willingly
ask forgiveness. If she be offended with me because I am a priest,
and because I profess my faith and will not turn minister against my
conscience, I shall be, I trust, excused and innocent before God. I
must obey God, saith S. Peter, rather than men.” At this Topcliffe was
enraged, and bade the hangman turn the ladder; scarcely giving him time
to say a _Pater Noster_. Cut down by his order before he was dead, the
butchery began, and, the hangman’s hand being already on his heart,
Genings was heard to say, “Sancte Gregori, ora pro me!”—which the
hangman hearing, he swore, “_Zounds, see, his heart is in my hand_, and
yet Gregory is in his mouth! O egregious papist!”[25]

We return to Father Southwell, who was drawn on a hurdle or sled from
Newgate to Tyburn, and resume the account of the S. Omer’s MS.: “When
he was come to the place, getting up into the cart, he made the sign of
the cross in the best manner that he could, his hands being pinion’d,
and began to speak to the people those words of the apostle (Rom. xiv),
‘Whether we live, we live to the Lord, or whether we die, we die to the
Lord; therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.’ Here
the sheriff would have interrupted him, but he begged leave that he
might go on, assuring him that he would utter nothing that should give
offence. Then he spoke as follows: ‘I am come to this place to finish
my course, and to pass out of this miserable life; and I beg of my Lord
Jesus Christ, in whose most precious Passion and Blood I place my hope
of salvation, that he would have mercy on my soul. I confess I am a
Catholic priest of the Holy Roman Church, and a religious man of the
Society of Jesus; on which account I owe eternal thanks and praises to
my God and Saviour.’ Here he was interrupted by a minister telling him
that, if he understood what he had said in the sense of the Council of
Trent, it was damnable doctrine. But the minister was silenc’d by the
standers-by, and Mr. Southwell went on, saying: ‘Sir, I beg of you not
to be troublesome to me for this short time that I have to live: I am a
Catholic, and in whatever manner you may please to interpret my words,
I hope for my salvation by the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and as
to the queen, I never attempted, nor contrived, or imagined any evil
against her, but have always prayed for her to Our Lord, and for this
short time of my life still pray, that, in his infinite mercy, he would
be pleased to give her all such gifts and graces which he sees, in his
divine wisdom, to be most expedient for the welfare both of her soul
and body, in this life and in the next. I recommend in like manner, to
the same mercy of God, my poor country, and I implore the divine bounty
to favor it with his light and the knowledge of his truth, to the
greater advancement of the salvation of souls, and the eternal glory of
his divine Majesty. In fine, I beg of the almighty and everlasting God,
that this my death may be for my own and for my country’s good, and the
comfort of the Catholics my brethren.’

“Having finished these words, and looking for the cart to be
immediately drove away, he again blessed himself, and, with his eyes
raised to heaven, repeated with great calmness of mind and countenance,
‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,’ with other short
ejaculations, till the cart was drawn off. The unskilful hangman had
not applied the noose of the rope to the proper place, so that he
several times made the sign of the cross whilst he was hanging, and was
some time before he was strangled, which some perceiving, drew him by
the legs to put an end to his pain, and when the executioner was for
cutting the rope before he was dead, the gentlemen and people that were
present cried out three several times, ‘Hold, hold!’ for the behavior
of the servant of God was so edifying in these his last moments, that
even the Protestants who were present at the execution were much
affected with the sight.” After he was dead he was cut down and the
remainder of the sentence carried out. Turnbull relates that “Lord
Mountjoy (Charles Blount), who happened to be present, was so struck by
the martyr’s constancy that he exclaimed, ‘May my soul be with this
man’s!’ and he assisted in restraining those who would have cut the
rope while he was still in life.”

Father Southwell’s reverend and Protestant biographer declares, in
concluding his relation of the execution: “I must regard our worthy as
a ‘martyr’ in the deepest and grandest sense—a good man, and full of
the Holy Ghost. I should blush for my Protestantism if I did not hold
in honor, yea reverence, his stainless and beautiful memory.

  ‘Through this desert, day by day,
  Wandered not his steps astray,
  Treading still the royal way.’

  —_Paradisus Animæ._

“So perished Father Southwell, at thirty-three years of age, and so,
unhappily, have perished many of the wise and virtuous of the earth.
Conscious of suffering in the supposed best of causes, he seems to have
met death without terror—to have received the crown of martyrdom not
only with resignation, but with joy.”[26]

It is matter of regret that there exists no authentic portrait of
Southwell. His biographer is of opinion that a genuine likeness of him
would have shown an intellectual, etherealized face, and fancies that
he might have sat for the portrait of the Prior in _The Lady of Garaye_:

  “Tender his words, and eloquently wise;
  Mild the pure fervor of his watchful eyes;
  Meek with serenity and constant prayer,
  The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare.
  The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still
  With a sweet calm that speaks an angel’s will.
  Resolving service to his God’s behest,
  And ever musing how to serve _him_ best,
  Not old, nor young; with manhood’s gentlest grace,
  Pale to transparency the pensive face,
  Pale not with sickness but with studious thought,
  The body tasked, the fine mind overwrought;
  With something faint and fragile in the whole,
  As though ‘twere but a lamp to hold a soul.”




PART SECOND.—POET.


And here, first, a few words on the prose writings of Southwell. We
have already referred to the remarkable letter of admonition by him
addressed to his father. It is a severe test to put the prose of any
cultivated language to that of comparison with the productions of the
same tongue nearly three centuries later. And yet this letter will
support such comparison surprisingly well both as to substance and
style. The reader will bear in mind the peculiar circumstances under
which Southwell addressed this


LETTER TO HIS FATHER.

 “I am not of so unnatural a kind, of so wild an education, or so
 unchristian a spirit, as not to remember the root out of which I have
 branched, or to forget my secondary maker and author of my being. It
 is not the carelessness of a cold affection, nor the want of a due and
 reverent respect, that has made me such a stranger to my native home,
 and so backward in defraying the debt of a thankful mind, but only
 the iniquity of these days that maketh my presence perilous, and the
 discharge of my duties an occasion of danger. I was loath to enforce
 an unwilling courtesy upon any, or by seeming officious to become
 offensive; deeming it better to let time digest the fear that my
 return into the realm had bred in my kindred than abruptly to intrude
 myself, and to purchase their danger, whose good-will I so highly
 esteem. I never doubted but what the belief, which to all my friends
 by descent and pedigree is, in a manner, hereditary, framed in them a
 right persuasion of my present calling, not suffering them to measure
 their censures of me by the ugly terms and odious epithets wherewith
 heresy hath sought to discredit my functions, but rather by the
 reverence of so worthy a sacrament and the sacred usages of all former
 ages. Yet, because I might easily perceive by apparent conjectures
 that many were more willing to hear of me than from me, and readier
 to praise than to use my endeavors, I have hitherto bridled my desire
 to see them by the care and jealousy of their safety; and banished
 myself from the scene of my cradle in my own country. I have lived
 like a foreigner, finding among strangers that which, in my nearest
 blood, I presumed not to seek.”

Then, regretting that he has been barred from affording to his dearest
friends that which hath been eagerly sought and beneficially attained
by mere strangers, he exclaims passionately:

 “Who hath more interest in the grape than he who planted the vine?
 Who more right to the crop than he who sowed the corn? or where can
 the child owe so great service as to him to whom he is indebted for
 his very life and being? With young Tobias I have travelled far, and
 brought home a freight of spiritual sustenance to enrich you, and
 medicinable receipts against your ghostly maladies. I have with Esau,
 after long toil in pursuing a long and painful chase, returned with
 the full prey you were wont to love, desiring thereby to ensure your
 blessing. I have, in this general famine of all true and Christian
 food, with Joseph prepared abundance of the mead of angels for the
 repast of your soul. And now my desire is that my drugs may cure you,
 my prey delight you, and my provisions feed you, by whom I have been
 cured, enlightened, and fed myself; that your courtesies may, in part,
 be counterveiled, and my duty, in some sort, performed.

 “Despise not, good sire, the youth of your son, neither deem your
 God measureth his endowments by number of years. Hoary senses are
 often couched under youthful locks, and some are riper in the spring
 than others in the autumn of their age. God chose not Esau himself,
 nor his eldest son, but young David, to conquer Goliath and to rule
 his people; not the most aged person, but David, the most innocent
 youth, delivered Susannah from the iniquity of the judges. Christ,
 at twelve years of age, was found in the temple questioning with
 the greatest doctors. A true Elias can conceive that a little cloud
 may cast a large and abundant shower; and the Scripture teacheth us
 that God unveileth to little ones that which he concealeth from the
 wisest sages. His truth is not abashed by the minority of the speaker;
 for out of the mouths of infants and sucklings he can perfect his
 praises.... The full of your spring-tide is now fallen, and the stream
 of your life waneth to a low ebb; your tired bark beginneth to leak,
 and _grateth oft upon the gravel of the grave_; therefore it is high
 time for you to strike sail and put into harbor, lest, remaining in
 the scope of the winds and waves of this wicked time, some unexpected
 gust should dash you upon the rock of eternal ruin.”

The entire letter is given in both Walter and Turnbull’s _Memoirs of
Southwell_, and has been extravagantly praised as being the composition
of Sir Walter Raleigh, among whose _Remains_ it is frequently
reprinted. Mr. Grosart, a Protestant clergyman, says of it: “I know
nothing comparable with the mingled affection and prophetlike fidelity,
the wise instruction, correction, reproof, the full rich scripturalness
and quaint applications, the devoutness, the insistence, the pathos of
this letter.” The edition of Sir Walter Raleigh’s _Remains_, published
in London in 1675, was the subject of an article in the _Retrospective
Review_ for 1820, in which the reviewer remarks: “‘The Dutiful Advice
of a Loving Son to his Aged Father’ is supposed to be a libel on
Sir Walter, written by his enemies. It will be seen, however, that
it bears a strong resemblance to his style, although the metaphor
is more profuse and ornamental, and seems to be rather engrafted on
his thoughts than to spring up with them. That this piece should be
dictated by personal hostility is strange. It contains exhortations
that might with the greatest propriety be directed to any man.

“It is possible that it might be written by another in imitation of
Sir Walter Raleigh’s ‘Advice to his Son’; _yet if he was an enemy, he
was of a most uncommon description_. As the advice, however, is worth
quoting for its own merit, and is written with great force and beauty,
we shall give our readers an opportunity of judging for themselves.”

This letter is Southwell’s earliest dated prose, and was followed by a
variety of treatises, epistles, and pamphlets, printed on the “private
press” at his own house in London. Besides these, there remain several
English and a large number of Latin prose writings still in manuscript.
“Mary Magdalene’s Funerall Teares,” although prose in form, is in fact
far more fervid and impassioned than the greater part of his poetry.


SOUTHWELL’S POETRY.

To the readers of poetry for its merely sensuous qualities of flowing
measure, attractive imagery, and brilliant description, the poems
of Southwell possess but few attractions. Their subjects are all
religious, or, at least, serious; and, in reading him, we must totally
forget the traditional pagan poet pictured to us as crowned with
flowers, and holding in hand an overflowing anacreontic cup. Serious,
indeed, his poems might well be, for they were all composed during
the intervals of thirteen bodily rackings in a gloomy prison that
opened only upon the scaffold. And yet we look in vain among them
for expressions of the reproaches or repining such a fate might well
engender, and we search with but scant result for record or trace
of his own sufferings in the lines traced with fingers yet bent and
smarting with the rack. The vanity of all earthly things, the trials
of life, the folly and wickedness of the world, the uncertainty of
life, and the consolations and glories of religion, are the constantly
returning subjects of his productions, and, however treated, they
always reflect the benignity and elevation of the poet’s character.

Certain it is that Southwell was largely read by the generation that
immediately succeeded him. Many years ago, Ellis[27] said: “The
very few copies of his works which are now known to exist are the
remnant of at least seventeen different editions, of which eleven
were printed between 1593 and 1600”; and at a later period, Drake, in
his _Shakespeare and his Times_, says:[28] “Both the poetry and the
prose of Southwell possess the most decided merit; the former, which
is almost entirely restricted to moral and religious subjects, flows
in a vein of great harmony, perspicuity, and elegance, and breathes
a fascination resulting from the subject and the pathetic mode of
treating it which fixes and deeply interests the reader.”

A valuable tribute of admiration to Southwell’s poetic talent is that
of Ben Jonson, who said: “that Southwell was hanged; yet so he (Jonson)
had written that piece of his, ‘The Burning Babe,’ he would have been
content to destroy many of his.”[29] Our readers, we are sure, will
thank us for giving it here, although we strongly suspect that Mr.
Grosart will not approve of its modern orthography.

  As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
  Surprised I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow;
  And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
  A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear,
  Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,
  As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears
      were fed;
  Alas! quoth he, but newly born, in fiery heats I frye,
  Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
  My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
  Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scornes;
  The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
  The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
  For which, as now, on fire I am, to work them to their good,
  So will I melt into a bath to washe them in my blood:
  With this he vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
  And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

Our limits will permit but slight citation from the body of
Southwell’s poetry. He is most widely known by his chief poem
“S. Peter’s Complaint,” consisting of one hundred and thirty-six
stanzas (six-line). But his most attractive pieces are his shorter
poems—“Times go by Turns,” “Content and Rich,”[30] “Life is but
Loss,” “Look Home,” “Love’s servile Lot,” and the whole series on our
Saviour and his Mother; and, making some allowance for the enthusiasm
of our editor, no true lover of poetry who reads these productions of
Southwell will seriously dissent from Mr. Grosart’s estimate of them.
“The hastiest reader will come on ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ that are
as musical as Apollo’s lute, and as fresh as a spring budding spray;
and the wording of all (excepting over-alliteration and inversion
occasionally), is throughout of the ‘pure well of English undefiled.’
When you take some of the Myrtæ and Mæoniæ pieces, and read and re-read
them, you are struck with their condensation, their concinnity, their
polish, their _élan_, their memorableness. Holiness is in them not as
scent on love-locks, but as fragrance in the great Gardener’s flowers
of fragrance. His tears are pure and white as the ‘dew of the morning.’
His smiles—for he has humor, even wit, that must have lurked in the
burdened eyes and corners o’ mouth—are sunny as sunshine. As a whole,
his poetry is healthy and strong, and, I think, has been more potential
in our literature than appears on the surface. I do not think it would
be hard to show that others of whom more is heard drew light from him,
as well early as more recent, from Burns to Thomas Hood. For example,
limiting as to the latter, I believe every reader who will compare the
two deliberately will see in the ‘Vale of Tears’ the source of the
latter’s immortal ‘Haunted House’—dim, faint, weak beside it, as the
earth-hid bulb compared with the lovely blossom of hyacinth or tulip or
lily, nevertheless really carrying in it the original of the mightier
after-poem.”

Our warmest tribute of praise can render but scant justice to the
intelligence, the industry, the erudition, the keen poetic sense, and
the enthusiasm which the editor of the volume before us has devoted to
what has evidently been to him a labor of love. Mr. Grosart is well
known in the literary world as the editor of Crashawe and of Vaughan,
as also of the forthcoming editions of Marvell, Donne, and Sidney.
His laboriously corrected version of our martyr-poet’s legacy has, it
may be said, restored Southwell to us, so obscured had he become by
mistakes, misprints, and false readings. Indeed Mr. Grosart’s somewhat
jealous love of his subject betrays him into apparently harsh judgment
on the efforts of others, when, for instance, he declares himself
“vexed by the travesties on editing and mere carelessness of Walter
earlier (1817) and Turnbull later (1856) in their so-called editions of
the poems of Father Southwell,” adding: “Turnbull said contemptuously,
‘I refrain from criticism on Mr. Walter’s text’—severe but not
undeserved, only his own is scarcely one whit better, and in places
worse.”

There is one passage at the close of Mr. Grosart’s interesting
preface which has a special interest for us as Americans. We mean his
reference to the verdict pronounced on Father Southwell’s poetry by
Prof. James Russell Lowell in his charming book _My Study Windows_.
“It seems to me,” says Mr. Grosart, “harsh to brutality on the man
(meet follower of him ‘the first true gentleman that ever breathed’);
while on the poetry it rests on self-evidently the most superficial
acquaintance and the hastiest generalization. To pronounce ‘S.
Peter’s Complaint’ a ‘drawl’ of thirty pages of ‘maudlin repentance,
in which the distinctions between the north and northeast sides of
a (_sic_) sentimentality are worthy of Duns Scotus,’ shows about as
much knowledge—that is, ignorance—of the poem as of the schoolman,
and as another remark does of S. Peter; for, with admitted tedium, S.
Peter’s complaint sounds depths of penitence and remorse, and utters
out emotion that flames into passion very unforgettably, while there
are felicities of metaphor, daintinesses of word-painting, brilliancies
of inner-portraiture, scarcely to be matched in contemporary verse. The
‘paraphrase’ of David (to wit, ‘David’s Peccavi’) is a single short
piece, and the ‘punning’ conceit, ‘fears are my feres,’ is common to
some of England’s finest wits, and in the meaning of ‘fere’ not at all
to be pronounced against. If we on this side of the Atlantic valued
less the opinion of such a unique genius as Prof. Lowell’s, if we did
not take him to our innermost love, we should less grieve over such
a vulgar affront offered to a venerable name as his whole paragraph
to Southwell. I shall indulge the hope of our edition reaching the
‘Study,’ and persuading to a real ‘study’ of these poems, and, if so, I
do not despair of a voluntary reversal of the first judgment.”


ARIS WILMOTT

pronounced Southwell to be the Goldsmith of our early poets; and
‘Content and Rich,’ and, ‘Dyer’s phansie turned to a Sinner’s
Complaint’ warrant the great praise. But beneath the manner recalling
Goldsmith, there is a purity and richness of thought, a naturalness, a
fineness of expression, a harmony of versification, and occasionally a
tide-flow of high-toned feeling, not to be met with in him.

“Nor will Prof. Lowell deem his (I fear) hasty (mis)judgment’s
reconsideration too much to count on, after the present Archbishop of
Dublin’s well-weighed words in his notes to his _Household Book of
English Poetry_ (1868):

 “‘Hallam thinks that Southwell has been of late praised at least as
 much as he deserves. This may be so; yet, taking into account the
 finished beauty of such poems as this (“Lewd Love is Loss”) and No.
 2 (“Times go by Turns”) of this collection, poems which, as far as
 they go, leave nothing to be desired, he has scarcely been praised
 more than he deserves. How in earlier times he was rated, the fact
 that there were twenty-four editions of his poems will sufficiently
 testify; though probably the creed be professed, and the death which
 he died, may have had something to do with this. Robert Southwell
 was a seminary priest, and was executed at Tyburn in the reign of
 Queen Elizabeth, in conformity with a law, which even the persistent
 plottings of too many of these at once against the life of the
 sovereign and the life of the state must altogether fail to justify or
 excuse’ (pp. 391-392).

“To Archbishop Trench’s I add, as equally weighty and worthy, the
fine and finely sympathetic yet discriminative judgment of Dr. George
Macdonald in _Antiphon_ as follows:

 “‘I proceed to call up one WHO WAS A POET INDEED, although
 little known as such, being a Roman Catholic, a Jesuit even, and
 therefore, in Elizabeth’s reign, a traitor and subject to the
 penalties according (accruing)? Robert Southwell, thirteen times most
 cruelly tortured, could “not be induced to confess anything, not even
 the color of the horse whereon he rode on a certain day, lest from
 such indication his adversaries might conjecture in what house, or in
 company of what Catholics, he that day was,’ etc.

“I believe, then,” concludes Dr. Grosart, “I shall not appeal in vain
to Prof. Lowell to give a few hours behind his ‘Study Windows’ to a
reperusal of some of the poems of Southwell named by us and these
sufficiently qualified critics.”




SOMETHING ABOUT LACE.


THERE is probably no article, not a necessity, which has employed so
many heads and hands, and been the subject of such varied interests,
as lace. The making of it has given employment to countless nunneries,
where the ladies, working first and most heartily for the church, have
also taught this art to their pupils as an accomplishment or a means of
support. It was, indeed, so peculiarly the province of the religious
that, long after it was done in the world, it still bore the name of
“nun’s-work.”

In those old days when railroads were not, and when swamps and forests
covered tracts of land now thick with villages and cities, country
ladies made fine needle-work their chief occupation; and it was the
custom in feudal times for the squires’ daughters to spend some time
in the castle, in attendance on the _châtelaine_, where they learned
to embroider and make lace. It was then a woman’s only resource, and
was held in high esteem. In the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, one
Catherine Sloper was laid to rest, in 1620, with the inscription on her
tombstone that she was “exquisite at her needle.”

Millions of poor women, and even men and children, have earned their
bread by this delicate labor; women of intelligence and fair estate
have devoted their lives to it; and noble and regal ladies have been
proud to excel in the art.

It is related that when Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio went down to
the palace at Bridewell to seek an interview with the repudiated wife
of Henry VIII., they found her seated among her ladies embroidering,
and she came to meet them with a skein of red silk around her neck. In
those days they wrought and made lace with colored silk. We can imagine
how the bright floss must have trembled over the tumultuous beatings of
that wronged heart during the cruel interview that followed.

But the work of Catherine of Aragon was not for vanity’s sake, nor even
to pass the heavy hours. In her native Spain the rarest laces were made
for the church, and not only nuns, but ladies of the world, wove pious
thoughts in with that fairy web. Perhaps nowhere else, save in Rome,
was the church lace so rich as in Spain. Images of favorite saints and
Madonnas had wardrobes of regal magnificence, changed every day, and
the altars and vestments were no less regally adorned.

Beckford writes that, in 1787, the Marchioness of Cogalhudo, wife of
the eldest son of the semi-regal race of Medina Cœli, was appointed
Mistress of the Robes to Our Lady of La Solidad, in Madrid, and that
the office was much coveted.

It is supposed that the peasantry of Bedfordshire, in England, first
learned lace-making through the charity of Queen Catherine. While at
Ampthill, it is recorded that, when not at her devotions, she, with
her ladies, “wrought a needle-work costly and artificially, which she
intended for the honor of God to bestow on some of the churches.”

The country people had the greatest love and respect for the disgraced
queen; and, till lately, the lace-makers held “Cattern’s Day,” the 25th
of November, as the holiday of their craft, “in memory of good Queen
Catherine, who, when trade was dull, burnt all her laces, and ordered
new to be made. The ladies of the court followed her example, and
the fabric once more revived.” Lace was and is considered a suitable
present from a king to a pontiff. These earlier gifts were, it is true,
sometimes of gold and silver lace wrought with precious stones, but
they were scarcely more costly than the later white-thread points. In
the Exhibition of 1859 was shown a dress valued at 200,000 francs, the
most costly work ever executed at Alençon. This Napoleon III. purchased
for the empress, who, it is said, presented it to his Holiness the Pope
as a trimming for his rochet. Also, so early as the XIIIth century, the
English cut-work was so fine that, according to Matthew Paris, Pope
Innocent IV. sent official letters to some of the Cistercian abbots
of England to procure a certain quantity of those vestments for his
own use. His Holiness had seen and admired the orfrays of the English
clergy.

The finest specimens extant of this old English work (_opus
Anglicanum_) are the cope and maniple of S. Cuthbert, taken from his
coffin many years ago in the cathedral of Durham, and now preserved in
the chapter library of that city. One who has seen them declares them
beautiful beyond description.

This work seems to have been at first used only for ecclesiastical
purposes, and the making of it to have been a secret preserved in the
monasteries.

Nor have the clergy been merely the wearers of lace. We hear of monks
being praised for their skill in “imbrothering”; and S. Dunstan himself
did not disdain to design patterns for church lace. Pattern-books for
these needle-laces were made by monks as well as laymen, and plates
in them represent men seated at the embroidering frame. Some of these
old pattern books of the XVIth century are preserved in the library
of S. Geneviève at Paris, inherited from the monastery of that name.
These books are prized and sought for as some of the earliest specimens
of block-printing. But few remain, and doubtless their high price
prevented them from being made in great numbers. Their place was taken
by samplers, into which were copied the patterns desired. From these
old lace-samplers come the later alphabetical samplers, which many now
living will remember to have made in their youth.

Large quantities of rich old lace were lost in the last century, when
the French Revolution brought in gauzes and blondes, and fashion tossed
aside as worthless these exquisite products of the needle. In Italy,
where the custom was to preserve old family lace, less was destroyed;
but in England it was handed over to servants or farm people, or stowed
away in attics, and afterwards burned. Some ladies gave point-laces
which now they could not afford to buy, to their children to dress
their dolls with. Sometimes it was thrown away as old rags.

In the church, however, fashion had no power, and old lace has been
usually preserved. Some collections are exceedingly valuable. Notable
among these is that of the Rohan family, who gave princes-archbishops
to Strasbourg. Baroness de Oberkirck, in _Memoirs of the Court of Louis
XVI._, writes: “We met the cardinal coming out of his chapel dressed
in a soutane of scarlet moire and rochet of inestimable value. When,
on great occasions, he officiates at Versailles, he wears an alb of
old lace of needlepoint of such beauty that his assistants were almost
afraid to touch it. His arms and device are worked in a medallion above
the large flowers.” This alb is estimated at 100,000 livres.

It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which lace was used prior
to the French Revolution, or the immense extravagance of the sums
spent on it. Everybody wore it, even servants emulating their masters
and mistresses. It trimmed everything, from the towering Fontanges,
which rose like a steeple from ladies’ heads, to the boot-tops and
shoe-rosettes of men. Men wore lace ruffles not only at the wrist,
but at the knee, lace ruffs, cravats, collars, and garters; and bed
furniture was made of lace, or trimmed with it, costly as it was. A
pair of ruffles would amount to 4,000 livres, a lady’s cap to 1,200
livres. We read that Mme. du Barry gave 487 francs for lace enough to
trim a pillow-case, and 77 livres for a pair of ruffles. Lace fans were
made in 1668, and lace-trimmed bouquet-holders are not a new fancy.
When the Doge of Venice made his annual visit to the convent _Delle
Vergini_, the lady abbess used to meet him in the parlor, surrounded by
her novices, and present him a nosegay in a gold handle trimmed with
the richest lace that could be found in Venice.

Voltaire says that the mysterious Iron Mask was passionately fond of
fine linen and rich lace.

So extravagant had the use of this luxury become that in England
there was an outcry against it, and the Puritans laid great stress on
discarding vanity in clothing.

We have a little scene illustrative, between the Princess Mary and
Lady Jane Grey. The princess had given the maiden some gorgeous
dresses trimmed with lace. “What shall I do with it?” asks Lady Jane.
“Gentlewoman, wear it,” was the reply, a little vexed, may be. “Nay,”
says Lady Jane, “that were a shame to follow my Lady Mary against God’s
will, and leave my Lady Elizabeth, which followeth God’s will.”

“My Lady Elizabeth,” however, set aside her scruples before long, and,
when queen, did not hesitate to adorn herself as bravely as she might,
though she had no mind her fashions should be copied by the vulgar; for
we read that, when the London Apprentices adopted white stitching and
guards as ornaments for their collars, Queen Elizabeth forbade it, and
ordered that the first transgressor should be publicly whipped in the
hall of his company.

There is another incident, which, as one of the sex in whom vanity is
supposed to be prominent, we take special pleasure in relating.

The Puritan nobles had not in dress conformed to Puritan rules as
strictly as some desired, the foreign ambassadors dressing as richly as
ever. When, therefore, the Spanish envoy accredited to the Protectorate
of Cromwell arrived and was about to have an audience, Harrison begged
Lord Warwick and Colonel Hutchinson to set an example by not wearing
either gold or silver lace. These gentlemen did not disapprove of rich
clothing, but, rather than give offence, they and their associates
appeared the next day in plain black suits. But, to their astonishment,
Harrison entered dressed in a scarlet coat so covered with lace and
_clinquant_ as to hide the material of which it was made. Whereupon
Mrs. Hutchinson remarks that Harrison’s “godly speeches were only
made that he might appear braver above the rest in the eyes of the
strangers.”

Lace has frequently employed the thoughts of law-makers, and in 1698
was the subject of a legislative duel between England and Flanders.
There was already in England an act prohibiting the importation of
bone-lace (_i.e._ bobbin-lace), loom-lace, cut-work, and needle-work
point; but this proving ineffectual, since everybody smuggled, another
act was passed setting a penalty of twenty shillings a yard and
forfeiture. We regret to learn that forfeiture meant, in some cases at
least, burning, and that large quantities of the finest Flanders lace
were seized and actually burned. It reminds one of the burning of Don
Quixote’s library of chivalric records.

Flanders, however, with its nunneries full of lace-makers, and its
thousands of people depending on the trade, had no mind to be thus
crippled without retaliation. An act was immediately passed prohibiting
the importation of English wool; whereupon the wool-staplers echoed
with addition the groans of the lace-makers, and England was forced to
repeal the act so far as the Low Countries were concerned.

As we have said, everybody in England smuggled lace in those days.
Smuggling seems indeed to be everywhere looked on as the least shameful
of law-breaking. But never, perhaps, were officers of the customs as
incorruptible as these. Suspicious persons were searched, no matter
what their rank, and no person living within miles of a seaport dared
to wear a bit of foreign lace unless they could prove that it had been
honestly obtained. Many were the devices by which men and women sought
to elude the customs. When a deceased clergyman of the English Church
was conveyed home from the Low Countries for burial, it was found that
only his head, hands, and feet were in the coffin—the body had been
replaced by Flanders lace of immense value. Years after, when the
body of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire, who had died in France, was
brought over, the custom-house officers not only searched the coffin,
but poked the corpse with a stick to make sure that it was a body.
The High Sheriff of Westminster was more fortunate, for he succeeded
in smuggling £6,000 worth of lace in the coffin that brought over from
Calais the body of Bishop Atterbury.

In the present century, Lady Ellenborough, wife of the lord
chief-justice, was stopped near Dover, and a large quantity of valuable
lace found secreted in the lining of her carriage.

At one period, much lace was smuggled into France from Belgium by means
of dogs trained for the purpose. A dog was caressed and petted at home,
then, after a while, sent across the frontier, where he was tied up,
starved, and ill-treated. The skin of a larger dog was then fitted to
his body, the intervening space filled with lace, and the poor animal
was released. Of course he made haste to scamper back to his former
home.

_A propos_ of the customs, there is a story in which George III.
had an active part, and displayed his determination to protect home
manufactures.

On the marriage of his sister, Princess Augusta, to the Duke of
Brunswick, the king ordered that all stuffs and laces worn should be of
English manufacture. The nobility, intent on outshining each other on
this grand occasion, took but little notice of the command. We may well
believe that the rooms of the court milliner were gorgeous with these
preparations; that there was unusual hurry and flurry lest everything
should not be done in time; and that high-born and beautiful ladies
were constantly besieging the doors, bringing additions to the stock.
Fancy, then, the consternation of the expectant and excited dames,
when, only three days before the wedding, the customs made a descent on
this costly finery, and carried off in one fell swoop the silver, the
gold, and the laces! There was not only the loss of these dear gewgaws
to mourn, but a new toilet to be prepared in three days!

The camp, too, as well as the church and the court, has cherished lace,
and the warriors of those days did not fight less gallantly because
they went into battle elegantly arrayed. Lace ruffles at the wrist did
not weaken the sword or sabre stroke, nor laces on the neck and bosom
make faint the heart beneath. Possibly they helped to a nobler courtesy
and a braver death; for slovenly dress tends to make slovenly manners,
and slovenly manners often lead to careless morals.

A graceful fashion called the Steinkerk had a martial origin, and was
named from the battle so-called, wherein Marshal Luxembourg won the day
against William of Orange. On that day, the young princes of the blood
were suddenly and unexpectedly called into battle. Hastily knotting
about their necks the laced cravats then in fashion, and usually tied
with great nicety, they rushed into action, and won the fight.

In honor of that event, both ladies and gentlemen wore their cravats
and scarfs loosely twisted and knotted, the ends sometimes tucked
through the button-hole, sometimes confined by a large oval-shaped
brooch; and Steinkerks became the rage.

But evidence enough, perhaps, has been brought to prove that lace is
not an entirely trivial subject of discourse. We may, however, add that
Dr. Johnson condescended to define net lace in his most Johnsonian
manner. It is, he says, “anything reticulated or decussated, with
interstices between the intersections.” After that, ladies may wear
their ruffles not only with pleasure, but with respect; for if he was
so learned in defining plain net, what unimaginable erudition would
have entered his definition of Honiton guipure, or the points of
Alençon, Brussels, or Venice!

Spiders were probably the first creatures that made lace, though the
trees held a delicate white network under the green of their leaves.
After the spiders came the human race, following closely. Old Egyptian
pictures and sculptures show us women engaged in twisting threads;
and the Scriptures are full of allusions to “fine twined linen” and
needle-work. Almost as soon as garments were worn they began to be
adorned at the edges; and among savages, to whom garments were of
slight consequence, tattooing was practised, which is the same idea in
a different form.

The Israelites probably learned from the Egyptians, and from them the
art travelled westward. One theory is that Europe learned it from the
Saracens. It matters but little to us which is the real version. It
is most likely that all the children of Adam and Eve had some fancy
of this sort which reached greater perfection in the more cultivated
tribes and nations, and was by them taught to the others. The waved
or serrated edges of leaves would suggest such adornments to them, or
the fur hanging over the edge of the rude skins they wore. The very
waves of the sea, that curled over in snowy spray at their tips, had a
suggestion of lace and ornamental bordering; and the clouds of sunrise
and sunset were fringed with crimson and gold by the sun. Flower petals
were finished with a variegated edge, and it was not enough that birds
had wings, but they must be ornamented.

When embroidery at length became an art, the Phrygian women excelled
all others. Presently close embroidery became open-worked or
cut-worked, and out of cut-work grew lace.

This cut-work was made in various ways. In one kind, a network of
thread was made on a frame, and under this was gummed a piece of fine
cloth. Then those parts which were to remain thick were sewed round on
to the cloth; and afterward the superfluous cloth was cut away.

Another kind was made entirely of thread, which was arranged on a frame
in lines diverging from the centre like a spider’s web, and worked
across and over with other threads, forming geometrical patterns.
Later, a fabric still more like our modern lace was made. A groundwork
was netted by making one stitch at the beginning, and increasing a
stitch on each side till the requisite size was obtained. On this
ground was worked the pattern, sometimes darned in with counted
stitches, sometimes cut out of linen, and _appliqué_. Still another
kind was drawn-work, threads being drawn from linen or muslin, and the
thinned cloth worked into lace. Specimens still exist of a six-sided
lace net made in this way, with sprigs worked over it.

The earlier rich laces were not made of white thread. Gold, silver,
and silk were used. The Italians, who claim to have invented point
lace, were the great makers of gold lace. Cyprus stretched gold into
a wire, and wove it. From Cyprus the art reached Genoa, Venice, and
Milan; and gradually all Europe learned to make gold lace. In England,
the complaint was raised that the gold of the realm was sensibly
diminishing in this way, and in 1635 an act was passed prohibiting the
melting down of bullion to make gold or silver “purl.” And not only
in Western and Southern Europe was this luxury fashionable. A piece
of gold lace was found in a Scandinavian barrow opened in the XVIIIth
century. Perhaps the lace was made by some captive woman stolen by
the vikings, a later Proserpine ravished from the South, who wove the
web with her pale fingers as she sat in that frozen Hades, while her
piratical blue-eyed Pluto looked on marvelling, and waiting to catch a
smile from her relenting eyes. Gold lace was sold by weight.

Some of the most magnificent old points of Venice were made of silk,
the natural cream-color. The rose Venice point—_Gros point de Venice,
Punto a rilievo_—was the richest and most complicated of all points.
It was worked of silk, on a parchment pattern, the flowers connected by
_brides_. The outlines of these flowers were in relief, cotton being
placed inside to raise them, and countless beautiful stitches were
introduced. Sometimes they were in double, sometimes in triple, relief,
and each flower and leaf was edged with fine regular pearls. This
point was highly prized for albs, _collerettes_, _berthes_, and costly
decorations.

Another kind of Venice lace—knotted point—had a charmingly
romantic origin. A young girl in one of the islands of the Lagune, a
lace-worker, was betrothed to a young sailor, who brought her home from
the Southern seas a bunch of pretty coralline called mermaid’s lace.
Moved partly by love for the giver, and partly by admiration for the
graceful nature of the seaweed, with its small white knots united by
a _bride_, the girl tried to imitate it with her needle, and, after
several unsuccessful efforts, produced a delicate guipure, which soon
was admired all over Europe.

We must not, in this connection, forget that handkerchief given by
Othello to Desdemona, the loss of which cost her so dear. It was
wrought, he tells her, by an Egyptian sibyl, who

  “In her prophetic fury sewed the work.”

And he declares that

  “The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk.”

The flat points of Venice were no less exquisite than the raised, the
patterns sometimes being human figures, animals, cupids, and flowers.

In the XVIth century, Barbara Uttmann invented pillow-net, a great
advance in the making of lace. This lady’s father had moved from
Nuremberg to the Hartz Mountains, to superintend mines there, and there
the daughter married a rich master-miner, Christopher Uttmann, and
lived with him in his castle of Annaberg. Seeing the mountain girls
weave nets for the miners to wear over their hair, her inventive mind
suggested a new and easier way of making fine netting. Her repeated
failures we know not of, but we know of her success. In 1561 she set up
a workshop in her own name, and this branch of industry spread so that
soon 30,000 persons were employed, with a revenue of 1,000,000 thalers.
In 1575, the inventress died and was laid to rest in the churchyard of
Annaberg, where her tombstone records that she was the “benefactress of
the Hartz Mountains.”

Honor to Barbara Uttmann!

Pillow-lace, as most people know, is made on a round or oval board
stuffed so as to form a cushion. On this is fixed a stiff piece of
parchment with the pattern pricked on it. The threads are wound on
bobbins about the size of a pencil, with a groove at the neck. As many
of the threads as will start well together are tied at the ends in a
knot, and the knot fastened with a pin at the edge of the pattern;
then another bunch, and so on, till the number required by the lace is
completed. The lace is formed by crossing or intertwining these bobbins.

Hand-made lace is of two kinds, point and pillow. Point means a
needle-work lace made on a parchment pattern, also a particular kind
of stitch. The word is sometimes incorrectly applied; as, _point de
Malines_, _point de Valenciennes_, both these laces being made on a
pillow.

Lace consists of two parts, the ground and the flower pattern or gimp.

The plain ground is called in French _entoilage_, on account of its
containing the ornament, which is called _toilé_, from the texture
resembling linen, or being made of that material or of muslin.

The honeycomb network or ground—in French, _fond_, _champ_,
_réseau_—is of various kinds: wire ground, Brussels ground, _trolly_
ground, etc. Double ground is so called because twice the number of
threads are required to make it.

Some laces, points and guipures, are not worked upon a ground, the
flowers being connected by irregular threads worked over with _point
noué_ (button-hole stitch), sometimes with pearl loops (_picot_).
Such are the points of Venice and Spain and most of the guipures. To
these uniting-threads lace-makers in Italy give the name of “legs,” in
England “pearl ties,” in France “brides.”

The flower is made either together with the ground, as in Valenciennes
and Mechlin, or separately, and then either worked in or sewn on
(_applique_).

The open-work stitches in the patterns are called “modes,” “jours,” or
“fillings.”

The early name of lace in England and France was _passement_, so
called because the threads were passed by each other in the making.
The learned derive lace from _lacina_, a Latin word signifying the hem
or fringe of a garment. _Dentelle_ comes from the little toothed edge
with which lace was finished after awhile. At first, it was _passement
dentelé_, finally _dentelle_.

The meaning of guipure is hard to connect with the present use of the
word, which is very loose and undefined. It was originally made of silk
twisted round a little strip of thin parchment or vellum; and silk
twisted round a thick thread or cord was called guipure, hence the name.

The modern Honiton is called guipure, also Maltese lace and its
Buckingham imitations. The Italians called the old raised points of
Venice and Spain guipures. It is hard to know what claim any of these
have to the name.

A fine silk guipure is made in the harems of Turkey, of which specimens
were shown in the International Exhibition. This _point de Turquie_ is
but little known, and is costly. It mostly represents black, white, or
mixed colors, fruit, flowers, or foliage.

The lace once made in Malta was a coarse kind of Mechlin or
Valenciennes of one arabesque pattern; but since 1833, when an English
lady induced a Maltese woman named Ciglia to copy in white an old Greek
coverlet, the Ciglia family commenced the manufacture of black and
white Maltese guipure, till then unknown in the island.

It is the fineness of the thread which renders the real Brussels
ground, _vrai réseau_, so costly. The finest is spun in dark
underground rooms; for contact with the dry air causes the thread to
break. The spinner works by feeling rather than sight, though a dark
paper is placed to throw the thread out, and a single ray of light is
admitted to fall on the work. She examines every inch drawn from her
distaff, and, when any inequality occurs, stops her wheel to repair the
mischief.

The _réseau_ is made in three different ways: by hand, on the pillow,
and more lately by machinery—the last a Brussels-net made of Scotch
cotton. The needle ground costs three times as much as the pillow; but
it is stronger and easier to repair, the pillow ground always showing
the join.

There are two kinds of flowers: those made with the needle, _point à
l’aiguille_, and those on the pillow, _point plat_. The best flowers
are made in Brussels itself, where they excel in the relief (_point
brode_).

Each part of Brussels lace is made by a different hand. One makes the
_vrai réseau_; another, the footing; a third, the point flowers; a
fourth works the open _jours_; a fifth unites the different sections of
the ground together; a sixth makes the _plat_ flowers; a seventh sews
the flowers upon the ground.

The pattern is designed by the head of the fabric, who, having cut the
parchment into pieces, hands it out ready pricked. In the modern lace,
the work of the needle and pillow are combined.

Mechlin lace, sometimes called _broderie de Malines_ is a pillow lace
made all in one piece, its distinguishing feature being a broad, flat
thread which forms the flower. It is very light and transparent, and
answers very well as a summer lace. It is said that Napoleon I. admired
this lace, and that, when he first saw the light Gothic tracery of the
cathedral spire at Antwerp, he exclaimed: “_C’est comme de la dentelle
de Malines._”

Valenciennes is also a pillow lace, but the ground and gimp, or flower,
are all made of the same thread.

The _vrai Valenciennes_, as it was at first named, that made in the
city itself, was made in the XVth century, of a three-thread twisted
flax, and reached its climax about the middle of the XVIIIth century,
when there were from 3,000 to 4,000 lace-makers in the city alone.
Then fashion began to prefer the lighter and cheaper fabrics of
Arras, Lille, and Brussels, till in 1790 the number of lace-workers
had diminished to 250. Napoleon I. tried unsuccessfully to revive
the manufacture, and in 1851 only two lace-makers remained, both
over eighty years of age. This _vrai Valenciennes_ which, from its
durability, was called _les eternelles Valenciennes_, could not, it
was asserted, be made outside the walls of the city. It was claimed
that, if a piece of lace were begun at Valenciennes and finished
outside of the walls, that part not made in the city would be visibly
less beautiful than the other, though continued by the same hand, with
the same thread, upon the same pillow. This was attributed to some
peculiarity of the atmosphere. That lace, therefore, which was made in
the neighborhood of the city was called _bâtarde_ and _gausse_.

The makers of this lace worked in underground cellars from four in the
morning till eight at night. Young girls were the chief workers, great
delicacy of touch being required, any other kind of work spoiling the
hand for this. Many of the women, we are told, became blind before
reaching the age of thirty. So great was the labor of making this lace
that, while the Lille workers could produce from three to five ells per
day, those of Valenciennes could not finish more than an inch and a
half in that time. Some took a year to make twenty-four inches, and it
took ten months, working fifteen hours a day, to finish a pair of men’s
ruffles.

It was considered a recommendation to have a piece of lace made all by
one hand.

This old Valenciennes was far superior to any now made under that name.
The _réseau_ was fine and compact, the flowers resembling cambric
in their texture. The fault of the lace was its color, never a pure
white, but, being so long under the hand in a damp atmosphere, of a
reddish cast. In 1840, an old lady, Mlle. Ursule, gathered the few
old lace-makers left in the city, and made the last piece of _vrai
Valenciennes_ of any importance which has been made in the city. It was
a head-dress, and was presented by the city to the Duchesse de Nemours.

In the palmy days of Valenciennes, mothers used to hand these laces
down to their children as scarcely less valuable than jewels. Even
peasant women would lay by their earnings for a year to purchase a
piece of _vrai Valenciennes_ for a head-dress.

One of the finest specimens of this old lace known is a lace-bordered
alb belonging to the Convent of the Visitation, at Le Puy, in Auvergne.
The lace is in three breadths, twenty-eight inches wide, entirely of
thread, and very fine, though thick. The ground is a clear _réseau_,
the pattern solid, of flowers and scrolls.

There is a story of Le Puy that in 1640 a sumptuary edict was issued by
the seneschal, forbidding all persons, without regard to age, sex, or
rank, to wear lace of any kind. Lace-making being the chief employment
of the women of this province, great distress resulted from the edict.
In this time of trial, the beggared people found a comforter in the
Jesuit F. Régis. He not only consoled them, but he proved the sincerity
of his sympathy by acts. He went to Toulouse, and obtained a revocation
of the edict; and at his suggestion the Jesuits opened to the Auvergne
laces a market in the New World.

This good friend to the poor is now S. Francis Régis, and is venerated
in Auvergne as the patron saint of the lace-makers.

The finest and most elaborate Valenciennes is now made at Ypres, in
Flanders. Instead of the close _réseau_ of the old lace, it has a clear
wire ground, which throws the figure out well. On a piece of this Ypres
lace not two inches wide, from 200 to 300 bobbins are employed, and for
larger widths as many as 800 or more are used on the same pillow. There
are now in Flanders 400 lace-schools, of which 157 are the property of
religious communities.

We may say here that lace-makers now use Scotch cotton chiefly, instead
of linen, finding it cheaper, more elastic, and brilliant. Only
Alençon, some choice pieces of Brussels, and the finer qualities of
Mechlin are now made of flax. The difference can scarcely be perceived
by the eye, and both wash equally well, but the cotton grows yellow
with age, while linen retains its whiteness.

Alençon, the only French lace now made on a pillow, was first made in
France by an Italian worker, who, finding herself unable to teach the
Alençon women the true Venetian stitch, struck out a new path, and,
by assigning to each one a different part of the work, as Brussels
did afterward, succeeded in producing the most elaborate point ever
made. Early specimens show rich scroll-work connected by _brides_. One
piece has portraits of Louis XVI. and Maria Theresa, with the crown
and cipher, all entwined with flowers. The patterns were not at first
beautiful, scarcely at all imitating nature; but their work was perfect.

Point Alençon is made entirely by the hand, on a parchment pattern, in
small pieces afterwards united by invisible thread. This art of “fine
joining” was formerly a secret confined to France and Belgium, but is
now known in England and Ireland.

Each part of this work is given to a different person, who is trained
from childhood to that specialty. The number formerly required was
eighteen, but is now twelve.

The design, engraved on copper, is printed off in divisions upon
pieces of parchment ten inches long, each piece numbered in order.
This parchment, which is green, is pricked with the pattern, and
sewed to a piece of very coarse linen folded double. The outline of
the pattern is then made by guiding two flat threads around the edge
with the left thumb, and fixing them by minute stitches passed with
another thread and needle through the holes in the parchment. The work
is then handed over to another to make the ground, either _bride_ or
_réseau_. The _réseau_ is worked back and forward from the footing, or
sewing-on-edge, to the _picot_, or lower pearled edge. The flowers are
worked with a fine needle and long thread, in button-hole stitch, from
left to right, the thread turned back when the end of the flower is
reached, and worked over in the next row, making thus a strong fabric.
Then come the open-work fillings and other operations, after which
the lace is taken from the parchment by passing a sharp razor between
the two folds of linen. The head of the fabric then joins the parts
together. When finished, a steel instrument is passed into each flower
to polish it.

The manufacture of Alençon was nearly extinct when Napoleon I. restored
its prosperity. Among the orders executed for the emperor on his
marriage with Marie Louise was a bed furniture of great richness.
Tester, coverlet, curtains, and pillow-cases were all of the finest
_Alençon à bride_. Again the manufacture languished, though efforts
were made to revive it, and, in 1840, two hundred aged women—all who
were left of the workers—were gathered. But the old point had been
made by an hereditary set of workers, and the lace-makers they were
obliged to call to their help from other districts could not learn
their stitches, consequently changes crept in. But the manufacture
was revived, and some fine specimens were shown in the Exhibition of
1851, among them a flounce valued at 22,000 francs, which had taken
thirty-six women eighteen months to complete. This appeared afterwards
in the Empress Eugénie’s _corbeille de mariage_.

Alençon was chiefly used in the magnificent _layette_ prepared for the
prince imperial. The cradle-curtains were Mechlin, the coverlet of
Alençon lined with satin. The christening robe, mantle, and head-dress
were also of Alençon, and Alençon covered the three _corbeille_ bearing
the imperial arms and cipher, and trimmed the twelve dozen embroidered
frocks and the aprons of the imperial nurses.

Remembering all the magnificence which clustered around the birth of
this infant, who had

  “Queens at his cradle, proud and ministrant,”

one thinks with sadness of that exiled boy who now, weeping bitterly
the loss of a tender father, beholds receding from his gaze, like a
splendid dream, that throne he once seemed born to fill. Nowhere on the
face of the earth is one who has possessed so much and lost so much as
that boy; and nowhere are a mother and son around whom cling such a
romantic interest and sympathy.

The specimens of Alençon in the Exhibition of 1862 maintained the
reputation of the ancient fabric. _Bride_ is but little made now, and
is merely twisted threads, far inferior to the clear hexagon of the
last century. This hexagon was a _bride_ worked around with _point
noué_.

Of late, the reapplication of Alençon flowers has been successfully
practised by the peasant lace-workers in the neighborhood of Ostend,
who sew them to a fine Valenciennes ground.

The Chantilly lace, which owed its foundation to Catherine de Rohan,
Duchesse de Longueville, has always been rather an object of luxury
than of commercial value. Being considered a royal fabric, and its
production for the nobility alone, the lace-workers became the victims
of revolutionary fury in ‘93, and all perished on the scaffold with
their patrons. The manufacture was, however, revived, and prospered
greatly during the First Empire. The white blonde was the rage in Paris
in 1805. The black was especially admired in Spain and her American
colonies. No other manufactories produced such beautiful scarfs,
mantillas, and other large pieces. Calvados and Bayeux make a similar
lace, but not so well. The real Chantilly has a very fine _réseau_,
and the workmanship of the flowers is close, giving the lace great
firmness. The so-called Chantilly shawls in the Exhibition of 1862 were
made at Bayeux. Chantilly produces only the extra fine shawls, dresses,
and scarfs.

Honiton owes its reputation to its sprigs. Like the Brussels, they
are made separately. At first they were worked in with the pillow,
afterwards _appliqué_, or sewed on a ground of plain pillow-net. This
net was very beautiful, but very expensive. It was made of the finest
thread procured from Antwerp, the market price of which, in 1790, was
£70 per pound. Ninety-five guineas have been paid a pound for this
thread, and, in time of war, one hundred guineas. The price of the
lace was costly in proportion, the manner of fixing it peculiar. The
lace ground was spread out on the counter, and the worker herself
desired to cover it with shillings. The number of shillings that found
a place on her work was the price of it. A Honiton veil often cost a
hundred guineas. But the invention of machine-net changed all that, and
destroyed not only the occupation of the makers of hand-net, but was
the cause of the lace falling into disrepute.

Desirous to revive the work, Queen Adelaide ordered a dress of
Honiton sprigs, on a ground of Brussels-net, the flowers to be copied
from nature. The skirt of this dress was encircled with a wreath of
elegantly designed sprigs, the initials of the flowers forming her
majesty’s name: Amaranth, Daphne, Eglantine, Lilac, Auricula, Ivy,
Dahlia, Eglantine.

Queen Victoria’s wedding lace was made at Honiton, difficulty being
found in obtaining workers enough, the manufacture had been so little
patronized. The dress, which cost 1,000 pounds, was entirely of Honiton
sprigs connected on a pillow. The patterns were destroyed as soon as
the lace was made. Several of the princesses have had their bridal
dresses of Honiton.

The application of Honiton sprigs upon bobbin-net has of late almost
entirely given place to guipure. The sprigs are sewed on a piece of
blue paper, and then united by the pillow, by cut-works, or purlings,
or else joined with the needle, button-hole stitch being the best of
all, or by purling which is made by the yard. But Honiton has fallen in
public esteem by neglecting the pattern of its lace, which does not
well imitate nature.

A new branch of industry has lately risen there—that of restoring or
remaking old lace.

When old lace revived, it became a mania. The literary ladies were the
first to take this fever in England. Sidney, Lady Morgan, and Lady
Stepney made collections, and the Countess of Blessington left at her
death several large chests full of fine antique lace.

In Paris, the celebrated dressmaker, Madame Camille, was the first one
to bring old laces into fashion.

Much lace is taken from old tombs, cleansed, and sold, usually after
having been made over. All over Europe it was the custom to bury the
dead in lace-trimmed garments, and in some cases these burial toilets
were of immense value. In Bretagne, the bride, after her marriage, laid
aside her veil and dress, and never wore it again till it was put on
after she was dead. Many of these old tombs have been rifled, and the
contents sold to dealers.

In Ireland, lace-making was at one time quite successful. Swift, in the
last century, urged the protection of home manufactures of all kinds,
and the Dublin Society, composed of a band of patriots organized in
1749, encouraged the making of lace, and passed strong resolutions
against the wearing of foreign lace. Lady Arabella Demy, who died in
1792, a daughter of the Earl of Kerry, was especially active in the
work, and good imitations of Brussels and Ypres lace were made. In
1829, the manufacture of Limerick lace was established. This is tambour
work on Nottingham-net. But the emigration of girls to America, and the
effort of the manufacturers to produce a cheap article, thus bringing
it into disrepute, have prevented this lace from attaining success.

For half a century, machine-lace has been striving to imitate hand-made
lace, and in some instances with such success that the difference
can scarcely be perceived. In 1760 a kind of looped lace was made in
England on the stocking-frame, and the fabric has been constantly
improving. But hand-made lace still maintains its supremacy, and is
growing in favor, and old laces are more highly prized even than
old jewels, since the former cannot be imitated, or can scarcely be
imitated; the latter may be. There is a delicacy and finish in needle
and pillow laces which the machine can never give; besides that,
the constant tendency of machine-work, when once it has attained
excellence, is to deteriorate.

We are glad of this revival of lace-making; for in no other way can the
luxury of the rich in dress so well benefit women and children among
the poor. Most working-women have to work too hard, and they have to
leave their homes to earn money. But lace-making accords admirably with
feminine taste and feminine delicacy of organization, and it can be
done at any time, and at home, and of every quality. It is refining,
too. One can scarcely imagine a very coarse person making a very
beautiful lace. It teaches the worker to observe nature and art, in the
selection and working of patterns, and it stimulates inventiveness,
if there be any. And more than that, by the multitudinous ticking of
these little bobbins, and the myriad points of these shining needles,
thousands of that tortured and terrible class called “the poor” might
be able to keep at bay not only the wolf of hunger, but the lion of
crime.




ANTIQUITIES OF THE LAW.


[WE have received this article from a very distinguished and learned
member of the New York bar, with an accompanying letter, in which he
writes, among other things, as follows:

“Confined as I am by my infirmities to my house, and wearying of the
sameness of the life I have to lead, I sometimes vary my occupation by
delving into the ‘Antiquities of the Law.’

“I have lately come across an old law book published in 1711, which
has been several years in my library, but entirely lost sight of by me
until recently.

“From that I have been compiling some articles for one of our law
journals, and began the accompanying article for the same publication.

“While writing it, it occurred to me that it might be more useful,
if not more interesting, to the readers of such a journal as your
CATHOLIC WORLD than to those of a mere law journal; and as I
abhor religious intolerance in all forms, and see so much of it in this
country, I concluded to send it to you, thinking perhaps you may deem
it advisable to use it.”]


ABJURATION.—The statute 35 _Eliz. cap._ 2 was made wholly
against Popish Recusants convict above 16 Years of Age, enjoining them
not to remove above 5 Miles from their Habitation: if they do, and not
being covert (married?), nor having Land to the Value of 20 Marks _per
Annum_ or Goods worth £40, they must abjure the Kingdom. _Hale’s Pl.
Cr._ 228.

“Likewise upon Persons who absent themselves from Church without just
Cause, and refusing to conform within 3 Months after conviction.” _35
Eliz. cap. 1._


ARMOUR.—(Recusancy was denying the Supremacy of the Queen
and adhering to the Pope as Supreme Head of the Church.) “The Armour
of Recusants convict shall be taken from them by Warrant from Four
Justices of Peace.”

“If they conceal their Arms or give any Disturbance in the Delivery,
one Justice may commit them for 3 months without Bail.” _3 Jac. cap. 5._


BAIL: When allowed or denied.—A Minister “depraving” the
Common Prayer-Book, as fixed by Statute, was liable, for first offence,
to commitment for 6 months; for second offence, for a year; and for
third offence, for life.

“Being present at any other Form: First Offence, Commitment for 6
Months; Second Offence, 12 Months; Third Offence, for Life.”

Recusants. “Suspected to be a Jesuit, Seminary, or Priest, and being
examined refuseth to answer, may be committed till he answer directly.”

“Impugning the Queen’s Authority in Ecclesiastical causes; perswading
others to it or from coming to church; meeting at Conventicles, under
Colour of Religion, or perswading others to meet there, commitment
till they conform and make an open Submission and Declaration of their
conformity.”

“Absenting from Church on Sunday, and no Distress to be had, Commitment
till Forfeiture is paid.”

“Above the Age of 16, and absenting for a Month: Forfeiture 20_s._ per
Month, or be committed till paid.” _23 Eliz. cap. 1._

Keeping a School Master or “any other Servant in the House, and not
coming to Church for a Month, the Master of such House forfeits £10
_per_ Month.”


BLASPHEMY.—By Statute 9 and 10 _Will._, “Any Person bred
in or professing the Christian Religion, and who shall, by Writing,
Printing, Teaching, or advised Speaking deny any one of the Persons in
the Trinity; or assert that there are more Gods than one; or deny the
Christian Religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of Divine
Authority, shall be disabled to have any office,” and “if convicted
a second time, he shall be disabled to sue in any court, or to be a
Guardian or Executor or Administrator, and be incapable of any Legacy
or Gift, or of any office, and shall be committed for Three Years
without Bail.”


CHURCH WARDENS.—“By Common Law they are a corporation to take
care of the Goods of the Church.”

“An Attorney cannot be made a Church Warden.” _2 Roll. Abr. 272._

“He is to see that the Parishioners come to Church every Sunday and
Holiday, and to present the Names of such who are absent to the
Ordinary, or to levy 12d. for every offence, _per Stat. 5_ and _6 Ed.,
1 Eliz. cap. 1_.”

“Arresting a Minister going to or returning from Church may be punished
by Indictment or bound to Good Behaviour. The Offence is the same
if a Layman be arrested. Quarreling in Church or Church Yard, if a
Layman may be suspended _ab ingressio Ecclesiæ_; if a Clergyman, _ab
officio_. But if a Weapon be drawn with intent to strike, the Party may
be convicted, etc., and Judgment to lose one of his Ears by cutting it
off, and if no Ears, to be marked in the Cheek with the Letter F.” _5_
and _6 Ed. VI. cap. 4_.

_Seats in Churches._ “The Ordinary may place and displace whom he
thinks fit.”

“A Man may have a Seat in a Church appendant to his House, and may
prescribe for it, etc. But one cannot prescribe to a Seat in the _Body
of the Church_ generally.” _Roll. Abr., 2 Pars. 288._

“The case is the same in an _Isle of a Church_.” _2 Cro. 367._

“_Presentments_” are to be made by the Church Wardens, usually twice a
year, but cannot be compelled oftener than once a year, except at the
Visitation of the Bishop.

The Articles commonly exhibited to them to make their Presentments may
be reduced thus, viz.:

_To Things which concern_ the Church, the Parson, the Parishioners.

_And First, to those Things which concern the Church; as_,

Alms, whether a Box for that Purpose; Assessments, whether made for
repairs; Bells and Bell Ropes, if in Repair; Bible, whether in Folio;
Canons, whether a Book thereof; Carpet; Chest, with three Locks; Church
and Chancel in Repair; Creed in fair Letters; Cups and Covers for
Bread, etc.; Cushion for Pulpit; Desk for Reader; Lord’s Prayer in fair
Letters; Marriage, a Table of Degrees; Monuments safely kept; Parsonage
House in Repair; Church Yard well Fenced; Commandments in Fair Letters;
Common Prayer-Book; Communion Table; Flaggon; Font; Grave Stones well
kept; Queen’s Arms, set up; Register Book in Parchment; Supplies,
whether any; Table-cloth; Tombs well kept.

2. _Those Things which concern the Parson_:

Articles 39, if read twice a Year; Baptizing with Godfathers; Canons,
if read once a Year; Catechising Children; Common Prayer, if read,
etc.; Dead, if he bury them; Doctrine, if he preach good; Gown, if he
preach in it; _Homilies_, if read or he preach; _January_ 30th, if
observed; May 29th, if observed; Marrying privately; _November_ 5th,
if observed; Preaching every _Sunday_; Peace Maker; Perambulation;
Sacrament, if celebrated; Sedition, if vented; Sick, if visited; Sober
Life; Surplice, if wear it.

3. _Those Things which concern Parishioners_:

Adulterers, if any; Alms Houses, if abused; Ale Houses, and in Divine
Service; Answering, according to Rubrick; Baptism, neglected by
Parents; Blasphemers; Church, resorting to it; Dead, if brought to be
buried; Drunkards, if any; Fornicators, if any; Legacies, if any given
to pious Uses; Marrying within prohibited Degrees; Marrying without
Banns, Licence, or at unlawful hours; Sacraments received 3 times in a
year of all above 16, whereof Easter to be one time; School, if abused;
Seats, if Parishioners are placed in them without contention; Standing
up; _Sundays_, working therein; Swearers, if any; Women, if come to be
Churched.”

“A Warrant against one for not coming to Church.

“To the Constable, etc.: “Sussex, ss. Whereas Oath hath been made
before me That J. O. of, etc., did not upon the Lord’s Day last past
resort to any Church, Chapel, or other usual Place appointed by Common
Prayers, and there hear Divine Service according to the Form of the
Statute in that case made and provided.

“These are therefore to require you, etc., to bring the said J. O.
before me to answer the Premises. Given, etc.”

“Any Man may build a Church or Chappel, but the Law takes no Notice of
it as such till it is consecrated, and therefore, whether Church or
Chappel, it must be tried by the Certificate of the Bishop.”


CLERGY AND BENEFIT OF CLERGY.—“Before the 20 _Ed. I._, the
Clergy paid no Tenths to the King for their Ecclesiastical Livings, but
to the Pope; but in that King’s reign, their Livings were valued all
over England, and the Tenths paid to the King; and by the Statute 26
_Hen. VIII. cap._ 3, they were annexed to the Crown forever.”

Many of their privileges were “confirmed by _Magna Carta_, viz., _Quod
Ecclesia sit libera_.”

“As to the Benefit of Clergy, it was introduced by the Canon Law,
Exempting their persons from any Temporal Jurisdiction. ‘Tis a
Privilege on purpose to save the Life of a Criminal in certain cases,
if he was a man of learning, as accounted in those Days, for as such he
might be useful to the Publick.—At first it was extended to any person
who could read, he declaring that he had vowed or was resolved to
enter into Orders, and the Reading was to show he was qualified.—But
afterwards the reading without a Vow to enter into Orders was held
good, and now ‘tis become a legal conveyance of Mercy to both Clergy
and Laity.”

“But tho’ the Ordinary usually tenders the Book, the Court are the
proper Judges of the Criminal’s Reading: Therefore, where the Ordinary
answer _Quod legit_, the Court judged otherwise, fined the Ordinary,
and hanged the Person.”

“Now, if a Man cannot read where Clergy is allowable, and ‘tis recorded
by the Court _Quod non legit_: if the Offender be reprieved, the Book
may be tendered to him again because ‘tis _in favorem vitæ_, for which
Reason he may have it under the Gallows.” _Dyer_, 205 _b_.

“In those days, an offender might have his Clergy even for Murder
_toties quoties_, but this was restrained by the statute of 4 _Hen.
VII. cap._ 13, that he should have it but once. And for the better
Observance of that Law, it was then provided That the Criminal should
be marked upon the Brawn of the Left Thumb, that he might be known
again upon a second Offence”—“which was not intended as any Part of
the Judgment”—“It was only a Mark set upon the Offender that he might
not have his Clergy a second Time.”

By the Common Law, “all Offenders, except in Treason against the Person
of the Queen,” should have the Benefit of Clergy “and _toties quoties_;
but by statute of 25 _Ed. III. cap._ 4, it was prohibited in Treasons;
and by that of 4 _Hen. VII._ it is restrained to one Time, so that
now (_i.e._ in 1711) there are but very few cases wherein the Common
Law denies Clergy, but in many ‘tis taken away by several acts of
Parliament.”

Among those from whom it was thus taken away, were Popish Recusants by
act of 35 _Eliz. cap._ 1 and 2, and those who receive Priests being
natives of England, and ordained by the See of Rome by act of 27 _Eliz.
cap._ 2.

“In Anno 2 _Ed. VI._, the Reformers, intending to bring the Worship
of God under set forms, compiled a Book of Common Prayer, which was
established by Act of Parliament in that year.”

“But because several things were contained in that Book which showed
a compliancy to the superstitious Humours of those times, and some
Exceptions being made to it by precise Men at Home and by JOHN
CALVIN abroad, therefore two years afterwards it was reviewed, in
which _Martin Bucer_[31] was consulted and some Alterations were made,
which consisted in adding some Things and leaving out others, as in the
former Edition:


              { A general Confession
              { of sins to the daily service.
              {
              { A general Absolution
              { to the truly Penitent.
              {
              { The Communion to
              { begin with reading the
  The         { Commandments, the
  Additions   { People kneeling.
  were, viz.: {
              { And a Rubrick Concerning
              { the Posture of
              { kneeling, which was
              { afterwards ordered to be
              { left out by the statute of
              { the 1 _Eliz._, but is now
              { again explained as in 2
              { _Ed. VI._

              { The use of Oil in Confirmation
              { and Extream
              { Unction. Prayers for
              { Souls departed.
  Left out:   {
              { And what tended to a
              { Belief of the Corporeal
              { Presence in the Consecration
              { of the Eucharist.”

“Afterwards, _Anno_ 5 _Ed. VI._, a Bill was brought into the House of
Lords to enjoin Conformity to this new Book with these Alterations, by
which all People were to come to those Common Prayers under pain of
Church Censure, which Bill passed into a Law, _Anno_ 5 and 6 _Ed. VI._;
but not being observed during the reign of Queen Mary, it was again
reviewed by a Committee of Learned Men (naming them), and appointed to
be used by every Minister, _Anno_ 1 _Eliz._, with some Additions, which
were then made, viz.:

“Certain Lessons for Every Sunday in the Year, some Alterations in
the Liturgy, Two Sentences added in the Delivery of the Sacrament,
intimating to the Communicants that Christ is not Corporeally present
in the Elements, etc. The Form of making Bishops, Priests, and Deacons
was likewise added.”

“Upon these and other Statutes several Things are to be considered:

1. The Punishment of a Minister for refusing to use or depraving the
Book of Common Prayer.

2. The Punishment of any other Person depraving it, and of such who
shall hear or be present at any other form.

3. Who are bound to use it.

4. Who must provide it.”

The Punishment of the Minister was for 1st offence, loss of a year’s
Livings and six Months’ imprisonment; 2d offence, Deprivation and
Imprisonment for a Year; 3d offence, Imprisonment for Life and
Deprivation.

Any other Person, for 1st Offence, six months’ Imprisonment; 2d
Offence, twelve months; and 3d Offence, for Life. 5 and 6 _Ed. VI.
cap._ 1.

“No Form of Prayer should be used in any Public Place other than
according to the said Book.”

By Statute 3 _Jac. cap._ 4, Constables “must once a Year present to the
Quarter Sessions those who absent themselves for the space of a Month
from Church”; and he must levy certain forfeitures on those who keep
or resort to Bowling, Dancing, Ringing, or any sport whatever on the
Sabbath; and on a Butcher who shall kill or sell Flesh on that day.


RECUSANTS “are those who refuse or deny Supremacy to the Queen
by adhering to the Pope as Supreme Head of the Church.”

“_Anno_ 24 _Hen. VIII. cap._ 12, Parliament prohibited _Appeals_ to
_Rome_, etc.”

25 _Hen. VIII._ “The King appointed that _Convocations_ should be
assembled by his Writ, and that no _Canons_ or _Constitutions_ should
be contrary to his Prerogative or the Laws of the Land.”

“In the same Year an Act passed to restrain the Payment of _First
Fruits_ to the Court of _Rome_.”

“In the next Year, 26 _Hen. VIII._, An Act passed by which the First
Fruits of all Spiritual Livings were given to the King.”

In the same Year, “an Act passed, prohibiting _Investitures_ of
Archbishops or Bishops by the Pope; but that in a Vacancy the King
should send his _Letters-missive_ to a Prior or Convent, Dean or
Chapter, to choose another.”

“Likewise, in the same Year, all _Licenses_ and _Dispensations_ from
the Court of Rome were prohibited, and that all _Religious Houses_
should be under the _Visitation of the King_.”

And by an Act passed the same Year (viz., 1534), The King was “declared
to be _Supream Head of the Church_.”

“But he did not exercise any act of that Power till a year afterwards,
by appointing Sir Thomas _Cromwell_ to be his Vicar General in
Ecclesiastical Matters, and Visitor of all the _Monasteries_ and other
Privileged Places in the Kingdom.”

In 27 _Hen. VIII._ (1536) “all the _lesser Monasteries_, under the
number of _twelve Persons_, and whose Revenues were not of the Value of
£200 _per annum_, were given to the King, his Heirs and Successors; and
a Court was erected on purpose for collecting the Revenues belonging to
these Monasteries, which was called _The Court of Augmentation of the
King’s Revenue_, who had full power to dispose of those Lands for the
Service of the King.”

The officers of this Court had, among its other duties, that of
inquiring “into the Number of _Religious_ in the House, and what Lives
they led; how many would go into other Religious Houses, and how many
into the _World_, as they called it.”

The whole of the goods thus confiscated were valued at £100,000, and
the rents of these small Monasteries came to £32,000 _per annum_.

“This occasioned great Discontents amongst the people,” to appease
which the King sold some of the Lands “to the Gentry” at low Rates,
“obliging them to keep up Hospitality.”

“This pleased both them and the ordinary Sort of People for a little
time; and, to satisfy others,” the King “continued or gave back
thirty-one Houses. But these, about two Years afterwards, fell under
the Common Fate of the great Monasteries, and were all suppressed with
them.”

“But notwithstanding he gave back some of these Houses, yet the People
were still discontented, and openly rebelled in _Lincolnshire_, which
was quieted by a Pardon: There was another Rebellion in _Yorkshire_ and
the Northern Counties, which ended also in a Pardon, only some of the
chief of the Rebels were executed for this last Rebellion.”

Most of the Monasteries, “seeing their Dissolution drawing near,
made voluntary Surrenders of their Houses in the 29th _year of Hen.
VIII._, in Hopes by this means to obtain Favor of the King; and after
the Rebellion, the rest of the Abbots, both great and small, did
the like; for some of them had encouraged the Rebels, others were
convicted by the Visitors of great Disorders, and most of them had
secured all the Plate, Jewels and Furniture belonging to their Houses,
to make Provision for them and Relations and then surrendered their
Monasteries.”

“Afterwards, _Anno_ 31 _Hen. VIII._, a Bill was brought into the House
of Peers to confirm these surrenders. There were 18 Abbots[32] present
at the first Reading, 20 at the second, and 17 at the third. It soon
passed the Commons and the Royal Assent; and by this Act all the
Houses, etc., were confirmed to the King.”

“‘Tis true, the Hospitallers, Colleges and Chanteries, etc., were not
yet dissolved.... These had large endowments to support themselves and
to entertain Pilgrims,” etc.

“But notwithstanding the King was declared to be the Supreme Head
of the Church, yet these Hospitallers would not submit,” etc., “and
therefore, Anno 32 _Hen. VIII. cap._ 24, The Parliament gave their
lands to the King and dissolved their Corporation.”

“The Colleges and Chanteries still remained; but the Doctrine of
Purgatory being then grown out of Belief[33] and some of those
Fraternities having resigned in the same manner as the Monasteries,
the Endowments of the rest were then thought to be for no purpose, and
therefore, _Anno_ 37 _Hen. VIII._, all these Colleges, Free Chapels,
Chanteries, etc., were given to the King by Act of Parliament.”

“Thus in the Compass of a few years, the Power and Authority of the See
of _Rome_ was suppressed in this Kingdom. And because frequent Attempts
have been made to revive it, therefore, in succeeding Times, several
Laws have been made to keep them in subjection.”

Among those were the following: Recusant Convict above 16 must go
to his place of Abode and not remove 5 miles without license or
otherwise abjure the Realm. Not departing within the time limited by
the Justices, or returning without license from the Queen, was felony
without Benefit of Clergy. 35 _Eliz. cap._ 2.

“To absolve or to be absolved by Bulls from the Bishop of Rome was High
Treason.” 13 _Eliz. cap._ 2.

“Bringing an _Agnus Dei_ hither, or offering it to any Person to be
used, both he and the Receiver incurs a _Premunire_.[34] 13 _Eliz.
cap._ 2. All Armour shall be taken from Recusants by order of four
Justices.” 7 _Jac. cap._ 6.

Bringing over Beads or offering them to any person, both he and the
Receiver incur a Premunire. 13 _Eliz. cap._ 2.

“Two Justices may search Houses for Books and Relicks, and burn them.”
3 _Jac. cap._ 5.

“Every Popish Recusant must be buried in Church or Church yard
according to the Ecclesiastical Laws, or his Executor or Administrator
forfeits £20.” 3 _Jac. cap._ 5.

“Children of Recusants must be baptized by a lawful Minister, or the
Parent forfeits £100.” 3 _Jac. cap._ 5.

“Popish Recusant, if he sue any person, the Defendant may plead it in
Disability.”

He “shall not be Executor, Administrator, or Guardian.” 3 _Jac. cap._ 5.

A married woman, a Popish Recusant convict, “not conforming within 3
months after conviction, may be committed by two Justices until she
conform, unless her Husband will pay to the King 10 shillings per month
or a third part of his Lands.” 7 _Jac. cap._ 6.

“Popish Recusant marrying otherwise than according to the Forms of the
Church of England shall forfeit £100. If a woman, not have her Dower or
Jointure or Widow’s Estate.” 3 _Jac. cap._ 5.

“Saying Mass forfeits 200 marks, hearing it 100 Marks.”

“Jesuits, Seminary Priests, etc., and other Ecclesiastical Persons
born within the Queen’s Dominions, coming in or remaining in the said
Dominions, is guilty of Treason.” 27 _Eliz. cap._ 2.

“Any knowing a Jesuit or Priest to be here and not within 12 days
afterwards discovering him to a Justice of Peace shall be committed and
fined.” 27 _Eliz. cap._ 2.

“Per Stat. 3 _Jac. cap._ 4, to move any one to promise Obedience to the
See of Rome or other Prince is High Treason in the Mover and he that
promiseth Obedience.”

“Recusant Convict must not practice the Art of Apothecary, Civil Law,
Common Law, Physick, or be an officer in any Court or amongst Soldiers,
or in a Castle, Fortress or Ship.” 3 _Jac. cap._ 5.

“Sending Persons beyond Sea to be instructed in Popish Religion
forfeits £100, and the Persons sent are incapable to take any
Inheritance.” 1 _Jac. cap._ 4.

“Children shall not be sent beyond Sea without License from the Queen
or six of her Privy Council, whereof the Principal Secretary of State
to be one.”

“Notwithstanding all these Laws, the Parliament (11 and 12 _Will._) was
of Opinion that Popery increased, and therefore to prevent its growth
a Law was made That if any person should take one or more _Popish
Bishop_, _Jesuit_ or _Priest_, and prosecute him till he is convicted
of _saying Mass_ or exercising any other part of the Office or Function
of a _Popish Bishop_ or _Priest_,” he shall have a reward of £100.

“If any Popish Bishop, Priest or Jesuit, shall be convicted of saying
Mass, etc., or any Papist shall Keep School, etc., he shall be adjudged
to perpetual Imprisonment in such place where the Queen by Advice of
her Council shall think fit.”

“Every Papist, after the 10th of April, 1700, is made incapable of
purchasing Lands, etc., either in his own Name or the name of other
Person, to his use.”


THE SABBATH.—“Shoemaker putting Boots or Shoes to sale
forfeits 3_s._ 4_d._ and the goods.” 1 _Jac. I. cap._ 11.

“Carriers, Drivers, Waggoners, travelling on that day forfeit 20_s._” 3
_Car. I. cap._ 1.

“Butchers killing or selling, or causing to be killed or sold or privy
or consenting to kill or sell Meat on that day, forfeit 6_s._ 8_d._” 3
_Car. I. cap._ 1.

By 29 _Car. II. cap._ 7 “Public and private Duties of Piety are
enjoined, all worldly business is prohibited, and all above the Age of
14 forfeit 5_s._”

“Drovers or their servants coming to their Inns on that day forfeit
20_s._”

“If the Offender is not able to pay the Forfeiture, he shall be put in
the Stocks for two Hours.”

“Meeting together out of their own Parish for any Sports or Pastimes,
forfeit 3_s._ 4_d._” 1 _Car. I. cap._ 1.


SACRAMENT.—“Depraving or doing any Thing in contempt of the
Sacrament must be committed.” 1 _Ed. VI. cap._ 1, 1 _Eliz._ 2, 3 _Jac._
4.


SCHOOLMASTER.—“Not coming to church or not allowed by the
Bishop of the Diocese, forever disabled to teach Youth, and shall be
committed for a year without bail.” 23 _Eliz. cap._ 1.


TYTHES.—“A canon was made _Anno_ 1585 for payment of Tythes
as founded on the Law of God and the ancient Custom of the Church.”

“When Glanville wrote (about 1660), a Freeholder was allowed to make a
Will, so as he gave the best Thing he had to the _Lord Paramount_, and
the next best to the _Church_.”

“They are said to be Ecclesiastical Inheritances collateral to the
Estate of the Land, out of which they arise, and are of their own
Nature due only to Spiritual Persons.”

Certain Lands were, however, exempt. “Most orders of Monks were first
exempted; but in time this was restrained to three orders—Cistertians,
Hospitallers, Templars.”


DISSENTERS.—After the various laws against “Popish
Recusants,” as they were called, had had the effect of rendering
somewhat firm the establishment of the English Protestant Church, and
about the time of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a new trouble arose
from those who dissented from that church, in its forms and in some of
its principles, and government then began to interfere with them.

In the 1st Year of the reign of William and Mary these “Dissenters”
were exempted from the statutes of 1 _Eliz. cap._ 2, 23 _Eliz. cap._
1, 3 _Jac. cap._ 4, above mentioned. “But they must not assemble in
Places with Doors locked, barred, or bolted, nor until the place is
certified to the Bishop of the Diocese or to the Arch Deacon or to the
Justices at the Quarter Sessions, and registered there and they have a
certificate thereof.”

Their Preachers must declare their Approbation, and subscribe the
“Articles of Religion,” except the 20th, 34th, 35th, and 36th articles,
and must take the oaths and subscribe the Declaration prescribed Dy
certain statutes, and that at the Quarter Sessions where they live.

So that, from the reign of Elizabeth, through the reign of James
I., and until the the troubles which ended in the civil war and the
Protectorate of Cromwell, Dissenters were subject to many of the
restrictions which had been imposed on the Roman Catholics; and even
when those troubles finally ended in the flight of James II., and the
elevation of William and Mary to the throne, freedom of religion was
not allowed to the Dissenters, but they were permitted to enjoy their
dissent from the forms and ceremonies of the Church of England only by
declaring their assent to many of its most important tenets of faith or
doctrine.

The oaths of allegiance and supremacy enjoined by the statutes of _1
Eliz._ and _3 Jac._ were abrogated by the Statute of _1 Will., and Mar.
cap. 8_, and the following substituted:

“I, A. B., do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and
bear true allegiance,” etc.

“I, A. B., do swear that I do from my Heart abhor, detest and abjure
as Impious and Heretical, that damnable Doctrine and Position that
Princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope or any authority of the
See of Rome may be deposed by their subjects or any other whatsoever;
and I do declare that no Foreign Prince, Person, Prelate, State or
Potentate, hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction, Power, Superiority,
Pre-eminence or Authority, Ecclesiastical or Spiritual, within the
Realm. So help me God.”




JOSEPH IN EGYPT A TYPE OF CHRIST.


LOOK down, O Lord, holy Father, from thy sanctuary, and from thy high
and heavenly dwelling, and behold this all-holy Victim, which thy great
High-priest, thy holy Child Jesus, offers thee for the sins of his
brethren; and have mercy on the multitude of our iniquities. Lo! the
voice of the blood of Jesus our Brother cries to thee from the cross.
For what is it, O Lord, that hangs on the cross? Hangs, I say; for past
things are as present with thee. Own it, O Father! It is the coat of
thy Joseph, thy Son; an evil wild beast hath devoured him, and hath
trampled on his garment in its fury, spoiling all the beauty of this
his remanent corpse, and, lo! five mournful gaping wounds are left in
it. This is the garment which thy innocent holy Child Jesus, for the
sins of his brethren, has left in the hands of the Egyptian harlot,
thinking the loss of his robe a better thing than the loss of purity;
and choosing rather to be despoiled of his coat of flesh and go down to
the prison of death than to yield to the voice of the seductress for
all the glory of the world.—_S. Anselm._




MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.




CHAPTER I.

IN WHICH WE ARE MADE ACQUAINTED WITH MADAME AGNES.


ABOUT twenty years ago, I lived in a town in France which I may be
allowed to call Philopolis. It need not be sought on the map: it will
not be found there, at least under the name I think it proper to call
it by, in order to avoid all appearance of indiscretion. The story I am
about to relate is really a true one.

I had just finished my school-days, and, having carefully thought over
the different professions which seemed to accord with my tastes, I
felt—and it may be imagined how bitterly—that not one of them was
within my means. To embrace any of them would have required a larger
sum than I had the least hope of. Under such unfavorable circumstances,
I became a tutor in a Lycée.

God preserve my very enemies, if I have any, from so trying an
occupation! At the end of three months, worn out with my labors, and
overwhelmed with humiliations and sadness, I had fallen into such a
state of discouragement, not to say of despair, that I regarded myself
as the most unfortunate of men.

To those who wish to be distinguished from the crowd, there is
something peculiarly attractive in looking upon themselves as more
unhappy than common mortals. I gave myself up to this notion, at first
through vanity. But this kind of superiority is by no means cheering, I
assure you, so I soon sought consolation. Thank God, I had not far to
go. My old friend, Mme. Agnes, was at hand. I sought refuge with her. I
speak as if she were advanced in years, but it must be acknowledged she
would have seemed a mere child to Methuselah. She was thirty-six years
of age; but I was only eighteen, and thought her old.

Mme. Agnes lived on a broad and pleasant quay that gently sloped
towards a noble river. Not fifty steps from the house rolled the swift
current of the Loire. Beyond was an extensive plain from which rose
innumerable spires.

When I arrived, I found my friend in her usual seat near the window.
She was in a large arm-chair, with a table before her, on which were
all the materials necessary for a painter of miniatures. Mme. Agnes was
renowned in Philopolis as an artist. Her uncommon talent enabled her to
support her mother and young sister in a comfortable manner. Alas! poor
lady, she had been a paralytic for ten years.

According to her custom, she laid aside her work when I entered, and
welcomed me with a smile. But this expression of pleasure gave place to
one of motherly anxiety when she observed the sad face I wore.

“What is the matter, my poor child?” said she. “You have grown
frightfully thin.”

“I cannot say I am ill,” I replied, “but I am down-hearted, and have
so much reason to be, that things cannot continue long in this way: I
should die.”

Thus saying, I leaned my head against Mme. Agnes’ chair, like a great
child as I was, and cried heartily. I had so long restrained my
tears!...

Mme. Agnes softly placed her hand on my head, and consoled me with a
kindness truly maternal. When my explosion of grief had passed away,
she made me give her an account of my troubles. I told her, perhaps for
the tenth time, what an inclination I had for a literary life, only
I was absolutely too poor to embrace it. I added that my duties as a
tutor were repugnant; the pupils were insolent and unfeeling; in short,
I concealed nothing that afflicted me. At length I ended with these
words:

“You now see, Mme. Agnes, that I could not be more wretched than I am.
This must end. Give me, I beg, some of the good advice I have so many
times received from you. Tell me what I must do.”

“Have patience, my child, and wait till God makes the way smoother.”

“Wait! when one suffers as I do?... When I abhor my position?... When
I feel how happy I could be elsewhere!... Ah! Mme. Agnes, if you knew
what I have to endure—if you only comprehended my complete despair!”

“Poor child, your trials are bitter, I acknowledge; but you are young,
capable, and industrious, and will get a better position by-and-by.”

“To be forced to endure it only a year would be beyond my strength.
Neither my disposition, nor tastes, nor health could stand what I have
to bear.”

“How many others are in a similar position, but without even the hope
you have of soon exchanging an employment without results—detestable,
if you like—for one more congenial! The task they are pursuing must be
that of their whole lives. They know it, and resign themselves to it.
You, who have only to bear your trials for a certain time, must imitate
their example. Come, come, my friend, every one has his cross here
below. Let us bear ours cheerfully, and it will soon seem light.”

These consoling words were uttered in a sympathetic tone, as if they
came from the heart. I was touched. I began to look at Mme. Agnes
more attentively than ever before, and the thought occurred to me
like a revelation: “How much this woman must have suffered, and how
instructive would be the account of her life!”

“Mme. Agnes,” said I, “your advice is excellent, but example would
produce a still greater impression on me. I beg you to relate the
history of your life. You have evidently gone through much suffering,
and with great patience, I am confident. I will endeavor to conform to
your example.”

“You require a sad task of me,” she replied; “but no matter, I will
gratify you. My story—and who of us has not one?—will prove useful
to you, I think. But you must not be so ready to declare me a saint.
I never was one, as you will soon see. Yes, I have suffered, as you
suppose—greatly suffered, and have learned that the best means of
mitigating our sufferings is to submit to God’s will, and to cherish
it. The lesson to be derived from my history will be of use to you, I
trust, and therefore I yield to your request.

“One word more before commencing. I would observe that the account of
my own life is closely interwoven with the lives of several persons
whom you will not reproach me for making you acquainted with. By
a concurrence of circumstances which would appear to me almost
inexplicable did I not behold the hand of God therein, my life for
many years was identified, so to speak, with theirs. I witnessed the
struggles these loved ones had to make; I shared their very thoughts;
I sympathized in their sorrows, as they in mine; and I also had the
happiness of participating in their joys.

“When, therefore, I invoke these remembrances you wish me to recall, I
find all along the pathway of my life these friends now gone. I could
not relate my own history without relating theirs. But everything
encourages me to go on. The task is pleasant. It is sweet to speak of
those we have loved! The faithful picture I am going to draw of their
lives will be as full of instruction to you, my friend, as that of my
own.”




CHAPTER II.

PROVIDENCE SENDS A LODGER.


To begin: my father, a worthy man and a sincere Christian, was a _Chef
de Division_ at the Préfecture. A sudden illness bereft me of his care
when I was barely fifteen years old. My mother, my young sister, and
myself were left in quite limited circumstances, being wholly dependent
on the rent of this small house, which had belonged to the family many
years. Some time after, a pension of five hundred francs was added to
our income by the government which my father had faithfully served.
Our position was very sad, and the more so because, during my father’s
life, we had everything in abundance. But our misfortunes offered us
a thousand inducements to draw nearer to God. It is only ill-balanced
souls—at once proud and weak—that disregard him who chastises them.
Poor souls! they are doubly to be pitied, for they suffer and do not
have recourse to him who alone can console them! As for us, God granted
us the grace to recognize his agency. He sustained us, and we humbly
submitted to his divine decrees. Misfortune only rendered us the more
pious.

I had had a special taste for painting from my childhood, but still
lacked proficiency, notwithstanding the lessons I had taken. I now set
to work with ardor, though I had no master. At the end of a year I
had made so much progress that an old teacher of mine, the principal
of a boarding-school—an excellent person, who took an interest in
our affairs—received me as teacher of drawing in her establishment.
She also made me give English lessons to beginners. This additional
resource restored ease in a measure to our household. Nevertheless, we
were obliged to practise the strictest economy. To enable us to get on
swimmingly, as my mother said with a smile, we at last resolved to rent
the spacious ready-furnished apartments on the ground floor. The first
story was occupied by a lodger, who was, at the same time, a friend of
ours. As for us, we lived in the second story.

Things went on thus for some years. I was nearly twenty, when one day a
young man, whom neither my mother nor myself knew, called to say he had
heard our furnished rooms were vacant, and that he would like to occupy
them. My mother was greatly pleased with his frank, open manner. She
is very social, you know, and made the stranger sit down. They entered
into conversation, and I sat listening to them.

“Am I mistaken, monsieur?” said my mother, after a while; “it seems as
if I have already met you somewhere.”

“Yes, madame,” replied the young man, “I have had the honor of seeing
you more than once.”

“But where?”

“At M. Comte, the apothecary’s. I was the head clerk there.”

“That is it!... I remember now.... And you have left him?”

“Under the most singular circumstances. It seems I am a writer without
being aware of it.”

“How so?”

“You know the Philopolis _Catholic Journal_?”

“Certainly: an excellent paper. It is a great pity it is not so
successful as it deserves to be. But between us, it is partly its
own fault: it lacks interest and ability. It has only one able
contributor—Victor Barnier, but he does not write often enough.”

“The poor fellow cannot help it. His duties at the apothecary’s shop
have naturally superseded his taste for journalism.” ...

“What! are you Victor Barnier?”

“Yes, madame.”

“Ah! well, young man, you do not lack talent.”

“Others have said the same, madame. I hope you are not all mistaken,
especially for the sake of the _Catholic Journal_, of which I have
been appointed the principal editor. I refused the post at first,
the responsibility seemed so great. They insisted. The position
surpassed my wishes. Without any one’s knowing it, I had for many
years ardently longed to be a writer. But like so many others, the
limited circumstances of my family prevented it. Now, thanks to this
unexpected offer, the opportunity of following my natural inclinations
is so tempting that I cannot resist it. My good mother tells me it is a
perilous career, and that I shall meet with more trouble than success.
No matter! I am so fond of literary pursuits that, were they to afford
me only one day of happiness in my life, I should still cling to them.
And then, I say it without boasting, I love above all things the cause
I am to defend, and hope through divine assistance to become its able
champion. I have, therefore, left M. Comte’s, though not without some
regret. I enter upon my duties to-morrow, and—am in want of lodgings.”

“Oh! well, that is all settled. You shall come here and be well taken
care of.”

After this, Victor left us. I have only given you the substance of the
conversation in which I more than once took part. I must confess Victor
won my esteem and good-will at this first interview. He merited them.
He was at once an excellent and a talented man—that was to be seen at
the first glance. The better he was known, the more evident it became
that his outward appearance, pleasing as it was, was not deceptive.
He was then twenty-five years old, but, though young, he had had many
trials, I assure you—trials similar to yours, my young friend, but
much more severe.




CHAPTER III.

TRUE LOVE—HAPPY UNION.


The following day Victor took up his abode with us. Before a fortnight
had elapsed, my mother was enchanted with her new lodger. She sounded
his praises from morning till night. This may perhaps astonish you,
but you must know that she and I were always in the habit of telling
each other our very thoughts. This reciprocal confidence was so perfect
that it might be truly said we concealed nothing from each other.

And I must confess Victor showed himself every day more worthy of my
mother’s admiration. He was the most modest, amiable, industrious, and
orderly of young men—a genuine model for Christian men of letters. He
rose every morning at an early hour, and worked in his room till about
eight o’clock. Then, unless his occupations were too pressing, he heard
Mass at a neighboring church. After that, he went to the _Journal_
office, where he remained till noon; then he returned to breakfast. He
left again at one, came back at three, worked till dinnertime, then
studied till ten at night, and often later.

“Why do you work so hard?” said my mother to him one day. “The life
of a journalist, according to you, is that of a galley-slave. I never
should have thought an editor had so hard a time. You have all the four
large pages of the _Journal_ to write yourself, then, M. Victor?”

“By no means, dear madame. I write the leading article every day, and
in a short time, too, for I have the peculiarity of not writing well
when I write slowly. This done, I look over the other articles for the
paper. As I am responsible for them, I do not accept them till they are
carefully examined. This is my whole task—apparently an easy one, but
tedious and difficult in reality.”

“Yes; I see you have a great deal to do at the office; but why do you
continue to work at home?”

“Two motives oblige me to study—to increase my knowledge, and prevent
ennui. Having risen from a mere apothecary’s clerk to be the chief
editor of an important journal, I have to apply myself to keep apace
with my new profession. A journalist must be imprudent or dishonest who
discusses any subject on which he has not sufficient information. And
think of the multitude of questions connected with politics, political
economy, legislation, literature, and religion itself which I have in
turn to treat of! In the Paris newspapers, each editor writes on the
subjects he understands the best. The work is thus divided, to the
great advantage of the paper and its editors. Here, I alone am often
responsible for everything. Nevertheless, the care of my health, as
well as my indolence, would induce me to rest a few hours a day; but
where shall I pass them?—At the café? I go there sometimes to extend
my knowledge of human nature; but one cannot go there much without
being in danger of contracting injurious habits.—With my friends? I
have none, and am in no hurry to make any. The choice of a friend is
such a serious thing! One cannot be too cautious about it.”

“Come and see us,” said my mother, with her habitual cordiality. “When
you have nowhere else to go, and your mind is weary, come up and pass
an hour in the evening with your neighbors.”

Victor came, at first occasionally, then every day. Only a few weeks
elapsed before I felt that I loved him. His companionship was so
delightful; he had so much delicacy in little things; he was so frank,
so devoted to all that is beautiful and good! Did he love me in return?
No one could have told, for he was as timid as a young girl.

But this timidity was surmounted when my feast-day arrived. He came in
blushing with extreme embarrassment—poor dear friend! I can still see
him—holding a bouquet in his left hand, which he concealed behind him,
while with the other he presented my mother with an open paper. She
took it, glanced at it, and, after reading a few words, said:

“But this is not addressed to me. Here, Agnes, these stanzas are for
you, my child! And I see a bouquet!”

Victor presented it to me in an agitated manner. I myself was so
confused that I longed to run away to hide my embarrassment. I
concealed it as well as I could behind the sheet on which the stanzas
were written, and read them in a low tone. They gracefully thanked
my mother for all her kindness to him, and ended with some wishes
for me—wishes that were ardent and touching. In a tremulous tone I
expressed my gratitude with a sincerity which was quite natural. Our
embarrassment was not of long continuance. It soon passed off, and we
spent the evening in delightful conversation. One would have thought we
had always lived together, and formed but one family.

The next morning, when I returned from giving my lessons, what was my
astonishment to find Victor with my mother!

“Here she is to decide the question,” exclaimed the latter joyfully.
“M. Victor loves you, and wishes to know if you will be his wife.”

“Mother,” I replied, “must I be separated from you?”

“Less than ever,” cried Victor.

My delightful dream was realized! I was to be united to the man I loved
with all my heart—whom I esteemed without any alloy! And this without
being obliged to separate from her of whom I was the sole reliance.

I extended my hand to Victor, and threw myself into my mother’s arms,
thanking her as well as I could, but in accents broken by tears....

A month after, we were married, and happy—as happy, I believe, as
people can be here below.




CHAPTER IV.

SAD PRESENTIMENTS.


Thenceforth began a life so sweet that I am unable to describe it.
Victor and I lived in the most delightful harmony. Our love for each
other increased daily. We had but one heart and one soul. Our very
tastes accorded.

Oh! how charming and happy is the wedded life of two Christian souls!
What mutual sympathy! How they divine each other’s thoughts! How
readily they make the concessions at times so necessary, for the best
matched people in this world do not always agree! A life more simple
than ours cannot be imagined, and yet it was so sweet!

I worked beside Victor in the morning and during a part of the
afternoon, looking at him from time to time, saying a few words, or
listening as he read what he had just composed. He said he first tried
the effect of his writings on me. How happy I was when he thus gave me
the first taste of one of his spirited articles, in which he defended
his principles with an ardor of conviction and a vigor of style which
impressed even those who were sceptical.

Before dinner we went to walk together. I persuaded Victor to devote
a part of each day to physical exercise as well as mental repose. Our
conversation always gave a fresh charm to these walks. And yet we did
not talk much, but we infused our whole souls into a word or two, or a
smile. How often I dreamed of heaven during those delicious hours! It
is thus, I said to myself, the angels above hold communion with each
other. They have no need of words to make themselves understood.

Among the pleasant features of that period, I must not forget that
of Victor’s success. Before he was appointed editor, the poor paper
vegetated. There were but few subscribers. No one spoke of the obscure
sheet which timidly defended sound principles and true doctrines.
What a sad figure it made in the presence of its contemporary, _The
Independent_—a shameless, arrogant journal which boasted of despising
all religious belief, and scoffed at the honest people foolish enough
to read it!

Victor had scarcely been chief editor of this despised paper three
months before there was a decided change. Every day added to the list
of subscribers. The _Catholic Journal_ was spoken of on all sides.
The sceptical, even, discussed it. As to _The Independent_, it was
forced to descend into the arena. In spite of itself, it had to engage
in conflict against an adversary as skilled in irony as in logic. I
acknowledge I was proud of Victor’s success, and, what was more, it
made me happy. For a long time, young as I was, I had groaned at seeing
Catholic interests so poorly defended. They were now as ably sustained
as I could wish, and by the man whom I loved. All my wishes were
surpassed!

Nevertheless, there is no perfect happiness in this world. Even those
blissful years were not exempt from sorrow. God granted me twice, with
an interval of two years, the long-wished-for joy of being a mother,
but each time Providence only allowed its continuance a few months.
My first child, a boy, died at the end of six months. The second, a
daughter, was taken from me before it was a year old. You are young, my
friend and cannot understand how afflicting such losses are. A mother’s
heart, I assure you, is broken when she sees her child taken from her,
however young it may be. My husband himself was greatly distressed when
our little boy was carried off after an illness of only a few hours.
But his grief was still more profound when our little girl died. Dear
child! though only nine months old, her face was full of intelligence,
her eyes were expressive, and she had a wonderful way of making herself
understood. She passed quietly away, softly moaning, and gazing at us
with affection. Her father held her in his arms the whole time of her
long agony. It seemed as if he thus hoped to retain her. She, too,
was sad, I am sure. She seemed to know we were in grief, and to leave
us with regret. Her sweet face only resumed its joyful expression
after her soul had taken flight for heaven; then a celestial happiness
beamed from her features consecrated by death. Victor stood gazing at
her a long time as she lay on the bed with a crucifix in her innocent
hands. His lips murmured a prayer in a low tone. It seemed to me he
was addressing our angel child—begging her to pray that God would
speedily call him to dwell for ever with her in his blissful presence.
The thought made me shudder. It seemed as if I had at that moment an
interior revelation. I knew that was Victor’s prayer, and I had a
presentiment it would be heard.

From that day, though we had a thousand reasons to consider ourselves
happy, we were no longer light-hearted as we once had been. There
was a something that weighed on our minds and kept us anxious, and
empoisoned all our joys. Life seemed unsatisfactory, and we drew nearer
to God. We were constantly speaking of him and the angel who had flown
from us, and we often approached the sacraments together. It was thus
that God was secretly preparing Victor to return to him, and me to
endure so terrible a blow.




CHAPTER V.

AN UNEXPECTED ASSAULT.


No man was ever more fond of domestic life than Victor. The happiest
hours of the day were those we all spent together—he, my mother, my
young sister, and myself—occupied in some useful work, but often
stopping to exchange a few words. It was with regret Victor sometimes
left us at such hours to mingle with the world. He refused all
invitations to dinners, soirées, and balls as often as possible, but
he could not always do so. He had taken the first place—a place quite
exceptional—in local journalism, and it was impossible for him to
decline all the advances made him. Besides, he wished, as was natural
to one of his profession, to ascertain for himself public opinion on
the question of the day. I cannot tell you how dull the evenings seemed
when he was away, or how anxious I was till he returned. There was
something dreadful about his profession. In vain he resolved to avoid
personalities; they were often discovered when none had been intended.
If he was fortunately able to keep within the limits he had marked out
for himself, and confined himself to the defence of justice, morality,
and religion, he found these three great causes had furious opponents.
Whoever defended them incurred the ardent ill-will of the enemies of
all good. This is what happened to Victor. Their secret hatred burst
forth on an occasion of but little importance.

A renowned preacher of the South, worthy in every respect of his
reputation, came to preach at the cathedral during Advent. This man,
as eloquent as he was good, attacked the vices of the day with all the
ardor of an apostle. Many of the young men of the place who went to
hear him were infuriated at the boldness of his zeal. Some supposed
themselves to be meant in the portraits he drew of vicious men in
a manner so forcible and with such striking imagery as to make his
hearers tremble. At the close of one of these sermons, there was some
disturbance in the body of the church. Threats were uttered aloud, and
women treated with insult. Victor, indignant at such conduct, had the
courage to rebuke the corrupt young men of the place. Never had he
been more happily inspired, and never had he produced such an effect.
The article was everywhere read. It gave offence, and we awaited the
consequences.

The next day Victor received an invitation to a large ball given by a
wealthy banker. The invitation surprised him, for he knew the banker
was a liberal with but little sympathy for the priesthood and its
defenders. I begged Victor to decline the invitation politely. I feared
it was only a pretext to offer him some affront. He gently reassured me
by saying that, though M. Beauvais was a liberal, he had the reputation
of being an honorable man. “I am glad,” added he, “to become acquainted
with those who frequent the banker’s salon. I shall probably find more
than one Christian among them,” as, in fact, often happened.

When the night came, Victor went away, leaving me quite uneasy, in
spite of all his efforts to reassure me. I made him promise to return
at an early hour. I was beginning to be anxious towards eleven, when
all at once there was a sound of hasty footsteps. I sprang to the
door—I opened it—it was he. As soon as he entered the room, I noticed
he was extremely pale. He vainly endeavored to appear calm, but could
not conceal the agitation that overpowered him.

“Victor,” I cried, “something has happened!”

“Yes, but not much. Somebody tried to frighten me.”

“Are you wounded?”

“No, they did not wish to take my life.”

“I conjure you to tell me frankly what has happened.”

“Well, here are the facts: I had left M. Beauvais’ house, where I was
politely received, and had gone two streets, when I observed three men
walking swiftly after me on the Place. They seemed well dressed, which
removed my suspicions. I turned into the little Rue St. Augustine. It
is dimly lighted in the evening and almost always deserted.”

“How imprudent!”

“That is true. I did wrong. I had scarcely gone a hundred yards, before
the three men overtook me.”

“‘Stop!’ exclaimed one of them. I stopped to ascertain what they
wished. The same voice continued in these terms: ‘How much do those
_calotins_ give you to defend them?’

“‘I have only one word to say in reply to your insulting question—I
defend my own principles, above all because I cherish them in the
depths of my soul.’ So saying, I sought to keep on my way.

“One of them detained me. ‘Before going any further,’ said he who
seemed to be the spokesman, ‘swear never to abuse the young men of this
town again!’

“‘I attack no one individually,’ I replied. ‘Am I forbidden to defend
my own cause because it is not yours?—But this is no time or place for
such an interview. It should be at my office and by daylight. Come to
see me to-morrow, and I will answer your questions.’

“The three men were so wrapped up in their bernouses and large
comforters that I could not tell who they were. I thought it time to
disengage myself from the grasp of the one that held me. I made a
violent effort. In the struggle, my cloak fell off. As I stooped to
pick it up, I received several blows. I then called for assistance.
Several windows in the neighborhood opened. The three cowards
disappeared. As you see, I am neither killed nor wounded. On the whole,
no great harm has been done.”

My whole frame trembled during this account. When it was ended, I
became somewhat calmer, and, passionately throwing my arms around
Victor, I begged him to promise me solemnly never to go out again in
the evening. He did so willingly.




CHAPTER VI.

VICTOR AT THE POINT OF DEATH.


The next morning Victor told me he did not feel any effect from what
had occurred. He therefore went to the office as usual, and wrote a
spirited article, in which he made known and energetically stigmatized
the base proceedings of those who had attacked him. The article
attracted particular attention, and gave us the pleasant satisfaction
of realizing to what a degree Victor had won the good-will of upright
men. On all sides they came that very day to express their indignation
at the violence used against him....

We should neither overestimate nor decry human nature. There are
certainly a multitude of base men with low natures and vile instincts.
But even among those who are the farthest from the truth there are some
souls that have preserved a certain uprightness and hearts of a certain
elevation for whom we cannot help feeling mingled admiration and pity.

That same evening Victor complained of not being well, but kept
saying it was nothing serious. Without asking his consent, I sent
for a physician, who examined him. Victor was forced to acknowledge
he had been chilled the night before. He was very warm when he left
M. Beauvais’ house, and, to counteract the effect of the keen north
wind, he started off swiftly, and was in a complete perspiration when
overtaken by his assailants. Stopped in the middle of the street, he
was exposed to the cold night air, which was of course injurious. What
was still worse, his cloak fell off, and it was several minutes before
he recovered it.

I was seized with terror at hearing these details. It seemed as if my
poor husband had just pronounced his own death-warrant. At the same
time a horrible feeling sprang up in my heart, such as I had never
experienced before. I was frantic with rage and hatred against those
who were the cause of this fatal chill. I begged, I implored Victor and
the physician to promise to take immediate steps for their discovery,
that no time might be lost in bringing them to justice in order to
receive the penalty they deserved.

“Agnes,” said Victor mildly—“Agnes, your affection for me misleads
you. I no longer recognize my good Agnes.”

But I gave no heed to what he said, and was only diverted from my
hatred by the care I was obliged to bestow on him. In twenty-four
hours my poor husband’s illness had increased to such a degree that
I lost all hope. Poor Victor! he suffered terribly, and I added to
his sufferings instead of alleviating them! I loved him too much, or
rather with too human an affection. I afflicted him with my alternate
outbursts of despair and anger.

“Live without you!” I would exclaim—“that is impossible! Oh! the
monsters who have killed you, if they could only die in your stead! But
they shall be punished and held up to infamy as they deserve! If there
is no one else in the world to ferret them out, I will do it myself!”

These fits of excitement caused Victor so much sorrow that the very
remembrance of them fills me with the keenest remorse—a remorse I have
reason to feel. His confessor, the physician, my mother, and he himself
tried in vain to soothe me. One told me how far from Christian my
conduct was, and another that I deprived my husband of what he needed
the most—repose. I would not listen to them. I was beside myself.

One evening I was sitting alone beside the bed of my poor sick one, and
was abandoning myself anew to my unreasonable anger, when Victor took
my hand in his, and said, in a tone that went to my very heart:

“Agnes, I feel very weak. Perhaps I have not long to live. I beg
you—I conjure you—to spare me the cruel sorrow of having my last
hours embittered by a want of resignation I was far from expecting of
you! Of all my sufferings, this is the greatest—and certainly that to
which I can resign myself the least. What! my dear Agnes, do you, at
the very moment of my leaving you, lay aside the most precious title
you have in my eyes—that of a Christian woman, a woman of piety and
fortitude—which transcends all others?... What! are you unable to
submit to the will of God! Because his designs do not accord with your
views, you dare say that God no longer loves you—that he is cruel!...
My dear, do you set up your judgment against that of God? Do you refuse
him the sacrifice of my life and of your enmity?... Does not my life
belong to him?... And is not your enmity unchristian?... Did they who
have reduced me to this condition intend doing me such an injury?...
I think not. Could they have done me the least harm if God had not
permitted them?... No matter at what moment the fatal blow falls on us,
no matter whence it comes, it only strikes us at the time and in the
manner permitted by God.—Agnes, kneel here beside me, and repeat the
words I am about to utter. Repeat them with your lips and with your
whole heart, whatever it may cost you. It is my wish. It is essential
for your own peace of mind, and also for mine. Agnes, my dear love, we
have prayed a thousand times together and with hearts so truly united!
Now that you see me ill, perhaps dying ... can you refuse me the
supreme joy of once more uniting my soul with yours before God in the
same prayer?” ...

I burst into tears, and obeyed.

“O my God!” he cried, “whatever thou doest is well done. Nothing can
tempt me to doubt thy goodness. Is not thy loving-kindness often the
greatest when it seems disguised the most?... I firmly believe so, and
I forgive all those who have tried to injure me. I pray thee to convert
them. As for me, I beg thee, O my God, to deal with me as thou judgest
most for thy glory and for my good.”

Victor uttered these words with so much fervor and emotion that I was
stirred to the depths of my soul. A complete change took place within
me which I attributed to my dear husband’s prayers. My eyes, hitherto
tearless, now overflowed. My anger all at once disappeared. A profound
sadness alone remained, mingled with resignation....

Victor’s life continued in danger some days longer. Then—oh! what
happiness!—when I had made the sacrifice and bowed submissively to the
divine will, the physician all at once revived my hopes. To comprehend
the joy with which my heart overflowed at hearing that perhaps my
husband might be restored to life, you must, like me, pass through long
hours of bitterness in which you repeat, with your eyes fastened on
your loved one: “A few hours, and I shall behold him no more!”

A week after, Victor was convalescent.




CHAPTER VII.

A PROVIDENTIAL EVENT.


Victor and I then entered upon a singular life of which I think there
are but few instances. I felt from the first that his convalescence
was deceptive, and the physician secretly told him so. We both felt
that God allowed us to pass a few more months together, but no longer.
The disease was checked, but it still hung about my dear one. It
assumed a new form, and changed into a slow malady that was surely
accomplishing its work. As frequently happens in such complaints,
Victor was but partially cured of inflammation of the lungs, and now
became consumptive.

A great poet says that no language, however perfect, can express all
the thoughts, all the emotions, that spring up in the soul.[35] This
is true. I have often felt it, and now realize it more than ever. Ten
months elapsed between Victor’s amelioration and his death—months
memorable for great suffering, but which have left me many delightful,
though melancholy, remembrances. I wish I could impart these
recollections to you. I hardly dare attempt it, so conscious am I of my
inability to do them justice.

How, indeed, could I depict the love, stronger than ever, that bound
me to my husband, spared in so unhoped-for a manner, though but for a
brief period—so brief that I could almost count the hours? How make
you understand how elevated, superhuman, consoling, and yet sorrowful,
were our conversations? How many times Victor said to me: “Agnes, how
merciful the good God is! See, he could have recalled me to himself
at once, but still leaves me with you a few months longer. Oh! how
heartily I desire to profit by this time in order to prepare for death,
though I fear it not! I do not wish to spend one of these last hours
in vain. I wish to do all the good in my power, and love you better
and better as the blessed do in heaven. Oh! how sweet it will be to
enter upon that perfect love above, which we have imagined, and had a
foretaste of, here below—what do I say?—a thousand times sweeter,
more perfect. Its enjoyment will be without any alloy of fear or
sadness, for in loving, we shall have a right to say: ‘It is for ever!’”

But of all the thoughts that occupied Victor’s mind at that period,
that which was most constantly in his heart he expressed in these
simple but significant words: to do all the good possible! Penetrated
with this desire, he resumed his duties at the _Journal_ office as
soon as he was able. His talents had developed under the influence of
suffering. Every one remarked it. But controversy fatigued him, and he
was not able to go out every day. He was, therefore, provided with an
assistant—a young man of ability, to whom he could transfer most of
the labor. He took pleasure in training him for the work, saying to
himself: “He will be my successor. I shall still live in him, and have
some part in the good he will do.”

A part of the day, therefore, remained unoccupied. He employed these
hours in writing a small work—a simple, touching book, which was
published a short time before his death, and is still doing, to my
knowledge, much good among the people.

Training his successor and publishing a useful book were two good acts
he took pleasure in, but, so great was his ardor for benefiting others,
that they did not suffice. He earnestly longed for some new opportunity
of testifying to God how desirous he was of making a holy use of the
last moments of his life. “And yet,” he added, “I acknowledge this
work is perhaps presumptuous. It is asking a special grace from God of
which I am not worthy.” But God granted him this longed-for opportunity
of devoting himself to his glory, and he embraced it with a heroism
that won universal admiration.

Spring returned, and we fell into the habit of going from time to time
to pass a day in the country with Jeanne, my old nurse. Jeanne was one
of those friends of a lower condition whom we often love the most.
There is no jealousy in such a friendship to disturb the complete union
of soul. It is mingled with a sweet sense of protection on one side,
and of gratitude on the other—which is still sweeter.

We went there in the morning, walked around awhile, then breakfasted
and resumed our walk. Jeanne lived at St. Saturnin, six kilomètres
from town. It is a charming place, as you are aware. Near the village
flows a stream bordered by poplars and willows that overshadow the deep
but limpid waters. One morning we were walking in the broad meadow
beneath the shade of these trees, when suddenly we saw a young man on
the opposite shore, not six rods off, throw himself into the stream.
Victor still retained a part of his natural vigor. Before I thought
of preventing him, he sprang forward, and, seeing that the man who
had precipitated himself into the water did not rise to the surface,
jumped into the river, swam around some time, and finally succeeded
in bringing the stranger to shore. I was wild with anxiety and grief.
Without allowing him to stop to attend to the person he had rescued,
I forced him to return to Jeanne’s in order to change his clothing.
He gave orders for some one to hasten to the assistance of the poor
man for whom he had so courageously exposed his life. Several persons
hastily left their work, and in a short time returned with the man who
had tried to drown himself. He was still agitated, but had recovered
the complete use of his faculties. At the sight of my husband in the
garb of a peasant, he at once comprehended to whom he owed his life.
He was seized with a strange tremor; he staggered, and seemed on the
point of fainting. Victor made every effort to bring him to himself,
and at length succeeded. As soon as this young gentleman, who was clad
with uncommon elegance, recovered his strength and self-possession,
he seized my husband’s hand and kissed it with a respect that excited
strange suspicions in my mind. Victor appeared to know him, but I did
not remember ever having seen him before. Why had he thrown himself
into the river? To drown himself, of course.... Why, then, did he
testify so much gratitude and respect for one who had hindered him from
executing his project?...

He requested, in a faint, supplicating tone, to be left alone with
Victor. The rest of us withdrew into the garden. At our return, Victor
whispered to me: “This gentleman is Louis Beauvais, the banker’s oldest
son. He himself will relate his history to you after our return home.”

The carriage was not to come for us till four o’clock. We therefore
passed several hours together at Jeanne’s. Victor devoted himself to
Louis with an attention that touched me inexpressibly. As to Louis, a
son could not have shown more affection to the best of fathers than he
to Victor.

The hour of our departure came at last. We entered the carriage, and
were all three at home in half an hour.


TO BE CONTINUED.




HOME EDUCATION.


AS the family is the type and basis of society, so does it contain,
as in a microcosm, all the questions, problems, and difficulties that
agitate the larger world. Marriage is first in importance within the
family and in society, as representing the principle of creation;
education comes next, as representing the principle of development.
Given a new and perfect society, made up of individual couples whose
union should be absolutely satisfactory, and whose motives, thoughts,
and actions absolutely irreproachable, how is it to be perpetuated in
this desirable state? If to the perfection of marriage were not added
the consequent perfection of education, the new society, for a moment
raised up above former standards of approximative goodness, would, in
the course of half a generation, be reduced lower than any standard of
Christian times. This is so well understood that education has come to
be the one cry of all parties, representing with some the conscientious
result of their religious belief, with others merely their ambition to
make a stir in the political world. Christians look to it as fitting
men for heaven; statesmen turn to it as fashioning the law-abiding
citizen; atheists see in it the means whereby successfully to blind
mankind, and make them swallow the poison hidden under the appearance
of superficial cleverness; the devil grasps it as a tool, or recoils
from it as from a thunderbolt; but to no thinking being can it be a
matter of indifference.

We do not propose to go into that broader question of public education
which, once within the scope of the law, and face to face with
established national systems, immediately sets both hemispheres in
a ferment; but to discuss that preliminary and more vital training
whose silent power shows itself every day in the homes of thousands,
neutralizing on the one hand good examples and wholesome teaching, and
on the other often redeeming from utter badness its half-corrupted
subject. And first taking the literal meaning of the word education,
_i.e._ to _lead up_, or _out of_ (_e-duco_), we must remark that as
education is coeval with the dawn of reason, so it is also continuous.
It begins in the cradle, and goes on hand in hand with life to the
grave. All experience, good or bad, is education, not only the lessons
taught in school-hours, the lectures given in classes, halls, and
colleges, not alone the books we read and the examinations we undergo,
but, more emphatically, the places we frequent, the people we meet,
the misfortunes we go through, the work we perform. Even prosperity is
education, though seldom in the highest sense, but it is chiefly in the
lower walks of fortune that the more important part of this daily and
hourly education is imparted. For this reason specially, and in view
of the future in which a chance word heard in the street or a stray
visit to some place or person may become of such subtle and paramount
gravity, should home education in the Christian sense of the word be
encouraged to the utmost. More particularly should this be the case in
non-Catholic countries. We have no outward atmosphere of religion to
trust to; no wayside crosses to remind us of the sufferings which our
sins caused our Blessed Saviour; no simple shrines to bid us remember
to pray for our invisible brethren in purgatory; no street processions
to bring vividly before our minds that our King is more than an earthly
lord, and our Mother more than an earthly parent.

We do not breathe Catholicity in our daily life, and there is therefore
the greater need of our drinking it in with our mother’s milk. This
insensible and gradual instilling of religion into our infant minds
is the essence of Christian “home education.” First among all the
influences that go towards it is example. This extends over every
detail of the household, and can be and should be kept in view in the
poorest as well as the most comfortable home. In the latter, certainly,
the duty is more stringent, the incentives to its performance lying
so near at hand that it requires an absolutely guilty carelessness to
neglect them. In the former, though a thousand excuses might be made
for the neglect of this paramount duty, it should still be remembered
that God’s grace is all-powerful, and never fails those who seek to
do his will. Parents sorely tried during a day of toil and anxiety
are often found more loving and forbearing towards their helpless
children than others who, with no trouble on their minds, yet delegate
the “tiresome” office of nurse to a hired attendant; and although it
is certainly to be deplored that in so many cases the children of the
poor should be nothing but little men and women already weighed down
by cares that ought to belong only to a later age, still it may be
questioned whether even this is not a lesser evil in the long run than
that other sort of neglect which makes the children of the rich, for
the most part, only the playthings of their parents.

The poor, on the contrary, though necessity may make their children
drudges, yet have in them early friends, while too often among their
more fortunate neighbors children count only as the ornaments of
the house. So that even out of evil comes good, and God has planted
consolations in the path of his poor which go far to soften the
miseries of their inevitable lot. We say inevitable, not as denying the
immense, unexplored possibilities of alleviating this lot which remain
in the power of future philanthropists, but as believing in our Lord’s
prophecy, “The poor you have _always_ with you,” which blessed promise
we count as a staff vouchsafed in mercy to help us on our way to heaven.

We have said that the duty of good example is incumbent upon every
parent, rich or poor. But not only those broad examples which could
hardly fail to strike even an idiot, such as abstaining from unseemly
brawls, from excesses of language and of self-indulgence—in plain
words, from swearing and drinking—or from manifest dishonesty; there
are subtler things than these, and which produce indeed greater effect
on the child spectator. Gross vice has often that redeeming phase of
being its own antidote by disgusting those who come in daily contact
with it. The principle on which the Spartans educated their children in
temperance by exhibiting before them the drunken helots was (however
cruel its application on the persons of their unhappy prisoners) a
consummate proof of practical wisdom. That which does not carry such an
antidote with it is more to be feared in the education of a child. A
spirit of irritability between husband and wife; a carelessness on the
part of either in entering cordially into the other’s little interests;
an exhibition of temper over absurd trifles or of unamiability in small
questions of self-denial—these tell gravely upon a child’s character.
Observation and criticism are childhood’s natural characteristics,
and very logical and very pitiless are childhood’s judgments. The
old-fashioned code of a “well-behaved” child used to be never to ask
questions; we are not so sure that this code was faultlessly wise. We
suffer perhaps under a somewhat aggravated form of a very dissimilar
one just now, and may be tempted—not unpardonably—to wish for the
peace of the good old times back again. As usual, the middle course is
the most rational as well as beneficial, and if it were in our power to
stop the violent swayings of the social pendulum from one extreme to
the other, we would gladly do our part in the work.

It is therefore in the more unheeded and less abnormal occurrences
of every day that the greatest force of example lies, and that harm
or good may be done beyond recall. Christian gentleness, that daily
unobtrusive charity which in rough homes amply makes up for what
outward refinement may be lacking, and in more prosperous households
alone sets the seal of true worth upon such exterior polish as there
is, is the golden secret of a perfect example. And this spirit should
extend to every domestic relation, covering the whole field of
contingencies which may assume such grave proportions in a child’s
memory. Your deportment to the poor, if you are rich yourself, has
an invaluable force of example; the patience with which you listen
to a tale of distress, the delicate courtesy implied in an attentive
attitude, the gracefulness of your alms, and the wise but gentle
discrimination of your questioning, all have an untold effect upon the
little trotter by your side, hardly old enough to reason however dimly,
but old enough to bear away a nameless impression of the scene. On the
other hand, think of the responsibility incurred by a rude or callous
reception; a sneering or lofty air of caution against what you think
may be an imposture; above all, perhaps, a careless alms given to be
rid of a disagreeable importunity, and a half-expression of relief when
the interruption is happily over! The child at your side bears away
this impression quite as surely, and in after-years uses its imitative
powers quite as skilfully, as if the impression had been one of mercy
and kindness; and a very few scenes of this sort are enough to mould
for a child a certain standard of behavior.

Among the domestic relations, none is more likely to strike a child’s
eye than that between master and servant. Here also dangerous seeds of
future heartlessness may be easily sown by the example of a careless
or haughty parent. Considerate thought for the proper comforts of
those whose toil ensures your leisure is one of the foremost Christian
duties. A child is naturally tyrannical, and this disposition, if
fostered by an injudicious mother, may lead to a shameless persecution
of the very persons to whose care children are most often left. This,
in turn, will encourage tyranny on the nurse’s part, and engender a
system of mutual deceit; the child and the servant trying to circumvent
each other in carrying tales, and then sheltering themselves by lies
from the consequences of having carried them. Now, all this is to the
last degree injurious to the future character of the child; it withers
the principle of honor; it kills all manliness and straightforward
dealing, and sows the seeds of those two inseparable vices, cruelty and
cowardice. In after-life, when the despairing mother sees her darling
sink below himself, and earn the unenviable names of bully and sneak,
can she blame him for shattering the ideal she blindly worshipped in
his person? Not so, for with justice can she look back on her own
folly, and with bitterness cry out, “_It was my fault._”

Very different is the other and the good example shown by so many holy
and conscientious women in their relations with their households.
Considerateness and forbearance in all things are not incompatible with
firmness in some. A sense of your own dignity, were it nothing higher,
will dictate a kind bearing towards those in humbler station; for to
those who never obtrude their superiority a double homage will ever be
accorded. A child can exercise on its attendants some of the noblest
virtues of manhood; the household is a little world, a preparatory
stage on which to rehearse in miniature the opportunities of
after-life. Pleasure given to some, a little gift or a gracious speech
vouchsafed to others; consolation afforded to one in grief, attention
shown to one in sickness; and, above all, a mindfulness of not making
the yoke of servitude too galling by restricting the natural and proper
diversions of those whom God has destined to bear it—such are a few of
the lessons a child should learn, not in words alone, but in the manner
of its parents and the unconscious radiating of an habitual example.

Another class of influences under which a child will necessarily
come is that of social relations. For the most part, children are
made too much of a show. They are taught—or allowed—certain little
mannerisms which, at their age, are called charming, but, if looked
at by the light of common sense, are simply as absurd as they are
forward. Later on, when they begin to use their reason, they are
often listeners to frivolous or scandalous conversations, in which
they pick up, if not a half-knowledge of vice, certainly a whole
love of gossip. Now, all this is deplorable from a Christian point
of view. In a really Christian home—a home such as we aspire to see
at least in every Catholic family—the case would be very different.
Entertainments and fêtes would be judiciously “few and far between,”
and in its mother’s visitors the child would see only fresh objects of
its mother’s charitable tact. If anything against charity were said,
the hostess would gently check the conversation, either by palliating
the fault alluded to, suggesting a better motive than the apparent one
concerning any person implicated, or turning the conversation skilfully
to some less dangerous topic. Those formal visits, made to kill time
or otherwise uselessly, would have no part in her day’s programme, and
with ever charitable but firm demeanor would she effectually check the
frequent demands thus made upon her time by others. The child, quick
of perception, as almost all children are, would be unconsciously
moulded to habits of orderly and discriminating hospitality, and would
soon learn to do something for God in every social pastime which it
legitimately enjoyed.

This brings us to the subject of order, an important virtue in the
Christian home. Education itself, if given in a desultory fashion,
would be next to useless, and some of that strict apportioning of time
which gives to our study hours their wholesome monotony is essential
also for the home training of youth. This may seem at first sight a
very arbitrary decision, but, when we come to look deeper into it, we
find that it has the same relation to the future moral life as the
study of the classics or of mathematics to the intellectual life. A
knowledge of the Greek and Latin poets, orators, and historians has
perhaps very little influence on the practical and ultimate result of
a college education; but the effect of refinement it has on the mind,
and the polished tone it imperceptibly gives to thought, manners, and
conversation, are benefits simply incalculable. So with mathematics. A
boy may not have any aptitude for that science, and may never hope to
become proficient in it; still, the habit of application, the facility
of concentrating and commanding his thoughts, which is the natural
result of the close study demanded by the exact sciences, are things
whose influence on his future career cannot be rated too high. They may
not unlikely ensure temporal success, and, in these days of feverish
competition, this argument should not be overlooked. Still, it is from
a higher motive that we say the same of habits of order in the home.
This regularity, which, no doubt, may be tedious, just as mathematics
may be dry, is not lost on the general impressions of childhood, and,
were it only for its own sake, should be looked upon as a seal of
likeness to the works of God, which cannot fail to hallow the family
circle. We have said that the family is the world in miniature, and
as the principle of order was the presiding attribute in creation, so
ought we in our daily lives to take it as a means of creating more and
more time, more and more opportunities, for the service of God. “Be
perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

In the education given by the constant example of the parents, nothing
is more important than family prayer, or, at least, prayer said at
the mother’s knee. In the most solemn of duties, it is not fitting
that parent and child should be separated. If Jesus has said that
his Father can refuse nothing to “two or three _gathered_ together
in his name,” how much more invincible must be the joint prayer of
those who are linked by such close and sacred ties, those who present
to him a faint shadow of his own humble home at Nazareth! Think you
that Jesus in his kingdom forgets the simple hearth where his Mother
taught him, according to the development of his human nature, those
formulæ of prayer and thanksgiving which he himself, in his divine
nature, had taught to the Jewish lawgivers? Does he forget the rites
of circumcision and presentation, the offerings and ransom paid for
him according to the law, the visit to the temple at Jerusalem? He has
shown us in his obedience to these religious observances his wish that
we should imitate his outward devotion and submission to the church.
Family worship is dear to him in remembrance of his own childhood, and
as it is one of the most solemn, so it is also one of the sweetest
duties of the Christian parent. It tends to give the child a proper
spirit of faith and simple reliance, in that it sees its earthly
parent, to whom it looks up for everything and considers as the final
arbiter of its small world, prostrate before a higher Fatherhood, and
taking towards the divine Omnipotence the very attitude of a submissive
and expectant child.

Next to prayer itself, pious reading cannot fail to demand our
attention as the second great spiritual help in the routine of
home education. This should be simple and well suited to the
understanding of young children, and, above all, should not be a dry
and barren formality, but should be explained and amplified by the
mother’s comments. How, unless questions are freely allowed—nay,
encouraged—can the extent of the impression made by spiritual reading
be measured? Then, what an inexhaustible resource does not this
reading or its equivalent—descriptions by word of mouth—afford to a
thoughtful parent! The beautiful narratives of the Old Testament, the
stories of the four gospels, the many striking incidents in the lives
of the saints, the legends of the faithful middle ages, the histories
of the contemporaneous manifestations of God’s mercy, all offer mines
of wealth to a skilful narrator. If, instead of goblin tales more
fit for the entertainment of rational people than for the staple of
a child’s too credulous meditations, these holy histories became the
nursery rhymes of the future generation, it would be well indeed for
the spiritual advance of our age. If among the romances of mediæval
times more of those were chosen in which religion figures than of those
where fairy and elf appear, it would be a better promise for the future
health, moral and physical, of our people. Who knows how much of that
nervousness which is the characteristic disease of our day is due to
those unwholesome terrors of infancy, those threats of bogy and ogre,
with which children are frightened into silence or lulled into uneasy
sleep! The child who would be, in a manner, the companion of the boy
Jesus, of the child Precursor, the infant Samuel, the Holy Innocents,
the children of whom our Lord said, “Suffer them to come unto me, and
forbid them not,” and of the many boy and girl saints—S. Rose of
Viterbo, S. Aloysius Gonzaga, S. Stanislaus Kostka—would be a far
healthier and more manly subject than the mental companion of deformed
sprites and forest goblins. The young mind is so impressionable that it
is the greatest possible mistake to let its first exercise of reason
spend itself on unrealities; they are apt to take on an influence not
readily shaken off, and to cumber the ground long after room is needed
for more serious growths of thought. This may seem an exceptional mode
of proceeding, perhaps an eccentric one, the contrary having for so
many ages held sway, but we take leave to think that it has reason,
expediency, and religion on its side.

To this great duty of example, which ramifies itself as often as there
are distinct classes of influence, is added the duty of vigilance.
Parents need not only the knowledge of what to impart, but the instinct
of what to shun. As watchers over a citadel, they have to guard against
the masked inroads of the enemy, and carefully to sift their children’s
surroundings, whether social or domestic, lest any taint should lurk
in the association. We have read somewhere in a book of devotion that
those who carry great treasures in a frail vessel naturally take the
greater care as to their gait and speed; they look well to see if the
road is level, or to avoid its irregularities if it is not; they take
heed to keep their eyes and mind intent on what they bear, so as to
bring it safe to its destination. Even so does the mother carry in her
hands the priceless treasure of a human soul, and her solicitude for
its perfect preservation from all taint or attack should be little less
than that of the child’s Guardian Angel himself. If, as we have just
hinted, she should choose with such scrupulous care even the companions
of his fancy, so much the more should this judicious censorship be
extended to the real companions of his studies or recreations. Perhaps
the influence of childish association is even greater than the mother’s
own, and what the latter may have laboriously sown will be uprooted in
a moment by the former. Children’s minds, in indiscriminate contact
with each other, are as powder and spark brought together; if each
had been kept until the right moment, and applied in the right way,
we might have had an illumination; as it is, we have a conflagration.
As childhood merges into youth, the choice of a school brings this
question of companionship into prominence. In a public institution,
it is not possible to admit only children who come, well-taught and
docile-minded, from irreproachable homes; the very aim and end of
the institution would thus be frustrated. Nor is it possible for its
parents, once a child is admitted, to choose absolutely who, among its
many school-fellows, shall be its special friends. Much may be done
in that way by advice, tact, and prayer; still, guidance falls far
short of absolute choice. It is therefore evident that the greater
care should be taken to choose the school which in itself shall have
the greatest influence in moulding the character of its scholars,
and thereby in transforming into fitter companions for the new-comer
those very children who, _nolens volens_, must needs be his everyday
acquaintances. But the influence of home does not cease with the first
day at school. Letters from home, breathing the old atmosphere, will
carry the child back, week by week, to his old associations, be they
good or bad; the holidays will bring him again within the fascination
of the old circle, and occasional visits from the companions of his
early childhood will complete the charm. Thus an infinite amount of
good, or a corresponding amount of harm, may yet be done after the home
education period has, strictly speaking, passed away.

And here is, perhaps, the best place to touch upon the holy influence
which an elder brother or sister may exercise on a younger one. This,
one of the most powerful means of good, is only second to that of the
parents themselves, and may furnish a very beautiful illustration
of true and discerning brotherly love. It is spiritual friendship
engrafted upon the stock of natural affection, itself a noble virtue
and most sweet tie, which has often, even in heathen times, produced
great effects. Under this figure of brotherhood God has typified
his union with creatures; he made himself our Brother through the
incarnation; and everywhere brotherhood is synonymous with the
dearest and purest fellowship. Our brothers and sisters in the flesh,
especially if they are younger than ourselves, are as much our care
and charge as they are of our parents; and of this we have a striking
instance in the very first book of the Pentateuch, and only a few
years after the sinless creation of Adam. Cain’s defiant plea, “Am
I my brother’s keeper?” failed to meet with God’s endorsement, but
brought instead the terrible answer that he should be “a fugitive and
a vagabond upon the earth.” In the daily companionship of brotherhood,
this scene is often re-enacted; souls are slain by their own kindred,
and the world smiles and passes blindly on. But God has set a mark upon
the murderer by which the devils know him and kill him not, because
they know too well whose road he is even now treading, and that in the
last day his mark shall be revealed to all. Here is the dark side of
that continuous education which is as potently at work in dens of shame
and places of pleasant danger as it is in Christian homes and schools.
Here is that nefarious education which neutralizes or obliterates the
happy past, and leads our young men by tortuous paths of gradual vice
to the end of many such deceptive panoramas—the gallows or suicide.

False example, insidious promptings, rash indulgences, intoxicating
freedom, wily friendship—through these and many kindred forms, subtle
may be and proportionately dangerous, the devil, in the person of your
brother or your seeming friend, leads you on till the murder of Abel
is repeated, and the insolent excuse flung back to heaven: “Am I my
brother’s keeper?”

The system of rewards and punishments has much to do with the moral
training of youth. With regard to this, we may startle our readers
by broaching views so different from those time-honored ones that
pretend to find their sanction in the Biblical rule, “Spare the rod,
and spoil the child,” as to seem heretical to good old-fashioned,
jog-trot parents.[36] But what if the Scripture itself were to fail
them? What authority have they for understanding “the rod” in its
literal instead of its figurative sense? The rod was, with the Hebrews,
an emblem of power: witness the miracles of Aaron in Egypt, and the
blossoming of his rod when his supreme authority was called in question
by the rebellion of Core. “The rod” may therefore very plausibly be
taken as meaning parental authority, and the text would thus imply
nothing more than a declaration that the _carelessness_ of the parent
will be responsible for the wrong-headedness of the child. In this
sense we prefer to read this passage, and for this reason: physical
punishments and rewards will be indissolubly associated in a young
child’s mind with his good or bad actions, just as they are coupled
in the memory and instinct of a dog with the various desirable or
undesirable things it has been taught or forbidden to do. This produces
a low and degrading standard by which moral actions are henceforward
measured by the child, and later on will lead to the impression that
the absence of such tangible consequences argues the right to do as
he pleases, irrespective of merely moral restraints; whereas, if
the rewards and punishments meted out to him are of the moral and
intellectual order, his conception of the principle of duty will be
abstract and independent. Childhood has a natural leaning towards
deception; therefore truth should be made not only prominent, but
attractive. To own a fault, and even to confess it unasked, should be
an understood palliation of the fault itself; whereas any attempt at
concealment should be treated as a far graver offence than the action
concealed. In a word, the principle of Christian honor should be the
keynote of home education, and any meanness should be condemned as
the most contemptible of all faults. Sensitive as children are to
the slightest alteration of manner in their regard, they would feel
keenly the silence and avoidance which this plan presupposes in their
parents’ conduct towards them when guilty of a dishonorable action,
and, by associating the idea of _wrong_ with that of _disgrace_, would
very soon be brought to a truer estimate of morals than if wrong with
them was only the synonyme of _pain_. Again, the system of physical
punishment invariably leads to defiance; it stirs up a spirit of
contradiction and sullenness which gradually encrusts the young mind
with the deplorable proof-armor of ultimate indifference. We need give
but one example—a personal one—of the immense superiority of moral
over physical punishment. As a child, we were stubborn and self-willed,
and were frequently treated, not exactly to corporal indignities, but
to threadbare schoolroom devices for overcoming temper. Two or three
times it happened that, these worn-out means proving as inefficient
as “water on a duck’s back,” fatherly authority had to be invoked. It
always took one form—silence. For a week there would be none of the
happy familiarities between father and child, but, instead, a cessation
of the usual pleasant and indulgent intercourse, and now and then a
grave look of displeasure as the culprit would make some spasmodic
and despairing advance. This was the only punishment which made the
slightest impression, and the keen remembrance of it lasts to this
day. Sometimes, when we were older, another variety was tried. Instead
of being, according to the old code, starved on bread and water in a
dark closet, we were seated alone at a table, while the rest of the
family ate together as usual; every dish was ceremoniously brought up
and served at our solitary meal, and every servant in the house was
perfectly aware of the cause; no one spoke or offered us the least
attention beyond the ordinary formalities, and we were treated half
like a distinguished prisoner, half like an excommunicated person. The
result was admirable, prompt in the extreme, and certain to ensure an
unusually long term of subsequent docility.

Rewards are no less important than punishments. Of these, knowledge
and religious opportunities should, in our idea, form the staple.
They are thus invested with a personal interest to the child; they
come before him as things specially concerning his own good behavior
and his parents’ appreciation of it. For instance, the mother reads
him Scripture stories and the legends of the saints; he listens with
absorption, and longs to read the book himself, but the road through
the alphabet and spelling-book is uninviting. Why not teach him through
the book itself? The illuminated capitals will strike him by their
beauty, the pictures will lend force to the difficult words, and help
his memory to connect them with the illustrated subject. Instead of
finding church services an irksome interruption to his games, he might
be made to look upon them as the highest rewards he can obtain. For a
well-learnt lesson in catechism, he might be taught to chant one of
those immortal poems, the Psalms; for proficiency in Bible history,
he might be taken to some of the most picturesque of our solemn
ceremonies, and hear, on the way, of the typical manner in which it
is connected with that history; for an act of childish self-denial,
he might be allowed to serve as acolyte at Mass. Even these rewards,
however, should not be injudiciously multiplied, for familiarity would
beget irreverence,—the worst stumbling-block that could be laid in
a child’s spiritual path. We think that a Christian education in
the early days of childhood could go no further in perfection than
this—the thorough identification of all happiness with religion.

We have yet to speak of a detail in household economy, which, in point
of interest, is one of the foremost. Personal attention to a child is a
part of the mother’s duty of vigilance, and the fashionable custom of
leaving such attention to domestics cannot be reprobated too strongly.
This personal care is, first of all, an instinct of nature which it
must require a very thick coating of frivolity entirely to supersede;
and it is, secondly, a duty of religion from which even great physical
sickness cannot conscientiously release the parent. Numberless evils
flow from a neglect of this imperious duty. The forsaken child will
learn in time to forget its mother, to think of her as a splendid
being very far from him—one not to be annoyed by his cries or made
nervous by his romps, but to be gazed at from afar, like a grand
picture or work of art. Happy child if an affectionate, compassionate
nurse takes the vacant place of his own mother, and makes him familiar
with those sweet, nameless trivialities that make up the world of a
child’s heart; but, even so, how sad the necessity for such comfort!
How much more sad, then, the position of the unloved child, neglected
even by its nurse, or left to the well-meaning but questionable petting
of the other servants! They will not be reticent, though they may be
obsequious, and the future character of their charge will be warped
beyond remedy. Pride, too, will be ridiculously fostered, and will
drive tenderness away; a certain recklessness will be infused into
the child’s habits, and reverence, refinement, sensitiveness, will be
petrified within him. He will feel himself of no value, since no one
cares for him, and, if no happy influence stops his downward course, he
will be a cynic before he is twenty-five.

We have said so much in this strain, and made so much of the gloomy
side of the question, that we feel bound to speak a little more fully
of the model Christian home, not only as it should be, but—thank God
that we can say it!—as it very often is. We know that, according
to Father Faber’s beautiful expression, “God has many Edens in this
world,” and surely among our Christian homes many deserve this name.

There are those in which the father is not absorbed in business and the
mother by fashion, where the servants are happy and attached members of
the family, where daily prayer and cheerful work alternate with each
other in order, where recreation does not degenerate into riot, nor
work conduce to moroseness. Healthy exercise and early hours keep the
doctor from the door, while constant industry repulses the proverbial
visitor who always “finds mischief for idle hands to do.” The father
is the genial companion of his children, and does not lose their
respect by gaining their confidence; the mother is the guardian spirit
of the household, the wise woman of the Proverbs, “whose children
rose up and called her blessed; her husband, and he praised her.”
Towards each other the husband and wife behave as they would before
the angels of God, because they remember that he who scandalizeth “a
little one” is accursed, and that the angel of “the little one,” who
is there continually beside him and in some sort represents him in
heaven, “beholds the face of the Lord.” The children are submissive,
not through fear, but through _reason_ and love; for the acknowledged
superiority of their elders has a rational force with them, and they
think themselves honored in obeying those who are wiser than they. They
have Jesus of Nazareth ever before their eyes—the Boy who, as he grew
in years, “waxed strong in wisdom and grace,” and who, though he was
God, “went down, and was subject to them.”

This life, peaceful, orderly, religious, the life of the cloister
translated into the home, is in itself education. Its holy influence
is not confined to space or time, but will live in the hearts of
the scattered family through youth and manhood to extreme old age.
In fancy, they will be able to reconstruct that home; in spirit, to
revisit it long after its dearest inmates shall have left it for their
heavenly home, long after its material frame shall have passed away to
other, perhaps to careless, hands. In their various resting-places,
whether a new home, the daughter of that shrine, or only a rock just
above the level of the sea of fortune, the hallowed remembrance will
come back to them freighted with hope and strength for the future. Even
in heaven, the Son of God is called Jesus of _Nazareth_, and can _we_
forget the home and the mother that made us what we are?

In all that pertains to this ideal, although man is bound to subserve
it to the utmost, woman is more solemnly pledged to its fulfilment.
Man has the world for his empire: woman has man—during the years of
his pupilage. The mother’s education is the child’s second birth, and
she who, being mother to the body of her child, neglects that more
laborious training which accompanies its moral development, practically
refuses to be the mother of its soul. To a woman failing in her home
duties is attached more reproach than to a neglectful husband and
father, because her office is the more sacred, her position the nearer
to God. It was a woman who was glorified by the most miraculously close
union with God that the universe has ever seen, and by that standard
alone should womanhood and motherhood be judged. If it falls short of a
faint copy of Mary the mother of Jesus, it is condemned, for the state
that has been the most divinely exalted should ever after remain the
most humanly perfect.

The mere temporal importance of home education, though secondary to
its spiritual aspect, cannot be overlooked. Besides the duty of the
angel—training souls for heaven—woman has the duty of the citizen,
_i.e._ training patriots for the state. Without faith there is no love
of country in the highest sense; without discipline, no love of law.
It is woman’s task to mould the men who, in the future, will mould the
nation. High or low it matters not: the mother of the statesman and the
mother of the laborer work alike towards their country’s glory. The
state needs hands as well as heads, and the mason who cuts the common
stones has as much part and should have as much pride in the completed
building as the artist who carves the wonderful pinnacles or fashions
the marvellous capitals.

We have spoken perhaps too exclusively of the duties and circumstances
of the higher classes in this matter of home education. Perhaps it is
not altogether unprovidential that we should have been led to do so;
for of the various divisions of humanity which our Lord in his parable
of the sower represents under the figure of the different accidents
that befell the good seed, we know which is, unhappily, the least
productive. Jesus himself has explained that the thorns which choked
the seed are the “cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life.”
Mark well, the _cares_; not only the riches and pleasures, for those
self-sought and profitless cares have not the blessings on them which
the God-given cares of poverty have. The poor and lowly too often
shame their more fortunate brethren by their greater self-devotion and
generosity. Their homes, so much less prosperous, are yet often so much
more edifying, than ours; and let it be remembered that every act of
theirs has, according to the measure of their inferior opportunities,
double the merit of any similar act of ours. So with the wholesome
reticence which becomes us who have so many opportunities _and neglect
them_: we have preferred to point out the beam that is in our own
eye, rather than pharisaically to expatiate on the mote that is in
our neighbor’s. Yet we would not that any class should deem itself
exempt from the duties of home education—duties which, with the poor,
have all the added merit of absolute heroism. The poor are told, and
doubtless truly, by our teachers and superiors, that their condition
should be dear to them because it was that of our Lord himself; but
we, their brethren and fellow-pilgrims, should labor to supplement
this teaching by making that very condition less irksome to them. Who
can dream of Jesus on earth as _not_ being poor and destitute? But, on
the other hand, who would dare, were he now on earth, to be behindhand
in ministering to his poverty? Now, the alms we _owe_ to his earthly
representatives are twofold, _i.e._ spiritual and temporal. Among the
former, none are so meritorious as good examples. Have we not in these
days a perpetual and most sadly grotesque picture of class aping class,
of tawdriness following close on the heels of fashion, of aspiring
vanity actually crowding out the legitimate needs of the body? If
this system of imitation must be, why not give it a worthy subject to
practise upon?

Reform, to be practical, must begin in the higher strata of society;
for not only to individuals, but also, in a wider sense, to classes,
is the keepership of brotherhood entrusted. We _are_ our “brother’s
keeper,” and our “brother” is the mass of men who look up to us for
guidance. As long as our fathers and husbands care more for their
office than their home, so long will the bulk of the nation be mere
animated machines snatching after precarious wealth; as long as our
wives and mothers care more for the drawing-room than for the nursery
and study, so long will the mass of women be heartless coquettes or
abandoned harlots. We speak strongly, because we feel strongly. This
is an age of initial struggle, which our faith should turn into an
era of better things. If we need any “new departure,” let it be the
departure from frivolity to domesticity, from contemptible weakness
to the manliness of the Gospel. And here let us say one word to the
head of the family, to him without whose example even the mother’s
influence is incomplete. Business is _not_ the whole of life; it is
_not_ even the first earthly good to be sought for. Success often kills
happiness, and its exclusive pursuit always kills peace. The father who
allows business to isolate him from all the tenderer interests of his
home achieves two things: he alienates his children’s affection—after
having very likely worn out his wife’s devotion—and he teaches them
betimes the baneful lesson that before Mammon all other interests
must bow. This false doctrine his children will teach to theirs by an
example equally gloomy with his own, and thus God will be forgotten in
the very gifts which one word of his mouth could turn in a moment to
dust and ashes.

Shall this be so, or will Christian parents take heed to their duty?




THE PICTURE OF THE RIVIÈRE QUELLE.

A CANADIAN LEGEND.

FROM THE FRENCH OF M. L’ABBE CASGRAIN.


I.—THE MISSIONARY.

READER, have you ever been in the old church of the Rivière Ouelle? In
one of its side-chapels is an _ex-voto_ which was placed there many
long years ago by a stranger who was miraculously preserved from death.
It is a very old picture, full of dust, and of no artistic value,
but it recalls a touching story; I learned it when very young, on my
mother’s knees, and it has remained as fresh and vivid in my memory as
when I first heard it.

It was a cold winter evening, long, long ago. The snow was beating
against the window-sashes, and the icy north wind howled and shrieked
among the naked branches of the great elms in the garden. The whole
family had assembled in the _salon_. Our mother, after playing several
airs on the piano, allowed her fingers to wander restlessly over the
keys—her thoughts were elsewhere. A shade of sadness passed over her
brow. “My dear children,” said she, after a moment’s silence, “see what
a fearful night this is; perhaps many poor people will perish before
morning from cold and hunger. How thankful we ought to be to God for
our good food and warm, comfortable beds! Let us say our rosary for the
poor travellers who may be exposed to such dangers during the night.”
And then she added, “If you say it with devotion, I will tell you all
a beautiful story.” Oh! how we wished that our rosary was finished! At
that age the imagination is so vivid and the soul so impressionable.
Childhood possesses all the charms of the golden dawn of life;
enveloping every object in shade and mystery, it clothes each in a
poetry unknown to any other age.

We gathered around our mother, near the glowing stove, which diffused a
delicious warmth throughout the apartment, and listened in a religious
sort of silence to her sweet and tender voice. I almost think I hear it
now. Listen with me to her story:

Toward the middle of the last century, a missionary, accompanied by
several Indians, ascended the south bank of the St. Lawrence River,
about thirty leagues below Quebec. The missionary was one of those
intrepid pioneers of faith and civilization whose sublime figures are
thrown out from the dark background of the past, surrounded by a halo
of glory and immortality. Nailed on Golgotha during the days of their
bloody pilgrimage, they shine to-day on a new Tabor; and the light
which radiates from their faces illuminates the present and throws
itself far into the future. At their names alone, the people, seized
with wonder and respect, bow low their heads; for these names recall
a courage most superhuman, a faith most admirable, and a devotedness
most sublime. He whom we are following at this moment was one of those
illustrious children of the Society of Jesus, whose entire life was
consecrated to the conversion of the savages of Canada. He was not
very tall, and stooped slightly; his beard, blanched prematurely by
hardships, and his pale and attenuated features, seemed to indicate
a want of strength and endurance for so hard a life; but this frail
body concealed one of those grand souls which draw from the energy of
their will an inexhaustible strength. His large, expansive forehead
suggested a proportionate intellect, and his features wore an
expression of incomparable sweetness and simplicity; the least shade
of a melancholy smile played over his lips—in a word, his whole face
seemed filled with that mysterious glory with which sanctity illumines
her predestined souls.

The leader of the little band was a few steps in advance. He was
an old Indian warrior who a long time before had been converted to
Christianity by this holy missionary, and who from that time became the
faithful companion of all his adventurous wanderings.

The travellers advanced slowly on their _raquettes_[37] over a soft,
thick snow. It was one of those superb December nights whose marvellous
splendor is entirely unknown to the people of the South, with which
the old year embellishes its waning hours to greet the advent of the
new-comer. Innumerable stars poured their light in silver tears over
the blue firmament of heaven—we might say tears of joy which the
glory of the Sun of Justice draws from the eyes of the blessed. The
moon, ascending through the different constellations, amused itself
by contemplating in the snowy mirror its resplendent disk. Toward
the north, luminous shafts radiated from a dark cloud which floated
along the horizon. The aurora borealis announces itself first by pale,
whitish jets of flame which slowly lick the surface of the sky; but
soon the scene grows more animated, the colors deepen, and the light
grows larger, forming an arch around an opaque cloud. It assumes the
most bizarre forms. In turn appear long skeins of white silk, graceful
swan-plumes, or bundles of gold and silver thread; then a troop of
white phantoms in transparent robes execute a fantastic dance. Now it
is a rich satin fan whose summit touches the zenith, and whose edges
are fringed with rose and saffron tints; finally, it is an immense
organ, with pearl and ivory pipes, which only awaits a celestial
musician to intone the sublime hosanna of nature to the Creator. The
strange crackling sound which accompanies this brilliant phenomenon
completes the illusion; for it is strangely like the sighs which escape
from an organ whose pipes are filled with a powerful wind. It is the
prelude of the divine concert which mortal ears are not permitted
to listen to. The scene which presented itself below was not less
fascinating in its savage beauty than that of the sky above.

The cold, dry atmosphere was not agitated by a single breath; nothing
was heard but the dull monotonous roaring of the gigantic river,
sleeping under a coverlet of floating ice, which dotted its dark waters
like the spotted skin of an immense leopard. A light white vapor rose
like the breath from the nostrils of a marine monster. Toward the
north, the blue crests of the Laurentides were clearly defined, from
Cape Tourmente to the mouth of the Saguenay. In a southern direction
the last slopes of the Alleghanies stretched along, covered with
pines, firs, and maples; almost the entire shore was densely wooded,
for at the remote period which we describe those vast clearings along
the banks covered with abundant meadows were not to be seen, nor the
pretty little whitewashed houses grouped in villages along the shore
so coquettishly, a person could easily compare them to bands of swans
sleeping on the river-banks. A sea of forest covered these shores. A
few scattered houses appeared here and there, but this was all.


II.—THE APPARITION.

The travellers advanced in silence toward the middle of the wood,
when suddenly the leader of the party stopped, making at the same
time a sign with his hand for his companions to do likewise. “You are
mistaken, comrade,” said the missionary to him; “the noise that you
have just heard was only a tree split by the frost.”

The Indian turned slowly toward him, an almost imperceptible smile
passing over his face. “My brother,” said he, in a low voice, “if you
saw me take your holy word,[38] and try to read in it, you would laugh
at me. I do not wish to laugh at you, for you are a black-gown; but
I tell you, you do not know the voices of the forest, and the noise
which we have just heard is a human voice. Follow me at a distance,
while I go on to see what is happening yonder.” The travellers walked
on for some time without seeing anything. The father began to think he
had not been deceived, when they came to an opening in the woods, and
saw the Indian stop. What was his astonishment, when, following the
direction in which the savage was looking, he saw at the extreme end of
the opening a very extraordinary light, apparently detached from the
obscurity of the trees. In the midst of this luminous globe appeared
a vague, indistinct form, elevated above the ground. Then another
spectacle that the brilliancy of the strange vision had prevented him
from seeing before, was presented to his gaze.

A young man dressed in military uniform was kneeling at the foot of a
tree. His hands were clasped and his eyes turned towards heaven; he
seemed absorbed in the contemplation of a mysterious and invisible
object. Two corpses, which were easily recognized as an officer and a
soldier from their uniforms, were lying by his side in the snow. The
officer, an elderly man with gray hair, was lying against a maple; in
his hands was a little book, about to slip out of them. His head was
leaning on his right shoulder, and his face had that ashy hue which too
plainly told that death already claimed him. A bluish circle surrounded
his half-closed eyes, and a last tear stood congealed on his livid
cheek. A placid smile was on his face, indicating that a supreme hope,
which faith alone could inspire, had consoled his last moments.[39]

The noise made by the travellers’ feet in the snow caused the young
man, who was still on his knees, to turn suddenly round. “O father! my
father!” cried he, rushing toward the missionary, “it is Providence who
has sent you here to save me. I was about to share the terrible fate of
my unfortunate companions, when—a prodigy!—a miracle!”—suffocated by
his tears and sobs, he could say no more, but, throwing himself into
the arms of the missionary, he pressed him to his heart.

“Calm yourself, my dear son,” said the old man; “for in your feeble
and exhausted state such violent emotion might prove fatal.” Scarcely
had he finished the words, when he felt the young man’s head sink
heavily on his shoulder, and his body become a dead weight—he had
fainted.

The travellers eagerly bestowed on him every care that his situation
required and that lay in their power. His two friends, alas! were
beyond reach of human succor. The savages dug their graves in the snow,
and the saintly missionary, after reciting some prayers over their
bodies, cut with his knife a large cross in the bark of the maple at
the foot of which they had breathed their last—a simple but sublime
monument of hope and love, destined to guard their earthly remains.


III.—A CANADIAN HOME.

See you yonder, on the slope of the hill, that pretty cottage, so neat
and white, with its little thatched barn, so clearly defined against
the caressing foliage of that beautiful copse of maples? Well, that is
a Canadian home. From its high green pedestal it smiles at the great
rolling river, in whose wave is mirrored its trembling image, and which
so gently comes to expire at its feet; for the happy proprietor of this
pretty dwelling loves his great, beautiful river, and has been careful
to establish his home on its banks. Sometimes, when necessity obliges
him to go away, he is always homesick, because he must listen to its
grand voice, and contemplate its wooded islands and distant shores;
he must caress with his eyes its waters, sometimes calm, sometimes
foaming and turbulent. A stranger who is not familiar with the
_habitant_ of our country, and who imagines that there is an affinity
to his ancestor—the peasant of old France—is much mistaken. More
enlightened, and, above all, more religious, he is far from sharing
his precarious condition. The former is, in comparison, a veritable
prince; perfectly independent on his sixty or eighty arpents of land,
surrounded by a cedar enclosure, he is furnished with everything
necessary for an honest and comfortable subsistence.

Let us now peep under this roof, whose exterior is so attractive.
I should like to sketch it just as I’ve seen it so frequently. On
entering the _tambour_, or passage-way, two pails of fresh water,
standing on a wooden bench, and a tin cup hanging against the wall,
hospitably invite you to quench your thirst. In an inner room the
mother of the family is quietly spinning near the window, while the
soup is boiling on the stove. A calico cape, a blue skirt of domestic
manufacture, a _caline_[40] neatly fixed on her head, completes her
toilet. The baby sleeps in its cradle at her side; from time to time
she smiles at its bright little face, as fresh as a rose, peeping out
from the quilt, whose triangular patches of the brightest colors are
ingeniously distributed over it. In a corner of the room the eldest
daughter sits on a chest, singing merrily, while she works at her loom;
quickly and skilfully the shuttle flies between her hands; she makes
in a day several measures of cloth, which she will use next year to
make into garments. In another corner stands the huge bed, with its
white and blue counterpane, and at its head a crucifix surrounded with
pictures. That little branch of withered fir above the cross is the
blessed palm. Two or three barefooted little urchins are playing on
the floor, harnessing up a dog. The father, bending over the stove,
gravely lights his pipe with a firebrand. He is accoutred in a red
woollen cap, vest and pants of a grayish material, and rough, heavy
boots. After each meal he must “take a smoke” before going out to
plough or to thresh in the barn. There is an air of thrift and comfort
about the house; the voices of the children, the songs of the young
girl, with her spinning-wheel accompaniment, the appearance of health
and happiness written on their faces, tell of the peace and serenity of
their lives.

If ever, in travelling through this country, you are overtaken by a
snowstorm or severe cold, go and knock without fear at the door of
the Canadian cottager, and you will be received with that warmth and
cordiality which their ancestors have transmitted to them as a souvenir
and a relic of the Old Country; for this antique French hospitality,
which can scarcely be found now in certain parts of France, seems to
have taken refuge under the roof of the Canadian _habitant_. With his
language and religion, he has piously preserved many of his old habits
and customs. The traveller who rested under his roof a century ago
would to-day find the same manners and characteristics.

It is in the parish of the Rivière Ouelle, in the bosom of one of these
good Canadian families, that we find again our missionary and his
companions. All the family, eager to hear the extraordinary adventures
of the young officer, had gathered round him. He was a young man, from
twenty to twenty-five years of age, with fine, delicate features;
his dark wavy hair fell over and partially shaded his high forehead,
and his proud glance revealed the loyalty of the French soldier; but
an extreme pallor, consequent on the fatigue and privations he had
undergone, had left a touching and melancholy expression on his face,
while his refined and finished manners told of an equally finished and
careful education.


IV.—THE SILHOUETTE.

“More than a month ago,” said the young officer, “I left the country
of the Abnakis, accompanied by my father, a soldier, and an Indian
guide. We were bearing very important dispatches to the governor of
the colony. We travelled along through the forest for several days
without any accident, when, one evening, overcome with fatigue, we lit
a fire and camped for the night near an Indian cemetery. According to
the custom of the savages, every corpse was wrapped in a shroud of
coarse bark, and placed high above the ground on four stakes. Bows
and arrows, tomahawks, and some ears of maize were hung against these
rude graves, and shook and rattled as the wind passed over them. Our
own savage was seated just in front of me, on the half-decayed trunk
of a pine-tree that had fallen to the ground, and seemed half buried
in profound meditation. The fitful flames of the fire threw a weird
light over his gigantic frame. An Indian might readily have compared
him to one of the superb maples of our forest, had he been able at the
same time to have united with it the cunning of the serpent and the
agility of the elk. His height was increased by a quantity of black,
red, and white feathers tied with his hair on the top of his head. His
ferocious features, piercing black eyes, his tomahawk and long knife,
half concealed by the trophy of scalps which hung from his belt, gave
him a wild and sanguinary appearance. The night was dark and bitter
cold. The low and unequal arch formed by the interlacing branches of
the trees, and illuminated by the flickering light of our pine-wood
fire, seemed like a vast cavern, and the old trunks of the rotten
trees, which were buried in the snow, looked like the corpses of giants
strewn around. The birches, covered with their white bark, seemed
like wandering phantoms in the midst of this _débris_, and the dull
rumbling of the distant torrent, and the wind moaning and whistling
through the leafless branches, completed the weird funereal aspect
of the place. Any one slightly superstitious could easily believe he
heard the sighing spirits of the Indian warriors who lay buried so
near us. In spite of myself, a shiver of horror ran through my veins.
Here, in the midst of all this grim rubbish, where every rock and tree
was transformed by the shadows into as many spectres watching his
movements; our audacious savage appeared as grave and tranquil as if he
had been in his own cabin.

“‘Comrade,’ said I to him, ‘do you think we need fear any danger still
from those Iroquois whose trail we discovered yesterday?’

“‘Has my brother already forgotten that we found it again this morning?’

“‘But there were only two,’ said I.

“‘ Yes; but an Iroquois can very quickly communicate with his comrades.’

“‘But these were not on the war-path; they were hunting an elk.’

“‘Yes; but the snow is deep, and they could soon kill him without much
fatigue, and then—’

“‘Well!’

“‘And then, their hunger once satisfied—’

“‘Finish!’

“‘I say they might, perhaps, amuse themselves by hunting the
whiteskins.’

“‘But the whites are at peace with the Iroquois.’

“‘The Iroquois never bury but half of the war-hatchet; and, besides,
they have raised the tomahawk against the warriors of my tribe, and if
they discover the track of an Abnakis among yours—’

“‘You think, then, that they might pursue us? Perhaps it would be more
prudent to extinguish our fire.’

“‘Does not my brother hear the howling of the wolves? If he prefers
being devoured by them to receiving the arrow of an Iroquois, he can
extinguish it.’

“The words of our guide were not very reassuring, but I was so overcome
with fatigue that, in spite of the evident danger to which we were
exposed, I fell asleep. But my sleep was filled with the wildest
dreams. The dark shadow of our guide, that I saw as I went to sleep,
seemed to lengthen and rise behind him, black and threatening, like
a spectre. The dead in the cemetery, shaking the snow from their
shrouds of bark, descended from their sepulchres, and bent towards
me. I fancied I heard the gritting of their teeth as the wind rushed
through the trees and the dry branches cracked and snapped. I awoke
with a start. Our guide, leaning against a post of one of the graves,
was still before me, and from his heavy and regular breathing I knew
that he slept profoundly. I fancied I saw just above him, peeping over
the grave against which he was leaning, a dark form and two fixed
and flaming eyes. My imagination is excited by my fantastic dreams,
thought I, and tried to compose myself to sleep again. I remained a
long time with my eyes half shut, in that state of semi-somnolence,
half watching, half sleeping, my stupefied faculties scarcely able to
discern the objects around. And yet the dark shadow seemed to move
slightly, and to lean more and more towards our savage, who was still
in a deep sleep. At that moment the fire suddenly blazed up, and I saw
distinctly the figure of an Indian. He held a long knife between his
teeth, and, with dilated eyes fixed on his enemy, he approached still
nearer to assure himself that he slept. Then a diabolical smile lit up
his face, and, seizing his knife, he brandished it an instant in aiming
a blow at the heart of his victim. The blade flashed in the firelight.
At the same moment a terrible cry rang out, and the two savages rolled
together in the snow. The flash of the steel, in awakening our guide,
had also betrayed his enemy. Thus my horrible nightmare terminated in a
more horrible reality. I had hastily seized my gun, but dared not fire,
lest I should kill or wound our guide. It was a death-fight between
them. The snow, streaked with blood, blew up around them like a cloud
of dust. A hatchet glittered in the air, then a dull, heavy sound,
followed by the cracking of bones. The victory was decided. A gurgling
sound escaped from the victim—it was the death-rattle! Holding in
one hand a bloody scalp, the conqueror, with a smile, raised himself
proudly. At that instant a shot was heard. A ball struck him in the
breast, and our savage, for it was he, fell dead in front of the fire.
Taking aim with my gun, and sending a ball in the direction whence
the shot had come, and where I saw another shadow gliding among the
trees, was for me the work of an instant. The Indian, with a terrible
death-cry, described an arch in the air with his body, and fell dead to
the ground. The tragedy was finished; our savage was avenged, but we
had no longer a guide. I then thought of our conversation that evening,
and how his apprehensions of the two savages whom we had tracked in the
morning had been so fearfully realized.”


V.—DEATH.

“Abandoned, without a guide, in the midst of interminable forests, we
were in a state of extreme perplexity. We hesitated a long time whether
to proceed on our route or retrace our steps. The danger of falling
into the hands of the Iroquois, who infested that part of the country,
decided us to continue our journey.

“The only means left of finding our way was a little compass which my
father had fortunately brought along. Several days later found us still
on our painful march, in the midst of a violent snowstorm. It was a
veritable tempest; the snow fell so thick and fast we could scarcely
see two feet in advance.

“In every direction we heard the trees splitting and falling to the
ground. We were in great danger of being crushed. My father was struck
by a branch, which completely buried him under the snow, and we had
great difficulty in extricating him. When we raised him up, he found
that the chain around his neck which held the compass was broken, and
the compass had disappeared. We searched long and carefully, but in
vain—it could not be found. In falling, my father received a severe
injury on the head. While dressing the wound, which bled freely, I
could not restrain my tears on seeing this old man, with his white
hair, enduring intense suffering with so much fortitude, and displaying
such calmness in the midst of an agony which he tried to conceal from
me by an outward show of confidence. ‘My son,’ said he, when he saw my
tears, ‘remember that you are a soldier. If death comes, it will find
us on the roll of honor. It is well to die a martyr to duty; besides,
nothing happens except by the will of God. Let us submit at once with
courage and resignation to whatever he pleases to send.’

“We marched two days longer in an intense cold, and then my father
could go no further. The cold had poisoned the wound in his head, and
a violent fever came on. To crown our misfortunes, our little store of
matches had become damp, and it was impossible to kindle a fire. Then
all hope abandoned me, and, not having been able to kill any game for
the past day or two, we had been almost entirely without food; then,
in spite of all my warning and advice, the soldier who accompanied us,
exhausted by fatigue and hunger, and utterly discouraged, went to sleep
in the snow, and, when I found him some time after, he was dead—frozen
stiff! Overcome by the most inexpressible grief, I remained on my knees
by the side of my dying father. Several times he besought me to abandon
him, and escape death. When he felt his last hour approaching, he said,
handing me an _Imitation of Christ_ which he held in his hand, ‘My son,
read to me.’ I took the book, and opened it at chance, reading between
my sobs: ‘Make now friends near God, in order that, after leaving this
life, they will receive you in the eternal tabernacles.’[41] ‘Conduct
yourself on earth as a traveller and a stranger who has no interest in
the affairs of the world. Keep your heart free and raised toward God,
because here below you have no substantial dwelling-place. You should
address to heaven every day your prayers, your sighs, and your tears,
in order that, after this life, your soul will be able to pass happily
into the bosom of our Lord.’

“I replaced the book in his hand. A smile of immortal hope passed over
his countenance, for these lines were a _résumé_ of his entire life.
After a moment’s silence, he said: ‘My son, when I shall be no more,
take this little gold cross which hangs around my neck, and which was
given to me by your mother on the day of your birth’—there was a
moment’s silence. A shade of profound sadness passed over his face,
and, taking my two hands in his, he added, ‘Your poor mother!—oh! if
you live to see her again, tell her I died thinking of God and of her.’
Then, making a supreme effort to put aside this painful thought, at
which he feared his courage might fail him, he continued: ‘Always wear
this little cross in remembrance of your father. It will teach you to
be faithful to your God, and to your country. Come nearer, my son, that
I may bless you, for I feel that I am dying.’ And with his faltering
hand he made the sign of the cross on my forehead.”

At these words the young man stopped. Large tears rolled down his
cheeks as he pressed to his lips the little gold cross which hung on
his breast. All around him remained silent, in respect to his noble
grief, but their tears flowed with his. Sorrow is so touching in youth!
We cannot see, without a pang, the bright flowers which adorn it wither
and fade away. The missionary was the first to break the silence. “My
son,” said he, addressing the young man, “your tears are legitimate,
for the cherished being for whom you weep is worthy of them; but do not
weep as those who have no hope. He whom you have lost now enjoys on
high the recompense promised to a life devoted to sacrifice and duty.”

“But, oh! my father, if only you could have been with him to console
his last moments!”

After a pause, he continued: “I pressed my father for the last time
in my arms, and imprinted a last kiss on his pale, cold forehead. I
thought at this moment he was dying. He remained immovable, his eyes
turned towards heaven, when suddenly, as if by inspiration from above,
he said, ‘I wish you to make a vow that, if you succeed in escaping
with your life, you will place a picture in the first church which you
reach on the road.’ I promised to do as he desired. Some moments after,
a few vague and incoherent words escaped his lips, and all was over.”


VI.—THE VISION.

“How long I remained on my knees beside my father’s corpse I cannot
tell. I was so utterly overwhelmed by grief and sorrow that I was
plunged in a kind of lethargy which rendered my soul insensible to
everything. Death, the loneliness of the forest, terrified me no
longer; for solitude dwelt in my heart, where so short a time before
all was bright and joyous. Dreams, illusions—those flowers of life
that I have seen fall leaf by leaf, to be swept away by the storm;
glory, happiness, the future—those angels of the heart who so lately
entranced my soul with their mysterious music, had all departed,
veiling with their drooping wings their sorrowful faces. All had
gone—all. Nothing remained but a void, a horrible nothingness. But
one feeble star watched yet in the midst of my night. The faint lamp
of the inner sanctuary was not entirely extinguished; there came a ray
from its expiring flame. Remembering the vow that my dying father had
desired me to make, I invoked with a sort of desperation the Blessed
Virgin, Comfortress of the Afflicted; and behold, suddenly—but can
I tell what took place within me? Human words are inadequate to
unveil the mysteries of God. I cannot explain, human ears cannot
comprehend—yes, suddenly, in the midst of my darkness, my soul
trembled, and a something seemed to pass through me like an impetuous
wind, and my soul was carried over the troubled waters; then, rapid as
the lightning that flashes through the storm-cloud, a light appeared
in the darkness, in this chaos—a dazzling, superhuman light—and the
tempest was appeased within me; a wondrous calm had entered my soul,
and the divine light penetrated its most remote recesses and imparted
a delicious tranquillity and peace, but such a peace as surpasses
all comprehension; and through my closed eyelids I saw that a great
light was before me. O my God! dare I tell what happened then? Would
it not be profane to weaken thus the marvels of your power! I felt
that something extraordinary, something supernatural, was taking place
around me, and a mysterious emotion, a holy terror, that every mortal
should feel at the approach of a Divine Being seized me. Like Moses,
my soul said within me, ‘I will go and I will see this grand vision’;
and my eyes opened, and I saw—it was not a dream—it was a reality, a
miracle, from the right hand of the Most High. No; the eye of man has
never seen, nor his ear heard, what was permitted that I should see
and hear then. In the midst of a cloud of dazzling light, the Queen of
heaven appeared, holding in her arms the divine Child. The ineffable
splendor that enveloped her form was so brilliant that in comparison
the sun is only a dim star; but this brilliancy, far from fatiguing
the sight, refreshed it deliciously. Twelve stars formed her crown,
the colors of the rainbow tinged her robes, while under her feet were
clouds which reflected the colors of aurora and the setting sun, and
behind their golden fringing myriads of angels were smiling and singing
hymns which have no echo here below. And what I saw and heard was so
real that all that I had heard and seen heretofore seemed like a vague,
dark dream of night. The divine Virgin looked at me with an immortal
smile, which was reflected no doubt from the lips of her divine Child
on the day of his birth.

“She said to me: ‘Here I am, my son. I come because you called me. The
help that I sent you is very near. Remember, my son—’ But, oh! what
was I going to say! I am only permitted to reveal a few words of this
celestial conversation, which relate to my deliverance. The rest is a
secret between God and myself—sufficient to say these words have fixed
my destiny.

“For a long time she spoke to me, and my soul, ravished, absorbed,
transfigured, listened in unspeakable ecstasy to the divine harmony of
her voice. It will vibrate eternally in my soul, and the torrents of
tears that poured from my eyes were as refreshing as dear to my heart.
At last the mysterious vision gradually vanished. Clouds, figures,
angels, light, all had disappeared, and yet my soul invoked the
celestial vision by ineffable sighs and moans.

“When at last I turned round, the help which had been miraculously
promised to me had arrived. ‘Twas then, reverend father, that I
perceived you near me. You know the rest.”

The next day there was great excitement among the little population
of the neighborhood. The news of the miracle had spread rapidly, and
a pious and devout crowd had gathered in the modest little church
to assist at a solemn Mass celebrated by the holy missionary. More
than one pitying look was turned during the ceremony toward the young
officer, who knelt near the sanctuary, praying with an angelic fervor.

It is said that some time after, in another country, far, far beyond
the sea, a young officer who had miraculously escaped death abandoned a
brilliant future, and consecrated himself to God in a cloister. Was it
he? No one has ever known positively.

If ever you pass by the old church of the Rivière Ouelle, don’t forget
to stop a moment. You will see hanging in one of the side-chapels the
antique _ex-voto_ which recalls the souvenir of this miraculous event.
The picture has no intrinsic value; but it is an old, old relic, that
one loves to see, for it tells a thrilling story. Often travellers who
come from distant lands stop before this dusty old picture, struck by
the strange scene it represents. Oftentimes pious mothers stand before
it with their little ones, and relate to them the wondrous legend; for
the souvenir of this thrilling story is still vivid throughout the
country.




THE RECORDS OF A RUIN.


THE Palais Royal derives its chief historical interest from its
association with the memory of Cardinal Richelieu. When it first
attracted his notice by its situation, at once delightful and
convenient, surrounded by richly planted gardens, and close to the
Louvre and the then fashionable thoroughfare of the city, it was the
property and residence of the Marquis d’Estrée. From this nobleman
Richelieu purchased it in 1624. Soon, however, the elegant mansion,
which had been abundantly spacious for the lords of d’Estrée with their
innumerable retainers and long corteges of valets of every degree in
the lengthy domestic hierarchy of those days, became too small for the
growing importance of Louis XIII.’s magnificent minister.

Richelieu fell a conquest to the building and decorating mania
prevalent at that period amongst princes and princely prelates; he
threw down the walls of the Hôtel d’Estrée at the north end, pushed
the house into the gardens, drove the gardens further out into the
open space beyond, and pierced a way through into the street which was
henceforth to be honored by bearing his name. Philippe of Champagne
was invited to paint the ceilings and decorate the walls of the
stupendous eminence whose cipher gleamed over all the doors, sometimes
engrained in gold letters upon marble, sometimes curiously interlaced
with emblematic figures, or emblazoned in the Richelieu arms. When all
was complete, it was necessary to rechristen the dwelling which had
been so enlarged and renovated as to be virtually a new edifice—the
mansion which had been metamorphosed into a palace. After much serious
consultation, and many times changing his mind, Richelieu decided that
it should be called Palais Cardinal. A slab bearing these two words
in large gold letters was accordingly placed over the gates of the
_ci-devant_ Hôtel d’Estrée. The next morning all Paris beheld it, and
burst out laughing. The _beaux-esprits_ of the sarcastic capital, with
Balzac at their head, rushed in a body to the square in front of the
new palace, and woke the echoes of the sleeping aristocratic gardens
with their uproarious mirth; there they stood, armed with grammars,
lexicons of divers tongues, and pens and portfolios, discussing with
much solemnity the two inoffensive nouns on the marble slab; every
now and then a wag from the crowd raising shouts of laughter by some
ludicrous explanation of his own. Presently the gates were swung apart,
and out drove the cardinal, and beheld the spectacle, so eminently
gratifying to his sensitive pride, of “all Paris laughing at him.”

The scoffers gathered round his equipage, books and pen in hand,
imploring him to enlighten their ignorance from the depths of his
unfathomable erudition; how were they to parse the name of his
eminence’s house? _Palais_ and _Cardinal_—it was most perplexing to
their weak intelligence. The conjunction was a turning upside down of
all established rules—a topsy-turvy of principles and of all known
precedents.

Separately, the two nouns were comprehensible, but joined together,
what were they? Was it, mayhap, Greek or Latin construction, or was it
taken from the legends of old Gaul French, or a specimen of some new
and unknown tongue evolved from the universal genius of the minister?
Richelieu, writhing under the pitiless hilarity of the tormentors,
lent a deaf ear to them, and rode forth in scornful taciturnity;
petitions from imaginary savants, who professed to be laboring in
the mazes of a new grammar, flowed in the following days upon the
unlucky author of the ungrammatical inscription, beseeching him to
let the ignorant world into the secret of its proper parsing; the
enemies of the cardinal, in fact, made capital out of his vanity to
their heart’s content, but Richelieu’s pride was a match for them. The
only answer he condescended to make was to point to the inscription
over the Hôtel Dieu. The precedent was no doubt unanswerable; but
vanity remained, nevertheless, more prominent in the imitation than
either sense or grammar. It held its place, however, in spite of all
attempts to laugh it down. The splendors of the Palais Cardinal have
been enlarged upon in most of the memoirs and chronicles of that time.
Richelieu, while busy making and mending quarrels between the king and
the queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, governing France, and pulling the
strings of all the governments of Europe, found time to devote to his
hobby of enriching and beautifying his palace, overseeing in its most
minute details the architectural part of the work, and directing the
research after objects of art far and near for its adornment. While
he was thus variously occupied, a knot of literary men were in the
habit of meeting quietly once a week close to his palace gates, to
read aloud their own works, and discuss the state of letters, whose
horizon was just then beginning to brighten under the rising sun of
the great Corneille. The meetings were held at the house of one of the
circle; they were quite unostentatious, and aspired to no notoriety
beyond their own circle; the members sought only to encourage each
other by honest criticism, and by the emulation that comes of working
in common towards a common end. Soon, however, these weekly gatherings
became talked about; courtiers heard of them, and begged to be allowed
to assist at them. By-and-by Richelieu came to hear of them; his
curiosity was excited, first from a political point of view—he feared
the so-called _réunions littéraires_ might be a covert for something
more dangerous; he was not slow, however, to find out his mistake,
and to detect in the modest literary club a germ of future greatness;
he expressed his desire that the meetings should be held henceforth
at the Palais Cardinal, and under his immediate auspices. The members
protested; they were not worthy of so distinguished an honor, etc.;
but Richelieu assured them that he saw in their modest labors the
promised fulfilment of his long-cherished desire “to raise the French
language from the ranks of barbarous tongues, and to cleanse it from
the impurities which it had contracted in the mouth of the people
and on the lips of courtiers.” The little band of writers yielded
reluctantly to the pompous summons so flatteringly sent forth against
their independence, and the Académie Française was founded. Louis XIII.
gave it letters-patent, and became its chief patron, while Richelieu
was named President. The number of academicians was limited to forty.
Amongst the great and gifted men who figure at the birth of this modern
Areopagus, destined to be glorified in its after-career by so many
brilliant members, Pierre Corneille stands out conspicuous. The young
poet found in Richelieu a kind and munificent patron, until he had the
ill-luck to wound his vanity in one of its most vulnerable points. Not
content with being a potentate, a warrior, a financier, and innumerable
other things besides, the insatiable cardinal aspired to being a
poet—a disastrous form of ambition which gave a cruel handle to his
enemies, and furnished them with many a shaft of ridicule wherewith
to pierce his thin-skinned susceptibilities. Richelieu, however,
pursued his way in serene self-confidence, despising the ignorance
and jealousy of the vulgar herd, and periodically bringing forth the
offspring of his genius in the shape of plays and poems. One set of
verses with which he was particularly satisfied he handed in MS. to
Corneille, desiring to secure his approval before launching them on
the sea of public criticism, and modestly requesting the young poet
to overlook them and make any alteration that he thought advisable.
Corneille had not graduated long enough in the school of courtiers to
know what this flattering request was worth, so he set about complying
with it conscientiously, pruning and altering with his fine critical
pen as it ran along the course of the ministerial poem. Richelieu’s
amazement on beholding his masterpiece thus audaciously overhauled was
only equalled by his indignation. Corneille, instead of falling on his
knees and crying _peccavi_ when he saw his mistake, proceeded with
infantine _naïveté_ to argue the case with the wrathful poet, and prove
to him that every correction had been called for by some glaring fault.
This did not mend matters. Such insane honesty met with the fate it
deserved—the fate that from time immemorial it has met with in similar
circumstances. The scene between Gil Blas and the bishop was enacted
in the library of the Palais Cardinal between Corneille and Richelieu,
and certainly Gil Bias was not more astonished by the effect of his
candid criticism on the bishop’s long-winded sermon than was the young
academician by the thunderbolt which fell from his patron’s brow on
perusing his MS. revised and corrected. He was dismissed peremptorily,
and withdrew cursing his own stupidity, and vowing that never again
would he be entrapped into the folly of believing in the common sense
of a patron. Shortly after this mishap, while wandering about in
listless pursuit of an object at Rouen, his native place, he fell in
accidentally with a gentleman who had read his first poetic efforts,
and discerned through their faults and trammels the promise of true
genius that lay beneath. “Why do you waste and hamper your talent in
the threadbare conventionalities of French art?” inquired M. de Chalan.
“You want a higher and a wider scope; read Guillen de Castro, and there
you will find a subject worthy of you, and which will bring out your
powers with a fire and force unsuspected by yourself.”

“Unfortunately, I am not acquainted with Spanish,” replied the young
man.

“But I am,” returned M. de Chalan, “and, if you like, I will teach it
to you.”

Corneille, having nothing else to do, accepted the proposal, and to
this chance circumstance the world apparently owes _The Cid_. That
masterly composition came upon the dramatic world of France—hitherto
fed on threadbare conventionalities, as de Chalan had well said—like
a revelation, and raised such a tempest of senseless vituperation and
malignant opposition as has no parallel in the history of literary
cyclones. Richelieu, who was far too good a judge not to see the rare
merits of the poem, had not the magnanimity to proclaim his opinion,
and thus quell the storm, but fell in with the rioters, and was one
of the loudest in crying down the new tragedy. He could not forgive
the young poet who, without his patronage, nay, in spite of his own
disgrace, had succeeded in climbing to the topmost round of the ladder.
Corneille’s star rose steady and clear above the stormy waters, and he
lived to see it shine out in glorious lustre through the clouds of envy
and hostile criticism. His career was one of unparalleled triumph, till
the appearance of his last work, _Pertharite_, written in 1653. It was
played on the boards of the Palais Cardinal theatre, that had echoed to
so many of his previous triumphs, and was received with a coldness that
was equivalent to condemnation. Corneille saw in this isolated defeat
the ruin of his poetic fame; he became possessed by a morbid despair,
flung away his lyre, and gave up the theatre in disgust. During the
interval of depression that followed this fancied humiliation, he
devoted himself to the translation of Thomas à Kempis’ _The Imitation
of Christ_, sacrificing, as he said himself, “his own reputation to the
glory of a sovereign author.”

The Palais Cardinal, during Richelieu’s multifarious reign, was the
theatre of many boisterous scenes, dark intrigues, and events otherwise
important than these literary skirmishes that occasionally engage
the thoughts of ambitious statesmen. Its propinquity to the Louvre
enabled him to keep his lynx eyes on the busy hive of friends, foes,
and tools who gathered round the king; to frustrate the petty plots
of courtiers; and forestall the schemes of faction by his ubiquitous
presence. Nor are comic chapters lacking in the annals of the Palais
Cardinal at this period. One related by the sprightly Duchesse de
Chevreuse, in a letter to Mme. de Motteville, is grotesque enough to
be worth recording, as characteristic of the cardinal and the court.
Richelieu, it was said, had dared to raise his eyes to the queen, then
in the full bloom of her youth and beauty. As might be expected, the
unwarrantable presumption inspired Anne of Austria with no gentler
feeling than contempt, not unmixed with disgust. She gathered up her
purple robes, as she might have done at the touch of a viper, and
shook them, and passed on with a shudder and a shrug. But her volatile
friend, Mme. de Chevreuse, whose _rôle_ was fun at any price, thought
the cardinal’s love too good a joke not to be turned to account. She
proposed playing him a trick which would have the double advantage
of giving herself and her royal mistress an hour’s good fun, and of
making Richelieu, whom she hated with a woman’s inventive hate, appear
thoroughly ridiculous. “Let me tell him from myself,” she entreated,
“that your majesty is only inexorable because you do not believe in
the sincerity of his love; but that, if he can give you proof of it,
you are open to conviction. I will propose that he come here by the
private way, dressed as a harlequin, and dance the saraband before
you one of these evenings, assuring him, if he does this, you will
believe in the reality of his protestations.” Anne was young, her life
had not much sunshine in its splendor, and the demon of frolic which
so madly possessed her friend was not without its power over her.
She consented that the outrageous joke should be played off on her
gloomy swain. The duchess accordingly informed him that the queen was
passionately fond of the saraband, and had often expressed a desire
to see it danced by one whose dignified deportment and elastic figure
were so admirably adapted to bring out the peculiar characteristics
of the spirited and stately dance, and that nothing would gratify and
flatter her more than to see his eminence yield to this fancy. It was
necessary, she added, that he should be dressed as a harlequin, in
order to bring out in all their perfection the picturesque points of
the dance. Richelieu bit at this outlandish bait, and it was agreed
on a given night he would roam to the Louvre, and disport himself in
the aforesaid manner for the edification of the queen, he being alone
in one room, while her majesty looked on at the performance from
behind a screen in an adjoining one; a musician, concealed also from
view, was to accompany the performance on the violin. The duchess,
who had not bargained for her own share in the sport, took care not
to be deprived of it, but stood beside the queen, peeping through
the screen, while the haughty statesman, bedizened in the variegated
costume of harlequin, “with bells on his fingers, and bells on his
toes,” and jingling from his comical fool’s cap, tripped it on the
light fantastic toe. Mme. de Chevreuse describes the scene with the
mischievous glee of a schoolboy: herself and the queen squeezing each
other’s hands, and terrified lest one explosive burst should betray
them and suddenly cut short the performance; the musician convulsed in
another corner, scratching away frantically at his fiddle to drown the
irrepressible laughter of the trio; while Richelieu, the proud, the
grave, the vindictive and all-powerful Richelieu, capered backwards
and forwards on the polished floor, snapping his fingers at each rapid
_pirouette_, stamping his heel and pointing his toe as the figures of
the saraband demanded. The performance over, he donned his cloak, and
made his way back discreetly to the Palais Cardinal. No time was lost
in recapitulating the farce to the court, and the merriment that it
provoked may be readily imagined. But who might laugh with impunity
at Richelieu? The true motive of the unseemly burlesque to which he
had lent himself was soon made known to the hero, and terrible was the
vengeance that awaited its authors. He bided awhile, and then began
that series of calumnies and persecutions that poisoned so many years
of the young queen’s life. Richelieu had insinuated himself into the
confidence of Louis XIII., and his influence over him was boundless.
This tremendous weapon he used against the queen with cruel ingenuity.
He contrived to implicate her in the odious and diabolical conspiracy
of the arch-traitor de Chalais; accused her of having plotted to
dethrone and murder the king, with a view to putting Gaston d’Orléans,
his brother, on the throne, and marrying him. When Louis XIII. brutally
challenged his wife to vindicate herself from the twofold criminal
charge, she replied, with _spirituelle_ disdain: “I had too little
to gain by the exchange.” It is more than probable that Louis never
seriously suspected Anne of Austria of having had any share in the
guilt laid to her charge by Richelieu; but the calumny did its work
efficiently in another way: it cut at the root of her affection for
her husband and of his trust in her—it chilled and alienated them for
years. The Duchesse de Chevreuse, accused, with some show of truth, of
having conspired with Gaston d’Orléans to dethrone the king, was exiled
from France. Richelieu followed up the advantage of his first attack by
accusing the queen of keeping up a correspondence with the enemies of
the state. Anne, too proud to justify herself, imprudently paraded her
contempt for Richelieu’s malevolent intrigues by openly and on every
occasion showing her love for her own family, at that time at war with
France; expressions full of the warmth of natural affection were made
a handle of by her enemies, construed into treason against the king
and the state. The birth of Louis XIV. (1638) brought about a partial
reconciliation between her and the husband who had insulted and treated
her with systematic neglect. But Richelieu’s sway remained unshaken to
the end. It was entirely an intellectual sway; the heart had no share
in it on either side. The minister hated the king, and the king hated
the minister; their natures were essentially antagonistic, and mutual
interest alone held them together. Louis, hearing that he was about to
be freed from the bondage under which he had chafed so long—that the
summons had come for Richelieu—went in haste to the Palais Cardinal to
receive the adieux of the dying minister. The interview between them
was short and utterly devoid of pathos; no shade of tenderness had
entered into the bond that was about to be dissolved. The breaking up
of it was simply a matter of business. The king left the death-chamber
of the man to whom he owed all the glory of his reign, without a tear
in his eye or a passing emotion in his heart, and paced the adjoining
room with a steady step and satisfied air, while a smile, amounting
at intervals to a suppressed laugh, was visible on his features. When
all was over, and the signal came forth that Richelieu was no more, he
exclaimed tranquilly: “_Voilà un grand politique de mort!_”[42] (1642.)
A few months later, he himself had joined the great politician in
another world.

Richelieu, whose more than royal munificence of state had roused the
jealous susceptibilities of the king, atoned for it by bequeathing his
beautiful palace, with its accumulated treasures of art and industry,
to his unthankful master. Anne of Austria inaugurated her reign as
regent by taking up her abode under the roof of the man who had been to
the last day of his life her implacable enemy. Immediately after the
death of Louis XIII., she came to the Palais Cardinal with the little
king and his brother, the Duc d’Anjou. The theatre on which Richelieu
had lavished so much taste and wealth was included in the bequest,
though he had often expressed his intention of presenting it to the
nation, and endowing it for the benefit of rising dramatic artists.

Notwithstanding that Anne of Austria had good reason to execrate the
cardinal for his injustice and malignity to herself personally, she did
full honor to his merits as a statesman; and years after his death,
when at the zenith of her popularity as regent, she said once, looking
up at a portrait of Richelieu which hung in the state-saloon of the
Palais Cardinal: “Were that man alive now, he would be more powerful
than ever.” It was a generous and exhaustive tribute to the memory of
those services which had consolidated the monarchy in France, and made
her own position what it was.

The name of Palais Cardinal, which, despite its equivocal grammar, was
appropriate while Richelieu inhabited it, ceased to be so when it
passed into the possession of the crown. Anne was advised to change it,
but refused to do so, at the solicitation of the Duchesse d’Aiguillon,
who besought her to retain a name which so honorably associated
Richelieu with the glorious reign of Louis XIII. Public opinion,
however, prevailed before long, and the palace was henceforth by common
consent designated as the Palais Royal. With its new name began a new
era in its annals.

Anne has been compared by some of her admirers and biographers to
Blanche of Castille; but, while rendering full justice to the queenly
qualities of the Austro-Spanish regent, we own that the comparison
strikes us as being suggested rather by their circumstances than by
the characters of the two queen-mothers who each played so remarkable
a part in the history of their epochs. Blanche of Castille made it
her first and paramount ambition to render her son worthy of that
imperishable crown which awaited him in the Kingdom that is not of
this world: Anne of Austria aimed at securing for hers the supremacy
of earthly glory—at making him a great and powerful king. In each
case, as it mostly happens, the omnipotent mother’s will worked out
its own ideal. The minority of the future Grand Monarque opened in
troubled times; the elements of the Fronde were fermenting deep down
under the apparently smooth surface, and the _fêtes_, and masquerades,
and merry-making with which the regent celebrated her tardy accession
to sovereign power were soon followed by more exciting events. Mazarin
had succeeded to Richelieu—oily, pliant Mazarin, so zealous in his
endeavors to keep well with all parties; flattering the ambitious
hopes of Gaston d’Orléans, and laying himself out with elaborate zeal
to please the regent and secure her confidence; yielding outwardly,
with alluring grace, to every caprice of her soft despotic sway; and
pulling dexterously the complicated strings of the malcontents, Condé,
and Conti, and Longueville, and many other illustrious personages who
chafed uneasily under the sceptre of the foreigner; benevolent and
outspoken, but irreclaimably despotic. Mazarin, in his desire to please
all parties whom it was of use to propitiate, and make money plentiful
where it was needed for his purposes, had gone on taxing till he raised
the devil in the _then_ much enduring people. Everything was ready for
an outbreak. The _Te Deum_ after the victory of Lens gave the signal
for it. It was a burning day in August, in the year 1648. The city
had turned out to join in the jubilee, and, amidst the inspiriting
chorus of trumpets, and cannons, and bells that sent exulting chimes
from many belfries, such small matters as hunger and empty hearths and
misery in its multiform moods and tenses were forgotten for a moment.
But it needed only a touch to rouse the sleeping furies in the hearts
of the hungry, rejoicing crowd. Broussel was seized by the troops, who
had just played their part in the gay thanksgiving, and carried off
to prison—Broussel, the venerable magistrate, the people’s sturdy
friend; who had fought their battles over and over again against mighty
Mazarin himself; who had stood by them and upheld their rights in the
teeth of the foreign queen and her foreign minister; Broussel, whom
the people called _notre père_—were they going to see him seized by
soldiers, and carried off before their eyes? No; they would stand by
him as he had stood by them. The last notes of the _Te Deum_ were
still ringing over the city, when up leaped the shouts of revolution
and the cry “To arms!” and chased away their holy echoes. The mob
surrounded the carriage in which Broussel was placed, guarded on all
sides by armed men; they were beaten back and trodden down; the people
returned to the charge undaunted, and finally bore down on the Palais
Royal, vociferating unmannerly threats, and demanding Broussel: “Give
us Broussel, or we will burn down your house about you!”—pleasant
sounds for the queen to hear beneath her windows! Anne of Austria
had not foreseen this bursting up of the vulgar depths over which
she had hitherto ridden in safe and scornful unconcern; nor, in all
probability, had Mazarin. He was with the queen in that sumptuous
apartment called the queen’s boudoir, whose one broad window, mounted
in a frame of massive silver wrought like a brooch, looked out upon
the court; the regent paced the room in feverish excitement, her face
flushed, her hands, alternately crossed on her breast with an air of
stern resolve, moving in the animated and expressive play that was
familiar to her; every now and then she would stand in the embrasure
of the rich and cunningly carved window, and cast a glance of mingled
scorn and defiance on the vociferous rabble below. They catch sight
of her, and greet her with ominous signs and gestures. They see in
her cool courage a taunt that rouses them to desperation. All unarmed
as they are, except with stones and sticks and such like unmilitary
weapons, they are ready to give battle to her troops. At this crisis,
when the Fronde was born, a young man named Gondi starts to the
surface, shooting up from the dark horizon like a glittering rocket.
He is endowed with that peculiar kind of alcoholic eloquence which
appears to be in all climes and ages the apanage of demagogues. Gondi
had already made himself conspicuous as a discontented spirit whom it
would be well either to crush or to conciliate; and Mazarin would in
all likelihood have adopted the latter plan but for the fact of his
jealousy having been aroused by the queen’s kindly notice of the young
firebrand; he foresaw a possible rival in Gondi’s ardor and talents,
and forthwith decreed his ruin. Gondi was just now making himself
popular by declaiming on the wrongs of the people, and denouncing the
seizure of Broussel as iniquitous and tyrannical. There was some talk
of sending a despatch to the regent to demand his release; Mazarin
caught at this opportunity of lowering Gondi in the estimation of the
queen by placing him in the position of a leader of the Fronde, so he
sent word to him indirectly to come to the Palais Royal and present
the people’s petition. Gondi, who saw in the mission an occasion
for distinguishing himself with all parties, accepted it. He told
the people that he undertook to ask, and pledged himself to obtain,
the liberation of Broussel within an hour. They followed him with
enthusiastic cheers to the Palais Royal, where he was admitted to the
presence of the queen. She received him with flattering promptitude,
unconscious of the motive of his visit. Anne was in no mood for
compromises or concessions; the rebellious attitude of her subjects had
steeled her heart for the moment against the demands of clemency, and
when Gondi, announcing himself the bearer of the demands of the people,
asked for the liberation of the magistrate, her anger broke out into
violence: “Give up Broussel!” she cried, with a sardonic laugh, “I will
strangle him first with my own hands!” And clenching those beautiful
little hands that have been sung by every poet of her day, she went
close up to Gondi, and shook them in his face. The deputy, confounded,
stood rooted to the spot, and uttered not a word; when Anne, abruptly
turning away, said, with a quiet sarcasm the more chilling from its
sudden contrast with her foregoing vehemence: “Go and rest, Monsieur de
Gondi; you have worked hard.”

He left her presence, and carried his perplexity to Mazarin. But
Mazarin, who had led him into the dilemma of playing false to the
people and vexing the queen, coldly declined interfering, and bowed
the unsuccessful diplomatist out. Gondi, betrayed and baffled, left
the Palais Royal with an oath that the morrow would see him master
of Paris. When a lad of eighteen, he had written an essay on the
_Conjuration de Fiesque_, which drew from Richelieu the remark: “_Voilà
un esprit dangereux._”[43] The day had come when the fiery young
author was to fulfil this sagacious prophecy. The future Cardinal
de Retz had entered the Palais Royal an ambitious courtier: he left
it an infuriated _frondeur_. The next day Paris was bristling with
barricades—its traditional mode of expressing its irritated feelings.

This day, famous as _la journée des barricades_, saw Mathieu Molé
appear in one of the finest attitudes that have marked his noble and
honorable career.

While still young, Molé had risen to the brilliant and perilous
position of _Premier Président du Parlement de Paris_ by the mere
force of talent and rigid integrity of character; he had never courted
the patronage of a minister, nor accepted a favor from one; he had
lent no base compliance to Richelieu’s despotism or to Mazarin’s
more captivating rule; he had remained the staunch friend of the
heterodox Abbé de St. Cyran, holding faster by him in his disgrace and
imprisonment than in the days of his transient popularity, persecuting
Richelieu to obtain his pardon, dodging the inaccessible minister late
and early, waylaying him in all possible and impossible places with the
same persistent cry, “Give me back my friend St. Cyran,” till at last
Richelieu, worn out with his importunity, seized the president by the
arm one day, and said: “This M. Molé is a worthy magistrate, but the
most obstinate pleader in France,” and gave him back his Abbé de St.
Cyran. This was the man who was chosen to head a second embassy from
the people to the Palais Royal. The regent was aware of his coming,
and received him with cold civility; but her high spirit was slightly
subdued since the preceding day; she had passed a sleepless night
waiting for the events of the morrow, and was disposed to admit the
possibility of coming to a compromise with her unruly citizens. Mathieu
Molé was not an orator in the classical sense of the word, but he had
that sort of eloquence that stirs the hearts of men. It achieved a
victory, in the first place, over the angry mob by making them listen
to reason and take a dispassionate view of their position, and now it
gained an equally important one with the regent, inducing her to yield
a reluctant consent to the liberation of Broussel. The barricades
were lowered, and Paris gave a joyous welcome to its friend. But the
blaze thus rashly kindled was not to be so quickly quenched. Anne of
Austria eventually conquered both the Fronde and the less violent but
equally dangerous pretensions of Mazarin, who, succumbing with a fairly
good grace before the indomitable courage and inflexible firmness of
the regent, renounced the ambition of making her his tool, and was
satisfied with being her right hand in governing the state. How high
his ambition soared may be guessed from the following trait. Once, when
conversing with Anne of Austria, emboldened by that gracious _abandon_
of manner which made the haughty Spaniard so charming in her amiable
moods, Mazarin alluded to the boyish passion of the king for his niece,
Marie Mancini, and observed how deeply he would have deplored it had
his majesty, yielding to the infatuation of the hour, committed the
chivalrous folly of marrying her. Anne of Austria drew herself up with
all the pride of her Castilian blood, and answered: “Had my son been
capable of such an unworthiness, I should have placed myself with his
brother at the head of the nation against him and against you.” The
proud daughter of kings, who, by the strength of her solitary will,
could govern a nation and cow the daring leaders of the Fronde, was
in person as tender and delicate as a child; her health was fragile,
and her skin so sensitive that it was difficult to find any cambric
soft enough to clothe without hurting her. Mazarin, alluding once to
this Sybarite delicacy of temperament, declared to the regent that her
purgatory in the next world would be to sleep in Holland sheets. Yet,
when Anne was attacked by the cruel malady which ended her days, no
Roman matron could have endured it with greater fortitude. Her piety,
which had guarded her youth through the alluring temptations of the
court, despite the neglect and rudeness of a morose and heartless
husband, sustained her in the protracted tortures of her last illness.
Shortly before she expired, Louis XIV. was kneeling by the bedside of
his mother, weeping bitterly, and covering her hand with his tears;
she drew it gently away, and, looking for a moment at that hand which
had been her chief woman’s vanity, she murmured: “They are beginning
to swell; it is time to go!” Some historians have flippantly taxed
Anne with having systematically kept her son in the background, and
sacrificed him selfishly to the prolongation of her own power; but
Louis’ passionate grief at her death, and his lifelong gratitude to
the memory of his mother, sufficiently repudiate this charge. Louis
XIV. never resided at the Palais Royal after her death; when necessity
obliged him to remain in Paris, he occupied the Louvre.

The characters and careers of Richelieu and Mazarin furnish one of
those points of comparison which history is so fond of. Richelieu was
undeniably the more brilliant statesman of the two; he was endowed with
greater originality and a larger breadth of view; he left a deeper
impress on his time, and his remote action on France was more enduring;
but if the achievement of peace be more valuable to a people than the
prosecution of war, Mazarin has paramount claims on the gratitude of
his country. The Treaty of Westphalia, and the Peace of the Pyrenees,
are two monuments raised by Mazarin to his own fame that out-top all
the dazzling trophies of his predecessors, and establish a nobler
claim to the admiration of the civilized world than all Richelieu’s
victorious accomplishments in war. Both statesmen were pre-eminently
gifted with that power of reading men which is so serviceable an agent
in the hands of those who are called to govern. It was this electric
instinct which prompted Richelieu to single out Mazarin from the crowd
as the man best fitted to be his successor—a choice which the young
Italian justified by carrying out with unswerving fixity of purpose
the vast unfinished designs of the patron whom death had cut short in
the midst of his work. Mazarin, on the other hand, gave a striking
proof of this same subtle insight when he said of the young king, then
a mere boy in his mother’s leading-strings, and as yet having done
nothing to reveal the future grand monarch: “There is stuff enough in
him to make four kings and one honest man.” Both ministers set their
influence and power above the interest and authority of the sovereign;
but both labored with unflinching steadiness of aim to raise the
monarchy to a height of splendor it had never before reached, and was
not destined long to retain. Both carried their _soutane_ with more
of martial dignity than priestly gravity—that _soutane_ of which
Richelieu boasted: “I mow down everything, I upset everything, and
then I cover it all with my red _soutane_.” Both made it the business
of their lives while at the head of the state to humble Austria and
Spain, and both succeeded. The marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta
of Spain was one of Mazarin’s most successful diplomatic acts; he
foresaw in this union the probable succession of the Bourbons to the
crown of Charles Quint. But alongside of his many services to his
country, there is one act of his that goes far to annul them—this
was his introduction of gambling into France. To this deplorable
importation the Abbé St. Pierre traces, not perhaps without a shade
of exaggeration, but with palpable logic, the rapid decadence of the
national morals and character; he says that Mazarin inoculated the
young king with the passion for games of hazard, in order to keep his
mind aloof from things in which it became him better to be interested,
and thereby to prevent his interference in the affairs of state; the
regent, in her turn, became smitten with the novel mania, and would
spend whole nights with her court playing cards. Mazarin himself was
an incorrigible gambler, and often devoted to this passion the hours
he should have given to sleep after his day’s arduous task. He was
looked upon more as a player of doubtful honesty—“_un joueur plus que
suspect_”; but “who allowed others in turn to cheat him, provided they
did it cleverly,” St. Pierre tells us; and he goes on to say: “The
young nobles, first at court, and then all over the country, followed
his example, and took to card-playing; they forsook the athletic
sports and manly amusements which had delighted their fathers, and
gave themselves up to this enervating and ruinous passion; they became
weaker, more ignorant, and less polished; women caught the fever, and
grew to respect themselves less, and to be less respected.” Mazarin’s
avarice was as insatiable as his ambition; he died colossally rich;
but during his last illness, seized with remorse, he made over all his
unjust gains to the king, who, of course, refused to accept them, and
the cardinal then divided his vast wealth between Louis, the queen,
Condé, Turenne, his friend Louis de Haro, and several members of his
own family. He bequeathed a large sum for the foundation of a college,
which he also endowed with his splendid library, recollected after its
dispersion by the Frondeurs at immense trouble and expense. He wished
this college to be called _Collége des quatre nations_, destining it
chiefly for the education of young men belonging to the four provinces
annexed to France during his ministry—Pignerol, Alsace, Roussillon,
and Artois. Le Tellier, who was his executor, punctually obeyed all
his instructions except the last-named. By desire of the king, it
was called Collége Mazarin, which was to become the magnificent
Bibliothèque Royale of to-day.

Henrietta Maria of England occupied the Palais Royal in 1644. The
marriage of her daughter Henrietta to Philip of Orleans, then Duc
d’Anjou, was celebrated here with great pomp, and here the young
princess held a brilliant court for a few years, while her mother dwelt
in the cloistered retreat of Chaillot. The thread of this bright young
life was suddenly snapped asunder. Bossuet’s “O night of horror!” came
like a thunderbolt from a summer sky, scattering the volatile court,
and spreading the news of its loss over the whole of France. Then came
the Regency, which was to add a chapter of such dark and lamentable
notoriety to the history of the Palais Royal. The nephew of Louis
XIV. inherited all the vices and foibles of his race without any of
their redeeming qualities. His selfish, easy-going _bonhomie_ has been
sometimes lauded as clemency; but it may more justly be considered
a combination of weakness and cynical contempt for the claims of
justice. When the enraged populace gathered before his palace, dragging
three naked corpses—the victims of their legitimate but misplaced
anger—along with them, the regent looked out at the tempestuous scene,
and remarked coolly: “The mob are right; the wonder is they bear so
much from us.” And truly it was a wonder; and if the Revolution of
‘93 did not break out under the lawless and exasperating rule of the
Regency, it must only have been because, as St. Simon explained it,
“three things are necessary to make a revolution: leaders, brains,
and funds, none of which were to be found in France at this period.”
The _petits soupers de la Régence_, which have acquired an infamous
celebrity through all the chronicles of the time, can have no place in
our sketch.

The visit of Peter the Great broke in on the luxurious and effeminate
court of the Palais Royal like a Spartan appearing suddenly in the
midst of a banquet of Sybarites. Peter, who had “civilized his people
by cutting their heads off,” set his heart on visiting France during
the preceding reign; but Louis XIV., partly from an insurmountable
antipathy to the semi-barbarous autocrat, partly from political
motives, had signified to his brother of all the Russias that his
absence would be more agreeable than his presence. Peter was compelled,
therefore, to wait until the Grand Monarque had rejoined his ancestors
before gratifying his desire to visit Paris. The regent, far from
making any difficulty about receiving him, made the most sumptuous
preparations for the Northern reformer, and invited him to be his guest
at the Palais Royal. But the hardy Muscovite could not conceal his
contempt for the epicurean habits of his host, and horrified him by
declaring that he never slept on anything softer than a camp-stretcher,
which he carried with him in all his peregrinations, and used on the
field of battle and in his own palace, and which he insisted now on
substituting for the luxurious couch prepared for him. Altogether,
the ways of Peter bewildered the nephew of Louis XIV. He was up with
the birds, and flying over the city to see things and people that
the latter would never have dreamed of calling his attention to. He
expressed a wish to see Mme. de Maintenon, then living in dignified
retreat at St. Cyr. Her Solidity, as Louis XIV. had dubbed her, pleaded
ill-health as an excuse for declining the honor and fatigue of an
official reception. Peter, therefore, set off one morning and scared
the learned and sedate ladies of St. Cyr out of their propriety by
requesting to be shown at once to Mme. de Maintenon’s room. On arriving
there, he entered without knocking, walked straight to the bed, pushed
aside the curtains, and, sitting down beside the astonished lady,
entered brusquely into conversation. The Sorbonne he also honored
with one of these unceremonious visitations; perceiving a statue of
Richelieu in one of the galleries, he rushed up to it, and, clasping
the marble in his arms, exclaimed: “O incomparable man! would that thou
wert still alive, and I would give thee one-half of my empire to teach
me how to govern the other!”

But with all this rough and somewhat ostentatious disregard of
etiquette, Peter had a keen sense of what was due to his imperial
mightiness, and, with the caprice of a despot, could assert it
trenchantly enough when he thought fit. The regent invited a number
of the most illustrious men of the day to meet his eccentric guest
at a banquet at the Palais Royal. As they were about to enter the
dining-room, little Louis XV. stood back to let the czar pass first;
Peter was unwilling to take precedence of the King of France, and
equally reluctant to walk behind a child, so he wittily solved the
difficulty by catching up the small monarch in his arms and carrying
him to his seat.

The regent closed his ignoble life at the Palais Royal in 1723. His
son Louis, Duke of Orleans, succeeded him. This prince brought his
young bride, Jeanne de Bade, there soon after he took possession of his
ancestral home, and lost her after a brief and blissful union. At the
time of her death, Louis XV. was lying mortally sick, it was believed,
at Metz, and thither, in the frenzy of his grief, the bereaved husband
flew, and, going straight to the room of the dying king, demanded
admittance; the attendants expostulated, but Louis pushed them aside,
and kicked in the door to announce his loss to the kinsman who himself
lay battling with death. He survived Jeanne some years, but never
recovered her loss; he led a solitary and desolate life, and gave
himself up to works of benevolence and the study of oriental languages.
He became a perfect adept in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek tongues,
and never appeared at court as a widower except when the imperious
etiquette of Versailles occasionally demanded it. He died in 1752. His
son’s reign at the Palais Royal is chiefly remarkable by his having
inoculated his own children with small-pox; the daring experiment,
which was performed by Tronchin, summoned from Geneva for the purpose,
was crowned with success. Paris, transported with joy, made bonfires in
the Place in front of the palace, and for a time the rash and fortunate
father was the hero of toast and song. Another event which signalized
his occupation of Richelieu’s palace was the destruction of the theatre
by fire (1763). The duke rebuilt it on a somewhat larger but infinitely
less gorgeous scale as to decoration. He was an enlightened patron
of art, and especially kind in assisting young men whose talent was
struggling to make head against poverty. He divined the genius of the
young poet Le Fèvre, and encouraged him both by personal notice and by
liberal gifts. He was so pleased with Le Fèvre’s tragedy _Zuma_ that
immediately on its appearance he bestowed a pension of 1,200 crowns
on the poet out of his privy purse; and on the latter’s asking what
services were expected from him in return for this munificence, the
duke answered: “It obliges you to work henceforth more ardently for
your own fame—nothing more.” This prince, though he allowed himself
to be drawn, to a certain extent, into the fashionable follies of
the court, had inherited from his father many sterling and beautiful
qualities. His benevolence was unbounded; but it was only after his
death that his real character was revealed, so carefully did he shun
everything like ostentation in the exercise of his favorite virtue. It
was then discovered that two-thirds of his immense revenue had been
spent upon the poor, in the payment of pensions to artists, men of
letters, widows, etc.; some granted in his own name, others in the name
of one or other of his ancestors. His condescending kindness towards
his dependents endeared him to all who approached him. A chamberlain
coming one day to announce to him the death of a most inefficient
and tiresome valet, who had been twenty years in the duke’s service,
“Poor fellow!” sighed the duke, “for twenty years he served me, and
for twenty years he worried me!” “Why did you keep him, monseigneur?”
inquired a bystander. “Why, he would never have found a place if I had
turned him away,” replied the prince, and then added: “We must see now
that his wife and children are provided for.” Was it not Sophocles who
said, “Only a great soul knows how much glory there is in being kind”?
What a germ of true glory there lies buried in this quiet little trait
of Louis d’Orléans!

The death of this magnificent patron, forbearing master, and generous
father of the poor makes way for another prince of the House of Orleans
who has earned a louder but less enviable notoriety on the world-stage
of history. Almost immediately on his becoming master of the Palais
Royal, the new Duc d’Orléans had the vexation of seeing the theatre so
recently rebuilt by his father burnt down again. Discouraged, no doubt,
by this precedent, he refused to rebuild it at his own expense, and
applied to the city of Paris for the necessary funds; but that body
declined to furnish them. The _Comédie Française_ was consequently
transferred to the Porte St. Martin, where a building was erected in
the space of six weeks by Lenoir. It was not till many years later
that Richelieu’s beautiful temple to dramatic art was rebuilt by a
prince of the House of Orleans, to be henceforth hired out on lease to
enterprising managers.

We are told that in his early youth Joseph Philippe d’Orléans gave
promise of an estimable manhood. How wofully this promise was belied by
his after-life and shameful and tragic death we know. He was born at
St. Cloud in 1747, and married, in 1769, the only daughter of the Duc
de Penthièvre—a creature endowed with every charm of person and mind
to make her at once reverenced and loved. Philippe was tall, slight,
and well proportioned, his features finely cut and lit up with vivacity
and intelligence, his manners gracious and dignified. Such is the
portrait handed down to us of him in those early days before the shadow
of coming infamy had obscured the picture. He fell soon into habits of
unbridled dissipation; but, so long as he confined himself to this,
to mad charioteering pranks on the boulevards, and aerial escapades
in balloons, with boon companions as mad as himself, the people
looked on in contemptuous disapproval. It was necessary, in order to
stimulate this passive feeling to one of direct antagonism, that he
should interfere with the popular pleasure and convenience. This he
did by turning his broad and richly planted garden into a huge shop,
thus depriving the _bourgeois_ and idlers of Paris of their accustomed
resort on the sultry days and long mellow evenings of summer. His royal
highness had contrived very soon to compromise a fortune more than
royal in its extent; and, in order to replenish his coffers, he decided
to cut down his ancestral chestnuts, and build up in their place long
rows of shops, to be hired out at a high rent to tradespeople. The
fashionables and the _bourgeois_, and, more important than all in a
Frenchman’s eyes, the children, were thus driven to promenade under a
stone colonnade, instead of enjoying the green shade of Richelieu’s
groves, where the buzz of a multifarious bazaar had replaced the
cooing of doves and the twitter of singing-birds. By-and-by we see the
thermometer rising from resentful dislike to fierce hatred. Philip
is smitten with Anglomania, and spends his time and, what is of more
consequence to Paris, his money in London. He wears only London-made
coats, drives English horses, hires English grooms, altogether affects
the ways and manners of _outre-mer_, to the great disgust of Versailles
and the boulevards. Wretched Philip! well had it been for him and
for Versailles had he dwelt content in these puerile masquerades and
self-degrading follies! But under the frivolous surface there lay
a substratum of cruel vindictiveness, a bristling self-love, that
was quick to see an affront, and implacable in avenging it. Marie
Antoinette had the dire ill-luck to offend her disreputable cousin of
Orleans. When her brother, the Archduke Maximilian, came to see her
at Versailles, the queen, then in her twentieth year, very naturally
desired to see as much as possible of this dear companion of her
childhood during his short stay; so she dispensed, as far as she could,
with court ceremonial, remaining chiefly in her private apartments with
her brother. It did not probably occur to her that, in omitting to
invite the Duc d’Orléans to share this sisterly intercourse, she was
inflicting a wound that would one day distil its deadly poison upon
herself and those dearest to her. So it was, however. Philip never
forgave what he considered a slight, and bitterly did he make the
thoughtless young queen repent having inflicted it.

The gardens of the Palais Royal, which had given rise to his first
unpopularity, were destined to be the scene of the upheaving of the
revolution. All was ready, only waiting for a bold hand to give a push
to the pendulum and set it going. Camille Desmoulins did it. It was
the 12th of July, 1789. Yesterday the great crisis had been prepared,
and to-day it burst. Necker, the universal genius whose advent to the
ministry was hailed as the panacea for all discords, and difficulties,
and threatened dangers; Necker, the “Achilles of computation,” whose,
vigorous hand and capacious brain were to seize France, tottering on
the brink of some invisible gulf, and steady her; Necker, to whom
the timid, apathetic king, and the proud, valiant queen, had all but
gone on their knees to induce him to come and redeem the treasury by
“swift arithmetic,” and save the government and—yes, even at this
date they must have included it in the salvations to be accomplished
by Necker—the throne; Necker, who had yielded to the royal suppliants
with these words: “I yield in obedience to duty, but with the certainty
that I am doomed”—Necker had been dismissed. On the 11th of July,
Louis XVI. signed the letter imploring the minister to leave the
kingdom “at once and without _éclat_.” When his secretary objected that
Necker’s extraordinary popularity was a strong presumption against his
obeying this last command; that he had only to show himself, and the
people would rise _en masse_ to prevent his flight, Louis replied:
“I know Necker; he will guard us against himself; he will obey me
scrupulously, and fly without _éclat_.” And he was right. The minister
received the letter at three in the afternoon, and quietly put it in
his pocket without communicating its contents even to his wife; he
dined at the usual hour with some friends already invited; nothing in
his appearance or conversation betrayed the slightest emotion during
the repast; on leaving the table, he showed the letter of dismissal
to Mme. Necker, ordered his carriage, and they went out for a drive;
when they were about two hundred yards from the house, he pulled
the check-string, and desired the coachman to drive to the nearest
post-station. It was not till the following morning that his daughter
and his numerous friends knew of his departure. The news electrified
everybody. Camille Desmoulins’ grand opportunity had arrived. He
had already made himself notorious as a leader of malcontents; this
afternoon he was drinking with a certain set of them in a _café_ at
the Palais Royal—of late a favorite rendezvous of patriots of his
type—noisy and blustering, believing in copious libations as the
most efficacious proof of patriotism. Desmoulins, on hearing the
news, rushed out, pistol in hand, and, jumping on an orange-tree tub,
proceeded to harangue the assembled multitude. He was afflicted with a
painful stuttering in his speech, but this impediment appears to have
been no hindrance to the effect of his oratory; on the contrary, it
gave it a more vehement character, impelling him to wild and passionate
gesticulation, by way of helping out his defective utterance. He spoke
with his eyes, his teeth, every member of his body; he would shake
out his hair in lion-like fashion, stamp his feet, toss his arms with
clenched fists above his head to supply the word his tongue refused to
articulate, and the energetic pantomine elicited the sympathy, while
it fired the passions, of his hearers. “Citizens!” he cried, “I come
from Versailles.” (He came from a neighboring _café_, as we have seen,
but what of that?) “Necker is dismissed. This dismissal is the tocsin
of S. Bartholomew for all patriots. Before the sun has gone down, we
shall see the Swiss and German battalions marching from the Champs de
Mars to murder us like dogs. One chance yet remains to us. To arms!
Let us choose a cockade whereby we may know each other.” This exordium
was covered with thundering salvos by the patriots. “What color shall
we choose?” continued the orator. “Speak, patriots! Select your own
flag. Shall it be green, the emblem of hope, or blue—the color of free
America, of liberty, and democracy?” A voice from the patriots cried
out: “Green, the color of hope!” But the choice was negatived by the
voice of popular prejudice. Green, it was said, was unlucky. No; they
would not have green.

A scene of indescribable tumult followed while the momentous question
of the cockade was being canvassed. Finally, by what train of argument
history does not record, blue, white, and red were elected to the honor
of representing the patriots. They happened to be the colors of the
House of Orleans. From the tub which served as a rostrum to the orator
the decree was shouted to the serried ranks around, and all through
the gardens it was borne along the colonnade rapid as lightning,
swelling, as it went, into a deafening peal that soon reverberated
from the boulevards and the thoroughfares of Paris to Versailles. It
is said, we know not whether or not on authentic testimony, that while
this wild uproar, which terminated in the adoption of his House’s
colors by the popular party, was going on under his windows, Philip of
Orleans, henceforth to be known under the title of Egalité, was coolly
looking out at the performance, smoking his cigar, and discussing the
probable effect of it all at Versailles. By the time the whole city
was out-of-doors, it was the hour for the performance to begin in
the Palais Royal theatre, close by the scene of Camille’s rhetorical
triumph; other more interesting pieces, beginning with comedy and
ending with tragedy, were now to be performed; a band of patriots,
with Camille at their head, burst into the theatre, and, rushing on
the stage, summarily reversed the programme of the evening. They flung
tricolor cockades right and left, and called the spectators to arms.
“The audience rose _en masse_” at the appeal, like a true-born Parisian
audience, and, surging from pit and boxes, poured out impetuous and
desperate, it knew not well why, at the bidding of Camille Desmoulins.
He marched off, with the swelling stream behind him, to the studio
of the sculptor Curtius; there the patriots seized a bust of Necker
and Philip of Orleans, and carried them in procession through the
streets. This was Egalité’s official _début_, as a leader of the Red
Revolution. It was at the Palais Royal he was arrested. Here, on the
site of its first eruption, the wild demon which he had, in the measure
of his power, evoked and called up from the smouldering lava depths
to the full activity of its satanic life, and flattered and bowed
down to, was doomed at the appointed hour of retribution to raise its
bloody hand against the regicide, and strike him down. On his way to
the guillotine, the car, whether by accident or design, passed under
Egalité’s old home. He raised his eyes for a moment to the windows,
and, surveying them with an unmoved countenance, turned his glance
calmly again upon the yelling crowd.

While the Terror lasted, the Palais Royal remained untenanted. After
the Restoration it was occupied by Louis Philippe while Duke of
Orleans; when the son of Egalité called himself to the throne of his
nephew, he forsook it for the Tuileries, and during the remainder of
his reign it was open to the public as an historical monument and
museum. On the resurrection of the Empire, the Palais Royal became
the residence of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, only surviving brother of
Napoleon I. When this last venerable twig fell from the old imperial
tree, it continued in the possession of his son, Prince Napoleon.
Hither, in March, 1859, he brought his young bride, the Princess
Clothilde, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, and there he resided until the
memorable summer of 1870, when the disastrous war with Prussia came
like a cyclone, and tore up the old tree by the roots, and sent the
branches flying hither and thither over the astonished face of Europe.

The Commune closes our retrospect of Richelieu’s palace. The Tuileries
and the Palais Royal sent up their petroleum flames together to the
soft summer skies where the bright May sun was shining down, serenely
sad, upon the awful spectacle of Paris on fire—a funeral pile whereon
were consumed, let us hope never again to rise from their ashes, the
Commune itself, and the delusions of the few honest fools, if such
there were, who believed in its insane theories. Surely as they fled,
scared from their old historic haunts by the blaze and stench of the
devilish modern fluid, the ghosts of Richelieu, and Mazarin, and Anne
of Austria, and all that band of majestic figures from the unburied
past, must have laughed a bitter laugh, wherein horror was not without
a note of triumph, as they looked back upon the ghastly scene. “Our
little systems had their day,” the dead legislators may have said,
one to another, as they stood in the lurid light of the conflagration
that illuminated, to the eyes of their disembodied spirit, the
far-stretching vistas of the present and the past; “they were all
faulty, how faulty we know now with unavailing knowledge, but, compared
to this, were they not the Millennium, Eutopia, the ideal of the reign
of justice upon the earth?”




AN ABUSE OF DIPLOMATIC AUTHORITY.


THE tendency, to which we have heretofore alluded, to ostracize
Catholics, and to take it for granted that this is a Protestant
country, to be ruled exclusively by anti-Catholics, has had even a
more dangerous and far-reaching effect beyond our borders, and that,
too, apparently with official sanction. The popular prejudice has not
unnaturally reached and infected the authorities at Washington. We
do not allude especially to the present Administration or Congress,
for the evil is of long standing; but we have no hesitation in saying
that our diplomatic and consular systems as at present conducted are
unjust to a very respectable minority of the American people, and are
likely to mislead and deceive the nations with which we are on terms of
peace and amity. The foreign appointees are, almost without exception,
taken from the ranks of non-Catholics and without regard either to
the feelings of a large class of our own citizens or the wishes of
the people to whom they are sent. The ministers plenipotentiary to
the great powers of Europe have been invariably selected from the
ultra Protestant class like Motley; while the numerous consuls, with a
few honorable exceptions, have been men of the same way of thinking,
according to their limited understanding. When the Holy Father was yet
in possession of his dominions, we used to delight in sending him now
and then a specimen of a genuine Know-Nothing; and when Spain—Catholic
and conservative Spain—began to feel the Gem of the Antilles slipping
from her grasp, we despatched an atheistical _filibustero_, Soulé, to
assure her of our friendship and good-will With Catholic countries
generally we have acted in the same spirit of contradiction, as if our
object were to excite hostility rather than to perpetuate kindness and
harmony, as among them, particularly in South America, each legation
and consulate habitually formed the nucleus of anti-Catholic society.
As long as this blundering—we will not call it by a harsher name—was
confined to our European appointments, it mattered little; for the
relative condition of Catholics and the sects in this country is there
pretty well known, and, the faith of the people being well fixed,
prejudice and bigotry, even when protected by the stars and stripes,
could do little harm.

It is of the character of our representatives in Turkey, Africa, India,
China, and other places _in partibus infidelium_ that we have most
reason to complain. These American envoys and consuls seem to become
volunteer lay evangelizers; and if, like our friends of the Methodist
and Presbyterian missionary societies of this city, they do not succeed
in converting the benighted heathen from the error of their ways, they
endeavor, by the exercise of all their delegated authority, to thwart
and depreciate the labors of those who can—the Catholic missionaries
from other countries. Take, for example, India and China, the great
missionary fields of the world, containing as they do at least one-half
of the whole human race in a comparative state of civilization. The
former being a province of Great Britain, it is natural that sectarian
missions should receive at least a semi-official recognition and
protection from the appointees of the head of the Protestant Church “as
by law established”; but even in this respect the English officials
have been outdone in zeal and officiousness by our own agents in the
Indian Peninsula, as we learn from a late work on that country.[44]
But in China, with its four or five hundred millions of idolaters,
the case is different. There the Catholic priest and the devoted
Sister of Charity, unsupported by the temporal arm, and unawed by
threats, torture, and death, have been most active and most successful
in advancing the standard of the cross and winning souls to Christ.
Their converts are numbered by tens of thousands, and their churches,
schools, and orphanages dot the southern and western coasts; while the
sectarian missionaries, lacking the sustaining power of the state, have
practically done nothing. This has long been a source of much chagrin
to the various dissenting proselytizing societies in England and the
United States, as it also seems to have been the cause of exasperation
to our Minister at Peking, Mr. Frederick F. Low.

That gentleman’s mission to China appears to have embraced but three
objects, if we except his attempt and absurd failure to bring the
Coreans into communication with the outside world. The first of these
was the protection of American Protestant missionaries, and them only;
the second, to convince the Chinese officials that the United States
have nothing to do with Catholics, or, as he is pleased to style them
on all occasions, “Romanists”; and the third, to send home false
despatches and mistranslated documents.

In looking over the foreign correspondence of our government for 1871,
as presented to Congress with the President’s Message,[45] we find
that, in October, 1870, Mr. Low, without any authority whatever from
Washington, ordered a United States war-vessel from Chefoo to Tungchow,
for the sole purpose of returning some Protestant missionaries to
the latter place, who, with their usual regard for the first law of
nature, had fled from it upon the slightest rumor of danger. The
ship was the _Benecia_, and her precious cargo consisted of “the
missionaries (number not stated), their teachers and servants, also
_their children_, amounting to a total of twenty-four persons.” Of
the reverend gentlemen at whose disposal a public vessel had been so
obsequiously placed by the accommodating Mr. Low, Commander Kimberly,
in his report, bluntly says:

 “The missionaries expressed themselves perfectly satisfied with
 everything that had been done in regard to returning them to their
 homes, and wished me to visit the shore and walk about the city with
 the officers of the ship in full uniform, which I declined to do,
 as, after the promises made by the Chinese officials, I considered
 it unnecessary, and the Chinese being perfectly willing and pleased,
 as far as I could judge, that they had returned. From my interview,
 I came to the conclusion that there never existed any real danger at
 Tungchow-foo, but the missionaries were frightened by the threats of
 some Chinese not in authority. Mischievous persons are found in every
 community, and Tungchow-foo is not free from this infliction. The
 massacre of Tientsin capped the climax, and the missionaries left in
 consequence.”

The cowardly conduct of the missionaries, who were thus so honorably
reconducted to their homes, is even partially admitted by the minister
in his explanatory despatch, for he says: “In this connection, I desire
to say that I have had no information from the missionaries, except a
short note from one of them saying that they had all reached Tungchow.
Without expressing any opinion as to the real peril they were in, or
whether there was or was not cause for the step they took, I am of the
opinion that their removal and the manner of their return will, on the
whole, result in good.”

We admit that it is the duty of every envoy, consul, or other foreign
agent of our government to succor and protect our citizens abroad in
all things lawful; but here, in this respect, their duty ends. They
have no shadow of right to employ the public vessels of the country,
paid for by the public at large, and destined for far other purposes,
in any other business, much less for the transportation of runaway
missionaries, “their teachers, servants, and children.” This is not
a Protestant country _de facto_ or _de jure_, and, as far as the
national government is concerned, no religion whatever is recognized.
If it were an equal number of merchants or traders who had fled in
terror from imaginary danger, is it likely that Mr. Low would have
depleted our small squadron in the Chinese seas by putting at their
service, and that of their “teachers, servants, and children,” one of
the best vessels in the fleet? Or does any one suppose that, if those
persons had been Catholic missionaries, he would have been guilty of
a similar abuse of authority? But he apologetically says, “The manner
of their return will, on the whole, result in good.” Just so. Good to
Mr. Low, though we have not yet heard of a vote of thanks having been
presented to him by any of our numerous foreign missionary societies,
or that they have sent on to Washington deputations for his retention
or promotion. That his conduct deserves such commendation from these
bodies no one can doubt who reads further his despatches to the State
Department.

In 1858, a treaty was formed between China, on the one part, and the
leading Western powers, on the other, whereby, among other things, it
was stipulated that the Christian converts in the former country should
practise their religion without molestation, and also enjoy certain
immunities; and that in the free or open ports and districts the
ministers of religion should be guaranteed the full exercise of their
functions, etc. In 1870, as previously agreed upon, this treaty came
up for revision, and France, ever foremost in the work of civilization
and conversion, proposed five amendments to the treaty, all relating
directly or indirectly to commerce. The second of these reads as
follows:

 “You have expressed a desire to know the demands which I have engaged
 my government to make from the Chinese government when the treaty of
 1858 is revised. I have no objection to satisfy you, for I believe
 that the alterations are indispensable, and I shall be happy to learn
 that the other governments allied with China have decided also to
 demand them.... Second, I demand that we shall have the right to place
 salaried consuls wherever we judge proper, and that those cities where
 consuls reside shall also be opened to foreign trade.”

These demands seemed rational enough, and have since, we understand,
been substantially complied with; but our clear-sighted minister
immediately detected the danger that lurked beneath them, particularly
the one just quoted, and hastened to advise his government not to
second the propositions of the French ambassador. Here is one of his
reasons:

 “I see so many objections to such a treaty provision, and so many
 chances of its proving a delusion and a snare, that, unless the
 proposition can be more definitely defined, I should not be inclined
 to favor it. If the exact truth could be ascertained, it would be
 found, I expect, that the whole idea of the French _chargé_ in this
 scheme is the better protection of the French missionaries; and were
 it possible to obtain the concession asked for, these additional
 consuls would be, to all intents and purposes, agents of Roman
 Catholic missionaries. Their official positions and influence would be
 used to sustain missionary claims and assumptions, some of which have
 been described in a former despatch. So far as trade is concerned, it
 may well be questioned whether the presence of French consuls in the
 interior would not prove a damage instead of a benefit.”

And this is the representative of a free and commercial people who
desire to be considered Christian! Rather than see Catholic missions
extended, and paganism eradicated from the hearts of millions of
human beings, he would be willing to keep some of the most populous
and fertile portions of the Celestial Empire closed for ever against
civilization and commerce. But let us follow this model minister a
little further.

In February, 1871, the Chinese Foreign Office submitted to the foreign
representatives at the capital, for consideration and approval, the
draft of a minute, and eight rules for the guidance and government
of missionaries in the entire empire. They were drawn up with true
Tartar cunning and ingenuity, and were intended, if adopted, to baffle
the straightforward demands of France. In terms they were plausible
enough, but in reality exceedingly restrictive, and evidently aimed
at the Sisters of Charity, whose schools and orphan asylums were
rapidly increasing, and at those zealous and enterprising missionaries
who, under various disguises, and despite the vigilance of the local
authorities, are in the habit, at imminent personal danger, of
penetrating into the very heart of the country, and preaching the Word
of God where his name has never before been heard. This was a chance
for Mr. Low to exhibit his sectarian bigotry before the mandarins, and
he eagerly availed himself of it. Answering their communication in his
official capacity, and while dissenting generally from their views, he
takes occasion, we think very gratuitously, to say:

 “It is a noticeable fact that, among all the cases cited, there does
 not appear to be one in which Protestant missionaries are charged
 with violating treaty, law, or custom. So far as I can ascertain,
 your complaints are chiefly against the action and attitude of the
 missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith, and, as these are under
 the exclusive protection and control of the government of France, I
 might with great propriety decline to discuss _a matter with which the
 government of the United States has no direct interest or concern_,
 for the reason that none of its citizens are charged with violating
 treaty or local law, and thus causing trouble.”

And again, with equal truthfulness and appositeness, he adds:

 “Whenever cases occur in which the missionaries overstep the bounds
 of decorum, or interfere in matters with which they have no proper
 concern, let each case be reported promptly to the minister of the
 country to which it belongs. Such isolated instances should not
 produce prejudice or engender hatred against those who observe their
 obligations, nor should sweeping complaints be made against all on
 this account. Those from the United States sincerely desire the
 reformation of those whom they teach, and to do this they urge the
 examination of the Holy Scriptures, wherein the great doctrines of the
 present and a future state, and also the resurrection of the soul, are
 set forth, with the obligation of repentance, belief in the Saviour,
 and the duties of man to himself and others. It is owing, in a great
 degree, to the prevalence of a belief in the truth of the Scriptures
 that Western nations have attained their power and prosperity.”

Having thus, as he thought, directed the prejudice and hostility of the
authorities against the Catholics exclusively, and put in a good word
for the evangelizers; and assured them that, as far as the former were
concerned, the United States had no concern whatever, and by inference
that they might maltreat and murder as many of them as they pleased
without let or hindrance from us, Mr. Low next proceeds to mislead his
government in a manner which may be diplomatic, but is certainly far
from honorable.

In transmitting to the Department of State a translation of the rules
alluded to, he remarks:

 “A careful reading of the memorandum clearly proves that the great, if
 not only, cause of complaint against the missionaries comes from the
 action of the Roman Catholic priests and the native Christians of that
 faith; although the rules proposed for the government of missionaries
 apply equally to Protestants and Catholics.”

“A careful reading” of the document as translated under his auspices
would indeed seem to bear out Mr. Low’s views, for it is filled with
complaints and denunciations of “Romanists,” and the derivative
adjective “Romish” is used with a freedom that would delight the heart
of the most virulent _colporteur_. But, unfortunately, there was
another translation of the same document in England, and in it, behold,
all the “Romanists” are turned into “Christians”![46] Even Mr. Davis,
of the State Department, could not help noticing this discrepancy
between the two papers, and in a letter dated Oct. 19, 1871, calls upon
the Peking minister for an explanation, which, of course, was never
given, for the good reason that the deception was intentional. If, as
according to Blackstone, forgery consists in the material alteration
of the body of a written instrument, as well as in the imitation or
alteration of a signature, we fear our respected representative has
been guilty of a very serious legal mistake. The assistant secretary
writes:

 “Two versions of these regulations have found their way to the
 Department—the translation enclosed in your No. 56, and a translation
 apparently made from a French version presented to the houses of
 Parliament in Great Britain in June or July last, and printed in
 _British Blue-Book_, entitled “China, No. 3, 1871.” These versions
 differ widely in form and expression, and, to some extent, in sense.

 “The version presented to Parliament has been or will be made the
 subject of instructions by her Majesty’s government to Mr. Wade.
 A copy of these proposed instructions was communicated to this
 Department by her Majesty’s _chargé_ at Washington in August last. A
 copy is herewith enclosed, and also a copy of the version to which
 they relate.

 “The most material variance between the two versions is in the
 designation of the missionaries against whom the Chinese Foreign
 Office complains. Your version limits the complaints to missionaries
 of the Roman Church. The British translation, following the French
 version, represents the complaints against ‘Christians.’ For instance,
 the British version renders the beginning of the first article or
 rule as follows: ‘The Christians, when they found an orphanage, give
 no notice to the authorities, and appear to act with mystery.’ Your
 translation of the same sentence reads: “The establishment of asylums
 for training up children by the Romanists has hitherto not been
 reported to the authorities, and as these institutions are carefully
 kept private,’ etc., etc. From the English version of the accompanying
 note from the Yamên, it is evident that the Chinese Foreign Office
 recognizes that there are in China Christian missionaries of different
 faiths; for they say that ‘the people in general, unaware of the
 difference which exists between Protestantism and Catholicism,
 confound these two religions under this latter denomination.’”

The sectarian views of the minister in Peking were ably seconded by his
subordinate, the consul-general at Shanghai. That official, Mr. G. F.
Seward, under date August 22, 1871, sends to the Assistant-Secretary
of State a cursory review of the general condition of China, and
a detailed account of the horrible massacre of Tientsin, June 21,
1870; with a report of the trial and execution of some of the
miscreants engaged in it. His communication, as might be expected, is,
whenever possible, thoroughly anti-Catholic, filled with innuendos,
insinuations, and even broad statements against the missionaries of
that faith, and the Sisters of Charity; the usual elegant phrases
“Romish” and “Romanist” being used at every opportunity. As a sample of
this _commercial_ agent’s style and skill in the art of hinting a fault
and hesitating dislike, we quote the following passages from his letter:

 “Various allegations have been made against Roman Catholic
 missionaries. It has been alleged that the bishop of one of the
 western provinces resides in a palace which vies with that of the
 viceroy; that he uses a palanquin decorated in a way allowed only to
 the highest officials of the empire; and that his progresses from
 one part of his diocese to another are made in a regal way. It has
 been asserted that the priests claim the right to correspond with the
 officials on terms of equality; that they combine with and arrange
 combinations among their converts to defeat the objects of the
 government; that they claim for their converts various unusual and
 objectionable immunities; that, in fact, they are building up a rule
 within the territorial rule which is very dangerous to the state. One
 who has studied the history of the Roman Church cannot be surprised
 when he hears that China is seriously alarmed; but we can estimate the
 actual danger more perfectly than she. Any exposition of her fears
 which she is likely to make will exhibit many puerilities. Yet we must
 admit that her statesmen would be unwise if they should fail to study
 the problems which the presence of the church presents.”

So much for some of our diplomats in Asia. If they had been sent out
by the Methodist missionary body or any other fanatical society, they
could not have shown more narrow-minded bigotry or less regard for the
advancement of religion and true civilization; but as representatives
of this republic, where all are regarded as equal, and where the
general government is supposed to represent the interests of every
class and creed alike, it is not too much to say that they have been
sadly recreant to the trust reposed in them.

Turning over the pages of this voluminous collection of foreign
correspondence from all parts of the world with the Department of
State, we came upon the following curious despatch. It is dated Mexico,
April 29, 1871, signed by our minister, Mr. Thomas H. Nelson, and
referred to in the index as “The Spread of Protestantism”:

 “The Protestant movement in Mexico has for the past year been making
 considerable progress, chiefly owing to the efforts of the American
 clergyman, Rev. H. Chauncey Reilly, a letter from whom upon this
 subject was forwarded by me, forming an enclosure to my No. 38, of
 August 9, 1869. There are now about fifty congregations or assemblies
 of Mexican Protestants in this city and vicinity, and an equal or
 greater number scattered throughout the country. Most of these
 assemblies still meet in private houses, though in some small places
 of the interior they form a numerical majority, and have, therefore,
 acquired possession of the parish churches. In this city, through the
 efforts and personal liberality of Mr. Reilly, the Protestants have
 acquired two fine churches of those which were secularized and sold by
 the government some years since; one of these is the former convent of
 San Francisco, the most magnificent as well as the first one erected
 in Mexico. It is now being repaired for its new use. The other is the
 commodious church of San José de Garcia, which, having been thoroughly
 repaired, was dedicated to the Protestant service on Sunday, the
 23d instant, in the presence of an immense multitude. Two or three
 Catholic priests of some prominence have, within the past two or three
 months, joined the Protestant communion, and two of them have ventured
 upon the decisive step of matrimony. One of the recent converts,
 Father Manuel Auguas, formerly an eloquent preacher of the Dominican
 Order, has become the pastor of the new church. This event has caused
 a vigorous polemic in the newspapers of this city; the two papers
 considered especially Catholic have been filled with attacks upon the
 new religious movement, while most of the other papers have exhibited
 a commendable spirit of tolerance or even of good-will toward the
 Protestants. I enclose an interesting article upon this subject from
 the _Two Republics_ of to-day, translated from the _Federalista_, and
 written by M. Ignacio M. Altamirano, who is considered as the chief of
 the Mexican literary writers of the present day. Yours, etc.”

This is the entire communication, no other subjects being touched upon;
but the matter seems of so much importance and of so great national
interest as to warrant the sapient Mr. Nelson in making it the basis
of a special official despatch. Is this gentleman the envoy of the
United States, or a commissioner appointed by some Bible or tract
society to report on the “spread of Protestantism” in the neighboring
republic, or does he unite the two characters in his own person? Does
he receive the public money for puffing the Rev. H. Chauncey Reilly,
and transmitting his diatribes and the effusions of a certain M.
Altamirano for preservation in the archives of the nation? If so, it is
time the public should know it. Mr. Nelson’s letter, however, explains
an incident that occurred in Washington a few years since. It was this:
the mission to Mexico was vacant, and it was applied for by a gentleman
every way qualified for the post. He was thoroughly educated, knew
the Spanish language well, and had served with high rank and marked
distinction during the late war. He was appointed by the President,
and his nomination by the Senate was urged by several influential
citizens, including the then Secretary of State, the late Mr. Seward.
The committee of the Senate refused to report his name favorably, and,
in reply to the query of the writer what objection could be urged
against the applicant, a leading senator replied that “he understood
him to be a very violent (meaning practical) Catholic!” The policy of
this gentleman, like that of many others at the national capital, was
not to send a Catholic to a Catholic country, but one who would report
on the “spread of Protestantism,” and doubtless, find materials for his
despatches.

Nor must we blame the government too severely for their injudicious
sectarian appointments. Its views are but the reflex of popular
opinion, and, as long as we tolerate bigotry and proscription in our
popular elections, we must expect that those who are supposed to
represent us will follow the bad example thus set them. The fault
hitherto has been partly ours, and the remedy is in our own hands. This
remedy consists in discountenancing all subsidized newspaper writers
and demagogues whose abuse and slanders prevent good men from filling
the national and state councils; in trampling under foot all party and
religious prejudices, and invariably voting against those who would
maintain them; and by supporting for offices, both at home and abroad,
only those who will attend to the public business, and let sectarian
missionaries and the “spread of Protestantism” alone.




A LEGEND OF S. MARTIN.


AFTER many strifes and battles, and after having been for years
Administrator of Thrace, Asia, and Egypt, with Dacia and Macedonia,
to which the dethroned and executed Emperor of the West, Gratian,
had appointed him, Theodosius I., the Roman emperor, returned from
Thessalonica, his former headquarters, to Constantinople.

The day was cold and stormy, and many a one of the emperor’s suite
wrapped his cloak closer around his shivering body, as the snowflakes
fell thicker and faster, covering the road quickly in the white mantle
of winter.

The troop had just entered a small village, when the emperor’s horse
was stopped by a man miserably clad and trembling with cold.

Impatient of the detention, Theodosius pressed his spurs into the sides
of his steed, and flew past the wretched beggar.

But a knight called Martin, from Pannonia, who followed next, halted
and looked pityingly upon the poor trembling form. Willingly would he
have given him money or clothing, but a soldier seldom has much to
give, and, except his hat and coat, the knight possessed nothing. One
moment only he reflected, and the next he drew forth his sword, and cut
in two the large cloak hanging over his shoulders. Handing the one half
to the beggar, and wrapping himself closely in the other, he followed
the emperor with lightning speed, without listening to the words of
blessing which fell from the lips of the mendicant.

After the sun had set, the emperor and his followers took quarters for
the night.

All had gone to rest, and Knight Martin also had laid himself down,
and soon was fast asleep. Shortly, however, he felt as if his eyes
were forced open by a most brilliant and dazzling light. He sat up,
and perceived at his feet a man upon whose head was a crown of thorns.
Shining angels surrounded him, and the mantle which Martin had given to
the beggar hung around his shoulders. Pointing to it, he asked S. Peter
(who stood by his side) in sweet and gentle voice: “Do you see this
mantle?”

“From whom did you receive it?” S. Peter questioned.

“From Martin here,” was the reply, given in a heavenly voice, his
finger pointing at the same time to the astonished soldier. “Rise, my
son,” he then continued—and his angelic smile was ravishing to the
eyes of Martin—“I have chosen thee henceforth to be my servant. Until
now thou hast been a blind heathen: thou shalt now become a shining
light in my army. Put up thy sword; thou shalt be a soldier of God.”
And then Martin knew that it was the Lord himself who spake to him.

An angel kissed the mantle’s border—and Martin awoke.

The morning broke. He rose quickly, and left the place, never resting,
never stopping, until he had reached the portal of a cloister; there he
knocked and entered.

Soon he became famous for his goodness and piety, and, as bishop,
served his Master with spiritual rather than material weapons.




NEW PUBLICATIONS.


 MY CLERICAL FRIENDS, AND THEIR RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT.
 New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

We are glad to announce the publication of the American edition of this
work, our previous notice having been based upon the advance sheets of
the English edition.

The Catholic Publication Society has done good service to religion by
its handsome edition of this most important book. It is divided into
four chapters, which treat of “The Vocation of the Clergy,” “The Clergy
at Home,” “The Clergy Abroad,” and “The Clergy and Modern Thought.”
Under these divisions, the distinguished author has grouped together
a most interesting series of facts and arguments which cannot fail to
carry conviction to any honest mind. He deals principally with what may
be called the advanced clergy of the Anglican Church, shows their real
position in the present state of controversy, and the utter absurdity
of their claims. If there is anything properly called ridiculous, it
is the aspect of a small portion of a sect pretending to be that which
every one else in the world denies them to be, and flaunting their
professions to the entire denial of history, tradition, and even common
sense. Our Ritualistic friends have no regard for anything in the past,
present, or future but themselves, and, therefore, they cannot be
reasoned with. Their half-way house may be a stopping-place for a time
for honest hearts, but no sincere mind can rest there, for Almighty
God never leaves the true in mind without the assistance of his grace
or the use of their natural faculties. We commend this book to all in
the Anglican communion who desire to look facts in the face or to save
their souls. And we beg in all charity to tell them that they cannot
save their souls without sacrifice. If they prefer to keep this world,
they will lose the next. There may be in our author’s clear and bright
presentation of truth something that may seem to them harsh or severe.
We can assure them that there is no kinder heart than that of our
distinguished friend, the author; but he has such keen perceptions of
right and wrong that he cannot fail to put, with telling effect, the
absurdity of their religious position. And deny it as they may, and
perhaps will, the whole world appreciates the inconsistency of their
actions with their professions. Kind people pity them, while worldly
people laugh at them.

Beginning with the theory that the _one_ church of God can be divided,
which is a contradiction in terms, they claim to be a _branch_ of
something that confessedly can have no branches. Then, they are not
simply a branch, but a _branch of a branch_. And the branch of which
they form part renounces them, and casts them out, but they will not be
cast out. Their mother, the Church of England, does not know herself as
these her children do. Then, there is one thing they can hang on to the
last, even if everything else fails. They were admitted to apostolical
ordination by _Barlow_, whom they will have a bishop, though there is
no proof whatever that he was one, and while he himself denied the
necessity or the virtue of the sacrament of order. “If schism,” as Dr.
Newman says, “depends on the mere retention of the Episcopal order,
there never was and there never will be a schism,” for bishops are
as likely to be corrupted as priests. But the truth is, nobody ever
pretended to any apostolical succession in the English Church until the
Dissenters became so strong that, out of opposition to them, “a few
Anglican prelates began to talk of pretensions which, during several
generations, they had treated as a jest and a fable.” “According to
Barlow, an English bishop could dispense with orders; and, according
to Cranmer, with grace.” There was no pretence of any doctrine of
priesthood on the part of the _founders_ of the Church of England, and
surely these intelligent men ought to have known what they intended to
do. Hooker is one of their greatest defenders, and he expressly denies
the necessity of Episcopal ordination. “Being about to appear before
God, he sent—not for an Anglican minister—but for his friend Saravia,
and accepted from his unconsecrated hands those quasi-sacramental rites
which, according to Ritualistic views, he had no power to dispense.”
These divines were the faithful interpreters of the mind of their
church.

 “‘It is quite clear,’ observes Bishop Tomline, expounding the 25th
 Article, ‘that the words of the Article do not maintain the necessity
 of episcopal ordination.’ Bishop Hall, again, though he wrote a
 well-known book in defence of episcopacy, gave up the whole question
 when he said: ‘Blessed be God, _there is no difference_, in any
 essential matter, betwixt the Church of England and _her sisters of
 the Reformation_.’ And this was the language even of men who had
 written the most earnest apologies for episcopal government. They
 never attempted to maintain that the apostolical succession was
 necessary to the integrity of a church. Thus Bramhall said, with
 easy composure: ‘The ordination of our first Protestant bishops was
 _legal_,’ _i.e._ it had the royal sanction; ‘and for the _validity_ of
 it, we crave no man’s favor.’ Andrewes is a more important witness.
 Though Ritualists may not approve his subservience to that robust
 theologian, James I., he is still held in honor among them as almost
 a High-Church prelate, and is regarded as the most imposing figure of
 his time. Yet Andrewes, on their own principles, was as flagrant a
 betrayer of the doctrine of the Christian priesthood, if he ever held
 it, as Hooker himself, or even as Barlow or Whittaker. He not only
 gave the Anglican sacrament to a Swiss Protestant, Isaac Casaubon, but
 related afterwards, with impassioned and approving eloquence, that his
 friend died loudly professing with his latest breath the strictest
 tenets of the Calvinists of Geneva.”

There are many other points that will attract the attention of the
reader, and which we cannot speak of in this short notice. The last
chapter, upon “The Clergy and Modern Thought,” is particularly adapted
to the superficial age in which we live, and answers all the objections
which are made by the really shallow thinkers who, according to the
language of the apostle, “professing themselves to be wise, have become
fools.”

We bespeak for this most interesting and instructive book a large
circulation and many attentive readers, who will unite with us in
thanking the accomplished author for the pleasure and profit they have
received from him. May God grant him yet many years to live in which to
do good with his able pen!

The following letter of the author, correcting a mistake into which he
had fallen, appeared in the London _Tablet_ of February 8:


“MR. LECKY AND ‘MY CLERICAL FRIENDS.”

  “_To the Editor of the Tablet_:

 “SIR: I am assured by friends of Mr. Lecky, the well-known
 author of the histories of _Rationalism in Europe_ and of _European
 Morals_, that I have misunderstood a passage in the latter work, and
 attributed to the distinguished writer sentiments which he disavows.
 Mr. Lecky has displayed in his remarkable writings such unusual
 candor, and even, in spite of much that is painful to a Christian,
 such elevation of thought, that to do him wilful injustice is a fault
 of which no Catholic ought to be capable. I ask your permission,
 therefore, to make the following explanation.

 “The passage which I am said to have misunderstood is this: ‘Had the
 Irish peasants been less chaste, they would have been more prosperous.
 Had that fearful famine, which in the present century desolated
 the land, fallen upon a people who thought more of accumulating
 subsistence than of avoiding sin, multitudes might now be living who
 perished by literal starvation.’ Interpreting these words by the
 light of other statements of the same author, and especially by his
 announcement that ‘_utility_ is perhaps the highest motive to which
 reason can attain,’ they seemed to me, as they seemed to all whom I
 have been able to consult, to bear only one meaning. I was mistaken.
 They really meant, I now learn, ‘that the habit of early marriages in
 a nation is detrimental to its economical prosperity.’ I am further
 reminded that Mr. Lecky has written admirably on the grace of chastity
 which adorns the Irish nation, and could not, therefore, have wished
 to say that sin is a less evil than famine and destitution.

 “I am too familiar with the writings of Mr. Lecky, which I have read
 more than once, and always with extreme interest, not to recognize his
 great moral superiority over the contemporary school of Rationalists.
 The study of his books has even created in me a strong personal
 sympathy for the writer. In quoting him frequently, I think I have
 manifested this feeling. But if I have done him injustice in the case
 referred to, I regret that he did not more carefully guard himself
 from a misapprehension which was purely involuntary, and into which
 others fell who share my admiration of his candor and ability. I have
 only to add that, if the opportunity should occur, I will suppress the
 passage to which Mr. Lecky’s friends have called my attention. Yours
 faithfully,

 “THE AUTHOR OF ‘MY CLERICAL FRIENDS.’”


 SERMONS ON ECCLESIASTICAL SUBJECTS. By Henry Edward,
 Archbishop of Westminster. American Edition. Vol. II. New York: The
 Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

This dauntless champion of the faith is once more in the field. In
the present volume, the great Archbishop of England presents himself
in that which is his special character and vocation, to wit, as the
defender of the rights and doctrines maintained and promulgated by
Pius IX. in the face of his enemies and of some timid or misguided
persons among his friends. The sermons are not all new ones, since they
range in time from 1866 to 1872; but as now collected they make a new
whole out of previously separate parts belonging to one great theme,
the rights of the Holy See and the church as opposed to the nefarious
system of modern liberalism. The masterpiece of the volume is, however,
the Introduction, a most able and eloquent analysis and confutation
of the principles of the revolutionary party in Europe which aims at
the overthrow of the Catholic Church and of the Christian religion.
Archbishop Manning has done immense service to religion, and his power
seems to have been continually and steadily increasing since he first
entered the lists as a champion of the true church. Before the Council
of the Vatican, he was one of those who contributed most efficaciously
to the preparation of the greatest event of this age, the definition
of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, by which Gallicanism, the mother
error of that brood of false doctrines condemned in the Syllabus of
1864, was destroyed. During and since the Council he has combated these
errors with equal ability and courage, and seconded the great Pope, who
now fills the place of Christ on the earth, by re-echoing the divine
harmonies of his doctrine through the English-speaking world. It is
most important that all our educated laity should be thoroughly imbued
with this pure and saving doctrine, in which alone is contained, not
only the salvation of the soul, but of sound science, of nations, of
society, and of all human interests. We know of no such thorough and
perfect interpreter of Pius IX., the infallible teacher of the nations,
in the English language, as the Archbishop of Westminster. His writings
are those which ought especially to be circulated and read among the
educated laity, as the exposition of that truth which is the special
antidote to the fatal errors of the times. They are especially suitable
for this purpose, because they are the writings of a bishop; and it
is to the priests of the church, and especially to the chief priests
and pastors, to whom is committed the office not only of teaching the
faithful personally, but of giving to the writings of the subordinate
clergy and of learned laymen the only canonical sanction which they
possess, that the laity are to look for instruction in sound doctrine
under the supreme authority of the Holy See. The private opinions of
a bishop have, indeed, no more weight than is given them by their
argumentative value. This is always very great in the writings of
Archbishop Manning, who is accustomed to sustain his positions by a
very great force of evidence and reasoning. But a still greater merit
of his writings is found in the fact, that he never obtrudes his
private opinions as Catholic doctrine, or goes beyond the mark placed
by the authority of the church or the common teaching of approved
theologians. Not only does he avoid extenuating, but he equally
avoids exaggerating statements respecting Catholic doctrine. And,
moreover, although of uncompromising strictness in his orthodoxy, and
apostolic severity in his language respecting contumacious heretics
and rebels against divine authority, he is considerate and gentle
towards those whose errors may, in charity, be regarded as excusable.
In this respect, his writings are a model for those who undertake the
advocacy of the great Catholic truths which are opposed to the errors
of the day. May God preserve the worthy successor of the great English
cardinal to see the triumph of the church in the land of S. Edward and
S. Thomas of Canterbury!


 LENTEN THOUGHTS: Drawn from the Gospel for Each Day of Lent.
 By the Bishop of Northampton. New York: The Catholic Publication
 Society. 1873.

We recommend this little book to all who wish to spend the season of
Lent in conformity with the spirit and intention of the church. The
style is simple and chaste; the thoughts are elevated and suggestive.
There is, too, an air of serenity and even cheerfulness about the book
which we cannot but consider as in perfect accord with the true nature
of penance as understood by the church:

  “Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
  Thrill the deepest notes of woe.”

“When you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad,” says the church to her
children on Ash-Wednesday, re-echoing through the ages the words of her
divine Spouse.


 MEDITATIONS FOR THE USE OF THE CLERGY, for Every Day in the
 Year, on the Gospels for the Sundays. From the Italian of Mgr. Scotti,
 Archbishop of Thessalonica. Revised and Edited by the Oblates of S.
 Charles. With a Preface by His Grace the Archbishop of Westminster.
 Vol. I. From the First Sunday in Advent to the Sixth Saturday after
 the Epiphany. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The
 Catholic Publication Society.)

The remaining three volumes of this work, we are told, may be looked
for in the course of the present year. The whole will form a manual of
meditations for priests to which we have seen nothing comparable. That
such a work is needed who will deny? For if any one ought to meditate,
it is a priest; and how few books of meditation in our language are
at all what he wants! Of the present compilation, then, his grace the
Archbishop of Westminster, in his prefatorial letter to his clergy,
says: “In dedicating to you this first part of Scotti’s _Meditations
for the Clergy_, I need only add that it is a book held in high esteem
at Rome. Having found by the experience of many years its singular
excellence, its practical piety, its abundance of Scripture, of the
fathers, and of ecclesiastical writers, I have thought that it would be
an acceptable and valuable addition to your books of devotion.”

After this recommendation, let us simply express a wish that the work
may become known to every priest who speaks the English language.
And again let us thank the good Oblate Fathers for one of the most
estimable services they have ever done for religion.


 S. ANSELM’S BOOK OF MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. Translated
 from the Latin by M. R. With a Preface by His Grace the Archbishop
 of Westminster. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The
 Catholic Publication Society.)

These meditations differ very much from ordinary compositions with
that name. They are divided into brief sections, a single one of which
will suffice the devout soul for a whole day’s food. There is nothing
stiff and formal, nothing meagre, nothing dry. While, together with
honeyed colloquies—now with ourself, now with God or the saints—there
is a deep philosophy in a very simple guise. We are, therefore, most
grateful for such an addition to our devotional literature.


 THE ‘OLD CATHOLICS’ AT COLOGNE. New York: J. A. McGee. 1873

This clever _jeu d’esprit_ is by the brother of Dr. T. W. M. Marshall,
who was one of the joint authors of the _Comedy of Convocation_. It is
a little coarse in some parts, too much so for our taste, and in this
respect inferior to the famous _Comedy_, which was unexceptionable
in that respect. Nevertheless, it has a great likeness in some of
its salient points to that remarkable piece of logical sarcasm. The
argument is unanswerable, and very cleverly put; and terrible as the
ridicule is which is heaped on the Janus clique, whose final fiasco
was made at Cologne, they deserve it richly; for never was there a more
absurd as well as detestable little generation of vipers among the
whole of the noxious brood of heretics who in various ages have hissed
against the decrees of the Œcumenical Councils. We can assure all
readers that they will be amused and instructed by this brochure.


 SŒUR EUGÉNIE: The Life and Letters of a Sister of Charity.
 Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1873.

The subject of this memoir was a French lady of rank, brought up a
Protestant, but converted in early life to the Catholic faith. It is
an interesting, edifying, and well-written, as well as beautifully
printed, little book, not at all commonplace, but with the freshness of
unusual incidents told in the charming style which belongs to modern
English literature of the best class.

There is something very attractive in the French character when
unperverted by scepticism and frivolity. The energy, zeal, and
enthusiasm they throw into their work for God are very captivating to
colder natures. And the higher one ascends in the social scale, the
more decided, apparently, do these traits become. Whereas, in other
nationalities, prosperity and position frequently have a deleterious
effect; they often bring a Frenchman’s better qualities into higher
relief. In the religious orders, many illustrious examples of this
remark may be found—of men brought up in ease and affluence who have
adopted the mortified life of missionaries, braved every danger, and
courted death itself, if thereby they could win some souls for Christ.
The French nuns and Sisters of Charity have also been preeminent, as
the unwritten history of the late war alone would demonstrate. The
charitable spirit which lies at the foundation of that suavity and
grace too often characterized as surface politeness, peculiarly fits
them for the delicate and trying duties they assume.

In the subject of this memoir we recognize the same winning
characteristics to which we have adverted. Of high birth, she left all
which usually attracts youthful ambition for a life of self-abnegation
and charity. The name Eugénie, already endeared to thoughtful readers
through the _Letters_ and _Journal of Mlle. de Guérin_ (for we learn
to appreciate a character full as much through the productions of the
subject as by the portrayal of others), will receive new lustre from
the memoirs of another saintly wearer. Such a record, though simple, is
full of beauty and edification to those who follow in the same path, as
well as those whose sphere of duty, though lying in the world, is yet
elevated above it.


 TRUTH AND ERROR. By the Rev. H. A. Brann, D.D. New York: D. &
 J. Sadlier & Co. 1873.

This book is of small size, but on an important subject, viz., the
nature and sources of certitude. It is clear, logical, sound, and
written in a good style. As an antidote to the wretched, poisonous
trash sold under the name of philosophy, which is nothing but
methodical scepticism and materialism, this little book must do
good if it is read and understood by those who have need of it. The
unhappy intellectual vagrants of our day are afflicted with the two
great miseries which poor “Jo” complained of: “Not knowing nothink,
and starwation.” Jo often sadly muttered to himself, “I don’t know
_nothink_!” Mr. Bain and all that set are so many Joes, repeating for
ever, “I don’t know nothink, you don’t know nothink, nobody don’t and
nobody can’t know nothink.” The sophist of Königsberg was a Jo of
genius, nothing more. Dr. Brann will give a substantial breakfast to
any one of these hungry Joes who will read his book.


 AUNT JO’S SCRAP-BOOK. Vol. II. Shawl-Straps. By Louisa M.
 Alcott, author of _Little Women_, _An Old-fashioned Girl_, _Little
 Men_, _Hospital Sketches_. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1872.

This book is written in a light, trifling, flippant style, which may be
very pleasant and appropriate when used to describe certain things, but
when applied indiscriminately to all that one sees abroad, it certainly
is not agreeable, to say the least of it. Neither is it pleasant, in
a book of travels, to find that nothing is considered true, or even
worthy of respect, unless the _author_ believes in it. A Mass at S.
Mark’s, Venice, is described in this way: “The patriarch was a fat
old soul in red silk, even to his shoes and holy pocket-handkerchief;
and the service appeared to consist in six purple priests dressing
and undressing him like an old doll, while a dozen white-gowned boys
droned up in a gold cockloft, and many beggars whined on the floor
below.” A visit to the Carthusian Convent, Pavia, calls forth the
following comment: “A nice way for lazy men to spend their lives, when
there is so much work to be done for the Lord and his poor! Wanted
to shake them all round,” etc. In the description of the inundation
of parts of the city of Rome we read: “Livy indulged the sinful hope
that the pope would get his pontifical petticoats very wet, be a
little drowned and terribly scared by the flood, because he spoiled
the Christmas festivities,” etc. Victor Emmanuel is spoken of as “the
honest man,” with the remark that “that is high praise for a king.”
Such expressions as “sullen old gentleman in the Vatican,” “silly
Madonna,” and others of the same character, enliven the pages in
various places.

We can scarcely believe that this book is from the same pen as _Little
Women_, and we think it would be far better, when one is only willing
to see things through their ignorance and prejudices, not to attempt to
make others see with their eyes.


 GOD OUR FATHER. By a Father of the Society of Jesus, author
 of _The Happiness of Heaven_. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1873.

After reading this little book, we felt an ardent desire to tell
everybody we had found a treasure. Its title, a rather unusual thing
nowadays, is the true exponent of its contents. That God is our
Father—our kind, indulgent, beneficent, merciful, loving Father—it
proves as we have never seen proved before. We do think, if Voltaire
had seen this little treatise, he would not have called God a “tyrant
and the father of tyrants,” and he, Voltaire, would not have been a
fool and the father of a generation of fools. Some Christians other
than Calvinists are accustomed to regard God as a stern judge or an
exacting master, ignoring altogether his parental relationship. This
way of regarding God not unfrequently produces a morbid spirituality,
if not worse. Under its baneful influence, the soul is parched up and
rendered incapable of any other sentiment than that of fear. It is true
that “fear is the beginning of wisdom”; but it is no less true that
“love is the fulfilment of the law” and the sublime summary of the new
dispensation. And who can love a being whom he sees only in the light
of a stern judge, an exacting master? God, as he is represented in this
work, is a being whom you cannot but love. In very truth, the author
himself must love much, or he could never write so eloquently of divine
love.

To all Catholics who look with a filial confidence to God, and love him
as their Father, we recommend this book as a means of strengthening
their confidence and increasing their love. To those Catholics,
happily few, who see in God only a rigid master, we prescribe the
perusal of this work as the best remedy for their dangerous disease.
To our separated brethren, who want to get a Christian idea of our
common Father, we would respectfully suggest the careful study of this
treatise; they will find it sufficiently scriptural and sufficiently
simple for their tastes.

We cannot, perhaps, pay the publishers a higher compliment than by
saying that the setting is in every way worthy of the gem.


 LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPAL DOCTRINES AND PRACTICES OF THE CATHOLIC
 CHURCH. By Cardinal Wiseman. New York: P. O’Shea.

These two volumes belong to the uniform series of Cardinal Wiseman’s
works now being issued by Mr. O’Shea, and, as we understand, are
printed from the same plates as the one-volume edition heretofore
issued by Kelly, Piet & Co.

It is a strong evidence of the permanent interest which attaches
to Catholic doctrine—the faith ever ancient, ever new—that these
lectures are read now with almost equal avidity with that which greeted
their appearance almost forty years ago, while as many weeks suffice to
lay on the shelf the productions of many a popular preacher of the day.

This course constituted the _Lent_ at S. Mary’s, Moorfields, in 1836,
when the Oxford movement had already acquired considerable headway, and
the public mind was alive to the subjects discussed. In view of the
audience which he addressed, they were doubtless prepared with great
care, and may therefore be considered most favorable specimens of the
distinguished author’s style.

One is struck, in looking over Cardinal Wiseman’s works, by the fact of
the singular diversity of his gifts, and his preeminence in the varied
fields of research and discussion—as if he had made each a specialty.
His _Lectures on the Connection of Science and Religion_, delivered the
preceding year, has maintained a position in the front rank of works
devoted to that subject, and may be said to have become obsolete only
in so far as science has presented new phenomena and discoveries for
elucidation; while the present work has remained, to our thinking,
the most exhaustive popular exposition of Catholic doctrine in the
language. His more elaborate historical and critical essays have
attracted marked attention, and been thought worthy of publication in
separate volumes, while his distinctively belles-lettres works have
enjoyed almost universal favor. His _Fabiola_ confessedly stands at the
head of Christian fiction. It is a little remarkable that _The Hidden
Gem_, and one of the most acute critiques of the day upon Shakespeare,
should have been the production of one who it is fair to infer scarcely
ever-witnessed an acted drama.

The same house has brought out in similar style the _Four Lectures on
the Offices and Ceremonies of Holy Week_ by the same author, which we
hope will prove a valuable aid to the intelligent participation in
the devotions of the present season. The interest in the Lectures is
enhanced by the fact that they were delivered at Rome, and relate to
the ceremonies in the Papal chapels.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Catholic Publication Society will publish in a few days, from
advance sheets, a new work by the author of _My Clerical Friends_,
entitled _Church Defence: Report on the Present Dangers of the Church_.


AN ERROR RECTIFIED.

_Card of the Editor of The Catholic World._

AN error in respect to a matter of Catholic faith into which the
author of an article in our last number inadvertently fell, and which
escaped my notice until it was too late to make any earlier correction,
requires me to make the present explanation. I do it for the sake of
the reverend gentleman who first animadverted upon this erroneous
statement, and for others at a distance who are not in a position to
know personally the utter impossibility of any statement bordering on
“Gallicanism” being admitted into THE CATHOLIC WORLD with the
knowledge of the editor. The passage in question is as follows, and is
found on p. 784: “Who can wonder if the Church, in this dire emergency,
_delegates to one man_ the power she can no longer collectively
exercise in peace?” The mistake of the writer, who is a lay Catholic
and not a theologian, is very excusable. The responsibility for the
doctrine of the articles published rests exclusively with me, as the
editor in the absence of the Very Rev. F. Hecker. If any statement
which is contrary to Catholic doctrine or sound theology is allowed
to pass in any article, it is by accident, and any reverend gentleman
or layman who notices anything of the kind will oblige me by sending
a communication to me directly, pointing out the error. Any such
communication will receive due attention from myself or from the
editor-in-chief, when he is in town and able to attend personally to
the duties of his office. In this connection, I take occasion to remark
that another worthy clergyman, entirely unknown to me, who has recently
expressed himself as aggrieved by the remarks of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD upon Italy, has wholly misapprehended their intention.
The articles on this subject which have appeared have been generally
written by myself, or prepared under my direction. I have no hostility
except against the wicked party which tyrannizes over the Catholic
people of Italy, and would with pleasure have admitted the letter of
the Italian missionary, pleading the cause of his country, to the
columns of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. It is the aim of the editors
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD to make it Catholic in its spirit and
tone of charity and courtesy, as well as orthodox in doctrine, and
to remember that it becomes those who profess a special loyalty to
the Holy Father to pay attention to _all_ his admonitions, especially
to that one in which he gave such an emphatic warning against the
violation of charity by those who are very zealous for his authority.

  AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT, C.S.P.




THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVII., No. 98.—MAY, 1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev.
I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.




THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE.[47]


THE question of the origin of species—the question, namely, whether
the vegetable and animal species now on the earth, and those which from
the study of its strata we know to be extinct, were in the beginning
called into existence by the direct creative _fiat_, and substantially
with the forms they now have; or whether they have been developed
from other and pre-existing beings with forms essentially different
from their own, in obedience to natural law—is one upon which, since
Charles Darwin published the first edition of his book upon the
subject, now about twelve years ago, much has been said. We may add
that the answer given to it by Mr. Darwin has been much misunderstood.
It has been misunderstood in _itself_ by those who would not take the
trouble to inquire in what its precise merits consisted: how much of
certainty, and how much of mere theory, it contained; what facts or
series of facts, if admitted, it was incompetent to throw light upon;
and whether there were any facts, botanical or zoological, in conflict
and irreconcilable with it. It has been misunderstood, too, _in its
bearings on revelation_, and that by two classes of men: on the one
hand, by mere scientists, for the reason that they knew nothing of
theology, and were therefore not in a way to decide whether the Bible
and the theory of development are compatible with each other; and,
on the other, by well-intentioned advocates of Christianity, because
frequently they knew nothing of science in general—little of this
question, and the precise meaning and worth of Darwin’s answer to
it in particular. The former have been at fault in asserting that a
science—theology, Catholic theology, we mean, is a science—of which
they knew nothing did not harmonize with a hypothesis of which they
knew perhaps all that is to be known; the latter, in not acknowledging
distinctly the grain of truth or of certainty contained in the
speculations of Darwin.

The question is an interesting one, and has accordingly called forth
a large literature in England, Germany, France, and Italy. Mr.
Chapman’s book is, we believe, the only one written in this country,
and professedly devoted to the advocacy of the theory that, to use the
author’s own words, “the development of the higher forms of life from
the lower has been brought about by natural selection, and that man has
descended from a lower extinct form of which the gorilla and chimpanzee
are the nearest living representatives”—which is Darwinism pure and
simple, and which ought to be distinguished from the more general
theory of “evolution.” That Mr. Chapman’s book has been published in
America, and that we wish to say a few words on the question which it
treats, and especially on the bearings of that question on revealed
religion, constitute its only claims on our attention; for neither the
style of the writer nor the lucidity of his argument, much less its
originality, entitles it to any particular notice. The work is a mere
compilation, which, however, may be of service to those who desire to
possess in a convenient shape the facts, and to examine the nature of
the reasoning, by which the Darwinian hypothesis is supported.

When we have said this, and that Mr. Chapman devotes a chapter of
his book to the argument from zoology, geology, embryology, etc.,
respectively, in favor of Darwinism; that these arguments are neither
as elegant, scholarly, or cogent as they might be made; that he has
followed the materialists of Germany in their version of the theory,
and further than there is even the shadow of a warrant to follow it, we
have said all that we wish to say about his book, and bestowed upon it
the highest praise it is in our power to bestow consistently with truth.

What our views on the Darwinian theory are will appear in the sequel.
Here we wish simply to say a few words on certain doctrines drawn
from it by Mr. Chapman, or, if not drawn from it, associated with it
both by him and others—doctrines which, in our view, are not part
and parcel of it because mere assumptions in no way countenanced by
facts. Thus, Mr. Chapman desires us expressly to understand that
“natural selection,” the meaning of which we will explain in a
moment, does not imply the existence of a “natural selector”; and
this, without any forced interpretation, may be construed into a
profession of atheism. Now, as we will see a little further on, the
admission of the Darwinian theory does not necessarily lead to any
such conclusion. Again, he informs us, p. 14, that life is only a
“physical phenomenon, and that the nervous system produces ideas and
all the acts of intelligence”—which is rank materialism. That Mr.
Chapman advocates fatalism is no less plain, for he assures us that
morality is necessarily progressive. On the last page of his book, he
defines morals to be “duty to one’s self.” We confess that we do not
understand how he reconciles his assertion that morality is necessarily
progressive with his definition of morals. It seems to us that, if
necessarily moral, men will necessarily do their duty; or rather,
they will have no duty to do, since necessity and duty exclude each
other. According to this theory, there can be no distinction between
good and evil, and all the crimes that are committed are the necessary
consequences of man’s origin. Indeed, the author tells us, p. 180:
“Crimes and outrages are committed even among the most civilized,
simply, in the words of Mr. Spencer, because man ‘partially retains the
characteristics that adapted him for an antecedent state. The respects
in which he is not fitted to society are the respects in which he is
fitted for his original predatory life. His primitive circumstances
required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his
own; his present circumstances require that he should not do so; and in
as far as his old attribute still clings to him, in so far he is unfit
for the social state. All sins of men against each other, from the
cannibalism of the Carib to the crimes and venalities we see around us,
have their causes comprehended under this generalization.’”

Now, if all this be so, we cannot see why murder, or robbery, or any
other crime, is not perfectly legitimate. If to the exercise of his
“old attributes” in the struggle for existence man owes his “survival”
and his place among the fittest, in any degree, however small; and
if there be nothing in man not produced by natural selection, we
cannot see why he should not even now continue the exercise of these
“attributes”; in other words, we do not see why any propensity,
passion, or inclination originated by the agency of “natural
selection,” to the exclusion of all other agencies, cannot legitimately
be exercised to the full extent to which “natural selection” has
developed it. If man exercises these “attributes” simply in obedience
to a law of nature, we should not if we could, nor could we if we
would, resist them. If, indeed, these views of morality be correct,
then might is right, the Decalogue a code against nature, civilization
an abnormal condition for man, and barbarism his only true state.

So much for the atheism, materialism, and fatalism, we do not say of
Darwin—for we have reason to believe that that gentleman himself is
none of these—but of Mr. Chapman’s version of evolution. There is
one very important point, however, on which Mr. Darwin, the man of
science, and the compiler, Mr. Chapman, are at one—a point of very
great consideration because of its bearings on revelation—the doctrine
that the difference between man and the lower animals is not one of
“kind,” but of “degree.” We do not wish to argue this point here in
full. What we wish to say is that men of the school of Darwin, etc.,
should be the very last persons in the world to make an assertion of
this character, for the reason that they confine our knowledge to
appearances, to phenomena. The question, however, whether man and the
lower animals differ in “kind” or only in “degree” is not a question of
phenomena or appearances: it is a question of _noumena_, of essence, of
reality. We do not grant that even appearances warrant the assertion
that man differs from the lower animals in nothing essential. There
are appearances which forbid any such conclusion. But we maintain
that, whether they so differ or not, Darwin and his school are, by the
principles of their philosophy, estopped from asserting that they do or
do not. They cannot say that the same phenomena imply the same noumena,
the same accidents, the same essence, the same appearances, the same
reality, because, to assert the identity of nature of two things, both
must be known in what constitutes their essence, whereas these men
expressly say that of noumena, reality, or essence nothing can be known.

Mr. Chapman is more a disciple of Haeckel than of Darwin, and follows
that gentleman in all his vagaries—a course well calculated to
increase rather than decrease the amount of prejudice against what
there may be of truth in Darwinism. Among the advocates of this, as of
almost all theories, there are extremists. Our author seems to have
gone to school to all of them, and swallowed all they told him, no
matter how paradoxical, no matter how little proof to substantiate it.
On the other hand, of all that has been said against pure Darwinism,
not a word has been recorded by Mr. Chapman; and of those who, like
Prof. Agassiz, do not agree with Mr. Darwin, or who, like St. George
Mivart, have, as we think, dealt his theory blows from which it will
not recover, he does not make the smallest mention. Yet it cannot be
that Agassiz and Mivart are too small to be noticed by Mr. Chapman.
Agassiz is too venerable a name in science to need any demonstration
that his opinion on scientific matters is entitled to consideration.
Mivart is, we take it, a younger man; yet, if he has not made himself
an abiding reputation by what he has the modesty to call his “little
book,” the _Genesis of Species_, he has made a name which must live, if
Darwin’s, and Lyell’s, and Huxley’s do; since all these men have found
in him a foe worthy of their steel—and the latter of the vials of his
wrath.

We would not consider this article complete without a condensed history
of the controversy between Mr. Huxley and Mr. Mivart, occasioned by
the publication by the latter of his admirable work, the _Genesis of
Species_. We give it here for this, as well as for the reason that it
will serve as the best general answer it is in our power to give to Mr.
Chapman and other writers of his character.

But first a few remarks on Darwin’s theory. It is only a theory, a mere
hypothesis. Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have proved it himself; nor
does his advocate, Mr. Huxley, who seems to have taken Mr. Darwin and
the Darwinian theory under his special protection, pretend that it is
proved.

Bearing in mind that the Darwinian theory is only a hypothesis, we must
estimate its value as we estimate that of other hypotheses, viz., by
its ability to account for all the facts of which it pretends to be the
solution.

The Copernican system of astronomy, for instance, is only a hypothesis;
yet, as there is no known astronomical fact absolutely contradictory
to it, we accept it as true. If there were only one fact which it did
not explain and could not explain; above all, if there were one fact
at variance with the hypothesis, the hypothesis must give way, and the
fact stand; for one fact is worth a thousand hypotheses, and one fact
in cases of this kind, as Mr. Huxley says, as good as five hundred.

Are there, then, any facts which the Darwinian theory of development by
natural selection should explain and does not? Mr. Huxley himself says
there is one set of such facts—the facts of hybridism; and, as we will
presently see, there are a great many others.

To St. George Mivart, a scientist, but more than a scientist, a
philosopher in a degree, somewhat of a theologian as well, and
therefore a man of greater intellectual grasp than either Darwin or
Huxley, we are indebted for the fullest presentation of the facts
inexplicable by natural selection that has yet been given to the
reading world. This that gentleman has done in his book before referred
to, _The Genesis of Species_.

One of Mr. Mivart’s great merits is that he accords to Mr. Darwin’s
theory its full meed of praise. He is a scientific man, and as such
a good judge of its merits and demerits, therefore competent to
acknowledge the one and point out the other.

We are not at all prejudiced against Mr. Darwin or his theory. We agree
entirely with Mr. Mivart that it “is perhaps the most interesting
theory, in relation to natural science, which has been promulgated
during the present century.” Before pointing out, however, why it is
the most interesting theory of the kind, let us see in brief what the
Darwinian theory of natural selection is.

In the words of Mr. Mivart it may be stated thus:

1. “Every kind of animal and plant tends to increase in numbers in a
geometrical proportion.

2. “Every kind of animal and plant transmits a general likeness with
individual differences to its offspring.

3. “Every individual may present minute variations of any kind in any
direction.

4. “Past time has been practically infinite.

5. “Every individual has to endure a very severe struggle for
existence, owing to the tendency to geometrical increase of all kinds
of animals and plants, while the total animal and vegetable population
(man and his agency excepted) remains almost stationary.

6. “Thus, every variation of a kind tending to save the life of the
individual possessing it, or to enable it more surely to propagate
its kind, will in the long run be preserved, and will transmit its
favorable peculiarity to some of its offspring, which peculiarity will
thus become intensified till it reaches the maximum degree of utility.
On the other hand, individuals presenting unfavorable peculiarities
will be ruthlessly destroyed. The action of this law of ‘natural
selection’ may thus be well represented by the convenient expression,
‘survival of the fittest.’”

Now as to the series of facts which this theory throws light upon. Here
they are as enumerated by Mr. Mivart. It explains:

1. Some singular facts “relating to the geographical distribution of
animals and plants; as, for example, on the resemblance between the
past and present inhabitants of different parts of the earth’s surface.

2. “That often, in adjacent islands, we find animals closely resembling
and appearing to represent each other; while, if certain of these
islands show signs of more ancient separation, the animals inhabiting
them exhibit a corresponding divergence.

3. That “‘rudimentary structures’ also receive an explanation by means
of this theory.

4. “That the singular facts of ‘homology’ are capable of a similar
explanation.”

5. That “that remarkable series of changes which animals undergo before
they attain their adult condition, which is called their process of
development, and during which they more or less closely resemble other
animals during the early stages of the same process, has also great
light thrown on it from the same source.”

6. That “by this theory, and as yet by this alone, can any explanation
be given of that extraordinary phenomenon which is metaphorically
termed ‘mimicry.’”

To explain in detail the exact import of each of these heads would
carry us beyond the limits of a magazine article; and the reader who
wishes for more minute and definite information on them we must refer
to Mivart’s own book, or to Darwin’s _Origin of Species_.

Pass we now to those facts which Darwin’s theory is incompetent to
explain, and to the arguments against it. Mr. Mivart enumerates them
thus:

1. “That ‘natural’ selection is incompetent to account for the
incipient stages of useful structures.

2. “That it does not harmonize with the coexistence of closely similar
structures of diverse origin.

3. “That there are grounds for thinking that specific differences may
be developed suddenly instead of gradually.

4. “That the opinion that species have definite though very different
limits to their variability is still tenable.

5. “That certain fossil transitional forms are absent which might have
been expected to be present.

6. “That some facts of geographical distribution supplement other
difficulties.

7. “That the objection drawn from the physiological difference between
‘species’ and ‘races’ still exists unrefuted.”

Our readers will readily understand that, if species, or rather
individual animals, were originated by natural law, and if that law be
“natural selection,” the action of “natural selection” must be able
to explain not only the production of the animal as a whole, but of
its several organs, both when they have reached the point of maximum
utility, and at all stages previous thereto.

Mr. Mivart shows that it does not accomplish this; that it does not
account for “the incipient stages of useful structures, _e. g._ the
heads of flatfishes, the baleen of whales, vertebrate limbs, the
laryngeal structures of the new-born kangaroo, the pedicellariæ of
echinoderms”; and thus he established his first charge on purely
scientific grounds, as a scientist writing for scientists. The other
charges are equally well sustained. It would, however, require the
rewriting of Mr. Mivart’s book to follow him through all his facts and
arguments, and we must beg again to refer the reader who would study
the matter in detail, to the book itself.

Another series of objections brought forward by Mr. Mivart against the
same theory is equally well sustained—objections that go to show that
“it cannot be applied at least to the soul of man,” as Mr. Darwin has
applied it.

Here, again, everyone will see that, if the human soul is not created
by God, it, too, must have been gradually evolved from what, for lack
of a more convenient term, though not without protest, we must call
an animal soul, by the process of natural selection; and therefore
there is nothing in man’s soul which was not in the ape’s—the same
faculties, moral and intellectual, in kind, different only in degree.
This question Mr. Mivart discusses in a separate chapter on “Evolution
and Ethics.”

The result of the discussion he thus sums up:

1. “Natural selection could not have produced, from the sensations of
pleasure and pain experienced in brutes, a higher degree of morality
than was useful; therefore it could have produced any amount of
‘beneficial habits,’ but not an abhorrence of certain acts as impure
and sinful.

2. “It could not have developed that high esteem for acts of care and
tenderness to the aged and infirm which actually exists, but would
rather have perpetuated certain low social conditions which obtain in
some savage localities.

3. “It could not have evolved from ape sensations the noble virtues of
a Marcus Aurelius, or the loving but manly devotion of a S. Louis.

4. “That it alone could not have given rise to the maxim, _Fiat
justitia, ruat cœlum_.

5. “That the interval between material and formal morality is one
altogether beyond its power to traverse.”

Mr. Mivart further shows “that the anticipatory character of moral
principles is a fatal bar to that explanation of their origin which
is offered to us by Mr. Herbert Spencer”; and “that the solution of
that origin proposed recently by Sir John Lubbock is a mere version
of simple utilitarianism, appealing to the pleasure or safety of the
individual, and therefore utterly incapable of solving the riddle it
attacks.”

It is hardly necessary that we should dwell on these points. Our
Christian readers need no demonstration of them. Knowing, on the one
hand, what Christian morality is, and, on the other, what mere animal
behavior, they must know the difference between them, and, knowing this
difference, that by no possibility could the one be developed from the
other, there being no oneness of kind in them.

Just here we would remark that, in addition to his other arguments, Mr.
Mivart might have added that from philology against Darwinism, and with
good effect. There are those who, from that science, argue the other
way. But, in a series of able articles on “Darwinism and the Science
of Language,” the Rev. J. Knabenbauer, S. J., has shown that philology
points to a diversity of origin for man and the lower animals.

He argues that the ultimate elements, the roots of all language, are
expressive of general ideas. Now, general ideas are the products of the
intellectual processes known as abstraction and generalization. Hence,
before the formation of roots, before the beginnings of language, man
was man, since he could abstract and generalize. Hence, also, language
is not a development of animal cries, nor man of the brute, since the
brute can neither abstract nor generalize.

Finally, Mr. Mivart shows in his chapter on “Evolution and Theology”
that evolution and creation by no means exclude one another; and that a
Catholic—Mr. Mivart is a Catholic—may accept the theory of evolution,
ancient writers of authority in the church having “asserted abstract
_principles_ such as can perfectly _harmonize_ with the requirements of
modern science,” and, “as it were, provided for the reception of its
most advanced speculations.”

In support of this view, Mr. Mivart quotes from S. Augustine, S.
Thomas, Cornelius à Lapide, and refers to the Jesuit Suarez, with the
doctrines of all of whom it is perfectly consistent to hold that animal
species were created only potentially, _potentialiter tantum_.

By that we do not mean to insinuate that the naked Darwinian theory is
compatible with Catholic faith; but of this more hereafter.

It was not to be expected that Mr. Mivart, in his criticism on
Darwinism, would meet with no opponents. He must have expected to be
attacked from two quarters, and by two different classes of men: by
those committed to the Darwinian hypothesis, in the first place; and,
again, by those who value that hypothesis less for its scientific merit
than for—as they suppose—its incompatibility with Christian doctrine,
and the service they think it might render in the disintegration of the
Christian societies. Among the latter we are compelled to class Mr.
Huxley, who, if a very good scientist, is, notwithstanding, one of the
most arrogant of men.

He replied to Mr. Mivart, and in his reply does neither more nor less
than constitute himself the infallible teacher of all mankind, the
supreme pontiff of science, empowered to speak with authority on all
matters pertaining to religion and philosophy, as well as to anatomy.
He has the commendable modesty, even, to tell Catholics what they
may believe, and what they must reject. He interprets the Bible for
them, expounds the teachings of the Fathers of the church, comments
on the schoolmen, all for their benefit; in fact, entirely forgets
the good old maxim, “Let the cobbler stick to his last,” and imagines
that, because he has learned a considerable amount about brains and
stomachs—dead brains and stomachs, for the most part—he can legislate
for the Christian world; that anything in heaven or on earth which
he cannot weigh or measure, upon which he cannot bring the knife, or
the blowpipe, or the spectroscope to bear, does not exist, or exist
otherwise than as it takes form in his own by no means humble mind.

In his reply to Mr. Mivart, he virtually passes over all of the latter
gentleman’s scientific objections, and fastens on his assertion that
evolution is at all _compatible_ with Catholic doctrine.

Mr. Mivart had, as we have seen, referred to Suarez, and that, Mr.
Mivart assures us, because, in Mr. Huxley’s words, “the popular repute
of that learned theologian and subtle casuist was not such as to make
his works a likely place of refuge for liberality of thought.”

Of course Mr. Mivart did not intend to represent Suarez or the other
writers we have mentioned above as advocating the very modern doctrine
of evolution, but only abstract principles harmonizing with it; and,
if anything, broader than it, inasmuch as they are broad enough not
only to take in the recent theory of evolution, but any other theory
of development which may be yet advocated; yet Mr. Huxley assumed
that Mr. Mivart meant to convey the impression that F. Suarez was a
Darwinian or a disciple of Herbert Spencer, which he could not well be,
having lived some centuries too early to enjoy any such good-fortune.
Having erected this theory, Mr. Huxley went, in his “More Criticisms on
Darwin,” deliberately to work to demolish it, in doing which he left
his way considerably, raising questions on which Mr. Mivart had said
nothing whatever, and which in the discussion are wholly irrelevant;
as, for instance, the meaning of the word “day” in the first chapter of
Genesis, as advocated by some authorities.

Mr. Mivart retorted through the pages of the _Contemporary Review_, and
demonstrated that Suarez was “an opponent of the theory of a perpetual
direct creation of organisms,” and “that the principles of scholastic
theology are such as _not to exclude_ the theory of development, but
rather to favor it.” He quoted again from Suarez, to show that that
writer, treating of the opinion that individuals of kinds like the
mule, leopard, lynx, etc., must have been created from the beginning,
expressed the view that the contrary seemed to him more probable,
thus asserting _the principle_ that those kinds of animals which are
_potentially_ contained in nature need not be supposed to be directly
and immediately created. More than this, Mr. Mivart shows that the same
authority recognizes the possibility that certain organisms may be
originated directly from the inorganic world by cosmical influences.

Our readers already know what were the views of S. Augustine on this
matter. Mr. Mivart shows that other theologians besides S. Thomas, such
as S. Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, Denis the Carthusian, Cardinal
Cajetan, Melchior Canus, Bannes, Vincentius Contenson, Macedo and
Cardinal Noris, Tosti, Serri, “and others down to the present day,”
agree with S. Augustine in his views on the question we are considering.

The great result—the only result in which we feel especially
interested—of this controversy was the bringing into clearer light the
fact that the kernel of truth contained in Darwinism or in evolution is
not at variance with revelation, as indeed it cannot be and be true.
This is what Mr. Huxley has done for the church.

Of Mr. Huxley’s treatment of his opponent’s objections on the score of
morality we have nothing to say which would be of the least service to
our readers.

Remains the question: How far may a Catholic accept the special
Darwinian theory or the doctrine of evolution? Mr. Mivart asserts
that a miraculous origin of the body of man is not necessary; that it
might have been evolved from that of some lower being by natural law.
Darwinians and evolutionists generally maintain an analogous origin for
the human soul. Is there anything in this contrary to revelation?

We have not space, if we had the ability, to go into a lengthy
examination of this question. Nor is there any reason that we should.
It has already received the attention of able Catholic writers, and we
can do no better than give the results of their investigation. They
have shown[48] that, with respect to all organisms lower than man, the
doctrine of the fathers is that Catholic faith “does not prevent any
one from holding the opinion that life, both vegetable and animal,
was in the world in germ at its creation, and afterwards developed
by regular process into all the various species now on the earth”;
therefore, that “all living things up to man exclusively were evolved
by natural law out of minute life-germs primarily created, or even out
of inorganic matter,” is an opinion which a Catholic may consistently
hold if he thinks fit so to do.

As to the question of the _body_ of man, the same writers have shown,
and we take it to be the safer opinion—in which, perhaps, we differ
from Mr. Mivart—“that to question the immediate and instantaneous
(or quasi-instantaneous) formation by God of the bodies of Adam and
Eve—the former out of inorganic matter, the latter out of the rib of
Adam—is at least rash, and probably proximate to heresy.”

That the human soul was specially and separately created is an article
of Catholic faith.

There is not a fact in science at variance with these views of the
origin of the body of man and of the human soul. Even Mr. Wallace—to
whom the credit of pointing out the influence of “natural selection”
in modifying organic beings belongs by right of a title not less valid
than that of Mr. Darwin—believes, and he has reason to believe, in the
action of an overruling Intelligence in the production of “the human
form divine”; and that, in view of man’s special attributes, “he is,
indeed, a being apart”—not, therefore, evolved, either as to his body
or his soul, from any inferior organism. When a man like Mr. Wallace
holds such a view, we may rest assured that the facts in the case do
not require any one to hold the contrary. Let us now endeavor to sum up
the results in relation to the Darwinian theory and the bearings thus
far obtained:

1. The tendency of every kind of animal and plant to increase in
geometrical progression, and to transmit a general likeness with
individual differences, as well as to present minute variations
of any kind in any direction, the great length of past time, the
struggle of animals and plants for existence, and the preservation and
intensification of favorable variations, are facts on which the theory
is based.

We accept these facts.

2. We do not accept the theory, because, although it throws light on
some facts, there are others with which it is not compatible; and
because those even on which it does throw light do not require us to
accept it.

3. There is nothing in the Darwinian theory, or in the more general
theory of evolution countenanced by facts bearing on the development of
life, which a Catholic may not accept, if he wishes so to do.

4. The teaching of Darwinism as to the origin of man’s body is probably
next to heretical. At all events, the only safe opinion is that it
was not evolved from the body of a lower being, but was directly and
quasi-instantaneously created by God.

5. Its teaching concerning the origin of the human soul is in direct
and irreconcilable contradiction with an article of Catholic faith.

6. There is—apart from revealed doctrine—an absolute scientific
certainty of the truth of that same doctrine respecting the creation of
the human soul, and the highest probability of the immediate creation
of the human body.

So much for the facts, so much for the theory, so much for its bearings
on revelation.

In all we have said, we do not wish to be understood as advocating
the Darwinian theory, even in so far as it does not conflict with
Catholic faith, nor as committing ourselves to the general doctrine of
evolution. The fact is, we do not care as Catholics to pledge ourselves
hastily to any hypothesis whatever. We know some little of the history
of hypotheses, and we know that it has been a history of failures.

When the Darwinian hypothesis or the theory of evolution shall
have stood the test of years and facts, and the most searching
investigations, let the Catholics who will be then alive accept them.
There is no special reason why we should profess our faith in them. We
do not need them to account for the phenomena about us.

On the other hand, we can readily understand why a certain class of
minds should subscribe to it.

The human mind naturally seeks for an explanation of the origin of
things. Intelligent men know the human race has not always been on
the earth, that the phenomena about us are not eternal, that animal
and vegetable life must have had a beginning here. Catholics know the
same, and knew it before science had demonstrated it or discovered its
minutiæ.

Men who wish to get rid of God welcome any hypothesis which seems to
remove him to a greater distance from them, even before that hypothesis
has more in its favor than against a it. Catholics, who believe in God,
have no such anxiety. They are willing to wait, since they have already
an explanation of the origin of things in their belief in God, and in
the teachings of his revelation that he in the beginning created the
heavens and the earth, and all that they contain. The minutiæ, the How
of that creation, they leave it to science to discover. When discovered
and proved, they will accept it. But science can never give them
anything not contained in the first article of the Creed: “I believe
in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” All it can do
is to explicate and confirm this.

If it be objected that scientists accept the theory, and that we
therefore should, we reply, _mere_ scientists do; and of all men, the
least safe of guides is the mere scientist. No other man is more apt to
become a blind worshipper of the idols of the Cave. He confines himself
within the narrow limits of his laboratory, among instruments of death,
and then would excogitate a solution to the problems of life and of the
universe; as if with bolts and screws he could wring from nature the
secret it will not yield.

Goethe well knew that from such men we need not expect the answer to
the riddle of the universe; that one glance at the world as a whole as
it lies bathed in the sun on a summer’s day tells us more than all the
tomes of philosophers.

  “Ah me! this dungeon still I see,
  This drear, accursed masonry,
  Where even the welcome daylight strains
  But darkly through the painted panes,
  Hemmed in by many a toppling heap
  Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust,
  Which to the vaulted ceiling creep,
  Against the smoky paper thrust,
  With glasses, boxes, round me stocked,
  And instruments together hurled,
  Ancestral lumber stuffed and packed:
  Such is my world: and what a world!
  And do I ask wherefore my heart
  Falters, oppressed with unknown needs?
  With some inexplicable smart
  All movement of my life impedes?
  Alas! in living nature’s stead,
  Where God his human creature set
  In smoke and mould, the fleshless dead
  And bones and beasts surround me yet!”

And although we can see some force in the general theory of evolution,
we cannot accept it till it settles its account with the principle on
which the whole inductive method is raised—the constancy of the laws
of nature.

The theory of evolution strikes, it seems to us, at the very root of
this principle. It proclaims that there is not and has never been any
constancy in nature. It devours all other law, or rather destroys it.
It means simply change. Permanency, constancy, and their synonymes
are opposed to it; and thus the theory of evolution must invalidate
all the sciences which are founded on the assumption that nature is
constant; in other words, that it does not change, does not evolve. The
definition of evolution given by Mr. Spencer makes it simply a change.
True, he states the method or law of that change. But the method is
discovered by induction. Induction is in turn annihilated by evolution.
The fabric as it rises loses its foundation, and floats in the air, a
baseless vision.

But if we are in no haste to yield assent to Darwinism or evolution in
general; as applied to man’s soul by advocates like Spencer or Chapman,
we reject it _in toto_. It is incompetent to account for the facts,
nay, in glaring contradiction to them.

We take our stand against man’s relation to the ape on facts as
undeniable as any the zoologist or anatomist advances in its favor.
These compare man’s body and the ape, and _find_ no very great
superiority of the one over the other as they lie recently dead on the
anatomist’s table. Let the two lie there only a little longer, and none
at all will be discoverable. A little dust which the winds of heaven
will soon scatter to the four points of the compass is all that will be
left of either. Shall we therefore infer their oneness of kind? By no
means.

We know that man is in some respects not unlike the ape in form; but we
know, too, that there are Godlike faculties in man which are not in the
ape. We know this, and we know, moreover, that the philosopher through
whose brain roll vast choruses of thought; who stands on the heights
of Christian philosophy and human speculation, and discourses on death
and immortality; who, from the eminence to which Christianity has
raised him, looks down, not with indifference and not with contempt,
but with deep serenity, on the little loves and little hates of the
world, because conscious of his eternal destiny—we know, we have an
intuition, which we trust more than we trust Darwin and Huxley, that
this philosopher is more than a developed ape.

And when the anatomist tells us there is little anatomical difference
between man and the ape, therefore between man as man and the ape as
ape there is little difference or a difference only of degree, we
reply: Between man and the ape, between a Newton or even a savage and
a monkey, there is, in the intellectual order, a vast difference,
an infinite difference. _This_ we take as the fact, and draw the
conclusion that the amount of anatomical difference between a monkey
and a man is no criterion or measure of the real difference.

We treat the argument from embryology in the same way. Because
at a certain stage in its development the human embryo cannot be
distinguished from that of certain of the lower animals, we are assured
that man differs from these only in degree. We grant the fact, we
reject the inference; and we reason: notwithstanding you can detect
no difference at certain stages between the two, time develops one
so great that the one may become a Shakespeare, the other becomes
only a Shakespeare’s dog. What follows? Simply this: that there is a
something in the human embryo which is not in the other—a something
which the sense cannot detect, but the existence of which the mind
may infer; that there is more of life than the embryologist can find
out by his methods, as there is more of the rose than is found in its
ashes—more of life than we would be apt to see in a dissecting-room or
a charnel-house.

No; whatever force the special Darwinian theory may have to the student
of animal life, to the student of man as an animal, it can have very
little to him who views man in his higher manifestations. Whatever else
it may account for, it never can throw any light on the facts of man’s
moral nature. It never can explain the origin of a being who believes
in purity or pity.

Let the Darwinian, indeed, explain, if he can, how, if man owes
his existence and his development, physical, moral, and mental, to
success in the struggle for existence—in other words, to natural
selection—and this success, in turn, to the exercise of the selfish or
combative faculties, or to both combined—faculties which, according to
this theory, he must have exercised, his present and previous states
taken together, for ages unnumbered—so long, indeed, that they ought
to have grown into uncontrollable instincts—and which are the only
ones he can have exercised from the beginning, to which, therefore, as
the most imperious, all others should be subordinate—let him, we say,
explain who can how this tendency to battle, inherited through infinite
ages, has not taken complete possession of man, nor caused his life to
be a continual strife with his fellows; let him explain how, instead of
all this, there _are_ men who have learned, not to hate, but to love
their enemies, to compassionate the weak, the poor, and the lowly, to
nurse the sick and the dying, to care even for the dead; nay, how it
comes that there are men who are guided by the sublime command: “Love
them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that
persecute and calumniate you”; or, further yet, how, in spite of the
exercise of the selfish and combative faculties, in the struggle for
existence, the tendency of which must have been to strengthen by use
the organs of destruction, the same organs should gradually disappear,
and that in man not one of them should be left.

Let him explain, again, how out of mere animality, by “natural
selection,” out of the mere brute, in a “struggle for existence,”
beings should come—men to whom this would be a law: Be pure; for “he
that looketh after a woman to lust after her hath already committed
adultery with her in his heart.” There are such men—men to whom this
is a law, and who obey it. Will a Vogt or a Büchner believe it? Will a
Darwin account for it by “natural selection”?

Finally, let him explain how, if man has always been only growing out
of some lower condition, he has yet learned, in a measure, to go beyond
himself, to harbor an ideal which he has never reached, but towards
which he ever strives, inasmuch as he endeavors to fulfil the command
of the Son of God: “Be ye perfect, as my heavenly Father also is
perfect.”


PEACE.

THIS supplication of the Suffering was that also of the Militant
Church, which daily offered it as now with sighs and tears, and, by the
light which this reflection casts on history, we can catch a glimpse
for an instant at the immense multitude of the pacific men who in the
middle ages were existing upon earth; for as many as were joined in
spirit to the church, were united with her in this ardent, insatiable
desire of peace. How do we know that the Catholic Church, which the
holy Fathers call the house of peace, was so profoundly attached to
peace? From a simple review of her liturgy: for in the first place, her
great daily sacrifice itself was nothing else but the mystery of peace,
the pledge of future and eternal, the diffusion of present peace to
man. At this holy and tremendous celebration in which God hath given
peace reconciling the lowest with the highest in himself, the good of
temporal peace was also formally invoked, at the _Gloria_, at the _Te
igitur_, at the spreading of the hands before the consecration, at the
_Libera nos_ at the salutation of the people, at the _Agnus Dei_, at
the three prayers which follow it, and in the prayer for the king; for
as the apostle assigns the reason for the latter, _that we may lead
a secure and peaceable life_, so with that intention the holy church
prays for all rulers, even for such as are transgressors of the divine
law;[49] which intention is formally expressed in her solemn litany,
where she prays that kings and Christian princes may have peace and
true concord, and all the people peace and unity. The innumerable
priests, who celebrated throughout the earth, knew that the inestimable
price of the world, and the great Victim for the salvation of men,
could only be immolated in a spirit of peace, and with a contrite
heart; and that, as Peter of Blois says, it is never lawful to offer it
without that preparation.[50]—DIGBY, _Mores Catholici_.


DANTE’S PURGATORIO.

CANTO EIGHTH.

 In this Canto, Dante introduces the souls of Nino Visconti, judge of
 Gallura in Sardinia; and of Conrad Malaspina, who predicts to the poet
 his banishment.

  ‘Twas now the hour that brings to men at sea,
    Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell,
  Fond thoughts and longing back with them to be;
    And thrills the pilgrim with a tender spell
  Of love, if haply, new upon his way,
    He faintly hear a chime from some far bell,
  That seems to mourn the dying of the day;
    When I forbore my listening faculty
  To mark one spirit uprisen amid the band
    Who joined both palms and lifted them on high
  (First having claimed attention with his hand)
    And towards the Orient bent so fixed an eye
  As ‘twere he said, “My God! on thee alone
    My longing rests.” Then from his lips there came
  _Te lucis ante_, so devout of tone,
    So sweet, my mind was ravished by the same
  The others next, full sweetly and devout,
    Fixing their gaze on the supernal wheels,
  Followed him chanting the whole Psalm throughout.

    Now, reader, to the truth my verse conceals
  Make sharp thy vision; subtle is the veil
    So fine ‘twere easily passed through unseen.
  I saw that gentle army, meek and pale,
    Silently gazing upward with a mien
  As of expectancy, and from on high
    Beheld two angels with two swords descend
  Which flamed with fire, but, as I could descry,
    They bare no points, being broken at the end.
  Green robes, in hue more delicate than spring’s
    Tender new leaves, they trailed behind and fanned
  With gentle beating of their verdant wings.
    One, coming near, just over us took stand,
  Down to th’ opponent bank the other sped,
    So that the spirits were between them grouped
  Full well could I discern each flaxen head;
    But in their faces mine eyes’ virtue drooped,
  As ‘twere confounded by excess and dead.
    “From Mary’s bosom they have both come here,”
  Sordello said—“this valley to protect
    Against the serpent that will soon appear:”
  Whence I, unknowing which way to expect
    This object, turned me, almost froze with fear,
  And to those trusty shoulders closely clung.
    Again Sordello: “Go we down and see
  These mighty shades, and let them hear our tongue:
    Thy presence will to them right gracious be.”
  Only three steps I think brought me below
    Where one I noticed solely eyeing me
  As if who I might be he fain would know.
    ‘Twas dusk, yet not so but the dusky air,
  Between his eyes and mine, within the dell,
    Showed what before it did not quite declare.
  Towards me he moved, and I towards him as well:
    Gentle Judge Nino, when I saw thee there
  What joy was mine to find thee not in hell!
    We left unsaid no form of fair salute:
  Then he inquired: “How long since thou didst come
    O’er the far waters to the mountain’s foot?”
  “O but this morn,” said I, “the realms of gloom
    I passed: in the first life I am, but fain
  Would find the next by following on this track.”
    Like to men suddenly amazed, the twain,
  He and Sordello, hearing this, drew back.
    One looked at Virgil, one into the face
  Of a companion sitting there, and cried,
    “Up, Conrad! see what God hath of his grace
  Bestowed,” then turning unto me replied:


NINO VISCONTI.

    “By that especial reverence, I beseech,
  Which thou ow’st him whose primal way is hid
    So that none sound it, if soe’er thou reach
  The shore beyond the vasty waters, bid
    My child Giovanna for my peace implore
  There where the cry of innocents heaven heeds.
    Her mother I am sure loves me no more
  Since she put off her widow’s paly weeds,
    But in her misery fain would wear this day.
  From her full readily may one be taught
    How soon love’s flame in woman dies away
  If sight or touch full oft relume it not.
    The chanticleer upon Gallura’s shield
  Had graced her sepulchre with fairer show
    Than will that viper, which to battle-field
  Marshals the men of Milan.” With such glow
    He uttered this as in his face revealed
  The heart’s just passion smouldering yet below.
  Still that sole part of heaven I fondly eyed
    Where the stars move, even as a wheel doth move
  More slowly next the axle. Said my Guide:
    “Son, what dost thou so gaze at there above?”
  “Up there! at yon three torches,” I replied,
    “Whose splendor makes this pole here all ablaze.”
  And he to me: “The four clear stars that rose
    This morn before thee have abased their rays,
  And these have mounted in the place of those.”
    While thus he spake, Sordello to his side
  Drew Virgil, and exclaimed: “Behold our Foe!”
    And pointed to the thing which he descried.
  And where that small vale’s barrier sinks most low
    A serpent suddenly was seen to glide,
  Such as gave Eve, perchance, the fruit of woe.
    Through flowers and herbage came that evil streak,
  To lick its back oft turning round its head,
    As with his tongue a beast his fur doth sleek.
  I was not looking, so must leave unsaid
    When first they fluttered, but full well I saw
  Both heavenly falcons had their plumage spread.
    Soon as the serpent felt the withering flaw
  Of those green wings, it vanished, and they sped
    Up to their posts again with even flight.
  The shade who had approached the judge when he
    Accosted him, had never moved his sight
  Through this encounter, looking fixed on me.


CONRAD MALASPINA.

  “So may that light,” the spirit began to say,
    “Which leads thee up, find in thine own free will
  Sufficient wax to last thee all the way,
    Even to th’ enamelled summit of the Hill.
  If thou true news of Val di Magra know’st,
    Or of those parts, inform me of the same,
  For I was mighty once upon that coast,
    And Conrad Malaspina was my name.
  Not the old lord, but his descendant, I:
    The love which once I to my kindred bore
  Is here refined.” “O,” thus I made reply,
    “That realm of yours I never travelled o’er;
  But where throughout all Europe is the place
    That knows it not? The honor Fame accords
  Your house illustrates not alone the race,
    But makes the land renowned as are its lords;
  He knows that country who was never there:
    Still the free purse they bear, and still bright swords
  So mount my soul as this to thee I swear!
    Custom and nature privilege them so,
  That, if through guilt the world’s guide lead astray,
    They in the path of right straightforward go
  Sole of all men, and scorn the evil way.”
    To these my words, “Now go,” the spirit said,
  For the sun shall not enter seven times more
    That part of heaven where Aries o’er his bed
  Stretches and spreads his forked feet all four,
    Ere this thy courtesy’s belief shall be
  Nailed in the middle of thy head with nails
    Of greater force than men’s reports to thee
  If, unimpeded, Judgment’s course prevails.


THE RUSSIAN IDEA.

FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

CONCLUDED.

III.

RUSSIAN VICTIMS.

THE following morning, Rasumowski sat with his guests at a sumptuous
breakfast in his elegant summer-house, the roof of which rested upon
beautifully ornamented pillars. Adolph von Sempach appeared very sad;
for he had again received evidences of Alexandra’s indomitable pride
and want of feeling. Beck remarked the disposition of his friend, and
he thought with satisfaction of the deeply afflicted mother in her
lonely palace at Posen.

“Some years ago, the emperor emancipated the serfs—did he act
prudently?” asked the high official of Berlin.

“Whatever the czar does, is well done,” answered the governor; “and
if the future czar again introduces the former system of servitude,
that also will be right. But you must not understand the abolition of
servitude in a literal sense. The serfs; were freed only from servitude
to the nobility; the Russian nobility have lost by it. But both peasant
and noble will always remain slaves of the emperor. Consequently
servitude still exists in Russia, the same kind that you desire to
establish in the new German Empire. Ah! there comes the Roman Catholic
pastor!” exclaimed the governor, his features assuming at once their
accustomed look of ferocity. “Now, gentlemen, see how I shall deal with
this hero of liberty, who preaches rebellion to the people!”

The pastor timidly approached the Russian dignitary, and allowed
himself to be treated in a manner unworthy of his priestly dignity.

But the priest had seen many thousands of his Catholic brethren put
to death and transported to Siberia. He knew that, by a stroke of the
pen, Rasumowski could doom him to the same fate; and to this must
also be added the fact that in Poland Catholic clergyman are educated
by professors appointed by the Russian government. These professors
very naturally train and discipline the seminarians according to the
commands of a government hostile to the Roman Catholic religion. Solid
theological learning and a proper appreciation of the dignity of the
priesthood are not sufficiently esteemed, for which reason we must make
allowances for the cringing deportment of the village pastor.

After having made a low reverence before the governor, the latter
rudely accosted him by saying, “Have you your sermon with you?”

“It is at your service, your honor,” replied the priest, taking with
trembling hands from his pocket a written sheet of paper, which he
handed to the governor.

Rasumowski began to read, while now and then a sign of contempt or a
shade of anger would spread itself over his face.

“By the heavens above me! pastor, this is incredible; in your sermon
there is not one word said about his most high majesty the emperor!
What is the meaning of this? Do you wish to go to Siberia?”

The priest shook like an aspen-leaf.

“Pardon me, your honor, pardon me!” stammered the priest. “I preached,
as your honor may condescend to see, not about the most high emperor,
but concerning Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, who has redeemed
men through his death upon the cross, and has freed them from the
servitude of Satan.”

“Bah!—Saviour of the world—nonsense!” interrupted the governor. “You
must always preach about the most high the emperor. Your remarks about
the Saviour of the world are altogether superfluous. And then,” he
continued, with a threatening frown, “in your sermon you repeatedly
use words not approved of by the government; that is, _freedom_ and
_servitude_. You must never again use such expressions, for, if you
do—remember Siberia!”

“Pardon, your honor! My intention was to show the people that we must
obey God from motives of gratitude.”

“That, again, is nonsense!” exclaimed the governor. “If God wishes the
people to obey him, let him march his soldiers against the disobedient.
Our first duty is to the emperor; this you must preach to your
parishioners!”

He rang the bell, which was immediately answered by a Cossack.

“Bring me a sheet of official paper, and the pen and ink!” said
Rasumowski to the servant. “Now, listen, pastor, to what I say! If
you again preach upon _liberty_ or _servitude_, you will be sent to
Siberia; for in the holy Russian Empire there is neither _freedom_ nor
_servitude_; and, in order that you may become a practical preacher,
you must preach for a whole year on nothing else but on the _kindness_,
_mildness_, _glory_, _wisdom_, _power_, and _benevolence_ of the
emperor, but, above all, on the strict obligation of unconditional
obedience due to him. Will you do this?”

“At your honor’s command,” replied the intimidated priest.

Rasumowski wrote upon a sheet of paper which bore the printed
superscription: “Police Notice.” He then read aloud what he had
written: “In this church the only topic to be preached upon for a whole
year is on the high qualities of the emperor, and on the obligations of
his subjects to him.”

He then folded the paper, and gave it to the priest.

“That your congregation may be informed of my command,” said he, “you
must nail this police notice upon the church door. Now go!”

Before the priest had left the garden, the Berlin official burst into
a loud laugh.

“Oh! this is sublime!” he exclaimed. “I must confess that you have
these priests under splendid subjection. The Russian method is
admirable, and must be introduced into the new German Empire.”

“My opinion,” said the professor, in a tone of indescribable sarcasm,
“is that this Russian method is even excelled by the Prussian. The
governor has not forbidden the pastor to preach, he has simply given
him matter for his sermons; but upon the doors of several churches in
certain cities of Prussia _police notices_ are placed, which forbid
preaching altogether; and not only preaching, but even the hearing of
confessions and the celebration of Mass. I think, therefore, that we
have surpassed the Russians.”

“That is so,” replied Herr Schulze; “but the order of which you speak
is unfortunately directed only against the Jesuits.”

“It is all the same,” answered Beck. “Catholic preaching, the holy
Mass, and confession were forbidden. The war of destruction is not made
solely against the Jesuits, but against the church.”

“You are correct, professor!” answered Schulze. “Do you know Dr.
Friedberg, of Leipzig?”

“Not personally,” replied Beck; “but I am familiar with some of his
writings.”

“Well,” continued Schulze, “Dr. Friedberg is Bismarck’s most faithful
adviser and assistant in the combat against the ultramontanes, who
are so hostile to the empire. Friedberg has lately published a work
in which he expressly says that war is to be made not on the Jesuits
alone, but on the whole Catholic Church, and that this war must be
energetically carried out.”

“Without reference to Dr. Friedberg’s pamphlet,” said Beck, “it is
clearly evident to every man of judgment, that the destruction of
the Catholic Church is the one thing aimed at. It is really amusing
to see how opinions change. Some years ago, the liberal press spoke
of the Catholic religion with the greatest disrespect and contempt.
The Pope was a feeble old man, and Catholicity tottering to its fall;
it was, in fact, not only lifeless, but even unfit to live. To-day,
however, this same liberal press proclaims the very reverse. The Pope
is now so dangerous that Bismarck is already using every effort to
secure at the next election of a pope a man who has what is popularly
called _extended views_, and who will make very little use of the
extraordinary powers of his office. It has become evident to the
liberals that Catholicity is by no means a worn-out, dead thing, but
that it is to be feared and is strong enough even to overthrow the new
German Empire.”

“You make the newspapers of too much consequence,” replied Schulze.
“Our journalists write under great restrictions, of course; but they
are well paid for their work, and cost us a great deal of money.
Bismarck’s organ, _The North-German General Gazette_, alone costs the
empire every year over twenty thousand dollars. Bismarck, nevertheless,
has a very low opinion of newspaper-writers; he calls them, as is
well known, _his swine-herds_. You cannot, however, deny the fact,
professor, that the Catholic Church is hostile to the empire.”

“If you ask me as an historian, Herr Schulze, I must contradict some
of your assertions,” said Beck. “The Catholic Church is a spiritual
power, but is not hostile to the empire, as far as the new empire
aspires after the liberal development of noble ideas. Culture,
freedom, civilization, true humanity, are children of the Catholic
Church. As you know, Herder, our great writer, has said: ‘Without the
Catholic Church, Europe would have become in all probability the prey
of despots, the theatre of perpetual discord and strife, or else a
vast desert.’ If, however, the new German Empire intends to introduce
a Russian form of government, and with it servitude and the knout,
then, of course, the Catholic Church will fearlessly manifest her
displeasure.”

The governor and Herr Schulze opened their eyes, and gazed with
astonishment and suspicion upon the daring speaker.

“Do not forget,” remarked Von Sempach, “that my friend speaks only from
a historical standpoint.”

“On the whole you are right, Herr Beck!” exclaimed the governor. “The
Catholic Church confuses the minds of the people by preaching about
_liberty_, _about being the children of God_, about _the dignity of
man_, and all such absurdities. The Pope and his priests make their
people proud, obstinate, and rebellious, and difficult to manage. Mark
my prediction, Herr Schulze: you cannot introduce the Russian form of
government into Germany until Catholicity is exterminated.”

“We will rid ourselves of it,” said Schulze confidently. “The Jesuits
are already expelled, and now we are using stringent measures to
suppress their kith and kin—that is, all the orders and convents—so
that we shall gradually have the Catholic Church under the same
subjection as it is in Russia. And have you noticed, gentlemen, how
quietly all has been effected? The Jesuits were sent away without the
least opposition on the part of the Catholics; the riot at Essen was
only the demonstration of a few workmen.”

“There was, however, great excitement among the liberals,” replied Von
Sempach; “for, when the German religious were innocently proscribed and
forcibly driven from their homes, the national liberals applauded and
cried out ‘Bravo!’”

“If you imagine, Herr Schulze,” said Beck, “that the patient endurance
of Catholics in witnessing the expulsion of their priests is not
dangerous, you deceive yourself. Their manner of combat, however, is a
very singular one. Recourse to arms, or rebellion against authority, is
forbidden them by their religion; but history teaches that the weapons
employed by the Catholic Church have proved most disastrous to all
her enemies. And it is to me as clear as the sun at noon-day that, in
consequence of this persecution of the church, the German Empire will
succumb.”

“You speak in riddles, Herr Beck!” said Schulze. “What do you mean when
you speak of the Catholic manner of combat?”

“That which is, in fact, the very essence of Catholicity,” answered
the professor. “Catholics believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
is the founder of their church; they know that God will never abandon
his church, because he has promised to abide always with her. Since
they are forbidden to conspire and rebel, they have recourse to prayer,
and they pray to Almighty God to keep his word—in my opinion, a very
dangerous mode of combat; for no power, not even that of the new German
Empire, can stand against the Lord. And it is a remarkable truth
that the Catholics, for over 1,800 years, have conquered all their
oppressors. If Bismarck should commence to boil and roast Catholics, as
did Nero and other cruel tyrants who persecuted them for three hundred
years, he would meet with the same fate that befell the pagan emperors
of Rome.”

“What you say, professor, is no doubt incontrovertible, for the facts
are historical,” replied Schulze. “We do not, however, intend, for
the present, to either boil or roast Catholics, and it is not even
necessary to adopt such severe measures. If the liberal government
once gets undisputed control of all the academies and public schools,
Catholicity must naturally die out.”

“Another deception, Herr Schulze,” replied Beck. “The apostate
Emperor Julian, fifteen hundred years ago, adopted this very plan of
exterminating Catholics. He established infidel instead of Christian
schools; but the Emperor Julian perished, together with his empire,
while the Catholic Church still exists, and is the terror of her
enemies.”

“We have heard enough!” exclaimed the governor. “We will not deny the
assertion of our learned friend. The Catholics in the new German Empire
can suffer and pray, and look for assistance from above, until they say
their dying prayer, as they do in Poland.”

From the eyes of the professor there shone a brilliant ray of light.

“You are mistaken, Governor Rasumowski,” said he; “not Catholic Poland,
but the Russian Empire, is saying its dying prayer.”

If lightning had come down from heaven, it would not have made a
greater impression upon the Russian when he heard Beck’s remark.

“You seem astonished, governor,” said the professor. “Are you really
ignorant of what a volcano the Russian Empire is standing upon? I
have made diligent inquiries upon the subject, and know something of
the interior dissensions that prevail in Russia. The present emperor
is also aware of it; for his father, when dying, admonished him,
saying: ‘Soucha (that is, Alexander), take care, lest thou become the
Louis XVI. of Russia!’ Excuse my candor, and permit me to wish you
good-morning, as I intend to accompany my friend to the city.”

The two young men walked through the garden, followed by the angry
looks of the Prussian and the Russian.

Severe weather prevailed for some days. Excursions into the country
were out of the question. Schulze visited the public institutions of
the city, which were managed according to the Russian system.

One day, Von Sempach found the professor busily writing in his room.

“Are you taking notes, Edward?”

“I am collecting important Russian items to send to Bolanden, that he
may use them for the good of the German people, and for the benefit
of other nations, who do not desire to be governed according to the
Russian mode.”

“I protest against it,” replied Von Sempach. “I have no desire to
figure in a novel.”

“Do not excite yourself, my dear Adolph! Bolanden will change our
names, and perhaps call the gentleman from Berlin _Schulze_. How is
Alexandra?”

The young man sighed heavily, and seemed greatly distressed.

“I wish that I had never known her!” said he; “for I can tell you, in
confidence, that a deformed soul dwells in her beautiful body. Her
pride is insufferable, her want of feeling repulsive; in fact, she is
utterly devoid of those amiable qualities of heart and mind which a
woman must possess in order to make a happy home.”

“She is the child of a Russian governor, who, by means of the pleti and
Siberia, keeps in subjection the serfs of the divine emperor,” replied
Beck. “I told Schulze and the governor my real opinion in regard to
the decayed condition of the empire of the czar, and yet I was very
temperate in my language; I should have added that Almighty God also
is the arbiter of nations, and suffers the continuance of Russian
barbarities only to show how deeply empires can sink, and how wicked
men can become, when an emperor has unlimited command in church and
state. The same result will take place in Germany, if she takes Russia
as her model.”

“I hope you will not use such expressions before Rasumowski,” said
Adolph warningly.

“No; we must not cast the pearls of truth before swine, for they would
perhaps attack us with their Cossacks and the pleti!”

“Why do you jest?” said Adolph. “The discoveries I have made concerning
Alexandra’s real nature have made me very sad. Why must I bind myself
for ever to such a creature?”

“Reason and the desire for true happiness forbid it!” answered the
professor. “You are free, and not a Russian serf. Act like a man;
destroy the magic charm which her fatal beauty has woven around you. My
travelling-bag is ready, let us go back to your dear mother Olga. I am
disgusted with everything in this corrupt, stupid Russian Empire.”

The servant of Von Sempach now announced dinner. As the two friends
entered the dining-room, Schulze, with an air of triumph, held out a
newspaper.

“Herr Beck, you cannot say now that the Germans are unwilling to adopt
the Russian form of government,” he exclaimed. “Here, read _The Cross
Gazette_. You remember what trouble we had with reference to the
village of huts which some miserable and poverty-stricken wretches
had built outside the gates of Berlin. Well, these huts have been all
removed, according to the Russian method.”

“So I understand!” said the professor, who had read the article. “_The
Cross Gazette_ announces that the President of Police, Herr von Madai,
had given orders to several hundred policemen and soldiers to take
down, in the night from Monday to Tuesday, the collection of huts
outside of the Landsberg-gate; the poor settlers, who were roused from
their sleep, were driven away without difficulty, although the men
murmured, and the women and children wept; but there was otherwise no
disturbance or resistance. What a fine contribution to the history of
the new German Empire!” added Beck.

“Is it not also stated,” asked Adolph, whose face was glowing with
indignation, “that the humanity on which they pride themselves held the
torch while the sorrowing women and children were driven from their
wretched homes into the cold, dark night?”

“Why, Von Sempach, do not be so sentimental!” exclaimed the governor.
“Be like a Russian, who wastes very little time or sympathy on such
occasions.”

Dinner was served. Alexandra had never appeared more lovely; her
toilet was exquisite. She had remarked the serious deportment of her
betrothed; for she made use of every species of blandishment in order
to regain possession of his heart.

But something happened which brought matters to a crisis.

The dessert had just been laid, when a servant of the governor handed
him an official paper. He had only read a few lines, when a grim smile
diffused itself over his face.

“I have a surprise for you, gentlemen!” said he. “The nearest Prussian
police-station has had the kindness to deliver up to me the Jesuit F.
Indura, so that I may forward him to his native place, Kosow.”

“A Jesuit? Oh! that’s imperial!” exclaimed Alexandra, filled with
curiosity. “I have heard so much of the Jesuits, and wish to see one.
Papa, will you not have him brought here?”

“If it gives you pleasure, why not? That is, if our honored guests have
no objection.”

“None at all, governor!” replied Adolph von Sempach, with stern
formality. “You alone have to decide.”

“And I think that it is always praiseworthy to be willing to see and
hear a Jesuit,” said Beck.

“Tell the commissioner of police,” commanded Rasumowski, “to bring
before me without delay the Jesuit of Kosow!”

“Oh! that will be interesting!” exclaimed Alexandra. “I am so anxious
to see a man who belongs to that terrible order which has sold itself
to the devil, and labors only in the interest of hell.”

“Do you really believe what you say, mademoiselle?” asked Von Sempach,
in astonishment.

“Certainly! I have often read in the newspapers shocking things about
the Jesuits. They are said to possess in an extraordinary degree the
power of deceiving people, and they owe this spiritual power to Satan,
with whom they are in league.”

“You have derived your information from the Vienna _New Free Press_, is
it not so?”

“It may be, I do not know exactly. The new German Empire, in its fear
of God and love of morality, acts very prudently in expelling these
diabolical Jesuits.”

“But suppose these diabolical Jesuits come to Russia?”

“Oh! we are not afraid of them; we will send them to Siberia!”

“Here comes the Jesuit,” said Rasumowski, when he heard the clattering
sound made by the guards’ sabres.

Deep silence reigned in the dining-room. All sat with their eyes
intently fixed upon the door. In the hall were heard heavy, weary
steps, as though an aged or sick man was moving forward with great
difficulty. Then a hand appeared, grasping the side of the door, and
finally the Jesuit father, a tall, thin man, very much bent, and
leaning on a cane.

“Come in, quick!” cried out Rasumowski roughly.

F. Indura staggered into the room. The door was closed after him.

Those who were present gazed in silence at the suffering priest, who
could hardly stand on his feet, and who leaned exhausted against the
wall. Although still young, the incredible hardships that he had
undergone of fatigue as well as of hunger and thirst seemed to have
entirely destroyed the bodily strength of the Jesuit. His face was
deathly pale, and the hand which held his wide-brimmed hat trembled
from excessive weakness. His black habit was covered with dust, as if
he had been driven like a prisoner on the highway. Upon his breast
there hung an honorable sign of distinction, bestowed by the new German
Empire—the iron cross. After having saluted those present, this victim
of modern humanity and liberal justice silently awaited the command of
the Russian governor.

“Your name is Indura, and you come from Kosow?” commenced the governor.

“Yes, your honor!” answered the priest, in a feeble voice.

“You have been expelled by the Prussian government, and in the holy
Russian Empire you can find an abiding-place, and perhaps secure for
yourself a splendid position, if you will renounce the Society of
Jesus, and embrace the Russian state religion. Are you determined to do
this?” asked the governor.

“No, your honor! I prefer death to apostasy!”

“Well, we will not hang you yet awhile!” brutally exclaimed the
governor. “But we can send you to the mines of Siberia.”

“That will be impossible, sir!” replied the Jesuit, with a faint smile.
“for my strength is too far gone ever to reach Siberia.”

Von Sempach had until now been a quiet spectator of the scene;
alternate feelings of compassion and indignation filled his breast
whenever he looked at the priest. He turned to Alexandra, in whose
impassive features not a vestige of sympathy was visible.

“Mademoiselle,” said he in a subdued voice, “a work of mercy is
necessary in this case. This poor clergyman is dying from exhaustion.
Will you have any objection if I offer him my seat?”

The Russian lady turned fiercely around, like a serpent that had been
trodden upon.

“What do you mean, sir?” she answered, with a proud disdain. “Do you
think that I will grant such a disgraceful request?”

An angry flush overspread the face of the young man; his eyes gleamed
with a new light, and a proud, contemptuous smile wreathed his lips.
Alexandra at this moment had for ever forfeited the love of a heart of
which she was unworthy.

The governor meantime continued his questions.

“As you still wish to remain a Jesuit,” said he, “that is, a man
dangerous to the empire, an enemy of modern civilization, you will be
sent to Siberia!”

“Will your honor not procure me a passport to India?”

“What do you want to do in India?”

“We have missions there,” replied the priest. “As it is my vocation to
work for the salvation of souls, I wish to preach there the doctrine of
Christ according to my humble capacity.”

“I must reflect upon your petition,” replied the governor. “The
government may not wish the Jesuits to continue their activity even in
India. For the present, you must go to prison!”

The priest made a motion to leave, but his strength failed him, and a
cold sweat appeared in large drops upon his forehead. Then Adolph von
Sempach rose.

“Governor Rasumowski,” said he, “I do not believe that I shall appeal
in vain to your feelings as a man. I therefore urgently beseech you to
allow me to offer some refreshment to this exhausted gentleman from
your hospitable table.”

Von Sempach spoke in such an earnest tone of voice that it seemed
impossible to refuse him.

“If you wish to assume the character of the good Samaritan, Von
Sempach, I do not object,” answered the Russian, making a great effort
to conceal his real displeasure.

Adolph approached the weak and feeble priest, and, giving him the
support of his arm, led him to his seat.

“Allow me, reverend sir, to serve you.”

The Jesuit looked at him with gratitude, and Adolph commenced to fill
his plate. The half-starved owner of the iron cross began to eat, and
like a lamp whose dying flame is revived when oil is poured upon it,
so also was it with the proscribed priest, who soon felt the benefit of
Adolph’s tender care.

Alexandra had left the room when she saw that her father would grant
the request of Von Sempach. With an expression of unutterable scorn and
disgust, she gathered up the train of her rich silk dress, and retired
to her own apartment.

“Will the new German Empire send us any more of such guests?” asked the
governor, who was filled with suppressed wrath at seeing a Jesuit at
his table.

“Hardly!” replied Schulze. “The majority of the Jesuits are Germans or
Swiss; there are only a few Poles among them.”

“Are only the foreigners expelled, and not the Germans?” asked the
Russian.

“No Jesuit, even if he be a German, can remain in the new German
Empire, and discharge any sacerdotal or educational functions,” replied
Schulze.

“It has made a very strange impression upon me,” said the professor,
“to see men condemned and treated like criminals, against whom not the
least fault can be proved. Even the bitterest enemies of the Jesuits
confessed this at the Diet, saying, ‘We find no fault in them!’ An
old proverb asserts that ‘Justice is the foundation of kingdoms.’ The
conduct of Russia against Poland excepted, there is not a similar
example in modern history.”

“Is your remark intended as a reproach, Professor Beck?” asked the
Russian.

“I refer only to historical facts,” replied the professor. “My personal
opinion has nothing to do with it.”

“And I must openly acknowledge to you my belief that Germany acts
very prudently in imitating the Russian method in treating defiant
Catholics!” retorted the governor.

“Then, we shall have violence done to conscience, and the destruction
of human liberty in the highest sense of the word,” said the
professor. “From this tyranny of conscience would result, as a natural
consequence, a state of slavery and a demoralized condition of affairs.
Religion would cease to ennoble man, because her enemies would
misrepresent her doctrines in such a way that she would cease to be the
revelation of God; she would become a machine of the state, and this
machine would be called a National Church—a hideous thing that would
prove to be the grave of all liberty. Finally, an abyss would open, and
swallow up the whole; for Almighty God will not suffer the wickedness
of man to go beyond a certain length. History records his punishments;
as, for example, the Deluge, the destruction of the kingdoms belonging
to the Babylonians and Persians, the destruction of Jerusalem and of
the Jewish nation.”

Rasumowski was about to answer, when the Jesuit father rose from his
chair.

“Sir!” said he to Adolph von Sempach, “you have, in truth, performed a
work of mercy. May the Lord in heaven reward you!”

“He has already done so, your reverence!” replied Von Sempach, with a
look at Alexandra’s vacant seat.

“Accept my grateful thanks, your honor!” said Indura to the Russian.

“That will do!” interrupted the governor. “The commissioner is waiting
for you.”

Adolph left the room with the priest.

“All learned gentlemen do not seem to approve of the war of
extermination against the Catholic Church,” said Schulze, in a
slightly ironical tone.

“At least, not those who have preserved some sense of justice,” replied
Beck. “I cannot understand how so many millions of Catholics can
submit to be insulted and threatened in a way that should excite the
indignation of Christendom.”

“It is all very clear,” explained Schulze. “A national church is to be
established in Germany, just as it is in Russia. Protestantism sees the
necessity of the change, and makes no resistance; but it is not so with
Catholicity.”

“I agree to the last assertion, Herr Schulze,” said Beck. “From the
very earliest ages there have been cowardly bishops and cowardly
priests; but the Catholic Church has never made concessions in matters
of faith, and will never do so in all time to come.”

“For this very reason she must be exterminated, even if we have to
resort to extreme measures,” answered the great official of Berlin, in
a transport of passion.

“And do you believe in the possibility of extermination?” asked Beck.

“Why not? The educated portion of the world has long since repudiated
all belief in the nursery tales of religion.”

“I most solemnly protest against your remarks,” said the professor.
“Religion is as much a nursery tale as is the existence of God, who
manifests himself in his works; the most wonderful work of whose hands
is the Catholic Church, particularly her miraculous preservation. While
everything else in the course of time falls into decay; while the
proudest nations disappear from the face of the earth, leaving scarce a
trace behind them; while sceptres are constantly passing from the hands
of rulers, the chair of Peter stands immovable. No intelligent man can
refuse to respect and admire the Catholic religion. On the other hand,
I do not deny that liberalism in its spiritually rotten condition,
devoid as it is of every high aspiration, is ripe for the establishment
of a national church, which is to be fashioned after the Russian model.
The new German Emperor-pope will be able, without opposition from the
liberals, to introduce the Russian catechism. Liberalism will not
object to the introduction of the pleti and to a Siberia; for it is
servile, without principle, and utterly demoralized. Those Germans,
however, who have preserved their holy faith, their dignity as men,
and their self-respect, are no slaves, and will never wear the yoke of
Russian servitude.”

“Sir, you insult me!” vociferated the Russian governor.

“In what manner do I insult you?” said Beck. “You yourself maintained a
few days ago that the Russians were all serfs of the czar.”

“Yes, they are; but I will not allow you to speak of it with such
contempt,” responded the irritated dignitary.

“Since we are not as yet serfs in the new German Empire,” said the
professor earnestly, “you will permit a free man to express his views.”

“No, I will not allow you to do so!” cried Rasumowski, with a loud
voice. “If you were not, unfortunately, the friend of my future
son-in-law, I would send you to Siberia as a man dangerous to the
empire.”

The professor rose.

“Governor!” he exclaimed, in a tone of unmistakable self-restraint,
“your rudeness makes it impossible for me to stay one moment longer
under your roof. The very thought of having received your hospitality
is painful to me.”

At this moment, Adolph von Sempach appeared.

“Governor Rasumowski,” said he, “I have come to say farewell. Your
daughter, whom I have seen, will communicate to you the reasons of my
departure.”

The Russian, with widely distended eyes, looked with astonishment at
the young nobleman, who bowed and disappeared with his friend the
professor.

At the entrance of the palace, the servant of Von Sempach held open the
door of a carriage. The friends entered, and drove to the depot.

“But, Adolph, how do you feel? Tell me what has happened!” asked Beck.

“That which had to be done, unless I chose to make myself unhappy for
my whole life,” replied Von Sempach. “I have broken my engagement with
Alexandra.”

“I congratulate you from my whole heart!” said Beck, warmly pressing
the hand of his friend.

The next morning, the Baroness Olga welcomed the returned travellers;
and when Adolph related what had happened, joy and happiness
illuminated the face of the good mother, who embraced and kissed her
son. The professor stood smiling at her side.

“You see, most gracious lady,” said he, “that the study of Russian
affairs is very apt to convince every good German of the impossibility
of obtaining real happiness and prosperity from the land of the knout.”

A few days later the poor people exclaimed: “Our mother Olga is well
again; her eyes have lost their sad expression, and the kind smile has
returned to her lips.”




MY COUSIN’S INTRODUCTION.

THE only fault we could possibly find with the Gastons was that they
were Roman Catholics.

True, they were our own cousins, quite as well off as ourselves, and as
well educated and respectable as any family in the country; but then,
being Romanists, you know, they associated with such queer people, had
such singular notions, and attended a church filled every Sunday with
families that you and I would never think of speaking to, you know.

Aunt Mildred went to Mass with them one Sabbath, just out of curiosity,
and declared there wasn’t a decent bonnet in the whole congregation
outside of Cousin Mary’s pew; and father, who looked in at the chapel
on Christmas Day, told us he didn’t see a single carriage at the
entrance—nothing but a lot of farmers’ and workingmen’s wagons.

Nevertheless, the Gastons were charming people. Our affection for
them went to the full extent of our cousinly relationship, and I
in particular—by the way, I forgot to introduce myself—George
Willoughby, at your service, just twenty-one—nice age, isn’t it?
Graduated at—but I won’t mention what college in New England, lest
you might expect too much of me. Well, as I was saying—and I in
particular had conceived quite an attachment for my Cousin Richard
Gaston. He was three years my senior, had received his education in
some out-of-the-way Catholic college situated on the top or at the
foot—I really forget which—of some mountain among the Alleghenies. We
had frequently met and exchanged visits during our vacations, and the
only objection I had to Cousin Dick was that on these occasions he made
no end of fun of my Protestant Latin pronunciation, asking me to read a
page of Virgil, and then rolling over in his chair, splitting his sides
with laughter. What he found so comical in my recitation I could not
imagine. I saw nothing in it to laugh at. This was several years ago. I
now know the cause of his mirth.

But even if Dick did make fun of my Latin, and call it barbarous,
he was a good fellow, although I must say that at times he presumed
a little upon his seniority so as to be a trifle mentorish. Indeed,
I loved him as a friend, independently of my affection for him as a
relative. He was considerate, too, and never troubled me with any of
his Romanish notions, except when I sometimes asked him a question
about the church, or touching some point in Catholic history, and
then I generally received more information than I either expected or
desired. One of these occasions I well remember, for the conversation
eventually led to serious results for me. I had gone down to spend a
week with the Gastons. One rainy afternoon—too wet to drive over to
the village, as we had intended—I had just waded through the strange,
eventful story of that gay and festive American citizen, Mr. St. Elmo,
and, as usual when at a loss for something to do, I began to look
around for Dick.

I soon found him in the library, but so entirely engrossed with a book
that he did not notice my entrance.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“Oh!” said he, “nothing that would interest you.”

“Let me see?” I took the book, and read the title-page: _Introduction
to a Devout Life. From the French of S. Francis of Sales._ “Why, Dick,”
said I, “this is Thursday, not Sunday.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why,” said I, “on Sunday you get out the Bible, or some pious book,
and read a spell—needn’t read very long, you know, about enough to
keep your face straight for the rest of the day. It’s the thing to
do—good young man, and all that sort of thing, you know—_Cela vous
pose_, as the French say; but as to pious reading, except for that or
to fight a rainy Sabbath with—never heard of such a thing. But what’s
your book about? Who is your Sales man? Some old ‘stick-in-the-mud’ of
a stupid hermit, eh?”

“Your phrase is not of the politest,” replied Dick, “but I will answer
your question. S. Francis of Sales was not what you describe, but an
elegant, accomplished gentleman, a graduate of the Sorbonne at Paris,
and of the University of Padua, where, after a brilliant examination,
he took the degree of doctor of laws with great distinction.”

“That might all be,” I answered, for I was determined not to accept
Dick’s saint without a fight, as was indeed my duty, being a staunch
Protestant—a _rôle_ no one need ever have any trouble in filling,
for, as I understand it, you have nothing to do but deny everything
the Romanists assert—“that might all be. I suppose he took refuge in
orders and sanctimony because he had a game-leg, like your Loyola man
there—what do you call him? yes, S. Ignatius—brave fellow, by the
way, and a good soldier—or else he was jilted by some handsome girl.”

“Nothing of the kind. His early years, his youth, his student life, and
his advent in the world were all marked by a modesty, a purity, and a
piety that seemed to be the sure precursor of a saintly life.”

“Oh,” said I, “I have it now. He must have been a hard-featured fellow,
so ugly, most probably, that, piety being his only resource, he became
a regular old square-toes of a monk in advance of the mail.”

My cousin took a new book off the table, and said, “How ugly he was you
shall hear from his Protestant biographer.[51] Listen:

 “‘A commanding stature, a peculiar though unstudied dignity of manner,
 he habitually moved somewhat slowly, as though to check the natural
 impetuosity of a vigorous, healthy frame; regular though marked
 features, to which a singularly sweet smile, large blue eyes, and
 pencilled eyebrows gave great beauty; a complexion of almost feminine
 delicacy, in spite of ceaseless exposure to all weathers. His voice
 was deep and rich in tone; and, according to one who knew him, he was
 in appearance at once so bright and serious that it was impossible to
 conceive a more imposing presence.’”

“That’s all very well,” I answered, determined not to give it up
yet; “but that work of his you were reading, that _Devout life_,
is nothing but a string of prayers anyhow, isn’t it?—a sort of a
down-on-your-marrowbones manual?”

“Quite the reverse, my dear George. When the book was first published,
it was seized upon with avidity, and became immensely popular,
precisely because its author, not content with prescribing rules for
exterior acts of devotion, sought also to lead souls into the interior
life of piety. But judge for yourself. Let me read now a short extract
from the very first chapter, and you will at once see that, in the
opinion of S. Francis of Sales, the mere down-on-your-marrowbones
performance, as you not very elegantly phrase it, will not, of itself,
take you to heaven.”

“Well,” said I, “Dick, this is getting to be rather more than I
bargained for; but I’ll fight it out on this line if it takes me till
tea-time. So go on.” And he read:

 “As Aurelius painted all the faces of his pictures in the air and
 resemblance of the woman he loved, so every one paints devotion
 according to his own passion and fancy. He that is addicted to
 fasting, thinks himself very devout if he fasts, though his heart
 be at the same time filled with rancor; and, scrupling to moisten
 his tongue with wine, or even with water, through sobriety, he
 hesitates not to drink deep of his neighbor’s blood by detraction and
 calumny. _Another considers himself devout because he recites daily
 a multiplicity of prayers_, though immediately afterwards he utters
 disagreeable, arrogant, and injurious words amongst his domestics and
 neighbors. Another cheerfully draws alms out of his purse to relieve
 the poor, but cannot draw meekness out of his heart to forgive his
 enemies. Another readily forgives enemies, but never satisfies his
 creditors but by constraint. These by some are esteemed devout, while,
 in reality, they are by no means so.”

“That’s pretty plain talk,” was my comment—“a good deal plainer than
they give it to us down at our meeting-house. It sets a fellow to
thinking, too.” And here I was about to make a damaging admission,
when I fortunately recollected that I was in line of battle, with my
enemy in front. So I charged again with: “Oh! it’s easy enough to write
or preach the most pious precepts, and, at the same time, not be at
all remarkable for their practice. If your Sales man was such a fine
gentleman as you describe, I strongly suspect that that very fact kept
him pretty closely tied to the world, and that he may have been, after
all, a mere ornamental guide-post to point out to others the road he
had no idea of travelling himself.”

“George, you are incorrigible, and I doubt that you really believe
the half of what you are saying. But I shall not ask you to accept my
opinion of S. Francis of Sales’ personal piety. Here is a Protestant
estimate of it: ‘There is a beauty, a symmetry, an exquisite grace of
holiness, in all that concerns the venerable Bishop of Geneva which
fascinates the imagination and fills the heart. Beauty, harmony,
refinement, simplicity, utter unself-consciousness, love of God and
man, welling up and bursting forth as a clear fountain that never can
be stayed or staunched—such are the images and thoughts that fill the
mind as we dwell upon his memory.’

“It was in 1592,” continued my cousin, “that Francis of Sales returned
to the paternal mansion, after having been for twelve years a scholar
at the universities, and a student of the great world. His father had
ambitious projects for the advancement of his only son. By agreement of
the parents on both sides, he was to marry a rich heiress, the daughter
of the Seigneur de Vegy; and the reigning Duke of Savoy tendered him
the high position of senator; yet, notwithstanding the most energetic
remonstrances and prayers of his father and many friends, he calmly
but resolutely declined both the marriage and the senatorial dignity,
and in 1593 was received in minor orders by the Bishop of Geneva, and
ordained priest in December of the same year.”

“After which,” I interposed, “he, of course, had an easy time of it.”

“Listen, and you shall hear. The duchy of Chablais, adjoining
the Genevese territory, had in previous years been conquered and
occupied by the Bernese, and, as one of the results, Calvinism became
predominant. Restored to the Duke of Savoy in 1593 as the result of
treaties, it was important to provide for the spiritual wants of the
few scattered Catholics who remained. A learned and pious priest
named Bouchut was sent to one of the towns of the Chablais, but was
compelled to leave it, on account of the fierce and hostile attitude
of the inhabitants. It was soon understood that any Catholic priest
who undertook to minister there publicly would do so at his peril.
There was an absolute necessity that some one should go, but the
Bishop of Geneva naturally hesitated to order any of his priests to so
dangerous a mission. He would gladly have sent Francis of Sales, for
he saw that he possessed all the qualities desirable in so critical an
emergency—bravery, firmness, prudence, and gentleness, besides a name
and family position which commanded respect throughout the country.
Sorely embarrassed, the good bishop convened a chapter, and all his
ecclesiastics were summoned to be present. He laid the matter before
them, together with the letters of the reigning duke, spoke plainly of
the difficulties and perils of the mission, and asked their counsel
as to what should be done. As in the case of an overwhelming peril at
sea, or a desperate charge on a fortified place, where the captain
or commander hesitates to order men to certain death, and calls for
volunteers, so the good bishop in this manner really asked, ‘Who will
undertake this dangerous duty?’

“As the head of the chapter, it was for Francis of Sales to speak
first. No one present knew as well as he the most serious dangers of
the proposed mission.

“Amid profound and discouraging silence, he arose, and said,
‘Monseigneur, if you hold me capable of the work, and bid me undertake
it, I am ready’—few words, but to the point. Information of what
had taken place soon reached Château de Sales, and in spite of his
seventy-two years, the father instantly ordered his horse, and rode to
Annecy, where he imploringly remonstrated with his son, and begged him
to withdraw his offer.

“From the son the old man went to the bishop, and protested in tears
against the step about to be taken. ‘I give up,’ he exclaimed, ‘my
firs-tborn, the pride and hope of my life, the stay of my old age, to
the church; I consent to his being a confessor; but I cannot give him
to be a martyr.’ The father’s remonstrance was so powerful, his grief
so violent, that the good bishop was deeply moved, and gave signs of
wavering, when Francis, perceiving it, cried out: ‘Monseigneur, be
firm, I implore you; would you have me prove myself unworthy of the
kingdom of God? I have put my hand to the plough; would you have me
look back, and yield to worldly considerations?’

“But the father held out as well as the son. ‘As to this undertaking,’
he said to Francis, in parting, ‘nothing can ever make me either
sanction or bless it.’ At the last moment, several priests offered
the brave volunteer to accompany him, but he would take no one but
his cousin, the Canon Louis de Sales. It would be a long but most
interesting history to go into the details of the Chablais mission.
Under other circumstances, the people of that province might have run
the risk of being dragooned into Catholicity as they had been into
Protestantism. But the mild counsels of its noble apostle prevailed.
After trials, labors, and dangers most formidable, his holy life
and winning words of peace and reconciliation shamed persecution,
transformed hatred into respect and admiration, and the conversion of
the Chablais was the result of his holy daring. It was during this
period that he even penetrated into the camp of the enemy, going to
Geneva several times to visit Calvin’s successor, Theodore Beza, then
seventy-eight years of age.

“The Apostle of the Chablais, as Francis de Sales was henceforth called
by the reigning duke, was now urged by the aged Bishop of Geneva to
become his coadjutor, and with great difficulty was almost forced
to accept the position. He was soon after sent to Rome, to ask the
good offices of the sovereign pontiff in arranging a serious dispute
between Savoy and France, as to whether Geneva was included in the
provisions of the treaty of Vervins. Having transacted the business
of his mission, he was notified by Clement VIII. to prepare for a
public examination in his presence within a few days. It is related, as
characteristic of his strong sense of justice and independence, that,
with all his reverence for pontifical authority, and his well-known
personal humility, the first impulse of Francis was to resist this
order as an infringement upon his ecclesiastical rights. He laid the
matter before the ambassador of Savoy, who immediately sought an
audience of his holiness. Clement VIII. at once recognized the validity
of the objection, and promised that the case should not be treated as
a precedent. He had heard so much, he said, of the ability and talent
of De Sales, that he was desirous of an opportunity of judging of it
himself, as was also the College of Cardinals. The order, it was then
agreed, should stand, and the examination go on. The only preparation
of Francis for this formidable trial was—prayer. Indeed, there was no
time for any other, for there were but three days between the order and
the ordeal.

“Among the cardinals before whom he appeared were Baronius, Federigo
Borromeo, Borghese, and, among their assistants, the great Bellarmine.
Added to these was a crowd of archbishops, bishops, generals of
religious orders, and many eminent ecclesiastics of lesser dignity. A
Spanish priest of distinguished learning, who was to have presented
himself with Francis for examination before this body, was so
overpowered on entering the hall that he fainted. The scope of the
examination included civil law, canon law, and theology, but it was
confined to the last-named branch. Thirty-five questions were proposed,
and every possible objection was raised by the examiners to all the
answers. The examination over, his holiness expressed his supreme
satisfaction, went to Francis, and embraced him in presence of the
assembly, repeating the verse: ‘Bibe, fili mi, aquam de cisterna tua,
et fluenta putei tui; deriventur fontes tui foras, et in plateis aquas
tuas divide.’[52]

“In January, 1602, Francis was sent to Paris, charged with the
arrangement of certain ecclesiastical difficulties which had arisen in
consequence of the late transfer of the small territory of Gex from
Savoy to France. Negotiations with royal ministers are proverbially
slow, and a matter that Francis supposed might be terminated in six
days retained him at Paris six months. But for him this was not lost
time. He gave the course of Lenten sermons at the Royal Chapel,
preached constantly in various churches and communities, and was so
tireless in his spiritual labors that during these six months he is
said to have delivered one hundred sermons. It was during this visit
that he suggested to Pierre de Berulle (afterwards cardinal) the
foundation in France of an order for the education of the clergy, on
the model of the Oratory established in Italy by S. Philip Neri. The
project was carried out, and in 1611, when the Oratory was established
in France, its founder asked Francis of Sales to be its first superior.

“The reigning King of France was then Henry IV. He so highly prized
and admired De Sales that he offered him every inducement to remain in
France. He recognized in Francis the possession of all the qualities
and virtues belonging to the model ecclesiastic, and best calculated
to make religion respected and loved in a community scarcely recovered
from the evil effects of religious wars. The learned Cardinal du
Perron also appeared to be of the same opinion, for he said: ‘God has
certainly given him (De Sales) the key of hearts. If you want merely to
convince men, bring me all the heretics, and I will undertake to do it;
but if you want to convert them, take them to Mgr. de Genève.’”[53]

“Richard, cousin of mine,” said I, “your measure is Scriptural, heaped
up and running over. I ask you a question about that little book there
on the table, and you give me the entire biography of your Saint of
Sales. It’s all very edifying, certainly, but I want to know about the
work.”

“Oh! _The Devout Life?_” he replied. “I will tell you. In the first
place, a singular fact connected with it is that the work was completed
before S. Francis was aware that he had written a book. It happened
thus: A young, beautiful, and wealthy lady of the fashionable Parisian
world was so impressed by a sermon preached by the Bishop of Geneva
that she resolved to lead a new life, and solicited his spiritual
advice. His counsels of enlightened piety soon taught her that it was
possible to serve God with zeal without absolutely leaving the world.
Seeing her but seldom, he wrote from time to time such instructions as
he wished to convey, and also answered her letters asking for further
advice. On a visit to Chambéry, Mme. de Charmoisy—for that was the
lady’s name—showed these papers to the learned and pious Père Forrier,
rector of the College of Jesuits at that place. He was so much struck
with their contents that he had them copied, and wrote to Francis of
Sales, now Bishop of Geneva, urging him to publish them. The bishop
did not at first understand what he meant, and replied that he had
no talent for authorship, and no time to write. When the matter was
explained, and he ascertained that Père Forrier had studied and written
out what he called his ‘few miserable notes,’ he exclaimed: ‘Truly,
it is a wonderful thing that, according to these good people, I have
composed a book without knowing it.’ Very opportunely there reached him
at this juncture a letter from the secretary of Henry IV. of France,
expressing his majesty’s earnest wish that Mgr. de Genève would write a
work setting forth the beauty of religion, and showing worldly people
that a life of piety was not incompatible with a busy, active career.
‘No one,’ said the king, ‘could write such a book but Mgr. de Genève.’

“Thus pressed on all sides, the bishop set to work, made some changes
and additions[54] in the manuscript, and published it under the now
familiar title of _Introduction to a Devout Life_.

“The work had no model in French literature. It was neither apologetic
nor controversial, but purely moral and advisory; and this was much
in a period torn by religious dissensions and wars. Its success was
enormous. Praises of the book and its author poured in upon all sides.
Exaggerated encomiums disturbed the good bishop. ‘What!’ he said,
‘cannot God make fresh-water springs to come forth from the jaw-bone
of an ass? These good friends of mine think of nothing but me and my
glory, as though we might desire any glory for ourselves, and not
rather refer it all to God, who alone works any good which may be in
us.’

“Meantime, the _Introduction_ was translated into all languages, and so
widely read[55] that it was called at the time the _breviary_ of people
of the world.

“The imagery and symbolism of the book are full of grace and
attraction. It draws illustrations from pictures and flowers, and its
style is rife with similes and images which light up the essential
solemnity of the subject. As Sainte-Beuve says, ‘He puts plenty of
sugar and honey on the edge of the vase.’[56]

“But this grace of language and of style is not obtained at the
sacrifice of strength or of principle. The work has many passages full
of sombre energy, and, in particular, a meditation on death (first
book), which displays something of the peculiar vigor of a similar
chapter (twenty-third of the first book) in _Thomas à Kempis_.

“Then, there is a sharpness of penetration and a delicacy of insight
surprising to those who have not closely watched the springs of human
action and the workings of the human heart in themselves as well as in
others. Distinguished moralists, such as Montaigne and Franklin, have
discoursed eloquently and effectively on the morals and motives of
men, but you will find in none of them the elevation and purity of S.
Francis of Sales. Take, for instance, the thirty-sixth chapter of the
third book, in which he points out the almost imperceptible motives of
partiality and injustice which prompt us in everyday life to the most
selfish acts, consulting only interest and passion, while we pretend
to ourselves and others to be totally unconscious of anything in our
conduct that is not entirely praiseworthy. Listen and see how admirably
he introduces the subject: ‘It is reason alone that makes us men, and
yet it is a rare thing to find men truly reasonable; because self-love
ordinarily puts us out of the path of reason, leading us insensibly to
a thousand small yet dangerous injustices and partialities, which, like
the little foxes spoken of in the _Canticle_ destroy the vines; for,
because they are little, we take no notice of them; but, being great in
number, they fail not to injure us considerably.’

 “Now, remark how unerringly he places his finger on spots and
 blemishes that to our eyes are apparently as white as snow:

 “‘Are not the things of which I am about to speak unjust and
 unreasonable? We condemn every trifle in our neighbors, and excuse
 ourselves in things of importance; we want to sell very dearly, and
 to buy very cheaply; we desire that justice should be executed in
 another man’s house, but mercy and connivance in our own; we would
 have everything we say taken in good part, but we are delicate and
 touchy with regard to what others say of us; we would insist on our
 neighbor parting with his goods, and taking our money; but is it not
 more reasonable that he should keep his goods, and leave us our money?
 We take it ill that he will not accommodate us; but has he not more
 reason to be offended that we should desire to incommode him?... On
 all occasions, we prefer the rich before the poor, although they be
 neither of better condition, nor more virtuous; we even prefer those
 who are best clad. We rigorously exact our own dues, but we desire
 that others should be gentle in demanding theirs: we keep our own
 rank with precision, but would have others humble and condescending;
 we complain easily of our neighbors, but none must complain of us;
 what we do for others seems always very considerable, but what others
 do for us seems as nothing. We have two balances: one to weigh to
 our own advantage, and the other to weigh in to the detriment of our
 neighbor. _Deceitful lips_, says the Scripture, _have spoken with a
 double heart_; and to have two weights, the one greater, with which we
 receive, and the other less, with which we deliver, is an abominable
 thing in the sight of God.’”

“The book must be interesting,” said I. “You must lend it to me.”

“Candidly, George,” my cousin answered, somewhat to my surprise, “you
had better select something else for your reading; for, if you wish
merely to pass away the time in its perusal, it will most certainly
disappoint you, and you will find it dry and dull. If, indeed, you
desire to read it with a motive corresponding to the author’s aim in
writing it, that’s quite another affair. The book is for the heart
and the soul, not for the calculating head and worldly mind. There’s
nothing about it of what your admired Carlyle calls _dilettanteism_,
and its object is your welfare—not in this world, but in the next.”

“In what language,” I inquired, “was this work written?”

“In French, of course.”

“But Francis of Sales was, you say, a Savoyard?”

“True,” replied Dick; “what then?”

“Why, perhaps he didn’t write pure French?”

“Perhaps not. You are an American, are you not, George?”

“Of course I am; what then?”

“Why, then, perhaps you don’t speak the English language correctly. And
that,” continued Dick, “reminds me, as our late President used to say,
of a little story. You know that queer old original Major Eustace, who
lives just beyond the lake. I heard him relate that, when a young man,
he was travelling in Europe, and found himself one fine day at Moscow
without funds or tidings from home, except a letter advising him of
the failure of his father’s house. This was at a time when travelling
facilities were far inferior to those of the present day. He could not
get away, and so sat down and studied the Moscow advertisements. One
of them demanded an English tutor for the two sons (aged respectively
fourteen and sixteen years) of a Russian nobleman residing at a
well-known château near the city. Eustace was a college graduate. He
felt himself abundantly qualified for the position, and made instant
application. He was cordially received for the chances of obtaining
an English tutor at Moscow were very slim. The Russian questioned
Eustace very closely as to his acquirements—this conversation being,
of course, in French—and things went on swimmingly until he asked our
American cousin from what part of England he came. Eustace replied that
he was an American. The Russian’s face fell. ‘And what language do they
speak in America?’

“‘In the United States we speak English,’ replied Eustace.

“‘But it must be a _patois_,’ objected the Russian.

“‘Not at all,’ said Eustace. ‘We have no dialects, and, taken as a
body, the American people speak better English than the people of
England.’

“The Russian could not comprehend it. The result was that Eustace was
not engaged. Our nobleman went all the way to St. Petersburg for what
he wanted, and returned home triumphant with his born-English tutor.
Meantime, Eustace found something else to do, and remained at Moscow
long enough to acquire the Russian language, and make many pleasant
acquaintances. Being in London five years afterwards, he found the
Russian colony there in a fit of Homeric laughter over the strange
mishap of two young noblemen recently arrived from Moscow. Eustace at
once recognized the name of the Russian who insisted that Americans
speak a _patois_. His sons had been taught English by the tutor picked
up in St. Petersburg, and, fortified with plenty of money and excellent
letters of introduction, had been sent over to acquire the polish of a
London season in the best English society. In this society, then, they
made their _début_ speaking English fluently in _the broadest Yorkshire
dialect_!

“Now, to return to your Savoyard objection,” continued my cousin. “You
must know, my dear George, that Savoy is essentially French in tongue
and general characteristics of race. The French language is both spoken
and written there in all its purity; and many authors of worldwide
reputation as French writers are, in reality, Savoyards. There is, for
instance, Vaugelas the grammarian, Saint-Réal the historian, Ducis
the poet, the great Joseph de Maistre, his brother Xavier de Maistre,
whose _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_ I know you have read; and, in our
own day, Cherbuliez, whose success as a novelist has made the Parisian
romancers look sharply to their laurels. I have reserved mention of
S. Francis of Sales for a special reason. He wrote at a period when
the French language under the influence of Malherbe was soon to settle
down into its modern form; and so pure is his language and phraseology,
even tried by the highest French standard, that he is one of the model
authors adopted by the French Academy when its celebrated _Dictionary_
of the language was undertaken. The list of prose writers included,
among others, the names of Amyot, Montaigne, Charron, Arnauld, S.
Francis of Sales, Duplessis-Mornay, Cardinal du Perron, etc., etc.[57]
S. Francis of Sales is thus, you perceive, a French classic. The
English translations we have of his works,” continued my cousin, “fail
to do him justice.”

“Oh!” said I, “the old story—_traduttore_—_traditore_[58]—as the
Italians say.”

“Precisely so, for the sense and substance; and then, for the form and
setting, a period of nearly three hundred years has so modified shades
of signification and value in words which to-day apparently have the
same general meaning, that in our modern rendering the subtle aroma and
the more delicate beauties of thought and language appear to evaporate
in the process of translation.

“There is a certain charming simplicity and quaintness in the original
to which our grand modern style refuses to bend; and it appears to me
that we might have had an English version of the _Devout Life_ really
redolent of its author’s spirit if it could possibly have been done by
one of that noble band of young Jesuit martyrs judicially murdered by
Queen Elizabeth—say Campion or Southwell, for instance, who wrote in
the English of Shakespeare’s day—a period exactly corresponding with
that of S. Francis de Sales.”

“To sum it all up, then,” said I, “you ask me to accept this work as
perfection, and yet refuse me an opportunity of judging for myself.”

“On the contrary, George; for, although I contend that it is admirable
and, indeed, unsurpassed for its purpose, I have already said that
a reader seeking in it purely literary gratification would most
certainly be disappointed. I will say more, for I will not allow you
to monopolize the functions of _advocatus diaboli_: the book, to our
nineteenth century eyes, has several defects.”

“What do you mean by calling me the devil’s advocate?”

“Well, merely this, Cousin George. In our church, whenever it is
proposed to canonize as a saint a person of holy life, there is a
member of the commission appointed to examine the case, whose duty it
is rigidly to scrutinize all the testimony presented as to the holy
life of the deceased, to require the strictest proof, and to present
and urge every valid objection to its saintliness, such as charges of
any irregularity or lapse in conduct, morals, or faith. This official,
in short, is a sort of infernal prosecuting attorney, and has hence
received the descriptive nickname of _advocatus diaboli_. Now, it
appears to me, Cousin George, that, from the moment our conversation
on the _Devout Life_ began, you have been plying his vocation pretty
vigorously.”

I could not deny it, so I said nothing, and allowed Gaston to go on.

“No; so far from claiming perfection for the work, I will volunteer
a criticism or two upon it. In the first place, there is an excess
of symbolism, and the multitude of comparisons and images becomes
fatiguing. Many of these images are full of grace and simplicity,
especially those drawn from the writer’s observation of nature; for
S. Francis of Sales, as we gather from this book, had a quick and
sympathetic appreciation of the charm of landscapes, the song of birds,
the fascination of flowers, and the thousand beauties of nature visible
only to one who truly loves nature, and sincerely worships nature’s
God. But there is an excess of all this; and when he gets beyond the
line of personal sympathy and observation, the comparisons become
stiff, and frequently violate good taste. Those drawn from natural
history, for instance, are strained and incongruous. The writer must
have found his Paphlagonian partridges with two hearts in Pliny. There
are many things, too, which to us appear to be in excessively bad
taste; but that is a defect not chargeable to the author individually,
but to the prevalent style of the age in which he lived. After all,
there are ‘spots on the sun.’ S. Francis of Sales did not write for
fame as an author, nor, indeed, from any worldly motive. A ‘classic
style’ and ‘the French Academy’ were inducements which never engaged
his attention. There is nothing of the rhetorician in his phrase, for
it is almost familiar in its ease and simplicity. But there’s the
tea-bell, my dear George, probably a happy release for one of us, for I
fear I have bored you dreadfully.”

“On the contrary, my dear Dick, for I have been as much edified as
interested in the saintly life you have revealed to me.”

“Why, my dear boy, I haven’t told you the half of it; nor, indeed, do I
know it thoroughly. But if it at all interests you, here it is.”

I read it, and have since read the lives and some few of the works of
several other saints, with what result it does not interest the public
to know. I can only say that I am going to fight it out on my present
line if it takes till doomsday. Cousin Dick and I are firmer friends
than ever, and Aunt Mildred from time to time asks me, with a slight
tone of sarcasm, if I saw any fashionable bonnets at our church last
Sabbath?


MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONFESSION.

AT our return, we found my mother had prepared the dinner as usual on
the days we went into the country. We joyfully seated ourselves at
the table. What is more delightful than a family dinner? And we were
all united. Louis was also in our midst. Victor was uncommonly lively
that evening. His face, so open, intelligent, and kind, was radiant.
I had never seen him so social and witty. His animation enlivened us
all—we loved him so much! Excellent man! what made him so happy was
the remembrance of the good deed he had done at the peril of his life.
I asked him more than twenty times that evening if he felt any worse,
and if it were not advisable to send for a physician. He invariably
replied that he felt as well as the day before, and even better. But
his cough grew worse from that time, and caused me serious alarm.
During dinner we conversed on general subjects, and afterwards went to
the _salon_. Victor installed himself beside the blazing fire which I
always had made for him in the evening. My mother and sister went up to
their own apartments. We were thus left alone with M. Louis Beauvais.
He turned towards Victor with a look full of respect and affection, and
I observed with astonishment that tears were streaming from his eyes.

“Madame,” said he to me, “I must appear strangely to you. Ah! that is
not the worst of it. I am a great sinner.”

Victor tried to stop him.

“No,” said he; “I will not keep silence. Mme. Barnier must know
everything, as well as you, noble-hearted man, whom I dare not call my
friend: I feel too unworthy.”

He seated himself, and, sadly gazing into the fire, began his story in
a tone as grave and sorrowful as if he were making a solemn avowal of
his faults before dying:

Ten years ago, said he, I was a Christian, not only in name, but in
heart and soul. My mother, a pious, energetic woman, such as we do not
see in our day, brought me up with extreme care, and I did my utmost
to correspond to her efforts. It is so easy and delightful to practise
one’s religion when one has faith, and feels that his endeavors are
at once pleasing to a mother and to God! My other studies over, I
became a candidate for the Polytechnic School, but was not successful
in my application. I then entered another, in order to learn civil
engineering. By the end of a year, I had given up all my pious habits
through want of moral courage. My principles, however, remained firm
enough to condemn me and fill me with remorse, but they were incapable
of restraining one who had imbibed a taste for error. Even my mother’s
death and her last words, though they affected me, did not bring me to
a sense of duty. A short time after I completed my studies in civil
engineering, my father gave me possession of what I inherited from my
mother, and asked what course I intended to pursue. “Remain at home,”
I replied,” and work under the direction of M. C——,” an architect of
the department, and a friend of the family. My father gave his consent
to this.

Left to myself, and master of my time and property, I made no delay in
commencing a life of dissipation and pleasure. My father was, above all
things, a man of forethought and calculation, and my conduct disgusted
him. We had several painful disputes, and at last he declared, to use
his own expressive language, he would give up the reins, and cease
to reproach me, but I must not thenceforth expect of him the least
advice or even aid, if I needed it. He then centred all his affections
on my brother and sister. As for me, I had begun by being idle and
extravagant: I soon became openly irreligious. My religious principles
were a restraint, and I determined to throw them aside. I thought
this would be easy. And I did prove myself uncommonly impious when
the preacher we had some months ago told us so many plain, wholesome
truths. I was not one of those guilty of disorderly conduct, whom all
respectable people must condemn; but—the acknowledgment is due you—I
approved of it, contemptible and wicked as it was. My conscience was
now roused, and remorse filled my soul with secret anger.

My mother being dead, there was no longer any one at home to speak
to me of religious things. My father is an honorable, upright man,
and attentive to his business, but as regardless of another world as
if there were none. My young brother is pious to a certain degree, I
suppose, but he is timid and reserved. Only my sister remains. Aline
left boarding-school about six months ago. She is nearly ten years
younger than I, and bears a striking resemblance to my mother. She has
the same kindness of heart and the same tone of piety, at once fervent
and rational, which I always loved and admired in my mother. I had been
separated from my sister many years, and when I met her again, I was
struck, with this resemblance, and at once conceived so much affection
and respect for her as to astonish myself.

As soon as Aline returned home, the appearance of everything changed:
the house became more attractive. I certainly do not wish to impute any
blame to my father—I love and respect him too much for that—but you
know as well as I that a house is not what it should be that has no
woman to preside over it. An Arabian poet says the mistress of a house
is its soul, and he is right. After my mother’s death, the house became
gloomy, but there was a marked change when Aline returned. It seemed as
if my mother had come back after a long absence to diffuse once more
around her cheerfulness, order, and piety.

But the superintendence of the household affairs, and her obligations
to society, did not wholly fill up Aline’s time. Like her whose
living image she was, she was eager to extend her knowledge. Before
her return, my father had subscribed for that wretched journal which
is the delight of the unbeliever, or those who wish to pass as such.
Aline sometimes read it, but she disliked it, as you may suppose. She
imparted her impressions to me, but I did not conceal from her my
sympathy with its irreligious views.

“Well, I do not agree with it in the least,” said she; “and, as I like
to know what is going on, I wish I could subscribe for M. Barnier’s
paper. Mme. C—— has lent it to me for some time. It is an able,
thoughtful journal, and edited by a sincere Catholic. That is the kind
of a newspaper that suits me.”

“Then, order it to be sent you.”

“That would be ridiculous. A young girl cannot subscribe for a
newspaper.”

“I see no other way of having it.”

“Excuse me, there is. If you were obliging, you would see the way at
once.”

“And subscribe for you!... I subscribe for a _journal de sacristie_?...
That would be going rather too far; I should be laughed at.”

“You must have publicly compromised yourself, then, to fear making
people talk by subscribing for a respectable paper.” ...

The cut was well aimed. I reddened, but made no reply, and went away.
That night I subscribed for your paper, and received my first number.
Of course I opened it at once, out of perverse curiosity. I should have
been overjoyed to find a single flaw in it.

A short time after this, the incident at the cathedral occurred. As I
have already told you, I was not among those who made a disturbance
at the church door, but I was with them in heart. Père Laurent was
repulsive to me, as well as to most of those who displayed their
anger in so reprehensible a manner. He was everywhere the topic of
conversation. At home, my sister, who never lost one of his sermons,
annoyed me with his praises. Above all, she irritated me by repeating
his very words—words that seemed chosen expressly to disturb me and
force me to reflect.

The day after that atrocious manifestation, I eagerly opened your
journal. I was sure you would speak of the outbreak of the previous
day, and wished to see how far you would condemn it. The article
surpassed my expectations. You showed yourself more courageous than
ever. Never had you written anything that so directly hit my case. You
made use of certain phrases that reminded me of my shameful course, my
base inclinations, and my secret remorse, and in so forcible a manner
that the very perusal made me tremble with anger. That night, at our
club—that well-known circle of young men devoid of reason, and so
many men of riper years even more thoughtless—we had a great deal to
say about the occurrence of the previous day, and your article of that
morning. There was a general indignation against the preacher, and that
excited by what you had written was still stronger.

One of the _habitués_ of the club—one of those men who assume
the right of imposing their opinions on others about every
subject—seriously declared he had made a very important discovery:
the clerical party wished to overrule the city, and assert its adverse
authority as in the fearful times of the middle ages; but, however well
contrived the plot might be, it had not escaped the sagacious eye of
the speaker. The Conference of S. Vincent de Paul, more flourishing
than ever; the new development given to the journal you edit; the
arrival of an eloquent preacher—were they not all so many signs that
ought to arouse us to the imminence and extent of the danger?

The simplest and worst members of the club allowed themselves to be
influenced by this absurd declamation. I was, I confess, of the number.
Others shrugged their shoulders. The orator perceived it.

“Ah! you smile, messieurs; you think I exaggerate! In a year you will
confess I was right, but then it will be too late! Your wives will have
become devotees, the very thought of whose bigotry is enough to make
anybody shudder; your daughters will only aspire to the happiness
of entering a convent; the theatres will be closed for want of
patronage; and, if any one wishes an office, it will only be obtained
by presenting a certificate of confession. _Allez! allez!_ when that
black-robed tribe undertakes any scheme, it knows how to bring it
about. Instead of shrugging your shoulders when I reveal what is going
on, you would do better to take proper precautions. It is high time.”

A young fop in the assembly, the head clerk of a notary, notorious for
his volubility, his shallowness, and his assurance, rose and took up
the thread of discourse in his turn:

“I agree with what M. Simon has just said. We must consider the means
of utterly routing this dark race. The shortest course would be to
attack their leader. I will take that on myself. Barnier shall hear
from me.”

“No rashness!” was the exclamation on all sides. “We must beware of
making a martyr of him!”

“What course shall we take, then?” asked some of the party.

“Intimidate him,” said a voice. “Write him a letter of warning of so
serious a character as to make him desist.”

“That is also a bad plan,” objected M. Simon. “Anonymous letters are
treated with contempt, or are laid before the public. In either case,
the effect would be unfavorable to us.”

The young fop who had begun the subject now resumed:

“M. Simon, who has so clairvoyant an eye with respect to danger, ought
himself to suggest some way of bringing Barnier to reason.”

M. Simon assumed a solemn air: “I only know of one way, but that is a
good one. We must bribe him, not to withdraw from the paper—that would
be a false step, for another would take his place, and continue to
annoy us—but to induce him, in consideration of a certain sum, to wage
henceforth only an apparent war on us. That is the best thing to do.”

“Well,” replied the young fop, “it is hardly worth while to criticise
others, and then propose something not half so good. Barnier is not to
be bribed.”

“Why not?” asked M. Simon.

“Because a man whose opinions are the result of conviction can never
be bought. He fights for his flag, and is not much concerned about
anything else.”

“Convictions!—flag!—disinterestedness, indeed!” retorted M. Simon,
with a gesture of supreme contempt.

It was in vain to say that most of us had carefully observed you, and
were not mistaken as to your character. We were nearly all of the
clerk’s opinion. For once in his life, the fellow had a correct notion.
We then separated without coming to any decision, but each one promised
to think of some means of bringing you to reason, as we expressed it.
I dwelt on the subject the whole evening, and was still thinking of it
the next day when I took my place among the family at the dinner-table.

Aline was at that time greatly interested in the _soirée_ to which you
were afterwards invited, and the preliminaries were discussed at table.
To my great astonishment, she proposed to place your name on the list
of invitations. This proposition made me angry, and I flatly declared
it absurd. I was sure my father would make a similar reply. I had no
idea he would open the doors of his _salon_ to you, for I knew there
was no similarity of opinion between you. The result was precisely
contrary to my expectations. Was my father desirous of gratifying
Aline? Or did he wish to seize an opportunity of showing how little
value he attached to my opinion? I know not. But he allowed me to
finish what I had to say, and then said, in a dry tone:

“Aline, send M. Barnier an invitation. It is my wish.”

I was confounded. In my fury, I inwardly swore to be revenged. The
means of intimidating you, which the members of the club had not
been able to find without compromising themselves, I thought I had
discovered myself the night before. I communicated my plan to two of my
friends whose names I will not give. They declared it excellent, and
promised to second me.

What took place you know, but I will give you some details impossible
for you to have ascertained. I did not attend the _soirée_, but one of
my accomplices was there to keep me informed of your movements. When
you were ready to leave, he came to my room to notify me. It took only
a moment to disguise ourselves. We went out by a private door, and
dogged your steps. Ah! my dear friend, what infamous behavior! What had
you done to me that I should thus dare violate in your person the laws
of hospitality which even savages respect?

At this revelation, I turned pale. M. Louis Beauvais perceived it.

“Is not such an act unpardonable, madame?” said he. “And do you not
look upon me as worthy only of your contempt and hatred?”

“I have forgiven those who committed this wrong, whoever they might
be,” I replied. “Now I know it was you, and see how fully you repent of
it, I forgive you even more willingly.”

Thank you, madame, said he; but let me assure you that, culpable as my
intentions were, they were less so than they must have seemed to you.
We were desirous of intimidating M. Barnier, and making him believe
he exposed himself to constant serious danger by the boldness of the
course he had taken. We did not—I mistake—I did not intend to show
any physical violence, for that I considered base and criminal. I was
indignant when I saw one of our number strike him. I have ever since
regarded that young man with profound contempt. I had more than one fit
of remorse that night. The next morning, Aline, after accosting me,
said:

“You know what happened to M. Barnier last night after leaving us. It
is infamous! It must have been a plot. I am sure you know the guilty
authors! Who are they? They ought to be punished.”

“How should I know them?” I exclaimed angrily.

“You know them only too well,” said Aline, regarding me with an air of
severity; ... “but you are not willing to betray your friends.... What
friends!”

I endeavored to appear unconcerned. She continued looking at me with a
steadiness that made me shiver.

“Do not add to my distress,” said she. “Do not lay aside the only
virtue you have left, my poor brother—your customary frankness! I
understand it all, and know what I ought to say to you, but words fail
me. Ah! if our poor mother were still alive!” ...

Aline went away without another word. As for me, I remained motionless
and silent for some moments, by turns filled with shame, remorse, and
anger.... It would seem as if so grave an occurrence should have led
me to serious reflection. I felt inclined to it at first, but resisted
the inclination. I found excuses for myself, and soon thought no more
of it.

I continued, therefore, to live as I had for five years, one pleasure
succeeding another, and spending my property without reflecting what I
should do hereafter. But the day was at hand when I found myself in a
critical position in consequence of my prodigality.

When my father, in order to avert cause for contention, put me in
possession of my mother’s property, I at once took my papers to a man
in whom I placed entire confidence. I did this in order to throw off
all care. He had been for a long time my father’s cashier. He was and
is honesty itself.

“F. Martin,” said I, “here is all I possess. It will be a care for me
to keep these papers and collect my income. Do me the favor to take
charge of my property.”

F. Martin was confused and gratified at such a proof of confidence. But
his pleasure was somewhat modified when I added the following words:

“F. Martin, I attach one condition to this arrangement: you are not to
take advantage of it to sermonize me. I now tell you, with a frankness
that will preclude all surprise, I wish to amuse myself.... To what
degree, or how long, I cannot say, but such is my present intention,
that is certain.”

“O M. Louis, if your mother could only hear you!”

“F. Martin,” said I, with a gesture, as if to take back my portfolio,
“if you are going to begin to preach to me, take care!... I shall
give my papers to some one who may rob me. Then, instead of merely
curtailing my property a little, I shall spend it all in two years, or
four at the furthest; or rather, we shall spend it between us.”

“Dreadful boy! I always said you had the faculty of making everybody
yield to you. Well, I will do as you wish.”

“Ah! that is right. One word more. When I have but twenty thousand
francs left, you may warn me—not before!”

Things went on thus till a few days ago. I spent my property with a
rapidity that frightened me when I thought of it. My father perceived
it. My extravagance excited his indignation, but, faithful to his
resolution to avoid all contention, he forebore saying anything.
Not quite a fortnight ago, I met with a sad disappointment. An old
aunt of mine died. I had calculated on being her heir, but she left
all she had to my sister and other relatives, and gave me nothing.
My unwise conduct had for some time prejudiced her against me. This
disappointment made me quite thoughtful. I wrote F. Martin that I
wished to know the exact state of my affairs. The next day Martin
arrived at the appointed hour. He was pale and agitated—pitifully so.

“M. Louis,” said he, “you anticipated me. I was going to request an
interview with you. You have now only twenty thousand francs!”

I made a strong effort to control myself, and replied, with a smiling
air: “Well done! that is rather fast work!”

“So fast that I can hardly believe you have come to this. But it is
really so!”

“Where are the twenty thousand francs, Martin?”

“Why, I have not got them, M. Louis! I have only five thousand left
besides what you took.”

At this, my strength almost failed me. I at once realized I was
completely ruined. Fifteen months before, I had withdrawn twenty
thousand francs from Martin’s hands under the pretext of investing
them in a particularly advantageous manner. A trip to Germany, play,
and some pressing debts absorbed this sum without Martin’s knowing it.
I quietly dismissed him, saying I would see him again the next day.
Left alone, I balanced my accounts. Alas! my affairs were desperate!
The five thousand francs in Martin’s possession were all I had left,
and my debts amounted to four times that sum!

All day yesterday I remained stupefied, as it were, at so unexpected a
disclosure. My father had gone to Paris. I resolved to take refuge in
the country, and come to some decision. I went, scarcely knowing what
I was about, angry with myself, with everybody else, and desperate.
All night I sought some way of escape from the terrible blow that
had befallen me. I walked to and fro. From anger I sank into the
most profound dejection. The very thought of applying myself to any
occupation whatever appeared, above all, intolerable.

When morning came, I mechanically went to walk beside the river that
runs about a hundred yards from our house, and fell into a gloomy
reverie. The sleepless nights, the rioting, the habits to which I had
successively given myself up for years, the painful anxiety of the
previous night, had excited and weakened my nervous system. I was, as
it were, deprived of my reason.

While I was thus lingering on the shore, it seemed as if a mysterious
voice invited me to bury myself in the current before me. A terrible
struggle took place between my reason, the instinct that restrained
me, and the hallucination that kept drawing me nearer the bank. Reason
failed me. In a fit of despair, I cast myself into the stream. As soon
as I felt the cold water, my reason, my faith, awoke as ardent as in
the days of my boyhood. A cry issued from the very depths of my soul:
“O Mary, save me!” It would be impossible to tell you with what fervor,
what terror, I uttered this short prayer—impossible, also, to express
the immense joy that filled my heart when I realized I was saved.
But what confusion mingled with this joy—what gratitude, too, what
admiration of the designs of God, when I saw it was you who had rescued
me at the peril of your life!

CHAPTER IX.

BROTHER AND SISTER.

M. Louis Beauvais had finished his story.

“And now,” said Victor, in the cheering, confidential tone of one
friend who wishes to encourage another, “what are you going to do?”

“That is precisely the question that preoccupies me. In fact, I see
no way of solving it. Were you to ask me what I am not going to do,
oh! then I should not be embarrassed for a reply. At all events, had
I even the means, I should not wish to continue the life I have led.
Nor do I any longer desire to escape from the trying position I am in
by having recourse to the cowardly, criminal means I took in a moment
of madness. Suicide fills me with horror! One must behold death face
to face, as I have to-day, to realize how easily a man can deceive
himself. I had really arrived at such a state of indifference and
insensibility that it seemed as if I had never had any religion; but
the terrible thought no sooner sprang up in my soul that I was about
to appear before God, than I found myself as sincere a believer as on
the day of my first communion. My whole life passed in review before
me, and I condemned myself without awaiting the divine sentence. When I
recall the inexpressible terror of that moment; when I remember if God
had not sent you to my assistance, and that, had it not been for your
heroism, I should have been for ever lost, there springs up in my heart
a continually increasing gratitude to my heavenly Father, and to you
who were the agent of his mercy.”

“Then, my friend,” replied Victor gravely, “you will allow me to make
one request.”

“Consider whatever you would ask of me granted in advance.”

“Then, forget the past six or eight years of your life, and become
again what you were under your mother’s influence.”

“I pledge you my word to do so, and hope by the divine assistance never
to break my promise—a promise I make with inexpressible joy. But that
is not all. What course do you advise me to take?”

“If I may form an opinion of your sister from what you say, she must be
a person of intelligence, kind feelings, and decision. In your place, I
would go to her, make known my exact situation, and ask her advice.”

“Yes; that is the best course to take. The idea pleases me. I will put
it in execution this very evening. My father is to be absent a day or
two longer. I shall have a good opportunity of talking freely with
Aline. I will go directly to her when I leave you. To-morrow morning I
will return and give you an account of our interview.”

Louis left us a few moments after. We commended him to God with all
our hearts at our evening devotions. It was so impressive a spectacle
to behold a soul break loose from past habits, and return to God
humiliated and conscious of his weakness—repentant, and burning with
ardor to enter upon a new life.

During the night, Victor was seriously ill. Fearing he was going to
die, I exclaimed, in a moment of anguish:

“Oh! that unfortunate adventure! That wretched young man will be the
death of you!”

“Take that back, dear,” said Victor; “it pains me. Instead of deploring
this occurrence, and calling it unfortunate, you should thank God.
He has thus granted my dearest wish. From the time I found my days
numbered, I prayed God to grant me every possible opportunity of
showing how earnestly I wished to serve him during the short time
left me on earth. He has now granted my desire. If my going into the
water to-day leads to my death, I shall have the infinite joy of being
in a certain sense a martyr, for I fully realized the danger. But an
interior voice whispered: ‘There is a soul to save,’ and I plunged into
the river.... Others would have done the same, but God does not give
every one such an opportunity. I thank him for having granted it to me.”

By degrees Victor’s alarming symptoms wore off. When he awoke the next
morning, he was much better than I had dared hope. He recalled with
a lively joy the events of the previous day, and expressed an eager
desire to know what Louis and his sister had decided upon.

We were not kept in suspense long. Louis arrived about nine o’clock.
Seeing his face was calm and happy, my poor husband manifested a
livelier satisfaction than I had ever known him to express.

“Sit down there,” said he, pointing to an arm-chair beside his bed,
“and give us the details of all you have done.”

As we agreed upon last evening, replied Louis, I went directly home
after leaving you, and inquired if my sister was in. They told me she
was. I went to her room. It was vacant. A servant informed me that
she had given up her old chamber some weeks before, and now occupied
my mother’s. I found Aline sitting in the middle of the room beside
a stand, in the same arm-chair my mother made use of to the last. I
cannot express the emotion that overpowered me when I entered. The
aspect of the room, the sight of the well-known furniture, Aline’s
grave air, and her resemblance to my mother, all carried me back ten
years. It seemed as if I were once more in the presence of her whom
I loved so much, but whose counsels I had followed so poorly. My
agitation increased when Aline sprang towards me, clasped me in her
arms, and covered my face with her tears.

“Wicked, wicked boy, she cried; you wished to put an end to your life!
How sinful in you! and what sorrow for us! Oh! conceal nothing from
me.... You are very unhappy, then?... You have no confidence in me?...
Come, tell me all. Leave me no longer in a state of uncertainty. And,
first, have you renounced your horrible project?”

Her voice betrayed such profound emotion, her eyes such tender
affection and deep anxiety, that I was affected to tears. I began by
begging pardon for all the anxiety I had caused her. I pledged my word
to enter upon a new life. When we were both somewhat calmer, I told her
all I had related to you. At the end of the account, she looked at me
as a mother would at her son, and said:

“Louis, the hand of God has visibly interposed in your behalf.
Everything shows you would have been drowned. And what a horrible
end!—in that river where so few people go, especially the spot you
chose, had not Providence, at the very moment you plunged into the
water, sent a man, a noble-hearted man, to save you at the peril of
his life. That is not all. When you were able to thank your deliverer,
you found it was—the very man who had already been brought to death’s
door through your fault. If I am not deceived, this is a wonderful
interposition of Providence. You have been a great sinner, my poor
boy, and your conversion had to be effected by a great sacrifice. This
sacrifice has been offered by M. Barnier in risking his life in order
to restore you to existence, which you wished to deprive yourself of. I
believe—pardon my great frankness—God wished, I believe, to inspire
you with thorough repentance by showing you your victim under the form
of your deliverer. Oh! if this repentance is not lasting, I shall
tremble at the thought of the chastisement that the justice of God,
weary of pardoning you, has in reserve. But, no!—there is no fear of
that. And now, what are you going to do?”

“Put an end to my idle life.”

“Very well. It was idleness especially that caused your ruin. But what
occupation will suit you? No imprudent heroism! You must do something
that will be congenial.”

“I am an engineer. It is time to remember it. I am going to Paris.
Either there or elsewhere I can easily find a place in some
manufactory.”

“Very well. Father is to return to-morrow evening. What has occurred
cannot be concealed from him. I am even of the opinion it would be best
to tell him the whole truth. Only ... you will allow me to speak with
the frankness of a sister who loves you, will you not?”

“Oh! yes. Speak to me as our mother would.”

“Well, then, I must acknowledge father is extremely offended with
you. He is kind, very kind, as you know, but he cannot endure want of
calculation, especially in money matters, and your manner of conducting
has excited his indignation. I fear, therefore, he will at first be
greatly irritated at learning what has taken place. Public rumor will
at once inform him of it, so that, when he sees you for the first
time, you will not be able to induce him to listen to you. With your
consent, I will talk with him first. To prevent a premature explanation
with him, I propose you should go and pass two or three days with Aunt
Mary. She is now at her country-seat in M——. It is not far off. I can
easily send you word when it is time for you to return.”

I need not say with what gratitude I accepted this proposal, which
revealed the kindness of a sister, the delicacy of a woman, and the
prudence of a mother.

Aline continued: “I have two more requests to make. If you were a
different person, I might hesitate. But you were once pious. You are
better instructed in our religion than most of the poor young men
of our day. In a word, you have never lost your faith. Do not delay
having recourse to the remedy. Go to confession as soon as possible.
Confession develops repentance, puts a seal on our good resolutions,
and confers a special grace to keep them. I speak as I think. A
repentance that remains purely human cannot be lasting.”

I promised to go to confession to Father——, and shall keep my promise.

“One favor more,” resumed Aline. “It is a somewhat delicate matter,
but let us talk with the same freedom and simplicity that we did in
our childhood. That is the shortest way to come to an understanding.
You say you are fifteen thousand francs in debt. Knowing my father’s
disposition as I do, I am sure this will cause trouble if he knows it.
He is a man who would forgive your spending a hundred thousand francs,
but a debt of five hundred would make him extremely angry. This is
strange, but it is so. And you may be sure as soon as your creditors
hear of your ruin, they will come upon you. We must, therefore, hasten
to forestall them. We must settle with them where they are. Will you
permit me to render you a little service?... Sit down here, and draw
up, as papa would say, a schedule of your debts. I will give it to our
head clerk to-morrow, bind him to secrecy, and before noon you will be
free from debt.”

I was profoundly moved by so much generosity, and so profuse in my
thanks as to greatly touch Aline herself. But she concealed her emotion
under a lively, playful manner. I had to make out a list at once. I did
so, and gave it to Aline. She took it with a smile, and folded it up
without looking at it. There were two small sheets, one of which was
nearly blank.

“Why two papers?” she asked mechanically.

“One contains the list—the sad list; the other is a note which”....

“Ah! that is too much! Louis, my poor Louis, you are only half
converted! You do not really love me! You are unwilling to receive
anything from me. You would deprive me of the pleasure of giving this
to you. Ah! that is wrong. Oh! the contemptible _rôle_ you wish me to
play! I lend it to you! Fie, fie!” ...

So saying, Aline tore up the unfortunate note.

The night was far advanced before we separated. I had already bidden
my sister good-night. She retained my hand in hers, and, looking at me
with a caressing air, said:

“Louis, one favor more! Let us say our night-prayers together at the
foot of that bed where our dear mother made us say them so often. We
will pray for her. She watches over us. What has happened to you is a
proof of it.”

We sank on our knees beside each other. Aline said the prayers aloud.
I repeated them with my lips and in my heart, and with so much joy and
emotion that I melted into tears.

This morning I took leave of Aline. She means to come here herself,
in order to express her gratitude. My mother could not feel more. Oh!
how she loves you! As for me, I am going away ruined, but happier than
if my fortune were increased tenfold. Pray for me. And you, my dear
friend, take care of yourself. I trembled yesterday at the thought of
the danger to which you had exposed yourself in order to save my life.
I trembled as I came here, fearing your heroic imprudence might have
led to fatal results! Thank God! there is nothing serious. But redouble
your precautions; I shall need you for a long while. You will be my
best guide in the new way upon which I have now entered.

Louis then departed, leaving us exceedingly happy at the favorable turn
in his affairs.

CHAPTER X.

ALINE’S HOPES.

The second day after Louis’ departure, we had in the afternoon an
agreeable surprise: Aline called to see us. All that Louis had told us
about her prepossessed us in her favor. The sight of her only increased
our disposition to love her.

Aline was at the time I am speaking of—and still is—a fine-looking
woman, tall, well-formed, and with a pleasing, intelligent face. Her
manner is a little cold at first, but her reserve is not unpleasing,
for it indicates a thoughtful mind. When she came into the room, my
husband and I were reading. She went directly to Victor, and with
emotion, but without any embarrassment, said:

“Monsieur, I am late in expressing my gratitude. Pardon this delay.
It has not been without good reasons. I was expecting my father every
moment, and was greatly preoccupied with all I had to communicate, as
well as about the reply he would make.” ...

“Mademoiselle,” replied Victor gently, “there is no need of excusing
yourself. I am happy, very happy, to see you, but had no right to
expect your visit.”

“No right, monsieur?... What! did you not save my brother’s life?...
And was it not you the unhappy fellow had before” ...

“O mademoiselle! do me the favor never to mention that circumstance!”

“You are generous, monsieur! But that is no reason why we should show
ourselves ungrateful—rather the contrary. Louis and I can never forget
that, before you saved his life, he had injured you to such a degree
that he can never be sufficiently repentant. As to my father, I have
not dared inform him of these details too painful to be acknowledged.
My father, alas! is not religious. Louis’ fault would seem so enormous
to him that he would never forgive him.”

“It is, however, of but little account. If harm has resulted from it,
Louis was only the involuntary cause. Let us adore the divine decrees,
and forgive our poor friend. He had not, after all, any very criminal
intentions.”

Aline looked at Victor with a sadness she could not wholly conceal. His
wasted features, his eyes hollowed by suffering, his air of languor,
nothing escaped her observation.

“I wish I could think so,” murmured she, as if speaking to herself.
“Ah! poor Louis, what remorse he must feel!”

This allusion to Victor’s sad condition brought tears to my eyes.
Victor suspected my emotion, and at once changed the subject.

“M. Louis has become my friend,” said he to Aline; “therefore pardon my
curiosity, mademoiselle, if it is indiscreet. May we hope to see him
again soon? Is M. Beauvais greatly offended with him?”

Everything is arranged for the best, though not without difficulty.
My father was not originally wealthy. It has only been by dint of
order, economy, and industry, that he has attained the position
he now occupies. When he learned that Louis had lost, or rather
squandered, his maternal inheritance, his anger was fearful. But by
degrees I made him comprehend that Louis, though ruined, had shown new
resolution—that he was willing to work; he wished to become useful,
and regain all he had lost. My father then grew calm. And yet all my
fears were not allayed. I had to tell him of Louis’ sad attempt at
suicide, of which he was still ignorant, but which he could not fail to
learn. I told him of it, dwelling on your devotedness, which struck him
most of all.

“Has Louis shown himself duly grateful to M. Barnier for the service?”
he asked. I replied that he had.

“So much the better. Such a sentiment does him honor. This circumstance
may lead to a friendship between them which cannot be too intimate, in
my opinion. And you say our prodigal son is willing to work? What is he
going to do?”

“Anything you wish, father.”

“That is easily said, but a poor reply. Nothing is well done that we
do not like to do. Has he manifested an inclination for any special
occupation?”

“Louis is a civil engineer. He would like to find a place somewhere in
that capacity.”

“Ah! he at length remembers he is a civil engineer!... He wishes to
turn his acquirements to some account?... It is a wonder! He need not
exile himself for that. You know Mr. Smithson?”

“Is not he the cold, ceremonious gentleman who came to see us Sunday?”

“The very one. Mr. Smithson is a wealthy Englishman who has been in
France these twenty years. He came on account of his health. He settled
at first in Paris, where he married a charming woman—a Catholic of
no property, but of a good family. This excellent Mr. Smithson was
so foolish as to speculate too much at the Bourse some years since,
and his losses were considerable. To withdraw himself from such a
temptation, he established his residence at St. M—— six months ago.
The situation pleased him, and there was another inducement: a large
paper manufactory there was offered for sale. He bought it, hoping
not only to find occupation, and feed his incessant activity, but to
repair the losses of the last few years. The mill is well situated
and well patronized. Everything would prove advantageous if Mr.
Smithson were better versed in the knowledge of machinery. But though
an Englishman, he has not been through the studies necessary to enable
him to superintend his industrial project as he ought. Besides this, he
is subject to frequent attacks of the gout. He has therefore besought
me to find him a man capable of superintending the mill under his
direction, and even of taking the whole charge if necessary.”

“So much for Louis’ affairs. What do you think of the arrangement? I
approved of it without any restriction. And you, monsieur?”

“I think, mademoiselle,” replied Victor, “that Providence continues to
treat Louis with parental kindness.”

“Oh! yes; truly parental! He will now remain under your influence. Even
in the house he is to enter, everything will encourage him, I hope, to
persist in his good resolutions. Mme. Smithson is said to be a woman of
lovely character. She has a daughter who must be a prodigy, unless I
have been misinformed. My father, who is very practical, and but little
given to exaggeration, is enthusiastic in her praise.”

Victor knowingly smiled at this last communication.

“You have divined my thoughts,” said Aline, blushing a little. “Well,
yes: this thought at once occurred to my mind. I said to myself, if
Louis can find at Mr. Smithson’s not only an occupation that will
enable him to forget the past, but an affection that will continue to
sustain him in a better course, I shall consider him the most fortunate
of men. But it is too soon to speak of that. This dear brother must
first return home, and be accepted by Mr. Smithson, to whom my father
wrote to-day.”

The next day both these things took place. Louis returned. Mr. Smithson
at once accepted him as his assistant. After calling on us with his
father, he left for St. M——.

While M. Beauvais was speaking to me, Louis said to Victor, in a low
tone:

“Everything is done. The bonds of iniquity are completely broken. I
have been to confession and to Holy Communion, and a new life has
begun!”

The air of satisfaction with which he uttered these words, the calmness
and unaffected gravity he manifested, all announced he had indeed
become a new man.

“In a year he will be an eminent Christian!” said Victor, as Louis
disappeared.

He was not mistaken.


TO BE CONTINUED.


CONCILIAR DECREES ON THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

FROM THE ETUDES RELIGIEUSES.

THE church has been commissioned to teach all mankind. It is by
preaching she fulfils this great work. But to aid her in this divine
mission, her Founder has furnished her with books written under the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, which contain the very word of God
graven in ineffaceable characters. So precious a treasure has always
been preserved by the church with the respect it merits. Her doctors
have carefully weighed every word of these holy books; they have
taken pleasure in developing the different significations; and their
commentaries form the finest monuments of Christian literature. There,
as in a well-furnished arsenal, they have sought spiritual arms in
their warfare against the enemies of the faith, and they have defended
the Bible with unequalled zeal against all attacks and alterations
by heretics. The Scriptures have been the object of the fury of
persecutors, and more than one hero has shed his blood to defend them
from the insults of the unbeliever, and thereby had his name inscribed
on the glorious roll of the martyrology.

Protestantism, at its very birth, was desirous of profiting by this
respect of the Christian world. It affected an ardent zeal for the
sacred books, and, carrying its veneration beyond reasonable limits,
maintained that the Bible is the only rule of faith. But its very
exaggerations, by a law of Providence, have led it to the opposite
extreme. Three centuries have hardly elapsed, and the followers of
those who acknowledged no other rule of faith than the Bible, gradually
led to the verge of rationalism, accord a merely human authority to the
sacred volume.

Even from the very dawn of the Reformation, the pernicious influence
of free examination gave a deadly blow to the canon of Scripture.
Luther was the foremost. Everything in Holy Writ that conflicted with
his doctrines of wholly imputative justification, of free-will, and
the sacraments was boldly consigned among the apocryphal books. The
canon of Scripture, thus at the option of individuals, no longer had
any stability. Individual caprice led to the admission or rejection
of books that had been regarded as inspired from all antiquity. The
authenticity of the Scriptures was not only questioned, but also
their legitimate meaning. Luther denied the doctrinal authority of
the church, and was obliged to make the Bible the ground of faith;
that is, the Bible interpreted according to the particular notions
of each believer. In reality, Luther wished to subject his followers
to his own interpretation. Like rebels of every age, he arrogated an
authority he refused to legitimate power. But logic has its inevitable
laws. The Lutheran theory claimed absolute independence. It made all
Christians, even the most ignorant, even those the farthest from
the knowledge of the truth, judges of the real signification of the
Scriptures. It promised each believer the interior illumination of
the Holy Spirit in ascertaining the true meaning of the sacred text
beneath all its obscurities. But, as the divine Spirit is not pledged
to fulfil the promises of the Reformer, each Protestant interprets the
Bible according to his own views, and the various sects sprung from
the Reform have, in the name of the Scriptures, maintained the most
contradictory opinions.

Besides the change in the canon, and the false interpretation of the
holy books, there was another abuse—that of unfaithful translations.
Protestantism rejected the authority of the church, therefore it would
not receive her version of the Scriptures. It had no regard for the
Vulgate. The innovators, with Luther at their head, undertook new
translations. In their boldness, they did not shrink from attempting
to surpass the work of S. Jerome. They were not well versed in
the knowledge of the original idioms; they had access to but few
manuscripts; the copies they had were not the choicest; and yet they
imagined they could excel the great doctor who spent so large a part
of his life in Palestine, absorbed in the profound study of the
ancient languages; who took pains to collate the best manuscripts,
and was aided by the ancient rabbis the most versed in the knowledge
of Hebrew antiquities and in the languages of the East. Every day a
new translation appeared, which, under the pretext of adapting God’s
own Word to the common mind, diffused heretical novelties by means of
insidious falsifications.

The Reform was equally unscrupulous as to the correctness of the
text. The Bible was left to the arbitrariness of its editors and the
carelessness of printers. Through unscrupulousness or negligence,
many incorrect expressions crept into the versions sold to the
public. The new heresy was not wholly responsible for the numerous
faults in the various editions of the Bible. The sacred book had for
ages been subjected to all the hazards of individual transcription.
The distractions of the copyist had, in many instances, caused the
substitution of one word for another, the omission of a part of a
verse, or the transferring of the marginal gloss to the text. Hence so
many copies alike in the main, but full of discrepancies.

II

Such was the state of the Bible question at the opening of the Council
of Trent. Its importance could not escape the bishops who composed
that assembly, and the theologians who assisted them with their
acquirements, consequently it was the first proposed for consideration.
On the 8th of February, 1546, the fathers being assembled in general
congregation, Cardinal del Monte, the chief legate of the Holy See,
proposed the council should first consider the subject of the Holy
Scriptures, and make a recension of the canon, in order to determine
the arms to be used in the struggle against heresy, and also to thereby
show Catholics whereon their faith was grounded, many of whom lived
in deplorable ignorance on this point, seeing the same book accepted
by some as dictated by the Holy Spirit, and rejected by others as
spurious.[59] The president of the council afterwards determined the
principal points to be submitted to the consideration of the Fathers.

But this is not the place to review the account of this interesting
discussion. We will only state the results.

In the fourth session, held April 8, 1546, the council promulgated its
celebrated decree respecting the Holy Scriptures, which comprehended
two very distinct parts: the first, dogmatic; the second, disciplinary.

The dogmatic part established the authority of the sacred books in
matters of faith and morals, their divine origin, the canon, the
authenticity of the Vulgate, and the rules for interpreting the
inspired text.

The disciplinary prescriptions had reference to the use of the
Vulgate in the lessons, sermons, controversies, and commentaries; the
obligation of interpreting the Scriptures according to the unanimous
teachings of the Fathers; the respect to be paid to the divine Word,
and, consequently, the crime of those who apply it to profane, light,
or superstitious uses. The council likewise enacted severe laws against
publishers who issue the holy books, or commentaries on them, without
a written authorization of the ordinary, and against the vendors or
holders of prohibited editions; finally, it ordained that the Holy
Scriptures, especially the Vulgate, be henceforth printed with all
possible correctness.

To these prescriptions of the fourth session we will add the first
chapter of the decree of reform, continued in the fifth session,
ordering the institution of a course of Holy Scripture in certain
churches, in order that the Christian community might not be ignorant
of the salutary truths contained in the sacred volume. Such was the
reply to Protestant calumnies which accused the church of withholding
the sacred treasure of God’s Word from the faithful.

Such, briefly, were the labors of the Council of Trent with regard
to the Holy Scriptures. The importance of the decree of the fourth
session must not be estimated according to the brief place it occupies
in the canons, for, brief as it is, it has had an incalculable
influence on sacred science. This decree, in fact, gave rise to those
admirable works of criticism that have defended the authentic canon
against the attacks of heresy, and reduced the pretended discoveries
of Protestantism respecting the true canon of holy books to their
proper value; thence the number of excellent commentaries that for
three centuries have been enriching Catholic theology; and thence so
many apologetic works which have defended the truth of the Biblical
narrative against the false pretensions of rationalistic history.
To this same decree we owe the many learned researches concerning
the original text, the primitive versions regarded as genuine in the
ancient churches, and, above all, the incomparable edition of the
Vulgate—the result of thirty years’ labor by those most versed in the
study of sacred literature.

It would seem as if there were no necessity of reconsidering a question
so fully weighed by the Council of Trent. And yet the Fathers of the
Vatican also deemed it proper to take up the subject of the Holy
Scriptures, in order to reaffirm what had been defined by the Council
of Trent, to give greater prominence to points that the council had
left obscure, and to clear up some difficulties of interpretation that
had arisen within three centuries even among Catholic schools. The
dogmatic part of the decree of Trent alone was renewed and completed
by the Fathers of the Vatican. The exclusively doctrinal character of
the decree _Dei Filius_ admitted no reconsideration of the disciplinary
laws relating to the publishing of the holy books, or their
commentaries, and the abuses that might be made of the sacred text.
Besides, the penalties decreed by the Council of Trent were such as in
our day could not be put in execution, as they consisted not only of
spiritual censures, but pecuniary fines. The ecclesiastical authority,
deprived of its ancient tribunals, and living in the midst of a society
whose leading maxim is liberty of the press and liberty of conscience,
could not revive the old penalties. The Fathers of the Vatican also
omitted everything respecting the authenticity of the Vulgate. Many of
them, however, requested the council to ratify the decree of the fourth
session of Trent on this point, but the greater part of the bishops did
not deem it advisable to accede to the request. What, indeed, could
they add to that which had been so wisely defined by the Fathers of
Trent? Besides, is not the Vulgate received without protest by the
whole Catholic world as the only version recognized by the church as
authentic? As to the rationalists, it is not the translation of the
sacred books they attack, but the books themselves, their canonicity
and supernatural origin.

Laying aside, therefore, all these questions so important in
themselves, but which are not now points of controversy, the Council of
the Vatican only dwelt on the authority of the Scriptures, their divine
origin, the canon, and the rule of interpretation. On all these points
it had to oppose modern rationalism, and banish false and dangerous
theories from Catholic schools of theology.


III.

First, in opposition to rationalism, the council teaches that divine
revelation is comprised in the Scriptures and tradition. This was
declared in the same terms by the Council of Trent, but it was by no
means useless in these times to renew so fundamental a definition.
Modern science rejects revelation: to be consistent, it ought also
to reject its monuments. It regards the Holy Scriptures as merely of
human authority. It does not, it is true, imitate the cynicism of the
philosophers of the XVIIIth century: it does not make our holy books
the butt of their foolish railleries. On the contrary, it affects
a profound respect for them, though it refuses to accept them as
the organ of divine communications. It regards them as it would the
discourses of Socrates—as books full of admirable wisdom which every
philosopher ought to know and study, but which do not owe their origin
to inspiration, properly so-called, or to revelation.

Discussion as to such an error was impossible. The council had merely
to pass its judgment, and repeat what the church had taught its members
for eighteen centuries, as a fresh proof that the Christian faith does
not falter in encountering the many new forms of incredulity. Having
affirmed the truth of revelation, it was necessary to point out what
it was contained in, that the Christian might know where to study the
science of salvation. It says: “This supernatural revelation, according
to the belief of the universal church, as declared by the holy Council
of Trent, is contained in the written books and in the unwritten
traditions that have come down to us.”

But what books contain this revelation? Pursuing the subject, the
council defined anew the canon of Scripture, which the state of the
times made, if not necessary, at least very opportune. Protestant
critics have not ceased since the Reformation to attack the canon
sanctioned by the authority of the church. Rationalism has come to the
support of Protestant criticism, and sometimes flatters itself it has,
by its historical discoveries, blotted out the entire list of the
holy books. The unadulterated traditions preserved by the church have
no scientific value in the eyes of rationalism, which only admits the
canonicity of those books that can trace the proofs of their origin
back to the very time of the apostles. Tertullian took a wrong stand in
asserting that the dogmas of faith should have prescriptive proof. In
vain the Catholic points out the wholly exceptional circumstances that
surround the Scriptural canon—the impossibility from the very first
of admitting books of doubtful origin as coming from the apostles,
or that these books could have been changed in any respect under the
jealous guardianship of a church and hierarchy spread over the face of
the earth, and charged with the conservation of the sacred deposit.
The incredulous critic refuses to receive proofs which the most common
mind perceives the full value of as well as the good sense. What does
he substitute for them? Theories founded on mere conjecture, and
constantly changing, but which are welcomed as the final conclusions
of science. Have we not seen the school of Tübingen found on some
obscure words of Papias a whole system tending to establish the more
recent composition of the Gospels? These new doctors regard the books
of divine truth as some of those legends that are embellished as they
pass from mouth to mouth till they are collected in a definite form by
some unknown writer. And has not this strange theory met with ardent
panegyrists in France, as if it were the definite solution of the great
controversy on the origin of the Gospels?[60]

Whoever attentively examines these strange theories will soon perceive
their weak point. But where are the men in the present generation who
read with sufficient care to see the hollowness of such solutions?
Their authors have seats in our academies; they occupy the most
important professorships; there is not an honorary distinction that
does not add its recommendation to their apparent knowledge. Skilled in
praising one another, the journals and reviews regarded as authorities,
even by certain Catholics, extol their labors. One would think they had
a monopoly of science. Has not all this been a source of real danger to
the faith of Christians?

The church had to counteract the influence of a criticism as bold as
it was easy, by her immutable decrees. It must once more affirm the
ancient canon of Scripture. This catalogue of the sacred books had
been solemnly approved at the end of the IVth century, in a celebrated
decree of the Councils of Hippo and Carthage, in which the Fathers
declared they received this canon from their ancestors in the faith. A
little later, Pope S. Innocent I. sent this same canon of Scripture to
S. Exuperius, the illustrious Bishop of Toulouse. S. Gelasius, in 494,
included it in his synodical decree. Finally, the Council of Florence,
in its decree relating to the Jacobites, and, at a later period, the
Council of Trent, sanctioned it by their supreme authority. Several
of the Fathers of Trent proposed to subject it to a re-examination;
not in order to retrench anything, but to satisfy the heretical, and
convince them by such a discussion that the Church of Rome had not
lightly decided on the list of the inspired books. But a large majority
of the Fathers thought, and with reason, that such a discussion
was appropriate to schools of Catholic theology, but to a council
it belonged to pronounce authoritatively. The canon of Scripture,
being a dogma of faith, formally defined by popes and councils, and
consequently unchangeable, could only be proclaimed anew and without
discussion.[61] The Council of the Vatican came to a like decision,
and, in declaring its acceptance of the canon of the Council of Trent,
with each of its books, in all the parts, it strengthened the faith of
Christians against the shameful pretensions of false science.

This course has shocked the Protestant historian of the council. M.
de Pressensé is indignant at so summary a procedure. “The council,”
he says, “has fallen into a profound and dangerous error on two
important points. In the first place, it proclaims the indisputable
canonicity of all the books of the Vulgate, including the Apocrypha[62]
of the Old Testament, thus showing it regards the immense labors of
the critics of the XIXth century as of no account, and acknowledging
that it is not permitted, for example, to question the origin of the
Gospel of Matthew, or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by
referring to such and such an expression of a Father of the IId and
IIId centuries.[63]The Catholic Church is thus prevented anew from
taking any part in the great work of Christian science of our day,
which consists in establishing a safeguard to the true canon of Holy
Scripture by free and conscientious research. What confidence can we
have in Catholic theology, on those points disputed by rationalism,
like the authenticity of the fourth Gospel? Examination, even, is
forbidden. Everything must be accepted in a lump. How much valuable
co-operation is thus lost or made fruitless through the council!”[64]

The church, then, at the bidding of this Protestant theologian, should
renounce her right to decide on the true Scriptures, and give up the
canon to the researches of rationalistic science, and this in order
to provide a safeguard for this same canon. An amusing idea, to give
up the catalogue of holy books to the caprice of incredulous critics
in order to preserve it intact! And besides, what new documents can
rationalistic science bring to light not perfectly known and considered
by the Catholic theologians of the last three centuries? Catholic
doctors have seen and weighed these difficulties as fully, to say
the least, as Protestant critics, but they have not thought a few
obscurities ought, scientifically, to outweigh immemorial prescription,
or, dogmatically, the perpetual usage of the church and the decrees of
councils.

Rationalism, on the contrary, appeals to obscure passages, or hasty
conclusions sometimes to be met with in the Fathers, in order to
exclude books from the Scriptural canon that have been venerated from
time immemorial as inspired. On which side is the real scientific
method? If historical records merit any confidence in spite of
difficulties of detail, no person of sincerity would hesitate to give
the preference to the theological rather than the rationalistic method.

As to the reproach made against the church for confining criticism
within such narrow limits as to stifle it, nothing is more contrary
to experience. The Council of Trent likewise decided on the canon of
Scripture, and yet what extensive labors, how many learned works,
have been published within three centuries in reply to the attacks of
Protestantism, and in order to establish the authenticity of the books
rejected by the Reformer! No, indeed; the church, in defining the
canon of Scripture, does not discourage the researches of the learned
respecting the Bible. The love of sacred literature, in the first
place, and also the necessity of defending Catholic belief against the
constantly renewed attacks of heterodox criticism, will keep Catholic
apologists constantly at work. The church, in maintaining its canon,
directs their labors, but without putting any restraint on their
abilities.


IV.

Besides reaffirming the ancient decrees relating to the canon of
Scripture, the Council of the Vatican has completed and explained more
clearly what faith requires us to believe respecting the origin of the
holy books. This point had not been fully decided. The wants of the
times had not before required it. But the attacks of rationalism, and
the misinterpretations of semi-rationalism, required a more definite
decision in order to put an end to dangerous teachings even in Catholic
schools.

Christians have from the beginning believed God to be the author of
the Holy Scriptures. The Fathers of the fourth Council of Carthage, in
the profession of faith required of the new bishops, expressly made
mention of this truth. The same profession of faith is made in our day
by those who are promoted to the episcopate. Pope S. Leo IX., in the
profession of faith to which he required Peter of Antioch to subscribe,
declared God to be the author of the Old and New Testaments, including
the law, the prophets, and the apostolic books. The Council of Florence
inserted this same article in the decree about the Jacobites: The most
holy Roman Church “confesses that it is one and the same God who is the
author of the Old and the New Testament; that is to say, the law, the
prophets, and the Gospel; the saints of both Testaments having spoken
under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit.” Finally, the Council
of Trent, renewing the decree of Florence, accepted all the canonical
books of the two Testaments, God being the author of them both: _Cum
utriusque unus Deus sit auctor_. Besides, all these decrees were only
an expansion of the words of the Nicene Creed: _Qui locutus est per
prophetas_.

The Catholic dogma is explicit: “God is the author of the books
of the Old and the New Testament.” The definitions of the ancient
councils had for their direct object the condemnation of the errors
of the Manichees, who made a distinction between the two Testaments,
attributing the first to the evil principle, the second to the true
God. But, secondarily, these definitions, referring to the actual
origin of the Holy Scriptures, declare they have God for their author.
The Council of Florence gave this explanation: “Because the saints of
both Testaments wrote under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit.”

But what is meant by inspiration? An important question, on which not
only Protestants differ from Catholics, but on which even orthodox
writers are not agreed.

To say what Protestantism understands by the inspiration of the
Scriptures would be difficult, or, to speak more correctly, impossible.
In a system where all belief is founded on free examination, there
must be an infinite variety of doctrinal opinions. The first Reformers
understood the inspiration of the holy books in the strictest
sense—every word of Scripture was sacred. Now, Protestantism, even
the most orthodox, allows greater latitude. Constrained to make more
or less concession to the encroaching spirit of rationalism, it takes
refuge in vague expressions that leave one in doubt as to the part
God had in the composition of the sacred books. Here is a pastor who
considers himself orthodox, and boasts of remaining faithful to the
principles of Luther and Calvin; he enters upon the subject of the
Scriptures, and speaks at length on the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
Nevertheless, in these holy books inspired by God, he admits the
possibility of complete error when there is any question of history or
science which does not touch directly on religious dogmas or precepts.
Even in what relates to religious truth, inspiration, to him, is
reduced to I know not what particular assistance granted those who
had witnessed the life of Christ, in relating what they had seen and
heard.[65]

According to this theory, every way so vague, we ask ourselves, What
was the nature of the inspiration imparted to the Evangelists SS. Mark
and Luke, who were not witnesses of our Saviour’s deeds, but merely
related what they had heard from others; what was the nature of that
imparted to S. Paul, who had never seen Christ, and took something very
different for the subject of his epistles from the acts and discourses
of the Redeemer?

The incertitudes of Protestantism had pervaded more than one Catholic
school, especially in Germany. Jahn, in his introduction to the books
of the Old Testament, confounds inspiration with assistance. A book
composed by the mere light of reason and pure human industry might be
placed on the catalogue of Holy Writ, if the church declared God had
preserved the writer from all error in the composition of the work.
Who does not see the falseness of a system which would include all the
dogmatic decrees of the popes and councils in the canon of Scripture?
Others confound inspiration with revealed truth. Every book written
according to the precise spirit of divine revelation could be placed
in the canon. According to this, not only the definitions of popes and
councils, but many ascetic works, sermons, and catechisms, might be
reckoned among the Holy Scriptures.

Finally, others, desirous of explaining the difference to be seen in
the various books of the Bible, think several kinds of inspiration
are to be distinguished. Sometimes the truths the sacred writer had
to record were above human comprehension, or at least unknown to him,
and could only be learned by actual revelation. The inspiration God
accords for this class of truths supersedes all effort on the part
of the writer. It is a suggestive inspiration, or, as it is called,
_antecedent_.

If the sacred writer was himself aware of the facts he related, and the
philosophical maxims he proposed to insert in his book, or if he had
drawn from any other source the truths he undertook to record, he had
no need of suggestive inspiration. His book, however, is to be regarded
as the work of God if he received special assistance to guide him in
the choice of the truths he recorded, and prevent him from making any
mistake in expressing himself. This is what is called _concomitant_
inspiration.

Finally, suppose a work composed by mere human wisdom, without any
other participation on the part of God than general assistance, and
it comes to pass that God, by the testimony of his prophets, or the
voice of the church, declares this book exempt from error, it is
thereby endowed with infallible authority, and may be reckoned among
the Scriptures. This kind of approval has been styled, though very
improperly, _subsequent_ inspiration.

These three distinct kinds of inspiration have been taught by eminent
theologians, such as Sixtus of Sienna (_Biblioth. Sac._ l. viii. Hæres,
12 ad. obj. sept.), Bonfrère (_Proloq._ c. viii.), Lessius and Hamel
(_Hist. Congreg. de Auxiliis_, a Livino de Meyere, l. i. c. ix.). But
these doctors never actually applied this distinction to the books that
compose the canon of Scripture. It was for them a mere question of
possibility: could books thus authentically approved have a place in
the Scriptural canon? They replied in the affirmative. But are there
actually any of our holy books that are wholly due to human industry,
and which God has declared sacred by subsequent approval? We give
Lessius’ opinion: “Though I do not believe this kind of inspiration
produced any of our canonical books, I do not think it impossible”
(_loc. cit._).

But the wise reserve of these great theologians has not been imitated
by all. A learned German professor, who is likewise a highly esteemed
author, has not hesitated to apply the distinction of these three
kinds of inspiration to the existing books: “The kind of inspiration,”
he says, “that produced such and such a book, or such and such a
passage, it is almost impossible to determine in particular. We can
only say that the parts where we read, _Thus saith the Lord_, or a
similar formula, probably belong to the first kind of inspiration; the
historical narrations that came under the writer’s observation belong
to the third (subsequent inspiration); the poetical books seem to come
under the second (concomitant inspiration).”[66]

These systems, it is manifest, weaken one’s idea of the inspiration
of the sacred volume as always understood by the church. We want an
inspiration by virtue of which the book is really the work of God,
and not of man—the truths it contains of divine, and not of human,
origin: man is the instrument, he who dictates is the Holy Ghost:
man lends his hand and pen, the Spirit of truth puts them in action.
But in the systems referred to, it is not really God who speaks: it
is man. Supernatural testimony gives indeed a divine authority to a
book, but it could not make God the author of what was really composed
by man. And though these writings should contain the exact truths
of revelation, they would be as much the result of human wisdom as
sermons, catechisms, ascetic books, and even the creeds and decrees of
councils which clearly state the doctrines of the church.

It was the duty of the council to put an end to interpretations which,
depriving the sacred books of the prestige of divine origin, diminished
their authority among the faithful. It has therefore defined what every
Catholic must believe concerning the degree of inspiration accorded to
the sacred writers. This definition is first stated in a negative form:
“The church holds them (the Holy Scriptures) as sacred and canonical,
not for the reason that they have been compiled by mere human industry,
and afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain
revelation without error.” To this definition in a negative form
succeeds a positive one, in which the council declares the essential
condition of a book’s being placed in the canon of Scripture—“because,
having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they
have God for their author”: _propterea quod Spiritu Sancto inspirante
conscripti, Deum habent auctorem_.

The council, therefore, by this dogmatic definition, has excluded
any other meaning to the inspiration of the Scriptures that does not
ascribe them to the special agency of God. The schools are still free
to discuss what this divine operation consists in, and the conditions
on which a book may be said to have God for its author. But they must
first reject every explanation that reduces the agency of God to mere
assistance, and, still more, to subsequent approbation. It is in this
sense we must understand the fourth canon of the second series: “If any
one shall refuse to receive for sacred and canonical the books of the
Holy Scriptures in their integrity, with all their parts, according as
they were enumerated by the Holy Council of Trent, or shall deny that
they are inspired by God, let him be anathema.” It is the same anathema
pronounced by the Council of Trent, to which the Council of the Vatican
has added the express mention of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

There are other important observations to be made concerning this
definition. Though by no means favorable to the system of Sixtus of
Sienna, Bonfrère, and Lessius, it does not, however, condemn them in
formal terms. These theologians, as we have said, only considered the
subject _in abstracto_: Would subsequent inspiration or approbation
give a book a right to be placed in the canon?—a verbal question
rather than one of doctrine. It is certain that such a book would
have a sacred authority, but it is also certain that it could not be
called the work of God in the same sense as the holy books now in
our possession. The council, in its definition, only considered the
actual point; it declared all the books of our canon have God for
their author, because the Holy Ghost was the chief agent in their
composition. But the opinion of the modern exegete who applies the
doctrine of subsequent approbation to the books contained in our actual
canon appears to us really condemned by the new definition.

Now, the decree of the Vatican does not forbid the division of the
holy books into several classes according as the truths they contain
are recorded by the writer as a special revelation, or from knowledge
acquired by his natural faculties. But this distinction does not
infringe on the overruling agency of God in the composition of the book.

Finally, the question of verbal inspiration, so often discussed by
theologians, remains as free since the council as before. It is not
necessary for a ruler who issues a decree to dictate every expression,
but merely the substance of the new law: the secretary clothes it in
his own style. The latter is not a mere copyist: he, too, is the author
of the decree, but in a secondary sense. It is the same with regard to
the Holy Scriptures. The Holy Spirit suggests the truths to be recorded
in the prophecy, and directs the writer, but David and Isaias clothe
them in their own royal style, Amos in his rustic language.


V.

We come now to the question of the interpretation of the holy books.
On this point, also, the Council of the Vatican has renewed and
completed the decree of the Council of Trent, which, in its fourth
session, endeavored to check the boldness, or, to make use of its
own expression, the restlessness of the free-thinkers of the age.
Protestants are constantly appealing to the Scriptures, but to the
Scriptures according to private interpretation. Agreed merely in
their opposition to the church and its doctrines, they are divided
infinitely as to the signification of the simplest texts. The strangest
interpretations are daily astonishing the faith of the believer, and
giving rise to scandals among Christians. To obviate this abuse, the
Council of Trent made the following decree: “In order to restrain
restless spirits, the council decrees that no one, relying on his own
wisdom in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of
the Christian doctrine, shall wrest the Holy Scripture according to his
own private notions, and have the boldness to interpret it contrary to
the true sense in which it has been and is held by our holy mother, the
church, to whom it belongs to judge of the interpretation of the Holy
Scriptures, or contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”

This decree, as to its form, is chiefly disciplinary: it prohibits
interpreting the Scriptures contrary to the definition of the church
and the unanimous opinion of the Fathers in all that relates to faith
and morals.

This disciplinary prescription is based on a dogmatic principle which
the Council of Trent did not define, but which it referred to as an
incontestable truth: to wit, that to the church it belongs to judge
of the true meaning of the Scriptures: _cujus est judicare de vero
sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum sanctarum_. This truth is the
necessary consequence of the supreme magistracy of the faith. All
Catholics venerate the church as the depository of revealed truth,
and consequently of the Scriptures. But the deposit is not merely a
material one. The Christian receives the Scriptures from her, first,
because it is by her testimony he is assured of the true canon, that
they have God for their author, and that he is enabled to distinguish
the real text from the inaccuracies that have, in the course of time,
been introduced by the carelessness of copyists, as well as the
unscrupulousness of heretics. Moreover, he receives them from the
church, because through her he is made aware of their true meaning.
What would it avail him to possess the inspired volume, if, like the
book in the Apocalypse, it were sealed with seven seals? And who has
the power to break these seals but the church—bride of the Lamb?

In vain Protestantism repeats that the Scriptures are plain in
themselves, or, at least, that the interior illumination of the Holy
Spirit renders them intelligible to all. If this is really the case,
why, whenever the voice of the church is unheeded, the infinite number
of ways of interpreting the same passages? How was it that Calvin
plainly saw a mere figure of the Presence in the passage relating to
the Eucharist, when Luther clearly understood it to mean the Real
Presence? Would the Holy Spirit speak to Luther in one way, and to
Calvin in another entirely opposite? Whatever the Reformers may say,
the Scriptures are full of obscurity. The truths of salvation they
contain are not expressed in the didactic manner of a theological
treatise. The truths are there, but veiled in mystery, expressed in a
language now dead, and full of allusions to a history and to customs
widely differing from ours, as well as to the institutions and local
circumstances of a nation no longer existing. Private research would,
no doubt, enable a small number of men of intelligence and learning
to comprehend many parts of our holy books; but this means is not
accessible to the masses, who would remain for ever deprived of the
truths contained in the Scriptures if there were not on earth an
authorized interpreter of the divine text. What certitude would the
learned themselves have on this point without the help of the church?
How many divergent opinions would not liberty of interpretation
produce! It was, therefore, necessary that the church, when entrusted
with the Scriptures, should at the same time receive power to
interpret them authentically. This is why the Council of Trent forbids
interpreting them contrary to the defined meaning of the church.

Now, the church acquits itself of its duties as interpreter in two
ways: by solemn definitions, and by the ordinary teachings of its
doctors. The definitions of the church are not, in fact, restricted
to the declaration of dogmatic decisions: they often decide the real
meaning of the Scriptures. Thus we see the Council of Trent is not
satisfied with defining the divine institution and existence of the
sacrament of Extreme Unction: it also declares that the well-known
words of the Apostle S. James refer to this sacrament, and designate
its ministry, its matter, its form, and its effects.[67] In like
manner, with regard to the sacrament of Penance, not content with
defining its existence, it declares, in the first chapter of the
fourteenth session, that our Lord referred to this sacrament when,
addressing his disciples, he said: _Quorum remiseritis peccata_. We
could point out many other passages of Scripture of a similar nature
which the Council of Trent and other councils have authentically
defined the meaning of.

But the interpretation of the sacred text is more frequently shown
by the usage of the church, especially in its liturgy, and by the
unanimous or almost unanimous teachings of the Fathers and doctors.
It was thus the meaning of the passages concerning the Eucharist were
clearly determined by the liturgy, the writings of the Fathers, the
teachings of the schools, and the general sentiment of the Christian
world a long time before it was expressly defined by the Council of
Trent. In the same way, the church did not wait for the definition of
the Council of the Vatican to regard the promises of Christ to S. Peter
as made to the See of Rome, and including the essential prerogatives of
the Pontifical power.

Such was the twofold manner of defining the meaning of the Scriptures
the Council of Trent had in view when it forbade their interpretation
on points of faith and morals contrary to the sense in which they are
held by holy church and the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

This decree appears sufficiently explicit. And yet semi-rationalism
found two ways of eluding its bearing. The first was to regard this
part of the decree of the fourth session as purely disciplinary,
doubtless necessary in the condition of Christendom at the time of
the Council of Trent, but susceptible of being afterwards modified.
Now, in our day, the Catholic faith is no longer attacked as it once
was through the authority of the Scriptures. Knowledge has increased.
The commentator is forced to be mindful of the progress of human
intelligence, and to reconcile the meaning of the Scriptures with the
discoveries of the age. If one persists in asserting that the decree of
the council relates to faith as well as discipline, semi-rationalism
has recourse to another evasion: it understands this decree merely
in a negative sense; namely, that it is not lawful to interpret the
Scriptures contrary to the Catholic belief, which does not imply any
obligation to regard the meaning the church attaches to a passage
of Scripture as an article of faith. According to this rule, the
Catholic theologian could not interpret any text in opposition to the
existence of the sacrament of Extreme Unction, but, notwithstanding the
declarations of the Council of Trent, he would remain within the bounds
of orthodoxy, even if he denied that the words of S. James had any
reference to this sacrament.

Such is the half-way manner in which unsubmissive souls flatter
themselves they can remain true to the faith without accepting the
teachings of the church. For a long time this doctrine was practically
followed, though not formally stated. We will give an example. In the
XVIIth century, the Oratorian, Richard Simon, carried the boldness of
his criticisms to such an extreme that he openly acknowledged he made
no account of traditional interpretation, the authority of the Fathers,
and the teachings of the church; pretending to correct, according
to the Hebrew or Greek text, the meaning constantly followed by the
doctors of the church. Our readers are well aware with what vigor
Bossuet attacked a system so thoroughly Protestant.[68]

But this way of understanding the decree of the Council of Trent was
in direct opposition to the terms in which it is conceived. The form
doubtless is disciplinary, but the foundation of this law is expressly
stated, and is wholly dogmatic: _Cujus (ecclesiæ) est judicare de vero
sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum sanctarum_. This was not a mere
disciplinary prescript made for the first time by the council, but the
reminder of an obligation imposed on all Christians by the very nature
of revelation and the authority of the church.

If it is not true that this decree is purely disciplinary, it is
still less so that it should be understood in a mere negative sense,
as if the council only intended forbidding the interpretation of the
Scriptures contrary to the express dogmas or even the definitions of
the church and the unanimous opinion of the Fathers. The principle
on which this decree is founded goes still further: “It is to the
church it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of
the Holy Scriptures.” Consequently, we ought not only to refrain from
contradicting her authentic interpretation, but should regard her as
our guide, and her decision in matters of interpretation as binding on
every Christian, so that he would fall into heresy who should refuse to
accept the meaning of a passage of Scripture as defined by holy church.
Such is the evident meaning of the decree of the Council of Trent.

This truth is so manifest that the profession of faith by Pius IV.
substitutes the positive and general form for the negative and
restrictive terms of the decree: “I also admit the Holy Scriptures
according to that sense which our Holy Mother the church hath held
and doth hold, to whom it belongeth to judge of the true sense and
interpretation of the Scriptures; neither will I ever take and
interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent
of the Fathers.” Here the teachings of the church and the opinions
of the Fathers are plainly made the positive and authentic rule of
interpretation.

There could be no doubt as to the meaning of the Fathers of Trent.
But a controversy having arisen on a point of so much importance, the
Fathers of the Vatican were forced to explain this decree in such a way
as to prevent any ambiguity. They did so in these terms: “And since
those things which the Council of Trent has declared by wholesome
decree concerning the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, in order
to restrain restless spirits, are explained by some in a wrong sense;
we, renewing the same decree, declare this to be the mind of the synod:
that, in matters of faith and morals which pertain to the edification
of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the true sense of the
sacred Scripture which Holy Mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge
of the true sense and interpretation of the sacred Scriptures, has held
and holds: and therefore that no one may interpret the sacred Scripture
contrary to this sense or contrary to the unanimous consent of the
Fathers.”

It follows from the definition of the Vatican that the decree of the
Council of Trent was not purely disciplinary, but likewise dogmatic:
that consequently it was not intended for a particular epoch and
exceptional circumstances, but was the expression of a divine law
applicable to every age, and as lasting as the church and the world;
that this decree not only forbids understanding the Scriptures contrary
to the belief and interpretation of the church, but makes it a positive
obligation to accept the meaning the church attaches to the sacred
text; in short, that the disciplinary law is founded on a dogmatic
truth which makes the authentic interpretation of the church a rule of
faith to which every mind should submit in the study of Holy Writ.

It is thus the Council of the Vatican has renewed, explained, and
completed the definitions of the Council of Trent touching the great
question of the Scriptures. The second chapter of the Constitution
_Dei Filius_, in addition to the decree of the fourth session of the
Council of Trent, henceforth forms the basis of theological teachings
in everything relating to Biblical science.




MYTHS AND MYTH-MONGERS.[69]

 This bald, unjointed chat of his, my lord, I answered
 indirectly—_Shakespeare, Henry IV._


AUTHORS are proverbially not the best judges of their own works. It is
as rare, therefore, as it is gratifying to meet with one whose verdict
on his own production exactly coincides with that of the critic. Such
a fortunate concurrence of opinion between the writer and the person
to whose lot it has fallen to pass sentence on a work for a certain
portion of the public, relieves the latter gentleman of a vast amount
of responsibility, and renders his difficult task infinitely lighter
and more pleasant than such a task generally proves to be.

When, then, Mr. Fiske, the author of _Myths and Myth-Makers_, is kind
enough gratuitously to inform us in his preface that the “series
of papers” of which his book is composed is “somewhat rambling and
unsystematic,” it can be considered no injustice to him, and no
presumption on our part, to say that we cordially agree with him.
And when he further informs us that, “in order to avoid confusing
the reader with intricate discussions, he has sometimes cut the
matter short by expressing himself with dogmatic definiteness where a
sceptical vagueness might perhaps have been more becoming,” we find
nothing whatever to object to in this statement, with the solitary
exception of the word “perhaps,” which, if suppressed, would bring it
nearer the exact truth.

However, Mr. Fiske has here furnished us with a very fair idea, of
what the reader is to expect from his _Myths_. He himself has passed
sentence on himself. He tells us practically that we must not expect
too much from his “rambling” papers; he forestalls, if he does not
deprecate, criticism by assuring us at the outstart that his fault
has not been on the side of modesty of opinion and judicial weighing
of what he set forth. What, then, is left for the critic to do but to
confirm the self-condemnation of the author?

But we cannot allow Mr. Fiske to escape us in this fashion. Mr. Fiske
is an M.A., and Mr. Fiske is an LL.B., and a professor, and a professor
of philosophy—at Harvard, too. So that, although the dates so
carefully affixed to the end of each of his “rambling and unsystematic”
papers indicate that Mr. Fiske knocked this book off in three months,
still three months of philosophic chaff from a Harvard professor ought
surely to contain some grains of wheat.

The book in itself is not an uninteresting one. It is chock-full of
mythical stories, or folk-lore, or whatever people may please to
call what in our younger days we should have comprised under the one
delicious head of fairy-tales. To be sure, the stories were all told
before and by somebody else; but then, Mr. Fiske gives everybody
due credit, and confines his own portion of the work to a running
commentary with an undercurrent of foot-notes, and all sorts of
quotations, from the Rig-Veda down to Jack and Jill. We cannot in
justice say that Mr. Fiske’s portion is as interesting as the myths
themselves, though partaking considerably of their character.

But to come to the point—what does Mr. Fiske mean by his book? What
idea would he convey to us? What would he have us infer from it? “A
book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.”

If it is suggestive of anything at all, it is this: all or the chief
portion of the great myths of antiquity refer to the struggle between
darkness and light. It was the phenomenon of night and day which
puzzled people in the dawn of the world, ages before men possessed the
great blessing of this XIXth century, which blessing is, according to
Mr. Fiske, _via_ M. Littré, “scientific faith,” seemingly the only sure
thing in this enlightened age.

Some people might require a definition of this wonderful faith of
modern invention; but then, some people always will ask disagreeable
questions. For their benefit, it may be said to mean taking nothing for
fact or truth except what you can arrive at, or prove, or demonstrate
by a scientific process: in plain English, no faith at all.

Mr. Fiske then takes up this theory: that all men, being puzzled by
this daily phenomenon of light and darkness, day and night, and having
no “scientific faith” to guide them, and nothing better (Mr. Fiske
will pardon us this little bit of heresy against the XIXth century)
to supply its place, set to thinking and endeavoring to solve this
tremendous problem. They were all a dreadful sort of people all the
world over: they “knew nothing about laws of nature, nothing about
physical forces, nothing about the relations of cause and effect,
nothing about the necessary regularity of things.” As a set-off against
all these “nothings,” they possessed a something in the shape of “an
unlimited capacity for believing and fancying, because fancy and
belief had not yet been checked and headed off in various directions
by established rules of experience.” To all of which, and a great deal
more of the same nature, we feel very much inclined to append that
awkward _Q. E. D._ of the geometry which somebody would tag on to the
end of those beautiful propositions at school, and which our professor
terrified us by translating, “Which must be proved.”

Mr. Fiske, then, having set this profound and eternal conundrum before
the crazed intellects of the human race, which were gifted, according
to him, with nothing but this “unlimited capacity for believing and
fancying”—one would imagine that there might have been room for
Revelation here; but Revelation, of course, clashes with “scientific
faith,” and is therefore a myth in Mr. Fiske’s eyes—what were the
poor beings to do but endow everything, particularly the sun, with the
“volition” which they felt within themselves? How or why this _must_
have been so Mr. Fiske fails to explain, or indeed that it was so
at all. However, just for argument’s sake, let us take his word for
it, though by so doing we are false to scientific faith. Mr. Fiske’s
proposition, then, runs thus: Given the sun, and given the people with
eyes to gaze at the sun, the people must necessarily have endowed the
sun with “volition,” and worshipped the sun as a god. Once more, _Q. E.
D._

Hence Mr. Fiske proceeds to argue: “The conception of infallible skill
in archery, which underlies such a great variety of myths and popular
fairy-tales, is originally derived from the inevitable victory of the
sun over his enemies, the demons of night, winter, and tempest. Arrows
and spears which never miss their mark, swords from whose blow no
armor can protect, are invariably the weapons of solar divinities or
heroes.” Consequently, Mr. Fiske is cruel enough to knock on the head a
considerable number of fictitious characters who were much better known
and loved by us years ago than many real characters to-day. He levels
his shaft tipped with scientific faith, whiz!—and down drop William
Tell, William of Cloudeslee, Beth-Gellert, Jack and the Beanstalk,
Roland, Sir Bedivere, Ulysses, Achilles, Balder the Beautiful,
Hercules, and a whole host of other famous heroes—or rather they
mount, for one and all represented the sun, and were types and figures
of his solar majesty.

Well, though we grieve to say it, it may be so; but the consolation
is still left us that, even if it be so, “it’s of no consequence,” as
our old friend Mr. Toots was wont sagaciously to remark. There is so
much of reality around us, and so much real sham, to speak a paradox,
to wing with our arrows, to shoot at all our lifelong and make no
visible impression on, that we have neither time, nor inclination, nor
patience to bother our brains with wire-drawn theories as to whether
Tell was Tell or the sun; whether a man ever performed the impossible
feat of piercing an apple, which happened to be on his boy’s head, with
a shaft or not, or whether a dog was killed by its master in mistake.
Such things may serve to amuse children or people who can find nothing
better to occupy their time. So far there is nothing to object to in
it. But when a man takes every imaginable story, collects them all as
he would old fossils, and tickets each off with a bad explanation,
or throws them together into a bag, as it were, and, charlatan-like,
shakes them all up in order to see if by any chance they might tumble
out in a shape antagonistic to Christianity, a work which, in view of
the many realities around us, is rubbish at the best, becomes in Mr.
Fiske’s hands rubbish at the worst.

For he does not hold to his tether; he will go out of his way to drag
religion into a place where, if it must enter, it shows itself, as
always, full of majesty, and beauty, and sublime truth, but not a thing
of ridicule, as this writer, by hint, and innuendo, and insinuating
little foot-note, and sly little chuckle, and weak little laugh, and
wit of the very smallest, would make it.

“The religious myths of antiquity, and the fireside legends of ancient
and modern times, have their common roots in the mental habits of
primeval humanity. They are the earliest recorded utterances of men
concerning the visible phenomena of the world into which they were
born.”

Now, there is nothing particularly startling in this passage; it is
just such an one as the reader might or might not assent to, being
really utterly careless on the subject. He would scarcely stop to
inquire how far Mr. Fiske’s “religious myths of antiquity” extended.
There is a seemingly unconscious vagueness about the phrase that
allows it to pass without question. And Mr. Fiske’s theories, if we
may dignify them by such a title, run on smoothly enough in killing
Beth-Gellert for the thousandth time, and bringing his powerful mind
and the infallible test of his “scientific faith” to bear on old
nursery jingles—such, for instance, as:

  “Jack and Jill went up the hill
    To get a pail of water;
  Jack fell down and broke his crown,
    And Jill came tumbling after.”

“This may read like mere nonsense,” says Mr. Fiske. Again we agree
with him it may; but the rising smile fades on the lip when met by the
solemn assurance immediately following: “But there is a point of view
from which it may be safely said that there is very little absolute
nonsense in the world.”

We grieve to say that the thought which struck us immediately on
reading this aphorism of Mr. Fiske’s was that, if one thing more than
another could tend to make us dubious as to its truth, it would be the
perusal of his own book. But _revenons_: “The story is a venerable
one,” he proceeds _in re_ “Jack and Jill.” “They—the children—fall
away from one another as the moon wanes, and their water-pail
symbolizes the supposed connection of the moon with rainstorms.”

Leaving our readers to ponder over this profound mystery so solemnly
set forth by the author, dazzled and bewildered, doubtless, by this
latest exhibition of moonshine, we pass from it to other things. It is
of a piece with all the author’s deductions, and as fair a sample as
any other of the ingenuity of his argument and the profundity of his
conclusions. We do not attempt to refute them; that task is above us;
we leave such questions to be argued out in their more fitting sphere,
where the characters in the story are best known and believed in—the
nursery.

To all this sort of thing we do not object; it is very harmless,
and though scarcely the style of study and method of deduction one
might expect from a professor of philosophy at what is esteemed the
leading university in the United States, we can only arrive, however
regretfully, at the conclusion that we had perhaps made a false
estimate of the intellectual standing of that university, and of the
calibre, mental and moral, of its professors. Still, Mr. Fiske may
argue all his lifelong in this fashion, and we can only wish him better
employment. But unfortunately he does not stop here.

All the unravelling of these worthless myths has one aim and tendency:
the connecting with them true religion, Judaism first, and afterwards
Christianity, the belief in Christ, the Christian sacraments, Christian
observances, Christian practices; not as the one truth of which all
these myths formed so many broken and distorted fragments, but—hear
it, Christian fathers who send your sons to Harvard to learn wisdom and
truth from such men as the one under our notice—a myth with the rest
of them!

Ulysses, Achilles, Ormutz, Thor, Tell, William of Cloudeslee, the sun,
Jesus Christ—“These be thy gods, O Israel!”

A mad world, my masters! We are all wrong; living in a myth,
worshipping a myth, teaching a myth, our social and political state
to-day built upon a myth. “We may learn anew the lesson, taught with
fresh emphasis by modern scholarship, that in the deepest sense there
is nothing new under the sun.” So says Mr. Fiske. There is nothing sure
but scientific faith as expounded by M. Littré and—Mr. Fiske. All the
rest is myth.

It would be no surprise to us if Mr. Fiske were indignantly to reject
the construction which the Catholic, or the Christian reader of
whatever denomination, who possesses any knowledge of Christianity,
must put upon his words. Apparently he himself is not sufficiently
acquainted with Christianity to understand the meaning of those words;
and yet he is a “professor of philosophy” at a presumably Christian
university. He is, to judge him by this book, of that school of
would-be atheists so fashionable tod-ay, who talk mild infidelity
over their tea, and take it down with their muffins—a toast-and-water
infidelity, nice to take hob-and-nob with and to the admiration of
some antiquated Blue-Stocking. Mr. Fiske, like his class, might be
considered an atheist did he only possess the faintest conception of
what Christianity meant. An atheist is not a man who does not, but
who _will_ not, know God—a rebellious spirit who, like the fallen
archangel who has seduced him, rejects God, flings back his offering,
and cries out: “I will not serve!”

Such is atheism—negation, not unconsciousness; denial, not lack of
knowledge. Mr. Fiske’s toast-and-water stuff partakes of the latter
character. It is so very weak, so very thin, so supremely unconscious
of its feebleness, so full of self-sufficiency, so sublimely ignorant
of the fact that the poor little hobby-horse which it rides astride of,
and on which it pranks out, with “all the pomp and circumstance” of
mimic warfare, to have a tilt with the church, has been long ago ridden
to death by far doughtier champions than Mr. Fiske, but with a like
result—a tumble in the dust. Like the carpet-knight, who, “but for
those vile guns, might himself have been a soldier,” but for the vile
faith, these carpet-atheists might themselves have become Christian.
Did we not recollect that they possess immortal souls destined for one
of two eternities, we might almost congratulate ourselves on their
defection.

But not to lay so very serious a charge at Mr. Fiske’s door without
just grounds, we proceed to give a few instances of that gentleman’s
mythical contortions, which will sufficiently vindicate the severe
strictures we feel compelled to pass upon his book—a book, indeed,
which should have passed unnoticed, only that it is typical of the tone
and tendency of the class of writers remarked upon above.

Mr. Fiske would seem to have received some sort of a Christian
education, if we may so call it, in his youth; for he tells us “of
that burning Calvinistic hell with which his childish imagination had
been unwisely terrified.” Calvinism probably drove him into revolt
against Christianity, as it has driven so many others, and, instead of
returning, and examining, and searching for truth, he has adopted the
easier course of saying that it was all a sham—the devil was only a
bogy conjured up by nurses to frighten children and make them good.
Christianity was an excellent religion for children and timid old
maids; but for MEN, men of the XIXth century, it was a little
too much. On reading the fables of the pagans, he found that they had
their bogies to frighten their children, as the heathen possesses them
still. All the same, all the same, all the way down to the cradle, if
there be such, of the race.

  “Black spirits and white,
    Red spirits and gray,
  Mingle, mingle, mingle,
    You that mingle may.”

Such, if put into a coherent shape, would be, we think, Mr. Fiske’s
mode of explaining his belief. To him all mystery is myth, and the one
true guide is scientific faith.

There is no mention of Revelation from beginning to end of the book:
the author evidently does not believe in it. But though he is careful
not to say so in express words, the meaning of all his deductions is
very clear; and passages from the sacred Scriptures are contorted to
suit his purpose.

Thus, we are told[70] that “the very idea of an archfiend, Satan,
which Christianity received from Judaism, seems to have been suggested
by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to have derived its principal
characteristics from that source. There is no evidence that the Jews,
previous to the Babylonish captivity, possessed the conception of
a devil as the author of all evil. In the earlier books of the Old
Testament, Jehovah is represented as dispensing with his own hand the
good and the evil, like the Zeus of the _Iliad_.”

Of course, to a man of Mr. Fiske’s vast knowledge and profound
erudition, it would be an impertinence to suggest that, as the
name—the mere name, apart from all belief in it—Jehovah is the more
ancient of the two, it might have been more in order to invert its
position, so that it would run: “The Zeus of the _Iliad_, like the
Jehovah of the Old Testament, was the dispenser of good and evil.” But
Mr. Fiske studiously sets Jehovah first in place, though second in
time, giving one to understand thereby that Zeus was his precursor.
This may have been done inadvertently, but, if so, there is a strange
method in Mr. Fiske’s carelessness. He is clearly a believer in that

  “Divinity which doth shape our ends,
  Rough hew them as we may.”

Then, again, Mr. Fiske is correct enough in the passages which he cites
as showing that the Jehovah of the Old Testament dispenses “with his
own hand the good and the evil.” There is nothing startling in this: it
is the soundest Catholic as well as Jewish doctrine. We believe that
God does dispense the good and the evil alike; but the “dispensing
of the good and the evil” is a very different thing from the phrase
which concludes the preceding sentence: “The author of _all_ evil.”
Mr. Fiske plumes himself on his philological knowledge; he is great
in word-science, if we may so call it; does he, then, recognize no
distinction between “a dispenser” and “an author,” or again, between
evil and evil, or still further, between “evil” and “_all_ evil”?

“Evil is natural and moral,” says the dictionary. In the first sense,
it means what we generally comprehend by the word “misfortune”; as,
evil tidings, evil news, evil accident. In this sense, God is said
to be the dispenser of evil; that is, of trials which he sets his
children, as a father sets his son a hard task, to prepare them, to
test them, to educate them, to lift them up to the fulness of manhood,
which is in God. “Whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth.” But “moral
evil” or what Mr. Fiske calls “all evil,” is a very different thing. It
is that which is evil naturally, _in se_ and _per se_, which is in the
will of the devil, and which it is blasphemy to attribute to God. Evil
in the first sense may be, is generally, good in itself: the latter,
never. It may not be blasphemy in Mr. Fiske, for, as we said, he does
not, from insufficient acquaintance with the subject, know the meaning
of his own words. But observe how carefully all these words are placed
in connection and juxtaposition one with another, and how easily each
slides into its wrong place. Again, there is a singular method in Mr.
Fiske’s glaring—for a milder term in the face of what we have just
pointed out would be impossible—inaccuracies.

He goes on: “The story of the serpent in Eden—an Aryan story in every
particular, which has crept into the Pentateuch—is not once alluded
to in the Old Testament.” To this he adds a note: “Nor is there any
ground for believing that the serpent in the _Eden-myth_ is intended
for Satan?” Though Mr. Fiske is overrunning our space far more than we
intended he should do at the beginning, the next sentence is too good
to omit, as replete with a piece of criticism unique in its simplicity
and loftiness of tone: “The identification (of the serpent in the
Eden-myth with Satan) is entirely the work of modern dogmatic theology,
and is due, naturally enough, to the habit, so common alike among
theologians and laymen, of reasoning about the Bible as if it were a
single book (!), and not a collection of writings of different ages and
of very different degrees of historic authenticity.”

To all his readers the question will naturally suggest itself: Has Mr.
Fiske ever been outside the walls of Harvard? But there—we leave the
matter: it suggests its own comment; and, moreover, Mr. Fiske promises
us, “in a future work entitled (start not, ye publishers!) _Aryana
Vaedjo_, to examine, at considerable length, _this interesting myth_ of
the Garden of Eden.” We hope to see it.

Well, here we have in plain English the whole story of the fall of man,
the origin of good and evil in this world, and the cause of all the
consequences which followed therefrom; the whole story of the Creation
in fact, as in another place that of the Deluge, set aside quietly
and easily, without a word of doubt, or difficulty, or hesitation, as
a myth. It would be interesting to know what Mr. Fiske does believe
on these points—but his book is to come. We trust he will take the
pains to set us right on the subject of the origin of man and of the
Creation generally. Of man we should judge him to have as high an
opinion as Mr. Darwin, when he explains his present condition as being
brought about by “that stupendous process of breeding which we call
civilization; which has strengthened the feelings by which we are
chiefly distinguished from the brutes, leaving _our primitive bestial
impulses_ to die for want of exercise, or checking in every possible
way their further expansion by legislative enactments. (Draw this to
its legitimate conclusion, and there is no such thing as morality, it
being merely synonymous with law or education.) But this process which
is transforming us from savages into civilized men is a very slow one;
and now and then there occur cases of what physiologists call atavism,
or _reversion to an ancestral type of character_.... Now and then
persons are born possessed of the bestial appetite and cravings of
primitive man, his fiendish cruelty, and his liking for human flesh.”

This is a Harvard professor who thus explains what people generally
accredit to the maxims of the Gospel and the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Morality is simply education or force, and evil is inherent in the
naturally brutal being, man, who, like Topsy, gradually “growed” up to
what he is.

It were easy to go on thus multiplying instances of the truth of our
observation, that Mr. Fiske reduces Christianity to a myth; but we
think there is enough proof already. We pass by many things, therefore,
where the author’s display of shallow learning is only equalled by his
flimsy remarks. In a note (p. 48), he would have us infer that the
Jews believed in a plurality of gods just as did the pagans, because
Elohim—God—is plural—a common use of the word even in the English
Version, as when God says, “Let us go down and confound their tongue,”
etc.; but the Jews certainly never interpreted it as meaning anything
else than the one God, whom they adored. It was merely a foreshadowing
of the doctrine of the Trinity. In another place, he informs us that
S. Ursula is Artemis and Aphrodite, S. Gertrude the heathen Holda. He
is evidently unaware that one of the most popular books of Catholic
devotion is written by the “heathen Holda.” Stupid inaccuracies of
this description are unaccountable. In any other person they would
indicate a mind inflated with that dangerous “little learning” which
Pope warns us against; in a Harvard “professor of philosophy,” they
doubtless take the form of Shakespeare’s sins against grammar and good
taste, and go down as “beauties.” “Angels—women with large wings”
(_sic_)—are kinsfolk of the werewolf family, and Christianity has
“_degraded_ the beneficent lightning-god, Thor,” into the “grotesque
mediæval devil.” Odin and other glorious divinities undergo a similar
hideous transformation under the “degrading” influence of Christianity.
In fact, Christianity is but a system of plagiarizing, and plagiarizing
which by no means improves on the old pagan superstitions. The devil is
really a good-natured sort of being, or was till Christianity came and
spoiled his temper and himself generally. Of course such a being never
existed except in the brain of superstitious people unendowed with
scientific faith, who were racking their brains to find out the meaning
of that eternal puzzle, darkness and light, so that they at length came
to embody darkness in the form of the devil, and light in the person of
God, or Jupiter, or Apollo, or William Tell. That is the plain English
of Mr. Fiske’s book.

Mr. Fiske seems to think that he has struck a new vein, and opened up
to the world a golden ore long hidden. His theory is as old as any
other; and he has only given us a poor rehash of what much cleverer
men than he have oversurfeited us with ages ago. Before attempting to
handle the subjects he has touched upon, it would be advisable to go
to school again, and he might thus be saved a lamentable display of
childish ignorance on points known to all the world, save apparently
to Mr. Fiske. In a very weak review of a most interesting and clever
book, _Juventus Mundi_, written by a scholar and a thinker, neither of
which titles we feel justified in applying to Mr. Fiske, this latter
gentleman remarks, with astonishment, that Mr. Gladstone draws an
analogy between the gods of heathendom and the God of Christianity;
in other words, between distorted truth and its first original. This,
again, is as old as the hills. _Prometheus_, for instance, has struck
all readers as a wonderful type of the Saviour; and so with other
gods and heroes of antiquity. Scholars are pleased to draw likenesses
between the characters of the fables of pagan antiquity and those of
the sacred Scriptures; such connection is by no means necessary to
prove the truth of Christianity and of the doctrines of Revelation.
Christianity is here, around us, living, real: we are in it. It is
clear, well defined, unchanging, distinct, a solemn and awful fact:
deal with _it_, study it, destroy it, if you can. It has no connection,
claims no connection, needs no connection, with paganism. It stands
alone, self-sufficient, for God is its centre. It embraces the world;
it rules nations; and the better the governments, the nearer they
approach to the observance of its codes. History hallows it; scientific
discovery only tends to confirm our faith in it. It is superseding all
things, as its Founder meant it should; and people have the impudence,
for it is nothing else, to come and tell us to-day, in out-of-the-way
notes in silly books, that this stupendous fact is a myth! We can only
say to them, _tolle, lege_!

It is easy for a man to sit down in his chair, and spin out a theory,
connecting the most distant objects together in his own mind. Thus
Mr. Fiske drives Tell back to the sun, or Ulysses, or Odysseus, as he
prefers to call him, for he takes kindly to what we may be pardoned
calling the _Grotesque_ etymology; and even in this, like all poor
imitators, goes beyond his master. Homer tells us Ulysses was a man,
a great traveller, who had seen many lands. Oh! no, says Mr. Fiske;
Homer made a great mistake; he did not know what he was talking about;
Ulysses was meant for the sun. And yet Mr. Fiske tells us that the
“minds of primitive men worked like our own, and, when they spoke of
the far-darting sun-god, they meant just what they said.” Why should
not this reasoning hold good for Ulysses, as well as for Apollo?

Why, we might take up the story of Mr. Stanley’s discovery of
Livingstone, and concoct a far better myth out of it than Mr. Fiske has
out of many of his materials. Livingstone, like Ulysses, is a man who
had seen many lands; he is hurried away and lost to the world in a dark
and fiery country—a land of demons and impenetrable burning deserts.
The world laments his loss, and Stanley, the youthful, the Dawn, goes
out to seek him, and, after the usual obstacles, finds him in the dark
land, clothed in rags, with a blue cap on his head, adorned with a gold
band, a long beard falling gray over his breast, surrounded by the dark
children of the desert. When that fabulous New Zealander sits on the
ruins of London Bridge, some future Professor Fiske will probably take
up this story of to-day, and weave a myth out of it as the present one
has done with Ulysses; but Mr. Fiske may remember that the prophet who
foretold the New Zealander in his incongruous position only did so to
serve as an example of the indestructibility of God’s church.

If he must refer everything back to light, why not go a little beyond
the sun to the _Lux Mundi_—the light which shineth in the darkness,
but which the darkness comprehended not? Light and fire run from the
beginning to the end of the New and Old Testaments, as typical of God.
The first thing God made was light; he spoke to Moses in a burning
bush; his angel accompanied his people in a cloud and a pillar of
light. Man cannot look upon his face and live, for the glory of it. Is
it possible that Mr. Fiske, who is so keen at connections, could miss
such palpable indications of the connection between the traditions he
has mentioned and Revelation, without being struck by it, unless he did
so intentionally?

Had we space, we could show by comparison that the very words he has
quoted from Indian and other traditions of the Michabo, the great white
One, of the origin of the world and the history of the Deluge, are
almost identical in phrase even with the Scriptures. From F. De Smet’s
interesting Indian sketches, appearing in the _Catholic Review_, we
find that the Indians adore the Great Medicine, who is, above all, the
All-powerful, and sacrifice to him through the sun and the thunder,
because the sun is his great servitor.

And as for the devil, whom Mr. Fiske finds such an amusing character
(happy man! may he never be undeceived!), it may make him laugh at us,
but, for our part, we have a very decided belief in his existence and
power to do harm; in fact, did we only discern a spice of something
stronger and more powerful than Mr. Fiske presents us in his book,
just the faintest flavor of the genuine article—real brimstone and
fire—we should have been led to refer its authorship to the very
personage whom Mr. Fiske so despises. As it is, the work is unworthy
of his Satanic majesty. He inspired the idea which animates it long
ago, but the present execution is by too weak a hand for his. In this
we find an indication that the idea is used up and gone beyond working
order—driven to death, in fact.

Superstition undoubtedly did exist in the middle ages; perhaps—for
we are not too ready to believe this age so very far superior in
many points to those days as is generally conceded; at all events,
the world, as the world, is materially even very little better off
than it then was, notwithstanding all our boasted science, and the
rest, and the days allotted to man are not lengthened—perhaps, then,
superstition did flourish at that time to a greater extent than it
does to-day; but what does that prove? Simply that Christianity, “that
stupendous process of breeding,” did not convert the world in a day.

Did superstition prevail to a greater or less degree than it did prior
to the introduction of Christianity, before the old Jewish order passed
away, and gave place to the new—to the religion which was no longer
to be restricted to a single nation, but which was to spread abroad,
to become Catholic, and embrace the world, the family of God’s human
creatures, within its bosom? Was it, so much of it as did exist, more
or less hideous in the supernatural figures with which it peoples the
universe? Were the Norse gods of blood and bestiality, Thor, and Odin,
and Friga, “degraded”? Could they be degraded? Was Venus degraded, or
Jupiter, or Bacchus, or the multitude of others, by being replaced by
the truth, by the light which was so long coming and expected of the
nations—by the Sun of Justice?

It was this bursting of the light of the world upon nations which
dispelled for ever the dark mists of superstition that had so long
hidden the creation from its Creator; this was the Sun the nations
dimly saw and adored; this was the victorious Conqueror who overcame
all obstacles by his own sufferings, and death, and sacrifice; who,
like Prometheus, “came to cast fire upon the earth,” and who died in
agony to save his fellows, and destroy the false Jove with his heaven
of immorality—Jesus Christ! at whose name “every knee shall bow.”

And the darkness was this very devil, the author of all evil, who fell,
freely and consciously, in eternal rebellion against God; who cannot
be destroyed, for God created him immortal; who uses the power still
left him, which was once heavenly, in order to lead into rebellion
all creation against the God he hates with an eternal hatred; who is
permitted by God to tempt man, for man is a free agent—God not having
endowed a mere machine with the breath of life, the breathing of his
spirit—and, if man falls, he falls freely and consciously as did Satan.

Here lay the puzzle of darkness and light, good and evil, right and
wrong. The world saw itself bounded everywhere by the impassable; by
its wickedness it had lost the clear knowledge of its God; it would
overleap those barriers, and reach him again. The craving of its heart
was eternal; it saw the marks of its God around it: “The heavens
declared the glory of God, and the firmament displayed the wonders of
his works.” Men felt the supernatural, and worshipped; but their eyes
were blinded, and, groping in the darkness for their God, they mistook
his enemy, and worshipped him.

Paganism was and is the worship of the devil. The evil one allows men
to worship him under whatever form they please, provided only they
rebel against God. Impurity, bestiality, drunkenness, intellectual
pride, all things that lead astray, are for him good; but the law
of God is one and unchangeable, the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever; and, therefore, though it is hard to kick against the goad, the
free-will of man whispers rebellion to him ever, for he finds God
everywhere.

What, then, dealt the death-blow to superstition? Was it scientific
faith, or the coming of Christ?

In order completely to fill a void, you must have something adequate.
The world through all the ages had this yearning for a something
wanting, this searching after a something lost. It felt the
supernatural, the beyond—it felt, but did not see. So each one made
him a religion of his own. To fill that eternal void, to make all one,
to satisfy the craving of the world, that void must be filled. But what
can fill it, save the supernatural? An infinite want can only be filled
by infinity. Jesus Christ came in form and with surroundings the very
reverse of what those who had waited most anxiously for him expected.
Consequently, their pride revolted, and they refused to accept the
Messiah. Nevertheless, no sooner was his doctrine made known, than
the world outside, the gropers in the darkness, felt the Sun; the
scales dropped from their eyes, the void was at length filled, the
craving satisfied; they saw their God, and knew him. Then superstition
ended, for they found a reason for every mystery in the all-powerful,
all-pervading God.

Had the world to wait for scientific faith to clear up its doubts and
give a reason for its longings and beliefs, superstition would still
reign paramount among men. What is scientific faith? What can it do?
That science has advanced since the days when men built the pyramids,
constructed cities whose ruins are the wonders of to-day, converted
the Eastern deserts into gardens, constructed the alphabet, built the
Parthenon, devised the geometrical figure, organized the sciences
of numbers, philosophy, the heavens, and set up leaning towers, we
concede; but the men who performed those wonders can scarcely be set
down as “knowing nothing of the laws of nature, nothing about physical
forces, nothing about the relations of cause and effect.” This age
has made an advance on them, it is true; but an advance utterly
disproportionate to the centuries which have rolled between; nay, in
some things it has retrograded.

Did people wait, then, for scientific faith to lift the veil from their
eyes, or was it the teachings of Christianity and the appearance of
Jesus Christ which lifted it? How much more has scientific faith taught
us than it taught the men who centuries ago, by their intimate and
accurate knowledge of natural causes, wrought those wonders touched
upon above? The supernatural still confronts us as it did them. Science
ends with the scientist. Can it tell him who he is, or why he is? Can
it touch the lightning, weigh the sun, reveal the mystery of life and
death? It can tell us we live and we die; that, when such or such a
circumstance occurs, what we call life is over. But can it tell us what
is life, whence it came, whither it goes? what the world is, who made
it, why it was made? what the seed is, why it grows up into a tree,
why the leaves sprout from the hard wood, who set all this principle
of life going, and why? Here lies the mystery that puzzled men; here
science stops, and God reveals himself: it is awed into silence, and
listens for his voice.

On reading this article once more, the thought has occurred to
the writer that objection may be taken to its tone as not exactly
in accordance with that myth of myths which goes by the name of
“amenities of literature.” Catholics very rarely come across this
pleasing illusion in the columns of adverse writers. But even should
this charge be well grounded, it is idle for Catholics to wrap what
they have to say in wadding, lest it fall too roughly on the delicate
sensibilities of people who undertake to insult a religion of which
they know nothing. Mr. Fiske is only a type of a class to whom is
entrusted the sacred mission of educating the youth of this country,
those particularly whose means admit of the highest education, and from
whom, therefore, much should be expected. Men wonder at the immorality
of our youth—the young man of society of to-day. Why wonder, when his
professors teach him that morality is a name, Christianity a fable, and
all religion a sham? We cannot affect to toy when the stakes played for
are so high. The morality of the coming race depends on the education
it receives. When, therefore, we find men, set in high places in our
foremost universities, abusing their position, and striving by every
means in their power to sap and undermine Christian education, we
think studious phrases idle and polished courtesy thrown away. Insult
and evil must be met with other weapons. If Mr. Fiske wishes to know
whether Christianity is a myth or not, let him sit down and study
before pronouncing. When he has sought and inquired earnestly, he will
find plenty to furnish him with the right answer.


HEAVEN.

WHAT man that is journeying abroad, doth not hasten backward to his
native land? Who that is speeding a voyage toward them he loves, longs
not with more ardor for a prosperous wind, that so he may embrace his
friends the sooner?... It is a large and loving company who expect us
there: parents, brothers, children, a manifold and numerous assemblage
longing after us, who, having security of their own immortality,
still feel anxious for our salvation.... Ah! perfect and perpetual
bliss! There is the glorious company of the apostles; there is the
assembly of prophets exulting; there is the innumerable multitude of
martyrs, crowned after their victory of strife and passion; there are
virgins triumphant, who have overcome, by vigor of continency, the
concupiscence of the flesh and body.... To these, dearest brethren, let
us with eager longings hasten: let it be the portion which we desire,
speedily to be among them, speedily to be gone to Christ. God behold
this thought of ours! This purpose of our mind and faith may the Lord
Christ witness!—who will make the recompenses of his glory the larger
according as man’s longings after him have been the stronger.—_S.
Cyprian._


DIES IRÆ.

  Day of Doom! O day of terror!
  Prophet’s word, and Sibyl’s finger
  Point to one dread day of anger,

  When the skies shall warp and wither,
  Ocean shrink and dry together,
  Solid earth consume to cinder.

  Day of nature’s dissolution,
  Day of final retribution—
  Some to joy, and some to sorrow.

  Hark! the trumpet-blast terrific.
  How the dead, in mingled panic,
  Gather to the dread assizes!

  Death shall stand aghast, and Nature,
  When from dust the summoned creature
  Rises trembling to make answer.

  Ah, the wonder! oh, the wailing!
  When the heavens above unveiling,
  Show the Judge of all descending.

  Now begins the awful session.
  Sinner, make thy full confession;
  Naught avails the least evasion.

  Lo, the Book of Doom! each action,
  Secret sin, or bold transgression,
  Idle word, foul thought, is noted.

  Strictest justice is accorded;
  Grace to gracious deed afforded,
  Death to deadly sin awarded.

  Oh! where saints must fear and tremble,
  Could I stand the test, thus sinful?
  Could I find a plea for pardon?

  Could an advocate avail me?
  Pleas and advocates all fail me.
  Jesus! thou alone canst save me.

  Mighty Monarch! oh, remember
  That blest day of blest December—
  ‘Twas for me the Virgin bore thee.

  Seeking me, beside the fountain
  Thou didst rest thee; to the mountain,
  For my sake, thou didst betake thee;

  On that dear cross, to redeem me,
  Thou didst hang. Lord! is it seemly,
  So much costing, I should perish?

  Thou didst smile on Mary’s unction,
  Tearful love, and deep compunction,
  On the dying thief’s confession.

  Like them guilty, like them grieving,
  Like them loving, and believing,
  Lord! show me a like compassion.

  To thy mercy I confide me;
  From thy justice, Saviour, hide me,
  Ere that day of dread accounting.

  Oh, that day of strange uprising!
  Oh, that solemn criticising!
  Oh, that sentence past reversal!

  Peace to thee! departed brother,
  Tenant once of this cold clay!
  Jesus! give him rest alway. Amen.

  C. W.




WOMAN AS A BREAD-WINNER.

IN all things that are not of precept, we must needs, if we wish to
influence the world, take the world as it is. We may deplore that the
stream has passed the romantic scenery through which its course once
flowed, but we are powerless to turn the current back. Indeed, its
oncoming strength is so ominous that no wise man can stand long on its
banks without seeing the urgent need of providing fresh outlets for
its impetuosity, lest it should come upon him unawares, and sweep him
away in a roaring inundation. The mental ferment of our age is this
stream which demands of us new channels whereon to spend its exuberant
activity; and it perhaps depends upon Catholic action whether the new
development shall be a blessing or a curse. The church knows that her
place is in the van of humanity, and to each young century she turns
her speedy encouragement, bidding it go forth and do its allotted
work under her banner. She hallows all discoveries, and knits them to
herself by the services she causes them to render to the truth, and, a
bolder innovator than the veriest sceptic, she opens her arms to every
development whose capabilities may be turned to a divine account. We
may depend upon this: that no new thing or idea which does not at once
draw upon itself the church’s approving notice, is worth more than a
passing thought. She lets the ephemeral go by, and fixes her eyes only
on the stable and the solid. More than that, all that is claimed as new
and good is contained or foreshadowed somewhere within her pale, either
in the hidden achievements of her sons, or in the written record of her
attitude towards human progress.

Now, the position of woman is a topic universally discussed, and one
which it has become the fashion to look upon as the pet offspring
of this particular century. There are two questions involved in the
discussion: one theoretical, upon which we have already touched, and
one practical. The former treats of the abstract right of equality
between man and woman, the latter (more sensibly) of the employment of
women, and of their fitness for bread-winning purposes. Woman has so
many spheres that it is difficult to mass her duties and rights in one
sweeping code; and, though her peculiar gift of home ministry is the
one which renders her most amiable in the eyes of the opposite sex,
it should be remembered that it is this very domesticity which often
obliges her to take to self-supporting labor. In this, how far superior
is womanhood to manhood! For whereas a man’s chief thought when
entering a profession or learning a trade is for his own advancement
and pecuniary success in life, a woman’s intention when working for her
bread is almost invariably the support of one weaker than herself, or
the lightening of the burden already borne by the other. In this sense,
we may say that woman is more heroic than man, constrained as she is by
the very nobility of her nature to ennoble the lowest things with which
necessity brings her in contact. Work in itself, simply as occupation
and discipline, is a noble thing and the fulfilment of the divine
law, but when undertaken with a motive such as the support of aged
parents and of sick children, or the reparation of an act of dishonesty
committed by a dishonorable member of the family, it rises even to
sublimity. Women are not exempt from the law of labor, though it has
been an immemorial custom that their fathers, brothers, and husbands
should shield them from its heaviest penalties. Work, in a mitigated
sense, has always been the lot of woman, but among Christians it is so
hallowed as to be rather a privilege than a yoke. In heathen nations,
woman’s work was merely that of a female animal, necessarily not quite
so hard as man’s, but only lighter in consideration of her physical
powers, and certainly not in reverence for her rightful dignity. It
was not the wife and mother who was thought of then: it was the female
beast of burden, at most the favorite of the hour. Judaism, the dawn of
a broader and holier dispensation, naturally betrayed its divine origin
by protecting the person and property and regulating the labor of
woman, thereby elevating drudgery into home duties, and raising to the
dignity of a contracting party one who had been hitherto but a servile
tool. Christianity went a step further, and threw open the doors of the
temple to woman, suffering her to assume every position her mental or
moral ambition led her to desire, save the office of the priesthood.
Judaism had sanctified and glorified marriage by looking upon every
union as a possible link in the future genealogy of the Messiah; and
the perfection of the Hebrew ideal culminated in Mary, the veritable
human mother of the Eternal Word. But Christianity had an additional
crown to bestow on womanhood, and, unlike Judaism, instead of leading
up to this new perfection, it first reared its ideal, and then called
upon all unborn generations to follow it as closely as might be. Thus
the two systems, marriage and virginity, converged for one miraculous
moment in the stainless person of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and since
after that unique motherhood there could be no aspiring to become an
earthly ancestor of the Promised One, a new relationship with God—that
of Spouse—came to be the highest honor attainable by womanhood. Step
by step, God had brought about woman’s enfranchisement, had united in
his law the dignity with which the Jews had invested her, and a new,
mysterious, unearthly dignity which he alone can understand, and had,
in one word, made perfection easy of attainment by her. Her work, too,
necessarily came under this ennobling process, and she can look back
with pride to the example of the typical woman—the last perfect Jewish
matron, the first perfect Christian virgin—and see the daughter of
kings and the Mother of God stooping to lowly household duties.

The Old and New Testament are full of circumstances or sayings with
reference to the subject of woman’s work. Although it is not expressly
mentioned in the curse pronounced on Adam after the Fall, there can
be little doubt that it is included in it. The race of man was there
doomed to earn its bread by the sweat of its brow, and though a special
punishment was also awarded the offending “mother of all the living,”
still she seems to have been included in the general curse of labor.
Events have proved this, and so long and regular a succession of events
must needs have had a deeper reason than mere temporal expediency.
In the history of Jacob and his two wives, we see a plain reference
to the importance of woman in a question of wages and inheritance.
Jacob, after serving his father-in-law Laban for twenty years,
departs secretly, but before doing so takes counsel with his wives,
and puts his case before them, calling them to witness that Laban
has overreached him and striven to do him harm. Their answer is as
practical as could be wished for: they complain of their father having
wasted their lawful inheritance and having counted them as strangers,
while they commend Jacob for championing their rights by taking, as the
Lord had commanded, all that was otherwise denied them.

In the history of the infant Moses, Pharaoh’s daughter makes a regular
engagement with the child’s unknown mother “to nurse him for her, and
she would give her _her wages_.” It was a fair contract, by which the
Hebrew woman earned an equivalent for her services as nurse.

Then, again, we have Anna, the wife of Tobias, a genuine bread-winner,
though perhaps a lesser example of patience than she is of energy.
“Now, Anna his wife went daily to weaving work, and she brought home
what she could get for their living by the labor of her hands.”[71]
The picture of her domestic trials is pathetic, and her husband seems
to have had but a poor opinion of her discretion, for he asked her one
day, when she had brought home a young kid, whether she were sure that
it was not stolen? Her answer was certainly petulant, and consisted of
what many modern wives would say under the same provocation, but it was
ungrateful towards God. Human nature was much the same then as it is
now; and one charm of the old Bible narratives lies just in this, that
they _are_ so naïvely human. In the Book of Ecclesiasticus we read: “He
created of him [man] a helpmate like to himself: he gave _them_ counsel
and a tongue, and eyes, and ears, and a heart to devise....”[72] The
woman is here expressly included in the intellectual benefits heaped
upon man, and it is contrary to the whole spirit of the Scriptures to
suppose that these gifts were in her merely ornamental. Matters of
foresight, discretion, and business evidently come under the head of
things to be “devised.” Again, a little further on we find that “a
good wife is a _good portion_,” and “the grace of a diligent woman
shall delight her husband and shall _fat his bones_.”[73] By this is
meant “increase his substance,” which a woman can do in two ways—by
husbanding her means, or earning something herself. Even if the
“diligent woman” gave her husband nothing but counsel, that in itself
would be a material help: “A _prudent_ wife is from the Lord.”[74]

To guard against the abuses of unremunerated labor, to which through
poverty or improvidence the Hebrews might be subjected, Moses provided
the law of the seventh year of remission and the fiftieth of jubilee.
“Thou shalt not oppress him with the service of bond-servants, but he
shall be as a _hireling_ and a _sojourner_,” and “_his wages_ being
allowed for which he served before.”[75] With regard to women, the
laws were the same. “When thy brother a Hebrew man or Hebrew _woman_
is sold to thee and hath served thee six years, in the seventh year
thou shalt let him go free. And when thou sendest him out free, _thou
shalt not let him go away empty_; but shalt give him for his way out
of thy flocks, and out of thy barn-floor and thy wine-press,”[76] and
it is specially recommended that bondmen and bondwomen should not
be of the chosen race, but of the “nations around” the Hebrews. As
to the responsibility of women concerning vows, we read that a woman
under the power of her father or husband shall be bound to fulfil a
vow contingently on the consent of her superior, but an independent
woman is bound like a man: “The widow, and she that is divorced, _shall
fulfil whatsoever_ they vow.”[77] This argues at least a recognition
of woman’s full powers of reasoning, choice, and accountability, all
of which are involved in the serious matter of a vow. In the Gospel
of S. Luke, there is a passing allusion to female manual labor in the
parable that foretells Christ’s second coming: “_Two women_ shall be
_grinding_ together, the one shall be taken and the other left”—which
allusion is not meaningless. All through the New Testament, additional
light is thrown on the figurative expressions by the common customs of
the country during our Lord’s human life in Judea, and so we may infer
that in those days women frequently helped their husbands in various
agricultural pursuits.

Martha, the sister of Lazarus, has always been looked upon as a
type of active, busy life, according to our Lord’s words, “Thou
art troubled about many things.” But this was not wholly meant as
a rebuke, for there is a great difference between being _troubled_
and being _absorbed_ by worldly matters. Some among us must bear the
domestic burden, in order that others may have the leisure needed for
contemplation. Their place in the world is none the less holy because
it is not the most perfect, for if there were no rungs to the ladder
but the topmost one, how would it be possible to reach heaven? The
workers of this world have a mission as well as the seers, and Martha
holds almost as high a place in heaven as her sister who chose “the
better part.” In the Acts of the Apostles, it is related that S.
Paul, going out of the gates of Philippi and seeing there some women
assembled, spoke to them, whereupon “a certain woman named Lydia, _a
seller of purple_ of the city of Thyatira ... did hear ... and when
she was baptized, _and her household_, she besought us, saying: ...
come into my _house_ and abide there. And she constrained us.”[78]
This woman must doubtless have been sufficiently well-off, and was
most likely a widow or an unmarried woman. Her business, which she
probably conducted herself, since she is distinguished by the epithet
“a seller of purple,” must have brought her affluence, for her house
and household are specially mentioned, and it strikes us also as a
proof of her self-supporting and successful operations, that, being of
the city of Thyatira, she had travelled to Philippi and established a
home for herself within its walls. S. Paul and Silas are put in prison
and freed again while in Philippi, and as soon as they leave their
confinement, it is to Lydia’s house that they again repair. “And they
went out of the prison, and entered into the house of Lydia; and having
seen the brethren, they comforted them and departed.”[79] The natural
inference is that the house of the generous “seller of purple” was the
centre, for the time being, of the little Christian community; that
here were the assemblies held and religious ceremonies performed; and
that Lydia, in fact, gave up her dwelling to be practically a school
and church. Her riches were her own; legitimately accumulated by an
ordinary trade. We are told nothing of her origin, her education, her
social position; she appears only as a “seller of purple” and a docile
recipient of God’s Word. There was probably nothing at all wonderful
about her—she was the ordinary business woman of her day: thrifty,
since she had worked to so successful a purpose—simple-minded,
since she so quickly believed the Word of God—generous, since she
“constrained” the Apostles to dwell with her. S. Paul, who found in
women such powerful auxiliaries, speaks in his Epistle to the Romans
of “Phœbe, our sister in the ministry of the church [a deaconess] ...
that you assist her in whatsoever _business_ she shall have need of
you: for she also _hath assisted many_.”[80] Now, this clearly points
to her having, or having had, either great possessions, which must have
entailed many cares of management, or great zeal in stirring up others
who were wealthier, which zeal also proves a capability for affairs.
But let us turn back to yet more emphatic Scriptural proof that woman
is noways debarred from a certain share in even great enterprises,
so long as her modesty is not endangered by it. Judith, the queenly
widow, occupied a position of this kind. “And her husband left her
great riches, and very many servants, and large possessions of herds
and oxen.”[81] The sequel of Judith’s history showed that she was as
wise as she was rich, and that prudence and discretion were her most
conspicuous gifts. She must have had great powers of government, and
an eye for ruling the many subordinates whom she probably employed
in the management of her possessions. She was no doubt a mother and
a guardian to her servants, and, although young and beautiful, as
the Scripture tells us she was, yet possessed a gravity and dignity
beyond her years. Her mind was not set upon the frivolities of social
life, and she gave herself much to prayer and fasting, abiding “shut
up with her maids” in an upper chamber of her house. It is a great
mistake to suppose that piety interferes with business habits in either
man or woman. The legitimate cares of life are perfectly compatible
with an unusual degree of spirituality, indeed, in many cases such
cares become absolute duties. The spiritual life reacts upon the
outer sphere of business relations, and while eliminating from it all
tendency to mere selfish aggrandizement, enhances and hallows the
worldly qualities requisite to its successful development. The world
needs holy and grave influences to leaven its pursuits in every field,
whether artistic, literary, or commercial, and while women can impart
to every lawful calling into which they enter that natural grace and
refinement which is their birthright, they should also strive to infuse
into it a supernatural influence. In the Book of Proverbs,[82] we read
the memorable description of the “wise woman,” and nothing is further
removed than this Scripture ideal from the various types of modern
womanhood which, in the clamor of the present questions as to woman’s
place and proper employment, have terrified the sight and darkened
the understanding of observers. Of her devotion to her husband, it is
said that “his heart trusteth in her, _and he shall have no need of
spoils_.” She is not of that aggressive, self-protecting type with
which we are (for our sins) familiar; she is not of those to whom a
husband is an appendage, insignificant at all times, removable at
any; she is not of the independent sisterhood who take their passions
for inspirations and their caprices for rules. Her influence must
mightily serve her husband’s lawful interests, for we are told that “he
is honorable in the gates when he sitteth among the senators of the
land.” This points to the wise woman’s high social position, no doubt
more due to her efforts, her industry, and her prudence, than simply
to her noble birth. She might—like many of her modern sisters—have
been born in the more fortunate walks of life, she might have been
educated with care and assiduity, she might have been taught that
perfect command of domestic details which secures an orderly and
attractive household, she might even have acquired that unconscious
good-breeding that marks the well-born and gently nurtured all over
the civilized world; and yet with all these advantages she might still
have failed to take a place in life—she might still have remained a
social nonentity. How many such worthy and estimable blanks are there
not in this world, in all ranks and shades of social standing! But the
model woman of the Scripture has risen above this level of neglected
or barren opportunities, and bears away the first honors of the race
of life, simply because she is _wise_. The prudence of her counsels,
shown in the ordering of her well-appointed household, her bargains and
her forethought, her stores of bread, linen, and wool, redound to her
husband’s honor; and when he “sitteth among the senators” he is known
as possessing a treasure that doubles all his wealth, and is herself
worth all his riches thrice doubled. But she is not entirely dependent
on him in her transactions, for we see that “she hath considered a
field and bought it; with the fruit of her hands she hath planted a
vineyard.” This bears very closely on our subject, and proves how
far the Scriptures hold a woman competent to think, speculate, work,
and achieve, unassisted by man. “She hath tasted and seen that her
traffic is good: ... she made fine linen and sold it, ... and hath
not eaten her bread idle.” Now, all this points to more than mere
domestic thrift. Here we see woman, not as a divorced wife, not as an
aggressive spinster, not as a frivolous social ornament, not as a mere
household drudge, but woman as a responsible being, with grave duties
and a wide field of action, taking a place in the world fully equal to
and yet utterly distinct from that of a man. She considers, she buys,
she sells, she rules, yet all the while she is solicitous for her
“maidens,” charitable and gentle to the poor, beloved by her husband,
and blessed by her children. She appears here as judged by the real
standard of her real worth. “Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain;
the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the
fruit of her hands; and let her works praise her in the gates.”

So that she is not only to earn, but to enjoy. She is to have a stake
in the world, and a voice in matters of importance—she “opens her
mouth in wisdom, and the law of clemency is on her tongue.” Her opinion
is to be sought, considered, followed; her example is to be looked upon
with reverence, and criticism is to merge into admiration. Her position
is to be that of an arbiter and referee, neither sinking to that of
a petted child nor drifting into that of an unmated, unloved, and
defiant waif. It is not from a band of social outlaws, whose common
exile links them in common defence, that she is to seek support; but
in the circle of her own home, in the centre where God and nature have
placed her, she is to take the helm and gracefully mount the throne. No
violence and no straining after impossible immunities are to disfigure
her calm attitude of secure headship, and, even if her advice be
disregarded, time and not she herself must vindicate its wisdom.

It may be objected that all this is very well in theory, and would work
admirably if all women were _wise_, and all men worthy of them. But
who does not know that ideals will never become healthful influences
unless translated into facts, and that theories will never succeed in
bettering the world unless exemplified here and there in trial cases?
Would the _theory_ of Christianity be worth anything to the outside
world unless realized in the daily life of its Founder and in the model
existences of thousands of saints? It is impossible that anything
should take hold of the human mind and mould it to new perfections
before it has been put into tangible shape, and it is equally
impossible in our fallen state that _all_ the world should be converted
at once into so many perfect entities. Yet because all men will not
become saints, because all cannot write like Shakespeare, paint like
Raphael, or compose like Beethoven, are religion, poetry, and art to
be eschewed by lower aspirants, and relegated to the barren region of
things to be admired but not imitated? If, because absolute perfection
was never attainable by man, every man had therefore resigned himself
to a hopeless contemplation of the fine possibilities of Christianity,
we should have had no Anthony, no Jerome, no Augustine. If, later on,
because it was impossible to reform the _whole_ world and strike at
the root of _every_ abuse, the pontiffs had calmly looked on while
Christendom crumbled away, we should have had no Gregory the Great,
no Hildebrand, no Innocent III., no Sixtus V. Again, if an inflexible
adherence to rule were the only point worth aiming at, should we have
had a Dominic, a Teresa, a Francis Xavier, a Philip Neri, a Vincent
of Paul? In this world there are many experiments—tentative steps
leading to higher things, and opening doors of possibility to hitherto
untried systems. Even in the church, where all else is immovable,
there is constant _human_ progress, and if here or there one soldier
falls at his post—not through lack of enthusiasm, but through the
force of adverse circumstances, or the darkness of mind which still
shrouds his contemporaries while he himself has prematurely pierced
beyond it—still the great search after perfection, the great work of
Christian development, rolls on. So it is in the world, in art, in
philosophy, in science, in society. What if woman’s position never
has been made absolutely and securely certain? The church has always
theoretically pointed it out, and has often secured its partial
realization within her pale; it remains for the world to open its eyes,
and extend those barriers of the church to the furthest limits of
civilization, taking with it those improvements which it has so long
groped for in its wilful darkness, and which all the time have been
steadily in operation in the sanctuary of the old church.

So that it is idle to object that all we have said about woman’s work,
reward, and position is “very well in theory.” If a few pioneers will
do for the system what companies or even enterprising individuals
are ever ready to do for any material scheme that presents but the
slightest chance of success, the world would soon see the noblest
reform of all achieved in the very core of society. Nay, we will say
more: the pioneers _are_ there, the reform _is_ going on; only let the
busy, sceptical world stop a moment and look into the silent, gigantic
work ever renewing its strength in the church; let it pause and see
homes where woman, either as manager or worker, holds her supreme
rod of gentle authority; let it see the maiden toiling cheerfully
for her aged parents, or bringing home food and clothes to helpless
little sisters or ailing brothers—the wife helping and encouraging
the husband, and eking out by skilful management a pittance into an
income, and evolving comfort out of what in careless hands could hardly
compass necessaries; the widow keeping her sacred state, unassailed by
calumny, through the earnings which secure her privacy, or the widowed
mother joyfully burdened with the twofold legacy that gives her both
an object to live for and a memory to live in. Hidden homes these may
be, poor homes they almost all are—homes bounded by the four walls of
one squalid room, homes cramped in the garrets of tenement-houses or
saddened by the dreary respectability of furnished lodgings, but none
the less precious in the sight of the angels, and an example in the
sight of men.

We have spoken much of the Scriptural conception of woman as a
bread-winner, because upon this as a solid foundation we can build up
the further development of such a woman’s position. Everything that is
compatible with the _spirit_ of this conception may be said, in broad
comprehensiveness, to be allowable in woman. Everything that can be
referred to this ideal, as naturally flowing therefrom, is admissible
in her relations with the great working hive of mankind. Intellectual
labor especially is befitting to her, within the limits prescribed
by modesty. Manual labor, especially agricultural or mining, is
proportionately less fitting, both because of her physical weakness and
more still because of the too free association with men which it often
necessitates. Domestic labor, where this is not unreasonably heavy, is
certainly within her sphere—and for this no better reason can be given
than that the women of patriarchal times thought domestic labor no
shame.

With this view, we say that as many openings for the employment of
woman as can possibly be made, consistently with delicacy and womanly
modesty, should be speedily contrived. No one need fear that such
openings will deprive us of necessary comforts in the way of domestic
attendance; there will always be a residuum of womankind to whom
service will be the most natural and desirable outlet, to whom in fact
it will be the only career which will give scope to the capacities
they have. This will be the least difficulty; the real problem will
always remain rather on the other side—that is, as to how many
women can be redeemed from the bondage of circumstances by any known
method of redemption. It is appalling to think of the many women,
delicate-minded, earnest, persevering, who see in their womanhood,
which should be their crown and their boast, only the barrier to their
aspirations, the prison-door of their capabilities. It is terrible
to reckon the number of women who lose themselves, and wander away
from their place in society, either through the door of open shame
or through the only less revolting path of that which is called but
is not marriage; or visionary, defiant “independence.” How many
fallen women sadly excuse themselves by saying that they could find
no work to do, and yet could not bear to starve! On the other hand,
in women who have obviated that degradation by leaping into another,
we see the inevitable action of the narrow-mindedness of the world
upon an undisciplined nature. Women are often accused of being always
in extremes, and the accusation, in the case of women untrained by
religious influences, is in the main true, although it may as well be
said that the fact holds equally good with men who are not restrained
by such influences. So, between open degradation and blatant “woman’s
rightism,” the mind of the untutored woman will almost certainly,
except by a happy chance, find no mean.

Is this picture overdrawn? We are ready to affirm again and again
that it is not; the annals of society scandals and the records of the
divorce courts show that it is not; for what difference is there but a
despicable and conventional one between the legalized re-marriage of a
guilty woman to her seducer, and the illegal union of so many unhappy
couples whose relations it is a breach of propriety even to mention?

This is womanhood outside the church. It is no more a fancy picture
than that other blessed one of the homes we have already praised, the
homes of honest work and perfect peace. The world, to secure a nation
of women bred in such homes, must turn to the church, and ask her to
teach it the secret of such womanhood. The secret is in the Gospels,
in the old hallowed traditions of the Hebrews, and in the fulfilled
evangelical counsels. Voluntary poverty is the safeguard of holy and
allowable wealth; voluntary obedience is the counterpart of lawful
freedom; voluntary chastity is the hidden grace that obtains for others
wedded love and a grave Christian home. The hostages of humanity are
praying in the cloisters for the commendable domestic happiness of
their numerous brethren, and, in proportion as the world scorns their
sacrifice, so does it lose the fruit of their prayers.

We have said that woman’s work should be decided, God willing, by her
capabilities. This is to say that more ways should be open to her
than are open now to improve the talents God may have given her. In a
great measure she can, and does, open these ways for herself, and an
energetic nature of course will, like water, sooner or later “find its
own level.” Still, many who have mental powers have little strength
in battling with life, and might be helped if their luckier sisters
would be a little less selfish in their easily acquired security.
Work means self-respect, and self-respect means success. There is no
one so proud as the woman who knows her own worth, and lifts herself
by this knowledge high above all sordid temptations. She will be
a good wife, for she will choose no man for a husband save on the
lofty principle of his own worthiness of her, while her estimate of
herself will unconsciously become his also. She will be a tribunal to
herself and to him, and the slightest wrong action or paltry motive
in either will take, in the eyes of the other, the proportions of a
blot on their self-esteem. She will be a good mother, for her standard
of superiority will be the first her children will know, and with
them it will be inseparably blent with their personal affection for
their mother. The home will thus be created on a footing that years
will strengthen as they pass, and the austere yet happy gravity of
a Christian household will become a hereditary tradition with the
children. But for all this, the basis of work is wanted—work of some
sort, voluntary occupation or necessary drudgery, it matters little.
It is the discipline, not the fact, of work which is essential, and in
this sense the rich and high-born may be as hard workers as the poor
seamstress or the factory-girl. Yet, since this labor question touches
the poor chiefly, it is for them we would chiefly speak. Woman’s work
is circumscribed by her physical powers, man’s is not. Therefore, in
all things that a woman can do as well as a man (and of course in all
those which she can do better), the preference should be given to her.
There are many trades in which men cut not only a very useless but a
most ridiculous figure, and which the fittingness of things would point
out as woman’s proper field. Everything relating to feminine clothing
comes under this head; and were this department wholly given over to
women, it would at once relieve the poverty and shield the virtue of
many homes, and also spare the public the absurd spectacle of strong
men engaged in handling delicate ribbons and filmy laces. Printing
and kindred trades have been found practicable for women, and we know
that watchmaking and jewellery work are also accessible to the “weaker
vessel.” Still, it has at present gone no further than this, that
women are associated with men in many employments. Now, we could wish
that there should be many trades of which they would have an exclusive
monopoly. In this we think there would be no inconvenience; at any
rate, no one could assert that there was until the system had been
given a fair trial.

Society, in its present state of godless disorganization, not only
affords very little help to women who are eager and willing to help
themselves, but positively, despite the loud boasting of the century
as having originated “woman-reform,” places barriers in their way.
For what else is it but a barrier to honest advancement that, when a
respectable and virtuous woman of pleasing appearance goes to apply for
some desirable situation offered by advertisement, she is often, very
often, insulted by disgusting propositions, and her very expressions
of indignant surprise put down as a part skilfully played by her
before the inevitable surrender? This has been repeatedly done, in
many cases successfully, for precautions had been taken beforehand
to cut off the victim’s retreat and drown her cries; in others, when
cowardice, the twin-sister of vice, has shrunk from the determined
attitude of a virtuous woman at bay, the effort has happily failed.
The public papers have sometimes—with their proverbial inefficiency
and spasmodic, theatrical manner of showing up an abuse they know it
will pay better to speak of than to act against—taken in hand this
outrage to civilization, and published letters from the aggrieved women
detailing the attempted insult, but how many more women, sensitive and
gentle, shrink with horror from putting into print an experience they
would gladly blot from their memory! It will be asked, what remedy can
be devised for this? Immediate remedy, perhaps none; but remotely,
the remedy of a newly formed habit of regarding women with at least
the same respect as men who earn their daily bread. Physical weakness
will always be an incentive to wicked men to insult unprotected
women—that is to say, the vices of fallen human nature will never be
wholly blotted out; and in this juncture, as in all others, the real
remedy is the influence and authority of the church. Nowhere more than
in Italy—that maligned country in which Protestants refuse to see
anything save the last stage of corruption brought on by an “effete
priesthood and a degraded religion”—is that touching charity known of
portioning poor girls and affording them temporary refuge while out of
employment. In Rome, this was one of the foremost Papal charities; the
Holy Father took an especial personal interest in it; the Roman ladies
vied with each other in enlarging the numbers of its recipients and
adding to the fund provided for its continuance. In Venice, it used
to be the affair of the Doge, who was conventionally father to all
the dowerless, and the sworn protector of impoverished and threatened
innocence. Many saints have made this their favorite charity, and many
Italian marriages in the higher grades of life are accompanied by
this crowning token of Christian brotherhood—the portioning and safe
marrying of a poor young girl who might have otherwise fallen a victim
to the licentiousness of some professional _roué_.

While it is to be deplored that the openings for female employment
should still be so restricted, it is still more to be lamented
that there are actually employments in which female labor is most
unwarrantably used. In mining districts, this is peculiarly the case.
There men and women work promiscuously, often with very little clothing
on, and with still less sense of decency and morality. Little girls are
brought up there with no knowledge of themselves as responsible moral
agents, and conscious only that their work is not quite so valuable
because their muscles are not quite so strong as those of their
companions. Ignorance of religion, of moral restraints, and of social
decencies, combine to make of these immortal beings only lithe savages,
less enduring than the negro, less clever than the Indian. For the
white race in some sense seems born to civilization, and when removed
from civilizing influences relapses into far more brutal savageness
than others. Again, we find the problem only solvable through the
influence of the church; for she who originally drew together the
nomad hordes of the North and East, and gathered from their ranks
the founders of empires, the lawgivers of her own system, and the
discoverers of the New World, is still the only mistress the dominant
race which she once civilized will ever again acknowledge. Christendom
has been rent in twain, and the Christian nations deprived of the bond
that once knit them in one vast confederation and unity of interests;
and until this whole has been restored, barbarism will struggle
periodically to the surface, and strive to regain that ascendency it
lost more than a thousand years ago. The abuses and horrors of female
labor in mining districts are a blot upon civilization which never
had any existence before the recent disruption of Christendom; for,
wherever an abuse reared its serpent head, the church was at least
there to protest, and exert her moral influence if not material force.
It is idle to object that she did not, as a matter of fact, quell all
abuses; this objection might be urged against the apparently frustrated
mission of our Lord himself, as far as immediate tangible reforms
were concerned, but the essential fact stands, that as long as the
church’s authority remained undisputed there was at least in the world
one tribunal which, being the acknowledged visible representative of
God, could brand beyond appeal all encroachments on the rights of the
defenceless, and wither the plans of cunning and cruelty against the
poor. To those defended, this was a consolation; to those upbraided, it
was at least a secret dread.

Having said so much upon the question of woman’s position as a
bread-winner, we can only end by acknowledging that whatever is to
be done will have to be done in fragments, and under the auspices
of private enterprise alone. We cannot expect that in the present
condition of the world any but individual efforts will be made for the
advancement of the weaker sex, nor can we anticipate any but partial
and isolated results. But, nevertheless, these efforts will not lack
their reward, and we, who in the eyes of the world are now working in
the dark, can be content with the knowledge that from these disjointed
earthly efforts God is silently building up a great spiritual temple
of rescued souls. It may be that we never shall succeed but in part,
but this is the fate of all workers at a perfect system, and need not
dismay us in the least. Theologians say that if the merits of our
Lord’s Incarnation and Passion had redeemed but the single soul of his
Blessed Mother, still such unheard-of merits would not therefore have
been in the least superfluously applied; and in the same way may we
humbly think of ourselves, that if each life spent in the effort of
bettering the condition and widening the intellectual horizon of woman
had no result save in the increased welfare of one individual, still
the labor of such a life would not have been in vain.




“ABRAHAM”—“ABRON”—“AUBURN.”

A SHAKESPEARIAN EXCURSUS.

_Merc._—“Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim.”—_Romeo and
Juliet_, act ii. sc. I.[83]

CERTAINLY, this very singular prefix to the ordinary appellation of
the god of love suggests difficulties of interpretation not easy of
solution. It would appear to be one of those cant phrases familiar
enough, we may presume, at a certain period, for, if not readily to
be understood, the poet was unlikely to make use of it in such a
connection. But the reason for its application has passed out of mind,
and all the commentators have been at a loss to discover its meaning.
Mr. Singer, editor of a well-known edition of the poet’s plays,
disposes of the embarrassment in a manner equally summary and, as it
seems to us, unsatisfactory. Accepting the suggestion of Mr. Upton,
another commentator, that the word “Abraham” should be “Adam,” these
critics agree in conferring upon Cupid a prænomen which it is clear
neither Shakespeare nor his early editors affixed to the name by which
he is usually known. It is equally certain that no other writer has
ever employed the term “Adam” in such a way. In this state of the case,
we seem still left to seek the meaning of the word “Abraham,” as thus
used. In order to exhibit the whole merits of the question, let us
subjoin the note of Mr. Singer in reference to it, and also that of Mr.
Richard Grant White, editor of an American edition of Shakespeare. Mr.
Singer remarks:

“All the old copies read _Abraham_ Cupid. The alteration was proposed
by Mr. Upton. It evidently alludes to the famous archer, Adam Bell. So
in Decker’s _Satiromastix_: ‘He shoots his bolt but seldom, but, when
Adam lets go, he hits.’ ‘He shoots at thee, too, Adam Bell; and his
arrows stick here.’ The ballad alluded to is ‘King Cophetua and the
Beggar Maid,’ or, as it is called in some copies, ‘The Song of a Beggar
and a King.’ It may be seen in the first volume of Percy’s _Reliques of
Ancient Poetry_. The following stanza Shakespeare had particularly in
view:

  ‘The _blinded_ boy, that _shoots so trim_,
    From heaven down did hie;
  He drew a dart, and shot at him,
    In place where he did lie.’”
  —_Singer’s Note._

Now, though it cannot be doubted that Shakespeare had in mind _the
blinded boy that shoots so trim_, as set forth in the ballad referred
to, nor that the expression “shot so trim” grew out of it, yet this
fact is far from affording good reason for the belief that he had
also Adam Bell in view, or that he had any thought of conferring the
Christian name of that noted outlaw upon Cupid himself. The presumption
would be that however _trim_ a bowman that “belted forestere” may have
been, yet the skill of Cupid in this respect is too preeminent and
well allowed, to admit of any compliment or illustration derived from
the name of the very best merely human archer who ever drew cloth-yard
shaft to ear. Mr. Singer appears to us, therefore, to have been misled
by a merely superficial analogy into too great confidence in an
improvident suggestion, when he ventured to substitute a conjectural
emendation of the text for a reading which was uniform in “all the old
copies.”

The note of Mr. White is as follows:

“Upton gave us the _Adam_ which takes the place of ‘Abraham’ in all the
current editions, except Mr. Knight’s. But, as Mr. Dyce says, there is
not the slightest authority for the change. The last-named gentleman
conjectures that ‘Abraham’ in this line is a corruption of _Auburn_; as
it is unquestionably in the following passages which he quotes:

  ‘Where is the oldest sonne of Pryam,
  That Abraham coloured Troian? Dead.’
  —_Soliman and Perseda_, 1599, sig. H, 3.

  ‘A goodlie, long, thicke Abram colored beard.’
  —_Middleton’s Blurt_, _Master-Constable_, 1602, sig. D.

And in _Coriolanus_, act ii. sc. iii.

  ‘Not that our heads are some browns, some
  blacke, some Abram,’

as we read in the first three folios.

“The suggestion is more than plausible; and we at least owe to Mr. Dyce
the efficient protection which it must give to the original text. Cupid
is always represented by the old painters as auburn-haired.”[84]

But Mr. White, it will be observed, begs the question as to the
passages quoted from other authors. These passages simply prove that
“Abraham coloured” and “Abram colored,” as applied to the hair and
the beard, were common enough expressions at and before the time of
Shakespeare. Besides, only conceive whether it would be characteristic
of Shakespeare to write so tamely as “Young auburn Cupid”!

In fact, the term in question must have had a pertinent, significant,
and peculiar meaning, well understood by his contemporaries.

Mr. Knight conceives the term _Abraham_ to be thus appropriated from
the vagrants and beggars called “Abraham-men,” who were too often
cheats;[85] and it is to be feared that he thus means us to imply
the propriety of the appellation in this instance, upon the ungallant
hypothesis that Cupid is himself the prince and chief exemplar of
deceivers in general. But this specific characteristic we have always
understood to belong to Mercury. For however, popularly, Cupid is
estimated as a gay deceiver, Mercury was held by the Greeks the god of
fraud and falsehood. The sailors have a phrase of “shamming Abraham”
when one of the crew shirks his duty on pretence of sickness or for any
other pretended excuse. No one seems to have thought of the possible
origin of this proverbial expression, as used in reference to the
beggars from whose habits it is evidently derived. It has occurred to
us that, since Abraham was the father of the faithful, that is, the
person most eminent for faith, his name may have been thus taken up, in
a manner savoring more of wit than of reverence, in relation to persons
disposed to live rather by _faith_ than by _works_—in fact, who showed
the amplitude of their trust in whatever might turn up, oftentimes in
a somewhat questionable shape, by doing no work at all. This would
manifestly be a sort of _shamming Abraham_.

But however this may be, since all the old copies read _Abraham_ Cupid,
and since the alteration of the text commended by Mr. Singer and others
cannot be justified upon any grounds which they offer, or in any other
mode, we must find some means of explaining the phrase as it stands,
or remain in the dark as to its true interpretation. Certainly the
matter is not at all cleared up by unauthorized substitution. Against
Mr. Knight’s theory, on the other hand, militates the plain fact
that, in every example cited, unless the one in controversy be taken
as an exception, the word stands for a certain _color_, and not as
qualifying any moral characteristic, or implying any personal defect.
There is a difficulty, besides, in the _auburn_ hypothesis which it
must be admitted is hard to get over. Supposing the word had been found
written as it is, nowhere but in these two passages of Shakespeare,
it might, perhaps, so pass muster. He might not very unnaturally be
thought to have put such a corrupt form of the word _auburn_ purposely
into the mouth of the worthy citizen in _Coriolanus_; and the term
_auburn_, in such a connection, but misprinted in the course of time,
might possibly be considered not absolutely inconsistent with the
character of Mercutio and the strain of his speech. But when we find
the same word used by two other writers contemporary with Shakespeare,
both of whom would be likely to know the correct form and so to write
it, if “Abraham” or “Abram” were merely a corrupt form of it, and
especially as in one of the examples it occurs in a serious passage of
a tragedy—it seems much more probable that the term “Abraham” itself,
as so applied, had its own distinct and well-understood meaning,
so familiar as to excite, at that period, no necessarily ludicrous
association. And that this term _Abraham_ was a cant phrase which
had come into common use is actually implied by the correspondent
expression in the preceding line of this very speech of Mercutio:

  “Speak to my gossip, Venus, one fair word,
  One _nickname_ for her purblind son and heir;
  Young _Abraham_ Cupid, he that shot so trim.”

Now, it is obvious that _auburn_, as being a common adjective, could
constitute no nickname; whereas Abraham, as a noun proper, and at the
same time signifying a certain color, serves that purpose completely,
as, for example, _Cicero_, or _Nasica_.

We must own that a passage in Bishop Hall’s _Satires_ at first a little
puzzled us, viz.:

  “A lustie courtier whose curled head
  With _abron_ locks was fairly furnished.”[86]

But upon reflection it will be found that, although _abron_, at first
sight, looks much more like auburn than does either _Abraham_ or
_Abram_, and it might appear, therefore, to be, in fact, a less corrupt
form of that word than either of the other terms, yet, on the other
hand, _abron_ is itself both in form and sound much nearer _Abram_ than
it is to _auburn_, and may, therefore, be only a misspelt variation of
the first rather than of the second expression.

In this philological dilemma, we believe we are able to throw a gleam
of light on the obscurity; and, though the explanation is derived
from a source apparently remote, there is, nevertheless, good ground
for thinking it may prove satisfactory. We happen to have in our
possession a copy of the quarto edition of the Latin Dictionary
published at Cambridge, England, in 1693, which is the foundation of
those dictionaries of the Latin language in common use which have
succeeded it. The word _vitex_ is thus translated in it: “A kind of
withy or willow, commonly called agnus castus, in English, park-leaves,
_Abraham’s balm_, chaste or _hemp_ tree.”

Now, it is no less certain than melancholy to reflect upon that our
respected ancestry, like their descendants, were compelled to supply
the loss of hair by some adventitious covering, and that their periwigs
were sometimes perhaps commonly manufactured out of either the coarser
or the finer filament of flax or hemp, since those made of hair were
very costly. We are confident we have read of a splendid and no doubt
full-bottomed article of the latter material costing as much as fifty
guineas, a couple of centuries ago.[87] We speak of flax and hemp
indiscriminately, however botanically different, as those predecessors
of ours were in the habit of doing, and as being, in fact, used for
similar purposes, _e.g._, “Except the flax or hemp plant, and a few
other plants, there is very little herbage of any sort.”[88]

To the coarser filament of both, after the article is heckled, is
still, we believe, applied the name of _tow_. In either case, the
substance, when thus subjected to the nicer process of manufacture,
presents that well-known whitish brown color so often and so
enthusiastically celebrated by the elder English poets in the aspect
of “flaxen locks.” We do not know, and, after considerable research,
have been unable to ascertain with accuracy, what was the peculiar
relation of the “hemp-tree” to those other vegetable productions; but
infer from the name that there was a certain resemblance in the fibre
of the one to the others, and that probably to some extent it was
formerly used for similar purposes. At any rate, it is only with the
name and the associations it calls up that we have particularly to do.
If the hemp-tree, otherwise called “Abraham’s balm,” furnished when
manufactured an article similar in color to that of the other vegetable
productions referred to, a sufficient foundation is laid for this
inquiry.

Bosworth’s _Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language_ affords a striking
illustration of the general subject. He says that “flax signified, in
earlier times, also _hair_ and all kinds of hairy thread. In Austria,
the flax is called haar, hair. The Danish hör signifies the same.” He
adds: “The Old English flix-_down_, soft hair, is another instance that
flax in earlier ages was used to designate hair.”

Of the metaphorical use of the word the poets are full of pregnant
examples, for instance:

  “Her flaxen haire, insnaring all beholders,
  She next permits to wave about her shoulders.”[89]

  “All flaxen was his poll.”[90]

  “Adown the shoulders of the heavenly fair
  In easy ringlets flowed her flaxen hair;
  And with a golden comb, in matchless grace,
  She taught each lock its most becoming place.”[91]

If to these examples we add the following passage, we shall perceive
that the hue in question enjoyed a special distinction and favor:

“The four colors signify the four virtues; the _flaxey_, having a
whiteness, appertains to temperance, because it makes _candidam et
mundam animam_.”[92]

And as this is a hue which frequently distinguishes the heads of
youngsters, a large proportion of whom, at an early period of life, we
know as _white-headed_ urchins, and in England as well as in the United
States even as _tow-heads_, we are very strongly inclined to believe
the color and the term “Abraham” or “Abram” to be thus derived from
association, and to be so applied to the boy Cupid; the word _Abraham_,
in this connection, having come to express, to a certain extent, the
_tow_, or the color of the tow, of _hemp_, or flax, or equally of the
finer part which remains after the tow is combed out. So that, in all
probability, the cant term “Abraham,” as thus applied in Shakespeare’s
day, meant precisely the same as _flaxen_, with, perhaps, a slightly
humorous allusion. And in this view of the case, we must put in a
_caveat_ to the allegation of Mr. White, that, if “Cupid is always
represented by the old painters as auburn-haired,” then they have so
depictured him without sufficient authority; indeed, in contradiction
of the best authorities; for the classical evidence on this point
will show his hair to be described as of that color which is usually
known by the style of “flaxen”; since auburn is really a dun color, or
“reddish brown,” whereas Cupid’s hair was flaxen, or, as we now say,
blonde. For instance:

“The god of love was usually represented as a plump-cheeked boy, rosy
and naked, with _light_ hair floating on his shoulders.”[93]

“Eros is usually represented as a roguish boy, plump-cheeked and naked,
with _light_ hair floating on his shoulders.”[94]

We cannot but think, therefore, that this manifest distinction of
hue effectually disposes of the theory that “abron” stands for any
misspelling of _auburn_, as suggested by Mr. Dyce, and adopted by Mr.
White.

It appears, by the bye, that this same _agnus castus_, or hemp-tree,
which has given occasion for these remarks, was supposed from an early
period to possess some peculiar virtues, which prompted its other
appellation of “The Chaste Tree”; and to this circumstance was owing,
doubtless, its introduction by the poets in their descriptions of
various ceremonials. Thus, Chaucer has three several references to it
in his “Floure and Leafe,” and very noticeably, as follows:

  “Some of laurer, and some full pleasantly
  Had chaplets of woodbind; and, sadly,
  Some of _agnus castus_ weren also
  Chaplets fresh.”

So Dryden, also, modernizing this very passage of the older poet:

  “Of laurel some, of woodbine many more,
  And wreaths of _agnus castus_ many bore.”

It ought to be suggested that the statement herein made as to the
earlier practice of wearing wigs of flax and tow, in addition to some
direct evidence to the point, is partly a matter of inference, and
partly due to rather vague recollections of youthful studies (to which
we have not thought it worth while to recur) among the romance writers
of the last century. Their famous heroes undoubtedly were more or less
familiar with “Abraham-men” and personages of that description; and
it must be confessed that the impression of the “tow-wigs” worn, for
purposes of disguise or with whatever object, by the highwaymen, sturdy
beggars, and other worthies introduced into their novels, is amongst
the strongest left on our mind by those lucubrations of their genius.

The inference which we have ventured upon is that, since wigs were
articles of supposed necessity, and certainly have been used from
early times; and since those manufactured of hair must have been much
more costly in former days than at present, the probabilities are very
strong that this important description of head-gear was made, more or
less commonly, out of that material which still, we believe, affords
the foundation of those ingenious works of art, the color and beauty
of which furnished the poets with an ordinary and apt illustration of
bright and flowing locks.

We are not without testimony on this point, however, and that, too, of
no less authority than Walter Scott, which is literally to the point:

“The identical Peter wears a huge great-coat, threadbare and patched.
His hair, half gray half black, escaped in elf-locks around a huge wig
_made of tow_, as it seemed to me.”[95]

Addison also tells us, in a paper of the _Spectator_, as quoted by
Johnson:

  “I bought a fine flaxen long wig.”

It is true, Dr. Johnson cites this example in his _Dictionary_ as only
meaning something “fair, long, and flowing, as if made of flax”; but we
are far from thinking the qualification of his definition inevitably
correct, any more than in some other well-known instances. The great
lexicographer imagines a wig of hair as presenting the appearance of
one made of flax; but we see no reason why the excellent _Spectator_
should not be taken literally according to his expression; nor why
he may not have appeared upon the occasion to which he refers in a
veritable wig of flax, especially since such an object of manufacture
was common, could be made to bear so close a resemblance to hair,
probably looked better, and was of much less cost. We find a still more
decisive example in the _Spectator_, which scarcely admits of any other
than the most literal interpretation:

“The greatest beau at our next county sessions was dressed in a most
monstrous flaxen periwig that was made in King William’s reign.”[96]

The following example is equally pertinent:

“A fair, flaxen, full-bottomed periwig.”[97]

In this instance, the word “fair” would seem clearly to apply to the
color, and “flaxen” to the material, for otherwise the use of both
expressions would be tautological.

Indeed, we have not left this matter to conjecture and inference
merely; for we took occasion to inquire upon this topic, several years
ago, of a late celebrated hair-dresser; and, in fact, these notes have
been kept on hand for a period considerably longer than the nine years
prescribed by Horace for the due refinement and perfection of immortal
verse. Our excellent friend, M. Charrier, of Boston, informed us that
he had been called upon to manufacture actual wigs of the filament of
flax; and he remembered one particular occasion, when an article of
special beauty was required for the use of a popular actress, who was
to perform in a play which he thought was called “The fair maid with
the golden locks.”[98] Thus we trace the article to the stage itself,
and there, in all probability, its construction of the material in
question is traditional, and is much more likely to have originated
at a period earlier than the time of Shakespeare than at a later
date. Of course, if M. Charrier had lived to our day, he would have
found plenty of business in constructing those mountainous piles of
various vegetable material with which ladies now see fit to load their
heads—“some browne, some blacke, some Abram.”[99]

In corroboration of these views, explanatory, we hope, of the strange
expression, Abraham Cupid, to modern eyes and ears, we have just met
with a singularly apt illustration. A very young lady of our family
received last Christmas, as a present, a doll with a remarkable head of
hair. It was long, fine, profuse, admirably curled, and exactly of that
brilliantly fair color, the lightest possible shade of brown, sometimes
but rarely seen in its perfection on the heads of young persons, and
of the hue which might well be imagined as a peculiar and suitable
attribute of the god of love. An examination of this attractive
ornament to the seat of whatever intellect a doll might be supposed to
possess showed at once, that it was skilfully manufactured, doubtless
by accomplished French artisans, of the filament of flax.[100]

From these premises the following propositions seem to be fairly
deducible:

1. That, in the time of Shakespeare, the word _Abraham_ was sometimes
employed as a cant term expressive of a certain color.

2. That, since the name “Abraham’s balm” was used for a certain shrub
or bush, otherwise called the hemp-tree, the color in question was
probably that of dressed hemp or flax, which nearly resembled each
other in hue; the word tow being still applied to the coarse filament
of both.

3. That the color attributed to “flaxen locks,” so celebrated through
the whole range of English poetry, is, in fact, that light and fair,
that is, blonde, color of the hair assigned to Cupid.

4. That “Young Abraham Cupid,” therefore, means nothing else than
_flaxen-haired_ or _fair-haired_ Cupid.

In regard to the term “Abraham’s balm,” as applied to the hemp-tree, we
beg leave to suggest that such an appellation may have been bestowed
on such a tree, as intimating a natural and appropriate cure for such
infirmities as resulted in mistakes about property, to which we may
suppose Abraham-men and their associates were only too subject. The
figure may be thought similar to that highly metaphorical expression
conveyed by the passage:

  “Ye shall have a hempen caudle, then.”[101]

As to “Abraham-men,” a rope may, in fact, have been thought, in extreme
cases, a “_balm_ for hurt minds.”




FONTAINEBLEAU.

IT stands girdled with its forty thousand acres of forest, or gathering
of many palaces rather than a united single one, and presents perhaps a
wider and more varied retrospect than any of its historical compeers.
Poet, philosopher, and historian alike find inexhaustible food for
meditation before the grand, irregular pile that rises up before us
with its towers and gables massed against the sky—the most elaborate
epic ever written in stone. But prior to the stupendous poem that
we behold to-day, an idyl rose upon its site; a song, half sacred,
half sylvan, floats to us across the distant tide of time, the
record of an undying past. A vast virgin forest where the chant of
prayer and penitence mingles with the voicing of the primeval choir
of oaks, and sycamores, and elms, and spire-like poplars, ranged in
many-octaved lyres for the winds to strike with strong melodic finger;
and human souls set up in the high places, higher than forest trees
or earth-built towers; harps wooing the touch divine of the Master’s
hand, joining in the ecstatic song of seraph praise; souls these who
have cast aside crowns of gold, and trodden their purple garments under
foot, to choose the crown of thorns and the scant robe of poverty—love
driven to the strange madness, of the cross; others there are who sing
the deep plain-song of humility and forgiven sin; while some, whose
snow-white brow the dark shadow of sin has never crossed, carol forth
in innocent joy with the matins of the lark the hymn of deliverance,
the psalm of praise and worship, of intercession and thanksgiving—such
is the concert of celestial harmony that echoes to us from the long-ago
of the grand old forest. Many changes, will follow: we shall see a
busy stir of multitudinous life alternating with the chill silence of
the tomb; princes and prelates hurrying to and fro, noble matrons,
and frail women, and death in many forms, beautiful and terrible,
serene and tragic, passing and repassing the gates; and we shall hear
the woods reverberating to other sounds than those of prayer—to the
clanging of civil strife, to the voice of laughter and of tears.

Distinct amidst all the earlier memories of Fontainebleau stand out
the figures of S. Louis and his mother, Blanche of Castille. There
are many versions as to the origin of the place; the most popular one
records that S. Louis, being out hunting one day, lost a favorite
hound called Bleau, and, after scouring the forest in search of the
truant, found him at last quietly drinking at a fountain, and was so
enchanted with the beauty of the surrounding scene that he determined
to build a hunting-lodge on the spot; he did so, and, in memory of the
incident, it was named Fontaine de Bleau. But this pretty legend is
rejected by the most reliable historians, who have searched out traces
of a much earlier origin for Fontainebleau. There seems sufficient
evidence of its having been used as a royal residence by Hugh Capet,
and frequented as a favorite rendezvous for the hunt by all the earlier
kings of France. The existence of the famous monastery of S. Germain
l’Auxerre, at the western extremity of the forest, is advanced as a
proof, and a strong one, of its being in those remote times inhabited
by royal patrons, for monasteries sprang of necessity where kings
lived; and there is no doubt that the greater portion of the abbey
lands were grants from good King Robert. Blanche of Castille retired
to an old château of some sort at Fontainebleau during her husband’s
absence while at war with England or the Albigenses; she founded in the
neighborhood the Abbaye de Lys, which was later on munificently endowed
by her son, Louis IX., who even went the length of giving up to it some
acres of the forest that he loved so well. It was here that a great
portion of his childhood was passed. Under the shadow of the old woods,
or pacing the solemn cloisters of the abbey, his mother instilled into
his mind those first lessons of fear and love upon which his life was
so faithfully modelled. “My son, I love thee dearly, but, so help me
God, I would rather see thee dead at my feet than have thee live to
sully thy soul with one mortal sin.” Truly, a valiant mother of the
Machabean mould—a woman of strong faith, worthy to be the mother of a
Christian king.

When the child has grown to manhood, we see him still at Fontainebleau,
holding his court of justice under the broad shade of a giant oak, he
seated on the gnarled trunk, while his people gathered round him—a
young patriarch settling the disputes of his tribe, dealing out the
law; justice and mercy being counsel, and judge, and jury, and the
king’s word supreme. Sometimes we see him dashing through the glade,
followed by his courtiers, while the merry hunting-horn scares the wild
birds from their nests, and rouses the tusky boar in his lair; but
more frequently we see the king alone, meditating on the frail tenure
of earthly joys and pride, or surrounded by the wise and learned men,
too noble to be called courtiers, whose society he enjoyed better than
that of youths of his own age. Louis preserved through life a taste for
the monastic offices that he had joined in habitually with Blanche de
Castille in his childhood; and, when he could spare a few days from the
cares of his kingdom, he would spend them in the prayerful solitude of
the monastery of the Mathurins, assisting at all the offices with the
monks, and helping them in tending the sick and teaching the poor. His
young courtiers made merry over this strange pastime for a king, but
Louis only laughed, and said: “Let them laugh, these young ones! It
hurts no one, and God is not offended. If I spent my time in hunts, and
tournaments, and dancing, they would not blame me. Let them laugh; pray
God I may never give them cause to weep!” Once S. Louis fell ill at
Fontainebleau, and, being considered at the point of death, he called
his little son to him, and gave him some touching advice concerning his
conduct and private life; then suddenly changing his tone to one of
great impetuosity, he exclaimed: “I pray thee, fair son, make thyself
loved of my people! for verily I had rather a Scotchman came from
Scotland to govern the kingdom well and loyally than that it should be
unfairly or unkindly governed by thee!”

Joinville, who was the close companion of S. Louis through the
most active part of his career, finds no words wherewith to praise
adequately the character and virtues of the king. “What concerned
himself alone could never move him to joy or wrath,” says this
trustworthy chronicler; “but when it touched the honor of God, or the
happiness of his people, Louis knew no fear, and brooked no delay, nor
could any earthly consideration hinder him in the discharge of a duty.”
Yet Joinville censures his master severely for having undertaken the
second Crusade, which he condemns as a great military and political
mistake. Had it succeeded, however, Egypt would have become a Christian
colony, and the cross would have been planted on the pyramids; this was
what S. Louis looked to beyond the conquest of Jerusalem; and, if his
dream had been realized, Joinville would hardly have pronounced it a
“great mistake.”

A quaint anecdote is told of a trick played by S. Louis to ensnare
his nobles into enlisting in this fatal expedition. The court was at
Fontainebleau for the celebration of Christmas. It was customary for
the king to present the courtiers with furred cloaks called _liveries_
to wear at Midnight Mass on Christmas eve. S. Louis had a great number
of these made, and gave orders that a cross should be embroidered in
dark silk on the shoulder of each, and that they should be distributed
at the last moment in a dimly lighted apartment; this was done,
according to the king’s command; the courtiers hurriedly donned
their _liveries_, and it was only when they entered the brilliantly
illuminated church that the wearers beheld the symbol on each other’s
backs. They were at first astonished and displeased, says Joinville,
but when the king came forward with the cross on his own shoulder and
the crucifix in his hand, and asked if they would tear theirs off, and
send him forth alone to the Holy Land, a thrill of chivalrous ardor
ran through the assembly, and all answered as one voice: “No; we will
follow you! We will keep the cross!” And they did.

Blanche de Castille, whose religious enthusiasm is rightly or wrongly
credited with the responsibility of this ill-fated enterprise, held
the regency during her son’s absence, and proved by her courage in
confronting the dangers and difficulties of the charge, and by her
wisdom and counsel, that even in those unprogressive days a wise and
virtuous woman made no bad substitute for a man in the mighty task of
government. She spent most of her time in the comparative retirement
of Fontainebleau; but when the news came of the disastrous issue of
Mansoorah, where the Christian army was cut to pieces, and the king
with his noblest captains taken prisoners, she left it, and hastened
to the capital, in order to work more actively for the ransom of her
son and his brave companions in arms. It was a terrible time for a
mother. The queen knew that those who had taken her son captive had
no power over his soul; she knew that Louis was more commanding in his
chains than he had even been at the head of his armies; that adversity
would teach him no language unbecoming a Christian prince; that neither
threats nor torture would wrench from him any compromise unworthy of
his honor; and that captivity, nay, death, in so august a cause was the
most enviable destiny she could have wished him; but she was a human
mother withal, and in this hour of trial her motherhood vindicated
itself relentlessly. Blanche labored day and night to raise a ransom
that might tempt the Turk to give up his prize. She heard that eight
thousand _besants_[102] would be accepted for the king himself, and
this sum was with great difficulty mustered and sent to Palestine.
But when Louis heard it, he sent word to the sultan that “the King of
France was not to be ransomed with gold or silver; that he would give
the town of Damietta for his own person, and eight thousand _besants_
for his army.” The offer was rejected with scorn, and Louis was
subjected to still greater cruelties and humiliations; but at last,
worn out by the indomitable heroism of his victim, the sultan gave
way; the regal fortitude in which suffering had clothed their captive
had subdued even his jailers into wondering admiration, and they set
him free, declaring that “this king was the proudest Christian that
the East had ever seen.” No sooner was he at liberty, than, instead of
hastening away from the scenes of his misery and misfortunes, Louis set
to work to spread the Gospel far and wide in Palestine; but Blanche
had earned a right to clasp him to her heart after those three years
of separation. She felt, too, that the days were growing short; so she
wrote, entreating him to come home. S. Louis was repairing the ramparts
of Sidon when the summons reached him; he immediately prepared to obey
it; but, before he had left Sidon, the mother who, next to God, had
been the supreme love of his life had taken her flight to a better
world. She died at Fontainebleau. “He made great mourning thereat,”
says Sire de Joinville, “that for two days no speech could be gotten of
him. After that he sent a chamber-man to fetch me. When I came before
him in his chamber, where he was alone, he stretched forth his arms,
and said to me, ‘O seneschal! I have lost my mother. My God, thou
knowest that I loved this mother better than all other creatures, but
thy will be done. Blessed be thy name!’” Philip le Bel (IV.) was born
at Fontainebleau. There are conflicting versions as to the place of
Philip’s death, but it is generally supposed to have taken place at
Fontainebleau, in the same room where he was born. There was a current
belief at the time, and it was preserved through many succeeding
generations, that his death was the result of a summons issued against
him by the grand master of the templars, Jacques de Molai. A hundred
and thirteen templars perished at the stake during Philip’s reign, and
these _autos-da-fe_ were crowned by that of the grand master, who was
burnt alive in the gardens of his own palace. As the flames rose round
his naked body, the templar lifted up his voice, and, in the hearing of
the vast multitude of spectators, solemnly summoned Philip “to meet him
at the judgment-seat in four months from that day.” The death of the
king precisely four months from the day of De Molai’s execution gave a
sanction to the credulity of the people, and the legend passed into
an historical occurrence. The fact of the summons is accepted; we can
have no difficulty in admitting its inevitable effect on the mind of
the individual against whom it was sent forth. There was a prevailing
belief that a dying man had the power to issue the formidable command,
and that obedience was compulsory. Philip, whose passion for gold
had led him to confiscate the treasures of the templars, and then to
calumniate and persecute them in order to justify his own spoliations,
was haunted by the words of De Molai. He grew sick, and his illness,
defying all the arts of medicine, soon brought him to the verge of
death. Feeling that his days were numbered, he begged to be taken to
Fontainebleau, that he might gaze once more upon the home of his happy
childhood. On arriving there, he sent for his children and his friends,
and took a sorrowful farewell of them. “They entered the chamber where
the king was,” says Godefroid de Paris, “and where there was very
little light. They asked him how he felt, and he answered: ‘Ill in body
and in soul. I have put on so many _tillages_ and laid hands on so much
riches that I shall never be absolved. Methinks I shall die to-night,
for I suffer grievous hurt from the curses which pursue me.’” And that
same night he died (1314).

The sons of Philip frequented Fontainebleau very faithfully. So
did Charles V.; but a veil of mist hangs over the history of the
castle during the greater part of the XIVth century. We only find
it mentioned now and then as a meeting-place for the hunt of royal
sportsmen. Isabeau de Bavière honored it often with her presence,
and enlarged a portion of the building. But the romantic history of
Fontainebleau dates from Francis I. He was to it what Louis XIV. was
to Versailles. It is customary amongst the admirers of those two
brilliant representatives of French monarchy to set them side by side,
and compare their characters and achievements. And no doubt there are
points of resemblance between them, but it is difficult to pursue the
comparison much below the surface. Louis XIV., as a king, certainly
has the best of it, and, as a man, Francis seems to have had all the
vices without many of his successor’s redeeming virtues. Louis was
dissipated, but he put a limit to his dissipation: Francis knew none;
he exhausted the treasury by his wanton prodigality and the army by his
senseless ambition; he burnt La Provence, he broke his plighted word to
Charles V., and yet we hear him spoken of as the rival of Bayard, “sans
peur et sans reproche.”[103]

History passes strange verdicts sometimes, but stranger still is the
blind credulity with which posterity endorses them, and clings to them
in spite of the light that by degrees pierces through the darkness,
showing up the idol or the monster, stripped of masks and drapery, and
exposed in its nakedness, or clothed with its own deeds, that make the
only garment it has a right to wear; we acknowledge that we have been
worshipping a false standard, or forswearing an honest one; but we go
on with a dogged tenacity worshipping and forswearing still, rather
than forsake an old love or renounce an old antipathy. There are few
personages in history who have usurped this kind of worship and held
it more successfully than Francis I. Fontainebleau is not, however,
the appropriate place for challenging his claims to the applause of
posterity; here he is on his vantage-ground; we see him at his best,
all his faults, if not obliterated, mellowed in the blaze of borrowed
glory that encircles him; here he is the graceful knight-errant, the
magnificent patron of art, and science, and learning, surrounded by
men of genius, whom he treats as equals and as friends; we forget his
profligate follies, his reckless waste of the kingdom’s money and the
kingdom’s blood, when we see him petting Leonardo da Vinci, doing the
behests and humoring the crotchets of the cantankerous old genius so
tenderly, and bearing his unreasonable jealousy and his reproaches like
a chidden child. It would go hard with us to be severe on so lovable
a scapegrace, even if he were not the King of France. Francis ought
never to come before us except in the midst of his beloved artists.
There he is perfect. To Leonardo his demeanor is especially touching.
When the proud old man, still in the zenith of his fame, but stung by
the coldness of Leo X. and frightened by the rising glory of Michael
Angelo’s sun, turned sulkily away from his native land, Francis
invited him to Fontainebleau, received him with open arms, and treated
him like a prince as he was of the true _right divine_ creation,
and laid himself out to console him and brighten the evening of his
days. The exile was querulous from ill-health, as well as soured by
disappointment and the ingratitude of the Medici; but Francis bore with
his temper and his lamentations with the sweetness of a woman; there
was no tender gracefulness that sympathy could devise to cheer the old
man’s spirit and heal his aching pride that the king had not recourse
to; he would have kept him at Fontainebleau, near his own person, but
Leonardo, who was so fond of solitude and meditation that he never
married, “because the clatter of a wife’s tongue would have disturbed
his thoughts,” could not bear the gay bustle of the court, and said he
must go somewhere to be quiet; so Francis gave him a splendid suite of
apartments in the Château de Clou at Amboise. He spent the remaining
four years of his life there, painting his celebrated Mona Lisa, the
most exquisitely finished perhaps of all his works, and in writing his
treatise _Della Pittura_, a book of great originality and learning,
written, like all Da Vinci’s books, after the manner of the Eastern
manuscripts, from right to left—a singularity which he adopted, it
is said, to foil the curiosity of those around him, and prevent his
brother artists from discovering his secrets. The king paid twelve
thousand livres for Mona Lisa—an unprecedented sum for a work of art
in those days. When Leonardo was thought to be near his end, Francis
had him conveyed to Fontainebleau that he might watch over him himself
and be with him at the close.

On the morning of his death, when the king came into the room, the
dying man tried to raise himself on his couch to welcome him, but the
effort was too much; he sank forward, and would have fallen but for the
timely arms that rescued him. Francis laid the venerable old head upon
his breast, and there it lay till Leonardo breathed his last.

The artist had been pursued for months before his death by a morbid
terror of being buried alive, and had implored Francis to let him be
kept three days before the coffin was closed. The king complied with
the wish, and caused his friend to be exposed with royal honors, and
the body laid in state for three days. He was buried in the Church of
S. Florentin, near his own abode at Amboise.

Benvenuto Cellini is another shining stone in the pedestal of Francis
I. Discontented with the recognition that his genius met with at home,
he too was enticed from the blue skies of Florence to the colder but
more genial atmosphere of Fontainebleau, and was petted by the graceful
king only in a less degree than Da Vinci. But Benvenuto, who knew so
many things, who excelled almost equally as a poet, a sculptor, and
a painter, was lamentably ignorant in the art of being a courtier.
The Duchesse d’Estampes was queen of the gay palace of Armida, and
all the great men that frequented it bowed before her; but this bold
Florentine, who had a dash of the brigand in his composition, thought
he might dispense with her patronage, and refused to do homage at
the common shrine; he knew that he had had the bad luck to displease
the haughty fair one by his untutored manners from the first, and,
instead of trying to conciliate, he determined to conquer her. The
duchess was a liberal and enlightened patroness of art, and seems
to have merited in some degree by her personal accomplishments the
flattering title bestowed on her by one of her protégés of “the most
beautiful of _savantes_ and the most learned of belles.” Her sway over
Francis rested, therefore, on something stronger than the ephemeral
tenure of mere beauty; but, had it been otherwise, what chance was
there for Benvenuto against the favorite of the king? He, foolish
mortal, braved her so far as to ask the king direct, without having
recourse to her intervention, for an order to cast a bronze statue
for the great gallery which was in process of completion, and Francis
gave him the order, with carte-blanche for the execution. The statue
was finished, and a day appointed for the king to see it. This was a
precious opportunity for a woman’s vengeance; the duchess knew that
the triumph of the artist depended altogether on the first impression
produced on the king, and that the triumph of the work depended mainly
on the light in which it was seen: Cellini had named an hour when the
sun would pour in soft, full floods of light down the gallery; and,
long before the appointed time, he was there, watching every changing
shadow that it cast upon his statue, counting the minutes impatiently,
while his friends and all the court flocked in to assist at the king’s
entrance, and witness the triumph or the humiliation of the sculptor.
But the hour passed, and another, and another, and there was no sign of
Francis; the sun was gathering up its light, and speeding away to the
west, and the brown twilight was creeping into the gallery. Benvenuto
grew nervous, then outrageous. He paced up and down before his Jupiter
like a man gone mad. Where was the king? Would no one take pity on him
to go and call the king? But Benvenuto knew full well that none in that
courtly crowd would be guilty of so rash an act. Not even he himself
would dare to do it. He knew whose fault it was that the king was not
forthcoming, and he gnashed his teeth in savage but impotent rage. But
genius, like prophecy, has a ready handmaid in inspiration. “Let fall
the curtains, and bring lights,” cried the sculptor, with a sudden
bound from despair to triumph. The partisans of the “_belle savante_”
groaned, and stood still; the friends of Cellini flew to obey his
orders. It mattered not that they did not understand: the master did.
In less time than it takes to tell, the gallery was illuminated from
end to end; lamps, torches, waxlights, every luminary that hands could
carry, was put in requisition, till Jupiter shone out magnificent,
terrible, and dazzling in the blaze of an impromptu illumination more
weirdly effective than the brightest daylight could have been.

Cellini’s spirit rose to frenzy. He ran hither and thither, arranging
the lights with a view to more striking effect; clustering many flames
in a group at one point, leaving another in partial shade; clapping his
hands in wild delight one minute, impatiently knocking down one of his
helpmates the next. It was finished. The king was heard approaching.
Cellini, with an imperious gesture, commanded silence; the doors of
the gallery were thrown open, and the colossal bronze god flashed out
in all his dark effulgence on the astonished and enchanted gaze of the
monarch. The triumph of the hour was complete; but it cost the sculptor
dear. The duchess gave Francis no peace till he quarrelled with her
enemy, and dismissed him from the court.

Many Italian artists had followed Leonardo da Vinci to France, some out
of love for the great master himself, others tempted by the generosity
which the King of France showed universally to their class. The most
distinguished of these disciples of Leonardo was Andrea del Sarto. But
he was of too restless a disposition to settle anywhere permanently;
camp, court, and studio alike wearied him after a time; his wings
were too buoyant to remain long folded even in the enchanted clime of
Fontainebleau; he was not more than a year there, when he declared it
was a necessity of life for him to return to Florence, the ostensible
motive being to see his wife. Francis proposed to send for her,
promising that she should be made welcome to his court as an honored
guest; but Andrea said this would not do: he must go himself and fetch
her. All the king could obtain was a promise that he would return to
France in a year; and, to make the promise more binding, he entrusted
him with a considerable sum of money, to be expended, according to
Andrea’s taste and judgment, on objects of art for the decoration of
the palace. But when Andrea found himself once more in Florence, in
the company of his wife and his former boon companions, he forgot all
about his mission, and spent the king’s money in merry-making; he did
not dare show himself at Fontainebleau after this, but frittered away
the rest of his life in his native city, where he eventually died in
poverty and contempt. It would take too long to enumerate the various
European celebrities who fill up the brilliant picture presented by
Francis’ court at this period; but we cannot refuse a passing mention
to Serlio, the accomplished Bolognese architect, whom the king lured
away from Italy by his gold and his honeyed flattery. Serlio rebuilt
the palace almost entirely; his genius was allowed full scope, and the
result justified the confidence of his patron.

The area of the old building being much too small for the magnificent
new plan, Francis bought in the Mathurin Convent and the noble grounds
with which Louis IX. had endowed it, and added them to the original
site. The design of the library had been sketched by S. Louis, and
this Serlio adhered to strictly, making no change of his own. When the
edifice was finished, Francis swept Italy and Spain for artists to
adorn and beautify it. Rosso came to paint the walls in fresco, and his
design for the grand gallery, which was to be called the Gallery of
Francis I., carried the prize over all his competitors; he embellished
it with paintings, friezes of great beauty, and rich stucco-work.
So delighted was the king with the result of Rosso’s labors that,
in addition to other favors, he created him a canon of the Sainte
Chapelle. This wonderful gallery had sixteen frescoes representing the
most remarkable incidents in the life of Francis; the famous _porte
dorée_[104] was decorated by the same gifted hand. It is lamentable to
think that these glorious works of art, which formed Rosso’s principal
claim on the admiration of the world, were sacrificed to the vindictive
jealousy of a rival. Francesco Pellegrini had been the early friend
of Rosso; but, when they met as fellow-laborers at Fontainebleau, the
friendship turned to a rivalry which soon developed into bitter enmity,
and ended in the tragic death of Rosso. Primaticcio, as Pellegrini
is usually called, was accused by his rival of having stolen a large
sum of money from him; he was put to the torture, but acquitted
triumphantly. Rosso was then seized with shame and remorse; haunted
in imagination by the shrieks of the innocent man, the friend of his
youth, whom he had given up to the torture, his mind gave way, and in a
fit of insanity he took poison, which killed him in a few hours. Some
say that Rosso knew that the accusation was false, and that he brought
it designedly against Primaticcio, hoping to get rid of him; but his
frantic grief on discovering his mistake, and the fatal consequences of
his remorse, may be taken as contradictory evidence of this opinion.
Primaticcio, moreover, by his subsequent conduct, vindicates his
unhappy rival from having done him so very great a wrong in suspecting
him capable of the theft, for he unblushingly stole from Rosso what was
incomparably more precious to him than gold—his fame. No sooner was he
master of the field, than he set about to destroy all traces of Rosso’s
beautiful compositions, pulling down the walls which they adorned,
under pretence of enlarging the space. Some few that were spared by the
relentless destroyer have been obliterated by damp and the effects of
time. There is one fine painting of his to be seen in the Louvre—“Mary
receiving the homage of S. Elizabeth.”

The fêtes given at Fontainebleau by Francis I., though perhaps inferior
in splendor to those of Louis XIV. at Versailles, surpassed them
in picturesque elegance; they were rather the ideal festivities of
an artist than the gorgeous pageants of an Arabian caliph. But the
leisures of Francis were not all wasted in frivolous amusements. In
his sane moments, when he was not flying after that will-o’-the-wisp
that cost France and him so dear, the conquest of the Milanese, he was
something more than the mere fascinating madcap that his enemies make
him out; for it is his lot, like that of all charming but unprincipled
sovereigns, to inspire panegyrics and denunciations equally
exaggerated. He was not only a patron of those artists who contributed
to the adornment of his dwellings: Francis courted the society of
learned men for learning’s sake. The luxurious repasts of Fontainebleau
were enlivened and refined by the presence of such men as Clement
Marot, whose style, full of terseness and incisive grace, the king was
fond of emulating in verses of his own composition, not altogether
devoid of poetic merit. He delighted in the chivalrous lays of the
middle ages, and in the harmonious cadence and florid imagery of the
ballads of the troubadours. The witty Curé of Mendon was a frequent
guest at the royal table, Francis provoking his lively sallies, and
heartily enjoying them, though the sarcasm was often boldly pointed
at himself. Learned men of every class—doctors, bookworms, and even
printers—were admitted to the same honor. Erasmus was one of the
few who withstood the wiles of the charmer; he steadfastly refused
all invitations to reside permanently at Fontainebleau; but he kept
up a brisk correspondence with Francis, the honest freedom of whose
tone throughout does equal honor to the scholar and the king. The
French court was, in fact, the most polished and the gayest in Europe
at this period. The sprightly Queen of Navarre—that sister whom
Francis so tenderly loved, his “Marguerite des Marguerites”—was its
presiding genius and brightest ornament. She was passionately fond of
Fontainebleau, and made it her home during the greater part of her
first husband’s life, and after her marriage with Henri de Navarre,
who was so frequently absent, either in her brother’s service or
in the pursuit of war on his own account. Her image is everywhere
associated in our memory with that of Francis in his favorite palace.
In her boudoir, a spacious and magnificently decorated room, leading
out of Rosso’s noble gallery, the royal brother and sister passed
many delightful hours, either in affectionate converse together, or
surrounded by the artists and learned men whom they both loved to
honor. Here Francis placed the library of rare books and manuscripts
for which he had scoured Italy, Spain, and Greece. The erudite Erasmus
would sometimes deliver one of his learned discourses on deep and
elevating themes in the privacy of this enchanting retreat, while
Marguerite de Navarre worked out, in rainbow-tinted silks and golden
threads, the poem of one of her artist friends, or some chivalrous
exploit of her idolized Francis. Happy had it been for Francis and for
France had he dwelt content amidst the peaceful and refined delights
of this Eldorado. But there was the Milanese—that unlucky Milanese,
the bane of his life, and of his people’s while his lasted. Again
and again he flew at it like a moth at the flame, or a madman at his
_idée fixe_—failure and humiliation, instead of disgusting him with
his hobby, only goaded him to its pursuit with greater zest. And what
odd, shifting relations grew out of this standing duel between him and
Charles V.! Alternately, they were rivals, friends, deadly foes, and
“dear brothers.” Beside the gloomy, vindictive Spanish warrior, subtle
in his policy, swift and ruthless in his vengeance, the brilliant
figure of Francis shone at its best; he had all the qualities that his
rival lacked; his uncalculating generosity, his rash impulses that
led him into so many grievous straits, all stand out in bright relief
against the dark background of the contest. The story of the broken
Treaty of Madrid is one of the many vexed questions over which the
apologists of both princes have broken innumerable lances, but they
leave it pretty much where it stood in the year of grace 1527, after
the Notables decided that the conditions of the treaty were monstrous,
and had been unjustifiably imposed by a jailer on his prisoner, and
that Francis was right in maintaining _que prisonnier gardé n’est tenu
a nulle foye, n’y se peut obliger à rien_.[105]

Charles had no right to exact the abdication of his conquered foe,
and the latter had no power to effect it without the consent of his
Notables, which he knew full well would never be granted. Still, the
solemn oath sworn on the crucifix by Francis in presence of the emperor
is not to be disposed of so easily. It would have been more consistent
with the character for Bayard-like chivalry, which the French prince
arrogated, to have withheld the pledge which he knew he could not
redeem, than to purchase his liberty by a subterfuge that has left
an equivocal mark upon his memory. He was only a lifetenant of the
crown of France; he might resign it, but he had no power to alienate
its most insignificant fief; in swearing, therefore, to hand over the
duchy of Burgundy and the counties of Flanders and Artois to Charles
V., he was performing a vain sham; for, had he been willing to carry
out the promise of renunciation himself, he was well aware that the
states-general and the parliament of the realm would never ratify the
act, and that without their ratification it remained null and void. The
strong epithets used by Charles in denouncing the disloyalty of his
quondam captive in violating this preposterous treaty are, however,
somewhat misplaced, considering the duplicity and cruelty which he
himself had displayed in extracting impossible concessions from a brave
and conquered foe.

It was not long before Francis had an opportunity of vindicating his
much-prized character for chivalrous magnanimity by heaping coals of
fire on the head of Charles. The emperor was on his way to Ghent, and
applied to the king for a safe-conduct through his dominions. It was
granted at once, but on condition that the emperor should remain for a
few days the guest of Francis. Charles was in such a hurry to castigate
the rebels that he would have promised more than this in order to
arrive swiftly on the scene of vengeance; he consented to halt at
Fontainebleau; but no sooner had he set foot on the soil of his “good
brother of France,” than he was seized with tremors and suspicions
that made his life miserable; he accused himself of madness in having
so rashly rushed into the arms of a prince whom he had persecuted
meanly when he was in his power, and whose state he had grievously
injured; nor did the magnificence of the reception which greeted him
on his arrival calm his fears. Francis, who was utterly incapable of a
base breach of hospitality, could not forego the pleasure of playing
a little on the agonies of Charles; he occasionally repeated to him
the murmurings of the Queen of Navarre and the Dauphin, who would fain
have improved the rare opportunity by compelling their guest to undo
some of the mischief he had done their brother and father. Francis even
recounted to the emperor with great merriment an epigrammatic little
passage between himself and his favorite dwarf, Triboulet: while the
latter was diverting the king with his usual antics on the night of
the Spaniard’s arrival, he suddenly pulled out his tablets, and began
to write with an air of great gravity. “What are you writing there,
Triboulet?” inquired his master. “The name of a bigger fool than
myself,” replied the dwarf. “Who is that?” said Francis. “Charles,”
replied Triboulet. “But suppose I keep my word, and let him go?”
queried the king. “Then,” answered Triboulet, “I would rub out Charles,
and write Francis instead.”

The question of the Milanese was discussed between the two sovereigns
during this period with great earnestness on one side and consummate
skill on the other. Charles promised solemnly to bestow the investiture
on the Dauphin; but, when Francis urged him to confirm his pledge by a
written guarantee, he cunningly retaliated his host’s answer concerning
the Treaty of Madrid: “_Prisonnier gardé n’est tenu à nulle foye,
n’y se peut obliger à rien._” He declared, however, that on reaching
Flanders he would give the promise in writing. We know how he kept his
word.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.




BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS.[106]

THIRD ARTICLE.

IN a former notice, we expressed an intention to present our readers
with the translation of certain curious fragments relating to Merlin;
to be followed by some of the historical poems which succeeded the
Druidic compositions of earlier times. We proceed to fulfil our promise.

The name of Merlin (Myrrdhin, or Marzin) is so closely associated with
the early mystic and mythological poetry of Cambria and Armorica that
it will be desirable to give some account of this personage, as far as
the uncertainty of his history renders it possible to do so, before
reproducing any of the poems of which he is the subject.

It has long been supposed that there existed two Merlins, one of whom,
a magician, was the offspring of a Christian virgin and a Roman consul
who lived in the Vth century, in the reign of Ambrose Aurelian; or,
according to the popular tradition, whose father was no mortal, but a
malignant _Duz_, whom, under the form of a bird, she unwittingly let in
at her window: and the other, a warrior and bard, who after the battle
of Arderiz, in which he had unintentionally killed his nephew, lost his
reason, and retired from the world.

But critics of the present day agree in considering that it is one
person who is the subject of a triple tradition, and that it is the
same Merlin who appears in the light of a mythological, historical, and
legendary hero.

The fragments which still remain in Wales of the poems of this bard
are either very much modernized or almost wholly transformed. Of the
ballads relating to him which exist in Brittany, there seem to be four
principal ones. First, a cradle-song, intensely pagan in spirit, in
which his mother plaintively relates to him his mysterious origin while
rocking him to sleep, and when, to her amazement, the infant derides
her regrets, and defends his father, declaring himself to be born to
be the good genius of the Breton nation. This poem it is needless to
reproduce. We give translations of the remaining three, beginning with

MERLIN THE WIZARD.

(MARZIN DIVINOUR.)

VTH CENTURY.

  “Merlin, sage Merlin, say, whither away,
  With your Black Dog, at the dawn of the day?”
  “Seeking am I, in each wave-hollowed cleft,
  Egg red as blood, by the sea-adder left.

  “Cress I would seek in the meadowland low,
  Magical gold-herb, and weird mistletoe;
  Deep in the forest to find must I go,
  Where by the fay-haunted fount it doth grow.”

  “Merlin, sage Merlin, your steps, ah, retrace!
  Mistletoe leave, the old oak-tree to grace;
  Leave the green cress and the gold-herb to grow,
  Hid in the well-watered meadowland low.

  “Leave the red egg of the snake of the sea
  Mid the wild foam of the breakers to be.
  Merlin! turn back from the path you have trod,
  One and the only Diviner is God!”

The latter half of the poem appears to be the voice of S. Kado, the
Christian bishop to whom tradition attributes the conversion of Merlin.

The gold-herb figures as one of the most approved charms of Druidic
days. It is said to sparkle at a distance like gold—whence its
name—and is greatly esteemed by the Bretons for its medicinal
qualities. It must be gathered at dawn, by a person who is in a state
of grace, fasting, barefoot, and clad in white linen which has not
been previously worn. A circle is traced round it, and no steel must
approach it, but it must be carefully plucked by the hand. Should any
one chance to tread upon the plant, he sleeps forthwith, and can hear
and understand the language of animals and birds.

In the next poem, Merlin no longer appears as a magician. He is himself
overcome by a sorceress, who, after depriving him of his harp and his
gold ring, the symbols of his dignity as bard, takes advantage of a
particular taste he seems to have had for apples (if we may judge
by the praises lavished upon that fruit in poems of his composition
still extant in Wales[107]) to ensnare him, and to make even his will
powerless by their means.

The tradition of his disappearance is common to Wales and Brittany.
“The tomb of Merlin is known to none,” says the bard Myvyrian, who
lived before the Xth century. And in the Welsh Triads[108] it is
written that “he embarked with nine other bards, and whither he went
cannot be known.” He himself says that he fled from the court to dwell
in the woods.[109]

The king mentioned in the ballad appears to be Budik, chief of the
Bretons of Armorica, a British prince who emigrated from Cornwall, and
who was a valiant defender of the independence of Brittany against the
Franks. He was assassinated by order of Clovis, who had been unable to
overcome him in battle, about the year 506. He married his daughter
Alienor to a prince whose name is unknown, and gave her Léon for dowry.

MERLIN THE BARD.

(MARZIN BARZ.)

I.

  “Good grandmother, pray list to me:
  Fain would I go the feast to see—
  The feast commanded by the king,
  And join the races in the ring.”

  “To see the feast you will not go,
  To this, nor other one I trow;
  Go you shall not to see the sight:
  I see that you have wept this night.
  Go you will not while I can let,
  If dreamings fond your cheeks make wet.”

  “Sweet little mother, love you me?
  Can _you_ forbid me there to be?”
  “In flying thither, you will sing:
  Returning, you will droop the wing.”

II.

  Bridled has he his chestnut colt,
    His chestnut colt so red:
  Its hoofs, well shod with glittering steel,
    Strike fire at every tread.

  Gleams on its neck a ring, and on
    Its tail a ribbon gay;
  Fair trappings o’er its back he throws,
    Then mounts and speeds away.

  E’en as he gains the glittering course,
    The horns all loudly sound;
  While, in the ever-thickening crowd,
    The eager horses bound.

  “Who the great barrier of the field
    Shall leap at one clear spring,
  Perfect and free, the same shall wed
    The daughter of the king!”

  Wildly thereat the young colt neighs,
    Prances, and bounds amain;
  His gleaming eyes flash eager fire,
  He paws the ground with keen desire,
    Then flies across the plain.

  Far, far behind, the others all
    Were long ago pass’d by:
  He flies alone. With one great bound,
    He clears the barrier high.

  “My lord the king, your royal word
    Is pledged that so it be:
  The fair Linor I therefore crave,
    For surely mine is she.”

  “The princess Linor think not thou
    In any wise to win.
  No sorcerer my daughter weds,
    Nor any of his kin.”

  An aged man, whose snowy beard
    Upon his breast flowed down,
  White as the wool by furze-brake torn
    Upon the moorland brown—

  An aged man, with robe of wool,
    Bordered by silver band
  Throughout its length, sat by the king,
    Upon the king’s right hand.

  Unto the royal ear he bent—
    He bent, and whispered low;
  Then did the king his sceptre raise,
    And struck a sounding blow—

  A blow upon the table thrice,
    That all the field might hear:
  It hushed the crowd to silence, while,
    With voice both loud and clear,

  Thus spake the king: “So bring thou me
    The harp of Merlin old,
  Which by four chains hangs by his bed—
    Four chains of finest gold:
  If Merlin’s harp thou bring to me,
    My child, perchance, shall marry thee.”

III.

  “Good grandmother, I pray give heed,
  And counsel me in this my need:
  My heart is broken!” “Oh, indeed!
  Hadst thou not set at naught my rede,
  Thy hap had met with better speed.
  Poor grandson mine! Yet weep not so:
  The harp shall be unbound, I trow.
  A golden hammer here behold,
  No sound rings from its stroke of gold.”

IV.

  “Now fair befall this palace high,
    And joy to all therein!
  Behold, with Merlin’s harp I come,
    Which scarce I hoped to win.”

  When the king’s son these tidings heard,
    Low to his sire spake he:
  And thereupon thus said the king,
    To that bold youth and free:

  “If thou from Merlin’s own right hand
    Safe unto me shalt bring
  The ring he wears, Linor is thine
    When I receive the ring.”

V.

  He went his way, and, weeping, sought
  His grandame, with new care distraught:
  “Behold, the king his word hath spoken!
  Behold, the king his word hath broken!”

  “Nay, fret thee not: there is small need;
  Only, to that I bid, give heed:
  My little coffer open thou,
  And take thereout a slender bough,
  Whereon twelve glittering leaflets grow:
  Like fiery gold they gleam and glow.
  ‘Tis now full seven years agone
  Since seven woods I searched, alone,
  On seven nights, at darkest hour,
  Ere I could win that plant of power.
  When you the midnight cock-crow hear,
  Your red horse waits: speed forth, nor fear:
  In slumber deep will Merlin be;
  So fear thee not: good speed to thee!”

  When loud the cock at midnight crowed,
  The red steed bounded on the road;
  And ere his notes he ceased to sing,
  The youth had borne away the ring.

VI.

  Ere dawn had brightened into day,
    He stood the king beside,
  Whereat the king in wonder gazed,
    Silent and stupefied.

  And all with him: “His wife, behold,
    He verily has won!”
  The king retires a moment, with
    The old man and his son.

  Anon the king returns, and still
    The two are at his side:
  And thus he spake; “‘Tis true, my son,
    That thou hast gained thy bride;

  “Yet is there one adventure more
    Which thou must undertake;
  When that is sped, my son-in-law
    Forthwith I thee will make.

  “The princess Linor shall be thine,
    And all the country fair
  Of Léon I bestow for dower;
    This, by my race, I swear.

  “Do but the thing which I demand,
    (And this the last shall be:)
  To celebrate the marriage, bring
    Bard Merlin unto me.”

VII.

  “O Merlin, Bard, alone, forlorn,
  With all thy garments soiled and torn:
  O Merlin, Bard, whence comest thou,
  With weary step, with clouded brow,
  Bareheaded and barefooted? Say;
  And whither wouldst thou wend thy way?
  Thy holly staff can barely stay
  Thy bending form, thou Druid gray.”

  “Alas! To seek my harp I go:
  Best solace that my heart can know
  In this world. I am wandering
  To seek my harp, to seek my ring:
  Both have I lost: no more I sing,
  But wearily am wandering.”

  “Nay, then, O Merlin, grieve not so;
  Yet shalt thou find thy harp, I trow:
  Thy harp and eke thy golden ring;
  So cease awhile thy wandering.
  Enter, O Bard, and rest thee here,
  And taste a morsel of my cheer.”

  “Nay, pray me not: I will not stay,
  Nor pause upon my weary way;
  I will not cease my painful quest,
  I will not eat, I will not rest,
  Until I seek no more in vain:
  Until my harp I find again.”

  “Hear me, O Merlin, and obey:
  In sooth, thou wilt not long delay
  Thy harp to find. Come in, I pray,
  A little space, nor say me nay.”

  She so besought, so urged him, till
  Her wily wit had worked her will.

  With night approaching, home there came
  The grandson of that ancient dame;
  And when he drew the hearth anear,
  Back started he with sudden fear;
  For there Bard Merlin sat at rest,
  His head low bowed upon his breast:
  Yes, there forsooth sate Merlin gray;
  And he?—how should he flee away?

  “Hush, grandson mine! fear naught; in deeps
  Of slumber most profound he sleeps.
  Eaten has he red apples three,
  On the hot ashes cooked by me.
  Whither we list we now may fare,
  And he will follow everywhere.”

VIII.

  In early morning, ere the queen
    Had risen from her bed,
  Her waiting-lady to her side
    She called, to whom she said:

  “What in the city has befall’n?
    And what the noise, I pray,
  That shakes the columns of my bed,
    Ere yet ‘tis dawn of day?

  “And what has happened in the court?
    And wherefore do the crowd
  With eager tumult thus press on
    With joyous shouts and loud?”

  “It is that all the town is glad,
    And keeping holiday,
  Because unto this palace high
    Bard Merlin comes to-day;

  “And by his side an aged dame
    In robe of white wool fair:
  The royal son-in-law, behind,
    Follows the ancient pair.”

  This heard the king, and ran to see:
    “Haste thee, good crier arise!
  Rise from thy bed: make speed: proclaim
    The feast in gallant wise.

  “Make proclamation through the land,
    And summon great and small
  Alike, to keep the marriage feast,
    And make high festival.

  “Come all who will, come high and low:
    The daughter of the king
  Affianced eight days hence will be
    With the betrothal ring.

  “Bid to the nuptials nobles, lords
    Of ancient Brittany,
  Dukes, marquises, and judges grave,
    And all of high degree.

  “Bid churchmen, warriors, and knights;
    But summon first of all
  The great crown-vassals of the land:
    The rich, the poorest, call.

  “Run, messenger, the country through,
    With diligence and speed;
  To hasten quickly thy return
    See that thou give good heed.”

IX.

  “Good people all two ears who own,
    Wide open let them be,
  And silence keep—keep silence all,
    And hearken unto me.

  “Hearken to that which is ordained:
    The daughter of the king
  In eight days hence betroth’d will be,
    And wear the ‘spousal ring.

  “Come to the nuptials all who list,
    Rich, poor, or great, or small;
  Churchmen and judges, counts and knights,
    The king inviteth all.

  “Nothing to you shall lacking be,
    Nor silver bright, nor gold,
  Nor meat, nor bread, nor hydromel,
    Nor wine, for young and old,

  “Nor seats for you to sit upon,
    Nor valets quick to wait.
  Two hundred bulls, two hundred swine,
    Will be served up in state.

  “Two hundred heifers, and of roes
    One hundred from each wood
  Throughout the country, oxen white
    And black, two hundred, good;

  “Whereof the hides shall equally
    Be shared among the guests;
  And there will be a hundred robes
    Of white wool for the priests.

  “A hundred chains of burnished gold
    For warriors brave and true;
  And for young girls a roomful gay
    Of festal mantles blue.

  “Eight hundred nether garments good
    For folk of poor estate,
  And seemly gifts for every guest
    Or be he small or great.

  “A hundred skilled musicians there,
    Each seated in his place,
  Music will make, by day and night,
    The festival to grace.

  “And in the midst of all the court,
    With fitting pomp and state,
  Merlin the Bard that marriage high
    Will duly celebrate.

  “In short, the feast will all surpass
    That e’er have been before;
  Nor will there be in time to come
    Its equal evermore.”

X.

  “Chief of the royal kitchens, say,
    The marriage, is it done?”
  “Finished, and paid for; and the guests
    Departed every one.

  “For fifteen days the feast was kept
    With gaiety and glee,
  Then, laden with rich gifts, the guests
    To go their ways were free,

  “All with protection from the king;
    And thus, with joyful heart,
  To Léon with his royal bride
    Did the king’s son depart.

  “All are gone hence, well satisfied;
    Not so the king alone:
  Merlin the Bard is lost again,
    And whither is he gone?”

It is believed that Merlin was assassinated, but popular tradition has
not suffered the mysterious bard to die.

The story of the conversion of Merlin in his old age comes down to us
from very early times, and has been sung by the Christian bards of
Wales, Armorica, and the Gaelic clans. The following ballad, as well
the foregoing fragments relating to Merlin, is still sung in Treguier,
and other parts of Brittany.

CONVERSION OF MERLIN.

  S. Kado walked the forest maze,
    Through many a darkling dell:
  S. Kado walked thro’ the forest green
    Ringing his clear-toned bell;

  When out from the shade of the ancient trees
    A phantom bounding sprang;
  But still S. Kado went his way,
    And still his clear bell rang.

  The phantom’s beard was like lichen gray
    Spread o’er an ancient stone,
  And its restless eyes, like boiling water,
    Glitter and danced and shone.
  ‘Twas Merlin the Bard that Kado met,
    That S. Kado met this day,
  With fiery eyes that wildly glared,
    And beard so long and gray.

  “In Heaven’s name, I bid thee, phantom,
    Tell me who art thou?”
  “A bard was I when in the world,
    To whom did all men bow.
  If I into the palace came,
    A joyous crowd pressed round,
  And gleaming gold fell from the trees
    When my harp began to sound.

  “My country’s kings all loved me well;
    And strange kings held in fear
  The mighty bard with harp of gold,
    To Brittany so dear.
  Now in the woods I dwell alone:
    Men honor me no more.
  Grinding their teeth, there pass me by
    The wolf and fierce wild boar.

  “My harp is lost; the trees are felled
    From whence dropped glittering gold;
  The kings of Brittany are not;
    The land to strangers sold.
  ‘Merlin the fool!’ now shout the folk,
    And pelt, with scoffings bold.”

  “Poor innocent, return to God,
    Who pity has on thee,
  And rest thy weariness on him
    Who died on Calvary.”

  “Ah, then in him I will confide,
    Will he but pardon me.”
  “Pardon from him do I pronounce:
    The Blessed One in Three.”

  “A cry of joy my heart sends forth,
    To honor heaven’s high King;
  And through eternal ages I
    His praise will ever sing.”

  “Go, Christian soul, and may his angels
    O’er thee spread their wing.”




“FOR BETTER—FOR WORSE.”

THE mother of a family of three children sits musing while she mends
their clothing which lies heaped upon a table beside her. The pile
has lowered slowly under her patient and busy fingers during the long
afternoon. The slanting sun now shines across her bowed head while she
still continues her work. It touches up the homely furniture of the
room with a glow richer than the gilding of art, and lends to the place
a cheerful aspect which does not accord with the mood of its occupant.
She is a woman of about twenty-four years, with considerable claim to
beauty in her regular features and dark, intelligent eyes. But there is
a look of discontent on her face, and a querulousness in her voice, as
she occasionally reproves the noisy children playing about her. Yet the
eyes wear a patient look, in spite of the discontent expressed, and a
sort of hushed resolve seems stamped upon her features, as if, whatever
is the trouble with which she battles, no acknowledged recognition of
it shall find vent. Nature, however, has her way, and that which the
voice refuses to utter the eye often betrays, and there will be found
lines written upon the human face which those who study physiognomy may
translate. It is the chirography of the soul. She writes upon the face
as upon a tablet, often also extending the characters to the whole of
the frail temple she occupies, leaving her traces in motions of the
hands, carriage of the head, the very posture of the body, and in the
gait, so that all are eloquent of her subtle influence. How often a
pure pious soul, dwelling on heavenly things, recoiling from grossness,
and courting all that is divine, praying fervently always not to be
led into temptation, but delivered from evil, glorifies a plain face
into a seraphic beauty which makes the beholder wonder whence comes
this loveliness! We see plain features. We wonder that this face should
please as much as it does, forgetting the soul’s high mission. We see
not the lamp behind the screen of flesh: we only see the effect of
the rays. Again, we see faces where nature has done much to beautify,
and where a soul not delivered from evil has written such ugly marks
that the fair tablet is disfigured with blots and stains of sinful ink
flowing from the pen held in the grasp of passion.

Whence comes the writing on the face of this mother sitting in the
golden sunshine, doing the work which mothers are usually content to
perform? She is striving as best she may with a lot in life distasteful
to her, but from which she sees no means of escaping, and, indeed,
as yet does not dream of trying to escape. This lot is that of being
married to a man of coarser nature than her own, who seldom sympathizes
with her in anything at all above the most grovelling interests.
Why she married him seems to her now an ever-unsolved puzzle, a
never-ceasing source of regret. If she had read the lines, she might
conclude with the poet that it was “accident—blind contact and the
strong necessity of loving.” Not being acquainted with that answer
to her riddle, she blames fate and her own inexperienced youth, and
the need of a home and protection at a time when her own heart had
not yet asserted its rights. Now, she knows she does not love her
husband, and she thinks she hates him at times. Not that he is cruel,
not that he is unfaithful—he is neither of these; but he is narrow,
jealous, exacting, unintellectual, and coarse; while she is aspiring,
even poetic, in her nature. Fond of the beautiful, seeking it in every
way, cultivating her intellect as best she can against the odds of a
deficient education, limited means and time, and overtaxed strength of
body, she longs for a better position in life. Care has fretted, if
not furrowed, her fair white forehead already; yet still she reaches
out and clings to every refining influence. All books that have
fallen in her way she has read, stealing the time from toiling hours
already filled to overflowing with household work. On this particular
afternoon, there lies among the stockings she is mending a poem of
Whittier’s, which has taken such a hold upon her fancy and morbid
feeling that the discontent deepens and the hunger of her starving
heart gnaws more sharply than usual. This poem, _Maud Muller_, read so
gaily by the happy many, with pleasure at its pretty conceits, allies
itself so to this woman’s experience that it finds an echo she cannot
silence, in the lines—

  “She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
  And many children played round her door;
  But care and sorrow and childbirth pain
  Left their traces on heart and brain.”

Although she has never had any other lover, or even a passing fancy for
any other man, save some vague ideal of some one different from her
husband John Thorndyke, as she reads:

  “And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
  Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,
  A manly form by her side she saw,
  And joy was duty, and love was law,”

she seems to herself the heroine of the poem, and John Thorndyke the
very unpleasant companion portrayed. And yet no thought of escaping
from what she considers her “shackles” obtrudes upon her musings.
She is a severe Puritan in her education and faith, and thus far has
escaped the base free-thinking and “free-love” tendencies of the day.
Marriage, disagreeable as it has proved to her, seems still, if not
a sacrament, a binding, honorable state, to be borne with according
to her promise, “for better or for worse.” She has been married by
an Episcopal clergyman, because it had been most convenient, and her
husband had preferred that form; and thus her spoken promise has always
seemed to her yet more definite. “For better for worse, for richer for
poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till
death us do part.” That sounds always to her like a doom. Joy is not
duty, and love is not law, in her case; but she patiently takes “up her
burden of life again, saying only, ‘It might have been.’”

But in her lonely heart, she has one pure God-given instinct to glorify
her otherwise gloomy religion, and ennoble her dull, hard lot. This
is charity in its loveliest form—a disposition for nursing the sick
and attending to the needy—a positive vocation for the work, which
she does from enthusiasm, not from cold duty. Ever her willing hands
minister to the suffering, and often is she called to watch through
lonely nights at their bedsides. In this way, her acquaintance has
extended far beyond her husband’s sphere of life. Often in the houses
of her neighbors, both rich and poor, are her skill and kindness called
into requisition. Tact and cleverness, and, above all, a willingness
to help in time of need, soon make a woman appreciated and respected
among those by whom she is surrounded, and so it happens that her own
life presents itself to her in sharper contrast with the lives of other
women.

That unsatisfied hunger at her heart gnaws more and more, and her
husband grows to her more and more repulsive; but while he repels her
thus, and every tendril of her nature reaches out vainly for supporting
strength, she fails not in any duty as wife and mother. While her heart
calls vainly, her conscience is answered and obeyed in every exaction.
Courting no admiration from others, even where willing tribute is paid
to her beauty and refinement; dressing in Quaker-like simplicity, not
only in accordance with her limited means, but her own severe taste;
leading a quiet, industrious life, Agnes Thorndyke is irreproachable,
and esteemed by all who know her. The serpent coiled down in the
shadows of her soul is waiting to rear its head—waiting for an evil
hand, an evil breath, to warm it into strength, that its venom may
poison this pure life.

That evil hand, that evil breath, are coming, as they are always sure
to come—

  “When such thoughts do not come of themselves
  To the heart of a woman neglected, like elves
  That seek lonely places—there rarely is wanting
  Some voice at her side, with an evil enchanting
  To conjure them to her.”

“Deliver us from evil.” How well our Lord knew the need of that
petition for us! How wise the church to require its frequent use! It
is the cry of the direst human need, in its last extremity, to its
last refuge. How will the evil come to Agnes Thorndyke? and how will
she be led into temptation? The gate is opened apparently by her very
virtues. While she sits brooding over the thoughts which Whittier’s
pretty poem has suggested, her attention is aroused by a loud cry, and
noise of clattering hoofs and wheels. Running to the window, she sees
a crowd around a gentleman who lies bruised and senseless before her
door, while a horse and shattered carriage are fast disappearing down
the street. Standing on her porch, elevated above the heads of the
little crowd, she perceives that the stranger is not killed, but that
he must be cared for instantly. She calls to the men to bear him within
her open door, that she may assist to dress his wounds, while a surgeon
is summoned. This she does so deftly and so gently that the sufferer
thanks her warmly, and the surgeon compliments her on her skill.

The man is not very dangerously hurt, but the doctor advises that he be
kept very quiet for a time. At this the stranger looks perplexed, and,
casting first a searching glance about the room and over the person of
Mrs. Thorndyke, he says:

“If I could be allowed to remain here for any remuneration which this
lady would consent to receive, I would pay it willingly, and also
consider it a great favor. I am a stranger in the place. I had finished
the business for which I came, and I was hurrying to the railway
station, when this unlucky accident befell me, and threw me upon your
kindness.”

He looks now at Mrs. Thorndyke. She does not speak immediately, but
seems to be considering the expediency of yielding to his request. Her
quick sympathy shows her at once that it will be best for him not to be
disturbed.

“If you cannot consent, Mrs. Thorndyke,” says the doctor, “he had
better be removed to the hotel above here.”

“Pray, no!” interposes the patient. “I came from there, and glad enough
I was to leave it. It is a noisy, dirty, wretched place. Can’t you
think of some better refuge than that?—if I may not stay here.”

There is peevishness in his tones while speaking to the doctor which
soften to a gentle pleading as he turns at the last words again to his
hostess. It is not lost upon her. She is touched by his evident desire
to stay, and equally evident need of quiet and rest.

“If my husband does not object when he returns,” she says, “I will
undertake to be your nurse; but I am afraid our plain house and ways
will hardly satisfy you when you are stronger.”

“Oh! thanks—a thousand thanks,” he replies; “no danger of any
fastidiousness of mine standing in the way of my gratitude and content.”

And so it is arranged; for the pecuniary help which the stranger offers
is not unwelcome to John Thorndyke in the growing needs of his family.

This stranger, Martin Vanderlyn, is a handsome man of thirty-five
years, with the kind of beauty and manner which takes captive the
fancy of many women, yet which is really satanic; hard and cruel gray
eyes, but capable of a soft, imploring expression; dark hair; pale,
clear skin; and tall, well-knit figure; a voice agreeable in most of
its cadences, but with a treacherous note occasionally grating on the
ear, though corrected quickly, as if he himself had felt it; inherent
strength, but not purity of purpose; persistent patience in executing
his own selfish and sensual will; apparent gentleness, and refinement,
and culture, made subservient to his own desires; poetry, and flattery,
and irreligion, and sophistry always on his lips and in his eyes—such
is the patient which it becomes Agnes Thorndyke’s loving task to nurse
day after day. In this dangerous companionship, this hungry heart finds
solace. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” should
be her constant prayer now. How can she help seeing his admiring eyes
follow her, and look into her own? How can she prevent the dangerous
familiarity sanctioned by their relative positions of nurse and
patient? Well he knows how to increase the ever-ready sympathy for his
sufferings. Soon and easily he reads the disappointment in her life,
and detects the cause. Is there no scruple of conscience, no emotion
of gratitude, to stay him in his bad designs, framed and nursed on
his sick-bed during the very time she so tenderly cares for him? Not
one. Day by day he weaves the net and casts the toils about her so
surely that her whole manner towards her husband has changed to a
querulousness and impatience which speedily provoke a response of the
same nature; and discord and hatred sit in the place where once reigned
duty and peace.

John Thorndyke, although of a heavy, is also of a spiteful and jealous,
temperament. He has been, in his dull way, proud of his wife, and
selfishly pleased at the comfort she has brought him. It has not
occurred to him to try to brighten her life. Indeed, he has not known
that her life needed any cheer. He thinks that she is his, and all her
duty is to him, and so long as he knows himself faithful to her, and
gives her all the pecuniary support he can command as a mechanic, it
does not occur to him that he fails in any respect. He has never even
questioned himself on that point. No misgivings apparently disturb his
sluggish conscience. In this, he differs widely from his wife. She has
sharply questioned her conscience, being perhaps dimly aware of the
weak spot in the citadel, of the serpent coiled in the shadow. But as
she has never before given the slightest cause for his jealousy, she
has not been even suspicious of how terrible a sway it can have over
him. Even now she does not read the signs aright, being blinded by her
own new infatuation.

In the meantime, Martin Vanderlyn is convalescent, and making himself
more and more interesting to her. He addresses her always with so much
respect and courtesy that it is a continual flattery to her; for this
woman has her vanity under all her severe simplicity of garb and mien,
and to be recognized as being superior to her position in life is the
strongest—or _weakest_—desire of her heart. To so regard her is to
flatter her more surely and insidiously than to praise her beauty or
her grace.

Sitting one day over her sewing, she is suddenly surprised by the
remark from Vanderlyn, who has been silently studying her: “Mrs.
Thorndyke, you are not happy.”

She looks up with a sort of frightened expression, as if detected in
some crime. After a moment of deprecating, silent supplication in her
eyes, she responds with the commonplace question, quite at variance
with her look and manner:

“Why do you think so?”

“Because,” he says, “I am a physiognomist, and I have been studying
your face until I can read it as I would a book; and a more eloquent
book could not be found.”

The last words are spoken in a softened voice which makes her blush and
keep her eyes steadily averted. She has not been used to compliments
before his advent, and cannot toss them off or return them lightly.
She feels guilty now at liking this so well. Looking steadily at her
meanwhile, and pleased at her embarrassment, he says, “I have read in
this book that your life is not a happy one, and I am not surprised
at reading it. Perhaps my own past experience has made me quicker at
translating the language of your book; for, Mrs. Thorndyke, I have not
been happy myself, and I think your discontent springs from a similar
source.”

Again that deprecating look, as if battling with her conscience, which
whispers to her that the cause of her trouble should not be avowed or
even tacitly admitted. Complaint against her husband should not be
made to Martin Vanderlyn, above all. There is already too dangerous a
sympathy between them. A subtle intuition tells her that she is being
led into temptation, and that she ought to end this now and for ever.
Yet she does not do so. The serpent in the shadow has even now warmed
and stirred. Curiosity, also, concerning Mr. Vanderlyn’s former history
leads her to encourage him to proceed; so she says, “I am sorry to hear
that your life has not been, a happy one. I had thought of your leaving
us to go to brighter scenes and kinder friends.”

She has pondered over the absence of any communication with friends
or relatives during his illness, and so this last remark is not quite
truthful. She has often wondered if he has ever had wife or lady-love.
He answers all this by his reply to her last words:

“I am glad that I cannot return to the unhappy time I speak of. That is
closed for ever. It was when I had a wife, Mrs. Thorndyke; I have none
now.”

“She is dead, then,” says Agnes, looking up, and speaking in a low
voice which she instinctively feels should not seem sympathetic with
a grief he evidently disavows, for it is rather a relief which he
confesses.

“I know not,” he says, with a careless tone; “she may be, for aught I
know or care. She is dead to me, and I know I feel quite dead to her.
We are divorced, and I am a free man again. To that unhappy time of
my life I cannot return. The chains are broken. It was a woeful time.
I can imagine no surer blight on a human being’s happiness than an
unsuitable marriage. I know how it poisons a life, because mine, for a
time, was so poisoned. I think if there is any hell, my marriage was
arranged there by the prince himself, who is particularly interested
in the marriage question. I think divorces are made in heaven, not
matches, for my relief on getting my divorce was heavenly. The
sacrament of divorce for me! The feeling it gave me was that which old
John Bunyan ascribes to Christian when the pack of sins fell off his
back.”

He speaks with an audacity which frightens her Puritan prejudices,
while it lures her feminine admiration for his courage in daring to
speak out and assert himself. There is some romance here also, and a
subtle flattery in being made his confidante. For to her more delicate
sense, this, which he would brazenly declare to any one who might
listen, seems a sacred confidence. Her face looks her sympathy. The
answering chord is struck, and he sees it. The serpent has stirred to
the evil breath.

“Do you not think, Mrs. Thorndyke, that we have the inborn right to
seek our own happiness? Has not nature implanted that feeling within
us? Are not our lives a continual protest against being made miserable
or uncomfortable for the sake of sustaining a law of church or state?
The law of love is above these, and it can glorify a life, or the
absence of it can debase one.”

“And joy was duty, and love was law,” echoes in Mrs. Thorndyke’s
memory; and here is the “manly form by her side.”

He continues without pause: “If it is our right to pursue happiness, it
is equally our right to seek our love freely, casting off fetters which
love disdains; they chafe his delicate wings—love cannot live bound.”

“But he must be, to some extent,” she almost gasps, frightened at this
new and dangerous doctrine. “Society, respectability, require that
there should be a marriage bond by which the law can hold either party
to the contract. Else what would become of us? So many would escape who
have no right to do so.”

“I doubt that they have no right to escape. The very desire for escape
constitutes the right. If the law of love is there, no escape will be
desired.”

“Yes; but, Mr. Vanderlyn, in many instances, the possibility of escape
causes a desire for it; and where there is no way of escape, the
inevitable is accepted. ‘What can’t be cured must be endured,’ you
know.” And there is a mournful cadence in her voice, a drooping of her
head and eyes.

“That is just the cruel part of it,” he says—“that freezing endurance
sitting like a vampire on our hearts.”

She puts her hand up suddenly to her heart, and clutches at her dress
nervously, as if to hide the vampire hidden there. Is it not rather a
tightening of the serpent’s coil? The next moment she is composed, and
ashamed of the momentary effect his words have caused in her outward
manner. He has seen the motion, however, but gives no evidence of it.
As if absorbed only in his own remembrances, not desiring to stir up
hers, he continues:

“I speak as one who knows and has felt, not as one who deals with
the cold abstractions of theologians and political economists. We who
know through bitter tasting of the cup are the true philosophers. Our
eyes have been opened, and we see the light. We no longer grope in the
darkness of the middle ages. We cast off the chains forged for us ages
ago. We will be free in our love, and in our beliefs or disbeliefs,
for creeds are chains. Do not let me shock you, my gentle Puritan. I
beg your pardon. Do not look at me so reprovingly, I cannot bear it.
Remember I am a sick man still, and you are my good, sweet nurse. You
must not grieve me with your displeasure. It is bad for me, you know.
Your frown makes me unhappy—come, smile on me.”

Ah! such idle, easy, words for him to speak—such dangerous ones for
her to hear! None such ever fall on her ear from John Thorndyke’s lips,
and, if they should, they would not please her so from him. She knows
this only too well, and that this man ought not to have the power to
please her so easily. But she allows herself this pleasure, arguing
that her life is bare enough.

“Do you forgive me enough to care to hear my story?” he says, after a
pause.

“Oh! yes,” she answers; “I am interested in that which has so colored
your feelings on this subject, and has given you such strange views of
law and religion.” She tries to speak it lightly, but he detects the
interest in himself. It is what he wishes.

“It is not much of a story,” he says. “I was married very
young—attracted and deceived by a pretty, saintly face, such as one
sees in pictures, and which always pleases youth. I found my saint to
be a stubborn bigot, who put her confessor above me, and set me and my
happiness entirely at naught in computing her debit and credit with
her church. Such selfish looking after one’s own interest in the next
life is to me disgusting. Every generous impulse must be stifled for
that end. The certain present is offered up a victim to the uncertain
future. I and my happiness had to be forgotten in prayers, penances,
fastings and foolishness. Bah! it sickens me to remember it. Enough
that, after bearing every discomfort, I sought a divorce, and _took_
it.”

He says the last in a strange tone, which long afterwards she recalls.

“Had you no children?” she asks.

“Yes, one; but it died, happily for it. I should not have liked to see
a daughter of mine trained in that church, as of course she was doomed
to be had she lived. That alone would have goaded me to madness—to see
the fastings and prayings duplicated. Two at it, against one.”

Here the conversations ends, and Agnes Thorndyke takes “up her burden
of life again,” with an added protest against it. How she wishes that
she could cut the cords, and let it fall like Christian’s pack! Poor
John Bunyan! “to what base uses has he come at last!” Christian’s pack
of sins made to represent the sacrament of marriage! But if “the devil
can quote Scripture for his purpose,” he will not scruple to use John
Bunyan’s quaint fancies.

About this time, Mrs. Thorndyke begins to have her attention drawn to
certain vile papers and periodicals of the day, introduced cautiously
at first, and with some discrimination, as if the better (or rather,
_less bad_) ones have been selected. She finds them lying about Mr.
Vanderlyn’s room, and she reads them without comment, but the seeds
take root. Afterwards Mr. Vanderlyn calls her attention to certain
cleverly written but mischievous articles; flattering her intellect
by appealing to her supposed ability to decide on these abstruse
questions. When he finds that she reads with avidity all he procures,
faster and thicker the vile flood, which disgraces the press and the
name of literature, pours in upon her. Here she is almost defenceless.
With no thorough education, no religious influence to penetrate into
her life, and guard her against this assault, she is left to stem this
torrent of sophistry, to answer these devil’s thoughts penned too often
by the hand of her own sex. It is a sad but significant fact that, in
this sort of vile writing, women, when they do stifle their better
natures and take up unclean pens, excel the other sex. Some of the most
dangerous books of the day are written by females, under the guise of
pretended morality, which deceives silly girls and weak women who read
them and are unable to detect the poison under the honey. Alas! that
women should thus prostitute their intellects in the service of the
devil!

When a woman of Agnes Thorndyke’s stamp can be found reading long
editorials in a paper devoted to the destroying of the marriage
relation, and to the advance of “free-love” principles, alas! for the
happiness, the very legitimacy, of her children! But what cares Martin
Vanderlyn for any such considerations? To corrupt this woman’s nature
and to win her is his present and sole object, and so he calls to his
aid all those of her own sex as well as of his, who dip their pens in
envenomed ink for mercenary ends.

But John Thorndyke has become jealous, and, being so, he is not
a more agreeable husband. He soon signifies his desire that Mr.
Vanderlyn shall find for himself some other lodgings. In doing this,
he expresses himself so coarsely, and hints so broadly at the cause of
his displeasure, that it increases the very danger he seeks to avoid,
by forcing an understanding and recognition of the situation between
his wife and her patient. This is just what Mr. Vanderlyn desires. He
wishes Agnes Thorndyke to know him to be her lover, long before he
will dare to avow it to her. Well he knows that he must prepare her
for that, lead her step by step up to that avowal; and he knows that
she may recoil at any moment, and turn out from the slippery path
through which he is leading her. Too many good instincts and habits of
early training are warring with the bad teachings he is so assiduously
implanting, to make his task a perfectly easy one. Now that John
Thorndyke has shown his jealousy so plainly, these two cannot look
into each other’s eyes without knowing there is some cause for it.
They cannot ignore it, and, while Mr. Vanderlyn is preparing to leave,
he improves the opportunity to remark how unhappy he is at the sad
necessity. He tells her how pleasant it would be if he could continue
to pass all his days with her; and at last, finding himself unreproved,
he asks if that is not possible?

At this she does recoil, with a wild and frightened look like that of a
hunted deer. But he knows that it is the first shock which either kills
or leaves the victim able to bear another. Her mind has taken in the
full force of the proposal, and yet she does not send him at once from
her presence. She only says, “How can it be possible?” admitting by the
very question that she might like it to be possible.

“Leave him, Agnes,” he says, “and come to me—to me, your adorer—I
can appreciate the jewel of which he knows not the value!”

“But I am his wife, and I cannot be that to you; so, if not that,
nothing, Martin.”

“Yes; you can be a wife to me, Agnes, if you must be tied by the law.
The law will soon free you as it has freed many another. Cast off your
chains as I cast off mine, and come to me!”

He holds out his arms as he speaks, and she goes to them. The serpent
has coiled almost his last coil!

In no relation except that of wife can this woman be persuaded to live
with Vanderlyn; but the law may be perverted, her marriage contract
basely set aside and broken. “For better, for worse” she has taken
John Thorndyke, and she has plighted him her troth; but she will not
have the worse, and her troth she will not keep. Yet the law must make
her _seem_ a wife, even in this degradation. So it is agreed that
steps shall be taken to obtain a divorce, Vanderlyn’s money being at
her service. It is so agreed, but not without many struggles on her
part. If she is not a loving wife, she is a tender mother. This new
infatuation cannot crush the true maternal instinct in her heart. It
requires the wildest assurances on Vanderlyn’s part that the law will
give her the control of her children, and that he will care for them
and educate them as if they were his own, to keep her from receding.

Vanderlyn is no longer an inmate of her house, but he hovers around her
neighborhood, seeing her during her husband’s absence, upon which she
can always count for a certain number of hours every day. He writes to
her letters which seem to her gems of poetry and eloquence, but which
are really only fulsome flatteries, and sophistries of a godless school
which he studies and copies. He knows that it is necessary to keep her
mind always clouded by these false arguments, and her vanity fed by
these protestations, because she is not by nature prone to the falsity
to which he is luring her. This woman with a better husband, or even
with a worse husband, and better religious teaching, could not have
been so tempted. She is no syren, no coquette; it really needs much
careful tact, and study, and address on Vanderlyn’s part to make her
take the first steps in this path.

The children seem to be her guardian angels now. In their innocent
helplessness there is great strength. Vanderlyn often wishes them in
their graves, for it seems to him, chafing in his vexation, as he
repeats,

  “Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother’s breast,”

that these are rivals indeed, which may yet laugh him down and bring
her rest, unless he is unremitting in his efforts to prevent it.

As if in answer to his bad desires, scarlet-fever prostrates them all
at once, but drives him, for the time, from the thoughts of their
mother. Wan and pale with watching, anxiety, and dread, Agnes weeps
and prays over her little flock—prays as she has not prayed for a
long while. Yet two are taken. The youngest darlings are buried in one
grave, leaving a boy of seven years to fill the empty places.

For a time, Vanderlyn almost thinks his game is lost to him, and that
Death has checkmated him; for the dead children, whose lives have
seemed in his way, are even yet his most powerful opponents. So truly
does Agnes mourn now, so bitterly reproach herself, that, if her
husband will meet her with any tender sympathy in this their common
sorrow, some love for him may yet spring up, watered by her tears for
children which were his as well as hers.

  “Oh! the child, too, clothes the father with a dearness not his due.”

But John Thorndyke is not the man to be tender and delicate to any
one whose grief takes such a form as hers. Her brooding melancholy he
calls “moping.” Her silence and shrinking from every one, he speaks
of as “airs” put on to disturb him. He thinks the loss is his as well
as hers, and _he_ is not inclined to “mope and take on so.” He goes
to his work every day as usual, and, although he does miss his little
prattlers, to whom he has always been indulgent, the world does not
seem all dark to him. He is utterly incapable of understanding how
differently this blow affects her, and it chafes him that she does not
bear it as he does. He cannot see that the very need of going to his
daily toil, of mixing with other men whose minds are not on his loss,
and the leaving of his sad home every day, helps to dissipate much
morbid feeling which might cling to him were he obliged to stay at
home, as his wife is compelled to do. He never thinks of the greater
difference which it has made to her in every little change which the
absence of the children demands. The very lightening of her care and
toil for them leaves greater time and room to grieve. Her bereaved
heart cries for love and sympathy in this her sorest need, and her
husband does not heed the cry; does not soften to her just at the time
he can save her.

Vanderlyn does not slight the chance of increasing his influence. He
has been jealous of these children living, he has feared their memories
may even now crowd him from the mother’s heart, but he sees the need
of some one to _appear_ at least to share her grief. She does not
scruple to tell him how cold and unfeeling her husband is at this time;
and thus she furnishes him with one more weapon in the contest he is
waging against her better nature. He plays now the part of tender,
devoted friend, rather than that of lover. He sees that just now no
lover’s image can obtrude before the angel faces always present to her
thoughts; he has the tact and patience to wait and turn the present
digression ultimately to his favor. It may be that, after all, if
these children had lived, she never could turn entirely from her duty.
But this delicate attention to her now in her grief, contrasting so
unhappily with Thorndyke’s unfeeling, stupid impatience with her, is
the most dangerous temptation of all, because it wins her confidence in
his being a real friend as well as lover.

When the first acute feelings have worn off after the children’s death,
and her life has gradually become more cheerful, she turns from her
husband with a bitterness and contempt which produce in him a still
worse frame of mind. Now he taunts her for her assumed superiority to
him, and scoffingly pictures how happy she might have been with some
rich man—Vanderlyn, for instance. And so matters go on from bad to
worse, until he consents to her applying for a divorce, seeming as
willing as she to part for ever.

Of what use lingering over the details? The divorce is granted, as
such things are, in open defiance of Heaven’s decree and the apparent
law of the land. When a New York daily paper has frequently a list of
divorces longer than its list of marriages, can we wonder over the
fact? In this case, it has been necessary to change their residence
for a time, because the laws of one state are more favorable to this
object than another. But Christ’s law is the same everywhere. Can a
couple be considered married to each other in one part of our country,
and divorced in another? Are the children of a second union legitimate
in one state, and illegitimate in another? It would really seem so.

But Agnes Thorndyke, or rather, Agnes Rodney, as she is now
called—taking back her maiden name, without her maiden heart—is
deprived of one comfort on which she had surely counted. Her one child
is left to its father. Thorndyke has schemed for this with deliberate
malice. It is not that he loves the boy overmuch, but it is his revenge
upon her. He would rather burden himself with the care of this little
child than forego the pleasure it gives him to punish her. And so,
while the father of her child lives, she lays her head on another man’s
breast, and calls him husband. Vanderlyn is spared either the keeping
or the breaking of his promise to care for her children—two in the
graves where he wished them, and one in a strange woman’s care. He has
all he wished for—John Thorndyke’s pretty wife at last.

Thorndyke takes to his forsaken home a housekeeper at first, as if he
were a widower. This woman is a widow who makes him so comfortable that
he speedily marries her, without considering law or Gospel as they may
bear on his case. No compunctions trouble her easy conscience, and she
accepts the lot offered to her as the best thing in a business point
of view likely to fall to her. Being disinclined for reading poetry,
having no refined yearnings, having little intellect to cultivate, she
never reads _Maud Muller_, nor thinks of herself as out of her place
in any sense. Being good-natured and not oversensitive, she gets along
with John Thorndyke remarkably well, and no thought of Agnes ever makes
a ripple of disturbance between them. She might be forgotten, except
for the boy, with her eyes and features, left in her old home. He calls
the woman in her place “mother,” and does get quite motherly treatment.
He loves the brothers and sisters who in time spring up around him, and
seems as happy in his boyish plays as if his own mother were guarding
and guiding him. Who can say how much his future life might be changed
if that mother had been left to him? To be sure, her death might have
brought as great a change to him, and we will now only follow her fate.

Is she happy in her new relations? Is joy her duty, and love her
law, now? Can that ever be, after broken vows and outraged honor?
“It is not in the bond.” For a time she thinks herself happier in
all her more refined associations; with leisure, books, servants,
all at her command, and with Martin Vanderlyn devoted to her. He
does not introduce her into society, but lives remote from all his
acquaintances and former friends. This never troubles her. Two people
like these, who have closed or tried to tear out a chapter in their
life-history, naturally shrink from having it recalled. They prefer
to think themselves sufficient for each other, looking always to the
future—never to the past, if they can avoid it.

But before a year is passed, Agnes begins to see that Vanderlyn is
not so entirely devoted to her as she would wish and he has at first
seemed. It is the first shadow of a misgiving, not really harbored,
but resting upon her heart in spite of herself. She does not wish to
see any difference in him, and she tries to think it is business which
keeps him so often away from her. He says it is, and why not think so?
why not believe him? Alas! small clouds of doubt already dot the sky of
her belief in him. Whence they have arisen she can scarcely tell; but
there they are, and threatening to increase. However, she has risked
too much for him, braved too much, to foster anything now which may
wreck her life-venture. If this man fail her, where can she turn? But
after a while a little child is born—a boy to help divert her thoughts
from that other boy bearing another father’s name. The mother does
blush when she thinks of these boys, each hers, having each a different
father living _now_. She had named her first-born after her own father,
and some idea of trying to fill his place leads her to call this one by
the same name—George Rodney. Vanderlyn, however, playfully calls him
Martin after himself, and, as the child grows, he learns to answer to
that, and calls himself “Martie” quite as often as by the name which
his mother has given him, and which she will never relinquish.

So truly does the pure instinct of motherhood show her the falsity of
her present position that she often feels that two fathers should not
be living at the same time for the two boys for whom she is mother. Of
that other boy she often thinks still with yearning love, and of his
sisters in their little grave; more now than at first, when Vanderlyn
was with her so much, for his absences grow longer and more frequent.
He takes no father’s pride in this child of his, but rather seems bored
by the care and trouble it has brought. A baby _is_ a tyrant in a
household, especially if it is loved as Agnes loves this one, giving it
almost all her time and care. Now, indeed, Vanderlyn might say, if he
remembers the poet he quoted before in his jealousy of her love for her
children:

  “Nay, but nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry:
  ‘Tis a purer life than thine—a lip to drain thy trouble dry:
  ... My latest rival brings thee rest.”

But it does not bring her rest. She often now remembers that Thorndyke
was a fonder and better father than his successor; that his children
seemed at their birth and during their lives to form a tie between his
wife and himself; that he always faithfully brought his hard-earned
money to her, to spend or save for them as well as for himself. She
gives him this credit now, because Vanderlyn, with his more abundant
means, shows in many ways a carelessness of her comfort and pecuniary
wants. True, she has not really suffered, but small misgivings have
oppressed her that she may yet come to that. She has found that
Vanderlyn is not the substantial business man she was at first led to
believe. She had thought him a lawyer, and so he is by education; but,
in reality, he is an adventurer and a speculator, and, although often
commanding money easily, he has no real fortune, and has only a very
fluctuating income. This it is that worries him and takes him often
away from home long at a time. He has not the honesty to deny himself
any accustomed luxury for the sake of those dependent upon him. It
chafes him to be obliged to meet his household expenses, and not always
have the means to do so conveniently. He knows that Agnes will not
insist upon unnecessary expenditure, but he has not the courage to tell
her frankly of his affairs. There is a respect for her in his heart
in spite of all, and he knows that there is an uprightness about her
which would lead her to insist on plainer living and fewer servants.
She is not weakly self-indulgent as he is. He is so unprincipled at
heart that no tie, no obligation, can bind him when it once becomes
irksome. He is a greater moral coward than the woman he has perverted.
And so at last, when her boy is about five years old, Agnes finds
herself deserted. Martin Vanderlyn has gone to California, and left
her with her household effects, and about one hundred dollars in
money—that is all.

She looks her fate steadily in the face. Young enough and strong enough
yet for work, but with a helpless child upon her hands, what shall she
do? She sells promptly her furniture, books, pictures, and jewelry. For
the last she has never cared, but Vanderlyn had lavished it upon her
during the days she was seeking a divorce. Very rarely has she worn it.
With the sum thus raised, she can, for a time, pay her board until she
can find employment, and she seeks the most retired house she can find
for a refuge.

In bitterness of spirit beyond anything she has ever endured while the
honest wife of John Thorndyke, Agnes now feels in almost overwhelming
force the folly of the course she has pursued—_almost_ overwhelming,
but not quite, for she still believes herself to be Martin Vanderlyn’s
lawful wife. Bad as he has proved himself, she as yet has no doubt
that he is her lawful husband, and so, in her present abode, she calls
herself Mrs. Vanderlyn, with no thought but that she is so honestly, if
not wisely.

She has been in her new home rather less than a week, when, passing
along the corridor, she meets, coming from a room near her own, two
Sisters of Mercy, who have apparently just taken leave of an invalid
lady; at least, so she judges from the voice which comes through the
open door, saying:

“Good-by, and come again soon, Sisters,” followed by a cough that to
her experienced ear sounds like consumption. She has heard that cough
in the night when she has been wakeful, and she hears it again many
times this day. She thinks of the invalid often, with her old instinct
of sympathy for the sick—a sympathy which of late years has not been
much called forth in her retirement. The next day, coming in from her
quest for employment, she meets on the porch a gentleman who, she feels
almost sure, is a Catholic priest. He enters the house at the same
time with herself, and, proceeding before her up the stairs, passes
directly and quietly to the room occupied by her sick neighbor. “She is
a Catholic, then,” says Agnes to herself; “but that does not matter. I
wonder if I could do her any good?” And she acknowledges to herself a
very strong desire to see her neighbor, and offer any service in her
power. But she does not act at once. Her peculiar position makes her
shrink from meeting strangers or forming acquaintances. Still, the
cough strikes upon her ear appealingly, all the more that there comes
no sound of any voices from the room, save when the priest or the
Sisters of Mercy are there. She knows her neighbor must be alone, and,
she suspects, lonely also, for many hours. She resolves to go to see
her, and take little George, thinking, in the fondness of her mother’s
heart, that his pretty ways may divert the sick woman.

But who is she, and what is her name? Agnes asks this of her landlady
the first time she finds that everbusy and worried woman alone.

“The sick lady in the front room? Why, she is your namesake, perhaps a
relation.” And the landlady eyes keenly her questioner, thinking her
curiosity about both of her boarders will now be gratified, as she
slowly adds: “She is a Mrs. Vanderlyn, as well as yourself.”

Agnes feels herself trembling and almost choking at the swift rush of
conviction coming over her as to who this Mrs. Vanderlyn is: The priest
and the Sisters of Mercy! Martin Vanderlyn’s wife was a Catholic! She
can hardly command her voice to ask:

“Is she a widow?”

“I guess so, but she hasn’t said so,” replied the landlady. “She has
no friends, except them horrid spooks of nuns and that there sneakin’
priest; I do declare I’m ashamed to see ‘em a-comin’ in and out o’ my
door—but _you_ be’ent a Catholic, be you?” she says, in sudden alarm,
lest her burst of confidence has been misplaced. Agnes reassures her by
saying:

“Oh! no; I am not a Catholic, nor is any of my family; so I think this
lady can be no relative, as my husband was never a Catholic.”

What makes her voice change as she shapes her reply in this evasive
way? It is not altogether the keen, inquiring eyes of the landlady
trying to find if she is wife or widow. She can scarcely tell herself;
but the sharpened sense of expectation of some coming revelation, or
else the nearness of Martin Vanderlyn’s wife, makes her feel for the
first time a sense of guilt in speaking of him as her husband. Not that
she says even to herself as yet that he is _not_ her husband; but the
two wives—if this is his wife—in such close proximity, impresses her
much as the fact of the two living fathers of her two boys has done.
It cannot seem to her quite right for herself to be Martin Vanderlyn’s
wife, while the woman in the next room is such a reality. As long as
the divorced wife had seemed to belong to the past—perhaps dead—it
had not impressed Agnes so keenly as to be living under the same
roof with her; for Agnes feels almost sure that it is so. Still, her
desire to see her neighbor is by no means lessened; and it is not idle
curiosity, but a nobler feeling, which leads her to ask the landlady to
introduce her. That person has, in the meantime, remarked:

“The lady is a real lady, and, if she _is_ a Catholic, I can’t say
aught agin her. I do hate to see them beads, and crosses, and figgers,
and picturs of folks with Saturn’s rings on their heads, which she
keeps in her room; but, if she gits any comfort from ‘em, poor soul,
why, I can’t begrudge her that. Only I wish she had more light and some
_real_ religion, now that she’s so near dyin’. I do hate to see her
sunk in darkness, without no light o’ the Gospel. But ‘tain’t no use
talkin’ to her, she never gits offended; but, when I wanted to send a
good Methodist minister to pray with her, she said her spiritooal needs
was already cared for by. Father what’s-his-name, and she jist give me
back that lovely tract about _Going to Hell_, as if she warn’t scared a
bit. ‘Tain’t no use, Mrs. Vanderlyn, to talk to her. They’re all of ‘em
so set and superstitious they _can’t_ experience religion or have any
realizin’ sense o’ their sins.”

Says Agnes: “I don’t want to minister to her soul. That is not my
mission. I only thought she was lonely, and I might do her some good in
being a little company for her some of the time, if nothing more.”

“And so you might, and it’s right good of you to think of it. It’ll
take some off my mind to know you’ll see her sometimes, as I can’t
find time to go in and sit with her as often as I think she may expect
of me.”

And the landlady, followed by Agnes, taps at the door of Mrs.
Vanderlyn’s room. In a minute more, Agnes finds herself face to face
with the invalid, who is sitting in a large easy-chair by the window.
After some words from the landlady, explaining Agnes’ kind intention
and sympathy, that garrulous person withdraws to her pressing household
cares.

  TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.




“BEATI QUI LUGEANT.”

FROM THE FRENCH OF MARIE JENNA.

  Go; vainly in thy breast lies hid the steel
  That pierces. I perceive thy sad estate,
  Thy silent fortitude; and for thy weal
      I pray thee meet thy fate.

  And weep before me! Cast thy burden down,
  I know that sorrow finds a drear relief
  In solitude, and wears abroad the crown
      Of a majestic grief.

  The hand of friendship may not put aside
  The heavy folds of the funereal veil,
  And on the threshold of an arid pride,
      Words seem to faint, and fail.

  But days have passed, I come—nay—never start,
  Suffer my presence, place thy hand in mine,
  Pour thy full soul into my faithful heart
      Whose pulses all are thine.

  If friendship only bore me to thy side,
  I would withdraw before thine icy face,
  Obey the teachings of my _human_ pride,
      My eager steps retrace.

  But I, too, have known sorrow, and have earned
  The right to minister before its shrine.
  A mighty secret, too, my heart has learned,
      Whose sources are divine—

  A secret that shall set thy soul aglow
  When once its holy meaning I unfold,
  And make thee bless its author for the woe
      That _thus_ could be consoled.




JOHN BAPTIST DE ROSSI AND HIS ARCHÆOLOGICAL WORKS.

FROM THE HISTORISCH-POLITISCHE BLAETTER.

THE ruins that lie by the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates give us
a better notion of the power of the kings of Babylon and Assyria, of
the civilization, religion, and moral condition of the ancient peoples
of these countries, than the writings of historians. The obelisks and
pyramids, the ruined temples and the columns covered with hieroglyphic
characters, tell us more of Egypt than Herodotus and Manetho. In like
manner do the tombs and inscriptions in the catacombs bear witness to
the faith and morality, the usages and manner of living, of the early
Christians.

The study of these catacombs has therefore a double aim: one dogmatic,
the other historical. Considered from the latter standpoint alone,
the discoveries recently made in the catacombs destroy the theories
and appreciations of many historians. It is literally true, as a
distinguished non-Catholic has said, that, “since Rossi published
his works, the history of the age of the Christian martyrs has to be
rewritten.” The distinguished Alfred de Reumont, on page 806 of the
first volume of his _History of the City of Rome_, says: “No one knows
better than the author how much this work is indebted to the researches
of De Rossi.”

The pontificate of Pius IX., among its other glories, can claim that of
having especially aided De Rossi in his archæological studies; and on
this account alone it would deserve the gratitude of all the friends
of science. Pius IX. has deserved the name of the “second Damasus,”
not only because he founded “The Archæological Commission for the
Investigation of the Ancient Christian Monuments of Rome,” and aided
it with pecuniary subsidies, but more particularly because he took a
lively personal interest in all its undertakings.

The zeal of Pius IX. found in John Baptist de Rossi, a born Roman, a
most suitable person for the advancement of archæological lore. And,
in fact, Rossi alone, as all acknowledge, made more progress than
all his predecessors. Although he has been more than a quarter of a
century at work, he is still a hale man; and if Piedmontese brutality
or revolutionary barbarism does not prevent him, he may yet make
more splendid progress in his learned studies. Rossi has wonderful
powers of observation, united with great calmness and perseverance in
investigation, ardent love of science, and vast erudition. He is well
versed in all the branches of his favorite science—in archæology,
bibliography, history, æsthetics, topography, and architecture. With
keen discernment, which his complicated investigations never lead
astray, he knows how to choose and value his materials. We know
not which to admire more—the persevering industry, or the great
and unflinching mental and physical strength, which he displays in
assorting the various materials which come before him. His judgment in
forming hypotheses, in drawing conclusions and consequences, is always
prudent. He prefers to prove too little rather than too much. On this
account, as well as because of his critical acumen, he has obtained
such a reputation among archæologists that Martigny, in his _Dictionary
of Christian Antiquities_, says: “We can rely implicitly on every word
that Rossi writes.” Rossi never builds a card-house; he makes no vague,
superficial reasonings. All is deeply thought; monuments and documents
are always brought in to corroborate his assertions; and we know that
nothing is more solid and convincing than the hard marble.

It is true Rossi has not published the half of his immense collections;
but from what has been published we can perceive that nothing so
important has appeared in the archæological world since the time of
Bosio, perhaps never anything so vast from one archæologist.

The first great archæological work of Rossi appeared when he was yet
a young man. It was printed in the third volume of the _Spicilegium
Solesmense_, published by the celebrated Benedictine Dom Pitra, now
cardinal of the church. Rossi always quotes it with pleasure as his
first work. The title is _A Letter on the Christian Monuments bearing
the Inscription ΙΧΘΥΣ_. Paris, 1855.

The figurative and poetical style of the Sacred Scriptures, as well
as the discipline of the secret, introduced into the “Church of the
Catacombs” those numerous symbols, so full of meaning, which, disguised
in the simplest pictures or the simplest words, expressed so much to
the initiated. The lamb, the anchor, ship, the stag, peacock, the cock,
the dove, etc., were symbols of sublime Christian ideas. But the most
important of all the Christian symbols was the _fish_. It is mentioned
as a Christian hieroglyphic all through the works of the Fathers, and
appears on all the old monuments. On these latter, sometimes the Greek
word _ΙΧΘΥΣ_ sometimes the painted, and some times the engraved, image
of the fish, is found. During the period of the discipline of the
secret, especially during the first three centuries of the church, the
most holy mysteries of Christianity were concealed from the uninitiated
under the symbol of the fish.

The fish is the symbol of Jesus Christ. The Fathers before the IVth
century insinuate this in obscure and ambiguous terms, while those of
the IVth and Vth centuries proclaim it plainly. Thus writes towards the
end of the IVth century Bishop Optatus Milevitanus:[110] “The fish,
according to its Greek orthography, _Ιχθυς_ expresses by its letters
a number of holy names, which in Latin are _Jesus Christus Dei Filius
Salvator_”—Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour—_Ιησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ
Υἱὸς Σοτήρ_. S. Augustine[111] expressly says that, if you take the
first letters, of these five Greek words, and unite them together, you
have _ἰχθυς_, _i.e._ _fish_, which name is a symbol of Christ.

Some ecclesiastical writers strive to connect the fish-symbol of Christ
with the Sibylline prophecies; other Fathers endeavor to find in it
certain analogies between the nature and acts of the fish and the human
nature and works of Christ. The different passages of ancient writers
on these points are brought together in De Rossi’s treatise. Rossi
himself has beautifully explained the origin of this symbol.

The fish is the symbol of Christ according to his human nature. In the
figurative language of the church, the present life is likened to a
sea. _Ubique mare sæculum legimus_,[112] says Optatus Milevitanus.
Ambrose calls men the fish who swim through this life. When the divine
Word became man, he became a fish as we. Hence Gregory the Great wrote:
“Christ condescended to hide himself in the waters of human nature, in
order to be captured by the angel of death.”

More frequently the fish is used as the symbol of the divine nature of
Christ. The large fish caught by Tobias that he might have food for his
journey, use the liver and gall to free Sara from devils, and restore
sight to his father, was considered by the Fathers as a striking symbol
of the divine Redeemer, who by the light of his doctrine cures the
blindness of ignorance, redeems the world from the power of demons,
and feeds us with his body on the pilgrim route from earth to heaven.
Therefore is Christ symbolized as Teacher of truth in his church; as
Redeemer from the power of Satan by baptism; and as Food of souls in
the Eucharist.

Out of the many beautiful and expressive symbolical representations of
the intimate connection between Christ and his church, we shall select
only the two figures numbered 104 and 105 in De Rossi’s tract. In the
midst of a surging sea a fish is swimming, carrying on its back a ship,
the symbol of the church. It is the divine _Ιχθυσ_, who, according
to his promise made to his church, carries her safely through the
storms of the world. The ship is managed by rowers, the hierarchy of
the church. The only pilot and leader of the ship is the Holy Ghost,
represented by a dove sitting on the top of the mast. In order that
no one may mistake the vessel, the scene of Christ giving the keys
to Peter is painted in the foreground exactly as our modern painters
represent it. In order to make this point clear, namely, that the Holy
Ghost is guiding the bark of Peter, the words _ΙΗΣ_ (_Ιησοῦς_) and
_ΠΕΤ_ (_Πέτρος_) are written over the picture.

Man is born the child of divine wrath: Christ frees him from
Satan’s power by baptism; makes him a child of God, a new man, a
_neophyte_.[113] Now, as Christ the Fish scatters these his blessings
in the baptismal font, it was called by the names of _baptisterium_,
_illuminatorium_, and, more frequently during the time of the
discipline of the secret, _piscina_, or fishpond. Therefore Bishop
Oriontius of Auch wrote in the Vth century: “The fish, born in
the water, is the author of baptism.” Therefore were the oldest
baptisteries commonly ornamented with the picture of a fish (Rossi, p.
3).

In many of the monuments collected by Rossi, near the word _ΙΧΘΥΣ_ we
have also the word _ΝΙΚΑ_. The fish conquers. The neophyte is freed
from ruin and the power of Satan—he is a trophy of Christ’s victory.

Since the word fish, as well as the picture of it, was perfectly
identified with Christ the Redeemer, it was natural to use this symbol
to conceal that mystery which the pagans so fearfully misrepresented
when they said that the Christians met together at stated times,
slaughtered a child, drank its blood, and ate its flesh.[114]

The fish became the symbol of the Holy Eucharist. This could be done
with the greater propriety, since Rossi tells us that, at the banquets
of the wealthy pagans, fish was considered a delicacy, and it is seldom
found on pagan monuments. Hence, to eat _the fish_, and to receive
Holy Communion, became synonymous expressions. Prosper of Aquitaine
calls Christ the great Fish, who gives himself as food to his disciples
and the faithful.

We cannot enter into details, and shall only consider the monumental
inscription found at Autun in 1839, which has attracted so much
attention from the archæologists. The text begins with the words:
_Ιχθυσ οὐρανίου θεῖον γένος ἤτορι σεμνῷ χρῆσαι_: “O divine race of
the heavenly Ikthus, guard, after you have received it, the immortal
fountain of grace flowing from divine sources. Bathe thy soul, my
friend, in the ever-flowing waters of wealth-giving wisdom. Receive the
sweet food of the Saviour of the saints; eat and drink the Ikthus which
thou holdest in thy hands.[115] O Ikthus, I have prepared my hands,
I long for thee, my Lord and my Redeemer! That I may behold thee in
happiness, O my mother; I beseech this favor of thee, O light of the
dead. Aschaudius, my father, thou dearest to my heart, with my sweet
mother and my sisters, in the peace of the Ikthus remember thy son
Pektorius.”

The first verse of this beautiful inscription which many of the learned
in the time of Marcus Aurelius and at the end of the IIId century use,
alludes to the grace of baptism; the following sentences refer to the
sacramental use of the Ikthus. In the concluding phrase, the founder
of the monument, Pectorius, addresses himself to his parents and
relatives, with the petition that they would remember him in heaven,
where they enjoyed the peace of the Ikthus.

From this important monument, as well as from many others collected
by Rossi, it is proven that the Holy Eucharist was thought to be a
_sacrament_ by the early Christians. In others, it is equally clear
that they considered it a _sacrifice_ also.

In one of the oldest cemeteries, that of Domitilla, as well as in
that of Callistus, we see a thrice sweet sacrificial table, on which
three loaves and one fish are lying. On each side of the table are
seven baskets with loaves. The meaning of the picture is plain. The
connection of the Ikthus with the bread is clearly shown. “The table
represents the Christian altar. This was usually a portable slab of
marble with brazen rings, placed over a martyr’s grave, and supported
by little columns. But what else could the Christian artist wish to
symbolize by placing the fish beside the bread than the offering of
the divine Ikthus on the altar? We have, therefore, on the one hand,
the invisible presence of the divinity in the fish; on the other, the
visible form of the bread, and then the position of the mysterious
representation. The sacrifice is the table of the Lord, the Eucharistic
banquet. To make this clearer, the seven baskets filled with loaves
surround the sacrificial table. They represent the seven baskets which
were filled with the remnants left after the multiplication of the
loaves in the wilderness—a miracle which has always been considered a
type of Holy Communion.”[116]

Dom Pitra, in his _Spicilegium_, has added to Rossi’s documents
many found in Gaul. Ferdinand Becker, in the _Historisch-Politische
Blätter_, vol. lxiii., p. 736 _et seq._, has written, since Rossi’s
time, a remarkable article on the “Symbol of Jesus Christ under the
Figure of a Fish.” Professor Jacob Becker has published something
on the same subject. Rossi naturally did not treat of the German
discoveries in this line of archæology.

It is singular that the symbol of the fish continued to be used in
Germany up to the middle age. In the _Hortus Deliciarum_ of the Abbess
Herrad, written in the XIIth century, and still preserved in the
Strasbourg Library, there is a representation of the sacrament of the
altar, by means of a small basket with a loaf and a fish. In a picture
in the cathedral library at Einsiedeln, there is the symbol of a fish
whose blood is represented as opening the gates of limbo.

Northern Africa, once so celebrated in the annals of the church, did
not escape the research of Rossi. Léon Rénier has collected, in a
work entitled _Roman Inscriptions of Algeria_, published at Paris,
A.D. 1838, most of those documents which caused Rossi to
undertake his second great work, _A Letter to J. B. Pitra, Benedictine
Monk, on the Christian Titles found at Carthage_. These documents are
very important as explaining the symbol of the cross. The Christians,
for various reasons, were unwilling at first to represent the cross
among their symbols. The cross was the _damnata crux_ of Apuleius,
the _infelix lignum_ of Seneca, the _teterrimum, crudelissimumque
supplicium_ of Cicero. The Christians, therefore, did not wish to give
the pagans an occasion of insult, nor to give scandal to the weak
faith of the catechumens. Prudent respect, as well as wise foresight,
induced them to conceal their most holy symbol in the interest of the
progress of faith. Consequently, as Rossi proves, we find the _cruces
dissimulatæ_ among the symbols, which, by their similarity with the
real figure of the cross, became Christian symbols, but, on account
of their being also recognized as heathen symbols, excited no scandal
or suspicion. Such concealed symbols, or _cruces dissimulatæ_, are,
according to Rossi, the _Tau_ or crooked cross, the oblique or S.
Andrew’s cross, the anchor cross, and the monogram of Christ with all
its varieties.

The oldest monogram is the simple _Χ_, the first letter of Christ’s
holy name. At a later period, the _Χ_ was united with the _Ι_, the two
together standing for _Ιησοῦς Χριστός_. Before the time of Constantine,
the monogram was represented by the union of the Greek letters _Χ_ and
_Ρ_, the two first letters of the word _ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ_. After the conversion
of Constantine, when the punishment of the cross was abolished, and all
that was offensive or scandalous in it removed, the symbol became more
striking by the introduction of a cross-line. In the second half of the
IVth century, in spite of the Julian persecution, the symbol of the
cross became more plain. But when Christianity, in and since the time
of Theodosius the Great, took possession of the laws, and ordinances,
and customs of the empire, the symbol became so clear that all could
understand it. Therefore, after the end of the IVth century, and in the
beginning of the Vth, we find the simple figure of the cross on all
public monuments, without any attempt to conceal it.

The progress of this symbol of the cross was not so slow in development
in some of the remote provinces as in the city of Rome and its
environs. In some of the distant provinces, the power of paganism
ceased to control the people at an earlier date than in the city, and,
consequently, allowed the Christians to manifest their symbols without
fear. This happened as early as the IId century in Northern Africa,
where the Christians were powerful at a very early date. Rossi, in the
same work, gives us valuable documents and proofs to show the important
place which the symbol of the triangle should hold in archæological
disquisitions. It was a recognized symbol of the Holy Trinity.

It is a common custom among certain prejudiced modern writers to speak
of the “hatred of the early Christians for art.” By degrees, however,
the bandage begins to fall from their eyes, and the truth becomes
clearer. To Rossi much credit is due for having labored to destroy this
prejudice also. The attention of the early Christians was called to
works of sculpture rather than to works of painting. And this was quite
natural. The statues were mostly naked. And “among the entirely naked
Aphrodites of the later Greek and Roman artists, there is hardly one in
which the woman does not predominate over the goddess. Sensuality and
grossness are conspicuous in most of them.”[117] Some of them also knew
that the Venus of Praxiteles, which he represented at first entirely
unclothed, was copied after a model of Phryne.

It is different with painting—after music and poetry, the most
spiritual of arts. “By the blending of light and shade, and the laws
of perspective, it can give a tone of spirituality to the bodily form,
and an ethical appearance to the inanimate. Painting is the art of
soul impressions. Everything great, noble, and refined can be better
expressed on the canvas than in marble.” The Christian muse, therefore,
naturally took to painting. Hence on the walls in the catacombs we find
the first efforts of the Christian painters. Likenesses of the Mother
of God are among the first which we meet. These pictures, in which
virginal innocence, maternal tenderness, holy worth, tender grace and
piety, are manifested, have been collected and published in 1863 in
large chromo-lithographs in his work entitled _Imagine Scelte della B.
Vergine tratte dalle Catacombe Romane_.

The earliest likeness of the Mother of God is found in the catacombs
of Priscilla. On account of the many likenesses of the Blessed Virgin
found in them, these have been called the Marian Catacombs. There is no
doubt that these pictures are of apostolic date, and originated with
that Priscilla who was known both to Peter and Paul, the mother of
the Senator Pudens, and grandmother of the holy virgins Praxedes and
Pudentiana. In the arch of the central crypt, the adoration of the magi
is painted. The Blessed Virgin holds the Infant Jesus in her bosom;
before her in the sky is the star whose light leads the three wise men
from the East to visit the divine Child.

In another crypt is delineated the annunciation of the angel. The
Blessed Virgin sits on a throne like the ancient episcopal chairs;
before her stands the archangel as a beautiful, ethereal youth,
without wings, dressed in tunic and pallium, his right hand raised,
and the index finger of it pointed at the Virgin. In her face there
is a look of surprise and holy, virginal shyness. On the ceiling of
another grave-niche, in the very oldest part of the catacomb, close
to the graves of the family of Pudens, we find a painted picture of
the Virgin and Child in the pure classic style. Rossi, supported by
the most various archæological and historical documents, places this
picture in the time between the second half of the Ist and the first
half of the IId century. The Blessed Virgin, clothed with many-folded
drapery and cloak, bears on her head the veil usually worn by the
married or betrothed. Over her hangs the star of Bethlehem; before her
stands a young, powerful-looking man, with a prophet’s mantle thrown
over his shoulders. In his left hand he holds a scroll, and with the
right he points to the star and the Virgin and Child. He is Isaias
the Prophet, pointing out the favored Virgin, the branch of the root
of Jesse, who was to conceive and bring forth the blessed Fruit; and
showing the great light which was to shine over Jerusalem. The beauty
of the composition; the grace and dignity of the figures; the swelling
folds of the drapery; and the correctness and spiritual beauty of the
expression, make this, although the oldest picture of the Madonna, one
of the most striking which we possess. The elder Lenormant did not
hesitate to compare it with Raphael’s best productions.

The picture of the Madonna in the second table of Rossi is of more
recent origin. In this picture, the Mother of God sits on a chair of
honor, holding the divine Child in her lap. The three kings, led by a
star, come to meet her. It is from the cemetery of Domitilla. We omit
the other pictures of the adoration of the magi in the other catacombs
of Callistus, Cyriaca, etc.

The assertion of the Calvinist historian Basnage, that the pictures of
the Blessed Virgin were not introduced into the church until after the
Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, sinks to the ground in the face
of Rossi’s documents.

He has collected in his works the chief inscriptions to be met with
in the catacombs, and has surpassed all his predecessors in the
completeness of his information and documents. Although, after the
discovery and investigation of the catacombs by the celebrated Bosio,
many authors like Aringhi, Bottari, Boldetti, the Jesuit Lupi, Marchi,
and others, had treated on them, and the relations of their contents to
theological sciences and ecclesiastical studies, none has equalled the
distinguished Rossi, whose ardor, energy, and talent were always aided
by the most liberal sympathy of the Roman Pontiff.




A LEGEND OF S. CHRISTOPHER.

OFFERO (the bearer), afterwards S. Christopher, being proud of his vast
strength and gigantic limbs, resolved to serve—for he was poor—only
the most powerful monarch on earth.

Accordingly, he searched far and near until at last he came to the
court of a king who, as he was told, was the greatest monarch on earth.
To him Offero offered his services.

They were gladly accepted, for his powerful frame pleased the eye of
the king, who knew that no other prince could boast of such a servant.

Offero, supposing his master to be afraid of no one, was greatly
surprised on perceiving the king tremble and cross himself, whenever
the name of Satan was mentioned. “Why dost thou do so?” he inquired of
the monarch.

“Because Satan is very mighty,” replied his master, “and I am afraid
lest he should overcome me.”

“Then I must leave thee, for I will serve only him who is afraid of no
one,” said Offero.

Again he commenced his wanderings; this time in search of Satan. One
day, on crossing a desert, he perceived a horrible object with the
appearance of great power coming towards him. Offero’s great size
seemed not in the least to startle him, and with an air of authority he
asked: “Whom dost thou seek?”

“Satan,” Offero answered, “for I have heard that he is the most
powerful upon earth. I wish to have him for my master.”

“I am _he_,” said the other, “and thy service shall be an easy one.”

The giant bowed low, and joined his followers.

As they pursued their way they came in sight of a cross. No sooner had
Satan’s eyes perceived it, than he turned with evident fear and haste
and took another road, so as to avoid passing the cross.

Offero was not slow in noticing these signs of alarm. “Why dost thou do
so?” he asked his master.

“I fear the cross,” Satan made answer, “because Christ died upon it,
and I fly from it lest it should overcome me.”

“Then there is one more powerful than thou, and I shall leave thee and
seek him,” replied Offero. With these words, he left Satan and went in
search of Christ.

After much toil and long wanderings, he came to a hermit, whom he
entreated to tell him where Christ could be found.

The holy man, seeing him thus ignorant, pitied and taught him. “Christ
is indeed the greatest king in heaven and on earth,” he said, “for his
power will endure throughout eternity; but thou canst not serve him
lightly—he will impose great duties upon thee, and he will require
that thou fast often.”

“I will not fast,” said Offero, “for that would weaken my strength,
which makes me so good a servant.”

“Thou also must pray,” continued the hermit, taking no heed of the
interruption.

“I have never prayed and will never do so. Such service is for
weaklings, not for me,” replied the giant.

“Then,” said the hermit, “dost thou know of a river whose waters are
wild and deep, and often swollen by rains, sweeping away in its swift
current many of those who would cross it?”

“Yes,” said Offero.

“Then go there and aid those who fight with its waves; carry the weak
and little ones across upon thy strong, broad shoulders. This is good
work, and, if Christ will have thee in his service, he will assure thee
of his acceptance.”

Offero went to the river, and on its banks built himself a hut. Day
and night he aided all who came, carrying many upon his shoulders, and
never wearying in assisting them across the river. A palm-tree was his
staff, which he had pulled in the forest, and which was well suited to
his great strength and height.

One night, when resting in his hut, he heard a voice like that of a
weak child, and it said: “Offero, wilt thou carry me?”

He rose quickly and went out, but, search as he would, he could find
no one; and he re-entered his dwelling; but presently the voice
called again: “Offero, wilt thou carry me?” A second search proved
fruitless. At the third call he rose again, taking with him a lantern.
He searched, and at last found a child. “Offero, Offero, carry me over
this night?”

He lifted him up and began crossing the stream. Immediately the wind
commenced to blow, the waves rose high, and the roar of the waters
sounded like thunder. The child also began to increase in weight,
grew more heavy upon his shoulders, and Offero feared that he must
sink; but, with the aid of his staff, he kept himself up, and at last
succeeded in reaching the opposite shore. Then he cried: “Whom have I
carried? Had it been the whole world, it could not have been heavier.”

Then the child replied: “_Me_, whom thou desirest to serve, and I have
accepted thee. Thou hast not only carried the world, but _him_ who made
it, upon thy shoulders. As a sign of my power and my approbation of
thee, fix thy staff in the earth, and it shall grow and bear fruit.”

Offero did so, and soon it was covered with leaves and fruit. But the
wonderful child was gone. Then Offero knew that it was Christ whom he
had carried, and he fell down and worshipped him.

Thenceforth he called himself Christopher, served his Master
faithfully, holding fast to his new faith through all kinds of tortures
and sufferings.

King Dagnus of Lycia, after having thrown him into prison, and not
succeeding in turning him from his faith, commanded that he should be
executed.

Arrived at the place of execution, he knelt down and prayed that all
who saw him and believed in Christ, should be delivered from earthquake
fire, and tempest. It was believed that his prayers were heard, and
that all who look upon the figure of S. Christopher are safe, for that
day, from all dangers of earthquake, flood, and fire. The sight of it
is believed also to impart strength to the weak and weary.


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

 CHURCH DEFENCE. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

 “Our Clerical Friends” appear to be suffering pain from the strong
 sinapisms of Dr. Marshall. At least, we suspect they must be in pain,
 from certain suppressed, inarticulate cries and moans of the _Church
 Journal_, _Churchman_, etc. Their doctor is inexorable, however, and
 has already applied another blister. Their internal disorder is too
 deeply seated and obstinate to allow of any milder treatment. They
 have been seized with such a violent madness of fancying themselves
 priests and playing at Catholic that argument is lost on them, unless
 plentifully infused with ridicule. _Church Defence_ is unmerciful
 in its ridicule, like the _Comedy of Convocation_, but it is also
 perfectly genteel and polished in its style, and as overwhelming in
 argument as an essay by Dr. Newman. Those who have laughed over the
 sparkling pages of the classic _Comedy_, will enjoy another laugh
 over this new drama, and those who have been thrown into a rage by
 _My Clerical Friends_ will be at a loss for epithets wherewith to
 give vent to their pent-up bosoms when they read this new amiable
 discussion, which they will and must do, in spite of themselves. Dear
 friends and would-be Catholics, you might as well laugh with the whole
 world that is laughing at you! Your little farce is played out. It is
 a small business to be trying to cheat poor girls who are entrapped
 by your counterfeit Sisters, by pretending that you are Catholic
 priests and can give them sacraments. Something else is wanted besides
 acolytes and nicolytes, candles and high celebrations, mimicry of our
 sacerdotal dress, and high collars or high altars. You are outdone
 even in counterfeiting Catholicity by the little Greek schismatical
 chapel, where there is a better Signor Blitz than any of your feeble
 imitations. Do, if you please, try something new for the amusement of
 mankind, and let the curtain fall on the Anglo-Catholic farce!


 THE PROGRESSIONISTS, AND ANGELA. By Conrad von Bolanden. New
 York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

 The second of these novelettes by the most popular writer of fiction
 among the Catholics of Germany is really a charming story. The
 character of “Angela” is remarkably well drawn, and is the type of
 a perfect Christian woman, in the three phases which are so full
 of moral and poetic beauty, as maiden, bride, and mistress of the
 household. The first one is very different, dealing with incidents and
 scenes which are not so pleasing, but unfortunately equally real. As
 both are reprints from the pages of this magazine, our readers will
 remember them, and no doubt be glad to get them in a separate form.
 Those who have not read them will find them not only entertaining
 reading, but full of thought and instruction on most important and
 practical topics of modern life.


 LIFE OF J. THEOPHANE VÉNARD, Martyr in Tonquin; or, What Love
 Can Do. Translated by Lady Herbert. New York: The Catholic Publication
 Society. 1873.

 LIFE OF HENRY DORIÉ, MARTYR. Translated by Lady Herbert. New
 York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

 These two works are translations from the French by Lady Herbert, for
 the benefit of S. Joseph’s Foreign Missionary College at Mill Hill
 near London, to which she has been a warm friend and liberal patron
 from the beginning. Americans cannot help feeling a great interest in
 that institution, for the first band of missionaries it sent forth
 came to labor among the colored people of our Southern States.

 Nothing could be better calculated to stimulate the fervor of the
 aspirant to the missionary life than the example of these two young
 Christian heroes worthy of the primitive ages of the church—worthy,
 it might be said, of the XIXth century; for never was there an age
 that required more firmness of purpose and constancy to the truth
 than this, with its glorious confessors of the faith in Asia, and as
 large an army of martyrs on the other side of the globe undergoing the
 slower torture of heart and soul that is far worse than that of the
 cangue.

 The lives of the two missionaries before us are affecting to the
 last degree. Every Catholic youth should read them, if not to fully
 emulate their example, to which all have not the happiness of being
 called, at least to catch something of the unworldliness and burning
 piety they manifested from their very childhood. Indeed, we wish
 everybody could read them, for there could be no better proof of the
 holy influences of the Catholic religion upon the young heart. We
 linger with admiration over the account of their boyhood overshadowed
 by their future martyrdom. One golden thread runs through their
 whole lives—one constant aim—the wish to win souls to Christ, and
 at last to gain the martyr’s crown. And this intense desire for
 martyrdom was no mere youthful enthusiasm, as was proved when their
 lifelong prayer was granted. But amid all the self-denial with which
 they fitted themselves for their glorious destiny, nothing in their
 character is more striking than the tender affection—passing ordinary
 human love—apparent in their intercourse with their families, as
 if religion had refined every fibre of their hearts, and made them
 more keenly susceptible of love, of suffering, and of devotion to
 the service of God. They never allowed earthly affections, however,
 to come between them and their great aim in life. What angels of the
 sanctuary they were while preparing for the sublime functions of the
 priesthood! What a lofty conception they had of the sacrament of holy
 orders that consecrated them to a life of sacrifice! How joyfully they
 entered upon the life that promised them the radiant crown.

  “Prepared for virgin souls and them
  Who seek the martyr’s diadem.”

 “_Souffrir pour Dieu_—To suffer for God—will henceforth be my
 motto,” said Henri Dorié, about to leave his country for ever.
 Everything at the _Séminaire des Missions Etrangères_ was calculated
 to strengthen this desire for suffering. Old missionaries, who bore
 in their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus, were their professors.
 Every day they went to pray in the Hall of Martyrs, around which
 are ranged the relics of those who have suffered for the faith in
 China, Japan, and the isles of the sea, together with the instruments
 of their martyrdom—an appalling shrine at which to pray! And the
 whole room is crimsoned with the light diffused through the red
 hangings—significant of blood and suffering.... Among other sacred
 articles in this hall is the blood-stained crucifix of Bishop Borie,
 whose interesting life has been written by the Rev. F. Hewit.

 One of the most affecting scenes related in these books is when a
 band of missionaries is about to leave for their field of labor. On
 the eve of their departure, the young apostles all stand before the
 altar—victims ready for the glorious sacrifice—and one by one the
 loved companions and friends they are to leave behind come up to
 prostrate themselves, and kiss the feet of these heralds of salvation,
 the whole congregation meanwhile chanting: _Quam speciosi pedes
 evangelizantium pacem, evangelizantium bona!_—How beautiful are the
 feet of them who preach the Gospel of peace, of them that bring glad
 tidings of good things!

 M. Vénard went to labor in Tonquin. When the first missionary to that
 country—a Dominican friar—landed there in 1596, he found a great
 cross on that unknown shore, which seemed to prefigure what awaited
 those who should attempt to evangelize it. And to see how truly, we
 need go no further back than 1861, when, in the course of nine months,
 sixteen thousand Christians were martyred in only two provinces of
 Anam, and twenty thousand condemned to perpetual slavery. This was the
 year in which M. Vénard was martyred. The letter he wrote his beloved
 sister in his cage at midnight on the eve of his martyrdom has been
 styled by an eminent Frenchman “one of the most beautiful pages of the
 history of the martyrs of the XIXth century.”

 Henry Dorié was sent to Corea—the very name of which is symbolical to
 the Christian ear of persecution and martyrdom. The whole history of
 the church in that country is written in blood. Its first missionaries
 were all martyrs, its first bishop, its first converts. In one
 year—1839—over eight hundred Christians were martyred, and a still
 larger number perished from want in the mountains where they had taken
 refuge. But M. Dorié had but one desire—when his labors were ended,
 to win the palm. His prayer was not denied him.

 It is thus the sufferings of Christ are daily perpetuated in some
 member of his body in various parts of the world. We should all have a
 share in this great sacrifice of atonement, according to the measure
 of our calling, if not by personal labors, at least by our prayers
 and contributions. England is taking up the foreign missionary work.
 America, too, should have her part in it. Such a work would react on
 our own hearts, and develop a self-denial and generosity that would
 constrain us more powerfully in promoting every good work at home.
 As Archbishop Manning says: “It is because we have need of men and
 means at home that I am convinced we ought to send both men and means
 abroad—in exact proportion as we freely give what we have freely
 received will our works at home prosper, and the zeal and number of
 our priests be multiplied.”


 THE MONEY GOD; or, The Empire and the Papacy. A Tale of the
 Third Century. By M. A. Quinton. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1873.

 _The Empire and the Papacy_—a title of fresh significance in these
 days. It is remarkable how soon the Roman emperors realized that
 their authority could not exist in Rome with that of the pope,
 the importance of whose office became more and more apparent. The
 influence of the papacy gradually widened, and so asserted itself as
 to overshadow the very authority of the emperor himself. It excited
 alarm. Decius declared he would rather hear of a rival springing up to
 contest for the empire than of the election of a new bishop of Rome.
 How notoriously eminent must have been the dignity of that office to
 excite such jealousy! Was it the dread of this new mysterious power
 that led so many of the emperors to exile themselves, as it were, from
 their capital? Though pope after pope lived in Rome, and died there,
 even if by martyrdom, not one emperor from the time of Heliogabalus
 till Constantine ended his days in that city. One was killed in
 Germany, another strangled in Carthage, a third slain in Thrace, a
 fourth killed by lightning beyond the Tigris; not one died in Rome.
 And for more than a century and a half they resided elsewhere, hardly
 daring to show themselves in the capital, because they felt more
 and more their moral isolation in the midst of the Roman people.
 Diocletian went to Rome to be recognized as emperor, but returned
 to Nicomedia. When Maximian was made his colleague and assumed the
 government of Italy, he did not establish himself at Rome, but chose
 Milan as his residence. Constantine’s great object, after triumphing
 over his enemies, was to leave Rome and found a new capital. “The
 same girdle could not enclose both the emperor and the pontiff,”
 says M. de Maistre; “Constantine gave up Rome to the pope.” It was
 a moral necessity that the papacy—a power “far above king, law, or
 popular right,” should be free, and this has never been contested with
 impunity since.

 In the work before us, the contrasting influence of the empire and
 the papacy is exemplified in the history of two boys who were stolen
 from their mother in Thrace and sold at Rome as slaves. Separated in
 their childhood, one providentially fell into the hands of Agatho, a
 Christian hermit; the other gave himself to the service of Plutus,
 the “Money God.” We wish, for the sake of the young into whose hands
 this book may fall, that the early history of Eva, their mother, had
 been somewhat veiled. It affords, however, a strong contrast between
 the violent, passionate courtesan and the subdued and humble Christian
 which she finally becomes. A confessor of the faith, she fully redeems
 her early career by a life of penitence. Her sad form gives relief
 to that of Plautia, a noble Christian matron. Tertullian tells us
 how much Christianity improved the condition of woman. No sage of
 antiquity ever thought of developing her spiritual nature and thereby
 giving her greater moral elevation, but the humblest Christian priest
 made this a duty. We have only to read the writings of the Fathers,
 particularly S. Jerome, to realize the great renovation that took
 place in woman’s nature when her soul was awakened to higher aims
 and became conscious of a holier destiny. The _Acts_ of the early
 martyrs set before us some of the noblest types of womanhood. There is
 a grandeur in their unalterable serenity of soul under persecution,
 examples of which are given in the book before us. Indebted so greatly
 to the Christian religion, woman became its efficient supporter. We
 learn from Ammianus Marcellinus that the first popes were chiefly
 supported by the offerings of the Roman matrons. Their devotion to
 the service of the church is manifest from the jealous exclamation of
 Diocletian: “I hate, as a usurpation of my powers, the influence of
 these Christian priests over the matrons.”

 This tale of the IIId century evinces great familiarity on the part of
 the author with classical and antiquarian lore as well as the early
 Christian writers.


 THE NESBITS; or, A Mother’s Last Request, and other Tales. By
 Uncle Paul. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

 The first of these stories and the principal one, _The Nesbits_, is a
 rapid sketch of the life and fortunes of a young American, none the
 less interesting and, it may be hoped, true to nature because the
 figure of the hero, Ned Nesbit, is exactly the reverse of the “Young
 America” of the popular imagination. He is honest, manly, truthful,
 and religious; and it may be a surprise to some readers to find that
 those unusual characteristics of “Young America” neither make him
 insipid nor offer an insurmountable barrier to his success in life.
 The scenes of the story shift from the backwoods to New Orleans, from
 New Orleans to Mexico. There is plenty of fresh air, of sea and sky,
 pleasant bits of Mexican scenery and vistas of Mexican life; there are
 camping out and long rides and “brushes” with the Indians, hit off
 rapidly, and though in an unpretentious style, one admirably adapted
 to its purpose. There is a pleasant and harmless little love-plot
 that Uncle Paul’s chief readers—the young folk—are likely to vote
 “slow,” but they will find plenty of other things more congenial to
 their sanguinary tastes scattered throughout the book, while the tone
 is thoroughly Catholic from beginning to end. The second story of the
 volume—“The Little Sister of the Poor”—is a sketch, condensed from
 the French, of a little hunchback, who, finding her deformity rather
 an obstacle to her walking pleasantly in the ways of this world, and
 that even a dower of 10,000 francs did not serve to smooth it down,
 finally hides it away in religion, and becomes “a little sister.” The
 story would be very entertaining only that it may tend to strengthen
 the stupid idea so prevalent among non-Catholics, that the nun’s
 habit is a good covering for personal deformity, and that a convent
 is a sort of receptacle for ladies who can “do no better”: whereas,
 God culls his flowers where he wills, and women in convents are just
 the same as women anywhere else, with the exception that they have
 devoted their lives entirely to God’s service. In his last story—“The
 Orphan”—Uncle Paul has struck upon a vein which might be worked with
 as much profit as interest. It is a short, indeed too short, sketch
 of a thing that a few years back was of very common occurrence in
 this country. An Irish emigrant girl finds herself suddenly bereft of
 her parents, and placed in the keeping of a Protestant family. The
 author has made her position superior to that of the generality of
 her sisters under similar circumstances; she is a ward rather than a
 servant, and among friends rather than enemies to her race and faith.
 But even so, she finds herself, young and friendless, placed amid
 the thousand difficulties of Protestant surroundings. Her triumph
 over them is very touchingly told. The idea contained in this story
 might be worked to much greater advantage; and the tracing up some of
 those poor children who were snatched away and buried among heretical
 families, which, even if acting with the very best intentions, might
 consider the religion of these orphans something they were bound to
 abolish, would form a sadly interesting story, and one which would
 take in much of our recent Catholic history in this country.


 WILD TIMES. A Tale of the Days of Queen Elizabeth. By Cecilia
 M. Caddell. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

 This is a new and handsome edition of a story which, though it came
 out some years back in London, is probably unknown to very many of our
 readers. It is just one of those books which Catholics sadly stand
 in need of to adorn and grace their, to a certain extent, cumbersome
 literature. Miss Caddell has been fortunate in her choice of _Wild
 Times_, and _Wild Times_ have been fortunate in Miss Caddell. The
 period of the Reformation forms for the Catholic of to-day the most
 interesting one of English history; and recent researches, such as
 are exhibited in F. Morris’ late books (_Our Catholic Forefathers_,
 and _The Condition of Catholics under James I_.) and others similar,
 are bringing that particular period home to us with a clearness and
 fulness of knowledge which tend to make us acquainted with all the
 intricacies and common details of life, particularly Catholic life
 in those wild times, as we are with the humdrum life of to-day. Miss
 Caddell’s story is really the history of one of the very few noble
 English Catholic families who stood firm to their faith in that dark
 hour, and who, for the simple reason of being true to their God, were,
 according to law, false to their sovereign and country. The chief
 characters are two young brothers, Sir Hugh and Amadée Glenthorne, the
 latter a Jesuit educated on the Continent, and returning by stealth
 to the work of the ministry, which at that time meant martyrdom; the
 former a fiery, high-spirited English gentleman, whose hot blood and
 lofty aspirations cannot run tamely in the dismal groove set him by
 the “law,” because he happens to be a Catholic, but who, when the
 hour of trial comes, and he is weighed in the balance, is not found
 wanting. Around these two, with their charming sister Amy, the plot
 gathers; and the tracing of their fortunes and misfortunes makes a
 most beautiful and moving tale. There are plenty of other characters
 in the book: Blanche Monteman, Hugh’s betrothed, and Guy, the lover
 of Amy, both Protestants, give occasion for some very skilfully
 constructed complications; and the proud nature of the girl, and the
 terrible fall of that pride, are given with what the lady author may
 allow to be called a masterhand. There is also a weird gipsy queen,
 Ulrique, who turns out eventually to be something quite different,
 powerfully drawn, whilst the premature death of the mischievous little
 imp, Tom Tit, is as touchingly told, if not more so, as that of Little
 Paul Dombey. To enter into the plot of the story further than has
 been done would be to deprive the reader of _Wild Times_ of half the
 pleasure of a story so skilfully woven that the interest is sustained
 to the very last line, and its development hidden until the author
 chooses to disclose it. The style is of the purest, occasionally
 rising to the strongest, English. Miss Caddell has mastered the old
 forms, without making them as wearisome as some of Scott’s Northern
 dialects cannot fail to be to the unhappy uninitiated. The love in
 the story is by no means of the namby-pamby order, but good, and
 honest, and true; in a word, manly and womanly in the true sense
 of those words; and though mainly carried on between Catholic and
 Protestant, it serves for that very reason to heighten the interest of
 the story, and as here depicted seems a very natural thing in those
 wild times; whilst one has the hope all through that earthly love will
 blend with a higher. The gradual change effected in the blunt, fiery
 character of Hugh by the chastening hand of affliction, under which
 at first he chafes till you fear for him, but finally rises with all
 his strength of character to the heroism of a Sebastian, is as ably,
 though naturally and unconsciously, developed as anything the writer
 remembers seeing in this style of book. The only thing he quarrels
 with is the preface. Without being dogmatic on the point, it is very
 doubtful whether, “when the queen—Elizabeth—ascended the throne,
 Catholicity was still the religion of the great masses of the people,
 and was either secretly followed or openly professed by a large half
 of the noblest families in the land.” English history scarcely bears
 this out; and had only one-half the noblest families in the land been
 even secretly Catholics, still less such Catholics as Hugh Glenthorne
 and his brother, England would never have sworn by a goddess in
 petticoats, and Mr. Froude would never have felt compelled to write
 his history. Again, when the author speaks of “the brightest and
 bravest of the band who form a halo of glory round the throne of Queen
 Elizabeth,” the reader involuntarily asks himself, What band? And the
 very question is its own answer. Still, a notice is not for a preface;
 and however one may quarrel with that, with the story itself no fault
 can be found. It is a beautiful, high-toned, moving picture of noble
 Catholic struggle, suffering, and death, drawn evidently with infinite
 pains and after historic study, and with that highest art which is
 nearest nature.

 PETER’S JOURNEY, AND OTHER TALES. By the author of
 _Marion Howard_ and _Maggie’s Rosary_. WILFULNESS AND ITS
 CONSEQUENCES. By Lady Herbert. New York: The Catholic Publication
 Society. 1873.

 The little book before us is intended for a premium-book for schools,
 and is admirably adapted to this purpose. The stories are thoroughly
 natural, and written in a good, healthy Catholic spirit. They are
 calculated to reach the masses in the most satisfactory way which
 could be chosen, that is, through their children. A great deal is
 constantly said about the authority of parents in the home, but
 we should not forget the immense and preponderating element of
 the children’s influence on their parents. This, if used in the
 right direction (which means, if guided in that direction by the
 teacher) may become of the utmost importance. It may civilize many
 a half-savage unfortunate who seems dead even to the stings of his
 own conscience; it may turn to serious reasoning the mind hitherto
 careless, because not exercised on spiritual things; it may shame
 into decency a character not irredeemably bad, but overgrown with the
 evil habits of half a century. In _Peter’s Journey_, or a drunkard’s
 dream, we see put into plain words the devil’s plea against the victim
 of intemperance. He claims him as his own by _fair barter_. “When
 thou didst ask for drink, did I not ask thee in return, not only thy
 wife’s affection, thy children’s happiness, thy home’s comfort, but,
 more than all, did I not demand thy soul? _I asked thee openly, and
 thou didst willingly agree...._ Well, didst thou not have the drink,
 morning, noon, and night? _And if so, shall I not have my price in
 full?_” This is a dark, but far from overwrought picture. Yet the
 mercy of God is greater than even such malicious sins, and till the
 very last the “pearly shadow” of his angel guardian protects the poor
 sinner. Peter awakes, and a sudden reformation is at hand. The poor
 wife, breaking down under her troubles, is weary and fretful, but
 Peter does not heed this, and in his stormy exit is only stopped by
 the baby, who is “examining the handle [of the door] with an attention
 worthy of an amateur locksmith.” Peter raised it in his arms, looked
 at it for a moment, and then, kissing it almost reverently, gave it
 to Mike and clumped down-stairs. “Poor Norah hoped he had not got
 _delirium tremens_.” It was a long time before Peter came back; when
 he did, it was behind the rampart of a large basket bursting with
 eatables. He goes down on his knees to his wife and begs forgiveness
 in the most charmingly abrupt and natural way, and when Norah recovers
 from a fainting-fit, everything is bright and happy again. “Certain
 it is that, when the _Angelus_ rang, it found them sitting side by
 side, shelling peas, and the baby on his knee, chuckling over a stick
 of rhubarb that it expected every one to smell every five minutes.”
 And what is the end? A triumph for Peter, and a hopeful example for
 all those who are honestly trying to follow in his footsteps. “In
 the whole parish there is not a cleaner house, better children, or
 a happier wife than Peter’s.... He collects the subscriptions for
 the schools, takes the money in church, carries the big banner at
 processions, and seems to do the work of half a dozen men made into
 one.... Is there a drunkard to reclaim, Peter is the man to take him
 in hand, depend upon it. Is there a drunkard’s widow struggling with
 her little ones alone, Peter will help her and put her in a way to get
 her living ... and he thanks God for all things, for his home, his
 little ones, his means of doing good, but, more than all, he thanks
 him for his wife Norah, and for a journey he took, of which he never
 speaks, on the Feast of S. Peter and S. Paul.”

 Of the “other tales,” we much prefer “A Carpenter’s Holiday.”
 The evils of bad companionship are here depicted, the absurd
 temptations which human respect thrusts in the path of young and
 often weak men, the manliness and true Anglo-Saxon spirit which even
 outsiders recognize in a firm refusal to yield to such temptations.
 The character of Sam is very interesting, and the history of his
 conversion quite a natural one. A lesson here and there is worth
 taking from it. For instance, the Catholic carpenter says to his
 friend, “People talk so much about our flowers and candles that really
 one would think they was a great part of our religion, _and, as it
 is, they’re just nothing_.” The old lesson of the example of converts
 is also well put forward. The end is, of course, an introduction to
 an earthly paradise, in the shape of a snug little farm, “the house
 hidden by roses, jasmine, ivy, and honeysuckle ... a dear, large,
 old-fashioned garden, with its apple and pear trees, its currant
 and gooseberry bushes, and its bed of flowers and cabbages, never
 thinking, as grand people’s flowers and cabbages seem to think, that
 they are not fit company for each other.” We are inclined to think
 that, if all discontented, restless people believed this sort of thing
 to be the inevitable reward of virtue, they would immediately become
 virtuous and leave off being discontented and restless. _We_ should,
 at any rate. And if this kind of life was the ending to which all
 good carpenters who spent their early holidays properly had a chance
 of attaining, why, then, we should be much freer than we are from
 trades-union strikes and International Associations. “The Carpenter’s
 Holiday” is the story most full of human interest and natural incident
 among all the little group by the author of _Maggie’s Rosary_.—We now
 come to Lady Herbert’s story of _Wilfulness_. This is an extract from
 the diary of a Sister of Mercy, and reveals one of the many phases
 of silent misery of which a large city is always full. The story is
 interesting if only as a picture of the heroism, the sacrifices,
 the sufferings, and the charity of people in humble, struggling
 circumstances, who could never hope to have their virtues set before
 an admiring public, and whose only motive was evidently the love of
 God and reverent trust in his divine providence. The last days of
 the heroine are touchingly told, her unselfishness in behalf of her
 father especially. “Every shilling which had been given her to spend
 in the little comforts so urgently required, had been hoarded up by
 her for this long-expected situation, when she was determined that her
 father’s appearance should do no discredit to his kind recommender.
 ‘Only think,’ she continued, ‘I had enough for everything but one pair
 of boots, and I could not conceive where that eighteen shillings was
 to come from. But I set to work and prayed one whole night for it,
 and the next morning a young priest came to see me, and brought me a
 sovereign, which he said a gentleman had given him that very day to
 give to his first sick call!’”

 TWO THOUSAND MILES ON HORSEBACK. A Summer Tour to the Plains
 and New Mexico. By James F. Meline. New York: The Catholic Publication
 Society. 1873.

 This is the fourth edition of this excellent book, which is now
 published by The Catholic Publication Society. As we noticed this book
 at some length in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1868, we
 can only reiterate what we then said, viz.:

 “There is just about enough fact to make the work decently solid, a
 good deal of fancy and impression, and, above all, a light hand.
 The style as a whole is really good, because it does pretty evenly
 just what it attempts and professes—sometimes more, seldom less.
 The descriptions of Denver and Central City, and the account of the
 Pueblos of New Mexico, interested us especially—the former for its
 manner, the latter for its interesting and curious facts. But another
 reader would call our selection invidious, and cite quite another set
 of incidents. The fact is, Mr. Meline is everywhere vivid, easy, and
 suggestive, and we do think we like those two parts best because we
 have friends in Denver and take a special interest in the old Poltec
 question.”

 PROCEEDINGS OF THE FOURTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE IRISH CATHOLIC
 BENEVOLENT UNION, HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER 16-18, 1872; TOGETHER
 WITH THE CONSTITUTION, ADDRESSES, ETC. Philadelphia: Office of
 the _Catholic Standard_. 1872.

 This was a convention of the representatives of nearly 20,000 Catholic
 workingmen. These men, living in different parts of the country,
 are organized into numerous beneficial societies, each independent
 for its own purposes and government, yet enjoying a fellowship with
 all the others for the sake of mutual benefit. The Benevolent Union
 makes these men each others’ friends, in sickness and in death, in
 any part of the country where a society exists. We say it makes them
 friends—we might better say brothers; for attention and support in
 sickness and Catholic burial after death are acts more than friendly.
 Any society which is beneficial and composed exclusively of practical
 Catholics, can become associated on payment of five dollars initiation
 fee, and not to exceed twenty-five cents a year for each member—this
 tax last year having been but ten cents. From these sources a fund
 is raised to pay the expenses of the conventions and a very small
 salary to the secretary and treasurer. Any member away from home is
 entitled to recognition by simply presenting his travelling card.
 In case of sickness, it entitles him to receive from any affiliated
 society whatever aid his own would give him, and in case of death, to
 the expenditure of the same amount for his funeral as would have been
 allowed at home. Expenses thus incurred are refunded by the society to
 which the recipient belonged.

 The mere statement of these advantages suffices to explain the
 extraordinary success which has attended the Union. Begun in the
 little city of Dayton, Ohio, with a small number of societies, it
 has in four years extended itself in every direction; sometimes
 creating new societies, sometimes affiliating old ones, everywhere
 attracting great attention and eliciting the warmest encouragement;
 until it is not too much to say of it now that it is one of the great
 beneficial institutions of the country. At the last convention,
 the President of the Philadelphia City Council extended a public
 welcome to the delegates. The proceedings were opened by a sermon
 from the distinguished Jesuit Father Maguire, and the speeches and
 debates were orderly and dignified, and sometimes eloquent, the most
 important questions being discussed and decided expeditiously and
 without ill-temper. Among other things, we noticed that measures
 were instituted looking to the settlement of immigrants in favorable
 places, and to their safety and comfort while in transit. A full
 and minute account was rendered of the receipt and disbursement of
 the common fund, and expression frankly and powerfully given to
 the unanimous sentiment of the societies with regard to Catholic
 education, and of sympathy with the Holy Father in his present
 distress. There was no evidence whatever of any spirit of rivalry; on
 the contrary, a committee was appointed to negotiate for the extension
 of the benefits of the Benevolent Union among other Catholic bodies.

 These large assemblages of intelligent and zealous Catholics supply
 one of the greatest wants of the church. After business matters
 are fairly disposed of, the convention becomes a great Catholic
 representative body—not indeed to make laws or to enforce them, but
 to give voice to the thoughts of the Catholic laity on questions which
 concern the general welfare of the church. Never did the clergy, from
 the Pope down to the parish priest, stand in greater need of the
 encouragement of the faithful, and never before have the faithful
 exhibited greater alacrity in giving it. Such gatherings as these
 are the best support which the church nowadays can have in resisting
 oppression and securing her rights. We therefore pray God to give this
 Benevolent Union a great success; and we are at a loss to perceive why
 such should not be the prayer of every good Catholic. The organization
 of a branch society in a parish will be the best preventive of
 Freemasonry and other condemned societies; it will secure the poor
 man and his family from want in case of sickness or accident at home
 or among strangers; it will give the priest and the educated layman
 an audience outside the church for the advocacy of Catholic public
 rights; and at least once a year the convention will exhibit to the
 American public, in a most striking manner, the unity, the charity,
 the patriotism, and the power of the Catholic people of this country.


 THE HOMES OF OBER-AMMERGAU. A series of Twenty Etchings in
 heliotype, from the original pen-and-ink drawings, together with Notes
 from a diary kept during a three months’ residence in Ober-Ammergau,
 in the summer of 1871. By Eliza Greatorex. Munich: Published by Jos.
 Albert, photographer to the courts of Munich and St. Petersburg. 1872.
 New York: Putnam.

 Many books have been published about Ober-Ammergau and its
 Passion-Play. This one is not, however, a mere repetition of their
 substance under a different form. It is altogether different in
 substance, and, therefore, a really new as well as most interesting
 description. The accomplished author does not occupy her pages with an
 account of the play itself, but takes us into the homes of the actors,
 and among the scenes of that picturesque German village. Though
 she is not a Catholic, her heart is full of kindliness, sympathy,
 and reverence, and we have read her truly exquisite portrayal of
 the primitive and most Christian life of the favored inhabitants
 of Ammergau with pleasure and admiration. The etchings are in the
 style of the best and truest art. The author has been honored by an
 autograph letter from the King of Bavaria, who, in spite of his faults
 as a ruler, is a man of taste and cultivation in the fine arts, and
 by a very kind reception at the private audience which was granted to
 her by the august Pius IX. We recommend this beautiful volume very
 cordially to all lovers of art, and of the most genuine, simple, and
 charming phases of nature and of Catholic piety which are to be found
 in the modern world, which is so full of glaring but empty illusions.
 As the edition in the hands of the New York publisher is a small one,
 those who desire to procure a copy would do well to be in haste about
 ordering it from the publisher.

 FILIOLA. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1873.

 ERNSCLIFF HALL. THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL. Dramas for young
 ladies’ school exhibitions. New York: The Catholic Publication
 Society. 1873.

 The latter of these, a whimsical satire on the discontent of each
 class with its own duties, pleasures, and belongings, and envy of
 those of every other class, is amusing. To every rose there is a
 thorn, and while some envy their superiors in position those luxuries
 which the latter care nothing for, these again are often constrained
 to envy the freedom of those on a lower level. But nothing is truer
 than the adage, that _the back is fitted to the burden_.

 THE DEAF-MUTE: OR, THE ABBÉ DE L’EPÉE. Historical Drama in
 Four Acts. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

 The following, taken from the preface of the work, is a synopsis of
 this little play: Julius is exposed in Paris at the age of ten by his
 uncle, who procures a written evidence of the boy’s death, and then
 seizes upon his property. The Abbé De l’Epée, Director of the Deaf and
 Dumb Asylum in Paris, finds the youth, and educates him. Suspecting
 the boy to be of noble blood, he bestows all his care on the helpless
 deaf-mute during eight years, creates his soul anew, as it were, and
 in the meantime endeavors to find out the place of his birth. For this
 purpose the Abbé travels with his protégé over a great part of France,
 and finally arrives at Toulouse, which city the young man recognizes
 as the place of his home. The Abbé consults the young lawyer Frauval,
 a friend of St. Alme, who is the son of Julius’s uncle. Darlemont
 refuses to recognize his nephew, but is at last prevailed upon to
 restore Julius to his rightful inheritance, by the threatened exposure
 of his son St. Alme. So the matter is settled amicably, and Julius
 grants to St. Alme, his former playmate, half of his estate.




THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.


VOL. XVII., No. 99.—JUNE, 1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev.
I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.


JEROME SAVONAROLA.

 “No breath of calumny ever attainted the personal purity of
 Savonarola.”—_Henry Hart Milman, Dean of S. Paul’s._

THE bright and shining fame of Girolamo Savonarola, the man upon
whom, in the XVth century, the wondering attention of the whole
civilized world was admiringly fixed, fell during the XVIIIth century
into oblivion or contempt—a not uncommon fate in that period for
religious reputations and religious works. The generally received
opinion concerning him was that of the sceptic Bayle, who, with show
of impartiality and phrase of fairness (‘Opinion is divided as to
whether he was an honest man or a hypocrite’), but with cold and
cruel cynicism, covered the unhappy Dominican with his sharpest and
most pungent sarcasm, leaving the reader to infer that he was a mean
impostor, who most probably deserved the martyrdom he suffered.

In our own day, Dean Milman, of the Established Church of England, asks:

 “Was he a hypocritical impostor, self-deluded fanatic, holy,
 single-minded Christian preacher, heaven-commissioned prophet,
 wonder-working saint? Martyr, only wanting the canonization which was
 his due? Was he the turbulent, priestly demagogue, who desecrated
 his holy office by plunging into the intrigue and strife of civic
 politics, or a courageous and enlightened lover of liberty?”

And—unkindest cut of all—punishment transcending in degree the worst
faults and most terrible crimes of which he has been unjustly accused
by his most cruel enemies—modern German Protestantism has placed
him in bronze effigy in company with the bigamous Landgrave Philip
of Hesse, and with Prince Frederick of Saxony, on the monument at
Worms, as one of the predecessors and helpers of Luther. The ascetic
Savonarola the acolyte of the beery Monk of Wittenberg! The chaste
Dominican the inferior of the sensual Reformer! The ecclesiastic who,
in the flower of his manhood and the fulness of his intellect, made the
unreserved declaration of Catholic faith[118] in which he lived and
died, the aider and precursor of the archheresiarch!

Truly, so far as the judgment of this world is concerned, one hour of
the degradation of Worms is sufficient to have cancelled all his sins.
Poor Savonarola!

Jerome Savonarola, born in Ferrara, in 1452 (Sept. 21), was the son of
Nicholas Savonarola. His mother Helen was of the Buonaccorsi family of
Mantua, and his paternal grandfather a physician of Padua of such high
reputation that Nicholas, Prince of Este, induced him, by the bestowal
of honors and a pension, to come to Ferrara. Jerome’s youth was serious
and studious, and, under the fostering care of one of the best of
mothers, his character developed favorably. At the age of ten, he went
to the public school of his native city, and it was intended that he
should complete the usual studies necessary to his becoming a physician.

The traveller of to-day, who sees the deserted squares and grass-grown
streets of Ferrara, can form but little idea of the Ferrara of that
period; a splendid city of one hundred thousand inhabitants, possessing
one of the most brilliant courts of Italy, and witnessing the frequent
passage of princes, emperors, and popes, whose presence gave constant
occasion for pageants, processions, and banquets. The young Jerome, it
was noticed, sought none of these, but was fond of lonely walks and
solitude, even avoiding the beautiful promenades in the gardens of the
ducal palace.

He pursued his medical studies for some time, but his favorite reading
was found in the works of Aristotle and S. Thomas Aquinas. Long years
afterward, he said of the latter: “When I was in the world, I held him
in the greatest reverence. I have always kept to his teaching, and,
whenever I wish to feel small, I read him, and he always appears to me
as a giant, and I to myself as a dwarf.” Although, like most youths of
his age, he indulged in making verses, his were not of the ordinary
callow model. One of his short youthful poems which survived him was on
the spread of sceptical philosophy and the decay of virtue. “Where,” he
asks—“where are the pure diamonds, the bright lamps, the sapphires,
the white robes, and white roses of the church?” Such language, taken
in connection with his declaration at the time that he would never
become a monk, shows that the idea, although in a negative form, was
already working in his mind. He afterwards related that, being at
Faenza one day, he by chance entered the church of S. Augustine, and
heard a remarkable word fall from the lips of the preacher. “I will not
tell you what it was,” he added, “but it is here, graven on my heart.
One year afterwards, I became a religious.”

Modern novels and the average silly judgment of worldly people in such
matters are usually unable to comprehend why any man or woman should
enter a convent unless they are what is called “crossed in love.” Some
such story is related of Savonarola, and Milman says of it: “There is
a vague story, resting on but slight authority, that Savonarola was
the victim of a tender but honorable passion for a beautiful female.”
We should also incline to be of the same opinion, were it not that
Villari[119] refers to it as having some foundation. He says that, in
1472, a Florentine exile, bearing the illustrious name of Strozzi, and
his daughter, took up their abode next to the dwelling of Savonarola’s
family. The mere fact that he was an exile from Dante’s native city
was sufficient to excite Savonarola’s sympathies. He imagined him
oppressed by the injustice of enemies, suffering for his country and
for the cause of liberty. His eyes met those of the Florentine maiden.
Overflowing with confident hope, he revealed his heart to her. What was
his bitter disappointment on receiving a disdainful answer rejecting
him, and giving him at the same time to understand that the house of
Strozzi could not lower itself by condescending to an alliance with the
family of Savonarola. He resented the insult with honest indignation,
but, says his chronicler, _il suo cuore ne restó desolato_—“his heart
was broken.” This may all be, but certain it is that the disappointed
youth did not instantly rush into a convent to bury his blasted hopes.
On the contrary, the incident of the sermon at Faenza occurred nearly
two years afterward. On this circumstance he frequently dwelt, saying
that a word, _una parola_, of the preacher still strongly affected him,
but he always reserved it as a sort of mysterious secret even from his
most intimate friends.

In returning from Faenza, he was light of heart, but found, on reaching
home, that a hard trial was before him. It was necessary to conceal
his intention from his parents, but his mother, as though she read
his secret, would fix her eyes upon him with a gaze which seemed
to penetrate his very soul. This struggle went on for a year, and
Savonarola often refers to his mental sufferings during that period.
“If I had made known my resolution,” he says, “I believe my heart
must have broken, and I should have allowed myself to be shaken in
my purpose.” Again, on another day, the 22d of April, 1475, Jerome,
seating himself, took a lute, and played an air so sad that his mother,
turning to him suddenly, as if moved by the spirit of prophecy, said to
him in a tone of sorrow: “My dear son, that is a farewell song.” With
great effort, the young man continued to play with trembling hand, but
dared not raise his eyes from the ground.

The next day, April 23, was the feast of S. George, a great festival
for all Florence. Savonarola had fixed upon it to leave his father’s
house, and, as soon as the religious ceremonies of the morning were
over, he quitted home, and made his way to Bologna, where he knocked
for admittance at the


CONVENT OF THE DOMINICANS.

He was then just twenty-two and a half years old. Announcing his desire
to enter on his novitiate, he wished, he said, to be employed in the
most menial of the offices of the community, and to be the servant of
all the others. Being admitted, he seized his first leisure moment that
same day to write a long and affectionate letter to his father, in
which he sought to comfort him and explain the step he had taken. It is
a memorable letter:

 “DEAR FATHER: I fear my departure from home has caused
 you much sorrow—the more so that I left you furtively. Permit me
 to explain my motives. You who so well know how to appreciate the
 perishable things of earth, judge not with passion like a woman,
 but, guided by truth, judge according to reason whether I am not
 right in carrying out my project and abandoning the world. The motive
 determining me to enter on a religious life is this: the great misery
 of the world, the iniquities of men, the crimes, the pride, the
 shocking blasphemies, by which the world is polluted, for there is
 none that doeth good—no, not one. Often and daily have I uttered this
 verse with tears:

  ‘Heu fuge crudelas terras! Fuge littus avarum.’

 I could not support the wickedness of the people. Everywhere I saw
 virtue despised, and vice honored. No greater suffering could I have
 in this world. Wherefore every day I prayed our Lord Jesus Christ to
 lift me out of this mire. It has pleased God in his infinite mercy to
 show me the right way, and I have entered upon it, although unworthy
 of such a grace. Sweet Jesus, may I suffer a thousand deaths rather
 than oppose thee and show myself ungrateful! Thus, my dear father,
 far from shedding tears, you should thank our Lord Jesus, for he has
 given you a son, has preserved him to you up to the age of twenty-two,
 and has deigned to admit him among his knights militant. Can you
 imagine that I have not endured the greatest affliction in separating
 from you? Never have I suffered such mental torment as in abandoning
 my own father to make the sacrifice of my body to Jesus Christ, and
 to surrender my will into the hands of persons I had never seen. In
 mercy, then, most loving father, dry your tears, and add not to my
 pain and sorrow. I am satisfied with what I have done, and I would not
 return to the world even with the certainty of becoming greater than
 Cæsar. But, like you, I am of flesh and blood; the senses wage war
 with reason, and I must struggle furiously with the assaults of the
 devil.[120] They will soon pass by, these first sad days, bitterest in
 the freshness of their grief, and I trust we will be consoled by grace
 in this world, and glory in the next. Comfort my mother, I beseech
 you, of whom, with yourself, I entreat your blessing.”

In the convent at Bologna, Savonarola spent seven years. During his
novitiate, his conduct was the admiration of all his brethren. They
wondered at his modesty, his humility, and his faultless obedience. He
appeared to be entirely absorbed in ecstatic contemplation of heavenly
things, and to have no other desire than to be allowed to pass his time
in prayer and humble obedience. To one looking at him walking in the
cloisters, he had more the appearance of a shadow than of a living man,
so much was he emaciated by abstinence and fasts. The severest trials
of the novitiate seemed light to him, and his superiors had frequently
to restrain his self-imposed denials. Even when not fasting, he ate
hardly enough to sustain life. His bed was of rough wood with a sack
of straw and one coarse sheet; his clothes, the plainest possible,
but always scrupulously neat. In personal appearance, Savonarola was
of middle stature, dark, of sanguine-bilious temperament, and of
extraordinary nervous sensibility. His eyes flamed from beneath dark
eyebrows; his nose was aquiline, mouth large, lips thick but firmly
compressed, and manifesting an immovable determination of purpose.
His forehead was already marked with deep furrows, indicating a
mind absorbed in the contemplation of grave subjects. Of beauty of
physiognomy there was none, but it bore the expression of severe
dignity. A certain sad smile, passing over his rough features, gave
them a kindly expression which inspired confidence at first sight.
His manners were simple and uncultivated; his discourse, plain to
roughness, became at times so eloquent and powerful that it convinced
or subdued every one.

As Savonarola advanced in his studies, he devoted all the time he
could possibly spare to the writings of the Fathers and to the Holy
Scriptures. There are no less than four different copies of the Bible
still existing in the libraries of Florence, and a fifth in the library
of S. Mark, in Venice, of which the margins are covered with Latin
notes written by him, which are excessively abridged, and in a writing
so fine as to be read only with difficulty. According to the custom of
the order, the young monk was in due time sent out on the mission, that
is, to different cities and towns, to preach and exercise his other
clerical duties. In 1482, he was ordered to Ferrara, whither he went,
very much against his will. His relatives desired that he should remain
there, in order to be near his family. Referring to this, he wrote to
his mother: “I could not do as much good at Ferrara as elsewhere. It
is seldom that a religious succeeds in his native place. Hence it is
that the Scripture commands us to go forth into the world. A stranger
is better received everywhere. No one is a prophet in his own country.
Even concerning Christ, they asked: ‘Is not this the son of the
carpenter?’ As to me, it would be inquired, ‘Is not this Master Jerome,
who committed such and such sins, and who was not a whit better than
ourselves? Ah! we know him.’”


THE CONVENT OF S. MARK.

From Ferrara, Fra Hieronimo was sent to the Convent of S. Mark, at
Florence. A mass of saintly and artistic recollections cluster around
the history of this convent. Holy men passed their lives within its
austere cloisters, and eminent artists here consecrated their works by
Christian inspiration. It is sufficient to mention from among them the
names of Fra Angelico, whose admirable frescoes adorn its walls, of
Fra Bartolomeo, known to the world as Baccio della Porta, the equal of
Andrea del Sarto, of Fra Benedetto, and of the brothers Luke and Paul
della Robbia. Villari dwells on one of its greatest illustrations, F.
Sant’ Antonino, the founder or renewer of nearly all the charitable
institutions of Florence, and in particular of the Buoni Uomini di
San Martino, which exists to this day in all its beautiful Christian
edification, if, haply, the tide of modern progress, under Victor
Emmanuel, have not swept it away.

F. Sant’ Antonino’s memory is still cherished there as that of a
man burning with divine charity, and consumed with the love of his
neighbor. His death, which took place in 1459, was deplored in Florence
as a public calamity.

The early history of the convent is closely connected with that of
Cosmo de’ Medici, who was its munificent patron. Besides large amounts
spent on the building, he made them a still more valuable donation.
Niccolo Niccoli, a name well known to scholars, a collector of
manuscripts of European fame, had spent his life and a large fortune in
making a collection of valuable manuscripts which was the admiration
of all Italy. At his death, he bequeathed it to the public, but the
donation was useless by reason of the heavy debts against his estate.
Cosmo paid them, and, retaining for himself a few of the most precious
documents, gave all the rest to the convent. This was the first public
library in Italy, and it was cared for by the monks in a manner which
proved them worthy of the gift they had received. S. Mark became, as it
were, a centre of learning, and not only the most learned monks of its
affiliated convents in Northern Italy, but the most distinguished men
of that period, sought every occasion to frequent it.

Savonarola’s arrival in the Florentine convent had been preceded by his
reputation for learning and for piety. It was even said of him that he
had made some miraculous conversions, and the story was told that, in
making the journey from Ferrara to Mantua by the river, he had been
shocked by the obscene ribaldry of the boatmen. He turned upon them
with terrible earnestness, and, after half an hour of his impressive
exhortation, eleven of them threw themselves at his feet, confessing
their sins, and humbly demanding his pardon.

Savonarola was at first delighted with all he saw of Florence. The
delicious landscape bounded by the soft outline of the Tuscan hills,
the elegance of language, the manners of the people, which appeared to
increase in refinement and courtesy as you approached Florence, all had
predisposed him to find delight in this flower of Italian cities, where
nature and art rival each other in beauty. To his mind, so strongly
imbued with the religious feeling, Florentine art seemed like a strain
of sacred music, attesting the omnipotence of genius inspired by faith.
The paintings of Fra Angelico appeared to him to have summoned the
angels to take up their abode in these cloisters; and, gazing at them,
the young religious was transported into a world of bliss. The holy
traditions of Sant’ Antonino and of his works of charity were still
fresh among the brethren, and everything appeared to draw him closer
to them. His heart was filled with hopes of better days, he forgot
his former disappointments, as well as the possibility that there
might be fresh ones in store for him when in time he came to know the
Florentines better.


LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT.

When Savonarola came to Florence, Lorenzo the Magnificent had been its
ruler for many years, and was then at the apogee of his fame and his
power. Under his sway[121] everything looked prosperous and happy.
The struggles that formerly convulsed the city had long ceased. Those
who refused to bend to the domination of the Medici were imprisoned,
exiled, or dead. All was peace and tranquillity. Feasts, dances, and
tournaments filled up the leisure of this Florentine people, who, once
so jealous of their rights, now seemed to have forgotten the very
name of liberty. Lorenzo participated in all these diversions, and
even exerted himself to invent new ones. Among these were the _Canti
Carnascialeschi_, first written by him and sung by the young nobility
and gentry of Florence in the masquerades of the Carnival. Nothing
perhaps can better depict the corruption of the period than these
songs. At this day not only educated young men, but the lowest of the
populace, would hold them in scorn, and their repetition in public
would be an offence against decency swiftly to be suppressed by the
police. And yet such were the occupations of predilection of a prince
praised by all, and considered as the model of a sovereign, a prodigy
of courtesy, a political and literary genius. And there are those
who are to-day inclined to think of him as he was then looked upon,
to pardon him the blood cruelly spilled to maintain a power unjustly
acquired by him and his, the ruin of the republic, the violence by
which he forced from the community the sum necessary for his reckless
expenditure, the shameless libertinism to which he abandoned himself,
and even the rapid and infernal corruption of the people which he
studied to maintain with all his force and mental capacity.[122] And
all this must be pardoned him forsooth, because he was the protector of
literature and the fine arts!

Among all the Italian historians who have painted Florence at this
epoch, there is but little difference except in the variety and depth
of the colors used by them. Bruto writes, and what he says is neither
useless nor irrelevant reading if, as we progress in his description,
we bear in mind to what extent it may be applied to New York in the
year 1873 as well as to Florence in 1482. “The Florentines,” he says,
“seeking to live in idleness and ease, broke with the traditions of
their ancestors, and in immoderate and shameful license fell into the
way of the most disgraceful and detestable vices. Their fathers, by
dint of labor, fatigue, virtue, abstinence, and probity, had made the
country flourish. They, on the contrary, as if they had cast aside
all shame, seemed to have nothing to lose: they gave themselves up to
drinking, gambling, and the most ignoble pleasures. Lost in debauch,
they had shameless intrigues and daily orgies. They were stained with
all wickedness, all crime. General contempt of law and justice assured
them complete impunity. Courage consisted in audacity and temerity;
ease of manner, in a culpable complaisance; politeness, in gossip and
scandal.”


SAVONAROLA IN FLORENCE.

In consideration of his acquirements, Fra Hieronimo, was appointed
a teacher of the novices, and held the position for four years
(1482-1486). In 1483, owing either to a want of preachers or to the
high opinion formed of him from his success as a professor, he was
appointed to preach the course of Lenten sermons at the church of
S. Lawrence. Meantime, what he had learned of the Florentines from
personal observation had not tended to raise them in his estimation. He
had discovered that, in spite of their finished education and highly
cultivated intellects, their hearts were filled with scepticism, and
an ever-present sarcasm hovered on their lips. This want of faith and
of high principles caused him to shrink anew into himself, and his
disappointment was the greater as it contrasted so keenly with the
hopes he entertained on entering Florence. With these feelings he
for the first time ascended a Florentine pulpit. Hardly twenty-five
people came to hear him a second time. Twenty-five persons! They
could hardly be seen in the vast building. His voice was feeble, his
intonations false, his gestures awkward, his style heavy. His preaching
was a failure. But he was not discouraged, and was anxious to make
another attempt. His superiors, not caring to renew the experiment in
Florence, sent him to San Gemignano for two years. He made no attempt
to change his style. The Florentines had been accustomed to preachers
who carefully studied the elocutionary part of their sermons, many of
them seeking to form themselves upon some classical mould, and their
delivery was generally polished and graceful. Savonarola despised
these aids, and thundered in his rough, uncultivated way, against
scandals and want of faith, speaking with scorn of the modern poets
and philosophers, and despising their fanaticism for the classics.
The Bible he quoted profusely, and made it the foundation of all his
sermons. His success at San Gemignano was by no means a decided one,
nevertheless it was sufficient to give him confidence in himself, and
to confirm the course he had marked out for himself as a preacher.
Returning to his convent, he continued to fulfil his modest duties as
reader or professor until 1486, when by his superiors he was


SENT TO LOMBARDY,

where he remained four years. These four years are the most obscure of
his life. It is known, however, that during this period he preached
in various cities of that country, and especially at Brescia. Here
his power in the pulpit first fully revealed itself. He preached on
the Apocalypse. With fervid words, imperious accents, and impressive
voice, he reproached the people with their sins, and threatened them
with the anger of God. Making startling application of the prophecies
to Brescia itself, they should see, he told them, their city a prey
to furious enemies, who would make their streets run rivers of blood.
Crime and cruelty would visit them in their worst shape, and everything
would be delivered up to terror, fire, and destruction. His menaces
appalled them, and his voice appeared to come from another world. These
prophecies were recalled when, a few years later, in 1512, Brescia
was taken by assault by the French troops under Gaston de Foix, and
the city sacked and devastated with the most dreadful barbarity. Six
thousand of its inhabitants were killed.

Savonarola is next heard of at Reggio, in 1486, where a chapter of
Dominicans was convened for the discussion of certain questions of
theology and discipline. A number of learned laymen were also present,
attracted by the prospect of theological discussion. Among these was
the celebrated Pico di Mirandola, then only twenty-three, but already
famous as a prodigy of intelligence and learning. He was struck by the
appearance of Savonarola before the monk had said a word, and had noted
his pallid countenance, and sunken eyes, and forehead ploughed with
furrows of thought. In the theological debate, Savonarola took no part,
but when the question of discipline came up he spoke and thundered.
What he said left upon Mirandola the impression that he beheld an
extraordinary man, and on his arrival at Florence some time afterward,
he besought Lorenzo de’ Medici to have Savonarola recalled to
Florence.[123] After preaching at Bologna and Pavia, and delivering a
course of Lenten sermons at Genoa, he was, at the instance of Lorenzo,
recalled by his superiors to Florence, in 1490. Thus it was that the
bitterest enemy of the Medici, the subverter of their power, was by
one of themselves invited to return. Notwithstanding his discernment
Lorenzo little knew what sad disasters he was preparing for his house,
or what a flame he was kindling in the convent which his ancestors
had built. In order to give an example of the Christian simplicity he
preached, Fra Hieronimo made the journey home on foot, and, owing to
physical weakness, accomplished only with difficulty his


RETURN TO FLORENCE.

In his convent he quietly resumed his functions of reader. There
was no question of his preaching, for he had not forgotten the icy
indifference of the Florentines. Devoting himself sedulously to the
instruction of his novices, they became the objects of his tender care
and of his fondest wishes. Meantime his powers had increased and his
fame had spread. It was echoed from Northern Italy, and confirmed by
Mirandola. Gradually the professed brothers of the convent joined
the novices in listening to Savonarola’s lectures, and scholars and
learned men of the city demanded permission to be admitted to them.
Among those was his adviser Pico. The study-room in which he gave his
lectures was no longer sufficient to hold the crowd. The garden of the
convent was then taken possession of, and there, under the shade of a
bush of damask roses, carefully renewed to this day by the brothers
of the convent with religious veneration, he continued his lessons.
His subject was the exposition of the Apocalypse. The crowd of his
hearers still increased, and it was proposed to the Prior of S. Mark
that Fra Hieronimo should continue his lectures in the church. This
was accorded, and on Sunday, August 1, 1490, crowds flocked to hear
the preacher, who, formerly so much despised in Florence, had gained
such a reputation in other parts of Italy. From an account of it left
by himself, he that day preached a terrible sermon. He continued
his explanation of the Apocalypse. The walls rang with his terrible
conclusions, he succeeded in communicating to the excited multitude the
impetuosity of his own feelings, his voice seemed to them superhuman.
The success of that day was complete. Nothing else was talked of in all
Florence, and the literati for a short time forgot Plato to discuss the
merits of the new Christian preacher. Here is his own account of the
event:

 “On the first day of August of this year, 1490, I began publicly to
 expound the Apocalypse in our church of S. Mark. During the course
 of the year, I continued to develop to the Florentines these three
 propositions 1. ‘That the church would be renewed in our time.’ 2.
 ‘Before that renovation, God would strike all Italy with a fearful
 chastisement.’ 3. ‘That these things would happen shortly.’ I labored
 to demonstrate these three points to my hearers, and to persuade them
 by probable arguments, by allegories drawn from sacred Scripture,
 by other similitudes and parables drawn from what was going on in
 the church. I insisted on reasons of this kind; and I dissembled the
 knowledge which God gave me of those things in other ways, because
 men’s spirits appeared to me not yet in a state fit to comprehend such
 mysteries.”

The reader will not fail to notice the portentous intimation conveyed
in the last sentence of this remarkable record. Savonarola already
believed himself the recipient of supernatural communications “the
knowledge which God gave me of these things in other ways.” We shall
find him presently boldly announcing his celestial visions and commands
from heaven, and here may be discerned clearly and at once the point at
which his noble mind and pure spirit, disturbed by the excitement of
years of mental tension and meditation on Apocalyptic visions, lost its
clearness and its balance, and fell into the gravest errors of judgment
and doctrine.


THE FAMOUS SERMONS.

Crowds continued to press into the church of S. Mark to hear the
preaching of Fra Girolamo, until the utmost capacity of the building no
longer sufficed to hold them. For the Lent of 1491, his preaching was
appointed to take place in the cathedral, and the walls of Santa Maria
del Fiore for the first time echoed to his voice. From this moment
he was lord of the pulpit and master of the people, who, increasing
every day in number as hearers, redoubled in their enthusiasm for
him. The pictures he drew charmed the fancy of the multitude, and the
threats of future punishments exercised a magic influence upon all,
for sinister forebodings appeared to rule the hour. All this was far
from satisfactory or pleasing to the Magnificent Lorenzo, and naturally
begat among his adherents a feeling of strong opposition to Savonarola.
The result was that a deputation of five of the principal citizens
(Domenico Bonsi, Guidantonio Vespucci, Paulo Antonio Soderini, Bernardo
Rucallai, and Francesco Valori) waited upon him, with instructions to
advise him that he was risking his own safety and that of his convent,
and to admonish him to be more moderate in his tone when teaching or
preaching. Savonarola abruptly cut short their discourse, saying: “I
see that you come not of your own motion, but that you are sent by
Lorenzo de’ Medici. Tell him to make haste to repent of his sins, for
God is no respecter of persons, and has no fear of the great ones
of this earth.” Proud of his independence as a priest, Savonarola
desired thus to crush at the outset the established custom in S. Mark
of continually bending and prostrating before the house of Medici. At
this the deputation pointed out to him the danger he was in of being
exiled; and he answered: “I have no fear of exile from your city, which
is, after all, a mere grain of dust upon the face of the earth. But
although I am only a stranger in it, and Lorenzo a citizen and its
head, know ye that I shall remain, and ye shall depart.”

To this he added a few words concerning the actual condition of
Florence, which made them wonder at the intimate knowledge he possessed
of its affairs. Shortly afterward in the sacristy of S. Mark’s, in the
presence of several persons, he said that the affairs of Italy would
soon change, for that the Pope, the King of Naples, and Il Magnifico
had not long to live.

The ill-will of the Mediceans was naturally strengthened by such an
incident as this. Their murmurs increased, and, coming from a small but
influential portion of the citizens, Savonarola took it into serious
consideration whether he should not give up for the time the prophetic
strain of his sermons, and confine himself to the inculcation of moral
and religious precepts. There is but little doubt that he struggled
earnestly and conscientiously to bring himself to this resolution, and
he has himself left the record of it in his _Compendio di Rivelazione_.
“I deliberated with myself,” he says, “as to suppressing the sermon
on the visions I had prepared for the following Sunday’s cathedral
service, and for the future to abstain from them. God is my witness
that throughout the whole of Saturday and during the entire night I lay
awake; and every other way, every doctrine but that, was taken from me.
At daylight, fatigued and exhausted by my long vigil, while I prayed,
I heard a voice which said to me, ‘Fool, seest thou not that God wills
that thou shalt persevere in thy path?’ And that day, I preached a
terrible sermon.”[124]

It was, doubtless, as he says, “una predica tremenda,” for, persuaded
as he was of his divine mission, he no sooner entered the pulpit than,
with his imagination excited, his senses in febrile agitation from
the effect of vigils and fastings, his subject carried him away into
bursts of denunciatory eloquence that frightened while they charmed his
hearers. In his excitement he again sees the nocturnal visions of his
cell, loses consciousness of his own personality, and confounds the
words there heard with the language of Scripture, for in his sermons he
frequently, in the rush of language, cites as passages from the Bible
the phrases of his own visions. Among these was his famous _Gladius
Domini super terram cito et velociter_.


THE NEW PRIOR.

Meantime, in the interior of his convent, the learning, the simplicity,
the profound piety and purity, and benevolence of Fra Girolamo had won
for him the love and veneration of all his brethren. At the election
of a new superior in 1491, they naturally chose him for their prior.
Savonarola, who had always felt and sought to inculcate the higher
appreciation of the dignity of the church and its ministers, seized
this occasion to protest practically against a ceremony, which to him
seemed not only compromising but degrading. Ever since the reign of
the Medici, it was the custom for every newly elected prior of S. Mark
to render homage and swear fealty to the reigning chief. Savonarola
gave no sign of conforming to it, and from his silence might have been
supposed to be ignorant of it. Some of the older monks reminded him of
it as a formality which they had always considered obligatory. This
view of it was natural enough from the fact that the Medici really
founded the convent and had been its most generous benefactors. The new
prior’s reply was characteristic: “Is it God or Lorenzo de’ Medici who
has named me prior? I acknowledge my election as from God alone, and
to him only will I swear obedience.” This was carried to Lorenzo, who
said: “You see, a stranger comes into my house, and deigns not even to
visit me.”

It must be conceded that, considering his position and personal
character, Lorenzo acted with great moderation, for he evidently
desired to conciliate the prior of the convent and to avoid the scandal
of a quarrel with a religious. More than once he attended Mass at
S. Mark’s and afterwards strolled in its garden. On these occasions
some brother would run to the prior to tell him of the distinguished
personage who was walking alone in the garden. “Did he ask to see me?”
was Savonarola’s answer. “No, but ...”—“Then let him walk there as
long as he pleases.”

The monk judged Lorenzo severely, and acted in consequence, for he knew
all the injury to public morals he had done, and looked upon him not
only as the enemy and destroyer of liberty, but as the most serious
obstacle to any amelioration and christianizing of the people. Failing
in one course, Lorenzo began to send to the convent liberal alms and
rich gifts, but this only increased Savonarola’s contempt for him, and
he even made scornful allusion to it in the pulpit, intimating that
such an attempt only confirmed him in his former resolution. Shortly
afterward were found in the “alms-box” of S. Mark’s a number of pieces
of gold. The prior understood perfectly that they came from Lorenzo,
as in fact they did, and, separating the princely gold from the modest
offerings of the faithful, he sent it to the Buoni Uomini of the city
for distribution among the poor, with the message that “silver and
copper sufficed for the wants of the convent.”

Thus far thwarted at every turn, Lorenzo was not the man to give
up a struggle once entered upon, and he was determined to turn, if
possible, the rising tide of the Dominican’s popularity. The preacher
most admired at that period in Florence had for some time been Padre
Genazzano—the same whose sermons were attended by crowds when Fra
Girolamo could scarce retain a dozen or two of people to listen to
him. Lorenzo requested the former to resume his preaching. He did so,
and his sermon was announced for Ascension Day. All Florence rushed
to hear him. Taking for his text, “Non est vestrum nosse tempora
vel momenta”—“It is not for you to know the times or seasons”—he
imprudently presumed too far upon his princely patronage, and
violently attacking Savonarola by name, qualifying him as a false and
foolish prophet, a sower of discord and scandals among the people,
so revolted his auditory by his intemperate speech and uncharitable
denunciation that, in the short hour of his discourse, he utterly lost
the reputation of long years’ acquisition. On the same day, Savonarola
preached upon the same text, and, so far as the popular judgment was
concerned, remained master of the field. Lorenzo, seeing the total
failure of his scheme, and suffering from the rapid advances of a
malady that was soon to become mortal, fatigued, moreover, with the
struggle against a man whom, in spite of himself, he felt forced to
respect, he left him henceforth to preach unmolested.


SAVONAROLA’S SERMONS,

as printed, give us, on reading them, but a very imperfect idea of
their effect as delivered. Of that tremendous power he wielded in
the pulpit, and concerning which the amplest testimony of both his
friends and enemies entirely agree, the source cannot be traced in
the published copies of his sermons. The earliest of these are those
preached in 1491, on the first Epistle of S. John. It would be a
difficult task to present a general idea of this collection. In form,
they offer no unity of subject nor connection of parts, added to
which, the strong originality and waywardness of Savonarola’s style
and studies make it difficult for a modern reader to bring order out
of this apparent disorder. He always commences with a citation from
Scripture, grouping around it all the ideas theological, moral, and
political which it suggests to his mind, resting these in their turn
upon fresh Biblical texts. The apparent result to him who reads them
to-day is a heterogeneous mass of discordant materials of which the
confusion is hopeless. But these sermons were actually preached by
Savonarola with a very different result. To him everything was clear.
These words before him in manuscript are but the dry bones which he
clothes with the magnetic life of inspiration, and to which he gives
voice in the thunders of his own eloquence. The fire of his imagination
kindles, figures of gigantic power present themselves to his mind,
his gesture is animated, his eyes flame, and, abandoning himself to
his originality, he becomes what he really was—a great and powerful
orator. At times, he appears to fall back into a mass of artificial
ideas without connection, again and again to free himself by force
of natural talent, for, born orator as he was, he needed the arts of
oratory; and it was only when his subject mastered him, and carried
him away, that nature took the place of art, and he was eloquent in
spite of himself. Of his originality and depth of thought some idea may
be gained from the following extract taken from one of his nineteen
sermons upon the first Epistle of S. John, in which he explains at
length the mysteries of the Mass, giving in it religious precepts and
counsels to the people:

 “The word we utter proceeds out of our mouths separated and divided
 by a succession of syllables, in such manner that, while one part
 exists, the other part is already extinct, and, when the whole word
 is pronounced, it exists no longer. But the Verb, or the Divine Word,
 has no divisions; it is one in its essence, it is diffused throughout
 the created world, and lives and endures throughout eternity like
 the celestial light which is its companion. Therefore it is the Word
 of Life, and one with the Father. We accept, it is true, this Word
 in various senses. By ‘life’ we sometimes mean the natural being of
 mankind, sometimes we mean by it their occupation. Hence we say, the
 life of this man is science, the life of the bird is singing. But
 there is but one true life which is in God, for in him all things have
 their being. And this is that blessed life which is the object of
 man, and in which he may find infinite and eternal happiness. Earthly
 life is not only fallacious, but powerless to give us happiness from
 its want of unity in itself. If you love riches, you must give up
 sensual pleasures; if you are abandoned to these, you must renounce
 the acquisition of knowledge; and if you give up the acquisition of
 knowledge you cannot obtain offices of responsibility and honor. But
 the joys of life eternal are all comprised in the vision of God, which
 is supreme felicity.”


DEATH OF LORENZO.

With a mortal disease fastened upon him, Lorenzo the Magnificent
had retired to his villa at Careggi. Hope of his recovery there was
none, for the physicians had exhausted the last resources of their
art. Even the renowned Lazzaro da Ficino had been called from Pavia,
and had administered his wonderful draught of distilled gems without
result. Death approached rapidly, and in this solemn hour Lorenzo’s
mind turned seriously on his religious duties. He seemed entirely
changed. When Holy Communion was to be administered to him, he made a
superhuman effort to rise from his bed, and, supported in the arms of
those around him, to receive it kneeling, but the priest, perceiving
his weakness and his agitation, insisted on his being returned to his
couch. It was impossible to calm him. The past rose up before him in
horrible visions. As he approached his end, his crimes assumed gigantic
proportions, and became every moment more menacing, filling him with
a wild dismay, and depriving him of the peace and comfort he would
otherwise have derived from the consolations of religion. Having lost
all confidence in men,[125] he even doubted the sincerity of his own
confessor. Accustomed to have his slightest wish obeyed, he began to
doubt if that ecclesiastic had acted with entire freedom. His remorse
became harder and harder to bear. “No one ever dared say ‘No’ to me,”
he thought within himself, and this reflection, once a source of
pride, now became his most cruel punishment. Suddenly the image of
Savonarola in its grave severity presented itself to his mind, and he
remembered that he at least had never been influenced either by threats
or flatteries. “He is the only true _frate_ I know,” he exclaimed,
and expressed a desire to make his confession to him. A messenger was
instantly sent to S. Mark’s for Savonarola, who was so astonished at
the strange and unlooked-for summons that it seemed to him incredible.
He gave answer that it appeared to him useless to go to Careggi because
his words would not be well received by Lorenzo. But when he was made
to understand the gravity of Lorenzo’s condition, and the fact that he
had really sent for him, he set off instantly. That day Lorenzo felt
himself rapidly sinking. Summoning his son Piero, he gave him his last
instructions and his dying farewell. He afterwards expressed a wish
to see Pico di Mirandola, who came immediately, and the pleasure of
his society had a soothing effect upon the moribund. Scarcely had Pico
left, when the prior of S. Mark was announced. He advanced respectfully
to the bedside of the dying man. Three sins in particular lay heavy
upon his conscience. These were: the sack of Volterra; the plunder of
the treasure set apart for the dowry of poor Florentine damsels, which
had driven many of them to evil lives; the blood he had shed to revenge
the conspiracy of the Pazzi.

While speaking, Lorenzo’s agitation increased alarmingly. But
Savonarola, in order to calm him, kept repeating, “God is good, God is
merciful.”

“But,” he added, when Lorenzo had finished, “three things are
necessary.”

“What are they, father?” asked Lorenzo.

Savonarola’s countenance became grave, and, reckoning upon his fingers,
he said: “First, you must have a firm and lively faith in the infinite
mercy of God.”

“I have it fully.”

“Second, you must make restitution of all money unjustly acquired, or
charge your son to do it for you.”

At this Lorenzo was sorely grieved and perplexed, but with a great
effort he signified assent by nodding his head.

Savonarola then rose, and, drawing himself up to his full height,
said with solemn countenance and impressive voice, “Lastly, you must
restore to the people of Florence their freedom.” He fastened his eyes
upon those of Lorenzo, awaiting his answer. The dying man, gathering
what little strength was left him, disdainfully shrugged his shoulders
without deigning to utter a single word.

Thus—so runs the story—Savonarola left him, and Lorenzo the
Magnificent, lacerated with remorse, soon afterwards breathed his last
sigh (8th of April, 1492).[126]

The death of Lorenzo seriously affected the public affairs of Tuscany
and of Italy. His personal influence over other princes, his prudence
and ability, had made him in some sort the moderator of Italian
politics. Piero, his son and successor, was in every respect his
opposite. Of handsome and powerful physique, he abandoned himself to
athletic sports and to gallantry. He possessed a certain facility of
improvisation and a pleasing address, but centred his highest ambition
on horsemanship, tournaments, and games of strength and dexterity.

He inherited from his mother all the pride of the house of Orsini, but
from his father none of that simplicity and modesty of manner which
had so powerfully contributed to render him popular. His manners were
rough and displeasing to all: he yielded frequently to transports of
rage, and one day, in the presence of many persons, gave his cousin a
violent blow with his fist. These things were looked upon in Florence
as worse than an open violation of the law, and of themselves sufficed
to create for him a great number of enemies. Not only to his subjects
were his manners displeasing, but from the very commencement of his
reign he so disgusted all the Italian princes that Florence soon lost
the preeminence which Lorenzo had gained for her. He utterly neglected
the public affairs, and was solicitous only to concentrate in himself
all the power of the government. Day by day he successively swept away
even the few remaining semblances of liberty which Lorenzo had taken
great care to leave intact, and to which the people naturally clung
with affection. General dissatisfaction spread rapidly, and swept
into a threatening opposition even many of the strongest partisans
of the Medicean dynasty. A certain uneasy expectation of a change in
public affairs began to manifest itself, a change the more necessary
and desirable as Piero, deserted by citizens of repute, was forced to
surround himself by men either unknown or incapable.

Meantime the multitude pressed around the pulpit of Savonarola, and
looked up to him as the preacher of the anti-Mediceans. The fact that
Lorenzo, at the approach of death, had desired him for a confessor,
gained him many adherents among the admirers of that prince, who
rapidly fell away from Piero on account of his personal faults and
defective administration. The populace, moreover, recollected that
Savonarola, in the sacristy of S. Mark’s, had predicted the approaching
deaths of Lorenzo, of the Pope, and of the King of Naples. One portion
of this prediction had been verified, and the fulfilment of another
seemed close at hand. The vital powers of Pope Innocent VIII. were
rapidly failing him, and he died on the 25th of April, 1492. The death
of the King of Naples, it was known, must soon follow. And now all eyes
were involuntarily turned to the man who had predicted the disasters
which seemed impending over Italy, and whose prophecies seemed so
strangely fulfilled. The universal belief in his prophecies seemed to
confirm Savonarola’s confidence in his own power, and spread his name
throughout the world. He was at once the cause and the victim of his
own visions. His exaltation increased. The time he had foretold seemed
close at hand. He read and re-read the books of prophecy, and preached
with greater fervor. It is but little to be wondered at that in this
frame of mind his visions went on increasing in number.

Toward the end of the same year, while preaching the Advent sermons,
he had a dream which to him appeared like a vision, and which he did
not hesitate to look upon as a divine revelation. He seemed to see
in the heavens a hand holding a sword on which was written: _Gladius
Domini super terram cito et velociter_. He heard many voices, clear and
distinct, promising mercy to the good, but menacing punishments to the
wicked, and crying out that the wrath of God was nigh at hand. Suddenly
the sword points to the earth, the sky is overcast, it rains swords and
arrows, the lightnings flash, the thunders roll, and the whole earth is
given up a prey to war, famine, and pestilence.

The vision ceased with a command to Savonarola to menace the people
with approaching punishments, to inspire them with the fear of God, and
induce them to beseech the Lord to send good pastors to his church, who
would seek and save the souls in danger of being lost. In later years
we find this vision represented in an infinite number of engravings
and medals, and become, as it were, a symbol of Savonarola and of his
doctrine.

 TO BE CONTINUED.




DANTE’S PURGATORIO.


CANTO NINTH.

  FORTH from the arms of her beloved now,
    Whitening the orient steep, the concubine
  Of old Tithonus came, her lucent brow
    Adorned with gems whose figure formed the sign
  Of that cold animal whose tail with dread
    Strikes trembling nations; and the night, where we
  Now were, had made of her ascending tread
    Two of her paces and was making three,
  With wings through weariness less fully spread,
    When I, in whom the weakness was alive
  Of Adam’s nature, sank in slumber’s power
    Where sat already on the grass all five.

  Near to the dawning and about the hour
    When first the little swallow wakes her lays
  (Haply remembering her old woes afresh),
    And when our mind, relieved of thinking, strays
  More of a pilgrim from its cage of flesh
    Till to its vision ‘tis almost divine,
  Dreaming, I seemed to see in heaven suspended
    An eagle that with golden plumes did shine
  And with spread wings as he to swoop intended:
    And in that place it seemed to be, methought,
  Where Ganymede, abandoning his own,
    Was up to heaven’s high consistory caught.
  Then I considered; haply here alone
    His wont to strike is, and he scorns elsewhere
  To bear up what he snatches in his feet;
    Methought he next wheeled somewhat in the air,
  Then struck like lightning, terrible and fleet,
    And rapt me up to the empyrean: there
  We burned together in so fierce a heat,
    And such of that imagined fire the smart,
  My dream perforce was by the scorching broke.
    Not otherwise Achilles with a start
  Rolled his amazed eyes round him, newly woke,
    And knowing nothing where he was, when flying
  His mother bore him, slumbering on her breast,
    From Chiron to the isle of Scyros hieing,
  Whence the Greeks, after, forced him with the rest,
    Than I too started! so that all repose
  Fled from my features; deadly pale and chill
    I grew, like one whom fear hath well-nigh froze.
  Sole stood my Comforter beside me still;
    My face was towards the sea-shore turned; the sun
  Was risen already more than two hours high.
    “Fear not,” my Lord said, “we have well begun:
  Shrink not! but every way enlarge thy strength;
    Thou hast arrived at Purgatory! See
  Yon cliff that circles it; behold at length
    The entrance, parted where it seems to be.”

  In the white light that comes before the morn
    While slumbering in thee lay thy soul, there came
  Over the flowers this valley that adorn
    A woman, saying, “Lucia is my name:
  This man here sleeping let me take in care;
    So shall I speed him forward on his way.”
  Sordello, with his gentle comrades there,
    Remained: she took thee and, at dawn of day,
  Up hither sped, and I behind her straight.
    Here she reposed thee; first with her fair eyes
  Showing the aperture of yonder gate,
    Then vanished and thy sleep in even wise.
  As a man, doubting, comforteth his fear
    At truth’s discovery, confident once more,
  So did I change; and seeing me appear
    Without inquietude, my Guide up o’er
  The cliff moved on, I following in his rear.

  Reader, thou well observ’st to what a height
    I lift my matter, therefore wonder not
  If with more art I strengthen what I write.
    We still approached and now had reached the spot
  Where that which first had seemed to me a rent,
    Like to a fissure in a wall, my view
  Made out a gate, and leading to it went
    Three steps, and each was of a different hue;
  A guardian sat there keeping the ascent.
    As yet he spake not, and as more and more
  Mine eyes I opened, on the topmost stair
    I saw him sitting, and the look he wore
  Was of such brightness that I could not bear.
    The rays were so reflected from his face
  By a drawn sword that glistened in his hand
    That oft I turned to look in empty space:
  Then he began: “Speak ye from where ye stand!
    What seek ye here? who leads you to this place?
  Take heed lest climbing upward from the strand
    You come to harm!” My Master answered thus:
  “A heavenly lady, of such things aware,
    Spake in these words not long ago to us:
  ‘Go ye up yonder, for the gate is there.’
    And may she speed you on your way to good!”
  Rejoined that gracious guard. “Up to our flight
    Advance you then!” We therefore came and stood
  At the first stair, which was of marble white,
    So clear and burnished, that therein I could
  Behold myself, how I appear to sight.
    The second was a rough stone, burnt and black
  Beyond the darkest purple; through its length
    And crosswise it was traversed by a crack.
  The third whose mass is rested on their strength
    Appeared to me of porphyry, flaming red,
  Or like blood spouting from a vein; thereon
    God’s Angel kept with planted feet his tread
  Sitting upon the threshold’s gleaming stone,
    Which seemed to me of adamant. My Guide
  Led me with my good will up that ascent,
    Saying, “Beg humbly that the bolt may slide!”
  And at those hallowed feet devout I bent.
    “In mercy open to me!” I implored,
  But first I smote me thrice upon my breast.
    He on my forehead with his pointed sword
  Traced P. seven times, then spake me this behest:
    “Wash thou these wounds when thou hast past the door.”
  Ashes or dry heaps dug from gravelly earth
    Were of one color with the robe he wore,
  From under which two keys he next drew forth.
    One was of gold, one silver; first he plied
  The white, then used the yellow on the gate,
    In such sort as my spirit satisfied;
  Then said: “To none is passable the strait
    When either of these keys be vainly tried,
  And in the wards without response it grate.
    One is more precious, one more asketh wise
  Counsel and intellect the lock to free,
    Because ‘tis this which error’s knot unties.
  From Peter’s hand I hold them. He on me
    Enjoined this rule, that I should rather err
  In opening unto penitents, than be
    Slow to unbind, if at my feet they were.”
  Then of that pass he pushed the sacred gate,
    Saying—“Go in; but be ye warned, before
  You enter! who looks back returneth straight.”
    And when the hinge-bolts of the holy door,
  Which are of strong and sounding metal, rolled
    Round in their sockets, the Tarpeian rock,
  When robbed of good Metellus and its gold,
    Rung not so loud nor yielded such a shock.
  At the first thunder, as the portal swung
    I looked about, and as I stood intent
  Heard _Te Deum laudamus_! clearly sung,
    And the gate’s music with the song was blent.
  The same impression what I heard gave me
    As on the listener’s hearing is begot
  When men with organs join their voice, and we
    Now hear the words, and now we hear them not.




UNITY.

HE who holds not this unity of the church, does he think that he
holds the faith? He who strives against and resists the church, is he
assured that he is in the church? For the blessed Apostle Paul teaches
this same thing, and manifests the sacrament of unity, thus speaking:
_There is one Body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one Hope of
your calling; one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God_. This unity
firmly should we hold and maintain, especially we bishops presiding in
the church, in order that we may approve the Episcopate itself to be
one and undivided. Let no one deceive the brotherhood by falsehood;
no one corrupt the truth of our faith by a faithless treachery. The
Episcopate is one; it is a whole, in which each enjoys full possession.
The church is likewise one, though she be spread abroad, and multiplies
with the increase of her progeny; even as the sun has rays many, yet
one light; and the tree boughs many, yet its strength is one, seated
in the deep-lodged root; and as, when many streams flow down from one
source, though a multiplicity of waters seems to be diffused from
the bountifulness of the overflowing abundance, unity is preserved
in the source itself. Part a ray of the sun from its orb, and its
unity forbids this division of light; break a branch from the tree,
once broken it can bud no more; cut the stream from its fountain, the
remnant will be dried up. Thus the church, flooded with the light of
the Lord, puts forth her rays through the whole world, with yet one
light, which is spread upon all places, while its unity of body is not
infringed. She stretches forth her branches over the universal earth
in the riches of plenty, and pours abroad her bountiful and onward
streams; yet is there one Head, one Source, one Mother, abundant in the
results of her fruitfulness.—_S. Cyprian._




THE TROWEL OR THE CROSS;

FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

“_This is your hour, and the power of darkness._”—S. Luke xxii. 53.


BOLANDEN’S stories have been received with such marked favor, both in
the original and translation, that we have thought a short biographical
sketch of the author would be acceptable to the readers of The Catholic
World.

Joseph Edward Charles Bishoff, better known as Conrad von Bolanden, was
born August 9, 1828, at lower Gailbach, a village of the Palatinate,
formerly belonging to Lorraine.

His father was a wealthy merchant, and, when his son had reached a
suitable age, he placed him under the direction of a private tutor;
but the child gave no indication of talent, and made slow progress in
his studies. He exhibited an equally backward disposition in the Latin
school at Blieskastel, which he attended at the age of eight years.
When his parents afterwards moved to Fischbach in Breisgau, it was his
delight to roam through the forests, and remain many hours among the
ruins of Hohenburg, situated upon the summit of a high mountain. To
his close observation of the beauties of nature at this early age we
are doubtless indebted for the graphic descriptions of natural scenery
which we find in his works.

Having studied Latin for some time with the reverend pastor of Schönau,
he entered, at the age of thirteen years, the Bishop’s Seminary of
Speyer. Here also he was accounted a very dull scholar, for the reason
that the method of instruction was unsuited to him, and because he had
already commenced to write poetry and romances.

In the year 1849, he became a student of the University of Munich, and
applied himself diligently to the study of theology, for he felt within
himself the vocation to become a priest. During this time, he wrote
a _feuilleton_ for the _Volkshalle_, published at Cologne, in which
he describes an incident of the French Revolution. On the 20th day of
August, 1852, he was ordained priest by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Nicholas
von Weiss, in the seminary-church of Speyer, and became assistant
priest of the cathedral. He devoted himself with zeal and enthusiasm
to his new sphere of duty; but, at the end of two years, the bodily
strength of the young assistant was completely exhausted, and he was
made pastor of Kirchheim Bolanden, a small city at the Donnersberg. The
parish numbered 1,303 souls, who were distributed among not less than
40 stations, in the midst of Protestants. Here again was a hard and
fatiguing field of labor, but the experience which he acquired during
his sojourn in Bolanden concerning the nature of Protestantism, was the
foundation of his _Wedding-tour of M. Luther_. In memory of this his
first mission as pastor, he called himself Conrad von Bolanden.

Ten months later, he was made pastor of Boerrstadt. There he wrote,
within three years, _Eberhard of Falkenstein, or the Power of Faith_,
_Franz von Sickingen_, and _Queen Bertha_.

From the year 1859 to 1869, he was pastor of Berghausen, about two
miles from Speyer. Now followed in rapid succession novels and
historical romances, which were at once translated into all the living
languages, and gave the author a more than European fame, since his
writings were printed and read also in America. His social romance,
_The Progressionists_, lately reproduced in this magazine, became very
popular. Workingmen of all classes made up funds to buy the book. Among
the higher class also, and even in the family of a certain prince,
this work created a furor; but it was the cause of great trouble to
the author. A man of exalted rank and power, whose scandalous habits
were known far and wide, imagined that he saw himself depicted in _The
Progressionists_. The wrath of this person was the reason why many,
out of fear of incurring his displeasure, avoided the presence of
Bolanden. His shattered health, as well as the loss of friends, induced
him, in the year 1869, to resign of his own accord his position as
pastor, especially as the compensation he had received for his works
had secured him an independent fortune. He purchased for himself a
comfortable house in Speyer surrounded by a large garden, and there he
now lives, always employed in writing, but in strict retirement.

His method of life is very regular. Every morning at nine o’clock he
appears in his garden, where he occupies himself with his flowers and
fruit-trees, after which he reads the newspapers and letters he has
received. He never writes either in the morning or late at night. He
commences work at two in the afternoon, and ceases at five.

Having no sisters, brothers, or other near relatives, Von Bolanden’s
house is presided over by his aged mother, Eleonore Languet, a
venerable matron, whose motherly love is never exhausted, and whose
devotion is repaid by the respectful and childlike affection of her
distinguished son.

One of the peculiarities of Von Bolanden is his decided aversion
to travelling, and to stopping at hotels. “I feel uneasy when out
of my house.” he often remarks. Like many literary men, he is very
absent-minded; he will look at the clock to ascertain a day or date,
and, during the hottest days of summer, he will approach an empty stove
to light his cigar.

His great merits as a Catholic novelist, and his fearless exposure
of historical falsehoods, as well as his efforts for the religious
enlightenment of the people, have been recognized by Pope Pius IX., who
has made him a Monsignore. This distinction is important, inasmuch as
it implies the approval of Bolanden’s works by the highest authority on
earth.

God grant that the intrepid author may be spared for many years to
uphold the banner of truth, and increase his merits by waging a combat
against the enemies of the Catholic Church.


CHAPTER I.

THE CONSPIRATORS OVERHEARD.

A FARMER stood on the border of a meadow, and, with hands clasped upon
the handle of his axe, looked with disappointment at the appearance of
the grass. He shook his head sadly, and exclaimed aloud: “All labor and
skill are useless if God does not bless the land!”

He pushed his cap from his brow, and the expression of his face became
more discontented than before, when suddenly he raised his head,
listened, and gazed in the direction of the forest. His whole aspect
now changed; his eyes lighted up with joy at the sound of a beautiful
tenor-voice merrily singing:

  “If I were only king,
  I would be just to all,” etc.

A gentleman on horseback soon became visible, followed at some distance
by a second rider, who was evidently a servant. The gentleman, who was
young and handsome, was dressed in gray; he wore his felt hat jauntily
on one side, thus leaving exposed his good-humored, intelligent
countenance, and his dark and brilliant eyes.

At the first curve of the road, he checked his horse. A thriving
village is seen in the distance, and a palace belonging to the king
crowns the summit of the hill.

“Franz, do you not think the weather unusually pleasant to-day?”

“Yes, your lordship.”

“Do you know the reason why the atmosphere is so pure, Franz?”

“I do not know, your lordship.”

“Well, I will tell you,” said the young gentleman, taking off his
hat, and passing his right hand through his curly hair. “The air
is invigorating and fresh because it is not breathed by the ladies
and gentlemen of the court. I have often observed that, whenever
the caravans from the city come out here, the air becomes damp and
oppressive. Nature seems to shroud its loveliness in a mourning-veil.
Every shrub and flower shrinks, as it were, within itself, in the vain
attempt to shut out the idle babbling of courtiers and the noxious
smell of musk which they use in such quantities. To-day, however,
the country is radiant in beauty; peace dwells everywhere, the most
profound stillness reigns, and the Spirit of God fills the heart,
therefore, Franz, I shall not return yet; you can ride home alone.”

He sprang from his horse.

“Give me my portfolio and my plaid!”

The servant handed him both.

Throwing the plaid over his shoulders, the young count turned in the
direction of the woods, whose tall beech-trees covered the sides
of a small hillock. The road ended in a circle surrounded by young
fir-trees. Benches with comfortable backs invited the traveller to
rest; but the count continued his walk until he reached a certain spot,
when he seated himself upon a large moss-covered stone. Through an
opening in the forest he saw the farmer, whose whole deportment and
walk again expressed care and reflection.

“He also is a thinker,” said the count to himself, “and the subject
of his meditation is doubtless more profitable to mankind than are
those of many who make pretensions to profound learning. As he stands
there, he is the very personification of care! He is evidently devising
some plan by which the waters of the little brook may be led into
his parched meadows. Idle work, my dear fellow! If you should succeed
in turning its fertilizing streams into your land, and if you should
enrich the soil with the sweat of your brow, the terrible military
ordinance will devour the fruits of your labor. If you have sons who
are healthy and strong, they cannot be of assistance to you, for the
army will claim their service. The minister of war is insatiable in his
demands, and it is necessary that he should be so, for we are living in
strange times.”

He continued to gaze musingly upon the scene before him. Gradually his
countenance assumed an earnest and almost solemn expression; his bright
eyes became dreamy, as if communing with spirits of the invisible
world, until, as though yielding to some mysterious impulse, he seized
his pencil, and began to write.

Suddenly a gruff voice was heard. The poet is startled out of his
dreams. Four elegantly dressed gentlemen are seen coming up the road,
and approach the circle.

“Who can escape his fate?” said the young count angrily. “The heavenly
muses are put to flight by hostile spirits; but what do I see?” he
continued, looking through the branches at the group. “Three of
the most powerful men of the kingdom? Three master-masons and the
grandmaster of all the Freemasons within a circumference of three
hundred miles? What can bring these sons of night to this peaceful
spot? I hope they will not remain long enough to poison the fragrant
air with their foul plotting and plans. Truly, their presence has
already effected a change: the sun does not shine as brightly, and it
is becoming cloudy.”

He then sat listening.

“I do not understand you, professor,” said the person with the gruff
voice. “To say the least, it is a very singular fancy of yours to
defend the Jesuits.”

“No fancy at all, Herr Director; it is simply the result of knowledge,”
replied the professor.

“The knowledge acquired in your high-school is certainly wonderful,”
answered the director, with a mocking laugh. “But your effort to defend
the Jesuits surpasses even the bounds of knowledge!”

“If you scorn knowledge when right and truth are in question, you will
surely allow a man of sound judgment to have some respect for that
which is founded on facts,” said the university professor, with great
warmth.

“Oh! you have my permission to say what you choose between these green
walls,” exclaimed the director, pointing with his hand towards the
young fir-trees.

“And you, most worshipful grandmaster—do you also allow the free
expression of opinion?” inquired the professor of a man with a gray
beard, whose eyes and features indicated a disposition of great
craftiness.

“Certainly; we are not in the masonic lodge,” replied the gentleman
addressed. “I am not grandmaster here, but a simple chief-magistrate,
Be careful, however, in your expressions, we might be overheard.”

The professor walked around the circle, and looked in every direction.

“There is no one within hearing distance,” said he, returning.

“This is growing interesting; I must take notes of what will
transpire,” said the invisible count; and he at once commenced to write
down what he heard.

“Our order has determined upon the extermination of the Jesuits—well!
As this resolution has been passed, it no longer admits of debate,”
continued the professor. “I do not speak now as a Freemason, but as a
close observer of matters and things; and what do I see? Attacks on all
sides upon the Jesuits. At Munich, our Masons have clothed themselves
in the garment of Old Catholicity, that they might hurl from the
standpoint of belief their anathemas against the Jesuits. In Darmstadt,
our first Masons even went so far as to appear in the garb of Luther,
that they might condemn the Jesuits from Protestant pulpits also, and
demand their expulsion by actual force. All our newspapers denounce the
Jesuits, and stir up a hatred of them among the people. But, gentlemen,
in my estimation, the newspapers have gone too far; any man of common
sense can convict them of falsehood and calumny. Here is a Bavarian
paper of yesterday, called the _Kemptener Gazette_,” said he, producing
the journal. “Listen to this article, which endeavors to incite the
fears of the credulous.”

And the professor read:

“What are all the calamities which threaten and even destroy the human
race in comparison to the crimes of the Jesuits? For centuries they
have immolated thousands upon the scaffold, and justified their acts
by appealing to an all-loving Deity. Children and their parents, the
young and the old, virgins and matrons, have been sacrificed to their
cruel and insatiable thirst for power. Amid, horrible torments and
unspeakable sufferings, innumerable beings, despairing of the mercy of
God, have been put to death at their command. They have been the means
of introducing treason and parricide into the world; they have artfully
managed to incite with a word one nation against the other; while at
the same time they point with a hypocritical face to the cross, the
symbol of an all-governing love. But what caps the climax is that they
seek to effect the ruin of men, not for _time_, but for _eternity_.
With unheard-of cruelty, they everywhere stifle spiritual freedom in
its very birth. They have secretly murdered kings and emperors who
would not submit to their will. To obtain their end, they destroy the
welfare of nations, and humble the majesty of princes into the very
dust. Like an evil spirit, they have triumphantly placed their yoke
upon enslaved mankind, and they yet strive to carry out their base
designs, as the experience of our own times teaches us—in a word, they
are the enemies with whom the spirit of truth has now to combat.”

“Now, gentlemen, I ask of you,” said the professor, holding up the
paper, “are not these accusations most ridiculous and absurd? A long
chain of the gravest crimes and of the most diabolical designs are
fastened upon the Society of Jesus, and yet not a single one of these
allegations can be proved. They are wicked and stupid fabrications, and
cannot but appear as such to a man of ordinary intelligence.”

“To an intelligent man, perhaps!” answered the director. “But the
article is not written for that class of people, but only for the
ignorant, who are easily duped.”

“And we must remember,” said one of the four Masons, “that the article
fulfils its end; it is even well written; for it will fill the minds of
the common people with hatred and distrust of the Jesuits if they read
such things of them.”

“Perfectly true, Herr Counsellor!” said the director.

“The end, indeed, sanctifies the means, we may say with truth,” replied
the professor. “Let us, however, not forget that the present attack
upon the Jesuits will be recorded in history. A future age will judge
for itself, and I fear it will decide in favor of a society which in
our days is assailed with such senseless fury. Posterity will look upon
the present treatment of the Jesuits as not only contemptible, but
as cowardly and wicked. According to the testimony of centuries, the
Society of Jesus is the most active, the purest, the most influential
and learned order of the Catholic Church. The Jesuits are acknowledged
to be the best teachers, the most prudent instructors of youth, the
most experienced confessors, and the most zealous priests. They are
known as the vanguard of Rome; they are wonderful in mortification and
in obedience, and are always ready to make any sacrifice whatever for
the church. I can prove this by innumerable passages from Protestant
works.”

“It is not necessary, Herr Professor!” interrupted the grandmaster.
“The Jesuits are no doubt excellent people. The society is a masterly
organization; each member obeys without contradiction the commands of
an experienced general; they form the strongest bulwark of Rome; for
that very reason, they must be suppressed. ‘The Trowel or the Cross!’
that is to be the watchword! The trowel, the symbol of Freemasonry,
must triumph over the cross, the symbol of Christianity. According to
the spirit and plan of our order, all religion must disappear from the
face of the earth. The trowel must reign, the cross be broken. As the
Catholic Church gives the strongest support to religious belief, and
because the Jesuits are the most active propagators of the doctrine of
Christ, it is necessary that the Jesuits should be exterminated.”

“Well, Herr Counsellor, I agree with you,” replied the professor.
“The death-sentence has been pronounced upon the Jesuits, and must
be executed; but, to accomplish such a result, neither brutal force
nor the interference of the government should be used; we should call
knowledge to aid us in gaining the victory. There are perhaps two
hundred Jesuits in the whole German Empire; thus there is one Jesuit
to twenty learned men. Now, I ask you, will it not be disgraceful to
our enlightened age if twenty well-informed doctors cannot render
inefficient the activity of one Jesuit? Will it not be a neverending
cause of shame to German science if it cannot gain the mastery over
such a small number of unarmed and persecuted men? It is humiliating to
my pride to use such means for the extermination of this little band of
enemies. Science must be made to destroy the Society of Jesus, but not
a decree issued in the spirit of the barbarous and tyrannical Nero!”

“Don’t talk to me about your sciences!” said the grandmaster
impatiently. “I am an old, experienced Freemason, and you may believe
what I tell you. Science will not be able to disconcert even one
Jesuit. Do not forget, dear professor, that the Jesuits are proficient
in all the sciences, and that they understand how to fight upon that
ground. We must not skirmish long with such an enemy; we must advance
quickly, and must concentrate all our forces for the great battle. It
must now be decided—the trowel or the cross! If the dominion of the
cross is to cease, the religion of Jesus of Nazareth must disappear; if
the spirit of Freemasonry is to obtain the victory, then the Jesuits
must first be exterminated by every possible means.”

A deep murmur came from behind a large tree in the vicinity. The sound
proceeded from the same farmer, who, having walked around his meadows,
was on his return home, when he heard voices in animated conversation,
and he lost no time in hiding himself behind the tree. There he stood,
tall and broad-shouldered, listening attentively; he would every now
and then clinch his strong fists, and would dart fiery glances at the
assembled group of Freemasons.

“The most natural and efficacious means,” remarked the professor,
“would be a decree of suppression, which could be easily obtained
from the Chamber of Deputies, the majority of whom belong actually or
at least in spirit to our order. But the question is, Will the king
consent to it?”

“Bah! he is a narrow-minded man, who does not govern, but is governed!”
said the grandmaster contemptuously. “Our Masons have excited his fears
to such a pitch in regard to the pretensions of the infallible Pope
that he is ready at any moment to attack Rome.”

“Splendid!” said the count to himself, underlining the words in his
note-book: “A narrow-minded man, who does not govern, but is governed!”

“Our victory is certain!” declared the counsellor. “The time for
a decisive battle could not be more favorable. The majority of
intelligent people and of the working classes are without any
religion. The lower orders must be indoctrinated by our Masons and
apprentices; our newspapers must confuse and alarm them concerning
the claims of the infallible Pope. Besides, the German emperor is
a Freemason, the Crown-Prince of Germany is a Freemason, all the
ministers of our country are Freemasons, and many ministers of other
German countries are Freemasons. In Spain, we are already so powerful
that the Grandmaster, Zorilla, gave the royal crown to a prince of
his own choice. In Rome, for 1800 years the seat of the popes, the
“Grand-Orient” of our order will erect his seat above the chair of
an imprisoned and helpless Pope. As I have already remarked, affairs
are everywhere so propitious to our cause that the trowel will surely
conquer the cross!”

“This is indeed your hour, and the power of darkness!” thought the
count.

“Only hear the villains!” muttered the farmer behind the hedge, “What
pious creatures these Freemasons are!”

“You are mistaken in regard to one point,” replied the professor. “The
Emperor and the Crown-Prince of Germany are undoubtedly Freemasons;
but the real object of our World Union is not known to either of them.
Neither William nor Fritz dreams that after the downfall of the altar
follows that of the throne. The cross is well adapted for the crown of
princes, but not the trowel. Suppose the emperor shall discover the
fundamental law of our order? Do you think that he would espouse the
cause of religion, and war against us?”

“Care has been taken that he shall never know it,” said the
grandmaster. “Do not torment yourself with fears that will never be
realized!”

“If the German emperor could only hear these rascally Freemasons talk!”
thought the indignant farmer within himself. “I must look closely at
these fellows.”

“Well, professor,” inquired the grandmaster, “are you at last convinced
that the Jesuits must be first driven out, and that this can only be
done by force?”

“I am not convinced of your last assertion; but yet I submit, in
obedience to my oath as a Freemason most worshipful grandmaster!”
replied the professor. “I shall endeavor, in my sphere of labor, to be
restlessly active, so that we may attain our great end. I shall do my
best to destroy religious faith in all the young men confided to me,
by appealing always to the light of science. Our universities of the
present day are justly considered to be the most successful mothers of
religious unbelief. To the destruction of altars, to the downfall of
thrones, to the universal fraternization of all nations by means of a
universal republic without a God, without heaven, without hell; for
liberty in our pleasures, for liberty of will, for liberty in life and
death, shall my whole strength be dedicated in submission to the rule
of our order!”

The grandmaster nodded his head approvingly. Suddenly the group were
startled by the appearance of the farmer, who, no longer able to
control his wrath, stepped into the circle. Holding his axe in his
hand, he gazed attentively at the strangers.

“What do you wish, good man?” asked the grandmaster condescendingly.

“I have heard much about the Freemasons, and, as I now have a chance, I
must look at them a little.”

“Well, well, this is fine work!” replied the counsellor, concealing his
perplexity by a loud cough.

“How do you know that we are Freemasons?” asked the director.

“I know it because I have been listening to your confessions,” replied
the farmer.

The confusion now became general.

“What did you hear?” asked the professor.

“I heard enough! But I must tell you this, you Freemasons, your
undertaking will fail, for your motives are wicked,” continued the
farmer, with rising indignation. “You say that you will expel the
Jesuits, and destroy and exterminate them? Slowly, gentlemen; the
people also will have something to say about that. We Catholics know
what the Jesuits are. In the Bavarian Diet, some one said that the
skulls of the Catholics should be beaten in. All right; but I tell you,
Freemasons, that I will break with this my axe the skull of the first
one who dares to come near our parish for the purpose of driving away
our dear, good Jesuit father. Only try it! Do you think,” he exclaimed,
while he shook his clenched fist at them, “that we Catholics intend to
be tormented by vagabonds and good-for-nothing fellows like you who do
not believe in a God, nor in a heaven, nor in a hell? Do you imagine
that we will allow ourselves to be trampled under foot, that we will
permit our religion to be destroyed, our faith undermined, our priests
abused and expelled? Do you think that we are such fools? Commence your
work, and you will see what will happen! We are not African slaves:
we are free Germans; you Freemasons would do well to keep out of the
way. Our fists are stronger than your trowels, and defence, in case of
necessity, is lawful!”

The dignitaries of the most powerful order in the world, observing the
wild looks of the angry man, were silent.

“Do you see the cross upon the steeple of the church there?” asked
the farmer, pointing to the village beyond. “How many such spires are
there not in Germany? And you wish to take down that cross from the
church—the cross upon which the Saviour has died for us—and put on
your dirty mason-trowel? Ha! ha! that’s too ridiculous!”

“Is your pastor a Jesuit, my friend?” inquired the professor, in a
bland tone of voice.

“Yes, indeed; our pastor is a Jesuit; he has been three years with us,
because there is a scarcity of secular priests. And what a pastor he
makes! I can tell you, Freemasons, that our Jesuit father is so good,
so zealous, so full of piety, that all of you put together are not fit
to unloosen his shoes. Yes; you may scowl at me, but it is so! And
then, gentlemen, I have something else to say to you! If you think so
much about freedom, and about the welfare of the people; if all your
ministers are Freemasons; and if you are all-powerful in the chambers,
why do you heap burden after burden upon the shoulders of the people?
Why is it that the taxes are growing heavier every day? Why is it that
the farmers are pressed by the collectors as if they were grapes? Why
does the war-budget constantly increase, so that we are in danger of
being forced to work in the end only for the soldiers? See, Freemasons,
these are our troubles; you can, if you choose, help the oppressed
people; but I warn you to keep your hands away from the Jesuits and
from our religion ... or ...” and he made a threatening gesture, “you
will be sorry. Franz Keller, of Weselheim, from yonder village, has
said it.”

He placed his axe upon his shoulder, and walked away with long,
determined strides, while the Freemasons preserved a deep silence.

The count laughed at their evident discomfiture.

“Another significant proof of the powerful influence of the Jesuits,”
said the grandmaster. “The parish of Weselheim was formerly indifferent
in regard to religious matters; but now they are made fanatical by
having had a Jesuit among them for three years. He must leave!”
continued he angrily. “The clock of his activity has run down.”

“Will the king receive us at his villa?” asked the counsellor.

“On the 14th of this month, at eleven o’clock precisely!” replied the
director.

“It is growing cold, gentlemen, let us return,” remarked the
grandmaster, whereupon they all left the forest.


CHAPTER II.

A JESUIT AS A PASTOR.

IN a meditative mood, the count walked towards the village. The serene
and joyous expression of his handsome face had disappeared, and was
replaced by a grave earnestness.

“A valuable experience!” said he to himself. “So ‘The Trowel or the
Cross!’ is to be the watchword of those who govern! Thrones are to be
broken over the ruins of the altars, so that, in the end, a general
fraternization of mankind may, according to the spirit of Freemasonry,
crown the whole. Fraternization—hem! The real meaning of all this is
that men who are not rich and are not liberals are to become the slaves
of the liberals and the rich. The farmer was right: these Freemasons
are wicked rascals, for they do not believe in God. And this spiritual
rascality is, without doubt, more wicked and dangerous to the state
than open drunkenness. This farmer is a brave fellow; I like him!”
continued the count, laughing. “Healthy in body and spirit, courageous,
sincere, and free! Like a night-bird before the eagle, so also do these
light-hating Freemasons shrink before righteous and honest anger.” He
sauntered through the streets of the village, observed with pleasure
the universal cleanliness that prevailed, and returned politely the
friendly salutations of all who greeted him, after which he entered his
hotel. When he had dined, and while reading the newspaper, his servant
appeared.

“Some men are here, your lordship, who desire to speak with you.”

“Who are they?”

“Good people from the country, your lordship.”

“Send them up!”

Slowly, and bowing respectfully, at least a dozen villagers entered the
room. The count at once recognized the tall form and broad shoulders of
Franz Keller. The men were dressed in their Sunday attire, and their
weather-beaten countenances were full of care and solicitude.

“What can I do for you, my friends?” began the count, who saw their
embarrassment.

“We have come here on business, your lordship,” said the leader of the
little troop. “I am the burgomaster of this place, and these men are
the aldermen.”

“I am greatly rejoiced to make the acquaintance of the principal men of
Weselheim,” replied the young count kindly. “What is the nature of your
business with me?”

“I will tell your lordship. For three years we have had a Jesuit father
as our pastor—a good, pious, and zealous priest. The government
has, for the last four months, endeavored to take him away from us,
because he is a foreigner. He has received no less than three letters
ordering him to leave, but he will not desert his post. He says that
the government did not make him pastor of our church, but the bishop,
and therefore government cannot dismiss him from the care of souls.
But because the Freemasons hate the Jesuits, and because they are
all-powerful with the government, our pastor is to be taken away from
us by force. The whole congregation are indignant at this, for it will
be difficult to find another pastor like him. If the gendarmes come, I
do not pledge myself that they will not be driven out of the village;
we all feel that it would be a sin crying to heaven if we allow a
pious, innocent man to be taken away by gendarmes like a thief. No; we
shall never submit to such treatment! Now, this is our humble request
to your lordship: to-morrow, or after to-morrow, our most gracious
king will arrive at the palace yonder, and, since your lordship is the
friend of his majesty, the entire parish beg of you to speak in our
behalf, so that we may be able to keep our pastor.”

“I thank you, Herr Burgomaster, and all the parish for the confidence
they place in me,” said the count. “At the same time, I must confess
that it is a long time since I have heard any praise of the Jesuits;
the fashion is now to heap insult upon them, and to accuse them of
every known crime.”

“I ask pardon, your lordship,” said Keller; “only those who do not know
the Jesuits will ever insult them. We know them. Our Jesuit father is a
very pious man; he has no fault—or at least one only.”

“Well, what fault has he?” inquired Count von Scharfenstein.

“He gives away everything to the poor, your honor,” replied the
burgomaster. “He keeps nothing of what we give him; the lay brother who
lives with him carries it away to others. A man must eat and drink well
if he expects to work well.”

“Very true!” said Von Scharfenstein, hardly able to restrain a laugh.
“And because your pastor does not eat and drink well, he therefore does
not work well either.”

“Oh! yes, your honor, oh! yes. I did not mean to say that. What I
wanted to say was that our pastor works very hard, but that he does
not eat enough, and therefore looks pale and thin. We cannot make him
grow fat.” And the burgomaster cast a satisfied glance at his own well
nourished body. “If we give him the very best we have, he will not eat
it, but gives it away, and that provokes us.”

“Console yourselves!” answered Von Scharfenstein. “The poor to whom
your pastor gives the best he has will not be displeased with him for
it. And for the very reason that he is such an incorrigible friend of
the poor, I shall speak to the king in his behalf.”

The interview now came to an end.

“God reward your honor!” said each one of the delegation, as they bowed
and took their departure.

Von Scharfenstein, whose thoughts were generally in the clouds, and who
paid very little attention to the course of things in the world around
him, walked thoughtfully up and down his room. The touching fidelity,
love, and reverence of the villagers for their priest, at a time when
authority was mocked at unless supported by brute force, excited in him
great admiration.

“The hatred of Freemasons for Jesuits is very natural,” said he. “The
grandmaster is right: it will never be possible to plant the banner of
infidelity upon the ruins of the altar as long as the bravest soldiers
of the church militant exist. This forcible expulsion of the society is
a political blunder. The case merits attention; I must take a look at
the theatre of action.”

He put on his overcoat and hat, and went forth into the twilight.
Well-freighted wagons were returning home from the fields. Those who
met saluted one another, or spoke a few words together. Children
carried small bundles upon their heads, grown persons dragged their
burdens after them. It was a scene of animated activity. No swearing
or angry word was heard, but the day’s work ended in the most peaceful
manner. The same thing was repeated every evening during the sojourn of
the count in Weselheim, but, having never felt any interest in rural
life, he was astonished at all that he saw.

In the middle of the road, a heavily-laden wagon came to a stand-still;
the horses refused to proceed, notwithstanding the efforts of the
driver. The count could not but admire the patience of a man who did
not swear at or ill-treat his horses. Several peasants came to offer
assistance. They pushed the wheels, but in vain, for the animals would
not move.

“I do not know what is the matter with the horses to-day,” exclaimed
the driver. “I have not overloaded them.”

“Just a little too much, Jacob!” said a voice.

At once all hats and caps are raised. A tall, thin form now approached.

“May Jesus Christ be praised, your reverence!” was the respectful
salutation of all the men.

“Now and for ever!” answered the good priest. “Well, Prantner, what has
happened?”

“Your reverence, the horses will not stir!”

“Because they want to rest a little,” replied the Jesuit. “We do the
same when we are tired; and it is a heavy, a very heavy load,” said he,
with a glance at the towering height of the wagon.

“I have just told him that the wagon was overloaded,” remarked another
peasant, in a tone of reproach.

“Perhaps—but Prantner knows that his horses are very strong, and
he therefore has great confidence in them,” said the pastor. “They
are splendid creatures,” patting the broad necks of the horses, and
stroking their manes. The horses commenced to snort, to toss their
heads, and to paw the ground. “Ah! see, they like to be complimented,”
he continued cheerfully. “Let us always acknowledge merit, and that
which seems difficult will then become easy. Now, Prantner, go on!”

The priest had hardly stepped back, when the horses proceeded on their
way without further urging.

“Was there ever any one like our pastor?” exclaimed the peasants, in
astonishment. “He understands everything.”

“Where is he going, so late?”

“To Michael the carpenter, who is dying, and who refuses to be
reconciled with his neighbor.”

“Michael has always been very stubborn; may Almighty God grant him a
happy death!” Saying which, the men dispersed.

The count, who had watched the proceedings, also went his way.

“The leading spirit of this parish is evidently the Jesuit, and he
deserves to be,” thought Von Scharfenstein.

The Angelus now rang; at once every head was uncovered; for the silvery
tones of the bell reminded the villagers of the incarnation of the Son
of God. From all the houses resounded the angelic salutation, sometimes
uttered by the clear voices of the children.

“What a pity that those men of the trowel are not here to shake their
empty heads compassionately at the pious usages of an ignorant but
believing people!” said the count. “In my opinion, a people who are
reminded thrice during the day of the incarnation of the Son of God,
and who are admonished to walk in the presence of the Omniscient, are
better than a people who have no faith in either the justice or the
mercy of God.”

Before the windows of a house there stood several persons, principally
women. The count approached out of curiosity, and looked into a
well-lighted room. The table near the wall was covered with a white
cloth. Between two burning candles stood a crucifix and a holy-water
vase. At the bedside of the dying man sat the Jesuit father, making
impressive exhortations. He held the hand of the sick man in his own,
and would frequently bend his head towards him, as though expecting
some reply. At the foot of the bed knelt a young man, who covered his
face with both hands. Two young girls and an aged woman stood near with
sad and depressed countenances.

“What is the matter here?” inquired the count, in a low tone.

“Alas! sir, it is a sad affair!” replied one of the women. “Michael the
carpenter is dying, and the priest cannot give him the last sacraments.”

“Why not?”

“Because Michael has for a long time been at enmity with his neighbor.
For the last eight days, our pastor has come several times a day to
visit him, in order to persuade him to be reconciled; but Michael will
not listen to any advice. It is a pity for any one to be so malicious
and obstinate.”

At this moment, there was a movement in the sick-room. The young man
who knelt at the foot of the bed rose hastily, and left the house.

“At last, at last!” exclaimed a voice, “Michael has again become a
Christian!”

A man was now seen to enter the room; he was the carpenter’s neighbor.
The dying Michael held out his emaciated hand to him, which the
neighbor took, although nearly blinded by tears. The Jesuit said a few
words, and the reconciled enemies again shook hands. The women standing
near the window were loudly sobbing. Von Scharfenstein was also greatly
moved by what he witnessed.

The priest left the house, and hurried to the church.

“He will now bring the holy viaticum,” said a voice.

“Thanks be to God!” said another.

The count returned slowly to the hotel.

“I have until now examined only superficially into the activity of the
Jesuit father, and must confess that he works admirably—light and
darkness combat each other, it cannot be otherwise. The Freemasons are
naturally the sworn enemies of an order which fulfils its mission with
zeal and prudence. The trowel will never attain an ascendency as long
as the cross is defended by such brave soldiers, so well trained to
combat!”

 TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.




COUNTRY LIFE IN ENGLAND.

BY AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC.

THE “intelligent foreigner,” that convenient critic whom Englishmen are
so fond of using as a mouthpiece for their own often just criticisms,
is supposed to have seen little or nothing of England unless he has
visited the country mansions for which our island is famous. And
this is very true, even if he have been touring in the Lake country,
taking notes in the “Black Country” around Wolverhampton, inspecting
cotton-mills in the North, or admiring the gigantic human engine called
the “City” in London. All these are phases of English life, yet none
is so distinctively English as life in agricultural neighborhoods.
After all, social life is the most visible test of difference of
nationality, and although the uniformity of the XIXth century seems to
have fallen like snow upon the world, covering its hedges and fields,
levelling its hillocks with its valleys, and hiding alike its various
flowers and different weeds, yet here and there some landmarks of the
old social systems still hold their heads above this uninteresting
pall of sameness. The English are traditionally tenacious of their
individuality; gracefully so at home, boastfully, and, at times rather
absurdly so, abroad. But the indomitable “British tourist” is too well
known to claim much attention; his personality is better expressed by
caricature than by sober description.

Country life is often imitated abroad, but the copy is at best but
a sorry caricature, for this institution of social England cannot
be transplanted, as is evident by a very simple reason. It has its
roots in the whole moral, political, and physical system of the
Saxon race; it comes of mediæval and feudal feeling; it is bound up
with the territorial traditions that hitherto have been England’s
bulwarks as much and more than her navy, her insular position, or
her parliamentary institutions. It is worth notice that in France
the beginning of the great Revolution was the centralization of all
social interests in Paris and its court. Landed proprietors envied the
court office-holders; they contrasted their “dull” existence with the
brilliant and meretricious pageantry that framed the lives of their
luckier friends, and, hurrying to join in the profitless triumphs
or even the disgraceful successes of certain courtiers, they became
absentees, spent more than their mortgaged and encumbered lands would
yield, had recourse to money-lenders, lost all hold on the sympathy of
their tenants, and finally incurred the hatred of some and the contempt
of all. The only nobles who, during the Revolution, could count on a
guard of faithful defenders and practical adherents, were those of
Brittany—the rugged country gentlemen whose lives were spent among
the tenantry, and whose knowledge of farming and hunting made them the
daily companions of the class whom they headed. When the storm burst,
the peasants of La Vendée alone were faithful to those who had ever
been faithful to them, while the court favorites were betrayed by the
very servants whose truculence they had mistaken for attachment.

This unfortunate system of neglect never prevailed in England to the
same extent as it did in France, though, during the brilliant reign of
Charles II., some poison of this kind began to creep into the habits of
the landed gentry. Upon the whole, the English lords of the soil have
justly and generously lived _for_ as well as _upon_ their possessions,
and, if we have not had a “Reign of Terror,” this is one of the chief
reasons. The great land-owners of a county (we speak specifically of
the midland counties) divide among them the municipal and political
offices; the Lord-Lieutenant, the High Sheriff, the M. P., the local
magistrates, are all gentlemen and property-holders, and personally
interested in the individual progress of the county. Each manor-house
is a petty court of justice, and offenders of a minor sort, such as
poachers, window-breakers, and the like, are tried and sentenced
with exemplary despatch as well as impartiality by the squires of
the neighborhood. There is generally a yearly agricultural show,
and as almost all the gentlemen are cattle-breeders, or keep studs
for hunting or racing purposes, and all the ladies are more or less
poultry-fanciers, the whole community meets with equally eager pleasure
upon common ground. The yeomanry and militia, which answer to the rural
national guard in other European countries, are formed of well-to-do
young farmers whose pride in their accoutrements or horses is a healthy
token of sound national feeling; the officers are the gentlemen of
the county, the same who sit upon the bench, and who entertain their
military tenants at the annual rent-dinner. As for this gathering, it
has no ominous meaning for the thriving men who attend it; the meeting
is signalized by an unlimited flow of good spirits, of kindly feeling,
and, occasionally, of local and rural wit. True, the speechifying is at
times prolix, and the number of toasts alarmingly great; the smoke of
the farmers’ pipes becomes sometimes rather dense, and the wit turns to
pleasantry which has a slightly “heady” flavor like the wine, no doubt;
but, for all that, there is nothing more reassuring in a political
point of view than such a gathering, and nothing more charming to
an imaginative mind than this unfeigned hospitality and baronial
good-fellowship.

It might be said, speaking broadly, that, “next to a gentleman, there
is nothing like a farmer.”

The farmer has his pride of caste and descent as eminently as any child
of Saxon earls or of Norman barons; his family have often lived on
the same land, under the same roof, and owned the same allegiance to
a long uninterrupted line of noble landlords for centuries back. Of
nothing is he prouder than of this, and when, as is often the case, he
entertains the family of his lord, nothing can be simpler, grander,
and more utterly gentleman-like than his conduct. No straining after
effect, but homely and lavish abundance; no attempt at fine speeches,
but cordial and undisguised rejoicing; respect that is not the contrary
to independence, but the very assertion and expression of it. In one
estate, it happened, perhaps about a hundred or more years ago, that
an Earl of G—— wooed and married the pretty daughter of one of his
chief tenants; both families are living now on the same lands, and,
when the farmer looks towards the chancel of the parish church from his
capacious pew in the nave, he sees the marble monument of his beautiful
ancestress, who was twice the wife of a man distinguished by noble
birth, and generally beloved for his goodness. (After the death of her
first husband, she married his Cousin Tom, the great local sportsman
of his times.) Her portrait, in her countess’ robes and ermine-lined
coronet, hangs conspicuously in the dining-room of the family mansion,
while her two successive husbands are represented not far from her, the
one in the gorgeous court dress of a peer, the other in the familiar
green velvet hunting-coat, with a fox-hound by his side.

The farmers of the midland counties are often land-owners on their own
account, and, far from being indifferent or adverse to sport, they are
its chief encouragers. Fox-hunting is an instinct with them—another
likeness they bear to their landlords. You never hear a complaint of
fields ridden over, or crops injured; the owner will gallop over his
own furrows, or break through his own fences, utterly reckless of
anything but the pursuit of the fox. Meanness is a thing unknown to
them, and yet you will hardly meet many who are extravagant. There is
a broadness of character, an incapacity for doing or thinking anything
petty, a love of Old-World customs and hereditary modes of thought,
that seem to keep them out of the selfish narrowness born of modern
commerce, and, while it makes them less sharp, less peculating, makes
them also incomparably more lovable.

Surrounded by such people, of whom they are the pets and the pride, the
children of the landlords cannot fail to grow up healthy in mind and
body, full of fun and frankness, loving country sports and pastimes,
learning early how to manage land and crops, entering heartily into
the feelings and wishes of those they will one day be called upon to
rule, noting the idiosyncrasies and carefully handling the prejudices
of their early comrades and future co-laborers. A bond of union,
friendship, and help is thus formed which grows stronger every year,
and stronger still with each succeeding generation. The old men and
women, whose place is by the capacious hearth, seem to live just long
enough to tell their master’s grandchildren how they danced at his
“coming of age” fifty years ago, while their own little grandchildren
laugh as they think that, in a few years more, there will be another
“coming of age,” and that they, too, will dance at the old hall, and
taste the wonderful ale their father told them of when they passed the
ghostly stairs leading down to the great cellar.

Then come the weddings of the daughters of the house, and, as they have
been familiarly known in the village nearest their home by all the
poorer cottage tenants and the Sunday-school children, the young brides
find the whole population personally enthusiastic over each detail of
the ceremony. Young men and girls have seen the ladies of the “house”
bringing cordials and delicacies to their poor dying parents, and
strewing costly flowers over their plain coffins in the churchyard; and
they remember this as the same fair girl whom they saw minister to them
in their sorrow, takes upon herself another and a lifelong ministry
with the hopeful trust of youth and the holy certainty of love. Again,
as the bride comes forth, the children remember the feasts in the
grounds, the armful of buns and cakes thrown into their pinafores at
leaving, the delightful romps on the lawn, the adventurous row round
the pond which their imagination magnified into a stormy sea—all the
pleasures, out-doors and indoors, which were associated with the sight
and presence of that slender, white-robed, and white-crowned figure.
Thus, while there are class distinctions in rural England, there are
no class _divisions_, and servants and masters, landlords and tenants,
form, as it were, one clan with common interests and reciprocal
sympathies.

Then, life in the country is so much more individual than in town. All
tastes are there easily gratified; books and magazines are constantly
pouring down from London; guests, not compulsory, as is the genus
“morning caller” in town, who lounges in utterly exhausted, and asks
languidly whether “Lady So-and-so’s ball last night was not perfectly
delightful?” while his general air of boredom proclaims that he is
surfeited with all mundane _delights_—guests not such as this inane
specimen of humanity, but chosen friends, gay, witty, brilliant, are
at hand at the shortest notice for those whose life is cut out for
society; morning rambles for the solitary; moonlight effects for the
romantic; hours of leisure for the studious; a wide field of usefulness
for the charitable; a matchless opportunity for indulging in the
woman-gossip, without which that essentially English institution,
five o’clock tea, would be “flat, stale, and unprofitable”; and last,
not least, the best chances for marriage that any sort of social
intercourse can afford.

The only drawback to this state of things is that it sometimes becomes
a little too artificial. Even rusticity may be aped, and, indeed,
this is the tendency of the day, as it was the tendency in former
days also, when shepherdesses were represented by ladies of fashion
in silk skirts, beribboned crooks, and high-heeled shoes. But this
pseudo-rusticity spoils the real, tangible pleasures of life in the
country. Studied simplicity is worse than studied art. Young ladies
“got up” like Dresden china are not peasants, and have neither the
charms nor the merits of peasants. They are probably _blasées_, and so
miss the freshness symbolized by their costume; and they are incapable
of work, and so miss the usefulness also distantly suggested by their
dress. In one expressive word, they are a _sham_.

There are many houses, however, where healthful pleasure is dominant,
and no fine-ladyism finds favor—houses where the chapel is not far
from the drawing-room, and where masters and servants, guests and
hosts, meet silently to greet their Maker before they enjoy his gifts
for the day. Then comes the ten o’clock gathering round the breakfast
table—a picture in itself, with bright flame-colored flowers amid
the delicate white glass and china, and pretty faces joyously eager
for the day’s programme of amusements. Perhaps there are ruins to be
seen—a great resource in country visiting—at all events, there is a
church. The churches are certainly one of the proudest inheritances
of the old land, and the way in which they have been preserved speaks
well for the naturally reverential turn of the Saxon mind. In every
county, some distinctive feature is visible; in Kent, hardly anything
is used in churches but flint, and the bells are generally hung in a
square massive tower instead of a steeple. In the midland counties,
on the contrary, steeples are a great feature; there is one at a
little village called Ketton, which is peculiarly fine, though it
certainly looks too heavy for the church it crowns. Wicliffe’s church,
at Lutterworth, is a standard sight for the guests of a large old
family mansion near by; you are shown the pulpit said to be Wicliffe’s
own, and, in one of the aisles, his tomb, with a long Latin epitaph
sufficiently bombastic and untruthful, as it states that, despite of
monks and bishops, he instructed the populace in plain Gospel truth,
and was the first to translate the Bible into the vernacular! But
Lutterworth church has for us of the old faith a more interesting
memorial of the “good old days.” This consists in a very primitive
fresco representing the resurrection of the dead. The colors are not
much varied, and the draperies are quaintly angular; yet this early
effort of art is far more simply and honestly Christian than many of
those skilful productions of later periods, when the painter thought
more of the fame his execution of a subject might bring him than of
the solemn truth contained in the subject itself. Here we see Our Lord
seated on some very solid-looking clouds, while below, on the right
side, the angels are helping the good out of their sepulchres, and,
on the left, the devils doing the same service to the wicked. Some
of the tombs are open, as if burst asunder by an explosion, and the
skeletons stand bolt upright; some are half closed, and their occupants
creeping quietly out; while in others the disjointed bones are seen,
not yet rebuilt into human shape, or a skeleton is detected half
clothed with flesh, and some bones still protruding in their original
bareness. Much the same scene is portrayed on the left side, but the
expressions even in the skeletons are very different; the attitudes
are distorted, and the impish figures of the demons prominently drawn.
If there is a lack of harmony and beauty in the whole composition, it
is quite compensated for by the evident earnestness of the artist,
the gravity of the angels’ demeanor, and the reverent intention which
animates the grotesque _ensemble_. As an archæological memorial, it is
invaluable, as very few such specimens of Catholic art of so early a
date (certainly no later than the XIIIth century) are in existence in
England.

Some of the country churches are beautifully restored according to old
Catholic models, and, with the restoration of the ancient worship,
might again become what they were at the time they were christened
by those suggestive names, All Hallows’, S. Mary’s, S. Chad’s.
Others, however are terribly neglected, though this is a fault fast
disappearing, together with the fox-hunting, easy-going parsons of the
Georgian era, and all other laxities of an unusually stagnant age. The
music in these country churches is not always equal to the imposing
exterior, a harmonium in the choir being sometimes all there is
wherewith to guide and sustain the voices. Still, this is a step in the
right direction, as formerly the utmost a village church could boast
of was an orchestra composed of the local shoemaker with a dilapidated
fiddle and the smith with a bass-viol out of tune. Any self-elected,
occasional amateur with a strong or a thrilling voice would be, of
course, a welcome addition, but the instrumental groundwork might be
always depended upon. Most churches near family seats have remarkable
monuments, some of the ancient Elizabethan style, with rows of decorous
sons and daughters praying in bas-relief at the feet of their dead
parents, their quaint costume, heavy-folded robes, and immense ruffles
seeming marvellously to suit the immobility of the material in which
they are sculptured; some, again, dating back to the times of the
Crusaders, but many, unfortunately, of the pseudo-Grecian Renaissance,
which to a Catholic mind seem both irreverent and absurd. Fancy a Cupid
with eyes bandaged and torch inverted as an emblem of that sacred grief
for the dead which is inseparably mingled with the steadfast hope of
the Christian for the day of resurrection! Or again, as we once heard
a sarcastic friend aptly express it, a woman crying over a tea-urn!
Really, some of these monuments are no better than that, and deserve
no other description. How much more dignified are those ancient Gothic
tombs where the quiet, stately figures of a knight and his wife, a
bishop, a magistrate, lie as on a bed, in the sleep of expectation,
not in a ridiculous simulation of life, nor symbolized by some vulgar
heathen myth.

A visit to the parish church is an ordinary recreation on the first
morning of a guest’s stay at a country-house, after which there will
very likely be croquet, that eminently modern and English contrivance
which is pretty enough if one could only make up one’s mind to consider
men and women nothing more than grown-up children. A great deal of care
is often expended on the croquet lawn, and ladies are even careful
in the choice of a croquet costume. A lounge through the grounds,
admiring the host’s specimen trees—the Wellingtonia is generally the
chief attraction—and sauntering through the hot-houses, occupies the
time till luncheon. Most Englishmen have a passion for rare trees and
shrubs, and often carry home from distant countries seeds and cones
for their grounds at home. We have seen a lovely Ravenna pine, grown
from a cone picked up in the celebrated forest of Ravenna; every other
shrub of its kind perished from the effects of the climate, while
this solitary one throve well, and filled a considerable space in the
garden. The copperbeech is a very favorite specimen tree in England,
and looks beautiful among the shaded greens of limes, foreign oaks,
and fir-trees. It is generally the ladies of a household to whose
share fall the hot-houses and the flower-garden, but in one place
in Cheshire, where the visitor is unfailingly taken through miles
of glass, the whole thing is under the special supervision of the
master of the house. Lord E—— of T—— is an old man, and not very
active, on account of his impaired health; but, being passionately
fond of horticulture, he spends half his day in his hot-houses. The
orchid-houses, particularly, are a perfect marvel; there are eighteen
or twenty species of these lovely flowers in bloom at all times of the
year, and the conservatory into which some of these glass passages lead
is a palace of camellias, azalias, and other rare and delicate flowers.
The garden and grounds are mostly a wilderness of rhododendrons,
of which magnificent, far-spreading bushes cover even the islets
of the artificial lakes. But the most beautiful of Lord E——’s
floral possessions is the fernery, where seven or eight New Zealand
arborescent ferns spread their palmlike branches overhead, hiding the
glass roof above them, and suggesting the earthly paradise to the least
impressionable mind. The ground at their base is covered with rock-work
overgrown with mosses and ferns of various sorts, and water trickles
hiddenly in the tangle, its very sound denoting coolness and repose.

In the autumn and winter, the men of the party disappear after
breakfast, and return, tired with sport or laden with game, about
five o’clock; but in summer, during the brief interval between the
London season and the 1st of September, the pleasures of the ladies
are shared with their knights. A picnic is often the most amusing
resource for a day, and it would be needless to describe it; but what
is not so common an occurrence in the country is a breakfast, that is,
a two o’clock reception in the open air, and a magnificent spread of
cold _chefs-d’œuvre_ of the culinary art. Let us suppose the _locale_
to be this: a pretty piece of water running here and there into
creeks fringed with bulrushes and water-lilies, and a queer little
erection of no classifiable style of architecture, neither pavilion
nor villa, but very convenient and even sufficiently picturesque.
Clematis and honeysuckle climb over its walls, and to the front is a
rather irregular lawn which is partly carpeted for the occasion. In
England, we are never quite sure of not getting our feet damp, and
the flimsy summer toilets appropriate to this social festivity would
be but a slender protection against wet weather. All the county, far
and near, is asked—brides just returned from their honeymoon trip;
old stay-at-home fogies, childlike in the pleasure they exhibit on
this novel occasion; merry young people bent on enjoying themselves to
the utmost. One old lady has confidentially informed her best friend
about a wonderful new bonnet she has bought on purpose, and which
turns out to be something “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It is
curious to see the many different kinds of vehicles that draw up at
the door of “Fort Henry.” Old chaises driven by the most ancient (and
delightfully tyrannical) of family coachmen; queer little low cars,
called by the complacent owner “Norwegian cars,” drawn by a diminutive
pony resembling a Shetland; hired flies from the country town; open
barouches of unimpeachable make, but painfully, suggestive of the
“shop”; two-wheeled dog-carts, the prettiest carriage for the country,
driven by young unmarried land-owners whose arrival causes a stir among
the “merry maidens,” as Sir Gawain called his pretty companions in
Tennyson’s _Holy Grail_; lastly, a large “brake,” or capacious car,
filled with cross-seats, on which a whole party from some neighboring
mansion is comfortably and amicably packed; for not only are neighbors,
friends, and acquaintances asked, but any visitors they may happen to
have staying with them. When all are gathered, the luncheon begins;
and certainly the table is a masterpiece of floral decoration. The
cook, too, has surpassed himself, and the rarest wines and fruits are
lavishly added to the more substantial hospitality. The ladies’ dresses
are a _parterre_ in themselves; the prettiest things that taste can
dictate are worn for this _fête_, and the beautiful peacocks that range
the banks of the lake must find themselves rivalled for once in their
own domain. How different is this from a London “breakfast”! Here we
have no simulated _ennui_, no cadaverous looks resulting from sleepless
nights and constant dissipation, no hurry to get away, no empty forms
of hypocritical civility. It is almost a family gathering. After
luncheon, the boats are ready. Large and small—the largest manned by
four stalwart “keepers,” hereditary retainers of the family—these
boats are quickly filled; and, while the “state barge” (so to speak)
solemnly carries the elders of the party around the pretty lake, the
smaller skiffs, rowed by amateur oarsmen, and filled with a laughing
freight of girls, go off to try the famous echo, or to sing glees
near the old bridge at the lower end. This is not all the music,
however; a band is stationed in a boat that follows the grand barge,
or sometimes stops to let the guests hear the echo of a few loud notes
sounded on the horn. The effect of the music, the echo, the gaily
ringing laughter of the younger guests as they row swiftly from place
to place, is like a reminiscence of the days of Paul Veronese and his
pleasure-loving Venetian companions. At one end of the lake there is
an old horse-chestnut, whose branches stretch far out over the water,
and then droop into it, forming a green vault over a shady little nook.
It is difficult to steer a boat well in; therefore no boat passes by
without trying. At the other end, the water is choked with weeds and
tall bulrushes, and the plantation slopes to the brink, with beautiful
sunset lights playing on its Scotch firs, and bringing out the blue
green of their foliage in peculiar contrast with their dinted, reddish
stems; now and then a peacock’s harsh cry is heard, or the water-fowl
take a swift, low rush over the surface of the water, while the swans
move about as undisturbedly as if the scene were to them an everyday
occurrence. Presently the sun sets; the boats unload, and the carriages
begin to get ready again. A few stragglers, probably the host’s own
visitors, who have not far to go home, take a stroll up to the graceful
bark temple raised on the hillock opposite the lake; the view is
pretty from there, and the whole thing looks like an animated English
water-color.

But this is not all the pleasure that a country visit affords: a
great resource lies in _tableaux vivans_. Very little trouble is
necessary; in some houses, a small stage is kept in readiness, or can
be extemporized in an hour, just when the performance is agreed upon.
Pictures and poems are laid under contribution; sometimes a particular
garment evidently suggests such and such a use, and a suitable
tableau is got up to exhibit it; and some costumes are so very easy
of arrangement that they are naturally chosen. The “Huguenot Lover,”
by Millais, is a very favorite scene, so is “Titian’s Daughter”; and
there are “Faith, Hope, and Charity,” or other allegorical figures,
always at hand to fill up any gap in the inventive genius of the
performers. But the best series we can think of is one—not a little
ambitious—representing dramatically the story embodied in Tennyson’s
song, “Home they brought her Warrior dead.” How often we have listened
to those words, so mournfully sung! The first tableau is very rich in
details; the year-old bride, in the gorgeous white and gold embroidered
robe which she had donned to meet her husband, sits tearless and pale
in the centre, her dark hair escaping from the jewelled fillet, her
white hands hard pressed together. The body of her husband lies at
her feet covered with a dark cloak, his pallid face just revealed,
and the four men who have borne him in stand in sorrowful silence
in the background, while the attendant maidens press round their
mistress, each dressed in some graceful, flowing costume. Any amount of
ornamentation, such as tapestry, vases, porcelain, jewellery, would be
in keeping with the tableau and enhance its beauty. The second scene
(the curtain being dropped for a moment) is the same, with the addition
of a hoary old nurse placing her child in the widowed mother’s arms,
while the bereaved one herself turns on the babe a look of passionate
and agonized yearning. The child is not a very easy part of the tableau
to manage, and it might, strictly speaking, be left out; still, the
story is more completely told thus, and its representation considerably
improved.

These are only a few of the numerous and variable pleasures to be
enjoyed by a large gathering of friends: the winter brings others
peculiar to itself.

A _meet_ is a very pretty sight, but never more so than when it takes
place in front of an old manor where the hunting-breakfast is going on.
This carries one back to the days of our grandfathers, and gives to the
sport of fox-hunting a certain traditional air of poetry. The servants,
whose livery is almost a costume in itself, carry trays of substantial
refreshments and foaming tankards of old ale among the farmers and
professional sportsmen, while the friends and county neighbors of
the host circulate through the house, lighting up our XIXth century
dead-level of dress by their scarlet, or, to speak more technically,
their pink coats. This word is used to denote the color the coat
_ought_ to have after a good sporting season; for it is as inglorious
in a true sportsmen to wear a new and undiscolored garment as it would
be for a soldier to bear an unharmed standard or unbroken weapon out of
the battle. In many counties, the full dress for dinner of those who
are known as sportsmen is a scarlet coat, the rest of the dress being
the ordinary costume of our day; and very gratifying it is to see the
old custom kept up by the gentlemen of the midland counties, where
fox-hunting is in its glory. At the meet, not a few ladies appear, some
on horseback, devoted followers of their brothers and husbands in the
chase, some in carriages, with their little children prettily dressed
in red, or otherwise suggestively clad. The host’s wife or daughters
come out among the hounds, perhaps in the graceful riding-habit, or
more often in jaunty little cloth suits, with red feathers coquettishly
peeping out of a sealskin cap. The hounds are all collected in front of
the hall-steps, and answer whenever called by name by the huntsmen. At
last the cavalcade is off, and winds past the margin of the park and
grounds, till the sound of the horn and the crack of the whip die away
in the distance, to be heard again a few hours later, when the whole
field, after making a circuit of, say, ten miles, returns to some cover
near the house, where the unhappy fox is caught at last. Boys follow
the hounds as soon as they can ride, and, indeed, sometimes perform
feats that make them heroes in a small way in the eyes of their
companions. A few years ago, the youngest son of the chief land-owner
of the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, distinguished himself in this
way, and, upon a tiny gray pony, Asperne by name, kept so close to the
huntsmen that he was always first in at the death, and many a time was
the first to break a gap through a hedge or a stone wall, through which
the whole field would follow him. He often brought home “the brush” (a
fox’s tail), and the sportsmen from the opposite side of the county
used to ride ten or twelve miles to the next meet to see the wonderful
boy whose exploits and reckless daring were in every one’s mouth.

The early autumn, before the fox-hunting has regularly begun, brings
its own pleasures with it, one of which is a nutting expedition.
This generally involves a tea-picnic—a far more amusing affair than
the conventional mid-day meal known by that name, and devoted to the
consumption of sandwiches, cold meat, salad, and soda-water. This
tea-picnic has often occupied a pleasant afternoon within our own
recollection, especially when a very informal party of young foreign
guests was gathered at E—— House. There was a representative of
Germany, a young man high in office at the former Hanoverian court,
who bore a remarkable likeness to Prince Albert, and to whom the queen
even spoke of this, to her, touching fact. Very fresh and childlike was
this young Prince S——, and very different from certain of his English
contemporaries, who, at eighteen, declare that life is a _bore_, and
amusement a sham. These are the men who discredit our century, and
belie nature herself. They affect to have no faith in woman and no
hope in religion. We have known one of these when he first began to
go into society. He was fresh and charming, said the most innocent,
boyish things in a fearless, truthful way that was especially winning.
He excelled in all social pursuits, and rejoiced in all healthy
amusements. Add to this that he was uncommonly good-looking, with dark
hair and eyes such as are not often met with in England, and was an
only son, heir to a fine Northern property, part of the family house
dating as far back as the XIIth century. We met him two seasons later,
and he was hardly recognizable. The same handsome features, but with a
wearied, listless air marring them; in his voice no animation, in his
manner not a trace of that early frankness that was his greatest charm.
He used to seem like a girl of seventeen; now he was, morally speaking,
a misanthrope of five and thirty! He owned himself that all amusements,
even dancing (which was a special accomplishment of his), _bored_ him,
and that there was nothing but pigeon-shooting that excited him! Even
during the famous matches at Hurlingham (a villa near London where
the pigeon-shooting is done, and which has become of late one of the
most _recherché_ haunts of fashionable idlers, and a field for the
display of the loveliest toilets), this young victim of _ennui_ hardly
vouchsafed to seem interested; yet beneath all this was a soul worthy
of great things; a will that, guided aright, might achieve much good to
society or even to the country; and a personality eminently fitted for
moral and intellectual success. And this energy was being thus wasted
by day, while, according to his own confession, billiards occupied the
greater part of his nights! Poor England, indeed, when her manliness is
thus thrown away! Who would not look back with pride and regret to the
days of the “good old English gentleman,” with his boisterous and rough
pursuits, his fox-hunting and his farming, but, withal, his healthful
vitality and his active usefulness?

Besides the young German, so pleasant a contrast to the _blasé_ youth
of London drawing-rooms, there was round the gypsy kettle in the woods
of E—— a Spaniard as good-natured as he was stately; and, strange to
say, here was another royal likeness! Many might have mistaken him for
the Prince of Wales. Other Spaniards, too, there were, more lively and
not less good-natured, one with a smile that was irresistibly comic,
the other with the profile of a S. Ignatius, and principles and habits
that well suited his appearance. The English girls of the party were
well matched with their companions, and looked very picturesque as they
toasted immense slices of bread at the end of forked sticks at least
a yard and a half long! The tawny golden hair of one, the willow-like
figure and gravely childish glee of another, the restless activity
of a third, as they all joined in the search for dry fire-wood, made
a pretty subject for an artist; and, in the midst of the bustle, the
father, enjoying the young people’s fun, gave a touch of pathos that
much enhanced the beauty of the rustic scene.

A drive home through the tall bracken, and along the grassy roads of
the numerous plantations, perhaps a rapid visit to deserted “Fort
Henry,” and a row to the Echo, sufficed to fill up the evening, and a
project for paying a visit to an old Quaker tenant on the morrow would
perhaps be discussed during dinner.

It is no wonder that foreigners grow enthusiastic over this side of
English life; the pity is that so many rush to England and leave it
again before they have a chance of seeing a family gathering in the
country; those who have not seen it know little more of English society
than we do of the fruits of the West Indies after we have tasted them
in the shape of candied peel and preserved jellies. Drawing-room life
is the same in Paris, St. Petersburg, or New York; individualism
thrives only in the country, and it is there the character of a nation
should be studied.




MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.


CHAPTER XI.

EUGENIE.

A WEEK after, Louis came to see us for the first time.

“Well,” inquired Victor, “do you like your new manner of life?”

“Yes and no, my dear friend,” replied Louis. “Yes, because I feel that
the new life on which I have entered is good for me. It is just what I
needed, I must confess—for I think aloud here. It is such a relief to
speak to some one who understands, who loves you, and is always ready
to excuse and pardon you! But I forewarn you I need, and shall need,
great indulgence, though nothing ought to seem too hard to one who was
on the high-road to destruction, soul and body, and would at this very
instant be lost, had not God, in his mercy, sent you to my aid. This
benefit has filled me, I assure you, with so much gratitude from the
first that, in view of my past life and the divine goodness, I feel I
ought to be a saint in order to expiate so many transgressions—I ought
to prove my sincerity by some heroic sacrifice for God.”

“Oh! oh! that is somewhat ambitious.”

“I suppose it is absurd. Not that it is necessarily absurd to aspire to
heroism, but the means should be taken into consideration. Now, mine
are fearfully, pitifully inadequate. I am cowardly, fickle, and a lover
of my ease.”

“Come, come! do not calumniate yourself. We must neither judge
ourselves with too much leniency nor with too much severity. We must
see ourselves as we are. This is difficult, but it is essential.”

“Well, my kind friend, that is exactly the way I regard myself.”

“I doubt it.”

“You shall judge for yourself. My duties oblige me to remain night and
day at St. M——. Alas! this very necessity I find harder than I can
express. There is not a day in which I do not find myself regretting
the city three or four times. This is very wrong, when the city has
been so pernicious to me....”

“Come, you exaggerate things. You were born and brought up in the city,
and have always lived here till now. I see nothing astonishing at your
finding it disagreeable at first to live in the country.”

“What a lenient judge! We shall see if you are as much so after the
other acknowledgments I have to make. There are times when work seems
insupportable. To rise at six o’clock and superintend workmen and
machinery the live-long day irritates and fatigues me to such a degree
that I am sometimes tempted to give it all up.”

“You have not yet yielded to the temptation?”

“No, indeed; that would be too despicable.”

“Since you yourself regard such a step as it deserves, pursue your
occupation without being concerned about a slight disinclination for
work. Even people who have always been accustomed to labor have such
temptations. I assure you, in a year there will be no question of all
this. You will have acquired a love for your business, and, active as
you are, you will not be able to do without it.”

“You think me at the end of my confession. The worst is to come. Mr.
Smithson is polite and sincere, but reserved and ceremonious, like all
Englishmen. He keeps me at a distance, and appears as if my errors
and loss of property, which of course he is aware of, gave him some
superiority over me. I think he does wrong to make me feel this.”

“Ah! this is more serious, my dear friend. Like all people in a wrong
position, you are inclined to be unduly sensitive. Watch over yourself.
Endeavor to be guided by reason. I do not wish you to submit to too
much haughtiness, but do not attribute to people airs, and especially
intentions, they are not guilty of.”

“You are a thousand times right. I appreciate your advice, and promise
to follow it. It would, indeed, be foolish to make myself needlessly
unhappy. St. M——, as you know, is a lovely place. The river on which
the mill stands has many charming views. During my leisure hours, I can
draw and paint at my ease. I have a great deal to do, and my work is
frequently burdensome, but I shall become accustomed to it, for it is
a source of real interest. By an excess of good luck, I have lodgings
that suit me in apartments near Mr. Smithson’s house. There I can read,
meditate, and pray at my leisure. One thing only is wanting—a little
society in the evening; but that will come, perhaps. I am invited
to dine at Mr. Smithson’s next Thursday. I hope that will be the
commencement of closer intercourse with the family. Hitherto, I repeat,
they have kept me at a distance. I have exchanged a few words with
Mme. Smithson, who appears very affable, but I have only had a glimpse
of the daughter—Eugénie, I believe her name is. As far as I could
judge, she is tall, fine-looking, even dignified in her appearance,
with something haughty in her air. I frankly confess it will be a treat
to meet these three people. I have always had a fancy for studying
different characters, and shall enjoy it particularly now, I am so
unoccupied in the evening.”

“And your workmen—what do you make of them?”

“I am constantly observing them, and assure you they are as interesting
to study as any one else. What a source of reflection! We have, you
must know, workmen of every grade, good and bad—yes, fearfully bad.
There are four hundred and fifty people—men, women, and children—who
represent every phase of humanity.”

“To study mankind, my dear friend, to confine one’s self to that, is an
amusement suitable for a philosopher. But a Christian has higher views:
he studies human nature in order to be useful.”

“That idea has occurred to me. I have even formed a series of fine
projects; but I am so poor a Christian, and so inexperienced!”

“No false modesty! Excuse my bluntness; but false modesty is the shield
of the indolent, or their couch, whichever you please. Have you any
desire to benefit the people among whom you live?”

“Yes, certainly, if I can.”

“You can. You only need zeal and prudence; the one ought always to
guide the other. Come, what plans have occurred to you?”

“I should like to found an evening-school, and take charge of it. Those
who are the best instructed might serve as monitors.”

“Perfect! That would be a means of keeping the young men, and even
those of riper years, from idleness and the wine-shops, and afford you
an opportunity of giving them good advice. What else?”

“I should also like to establish a fund of mutual aid.”

“Excellent!... Reflect on these two projects till Sunday. I will do
the same. Consult Mr. Smithson also about them, and come and dine with
us in a week. We will talk it over, and you can tell me how you like
the family you are about to become acquainted with. I hope you will be
pleased with them.”

“I hope so too, but have my fears. If they were all like Mme.
Smithson, everything would be propitious. I took a fancy to her from
the first. But Mr. Smithson is frigid, and his daughter seems equally
unapproachable. It is singular, but I had met her once or twice before
I entered her father’s employ. I thought her beautiful and intelligent,
and heard her very highly spoken of. But really, I begin to believe
that she, like many others, is brilliant rather than solid.”

“Come, come! no rash judgments!”

“What can I say? I was deceived in her. I thought her an uncommon
woman—one capable of comprehending all the delicacy of my position,
and of coming to my assistance. She ought to realize that I am out of
my element there. You must confess that Mlle. Smithson’s coolness does
not tend to console me.”

“Why, my dear friend, you are very exacting!... Would you expect as
much from every one?”

“No; but this young lady occupies an important place in the house,
without trying, I confess, to take advantage of it.”

“And an important place in your thoughts ...,” said Victor, with the
friendly, significant smile so natural to him.

Louis blushed.

“I am inclined to think your opinion of her will be less severe in a
week. I, too, have heard her highly spoken of.”

These words seemed to afford Louis great satisfaction. Victor did not
continue the subject.

If you have carefully followed the conversation I have just related,
you must see that Louis, though unaware of his sister’s hopes, already
thought more of Mlle. Eugénie than he confessed or even acknowledged
to himself. I think I shall only anticipate your wishes in making you
acquainted at once with that young lady, who is to fill an important
_rôle_ in my story. And this cannot be done better than in her own home.

Eugénie is in her chamber. It is the morning of the day Louis and some
other acquaintances are to dine with her father. She is engaged in
completing her toilet. A more charming room cannot be imagined. It is
furnished in exquisite style. Nothing is lacking. The pictures are all
rare, and arranged with artistic taste. The book-case contains, not
so many books, but solid works that will bear reading over and over
again. What, above all, completes the charm of this young girl’s bower
is the view to be seen from the two windows, which are like frames to a
picture. They afford a glimpse of a terrestrial paradise through which
flow the limpid waters of a deep stream. A breeze, playing through the
poplars that stand on its banks, softly rustles the leaves. Directly
across, on the opposite shore, is a broad meadow, bright with flowers,
with here and there clumps of trees. As far as the eye can reach are
objects on every side to satisfy the soul, and excite it to reverie:
a windmill with its long wings of white canvas swaying in the air; a
villa with its gardens; a little hamlet, and, overlooking it, a church,
the slated belfry of which is glistening in the sun.

The world is full of material souls whom it would be a kind of
profanation to introduce into a place so attractive. They would be
unable to appreciate the charm. What is nature, however beautiful, to
a man eaten up with avarice and ambition?—to a woman who only dreams
of pleasure?... To such degenerate souls, nature is a sealed book—a
divine picture before a sightless eye.

But to this number Eugénie did not belong. The daughter of a Catholic
mother and a Protestant father, she had been educated in one of the
best schools in Paris. Shall I call her pious? No; that would be
exaggerating. Eugénie did not lack faith. Her religious instincts were
well developed, but checked by her father’s coldness and her mother’s
frivolity. She was by no means insensible to all the beautiful and true
in religion. They filled her with admiration. She always fulfilled
the obligations rigorously imposed by the church, but avoided going
any farther through indifference as well as calculation. She had a
horror of what she called petty religion and little practices of piety.
Poor girl! she, too, closed her eyes in this respect to the light.
The practices she disdained—frequent prayers, the raising of the
soul to God, visits to the church, and assiduous frequentation of the
sacraments—are they not what truly constitute religion, such as it
ought to be, in order to be the companion, friend, and guide of the
whole life?... This is what Eugénie did not comprehend, or rather, what
she did not wish to comprehend. In short, she was religious in her own
way—half-way religious—quite so in theory, but in reality much less
so than she should have been.

The somewhat indirect influence her parents exercised over her in
a religious point of view also affected her in other ways. Eugénie
possessed two natures: she was cold like her father, and kind like
her mother, but without displaying it. Let us also add another
characteristic by way of completing her portrait—she was romantic.
In everything, she had a repugnance to what she called commonplace.
An object, an individual, or an action, to please her, must have a
peculiar stamp, an original turn, which she wished might be more
frequently met with. She only liked what was out of the common course,
according to the elevated standard of a certain ideal she had formed in
her own mind.

Eugénie’s exterior, her distinguished manners, her fluency in
conversation, and the tone of her calm, well-modulated voice, all
inspired a respect bordering on admiration. She was beautiful without
being bewitching. She was kind, but in so inexpressive a way as to
inspire at first fear rather than confidence. As has been said, she
possessed a character not easily read, and, though only twenty-one
years old, she passed for what is called, and with reason, a person of
ability. Her father and mother doted on her: she was their only child.
Yet there was a difference in their affection. Mr. Smithson tenderly
loved her as a daughter: Mme. Smithson loved her with a shade of fear,
as we love a companion or friend whose superiority we feel.

Her toilet otherwise completed, Eugénie rang for her waiting-maid
to arrange her hair. Fanny did not keep her waiting. There was a
striking contrast between mistress and maid. Fanny was towards forty
years of age. She was of ordinary height, neat in person, but plain
and unattractive in appearance. She had a bad complexion, large eyes
hidden under thick lashes, a wide mouth, and a large fleshy nose, which
made up one of those vulgar faces that are never observed except to
laugh at. She was beloved by no one except her employers. This was not
strange. She had an observing eye and a keen, sarcastic tongue. Her
nature was soured, rather than instinctively bad. She was selfish and
bitter—a good deal so. This selfishness and bitterness sprang from
two causes which she would by no means have acknowledged. She was no
longer young, she knew she was homely, and she had no hope of being
married. Such a hope she had once, and a few days of happiness was the
result. Fanny would have been so glad to be, in her turn, mistress over
her own house! But her dream had vanished, and under circumstances not
calculated to sweeten her temper.

For some years, Fanny was a servant at Mme. Smithson’s sister’s. That
lady was in the commercial line at Paris. There Fanny made the conquest
of a smart young man from the country employed by her mistress as
head clerk. He was an excellent person, but, like many others, wished
to reconcile his affections with his interests. He said to himself
that, by waiting awhile, he might, some fine day, find a wife richer,
prettier, and younger than Fanny. As he was bound to her by no actual
promise, he finally obtained another situation, and disappeared without
any warning. The poor girl regarded such conduct as infamous. She felt
that all hope of ever marrying was now lost, and the disappointment
made her ill. Unbeknown to her, her mistress had followed all the
scenes of this little domestic drama. She nursed Fanny with a care
that was quite motherly. When the girl recovered, she expressed her
gratitude, but begged permission to go away. The house had too many
cruel associations. Her mistress willingly consented, and Fanny entered
Mme. Smithson’s service. When the latter left Paris, Fanny accompanied
her to St. M——, and had now been in the family several years.

Having, to her great regret, no prospect of marrying, forced to
acknowledge to herself that she should never have a house of her own
to manage, Fanny had but one desire, but this was an ardent one—to be
installed in a family which, if not her own, might prove as pleasant,
and where she could rule while appearing to obey. But where find this
ideal home?... She resolved to create it. And in this way: her old
mistress, Mme. Smithson’s sister, had a son named Albert, who was five
years older than Eugénie. Fanny had known him from his childhood. She
was attached to him, and, above all, she understood his disposition.
No one knew better than she that Albert would be the easiest, the most
manageable, in short, the mildest of masters. On the other hand, she
knew that Eugénie, energetic as she was, would not be difficult to
please. “Mademoiselle lives in the clouds,” she said to herself; “she
will be glad enough to have some one manage the house for her.”

Fanny, therefore, resolved to make a match between the two cousins.
There is reason to believe she made skilful overtures to her former
mistress and to the young man himself, and that these overtures were
well received. Albert was now preparing his thesis with a view to the
law. As he was not rich, his cousin’s fortune was a very pleasant
prospect, and still more so to his mother. Besides, Albert had always
known Eugénie and loved her, as is natural to love a cousin that is
pretty and intelligent. He and his mother, therefore, made Fanny their
intermediary, without committing themselves to too great an extent.

But Fanny had a good deal to overcome. Mr. Smithson was not partial
to lawyers. The profession was not, in his estimation, clearly
enough defined or very elevated. As to Eugénie, no one knew what her
sentiments were with regard to her cousin. Fanny thought she had, if
not a very strong attachment to him, at least an incipient affection.
But she was not sure. Thence resulted continual fears. Every young
man who entered the house was to her an object of alarm. Perhaps her
prospects, so slowly ripening and so dear, would be again overthrown by
this one!

It may be imagined that Fanny looked with an unfavorable eye on Louis’
connection with the manufactory. If Mr. Smithson had chosen another
kind of a man to aid him, one who was obscure, a mere common man of
business, she would not have minded it. But in the course of a week,
she was fully informed as to the history of the new-comer. She knew
he belonged to one of the best families of the city; that he had been
rich, and might become so again; that, till recently, he had been
regarded as one of the most brilliant young men in society; and he
was intelligent, well-educated, and of irreproachable morals. “I am
lost!” thought she. “All these people are linked together to ruin my
plans. This M. Louis comes here as an engineer?... Nonsense! it is
an arrangement between his father and Mr. Smithson. They wish him to
marry mademoiselle. What a contrivance! And that poor Albert, what will
become of him?...”

These suspicions quite upset her. She resolved to make inquiries, in
order to relieve her mind, if by chance she was mistaken. But whom
should she question?... Mr. Smithson?... That must not be thought of.
Eugénie? Fanny made the attempt. Eugénie, with her usual coolness
and wit, replied in such a way that Fanny retreated every time more
uncertain than before.

The day of which I am speaking—the notable day of the dinner—Fanny,
out of patience, could endure it no longer. She resolved to carry
matters so far that, whether she liked it or not, her mistress would
be forced to revive her hopes, or utterly destroy them. Hardly had she
entered the chamber before she opened fire:

“How shall I arrange mademoiselle’s hair?”

“As usual.”

“Then we will dress it differently this afternoon with ribbons and
flowers.”

“Why such a display?”

“Can mademoiselle have forgotten it is the day of the great dinner?”

“Great dinner? What do you mean by such nonsense, Fanny? Why, whom are
we to have at our table of so much importance? Nobody is invited that I
have not known a long time: our neighbor, M. Daumier, with his wife and
daughter, Dr. Ollivier, and M. Dupaigne. Really, it would be singular
for me to receive them with any ceremony.”

“Mademoiselle has not named all the guests.”

“Whom have I forgotten?”

“M. Louis Beauvais.”

“Ah! that is true. I overlooked him. But his coming will not change my
intention to remain as I am.”

These words were uttered in a tone of perfect indifference. Fanny was
overjoyed, but careful not to manifest it. Then, as she continued to
busy herself about her mistress, she began to reflect. “She does not
care for him,” she said to herself. “There is nothing to fear for the
moment, then. But who knows how it may be by-and-by?... I must at once
find out if, under favorable circumstances, she might not conceive an
affection for him, and try to prevent such a misfortune. I will take
the other side to find out the truth.”

“A charming young man, this M. Louis, and quite worthy of interest,”
said she, without appearing to attach any importance to her words.

“What do you find so charming in him?”

“He has a serious air, which I like.”

“Yes; it might even be called gloomy.”

“He may well have.”

“Really! Ah! Fanny, then you know his history?”

“Yes, mademoiselle; and a very curious one it is.”

“Well, relate it to me. Only suppress the details; you always give too
many.”

“Three months ago, M. Louis was the finest dancer and the gayest
young man in the city. Unfortunately, these young men are not always
remarkable for uniformity. He lived like a prince for six years, and
one fine morning found himself penniless.”

“And what did he do then?”

“They say—I am unwilling to believe it, but everybody says so—that he
tried to drown himself.”

“A weak brain. That is not to his credit.”

“They also say that M. Barnier, the journalist, saved him at the risk
of his life, and converted him so thoroughly that the poor fellow came
near entering a monastery.”

“A queer idea! That shows he has more imagination than reason!”

“But he did not stick to his first intention. He is now established
here, and will remain, I feel sure, ... and this alarms me!...”

“Why are you so sure? And how can this assurance cause you any alarm?”

“That is a secret. Mademoiselle will excuse me from replying. Though I
have known mademoiselle from her childhood, she intimidates me.”

“Not much, Fanny.”

“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, I do not understand you.”

“You understand me perfectly, but I have to dot your i’s for you. Well,
I will do so. I do not intimidate you much, I say. You dare not tell me
what you mean, but you give me a hint of it. What are you afraid of?
Tell me. I insist upon it.”

“As mademoiselle insists upon it, I feel obliged to tell her what she
wishes to know. Mademoiselle is not to be resisted. But I should prefer
keeping it to myself. If it were to displease mademoiselle ...”

“No; go on.”

“Well, then, mademoiselle, I have everything to fear! This young man
has lost his property.... He passes himself off here as a creditable
person.... He has secret designs ...”

“What designs?”

“Mademoiselle puts me in an awkward position.... It is such a delicate
point to speak to mademoiselle about.”

“That M. Beauvais aspires to my hand through interested motives?”

“I should not have dared say so.”

“Well, that would be audacious! I accept a man for a husband whom
poverty, disgraceful poverty, alone inclines towards me!”

“Without doubt, he has committed many faults, but there is mercy for
the greatest sinner, and he is so pious just now!”

“I know—he goes to church often, even during the week. That is his own
affair. That is enough, Fanny. Let there be no further question of this
between us. You take too much interest in what concerns me, as I have
told you before. I am astonished you should force me to repeat it.”

Fanny, thus dismissed, went away furious and more uneasy than ever. But
if she could have read Eugénie’s inmost thoughts, her fury would have
turned to joy. As soon as she was gone, Eugénie seated herself in a
low arm-chair, and began, as she sometimes laughingly said, to put her
thoughts in order.

“That malicious girl is no fool,” she said to herself. “This young
man may have entered my father’s service from secret motives, perhaps
suggested by his family. Who knows but my parents themselves smile
on his projects? My father seems to be on the best of terms with his
father. Perhaps they have come to an understanding with a mere word,
or even without speaking at all. That would be too much! Well, if it
is so, if the whole world conspires against me, I will defeat their
calculations.... In the first place, I do not fancy this M. Louis, and
I will soon let him see it, as well as those who favor him. The mere
supposition that I could ever be his wife makes me indignant and angry.
I marry a man who has ruined himself, who only aimed at my fortune, and
would squander it in a few years! I give my heart to a man who does
not love me, and, even if he sincerely vowed he loved me, would be in
such a position that I should always have reason to doubt it! And,
besides, what a weak mind this hare-brained fellow must have to play
so many _rôles_ one after the other! I wish my husband to have purer
motives and a stronger head. This man must have a false heart. He is an
intriguer, and that includes everything....”


CHAPTER XII.

MORE ABOUT EUGENIE—A REAL FRIEND.

THAT evening, Louis found himself for the first time in the midst of
the Smithson family. We often thought of him that night, and wished we
could know at once what kind of a reception he had met with, especially
from Eugénie. But we were obliged to wait for these interesting details
till Louis could relate them himself. We did not have to wait long.
When he came, he was gloomy and dispirited. Victor pretended not to
observe his dejection.

“Well,” said he, “you have now made the acquaintance of the Smithsons.
What do you think of them?”

“A good many things, but I can sum up my impressions in a word: they
are queer people!”

“Indeed! did they hurt your feelings in any way?”

“Yes; ... yet I do wrong to be angry, or even to be astonished. I
should have expected it.”

“This great dinner, then, did not turn out as I hoped—a means of
cementing amicable, if not affectionate, relations between you?”

“By no means.”

“You greatly astonish me!”

“It is just so.... The way things were managed shows the Smithsons to
be sagacious people. They invited me, in order to make me understand
at once the position I hold in their estimation—that of engineer and
superintendent, nothing more.”

“I am really amazed!”

“And I am equally so. I did not expect it, but the fact is too evident.”

“Well, tell me all that happened, without omitting anything.”

“Not to omit anything would make the story long, and it is not worth
the trouble. I will briefly relate what I think will interest you,
that you may have an idea of this first visit. There were but four
other guests, whom I only regarded with indifference. They were neither
pleasing nor displeasing, so it is useless to speak of them. We will
confine ourselves to the leading members of the household. I will first
speak of the real though unacknowledged head. My mind is made up on
this point. As I saw from the first, it is Mlle. Eugénie who rules the
house.”

“Even her father?”

“Yes; even her father; not as openly and directly as she does her
mother, but as unmistakably by dint of management.”

“Is she really a superior woman, as I have been told, or is she merely
shrewd and imperious?”

“Oh! no. Those who have sounded her praises have not deceived you.
She is by no means a common person. In the first place, it must
be confessed she is really handsome. There is especially a rare
intelligence and dignity in her appearance. She converses well, often
says something profound, and is always interesting. She is a lover of
the arts, and all she says, all she does, evinces an elevated mind.”

“Such a person as is seldom met with, then—a model of perfection?”

“She has all that is necessary to become so, ... and yet she is not.
One fault spoils everything, one or two at the most, but they are
serious. She is proud or egotistical, perhaps both.”

“Are you not too severe upon her? You scarcely know her, and yet you
are very decided in your condemnation.”

“I have reasons for my opinion. You shall judge for yourself. My
position with respect to Mr. Smithson is very trying. He knows, and
doubtless the rest of the family too, all the follies I have committed
within a few years, and how I regret them. He cannot be ignorant, nor
they either, that the office I hold under him, however respectable,
must awaken a susceptibility that is natural and excusable, even if
exaggerated. In this state of things, I had a right to expect that Mr.
Smithson and his family, if they were really people of any soul or
breeding, would treat me with a delicacy that, without compromising
them, would put me at my ease.”

“I am of your opinion. And have they been wanting therein?”

“Yes; and in a very disagreeable way. It is little things that betray
shades of feeling, and it was thereby I was hurt. In leaving the
_salon_ for the dining-room, each guest offered his arm to a lady. Mr.
Smithson, his daughter, and myself were the last. Mlle. Eugénie took
her father’s arm with an eagerness that was really uncivil.”

“It was from timidity, perhaps.”

“She timid?... I must undeceive you! She certainly is not bold, but she
is far from being timid. At table, I found myself consigned to the
lowest place. None of the guests were great talkers, and more than once
I took part in the conversation. Mlle. Smithson undisguisedly pretended
not to listen to me. She even interrupted me by speaking of something
quite foreign to what I was saying.”

“Her education has been defective.”

“Pardon me, she is perfectly well-bred. To see her an hour would
convince you of this. When she is deficient in politeness, it is
because she wishes to be.”

“I believe you, but cannot comprehend it all.”

“I have not told you everything. The worst is to come. Towards the
end of dinner, the conversation fell on a certain cousin of Mlle.
Eugénie’s. His name, I think, is Albert. She praised him highly,
to which I have nothing to say; but she added—and this was very
unreasonable or very malicious—that this dear cousin did not imitate
the young men of fashion, who were extravagant in their expenditures,
acquired nothing, and ended by falling into pitiful embarrassment. I
was, I confess, provoked and angry. I felt strongly tempted to make
Mlle. Smithson feel the rudeness and unkindness of her remark. But I
bethought myself that I was a Christian, and that, after all, the most
genuine proof of repentance is humility. Therefore I restrained my
feelings, and remained silent. The rest of the evening I cut a sorry
figure. Mlle. Smithson seemed perfectly unconcerned as to what I might
think.”

“Her behavior is so inexplicable,” said Victor, “that, if I had these
details from any one else, I should refuse to believe them.”

(At this part of her story, Mme. Agnes made a remark it may be well to
repeat to the reader: “You must bear in mind,” said she, “that neither
Victor nor I then had any means of knowing what I related a few moments
ago as to Fanny’s projects and Eugénie’s suspicions; and we were
completely ignorant of her turn of mind and romantic notions.”)

“Well,” resumed Louis, “her way of acting, at which you are astonished,
does not amaze me. I can easily explain it. Mlle. Eugénie imagines
that I aspire to her hand, or rather, to her fortune. She is mistaken;
I aspire to neither. I acknowledge she has a combination of qualities
calculated to please me, but her disdain excites my indignation. I
mean, therefore, to put a speedy end to her injurious suspicions. Then
I will leave the place. I have already begun to put my project into
execution.”

“Do not be precipitate, I beg of you. It is a delicate matter. What
steps have you taken?”

“None of any importance. This morning, the work-rooms being closed as
usual on Sunday, I went, before Mass, to sketch a delightful view not a
hundred steps from the manufactory. I was wholly absorbed in my work,
when Mlle. Smithson approached. I will not deny I was moved at seeing
her.”

“Then you are no longer indifferent to her?”

“Oh! I think I can vouch for the perfect indifference of my sentiments
for the moment. But would this coldness towards her always last
if I did not watch over my heart?... She has so many captivating
qualities! I have seen so few women to be compared to her! No, no; I
will not allow myself to be captivated unawares; that would be too
great a misfortune for me.... I have resolved to raise myself in her
estimation. I will clearly convince her she has calumniated me in her
heart; that I am in no respect the man she thinks; and, when I have
done that, I shall leave. So, when she approached, I bowed to her with
respect and politeness.

“‘You are sketching, monsieur?’ she said, bending down to look at my
work. ‘It is charming.’

“‘It ought to be, mademoiselle. There could not be a landscape better
calculated to inspire an artist. But while I am admiring what is before
me, I regret my unskilfulness in depicting it. It is my own fault. I
have so long neglected the art of drawing. I have acted like so many
other young men, and lost some of the best years of my life.’

“She understood the allusion—perhaps too direct—to her sally of the
other day. A slight blush rose to her face. ‘One would not suspect
it, monsieur,’ she said. ‘But as for that, even if you have lost your
skill, it can easily be regained in the midst of the delightful views
in this vicinity.’

“‘It is true, mademoiselle! A lovelier region it would be difficult to
find. I wish some of these views for my sketch-book, as I may leave any
day.’

“I uttered these words in a cool, deliberate tone, and then resumed my
work. Mlle. Eugénie seemed to wish to continue the conversation, but,
slightly abashed, had not the courage, I think, to make any advances. I
bowed ceremoniously, and she went away. My opinion is, she stopped out
of mere curiosity. She had shown how little she esteemed me, and was
not afraid of my attaching any importance to her speaking to me. Such a
course favors my plans.”

“Wonderfully! But—nothing headlong! Forbear leaving Mr. Smithson too
precipitately. You are now near your family. Time may show things to
you in a different light. And, above all, it seems to me great good can
be done there, and more easily than in most places. Tell me something
of your workmen. Have you thought of the two projects we talked about
the other day? Have you spoken to Mr. Smithson about them?”

“No; it seems to me they would not particularly please him. I really do
not know whether this Englishman has any heart or not. I am inclined to
regard him as an egotist, merely employing men to increase his wealth,
and not very solicitous about their welfare.”

“I must undeceive you. I have reason to think Mr. Smithson a very
different person from what you suppose. We have not many Protestants
here, you know, but still there are a few. Among them are some who
are really actuated by good motives. They assembled a few months
ago at the house of Mr. Carrand, the rich lawyer you are acquainted
with. They wished to establish a charitable society, in imitation of
our Conferences of S. Vincent de Paul, but did not succeed in their
plans. To effect such an enterprise, there must be the zeal and
charity that animate the Catholic Church. To her alone God grants
the sublime privilege of devoting herself with constancy and success
to the physical and moral welfare of mankind. Though their project
remained unfruitful, it revealed a generosity much to the credit of
the Protestants interested in it Mr. Smithson himself was one of the
foremost on this occasion to manifest how earnestly he had at heart the
welfare of the poor; and this without any evidence of being influenced
by selfish motives.”

“What you say surprises me, but it gives me great pleasure. I shall
henceforth be less reserved with him.”

“And you will do well. I even advise you to consult Mme. and Mlle.
Smithson about your charitable plans. They are Catholics, and will
comprehend you at once.”

“I have no great confidence in their piety.”

“My dear friend, I regard you with the affection of a brother....”

“Say, rather, of a father, as you are, in one sense, having saved my
life; and also by another title, in aiding me to become an earnest
Christian, such as I once was.”

“Well, then, let us use a medium term. My regard for you shall be
that of an elder brother. I thank you for allowing me this title. My
affection for you makes me take an interest in all that concerns you.
I have obtained very exact information respecting the Smithson ladies
from a reliable source. They are not as pious as they might be, but
they do not lack faith, and they fulfil the absolute requirements of
the church. I know that Mlle. Eugénie is keenly alive to the poetical
side of religion. You have, I believe, an important _rôle_ to fill
in the family and in the whole establishment. You can do good to
every one there, and, at the same time, to yourself. The course to be
pursued seems to me very simple. I feel sure Mlle. Smithson has some
misconception concerning you—some injurious suspicions. Endeavor
to remove them from her mind. Act prudently, but as promptly as
possible. That done, induce her to take an interest in the work you
are going to undertake. She will lead her father to participate in it.
In a short time, you will see the good effect on your workmen, and
derive from your charitable efforts the reward that never fails to
follow—an ever-increasing love of doing good, and a livelier desire of
sanctifying your own soul. The exercise of charity is of all things the
most salutary. I can safely predict that the Smithson ladies will both
become pious if they second you; and as for you, you will be more and
more strengthened in your good resolutions. Who knows?—perhaps you may
have the sweet surprise of seeing Mr. Smithson converted when he sees
that Catholicism alone enables us to confer on others a real benefit.”

“These are fine projects, and very attractive; but I foresee many
obstacles and dangers.”

“What ones?”

“Of all kinds. First, I expose myself to conceive an affection for
Mlle. Smithson it would be prudent to guard against. She does not
like me. I imagine she loves some one else—the cousin she praises so
willingly.”

“A supposition without proof! What I have heard from others, as well as
yourself, convinces me that Mlle. Smithson has not yet made her choice.
The praise she so publicly lavishes on her cousin is, in my opinion, a
proof of her indifference towards him.”

“But if I were to love her—love her seriously, and she continued to
disdain me; if her prejudice against me could not be overcome?...”

“I should be the first to regret it. But listen to me. You were once
truly pious, my friend, and wish to become so again. This desire is
sincere, I know. Well, it is time to take a correct view of life. For
the most of us, especially those who are called to effect some good in
the world, life is only one long sacrifice. Jesus Christ suffered and
died to redeem mankind; the way he chose for himself he also appointed
for those who become his disciples. It is by self-sacrifice that we
acquire the inappreciable gift of being useful to our fellow-men. Do
not cherish any illusion with regard to this!”

Louis and I exchanged a sorrowful glance as Victor spoke. Poor dear
fellow! how he realized what he was saying! He was about to die at
thirty-six years of age, in the very height of his usefulness, and this
because he likewise had voluntarily chosen the rough path of sacrifice
that was leading even unto death!

“My friend,” replied Louis, “what you say is true. I feel it. You are
yourself an eloquent proof of it—you whom I have stopped in the midst
of your career....”

“Do not talk so,” interrupted Victor; “you pain me. Your manner of
interpreting my words makes me regret uttering them. Do not mistake
my meaning. What I would say may be summed up thus: to effect a
reformation in Mr. Smithson’s manufactory, where there are many bad men
who corrupt the good; to enkindle a spirit of piety in the hearts of
the Smithson ladies, by associating them in the good you are to effect.
Whatever may be the result, devote yourself to this work without any
reserve. You must not hesitate! Your sufferings, if you have any to
endure, will not be without fruit, and perhaps God may not suffer them
to be of long duration.”

“You have decided me. I will begin to-morrow. I will commence with the
evening-school, and by visiting the most destitute families.”

“Do not forget that the destitution most to be pitied is moral
destitution. Visit those who have nothing, but especially those who are
depraved.”

Louis went away in a totally different frame of mind from that with
which he had come. Victor, in his gentle way, had increased his esteem
for Mr. Smithson, and inflamed him with the zeal—the ardent desire
of usefulness with which he was filled himself. When he was gone,
Victor and I talked a long time about him. I confessed I had no great
faith in his perseverance. Victor replied: “His mother’s piety and
careful training must lead to his thorough conversion. And how he has
already changed! He realizes the worthlessness of the aims to which he
once gave himself up. There is no fear of his receding. He has taken
the surest means of persevering—the apostolic work of doing good.
Nevertheless, I acknowledge I wish he could find some one to aid him.
And what a powerful aid it would be if he loved and felt himself loved!
Ardent as he is, he would communicate his piety to the object of his
affection. And how much good would result from their combined efforts!
But I fear it will not be thus! Our poor friend will, perhaps, purchase
the right of winning a few souls at the expense of his own happiness.”


CHAPTER XIII.

LOUIS AT WORK.

LOUIS took two whole days to reflect on the important subject of his
conversation with my husband. Was the profound love he subsequently
felt for Eugénie already springing up in his heart? Such is my
opinion, though I dare not say so positively. He probably was not
conscious himself of the real state of his mind. Since that time, I
have often dwelt on all that took place then and afterwards, and it
has always seemed to me that, from the very moment Louis first knew
and appreciated Mlle. Smithson, he conceived an affection for her
as serious as it was sudden. This affection was one of those that
seem destined, from the beginning, to a continual increase. Does this
mean that I have adopted the foolish and erroneous theory of novel
writers, who regard love as an overmastering passion to which one
is forced at all hazards to submit?... Neither religion nor reality
will allow one to yield to such an error. But they do not hinder me
from believing there are inclinations and affections that all at once
assert themselves with so much force that, if one would not be speedily
overcome by passion, he must at once raise an insurmountable barrier
against it, such as flight, reason armed with contempt, and, what is a
thousand times better than all—prayer. Such, in my opinion, was the
love Louis at once conceived for Mlle. Smithson.

How shall I account for his being so captivated, when Eugénie had
wounded him so deeply, and was so proud and every way original? For he
too was proud, and his pride was allied with an unvarying simplicity
which by no means accorded with Mlle. Smithson’s turn of mind.... I
account for this in many ways. Eugénie had very distinguished manners.
This naturally pleased Louis, for he had been brought up by a mother
who was a model of distinction. Eugénie had a noble soul. Her opinions
were not always correct, but they were always of an elevated nature.
She was, it is true, peculiar and romantic, and Louis was not. But he
liked all these peculiarities in her. They seemed to him charming.
Lastly, and this is one of my strongest reasons, I think it was because
Louis felt himself worthy of being Eugénie’s husband, and, seeing
himself slighted by her, was the more strongly tempted to win her.

As Victor and I were his confidential friends, he kept us informed of
all his proceedings, and, I may safely say, even of his thoughts. It is
therefore easy for me to retrace the story of his love, which I will do
without any exaggeration.

But first, let us return to his charitable projects, and the way
in which he executed them. Louis was not merely an engineer in Mr.
Smithson’s establishment, but a Christian, and all the more zealous
because he was anxious to expiate his past errors. He knew by
experience to what an abyss the passions lead, and was desirous of
warning others. If he had been a man of ordinary mind and heart, he
would no doubt have been animated by entirely different motives. After
his ruin, and rescue from a watery grave, desirous of regaining not
only his father’s esteem, but that of the world, he might have chosen
the very position he now occupied, but he would have taken care to live
as easily as possible. He would perhaps have sought to win Eugénie’s
affections, and in the end would have thought only of her and labored
for her alone. Such a life would not be worth relating. The lives of
ordinary men are as unworthy of interest as the egotism that is the
mainspring of their actions.

Louis’ life was a very different one. That is why I am desirous of
making it known. But do not suppose his nature was thus transformed
in an instant. God did not work one of those miracles that consist in
the complete, instantaneous change of a man’s character. Our faults
veil our better qualities, but do not suppress them; so a return to
piety gives them new brilliancy, but does not create them. Louis, as
I afterwards learned, had in his youth manifested uncommon elevation
and purity of mind, and the piety of a saint. After his arrival at
manhood, deprived of his mother’s influence, and led away by his
passions, he placed no bounds to his follies. But suddenly arrested
in the midst of his disorderly career, providentially saved at the
very moment of being for ever lost, he at once broke loose from his
pernicious habits. Like a traveller who returns to the right path
after going astray for awhile, he resumed his course in the way of
perfection with as much ardor as if he had never left it. There was
only one reproach to be made against him at the onset. With his earnest
nature and tendency to extremes, he manifested too openly the interior
operations of grace. The difference between the young exquisite whom
everybody knew, and the new convert observed of all eyes, was rather
too marked. Louis’ serious and somewhat stern air, his austere look,
and his habitual reserve, repelled those who had no faith in his entire
conversion. Thence arose backbitings, suspicions, and accusations of
hypocrisy which did not come to our poor friend’s ears, but were the
cause of more than one annoyance. I must, however, acknowledge, to Mr.
Smithson’s credit, that he showed a great deal of charity for Louis at
that time. If he sometimes accused him of undue zeal, he was from the
first disposed to believe it sincere.

I will briefly relate what Louis accomplished during the few weeks
subsequent to his last conversation with Victor. My husband had advised
him not to undertake anything till he had consulted Mr. Smithson.
Louis followed his advice, and begged an interview with his employer.
It was then in the month of June. The conversation took place without
witnesses, in the open air, on a fine summer evening. I give it as
related by Louis.

“Monsieur,” said he, “I am aware of your interest in benevolent
objects. The workmen you employ, and whom I superintend under your
orders, are not in your eyes mere instruments for the increase of
wealth, but men to whom you wish to be as useful as circumstances will
allow.”

Mr. Smithson was never lavish of his words. He made a sign of assent,
and appeared pleased with what was said.

Louis continued: “I also am desirous of being useful to my fellow-men.
I have done many foolish things, and would like to preserve others
from similar mistakes, for the consequences are often fatal. With your
permission, I will not content myself with aiding you in the management
of the mill, but beg the honor of being associated, in proportion to my
ability, with all the good you are desirous of doing.”

“Monsieur,” said Mr. Smithson, “your unexpected offer somewhat
embarrasses me. I am quite ready to accede to your wishes, but could
not, in truth, consider you my co-laborer. What I have hitherto done
has been but little, but I know not what else to do. I assist the
needy, and give good advice here and there; that is all. You can follow
my example. I shall be glad. Is that what you wish? Or do you happen to
have anything better and more extensive to propose? If so, go on. I am
ready to hear it.”

“Yes, monsieur; I have some other plans to suggest.”

“State them without any hesitation. I only hope they are of a nature
to second my views. The first condition for that is, to propose only
what is simple and practical. Doubtless too great an effort cannot
be made at this time to aid and improve our workmen, both for their
own interest and for ours. Everything is dear. The country is in a
ferment. Among those we employ, there are a number of turbulent fellows
and many wretchedly poor.”

“Precisely so. What I wish is, to aid the needy, and reform the bad.”

“Your design is worthy of all praise—as a theory; ... but its
realization will be difficult, not to say impossible. Listen to me,
monsieur; I have a frank avowal to make. I have been engaged in this
business but a short time. I know the common people but little. I
belong to a country and a religion that have a special way of aiding
the indigent. The government takes charge of that with us. In France,
it is different: private individuals take part in it. You find me
therefore greatly embarrassed. Enlighten me, if you can. I ask for
nothing better.”

“Well, monsieur, it seems to me that beneficence should be exercised in
three different ways. First, it is our duty to come to the assistance
of those in distress; ... only I cannot, in this respect, do all I
would like.... I could have done so once ... now ...”

“Do not let that worry you. My purse is open to you on condition that
you only aid those whose destitution you can personally vouch for. It
is also advisable to ascertain what use they make of that which is
given them.”

“I promise this, and thank you. No; it is not sufficient to give them
money. One must see it is made a good use of. The poor should be taught
to double their resources by economy. The assistance of the needy,
then, is the first benevolent effort I would propose. I now come to
moral beneficence. This does not refer to the indigence of the body,
but to that of the soul. I think it especially desirable to preserve
from corruption those of our workmen who are at present leading upright
lives, particularly the young. This does not hinder me from thinking it
necessary to bring those who have gone astray under good influences.”

“Fine projects! I, too, have made similar ones, as I said, but I was
discouraged by the difficulty of executing them. What means do you
propose to employ?”

“What would you say to the formation of a library in one of the rooms
of the manufactory—for instance, that which overlooks the river? It
is now unoccupied. The workmen might be allowed to go there and read
in the evening, and even to smoke, if they like.... This library could
be used, during the hours of cessation from labor, as a schoolroom,
where all could come to learn, in a social way, what they are
ignorant of.—Would not this be a means of keeping them away from the
wine-shops, and afford one an opportunity of conversing with them, and
giving them good advice—advice which comes from the heart?”

“I like the idea. It really seems to me you have conceived a happy
combination of plans; but nothing can be done without a person to put
them in execution.”

“I will do it if you will allow me. I am eager to try the experiment.”

“Your courage and enthusiasm will soon give out. At every step, you
will meet with difficulties impossible to be foreseen. I have mingled
only a little with the working classes, but enough to know they are
difficult to manage, and often ungrateful to those who try to be useful
to them.”

“God will aid me. He will reward me, and they may too. But I shall not
be difficult to please. If some of them correspond to my efforts, it
will be enough. I will forget the ingratitude of the rest.”

Mr. Smithson was amazed at his zeal. His own religion, cold and
formal, had never taught him to take so much pains for those who might
prove ungrateful. He and Louis separated quite pleased with each
other. Louis felt he had been comprehended. He had also the promise
of assistance. Mr. Smithson, with all his reserve, was captivated by
Louis’ enthusiasm for doing good. But though he had promised to aid
Louis, he pitied him. “He will fail,” he said to himself.

The work was begun a few days after, thanks to the co-operation of
Mr. Smithson, who smoothed away the difficulties inseparable from all
beginnings. At seven in the evening, Louis, laying aside the title and
functions of an engineer, became the friend and teacher of the workmen.
They assembled in a large room where benches, tables, and a library
were arranged. At first a certain number of workmen came through mere
curiosity. They found what they did not expect—a teacher who was
competent, kind, ready to converse with them and teach them what they
wished to learn, and this with a heartiness quite different from an
ordinary schoolmaster. Louis devoted himself with so much pleasure to
these evening exercises that his pupils soon learned to like them, and
gave so captivating an account of them to the rest that the number of
scholars increased from day to day. Thus the school was permanently
established without much delay, and numbered about thirty men of all
ages and varieties of character. Louis showed perfect tact in profiting
by so happy a commencement. Every evening, he gave oral instructions,
sometimes on historical subjects, sometimes on a question of moral or
political economy. In each of these lectures, the young master mingled
good advice, which was willingly listened to, given, as it was, in
the midst of instructions that excited the liveliest interest. The
workmen felt they were learning a thousand things they could never have
acquired from books. A book is a voiceless teacher that requires too
much application from unaccustomed pupils.

Mr. Smithson watched over the development of this work, and became more
and more interested in it in proportion as its success, which at first
he had doubted, became more probable, and its utility more evident.
At the same time, without acknowledging it to himself, suspicion and
distrust began to spring up in his heart. Even the best of men under
certain circumstances, unless checked by profound piety, are accessible
to the lowest sentiments. Mr. Smithson began to be jealous of his
assistant, and even to fear him.

“What!” he said to himself, “shall he succeed in a work I dared
not undertake myself! He will acquire a moral influence in the
establishment superior to mine!...” Then, as his unjust suspicions
increased: “It is not the love of doing good that influences him: it is
ambition,” he thought.

Louis had no suspicion of what was passing in his employer’s mind,
and therefore resolutely continued to pursue the course he had begun.
He had formerly accompanied his mother in her visits among the poor,
and thus learned how to benefit them. She had taught him it was not
sufficient to give them money: it was necessary to mingle with them,
talk with them, give them good advice—in a word, to treat them as
brethren and friends. Having organized his evening-school, he resolved
to visit the most destitute and ignorant families in the village, which
was about a kilometre and a half from the manufactory. He went there
every evening towards six, and spent an hour in going from one house to
another. Chance, as an unbeliever would say, or Providence, to speak
more correctly, led him to the house of a poor woman quite worthy of
his interest. She was fifty years of age, and slowly wasting away from
disease of the lungs, complicated with an affection of the heart.
This woman was one of those lovely souls developed by the Catholic
religion oftener than is supposed. People little suspected how much she
suffered, or with how much patience she bore her sufferings, but God
knew. She was a real martyr. Married to a drunken, brutal man of her
own age, she had endured all the abuse and ill-treatment with which he
loaded her without a murmur. She had brought up her son piously, and
labored as long as she was able to supply her own wants and those of
her child. Broken down by illness and the continual ill-treatment of
her husband, she would have died of want, had not Mlle. Smithson come
to her aid.

When Louis went to see this poor woman, whom we will call Françoise,
she spoke of Eugénie so enthusiastically, and with so much emotion,
that he was greatly impressed. It was sweet to hear the praises of one
whom he dreamed, if not of marrying, at least of associating in his
good works.

The next day, he repeated his call on the sick woman, and for several
days in succession. I think he had a secret hope of meeting Eugénie,
without daring to acknowledge it to himself. As yet, he had merely seen
her. He found her, as you know, handsome, stylish, and intelligent, but
cool towards him. He longed to observe her in this miserable dwelling.
Here, apart from other influences, she might show herself, as he hoped
she really was—exempt from the imperfections he had remarked in her
at home with regret. Without acknowledging it, he loved her, and it is
hard to be forced to pass an unfavorable judgment on those we love. But
days passed without their meeting. The sick woman was visibly failing.
One evening, Louis found her weaker than ever.

“My dear monsieur,” said she, “I am very happy. I am about to enter
the presence of the good God! But I have one cause for anxiety at the
hour of death. I depend on you to remove it. When the wealthy die,
they leave their friends valuable legacies, but we poor people have
only burdens to bequeath. Mlle. Eugénie has promised to watch over my
little boy. She is very kind!... And I have another favor to ask of
you, monsieur. Not far from the village is a family by the name of
Vinceneau. The father is employed in the tile works you have to pass in
coming to see me. Hereafter, when you come by, continue to think of me,
and pray for me!... But that is not the point. The man I am speaking of
is intemperate like my husband. The mother would be an excellent woman,
were it not for two faults. She is indolent and envious—always ready
to think evil of the rich. She works at your mill. It is not these two
people I am going to recommend to you, but their daughter. The poor
child is as handsome as a picture, and as pious as an angel. She often
comes to see me. I tremble lest she be lost through the bad example of
her parents, or through dangerous society. I have a feeling that, in
some way, you will find means of being useful to her, if necessary.
I should have recommended her to Mlle. Eugénie, but her father and
mother, as I have said, are good for nothing, and I should not like
to send mademoiselle where I know she is detested on account of her
wealth.”

Louis gladly acceded to her request. He left a few moments after to
attend his evening-school. Half-way home, he perceived Eugénie coming
from the mill, and could not help meeting her.

TO BE CONTINUED.




THE POLITICAL PRINCIPLE OF THE SOCIAL RESTORATION OF FRANCE.

BY F. RAMIERE, S.J.

FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES.


THE great danger of France at the present time is neither the
decline of her military power, nor the diminution of her political
influence, nor the deep wound inflicted on her finances by an enormous
war contribution, nor the aggrandizement of Prussia, nor even the
unchaining of the Revolution: it is the division among right-thinking
men.

Supposing that all men in or out of the Assembly, united by the
indissoluble bond of principle, sincerely desired the re-establishment
of order, the revolutionary monster would soon be rendered harmless.
The healthy influences now paralyzed would regain their action; with
security, legitimate interests would recover their power of expansion;
the vital strength of the country would develop rapidly; and, thanks
to the vigorous elasticity which characterizes our race, we would soon
resume the rank in Europe that belongs to us.

Let us recollect the wonderful promptitude with which France, reduced
to extremity by the religious wars, reached the apogee of her
prosperity under Louis XIII. We would rise again with equal facility,
if the good dispositions, not wanting in France, could be bound
together, and oppose a compact fasces to the revolutionary passions,
alas! too well united for destruction.

Unfortunately, it is not so. Unity of thought and action, which is the
supreme necessity of every government, is wanting to-day in those who
are alone able to save us, and it has become the exclusive privilege
of the party that is working for our ruin. M. Le Play, who, in a
recent treatise, warns us of the danger of the situation, sees but one
remedy: the abandonment for a time at least of political questions,
and the concentration of the efforts of all true men for the study and
solution of the social question. Says M. Le Play: “The enlightened men
who compose the majority of our Assembly render themselves powerless
by their division on what is called the political question—that is
to say, on the form of sovereignty. They may be assured that each
political party, when it advances its principle, raises against it
a majority formed by the coalition of rival parties. When, on the
contrary, this same party takes up the social question, that is to
say, the immediate interest of the family, it gains the majority,
sometimes even unanimity. It is sufficient to know the cause of the
evil to find the remedy. The conservatives have the power to establish
a strong majority. It is only necessary to avoid the subject that
divides them, and to devote themselves to the one that draws them
together.”

There is much truth in this observation, and we are far from wishing to
combat it on the whole. The eminent publicist who, in this same work,
accords so favorable an opinion to our studies on the rights of men,
knows with what warm sympathy we follow his useful labors for social
reform. We appreciate as fully as he the importance of the question to
which he desires to draw the attention of all true friends of order.
With him we believe that the social order is anterior to the political,
and that, at a time when society is disorganized even in its original
elements, it is there above all that the remedy must be applied.
How can a good government be given to a nation that the anti-social
propaganda has rendered ungovernable?

We must acknowledge, however, that, to the rule which M. Le Play
has laid down, objections arise which at the first glance appear
sufficiently grave. We have heard intelligent men doubt whether even
the temporary withdrawal of the political questions would be opportune
or possible, and that for several reasons.

In the first place, because these questions are irresistibly imposed
upon us. They are discussed every day in the debates of the Assembly or
by the press. If we give up treating them according to true principles,
they will certainly be determined in the sense of the Revolution.

In effect, and it is a second reason, if men of order deny themselves
entrance on this ground, it is indispensable that the revolutionary
party should promise to abstain likewise. But how can we hope that it
will make, much less that it will observe, this engagement? The first
aim of this party is evidently to possess itself of political power, by
means of which it will be easy to realize its anti-social theories. We
must put forth our whole strength in this contest, if we do not wish to
have it become impossible for us to defend the social interests.

Finally, here is a consideration which, to the eyes of the men whose
sentiments we express, appears still more decisive. They say that in
order to make it possible to abstract political questions, and give
ourselves exclusively to the study of the social, there should be a
line of demarcation drawn between these two domains so closely united.
This is what they cannot accomplish. Social and political rights repose
on the same basis, they have the same enemies, and are attacked with
the same arms. Why is the family disorganized? Why, in labor, is the
harmony so necessary between the employer and the employed replaced by
an antagonism equally hurtful to both? Is it not, above all, because
every rank of society suffers from the rebound of the attacks made
politically on the principle of authority?

We do not dispute the fatal influence of the false principles pointed
out by M. Le Play—the original perfection preached by Rousseau, the
native equality of men maintained by Alexis de Tocqueville, have
had their share, and their great share, in the disorders which have
totally overthrown society. But the principal cause of these disorders,
the revolutionary principle by excellence, is the negation of all
authority superior to that of man!

How shall we answer these arguments? It will not be difficult. We
can admit them without injury to the thesis of M. Le Play. We would
misapprehend him if we placed the Christian principle of authority
among the number of political questions which he counsels us to avoid.
This principle, in reality, is not less social than political. It is
the common foundation of these two orders, the fourth commandment of
the decalogue, and, consequently, constitutes one of the essential
articles of the social restoration, whose complete programme M. Le Play
finds in the decalogue.

What are the political questions we should avoid, if we would see union
and strength succeed to the divisions which now paralyze us? Those that
spring from opinions.

Opinions divide parties, and create among them interminable struggles.
S. Augustine has well said: _In necessariis, unitas; in dubiis,
libertas._ Necessary principles are the domain of unity; doubtful
opinions, by provoking liberty, engender division. It is in the very
essence of opinion to arouse against it other opinions, to which their
probability, more or less great, gives the right to struggle against
every light but that of proof. Here is, then, what experience teaches
us, and what the dangers of society command us: it is to lift ourselves
above this obscure and troubled region where opinions clash, and to
rise to the peaceful sphere that principles illumine with a steady
light. Here there can be no subject of division among sincere minds.
In the social as in the political order, principles convince by their
proofs all intellects which have not made a compact with error; and
their necessity, as incontestable as their truth, conquers the adhesion
of all just men.

We can, then, without contradicting M. Le Play, establish the following
proposition: to obtain this union among right-thinking men, without
which there is no salvation to be hoped for France, political parties
must be silent on the questions which divide them, and cling to
the immutable principle whose negation is the chief cause of our
misfortunes.

But what is this principle? This is the question we will endeavor to
answer with a precision which will leave no doubt in sincere minds; no
pretext for the division of parties.

Our aim is very clear, and we hope it will be understood by our
readers. We do not intend to discuss the various political opinions,
still less to ask their defenders to sacrifice them; we seek the
indisputable, the first principle of the political order, around which
can be immediately formed that union of honest and upright men which
will place them in a position to struggle against the Revolution, and
will prepare for the future a more complete harmony, and the permanent
restoration of France.


I.

We must, above all, distinguish clearly “the saving principle” from
the opinions with which it might be confounded. It will be easier to
understand what it is when we will have said what it is not.

In the first place, this principle is not that of _absolute monarchy_.

In the happiest period of our history, the power of the monarch was
modified by institutions of various kinds: by the states-general,
which, having the right to confirm or reject new taxes, afforded an
opportunity of laying at the foot of the throne the complaints and
the wishes of the country; by the magistrates, who, almost sovereign
in the judicial order, exercised an efficacious control over the
legislature; by the church above all, that energetically defended the
supremacy of divine law against the caprices of princes. Whatever may
be thought of the causes which, after the invasion of Protestantism,
led to the destruction of these guarantees, and to the concentration
of power; whatever may be said to excuse or glorify absolute monarchy
in the past, it evidently cannot now be presented as the immutable
principle through which we could ask our salvation.

It is not necessary to add that the inferior institutions which
surrounded the monarchy at divers epochs, merit still less the name
of principles. Formerly these institutions had a reason for existing,
but nothing proves that they should survive the circumstances which
gave them birth. Neither the warlike feudalism of the middle ages nor
the nobility disarmed, but still privileged, of later times, belongs
to those elements essential to all society, to which we are bound to
restore their energy as soon as possible, if we would not condemn
ourselves to perish.

Nor can we give the name of principle to _divine right_ as understood
by the Gallican school. According to this school, Providence, at
the commencement of society, chose a man or a family to exercise
the supreme power. The course of events which decided the form of
government of infant societies was, in its opinion, a manifestation of
the divine will sufficient to invest with the right of commanding those
who had the strength to enforce it. This right is then divine, since
it is held immediately from God; and, in the language of theology, the
power of divine right is that which comes from God without passing
through any human intermediary. The Gallican school recognized two
sovereignties of divine right: that of the temporal order, which was
royalty; and the papal sovereignty, which was spiritual—if it was
allowable to say in this system that the pope was sovereign, since,
contrary to the policy which sustained absolute political power,
they wished in the spiritual order that the pope should share his
sovereignty with the episcopate.

To dissimulate nothing, let us say here that lately theologians
and Catholic philosophers, strangers to the Gallican school, have
defended the thesis of divine right. But their adhesion, in giving new
weight to this doctrine, does not take it from the category of simple
opinions. It has always against it the arguments and authority of our
most illustrious doctors, according to whom the right of princes is
divine only in its first origin and in its abstract essence; but in
its immediate origin, its concrete form, and in the appointment of the
subject to be invested with it, this right is human, since it would
only receive the determinations indispensable to its exercise by the
expressed or tacit consent of society. The providential events of which
we have before spoken were more or less indicative of the divine will,
but the majority of doctors refuse to see in them a sufficient motive
for investing with the right of commanding a man previously supposed to
be without it.

The doctrine of the _absolute inamissibility of power_ generally
maintained by the partisans of divine right should also be ranked among
the disputed opinions. It is logic that he who has received power
immediately from God can only be deprived of it by God. The defenders
of the opposite opinion admit, on the contrary, that, in extreme
cases, power can be withdrawn from him who abuses it by only using for
the destruction of society what was given to him for its preservation.
And as it is difficult to distinguish in such cases, as error on such
occasions could only be disastrous, as anarchy could easily spring
from the most legitimate resistance to tyranny, Catholic theologians
do not wish that these doubtful cases of conscience should be left
to the passions of parties or to the blind fury of the mob; but they
find a guarantee qualified to defend every right and to reassure every
interest in the authority, ever impartial and paternal, of the Vicar of
Jesus Christ.

The first basis of social order which we are now seeking, can neither
be found in the _monarchical principle_.

In reality, whatever may be to the minds of the greatest philosophers
the prerogatives of a limited monarchy, they cannot maintain that it
is the only legitimate form of government; and consequently, as the
monarchical principle is neither universal, absolute, nor immutable, it
has none of the marks of a true principle.

Besides, the firmest partisans of monarchy do not assume for it this
universal necessity. In the states with which it is identified, by long
and legitimate possession, with the principle of right, they justly
claim for it all the prerogatives of that principle. Unreasonable as it
would be to pretend that monarchy is the only legitimate government for
all times and all peoples, equally absurd would it be to maintain that,
when it is legitimately established, it can be legitimately combated
and overthrown. There is no right against right. The monarchical
principle thus defended has no adversaries but those fanatical adorers
of the republican form whose absolutism is a hundred times more
unreasonable than ever was that of the most servile worshippers of
royal power.

These topsy-turvy legitimists condemn, from the height of their pride,
the immense majority of the human race, arrogating to themselves in
favor of their opinion the authority which they refuse to the church of
God; and they take to themselves, in remaking it, the motto with which
they have so often reproached us: No salvation outside of the republic!
After twenty-five centuries, they renew the foolish enterprise of
the Babylonian despot: they wish to compel all the nations under the
sun to prostrate themselves before the statue of their republic, and
acknowledge it as the only true divinity.

No more tyrannical intolerance can be imagined. Whence do these
absolutists derive the right of imposing their opinions on their
equals? From what have they taken the halo with which they surround
the cap of liberty, after having trampled all crowns under their feet?
Undoubtedly, government exists but for the people, but does it follow
that it should necessarily be exercised by the people? To refute
their exclusive theories, it would be sufficient to compel them to
make an application of them in their own families. In fact, from the
moment that the principle becomes absolute, it should be applied to
all authority; and there is no reason why the family and the workshop
should not share with the state the advantages of the republican form.

But it is waste of time to dwell on this fanaticism, of which, thank
God, we do not find a trace among the partisans of monarchy. The
necessity which they attribute to it is not absolute, but hypothetical.
They affirm that monarchy is the only form of government suited to
the characters, defects, customs, and traditions of certain peoples.
They say that nations, like individuals, have different temperaments;
and, consequently, it would be absurd to impose the same rule on all.
Nations, like individuals, when the constitution is formed, when
inveterate habits have become a second nature, cannot, without danger,
suddenly adopt new customs. What would become of a people who should
persist in making this dangerous experiment? Against their will, they
would carry their old customs into the new system; they would preserve
their monarchical manners in the midst of a nominal republic; and this
bastard government would have all the inconveniences of the monarchy,
without its stability and other advantages.

More even than individuals, nations live by traditions. By them, the
past extends its influence over the present, illumines it with the
reflection of its glory, and animates it with its spirit. Traditions
bind together the successive periods in a nation’s existence, and
preserve among its children the unity produced by a long community of
dangers and struggles, of triumphs and reverses. A people that breaks
with tradition is like an uprooted tree; its existence is similar to
that of a man, who, having lost his memory, cannot connect the present
with the past. Now, it is evident that a nation whose institutions
and customs for centuries have reposed on monarchy cannot have this
basis overthrown without breaking all traditions, and throwing society
entirely out of its beaten tracks.

These observations are evidently the dictates of good sense and
experience. It is impossible not to be vividly struck by them, when one
has lived among a people faithful to its traditions; as the English,
for example. Nothing is more striking than the contrast between the
general security, the vitality, the friendly enjoyments, whose source
is respect for tradition, with the instability and anxiety which the
Revolution has produced in our French society, formerly so calm and
joyous.

But however well grounded may be this induction, it cannot take the
place of the absolute and indisputable principle by which we wish to
bind together all true and earnest men.

Let us pursue our research, and congratulate ourselves on being
dispensed in our present position from pausing at the thorny
distinction between the _power of right_ and the _power of fact_.
For too long a period has this been a cause of incurable division
between the most honest and religious men. Of all the problems which
belong to the social order, it is perhaps the most difficult to
resolve practically. On one side, it is certain that the violation
of right cannot destroy it, and that the usurper who, to gratify his
ambition, imperils the gravest interests of society, does not become
legitimate, even though his attempt be crowned by success. On the
other side, however, the maintenance of public order being the reason
of the existence of the rights of power, obedience cannot be refused
to him who alone has the strength and the means of attaining this
indispensable end.

From this springs one of those conflicts of opinion which make the
social question so difficult. The same public order which commands
obedience to the usurper alone capable of defending it, forbids
encouraging the ambition of future usurpers by the full acceptation
of triumphant crime. The friends of order can then follow different
paths, according to the preference they may have for either of these
interests. The power of fact will attract men who, most affected
by present necessity, will hope to find in their adhesion to the
established order a safeguard against new convulsions. Others will see
in this adhesion to the revolution consummated an anticipated sanction
of future revolutions, and will think themselves obliged to provide
for the permanent necessities of society by remaining faithful to the
fallen power.

This is not the place to decide such a difficult question, where
even the supreme authority of the church has thought it often wiser
to abstain. We need only state as a fact, unfortunate as inevitable,
the division which springs from this conflict of duty. It will last
until the illegitimate power is overthrown, or until, by the lapse
of time, all trace of its origin is lost. In the first case, the
transitory right which the usurping government borrowed from fact
having disappeared with the fact, the power of right recovers its
preponderance. In the second case, fact is transformed into right by
becoming alone capable of defending society; and legitimacy, of which
social interest was the base, will disappear with the real possibility
of saving this supreme interest.

It is what happened in England, where the tories, the former partisans
of the Stuarts, have long since adhered to the reigning dynasty.
But in France, neither of the two dynasties which succeeded to that
of our ancient kings established its domination firmly enough, or
sufficiently renounced its revolutionary principle, to render evident
to all eyes this union of right and fact. For fifty years, we have seen
conservatives, religious men, and even the clergy, divided into two
or three political fractions; and this division has not been one of
the least causes of our weakness, and of the growing strength of the
Revolution.

The evil appeared irremediable, and each day it acquired fresh gravity;
for the government of fact, instead of seeing in the adhesion of men
of order a motive for returning openly to conservative principles,
believed it to be their interest to conciliate the men of disorder by
supporting the principle of the Revolution.

Providence has drawn us from this position, apparently inextricable,
and, by the result even of our faults, has made the cause of our
divisions disappear. The Revolution has destroyed the governments
blind enough to lean upon her. The power which exists to-day, and
whose strength lies in the Assembly, has more than once acknowledged
its provisional character. France is, then, free to return to the true
principles of order, and to reunite under one flag all those who are
sincerely devoted to the holy cause. Nothing prevents her fulfilling a
celebrated prediction, and to close, by the proclamation of the rights
of God, the revolution which opened with the proclamation of the rights
of man.


II.

Herein lies our salvation: to the revolutionary principle, which
weakens all powers and all social rights, in making them depend on
man’s caprice, we must oppose the Christian principle, which gives them
an immovable solidity, in reposing them on the supreme authority of God.

No innovation is required: we must simply return to the eternal law’s
of social order. If imprudent architects attempt to change the laws of
equilibrium, what should be done to repair the ruins accumulated by
their folly? Remember those laws, and enforce their observation. There
is also an equilibrium in the moral order, and it was the unpardonable
fault of our fathers that they overlooked its most essential condition.
Let us hasten to restore all splendor to the truth whose darkening was
the cause of our misfortunes. Foreseen and accepted without dispute by
the pagans themselves, this generative dogma of society was, in the
dawn of Christianity, promulgated by S. Paul as one of the principal
articles of revealed religion; and it did not cease to rule the nations
of Europe until the epoch when, with the law of Christ, order and peace
were driven from their confines. Reason and religion are in perfect
harmony when they proclaim the Christian principle. They tell us,
with one voice, that God, who directs all with so much wisdom in the
material world, wishes equally, and with much more reason, that order
should reign in the moral. In commanding men to unite in society, so
as to assure by their common efforts the happiness of all, he imposes
on them an obligation to bridle the selfish passions which unceasingly
conspire against the general interest. And as the only efficacious
means of keeping them in order is the institution of a power armed with
strength for the defence of the right, God wills that this power should
be created, if it does not exist, and obeyed when it exists.

Thus, according to the teaching of Christianity, civil power is divine
in its origin, and, although a human element must interpose in the
principle to determine the form and choose the depositary, he that
is once elected commands really in the name of God. “All power comes
from God,” says S. Paul; it is by order of God that it exists, and
consequently it cannot be resisted without resisting the order of God,
and without drawing down the damnation justly reserved for those who
revolt against God.

It is evident that between this principle which belongs to Catholic
faith, and the Gallican opinion of divine right, the difference is not
so great as would at first appear. Both parties agree as to the origin
of power, its mission, its rights, and its duties. Only on one point do
they differ: according to one, the man who, in the commencement, was
invested with power, received it immediately from God; while the other
holds that the investiture was made by the expressed or tacit consent
of society. This divergence is clearly more speculative than practical,
as, with this exception, they both believe the same doctrine.

It is therefore wrong to seek any analogy between the revolutionary
theory and the opinion of Catholic doctors the most favorable to
the primitive rights of society. It is only necessary to thoroughly
understand their doctrine to see this resemblance, which is merely
apparent, instantly vanish. According to them, it is true that power
depends for its first organization on those whom it will soon command;
but once constituted, it is independent of them in its exercise within
the limits inherent in the form of government. Society, in reality, is
not the source of the authority with which it invests its elect: it
is only the channel. If it has the right to determine the form and to
choose the subject, it is also obliged to make use of this right, and
to arm the power instituted by it with the full prerogatives necessary
for the maintenance of order.

Nothing is wanting to authority thus understood; it has a precise end
and an indispensable reason for being—the defence of individual
rights, and the maintenance of public order. It has an immutable
base—the will of God, the guarantee of rights and the protector
of order. It has a universal and inevitable sanction—the eternal
punishment which the contemners of the law cannot escape, even though
they succeed in avoiding temporal chastisement. In resting social
order on the first principle of all things, this doctrine places it
in perfect harmony with the general order of the universe; and it is
as satisfactory in theory to the mind of the philosopher as it is
efficacious in practice in maintaining the order of society. Equally
favorable to all legitimate interests, it elevates at the same time the
majesty of power and the dignity of obedience; for, if it is glorious
for rulers to command in the name of God, it is not less so for the
governed to obey only God.

What, on the contrary, is the effect of the revolutionary principle?
Instead of establishing authority, it destroys it; and, under the
pretext of elevating obedience, degrades it.

It destroys authority; for there is no true authority, except where
a superior will is invested with the right to command, and an
inferior one is obliged to obey. Now, these two conditions cannot be
realized in the revolutionary theory. The principle of this theory,
such as Rousseau laid it down in his _Social Contract_, is that the
power placed over civil society draws all its rights from the free
concession of those whom it is called to command. It is, then, their
mandatary, and not their superior; consequently, it has no more the
right to command them than they are bound to obey it. Rousseau says it
in these very terms: in obeying it, they only obey themselves; and,
consequently, they can, when they please, dispense themselves from
obedience.

Thus, instead of creating authority, the revolutionary principle
renders it impossible; and since authority is the essential condition
of the stability, strength, well-being, and existence even of society,
it cannot be denied that this principle is the overthrow of social
order.

But at the same time that it annihilates the majesty of power, it
debases the dignity of obedience. It is very well to say to the
members of society that, in obeying their mandatary, they only obey
themselves; it will not prevent them in a thousand circumstances from
being directed to do the contrary of what they would like. What will
then happen? If the discontented are numerous and strong enough to
make their will prevail over that of power, they will revolt; but, if
resistance is impossible, they will be compelled to obey. What will be
this obedience? The act of a slave who yields to force, and not the act
of a reasonable man and a Christian who conforms his will to that of
God.

Instead of the alliance which Christian doctrine establishes between
the majesty of power and the dignity of obedience, the revolutionary
theory creates an irreconcilable antagonism between these two essential
elements of society; it is only by degrading the subjects that the
rulers can ensure the execution of their orders.

This radical and absolute opposition between the two doctrines
necessarily extends to their consequences. Whilst the Christian
principle gives an inviolable stability to power, and guarantees with
equal efficacy the rights of the subjects, the revolutionary principle
has for result inevitable anarchy and tyranny.

Anarchy first; for how can a power which is absolutely without a base
sustain itself for any length of time? Consistently with itself, the
theory of the Revolution intends that society, in establishing power as
its mandatary, should not strip itself in any manner of sovereignty.
As society created it freely, by an act of its own will it can reverse
it when it seems desirable, without any one having the right to demand
an account of its acts. As a consequence, the revolutionary theory
involves daily appeals to new _plébiscites_ and to new elections
for the overthrow of the established power, and the substitution of
another more in accord with the present will of the nation; and, as the
triumph of the discontented of yesterday will infallibly create other
dissatisfied ones, these will have the right to organize to-morrow a
new agitation to overthrow everything.

The constitution cannot legitimately reprove or arrest these attempts;
for, emanating like the government from the national will, it is also
subordinate to the fluctuations of that capricious sovereign. The
small number of the agitators can be no objection; and you cannot
oppose to them the wishes and rights of the majority. If there is no
authority superior to that of man, all human wills are equal, and all
equally sovereign. The number of those who differ from me gives them a
preponderating force, but it does not confer on them a superior right.
If, then, I think my sentiment the best, nothing can hinder me from
working to make it prevail. By making use of intrigue and violence,
the smallest minority easily becomes the majority; and, with strength,
it acquires the right to do all that the revolutionary principle
attributes to majorities.

What can be opposed to this argument? Is it not perfectly logical?
If the consequences appear intolerable, there is but one means of
escape—the return to Christian principle, alone capable of preserving
social order from the convulsions to which it is condemned by these
attempts against power. Christian doctrine repels the attacks made upon
public order with much more severity than the violations of individual
rights; it brands them as crimes of treason against society. Except in
the extreme cases of which we have already spoken, it declares power
inviolable; not in virtue of the personal prerogative of him who is
invested with it, but in virtue of the interest of which he is the
necessary guarantee.

Thus we have heard S. Paul tell us that he who resists power resists
the order of God, and draws damnation on his head. This sentence, we
know, does not agree with the verdict of public opinion, as indulgent
in regard to political crimes as it is severe against those which come
under the head of crimes of common right.

On which side is the truth? If public power is the indispensable
bulwark of individual rights, can the attempt be made to overthrow it,
without, at the same time, attacking all those rights? If a man, who,
during the night, forces his entrance into a house, and seeks to enrich
himself to the prejudice of the legitimate possessor, is thrown into
prison as a criminal unworthy of compassion, how can he merit less
severe punishment who shakes the entire social edifice, to gratify his
cupidity and ambition at the expense of the public peace? Nothing is
clearer: in listening to the revolutionary theories in preference to
the Christian doctrine, public opinion is in complete disagreement with
reason.

Would to God that it was all limited to a theoretical opposition!
Unfortunately, nothing is more practical than revolutionary error; as,
for a century, the conclusions to which logic has led us have been but
too well confirmed by experience. Nothing, then, is wanting to enable
us to judge the two rival doctrines with full knowledge of the case. We
have seen them at work—one for fourteen centuries, the other during
the age nearest our own time; they have given their measure, and are
known by their fruits. One, in semi-barbarous times, endowed France
with the unity, glory, concentration of strength, and expansion which
placed her in the first rank among the nations of the world; the other,
in an age of advanced civilization and unheard-of material progress,
heaped ruins upon ruins on our unfortunate country—religious ruin,
moral ruin, social ruin, political ruin, financial ruin, military
ruin—nothing remained standing when with the principle of authority
the necessary foundation of society was overthrown.

And let it not be imagined that, in thus delivering the social body
to the ravages of anarchy, the revolutionary principle guarantees it
against the rigors of tyranny. No; it condemns it inevitably to suffer
those rigors. At the same time that it disarms power with regard to the
wicked passions, it arms it with an all-powerful force against the most
sacred rights. Rousseau avowed it frankly; and, from the Convention
to Prince Bismarck, all revolutionary governments have practised this
lesson. Nothing escapes the sovereignty of the state from the moment
that the state is emancipated from the authority of God. The soul
of the citizen belongs to it with the same title as his body; the
questions of doctrine are not more independent of its control than
those of policy; the church and the school are under its jurisdiction
as well as the public streets and the prison.

Since society recognizes no authority above it, and the state
represents the social will, it is absolute master, it is all-powerful,
it is God. It is the state that makes justice and truth, that creates
rights, that is the supreme arbiter of conscience; and its omnipotence,
as unlimited as fragile, leaves to the citizen but the choice between
two expedients: either to bend with docility under its yoke by
abdicating all moral dignity, or to overthrow it, with the certainty of
seeing it replaced by an equal tyranny.

Thus the revolutionary theory, which is permanent anarchy, is at the
same time organized despotism. At other periods, we have seen society,
deprived of its equilibrium, oscillate between these two extremes,
passing in turn from anarchy to tyranny, and from tyranny to anarchy.
Thanks to revolutionary progress, we can enjoy simultaneously the
advantages of these two states, and taste the vexations of despotism,
without escaping the agitations of anarchy. Since the proclamation of
the pretended liberal principles, we have seen disappear the liberties
which, under the most absolute systems, were considered as inviolable.
Provincial and communal franchises, the rights of the father over his
children, of the proprietor over his possessions, of the testator over
his estate—all have been grasped by the iron hand of the state. It
has broken all counterbalancing influences, and those that it has not
completely annihilated only subsist during its good pleasure.

How different is the theory of power, regarded by the light of
Christian principle! Instituted for the protection of rights and the
repression of injustice, it extends its jurisdiction only by the means
necessary for attaining its end. As soon as it would leave that sphere,
it becomes an usurper. Its power is limited in every sense by divine
law and by the pre-existing rights of the subjects; for, instead of
the revolutionary theory that the state creates the rights of private
individuals, it is Christian doctrine that the rights of individuals
incapable of defending themselves rendered necessary the creation of
the state.

According to the first, society is everything, the individual
nothing; according to the second, the individual alone has immortal
destinies, and civil society is but a temporary means to facilitate the
accomplishment of those destinies. The least of the subjects has, then,
the right to oppose his conscience as a brazen wall against the unjust
will of a despot; and, if this protestation is not heeded, another
voice will soon be heard which will resound to the extremities of the
universe—the voice of the incorruptible defender of justice, and the
protector of oppressed weakness; of him whom God has placed on the
earth to speak in his name, to promulgate his law, and to recall alike
princes and people to the respect of justice.

It is not necessary to give further proof of the doctrine we have
endeavored to explain. There is not one of our readers who will not
instantly understand the principle whose restoration we have declared
indispensable for putting an end to the fatal reign of the Revolution.
We were not wrong in giving it the name of principle, as from it flow
all the laws of political order, at the same time that itself is
immediately derived from the very idea of that order. It is, then,
necessary, universal, and absolute; it extends to all times, all forms
of government, all degrees of civilization. At once political and
religious, rational and revealed, it belongs to universal ethics, and
is part of the traditional dogma. He who denies it will be condemned
by the church as a heretic, and will be disowned by reason, as both a
rebel against evidence, and guilty of an attack on the essential laws
of social order.


III.

If we have succeeded in demonstrating this truth, it will not be
difficult to decide upon the duties it imposes upon us, and the means
we must employ to incline in the way of salvation the undecided balance
of the destinies of France.

Since the proclamation of the revolutionary principle in the last
century was the commencement of our ruin, we can only save ourselves
by denying it with all possible solemnity, and in placing the contrary
principle as the basis of the future constitution of our country.
We must, in fine, leave the ways which have misled and lost all the
powers that during fifty years have assumed in France the mission
of restoring public order. Undoubtedly, none of them accepted the
revolutionary theory to its full extent; they even by more than one act
implied its negation. But these isolated efforts, extorted from them
by the instinct of preservation, did not prevent them from habitually
submitting to the influences of the Revolution, and even often
rendering homage to its principles.

Sprung from its bosom, they dared not deny their origin, and they
did not understand that, while shrinking from this disavowal, they
condemned themselves to be overthrown by the blind force which
had lifted them on its shield. One after the other they deceived
themselves, and France with them, by taking “the great principles of
‘89” as the palladium of their thrones and their dynasties. It was
asking a guarantee of duration from the most energetic dissolvent,
and giving a solemn falsehood to France as a political creed. We have
shown elsewhere that, under ambiguous formulas intended to deceive
thoughtless good faith, the declaration of 1789 contains, in seventeen
articles, the pure theory of the Revolution. We willingly admit that
this hypocrisy of language might, at the first moment, put on the wrong
scent a generation intoxicated with the desire of reform; but to be
still seduced by it, after so many bloody revolutions have too clearly
commented this ambiguous text, would be intolerable.

If we push blindness to this excess, will we deserve to be called the
most intellectual people in the world? We have been duped by a comedy
of fifteen years; will it be so with a comedy of a hundred? It is thus
that posterity will name the century in which the principles of ‘89
were the theme of the most gigantic mystification found in history.
All the civilized nations have been more or less cheated by this
jugglery of the most precious liberties, in the name of liberalism;
but France has played a separate part. It is she who, after being
herself deceived, endeavored to make the entire universe share in her
deception, and thus took upon herself both the shame of the fraud, and
the responsibility of the imposture.

Let us be done with this odious falsehood, and return to reality.
Let us seek true liberties in the proclamation of true principles,
and ensure respect for the rights of man by the restoration of the
authority of God.

This is the first duty that the vital interest of France imposes on all
men called to take any part whatever in the re-establishment of power.

But henceforward we have another obligation to fulfil. Honest men of
all parties must unite in the proclamation of the Christian principle,
and renounce any alliance with the defenders of the Revolution. Former
parties must disappear, and only leave in the field the great armies of
order and disorder. This division alone has a reason for existing in
the present state of society. Old parties, on the contrary, can only be
divided by personal questions, to which it would be shameful to attach
any importance in presence of the dangers that menace society. All
parties, even those that seem to yield the most thorough allegiance to
the Revolution, contain a greater or less number of friends of order
whose equivocal connections do not prevent their disowning, in the
bottom of their hearts, the revolutionary principle.

The moment has come to separate these contrary elements united by
purely accidental affinities. We are approaching one of those fatal
dates that betokens the end of one world, and the commencement of
another; one of those partial judgments of Providence that prelude the
general one by which divine justice will close the era of time, to open
that of eternity. Now, as then, the terrible blows of the Almighty
dissipate illusions, crush adverse interests, and bring to light the
two contrary tendencies which have been hidden in the depths of hearts;
the two opposite loves that, since the beginning of the world, have
divided humanity into two hostile cities.

It is, then, indispensable to take a side; the time of tergiversation
and compromise is past; we must be for truth or falsehood, for order or
the Revolution, for Jesus Christ or the infernal chief of all rebels.
And it does not suffice to carry the truth in the heart: it must be
professed openly and courageously. The more evident is the necessity
of adhering to the Christian principle, the more manifest is the
double obligation that flows from it for honest men of all parties to
form a compact league, whatever may have previously been their mutual
estrangement, and to separate themselves from the revolutionists, with
whom circumstances may have connected them.

We will go on no further, for we have resolved not to leave the region
of principles; but the men to whom Providence has given the mission and
power to save us cannot stop there. They must bring down the saving
principle from the region of abstractions to that of facts, give it
a concrete existence, a determined form, a durable organization, a
strength sufficient to maintain itself, and to raise us up. It is not
our province to guide them in the accomplishment of this task; may God
give them, with the light which will show them the path of salvation,
strength to follow it, and draw France after them! They are called to
be nothing less than the saviours of their country and of Christendom;
for it is not only the destinies of France which they hold in their
hands, but those of Christian civilization, incapable, if France
yields, of escaping from the invasion of the double revolution of
Cæsarism and demagogism. May they feel the gravity of the situation,
and understand that such great peril demands heroic resolutions!

To worthily fulfil this mission, the most important, perhaps, ever
confided to a deliberative assembly, they must rise above all
consideration of persons, all interests of parties, and they must
choose, in the sincerity of their conscience, the man and the form
of government that will most surely guarantee the restoration of the
Christian principle, and the repudiation of the revolutionary, the
destruction of anarchy and Cæsarism, the protection of every right,
and the re-establishment of true liberty. This choice, which alone
can save us, will not be difficult from the moment that they agree on
the principle from which it must proceed, and the end which must be
attained; and once the choice made under the eye of God, it will be
still less difficult, with his help, to make it acceptable to France.

The Comte de Breda recently recalled to us, as appropriate to the time,
the consoling and prophetic words written by Joseph de Maistre in 1797,
at an epoch when the restoration of order appeared still more difficult
than at the present time: “Can we believe that the political world
moves by chance, and that it is not organized, directed, animated, by
the same wisdom which shines in the physical? The great criminals who
overthrow a state necessarily produce heart-rending wounds; but, when
man works to re-establish order, he associates himself with the Author
of order, he is favored by nature—that is to say, by the harmony of
secondary causes, which are the ministers of divine power. His action
has something in it of divine; it is at the same time gentle and
imperious; he forces nothing, and nothing resists him.”




GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”


CHAPTER I.

CRICHTON, AND THE CRICHTONIANS.

THE delicate exuberance of a New England spring was making amends for
the rigor of a New England winter, and for its own tardy coming. Up
through the faded sward pushed multitudinously all the little budding
progeny of nature; out through rough bark burst the tender foliage; and
all the green was golden-green. Light winds blew hither and thither;
light clouds chased each other over the sky, now and then massing their
forces to send a shower down, the drops so entangled with sunshine as
to look like a rain of diamonds. Birds soared joyously, singing as
they flew; and the channels of the brooks could scarcely contain their
frolicsome streams. Sometimes a scattered sisterhood of snowflakes
came down to see their ancestresses, and, finding them changed into
snowdrops, immediately melted into an ecstasy, and so exhaled.

This vernal freshness made the beautiful city of Crichton fairer yet,
with curtains waving from open windows, vines budding over the walls,
and all the many trees growing alive. It set a fringe of grasses
nodding over the edges of three yellow paths ravelled out from a new
road that, when it had travelled about a mile westward from the city,
gave up being a road for the present. One of these paths started off
southward, and sank into a swamp. In summer, this swamp was as purple
as a ripe plum with flower-de-luce, and those who loved nature well
enough to search for her treasures could find there also an occasional
cardinalflower, a pink arethusa, or a pitcherblossom full to the
brim with the last shower, or the last dew-fall. The second path ran
northward to the bank of the Cocheco River, and broke off on the top
of a cliff. If you should have nerve enough to scramble down the face
of this cliff, you would find there the most romantic little cave
imaginable, moss-lined, and furnished with moss cushions to its rock
divans. A wild cherry-tree had in some way managed to find footing just
below the cave, and at this season it would push up a spray of bloom,
in emulation of the watery spray beneath. Fine green vines threaded
all the moss; and, if one of them were lifted, it would show a line of
honey-sweet bell-flowers strung under its round leaves.

The third path kept on westward to a dusky tract of pine-woods about
two miles from the town. No newly-sprouting verdure was visible amid
this sombre foliage; but there was a glistening through it all like
the smile on a dark face, and the neighboring air was embalmed with its
fine resinous perfume.

Out from this wood came sounds of laughter and many voices, some
shrill and childish, others deeper voices of men, or softer voices of
women. Occasionally might be heard a fitful song that broke off and
began again, only to break and begin once more, as though the singer’s
hands were busy. Yet so dense was the border of the wood with thick,
low-growing branches that, had you gone even so near as to step on
their shadows, and slip on the smooth hollows full of cones and needles
they had let fall, not a person would you have seen.

A girlish voice burst out singing:

  “‘The year’s at the spring,
  And day’s at the morn;
  Morning’s at seven;
  The hillside’s dew-pearled.
  The lark’s on the wing,
  The snail’s on the thorn;
  God’s in his heaven—
  All’s right with the world!’

Only day is not at the morn,” the voice added correctingly; “for it is
near sunset. But,” singing again,

  “‘The year’s at the spring;
  The lark’s on the wing;
  God’s in his heaven—
  And all’s right with the world!’

—which may be called making a posy out of a poem.”

A young man’s voice spoke: “All will soon be wrong in a part of the
world, Pippa, if I do not call the sheep to fold.” And immediately a
loud bugle-call sounded through the forest, and died away in receding
echoes.

Presently a Maying-party came trooping forth into sight.

First, stooping low under the boughs, a score of boys and girls
appeared, their cheeks bright with exercise and pure air, their silken
hair dishevelled. After them followed, more sedately, a group of youths
and maidens, “Pippa,” otherwise Lily Carthusen, and the bugler, among
them. All these young people were decked with wreaths of ground pine
around their hats, waists, and arms, and they carried hands full of
Mayflowers.

Lastly, two gentlemen, one at either hand, held back the branches, and
Miss Honora Pembroke stepped from under the dark-green arch.

If you are a literal sort of person, and make a point of calling
things by their everyday names, you would have described her as a
noble-looking young woman, dressed in a graceful brown gown, belted
at the waist, after a Grecian fashion, and some sort of cloudy blue
drapery that was slipping from her head to her shoulders. You would
have said that her hair was a yellowish brown that looked bright in the
sun, her eyes about the same color, her features very good, but not so
classical in shape as her robe. You might have added that there was
an expression that, really—well, you did not know just how to name
it, but you should judge that the young woman was romantic, though not
without sense. If you should have guessed her age to be twenty-eight,
you would have been right.

If, on the other hand, you are poetically Christian, ever crowning with
the golden thorns of sacrifice whatever is most beautiful on earth,
you would have liked to take the Mayflower wreath from this womanly
maiden’s hand, place the palm-branch in its stead, and so send her to
heaven by the way of the lions. Her face need hardly have changed to go
that road, so lofty and delicate was the joy that shone under her quiet
exterior, so full of light the eyes that, looking straight before her
into space, seemed to behold all the glory of the skies.

The girl who came next was very different, not at all likely to suggest
poetical fancies, though when you looked closely you could see much
fineness of outline in the features and form. But she was spoilt in
the coloring—a sallow skin, “sandy” hair, and light eyes giving a
dingy look to her face. She was spoilt still more by the expression,
which was superficial, and by being overdressed for her size and the
occasion, and a little ragged from the bushes. This is Miss, or, as
she likes to be called, Mademoiselle, Annette Ferrier. If at some
moment, unawares, you should take the liberty to call her Niñon, with
an emphatic nasal, she would forgive you beamingly, and consider you
a very charming person. Mademoiselle, who, like three generations of
her ancestors, was born in America, and who had spent but three months
of her life in France, had no greater ambition than to be taken for a
French lady. But do not set her down as a simpleton. Her follies are
not malicious, and may wear off. Have you never seen the young birds,
when they are learning to fly, how clumsily they tumble about? yet
afterward they cleave the air like arrows with their strong pointed
wings. And have you not seen some bud, pushing out at first in a dull,
rude sheath that mars the beauty of the plant, open at last to disclose
petals of such rare beauty that the sole glory of the plant was in
upbearing it? Some souls have to work off a good deal of clinging
foolishness before they come to themselves. Therefore, let us not
classify Miss Ferrier just yet.

She had scarcely appeared, when one branch was released with a
discourteous haste that sent it against her dress, and a gentleman
quickly followed her, and, with a somewhat impatient air, took his
place at her side. Mr. Lawrence Gerald had that style of beauty which
suggests the pedestal—an opaque whiteness of tint as pure as the
petal of a camellia, clustering locks of dark hair, and an exquisite
perfection of form and feature. He and Miss Ferrier were engaged to be
married, which was some excuse for the profuse smiles and blushes she
expended on him, and which he received with the utmost composure.

The second branch swung softly back from the hand that carefully
released it, and Mr. Max Schöninger came into sight, brushing the brown
pine-scales from his gloves. He was the last in order, but not least
in consequence, of the party, as more than one backward glance that
watched for his appearance testified. This was a tall, fair-haired
German, with powerful shoulders, and strong arms that sloped to the
finest of sensitive hands. He had a grave countenance, which sometimes
lit up beautifully with animated expression, and sometimes also veiled
itself in a singular manner. Let anything be said that excited his
instinct of reserve or self-defence, and he could at once banish
all expression from his face. The broad lids would droop over those
changeful eyes of his, and one saw only a blank where the moment before
had shone a cordial and vivid soul.

When we say that Mr. Schöninger was a Jew who had all his life been
associated more with Christians than with his own people, this guarded
manner will not seem unnatural. He glanced over the company, and was
hesitatingly about to join Miss Pembroke, when one of the children left
her playmates, and ran to take his hand. Mr. Schöninger was never on
his guard with children, and those he petted were devotedly fond of
him. He smiled in the upturned face of this little girl, held the small
hand closely, and led her on.

The order of march changed as the party advanced. Those who had been
last to leave the wood were made to take precedence; the youths and
maidens dropped behind them, and, as both walked slowly forward, the
younger ones played about them, now here, now there. It was like an air
with variations.

The elders of the company were very quiet, Miss Carthusen a little
annoyed. She need not have wasted her eloquence in persuading Mr.
Schöninger to come with them, if he was going to devote himself to
that baby. Miss Carthusen was clever, and rather pretty, and she liked
to talk. What was the use of having ideas and fancies, if one was not
to express them? Why should one go into company, if one was to remain
silent? She considered Mr. Schöninger too superb by half.

The sun was setting, and it flooded all the scene with a light so rich
as to seem tangible. Whatever it fell upon was not merely illuminated,
it was gilded. The sky was hazy with that radiance, the many windows
on the twin hills of Crichton blazed like beacons, and the short green
turf glistened with a yellow lustre. Those level rays threw the long
shadows of the flower-bearers before them as they walked, dazzled the
faces turned sidewise to speak, turned the green wreaths on their heads
into golden wreaths, and sparkled in their hair. When Miss Pembroke
put her hand up to shade her eyes in looking backward, the ungloved
fingers shone as if transparent. She had been drinking in the beauty
of the evening till it was all ready to burst from her lips, and there
seemed to be no one who perceived that beauty but herself. She would
have liked to be alone, with no human witness, and to give vent to the
delight that was tingling in her veins. A strong impulse was working
in her to lift a fold of her dress at either side, slide out that
pretty foot of hers now hidden under the hem, and go floating round in
a dance, advancing as she turned, like a planet in its path. It would
have been a relief could she have sung at the very top of her voice.
She had looked backward involuntarily at Mr. Schöninger, expecting some
sympathy from him; but, seeing him engrossed in his little charge,
had dropped her hand, and walked on, feeling rather disappointed. “I
supposed he believed in the creation, at least,” she thought.

Miss Pembroke was usually a very dignified and quiet young woman, who
said what she meant, who never effervesced on small occasions, and
sometimes found herself unmoved on occasions which many considered
great ones. But when, now and then, the real afflatus came, it was hard
to have her lips sealed and her limbs shackled.

As she dropped her hand, faintly and fairylike in the distance she
heard all the bells of Crichton ringing for sunset.

_Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus_, she sang softly, clasping her hands, still
walking forward; and so went on with the rest of the hymn, not minding
where the others of the party were, or if there were any others,
till she felt a little pull at her dress, and became aware that Mr.
Schöninger’s young friend had urged him forward to hear the singing,
and was holding up her hand to the singer. But the Jew’s visor was down.

Miss Pembroke took the child’s hand, which thus formed a link between
the two, and continued her singing: _Benedictus qui venit in nomini
Domini_. She felt almost as if the man, thus linked to her by that
transparent, innocent nature of the little girl between them, were
spiritually joining her in the Hosanna. How deep or bitter his
prejudices might be she knew not. Their acquaintance had been short,
and they had never spoken of their theological differences. That his
unbelief could be profound, yet gentle and tolerant toward her belief,
had never occurred to her mind. She would have been scarcely more
shocked than astonished could she have known the thought that almost
escaped his lips. “She is too noble to be a worshipper of strange
gods,” he thought. “When will this miserable delusion be swept away!”

A slim, light hand stole into Miss Pembroke’s arm on the other side,
and Miss Carthusen’s cheek pressed close to her shoulder. Miss
Carthusen was a foundling, and had been adopted by a wealthy and
childless couple. Nothing whatever was known of her parentage.

“Lady Honora,” she whispered, “this scene reminds me of something. I
am like Mignon, with my recollections gathering fast into a picture;
only my past is further away than hers was. I almost know who I am, and
where I came from. It flashes back now. We were dancing on the green,
a ring of us. It was not in this land. The air was warm, the sward
like rose-leaves; there were palms and temples not far away. I had
this hand stretched forward to one who held it, and the other backward
to one who held it, and so we danced, and there were wreaths on our
heads, vine-leaves tangled in our hair. Suddenly something swept over
and through us, like a cold wind, or a sharp cry, or both, and we all
became fixed in a breath, the smile, the wreath, the tiptoe foot, and
we hardened and grew less, and the air inside the ring died with our
breaths in it, and the joy froze out of us, and the recollection of
all we were faded. We were like flames that have gone out. There was
nothing left but an antique vase with Bacchantes dancing round it in
a petrified circle. Have you ever seen such a vase, with one figure
missing?”

“Silly child!” said Honora, smiling, but shrinking a little. This girl
was too clinging, her imagination too pagan. “It is said that, at the
birth of Christ, that wail was heard through all the hosts of pagan
demons. ‘Pan is dead!’ they cried, and fled like dry leaves before a
November wind. Pan is dead, Lily Carthusen; and if you would kindle his
altars again, you must go down into the depths of perdition for the
spark.”

She spoke with seriousness, even with energy, and a light blush
fluttered into her cheeks, and faded out again.

Miss Carthusen, still clinging to the arm she had clasped, leaned
forward to cast a laughing glance into the face beyond. “To Mr.
Schöninger,” she said, “we are both talking mythology.”

Miss Pembroke freed her arm decidedly, and stepped backward, so as to
bring herself between Miss Ferrier and Lawrence Gerald. She took an arm
of each, and held them a moment as if she were afraid. “Annette, Lily
Carthusen must not help us to trim the altar,” she said. “It is not
fitting. We will do it ourselves, with Mother Chevreuse.”

“But Lily has such taste,” was the reluctant answer. “And she may be
displeased if we do not ask her.”

“Our Lady thinks more of devotion than of taste, Annette,” Miss
Pembroke said earnestly. “It seems to me that every flower ought to be
placed there by the hand of faith and love.”

The other yielded. People always did yield when Miss Pembroke urged.
And Miss Carthusen, fortunately, saved them the embarrassment of
declining her assistance by walking on, engrossed in a gay conversation
with the German. When she recollected, they were already far apart. She
and her companion were close to the town, and the others had stopped
where the three paths met.

The children gathered about Miss Ferrier, and began piling their
Mayflowers and green wreaths into her arms; for the flowers were all
to decorate the altar of Mary in the beautiful church of S. John the
Evangelist. These children were not half of them Catholic; but that
made no difference in Crichton, where the people prided themselves on
being liberal. Moreover, Miss Ferrier was a person of influence, and
could reward those who obliged her.

Then they scattered, dropping into different roads, one by one, and
two by two, till only three, heavily laden with their fragrant spoil,
were left walking slowly up South Avenue, into which the unfinished
road expanded when it reached the city. They were to take tea at Mrs.
Ferrier’s, and afterward go to the church; for this was the last day of
a warm and forward April, and on the next morning the exercises of the
Month of Mary were to begin. At the most commanding spot on the crown
of the hill stood Mrs. Ferrier’s house; and one has but to glance at it
to understand at once why mademoiselle is a person of influence.

Seventeen years before, those who knew them would have imagined almost
any change of fortune sooner than that the Ferriers should become
people of wealth. There was Mr. Ferrier, a stout, dull, uneducated,
hard-working man, who had not talent nor ambition enough to learn any
trade, but passed his life in drudging for any one who would give him
a day’s work. A man of obtuse intelligence, and utterly uncultivated
tastes, but for the spark of faith left in that poor soul of his, he
would have been a clod. But there the spark was, like a lamp in a tomb,
showing, with its faint but steady light, the wreck of the beautiful,
and the noble, and the sublime that was man as God made him; showing
the dust of lost powers and possibilities, and the dust of much
accumulated dishonor; showing the crumbling skeleton of a purpose that
had started perfect; and showing also, carven deep, but dimly seen, the
word of hope, _Resurgam!_

Those human problems meet us often, staggering under the primal curse,
ground down to pitiless labor from the cradle to the grave, losing in
their sordid lives, little by little, first, the strength and courage
to look abroad, then the wish, and, at last, the power, the soul in
them shining with only an occasional flicker through the _débris_ of
their degraded natures. But if faith be there buried with the soul in
that earthy darkness, the word of hope is still for them _Resurgam!_

There was Mrs. Ferrier, a very different sort of person, healthy,
thrifty, cheerful, with a narrow vein of stubborn good sense that
was excellent as far as it went, and with a kind heart and a warm
temper. The chief fault in her was a common fault: she wished to
shape and measure the world by her own compasses; and, since those
were noticeably small, the impertinence was very apparent. She was
religiously obedient to her husband when he raised his fist; but, in
most matters, she ruled the household, Mr. Ferrier being authoritative
only on the subject of his three meals, his pipe and beer, and his
occasional drop of something stronger.

And there were five or six young ones, new little souls in very soiled
bodies, the doors of life still open for them, their eyes open also to
see, and their wills free to choose. These little ones, happy in their
rags, baked mud pies, squabbled and made up twenty times a day, ate and
slept like the healthy animals they were, their greatest trial being
when their faces were washed and their hair combed, on which occasion
there was an uproar in the family. These occasions were not frequent.

The Ferrier mansion had but one room, and the Ferrier plenishing was
simple. The wardrobe also was simple. For state days, monsieur had
a state costume, the salient points of which were an ample white
waistcoat and an ancient and well-preserved silk hat which he wore very
far back on his head, both these articles being part of his wedding
gear. Madame had also her gala attire, with which she always assumed
an expression of complacent solemnity. This toilet was composed of a
dark-red merino gown, a dingy _broché_ shawl, and a large straw bonnet,
most unconsciously Pompadour, with its pink flowers and blue ribbons.
For great occasions, the children had shoes, bought much too large
that they might not be outgrown; and they had hats nearly as old as
themselves. The girls had flannel gowns that hung decently to their
heels; the boys, less careful of their finery, had to go very much
patched.

On Sundays and holidays, they all walked two miles to hear Mass, and
each one put a penny into the box. On Christmas Days, they each gave
a silver quarter, the father distributing the coin just before the
collector reached them, all blushing with pride and pleasure as they
made their offering, and smiling for some time after, the children
nudging and whispering to each other till they had to be set to rights
by their elders. Contented souls, how simple and harmless they were!

Into the midst of this almost unconscious poverty, wealth dropped
like a bombshell. If the sea of oil under their cabin and pasture had
suddenly exploded and blown them sky-high, they could not have been
more astounded; for oil there was, and floods of it. At almost any part
of the little tract of land they had bought for next to nothing, it was
but to dig a hole, and liquid gold bubbled up by the barrelful.

Mr. Ferrier, poor man! was like a great clumsy beetle that blunders
out of the familiar darkness of night into a brilliantly lighted room.
Perhaps something aspiring and only half dead in him cried out through
his dulness with a voice he could not comprehend; perhaps the sudden
brightness put out what little sight he had: who knows? He drank. He
was in a dream; and he drank again. The dream became a nightmare; and
still he drank—drank desperately—till at last nature gave way under
the strain, and there came to him an hour of such utter silence as he
had not known since he lay, an infant, in his mother’s lap. During that
silence, light broke in at last, and the imprisoned light shone out
with a strange and bewildered surprise. The priest, that visible angel
of God, was by his side, instructing his ignorance, calming his fears,
calling up in his awakening soul the saving contrition, leaving him
only when the last breath had gone.

After the husband went child after child, till but two were left,
Annette and Louis. These, the eldest, the mother saved alive.

We laugh at the preposterous extravagance and display of the newly
enriched. But is there not something pitiful in it, after all? How it
tells of wants long denied, of common pleasures that were so distant
from those hopeless eyes as to look like shining stars! They flutter
and run foolishly about, those suddenly prosperous ones, like birds
released from the cage, like insects when the stone is lifted from
them; but those who have always been free to practise their smooth
flight through a sunny space, or to crawl at ease over the fruits of
the world, would do well not to scorn them.

The house Mrs. Ferrier had built for herself in the newest and finest
avenue of Crichton was, it must be confessed, too highly ornamented.
Ultra-Corinthian columns; cornerstones piled to the very roof at each
angle, and so laboriously vermiculated that they gave one an impression
of wriggling; cornices laden with carving, festoons, fancy finials
wherever they could perch; oriels, baywindows, arched windows with
carven faces over them—all these fretted the sight. But the view from
the place was superb.

When our three flower-bearers reached the gate, they turned to
contemplate the scene.

All round, a circle of purple hills stood bathed in the sunset. From
these hills the Crichtonians had borrowed the graceful Athenian title,
and called their fair city the “city of the violet crown.” Forming
their eastern boundary flowed the stately Saranac, that had but lately
carried its last float of ice out to sea, almost carrying a bridge with
it. Swollen with dissolving snows, it glided past, a moving mirror,
nearly to the tops of the wharves. Northward was the Cocheco, an
untamed little river born and brought up amid crags and rocks. It cleft
the city in twain, to cast itself headlong into the Saranac, a line of
bubbles showing its course for half a mile down the smoother tide.

The Cocheco was in high feather this spring, having succeeded at last
in dislodging an unsightly mill that had been built at one of its most
picturesque turns. Let trade go up the Saranac, and bind its gentler
waters to grind wheat and corn, and saw logs, and act as sewer; the
Cocheco reserved itself for the beautiful and the contemplative. It
liked that lovers should walk the winding roads along its banks; that
children should come at intervals, wondering, half afraid, as if in
fairy-land; that troubled souls, longing for solitude, should find it
in some almost inaccessible nook among its crags; but, best of all,
it liked that some child of grace, divinely gifted to see everything
in God, should walk rejoicingly by its side. “O my God! how sweet are
those little thoughts of thine, the violets! How thy songs flow down
the waters, and roll out from the clouds! How tender is the shadow of
thy hand when at night it presses our heavy eyelids down, and folds us
to sleep in thy bosom, or when it wakens us silently to commune with
thee!” For such a soul, the river had an articulate voice, and answered
song for song.

Yes; that was what it had to do in the world. Away with mills and
traffic! Let trade go up the Saranac.

So for three years watery tongues had licked persistently at posts and
timbers, legions of bubbles had snapped at splinters till they wore
away, and the whole river had gathered and flung itself against the
foundations, till at last, when the spring thaw came, over went the
mill, and was spun down stream, and flung into the deeper tide, and so
swept out to sea. Let trade go up the Saranac!

But the patient Saranac sawed the logs, and carried away their dust
and refuse, and took all the little fretted brooks and rivers into its
bosom, and soothed their murmurs there. And both did God’s will, and
both were good.

Half hidden by the steep slope of the hill, as one stood in Mrs.
Ferrier’s porch, was the church of S. John the Evangelist. Only the
unfinished tower of it was visible, and a long line of slated roof seen
in glimpses between spires and chimneys.

“I really believe, Lawrence, that Crichton is the pleasantest place in
the world,” remarked Miss Pembroke, after a short silence.

A servant had taken away their flowers to keep fresh for the evening,
and Miss Ferrier had gone in to change her dress. The mother being
away, there was no need the other two should enter, when the lovely
evening invited them to remain outside.

Receiving no reply, the lady glanced inquiringly at her companion, and
saw that his silence was a dissenting one. He had thrown himself into a
chair, tossed his hat aside, and was looking off into the distance with
fixed and gloomy eyes. The tumbled locks of hair fell over half his
forehead, his attitude expressed discontent and depression, and there
was a look about the mouth that showed his silence might proceed only
from the suppression of a reply too bitter or too rude to utter.

Seeing that her glance might force him to speak, she anticipated him,
and continued, in a gentle, soothing tone: “If one loves religion, here
is a beautiful church, and the best of priests; if one is intellectual,
here is every advantage—books, lectures, and a cultivated society; if
one is a lover of nature, where can be found a more beautiful country?
Oh! it is not Switzerland nor Italy, I know; but it is delightful, for
all that.”

She had spoken carefully, like one feeling her way, and here she
hesitated just for a breath, as though not sure whether she had better
go on, but went on nevertheless. “Here every one is known, and his
position secure. He need not suffer in public esteem from adverse
circumstances, if they do not affect his character. There never was a
place, I think, where a truly courageous and manly act would be more
heartily applauded.”

“Ah! yes,” the young man said, with hasty scorn; “they applaud while
the thing is new, and then forget all about it. They like novelty. I
don’t doubt that all the people would clap their hands if I should take
to sweeping the streets, and that for a week the young ladies would tie
bouquets to the end of the broomstick. But after the week was over,
what then? They would find me a dusty fellow whose acquaintance they
would gradually drop. Besides, their applause is not all. I might not
enjoy street-sweeping, even though I and my broomstick were crowned
with flowers as long as we lasted.”

Miss Pembroke had blushed slightly at this sudden and violent
interpretation of her hidden meaning; but she answered quietly: “No:
their applause is not all—the applause of the world is never all, but
it helps sometimes; and, if they give it to us for one moment when we
start on the right path, it is all that we ought to expect. Life is not
a theatre with a few actors and a great circle of spectators: we all
have our part to play, and cannot stop long to admire others.”

“Especially when that other is only the scene-shifter,” laughed the
young man, throwing the hair back from his face.

“I know well that ordinary, inelegant work would come very hard to you,
Lawrence,” she said kindly; “and, if it were to be continued to the end
of your life, I might think it too hard. But there must be ways, for
other men have found them, of beginning at the lower end of the ladder,
even very low down, even in the dust, and climbing steadily to a height
that would satisfy the climber’s ambition. It needs only a strong will
and perseverance; and I firmly believe, Lawrence, that, to a strong
will, almost anything is possible.”

“A strong will is a special gift,” he replied stubbornly.

“Yes; and one for which we may ask,” she said; then, seeing that he
frowned, added: “And for you I like Crichton, as I said. One is known
here, and motives and circumstances are understood. A thousand little
helps might be given which in a strange city you would not have. All
would be seen and understood here.”

“All would be seen, yes!” he exclaimed, with a shrug and a frown. “That
is the trouble. One would rather hide something.”

She would not be repelled. “There is, of course, sometimes a
disadvantage in living where everything is known,” she admitted. “But
there must be disadvantages everywhere in the world. Look at the bright
side of it. If you were in a great city, where all sorts of crimes
hide, where men the most abandoned in reality can for a long time
maintain a fair reputation before the world, how your difficulties
would be increased! You would not then know whom to trust. Here, on the
contrary, no wrong can remain long hidden.”

He had not looked at her before, but at these words his eyes flashed
into her face a startled glance. Her eyes were looking thoughtfully
over the town.

Feeling his gaze, she turned towards him with a quick change of
expression and manner. A friendly and coaxing, almost caressing,
raillery took the place of her seriousness: “Come! drive away your
blues, Lawrence, and take courage. Study out some course for yourself
where you can see far ahead, and then start and follow it, though you
should find obstacles grow up in the way. Bore through them, or climb
over them. There must be a way. There is something in you for honor,
something better than complaining. Cheer up!”

She extended her hand to him impulsively.

“What motive have I?” he asked. But his face had softened, and a faint
smile showed that the cloud had a silver lining.

“For your mother’s sake,” she said. “How happy she would be!”

“I can make my mother happy by kissing her, and telling her she is an
angel,” he answered.

It was but too true.

“For poor Annette, then. There is a good deal in her, and she is
devoted to you.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and lifted his eyebrows: “She loves me as
I am, and would love me if I were ten times as worthless, poor silly
girl!”

Miss Pembroke withdrew her hand, and retired a step from him. Again he
had spoken the truth, this spoiled favorite of women!

“For God’s sake, then.”

He did not dare give another shrug, for his mentor’s face was losing
its kindness. “You know I am not at all pious, Honora,” he said,
dropping his eyes.

She still retained her patience: “Can you find no motive in yourself,
Lawrence? Do you feel no necessity for action, for courageous trial of
what life may hold for you?”

His pale face grew bright with an eager light. “If life but held for me
one boon! O Honora....”

She made a quick, silencing gesture, and a glance, inconceivably
haughty and scornful, shot from her eyes.

“Are you two people quarrelling?” Miss Ferrier inquired, behind them.
“If you are, I am in good time. Tea is ready, and I suppose the sooner
we are off, the better.”

“I sent the flowers to the church,” she continued, as they went in
through the gorgeous hall, “and directed John to tell Mother Chevreuse
that we should come down in about an hour. But he brings me word that
she is out with some sick woman, and may not come home till quite late.
So we are but three.”

Mother Chevreuse was the priest’s mother. It had grown to be a custom
to give her that title, partly out of love for both mother and son,
partly because Father Chevreuse himself sometimes called her so.

“It will require one person to carry your train, Annette,” Mr. Gerald
said, looking at the length of rustling brown silk over which he had
twice stumbled. “And that takes two out; for, of course, you can do
nothing in that dress. Honora will have the pleasure of decorating the
altar, while we look on.”

Only the faintest shade of mortification passed momentarily over the
girl’s face, and vanished. She knew well the power her wealth had with
this man, and that she could not make it too evident. Miss Ferrier was
frivolous and extravagant, but she was not without discernment.

“Did you ever know me to fail when I attempted anything?” she asked,
with a little mingling of defiance and triumph in her air. “Honora goes
calmly and steadily to work; but when I begin....”

She stopped, embarrassed, for a rude speech had been at her lips.

“You do twice as much as I,” Miss Pembroke finished, with sweet
cordiality. “It is true, Annette, though you did not like to say it.
You have great energy.”

She put her hand out, and touched caressingly the shoulder of her young
hostess in passing. “You are just what Lawrence needs.”

Tears of pleasure filled Annette’s eyes. For all her wealth and the
flatteries it had brought her, she had seldom heard a word of earnest
commendation.

To be praised by Honora was sweet; but to be praised before Lawrence
was sweetest of all.

They hurried through their tea, and went to the church. Mother
Chevreuse had not returned home, and the priest also was away. The
pleasant task of adorning the altar of Our Lady was left to them.

The stars were beginning to show faintly in the sky when they commenced
their work, and all the church was full of that clear yellow twilight.
The pillars and walls, snowy white, with only delicate bands of
gilding, reflected the softened beams, and seemed to grow transparent
in them. But around the side-altar burned a ring of brilliant gas-jets;
and through the open door of the sacristy was visible, ruddily lighted,
a long passage and stairway leading to the basement.

The light of heaven and the light of earth were thus brought face to
face—the one pure, tender, and pervading, the other flaring, thick,
and partial. But as daylight faded away, that inner light brought out
strange effects. There was no longer anything white in the church:
it was all turned to rose-color and deep shadow. Carven faces looked
down with seeing eyes from arch, capital, and cornice; the pillars,
standing up and down in long rows, appeared to lean together, to move,
and change places with each other; there was a tremor in the dimly-seen
organ-pipes, as though the strong breath of music were passing through
them, and would presently break out in loud accord. A picture of S.
John beside the grand altar showed nothing but the face, and the face
was as glowing as if it had just been lifted from the bosom of the Lord
to look into the Lord’s eyes.

One might fancy that this fair temple in which God had taken up his
dwelling only waited for those three to go away, that it might break
into joy and adoration over its divine Guest.

On a pedestal at the gospel side of the altar stood the statue of Our
Lady, lovely eyelids downcast, as she gazed on those below, loving
hands and arms outstretched, inviting all the world to her motherly
embrace. An arch of white lilies had already been put up against a
larger arch of green that was to be set with candles and a crown of
light. They were now engaged in putting under the lilies a third and
smaller arch of Mayflowers, that the whole might be like the Lady it
was meant to honor—radiant with glory, mantled in purity, and full of
tender sweetness.

Annette had redeemed her promise of usefulness. Her long train was
pinned about her, leaving a white skirt with the hem close to her
ankles, and the flowing drapery of her sleeves was bound above the
elbow, her arms being quite free. Mounted on the topmost step of an
unsteady ladder, she fastened the higher flowers; lower down, at either
side, Lawrence Gerald and Honora tied the lower ones. Not much was
said, the few necessary words were lowly spoken; but they smiled now
and then in each other’s lighted faces.

It was ten o’clock when they went out through the basement, leaving
a man to extinguish the gas and lock the door. On their way to the
street, they passed the priest’s house. Only one light was visible in
it, and that shone in a wide-open stairway window. The light, with a
shadow beside it, was approaching the window, and presently a man’s
head and shoulders appeared above the high sill. Father Chevreuse had
returned home, and was going up to his chamber. He stopped, holding a
candle, and put out his right hand to close the window, but paused,
hearing a step outside. “Who’s there?” he asked authoritatively,
peering out, but seeing nothing in the darkness.

“Three friends who are just going home,” answered a voice.

“And who are the other two, Honora Pembroke?” demanded the priest.

“Annette and Lawrence. We have been arranging flowers for Our Lady.”

“That’s well. Good-night!”

He pulled the sash down with a bang; but Honora, smiling in the dark,
still held her companions beneath the window. It opened again with
another bang.

“Children!” he called out.

“Yes, father!”

“God bless you! Good-night!”

Again the sash came down, more gently this time, and the light and the
kind heart went on climbing up the stairway.

“He wouldn’t have slept well to-night if he had not said ‘God bless
you!’ to us,” said Miss Pembroke. “And I believe we shall sleep better
for it, too, God bless him!”

They walked up the steep hillside from the lower part of the town
toward South Avenue. Half-way up the hill, on a cross-street that led
out toward the country, was the cottage in which Lawrence Gerald lived
with his mother, his aunt, and Honora Pembroke. As they approached this
road, Annette Ferrier’s heart fluttered. Lawrence had been very amiable
that evening. He had praised her, had twice smiled very kindly, and had
put her shawl over her shoulders before they came out, as though he
were really afraid she might take cold. Perhaps he would leave Honora
at home first, and then go up with her.

What great good this would do her she could not have explained; for
seldom had she heard from him a word too tender to be spoken before
witnesses. Still, she wished it. He might say something kind, or listen
willingly to some word of affection from her. At any rate, she would be
a little longer in his company.

Miss Pembroke anticipated her wish, or had some other reason for
making the proposal. “Just go as far as the gate with me, and then you
can escort Annette,” she said. “You will not mind a few extra steps,
Annette?”

“Oh! come up with us,” the young man interposed hastily. “It is a
beautiful night for walking, and I know you are not tired yet. You can
bear twice the walking that Annette can.”

She hesitated a moment, then went on with them. His request displeased
her on more than one account: she did not like his indifference to the
company of his promised wife, and she did not like his preference for
being with herself. But his mother would be anxiously watching for him;
and it would be something if he could be lured in at an early hour
after a quiet evening.

Down in the black heart of the town, among the offices, was a certain
back room where the windows were not so closely curtained but those who
watched outside could see a thread of light burning all night long. To
this room men went sometimes in the hope of mending their fortunes,
or, after the demon of gambling had caught them fast, to taste of that
fiery excitement which had now become to them a necessity. Honora more
than suspected that Lawrence Gerald’s steps had sometimes turned in
there. A year or two before, in one of his good moods, he had confessed
it to her, with an almost boyish contrition, and had promised never
to go again. It was his last confession of the sort, but, she feared,
not his last sin. Of what worth were the promises of a weak, tempted
man who never sought earnestly the help of God to strengthen his
resolution? Of no more value than an anchor without a cable. Lawrence
needed to be watched and cared for; so she went on with them.

“I am so sorry to trouble you both,” Miss Ferrier exclaimed, in a voice
trembling with anger and disappointment. “I could have had John come
for me, if I had thought.” She snatched her hand from the arm of her
escort, and pulled her shawl about her with nervous twitches.

“It would have been better to have had John,” Honora said; “for he
could have gone home with me. I am the troublesome third, as it is. But
then,” speaking lightly, “if I am the last, Lawrence will be obliged to
go in early.”

With another twitch of her shawl, Annette took her escort’s arm again
as abruptly as she had left it, and, held it closely.

Careless as the last words had sounded, she knew their meaning, for
there had been something said on this subject before. She chose to take
it defiantly now, and it comforted her to do so. Others might blame
and doubt him, but she would not. He seemed nearer to her in the light
of her superior devotedness than to any one else. She would never fail
him; and by-and-by he would know her worth. The glow of this fervent
hope warmed the girl’s chilled heart, and gave her a sort of happiness.

And so they reached the house, and, after a quiet good-night, separated.

The walk back was passed in silence; and Miss Pembroke did not choose
to lean on her companion’s arm; she wished to hold her dress out of the
dust.

The street they went through was one of those delightful old ones which
a city sometimes leaves untouched for a long time. Over-arching elms
grew thickly on either side, and the houses were all detached.

Midway up this street stood the cottage of the Geralds, with a garden
in front and at the back, and a narrow green at right and left. Three
long windows in front, lighting the parlor, reached almost to the
ground. The steep roof slanted to a veranda at each side, leaving but
one upper window over the three—a wide window with casements swinging
back from the middle. The cottage was in the shape of a cross, and at
one arm of it a lighted window shone out on the veranda.

At sound of the gate-latch, the curtain was drawn aside a little, and a
woman looked out an instant, then hastened to open the door.

“Are we late, Mrs. Gerald?” Honora asked, and stepped forward into the
sitting-room.

“Oh! no, dear; I did not expect you any sooner.”

Mrs. Gerald lingered in the doorway, looking back at her son as he
stopped to leave his hat and overcoat in the entry, and only entered
the sitting-room when she had caught a glimpse of his face as he came
toward her. He was looking pleasant, she saw, and was contented with
that.

“Well, mother!” he said, and sank indolently into the arm-chair she
pushed before the open fire for him. It was the only arm-chair in the
room.

She drew another chair forward, and seated herself beside him. Honora,
sitting on a low stool in the corner, with the firelight shining over
her, told what they had been doing that afternoon and evening. The son
listened, his eyes fixed on the fire; the mother listened, her eyes
fixed on her son.

Mrs. Gerald was an Irish lady of good descent, well educated, and well
mannered, and had seen better days. We do not call them better days
because in her girlhood and early married life this lady had been
wealthy, but because she had been the happy daughter of excellent
parents, and the happy wife of a good man. All were gone now but this
son; the husband dead for many a year, the daughters married and far
away, the wealth melted from her like sunset gold from a cloud; but
Lawrence was left, and he filled her heart.

One could read this in her face as she watched him. It revealed the
pride of the mother in that beautiful manhood which she had given to
the world, and which was hers by an inalienable right that no one could
usurp; and it revealed, too, the entire self-forgetfulness of the woman
who lives only in the life so dear to her. The face showed more yet;
for, hovering over this love and devotion as the mist of the coming
storm surrounds the full moon, and rings its softened brightness with a
tremulous halo, one could detect even in the mother’s smile the mist of
a foreboding sadness.

How ineffable and without hope is that sadness which is ever the
companion of a too exclusive affection!

Honora Pembroke looked at the two, and pain and indignation, and the
necessity for restraining any expression of either, swelled in her
heart, painted her cheeks a deep red, and lifted her lids with a fuller
and more scornful gaze than those soft eyes were wont to give. Where
was the courtesy which any man, not rudely insensible, should show
to a lady? Where the grateful tenderness that any child, not cruelly
ungrateful, pays to a mother? This man could be gallant when he wished
to make a favorable impression; and she had heard him make very pretty,
if very senseless, speeches about chivalry and ideal characters, as
if he knew what they were. He had even, in the early days of their
acquaintance, maintained for a long time an irreproachable demeanor in
her presence. She was learning a doubt and distrust of men, judging
them by this one, of whom she knew most. Were they often as selfish
and insensible as he was? Were they incapable of being affected by any
enchantment except that which is lent by a delusive distance? Here
beside him was an ideal affection, and he accepted it as he accepted
air and sunshine—it was a matter of course. The mother was in person
one who might satisfy even such a fastidious taste as his; for though
the face was thin and faded, and the hands marred by household labor,
there were still the remains of what had once been a striking beauty.
Mrs. Gerald carried her tall form with undiminished stateliness, her
coal-black hair had not a single thread of white among its thick
tresses, and her deep-blue eyes had gained in tenderness what they
had lost in fire. To use one of Miss Pembroke’s favorite expressions,
it was not fitting that the son, after having passed a day without
fatigue, should lounge at ease among cushions, while the mother, to
whom every evening brought weariness, should sit beside him in a chair
of penitential hardness.

But even while she criticised him, he looked up from the fire, his face
brightening with a sudden pleasant recollection.

“O mother! I had almost forgotten,” he said, and began searching in his
pockets for something. “Neither you nor Honora mentioned it; but I keep
count, and I know that to-day your ladyship is five times ten years
old.”

He smiled with a boyish pleasure more beautiful than his beauty,
and the little touch of self-satisfaction he betrayed was as far as
possible from being disagreeable. He could not help knowing that he
was about to give delight, and cover himself with honor in the eyes of
these two women.

“Now, mother,” opening a tiny morocco case, “this is the first ring
I ever gave any woman. The one I gave Annette was only a diamond of
yours reset, and so no gift of mine. But this your good-for-nothing son
actually earned, and had made on purpose for you.”

He drew from the case a broad gold ring that sparkled in the firelight
as if set with diamonds, and, taking the trembling hand his mother had
extended caressingly at his first words, slipped the circlet onto her
finger.

“I had no stone put in it, because I want you to wear it all the time,”
he said. “Doesn’t it fit nicely?”

“My dear boy!” Mrs. Gerald exclaimed, and could say no more; for tears
that she wished to restrain were choking her.

A fiftieth birthday is not a joyful anniversary when there is no
one but one’s self to remember that it has come. Just as the mother
had given up hope, and was making to herself excuses for his not
remembering it, her son showed that it had been long in his thought.
The joy was as unexpected as it was sweet.

When she said her prayers that night, Mrs. Gerald’s clasped hands
pressed the dear gift close to her cheek; and no maiden saying her
first prayer over her betrothal-ring ever felt a tenderer happiness or
more impassioned gratitude.

“Dear Lawrence! it was so nice of you!” whispered Honora, and gave him
her hand as she wished him good-night.

He threw himself back in the arm-chair again when he was left alone,
and for a few minutes had a very pleasant sense of being happy and the
cause of happiness. “Who would think that so much fun could be got out
of a quiet evening spent in tying Mayflowers round a pole, and giving
a gold birthday ring to one’s mother?” he mused. “After all, the good
people have the best of it, and we scape-graces are the ones to be
pitied. If I were rich, I should be all right. If I had even half a
chance, I would ask no more. But the poverty!” He glanced about the
room, then looked gloomily into the fire again.

Yes; poverty was there—that depressing poverty which speaks of decayed
fortunes. The carpet, from which the brilliant velvet pile was worn
nearly off, the faded and mended covers of the carved chair-frames, the
few old-fashioned ornaments which had been retained when all that would
sell well had gone to the auction-room, each showed by the scrupulous
care with which it had been preserved a poverty that clung to the rags
of prosperity in the past because it saw no near hope of prosperity in
the future. Miles of unbroken forest could be seen from the cupolas of
Crichton; yet in this room the very stick of wood that burned slowly
on the andirons was an extravagance which Mrs. Gerald would not have
allowed herself.

“Yes; the good ones have the best of it,” the young man repeated,
rousing himself.

He drew the andirons out, and let the unconsumed stick down into the
ashes, lighted a candle, and turned the gas off. Then, candle in hand,
he stood musing a moment longer, the clear light shining over his face,
and showing an almost childlike smile coming sweetly to his lips.
“After all,” he said softly, “I haven’t been a bad fellow to-night,”
and with that pleased smile still lingering on his face, went slowly
out of the room.

And so the stillness of night descended, and deep sleep brooded over
the town as the lights went out.

Crichton was a well-governed city: no rude broils disturbed its hours
of darkness. Decency was in power there, and made itself obeyed. You
might see a doctor’s buggy whirl by, like a ghost of a carriage, its
light wheels faintly crunching the gravel; for only the business
streets were paved. Now and then, on still nights, might be heard the
grating of ropes, as some vessel sailed up to the wharf after a long
ocean voyage. Perhaps a woman in one of the houses on the hill above
would hear that sound through her dream, and start up to listen,
fancying that, in the word of command the soft breeze bore to her
casement, she could detect a familiar voice long unheard and anxiously
waited for. Perhaps the sailor, whose swift keel had shot like an arrow
past the heavy junk of Chinese waters, and scattered, as it approached
the shore, clear reflections of tufted palms and dusky natives—perhaps
he looked eagerly up the hill to that spot which his eyes could find
without aid of chart or compass, and saw suddenly twinkle out the lamp
in the window of his home.

But except for such soft sounds and shadowy idyls, Crichton was at
night as still as sleep itself.

The Crichtonians had a pleasant saying that their city was built by a
woman, and the best compliment we can pay them is that they made this
saying proudly, and kept in honored remembrance the hand of the gentle
architect. But not so much in brick and stone was it acknowledged,
though they owed to her their first ideas of correct and symmetrical
building: in their society, high and low, in many of their pretty
customs, in their tastes, in their freedom from bigotry of opinions,
even in their government, they felt her influence.

While the city lies sleeping under the stars, strong, adult, and
beautiful, full of ambitious dreams, full, too, of kind and generous
feeling, let us go back to the time when, an infant town, it began to
use its powers, and stammer brokenly the alphabet of civilization.

Hush, fair city, all thy many thousands, while the angels watch above
thee! and, sweeter marvel yet! while the dear Lord waits unsleeping
in thy midst, where that solitary taper burns. Sleep in peace, “poor
exiled children of Eve,” and be grateful at least in dreams.

Not very long ago, this place was a wild forest, with a rude little
settlement hewn out of it on the river’s banks. It was shut in from the
world, though the world was not far distant. But the river was broad
and deep, the ocean only ten miles away, and within a few miles were
large and growing cities. Soon the sound of the axe and the saw were
heard, and little craft, sloops and schooners, floated down the Saranac
laden with lumber till the water rippled close to the rails. The story
of her growth in this regard is the story of a thousand other towns.
The vessels grew larger, their voyages longer, more houses were built,
some men became comparatively wealthy and gave employment to others,
while the majority kept the level of the employed. Social distinctions
began to show themselves, detestable ones for the most part, since
there was no social cultivation. Indeed, this poor settlement was in
a fair way to become the most odious of towns. The two meeting-houses
began to be called churches by the aspiring; the leading woman of the
town ventured to call her help a servant (on which the indignant “help”
immediately deserted her); and the first piano appeared. But let us
mention this piano with respect, for it was the pioneer of harmony.

When Crichton had about fifteen hundred inhabitants, a stranger came
there one day, as a passenger on board a bark returning from a distant
city. This bark was the chief vessel, and was owned by the three chief
men of Crichton. It had gone away laden with laths, and it brought back
tea, coffee, sugar, and other foreign groceries; and, more than all, it
brought Mr. Seth Carpenter. He was not, apparently, a very remarkable
man in any way, except as all strangers were remarkable in this young
town. He was plain-looking, rather freckled, and had a pair of small
and very bright eyes which he almost closed, in a near-sighted way,
when he wished to see well. Behind those eyes was a good deal of will
and wit, and the will to put the wit into immediate practice. Moreover,
he knew how to hold his tongue very cleverly, and baffle the curious
without offending them. Nothing but his name transpired. He might be a
mountebank, a detective, a king’s son—how were these people to know?

In fact, he was nothing more mysterious than a respectable young man
twenty-five years of age, who, having his fortune to make, had thought
best to leave his prim, sober, native town, where nothing was being
done, and where the people were mummies, and seek what, in modern
parlance, is called a “live” place. In his pockets he had nothing but
his hands; in his valise was a single change of linen.

The very morning of his arrival at Crichton, Mr. Seth Carpenter went
to the highest hill-top, and from it viewed the town, the river, and
the receding forests. He then strolled down to the river, and looked
through the mills, and from there sauntered to the ship-yard, where
he found a ship on the stocks, almost ready to be launched. He walked
round the yard, whistling softly, with an air of critical indifference.
He paused near two other men who were viewing the ship, and, since
their conference was not private, listened to it.

One of these men, a sailor, rather thought he might make up his mind to
buy that ship. Did his companion know what was likely to be asked for
it? The other reckoned, and calculated, and guessed, and expected, and
finally owned that he did not know.

Mr. Carpenter, his eyes winking fast with the sparks that came into
them, and his fingers working nervously, walked out of the yard, and
found the owner of the ship, and, still with nothing in his pockets but
his hands, made his bargain with all the coolness of a millionaire.
Before sunset, the ship was nominally his; and, before sunrise, it had
changed owners again, and the young adventurer had made five hundred
dollars by the bargain.

“I will yet rule the town!” he said exultingly, when he found himself
alone; and he kept his word. Everything prospered with him, and in a
short time even rivalry ceased. Men who had been proud to add dollar
to dollar shrank and bowed before this man who added thousand to unit.
Half the men in town, after ten years, were in his employment, and
business prospered as he prospered. In another ten years, Crichton was
a city, with all barriers down between her and the great world; but
a raw, unkempt city; jealous, superficially educated, quarrelsome,
pretentious, and rapidly crystallizing into that mould. Only a
person of supreme position and character could now change it. Mr.
Carpenter had the position, but not the character. He thought only
of money-making, and of the excitement of enterprise and power; the
rest he viewed with a pleasant indifference not without contempt. At
forty-five he was still a bachelor.

We have mentioned the first piano with respect, because others followed
in its train, rendering a music-teacher necessary; so that, after a
succession of tyros, Miss Agnes Weston came, bringing the very spirit
of harmony with her into the town she was to conquer.

She did not come as a conqueror, however; nor probably did she
anticipate the part she was to play any more than the Crichtonians
did. She came to earn her bread, and, while doing so, was anything but
popular. Nothing but her brilliant musical abilities, and the fact that
she had been educated at Leipsic, saved her from utter failure. People
did not fancy this self-possessed, unpretending young person, who could
sometimes show such a haughty front to the presuming, and who was,
moreover, so frightfully dark and sallow. They did not understand her,
and preferred to leave her very much to herself.

One person only found her not a puzzle. To Mr. Carpenter she was simply
a refined woman among uncongenial associates; becoming discontented
and unhappy there, too, before many months had passed. He did not
choose that she should go away. He had become pleasantly accustomed to
seeing her, had sometimes met her on her long walks out of town; and
once, when he had politely offered to drive her home—an offer which
any other lady in Crichton would have accepted beamingly, without the
preliminary of an introduction—had been refreshed by receiving a cold
refusal, and a surprised stare from a pair of large black eyes. The
great man, surfeited with smiles and flatteries, was immensely pleased
by this superciliousness.

But though strangely disturbed at the prospect of Miss Weston’s
leaving, he hesitated to speak the word which might detain her. A
bachelor of forty-five does not readily determine on making a sensible
marriage; it usually needs some great folly to spur him on to a change
so long deferred. He had, moreover, two other reasons for delaying: he
wanted a charming wife, and was in doubt whether even his power could
transform this lady into his ideal: the other reason had blue eyes, and
a dimple in its chin, and was a very silly reason.

But no one who knew this gentleman would expect him to remain long in
doubt on any subject. Within a month from the day he first entertained
the thought of running such a risk, Crichton was electrified by the
announcement that Mr. Carpenter was soon to be married to Miss Weston;
and, before they had recovered from their first astonishment, the
marriage had taken place, and the quiet, dark-faced music-teacher was
established as mistress of an imposing mansion on North Avenue.

It was now Mr. Carpenter’s turn to be astonished, and he was enchanted
as well. Never had he pictured to himself a woman so charming as
this grub, now become a butterfly, proved herself; and never had he
imagined that even his wife could obtain so beautiful a supremacy as
she gradually established and never lost. She was born to rule, and
seldom had such power been placed in any woman’s hands. Mr. Carpenter
was the first of her vassals. With a refined and noble arrogance, she
esteemed him as the first man in the world, because he had been the
first to appreciate and exalt her. For this she gave him a faithful,
if condescending, affection, and quoted his wishes and opinions so
constantly that one might have thought they were her only guides. So
thorough was her tact and her courtesy toward her husband he scarcely
guessed his own inferiority, and never dreamed that she was aware of it.

She grew beautiful, too, as well as amiable. Now that the drudgery of
toil was lifted from her, and her cramped talents had room for full
and exhilarating play, the swarthy skin cleared, showing a peach-like
bloom, the fine teeth lit a frequent smile, and the deep voice lost its
dull cadence, and took a musical, ringing sound.

Mrs. Carpenter used her power well. Crichton was as clay in her hands,
and she moulded it after a noble model. What arrogance could never
have done was accomplished by tact and sweetness. Her forming touch
was strong and steady, but it was smooth, and nothing escaped it.
Thoroughly womanly, speaking by her husband’s mouth when she deemed it
not fitting that her proper voice should be heard, she could influence
in matters where women do not usually care to interfere. She thought
nothing out of her province which concerned the prosperity of the town
she honored with her presence, and she inspired others with her own
enthusiasm. That streets should be wide and well kept, that public
buildings should be architecturally symmetrical, that neat cottages for
the poor, replacing their miserable huts, should start up sudden as
daisies along some quiet road—these objects all interested her, though
she worked for them indirectly.

But in social life she ruled openly; and there her good sense and good
heart, her gentle gaiety and entire uprightness, became the mould of
form. Ill-nature went out of fashion, and, in the absence of charity,
self-control became a necessity. When people of opposite creeds met at
her house, their feuds had to be laid aside for the time; and, once two
foes have smiled in each other’s faces, the frown is not so easy to
recall.

Gradually the change which had been imposed outwardly became a real
one; and, when Mrs. Carpenter died, full of years and of honors, her
spirit continued to animate the place, in its opinions and actions, at
least, if some fairer grace of heart and principle were wanting. She
died as she had lived, out of the church; though the church had ever
found her a friend, bountiful and tenderly protecting. Of its doctrines
and authority she seemed never to have thought; but the copy of the
Sistine Madonna in her drawing-room had always a vase of fresh flowers
before it.

She left no children. A niece whom she had adopted married in
Crichton, and had one descendant, a grand-daughter, living there. This
grand-daughter was Honora Pembroke.

Wake again, Crichton, for morning is come. Long rays of golden light
are shooting out of the east; and down the hillside, in the church of
S. John, Father Chevreuse is saying, _Sursum Corda_!

 TO BE CONTINUED.




FONTAINEBLEAU.

CONCLUDED.

CHARLES had a dangerous enemy in the person of the Duchesse d’Estampes.
She was furious at his being allowed to enter France at all, and still
more at his leaving it without paying such a ransom as his host might
easily have enforced; but to all her arguments and blandishments
Francis was nobly inexorable; he remained true, in this instance at
least, to the instincts of his better nature and the promptings of
knightly honor. He could not, however, resist saying to Charles, when
presenting the duchess to him: “Here is a lady who advises me to undo
at Paris the work done at Madrid.” To which the emperor replied coldly:
“If the advice be good, you ought to follow it.” The story goes—a
most improbable one, considering the position occupied by the Duchesse
d’Estampes, whose jewels were worthy of a queen of France—that at
supper that same evening, when, according to the complimentary custom
of the times, she presented Charles with the urn of perfumed water
to rinse his hands, he dropped a diamond ring at her feet, and, on
her picking it up and handing it to him, replied: “Keep it, madame;
it could not be in fitter hands.” Whether Charles bribed the _belle
savante_ with a diamond or any other device, it is certain that, before
he left, they had become very good friends, and she had quite adopted
the king’s more generous view of the case.

At the close of 1546, Francis fell ill, and was supposed to be dying.
The courtiers, true to the traditions of their race, immediately fled
from Fontainebleau to greet the Dauphin, who was at Amboise. Francis
was conscious enough to notice their disappearance, and to divine
the cause of it. It stung him to the quick, and roused him to make a
desperate effort to disappoint them. He rallied, and announced his
intention of following the procession of _Corpus Christi_ next day.
The doctors remonstrated, but in vain; nothing could shake the king’s
determination. He dressed himself in his robes of state, had his pale
cheeks brightened with rouge, and thus, under a mask of returning
health, appeared in the midst of his astonished court, and held the
canopy during the procession. But the ceremony was no sooner over than
he fell exhausted into the arms of his attendants, and was carried
back to bed. He remained for some time unconscious; on recovering his
senses, his first exclamation was, “Well, at any rate, I will give them
one more fright!” Four months after this childish piece of bravado, he
died at the Château of Rambouillet.

The forest of Fontainebleau was infested during his reign with a
quantity of noxious vermin—serpents eighteen feet in length, which
did great damage, and filled the inhabitants with terror. One of these
snakes, by his depredations on man and beast, earned the reputation
for himself of a sort of mythological dragon. Some bold men had
undertaken to combat him, but all had perished in the attempt. Francis
declared at last that he would fight and kill the dragon himself. He
equipped himself accordingly in a suit of armor covered all over with
long blades as sharp as razors, and, thus armed, sallied forth to the
perilous duel. The serpent coiled itself round the glistening blades,
and, in clasping his victim, cut himself to pieces. This fantastic
exploit of Francis was magnified by the adulation of his courtiers into
a deed of supernatural prowess.

The death of Francis was the signal for the downfall of the Duchesse
d’Estampes, who retreated like a dethroned sovereign before the now
transcendent star of Diana of Poitiers. Diana’s frailty was unredeemed
by the intellectual gifts and native kindliness that distinguished
her rival. There is no counterpart even in French history to the
sway exercised by this Dalila over Henri II. Madame Du Barry’s is
the nearest approach to it, but even that falls far short of the
precedent. Diana not only ruled the king and the kingdom, but openly
usurped the honors, prerogatives, and official state of a legitimate
queen. Her cipher, interlaced with Henri’s, was carved and emblazoned
on all the public monuments; not a door or gallery of Fontainebleau,
aptly nicknamed by the people “the Temple of Diana,” that was not
surmounted by the monogram H. D. It was to be seen in the stained glass
windows of the chapel, as well as on the plate served on the royal
table under the eyes of Catherine de Medicis. Diana appropriated the
crown jewels, and appeared at all the public ceremonies decked in the
hitherto sacred regalia of the queens of France. Catherine looked on
and was silent—she could wait; her hour would come. It came sooner
than either she or Diana anticipated. The king fell mortally wounded
in a tournament given to celebrate the nuptials of his daughter, the
Princesse Elizabeth, with the King of Spain (1559). He was carried to
the nearest shelter; Catherine flew to his side, and gave orders that
no one should be allowed to approach him; at this crisis, at least, the
wife should be supreme. Diana soon presented herself at the door, but
the guard refused her admittance; the queen had forbidden it. “And who
dares to give me orders?” demanded Diana, with flashing eyes; “if the
king breathes, I have no master yet.” Soon he had ceased to breathe,
and Diana, without further protest, bowed to the queen’s command, which
bade her “restore the crown jewels, and retire forthwith to her Château
d’Anet.”

Her beauty was marvellous, and lasted in all its bloom long after
the meridian of life was past. Brantôme describes her at the age of
sixty-five as “still beautiful as a girl.” The death of Henri II.
was the signal for Catherine de Medicis’ real queenhood. Her reign
lasted over thirty years, and may be justly styled, in the most
comprehensive sense of the word, a reign of terror for the nation. Her
first business was to create discord in the family as a prelude to
civil war in the state. She imported into France, with the enlightened
love of the arts imbibed at the court of the Medicis, their crafty
Italian policy; a system of cabal and intrigue which worked well
enough in the narrow compass of petty states, but was fruitful of
the most disastrous results in a large kingdom where government can
only be carried on successfully by well-organized institutions and
strong and wise laws justly administered. Catherine was born with a
genius for intrigue; her love for conspiracy amounted to a mania. The
faculty of dissembling, with which nature had so pre-eminently endowed
her, did her good service in the first years of her residence at
Fontainebleau. It required all the tact of an accomplished dissembler
to steer between the rival powers of the Duchesse d’Estampes and Diana
of Poitiers—a feat which the wily pupil of the Medicis achieved
with singular success. To the last day of their reign and her own
thraldom, she contrived to remain friendly with both. Catherine’s
ambition was unbounded, and drove her to excesses of wickedness that
have few parallels in modern history. She systematically labored to
corrupt the minds and hearts of her children, and to sow dissensions
amongst them, so as to draw the power that should have been theirs
into her own hands. Jealousy of one son, Francis II., drove her to
espouse the cause of the Huguenots for a time; and, when his death
placed the sceptre in the hands of his brother Charles IX., she veered
round, and persecuted her quondam _protégés_ with cold cynicism and
ferocity. Five civil wars can be traced home to the dark intrigues of
this unnatural mother—a woman who never took a straight road when she
could find a crooked one, who regarded human beings as an apparatus
composed of an infinite variety of tools to be used one set against
another as the special nature of her work demanded. The massacre of
S. Bartholomew was but another manifestation of the same spirit which
had led her to stir up the Huguenots to revolt when she thought their
rebellion would serve her aims. This sanguinary despot had most of
the foibles of a woman, combined with the fiercer passions of a man.
Her frivolity and extravagance knew no bounds; and when her ministers
ventured to hint to her that the lavish prodigality of her expenditure
was exasperating the people, and might lead to trouble, she shrugged
her shoulders, and replied, with serene simplicity: “Good heavens!
one must live.” The sweet, pathetic face of Marie Stuart appears for
a moment at Fontainebleau in the earlier days of Catherine’s rule—a
bright meteor flashing on a troubled sky; poor Marie, whose sky was
gathering up the storm that was to break at no distant day over her
young life, and beat it some twenty years with a fury that was only to
be silenced by the great tranquillizer—death. Fierce and long-raging
were the storms that swept over Fontainebleau through the same
darkling years. Henri de Navarre bears down on it like a whirlwind,
and forces the queen, with her son Charles IX., to fly before him and
his Huguenots to Melun. They have not taken breath at Melun when the
Duc de Guise meets them like a contrary wind, and blows them back to
Paris. Soon follows the night of S. Bartholomew, that blackest of
black nights, under whose pall, as it has been pithily put by a modern
Frenchman, “a few scoundrels killed a few scoundrels.” Its gloom was
still hanging over the city when Catherine and the king were bowling
along the road to Fontainebleau—he shuddering, a Macbeth terrified at
his share in the ghastly deed; she triumphant, unappalled by ghost or
conscience, her sharp, elastic mind busy on the next step to be taken.
How was she to undo the one awkward consequence of her triumph—the
remorse and mistrust of this faint-hearted son? A hundred and fifty
maids, miscalled of honor, were recruited from the beauty of France,
and brought to Fontainebleau to aid in the task of soothing the king’s
scruples and mending the queen’s nets. But her hold upon Charles
was loosened, and not all the charms of all the houris of Mahomet’s
paradise would lure it to her grasp again. Catherine, however, could
accommodate herself to the decrees of fortune, and turn even her own
blunders to account. Charles, obdurately sullen, refused to revoke the
edict of the pacification of Amboise, thus quenching for once, instead
of lighting, the smouldering flames of civil war. Catherine smiled
bland approval on her blighted schemes, and was full of satisfaction,
as if, instead of chaining the war-dogs, she had been allowed to let
them loose. She received the ambassadors in regal state, and laid
herself out to captivate all men by her smiles and honeyed courtesies;
feuds and jealousies were lulled to sleep with soft music of delight;
all the heads of all the factions, civil and religious, turned in the
dance till they were giddy, carousing, and embracing, and pledging one
another in loving cups, while their followers were cutting each other’s
throats hard by; fireworks sent rockets blazing to the sky—merry
rockets, red, white, and green; and Fontainebleau was once more a
palace of Armida, an Arabian night’s dream, where men came and drank,
and were inebriated. A dark and agitated scene is that which France
presents at the close of Catherine’s reign. We turn from it with relief
to see Henri de Navarre enter his “good city” of Paris. After the
peace of Vervins, which put an end to religious wars in France, and
allowed Europe to breathe once more, the gay Béarnais came to enjoy his
well-won conquest at Fontainebleau. Sully, the true and trusty friend,
goes with him, supreme, though not alone, in his influence with the
soft-hearted monarch. Gabrielle d’Estrée contests the field with him;
but, to Henri’s honor be it said, she is defeated. Gabrielle had, in a
weak moment, extracted from the king a promise that he would make her
Queen of France—a promise which, as a matter of course, he immediately
confided to Sully. The minister burst out into indignant protest, and
outswore the Béarnese himself in the vehemence of his indignation. They
parted, as usual, in a rage, and, as usual, Henri soon calmed down, and
declared that Sully was right. When Gabrielle recurred to the promise,
he told her the result of his conversation with “my friend Rosny.”
The lady flew into a tantrum, called Rosny hard names, and wound up
by insisting that “that valet” should be dismissed from the court.
The insolent appellation, coming from such a quarter, roused the king
to a sense of his own disgraceful weakness. “Ventre S. Gris, madame,”
he cried, “if I must needs dismiss either, it shall be you a thousand
times rather than my faithful Rosny—my friend without whom I could
not live!” Gabrielle saw that she had overstepped the mark; for Henri,
if he had the faults of a man, was no emasculated puppet, like so many
of his predecessors, to be bound hand and foot by a Dalila; he had
still the spirit of a king. Gabrielle fell at his feet, and begged his
pardon, and Sully’s too. Shortly after this incident, Sully’s fears on
her account were put an end to by her death. Henri’s grief for a time
was so violent as almost to deprive him of his reason. But his fickle
heart soon found consolation in a new allegiance. Mlle. d’Entragnes was
the next to captivate it. For this fair siren, Henri went so far as to
draw out a written promise of marriage. Before, however, giving the
document into the hands of the fair lady, he, of course, showed it to
Sully, the dauntless Sully, who was the most discreet of confidants,
but the most unmanageable of accomplices. This time he was too deeply
moved for anger; he did not bully the king, but coolly read the paper
twice over, and then, tearing it deliberately into four fragments, he
flung it into the fire. “_Parbleu_, Rosny, you are mad!” cried the
king. “Would to God, sire, I were the only madman in France!” replied
Rosny. Henri turned on his heel, and there was no more said about
that marriage. He married finally Marie de Medicis. She gave birth to
the Dauphin Louis XIII. at Fontainebleau. Henri’s joy was unbounded.
He made his wife a present on the occasion of the Château of Monceau
with its beautiful park and grounds, which had formerly been a gift to
Gabrielle d’Estrée. Marie de Medicis was blest with wonderfully robust
health—a fact which her husband comments upon rather quaintly in a
letter to Sully ten days after the birth of the Dauphin. “My wife,”
he says, “dresses her own hair, and talks already of getting up; my
friend, she has a terribly robust constitution!” Sad pity that anything
should spoil the attractive beauty of Henri IV.’s portrait as it hangs
before us in the long gallery of royal sitters at Fontainebleau; but,
alas! there it is, the black blot on the bright disk, the treacherous
breach of hospitality perpetrated in his name toward an old companion
and brother-in-arms. There is abundant proof that the arrest of
Maréchal de Biron and his death were repugnant and painful to the king,
and that for some days he combated both by every means in his power,
stooping to tears and passionate entreaty with Biron, and pleading
eloquently in his behalf with his own ministers; and that it was only
after all his efforts had failed to convince the latter, or to wring
from Biron’s stubborn pride the confession which could have saved him,
that Henri’s signature was obtained for the death-warrant. This no
doubt absolves him from the odium of a cold-blooded, premeditated act
of vengeance; but it is a poor apology to say that he only consented
to invite his old brother-in-arms to Fontainebleau, and let him be
arrested in a dark corridor at nightfall, and taken to prison, and
eventually put to death, because he was overruled and circumvented by
the iron will of his wife Marie with the “terribly robust constitution.”

The gardens of Fontainebleau are full of delicate and poetic memories
of Henri de Navarre in which Rosny plays a prominent part. The
courtiers looked on at the familiar, schoolboy friendship between the
king and his minister with envious eyes, and set to work with malignant
diligence to loosen the bond. They succeeded in getting up such a
plausible story against Rosny that the king, who had been some time
without seeing him, was staggered; he examined the deed of accusation,
and admitted that the circumstances looked badly. The minister was
in Paris working away for his master as hard as any galley-slave at
the arsenal. Henri sent for him. When he arrived, the king was on
the terrace surrounded by the court; he greeted his friend with a
gracious formality foreign to the habitual free and easy manner of
their intercourse. Sully was pained and mystified. But the restraint
was equally intolerable to both. Henri called him aside presently,
and they walked up and down an alley in sight of the terrace, but out
of ear-shot. The king pulled out the deed of accusation, and handed
it to his friend. Rosny cast his eye contemptuously over the paper,
and in a few words scattered all its contents to the winds. Henri saw
that he had been the dupe of a base, designing jealousy, and broke
out into bitter self-reproach at having been led to doubt even for a
moment the fidelity of his tried and faithful servant. He held out his
hand; Sully, overcome with emotion, was about to fall on his knees to
kiss it; but, quick as lightning, the king caught him in his arms,
exclaiming: “Take care, Rosny! Those fellows yonder will fancy I am
forgiving you.”

The visit of the Spanish ambassador to Fontainebleau led to the
construction of the large and handsome Chapel of the Trinity. After
going all over the interminable galleries and halls of the vast
edifice, they came to the chapel. It was very pretty, but quite out
of keeping with the space and splendor of the rest of the building.
Don Pedro’s minister was scandalized at the irreverence implied in
the contrast, and, with the impulse of a Spaniard, exclaimed, looking
round at the narrow walls of the little sanctuary: “Your house would
be perfect, sire, if God were as well lodged in it as the king.” Henri
was pleased with the outspoken rebuke, and at once set about building a
temple worthier of the divine worship.

His ungovernable passion for the chase was a frequent cause of
altercation between himself and Sully, who shared his master’s love for
the sport, but, unlike him, knew where to stop in the indulgence of it.
The title of _Grand Veneur_,[127] attached to the office of master of
the royal hounds, dates from Henri’s time, and takes its rise from a
phantom which made its appearance in the forest in the shape of a man
larger than life, dressed in black, and surrounded by a pack of hounds,
and who vanished as soon as the spectator tried to approach him. Sully
had long laughed at the story of this spectre, but, once coming to meet
the king, he came face to face himself with the _grand veneur_; he
owned to the fact, but was still sceptical, though unable in any way to
explain away the mysterious apparition, which he took great pains to do.

Louis XIII. resided much at Fontainebleau, and continued the work of
embellishment, which needed little now to make it perfect. Anne of
Austria enriched the new chapel with many valuable paintings. For a
period, Richelieu is the presiding genius of the grand old palace. Then
he passes away, and makes room for Mazarin, who received here Henrietta
of England with a splendor becoming her double majesty of misfortune
and royalty.

The first time that Louis XIV. honored the palace with his presence was
on the occasion of signing the marriage contract between Ladislas of
Poland and Marie de Gonzagne (1645); the marriage itself was celebrated
at the Palais Royal.

Christina of Sweden furnishes one of the most thrilling chapters in
the history of Fontainebleau. This eccentric woman, whose ambition it
was to entwine the laurels of Sappho with the jewels of her crown,
gave up the throne of Sweden to wander about the world like an Arab.
That sort of eccentricity being rarer in those days than in our own,
it passed for genius, wisdom, anything the owner chose to call it.
Christina gained the reputation of possessing extraordinary erudition,
and a mind gifted with the powers of a man, as well as adorned with
the graces of an accomplished woman. Anne of Austria was filled with
admiration for the queen who cast away a crown to go in pursuit of
science and philosophy; and, when Christina announced her intention
of visiting France, the regent made preparations to receive her which
surpassed anything that Fontainebleau had witnessed since the reception
of Charles V. by Francis I. Christina made her entry on horseback,
surrounded by a guard of honor composed of the highest nobles of the
kingdom, all magnificently attired, and followed by a _cortége_ of
noble dames, some riding on horses caparisoned in housings of cloth
of gold and silver, others drawn in chariots of state. The _fêtes_
given for the royal Sappho’s entertainment were on a scale equal
to the splendor of this reception. She showed her sense of Anne of
Austria’s appreciation of her superior merits by making herself very
agreeable to her; but she earned the dislike of the young king by
ridiculing openly his boyish love for Marie Mancini, and pointing
an epigram at the fair Italian. Lo, when, on her return from Italy,
she intimated her intention of again coming to France, Louis sent
word that he placed the Palace of Fontainebleau at her disposal, but
begged she would not show herself in Paris. During this second visit,
Christina committed the crime which has so irretrievably damned her
memory. Monaldeschi, who had been her pampered favorite for years,
rightly or wrongly incurred her displeasure. Christina determined that
he should die, and did not pause to consider that it was adding a
darker hue to her crime to perpetrate it under the roof of a brother
king. The hour suited her vengeance—that was enough. The whole thing
was planned with a business-like coolness worthy of Louis XI. in his
best days. The queen ordered her victim to be taken to the _galerie
des cerfs_, and herself gave the most minute instructions as to how
he was to be killed, and by whom: he was not to be despatched by one
or even a few successive blows, but struck a great many times and at
short intervals, in hopes of extracting certain avowals from him.
Christina then retired to an adjoining room, and remained in animated
conversation with her _entourage_ while the horrible tragedy was going
on close by. Occasionally she sent in to ask if Monaldeschi were dead;
when the answer again and again came back that he was still struggling,
she expressed first surprise, and then impatience, and at last, unable
to brook the delay, she rose and opened the door of the gallery;
Monaldeschi, on beholding her, stretched out his arms in an attitude
of supplication, but the queen exclaimed sharply, “What! thou art not
yet dead?” and, walking up to where he lay writhing on the ground,
she slapped him on the face “with that hand,” says Voltaire, “which
had loaded him with benefits.” Monaldeschi had cried out for a priest
to help him to die, and this last grace had been granted. Christina
stood by till her victim was dead, and then quietly paid the assassins,
and went back to her conversation. The news of the abominable deed of
blood travelled quickly to Paris; as soon as Mazarin heard it, he sent
her a peremptory order to leave Fontainebleau and France forthwith,
adding that the King of France harbored no assassins as his guests; to
which Christina returned the contemptuous reply that “she was queen
wherever she was, and took no orders from the King of France, and
was accountable for her acts neither to him nor any one else.” It is
curious to observe how little horror seems to have been produced in the
public mind by this execrable murder, committed under circumstances
which rendered it tenfold more revolting; the ladies and courtiers of
the time make no more than a passing mention of it in their letters,
and, in speaking of Christina, reserve their sharpest criticism for
her style of dressing her hair and her manner of dancing, which they
condemn as “fantastic and awkward.” Two years after this event, we find
Christina abjectly begging for an invitation to the carnival ballet
in which Louis XIV. was to dance! The fact of the invitation being
granted is perhaps as significant as that of its being asked for. It
was accompanied, however, with the condition that the Queen of Sweden
should only remain in Paris the three days that the ballet lasted; this
she agreed to, and Mazarin’s apartments at the Louvre were placed at
her disposal.

Louis XIV. restored Catherine de Medicis’ pavilion at Fontainebleau,
called the _Pavillon des Poêles_,[128] for Mary of Modena, and fitted
it up in a style of elegance and splendor befitting rather a royal
bride of France than an exiled queen. But all his graceful gallantry to
the beautiful exile, and professions of brotherly love to her husband,
did not prevent Louis from signing in 1698 the treaty whereby he
pledged himself to recognize the Prince of Orange, and not to disturb
him in the possession of his kingdom.

Louis XV. was married in the chapel at Fontainebleau to Marie Leczinska
(1725). He never cared for the palace as a residence, and merely used
it as a hunting-lodge. His first-born son died there. Shortly before
his death, the young prince, leaning over a balcony from one of the
upper rooms of the palace which looked towards Paris, was heard saying
to himself with a deep-drawn sigh: “What delight the sovereign must
feel who makes the happiness of so many men!” A great deal has been
built on this exclamation—regrets for the blighted promise which
the feeling that prompted it held out to France. But twenty years
before, Louis XV. had said as much, and felt it, very likely, just as
sincerely. Fontainebleau was spared the shame of the saturnalian orgies
that profaned Versailles and Trianon under the reign of Du Barry. The
grim towers that had sheltered Francis, and the Medicis, and Henry
de Navarre had many tales to tell that were better left untold, but
at their worst they showed white beside the vulgar blackness of the
Pompadour and Du Barry chronicles.

Louis XVI., who seldom visited Fontainebleau, has left no mark
of his passages there. Under the Revolution, it was used as the
military school which has since been transferred to St. Cyr. Napoleon
compensated the royal old château for the neglect of his predecessors;
he preferred it, next to St. Cloud, to all the other palaces of which
France had given him temporary possession, and repaired it with
elaborate magnificence, adhering rigidly to the original style in
every detail. He also added a stirring chapter to its history. When,
by his orders, General Radet scaled the walls of the Quirinal at three
o’clock in the morning, and, attended by a band of soldiers, brutally
dragged Pius VII. from his bed, it was to Fontainebleau that the
venerable pontiff was conveyed; here he was kept in close confinement,
and fed upon the bread of insult, with which it was Napoleon’s wont to
nourish his captives; but Pius VII., disarmed, isolated from friends
and counsellors, surrounded by spies paid to interpret his every word
and gesture according to the interests and wishes of their paymaster,
broken in bodily health, his mind bending under the accumulated weight
of every torture that ingenious cruelty could devise, was still a
greater conqueror, in the noblest sense of the word, than Napoleon ever
was on the field of battle. Moreover, a day of reckoning was at hand.
Fontainebleau, which had been the theatre of so many of Napoleon’s
most gorgeous pageants of the melodramatic and sentimental kind—for
he could be sentimental, this great butcher of men and despoiler of
crowns; he could, “with delicate forethought, and at vast expense,
cause a multitude of pine-trees to be planted” amidst the elms and the
oaks of the sombre Medicean forest, in order that his young Austrian
bride might find some reminiscence of home when she walked out for
her evening stroll—Fontainebleau was to witness the going down of
his sun. Fortune, exasperated at last by the excesses of her spoilt
child, plucked the brilliant meteor from the sky, and cast it out
into the darkness. Once, in an interview with Pius VII. during his
captivity, Napoleon, after lavishing all his art of flattery on the
pope, stooping to tender caresses and the most winning attitude of
supplication to wrest from his captive the coveted concession of the
Concordat, presently paused to see the effect of the experiment. Pius
VII. was silent awhile, then, looking up at the emperor with a smile of
withering scorn, he answered: _Commediante!_[129] Like lightning the
tactics were changed; curses rained where kisses had been showered;
threats and gestures fierce as blows succeeded to bland entreaties;
the actor struck his forehead with clenched fists, stamped, grew red
and white in turn, and swore that a thunderbolt should be hurled by
the Tuileries at the Vatican which should crush her defiant pride, and
bury all Christendom under its ruins. Again he “paused for a reply.”
Pius raised his eyes, and, looking fixedly at Napoleon, murmured,
this time with no smile: _Tragediante!_[130] The whole life and
character of the man are summed up in those two epithets: _commediante,
tragediante_. But if Bonaparte played comedy well, tragedy was his
forte, and his last appearance at Fontainebleau was a splendid
farewell representation. It is a little past mid-day. A bright April
sun pours down from a cloudless sky upon the courtyard of the palace;
the horse-shoe staircase, bathed in the unmitigated sunshine, gleams
white and majestic—a stage of the antique fashion well suited for
the closing act about to be played upon it. The audience are already
gathered to the place; thousands of the inhabitants have flocked in
from the town and neighborhood, but the inner circle, the reserved
seats, are filled by the grenadiers of the guard, the Old Guard of a
hundred battles and as many victories, and by the marines of the young
guard. The time seems long, for every heart is beating in sympathetic
emotion with the coming crisis. At last the curtain rises. The doors
opening on the horse-shoe staircase are thrown back, and Napoleon comes
forward. A cry goes up to him from the depths of those many thousand
hearts. But hush! He waves his hand for silence. He is going to speak.
The crowd sways to and fro, a human wave ebbing at the base of an
adamantine rock, whence its idol of twenty years looks down upon it.

“Officers, non-commissioned officers of the Old Guard, I bid you
farewell!... For twenty years you have given me satisfaction. Be
faithful to the new sovereign whom France has chosen. Grieve not for
my fate; I might have died, nothing would have been easier to me—but,
no; I shall to the last tread the path of honor. I will write what
we have done together....” Sobs, such as break the stout hearts of
warlike men, interrupt him. He waits for a moment, and then resumes:
“I cannot embrace you all, but I will embrace your general. Approach,
General Petit.” The general advances, and Napoleon clasps him in a long
embrace. “Bring me the eagle!”

They bring it. He gathers the colors to his heart, and kisses the
symbol passionately.

“Dear eagle! May these kisses find an echo in the hearts of every brave
man!... My children, farewell.” The voice that had electrified them on
a thousand battle-fields ceased to speak; it has stirred those brave
hearts to their depths; the veterans sob like women. Napoleon descends
the monumental steps of the horse-shoe, and passes through the midst
of them in silence. Bertrand is waiting for him at the gate. He gets
into his carriage, and drives away. Thus the unrivalled actor took
his leave of the world-stage on which he had figured so long and so
brilliantly. The colors which he clasped in that last touching embrace
were henceforth treasured as a sacred thing; half a century later, they
were laid on his tomb at the Invalides.

The gallery of Diana, which had been left unfinished by Napoleon,
was completed after the restoration of the Bourbon. Louis XVIII. has
commemorated the achievements on a slab bearing in golden letters
the date of the completion of the gallery—“_in the 20th year of my
reign!_” And on the table on which Napoleon signed his abdication he
caused the following to be engraved: “The 5th of April, 1814, Napoleon
Bonaparte signed his abdication on this table in the king’s cabinet,
the second after the bedroom, at Fontainebleau.” With the singular
mixture of obstinacy and simplicity which characterized his Bourbon
mind, he systematically ignored in conversation and in all official
deeds the reign of Napoleon altogether, and continued to the last to
date as if that stormy meteor had never broken in upon the dull horizon
of his sovereignty. Those inscriptions are the only two traces of Louis
XVIII.’s passage which are to be found at Fontainebleau.

Charles X. never resided there, and seldom even visited the palace. It
fell into sad neglect, but was entirely restored by Louis Philippe, not
only the edifice, but the pictures and costly works of art with which a
long line of sovereigns had so magnificently endowed it.

Under the Empire, Fontainebleau came in for the share of imperial favor
which was so impartially divided amongst the still habitable castles of
France. Every autumn it was the scene of brilliant hunting-parties and
varied hospitalities.

We will close this fragmentary record of the past of Fontainebleau by
an incident, which, though not yet within the range of history, may one
day take its place there, and be quoted with interest as an indication
of the character of one destined, for aught we know, to play his part
in the annals of the coming age.

The Prince Imperial, then a mere child, was playing one day in the
_galerie des cerfs_ with a little friend of his, the son of an officer
of the household. Suddenly, in the midst of their game, the latter
rather irrelevantly remarked: “This is where Queen Hortense killed a
man.” “Queen Hortense was my grandmother,” retorted the young prince
indignantly; “she never killed anybody!” “Oh! but she did, though,”
persisted his companion; “she killed one somewhere hereabouts; I’ve
read it in a book.”

This was too formidable an argument to be met by mere words; the
descendant of the injured Hortense clenched his little fist, and laid
on vigorously to the traducer of his grandmother. The noise of the
battle soon drew the attention of some ladies who were at the other end
of the gallery; they ran to separate the combatants, and inquire the
cause of the row; but the young prince, crimson with rage, and with the
big tears rolling down his cheeks, broke away from them, and rushed to
his mother, who was somewhere in the neighborhood.

“He says that my grandmother killed a man,” cried the child out loud,
“and I say it is a lie!” Then, throwing his arms round the empress’
neck, he whispered: “It’s not true, is it, that she ever killed
anybody?”




LAUGHING DICK CRANSTONE.

IT was not that soft, white, feathery stuff that flutters to the ground
pleasantly and lighter than the fall of a rose-leaf; that, dancing and
darting around and about everywhere with gleaming whiteness and varied
and graceful motion, makes the empty air seem a living thing smiling
at its own frolic. No; the snow was not of that character at all. It
was a sharp, fierce storm that made at you in a determined manner, as
though it had a sort of spite against you and the whole human race
generally for bringing it down out of its bed somewhere up there among
the clouds; that, as it was compelled to make the journey, made up its
mind to let you and everybody else have the full benefit of it. So
down it came fiercely in bitter lines so regular that a William Tell
might shoot an arrow through them without touching a single flake. It
rushed at you, it beat you in the face, it snarled around your legs, it
powdered your hair, and made for the small of your back; it peeped up
your sleeves, and made acquaintance with the inside as well as outside
of your boots, as though it thought of getting a pair itself, and
wished to examine your shoemaker’s handiwork. It laughed at umbrellas,
and made such a savage assault on your overcoat and waterproof that it
was plainly as enraged as it could be at being foiled, and in revenge
settled down on them, till it made you look from top to toe as though
you had been just rolled in feathers, _minus_ the tar.

Ah! it was a dreary day—a day that made one shiver and think of the
poor, and shiver again. It spoiled the play of the children, and little
Bessy would sit “anyhow,” as her nurse termed it, in her chair, with
one hand mechanically endeavoring to pull the cane at the back of it
to pieces, while her big round blue eyes would look out in silent
wonder at the ugly day; and little Benny would flatten his already flat
nose in desperation against the window-pane, creating quite a little
atmosphere of fog around him; while Harry, the big brother, ten years
old last birthday, would make a false attempt to keep up his spirits by
riding that imaginary horse round and round the room, making him curvet
and caper, and shy at that corner, and evince a particular dislike to
the nurse, and kick so furiously at the door-key, till a crack of the
whip suddenly brought the restive animal to his senses, and Harry would
be still a moment, and gaze silently with the rest of the world out at
the cheerless snow.

Was it the snow that Cranstone of Cranstone Hall was gazing at so
fixedly out of the library window? Was it the snow that made those
cheeks so deadly white, save for the two little purple spots on each
of them? Was it the snow that made him clench his hands till the nails
almost tore the flesh? What was he looking at so fixedly out there in
the Park? What did he see out in the blinding snow, driving down on
his own meadow-lands, and draping the strong forms of his ancestral
oaks in mystic drapery, while from the bottom where the river ran,
stole up a snaky mist in curling ashy-gray folds? He saw no snow, no
mist, no oaks: he looked through them, beyond them, straight out at a
tall form striding along, its back to Cranstone Hall, and its face to
the wide, wide, bitter, cold world—striding on, and on, and on, and
never looking back to the home where he fell one day like one of these
little snowflakes out of heaven, and grew up straight, and tall, and
honest, and true, and manly, with a head, and a handsome head too, on
his shoulders, and such a heart in his bosom!—the pride of all the
country-side, and the heir of Cranstone Hall. It was Dick Cranstone
whose figure his father was gazing at so fixedly, though that figure
had been gone three hours, and was far out of sight—Dick Cranstone,
his father’s only son, the only relic of his dead mother, the boy on
whom all the father’s strong heart was now set, who was striding along
through the snow and the mist out into the bleak world on that winter
morning, cast out from his father’s hearth and heart, driven away with
a bitter curse.

What had Dick Cranstone done to bring down this curse and chastisement
on his handsome young head? Dick and his father had been companions
as well as father and son, for Ralph Cranstone was still a youngish
man, and bore such years as he had well. His heart and his hopes were
centred in this boy, whose mother had been snatched away so early; and
when he saw the bright-eyed, laughing lad ripen into a great, handsome,
clever young fellow, who rode with him, and played cricket with him,
and scoured over the country neck and neck with him—for there was a
dare-devil drop in the Cranstones—it would be hard to find a happier
man in this world than Ralph, or a more loving son than Dick; in fact,
“Oh! they’re as fond of each other as the Cranstones” had grown into
a proverb in all the country-side. What, then, was Dick’s great crime
that left him in a day fatherless, and his father childless, and rent
asunder with a fierce wrench two hearts which all their lives had run
together?

The Cranstones were an old family, older than Elizabeth, though it
was at her time that Cranstone Hall first came into their possession.
That was a good reign for people blessed with an elastic conscience.
The Elizabethan Cranstone was a Catholic. He had the choice of running
his neck in a noose and dying a martyr for his faith, or renouncing
the religion he believed in, and taking instead the goodly Abbey of
Cranstone, with its river, meads, and all its appurtenances. He did not
hesitate long. Like most of his countrymen, he threw up his religion,
and took to the abbey, turned out the monks, became a bitter persecutor
of the church, changed the name of the place to Cranstone Hall, lived
to a good old age, and the rich man died and was buried—in Cranstone
churchyard. The old country folk round about tell you that this
particular old Cranstone, whom they look upon as the first of the race,
“died a-yellin’ for holy water like hell-foire”; but then, such people
are always foolish. However, to come back to the story, the Cranstones
remained from that day out a flourishing, wealthy family, strongly
devoted to church and state, fierce persecutors of the Catholics whilst
persecution was the fashion; when not so, what Catholics call bigoted
Protestants.

Ralph was no exception to the rule. He honored the queen, and hated the
pope and Papistry as genuinely as the old Elizabethan Cranstone had
professed to do. He thought the country was going to ruin when he found
Papists throwing up their heads, and walking about on English ground,
just as though they had as much right there as anybody else. And when
his old friend and neighbor Harry Clifford, who had been at Eton and
Oxford with him, and whom Ralph had pronounced over and over again “the
best fellow going,” turned Catholic one fine day, as soon as Ralph
heard of it, and met Harry by chance at a friend’s, he turned on his
heel, and walked out of the house, leaving the latter standing there
with the old friendly hand outstretched towards him. From that day out,
all intercourse ceased between the Cliffords and Cranstones, and the
old friends were as dead to each other as though they had never met.

In good time, Dick went off to Oxford, with an Eton fame as a good bat
and all-round cricketer, a handy man at the oar, the best runner and
jumper in the school, added to the lesser reputation of being able to
knock off the best Latin poem in the college, and running Old Barnacles
hard for the head of the class—Old Barnacles, who did nothing but grub
at his books night and day, and who sucked at Greek roots as little
chaps would at lollipops. He made one of “the eleven” that year against
Cambridge at Lord’s, and saved the game from becoming a disastrous
defeat to his university by his plucky and cool play against that
terrible left-hand bowler. How proud his father was of him that day! He
could almost have gone up and shaken hands with Harry Clifford, whom
he saw there with his wife and a beautiful young lady in the carriage,
so divided in looks between Harry and his sweet wife that she could
have belonged to no one else but to them. “A Clifford to the tip of her
nose!” he kept repeating to himself, as he stole a sly glance at them
now and then, and yearned for a grasp of his old friend’s hand; but the
stubborn Cranstone blood was too strong within him, and he turned away
slowly to watch the game.

It was going badly for Oxford in the second innings; the Cambridge men
had a hard hitter in, who hit so hard and so furiously, and had so
completely “mastered the bowling,” that the score mounted rapidly, and
every new hit elicited shouts of applause for Cambridge. All over the
field flew the ball, sometimes in among the rows of carriages which
lined the ground. “They’ll never get him out,” said the spectators
one to another, as the Cantab struck away right and left as freely as
though he were playing with the bowlers. “There she goes! Bravo! Well
hit!” they shouted, as the ball flew from the bat right across the
field, straight and furious, full at the carriage where were seated
the Cliffords. “Look out there! Look out—look out!” they shout, as
the carriage party, conversing together, are utterly unconscious of
the danger approaching them. It takes a long time to tell this here,
though it was all over in half a minute. The cricket-ball was flying
at lightning speed straight at the head of the young lady, who at the
moment was looking in another direction, inattentive to the warning
cries that rose from all parts of the field. The shouts were hushed
into that deadly silence that will settle so awfully over a vast
assembly when every eye is bent in one direction, and every heart
beats as one great one with the expectation of immediate disaster. All
saw the danger of the young girl, but no one could prevent it, when
suddenly there is a rush of something white, a leap in the air, a bare
arm flashes in the sun, and the ball is clasped in the hand of one
who never missed a catch yet, as he falls back over the side of the
carriage, right in among the party, holding the ball all the while, and
the great Cantab is out.

“Bravo, Cranstone! Bravo, Cranstone!” What a shout from the Oxonians!
What a shout and a rush from all sides of the field to applaud the
young fellow whose Eton fame had not belied him for speed, and whose
swiftness and agility, and that high leap in the air and splendid
catch, had perhaps saved a young girl’s life, while it rid his side
of a terrible foe, and revived the hopes of Cambridge! But Cranstone
never heeded the shouts; he lay back there in the carriage, lifeless,
his head on Harry Clifford’s knee, his eyes closed, and his face white,
while the frightened ladies, who scarcely yet knew from what a danger
they had escaped, bent over him in terror. He had fallen heavily on the
side of the carriage, and the shock caused him to faint.

The crowd is parted by a strong man, who rushes wildly to the spot.
“Dick, my boy, Dick, are you hurt? Good God! Harry, it’s my son. Water,
some of you—water. Clear away there, and let him have air!” The water
is brought, and in a few moments he revives, to open his eyes on a pair
of the tenderest blue eyes looking pityingly and frightened into his.
A shake or two, like a strong mastiff, and he is all right again; the
game goes on, and, though Oxford was beaten, that catch lives in men’s
memories; while Ralph Cranstone and Harry Clifford were old friends
again, and Mr. Dick Cranstone was reintroduced to his old playmate,
Miss Ada Clifford.

Dick went back to Oxford that year with another feeling creeping into
his heart side by side with the great love for his father which had
hitherto possessed it. He was not over head and ears in love with
Ada Clifford, nor, since it must be confessed, she with him; but his
father and himself rode over often that vacation, and Dick found the
family one of the most agreeable in every way that he had ever met,
while Ralph atoned for his former rudeness in a thousand ways that come
with such an indescribable charm from a strong nature. Dick took back
this memory with him to the university, and perhaps it saved him from
getting among the “fast men”—a society only too fascinating for young
fellows blessed with health, strength, good nature, good looks, and
money.

Without actually giving up his practices of muscular Christianity,
association with more intellectual minds brought him soon to perceive
that there was a higher ambition in this life for a young man than
being the captain of a cricket eleven, the “stroke” of a university
eight, the best pigeon shot, or the proprietor of the most startling
“turn-out” on the road. Association with intellectual men brought with
it intellectual thoughts, inquiries, pursuits; while under all happily
ran the boy’s innate love of honor, of what was fair and truthful,
supporting him somewhat, and keeping him, on the whole, straight in the
midst of the dangerous speculations and vexed problems which were being
agitated around him, and discussed with all the boldness natural to
undisciplined minds.

His Oxford course was drawing to a close, and he began to think of
adopting some career, though the wealth and property to which he was
heir necessitated no pursuit at all other than that of a quiet country
gentleman living on his estates. During his last year particularly he
had read and studied much, and the result of his studies and inquiries
always came home to him in the form of the old question of Pilate, What
is truth? He was, like his father, a loyal Englishman, a supporter of
the state, rather because he found it there established, and could see
no better, than for any divine right which, in his father’s mind, and
in the minds of so many Englishmen, the glorious British Constitution
possesses. But the church was another affair. That question puzzled
him sorely. That it might be a very fine institution, that it had
given birth to many splendid minds, that it still possessed many very
amiable and worthy followers, he did not deny; but that an institution
which was at best a very mixed affair, which was not believed in by
the majority of his countrymen, which had been patched, and stretched,
and mended, and cobbled to meet the exigencies of every changing hour,
which was not believed in even by so many of its professed members and
teachers, was in any sense a divine institution, he could not concede.
To his truthful mind, it dated from Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, not from
Jesus Christ; it was simply in its present form an amiable machine of
state, not a divine organization which should command the approving
consent of all were it what men who believed in salvation ought to
follow. As for the rest of the wrangling sects, he looked upon them as
so many ecclesiastical tinkerings, better calculated to bore holes in
the edifice of faith than to build up a system strong, enduring, and
right.

Filled with thoughts of this description, he came home restless,
dissatisfied, questioning; too true and too earnest to throw quite
overboard all belief as a sham, and take the world as he found it—a
mixture of good and bad, inexplicable save as a result of chance and
conventionality. He visited the Cliffords, and they found laughing Dick
Cranstone an altered man, somewhat graver, and evidently unsettled.
One day, when his father was not present, he unbosomed himself to Mr.
Clifford, who was a very intellectual man. The latter listened kindly
to the boy, though he knew the story well; he had gone through it all
himself. He did not try to explain matters there and then; he merely
told him that what he was then experiencing was the exact counterpart
of what he himself had experienced. “If you like to come over in a few
days, I expect to have F. Leslie here, a Jesuit, and a convert like
myself. He will explain matters to you much better than I can, if you
are not afraid of meeting a Jesuit, Richard.”

Dick winced a little at this proposal; he had never in his life met
with a Jesuit, and his opinion of the society was formed on what he had
read of them as the most deceitful, crafty, and cunning set of men
ever organized to blind men’s eyes and lead them astray from freedom
and light; though, when he came to think the matter over, he could not
bring to mind a single case of any of his friends who had come across
them and been converted to Catholicity, as some of them had, turning
out fiends or blind enthusiasts. So he resolved to meet F. Leslie.

It was the old story. After due inquiry and preparation, he was
converted, and immediately after went straight to his father, and told
him all.

To describe Ralph Cranstone’s wrath at the news would be impossible. He
only saw one terrible fact—his family disgraced for ever in the person
of their last descendant his son, from whom he had hoped so much. The
line of the Cranstones was poisoned, defiled in the person of one who
could thus turn traitor to his queen and country. A Cranstone a Papist!
And that Cranstone his son Dick! He did not ask him to retract—he rose
up and cursed the boy, and turned him out of the house.

Protestant friends, this part of the story, though inwoven with
fiction, is a very hard fact. It is not of unfrequent occurrence; the
writer to-day has friends who in their own persons can corroborate it.

Ralph Cranstone could have borne anything rather than this—that his
son should turn Papist. He might become an infidel, and believe in no
God at all; he might join any one he chose of the sects, however low;
he might even turn Mussulman or Jew—but a Cranstone a Papist! Good
God! it were better that he had never been born.

And so Ralph sat there looking out into the storm, where the form of
his brave, handsome boy had vanished. He was conscious only of the
storm raging in his own breast, of the terrible curse he had uttered
out of his heart on the head of the one he had loved more, infinitely
more, than himself. That curse was ringing around the room still,
and seemed to mock him like a fiend. He rose at last, and staggered
to his room, not noticing the tearful old housekeeper, who knew that
something dreadful had happened, and who came timidly asking him to
take something to eat, for the day had gone. His day had gone out with
his boy, and the light of his life went out with Dick into the winter
storm, to be swallowed up and buried away in it for ever.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dick had a hard time of it. He refused all offers of assistance
tendered him by Mr. Clifford. He would not even go down to visit them;
he would not appear in the neighborhood; for he could not meet his
father again. He wrote to him many times, but his letters were always
returned unopened. He soon received news from Mr. Clifford that his
father had broken up his home, left the neighborhood, and gone no one
knew whither. He could only pray for him to the God to whom, for the
first time in his life, he found he could pray with a strong faith and
earnest belief. He still would not go to the Cliffords’, though he
corresponded with them from London, and saw them now and then when they
came up. He had friends on the press, and with their assistance managed
to eke out enough to live upon by means of his pen. He worked away,
sustained, in his loss of father, fortune, and place, by the religion
of Jesus Christ, discovering each day new wonders in an exhaustless
region. His father he never heard from, nor gained any intelligence of
his whereabouts, nor whether he was living or dead. The trial was a
sore one, but he felt that perhaps he was in some small degree atoning
for all the evils which had followed that first defection of his family
from the religion to which they belonged. And so he worked away, and
rose; for he had talent, and soon attained a position which relieved
him from all fears of absolute want, though still poor enough.

The Cliffords were a great comfort to him, and the thought of Ada often
inspired the weary pen to fresh exertion when it flagged from sheer
fatigue. The more he found the love of her growing upon him, the more
he avoided the presence of the family; for his poverty set a boundless
sea, in his imagination, between himself and her. He excused himself
for not calling on them by a thousand reasons—press of business, and
the usual excuses; till at last their intercourse almost ceased, and
poor Dick, laughing Dick, became wretchedly miserable, and began to
look upon the world as a poor sort of place after all, while Cranstone
Hall would force itself upon his mind, dreary and deserted, the garden
weedy, and the oaks lonely, with that terrible, heartless curse hanging
over all.

One night, while seated in his room thinking such thoughts as these, a
hasty knock came to the door, and, opening it, the old housekeeper fell
forward almost fainting in his arms, with the exclamation:

“O Master Richard! Master Richard, dear! he’s come back at last.”

Dick staggered as though the old woman’s trembling voice had been a
giant’s arm which smote him.

“Yes, yes,” he murmured.

“For God’s sake and your dear mother’s, Master Richard, fly! He’s
ill—he’s dying—he’s raving of you!... At the Hall.... Yes. Go, go, or
you’ll be too late.”

He rushed into the street, she following him. The snow was falling
again as bitterly as on the day when he last saw his father. The train,
though it flew along, seemed to him to travel at a snail’s pace. The
snow blocked the roads leading to the Hall: the chaise could not
advance. He leaped out, unyoked one of the horses, bade the driver
follow as best he could with the housekeeper, mounted the animal, and,
by what means he never knew, found himself at the Hall. He was about
to dash up to his father’s rooms, when a light in the library window
attracted his attention. Mother of God! can that be his father?

The brown curls bleached to snow, the face white, and thin, and
bloodless, the eyes staring wildly straight out of the window, the form
shrunk, the mouth mumbling some incoherent words. The light of a candle
shone full on his father’s face, altered to that of a ghost.

Dick entered trembling, uncertain whether it was a spirit or his father
himself whom he saw before him.

“I want my boy, my Dick, my brave, handsome son. Bring him back to me.
You stole him away. Where is he?”

“Father, he is here. Look at me, father. Here I am, Dick—your own son
Dick, come back to you. Do you not know me?”

“You? You’re not my son. I’ve got no son. He went away from me. He
hates his father—his poor father. I—I—cursed him, when I could have
blessed him, and he believed me; and Dick’s gone—gone—gone.” And the
poor creature moaned, and covered his crazed head with his hands, while
the sharpest pang that ever rent his boy’s heart rent it at that moment
with the thought that, perhaps, it was all his fault, and that, had he
only forced himself upon him, his father might have forgiven him, all
might have gone well, and he would not now have been summoned to the
side of the lost wreck before him.

They bore him back to the bed whence he had stolen while those who
should have watched him had dozed a little. The next day the Cliffords
came over, and took up their abode in the old Hall, where Ada and her
mother watched and tended the sufferer as only women can do. Dick was
around them and about them, and in and out, and happy and miserable,
and all contraries in a breath. Ada alone could set him right, and
prevent him from going as mad as his father.

Ralph lay long between the two worlds. His strong reason; once forced
out, seemed sullen to return. But it did come at last, and his weak
eyes opened on his son, while the heart of the father, with all the
pent-up feelings of these years, gushed out over his boy. He had gone
away and wandered everywhere. He drank till his brain gave way, and
only enough reason was left to lead him home to die.

But death seems a long way off from Ralph Cranstone yet. The saying is
oftener than ever on people’s lips, “They’re as fond of each other as
the two Cranstones.” Old Cranstone’s face—the Elizabethan—has taken a
new scowl, for underneath his picture rises up an ivory crucifix which
Ralph himself set there. The snow falls merrily and cheerily; the old
oaks smile in their winter garb; no mist rises up from where the river
runs. Yes; that’s young Ralph there dashing out of the hall door to
meet his uncle and papa; there he goes climbing up uncle’s legs, and
shaking him as though he were a telegraph post set up there for him to
shake; and, if ever there was a happy couple, that couple is Ada and
laughing Dick; and the old Cranstone frowns down on it all out of his
dim canvas, for the Cranstone line has gone back to its old faith.


SONNET

TO A BOOK OF IMAGINATION; OR, THE LITERATURE OF THE FUTURE.

  Go forth, fair book! Go, countenanced like that man
  Upon whose brow all Eden’s light was stayed;
  Beauteous as truth, go forth to cheer and aid,
  Breathing of greatness ours ere sin began;
  With angel-wing from eyes earth-wearied fan
  Convention’s mist; revive great hopes that fade;
  Bid nature rule where reigned but masquerade;
  Bear witness to the joy divine that ran
  Down to Creation’s heart, while, bending o’er it,
  The great Creator saw that all was good—
  The mightier joy, when, dying to restore it,
  He rose who washed it in his conquering blood.
  Go forth, a seer in minstrel raiment clad;
  Say to the meek, “Be strong”; the poor, “Be glad!”

  —_Aubrey de Vere._




THE PRESENT GREATNESS OF THE PAPACY.

FROM THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA.


I.

WE do not know that history, ancient or modern, offers a spectacle
similar to the one presented to the world by the Vatican to-day. Upon
the brow of that hill sits an august Pontiff and king, an octogenarian,
unarmed, dethroned, a prisoner. He is strong only in the power infused
into him from God; rich only in heavenly wisdom and the love of
nations; great in his merits towards Christendom; great, above all, in
the treasure of rights divine and human which he represents. The powers
of earth have attacked or forsaken him; the base world concentrates
against him all its rancor for the extermination of everything that
Christian civilization holds sacred. Standing alone, with serene
brow and heart unshaken, he lifts his head before this concourse. He
humbles, confounds, sears them; the more furious the attack, the more
does he show himself invincible to assault and terrible to assailants.

The enemy has hitherto triumphed over all and conquered all; subduing
empires, destroying kingdoms, subjugating nations. He holds in his
hand all the instruments of brutal force, and in his service all the
passions of brute nature. He is to-day almost master of the civilized
globe; yet he cannot rule that venerable man of eighty years, who
stands as high in glory and authority as the opponent lies low in vile
infamy.

Such is the spectacle, historically unique in all its accessories,
which we have witnessed for several years, and have never seen so grand
and august in aspect as to-day—the contrast between Pope Pius IX. and
the Revolution. Unique, we say, for in no age of Christianity do we
find its equal for the universality of war, and arms, and desolation,
or for the duration and variety of outrages. Therefore, the contrasts
between Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and Pius VII.,
with the impious sovereigns who dared to oppress them, do not in
several points present a parallel.

There are feeble spirits, unmindful of the past, and weak of faith
in the unfailing promises of Christ, who cannot read the lucid words
graven by his finger on the tiara of Pius IX.: I am the strength of
God; let no man touch me!

Through the shower of hostile darts raining around the Vatican they do
not discern the glory of moral grandeur radiating from it. Therefore
they are discouraged and scandalized. For the comfort of such as these,
it seems well to speak of this grandeur, which, in our opinion, is
clearly shown in the glorious cause defended by the Pontiff, in the
mode and circumstances of his defence, in the quality of the enemies
who attack him, as well as of the friends who support him.


II.

The cause for which Pius IX. wages so stern a war is the cause of God
and man; the cause of liberty, individual, domestic, and social; in
short, a cause embracing all those ordinances without which no public
or private right, no property, or virtue, or justice, or peace, could
be maintained. In the Sovereign Pontiff temporarily imprisoned in the
Vatican, the Revolution attacks not only the liberty of the supreme
Catholic apostolate and the legitimacy of the most inviolable of
thrones, but also all rational liberty of conscience, and the source of
all social authority. In the Sovereign Pontiff, it attacks God, whose
vicegerent on earth he is, and with God all rights and duties of nature
and of grace, which proceed originally from him.

The Revolution, essentially satanic, full of hate towards God and man,
_extollitur supra omne quod dicitur Deus_.[131] It tries to supplant
God, whose every image in creation it would gladly see cancelled. From
the beginning, it has always attacked the Papacy as the most vivid and
universal representation of God among men; of God under the double
aspect of Creator and Saviour, author of reason and faith, eternal
founder of natural society and of the church; in one word, of Christ
the God-man. As it cannot dethrone Christ in heaven, it would dethrone
him on earth: and, to accomplish this hellish work of madness under
the guidance of Satan, it directs all its efforts against the Roman
Pontificate, truly the true vicariate of Christ, the king of the world.

All moral grandeur, human and divine, is therefore included in the
cause defended by Pius IX. against the ministers and satellites of the
enemy of human nature and of God’s Word. The accursed phalanx make use
of innumerable frivolous and false pretexts to reach their aim; but in
truth they thirst to destroy the Papacy because the Papacy embraces all
morality of reason and faith emanating from the Word, the unchangeable
and eternal wisdom. In vain the Revolution masks its batteries behind
the dazzling names of liberty, civilization, and progress, pretending
to seek the destruction of the Papacy as their implacable adversary.
Indeed, after eighty years of experience, it is evident, palpably
certain, that under its false liberty lies hidden the most ruinous
tyranny that ever oppressed the world. It usurps the dominion of
conscience and of family life, and confiscates at its wanton and fickle
will the blood and gold of nations which it has trampled underfoot,
giving them in return only the liberty of corruption and blasphemy.
Its treacherous civilization covers a refined barbarism fully shown by
the carnage and ruin of France in 1793, and of Spain in 1834, and by
the massacres and conflagrations of the Commune in 1871. Its baleful
progress tends to change the partnership of Christian nations into a
horrible hell of disorder, where, as in the kingdom of Satan, _nullus
ordo sed sempiternus horror inhabitat_.[132]

Therefore, strictly speaking, Pope Pius IX., with his indomitable
resistance, defends all the wealth of humanity against the monster
that would destroy it as the communists destroyed it before our eyes
in Paris lately. The religious, civil, and material ruin of the human
race is the final end for which, directly or indirectly, with or
without deliberate purpose, all the partisans of the Revolution exert
themselves, from the most hypocritical or dull of moderates to the
grossest socialist.

The immeasurable grandeur of this cause defended by the Roman Pontiff
is generally seen and felt by all, even more by the enemies than by the
friends of the Papacy. Upon their war against the Vatican they have
concentrated their best strength, sagacity, and industry. They care for
nothing so much as for the least trifle connected with the Pope; they
talk, and write, and vociferate of nothing so much as of the Pope’s
sayings and doings; of the hopes and fears which agitate them in this
war. Hence the first position in the political world and in what we
call public opinion is held by the Pontiff. It is preserved to him and
nourished by that very Revolution which would gladly annihilate for
ever his name and memory. It cries a thousand times a day that he is
dead and buried, and a thousand times a day it is forced to bewail his
vitality and energy; neither more nor less than do the demons and the
damned in the abyss, forced to glorify God for ever, in that they will
eternally blaspheme him.

This is one of the marvellous sports of Providence in our day: to make
use of the wild beasts of the Revolution to strengthen the Papacy. When
they think to devour it, they find themselves drawing its triumphal
car. So it was with Nero and Domitian in their persecutions against
Christianity; so with Henry IV. and Barbarossa in the middle ages; so
with the Directory and Bonaparte in modern times. What doubt can there
be that the same will come to pass with the Lanzas, the Bismarcks, and
their compeers in our own day?


III.

But the glories of the cause for which Pius IX. is fighting receive
also wonderful lustre from the strange modes and conditions of his
warfare. He has neither arms nor soldiers; he is poor in gold; neither
diplomacy, nor journalism, nor the telegraph is subject to his orders;
he is morally deprived of the liberty of leaving the precincts of
the Vatican, whose outer gates are guarded by the cut-throats of the
Revolution. Arms, money, diplomacy, newspapers, and the telegraphic
wires are in the hands of the enemy who besieges him before the tomb
of S. Peter, and who uses them as far as possible to his injury. The
artifices, conspiracies, calumnies, outrages, and insults of the
Revolution succeed each other like waves on a tempestuous sea. And to
make them more exquisitely atrocious, the greater number are hurled at
him with the absurd protest that his inviolability is guaranteed by the
majesty of the laws.[133]

Literally speaking, no other arms are left to the Holy Father than
his constancy and his word; but it is a constancy that makes the
enemy despair, and a word that confounds him. That apostolic breast
is inaccessible to seduction, those august lips are inexhaustible of
truth. He boldly defines theft to be theft, injustice to be injustice,
tyranny to be tyranny; his language does not change with the times, nor
to suit any one whomsoever. In condemning crimes and reproving villany,
he has no respect for persons. He fears the powerful no more than the
faint-hearted. He does not suffer himself to be deluded by the promises
or dismayed by the threats of those who boast innumerable armies and
glory in formidable artillery. The heart of Pius IX. is undaunted by
the flash of swords and the thunder of cannon. The Revolution, unable
to shake the firmness or chain the tongue of Piux IX., regards him with
a shuddering admiration, and exalts with demoniac yells his superhuman
power.

In very truth, a strange case! We see a victim and an assassin. The
victim has only the moral strength of dignity and right: the assassin
is opulent in brute force; yet the victim does not tremble before the
assassin, but the assassin before the victim. The Revolution does not
make Pius IX. turn pale: Pius IX. intimidates the Revolution. A rebuke
from the victim strikes sharper terror into the assassin than the whole
arsenal of the assassin can infuse into the victim.

This fact alone, in our opinion, is a striking proof that the Papacy
is divine in origin, in its prerogatives, its life, its activity, its
manifestation. The mysterious power which, with the simple virtue of a
_non possumus_ and a _non licet_, it exercises on earth, proves that
God speaks in it, and its word proceeds from the Word of truth. What
other mere mortal could by his own power produce effects so great with
arguments so slight? A motto of Napoleon I. intimidated whole nations,
because at his beck armed men stood forth and always victorious: his
power was founded on iron and in blood. But on what soldiery rests the
word of the Vicar of Christ, imprisoned in the Vatican? What invasion,
what battle, can be dreaded as the result of a _non possumus_ and a
_non licet_ of Pius IX.? Yet these words, uttered by his lips, strike
perplexity into the leaders of all Revolutionary armies. How explain
this wonder without admitting that the strength of Pius IX. is God’s
strength? And after that, how deny that the stupendous greatness of
the Roman Pontificate never shone more gloriously than now, whilst
Pope Pius, in the name of the King of kings, and of the Lord of lords,
_pugnat gladio oris sui_,[134] strikes with the sword of the Word, and
conquers the satanic hydra of the insolent Revolution?


IV

The assailants of the Papacy are wont to say, in their own praise,
that the Vatican has for its adversaries the most enlightened,
cultivated, and virtuous men of our time. We, on the contrary, see
the very opposite. With certain exceptions, including the blind,
the dull, and the deluded, in the throng of declared enemies of the
Roman Pontificate, we find only the moral dregs of society. There
are great and small, of course, but, when put to a moral test, they
are all equal, one as good as another, unless, indeed, the great are
worth less than the small. In the throng, there are heretics without
a creed, Jews without a Testament, atheists without a God, and
Catholics without laws. We find deserters from every flag—those who
betray their masters, and bite the hands of benefactors; doubled-faced
deceivers—men who have instigated horrible massacres, and flattered
every social crime; men guilty of infamous sacrilege, awful rapine,
nefarious murders. We see corruptors of the people—burglars, brawlers,
bombarders of harmless cities, mercenary writers, vendors of honor,
protectors of evil haunts, worshippers of luxury. We notice all the
apostates from the church and the priesthood: renegade Christians,
silenced priests, unfrocked friars. We see men who insult God, disturb
civil order, tear down thrones, cheat and defraud their neighbor—in
short, men who blaspheme against the faith, and trample on the Ten
Commandments. There is no kind of sectarian, from the most stupid of
Freemasons to the most brutal of communists, that does not make part of
this crowd of enlightened, cultivated, virtuous men of the present age.

The Prophet Daniel contemplated, in four shadowy, mysterious creatures,
not only the four great monarchies of the earth, but the four great
persecutions to which Christ’s church would be subjected in the course
of ages. The interpreters of this acceptation of the vision agree in
saying that the first, symbolized by the lioness, meant the persecution
of Gentiles so cruelly prosecuted by the Roman Cæsars; the second,
denoted by the bear, that of heretics; the third, represented by the
leopard, that of false Christians; and the last, figured by a nameless
creature awfully hideous, that of Antichrist, and so designated
because, _in ea erit omnium perversitatum concursus_, it shall contain
in itself the wickedness of the three preceding ones.[135]

It is, indeed, difficult to decide whether the terrible and universal
persecution which the Catholic Church is now sustaining, especially in
the person of the Sovereign Pontiff, should be referred to the third as
its completion, or to the fourth as its preparation. When we consider
the quality of the persecutors, they are undoubtedly false Christians,
and worthy to be compared in ferocious malice to the leopard. But when
we see in them the union of all perversity united to slay the church
in its head, we suspect that the present is, indeed, a preparation for
that final persecution which must forerun the consummation of the human
race.

However that may be, it is beyond controversy that the persecution of
to-day bears all the marks of Antichristianity, and that its promoters,
followers, and accomplices accord with the description given by the
apostle S. Paul to his disciple and Timothy. We give the text, let him
deny it who can:

“Know also this, that, in the last days, shall come dangerous times.

“Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud,
blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked,

“Without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful,
without kindness,

“Traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than of
God;” and the following verses.[136]

Now, if, according to the proverb, the vituperations of the wicked
are praise, is it not glory for the Papacy to see unchained against
it to-day all the malice of the world, and to be lashed by all that
Christendom holds in its bosom most odious, despotic, base, and
abominable? Is not this the highest summit of grandeur? Is it not an
unexampled participation in the glories of Christ?


V.

The more startling the contrast of opposite qualities in those who
love and are faithful to the Papacy, the more must we admire them.
To the moral dregs of society we see opposed the very flower of good
men of every condition and in every country; not only among Catholic
Christians, but among Protestants and schismatics, and even among
Turks, Jews, and the barbarians of Asia. In vain does the Revolution
try to vilify with terms of reproach those who are devoted to the
Pope and to his sacred rights. It cannot prevent them from being what
they are—an honor to the world, and the support of justice. It is
impossible to be sincere, to understand clearly the significance of the
cause defended by the Papacy, and not feel for it love and veneration.
For this end it is not necessary to have supernatural faith, and
to belong to the fold of the church: the light of reason, human
understanding, are sufficient. Reason and sense make it clear to the
least astute minds that the Pontiff is now defending all order, every
right, every social law, against an enemy who hates God in humanity,
and every good of God in the good of mankind.

The ardor of Catholics all over the world for Pius IX., and the close
union of the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy with his see, constitute a
plain and lasting fact which will surely be the greatest glory of this
age in the annals of Christianity. It is a glory due chiefly to the
Revolution, which has been providentially permitted and ordained by
God, chiefly for the end of better strengthening and confirming unity
in the hierarchy of his church. The result has been an exaltation of
Papal authority among Christian nations so new and striking that it
now forms a large part of the strength with which the Papacy repels
the attacks of the Revolution, and promises to surpass before long
the effective power which it possessed in the middle ages of our era.
The complication of events leads nations to recognize in the Roman
Pontificate the sole anchor of safety left to them in these tempests
raised by the Revolution. We may say that an irresistible power is
little by little bringing them to seek refuge in this asylum. Not only
has the Pontiff’s voice found a wonderful echo in the soul of peoples,
but his sacred person is oppressed, so to speak, with demonstrations of
faith and love more solemnly magnificent than could be imagined. The
voluntary tribute of blood has been and is offered to him by thousands
of valiant men; that of gold is constantly given to him by millions of
the faithful. He is truly the most beloved, praised, and honored among
men. In our time, there is no name of magnate or of king which ranks so
high as the name of Pius IX.

It is true that governments occupied almost everywhere by the
Revolution strongly oppose, with a thousand corrupting and despotic
artifices, this movement of nations towards the Papacy; but all in
vain. The wind blows from that quarter, and it is a wind that crushes,
sweeps, and grinds to powder all impediments. See how rapidly the deeds
and men of the Revolution succeed each other in the nations oppressed
by it; the instability of its kingdoms, the fragility of its empires,
the fickleness of its victories, the inanity of its statistics, the
weakness of its institutions; all about it is variable, changeable,
inconstant: the buildings of yesterday crumble to-day.

This is because its satanic power is that of a meteor, not of a star;
it appears, falls to ruin, and disappears. The power of the Papacy, on
the contrary, is a sun which does not pass away, but lives; and the
vivid flashes which it sends through the clouds gathering around the
Revolution already show that the meteor is about to break and melt away.


VI.

Yes, the present greatness of the Roman Pontificate, impersonated in
Pius IX., the visible pole of all social order in this world, the
terror of bad hearts, and joy of upright souls—this glory is only the
first gleam of that which his heroic and lingering passion is preparing
for an approaching future.

For the comfort, meanwhile, of the weak and timid, we repeat, with
the more sagacious minds of our own day, that the future is for the
Papacy, not for the Revolution; that the Papacy has already conquered
the Revolution. We will conclude by making our own those noble words
upon the immortal youth of the Church, spoken by our Holy Father to the
representatives of the Catholic youth of Italy, on Epiphany of this
year, in the Vatican. We accommodate them with perfect propriety to the
supreme office of the Vicariate of Christ, with which he is divinely
invested, and which he so gloriously sustains in the presence of God,
of angels, of men, and of the infernal Revolution itself:

“My sons, let us give battle, and fear nothing. Remember that the
enemies of God are vanishing, and the Papacy remains. The Child
Jesus fled into Egypt, but in the night-time he was told to return,
‘for they are dead who sought the life of the child.’ How many
persecutors of the Papacy are dead! After giving vent to their fury,
and decimating the faithful who served God, they are dead: and the
Papacy is left. Yes; _ipsi peribunt_, but thou, beloved Peter, living
in thy successors—thou, constituted by God his vicar on earth—thou
remainest, and thou shalt always remain: _ipsi peribunt, tu autem
permanebis_. Thou shalt remain, young, vigorous, constant, in contrast
to the persecutions which purify the church, whose head thou art,
wash away its every spot, and make it stronger. _Ipsi peribunt, tu
autem permanebis._ Thou art still with us in the teaching of truth and
morals, in many ways, under many appearances. _Ipsi peribunt, sed tu
permanebis._

“Let this be our consolation, our comfort, our faith. Let us feel
assured that _ipsi peribunt, Petrus autem permanebit usque in finem
sæculorum_.”[137]

And you, great Pontiff, in uttering these sublime words, little thought
that, three days later, he would perish suddenly who for many years had
been the treacherous tormentor of the Papacy in your august person.

Napoleon III. perished uncrowned, humbled, in exile; that Napoleon
who, in the intoxication of his empty triumphs, thought to hold in his
hand, after your death, the victory over the Roman See, _periit_. He
died, let us hope, repentant; and you, Holy Father, survive him to pray
for his peace after death, with the same generous soul that, like your
divine Model on Golgotha, always pardoned him in life. He has vanished
like a shadow, first from the greatest throne in Europe, then from the
sight of men, _periit_; and the Papacy _permanet_ in you more than ever
invincible. You, Pope Pius, for the time a prisoner, continue, from
the Vatican, with Christ and in Christ, to reign beloved, blessed,
applauded, over all who have a believing heart, an upright soul.
Napoleon III. has gone down to that city of the dead which shall form
the pedestal of your greatness in all ages: _scabellum pedum tuorum_;
peopled by beings like Cavour, Palmerston, Mazzini, and by a throng of
many others, who girded their loins for the mad enterprise of crushing
out in his Vicar Christ our God, King of Heaven and Earth.




A MAY CAROL.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.


  Is this, indeed, our ancient earth?
    Or have we died in sleep, and risen?
  Has earth, like man, her second birth?
    Rises the palace from the prison?

  Hills beyond hills ascend the skies;
    In winding valleys, heaven-suspended,
  Huge forests, rich as sunset’s dyes,
    With rainbow-braided clouds are blended.

  From melting snows through coverts dank
    White torrents rush to yon blue mere,
  Flooding its glazed and grassy bank,
    The mirror of the milk-white steer.

  What means it? Glory, sweetness, might?
    Not these, but something holier far—
  Shadows of him, that Light of Light,
    Whose priestly vestment all things are.

  The veil of sense transparent grows:
    God’s face shines out, that veil behind,
  Like yonder sea-reflected snows—
    Here man must worship, or be blind.




“FOR BETTER—FOR WORSE.”

CONCLUDED.


“PRAY take an easier chair, Mrs. Vanderlyn,” says the invalid; “I thank
you for your sympathy, and trust my cough has not disturbed you.”

“Oh! not at all,” says Agnes; “it only made me want to come to see you,
and I hope you will not regard it as an intrusion on my part.”

“By no means. You are very kind. I see it in your eyes. You do not shun
the sick. It is a good heart that leads you to me. I thank you.”

These words are interrupted by painful coughing, but, after the
paroxysm has passed, she becomes more quiet, and Agnes has a better
opportunity of studying her face while they converse.

In spite of her wasting disease, it is a beautiful and _saintly_ face
still, and evidently has been much more beautiful in health and youth.
Refinement and purity are stamped on every feature, and in every
gesture and every fold of her raiment. The small, thin hands, folded
over the book in her lap, are those of a delicately bred lady. A heavy
plain gold ring, on the third finger of her left hand, is so loose that
it is guarded by another and smaller one. These are all the ornaments
she wears. A soft, warm wrapper of brown merino, a little white cap of
thin muslin which does not altogether hide her abundant dark hair, are
all of feminine costume to tell of the wearer’s character.

The room is very neat and comfortable, and shows no sign of poverty. On
the walls are a few wood engravings, mostly of religious subjects, and
a few photograph portraits finished in oils. A crucifix stands on the
mantel, and a smaller one, attached to a rosary of Roman pearls, on the
table by her side, where also is an exquisite Parian statuette of the
Blessed Virgin and Child. Agnes sits on the other side of this table,
and, while she converses with her hostess, her attention is drawn to a
small book lying near her. Apparently only to read the title, she takes
up this book, and opens at the fly-leaf. It is a prayer-book, and, in a
lady’s writing, she reads:

“Martin Vanderlyn, from his wife.” Although prepared to know the truth,
almost knowing it before she came into the room, Agnes feels her cheeks
and lips grow pale; but she has always great command of herself, and
now has not been taken quite by surprise.

“My husband is not a Catholic, although that book bears his name,” says
Mrs. Vanderlyn. “Perhaps he is a relative of yours,” she adds, looking
inquiringly at her guest.

“I never heard my husband speak of any relative of that name,” Agnes
says. “The name is not a very common one, either. It seems strange that
two of us should meet here. Is your husband absent?” She has remarked
that Mrs. Vanderlyn had said, “My husband is not a Catholic,” and the
avoidance of the use of the past tense gives her the chance to put her
question, which she does to cover her own confusion, and mislead the
lady as to herself. An expression of pain passes over Mrs. Vanderlyn’s
face, as she quietly replies:

“Yes; he is absent, travelling.” It is not the first time that the poor
lady has been obliged to answer a similar question, so she is not much
disturbed; but Agnes feels sorry she has asked it. Mrs. Vanderlyn goes
on speaking of her increased indisposition: “Mr. Vanderlyn does not
know how very rapid has been the progress of the disease. I am much
worse now than when he left home.”

Agnes cannot find it in her heart to ask how long it is since he left
her. She thinks she knows, and she thinks she understands that Mrs.
Vanderlyn does not wish her to know that she is a divorced woman.
She respects this as a delicacy of feeling which her own position
fully teaches her to appreciate. With her present knowledge of Martin
Vanderlyn as a husband, her sympathies are all with his wife. She
believes now that it was his fault and not hers which made the trouble
between them. Her strong good sense tells her that Mrs. Vanderlyn being
a Catholic was no sufficient reason for his separating from her; and
she cannot believe that this lady has been a disagreeable companion to
live with.

Overwhelmed with all the thoughts surging in her mind, she soon takes
her leave, all the sooner that she hears her boy calling to her.

“You have a little son,” Mrs. Vanderlyn remarks. “Will you not bring
him in to see me? I am very fond of children, and the only one I had is
dead; I shall soon meet her, I hope. But to-morrow you will bring your
boy to see me, will you not?” And she holds her hand out to Agnes, and
looks wistfully in her face. Agnes is touched almost to tears as she
promises.

The next day, with her “curled darling” clinging to her skirts, she
goes to see this _sister_, as she somehow feels Mrs. Vanderlyn to be
to her. Are they not both the deserted wives of the same man? And she
feels that this one is more truly the wife than herself, in spite of
all the law can do for her. And it has not escaped her notice that Mrs.
Vanderlyn spoke of Martin as her husband still.

As she approaches Mrs. Vanderlyn, little George is hiding his face
in her skirts, only allowing himself to look out, from time to time,
between his fingers, at the lady. No urging from his mother seems
likely to get him out of his intrenchment.

“Let him alone,” Mrs. Vanderlyn says; “that is the way with many
children. When we stop urging him, he will show himself of his own
accord.”

And so he does. After the attention of the two is, as he supposes,
removed from himself, the chubby fingers come down, and the bright eyes
gaze steadily at Mrs. Vanderlyn. She, becoming aware of this, turns,
saying, “What is your name, darling?”

“Martin Van’lyn,” proudly speaks out little George, using the name by
which his father had nearly always called him, and which he now seems
to choose in a spirit of sheer mischief, for Agnes has rarely called
him by that name. She had opposed it because it confused the address
she used for his father. The child speaks out the “Martin” with unusual
distinctness too, although he has oftener called himself “Marty” than
Martin. Agnes has never thought of the boy thus betraying her, and she
has said truly that his name is George. She is confused, and looks
distressed, feeling that Mrs. Vanderlyn will naturally suspect her of
falsifying, if not much more.

That lady seems equally disturbed, but in a different way from that
which the child’s blunder might be supposed to create. She pauses,
stammers, and, in great agitation, looking at Agnes, exclaims:

“_Whose_ child is this? I could almost think I had my own again! Holy
Mother, help me!” Then reaching for a little velvet miniature case, she
opens it with trembling fingers, saying, “Look at that!”

Agnes looks, and sees the face of a child nearly the age of her own,
which is so good a likeness of George that it might be taken for him.
What wonder? It is the picture of his half-sister. These children
of the same father had inherited a resemblance to his family rather
than to himself, and here is little George looking at Mrs. Vanderlyn
with the eyes and smile of her own child. Who has not observed how
wonderfully lineage will proclaim itself in this way? The poor lady is
more overcome by this sight than by any question as to George’s name;
but that has not escaped her notice. She lays her wasted hand on the
arm of Agnes, and says appealingly:

“Tell me the name of this child’s father! Pardon me! See, I will tell
you first why I ask, that you may know why I take this liberty with
you. I am Martin Vanderlyn’s deserted wife. This is his child’s face,
and that is your child. He says his name is Martin. Pardon me, dear
lady, again, for asking. I do not wish to pain you as I am pained; but
what that man did to one woman he may have done to another—deserted
her. I have heard that he did deceive another, and married her. I
had not believed it, because he came to me for money within the past
year, and spoke of returning to me after he had done travelling. I
could not believe he had pretended to marry another woman; but with
this” (pointing to the picture and to the boy), “you see I cannot help
believing it. Are you that unfortunate woman?”

She speaks with tender commiseration for Agnes rather than with any
animosity toward her. Agnes has stood during all this time, with her
hands nervously clutching her dress, and vainly trying to be composed.
Of what need, after all, is concealment from this woman, evidently not
long for this life, and so full of pity and forgiveness? So she answers:

“You have rightly guessed. This is Martin Vanderlyn’s son, and I am
what you truly call that unfortunate woman whom he has deserted. But I
knew you immediately to be his divorced wife.”

“Divorced! who says so? No; I am not _that_. He would have made me so,
but I am a Catholic, and I would not consent to it. I _could_ not.
He is my husband still, and, while I live, no law can make another
woman his wife. But, oh! this is too cruel to you!” she says, seeing
Agnes droop at once. “Did you really believe, dear, that you had the
law on your side? You thought he was divorced from me. Ah! no; not
even that doubtful right had he to marry you. He has not even the
Protestant permission, for he is not divorced from me. Even if the law
had so parted us, he ought not to have married another, and I, as a
Catholic, _could not_ do so; for you remember our Lord’s words that
“he who shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.” I pain
you, madam, very much, I know, but I must not deceive you more than
you have been deceived already. I have not much longer to live, and I
must speak truth. If he ever returns to you, as I once hoped he would
return to me, I may be in my grave then. Beg him, in that case, to
marry you, else you will never be his wife. I say this for your good.
I am sure you cannot think it is in malice. Look at me. I have nearly
done with this life—above all, with Martin Vanderlyn. You have shown
me kindness. I say to you what I do now, that you may see to it that
no more wrong in the sight of Heaven is done. I cannot look into your
face, and think that you will live with him again while I live.”

“Oh! no, no! God forbid!” cried Agnes. “I am not _that_, I could not
be!”

“Then see to it when I am dead,” says Mrs. Vanderlyn, and she sinks
back exhausted in her chair. Agnes kneels before her, and does
everything in her power to restore her; but, in the meantime, her own
condition is almost as pitiable. Little George has got hold of Mrs.
Vanderlyn’s rosary, and is quietly playing with it during all this
time. When Mrs. Vanderlyn is more composed, Agnes gives way herself.
Drawing her boy to her heart, she cries:

“Oh! what am I, and what is he? What is our name, and what can we
call ourselves? Can a few words more or less from judge or jury thus
disgrace us? If I am not his wife, what am I? God knows I insisted on
marriage with him, and entered upon it in good faith.”

“I do not doubt you,” Mrs. Vanderlyn says gently. “But, my dear,
call yourself by your own name again. Try to put yourself, as far as
possible, back into your old life, until you can get him to make it
right.”

Alas! she little knows how these words pierce Agnes, and enlighten her
as to the great wrong that has been done. Her own name again? Why, what
is it? Not Thorndyke now. Her old life! She shall

  “Hear the ‘Never, never,’ whispered by the phantom years.”

Another woman fills her place, closed now for ever to her, even if
she could wish to take it. No honored wife can she be now; only a
dishonored woman, deceived, betrayed, deserted. Her child without
a father’s name to call his own—in the eyes of the law, “nobody’s
child.” Where shall she go? What shall she do? To earn their bread
she expected, but she had not thought to do it in disgrace. The two
women weep together, Mrs. Vanderlyn trying to comfort Agnes, who now
tells all her former history to this new and strange friend. Strange,
indeed, that to Martin Vanderlyn’s true wife this shameful story should
be confessed by his victim; but Agnes feels that she has not a wiser,
kinder friend.

“Oh! where shall I go? What shall I do!” she sobs, with her head in
Mrs. Vanderlyn’s lap.

“My dear, if you were a Catholic, I should answer: ‘Go to your
confessor.’ As it is, could you not seek advice of your pastor? What
kind of Protestant are you, dear?”

“Alas! I have no pastor. I _was_ a Presbyterian. I am nothing now. _He_
destroyed all my faith.”

“Yes, yes; I can well believe it; only a faith rooted deep as mine is,
and as invulnerable, could withstand his assaults,” Mrs. Vanderlyn says
sadly. “But, my poor child, you need some counsel wiser than I can give
you, and a strength greater than your own or mine to lean upon in this
sore trial. Are you too prejudiced to let me bespeak for you the aid
of my own pastor, F. Francis? Our fates seem so to meet in this great
trouble of our lives (though I know yours is the greater burthen) that
I feel sure F. Francis will give you the advice and consolation you
need.”

Agnes is startled at the proposition, but it does not repel her as
it once would have done. This much, at least, unbelief will do for
its victims, if they have been Protestant—it destroys that intense
prejudice against the Catholic clergy which is the very life of
Protestantism. Indeed, it often ploughs up the soil of the mind, and
roots out the weeds of prejudice and bigotry, leaving a fair chance
for the seeds of the true faith to find root. Agnes has been a very
thoughtful woman, and has often suspected that there must be some
divine influence in the Catholic religion to bind its believers to it,
and to sustain them as she has seen no others held and sustained. In
Mrs. Vanderlyn, she has perceived, through all her own perplexity and
grief, a marked example of this divine assistance. Now that the way is
open, she feels a yearning to lay hold of the same support. It is the
desperate groping of a despairing soul for something beyond itself.
Moreover, she has seen the gentle face of F. Francis, and heard the
kind tones of his voice. So she answers humbly:

“If he will let me, Protestant as I am, trouble him with my affairs,
I would be indeed glad to have his advice. He must be often called to
comfort distressed Catholics, who keep nothing back from their priests.”

“Indeed he is—none oftener. Then I will tell your part of this sad
story to him first. He, of course, knows mine already. What shall I
call you to him, dear? You will be Mrs. Thorndyke still to him and
to me, but you may not like to hear the name from us, and we must
designate you.”

“Call me Agnes Rodney—my father’s name may yet be mine. This is the
second time I have taken it back. I gave my boy that name. Poor child!
He has no other now.”

The boy has been sleeping on the pillows of a sofa for some time,
happily hidden from Mrs. Vanderlyn’s sight by the back of his mother’s
chair. As he turns now in his sleep, Agnes rouses him, and leads him
from the room.

On the following day, Agnes is asked by a servant to come to Mrs.
Vanderlyn’s room. She suspects that it is to meet F. Francis, and she
is not mistaken. It is not so great a trial to her as she has feared,
for Mrs. Vanderlyn has told the story first to him.

From this interview she goes with a chastened spirit, and yet with
more of comfort than she has thought it possible for her to feel. He
has not spared her in the matter of how much she has been blamable all
through her trials in not bearing with her husband more patiently and
dutifully, and, above all, in tampering with divorce. He has shown her
how the church regards marriage: not as a civil contract, but as a
sacrament; and that, in his eyes, she is still John Thorndyke’s wife.
So the wish of Mrs. Vanderlyn that Martin might be persuaded to legally
marry Agnes after her own death, could not be granted while Agnes had
yet a husband. True, the _law_ has freed her from that tie, but no
Catholic could bid her take any such advantage. Moreover, it is very
doubtful if she will ever see Vanderlyn again. No thought of pursuit or
of punishment ever enters her mind. To work for herself and her boy is
now all that is left for her, and F. Francis promises to try to find
that work for her to do. In the meantime, it is arranged that she shall
stay for the present with Mrs. Vanderlyn, making no difference in her
name to the landlady, to whom she says that they have discovered that
they are remotely connected.

“I guessed it would turn out so,” says the landlady, “and I am right
glad the poor soul has found a friend. I think she grows worse very
fast. She won’t last long.”

The landlady is not wrong in her conclusions. From this time, Agnes
devotes herself to the care of Mrs. Vanderlyn in her fast-failing
strength. Indeed, did Agnes not fill the place of nurse, a hired one
would be necessary, for the invalid has no relatives in the country
upon whom to call. She was an only child, and her father the only one
left of his family. From him she has inherited a small competence
which has placed her above want and above the need of trying to wring
from her husband any support. It was this which tempted him to come so
meanly to her, even while living with Agnes, for pecuniary aid, well
knowing, as he did, her generous nature.

It is a loving, but short task for Agnes to perform. In little more
than three months, Margaret Vanderlyn is dead. But what a missionary
even on her dying bed she has proved herself! Agnes sees now what it
was that gave the angelic patience, and lent such a glory to the last
days of her friend. Day by day, she has been necessarily thrown within
the influence and teaching of F. Francis. The soil has indeed been
ready, and, after Mrs. Vanderlyn’s burial, she feels, in her desolate
condition, that only in the bosom of kind Mother Church is there
any consolation for her. Perhaps, too, the desire to get as far as
possible from all the infidel tendencies and teachings which Vanderlyn
had brought to bear upon her mind makes her turn to the church as the
surest and safest refuge. So Agnes Rodney becomes a Catholic, and a
sincere one. As she kisses the crucifix, which was Mrs. Vanderlyn’s,
she feels that she is a Magdalen, and longs to pour some precious
ointment over her Saviour’s feet.

Mrs. Vanderlyn has left nearly all of her property to Agnes, not only
as an acknowledgment of untiring devotion in her last days, but as some
amends for the wrong done to her by Martin Vanderlyn. No finer proof of
Margaret’s noble heart could have been given than in this generosity to
the woman who had supplanted her.

But Agnes cannot rest content in the ease thus afforded her. She feels
that she does not deserve it. She longs to make some greater expiation
than any she has yet offered for the error of her life. A Magdalen she
seems always to herself. It is this feeling which culminates at last in
a desire to make the devotion of all her energies, and the sacrifice of
all ease the precious ointment to pour at his feet. With this thought,
she goes to F. Francis, and proposes to place her boy in a Catholic
asylum, and that she may become a religious in some severe order.

“My daughter, it must not be,” replies the good priest sadly.

“Why not, father? I will strive so hard; I think I can be steadfast,
with God’s help, after all I have endured. It would be such a blessed
refuge, too, from my name and from my sad place in life—perhaps too
great a privilege for me,” she adds, watching the unconsenting look in
F. Francis’ eyes.

“You have said it, my child,” he replies. “Those who wear that garb
have never been in your doubtful position. Besides, your husband lives.”

Agnes’ face falls. She never thinks of herself now as a married woman.

“But if I should become a real widow ever?” she pleads; for the purpose
is dear to her, and she has hoped that her boy can be made a priest.

“Even then,” says F. Francis, “that which was your relation to Mr.
Vanderlyn would be in the way of your reception into any of these
orders, and your boy’s birth would be an impediment to his entering the
priesthood.”

Never before has Agnes felt how great has been her degradation as
now, when she finds that the all-pitying, loving, and gentle church
which has washed her sins and granted her comfort and hope has yet its
reservations for such as she and her boy.

It may be taken as a proof of the thoroughness of her conversion that
she so meekly acquiesces.

“But, my daughter, I will tell you what you may do, if you feel like
devoting yourself. We will put George in an asylum, and educate him,
and by-and-by we will find his place for him; and you can go into a
hospital as nurse.”

Her face brightens.

“You may not be a real sister; but a good hospital nurse, braving all
contagion, and discomfort, and fatigue, is the next thing to one; and
you may fashion your garb plainly, and shun the world’s comforts and
pleasures very effectually in such a calling.”

“I will, father! Oh, I will!” she says with warmth, for this is her
true vocation. “And then I may not have to part from George entirely,
which, after all, would wound me _here_.” She lays her hand upon her
heart as she speaks. “He is the only tie that is left me now.”

So Agnes Rodney watches beside the sick and dying in a hospital.
Dressed in a plain brown gown, with her hair drawn under a simple white
cap, she looks almost a real “sister,” and many of her Protestant
patients think her such. She is happier now than ever since her
girlhood. She is doing her Saviour’s work and that which she has
always loved—ministering to the sick. No other nurse throws into her
work such tender, loving care, such sympathy for the homeless and
friendless. The doctors rely upon her skill; the patients love her for
her gentle ministrations.

  “And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
  The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
    Her shadow, as it falls
    Upon the darkening walls.”

It is some five years from the time when Agnes Rodney commenced this
life, that a young man, indeed scarcely more than a youth, for he
cannot be more than nineteen, is hurt by a fall from a scaffold, and
brought into the hospital. He is a carpenter, and has been at work
on an adjoining building. To care for him, Mrs. Rodney is sent. The
youth is unconscious at first, and under the surgeon’s hands. She does
not learn his name at once, and it seems as if no one knows it. His
fellow-workmen have withdrawn for the time, but will return to-morrow.

While Mrs. Rodney is disposing of this youth, washing and removing
superfluous clothing, a pocket-book falls from his pockets, opening,
and scattering its contents. She gathers these up, and is returning
them, when her eye falls on a little picture which makes her start and
gaze curiously at the youth on the bed before her. This picture is
of a woman much younger than herself, and fairer, but it is her own
likeness, nevertheless, taken many years ago. The face has a sweet
girlish look, and soft, dark ringlets hang about the white throat. Her
own hair is now more gray than dark, and stern lines are traced about
the eyes and mouth; yet something of the same expression characterizes
the face of the picture and the face of the hospital nurse. How many
changes have come in her life since the sun portrayed that girlish
face! How well she remembers sitting for it years ago! She gazes at it
now, and criticises it, as if it were that of another person—never of
herself. So completely changed does she seem to herself that no feeling
has she now in common with the girl in the picture. And yet she knows
it so well. Who is this youth who carries it about him? Is it for a
chance admiration of it? She knows this may be, for it is the picture
of a very pretty girl of about his own age. She almost fears to allow
herself to believe who he may be as she scans his face closely. He
moans and opens his eyes, turning to her, saying:

“Please give me some water.”

She gives it, and asks, with a quiet voice, but with eyes and ears
expectant of the answer:

“What is your name?”

“George Thorndyke, ma’am.” And Agnes knows that her own son lies before
her. How anxiously, for many days and nights after this, does she
devote herself to this patient! No wonder the boy grows to be very fond
of her? To him she is only Mrs. Rodney, and he has connected no idea of
his mother with that name, although it has been his middle name also.
His father struck it out, and he does not even know his mother’s maiden
name. During his illness, she, by little and little, gleans this from
him—that his father is dead; that he has three sisters (she sighs to
herself as she remembers the other two); that he is working with a
carpenter, of whom he is learning his trade; that his “_stepmother_”
has been always good to him, but that she is gone, since his father’s
death, to live far away. This explains one thing which has puzzled
her—that only his employer and fellow-workmen have come to see him in
the hospital. She has feared every day that some of his family might
come. One thing yet she yearns to know—does he know any thing of
herself, or does he think her dead? She longs and yet dreads to know
this. At last, when it is evident that he will soon be well enough to
leave the hospital, she asks him if he remembers his own mother, or if
he was too young when he “_lost her_.”

“Yes, ma’am; I remember her a very little; but I have got her picture
in my pocket-book.” And he shows it to her.

“This was taken when she was very young, I should think,” says the
nurse.

“Oh! yes; mother said, the day she found it, that she guessed it was a
keepsake of father’s once, but that she thought I had the best right to
it. She told me never to let him see it, or know I had it, and that’s
the reason I got to carrying it around with me. Why, nurse, I think she
had eyes like yours.”

The nurse smiles, and busies herself in such a way that her head is
turned away for some moments.

“Don’t you think she was pretty, nurse? _I_ do?” continued Thorndyke.

Thus challenged, Agnes looks critically at the little picture.

“Yes; she _was_ pretty, I think,” she answers slowly; “but, if she had
lived, she might have been no better-looking than I am now.”

“And that would be nice enough for me; but, nurse, stoop down. I want
to tell you something. She isn’t dead, or wasn’t when my father married
my stepmother. They think that I think so, but a boy told me that she
went away, and was divorced. I didn’t believe it at first, but I found
out that it was true, and I would so much like to find her.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe it was father’s own fault that she went away. It
may be wrong in me to say it, but I know he could be hateful sometimes,
and I think he never liked me so well as he liked my sisters; and I
always thought my stepmother was kinder to me than he was.”

“God bless her for that!”

Thorndyke looks at the nurse, surprised at the earnestness of the words.

“Why, yes,” he says, encouraged in his confidences by her sympathy.
“She was always good to me, but I guess my own mother was superior to
her, and father knew it; but they got along very well together, and she
was good to him when he was sick at last.”

“Did he prosper?”

“Yes, quite well; but what he left wasn’t much, divided among four
of us, and mother’s share out. I’ll have a little to start me with,
though, and I got good schooling.”

“I am glad of that,” says the nurse.

“Why, nurse, what an interest you take in me; I think it very good of
you, indeed. Is it so with all the poor fellows who get shut up here?”

“George Thorndyke, let me tell you something which I _must_ before you
go away and I lose all trace of you. I knew that picture as soon as I
saw it, for I saw it before you were born.”

“Then you knew my mother! Where is she? Say! Is she living?”

“She is here. Can you forgive her and love her?”

They are not alone, so this revelation has to be made with hushed
voices and guarded manner; but George Thorndyke says, grasping her
hands:

“I would rather you were my mother than any woman I have ever met; and
I will work for you all the days of my life.”

“No, George; this is my place, and this is my work.”

“But you must come out of it; you’ll get your death here. Gracious
goodness! I can’t take it all in! Why, what a good thing it was for me
to get that tumble, as it led me to you!”

And then he questions her very much, and many of his questions are hard
to answer. At last he says suddenly:

“But you’re a Catholic, are you not?”

“Yes,” she answers.

“Did that make the trouble, mother?” And he looks as if he thinks he
has guessed it all.

“No, my son; if I had been a Catholic then, it would never have
happened, and I should never have been here, and perhaps not you,
either.”

He refrains from any further questions, but goes on declaring that he
will take her from there, and work for her. It is pleasant to this
lonely woman to feel that here is a manly heart and strength to lean on
which she may honestly claim, but she answers:

“No, George; I cannot allow it; you must work, and take a wife,
by-and-by, to yourself. I have my place and my work here, and there is
another for whom I work too. But I have some money besides. There is no
need for you to work for me, although I am here. Why, I am almost rich.”

“Another?” he says curiously, and scarcely noticing her last words.

“Yes,” she says, and has the pain of blushing before her own son, as
she tells him he has a brother. “There is another George who is as near
to you as those sisters of whom you have told me. I named him George to
fill your place, after the law gave you to your father and not to me.
O my son! I never meant to leave _you_. God knows I did not.”

“I do believe that,” he said; “but keep quiet, or they’ll notice. Where
is—my—brother?” There is a slight hesitation over the last word—ever
so slight—and he puts it bravely, but she feels it. That nice sense of
motherhood has always been so quick with her. In all her vicissitudes,
it has never been blunted. She tells him where George Rodney is, and
asks if he wishes to see him.

“Yes; I do, for your sake; and, besides, he is my namesake, and did
almost crowd me out, which I can’t allow, you know. But—is—is—Mr.
Rodney living?”

Ah! what a keen although unconscious thrust is that!

“Rodney is my maiden name, George, and I have dropped the other. The
Catholic Church does not recognize me as the wife of any other than
your father.”

“Ah! I see,” he says, in evident relief.

She goes bravely on to have it over:

“But little George’s father is gone from us, I do not know where; I
never expect to see him again. Rodney was in your name too, George.”

“I never knew that,” he says.

“Well, let it pass; perhaps your father did well to leave it out, and
your brother keeps it now.”

They are interrupted here, and the nurse leaves her son, to attend
to other duties. He finds enough to think about, and wants no other
company but his own thoughts.

It is not many days after this that George Thorndyke leaves the
hospital; but he never lets a day pass without going to see his mother,
and he meets his brother kindly, if not affectionately. But to all his
entreaties, and for a long time, Agnes refuses to leave her hard life.
She means to “die in the harness” which she has voluntarily assumed.
But at last her health begins to fail with the long strain upon her
endurance, and the doctors say she must rest. F. Francis also counsels
it. Now, and not till now, does she allow her son to make a home for
her. It is a very comfortable one, for, with the money left her by Mrs.
Vanderlyn, added to her long-saved pay as a hospital nurse, and George
Thorndyke’s wages in his trade, they live in quiet refinement, if not
luxury. And Agnes Rodney is a happy mother of two good sons.

A year has passed, and Agnes sits on a ferry-boat, in company with
George Rodney, who is spending a short vacation with her. They sit
near a man who is closely watching them, but whom they do not observe.
This man has a sallow, unhealthy, and dissipated face, but withal a
rather handsome one. The hair is dark, the eyes are gray, but sunken,
and restless in their expression. A very heavy beard covers all the
lower part of his face. A broad-brimmed felt hat shades his forehead
and eyes. He seems very curious about Agnes, and shifts his seat, and
leans nearer to hear her voice every time she answers George’s frequent
questions. As they pass from the boat, he hastens to walk close behind
her. He hears her say to the boy, “Wait, _George_, not so fast,” and
his eye lights up at something in these few words. The mother and son
get into a street-car. The man follows them, but seats himself on the
same side, and at the other end of the seat. He keeps his head turned
the other way whenever Agnes appears likely to look in his direction.
He is at the end of the car where she will not pass him in leaving it.

When Agnes and George get off, he follows quickly, still without their
noticing him. He sees the house they enter, surveys the neighborhood,
repeats the number to himself, and then walks up the street and around
the block, apparently in deep thought. When he comes around to the
house again, he goes slowly up the steps, and reads “Thorndyke” upon
the door. This seems to puzzle him. He looks around the neighborhood
again.

“No; I am right,” he says; “that is the church opposite, and this is
the number, but what does _this_ name mean! John Thorndyke is dead, but
she seems to prefer his name! Well, I’ll just see.” And he rings the
bell.

“Is Mrs. Thorndyke in?” he says to the maid who opens the door.

“There hain’t no Mrs. Thorndyke,” says the girl, taking it as a
personal grievance that he is not aware of this fact.

“Oh! well, the lady of the house—Mrs. Vanderlyn,” he says, not
wishing to appear too ignorant before this austere damsel. Now she is
exasperated.

“There hain’t nobody of _that_ name, neither; but isn’t it Mrs. Rodney
you want?”

The moment he hears this name, he appears satisfied, and, without
noticing the girl’s rudeness, he says:

“That is the lady I mean.”

“Well, she’s in.” And the girl waves her hand to the open parlor door,
as if she disdains further words with him. She suspects he hasn’t known
the name of Rodney at all before she mentioned it. All his offence is
in asking a question which she has been obliged to answer several times
before to pedlars and others of that kind, but she visits upon him the
accumulated vexation caused by his predecessors.

“_What name_ shall _I_ take to her?” she asks, with an unpleasant
emphasis, as if she doubts whether he knows his own name, or has any.

“What name? Ah! yes. Say Mr. _Martin_ would like to see her.”

The girl goes up-stairs, and tells Mrs. Rodney that Mr. _Morton_ is
waiting in the parlor.

After he is left alone, the man looks about the comfortable
appointments of the room with a quick business eye. He seems satisfied,
but has not much time for scrutiny, as he hears a step coming down the
stairs. He rises, and stands ready to meet Agnes as she enters. When
her eye falls on him, she stops at once, and stands looking steadily
at him without speaking, but growing very pale. He comes toward her,
saying, “Agnes!” and holding out both his hands. She does not take
them, nor offer any welcome, but says, in a cold, quiet voice, “What do
you want of me?”

“Are you, then, so unforgiving to me, Agnes? After all my long search
for you, is this all the greeting you can give me?”

“I do not know how long your search may have been, but I am sorry that
you have succeeded in finding me. What is it you want of me?” she says,
in the same cold tone.

“To live with you, as I would have done all these years if you had not
so unaccountably hidden yourself away.” He says this with an air of
boldness, and of assertion of some right which he supposes she must
recognize.

She smiles disdainfully. She divines the selfishness of this move, and
she sees that he is ignorant of the extent of her knowledge concerning
him.

“Where have you been all these years?” he asks, as she continues
silent.

“I am not bound to account for myself to you,” she replies.

“Come, now, Agnes, this is foolish. Why not be friendly? It is best for
you to be so. I have seen you with the boy. He is mine, and I can claim
him, you know.”

“No, sir! you cannot do that.”

“You think I cannot? Pray, why? You are my wife, and he is my son.”

“He is your son, but I am not your wife,” she says, in a firm tone.

“Not my wife! But you were married to me. Oh! shame, Agnes! I did not
expect that _you_, who insisted on the tying of that knot, would be the
one to untie it. In what position does it place you and the boy if you
are not my wife? I suppose you have considered _that_, and you must
have advanced somewhat in your ideas to be so independent now of public
opinion.”

Her face is very pale, and her lips have been firmly set. There is a
cold, stern light in her eyes as she answers: “I was never your wife.
You were not free to marry me, even if I had been free to marry you.
You were never divorced from your wife, so you can have no claim on me.”

He looks astonished, and for a moment cringes just a little as she says
this. But he rallies, and says, “That will not matter now, my wife is
dead; do you know that?”

“Yes.”

“You do? Why, how do _you_ know so much, when I only know that bare
fact? Pray, can you tell me anything more?”

His tone is half satirical, half beseeching. He really wishes to
know more than the meagre information which he has gleaned from the
neighbors of the house where Margaret died—that a Mrs. Vanderlyn was
buried from that house. The landlady has gone they know not where.
They remember the funeral, that is all. He is anxious to know what
has become of Margaret’s money. He thinks the priests have it; but
he is not sure of this, however, for one person has told him that a
relative who was nurse for the Catholic lady at the last inherited all
her money. It has puzzled him very much to guess who this person could
have been. He has not succeeded in finding any record of Margaret’s
will. F. Francis and Mrs. Vanderlyn had thought it wiser not to have
it recorded, considering Agnes’ peculiar relation to Vanderlyn, who
might yet return to dispute the possession of the money with her,
or to trouble her. Now that Agnes seems to know something of his
wife, it occurs to him that she may possibly be that _relative_ who
inherited the money. Knowing the disposition of each of these women
as he does—the one for nursing the sick, the other generous and
forgiving—he sees that, if they met at all, this might have been the
consequence. Remarkable quickness of deduction and conclusion he has
always possessed, and it serves him now, and makes him more determined
in his designs upon Agnes; but he is desirous of playing his game
adroitly. She, on her part, wishes to shorten the interview, and be rid
of him.

“I can tell you,” she says, “that your wife died as she lived, a
saintly woman; that she was the kindest, truest friend to me I ever
had. I knew from her the falsehood you told me when you said you were
divorced from her, and the base deception you practised on me in
pretending to make me your wife.”

“For love of you, Agnes! There was no other way for me. Let my love be
my excuse.”

She disdains any notice of this interruption, and continues:

“It was an infamous falsehood and treachery to me; but let that pass.
I was almost equally to blame, for I had no real right to marry you.”

“How so? You, at least, were free,” he says.

“No; my husband lived. I was still John Thorndyke’s wife in the eyes of
the church.”

“Church!” he repeats scornfully.

“Martin Vanderlyn, I am a Catholic. It may modify your tone and remarks
to be aware of that. I am proud and thankful to be of Margaret’s faith.”

He frowns, but thinks quickly that he may turn this to his advantage.

“Why are you called Rodney, then, and Thorndyke on your door, if you
are Mrs. Thorndyke still?”

“My son’s name is Rodney. He has no other, and I will bear his. I
decline to account to you for the name on my door.”

“You are very proud, Agnes, but I think it is best for you to be
friendly with me, considering all things. I certainly am free to marry
you now, and give the boy and you your right name and place. I should
think you were the very woman to wish that. I happen to know of John
Thorndyke’s death, too, so I think you are as free as I am now, even
on your own ground. Agnes, I never meant to leave you so long. I wrote
to you, and got no answer. I have searched for you in every direction,
and only now I find you. Why are you so unwilling to live as my wife
with me, when you see that it would place you and your son in a more
respectable condition?”

Agnes remembers Margaret’s words: “See to it that he marries you when
I am gone!” Then it had seemed doubtful if he could be persuaded to
do so. And here he is suing for her consent. She remembers his son’s
position, “nobody’s child,” but she remembers also her first-born son.
She remembers the bold, false, bad heart and life of Martin Vanderlyn;
she sees the possible effect of his evil influence on both her sons,
as it formerly blighted her own life, and she shrinks in horror and
disgust at the bare thought of such a stepfather introduced into their
home. She answers his question without hesitation:

“I do not love you. I cannot respect you. You were false to your wife
and false to me. I have been able to live happily without you all these
years, and I shall live apart from you still.”

He keeps down his pride, and appears yet to hope to change her
resolution, thinking it may be only the result of a woman’s pique.
Moreover, he feels almost sure now that the comfortable home around
her is purchased with the money left by Margaret. At all events, he
is determined on getting a home if possible at her expense, and he
does not scruple at any misrepresentation regarding his own means of
support. To her last scornful words, he replies, with an air of kind
consideration:

“But, Agnes, you will not always be able to support yourself as well as
I can support you. I know not how you do it, but I can place you above
the need of any effort on your part. Why can you not be frank with me,
and tell me how you have managed to live? You did not receive all the
money I sent, for some of it came back to me. Tell me, Agnes.”

“Martin Vanderlyn, I will not accept anything for either of us from
you. We can do without you, and we _will_. My decision is final.”

“Do you know the harm I can do you?” he says, in an angry voice, and
with flashing eyes. “I can brand you to the world and to the boy.
Would you rather that than have a husband, and a father for your son?”

She seems to shrivel and whiten at his threat, but she stands firm, and
answers him:

“You committed bigamy when you married me. What will the law do about
_that_? I can prove it, sir! Now, had you not better leave me?”

“No! I swear I will not leave you until you promise to marry me!”

At this moment, a man’s step is heard in the hall. He has entered the
house, quietly opening the door with a key of his own, and, while
taking off his overcoat, has heard the last words of both the speakers.
He steps within the room, and comes to Agnes’ side, passing his arm
around her trembling form. He is a powerful young man, in full and
vigorous health, which contrasts strongly with Vanderlyn’s sallow face
and wasted figure. He looks at Vanderlyn with piercing eyes as he says:

“What do you mean, sir, by speaking to this lady in this manner?
Mother, has he any right here that you acknowledge?”

“None, my son; I wish only to be rid of him.”

“Then, go,” says Thorndyke, “or I will see that you do. And if you
trouble her again, I will see that the law lays its hand on you more
heavily than I will lay mine if you do not leave us at once.”

Vanderlyn has gazed in great astonishment at this unexpected champion
for Agnes. When he hears him call her “mother,” it flashes upon his
quick perception why “Thorndyke” is on the door. He does not forget
that there was a boy left in Agnes’ old home, whom he once promised to
care for as if he were his own. Not much more has he cared for his own;
but this is an opponent he does not like. This is a different kind of
quarrel from the one he supposed he had with a defenceless woman. His
game is lost; he knows it, but he tries to be very brave in his defeat.
He says scornfully:

“Mr. Thorndyke, I do not ask _your_ hospitality. I remember the quality
of the article I had from your father some years ago. Yours seems to
be of the same sort. I will not disturb the _honorable_ repose of
your family, or try to become further acquainted with my son, _your
brother_.”

George raises his clenched hand to fell him to the floor, but Agnes
interposes, and Vanderlyn leaves the house untouched—leaves it, but
reels as he goes down the steps—staggers—falls upon the pavement only
a few paces from the door. A few moments later, George Rodney, coming
in the house, cries:

“A man has fallen dead in the street, just by the corner! I was coming
around the other side, and I almost met him!”

George Thorndyke rushes out, and sees the men carrying Martin
Vanderlyn’s senseless body away.

The next day, Agnes and her sons read in the papers that the man died
of heart disease, which the doctors thought had been aggravated by some
recent excitement. The mother and son are thankful that George’s hand
did not fall upon him; but George Rodney never knows that the man he
“almost met,” and who dropped down before his eyes, was his own father.




THE INDIANS OF YSLETA.

THE rich and thriving Pueblo of the Ysléta Indians is situated on the
western bank of the Rio Grande del Norte, about nine miles below the
little town of Albuquerque in New Mexico.

We strike southward from Albuquerque along the east bank of the
river. Three miles below the town we enter on flat and uninteresting
bottomland. The eye is not relieved by a dwelling, not even by a tree,
for a distance of five miles. We thus come to a rancho, deserted when
we last passed there, but which still gave evidence of former comfort.
The owner had joined the Texan Confederates, and quitted the territory.

Now we begin to cross the Sand Hills—a not unexciting performance.
The road is a narrow and shifting one, growing daily narrower and of
steeper slope, as the winds blow the sand upon it and fill it up. The
wagon moves along slowly at an angle of 45°. The road winds tortuously
along the face of the Sand Hills for about two miles, sometimes making
short and abrupt turns. It is from two to three hundred feet above the
river which washes the base of the hills. I feel an unpleasant tingling
sensation at my elbows, and a great and almost uncontrollable desire
to walk—“to lighten the load,” of course. Once on the road, there is
no going back, and one is entirely at the mercy of one’s mules. You
must let them go their own way. If they should grow restive or become
frightened, a broken neck, a general and irretrievable “smash up,” an
unpleasant and unrecorded grave in the quicksands of the Rio Grande,
would be the result. A six-mule wagon went off at one of the sharp
turns some years ago. Its fate was discovered by persons who travelled
some hours behind it, and who noticed the tracks. The wagon and team
had been engulfed, and had entirely disappeared before they arrived.

From the Sand Hills, we have a beautiful view of the Pueblo of Ysléta
on the opposite side of the river. The spectacle of the Indians fording
the river in certain spots, and driving their _burros_ up the steep
sides of the Sand Hill on which their Pueblo is built, enhances the
picturesqueness of the scene.

We have passed the Sand Hills, and now we cross the river to visit the
Pueblo. We have struck a little above the ford, however; the water is
in the bed of our wagon. We have to stand on the seats in order to keep
dry, and we perceive, not without alarm, that the mules are swimming.
By striking down-stream a little, however, the mules find bottom again,
and pull us out all safe on the western bank.

A steep and narrow path leads up to the summit of the Sand Hill on
which the Pueblo is perched. The Pueblos always have built and still
build their dwellings on the hill-tops: for defensive reasons in the
olden times, for security against inundations in the present. The
houses are built of the customary adobe. They are washed outside with
a whitish wash which resists the action of the weather; the mode of
its preparation is said to be known only to the Pueblos. I have seen
nothing like it in any of the Mexican towns. The houses are generally
two stories high, the lower story projecting considerably beyond the
upper. The entrance is through the roof, to which you climb by a ladder
placed against the outside. This mode of entrance is also a relic of
defensive precaution in past times of hostilities with other tribes of
Indians and with the Spanish invaders. The internal arrangement of the
houses is the reverse of ours. The kitchen is in the upper story, and
the sitting or sleeping room in the lower. You descend into the latter
from the former by an opening in the floor so small that not even the
lightest weight of the Fat Man’s Club could hope to squeeze through.
The Pueblos have no monstrous developments of adipose tissue; the
opening is large enough for them. The lower room is thoroughly secured
even against ventilation. The only window consists of one piece of
glass, without frame, imbedded in the wall.

The earthen vessels for family use are manufactured by the Pueblos
themselves, and are ornamented with fantastic designs of most primitive
execution. Chief among these vessels is the _tinaja_, globular in
shape, with an orifice at the top large enough to permit taking out the
liquid contents with a small dipper. The _tinaja_ is porous, to permit
evaporation through its sides. In hot weather, the _tinajas_ are filled
from the river or spring before sunrise, carefully covered, and set in
the shade. With these precautions, they keep the water almost ice-cold.
They are used in all Mexican _ménages_, as well as in the households of
the Pueblos.

The costume of the Pueblo men is not lacking in picturesqueness, more
particularly when distance lends its proverbial effect. They wear
a short loose sack of white cotton, or manta, ordinarily made of
carefully washed flour-sacks; for your Pueblo Indian is economical,
and, when he has sustained the inward man with the contents of
the flour-sack, he covers the outer man with the sack itself. The
pantaloons are of the same material, loose but short, not usually
reaching below the knee. The enchantment of distance dispelled,
however, traces of the former uses of the material may be discovered
in such inscriptions on the shoulders or the seat as the following:
“Superfine Family,” or “Choice Family Extra.” The Pueblo wears his hair
long, tied behind in a cue, around which is wound a piece of red cloth
or ribbon, according to the financial standing of the wearer, or mayhap
the greatness or solemnity of the occasion. The head gear is generally
a broad-brimmed straw hat. The foot covering is a deer-skin moccasin.

The costume of the gentler sex is eminently ungraceful. The women
wind long strips of buckskin tightly around the leg, in successive
layers, resulting in an enormous bandage from three to four inches
thick reaching from the ankle to above the knee. The _chaussure_ is a
moccasin. The effect produced by this arrangement is that of a feminine
_torso_ set on two huge bolsters. All symmetry of form or grace of gait
is destroyed. The walk is a sort of shuffle. The upper covering of the
figure is a dark woollen stuff, coarse in texture, and of Pueblo woof.
This reaches to the knee, and is composed of two rectangular pieces
joined at the upper edges, which form the shoulders, and leaving a
space for the passage of the head and neck. The pieces hang down before
and behind, and are held together at the waist by a belt or cincture.
The women cut their hair squarely across the forehead, leaving the
side locks and back hair to hang down loosely. Many of the men, too,
besides wearing a cue, cut the hair straight across the forehead, and
wear the pendent side-locks. The women wear their arms bare, save the
ornamentation of from one to a dozen bracelets of thick wire, which
glitters, but is not gold. They wear necklaces of coral, moss-agates,
or common glass beads, according to the wealth or importance of the
wearer. The men also frequently wear similar necklaces.

The portion of the feminine toilet which requires most elaboration is
evidently the leg-bandage. It is taken off to cross the ford on foot,
and its removal seems to be as slow a process as unrolling a mummy. The
object of such a covering for the nether limbs I am unable to imagine.

The Pueblo is a handsome Indian. I have seen very finely cut features
among the men. Many of them have beautifully fresh complexions, on
which a bright apple-rosy tint is gradually shaded into a deep rich
brown. They are generally of medium stature, however. Their feet and
hands are correspondingly small. Their faces have not that animal,
that _wolfish_, expression of the wild Indians of the mountains or the
plains; on the contrary, they beam with good nature, simplicity, and
single-heartedness. They are thrifty and industrious. The men do the
out-door work; the women attend to the household affairs, or, in the
season, peddle the grapes, apricots, peaches, melons, etc., raised in
their Pueblo. Should you meet a Pueblo and his squaw travelling with
the universal _burro_, you will always find the lady mounted on the
animal, while her cavalier, urging on John Burro with his stick, trots
along gaily behind, and smilingly gives you a cheery “_Come te va?_” as
he passes.

The Pueblos do not intermarry with the Mexicans. The women are chaste
in their lives, and domestic in their habits. Vice is almost unknown
among them. I have lived some years in the vicinity of two or three
Indian Pueblos, and have neither known of nor heard of an abandoned
woman among them. I wish I could say the same of other races in the
territory. In this regard, the Pueblos also differ greatly from the
wild Indians whose lives are continued scenes of bestiality.

During my residence in their vicinity, the Pueblos had daily access
to my dwelling. They were our fruit and vegetable purveyors. I have
not known an instance of their stealing a pin’s worth, though they
had ample opportunities to pilfer had they been so inclined. In this
regard, their example might be imitated with profit by people with
greater pretensions to civilization, and in this also they differ
widely from the savage Indians who are, to a man, thieves both by
nature and habit. In fine, the Pueblos are among the most moral,
peaceful, simple, and honest citizens of New Mexico.

The Pueblos are Catholics. Their Catholicity, in its out-door
festivals, has just sufficient tinge of the antique observances of the
Montezumas to throw a romantic glamour around it. They have churches
in all their Pueblos. Some of these—Ysléta among the number—have a
priest regularly stationed in them, and many of the churches are served
by the priests of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in which they are
situated. The churches are adobe structures, not always cruciform, with
a belfry, and adorned inside with grotesque figures, the product of
their own primitive art.

The weapon of the Pueblos is still the bow and arrow. A few have
old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifles. The Pueblos do not lack the
combative instinct, and are more than a match for the Apaches and
Navajoes, man to man. They have frequently acted in conjunction with
our troops against these tribes; but their co-operation is often
rendered valueless by their custom, most strictly adhered to, of
returning to their village as soon as they have taken a scalp, for the
purpose of having the customary scalp-dance. I regret to say that they
give no quarter, and spare neither age nor sex, except when it suits
them to make _peóns_, or slaves, of the women and children. They say,
in self-justification, that little Indians soon become big Indians if
allowed to grow. The measure they mete is meted again to them by the
hostile tribes.

As in courtesy bound, we direct our steps to the dwelling of the
“governor,” who is known as “Don Ambrosio.” His house is of more modern
construction than the customary Pueblo dwelling. We were admitted
through a _corral_ and a door—not in the roof, but in the side of the
house, after the fashion of “the whites.” The room we were received in
was a long apartment _à la Mexicaine_, with benches around the walls.
Some of the finest Navajo blankets I ever saw were displayed upon the
benches. The walls were hung around with French colored lithographs of
a religious character.

Governor Ambrosio was a dapper little Indian, with long snow-white
hair falling loosely to his shoulders. His complexion was clear
and peach-bloomy. Though full of years and honors, he was full of
life and health. His son, who acted as his lieutenant, was a man
about thirty-odd years, the image of his father, in stature, size,
complexion, and everything except the white hair, the junior’s being
jet-black. The women of the family were pleasingly featured, but their
inartistic dress destroyed the effect of their good looks.

Ambrosio is said to be quite wealthy, with fifty or sixty thousand
dollars in _oro_ and in _plata_; for your Pueblo does not consider
greenbacks good hoarding. Ambrosio, Jr., showed us the fruithouse,
where the senses of sight and smell were regaled with the pleasant
spectacles and odors of heaps of rich, fragrant quinces and apples, the
latter small but rosy as young Ambrosio’s pleasant face.

Ambrosio’s style of farming is more in accordance with modern
progressive ideas than that of some of his neighbors. His mules were
fat, round, and sleek, and in the _corral_ lay an American plough of
modern construction. Many among the middle and lower classes in New
Mexico still plough “with a sharp stick.” The irrigating dikes, or
_acequias_, of the Pueblos are well and carefully attended to; they are
not permitted to overflow in the wrong places and at the wrong times—a
neglect which so frequently causes the traveller from the valley of
the Rio Grande to soar from prosaic observation to the sublimity of
anathema. In their fields, I saw men, only, engaged in agricultural
labors.

S. Augustine is the patron saint of Ysléta. Its great _fiesta_ is
the “San Augustin.” The feast is held about the time when all the
grapes are gathered and some of the new wine already made. It is
essentially a grape and wine feast. But to his other virtues, the
Pueblo adds the great one of temperance. Mass is celebrated in the
morning, and the whole Pueblo is out in its showiest attire. The dance
known as “the Montezuma” is performed by young men selected for the
occasion. Americans and Mexicans are kindly received and hospitably
entreated in the Pueblo on these festival occasions. I have heard of
but one instance in which this kindness and hospitality was abused.
It was by a miserable gambler—a “white man,” and, I regret to say,
an American—who, at the San Augustin of 186-, without the slightest
provocation, shot dead a Pueblo boy. The territory got rid of the
desperado, who had to fly, for his worthless life, from the wrath of
the outraged Indians of Ysléta.


TO A CHILD.

  You little madonna, so very demure!
          You draw me, yet awe me:
          As warning, half scorning,
  That kissing a face so religiously pure
  Is almost a sacrilege, I may be sure.

  Yet, awed as I am, I but love you the more.
          You meet me and greet me
          Serenely and queenly;
  And image so sweetly the one I adore
  When She was a child in the ages of yore.

  Her name it is Mary Regina—your own.
          You share it and wear it
          As flower its dower
  Of fragrance—predestined hereafter, full-blown,
  To reign with the lilies that circle Her throne.

  Be fragrant for me, then, O lily! and pray—
          Each hour, little flower,
          Exhaling availing
  Petitions—to Mary the Queen of your May,
  To breathe on my Autumn your pureness to-day.


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

 ELEMENTS OF PHILOSOPHY, COMPRISING LOGIC AND ONTOLOGY, OR GENERAL
 METAPHYSICS. By Rev. W. H. Hill, S.J., Professor of Philosophy
 in the St. Louis University. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. London: R.
 Washburne.

We are glad to see this anxiously expected volume. The author proves
himself quite competent to the most important task he has undertaken,
and writes with the ease and precision of a thorough student and
practised teacher of the highest and most necessary but most neglected
and abused of all the rational sciences, philosophy. In his doctrine,
he follows S. Thomas and Suarez, and is therefore necessarily sound in
his principles and method. The most subtile, abstruse, and controverted
points in respect to which there is the most difference among the
votaries of scholastic philosophy, and those topics also where there
is the best opportunity for the author to display special ability in
his explication of doctrines in which all scholastic philosophers
are substantially agreed, are found in the special metaphysics. The
present volume, proceeding no further than general metaphysics, does
not enable us to judge of the way in which the author will treat these
questions. So far as he goes, we are satisfied with his explication
of the grand fundamental principles and truths of philosophy, and
wait with favorable anticipations his second volume. The style is
admirably precise and clear, and as neat and elegant as our imperfect
language will admit in such a treatise. An able correspondent, whose
letter will appear in our next number, has laid down certain rules in
regard to this point, and made some pertinent observations in which we
concur, and we refer our readers to that forthcoming letter. We think
he will find that F. Hill has generally adopted the style which he
recommends. We find, so far as we have had time to examine, only one
word which appears to us open to criticism, “cognoscive,” used in place
of the term cognoscitive, employed by Cudworth and found in Webster’s
_Dictionary_. The term _Idea_ also seems to us to need a more full and
precise explanation, in connection with the terms _species sensibilis_,
_species intelligibilis_, _species impressa_ and _expressa_, and
_verbum mentis_, as used by S. Thomas, which we presume we may expect
to be given in the treatise on psychology. A teacher who has been
thoroughly taught philosophy will find this treatise, we think, well
suited to the purposes of a text-book. The question, how far teachers
who read only English, and are obliged to learn themselves a sound
system before they can teach it to others, or intelligent pupils in
their own private studies, will find the exposition of philosophy in
this volume intelligible and satisfactory, can better be answered
after a fair trial. The logic has been much shortened and simplified,
yet includes, we think, all that is essential for training the class
of pupils who will use the book in the rules of correct reasoning. If
something more is needed for exercise in syllogisms, any of the books
of logical praxis in common use will answer the purpose. We recommend
the adoption of F. Hill’s philosophy as a text-book to all teachers
in Catholic schools, both male and female, where English text-books
are used. It is the only English text-book fit for use in teaching
philosophy. Our impression is—that it will be found on trial to be an
excellent text-book for the higher classes of pupils, and we thank the
author for the great service he has rendered in preparing it, hoping
that he will not delay to finish his work.

 IERNE OF ARMORICA. By J. C. Bateman. (Fifth volume of F.
 Coleridge’s Quarterly Series.) London: Burns, Oates & Co. (New York:
 Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is an historical novel after the fashion of _Fabiola_ and
_Callista_. The scene is laid in the time of Chlovis, about the period
of his marriage to Chlotildis. The author has brought extensive and
accurate learning into play in this story, which is thus a picture
of the times it describes. It is also a well-written and interesting
romance. We think he has made Chlotildis, who is exquisite as an
ideal character, somewhat too perfect for the strict historical truth.
Although a saint, she had a little of the barbarian left in her, before
she achieved the full measure of the perfection of Christian meekness,
gentleness, and charity. All readers will be pleased with the perusal
of this book. Our young friends in college and convent, who are always
keen for a new book for wet days, of which we have had so many of late,
will be delighted with this one, and, while they are reading it, will
forget the disappointment they are apt to feel when their favorite
prayer, _Donnez nous un beau jour_, is not granted.

 SERMONS FOR ALL SUNDAYS AND FESTIVALS OF THE YEAR. By J. N.
 Sweeney, D.D., O.S.B. In two volumes. Vol. I. London: Burns, Oates &
 Co. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

 MARY MAGNIFYING GOD—MAY SERMONS. By William Humphrey, of the
 Cong. of the Oblates of S. Charles. Same Publishers.

These two volumes of sermons are excellent in regard to matter and
style. F. Humphrey’s little volume is specially marked by a dogmatic
character. Both will be found serviceable to priests in preparing
sermons, and to the faithful for their private reading.

 SUEMA; or, The Little African Slave who was Buried Alive. By
 Mgr. Gaume, Prothonotary Apostolic. Translated, and with a Preface,
 by Lady Herbert. London: Burns, Oates & Co. (New York: Sold by The
 Catholic Publication Society.)

The recent mission of Sir Bartle Frere, by the British Government,
to the Sultan of Zanzibar, with a view to the suppression of the
slave-trade in East Africa, has attracted American notice. Now,
although government intervention will be able to put a stop to
the shipping of slaves across the seas, it cannot interfere with
slave-labor in Zanzibar itself and the adjoining towns, or prevent the
atrocities of Portuguese and Arab agents who act as traders on their
own account. Catholic charity, then, has found a way of reaching where
government influence has no bearing. There is a community in Brittany
which devotes itself exclusively to the education of little negresses,
purchased from the slavers in the African marts. And, jointly with this
community, the Fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost and of the
Sacred Heart of Mary, who have founded a mission in Zanzibar, buy up
as many slave children as they can, and educate them in the Catholic
faith. These devoted religious would, of course, be able to do much
more in this way had they the pecuniary means at their command. The
thrilling story of Suema is put forth in order to excite an ardent zeal
in the hearts of Catholic readers for the purchase of slave-children in
East Africa, whereby the curse that has befallen them is turned into a
blessing. The story is perfectly authentic, the substance of it having
been taken down from Suéma’s own lips, translated into French, and sent
home by the superior of the Zanzibar mission.

We are very sure the narrative itself, as also the admirable preface
and introduction which accompany it, cannot fail to awaken the sympathy
of our Catholic readers. When, then, they learn that the sum of fifty
francs, or about ten dollars in currency, will purchase a boy or
girl of seven or eight in the slave-marts, they will not be slow, we
believe, to contribute towards so glorious a work. And the price of a
single slave-child “will be received with the greatest gratitude by the
R. P. Procurator-General of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost and of
the Sacred Heart of Mary (who have charge of the Zanzibar Mission), 30
Rue Thomond, Paris, or by Monseigneur Gaume, 16 Rue de Sèvres, Paris.”

 A CATECHISM OF THE HOLY ROSARY. By the Rev. Henry Formby. New
 York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

This is a neat little book in catechism form containing about 60 pages
of the most necessary and useful instruction on the fifteen mysteries
of the Holy Rosary. F. Formby is doing a great work. He is the right
man just at the right time, and seems to anticipate the wants of priest
and people. His other books are admirably well calculated to interest
not only the youth for whom they were especially intended, but also
those of riper years. The little book before us ought to be in the
hands of every Catholic, young and old. It is also well calculated
to instruct those who think that our devotion to the Blessed Virgin
excludes God and the Saviour from our prayers. All we have to say
is let any such person read this catechism, and they will be forced
to admit that the Rosary is nothing more or less than an epitome of
the New Testament history of our Lord, and that he is mentioned on
nearly every one of the pages of this beautiful little book, for the
appearance of which we thank the Rev. author most heartily.

 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. By Mgr.
 Gaume, Prothonotary Apostolic. Translated from the last French edition
 by A Daughter of S. Joseph. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. 1873.

This work, which might, to a passing glance, appear fanciful and
unimportant, is truly philosophical and of rare interest. It comes to
us not only with the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Philadelphia, but also
with a Brief of His Holiness Pius IX., granting an indulgence of fifty
days to the sign of the cross, in response to the illustrious author’s
petition.

The author is able to say, in his preface to the second edition, that
the book has had a wonderful success: “The first French edition was
sold in a few months. Three translations of it have been made into
different European languages—one in Rome, one in Turin, and one in
Germany. Catholic papers have vied with one another in recommending
its perusal, and many letters have been sent to us bearing the
congratulations of the most respectable men of France and of foreign
countries.” He then, after quoting the Neapolitan review, _Scienza e
Fede_, appends a portion of a letter from the Dean of the Catholic
Chair at Rome, and also a circular from the commission charged with the
care of the regionary schools, to the effect that the book should be
read by the pupils, and distributed as a premium.

The preface to the first edition explains the origin of the
treatise—how a young German of distinction, having come to study
at the College of France, found his companions there laugh at him
for making the sign of the cross before and after meals, and so by
requesting the author’s opinion of the practice, and of the sign in
general, occasioned the twenty letters which form the volume.

These letters exhaust the subject in a masterly way truly French.
Besides proving over again what has been proved so many times before,
the antiquity of the holy sign among Christians, and how the noblest
intellects of primitive times both taught and practised the use of it,
Mgr. Gaume shows that it was made in some way before Christianity, and
from the beginning of the world. “The sign of the cross is so natural
to man that at no epoch, among no nation, and in no form of worship,
did man ever put himself in communication with God by prayer without
making the sign of the cross.” Then he gives the “seven ways of making
it”:

“(1) With the arms extended: man then becomes an entire sign of the
cross. (2) With hands clasped, the fingers interlaced: thus forming
five signs of the cross. (3) The hands joined one against the other,
the thumbs placed one over the other: again the sign of the cross. (4)
The hands crossed on the breast: another form of the sign of the cross.
(5) The arms equally crossed on the breast: fifth way of making it.
(6) The thumb of the right hand passing under the index finger, and
resting on the middle one: a sign of the cross much in use, as we shall
see. (7) And, finally, the right hand passing from the forehead to the
breast, and from the breast to the shoulders: a more explicit form,
which you know.”

“Under one or other of these forms,” he adds, “the sign of the cross
has been practised everywhere and always in solemn circumstances, with
a knowledge more or less clear of its efficacy.”

Accordingly, he proceeds to show, first, how the Jews made it,
instancing Jacob, Moses, Samson, David, Solomon, and others. And here
he only echoes what the Fathers have observed before him. Next, he
tells us how the pagans made it, attaching to it some mysterious value.
Three of the ways of making it were known to them; and these ways,
being universal, were not arbitrary.

Some curious facts of undoubted authenticity are related of the power
of the holy sign when made even by strangers to Christianity. And this
sets off its efficacy as it is made in the church. Now, our author
laments, and, we fear, with good reason, that the sign of the cross is
fast becoming obsolete among a large number of Catholics. Those who
make it at all, too often make it very imperfectly and carelessly.
The object, therefore, of the present work is to revive the ancient
practice of making the sign frequently and making it thoroughly. And
it is with the same intention that the Pope has granted fifty days’
indulgence to it when made reverently and with invocation of the august
Trinity.

 THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 6 vols.
 18mo, in box. Containing: The Apprentice, and Other Sketches. Mary
 Benedicta, and Other Stories. Faith and Loyalty, and The Chip
 Gatherers. Agnes, and Other Sketches. Lame Millie. The Chapel of the
 Angels. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

Sensible stories with good illustrations are always welcome to
children. This set of books is well calculated to please the eye and
satisfy the tastes of both reader and purchaser. They are excellently
printed, handsomely bound in bright colors, and present a variety
of healthful reading seldom found within the compass of six small
volumes. The cuts, from neat and chaste designs by a skilful artist,
will attract the attention of every child, and lend additional interest
to the tales. In the selection and arrangement of the stories, good
judgment is shown, many of them being now published for the first time.
As premiums, no series of volumes could be more desirable for the
little folk.

 THE KING AND THE CLOISTER; OR, LEGENDS OF THE DISSOLUTION. By
 the author of Cloister Legends, etc. London: Stewart.

These legends are well suited to readers of a romantic turn of mind and
fond of the marvellous and tragical. Being purely Catholic stories, and
perfectly innocent, our young readers will, we hope, have a good time
over them.

 THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS DURING THE WAR OF
 1870-71. From the French. With thirty-two Illustrations.
 Westchester: Printed at the Catholic Protectory. 1873.

This book exhibits Christianity in action. Plato said, “If virtue
could be seen embodied”—he meant in living form—“all men would love
and adore it.” Plato’s dream was realized when Love became incarnate,
and walked about doing good to the bodies and souls of men; but all
men did not adore it. Virtue, to be adored, must be known. The book
before us makes known the cardinal virtue of Christianity, charity,
by exhibiting her in human form, and telling us, not what she can do
or should do, but what she _did_ do by the hands of the Christian
Brothers during the late memorable war between France and Prussia. Of
the success of this glorious order in doing the work for which it was
started by its venerable founder, it is not our purpose to speak, but
of the book which lies before us, and which tells so graphically the
deeds of charity and heroism of these Brothers during the terrible war
of 1870-71. It is translated from the French of J. D’Arsac.

The mechanical execution of the volume is creditable to the boys at the
Protectory where it has been brought out.

 HAWTHORNDEAN; or, Philip Burton’s Family. By Mrs. Clara M.
 Thompson. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. 1873.

This is a book written by a lady, and it bears in every chapter and
page the impress of a delicate, sensitive, and refined mind. It cannot
be called artistic in the truest sense, for the plot is simple, and
the characters are so natural that we feel in reading it that we are
only renewing our acquaintance with old friends. The scene is laid in
this country, and the actors are Americans, some by birth, others by
adoption, and in this respect it has the advantage over most of the
works of fiction which have issued from the press of late, which, while
treating us, or pretending to treat us, to a view of the inside lives
of Europeans, utterly ignore the fact that at our very door there are
abundant materials for a hundred novels and romances, still unused and
neglected.

 ISABELLE DE VERNEUIL; OR, THE CONVENT OF S. MARY’S. By Mrs.
 Charles Snell. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co.

This is a story about life in a convent school, written in an
interesting and ladylike style, and with a sufficient number of
exciting incidents to gratify the well-known taste of young ladies of
about the age of Mlle. Isabelle de Verneuil.

 LARS: A PASTORAL OF NORWAY. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: James
 R. Osgood & Co. (late Ticknor & Fields). 1873.

This poem is dedicated to John Greenleaf Whittier. It is fully worthy
his acceptance. Besides a delicious freshness which pervades the
story, like the air of its rural scene—the leading characters are
strikingly delineated. One sees their very faces; while never was
contrast more perfect than between Per and Lars, Brita and Ruth. The
last, the angel of the piece, is a Quakeress, and the tale seems
written in the interests of that persuasion, yet contains nothing
designedly offensive to a Catholic. The verse, smooth and strong, is
very scholarlike, and wisely modelled on Tennyson.

 ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. By Cardinal Wiseman. In six
 volumes. Volumes I. and II. New York: P. O’Shea. 1873.

This is, in one respect, the most desirable of Mr. O’Shea’s reprints
of the great Cardinal’s works, inasmuch as it is the only one, of the
_Essays_, that has yet appeared in this country, and the original
edition is out of print. It is needless to say aught in commendation of
these incomparable writings.

 MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE. By A. J. C. Hare, author of _Walks
 in Rome_, etc. New York: G. Routledge & Sons. 1873.

The life which this book relates was sufficiently quiet, so far as its
immediate subject was concerned, to suggest to other than personal
friends the sense of tame and insipid, were it not for its association
with characters more or less historical. And this reminds us of the
difference between Catholic and Protestant biography: whereas the
latter is restricted in its range to one country or language, the
former embraces within the scope of its interest all nations and races.
The record of the obscurest priest, if true to his vocation, may excite
sympathy in those widely separated from him in time and space: for his
spiritual life is quickened by the same blood which courses through
kindred veins in the highest social walks, and among the rudest tribes
of distant islands; the works of mercy and charity in which he is
engaged also occupy the thoughts and energies of his brethren in every
part of the globe; and the same seal which attests his ministry may be
recognized in theirs also.

The subject of this volume, the widow of Augustus W. Hare, was the
daughter of a clergyman, and in her maiden years was an intimate
friend of Bishop Heber, then rector of Hodnet, England. Her husband,
himself a clergyman, was joint author with his brother Julius W., also
a clergyman, of _Guesses at Truth_. The family trace their descent
from Francis Hare, one of the bishops of George II.’s reign, and boast
of other prelatical and noble connections with the church “as by law
established.”

It might naturally be inferred, therefore, that the author, a nephew of
the subject, would be thoroughly penetrated with Anglican “principles,”
and find all his ideals in the communion to which we are inclined to
attribute the discovery of the “happy medium” between truth and error.
But, alas for the perversity of human nature! he cannot see the schemes
of Victor Emmanuel through a rose-colored lens. He has the temerity to
express sympathy for the august prisoner of the Vatican; his regret
for the dismemberment and spoliation of convents and monasteries—the
dispersion of their libraries, the interruption of the charitable works
in which they were engaged, and the appropriation by the government of
the dowers which these religious brought with them to their respective
houses; the wiping out of many beautiful religious associations, along
with the destruction of the monuments with which they were connected.
He even has the hardihood to doubt whether there is a moral gain in
the freedom now vouchsafed to the vendors of Protestant Bibles and
the flood of _popular_ literature, which has signalized the advent of
the Sardinian usurper, as we glean from an article by the author in a
recent number of _Good Words_.

 THE POODLE PRINCE. By Edouard Laboulaye, Member of the
 Institute. Translated by W. H. Bishop. Milwaukee: Office of the
 _Journal of Commerce_. Pamphlet.

This is a most clever _brochure_, full of wit and humor, which is,
however, only the sparkle of serious thought, for the object of the
author is a serious one. M. Laboulaye is a Protestant and a Liberal,
but he is, we believe, one of the most respectable and moderate writers
of that school, and is certainly one of those who are disposed to be
respectful toward the Catholic Church. Writers of this class, though
they are deficient in respect to their positive political doctrines,
are yet often the most effective and powerful opponents of that
Cæsarism which Catholics have so much reason to detest and oppose. The
present _brochure_, which we regret not to have the pleasure of reading
in its original French, is a satire on Napoleonic Cæsarism, together
with a brilliant fancy sketch of what the author dreams of as a happy
political condition for France. The Poodle Prince is king of the
Fly-catchers, and receives his funny appellation from the circumstance
that his godmother, a fairy, occasionally turns him into a poodle.
She does this whenever he is about to be befooled by his ministers,
or to make a fool of himself. In his character as poodle, he meets
with mishaps and acquires a knowledge of the actual state of things
among his subjects, which are very serviceable to him, and he finishes
by becoming a model of what a wise and patriotic prince ought to be,
and doing what such a prince ought to do, according to the idea of M.
Laboulaye. This idea is simply that the institutions of the Republic
of the United States are those which France ought to copy, with, as
we suppose the author intends, a nominal monarch and a responsible
ministry, in place of an elective chief-magistrate.

We agree with him in respect to the end which he wishes to attain,
viz., the just liberty and prosperity of the mass of the people, by
means of a government which is properly restrained by laws and other
efficacious checks from tyrannizing over the nation. We do not believe,
however, in transplanting our institutions to French soil. They are
the best and the only ones for ourselves, because they have grown here
naturally. But we are convinced that France can only prosper under
a monarchy, and that a real one in which the king rules as well as
reigns. This does not hinder the formation of a constitution and a
mixed government in which the people have a share as voting citizens,
and by which the monarchical power is limited, though not destroyed.
The Napoleon Dynasty is the creation of the Revolution, and therefore
will not do. The Orléans family has compromised with the Revolution,
and therefore will not do, unless it will renounce the maxims of
1789, and return to its proper place under the headship of the Count
de Chambord. The latter, in his avowed principles, gives the best
guarantee France can have for liberty as well as order. The restoration
of her ancient monarchy, with Henry V. for king, and the _fleur de lis_
for her symbol, with the church re-instated in her complete rights
and privileges, and with the modifications of political and social
relations suited to the present time, is, in our view, the only way
of realizing that which F. Ramière, in his able paper published in
our present number, points out as the way of salvation for _la belle
France_ “_Le Drapeau blanc c’est un beau drapeau_,” and we hope to see
it supplant the tricolor, and wave in triumph over regenerated France.

To return to M. Laboulaye. His exquisite satire has been well rendered
into good English by his translator. Whoever reads it, and is able to
appreciate the finest intellectual sword-play, will enjoy a rich and
rare pleasure. Moreover, there is so much truth, and good sense, and
genuine philanthropic sentiment contained under the envelope of fancy
and satire, that we can sincerely and conscientiously commend its
general scope and spirit, and pronounce it a work as well worth reading
for a serious purpose, as it is for amusement.

 CONSTANCE AND MARION: OR, THE COUSINS. By M. A. B. Baltimore:
 Kelly & Piet. 1873.

The scene of this little story is laid in Ireland. It is one of the
best of the many nice books of the kind which have been recently
published, and may be read with pleasure by adults as well as young
people. The writers of these unpretending, modest little books are
doing more good than they can imagine, and we trust they will keep on
writing.

_The Irish Race in the Past and in the Present._ By the Rev. A. J.
Thebaud, S.J., is announced to be published this month by the Messrs.
Appleton. F. Thebaud’s book has been anxiously expected, as it is
understood to take up a phase of Irish history hitherto neglected—the
_race_ itself rather than the repetition of the sad events which, in
the main, constitute its history, and are only too well known. A book
of this kind is required for Irish history—one that may serve as a
light whereby to see the facts in their true colors, and which must
prove doubly interesting by reason of those facts having been brought
so recently before us.




THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVII., No. 100.—JULY, 1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev.
I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.


JEROME SAVONAROLA.

PART SECOND.

 “Ye fathers! let your children learn grammar, and keep able men as
 teachers who are accomplished, and not players, pay them well, and see
 that the schools are no holes and corners. All should practise grammar
 in some degree, for it wakens the mind, and helps much. But the poets
 should not thereby destroy everything else. There should be a law made
 that no bad poet should be read in the schools, such as Ovid, _De Arte
 Amandi_, Tibullus and Catullus, of the same sort, Terentius in many
 places. Virgil and Cicero I would suffer, Homer in the Greek, and also
 some passages from S. Augustine’s work, _De Civitate Dei_, or from
 S. Jerome, or something out of the Holy Scriptures. And where your
 teachers find in these books Jupiter, Pluto, and the like named, say
 then, Children, these are fables, and show them that God alone rules
 the world. So would the children be brought up in wisdom and in truth,
 and God would be with them.”—_Sermon of Savonarola._

IT was but natural that the striking events of the life of Savonarola,
and the tragic scenes of the close of his career, should have absorbed
the attention of his early biographers to the exclusion of the less
attractive and more difficult duty of appreciating and presenting
the moral and intellectual side of his character. He is constantly
described by those friendly to his memory as a grand pulpit orator and
Heaven-inspired reformer; by others, as the sensational preacher and
extravagant innovator; while little or nothing is said by either of his
literary and philosophical acquirements. By turns, and according to
their several views, they exhibit him to us as fanatic and impostor, as
prophet and martyr, while the figure of the scholar, the philosopher,
and the theologian remains invisible. It is, nevertheless, but fair
to say that this arises partially from the fact that a very important
portion of Savonarola’s literary productions was unknown to his
contemporaries and their immediate successors. Modern research has
brought to light a large number of which they never heard. Another
circumstance has contributed to confirm the mistaken impression
concerning him as a man wanting in literary capacity, namely, the
effort to make of him the enemy of literature by classing him among
the opponents of the so-called revival of letters in Europe.

What is styled the revival of letters in the XVth century really
began in Italy long before, and was prepared, says Hallam, by several
circumstances that lie further back in Italian history. The classic
revelation of the XVth century was indeed a revelation to Germany,
France, and England, but not to Italy. The true restorer of classical
antiquity in Italy, and consequently in Europe, had already appeared
in the XIVth century, and his name was Petrarch (1304-1374). It was
he who first inspired his countrymen with his own admiration of the
classic beauties of Virgil and Cicero. The larger portion of his works
is written in Latin, and he died under the delusion that his _Africa_,
a Latin poem, was his greatest work. A taste for the cultivation of the
Roman classics grew steadily from this period, gaining strength and
ardor every day, until it became the absorbing passion of all ranks
of scholars. Even Poggio Bracciolini, usually assigned exclusively to
the XVth, belongs partially to the XIVth century. So also does Guarino
Guarini, the greatest of the early Hellenists.


PAGANISM IN LITERATURE.

The tide of classical enthusiasm was now swollen by the introduction
of the Greek classics and the emigration to Italy of numerous
distinguished Greek scholars. Historians vie with each other in
describing the enthusiastic ardor of the Italians in the cultivation
of these two great ancient literatures. It amounted to an intoxication
that seized upon young and old, laity and clergy, women as well as men.
The purely literary advantages to be obtained by so general a devotion
to classic lore were of course enormous. But in this world, says a
distinguished English Catholic divine[138] in referring to the period
in question, “evil follows good as its shadow, human nature perverting
and corrupting what is intrinsically innocent or praiseworthy. It was
not Virgil, nor Cicero, nor Tacitus, nor Homer, nor Demosthenes that
was most read and imitated, but Propertius, and Tibullus, and Apuleius.
Pagan ideas colored men’s thoughts; pagan ethics supplanted Christian
morals; pagan theogony was better understood than the Christian
catechism; and their influences spread not only through the schools,
but to the cloister. Men sought in those classics, not poetry, but
pruriency; not finished style, but abandoned vice; not accountability
in a hereafter, but nothingness in the future. The Fathers, many of
whom wrote for the express purpose of denouncing the heathen immorality
of these productions, must not be studied, because, forsooth, of the
uncouthness of their style. Paganism impressed itself on everything,
and men sought to ignore the road to Calvary that they might enter the
flowery path of Olympus.”

Unfortunately, the period was most propitious for the introduction and
spread of this moral poison. For long years, Italy had been demoralized
by violent factions and bloody wars. Society was disorganized. The
removal of the head of the church to Avignon had been fatal to
ecclesiastical discipline. The effects of this laxity produced that
most frightful of scourges—a corrupt clergy; and although scores of
volumes have been written describing with great minuteness all the
details of the rapid march and wide extent of this fatal influence, it
would be difficult to present in any shorter space at this day any
adequate idea of its depth or intensity. Alone and unaided, Savonarola
dared to attack paganism in literature in its stronghold; for Florence
was at that time the centre of the Hellenic and Roman revival, and
filled with its most passionate devotees. He thus arrayed himself
against Italy and the spirit of the age. He denounced pagan literature,
and scouted as absurd the fanaticism for its study. Not the laity
alone, but the clergy and the hierarchy, came in for a share of his
strictures. “In the houses of the great prelates and great doctors,”
he cries out, “nothing is thought of but poetry and rhetoric. Go and
see for yourselves: you will find them with books of polite literature
in their hands—pernicious writings—with Virgil, Horace, and Cicero,
to prepare themselves for the cure of souls withal. Astrologers have
the governance of the church. There is not a prelate, there is not a
great doctor, but is intimate with some astrologer who predicts for him
the hour and the moment for riding out or for whatever else he does.
Our preachers have already given up Holy Scripture, and are given to
philosophy, which they preach from the pulpit, and make it their queen.
As to Holy Scripture, they treat it as the handmaid, because to preach
philosophy looks learned, whereas it should simply be an aid in the
interpretation of the divine Word.”

In another sermon, he says: “They tickle the ears with Aristotle,
Plato, Virgil, and Petrarch, and take no concern in the salvation of
souls. Why do they not, instead of books like these, teach that alone
in which are the law and the spirit of life? The Gospel, my Christian
brethren, must be your constant companion. I speak not of the book, but
its spirit. If ye have not the spirit of grace, although you carry the
whole volume about with you, it will be of no avail. And how much more
foolish are those who go about loaded with briefs and tracts, and look
as if they kept a stall at a fair? Charity does not consist of sheets
of paper. The true books of Christ are the apostles and saints: the
true reading of them is to imitate their lives.”

Because Savonarola thus denounced ancient classic literature, it
must not be supposed that he was either ignorant of it or unable to
recognize what was really valuable in it. On the contrary, he was
as familiar with Greece and Rome as his adversaries, and denounced
only such pagan authors as were dangerous to morality. He might as
consistently have been charged with ignorance of Aristotle, the whole
of whose philosophy and writings he had, as it were, at his fingers’
ends, because, after denouncing from the pulpit the blindness with
which that philosopher was followed, he would ask: “Has your Aristotle
succeeded in proving the immortality of the soul?”

Savonarola’s denunciation of the evil effects of pagan literature is
too often represented as sweeping and indiscriminate, while in point
of fact he falls short in both these respects of a writer of the XIXth
century who counts a certain number of respectable adherents. We refer
to the Abbé Gaume, who, in a remarkable work published in France in
18—, _Le Ver Rongeur des Sociétés Modernes_, maintains that very
many of the evils of society that have their origin in the education
of youth may be traced to the pagan ideas imbibed in the early study
of the Greek and Roman classics.[139] Savonarola’s position on this
subject, in fact, appears to have been substantially the same with that
of Tertullian, S. Basil, and S. Jerome.

Partial justice has been done to Savonarola as a powerful logician
and a learned theologian. His intimate knowledge of the Scriptures
was something exceptional—not a mere rote knowledge, for it is said
he knew them by heart, but a searching and thorough familiarity which
showed a wonderful intellectual and spiritual grasp of their body and
spirit.


HIS PHILOSOPHY.

As a philosopher, he has been credited by all writers with a
familiarity with the systems of Plato and Aristotle, then dominant;
but his latest Italian biographer, Villari, shows satisfactorily that,
in his theological writings, he reasons with so much freedom and
independence that he had practically freed himself from the dominion
of Aristotle.[140] His early biographers made neither attempt nor
pretence to do more than relate the material facts of his career. Later
writers, with more attention to his published works, saw more clearly
his intellectual power, although his philosophical productions were
almost entirely neglected. M. Perrens does indeed direct attention to
them, but merely as “_des catéchismes sans prétention_.” Rudelbach[141]
is so engrossed with his sharp search for Protestant ideas that he
takes no notice of his philosophical writings. Meier[142] perceives
that in philosophy “he shows a judgment and critical power of his
own”; while Poli, in his additions to Tennemann, remarks his order and
clearness. “Not to acknowledge Savonarola as a powerful logician,” says
Rio, in his remarkable work on Christian art, “an accomplished orator,
a profound theologian, a genius comprehensive and bold, a universal
philosopher, or rather, the competent judge of all philosophy, would be
an injustice which history and his contemporaries would not tolerate.”
The same author goes on to give him credit for the possession of
faculties rarely found united with those which make the logician and
the theologian. He says: “One might imagine without doubt that it
would be more just to deny him the possession of that rare gift of an
exquisitely acute and intuitive perception of the beautiful in the
arts of imagination, which is not always the privilege of the greatest
genius, and which supposes a sensibility of soul and a delicacy of
organs too difficult to meet with, either the one or the other, in a
monastic person devoted to the mortifications of the cloister; and yet
it is no exaggeration to say that both are found united in a very high
degree in Savonarola.” The historian Guicciardini, who had made special
study of Savonarola’s works, says: “In philosophy, he was the most
powerful man in Italy, and reasoned on it in so masterly a manner that
it seemed as if he had himself created it.”

Although the mass of published works of Savonarola may be truly called
enormous, very many of his productions never appeared, most of his
manuscripts having been destroyed, or, in a few instances, but lately
brought to light. Among these latter, Villari mentions a compendium of
all the works of Plato and Aristotle, regularly catalogued as in the
library of S. Mark. Some of his smaller treatises also survive, and the
same author recognizes the writer’s originality and the bold hand (_la
mano ardita_) of Savonarola in such passages as these:

 “We must, in all cases, proceed from the known to the unknown;
 for thus only can we arrive at truth with any degree of facility.
 Sensations are nearest and best known to us; they are gathered up in
 the memory, where the mind transforms individual sensations into one
 general rule or experience; nor does it stop here, but it proceeds
 further, and from many united experiences arrives at universal
 truths. Therefore, true experience resolves itself into first
 principles—primary causations; it is speculative, free, and of the
 highest nature.”[143]

Savonarola’s definition of _veracity_, strikingly acute and clear,
is one not likely to have been made by a man at all weak either in
philosophy or moral principle. It is well worth attention: “By veracity
we understand a certain habit by which a man, both in his actions and
in his words, shows himself to be that which he really is, neither more
nor less.” This, though not a legal, is a moral, duty, for it is a debt
which every man in honesty owes to his neighbor, _and the manifestation
of truth is an essential part of justice_. Savonarola was, in fact,
the first to shake off the yoke of ancient authority in philosophy.
He alone, if we except Lorenzo Valla, who spoke more as a grammarian
than a philosopher, dared to declare against it. “Some,” he says, “are
so bigoted, and have so entirely submitted their understandings to
the fetters of the ancients, that not only dare they not say anything
in opposition to them, but abstain from saying anything not already
said by them. What kind of reasoning is this? What additional strength
of argument? The ancients did not reason thus; why, then, should we?
If the ancients failed to perform a praiseworthy action, why should
we also fail?” And this sentiment he constantly presents in various
forms; not in theory alone, moreover, but in practice; not only in the
special discussion of philosophy, but in its practical application. His
_Triumph of the Cross_[144] which is generally accepted as his greatest
work, is an exposition of the whole Christian doctrine by reason alone.
He thus states it in his preface: “As it is our purpose to discuss the
subject of this book solely by the light of reason, we shall not pay
regard to any authority, but will proceed as if there had not existed
in the whole world any man, however wise, on whom to rest our belief,
taking natural reason as our sole guide.” And he adds: “To comprehend
things that are visible, it is not necessary to seek the acquaintance
of things invisible, for all our knowledge of the extrinsic attributes
of corporeal objects is derived from the senses; but our intellect,
by its subtlety, penetrates the substance of natural things, by the
consideration of which we finally arrive at a knowledge of things
invisible.”

We have spoken of the large number of Savonarola’s published works.
There would not be space in an article like this even for a list of
his popular treatises on practical religious duties, of which four
were published in one year alone (1492). These were _On Humility_, _On
Prayer_, _On the Love of Christ_, and _On a Widow’s Life_. With all
their pious fervor, they are marked by strong practical judgment, and
it is but little wonder that the people of Florence should have been
enthusiastic in their admiration of a priest who, in all the various
lines of his duty as teacher, as confessor, and as preacher, was always
equal to his high calling. His harshest critics have said of him that,
so violent was the asceticism he taught and preached, he opposed
matrimony, and would have turned Florence into a convent. They are more
than answered by the following passage from _A Widow’s Life_—_Libro
della Vita Viduale_:

 “Widows are like children—under the special protection of the Lord.
 The true life for them to lead is to give up all worldly thoughts,
 and devote themselves to the service of God; to become like the
 turtle-dove, which is a chaste creature; and thus, when it has lost
 its companion, no longer takes up with another, but spends the rest
 of its life in solitude and lamentation. Nevertheless, if for the
 education of her children, or through poverty, or for other good and
 sufficient motive, the widow desire to marry again, let her do so by
 all means. This would be preferable to being surrounded by admirers,
 and so expose herself to the risk of calumnies and to a thousand
 dangers. Let the widow who is not inclined to maintain the strict
 decorum, the somewhat difficult reserve, becoming her position,
 rather return to the dignified life of a married woman; but let those
 who feel that they possess strength and temper of mind equal to the
 demands of their state become a model to other women. A widow ought
 to dress in sober attire, to live retired, to avoid the society of
 men, to be gravity itself, and to maintain such severity of demeanor
 that none may dare utter by word or show by a smile the least want
 of respect. By such a life, she will be a continual lesson to other
 women, and will render it unnecessary for a widow to use words of
 counsel by which to acquire influence over others. It is unbecoming a
 widow to be prying into the lives and failings of other persons; it is
 unbecoming for her to be or even appear to be vain, nor ought she, for
 the sake of others, to forget what is due to herself.”


SCHOLAR AND POET.

Mention has already been made of Savonarola’s devotion to the task
of teaching the novices of the order, not only by his famous “damask
rose-bush” lectures which all learned Florence crowded to hear, but
his classes of the humanities and physical sciences. Not content with
this, and desiring that the monks of his convent should live by the
fruit of their own labors, he established schools in which they might
learn painting, sculpture, architecture, and the art of copying and
illuminating manuscripts. He also opened a department of oriental
languages, where Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, and Chaldean were taught. In
urging their cultivation, he said he hoped that he and his brethren
would be sent by the Lord to spread the Gospel among the Turks.

When, after the expulsion of the Medici, the Florentine signiory, on
account of the financial embarrassments of the republic, resolved
to sell the Medicean library, there was great danger that this
magnificent accumulation, then the most valuable collection of Greek
and Latin authors known in Europe, and specially rich in the most
precious MSS., would be either scattered or fall into the hands of
strangers. There was no private citizen in Florence wealthy enough to
purchase it. Savonarola, who fully appreciated its value, and who had
already brought up the library of his own convent to a high standard,
making it accessible to all, and the first free library in all Italy,
resolved that these treasures should not leave the city. His first
act of authority as prior had been to enforce the original rule of S.
Dominic as to the poverty of the order. The saint’s last words were:
“Be charitable, preserve humility, practise poverty with cheerfulness:
may my curse and that of God fall upon him who shall bring possessions
into this order!” Nevertheless, under certain so-called reformed rules,
the convent at Florence had adopted the power of holding property, and
its wealth in landed possessions had greatly accumulated. Savonarola’s
first reform was to enforce the practice of poverty in the order,
while the absence of landed income was to be supplied by the labors
of the monks and a yet more rigid economy. It so happened that the
sale of the convent property, in pursuance of this reform, had just
been made, and Savonarola had at his command a sum of two thousand
florins—a large amount for that period. His convent bought the library
for three thousand florins, paying two thousand on account, and
binding themselves to liquidate the balance, which was a claim held
by a French creditor, in eighteen months. This transaction occurred
precisely during the period of the celebrated bonfire of vanities, at
which Savonarola is unjustly charged with having destroyed innumerable
classical manuscripts.

Space fails us to speak of Savonarola as a poet. Like many other boys,
he scribbled verses in his early youth, and wrote a poem, _De Ruina
Mundi_, at the age of twenty. There is something anticipatory of Byron
in the sadness and gloom of its tone:

  “Vedendo sotto sopra tutto il mondo,
    Ed esser spenta al fondo
  Ogni virtute, ed ogni bel costume,
    Non trovo un vivo lume,
  Né pur chi de’ suoi vizi si vergogni.”[145]

We find in his youthful productions, says Villari, “both vigor and
poetic talent, but united with negligence of form.” Later in life,
he wrote numerous spiritual lauds, composed for the purpose of
counteracting and taking the place of the degrading carnival songs
in vogue under the Medici. As poetry, they possess no special merit.
Villari mentions several of his canzoni, written when he was a young
man, and cites one in praise of S. Catherine of Negri, in three long
stanzas of fifteen lines each, in which he finds great delicacy and
exquisite tenderness of feeling. He also refers to some of his Latin
compositions modelled on the Psalms, which are eminently poetical. In
one of them, he celebrates the praises of God, saying: “I sought thee
everywhere, but found thee not. I asked the earth, Art thou my God? and
I was answered, Thou deceivest thyself: I am not thy God. I asked the
air, and was answered, Ascend still higher. I asked the sky, the sun,
the stars, and they all answered me, He who made me out of nothing,
he is God; he fills the heavens and the earth; he is in thy heart.
I then, O Lord, sought thee far off, and thou wast near. I asked my
eyes if thou hadst entered by them, and they answered, We know colors
only. I asked the ear, and was answered that it knew sound only. The
senses, then, O Lord, knew thee not; thou hast entered into my soul,
thou art in my heart, and thou makest manifest thyself to me when I am
performing works of charity.”

Owing to his terribly earnest denunciation of pagan excesses in poetry
and painting, and his indignation at their imitation by Christians,
Savonarola has been held up as the enemy of both poets and poetry,
and this even in his own day. To this charge he replied in his work
on _The Division and Utility of all the Sciences_, one part of which
treats of poetry. We select a few of its points. He begins:

 “It never entered my mind to say a word in condemnation of the art
 of poetry. I condemned solely the abuse which many had made of it,
 although I have been calumniated on that account by many persons, both
 in speaking and writing.... The essence of poetry is to be found in
 philosophy. If any one believe that the art of poetry teaches us only
 dactyls and spondees, long and short syllables, and the ornaments of
 speech, he has certainly fallen into a great mistake.... The object of
 poetry is to persuade by means of that syllogism called an example,
 expressed with elegance of language, so as to convince and, at the
 same time, to delight us. And as our soul has supreme delight in song
 and harmony, the ancients contrived the measures of versification,
 that, by such means, men might be more readily excited to virtue. But
 measure is mere form; and the poet may produce a poem without metre
 and without verse. This, in fact, is the case in the Holy Scriptures,
 in which our Lord makes true poetry consist in wisdom; true eloquence
 in the spirit of truth; hence, our minds are not occupied with the
 outward letter, but are filled with the spirit.” ... He then goes on
 to denounce “a fallacious race of pretended poets, who know no better
 than to tread in the footsteps of the Greeks and Romans; keep to the
 same form, the same metre; invoke the same gods, nor venture to use
 any other names or words than those they find in the ancients....
 This is not only a false poetry, but one most pernicious to youth.
 We find the heathens themselves condemning such poets. Did not Plato
 himself declare that a law ought to be passed to expel those poets
 from the city who, by the allurements of the most corrupting verses,
 contaminate everything with vile lusts and moral degradation? What,
 then, are our Christian princes about? Why do they not issue a law
 to expel from their cities not only these false poets, but their
 works also, and all the works of ancient authors who have written on
 libidinous subjects and praise false gods? It would be well if all
 such works were destroyed, and none were allowed to remain except such
 as excite to virtuous conduct.”

It is on such passages as these that Savonarola’s enemies base their
charges of enmity to poetry, etc. The charges are unfounded. His
æsthetic opinions were in harmony with the purest principles of art,
and his sense of the true and the beautiful was always acute. “In what
does beauty consist?” he asks, in one of his sermons. “In colors?
No. In figures? No. Beauty results from harmony in all the parts and
colors. This applies to composite subjects; in simple subjects, beauty
is in light. Look at the sun and the stars—their beauty is in light;
behold the spirits of the blessed—light constitutes their beauty;
raise your thoughts to the Almighty—he is light and is beauty itself.
The beauty of man and woman is greater and more perfect the nearer it
approaches to the primary Beauty. But what, then, is this beauty? It
is a quality resulting from a due proportion and harmony between the
several members and parts of the body. You would never say that a woman
was handsome because she had a fine nose and pretty hands; but when her
features harmonize. Whence comes this beauty? Inquire, and you will
find it is from the soul.”

Addressing himself to women, he said: “Ye women who glory in your
ornaments, in your head-dresses, in your hands, I tell you that you are
all ugly! Would you see true beauty? Observe a devout person, man or
woman, in whom the Spirit dwells—observe such an one, I say, while in
the act of prayer, when the countenance is suffused with divine beauty,
and the prayer is over. You will then see the beauty of God reflected
in that face, and a countenance almost angelic.”

We have thus endeavored, in referring to Savonarola’s acquirements, and
by presenting him to our readers in a variety of mental aspects, to
convey some idea of the moral, intellectual, and æsthetic sides of his
character, in order that, as the story of his life and the account of
the exciting incidents with which it is filled progress in our pages,
they may be the better able to appreciate his action by at least a
partial knowledge of his spiritual constitution and mental resources.
We resume, then, the thread of our narrative.


THE SERMON AT BOLOGNA.

Savonarola preached his usual course of Lenten sermons in 1493, not at
Florence, but at Bologna. His correspondence with his brother friars at
S. Mark’s during his absence shows that he had gone there unwillingly,
and it is hence supposed that Piero de’ Medici had brought about his
absence through orders from his superiors at Milan and at Rome. The
friar confined his preaching to subjects of doctrine and morals, and at
the outset attracted but little public attention. The _beaux esprits_
set him down as “a poor simpleton, a preacher for women”—_uomo
semplice e predicatore da donne_. But his animation and sincerity
were contagious, and hearers soon came in crowds. The tyrant Giovanni
Bentivoglio then ruled Bologna, and his wife, an Orsini, appeared at
all the sermons, entering late, and followed by a large retinue of
gentlemen, pages, and ladies—_gentildonne e damizelle_. The silent
rebuke of stopping short in his sermon until the disturbance thus
caused had subsided was tried by the preacher several times in vain.
He then referred to the disedification given by such interruptions,
and mildly requested that ladies who came to hear the sermon should
endeavor to be present at its beginning. In response, the haughty woman
made a point of continuing the annoyance with offensive and increased
ostentation, until one morning, when thus breaking in upon the friar
while in all the fervor of his discourse, his patience gave way, and he
cried out: _Ecco, ecco il demonio che viene ad interrompere il verbo
di Dio_—“Behold the demon who comes to interrupt the word of God!”
All the blood of all the Orsinis boiled over at this public insult. A
reigning princess to be thus treated by a mere _frate_! As the story
runs, she ordered two of her attendants to slay him in the pulpit; but
whether their courage failed them, or the crowd would not permit them
to reach the friar, they did not carry out their order. Still enraged,
she sent two other satellites to his cell, where Savonarola received
them with such dignity and impressive calmness that their resolution
oozed away, and they said with great respect: “Our lady has sent us to
your reverence to know if you had need of anything.” To which suitable
and courteous reply being made, they were dismissed. In his closing
sermon at Bologna, the preacher announced: “This evening I shall depart
for Florence with my slender staff and wooden flask, and I shall sleep
at Pianoro. If any person want aught of me, let him come before I set
out. _My death is not to be celebrated at Bologna, but elsewhere._”

The legend runs that it was on this journey, when near to Florence,
that Savonarola, unable to take any food and broken with fatigue, sank
by the roadside, powerless to go further. Quickly there came to him the
vision of an unknown man, who, giving him strength, accompanied him
to the city gate, and disappeared, saying: “Remember that thou doest
that for which thou hast been sent by God.” Each reader will decide
for himself as to the degree of credibility to be attached to such a
legend. Certain it is, nevertheless, that Savonarola himself and many
men of the strongest minds of that day fully believed in it.[146]


INDEPENDENCE OF S. MARK’S.

On his return to Florence in the spring of 1493, Savonarola found a
worse state of things than he had left on his departure. The rule
of Piero de’ Medici was rapidly becoming every day less tolerable,
and the discontent of the people more marked and bitter. One thing,
however, the people knew well. It was that Savonarola was their friend.
Piero de’ Medici was also perfectly aware of it, and, as he had the
power, might at any moment through his influence have the Dominican
prior ordered away to Milan by his superiors in Lombardy or Rome,
as the Tuscan convents formed one province with those of Lombardy.
This union had been brought about some fifty years before by reason
of the depopulation of the Tuscan convents from the plague. As this
state of things had long ceased to exist, and the convents were again
full, it occurred to Savonarola to seek the restoration of the Tuscan
convents to their original condition of an independent province. In
his management of this important and difficult piece of practical
business, there was nothing whatever of the visionary monk, and he set
to work with all his energy to carry out a measure in which he felt
that the purity and elevation of his order and the liberties of the
Florentine people were at stake. The authorization for the measure he
desired must of course come from Rome, and, in order to obtain it, he
sent thither two of his friars, Alessandro Rinuccini, a member of one
of the most illustrious families of Florence, and Domenico da Pescia.
The latter in particular was unreservedly devoted to his prior, ardent
in his admiration of him, and fully persuaded that he was a prophet
sent by God. On arriving at their destination, they encountered a
formidable opposition. Not only the Lombards, but the King of Naples,
the republic of Genoa, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, and Bentivoglio
of Bologna, all joined in striving for the defeat of the petition.
Strangely enough—and it is mentioned by historians as an evidence of
his frivolous mind and inattention to serious matters—Piero de’ Medici
had been persuaded to favor a measure of which the main object was to
free S. Mark’s and its prior from his authority. In fact, Savonarola
could not have advanced a step without obtaining his approbation,
inasmuch as the application of the convent as made could not be allowed
to be presented without the approbation of the Florentine government.
In bringing about this important success, Savonarola had the assistance
of Philip Valori, and John, Cardinal de’ Medici, a brother of Piero,
who afterwards became Pope Leo X. While at Rome, the general of the
Dominicans and Cardinal Caraffa of Naples warmly supported him.
Nevertheless, the two friars of S. Mark’s who had been sent to Rome
were dispirited by the formidable aspect of the opposition they there
encountered, and wrote to their prior that success was impossible, and
he must give up all hope of carrying his point. Savonarola’s reply was:
“Away with doubts! Stand firm, and you will be victorious; the Lord
scatters the councils of the nations, and casts the designs of princes
to the ground.” In a consistory of the 22d of May, the Tuscan question
came up, but the pope refused to approve the brief, and dismissed the
consistory until the following day. All the cardinals departed with the
exception of Caraffa, who took the liveliest interest in the success
of the measure, and had a strong personal influence with Alexander VI.
They entered into a friendly conversation, during which the cardinal
produced the brief, and asked the pope to sign it. With a smile,
he declined; when, presuming on his personal familiarity, and in a
half-jesting manner, Caraffa took the pontifical ring from the pope’s
finger, and sealed the brief. Just then, in hot haste, came in fresh
and stronger remonstrances from Lombardy, but the pope replied that it
was too late—“What is done is done”; and he would hear no more of it.

Savonarola’s first care was to reform and strengthen the discipline
of his convent, and it was at this juncture that he brought it back
to the original rule of poverty established by the founder of the
order, as we have already stated. Then followed the enforcement of the
strictest personal economy, the acquisition and practice of useful arts
by the monks whereby to earn their livelihood, and the study of the
oriental languages. In all his conventual reforms, the new prior taught
by example as much as by precept. His monks saw that he inculcated
no principle of which he was not a living model. Sober in his diet,
ascetic in all his habits, of an application to study that seemed to
know no fatigue, he inspired all by his labor and self-denial. In all
the whole convent, the humblest monk was not more poorly clad than his
prior. No cell so naked, no pallet so hard, as his. Rigid with others,
he was severe with himself. Numerous candidates presented themselves
for admission to the Convent of S. Mark, which was now the admiration
of all Tuscany. The sons of the most distinguished families in Florence
sought to become inmates of S. Mark’s, and the Rucellai, the Salviati,
the Albizzi, the Strozzi, and even the Medici, pressed into the narrow
limits of the crowded convent, in order to receive at the hands of
Savonarola the robe of S. Dominic. Additional buildings were absolutely
necessary, and those of the Sapienza were obtained—the same that were
a few years since used for the stables of the grand duke.

Under the brief lately obtained from Rome, the Dominican convents of
Fiesole, Prato, and Bibbiena, and the two hospices of the Maddalena,
asked for reception into the Tuscan congregation under Savonarola’s
authority, and were admitted. Even the friars of another order, the
Camaldoli, were desirous of uniting themselves with S. Mark’s, in order
to be under the rule of Savonarola; but he could not accede to their
request, for want of authority. All this success and honor did not in
the slightest degree affect his character. If, during his career, he
manifested pride and daring, it was towards the great and powerful. In
private life, and in the interior of his convent, he was to the end the
same gentle and humble brother the monks had known as Fra Girolamo.


ADVENT, 1493.

It was natural, under the circumstances, that the Superior of the
Tuscan Congregation of Dominicans, the preacher whose predictions had
been so wonderfully verified, the exemplary monk who had been called
to the bedside of the dying Lorenzo the Magnificent, should enter upon
the delivery of his course of Advent sermons for 1493 with increased
confidence and far greater freedom of speech than the comparatively
unknown Fra Girolamo had ever manifested. His audiences grew daily more
numerous, and crowds awaited for hours his coming. The twenty-five
sermons of this course were on the Seventy-third Psalm (_Quam Bonus_).
His principal topics were the unhappy and ruinous condition of the
church, the immoral lives of the Italian princes and many of the higher
clergy, approaching punishments, and the desire of all good men to stem
the rising tide of depravity. We have already cited the passages (“They
tickle the ears with Aristotle, etc.,” and “In the houses of the great
prelates”) in which he denounces the clergy and hierarchy; and he thus
describes the princes of Italy: “These wicked princes are sent as a
punishment for the sins of their subjects; they are truly a great snare
for souls; their palaces and halls are the refuge of all the beasts and
monsters of the earth, and are a shelter for caitiffs and for every
kind of wickedness. Such men resort to their courts because there they
find the means and the excitements to give vent to all their evil
passions. There we find the wicked counsellors who devise new burdens
and new imposts for sucking the blood of the people; there we find the
flattering philosophers and poets who, by a thousand stories and lies,
trace the genealogy of those wicked princes from the gods; and, what is
still worse, there we find priests who adopt the same language. That,
my brethren, is the city of Babylon, the city of the foolish and the
impious, the city which the Lord will destroy.”

And then, after speaking sharply of a superfluity of golden mitres and
golden chalices, he adds: “But dost thou know what I would say? In the
primitive church, there were wooden chalices and golden prelates; but
now the church has golden chalices and wooden prelates....”

 “What doest thou, O Lord? Why slumberest thou? Arise and take the
 church out of the hands of the devil, out of the hands of tyrants, out
 of the hands of wicked prelates. Hast thou forgotten thy church? Dost
 thou not love her? Hast thou no care for her? We are become, O Lord,
 the opprobrium of the nations. Turks are masters of Constantinople. We
 are become tributaries of infidels. O Lord God! thou hast dealt with
 us as an angry father; thou hast banished us from thee; hasten the
 punishment and the scourge, that there may be a speedy return to thee.
 _Effunde iras tuas in gentes_—’Pour out thy wrath upon the nations.’
 Be not scandalized, my brethren, by these words; rather consider that,
 when the good wish for punishment, it is because they wish to see
 evil driven away, and the blessed reign of Jesus Christ triumphant
 throughout the world. We have now no other hope left us, unless the
 sword of the Lord threatens the earth.”


THE DELUGE.

In Lent, 1494, Savonarola resumed his preaching in a course of sermons
which, as published, have been entitled _Sermons on Noe’s Ark_
(_Prediche sopra l’Arca di Noé_). It was, in fact, a continuation of
the expounding of Genesis begun in 1490. The impression produced by
them upon his auditors was very great. All the biographers unite in
describing how the people were carried away, the wonder he excited,
and how marvellously all that was foretold came to pass. His Advent
sermons had dwelt on the near approach of punishments—a coming deluge
of calamities—and he now constructs a mystical ark in which all may
take refuge. He prophesied the approach of a new Cyrus who should
conquer Italy without resistance. At length, on Easter morning, his ark
being completed, he invited all to hasten to enter it with the virtues
which distinguish Christians: “The time will come when the ark will
be closed, and many will repent that they had not entered therein.”
Thus the short chapter of Genesis relating to the ark occupied the
whole of Lent, and he resumed the subject in the month of September
following. On the twenty-first day of that month, he was to expound the
seventeenth verse, relating to the Deluge.

The Dome of Florence was crowded. All waited for the sermon in anxiety
and excitement, but attentive and motionless. Mounting the pulpit,
and surveying the multitude in impressive silence for a few moments,
he thundered out: “And behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters
upon the earth.” A thrill of terror convulsed the vast assemblage.
Pico di Mirandola relates that a cold shiver ran through all his
bones, and that the hairs of his head stood on end; and Savonarola
has recorded that he was profoundly moved. That very day the news had
arrived that a horde of foreign troops were descending the Alps to
conquer Italy, and popular credulity made their numbers countless,
invincible in arms, gigantic, cruel, and ferocious. “Having, before
the arrival of the King of France, just closed the ark, these sermons
caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears, that every one passed
through the streets without speaking, more dead than alive.” (_MS.
history in Magliabecchian library._) Terror there was indeed. Italy
was helpless. There was neither nation nor national army. The princes
were defenceless, and the whole country must fall an easy prey to the
invader. Men saw rivers of blood before them. What could save them?
All rushed to Savonarola, imploring counsel and help. He alone could
succor them. All his words had been verified. All those whose deaths
he foretold had gone to their graves. Punishment threatened had begun.
The sword of the Lord had indeed descended upon the earth. Not only
the people flocked about him, but the graver men and magistrates of
Florence asked his counsel, and his admirers and adherents became in a
moment, as if by magic, the rulers of the city.

Here may be said to terminate the monastic life of Savonarola, and, in
order to follow his career, we must with him quit the cloister, and
accompany him among the people of Florence down in the public places.




MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.


CHAPTER XIV.

PERHAPS PROPHETIC.

IT was the first time for many weeks that Louis had met Eugénie alone.
He felt greatly excited, and naturally said to himself: “Ought I to
manifest any appearance of avoiding her?... Or, on the contrary, shall
I keep on? Any avoidance might make her think unfavorably of me....
But would it be prudent to speak to her?...” While thus debating with
himself, he looked at Eugénie as she advanced towards him, handsome and
dignified as ever, and as calm as he was agitated. He still kept on,
yielding to an irresistible attraction without bringing himself to an
account for it. As he advanced, he recalled how Françoise had praised
her. “That dear woman,” he said, “could have no interest in deceiving
me. A soul so upright and pure could only tell the truth. And who has
had a better opportunity of knowing Mlle. Eugénie?... Well, I must
study this unique girl a little more!... I will speak to her!... I have
judged her too severely. I must learn her real nature. I must show
her what I am. She has, I am sure, conceived some suspicion about me
which she may already regret. At all events, my line of conduct here is
plainly marked out. I am resolved to regain her esteem, and obtain her
assistance in the good I am doing, in order that it may be done more
effectually and speedily. Now is the time to make the attempt!...”

As he said this to himself, he met Eugénie. She did not appear at all
embarrassed as he advanced to speak to her, but said, in a frank,
natural tone: “You have been to see my patient; she spoke of you
yesterday.”

“Yes, mademoiselle; I have just come from there. I do not think she
will need our assistance long. Poor woman, or rather, happy woman, she
is at last going to receive the reward she so well deserves!... But
how many others there are still to be aided when she is gone!... There
is so much wretchedness whichever way we turn! If there were only more
like you, mademoiselle, to look after the poor!”

“And you also, monsieur. My father has told me something of your plans.
I will not speak of my approval: my approbation is of little value;
but I assure you they please me. Above all, I hope you will not allow
yourself to be discouraged by difficulties you are likely to meet with.”

“I hope, with the help of God, to overcome them, mademoiselle. But the
efforts of an isolated individual like myself are of little avail,
especially when one has had no more experience and is no richer than I.”

These words were uttered in a tone of frankness and simplicity that
produced a lively impression on Eugénie. “If he is sincere in what he
says,” said she to herself, “my suspicions about him are unjust; but
this frankness and simplicity of manner are perhaps subtle means of
blinding my eyes.” She therefore remained on her guard. “Ah! monsieur,
it is not money alone we should give the poor! What they need, above
all, is advice, which you are much better fitted to give than I who
have had no experience of life.”

There was a tinge of irony in these last words that did not escape
Louis, but he pretended not to observe it.

“I do not think,” said he, “that I have had as much experience as you
suppose, mademoiselle. However, a Christian seeks aid from a different
source than the insufficient arsenal of human experience. What we
should, above all, remind the poor of, what we should induce them to
love, are the precepts of religion which they may have forgotten and no
longer practise for want of knowing their value.”

“You are very pious, it seems, monsieur,” she said, in a slight tone of
raillery.

“I must put an end to this,” said Louis to himself. “She seems to
regard me as a hypocrite. I will prove to her I am not. If she refuses
to believe me, her persistency in such odious and unjust suspicions
will redound to her own injury.”

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I am not very pious, but I desire to be
so, or rather to become so again, for I was as long as my mother
lived. She was taken away too soon for my good, for I had need of her
counsels and guidance. I have realized it since! You have doubtless
had an account of my life. It may be summed up in three words: folly,
despair, and return to God. I dare not pledge my word that this return
is irrevocable: I have given too many proofs of weakness to rely on
myself. God, who has brought me back to himself, can alone give me
the necessary strength to remain faithful to him. But if I cannot
promise ever to falter again, I can at least venture to declare that my
conversion is sincere—so sincere that, having lost all I had, I regard
this loss as extremely fortunate, for it was, in God’s providence, the
means of leading me back to the faith. Such a benefit can never be too
dearly purchased!”

Louis kept his eyes fastened on Eugénie as he spoke. She looked up more
than once; the expression of his face and the tone of his voice were so
evidently those of an honest man, that she felt all her doubts give way.

“Monsieur,” said she, “I do not know as I should reproach myself for
what I said with regard to your piety, though I perceive it has wounded
you, for it has led to an explanation on your part which....”

“Which has made me happy,” was what Eugénie was about to say, but she
stopped quite confused as she bethought herself of the interpretation
he might give to her words.

Louis comprehended her embarrassment; he saw her fears, and came to her
aid. “Which you thought necessary, mademoiselle,” suggested he. “I can
understand that. It is rather a rare phenomenon to see a young man pass
from dissipation to piety.”

Eugénie immediately recovered her usual serenity. “Well, monsieur,”
said she, “now I know your intentions and projects; I assure you my
mother and myself will second them as much as is in our power. What is
there we can do?”

“Tell me what charitable offices you like the least, mademoiselle, or
what you find too difficult to perform.”

“That is admirable! We have often longed for a representative, a
substitute, who could effect what we were unable to do. But how can we
otherwise aid you?”

“You are kind enough, then, to allow me to be the medium of your alms.
It is a pleasant office to receive contributions for the benefit of
others, especially from people as benevolent as you, mademoiselle. I
accept the post with lively gratitude, and will at once ask you for
some good books for the library I have established for the workmen.”

“I will bring you twenty volumes to-morrow that are of no use to me,
and are exactly what you want.”

Louis and Eugénie then separated. The interview was short, but it led
to the very points which enabled them to study and appreciate each
other better than they could have done in two hours in a _salon_.

That evening, Louis appeared to his workmen more cheerful and social
than usual. He was at last sure of gaining Eugénie’s esteem. Without
acknowledging it to himself, he already loved her to such a degree that
he was extremely desirous of revealing himself to her under an aspect
more and more favorable. This is loving worthily and heartily.

As to Eugénie, when she entered the presence of the poor woman she went
to visit, she could not resist the desire of speaking again of Louis.
An instinctive, perhaps superstitious, feeling made her believe, as
well as he, that this woman, who was dying in so pious a frame of mind
after so heroic a life, could not be mistaken in her opinion. “So pure
a soul ought to be able to read clearly the hearts of those around
her,” she said to herself.

“Has M. Beauvais been here to-day, Mère Françoise?” she asked.

“Yes, mademoiselle. I am glad you spoke of him. I do not expect to see
him again in this world, and was so taken up with a favor I had to ask
him that I forgot to express my gratitude for all his kindness to me.
Every day he has brought me something new; but that is the least of his
benefits. I particularly wished to express my thanks for all the good
he has done me by his conversation. Ah! mademoiselle, how I wish you
could hear him speak of God, the misery of this world, and the joys
of heaven! If I die happy, it is owing to him. Before he came to see
me, I was afraid of death. However poor we may be, we cling to life so
strongly!... Thanks to him, I now feel I cannot die too soon.... I have
told M. le Curé all this, and he made me promise to pray for one who
has so successfully come to his aid. When I reach heaven, I shall pray
for him and for you, mademoiselle. You have both been so kind to me.
Promise to tell him all this.”

This testimony, so spontaneous and heart-felt, from a dying person,
with regard to Louis’ goodness and piety, and this union of their names
in the expression of her gratitude, produced a profound and lasting
impression on the tender, romantic soul of Eugénie. All the way home
she dwelt on what had occurred. She began to reproach herself for
her suspicions—suspicions now vanished. It was not that she loved
Louis, or even had an idea she might love him, but her noble mind had
a horror of the injustice she had been guilty of towards an innocent
and unfortunate man. “I will repair it,” she said to herself, “by
faithfully keeping the promise I made him.”

That very evening, she spoke of Louis to her father and mother,
repeating the conversation she had had with him, and expressing a
wish to co-operate in the good work he was undertaking. “It is a work
in which we cannot refuse our sympathy,” she said, “for its object
is to ameliorate the condition of our workmen—a question that has
preoccupied us all for a long time.”

Eugénie’s object in this was to induce her parents to express their
opinion of Louis. She particularly wished to ascertain Mr. Smithson’s
sentiments. He was almost an infallible judge, in his daughter’s
estimation, and therefore it was with sincere deference she awaited his
reply. It was the first time she had forced him to give his opinion of
Louis, or that there had ever been any serious question concerning him
in the family circle.

“My child,” said Mr. Smithson, “M. Louis means well, I think. He
seems to be a considerate person, or at least tries to be. I approve
of your wish to aid him in collecting a library; but, if he proposes
your joining him in any other benevolent enterprise, you must consult
me before coming to any decision. This young man, I say, has good
qualities, but he is a little enthusiastic. His ardor just now needs
moderating; after a while, it may be necessary to revive it. Let him go
on. We will aid him when we can be of service, but must be a little on
our guard.”

The oracle had spoken. Eugénie reflected on what had been said. It
was evident that Louis inspired her father with some distrust. Mr.
Smithson, according to his habit, left his wife and daughter at an
early hour to work in his office.


CHAPTER XV.

A QUESTION.

EUGENIE, being left alone with her mother, resolved to obtain, if
possible, some light on the question her father’s words had excited
in her mind. She felt anxious to know why he distrusted Louis. He was
now a subject of interest to her. This was not all: she had begun by
judging him unfavorably; then she reversed her opinion. Now she had
come to the point of wishing to repair her secret wrongs against him
without his being aware of it.... But should she carry out her wish,
or, on the contrary, return to her past antipathy?... On the one hand
was the impression left by her interview with Louis; on the other, the
depressing state of doubt produced by her father’s reticence. She was
one of those persons who prefer certainty to doubt, whatever it may
be. “My mother must be aware of my father’s real sentiments,” she said
to herself; “I will ask her.” Nothing was easier. Mme. Smithson and
her daughter lived on a footing of affectionate equality that I do not
exactly approve of, but which excludes all restraint.

“Mother,” said Eugénie, “give me a sincere reply to what I am going to
ask. What do you think of M. Louis?”

“You are greatly interested in this M. Louis, then? You talk of nothing
else this evening. What is the reason? Hitherto you have paid no
attention to him.”

“Yes; I am interested in him. I have been studying him. You know I
have a mania for deciphering everybody. Well, he is still an enigma.
Yet I am sure of one thing: he is a man to be thoroughly esteemed or
despised, not half-way. In a word, he is that rare thing—a character.
Only, is he a noble or a contemptible character?... The question is a
serious one. I wish to solve it, but cannot with the light I now have.”

“Well done! here is some more of your customary exaggeration! Of
what consequence is it, my dear, what he is? He has come here for
well-known reasons. Your father was tired of attending to all the
details of the manufactory, and employs him to take charge of essential
though secondary duties. He pays him a very high salary—too high,
in my estimation—but he is pleased, delighted with his aptitude and
activity; that is all I care for.”

“Excuse me, that is not enough for me. I repeat: M. Louis is different
from most men, mother. He is a man, and the rest are only puppets.”

“Really! I should not have suspected it. He seems to me quite
commonplace.”

“But not to me.”

“What can you see in him so remarkable?”

“He has, or at least appears to have, an elevation of mind and
constancy of purpose that are striking.”

“Why, my dear, you make me laugh. Really, if all the gentlemen you see
would only adapt themselves a little to your humor, there is not one
you could not turn into a hero of romance.”

“Not at all. The proof is that I have hitherto only seen men unworthy
of any serious consideration. When did I ever acknowledge I had found a
man of character such as I would like to see?...”

“And you think M. Louis this white blackbird?”

“I really do.”

“Well, I confess you astonish me. I never should have dreamed of your
noticing him. Perhaps you have taken a fancy to him.”

“Mother, we are accustomed to think aloud before each other. I do not
fancy him—understand that—in the least. I do not even believe I ever
could fancy him. This does not prevent me from thinking him, as I said,
different from other men. Whether in good or ill, he differs from young
men of his age. But is he better or worse?—that is the question—a
serious one I would like to have answered. Till to-day, I have thought
him worse.”

“It is not possible! The poor fellow has committed some errors, as I
have told you. I certainly do not wish to palliate them, but we must
not be more severe than God himself: he always pardons.”

“It is not a question of his sins.”

“What is the question, then? You keep me going from one surprise to
another this evening.”

“It is a question of knowing if he is the man he pretends to be—that
is, one who has forsaken his errors, acknowledges he has gone astray,
repents, and resolves to live henceforth in a totally different
manner. If he is such a man; if he can resign himself courageously
to his modest situation here, and, moreover, has the noble desire of
comforting the afflicted, instructing the ignorant, and reclaiming
those who have gone astray, I tell you M. Louis is worthy of the
highest esteem; we ought to encourage and aid him with all our might.
But if he is not the man I think—if these fine projects are only a
lure, an artful means....”

“A means of doing what?... Goodness! Eugénie, you get bewildered
with your fancies. Do you imagine he wishes to revolutionize the
establishment, and supplant your father?...”

“Let us not exaggerate things, I beg, mother. What I wished you to
understand was a delicate point. I hoped you would guess it from a
word. Come, have you no suspicion of what so greatly troubles me?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Indeed!... I am astonished. Well, may he not manifest all this zeal,
and affect all these airs of disinterested benevolence, to bring about
a secret project?”

“What one, I ask you again? When you go to dreaming impossibilities,
you know I can never follow you. Explain yourself clearly.”

“Well, since I am forced to call things by their right names, is he not
aiming at my hand?”

“What a droll idea!... Why, he has not a sou left! Everybody knows
that. He spent his property in six or seven years, and has nothing
more to expect for a long time. So you believe he resolved to become
religious, thinking that would be sufficient capital, in Mr. Smithson’s
eyes, to obtain his daughter? I think he has too much sense to imagine
anything so absurd; especially to give it a serious thought.”

“But if he hoped to please me by this means?... to win my esteem, my
good will, my affection?...”

“All romance that, my dear.”

“But not impossible.”

“I prefer to think, for my own peace of mind and your father’s, that
things will turn out differently. We have never intended you to marry
a man without property. The idea of your having a husband who, instead
of being wealthy, has squandered all he had, and might spend what you
brought him!...”

“Ah! I understand you: you do not think him sincere.”

“I do not say that! He may be changed for the present, but who can be
sure his conversion will be lasting?”

“It will if it is sincere; I am sure of that, for I have studied him.
He possesses one quality which I either admire or detest, according to
the use made of it: he has a strong will. He has been here a month,
and, having nothing better to do, I have observed him, and have not
discovered a single inconsistency in his conduct. He has always shown,
exteriorly at least, the same love of labor, the same desire of doing
all the good he can, and the same unassuming deportment. Either he is a
man of rare excellence, or is uncommonly artful. I wish I knew exactly
what my father thinks of him.”

“And why this persistency in discovering a mystery of so little
importance?”

“Because I do not wish to despise M. Louis if he is worthy of esteem,
and it would be wrong not to encourage him in well-doing if he has
entered on that path with a sincere heart. Besides, I regard what he
has undertaken and all he wishes to do as admirable as it is useful. I
had been wishing for such an attempt to be made here, and could not be
better pleased than to see my idea so speedily realized. M. Louis is,
in my eyes, either a saint or a hypocrite. I have no fancy for loving
either the one or the other; but, if he is a saint, I should feel like
aiding him to a certain degree. After all, mother, is there anything in
the world more desirable than to do good to those around us, especially
when we are so situated as to make it a duty? Have you not often said
so yourself?”

“You are right, my dear Eugénie. I feel what you say, and approve of
it. As I advance in years, I feel a constantly increasing desire of
laboring for Almighty God, for whom I have hitherto done so little.
You need not fear; neither your father nor I have any doubts as to M.
Louis. Nothing we have observed or have been told leads us to think
him a hypocrite. As you desire it so strongly, I will tell you your
father’s secret opinion, but do not betray me. He only dislikes one
thing in M. Louis: he is too devoted a Catholic. It is all in vain:
we cannot induce your father to like our religion. Catholics are
too ardent every way, too superstitious, he says. He distrusts the
engineer because he thinks him overzealous, that is all....”

When Eugénie went to her chamber, she selected the books she wished to
contribute to Louis’ library, and then retired to rest, thinking of
all the good that would now be done by him, as well as herself, in a
place where want and every evil passion were to be found. Her noble,
ardent soul had at length found its sphere. Hitherto she had dreamed
of many ways of giving a useful direction to her activity, each one
more impracticable than the rest. The right way was now open. Louis had
pointed it out. Eugénie longed to become the benefactress of St. M——.
Her imagination and her heart were pleased. It seemed to her as if she
had become another being. She prayed that night with a fervor she had
not felt for a long time. Then she fell into a reverie. In spite of
herself, Louis’ image continually recurred to her mind. Before she fell
asleep, she murmured a prayer for poor Françoise. Her name recalled the
last words of that excellent woman: “In heaven, I shall pray for him
and for you!” And circumstances were tending that same day to link them
together as the dying woman had joined their names in prayer. There
was something singular about this that struck Eugénie’s imagination.
“Can her words be prophetic?” she said to herself. “So many strange
things happen!... But this would be too much. He pleases me in no way
except....” And she reviewed his good qualities, then blushed for
attaching so much importance to the thought....

The next morning, she went with the books she had selected the night
before. Fanny accompanied her. Louis received her with the exquisite
politeness he never laid aside but with a cold reserve he had resolved
to maintain towards her. Their interview only lasted a few minutes.
Fanny, who had been easy for some time, was greatly astonished when
asked to accompany her mistress to the engineer’s office. Their
conversation showed they had recently seen each other, but under
what circumstances she could not make out. All this redoubled her
suspicions. On her way home with Eugénie, she remarked:

“That M. Louis is a charming young man; more so than I had supposed.
What respect he showed mademoiselle! I am sure mademoiselle judges him
with less severity than she did several weeks ago.”

“I have never judged him with severity,” replied Eugénie, with that
lofty coolness which made those who did not know her accuse her of
pride. “Why should I judge M. Beauvais? that is my father’s business.”

Fanny returned to the assault: “That is a queer notion of his to wish
to instruct all those ignorant people. Much good will it do them! The
more they know, the more dangerous they will be!...”

“Fanny, you should address such observations to M. Louis or my father.
It is they who have founded the library and school, and they intend
doing many other things without consulting you, I imagine.”

“Common people sometimes give good advice.”

“But they should give it to those who need it. All this does not
concern me, I tell you again.”

“O the deceitful girl!” said Fanny to herself when alone in her chamber
that night. “I always said she would deceive me. Where could she have
seen him?... Is she already in love with him?... She is capable of
it! But I will watch her narrowly, and, if it is not too late, will
counteract her projects! I have a good deal to contend with, however.
This M. Louis is an artful fellow. And on the other hand, it is no
easy matter to lead Mlle. Eugénie.... I only hope she is not yet in
love with him!... If she were to marry him instead of her cousin, I
should go distracted.... Poor Albert! if he knew what is going on here.
Fortunately, I am on the spot to watch over his interests. And there is
more reason than ever to be on the lookout.”


CHAPTER XVI.

LOVE WITHOUT HOPE.

LOUIS came to see us as often as his occupations allowed. He made
us a long call the very day after Eugénie gave him the books for
his library, and seemed more excited than usual. He related his
conversation with Mr. Smithson, and spoke of his pleasure at meeting
Eugénie and regaining her good opinion by a frank explanation of his
plans and the motives by which he was influenced.

“Well,” said Victor, “does she continue to please you?”

“More than I wish.”

“Why this regret?”

“It is only reasonable. My happiness is involved in being pleased with
her.”

“Come, I see we shall not be able to agree on this point.”

“Yes, my dear friend; the more I reflect, the plainer it is that I
ought not to become attached to her; at least, to make her aware of it,
should such a misfortune happen. But I will not conceal it from you: I
fear I already love her....”

“You are decidedly tenacious in your notions. Why do you torture
yourself with scruples that are evidently exaggerated?...”

“All your friendly reasonings are of no avail. However disinterested
my love might be, it would seem to her only the result of calculation;
this is enough to justify me in my apprehensions.”

“I cannot agree with you. Delicacy of sentiment is a noble thing, but
it must not be carried to excess. I am willing you should conceal your
love for her till you can prove it sincere; that is, not the result of
calculation—I will go still further: till the time comes when they
voluntarily render homage to the nobleness of your intentions. But
when that day comes, and you see that Mlle. Eugénie esteems and loves
you....”

“She will never love me.”

“How do you know?”

“Mlle. Smithson has rare qualities which make her the realization of
all my dreams, but I see I am not pleasing to her. Before any change
in her sentiments is possible, she will have another suitor with more
to offer her than I, and without a past like mine to frustrate his
hopes. He will please her, and I can only withdraw. Well, I confess I
wish to reserve one consolation for that day, feeble as it may be—the
satisfaction of being able to say to myself: “She did not know I loved
her.”

“My poor friend, you take too gloomy a view of the future.”

“Do not imagine my fears will result in a dangerous melancholy. I
realize more fully than you may suppose the advantages of my present
position. I might at this very moment be in another world—a world of
despair.... To us Christians, such a thought is full of horror. Instead
of that, I see the possibility of repairing the past, and of doing
some good. When I compare my present life with that I was leading a
year ago, the favorable contrast makes me happy! I had discarded the
faith, lost the esteem of upright men, and given myself up to ignoble
pleasures!—useless to the world, an object of disgust to myself. I had
not the courage to look at myself as I was. How all that is changed!
How happy I ought to be!... But, no; the heart of man is at once weak
and insatiable. At a time when I ought to be happy, I am so weak as
to yield to a love I should have denied myself. If I cannot overcome
it, it will be a source of new regret. I know there is one means of
safety, or perhaps there is—that of flight.... But, no; I will not, I
cannot thus ensure a selfish security. It would be cowardly to recede
before the noble work God has assigned me. There is no doubt now as to
my future usefulness at Mr. Smithson’s. I could not find elsewhere the
same facilities for doing the good I long to effect. I will remain....”

“I will not assert it would be cowardly to leave, but a man as
courageous as you are and have need to be ought to remain at his post
at whatever cost. Like you, I believe that is the post to which God
himself has called you.”

“I shall remain.... You cannot imagine how happy I am there when my
heart is not agitated. Provisions are dear this year, and we have
quite a number of hands forced by want to leave Paris. These two
things combined have produced unusual demoralization among the men
we employ. Some give themselves up to drunkenness by way of relief;
others, listening to the evil suggestions of hunger, conceive an inward
hatred against those who are rich. There are a few ringleaders, and
a good many disaffected men, all ready to yield to the most criminal
proposals. Mr. Smithson is aware of this, and therefore fully approves
of my plan for the amelioration of so mixed a set. I must do him the
justice to acknowledge he has been generous. His wife and daughter
are still more so. I shall therefore remain as long as I can. I only
beseech God for one favor—to bless my efforts, and give me the courage
necessary to make the great sacrifice if it be required....”

“Ah! then you really love Mlle. Smithson. I thought at the most you
were only afraid of loving her.”

“No; I will no longer keep this secret to myself; it is too great a
burden to bear alone. Besides, this concealment would not be worthy of
either of us. I was still in doubt this morning, but have since read
the state of my heart more clearly. And this is what enabled me to do
so:

“I returned home from church this morning with Mlle. Eugénie and her
mother. The church, you know, is a kilometre and a half from the mill,
but the road is delightful. On coming out of church, Mme. Smithson,
who is an excellent woman, and quite pleasant and easy in her manners,
invited me, as it were, to accompany them. Mlle. Eugénie at first
remained apart with her waiting-maid, but still near enough to hear
what we said. We first discussed the things suitable to give the poor,
and the utility of familiar conversation with them in their houses. I
expressed a determination to perform this act of charity as often as
possible. I begged Mme. Smithson to mention the families she thought it
advisable to visit in this way, as she knows them better than I. She
promised to give me a list. Mlle. Eugénie then drew near, and said she
would add a few names to it; then, taking a part in the conversation,
and even directing it with the grace she shows in everything, she spoke
in turn of charity, religion, and literature with an elevation of
thought and in such beautiful language that it was a pleasure to listen
to her. From time to time we stopped to look, now at one object, and
then at another—the large trees by the wayside, the bushes, or the
cottages. Mlle. Smithson found something charming to say of everything.
We were half an hour in going a distance we might have accomplished in
twenty minutes—a delightful half-hour, but it had its bitterness, as
all my joys will henceforth have. I see it is the will of God that I
should expiate my offences. Like you, I am persuaded that the privilege
of doing good—the most desirable of all privileges—is only to be
purchased at the price of suffering.”

“Yes,” said Victor; “but at the price of what suffering? Who can assure
you it is that of which you are thinking?... That is a secret known
only to God.”

“That is true, but I am sure I had to-day a foretaste of the suffering
I allude to. She was there beside me—that beautiful young girl
who would be a model of feminine excellence did she not lack one
quality—piety—a piety more womanly, more profound, and more simple.
She said many striking things—things that go straight to the heart:
there was perfect sympathy between her soul and mine, but I watched
over myself that I might not betray the admiration, the delight,
the emotion, with which I listened to her! In the expression of her
eyes, the tone of her voice, and whole manner, I could see, alas! how
indifferent she was towards me; that she regarded me as her father’s
agent—a mere employé, worthy only of passing attention.”

“How do you know? You are so accustomed to reading hearts that perhaps
you take imagination for reality.”

“I do not think so.... She has changed towards me, I acknowledge. She
regards me as a sincere, upright person. I know how to keep in my
place, but there she allows me to remain, and will continue to do so.”

Louis was extremely agitated when he left us that evening. My poor
Victor, ill as he was, and he was now worse than ever, was thoughtful
and sad for some time after Louis had gone.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“I am thinking of Louis,” he replied. “I fear things may turn out badly
for our poor friend. I do not know whether he will ever marry Eugénie
or not; but I have a presentiment, I know not why, that this love is to
cause him great suffering. And yet this attachment could not fail to
spring up. If it is God’s will that Louis should pass through a severe
trial, promise me to stand by him.”

“But you will also stand by him?”

“I shall no longer be here.”

Sad words! they were soon to be verified. Meanwhile, the hour of trial
was approaching our poor friend—the trial he himself had foreseen.


CHAPTER XVII.

A SOUBRETTE’S PLOT.

MEANWHILE, Fanny was preparing sad hours for Louis.

Louis thought Eugénie maintained great reserve during the conversation
that took place on their way home from church—so insatiable is one who
loves! But Fanny received quite a different impression. Never had she
seen her mistress so inspired, or converse with so much fluency and
animation. Mme. Smithson’s kindness towards Louis, the appreciatory
remarks she and her daughter made after their return home, and the
dry, haughty manner with which Eugénie put Fanny in her place when she
attempted to speak of the engineer, all excited the cunning servant’s
suspicions in the highest degree.

“There is nothing lost yet,” she said to herself; “perhaps there has
been no danger of it. Mademoiselle is not in love with him now, but
she may be soon, if care is not taken. To delay any further would risk
everything. I will hesitate no longer. How M. Albert would reproach me
were I to warn him too late! How much I should reproach myself! Instead
of having that excellent boy, so dear to me, for a master who would
allow me to govern his house in my own way, I should be the humble
servant of this gentleman, who is by no means pleasing to me, and who
appears determined to make everybody yield to him. He is humble for the
moment, because he has nothing; but I can read in his eyes: the day
he is master here it will be in earnest. I shall then have to start.
That would be distressing. There is only one way of avoiding such a
misfortune: I must hasten to write Albert’s mother!”

So saying, Fanny seated herself at her table. An hour after, her
_chef-d’œuvre_ was completed. She reminded Mme. Frémin, her old
mistress, of the affection she had always cherished for her and her
son—which was true; she spoke of having wished for several years
to see Albert marry Eugénie, and pointed out the perfect harmony of
taste there was between the two cousins. This point, however, remained
problematical. Fanny added that she should not be happy till the day
she saw her two dear children united and established, and she herself
living with them, entirely devoted to their interests.

Like all shrewd people, the _soubrette_ reserved the most important
communication for the end of her letter. She then remarked that Mlle.
Eugénie seemed to be tired of the country, and it was time for Albert
to offer himself; for, if another suitor appeared first, which she
insinuated was by no means improbable, Albert might regret his delay.
She had serious apprehensions.... Albert must really come. She would
tell him all; he would never regret having undertaken the journey. But
he must be careful, if he came, not to mention that she, Fanny, had
urged him to do so. If she wrote thus, it was only because she was in
a manner constrained by her affection for Albert and Eugénie. He must
therefore be careful not to risk everything by his indiscretion....

This letter, carefully corrected and copied, was taken to the
post-office in town the next day. No one suspected Fanny had written
to Tante Frémin. It is useless to speak of the impatience with which
she waited to see what her _protégé_ would do. She trembled at the idea
that he might not be roused till it was entirely too late to come.


CHAPTER XVIII.

A GLEAM BEFORE THE STORM.

A WEEK after, Louis was again invited to dine at Mr. Smithson’s,
whose birthday they were to celebrate. The only people invited out of
the family were the doctor and the _Curé_ of St. M——. The _curé’s_
invitation was an affair of importance, as you will see.

Mr. Smithson, as I have remarked, was an Englishman by birth. He had
been induced by two motives to settle permanently in France when about
thirty years of age: the climate suited his constitution better than
that of his own country, and he could live more at his ease on the same
income than he could in England.

Taking a house in Paris occupied by several tenants, his attention was
drawn towards a young girl employed in a mercer’s shop on the ground
floor of the same building. This girl was no other than the present
Mme. Smithson. She lived with her mother, who was in comfortable
circumstances, but made no pretensions. They were very estimable
people, and gave the rich Englishman to understand that he could
only be admitted as a visitor on condition of acknowledged serious
intentions. Mr. Smithson at first hesitated. The girl was not rich, she
belonged to a class he considered inferior to his own, and, what was
more, they were of different religions. But it was too late to call
reason to his aid. For six months he had felt a constantly increasing
love for her. He therefore offered her his hand, merely requiring one
concession on her part before he could marry her: she must embrace
the religion he professed himself. Neither of the women who listened
to this proposition was pious, but they did not lack faith, and they
fulfilled the absolute commands of the church. They therefore replied,
without a moment’s hesitation, that Mlle. Suzanne could not give up her
religion for the sake of marrying him. At this, Mr. Smithson hesitated
anew, but, as before, love carried the day. He renewed his offer,
promising not to interfere with Suzanne’s religious belief if she
would become his wife. He only made one condition to their marriage:
they should respectively practise their religion without making any
attempt to convert each other. As to the children, the boys must be
brought up in their father’s belief, the daughters in that of their
mother. Deplorable arrangement! showing the shameful indifference of
both parties, or their foolish and culpable inconsistency. You know
the church expressly forbids such concessions. It only tolerates mixed
marriages on a precisely contrary condition: the parties to be married
must pledge themselves that their offspring shall be brought up in the
Catholic religion. I do not know how Mlle. Suzanne, in becoming Mme.
Smithson, found means to evade this new difficulty. It is possible
that, through ignorance or culpable weakness, she yielded to the terms
without acknowledging it to any one. She doubtless hoped, when the time
came for testing the arrangement, to find some means of extricating
herself from it. At all events, they were married. Mr. Smithson
remained an Anglican, and, astonishing to say, a thorough one. His
attachment to the Church of England was easily explained by those who
knew him. He still cherished an ardent love for his country, and almost
reproached himself for leaving it. His fidelity to the English Church
was a last testimony of attachment to the country he had abandoned.

When Eugénie was born, her father manifested a temporary sullenness and
ill humor at her baptism that frightened Mme. Smithson. Nevertheless,
she was firm. Eugénie was brought up very strictly, and her father
gradually became accustomed to her being a Catholic, to see her
practise her religion, and even hear her speak of it with enthusiasm,
for she was enthusiastic on all great themes.

These were, it must be said, the only concessions Mr. Smithson made to
the true faith. He never entered a Catholic church. He even refused
to acknowledge that which its very enemies are forced to concede—the
grandeur and utility of the enterprises she alone successfully
achieves; the efficacious assistance she renders each one of us at
critical moments in our lives; and the happiness—earthly happiness
even—that she bestows on all who are faithful to her teachings.
But the decided stand Mr. Smithson took against the true faith was
specially manifested by his antipathy to the priesthood. Though he had
lived a year and a half at St. M——, he had never had any intercourse
with the Abbé Bonjean, the _curé_ of the commune. Mme. Smithson
and her daughter went to High Mass every Sunday, made the _curé_ a
brief call on New Year’s Day, and went to confession at Easter—that
was all. I had some reason, therefore, to say it was a thing of no
small importance to see the _abbé_ at Mr. Smithson’s table. What had
effected such a change in the mind of this dogmatic Englishman?...
Had his daughter begged it as a favor?... By no means. Eugénie was
not pious enough to care for the society of the _curé_.... Had Mme.
Smithson ventured to break the compact which forbade her broaching,
even remotely, the subject of religion to her husband? Still less
likely. Madame had not the courage unless forced to revolt against some
enormity like apostasy. What led Mr. Smithson to invite the _abbé_
was the result of his own reflections. Since he had taken charge of
a manufactory, and been brought in contact with a large number of
workmen, some poor and others corrupt, he had felt an increasing
desire of being useful to them, both morally and physically. Mr.
Smithson had really a noble heart. Catholic benevolence excited his
admiration more than he confessed. It caused him to reflect, though he
was careful not to reveal his thoughts. These salutary reflections had
gradually convinced him that, if he wished to reform the place, he must
obtain the aid of some one not only of good-will like Louis, but of
incontestable moral authority.... Where find a person with more means
than the _curé_?... With the extreme prudence habitual to him—and he
was more cautious now than ever, as it was a question of a priest—he
was desirous of studying his future co-laborer. He could not help it;
this black-robed man inspired him with distrust. “I will begin by
studying him,” he said to himself; “and, for that, he must come to my
house.” This plan decided upon, he acted accordingly. Without telling
any one of his secret intention, without even giving a hint of it,
except to his wife and daughter at the last moment, he invited the
_abbé_.

Louis had already begun to understand his employer’s prejudices, and
was therefore extremely astonished when he arrived to find the _curé_
had been invited. But his astonishment was mingled with joy. He had
already become acquainted with the _abbé_, and had been to confession
to him more than once, and had more than one conversation with him. The
_curé_ was even aware of all Louis’ plans, and, as may be supposed,
gave them his entire approbation.

There was some stiffness and embarrassment as the guests seated
themselves at table, and looked at one another; but, after a few
moments, the genuine simplicity of the _abbé_, who was no fool, and the
doctor’s facetiousness, broke the ice. Mr. Smithson alone maintained
his usual reserve. He had sent for the _abbé_ that he might study his
character, and he was not neglecting it. As to Louis, seated opposite
Eugénie, he seemed to emulate the wise man of the Scriptures who had
made a compact with his eyes and his tongue. He tempered the fire of
his eye, restrained his flow of words, and courageously filled the part
he had imposed on himself—that of a man serious unto coldness, calm
unto insensibility.

Everything passed off very well till the dessert. Mr. Smithson then
directed the conversation to the condition of his workmen, and spoke of
his desire to ameliorate it. Eugénie warmly applauded what her father
said; she spoke of some visits she had made, and gave many interesting
details respecting the families she had assisted.

The good _abbé_ had, alas! one fault. Priests have their faults as well
as we—fewer, without doubt, but still they have some. The _curé’s_
defect was a want of prudence. He was agreeable in conversation, and
had the best intentions in the world, but he did not weigh his words
sufficiently. He never troubled himself about the interpretation,
malevolent or otherwise, that certain people might give to them. He
was a good man, but not sufficiently mindful of our Saviour’s counsel
to be wise as a serpent and simple as a dove. He was amiable and
sincere, but lacking in discretion: that was a misfortune. At a time
of religious indifference and of impiety like ours, more than usual
prudence is necessary for all who love their religion: the impious are
so glad to find a pretext for their calumnies! The _abbé_ now began
in the heartiest manner, and very sincerely too, to compliment Mr.
Smithson for all he had said, and Mlle. Eugénie for all she had done.
He gave a thrilling but true sketch of the ravages want and immorality
were making among the working-classes, and dwelt on the necessity of
an immediate and efficacious remedy. All this was proper. There was
nothing so far to criticise. But the _abbé_ should have stopped there.
He had, however, the indiscretion to keep on, adding many things ill
adapted to those before whom he was speaking. “I know what remedies are
necessary,” said he; “and who of us does not? They are—instruction to
a certain degree, visiting the poor in their houses, dropping a good
word, and, above all, the infinite service of leading them back to the
holy Catholic religion, which alone knows how to influence the heart
of man, and inspire benevolent souls with the wisdom and perseverance
necessary for perfecting their noble enterprises. I hope I wound no
one’s feelings in expressing myself thus. What I have said is only a
well-known truth, readily acknowledged by a multitude of upright souls
who have not, however, the happiness of belonging to us.”

Mr. Smithson said nothing. He felt the shaft, however blunted, that
was aimed so directly at him. The _curé_ himself seemed conscious of
having gone too far in the ardor of his untimely zeal. The Englishman
was one of those men who only retort when obliged to: he remained
silent. The poor _curé_ hurt himself still more by enthusiastically
eulogizing Louis a few minutes after in these words: “M. Louis, by
another year, you will have shown yourself the good angel of the whole
country around.”

This appeared exaggerated to Mr. Smithson. It excited his jealousy,
already awakened. He imagined he saw proofs of an understanding
between the _curé_ and the engineer in this unfortunate remark. Their
understanding had an evident aim, in Mr. Smithson’s eyes, to diminish
his moral influence, and even suppress it. “That is the way with
Catholic priests,” he said to himself. “They are ambitious, scheming,
eager to rule, and knowing how to find accomplices everywhere.” The
_curé_ and Louis thenceforth became objects of suspicion, though he was
careful not to show it outwardly.

Louis had begun to understand human nature, and at once realized all
the imprudence of the _curé’s_ remarks. He foresaw the bad effect they
would have on the master of the house. He tried in vain, by some adroit
turn in the conversation, to lessen, if not to annul, the unfortunate
impression the _abbé’s_ conversation might have produced. The _curé_
persisted in his opinion, and only added to his previous blunder. Louis
felt he should not gain anything, and stopped short with so distressed
an air that it was pitiful to see him.

Mr. Smithson, led away by his prejudices, thought Louis’ depression
the consequence of his accomplice’s betraying so awkwardly the secret
tie between them. “The engineer is, perhaps, the more dangerous of
the two,” he said to himself. “I should never have suspected their
plan, had it not been for the _abbé’s_ imprudent frankness.” Hence he
concluded there would be more need than ever of keeping an eye on his
subordinate.

Eugénie, though not pious, understood her religion too well, and loved
it, or rather, admired it too much, to be astonished at what the _curé_
had said. She thoroughly agreed with him, but, as the conversation
became serious, she only attended to the most important points, and
paid but little attention to the _abbé’s_ imprudent remarks. The
praise he bestowed on Louis did not seem to her excessive. She rather
approved than condemned it. She did not, therefore, suspect the cause
of Louis’ sadness, but attributed it to a want of ease naturally
occasioned by the inferior position into which he had been thrown
by his misfortunes. More than once she came to his aid, politely
addressing the conversation to him. Seeing him still preoccupied, she
ended by proposing after dinner that he should sing something to her
accompaniment. Louis excused himself. “I insist upon it,” she said, in
a tone of sweet authority that instantly transported him into a new
world. He forgot the _curé’s_ imprudence, its probable effect on Mr.
Smithson, and his own difficult position. The first time for a long
while—ten years, perhaps—he had one of those moments of cloudless
happiness that rarely falls to man’s lot, and can never be forgotten.
It seemed as if a mysterious, ravishing voice whispered that Eugénie
was beginning to love him. At least, he no longer doubted for the
moment the possibility of her loving him some day. Louis had the soul
of an artist, and possessed undoubted talent, and he sang that evening
as he had never sung in his life.

When the song was ended, he turned toward Eugénie, and read in her eyes
sincere astonishment and admiration, but nothing else. All his doubts,
all his sadness, revived. An instant before, his heart overflowed
with joy: now he was so cast down that he was alarmed, and wondered
what misfortune was going to happen to him. I am not exaggerating:
ardent natures often pass through such alternations of extreme joy
and sadness. The evening passed away without any new incident. Before
midnight, the guests returned home, and were free to yield to their own
thoughts. The few hours just elapsed had modified the sentiments of all
who had dined together at Mr. Smithson’s.

Eugénie, without allowing it to appear outwardly, had also had one
of those sudden revelations that like a flash reveal everything with
unexpected clearness. For the first time, she fully realized the
possibility of loving one whom she at first despised. Louis’ dignified,
melancholy air, his grave, earnest manner of conversing, his remarkable
musical talent, and the sympathetic tone of his voice, all produced an
effect on Eugénie she had never experienced before. Not that she loved
him yet, but she asked herself how long her indifference would last.
First impressions are hard to efface from ardent souls. Eugénie was
alarmed at the idea of loving one who had at first inspired her with so
much distrust. She resolved to watch more carefully over herself, and
keep an observant eye on one who might take a place in her heart she
did not wish to give, unless for ever.

This was wise. One cannot take too much precaution when there is reason
to fear the heart is disposed to yield. The heart is the best or the
worst of counsellors, according as it is guided or abandoned by reason.
Besides, Eugénie was wholly ignorant of Louis’ feelings towards her.

Poor Louis ended the evening in disheartening reflections. He began by
dwelling on a painful alternative: either Eugénie did not suspect his
love for her, or, if she perceived it, her only response was a coldness
that was discouraging. “And yet,” thought he, “if I am mistaken!... If
she already loves me in her heart!... If at least she could some day
love me!” ... He smiled. Then another fear, still worse than the rest,
crossed his mind. “Well, if it were so, there would be another obstacle
in the way more dangerous than the indifference of Mlle. Eugénie
herself—the opposition of her father. He would never consent to the
marriage. His antipathy to me has always been evident. The _abbé_ has
completed my ruin. I am henceforth a dangerous man—a fanatic—in Mr.
Smithson’s eyes!”

“What shall I do?” added Louis, by way of conclusion. “Shall I give up
the work I have undertaken? Ought I to practise my religion secretly,
in order to give no offence?... No, indeed; that would be cowardly,
unworthy of a man of courage, and criminal ingratitude towards God, who
has been so merciful to me.... No hateful concessions! With the divine
assistance, I will do what I think is for the best. Whatever happens
will be the will of God.... Whatever it may be, I shall be sure of
having nothing to repent of....”

To be serious, I should add that Louis, in forming this resolution, was
not so heroic as he really believed himself to be. He was young, he was
in love: and youth and love have always some hope in store.

It is useless to speak of Mr. Smithson. We are aware of his sentiments.
Louis was not wrong in his fears respecting him. And yet, however sad
Louis’ position might be, it was soon to become still more so. A new
cloud was rising without his suspecting it.

 TO BE CONTINUED.




MARRIAGE SONG.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

  Love begins upon the heights,
    As on tree-tops, in the spring,
  April with green foot alights
    While the birds are carolling:
  Aye, but April ends with May:
  Love must have the marriage-day!

  II.

  Love begins upon the heights,
    As o’er snowy summits sail
  First the dewy matin lights
    Destined soon to reach the vale:
  Love-touched maidens must not grieve
  That morn of love hath noon and eve!

  III.

  Love begins with Fancy first,
    Proud young Love the earth disdains
  But his cold streams, mountain-nursed,
    Warm them in the fruitful plains
  Ere the marriage-day be sped:—
  Peal the bells! The bride is wed!




PHILOSOPHICAL TERMINOLOGY.

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF “THE CATHOLIC WORLD.”

THE suggestion often made in your excellent magazine, that Americans in
general, and American Catholics in particular, should be supplied with
some means of acquiring sound knowledge of philosophical truth, led me
to consider what particular plan might be most adapted to this end,
and what resources were at our disposal for carrying out successfully
such a praiseworthy undertaking. The result of this my investigation
is not calculated, perhaps, to excite that degree of interest which
the subject deserves; yet, as it may be the occasion of other useful
reflections on the part of those who wish to promote this enterprise, I
have decided to offer it to your philosophical readers.

I assume that our plan should unquestionably embrace either all that
is worth knowing in philosophy, or at least all that is needed for the
explanation and vindication of all important truths, as well as for the
radical refutation of all modern errors.

To carry out such a plan, a writer would need an extensive knowledge
and a keen appreciation of the teachings of the scholastic philosophers
and theologians, and especially a masterly comprehension of the general
principles on which those teachings have their rational foundation.
Such a writer, I think I may safely add, should be of that sort of men
who not only know the doctrines of the great masters of the old school,
but who also feel the greatest respect for those eminent thinkers;
and he should be prepared boldly to follow their leadership in all
fundamental questions concerning principles, without the least regard
for what is now circulated as “modern thought.” His style should be
modern, but his principles should be the principles sanctioned by the
wisdom of all past ages.

Every one, of course, will allow that we modern men, in many branches
of natural science, have attained to a degree of information vastly
superior to what the ancients even dreamed of. Accordingly, we may not
improperly consider ourselves better qualified than they were for the
solution of a great number of physical questions, of which they are
known to have either overlooked the very existence, or missed the true
interpretation. It is quite certain, however, at the same time, that we
are immensely inferior to them with regard to strictly philosophical
knowledge; and this is the more surprising as one would suppose that
our superior information concerning the laws of nature would have
enabled us to reach truth from a higher standpoint, and to correct and
improve, even to perfection, the philosophical theories of the old
school. Yet the fact is certain and notorious: we have only a few good
philosophers, while we need a great many to stand against the torrent
of infidelity.

As it is, I think that no man of judgment will deny that we cannot
raise ourselves to a competent philosophical level and secure the
triumph of truth unless we learn again, and turn to account in our war
against our modern barbarians, those doctrines that triumphed over the
barbarians of old, and made Europe remain for centuries the shining
centre of the civilized world. Wisdom was not born yesterday, and
philosophical principles are as old as mankind; hence, new facts may be
seen, but no new principles of philosophy can be invented.

It therefore remains for us, if we wish to spread sound knowledge and
foster true wisdom, to cling to the old philosophical principles, to
vindicate them so far as in our present struggling condition it may be
necessary, and to apply them judiciously to the close discussion and
consistent settlement of arising questions. This is the road that will
lead us to the goal; and it is a short and easy one, too; for the first
principles of all things are not very many, and can be mastered with
ease, while their application needs only two conditions, namely, first,
a sufficient knowledge of the primitive facts and laws of the physical
order; and, second, a rigorous logic.

As the main object we should have in view is the improvement of
American thought concerning moral and social truths, it might seem
that the work of which I am speaking should mainly be a work of moral
philosophy, comprising the treatment of all natural rights and natural
duties whether of individuals or of societies, and leaving dialectics
and metaphysics mostly in the background as idle speculations, or
at least as teaching nothing that is essential to the happiness and
prosperity of private and public life. It is a fact that the general
reader is inclined to look upon all logical and metaphysical subtleties
as a string of mere quibbles or an array of unsubstantialities. Though
I am sure that, in the present wretched state of our public education,
many would be found, even among our best citizens, ready to adopt and
countenance such a view of the subject, I must say that the view is
intrinsically wrong.

Philosophy is a whole whose parts are not merely _integrant_, but
_constituent_; for each of these parts is essentially linked with the
others. As time cannot exist without motion, so neither can moral
philosophy without logic and metaphysics; and so sure as no velocity
can exist apart from a moving body, even so rational philosophy cannot
exist apart from all metaphysical truth. To see this the more clearly,
let us examine what are the relations that bind together the parts of
philosophy.

The old division of this science into _rational_, _real_, and
_moral_, which we find to have been given by Plato,[147] is drawn
from the inmost nature of things and the very constitution of
philosophy. Everything that is perfect, whether it has an existence
in the fields of reality, or only in the region of thought, is found
to involve in its constitution, 1, something competent to give a
certain determination; 2, some other thing liable to receive such a
determination; 3, some third thing which is the immediate result of
the concurrence of the other two. That which gives a determination
is called the “formal” constituent of the thing; that which receives
such a determination is called the “material” constituent of the same
thing; finally, that which results is called the “formal complement,”
and is the actual constitution or the very actuality of the thing thus
constituted. Thus, for example, the human soul, inasmuch as it gives
life to the human body, is the formal constituent of man; the organic
body, inasmuch as it receives life through the soul, is his material
constituent; and actual conscious life, which is the immediate result
of the concurrence of soul and body in one compound nature, is the
actuality of the being thus constituted, and makes it formally complete
in its individual reality.

Now, philosophy is similarly made up of three such constituents. The
formal constituent and, as it were, the soul of philosophy (and of all
other sciences, too) is logic, or _rational philosophy_. Its duty is to
impress a kind of rational stamp on the objects of science by applying
to them the process of definition, division, and argumentation, which
is the scientific process, and constitutes the “form” of science. For
this reason, logic holds that place in regard to any object of science
which the soul holds in regard to its body, and is therefore to be
considered as the formal constituent of philosophy.

The material part, or the body, of philosophy is “all real being as
such,” or, in other terms, all the subject-matter of metaphysics, or
_real philosophy_; for metaphysics is nothing but the knowledge of
real things acquired through the consideration of their intrinsic
constitution; hence, all reality, be it created or uncreated, matter
or spirit, substance or accident, is the “material” constituent of
philosophy inasmuch as it is subjected to the scientific form by the
application made to it of the logical process. The objective truth
of things, so long as it is not subjected to the searching scrutiny
of speculative reasoning, mostly belongs to the lower region of
experimentalism, which scarcely deserves, though it has usurped, the
high name of science; but, when pervaded by intellectual light, rises
suddenly as vivified by it, and takes up its place in the serene
region of metaphysics, where it shows itself in all the glory of its
ontological beauty. Hence it is that metaphysics may be compared to a
living body, of which logic is the soul.

Finally, by the application of logic to objective realities, namely,
by the study of metaphysics, a wonderful bond is established between
the rational faculty and objective truth, the first getting hold of
the second, and the second reacting after its own manner on the first;
so that reason, enlightened by objective truth, knows how to pronounce
a right judgment on the merit of things, and in its natural rectitude
feels compelled to give them that relative place in its estimation to
which each of them is reasonably entitled. As the soul, therefore,
owing to its intimate connection with the body, “feels” what suits or
suits, not the requirement of the animated organism, and is pleased
with the one, and displeased with the other, so also reason, owing
to its clear possession of objective truth, “perceives” what agrees
and what clashes with: the objective order of things, and, with the
authority of a judge, pronounces its sentence that the first must be
approved, and the second condemned. Such dictates of reason form the
object of _moral philosophy_; and it is through them that the moral law
is naturally communicated and promulgated to all rational creatures.

Hence, it is evident that the knowledge of morality is the result of
an intellectual knowledge of the real nature of things, and of their
intrinsic perfection, exigencies, and manifold relations. Hence, also,
the conclusion that the rational, the real, and the moral order,
though distinct objects of knowledge, are so bound together in one
general science that it would be scarcely possible to speak of the one
without referring to the other. Hence, finally, the further conclusion
that the greater the importance of a true and thorough knowledge of
morality, the more stringent is the necessity of securing to it the
foundation of good, sound, and intelligible metaphysics. To neglect the
latter would be to tamper with the most vital interests of the former.

Perhaps I might go even further, and say that what we need just now is
not so much a new book of logic or of ethics as of metaphysics. A good
metaphysical work is the surest foundation both of a good logic and of
a good moral philosophy. The laws of thought and the laws of morality
must be explained in accordance with the laws of real being; and the
better we understand these last, the more truly conversant shall we
become with the first. Besides, with respect to logic and ethics,
we have no new doctrines to teach, whilst in metaphysics we have to
settle a number of old and new questions regarding the constitution of
natural things, and their causality, and their mutual connection, as
we find that such questions are not satisfactorily treated either by
the ancient metaphysicians or by our modern unphilosophical physicists.
Such questions regard, as I said, natural things; but their solution
has a bearing on many other philosophical doctrines, because it
materially effects the terminology by which those doctrines are to be
expounded.

I do not wish, nor would this be the place, to enter into particulars
with regard to the method which might be followed in the treatment of
different philosophical subjects; yet I think it worth remarking in
general that the fewer the principles on which a philosopher shall
build his reasonings, the more clear, uniform, and satisfactory
will his demonstrations generally prove; and, on the other hand, in
proportion as these principles shall be higher, the fewer will be
needed. This leads me to believe that one of the best means which could
be made available for the much-desired success of the undertaking
would be to take our standpoint as high as possible (according to the
very nature of philosophy, which is _scientia per summas causas_), and
to base our demonstrations on the very first constituent principles
of being. Looking down from such a height, we could easily dissipate
the vague phantasmagory, and control the dangerous influences of many
other so-called principles or axioms whose intrusion into the body of
philosophy is due to ignorance or wrong interpretation of the facts and
laws of the physical world. It is through these assumed principles that
a very lamentable discord has been fostered and perpetuated between
the votaries of physics, on the one hand, and those of metaphysics, on
the other; and it is through the same cause, that even now the same
student, after learning one thing as true in his class of metaphysics,
is obliged to hear it declared false in his class of natural
philosophy. This should not be; and we may hope that it will not be
when our philosophical reasonings are ultimately grounded on first
principles, and when no secondary principles are admitted which are not
demonstrated, or corrected, or restricted by some evident and adequate
reduction to first principles.

But now a question is to be answered which professors of philosophy
will perhaps be the first to propose. The question is this: Can a
sound and thorough work of philosophy, such as we want, be written in
common and popular English, so as to prove easy reading for the average
American student? Or must a special language be used which none but
trained philosophers will understand?

Every one who knows how peculiar is the language of other sciences
and arts will anticipate the answer. Of course, the English tongue is
as fit as any other to express common thoughts; but common thoughts
are the thoughts of common people, who do not commonly think with the
utmost philosophical precision, nor talk of matters (of which there
are many in philosophy) that transcend the common wants of their
ordinary avocations. This being the case, it is obvious that, in
writing a philosophical work (especially if it be intended to serve as
a text-book for our higher Catholic institutions), it will be necessary
to make use of a special language, which, though English, cannot be
that easy-going and popular English which we find in common use, but
must be a precise, guarded, dry, methodic, abstract, and perhaps
stiff language, such as the gravity, subtlety, and difficulty of
philosophical investigations often require.

I said, “Especially if the work is intended to serve as a text-book,”
because, in this case, it will be absolutely necessary to adopt in it
the whole of the philosophical terminology that has been handed down to
us by our Catholic ancestors. Terminology, in all branches of study,
is the faithful exponent of the various achievements of science, and
contains, as it were, a summary of all that mankind has succeeded
in learning in the course of centuries. To ignore more or less the
philosophic terminology is therefore to ignore more or less the wisdom
of all past ages. Moreover, it is only by means of an exact terminology
that a teacher can convey the knowledge of exact truth to his pupils’
minds; and accordingly, all who study philosophy _ex professo_ need to
be well acquainted with its language, that they may acquire a clear,
distinct, and precise knowledge of things; so that, when called upon
in after-life to discuss or expound philosophical matters in a plain
and popular way for the benefit of the unlearned, they may use such
circumlocutions as will not essentially conflict with the truth of
things. Experience shows that those who have not a clear and distinct
conception of things, however much they may try to explain themselves,
are never well understood.

But what if our work be not especially intended for the class-room,
but only for common reading? Would it still be difficult to have it
written in a plain and intelligible manner? I think it would, unless,
indeed, we leave out the most fundamental questions of metaphysics. If
we were asked only to write a few “academical” essays on philosophical
subjects, without concerning ourselves with the intimate nature of
things, it would not be very difficult to perform such a task in
tolerably readable and popular English; but if we are asked to go to
the root of things, and to give a consistent, clear, accurate, and
radical account of them and of their objective relations; if we are
expected to lay down and explain those grounds of distinction between
similar things that will enable us to avoid latent equivocations, to
detect paralogistic inferences, and to expose the sophistry of our
opponents; if, in short, we must prepare a standard work which will
create a deep and lasting interest, and take hold of the public mind by
its fitness to uproot prejudice, to confound error, and to silence,
if possible, all philosophical knavery, then, I say, we cannot do this
in the language with which people are generally familiar, without
filling it with a number of other words, phrases, and formulas of our
own. This, however, should not be looked upon as discouraging; for the
popularity to which a work on philosophy aspires is not the general
popularity of the newspaper or the novel, but a popularity confined
within the range of deep-thinking minds. Philosophy is not intended for
blockheads nor for the general reader; hence, if these have no relish
for our philosophical style, we shall not, on that account, complain of
any want of popularity.

We must own, however, that a number of philosophical words have
become popular in other modern languages which are still above
popular comprehension in the English; and on this account the range
of popularity of a philosophical work will be less in our country
than it would, all other things being equal, in France, Italy, or
Spain. In these last countries, where languages are so nearly akin to
the philosophic Latin, and where the study of philosophy under the
supervision of the Catholic Church formed for centuries a prominent
part of public education, every educated person soon learned how to
express in his national idiom what he had been taught in the Latin of
the schools. It is through this process that the language of philosophy
gradually became, in those countries, the language of all educated
people. In England, the same process was going on up to the XVIth
century, and, if continued, would have led to the same results; but
it was checked at the time of the Reformation, to the unphilosophical
and maleficent genius of which it must therefore be ascribed that
all further popular development of the philosophic language has been
arrested for three centuries in the Anglo-Saxon race.

Had England remained Catholic, and continued, like her sister nations,
to cultivate the fields of speculative knowledge, there is little
doubt that English writers, and the clergy in particular, would
have popularized and brought into common use those philosophical
and theological expressions which had been received already in
their dictionaries, and might have been a most valuable instrument
for improving the intellectual education of the country. But while
this process of familiarizing speculative knowledge was carried on
throughout Catholic Europe, England had something else more pressing
to do: she busied herself with tearing to pieces and burning the
metaphysical and theological books she had inherited from the great
Catholic founders and luminaries of her universities. How could
the Anglo-Saxon race attain to even a common degree of philosophic
development under the sway of a system which was the very negation of
philosophy? Could any one be a philosopher, and yet “protest” against
conclusions of which he had to concede the premises? Protestantism was
not the offspring of reason, but of passion and tyranny; it is carnal,
not intellectual; it popularizes matter, and studies material comfort,
but cannot raise the people to the contemplation and appreciation of
eternal and universal truth. Hence, whilst in all the branches of
knowledge which are connected with their senses the English people
made remarkable strides, in philosophy they remained infants; and it
was only by rowing the boat against the stream that a few privileged
beings saved some relics from the great national wreck. Even now
the Anglo-Saxon Protestant is fated to admire Hume and Bain, Darwin
and Huxley, Mill and Herbert Spencer; and it will be long before he
realizes that it is a shame to talk of these sophists as “our great
national philosophers.”

The same evil that stayed in England the process of popularization of
the philosophical language, caused this language to remain deficient
in many useful and some necessary words wherewith other nations wisely
enriched their vernacular tongues. This is equivalent to saying that
the English idiom, even as used by the learned, does not always
afford sufficient facilities for the exact expression of metaphysical
relations, and that, therefore, a writer who wishes to be quite
correct in treating of them will be tempted to take liberties with the
language, and will yield to the temptation.

As an example of this, suppose we wish to say in plain English what
S. Thomas Aquinas teaches in the following sentence (in 1. _Sentent_.
Dist. 2. q. 1, a. 2): “In Deo est sapientia, et bonitas, et hujusmodi,
quorum quodlibet est ipsa divina essentia; et ita omnia sunt unum. Et
quia unumquodque eorum est in Deo secundum sui verissimam rationem,
et ratio sapientiæ non est ratio bonitatis in quantum hujusmodi,
relinquitur quod sunt diversa ratione non tantum ex parte ipsius
ratiocinantis, sed ex proprietate ipsius rei.”

How should we here translate the word ratio? Andrews’ _Dictionary_
gives _reason_, _account_, _business_, _relation_, _regard_, _concern_,
_care_, _manner_, _plan_, _reasonableness_, _proof_, and such like;
to which we may add the very word “ratio” used by the English
geometricians to express the quotient of a quantity divided by another
of the same kind. Now, which of these terms can we employ in the
present case? There is not one of them which would not transform this
beautiful and important passage of the angelic doctor into a clumsy
piece of nonsense. To speak of the _reason_ of wisdom, of the _concern_
of goodness, of the _manner_ of eternity, or of the _business_ of
immensity would be absurd. The temptation to infringe on the rights
of lexicographers is therefore evident. But what other English word
can we employ? Should we translate, _the concept_ of wisdom, and _the
concept_ of goodness? By no means. Not that this last meaning of the
word _ratio_ is not legitimate, but because it is not what we need in
the present case; for the holy doctor does not say that God’s wisdom
and goodness are distinct only on account of our conceptions, but
explicitly teaches that they are distinct on their own grounds, “ex
proprietate ipsius rei.” Hence, “concept” is not the right word; and,
instead of “concept,” we should rather say “that which is the ground
of the concept.” Yet this circumlocution, besides being too long to
replace a single word, does not exactly correspond to it, as every
intelligent reader will easily perceive. The force of the word _ratio_
might be sufficiently rendered by the compound expression “objective
notion”; but this is forbidden by our dictionaries, according to which
the word “notion” has only a subjective sense. We cannot translate
“the nature” of wisdom and “the nature” of goodness, because it would
then seem that divine wisdom and divine goodness are of a different
nature objectively, and therefore _really_ distinct; which is not the
case, as they are only _mentally_ distinct, though on their own _real_
grounds. Perhaps, to avoid misconceptions, we might add an epithet to
the word “nature,” and translate _ratio sapientiæ_ as “the notional
nature of wisdom,” that is, as that formality which is distinctly
represented by the notion of wisdom. This last expression might be
considered tolerably correct; yet I should prefer to stick to the Latin
_ratio_, which is so much simpler and clearer, and which has, moreover,
a general and uniform application to all objects of thought; as we
everywhere find _ratio intelligibilis_, _ratio entitativa_, _ratio
generica_, _ratio specifica_, _ratio personæ_, _ratio substantiæ_, and
a great number of similar ratios. And, again, the word _ratio_ has
another very superior claim to adoption, inasmuch as it is the only
word that exactly expresses the transcendental unity resulting from
the conspiration of a material with a formal principle, and implies
in its concrete meaning the two principles from which it results as
actually correlated; for, as the geometric ratio implies a numerator
and a denominator correlated as “that which is mensurable” and “that
by which it is measured,” so the _ratio intelligibilis_, the _ratio
entitativa_, and all the others, imply and exhibit a potential and a
formal principle, correlated as “that which is determinable” and “that
by which it is determined”; and as the terms of a geometric ratio,
inasmuch as they are correlated, give rise to a simple result which
is the value of the ratio, so also the constituent principles of all
beings, inasmuch as they are correlated according to their mutual
ontological exigency, give rise to the actuality of the ontological
_ratio_. It would therefore appear that, if mathematicians are allowed
freely to use the word “ratio,” as they do, in the peculiar sense just
stated, metaphysicians too, _a fortiori_, may be allowed the free
use of the same word in that general sense which I have pointed out,
and which, solely through English philosophical apathy, was unduly
restricted to its present narrow mathematical meaning.

What I have said of this word may suffice as an instance of the poverty
of our philosophical language. There are other words which philosophers
are sometimes disappointed not to find in our dictionaries, and which
it will be necessary to borrow from other sources, or to translate
from the works of the schoolmen; but, as I cannot come to particulars
without entering into discussions which would lead me much further than
I at present intend to go, I will say nothing more on this point.

I beg to conclude with a last remark which some readers may deem
superfluous, but which should not be overlooked by the teachers or the
friends of philosophy. It is not so much the want of proper words as
the vague and improper use of the words which we already possess that
is calculated to impair the merit and mar the usefulness of an English
work of philosophy. If I knew that any one was engaged in such a work,
I would earnestly entreat him to spare no efforts to the end that all
indefiniteness or looseness of expression may be excluded from it, and
to take care that his philosophic language be, if possible, as precise
and as carefully wielded as that of the mathematician. In philosophy,
nothing is so dangerous as loose reasoning; and loose reasoning is
inevitable with a loose terminology. Truth, by careless wording, is
often changed into error, and even great heresies are frequently
nothing but the incorrect expression of great truths; according to the
remarkable sentence of S. Thomas: _Ex verbo inordinate prolato nascitur
hæresis._ Hence, all those terms which in the popular language have
a vague meaning should in philosophy be either avoided or strictly
defined, and constantly taken in the strict sense of the definition.

I remember having found years ago, in the works of an Italian
philosopher whose celebrity has since vanished, nine or ten _different_
definitions of the word _idea_. Which of such definitions he adopted
as his own I could not discover; but it seemed to me that he adopted
them all in succession, according as they suited the actual needs of
his multiform argumentation—a proceeding which, while confounding
the minds of his readers, was certainly not calculated to give weight
to his conclusions. This same word _idea_ in our popular English is
extremely indefinite; it stands for _object of thought_, _plan_,
_judgment_, _opinion_, _purpose_, and _intention_, none of which would
be the correct philosophical meaning of the word; for “idea,” in all
the approved treatises of psychology, means the knowledge of a thing
directly perceived in any object of first apprehension. Hence, no
accurate philosopher would say that we have an “idea” of God, or of his
immensity, or of virtue, but only that we have a “concept” of God, of
his immensity, of virtue, and of all those other things that are not
objects of first apprehension, and the notions of which can be acquired
only by a special operation of the intellect on pre-existing ideas.
This distinction between “idea” and “concept” is very important in
psychology, and should therefore be adopted in a philosophical work at
the very first beginning of logic, as a first precaution against the
equivocations of the ontologists.

It is not my intention to point out other words the popular meaning of
which must be sharply looked into by a philosopher before he makes use
of them; I will only add, in connection with the word “idea,” that,
in the classical books of philosophy, the direct knowledge of the
existence of a thing was not called “idea,” but _notitia_. In English,
we have the word “notice”; but this word means, according to Webster,
_the act_ by which we have knowledge of something within the reach of
our senses, whilst the Latin word _notitia_ means rather the permanent
_knowledge_ acquired by that act; whence we see that the Latin _notitia
facti_ cannot be translated “the notice of the fact,” and yet why
should not a philosopher be allowed to use the word “notice” in the
sense of the Latin _notitia_ when he wishes to contrast the knowledge
of the existence of a thing with the knowledge of its properties? This
would be, after all, only a late justice done to the word by again
recognizing its primitive legitimate meaning.

On the contrary, the word _conscientia_, which in Latin has two
distinct meanings, the psychological and the moral, in English
has been represented by two distinct words, “consciousness” and
“conscience.” This is a real improvement, so far as it goes. But the
word “consciousness,” which properly expresses the knowledge of self
and of the affections of self, has already acquired, as used by modern
authors, a very indefinite meaning, inasmuch as it already replaces
not only the Latin _conscientia_, but every kind of knowledge as well;
so that our educated men do not scruple to declare their consciousness
of the rotation of the earth, or their consciousness of your presence
in the room. In philosophy, where no word should be liable to two
interpretations, such a promiscuous and illogical use of the word is
really intolerable; and I respectfully submit that the word should by
all means be again restricted to its natural signification.

Not to tire the reader with other considerations of a similar
nature, I will come to an end. My object has been to point out in a
general manner what I considered to be most needed in a good English
philosophical work. Certainly, a work based on unobjectionable
principles, ample in its scope, complete in its parts, and precise
in its terminology, would be a great boon to the higher classes of
American society. Let a writer come forward who, besides a sound
knowledge of philosophical truths, possesses the rare art of expressing
them correctly and forcibly in plain language, and he will see his
efforts so fully rewarded that he will never regret the labor he may
have endured in such a difficult undertaking.

A FRIEND OF PHILOSOPHY.


CHRISTE’S CHILDHOODE.

  TILL twelve yeres’ age, how Christ His childhoode spent
    All earthly pennes unworthy were to write;
  Such actes to mortall eyes He did presente,
    Whose worth not men but angells must recite:
  No nature’s blottes, no childish faultes defilde,
    Whose Grace was guide, and God did play the childe.

  In springing lockes lay chouchèd hoary witt,
    In semblance younge, a grave and aunchient port;
  In lowly lookes high maiestie did sitt,
    In tender tunge, sound sence of sagest sort:
  Nature imparted all that she could teache,
    And God supplyd where Nature coulde not reach.

  His mirth, of modest meane a mirrhour was,
    His sadness, tempred with a mylde aspecte;
  His eye, to trye ech action was a glasse,
    Whose lookes did good approue and bad correct;
  His nature’s giftes, His grace, His word, and deede,
    Well shew’d that all did from a God proceede.

  —_Southwell._




THE TROWEL OR THE CROSS

FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

“_This is your hour, and the power of darkness._”—S. Luke xxii. 53.

CONCLUDED.


CHAPTER III.

JESUIT AND NEW PROTESTANT.

EARLY the next morning, the count was awakened suddenly from his
slumber. The three bells of the church-tower gave forth sorrowful
tones. The peasants assembled from all parts. Von Scharfenstein opened
a window, and looked in vain for the rising smoke, in order to discover
the whereabouts of the fire; but neither flame nor smoke was to be
seen. And yet all the inhabitants, men, women, and children, were
moving in the same direction, so that there must have been some cause
for the alarm.

“Where is the fire?” he asked of an aged man, who could hardly walk
even with the aid of his cane. “Where is the fire, good man?”

“There is no fire; the gendarmes are here to arrest our pastor.”

Von Scharfenstein closed the window.

“This is too much,” said he angrily. “The Freemasons, who are
ordinarily cunning enough, have this time committed a great mistake. If
the sons of the cross are not more prudent than the sons of the trowel,
there will be bloodshed in this case. The peasants will defend their
priest with scythes and axes.”

Meanwhile, the police commissioner who had come from the city with two
gendarmes endeavored to put a stop to the ringing of the bells. Before
going to the church, he had foolishly stationed the gendarmes upon the
high step of the pastoral residence, so that the Jesuit should not
escape.

“Stop the ringing of the bells,” cried out the commissioner to the
bell-ringers.

“Ring away!” exclaimed a sturdy, well-dressed farmer who had closely
followed the commissioner. “Continue to ring; the bells are ours; there
is fire!”

“I am the police commissioner,” said the officer sternly. “I am here by
the command of the government, and I repeat my orders to stop at once
the ringing of the bells!”

“And I am the burgomaster of this place, and repeat that the bells
shall be rung,” replied the angry and excited villager. “You have no
right to command here, and much less in the church. When the whole
parish is assembled, the bells shall be stopped, not before.”

The commissioner ground his teeth. He quailed before the determined
aspect of the burgomaster, and returned to the priest’s house. There
his anger changed into fear. The large yard before the house, the
surrounding walls, and the street were thickly covered with people. He
saw threatening looks and fierce eyes glaring upon him when he ascended
the steps. The crowd was as yet quiet, but already there were signs of
a coming storm.

The police commissioner unceremoniously entered the presence of Prince
Joseph von Eberstein, the Jesuit father.

“There, look!” he exclaimed rudely. “That is your work—open rebellion
against the government!”

“Pardon me, Herr Commissioner,” replied the priest calmly; “how could I
have caused the tumult, since I had no knowledge of your coming?”

“You have nevertheless incited the people to revolt against the
government, and here is the result of your teaching!”

“Sir, I have not incited the people against the government; the
government itself, by a violent and unjustifiable act, has provoked the
honest wrath of these simple peasants. I beg you to be less prejudiced.”

The bells were now silent; in the yard, a threatening murmur was heard;
the crowd seemed to be greatly incensed, and the commissioner saw that
the situation was becoming very critical. He listened at the window.

“To carry away our priest like a thief, like a murderer!” exclaimed a
trembling voice. “We will not permit it; he must remain here!”

“If our pastor was a servant of Judas,” said another voice, “and would
betray our religion to the Freemasons, then they would not persecute
him. But because he is a pious, conscientious priest whom we all love
and respect, they wish to take him away.”

“Yes; that is the reason.”

“We will not suffer it; we will keep our priest; he shall not go!”
exclaimed many voices confusedly.

The officer looked at the excited crowd, and acknowledged that it would
be dangerous to use violence.

“I regret this commotion,” said Prince von Eberstein. “If, however, you
choose to follow my advice, you can yet take your prisoner.”

“What is your advice?”

“Send away the gendarmes at once; their presence only serves to
exasperate the people. After that, I will speak to my parishioners, and
will enter the carriage with you.”

“Your advice is discreet,” replied the commissioner, who went out, and
commanded the gendarmes to leave Weselheim forthwith.

The departure of the gendarmes tranquillized the crowd. The threats
ceased, and the clinched fists were opened. Upon the steps of his
residence the prince now appeared dressed in his cassock.

“May Jesus Christ be praised, your reverence!” exclaimed the assembled
parish.

“Now and for ever, dear children! First let me thank you for the love
and sympathy you have always shown me during my stay among you. You
know that the government objects to my remaining here because I am a
foreigner. I have been frequently directed by the temporal power to
leave my parish. But because our Lord Jesus Christ has not commanded
the temporal powers to preach the Gospel, to administer the sacraments,
or to govern the church, but has given that right to the Pope, the
bishops, and the priests, and because I have derived my mission not
from the temporal authority, but from the church, I have refused to
leave the dear fold entrusted to my care, nor shall I leave it. In
order that these unfortunate disturbances may not recur again, I intend
to accompany the commissioner to the city. There I will lay the whole
affair before our most gracious king, who is a wise and just ruler.
I shall ask him to arrange matters so that I shall not be molested
again in the discharge of my sacred duties. Are you satisfied, dear
parishioners?”

The deepest silence reigned.

“Your reverence,” exclaimed a voice, “if you promise us to come back,
then we are satisfied.”

“I promise it to you,” answered the priest firmly.

He then re-entered the house.

“Herr Commissioner, have the carriage immediately brought before the
steps, so that any further excitement may be avoided.”

This was done. When, however, the children saw their pastor getting
into the carriage, they commenced to weep aloud, in which the girls and
women joined, so that heart-rending lamentations filled the air. The
driver whipped the horses, and the carriage almost flew through the now
desolated village.

“Do not weep so!” said Keller; “our pastor will return: he has promised
it.”

“But if they imprison him?” said a timid woman.

“Ah! bah! things have not yet come to such a pass!” observed the
burgomaster; “the parish will protect him!”

The people now separated. Only the burgomaster and some of the
influential villagers remained in the priest’s house conversing
together. In a short time, another carriage stopped at the door. The
astonished men saw an official wearing a very rich uniform descend from
the carriage.

“I think I know him,” said Keller. “Yes; I am right: he is one of the
four Freemasons.”

A priest who accompanied the official was received by the villagers
with sharp and suspicious looks.

“Good-morning!” said the friendly official. “I am rejoiced to meet here
in the priest’s house such a number of gentlemen. Herr Burgomaster, if
I am not mistaken?”

“Yes; I am he, and these are the councilmen.”

“This is splendid; what a fortunate circumstance!” remarked the
official. “I am the government counsellor, and have come to introduce
this reverend gentlemen into his office, so that the good parish of
Weselheim should not be one moment without a pastor.”

The men looked at one another; they were greatly perplexed, and seemed
hardly to understand what was going on.

“But, Herr Counsellor,” said the burgomaster, “we have a pastor. He
went only an hour ago to the city to see his most gracious majesty the
king, and to-morrow he will return.”

“You are mistaken, Herr Burgomaster,” assured the smiling counsellor
and grandmaster of the Freemasons. “The Jesuit will not return.”

The last words fell like a thunderbolt among them.

“What?—O ho!” exclaimed the men. “We shall see! Our pastor is the Rev.
Herr von Eberstein; we wish no other.”

“Unfortunately, Herr von Eberstein is a foreigner,” replied the
counsellor, shrugging his shoulders. “I introduce to you a pious priest
whose zeal will certainly bring a blessing upon the parish.”

The priest bowed and smiled, but the villagers evidently did not like
him.

“What is your name, if we may be allowed to ask?”

“My name is Stechapfel” (thorn-apple), answered the priest.

“What! Stechapfel?” cried they all, drawing back.

“Are you not the New Protestant Stechapfel of whom we have read so much
in the newspapers?” inquired Ewald, one of the councilmen.

“I am not a New Protestant, but an Old Catholic,” replied Stechapfel.

“It is really so—it is he!” exclaimed Keller. “Do you know, Herr
Stechapfel, what you call ‘Old Catholic’ is understood among Catholics
as ‘New Protestant’? We know also why the heretics of our day have
invented the word ‘Old Catholic’: they did so to throw sand in the
eyes of the people; as if they, the heretics, had remained faithful
to the old Catholic doctrine, but the Pope and all the bishops and
priests, as also all Catholics, had renounced the true faith. Luther,
the first Protestant, did the very same thing. He accused the Pope
and the bishops of having left the old doctrine, but that he, Luther,
had retained it, for which reason he was an Old Catholic. The same is
repeated to-day; it is deception—pure deception; therefore we do not
call these deceivers ‘Old Catholics,’ but ‘New Protestants.’”

“I deplore all this confusion,” replied Stechapfel devoutly. “I have
nothing to do with Luther nor with heresy of any sort. I keep firmly to
the Old Catholic doctrine.”

“Please listen to me, Herr Stechapfel; I wish to ask you something,”
began Keller, moving his cap on one side of his head. “Do you believe
that the Pope is infallible when he explains and defines how an article
of faith or of morals is to be understood?”

“No; I do not believe it, because it was never believed before,”
replied Stechapfel.

“Was never believed before—only hear that!” exclaimed the villagers,
laughing.

“Then let me continue—I am not through yet,” said Keller. “You
believe, therefore, Herr Stechapfel, that the Pope and all the bishops
erred when they maintained this doctrine in the council?”

“Of course they erred; for they invented a new article of faith,”
answered Stechapfel.

“Ha! ha! That is too absurd!” cried out some of those present.

“Do not laugh, men; it is not a laughing matter,” said Keller. “Now,
Herr Stechapfel, since you are to be our pastor, you can perhaps
explain something that I do not understand. Our Lord instituted an
infallible teaching tribunal in his church before he ascended to
heaven. That he was obliged to institute this infallible tribunal I can
understand; for fifty years would not have elapsed after his ascension,
before learned men would have begun to misinterpret and distort his
doctrine. Therefore an infallible tribunal was necessary, that it might
tell the people what is and what is not the doctrine of Christ. Our
Lord has also promised and given to this infallible tribunal the Holy
Ghost, that he should remain with it unto the end of the world, and
establish it in all truth. But now, this tribunal, that is, the Pope
and the bishops, has declared that the Head of the church is infallible
when he gives to the whole world a decision or an interpretation
concerning the meaning of an article of faith or morals. Now follows
what I do not understand. You New Protestants maintain that it is not
so. But if it is not true, then the infallible tribunal has erred;
then our Lord has told a falsehood. How does this all agree, Herr
Stechapfel?”

The counsellor and the priest could not conceal their vexation.

“You are well instructed,” said Schlehdorn.

“This is in consequence of having had a good and zealous priest,”
replied the burgomaster. “Are you not a New Protestant, Herr
Counsellor?”

“By no means! I hold fast to the original doctrine of the Holy Catholic
Church; therefore I am, strictly speaking, an Old Catholic.”

“I do not believe it!” exclaimed Keller, with a fierce gleam in his
eyes. “You are a Freemason; although you have shaved off your beard and
moustache, yet I know you. Did you not a few days ago meet three other
Freemasons on the Vogelsberg (mountain of birds)? Did you not then say,
‘The trowel or the cross’? Did you not say that there was no God, no
devil, no heaven, no hell?”

“You are mistaken in the person,” replied the astonished official, in
great embarrassment.

“Well, what of it?” cried Ewald consolingly. “Do not for that
reason excite yourself, Herr Counsellor. We knew long ago that the
New Protestants had very little religion. Who are the most zealous
New Protestants? Just those who never go to confession or to holy
communion. They have wrapped themselves in the little cloak of ‘Old
Catholicism,’ so that they might work the better against the Catholic
Church.”

“Enough!” exclaimed the official, who had regained his self-command.
“I am not here to expose myself to rude attacks, but to introduce this
priest into his office.”

“That is not necessary!” exclaimed the men. “You can take the New
Protestant at once back again with you; we do not want him.”

“We are not in Bavaria,” said the burgomaster. “We shall be faithful
to the Pope and his bishops; we care nothing for the infallible
professors. We do not believe that any man is infallible of himself;
but the Pope is infallible by virtue of his office as teacher; and the
Holy Ghost is neither promised nor sent to the professors.”

“Herr Burgomaster,” began the counsellor sternly, “I make you
responsible for the safety and official influence of Pastor Stechapfel.”

“Alas! Herr Counsellor, you have asked too much!” replied the
burgomaster. “We in this village are Catholics in the strictest sense
of the word. Therefore, we cannot have Herr Stechapfel, because he is
a New Protestant. Do you imagine, Herr Counsellor, that the people
will allow themselves to be commanded in religious matters? Do you
think that our faith is to be knocked into and out of our heads by
police-clubs, just because you say the word? No; I refuse to become
answerable for the New Protestant pastor you have brought us, and I
also assure you that, if he enters the church, the people will run out.”

Keller, who had evidently devised some plan of action, gave the
burgomaster a secret sign.

“I think,” said he, “as the government counsellor has come purposely
hither, we should give Herr Stechapfel a trial. By the way of
beginning, you should introduce Herr Stechapfel into the pastor’s
residence.”

“You have spoken very wisely,” answered Schlehdorn. “I must now go;
farewell, gentlemen!”

The official thereupon returned to the city, and Stechapfel and the
burgomaster entered the priest’s house.

Keller remained outside; he spoke earnestly with the other men, and the
nature of his communication created great but suppressed mirth among
them.

After a short interval, Keller and Ewald appeared before Stechapfel.

“Have you maturely considered the matter? It will not do,” commenced
Keller. “If it becomes known in the village that an Old Catholic New
Protestant is here, there would be a terrible tumult. The people would
be wild at the thought of having a man as their pastor who is more
infallible than the Pope and the bishops, and who is at the same time
excommunicated. To avert misfortune, you must leave at once!”

“I protest against such treatment; I shall remain!” exclaimed
Stechapfel.

“You can protest as long as you wish; it becomes you very well, for you
are a New Protestant!” replied Keller indifferently. “But remain here
you cannot!”

“The government has sent me as pastor to this village, and I shall
maintain my right to the position!” exclaimed the Old Catholic.

“Bah! the government! That is New Protestant nonsense! If you were a
Catholic, you would know that the government has no right to dispose
of ecclesiastical offices. Offices of the church are bestowed by the
church. Therefore, you must go! Where is your hat?”

“This is an outrage; it is nothing less than violence!”

“There, take your hat! I ask you whether you will leave voluntarily?”

“No; I will not go!”

“Well, then, we will accompany you until you are out of the village,”
said Keller; and he put his arm under that of Stechapfel, while Ewald
executed the same manœuvre on the other side. In vain did the intruder
resist. The strong men took him out of the house, across the yard, and
through the village. The people of Weselheim stood around and laughed
at the comical scene.

“Whom have you there?” asked a passer-by.

“We have here an Old Catholic New Protestant who has strayed away from
Bavaria. We are now showing him the way out of the village.”

“What are you doing?” cried out another, in surprise. “I hope you will
not lay hands on a priest?”

“Certainly not,” said Ewald; “we only expel the wolf who wished to
creep in clothed as a sheep.”

A short distance out of the village, the men halted.

“So, Herr Stechapfel, now you can proceed alone,” said Franz Keller.
“If you wish to be again taken out, then you must revisit us; it will
be a pleasure for us to escort you as we have just done. If you are
really a duly ordained priest, then I ask your pardon; but I have not
to ask pardon of you personally, for you bear too close a resemblance
to the traitor Judas. You can tell the gentlemen in the city that we in
Weselheim shall remain true to the cross: the trowel the Freemasons may
keep for themselves. Good-by!”


CHAPTER IV.

APPEAL FOR HELP.

FROM the tower of the palace floated a banner—a sign that the king had
taken up his residence there. In the royal park, a gentleman in the
prime of life was walking. His countenance bespoke a kind disposition,
and his dark eyes were full of spirit and intelligence. He sought out
the most lonely paths, and seemed lost in thought, while his gaze
rested upon the lovely flowers of the forest, the green moss, and the
gigantic oaks. Hurried steps are heard coming up the well-gravelled
road; joy beams from the face of the gentleman; he stretches out his
arms, presses the youthful count to his bosom, and imprints a kiss upon
his forehead.

“Have you come at last, my Adolph? How fresh and handsome you look!”

“No wonder, your majesty! I drink water, and eat potatoes with sour
milk,” replied the count merrily.

They walked on arm in arm. The count was distantly related to the king,
who was a great lover of art, and therefore took pride in the poetic
talents of his young relative.

“For how long has your majesty freed yourself from the affairs of
state?” asked Adolph.

“For two weeks—a short time. Even here I cannot rest; I have promised
an audience to many persons.”

“Why did you promise?”

“Because those who wish to see me belong to a powerful organization,”
replied the king. “The grandmaster of all the Freemasons of the country
will present an address to me—in two days, I believe.”

“The grandmaster?” exclaimed the count, taking his portfolio from under
his arm. “These leaves contain both good and bad. To keep either secret
from the king would be treason, and on my part a great violation of my
duty as his friend.”

“Have you written a drama?”

“Yes, your majesty; or rather, I have copied one; you also are one of
the actors, as well as the grandmaster. Can I begin to read?”

“Certainly; I am most anxious to hear what you have written.”

Von Scharfenstein, after a few words of introduction, described his
hiding-place in the forest, and the circle of unsuspecting Freemasons
assembled at his feet. He then commenced to read. The king listened
with undivided attention. Gradually a dark frown settled upon his brow.

“Many thanks for your valuable communication,” said he, when Von
Scharfenstein had finished reading. “So I am a narrow-minded man who
does not rule, but is ruled! Outrageous impertinence!”

“It is contemptible and vulgar; but what else do you expect from
Freemasons!” answered the count.

“And these very Freemasons are always professing to be the most
obedient servants of the crown,” said the indignant king. “They are
constantly clamoring about the dangerous designs of Rome upon other
governments, and they also pretend to decry the intrigues of the
ultramontanes!”

“In reality,” replied Von Scharfenstein, “it is these men of the
trowel and apron who undermine the authority of the crown; they make
the people hate their rulers, they violate and wound the holiest
feelings of subjects, and they do this clothed in the garment of
official authority. I will give you an example.” And the count related
the forcible expulsion of the Jesuit father, and the request of the
inhabitants of Weselheim.

The king walked a few steps in silence.

“Justice shall be given to the oppressed, and punishment to the
guilty,” said he, and then turned towards the palace.

Two days later, the councilmen left their village, dressed in their
best attire, and carrying with them the prayers of all the inhabitants.
The burgomaster led the procession, followed by the others, until they
entered the royal park. The nearer they approached the palace, the
slower were the footsteps of the men; for it is no trifling matter for
humble subjects to enter the presence of their king.

“George, do justice to our cause!” said Ewald to the burgomaster.

“I will do all that I can, but you must help me!” And the burgomaster
wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

They walked in respectful silence upon the clean gravel-path that
led to the palace. At some distance from them, they espied their
good friend Count von Scharfenstein coming up a by-road. He saw the
diffidence of the men, and saluted them kindly, in order to infuse new
courage into them.

“The parish of Weselheim is held in high estimation by the king, for
he only gives audience here to princes and to very intimate friends,”
said he. “Therefore, you must speak freely to him. The king likes a
plain and truthful statement of facts. At the same time, my friends,
the question is, Can the king help you, that is, for any time to come?
There is only one thing which will be of help.”

“What does your lordship mean?” inquired Keller.

“I mean that the Freemasons and liberals aim at the destruction of
religion. They have worked at this for many years, and not in vain.
They have succeeded in expelling in many places a large number of
priests from the schools, so that the children, if possible, may grow
up without religion. They have declared war against conscientious
bishops and priests. At present they have driven out the Jesuits,
because they are very active and zealous in the discharge of their
duty. After the Jesuits will follow the other religious orders, then
the seminaries will be closed, bishops and priests will be deprived
of their rights, and the church as they imagine, will be rendered
helpless. It is a most cruel tyranny, and a real stigma upon the German
name; but what can be done? The tyrants are all powerful.”

“Our gracious king can put a stop to their wickedness,” said the
burgomaster.

“You are mistaken,” replied Scharfenstein. “The king cannot do
everything. He has sworn to uphold the constitution, and he must keep
his oath. If, therefore, the representatives of the country, the
Chamber of Deputies, make laws hostile to religion, the king is often
obliged to confirm them. Consequently, only one thing can really help
you.”

“And what is it, if we are permitted to ask your lordship?”

“It is for you to exercise more prudence in the elections for the
Chamber and the Diet. Send pious, religious men as your representatives
to the Diet, and then your religion will not be insulted, and you will
have good laws. Why are the Freemasons now in the ascendency in the
Chamber, in the ministry, in the government, everywhere? And who are
to blame for it? The people, yes, the people have given the reins to
their bitterest enemies. If the Catholic people had elected proper
representatives, the Freemasons and liberals would never have become
so powerful. If, therefore, the enemies of religion use their power
for the destruction of the church and of religious belief, it is very
natural, and the careless indifference of the people is the cause of
their triumph.”

“Your lordship is right,” answered the burgomaster.

“It will be very different at the next election,” said the other men.

“I hope so,” remarked Von Scharfenstein. “Remember what I tell you.
Only one thing will be of lasting benefit to you, and that is to send
practical Catholics to the Diet; and this you can do if you choose.
Unscrupulous men who do not believe in God, in eternal reward or
punishment, do not hesitate to deprive the people of their religious
rights, to impose oppressive taxes upon them, and to make slaves of
free men!”

The villagers acquiesced in what was said.

“I wish that we had never believed the sweet-sounding words of the
liberals and their lying newspapers,” remarked Ewald. “We must really
confess that, as a people, we are too ignorant, and allow ourselves to
be too easily duped.”

“It is time for you to become prudent,” replied the count.

The deputation had now reached the palace.

“Do you see the man with the long official staff in his hand, standing
there in the hall? Tell him who you are, and he will take care of you.”
Saying this, Von Scharfenstein saluted them, and returned to the park.


CHAPTER V.

THE AUDIENCE.

IN the audience-chamber there stood three gentlemen in animated
conversation: the grandmaster and two other Freemasons, the director,
and university professor. They were handsomely dressed, and wore
several orders upon their breasts. They seemed to be very familiar with
their surroundings, for they moved about with perfect unconcern. The
grandmaster of the Freemasons especially appeared to be full of his own
importance, and he glanced haughtily at one of the king’s attendants
when he entered the apartment.

“Something has gone wrong to-day,” said he, looking at his watch. “It
is already a quarter of an hour after the appointed time. I have never
been treated so before.”

“I also remark something unusual,” exclaimed the director. “There,
behind the table, stands a chair of state. The king never seats himself
when giving audiences; why, therefore, has this rule been violated?
There is a bell upon the table—what does all this mean?”

“The king has his humors, no doubt,” replied the grandmaster
sarcastically, placing meanwhile an address upon the silver salver
which stood upon the table.

At once the folding-doors opened, and the king entered, looking grave
and dignified. He advanced towards the chair of state, and, placing
his hand upon it, he waited until those present had finished bowing.
No gracious smile lighted up his features, and he returned their
salutation with a scarcely perceptible nod of the head.

“Most gracious majesty!” commenced the grandmaster, “it cannot have
escaped your notice that a serious disturbance threatens the peace of
the whole German Empire, as well as the kingdom which is so happy as
to be governed by your wise and prudent rule. The infallibility of the
Pope, so dangerous to the state, and invented only to bring princes and
people under the sceptre of the Roman Pontiff, has provoked universal
indignation. Everywhere societies and meetings are protesting against
this usurpation of Rome. At Munich and Darmstadt, good and learned men
have taken part in the proceedings. In both cities, resolutions were
passed which your majesty will be graciously pleased to accept.”

The king silently took the address from the salver, and laid it upon
the table.

“Your majesty will permit me to remark,” continued the grandmaster,
“that, at the Protestant Diet of Darmstadt, the Jesuits were specially
designated as the most dangerous conspirators in the service of Rome,
and particularly hostile to the German Empire. Now, as the Society
of Jesus exists also in your majesty’s dominions, we have ventured,
actuated solely by the interest we take in the peace and political
welfare of the kingdom, to humbly petition that your majesty will
insist upon the immediate expulsion of the above-named society.”

“Are you a Catholic, Herr Counsellor of the High Court?” asked the king.

“Strictly Catholic, your majesty—strictly Catholic,” replied the
Freemason. “I hold firmly to the old doctrines of the Holy Catholic
Church, and shall resist with all my strength the innovation of the
last council.”

“According to what you say, your petition asking for the suppression
of the Jesuits does not come with such ill grace from you, for you,
as a Catholic, speak about Catholic affairs,” said the king. “But
why a Protestant diet should meddle itself with the ecclesiastical
discipline and religious belief of Catholics is beyond my conception.
The Catholics also have public meetings; but I never hear that they
concern themselves in the slightest degree about Protestant matters. I
am aware of the resolutions passed by the Protestant Diet of Darmstadt,
and regret them exceedingly, because they are only calculated to
grieve Catholics, to disturb the peace, and to seriously embarrass
governments. The Gustave Adolph Society is a proof how, in former
times, Protestants have united themselves with the foreign invader
and destroyer of our country against the Catholic Emperor of Germany.
Hostile treatment, or even an attempt to suppress the Catholic
Church on the part of the state, might in like manner force Catholic
Germans to unite themselves with a foreign power in opposition to the
Protestant Emperor of Germany. A faithful people are not in need of
forgiveness if they love their God and their religion more than they do
the tyranny of their fatherland.”

The Freemasons were astonished; they did not expect to hear the king
speak as he did.

“You make mention of the resolutions of the glass palace at Munich,
which were also directed against the Jesuits,” continued the king. “Do
you believe the grave accusations which they bring against the Society
of Jesus?”

“I have the fullest conviction of their truth,” replied the
grandmaster, bowing low.

The king now seated himself, and looked through the address. The men of
the trowel cast significant glances at each other.

“A ruler must be just; he should never belong to a party,” said the
king. “You demand the suppression of men who are highly respected
and venerated by thousands of my subjects. The Burgomaster and
principal men of Weselheim are here to petition for the restoration
of their pastor, a Jesuit father. If, after hearing these men, I am
convinced that the actions of the Jesuits correspond with the Munich
resolutions, then I will not be disinclined to grant your request for
the suppression of the society; but, if the contrary, then justice must
be done!”

He rang a bell. The folding-doors at the lower end of the _salon_
opened, and the burgomaster, together with the councilmen of Weselheim,
entered, all looking anxious as to the result of the interview. The
king rose from his chair, and his whole manner changed; with a friendly
gesture, he invited the embarrassed deputies to draw nearer.

“Ah! Herr Burgomaster, I am delighted to see you again!” said he to
the burgomaster, giving him his hand. “You have not become older in the
course of the year—always young and active. How are the trout? Shall I
see any more of them upon my table?”

“O most gracious king!” replied the delighted burgomaster, “the whole
parish will catch trout for your majesty.”

“I am glad to hear it!” rejoined the king. “And how is your little
golden-haired son with the rosy cheeks? Has he grown tall?”

“Two feet taller this year; your majesty would not know him!”

The councilmen were enchanted. The ice was broken.

“You desire your pastor, the Jesuit father, to return to you again?”
began the king, seating himself in the chair. “That is right; such a
request is honorable to you all. Parishioners should always esteem a
worthy pastor. But, my dear people,” he continued, “there are some
difficulties. It is asserted that the Jesuits are men dangerous to the
state; that their teachings are destructive to morals. It is further
said that the Jesuits conspire against the government; that they
are opposed to the enlightenment of the people; and I am therefore
petitioned by some of my subjects to authorize their expulsion. These
are the very words contained in the address I hold in my hand.”

The men looked at one another; they evidently did not comprehend the
meaning of the accusations made against the Jesuits.

“I ask pardon, your majesty; but we do not understand you,” said
the burgomaster. “We know, indeed, that there are many who hate the
Jesuits, and who wish to see them exterminated, none more so than the
Freemasons. But your majesty must not listen to such persons; for even
our Lord was accused by his enemies of inciting the people, of being
dangerous to the state; and they even went so far as to nail him to
the cross. If our Saviour would come again to-day in the flesh, the
Freemasons would not be satisfied until they had crucified him again.”

The king cast a quick look at the flushed countenances of the
Freemasons.

“I ask you, upon your conscience,” said he to the burgomaster, “if your
Jesuit father ever taught immoral doctrines?”

“O great heaven!” exclaimed the excited burgomaster. “Immoral
doctrines—our pastor? Why, your majesty, he is like a saint, and he
does his best to make saints of the whole parish. If two young persons
of a different sex live together without being married, our pastor
never rests until both have given up their scandalous life and are
married. If enmities exist, and lawsuits and quarrels, our pastor is
indefatigable until he effects a reconciliation. Thus, our pastor
is like an angel for our parish. Formerly there were many who hated
each other; we had dissensions among ourselves; but now everything is
peaceable and quiet in the village, and all this we owe to our pastor,
the Jesuit father.”

“And what he does for the children is beyond belief, your majesty,”
said Keller. “He visits the schools every day; the children love him.
In _former_ times, parents had to command the children to pray in the
morning and the evening; _now_ they pray without being told to do so.
And our children are so obedient, for our pastor impresses upon them
the full importance of the fourth commandment.”

“Has your pastor no enemies in the parish?” inquired the king.

“Yes, most gracious majesty; he has enemies, that is, three rascals,
who would like to see him driven out,” said the burgomaster.

“You see, gentlemen,” said the king to the officials, “that your
accusations against the Jesuits are by no means confirmed.”

“The Jesuit of Weselheim may perhaps be an exception,” replied the
grandmaster.

Franz Keller seemed possessed with a desire to speak, but he controlled
his impatience.

“Your majesty will excuse me for saying that the accusations against
the Jesuits appear very surprising to me,” remarked Ewald. “In
the Bible, we read that the Jews dragged our Saviour before the
high-priests, and accused him of different crimes. And when our Saviour
defended himself, one of the servants struck him in the face, whereupon
our Saviour said: ‘If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil;
but, if well, why strikest thou me?’ It is the same with the Jesuits.
If they are really as wicked and criminal as their enemies assert,
well, let them be brought before the law, and be punished according
to the law. But if nothing can be proved against them, why continue
to slander and persecute them, and to treat them like murderers and
thieves?”

“Very well said, and very true!” answered the king.

“Most gracious king, I can tell you what people are against the
Jesuits—the Freemasons,” began Keller, unable any longer to keep
quiet. “A short time ago, I heard them talking on the Vogelsberg. These
three gentlemen (pointing to the Freemasons) were there, and one other.
The one with the gray beard said: ‘The trowel or the cross, that is the
watchword!’ Then they all declared that the religion of Christ must be
exterminated; and, because the Jesuits are good preachers and zealous
priests, therefore they must be the first to be overthrown. And they
also said that, when the altars were destroyed, the thrones must be
demolished. What else they said, most gracious king, I will not grieve
you by repeating.”

The king looked silently, but with an expression of severe displeasure,
at the officials.

“Will your majesty permit us to withdraw?” inquired the grandmaster.

“You will remain; we have not finished yet,” replied the king sternly.

“Most gracious king,” entreated the burgomaster, “be kind enough to
look through the window.”

The king did as requested, and saw at the foot of the hill the whole
parish of Weselheim congregated together—men, women, and children.
They all stood with their faces turned towards the palace. Many knelt
upon the ground. The king was visibly affected at the sight.

“The whole village unite with us in asking your majesty to give us back
our dear, good, pious Jesuit father,” said the burgomaster.

At this moment, a chamberlain appeared, and handed the king a written
communication.

“He is very welcome; admit him at once!” commanded the king.

The delegation were attentive spectators of what was transpiring. In
the antechamber they heard the voice of the pastor, who now entered the
_salon_, and was most graciously received by the king. The presence
of royalty alone prevented loud exclamations of delight from his
parishioners, whose faces shone with joy.

“The Society of Jesus was very active during the last war,” said the
king, after certain formalities had been gone through. “How many German
Jesuits were on the scene of action?”

“Nearly all, your majesty—one hundred and eighty-eight,” replied the
Jesuit. “Our older members took care of the sick; for, during the war,
all our colleges were converted into hospitals.”

“No proof of hostility to the state,” remarked the king, turning to the
officials. “How many Freemasons were employed in attending to the sick
and wounded in the hospitals during the war?”

“The care of the sick does not belong to the vocation of a Freemason,”
answered the grandmaster shortly.

“Much is said and written to-day concerning the extraordinary power of
the Jesuits,” said the king to the reverend father. “I have in vain
endeavored to discover the secret of this power; you may perhaps be
able to enlighten me on the subject?”

“Your majesty, the so-called power of the Jesuits is a mere phantom
invented by our enemies to excite the fears of the credulous,” answered
the priest. “In fact, the Jesuits are, of all men, the weakest. They
are slandered, persecuted, suppressed. In many places, they have not
even the right to exist or to breathe, as in Bavaria and Switzerland.
All societies are protected in Bavaria, all associations can exist in
Switzerland, except the Society of Jesus. If the Jesuits, therefore,
possessed in reality the power claimed for them, they would not permit
their members to be treated like slaves, as they now are.”

“I believe you,” rejoined the king. “Being a foreigner, your reverence
had to abandon the sphere of your labor; but now I grant you the right
of a subject, and liberty to return to your mission. May you live many
years to be a blessing to the parish of Weselheim!”

He took the hand of the priest, and led him to the village delegation.

“Here, you have your pastor back again! Honor and obey him!” said he to
them.

“Most gracious king, may Almighty God reward you a thousand times for
what you have done!” exclaimed the men, down whose cheeks the tears
were streaming; and, if two of the chamberlains had not interfered, and
led them out of the _salon_, they would have committed many breaches of
etiquette, so great was their joy.

The king now approached the Freemasons; his manner was cold, but his
eyes were ablaze with indignation.

“I thank divine Providence,” said he, “for having exposed before my
eyes the cunning and malicious snare in which you sought to entrap
me. The Jesuits are not the enemies of culture nor of the state; but
the Freemasons are. The foundation of culture is Christianity, and
not Freemasonry, which is the enemy of Christianity. In my kingdom,
the cross, and not the trowel shall be the symbol of government. The
Jesuits neither teach nor practise a false and corrupt morality,
but the Freemasons do, for they seek to overthrow not only altars
but thrones. The Freemasons are unscrupulous, false, and perjured
officials, for they have presumed to say that their king to whom they
have sworn fidelity was a narrow-minded man who did not govern, but was
governed! It would be nothing more than just to have the whole order
prosecuted for high treason!”

The excited king ceased speaking. The Freemasons, who at first looked
defiant and unconcerned, now trembled with fright. His majesty stood
for a while in perfect silence. From the foot of the hill resounded
many hundred voices chanting the grand hymn of praise, the German _Te
Deum_, while they accompanied their beloved pastor to the village.

The king, who had recovered his self-command, now pronounced the
following sentence: “The director, the Counsellor of the High Court,
the professor of the university, and the government counsellor
Schlehdorn are from this time forth deprived of their offices. I shall
not institute judicial proceedings against them, out of regard to the
feelings of their innocent families!”

The king turned, and left the _salon_.

The Freemasons looked at one another. Upon the lips of the grandmaster
an ironical, revengeful smile was seen.

“A blow in the water will startle any one, if it is given
unexpectedly,” said he, “and our present discomfiture is only of that
nature!” he continued, with a peculiar movement of the hand, and in
language whose obscure meaning they evidently understood. “Brethren,
our labors in a small sphere are only discontinued that we may resume
the work on a grander scale; for the trowel of the Freemasons shall yet
build the arch that covers the grave of the greater as well as of the
smaller!”

The other Freemasons bowed affirmatively to the words of the
grandmaster, and followed him out of the _salon_.




WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?


THE word civilization, adopted into almost every European language, is
derived from the Latin of _civitas_, a city, and _civis_, a citizen.
Webster thus defines civilization: “It consists in the progressive
improvement of society considered as a whole, and of all the individual
members of which it is composed.” And further: “A well-ordered state of
society, culture, refinement.” Now, it is worth while to inquire into
the tangible ideal of that people to whose language we are indebted
for this comprehensive word. The Romans considered their empire the
appointed head, by divine right, of the whole world. They could not
take in the idea of their supremacy being disputed, much less resisted,
and hence the proud motto, “_Civis Romanus sum_,” which was meant to
express the _ne plus ultra_ of human dignity. No greater honor could
be bestowed upon a stranger, whether ally or conquered foe, than to
make him a Roman citizen. It was a title more valuable than that of
Cæsar; it had privileges attached to it which neither the blood of a
Machabee nor an Alexander could claim; it compelled greater respect
than the heroism of a Leonidas or the uprightness of a Socrates.
Thus early had false notions of material civilization corrupted the
genuine meaning of a word which should always stand, not for political
supremacy, but for moral excellence. Rome, the heart of the dominant
empire which had vanquished and absorbed at least two civilizations of
higher degree than its own, the Hebrew and the Greek, has transmitted
to the word civilization the spirit of its intensely local autonomy.
Every kindred word derived from the same root has a like meaning,
especially “civility,” a synonyme of “urbanity” (from _urbs_, a city),
thereby conveying the insinuation that city customs alone have that
grace and refinement necessary to pleasant social intercourse. Another
meaning naturally flowed from this arbitrary assumption of perfection
to imperial Rome. Civil came to mean national as opposed to foreign;
as we say, for instance, civil, for intestine, war. More or less all
nations of the world have adopted this way of looking upon civilization
as a local thing; and, to the greater majority of mankind, there is
a certain flavor of disparagement implied in the terms foreign and
foreigner. We speak in a tone of half-concealed pity of men from
far-off countries, as if they must needs be a little lower in the
scale of creation than our enlightened selves. We have not forgotten
that “barbarian” and “foreigner” were terms used interchangeably by
the Greeks, and our local pride still unconsciously crops out in the
most childish and laughable demonstrations. Nothing shows better how
very arbitrary is the interpretation of the word civilization than our
various estimates of its essence. The Chinese who wears yellow for
mourning smiles compassionately at the European in his dusky garment
of sorrow; and the European who is accustomed to eat his dinner with
a knife and fork thinks that a nation can hardly be civilized which
tolerates the use of chop-sticks. To come nearer home, we have known
an Englishman of distinguished birth and position refuse the hand of
his daughter to a French diplomat, a nobleman of the old stock, an
accomplished gentleman, a rich land-owner, for the weighty reason that
“he was a foreigner”!

The word “barbarian” (from the Greek _βάρβαρος_) is given in Webster’s
_Dictionary_ as meaning, in the first and literal sense, foreign.
Barber or Barbar was originally the native name of a part of the
coast of Africa. The Egyptians, fearing and hating its inhabitants,
used their name as a term of contumely and dread, in which sense it
passed to the Greeks and Romans. Thus the kindred words barbarous and
barbarity have kept the meaning of “cruel and ferocious,” but the main
stock of _βάρβαρος_ generally signifies the two almost synonymous
things, “foreigner” and “barbarian”! The imitative sound of _barber_
was applied by the Greeks to the ruder tribes whose pronunciation was
most harsh and whose grammar most defective. Dr. Campbell says that the
Greeks were the first to brand a foreign term in any of their writers
with the odious name of barbarism. This word with the Greeks had the
additional general meaning of ignorance of art and want of learning,
and as such has been used by Dryden. Barbaric remains to this day the
synonyme of foreign and quaint, far-fetched, as Milton, following the
Greeks, has used it:

      “The gorgeous East with richest hand,
  Showers on her kings _barbaric_ gold and pearl.”

But Dryden has also put the more unusual word barbarous for the same
thing:

  “The trappings of his horse embossed with _barbarous_ gold.”

The misapplication of all these terms, and more especially of
“civilization,” is of daily recurrence. We cannot open a newspaper
without seeing its self-eulogium expressed in the term “a journal
of civilization”; we cannot read a leading article on the financial
prosperity of the country without finding it confidently stated that
such prosperity is an infallible sign of civilization; we hear of
railroads “carrying civilization” among the wild tribes of Central
Africa; and we see atheism and false science parading their unhappy
progress as the “march of civilization.”

Now, admitting the very just definition we have quoted above, that
civilization is “the progressive improvement of society _as a whole_,
and of each individual member of which it is composed,” it seems to
us conclusive that only one perfect form of it could exist on earth,
_i.e._ that which flourished for a short time in the Garden of Eden.
Mankind in the state of innocence was _ipso facto_ civilized, and
civilized to the highest moral and intellectual degree possible to
mere human creatures. Had there been no original sin, and had Adam’s
posterity continued in utter sinlessness to inhabit the peaceful
and fruitful earth, we should have had that well-ordered state of
society in which the only progressive improvement would have been
ever-increasing love and knowledge of God.

But this, the only perfect civilization, was lost with all other
precious gifts—incorruptibility, innocence, and clear insight into
the things of God. The state of grace followed the state of innocence,
and man, having fallen from his innate mastership over nature when he
fell from his mastership over himself, found that civilization and
progressive improvement must henceforward mean nothing to him but the
painful effort to regain as much of his former power as God would
allow him, in guerdon of his repentance, to regain. All civilization
since the Fall, therefore, has been only approximative, and can never
be more than this. This explains why the highest civilization has
been attained only since Christianity has prevailed, the state of
accomplished redemption being the most perfect mankind has yet reached,
superseding even the state of expectancy of the Hebrew dispensation.
It explains, too, why the Jews were the most civilized of all ancient
nations—a point to which we will refer at greater length in another
place. From the few details briefly mentioned in Genesis, we infer
that the earliest civilization after the Fall was by no means inferior
to our own as far as material prosperity was concerned. Besides the
obvious callings of husbandman and shepherd, always the first and
indeed indispensable foundation of civilized life, we find that during
the lifetime of Adam, _i.e._, the first thousand years after the
Creation, cities were built and the arts cultivated. Cain was the first
to build and organize a town, and his descendant Jubal is called the
father of “them that play on the harps and organ.” Tubal Cain was “a
hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron.” Hunting and
the use of weapons were of course familiar to the pioneers of the human
race, for tradition tells us that it was while hunting that Lamech
slew a man, supposed by some to have been Cain, mistaking him for a
wild beast. It was not long before solemn religious ceremonies were
instituted, as appears from this passage: “This man (Enos) began to
call upon the name of the Lord,” which is thus interpreted: although
Adam and Seth had called upon the name of the Lord before the birth
of their son and grandson Enos, yet Enos used more solemnity in the
worship and invocation of God. The natural bent of fallen man, however,
prevailed over the efforts of a few faithful souls, and that material
civilization which, could we in imagination reconstruct its gorgeous
completeness, would undoubtedly not fall below that of the great
empires of Assyria, Egypt, or Persia, led surely though insensibly to
moral corruption. The fatal beauty of the women of Cain’s race, “the
daughters of men,” their wealth too, doubtless their worldly prosperity
and lavish display, tempted the descendants of Seth, “the sons of God,”
till, in a few hundred years, “all flesh had corrupted its way,” and
“it repented God that he had made man.” This was the first example of
the deteriorating effect of mere animal civilization, and, alas! how
faithfully has it been copied in all ages since! How persistently and
with what unwearying perseverance have its details of profligacy been
imitated by the succeeding generations of mankind!

A historical review of each separate attempt at civilization made by
the dispersed nations after the building of the Tower of Babel would be
a serious task, and its result too long for these pages; but, before we
leave this part of our subject to turn to the more abstract question of
the essence of civilization, let us stop to remark what a high pitch
of human culture had already been attained in times so remote that,
save through revelation, no memorial of them remains to us. Wendell
Phillips has partially developed this idea in his lecture on the “Lost
Arts,” proving that three-fourths of our _discoveries_ are plagiarisms,
that our best witticisms are borrowed from the Indian and the Greek,
and that our most boasted arts are but gropings in the dark after some
vanished ideal of antiquity. And how much more learning than we can
conjecture must there not be utterly buried out of sight in the sealed
records of antediluvian times! The only likeness which we can safely
boast of with those colossal days is the likeness of unbelief and
corruption. The “mighty men of old,” of whom the Bible so mysteriously
speaks, were doubtless as much above our standard of intellect and even
of prosperity as vulgar superstition ranges them above our standard of
physical strength and height. A veil of mystery shrouds them and their
lives from our utmost research, and we know only one thing for certain;
that is, their sin and its awful doom—little more than is told us of
the fall of Lucifer and his angels, yet enough to teach us that all
civilizations which in their arrogance dare to defy the laws of God
must inevitably fall beneath his rod.

And now, what _is_ civilization? What _is_ the “good of society
considered as a whole”?

Two things are indispensable to it—the inviolability of the family,
and the stability of the laws of property. On these two pillars,
humanly speaking, is society built, and whatever is antagonistic to
these fundamental principles is necessarily and directly antagonistic
to civilization.

Paternal and patriarchal government was the first known because the
most natural; and, when the increasing number of families confused
the original system and complicated its duties, the ruler chosen to
take charge of the whole tribe or nation still looked to no higher
title than that of _father_ of his people. The stability of the laws
regulating property was in all lands reckoned the gauge of prosperity
and the test of national vigor. The desire of personal possession, of
undisputed ownership over a tract of land however small, is a natural
and legitimate instinct of man; its realization alone can bring with
it to each individual that independence, that self-respect, which, in
the aggregate, creates the feeling of national honor. Patriotism is not
an intangible virtue; it springs from the broader basis of domestic
affection; it follows the feeling of responsibility induced by the
knowledge of having a personal stake in your country’s advancement.
The Romans have left us their motto: _Pro aris et focis_—“For our
altars and our hearths.” If we could no longer qualify these hearths
as _ours_, what a lessened interest they must necessarily have in our
eyes! The man who works for himself alone is reckless even if brave,
lukewarm even if conscientious. He may do his work, but he does it
without enthusiasm. He who works for those near and dear to him, to
gain or defend a patrimony for those who in the future will take his
place and bear his name, is gentle, considerate, patient, far-seeing,
persevering, as well as brave and conscientious. But granted that
these social and domestic laws are well-guarded, in what else does
civilization consist? There are four things which dispute the title
to forming the highest test of a well-ordered state of society:
riches, political freedom, education, and religion. Some men would
combine these elements in varied quantities to form _their_ ideas of
civilization; others would sink every element but one, and try the
experiment as long as it could be made to minister to their own private
aggrandizement; others, again, look for the visionary supremacy of one
element alone, and the subordination to itself of every other, whether
baser or nobler. We need not say to which class we hope to belong—the
sequel will show.

Does civilization consist in riches, whether national or individual?
True, the command of wealth inspires respect in neighboring peoples;
for national wealth means large resources, speedy armaments,
flourishing colonies, and means of thwarting the commerce of lesser
nations. But national wealth is seldom attained unless from the basis
of individual wealth. It is impossible for the state to absorb and
administer such resources as these, and yet to compel private citizens
to lead lives of Spartan frugality. The individual cannot be made to
acknowledge any right on the part of the state which will interfere
with his own right of accumulating capital, provided he makes over to
the government a fair share of his profits in the shape of legitimate
tribute. Private wealth then becomes the source of private luxury and
extravagance, and behind extravagance lurks moral decay. Factitious
wants are created, an abnormal state of society is brought about,
unmanning the body and weakening the mind. To many men, riches simply
suggest new means of indulging in vice; and to all men, vice, in the
long run, means disease. Material prosperity has thus reached its
apogee, has overshot its mark, and has found a fitting punishment in
physical deterioration. There is yet another side to the question.
Inordinate riches in the hands of a few, especially if unsupported by
territorial prestige, by hereditary honors and the semi-feudal spirit
which in Europe still links the agricultural and landed interests
in personal association, are apt to breed class jealousies, and to
estrange labor from capital. A civil war far more terrible than an
armed insurrection is set on foot and slowly undermines the political
structure. It is true that the most fatal example of this kind was the
upheaval of the French Revolution of ‘93, and that it took place under
a monarchical government; but, though monarchical, it was not a feudal
government, and the men whose birth, wealth, and station marked them
out as the victims of the people’s rage were essentially men whose
associations had long been dissevered from the land. Their estates had
been abandoned to unscrupulous agents or sold to ambitious _roturiers_;
and for what reason? That its price might cover their needless display
at an unstable court! At the present day, where is socialistic
agitation most rife in Europe? In the manufacturing towns: not in the
agricultural districts. Almost to a man, every factory-gang is ready to
turn against its employer; while, in the country, laborers will even
die in the defence of their landlords. In the former case, the master
is always a “self-made” man, a man of the people, or at least one whose
associations are obscure; in the latter, the master is the hereditary
representative of gentle blood and gentle nurture, the personal friend
of each man on his estate, identified with the neighborhood, and
attached to the soil.

The verdict of history has certainly gone against the theory that
times of material luxury, pushed to its furthest extent, are therefore
times of great national prosperity. Athens was at the height of her
ultra-refined civilization when the rude and martial Roman conquered
her autonomy; Rome herself, made effeminate by the conquering vices
of her conquered foe, was at the giddiest pinnacle of merely physical
prosperity when the resistless tide of the barbarians poured over her
frontiers; Spain had just grasped the New World with its teeming riches
when she fell from her political supremacy in the Old; France was
revelling in her Augustan Age when the tocsin of the Revolution woke
her from her dalliance. Great wealth has everywhere been the herald
of national misfortune; and, as if to set off this truth yet more
palpably, we have the republics of Sparta and of Switzerland to show
us that, both in classic and in modern times, frugality is the best
preservative of freedom.

But the existence of abnormal wealth as a criterion of civilization
has yet another phase. If it is possible under a republican form of
government and under a constitutional régime, it is still more likely
to reach gigantic proportions under a despotic system. Thus the East
produces more princely fortunes than even the “enlightened” West,
because, wealth being restricted to fewer individuals, it follows
that these few fortunes must be colossal. Unlimited pomp, dazzling
trains of slaves and camels, a fabulous blaze of gems, a limitless
harem, seem to be matters of course for the favored few whose almost
omnipotence has become proverbial among men as typical of the East.
Therefore, if wealth be a gauge of civilization, we must conclude that
despotism is the most civilized of states, since it is certainly the
most favorable to the accumulation of riches. If so (and, for the sake
of argument, let us grant it), how shall we reconcile this conclusion
with the claims of the second and, according to some, infallible test
of civilization—political freedom?

We understand by this the extreme of so-called self-government, the
government by ballot and universal suffrage. We have had but very
lately many signs of its woful fallibility; we have seen how cleverly
it can throw the cloak of legality over the most unblushing frauds;
we have seen hired violence control the very medium of government
itself. Men who respected themselves would as soon touch pitch as
defile their hands with voting tickets, or stand up by the side of
illegally naturalized citizens, pressed into momentary service by the
unscrupulous manipulators of the ballot-box. A form of government
which in theory is more perfect than any other, and more in accordance
with ideal human dignity, but which in sober practice has sometimes
been found an inadequate safeguard against corrupting influences, is
not apt to strike any one who has been familiar with the results of the
last few years’ political wire-pulling as the most exalted criterion
of civilization. The cant phrase of political freedom has unhappily
come to mean political corruption, which hardly entitles this second
candidate for the exclusive patent of civilization to a lengthened
discussion in these pages. The third is education.

This is certainly a more plausible test than the two former. Learning,
the arts, the sciences, the classics, all relate to the higher part
of man’s nature, and reflect honor on those who strive to be their
interpreters. This seems worthy of man, akin to his primeval state,
and like the occupation of his future life. But alone even education
cannot stand. When dissevered from religion, it falls, either into
atheism or fanaticism, sometimes into both. At least one example of
its pernicious moral results when thus left to itself is the brilliant
shame of the Medicean renaissance. In the new groves of Academe, the
ducal gardens of Fiesole, heathen voluptuousness speedily followed
heathen philosophy; polished manners and elegant diction redeemed loose
morals and equivocal conversation; Christianity was voted _barbarous_,
and Christian pageants uncouth. It was the age of Boccaccio. The poison
spread far and wide, the fever of a misdirected and one-sided education
seized all classes, and the fathers of the church were forgotten for
the lascivious poets of Greece and Rome. The mysteries of Bona Dea
were almost enacted over again, the dances of Bacchus were revived,
and the processions of Venus and Cupid took the place of Christian
solemnities. The corruption was thus forced on the people, who, excited
by gorgeous public entertainments of pagan complexion, caught the
hollow enthusiasm of their rulers, and emulated the servile Romans of
the empire who cried out, _Panem et circenses_, while they blindly
surrendered their freedom into the crowned showman’s hands. Material
prosperity and godless learning combined, stifled the last semblance
of Florentine liberty under the rule of the Medici. In France it was
atheism concealed under the guise of learning which prepared the way
for the Revolution of ‘93; it was the delicately veiled irony, and the
sportive unbelief of Voltaire’s disciples, which first made the “little
rift within the lute.” The savage leaders of the Reign of Terror had
nothing to do save crown with the guillotine the elaborate system of
corruption already founded by the “philosophers.”

Education without religion has been as treacherous and as frail a
support to the civilization of men as the reed that pierces the hand
of him who leans upon it; political freedom (?) without religion has
been only another name for a retrograde movement towards anarchy, and
material wealth without the controlling influence of religion has
proved the most dangerous because the most emasculating of allies to
those nations who have built their civilization on its basis.

Each and all of these experiments have fallen far short of the ideal
of the Garden of Eden, and each has practically confessed by its
failure the radical infirmity of the theory it represented. The reason
is self-evident: a system which undertakes to guide the complex
workings of human nature cannot afford to disregard any of nature’s
manifold instincts, and, by obstinately refusing to give a place to
all legitimate aspirations, overbalances itself, and falls sooner or
later into a trap of its own setting. You cannot govern man through
his animal wants alone or through his intellectual yearnings only, any
more than you can rule him solely through his spiritual instincts. He
must be fed, clothed, and housed, true, but this alone will not satisfy
him; his reason cries out for development and exercise, and his heart
also puts in a claim to the notice of any one who would undertake to
rule him. It is true that man is not an angel, and that spiritual food
alone would not allay his hunger, but it is equally true that he is not
a brute being, to be abundantly satisfied with good fodder and a dry
stable. His nature is threefold: animal, intellectual, and spiritual,
and claims an equal recognition of each of its phases. Neither mere
riches addressed to the contentment of his lower instincts, nor mere
educational and political advantages addressed to the satisfaction
of his nobler self, are enough for his welfare; his soul is a higher
region yet, and one which demands yet more imperatively an adequate
amount of attention. This soul it is which, when bound and blinded
as it but too often is in mere worldly systems of civilization, ends
by grasping, like Samson, the insecure supports of this partial
civilization itself, and in the untamed strength of despair dragging
down the fabric in ruins at its feet.

There remains one more element which is still claimed by a brave
minority, as the essence of all true civilization, and that is
religion. This is the most comprehensive criterion of a “well-ordered”
state of society, for it includes all the rest as a matter of course.
Religion is not incompatible with the possession and accumulations
of wealth, as some erroneously suppose, but she requires that such
interests shall be amenable to the dictates of moderation, and of
charity; she does not scout learning as an ally, but eagerly welcomes
it, so long as it keeps within its province and does not use its power
to stifle the spiritual nature of man; she is no enemy to political
freedom or to any particular form of government whatever, but she
firmly resists the claims to omnipotence which every strong government,
whether popular or absolutist, has in the hour of its worldly triumph
invariably made. With a wisdom the counterpart of that which equalizes
and controls the various forces of nature, religion holds in her hand
the various emotions, passions, and necessities of man, and balances
according to a divine standard the proportions in which each one may
be legitimately satisfied. She subordinates the lower satisfactions
to the higher, in exact proportion as the lower nature of mankind is,
or should be, subordinate to the higher; she places delegates in each
inferior sphere, that there may be no violence done to the spiritual
order in furthering the interests of the material; she bids honesty
watch over the legitimate increase of wealth, integrity temper the
efforts of men in the cause of political freedom, and reverence guide
them in the pursuit of learning. She gathers up these single threads
of our lives, and, weaving them into a triple cord, imparts to them a
strength which her blessing alone can confer, and which individually
they could never have attained. It is she alone who skilfully brings
within the practical reach of the poor, the oppressed, and of the
ignorant, those theories which in the mouth of worldly apostles seem
either poetical dreams or subversive and socialistic principles.
It is she who is the true reformer, the true progressist, the true
patriot. But why is she so? Simply because she is also the only true
conservatrix in the world. Her mission is to foster the good, to seek
it out, to make it known, to assimilate it to herself, to absorb it
into her system. Material good is not excluded; wherever it is, it
belongs of right to her; whether it be old or new, foreign or native,
it matters not, religion takes it into her bosom, gives it immortality,
sanctions its use, recommends its adoption. Being founded on the
rock of truth, she can safely stoop to draw from the wreck of error
any fragment of good contained in it, whether it be a scientific, a
literary, or a domestic addition to the stock of ideas which is the
common property of human nature, and of which she stands the perpetual
guardian. This broad, open-armed, fearless, progressive spirit is
the nearest approach to the ideal of the lost paradise: this is
civilization—this is Christianity.

As an example of the superiority of religion over any other test of
civilization, let us return for a moment to what we have said of the
Jews. To the only reasonable and dignified conception of the Godhead
known to the nations of old, they added the only worthy conception of
human duties and responsibilities. Their domestic system was the only
one in which woman bore a seemly part; their political organization,
whether in the desert, under Moses and his “rulers over thousands,
and over hundreds, and over fifties, and over tens”[148] (the same
division afterwards prevalent in the Roman army), or in the land of
Chanaan under the Judges, was essentially self-governing, federal,
and independent. Their laws were minute in detail and stringent
in execution, not only after their establishment as a nation in
Chanaan, but during the forty years of their nomadic existence in
the wilderness, a period which with any other people would have been
one of irremediable lawlessness. Compacts and treaties are mentioned
in the Bible even before the direct segregation from the world of
what was afterwards known as the people of Israel. Abraham and Lot
agreed solemnly and peaceably to settle the differences between their
followers, by each tribe taking up its abode within certain given
limits; Abraham and Abimelech came to a public understanding, the
former meaning to do the heathen and alien leader no harm, and the
latter restoring a well of which his servants had possessed themselves
by force; Abraham insisted upon paying a full and fair equivalent
in money to the Hethite who offered him _gratis_ the funeral cave
of Mambre; Eleazar made between Isaac and Rebecca a formal marriage
contract; Esau when he had voluntarily sold his birthright, though
at the bidding of necessity, was bound to hold by his rash cession;
Jacob made and faithfully kept with his uncle Laban an engagement to
give him his services for fair wages for a given number of years. Such
social compacts, rigorously adhered to even when made with idolaters,
are among the most convincing proofs of the high state of a country’s
civilization, and present a strange, suggestive contrast with the rude
polity of nations who, at that time and even many ages later, knew no
right of property save that of forcible possession, and no guarantee of
good faith save that which the sword could enforce. Attention to the
duties of hospitality, another prominent sign of civilization, was a
characteristic of the Jews. We have so many Biblical examples of this
that it is impossible to give them. The division of the community into
fixed orders of occupation is another recognized sign of an advanced
state of society. Of course this and many others were held by the
Jews in common with several nations of heathendom, some eminently
distinguished for heroism, for honor, for learning, etc; and yet which
of all the polished nations of antiquity had not some festering sore
of pauperism, superstition, or barbarity, to conceal beneath its fair
outside of dazzling “civilization”? The people of God, on the contrary,
the only representatives of the true religion, were free from such
social ulcers, and, even when their history shocks us by scenes of
mysterious cruelty, it is universally admitted that the hand of God was
working through them, and that they were but as instruments wielded in
the dark by a power mightier than themselves.

Agriculture, or the “arts of peace,” called by some the representative
of civilization, was an honored calling among the Hebrews. The riches
of Judith and of Booz were fields and cattle; the promises of future
prosperity scattered through Holy Writ are always typified by “fields
and vineyards”; the inheritances and dowers of the sons and daughters
of Israel were herds and fields, and so jealous was each tribe of
its landed possessions that it was enacted that its members should
intermarry only among themselves, under pain of forfeiting all claim to
the legal portion allotted the offender. So careful of the condition
of the land and its products were the divinely inspired laws of the
Hebrews that they provided every seven years a season of rest, “the
Sabbath of the land,” when for a twelvemonth the fields should not be
ploughed nor the vineyards pruned, neither any fruit forced to grow and
produce by artificial means. It would take a volume to develop this
mysterious superiority of the chosen people, as regards even material
civilization, over every other contemporary nation during fully two
thousand years. They saw whole systems of social economy rise from
barbarism, and fade away into political dotage, or disappear beneath
the heel of conquest; they watched nations live and die, and drop out
of the memory of mankind as completely as Pharao’s hosts were hidden by
the waves of the Red Sea, and yet they stood firm and indestructible,
with unchanged laws, with fixed customs, a people small in number, but
great in tradition, invincible as the sun, immovable as a rock. And
why? Because their political existence and their social system was
founded on truth, and controlled by religion. The Hebrew nation was the
one holy and only true church of those days. And for the same reasons
which gave the Jews that supernatural vitality, Christianity is at
this day in the van of civilization. Everything we have said of the
one applies to the other; the signs which we noticed as such prominent
features of Jewish polity—division of orders, fixed occupations, care
for agriculture, good faith, property and family laws, individual
and federal government—whence have they come to us? We say it
unhesitatingly, from Christianity. To put it into plainer language, let
us say, from the church, and chiefly through the monastic orders.

These armies of peaceful conquerors invaded the morasses and forests
of the North, and, carrying with them all that made the Hebrew system
divine, planted that very system in the midst of the barbarian hordes.
The monks were the first agriculturists, the first mechanics, the first
engineers, of our modern civilization. What need to tell again the
story of their giant labors and glorious success? After teaching us
how to build our houses, to till our fields, to protect our rights, to
clothe our bodies, they taught us how to beautify our lives by art, and
store our minds with learning. They gave us cathedrals, that we might
know how glorious was the God they taught; they gave us Roman, Greek,
and Hebrew lore, that we might see how liberal was the Master they
served. The laws under which all European nations and their offshoots
now live were framed on the model of the Canons of the Church,
themselves based on the Tables of the Mosaic law; and the sciences, the
literature, and the arts, of which we in our pygmy self-glorification
are so proud, have been painfully transmitted to us by the patient
labor of monastic scholars. Christianity in the person of these heroic
pioneers has paved the way for all the civilization we can boast of,
and those who seek to divorce civilization from Christianity thereby
disown their very title-deeds. Once blot the church out of the map of
the world, and civilization will speedily follow. Thank God that that,
at least, is now impossible!

Having therefore inherited all that made the Hebrew system the most
perfect approach to the ideal of the Garden of Eden, Christianity
stands to-day in the position of the only legitimate representative of
true civilization. For one thousand five hundred years, Christianity
meant Catholicism, and to the reign of her undisputed supremacy belongs
every important discovery, every material progress, the world has ever
made. Why then, when we face to-day that world which owes it to the
church that it is strong enough to face anything—do we meet everywhere
the reproach of intolerance, of retrogression?

Is the reproach true to-day which in the days of S. Columba was false?
Have we changed, has the church changed? If not, where is the fault?

It lies, as all human mistakes do, in the confusion and perversion of
terms. The world in its aberration has turned against its teacher, and
wounded itself with the weapons that only a practised and steady hand
may safely wield. It has erected its own puny tribunal at the foot of
God’s throne, and judged the Eternal from its own point of view. If
the childish madness were not so sad in its results, it would make one
smile at its presumption. But it has the power of damning a human soul,
and of frustrating the work of God himself on Calvary, so that we dare
not smile at its arrogance, how supremely ridiculous soever it may be
from a merely philosophical point of view. It is this aberration of the
human mind which for the last three centuries has dubbed Christianity
as retrograde. When the Pope’s Syllabus made the difference clear
between true progress and its infidel counterfeit, the world cried out
that he was retrograde. “See” it said, “he condemns the liberty of the
press, the liberty of association, the right of self-government, the
spread of education; he would have heretics burnt at the stake, and all
Protestant sovereigns deposed from their thrones.”

Was it so? We know that it was not. We know that it was the _abuse_,
not the _use_, of these things which was condemned, and that the
denunciation of error is a very different thing from the extermination
of that error’s victims. We know this, and the world too knew it, but
it suited the purpose of the world to say otherwise, and to raise
against us the cry of intolerance, fanaticism. Well, be it so; but who
fashioned the languages in which that cry is raised, who taught the
world the meaning of such words as intolerance and fanaticism, who led
the way to the contrivance without which the liberty of the press could
not exist?

Our civilization, it is true, is of a different order from that now
in fashion. It is a civilization which has no need of iron ships and
monster armies; it can subdue and humanize by other methods than the
bullet and the shell. It tolerates all and any customs that do not
strike at morality; it can adapt itself to any nation, and make itself
_all things to all men_. It does not pin its faith to the color of the
skin, the fashion of a garment, or any social conventionality; it does
not supersede individuality, either personal or national, but engrafts
itself upon it and makes it serve a higher purpose. It does not address
itself exclusively to one branch of human development, but cultivates
them all, each in its turn, making them subservient at last to the
spiritual interests of the soul.




TO A FRIEND.


  If ever, lady, any word of mine,
  Spoken in sorrow, came to thy own heart
  With any sense of comfort or of peace,
  My sorrow that before was half divine
  Becomes a joy! and I would never part
  With its remembrance. Why should sorrow cease
  That makes one happy? I would rather twine
  Roses than cypress round a grief so dear;
  And I could set as in an emerald shrine
  That sadness in my soul for evermore.
  How gladly would I live that evening o’er
  Thinking of thee! Not vain, amid the scenes
  Of that proud park, my mood was, from the shore
  Watching the slow state of those ermined queens.




GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”


CHAPTER II.

A GLANCE FROM MR. SCHÖNINGER.

NONE but people of routine ever used their prayer-books while F.
Chevreuse was reading or singing Mass, and it was seldom that even such
people used them the first time they heard him; for it was not enough
that those who assisted should unite their intention with that of the
priest, and then pray their own prayers, recalled now and then to the
altar by the sound of the bell: their whole attention was riveted there
from the first.

That penetrating voice, which enunciated every word with such exquisite
clearness, speaking rapidly only because so earnest, was heard
throughout the church, and its vivid emphasis gave new life to every
prayer of the service. When F. Chevreuse said _Dominus vobiscum!_ one
replied as a matter of course—would as soon, indeed, have neglected to
answer his face-to-face greeting on the street as this from the altar;
the _Orate, fratres_, compelled the listener to pray; and, at the
_Domine, non sum dignus_, one felt confounded and abashed.

Was it, then, you asked yourself, the first time this priest had
said Mass, that he should stand so like a man who sees a vision? No;
F. Chevreuse had been fifteen years a priest. Had he, perhaps, an
intellect more high than the ordinary, or a superior sanctity? No,
again; though a clearer mind or a nobler Christian soul one would
scarcely wish to see. The peculiarity lay chiefly, we should guess, in
a large, impassioned, and generous heart, which, like a strong fountain
for ever tossing up its freshening tide, overflowed his being, and
made even the driest facts bud and blossom perennially. In that heart,
nothing worthy of life ever faded or grew old. Its possessions were
dowered with the freshness of immortal youth.

Still, these gifts might have been partially ineffectual if nature had
not added to them a sanguine temperament, and the priceless blessing
of a body capable of enduring severe and prolonged labor. F. Chevreuse
was spared that misery of a bright intelligence and an active will for
ever pent and thwarted by physical incompetence, the soul by its nature
constantly compelled to issue mandates to the body, which the body by
its weakness is as inevitably compelled to disobey. In that wide brain
of his, thoughts had ample elbow-room, and could range themselves
without crowding or confusion; and the broad shoulders and deep chest
showed with what full breathing the flame of life was fanned. His mind
was always working, yet there was no sign of a feverish head; the eyes
were steady, and the close-cut gray hair grew so thick as to form a
crown.

For the rest, let his life speak. We respect the privacy of such a
soul; and, though we would fain show him real and admirable, we sketch
F. Chevreuse with a shy pencil.

The church of S. John was a new and unfinished one on Church Street.
This street ran east and west, parallel with the Cocheco, and half-way
up the South Hill, which here sloped so abruptly that the buildings
on the lower side had one more story at the rear than in front, and
those on the upper side one more story in front than at the rear. In
consequence of this deceptive appearance, those who liked to put the
best foot forward preferred to live on the upper side, though it doomed
them to a north light in their houses, while those who thought more of
comfort than of display chose the other side with a southward frontage.

The church was set back so as to leave a square in front, and its
entrance was but four or five steps above the street; but at the back a
large and well-lighted basement was visible. The priest’s house stood
close to the street, on the eastern side of this square, and so near
that between the back corner of its main part and the front corner of
the church there was scarcely space for two persons to stand abreast.
This narrow passage, screened by a yard or so of iron railing, gave
access to a long flight of stairs that led to the basements of the
church and of the house.

Seen from the front, this house was a little, melancholy,
rain-streaked, wooden cottage, which might be regarded as a blot upon
the grandeur of the church, or an admirable foil for it, as one had
a mind to think. The door opened almost on the sidewalk, and beside
the door were two dismal windows with the curtains down. In the space
above, another curtained window was set between the two sharp slants of
the roof. On the side opposite the church, where a lane ran down to the
next street, the prospect was more cheering. You saw there an L as wide
as the main building, though not so deep, and projecting from it so as
to give another street door at the end of a veranda, and allow space
for two windows at the rear of the house. This L was Mrs. Chevreuse’s
peculiar domain, as the house was that of the priest. Her sitting-room
and bedroom were here; and no one acquainted with the customs of the
place ever came to the veranda door unless they could claim an intimate
friendship with the priest’s mother.

The parlor with the two dismal front windows beside the entrance
was used as a reception-room. Back of that was the priest’s private
sitting-room, with two windows looking out on the veranda, and one
window commanding the basement entrance of the church, the pleasant
green space around it, and the flight of stairs that led up to the
street. F. Chevreuse’s arm-chair and writing-table always stood in this
window, and behind them was a door leading into a little side-room
containing a strong desk where he kept papers and money, and a sofa on
which he took an occasional nap.

Up-stairs were two sleeping-rooms; down-stairs, as the hill sloped, the
kitchen, dining-room, and the two rooms occupied by Jane, the cook, and
Andrew, the priest’s man. There was space enough in the house, and it
had the charm of irregularity; but from the street, as we have said, it
was a melancholy-looking structure. F. Chevreuse, however, could not
have been better pleased with it had it been a palace. Within, all was
comfort and love for him; and he probably never looked at the outside.
The new church and his people engrossed his thoughts.

Mrs. Chevreuse was not so indifferent. “It would not look well for
me to go up on a ladder, and paint the outside walls,” she said to
herself, her only confidant in such matters; “but, if it could be
turned inside-out for one day, I would quickly have it looking less
like an urchin with a soiled face.”

No one could doubt this assertion after having seen the interior of
this castle of the rueful countenance. There she could go up on a
ladder without shocking any one, and from basement to attic the place
was as fresh as a rose. But the nicety was never intrusive. This lady’s
house-keeping perspective was admirably arranged, and her point of view
the right one. Cleanliness and order dwelt with her, not as tyrants,
but as good fairies who were visible only when looked for. If you
should chance to think of it, you would observe that everything which
should be polished shone like a mirror; that the white was immaculate,
the windows clear, and the furniture well-placed. You might recollect
that the door was never opened for you by an untidy house-maid, and
that no odors from the kitchen ever saluted your nostrils on entering,
though a bouquet on the stair-post sometimes breathed a fragrant
welcome.

Now, housekeepers know that the observance of all these little details
of order and good taste involves a great deal of care and labor; but
they sometimes forget that their exquisite _ménage_ loses its principal
charm when the care and labor are made manifest. It cannot be denied
that the temptation is strong now and then to let Cæsar know by what
pains we produce these apparently simple results, which he takes as a
matter of course; but, when the temptation is yielded to, the results
cease to be entirely pleasing. The unhappy man becomes afraid to walk
on our carpets, to touch our door-knobs, to sit in our chairs, eat
eggs with our spoons, lay his odious pipe on our best table-cover, or
tie the curtains into a knot. The touching confidence with which he
was wont to ask that an elaborate dinner might be prepared for him in
fifteen minutes vanishes from his face like a rainbow tint that leaves
the cloud behind. “A cold lunch will do,” he tells you resignedly, and
you detect incipient dyspepsia in his countenance. The free motions
that seemed to feel infinite space about them are no more. The anxious
hero pulls his toga about him in the most undignified and ungraceful
manner, lest it should upset a flower-pot or a chair. In fine, the
tormenting gadfly of our neatness stings him up and down his days, till
he would fain seek refuge and rest in disorder.

Mother Chevreuse knew all this perfectly, and behaved herself in so
heroic a manner that her son never suspected, what was quite true, that
the unnecessary steps he caused her might make several miles a day.

One morning after early Mass, toward the last of May, she seated
herself in the arm-chair by the window, and watched for the priest to
come in from the church. This was a part of her daily programme, and
the only time of day she ever occupied what she called his throne.
After his breakfast, they did not meet, save incidentally, till
supper-time; for, except when they had company, F. Chevreuse dined
alone. The mother had perceived that, when they dined together, there
had been a struggle between the sense of duty and courtesy which made
him wish to entertain her, and the abstraction he naturally felt in the
midst of the cares and labors of the day, and, ever on the watch lest
she should in any way intrude on his vocation, had herself made this
arrangement. The fact that he did not oppose it was a sufficient proof
that it was agreeable to him.

This mother was the softer type of her son, as though what you would
carve in granite you should first mould in wax. There was the same
compact form, telling of health, strength, and activity, the same
clear eyes, the same thick gray hair crowning a forehead more wide
than high. Their expressions differed as their circumstances did;
cheerfulness and good sense were common to both; but, where the priest
was authoritative, the woman was dignified.

Presently her face brightened, for the fold of a black robe showed
some one standing just inside the chapel door, and the next moment
F. Chevreuse appeared, his hands clasped behind him, his face bent
thoughtfully downward. Seeing him thus for the first time, you are
surprised to find him only medium height. At the altar, he had appeared
tall. You might wonder, too, what great beauty his admirers found in
him. But scarcely had the doubt formed itself in your mind, before
it was triumphantly answered. The priest’s first step was into a
shadow, his second into sunlight; and, as that light smote him, he
lifted his head quickly, and a smile broke over his face. Wheeling
about, he fronted the east. The river-courses had hollowed out a deep
ravine between him and the sunrise, and the tide of glory flowed in
and filled that from rim to rim, and curled over the green hills like
wine-froth over a beaker. He stood gazing, smiling and undazzled, his
face illuminated from within as from without. It might be said of F.
Chevreuse, as it was of William Blake, that, when the sun rose “he did
not see a round, fiery disk somewhat like a guinea, but an innumerable
company of the heavenly hosts crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God
Almighty!’”

The mother watched, but did not interrupt him. She knew well that such
moments were fruitful, and that he was storing away in his mind the
precious vintage of that spring morning to bring it forth again at some
future time fragrant with the bouquet of a spiritual significance.
“Glimpses of God,” she called such moods.

He threw his head back, and, with a swift glance, took in the whole
scene; the fleckless blue overhead, the closely gathered city beneath,
the lights and shades that played in the dewy greensward at his feet,
and, turning about, his mother’s loving face—a fit climax for the
morning.

“_Bon jour, Mère Chevreuse!_” he called out, touching his _barrette_.

As he disappeared into the house, Mrs. Chevreuse went into her own
sitting-room, which opened from his, and gave a last glance at the
table prepared for his breakfast. The preparation was not elaborate. A
little stand by the eastern window held a pitcher of milk, a bowl and
spoon, and a napkin; and Jane, following the priest up-stairs, added a
dish of oatmeal pudding.

F. Chevreuse walked briskly through the entry, and threw the street
door wide open, then came back singing, “Lift up your heads, O ye
gates, and the King of glory shall come in!” and continued, as he
entered the room, his voice hardly settled from song to speech, “What
created things are more like the King of glory than light and air? They
are as his glance and his breath.”

The look that met his was sympathizing, but the words that replied were
scarcely an answer to his question. “Your breakfast is cooling, F.
Chevreuse,” she said.

He took no heed, but, clasping his hands behind him, walked to and
fro with a step that showed flying would have been the more congenial
motion.

“Mother,” he exclaimed, “the mysteries of human nature are as
inscrutable as the mysteries of God. Would the angels believe, if they
had not seen, that a Mass has been said this morning here in the midst
of a crowded city, with only a score or so of persons to assist? Why
was not the church thronged with worshippers, and thousands pressing
outside to kiss the foundation-stones? When I turned with the _Ecce
Agnus Dei_, why did not all present fall with their faces to the floor?
And when Miss Honora Pembroke walked away from the communion-railing,
why did not every one look at her with wonder and admiration?—the
woman who bore her God in her bosom! And just now, when the sun
rose”—he stopped and looked at his mother with a combative air—“why
did not the people look up and hail it as the signet of the Almighty?”

Mother Chevreuse smiled pleasantly. She was used to being set up as a
target for these unanswerable questions, especially in the morning, at
which time the priest was likely to be, as Jane expressed it, “rather
high in his mind.”

“If you could take your breakfast, my son,” she suggested.

“Breakfast!” He glanced with a look of aversion at the table that held
his frugal meal, considered a moment, recognized the propriety of its
existence, finally seated himself in his place, and began to eat with a
very good appetite. “You were quite right, my lady,” he remarked; “the
sunshine was drinking my milk all up. What thirsty creatures they are,
those beams!”

Let it not be supposed that F. Chevreuse was so ascetical as never to
eat except when urged to do so. On the contrary, he took good care to
keep up the health and strength necessary for the performance of his
multiform duties as the only priest in a large parish, and he used a
wise discrimination in allowing others to fast. “Some fasting is almost
as bad as feasting,” he used to say. “Besides injuring the health,
it clogs the soul. You look down upon eating when you have dined
moderately; but, when you have fasted immoderately, the idea of dinner
is elevated till it becomes a constellation. I do not wish to starve,
till, when I kneel down and raise my eyes, I can think of nothing but
roast beef. Asceticism is not an end, but a means.”

“Mother,” he said presently, laying down his spoon, “why is it that the
oatmeal and milk I get at home are better than that I find anywhere
else?”

“Children always think the food they get at home better than what they
get abroad,” she replied tranquilly.

Why should she tell him that what he called milk was cream, and that
the making of that “stirabout” was a fine-art, which had been taught
Jane line upon line, and precept upon precept, till every grain dropped
according to rule, and the motion of the pudding spoon was as exact as
a sonnet? Instead of being pleased, he would have been disturbed to
know that so much pains had been taken for him.

“I like no earthly comfort that has cost any one much trouble or pain,”
he would say. Like most persons who have been spared the petty cares of
life, he did not know that in this discordant world there is no earthly
comfort to any one which is not a pain to some other.

Breakfast over, the priest went promptly about his business; and
Mrs. Chevreuse, shutting the door between their rooms, brought her
work-basket to the stand where the tray had been, and seated herself to
mend a rent in a _soutane_.

It was a pleasant room, with its one window toward the church, and an
opposite one looking over the city and the distant hills, and most
enticingly comfortable, with deep chairs, convenient tables, and tiny
stands always within reach, and an open fireplace which was seldom,
save at mid-summer, without its little glimmer of fire at some time of
day. And even then, if the day was chilly or overcast, the fact that
it was mid-summer did not prevent the kindling of Mother Chevreuse’s
beltane flame. From this room and the bedroom behind it could be heard
on still nights the dashing of the Cocheco among its rocks.

Mrs. Chevreuse worked and thought. The sunbeams sparkled on the
scissors, needles, bodkins, and whatever bright thing it could find in
her work-basket, on her eyeglasses and thimble, on the smooth-worn gold
of her wedding-ring, and the tiny needle weaving deftly to and fro in
an almost invisible darn, of which the lady was not a little proud. Her
mind wove, too; not those flimsy fancies of youth so like spider’s webs
upon the grass, that glitter only when the morning dew is on them: the
threads of her dream-tapestry ended in heaven, though begun on earth,
and their severance could only change hope into fruition. And all the
time, while hand and heart slipped to and fro, the lady was aware of
everything that went on in the house. She heard Andrew come into the
next room with the morning mail, heard the sound of voices while he
received his orders for the day, heard him go clumping down-stairs,
and out through the kitchen into the chapel. Presently the clumping
resounded outside, and, glancing across the room, she saw the old man
standing on the basement stairs, his head on a level with her window,
looking at her across the space that intervened, and gesticulating,
with a twinkling candlestick in each hand.

Mother Chevreuse, still holding her work, went and threw the sash up.

“I think, madame, begging your pardon, that I can clean these just as
well as you can,” says Andrew, with a very positive nod and a little
shake that set all the glass drops twinkling and tinkling.

“Do you, Andrew?” returned madame pleasantly. “Very well, then, you can
clean them, and save me the trouble. But don’t forget to rub all the
whiting out of the creases.”

Andrew changed countenance as he turned slowly about to descend the
stairs. Mrs. Chevreuse had been gradually taking the care of the altar
from his rather careless hands, and this had been his diplomatic way of
escaping the candlestick cleaning of that day without asking her to do
it. He hobbled down-stairs again discomfited, and the lady went smiling
back to her work.

“It is all very well for Sharp’s rifles,” she remarked, threading her
needle; “but I don’t like being fired at in that spiral manner.”

Still weaving again with hand and heart, she heard Jane going about,
like a neat household machine doing everything in its exact time and
place, severe on interruption, merciless on mud or dust, ever ready
to have a skirmish on these grounds with Andrew; she heard the rattle
of paper from the next room, as letters and parcels were opened, the
scratching of F. Chevreuse’s quill as he wrote answers to one or two
correspondents, or made up accounts, and the little tap with which he
pressed the stamp upon the letters.

How peaceful and sweet her life was, all she loved within reach, all
she hoped for so sure! She breathed a sigh of thanksgiving, then
dropped her work and listened; for the priest was preparing to go out.
Every morning was spent by him in collecting for his church. He had
found in Crichton a thousand or more practical Catholics, with one
shabby old chapel to worship in, and nearly as many nominal Catholics
who did not worship at all; and in three years, with scarcely any
capital to begin with besides faith, he had raised and nearly finished
a large and beautiful church, and gathered into it the greater part of
the wanderers.

“Be prudent, my son!” the mother had warned him when he began what
seemed so venturesome an enterprise.

“I am so,” he replied, with decision. “It would be the height of
imprudence to leave these people any longer straying like lost sheep.
When the Master of the universe commands that a house be built for him,
is it for me to fear he will not be able to pay for it?”

She said no more. Mme. Chevreuse always remembered to distinguish
between the son and the priest, and was never more proud of her
motherhood than when her natural authority was confronted by the
supernatural authority of her child. But she always sighed when he
started on a collecting-tour, for his faith had to be supplemented by
hard work, and often he came back worn with fatigue, and depressed by
the sights of poverty, sorrow, and sin he had witnessed.

All had gone well with the church, however—so well that a new
enterprise had been added, and a convent school was just making its
small beginning in Crichton.

“Is madame visible?” asked a voice smothered against the door.

“_Entrez!_” she answered gaily; and the priest put his head in.

“Say a little prayer to S. Joseph for F. Chevreuse to-day,” he said;
“for he is collecting for the great note.”

“Oh!” She looked anxiously at him, and met a reassuring smile in return.

“Never fear, mother!” he said cheerfully. “Do not all the houses and
lands belong to God?”

“Certainly!” she answered, but sighed to herself as he went away: “it
is very true they all belong to God, but I’m afraid the devil has some
very heavy mortgages on them.”

Later in the day, Miss Ferrier called for Mrs. Chevreuse to go out and
visit the sisters at the new convent. “I have taken all I could think
of this morning,” she said, and enumerated various useful articles. “I
suppose they want nearly everything.”

Mrs. Chevreuse commended her liberality. “But I am glad you did not
think of cordage,” she added; “for that is the very thing I did
remember.”

She opened a large basket, and laughingly displayed a collection of
ropes and cords varying from coils of clothes-line and curtain-cord to
balls of fine pink twine. “Jane’s clothes-line gave out yesterday,” she
said, “and that made me think of this.”

Miss Ferrier gave a little shiver and shrug. “It is very nice and
useful, I know; but ropes always remind me of hanging.”

“Naturally,” returned the lady, tying on her bonnet: “that is their
vocation.”

“But hanging is such a dreadful punishment!” And the young woman
shivered again.

“Why, my pictures seem to enjoy it,” Mrs. Chevreuse replied,
persistently cheerful.

“Now, really, madame—“

“Now, really, mademoiselle,” was the laughing interruption, “what has
put your thoughts on such a track this morning? If you want my opinion
on the subject, I cannot give it, for I have none. All I can say is
that, if I thought any one were destined to kill me, I would instantly
write and sign a petition for his pardon, and leave it to be presented
to the governor and council at the proper time. Think of something
pleasant. I am ready now. We will go out through the house.”

She locked the veranda door, and put the key in her pocket. “I have
only to give Jane an order. Jane!” she called, leaning out the window.

A head appeared from the kitchen window beneath, and the mistress gave
her order down the outside of the house. “It saves so much going up and
down stairs for two old women,” she explained. “Now, my dear.”

They went into the priest’s sitting-room, and again the door was
locked behind them, and the key this time hung on a nail over the
writing-table. “Wait a moment,” said madame then, and began picking
up bits of paper scattered about the room. The priest had torn up a
letter, and absently dropped the fragments on the carpet instead of
into the waste-basket, and a breeze had been playing with them.

“How provoking men are,” remarked Miss Ferrier, stooping for a fragment
which a puff of air instantly caught away from her.

“Are they?” asked Mrs. Chevreuse quietly. “I do not know, I have so
little to do with them. Most people are provoking sometimes, I dare
say.”

Having made a second ineffectual dive for the strip of paper, the young
woman had not patience enough left to bear so cool an evasion. “F.
Chevreuse deserves a scolding for strewing this about,” she said.

The mother glanced at her with that sort of surprise which is more
disconcerting than anger. Miss Ferrier blushed, but would not be so
silenced.

“If you should oblige him to pick them up once,” she continued, “that
would cure him.”

“Oblige him!” repeated the mother with a more emphasized coldness. “I
never oblige F. Chevreuse to do anything. I should not dream of calling
his attention to such a trifle. He has higher affairs on his mind. Now
we will go.”

Their drive took them through the town by its longest avenue, Main
Street, which followed the Saranac half-way to its source. School
children in Crichton looked on Main Street as their meridian of
longitude, and were under the impression that it reached from pole
to pole. It crossed the Cocheco by the central one of three parallel
bridges, climbed straight up the steep North Height, and stretched out
into the country. The convent grounds were on the west bank of the
Saranac, twenty acres of rough land, roughly enclosed, with an old
tumble-down house that had been a tavern in the early days of Crichton.
It was a desolate-looking place, with not a tree nor flower to be seen,
but needed only time and labor to become a little Eden.

In the eyes of Sister Cecilia it was even now an Eden. Her ardent
and generous nature, made still brighter by a beautiful Christian
enthusiasm, saw in advance the blossom and fruit of unplanted trees,
and seeds yet in the paper. Full of delight to her was all this
planning and labor.

She was out-doors when the carriage drove up, in earnest consultation
with two workmen, directing the laying out of the kitchen-garden, and,
recognizing her visitors, hastened toward them with a cordial welcome.
Sister Cecilia was a little over forty years of age, tall and graceful,
and had one of those sunny faces that show heaven is already begun
in the heart. When she smiled, the sparkling of her deep-blue eyes
betrayed mirth and humor.

“Dread the labor?” she exclaimed, in answer to a question from Miss
Ferrier. “Indeed not! I was so charmed with the idea of coming to this
wild place that I had a scruple about it, and was almost afraid I ought
not to be indulged. It is always delightful to begin at the beginning,
and see the effect of your work.”

She led them about the place and told her plans. Here a grove was to be
planted, there the path would wind, vines would be trained against this
stone wall.

“But I don’t see any stone wall,” protested Miss Ferrier.

Sister Cecilia laughed. “I see it distinctly, and so will you next
year. There are piles of stones on the land which will save us a good
deal of money; and we are very likely to have some work done for
nothing. Do you know how kind the laborers are to us? Twenty men have
offered to do each a day’s work in our garden free of charge. Those
are two of them. Now, here we are going to have a large arbor covered
with honeysuckle and roses. It must be closed on the east side, because
there will be a river-road outside the wall some day, and we should be
visible from it. But the south side will be all open, so we can sit
under the roses and look down that beautiful river and over all the
city. You see the knoll was made on purpose for an arbor.”

As they went into the house, a slender shape glided past in the dusk
of the further entry. The light from a roof window, shining down the
stairs, revealed a face like a lily drooped a little sidewise, a wealth
of brown hair gathered back, and a sweet, shy smile. It was as though
some one had carried a lighted waxen taper through the shadows where
she disappeared.

“It is Anita!” exclaimed Miss Ferrier, stopping on the threshold of the
parlor. “Why did she not come to us?”

“That dear Anita!” said the sister. “She has a piano lesson to give
at this hour, and would not dream of turning aside from the shortest
road to the music-room. If you were her own mother, Mme. Chevreuse, she
would not come to you without permission. Yet such a tender, loving
creature I never knew before. Obedience is the law of her life. Next
spring she will begin her novitiate.”

The house was looked over, the other sisters seen, and the offerings
brought them duly presented and acknowledged; then the two ladies
started for home.

Miss Ferrier was rather silent when they were alone. She had not
forgotten the reproof of the morning, and she felt aggrieved by it.
Mrs. Chevreuse had known that she was but jesting, and might have been
a little less touchy, she thought. What was the matter that almost
every one was finding fault with her lately? Her mother accused her
of being cross and captious, her lover found her exacting, and Mrs.
Gerald had thought her too assuming on one occasion, and yet all she
was conscious of was a blind feeling of loss—some such sense as
deep-buried roots may have when the sky grows dark over the tree
above. Little things that once would have passed by like the idle wind
now had power to make her shrink, as the lightest touch will hurt
a sore; and trifles that had once given her pleasure now fell dead
and flat. The time had been when the mere driving through the city
in her showy carriage had elated her, when she had sat in delighted
consciousness of the satin cushions, the glittering harness and
wheels, and even of the band on the coachman’s hat and the capes that
fluttered from his shoulders. Now they sometimes gave her a feeling
of weary disgust, and she assured herself that she knew not why. If
any suspicion glanced across her mind that a worm was eating into the
very centre of her rose of life, and the outer petals withered merely
because the heart was withering, she shut her eyes to it, and kept
seeking here and there for comfort, but found none. Honora was the
only person who ever really soothed her; and, for some reason, or for
no reason, even Honora’s soothing now and then held a sting that was
keenly felt.

“Is it possible she is resenting my reproof?” thought Mrs. Chevreuse,
and exerted herself to be pleasant and friendly, but without much
success. Miss Ferrier’s affected gaiety was gone, and she had no
disposition to resume it.

“She is not so good-tempered as I believed,” the priest’s mother
thought when they parted, with one of those unjust judgments which the
good form quite as often as the bad.

Miss Ferrier drove on homeward. She had no need to tell the coachman
which way to drive, nor how, for he knew perfectly well that he was to
make his horses prance slowly through Bank Street, where, in a certain
insurance office up one flight of a granite building, Mr. Lawrence
Gerald bit his nails and fumed over a clerk’s desk, and half attended
to his business while inwardly protesting against what he called his
misfortunes. Perhaps his desk faced the window, or maybe his companions
were good enough to call his attention to it; for it seldom happened
that Miss Ferrier, glancing up, did not see him waiting to bow to her.
He did not love the girl, but he felt a trivial pride in contemplating
the evidences of that wealth which was one day to be his unless he
should change his mind. He sometimes admitted the possibility of the
latter alternative.

To-day he was not at the window; but his lady-love had hardly time
to be conscious of disappointment, when she saw him lounging in the
doorway down-stairs. He came listlessly out as the carriage drew up,
and at the same moment Miss Lily Carthusen appeared from a shop near
by, and joined them. This young lady took a good deal of exercise in
the open air, and might be met almost any time, and always with the
latest news to tell.

“I congratulate you both,” she said, in her sprightliest manner. “That
dreadful organist of yours has put his wrist out of joint, and cannot
play again for a month or two. Isn’t it delightful?” She laughed
elfishly. “Haven’t you heard of it? Oh! yes; it is true. It happened
this morning when he came down the dark stairway in his boarding-house.
He tumbled against the dear old balusters, and put his wrist out. I
never before knew the good of dark stairways.”

“Why, Lily! aren’t you ashamed?” remonstrated Miss Ferrier, smiling
faintly.

“Do you think I ought to be ashamed?” inquired Miss Lily, with an
ingenuous expression in her large, light-blue eyes.

“Yes; I do,” replied Miss Ferrier, much edified.

“Well, then, I won’t,” was the satisfactory conclusion.

“I am sorry for Mr. Glover,” Miss Ferrier remarked gravely.

“Now, my dear mademoiselle, please don’t be so crushingly good!” cried
the other. “You know perfectly well that he plays execrably, and spoils
the singing of your beautiful choir; and you know that you would be
perfectly delighted if F. Chevreuse would pension him off. Don’t try to
look grieved, for you can’t.”

“I don’t pretend to be a saint, Miss Carthusen,” said Annette, dropping
her eyes.

“And I don’t pretend to be a sinner,” was the mocking retort.

Mr. Gerald smiled at this little duel, as men are wont to smile at such
scenes. It did not hurt him, and it did amuse him.

“But the best part of the business is that F. Chevreuse has asked Mr.
Schöninger to play in his stead,” pursued the news-bringer. “He has
written a note requesting him to call there this evening.”

Miss Ferrier drew her shawl about her, and leaned back against the
cushions. She had an air of dismissing the subject and the company
which, not being either rude or affected, was so near being stately
that Mr. Gerald was pleased with it, and, to reward her, begged an
invitation to lunch.

“I had just come out for my daily sandwich,” he said; “but if you will
take pity on me—“

She smilingly made room for him by her side, and drove off full of
delight.

The afternoon waned, and, as evening approached, Mrs. Chevreuse sat
in her own room again, waiting for the priest to come home. She had
visited her sick and poor, looked to her household affairs, stepped
into the church to arrange some fresh flowers, and see that the
candlesticks shone with spotless brilliancy, and was now trying to
interest herself in a book while she waited. But it was hard to fix
her attention; it constantly wandered from the page. Jane had heard
and told her of the accident to their organist, and the rumor that
Mr. Schöninger was to take his place; but had not told the news by
any means with the glee of a Lily Carthusen. On the contrary, it had
seemed to her mind an almost incredible horror that a Jew was to take
any part in a service performed before the altar whereon the Lord of
heaven was enthroned. To Jane’s mind, every Jew was a Judas. That he
could be moral, that he could adore his Creator and pray earnestly
for forgiveness of his sins, she did not for an instant believe. The
worst criminal, if nominally a Catholic, was in her eyes infinitely
preferable to the best Jew in the world.

“Andrew declared it was so, madame, and that he carried a note to that
Mr. Schöninger before dinner,” she said, concluding her lamentation;
“but nothing will make me believe it till I hear F. Chevreuse say so
with his own mouth.”

“Oh! well, don’t distress yourself about it, Jane,” her mistress
replied soothingly. “Perhaps it is a mistake; but, if it is not, you
may be sure that F. Chevreuse knows best. He always has good reasons
for what he does. Besides, we must be charitable. Who knows but the
services of the church and our prayers might, by the blessing of God,
convert this man.”

“Convert a rattlesnake!” cried Jane, too much excited to be respectful.

But Mrs. Chevreuse, though she had spoken soothingly to her
subordinate, was not herself altogether satisfied. She was a woman
of large mind and heart; yet, if any one people in the world came
last in her regard, it was the Jewish people. Moreover, she had seen
Mr. Schöninger but once, and then at an unfortunate moment when
something had occurred to draw that strange blank look over his face.
The impression left on her mind was an unpleasant one that there was
something dark and secret in the man.

“Of course it will all be right,” she said to herself, annoyed that she
should feel disturbed for such a cause. “I am foolish to think of it.”

The street door was opened and left wide, after F. Chevreuse’s fashion,
and she heard his quick, light step in the entry. Dropping her book,
she smiled involuntarily at the sound. How sweet to a woman is this
nightly coming home of father, son, or husband! He came in, went to
the inner room, and opened and closed his desk, then returned to the
sitting-room, threw up the corner window, from which he could see into
her apartment, and seated himself in his arm-chair, leaning forward as
he did so to bow a smiling recognition across to her. His day’s work
was as nearly over as it could be. In the morning, he must go out to
meet his duties; in the evening, they must seek him. The hour for their
social life had come; and though subject to constant interruptions, so
that scarcely ten minutes at a time were left them for confidential
intercourse, they were free to snatch what they could get.

Mrs. Chevreuse put her book away, and opened the door between the two
sitting-rooms. “Father,” she said immediately, “is it true that you are
going to have that Jew play the organ at S. John’s?”

The priest rose hastily, and his mother’s foot was arrested on
the threshold; for just opposite her, coming into the room from
the entry, was Miss Lily Carthusen, leading a little girl by the
hand, and followed by “that Jew”; while, in wrathful perspective,
like a thunder-head on the horizon, gloomed the face of Jane, the
servant-woman.

The silence was only for the space of a lightning-flash, and the flash
was not wanting; it shot across the room from a pair of eyes that
looked as though they might sear to ashes what they gazed upon in
anger. The next moment, the eyes drooped, and their owner was bowing to
F. Chevreuse.

Miss Carthusen was perfectly self-possessed and voluble, seeming to
have heard nothing. “This little wilful girl would come with Mr.
Schöninger, madame,” she said; “and, as he is not going back, I was
obliged to come and see her home again safely.”

The truth was that Miss Lily, who boarded in the same house with the
gentleman, had encouraged the child to come, in order that she might
accompany her.

F. Chevreuse had blushed slightly but he showed no other embarrassment.
It was the first time that Mr. Schöninger had entered his house, and he
welcomed him with a more marked cordiality, perhaps, on account of the
unfortunate speech which had greeted his coming.

“You are welcome, sir! I thank you for taking the trouble to come to
me. It was my place to call on you, but my engagements left me no time.
Allow me to present you to my mother, Mme. Chevreuse.”

“My mother” had probably never been placed in so disagreeable
a position, but her behavior was admirable. The man she had
involuntarily insulted was forced to admit that nothing could be
more perfect than the respectful courtesy of her salutation, which
maintained with dignified sincerity the distance she really felt, while
it expressed her regret at having intruded that feeling on him.

“Yet they talk of charity!” he thought; and the lady did not miss a
slight curl of the lip which was not hidden by his profound obeisance.

The introduction over, she left Mr. Schöninger to the priest, and took
refuge with his little friend, since she could not with propriety leave
the room. The young lady was not agreeable to her. Mme. Chevreuse had
that pure honesty and good sense which looks with clear regards through
a murky and dissimulating nature; for, after all, it is the deceitful
who are most frequently duped.

Miss Carthusen went flitting about the room, making herself quite
at home. She selected a rosebud from a bouquet on the mantelpiece,
and fastened it in madame’s gray hair with her fingers as light as
snowflakes; she daintily abstracted the glasses the lady held, and
put them on over her own large pale eyes. “Glasses always squeeze my
eyelashes,” she said; “not that they are so very long, though, at
least, they are not so long as Bettine von Arnim’s little goose-girl’s.
Hers were two inches long; and the other girls laughed at them, so that
she went away by herself and cried. Perhaps, beyond a certain point,
eyelashes are like endurance, and cease to be a virtue. Who is it tells
of a young lady whose long lashes gave her an overdressed appearance in
the morning, so that one felt as though she ought to have a shorter set
to come down to breakfast in?”

Mrs. Chevreuse observed with interest the striking difference between
the two men who sat near her talking, both, as any one could see,
strong and fiery natures, yet so unlike in temper and manner. The
priest was electrical and demonstrative; he uttered the thought that
rose in his mind; he was a man to move the crowd, and carry all before
him. The ardor of the other was the steady glow of the burning coal
that may be hidden in darkness, and he shrank with fastidious pride
and distrust from any revelation of the deeper feelings of his heart,
and held in check even his passing emotions. He would have said, with
that Marquis de Noailles, quoted by Liszt: _Qu’il n’y a guère moyen de
causer de quoi que ce soit, avec qui que ce soit_; and, doubtless, he
had found it so.

F. Chevreuse had explained his wishes: their organist was disabled, and
they had no one capable of taking his place. If Mr. Schöninger would
consent to take charge of their singing, he would consider it a great
favor.

Mr. Schöninger had no engagement which would prevent his doing so,
and it need not be looked on at all as a favor, but a mere matter of
business. His profession was music.

F. Chevreuse would insist on feeling obliged, although he would waive
the pleasure of expressing that feeling.

Mr. Schöninger intimated that it was perhaps desirable he should meet
the choir an hour before the evening service.

The priest had been about to make the same suggestion, and, since the
time was so near, would be very happy to have his visitor take supper
with him.

The visitor thanked him, but had just dined.

Nothing could be more proper and to the point, nor more utterly stiff
and frozen, than this dialogue was. F. Chevreuse shivered, and called
little Rose—Rosebud, they named her—to him.

The child went with a most captivating mingling of shyness and
obedience in her air, walking a little from side to side, as a
ship beats against the wind, making way in spite of fears. Her red
cheeks growing redder, a tremor struggling with a smile on her small
mouth, the intrepid little blossom allowed herself to be lifted to
the stranger’s knees, her eyes seeking her friend’s for courage and
strength.

Mr. Schöninger smiled on his favorite with a tenderness which gave his
face a new character, and watched curiously while the priest reassured
and petted her till he won her attention to himself. His own experience
and the traditions of his people had taught him to look on the Catholic
Church as his most deadly antagonist; yet now, in spite of all, his
heart relented and warmed a little to one of her ministers. He knew
better than to take an apparent love for children as any proof of
goodness—some of the worst persons he had ever known were excessively
fond of them—yet it looked amiable in an honest person, and F.
Chevreuse’s manner was particularly pleasant and winning.

Embarrassed by the notice bestowed on her by all, yet, with a premature
address, seeking to hide that embarrassment, the child glanced about
the room in search of some diversion. Her eyes were caught by a picture
of the Madonna.

“Oh! who is that pretty lady with a wedding-ring round her head?” she
cried out.

“She,” said F. Chevreuse, “is a sweet and holy Jewish lady whom we all
love.”

The little girl glanced apprehensively at her friend—perhaps she
had been told never to speak the word Jew in his presence—and saw a
quick light flicker in his eyes. He was looking keenly at the priest,
as if trying to fathom his intention. Was the man determined to win
him in spite of his coldness? Was it his way of making proselytes,
this fascinating delicacy and tenderness? He did not wish to like F.
Chevreuse; yet what could he do in the presence of that radiant charity?

“I think our business is done, sir,” he said, rising.

The priest became matter-of-fact at once.

“It is not necessary for me to make any suggestions to your good
taste,” he said; “but I may be permitted to remark that our service
is not merely æsthetic, but has a vital meaning, and I would like the
music to be conducted earnestly.”

“I shall make it as earnest as your composers with allow, sir,” the
musician replied, with a slightly mocking smile.

“My composers!” exclaimed the priest, laughing. “I repudiate them. Was
it one of my composers who wrote the music of the _Stabat Mater_, and
set his voices pirouetting and waltzing through the woes of the Queen
of sorrows? The world accuses Rossini of showing in that his contempt
for Christianity. I would not say so much. I believe he thought of
nothing but the rhythm and the vowel-sounds.”

“And was it one of my composers,” the Jew retorted, “who set the _Kyrie
Eleison_ I heard on passing your church last Sunday to an air as gay as
any dance tune? If the words had been in English instead of Latin, it
would have sounded blasphemous.”

F. Chevreuse made a gesture of resignation. “What can I do if the
musicians are not so pious as the painters, if they will put the sound
in the statue, and the sense in the pedestal? My only refuge is the
Gregorian, which nobody but saints will tolerate. I am not a composer.”

The call was at an end, and the visitors went.

As soon as they were in the street, Miss Carthusen observed: “I notice
that F. Chevreuse adopts Paracelsus’ method of cure: he anoints with
fine ointment, not the wound, but the sword that made the wound.”

She had been annoyed at the little attention paid to herself in
contrast with the honor shown the priest’s mother, and wished to find
out if Mr. Schöninger kept any resentment toward Mme. Chevreuse. He
felt her inquisitive, unscrupulous eyes searching his face in sidelong
glances.

“The priest was very courteous to me,” he replied calmly. “And I should
think that madame might be a very agreeable person to those she likes.”

The young woman instantly launched into a glowing eulogy of the
priest’s mother, till her listener bit his lips. He was not quite ready
to be altogether charmed with the lady.

“And, _à propos_ of medicine,” said Miss Carthusen lightly, “it has
been revealed to me to-day who the first homœopathist was.”

“Is it a secret?”

“It was Achilles,” she replied. “Do you not remember that nothing but
Achilles’ spear healed the wound that itself had made?”

As soon as they were gone, Mme. Chevreuse turned to her son. “Need I
say how sorry I am?” she exclaimed.

Tears were in her eyes. She was touched to the heart that, though
he must have been deeply mortified, he should still not have failed
for a moment to treat her with even more than ordinary courtesy and
affection, as if to show their visitors that he did not dream of
reproving her.

“I knew that you felt worse about it than I did, dear mother,” he said,
taking her hand. “And this will remind us both that it is not enough
to be cautious in the expression of our thoughts. We must allow no
uncharitable feeling to remain in our hearts.”

“‘Murder will out,’” he added more lightly, seeing her moved. “And,
after all, isn’t Mr. Schöninger a fine fellow?”

Madame made no direct reply. She could not yet be enthusiastic about
the Jew. “I think we should have supper,” she said, and went down to
look after Jane.

“O madame! did you see the look that man gave you?” cried the girl.

“No matter about that,” the lady said calmly. “It was unfortunate that
I should not have known he was coming. You must be careful to give
some sign when visitors are coming in, and not introduce them in that
noiseless way.”

Madame held, with the Duke of Wellington, that it is not wise to accuse
one’s self to a servant. The humility, instead of edifying, only
provokes to insubordination.

“I was coming down from the chambers, and met them at the street door,
madame,” Jane made haste to say; “and I thought you would hear the
steps.”

“Very well, Jane; it’s no matter. I’m sure you do your duty faithfully.
And now we will have supper.”




CHURCH AND STATE IN GERMANY.

THE new laws for the regulation and adjustment of the relations between
church and state in Prussia, for the establishment of what Prince
Bismarck calls a _modus vivendi_ between the power spiritual and the
power temporal—laws which have won the approval of the liberal and
sectarian press in Europe and America—are substantially as follows:

1. All Prussian citizens who wish to receive ecclesiastical functions
must matriculate at the state university. After matriculating, they
must attend the university course for three years. On concluding their
ecclesiastical studies, they must pass another state examination; that
is to say, at the university. _No candidate can be admitted to the
priesthood unless he satisfy the state in this examination._

2. The creation of new (ecclesiastical) seminaries, great or small, is
prohibited. The seminaries already existing shall be placed under state
surveillance, and are forbidden to receive new scholars.

3. The candidate for the priesthood who is nominated by the bishop
must be approved of and installed in his office by the president of
the province. The bishop who nominates a candidate otherwise than
in accordance with the law, shall be punished by a fine of from 750
francs to 3,750 francs ($150 to $750). The candidate submitting to such
nomination shall be punished by a fine of from 3 francs (75 cts.) to
375 francs.

4. Ecclesiastical disciplinary power can only be exercised by
ecclesiastical authorities _of German nationality_. The ecclesiastical
functionaries who, by exercise of their functions, transgress the laws
of the state or the ordinances of the civil authority, may, at the
demand of that civil authority, be deposed, if the maintaining of their
functions prove incompatible with public order.

A single question may not be inappropriate here: Why all this? Why must
all Prussian citizens who wish to embrace the ecclesiastical state
matriculate at the university? What special advantages are either they
or that undefined thing called the state likely to derive from this
matriculation? Matriculation is a very small thing at the best, and
Catholics do not object to it even in a state university, as in London,
where they do not possess one of their own. But why must ecclesiastical
students be compelled to pass it? The matriculation examination as it
obtains at the London University embraces a hodge-podge of study, a
great part of which is of no absolute service to the clerical student
in his career. All the subjects are touched upon more or less in his
college course; but he naturally devotes his attention particularly to
those which relate more especially to his vocation. And when the state
forces a man who is studying to be a priest to attend a university
course of three years, it steps out of its province, and commits a
useless and tyrannical act.

As for the final examination at the end of the course, S. Paul
certainly could never have passed it to the satisfaction of the
present Prussian state—a man who taught such dangerous doctrines as
that Christ was “above all principality, and power, and virtue, and
dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but
also in that which is to come.”

There is no need to pursue this part of the subject further. It must
be plain to everybody that this provision of the bill is simply aimed
at preventing candidates from aspiring to the priesthood at all,
and hindering those who are perverse enough to aspire from becoming
priests—a view which is strengthened by the clause following.

The candidate for the priesthood whom the bishop wishes to ordain and
appoint must first meet with the approval of the president of the
province, and not only meet with his approval, but be installed in his
office by him. That is to say, the candidate must not be what the state
would call an ultramontane—in other words, a Catholic; and ordination
is practically transferred, if that were possible, from the bishop to
the state. What can the president of the province possibly know about
the candidate, an utter stranger to him? Or how is he to judge of his
fitness or unfitness for the divine vocation? Is the president of the
province for the future to undergo a course of theology, so as to be
“up” in his duties? But it is needless to pursue this inquiry.

Jesus Christ, when he called his apostles, never consulted Pilate or
Herod. He sought not men for the ministry who were learned in the
wisdom of the schools: poor, ignorant fishermen were the foolish
ones whom he chose to confound the wise and convert a world. Humanly
speaking, and to human eyes, the Son of Joseph the carpenter was
himself an ignorant man. There is no record of his studying, as did S.
Paul, “at the feet of Gamaliel.” The apostles asked no man’s permission
to preach; they consulted no powers in “the imposition of hands”;
they carried on all the business of the church, they ordained and
excommunicated, without ever consulting the president of the province
in which they happened to be. Their successors will continue to do the
same.

In military matters, for instance, which are purely state affairs,
the interference of the president of the province would be resented.
Courts-martial try offenders—the civil law may not touch them, and no
president is ever called in to sanction the appointments to the various
military grades. Why not? Simply because, in plain words, it is none of
his business.

It seems foolish to examine this theme so closely, so flagrant
is the violation of all common sense even, not to speak of
legal right. Nevertheless, here is the _Pall Mall Gazette_, an
ultra-liberal organ—so _ultra_, indeed, that it despises “commonplace
liberalism”—giving its hearty concurrence to these measures, on
the ground that priests are out of date, and the fittest judges of
education are men of the world, statesmen, lawyers, and business men,
who are more clever, better educated, and brisker in every way than the
clergy—with much more to the same effect. Regarding its charge that
the clergy are less fitted to cope with the question of education than
men of the world:

In the Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus is the principal teaching
order of modern times. But outside of it there are plenty of teaching
orders and societies—the Benedictines and others—possessed of
excellent colleges and schools. There are also the colleges belonging
to each diocese under the control of the respective bishops. Moreover,
all education has come to us through the hands of the clergy; and the
Catholic writers who have come out from Rome, and Louvain, and other
purely clerical centres, even in these enlightened days, might possibly
stand the trying test of comparison with the writers on the _Pall Mall
Gazette_. But not to wander into so wide a field as this, the _Pall
Mall_ may be referred to its own columns for a refutation of at least a
great part of this charge.

Writing last year on the expulsion of the Jesuits from Germany by the
same power which has framed these laws for the education of the clergy,
and which, as it confesses, are “almost enough to take one’s breath
away,” the same journal said: “One of the most remarkable traits of the
Society of Jesus has always been its literary productiveness. Wherever
its members went, no sooner had they founded a home, a college, a
mission, then they began to write books. The result has been a vast
literature, not theological alone, though chiefly that, but embracing
almost every branch of knowledge.”

And of their work in the particular profession which the _Pall Mall_
itself graces at present—there is no knowing what it may not come to
be in the future if its principles are only carried out—it said: “In
Italy, Germany, Holland, and Belgium, the most trustworthy critics are
of opinion that there are no better-written newspapers than those under
Jesuit control.”

This is only _en passant_; and, as it is often more satisfactory to
let those outside of the church answer themselves, here is the opinion
of the London _Spectator_ upon this particular point, given in direct
answer to the _Pall Mall_:

“Is an age of the world in which few men know what is truth or whether
there be truth, one in which you would ask statesmen to determine its
limits? We suspect that a race of statesmen armed with such powers
as Prussia is now giving to her officials would soon cease to show
their present temperance (!) and sobriety, and grow into a caste of
civilian ecclesiastics of harder, drier, and lower mould than any of
the ecclesiastics they had to put down.... To our minds, the absolutism
of the Vatican Council is a trifling danger compared with the growing
absolutism of the democratic temper which is now being pushed into
almost every department of human conduct.”

On the larger question of the dangers of modern universities, the
opinion of one of the keenest of living English statesmen was given
in unmistakable language at the annual meeting of the Church Congress
last year at Leeds. The Marquis of Salisbury is quite as true an
Englishman as any writer on the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and his words
may be considered to possess at least equal weight with those of the
distinguished journal mentioned.

Referring more immediately to the abolition of the “Test Acts,” by
which the state had hitherto guaranteed to overlook and prevent the
teaching of infidelity, he said: “All hindrance to the teaching of
infidelity has been taken away, and that is the great danger of
the future. The great danger is that there should be formed inside
our universities—especially, I fear, inside Oxford—a nucleus and
focus of infidel teaching and influence; not infidel in any coarse
or abusive sense, but in that sense in which Prof. Palmer used the
words ‘heathen virtue.’ _I fear that the danger we have to look to is
that some colleges in Oxford may in the future play a part similar
to that disastrous part which the German universities have played in
the dechristianization of the upper and middle classes._” And the
only advice he can give to England now is: “If the parents of England
who send their sons to these colleges will be alive to the heavy
responsibility which is now laid upon them, then perhaps we may have a
better security, a better guarantee, than we have had that Oxford shall
not be the means of uprooting the Christian faith which they had learnt
at home.”

These words of the real, if not the nominal, leader of the conservative
party in the British House of Lords, who at the same time is, or was
when he delivered the speech, chancellor of the university of Oxford,
are worthy of attention, and may be commended to that fussy little
termagant, the _Pall Mall Gazette_. They have been doubly corroborated
since by another British statesman whose testimony on such a subject
is of at least equal weight with that of the ultra-liberal journal,
inasmuch as he is the leader of the liberal party—the present Premier
of England, in his recent great speech at Liverpool, which was
principally devoted to exposing the errors of Strauss.

Passing on to the other laws, why, considered merely from a financial
point of view, should the creation of new seminaries, great or small,
be prohibited? This is controlling the private purse with a vengeance.
The Prussian state, or Prince Bismarck and the professordom, forbid
Prussians or anybody else to erect ecclesiastical seminaries. Of
course, this means that Prussian or German youth are in future to be
educated only in the state schools and universities. If they want to
become priests, they must learn their theology as best they may; at
least there shall be no schools or colleges for them to study in, for
those already in existence are to be placed under state surveillance,
to receive no new pupils—in a word, to be closed, or converted from
the purpose for which they were founded by private funds into state
schools with state professors at their head, which is just as though
Gen. Grant swooped down on all the banking-houses in the United States,
set them under government control, and bade the bankers go about their
business. And yet Catholics who find some reason to object to this
summary mode of dealing with their property and what they considered
were their rights, are told that they are traitors to the state,
conspirators against the empire, and that they only object in slavish
obedience to a mandate from Rome.

This measure was well devised. Its framers said: We have banished the
Jesuits; we have banished religious societies of every description; we
have abolished the sacrament of marriage; we have banished religion
from the schools; we now proceed to abolish ecclesiastical seminaries
altogether: that is to say, we abolish the priesthood, we abolish
God as far as Germany is concerned, and men shall worship us and us
only—the supreme power.

What else does this law mean? It strikes out the priesthood, root and
branch, as effectually as did the penal laws in England; nay, more so.
The next clause fits in neatly. The bishop who nominates a candidate
otherwise than in accordance with the law is fined heavily. As there
are a good number of bishops, and as they are likely to disregard the
law in this respect, this will ensure a constant revenue to the state
as long at least as they are allowed to remain in the country.

Ecclesiastical disciplinary power can only be exercised by
ecclesiastical authorities of German nationality. This, of course, is a
blow struck directly at the Pope in his capacity of universal head of
the church; indirectly at whoever may hereafter be appointed as bishops
of the church in Germany. It simply forbids the Catholic bishops and
priests to obey the commands of the Holy See, and, if carried out,
would be subversive of the whole edifice of Christ’s church, which its
divine Founder made one, indivisible, and CATHOLIC. “Go ye, therefore,
and teach _all_ nations.” Prince Bismarck aims at carrying out what
Bolanden calls “the Russian idea”—the erection in Germany of a state
popedom. And again, Catholics are traitors to the state for objecting
to it, though it is an amendment introduced into Article 15 of the
Prussian constitution for the purpose of nullifying that truly liberal
and wise measure, which was to the following effect:

The Evangelical and the Roman Catholic Churches, as well as all other
religious societies, may administer and regulate their affairs in
perfect freedom. All religious societies may continue in the possession
and enjoyment of their institutions, foundations, and funds destined
for worship, instruction, and charity.

This is the law that works in England, in this country, and wherever
else the name of freedom is known. It left the Catholic Church
little to desire in Prussia. The justice, the wisdom and necessity
of substituting for this law those which appear at the head of this
article, will be apparent.

Moreover, that same article very wisely and fairly provided that the
state right of nominating, proposing, electing, and confirming in the
offices of the church be suppressed, with the single exception of
ecclesiastical appointments in the army and in public establishments.

That law worked to the satisfaction of all parties—the state, the
Evangelicals, and the Catholics. The state never complained of it; the
Evangelical Church never complained of it; the Catholic Church never
complained of it. Why reverse this order now? Why, after handing the
disciplinary power over into the hands of the church, and after having
proved it so satisfactorily for half a century, do you now forbid the
exercise of that power by authority which is not of German nationality?
The constitution of the Catholic Church is exactly the same now as
it was when that article was drawn up. The Catholic bishops were not
self-appointed. Who conferred ecclesiastical disciplinary power in the
first instance? The church through its head, the representative of
Jesus Christ, who is not of German nationality; who, as head of the
Catholic Church, is of no nationality; and to whom in that capacity the
question of nationality does not apply: for the laws of which he is the
keeper refer to the spiritual part of man’s nature, the moral order,
which in all men is the same, and which takes as little color from
the accidents of place or climate as it does from the darkness or the
whiteness of the skin.

This law cannot be obeyed: its framers evidently were assured of this
fact, for they provide that the ecclesiastical functionaries who,
by exercise of their functions, transgress the laws of the state or
the ordinances of the civil authority, may, at the demand of that
authority, be deposed, if the maintaining of their functions prove
incompatible with public order.

This means the destruction of the Catholic episcopate, or its total
subserviency to the state. “I will strike the shepherd, and the flock
will be dispersed,” said our Lord on a memorable occasion. That is
precisely what Prince Bismarck says: Take all power out of the hands of
the Pope; destroy the bishops if you cannot win them over to the state;
strive to set priest against superior, by telling him that, if he
disobey, the voice of his church is powerless to affect him whilst the
arm of the state supports him. Swell the ranks of the “Old Catholic”
party thus, and we shall force a schism on the church; after a short
time, the people will go this way and that; the true shepherds gone,
the flock will be dispersed, and the nation is ours to do as we please
with, for there is no longer the voice of religion to rise up against
us: the people are ripe for the worship of force.

Observe the steps which have led up to the present consummation from
the foundation of the German Empire two years ago. The Jesuits, the
vanguard of the church, are driven out. Why? For conspiring against the
empire. Proofs? None.

All the other orders are driven out for the same reasons, and with the
like proofs of guilt.

The universities are placed in the hands of infidels.

The schools are taken from the hands of religious, and placed
altogether in the hands of the state.

The solemnization (!) of marriage is placed in the hands of the state.

Ecclesiastical seminaries are suppressed, and given over to the state.

Ecclesiastical students are for the future to be educated and appointed
by the state.

Catholics must not subscribe money to build colleges of their own; if
they do, those colleges will, like all the others, be appropriated by
the state.

The bishops, the divinely appointed successors of the apostles, are
only allowed to hold office at the will of the state.

He who disobeys is deposed from office by the state. The church is a
thing of state. The human conscience is a thing of state. It has no
rights, no thoughts, no feelings, no desires, that are not absolutely
controlled by the state, “for in the kingdom of this world the state
has dominion and precedence.”

There is the whole doctrine out, plain and undisguised. Those last
words are taken from the speech delivered by Prince Bismarck to
the House of Peers in the debate of March 10 on the question under
consideration. And now that they are there, what is the state?

“The state is I,” said Louis XIV., and he was right in his estimate;
but the fact of his having been right at the time when he made the
boast did not prevent the French Revolution, rather helped it on, and
does not prevent us to-day from repudiating the doctrine.

What constitutes the state in Prince Bismarck’s eyes? Is it the
emperor, or himself, or Dr. Falk, or the German professordom? Is it
the representatives of the country as collected in the Lower and Upper
Prussian Houses? On the educational question, the Upper House, in which
lay the strength of the conservative party, gave an adverse vote to
the government, and the House was immediately dissolved. A number of
mushroom peers were hastily created in an unconstitutional manner, and
sent in as the creatures of Prince Bismarck, for the sole purpose of
passing these bills, in order to give a show of free discussion, and
make the measure of Prince Bismarck appear as the will of the nation.
But does the following read like the speech of a man who was likely
to favor free discussion, or rather, of one who pined for absolutism,
and was determined to have it? It is an extract from the speech of
the prince on resigning the premiership of the Prussian Parliament
to Count von Roon: “There is no fear that Prussia will lose her
legitimate influence in the federal government, even if the individual
members of the cabinet are not on all questions at one.... Prussia’s
territory making five-eighths of all Germany, she will always command
the authority naturally belonging to her. Besides, the identity of the
German and Prussian politics is guaranteed by the fact that the German
Emperor and the King of Prussia happen to be one and the same person.
_I do not deny that the premier should be invested with more extensive
prerogatives than are now his own._ He might, for instance, be accorded
the right of suspending the decisions of the cabinet until their
approval or otherwise by the king; or he might be granted some other
prerogative with a view to regulating the action of the administration.
_All this, I dare say, will come to pass in course of time_, but, not
being as yet conceded to him, he has to shift as best he may.... There
is too much talking over one’s colleagues involved in the premiership
to leave a man time for anything else.”

That speech was delivered some months ago. Since then, the speaker
has come nearer to the boast of Louis XIV. This is how the echo
of the German chancellor, the Berlin special correspondent of the
London _Times_, speaks of it, with a cringing tone that to free
stomachs brings an absolute nausea: “With a decisive struggle against
popery looming ahead, it would be a great mistake in this loyal and
king-loving country to strip the ministry of the authority it derives
from representing _the crown rather than the parliament_”; whilst the
_Times_ itself remarks editorially, with a mental blindness strange
indeed, if unintentional: “We do not anticipate any retrogression
in the development of Prussia, but it seems inevitable that there
should be some check in the progress of change, some slackening in the
audacity of legislation, some disposition to rest and be thankful.”

To show how far freedom of discussion prevails in the Prussian
Parliament over and above the speech quoted of Prince Bismarck, the
dissolution of the Upper House on refusing to go the length of the
government on the education question, and the creation of new peers
for the purpose of overcoming that opposition, may be added the very
significant announcement made by Dr. Falk on presenting the bill to the
Chamber in the first instance, before a word of discussion had taken
place on it, that his majesty’s sanction was certain beforehand; which
was saying practically: You may vote as you please, but this bill must
be passed, and he who opposes its passage is an enemy to the throne—no
small threat in a military nation.

So much for freedom of discussion! Where, then, is one to find that
mysterious body, the state, of which there is so much talk? Of course,
this bill has passed both houses; it has been debated and divided on,
and the divisions have gone with the ministry. Well, in representative
governments, such is the rule. Whatever the majority votes becomes law.
All looks fair. The bill has gone against the Catholics, and that is
all that can be said about it.

But how has it gone against them? It is a sweeping measure; of that
there can be no doubt. It is the most tremendous measure framed within
this century, perhaps in all time, for the suppression of the faith;
for, to any honest mind, these laws are absolute suppression of all
that constitutes the Catholic Church, so far as human enactments can
effect it. Prince Bismarck endeavored from the beginning of this
contest with the church to throw a false light over it. He banished
the Jesuits and the other orders on the plea that they were conspiring
against the empire. There was no trial, or searching, or investigation.
It was simply his _ipse dixit_: he commanded, and they were banished.
At that time his contest, as he and his organs and representatives in
the Chamber continued to assure the world, was one with conspirators,
and in no wise with the Catholic Church. The secularization, which has
been better called the dechristianization, of the schools, and the
abolition of the sacrament of marriage, had nothing whatever to do with
the Catholic faith. What mockery! Now he comes and forces this bill
through the parliament, which, if carried out, as it doubtless will be
to the letter—for Prince Bismarck does nothing by halves—simply and
absolutely stops the life of religion, not alone the Catholic, but all
religion with any pretension to the name, throughout Germany; and still
he persists in declaring that the contest is not with the church. In
his speech of March 10, which will be remembered in history, and in
calmer moments read aright by all, the prince chancellor said: “The
question in which we are at present involved is placed, according to
my judgment, in a false light if we call it a confessional religious
question. It is essentially political; it has nothing to do with the
conflict of an evangelical dynasty against the Catholic Church, as our
Catholic fellow-citizens are taught to believe; it has nothing to do
with the conflict between faith and infidelity: it has solely to do
with the ancient contest for dominion, which is as old as the human
race; with the contest for power between monarchy and priesthood—the
contest which is much older than the appearance of the Redeemer in the
world.”

Now, if this statement of the relative position of the opposing forces
be correct, Prince Bismarck makes the contest all the easier for the
Catholics. He professes to remove it altogether out of the region
of religion into that of politics, and thus the conflict, according
to him, is one between two purely political parties. As will be
shown, the party opposed to the present Bismarck policy is not at all
restricted to the Catholics; it embraces the greater portion of the
Evangelicals, most probably all of them, as well as those who, outside
of Germany, would be called democrats. Basing the contest, then, on
purely political grounds, the majority of the German Empire is driven
by sheer force of the will of one man or of a few men, backed by the
most powerful army in the world, into accepting a state of things
which it abhors, and against which it vehemently protests. The claims
of either party are to be decided purely on their own merits, and the
verdict of a fair mind cannot fail to side with that at whose head
stand the Catholics; for they claim nothing more than that the Prussian
constitution, under which all up to the present have lived happily,
be preserved inviolate. “Leave the Prussian law as it stood,” demand
the Catholics and the Evangelicals. “We are content with it; we demand
nothing more.” How such a plain and patriotic request can be contorted
into conspiracy against the empire it is hard to conceive. As for
the allegation that the relations of Catholics to the state have been
altered one jot by the declaration of infallibility, that is idle.
Catholics believe now precisely what they believed from the beginning.
Prince Bismarck, then, was fully alive to the importance of the
question he was engaged in at the time. It was no insignificant measure
that might quietly sneak through the House almost without the House
being aware of its existence. The German Empire numbers 40,000,000 of
souls; of these 14,000,000 are Catholics; that is to say, more than
one-third of the entire population. Call the relation existing to-day
between these 14,000,000 of Catholics and the head of their church,
the Pope, between them and their bishops and clergy, what you please,
political or religious, the result of the passing of this measure is
one and the same—the total breaking up of that relation in all that
makes it what it is, in so far as it lies in Prince von Bismarck to
effect that result. And so the world understands it.

“There is no parallel in history,” says the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
“to the experiment which the German statesmen are resolutely bent
on trying, except the memorable achievement of Englishmen under the
guidance of Henry VIII.... Like all these measures, the new law
concerning the education of ecclesiastical functionaries, which is the
most striking of the number, will apply to all sects indifferently,
but, in its application to the Roman Catholic priesthood, it almost
takes one’s breath away.”

The London _Times_ of April 19, in a curious article on our Holy Father
which will call for attention afterwards, sums up the situation thus:

“The measures now in the German Parliament, and likely to become [which
since have become] law, amount to a secular organization so complete
as not to leave the Pope a soul, a place, an hour, that he can call
entirely his own. Germany asserts for the civil power the control
of all education, the imposition of its own conditions on entrance
to either civil or ecclesiastical office, the administration of all
discipline, and at every point the right to confine religious teachers
and preachers to purely doctrinal and moral topics. Henceforth there
is to be neither priest, nor bishop, nor cardinal, nor teacher, nor
preacher, nor proclamation, nor public act, nor penalty, nor anything
that man can hear, do, or say for the soul’s good of man in Germany,
without the proper authorization, mark, and livery of the emperor.”

The _Times_ is no special advocate of Catholic interests, so that, when
it puts the case thus, it is out of no love for them. But after such
a graphic picture of the situation, it is needless to reiterate what
has been maintained, that, call these measures what you please, they
simply involve and mean the legal suppression of the Catholic Church in
Germany.

The bill, then, required some consideration; for it could only be
regarded by one-third of the empire at least, and by the millions of
their co-religionists outside the empire, not simply as an outrage on
their conscience—that would be a weak word for it—but as a measure,
whether it passed or was defeated, to be resisted with all the power
that lies in man’s nature. In this light alone could it be looked upon
by the Catholics, and thus the hearts of one-third of the empire were
at once and, if freedom of conscience be not a meaningless phrase, most
justly alienated from the government of an empire scarce yet two years
old.

But the opposition was not confined to Catholics alone. The Evangelical
party, though a few of its members and organs had opposed the
intermeddling of the state with church affairs from the first, as a
whole accepted the expulsion of the Jesuits and the other arbitrary
measures as a good thing, and as a deadly blow struck at Rome. But
when these crowning measures appeared, it saw that, as usual, the blow
struck at Rome was a blow struck at all freedom, and strove to retract
when too late. To quote the _Pall Mall Gazette_ again:

“The difficulties of Prince Bismarck are not decreasing. The Jesuits
have found a fresh ally in Prussia, and the ranks of the enemies of
the new ecclesiastical legislation are swollen by combatants whose
loyalty hitherto has been unswerving. Herr von Gerlach no longer stands
alone as a Protestant opponent of the chancellor’s policy. A portion
of the Evangelical clergy and a section of the Protestant aristocracy
of the old provinces of the kingdom have passed over into the camp
of the enemy. In Pomerania and Silesia, a bitterness of antagonism
has revealed itself which was never suspected. The feelings that have
fed this opposition have evidently been long in existence, but only
now have they betrayed themselves openly. The occasion on which this
was done was the emperor’s birthday. It has been customary to have
religious services in the churches at such times, and they had come to
be expected by the population as a regular part of the celebration.
This year, however, many of the Evangelical clergy in different towns
omitted the usual services, and kept their churches closed. A letter in
the _Spener Gazette_ remarks upon the astonishment excited in Neusalz,
in Lower Silesia, because of the omission. Another letter from Wolgast
says neither in that town nor in Kammin or Schievelbein was ‘the divine
service held to which we have been always accustomed.’ The same thing
occurred at Wernigerode, where the only notice of the occasion was in
the prayers at the usual Sunday service the day after. These facts have
excited much comment in Germany. The official papers openly accuse the
Protestant clergy of the eastern provinces of becoming the allies of
the ultramontanes” (April 12).

Thus does this “loyal and king-loving” people manifest its gratitude to
the monarch for the forcing of this bill upon it. How is it that the
bill hurts them, the Evangelicals, who detest the Pope, most of them,
just as cordially as does Prince Bismarck? Alas for human nature! There
was a touch of the weakness of the flesh in it after all.

When this bill met their gaze, the eyes of the Evangelicals were at
last opened. They saw that its provisions were all-embracing, and that
there was no distinction made between Catholic and Protestant, so just
and righteous to all is the Gospel promulgated by Prince Bismarck—the
gospel of the state! They had thought to get off scot-free; they
lent no voice to the noble protest of the Catholic bishops at Fulda;
but at length their zeal is aroused, and they generously throw their
weight into the scale, praying that the new laws may take the form of
exceptional measures for the Catholic Church.

Such was the form which the Evangelical objection took—on purely
conscientious grounds, no doubt. While the internal budget was being
discussed, some of the progressionists were so stupidly logical as to
vote a refusal of the very respectable subsidy which this generous,
charitable, and conscientious body enjoys. But Dr. Falk, the liberal,
came to the rescue, and saved it.

The Prussian correspondent of the London _Times_ has an instructive
little paragraph on this subject, which may serve to throw some further
light on this eleventh-hour opposition:

“But the Catholic dignitaries are not the only ecclesiastics opposed
to the bill. The new measures applying not only to the Catholic
Church, but to all religious communities recognized by the state, the
Oberkirchenrath, or Supreme Consistory of the Protestant Church in the
old provinces, has also thought fit to caution the crown against the
enactment of these sweeping innovations. The principal reason given by
the Oberkirchenrath against the clause in the new laws facilitating
secession from a religious community, is that many a Protestant might
be tempted to forsake his faith on the eve of the building of a new
church. Rather than contribute his mite, as compelled by law, he might
prefer being converted to something else.”

If letters could blush, that last sentence ought to be of a scarlet
color. However, to keep to the question at hand: whatever may have been
the motive, certain it is that at length the Evangelical party, as a
party, a body, political or religious, as you please, is aroused, and
turns upon the government, of which it was ready to be the obedient
servant so long as all things went smoothly. A similar instance of a
great uprising of religious zeal against government innovation was
exhibited and is witnessed still in that “loyal and king-loving” body,
the Irish Protestants, on the disestablishment of what was called the
Irish Church. Here, then, are the Evangelicals protesting against the
government, and the Catholics protesting against the government; how
much of the nation is left? The Catholics are 14,000,000; the number
of the Evangelicals is unknown to the writer, but it probably doubles,
perhaps trebles, that of the Catholics—certainly in Prussia; at all
events, it may be safely said that the majority of the German Empire
protests against these laws. Where is the state to be found, then? The
state certainly does not lie in the majority of the people. On purely
political grounds, therefore, Prince Bismarck’s measure is tyrannical;
nevertheless, “in the kingdom of this world, the state has dominion and
precedence.”

  “Ave, Cæsar! Morituri te salutant!”

Prince Bismarck expected this opposition. So powerful did he imagine
it would be that he even feared it, and in his own speeches and organs
mingled cajolery with threats. Whilst the ecclesiastical bills were
still being debated, the _Provinzial-Correspondenz_ (official), in a
flaring article on the protest of the Catholic bishops at Fulda, and
the Catholic opposition to the ecclesiastical laws, wrote:

“The state, of course, being responsible for the welfare of the
inhabitants in every measure adopted, will have to be guided by a
_strict regard for what is just and upright_. It will have carefully
to refrain from meddling with the creed or interfering with the
ecclesiastical institutions and usages immediately connected with
the sphere of religious belief. Only the other day, the Minister of
Education (Dr. Falk) expressed his conviction in the Lower House
that, directly the new bills became law, the Catholic subjects would
perceive that no one intended to injure their religious faith, oppress
their church, or interfere with the preaching of saving truth.” (Dr.
Falk’s convictions are of a piece with his notions of “truth.”) ...
“In carrying through their present task, government is prepared to
encounter serious resistance and much trouble; but it is also aware
that the bills now under discussion, if once they become law, will
supply it with effective means of exerting its authority.... If the
washes of the government and parliament are fulfilled, the bills under
discussion will be a work of peace.”

“That is, in case the bishops yield,” remarks the Prussian
correspondent of the London _Times_. “In the other event, they are sure
to be successively fined, deposed, incarcerated, and perhaps sent out
of the country. All this the new legislation empowers the government to
effect.”

The government, then, or the state, or whatever be the name by which
Prince Bismarck chooses to be called, dreaded a powerful opposition.
Nevertheless, it determined to pass these bills—which were absolutely
uncalled for, as far as the harmony of the relations between Catholic
and Protestant went, and that of either or both of these bodies with
what ought to be the state, the true representative rulers of the
people, and not a man or a few men elevated on the bayonets of a
million soldiers—conscious that it was doing what the conscience
of its people might of necessity endure for a time, but could never
consent to. How long, then, did it take to bring this stupendous
measure about, fraught as it was with all these consequences, and a
cause of alarm and anxiety even to the government itself with all its
bayonets?

The laws are dated January 8 of this year; they were presented to the
Chamber on the following day, and, by the 21st of the same month, their
first discussion is over. On April 25, they finally passed the Upper
House.

In three months! A bill which altered throughout the whole relations
between church and state in Germany, down to their minutest details;
which involved the appropriation to state purposes of every
ecclesiastical college or seminary subscribed for, and erected, and
founded by the money of private individuals; which, involving as it
does the suppression of the bishops and the clergy, as a necessary
consequence hands over to the state a vast amount of funded property
in churches and houses; which, above all this, meets religion at every
turn, and makes it bow down and worship the state; which threatens a
future of disturbance and danger of every kind—is pushed through both
Houses of Parliament, and supposed to be fully discussed and decided on
in a period of three months!

Why, a bill for the laying of a new line of railroad twenty miles in
length would have required longer time and called for more discussion.
There it stands now, law, and all Germany must obey it, because the
state calls it law. On April 24, Germany could be Christian; on April
26, to be Christian is a crime against the state; to obey the dictates
of conscience is a crime; to establish a school in the name of God is a
crime; to establish a college for the education of God’s ministry is a
crime; to obey the pastors, the priests, and bishops of God’s church,
whom to obey hitherto was a virtue, is now a crime; to acknowledge the
Pope as the head of the universal church, a crime; in a word, to be
anything but German, body and soul, mind and heart and thought, is a
crime, to be punished by all the rigor of the law!

Prince Bismarck, while he is about it, should go further. “To-day we
will proceed to create God,” said a countryman of his, a philosopher,
an enlightened man and apostle of the stamp of Dr. Falk, the putative
father of these bills. The chancellor should create a German heaven
to correspond with this German religion and reward its devotees, the
worshippers of the divine state. What German Dante will arise to give
us the Bismarck _Inferno_?

The steps which led up to this measure, the ingredients which compose
it, the manner in which it was forced through, the meaning of it, and
the effect, if carried out, it will produce on religion, have now been
set before the reader, and he may fairly pronounce for himself upon
the whole question. But the question asked at the beginning remains
still unanswered: _Why_ has all this come about? Why has so wise a
statesman as Prince Bismarck is reputed to be raked up these embers
of dissension, and fanned them into so fierce a flame? Is it to his
advantage to turn one-third, the majority even, of his empire against
him? Why, if the contest were not, as he and his supporters of the
liberal and religious press allege, in a manner forced upon him, should
he be so unwise as to run the danger of rending his empire asunder,
and opening up that bitterest of difficulties, the religious question,
which lay so quiet? In one word, was or was not the Catholic Church a
danger to the new empire?

This is becoming the question of the day; and what concerns Germany
concerns the whole world. The Catholic Church is a danger to the state.

Again, why?

Because you obey an infallible Pontiff, an absolute ruler, blindly and
implicitly. Matters were not quite so bad before the declaration of the
dogma of infallibility; but since that date, the Pope has taken a new
stand which governments cannot admit. They cannot endure to have any
portion of their subjects ruled by a foreign potentate. They cannot
have their measures thwarted and decrees opposed by a mandate, open or
secret, from Rome. They cannot admit the pretensions of a well-meaning,
no doubt, but rather unpractical and decidedly impracticable old
gentleman to the sovereignty over the whole world. Those whom he claims
as his subjects may venerate him as much as they choose; they may even
obey him, as far as believing in a God and all that sort of thing goes,
if it bring any unction to their souls; they may believe in any mortal
or immortal thing they please; but they must obey the laws of the land
in which they live, _whatever those laws may be_. Religious belief may
be anything you please, as long as it is confined to the individual’s
mental faith; but his conduct must not be ruled by it. Whenever
religion crosses the state, religion must give way. Governments cannot
admit the disloyal theory of “a Catholic first, a nationalist if you
will.”

It all lies there: the contest between Prince Bismarck and the church,
between Italy and the church, between the whole world and the church.
This contest did not begin with the German chancellor. There is a
power behind the throne that moves even him to this deed of violence
upon the sacred person of the spouse of Christ, his holy church: the
same old tempter that first whispered to man in Eden: “Ye shall be as
gods”; that drove the kings to stone and persecute the prophets; that
moved the Jews to crucify Christ; that directed the arm of the pagan
emperors of Rome. It is not in man of his own will merely to stir up
this strife, and wage war upon his brother for the matter of faith. The
spirit of evil is ever working; and his present chief representative,
unconsciously it may be hoped, is the powerful chancellor of the German
Empire. Here is his standpoint, as given by the Berlin correspondent
of the New York _Herald_, in the remarkable speech of March 10. In
the extract already given, the chancellor pronounced the contest he
has entered upon as having “solely to do with the ancient contest for
dominion, which is as old as the human race; with the contest for power
between monarchy and priesthood—the contest which is much older than
the appearance of the Redeemer in the world.” After endeavoring to
connect every great movement of recent and mediæval history inimical,
or supposed to be inimical, to Germany with the machinations of the
Papacy, he goes on to say: “It is, in my estimation, a falsification
of politics and of history when His Holiness the Pope is considered
exclusively as the high-priest of any one confession, or the Catholic
Church as representative of churchdom in general. The Papacy has been
in all times a political power which, with the determination and
with the greatest success, interfered in all the relations of this
world; which meant to interfere, and considered such interference
as its legitimate programme. This programme is well known. The aim
constantly kept in view by the Papal power (like the Rhine borders
before the eyes of the French)—the programme which, at the time of
the mediæval emperors, was very nearly realized—is the making the
secular power subject to the clerical—an aim eminently political, the
effort to attain which is, however, as old as humanity; for so long
have there been persons, whether cunning people or real priests, who
have asserted that the will of God was better known to them than to
their fellow-citizens; and it is well known that this principle is the
foundation of the Papal claim to dominion.”

Now, there is no denying that this is a very fascinating doctrine for
nations. The rulers studiously misrepresent the Papacy, setting it down
as a political power: as that most dangerous of political powers which
would clothe politics in the garb of religion, as Mahomet did, and give
to their selfish schemes the name of the cause of God, so as to arouse
an enthusiasm and fanaticism in their devotees which mere human powers
can never hope to enkindle. Mahomet was just one of those “cunning
people” who “asserted that the will of God was better known to him than
to his fellow-citizens,” if they could be designated by that title. And
the conquests that Mahomet achieved by that deceit are in the memory of
all. The Pope is the Mahomet of the XIXth century, according to Prince
Bismarck.

When Shakespeare put that famous sentence into the mouth of King John,
“No foreign power shall tithe or toll in my dominions,” he only said
the same thing. “You are about to disestablish the church in Ireland,
because it was imposed by a foreign power,” said Mr. Disraeli, during
the debates on the question of the disestablishment. “You will do so;
but what will you have in its place? A nation ruled by a foreign power;
for the Pope is an absolute sovereign.” The words are from memory; but
the aim and substance are correct, and he of all men understood the
fallacy of the argument; but he knew that it was a valuable party-cry
to stir the blood of the patriotic Englishman. So, recently, Mr.
Gladstone told the House of Commons that the Irish University Bill was
defeated by Cardinal Cullen, under mandate, of course, from Rome. And
so runs the cry through the world.

It buzzes around our ears out here even in certain quarters, though
much less, happily, than it was wont to do. Terror of Rome! is the
string to harp on. The Catholics wish to surrender the country into the
hands of the Pope!

Laying aside the consideration of the practical impossibility of such a
thing, suppose the Pope did reign as emperor in Germany to-day, would
the people be less happy than they show themselves to be under the rule
of Prince Bismarck? Would the Pope encircle his throne with a cordon of
steel, or reign in the hearts of his people? How much happier are the
inhabitants of the Papal States to-day under the rule of Victor Emanuel
than they were under that of Pius IX.? Let the correspondents of the
secular press answer with their periodical record of outrage and crime.

How is it possible to convince people that all these allegations are
utterly and maliciously false? The Pope is infallible; and so was Peter
when our Lord made him the rock upon which he should build his church.
Peter had the same conflict with Rome that Pius has with Germany, not
simply because he was Peter, the head of the church on earth, and
the vicar of Jesus Christ, but because he was a Christian. And every
Christian who is faithful to the law of his crucified Master is bound
to say to the state “I cannot” when the state would have him deny that
Master, and break loose from the teachings of the church. It is not the
Pope these men are fighting: it is Christianity. As far as the German
laws of making the divinely instituted sacrament of matrimony a merely
civil contract, of preaching disobedience to the pastors of the church,
go, were the Pope to die to-day, and, if possible, an interregnum,
which seems to be so desired by many, to ensue, that fact would not
make a bit of difference in the opposition of Catholics to these state
measures. Wrong would be wrong still; the laws of God would remain as
binding as ever; and to hinge the Catholic faith _in this fashion_ on
the Papacy is a transparent trick. The Pope teaches what Jesus Christ
bade him teach; and no pope has ever swerved from that line.

It is almost useless to discuss this theme, and yet it must be taken
up, though those violent opponents of what they call ultramontanism, by
which they mean Catholicity, will still continue to close their eyes to
the truth that the Catholic religion has no connection of any kind with
politics as pure politics. But where politics touches upon religion, of
course religion is to be taken into account. It would far overstep this
article to go into all the details and intricacies of this question;
but the statement of the position which Catholics take upon the subject
may serve best to put the matter before the reader.

Catholics read history differently from Prince Bismarck and the
scientific historians who surround him. For them all practical history,
if the term may be used, begins with Jesus Christ. All the rest, as
far as theories of government, of the relations of the state to the
individual, go, may be considered as blotted out, as a _tabula rasa_,
and the world, in the moral order, began anew. Before the coming of
our Lord there was no government, in the modern sense of the word,
outside of the Jewish nation: there was force. Jesus Christ laid down
laws which should enter into every relation of the life of man, and
could not be mistaken. These laws were just as binding on the monarch
as on the subject, on the government as on the governed; they did not
destroy government: they guided and helped it, and infused into it
the first principles of freedom. Men recognized this fact, and, as
Christianity advanced, governments began to fashion themselves closer
and closer upon the law of the Gospel, until at length what is known
as Christendom grew up, grounded, as its very name implied, upon
the religion of Christ—that is to say, upon the law of Christ. Of
course, in the various governments, many things remained contrary to
this law, not, however, as rights, but as wrongs which only time and
Christian influence could remove. However, governments were measured
as to their justice and injustice, not by a standard antecedent to
the Christian era, nor by any standard which they might choose to set
up for themselves, but by their assimilation to, their agreement or
disagreement with, the law of Jesus Christ.

Of course, to those who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, all this
reasoning goes for nothing; but Prince Bismarck does not profess
to do so. Where, then, was this law to be found? Had it a keeper,
a guardian, a propounder, one to whose care its divine Founder had
entrusted it, guarded against the possibility of mistaking its
teachings, or did he leave the dead letter to commend itself in a
variety of ways to a variety of minds? Were all men blessed from birth
with perfect intelligence and personal infallibility, there would have
been no need of leaving anything more than the dead letter of the
law, as in that case all would have agreed as to its meaning. But as
men do not as a rule lay claim to perfect intelligence and personal
infallibility, without going further into the question here, it seems
obvious to common sense that, if Christ left a law to the world, he
left it in somebody’s keeping: he left a government and a head, as
the representative of himself. This representative is the Pope, whom
all Christendom recognized for so many centuries, not as king of this
mundane world, but as the supreme head of the universal church of
Christ.

In time, he came to have a patrimony of his own, which was freely given
him, and has been recently very freely taken from him. That patrimony
he did not rule infallibly as king. His policy as an earthly monarch
might even be defective, like that of any other ruler; but, in the
domain of faith and morals, he, when speaking _ex cathedrâ_, could not
err, and Christendom bowed to his decisions.

Here it is, then, that Catholics bind their faith in the Pope; not in
Pius IX. as ruler of Rome, but in Pius IX. as the successor of Peter,
as the vicar of Jesus Christ, as his living representative on earth.
When, therefore, Christendom departs from Christianity, from the law of
Christ upon which it was founded, and devises measures or promulgates
doctrines in opposition to the law of Christ, Catholics look to the
decision of him with whom the Word abides to say if this be true or
untrue, right or wrong. He pronounces, and they believe and obey. He
simply says this is or this is not the law of Christ—the law that
rules the government as well as the governed. If governments enforce
wrong with the strong arm, you must use all lawful resistance; but,
rather than deny the truth, you must die as your Saviour died.

The tendency of governments to-day is to say: “We bow to no law, we
recognize nothing higher than ourselves, and the laws we make must be
obeyed without question.” This is going back to the ante-Christian
era, and reviving the worship of force. Such is the tendency to-day:
disbelief in Christ; disbelief, consequently, in his doctrines, in his
church, in Christianity, in the head of his church. To be Catholic,
consequently, is to be anti-national, in the eyes of the state, when
in reality it is to be the truest citizen of the state. Home employed
a Christian legion, and, though in bravery and devotion to the empire
that legion knew no superior, many of its members were martyred because
they recognized a spiritual power higher than the state.

And therein Catholicity is compelled to oppose the state: dating from
Christ, believing in Christ, building itself upon Christ, its followers
members of the church of Christ, it follows the state in all things
save where it transgresses the commandments of Christ; hence the _non
possumus_.

Coming back, then, to the present question, Catholics believe the Pope
to be the infallible head of the Catholic Church, not the absolute
emperor of the kingdoms of this world. Jesus Christ, whose vicar he
is, himself proclaimed, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Nations may
assume what form of government best suits them; all that is nothing to
the Pope. A Catholic is absolutely free in this country, for instance,
to vote whatever ticket he may please, Republican or Democratic. As far
as those names and their meaning go, Catholicity has absolutely nothing
whatever to do with them. But a political party erects what it calls
a platform, raises a party-cry, and, as in the present instance in
Prussia, calls itself liberal, and its liberalism attempts to wipe out
absolutely the Catholic religion from the land and from the world if
it could. Is it in human reason to expect Catholics not to allow their
religion to influence their votes in such a case as that, or in such
a case as the Irish university question, or in any similar case that
might occur here?

What are votes given for? Surely to protect ourselves against tyranny
of every form, and to secure our proper representation in the body
to whose care is entrusted the government of the country. God forbid
that religion should not influence politics! Why should it not? Let
it alone; leave it free to do God’s work; leave it its churches, its
colleges, its schools, its hospitals, its asylums, its associations,
its free worship, its beliefs, and its institutions. But if you come,
as Prince Bismarck has done, to say to religion, I will take from you
your schools, which are your own private property; I will take from you
your sacraments, which you believe to have been instituted by Jesus
Christ; I will strip you of your ecclesiastical colleges, and educate
your students myself; I will take your ordination out of the hands
of your bishops, and ordain your priests myself; I will appoint your
bishops as I please, and they who displease me are no longer bishops;
I will take from you your head, the Pope, and make myself pope in his
stead: all this will I do, but still you are at liberty to believe in
and worship God—what must the answer be?

This is a mockery! This is paganism; it is violence, not law. We cannot
obey. There, says Bismarck, or the state, that is treason. Why cannot
you obey? Because the Pope, “that old conjuror of the Vatican,” forbids
you. That is just the point: either the Pope must rule or I.

Because conscience forbids me, because human reason forbids me,
because Jesus Christ forbids me, is the response of the Catholic.
Catholics cannot consent to the doctrine that in the dominion of this
world the state has precedence. What is the state? An accident. The
Czar of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, Bismarck, the British Parliament,
the _Commune_, all these in turn call themselves the state. Government
indeed is supreme, and to be obeyed, _in its own sphere_; but if
there be no law higher than the material laws which men construct for
themselves, and change as occasion demands, good-by to all stable
government. If government be merely a creation of man, it must be
subject to the varying temper of man; it cannot fix absolutely the
rights of man; it can have no absolute title to his obedience. We
utterly repudiate this doctrine, and refuse to accept anything as final
which we construct for our own use. Its powers are limited as are those
of all human institutions: once it oversteps these boundaries, it
becomes tyranny. State to-day means Bismarck, to-morrow the _Commune_;
it is a case of circumstances; and, if there lie no law beyond all
this, no principles which are fixed and come from a Power above “this
world,” one is as good as another. This power is religion, and the
church is the embodiment of religion, and the Pope is the head of the
corporate body, infallible indeed when teaching the universal church,
else is he an accident the same as all the others.

Suppose our Blessed Lord were to come down in the flesh at this moment
into Germany, what course would he take upon this question? Would he
bow to Cæsar in this? Neither will his vicar nor his children. With the
army at his back, Prince Bismarck does this wrong. It is said that he
is driven to it for the unity of Germany. Germany was united without
it. All the states cheerfully submitted even to Prussian preponderance,
without thought of dragging in the religious question. The laws as they
stood on that point were satisfactory. Well, Germany is united now; but
it has become the union of galley-slaves, chained together, watched by
a hard taskmaster whose blow is death. The enemy of true German unity
to-day is Prince Bismarck.

There is the law, and it is sure to be carried out. Well, the bishops
will go to prison, will pay the fines, or become exiles. They will
continue to ordain priests and educate them, irrespective of that power
called the state. And the real difficulty begins now. The Catholics
cannot yield: sooner or later, the state must.

One fact has come out of it all which is worthy of notice. This XIXth
century, at least this latter half of it, has been lauded and glorified
superabundantly as the age of freedom, the liberal age.

Catholics began to forget their history. They began to think the era of
persecution for conscience’ sake over, when they heard it proclaimed
on all sides that perfect freedom of thought was the order of the day;
there was to be no such distinction as Catholic or Protestant, or Jew
or Gentile, any more; the lion was to lie down with the lamb, the world
to become a haven of brotherly love, and the dawn of the millennium was
seen in the heavens. The rack, the gibbet, the fagot, and the hurdle
were all to be banished out of sight and forgotten, or only preserved
in museums as evidence of what horrible beings our sires could become.
It was all very gushing and nice; the narrow lines of prejudice were to
be softened down, and old-fogy, stiff-kneed notions to be voted out.

Suddenly rang out the voice of Peter’s successor: _Liberalism_ is
false: beware of it. It is only a few years back since these words
startled the world in the Syllabus. A storm of hatred and malign fury
arose on all sides, endeavoring to drown the voice of the church. Who
are you who condemn us? asked the world.

The infallible head of the church! Men proclaimed that Catholics
themselves did not accept it; and the Catholic Church spoke out boldly
in these days, not to proclaim a new doctrine, but only to acknowledge
to a doubting world what it had always accepted and believed, that
the head of the church upon earth is infallible. There was no more
talk of softening down of lines: Catholics believed this, or were
not Catholics. Listen to the voice of one of the bitterest and most
persistent enemies of the Pope, speaking only the other day:

“It is impossible to imagine a belief more sincere, a vision more
intense, a life more consistent, than that of the man who has claimed
for more than a quarter of a century to be the lord and master of the
whole world. If there be neither folly nor sin in such a claim, then we
may admire Pius IX., _and indeed must worship and obey him also_.”[149]

Was the “intense vision” mistaken in detecting the poison which lay
at the bottom of liberalism? Prince Bismarck has just deserted the
conservative party to which he adhered so long—all his political
life almost—and thrown himself into the arms of the liberals. These
ecclesiastical bills are the result—such is liberalism. “We will
force your children to go to our schools and receive the education we
give them, which you call godless,” says Huxley, scientific liberal
like Dr. Falk. _La Commune_ was the essence of liberalism, and it shot
the Archbishop of Paris and the priests out of pure sport apparently.
“A free church in a free state” was the Cavour doctrine for liberal
Italy, and the bill for the appropriation of church property and of
that belonging to the religious orders has followed naturally upon the
appropriation of the Papal States and the imprisonment of the head of
the church. Switzerland, the liberal republic, banishes the Jesuits,
closes the convents, and follows Bismarck’s steps in its dealings with
the Catholic clergy. The South American states are doing the same in
the name of liberalism. The whole world may be traversed, and wherever
liberalism is strongest, there is violence done in the name of freedom.

And here in this free republic men are found, like the writers in the
_Nation_ and throughout the Protestant press, to approve of all this.
And they are republicans—Americans—lovers of freedom. If Americans,
they are traitors to their country, repudiators of the principles
of their sires. They forget their history. What brought the Pilgrim
Fathers hither? The refusal to take the oath of supremacy to the state.
Is what was right in them wrong in us? Freedom was the one word written
on the virgin brow of this yet young republic. You who approve of these
measures in Prussia would wipe that word out, and set in its place
slavery.

The effect which these measures have produced on the outer world is
significant. Those who hailed the first outburst on the part of Prince
Bismarck with such loud acclaim begin to hesitate and draw back. The
secular journals in this country and in England, as a rule, either
watch and pronounce upon the steps which have led up to this final
outrage with timid caution, or, in a few instances, with downright
disapproval.

“We deny entirely that Prince Bismarck himself ever adopted this policy
on its merits in the sense in which the _Pall Mall_ admires it. On the
contrary, we believe that, as a statesman, he distrusted it seriously,
_and has even now little confidence in its success_. We believe that
it will result in giving a new stimulus to Roman Catholicism, and that
the fanatical vehemence with which the German people have adopted it is
a sufficient evidence of _the rash and ill-considered character of the
policy itself_.”[150]

“This rough-and-ready method of expelling ultramontane influences ‘by a
fork’ can hardly fail to suggest to a looker-on the probability that,
like similar methods of expelling nature, it may lead to a reaction.
Downright persecution of this sort (we are speaking now simply of the
Jesuit law), unless it is very thorough indeed—more thorough than is
well possible in this XIXth century—usually defeats itself.”[151]

In this country, the secular press seems generally inclined to shirk
the question, or devotes an occasional paragraph to it from time to
time, as to a disagreeable subject which will force itself upon the
sight, but which it is better to get out of the way as speedily as
possible. The religious press among us has gone wild over it from the
beginning as a death-blow to Rome. But even they begin to distrust it,
and soften their jubilant notes to a mild _piano_, that they hope all
good from this measure—they do not exactly see what good, but they
live in hope, whilst one of their number, the New York _Observer_, a
fine hater of “Popery,” actually declared the other day that, in its
opinion, “Cæsar was going too far.”

In Germany itself, as may be gathered from some of the extracts already
given, the state-god is not yet accepted as infallible and supreme
even in this world. Prince Bismarck marches very fast; and he would
make Germany march with him. Sedan was won by marching: but this moral
Sedan, as he would consider it, laughs at the snail’s pace of the
other. There is such a thing as “riding a gift horse to death”; and
Prince Bismarck seems intent on accomplishing that foolish feat.

And here a word may be devoted to the false allegation, which is
now beginning to be dropped, that the Catholics were foes to the
consolidation of the empire. The Jesuits were banished as conspirators
against the empire; the whole Catholic Church was in a conspiracy
against it; the Pope had gone further, and, with the rashness
characteristic of him, “openly declared war against Bismarck and his
ideas” (New York _Nation_). We have looked in vain for the details of
this mysterious conspiracy, which have not yet seen the light, though
it was so “well known.” Not a single scrap of evidence appeared, not a
single riot occurred, not a house was fired; there was no gun-powder
discovered, not even the traditional slouched hat and dark-lantern; the
supreme majesty of the law was never violated even in the sacred person
of a solitary policeman.

As for the other allegation, that Catholics were opposed to the unity
of the fatherland, they had ample opportunity to speak prior to the
war with France. There was no necessity for the Catholic German states
to join Prussia, and spend their wealth and the lives of their sons in
a terrible war. Why did not the Catholic clergy and bishops and the
Pope, who are nothing but a political power, use the vast political
power which they are supposed to wield in preventing the fatal alliance
between Protestant Prussia and the Catholic states? Then was the time
to pronounce, and how did they pronounce?

There was no doubt or hesitation on the part of either clergy or
people. Napoleon made the fatal mistake of endeavoring to throw a
religious color over his campaign, to win Catholic Germany to his
side. Catholic Germany stood by its homes and altars, and its bishops,
priests, and Jesuits stood with it. The Prussian Catholics gloried in
their country, and would yield the palm of religious freedom to no
nation, not even to ourselves. Mgr. Ketteler had long ago pronounced
for the unity of the German Empire. So let that allegation drop.

After the war, each state continued in full and free possession of the
right to manage its own home affairs: Prussia was the centre of foreign
policy alone. First the Prussian system of service in the army was
forced upon all, contrary to the wishes of the states, particularly
Bavaria. When Prince Bismarck made up his mind to force this
ecclesiastical bill upon Prussia, he saw clearly that, if it remained
law for Prussia only, and a dead letter for all the federal states
outside, it could not stand: it must be German or nothing. In order to
bring this about, he sounded the states for the transfer of the home
policy also to the hands of Prussia.

The proposition was vigorously opposed by all, chiefly by Bavaria.
Everybody understood the thing dead, when suddenly the announcement
came one morning that all the states, with the exception of Bavaria,
were in favor of placing the home policy also in the hands of Prussia.
Bavaria was left to do as it pleased, and now Prussia is the centre of
all power in Germany, so that the reins of absolute government over a
number of federal states, which two years ago were free, rest now in
the hands of a man whose chief doctrine is the natural preponderance of
Prussia.

The measures of the Bismarck régime in Germany have been from first to
last measures of violence, not simply as regards the Catholic Church,
but as regards the whole of the federal states; and their effects begin
to show themselves already in the disrespect shown the emperor on his
birthday, in the various riots which have taken and are taking place.
And be it marked, not one of these riots has been attributed to the
Catholics; they are too obedient to the religion which Prince Bismarck
would destroy to take this form of endeavoring to right their wrongs.
The riots have been generally called beer riots; but they are following
so fast one upon the other, and occurring in so many different cities,
that, however exciting a topic beer may be, people begin to hint at
something else as cause for them.

“The riots at Stuttgart, which were due, _apparently at least_, to
the hereditary quarrel with the Jews, were paralleled at Frankfort on
Monday by a great beer riot, said to be due to the high price of beer,
in which sixteen breweries were wrecked, twelve persons killed, and one
hundred and twenty arrested. A correspondent of yesterday’s _Times_,
who was in Frankfort and saw the riot, regards the deeper and more
remote cause as being the thorough dissatisfaction of the people with
the Prussian system of government.”[152]

Our readers will remember the very serious riot which took place in
Berlin at the meeting of the emprors last year right under the noses
of their imperial majesties. A _Herald_ correspondent, writing on
March 23, tells of a riot in Berlin on the birthday of the emperor; of
another which occurred on March 18, the anniversary of the Revolution
of 1848 in Berlin; and the correspondents both of the London _Times_
and of the _Herald_, describe the ferocity with which the mounted
police charged upon the unarmed mob, using their drawn sabres. The
_Herald_ correspondent concludes his letter thus:

“A slight demonstration on the part of the social democrats took place
at Brunswick.

“A feeling of dissatisfaction at an undefined something is constantly
gaining ground in Germany. There is a yearning after the freedom
promised with the united empire. ‘Germany is great, but she is not
happy!’ This seems to be the condition of the empire. The revolutions
that have just taken place in France and Spain, the declaration of the
republic, have had a positive influence in Germany. The democratic
element is again lifting its head, and a great meeting of democratic
leaders is soon to be held at Frankfort-on-the-Main, unless it be
prohibited by the authorities. The Catholic element of the German
population is also in a state of continual excitement.”

It is with no feeling of pleasure that these extracts are given here
from such a variety of non-Catholic quarters, showing the distrust and
growing dislike with which the Prussian rule is regarded. It is only to
show that Catholics, in battling for their religion, are only battling
for freedom and the rights of man. The mailed hand, red already with
the life-blood of three nations, which now smites the church, will not
hesitate to crush to powder every semblance of freedom which dares
stand in its path. He who attacks the rights of God will laugh at the
puny rights of man, simply as man. And you who bow down before the
state; you who set up this state above you, and surrender yourselves to
it absolutely—you have breathed life into the statue of Frankenstein;
you would rid yourselves of it if you could, but you have created
that which you cannot destroy, and forged for yourselves an agent of
self-destruction.

Happily, Catholics have faith in a God above it all. If it has done no
other good, it has brought out to the eyes of the world, in a wonderful
manner, at once the vastness and the unity of the Catholic Church.
Two years ago, the cry was: Catholics will not accept infallibility.
When the Jesuits were driven out from Germany, the cry was: “Catholic
Germany rejoices.” When the last remnant of the Papal States was
torn from the Holy Father, the world cried out: “Now is the Papacy
dead.” When a few disappointed and faithless men showed their heads in
Germany, with all the power of the throne at their back, men cried out:
“There is to be a new schism.” What do they say now?

Part of it has been seen already. M. John Lemoine, one of the
oftenest-quoted writers of the day, a Protestant, writes to the
anti-Catholic _Journal des Débats_ on the defeat of the Irish
University Bill: “From the depths of that palace which he calls his
prison, the now helpless old man (_le vieillard désarmé_), who reigns
only over consciences, has just shattered the most solid government of
Europe (the Gladstone ministry), and overthrown the greatest minister
of England. We would remark that never was the Pope more sovereign,
more a dictator, more omnipotent, than since he has relinquished the
command of subjects for that of the faithful only.”

After concluding that the stars in their courses have fought against
Pius IX., and that his failure is Heaven’s doom, the London _Times_
says:

“Indoors the whole universe is at his feet, but he cannot look out of
his windows without seeing a world in arms against him.... Pius IX. has
done all that devotees could dream, and suffered all that the world
could accomplish. He has achieved an absolute dominion over the human
intelligence, and lost every inch of his temporal power.... We may
concede, we may be even well content, that he still holds and rules the
most impulsive, the most imaginative, and the most sentimental races
of the civilized world, and that he himself is admirably adapted for
that empire over souls.... We envy the Pope his Irish, French, and
Peninsular subjects as little as we envy them their infallible guide.”

The _Times_ forgets the 14,000,000 German “subjects,” as it calls
them, and the other millions outside of the races it has mentioned.
From all it concludes, however, that “Rome will be Rome to the end of
the chapter,” and that indeed it would be a pity that it were not so,
though it ought to change a little with the world.

How, then, stands Rome to-day? Never more united, though never did the
whole world collect its forces with greater _animus_ to overwhelm it.
The state in Germany banishes the Jesuits, and takes infidels to its
bosom; in Spain, it banishes the Jesuits, and finds in their place
the _Descamisados_; in Switzerland, it ejects Mermillod, and embraces
Loyson; in Italy, it imprisons the Pope, and welcomes Victor Emanuel or
Garibaldi: _Non hunc sed Barabbam!_

Meanwhile, the Catholic world speaks out, and from the ends of the
earth comes back the protest, echoed from point to point, and gathering
volume as it goes: We protest as men, we protest as free citizens,
we protest as Christians! Protestation does little, say some. True,
but, if it has done nothing else, it has at least silenced the false
cry that Catholics approved of these measures. Protestation at last
tells; and when the interests of those who are now indifferent come,
as sooner or later they must come, to be affected by the policy to-day
so successful in Prussia, our voices and warnings will be remembered.
Catholics cannot at present take up the sword; they can only use,
then, the weapons at their disposal—the voice and the pen. They
must use them unceasingly and unsparingly until justice is done, and
Catholics are granted the rights of citizens, which Freemasons are
allowed to enjoy undisturbed. The rights of the state, whether monarchy
or republic, are sacred in their eyes, but they live for something
more than the state. All the armies in the world cannot coerce the
free soul of one man, for they cannot reach it: it is beyond their
province. There always will be two laws in this world—the law of God,
and the law of man. The first is equivalent to _right_, the second is
not necessarily so. The difficulty between states and the Catholic
Church lies in the fact that the states consider _legality_ synonymous
with _right_, and that what is legal therefore must commend itself to
the Christian conscience. Were men ruled by the law which makes the
Catholic proclaim himself “a Catholic first, and a nationalist if you
will,”[153] all difficulties would be at an end. We are Catholics
first, because to be a true Catholic is the truest patriotism, and the
perfection of citizenship; because to be Catholic is to be Christian,
and all civilized governments draw all that is sound and good in them
from Christianity, from Christ. When the state constructs no law which
is not right, then will Lord Denbigh’s famous sentence have lost its
meaning.




TO THE SACRED HEART.

  “Ego dormio, et cor meum vigilat.”[154]—Cant. v. 2.

  HEART of hearts, a love is thine
    Madly tender,[155] blindly true!
  Love in vastness so divine,
    In excess so human too!
  Seems it more a burning grief—
  Pining, aching for relief.

  Seems thou dost not, canst not live,
    Save to sue us for thy rest:
  While the all that we can give
    Is as nothing at the best.
  Wondrous Lover! Shall I say
  Thou hast thrown thyself away?

  Drench’d with anguish, steep’d in woe,
    Thou must needs, insatiate still,
  Linger wearily below,
    Prison’d to thy creatures’ will:
  While the current of the days
  Murmurs insult more than praise!

  Here I find thee, hour by hour,
    Waiting in thy altar-home,
  Full of mercy, full of power—
    Mutely waiting till we come:
  Waiting for a soul to bless,
  Some poor sinner to caress.

  Forth, then, from the fragrant hush,
    Where I almost hear thee beat,
  Bid a benediction gush—
    O’er me, thro’ me, thrilling sweet!
  Heart of Jesus, full of me,
  Fill mine—till it break with thee!

  FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART, 1873.




BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS.


FOURTH ARTICLE.—CONCLUSION.

LIKE the Cambrian bards, their brethren of Armorica sang the triumphs
and misfortunes of their country, and the deeds of her defenders,
during the twelve centuries that they were governed by chiefs of their
own race. The great names of Arthur,[156] of Morvan Lez-Breiz, of
Alan Barbe Torte, and of Nomenöe, offered stirring subjects for the
inspiration of the bards. In a former number, we gave “The March of
Arthur,” of which the original, with the exception of the last two
lines, bears every stamp of antiquity, and probably dates from the
VIth century. The epic of “Lez-Breiz,” of which we proceed to give a
translation of the fragments still extant, is about two centuries later.

Morvan, Machtiern or Viscount of Léon, son of a _Konan_, or crowned
chief, was famous in the IXth century as one of the maintainers of
Breton independence against the encroachments of the Franks under Louis
le Débonnaire, and received from his grateful countrymen the surname of
“Lez” or “Lezou Breiz”—the Stay, or the Hammer, of Brittany.

The story of Lez-Breiz, in a weakened and modified form, exists in
Wales in the fragmentary ballad of _Peredur_.


MORVAN LEZ-BREIZ.

PART I.

THE DEPARTURE.

I.

  Wandered forth the young child Lez-Breiz
    From his mother’s side,
  Early on a summer morning,
    Through the forest wide.
  There the shade and sunlight glancing
    On the armor played
  Of a mounted knight, advancing
    Through the greenwood glade.

  Under spreading oaks and beeches
    Rode the steel-clad knight,
  Till his warlike splendors nearer
    Flashed on Morvan’s sight.
  “‘Tis the great Archangel Michael,”
    Thought the child, and then
  Straight he crossed himself devoutly,
    Ere he gazed again.

  Down upon his knees in wonder
    Fell the trembling boy;
  “O my lord! my lord S. Michael,
    Work me not annoy!”
  “Nay, boy, no more lord S. Michael
    Than a serf am I;
  But a dubbed and belted knight, sooth,
    That I’ll not deny.”

  “Never saw I belted knight, nor
    Heard of, till this day.”
  “That am I: say, hast thou seen none
    Like me pass this way?”
  “Nay, first answer me, I pray thee:
    This, what may it be?”
  “‘Tis my lance, wherewith I wound all
    Whom it liketh me.

  “But this weighty club far better
    Than my lance I prize;
  Whoso dares provoke my ange
    With one blow he dies.”
  “What this dish of steel, which thou, sir,
    On thine arm dost wield?”
  “Dish, child! ‘Tis nor steel nor dish:
    It is my silver shield!”

  “Mock me not, sir knight, for silver
    Moneys more than one
  I have handled: this is larger
    Than an oven-stone.
  What may be the coat you wear, like
    Iron strong and hard?”
  “‘Tis my steel cuirass: from sword-strokes
    Safely this can guard.”

  “Were the roes thus clad in harness,
    Hard to kill were they!
  Tell me, were you born, lord knight, just
    As you are to-day?”
  Thereupon the old knight, laughing,
    Shook his sides with glee.
  “Then what wizard clad you thus, if
    So it might not be?”

  “He alone the right who claimeth.”
    “Who, then, has the right?”
  “Me my lord the Count of Quimper
    In my armor dight.
  Now, boy, answer in thy turn: hath
    One passed by this way
  Like to me?”—“‘Tis even so, as
    Thou, my lord, dost say.”


II.

  The child ran home in eager haste;
    Leapt on his mother’s knee.
  ‘Ma Mammik, ah! you do not know”
    (He said, with boyish glee):
  “You cannot guess what I have seen,
    What I have seen to-day!
  My lord S. Michael in the church
    Is not so grand, so gay.

  “A man so bright, so beautiful,
    I ne’er before have seen.”
  “Nay, son, more fair than angels are
    No man hath ever been.”
  “Pardon me, mother, but you err:
    These knights (men call them so)
  Are fairer. I would be as they,
    And after them will go.”

  Then thrice the mother, at these words,
    Fell fainting to the ground:
  While Morvan to the stable went,
    Nor once his head turned round.
  A wretched beast he found therein,
    Then mounted, and away;
  Bidding farewell to none, he sped,
    He sped without delay.

  After the noble knight went he,
    Urging his steed forlorn
  T’wards Quimper, from the manor old,
    The home where he was born.


PART II.

THE RETURN.

  Marvelled much Sir Morvan Lez-Breiz,
    Now a knight renowned;
  Famous, among warriors famous
    All the country round,—
  Marvelled much Sir Morvan Lez-Breiz,
    When, in ten years’ time,
  To his home once more returning,
    In his manhood’s prime,

  Brambles he beheld, and nettles,
    Springing wild and free
  In the court and on the threshold,
    Desolate to see.
  Thickly clung the clustering ivy
    O’er the ruined wall,
  And a poor, blind, aged woman
    Answered to his call.

  “Canst thou, worthy grandame, give me
    Lodging for the night?”
  “Willingly, my lord, but ‘twill be
    Neither fair nor bright.
  Ever since the child went wandering,
    Wandering far away,
  Young and headstrong, has the manor
    Fallen to decay.”

  Scarcely had she finished speaking,
    When a damsel fair,
  When a damsel fair came slowly
    Down the broken stair.
  And she sadly gazed upon him,
    Through her tears she gazed:
  “Wherefore, maiden, art thou weeping?”
    Lez-Breiz asked, amazed.

  “Why, my lord knight, I am weeping
    Freely will I say:
  Of your age I have a brother.
    Long since gone away.
  Forth he went to be a warrior,
    Ten long years ago;
  So, whene’er a knight I see, my
    Heart is full of woe.

  “Therefore ever am I weeping
    When a knight I see,
  For I think, my little brother,
    Where, ah! where is he?”
  “Had you, then, one only brother,
    Gentle maiden? say:
  And your mother? prithee tell me
    Have you none, I pray?”

  “Have I yet another brother
    In the world? Ah! no;
  But and if he be in heaven,
    That I do not know.
  Thither passed away my mother,
    Who for sorrow died
  When he left us. I have now my
    Nurse, and none beside.

  “There, beyond the door, my mother’s
    Bed you still may see:
  And her arm-chair by the hearth-stone,
    Where ‘twas wont to be.
  Her blest cross I wear—the only
    Comfort left to me.”

  Groaned so deeply Seigneur Lez-Breiz
    That the maiden said,
  “You, lord knight, have lost a mother?
    Your heart, too, has bled?”
  “Lost my mother have I truly:
    Her myself I slew!”
  “In the name of heaven, then, sir,
    Who and what are you?”

  “I am Morvan, son of Konan:
    Lez-Breiz named am I,
  Sister mine.” The young girl trembled
    As one like to die.
  Both his arms the brother folded
    Round his sister dear,
  And the maiden fondly kissed him,
    Shedding many a tear.

  “Long, my brother, have we lost thee,
    Since God let thee go;
  He again to me has led thee,
    Having willed it so.
  Blest my brother, blest be he,
    Who has pity had on me!”


PART III.

I.

  With Lez-Breiz be the victory!
    Lez-Breiz the Breton knight
  Goes forth with Lorgnez to engage
    In single-handed fight.
  Heav’n grant that in the combat fierce
    Victorious he may be,
  And send good news to gladden all
    The folk of Brittany.

  Said Lez-Breiz to his young esquire,
    “Awake, my page; arise:
  Furbish my helm, my sword, my shield
    And lance, in heedful wise.
  To crimson them with Frankish blood
    Forth am I fain to go;
  By help of heaven and my two arms,
    The Franks to leap I’ll show.”

  “Oh! bid me also, my good lord,
    Go with you, I implore.”
  “Ah! what would thy poor mother say,
    Shouldst thou return no more?
  If on the ground thy blood should flow,
    Who then would be her stay?”
  “Oh! if you love me, my good lord,
    You will not say me nay.

  “But let me follow in the fight;
    The Franks I do not fear:
  My heart is firm; my steel is sharp
    And true, my master dear.
  And let who list lay blame on me,
    Where you go, there go I;
  And where you fight, there I will fight,
    Whether I live or die.”


II.

  Forth to the combat Lez-Breiz went,
    With his young page, till he
  Came to S. Anne of Armor, when
    Into the church went he.
  “O blesséd lady, sweet S. Anne,
    In youth to thee I came
  To pay my homage, and to crave
    The shelter of thy name.

  “I had not reached my twenty years,
    Yet twenty fights had seen,
  And every one, O lady blest,
    Won by thine aid had been.
  If to my own land yet again
    It may be granted me
  Safe to return, I give this gift,
    Mother S. Anne, to thee:

  “With cord of wax encompassed thrice
    These very walls shall be;
  Thrice round the churchyard and the church,
    When I my home shall see.
  And I will offer thee, S. Anne,
    A goodly banner fair
  Of velvet and white satin wrought,
    And staff of ivory rare.

  “And likewise seven silver bells
    Shall in the belfry swing,
  Which merrily above thy head
    By night and day shall ring.
  And for thy holy-water stoup,
    Thrice on my knees I’ll go,
  Water to fetch from where the stream
    Doth clearest, purest flow.”

  “Go, Lez-Breiz, fearless to the fight,
    I will be with thee, noble knight.”


III.

  Hear ye? ‘Tis Lez-Breiz who arrives:
    He comes, ye need not doubt,
  With goodly number in his rear
    Of steel-clad warriors stout.
  Hold! on a small white ass he rides,
    Bridled with hempen cord;
  And all his suite one little page
    Who followeth his lord!
  And yet he is a mighty man
    As any that draw sword.

  Now, when the squire of Lez-Breiz saw
    Them onward nearer ride,
  He closer pressed and closer to
    The knight his master’s side.
  “See you, my lord? ‘Tis Lorgnez comes,
    And with him warriors ten,
  And ten surround him as he rides,
    Followed again by ten.

  “Round by the chestnut woods they come:
    Alas, my master dear,
  Against such fearful odds to fight
    Will cost us much, I fear.”
  “When once they taste my polished steel,
    Then thou fell soon shalt see,
  Though now they number thirty men,
    How many left will be.

  “Strike against mine thy sword, my page,
  Then march we forward, and engage.”


IV.

  “Ha! Chevalier Lez-Breiz: good-day to thee.”
  “Ha! Chevalier Lorgnez: the same from me.”

  “Is it alone thou comest to the fight?”
  “Nay, sooth, I am not come alone, sir knight:
  S. Anne herself is with me, lady bright.”

  “I from the king come forth to-day:
  He bids me take thy life away.”

  “Thy king I scorn, as I scorn thee,
  Thy sword, and all thine armed menie:
  Return ‘mid womankind to be,
  And wear gilt garments gallantly
  At Paris; and begone from me!

  “Sir Lez-Breiz, say to me, I pray,
  In what wood saw you first the day?
  The meanest serf that eats my bread
  Shall make your helm leap off your head.”

  Then Lez-Breiz swift his good sword drew:
  “The son shall make full well to rue
  Him who the father never knew.”


V.

  In friendly wise the hermit spake,
    As at his door he stood—
  To the young page of Lez-Breiz spake
    The hermit of the wood:
  “Thou speed’st apace the forest through,
    Thine armor dashed with blood:
  Come to my hermitage, my child,
    Come in for rest and food;
  Come in and wash thy stains away.”
    Thus spake that hermit good.

  “Nay, father, this is not the time
    For me to eat or rest:
  A fountain in all haste I seek
    At my poor lord’s behest.
  So sorely is my master spent
    With most unequal strife
  That well it is from this affray
    That he escapes with life.

  “Lie thirteen knights, Sir Lorgnez first,
    Beneath him, slain to-day;
  And I as many overcame:
    The rest all ran away.”


VI.

  Breton at heart he had not been
    Who had not laughed to see
  The green grass red with Frankish blood,
    As red as it could be;
  While near the slain sate Lord Lez-Breiz,
    Resting him wearily.

  And he had been no Christian, sure
    Who wept not to behold
  The tears from Lez-Breiz’ eyes that fell,
    And dropped upon the mould,
  All in the church of good S. Anne,
    Where, on his bended knee,
  Weeping he thanked the patroness
    Of his own Brittany.

  “Mother S. Anne, all thanks to you,
    All thanks to you I give:
  ‘Twas in your might I fought the fight,
    Still, thanks to you, I live.”


VII.

  This combat fierce to keep in mind
    Is sung this goodly song;
  In honor of the brave Lez-Breiz
    May Bretons sing it long!
  Sing it in chorus everywhere,
    And all men in the gladness share.


PART IV.

THE MOOR OF THE KING.

  Said to his lords the Frankish king,
    The Frankish king one day:
  “True homage he will render who
    For me shall Lez-Breiz slay.
  Naught doth he but my warriors kill,
    And aye, with all his might,
  My power withstands, nor ceaseth he
    Against me still to fight.”

  Now, when the king’s Moor heard these words,
    Before the king spake he:
  “True homage have I rendered oft
    And pledge of loyalty;
  But since another pledge you crave
    And warranty, O sire,
  The knight Lez-Breiz shall furnish me
    With that which you desire.
  And if to-morrow I should fail
    Sir Lez-Breiz’ head to bring,
  With pleasure offer I mine own
    Unto my lord the king.”

  Now, scarcely had the morrow dawned,
    When swift the young squire ran
  To find his master. “O my lord!’
    (The trembling page began,)
  “The giant Moor defiance flings
    Against my lord to-day.”
  “Defiance? be it so: I’ll answer
    Him as best I may.”

  “Ah! my dear lord, then know you not
    He fights with demon charms?”
  “He doth? Then Heaven’s aid be ours,
    And blessing on our arms.
  Haste thee, equip my good black steed,
    Whilst I my armor don.”
  “Pardon, my lord, your charger black
    You will not fight upon.

  “Within the royal stables stand
    Three steeds, and from the three
  One must you choose: pray listen to
    A secret thing from me.
  I learnt it from an ancient clerk,
    Right holy, sooth, was he,
  A man of good and saintly ways,
    If any such there be.

  “Do not thou take the charger white,
    Nor yet take thou the bay,
  But the black steed between them both
    Take forth and lead away;
  For that the king’s own Moor himself
    Hath tamed with his own hand:
  Trust me, and mount it when you go
    The giant to withstand.

  “And when into the royal hall
    The Moor shall enter, he
  Will throw his mantle on the ground:
    Let yours suspended be:
  If under his your garment lay,
    Doubled his might would be.

  When the black giant draws anear,
    Then fail not with your lance
  To make the sign of holy cross,
    Or ever he advance.
  And when he rushes full of rage
    And fury on my lord,
  Receive him on its point, the lance
    Will break not, trust my word.
  By aid of heaven and your two arms,
  Naught will avail his paynim charms.”

  By aid of Heaven and his two arms,
    The trusty lance brake not
  When they against each other rode
    In fierce encounter hot:
  When in the hall they dashed amain
    To onset, breast to breast,
  Steel against steel, as lightning swift,
    With lances firm in rest.

  The Frankish king sat on his throne,
    ’Mid lords of high degree,
  To watch the fight. “Hold firm,” he said,
    “Black Raven of the Sea!
  Courage! hold firm, thou Raven bold,
    And plume this _merle_ for me.”

  Then, as the tempest breaks upon
    The corsair, so the Moor,
  With furious might and giant weight,
    Down upon Lez-Breiz bore;
  His lance in thousand splinters flew,
    And, with one mighty bound,
  Unhorsed by that dread shock, he fell
    And rolled upon the ground.

  And when they found themselves afoot,
    Then each, with all his might,
  Fell on the other furiously
    In close and deadly fight.
  The sword-strokes, falling thick as hail,
    Rang through the palace halls,
  With sounding blows upon the mail
    That shook the very walls.

  At every clashing of their arms
    A thousand sparks leapt out,
  Like red-hot iron from the forge,
    Beaten by armorer stout.
  At last, through one unguarded joint,
    The Breton’s sword made way
  And pierced the giant’s heart. He fell,
    And bled his life away.

  Forthwith, when Morvan Lez-Breiz saw
    His Moorish foe lie dead,
  His foot he placed upon his breast,
    And straight cut off his head.
  He hung it by the grisly beard
    His saddle-bow unto;
  And, for its stains of Moorish blood,
    His sword away he threw.

  Upon his good steed then he sprang,
    He sprang without delay,
  And, followed by his page, went forth
    Upon his homeward way.
  When home, he hung aloft,
    Upon his gateway high,
  The hideous head with grinning teeth
    In sight of passers-by.

  And now the warriors said, Behold!
    A mighty man indeed
  Is Lez-Breiz, stay of Brittany
    In every time of need.
  Whereto Lord Lez-Breiz answered straight:
    “I twenty fights have seen,
  And twenty thousand armèd men
    By me have vanquished been;

  “Yet never was I so beset,
    So hardly pressed before,
  Until this last encounter when
    I slew the giant Moor.
  S. Anne, my dearest mother, thou
    Dost wonders work for me,
  Wherefore, ‘twixt Ind and Léguer, I
    A church will build to thee.”


PART V.

THE KING.

  Behold! Sir Lez-Breiz goes to meet
    The king himself to-day.
  Who brings five thousand horsemen brave
    To aid him in the fray.
  But, hark! before he rideth forth,
    A peal of thunder dread
  Rolls through the echoing skies, and breaks
    Above Sir Lez-Breiz’ head.

  His gentle squire lent anxious heed
    That omen ill unto:
  “In heaven’s name, my lord, I pray
  Stay you at home. This opening day
    Augurs not well for you.”

  “What, then, my page? Abide at home?
    Nay, that can never be.
  The order I have given to march,
    And, therefore, march must we.
  And I will march while spark of life
    Remains alight in me,
  Until that king of forest land
    Beneath my heel I see.”

  This hearing, sprang his sister dear
    Up to his bridle-rein.
  “My brother, go not forth, for ne’er
    Wilt thou return again.
  Then wherefore, brother, thus to meet
    Thy death wouldst thou be gone?
  For wert thou slain, I should be left
    Alone, thy only one.

  “The White Horse of the Sea behold
    I see upon the shore;
  A monstrous serpent him around
    Entwineth more and more.
  Behind, his flanks are interlaced
    By two terrific rings;
  Around his body, neck, and legs
    The hideous monster clings.

  “The hapless creature, stifled, scorched,
    On his hind feet uprears,
  Turns back his head, and with his teeth
    The serpent’s throat he tears.
  The monster gaping wide, his tongue—
    His triple tongue—darts forth,
  Fiery and pois’nous, rolls his eyes
    And hisses, mad with wrath.

  “But, ah! his snakelings, venomous brood,
    To aid him swarm around;
  The strife is all unequal: fly
    While thou art safe and sound.”
  “Nay, let the Franks by thousands come;
    From death I do not flee.”
  E’en as he spake, already far,
    Far from his home was he.


PART VI.

THE HERMIT.

I.

  In his cell at midnight sleeping,
    Lay the hermit of Helléan;
  When upon his door three blows fell,
    With a little pause between.

  “Open to me, holy hermit,
    Open unto me thy door;
  Here a place of refuge seeking,
    Let me lie upon thy floor.

  “Icy cold the wind is blowing
    From the bitter Frankish land;
  From the sea it blows, ice-laden:
    Bid me not without to stand.

  “‘Tis the hour when flocks are folded,
    Cattle herded in the stall:
  E’en wild beasts and savage creatures
    Cease to wander, sheltered all.”

  “Who comes thus at midnight, seeking
    Entrance at my lonely door?”
  “One to Brittany, his country,
    Known full well in dangers sore;
  In her day of anguish, _Lez-Breiz,
    Armor’s Help_, the name I bore.”

  “Nay, my door I will not open;
    A seditious one are you,
  Who against the Lord’s anointed
    Oft have earned a rebel’s due.”

  “I seditious? Heaven is witness
    None am I of rebel crew.
  Whoso dares to call me traitor,
    He the slander well shall rue.
  Cursèd be the Frankish people,
    Cursed their king, and traitors, too!

  “Yes; the Franks are coward traitors!
    Else the victory were mine.”
  “Man, beware! nor friend nor foeman
    Curse thou: ‘tis no right of thine.

  “And the king, the Lord’s anointed,
    Least of all be curst by thee.”
  “Say you so? Nay rather, soothly,
    Satan’s own anointed he:
  Brittany by Heaven’s anointed
    Devastated ne’er would be.

  “But the silver of the demon
    Goes the ancient Pol to shoe;[157]
  Yet unshod is Pol, and ever
    Silver is he fain to sue.

  “Come, then, venerable hermit,
    Open unto me thy door.
  But a stone whereon to rest me,
    This I ask, and ask no more.”

  “Nay, I cannot bid thee enter,
    Lest the Franks should work me woe.”[158]
  “Open! or the door itself I
    Down upon thy floor will throw.”

  Hearing this, the ancient hermit
    Sprang from off his lowly bed,
  Lit in haste a torch of resin,
    And forthwith to open sped.

  Opens, but recoils with horror,
    Back recoils with horror dread:
  Lez-Breiz’ spectre slowly enters,
    Bearing in both hands his head.

  Of his eyes the hollow sockets
    Gleam with fierce and fiery light,
  Wildly rolling; pale, the hermit
    Trembles at the fearful sight.

  “Silence! then, old Christian, fear not,
    Since ‘tis highest Heaven’s decree
  That the Franks should take my head off
    For a time: so let it be.

  “Me have they _de_capitated.
    But to thee, behold, ‘tis given
  Forthwith to _re_capitate me:
    Wilt thou do the will of Heaven?”

  “If, in sooth, high Heaven permits me
    To recapitate my lord,
  With good will I do so, proving
    By my very deed my word;
  For right well have you defended
    Bretons by your knightly sword.

  “Thus I place upon your shoulders
    Once again your severed head:
  Be, my son, _re_capitated,
    In the Name all spirits dread.”

  By the power of holy water
    Freely sprinkled him upon,
  Back to very manhood changing
    Lez-Breiz stood—the spectre gone.

  When the spectre thus had vanished,
    Changed to veritable man:
  “With me now you must hard penance
    Do,” the hermit sage began.

  “You a leaden cloak fast soldered
    Round your neck must henceforth wear,
  Wear for seven years, and daily
    Other penance must you bear.

  “Daily, at the hour of noontide,
    Fasting, you must wend your way.
  Up to yonder mountain summit:
    There a little stream doth play.
  From that little mountain streamlet,
    Water you must bear away.”

  “Holy hermit, only say
  What your will, and I obey.”

  When the seven years were ended,
    Bared his heels were to the bone,
  Where the leaden cloak had worn them;
    Long and grey his hair had grown.

  Grey his beard flowed o’er his girdle;
    Any who his form had seen
  Had a hoary oak-tree thought him,
    Which for sev’n years dead had been.
  None who Lez-Breiz met had known him,
    Altered thus in face and mien.

  One there was alone who knew him
    Through the wood a lady bright,
  Through the greenwood swiftly passing,
    Clad in garb of purest white,
  Stayed her steps and wept, beholding
    Lez-Breiz in so piteous plight.

  “Is it thou, my dear son Lez-Breiz?
    Lez-Breiz, is it thou indeed?
  Come, my child, that I may free thee
    From thy burden sore, with speed.

  “Let me with my golden scissors
    Sever this thy heavy chain.
  I thy mother, Anue of Armor,
    Come to end thy lengthened pain.”


II.

  A month and seven years had flown,
    When Lez-Breiz’ faithful squire
  Throughout the land his master sought,
    With love that cannot tire.

  And as he rode by Helléan’s wood,
    He to himself did sigh:
  “Though I have slain his murderer, yet
    My dear lord lost have I.”

  Then to him from the forest came
    A wild and plaintive neigh,
  Whereat his horse, with answering cry,
  Snuffing the wind, his head thrown high,
    Sped, with a bound, away.

  Away they sped the greenwood through,
    Until they reached the spot
  Where the black steed of Lez-Breiz stood,
    But them he heeded not.

  The charger stood the fountain by,
    He neither drank nor fed;
  But with his hoofs he tore the ground,
    With sad and downcast head;
  Then raised it, neighing dismally,
    He wept, so some men said.

  “Tell me, O venerable sire,
    Who to the fountain come,
  Who is it that beneath this mound
    Sleeps in his narrow home?”

  “Lez-Breiz it is who lies at rest,
    Here in this lonely spot.
  Famed will he be through Brittany
    Till Brittany is not.
  He with a shout shall wake one early day,[159]
  And chase the hated Frankish hosts away.”

Of the two warriors mentioned in the poem, the first is unknown except
under the opprobrious epithet of “Lorgnez,” or “the leper.” The “Moor
of the King” appears to have been one of those whom Louis took captive,
after having conquered the city of Barcelona, and retained in his
service. With regard to the avenging of his master’s death by the
esquire, tradition relates that, at the moment when a Frankish warrior
named Cosl struck off the Breton’s head, the esquire of Morvan pierced
his back with a mortal wound. According to Ermold Nigel, a Frankish
monk who accompanied the army of Louis, the head of Morvan was carried
to the monk Witchar, who, when he had washed away the blood and combed
the hair, recognized the features to be those of Lez-Breiz. He also
relates that the body was carried away by the Franks, and that Louis
le Débonnaire thought proper himself to arrange the ceremonies for
its sepulture, doubtless with the intent to guard his tomb from the
rebellious piety of the Bretons. The popular belief declared, as it has
done with regard to other heroes, and in other lands, that from his
unknown grave he should one day awake, and restore to his country the
independence of which his death had deprived her. Seven years after the
death of Morvan and the consequent subjugation of Brittany, Guiomarc’h,
another viscount of Leon, of the race of Lez-Breiz, in 818 again roused
his country to arms, and, after a vigorous struggle, succeeded in
throwing off the foreign domination so hateful to his countrymen.

Nomenöe, one of the most astute as well as determined of the Breton
kings, after deceiving Charles le Chauve for some time by a feigned
submission, suddenly threw off the mask, drove the Franks beyond the
Oust and Vilaine, seized the cities of Nantes and Rennes—which have
ever since formed a part of Brittany—and delivered his countrymen from
the tribute which they had been compelled to pay to the French king. M.
Augustin Thierry considers the following description of the event which
occasioned the deliverance of Brittany to be “a poem of remarkable
beauty, full of allusions to manners of a remote epoch, ... and a
vividly symbolical picture of the prolonged inaction and the sudden
awakening of the patriot prince when he judged the right moment to have
come.”

The fierce exultation of the poet when the head of the Intendant
is swept off to complete the lacking weight, recalls the words of
Lez-Breiz not many years before: “Can I but see this Frankish king, he
shall have what he asks. I will pay tribute with my sword!”

  “Si fortuna daret possim quo cernere regem,
  Proque tributali hæc ferrea dona dedissem.”[160]


THE TRIBUTE OF NOMENÖE.

(DROUK-KINNIG NEUMENOIOU), A.D. 841.

  Cut is the gold-herb.[161] Lo, the misty rain
  Forthwith in steam-like clouds drives o’er the plain.

Argad! To war!


I.

  Spake the great chief: “From the heights of the mountains of Arez,
  Mildew and mist for the space of three weeks have passed o’er us,
  Mildew and mist from the land that lies over the mountains:

  “Still from the land of the Franks, more and more, thickly driving,
  So that in no wise my eyes can behold him returning,
  Karo, my son, for whose coming from thence I am watching.”

  “Tell me, good merchant, who travellest all the land over,
  Hast thou no tidings to tell me of him, my son Karo?”
  “May be so, Father of Arez, but where and what does he?”

  “He, wise of head, strong of heart, with the chariots departed,
  Drawn by three horses abreast, into Rennes with the tribute,
  Bearing among them the toll in full weight of the Bretons.”

  “Chief, if your son bore the tribute, in vain you expect him:
  Each hundred pounds’ weight of silver was found to be lacking,
  Lacking by three when they weighed it: whereon the Intendant

  “Cried out, ‘O vassal, thy head shall make up the scant measure!’
  Straight, with his sword swept his head off, and then, by the long
      hair
  Taking it up, he has thrown it down into the balance.”

  Hearing these tidings, the aged chief fell, nigh to swooning,
  Heavily fell on the rock, with his long white hair hiding,
  Hiding his face, groaning, “Karo, my son! my son Karo!”


II.

  The aged chief is journeying with all his kith and kin,
  Till he to Nomenöe’s castle strong the way doth win.
  “Say, porter at the castle gate, your lord, is he at home?”
  “Or be it so, or be it not, to him may no harm come!”

  E’en as he spake, his lord came riding through the portal strong,
  Returning from the chase, his fierce hounds scouring swift along;
  His bow he carried in his hand, and o’er his shoulder slung
  A wild boar of the forest, huge, all dead and bleeding, hung.

  “Good-day to you, brave mountaineers, and father, first to thee.
  What tidings bring you, or what is it you would ask of me?”
  “We come to learn if Justice lives—if God in heaven there be:
  We come to learn if still there is a chief in Brittany.”

  “Sure, I believe that God in heaven ever dwells on high;
  And, so far as I can be, chief of Brittany am I.”
  “Who _will_ be, _can_; and he who can will drive the Franks away,
  Will chase the Franks, defend the land, vengeance on vengeance pay.

  “My son and me he will avenge: the living and the dead:
  Karo, my child, from whom the Franks have stricken off his head.
  The excommunicated Franks, who pity know nor truth,
  Have slain him in the early flower and beauty of his youth.

  “His head, so fair with golden hair, they threw to make the weight,
  They threw it in the balance, and have left me desolate.”
  Then thick and fast the tears fell from the father’s aged eyes,
  And glittered down his long and silvery beard in piteous wise;
  They sparkled like the morning dew upon the aspen white,
  When earliest sunbeams wake them into gems of quiv’ring light.

  When Nomenöe that beheld, a fearful oath he swore:
  “By this boar’s head, and by the dart wherewith I pierced the boar,
  I swear my country to avenge ere many hours be o’er:
  Nor will I wash away the blood from thee, my crimsoned hand,
  Till I have washed the bleeding wounds of thee, my injured land.”


III.

  The thing which Nomenöe did no chief hath done before:
  With sacks to fill with pebble-stones he went down to the shore:
  Pebbles and flints for tribute to the bald-head Frankish king:
  No chief but only Nomenöe e’er hath done this thing.

  He shod his horse with silver shoes, turned backwards every one,
  And he himself to pay the tribute forth to Rennes is gone,
  Prince that he is: no chief but he did ever this before,
  And never chief will do the like again for evermore.

  “Ho, warden! open wide your gates! wide open let them be,
  That I may enter into Rennes as it beseemeth me.
  Hither come I, Lord Nomenöe, bringing store of gold:
  My chariots all are filled therewith as full as they can hold.”

  “Descend, O chief! my lord, descend, and enter in, I pray;
  Enter the castle, and command your chariots here to stay,
  And in the hands of your esquires your white steed leave below,
  While you ascend to supper; but you first would wash, I trow:
  Hark! even now to horn the water[162] do the cornets blow.”

  “All in good time, my lord, I wash: be first the tribute weighed.”
  The first sack brought they, well tied up, the weight in full it made.
  The second sack was eke the same, and then the third they threw
  Into the scales. Oh! oh! there lacks the weight that here is due!

  When the Intendant that beheld, quick stretched he forth his hands
  All eagerly upon the sack, to loose the knotted bands.
  “Hold! Sir Intendant, I will cut the fastening with my sword.”
  And swift it from the scabbard leapt ere he had said the word.

  Upon the crouching Frank it fell, it fell with might and main,
  Clean from his shoulders swept his head, and cut the balance chain.
  Then rolled the head the scales into, and weighed the balance down.
  “Stop the assassin—stop!” they cried all wildly through the town.

  He flies! he flies! The torches bring; haste! follow him with speed!
  “Ha! bring your links to light my way—the night is dark indeed.
  The night is dark, the road is ice: ‘twill spoil your gilded shoes
  Of leather blue so fair bedecked, and ye your toil shall lose;
  For ne’er again your scales of gold shall you, for evermore,
  Use to weigh flints from Brittany and pebbles from her shore.”




KOCHE, KING OF PITT.


KOCHE, the subject of this memoir, was born on the remote island of
Chatham, in the Southern Pacific Ocean. Forced by a cruel servitude to
fly from his native island, he passed many years in absolute solitude
on the little uninhabited island of Pitt, lying some miles distant
from Chatham. Here he reigned undisputed master of the land and all it
contained: whence the title of “King of Pitt” among those who knew him.
His account of his native island and its inhabitants, together with his
own adventures, show him to have been a man of an undaunted spirit,
which no adverse fortune could bend, much less break; and had he been
known to Carlyle, would have been placed by him among his heroes for
worship and imitation; but, unluckily, Carlyle never heard of him.

It is well, in order to understand the life and adventures of Koche,
“King of Pitt,” to relate the history of the country and people from
which he sprang, before going into the details of his career.

Ware-kauri, one of the South Sea islands, called by the English,
Chatham, lies several hundred miles to the eastward of New Zealand. Its
history up to the year 1791 rests upon tradition, as prior to that date
its inhabitants had not acquired, among their many accomplishments, the
art of letters. Koche himself, from whose mouth this narrative has been
taken, says that his people were from the earliest period inclined to
peaceful pursuits, and subsisted chiefly upon fish and seal; that they
enjoyed a democracy, and conducted their simple affairs by a council of
notable men. He did not hesitate, however, to acknowledge that when at
long intervals, covering a generation, a high and prolonged west wind
drove a canoe-load of New Zealanders upon their shores, they forthwith
and without ceremony slew them. But he justified this departure from
their ordinary habits on the ground of public policy; as, had they
received them in charity, and pursued the peaceful tenor of their way,
their involuntary visitors would have ended by slaying and, moreover,
devouring them; the first party of this sort who landed on the island
having made it distinctly understood that men and women were their
favorite articles of diet. But among themselves, the taking of life,
he said, was unknown; and why should it not be, since they were not
fond of men, as some people were, and never suffered for want of food;
and on the sea-shore they found plenty of seal and birds, and, in the
marshes and lakes of the interior, fish and fowl in abundance? No! the
race of the Tuïti, his forefathers, were no man-eaters; they had become
“missionaries,” or Christian, in the days of his father, and remained
so ever since, such of them as had not been devoured or driven to death
by the hated Zealander—at whose name his black eye flashed fire—who
had made a slave-pen and shambles of his once happy island.

Their tradition goes back to a first pair, man and woman, who appeared
on the Isle of Rangi-haute, a score of miles to the southeast, called
by the English, Pitt. It is a solitary volcanic mountain, lifting its
truncated summit above the waters of the South Sea, whose waves have
beaten in vain for untold centuries upon its rock-bound base. How the
first pair came is unknown; whether brought by the Spirit from above,
or created on the mountain, none could tell; the time was remote, and
tradition was confused in going back to the origin of the human race,
to the beginning of the world; the memory of man did not run beyond the
apparition on Rangi-haute.

But the history of the couple and of their children is handed down in
the following legend: They lived upon the top of the mountain, from
whence they caught and worshipped the first ray of the morning sun,
and bowed in adoration to that luminary as he sank beneath the western
wave. The ground was held sacred; and their descendants in after-days
consecrated like spots, devoted alone to prayer and propitiation,
on which no article of dress even could be placed, and from the
desecration of one of which arose the destruction of the race.

Trees clothed the slopes of the mountain, and everywhere among them,
planted by the beneficent hand of the Creator, rose the karaka
(bread-fruit) laden with golden fruit—the sole food of man, and
source of perpetual youth and health. In after-days, it turned acrid,
and fatal to life, until the pitying Creator taught his children, by
immersion in boiling water and a running stream, to restore it in a
measure to its pristine state.

One day, a youth wandered down to the sea-shore among the birds that
lined the rocks, and, seating himself near where an eagle was perched
pluming his wing, they fell into conversation. The eagle complained
that they could no longer soar into the high air, by reason of a
spell cast over his tribe he believed by the Tuïti; his progenitors,
he said, had sailed over the mountain at will, and preyed upon the
living mako-mako, or honey-eater and the tuïs, or mocking-bird; while
he could fly only in the heavy air along the beach, and was compelled
to consort with sea-fowl, who held him in contempt; and to feed on
garbage. The youth answered that the blood of the honey-eater and
the mocking-bird had cried to the Creator, and brought down upon the
eagle his banishment. The Tuïti warred neither with the Maker nor his
children; they fed on fruit, and shed no blood: the eagle had banished
himself. The king of birds, avoiding the issue, replied that in the
great island to the northwest, which his friend had doubtless seen from
the mountain, the woods were filled with beautiful birds, and fruit of
every color, hanging over the dark, transparent waters of many lakes,
while here—what a poor place! One solitary mountain, no lakes, and no
fruit, save the karaka, which, sweet as it was, was bitter compared
with the fruit which grew in the west. There was no man upon it to rule
the great island. It called aloud for a master—a son of Tuïti—to go
over. The youth listened to the tempter, and ambition elated his soul;
he arose from the rock, and asked to be shown the path that led over
the water. The eagle, looking at him askance, promised him wings to
fly over, provided he would first render an easy service by taking him
to the top of the mountain. On hearing this, the youth cast himself
upon his face on the sand, trembling; where he lay for hours torn by
the conflict between the good spirit of obedience, and the evil one of
ambition, as they warred within him for the mastery. As the sun sank,
his guardian angel fled discomfited, and he rose to his feet with a
shudder, and, taking the eagle on his wrist, ascended the mountain, and
in the dark cast him loose in the forbidden field. All night long the
flutter and death-cry of birds smote upon his ear, and, when morning
dawned, the song of the mako was mute, and the tuïs had ceased to mock.

The people assembled in alarm. A child to whom its mother had given
fruit fell dead; they gathered about its body in terror. The eagle
hovered over them, and uttered his war-cry. The conscience-striken
youth confessed. The day was passed in penitence and sorrow about the
body of the child in the lap of its wailing mother. Hunger assailed
them; they burned the remains on a funeral-pyre built of the fragrant
kalamu, and, descending the mountain, fed upon the root of the fern,
and drank from the living spring.

The youth wandered by the shore, alone, stung with remorse, and,
meeting the eagle, was taught by him to construct the korari, the model
of all canoes, made in the likeness of a sledge, with a wicker-work of
tough creepers, having a false bottom filled with buoyant kelp. He put
to sea with his family, and landed on Ware-kauri, which he found, as
the eagle had said, uninhabited by man, a continent in size compared to
Rangi-haute; with undulating, fertile plains to the south, and lofty
mountains in the north, sparkling with lakes of dark transparent water,
and vocal with the song and bright with the plumage of birds. Filled
with new joy, he sent back tidings to his kinsmen, and was followed by
successive emigrations, until Rangi-haute was deserted save by a timid
few who feared the sea. Thus came about the settlement of Ware-kauri:
and to this extent is the tradition of the people.

From this time on they had lived in single families, or in companies of
two or three, moving from place to place as food became less plentiful,
or as fancy or a love of change dictated; being careful, in pitching
their new and fragile habitations, not to crowd upon established
groups. In the sealing season, the families of the interior came down
to the coast, and laid in from the rocks and reefs a supply of meat and
skins; and when fishing on the shore became dull, or the birds wild
with much hunting, the people of the sea bundled up their effects, and
moved to the interior lakes, chiefly to the great Tewanga, filled with
fish, and covered with wild fowl.

They dressed in cloaks of sealskin. Their only weapon of offence or
defence was a club, seldom used except in killing a seal. Tattooing
was unknown. No ornaments were in use. The teeth of deceased relatives
were burned with their bodies, not worn about the neck and wrist, as in
New Zealand, where they commit the absurdity of placing the departed
in a sitting posture in wooden boxes, after abstracting their teeth to
deck the survivors, in the name of religion. The Tuïti burned their
dead to avoid the fearful idea of prolonged decay. Man springs from
the earth as the flower springs: they return him to his mother, as the
fall fires, sweeping over the plain, return the flower; she drinks in
with the rain the ashes of her children, man and flower, and sends them
forth again after a season of repose to reign over and to beautify the
land. The songs of the women were plaintive and sweet, rivalling those
of the honey-eater, the mako-mako, who sang of love, and of the tuïs,
or mocking-bird, that mimicked from every tree and bush, and filled the
island with its false but beautiful notes.

Thus had lived the race in peace and plenty for centuries beyond their
simple means of computation, and thus were living, fearing no evil
from without, save the landing of a stray storm-driven canoe from
Zealand, when, towards the end of the last century, the sloop-of-war
_Discovery_ and its armed tender _Chatham_, commanded by Vancouver,
made a voyage of discovery around the world, by command of his majesty.
The _Chatham_, Captain William Henry Broughton, separated in a storm
from her consort, discovered the island on Nov. 29, 1791, and took
possession of it with the customary ceremonies, in the name of his
majesty, as first discoverer.

Broughton, as he approached the coast, saw a continued white sandbeach
interspersed with cliffs of reddish clay, and mixed with black rocks.
The country appeared very pleasant, with clearings here and there,
and smoke arising above the trees. With his glass he perceived some
people hauling up a canoe, and proceeded to the shore in a cutter. The
natives, seated on the beach, invited the party to land, and approached
and saluted them by meeting noses; and with great noise entered into
an animated but unintelligible conversation by signs, gestures, and
speech. They were a cheerful race, the conversation of the English
frequently exciting them to bursts of laughter. The young wore feathers
in their hair, and a few among them a necklace of mother-of-pearl. All
were cleanly and neatly dressed. The woods, which grew in a luxuriant
manner, afforded delightful shade, free of low limbs and underbrush,
and in many places were formed into arbors by bending and interlacing
the branches when young. The soil was rich, and the forests and beach
alive with birds of various species, which appeared as though never
molested.

The surprise of the islanders, their exclamations, and admiration on
beholding the strangers, could hardly be imagined. They pointed to the
sun and then to Broughton, and inquired if he came from thence. In
answer he gave them a dead bird, pointed out the cause of its death,
fired his gun, and advanced upon them. All fled to the wood excepting
one man, who stood his ground and offered battle. War was proclaimed.
The hero was reinforced, and the sailors fell back to the beach,
followed by fourteen men, armed with spears or driftwood picked up
as they advanced. “When abreast of the boat,” says Broughton, “they
became clamorous, talked loud to each other, and surrounded us. A young
man strutted towards me in a menacing attitude, distorted his person,
turned up his eyes, and made hideous faces and fierce gestures. As the
boat came in, they began the attack. We fired. Johnson’s musket was
knocked from his hand by a club. Our men were forced into the water,
when the boat’s crew opened upon them and they fled, save one who
fell on the beach with a ball through his breast. As we pushed off, a
man came out of the woods, sat down by the deceased, and in a dismal
howl uttered his lamentation.” He explains that in making the boast
which brought on hostilities he merely wished to show the natives the
superior effect of his firearms. This may be so, or it may be that
in the laborious process of confirming his majesty’s title to the
island, and in order to make assurance doubly sure, he had emptied more
bottles to his majesty’s health than was good for him, and had fired to
astonish the natives. Be this as it may, it was deeply to be regretted
that the answer to a question indicating such deep respect should
have been a warlike demonstration. But the Saxon knows but one way to
colonize, and that leads the aborigines “into the blind cave of eternal
night.”

The father of Koche told him that as the ship was leaving the shore the
atmosphere became dark, sultry, and gloomy, and thunder and lightning
descended the mountain and pursued the retreating strangers into the
sea. Meantime, the dead man lay on the white beach with a bullet
through his heart. Civilization had paid the Tuïti its first visit.

A council was held, and the fact that the slain was not carried off was
considered proof that “the children of the sun” were not cannibals, and
by some doubts were expressed as to their intent in landing. It was
concluded, in the event of their return, to meet them with an emblem
of peace. Accordingly, when in after years a sealer entered the bay of
Waitangi and its boat touched the sands, the natives laid down their
spears and clubs, a man advanced and placed one end of a grass plant
in the hands of the captain, and, holding on to the other, made him a
speech of welcome, threw over him his own cloak, and thus established
a firm and lasting peace; and from thenceforward the fishermen who
frequented the coast found them hospitable, cheerful friends, and
willing assistants in their labor, and “love between them flourished
like the palm.”

On the quarter-deck of an American vessel traversing the Pacific
Ocean, and chiefly at night, Koche related the sorrows of his race,
the private and public wrongs that had reduced the Tuïti to a handful
of slaves. Of his own mistreatment he made little account, relating
his personal oppression in a spirit of fun and bravado, relieved
occasionally by a flash of hate. In calm weather his broken narrative
ran tersely, and was marked by humor and a lack of strong feeling; but
when the storm-spirit arose, and washed the lower deck and enveloped
the upper in spray, his voice grew hoarse, his eye flashed, and his
white teeth from time to time came together with a clash that made the
blood tingle.

He said that one summer, about eighteen years before, a vessel in
search of seal anchored in the small oval bay of Pohaute, overlooked
by the Maunga Wakai Pai, a volcanic pyramid, the loftiest on the
island, at the base of which he lived. With his family and friends,
he went down to greet the new-comers, when, to the surprise of every
one, there landed among the white men a New Zealand chief armed to the
teeth. His hair, carefully combed and oiled, was tied up on the crown
of his head, and surrounded by a fillet of white feathers, and from
his ears protruded bunches of soft down. Evidently a man of power,
accustomed to command, he inspired a mysterious dread, and would have
been slain but for the protection he was under. The future darkened
as he walked the beach, questioning the people on their politics and
religion, manners and customs; and it was long remembered that he
highly commended the veneration they entertained for sacred places, and
walked off musing when in answer to his inquiry one was pointed out. It
was Mate-oro, chief of the Nga-te Motunga, who had lately been defeated
in battle by the Waï Kato, and driven with his tribe from the valley
of the Komimi to the coast of New Zealand, from whence he had embarked
for Ware-kauri, and appeared among the simple inhabitants as Satan in
Paradise—the forerunner of troops of fiends.

A red bluff beetled over the bay—a conglomerate of particles of
colored clay, cemented by a carbonate of lime, embedded with dark
shining nodules of iron, and traversed by dikes of basaltic lava.
Its summit was sacred. One morning before sunrise, a native ascended
to offer his devotions, and was horror-struck on beholding in the
holy field an iron pot. He sped down to communicate the startling
intelligence, and returned with a party of thirteen to verify the
reported sacrilege. Koche, who was of the number, threw off his cloak,
tore up a fragment of rock, and dashed the profane utensil to pieces.
A party of sailors, with a couple of bull-dogs, guided by Mate-oro,
pursued and overtook them. He shot dead one who turned and attempted
an explanation; the remaining twelve were bound and hung by the feet
from a tree, head downward, until nearly dead. The chief returned to
New Zealand, assembled his people, represented the island as fertile
and full of unarmed slaves, and recommended its subjugation. The brig
_Lord Rodney_, taking her pay in pigs, potatoes, and flax (and flame,
later on!), in two trips landed the tribe, numbering eight hundred,
on the fated isle. The natives offered no resistance to their fierce
invaders armed with firelocks, and were duly parcelled out among their
conquerors, and condemned to hard labor for life. No idea of moderation
in the amount exacted was entertained. In a short time, they furnished
thirty vessels annually with supplies. But the race began rapidly to
run out, with bent backs and paralytic limbs. Skulls on the beach,
pierced by musket balls or battered by clubs, told a tale to visitors
their tyrants could not deny. Valuable as was their labor, in drunken
orgies they were slain for food.

Once cheerful, full of mirth and laughter, they became morose and
taciturn. Koche, with many others, persistently refused to work; some
died under, others yielded to, the lash; and he, who had been dragged
by a rope to the field, and beaten in vain, and would neither yield
nor give up the ghost, was taken by the chief to his house to break
in. He continued moody, and maintained his independence so far as to
execute only such commissions as pleased him, frequently courting death
by mutely and stubbornly refusing to obey orders. Mate-oro seemed
to respect his attitude to some extent, and employed him to supply
his table with sea-fish, giving him a canoe furnished with nets and
lines for the purpose. The struggle between them now ceased, for this
occupation gave Koche solitude and freedom when afloat, and opportunity
to muse over the condition of himself and people. He soon came to
the conclusion that it was useless to attempt an insurrection, the
population being unarmed, dispirited, and under an iron subjugation.
But for his single self, he was resolved on resistance to the last,
and, as his boat tossed on the wave, he brooded over many schemes for
the destruction of his would-be master. A personal conflict was most
in accordance with his disposition, and many a time he was tempted,
unarmed as he was, to close in a death-struggle, out of which,
doubtless, he would have come victorious, if uninterrupted; for though
but little above the middle height, he was broad and deep-chested,
with sinews of iron, and capable of immense exertion; and, above all,
was animated by a spirit that would have revelled in the fight. But
followed as the chief was, fair play was not to be looked for, and he
reluctantly abandoned his favored purpose. His thoughts often wandered
to the cradle of his race, now uninhabited, to which he had made a
visit with his father in youth, where he felt assured he would find
a harbor of refuge, if Mate-oro could be first despatched. Whilst
in the midst of such reflections one afternoon, he drew up from the
ocean a fish seldom taken—the mo-eeka, pleasant to the taste, but
a virulent poison, a small portion of which when eaten producing a
deathly sickness, and a full meal, death. His massive face beamed with
satisfaction, and his dark eye glistened as he unhooked and dropped
it into the boat, contrary to the custom, which was to kill and throw
it back into the sea. On landing, he placed his dangerous prize in a
small salt-water pool near the beach, into which, as he caught them,
he placed others, until a large mess was collected. This he brought
home one night when the wind blew from the northwest, and persuaded
the cook to serve up for the morning meal. Directing her to throw the
offal to the wood-hogs, he disappeared, and soon after midnight reached
the east coast, seized a canoe, and put to sea. The cook, who had her
more immediate grudge to gratify, regaled the favorite dogs with the
heads and entrails; and this deviation from orders frustrated the
amiable purpose of her co-conspirator. The howls of his four-footed
companions in the night, followed by their death in the morning, told
the suspicious Indian a tale of poison, which a visit to the kitchen
confirmed. A portion of the breakfast thrown to a stray dog promptly
finished him.

Koche was sought for high and low, the island ransacked in vain; no
trace of him was found, and the conclusion was arrived at that he
had thrown himself into the sea. The chief had taken up a hatchet to
kill his cook, but she sullenly asserted she had never seen a mo-eeka
before, and was believed and spared, partly because the fish was rare
and seldom brought to land when taken, and partly because her good
cooking tickled his palate.

Prior to this attempt to treat him to the mo-eeka, Mate-oro had swept
the Isle of Rangi-haute of its inhabitants. The number of captives had
proved much smaller than had been anticipated, amounting in all to ten
families, and barely repaid the trouble and risk of the voyage.

When Koche, on the day following the episode of the poison-fish—the
last, as he flattered himself, of Mate-oro—ascended the mountain of
Pitt, and stood upon a throne—

  “He was monarch of all he surveyed,
    His rights there were none to dispute:
  From the centre all round to the sea,
    He was lord of the fowl and the brute.”

His first care was to make a royal progress over his dominion, in which
he fully expected to reign to the termination of his life. He felt
no fear of invasion, having traversed Ware-kauri, and effected his
embarkation unseen. No motive existed sufficiently strong to induce
one, in the face of the difficulties of a return trip against the wind,
unless it might be revenge on the part of Mate-oro, who was dead, and
had ceased to trouble him. Of domestic foes he had none. The Norway
rat, a deserter from a seal-ship, was the only quadruped on the island;
and the seal and sea-lion, the only amphibious animals that had ever
frequented the coast, had long since been extirpated, and the sealers
came there no more. All looked favorable for a quiet reign.

Near an old seal camp, he found growing some wild wheat, which he
cultivated after a manner, and which, with wild celery, water-cresses,
fern-root, and karaka, left him nothing to desire in the way of
vegetable food. On the shore, he found crabs and lobsters, and the
echini (sea-eggs) in the hollows of the rock; and at times, to
supplement his feast, the sea threw up her orange-colored pear. The
blue petrel had their habitations in the woods, in the ground under
the roots of trees, and in crevices of rocks, and were speared at
night as they flew about in numbers with a noise like the croaking
of frogs. They passed the day at sea-fishing, and not one was to be
seen until dark put a stop to their pursuit, when they returned to
land, and fluttered and croaked for hours before retiring to rest. But
the subject that gave its sovereign least trouble was the dark-brown
water-hen, of the size of a barnyard fowl, which inhabited the skirts
of the woods, and fed on the beach. It was unable to fly, and made no
attempt to escape when approached, but stood its ground, and bowed,
like a pious Turk, to its fate.

At the base of the mountain, near a strong spring, he formed a
summer-house—an arbor of the trees and shrubs of aromatic myrtle—and,
besides supplying his wants, did little else but wander over the isle
during the summer season; but, when winter came, he retired to a cave
in the mountain, from which he expelled the bats, and devoted his
leisure to making the utensils of the chase, toilet, and kitchen. He
manufactured baskets, nets, and lines of twisted fibre, fish-hooks of
mother-of-pearl, knives of sharp quartz, razors of shell, and mats for
bedding and cloaks.

He covered his fish alive in red-hot ashes, and, when cooked, peeled
off the skin, and ate the flesh from the ribs. He cooked his meat in an
oven, of which he had one at each residence, and several at points on
the shore. It consisted of a hole in the ground lined with stone, in
which he built a fire, and placed pebbles and stones. His game, after
the ordinary cleaning, was scrubbed with sand on the outside, and well
washed inside and out. Hot pebbles were placed in the belly and shaken
in under the breast, and green aromatic leaves stuffed in upon them.
The oven was then cleared of fire and pebbles, and lined with green
leaves, and the game placed in the bottom. The fat was washed, and
placed with hot pebbles in a vessel of bark, and beside it the blood,
tied in a leaf, and propped with hot stones. Then came a layer of such
vegetables as were in season or at hand, and the whole was spread over
with leaves, on which the remaining hot stones were placed, covered in
turn with leaves, and filled in with sod and earth. After an interval
according to the size of the mess, it was taken out, spread upon a
cloth of the glossy leaves of the karaka, and eaten hot.

No king fared better, and no one that ever reigned passed his days in
equal quietude and peace. No opposing politicians were there to vex his
soul with diverse counsels, and make the worse appear to him the better
reason; no blood of fellow-men weighed down his spirit; no friends
clamored for reward, or silent enemies shrank from punishment.

He knew neither hunger, thirst, nor cold, nor fear, nor jealousy,
and approached as near as it lay in fallen man to the estate of our
renowned ancestor in the garden before the presentation of Eve. He was
content, wanting no Eve, or Cain, or Abel. And for ten solitary years
his wish was gratified: he was unapproached, and reigned unchallenged.

In 1839, the captain of a vessel from Sidney offered to buy of Mate-oro
a portion of the island of Ware-kauri that lay about the bay of
Waitangi, then owned and possessed by a branch of the tribe commanded
by Nga-te-Toma. The terms were agreed upon, payment to be made on
delivery. But the Nga-te-Toma could not be prevailed upon to deliver
their possessions of black loam on demand, the more especially as
Mate-oro was to handle the purchase-money. War was declared, and the
contumacious Te-Toma were driven in the following spring into their
stronghold near the beach, and regularly invested.

At this juncture, the bark _Cuba_, having on board one Dieffenbach,
a naturalist, dropped anchor in the bay, entered into negotiations
with both parties, and, moved by the spirit of Christian charity,
ended by taking off the Te-Toma at night in boats to their ship—first
the women and children, followed by the naked warriors, stained with
ochre, armed, feathered, and equipped. The last to leave set fire to
the huts and abandoned property. The flames gave the alarm to their
opponents, who rushed through the fort to the beach, where they arrived
just too late, and presented, illuminated by the burning village in
the background, a vivid picture of baffled rage, going through the
war-dance with fearful yells and contortions. But they danced in vain,
though the exercise may have afforded them a melancholy gratification.
The _Cuba_ forthwith put to sea, and landed her human freight on the
northeastern shore among friends; but not until she had taken from them
deeds in fee of all their possessions in the west. Then, judging wisely
that Mate-oro would be found in no mood at that moment to discuss their
lately acquired title, she put to sea and bore down on Rangi-haute,
being the first vessel to cross the channel since Koche passed over in
his canoe ten years before.

Dieffenbach landed with a party, and in botanizing the isle was led to
the bower by a small spiral column of white smoke that arose from the
oven. No inhabitant was to be seen. The summer-house was ransacked of
nets, pearl-hooks, knives, and baskets; the oven opened, and a spread
of roast duck, hen, and karaka highly relished. The dark, transparent
water of the spring reflected the faces of the robbers, as they bent
over to drink, with a distinctness of outline unattainable by the white
water of other lands; but when Koche returned to his habitation, which
he did when the ship was well at sea, the reflection had vanished
from his mirror, the dinner from his oven, and the furniture from his
bower. As from a rock he watched the receding bark, freighted with his
peace of mind, he hoped and prayed she would pass Ware-kauri without
touching; but she ran in nevertheless, communicated with her friends,
and related the visit to the isle. The news that Rangi-haute was
inhabited soon reached Mate-oro, who read the riddle at once, and soon
after went over in person in pursuit of his quondam slave.

The party landed before noon, and, separating, closed in upon the
bower from different directions to find it empty. They soon, however,
struck a fresh trail, which led them down the coast to a small inlet,
in which it disappeared. Finding it did not issue on the opposite side,
they ascended either bank, watching closely for signs, until the bed
of the stream dwindled to a rivulet and entered a thicket; when the
trail was taken up and followed with difficulty through bushes and
underwood, matted with vines, until it failed totally. Circuits were
made, and much time wasted in fruitless search, but the thread was
lost, when the leader suddenly ordered the party back on the trail to
the mouth of the inlet, which they crossed, and moved down the beach
looking for footprints in the sand. Late in the afternoon they arrived
opposite a coral rock that stood out a mile in the sea. The water was
smooth, and a man swam out to reconnoitre. They watched him until he
disappeared behind the rock, which presented a bluff to the shore, and
waited patiently to hear from him, but an hour had elapsed and he made
no sign. The general opinion was that he had been devoured by a shark.
Mate-oro thought otherwise. He sent back a couple of men with orders
to bring down the boat at daybreak, set a watch on the beach, built a
fire, and went into camp.

A favorable breeze springing up, the boat came in early, took aboard
the party, and rowed out. In a deep fissure in the rock, from which he
was unable to extricate himself, they found the Indian who had swum out
the evening before. He told them that when he turned, and was about to
land, he was seized by the foot and drawn under the water, and, being
tired and out of breath, almost instantly lost consciousness.

When he recovered he found himself in utter darkness, and thought he
had passed into the spirit-land and was imbedded in a mountain for
punishment. After a time he had looked up and seen the stars, but could
make nothing of his condition. He had seen or heard no one, but as well
as he could recollect, the grasp on his ankle felt like the hand of a
man. Several pieces of fresh broken coral were found, but no footprints.

The party hastened ashore, and, leaving a man with the boat, moved down
the beach, and an hour later struck the trail coming out of the water,
and pursued it up a frightful chasm in the mountain, apparently without
an outlet. But as they neared the head they discovered the point at
which the trail began the ascent, and abandoning their dogs, the men,
after much difficulty and danger, gained the summit; when, to their
inexpressible astonishment, the trail led them directly back to their
camp on the beach—on reaching which they found their boatman lying on
the sand bound hand and foot with a running vine, gagged, and stunned
by a blow on the head, and the boat gone.

The rage of Mate-oro was excessive, and expended itself upon the
ill-starred boatman, whom he ordered to be tossed into the surf—a step
he speedily regretted and attempted to rectify; but when dragged out
to be cross-questioned, the body could return no answer; its shade had
quitted it, and was paddling a phantom canoe over the Stygian river to
the shadowy fishing-grounds.

The pursuers, full of wrath, set to work and built a korari, in which,
when the wind became favorable, they made their way home, calling down
maledictions upon the head of the rebellious runaway. During their stay
they scoured the island for Koche, and kept a lookout for their lost
boat, but saw nothing of either.

To the eastward of the southern point of Rangi-haute, and five miles
distant, lies the islet of Ranga-tira, consisting of a single mount
of moderate elevation, from two to three miles across at the base,
behind which Koche took shelter in his captured boat. The same favoring
breeze that brought down his enemies in the morning, enabled him in a
short run to double the “tira,” and land upon her little beach of forty
yards, quite out of sight and reach.

Had the fugitive been content to take up his permanent habitation
here, all might doubtless have gone well; but the islet was too small
to offer a place of concealment, and he feared an unsuccessful search
on the larger island would be followed by one on the smaller, in
which event escape would be impossible. For this and other reasons,
in which the question of food entered, but a cat-like attachment to
his old haunts ruled, he returned in the night after an absence of a
month, and, reconnoitring, found the coast clear. He had resumed his
old habits, adding to them a bright lookout to the northwest, when one
morning at daybreak, some months later, he discovered three canoes
close in to shore. He instantly struck into a deep ravine, and hoped by
doubling to gain time to reach and launch his boat. But he had hardly
got fairly off before his trail was taken up, and after a hot chase,
in ascending a dark defile, the dogs brought him to bay, and, turning,
he took up a rock and dashed out the brains of the foremost, and was
in deadly conflict with the pack, bleeding and faint, when a Zealander
came up with a club and felled him to the ground. When he recovered his
senses they were dragging him down the mountain by a rope tied about
the waist, torn with stones and briers, and bathed in blood; but even
then, until they reached the white beach, soon stained red, he caught
at every root, and projecting stone, and bush, and log, and held on
with such tenacity that they were compelled to beat his hands to force
them to relax. He lay on the sand bound hand and foot all night, with
parched mouth and throat, so bitten by the black sand-fly that by noon
on the following day he was swollen out of the semblance of man.

When taken back to Ware-kauri he was confined and watched closely,
taunted with the title of “King of Pitt Island,” fed and watered, but
not bodily ill-used. When sufficiently recovered and ordered to work,
he stood mute under two days’ lashing, seeking death; but his master,
who felt his honor enlisted in the contest, had resolved to break, not
kill him; and no provocation could wring from him the death-stroke.
Perceiving this on the third morning, Koche set to work when ordered,
and from thence performed the labor of two men; apparently completely
subjugated. From the fight with the dogs in the defile he had not
uttered a word; now he became cheerful and talkative.

In the fourth year of his renewed captivity, all watch upon him having
been removed, he was one evening among the slaves, employed in paddling
out canoe-loads of provisions to a whale-ship that was lifting her
anchor to sail. He boarded, and hid away in the hold unnoticed; and the
ship was clearing the harbor, when Mate-oro came out and instituted
search. He was found and dragged on deck, but broke from his captors
and sprang overboard. The ship’s boat gave chase, overhauled him, and,
as Mate-oro rose up in the bow to lay hands on him, he dived, and,
coming up behind, unshipped their rudder, and in the gathering dark
reached the headland and disappeared. He made his way by forest paths
to the eastern coast, where, finding an abandoned and broken canoe,
he stuffed her with kelp, and put to sea; by daylight he had sunk her
below the eastern horizon, and at nightfall ran her on the beach of
Rangi-haute.

Koche was himself again. He breathed anew the air of freedom, and his
soul exulted. Taught in his little school of adversity, he knew that
vigilance would be the price of his liberty, and determined to exercise
it, and carried out his resolution as well, perhaps, as any man since
the sun first shed on Eden his delightful beams—that sun which shone
upon him in his frail canoe that day for the last time for two dark
years; and on which, of his own free will, he never would have looked
again.

After picking up what food he could find upon the beach, and breaking
up and burying his canoe in a sand dune, he crossed the mountain, and,
plunging into an obscure thicket, almost impenetrable, crawled into
a crevice surrounded by jagged fragments of volcanic rock. The spot
was almost absolutely inaccessible, and the danger of approach would
have appalled a spirit less dauntless than his—not bent on liberty
or death. He had breasted his way to it in the glare of day when
perambulating his dominion; he now entered it with speed and safety a
fugitive at midnight.

In his retreat, he made and used no instrument whatever—no spear, or
snare, or knife, or line, or net. He never once approached the shore,
or left the circle of his crags and dense surrounding thicket. At dusk
he peered from his sepulchre, and watched the birds take up their
roosts upon the overtopping trees and bushes, and climbed up and caught
them in the night, and ate them raw. Hunger at first assailed him;
but his eye, becoming adjusted to the dark, marked down his prey with
unerring certainty, and he was soon able to drive and keep the wolf
from his den; and a water-drip in the rock quenched his thirst. At dawn
he sank into the earth, leaving behind no trace, no print of foot, no
trail; and when the sun uprose,

  “The mists were curl’d
  Back from a solitary world.”

The annals of his dark reign are soon told. Sleeping one day down
in the impenetrable darkness, he was startled by the deep bay of a
bloodhound; and his prophetic soul told him that the day of his second
dethronement had dawned, and his night of freedom passed. Mate-oro had
searched the isle in vain, and given up the hunt, when Gobiah, a New
Zealand son of Belial, brought over a slave-hunter whose deep hate
penetrated the impenetrable, and ran the fugitive to earth.

Expectation in Ware-kauri was on tiptoe during the absence of the
hunting-party; and on its return with the captive king a curious crowd
assembled on the beach to greet them. As the boat came through the surf
with Mate-oro on the prow and Koche bound at his feet, a shout went
up in honor of the chief, followed by derisive howling for the “King
of Pitt.” The march across the island was triumphal. Crowds flocked
to gaze upon the principal figures. The New Zealanders praised their
persevering chief, and called upon the “king” to burst his bonds. The
Tuïti, apart, with sullen and downcast looks, felt their faint hearts
beat quick as they caught a glance of their indomitable countryman,
stimulated by the sunlight, erect and proud, by whom the taunts of the
malignant masters were passing as the idle wind.

Gobiah and the hound shared the honors of the day, and all went merry
as a marriage-bell.

The capture, with its varying and contradictory details, was the
sensation of the period, and would have filled the columns of a
newspaper, had one existed, for a month. It subsided in due course, and
Koche, after another futile attempt to get himself despatched, went
to work as before with vigor and good cheer. His sovereign character
was now universally recognized, and he was invariably addressed by
his title in full. He accepted it in good humor, tinged with a little
pride. The Zealanders looked upon him with secret respect, while by
his own people he was regarded as one who, had their lot been less
hopeless, would have proved the leader and saviour of the nation.

Two years elapsed, when an American vessel, ready for sea, was boarded
by Mate-oro, and a demand made for the fugitive king. The ship was
searched from deck to keel, but no trace of him found. Unwilling to
anger the fierce chief, who still declared he was aboard, she lay over
a day, and the search was renewed with like effect. In the afternoon
she stood out to sea, and at nightfall her hull was down, and the
island had disappeared, all save one volcanic peak that rose like a
pyramid above the waves. Then Koche came out from the fore-chains, in
which he had in some mysterious manner buried himself, and caught a
last glance of his native mountain as it sank for ever from his view.




NECESSITY _VERSUS_ ART.


WE live in very busy days, and our lives hurry on to their end after
a very unceremonious fashion. Courtesy is out of date, and the world
scrambles on chiefly according to the principle embodied in the
words, “Every one for himself, and God for all.” This is the age of
individualism on the one hand, of levelling on the other. The system
of aggregate life, of Christian brotherhood, and helpful fellowship
is broken, and each one lives his little span to himself, jealously
cherishing a phantom of independence which, when appealed to for
protection, has a tendency to shelter itself under the broader ægis
of state supremacy. We live fast, and our lives wear us out. We pass
through all the emotions, all the experiences, of life in fewer years
than our forefathers took to study their classics or prepare themselves
for a profession. Young men who have reached the _nil admirari_ stage
before they are twenty, and young women who, before they are out of
their teens, have gone through the various religious phases, and made
up their minds that infidelity is the only rational system to adopt,
are unfortunately on the increase among us. After pleasure, after
controversy, what remains? Nothing but business. The mind of our day
is essentially practical. A certain social necessity exists of living
as well as your neighbors do, and of not “going down in the world.”
Certain artificial habits are formed almost unconsciously in early
youth; certain fictitious indispensabilities grow up silently by
your side, and, to keep up appearances, a certain amount of money is
wanted. In a new country where there is no privileged class, no landed
aristocracy, no law of primogeniture, each individual, to keep his head
above water, imagines he must take some means to increase his income
as years go on. This means that the whole community should devote
itself to commerce. But how does this “necessity” affect the abstract
principles of right and wrong, of moral beauty, of intellectual
development? In this race for life, where is all that makes life
beautiful? This utilitarian spirit looks upon all that from its own
point of view, as an auctioneer, not as an artist. The question is,
“Will it pay?” or “How much will it bring?” not “Is it civilizing, is
it beautifying, is it ennobling?”

Beauty is nothing to modern critics; it is no longer judged by
an abstract standard, but by the use which can be made of it. It
is utterly debased from its original estate; for, from being the
consolation of the many, it has become the luxury of the few. Rich men
think it right and proper that they should be surrounded by ornamental
objects, not because they appreciate their worth, but because it
shows off the wealth whose surplus they could afford to waste on such
expensive baubles. Costliness in ornamentation is the fashion of our
day, as simplicity and studied ruggedness were the fashion in the days
of Cromwell; and, cost what it may, the fashion must be followed. Do
these men care for their treasures? See what they would do with them if
it ever became the fashion again to sit on wooden chairs, and eschew
looking-glasses. They are valued, as in a shop, by the price they cost;
and old or new, elaborate or plain, it is all the same. The number
of figures on a Dresden vase is nothing: the number of dollars the
vase cost is everything. Some people would think nothing of a gem of
workmanship if it was got “at a bargain” or picked up on an old stall;
some would not be satisfied if the velvet they wore had been purchased
at half price, so that they could not boast it had cost twenty-five
dollars a yard! We will hope that such people are exceptions; still,
they exist. This is the exaggeration of the spirit of the age, and
prevails chiefly among those whom the latter half of the age has just
landed among the inhabitants of the modern El Dorado; but, in a more
or less rampant state, this spirit shows its cloven foot everywhere on
this vast continent.

But this is not the worst. If the appreciation of true art is wanting
in the patron, the time to perfect æsthetic productions is wanting to
the artist. Nowadays everything must be done at once; people cannot
wait; their houses must be run up in six weeks; for their churches
they will not wait longer than a year. Ornaments of all kinds must be
forthcoming immediately, and, indeed, if any vegetable model could
be found, which, like the acanthus leaf of Greek sculpture, might
be identified with the idea of our modern “art,” who shall say that
the mushroom is not a most fitting type? Must we suppose it to be
the result of our wonderfully rapid progress in art that we should
constantly change our ideals, and demand quite a different standard of
beauty this month from that we asked for last June? No doubt we are
so much more enlightened now that we could not wear the same colors
we wore last spring, and really thought quite pretty then, or that
we could not sit upon a sofa of the same shape as we found perfectly
charming last year! Of course, since our standards of taste vary so
quickly, it could hardly be expected that very minute care should
be bestowed on our ornamental surroundings. In old days, when men
worked for future ages, the leg of a chair was as delicately carved
as a cathedral buttress; when houses were built for twenty coming
generations to live in, the sculpture of a mantelpiece was wrought with
as much care as a monumental effigy. But _nous avons changé tout cela_.
Our houses are only intended to stand till they are pulled down to make
room for a railway depot, or till some advantageous offer is accepted
to turn them into a suite of _modiste’s_ or confectioner’s show-rooms.
Our furniture is meant to remain under our eyes only until we see a
set five times as gorgeous and ten times as expensive, when the things
we once thought so perfect will be sent as antiquated rubbish to some
auction-room, or ignominously hidden in the nursery or garret. And in
the meanwhile, where is art, nay, where is even comfort? Shall we not
very soon have overshot the mark, and find our lives becoming little
short of a pilgrimage from hotel to hotel? An English lady, whose
husband owned estates in all parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, and
who had at least six country-houses, each claiming the advantages of
family residence during a short part of the year, once said to a friend
less plentifully encumbered: “My dear, I envy you. I have half a dozen
houses in the country, and a large town-house; and, among them all, I
have not got a _home_!”

This constant change of fashion necessitates flimsiness of material
and carelessness of detail. But this is not all: it kills the artist
spirit. The old workmen had a chance of becoming artists because they
had plenty of time to exercise and sharpen their faculties; they became
used to certain sorts of work, and could perfect their ingenuity in
one particular line; and they had plenty of room for originality. Now,
on the contrary, it is more likely that the artist will degenerate
into a mere workman. He is hurried in his designs; he is often
dictated to by ignorant patrons, who, not having the divine _afflatus_
themselves, have not even the wit to trust to those who have; he is
called upon for six times the amount of invention that any man’s brains
can possibly furnish within a given time; and, to crown all, he is
limited as to price—which simply means as to materials, size, detail,
and ornamentation. He is in danger of becoming either a drudge or a
renegade, very often both. His art gets to be a mere bread-winning
business, a dry round of machine work, a careless fulfilling of an
unpleasant contract; and, under such adverse influences, no wonder the
creator-spirit leaves him, and he becomes simply a mechanic.

Art was once a power in the world: now it is rather an appendage to
a power of a different sort. Even while it was patronized by popes
and sovereigns, it was held as little less than sovereign itself; it
dictated terms, and claimed a full meed of independence in the choice
of its expressions within the limitations of orthodox symbolism. Now,
on the contrary, it is only tolerated so long as it conforms to the
fashion of the hour, so long as it ministers to the belittled taste
of to-day. Its votaries are no longer the honored guests of princes,
the equals of sovereigns, the arbiters of character. Of old, a painter
could immortalize a man by placing him in a certain part of his
picture, or he could ruin him by giving him a place on the opposite
side. Dante did the same thing in his unrivalled poem, and the sting
went home. But now what would the result be? The painter would lose
his custom, like a tradesman who sold damaged goods! Truly a dignified
position for the successors of Michael Angelo!

To be popular—and popularity just now is apt to be confounded
with greatness—art must truckle to the vitiated taste of a mob of
ignoramuses; architecture must give up noble proportions for the sake
of speed and cheapness; painting must give up historical memories
and religious inspirations for the sake of quick sales and gaudy
coloring; music and poetry must adapt themselves to the maudlin taste
of the age, and pretty, shallow ballads and idyls must take the
place of symphonies, anthems, and epic poems. So with oratory—it
must be graceful and piquant; that it should be logical and forcible
is immaterial. So with sculpture—we must have Rogers’ groups,
sewing-girls (why not have a sewing-machine and operator in marble?),
shoe-blacks, anything that is domestic and prosaic, provided we have
nothing heroic that will strain our powers of admiration, or excite
high aspirations after the ideal.

As to minor articles which of old were real objects of art, how do we
stand? Our jewelry, for instance—in what stage of decay is it? Would
Benvenuto Cellini think our clumsy plate worthy of his attention, or
our massive barbaric bracelets _artistic_ productions? On the other
hand, the lighter work is flimsy and insecure, equally unworthy of a
chiseller’s notice, except he toss it into the furnace, and reduce the
materials into an usable shape. Again the money test comes in: the
mere value of a precious stone is all, in modern times; the delicacy of
the setting, the thought of the designer, the time of the worker, are
perfectly immaterial.

Then our glass: it has no individuality whatsoever. We remember
noticing the strange contrast which happened to be most vividly
exhibited in a certain street in London, where two shops side by side
showed a glittering array of their respective specialty, English and
Venetian glass. The former, all blown by machinery, showed the most
perfect symmetry of design, each glass of a set the exact counterpart
of the other, the designs not varied to the extent of more than half a
dozen patterns, and the very prettiest things—baskets, for instance,
or horns of glass—pairfully, like three or four dozen similar ones,
allotted to their particular corner in the shop. The Venetian glass,
on the contrary, was a study for a painter. Every conceivable variety
of color, shape, and design, a luxuriance of detail, a fertility of
invention perfectly incredible, a picturesque individuality which will
not allow even pairs to do more than bear a general likeness to each
other—such are a few of the characteristics of this beautiful display
of ornaments. We took up a fruit-dish of opaque glass, and asked if
there were any more of that sort, none but that one being visible in
the shop. It was a marvellous conglomeration of colors, veined like
marble, vivid shades dying off into browns and dusky yellows, etc.
No; there were no more of them. “How was this produced?” we asked.
“I cannot tell,” said the polite Venetian who kept watch over these
treasures; “this is a mere chance; the glass sometimes runs into these
designs, but we might try for years, and never be able to reproduce
this.” The other articles, some useful, some ornamental, and all
moulded by the hand, attested the most delicate and fantastic skill;
the fancy of the workman had been allowed to run riot within certain
general limits; no line was the exact counterpart of the other—in a
word, the work was artistic, not mechanical. The contrast was evidently
unfavorable to the faultlessly mathematical proportions of the English
glass, which, however, in its own line, and freed from comparison with
higher products, is very beautiful.

Machinery has spoilt many minor arts; even the choir-stalls and the
screens of our day are often “turned” instead of carved, and in the
place of wrought-iron we have cast-iron in our grates and railings.
Even the domain of music has been invaded, and we have barrel-organs,
orchestrions, and musical boxes. Some new mechanism in a Geneva box
will command thousands of dollars, and for a musical canary with
jewelled eyes, caged in a tiny gilded cage, people will give any
sum; but who thinks twice of some unknown Beethoven or struggling
Mendelssohn whose sonatas and anthems might rival those of the masters
of old?

All that we have said is merely an introduction to an explanation
of the main subject of which we wish to treat, _i.e._ the effect
of this modern spirit on artists themselves. There are personal
ramifications consequent on this low estimate of art which amount just
to this: intellectual murder. The artist starts in life full of young
enthusiasm—and we include here all scholars and men who, in different
professions, reverence the principle more than they care for the use of
their craft—he feels that there is an intellectual world beyond and
above the world of business and fashion, and he strives to spread the
love of this ideal among commoner mortals. He finds them unresponsive,
though he feels himself a teacher sent to enlighten them. Still they
remain callous; they look on and laugh, and he starves. His art is all
he has whereby to live; for the spirit that recruits the ranks of art
is a vagrant and fitful one, and does not qualify men for steady habits
of lucrative drudgery. The truth now stares him in the face: he must
either pocket his principles or lie down and die of hunger. If he is
unusually persevering, and has that genius which does not alight more
than three or four times in a century on any child of Adam, he may
end by winning a place at last in public opinion, by commanding what
prices he likes, and by drowning, in the precarious tide of success,
the remembrance of the days when he fell below his own standard, and
had to drudge for bread. More often he will never succeed at all; he
will give up the unequal struggle, and be too glad if, by bartering his
independence, he can feed his wife and children.

We need hardly stop to say how baleful marriage too often is in the
case of artists; every one must see that. Unless in the rare instances
when a man meets a woman heroic enough to help him on in the difficult
paths of genius, nothing is more fatally clogging than marriage. It
is idle to speak of the joys and comforts which it brings. These are
ephemeral in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred where an artist of even
average talent is concerned, while the responsibilities and vexations
of marriage grow heavier every day. An artist’s joy in his wife can
only be of two kinds: it results either from her physical beauty or
from her intellectual sympathy. The former any sane man will weary
of, even if he be rich enough to surround it with all those adjuncts
without which the beauty itself will soon disappear; the latter
implies that ideal union which we have reason to deplore as being too
rare to be even taken into practical consideration. We are speaking
emphatically of poor artists, and every one knows the peculiarly
trying circumstances of poverty in any shape, more especially poverty
endured by a refined nature. The domestic vexations of a poor artist’s
married life are something incalculable, and are almost enough to
destroy the patience of a saint. He may be poet, painter, or musician,
it little matters what; but it is simply impossible that the daily,
hourly shocks to his sensibilities should not leave a woeful impression
on his spirit. Is it encouraging to be interrupted in the middle of
a fine stanza by shrieks from the kitchen, and frantic appeals to
come and rescue the urchin who has pulled the wash-tub over himself?
Is it inspiring to be interrupted in a fugue by the sound of a
servant’s shrill answer to the scolding of her incensed mistress? The
contemplation of an empty larder, and the calculation of how to fill it
again at the lowest figure of expense, is not an elevated occupation,
nor is it likely to produce a very spirited picture or soul-stirring
poem. Except in very rare cases, a rising artist should put off
marriage till his fame is in all men’s mouths. A drag is a different
thing from a companion, and to most such even a few years’ solitude
ending in a mature choice ought to be far preferable to an uncongenial
yoke which, long before success has softened it, has become only a
necessary evil.

But even to the unmarried artist or scholar, life holds out terrible
temptations. Many mistake popularity for greatness, sensationalism for
genius. If the higher walks of art do not “pay,” let us forsake them,
and pick up gold in the byways! The trace of the clay will not stick to
the precious metal, and, if it has come from the pocket of ignorance
to pay the price of vulgarity, still it is “hard cash,” and will be
none the less welcome at the exchange! It will buy houses and land, it
will buy broadcloth and velvet, it will buy champagne suppers and opera
tickets. The artist sees that he must be a slave—a slave either to his
own necessities or to the bad taste of his patrons. The former means
silent worship at the shrine of true art, an early death, an unknown
grave, and an obscure name; the latter means unblushing indifference
to principle, a long and merry life, and a name on the lips of
thousands. Human nature is weak, and, out of twenty men who once had
the possibilities of genius, nineteen will crush its development to
earn their daily bread. No wonder that we have so few artists nowadays;
no wonder that men who might have been so are only caterers for public
amusement and “turners-out” of so many landscapes or interiors a year.
What are the subjects most in vogue just now, not to speak of nudities
and immoralities? Everything that is trivial, pretty, if you will, but
commonplace—children picking flowers, drawing-room scenes, a farm
kitchen, a group of cattle, a nosegay lying beside a flagon of wine, a
few vegetables sliced open, a woman mending a shirt, etc.! Truly most
noble subjects whereon to expend the time, care, and ingenuity of a
man of genius—a man, at least, who might once have aspired to genius!
But these things sell—everything trivial, childish, and _mesquin_
does in our day—and the artist must live! When necessity and art come
into collision, art must go to the wall! In music, ballads are the
order of the day—pretty little nothings set to pretty little tunes;
strains that are often no better than a cross between a popular song
and a revival hymn! In poetry, the case is no better; in the drama, it
is worse. The very patronage which lifts a man into notice kills his
genius and insults his manhood. A drawing-room pet is the highest title
an artist can claim in these days, and, to gain that pitiful renown,
he must throw overboard all respect for principle, all love of art. He
must even make himself uncomfortable, forego innocent habits, burden
himself with stupid formalities, in order to reach that favor which
he feels in his inmost soul will only degrade him when he has won it.
Many a man sells his soul to the devil in these days, just as in former
times, but with this difference: that, in the old legends, the devil
always gave a generous equivalent, whereas now he puts one off with
very shabby gifts.

There is a quaint old tale of this sort current at Bruges, concerning
an unhappy organist of very mediocre talents but immense ambition. He
was dying with envy because the organist of the cathedral drew crowds
to hear his marvellous playing, while he himself could barely draw
out a few meagre harmonies. At last, in despair, he made a compact
with the devil, bartering his soul for a long lease of years, during
which he should be enabled to eclipse the best musicians in Europe.
Suddenly it began to be noised about that there had been some strange
charm at work; the obscure artist had blossomed into a prodigy, and the
cathedral was deserted. Years went on, and all the musical talent of
the mediæval world made pilgrimages to Bruges to hear the wonderful
musician whose fingers could evoke such matchless harmonies, and
cause the most hardened sinners to melt into tears. But one day, the
poor man got frightened, and, with much contrition and many prayers,
besought a priest to get him back his contract. The priest succeeded,
and the devil was compelled to release his victim. The organist went
as usual to his instrument. The church was full; foreigners were there
and many of the notabilities of the town; but the musician’s power had
fled. The result was a disgraceful failure, and the strangers left the
church, declaring that a trick had been put upon them. The unhappy man,
distracted and overwhelmed with shame, could not bear the ridicule of
his altered position, and, in a moment of desperation, called again
upon his former ally. The devil forbore to reproach him, and gladly
gave him back the fatal talent. Things went on as before; it was said
that a sudden indisposition had been the only cause of that memorable
break-down, and crowds again flocked to hear the inspired organist. His
end is darkly hinted to have been terrible.

Well in this case—supposing it to have been true—the power over
the organ was a tangible and valuable gift; but nowadays artists
and their patrons rather remind us of the story of Esau selling his
birthright for a _mess of pottage_! Rich men should feel themselves
honored by contact with artists, not _vice versa_. It is no more an
honor for an artist to please a millionaire than it is for the church
to receive again a truant and gifted son. The abstract laws of art and
intellect are above the superficial and shifting necessities of the
world, and, if there is to be any intercourse between the votaries of
the former and the slaves of the latter, it should be the part of the
lower natures to do homage first to the higher. A great king once said
to his courtiers, when one of them importuned him to bestow a title
upon him: “Assuredly I can make you a duke, monsieur, but God alone
can make you a gentleman.” God alone can make an artist; God alone
can mould a spirit as refined, a soul as complex, an organization
as sensitive, as art requires in its devotees; and it follows that
whosoever wilfully debases this spirit destroys God’s own handiwork.
The world at large and its absurd maxims are much to blame, but the
imprudence or carelessness of artists is none the less deplorable. No
one should without reason arrogate to himself this position; it is a
species of priesthood, and, except a man or woman be impelled to an
æsthetic career by an irresistible impulse, it is not a safe or happy
path to tread. None can live in that atmosphere unless God has really
fitted them for it, and to them, if they carry their lamps unquenched
to the end, it must needs be a path of trial. As a pure speculation, it
is the worst career a practical man can embrace. It dooms the artist to
a solitary life—solitary in fact if he wishes to succeed; solitary in
spirit if he hastily burdens himself with a badly chosen companion.

We were going to say that the ideal state of art would be that
all artists should be born rich; but, though that would have its
advantages, it would perhaps take away from the dignity of art.
Meyerbeer was born of a wealthy family, and Titian lived like a prince,
but those are exceptions. Besides, Titian won his riches by his art,
though his is a bad example to refer to, by the way, since he truckled
very much to the prevalent taste of his gorgeous era. All artists who
have touched the noblest chords of human nature have lived and died
poor, and all artists in the future who care to emulate these giants
of the past will have to resign themselves to a like poverty. Money,
in these days—and perhaps, if we had lived in other days, we should
have found it much the same then—means a compromise with principle.
Those who are born with it can alone enjoy it unmolested, and, say what
you will, they will always know how to enjoy it best. No one is so
discriminating a patron of art and so considerate a friend of artists
as the hereditary land-owner whose ancestors for generations were born
to wealth and its duties; no one loves beauty so disinterestedly as one
to whom the beautiful has never in any shape been a source of profit.

An aristocracy of birth and education is better fitted than one of
wealth to appreciate the aristocracy of intellect; both are, in the
purest sense of the word, a “privileged class,” and both ought to be
actuated by the proud old motto: _Noblesse oblige_. Money can never
be the test of the unseen; genius cannot be purchased, and art has no
price. The heaviest equivalent ever paid for any work of art is but
a drop in the ocean compared to the thing gained; for it is not the
material you pay for—the canvas, the marble, or the painting; it is
not even the artist’s time, though that is most precious; but it is
the very soul of the man, the breath of his life, the essence of his
being. What can ever be sufficient compensation for that? You can buy
the expression of his thought, but his thought itself remains with him,
so that his work is more his own than it is yours even after you have
purchased it. His creations are his children, and belong to him by that
inalienable right of paternity which no human law of sale and barter
could possibly supersede.

After this, what are we to think of art? Simply that it is the most
divine gift, in the natural order, vouchsafed to man, and entitles the
artist to a place more exalted than that of any favorite of fortune,
be he prince, noble, or merchant. When will the common world of rich
men understand that? When will artists themselves ensure that it be not
forgotten? That it is not merely a means of living, a bread-winning
drudgery? It is a reflection of God, a ray of his creative power, a
solace given to earth, a humanizing influence left among the barbarians
of all times (for we are all barbarians in the long run, and saints and
artists are the only civilized beings worth notice!) Let us, then, bow
down our heads, and accept the dictation of art, rather than presume to
impose our trivial conventionalities on one of God’s chosen messengers.




MADAME JEANNETTE’S PAPERS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.


WHEN I was a boy, I used to go every day after school to watch
Jean-Pierre Coustel, the turner, at his work. He lived at the other
end of the village. He was an old man, partly bald, with a queue
hanging down his back, and his feet encased in old worn-out shoes. He
used to love to talk of his campaigns on the Rhine and on the Loire
in La Vendée. Then he would look at you and smile to himself. His
little wife, Mme. Jeannette, sat spinning in the corner behind him;
she had large black eyes, and her hair was so white that it looked
like flax. I can see her now. She would sit there listening, and she
would stop spinning whenever Jean-Pierre spoke of Nantes; it was there
they were married in ‘93. Yes; I can see all these things as if it
were yesterday: the two small windows overgrown with ivy; the three
bee-hives on a board above the old worm-eaten door, the bees fluttering
in the sunshine over the roof of the hovel; Jean-Pierre Coustel with
his bent back turning bobbins or rods for chairs; the shavings winding
themselves into the shape of corkscrews.... I can see it all!

And I can also see coming in the evenings Jacques Chatillon, the dealer
in wood, with his rule under his arm, and his thick red whiskers;
the forest-keeper, Benassis, with his game-bag on his hip and his
hunting-cap over his ears; M. Nadasi, the bailiff, walking proudly,
with his head up, and spectacles on his nose, his hands in his
coat-pockets, as if to say: “I am Nadasi, and I carry the citations to
the insolvent”; and then my Uncle Eustache, who was called “brigadier,”
because he had served at Chamboran, and many others besides; without
counting the wife of the little tailor Rigodin, who used to come after
nine o’clock in search of her husband, in order to be invited to drink
half a pint of wine—for, besides his trade of a turner, Jean-Pierre
Coustel kept a wayside tavern. The branch of fir hung over the low
door; and in winter, when it rained, or when the snow covered the
window-panes, many liked to sit under the shelter of the old hut,
and listen to the crackling of the fire, and the humming sound of
Jeannette’s spinning-wheel, and the wind whistling out of doors through
the street of the village.

For my part, I did not stir from my corner until Uncle Eustache,
shaking out the ashes of his pipe, would say to me: “Come, François, we
must be going.... Good-night all!...”

Then he would rise, and we would go out together, sometimes in the mud,
sometimes in the snow. We would go to sleep at my grandfather’s house,
and he used to sit up and wait for us.

How plainly I can see these far-off things when I think them over!

But what I remember best is the story of the salt marshes which
belonged to old Jeannette—the salt marshes she had owned in La Vendée
near the sea, and which would have made the fortune of the Coustels if
they had claimed their rights sooner.

It appears that, in ‘93, they drowned a great many people at Nantes,
chiefly the old aristocracy. They put them into barks tied together;
then they pushed the barks into the Loire, and sank them. It was during
the Reign of Terror, and the peasants of La Vendée also shot down all
the republican soldiers they could take; extermination was the rule
on both sides, and no mercy was shown by either party. Only, whenever
a republican soldier demanded in marriage one of these noble ladies
who were about to be drowned, if the unfortunate girl were willing
to follow him, she was immediately released. And this was how Mme.
Jeannette had become the wife of Coustel.

She was on one of these barks at the age of sixteen—an age when one
has a great dread of death!... She looked around to see if no one would
take pity on her, and just then, at the moment the bark was leaving,
Jean-Pierre Coustel was passing by with his musket on his shoulders; he
saw the young girl, and called out: “Halt ... a moment!... Citoyenne,
wilt thou marry me? I will save thy life!”

And Jeannette fell into his arms as if dead; he carried her away; they
went to the mayoralty.

Old Jeannette never spoke of these things. In her youth, she had been
very happy; she had had domestics, waiting-maids, horses, carriages;
then she had become the wife of a soldier, of a poor republican; she
had to cook for him, and to mend his clothes; the old ideas of the
château, of the respect of the peasants of La Vendée, had passed
away. So goes the world! And sometimes even the bailiff Nadasi in his
impertinence would mock at the poor old woman, and call out to her:
“Noble lady, a pint of wine!... a small glass.” He would also make
inquiries about her estates; then she would shut her lips tight, and
look at him; a faint color would come into her pale cheek, and it
appeared as if she were going to answer him; but afterwards she would
bend down her head, and go on spinning in silence.

If Nadasi had not spent money at the tavern, Coustel would have turned
him out of doors; but, when one is poor, one is obliged to put up with
many affronts, and rascals know this!... They never mock at those who
would be likely to pull their ears, as my Uncle Eustache would not have
failed to do: they are too prudent for that. How hard it is to put up
with creatures like these!... Every one knows there are such beings.
But I must go on with my story. We were at the tavern one evening at
the end of the autumn of 1830; it was raining in torrents, and about
eight o’clock in the evening the keeper Benassis entered, exclaiming:
“What weather!... If it continues, the three ponds will overflow.”

He shook out his cap, and took his blouse off his shoulders, to dry it
behind the stove. Then he came to seat himself on the end of the bench,
saying to Nadasi: “Come, make room, you lazy fellow, and let me sit
near the brigadier.”

Nadasi moved back.

Notwithstanding the rain, Benassis appeared to be pleased; he said that
that day a large swarm of wild geese had arrived from the north; that
they had lighted on the ponds of the Three Sawmills; that he had spied
them afar off, and that the shooting on the marshes was about to begin.
Benassis laughed and rubbed his hands as he emptied his glass of brandy
and water. Every one was listening to him. Uncle Eustache said, if he
went to shoot them, he should go in a little skiff; for as to putting
on high boots and going into the mire, at the risk of sinking in above
his ears, he would not fancy that much. Then every man had his say, and
old Jeannette musingly murmured to herself: “I also owned marshes and
ponds!”

“Ah!” cried Nadasi, with a mocking air, “listen to that: Dame Jeannette
used to own marshes....”

“Certainly,” said she, “I did!...”

“Where were they, noble lady?”

“In La Vendée, on the sea-coast.”

And as Nadasi shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say, The old woman
is crazy! Mme. Jeannette ascended the little wooden staircase at the
back of the hovel, and then came down again with a basket filled with
various articles, needles, thread, bobbins, and yellow parchments,
which she deposited on the table. “Here are our papers,” said she: “the
ponds, the marshes, and the château are there with the other things!...
We laid claim to them in the time of Louis XVIII., but my relations
denied our rights, because I had married a republican. We would have
gone to law, but we had no money to pay the lawyers. Is it not so,
Coustel, is it not true?”

“Yes,” said the turner, without moving.

The persons assembled took no interest in the thing, not any more than
they would have done in the packages of paper money of the time of the
Republic, which may still be found in old closets.

Nadasi, still mocking, opened one of the parchments, and was raising
his head to read it, in order to laugh at Jeannette, when suddenly his
countenance become grave; he wiped his spectacles, and turning towards
the poor old woman, who had sat down again to her spinning.

“Are these your papers, Mme. Jeannette?” said he.

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you allow me to look at them a little?”

“You can do as you please with them,” said she; “they are of no use to
us.”

Then Nadasi, who had turned pale, folded up the parchment with several
others, saying: “I will see about that.... It is striking nine o’clock;
good-night.”

He went away, and the rest soon followed him.

Eight days after this, Nadasi set out for La Vendée; he had obtained
from Coustel and Dame Jeannette his wife their signature to a paper
which gave him full power to recover, alienate, and sell all their
property, taking upon himself the expenses, with the understanding that
he was to be repaid if he obtained the inheritance for them.

Soon after a report was spread in the village that Mme. Jeannette was
a noble lady, that she owned a château in La Vendée, and that Coustel
would soon receive a large income; but afterwards Nadasi wrote that he
had arrived six weeks too late; that the own brother of Mme. Jeannette
had shown him papers which made it as clear as the day that he had
held possession of the marshes for more than thirty years; and that,
whenever one holds the property of another for more than thirty years,
it is the same as if one had always had it; so that Jean-Pierre Coustel
and his wife, on account of their relations having thus enjoyed their
property, had no longer any claim to it.

These poor people, who had thought themselves rich, and whom all the
village had gone, according to custom, to congratulate and flatter,
when they found they were to have nothing, felt their poverty still
more keenly than before, and not long afterwards they died within a
short time of each other, like Christians, asking of the Lord pardon
for their sins, and confident in the hope of eternal life.

Nadasi sold his post of bailiff, and did not return to the country;
doubtless he had found some employment which suited him better than
serving citations.

Many years had passed; Louis Philippe had disappeared, then the
Republic; the couple Coustel slept on the hillside, and I suppose even
their bones had crumbled into dust in the grave. For my part, I had
succeeded my grandfather at the post-house, and Uncle Eustache, as he
himself had said, had taken his passport, when one morning, during the
gay season at Baden and Homburg, there happened to me something quite
surprising, and of which I still think frequently. Several post-chaises
had passed during the morning, when, towards eleven o’clock, a courier
came to inform me that his master, M. le Baron de Rosélière, was
approaching. I was at table. I immediately rose to superintend the
relay of horses. Just as they were being harnessed, a head was put
out of the coach-window—an old wrinkled face, with hollow cheeks,
and gold spectacles on the nose—it was the face of Nadasi, but old,
faded, worn out; behind him leaned the head of a young girl; I was all
astonishment. “What is the name of this village?” inquired the old man,
yawning.

“Laneuville, sir.”

He did not recognize me, and drew back. Then I saw an old lady also in
the coach. The horses were harnessed: they set off.

What a surprise, and how many ideas passed through my mind! Nadasi was
the Baron de Rosélière. May God forgive me if I am wrong! but I still
think that he sold the papers of poor Jeannette, and that he assumed
a noble name to ward off the questions of the inquisitive. What was
there to prevent him? Had he not obtained all the title-deeds, all the
papers, all the powers of attorney? And now has he not had the thirty
years of possession? Poor old Jeannette!... What misery we meet with in
this life!... And God permits it all!...




THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD.

FROM THE FRENCH OF REBOUL.


  An angel bent with pensive air
    Above an infant’s dream,
  And seemed to view his image there
    As in a stainless stream.

  “O beauteous child!” he said, “I see”—
    His breath like music’s sigh—
  “The earth is all unworthy thee:
    Come with me to the sky.

  “Earth has no happiness complete;
    The soul can never lift
  Thee to a height where round thy feet
    No clouds of pain will drift.

  “At every feast, unbidden guest,
    Some fear will still intrude:
  No day so calm but in its breast
    The morrow’s storm may brood.

  “And shall care leave with passing years
    Its impress on this brow?
  And sorrows dim with growing tears
    These eyes so tranquil now?

  “No, no, sweet child! Come, let us mount
    Above the fields of space;
  Kind Heaven will cancel the account
    Of life’s foreshadowed days.

  “I pray no selfish grief may view
    This day with mournful eyes,
  Or with reproachful words pursue
    Our way to paradise.

  “But let your mother lift her brow
    To Faith’s serenest light;
  To one as innocent as thou,
    Life’s last hour shines most bright.”

  A subtle radiance from his wings
    Upon the child was shed;
  The angel mounting upward, sings:
    “Poor mother! thy child is dead.”


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

 THE DOCTRINE OF HELL, VENTILATED IN A DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE
 REV. C. A. WALWORTH AND WILLIAM HENRY BURR, Esq. New York: The
 Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

This is a very small 18mo volume of one hundred and fifty-one pages,
containing more solid matter than some large octavos, as any person
who knows F. Walworth’s style of writing would naturally expect. It
contains a correspondence between himself and the gentleman whose
name is given above, who was a classmate of F. Walworth and one of
his fellow-members in the Presbyterian church of Union College. This
correspondence appeared in the _Investigator_, a notorious infidel
newspaper of Boston, and was called forth by an indignant denial
sent to that paper by F. Walworth of a false and utterly groundless
report that he had refused submission to the decrees of the Council
of the Vatican. Mr. Burr, who has renounced the errors of Calvinism,
and embraced those of infidelity and spiritism, took occasion from
this denial and the explicit avowal of perfect submission to all the
doctrines of Catholic faith involved in it, to question his former
classmate in regard to the doctrine of eternal punishment, and to
inquire of him how far his present belief in that doctrine agrees with
his former belief while a Presbyterian. This brought on a controversy,
in which Mr. Burr attempts to argue against the Catholic doctrine by
ridiculing and denouncing certain descriptions of the torments of
hell given by various writers, both Protestant and Catholic, bringing
in at the same time a number of discursive and random remarks about
many other topics, which are generally both very silly and altogether
irrelevant. F. Walworth, on his side, steadily refuses to be drawn from
the proper subject of controversy, or to permit his adversary to make
him responsible for the private opinions of any person, Protestant or
Catholic, and adduces strong, solid, irrefutable arguments from reason
in support of the strictly Catholic doctrine taught authoritatively
by the Church and obligatory on all her members. The only point which
F. Walworth professes to aim at, and toward which his argument is
directed with undeviating logic, is this. The doctrine which the church
authoritatively teaches and imposes as obligatory on the conscience
of her children is not contrary to reason, but in accordance with it,
and capable of being proved by rational arguments. In his statement
of what that doctrine is, F. Walworth follows Petavius, Perrone, and
Archbishop Kenrick with theological accuracy. He says (pref., p. 9),
“I have planted myself simply and purely upon the defined doctrine of
the Catholic Church, and what that doctrine necessarily involves.”
This is evidently to be understood of doctrine as defined, in the more
general sense of definitely and precisely taught by the infallible
magistracy of the church, by whatever method the church may exercise
this magistracy, and not to be restricted to definitions _de fide_
contained in explicit decrees of popes and councils. The logical
deductions following necessarily from that which is precisely the
article of Catholic faith are included in the obligatory doctrine. And
where these deductions have not been expressly drawn out and defined
in ecclesiastical decrees, the authority of the concurrent teaching of
theologians is acknowledged in explicit terms by F. Walworth: “Where
any questions remain undefined, I bow respectfully to the concurrent
opinions of [the church’s] leading theologians. Beyond this I will not
be bound” (p. 47). He says further: “All the language of Holy Scripture
on the subject must be accepted and maintained” (Pref., p. 8), which
is in accordance with a monition of the last Council of Baltimore to
Catholic writers on this subject. The same council also admonishes
Catholic writers not to diminish the punishment of sin in such a way
as to destroy its proportion to the sin. And if any one will examine
what F. Walworth has written, he will see that in this respect also he
has fulfilled the precept of the Fathers of Baltimore to the letter.
The statement of the defined doctrine of the church respecting hell
made by F. Walworth is precisely that of Petavius: “There is a hell,
and it is eternal.” Into the question of the specific physical nature
and instrumental causes of the punishments of hell he does not enter
very deeply. The only opinion of a Catholic writer which he expressly
opposes is that of F. Furniss, that the torments of hell increase in
geometrical proportion throughout eternity—an opinion which, so far
as we know, is not supported by any grave authority. Opinions which
are matters of lawful difference and discussion are left on their own
proper ground within the domain of theology. The point to be proved
is that reason cannot show any valid objection to the doctrine of
the everlasting punishment of the man who finishes his term of moral
probation on the earth in the state of mortal sin. Mr. Burr produces no
such objection. His admissions even confirm the truth of F. Walworth’s
positions. He admits that a state of intellectual and moral degradation
is in itself a state of misery. The sinner is in this disordered state
when he dies. If he lives for ever in the same state, this everlasting
state of existence is hell. But who can bring conclusive evidence that
there is any necessary cause which must bring him out of this state in
the future life? Such evidence not being forthcoming, reason has not
a word to say against the teaching of revelation, that those who fail
in their earthly probation have no other, and must abide for ever the
consequences of their own acts.

Some persons may object to the publication of a controversy in which
infidel arguments are placed within the reach of Catholic readers.
In the present instance, we think the cause of infidelity has alone
any reason to fear anything from Mr. Burr’s letters. His reasonings
are so weak and rambling, and the replies of F. Walworth so plain and
conclusive, that it must do good to any reader who has a Christian
belief to see what a wretched, disgusting substitute for divine
religion is offered to the dupes of infidel sophistry. Infidelity
destroys the mind and the manhood of the human being. In the form of
materialism, it makes him a beast; in the form of spiritism, a lunatic.
We do not say that books of this kind should be expressly placed in
the hands of all readers, especially children and those who never read
anything or hear anything except what is good; but we say to those who
do hear and read the infidel sophistry and blasphemy of the day, and
therefore need a refutation of it: Take the two sides represented in
this book—“Look on this picture, and then look on that.”

We must add that there are some most beautiful passages in F.
Walworth’s letters; that, as a literary work, they are a gem; and that
the appendix on the universal belief of mankind in hell, though brief,
is remarkably comprehensive and valuable.

 THE THRESHOLD OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: A Course of Plain
 Instructions for those entering her Communion. By Rev. John B.
 Bagshawe, Missionary Rector of S. Elizabeth’s, Richmond. With a
 Preface by the Right Rev. Monsignor Capel. New York: The Catholic
 Publication Society. 1873.

The first part of this manual contains instruction in the truths of
faith; the second part, on sacraments, rites, devotions and similar
matters. It is good for candidates for admission into the Catholic
Church, for recent converts, and for clergymen, religious ladies,
teachers, and others who have converts to instruct.


 A WINGED WORD, AND OTHER STORIES. By M. A. T., author of _The
 House of Yorke_. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This collection of stories, already published separately in THE
CATHOLIC WORLD, ought to be welcome to all readers of taste and
discernment. It is just the book for summer reading, the only companion
one could bear in the retirement of the woods, and one whose spirit
would never jar upon any of nature’s moods. Fancy reading Miss Braddon
or Wilkie Collins under the forest canopy or by the river bank! But
here is a book which, at every page, will help you to put your own
vague thoughts into words, and will almost make you think that you
understand the song of the bobolink and the chatter of the squirrel.
And yet it is a book full of human interest, made up of human stories,
and treating of sorrow and want as well as of joy and peace. If we did
not know that the authoress was a New Englander, we should say she was
a German, so subtle and so spiritual are her principal characters,
so tender and so chaste her infinitely varied language. There is no
passion, no stir, no sensation in her plots, and her words do not pour
forth like a lava torrent, suggesting dangerous possibilities, and
caressing the animal instincts of our lower nature, like too many of
the successful and popular authors of our day. Reading her books, one
experiences a sense of coolness, and feels as if transported to a white
palace, where a crystal fountain plays unceasingly, and the silent
silver bells of lilies hang in clusters over the stream. It would
fill all the space we have at command to quote any of her beautiful
descriptions of scenes in the woods or by the golden sea-shore; she
seems to have gone down into the heart of every flower and learnt its
secret, to have lured the confidence of every brooklet, and made every
tree sing her some woodland poem.

The stories themselves (except the last) are the merest sketches, made
to hang beautiful thoughts upon, just as we plant a slender pole for a
scarlet vine to creep over. Yet they are each of them very original,
such as only “M. A. T.” would or could write.

One passage in “Daybreak” has been criticised in the Philadelphia
_Standard_ as containing the Nestorian heresy. It is found on p. 183:
“If you are willing, I would like to teach her to bless herself before
praying, and to say a little prayer to the Mother of Christ for your
safety. I won’t make her say ‘Mother of God.’” A little attention to
the context will make it perfectly evident that this criticism is
groundless, and that any Catholic might use this language in a similar
instance with perfect propriety. Mr. Granger and his little daughter
were Protestants. Margaret had no right to teach the child anything
which was against the conscience of her father. He was willing that she
should address the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of Christ, but not that
she should use the term Mother of God. Mother of Christ is a perfectly
proper and orthodox title, and is used by the Church in the Litany of
Loretto. Therefore, it was right to teach the child to use it, with
her father’s permission, and to abstain from teaching her to use the
expression Mother of God, which is really its precise equivalent. S.
Basil did not even require certain persons who were estranged from the
Catholic fold through the Arian heresy, but who wished to be admitted
to the communion of the Church, to profess in express terms that the
Holy Ghost is God, but was satisfied with a profession of his divinity
in equivalent terms. If an equivalent term may sometimes be admitted
in the case of Catholics, much more may it be employed in teaching
those who are not Catholics. It is one thing to use terms which are
heretical, another to use those which are less explicit, but more
easily understood by those who do not know the true meaning of the more
explicit Catholic terms.

One of the stories in this collection, “What Dr. Marks Died Of,” might
have been omitted without any loss to the volume. It may easily be
taken as a shot at the medical profession, and if that was the author’s
aim, it is one which we cannot approve. If it was not, the story is an
arrow in the air.

 THE IRISH REFORMATION; or, The Alleged Conversion of the
 Irish Bishops at the Accession of Queen Elizabeth, etc. By W. Maziere
 Brady, D.D. Fifth Edition. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1867. (New
 York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

 STATE PAPERS CONCERNING THE IRISH CHURCH IN THE TIME OF QUEEN
 ELIZABETH. Edited by W. Maziere Brady, D.D. London: Longmans,
 Green, Reader & Dyer. 1868. (New York: Sold by The Catholic
 Publication Society.)

We have had frequent occasion of late to notice with pleasure and to
congratulate our readers and the Catholic community generally on the
revival in England of Catholic literature, and particularly of that
class of works which has a tendency to illustrate the dark era of
persecution and proscription which, commencing under the reign of Henry
VIII., may be said to have reached almost down to our own day. In the
last generation, Dr. Lingard, by his impartial _History_, cleared away
a good deal of the rubbish with which the deformities of the so-called
English Reformation were hidden from view; subsequently, Lady Fullerton
and other distinguished writers of fiction attempted, and with success,
to gain the attention of the public to their admirable portraiture of
the sufferings and fortitude of the Catholics of England in the times
of Elizabeth and James I.; while the erudite editor of the _Narrative
of F. Gerard_ has, by his industry and conscientious labors, placed all
future historians under a great debt of gratitude.

The works before us, though treating of a different subject, and
written by a Protestant clergyman, have a tendency very similar to
that produced by the writings we have mentioned. The first is devoted
to a discussion of the question whether the Protestant hierarchy in
Ireland can legally and historically claim descent from the ancient
church in Ireland; or, in plainer terms, have the Anglican bishops
in that country ever been consecrated at all, at any time, or by any
competent authority? In tracing up the succession of the defunct
“Establishment,” the author gives very succinct and accurate sketches
of every incumbent, Catholic and Protestant, of every diocese in
Ireland from the middle of the XVIth century and proves by dates,
facts, and public documents that the “reformed” prelates have no
more right to claim apostolic succession than they have to claim
to be the apostles themselves. When we mention that Dr. Brady is a
beneficed clergyman, and was formerly chaplain to the lord lieutenant,
our readers will have little hesitation in accepting conclusions so
damaging to his own church, and which, as he tells us himself, only the
cause of truth could have compelled him to publish.

The other book, though not so interesting, is to us on this side of
the Atlantic of much greater value, as few of us have an opportunity
of consulting the originals. It is a collection of state papers,
letters, documents, and petitions “touching the mode in which it was
sought to introduce the Reformed religion into Ireland,” and are all
authenticated copies taken from the records of the State Paper Office
in London. However much Dr. Brady may have done by these publications
to damage the cause of Protestantism in Ireland, and to humble the
pride of a faction that never has and never can possess the respect
or affection of the people upon whom it has so long preyed, he has
deserved by his fairness and courage the esteem and thanks of all
impartial lovers of historical truth.

—Since the above was in type, we find occasion for congratulating
the author upon having arrived at the conclusion to which his
investigations naturally led, _i.e._, his reception into the Catholic
Church.


 A VISIT TO LOUISE LATEAU. By Gerald Molloy, D.D. Boston: P.
 Donahoe. 1873.

This pretty little gem of a book, which has an engraving of the cottage
of the Lateau family as a frontispiece, will charm and edify all those
who take an interest in reading about the wonders of divine grace with
which our age is specially favored.


 DIRECTORIUM SACERDOTALE: A Guide for Priests in their Public
 and Private Life. By F. Benedict Valuy, S.J. With an Appendix for the
 use of Seminarists. London: John Philp. 1873.

This manual for ecclesiastics is highly commended by the Abbé Dubois,
an eminent director of a seminary in France, and an author of works
specially intended for priests, who calls it “the priest’s _Following
of Christ_,” and by the Bishop of Shrewsbury, to whom it is dedicated
by the translator. A valuable appendix has been added, containing a
catalogue of books for a priest’s library and for a mission, _i.e._,
parochial and lending library. It is enough to see Mr. Philp’s name as
publisher to know that it has been carefully, neatly, and conveniently
printed.


 A HUNDRED MEDITATIONS ON THE LOVE OF GOD. By Robert
 Southwell, Priest of the Society of Jesus. Edited, with a Preface, by
 John Morris, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1873.

There is a delicious quaintness about these meditations. They are
colloquies with God and with self, and come from the soul of a poet
who “aspired to and attained martyrdom.” A sketch of the saintly
author has recently appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD (“Poet and
Martyr,” April, 1873), so that it is needless to give one here. But the
frontispiece of the volume before us is a portrait of F. Southwell,
which is valuable.


ONLY A PIN. Translated from the French of J. T. De
Saint-Germaine. By P. S. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
1873.

_Only a Pin_, but an exceedingly valuable one, pointing a moral keenly
and sharply; having a head secure and sound, not likely to be turned
by any accidental twist; altogether a well-manufactured pin, straight
and strong, not weakly bending this way and that to serve illegitimate
uses, but made in the best factory and of good metal; a pin belonging
to the first and oldest family in Pindom, and sure to make its mark in
the literary world.

We often hear the expression “not worth a row of pins,” but a row like
this pin would be far from worthless. One would hardly expect to
become interested in the events brought about by so small an article as
a pin; yet the accomplished author has managed to engage attention most
agreeably from the first chapter to the last.

The translation is in the main very natural and easy, but now and then
a sentence seems a little careless or obscure.


 TALES FROM CHURCH HISTORY: VIVIA PERPETUA; or, The Martyrs
 of Carthage. By R. De Mericourt. Translated from the Second French
 Edition. New York: P. O’Shea. 1873.

The heroine of this story is S. Perpetua, the companion of S.
Felicitas. The story is well conceived and powerfully written. We have
not seen the original, but the translation shows an experienced and
competent hand, and has the great merit of reading as if the book had
been composed in English. There are, however, a number of inaccuracies
in respect to names, some careless sentences, and other blemishes of
style, some of which may be due to incorrect proof-reading, as the
errors evidently typographical are numerous. For instance, the Pontifex
Maximus is called the Pontiff Maximus, and in one place two Christian
converts are called “convicts.” Such an admirable story as this is,
with its thrilling delineations of Christian heroism and pagan cruelty,
ought to pass through more than one edition. If it does, we hope the
publisher will have its clerical errors corrected by a competent hand,
and the press-work more carefully performed, so as to make the book in
all respects _comme il faut_. If this is intended as the first of a
series, the project is one worthy of commendation.

Since the foregoing was put in type, we have ascertained that the story
as it appeared in French was “imitated from the English,” which, we
are informed, means that it was a free translation of an English book.
This accounts for certain omissions which appear rather singular in
a Catholic tale of this sort. No mention is made of the altar, the
sacrifice of the Mass, or holy communion. The explanations of Christian
doctrine and the answers to Vivia’s objections are not complete and
satisfactory. M. de Mericourt has taken care, however, that nothing
contrary to Catholic doctrine should be admitted, and as the events of
the story do not require any minute description of Christian doctrine
or worship, the omissions noted do not essentially detract from its
character as a portraiture of Christian virtue in the midst of the
dangers and trials of pagan life.


 CARDINAL WISEMAN’S ESSAYS. Vol. III. New York: P. O’Shea.
 1873.

This new volume contains the splendid refutation of High-Church and
Tractarian theories which appeared at the height of the Oxford movement
in the _Dublin Review_. Few persons have ever convinced so many and
such able antagonists by an argument as the great cardinal did in this
case. If it were possible to obtain the little volume on the last
illness and death of the cardinal, printed in England for private
circulation, to be published with this collection of his works, the
Catholic community would feel itself very much favored. The cardinal
was a holy man, as well as a great prelate. We have had the pleasure
of reading the beautiful account of his last illness and saintly death
in the little volume alluded to, and we cannot help thinking that its
publication would be an act of great propriety and utility, unless
there is some reason for reserving it for a place in a large and full
biography.

—Before going to press, we have noticed among the English
announcements that the work above referred to has been published.

 THE FISHERMAN’S DAUGHTER; THE AMULET. Tales by Hendrick
 Conscience. Baltimore: Murphy. 1873.

It is superfluous to praise Conscience’s tales, which are even better
than Canon Schmid’s. These two are uncommonly interesting, and
published in a very nice and attractive form, which makes them as
pretty little volumes for prizes as boy or girl could wish.


 MODERN MAGIC. By Schele De Vere. New York: G. P. Putnam’s
 Sons. 1873.

This is a crude hodge-podge of facts which the author has picked up
here and there, in which he utterly fails to distinguish between the
natural, the diabolical, and the divine. He has read some Catholic
works, and is to some extent familiar with the lives of the saints;
but the little that he knows only serves to place his ignorance in a
stronger light. What a pity it is that educated men should be ignorant
of what a child can so easily learn! Except for the additional examples
which he brings from recent times, Mr. De Vere would have been more
usefully employed in translating Görres, from whom he occasionally
quotes.

 LA PRIMAUTE ET L’INFAILLIBILITÉ DES SOUVERAINES PONTIFES,
 ETC. Par l’Abbé L. N. Bégin, D.D. Quebec: Huot. 1873.

This is another timely and admirable course of lectures from the Laval
University. The topics of the lectures are historical, embracing
the chief difficulties presented in the earlier, mediæval, and
later history of the Roman pontiffs respecting the supremacy and
infallibility of the successors of S. Peter. The controversies on
rebaptism, the Philosophumena, the case of Liberius, of Zosimus, of
Vigilius, of Honorius, the subject of the false decretals, the career
of S. Gregory VII., the conflict of Boniface VIII. with Philip le
Bel, the affair of the Templars, the great schism of Avignon, the
condemnation of Galileo, the suppression of the Jesuits, and several
other topics, are discussed in these able lectures in a critical and
erudite manner, in so far as space and the other conditions to which
the nature of his discourses subjected the author, have given him
the opportunity. The whole is preceded by an essay on the doctrine
of the supremacy, and concluded by a short eulogium on Pius IX. The
author is a graduate of the Roman College, and imbued with the sound
scholarship and orthodox spirit of that institution, the headquarters
of sacred science, which may God deliver from the impure horde who
are now defiling its precincts by their odious presence! There are a
great number of intelligent Catholic laymen seeking with anxiety at the
present time for clear, satisfactory information on just these topics
which the Laval professor has handled in the lectures now published. It
is a pity that they are accessible to those only who read French. If
the Quebec publisher would issue an edition in English, we are inclined
to think that the sale in England and the United States would reimburse
him. The lectures on the Syllabus, noticed in this magazine some months
ago, are also worth translating, and the publication of two such
courses in the English language would most certainly bring great honor
to the Laval University.

       *       *       *       *       *

TO CONTRIBUTORS.—New contributors are reminded that no
attention can be paid to manuscripts unless accompanied by the writers’
real names, and a reference, if they are unknown to the editor.

We also desire it to be understood that short, pithy articles on
subjects of present interest will have the preference, and that none
should exceed twelve printed pages (of 650 words each), except by
special arrangement.


BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

 From BURNS, OATES & CO., London, and The Catholic Publication
 Society, New York: The Life and Letters of S. Francis Xavier. By H.
 J. Coleridge, S.J. Vol. II. 12mo, pp. xxi-579.—Homeward. By Rev. F.
 Rawes, O.S.C.

 From J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: A Novena in Honor of S.
 Joseph. From the Italian of F. Patrignani, S.J. 24mo, pp. 104.

 From COLLINS & BRO., New York: Teachings of Jesus. 24mo, pp.
 44.

 From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: On the Eve. By I. S.
 Turgenieff. 18mo, pp. vi.-272.—Count Kostia. By Victor Cherbuliez.
 18mo, pp. 307.—Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine.
 18mo, pp. xx.-185.—Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thos. Hardy. 18mo,
 pp. vi.-269.

 From ROBERTS BROS., Boston: Memoir of Samuel J. May. 18mo,
 pp. 297.

 From D. & J. SADLIER & CO., New York: The Tithe-Proctor. By
 W. Carleton. 12mo, pp. xiv.-432.—Ravellings from the Web of Life.
 By Grandfather Greenway. 12mo, pp. 364.—Germaine Cousin. By Lady
 Fullerton. 18mo, paper, pp. 30.—Which is Which? By the same. Paper,
 18mo, pp. 45.—The Elder Brother. By Mrs. Jas. Sadlier. 18mo, paper,
 pp. 31.—The Invisible Hand. By Mrs. Jas. Sadlier. 18mo, paper, pp. 36.

 From BRIG.-GEN. ALBERT J. MYER, U.S.A.: Annual Report of the
 Chief Signal Officer to the Secretary of War, for 1872. 8vo, pp. 292.

 From DAILY JOURNAL PRINTING HOUSE, Syracuse: Addresses, etc.,
 at the Inauguration of Alex. Winchell as Chancellor of the Syracuse
 University. 8vo, paper, pp. 79.

 From THE SOCIETY: Annual Address of Chief-Justice Daly, the
 President, before the American Geographical Society, Feb. 17 1873.
 8vo, paper, pp. 60.

 From G. I. & C. KREUZER, Baltimore: Das Leben des HI. Paul
 vom Kreuze. Aus dem Italienischen von einem Mitgliede der Congregation
 der Passionisten. 12mo, pp. xvi.-400.

 From HERDER, Freiburg: Leben des seligen Petrus Faber, ersten
 Priesters der Gesellschaft Jesu. Von Rudolf Cornely, S.J. 12mo, paper,
 pp. 200.

 From WEED, PARSONS & CO., Albany: Remarks of Hon. Thos.
 Raines in Reply to the State Engineer and Commissioners. Paper, 8vo,
 pp. 28.




THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVII., No. 101.—AUGUST, 1873.

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev.
 I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
 Washington, D. C.


JEROME SAVONAROLA.

PART THIRD.

 “For neither in our own age nor in those of our fathers and
 grandfathers has any ecclesiastic been known to be so richly endowed
 with virtues, on whom so great reliance could be placed, or who
 enjoyed a greater degree of authority. Even his opponents admit him
 to have been a man of vast learning in numerous branches.... This was
 especially the case in respect of the Holy Scriptures, and in the
 knowledge of which it is a general belief that there had not existed
 for ages any one at all his equal. He evinced a profound judgment,
 not only in literature, but in the ordinary affairs of life.... The
 confidence he inspired was marvellous.”—_Guicciardini, Storia Inedita
 di Firenze._

 “ ... Of such a man one ought never to speak but with
 reverence.”—_Machiavelli, Discorsi._


CHARLES VIII. crossed the Alps at the head of an army of 22,000
infantry and 24,000 cavalry—admirably armed and appointed for that
period. They had thirty-six cannons, of which the wonder was related
that they were drawn by horses, the guncarriages having four wheels,
two of which could be detached when they went into battery. To these
forces were to be joined those of Ludovico the Moor, Duke of Milan,
who had specially urged the coming of Charles. To such an army as
this, the Italians feared that all the armies of Italy, even if they
could be consolidated, could offer no effectual resistance. They were
in wretched condition, both as to men and commanders, and the famous
_condottieri_ had degenerated into mere consumers of pay and rations.

Under the able diplomacy of Lorenzo, the most friendly relations had
been cultivated with France, and Charles VIII. was inclined to treat
Tuscany more as an ally than an enemy. But Piero, with characteristic
ineptness, manifested a preference for Naples, and alienated the French
king. The indignation of the Florentines was intense when they found
that Piero’s course was likely to bring an army of invasion within
their walls; for the French advance was already marked by the brutal
massacres of the people of Rapallo and Fivizzano after the garrisons
had surrendered. Having separated his cause from that of the citizens,
and without men and means to oppose the French, the frightened Piero
set out for the king’s camp to sue for peace. Charles had yet to pass
on his way to Florence three strongholds, Sarzanello, Sarzano, and
Pietra Santa, any one of which with a small force could hold a powerful
army in check. When Piero reached the French lines, Charles had been
besieging Sarzanello for three days without success. The invaders
were in a barren country, shut in between the mountains and the sea.
In point of fact, they were poorly commanded; the French king himself
was a model of stupid indolence and neglect, and they might easily
have been driven back in confusion. And yet the panic-stricken Piero,
without consulting the ambassadors who accompanied him, immediately
yielded to all the conditions demanded by Charles, and even more; for
he surrendered at once the three formidable fortresses, besides those
of Pisa and Leghorn, and agreed, moreover, to a forced loan of 200,000
ducats from Florence. The fortresses thus given up had been gained by
long sieges and enormous sums of money, and were the military keys of
Tuscany. Naturally enough, the news of their surrender aroused the
Florentines to anger, which was intensified by what they heard from
the ambassadors of the conduct of Piero. Excitement spread throughout
the city. All business was suspended. Groups in the public places soon
swelled to crowds. Fierce and angry-looking men were seen bearing
weapons but partially concealed. Daggers were brandished that had not
seen the light of day since the Pazzi conspiracy. Artisans of all
trades, and in particular the _ciómpi_, the strong-armed wool-combers,
abandoned their workshops, recalling their former triumphs under
Michele di Lando in the days of the republic. But the old friends of
popular liberty among the higher classes had, during the past sixty
years, all melted away in exile or persecution, and there was every
excess and atrocity to be feared from an enraged multitude just freed
from servitude, and making no concealment of their threats against
those who had become wealthy and powerful by oppressing them. Such
crowds as these raged through the streets of Florence, when a sermon
from Savonarola was announced at the _Duomo_. A dense mass of people
soon filled it, and Savonarola from his place looked down on a human
powder-magazine in which the smallest spark in shape of an imprudent
word would create explosion and spread dire disaster. If “turbulent,
priestly demagogue” there were, this was the moment and this the place
to find him.

What said Savonarola?

Not a word of their complaints or their wrongs, past or present; not
the slightest allusion to Piero or to the Medici; but, bending over the
pulpit with outstretched arms, and looking into the mass of upturned
faces with gaze of affection and expression of tenderest sympathy,
he poured out words of peace, union, and charity: “Behold, the sword
has descended, the scourges have commenced, the prophecies are being
fulfilled; behold the Lord, who is leading on those armies. O Florence!
the time for music and dancing is at an end: now is the time for
pouring out rivers of tears over your sins. Thy crimes, O Florence!
thy crimes, O Rome! thy crimes, O Italy! are the cause of these
chastisements. Behold, then, give alms, offer up prayers, be a united
people. O my people! I have been to thee as a father; I have labored
throughout my life to make thee know the truth of faith, and how to
lead a good life, and have met with nothing but tribulation, scorn,
and opprobrium. I might have had this compensation at least, that I
might have seen thee performing some good deeds. My people, have I ever
shown any other desire than to see thee in safety, to see thee united?
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But that I have said
many times. I have so often cried out to thee, I have so often wept
for thee, O Florence! that it might have sufficed thee. I turn, then,
to thee, Lord; pardon this people, who desire to be thine.” He then
went on enjoining charity and faith with an energy overflowing more
with affection than eloquence, and the crowd who entered the _Duomo_ a
raging multitude, left it in peaceful procession.

Old Gino Capponi, a man resolute in word and deed, arose in a meeting
of the signiory, and said: “The republic must look to itself; _it is
high time to get rid of being governed by children_. Let ambassadors be
sent to King Charles, and, if they meet Piero, let them not salute him.
Let commanding officers and troops be called in, and, while kept out of
sight in cloisters and other places, hold themselves in readiness, so
that, while nothing is wanting in honorable dealing with the king, we
yet stand prepared to resist designs to which we should not submit. And
above everything, do not fail to send with the ambassadors the Padre
Girolamo Savonarola, to whom the people are so entirely devoted.”

Capponi’s suggestions were all adopted. The embassy was sent,
Savonarola following it on foot—his usual mode of travelling. The
other ambassadors were coldly received by the king, and immediately
returned to Florence with the assurance that his majesty was by no
means well disposed towards the republic. Savonarola reached the French
camp, and, passing through the soldiery, soon came in presence of the
king, seated among his generals. He was courteously received, and,
with slight preamble, thus addressed Charles in a loud and commanding
tone: “Most Christian king, thou art an instrument in the hand of the
Lord, who sends thee to deliver Italy from her afflictions, as for many
years I have predicted, and sends thee to reform the church, which lies
prostrate in the dust. But if thou be not just and merciful; if thou
pay not respect to the city of Florence, to its women, its citizens,
its liberty; if thou dost forget the work for which the Lord sends
thee, he will then select another to fulfil it, and will let the hand
of his wrath fall upon thee, and will punish thee with awful scourges.
These things I say to thee in the name of the Lord.”


EXPULSION OF THE MEDICI.

Meantime, serious events had occurred in Florence. The reports of the
returning ambassadors had produced still greater excitement. Piero de’
Medici had attempted to regain possession of the government, but had
failed, was hooted at, mobbed, driven from the city, and a price set
upon his head. _Palle! palle!_[163] once the all-powerful rallying-cry
of the Medici in Florence, fell dead on the ears of the people. The
Medicean palace was seized, and the houses of Cardinal de’ Medici,
and of Guidi and Miniati, confidential agents of the Medici, were
sacked. The turbulent mob appeared disposed to proceed to still greater
lengths, when Savonarola returned from his mission to the French camp,
again preaching charity, union, and peace.

His bold language had profoundly impressed the French king, who
resolved to be guided by what the monk had said, and on the 17th of
November, 1494, at the head of a portion of his army, some 12,000
men, he made a peaceful entry into the city of Florence. Meanwhile,
Capponi, resolved to be prepared for the worst, had laid in good store
of munitions of war in buildings where he held reserves of soldiery, in
cloisters and courtyards. Materials for barricading the streets were
provided, and all were ordered to come forth armed at the first sound
of the bell. His precautions were timely.


CHARLES ENTERS FLORENCE.

The reception of the French king was magnificent, and, after the
ceremonies, feasts, and illuminations attendant upon it, he was
sumptuously installed in the Medicean palace. Here the wife and the
mother of Piero de’ Medici contrived to negotiate with him for the
restoration of the Medicean rule. Tempting offers were made him:
Piero was to be brought back, and the government of Florence was to
be shared with the king. The effect of all this was soon visible in
the extravagance of the demands made by Charles upon the Florentines.
The signiory resisted; the king refused to recede, and gave them his
_ultimatum_. On its rejection by the syndics, he said, in a threatening
tone: “Then we shall sound our trumpets.” “And we,” instantly replied
Capponi, springing to his feet—“and we will ring our bells.”

Charles thought better of it, and the treaty was shortly afterwards
signed. It recognized the republic, and gave the king the sum of
120,000 florins in three instalments. The treaty ratified, still the
king lingered. Troubles arose. Collisions had taken place between
the soldiery and the citizens; robbery and murder were of nightly
occurrence; shops were closed, and trade generally suspended. The worst
consequences were feared, and Savonarola, fully occupied in preaching
peace and warding off dangers, was implored to use his influence with
the French king, and persuade him to depart. He immediately presented
himself before Charles, who, surrounded by his nobles, graciously
received him.

“Most Christian prince,” said the monk, “thy stay causes great damage
to this city and to thy enterprise. Thou losest time, forgetting the
duty that Providence hath imposed upon thee, to the great injury of
thine own spiritual welfare and the world’s glory. Listen, then, to the
servant of God. Proceed on thy way without further tarrying. Do not
desire to bring ruin on this city, nor provoke the anger of the Lord.”
A few days afterwards, the king and his army departed.


THE REPUBLIC.

Great was the joy of the Florentines to be rid of the foreigner and his
armed legions. Short as had been his stay, it left profound traces.
Pisa, Arezzo, and Montepulciano had risen in rebellion. The enormous
sums paid to the French king had drained the resources of the city. The
wealthy were impoverished, and misery spread among the poorer classes.
Savonarola proposed, first of all, to provide for the wants of these
last, and to take up collections for them. If they proved insufficient,
to turn into ready money the plate and ornaments of the churches; to
reopen the shops without delay; to lighten the taxes, especially to the
lower classes; and, finally, to pray to God with fervor.

A _parlamento_, or assemblage of the people, was now held to establish
the new government. Without experience or sufficient knowledge on their
part, it resulted in the re-establishment of the old magistrates, and
the maintenance of the old forms so cunningly devised by the Medici,
that, while the people possessed the outward show of an independent
government, it was one which from its nature could easily be wielded at
the will of one man. These defects soon became apparent, and various
propositions for reform were forthwith made at the Palazzo. Differences
were represented by two parties, headed respectively by Paolo Antonio
Soderini, and Guido Antonio Vespucci. Soderini was of the popular
party, and preferred the form of government at Venice as the best model
for the Florentines to adopt, stipulating that, instead of limiting the
Grand Council, as in Venice, it should be composed of the whole people,
and a smaller council called, composed of the _ottimati_, or men of
experience. Vespucci argued strongly against the democratic features
of Soderini’s proposition. It was evident that he carried with him the
majority at the Palazzo, and among them, naturally enough, many recent
partisans of the Medici. While the debates grew warmer and longer, many
citizens feared the result, and appealed to Savonarola for counsel.
He, too, saw the danger even more clearly than they, and resolved
to give the counsel asked. The interference of holy and religious
people in political affairs was no new thing in Italy. S. Dominic had
participated in affairs of state in Lombardy; peace had been effected
between the Guelphs and Ghibellines by a cardinal; S. Catherine of
Sienna interfered to raise the interdict pronounced on Florence by
Gregory XI.; and S. Antonino, the former Archbishop of Florence, had
more than once interposed to prevent the passage of unjust laws.

On the third Sunday in Advent (Dec. 12, 1494), in the course of
his thirteenth sermon on Aggeus, Savonarola spoke to the people of
government, discussed its general nature, the advantages of its several
forms, and what was best for them; and concluded this ought to be the
groundwork: that no individual shall have any benefit but such as is
general, and _the people alone must have the power of choosing the
magistrates, and of approving the laws_.

In a subsequent sermon at the _Duomo_, to which he invited all the
magistrates and people except women and children, he presented the four
following propositions:

First. They should in all things have the fear of God before them, and
there should be a reform of manners.

Second. All considerations of private utility should yield to the
public good and the cause of popular government.

Third. General amnesty absolving the friends of the late government
from all blame, and remitting all penalties, with indulgence to those
who were indebted to the state.

Fourth. Establish a general government which should include all
citizens who, according to the ancient statutes, formed a part of the
state, recommending the form of the Grand Council at Venice as best
adapted, modifying it to suit the peculiar character of the Florentine
people.

This effectually disposed of the plan of Vespucci, which would
otherwise have prevailed at the Palazzo, leaving Florence under a
patrician government which might ripen into despotism, or be the
ever-frequent provocation of fresh disorders and revolutions.


SAVONAROLA ON GOVERNMENT.

There is nothing more remarkable in Savonarola’s character and career
than the familiarity displayed by him with the principles and practical
working of government, as manifested by his writings and sermons
during the course of the debates and struggles attendant upon the
formation of the new republic. On all the proposals or modifications
of fundamental laws, the popular party would enter into no discussion,
nor take any decisive step, until Savonarola had spoken. And it was
remarked that, during the discussions which followed in the Consiglio
and other assemblies, the new law itself, or arguments pro or con for
a change or abrogation of the old, were presented by those who spoke
in the very words in which he had discussed the matter in his sermons.
It would indeed be matter of legitimate surprise that a monk whose
whole time was, as we have seen, fully occupied with the duties of his
station, should possess even slight command of a subject so foreign
to his calling, were it not that we are apprised of the sources of
Savonarola’s knowledge. They lay in his profound study of S. Thomas
Aquinas for the principles, and in his keen personal observation for
the practice, of government. To the treatise _De Regimine Principium_
he is largely indebted for his theory of popular government. No modern
writer has pointed out the evils of tyrannical government more clearly
than S. Thomas Aquinas, and none more clearly than he has shown that
government to be the best which tends most to the moral, intellectual,
and material interests of the people, and includes the largest number
of citizens under its protection. We sincerely regret that our
restricted limits will not permit the citation of numerous passages
from “the Angelic Doctor” upon this subject, clothed in to-day’s
English; they might much more readily be taken for the lucubrations of
an advanced political thinker of 1873 than for those of an ecclesiastic
of 1273. And we would express the same regret as to the work of
Savonarola—his _Treatise on Government_.[164] Throughout the entire
range of modern literature, comments on Machiavelli’s _Il Principe_
are so constantly dinned in our ears that one might suppose the Italy
of that day to have been in profound ignorance even theoretically
of the principles of free government. Savonarola’s treatise is the
antidote of Machiavelli’s _Prince_. There are passages in it from which
it might be concluded that he not only saw the necessities of actual
democratic governments, but also foresaw the dangers of those not yet
in existence. Thus: “Not wealth, as we commonly believe, is the cause
why an individual attains the headship of a state. Rather the cause
lies in this: that an individual attains to overwhelming influence and
exclusive consideration in the state by the possession and distribution
of public offices and dignities. To deprive individuals of this power
is the first stipulation of a popular government, which demands that
no law and no tax, no office nor honor, should be conferred or become
valid without the consent of the whole people. But in order that the
whole people shall not be collected together on every occasion, this
right will be vested in a certain number of citizens,” etc. And he
concludes with this passage: “As in everything, so likewise in the
state spiritual force is the best and worthiest of ruling powers.
Hence it is that, even from the beginning, a still imperfect state of
government will flourish in complete security, and with time acquire
perfection; if it is always universally acknowledged that the end
of all Christian states is the improvement of the citizens by the
withdrawing of all obscenity and all wickedness, and that the truly
Christian life subsists in the fear of God; if, moreover, the law of
the Gospel is esteemed as the measure and rule of civil life and of all
laws that are made; if, further, all citizens show a true love of their
country; if, finally, a general peace shall have been concluded among
the citizens, all past injustice of the former government forgiven, and
all older hatred forgotten—such unity makes strong within, secure and
feared without.”


SAVONAROLA’S CIVIL REFORMS.

The first measures decreed by the new government proved superior
intelligence in political matters. The ancient laws of the city were
found in such confusion that even judges and officials were not aware
of the extent of their duties or their jurisdiction. It was ordered
that these laws should be consolidated in one volume, or, as we would
say nowadays, codified. Savonarola then insisted on a reform in the
system of taxation, which, under the Medici, was not only onerous and
clumsy in application, but unjust in its distribution. The so-called
_catasto_, or system of assessing taxes on the supposed profits of
trade and commerce, was not only exhausting but absolutely destructive
of many branches of trade and industry, at once ruining those who
pursued them, and drying up the sources of wealth to the state. “Lay
the taxes solely on property,” said Savonarola. “Put an end to the
continual loans and all arbitrary imposts.” And he recommended a new
system—one devised with so much prudence, says Villari, so much
wisdom, and on such sound principles, that it has continued to be
acted upon ever since. This new law established a tax on property for
the first time in Florence, and also for the first time in any part
of Italy; it put an end to all loans and arbitrary assessments, and
obliged every citizen, without distinction, to pay ten per cent. of the
income he derived from permanent property.

A general amnesty for political offences was next decreed, and many
penalties assessed were remitted. Among the latter was one of June 8,
1495, which possesses a certain historical interest: “The magnificent
signiory and Gonfalonieri, considering that Messer Dante Alighieri,
great-grandson of the poet Dante, has not been able to return to this
city, from his want of means to pay the taxes imposed by the signiory
in the past November and December, and they being of opinion that it
is very fitting that some mark of gratitude should be shown, through
his descendants, to a poet who is so great an ornament to this city, be
it enacted that the said Messer Dante may consider himself free, and
hereby is free, from every sentence of outlaw, exile, etc.”

Savonarola next drew public attention to the sore need of a _Monte di
Pietà_—an institution to which the poor could resort in pecuniary
stress for a temporary loan of money on objects pledged. By reason
of the absence of such an establishment, and the popular indignation
against the Jews, from whom the needy were obliged to borrow, serious
disturbances had broken out under Piero de’ Medici; but the poor were
no better off than before, and the necessity of some aid for them was
a crying one. It was officially ascertained that there were Jews in
Florence who lent money at 32-1/2 per cent., with compound interest, so
that a loan of one hundred florins on their terms would in fifty years
amount to 49,792,556 florins.

Savonarola urged the subject vehemently from the pulpit, without,
however, attacking the Jews. He desired they should be converted, not
persecuted. A law was passed (Dec. 28, 1495) establishing a _Monte_.
Expenses of the institution were not to exceed 600 florins per annum;
interest to be paid by the borrower not to exceed six per cent.; and
borrowers were required to take an oath that they would not gamble
with the money so lent. Thus, with a fairer administration of justice,
a radical reform in taxation, the abrogation of usury, the permanent
relief of the poor, the liberty to carry arms, the abolition of the
Parlamento, and the establishment of the Consiglio Maggiore, it may be
said that the freedom of the Florentine people was obtained without
bloodshed or riot in a single year. The American traveller of to-day
who visits Florence will remark on the platform in front of the Palazzo
Vecchio the admirable statue of Judith slaying Holofernes—the work of
the immortal Donatello. It was placed there at this time as a symbol
of the triumph of liberty over tyranny. On its pedestal are inscribed
these words: _Exemplum sal: pub: cives posuere MCCCCXCV_. (“The
citizens placed this symbol of the public safety, in the year 1495”).
If the man who was the soul of this great movement had been a great
soldier or potentate, his name would have been handed down to posterity
as that of a new Lycurgus. But he was a simple white-robed monk, with
no other insignia of rank or authority than his persuasive word and the
example of his pure life. Neither in the public places nor the meetings
of deliberation and discussion was he ever seen, nor had he any
system of secret influence or hidden working. Of seeking any personal
advantage or emolument no one ever thought of seriously accusing him.

All he thought and had to say on matters of public weal he announced
publicly in the pulpit. To those who complained of undue clerical
influence in secular matters, and hinted at the desire of a monk to
govern a republic, he replied that in its trouble he held it to be his
duty to give advice to the new state, especially when so many in the
council feared to proclaim the truth. More he had not done. Seeking to
lead men to propriety and justice is not meddling. Such participation
in civil affairs is neither unworthy itself of a priest nor without
example in history, ancient or modern. He had gone no further than to
denounce open abuses, to encourage men to what was good and peaceful,
and to preach the Gospel. “I have said to you,” he tells them in one of
his sermons, “that I will not mix in government affairs, but only labor
therein to preserve complete the general peace. To recommendations of
individuals or similar solicitations I never yield. Go with these to
the proper officials. I also say here openly, if any of my friends
should be recommended to you, deal no otherwise with him than according
to justice. Yet once more: I do not meddle with state affairs; I wish
only that the people should remain in peace, and receive no injury.”

Perfect, Savonarola’s work certainly was not, for there was in it
the germ of an oligarchic power which at a later day worked like a
principle of corruption. Savonarola himself would have wished it more
complete. It has been sought to throw personal ridicule upon the great
Dominican, and to deny him any marked political eminence; but when we
gather the opinions of three great Florentines who lived after him,
who were not his disciples, and who were eminently qualified to judge
the subject-matter in question, moderns and foreigners may properly
remain silent. We refer to Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Gianotti. Of
Savonarola personally, Machiavelli frequently spoke in terms of sarcasm
and irony, although in his writings he refers, to “the learning, the
prudence, and the purity of his mind.” He describes him (_Decennale
Primo_) as “breathing divine virtue”; and again he says: “Of such a
man one ought never to speak but with reverence.” He admits the great
importance of the institutions founded by Savonarola, and tells Leo
X. there is no other way to bring the state of Florence into order
than by the restoration of the Consiglio Maggiore—the council for the
establishment of which Savonarola struggled with such pertinacity.
Gianotti, a noble patriot twice exiled, who made special study of the
subject of government, says: “He who established the Consiglio Grande
was a far wiser man than Giano della Bella, because the latter thought
of securing the liberties of the people by humbling the great, whereas
the object of the other was to secure the liberties of all,” and is
elsewhere enthusiastic in his admiration of Savonarola. Guicciardini
the pompous historian and diplomat, and Guicciardini composing in the
privacy of his study, are two different writers. It is not in his
_Storia d’Italia_ that we must look for his real sentiments on certain
subjects. The diplomat holds the pen there. But in his _Ricordi_,
published long after his death, he says: “Such was the love of the
Florentines for the liberty conferred upon them in 1494 that no arts,
no soothings, no cunning devices of the Medici, ever sufficed to make
them forget it; that there was a time when it might have been easy,
when it was a question of depriving the few of their liberty; but,
after the Consiglio Grande, it was the deprivation of liberty to all.”
Elsewhere he says: “You are under heavy obligations to this friar, who
stayed the tumult in good time, and accomplished that which without
him could only have been attained through bloodshed and the greatest
disorders. You would first have had a government of patricians, and
then an unbridled popular government, giving rise to disturbances
and shedding of blood, and probably ending in the return of Piero
de’Medici. Savonarola alone had the wisdom, from the outset, to arrest
the coming storm by liberal measures.” Finally, in his _Storia di
Firenze_, he has none but the most enthusiastic terms of praise for the
prudence, the practical and political genius, of the friar, and calls
him the saviour of his country.


THE SERMONS AGAIN.

The great questions of government which then agitated Florence did not
for a moment distract Savonarola’s attention from the duty of preaching
practical Christian duties. After the course of sermons on Aggeus, he
preached on the Psalms, for the Lenten course of 1495 on Job, resuming
the Psalms after Lent. Solid teaching and vehement admonition were
never absent, and the sermons of 1494 were quite as strongly marked by
those features as those of the first course at the _Duomo_, in one of
which he tells his hearers: “How have you renounced the devil and his
pomps—you who every day do his works? You do not attend to the laws
of Christ, but to the literature of the Gentiles. Behold, the Magi
have abandoned paganism, and come to Christ, and you, having abandoned
Christ, run to paganism. You have left the manna and the bread of
angels, and you have sought to satiate your appetite with the food that
is fit for swine. Every day avarice augments, and the vortex of usury
is enlarged. Luxury has contaminated everything; pride ascends even to
the clouds; blasphemies pierce the ears of Heaven; and scoffing takes
place in the very face of God. You (who act thus) are of the devil,
who is your father, and you seek to do the will of your father. Behold
those who are worse than the Jews; and yet to us belong the sacred
Scriptures, which speak against them.... Many are the blind who say
our times are more felicitous than the past ages, but I think, if the
Holy Scriptures are true, our lives are not only not like those of our
fathers of former times, but they are at variance with them.... Cast
your eyes on Rome, which is the chief city of the world, and lower your
gaze to all her members, and, lo! from the crown of the head to the
sole of the foot, no health is there.

“We are in the midst of Christians, we converse with Christians, but
they are not Christians who are so only in name; far better would
it be in the midst of pagans.... For now men have become lovers
of themselves; covetous, haughty, proud, profane, disobedient,
ungrateful, given to ribaldry, without love, without peace, censorious,
incontinent, spiteful, without benignity, treacherous persons,
deceivers, puffed-up, lovers of voluptuousness more than that of God,
_who have the form of righteousness, but who deny the value of it_.”

More than ever the people hung upon his words. Numbers came from Pisa,
Leghorn, and the neighboring cities to hear him; many also from as
far as Bologna, to remain in Florence during Lent. Residents of the
neighboring villages and hamlets, and mountaineers from the Apennines,
filled the roads to Florence on Saturdays and the eves of feast days;
and, when the city gates were opened at dawn of day on Sunday morning,
crowds were there waiting entrance. Strangers thus coming were received
with brotherly charity, and the duties of Christian hospitality were
observed. Even in winter, the people of Florence rose from their
beds after midnight, in order to reach the _Duomo_ in time to secure
a place, and then waited in church, taper in hand, praying, singing
hymns, or reciting the office, for hours together. The cathedral could
not contain his audience. Seats were put up in an amphitheatre to
increase the space. Men and boys swarmed on the pillars and every point
where it was possible to obtain a position. Even the piazza was full.

All these remarkable manifestations were not without results. Florence
became a changed city. Not only were churches assiduously attended,
but alms were freely given. Women laid aside their rich ornaments and
expensive jewels, and dressed with simplicity. Light and careless
carriage or demeanor was rare. Habits of prayer and spiritual reading
in the houses of the Florentines became the rule rather than the
exception. The obscene carnival songs of the Medicean period were no
longer heard in the streets, but, in their place, lauds or hymns.
At the hour of mid-day rest, the artisan or tradesman might be seen
reading the Bible or some pamphlet by Savonarola, and young men of
noted licentious or frivolous habits became models of good conduct.
Fast days were observed with such rigor that, in justice to the
butchers, the tax on their calling was lowered. Men and women of
disedifying or tepid life became religious—among them men of mature
age, distinguished in letters, science, and public affairs. Such young
men as the Strozzi, the Salviati, the Gondi, and the Accaiuoli joined
the friars of S. Mark and other religious orders. Restitution of
ill-gotten gains or property was common. But the most wonderful thing
of all, says a historian, was to find bankers and merchants refunding,
from scruples of conscience, sums of money, amounting sometimes to
thousands of florins, which they had unrighteously acquired.


PROPHESIES HIS OWN DEATH.

Still Savonarola pressed on in his work of conversion as though it had
just begun. His followers had prepared themselves for a joyful tone
of victory in his sermons by reason of his brilliant civic triumphs,
and were ready to rend the air with their alleluias. But he, on the
contrary, seemed more serious, more sad, than ever, and, in his first
discourse after the events we have just related, opened with an
allegory full of sorrowful forebodings, and the prophecy of his own
violent death:

 “A young man, leaving his father’s house, went to fish in the sea;
 and the master of the vessel took him, while he was fishing, far into
 the deep sea, whence he could no longer discern the port; whereupon
 the youth began to lament aloud. O Florence! that sorrowful youth
 thus lamenting is before you in this pulpit. I left my father’s house
 to find the harbor of religion, departing when I was twenty-three
 years old in pursuit only of liberty and a life of quiet—two things
 I loved beyond all others. But then I looked upon the waters of this
 world, and began, by preaching, to gain some courage; and, finding
 pleasure therein, the Lord led me upon the sea, and has carried me far
 away into the great deep, where I now am, and can no longer descry
 the harbor. _Undique sunt angustiæ-_-shoals are on every side. I
 see before me the threatening tribulations and tempests, the harbor
 of refuge left behind, the wind carrying me forward into the great
 deep. On my right, the elect calling upon me for help; on my left,
 demons and the wicked tormenting and raging. Over, above me, I see
 everlasting goodness, and hope encourages me thitherward; hell I see
 beneath me, which, from human frailty, I must dread, and into which,
 without the help of God, I must inevitably fall. O Lord, Lord! whither
 hast thou led me? That I might save some souls to thee, I am myself so
 placed that I can no more return to the quiet I left. Why hast thou
 created me to live among the contentions and discords of the earth?
 I once was free, and now I am the slave of every one. I see war and
 discord coming upon me from every side. But do you, O my friends! you
 the elect of God, have pity upon me. Give me flowers; for, as is said
 in the Canticle, _quia amore langueo_—because I languish through
 love. Flowers are good works, and I wish for nothing more than that
 you should do that which is acceptable to God, and save your own
 souls.”

Here his agitation was so great that he was obliged to pause, saying:
“Now let me have some rest in this tempest.” Then resuming his
discourse:

 “But what, what, O Lord! will be the reward in the life to come to be
 given to those who have come victorious out of such a fight? It will
 be that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard—eternal beatitude. And
 what is to be the reward in the present life? The servant will not
 be greater than his master, is the answer of our Lord. Thou knowest
 that, after I had taught, I was crucified, and thus thou wilt suffer
 martyrdom. O Lord, Lord!” he then exclaimed, with a loud voice that
 echoed throughout the church, “grant me this martyrdom, and let me
 die quickly for thy sake, as thou diedst for me. Already I see the
 axe sharpened. But the Lord says to me: Wait yet awhile, until that
 be finished which is to come to pass, and then thou shalt show that
 strength of mind which will be given unto thee.”


HIS VISIONS AND PROPHECIES.

He then resumed the explanation of a psalm at the verse _Laudate
Dominum quia bonus_, and declaimed in a burst of ecstatic excitement,
which carried his hearers along with him, sobbing and weeping. It
was by passages like these, in which the magnetic attraction of the
speaker’s features, voice, and gestures predominated, that his hearers
were most affected. And this readily explains the fact that, when
we read his sermons as reported by those present, it is difficult
to invest the words with the tremendous effects they seem to have
produced. This state of ecstasy which seized him in the pulpit
frequently followed him to his solitary cell, where, for days and
nights together, he would remain the sleepless victim of visions, until
sleep happily released him. From his youthful days, he had made himself
familiar with all that S. Thomas Aquinas says of angels and prophets
and of their visions, and, in like manner, with all the dreams and
visions of the prophets and patriarchs as related in the Old Testament.
All these filled his mind, and at night reproduced themselves with
the vividness of original revelations. They increased upon him as
he read the Bible and the Fathers more assiduously, and he accepted
them as divine inspirations sent through the intervention of angels.
It is difficult to believe the extent to which a blind faith and
devotion to these visions had taken possession of all his faculties,
when we look at the calm, decided, and practical manner in which he
disposed of important questions of a merely mundane character, such as
administration, finance, and civil government.

Savonarola has left on record the fullest account of the workings and
condition of his own mind on the subject of his visions and prophecies,
in two works—_Dialogo della Verita Profetica_ (Dialogue on Prophetic
Truth), and _Compendium Revelationum_.


WAS SAVONAROLA A PROTESTANT?

In these works, Savonarola reveals himself without reserve on the
important subject of the prophecies and visions, and lays bare his
inmost heart. This is a part of his biography we would gladly treat at
length, for the reason that one of the accusations against him is that
of insincerity, bad faith, and deception of the people by abusing their
credulity. We must, however, content ourselves with the remark that,
although these works may afford some proof of an overheated imagination
and an overexcited mind, they certainly afford none whatever of any
thought or impulse of their author not perfectly sincere and loyal.
His two German Protestant biographers, Rudelbach and Meyer, to their
honor be it said, were the first to study these prophetic writings of
Savonarola. Their views diverge but slightly, both seeking to show that
he was a Protestant—a question now scarcely worth while discussing,
notwithstanding the impertinent assertion of the Luther monument at
Worms. In this connection, we may here cite the opinion of a late
writer on Savonarola, a distinguished English Protestant:[165] “So that
the effort made by some of the German biographers, more especially
Meyer, who artistically concocts a complete system of Protestant
dogmatics from his works, appears to be injudicious; and we must come
to the only reasonable conclusion: that, though he (Savonarola) is now
claimed both by Catholics and Protestants, he lived and died in that
church in which he was reared, and which he would not have destroyed,
but purified.”[166]


PARTIES AND FACTIONS.

When we speak of the respect and veneration entertained for Savonarola
by the population of Florence, we must not for a moment suppose he
was any exception to the rule that the presence of a good man is a
reproach to the depraved, or that Florence, like Athens, had not
within her walls those who were tired of hearing a man called just.
The Medici had still a large body of adherents in the city—men who,
whether they preferred or not an oligarchy to a republic, still
regretted the offices or emoluments they had lost—were themselves
of the aristocracy, or sympathized with it. Then came many of the
amnestied, who, themselves pardoned, did not therefore forgive others.
Then, too, those who felt themselves thwarted in their license or
licentiousness by the changed state of public morality. The dominant
party—that of the Frate—went by the name of the _Frateschi_. A
smaller party, composed of those who were not personally his adherents,
but were in favor of a republic, were called _Bianchi_ (white); another
and larger party, made up of partisans of the Medici, most of them
amnestied, were called _Bigi_ (grays), and, while outwardly favorable
to Savonarola, were his bitter and unrelenting enemies, in constant
correspondence with Piero de’ Medici, whose return was the object of
all their devices and plots. The partisans of the oligarchy, so active
in their endeavors to defeat the new government, and bent on getting
the power into their own hands, and establish a pretended republic
under aristocratic rule, were naturally opposed to both Savonarola and
the Medici. They had contemptuously bestowed the name of _Piagnoni_
(Mourners) on the followers of Savonarola, and, from their known bitter
hatred, were themselves called the _Arrabiati_ (rabid or infuriated).
Carefully avoiding any opposition to the republic, they sought by
every means to cast discredit on Savonarola, to throw ridicule upon
his visions and prophecies, to create discontent with his reforms,
and to foster a spirit of criticism and dislike against him. The
accidental elevation to the office of Gonfaloniere of a man unfit for
it—Filippo Corbizzi—was seized by them as an opportunity to attack
Savonarola as early as 1495. At their instigation, he called together
at the Palazzo a sort of theological council of theologians, abbots,
priors, etc., before whom a charge of intermeddling in the affairs of
state was laid against Savonarola. The council was opened, and the
discussion commenced, when, by the merest accident, Savonarola, in
entire ignorance of what was taking place, entered the hall with his
friend Fra Domenico, of Pescia. He was instantly assailed with words
of abuse and invective, and a Dominican monk of Santa Maria Novella,
who had some reputation as a theologian, made a violent speech against
him. Others followed the monk, and, when all were through, Savonarola,
calmly rising, said: “In me you see verified the saying of our Lord:
_Filii matris meæ pugnaverunt contra me._[167] It truly grieves me to
see my fiercest adversary wearing the dress of S. Dominic. That very
dress ought to remind him that our founder himself was in no small
degree occupied with the affairs of this world; and that from our order
have gone forth a multitude of religious men and saints to take part
in the affairs of state. The Florentine republic cannot have forgotten
Cardinal Latino, San Pietro Martine, Santa Caterina of Sienna, nor
Sant’ Antonino, all of whom belong to the Order of S. Dominic. A
religious man is not to be condemned for occupying himself with the
concerns of that world in which God has placed him. I defy any one to
point out a single passage in the Bible condemnatory of our showing
favor to a free government which is to promote the triumph of morality
and religion.” And he thus concluded: “It is easy to see that religion
ought not to be treated in profane places, and that theology is not a
fit subject for discussion in this place.”

There was no attempt at reply, except from one, who cried out: “Tell us
now frankly, Do you aver that your words come from God, or do you not?”

“That which I have said I have said openly; and I have nothing to add,”
was Savonarola’s reply.




SONNET

TO THE PILLAR THAT STANDS BESIDE THE HIGH ALTAR AT “S. PAUL’S OUTSIDE
THE WALLS,” ROME.[168]

BY AUBREY DE VERE.


  A conqueror called thee from the eternal night,
  And said, “Ascend from thy dark mother’s breast;
  Sustain my glory on thy sunlike crest,
  And by mine altar watch—an acolyte.”
  A poet, wandering from Helvellyn’s height,
  Beheld thee dead ere born. That Alpine guest
  Adjured thee, “Where thou liest, forever rest,
  And freeze those hearts that trust in mortal might.”
  The years went by; then, clear above that cloud
  Which blinds the nations, from her Roman throne
  Thus spake the universal church aloud:
  “Arise at last, thou long-expectant stone!
  For God predestined, consummate thy vow:
  Advance; and where the Apostle stood stand thou!”




MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.


CHAPTER XIX.

ALBERT’S VISIT.

FANNY, after despatching her letter, was filled with an uneasiness that
was continually increasing. “Will he get here in season?” she asked
herself. “Perhaps mademoiselle will have come to a decision before
Albert arrives.”

But however partial Fanny might be to her protégé, she could not help
seeing that Louis possessed rare qualities. If her interests had not
been at stake, she would have confessed at once that he alone was
worthy of Mlle. Smithson; but her selfishness kept her wilfully blind.

Alas! day after day passed away without result. The wonderful letter
Fanny depended so much on produced no effect. Twenty times a day she
went from despair into anger.

“Such a fine dowry!” she would exclaim. “Such a pretty girl! And he
allowing them to slip through his fingers—to fall into the hands
of another—and what other!... A spendthrift who will squander her
property—a libertine who will neglect his wife!... Ah! she might be
so happy with him, and he with her! And I should be so sure of an easy
life in their house! What is he doing?... Is he absorbed in trifles,
and going to lose such an opportunity? I was right: he is light-headed.
But his mother, Mme. Frémin, has sense enough, I am sure, and has
longed for this match these ten years: is she asleep too? Or has she
changed her mind?...”

When the day of the dinner came, of which I have just spoken, Fanny’s
distress was unbounded. “The enemy is constantly gaining ground,” she
muttered to herself. “Every day Mlle. Eugénie becomes less indifferent
towards him. Perhaps they will come to an understanding to-night, and
vow to love each other. We are lost! Albert is positively a simpleton!”

When Eugénie retired to her chamber, Fanny, quivering with excitement,
was there to eye her narrowly, hoping to read the depths of her soul.
She saw her mistress was more thoughtful than usual, and began by
artfully praising Louis. Eugénie seemed to listen with pleasure. All
this caused the wily servant a sleepless night.... When daylight
appeared, Fanny had decided on her course. This _soubrette_ was a
long-headed woman!

“If I had to choose a husband for Mlle. Eugénie,” she said to herself,
“I certainly should not select M. Louis. Mademoiselle would be far
happier with Albert. As to him, he will never find another equal to
her. But I cannot force them to be happy. It is their own affair. Mine
is to look out for my own interests.... What do I want?... To secure
a pleasant home for the rest of my life. Perhaps this new suitor
would give me one.... Is he really as much of a spendthrift, and as
overbearing, as I feared at first? I have seen him only a few times,
but I know him well enough to see I may have been greatly deceived,
and that there is much more in him than I supposed.... Well, that is
settled: if Albert is not here in season, if I see the other one is
likely to win the day, I shall take sides with him.... But I will make
one more sacrifice for the ungrateful fellow whom I have loved so much!
I will write his mother again, and wait a few days longer....”

She wrote, and did not have long to wait. Albert arrived the next
day but one. When he appeared, Fanny almost sank to the ground with
astonishment and joy: with joy, because she loved him as spinsters
always love when they love at all—with as much strength as
selfishness; with astonishment, for she hardly recognized him. She
had not seen him for a year and a half. He was then in the third year
of his law studies—a young man of sprightly, jovial air, faultless
in dress, and fluent of speech, though he only talked of trifles....
_Quantum mutatus!_ ... He now had a grave air, his dress was plain
even to severity, and there was a solemnity in his manner of speaking
that confounded Fanny, but which pleased her. What had wrought such a
change? She was dying to know, but had to wait to be enlightened on the
point till she could see him in private. This could not take place at
once. He must renew his acquaintance with his uncle, aunt, and cousin.

Albert’s sudden arrival caused some surprise, but not very much,
however, for he had promised several months before to come about this
time. Mr. Smithson received him with his usual quiet, somewhat cool
regard. He looked upon his nephew as frivolous, and for such people
he had no liking. But Mme. Smithson gave her dear Albert a very
different reception. She loved him for his own sake, and especially
for his mother’s, whom she regarded with affection and pity. She was
quite well aware that her sister’s income was very limited, and to see
Albert marry her daughter would by no means have been repugnant to
her. Eugénie also received her cousin with the pleasure and cordiality
natural to a relative meeting the friend of her childhood.

In the course of two hours, he was made to feel quite at home, at
liberty to go where he pleased, and to do what he liked. All the family
had some employment, Eugénie as well as her parents. Albert at once
profited by this liberty to _prendre langue_, as the saying is—to get
the news from Fanny. For had she not induced him to come here, and
made him aware of her projects?... He found her in a small building
not far from the house. It was on the banks of the river, which was
more charming here than in any other part. Its peaceful current glided
between high banks where grew on either hand a row of willows whose
pendant branches swept the very waters. Everything was delightfully
quiet and romantic. It was Eugénie’s favorite retreat, where she often
came in the morning to read, or to muse as the day declined. But Albert
gave no heed to the beauties of nature around him.

“At last we can have a talk, my good Fanny,” said he: “talk of our
mutual plans, eh! eh!—for it seems you, too, wish me to marry Eugénie.
Our plans are in danger, if I am to believe your two letters: it
is possible I may be set aside! That would be a pity! My cousin is
handsomer than ever.... But to tell the truth, her style of beauty is
not exactly to my taste: she is too dignified. But ...”

“Too dignified!... Mademoiselle is enchanting; and then, there is her
fortune, which it is no harm to consider.”

“My uncle’s losses have made a hole in it, however.”

“But they are being repaired every day by his industry. You would not
believe how profitable this mill is. Come, tell me plainly, will you
ever find a wife as rich?—with even half as much as she will have?...”

“_Ma foi!_ no.”

“And the money you would never find again you have come near letting
slip into another’s hands!... There is some danger of it still.”

“You alarm me.”

“It is just so. Why were you so long in coming?”

“Because ... _Tiens_, my dear, I was just going to tell you a fib,
but it would do no good. I may as well show my hand.... I came very
reluctantly, because I prefer my bachelor life. It would suit me better
to wait a while. Would it be dangerous to ask a delay of two or four
years?”

“Ah! it is not enough to furnish you with a handsome wife and a fine
fortune! One must wait till you are disposed to accept them! Where are
your wits?”

“Come, do not get angry. I see I must marry her at once. I will do as
you say. Here, I am all ready to listen to your advice, for you must
tell me what I am to do.”

“You give in? You may as well! Come, own that you gave me a false
impression. And I was so pleased! Your grave air and plain dress made
me hope you were converted—I see I was mistaken, and am sorry for it.”

“A fine farce. And so I even took you in! But did you not tell me to
come here like a man seriously disposed? If I succeeded in deceiving
you, the disguise must be perfect. The rest are more easily taken in
than you!... But that is not the point. You look quite frightened. What
are you afraid of?”

“Everything, and principally lest you make Mlle. Eugénie unhappy.”

“She shall be mistress: that is what she likes—what else?”

“When you are married, you will no longer have any need of me, and will
send me away.”

“Send you away! I am ready to swear.... Here, I will give you my
promise in writing: you shall never leave my house. Fanny, do you
think me capable of such ingratitude? I am frivolous, but I have some
heart, you well know, you old grumbler.... Well, how do affairs really
stand?... Does not your affection for me incline you to take too gloomy
a view of things?... My enemy—my rival, if I rightly understand your
letters—is a fellow who ruined himself, and came here to win the
beautiful Eugénie’s heart and fortune; he is very sedate in appearance,
and artful in reality. But it is not enough to be ruined, and long for
a fortune—the thing is to get it. The first condition is to please the
lady. Is he a handsome fellow?”

“No; but he has a sensible, refined face calculated to strike the fancy
of a young lady like your cousin.”

“Has he much wit?”

“He talks little, but well.”

“He is religious, I think you said?”

“Yes; he has founded a library and a school for the benefit of
the workmen, and he visits the poor. All this affords him many
opportunities of meeting Mlle. Eugénie. She gives him books for his
library, paper and pens for his school, and they agree upon the
families to visit.”

“Ha! he is a knowing fellow. He thinks that a good way to please my
cousin and to see her. Then Eugénie is more religious than she used to
be?”

“It seems so, but you know it is not easy to tell what is going on in
mademoiselle’s heart.”

“Fanny, you have rendered me a service I shall never forget. It was
time to come—high time. I am even afraid I am too late. Have you
detected anything to make you think her in love with him already?”

“She began by regarding him with aversion. This softened into
indifference. What further change there is I do not know.”

“What caused her aversion?”

“She thought he came here to catch her.”

“The deuce!”

“His piety seemed to her mere artifice.”

“Evidently!... Is any one ever converted without a motive?”

“You are a wicked creature, Albert. Louis may be a hypocrite, but all
religious people are not hypocrites. I even begin to think he is not.”

“Come, go on!... Well, I see Eugénie regards him as a saint. She
admires him, if nothing more. The danger is imminent.”

“What are you going to do? Nothing wrong, I hope.”

“Be easy on that score. I am going to keep an eye on that man, and
study him. If he is sincere, I will make him ridiculous; if he is
false, I will unmask him. Of course, I shall also employ other means.
If Eugénie is not yet in love with him, I shall be the foremost to win
her heart. If she is attached to him, I shall do my utmost to appear
more worthy of her regard, and to rout him. It is unnecessary to say I
shall persist in my _rôle_ as a person of gravity. Eugénie is absurdly
romantic. I must endeavor to appear more saintly than this new apostle.
No one will suspect the farce. It is an age since I was here, and
it would not be astonishing if I also had been converted during the
interval.”

“Don’t go too far!”

“You may rely on that. There is only one thing I am anxious about. Have
I not some invisible obstacle to contend against?... Eugénie has a will
of her own. If she has already made up her mind, if her heart is set on
him, all my attempts would be of no avail.”

“Things have not come to that pass yet, I have every reason to believe.
I know where and when she has seen him, and what he has said to her.
She only regards him with esteem, you may be sure.”

After deciding on his plans, Albert had but one wish—to put them
at once in execution. That very evening at dinner he directed the
conversation to Louis. Mme. Smithson heartily praised the engineer. Mr.
Smithson neither praised nor spoke disparagingly of him. He kept his
suspicions with regard to Louis to himself. He was not in the habit of
doing anything hastily, but had fully made up his mind to dismiss him
if he found him as thorough a Catholic as he had reason to believe;
that is, an overzealous one, secretly contriving with the _curé_ all
sorts of dark plots, the idea of which alarmed him.

Eugénie, in a perfectly natural manner, confirmed all her mother had
said, spoke of the good works he had undertaken, and finally mentioned
the part she had had in them.

“I also should be delighted to participate in all these laudable
undertakings,” said Albert. “I must tell you, dear cousin, that I am
beginning to be reasonable. I take an interest in studying the great
social problems, especially the extinction of pauperism, and the moral
improvement of the lower classes.”

Mr. Smithson gave Albert an incredulous look, and Eugénie broke out
into unrestrained laughter.

“Well,” said Albert, intimidated and cut to the quick, “you shall see
if what I tell you is not true! To-morrow I will visit this wonderful
school, and offer my services to the person who has charge of it. I
rather think they will not be refused.”

“Oh!” said Eugénie, “how amusing it will be to see you drilling under
M. Louis’ orders!... You will soon have enough of it.”

“You think me fickle, then?”

“Rather so.”

“You are mistaken. I always like the same things, and especially the
same people, my dear cousin.”

“How gallant you have become,” said Eugénie, laughing again. “But
what has come over us! We used to say _thou_ to each other; now we
say _you_. Once we kept up a succession of compliments anything but
flattering to each other, and here you are now gracious, amiable, and
complimentary beyond description! It is a pity I can make no return....
But it is all in vain, my dear Albert; neither your white cravat nor
your subdued air can deceive me. My aunt wrote me not long ago that you
were just the same. Do you hear?—your own mother said there was no
change in you.”

This unvarnished statement had really been made in one of Mme. Frémin’s
letters. She little thought of injuring her son by showing him in so
true a light.

“My mother was mistaken,” said Albert, exceedingly vexed at such
annoying remarks; “or rather, you have given a wrong interpretation to
her words. I am indeed the same in a certain sense. When there is cause
for laughter, I am ready to laugh. But though it is proper to laugh at
suitable times, I feel that excessive and constant gaiety is unworthy
of a man who aspires to a high place in the estimation of others.”

“Ah! to think of your sermonizing, my dear cousin,” cried Eugénie,
looking at him with a mocking air. “But now I begin to understand
your behavior.... Yes; that is it.... You have an eye to the bench.
You consider gravity as part of a judge’s outfit. You are right, but
between ourselves, as no one hears you, confess that the mask is
anything but comfortable.”

Albert was vexed and uneasy. His attempts were in vain: he could not
persuade Eugénie he was really what he wished to appear. His sagacious
cousin continued to banter him with a wit he found it difficult to ward
off.

Eugénie had no special design in her bantering, but her very simplicity
and wit disarmed Albert, and thwarted his plans. How far this was from
the _belle passion_ he hoped to inspire! Eugénie treated him merely
like a cousin, almost like a boy. He resolved to let her see he was a
man—a thoughtful and even religious man. “To-morrow,” thought he, “I
will go and beard the lion in his den. I will watch him narrowly; I
will become his friend in order to thwart him. When I have convinced my
uncle and aunt there are others quite as rational as this gentleman,
without being fanatics like him—for he is one, according to Eugénie’s
own account—when I have won the admiration of my romantic cousin, then
we will think of wooing. But we must begin by driving this Jesuit away.
Really, the comedy begins to interest me. A fine fortune and a pretty
wife are at stake. Moreover, there is this dismal creature to cover
with confusion. If I do not come off conqueror, it will be because the
fates are strangely against me.”

Such were Albert’s thoughts after retiring to his chamber. Then he
betook himself to a novel. He was delighted to find himself so shrewd,
and had no doubt of his success.

At that same hour, Louis was also awake, but absorbed in prayer. Piety
daily increased in his steadfast soul: so did love in his heart.
Albert’s arrival, which he was at once informed of, produced a painful
impression. “Mr. Smithson distrusts me,” he said to himself; “Eugénie
does not yet love me: it will be easy for this young man to win the
place I covet in her heart.” He dwelt on these sad thoughts for some
time, but soon had recourse to his usual source of consolation, and
confided all his cares to God. The prayer he uttered might be summed
up in these few words, so full of Christian heroism: “O my God! if it
is in his power to render her happier than I could, I pray thee to
bestow her on him, and let me find my only consolation in thee!...” The
true Christian alone can so purify his affections as to render them
disinterested. When Louis fell asleep, he felt a storm was brewing in
the air, but calmness was in his heart. Resignation, trust in God, and
the purity of his love had restored serenity to his soul.


CHAPTER XX.

A VILLAIN.

Albert called at Louis’ office about ten o’clock the next morning. This
office was in the centre of the manufactory, between two large rooms
always filled with workmen. Here Louis was confined ten long hours a
day. If he went out from time to time, it was first to one place, and
then to another, to keep an eye on everything, and remedy any slight
accident that might have occurred. He everywhere replaced Mr. Smithson.
He saw to everything, and gave orders about everything, and acquitted
himself of these duties with an ability and zeal that his employer
could not help acknowledging. He could not have wished for an assistant
more capable, more energetic, or more reliable. Had it not been for
one suspicion in this cold Protestant’s breast, one cause of antipathy
against this overzealous Catholic, Mr. Smithson would not only have
esteemed Louis, but would have taken him to his heart. As it was, he
contented himself with merely esteeming him, and this against his will.

The workmen were divided into two parties with respect to Louis. The
good, who were the least numerous—alas! it is so everywhere: the
majority are on the wrong side—were absolutely devoted to him. The bad
feared him. They knew he was inflexible when there was any question
of their morals or the rules of the establishment. Louis would not
tolerate drunkenness, or blasphemy, or any improper talk. The fear he
excited among the bad made him extremely hated by a few.

When Albert entered the engineer’s office, the latter went forward to
meet him with the ease of a man of the world receiving a visit, and
with the reserve of a diplomatist who finds himself in the presence
of an adversary. From the very moment these two men first saw each
other, they felt they were opponents. Each one had a position to defend
which the other sought for, and both were conscious of it. Before the
Parisian uttered a word, Louis divined what was passing in his heart.
“He has come to drive me away and marry his cousin,” thought he. “If
Providence favors his plans, I shall submit. But it was God who brought
me hither. I do not think I am mistaken in believing he has given me a
work to do here, and I shall not leave till I clearly see I ought to
give it up and go away.”

Albert had to introduce himself. “I am Mr. Smithson’s nephew,” said
he, “a licentiate of the law, and an advocate at the Paris bar. My
relatives have for a long time urged me to visit them, and I have
profited by an interval of leisure to accept their invitation. I am
aware, monsieur, of the important _rôle_ you fill in the house, and
what a useful man you are, and am desirous of making your acquaintance.
Besides, I have need of your services.”

“If I can be of any service whatever to you, monsieur, I assure you it
will give me great pleasure to serve you.”

“My charming cousin Eugénie tells me, monsieur, that you are engaged
in things I am likewise interested in—the relief of the poor and the
instruction of the ignorant around you. Eugénie has even given me to
understand that she is your assistant in this work.”

Albert kept his eyes fastened on Louis’ face as he uttered these words.
He thought he would betray his feelings at such a greeting—at the mere
name of Eugénie. But Louis’ countenance remained impenetrable as usual.
Albert felt he had before him either a very indifferent or a very
shrewd man.

“I am glad to learn, monsieur,” replied Louis, “that you take an
interest, as well as I, in these Christian labors, which in these times
are more necessary than ever. Poverty and immorality are making great
ravages. But I should remark that I am a mere novice in such matters.
As Mlle. Eugénie has been so kind as to speak of me, she may have told
you how little I have yet accomplished. And what I have done has only
been through Mr. Smithson’s constant aid. You wish, monsieur, to be
initiated into my undertakings. That will be very easy! I will show you
our library, scarcely established, and our evening-school: that is all.”

“You must also introduce me to your poor. I am seriously disposed
to make a practical study of the great questions of charity and
instruction. They are quite the order of the day. When can I meet
you?...”

“This evening, if you like; the school begins at seven o’clock.”

“And what do you do at this school?”

“I teach reading and writing to those who are ignorant of them,
orthography to some, and ciphering to others. I end by reading
something carefully selected, with occasional remarks easy to
comprehend and to retain. This affords me a daily opportunity of giving
my audience useful advice.”

Albert made a slight grimace. This manner of procedure did not suit
him. He wished for exercises that afforded a more promising field for
satisfying his vanity. It was well to propose being useful! He wished
to shine.

They continued to converse a while longer. Louis, with the shrewdness
that characterized him, led the conversation to the most serious
subjects. Albert replied without suspecting the scrutiny he was
undergoing. Faithful to his _rôle_, he affected to judge matters with
the seriousness of a man armed with unfaltering convictions. But this
seriousness did not blind Louis. Without appearing to observe it, he
caught him a dozen times in criminal ignorance, and, what was worse,
this ignorance was accompanied with a conceit that was ridiculous. At
length the two young men separated. They had formed an opinion of each
other at the first glance. Louis had seen through Albert’s mask, and
found him a man of no depth, poorly aping a person of gravity. Albert
felt he had a sagacious person to deal with. If Louis was his rival, he
was a formidable one.

It may be supposed that, loving Eugénie to such a degree, Louis felt,
as an impartial observer would have done in his place, that it would
be sad to see a woman of so much worth united to a superficial man.
He could not help feeling that he himself was more worthy of Eugénie
than Albert; that he was more capable of making her happy. He was not
mistaken; he had a right to think so.

A few days after this first interview, I sent Louis word that Victor
was very much worse. His disease had made alarming progress. Victor had
hitherto struggled courageously against it, but, the evening before,
he took me by the hand, and, fixing his large melancholy eyes on mine,
said:

“My dear, my beloved wife, I have kept up till now, and continued to
work as usual. But the hour has come for me to lay aside all earthly
thoughts and cares.... It is time to collect my thoughts.... Death is
approaching ...”

At these words, I began to weep and sob. He waited till this natural
explosion of grief was over.

“I can realize your distress, my good Agnes,” said he. “I, too, feel
how painful it is to leave you. But we are both Christians. Our
religion is a source of never-failing consolation.... See how good God
has been to us! I might have died months ago: God has left me with you
till now. He has given me time to prepare to enter his presence. And
I truly believe that, by the help of his grace, I have made a good
use of these last days. I have found and trained a man to succeed me
in the journal. He will defend the good cause as well as I; perhaps
better. I have saved the life of a young man who is and always will be
a consistent Christian such as we need more of. I shall, I hope, have
a share in all the good Louis will accomplish; and he will do a great
deal.... Of course, my dear Agnes, it is hard to separate from you,
but we shall meet again on high. The longest life is but brief. How
happy we shall be to meet again far from this wretched world, which I
should not regret were it not for leaving you. [P2 added period missing
in orig] Every day it gives less room to God: the impious and the
hypocritical are fearfully multiplying. This is a sad age! If the very
thought of leaving those we love were not so painful to the heart, ah!
how sweet it would be to soar away from so much wickedness to the pure
radiance of heaven. Why cannot I carry you with me, my poor darling?
Oh! how glad I should then be to go.... But, no; it is not the will
of God. He wishes me to precede you, alone. So be it. When in yonder
world, I shall pray for you!... And now, let us give up all worldly
things to those who have a longer time to live. As for me, I must cease
to labor, and henceforth think of nothing but God and my salvation....”

The following morning, I sent Louis word of what had taken place. He
hastened to see us that afternoon. When he saw our dear Victor, he
was exceedingly affected. My husband had changed every way within a
fortnight, without my being conscious of it, having been constantly
with him.

“Oh! how glad I am to see you!” said he to Louis. “Well, well, we shall
not meet many times more, ... here below, I mean, but we shall meet
again in heaven never more to separate.”

Louis burst into tears.

“You great child!” continued he. “If it were not for my sweet Agnes
there, I would beg you to congratulate me: I am going home to God! But
the idea of leaving that dear soul, who has made me so happy, hangs
like a cloud between me and heaven. Oh! you will, you will watch over
her as I would myself, will you not?”

“Yes; as your very self, I solemnly promise you,” cried Louis. Then,
falling on his knees beside the bed, he said: “My friend, assure me
once more that you forgive me. It is I who have killed you!”

Victor drew him towards him, and embraced him. Louis then begged my
forgiveness also. I could not answer him, but I held out my hand, which
he respectfully kissed.

“One favor more,” said Louis: “I hope you will not leave us so soon as
you suppose, but it is better to make the request now, as I can do it
to-day without troubling you: give me your blessing!”

Victor excused himself, but Louis insisted so long that he yielded.
Victor then extended his hand over his friend’s head: “O my God!” said
he, “I am only a sinner, with no right to bless in thy name; but I have
given my heart to thee, and I also love this soul to whom thou has
permitted me to do some good. Watch over him!... Make him happy here
below, or, if it is thy will he should suffer, grant him the necessary
courage to find joy in sorrow itself.”

This scene was deeply affecting. For some time we remained silent.
Victor, unwilling to leave us so painfully impressed, began to smile
and say the liveliest things he could imagine. Addressing Louis, he
said:

“How are your love affairs? You cannot imagine how I long for your
union with a woman so calculated to make you happy. The more I think of
it, the more I am convinced that Mlle. Smithson is the very person.”

Louis replied with a sigh. He related what had taken place at the great
dinner, and the wrong impression Mr. Smithson had derived from the
_curé’s_ imprudence. He also told us of Albert’s arrival, and gave a
brief account of their interview.

“This man’s unexpected appearance has caused me sincere pain,” he
said. “It has excited a thousand fears only too well grounded. Is it
because I think him capable of destroying my most cherished hopes?...
No; not if it depends merely on him. His meaningless face, his affected
and pretentious manners, and his vacant mind, are not calculated to
fascinate Mlle. Eugénie. Her nature is entirely different from his. His
defects must shock her. But the man, from what I am told, has the luck
of being in his aunt’s good graces. Who knows but Mme. Smithson herself
induced him to come, with the positive intention of giving him her
daughter’s hand in marriage?...”

“It is possible,” said Victor, “but you have one good cause for hope in
spite of everything. You acknowledge yourself that such a man cannot
please Mlle. Eugénie. Now, she is a woman with a mind of her own, and
her parents are very indulgent to her. These two reasons induce me to
believe she will never marry him.”

“She is different from most women,” replied Louis. “Her filial
devotion may lead her to accept the husband her parents propose....
Ah! if she loved me, I should not be alarmed on that score. For an
instant, I thought she did; but the longer I study things calmly, the
more inclined I am to believe I was lulled by a sweet illusion.... She
does not love me yet. It is possible she might, had things remained as
they were. Everything will take a new turn now. This young relative’s
arrival will absorb her attention, and how do I know but she will even
end by taking him for what he pretends to be—a grave, thoughtful man?”

“I have no fears on that point,” said Victor. “If this intruder is
the superficial person you suppose—and he is, I believe—he will not
deceive a person so observing as Mlle. Smithson.”

“He is her cousin.... Every one in the house treats him with great
affection.... Mlle. Eugénie is young and without experience, ... and
the man in question does not lack a certain ability.... He has already
annoyed me in more than one way.”

“Is it possible! How?”

“I told you that at our first interview he immediately expressed a wish
to aid me in the work I had undertaken. I promised to introduce him to
my school that evening. He was so urgent that he excited my suspicions
at once. My fears were only too well founded, as you will see. I had
scarcely been a quarter of an hour in the schoolroom, before he came in
with Mr. Smithson. I am anxious not to exaggerate anything; above all,
I do not wish to calumniate him. It is, therefore, with all sincerity
I tell you that this designing man, at his first visit, so arranged
everything as to take the precedence of me before my scholars. With
his arm passed familiarly through his uncle’s, he entered with a mere
salutation of condescending patronage. Then, after going to the door
with Mr. Smithson, who had business elsewhere, he remained as if to
superintend and direct me, as the master of the house might have done,
had he wished to assert his rights. I repeat it: this fellow only came
there to make the workmen feel that he was, even in my night-school, if
not the master, at least his representative, and I the humble agent.
In fact, without consulting me, he began to give advice to one and
another, making a great deal of noise, and meddling with everything, so
that, thanks to him, nothing was done. He disturbed everybody, and was
of no assistance.

“Of course, the idle and talkative, as well as those disposed to
flattery, took to the new-comer. As to me, I frankly confess he had a
singular effect on my nerves. However, I restrained myself, and said
nothing to him that evening. The next morning, he called on me, and
announced his intention of beginning a series of lessons on political
economy. As you know, I am in the habit of reading aloud every evening
from some good book—a historical incident, an anecdote, or a moral
extract calculated to interest the workmen. To this I join some
familiar explanations and reflections of a moral and even religious
nature. This exercise, as simple as it is beneficial in its results,
was not to his liking. He wished to replace it advantageously, as he
said, by instructions apparently learned, but in reality useless and
even pernicious. Nothing is worse than to waste great words on people
absolutely destitute of elementary knowledge. But the very ignorance
of his audience attracted Albert. He thought he should dazzle them
without much effort, and without running the risk of their finding out
how little he really knows. I listened very coldly to his proposal.
When he left, he gave me a slight glance of spitefulness which was
ominous of evil.

“That night the young man did not appear in the schoolroom, but the
following evening he presented himself. This time he made so much
confusion that I could not conceal my annoyance. He perceived it, and
left the room. I regretted not having, perhaps, restrained my feelings
sufficiently. I followed him into the next room. He received me with
insolent haughtiness, and took my explanations unkindly. When I had
finished, he thus addressed me:

“‘Monsieur, there are some who do good out of love of being useful: to
such I belong. There are others who do it from motives of self-love and
interest: you may know of some.... You have instituted this school; you
direct it in your own way; you wish to be the sole master. What your
reason is for all this I do not know, but I can certify one thing: you
wish to have your workmen to yourself. It is not my practice to intrude
anywhere, even when I have a perfect right. Consequently I withdraw.’

“I stopped him to ask what motive of interest I could have.

“‘O monsieur!’ said he, ‘the name of a philanthropist is not to be
despised. It leads to many things. You know better than I what use you
wish to make of it; it is not for me to tell you. It remains to be seen
if you succeed.’

“He evidently wished to insinuate that I had taken this indirect way
of gaining the esteem of the Smithson family, and perhaps Eugénie’s
affections. I felt my anger rise. I was about to reply in a way I
should have regretted, but he prevented it by going out without giving
me an opportunity.

“At first, I congratulated myself on my victory. I am ashamed to say
that my pride, which I thought I had conquered, again reappeared
in my heart. ‘He is afraid of me!’ I said to myself. ‘He feels my
superiority, and has gone away through mortification.’ Subsequent
reflection convinced me of my mistake. Albert, in withdrawing, was not
vanquished, but really the conqueror. He had successfully achieved
his perfidious design. He was tired of the school, and felt he should
soon cut a sorry figure in it. He sought the means of getting out of
it, which I unwittingly furnished him, so that his very retreat could
be used as a plea against me. All my subsequent observations have
confirmed my suspicions. I have not met him since, but I can see he has
been secretly plotting against me. Mr. Smithson is colder than ever
towards me. As to Mlle. Eugénie, I have met her only once, walking
with Albert. She saw me, and might have spoken, but pretended not to
observe me.... Ah! my dear friend, I am, I confess, down-hearted.
For days, I have seen that my course and my principles excite Mr.
Smithson’s suspicions, but I had some reason to believe I was no longer
indifferent to his daughter. Now she herself has turned, or rather,
has been turned, against me. In a month, she will no longer be able to
endure me.... What shall I do?”

“Keep straight on: continue the work you have begun. If an opportunity
occurs for explanation either with the father or daughter, convince
them that you are an honest man.”

Our poor friend was very gloomy when he left us. We participated in
his sadness, for we did not doubt but this cousin, who had come so
inopportunely, was slyly doing him some ill-turn. We were not wrong in
thinking so. I will relate what had taken place.

As Louis rightly conjectured, Albert had willingly allowed himself to
be excluded from the school. He immediately presented himself in the
_salon_ with an air of discouragement, but triumphing in the bottom of
his heart.

“You have returned early this evening,” said Eugénie. “Are you tired of
the school already?”

“I am not tired of it, but they can no longer endure me there.”

“Have you made yourself insupportable?” asked Eugénie. She really did
not love her cousin, and under the appearance of teasing him, as is
the way with young people, she told him some pretty plain truths as
often as she could. Mr. Smithson was reading a newspaper. Hearing what
Eugénie and Albert said, he looked up, and said to his nephew, in his
usual grave tone:

“What has happened?”

“I have been dismissed from the school.”

“Impossible!” said Eugénie.

Albert was astonished at the persistency with which his cousin defended
Louis. He felt his hatred redouble against the engineer.

“You may well think it impossible,” said he, in an insinuating tone....
“Really, if this gentleman has a right to figure in the school he has
founded with my uncle’s aid, I, his nephew, and almost a child of the
house, have a right to take a part in it also. But such is not the
opinion of our imperious co-laborer. There is a certain routine about
his instructions that I mildly criticised. For example, he tries,
however awkward it may be, to give a religious turn to everything,
which I, though a great friend to religion, find ridiculous.”

In this underhand way, Albert skilfully aroused his uncle’s anger and
distrust. Mr. Smithson murmured to himself, with that voice of the soul
inaudible to others: “I thought so: he is fanatical and ambitious. My
nephew, fool as he is, has found it out, and has unmasked him! That is
why the other has got rid of him.”

Albert partly guessed what was passing in his uncle’s mind, and saw he
had made a good hit. He ended his recriminations in these terms: “The
little advice of a humble nature I gave him; my course so different
from his, and, I may say without vanity, better....”

Here Eugénie burst into a loud laugh.

“Eugénie,” said Mr. Smithson gravely, “what your cousin is saying
merits attention. You are far too giddy this evening.”

Eugénie never resisted her father, except in a case of absolute
necessity; she became silent, and appeared to take no further interest
in the conversation.

“At last,” said Albert, “I clearly saw this gentleman wished to have
his school to himself, so much at home does he feel even there.... He
rudely ... made me feel that ... I was in the way. I withdrew, but not
without letting him know, in my turn, that I regarded his course as it
merited.”

“There was no quarrel between you?” inquired Mr. Smithson, who had a
horror of contention.

“No, uncle.”

Mme. Smithson thereupon proceeded to console her nephew as well as
she could. The remainder of the evening passed in an uncomfortable
manner. Each of the four persons in the room was absorbed in serious
reflection without wishing it to be obvious, and all felt that they
would not like to communicate what was passing in their hearts. This
caused a want of ease which became more and more awkward as it grew
more perceptible in spite of the efforts each made to conceal it. The
two who were the most troubled, however, were Mme. Smithson and Albert.
The latter no longer doubted Eugénie’s love for the engineer. He ought
to have seen that, as usual, she merely took the side of the oppressed.

As to Mr. Smithson, it was quite different. A few days previous, he
merely suspected Louis might be fanatical and ambitious, and linked
with the _curé_ to undermine his authority among the workmen. Now he
began to be sure of it. He even went so far as to suspect his daughter
of favoring Louis’ designs. This Catholic league, established in his
own house and at his own hearth, filled him with a terror and anger as
lively as they were ridiculous.


CHAPTER XXI.

CALUMNY.

The next morning, before any one was up, Albert went in search of
Fanny, with whom he had the following conversation:

“You have caused me a useless journey,” said he. “Eugénie loves the
engineer.”

“I do not believe it,” replied the servant, either because she did not,
or because she wished to console Albert.

“It is of no use to contradict me. I have kept my eyes open, and
drawn my own conclusions. I have a better opportunity than you for
observation. I tell you she loves him! If you cannot devise some scheme
for driving him from her mind, I shall set out to-morrow for the
capital.”

“Here is what I call hitting the nail on the head.... I thought of
something yesterday exactly to the point.”

It was Albert’s turn to be incredulous. He shrugged his shoulders as a
sign of doubt.

“I tell you I can satisfy your demand,” repeated Fanny slowly. “Listen!
In a manufactory, everything is talked about. The engineer has for
some time frequented a house apparently through charity, but it is my
opinion another motive takes him there. There is a young girl in the
house—the prettiest, handsomest girl to be seen, they say, for ten
leagues around. Besides, she is well behaved, intelligent, and even
pious; only, she is pitifully poor.”

“Tell me how he became acquainted with the family.”

“The father is a drunkard; the mother an idle, malicious creature who
is employed here. The engineer looks after her. This woman was probably
the cause of his going to the house. They are extremely destitute.”

“And the girl: what does she do?”

“She has been very well brought up at an aunt’s in town. The aunt died
recently, and so suddenly that she was unable to make her will, as she
intended, in favor of her niece. The latter has therefore returned
home, to find nothing but wretchedness. I must confess, however, that
she has behaved admirably.... All these details are correct, I assure
you.... What is no less true, Mlle. Eugénie knows all the poor families
that the engineer visits except this one. It is my conviction that
he loves this girl, and intends marrying her some day.... There is no
need of making people out worse than they are. There are some good
things in this M. Louis. All his family are very wealthy. He will not
be poor long, and is at liberty to marry a woman who has nothing, if he
pleases.”

“Well,” said Albert, “I will reflect on what you have told me. It seems
to me, with this information, I can greatly modify my fair cousin’s
feelings towards her protégé.”

Before another hour, Albert had gathered full particulars with regard
to the subject, and matured his plans. That very afternoon, he asked
Eugénie to allow him to accompany her in her rounds among the poor.

“Willingly,” said she. “I have not been to see them for some time. I
was just thinking I ought to go to-day.”

They set out together. The day was delightful. Eugénie, lively and
witty as usual, took most of the conversation upon herself. Albert had
on a dignified air of offence which he wished his cousin to perceive;
but she did not notice it, or pretended not. Twenty times he was on
the point of alluding to what had taken place the evening before, and
as often refrained. Conceited as he was, Albert could not help it—he
was not at his ease in Eugénie’s society. Her unvarying frankness, her
intelligence, and the vivacity that never forsook her, all these rare
qualities rendered him continually diffident in her presence.

At some distance from the manufactory, the road divided. One part
turned towards the highway that led to the village; the other followed
a gentle declivity to the river half hidden among the willows, rushes,
and flowers that make that part of the bank so delightful.

“What a charming view!” said Albert. “Let us go down this way a short
distance. We can afterwards return to the highway.”

Eugénie allowed herself to be guided by his wish. When within a hundred
steps from the shore, they came to a hut by the wayside, between two
large trees, picturesque in appearance, but indicative of poverty. It
looked like a forsaken nest in a thicket.

Albert had made particular inquiries, and knew the hut was inhabited by
the Vinceneau family—the one, it will be recollected, that Louis took
charge of unknown to Eugénie.

“Are there not some of your poor people here whom you ought to visit?”
asked Albert, in the most innocent manner.

“No; I have no idea who lives in this cottage.”

“I saw M. Louis coming out of it the other day.”

“He probably came here on business. I know all the families he visits;
none of them lives here.”

While thus talking, Albert approached the hut, and, before Eugénie
could prevent him, entered. She followed.

Mère Vinceneau was at home that day, in one of her fits of idleness and
ill-humor. She at once recognized Eugénie, whom she did not like. She
had, as I have already remarked, a general antipathy against the rich.

“What have you come here for?” said she.

“We do not wish to disturb you in the least,” said Eugénie, whose
curiosity was now roused. “My cousin and I merely wish to rest
ourselves. Perhaps you could give us some milk.”

“I have none.”

Mère Vinceneau was a tall, spare woman, with a forbidding countenance,
and covered with rags. Had it not been for her crabbed face, she would
certainly have excited compassion. However, Eugénie’s sympathies were
awakened at the sight of her wretched condition.

“You seem very destitute, my good woman,” said she. “Can I be of any
service to you?”

La Vinceneau softened a little at this gracious offer. “Thank you,” she
said. “It is true we are badly off, while some people have too much....
Nevertheless, I ought not to complain. We have one friend.... You
know him well—M. Louis, the engineer of your mill. What a kind heart
he has! There is one who loves the poor! If the rich only resembled
him!...”

“Do you live here alone?”

“No; I have a husband employed at the tile-works, and a daughter who
goes out as a seamstress in the village. She is coming now.”

A slight cloud came over Eugénie’s face. It became still darker when
Madeleine Vinceneau entered. Madeleine was not merely beautiful: she
was dazzling. Poorly but neatly clad, she came forward with a dignity
and grace that inspired astonishment as well as respect. Her large
black eyes, her pale, refined face, her smiling lips, and her whole
appearance, had an air of aristocratic distinction.

“What a lovely creature!” was Eugénie’s first thought. Then another
presented itself: “Perhaps Louis loves her.” She shuddered. A feeling
of displeasure and sadness came over her: “I must be in love with
him myself without being aware of it, to be so jealous,” she said to
herself. This doubt was natural. Eugénie determined to solve it. Such
is our nature. We can never see so clearly what is passing in the
depths of our hearts as in a tempest.

Eugénie began to question the girl discreetly. She wished to ascertain
if her nature was as angelic as her exterior. She was soon satisfied
on this point. Madeleine was innocence itself, and as good as she
was innocent. She confirmed all her mother had said, and in her turn
praised Louis with an ingenuousness that assured Eugénie she did not
love him. “But he—is he as indifferent to her?...” was Eugénie’s
thought as she left the house. She could not get rid of the painful
suspicion, consequently she was in rather a gloomy mood. Albert noticed
it, but refrained from saying anything. One unguarded word would have
counteracted the happy effect of his perfidious scheme. But he was
triumphant when he returned to his room. “I have dealt my rival a
severe blow,” said he to himself—“a blow he can hardly recover from;
for he will not suspect its source, and Eugénie will never mention it
to him. Even if she wished to, how could they have any explanation?
They never meet except in the presence of others. Before such an
explanation takes place, I must find other means of completing his
ruin.... I have begun well, and must bring things to a crisis....”

All this occurred the day before Louis came to see us. Mère Vinceneau
told him of the visit a short time after. He suspected there was
some scheme of Albert’s at the bottom of it, and dwelt on the means
he should use to defeat his calculations. Meanwhile, his enemy was
contriving a new plot destined to cause him still greater embarrassment.

 TO BE CONTINUED.




THE EMPIRE.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.


THE imperial form of government has sprung up in France within seventy
years, and been only slightly modified by the different administrations
that have succeeded each other. And yet nothing could be more at
variance with the traditions, customs, and genius of the nation. This
_régime_ is of foreign origin. It is the recrudescence of the conquest
of Gaul by Julius Cæsar. It has subjected us again to a yoke analogous
to the condition we were in after Gaul lost its independence. The veil
that blinded us to its real nature has fallen off in the shock of
momentous events. It is important to reassert a truth that will now be
better comprehended. The historians of the Revolution have endeavored
to show that the revolutionary movement of 1789 was purely French,
and the result of national necessity; but the very violence that
accompanied it proves the contrary. Natural developments are effected
peacefully. Louis XVI., so far from resisting the torrent, seconded
it, and abandoned himself to it. Nothing shows so fully what an effort
was necessary for the triumph of the Revolution as the impossibility
of its succeeding by regular means and the assent of the country. It
took France by assault. It profited by circumstances, but this does
not change the nature of its deeds or the character of its success. We
do not deny that this pagan and Cæsarean tradition might have found
its way into France with the monarchy, but it is certain that, however
restrained it had been by Christian principles, it all at once broke
through its bounds. Half the members of the Constituent Assembly
belonged to the legal profession. Imbued with the absolutist teachings
of Roman law, they energetically sought to apply them. The Revolution
recalls ancient Greco-Roman days; there is nothing Christian about it.
What is the sovereignty of the people but the very principle that laid
the foundation of despotism in Greece? The title of “citizen” implies
that all Frenchmen belong to the same city or town. This rising _en
masse_, and the notion that every Frenchman is a soldier, are wholly
pagan. The legislative corps—that means the people make their own
laws, only they do so by proxy. What! the people not exercise their
special prerogative! In ancient times, though the people only amounted
to a few thousand voters, they never fully enjoyed the legislative
power. Besides, in consequence of the institution of slavery, every
shade of democracy was equivalent to an aristocracy. The legislators of
1789 only recognized the slavery of citizens with respect to the state,
which induced them to create a power strong enough to counterbalance
and represent their ten millions of constituents.

Their proscriptions, denunciations, conspiracies, and struggles
recall the time of Marius and Sylla. It is worthy of notice that
in the revolutionary documents the heroes of Athens and Rome
replace the saints of the calendar. This imitation is extremely
amusing. A religion utterly pagan follows. A Pantheon is opened to
modern divinities, and great men deified. Catholicism undergoes a
persecution unsurpassed by the persecutions of the emperors of the
first three centuries. It alone is excluded from the Pantheon. Under
the empire, this imitation is so striking that it is impossible to
mistake it. The Napoleonic era recalls that of the Cæsars. In this
new civilization, or ancient civilization revived, new terms are
necessary to express the changes made. Political language is modified.
First we have consuls, then tribunes, then a senate, and at last an
emperor. The senatus-consultum keeps pace with the plebiscitum. The
subdued provinces are governed by prefects. The judges are merely
Napoleon’s delegates. The whole of this organization is of foreign,
not French, origin. Our history presents no parallel to it. And the
reality corresponds with the appearances: it is the engrafting of
absolute power on the sovereignty of the people. For the emperor never
disguised the source of his authority. He always assumed to be the
representative of the people. Like Augustus and Tiberius, he derived
the imperial inviolability from the tribunitian character with which he
was invested. The empire had its _noblesse_, but a _noblesse_ of titles
and decorations similar to that of the Lower Empire. All independence
was denied this _noblesse_. The army was likewise organized after
the manner of the Roman legion. There were no longer any local
distinctions. Each regiment was composed of a confused mixture of the
various French peoples. The officers even did not belong to their
regiments. They knew, in their nomadic life, only the will of Cæsar, on
whom alone they depended, and who transported them from one regiment to
another, and from one place to another. Passive instruments, they had
no will of their own. Therefore, they were ready for anything.

Formerly, the army could not be employed against the nation. It
represented the different social elements, and enjoyed the independence
natural to these elements. The officers retained their independence,
for they served at their own expense from a sense of duty. The
administration, the bar, and the army under the empire depended on one
individual. Neither local customs, nor municipal corporations, nor
right of property could withstand this despotism. A universal levelling
under the name of equality smoothed away every obstacle before Cæsar.
What rank could stand before the formidable title of the sovereignty of
the people? This Cæsarean power found no embodiment in one of French
origin. It fell to an Italian, a Roman, to one who rivalled Plutarch’s
heroes. This Italian assumed control of the Revolution without ceasing
to be Italian, or rather Roman; for Roman he was, a cosmopolite.
His aim was to restore the Roman Empire, or the Empire of the West.
The French nation was to be the means of universal conquest, as the
Gauls in the hands of his predecessors, the Cæsars. Of old France he
preserved no vestige. And he carried into Italy his achievements in
France. He extended the Revolution to Spain. There was nothing French
in a single characteristic of his genius. And his race have obstinately
pursued the imperial career which he opened. His nephew, like himself,
a mixture of astuteness, violence, boundless ambition, utopianism,
literary tastes, and fatalism, renewed the glory of the empire. Louis
Napoleon also belonged to all lands. Italian, Swiss, German, English,
American—he had something of them all. He spoke all languages as well
as the French, and his French was that of a refugee. During his reign,
he assembled around him none but foreigners. His apartments were never
clear of the outlandish people he had become acquainted with in his
wanderings. He loved to converse with them, to tell them his plans. And
these adventurers enjoyed being with him. They found him as utopian
as ever, as unchanged in his notions, and the phenomenon interested
them. No Frenchman of note consented to serve him. France was given up
to foreigners. They penetrated everywhere, and took possession of the
country. Imperial cosmopolitanism attracted them, and sheltered them,
and overloaded them with favors. French policy became English, Italian,
American. The denationalization of France was effected by the laws,
public schools, new manners, and the transformation of Paris into an
European capital of pleasures and the arts: France disappeared. This
system was overthrown when, arrived at the highest pitch of madness,
Louis Napoleon, after effecting the unity of Italy, so powerfully aided
King William in setting up the new Empire of Germany as a rival to
France. He sacrificed France to the triumph of the imperial idea in
Italy and Germany.

The Bonaparte family is completely destitute of patriotism. Its
cosmopolitan character is constantly asserting itself. Louis Napoleon’s
foreign policy was essentially anti-French. His constant desire
to effect the unity of Italy and that of Germany was the wish of
an alien. Our interior legislation became no less opposed to the
national character. What is the civil code but the systematization of
principles laid down in the Digest? The right of property restricted
by the legislator, family rights suppressed for the benefit of Cæsar,
and property, as well as individuals, placed under administrative
direction—all this is Bonapartism as well as Cæsarism. Outside of
the central power, there was no authority possessing any freedom of
action in France. No municipal body was safe from dissolution. No
corporation was allowed to stand alone. Obedience became the lot of the
French; which does not imply order and unanimity, for the government,
with contradictory aims, and without any real permanence, imposed
laws that were contradictory and impracticable. The distinguishing
feature of Bonapartism is the union of liberal theories with absolute
power. In spite of universal suffrage and deliberative assemblies,
despotism increased and was strengthened. It even relied on the
opposing and controlling influences it created. The senate and the
legislative corps were subservient to the empire, and sustained it.
The idea of equality and liberty constantly held out by high imperial
functionaries contributed to the popularity of the Napoleons. Under the
late _régime_, Prince Jerome Napoleon was charged with representing
the democratic side of the imperial government. But we know now,
by the revelations of the papers found, that his opinions always
coincided with the emperor’s. This was what may be called playing
into each other’s hands. The tip of the ear shows itself in those
liberal speeches which were apparently most hostile to the government
in such a way that no one who knows how to read can fail to perceive
it. Under his forcible language is concealed a faint, half-expressed,
vague opinion, but which is clearly and positively opposed to the
rights of assemblies. What enthusiastic liberalism did not M. de
Persigny manifest! According to him, provincial liberty was upheld by
the _préfets_, whom he styled, on one occasion, the fathers of the
departments. This sally caused much laughter, but M. de Persigny did
not laugh. This same minister bethought himself of some conflicting
elements that had evaded the superintending eye of Cæsar. It occurred
to him to place his master officially at the head of the secret
societies, and he transformed free-masonry into an imperial institution.

The despotism that has weighed on France for seventy years is
unknown to the rest of Europe. We do not say that other nations
have not undergone various degrees of despotism, but the despotism
of a dictatorship founded on the sovereignty of the people is a
privilege France alone has enjoyed. A dictatorship, that institution
of republican Rome, has been known here since 1789. Successive
governments have been set up in the name of the people; they have
all been ephemeral; they have acknowledged no other will but their
own—at least, in the beginning. The dictatorship is renewed every ten
years. At Rome, before the empire, it has been calculated that every
three years and a half a dictatorship was established, which lasted
six months or thereabouts. Our situation, therefore, is preferable.
It may, however, be questioned if it is the ideal of a Christian
nation. Louis Napoleon became the open apologist of Julius Cæsar:
he took sides against the Gauls and Franks, who were our ancestors.
This audacity excited universal astonishment. The Romans from the
beginning were accustomed to absolute power and anarchy. In the vast
series of revolutions that make up their history, we find no fixed
form of government. The consuls, prætors, and tribunes at Rome, and
in the provinces the proconsuls and governors, exercised unlimited
power. The emperor was only a perpetual dictator. Roman civilization
was absolute power opposed to the liberties of foreign and barbarous
nations who preserved a primitive social organization, and lived under
patriarchal institutions. The Roman historians acknowledge that the
barbarians fought for liberty. The Romans governed the provinces as,
at a later period, the Turks governed the countries they conquered.
Science and literature have depicted their sanguinary course with
brilliant sophistry, and erected it into a system. There is no doubt
that the thousands of jurisconsults who devoted their talents to the
empire never questioned the legitimacy of Cæsarism. They did not even
comprehend German liberty. They often spoke of it with a rare ignorance.

Tacitus sometimes forgets the fidelity with which he has described the
manners of the Germans. He passes this singular judgment on a people
of Thrace whose independent spirit he mentions: _Ne regibus parere
nisi ex libidine soliti_[169]—they obey their kings only according
to their caprice or humor. To us this has no sense. Tacitus sees that
these people obey sometimes, but not always. He does not perceive the
link that connects these two facts. To obey through humor or caprice is
not to obey at all. What is their legal obligation? It is sufficient
to examine their barbarous institutions. The barbarous king is neither
a dictator nor consul: he is like a father. His authority is limited
by other heads of families and by their customs. The tribe obeys, but
only after discussing the point in the assemblies of the nation. The
people obey when the king has received the necessary approval of the
established authorities. There is not, as under the Roman government,
a man who rules, and a nation that obeys. This dualism does not exist
among the barbarians. The king is a part of the nation, as a father
is of his family, which attributes a high dignity to both king and
father, but not great power. Unity of action, in this case, comes by
the concurrence of wills. This concurrence is permanent, and the easier
because nature, through the family ties, softens difference of opinion,
lessens rivalries, and produces men of incontestable authority whose
very birth commands respect. Their laws are less severe and stringent,
but liberty reigns, and society is based on the affections, and not
on the mere predominance of force. Tacitus would be more intelligible
if he said that the people only obeyed after giving their approval
according to forms which custom had established. Strictly speaking,
the word _libido_ might imply either consent or assent. The idea is
somewhat obscure. But there is nothing to authorize a translator to say
the people obeyed their king only through caprice or humor. Tacitus
finds it difficult to comprehend the organization of the tribe, and
does not regard it as of much account. He judges like a Roman who has
a clear notion only of military rule and passive obedience. In spite
of himself, however, he dwells on these barbarians, who inspire him
with a kind of terror. He points out the effects of their patriarchal
institutions from which the liberty of modern nations has sprung. His
books are for us a title of honor. Our ancestors figure therein as
conquered: their features are changed, but not unrecognizable. We love
to find proofs that the traditions of liberty among the French race
preceded the importation of despotism.

Despotism came to us by the way of revolution. This will not surprise
any one. The empire is the highest and most definite form of despotism
among civilized nations. Our enlightenment, or pretended enlightenment,
so far from having any repugnance to it, evidently led to it. Are we
more enlightened than the Greeks and Romans? Are our rulers better
versed in art, law, or literature than the rulers of Athens or Rome?
The idea of despotism has been so infused into the modern mind that
even the extreme partisans of liberty can conceive of nothing but
despotism as the basis of their theories. M. Jules Simon, the worthy
successor of M. Duruy, dreams of subjecting France to the communist
system of Spartan education. And hardly any one ventures to oppose him.
What notions of liberty have children reared by the state? They are
brought up in the official world, imbibe its sentiments and the ideas
of the state, and reproduce them in their public and private life. We
who cannot consent to the suppression of the family are desirous that
children should bear the impress of family influences. The family yoke
is sweet and light; the assimilation of children to their parents is
easy. The liberty of children is guaranteed. Family authority is a
less burdensome restraint than that of the state, and the multitude
of families creates a sort of counterpoise, so that their minds are
not formed by a single will, but develop according to their various
aptitudes. If any one objects that the state teaches no doctrines, we
reply that to teach none is to teach some. In fact, this is really the
source of indifference, or the system of practical atheism. Is not this
the doctrine that is agitating France?

Our government has been copied from the Cæsarean government. Everywhere
is to be seen a gradation of functionaries who receive their orders
from Paris, and are not opposed by any provincial action capable
of resisting them. It is useless to enumerate all the public or
collective offices in order to show how they are combined under a
single impulsion. No country in Europe has attained to such perfection
of the imperial _régime_. The Roman Empire even has been surpassed,
for we have the advantage of the press, railways, and telegraphs,
which increase the power of the state to an indefinite degree. New
ideas have also arisen to the aid of this despotism. Political economy
declares the loan to be the best of investments. The patrimony of
future generations has been invested in bonds regulated by the present
generation. By successive loans, all individual capital has fallen
into the hands of the state. In a more or less indirect way, the state
has taken possession of all the charitable or other funds created
by associations or individuals. Confiscations are not nominally
practised, but by the ingenuity of our fiscal system, and the skilful
apportionment of the taxes, the whole value of the soil passes into the
fiscal treasury in forty years. This is really a kind of confiscation.
Cæsarism found out how to transform the Chamber of Deputies into a
fiscal instrument. Instead of moderating, limiting, or abolishing the
taxes, the Chamber of Deputies, and especially our recent legislative
corps, have studied how to increase them. All the representatives of
the people have looked upon their constituents as subjects to be taxed
and made use of. The government has had more income from the taxes than
it wanted. This work of communism has been applauded in a thousand
revolutionary papers. In this respect, the republican assemblies have
not differed from the imperial. Whether the deputies were chosen by the
ballot, by the nomination of Parisian committees, or the appointment of
the Minister of the Interior, the state of the case and the result have
been the same.

The organization of our army is entirely Cæsarean. Though levied from
the whole country, it takes cognizance of nothing that is local or
provincial. Individual measures are repressed by the bureaucracy, which
is subservient to Cæsar because it is detached from the soil, and is
influenced only by the hope of promotion.

But the French magistracy at least enjoys independence? It did previous
to 1789. The government did not interpose in the appointment of
magistrates. This system, otherwise very defective, did not err through
servility. The empire, artfully retaining a certain semblance of the
ancient _régime_, was careful not to do so where the independence
of the magistracy was concerned. The emperor nominated all the
magistrates, and made them removable at pleasure. This system did not
suit the Restoration, and immovability was established. Under Louis
Philippe, the magistracy rapidly diminished. The more honest felt
themselves bound by their oath, and refused to serve the royalty of
July. But the Third Empire, by its administrative practices, effaced
the last trace of judiciary independence, and destroyed the permanence
of the office by the prospect of lucrative advancement. Hitherto money
had not seemed to be the aim of the magistrate. The idea of a career to
pursue never entered his head. The magistrate did not have to earn his
livelihood, and he belonged to his native place, where, regarded with
universal respect, he lived on his own fortune, which was the exterior
pledge of his independence. The needy and the ambitious did not seek
such a post. The empire raised the salaries of the magistrates only
to make the office accessible to that class of people who are ready
to obey at whatever cost. Immovability was illusory when the greater
part of the magistrates, desirous only of advancement, went from one
place to another according to the ministerial humor. Besides, the
government asked nothing better than to have in each locality transient
magistrates who were strangers to the people, and only awaited an
opportunity of ascending the ladder of promotion. This allurement was
more efficacious than fear in effecting the change in our judiciary
customs. The justiceship of the peace, which ought to be a kind of
rural and local institution, and which for some time preserved that
character, speedily degenerated. The empire at last ended by bringing
it completely under the yoke of centralism. Instead of being the
independent arbiter of petty quarrels and trivial interests that
required immediate solution because they were not worth the expense
and delay of a suit, the justice of the peace now found himself an
electoral agent, and implicated in politics. He had to be chosen from
the nomadic class of civilians. To prevent all ties with the people,
fees were done away with, and his salary made equal to that of the
judges of the inferior court. The pretext was made that the dignity of
the magistracy did not allow a judge to receive perquisites. The truth
is that there was a very different reason. The justices of the peace,
being natives of the country, and already in possession of a patrimony,
had no eye to the fees. Many of them had scarcely any. On an average,
the perquisites did not amount to more than five or six hundred francs,
and were not always easily collected. A mere income of seven or eight
hundred francs was not sufficient to attract a stranger, especially
when there was no prospect of promotion. The empire sought to bind
the justices of the peace closely to itself, and deprived the office,
practically speaking, of its perpetuity, for the same reason that it
had made the assize judges removable. The justiceship of the peace,
having been made a round of the judiciary ladder, became accessible to
those civilians or agents who only asked to serve the government. Our
judiciary army, as numerous as our administrative army, and composed
of agents nominated directly by the state, had, then, but one course
open to it. Its apparent immovability no longer hid anything. Those
who are familiar with the affairs of the empire know what to think
of a magistracy which takes it upon itself to sound its own praises.
Though founded on very different principles, the French magistracy, by
a sudden deviation, has gone back to the Cæsarean type of Byzantium.

This mixture of the appearance of freedom with despotism is natural
to an absolute power resting on a popular basis. We cannot see how
it could be otherwise. Ancient Rome afforded the same spectacle. The
Cæsars never ceased to repeat that they were the representatives of the
people, and the defenders of national liberty. We are not astonished
that the French government which sprang from the Revolution has
assumed this attitude. The Romans only admitted Roman civilization,
which they called “Roman peace.” Their poets often speak of “the
majesty of Roman peace.” Civilization, then, consisted in obeying the
proconsuls, paying the taxes, furnishing recruits, and working on
the roads and public monuments. At this price, the provinces enjoyed
a little tranquillity. It is noteworthy that the French Revolution
assumed to be the only light capable of guiding the world in the way
of liberty, equality, fraternity, progress, civilization, comfort,
etc. Its disciples still assert that France is continuing to fulfil
this mission. This is what Louis Napoleon meant when he said that
France alone contended for an idea. This immeasurable pride in thinking
ourselves superior to other nations has had to bow down. It was not
by virtue of our actual qualities that we undertook to assume such a
supremacy, but, on the contrary, by virtue of the errors and vices
that have sprung up in modern times. In the XVIIth century, when our
moral superiority was acknowledged and incontestable, no Frenchman ever
advertised any pretension to overrule other nations, or believed that
our nation was destined to precede others in order to enlighten them.
This pretension sprang up in 1789, at the time when a new system was
promulgated in the midst of the terrors of the Revolution. Supposing
this idea to be new, what right had France to impose it forcibly on
other nations? Europe rose in arms to repel revolutionary or Cæsarean
invasions, and before the coalition France has three times fallen.

We have been sobered by this experience. The _rôle_, brilliant as it
was, has only left us bitter remembrances. It remains for us to govern
ourselves without any pretension to govern others. Our political
and military organization has suddenly crumbled to pieces. That
masterpiece, which was a combination of contradictions, order, and
disorder, is now only a ruin. Lamentations are heard on all sides. It
is perceived that, under the pretext of equality, all Frenchmen have
been reduced to equal powerlessness. When men of good-will sprang up
on every hand to the help of France, leaders were wanting; there was
no one to direct. Overwhelmed in the first place by number, we ended
by overcoming that difficulty, and then there was a deficiency of
organization. Leaders and discipline are not the work of a day. If
education has not developed individual ability, in vain will you seek
for genuine, natural, and acknowledged leaders. The spirit of the
family alone, by forming the character, habituates men to a necessary
subordination. The atheism of the state tends to root out of every
conscience the sense of duty. How obey, if we do not comprehend the
obligation of obedience, and if those who rule over us do not seem
worthy of ruling us? Discipline is a certain moral order. It should
first exist within us by submission to Providence and to the social
order established by Providence. Imperial and republican despotism
have aimed at moulding the whole French nation after one single type.
And when the overruling, guiding will was gone, the whole nation was
paralyzed. The Roman Empire had the same fate. It fell both in the east
and west from causes analogous to those that are preying on us. An able
despotism, a vast material organization, admirable military traditions,
and the assent of the people, could not ensure the stability of the
brilliant communities of Rome and Byzantium. The same principles must
lead to the same consequences: no stable form of government; the
supreme power constantly at the mercy of elections, factions, and
violence. The Cæsarean system, whenever it obtains sway, gives glory,
and grandeur, and brilliancy to society, but also leads to anarchy and
incurable weakness.

Roman civilization was overthrown by pastoral nations: in the East,
by the Arabs and Turks; in the West, by the Germans. Cæsarean France
easily obtained the ascendancy over Italy, Austria, and Spain, because,
already initiated into Cæsarism by Roman law, they offered but slight
resistance. But when it undertook a struggle with Germany, its fortune
changed, because that country has many strong elements opposed to
Cæsarism and the principles of the French Revolution. Its _esprit de
famille_, its tendency to decentralization, and its official morality,
superior to ours, are among the differences that carry us back to the
invasions of the first four centuries. Cæsarean France has played a
great part against modern Germany. But France is not so thoroughly
Cæsarean as the Roman Empire. Its interests, its customs, and its
traditions, impregnated with Catholicism, resist this assimilation.
The Italian astuteness of the Bonapartes succeeded in making us think
despotism would lead to liberty. Our eyes are painfully opened to
the imperial _régime_ and modern institutions. We can no longer deny
that our social condition has approximated to ancient Cæsarism, and
reproduced its principal conditions. The empire did not even conceal
this imitation. The public works and the plebiscitum were the popular
side of this _régime_. No nation of Europe has experienced anything
comparable to it. In no other has the government become the contractor
and general constructor of all the public works.

The Roman Empire alone presents a similar spectacle. The emperors
provided for the amusement of the Roman people. They instituted
festivals and games. They everywhere erected buildings for ornament
or public utility, the ruins of which are still famous. The great
monuments of our ancient monarchies were due to individuals, guilds,
and the zeal of the faithful. The state did not interpose. Since 1789,
the state alone has erected edifices because it alone has had wealth.
This system of public works is only one form of communism. Though Louis
Napoleon had no taste for the arts, he had a passion for building.
This phlegmatic Cæsar, like the Roman emperors, made it a duty to
amuse the people. Family gatherings and the old festivals authorized
by religion did not meet with his approval. Such festivals are, from
their very nature, anti-Cæsarean. They recall principles and sentiments
opposed to Cæsarism. But the individual must not escape Cæsar. Public
amusements have a certain influence of their own. They must divert the
mind from all the influences of family, corporations, and religion, and
partake of the vulgar communism authorized by the state. It is thus
Cæsar undertook to amuse the people. Who does not know what the Paris
theatres became? The towns in the provinces followed the movement,
constrained by the _préfets_ and mayors. Corruption, promoted by books
and official addresses, was put in practice in every theatre of the
empire. When the immense bazaar of the Universal Exposition was opened,
Louis Napoleon invited all the sovereigns of Europe to be present.
They had no wish to attend, but yielded to his importunities. They
held a grudge against their Amphitryon. That was not the only mark of
superiority he affected with respect to them. He proposed a congress
to sanction the principles of the French Revolution. He neglected no
opportunity of influencing their policy. He was constantly shaking the
thrones of Europe by his democratic pretensions. He believed himself
alone to be legitimate, and pitied the other sovereigns who lacked the
consecration of universal suffrage. Experience has once more shown us
that immense powers may rest on fragile foundations, but the lesson
will be of no use to the Bonapartes, who are ready to recommence. Shall
it be lost on France?

Our revolutions and various _coups d’état_ within a century have
transformed us into a Cæsarean nation. All our political elements
bear the impress of this fatal destiny. The army, the magistracy,
the administration, and the schools are disciplining us for this
social system. There is no power but the state. Property is no longer
managed according to the wishes of the proprietor, but by those of the
legislator. Luxury has increased to an astonishing degree. How easily
it has pervaded all classes of society! It is the government that has
led us to yield to these new requirements of fashion. Economically
speaking, luxury is waste of capital, and an unproductive expenditure.
Old French society, founded on the right of property and the permanence
of families and fortunes, rejected luxuries, superfluities, and useless
expense. In everything, it had an eye to the solid and durable. That,
in fact, was the character of French industry. The Roman Empire was a
stranger to lasting influences and hereditary fortunes. Proscriptions
and confiscations made short work of them. Nothing must appear to
rival Cæsar, and manifest any power or independence. Christian society
pursued and attained a different object. With us, the civil code takes
the place of confiscations and proscriptions; it takes care that
fortunes are as speedily wasted as acquired; it ruins by periodical
liquidations families scarcely formed. In spite of this, the instincts
of nature incline us to a certain care of our property. Speedily
acquired fortunes, made by commerce, industrial pursuits, or legal
transmission, became a source of anxiety to the imperial mind. They
might foster independence! Thence the constant preoccupation of the
empire to lead the whole nation into luxurious habits by the temptation
of pleasures and large salaries. The multiplication of cabarets is an
unmistakable evidence of this. Obliged to expend more than they gained,
the office-holders remained in servitude. And from one to another
the emulation has extended throughout France. Cæsar not only amused
the people, but, led away by example, the people sought additional
amusements at their own expense. Thus property, idly spent, and lacking
the permanence that assures independence, ceased to limit or be an
obstacle to Cæsar’s will. All wealth became dependent on the public
credit and the stock market, and had an interest in the continuance of
Cæsar’s reign. The whole interior policy of the empire was based on
this principle. The political institution of luxury kept pace with the
theatre and literature.

The immorality of Cæsarism may be readily understood. Morality in a
nation is solely engendered by domestic life. But the family is the
_bête noire_ of Cæsarism. It was by destroying it and assuming its
functions that Cæsarism succeeded in training the people. A man,
separated from his family and the place where he ought to live, and
transported to another region where he is only accountable to the
state, a stranger to the people among whom he lives, no longer thinks
about his morality, but the service he must render to the state. How
many functionaries, inadmissible in one place on account of tricks
frowned upon by public opinion, are sent elsewhere without losing the
favor of the government!

France was as surprised by the invasion as the old world by the deluge.
Let us admire her patience and courage. We must remember, however, that
it was not Cæsarism that saved her. The official world had disappeared.
What remained rather clogged than aided the movement for repairing our
disaster. Our deliverance sprang from the people not enrolled under
the official banner. Without a government, France has shown her spirit
of unity, and revealed her moral and material resources. It was not
only the emperor, but the whole empire, that surrendered its sword to
the King of Prussia at Sedan. In the same way, Napoleon surrendered to
England after Waterloo. The high functionaries that only existed by
the will or caprice of Cæsar, and who only served him by giving up all
responsibility, were suddenly left in darkness. The emperor only sought
_ex officio_ supporters. In a country like France, these are always to
be found. Messrs. Morny, Billault, Troplong, Rouher, and Ollivier had
pliancy of mind enough to say and do anything to palliate and excuse
everything. Thus, without any counterpoise, the imperial government
consisted in a single will which was intermittent, fluctuating, and a
perpetual source of troubles and catastrophes to France. History is
not a casualty. It has its laws which control events. It is well to
repel invasions; it is better to do away with their cause. Demosthenes
replied to the Athenians who sought news of Philip: “Why, of what
consequence is it? Should he have perished, you would create another by
your dissensions. The Macedonian domination is only the result of Greek
anarchy.”

The French Empire, like the Roman, is the creation of historic
necessities produced by an age of revolutions and the application of
principles that only find complete development under an autocratic
form. Anarchy, in a proud and powerful nation with a glorious
past and a warlike spirit, will always end in military supremacy.
Christianity alone was able to check the system of perpetual war kept
up by paganism. It framed the law of nations, making them a Christian
republic. By the Revolution of 1789, France abandoned this system.
The Restoration of 1814 re-established it in part, but in 1830 the
European treaties were broken. Europe had to be on its guard against
us, and exclude us from its alliances. Louis Napoleon openly and
officially expressed his contempt for treaties. With him France took
refuge in proud isolation, affecting an intellectual dictatorship,
the prelude of wars. War alone, in fact, can impose the will of one
nation on another. This reign of armed propagandism has not ceased its
manifestations since 1848. The public schools, all the academies, and
the entire press came to the aid of Bonapartism. The personal enemies
of the emperor were his most active auxiliaries. He was well aware of
this. He carefully promoted Carbonarism in Italy, and Jacobinism in
France—two terms for expressing the same thing. The attempts against
his life only promoted his success, instead of being an obstacle to it.
He recognized, so to speak, their justice, for he had taken the oaths
of Carbonarism. When he realized that a crisis was at hand, he was not
willing for France to escape the Revolution, the reins of which he
held with apparent moderation. He successively let loose the press,
the clubs, the secret societies, and even the mob. He weakened and
degraded authority in the person of his agents, assured the pardon of
all political offences, frequently changed his ministers without any
reason or pretext, that the people might be convinced that they were
all puppets. In this way, and under the pressure of invasion, he seemed
preparing for a movement analogous to that of 1792. His death then
would have thrown us into a state of anarchy which would probably have
brought on the same invasion we have just undergone. He left behind him
only reflections of himself. When he disappeared from the scene, all
this was effaced. The regency of Eugénie amounted to about as much as
the regency of Maria Louisa—vain imitation, and a manifest proof that,
apart from the imperial person, there was no imperial government or
recognized authority, and that the empire and anarchy were brother and
sister.

The downfall of the French monarchy plunged France once more into
a state of paganism. Our wars and invasions have been of the same
character as the wars and invasions of the first centuries of our era.
The French Empire had an insatiable thirst to invade Europe. Germany,
on her side, has retained a power of expansion that recalls ancient
times. She no longer emigrates _en masse_, but by the indirect ways
of modern civilization. She first sends her pioneers. Her tillers of
the soil go to the Sclave provinces of Austria and the Russian coasts
of the Baltic. By their aptitude for labor, they take the lead, amass
capital, and end by controlling the people that receive them. There is
a German party in Russia, and this party has a controlling influence
over the czars, or Muscovite Cæsars. The Sclave race, more impressible,
more poetic, and less tenacious, less laborious, feels set aside by
the new settlers. It realizes that it is the victim of its hospitable
and beneficent nature. A reaction will soon take place. The czar will
be forced to take the national cause in hand. Russia has not uttered
its last word. She has been in some sort under foreign influence
since she imbibed the corrupt Christianity of Byzantium. It was only
under the direction of the French philosophers of the XVIIIth century
that she finally became a part of the European world. After the wars
of the Revolution and the empire, our influence greatly diminished,
and yielded to German influence. Destitute of scientific or literary
traditions, Russia sent her young men intended for office to the German
universities. They returned with the scientific jargon of the schools,
a strong dose of atheism, affiliated with the secret societies, and
without any sympathy with the tastes and sentiments of the Sclave
race. Thus favored, German influence has increased to such a degree
as to cause anxiety in the Russian Empire. In its encroachments on
Austria, Germany did not begin with pacific conquests. Silesia, seized
by Frederic II., was colonized gradually. Finally, German emigration
filled our banks, our counting-rooms, and our railway offices. This
tendency to expansion could only be restrained or repressed by our
alliance with a great nation. Unfortunately, France affected to be
above European law. She pretended to promulgate a new law, a new
civilization. She refused, in the name of the principles of 1789, to
allow that there were any legitimate sovereigns in Europe. France,
plunged into Cæsarism, found a rival in Germany, which had more
ancient Cæsarean traditions, and which, less ravaged by revolution, was
better organized than we for attack and defence. It is still increasing
in population, whereas France, under the rule of economists, diminishes
every day. This alone ought to warn French policy of the error into
which it has fallen. The German Confederation, the imposing remains
of Christian ages, was the safeguard of Europe, by maintaining a
peaceful equilibrium in Germany. France and England, unwisely governed,
allowed the German Confederation to be dismembered. The Germanic union
under Prussia was evidently threatening. Lord Palmerston and Louis
Napoleon, statesmen who had no correct notions of Christianity, could
not see anything or comprehend anything. It was, however, evident that
a peculiar kind of Cæsarism was to spring from this overturning of
Germany. A slight knowledge of history and the German character should
have been sufficient to convince Europe of this. The diplomacy which,
by the treaty of 1856, arraigned the Sovereign Pontiff at its bar,
rejoiced at the destruction of the Germanic Confederation, without
dreaming that a few years later the Empire of Germany would consign
the once powerful nations of England, France, and Russia to the second
rank. At the moment of this change, it is not useless to remark how
many deadly struggles the Papacy has had with Cæsarism. It was by
the diffusion of Christian principles that it laid the foundation of
Christian society.

The political life of the Papacy has been wholly spent in combating
Cæsarism. It struggled against the Roman emperors for three centuries,
and then against the heresies of Byzantium. In our age, Napoleon
exhausted all his arts and violence on Pius VII. Pius IX. found
himself at issue with Louis Napoleon, and Victor Emanuel, the Italian
representative of Cæsarism. The contest of the popes with the emperors
of Germany is celebrated. It was the Papacy that preserved human
liberty throughout the middle ages. Germany had seized the imperial
sceptre that had fallen from the hands of the weak successors of
Charlemagne. In the XIIIth century, the Cæsarean rule threatened the
whole of Europe. Frederic II., more perverse and more able than his
namesake of the XVIIIth century, found himself the master of Germany.
He triumphed in Italy through the support of the legists, and extended
his claims to the rest of Europe. Innocent IV., by issuing the bull of
excommunication against Frederic II. at the Council of Lyons, stopped
the German Cæsar in his career, and put an end to the invasions of
Italy he was constantly making. Italy, under the auspices of the
Papacy, displayed a long career of municipal liberty.

The development of Cæsarism in France as well as in Germany has
followed the overthrow of the temporal power of the Holy See. But the
German Empire will always retain an immense superiority over the French
Empire. It is less revolutionary, less democratic, less at variance
with its past history. It is not impossible that it may combine with
the local and municipal institutions of the country. Prussia is far
from our absolute centralization, and there is nothing to indicate that
she is to be subjected to it. She remains the ally of the great powers
of the Continent. She could easily have rallied all Europe against
imperial and Byzantine France. Let us not deny it: no victory of Louis
Napoleon’s could have secured the left bank of the Rhine. The German
coalition would very soon have drawn the rest of Europe after it. This
struggle of one against all is a necessity of Bonapartism. Nothing
can check it. Softness of manners, a refined civilization, pretended
condemnation of war, philanthropy bordering on religion, boundless
industry and credit, the military incapacity of Louis Napoleon,
nor anything else, could have prevented the war from breaking out.
“Revolution is war and bankruptcy,” said Royer-Collard. It obeys its
nature. It upheld the Bonapartes in spite of a kind of material order
and discipline they forced on the people; it required of them an armed
propaganda which they were more capable of managing successfully than
the republic itself. Louis Napoleon, with his mildness of character,
and talent as a writer, desired a peace that would enable him to
continue his utopian experiments in journalism. But he was not his own
master. He felt that a revolution at home constituted only one-half
of his obligations; the other half—revolution abroad—he was also
determined to effect, though to his regret. He regarded the bombs of
Orsini as a salutary warning, and submitted to his destiny. He extended
revolution to Italy and Mexico. He destroyed the influence of Austria.
Prussia profited by these disturbances to unite Germany. But Louis
Napoleon made a pitiful failure. He dashed against a wall with his
eyes shut. The pretext of a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne was
ridiculous, and the legislative corps and senate that countenanced it
showed the measure of their political knowledge and independence.

It is difficult to comprehend by virtue of what principle or interest
he opposed the choice of a Hohenzollern. Had he not rejected the
hereditary principle? Had he not aided in overthrowing all the princes
of the House of Bourbon who still reigned through this principle? Was
not his own power based on election? And what did it matter to France
whether that pitiful Spanish crown was on one head rather than another?
What gratitude could he expect from those revolutionary sovereigns
whose patron or director he constituted himself? He took the petty
Subalpine king by the hand, and led him to the Crimea, and to the
Congress of Paris, and thence into all the capitals of Italy. His plans
were unveiled when he forced the unhappy Victor Emanuel to give his
daughter to the imperial cousin. Who then could cherish any illusion
as to the result? It was unfolded. Did the revolutionary union of the
south spring from it? This union could only be effected by the unity
of despotism. Napoleon knew it: his nephew forgot it. Revolutionary
nations are necessarily at war or distrustful of one another, as the
revolutionary factions of a nation are always contending, unless some
master—no matter whether it is an individual or a party—succeeds in
suppressing the rivalry.

This was the state of the case in our Revolution. Is it not a matter
of public notoriety that the name of Napoleon excites only horror and
disgust in Spain and Italy?

Louis Napoleon’s aim was not to subdue Europe by war, but to effect an
internal change of government by means of revolutionary principles.
This resulted in exciting all the great powers against him. He
thought there would be a revolution in Russia in consequence of the
emancipation of the serfs which he recommended to the Czar Alexander.
He overthrew the German Confederation though it was so powerful a
guarantee for the safety of France. It was he who made William Emperor
of Germany. The overthrow of the Confederation under the circumstances
in which it took place necessarily led to the empire, as the overthrow
of ancient France led to the imperial _régime_ that has lasted till
now. We need not be astonished at the efforts of the King of Prussia
to re-establish Louis Napoleon. They were accomplices, though Louis
Napoleon has been taken for the dupe. Not that he was not conscious
of the situation, but he warded off the flashes of reason and common
sense he had, and gave himself up to a hallucination. France imitated
him, with the conscript fathers of the senate and the legislative corps
at its head. Louis Napoleon contended for an idea, and he triumphed
after his manner, after the manner of his uncle. Conquered and made
prisoner, he was humiliated, not by defeat, which does not humiliate
the brave, but by accepting his defeat. He yielded to the conqueror, he
surrendered his sword. Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, but he was
not really cast down till he found himself on board the _Bellérophon_.
Then he realized who was victor. The lamentations of St. Helena
reveal the liberal despot. Louis Napoleon also became an author and a
journalist. He dreamed of returning to France. He published at Cassel
under the name of his friend, M. de Grécourt, a _brochure_ designed
to influence Germany in his favor. He had no doubt of being as warmly
welcomed by France as Napoleon was when he returned from the island of
Elba.

There was no change in France. Our social institutions were still
standing. The republicans had found nothing to modify in the wonderful
machinery of despotism. There was nothing to prevent him from resuming
his place. There was the invasion besides. Did the disasters of 1814
prevent Napoleon’s reascendancy in France in 1815? Was there any
lack of senators and representatives to welcome Cæsar? Was not the
popularity of the uncle the foundation of the nephew’s success? That
was the sole cause of Louis Napoleon’s accession. This popularity was
nothing more than the result of success. Power and success united
and counted the votes, and proclaimed the result. The revolutionary
power was not entirely destroyed by the events of 1814 and 1815; it
became an organized system, having its regulations, its leaders, its
journals, its secret societies, and its permanent committees variously
disguised under the forms of beneficence, pleasure, science, etc. No
regular government at variance with this many-sided, intangible power
could be established. The regular government of France especially—the
hereditary monarchy—could not take root again. Public opinion and
enthusiasm are like stage machinery that rises and falls. We witnessed
the workings of this machinery from 1848 to 1852. The inventors did not
even give themselves the trouble to hide the workings from the eyes of
the public. This reign of opinion has continued. The word of command
from the emperor was echoed by the ministers, and from them by the
_préfets_, _sous-préfets_, and mayors. The entire administration in
all its gradations walked in the same footsteps. By the public works,
loans, and illusory promises, the mass of electors were so fascinated
that they could refuse nothing to a government that was promoting
such benefits. Universal suffrage is the character in the comedy—the
simple, good-natured Demos of Aristophanes. In reality, it is the
emperor—he who has the _imperium_, individually or by a number of
individuals, who votes at the general election. In the Cæsarean system,
the emperor alone acts, but he acts in the name of the people, and as
the representative of the people. He is the voice of the people. This
must not be lost sight of when we judge the acts of Louis Napoleon.

In his _brochure_, he claims the good-will of the King of Prussia and
Germany, because it was France alone that desired the war. He did not
desire it; he was not responsible for it. This was pleading his own
imbecility and the culpability of France. What! he did not set France
against Germany? He did not break the treaties of 1815, or officially
condemn them? He did not constantly propose the policy of his uncle
as an example to France? He followed it without condemning an act or
a principle. The Jacobinism of his later years was a mere imitation
of the liberal ideas his uncle brought back from the island of Elba,
and continued to cultivate at St. Helena—ideas that M. Thiers, in his
voluminous compilation concerning the empire, regarded as serious!
This was why Louis Napoleon declared him “the national historian,”
and presided at the obsequies of Béranger, “the national poet.” This
Bonapartism in verse and prose had only one practical aim—the conquest
of the Rhine provinces. That was the favorite topic of old soldiers and
the zealous members of the imperial _entourage_. People of more sense,
who were not overscrupulous, resigned themselves to it as a necessity
of the situation. Ever since 1852, it had been thought there would be
a sudden blow aimed at Belgium or Germany. Was not Austria attacked
in 1859 without any reason or pretext, and, it may be said, without
a declaration of war, and in violation of all the laws of nations?
When and where did universal suffrage countenance this? Where was it
discussed by the ten million voters? What authority did they give
their representatives? The imperialists and liberals have refused the
electors the right which they enjoyed in 1789 to give directions to
those they elected. The member represents, then, only himself, though
individually he may have been acceptable to his constituents at the
time of the election. The elector is not free in his vote, because
he does not know his so-called deputy. And these representatives of
Cæsarism have never been free. No sooner are they nominated, than
they forget their orders and electors, and only aim at “the glory of
obedience” to Cæsar, like the senators of Tiberius.

Louis Napoleon played to perfection the game of Cæsarism. Conqueror
or conquered, he always kept a foothold. Victory immortalized him,
and assured perhaps his son’s future career. And defeat was not to
be imputed to him. As the representative of the people, he was only
a passive agent. A docile instrument of the passions and sentiments
of the people, he sacrificed himself. Did not this entitle him to
the gratitude of his fellow-citizens? He regarded the republic as
less popular than himself, and condemned by universal suffrage.
Besides, he affected to personify in a supreme degree the republican
element. It was not with respect to France he was anxious. He knew
that the Cæsarean constitution of France left a sure way always open
of regaining the throne. It was by foreigners he was overthrown. He
preferred this fall to the necessity of presiding over new disasters.
He was not sorry, either, to see the city of Paris, which of late
had been constantly opposed to the empire, and whose enmity daily
increased under its liberal laws, chastised by Prussia. King William
thus effected a _coup d’état_ which did not injure the emperor, and
made a return to despotism easier than at the beginning of the empire.
_La Situation_, the Bonaparte organ at London, insinuated that Prussia
had an interest in allying itself with Louis Napoleon, in order to
reconstruct the map of Europe. And it did not conceal that the neutral
countries, Belgium and Holland, were to pay for this reconciliation. In
this way, Bonapartism, though apparently crushed, showed signs of life,
and fostered its hopes. This was a sign it was not morally subdued. It
was overcome only to be restored. But the French republic was not in
a condition to restore it, because it confounded itself with it. It
must be ascertained if Europe feared Bonapartism or France. Bonapartism
aside, France is now a really peaceful, honest, Christian nation.
She has only been formidable since 1789 through the principles of
dissolution she has carried within herself and diffused abroad by means
of newspapers, secret societies, and armies.

The idea of giving Holland to Prussia, and Belgium to France, was
worthy of Louis Napoleon. Would Europe allow it? Prussia already
preponderates. France would gain nothing. She could not rise from
the inferiority into which she has fallen through late events. The
humiliation that Cæsarism has inflicted on our country is not a thing
of yesterday. Napoleon stated the problem clearly: France must subject
Europe to revolution, or disappear before a torrent of invasions.
These two alternatives have been successively more or less realized.
The Restoration gave peace once more to France and to Europe. France,
regaining her rank, menaced no one, and sustained herself by her
alliances. She fell again in the Revolution of 1830. Foreign sympathy
was withdrawn from us. All the alliances were broken off. The various
governments, stunned by the rebound of the Revolution, stood on their
guard. The monarchy of July sought to favor revolution moderately
abroad, and to direct it with skill at home. From that time, Europe
formed a coalition against us. During the first ten years of the
Revolution of July, the public mind was disturbed as to the possibility
of a great war with Germany. The liberal party used every effort to
bring it on, without any reason certainly, in order to fulfil one
of the conditions of the revolutionary programme, which is an armed
propaganda. It was with such views that the fortifications of Paris
were conceived by M. Thiers. The equilibrium of Europe was destroyed,
therefore, to our sole injury. The empire developed the seeds of
revolution sown by the government of July. France descended lower than
in 1830; she even lost all regard to decency, by giving herself up to
the revolutionary current. The distinguished men of talent who devoted
themselves to the service of Louis Philippe withdrew from the scene,
and were replaced by a crowed of nobodies. Assemblies, ministers, and
emperor entered on such a contradictory course that one might believe
our country had fallen into its dotage.

The Mexican war made America aware of our political weakness; and,
in the East, our diplomacy lost the last remnant of its influence
by taking a stand apart from Catholicism. The war of 1859 set
Italy against us—a country so lately governed by princes favorable
to France. The Italian unity and German unity consigned France to
a secondary rank. Finally, the commercial treaties have made us
subservient to England. Thus, in renouncing all idea of conquest,
Louis Napoleon did not give up disturbing Europe. France served as the
instrument of this work, and ended by being the victim. The material
disproportion of forces could only produce a catastrophe. Europe was
arming its men, while France, under Louis Napoleon’s direction, was
plunged in revolutionary metaphysics. It does not require any great
sagacity, however, to perceive that a revolutionary nation could not be
in a condition to sustain a conflict with a nation that has remained
true to conservative principles. What could be effected by combining
all these shattered elements? How could we depend on these bruised
reeds?

So rapid a decadence under the influence of anti-social principles
has permitted neighboring nations to renounce the traditions that
bound them to us. The admiration they felt for the superiority of
our civilization yielded to the fear of falling under a despotism
as unprincipled as it was senseless. It was from the hotbed of
Bonapartism, the inheritor of revolutionary traditions, that have
sprung the various revolutions which from 1814 to 1830 ensanguined all
Europe. The republic of 1848, exhausted in the course of ten months,
consigned its stock of revolutionism to Louis Bonaparte. He made it
yield with usury. Until 1859, he hesitated and felt his way, being
fettered by public sentiment, which was more conservative and Christian
than he could have wished. He skilfully got rid of the honest people
around him, and, once started, he never stopped again. From that fatal
period, he was no longer his own master: he was the ready tool of the
Revolution. It is surprising that the Bonapartes are not satisfied with
reigning over France; they think they have a right to all Europe—a
right to substitute the sovereignty of the people and elective
governments for all the hereditary monarchies. The mission they claim
secures the complicity of all the malcontents. The rulers assuredly
take note of all this danger. They understand that their enemy in
France is not France itself, but the Revolution.

The German Empire rekindles the fears that Louis XIV. inspired and
Napoleon made us realize. Owing to a remnant of feudalism, it is
founded on a much more solid basis than the French Empire was. When
it attains its utmost limit, there will really be only one power in
Europe. Even now, no one would think of denying its preponderance.
The balance of power can only be preserved by the alliance of the
secondary powers—France, Russia, Austria, and England. No one disputes
the superiority of Prussia. In order to attain it, it would have been
sufficient to be preserved during the half-century just elapsed from
the revolutions that have so lowered France and Austria. Prussian
statesmen labored energetically to unite Germany. By directing the
mental training in the universities, the secret societies, the press,
and the diplomacy, they have shown a system and energy that in France
would have enabled statesmen of another stamp to bewilder and crush the
genius of France, and bring our nation down to the dust. The Napoleonic
Empire was one vast treason. It only allured France in order to deliver
it up to foreigners. By giving her the choice between universal rule
and annihilation, he placed her in an absurd position, and subjected
her to certain ruin for the greater glory of Napoleon. It may here be
remarked that no man ever made a more lavish use than Napoleon of the
word “glory,” which the pagans so constantly had on their lips. It was
comprehensible to people that lived to serve masters who, having all
that could gratify pride and power in this world, aspired to glory
as the supreme recompense. It was under similar circumstances that
Napoleon and his nephew sought and obtained glory. Their names are
imperishable. They are connected with catastrophes human memory will
forever retain. They refused to reign peaceably by fulfilling their
duties as sovereigns. Rejecting a divine authority, and recognizing
no higher power, they made use of the people as the instrument of
their passions. One had a passion for conquering Europe, the other
for revolutionizing it. And France had to promote these designs, be
drained of men under the First Empire, and be revolutionized under
the Second, in order that the revolutionary contagion might be spread
throughout Europe. War, coming to the aid of this work, led to the
third invasion—the crowning achievement of the Third Empire.

The sole prejudice the French manifest in favor of the empire is that
it maintained the honor of our army, and restored order. This is only
true with respect to the Revolution. For the Revolution was absolute
disorder. And the aim of the empire was not to substitute order for
revolution, but to organize the Revolution by making it possible to
the vulgar mind. It proved, therefore, wholly incompetent to the work
of reorganizing society. Napoleon succeeded republican anarchy, and
would have left us in it at his downfall, had it not been for the
House of Bourbon, which saved us from foreigners and revolution. The
nephew likewise succeeded his mother, the republic, whose death he
hastened. And everybody knows that his natural death at the Tuileries
would have been followed by a triumphant republican rising at Paris. He
made every preparation for that. The republic of the 4th of September,
1870, was established almost as a matter of course, without violence,
without noise. The _régente_ had orders not to oppose anything. General
Montauban declared to all who would listen to him that he should
only offer moral resistance to the expected demonstration of the
4th of September. In fact, after Wissembourg, there was no imperial
government. That government, then, was anarchical in essence and
administrative by accident. It only rose momentarily above anarchy,
and speedily sank into it again. It dreaded nothing more than a peace
that would strengthen institutions, create new influences, and diminish
Cæsar’s personality. Louis Napoleon was perpetually remodelling the
different institutions, and without any apparent object. It was in
this way he did away even with the traditions of the First Empire, and
subjected the army to so many ridiculous experiences.

It doubtless seems singular—to accuse the uncle and the nephew of
anarchy, when their putting down anarchy was precisely their title
to govern France. But anarchy is not the only feature of the empire:
there was despotism besides; and with these original principles there
was an ingredient of political order which we do not deny. When this
side of things became apparent, the people threw themselves into the
emperor’s arms, and hailed him as the saviour of the country. When all
was lost, they took hold of the first thing that presented itself. In
our modern France, the empire and the Napoleons are the only memories
capable of fixing every eye and directing every vote at a given moment.
The salvage obtained, half the work remains to be accomplished. In the
latter part of its task, the empire always fails. Its principles hinder
it; they only favor order under conditions which prevent its solidity.
Why this special hatred kept up by the Bonapartes against the House of
Bourbon? The Bonapartes have nothing against the Bourbons; our kings
had long lost their power when the Bonapartes seized it. There is no
personal difference between them and the Bourbons. We must look beyond
to find the connection between the cause and effect. The Bourbons and
the Bonapartes are above all that is individual and personal. They
represent two opposite causes. By the intrigues of Louis Napoleon, the
offshoots of the House of Bourbon have disappeared from the thrones of
southern Europe. They are a living protestation against revolutions.
The Bourbons have in vain allied themselves with the revolutionary
party, and ruined their own cause; they never succeeded in gaining the
good-will of their adversaries, so effectually have their principles,
which they cannot divest themselves of, protected the monarchical
cause against themselves! The House of Bourbon, in its downfall at
Naples and Madrid, was elevated by its fall. The dethroned Neapolitan
king has shown himself more Christian, more kingly, than before he
fell. The Spanish monarchy, by the mouth of Don Carlos, has expressed
sentiments truly worthy of a king, and contrasts with the attitude of
the elective and liberal king who has just left. The House of Bourbon
has been purified by the crucible of revolutions, because, in spite of
its failings and misfortunes, it represents the principle of right.
The Bonapartes remain true to themselves. They do not vary in their
_rôle_ or in their pretensions, and remain attached to principles
irreconcilable with the peace of France and all Europe. The recall of
the Bourbons is an European necessity. It will be more easily effected
when the wall of prejudice, which has barred the way, is wholly broken
down. This European war had been foreseen from the beginning of the
empire. Louis Napoleon, in throwing the responsibility of it on France,
acknowledged that he yielded to the fatality of his position. What
could be a more decisive proof, and what other could be wished, that
the empire is war? No one in France desired war. Nothing was ready. The
liberal party curtailed every year the budget of the army. Prussia gave
us no excuse for aggression; all the _chancelleries_ advised peace. It
was then that, a prey to the evil genius of his family, to obsessions
that deprived him of sense and foresight, Louis Napoleon made a sudden
attack on Germany, without looking to see if he was followed, or how he
was followed.

Our fault was in not being ready, say the Bonapartists. That is an
illusion. At no price could the empire have been ready. The military
organization, weakened by perpetual changes, the corruption and lack
of discipline diffused among the soldiers and under-officers by means
of the public journals and secret societies, the limited resources
available under a system which affected a kind of communism in the
civil order, and constantly encroached on future supplies, rendered
reform impossible. Everything set aside the thought of attempting
it. The budget paid 400,000 men, and our army did not really exceed
200,000! A reform in France on the Prussian model would have required
several years and the overthrow of all our modern institutions.
Can we imagine, with the other expenditures of our budget, eight
hundred millions more for the army? Prussia has been half a century
in achieving its present organization. Germany has its gradation of
ranks and classes. A numerous nobility forms the basis of its military
institutions, and furnishes, in time of war as well as peace, the
natural leaders of the whole nation. And we Frenchmen—we are still
under the elective system, which is that of children at their sports.
Leaders who are improvised remain necessarily without authority, unless
they have been prepared for their _rôle_ by their previous life. Our
military organization corresponds to our social organization: and it is
the empire, a military _régime_, but also a Saint-Simonian _régime_,
that has co-operated actively in the military dissolution of France. It
was by being mixed with Saint-Simonism that it returned to the extreme
notions of 1789 and 1793. This socialism that was to sustain the empire
against the clergy, the conservative party, and the republicans, did it
weigh one ounce in his favor? At the first reverse, all the socialism
in authority disappeared. And Louis Napoleon has had no adversaries
more implacable than all these socialists whom he fed, and who are
making up for their former servility by their present abuse.

We must not weary of meditating on these words: France fights for an
idea. This idea, under various names, is the Revolution, socialism, and
the principles of 1789. Louis Philippe, that emperor on a small scale,
and that “best of republics,” pursued the same crooked way. He classed
his wars and foreign intrigues under the mild term of “liberalism.”
He propagated in his way, by the assistance of the Assemblies, the
principles of the Revolution. He gradually but persistently violated
the treaties of 1815, which had put an end to twenty-five years of
social war in Europe. It was in violation of these treaties that he
ascended the throne. He interfered in Belgium in the name of the
Revolution; he aided greatly in the downfall of the Bourbons of Spain;
he occupied Ancona, in spite of the Holy See, and indicated a course
to Gregory XVI. that was identical with the terms of Louis Napoleon’s
letter to Edgar Ney. Finally, less Catholic than M. Guizot, he
applauded the ruin of the Sonderbund, and refused Prince von Metternich
the support of France in protecting the interests of the smaller
cantons, our friends and ancient allies. By his inaction, he favored
the revolutionary cause when he did not serve it with his forces.
The revolutionary triumph at Berne soon extended to Paris, and Louis
Philippe had to withdraw more speedily than he came. He propagated
revolutionism in Europe during the whole course of his reign, with less
display than Louis Napoleon, but with as much perversity. Certainly,
neither Prussia, nor Austria, nor Russia were deceived as to the
cause and tendency of the Revolution of 1830. They protested in vain.
England alone took sides with Louis Philippe: thence the subserviency
of our policy to that of England. Louis Philippe made the most of that
ally of the Revolution: through party spirit, he sacrificed even the
interest and honor of France. We recognize there the soldier of 1789,
the former usher of the Jacobin club. And Louis Napoleon, for the same
cause, humiliated himself more profoundly. He put his ministers, his
assemblies, his diplomacy, our commerce, and our industries at the
feet of England. And he certainly was not ignorant that England would
never send him a shilling or a man. But he knew that England protected
revolution on the Continent. He bound her to the revolutionary cause
by the Crimean war and the commercial treaty. England powerfully
seconded it in Italy and Spain. It was Bonapartism that English policy
has developed even while thinking it was making use of it. Coming
events will tell whether England has not, by violating her traditions,
hastened a decline already evident and even alarming.

It is possible that, by rejecting the pretended English alliance,
which was never anything but a lure, France would have been forced to
closer relations with the Continent, and to conform to the European
law of nations, which would have saved Europe from great calamities.
The sovereigns, then, have some interest in withdrawing France from
English complicity. The Restoration alone understood the practice of
French policy, and alone maintained a firm attitude with respect to
England. Its whole policy, interior as well as exterior, was national
and uninfluenced by England. The conquest of Algiers was the most
brilliant result of that policy. The Restoration made successful wars,
and wars Europe had no reason to complain of; for they were carried on
with the consent of the powers, and to re-establish the law of nations
settled by the treaties of 1815. Such was the character of the war
with Spain in 1823. Peace reigned then among all the great powers of
the Continent, and it was solely to the House of Bourbon it was owing;
that house overthrown, a spirit of revolt broke out on all sides, and
made thrones totter. What profit did France derive from it? Condemning
herself by her institutions to perpetual war, France pronounced her own
sentence of death. She conquered under Napoleon only by the ability of
her leader, when she found herself contending with one or two nations.
She successively defeated each of her enemies. At length her armies
were made up of recruits from every country in Europe; she incorporated
the vanquished through the same policy as ancient Rome. It was an army
composed of soldiers from all parts of Europe that Napoleon led into
Russia. The disaster of 1812 freed Germany. Then, for the first time,
a serious coalition was arranged, and Napoleon was defeated by the
combined forces in 1813, 1814, and 1815. Louis Napoleon attacked Russia
and Austria separately. He isolated Prussia from the great powers, but
his policy of nationality brought on German unity. And it was the whole
of Germany that confronted him when he merely wished to confront the
King of Prussia. The King of Prussia, had he been defeated, would have
appealed to the Emperor of Austria and the czar, who would not have
failed him. Our revolutionary tendencies will always draw a coalition
upon us. The late events have weakened the revolutionary party in
Europe to such a degree that the support it offered us, and on which
we relied, will be of no more avail. Europe, surprised by the outburst
of 1789, yielded to our arms for twenty years. She then united, and,
imitating the imperial military policy, carried it to a degree of
perfection that left us behind. What remains for France and all Europe
but to agree in re-establishing peace by conformity of political
principles? And in 1873, as in 1815, this peace depends solely on the
recall of the House of Bourbon to France. It is to this work that
Europe is invited if she does not wish to perpetuate a revolution
which, after ruining France, will not leave one of the great powers
standing.

The French Revolution has till now been the object of public attention.
Princes and people have bestirred themselves for a century to oppose
or sustain it. The inability of the principles of 1789 to establish
anything, and the invasion of 1870, have opened the eyes of France, and
better disposed it to make terms with Europe henceforth. But beside the
French Revolution, now growing powerless, rises a political element
that suddenly overawes and disturbs European equilibrium. A policy
of defence and preservation ought to be directed against the Empire
of Germany, not to destroy it, but to guarantee the safety of other
governments by a general alliance and a new law of nations. France
will never declare war against Europe again. Louis Napoleon is the
last to make such a challenge. Personally, there was nothing warlike
in him; but he represented a system that tends to war. To him this war
was an amusement, a distraction. To divert himself by a general war,
in order to escape for a moment from national affairs that perplexed
him! The diversion was powerful; as well blow out one’s brains to
drive away _ennui_. The mass of the French people did not participate
in the madness of the Bonaparte system: they are victims as well as
Europe. Only we have come to that phase of the system which is more
particularly humiliating to France. The three great allied powers of
the North have nothing more to fear from France. But this alliance of
the North is no longer on terms of equality. We say great powers! There
is now but one great power—Germany. And she necessarily threatens
Austria and Russia by her military strength and by her expansive power,
through her hardy and laborious race, that is filling the United
States with swarms of colonizers, extending to the neighboring Sclave
countries in Russia, and putting forth its shoots even on French soil.
German preponderance will pursue its course. It is not universal
rule, but a preponderance that will tend to it, unless a union of the
secondary powers oppose it with a strong, resisting force. Germany
herself will not be wanting in prudence. Her reign will last its time;
it is sure of only a short triumph. In twenty-five years, Russia, in
consequence of the progress of science and industry, will be able to
subjugate Germany. Germany will then have need of France.

By a law of Providence, nations that rise from an uncertain beginning
seem to attain their height suddenly, and almost as speedily begin to
decline. We Frenchmen have had our day of power and glory in the middle
ages. The age of Louis XIV. was our era of intellectual superiority and
political preponderance. We have come down from that pinnacle; there is
no denying it. Germany, by its material strength, is rising far above
the point we attained. England, France, Russia, and Austria no longer
have any influence, by their diplomacy and alliances, over the hundreds
of petty princes and peoples that constituted the German Confederation.
They are shut out of Germany. Any pretension to interference would
make them a laughing-stock. All these powers, Russia excepted, have
pursued a foolish policy, and are receiving the recompense due to
their shrewdness. Inheritor of Richelieu, the French Revolution so
disturbed Germany as to overthrow all its princes. The German nation
has survived, and by the concentration of its unity has acquired
a power of aggression and conquest it was incapable of under its
former organization. The Revolution of 1789 resulted in the immediate
elevation of England, which from the third rank rose almost to the
first—a rank she would still have, had she not replaced the policy
of Pitt and Burke by the policy of Lord Palmerston and his followers.
Louis Napoleon created the Empire of Germany, but England applauded his
course. All her statesmen have rejoiced in the humiliation of France
that has resulted from it. Those debaters and merchants have advocated
the establishment of an immense military empire in the heart of Europe,
without perceiving that peaceful and industrious England would thereby
lose its influence. She is destined to decline still further. Her
influence on the Continent depended on the old balance of power, and
preponderated through her alliance with Austria. In 1859, she betrayed
Austria, and shamefully disavowed the treaties of 1815. Austria turned
to Russia, or to Prussia, or to both at once.

The old kingdoms, the historic nations, are breaking in pieces. In
reality, it is the Prussian Empire that has been founded, rather than
the German Empire restored. Germany retains enough of Catholic life
to give her a tone of moral and intellectual grandeur that render her
superior to Russia and the United States. There is nothing to disturb
her but the future, and a future not far distant, if the people of
Southern Europe continue to abandon themselves to revolutionary
principles. We are far from believing that France can never rise
again. She rose after 1815: the same causes produce the same effects.
What concerns Europe is that France will never resume her _rôle_ of
agitator. Bonapartism is still powerful. It prevails through the habits
and necessities which concentrate and direct the whole political,
moral, and mental activity of France. This storm over, the name of
Napoleon will again disturb the public mind, and unite the suffrage.
The republic of 1870 is dragging along in the old beaten track of
imperialism. It has merely set up the men of 1848 or 1830—old,
worn-out functionaries, whose incapacity has increased rather than
diminished. It is time for a reaction against childish prejudices. The
motto of the liberal school is: Revolution and Progress! It is well
to know that a revolution is, etymologically speaking, a turn back.
Our liberals cling to the days of 1789. In a few years, they will be a
century behindhand. France rapidly rose from her helplessness of 1815
to the Spanish war of 1823, and the conquest of Algiers. Then a fatal
revolution arrested its progress, and it fell back to a state bordering
on that of ‘89. Louis Philippe kept us in subjection eighteen years.
He was overthrown by the socialism which he restrained, but which
with a bound returned to the theories of ‘93 in the name of progress!
These sudden relapses disorganize and destroy the social machine.
The Restoration alone was successful, because it was the regular
government. The House of Bourbon is able to give interior peace to
France. It is not the government of a party, for it does not derive its
title from the popular vote. It appeals to the conscience and reason
like a natural law and a national necessity. It has no other ambition
but to make France once more a Christian kingdom by ensuring the
general peace of Europe on the basis of a new public law. What great
power will dare refuse her its aid, when so strongly interested in the
same cause?




ENGLISH DOMESTIC FESTIVITIES.

BY AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC.


MEDIÆVAL England was the home of merriment and the scene of all manner
of family festivals and athletic rejoicings. Heir to the old Norse
traditions of Yule-tide, she preserved the spirit of innocent and manly
sport better perhaps than those less hardy and more polished lands of
the Mediterranean whose pleasures were mostly such as could be enjoyed
from the vantage-point of a balcony, and the soft resting-place of a
gilded ottoman. In England, the national pleasures are pleasures of
action as well as of sight; and, even in those specially destined to
commemorate the glories of an ancient feudal family, the members of
the family do not recline in luxurious ease, patronizingly looking on
at the feasts provided to do them honor, but mingle with the people,
share in their games, and compete for prizes with the rest. This it
is that distinguishes English festivities from any other, and stamps
them with an individuality which in the sequel has no little political
significance. The sister countries share in this attribute of hearty
good-fellowship among classes, and indeed what is here said of England
may be said interchangeably of Scotland and Ireland.

Still, things are not done in our day in precisely the same lavish
and baronial way that was common in Tudor times, and a revival of
this generous style of entertainment, though not infrequent, cannot
be called other than a rarity. This certainly enhances the interest
attaching to one of these social relics of the past; and the great
pageant two years ago at S. Paul’s Cathedral, London, in thanksgiving
for the recovery of the heir to the throne, was perhaps the most
brilliant and successful modern attempt to revive the glories of
England’s “golden age”; but yet, in some measure, more individuality
attaches to country _fêtes_ than even to such a national event as the
“Thanksgiving Procession.”

Then, too, they are so little known beyond the rural neighborhood
in which they occur that to us across the ocean they come as fresh
revelations of the inner structure—social, political, and domestic—of
the great mother country, whose language is now that of the greater
half of the civilized world. Such a festival is also rendered still
more interesting in our eyes when it takes place in a Catholic family,
under Catholic auspices, and is pervaded with the broad spirit
of Catholic generosity. The best days of “merrie” were those of
“Catholic” England, and the national character, now universally known
as the British—_i.e._, moroseness and gloom of disposition—is wholly
a graft of the unhappy Lutheran Rebellion. Unquestionably, the most
English domestic festival, the most characteristic, and the aptest to
exhibit Englishmen of all ranks and stations in their best aspect, is
a “Coming of Age.” This is celebrated on the twenty-first anniversary
of the birth of the heir to a large property, and is essentially an
outgrowth of the institution of primogeniture.

In the instance of which we speak, the festival took place in a
Catholic house, on the estate of the largest land-owner of one of the
midland counties of England. There was a large family gathering bidden
from all parts of the country; relatives of all denominations met in
perfect peace and friendship round the board of the Catholic head
of their house; there were clergymen and government clerks, married
sisters with large families, old aunts in sufficiently quaint costume,
young lawyers, parliamentary men, soldiers and sailors, some with
years of service behind them, some with their spurs yet to win; in
fact, each generation, from that of “powder and patches” down to that
of the nursery of to-day, was impartially and favorably represented.
The house, a large, roomy Tudor building, was still too small to
accommodate all the guests, and the lodges and even the inns of the
neighborhood, had to be put into requisition. When we drove through
the park on Tuesday evening, 10th of October, 18—, the first thing
that struck us was seeing moving lights in front of the house; and,
our carriage being suddenly stopped, we found that the lights were
carried by E—— and the servants to prevent our being shipwrecked upon
tent-ropes and poles! By that dim light, we discerned the outline of
the immense tent run out from the end window of the drawing-room; and,
as we looked at the preparations, the work really seemed as if carried
on by fairies, so quickly and perfectly was it accomplished. The place
was looking lovely; some of the beautiful trees were just touched with
the first tints of scarlet and gold, others still fresh and green. At
the east end of the Terrace Garden is a very handsome stone balustrade,
between the flower-garden and the straight walk leading to the old
Hall (a ruined house, once the family mansion, and now standing in the
grounds as a picturesque ornament, and also a convenient place for
school entertainments, servants’ dances, etc.) “To any prosaic mind,”
said a friend of ours, “there is always great amusement in watching
work of any kind; and the object for which all was going on gave me
such a real interest in it that I do not think any one entered more
fully than I did into even the minutest details of preparation.” Lord
G——, the owner of the house, and the father of the young recipient
of these patriarchal honors, gave Captain W—— _carte blanche_ about
many little things, and was so kindly pleased with every endeavor: all
the people worked with _such_ eagerness and good-will. Old Philip (a
garrulous old carpenter who knows the family history far better than
the family itself!) and Captain W—— made fast friends in no time.
The entrance tent became in a few days very pretty—lined with scarlet
and white, the floor covered with red, marble tables at the sides; and
at one end on a table was placed Lord G——’s bust, and a pier-glass
behind it, the two corners of the tent at each side being filled with
plants of variegated foliage. Just opposite the entrance was hung the
large picture of the _fête_ at Fort Henry when Lord G—— came of age
(thirty or more years ago); and very quaint indeed are the costumes and
most charming the “bonnets” of the “period”; but we were assured by
Philip they were all perfect likenesses! There were light chandeliers
suspended from the roof, which had a fine effect even in daytime, and
sofas were placed round the walls, so that one only felt what a pity
it would be when such a pretty entrance hall would be demolished! At
one end was the entrance, and the passage to the front door, all filled
with flowers. Much fun went on whilst all these things were being
placed, and some even said the preparations would be the best part of
all.

The hero of the festivities himself arrived a day or two after us.
Being in the army, as are most young men of good prospects in England,
he had hitherto been away with his regiment, and only obtained leave
of absence for this occasion. He seemed delightfully happy, but most
naturally, not excitedly; and throughout the whole no one could be more
unaffected or unspoilt by being the one object of all these rejoicings.
Where many a young man might have shown himself over-elated, he was
exactly himself, happy and cheerful, but quiet, calm, and always
self-possessed. When all the preparations were finished, nothing
could be more beautiful. It is not too much to say that they were
princely, yet all was in perfect taste and keeping—nothing of vain
show and ostentation, thoroughly refined, and so truly represented by
the word which to our mind conveys the highest praise, _gentlemanly_;
above all, everything was arranged for the happiness and rejoicing of
others, of high and low, of rich and poor, and nothing overlooked which
could gratify the feelings of participants. On each of the different
approaches to the house, the banners, placed at different distances
on each side of the drives, had a beautiful effect, as well as the
larger flags on the house, on the old Hall, on the church-tower; and
these brilliant colors were set off by the more varied and almost
equally rich tints of the trees. On Monday (the 16th October), the
festivities began in earnest. The first act was our all going directly
after breakfast up to the old Hall to see the gigantic cask of
21-years-old ale opened, and, as in duty bound, to taste the ale to
Charlie’s health. The universal custom in England of brewing a large
quantity of the very best ale the year an heir is born, and keeping it
untouched until the day he comes of age, when the cask is broached and
distributed in prudently moderate quantities to the guests and tenants,
is of very ancient origin, and is most religiously adhered to. Another
custom is that of planting an oak-tree near the house the year of the
heir’s birth, to commemorate the event, and the sapling is always
called after its human foster-brother. This tapping the ale was like
reading a page out of some memoir of former times, and reminded us of
the stories of Sir Walter Scott.

The cavernous cellar in which stand the mysterious casks, the ivy-grown
ruin overhead, the brawny men opening the family treasures, and serving
as rustic cup-bearers to the guests, all made a thorough old-time
picture. Some of the party, after this ceremony was over, left us to go
to the first village feast, the prototype—a description of which will
equally fit all the others. There are seven villages on the estates,
and each felt itself entitled to a separate local entertainment.
Ridlington, which supplies the family with one of its many titles, was
the first to experience its lord’s hospitality.

The feast consisted of an abundant supply of meat, ale, and cakes
for men, women, and children alike, with games on the village green,
races for simple prizes, such as articles of useful clothing, etc. The
greased pole formed the chief attraction for the men and boys, and of
course was productive of the greatest merriment, through the harmless
accidents to which it inevitably exposes the candidates for the honors
of successful climbing. During the repast, speeches were freely made
and healths proposed, every one much alike, but all interesting,
through the hearty reciprocity of feeling evinced between landlord
and tenant. Returning home, the host and his daughters prepared to
receive their unexpected guests, the greater number of whom were to
assemble that evening. Our “prosaic-minded” friend here interposed a
characteristic comment, in these words: “When the influx of guests
took place about six o’clock that same evening, you may conceive the
feelings of the ‘family aunt’ descending the stairs before dinner,
as if one of the pictures had stepped out of its frame to mix in
such a crowd of strangers, for such are almost all to me!” As the
drawing-rooms were dismantled in preparation for the ball, there was
only the oak corridor to sit in, and it must be confessed it required
some tact to find seats; whilst, of course, all the men crowded
together, English fashion, under the staircase! Capt. W—— acquired
the name of “master of the ceremonies,” as he and E—— (one of our
young hostesses) drew up the order of march to dinner, and he was
deputed to tell every one who to take—rather puzzling in an assemblage
scarcely one of whom he had ever seen before. The “weighty” matter of
English precedence in such a company is more important than any one
would suppose; and we cannot wonder that such social punctiliousness
should raise a smile among people of simpler though not less generous
habits.

The dinner was a most elaborate affair; indeed, in England, it is
always the crowning portion of any entertainment, and the test of a
genuine social success. The table looked beautiful with the massive
silver plate: the épergne representing a herd of stags (the white
stag is Lord G——’s crest) feeding under a spreading oak; the vases
of classical shape, formerly wine-coolers, but now, more congenially
to modern refinement, filled with ferns or plants of colored foliage,
contrasting with the frosted silver; flowers and fruit in utopian
abundance, and every vase or dish raised on a stand of crimson
velvet, in artistic relief against the delicate white damask of the
table-cloth—and this, of course, every day the same. Among the guests
we may pause a moment to mention a lady of whom a stranger to her
gave this characteristic description: saying that she was nicely but
quietly dressed, had large, soft eyes, an intelligent expression, and
a thoughtful look. She was certainly the most interesting and the
cleverest person of the company, if the inward history of a mind is to
count more than its outward covering. Suffice it to say that a few of
those present knew how to appreciate her, especially a clergyman of
the neighborhood noted for his historical researches and antiquarian
learning—the Rev. G. H. Hill. Among those whom social reticence does
not forbid us to distinguish by name was also an architect of rare
merit, under whose supervision part of the building had been erected—a
man whose mind is thoroughly artistic, and whose name, already the
property of the public, we need therefore not hesitate to give—Mr.
C. Buckler. His testimony, characteristic as it must be, will not
be inappropriate in this sketch; of the whole festival he could say
with truth, as he did in a charming letter to his patron and host,
that it was thoroughly mediæval in spirit. This is high praise in
the mouth of an Englishman and an artist; for our national pride is
inseparably woven with feudal and ancestral feelings, an admiration for
the open-handed generosity and lavish display of baronial times—for
everything, in a word, that made England a fit nurse for Shakespeare,
and an ideal for Washington Irving.

If our readers are not weary of pen-portraits, here is one—that of the
daughter of the lady we have just spoken of, which our dear old friend,
the “often-quoted,” thus incisively draws: “She is a pretty little
thing, with a very white skin, delicate wild-rose color, and very
bright and large eyes, and as much as possible keeping close to her
mother’s side, but evidently fond of dancing, and enjoying everything
with perfect freshness.” We are pleased to notice here that this type
of the English girl is not so defunct as some pessimists would have us
believe, and that, despite paint and fastness, and the clumsy imitation
of Parisian vice, there is yet in store for the future a generation
of homeloving wives and mothers. Of another of the near relations of
the host, our friend says: “It suffices to mention Lady L——’s name
to express all that is bright, and kind, and good; her presence was
a charm, but she was obliged to go away after two days, and it was a
blank not to see her.”

This woman, whose social charm is so irresistible, is none the less a
generous and devoted attendant on a husband whose mind had given way,
and whose health was more than precarious; it was his comfort, indeed,
which was the cause of her short stay in the house of rejoicing.

The great charm of this thoroughly pleasant gathering was that there
were no “grand people,” no “fashionable people,” no “fast people”; that
all were natural and real, and everybody seemed pleased and happy. But
our “prosaic” friend actually was not satisfied, and complained gently
of the disappointment, among so many young people, of not being able to
idealize any incipient romance; for, she queried, “would it not have
thrown a charm of poetry over the whole thing?”

No, truly, although the thought is touching and pretty; for, after all,
the fairest ideal of love could not live in a crowd, and the love we
read of in Elizabethan records was more courtly than deep, more gallant
than true. Love is an angel, not a Cupid.

One evening, there was a ball for the county families, many of whose
houses were filled with their own circle of friends, all of whom were
included in the invitations. The rooms looked gay and brilliant;
toilets were resplendent, and the family pictures, with which the walls
were literally covered, gazed down on an assemblage almost as bright as
their own. In the hall was a white stuffed stag, with hoofs and antlers
gilt, representing in life-size the family crest. The next morning,
breakfast _began_ at the usual hour (ten), but few appeared; but, by
two o’clock, they gradually stole down, when tea and coffee had given
place to luncheon. Wednesday evening, there was the servants’ ball.
Every one went into the large tent, which made a splendid ball-room.
The dancing was rather amusing to watch, for it was not the _forte_
of the assemblage; but they all looked very happy, and the dignity of
their manners to each other was quite edifying! Still, we thought it a
great shame to criticise. Thursday, there was the feast for other and
nearer villages, Exton, Barrow, and Cottesmore, with games before the
people sat down. And it was a goodly sight when all the tables were
peopled; all the men at dinner, and all the women and children at tea.
Lord G——’s health was drunk first. It was the first occasion on which
he had to speak, and it utterly overcame him; for he alluded to the
former time when they had all been thus assembled to welcome him to
E—— on his accession to the title. But the warmth and heartiness with
which his few words were received must surely have pleased him. Then
they drank his son’s health, to which toast the young man responded
modestly and well. Later on in the evening, there were beautiful
fireworks, which lit up the whole place most gorgeously.

Fireworks are not a specialty with Englishmen, but on this occasion
they really went off to the credit of all concerned. The host has had
long experience in such things in Italy, where the merest village can
shame London itself on this head. The clusters of Chinese lanterns
among the trees bordering the drives, the Bengal lights shooting up in
fitful illuminations across the broken front of the church tower and
the old Hall, the steadier lamps along the lines of the house itself,
and the reflection of all in the many little lakes within the grounds,
made the display peculiarly attractive. Every one enjoyed it to the
uttermost.

Friday, the 20th of October, the heir’s birthday, was _the_ day, _par
excellence_. And here we are reminded that we are among those who
have returned to the faith of old England, and have brought back to
the original giver of the great free institutions of the country—the
Catholic Church—all the gifts of intellect, education, culture,
and learning drawn from her alienated universities and the polished
influence of her errant sons. A solemn High Mass, with appropriate
ecclesiastical music, was the first interest that gathered the guests
together. Many not of our faith were there, joining reverently,
and as far as they could, in the beautiful service; the domestic
chapel, almost in size a church, looked very fair in the pale morning
light that streamed through its pointed windows; the shadows of the
beech-leaves, turning to brown and gold, were thrown fitfully across
the Lady Chapel, against whose outside walls the great tree almost
leans; bars of dusky golden light lay on the stone floor of the
memorial chapel, where the foundress sleeps; and, as the white-robed
choristers and acolytes moved softly to and fro in the deep choir,
the beautiful contrast seemed to force itself upon one’s imagination
between them and the worshippers in the nave, clad in dark, quiet
draperies, and massed together in shadowy corners—typifying so
delicately the restful life of the future, and the toiling watch
still to be kept in the present. From this, the most congenial and
appropriate scene we had yet witnessed, we turned regretfully to
the new pleasures of the day. The first event was very momentous,
and was marked by great state, being no less than the presentation
of a silver inkstand to the young hero of the _fête_, Lord C——,
from the servants. All the household was drawn up at one end of the
entrance-tent. Poor good Mrs. H——, the housekeeper, whom nearly
twenty years’ service had made a mother to the host’s children, was
quite unable to restrain her tears, while behind the large round table,
with the inkstand on it, stood J——, the butler, _pale_ with the
responsibility of his coming speech. Lord C—— stood opposite, with
the family and guests behind him. This was the most touching scene of
all, but none the less the most formidable ceremony. The presentation
was very creditably made, and as gracefully acknowledged, to the equal
satisfaction of all parties; and, among the birthday gifts, none was
so valued by the recipient. He had grown up among these old friends;
the few who had not known him as a boy had heard the tales of his
childhood, and experienced the kindness of his manner. All felt as if
he belonged to them, and as though his interests were theirs. This
feeling, too, is one of the relics of the past fast disappearing from
the heartless fabric of modern society; and it is pleasant to see
traces of it yet left here and there in the ancient baronial households
of England.

The concluding festivity was on a gigantic scale, and proved the
most characteristic of any. This was the grand ball and supper to
the tenants, which furnished the local newspapers with materials for
rapturous descriptions and complimentary “leaders” for at least a
week afterwards. The entrance tent was lined with the officers of
the yeomanry in full uniform (scarlet), to the number of eighteen or
twenty; the band of their regiment was also in attendance, and the
land-steward, to whose management much had been entrusted, introduced
each party of the tenants as they arrived. Nearly five hundred of these
characteristic guests were soon assembled, Lord G——, his daughters,
and two sons dancing in turn with all the most prominent of them. The
ball opened with a country-dance; not the formal quadrille, but the
hearty, old-fashioned performance, in which the elderly and heavy
are as comfortably at home as the young and the supple. The ball,
however, brilliant as it was, was but secondary to the supper, which
was the crowning-point of the week’s doings—the occasion, long looked
forward to, of pleasant and witty speeches, of hearty good-will, and
of manifestations of real and substantial friendship. To borrow the
words of a weekly of the neighborhood, the Lincolnshire _Chronicle_:
“At one o’clock, supper was served in the marquee, which, tastefully
decorated, brilliantly lighted, and filled with the gaily attired
company, presented a scene which will not soon be forgotten by those
who had the pleasure of witnessing it. The yeomanry band played ‘The
Roast Beef of Old England’ as the party glided into the tent, and, when
all had taken their places, grace was said. With the exception of a
buck roasted whole and sent to table with gilt antlers, the whole of
the viands were cold, the _pièce de résistance_ being a splendid baron
of beef. The birthday cake occupied a prominent position at a centre
table, and among other novelties was a fine peacock in full plumage.
Just before the toast of the evening was given, the beautiful present
of plate purchased by the tenantry was carried in and placed in front
of the young Lord C——, on the principal table.” “When all were
seated,” says another local paper, “the _coup d’œil_, from the entrance
of the tent, was very striking; the gay uniforms of the yeomanry, and
the dresses of the ladies, combined with the colored lining of the
tent, the numerous flags and banners, and the innumerable chandeliers
filled with wax candles, presenting a very brilliant effect. The Earl
of G—— and his distinguished visitors were seated at a long raised
table facing the guests of the evening, and immediately in front of
him were two other raised tables, upon one of which was a baron of
beef weighing between 30 and 40 stone, and a whole roasted buck. There
were also 21 joints of roast beef, 15 of pressed beef, 17 galantines
of veal, 24 game pies, 14 large hams, 28 tongues, 15 turkeys, 8 boars’
heads, 15 rounds of beef, 10 legs and 14 shoulders of mutton, 72 roast
fowls, 54 pheasants, 62 partridges, 20 plum-puddings, etc. etc., making
a total of 1,000 dishes.”

The speeches being the great characteristic incident of the feast,
we will quote some parts of them, showing in their simple energy
how close the ties of friendship still are between the owner and
the tiller of the soil. Some of the speakers were farmers, most of
them prosperous and pushing men. We take our quotations from the
Lincolnshire _Chronicle_: “Mr. Berridge proposed the health of the
Earl of G—— as a nobleman, a neighbor, and a friend.... The noble
earl had inherited from his ancestors that military blood which always
ran through the veins of the N——ls [the family name of Lord G——].
If they looked round these halls, they would see the portrait of many
an old warrior.... He understood Lord C—— now belonged to the army,
and he would express a wish that that young nobleman might one day be
commander-in-chief of England (cheers). Speaking of the family, he was
reminded of an anecdote. A friend of his was taking a drive through
the lanes in the neighborhood of this house, when he came in view of
the mansion, and said to an old laborer he met on the road: ‘Who lives
here, my man?’ ‘Lord G——,’ was the reply. ‘Is it an old family?’ was
the next inquiry. ‘They came here, sir, before the Flood,’ was the
response (laughter and cheers).”

This _naïveté_ of the old man reminds one of the proud boast of some
old French family, that they had an ark of their own at the time of the
Flood, and were quite independent of Noe and his ship of refuge!

Lord G——, in his earnest reply, gracefully alluded in the following
words to the long tenure of land by the farmers’ ancestors: “There can
be nothing more gratifying than the existence of cordial good feeling
between the occupiers of land and their landlords; and there can be
no better evidence of this happy state of things than to find, upon
reference to records of the past, numbers of families living upon the
same estate for generations—for a longer time, perhaps, than the
owners of the estate themselves (hear, hear). I believe there are many
people here whose ancestors have been for centuries upon this property;
and one can only hope that the same families, from father to son, may
continue here for centuries hereafter, and that what has happened
in years past will be repeated in years to come, so that, by your
descendants and the descendants of my son a long time hence, the same
mutual good feeling may be evinced and similar occurrences be witnessed
as these we celebrate this evening.”

Lord D——, an early friend of the host, proposed the health of the
young recipient of the day’s honors. His speech, quite the best of all,
is worthy of notice. After a very apt and graceful beginning, he said:
“I am speaking to tenant-farmers and breeders of stock, and you know
that, when you look upon a young animal, you always inquire after his
sire—what he came from (laughter and cheers); and you judge, from what
has been, what will be (renewed cheering). But you know what the N——s
are—what their stock is (great cheering). They have lived in this
country among you and before your eyes for generations. You know they
are a family who love to live among their own. They prefer spending
their money among their own people, and sharing their interests, to
going abroad, as so many others do, and spending their money away.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon, in speaking of a man, to say how
few vices he has, and not how many virtues; and many a time I have
heard it said, when there were no virtues to speak of, ‘Well, he is a
good-natured fellow.’” He then warmly eulogized his young friend, whom
he had known “ever since he could crawl,” and ended by wishing that he
might be a worthy “chip off the old block.” Then, with well-deserved
praise, he spoke thus of the father:

“For I will say this of the father, whom I have known most intimately
for the last twenty years: that he is one of whom it may be truly said,
in the full meaning of the word, he is a ‘just man’ (hear, hear), and I
hope his son will walk in his footsteps. May all health and happiness
accompany him through life, and, when his time is up, and he is called
away from this world, may he leave a memory behind him as of one who
lived blessing and blessed, and may he be handed down to posterity as
one who did his duty to God and man!”

Mr. Wortley—another principal tenant, and the orator of his
neighborhood, a man whose kind heart is father to his innocent pride of
speech—then stood forward on behalf of the committee who had managed
the subscriptions for the birthday gift, and spoke as follows:

“My Lord C——: I have now the great pleasure and the distinguished
honor to ask your acceptance of this plate, which is contributed by
tenants and friends of the Earl of G—— on the occasion of your coming
of age, as a substantial evidence from us of the cordial manner in
which we share the general joy of this day, and of the great respect we
entertain towards your noble father and the family of the N——s.... It
is given to you, my lord, just stepping, as it were, on the threshold
of active and responsible life, with the earnest wish that you may
be largely blest with those talents for which so many of your family
have been celebrated, and may, like them, enjoy the high blessing of
a disposition to use them, as they have used theirs, for the greater
benefit and advantage of their fellow-creatures.” Then making his
favorite quotation, one largely used on these occasions as strikingly
appropriate, he repeated sonorously the well-known lines:

  “Kind words are more than coronets,
  And simple faith than Norman blood.”

“And still,” he went on, “we, the living, have what past generations
could point to—the bright coronet of old N——l blood to boast of, and
their natural crest of real and crowning charity to be thankful for
(cheers).”

The presentation plate was a beautiful silver épergne, also convertible
into candelabra, thirty-nine inches high, and a pair of flower-stands
with finely modelled figures of a stag and a doe standing beneath an
oak. According to the universal custom in country neighborhoods,
these costly articles were not procured from London, but from some
local silversmith of good standing; for in England everything like
centralization is instinctively avoided. How much the prosperity of
every part of the kingdom is thereby increased may be seen at a glance.
Mr. Wortley concluded with these words: “It is not presented with the
power of words, but it comes with the far stronger power of hearts
within and without this gorgeous assemblage—warm, devoted, and glowing
hearts—hearts joining with yours, my Lord C——, in wishing that you
may long remain the heir to the title and estate; while we join most
sincerely with each other in the fervent hope and humble prayer that
through life, in whatever clime or condition, God’s blessing may be
your unfailing portion (cheers).”

Lord C—— made a modest and graceful acknowledgment in a few
well-chosen words, telling his guests “what a value he should always
set on the testimonial as a remembrance of the happy hours he and they
had been permitted to enjoy together” and begging them “to take what
he had said for what it was worth.” “I do not say this by way of any
excuse for what I am certain must be my shortcomings, but I say it lest
you should think I am expressing myself in any way too feebly, or with
too little warmth of feeling.”

Mr. Thompson (another tenant) proposed the brother and sisters of Lord
C——, and the younger branches of the family. He said facetiously
enough: “Experience has probably taught all of us that it is rather a
misfortune that there should be an only child in a family, and that
there is very apt to be in this case a spoiled urchin on one side, and
not at all unlikely two silly parents on the other.” Of course, this
produced laughter, and the speaker went on in the same strain, till he
remarked finally that he sincerely hoped “not only that there would
always be an heir to the N——l family, but younger branches also.”

Lord C——’s younger brother answered quite as well as he had been
addressed: “I was not prepared to speak to you on the present occasion.
I was flattering myself I should get through the whole of these
proceedings without having to pass through this ordeal.... As younger
branches, we grow out further and further from the parent stem, until
we are at length lost among the other trees of the forest, while the
other and older branch continues to tower upwards.”

A speaker, whom we cannot resist designating by a synonyme which is
no longer a disguise, “Lothair,” and who shared these festivities,
proposed “the ladies” in a humorous speech, beyond which we must
make no further quotations. “Somebody,” he remarked, “in speaking of
these festivities, has said that this entertainment had some peculiar
features distinguishing it from other entertainments of its kind;
as, for instance, it is now half-past three in the morning, instead
of about five or six in the afternoon (laughter). It has also this
peculiar feature, ... that it is not confined to a lugubrious class
of men in black, talking nonsense about the army, navy, militia, and
volunteers (renewed laughter). Here we have a few toasts brought in as
an interlude in the middle of an entertainment of which it may be said,
‘It is not good for man to be alone,’ whatever Mr. Spurgeon may have
observed to the contrary.”

The speaker has since been the subject of an ovation fully as
demonstrative as that in which he took a secondary part last October,
and we may hope that, in years to come, Cardiff may rival Rutland in
the mediæval character of its princely entertainments.

The birthday cake was home-made, and a _chef-d’œuvre_ of the family
housekeeper. Its weight was 120 lbs., and its structure four tiers
of confectionery, displaying medallions of the arms and crest of the
family; the silk banner (besides many smaller flags) surmounting it
bearing the name and date of birth of Lord C——. Never, indeed, could
there have been more gratifying feelings manifested, and never could a
series of the kindest hospitalities have passed off with more perfect
satisfaction. Throughout the whole week there was nothing but good
feeling, every one vying with each other to do the utmost to make all
succeed. Not a _contretemps_ occurred—all as Lord G—— could have
wished, and so well deserves it should be. There were most regretful
faces the next day, when, after breakfast, the time of parting came;
all, we believe, heartily wishing it could begin again.

This sketch, which to us has all the personal attraction of a family
record, may perhaps not be uninteresting to some descendants of those
old English families, who are as worthily represented on this side of
the Atlantic as they are in the mother country.

The poetry of the olden times has not yet quite departed from the
feudal soil of England; and, in these meetings of true friendship
between two of the most powerful classes of the country, we may read a
promise of a common cause being made by their united influence against
the sickening aggression of insensate communism, and the spread of
licentious ideas. In this all good men and true, whether of Old or New
England, are heartily agreed. But what strikes us even more is the
beautiful picture here displayed of the revived spirit of the olden
faith, quickening the pulses, guiding the lives, and hallowing the
pleasures of a new generation of Englishmen. Here are the senators,
the lawgivers, the soldiers of the future, assembled under the
auspices of the old church, putting into generous practice her ideas
of ample hospitality and unquestioning charity; here are England’s
best men bowing like happy children to the customs and the influence
of the faith brought to them by Augustine and Wilfrid; here is the
church represented by the best blood and the most chivalrous class of
England’s sons, who take their place and raise their voice to-day in
society, in the courts, and in the senate, with a fearlessness and a
freedom which a hundred years ago would have cost them their heads!
The Catholic Church stands now in a proud and high position, a social
conqueror on the same soil which she conquered once already by the
splendor of her learning, and the resources of her material energy.
The lands her monks reclaimed from barrenness, the universities her
friars adorned with their matchless genius, after having been torn
from her by violence, are virtually holding out their arms to her
again, and the Gothic chapels that crown the abbey demesnes of new
and wealthy converts are but the practical translation of that better
wealth poured back into her bosom by the converts of the schools and
universities. In England, more than in any other land, the Christian
may exclaim in triumph: _Christus regnat, Christus imperat_, and, for
the encouragement of the future, may confidently point to the records
of the past, and say with Constantine: _In hoc signo vinces._




MORE ABOUT DARWINISM.[170]


_The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals_ is the title of
the latest work written by Charles Darwin. This author has already
gained a pretty widespread name by his two volumes on the _Descent of
Man_, and on _The Origin of Species_. In all these, he advocates the
theory of only one parent and progenitor, common both to man and to the
animal.

Man is the offspring of the brute. The only distinction between them
is that of a more perfect development. Man is a monkey perfectly
developed. This developing process is no other than habit transmitted,
imitation, and practice.

This theory is supposed in the volume before us—_The Expressions_,
etc. It is, indeed, taken for granted, and Mr. Darwin merely seeks
confirmatory proofs in this work. How he does so we shall see.

The reasoning of the entire volume may be summed up in the following
syllogism: The expressions of the emotions in man and animals are, for
the most part, similar, nay, alike. Now, this could not be so, did man
not descend from the animal; therefore, man is the offspring of the
brute.

Of course, he will have to admit some accidental differences in the
expressions of each. But these he easily gets over by saying that in
man those external expressions of the emotions are already perfected,
matured, and developed, while in animals they are as yet budding,
developing, and perfecting.

The principle of evolution would seem to account for all differences.
The animal, by evolving its faculties in a long series of years, rises
gradually to a higher species, and finally, having walked on all
fours, comes to the conclusion it would be better and more sensible to
use only two feet. Having looked downward for a long time, it begins
to think it would be more honorable and decent to assume an upright
posture. And then, grunting and howling are by no means as becoming as
speaking French, or Italian, or Chinese; hence, Mr. Orang comes to the
conclusion that he has been silent long enough, and that it is time
that he, too, should have his say about matters.

We do not say that this is all expressed in so many words in the volume
before us. Oh! no; Mr. Darwin is too adroit to do that. Like the devil,
he sometimes assumes the garment of light, and puts on an appearance of
virtue. His words are characterized by a tone of modesty and humility
and even diffidence which is not common to that class of writers. He
does not directly affirm anything; but he asks questions that contain
a negative answer. He insinuates. He does not tell us man is a monkey,
but he affirms that man expresses his feelings in the same manner as
do these animals. Hence how explain this similarity, if they be not
brothers?

We call attention to this fact. It alone can render his work dangerous
to youthful or unguarded minds. We think there is little to fear that
its frivolous arguments will excite anything but laughter and ridicule
among men of solid erudition.

Unfortunately, the ideas embodied in this book are the creed of many
enlightened persons, even, of this “progressive” age. This alone
accounts for the favor and widespread circulation Darwin’s writings
have acquired. Protestantism has done its work only too well. Casting
off all authority in matters of faith, it has paved the way to all
errors, and its theory has merely been developed by our modern
materialists.

We are not disposed to deny the great labor and varied research
employed in the work before us; but, we must say, seldom has it been
our lot to witness such shallowness of argument, such loose connection
between premises and conclusions. It will astonish the intelligent
reader that so earnest a student as Mr. Darwin evidently is, could make
use of logic in a manner discreditable to any tyro.

But we must not wonder at this. The drunkard sees things turning
topsy-turvy, when in reality they stand still. One who wears green
spectacles will behold objects in a green or pale color. We are apt
to judge things according to preconceived ideas or a certain state
of mind. So Mr. Darwin: his great hobby is to make man a monkey, and
_vice versa_. Hence, he takes slight resemblances between the two
as certain proof of his theory. Thus, he says: “With mankind, some
expressions, such as the bristling of the hair under the influence of
extreme terror, can hardly be understood except on the belief that man
once existed in a much lower and animal-like condition. The community
of certain expressions in distinct though allied species, as in the
movements of the same facial muscles during laughter by man and by
various monkeys, is rendered somewhat more intelligible if we believe
in their common progenitor. He who admits on general principles that
the structure and habits of all animals have been gradually evolved,
will look at the whole subject of expressions in a new and interesting
light.”[171]

This language is clear and unmistakable, though its meaning be artfully
disguised. The logic of his conclusions, however, is not equally
satisfactory. Why trace man’s origin to the monkey, because, forsooth,
his hair bristles when angry? Or is it really so necessary to make
man a brute because the same facial muscles move during laughter?
We had always thought that these accidental resemblances were more
than sufficiently explained by the simple fact that man, besides his
immortal soul, is possessed of a body also, which, being material,
is subject in many respects to the laws of other animals. We say, in
fact, man is a rational animal. He is composed of matter and spirit.
As regards his body, he is subject to the same laws as those which
regulate animals.

Mr. Darwin has in his conclusions what is not contained in his
premises, and hence he falls into a grave error in regard to the
first principles of logic and sound reasoning. It is quite logical
and perfectly true to say man has some exterior or bodily motions and
expressions similar to those of other animals, and therefore that his
bodily organs have some relation and similarity with those of the
lower animals; nay, we may even infer the same essence to be common
to the bodily organs of both. Thus much strict logic will allow. Thus
much sound philosophy has always admitted. But then, we may ask, How
far does this resemblance extend? Does it merely exist in the bodily
organs, or does it perhaps show itself in all external actions,
even those of the intellect and the will? Does it extend to all the
essential elements in both, or is it merely accidental, relating simply
to minor actions? The answer cannot be doubtful even to the most
superficial observer. We ask, therefore, Is this resemblance of an
essential, or rather an accidental, character? We can only admit that
the latter is the case. There is, it is true, a manifold similarity;
but after all, even where this is most striking, is there not a vast
discrepancy? With the lower animal, all is routine—machine-like,
habitual, ever the same under similar circumstances, nor can it combine
means with the end. In man, these same external actions are regulated
by the will, and can be omitted or done at pleasure.

Now, will Mr. Darwin say this is merely a trifle—that this, too,
can be acquired by the brute after a long experience and a lapse
of years? Reason and sound philosophy teach that the sensations of
brutes are essentially distinct from, and in nowise contain, reason or
intelligence. How, then, could reason be the product of evolution? How,
then, can that be evolved which does not at all exist?

We repeat it: Darwin’s conclusion is similar to this: “A dog is a cat,
because, forsooth, both sleep.” He finds in man and brutes some partial
similarities in mere external actions, and straightway he concludes
that they are both of the same essence and parentage. As well might he
say burning lamps are emanations from the sun, because they, too, give
light.

Instinct is almost entirely left out of account, and all expressions
and external actions are attributed solely to habit and exercise
repeated.[172] We by no means doubt that habit and exercise have a
great deal to do with external actions. But can they all be accounted
for in such a manner? When we ask, How do children, from the very first
day of their birth, make use of their hands and feet, and employ their
mouths in the proper way for imbibing nourishment? Mr. Darwin may
answer: “This habit, too, was transmitted from parent to offspring, and
indicates a long series of generations” (p. 39).

But we cannot very well see how this answer will satisfy even the
most credulous reader. Habits may be to a certain extent transmitted
by parents to their children; but generally it is, in an imperfect
state, the “tendency” or inclination, rather than the act, that is
transmitted. An intemperate parent may transmit to his offspring a
“tendency” to that vice; but we have not yet heard of a born drunkard.

Moreover, is this principle applicable in a general manner even in
regard to merely accidental habits? Experience tells us quite the
contrary.

Weak-minded parents often give birth to most gifted children. On the
contrary, many most cultivated and intelligent parents have children
who are dull and slow of understanding.

But even granting that habits may be transmitted from parent to
offspring, we ask, What is the nature of such habits? Are they
essential elements of nature, or merely minor and trifling motions?
Mr. Darwin’s own example on the point will confirm our assertion that
they are of the latter sort: “A gentleman of considerable position was
found by his wife to have the curious trick, when he lay fast asleep
on his back in bed, of raising his right arm slowly in front of his
face up to his forehead, and then dropping it with a jerk, so that the
wrist fell heavily on the bridge of his nose. The trick did not occur
every night, but occasionally, and was independent of any ascertained
cause. Sometimes it was repeated incessantly for an hour or more. The
gentleman’s nose was prominent, and its bridge often became sore from
the blows which it received” (p. 34). His son, too, inherited this
trick. The only difference, however, consisted in the son’s nose not
being quite so prominent, and therefore less exposed to the tricky and
mysterious blows.

Now, what does a fact of this sort prove? Simply that slight, bodily
actions, such as the one alleged, can be transmitted.

“Language,” he tells us, “has been invented by man in a slow and
tedious process, completed by innumerable steps half consciously made”
(p. 60). It is somewhat amusing to listen to his description of this
process of inventing language. “The sexes,” he says, “of many animals
call for each other during the breeding season, etc. This, indeed,
seems to have been the primordial use and means of development of
voice” (p. 84).

As an example, he alleges the cow calling for her calf, the ewes
bleating for their lambs (p. 85). This theory is at least amusing, if
not clear and convincing. It only adds another specimen of Mr. Darwin’s
loose logic. His argument can be thus presented: There is a resemblance
between the sound of a cow calling for her calf and the voice of man;
therefore, the latter is derived from the former, being merely its
development—they are both identical in germ. The one is perfected
by the principle of evolution, which has the wonderful capacity of
transforming all sorts of things.

This is truly making light of that noble gift bestowed upon man by
his Creator—language. But, ingenious as Mr. Darwin strives to be in
assigning the origin of language, he overlooks two little points.
Language he confounds, first, with mere inarticulate sounds. Secondly,
he forgets that there may be a distinction between the sound or voice
as a sign of an idea or of a mere sensation. To confound the two would
be like comparing the tones of a piano, as produced by the hands of an
artist, to the same sounds brought forth by some monkey trying his paws
on the instrument.

We do not know whether Mr. Darwin has much of a musical ear. If he has,
even in a very slight degree, we think he would soon find a very great
and specific distinction between the production of the musician and the
jargon of the monkey. He would tell us, in the one case, the sounds are
expressive of the musical combination and ideas of the artist, while,
in the other, they are mere unmeaning sounds. So it is with language.
Words express ideas. We can use them as we choose, nay, even wilfully
change or disguise their true meaning. What similarity exists, then,
between language and the sounds of animals? If any, it is in the sound.
Does this justify the conclusion that they are both identical in germ;
that the one is a development of the other? As well might we say the
whistling of the wind among the leaves of trees, and the howling of the
storm, are identical with the voice of man. All these sounds of nature
are no less sounds than those of man and the brute; but will any man of
sound mind identify them?

Still, Mr. Darwin goes on with an air of perfect self-complacency:
“From this fact, and from the analogy of other animals, I have been
led to infer that the progenitors of man probably uttered musical tones
before they had acquired the power of articulate speech” (p. 87).

Of course, our progenitors here are none other than monkeys. It is
quite apparent that Darwin’s notion of language is extremely inadequate
and confused. He must allow us to refresh his memory a little on the
subject. A word is an external sign whereby an internal thought or
idea is made known to others, just as smoke is a sign of fire. Still,
words are not expressive of ideas by any natural aptitude. In fact
words are naturally so little adapted to express any particular concept
of the mind that they may be distorted from their meaning. They are
conventional signs: and except so far as they were given to our first
parents by God, they have been adopted and used by positive authority,
custom, or agreement to serve as a medium of thought.

Herein lies one of the specific differences of human speech from the
sound of animals. These give forth sounds _naturally_ adapted to
express some feeling. Moreover, their utterances are not chosen by
themselves, but dictated by nature. They cannot change them; while
man selects, varies, and changes his words at will. Hence, language
is defined: “The articulate voice of man, having signification by the
agreement of men.” Words are parts of a sentence, which is defined: “An
assemblage of words intended to mean something.”

We here waive the question whether language was invented by man at all.
Our doctrine is that it was not invented, but was communicated directly
by God to our first parents, Adam and Eve. But this is of no importance
at present; for, whether invented by man, or directly communicated by
God, Mr. Darwin’s theory is equally untenable.

We sum up the differences of sound or language in man and in animals as
follows:

1. In man, language is the expression of thought and judgment, while
the sounds of animals are merely spontaneous and natural utterances.

2. Language in man is the product of reasoning; it presupposes a
perception of the relation of the subject and the predicate. For
instance, when I say, Man is immortal, I must perceive the relation
of the attribute immortality to man. Now, the sound of the animal is
merely expressive of some solitary feeling.

3. Man directs his words, while the brute’s sound is ever the same.

Another instance of Darwin’s logic is found in tracing the origin
of the expression of sulkiness in man, especially in children. This
feeling, he says, is expressed by a protrusion of the lips, or, as
it is called, “making a snout.” Now, he continues, “young orangs and
chimpanzees protrude their lips to an extraordinary degree, when they
are discontented, somewhat angry, or sulky” (p. 234).

But, lo! what is his conclusion? Therefore, he infers, this habit of
man was a primordial habit in his “semi-human progenitors,” who are, of
course, no less than the aforesaid honorable monkeys. Let us hear his
words: “If, then, our semi-human progenitors [_i.e._ Messrs. Orang and
Chimpanzee] protruded their lips when sulky or a little angered in the
same manner as do the existing anthropoid apes, it is not an anomalous
though a curious fact that our children should exhibit, when similarly
affected, a trace of the same expression” (p. 234). Mr. Darwin is
cunning. He wishes tacitly to infer that man comes from the animal,
because both can make “snouts.” Of course, even he must concede that
the monkey can make a better or at least a longer “snout” than man.
And hence the principles of evolution in this case at least would
imply retrogression, not progress. His mode of reasoning is strange
indeed. When he finds an expression in man, he searches whether there
is anything like it among the monkeys or other animals; and, when he
has discovered even a slight trace, he triumphantly exclaims, Behold
the progenitors of man! He does not yet call them genitors; they are
not the immediate parents, but simply grandfathers and grandmothers.
Nor are these progenitors quite human; they are as yet semi-human,
being about half-way between the monkey phase and that of man. Speaking
of man, he says: “The lips are sometimes protruded during rage in a
manner the meaning of which I do not understand, unless it depends on
our descent from some ape-like animal” (p. 243). Mr. Darwin manifests a
strange partiality for the ape-like animals.

But it is no wonder he cannot understand the plainest facts, which
every Catholic child can tell him. He sets aside all revealed truths.
He knows nothing about the simple but sublime narrative in the first
chapter of Genesis. He ignores the creative act bringing forth, not
one kind, but “the living creature in its kind, cattle, and creeping
things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.”[173] To him,
this is of no meaning. True, the Scripture records the solemn creation
of man as entirely distinct from that of animals. “Let us make man,”
God said, “to our image, and likeness; and let him have dominion over
the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air,” etc. “And God created
man to his own image: to the image of God he created him, male and
female he created them.”[174] True, Darwin will say, according to the
Scripture, “God breathed into his [man’s] face the breath of life, and
man became a living soul.”[175]

But what care I for the Scriptures, when my own private and infallible
reason leads me to think that God did not directly breathe into man an
intelligent soul—made after God’s own image and likeness—but rather
that man received it from the animal? Such is, indeed, the result of
the revolt of reason against God. Like Satan, who was cast from heaven
in a moment, when desirous of elevating his throne to a level with that
of God, so man falls and degrades himself when he becomes too proud to
listen to God’s Word, making reason the supreme and sole criterion of
truth and certitude.

Mr. Darwin seems to admit a Creator of the universe, but holds that
only one, or at most four, species were created. Now, we must not
forget, as he certainly does, that the Creator was an infinitely
intelligent being, and therefore had some object in view in creation.
Every intelligent being must act for some end. We call him a fool
who knows not what he is doing, and therefore is foolish. Hence, in
creation, God destined each creature for some end, to accomplish a
certain task. The Creator must, however, give to each creature the
necessary means to attain its end. It would be unintelligible that God
should destine me to walk, without giving me feet; or create me to earn
my livelihood by the labor of my hands, without giving me hands to work
with.

Now, this principle, so universally exhibited in nature, will easily
and satisfactorily explain all expressions in animals as well as in
man, without obliging us to have recourse to the monkey theory so
fondly adhered to by Darwin.

We come now to another proof adduced by Darwin to establish his beloved
ape-descending theory. It is taken from the state of an insane person
(p. 245). We will allow him to speak for himself: “Its symptoms are the
reappearance of primitive instincts, a faint echo from a far distant
past, testifying to a kinship which man has almost outgrown” (p. 245).
These are the words of Dr. Maudsley, cited and approved by him. The
state of insanity in man is compared to the normal state of the animal.
Again, he asks, “Why should a human being, deprived of his reason, ever
become so brutal in character as some do, unless he has the brutal
nature within him?” (p. 246).

A more silly or childish mode of reasoning could scarcely be thought
of. As well might he say the sun returns to its primitive state when in
an eclipse, or an engine is working properly when the boilers explode
and spread death and consternation all around.

We say of the idiot, He has lost his mind. Not that it really is
entirely extinct: it is merely out of working order. Its clearness
is darkened by some disorder. The idiot is in a state repugnant to
his natural condition. How, then, infer from such a condition a
former kinship? A machine or clock out of order will, when left to
itself, work indeed; not, however, returning to its normal state, but
destroying itself. So it is with the idiot. It was, therefore, perhaps
rather superfluous for Mr. Darwin to spend so much time and labor, and
give his readers so much trouble, for the sake of finding out in how
many ways idiots resemble his dear monkeys, chimpanzees, and orangs.

We wonder why the case of Nabuchodonosor did not occur to him. It
would have so well illustrated his theory. For he, without becoming
permanently an idiot, was seized with an irresistible propensity to
return, as Mr. Darwin would say, to his own brethren, and renew his old
friendships and acquaintances. And so well was that gentleman pleased
with his company that he remained in it not less than seven years,
until it pleased God to restore him to his more intelligent and polite
brothers.

We would suggest to Mr. Darwin a similar experiment. He ought to be
sociable, and from time to time imitate Nabuchodonosor: let his hair
and beard grow until they become long feathers; his ears, too, could be
extended somewhat, and the nails of his hands and feet might very well
become claws; he ought also to eat grass for a while. Thus he would be
fulfilling a duty to his rustic brethren, and he could at the same time
enlighten them a little on bipedal civilization, especially as they
will one day get to be men themselves, and therefore should try to do
honor to their future relatives.

Darwin may tenderly call monkeys “our nearest allies” (p. 253), or
say: “The playful sneer or ferocious snarl in man reveals his animal
descent” (p. 253); or again: “We may readily believe, from our affinity
to the anthropomorphous apes, that our male semi-human progenitors
possessed great canine teeth” (p. 253)—he may say all this, and still,
we fear, he would not like to have himself introduced at the court of
London as the brother of the long-tailed and widely known orang-outang.
And why? Because his whole moral nature would revolt at such an
indignity, and thus furnish the strongest proof, perhaps, that all his
talk about ape-affinity and descent is nonsense. Human nature rebels at
such a degradation. It protests instinctively against such an alliance.
It is unconscious of such a relationship.

Now, how is it, otherwise, that our nature is so tender with regard
to all kindred? How is it that brothers and sisters and relatives
love each other so much and without effort; that in all men there is
a feeling of affinity toward their fellows? How, we ask, does our
nature, otherwise so tenderly inclined to all relatives, even the most
distant, forget in this one instance alone a relationship at once the
most sacred and tender—that of a child to its parent? For we, says Mr.
Darwin, are the grandchildren at least of the animal.

All the materialistic cavils and speculations of so-called philosophers
will suffer shipwreck on this rock—the moral feeling of the dignity
and specific difference of man. But we will explain the symptoms of
lunacy to Darwin in a direct manner.

We grant that man has the brutish “nature within him.” We do not
concede, however, that he has only the brutish nature and no other. Man
has a soul as well as a body. As regards the nature of the body, we
cheerfully grant all that Mr. Darwin could desire. It is of the same
substance as that of his dear orang. It has, moreover, the same violent
passions and downward tendencies; nay, it can—as experience teaches
in fact it has—outdo the brute in violent bursts of passion. It is,
moreover, regulated by the same laws of climate, food, life, etc.

But this is all we concede. It has not the same origin, being directly
created by God in its natural state. Much less do we admit that man is
endowed with no higher nature, entirely and specifically distinct from
his body. He has a soul that thinks—a soul that is entirely spiritual
and intelligent, not merely sensible.

We therefore answer that the state of idiots shows, indeed, that
man has the brutish nature within him, but by no means that he has
no other nature. Only a little logic would have shown Darwin that
his conclusions embody far more than his premises will allow. It
seems plain enough that this simple truth is the key to the fullest
explanations of human nature itself, and its similarities with the
nature of mere animals. Man was defined by the ancients as “a rational
animal.” S. Thomas and the scholastics took up and perpetuated this
definition. Man is an animal, because he has a body like all animals,
and a soul which is created to be the form of that body. Man is,
moreover, a rational being, because, unlike all the other animals,
he has a soul which has a separate existence of its own, is created
immediately by God, and is essentially spiritual.

This distinction, if only borne in mind by our monkey theorists,
would have aided them not a little, we opine, in their brain-cracking
researches; nor would they have found so many mysteries where
everything is plain and intelligible.

We now proceed to another principle advanced in the book before us.
Darwin says: “That the chief expressive actions exhibited by man and
by the lower animals are innate or inherited—that is, have not been
learnt by the individual—is now admitted by every one” (p. 351).

He must allow us to say that such a proposition is, in our estimation,
not admitted by every one. With the exception of the author and a few
monkeyists, we know of no one who ever advocated any such principle.
It is indeed conceded that a “tendency” to most of our expressive
actions may be innate or inherited; but, as to the actions and
expressions themselves, it is commonly taught by all the schools that
they are performed by instinct and reason, and perfected by imitation
and experience. What Mr. Darwin means when he calls expressions innate
and inherited is not the former—the tendency—but the action itself
as transmitted from the father to the son. He illustrates his meaning
by an example, not quite suitable for our pages, which may be found by
the curious on p. 44 of his work. If anything, this example shows that
dogs, and wolves, and jackals are guided by no reason, and do not apply
the proper means to attain an end. But does it follow that man, too,
has inherited his external movements from such progenitors as monkeys?
Does not man direct even all his external actions by reason? It is
true, he may be led away by passion; but that is an exception, and only
proves the rule.

But we go further. The Catholic Church teaches that the human race is
descended from one common pair—Adam and Eve. From them the whole human
race was propagated. Darwin, too, teaches the unity of mankind. But his
is quite a different unity. Not only do all men descend from a common
human parent, according to him, but both animals and men have a common
parent; so that originally there existed one animal, from which all the
rest, men included, derive their origin.

Now, we should naturally expect that so grave an inference would be
based upon a no less weighty proof. But herein we are sadly mistaken.
His whole argument rests upon a resemblance of some external actions
common to mankind: “I have endeavored to show in considerable detail
that all the chief expressions in man are the same throughout the
world. This fact is interesting, as it affords a new argument in favor
of the several races being descended from a single parent stock, which
must have been almost completely human in structure, and to a large
extent in mind, before the period at which races diverged from each
other” (p. 361).

This argument may do very well to confirm the doctrine of the church;
but we do not see how it will establish the ape theory, any more than
it would to infer that the sun and moon are alike because they both
shine. It is really amusing to hear our author so innocently say:
“We may confidently believe that laughter, as a sign of pleasure or
enjoyment, was practised by our progenitors long before they deserved
to be called human” (p. 362).

From all this it is at least evident that our poor progenitors had to
undergo a long novitiate to become invested with the habits proper to
man. Theirs, indeed, must have been a tedious process before attaining
human activity. One thing, however, he forgets to tell us. It is the
period when such a change of the species occurred. Theory may sound
very well; but we know of no fact of the kind. How is it that, as long
as the world can remember, no monkey ever became a man, or a tree a
pig? We cannot exactly agree with Darwin, therefore, when he calls the
“anthropomorphous apes our nearest allies and our early progenitors”
(p. 363). We are quite aware of the answer he gives to this objection
in his book, on _The Origin of Species_. But it may well be compared
to the method of those romance writers who take good care to place the
scene of the heroic exploits of their heroes in far distant lands as
yet unknown and unexplored. Thus they may write volume after volume,
without any danger of being convicted of telling stories and building
castles in the air. So Darwin. In his _Origin of Species_, he pretends
that the change from one species to another is so long and gradual that
it may comprise even millions of years. As a conjecture, this may pass;
but as an argument in support of a most elaborate system, we fail to
see its efficacy.

We will now pass to another argument. Speaking of frowning as shading
the eyes, he says: “It seems probable that this shading action would
not have become habitual until man had assumed a completely upright
position; for monkeys do not frown when exposed to a glaring light”
(p. 363). This phrase can be made plainer when paraphrased as follows:
It is a theory, established by me beyond any doubt, that man is the
offspring of the monkey. Now, the monkey does not frown or shade his
eyes, even when exposed to the most glaring light of the sun. Hence,
it follows that frowning is an action peculiarly adapted only to an
upright position. And hence, too, no wonder that the orang did not make
use of it as long as he was walking on all fours and bent downwards.
Hence, we must infer that frowning became a habit, then, only when the
ape, thinking that he had walked long enough on all fours, and that he
might, without any particular inconvenience to himself, dispense with
two feet, stood upright, and became a man. This is the meaning of his
words. On the same principle the following conjecture is based: “Our
early progenitors, when indignant, would not hold their heads erect
until they had acquired the ordinary carriage and upright attitude of
man” (p. 363). Its sense is: As our first parents were brutes, and as
we find that in no instance they held their heads erect when angry or
indignant, it follows, of course, that this action was acquired only
after they made use of their hind feet to walk, and when the fore paws
became hands.

Blushing is considered by Darwin an expression that requires attention
to one’s personal defects. Now, as it has not been observed in any
monkey or other animal, he of course infers that it became habitual
only when, having emerged from the monkey phase of existence, we became
semi-human.

“But it does not seem possible”—these are his words—“that any animal,
until its mental powers had been developed to an equal or nearly equal
degree with those of man, would have closely considered and been
sensitive about its own personal appearance” (p. 364).

Thus far we perfectly agree with him. Blushing is an act predicable
only of an intelligent being. Hence, it is quite logical to say
that animals could not possess it, unless almost as perfect as man.
But we by no means so readily coincide with his conclusion, namely:
“Therefore, we may conclude that blushing originated at a very late
period in the long line of our descent” (p. 364).

If this were true, it would likewise follow that man ought to become
more prone to blushing as he advances in years. This, however, it
will be confessed, is not the case. Quite the reverse frequently
happens. Youth and innocence blush, while age and vice grow daily more
barefaced and unblushing. Now, if blushing were a mere habit acquired
and developed by physical evolution, how does it come to pass that
full-grown men who are given to immorality lose that blush which rose
to their cheeks when young and innocent? Daily experience only too well
tells the tale how the maiden blush becomes dimmer and fades entirely
when the career of sin and shame has been once entered upon. Where,
then, is the philosophy of Darwin’s principle?

It is quite true, he tells us, that “we cannot cause a blush by any
physical means. It is the mind which must be affected” (p. 310); “that
the causes of blushing are shyness, shame, and modesty; the essential
element in all being self-attention” (p. 326). Again, he continues:
“Many reasons can be assigned [as causes of blushing] for believing
that originally self-attention directed to personal appearance in
relation to the opinion of others was the exciting cause. Moral causes
are only secondary; the same effect being subsequently produced through
the force of association by self-attention in relation to moral
conduct” (p. 326).

This shows that, with Darwin, morality is a mere matter of etiquette.
“But modesty,” he continues, “frequently relates to acts of indelicacy;
and indelicacy is an affair of etiquette, as we clearly see with
the nations that go altogether or nearly naked. He who is modest,
and blushes easily at acts of this nature, does so because they are
breaches of a firmly and wisely established etiquette” (p. 335).

From this, then, it is clear that morality, chastity, and every species
of virtue are nothing more than the external code of regulations which
society has agreed upon in its social intercourse. In other words, all
virtue and morality consist in what we call good breeding. We blush,
not because we break the law of God, but because we violate the precept
of man. Darwin’s ten commandments, we think, might well be summed up as
follows: First commandment: Society is the Lord God of man; thou shalt
adore it alone, by minutely observing all its external regulations,
called etiquette. 2d. Thou shalt not take its name in vain by saying
that man and society can commit any wrong, or be anything but perfect.
3d. Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath; that is, go to church on Sunday,
because others do so, and etiquette demands it. 4th. Honor thy father
and thy mother, because it is customary to do so. 5th. Thou shalt not
be so common a criminal as to kill a man by direct physical means;
but remember that thou must hold every man to be a rogue and a knave
until he proves the contrary. Thou mayest even, especially when thou
art a congressman, take an oath, without being particular as to the
truth of thy statement. 6th and 9th. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Now, as marriage is merely an ordinary contract, that can of course
be dissolved when the parties mutually agree, go to court, obtain a
divorce, and thou canst marry the wife of another. As to thoughts
against the sixth commandment, thou must not trouble thy head too much
about them. They are nature’s legitimate ebullitions. 7th. Thou shalt
not steal in open daylight, but get as much as thou canst without being
detected. This would constitute the moral code of Darwin. If morality
is reduced to etiquette, it is evident that its obligation is merely
external.

Finally, we come to another point in the book on _The Expressions_,
etc. It is a curious instance of our former propensities in a primeval
state. At some time or other, we are told, we were possessed of long
ears, and movable at that, such as we see in the mule and dog. The
elephant, also, would afford a pretty good specimen, its ears being
long and quite flexible.

But let us hear him: “If our ears had remained movable, their movements
would have been highly expressive, as is the case with all the
animals which fight with their teeth; and we may infer that our early
progenitors thus fought” (p. 365). Well, we do not by any means doubt
that these movables would be highly expressive in man. Just imagine,
for instance, Mr. Darwin going through the streets of New York with a
pair of long ears, moving and flapping to his heart’s content! Why, the
New York papers would hail it as a godsend, and the urchins on Broadway
would go in ecstasies over it.

Our interesting author winds up his somewhat lengthy dissertations
with the inference that his reasonings on the “expression of emotions”
afford another confirmatory proof of his theory that man is the
offspring of the monkey. His two volumes on the _Descent of Man_ were
intended as the corner-stone of his building. This later work was to
finish it. The great pity is that he is building a castle in the air.
He gives no proof. Similarities in man and animals may afford ground
for suppositions, but can never cause conviction.

“We have seen,” he says, “that the study of the theory of ‘expression’
confirms, to a certain limited extent, the conclusion that man is
derived from some lower animal form, and supports the belief of the
specific or sub-specific unity of the several races” (p. 367).

We are now done with Darwin. In perusing the volume, we confess it was
not without a feeling of deep sadness at so much blindness combined
with no ordinary degree of learning and research. Darwin is a student
of no mean class. His research shows that no pains were spared. His
numerous examples demonstrate that he is perfectly at home in natural
sciences. Mixed up with error, there is in his book a great deal both
interesting and highly instructive. His conclusions might perhaps be
correct if there existed no God, no revelation, and no eternity. He is
a striking example of men who set aside the revealed Word of God, and
take reason as their sole guide and standard in the search after wisdom.

It may not be amiss to subjoin a few general principles that will
refute even more fully the sophisms of the author.

We lay it down as a certain proposition that sensation is essentially
distinct from intelligence. Sensation is defined: “A certain impression
present to the mind, caused by an external agent on an animated
body.”[176]

This external impression is received by five sensible organs, viz.:
touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. These are evidently material
organs, having size, weight, figure, extension, distance, number,
motion, and rest. The same is the case with the object causing the
impressions.

Now, is there any specific difference between sensation and
intelligence? Is the understanding of man entirely different from the
sensation of the brute? Or is it merely a development of the latter?
If we believe Darwin, there is no real difference, except that the
one is more perfect than the other. In the monkey, there exists the
same faculty of intelligence as in man. In the former, however, it is
in its incipient stage; in the latter, it is matured and developed.
Can such a theory be reconciled with philosophy? We believe not. In
fact, the difference between sensation and intelligence can be given as
follows: 1. Sensations are external impressions which are not produced
by the mind, but merely received; hence they are passive; whilst the
understanding of man is essentially the actor, and not merely the
recipient. 2. Again, “Sensations are particular facts which never leave
their own sphere.”[177] Intelligence forms ideas that are universal and
absolute, being applicable to all individuals.

Moreover, sensation does not distinguish one object from the other,
neither does it compare them. The illustrious Spaniard whom we have
already quoted illustrates this by saying: “The sensation of the pink
is only that of the pink, and that of the rose only that of the rose.
The instant you attempt to compare them you suppose in the mind an
act by which it perceives the difference; and, if you attribute to it
anything more than pure sensation, you add a faculty distinct from
sensation, namely, that of comparing sensations, and appreciating their
similarities and differences.”[178]

This, indeed, is evident. Sensation is simply the external impression
received. As such, it is an isolated act. It does not compare or judge.

The idea, for instance, of the triangle is one, and is common to all
triangles of every size and kind; the representation or sensation is
multiple, and varies in size and kind.

Again, the idea or thought of the mind is fixed and necessary; the
representation changeable.

The idea, _e.g._, of the triangle is “the same to the man born blind,
and to him who has sight; and the proof of this is that both, in their
arguments and geometrical uses, develop it in the same manner.”[179]

From what has been thus far said, it is evident that there exists a
dividing line between the intellect and sensation; that the one is in
no sense contained in the other, and cannot by any process be derived
from it. Darwin is a mere sensist. He understands little of the nature
and faculties of the human soul. He ignores any essential distinction
between the intellect and sensation.

There is, indeed, it may be observed, a close connection between the
two. Sensation is the condition of the exercise of the intellect while
we are in this life. It supplies food for the intelligence. It always
precedes and accompanies the intellectual act. Thus, when we think of
God’s mercy, we easily imagine God as a kind father, etc.

But such is the case only in human intelligence. We have a spirit in
a material and sensible body. Our intellect, by its substantial union
with the body, is bound to adapt its exercises to the conditions
imposed by this union. But unless we deny all revelation, we must
admit the existence of celestial spirits who are not possessed of
and encumbered by any body. These, then, need no visible organs, no
external sensation, no sensible representation, to arouse and excite
their intellect to action. Hence, it follows that the connection
existing between sensation and intelligence is not essential.

We shall now examine some other acts of the intellect, to confirm what
we have said. Judgment is one of the principal acts of the mind. It is
defined: “The perception and affirmation of the identity or diversity
of two ideas or propositions obtained by comparing them.”[180] Thus,
in the proposition, “Man is mortal,” the mind compares the ideas man
and “mortal,” and affirms their identity. The sensation, however, is
an isolated impression on the mind, a single fact. Another feature of
human actions is the purpose or end for which a thing is done. The
dog may do things that have great similarity to human actions; but
close observation will easily convince one that the brute does so in
a uniform manner, and consequently is impelled by natural instinct.
Man, however, sits down and deliberates. He proposes some object to
be accomplished, and carefully selects the means best calculated
to attain that end. He changes his means at will, according to the
circumstances of the case. Does any animal, even be it Darwin’s darling
monkey, do anything of the kind? Moreover, the end or purpose may be
inherent in the act itself; thus, the sun gives heat and light. An
end, however, may not arise essentially out of the nature of things,
but may be freely intended; thus, man chooses different objects, while
animals necessarily perform them. Again, man observes order in his
actions. Order is defined: “A proper disposition of things, giving
to each its place”;[181] or, “A composition, and arranging things
according to their proper place.”[182] This arrangement may be made
either in relation to the matter, or time, or the object. Now, do we
ever behold animals displaying order in their actions? Has even Darwin
ever seen a monkey arranging books in a library in such a manner as
to place alongside each other those relating to one subject? We doubt
it. We conclude this review by summing up, in Darwin’s words, the
principles by which he contends that all our ideas are acquired. The
first is the principle of serviceable associated habits. According
to it, we gradually acquire all those habits, ideas, and expressions
that conduce to our interest or gratification. The second is that of
antithesis—that is, when something offered to our interest occurs, we
adopt contrary actions and ideas. The third is styled by Darwin the
principle of actions due to the constitution of the nervous system,
independently, from the first, of the will, and independently, to
a certain extent, of habit. This last principle is simply what is
commonly called instinct. No one denies that it causes many actions
pertaining to our welfare; but no man of sound mind will derive from
it intelligence. The first and second principles can be reduced to
that of utilitarianism. In plain language, it amounts to this: if all
the actions, thoughts, and desires of man are regulated merely in
accordance with each one’s private gratification, there would be no
such thing as being concerned about the welfare of others. We finish
by recalling the fundamental idea underlying this work. There are,
Darwin tells us, striking similarities between the external expressions
exhibited by man and the animal. These cannot be explained except on
the supposition that the former descends by a long and slow process of
generation from the latter. This is styled natural evolution.

There is, we admit, a germ of truth in the theory of evolution.
The mistake is in applying it without limit. The Catholic Church
teaches, 1. that the soul of man is immediately created by God. 2.
That the human body also was created in like manner. This latter,
however, is not so explicitly defined as the former. 3. It is a
commonly received opinion of theologians that all the principal
species of the animal were created directly by God. 4. That, however,
imperfect species, such as hybrids and those generated by corruption,
perspiration—_e.g._, fleas—were created only in germ, or _potentiali
modo_.

From this, it is not difficult to see how far a Catholic may accept the
theory of evolution. Scientists should not forget that reason is the
handmaid of revelation.




GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE “HOUSE OF YORKE.”


CHAPTER III.

“SOWING THE WIND.”

THE cottage where the Geralds lived was almost the entire inheritance
that had fallen to Miss Pembroke from those large estates which, it
seemed, should have been hers; but her wishes were submitted to her
circumstances with a calmness that looked very like contentment. Mother
Chevreuse called it Christian resignation, and she may have been at
least partly right. But it was contrary to Miss Pembroke’s disposition
to fret over irreparable misfortunes, or even to exert herself very
much to overcome difficulties. She liked the easy path, and always
chose it when conscience did not forbid. She made the best of her
circumstances, therefore, and lived a quiet and pleasant, if not a very
delightful, life. Mrs. Gerald was friendly; their little household was
sufficiently well arranged and perfectly homelike; they had agreeable
visitors, and plenty of outside gaiety. On the whole, there seemed to
be no reason why anything but marriage should separate the owner from
her tenants.

Of marriage there was no present prospect. Several gentlemen had made
those preliminary advances which are supposed to have this end in view,
but had been discouraged by the cool friendliness with which they were
received. The wide-open eyes, surprised and inquiring, had nipped their
little sentimental speeches in the bud, and quite abashed their killing
glances. Miss Pembroke had no taste for this small skirmishing, in
which so many men and women fritter away first what little refinement
of feeling nature may have gifted them with, and afterward their belief
in the refinement of others; and not one true and brave wooer had come
yet.

People had various explanations to give for this insensibility, some
fancying that the young woman was ambitious, and desirous to find one
who would be able to give her such a position as that once occupied
by Mrs. Carpenter; others that she had a vocation for a religious
life; but she gave no account of her private motives and feelings,
and perhaps could not have explained them to herself. She certainly
could not have told precisely what she did want, though her mind was
quite clear as to what she did not want. Mr. Lawrence Gerald’s real
or imaginary love for her did not, after the first few months, cause
her the slightest embarrassment, as it did not inspire her with the
least respect. The only strong and faithful attachment of which he was
capable was one for himself, and his superficial affections were so
numerous as to be worthy of very little compassion, however they might
be slighted.

Sweet-brier Cottage, as it was called, might, then, be called rather a
happy little nest.

Nothing could be prettier than the apartment occupied by the owner of
the house, though, since she had her own peculiar notions regarding the
relative importance of things, many might have found the mingling of
simplicity and costliness in her furnishing rather odd. An upholsterer
would have pronounced the different articles in the rooms to be “out of
keeping” with each other, just as he would have criticised a picture
where the artist had purposely slighted the inferior parts. The deal
floors were bare, save for two or three strips of carpeting in summer,
and sealskin mats in winter; the prim curtains that hung in straight
flutings, without a superfluous fold, over the windows, around the
bed, and before the book-case, just clearing the floor, were of plain,
thin muslin, plainly hemmed, and had no more luxurious fastenings than
brass knobs and blue worsted cords to loop them back; but a connoisseur
would have prized the few engravings on the walls, the candlesticks of
pure silver in the shrine before the _prie-dieu_, and the statuette of
our Lady that stood there, a work of art. In cleanliness, too, Miss
Pembroke was lavish, and one poor woman was nearly supported by what
she received for keeping the draperies snowy white and crisp, and
wiping away every speck of dust from the immaculate bower. No broom nor
brush was allowed to enter there.

“It is such a pleasure to come here,” Mother Chevreuse said one day
when she came to visit Honora; “everything is so pure and fresh.”

“It is such a pleasure to have you come!” was the response; and the
young woman seated her visitor in the one blue chintz arm-chair the
chamber contained, kissed her softly on the cheek, removed her bonnet
and shawl, placed a palm-leaf fan in her hand, then, seated lowly
beside her, looked so pretty and so pleased that it was charming to see
her. These two women were very fond of each other, and in their private
intercourse quite like mother and daughter. Theirs was one of those
sweet affections to which the mere being together is delightful, though
there may be nothing of importance said; as two flames united burn
more brightly, though no fuel be added. It might have been said that
it was the blending of two harmonious spheres; and probably the idea
could not be better expressed. The sense of satisfying companionship,
of entire sympathy and confidence, the gentle warmth produced in the
heart by that presence—these are enough without words, be they never
so wise and witty. Yet one must feel that wit and wisdom of some kind
are there. There is all the difference in the world between a full and
an empty silence, between a trifling that covers depth, and a trifling
that betrays shallowness.

Our two friends talked together, then, quite contentedly about very
small matters, touching now and then on matters not so insignificant.
And it chanced that their talk drifted in such a direction that, after
a grave momentary pause, Miss Honora lifted her eyes to her friend’s
face, and, following out their subject, said seriously: “Mother, I am
troubled about men.”

But for the gravity that had fallen on both, Mother Chevreuse would
have smiled at this naïve speech; as it was, she asked quietly: “In
what way, my dear?”

“They seem to me petty, the greater part of them, and lacking in a fine
sense of honor; lacking courage, too, which is shocking in a man.”

“Oh! one swallow does not make a summer,” said Mother Chevreuse,
thinking that she understood the meaning of this discouragement. “You
must not believe that all men fail because some unworthy ones do.”

“It is not that at all,” was the quick reply. “You think I mean
Lawrence. I do not. He makes no difference with me. I mean the men from
whom one would expect something better; the very men who seem to lament
that women are not truer and nobler, and who utter such fine sentiments
that you would suppose none but a most exalted and angelic being could
please them or win their approval. I have heard such men talk, when I
have thought with delight that I would try in every way to improve, so
as to win their admiration, and be worthy of their friendship; and all
at once, I have found that they could be pleased and captivated by what
is lowest and meanest. It is disappointing,” she said, with a sigh.
“It is natural that women should wish to respect men; and I would be
willing to have them look down on me, if they would be such as I could
look up to.”

“Has any one been displeasing you?” Mother Chevreuse asked, looking
keenly into the fair and sorrowful face before her. She suspected that
this generalizing sprang from some special cause. But the glance that
met hers showed there was at least no conscious concealment.

“These thoughts have been coming to me at intervals for a good while,”
Miss Pembroke answered calmly. “But, of course, particular incidents
awaken them newly. I was displeased this morning. I met a lady and
gentleman taking a walk into the country, and I did not like to see
them together.”

“But why should you care, my dear?” asked Mother Chevreuse, with a
look of alarm. She understood perfectly well that the two were Mr.
Schöninger and Miss Carthusen.

The young woman answered with an expression of surprise that entirely
reassured her friend: “Why should I not care for this case as well as
another? He is a new-comer, and all my first impressions of him were
favorable. I had thought he might prove a fine character; and so it is
one more disappointment. But I am making too much of the matter,” she
said, with a smile and gesture that seemed to toss the subject aside.
“I really cannot tell why I should have thought so much about it.”

She bent and gaily kissed her friend’s hands; but Mother Chevreuse drew
her close in an embrace that seemed by its passion to be striving to
shield her from harm. She understood quite well what Honora did not yet
know: that the nature which the Creator defined from the beginning when
he said: “It is not good for man to be alone,” had begun to feel itself
lonely.

“I would try not to think of these things, my dear,” she said
earnestly. “Trust me, and put such thoughts away. There are good men in
the world, and one day you will be convinced of that; but it is never
worth while to look about in search of some one to honor. Think of God,
and pray to him with more fervor than ever. Add a new prayer to your
devotions, with the intention of keeping this useless subject out of
your mind. Remember heaven, work for the poor, and the sinful, and the
sick, and, above all, do not fancy that it is going to make you happy
though you should be acquainted with the finest men, or win ever so
much their esteem. It isn’t worth striving for, even if striving would
win it. Nothing on earth is worth working for but bread and heaven.”

Miss Pembroke looked a little disappointed. She had expected sympathy
and reassurance, and had received instead a warning. “I hope, mother,
you do not think me bold in speaking on such a subject,” she said,
dropping her eyes; and then Mother Chevreuse knew that she had better
have spoken lightly.

“Certainly not!” she answered, laughing. “Do you think I fear you are
going to lecture on woman’s rights?”

And so the little cloud passed over; and, when her visitor went away,
Honora had quite dismissed the subject from her mind. There were her
simple household duties to perform; then Lawrence came home to take an
early luncheon and dress to go to Annette Ferrier’s, where there was to
be a musical rehearsal; and, as soon as lunch was over, who should come
in but F. Chevreuse!

Lawrence had a mind to escape unseen; but the priest greeted him so
cordially, pointing to a chair close beside his own, that it would have
been rude to go. And having overcome the first shyness that a careless
Catholic naturally feels in the presence of a clergyman, he found it
agreeable to remain; for nobody could be pleasanter company than F.
Chevreuse.

“I beg unblushingly,” he owned with perfect frankness, when they
inquired how his collecting prospered. “To-day, I asked Dan McCabe
for a hundred dollars, and got it. He looked astonished, and so does
Miss Honora; but he showed no reluctance. At first blush, it may
seem strange that I should take money that comes from gambling and
rumselling. My idea is this: Dan is almost an outlaw; no decent person
likes to speak to him, and he has got to look on society and religion
as utterly antagonistic to him. He is on the other side of the fence,
and the only feeling he has for decency is hatred and defiance. He
takes pride in mocking, and pretending that he doesn’t care what people
think of him. But it is a pretence, and his very defiance shows that he
does care. It is my opinion that to-day Dan would give every dollar he
has in the world, and go to work as a poor man, if he could be treated
as a respectable one. He is proud of my having spoken to him, and taken
his money, though I dare say he will pretend to sneer and laugh about
it. You may depend he will tell of it on every opportunity. Better than
that, he will feel that he has a right to come to the church. Before
this, he had not, or at least people would have said he had not, and
would have stared at him if he had come. Now, if he should come in next
Sunday, and march up to a front seat, nobody could complain. If they
should, he would have the best of the argument, and he knows that.
Then, once in the church, we have a chance to influence him, and he a
chance to win respectability. He isn’t one to be driven, nor, indeed,
to be clumsily coaxed. The way is to assume that he wishes to do right,
then act as if he had done right. He never will let slip a bait like
that. He will hold on to that if he should have to let everything else
go, as he must, of course. I knew, when I saw him look ashamed to meet
me, that he wasn’t lost. While there’s shame, there’s hope. So much for
Dan McCabe. Am I not right, Larry?”

Lawrence stooped to pick up F. Chevreuse’s hat, which had fallen, and
by so doing escaped the necessity of answering. One glance of the
priest’s quick eyes read his embarrassment, and saw the deepening color
in Honora’s face.

“I am sure you are quite right, father,” Mrs. Gerald said hastily, with
a tremor in her voice. “Perhaps Dan would never have been so bad if too
much severity had not been used toward his early faults. And so your
collecting goes on successfully. I am so glad.”

The priest, who perceived that he had, without meaning it, stirred deep
waters, resumed the former subject briskly:

“Yes, thank God! my affairs are looking up. But there was a time when
they were dark enough. I have been anxious about Mr. Sawyer’s mortgage.
He is not so friendly to us as he was, or else he needs the money; for
he would grant no extension. Well, I raked and scraped every dollar
I could get, and I knew that, before next week, I couldn’t hope to
collect above one or two hundreds in addition; and still it did not
amount to more than half of the two thousand due. So I wrote off to
a friend in New York who I thought might help me, and set my mother
praying to all the saints for my success. For me, I don’t know what
came over me. Perhaps I was tired, or nervous, or dyspeptic. At all
events, when the time came for me to receive an answer to my letter,
all my courage failed. I was ashamed of myself, but that didn’t help
me. While Andy was gone to the post-office, I could do nothing but walk
to and fro, and shake at every sound, and watch the clock to see when
he would be back. I always give the old fellow half an hour. I wasn’t
strong when he went. In ten minutes I was weak, in fifteen minutes I
was silly, in twenty minutes I was a fool. ‘I can’t wait here in the
house for him,’ I said; ‘I’ll take to the sanctuary, and, whatever
comes to me there, it can’t kill me.’ So I left word for Andy to bring
my letters to the church, and lay them down on the altar steps, and
go away again without speaking a word; and out I went, and knelt down
by the altar, like an urchin who catches hold of his mother’s gown
when somebody says bo! to him. By-and-by, I heard Andy coming. I knew
the squeak of his boots, and the double way he has of putting his
feet down—first the heel, then the toe, making a sound as though he
were a quadruped. Never had he walked so slowly, yet never had I so
dreaded his coming. I counted the stairs as he came up, and found out
that there were fifteen. For some reason, I liked the number; perhaps
because it is the number of decades in the rosary. I promised in that
instant that, if he brought me good news, I would climb those stairs on
my knees, saying a decade on every stair in thanksgiving. Then I put my
hand over my face, and waited. He lumbered in, panting for breath, laid
something down before me, and went out again. I counted the fifteen
steps till he was at the bottom of them, then snatched up my letter,
and broke the seal; and there was my thousand dollars! When I saw the
draft, I involuntarily jumped up, and flung my _barrette_ as high as I
could fling it, and it came down to me with a mash that it will never
get over. But, my boy,” he said, turning quickly, and laying his hand
on Lawrence Gerald’s knee, “that your hat may never be mashed in a
worse cause!”

Lawrence had been listening intently, and watching the speaker’s
animated face; and, at this sudden address, he dropped his eyes, and
blushed. Alas for him! his hat had more than once been mashed in a
cause little to his credit.

“And now,” continued F. Chevreuse, with triumph, “I have at home in my
strong desk two thousand dollars, lacking only fifty, and the fifty
is in my pocket. After this, all is plain sailing. There will be no
difficulty in meeting the other payments.”

The ladies congratulated him heartily. In this place, the interests of
the priest were felt to be the interests of the people. Making himself
intimately acquainted with their circumstances, he asked no more than
they could reasonably give; and they, seeing his hard and disinterested
labors, grieved that they could give so little.

Presently, and perhaps not without an object, F. Chevreuse spoke
incidentally of business, and expressed his admiration for pursuits
which one of the three, at least, despised.

“There is not only dignity but poetry in almost any kind of business,”
he said; “and the dignity does not consist simply in earning an honest
living, instead of being a shiftless idler. There is something fine in
sending ships to foreign lands, and bringing their produce home; in
setting machinery to change one article into another; and in gathering
grainfields into garners. I can easily understand a man choosing to
do business when there is no necessity for it. I have just come from
a sugarstore down-town, where I was astonished to learn that sugar
is something besides what you sweeten your tea with. It was there
in samples ranged along the counter, from the raw imported article,
that was of a soft amber-color, to lumps as white and glittering as
hoar-frost. Then there were syrups, gold-colored, crimson, and garnet,
and so clear that you might think them jewels. I remembered Keats’

  ‘Lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon.’

They asked me if I would like to taste these. Would I taste of
dissolved rubies and carbuncles? Why not I as well as Cleopatra? Of
course I would taste of them. And how do you suppose they presented
this repast to me? On a plate or a saucer, a stick or a spoon? By no
means. The Ganymede took on his left thumb a delicate white porcelain
palette, such as Honora might spread colors on to paint roses,
heliotropes, and pinks with, and, lifting the jars one by one with his
right hand, let fall on it a single rich drop, till there was a rainbow
of deep colors on the white. When I saw that, the sugar business took
rank at once beside the fine arts. And it is so with other affairs.
If I were in the world, I would prefer, both for the pleasure and
the honor of it, to be a mechanic or a merchant, to being in any
profession.”

When the priest had gone, Lawrence Gerald went soberly up to his
chamber, thinking, as he went, that possibly an ordinary, active life
might, after all, be the happiest. The influence of that healthy and
cheerful nature lifted for a time, if it did not dispel, his illusions,
as a sudden breath of west wind raises momentarily the heavy fogs,
which settle again as soon as the breath dies. For one brief view, this
diseased soul saw realities thrusting their strong angles through the
vague and feverish dreams that had usurped his life. On the one hand,
they showed like jagged rocks that had been deceitfully overveiled by
sunlighted spray; on the other, like a calm and secure harbor shining
through what had looked to be a dark and weary way.

He opened a handkerchief-box, and absently turned over its contents,
rejecting with instinctive disdain the coarser linen, curling his lip
unconsciously at sight of a large hemstitching, and selecting one that
dropped out of fold like a fine, snowy mist. A faint odor of attar of
roses floated out of the box, so faint as to be perceptible only to
a delicate sense. The same rich fragrance embalmed the glove-box he
opened next, and the young man showed the same fastidious taste in
selecting.

It appeared trivial in a man, this feminine-daintiness; yet some excuse
might be found for it when one contemplated the exquisite beauty of the
person showing it. It seemed fitting that only delicate linen and fine
cloth should clothe a form so perfect, and that nothing harsh should
touch those fair hands, soft and rosy-nailed as a woman’s. Yet how much
of the beauty and delicacy had come from careful and selfish fostering,
who can tell? Physical beauty is but a frail plant, and needs constant
watching; it loses its lustre and freshness in proportion as that care
is given to the immortal flower it bears. Both cannot flourish.

“I wouldn’t mind doing business after it was well established,” he
muttered, carefully arranging one lock of hair to fall carelessly over
his temple, in contrast with its pure whiteness. “It is the dingy
beginning I hate. I hate anything dingy. People mistake when they fancy
me extravagant, and that I like show and splendor. I do not like them.
But I do like and must have cleanliness, and good taste, and freshness,
and light, and space.”

What he said was in some measure true; and “pity ‘tis, ‘tis true” that
simple good taste can, in the city at least, be gratified only at an
extravagant price, and that poverty necessarily entails dinginess.

He glanced about the room, and frowned with disgust. The ceiling was
low, the paper on the walls a cheap and therefore an ugly pattern, the
chairs and carpet well kept, but a little faded. Plain cotton blinds,
those most hideous and bleak of draperies, veiled the two windows, and
an antiquated old mahogany secretary, the shape of which could have
been tolerable only when the _prestige_ of new fashion surrounded it,
held a few books in faded bindings.

The young man shrugged his shoulders, and went toward the door. As
he opened it, the draught blew open another door in the entry, and
disclosed the shaded front chamber, with its cool blue and snowy white,
its one streak of sunshine through a chink in the shutter, and its wax
candle burning before the marble Madonna.

“That is what I like,” he thought, and passed hastily by. Annette would
be waiting for him.

The sensible thoughts inspired by F. Chevreuse lasted only till the
quiet, shady street was passed. With the first step into South Avenue,
and the first glance down its superb length, other feelings came,
and cottages and narrow ways dwindled and were again contemptible.
The high walls, and cupola, and spreading wings of his lady’s home
became visible, and he could see the tall pillars of Miss Ferrier’s
new conservatory, which was almost as large as the whole of the house
he lived in. The fascination of wealth caught him once more, and the
thought of labor became intolerable.

Miss Ferrier was indeed on the lookout, and, brightening with joyful
welcome, came out to the porch to meet her visitor as he entered the
gate. He had so many times forgotten her invitations that she had not
felt sure of him, and the pleasant surprise of his coming made her
look almost pretty. Her blue-gray eyes shone, her lips trembled with a
smile, and a light seemed to strike up through her excessively frizzled
flaxen hair. If it had only been Honora! But, as it was, he met her
kindly, feeling a momentary pity for her. “Poor girl! she is so fond of
me!” he thought complacently, feeling it to be his due, even while he
pitied her. “But I wish she wouldn’t put so much on. She looks like a
comet.”

For Miss Ferrier’s pink organdie flounces streamed out behind her in a
manner that might indeed have suggested that celestial phenomenon. She
had, however, robbed Peter to pay Paul; for, whereas one end of her
robe exceeded, the other as notably lacked.

“Mamma has not yet come back from her drive,” she remarked, leading the
way into the drawing-room. “It is astonishing what keeps her so long.”

“Oh! it’s one of her distribution days, isn’t it?” Lawrence asked, with
a little glimmer of amusement that brought the blood into his lady’s
face.

Two mornings of every week, Mrs. Ferrier piled her carriage full of
parcels containing food and clothing, and drove off into some of the
poorest streets of the town, where her pensioners gathered about her,
and told their troubles, and received her sympathy and help. The good
soul, being very stout, did not once leave her carriage, but sat there
enthroned upon the cushions like some bountiful but rather apoplectic
goddess, showering about her cotton and flannels, and tea and sugar,
and tears and condolences, and perhaps a few complaints with them. It
is more than probable that, under cover of this princely charity, Mrs.
Ferrier had a little congenial gossip now and then. Among these poor
women were many no poorer than she had once been, and they were much
nearer to her heart and sympathies than those whom Annette brought to
her gorgeous drawing-rooms. Mrs. Ferrier was far from wishing to be
poor again, but for all that she had found wealth a sad restriction on
her tastes and her liberty. To her mind, the restraints of society were
worse than a strait-jacket, and it required all Annette’s authority
to keep her from defying them openly. But here she was at home, and
could speak her own language, and at the same time be looked on as a
superior being. Jack and John could leave the carriage, and step into
the little ale-house at the corner; and, if one of them should bring
her out a foaming glass, the simple creature would not resent it. There
was always an idle urchin about who was only too proud to stand at the
horses’ heads while Mrs. Ferrier had a chat with some crony, who leaned
toward her over the carriage-steps.

Miss Annette was sometimes troubled by a suspicion that her mother did
not always maintain with her _protégées_ as dignified a distance as was
desirable; but she was far from guessing the extent of the good lady’s
condescension. Her hair would have stood on end had she seen that glass
of ale handed into the carriage, and the beaming smile that rewarded
John, the footman, for bringing it. Her misgivings were strong enough,
however, to make her blush with mortification when Lawrence spoke of
the distribution days. The pleasure with which she had anticipated
a short _tête-à-tête_ with her intended husband died away, and she
seated herself in a window, and anxiously watched for her mother’s
coming.

She was not kept long in suspense. First there appeared through the
thickly flowering horse-chestnut trees a pair of bright bays so trained
and held in that their perpendicular motion equalled their forward
progress; then a britzska that glittered like the chariot of the
sun. In this vehicle sat Mrs. Ferrier in solitary state. One might
have detected some apprehension in the first glance she cast toward
the drawing-room windows; but, at sight of the young man sitting
there beside her daughter, she tossed her head, and resumed her
self-confidence. She had a word to say to him.

Jack brought his horses round in so neat a curve that the wheels
missed the curbstone by only a hair’s breadth; and John descended from
the perch—whence during three hours he had enjoyed the view of a
black-leather horizon over-nodded by the tip of Mrs. Ferrier’s plume of
feathers—and let down the step.

We are obliged to confess that Mrs. Ferrier descended from her carriage
as a sailor descends the ratlines, only with less agility. But, what
would you? She was already of a mature age when greatness was thrust
upon her, and had not been able to change with her circumstances.
Moreover, she was heavy and timid, and subject to vertigo.

“I’m much obliged to you, John,” she said, finding herself safely
landed. “Now, if you will bring that parcel in. I’d just as lief carry
it myself, only....”

A glance toward the drawing-room window finished the sentence. Of
course, Miss Annette would be shocked to see her mother waiting on
herself; and, in all matters relating to social propriety, this poor
mother stood greatly in awe of her daughter, and, indeed, led quite a
wretched life with her.

As the lady walked through the gate and up the steps, with a
half-distressed, half-defiant consciousness of being criticised, one
might find a slight excuse for the smile that showed for an instant
on the lips of her intended son-in-law; for it must be owned that in
decoration Mrs. Ferrier was of a style almost as Corinthian as her
house-front. A rustling green satin gown showed in tropical contrast
with a yellow crape shawl and a bird-of-paradise feather; she had curls
and crimps, she had flounces and frills, she had chains and trinkets,
she had rings on her fingers, and we should not be surprised if she had
bells on her toes.

“O mamma!” cried Annette, running out into the hall, “what made you go
out dressed like a paroquet?”

“Why, green and yellow go together,” mamma replied stoutly. “I’ve heard
you say that they make the prettiest flag in the world.”

The young woman made a little gesture of despair _à la Française_. “Of
course, colors can’t help going together when they’re put together,”
she said. “The question is whether they are in good taste. And cannot
you see, mamma, that what is very fine for a banner isn’t proper for a
lady’s dress? But no matter, since it cannot be helped. And now, I have
something to tell you. I read in a book this morning that fleshy people
could make themselves thinner by giving up vegetables and sweets, and
living on rare beef and fruits, and using all the vinegar they could on
things. That’s worth your trying.”

“But I don’t like raw beef and vinegar,” cried the mother in dismay.

“It is not a question of liking,” replied the young woman loftily. “It
is a question of health, and comfort, and good looks. It certainly
cannot be to you a matter of indifference that the whole neighborhood
laugh behind their blinds to see you back down out of the carriage.”

“Let ‘em laugh,” said the mother sulkily. “They’d be willing to back
out of carriages all their lives if they could have such as mine.”

Annette drew herself up with great dignity: “Mamma, I do not consider
anything trivial when it concerns the credit of the family. To keep
that up, I would starve, I would work, I would perform any hardship.”

To do the girl justice, she spoke but the truth.

“You might take claret with lemon in it, instead of vinegar,” she
added after a moment. “And, by the way, I have ordered dinner at
half-past four, so as to be through in time for an early rehearsal. Mr.
Schöninger is engaged for the evening, and they are all to be here by
half-past five. Do be careful, ma. Mrs. Gerald is coming up.”

“I don’t care for ‘em!” Mrs. Ferrier burst forth. “I’m tired of having
to mince and pucker for the sake of those Geralds. What are they to me?
All they want of us is our money.”

Annette hushed her mother, and tried to soothe her, leading the way
into a side room; but, having begun, the honest creature must free
her mind. “You’ve had your say, and now I want to have mine,” she
persisted, but consented to lower her voice to a more confidential
pitch. “I’m going to have a talk with Lawrence to-day when dinner is
over. I sha’n’t put it off. If company comes before I get through, you
must entertain them. My mind is made up.”

“Oh! gracious, mamma!” cried Annette, turning pale.

“There are some things that you know best, and some that I know best,”
the elder woman went on, with a steady firmness that became her. “I
give up to you a good deal, and you must give up to me when the time
comes. I shall talk to that young man to-day; and, if you know what is
best for you, then say no more about it. You are not fit to take care
of yourself where he is concerned, and I’m going to do it for you. No
matter what I want to say to him. It is my place to look out for that.
All you have to do is to be quiet, and not interfere.”

Annette was silent; and, if you had looked in her face then, you would
have seen that it by no means indicated a weak character. She was
looking at facts sharply and bravely, considering which of two pains
she had better choose, and swiftly coming to a decision. Strong as was
her will in that province where she ruled, it was but a reed compared
with the determination her mother showed when her mind was made up. The
daughter would sometimes yield rather than contend, and she was always
ready with reasons and arguments to prove herself right. But the mother
had none of that shrinking, on the contrary, took pleasure in having
a little skirmish now and then to relieve the tedium of her peaceful
existence; and, not being gifted in reasoning, was wont to assert her
will in a rather hard and uncompromising manner. Moreover, having once
said that she would or would not act in any certain manner, she never
allowed herself to be moved from that resolve. This was so well known
to her family and intimates that they took care not to provoke her to a
premature decision on questions that affected their interests.

“Well, mamma,” Annette said, looking very pale as she yielded, “you
must do as you please. But don’t forget that Lawrence has not been used
to rough words. And now it is time for you to change your dress.”

At these words, the sceptre changed hands again. Mrs. Ferrier sighed
wearily, remembering the happy days when she could put on a gown in the
morning, and not take it off till she went to bed at night.

John, the footman, sat in the hall as the two ladies came out of the
library, and, instead of going directly up-stairs as her daughter
returned to the drawing-room, Mrs. Ferrier made a little pretence of
looking out through the porch, to learn the cause of some imaginary
disturbance. When at length she went toward the stairs, she was
fumbling in her pocket, and presently drew out a small parcel, which
she tossed down over the balusters to John, standing under. The paper
unfolded in falling, and disclosed a gorgeous purple and gold neck-tie,
which the footman at once hid in his pocket.

“Do you like the colors, John?” she asked, leaning over the rail, and
smiling down benignantly.

He nodded, with a quick, short answering smile, which shot like
lightning across his ruddy face, disturbing for only an instant its
dignified gravity.

“Ma, are you going up-stairs?” called Annette’s sharp voice from the
drawing-room.

“Yes; if you’ll give me time,” answered “ma,” hastening on.

There was no reason why she should not buy, now and then, a little gift
for her servants, and there was no need of proclaiming what she had
done, and so making the others jealous. Or perhaps John had asked his
mistress to exercise her taste in his behalf, himself paying for the
finery. He was a very sensible, independent man, and did not need to be
pecuniarily assisted.

At the head of the stairs, the mistress of the house met Bettie, the
chambermaid, who had been a witness to this little scene.

“How do you get along, Bettie?” the lady asked, trying to patronize.

The girl turned her back and flounced away, muttering something about
some folks who couldn’t get along so well as some other folks, who
could go throwing presents over the balustrade to other folks.

Poor Bettie! perhaps she envied John his neck-tie.

The rich woman went into her chamber, and shut the door. “I declare,
I’m sick of the way I have to live,” she whimpered, wiping her eyes.
“I don’t dare to say my soul’s my own. I’m afraid to speak, or hold my
tongue, or move, or sit still, or put on clothes, or leave ‘em off,
or to look out of my eyes when they’re open.” She wiped the features
in question again. “And now I’m likely to be starved,” she resumed
despairingly; “for, if Annette sets out to make me do anything, she
never lets me rest till I do it. I was happier when I had but one gown
to my back, and could act as I pleased, than I’ve ever been with all
the finery, and servants, and carriages that are bothering the life out
of me now. It’s all nonsense, this killing yourself to try to be like
somebody else, when what you are is just as good as what anybody is.”

Which was not at all a foolish conclusion, though it might have been
more elegantly expressed.

She stood a moment fixed in thought, her face brightening. “I
declare,” she muttered, “I’ve a good mind to—“ but did not finish the
sentence.

A wavering smile played over her lips; and as she sat on the edge of
the sofa, with a stout arm propping her on either side, and her heavily
jewelled hands buried in the cushions, Mrs. Ferrier sank into a reverie
which had every appearance of being rose-colored.

When she was moderately pleased, this woman was not ill-looking, though
her insignificant features were somewhat swamped in flesh. Her eyes
were pleasant, her complexion fresh, her teeth sound, and the abundant
dark-brown hair was unmistakably her own.

She started, and blushed with apprehension, as the door was briskly
opened, and her daughter’s head thrust in. What if Annette should know
what she had been thinking of?

“Ma,” said that young woman, “you had better wear a black grenadine,
and the amethyst brooch and ear-rings.”

Having given this brief order, the girl banged the door in her
energetic way; but, before it was well shut, opened it again.

“And pray, don’t thank the servants at table.”

Again the Mentor disappeared, and a second time came back for a last
word. “O ma! I’ve given orders about the lemons and claret, and you’d
better begin to-day, and see how you can get along with such diet. I
wouldn’t eat much, if I were you. You’ve no idea how little food you
can live upon till you try. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you were
to thin away beautifully.”

At last she departed in earnest.

Mrs. Ferrier lifted both hands, and raised her eyes to the ceiling.
“Who ever heard,” she cried, “of anybody with an empty stomach sitting
down to a full table, and not eating what they wanted?”

This poor creature had probably never heard of Sancho Panza, and
perhaps it would not much have comforted her could she have read his
history.

We pass over the toilet scene, where Nance, Miss Annette’s maid, nearly
drove the simple lady distracted with her fastidious ideas regarding
colors and shapes; and the dinner, where Mrs. Ferrier sat in bitterness
of soul with a slice of what she called raw beef on her plate, and
a tumbler of very much acidulated claret and water, in place of the
foaming ale that had been wont to lull her to her afternoon slumber.
These things did not, however, sweeten her temper, nor soften her
resolutions. It may be that they rendered her a little more inexorable.
It is certain that Mr. Gerald did not find her remarkably amiable
during the repast, and was not sorry when she left the dining-room,
where he and Louis Ferrier stopped to smoke a cigar.

She did not leave him in peace though, but planted a thorn at parting.

“I want to see you in the library about something in particular, as
soon as you have got through here,” she said, with an air that was a
little more commanding than necessary.

He smiled and bowed, but a slight frown settled on his handsome face
as he looked after her. What track was she on now? “Do you know what
the indictment is, Louis?” he asked presently, having lighted a cigar,
turned his side to the table, on which he leaned, and placed his feet
in the chair Annette had occupied. “Milady looked as though the jury
had found a bill.”

Louis Ferrier, whom we need not occupy our time in describing, didn’t
know what the row was, really; couldn’t tell; never troubled himself
about ma’s affairs.

Lawrence smoked away vigorously, two or three lines coming between his
smoothly-curved eyebrows; and, as the cigar diminished, his irritation
increased. Presently he threw the cigar-end impatiently through an open
window near, and brought his feet to the floor with an emphasis that
made his companion stare.

“If there is anything I hate,” he cried out, “it is being called away
into a corner to hear something particular. I always know it means
something disagreeable. If you want to set me wild, just step up to
me mysteriously, and say that you wish to speak to me about something
particular. Women are always doing such things. Men never do, unless
they are policemen.”

Young Mr. Ferrier sat opposite the speaker, lolling on the table with
his elbows widespread, and a glass of wine between them, from which he
could drink without raising it, merely tipping the brim to his pale
little moustache. He took a sip before answering, and, still retaining
his graceful position, rolled up a pair of very light-blue eyes as he
said, in a lisping voice that was insufferably supercilious: “Ma never
does, unless it’s something about money. You may be pretty sure it’s
something about money.”

The clear, pale profile opposite him suddenly turned a deep pink, and
Lawrence looked round at him with a sharp glance, before which his
fell. The little drawling speech had been delivered with more of a
drawl than that habitual to Mr. Ferrier, perhaps, and it seemed that
there was a slight emphasis which might be regarded as significant.
Gerald had not taken any great pains to conciliate his prospective
brother-in-law, and Louis liked to remind him occasionally that the
advantages were not all on one side.

Lawrence rose carelessly from the table, and filliped a crumb of bread
off his vest. “I say, Louis,” he remarked, “do you know you have
rather a peculiar way of putting your head down to your food, instead
of raising your food to your mouth? Reminds one of—well, now, it’s a
little like the quadrupeds, isn’t it? Excuse me, that may be taken as
a compliment. I’m not sure but quadrupeds have, on the whole, rather
better manners than bipeds. Grace isn’t everything. Money is the chief
thing, after all. You can gild such wooden things with it. I’m going to
talk about it with your mother. Good-by! Don’t take too much wine.”

He sauntered out of the room, and shut the door behind him. “Vulgar
place!” he muttered, going through the entries. “Worsted rainbows
everywhere. I wonder Annette did not know better.” A contrasting
picture floated up before his mind of a cool, darkened chamber, all
pure white and celestial blue, with two little golden flames burning in
a shady nook before a marble saint, and one slender sun-ray stretched
athwart, as though the place had been let down from heaven, and the
golden rope still held it moored to that peaceful shore. The contrast
gave him a stifled feeling.

As he passed the drawing-room door, he saw Annette seated near it,
evidently on the watch for him. She started up and ran to the door the
moment he appeared. Her face had been very pale, but now the color
fluttered in it. She looked at him with anxious entreaty.

“Don’t mind if mamma is rather ... odd,” she whispered hurriedly. “You
know she has a rough way of speaking, but she means well.”

He looked down, and only just suffered her slender fingers to rest on
his arm.

“I would help it if I could, Lawrence,” she went on tremulously. “I do
the best I can, but there are times when mamma won’t listen to me. Try
not to mind what she may say ... for my sake!”

Poor Annette! She had not yet learned not to make that tender plea with
her promised husband. He tried to hide that it irritated him.

“Upon my word, I begin to think that something terrible is coming,” he
said, forcing a laugh. “The sooner I go and get it over, the better.
Don’t be alarmed. I promise not to resent anything except personal
violence. When it comes to blows, I must protect myself. But you can’t
expect a man to promise not to mind when he doesn’t know what is going
to happen.”

A door at the end of the hall was opened, and Mrs. Ferrier looked out
impatiently.

“‘Anon, anon, sir!’” the young man cried. “Now for it, Annette. One,
two, three! Let us be brave, and stand by each other. I am gone!”

Let _us_ stand by each other! Oh! yes; for ever and ever! The light
came back to the girl’s face at that. She no longer feared anything if
she and Lawrence were to stand together.

Mr. Gerald walked slowly down the hall. If his languid step and
careless air meant fearlessness, who can tell? He entered the library,
where Mrs. Ferrier sat like a highly colored statue carved in a green
chair, her hands in her lap (her paws in her lap, the young man thought
savagely). She looked stolid and determined. The calm superiority which
he could assume with Annette would have no effect here. Not only was
Mrs. Ferrier not in love with him, which made a vast difference, but
she was incapable of appreciating his real advantages over her, though,
perhaps, a mistaken perception of them inspired her at times with a
sort of dislike. There is nothing which a low and rude mind more surely
resents and distrusts than gentle manners.

The self-possessed and supercilious man of society quailed before the
_ci-devant_ washwoman. What would she care for a scene? What shrinking
would she have from the insulting word, the coarse taunt? What fine
sense had she to stop her at the point where enough had been said, and
prevent the gratuitous pouring out of all that anger that showed in her
sullen face? Lawrence Gerald took a strong hold on his self-control,
and settled instantly upon the only course of action possible to him.
He could not defy the woman, for he was in some way in her power. He
could marry Annette in spite of her, but that would be to make Annette
worse than worthless to him. Not one dollar could he ever hope to
receive if he made an enemy of Mrs. Ferrier; and money he must have.
He felt now with a new keenness, when he perceived himself to be in
danger of loss, how terrible it would be to find those expectations of
prosperity which he had been entertaining snatched away from him.

Mrs. Ferrier looked at him glumly, not lady enough to point him to
a seat, or to smooth in any way the approaches to a disagreeable
interview. There was no softness nor delicacy in her nature, and
now her heart was full of jealous suspicion and a sense of outraged
justice, as she understood justice.

The young man seated himself in a chair directly in front of her—he
would not act as though afraid to meet her gaze—leaned forward with
his arms on his knees, looked down at the eyeglasses he held, and
waited for her to begin. A more polite attitude would have been thrown
away on her, and he needed some little shield. Besides, her threatening
looks had been so undisguised that an assumption of smiling ease would
only have increased her anger.

The woman’s hard, critical eyes looked him over as he waited there,
and marked the finish of his toilet, and reckoned the cost of it, and
snapped at sight of the deep purple amethysts in his cuff-buttons, not
knowing that they were heir-looms, and the gift of his mother. He was
dressed quite like a fine gentleman, she thought; and yet, what was
he? Nothing but a pauper who was trying to get her money. She longed
to tell him so, and would have expressed herself quite plainly to that
effect upon a very small provocation.

“I want to know if you’ve broken that promise you made me six months
ago,” she said roughly, having grown more angry with this survey. “I
hear that you have.”

“What promise?” he asked calmly, glancing up.

“You know well enough what I mean,” she retorted. “You promised never
to gamble again, and I told you what you might depend on if you did,
and I mean to keep my word. Now, I should like to know the truth. I’ve
been hearing things about you.”

A deep red stained his face, and his lips were pressed tightly
together. It was hard to be spoken to in that way, and not resent
it. “When I make a promise, I usually keep it,” he replied, in a
constrained voice.

“That’s no answer to my question,” Mrs. Ferrier exclaimed, her hands
clenching themselves in her lap. “I’ll have the truth without any
roundabout. Somebody—no matter who—has told me you owe fifteen
hundred dollars that you lost by gambling. Is it true or not? That is
what I want to know.”

Lawrence Gerald raised his bright eyes, and looked steadily at her. “It
is false!” he said.

This calm and deliberate denial disconcerted Mrs. Ferrier. She had not
expected him to confess fully to such a charge; neither, much as she
distrusted him, had she thought him capable of a deliberate lie if the
charge were true—some sense of his better qualities had penetrated her
thus far—but she had looked for shuffling and evasion.

He was not slow to see that the battle was at an end, and in the same
moment his perfect self-restraint vanished. “May I ask where you heard
this interesting story?” he demanded, drawing himself up.

Her confusion increased. The truth was that she had heard it from her
son; but Louis had begged her not to betray him as the informant, and
his story had been founded on hints merely. “It’s no use telling where
I heard it,” she said. “I’ll take your word. But since you’ve given
that, of course you won’t have any objection to giving your oath. If
you will swear that you don’t owe any gambling debts, I’ll say no more,
unless I hear more.”

He reddened violently. “I will not do it!” he exclaimed. “If my word
is not good, my oath would not be. You ought to be satisfied. And if
you will allow me, I will go to Annette now, unless you have some other
subject to propose.”

He had risen, his manner full of haughtiness, when she stopped him: “I
haven’t quite got through yet. Don’t be in such a hurry.”

He did not seat himself again, but, leaning on the back of a chair,
looked at her fully.

“I wish you would sit down,” she said. “It isn’t pleasant to have you
standing up when I want to talk to you.”

He smiled, not very pleasantly, and seated himself, looking at her with
a steady gaze that was inexpressibly bitter and secretive. She returned
it with a more piercing regard than one would have thought those
insignificant eyes capable of. She had not been able to understand his
proud scruple, and her suspicions were alive again.

“If all goes right,” she began, watching him closely, “I’m willing that
you and Annette should be married the first of September. I’ve made up
my mind what I will do for you. You shall have five hundred dollars to
go on a journey with, and then you will come back and live with me here
two years. I’ll give you your board, and make Annette an allowance of
five hundred a year, and see about some business for you. But I won’t
pay any debts; and, if any such debts come up as we have been talking
about, off you will go. If this story I’ve heard turns out to be true,
not one dollar more of mine do you ever get, no matter when I find it
out.”

“I will speak to Annette about it,” he said quietly. “Is that all?”

She answered with a short nod.

Annette was anxiously waiting for him. “What is it?” she asked, when
she saw his face.

He snatched his hat from the table. “Come out into the air,” he said;
“I am stifling here.”

She followed him into the gardens, where an arbor screened them from
view. “Did you know what your mother was going to say to me?” he asked.

“No!” It was all she had strength to utter.

“Nothing of it?”

“Nothing, Lawrence. I saw that she did not mean to tell me, so I would
not ask. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

He hesitated a moment. Since she did not know, there was no need to
tell her all. He told her only her mother’s plans regarding their
marriage.

“You see it’s a sort of ticket-of-leave,” he said, smiling faintly. “We
are to be under _surveillance_. Hadn’t you better give me up, Annette?
She will like any one else better.”

The sky and garden swam round before her eyes. She said nothing, but
waited.

“I only propose it for your sake,” he added more gently, startled at
her pallor. “In marrying me, you run the risk of being poor. If that
doesn’t frighten you, then it’s all right.”

Her color came back again; but no smile came with it. These shocks had
been repeated too many times to find her with the same elasticity.

“This cannot go on a great while,” she said, folding her hands in her
lap, and looking down. “Mamma cannot always be so unreasonable. The
best way now is to make no opposition to her, whatever she proposes. I
may be able to influence her as we wish after a while. You may be sure
that I shall try. Meantime, let us be quiet. I have learned, Lawrence,
never to contend unless I can be pretty sure of victory. It is a hard
lesson, but we have to learn it, and many harder ones, too. The best
way for you is to laugh and seem careless, whether you feel so or not.
The one who laughs succeeds. It is strange, but the moment a person
acts as if he felt humiliated, people seem to be possessed of a desire
to humiliate him still more. It doesn’t do in the world to confess to
any weakness or failure. I have always noticed that people stand in awe
of those who appear to be perfectly self-confident and contented.”

Lawrence Gerald looked at her in surprise as she said this in a calm
and steady way quite new to him. Some thought of her being strong and
helpful in other ways besides money-bringing glanced through his mind.
“You know the world at least, Annette,” he said, with a half-smile.

No smile nor word replied. She was looking back, and remembering how
she had learned the world. She, a poor, low-born girl, ignorant but
enthusiastic and daring, had been suddenly endowed with wealth, and
thrown upon that world with no one to teach her how to act properly.
She had learned by the sneers and bitterness, the ridicule and
jibes, her blunders had excited. Mortification, anger, tears, and
disappointments had taught her. Instead of having been led, she had
been spurred along the way of life. She had seen her best intentions
and most generous feelings held as nothing, because of some fault
in their manifestation; had found the friendships she grasped at,
believing them real, change to an evasive coldness with only a
surface-froth of sweet pretence. Strife lay behind her, and, looking
forward, she saw strife in the future. As she made this swift review,
it happened to her as it has happened to others when some crisis or
some strong emotion has forced them to lift their eyes from their
immediate daily cares; and as the curtain veiling the future wavered in
that breeze, they have caught a glimpse of life as a whole, and found
it terrible. Perhaps in that moment Annette Ferrier saw nothing but
dust and ashes in all her hopes of earthly happiness, and felt a brief
longing to hide her face from them for ever.

“Your company are coming,” Lawrence said. He had been watching her with
curiosity and surprise. It was the first time she had ever disregarded
his presence, and the first time he had found her really worthy of
respect.

She roused herself, not with a start, as if coming back to a real
present from some trivial abstraction, but slowly and almost
reluctantly, as though turning from weighty matters to attend to
trifles.

“Can you be bright and cheerful now?” she asked, smiling on him with
some unconscious superiority in her air. “These little things are not
worth fretting for. All will come right, if we keep up our courage.”

As she held out her hand to him, he took it in his and carried it to
his lips. “You’re a good creature!” he said most sincerely.

And in this amicable frame of mind they went to join the company.

Crichton was eminently a musical city. In the other arts, they were
perhaps superficial and pretentious; but this of music was ardently and
assiduously cultivated by every one. Wealthy ladies studied it with all
the devotion of professional people, and there were not a few who might
have made it a successful profession. Among these was Annette Ferrier,
whose clear, high soprano had a brilliant effect in _bravuras_ or
compositions requiring strong passion in the rendering. All this talent
and cultivation the Crichton ladies did not by any means allow to be
wasted in private life. Clubs and associations kept up their emulation
and skill, and charitable objects and public festivals afforded them
the opportunity for that public display without which their zeal might
have languished. The present rehearsal was for one of these concerts.

They were to sing in the new conservatory, which was admirable for
that purpose. It was only just completed—an immense parallelogram
joined to the southwestern corner of the house, with a high roof, and
tall pillars making a sort of porch at the end. No plants had yet been
arranged, but azaleas and rhododendrons in full bloom had been brought
in and set in a thicket along the bases of the pillars, looking, in all
their airy roseate flush of graduated tints, as if a sunset cloud had
dropped there. Against this background the benches for the singers were
ranged, and Annette’s grand piano brought out for Mr. Schöninger, their
leader. Sofas and arm-chairs were placed near the long windows opening
into the house for a small company of listeners.

“I wish Mother Chevreuse could have come,” Mrs. Ferrier said, surveying
the preparations with complacent satisfaction.

Mother Chevreuse was employed much more to her own liking than she
would have been in listening to the most excellent music in the world:
she was waiting for her son to come home from his collecting, and take
tea with her in her cosy little parlor. If the day should prove to
have been successful to him, then he could rest a whole month; and,
in expectation of his success, she had made a little gala of it, and
adorned her room and table with flowers. The curtains next the church
were looped back, to show a group of sunlighted tree-tops and an edge
of a bright cloud, since the high walls hid the sunset from this room.
The priest’s slippers and dressing-gown were ready for him, and an
arm-chair set in his favorite place. He must rest after his hard day’s
work. The evening paper lay folded within reach.

Mother Chevreuse looked smilingly about, and saw that all was ready.
The green china tea-set and beautiful old-fashioned silver that had
been preserved from her wedding presents made the little table look
gay, and the flowers and a plate of golden honeycomb added a touch
of poetry. Everything was as she would have wished it—the picture
beautifully peaceful and homelike.

“What would he do without me?” she murmured involuntarily.

The thought called up a train of sad fancies, and, as she stood looking
out toward the last sunny cloud of evening, long quivering rays seemed
to stretch toward her from it. She clasped her hands and raised her
eyes, to pray that she might long be spared to him; but the words were
stopped on her lips. There was a momentary struggle, then “Thy will be
done!” dropped faintly.

At this moment, she heard a familiar step on the sidewalk, the street
door opened and banged to again, and in a moment more F. Chevreuse
stood on the threshold, his face bright with exercise and pleasure.

“Well?” his mother said, seeing success in his air.

He drew himself up with an expression of immense consequence, and began
to declaim:

  “‘Dick,’ says he,
  ‘What,’ says he,
  ‘Fetch me my hat,’ says he,
  ‘For I will go,’ says he,
  ‘To Timahoe,’ says he,
  ‘To the fair,’ says he,
  ‘To buy all that’s there,’ says he.”

“You’ve made out the whole sum!” was her joyful interpretation.

“Yes; and more,” he answered. “I am rich, Mother Chevreuse. All the
way home, my mind has been running on golden altar-services and old
masters.”

Mother Chevreuse seated herself behind the tea-tray, set a green and
gold cup into its appropriate saucer, and selected a particular spoon
which she always gave her son—one with a wheat-ear curling about
the quaint, half-effaced initials; he, insensible man that he was,
unconscious whether it was silver or tin.

“While you have a resting-place for the Master of masters, you need not
give much thought to any other,” she said. “But I own that my thoughts
often run on a golden altar-service. Only to-day I was reckoning that
what I possess of my own would buy one.”

“O vanity!” laughed the priest. “You want to make a show, mother.
Instead of being content to help with the brick and mortar, or the iron
pillars, you must approach the very Holy of Holies, and shine in the
tabernacle itself. Fie, Mother Chevreuse!”

“I mentioned it to F. White,” she said, “and he almost reproved me.
He said that there was more need of feeding the hungry than of buying
golden altar-vessels. I told him that gold endures, but bread is soon
eaten; and he answered that, if the eating of bread saved from theft
or starvation, and put hope into a breaking heart, it was making finer
gold than could be wrought into a chalice. A good deal of grace may be
found in a loaf of bread, said F. White.”

“That’s true,” answered the priest cheerfully. “F. White has sense,
though he grudges me a gold chalice. I’ll remember that when he comes
here begging for his organ. F. White, says I, it’s sheer vanity to talk
of organs when there are suffering poor in the world. A tobacco-pipe is
better than an organ-pipe, when it stops an oath in the mouth of a poor
hod-carrier who has no other comfort but his smoke. Much grace may be
found in a clay pipe, F. White, my darling.”

Merry, foolish talk, but innocent and restful.

“And, by the way,” resumed the priest, “that same F. White has gone
away, and I must go and attend a sick call for him. I got the telegram
as I came along.”

“Not to-night!” the mother exclaimed.

“Yes, to-night. I sent word that I would come. The man is in danger.
Besides, I could not spare time to-morrow forenoon. I can drive the
five miles before ten o’clock, stay the rest of the night there, and
come home in the morning in time to say Mass at six o’clock. That is
the best plan. I don’t care to be out very late.”

“It is the better way,” she said, but looked disappointed. “I don’t
like to have you out late at night, it gives you such headaches.”

“Headache is easier to bear than heart-ache, mother,” said the priest
brightly, and went to the window to give Andrew his order for the
carriage. “Have it ready in front of the church at a quarter before
nine o’clock,” he said. “And, Andrew, light the gas in the sacristy.”

Mother Chevreuse anxiously served her son, urged him to take a muffler,
lest the night air should prove chilly, poured a second cup of tea
for him, and, when he was ready to start, stood looking earnestly at
him, half in pride of his stalwart manliness, half in tender, motherly
anxiety lest some accident should befall him on the long, lonely drive.

“Hadn’t you better take Andrew with you?” she suggested.

“And why should I take Andrew with me?” the priest asked, putting a
stole in his pocket.

“Why ...” she hesitated, ashamed of her womanish fears.

“An excellent reason!” he laughed. “No, madam; I shall take no one
with me but my good angel. My buggy holds but two. Good-night. Sleep
soundly, and God bless you!”

She stood with her lips slightly parted, watching him earnestly, as if
fearful of losing some slight word or glance; but his cheerful talk
woke no smile in her face.

He would not appear to notice anything unusual in her manner, and was
going out, when she stopped him.

“Give me your blessing, dear, before you go,” she whispered, and fell
on her knees before him; and, when he had given it, she rose and tried
to smile.

The priest was disturbed. “Don’t you feel well to-night, mother?” he
asked.

“Yes, quite well,” she replied gently. “Perhaps I am foolish to be so
nervous about your going. It seems a lonely drive. Go now, or you will
be late.”

She followed him to the door, and stood there till she saw him come out
of the church, step into his buggy, and drive away.

“Good-night! good-night!” she said, listening till the last sound of
his carriage-wheels died into stillness; then, breathing a prayer for
his safety, she went back to her own room.

Jane had cleared away the table, drawn the curtains, and lighted a
lamp, and had gone down to her company in the kitchen.

“What does make me so lonely and fearful?” exclaimed the lady, wringing
her cold hands.

She busied herself in little things, trying to drive the trouble away;
refolded the paper her son had not found time to read, pushed his
arm-chair nearer the table for herself, and, discovering a flake of
smooth-pressed clay which his boot had left on the carpet, took it up,
and threw it into the fireplace. That homely little service brought a
faint smile to her face.

“The careless boy!” she said fondly. “He never could remember to wipe
his boots on coming in, even when he was a mere lad. I can see his
bright face now as it looked when he would argue me out of scolding
him. His mind was occupied with lofty matters, he said; he could not
bring it down to boots and mud. It sounded like a jest; but who knows
if he might not even then have been about his Father’s business!”

Dropping into his chair, she sat thinking over the old time and her
boy’s childhood. How happy and peaceful their life had been! Half
chiding herself, as if she knew he would have called it folly, she
went into her bedroom, and brought our a little trunk, in which were
preserved _souvenirs_ memorable in her life and his.

There was his christening-robe. She shook out the length, and pushed
two of her fingers through the tiny embroidered sleeve.

“How little we dream what the future is to be!” she murmured. “I wonder
how I would have felt if, when I was embroidering this, there had
risen before my eyes the vision of a chasuble hanging above it? But I
couldn’t have been prouder of him than I was. He was a fine healthy
boy, and had a will of his own even then. When he was baptized, he got
the priest’s stole in his baby fist, and I had to pull it away finger
by finger, the little fellow clinging all the time.”

There were boyish toys, schoolbooks adorned with preposterous
pencil-drawings, in which the human figure was represented by three
spheres set one over the other, and supported on two sticks; there were
letters written his mother while he was away from home, at school or
college, and a collection of locks of hair cut on successive birthdays,
till the boy had laughed her out of the custom. She placed these side
by side now, ranging them according to their dates, and studied the
gradual change from the silken-silvery crescent of a curl cut from the
head of the year-old babe, through deepening shades, to the thick brown
tress cut on his twentieth birthday. Every little lock had its story to
tell, and she went over each, ending with a kiss, in fancy kissing the
child’s face she seemed again to see. And as she sat there conning the
past, memory struck every chord of her heart, from the sweet, far-away
vibration when her first-born was placed in her arms, and coming down
through deepening tones to the present.

She lifted her face, that had been bent over these mementos. “Now he
is Father Chevreuse, and I am an old woman!” she said; and, sighing,
rose and put the souvenirs all away. “We have had a glad and prosperous
life; how little of sorrow, how little of adversity! I never before
realized how much I have to be thankful for.”

Presently she put a veil over her head, and went out through the
basement into the church to say her prayers. She always said her
evening prayers before the altar; and now she had double cause to be
scrupulous. She must atone for past unthankfulness, and pray for her
son’s safe return.

By ten o’clock, the house was closed for the night, and the inmates
had all gone to their quiet slumber. Mother Chevreuse’s uneasiness was
all gone, and, after devotions of unusual fervor, she felt an unwonted
peace. “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” she said, and sank
to sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

About midnight, she started up, wide-awake, and listened. There was a
low, stealthy sound, as of a door being softly opened. Could her son
have changed his mind, and come home again? Some one was certainly in
his room. She stepped out of bed, and listened keenly. There was a
faint noise like the rattle of a latch or lock, and then a soft step
retreating.

“It is he come back!” she thought joyfully; and, even in thinking so,
was smitten by a wild and sudden fear. She slipped on a dressing-gown
and sandals, and hurried toward the door. “My son!” she said
breathlessly as she opened it.

Faintly seen in the dim light, a man’s form was leaving the room by the
entry. A shawl or cloak wrapped him from head to foot, and he held a
little chest in his hand. In that chest F. Chevreuse kept his money.

All personal fear deserted his mother’s heart at that sight. She
thought only that the fruit of her son’s long labors was being carried
away under her eyes, and that, after the brief joy of his success, he
would come home to bitterness and disappointment.

She ran after the retreating figure, and caught it by the arm. “Shame!
shame!” she cried. “It is the money of the poor. It belongs to God.
Leave it, in God’s name.”

The man bent down, and wrapped his form still more closely from
recognition, as he wrenched himself loose. But while forced to let go
his arm, she caught at the casket he held, and clung with all her
strength, calling for help.

“Let go!” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “Let go, or I shall do you
harm!”

As she still clung and cried for help, they stood at the head of the
stairs leading to the basement of the house. Steps were heard below,
and Jane’s voice calling Andrew, and screaming from the window.

The man made one more fierce effort to free himself. Drawing back from
the stairs, he turned quickly, and threw himself forward again. There
was a sharp cry, “My son!” and a fall. Then a fainter cry, “My God!”
and then silence.




TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING.


WHAT does one gain by travelling? says some old wiseacre, with a shake
of the head. Better the man that settles down and grows with his native
or adopted dwelling-place. “The rolling stone gathers no moss,” is a
venerable saying. Men who stay only a short time in one place can never
be sufficiently known or loved by any people, and hence their credit
and fortune cannot increase.

What does one not gain by travelling? says the boy who is just old
enough to relish _Robinson Crusoe_, whose natural curiosity is feverish
for knowledge. For him, all countries are more interesting than his
own. He longs to climb the hill that bounds his native plain, to see
what lies beyond. No one for him so interesting as the soldier or
sailor come back from foreign lands, and he asks, with deep, attentive
inquiry, “if there are boys in such places, too, and whether they
are born there, or if they also went away from here?” Power, wealth,
beauty, have no charm for him. Money he values merely because it opens
his path to distant lands; and his instinctive desire to know is the
passion of his youth. This is the story of all of us, at least all of
us boys. It is only when our curiosity is satisfied either by personal
experience or by credible hearsay, when we meet members of the whole
human family, and find them seeking in our country that peace and
beauty which we used to ascribe to theirs—it is then we realize that
life is not poetry; that one’s native land is generally happiest for
him; and that the best thing for one to do is to choose a spot thereof,
and, as “H. G.” used to say, “to settle down and rise with it.”

Between the sturdy proverb of the oldest inhabitant and the boundless
dream of the boy exists the medium wherein we shall find the uses of
travel. There is nothing which may not be abused, and travelling may
degenerate into a passion in individuals; but the strength of the ties
of country, home, and family, whereby nature has bound us, forbids any
but solitary instances of men who have wandered, useless vagabonds on
the earth, trespassing on all countries, and aiding none; while, if the
Holy Ghost call forth some apostle from his kindred to sound the trump
of faith among many peoples, the Lord, who gives him an extraordinary
mission, will endow him with special grace, and the world will gain
by his vocation. This is the greatest traveller: who goes forth, not
to his own gain, nor to further his nation’s weal, but to extend the
kingdom of God on earth; to enlighten those who sit in darkness, and
bring them to the knowledge of the truth.

Why do people travel? People travel for health, for pleasure, for
business, and for knowledge. Some fifty thousand Americans travelled
in Europe last summer with one or other of these objects in view.
Have they all gained by their trip? Has the nation profited? Are they
healthier, happier, richer, wiser, for their tour in Europe? A general
answer to these questions cannot be given. All depends on the character
of the individuals who composed that large army. Their particular
circumstances and characteristics may have caused some to gain, others
to lose, both when there is question of health, as well as when we
speak of enjoyment, riches, and useful knowledge. I was one of that
invading army that descended on Europe last year, and will try to make
others partakers of whatever is communicable of the advantages derived
from the trip which under advice I took to the other hemisphere. We
will see who are they that lose by going abroad, what danger and
damage they incur, and the reasons why. We will also find what persons
profit by the excursion, what dispositions are required for this; and,
by contrasting and comparing each, we shall be enabled to conclude
how much of loss and how much of gain there is in travel, how the
one is avoided, and the other achieved. All this I will make bold to
illustrate from my own experience.

A change of air is well known to influence one’s health very much; for
a man lives as much on good air as on what are commonly considered the
elements of sustenance. I heard a gentleman state that the change from
Newburg to New York in summer had caused him to gain eleven pounds
in a fortnight. It was all in the change. A citizen flying from this
pent-up atmosphere to the expanded vision and pure breezes of that
delightful town could hardly have gained more in the same period. Hence
the doctors prescribe change of air so frequently. An English physician
says: “It is undoubted, explain it how we may, that a change of air,
diet, and scene rouses the faculties, improves the appetite, and
raises the spirits. When you set out for France, then, on your little
trip of twenty-five miles across the channel, pray Heaven you may
get thoroughly sea-sick, that nothing old or vitiated may make a bad
foundation for the new man you are going to build up.” People from the
plain gain by a change to the mountains; people from the mountain by
visiting the plains. People from inland by going to the sea-shore, and
those from the beach by retiring to the meadows. As with the body, so
with the mind. Our faculties become as it were choked up and stagnant
by continual monotony; even the most brilliant conversation, music, the
best jokes of a friend, fail at last to please or rouse the spirit.
Activity and exercise are necessary for the mind and soul as well as
for the body, and are obtained by seeking contact and conflict with new
ideas, sights, and wonders to move the imagination; and the consequent
enlivening of the spirits acts at once on the body, and does more
to restore physical power than any material food. It is by visiting
foreign places; seeing strange customs which excite our curiosity;
wondering at Alpine heights and Rhenish castles; sympathizing with the
decayed glories of Venice and old Rome; confronting ourselves with the
soul-entrancing beauty of the Bay of Naples and the awe of that burning
mountain which stirs the depths of the spirit—it is thus we produce
that friction, that reaction requisite for rousing soul and body from
tepidity and the stagnancy of hypochondria and disease. Our spirits
rise, the circulation is quickened by the winds of France and the music
of Italy, the strange _cuisine_ of other lands start all our organs
into activity, and happiness and health are the result.

There are those, however, who travel, and yet gain neither in spirits
nor in health. What often makes the difference, other things being
equal, is the bigotry and contrariety of certain individuals. Some
persons are so ignorant, and therefore so bigoted, that they will never
tolerate customs different from their own, hold all who think otherwise
than they in profound contempt, and will persist in following their
own ways no matter where they go, and although the habits and opinions
of an entire nation are opposed to them. Such persons never gain good
spirits; for they will not open the windows of their miserable little
souls, to let in the rays of happiness in which the people about are
basking. An Englishman of fifty years ago, for instance, sets out with
the notion that whatever is not English is contemptible. Hence, he is
disgusted with the pleasant sounds of the French tongue; the agreeable
politeness of the lady in the restaurant irritates him—perhaps he
feels angry that a Frenchwoman should be so much at ease in his
presence; the play he despises, because his taste is too debased to
rise to its enjoyment, or because Parisians applaud it. He will have
his beefsteak in the morning and his heavy slices of bread, no matter
though the whole French nation should think a light breakfast more
healthful. Hence, it is impossible that this man’s health should
improve. Instead of getting mentally sea-sick (he can’t help getting
bodily so; and the prouder he is, the more amusing his appearance
then), and throwing off prejudice, he keeps in his mind a bile that
jaundices his views, and corrodes every healthy idea that may possibly
enter his soul. He follows his own notions at the table; and, as the
food and habits of his northern isle do not suit southern latitudes, of
course he gains nothing in health, and often becomes sick, and returns
home disgusted with dons and messieurs, signors and mynheers, and tells
you “there’s no use in travel—he tried it.” The first requisite, then,
is, when you go to Rome, to do as the Romans do. The customs of a place
show what its inhabitants prefer; and it is silly in any man to set his
own little ideas against the experience of a whole people.

My friend and I had the misfortune to meet one of this class on setting
out on our trip, and thrown together as we necessarily were on an ocean
steamship, it caused us a great deal of inconvenience. The poor man was
actually yellow from dyspepsia and bigotry. I am sorry to say he passed
for an American. Whether his bigotry caused that viselike fastening up
of his better nature, and, reacting on his body, ruined his digestion,
as might easily be, or whether the desperate state of his chylopoetic
fluids produced a corresponding straitness in his soul, which we
assumed as the more charitable supposition, I can’t say; but certainly
all the benefit of new and entertaining society, all the advantages of
sea air, change of diet, etc., were lost, necessarily lost to him. What
was the cause of his old-fogyism? One dreadful incubus—you might call
it a standing evil, a nightmare (diurnal as well as nocturnal)—was
the presence at the same table, and in the willing association of
those whom he also preferred, and whose company he courted, of us two
priests. The man could not look us in the face, could not accept the
salt at our hands, would not “do us the pleasure of wine,” as they
say on English ships; in fact, his bigotry stood between him and his
own enjoyment and good appetite, rendered our position disagreeable,
caused the rest of the company (Protestants themselves) to condemn
his behavior in the strongest terms on deck, and ruined the pleasure
of our voyage, at least during the time spent at table. One of his
acquaintances was a whole-souled, honest, generous gentleman, a
Methodist from Brooklyn. He, on his part, took every opportunity to
throw sunshine about him, and to be polite to us especially, as if to
make up for the fellow’s savageness; and one day, when the dyspeptic
was complaining to the waiter as bitterly as if he were being flayed
alive, the other turned to him, and said aloud: “Ebenezer, if I was an
undertaker getting up a funeral, I’d hire you for chief mourner.” John
invited us to his cabin, and the other turned away from its door when
he saw us within. John proposed to take his cheerful, amiable wife to
Ireland first; Ebenezer declared his abhorrence of the Irish and his
contempt for Killarney. “He wouldn’t advise anybody to go to Ireland;
he’d been there three times, and there was nothing to see but beggars.”
John took him up before the company: “Why did you go there the second
and third time, Eben?”—a question which disconcerted the dyspeptic,
and caused intense amusement to the passengers. Such an one had no use
to go travelling for health or anything else. You must open the windows
of your soul, slacken the risible muscles of your face, and reduce
yourself to a soft, pliable, impressionable condition, if you want to
benefit by change of air, scenery, and society. Dry, hard wax does not
receive the impression of the seal. But let a man set out with proper
dispositions, leave care and prejudice behind, be ready to speak of
men and things as he will find them, let no thought of business come
up for a while, but move along easily and quietly through the scenes
and people of other lands, and he will experience the advantages of
travelling for health.

Another motive for travel is business. The post and the telegraph
afford wonderful facilities for carrying on commercial relations
between different firms and branches of the same house in different
countries; but many circumstances render personal visits and interviews
often necessary. Hence, the number of travellers on business is very
large. Many New York houses send trusty men to Europe annually or
oftener to buy the stuffs and to inspect and select the styles which
fickle fashion imposes on her votaries.

The American is not satisfied with looking through foreign eyes, for
he knows that short or long-sightedness is often the defect of even
business men in those old countries. Hence, he goes to see and inspect
for himself, and commonly finds an opening where the Frenchman, the
German, even the Englishman, did not suspect its existence; throws a
bridge over a chasm which to them seemed impassable; works his way
through difficulties they thought unsurmountable; and pushing on over
precipices and untrodden ways, “that banner with the strange device,
Excelsior,” in his hands, astonishes the natives, and secures the trade
of the world. Thus Singer, the sewing-machine man, goes to the ancient
mediæval city of Nürnberg, amongst other places—a city seemingly so
dead as to have recently erected another monument to Albrecht Dürer,
the artist, the only statue in the town; as if the last man of push and
note they produced was dead 350 years. Singer goes to this sleepy old
city, and, in spite of the depth and inflexibility of the old channels
in which trade had been running for a thousand years, attempts to
revolutionize it all at once with his sewing-machine. In spite of the
opposition of the tailors, which similar endeavors in parts of Great
Britain failed to overcome, he succeeds; for, instead of hiring a plain
office, in the simple manner of the country, and cautiously investing
a little capital at the outset, the American, with characteristic
enterprise and self-approved wisdom, spends hundreds in advertising
and thousands in erecting a building the most imposing and expensive
of its kind in the venerable city, astonishes the slow Bavarians while
attracting them by the employment he gives, makes them believe that
he is indeed the bringer of the great good he claims, obtains their
trade, and, while filling his own pockets, is a herald of his country’s
genius and enterprise. Another instance: while sailing down the Rhine
last October in one of those steamers which approach nearest to the
graceful beauties of our own rivers, and which are therefore most
highly praised by tourists, we were a little surprised and considerably
proud at seeing “Lent’s Floating American Circus” (like a vast floating
bath) paying a visit to one of the cities of that noble stream, up
and down whose banks it for ever roves, catering for the amusement
and instruction and picking up the loose thalers of Fatherland with
as much _sang-froid_ as Dan Rice on our Mississippi. When the people
of the Continent behold the Americans coming three thousand miles
over the sea, passing inside England, from whom we learnt these very
institutions, whose child our nation was, they naturally form a very
high opinion of the superior enterprise and skill of the republic, so
that our democratic institutions gain respect and our flag honor, while
English influence gradually decays. Thus George Pullman goes over and
steps in before John Bull, and secures the sleeping-car business on the
Continent. Nay, it is only now that, roused by his aggressive boldness,
England begins to adopt our great improvements in travel, afraid
of being left still more shamefully behind. Thus does the business
traveller, while making his own fortune, advance his country’s name
and influence; and his successful policy is always that of generosity,
accommodation, and politeness.

A class of men called commercial travellers is very numerous in England
and Ireland. They are a relic of the period preceding this great
advertising age, and go about from town to town soliciting orders and
selling goods of which they carry samples. Many of them are peddlers
also, and sometimes carry great value in money, jewelry, etc., and
offer story-tellers an attractive field for wild tales of robbery on
lonely roads, and murder in wayside inns. They all have some story
of this kind to relate. In Ireland, a room in every hotel is set
apart, called the commercial room, for the exclusive use of these men,
whose business transactions and responsibility require special care
and convenience, and where they can deposit their valuables without
danger of loss or damage. I was in a car once with one of these lonely
gentlemen, and he told me he travelled from the 1st of January to the
23d December.

The company of a wife is not considered conducive either to economy or
to profit; but their life must be a dreary one, especially in Ireland,
where the accommodation on the railroads and in some of the country
hotels is not only very poor, but even dangerous to health. In England
even, they have just begun to heat their cars, which are far below
those on the Continent; and in Ireland, at least in winter, I have had
to sleep in a room with a quarter inch of mildew dank and dark upon
the walls. Persons travelling for pleasure, however, are not generally
subjected to this last inconvenience, as the localities frequented by
tourists are furnished with whatever is needful for their comfort.

Pleasure is, doubtless, the object of most travellers; but it includes
much more than the word in its usual acceptance might imply. The
wealthy English travel in the mild, genial climates of southern Europe
during the prevalence at home of that indescribably abominable weather
which sits on London like a plague during the autumn and winter. Some
of them also go abroad because they cannot afford to reside at home.
They revel in the atmosphere of Rome and Naples—so mild that oranges
bloom and flowers deck the walls all through the wintry season. The sun
is bright, while the weather is not so mild as to interfere with balls,
parties, concerts, etc.; and hunting the fox, the wild boar, and the
deer, with the intoxicating pleasures of the carnival, and visits to
the interesting monuments of pagan and Christian times, make up a round
of diversion and entertainment peculiar to Italy.

The American tourist partakes of the same enjoyments, only that his
pleasure is sometimes interrupted and marred by the workings of his
practical and ever-active brain. I heard of one of our countrymen
paying a moonlight visit to that noblest of ruins, the Coliseum, in
company with a party composed of various nationalities. While they
gazed in silent, entranced contemplation at its dark majesty, with the
rays of the pale planet making its black recesses visible by contrast;
while they pictured to themselves 100,000 fair women and brave men
seated in its circuit, witnessing the bloody tragedy of the dying
gladiator or the triumphant martyr of Christ, the Yankee was asked
his impressions, and replied, on reflection, that “it was rayther
large, but money might be in the concern if ‘twas only roofed in and
whitewashed!”

I need not go to great length to show the pleasure which travelling
affords; the delight which all take in seeing new and strange places,
customs, works of art, ruins of antiquity, cataracts, mountains,
rivers, etc.—all of which have a wonderful charm in lightening one’s
heart, wearied by care; in purifying and strengthening the brain,
dimmed and dizzied by labor, and filling us with pure and exquisite
delight. Besides, many find in travel a refuge from the routine of
fashion, and the prospect of that lingering pain which follows her
severe, artificial, often painful enjoyments. In other countries you
do as you please. You are not criticised if you be not absolutely _en
rapport_ with the usages of the tyrant fashion at home, because she has
stayed there; nor with the ways of her sister abroad, because no one
extages pects you to be _au fait_ in customs not your own. Moreover,
you can live more cheaply, and your health is benefited by the change.
Hence, families broken down often leave England and go abroad for
economy’s sake, thus obtaining freedom by their apparent misfortune.

The student of history and the classics is the one who finds most
pleasure in visiting foreign lands. Every town, every river, plain,
mountain range, and country, has an indescribable attraction for him,
and he gazes still charmed upon scenes which may very soon sate the
curiosity of others. His pleasure is one which, if you are a reader,
you will appreciate; and, if not, it would be impossible for me to make
you understand. See one of these visiting Lake George. His imagination
covers the water with the three hundred boats in which Montcalm
advanced to the siege of Fort William Henry. He sees Leatherstocking
and Uncas plodding through the forest on their war-path, dropping
silently down the stream by night, and putting up their heads from
under the water for a stolen breath of air, while the bushes on the
bank are filled with savages watching for their scalps; stopping to eat
and drink in the middle of the forest at what we now call the Congress
Spring at Saratoga. Let him gaze for the first time on the coast of
Ireland—what an interest has that venerable and lovely land for him!
He at once looks out for the ruined castles of her decayed nobility;
he seeks thirstingly a sight of those round towers which stand old but
fresh monuments of that time “when Malachy wore the collar of gold
which he won from the proud invader”; and he remains alone, apart on
the deck, recalling in sad satisfaction the scene that presented itself
long ago, when abbeys, churches, and schools crowned the fair hill-tops
of Erin. Let him stroll companionless through London’s busy streets—he
is not alone. David Copperfield, Pickwick, Micawber, Sim Tappertit,
Agnes, Little Dorrit, Bill Sykes, and Fagin are always passing and
repassing; acting their parts for his entertainment. Let him view the
tall, white cliffs of Dover, and he sees Cæsar’s fleet approaching to
the conquest of Albion. Calais recalls the days of Catholic England’s
greatest military glory. Every spot of France, Germany, Italy lives
again for him in one short space its life of two or three thousand
years; for all the events of its history, all the heroes of its glory,
are present to his memory and imagination even more than their present
phases to his vision to-day. He sees the tradesmen of Flanders, the
butchers, bakers, weavers, smiths, combining for the liberation of
their country at the battle of the Golden Spurs, so called from the
immense number of these articles found on the field, representing the
number of professional soldiers of knightly rank slain by these bold
democrats, whose liberties they came to invade. He feasts his eyes
upon the “vine-clad hills of Bingen, fair Bingen on the Rhine,” which
his boyish imagination had pictured and laid back in the most loving
recesses of his heart. In Switzerland, the mountain-passes are crowned
for him by the native heroes, sons of Tell, and of those others who, in
the days of Catholic Switzerland, rose against the Austrian despot, and
in a band of 1,300 patriots defeated 60,000 hirelings of tyranny at the
battle of Morgarten. At Innsbruck, he venerates the soil consecrated
by the deeds of the citizen-soldier and martyr of liberty, Andreas
Höfer; at Venice, he recalls the glories of the republican queen of
the seas; while his interest and pleasure reaching their height in
the city of the popes, he pursues a boundless career of enjoyment as
he gazes on the monuments, walks over the localities, peoples again
the streets and forums, making all the heroes, poets, and great women
of royal, republican, imperial, and Papal Rome live their lives and do
their great deeds over again, and all for him, all for him. No amount
of reading or meditation at home can supply the pleasure derived from
visiting the famous places of history, while the previous reading
creates the desire and predisposes for the pleasure. Hence it is that
all students like so much to travel, and to travel on foot.

Those who travel expensively lose a great deal of the benefit and
interest of travel. The magnificent hotels are filled with English
and Americans, principally those who affect that rank and demand that
obsequiousness abroad to which they could not aspire at home. Many
of them are very ignorant, and the waiters, for their sake, speak a
mongrel kind of English, which is simply unbearable when it is not
absolutely needed. The latter affect English ways; and, though you
may desire to practise your college French, German, or Italian, they
insultingly reply in your own tongue, as if to spare you any further
exhibition of your ignorance, and because their avarice makes them
more anxious to learn English than that you should acquire a foreign
tongue. I asked one of these servants once how much I was to pay the
hackman. My question was in German, his answer in English; but I was on
the point of paying thirty-six cents for the lesson I gave him in our
language, as he told me to give the man eighty-four kreutzers instead
of forty-eight, because he didn’t know how to translate _acht und
pfierzig_. The tourist who, through his ignorance of the language or
his desire of display, frequents these English hotels, learns nothing
of the languages, nothing of the customs of the people, scarcely
anything of the _cuisine_, but becomes a target for the attacks of
interpreters, guides, lying _ciceroni_, and a host of hangers-on, who
impose on him in proportion to his ignorance, and palm off falsehoods
on him suited to his bigoted preconceptions on every subject. In the
drawing-room and at the table, he may as well be at home in London or
New York, as far as language, habits, etc., are concerned, and he often
leaves a country with less real knowledge of it than he had before he
came.

The artist, the student, the gentleman bachelor, who stroll about
for their own pleasure, and pay no unnecessary homage to fashion or
humbug—these are the ones who derive genuine pleasure from the novelty
and constant surprises of new customs, languages, and people. I have
seen such persons, some of them men of independent fortune, travelling
in omnibus or on foot about Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. They send
their trunks on to some known hotel in a place fifty miles off, and
then, carrying simply a knapsack with necessaries for a few days, take
a stick and perhaps a pencil and paper, and leisurely walk along the
fine roads of those countries, meeting a village every few miles, where
they can take some refreshment, or stay over night. This is seeing
a country, and knowing its language, customs, people, by personal
observation, and not through the uncertain medium of hotel guides. And
who would compare the restrained formality of fashionable moving about
to the glorious freedom of this? The students of the English College
at Rome used to travel thus two or three together during vacation, and
spend the time delightfully.

When visiting the ancient, interesting city of Nürnberg last
August—its old castle where the peace of Westphalia was signed, and
where many of the Western emperors resided; its curious walls and
fortifications; its old mediæval houses, with six stories, under an
oblique roof; its curious fountains; and the residence of Albrecht
Dürer—I entered a magnificent temple of old Catholic times, that of
S. Lawrence, now devoted to Lutheran worship. All the crucifixes,
pictures, and statuary with the altars still remain; for Luther was
a much more intelligent man than many who imitated his rebellion. I
was admiring the tabernacle of marble tracery, which reaches from the
pavement seventy feet up to the roof along one of the pillars, and is
the most exquisite piece of poetry in miniature stone I ever saw, when
my attention was drawn to two students, boys of sixteen or seventeen,
who were likewise visiting the church. They were very plainly dressed;
for the old Catholic universities are free in Europe, and good conduct
only is required as a condition of membership. On their backs, they
had knapsacks with straps coming over the shoulders, and containing
doubtless a change of clothing, while the long German pipe was seen
stuck into the bundle. They carried sticks in their hands, and one
had a guide-book, and was reading therefrom, and pointing out to his
companion the objects of interest existing in the church. I watched the
boys with great interest, and felt how happy they were in their simple
manners and pure friendship—happy in the possession of knowledge more
than if they had the Rothschilds’ wealth or Bismarck’s power; they were
in love with and betrothed to wisdom, and independent of the world.
Walking about afterwards round the great moat and curious turreted
walls of this famous town, I came across my two friends, seated on a
bench in the shaded, turf-set promenade which girds part of the city,
taking their frugal meal of the inevitable sausage and brown bread of
the country. Thus they strolled about from town to town, living plainly
and simply as their means—the gift, perhaps, of some patron—required,
but happy in the banquet which their own erudition and friendship
provided. I have seen many travellers, and they have remained longer or
shorter in my memory; but the picture of the two students of Nürnberg
will remain with me always.

Among those who travel we may include that class so numerous in
our own day in proportion to the increase of the enemies of the
supernatural—those who, to satisfy their devotion, visit holy places.
The sight of persons or localities associated with supernatural events
or with the lives of those whose heroic sanctity we venerate, impresses
us beings of half spiritual, half corporeal formation in a wonderful
degree. I need not dilate on this. It is the reason why, in all ages,
such multitudes have traversed land and sea, spent years even of their
lives in visiting the Holy Land, Rome, Loretto, Compostella. That they
obtained pleasure and sensible satisfaction you may easily imagine; and
that they aided the faith by supplying constant information relative
to the locality of sacred events, and thus kept up the strength
of tradition, cannot be denied; but I would console those whose
responsible care of family or office, whose want of means or leisure,
prevent their assuming the pilgrim’s scrip and staff, with the words of
Thomas à Kempis: _Qui multum peregrinantur, raro sanctificantur_.

There is so much to distract one in the strangeness and novelty of
foreign places, so much disturbance of order in one’s manner of life,
that, as a rule, one is likely to come home less single-minded and
less edifying than when he set out. However, I must bear witness to an
exception, though it is not calculated to be an example for any one
here. It is that of a Frenchman, a youth of twenty, dressed in the
national blouse (as a duster in the cars over a decent suit of black),
whom I met on the way to the famous shrine of Lourdes. His faith was
so simple, his modesty so perfect, his tongue so _straight_ (to use an
Indian idiom), that I felt that the true Christian is gentlemanly no
matter to what class of society he may belong. I was confounded and
ashamed when I compared my faith and hope with his, and knew that for
the first time I addressed a man who had never breathed the atmosphere
of heresy and unbelief, who had never felt a doubt or recognized a
difficulty regarding the truths of religion or the pious beliefs of
Catholics. Reflecting on the difference between what is termed “the
world” in all the conceitedness of its ignorance, and the class whom
he represented, I could not wonder that God should show his preference
for the simple, truthful people even by the most stupendous miracles.
However, he was still in France. Were he on an American railroad-car,
he might have allowed some of the mire of the world to adhere to his
garments.

I will not rest long on the subject of the Lourdes pilgrimage, as the
entire press has been forced to notice it, and has given full reports
of the appearance of the shrine, the gatherings of pilgrims, and the
wondrous works. Although the people of the village are said to be
gradually losing their simple, amiable qualities, on account of the
enlivened trade and the continual distraction consequent on the arrival
and departure of perhaps a thousand strangers daily in a village of
2,000 inhabitants, yet we could not help remarking the piety of the
matrons, the modesty of the maidens, and the straightforwardness of
the men—characteristics more refreshing to us than the breezes coming
down from the passes of the Pyrenees. It is delightful to get out of
an artificial state of society, and to see men and women as God made
them. I will have occasion to refer to this subsequently when I speak
of the Irish people. The peasantry of Lourdes, whom God chose for this
manifestation, are poor but not slovenly, simple but not uncouth,
comparatively illiterate but not ignorant. Education is not at all
incompatible with ignorance of reading and writing; while barbarism is
not seldom found united with these accidental accomplishments.

One evening, having prayed at the famous grotto, which was most
exquisitely decorated with candles supplied by the pilgrims, we
strolled toward a farm-house, and, seeing some peasants just finishing
their day’s labor, stopped and addressed them. Lord Chesterfield would
have been charmed to see the ease and grace with which the farmer rose
from his task, and inquired our pleasure. His conversation was pure,
straight, and full of faith. He spoke of things miraculous just as he
did of other events, evidently not thinking how people can question
God’s power, or wonder at his goodness. He had been one of that
20,000 who at times witnessed the ecstasies of Bernadette; and, after
describing what he saw, he concluded: “Ah! sirs, who ever visits that
grotto treads blessed earth.” My friend complimented him on the purity
of his language, and the politeness he had shown us, and which, indeed,
we strangers scarce expected from one in his dress and employment.
“Why,” said he, “gentlemen, if you take kindness and good grace out of
the world, after all, what is there worth living for?” We were charmed.
There spoke a Frenchman—one of those who made some one say: “They are
a nation of gentlemen.” We visited his poor habitation, and were still
more pleased with his filial and conjugal affection, as evidenced by
his regard for his wife, and care of his bedridden mother.

_A propos_ of this subject of travelling for pleasure, it was very
beautiful to watch from a height the pilgrims, 1,500 in number, winding
around the road, crossing the bridge, and going down the hillside to
the grotto. First came the cross-bearer with the crucifix shining
in the sun, then the women and children in the dark dresses which
distinguish the inhabitants of the region. Some of them bore lighted
candles; others carried baskets on their arms and heads; others had
jars containing wine for their lunch, or intended to be filled with
the miraculous water. They sang the Litany of Loretto, some priests
along the ranks directing, as they walked in double file. After these
came the men; then the altar boys in full dress, and thirty or forty
in number; then the clerics, priests, and canons in their robes; and
finally the Bishop of Perpignan, in sacred vestments, who had thus come
with his people to visit the spot favored by the Immaculate Virgin.
I never before saw the expression, “The bishop and his flock,” more
perfectly illustrated.

We were particularly struck by the behavior of these people in the
church—a beautiful marble structure built on the rock, under the side
of which the waves of the passing river had formed the grotto. They had
none of the superstitious reverence of Mahometans nor the cold decency
of Protestants; but acted with that quiet respect, alike remote from
fear and levity, which characterizes well-reared children in their
father’s house and presence. After performing their devotions with
intense faith and childlike fervor, they sat down before the grotto,
on the sweet level bank of the river which skirts the rock, and, in a
spirit of Christian recreation, began their frugal lunch.

So familiar are fervent Catholics with the wonderful works of God
that they who can talk and laugh when the communion thanksgiving is
ended found no difficulty in innocent relaxation after paying their
respects and perhaps witnessing miracles at the shrine consecrated by
the apparition of Mary. They reminded me of the _αγαπη_ of the first
Christians, and of the feast we school-boys used to have long ago,
after closing our retreat with receiving the body of Jesus Christ; and
I could not but acknowledge that these people were most likely to be
favored with supernatural manifestations by him who said: “Unless you
become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of
heaven.”

 TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.




THE CANADIAN PIONEERS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF M. L’ABBE CASGRAIN.


I.—DETROIT.

ARE you familiar with that fertile, laughing country, so rich in
historical souvenirs, whose virgin soil was first trodden by our
French ancestors? Are you familiar with these green and undulating
prairies, watered by limpid streams, and shaded by maples, plane-trees,
figs, and acacias, in the midst of which rises, brilliant in youth
and prospective greatness, the flourishing city of Detroit? If you
wish to enjoy fully the enchanting picture that this charming country
presents—whose climate need not be envious of the Italian sun—ascend
the Detroit River some fresh spring morning, when Aurora has shaken
her dewy wings over these vast plains, and when the bright May sun has
thrown its luminous rays through the transparent mists of morning.
Nowhere is there a clearer sky or more ravishing nature. Nowhere
are the wavy lines of the blue horizon more distinctly traced. Here
are wild and uncultivated sites, romantic landscapes, little wooded
islands, like baskets of verdure, all re-echoing the mocking laughter
of multitudes of birds. Pretty promontories whose round arms encircle
gulfs full of shadows and sunlight; whose waves, caressed by these
warm breaths, deposit along the shore a fringe of silver foam. Hills
and valleys, covered with luxuriant verdure, mirror themselves in the
neighboring wave. On either side the shore stretches along, covered
with pebbles or fine gray sand; sometimes embroidered with a lace-like
turf, or bristling with tall reeds, crowned with little tufts, among
which the timid kingfishers perch, and take flight at the least noise.
Here the fresh murmuring rivulets flow under the flowery arches of
interlacing boughs; there tiny paths, edged with strawberries and
forget-me-nots, wind over the brow of the hill; and, more distant, the
fresh spring zephyr trembles on the green meadows, and perfumes the air
with a delicious fragrance. The thousand confused noises of the water
and the rustling foliage, the warbling of birds, the buzz of human
voices, the lowing of herds, and the distant and silvery echo of the
bells of the steamers that ply along the river, ascend from time to
time through the air, and diffuse an indefinable charm in the soul and
through the senses. At short distances apart, pretty little villages
stretch along the shore, or group themselves on the banks of a stream,
or again on the slope of a hill, or crowning its summit like a diadem.
Finally you arrive at Detroit, with its steeples and roofs glittering
in the sunlight. Hundreds of boats, engaged in commercial interests,
are constantly arriving at or leaving its quays, furrowing the river
in every direction. Were I a poet, I would compare this charming city
to the superb swan of this country, which, on awakening in the midst
of the rushes on the river’s bank, shakes its white wings in taking
flight, and showers around a rain of dew and down; or, better still, to
the stately magnolia growing on the banks of the stream, when, shaken
by the aromatic breath of the morning breeze, it covers the wave in
which it is mirrored with the fertile dust of its corolla.


II.—THE PIONEER.

Founded in the year 1700, by M. de la Mothe-Cadillac, Detroit remained
for a long time under the Canadian government. It was taken by the
English in 1760, and remained in their possession until the war of
1812. Then the United States became the happy possessor of this
charming country, which F. Charlevoix has so justly called “the garden
spot.” “Detroit,” says the Canadian historian, “has preserved, in spite
of its many vicissitudes, the characteristics of its origin, and French
is still the language of a large portion of its population. Like all
the cities founded and settled by this great people—the monuments of
whose genius are landmarks in America—Detroit is destined to become a
great business centre, on account of its favorable situation between
Lake Huron and Lake Erie.”[183] Toward the year 1770 or 1780, Detroit
was far from presenting the flourishing aspect which it offers to the
stranger to-day. It was only a small fort surrounded by weak ramparts,
and a stockade in which lived a few hundred Canadian colonists—a
veritable tent in the wilderness. The fort was the advanced sentinel
of the colony, and by consequence constantly exposed to the attacks
of the Indians. Around the fortifications the colonists had cleared
a few acres of land, which they could only cultivate at the risk of
their lives, holding a pickaxe in one hand, and a gun in the other;
while beyond, before, behind, to the right, to the left, everywhere
a wilderness, everywhere interminable forests, whose gloomy shades
concealed multitudes of beings a thousand times more cruel, a thousand
times more formidable and to be feared, than the wild beasts and
reptiles which shared alike the tenebrious shelter. It is easy from
this to imagine what indomitable courage these hardy pioneers possessed
who dared to come and plant the standard of civilization in the
midst of these distant solitudes, in the face of such multitudinous
perils. One of the grandest pictures that the history of the New World
presents, after the sublime figure of the missionary, is that of the
Canadian pioneer. He is the father of the strongest race that has been
implanted on the American continent—the Canadian race; and the noblest
blood that has ever flowed in human veins, flows through his—the
French blood. Everywhere on the continent the Canadian pioneer is to be
found, and everywhere can be traced by his blood. Travel through North
America, from Hudson’s Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, from Halifax to San
Francisco, and on the snows of the North Pole and the golden sands of
California, along the Atlantic strand, and on the moss-covered slopes
of the Rocky Mountains, you will find the print of his footsteps. An
insatiable activity consumes him. Onward! is his watchword, and he only
rests when he has reached the goal of his ambition. But it is not alone
the love of adventure nor the violent thirst for gold that stimulates
him to action: a nobler ambition urges him on, a more legitimate
instinct animates and guides him. He has a mission to accomplish—a
mysterious apostleship. Turn for a moment to the pages of our history,
and especially to the accounts of the Jesuits, and you will see the
Canadian pioneer throughout animated by the most admirable zeal for
the conversion of the savages, opening a way for the missionaries
by the most heroic efforts, and frequently himself making the most
wonderful conversions. We find united in him the three grandest types
of manhood: priest, laborer, soldier. Priest!—by his ardent piety,
his lively faith, his zeal for the salvation of vacillating souls and
obdurate hearts, drawing to the faith entire settlements. Was there
ever a more admirable priesthood? Laborer!—before his powerful axe
the great forests fall with a crash around him, and his plough tracks,
through the fallen trunks, the furrow where the green germ of the
future harvest will soon begin to tremble. Soldier!—by years of mortal
combat, he has conquered the soil that his hand cultivates. Ah! were
I only an artist, to trace on canvas this noble figure in his triple
character of priest, laborer, and soldier. In the background of the
picture, immense forests, in all their savage grandeur; nearer, the
waving grain, growing between the charred trunks. In the foreground,
a portion of the great river, with its emerald waves sparkling in the
sun. On one side, an angle of the old fort, with its ramparts and
stockade, whence rises a modest little belfry surmounted by a cross.
On the other side, a band of Indians flying toward the edge of the
wood. The centre-piece would be my brave pioneer, his eyes flashing,
his hair blown by the breeze, and his forehead bleeding from a ball
which had just grazed it, near him his plough, and holding his gun,
whose muzzle still smokes from a recent conflict. At the right, he
would be pouring the water of baptism on the head of his vanquished and
dying enemy, whom he had just converted to the faith. Oh! how could I
attempt to paint this vigorous figure in the various attitudes of a
soldier-laborer, with his iron muscles, and the calm, serene strength
of the man of the fields; the invincible courage of the soldier, and
the sublime enthusiasm of the priest! Verily, this picture would not be
unworthy of the pencil of a Rubens or a Michael Angelo. Faith, toil,
courage; priest, laborer, soldier—this is the Canadian pioneer. It is
Cincinnatus, the soldier-laborer, become a Christian. It is the Spartan
warrior, who has passed through the Catacombs. The Canadian reader
who peruses these lines can raise his head with noble pride, for the
blood that flows through his veins is the blood of heroes. He can look
attentively at the palm of his hand, and see there still the unction of
earth, of powder, and of the priesthood. The pioneer has nobly filled
his mission: yours remains to be accomplished. A people to whom God has
given such ancestors is necessarily destined for something great, if it
faithfully corresponds with the designs of divine Providence. But let
us leave these teachings, which properly belong to venerable heads, and
return to our story.


III.—EVENING.

At the remote period which we describe, the fur trade of Detroit was
immense; and the Indians, aided and encouraged by the facilities for
reaching there, came in great numbers to sell the products of their
hunting expeditions. There were representatives from the various
tribes—Iroquois, Potawatamies, Illinois, Miamis, and a host of others.
M. Jacques Du Perron Baby was at that time Indian superintendent at
Detroit. This was an extremely important and responsible position at
that period. M. Baby had realized a handsome fortune there in a few
years. Almost all the land on which the Detroit of to-day stands was
then owned by him and a Mr. Macomb, the father of General Macomb, who
commanded a portion of the American troops during the war of 1812. At
the close of this war, the entire property of M. Baby was confiscated
in consequence of his political opinions, which were declared in favor
of Canada _versus_ the United States. His fine mansion stood in the
centre of the fort, surrounded by a beautiful garden. Having luxurious
tastes, he embellished it with all the requirements of refined and
cultivated life. The garden was on raised ground, surrounded by a
sodded terrace; the house stood in the centre, half concealed by a
dense foliage of maple, pear, and acacia trees, which waved their
branches coaxingly over its roof. A number of birds, sometimes
hidden in the branches, sometimes flying through the air, crossing,
pursuing each other, describing a thousand bewildering circles,
abandoned themselves to joyous song, while the little _ramoneur_,[184]
complaining on the chimney-top, mingled his shrill, harsh cry with
their melodious voices. It was evening. The last rays of the setting
sun colored with rose and saffron tints the tops of the forests.
The heat had been intense throughout the day. The evening breeze,
coquetting among the roses, dahlias, and flowering eglantine, refreshed
exhausted nature deliciously, and perfumed the air with the most
intoxicating fragrance. Tea was about being served in the garden, and
the table was most invitingly covered with tempting viands and lovely
flowers. The superintendent and his family were seated around; a young
officer who had been several months in Detroit had been invited to join
the family party. Two colored servants waited most assiduously at the
repast. “What a charming evening!” said the officer—he was a handsome
young man, with light hair, noble and expressive features, and rather
a high forehead. There was a proud, intelligent expression in his
bright eyes, and yet at times something vague and dreamy. “Truly,” he
continued, “I have never seen anything in Italy more delightful than
this; such a climate, and such ravishing scenery, such fine effects
of light and shade! Look there along the horizon, and at those fleecy
clouds which float through the azure sky; they resemble a superb scarf
fringed with purple and gold.”

“It is indeed a magnificent evening,” replied the superintendent. “We
really enjoy a very fine climate in this section of country. I have
never seen anywhere a clearer sky or more transparent atmosphere, and
nature so grand; but, against all of this, we are deprived of nearly
all of the luxuries and comforts of the old country, to say nothing of
the constant dangers to which we are exposed from the Indians; for we
are on the utmost limits of civilization. You, who have just left the
civilized shores of Europe, can scarcely form any idea of the cruelty
of these barbarians. Life is indeed very severe in this new country.”

“Yes,” said his wife, whose fine physiognomy indicated her great force
of character; “it is only a few years ago that I was obliged to do
sentinel duty, and stand at the entrance of the fort with a gun in my
hand, while the men were occupied in cultivating the fields around
it.”[185]

The conversation was here interrupted by one of the servants, who came
to say that a stranger was waiting to see the superintendent and his
wife. They all arose from the tea-table.

“You look very sad this evening, mademoiselle,” said the officer,
addressing a young girl of sixteen or eighteen years of age, and who,
from a strong resemblance, could be easily recognized as the daughter
of M. Baby. “What can have happened to cause such a shadow to fall on
your fair brow; while all are smiling around you, your heart seems full
of sorrow? It is almost impossible that any one could contemplate this
lovely scene, and not experience a feeling of interior peace. Nothing
so completely bewilders me like an evening of this kind. This graceful
harmony of light and shade is for me full of a mysterious intoxication.”

“Alas!” said the young girl, “a few days ago I too could have enjoyed
this scene; but to-day, as it were, every object is covered with a
funereal pall. This beautiful sky, these green fields, the flowers
and fruit, these vermilion roses, which charm your sight, all make me
shudder. I see blood everywhere.”

“My God!” cried the officer, “what misfortune can have happened to you?”

“Oh! only a few hours ago, I witnessed such a distressing scene that it
is impossible to imagine it. I cannot obliterate it from my mind, or
distract my thoughts in the least from the shocking spectacle. But I
ought not to distress you by this sorrowful recital. I had rather let
you enjoy tranquilly these hours that afford you so much pleasure.”

“Continue, continue,” exclaimed he. “Relate to me this tragic story.
Happiness is often so selfish, but we should always have our sympathies
ready for the sorrows of others.”

The young girl then continued: “Day before yesterday evening, a party
of Indians half intoxicated came into the fort to see my father; they
brought with them a young girl, whom they had captured several days
before. Oh! if you could only have seen the despair on her countenance!
Poor child, her clothes were in rags, her hair hung in tangled masses,
and her face was all scratched and bleeding. She did not utter a
complaint, nor did she weep; but stood with fixed eyes, mute and
immovable as a statue. We might have believed her dead but for a slight
trembling of the lips that betrayed the life that was not visible.
It was a fearful sight. I have never seen anything like it. Great
misfortunes are like severe wounds; they dry up our tears as terrible
and sudden wounds arrest the blood in our veins. Compassionating her
distressed situation, my sister and myself made her come in and stay
in our room through the night; but we did not deceive ourselves with
the slightest hope that anything could be done for her rescue, for we
knew too well the character of these savages. Nevertheless, we tried to
sustain her with a little hope that something might possibly be done.
Perhaps our father could succeed in inducing the Indians to let her go.
At last she gradually recovered from her state of stupor, and told us
her sad, sad story.”


IV.—AGONY.

“I have lived for some time,” said she, “near Fort Wayne with my
married sister. One morning, while her husband was at work in the
field, several Indians suddenly entered our house. ‘Where is your
husband?’ they inquired roughly of my sister. ‘He is at Fort Wayne,’
she replied, frightened by their sinister aspect; and they went out
again. Full of anxiety, we followed them with our eyes for some time.
‘O my God! sister,’ exclaimed I, trembling, ‘I am so frightened, so
terrified. Let us fly; these savages appear to me to be meditating
some dreadful act. I am convinced that they will return.’ Without
paying any attention to my words, she continued to watch them as they
went off in the direction of Fort Wayne. The road which they took lay
only a short distance from the place where her husband was quietly
at work, not having the slightest idea of the danger that threatened
him. Fortunately, a clump of trees hid him from their sight. We began
to breathe more freely, for they had now gone beyond the field; but
suddenly one of them happened to turn around. ‘They have discovered
him! they have discovered him!’ shrieked my sister, almost fainting
with terror. And really they had all stopped, and were looking in the
direction where Joseph was stooping down, gathering up the branches of
a tree which he had just cut down. He had no suspicion of danger. The
Indians, concealed by the trees, were now only a short distance off.
Suddenly we heard the report of a gun, and Joseph fell to the ground.
Believing him dead, they advanced boldly; but the ball had only grazed
his head, and he was stunned for the moment. He quickly recovered
himself, and, making a breastwork of the branches of the felled tree,
seized his gun, and in an instant two of them were stretched stiff
corpses on the ground. The others, alarmed, made a precipitate retreat
toward the edge of the woods, and then a quick firing commenced on both
sides. Joseph was a fine marksman; at each shot, he disabled an enemy.
Three had already fallen. We awaited, in an agony of apprehension, the
result of the mortal combat, which would not have been doubtful had
it been only an ordinary enemy that the savages had to contend with.
But Joseph was a formidable adversary. He fired rapidly, reloading his
gun with the most perfect coolness, while the balls were whistling all
around him. Placing the muzzle of his gun between the branches, he made
the sign of the cross on his breast at the moment of taking aim; then,
pulling the trigger, we counted another Indian less. Every time I saw
a new victim fall, I could not repress a tremor of delight. Joseph’s
unerring ball had just struck a fourth enemy. We began to hope, when we
discovered one of the savages creeping along on the ground behind him.
No serpent could have advanced with more cunning or address. Without
shaking a pebble or disturbing a leaf, he approached slowly; at one
time concealing himself behind a little knoll, then under a thicket
of brambles, only exposing himself when he saw Joseph busy taking
aim. Finally he arrived within two steps of him without being seen.
Then, stopping, he waited until Joseph had reloaded his gun. Without
suspecting the danger behind him, he raised his gun to his shoulder to
take aim; then we saw him lower it quickly, and look around. He had
heard a slight noise in the bushes near him. He raised his head and
listened an instant, then leaned toward the right, and then toward the
left, without perceiving anything; for the savage was lying flat on the
ground, behind a pile of branches. Feeling entirely reassured, he again
raised his gun to take aim. At the same moment, the Indian, with an
infernal smile, raised himself from the earth, and, just as Joseph was
preparing to immolate another enemy, he brandished his knife. A last
shot was heard, a last Indian fell; but Joseph had also fallen, struck
to the heart by the cowardly fiend. The wretch then proceeded to scalp
him, after which he plundered him of his clothes, in which he arrayed
himself.”


V.—LAMENTATION.

“Paralyzed with horror and fright, we thought no longer of saving
ourselves. My sister, in her despair, pressed her baby to her heart,
and threw herself at the foot of a crucifix, which she seized in her
hands, and mutely covered it with tears and kisses, while I, too,
utterly overcome, threw myself on my knees beside her, and mingled
my tears and prayers with hers. Poor mother! she did not tremble for
herself, but for her child—that dear little angel, whom she loved so
tenderly, whom she so adored. It was indeed a beautiful babe, scarcely
eighteen months old, and had already begun to lisp ‘Mamma.’ ‘O my God!’
cried my sister between her sobs, ‘if I must die, I willingly give up
my life; but save, oh! save my child!’ Then, embracing it, and bathing
it in her tears, she clasped it to her heart, and sank to the floor
insensible. Although more dead than alive myself, I tried to sustain
her, and had her in my arms, when Joseph’s murderer entered, followed
by his cruel companions. Without uttering a word, he advanced toward
us, and violently snatched the child from its mother. She had not heard
them enter the room, but, when they tore the child away from her,
she shuddered and suddenly recovered her consciousness. The savages,
exasperated at having lost seven of their comrades, now only thought
of blood and vengeance. The assassin of Joseph, holding the child at
arm’s length, looked at it with the diabolical expression of a serpent
charming his victim before striking him. It was an angel in the grasp
of a demon. The monster smiled—Satan alone could have laughed as he
did. The baby, as if to supplicate his pity, smiled also, with that
angelic expression of innocence that would have moved the most hardened
and obdurate of hearts. But he, seizing it by the leg, whirled it round
for an instant, and then—oh! horror!—dashed its head against the
heavy edge of the huge stove. Its brains spattered over its mother’s
face. Like a tiger she sprang at the murderer of her child. Maternal
love gave her superhuman strength, and, seizing him by the throat, she
buried her fingers in his flesh. He tottered; his face turned black,
and he fell heavily to the floor, suffocated by the strength of her
desperate grasp. She would have undoubtedly strangled him, had not
another savage at that instant struck her a blow on the head with his
hatchet. My poor sister! her death was indeed a cruel one, but her
agony only lasted a moment—her troubles are ended, and she is now in
heaven. But I—what will become of me? You see the condition that I am
in. O my God, my God! have pity on me.”

And the young girl, wringing her hands in despair, threw herself
sobbing into my arms, pressed me to her heart, and implored me not to
abandon her into the hands of these brutal savages. But, oh! what is
more heart-breaking than to witness misfortune without the power of
alleviating it! We spent the night in weeping and trying to encourage
her, but I could not help feeling at the time that it was cruel to
inspire her with a confidence that I had not; for I knew these savages
too well. I knew that the monsters never abandoned their victims. The
next day, my father tried in every way to conciliate them, and then
interceded in behalf of the young captive. He offered any amount of
ransom for her, but in vain; nothing would tempt them. The effects
of the liquor had not entirely worn off, and they were sullen and
obstinate. My father used in turn prayers and threats to move them;
but neither presents, prayers, nor threats could rescue her from their
merciless hands. The wretched girl threw herself at their feet, and,
embracing their knees, besought them to listen to her supplications;
but the monsters only replied to her entreaties by bursts of laughter;
and, in spite of her prayers, and sobs, and supplications, they carried
her off with them.[186]

“Alas!” said Mlle. Baby, looking sorrowfully at the young officer, “are
you surprised now at my sadness, and that I could not smile and be gay
after having witnessed such a scene?”

“The demons!” exclaimed the officer, stamping his foot in horror
and indignation. “This infamous, bloodthirsty race should be
exterminated—exterminated to the last man. Why did I not know this
sooner? Yesterday, a Potawatamie came to my quarters to sell some furs.
He asked three times as much as they were worth, and I declined buying
them. He hung around for some time, annoying me very much, until I
finally ordered him to leave. He refused to do so; then, losing all
patience with the fellow, I rose from my seat, and, leading him to the
door, I kicked him out. He went away muttering, and threatening me with
his knife. I had a stick in my hand, and I now regret that I did not
knock him down.”

“How imprudent!” said the young girl. “You ought not to have provoked
that Indian; don’t you know that a savage never forgets an injury? He
may wander around the fort for a year, spying all of your movements,
watching your footsteps, tracking you everywhere, hiding in the woods
and among the rushes in the river, until an opportunity offers, and he
will approach with all the _finesse_ and cunning of a serpent, spring
upon you like a tiger, and strike you a death-blow, when you least
expect it. I see that you go every day out of the fort to fish on the
banks of the river. I advise you not to go any more; it is not safe,
and something terrible might happen to you.”

“Pshaw!” said the young officer, “you are too timid. I saw the fellow
leave this morning with a number of warriors belonging to his tribe;
they were going to Quebec to sell the furs, which they could not
dispose of here.”


VI.—THE DREAM.

The clock in the _salon_ had just struck one. Mme. Baby and her
daughter were seated sewing in the deep recess of an open window,
with a little work-table in front of them. M. Baby had gone away
that morning, to look after some land that he had just bought on the
other side of the river. The streets were deserted; nearly all the
inhabitants of the fort were at work in the fields in the vicinity.
The heat was intense. Not a breath agitated the trees in the garden,
whose motionless branches drooped languidly toward the earth, as if
imploring a refreshing breath or a drop of dew. A negro servant was
spreading some linen out to dry on the bushes, and put to flight, in
her perambulations, some chickens that were panting with the heat
under the sheltering foliage of the trees and shrubs. The silence was
only broken by the buzzing of insects, and the noisy whirr of the
grasshopper as it danced through the sunlight. The open window, filled
with bouquets, looked into the garden, and the pale, melancholy face
of Mlle. Baby could be seen between them, bending over an open flower
which imaged her loveliness in its fragrant corolla. “Mamma,” said she
at last, raising her head, “do you think papa will be away a long time?”

“I think he will be back in four or five days at the latest,” replied
her mother. “But why do you ask such a question?”

“Oh! because I am so anxious to have him back again. I want him to take
us immediately to Quebec, instead of waiting until next month. The trip
will divert my thoughts; for, since those Indians were here the other
day with that poor girl they had captured, I have not had a moment’s
piece of mind. She is always before my eyes. I see her everywhere;
she follows me everywhere. I even saw her in my dream last night. I
thought I was sitting in the midst of a gloomy and immense forest, near
a wild, rushing river that dashed over a precipice into a bottomless
chasm a few steps from me. On the opposite bank, which was covered with
flowers, and charming to behold, stood the young captive, pale and
tranquil, in a halo of soft, transparent light. She seemed to be in
another world. She held in her hands an open book, and, bending towards
me, she slowly turned over the leaves. She turned at least sixteen;
then she stopped and looked at me with an expression of the greatest
sorrow and distress, and made a sign to some one, who then seemed to be
standing near me, to cross the torrent. At the signal, all his limbs
trembled; his knees knocked together, and his eyes dilated, his mouth
gasped with terror, and a cold perspiration stood upon his forehead. He
tried to draw back, but an invincible power drew him toward the abyss.
He turned toward me, and besought my help most piteously. I experienced
the greatest commiseration for him, and tried in vain to extend my
hands to help him; invisible cords bound all my limbs, and prevented
any movement whatsoever. Vainly he tried to cling to the cliffs along
the shore; a relentless force impelled him towards the abyss. He had
already reached the middle of the stream, whose deep and foaming waters
roared around him, as if impatient to swallow him up. He tottered at
every step, and came near losing his equilibrium; but, rallying his
strength, he struggled on. At last a great wave broke over him, and
he lost his balance. His feet slipped; he looked toward me with a
glance of the most inexpressible anguish, and fell. In an instant, he
was borne to the brink of the precipice; he threw out his hands, and
grasped at a piece of rock that jutted out of the water, burying his
fingers in the green and slimy moss which covered it. For an instant,
he hung on with the strength of despair; his body, stopped suddenly in
its precipitate course, appeared for an instant above the waves. The
foam and spray enveloped it like a cloud, and the wind from the fall
blew through his dank and dripping hair. His dilated eyes were fastened
on the rock, which little by little receded from his convulsive grasp.
Finally, with a terrible shriek, he disappeared in the yawning gulf
below. Transfixed with agony and horror, I looked across at the young
captive; but she, without uttering a word, wiped away a tear, and
silently pointed to the last page in the book, which seemed to me to
be covered with blood. I screamed aloud with fright, and awoke with a
start. My God! will it be a page in my life?”


VII.—BLOOD.

Scarcely had Mlle. Baby finished speaking, when the sound of hasty
footsteps was heard at the door, and a man, covered with blood, and
with a terrified look, rushed in. It was the young officer. His right
arm was broken, and hanging at his side.

“Hide me quickly,” cried he. “I am pursued by the Indians.”

“Up in the attic, quick,” said Mme. Baby to him, “and do not stir for
your life.”

In another moment, the savages had entered the room; but, before they
could say a word, Mme. Baby pointed to the next street, and they went
out again quickly, believing that the officer had escaped in that
direction. The admirable composure of Mme. Baby had completely deceived
them. Not a muscle of her face betrayed her excessive agitation, and,
happily, they did not have time to notice the mortal pallor of the
young girl, who, still leaning among the flowers on the window-sill,
had almost fainted away. It was one of those moments of inexpressible
anguish when a chill like death strikes the heart. Mme. Baby hoped
that the savages, fearing the superintendent, would not dare to force
themselves into the house; and yet, who could stop them if they did,
or who could foresee what these barbarians, once having tasted blood,
might do? She hoped that their fruitless efforts might induce them
to abandon their search, or, if they persisted, that she would have
sufficient time to obtain help, in case they again entered the house.
Making a sign to a servant who was at work in the garden, she ordered
him to run as fast as he could, and notify some men belonging to the
fort of the danger which threatened them. Some anxious minutes elapsed,
but the savages did not return. “Do you think they have really gone?”
asked the young girl, in a low tone. A faint glimmer of hope appeared
in her countenance.

“Even if they should return,” answered Mme. Baby, “they would not dare
...”

She did not finish, but leaning toward the window, she tried to catch
the sound of human voices which were heard in the distance. Was it the
help that she expected, or was it the voices of the Indians coming
back? She could not distinguish. The sound drew nearer and nearer, and
became more distinct as it approached. “They are our men,” exclaimed
Mlle. Baby. “Don’t you hear the barking of our dog?” And she drew a
long breath of relief, as if an immense weight had been taken from her
heart.

Mme. Baby did not reply; a faint smile played over her lips. She,
too, had heard the dogs barking; but another noise that she knew only
too well had also reached her ears. Very soon the voices became so
distinct that it was impossible to be deceived any longer. “Here they
are, here they are!” shrieked the young girl, sinking into a seat near
the window, as the different-colored feathers with which the savages
decorated their heads appeared between the trees.

“Don’t tremble so,” said Mme. Baby in a quiet voice to her daughter,
“or you will betray us. Look out of the window, and don’t let them
perceive your emotion.”

Courage and coolness at a critical moment are always admirable, but
when a woman possesses these qualities, they are sublime. Calm and
impassive, without even rising from her seat, Mme. Baby tranquilly
continued her work. The most practised eye could not have detected the
smallest trace of emotion, the least feverish excitement or agitation,
on her commanding and noble countenance. A heroine’s heart beat in
her woman’s breast, and it was thus that she awaited the arrival of
the savages. “Tell us where you have concealed the white warrior,”
cried the first one who entered the room. It was the Potawatamie whom
the young officer had so imprudently offended. He was dripping with
perspiration, and out of breath with his long and fatiguing quest.
You could see the rage and exasperation of his disappointment in his
ferocious glances, his scowling brow, and the excitement that made
every feature quiver.

“Comrade,” replied Mme. Baby, in a tranquil tone of voice, “you know
the superintendent well; and, if you have the misfortune to misbehave
in his house, you will get into trouble.”

The Indian hesitated a moment, then said, in a feigned mildness of
voice, “My white sister knows that the Potawatamie loves peace, and
that he never makes the first attack. The white warrior is on the
war-path, or the Potawatamie would not have pursued.”

“I have not hidden the white warrior,” answered Mme. Baby. “It is
useless to search here; you had better look elsewhere, or he will
escape you.”

The Indian did not reply, but, looking at Mme. Baby with a smile, he
pointed to a little stain on the floor that no one but an Indian would
have discovered. But the sharp eye of the savage had detected there a
trace of his enemy. It was a drop of blood, which Mme. Baby had taken
the precaution to wipe away most carefully. “My sister has told the
truth,” said the Indian, in an ironical tone. “The white warrior has
not passed this way; that drop of blood, I suppose, she put there to
persuade the Indian that she had concealed the white warrior.” Then,
assuming a more serious tone, he continued: “My sister, know well that
the Potawatamie will do the white warrior no harm; only show us where
he is hidden, and we will go away; we only want to take him pris ...”
He stopped, and, bending his head forward, looked through an open
window at the other end of the apartment; then, giving a hideous yell,
he rushed across the room, and leaped out of the window that opened
into the garden. His ferocious companions followed him, howling like a
troop of demons. Without seeing what had happened, Mme. Baby understood
all. The young officer, hearing the Indians return, and believing
himself lost, had the imprudence to jump out of one of the windows
into the garden. He ran toward a covered fountain in the centre of the
_parterre_ to hide, when the Indian perceived him. How can I describe
the scene which followed? The pen drops from my hand. In two bounds,
they had reached him, and one of the savages, striking him a terrible
blow with his fist, sent him reeling to the ground. He fell on his
broken arm, and the excruciating pain caused him to utter a deep groan.
They then seized hold of him, and bound his hands and feet. Poor young
man! what resistance could he make to his cruel enemies, with a broken
arm, and totally disabled and weakened by the loss of blood. He called
for help, but the echoes in the garden only answered his cries, and
redoubled the horror of the scene. Mlle. Baby, bereft of her senses,
threw herself at her mother’s feet, and, hiding her face on her knees,
she covered her ears with her hands, to shut out, if possible, from
sight and hearing the frightful tragedy. While the rest of the savages
were tying their victim down, the Potawatamie drew out his knife, and
deliberately commenced to sharpen it on a stone. His face betrayed no
excitement whatever; not even the horrible pleasure of gratifying his
vengeance, which caused his heart to palpitate with an infernal joy,
could change his stoical countenance. “My brother the white warrior,”
said he, continuing to whet his knife with the utmost coolness, “knows
very well that he can insult the Potawatamie with impunity, because the
Potawatamie is a coward, and would rather run than fight.... Does my
brother now wish to make peace with his friend, the Potawatamie? He can
speak if he wishes, and name his terms, for he is free.” Then, suddenly
assuming a ferocious air, he straightened himself up, and, fixing his
inflamed eyes on the young officer, said: “My brother the white warrior
can now chant his death-song, because he must die.” And brandishing
his knife, he plunged it into his throat, while another of these
monsters caught the blood in a little copper kettle. The rest of the
savages then kicked and stamped upon the body with the most infernal
yells and contortions. The death-rattle of the poor victim, mingling
with these howls, reached the ears of the young girl, and she shook
in a convulsion of horror. At last it all ceased. The victim had been
immolated. Pushing aside the corpse with his foot, the Potawatamie,
followed by his companions, came again toward the house. “Ha! ha! so
you would not tell us where your friend, the white warrior, was?” cried
the Indian, as he entered the room. “Very well, since you love him so
much, you shall drink his blood.” Mme. Baby, pale as a marble statue,
drew herself up firmly. “You can kill me,” said she, “but you can never
make me drink it!” The young girl had fainted, and was lying at her
mother’s feet. They seized hold of Mme. Baby, and tried to force open
her mouth; but failing in their efforts, they threw the contents of the
vessel in her face, and left the house.[187]


VIII.—THE SERPENT.

Several months had elapsed since the events had taken place which we
have just narrated. It was night. In the centre of the garden, a simple
black cross had been erected on the spot where the unfortunate young
man had been massacred. No inscription revealed to the passer-by either
the name of the victim or the fatal circumstances of his death. Alas!
it was written for ever in characters of blood on the hearts of the
family. Every evening, the superintendent, with his wife, children, and
servants, assembled at the foot of this cross, to pray for the repose
of the soul of his unfortunate friend. On this especial evening, all
the family had as usual visited the grave, and returned to the house,
except the young girl, who, dressed in deep mourning, still remained
kneeling at the foot of the sombre monument. She was very pale, and
there was an expression of the most ineffable sadness on her face. The
evening dew had almost entirely uncurled her long ringlets, which now
hung in disorder around her cheeks. You might have mistaken her for a
statue of grief. From the clear, high heaven above, the moon poured
floods of melancholy light. Its dreamy rays fell on the sod at the
foot of the cross and on the face of the young girl like a thought from
beyond the tomb—like a silent and grateful sigh from the innocent
victim whose memory had left so tender and anguishing an impression
in her soul. Her lips moved in ardent prayer—prayer, that celestial
solace of the grief-stricken heart, the smile of the angels through
the tears of earth. For a long time she thus silently held communion
with her God, breathing out her prayers with sighs and tears, as
she knelt at the foot of this cross, on the sod still damp with the
victim’s blood. At last she rose, and was about to leave, when, raising
her eyes for a moment, she thought she saw a shadow moving across an
opening in the wall of a shed near by. A cloud, at that moment passing
over the moon, prevented her from distinguishing what the object was.
She waited a moment until the cloud had passed over, when what was
her astonishment to see a human face in the aperture! It must be a
robber, she thought, and yet she knew positively that the gate was well
secured. “He will find himself nicely caught when the servants come to
lock up,” said she to herself. By degrees, however, the head was pushed
more and more through the air-hole, and gradually emerged from the
obscurity. At the same moment, the moonlight fell clear and full on the
face. The young girl actually shivered. She recognized it but too well;
it was impossible to be mistaken. It was he; she recognized perfectly
his copper skin, his hard, ferocious features, and his yellowish eyes,
rolling in their sockets. It was indeed the Potawatamie, the murderer
of the young officer.[188]

Her first thought was flight, but an invincible curiosity fastened
her to the spot. The Indian continued to work through the aperture;
one arm was already out, and he held something in his hand which
she could not discern. He tried for a long time to get through the
air-hole, which was too small for his body. Finally, while making a
last effort, he suddenly turned his head, and fixed his eyes with a
very uneasy expression on a little bush near him. He seemed undecided
what to do; then, letting go the object, he rested his hand on the
ground, and, pushing it against the earth with all his strength, tried
to force himself back again through the hole. But his broad shoulders,
compressed on both sides by the wall, held him like a vice, and he
could neither move one way nor another. Then his uneasiness increased,
and he looked again anxiously toward the bushes. A slight rustling of
the leaves was then perceptible, and a small head emerged slowly from
the shadow of the branches, and extended itself toward the savage.
It was a rattlesnake.[189] Immovable and with fixed eyes, the Indian
watched the least movement of the reptile, which advanced softly and
cautiously, as if aware of the strength and power of his redoubtable
adversary. When within a few feet of the savage, it stopped, raised
itself up, and, throwing out its forked tongue, sprang toward his face;
but, before he could touch him, the Indian, as quick as thought, gave
him a violent blow with the hand that was free, and the reptile fell
a short distance from him. Then he began again to make every effort
to disengage himself; but in vain. The snake, now furious, advanced
a second time to recommence the attack, but with more caution than
before. Approaching still nearer to his enemy, he threw himself forward
with much greater violence, but without success; for the hand of the
savage sent him rebounding further off than before. The Potawatamie
then gathered all his strength for a final effort of liberation, but
of no avail: he remained fast in the opening of the air-hole. Quick
as lightning, the reptile, now foaming at the mouth, with blazing
eyes, and jaws swollen with rage, his forked tongue extended, sprang
with renewed strength toward his prey. His scaly skin glistened and
sparkled in the silvery light of the moon, and the slight noise made by
his rattles resembled the rustling of parchment, and alone broke the
silence of the night. This mortal combat in the stillness of night,
between a serpent and a savage more subtle than the serpent, had an
indescribable fascination; it was more like a contest between two evil
spirits, in the shadow of night, over some unfortunate victim. The
serpent now approached so near the Indian that he could almost have
seized him with his hand; he raised himself a last time, and, throwing
back his head, sprang forward. The savage, guarding himself carefully
with his one hand, had followed with his eyes the least movement of
the writhing body. It was plain to see that the final fight had begun,
and could only terminate in the total vanquishment of one or the other
of the combatants. At the instant that the snake sprang like an arrow
upon his enemy, the Indian raised his hand; but this time the attack
of the reptile had been so rapid and instantaneous that, before he
could strike him a blow, his fangs had entered his cheek. A hoarse cry
died away in the throat of the savage, who, seizing the serpent with
his hand before he could escape, raised him to his mouth, and in his
rage tore him to pieces with his teeth. A vain reprisal—the blow had
been struck. A short time after, the most horrible cries and fearful
convulsions announced that the mortal venom had entered his veins. The
victim writhed with despair in the midst of his excruciating agony.
It was thought at first that he had finally succeeded in getting out;
but subsequently they found the body, enormously swollen, still held
in the aperture of the air-hole. His bloodshot eyes were starting
from their sockets, his face as black as ink, while his gaping mouth
revealed two rows of white teeth, to which still clung the fragments of
the reptile’s skin, and flakes of bloody foam. Providence had indeed
terribly avenged the assassination of the young officer.




THE JESUITS IN PARIS.


A WALK in the direction of the gloomy though now as ever fashionable
Faubourg St. Germain is not exactly one that a non-fashionable person
would ordinarily choose; nor does the Rue de Sèvres in that quarter
hold out any particular inducement for a foot-passenger to traverse it.

However, it was to the Rue de Sèvres that, on the 18th of January,
1873, I bent my steps; for at one o’clock precisely I had an
appointment to keep there with a Father of the _Compagnie de Jésus_;
and No. 35 in that street is the society’s headquarters.

I crossed the Seine at the Pont Royale, and soon found myself in the
main artery of the faubourg—the well-known Rue du Bac. I splashed
along with omnibuses that seemed determined to do their best to destroy
the roughly macadamized carriage-road; by huge gaps in the façade,
where the _pétroleuse_ had been at work, and where the dull-red walls
looked as if the destroying element were still lurking about them;
by blue-coated and blue-hooded policemen, who scrutinized one to an
extent that made you debate within your mind whether you had or had
not picked the pocket of a passer-by, or lately become affiliated to
the _Internationale_. On, by the “Maison Petit St. Thomas”—a large
dry-goods establishment, the name of which may bring back perhaps to
some of our lady readers the pleasant season passed a few years since
in Paris, with its gay _fêtes_ and agreeable shopping excursions. On,
till the plate-glass of the store windows becomes less costly, and
the fish and the _charcuterie_, or ham and sausage shops, become more
plentiful. On, till at last, to right and left, “Rue de Sèvres,” in
bold white letters on a blue ground, tells me that I have reached my
destination. To save time, I thought it necessary to ask some one where
the particular house that I wanted was situated. I looked at a _sergent
de ville_, but his glances repelled me. I turned towards a cabman, but
I fancied he expected something more than I was prepared to give him;
and then, not in despair, but in the natural order of things, I had
recourse to the inevitable Parisian chestnut-man, who (I having taken
the precaution of buying two sous’ worth of damply-warm chestnuts)
willingly gave me all the information that I required.

The exterior of No. 35 Rue de Sèvres is as much like that of any other
house in Paris as you can well imagine. There is a certain number of
feet of stucco, relieved by oblong windows; and there are two large
_portes cochères_, or folding-doors, far apart from one another, and
looking incapable either of being opened or closed; although, in point
of fact, the one leads to the church, and the other to the convent.

I entered, of course, by the last-named portal, and, passing through
the usual French courtyard, knocked at a glass door, from whence it was
evident that a brother porter within held communication with the world
without.

I presented my letter of introduction to him, and, while he was making
arrangements for the transmission of it to the rightful owner, because
it was raining heavily, and because I saw only one door open, I entered
by that door, and found myself uninvited and unwittingly in the
_conciergerie_, or porter’s lodge, itself.

The _concierge_ and his occupation afforded me a good deal of
amusement, or, to speak less lightly, a good deal of room for thought
during part of the three-quarters of an hour that I was destined to
wait for the arrival of the priest with whom I had the engagement.
He has under his control the management of ten brown wooden handles,
attached to ten wires, which wires are connected with ten different
doors in different parts of the establishment.

If a person want a confessor, he pulls the wire connected with the
church. If a lady desires advice, another pull opens the parlors to
her. If a priest wishes to come from the convent, another pull in
another direction is necessary. And as these pulls (except in the last
case) are invariably followed by a message sent through a speaking-tube
by the same brother porter, to inform the priest of the fact that he is
wanted; and as through the before-mentioned glass door and otherwise
he receives all letters, and answers all queries, both from within and
without, he has, I take it, a pretty hard time of it.

I had been too much absorbed at first to observe what was taking place
around me; but, after a little, I began to remark that the priests,
in passing to and fro through the _conciergerie_, bestowed upon me
more glances of earnest inquiry than I thought my personal appearance
actually warranted. At last the mystery was solved by one father being
so good as to tell me that seculars generally waited in the parlors.
I bowed, thanked him gratefully, and went; but not before I had
discovered that, if the pigeon-holes for letters be a true test, there
were fourteen or more priests resident in the Rue de Sèvres at that
particular time.

I was not sorry for the exchange of place. It was strangely interesting
to be sitting in those rooms where, so short a time since, the
Communists, under the command of an energetic young gentleman named
Citoyen Lagrange, took prisoner the good Superior Father Olivaint and
his Père Procureur, M. Caubert.

Strange to sit in those parlors, and gaze upon the large and
well-photographed portraits of those two men and martyrs, and to notice
the remarkable likeness existing between them. How both had the same
square forehead and firmly set, powerful mouth; and how both looked—as
they were—soldiers ready to die under the banner for which they fought.

_Ne pleurez pas sur moi_,[190] cried Father Olivaint to the solitary
group of sympathizers whom he met on his way to the _Préfecture de
Police_.

No! _mon père_, we weep not, but rather thank God that the grand old
spirit of martyrdom has not yet died out among us!

Besides the thoughts which the past suggested to me, it was interesting
to note the living occupants of the rooms. One silver-haired old
gentleman, whom I afterwards found out to be the self-same Père Alexis
Lefebvre whom Lagrange left in charge of the house, telling him to keep
it _au nom de la Commune_, was holding a very serious conversation with
two or three gentlemen, the red ribbons in whose button-holes declared
them to be _chevaliers de la Legion d’Honneur_. Another father was
having quite a small reception of middle-aged married ladies, who
probably had, or desired to have, sons either at the College of
Vaugirard or at that of S. Geneviève. Another—but stay! here is my
particular father, to whose kindness I owe it that I have been enabled
to write this paper.

The Society of Jesus is so well known to the citizens of New York that
it would be superfluous for me to give any lengthened description of
the general principles of government upon which the order is based.
Suffice it to say, for the benefit of the uninitiated, that, in common
with other religious, they have a head resident at the Roman court;
provincials under him, among whom the supervision of the different
stations is divided; and superiors of individual houses.

It is peculiar, however, to the Society of Jesus that each provincial
has attendant upon him an officer called _socius_, whose care it is to
look after the pecuniary business of the province, and in many kindred
ways to assist his chief; but this office, I am informed, does not
confer any additional rank upon the holder.

The case is different, however, with some other officials of the
society, called “consulters,” who, as their name implies, are chosen
from among the number of the elder and more experienced brethren.

The house in the Rue de Sèvres was reopened in the year 1853, after
having been considerably enlarged.

The main building consists of a plainly-built quadrangle, on the north
side of which, and in immediate connection with it, stands the church,
dedicated to the sacred name of Jesus. Running along all the inner
sides of the quadrangle, both on the ground and the other two floors,
is a lofty, well-ventilated corridor or cloister, adorned here and
there, after the usual manner of convents, with religious paintings.

The piece of ground forming the natural centre of the quadrangle is
laid out with shrubbery, though without pretension to anything more
than neatness.

On the ground floor are situated the refectory, the kitchens, and other
offices; while the first and second floors are devoted exclusively to
the use of the fathers. The cells, like the corridors, are lofty and
well ventilated, but so simple in their arrangement as to require no
description.

The priests, in the true monastic spirit, sweep and keep clean their
own rooms and even the cloisters; and, from the general air of
cleanliness and order that pervades the place, it is evident that the
work is well done. This walk through the cloisters of the Jesuit house
in Paris would be uninteresting were it not for the remembrance of one
ne’er-to-be-forgotten room; and for the sake of the names printed upon
the cell doors, bringing back as they do to one’s mind the recollection
of past times and weary troubles; and the near presence of men so many
of whom have distinguished themselves in working for the cause of holy
church.

Tread softly, and be silent now, as ye approach yonder door that bears
no printed name; for the key that turns the jealous lock will disclose
that to thy gaze which should excite thy intensest feelings of humility!

It is the “Martyrs’ Room,” where are kept the relics of the five heroic
men, each one of whom “pro lege Dei sui certavit usque ad mortem
et a verbis impiorum non timuit; fundatus enim erat supra firmam
petram.”[191]

Anatole de Beugy was arrested with the Père Ducoudray.

“Voilà un nom à vous faire couper le cou,” cried the officer in charge
of the party of arrest.

“Oh! j’espère,” replied the father calmly; “que vous ne me ferez pas
couper le cou à cause de mon nom.”

I imagine that the officer did not think more highly of F. de Beugy
after this. In fact, all through the time of his imprisonment, his
captors seem not to have liked him or his indomitable _sang froid_. His
coat is there, in this “Martyrs’ Room” (a secular one, by the bye),
and it is pierced with seventy-two Communist bullets—truly, a very
palpable proof of his enemies’ animosity.

When the Père Olivaint was on his way to execution, as he descended the
stairs of the prison of La Roquette, he found—how naturally!—that he
had his breviary tightly grasped in his hand. “They have me,” perhaps
he thought, “but they need not have _this_”; and he presented the book
to the _concierge_ of the prison, who had shown him some kindness. God
knows what motives the man had, but an officer of the National Guard
snatched it from his hand, and threw it into the flames of a fire near
by.

The _concierge_ recovered the breviary, or what remained of it, and it
is now in the “Martyrs’ Room.”

He who can look upon this relic without emotion must have a very hard
heart indeed!

Do any of us ever think that the spirit of penance—corporal
penance—is dying out amongst us? There are instruments of
self-mortification in this “Martyrs’ Room” that will convince us to the
contrary.

It is not a miracle—unless the world and life be all a miracle—if,
when men die wondrous deaths, wonderful things should follow upon those
deaths; and when we see a marble tablet in this “Martyrs’ Room” telling
how, not eighteen months ago, at Mass-time, when the priest invoked the
saints whose relics lay beneath the altars in the church, a child was
healed of a grievous disease, we must not be surprised.

“Ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem
sœculi.”[192]

The beds from La Roquette are here—pieces of sacking, stretched out by
a contrivance something similar to that made use of in the formation of
camp-stools.

Here are the little silver cases in which the fathers concealed the
Blessed Sacrament, to be at last, as each anticipated, his viaticum.

But enough....

The church, as I before stated, is situated on the north side of the
quadrangle. It is Gothic, and of fair proportions, consisting of a
choir and two aisles. The only side chapel worthy of note is that where
repose the bodies of the PP. Olivaint, Ducoudray, Clerc, Caubert, and
De Beugy, murdered on the 24th and 26th of May, 1871, by the Communists
of Paris. The walls, the floor, the whole chapel, in fact, is literally
covered with wreaths of blood-red _immortelles_; while in front of
what, in the event of their canonization, will be the “Martyrs’ Altar,”
are five white marble slabs, bearing upon them the names of the five
victims, together with the incidents and date of their deaths.

My kind guide—the priest whom I have elsewhere described as being
“my particular father”—having now shown me all that was necessary of
the house and chapel, returned with me to his cell, and, in some very
interesting conversations then and on my succeeding visits, soon gave
me an idea of the important works undertaken by his society in Paris.

“We are,” said he, “quite a military order. Fighting is as much our
business as it is the soldier’s; and I will even go so far as to say
that he is no true Jesuit who does not fight. Of enemies, as you may
imagine, there is no lack whatever; but, undoubtedly, here our _bête
noire_ is socialism; for you know in Paris, as indeed elsewhere, it
has ever been our aim to undertake, if possible, the education of the
male portion of society. And this, unfortunately, happens to be the
favorite work of the socialists also; for, however faulty their code of
moral philosophy may be in other respects, they have at least grasped
the fact that to educate the affluent youth of a country is to form the
intellect of a rising generation. However,” concluded my instructor
laughingly, “we have never been _very_ popular in European society.”

“No,” I answered abstractedly; for I was thinking just then of the
sacred name which the order bears—of him who was “Virum dolorum et
scientem infirmitatem”;[193] and my thoughts reverted to the martyr
shrine that I had so lately seen in the chapel. “But perhaps you, who
have in such a special manner enrolled yourselves under the banner of
the sacred name of Jesus, have received of him a greater share than
others of the shame of the cross.”

The father’s reply was a very practical one. “My dear sir,” said he,
“nothing of the kind. The world dislikes us because we persist in
teaching, and because it knows perfectly well that all our teaching is
impregnated to the core with that particular kind of Catholicity which
it hates—the Catholicity, I mean, whose first principle is devotion
and implicit obedience to the Holy See.”

It will be seen, therefore, from the foregoing fragment of
conversation, that the Jesuits’ work in Paris is for the most part the
Catholic education of the upper classes.

The fathers in the Rue de Sèvres do, in one way and another, a good
deal of work, although but little, perhaps, of a character that
directly identifies itself with the peculiar animus of the order to
which I have alluded. They are popular as confessors, and this involves
a good deal of labor.

They direct two confraternities of men, each numbering respectively
upwards of two hundred members. One is for the fathers of families,
and the other for young men. Each society meets in the chapel upon
alternate Thursdays for Mass and instruction. Again, the Jesuits render
every assistance that lies in their power to the parochial clergy; and
thus the fathers become, now conductors of missions, and now Lenten or
Advent preachers.

At the Rue de Sèvres are given retreats, not only to their own
brethren and the secular clergy, but also, and on a large scale, to
private individuals—men whom care has driven to seek refuge in the
contemplation of the treasures laid up for them in heaven.

Jesuits, whose duty calls them to places _en route_ to which Paris
becomes a natural resting-place, find a haven in the Rue de Sèvres. The
provincial resides here when he is in Paris; and, finally, a few men
who, at a moment’s notice, are available to be sent anywhere to meet a
sudden emergency, make for the time this most interesting house their
home.

In a dark, narrow street in close proximity to the Pantheon—in a
street that, in its unlikeness to some other parts of the city, reminds
one of the Paris of history—is situated the College of S. Geneviève.
This is the chief educational establishment of the order; the other
being that of the school of the Immaculate Conception at Vaugirard—a
village on the southwest side of Paris.

In concluding this chapter in the life of what, next to holy church
itself, must ever be considered the most wonderful organization that
the world has ever seen, I cannot do better than append a brief account
of the character of the work done in these two houses.

The Ecole S. Geneviève, founded in the year 1854, proposes for its
object the preparation of youths for admission into the various
professional colleges in France. That the work is a success may be
seen in the fact that, in 1872-1873, sixty-four students were actually
admitted from thence to the military academy at St. Cyr, while
twenty-three more were declared “admissibles”; that the same school
sent sixteen boys to the Ecole Centrale, to be educated as engineers,
seven to the Ecole Navale, and twenty-three to the Polytechnique; and,
lastly, that, exclusive of these, many more have been admitted into
other similar establishments in Paris or elsewhere. The aggregate
number of students appears, from the statistics put into my hands, to
exceed four hundred and fifty.

The present rector of S. Geneviève is the immediate successor of the
Père Ducoudray; and it is a noteworthy fact that three out of the five
men killed under the Commune were connected with the school; the other
two being PP. Caubert and Clerc. The services of the last-named father
must have been extremely valuable; for, previous to his admission to
the Society of Jesus, he had been for many years a naval officer.

The school of the Immaculate Conception, at Vaugirard, is perhaps as
perfect a specimen of its kind as can be found in Europe.

At the present moment, there are upwards of six hundred and forty boys,
representing the flower of the French _beau monde_, receiving at this
institution a sound high-class education.

On his entrance, the scholar is at first put through an elementary
course, out of which he is drafted into the sixth form, from which he
rises to the third, and then completes his education by successive
courses of classics, rhetoric, and philosophy.

Thus, to an outsider and to a passer-by in Paris, appears the work of
that grand order whose aim we believe to be no less than the motto they
have adopted:

_Ad majorem Dei gloriam!_




SAN MARCO: A REMINISCENCE.


IN all the great cities of the Old World, the cathedral is the nucleus
round which gathers the social life of the community. It is a national
monument, a historical representative; it keeps in its tombs records
more precious to the nation than those treasured in archives and
libraries; it is identified with the city’s success or failure, and
often bears visible marks of this sympathetic life in its trophies or
in its ruins. Of old, the principal church of a city became the mirror
of the people’s individuality; it took on the form that best expressed
the people’s genius; it was an index to the national character. If this
is so with other churches, it is perhaps even more strikingly true of
S. Mark’s in Venice.

This unique church, the S. Sophia of the West, and the inheritrix
_par excellence_ of Byzantine treasures, is one that, to our fancy,
makes a deeper impression on the stranger than S. Peter’s at Rome. To
describe it technically; to speak of its uneven floor and crowded,
heavy pilasters; to enumerate its columns, and analyze the color of
its mosaics, is simply a desecration, besides inevitably implying an
untruth. Criticism cannot be anything but an afterthought, even though
genuine admiration should not be the first impression of the visitor.
A spell is laid upon you at the very outset, and an indescribable
feeling of reverence steals over your every sense as you tread the
dusky aisles. We have always found it most satisfactory, in visiting
either churches or cities, to slowly drink in the spirit of the place,
rather than rush into a dissection of its detailed sights; and we are
persuaded that this slow, receptive method is the only way in which to
enjoy travel of any sort.

Thus, for instance, S. Mark’s became so woven in with our daily life
that, without being able to give a single date or statistical fact
concerning it, we were yet entirely penetrated with its peculiar
beauty, but, above all, by its silent influence.

We went there every morning to early Mass—which, by the bye, is the
only way to see a beautiful church on the Continent. You grow to love
it, to know its every corner, to feel its peace, to be quite at home
in it, to look out for the sunbeam throwing its line of gold over some
particular spot on the marble floor, or for the red glow of the sunset
to illumine some favorite mosaic. Then, too, you begin to know your
fellow-worshippers, and to expect the clamorous hum of devotion with
which this old man tells his beads, or to be disappointed if you fail
to see the old beggar-woman crouching behind the ponderous door, and
stretching out her hand with a ready blessing for the daily alms. S.
Mark’s is one of the most peaceful churches in Europe; silence seems
natural to it, and not even a great ceremony appears to create any
stir there. The midnight Mass, which, by a singular exemption from the
ordinary rule, takes place on Christmas eve, at five o’clock in the
afternoon (this and the Christmas Mass at Vienna are the only such
exceptions), is celebrated with great pomp, and the music is not too
full of repose; yet the spirit of the church seems serenely unaltered,
and the great brooding silence hangs over the echoes of the pageants,
hushing them till the mind wanders away so far from their earthly
presence that it is hardly more conscious of them than a man standing
on a high mountain would be of the suppressed hum of the city lying
at his feet. But another solemnity have we witnessed in this church
much more congenial to its spirit, and indeed the most impressive of
all Christian ceremonies—the office of _Tenebræ_. S. Mark’s is never
lighted by anything save the golden lamps of its distant shrines, and
the tall columns of wax on the high altar. The service on the three
evenings of Holy Wednesday and Thursday, and Good Friday, is generally
after dark, and every one brings his own light—a _cerino_, or coil
of waxen taper—by which to read his book. This will barely suffice
for two persons to read by, so that, from the gallery where we were
stationed, we could see the church sown with stars, like the heavens at
midnight; while, in the various fantastic recesses above and below our
own, called galleries, glimmered a score of similar fitful lights. The
attendance was small, and the beauty of the sight thereby increased.
The chant, coming from below as the invisible choir breathed out the
solemn lamentations, had a weird, stilling effect, like that of the
sighing of the wind among the pines, suggesting everything that was
strange, far-away, and desolate. We had heard the _Miserere_ of the
Sistine Chapel in Rome, and likened it to what one might dream the
angels to have sung while Christ hung on the cross of Calvary; but
this—the same service, the same words, almost the same chant—seemed
rather what the watchers round the sepulchre might have whispered amid
their sobs, as they left the sacred body of their dead Lord on the
evening of the first Good Friday.

Among the few people whose faces were near enough to be recognized
were some of our acquaintances of the Venetian _salons_. They wore
the customary dress, black gowns and lace veils falling gracefully
around them. One was a great beauty by night, though what looked a
soft, cream-colored complexion then would look sallow by day. She was
the daughter of a Jew, married to a nominal Catholic, but an actual
atheist, and herself practised no religion whatsoever. Here she was,
with her beautiful, hopeless eyes fixed on the religious ceremonial
with a sort of weary, hungry, perplexed look, while a friend tried
earnestly to interest her in the spirit of the ritual.

Don Carlos and his family were there too, he and his brother being mere
boys at the time, and more occupied by the care required to keep the
_cerino_ from burning down too low than by the solemn ceremonies at
which they were assisting. The daily life, if one may so call it, of
the Venetian Basilica has, however, more power to charm the memory than
its hours of splendid show. We like best to think of it almost empty
and quite silent, its high altar seldom used, and its Lady Chapel,
Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and altar of the Crucifix quaintly
propped up against the corner of the pilaster, surrounded by the few
worshippers whose faithful instincts bid them haunt the same spots
day after day. In the early morning, you enter the seemingly deserted
church. No hum of prayer is heard; hardly a human form is in sight.
Suddenly, to the right of the high chancel, the sound of a little
bell is heard, and, from the winding path that leads through chapels
and pillars from the sacristy, a priest appears, vested for Mass, and
accompanied by his server. From hidden corners rise up silent forms
that join his train, and follow him to the altar which he has chosen;
a devout congregation is quietly collected, and crowds round the
rails, outside and inside, or, where there are no rails, presses up
to the priest’s very feet, and often impedes the server’s movements.
The latter is not always very reverential, however, and his motions
sometimes savor of abruptness; but the people are too simple-minded to
be shocked. When the bell should be rung, the boy ensconces himself at
the side of the altar, and pulls a string attached to a bell high up
above his head; and here, as in most Italian churches, the _Domine non
sum dignus_ is not distinguished by a bell at all. Another feature of
S. Mark’s is the collector. At every Mass, he comes round, rattling
a box in the face of each person, and crying, in a monotonous tone,
“For the poor, my brethren,” or, “For the souls in purgatory”; and, as
there are many collectors, and the succession of Masses at each of the
three or four altars is uninterrupted, it may be judged whether this
simple and erratic style of collecting is not rather an infliction
than otherwise; yet somehow it fits in with the spirit of the place.
S. Mark’s contains no pictures; that is, no masterpieces of those
whom the world recognizes as the kings of their art. SS. Giovanni e
Paolo, the Jesuit church, that of the Frari, and many others, are
rich in these treasures; but San Marco has its matchless mosaics,
combining Scriptural, historical, and allegorical subjects of colossal
dimensions, with the most fanciful arabesques and purely decorative
tracery. The colors, both in the interior, where the low arches seem
lined with the golden glow of an everlasting sunset, and on the outer
porch, where figures of vast size and groups of bold conception strike
the eye, are almost as brilliant to-day as they must have been a
thousand years ago.

If there is no _chef-d’œuvre_ of modern art, there is nevertheless
something more suggestive to the Catholic mind. The “picture” we grew
to love most in all Venice was no Titian or Paul Veronese, nor even a
Bellini (though the latter have the fragrance of Beato Angelico about
them); but a brown Byzantine Madonna, hidden behind crowns and necklets
of heavy gold, and enthroned in a deep, receding shrine—a temple of
blazing gems under the massive, overhanging arches of S. Mark’s. The
face, as revealed in the unadorned prints of it sold all over Venice,
is very beautiful, the features severely regular, and the expression
one of infinite majesty and calm. We know more than one of these sombre
masterpieces of unknown artists, which no one admires, because no one,
as a rule, _sees_ them, but which, though overloaded with precious
metals to the detriment of their beauty, and branded contemptuously
by sightseers as mere “miraculous images,” are yet very pure models
of ancient art, and most interesting relics of early Christianity.
For instance, there is one at Warsaw in universal veneration all over
Poland, and whose grave, dignified, and grandly serene cast of features
raises it as a work of religious art far above the portraits of
simpering maidens, buxom peasants, or gorgeous sultanas, whom the world
has recognized for nearly four hundred years as the type of the Mother
of God. Russia is rich in these Byzantine pictures, and the Greek
Church holds them in as great honor as the Catholic.

We seem to have wandered out of Venice, somehow, in this gossip about
unrecognized pictures; but the mention of Byzantium in reality brings
us back to the lagoons, for it is as familiar to the Venetian as his
own republic. Indeed, one would think that Venice had no civilization
before she invaded Constantinople in 1204; for everything of any
value, artistic or historical, is always traced up to this date. As
it is impossible to create a new Venice, so it would be to build a
new Basilica of San Marco; the city of the Evangelist stands alone
in history, and its cathedral alone in art. It has the rare merit of
suggesting nothing if not Christianity; it is more individual than S.
Peter’s, and less associated with pageants and festivals; it is no mere
imitation or adaptation of the forms of pagan art; it suits the purple
sky and brilliant atmosphere of the South, yet without jarring on the
sense of the Christianity to whose use it is dedicated; and, if its
style is less symbolical than the Gothic, it is at least less servile
than the Palladian. The chief impression it has left on us, as well as
the only analysis we wish to make of its beauties, is this—that it is
the easiest church in Europe in which to pray without distraction.




“MOTHER OF GOD.”


  I KNEW, O God! that thou wert great and good,
    Holy and just, and yet most loving, too;
  But never did I know thy tenderness
    Till these sweet words had pierced me through and through.

  It seemed so far to lift my heart to thee,
    I could but fear and tremble as I prayed;
  Until thy grace made these sweet words disclose
    The infinite act of love which thou hadst made.

  Mother of God! Then Thou art one with us—
    Our Brother, Lover, Saviour, all in one;
  And the great distance ‘twixt our souls and thee
    Was bridged by Mary’s words, “Thus be it done.”

  Henceforth, when I would make my act of love,
    When my full heart would lift itself to thee,
  Should holy awe and fear weigh down my soul,
    “Mother of God” upon my lips shall be.




MEMOIRS OF A GOOD FRENCH PRIEST.


IT must not be always that men’s evil manners are writ in brass, their
good deeds in water. The one grand, true, and pure wife of Henry
VIII., with her strong sense of justice, commended the chronicler of
the virtues of her once-potent but then fallen enemy. The history of
conquerors, which most attracts the world’s admiring gaze, is but too
often a record of crime; but, _fiat justitia_, with their crimes let
their redeeming qualities, if any there be, stand forth, so that the
good and the evil may flow down the stream of time in history, as they
move in life, together.

We have recently read a work which contains in a few pages a large
record of virtue and vice, of good and evil: the actors, however, were
different parties—as far apart in their spheres as the spirits on the
right and the left hand on the day of doom.

The _Memoirs of the Rt. Rev. Simon Gabriel Bruté_, with his sketches
of scenes connected with the French Revolution, and extracts from
his journal by Bishop (now Archbishop) Bayley, is one of a class
of works which is deeply interesting in its nature and striking in
its contrasts. The glory and shame of France are strangely brought
together. The culmination of the neverending contest between the church
of Christ, on the one hand, and the world and the gates of hell, on the
other, appeared to be reached in the French Revolution. Heaven-born
piety and hell-born iniquity, each in its most potential form, seemed
to meet in a death-grapple. Astonished and awe-stricken nations looked
on as spectators of the combat, as if upon that field hung the fate of
Christianity, of revelation, of, in short, the subordination of the
creature to the Creator. The struggle indeed was appalling; and the
modern followers of that fool who said in his heart, There is no God,
often threw up their fool’s-caps, _bonnets-d’âne_, or _bonnets-rouges_
in token of victory. But the end was not yet, as it is not yet. In
that struggle, as in all others for eighteen hundred years, the divine
prophecy was vindicated, and the oracles of Satan for a time were
silenced, at least until the father of sin could rehabilitate them
in other forms. The American Catholic whose memory serves him for a
couple of score of years, may remember to have seen at Mount S. Mary’s
College, or in Baltimore, a French priest, whose very physiognomy
would strongly rivet attention. We remember once, in early college
days, passing from Georgetown College, where we were acquiring the
humanities, to Mount S. Mary’s on a holiday excursion. We had fresh in
mind as the very ideal of a venerable priest good old Father Jerome
Dzierozynski, priest, philosopher, scholar, saint, the pastor of the
college, and a model for his younger brethren aspiring to Christian
perfection. We found his counterpart in the French priest, Father
Bruté, at the mountain. His very presence was inspiring. The man of
God was plainly discernible in his calm, placid face, which spoke,
without words, of holiness, of wisdom, of learning, of the subjection
of self and the man of the flesh, of the age, to the spiritual man,
the pilgrim to eternity. Our personal recollections of this eminent
man, however, go not beyond appearances and first-sight impressions. We
are indebted to Archbishop Bayley’s fascinating work for a knowledge
of his eventful career. Born and bred in France in a model Catholic
family, he witnessed in his boyhood the practical workings of the
French Revolution. He had not the honor to undergo exile or martyrdom,
but he knew intimately many of the victims of that reign of _Satanas_;
and his young eyes were made to ache with the lurid coruscations of the
philosophy of Antichrist, which swept over France as fire sweeps over a
prairie.

Losing his father early in life, his education was conducted by a
wise and prudent mother, such as is called in Holy Writ “a valiant
woman.” He was sent to the best schools of the day in his native city
of Rennes, and he was fortunate in having for his teachers priests
eminent for piety and learning, several of whom gave up their lives
for the faith. For a short time he worked as a practical printer. “In
1793-4,” he writes of himself, “during the height of ‘The Terror,’
my mother made me work in the printing-office to save me from being
enrolled in a regiment of children named ‘The Hope of the Country’;
and a hopeful set they were.” A regiment of boys was formed, who acted
as so many young demons. “My mother was much pressed to allow me to
join them, and was terribly alarmed on this account. I remained in the
printing-office nearly a year, and became a pretty good compositor.”
To the honor of the craft, we may add that his widowed mother had a
printing establishment under her own direction, probably derived from
her first husband, Francis Vatar, printer to the king and parliament at
Rennes, who prided himself on his hereditary art, his ancestors having
been printers for many generations.

After this interruption to his studies, he resumed them, and in due
time began the study of medicine. His fondness for the profession, his
talents, his industry, gave sure indications of eminent success. In
1799, at twenty years of age, he entered the Medical School at Paris.
“At the time this occurred,” he says, “I was entirely wrapt up in my
medical studies, and preparing for the prize.” This indeed he obtained.
He graduated with the highest honors. There were at that time eleven
hundred students attending the course; out of these, one hundred
and twenty were chosen by _concursus_ as the best; and among this
number M. Bruté received the first prize after another examination.
An official appointment immediately followed this youthful triumph.
But his thoughts were now turned to another field of labor, and to
that vocation alone more worthy than medicine of his high endowments.
He determined to study for the church. “He was not led to abandon a
profession to which he had devoted so many years of assiduous study,
and which opened its most brilliant prospects before him,” as Dr.
McCaffrey remarks, “from any feelings of disgust. He always honored it
as one of the noblest to which a highly gifted and philanthropic man
can devote himself. Delightful as his conversation was to all, and to
men of science in particular, it was peculiarly so to the student or
to the practitioner or professor of medicine. He turned from it only
because he had higher and more important objects in view. His eleven
hundred classmates in medicine told him that it was easy to find
physicians for the body, but the Revolution had made it more difficult
to find physicians for the souls of men. The guillotine and prisons and
privations of exile had spared but a comparatively small number of the
former clergy, and of these many were occupied in foreign missions.
Dreadful as had been the ravages of infidelity and impiety, and the
almost entire privation of all spiritual succor, an immense number of
the French people still remained faithful to their religion, and a new
supply of Levites, to fill the places of those who had perished, was
called for on every side.”

The medical student who had gone through the Parisian curriculum with
a pure heart and a sinless soul proved thereby his title to join the
choicest body of Levites. He not only had gone through the course
with virginal purity, but he had already made a fight for the faith
amidst its most potent enemies. If he resembled Aloysius at Rennes, he
showed the spirit of Bayard at Paris. “Not satisfied with professing
and openly practising his religion, he entered into a combination
with several of his fellow-students, particularly those from his own
province, boldly to oppose the false principles to which they were
obliged to listen. They chose such subjects for their theses before
the class as to enable them to avow their belief in revelation, and to
defend its truth. One of the beneficial effects which followed from
this course, was that the attention of the government was called to it.
Bonaparte, then First Consul, was laboring to restore Christianity in
France, as the necessary means of reorganizing society; and the infidel
professors were made to confine their teaching to its proper limits.”

It would be well if infidel or atheistical professors at the present
day could be restrained to their respective courses of instruction.
Some of them seem to think it incumbent on them to proclaim, _ex
cathedrâ_, their irreligious or atheistical convictions. Such men
are entirely unfit for their occupations, no matter what talents or
learning they may possess, and they ought to be silenced by authority.
This may be considered illiberal by some, but let them make a little
change in the order, and suppose a Catholic professor of anatomy to
give a daily discourse to his pupils on the infallibility of the Pope
before mixed classes of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and infidels:
would such teachings, we ask, be greeted with liberal approbation?
We think not. Then the infidel professor cannot expect a Christian
public to consent to his teachings, beyond his proper course. This is a
practical question of the day, and all honest men should demand in the
teaching of medicine, or of any science or sciences, that the teachers
should confine themselves to demonstrative and demonstrable facts.
It is the last degree of folly or of impudence to attempt to prove
anything of the relations of the soul to the body by the aid of scalpel
or microscope. Professors in the Parisian schools still claim the right
to teach covert or overt atheism, and they deem interference nothing
less than persecution. They are philosophers, and claim free thought.
But their opponents say properly (and this matter has been before the
French Senate) that it is not the thought of the professors which is
the matter in dispute, but their officious _teachings_. If they are
free to think what they please, says an eminent medical writer, M.
Garnier, they are not therefore free to profess or to teach all that
they think. Animism, spiritism, materialism, are equally intractable
to science. In these matters science can prove nothing; the rights of
science, then, are neither compromised nor sacrificed by keeping it
within the limits defined by its very nature.

All parents and guardians of youth, whatever their faith, or want of
it, should protest against professors of medicine making use of their
chairs to inculcate upon their pupils that the soul is subordinate to
the body, the immortal to the mortal part of man. These are matters
which are not now, never were, and never will be under the dominion of
human wisdom or learning.

We will now follow Dr. Bruté rapidly in his career as physician in the
higher order, that is, for the souls of men. He made his studies in
divinity with the intense earnestness of his nature. “Theology was a
science for which his mind was admirably fitted. He loved his religion,
and it evidently became his delight thoroughly to explore the very
foundations of it.” He was ordained priest in 1808, and was for a short
time professor of theology in his native city. In 1810, he came to the
United States, and began that active career in Baltimore and at Mount
S. Mary’s College which made him so favorably known to the clergy and
people of this country. “If Mount S. Mary’s, in addition to all the
other benefits it has bestowed upon Catholicity in this country, has
been in a remarkable degree the nursery of an intelligent, active,
zealous priesthood, exactly such as was needed to supply the wants
of the church in this country, every one at all acquainted with the
history of that institution will allow that the true ecclesiastical
spirit was stamped upon it by Bishop Bruté. His humility, piety, and
learning made him a model of the Christian priest; and the impression
of his virtues made upon both ecclesiastical and lay students surpassed
all oral instruction. The Catholic religion alone can produce such men,
and hence their example confirms the faith and elevates the character
of all who come in contact with them. The name of Bishop Bruté has
been, and ever will be, associated with that of Bishop Dubois as common
benefactors to the infant church in this country.”

The church in America has obligations to a considerable body of
French priests, driven from their own country for the most part
by the ruthless madmen who for a season ruled fair France, which
obligations can never be repaid and have scarcely been recognized.
Even American Catholics often speak of Lafayette and his followers as
the only Frenchmen entitled to our gratitude, forgetting entirely the
valiant soldiers of the cross from the same country who Christianized
our savages in the wilderness, or who astonished our Protestant
civilization with their learning, their talents, and their virtues.
Speaking of Bishop Cheverus, first Catholic Bishop of Boston, “which
of us,” says Dr. W. E. Channing, the most eminent Protestant minister
of his time in that city—“which of us would like to have our lives
compared with his?” This candid and generous admission might have
applied to others as well as to the almost peerless Cheverus, but none
could have deserved it more. How truly is the blood of the martyrs
the seed of the church!—including in the martyrs all who suffer in
person or property for Christ. The French Revolution sent to our shores
as fine a body of priests as the world ever saw—learned, pious,
accomplished, refined, and highly cultured in every sense, they left
an ineffaceable impression upon their successors in the priesthood in
this country. In the order of God’s providence, persecution, in fact,
has given the greatest impetus to Catholicity in America. The perpetual
persecution of the Irish on account of their religion, the recent
or actual persecutions by Garibaldi, Victor Emanuel, and Bismarck,
all give laborers to this vineyard, where they are so much needed,
and where they are doing a world of good a century in advance of an
adequate supply of native priests.

In 1834, Dr. Bruté was consecrated as Bishop of Vincennes; in 1839,
worn out with much and faithful service, his pure spirit took its
departure. In his poor diocese, he had everything to construct, and
everybody to instruct, even some Indian tribes, who received him with
great joy as a “chief of the black robes,” a priest of “the true
prayer.” He had no sinecure dignity. “At home he was at once the
bishop, the pastor of the congregation, the professor of theology for
his seminary, and a teacher for one of his academies.” These give
a small idea of his labors. When the king of terrors (to most men)
came, he found the bishop at his post, on duty, like the faithful
Roman sentinel at the gates of Pompeii. But there were no terrors for
him. “On the morning of the day before his death, he remarked to the
clergyman who attended him with unwearied solicitude and affection:
‘My dear child, I have the whole day yet to stay with you; to-morrow
with God!’ To another pious friend he used these simple but expressive
words: ‘I am going home!’” And when his pure soul was disengaging
itself, as it were, from the body, having received all the last rites
of the church, he directed the prayers for the departing to be said,
which he answered devoutly and fervently to the last; and then he
entered upon that eternal life which he had always been contemplating,
and for which his whole career had been one long preparation.

We would wish, if space permitted, to give selections from some of
the good bishop’s “Brief Notes” of his recollections connected with
the persecutions in France in 1793 and the following years, for they
show in their simple details the striking contrasts between the lives
and deaths of the children of Christ and the children of Antichrist,
among the French people of that day. Never before in the history of the
church, or in the history of humanity, did virtue and vice, face to
face, reach loftier heights or deeper depths.

The aim of the French rulers was to extinguish Christianity. The “age
of reason” had arrived, and its advanced fautors determined that the
world should recognize it. But the priests stood in the way, and,
by some strange mischance, all the honest and meritorious people of
the land made common cause with the priests. To bring these people
to a just appreciation of reason, the churches were plundered and
dismantled, and turned into temples of reason or barracks and stables,
and, if possible, viler uses. To take God’s house from him was to
deprive him of a dwelling-place in France, and the example of France
would be followed everywhere, so that God should be banished from
the earth of his own creation. But the priests—the unreasonable,
intractable priests—instead of adopting the new lights, would adhere
to the doctrines and traditions of past ages. When the churches were
closed, they would worship God by stealth, with their followers, in
private houses, in the fields, in the woods, offering their pure
and unbloody sacrifice on every hill and in every dale and valley
of France. To correct this, their existence, and that of those
who harbored them, was demanded in bloody sacrifice. “During the
progress of the persecution,” says Bishop Bruté, “the greater number
of the priests of the diocese had been either guillotined or shot,
or transported to the penal colonies. The more aged and infirm were
imprisoned in the Castle of St. Michael. Of the few left in deep
concealment, some were almost daily discovered, and, according to the
_law_, led with those who had harbored them to the guillotine within
twenty-four hours.” Young Bruté often followed the accused to the
criminal court, and listened with palpitating heart to the mock trials
of priests and people. His instances are deeply touching. The very
_capitula_ arrest attention: as “Trial of the priest and the three
sisters of La Chapelle S. Aubert, Diocese of Rennes.” The priest, M.
Raoul, was summarily convicted and sentenced; he submitted without a
murmur, but attempted to offer a plea for the sisters, who sheltered
him, when he was immediately silenced. The ladies were then put upon
trial, and convicted and sentenced also. One of them had been a nun,
and, driven from her convent home, had returned to her sister’s house.
She was a woman of spirit, and when under the sentence of death she
had a word to say to the court and the spectators. “When the sentence
had been pronounced, the nun could not restrain her feelings of
indignation. She rose from her seat, snatched from her cap the national
cockade, which even the women were obliged to wear during those days
of national delusion, and, trampling it under her feet, she addressed
alternately the judges and the people with two or three sentences of
vehement reproach: ‘Barbarous people,’ she exclaimed, ‘amongst what
savage nations has hospitality ever been made a crime punishable with
death?’ I cannot now call to mind her other expressions, except that
she appealed to the higher tribunal of God, and denounced his judgment
against them.... The same day these four victims were immolated upon
the fatal guillotine. They were taken, I think, as was often the case,
from the tribunal to the scaffold, which remained permanently erected
under the windows.” “A priest and peasant, bound together, were led to
the ‘Fusilade’ singing the service for the dead.” One morning early,
young Bruté was startled from his studies by the notes of the _Libera
me, Domine_, from the Burial Service of the church, sung by some one
in the streets. “I understood too well what it all meant, and ran to
the door to go out and follow them, agitated and partially frightened
by the usual terror which rested on my heart, but at the same time
animated by the song of death, for it was the priest who was thus
singing his own _Libera_, and the poor peasant stepped along quickly
by his side, looking, as may be supposed, very serious, but without
the least appearance of fear. The impression on my mind is that the
soldiers, who generally followed their prisoners with jokes and abuse,
accompanied these two in silence.”

Priests and peasants and nobles were victims to the impious rage of
those days, and even women and children. It is appalling to read the
summary account of “children shot and children drowned; women shot and
women drowned; priests shot and priests drowned; nobles drowned, and
artisans drowned, besides the hosts who were guillotined or sent into
exile.”

We cannot draw further from the pages of this most interesting book,
but the reader may do so at his leisure. We have thought sometimes in
reading it that Victor Emanuel and Bismarck might find its perusal
profitable. While writing this, we see by the papers that the Upper
House of the Prussian diet has passed a bill authorizing a complete
control of the church—that is, of all religious matter—by the state
government. In other words, the church must be the king’s creature, or
must perish. We shall see. There is traditional policy in this move. In
one of Frederic the Great’s letters to Voltaire, he expresses a wish to
break up the Catholic Church first, for then, he adds, the Protestant
churches will be very easily disposed of.

The modern persecutors might see, if they were not blind, that after
all the follies and crimes and slaughters of the French Revolution—and
surely they can bring nothing worse or more potent than this—the
church has risen again in France in her glory, and that hers is at this
day the only one great conservative influence in France, as everywhere
else in Christendom. Surely it is plain that, though often doomed to
death, she is fated not to die. But how strange the infatuation of
princes or people who would wish to blot out Christianity from the face
of the earth, or to make it a mere servile tool of tyrants! To blot it
out! and what then the history of man? Some philosophic inquirer has
suggested the extinction of the sun, and then on this now bright planet
of ours universal darkness, intense cold, the congelation of all the
waters, the death of all vegetable life, the death of all animal life,
and of the last strong man in the midst of an infinitude of horrors!

Even so in the moral world if the church of Christ, by the malice of
man, could be extinguished: darkness, crime, and death, death temporal
and eternal, would be poor lost man’s only inheritance. But, thanks be
to God, we know that the bark of Peter will survive all tempests in the
future as in the past, and that she will float over the stormy sea of
time in safety to the consummation of ages; for the divine assistance
is promised to her for ever.

In conclusion, we beg leave to express the hope that Archbishop
Bayley will give to the world a new and enlarged edition of Bishop
Bruté’s life, as his materials are by no means exhausted. It will be
no detriment to Mr. Clarke’s excellent work to give to many of the
deceased prelates, individually, much more extended biographies than
that gentleman could possibly give in his instructive pages. And
finally, we may express a hope that, when Lady Herbert edits a new
edition, she will not forget to give due credit to the distinguished
author whose labors she has in some sense so fully appreciated.[194]


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

 LECTURES AND SERMONS. By the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O.P.
 New York: P. M. Haverty. 1873.

This, the second volume, containing thirty-two of F. Burke’s
magnificent discourses, has just been issued by his authorized
publisher, Mr. Haverty. In neither matter nor form is it inferior to
the splendid volume published a year ago. It contains lectures on
most of the important questions of the day, and nowhere better than
in these lectures may be found a solution to the great problems that
the moral and social condition of our age and country present. The
fundamental principles of religion, order, and law treasured up in
the _Summa_ of S. Thomas, F. Burke has thoroughly mastered and made
his own; and, armed with these, he comes forth in the might of his
eloquence, prepared to offer a remedy for every disease, intellectual
and moral, of the XIXth century. The principles which he advocates and
has proclaimed on the house-tops, from the Merrimac to the Mississippi,
are just those by which modern society must be saved, if saved at
all. His mission has been called a providential one with reference to
the Irish in this country; but we believe it to be a providential one
with reference to the American people at large. Never before have the
genuine principles of human action been so publicly and brilliantly
taught in our land; and the good seed, sown broadcast as it has been,
cannot but take root and produce fruit in due season.

Even now the conversions to our holy religion, wrought through the
instrumentality of F. Burke’s preaching, are many and widespread. But
how great and palpable the good he has done amongst his own people!
He has aroused their love for faith and fatherland to enthusiasm; he
has made them to realize the important influence they are to exert
on this continent; he has taught them to feel their dignity; he has
told them what is required of them as citizens of the republic; he has
pointed out their dangers, and suggested remedies for their disorders.
His constant aim has been to instil into the minds of his countrymen
every sentiment of religion, patriotism, and honor that could elevate
and ennoble a generous race. Since the days of O’Connell, no one man
has done so much for the Irish people, and none has received so much
of their gratitude and confidence. It is but a short time ago that we
heard a poor fellow say he had resolved “never to get drunk again,
lest he might disgrace a country that could produce such a man as F.
Tom Burke”—a noble sentiment truly, and one that speaks volumes for
the man who could inspire it. We seem to be describing the work of a
lifetime, and surely what we have said and had reason to say would make
a long lifetime illustrious. Yet in very truth are we but enumerating
the labors of a few months. What may not critics be able to write in
the future, should F. Burke return to us, and resume his glorious work?

 THE IRISH RACE IN THE PAST AND IN THE PRESENT. By Rev. Aug.
 J. Thebaud, S.J. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1873.

F. Thebaud has written us a philosophy of Irish history. He has
sought out the characteristics of the Celtic race, and has, we think,
discovered them and successfully traced them down from the earliest to
the latest annals of that grand old people. He has read Irish history,
and reflected on it, and his views, in relation to the Ireland of the
past at least, are correct. We are glad that one not an Irishman has
written this book; for when an Irishman speaks of his country’s bygone
glories, he is pretty generally accused of exaggeration, and the world
refuses to be interested in the details of an antique history which it
supposes to be in great part the creation of national pride. We have
always regretted that Montalembert did not write a history of Ireland,
as he once intended to do, and we have never quite forgiven Victor
Cousin for the part he took in dissuading the count from carrying out
this the cherished scheme of his youth. Had the brilliant author of
_The Monks of the West_ compiled the annals of Ireland, the story of
Erin’s ancient greatness and civilization would now have its fitting
place in the classic lore of Europe. F. Thebaud’s treatment of early
Irish history is very satisfactory; he has a real love and admiration
for that land—

  “History’s sad wonder, whom all lands save one
  Gaze on through tears, and name with gentler tone.”

Christian Ireland in its golden age is particularly dear to him, and he
delights in describing the glories of that Erin, then

  “Lamp of the north when half the world was night,
  Now England’s darkness ‘mid her noon of light.”

In dealing with the events of this period, we think the learned author
more happy than in his treatment of modern Irish history, though we are
not at all disposed to disagree to any great extent with his views of
martyred Ireland’s wrongs and their needs. We, too, believe that

              ... “Ere long
  Peace Justice-built the Isle shall cheer.”

From what he says of the present condition of things in that
misgoverned country, however, we do think he has not consulted the most
reliable authorities on all points; his account of the ignorance and
destitution of the poorer classes is certainly somewhat exaggerated.
This is about the only thing we find to criticise in a book which is
manifestly a labor of love, and executed with an ardor and enthusiasm
that love alone can enlist. F. Thebaud’s work is a valuable and highly
important contribution to Irish history. To our Irish fellow-citizens
it commends itself. To our American and non-Catholic readers who want
to form correct views of Ireland and its people, we commend it.


 THE LIMERICK VETERAN; OR, THE FOSTER SISTERS. By Agnes M.
 Stewart. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1873.

This is a historical romance, and a very good one of its kind.
Throughout its two hundred and fifty pages thrilling facts and pleasing
fiction are well and judiciously blended. The style is really good,
and the name of Agnes Stewart is sufficient warrant that the tone is
high and unexceptionable. If there were anything in a name, we might be
disposed to criticise it in this particular; for, in very truth, the
connection between the title and the tale that hangs thereon is slight.
The story opens in Scotland, and the bonny Highlands are kept pretty
well in view throughout, though the scene shifts to England, France,
and Germany, and the curtain falls on a Christmas scene by the frozen
St. Lawrence. In a novel such as this we do believe; it amuses, it
instructs; from such a book much valuable history may be learned in a
pleasing way.

The publishers have done Miss Stewart justice by giving to the public
her graceful story in an appropriate form.

 SINS OF THE TONGUE. By Monseigneur Landroit, Abp. of Rheims.
 Boston: P. Donahoe. 1873.

Mgr. Landroit is already favorably known to the English reader by
a series of discourses for the use of women living in the world,
translated under the title of _The Valiant Woman_. The present work not
only treats of the subject indicated by the title, but also of “Envy
and Jealousy,” “Rash Judgments,” “Christian Patience,” and “Grace”;
and is intended for those who would naturally derive greater spiritual
advantage from thoughtful reading than from formal meditation.

From the unrestful condition of things in this age and country it
probably comes that there are fewer vocations to a contemplative life,
and less inclination to habits of systematic contemplation, than in
older and more settled communities. Hence, works like the present are
perhaps more appropriate to those not consecrated to the religious
state than many of the ordinary books of meditation. We therefore
welcome it as we do all judicious efforts to assist persons in the
world to perform the duties to which they may be called, and to resist
the temptations by which they may be assailed.

The Marthas are likely always to outnumber the Marys, and should have
every assistance at the hands of those capable of leading them in the
path of holiness. The church in this and similar ways is ever adapting
its aids to the varying circumstances by which her children may be
surrounded.

 OUT OF SWEET SOLITUDE. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Philadelphia:
 Lippincott & Co. 1873.

This modest little volume, a “first book,” gives us confidence that
the authoress will fill a useful place in the Catholic literature of
America. We say a useful place, for poetry like hers is much in demand
in our Catholic homes.

The three divisions of the volume—“Sacred Legends,” “Poems of the
Civil War,” and “Miscellaneous Poems”—present a pleasing variety,
both of matter and of style. Some of her lyrics are more accurate than
others; and some of her descriptions would be stronger with fewer
epithets. But her verse is, for the most part, as smooth as simple.
And while no one can charge her with affectation, she is certainly not
lacking in originality.

There is but a single line on which we shall make a stricture. It
occurs in a poem called “The Skeleton at the Feast”: the sixth line of
the fifth stanza, p. 77. She speaks of

                      “The flame
  Lit for the damned _from all eternity_.”

Now, God did not create “from eternity”; still less are any of his
creatures damned “from eternity.” We therefore pronounce this line a
slip of the pen, and beg that it may be altered in the next edition.

In conclusion, we thankfully welcome the authoress into the number
of our Catholic poetesses, and hope that ere long she will be again
tempted to come to us “out of sweet solitude.”

OLD NEW ENGLAND TRAITS. Edited by George Lunt. New York:
Published by Hurd & Houghton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press. 1873.

Any one acquainted with the ancient city of Newburyport will have a
special interest in the reminiscences which this very readable book
contains. To those who are not, it will give a very perfect idea of the
New England of the past, which is even now pretty well preserved in
these old seaport towns of Massachusetts. There is not a dry or tedious
page in it from beginning to end, and, both in matter and style, it is
just the kind of a book for any time of year, but particularly for the
summer. At the end, there are a number of ghost stories. Ghosts seem to
thrive well in Newburyport, judging from recent developments as well as
these more ancient ones, and there can be no doubt that the reputation
of Essex County for the preternatural is really very well founded.


BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

 From W. G. SIMONS & CO., Richmond: Pastoral Letter on
 Christian Education. By the Rt. Rev. James Gibbons, D.D. 8vo, paper,
 pp. 19.

 From P. O’SHEA, New York: Essays on Various Subjects. By H.
 E. Card. Wiseman. Vol. IV. 12mo, pp. 300.

 From LEE & SHEPARD, Boston: The Year. By D. C. Colesworthy.
 12mo, pp. 120.

 From E. O’KEEFE, New York: Third Annual Report of St.
 Vincent’s Home for Boys, 10 Vine Street, Brooklyn. Paper, 24mo, pp. 16.

 From D. APPLETON & CO., New York: Insanity in its Relation to
 Crime. By W. A. Hammond, M.D. 8vo, pp. 77.—A Review of Prof. Reese’s
 Review of the Wharton Trial. By W. E. A. Aikin, M.D., LL.D. Paper,
 8vo, pp. 20.

 From the AUTHOR: Religion in the University: Being a Review
 of the Subject as agitated in the Legislature of Michigan. By S. B.
 McCracken. Paper, 8vo, pp. 19.

 From the GENERAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY, Boston: Eleventh Annual
 Report, April 21, 1873. Paper, 8vo, pp. 44.

 From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: Babolain. By Gustave Droz.
 18mo, pp. 306.

 From BURNS & OATES, London: The Question of Anglican
 Ordinations Discussed. By E. E. Estcourt, M.A., F.S.A. With Original
 Documents and Fac-similes. 8vo, pp. xvi.-381.-cxvi.—A Theory of the
 Fine Arts. By S. M. Lanigan, A.B., T.C.D. 12mo, pp. xiii.-194.—The
 Prophet of Carmel. By Rev. C. B. Garside, M.A. 18mo, pp. xiii.-348.

 From T. & T. CLARK, Edinburgh: The Works of S. Aurelius
 Augustine—Vol. VII., On the Trinity. Vol. VIII., The Sermon on the
 Mount, and The Harmony of the Evangelists.




THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVII., No. 102.—SEPTEMBER, 1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev.
I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.




SHEA’S CHARLEVOIX.


WHEN the history of American Catholic literature comes to be written,
the name of John Gilmary Shea will hold one of the most honorable
places in the record. So much rough work has been needed to prepare the
ground for the American church, so much polemical discussion has been
called forth by our peculiar position in the midst of a hostile and
prejudiced community, so many problems of philosophy and social science
have pressed upon us for consideration, and the demand for books of
education and devotion has been so urgent, that few of our writers have
found occasion to apply themselves to strictly literary and historical
studies or to those branches of criticism which are included in the
department of polite letters. And yet how richly this neglected field
of research would repay the labors of the Catholic investigator! The
early history of many parts of the North American continent is only a
chapter in the history of the Catholic Church. The most picturesque
characters in the early American annals are the Catholic voyagers
of France and Spain, the settlers of Canada, and Florida, and the
Pacific coast, and the missionaries who followed them across the ocean,
and pushed forward in advance of them into the savage wilderness.
How tame and mean appear the quarrels of the Plymouth settlers with
hostile Indians, and rival adventurers, and preaching sectaries, and
bewitched old women, after one has read of the heroism of a Jogues
and a Brebœuf, and the romantic travels of the discoverer of the
Mississippi. The settlement of Virginia was a prosaic and commonplace
affair beside the settlement of Canada. The monks who accompanied the
armies of the Spanish conquerors passed through experiences of the
most thrilling kind, whose story has been only imperfectly outlined in
the glowing pages of Prescott. Within the limits of the present Union,
the missionary has been the chief actor in many an extraordinary
scene of dramatic interest, and the hero of many a daring enterprise.
Simple-minded F. Mark traversing the desert in search of the seven
mythical cities of New Mexico; the gentle Marquette guiding his canoe
down the great river of the West, and breathing his last prayer on the
shores of the mighty lake; Hennepin, pattern of grotesque mendacity; La
Salle, model of a magnanimous commander and a daring explorer—such are
among the infinite variety of figures in the early Catholic history of
our country. Its later annals are not inferior in interest to the more
remote. Even yet the task of the pioneer is not complete, and startling
incidents are still common in the chronicles of missionary adventure.

No man has done more than Mr. Shea to preserve the record of all
these events and all these personages. For more than twenty years, he
has devoted himself to the study of the old materials for American
Catholic history. He gave to the world the first authentic and complete
narrative of the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, and
brought to light the manuscript narratives of the actors in that most
important and striking achievement. He prepared the only connected
account of the various Catholic missions among the Indian tribes, from
the discovery of the country to the present day. He was one of the
joint authors of the only general history of the American church. To
these works, and a large number of books of a miscellaneous character,
short histories, religious biographies, statistical publications, etc.,
he has recently added the result of patient and learned research into
the Indian languages; he has recovered the grammars and vocabularies
prepared by the old missionaries; he has assisted in the preparation
of various works on the Indians printed at the cost of the United
States government; he has edited an extraordinary variety of historical
collections and monographs; and, finally, he has prepared for the press
a number of hitherto unpublished narratives, memoirs, and relations in
connection with the early French and Spanish settlements. The value of
these publications can hardly be overstated. The care and judgment of
the editor have been universally recognized by the highest authorities;
and though Mr. Shea can hardly expect an adequate pecuniary recompense
for his time, his labor, and his outlay, he has been rewarded in a most
flattering way by the respect and gratitude of historical students,
Catholic and Protestant alike.

His latest work is one of the most laborious of his life, and one of
the most splendid in its results. It is a translation, with notes, of
the _History and General Description of New France_, from the French of
the Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S.J. The first of the six sumptuous
volumes of this elegant work appeared from the author’s own press in
this city in 1866, and the last was issued at the close of 1872. As we
shall see further on, Mr. Shea has expended upon the “translation and
notes” an extraordinary amount of pains of which the modest title-page
affords no hint; but the book was well worth the trouble. No history
of America can be written without a constant reference to the labors
of F. Charlevoix. He is our best and sometimes our only authority for
the transactions in all the French North American settlements. Of
many of the scenes that he describes he was an eye-witness. He was a
diligent and conscientious student; he had access to important and
little-known sources of information; he sympathized with the sentiment
of the early French explorers, and caught as by instinct the spirit of
those curious expeditions wherein the priest and the peddler marched
side by side through the wilderness for the glory of God and of France,
and the spread simultaneously of the Gospel and the fur-trade. Born in
the north of France in 1682, Charlevoix entered the Society of Jesus,
and was sent to the Canada mission when he was about twenty-three years
old. He spent four years in America, returning to France in 1709, and
teaching philosophy for some time in various colleges of his society.
Eleven years later, the king sent him to make a tour among the French
settlements of the New World, and a curious account of this adventurous
journey is preserved in his _Journal of a Voyage to North America_,
a translation of which was published in London in 1761. He landed at
Quebec in October, 1720, visited Montreal and other settlements on the
St. Lawrence, and the following spring set out on his remarkable canoe
voyage to the Gulf of Mexico. This took him through Lakes Ontario,
Erie, Huron, and Michigan. On the 6th of August, 1721, he entered the
St. Joseph River, at the southern end of Lake Michigan. Thence by a
tedious portage he reached the head-waters of the Kankakee. Towards
the end of September, he found himself on the Illinois, and on the 9th
of October his frail bark floated on the waters of the Mississippi.
Stopping at various posts along the bank, he was nearly three months
in reaching New Orleans, whence he embarked in April, 1722, for Santo
Domingo. Wrecked on one of the Florida keys, he made his way back to
Louisiana in an open boat, and at the end of June took ship again
at Biloxi. After touching at Havana, and narrowly escaping another
disaster, he made Cape François, in Santo Domingo, and there found a
merchant ship, which took him home.

Before starting on this extensive and arduous tour, he had begun a
series of histories of all the countries unknown to Europeans previous
to the XIVth century, giving to that tolerably comprehensive portion of
the universe the general name of the New World. The first instalment of
his task, a _History and Description of Japan_, was printed at Rouen in
three volumes in 1715. He had no expectation of completing the whole
series of proposed histories. That was an enterprise beyond the powers
of one man; but “the same may be said of this,” he remarked, “as of
the discovery of America: the worst was done when it was once begun;
there is, then, every reason to believe that it will be continued after
me, and that, if I have the advantage of suggesting the idea, those
who succeed me will have the glory of perfecting it.” The second fruit
of the scheme was the _History of Santo Domingo_, which appeared at
Paris in two quarto volumes, in 1730. The third was the _History of
New France_, in three quarto volumes, in 1744; and there was a fourth
book, a _History of Paraguay_, in three quarto volumes, in 1756. F.
Charlevoix died in 1761, having been for more than twenty years one of
the principal workers on the famous _Journal de Trévoux_.

Of the four works embraced in his uncompleted series, three are
little known on this side of the ocean, except in the libraries of
the curious. The _History of New France_, however, has long enjoyed
an American celebrity, through the frequent references to it in the
pages of modern historians; and Mr. Shea is not unreasonably surprised
that it should so long have gone untranslated. Fidelity is by no means
its only merit. It is well planned, and written with a carefulness,
simplicity, and good judgment which give it a very respectable, if
not a very high, literary character. Its style is not remarkable for
eloquence, but it is chaste and direct. It is never ambitious, but
it is always agreeable; rarely picturesque, but never dry. Prefixing
to his work a comprehensive chronology of European explorations and
settlements in the New World (taking that phrase in his own extended
application), and an excellent bibliographical account of the numerous
authors whom he has consulted, he begins his narrative proper with the
voyages of Cortereal and Verazzano to Newfoundland, between 1500 and
1525. It is with the expedition of Jacques Cartier, however, in 1534,
that the story of the French settlements in North America properly
commences. Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence, visited the site of
Montreal, and planned a town there, though he did not succeed in making
a permanent establishment. There is a curious illustration in this part
of the narrative of the simplicity which gives F. Charlevoix’s book
such a peculiar charm. Misled by an unfaithful abridgment of Cartier’s
narrative, the good father gently rebukes the traveller for certain
marvellous tales which he is unjustly accused of bearing back to
France: but there is one strange story to which the reverend historian
is evidently more than half disposed to attach credit. An Indian named
Donnacona is reported to have told Cartier that in a remote part of
the land “were men who had but one leg and thigh, with a very large
foot, two hands on the same arm, the waist extremely square, the breast
and head flat, and a very small mouth; that still further on he had
seen pigmies, and a sea the water of which was fresh. In fine, that,
ascending the Saguenay, you reach a country where there are men dressed
like us, who live in cities, and have much gold, rubies, and copper.”
Now, by ascending the Saguenay, Charlevoix conjectures, and turning
west, an Indian might reach Lake Assiniboin, and thence penetrate to
New Mexico, where the Spaniards had begun to settle—a conjecture
which certainly betrays a rather loose idea of American geography.
The pigmies he supposes to be the Esquimaux. But of the men with one
leg, he remarks that the story is “very strange.” He does not accept,
but he certainly does not reject it. Nay, he cites a long account by
an Esquimaux girl, who was in Quebec while he was there in 1720, of a
kind of men among her country people “who had only one leg, one thigh,
and a very large foot, two hands on the same arm, a broad body, flat
head, small eyes, scarcely any nose, and a very small mouth”; they were
always in a bad humor, and could remain under water three-quarters of
an hour at a time. “As for the monstrous men,” he concludes, “described
by the slave of M. de Courtemanche and by Donnacona, and the headless
men killed, it is pretended, by an Iroquois hunter a few years since
while hunting, it is easy to believe that there is some exaggeration;
but it is easier to deny extraordinary facts than to explain them; and,
moreover, are we at liberty to reject whatever we cannot explain? Who
can pretend to know all the caprices and mysteries of nature?”

From Canada our historian passes suddenly to Florida, which he defines
as “all that part of the continent of America lying between the two
Mexicos, New France, and North Carolina.” To this part of the new world
Admiral de Coligni sent out a colony of Huguenots in 1562 under John
de Ribaut, who built a fort at Port Royal, near the site of Beaufort,
South Carolina. In all the early settlements of America, there is the
same story to be told of avarice and childish folly. The colonists
were not settlers, but adventurers. They had come in search of a land
where they could grow rich without work, and pick up gold and silver
with no more trouble than the occasional killing of a few Indians. They
depended for sustenance upon what they brought from France and the
provisions they might purchase from the savages. But there was little
to be obtained from a race of hunters who were half the year themselves
on the brink of starvation, and the fresh supplies promised from home
were often delayed. It is almost incredible that no attempt should have
been made to cultivate the fertile lands upon which they established
themselves; but year after year the same blunder was repeated: winter
found the adventurers famishing; and promising colonies were broken
up by their reckless improvidence. Such was the fate of Ribaut’s
settlement at Port Royal. The commander had gone home to obtain
re-enforcements. When the re-enforcements arrived under Laudonniere in
1564, Port Royal had been abandoned. The colonists had built a vessel,
caulked the seams with moss, twisted the bark of trees for ropes, used
their shirts for sails, and, with a short supply of provisions and a
crew composed of soldiers, had put to sea. They suffered terribly. The
water gave out, and some died of thirst. After they had eaten their
last shoe and their last scrap of leather, a soldier named Lachau
offered the sacrifice of his own life to save the rest. They ate
Lachau, and drank his blood. Soon afterward, they sighted land, and
about the same time fell in with an English vessel.

Laudonniere established himself on the St. John’s River, in Florida.
F. Charlevoix tells an interesting story of his curious dealings with
the Indians and the dissensions of his disorderly colonists. He seems
to have been upon the whole a fair commander, but the fatal mistake of
all these adventurers soon brought him to the brink of ruin. Provisions
gave out. The expected relief from France was delayed. Fish and game
grew scarce. In July, 1567, Laudonniere was trying to patch up his one
small vessel to return home, when he was unexpectedly relieved by a
visit from Sir John Hawkins with four English ships. Hawkins treated
the suffering Frenchmen with great generosity. He gave them bread and
wine, replenished their stores of clothing and munitions, offered the
whole party a passage home to France, and finally persuaded them to
purchase one of his vessels which was better fitted for their use than
their own. Laudonniere now hastened his preparations for the voyage,
and was actually weighing anchor, when Ribaut entered the river with
seven vessels, and set about restoring the dismantled Fort Caroline,
and planning an expedition after gold to the distant mountains of
Apalache. But this whole chapter is a tale of surprises. Six days after
the arrival of Ribaut, another squadron appeared at the mouth of the
river. It consisted of six Spanish ships under the command of Don
Pedro Menendez, whom Philip II. had despatched to conquer Florida, and
drive out the heretics.

The story now becomes a horrible narrative of battle, treachery, and
murder. Menendez attacked the French vessels without doing much injury,
and then, hastening southward to the spot which he had already selected
as the site of a settlement, began the building of St. Augustine. From
St. Augustine he marched with five hundred men through the swamps, in
the midst of a long and violent storm, surprised Fort Caroline, and
put most of the garrison to the sword. At the spot of the execution,
Menendez erected a stone with the inscription, “I do this, not as
to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans.” Nearly three years afterwards,
Dominic de Gourgues, after a semi-piratical cruise along the coast of
Africa and among the West India Islands, crossed over from Cuba to the
mainland to avenge the slaughter of his countrymen. He reached the fort
unsuspected, and took it by escalade, with the help of a large force
of Indians. Then the prisoners were led to the scene of the former
massacre, and all hanged upon a tree, with the inscription: “I do
this, not as to Spaniards nor as to maranes,[195] but as to traitors,
robbers, and murderers.” Such is the story of Dominic de Gourgues, as
Charlevoix gives it after contemporary French accounts. No Spanish
version of it is known to exist, and Mr. Shea points out in a note the
reasons for regarding it with some suspicion. The conqueror could not
hold what he had won. Burning the fort, and destroying all the plunder
that he was unable to carry away, he hastened back to France; and so
ended the history of French Florida.

It was about thirty years after this that the Marquis de la Roche,
a gentleman of Brittany, received from Henri IV. a commission as
lieutenant-general of the king “in the countries of Canada, Hochelaga,
Newfoundland, Labrador, River of the Great Bay [St. Lawrence],
Norimbegue, and adjacent lands,” and fitted out a vessel to explore
his territory. Landing on Sable Island, ninety miles from the mainland
of Nova Scotia (1598), he left there a colony of forty convicts whom
he had drawn from the French prisons, coasted awhile along the shores
of Acadia (Nova Scotia), without accomplishing anything of value, and
then went back to France. Contrary winds prevented his taking off the
wretched colony of Sable Island, and it was not until seven years
later that the king, hearing of the adventure, sent a ship to their
relief. Only twelve remained alive, and these were brought to court in
the same guise in which they were found, “covered with sealskin, with
hair and beard of a length and disorder that made them resemble the
pretended river-gods, and so disfigured as to inspire horror. The king
gave them fifty crowns apiece, and sent them home released from all
process of law.” The expedition of De Monts and Pontgravé (1604) was
more fortunate. It resulted in the settlement of Port Royal (Annapolis)
by M. de Poutrincourt, under a grant from M. de Monts, afterwards
confirmed by the crown; it brought forward Samuel de Champlain, who was
soon to play so distinguished a part in the exploration and settlement
of Canada; and it offered a career to the Jesuit missionaries, whose
heroism reflected so much glory upon the colony. The king had
intimated to M. de Poutrincourt, when he confirmed the grant of Port
Royal, that it was proper to invite the Jesuits to the new colony;
and, by his majesty’s desire, two priests were selected from the
many who volunteered to go. These were F. Peter Biard and F. Enemond
Masse. Strange to say, the first difficulties they encountered were
from their own countrymen. “M. de Poutrincourt was a very worthy man,”
says Charlevoix, “sincerely attached to the Catholic religion; but the
calumnies of the so-called Reformers had produced an impression on his
mind, and he was fully determined not to take them to Port Royal. He
did not, however, show anything of this to the king, who, having given
his orders, had no doubt but that they were executed with all speed.
The Jesuits thought so; and F. Biard, at the commencement of the year
[1608], proceeded to Bordeaux, where he was assured the embarkation
would take place. He was much surprised to see no preparation there;
and he waited in vain for a whole year. The king, informed of this,
reproached M. de Poutrincourt sharply; and the latter pledged his
word to the king that he would no longer defer obeying his orders.
He actually prepared to go; but, as he said nothing of embarking the
missionaries, F. Cotton paid him a visit, to bring him to do so in a
friendly way. Poutrincourt begged him to be good enough to postpone it
till the following year, as Port Royal was by no means in a condition
to receive the fathers. So frivolous a reason was regarded by F. Cotton
as a refusal, but he did not deem it expedient to press the matter or
inform the king. M. de Poutrincourt accordingly sailed for Acadia; and,
with a view of showing the court that the ministry of the Jesuits was
not necessary in the conversion of the heathen, he had scarcely arrived
before he sent the king a list of twenty-five Indians baptized in
haste.” Meanwhile, the king died, and Poutrincourt considered himself
thereupon released from his obligation. It was in this difficulty that
the Marchioness de Guercheville, whose name is so honorably associated
with American adventure, declared herself the protectress of the
missions. But the story of the troubles which this powerful advocate
had to overcome gives us a curious idea of the manner in which American
affairs were regulated at the French court. Biencourt, the son of M. de
Poutrincourt, was about sailing for Acadia, and consented to take the
missionaries. When the fathers reached Dieppe, Biencourt had changed
his mind, or been overruled by his two Huguenot partners, and passage
was refused. Mme. de Guercheville had recourse to the queen mother, who
gave a peremptory order that the Jesuits should be taken on board. The
order was laughed at, and nobody attempted to enforce it. Then Mme. de
Guercheville raised a subscription, bought off the two Calvinists, and
proceeded to treat with Biencourt. Not finding his title clear, she
purchased of M. de Monts all his lapsed privileges, with the purpose of
reviving them, and formed a partnership with Biencourt, under which the
subsistence of the missionaries was to be drawn from the fishery and
fur trade. Thus at last a woman accomplished what the king had failed
in, and F. Biard and F. Masse reached the scene of their labors in 1611.

Mme. de Guercheville soon fell out with Poutrincourt, and resolved to
found a colony of her own. She despatched a ship under the Sieur de la
Saussaye in 1613. The settlers landed on Mount Desert, and there began
a settlement, bringing FF. Biard and Masse from Port Royal, and having
with them also two other Jesuits, a priest named Quentin, and a lay
brother, Du Thet. The narrative of the destruction of this settlement
as well as Port Royal by the English free-booting adventurer Argall,
from Virginia, is familiar to all American readers. The colony had not
yet assumed a regulated form when the Englishman swept down upon it,
carried some of the settlers to Virginia, and sent the rest to sea in
a small bark. The latter, among whom was F. Masse, were picked up by
a French ship, and carried to St. Malo. The others, after much harsh
treatment at Jamestown from Sir Thomas Dale, were taken back to Acadia
with an expedition sent to complete the demolition of the French posts.
Argall performed his task thoroughly, and set sail again for Virginia.
Of his three vessels, scattered in a storm, one was lost; another,
under his own command, reached Jamestown in safety; the third, bearing
Fathers Biard and Quentin (Brother du Thet had been killed in Argall’s
first attack), and having one Turnell for captain, was driven to the
Azores, and forced to seek shelter at Fayal. Here the Jesuits had only
to complain of the outrages to which they had been subjected, and they
would have been at once avenged. Turnell was alarmed, and begged them
to keep concealed when the officers of the port visited his vessel.
“They consented with good grace. The visit over, the English captain
had liberty to buy all that he needed, after which he again weighed
anchor, and the rest of his voyage was fortunate. But he found himself
in a new embarrassment on arriving in England: he had no commission,
and, although he represented that he had accidentally been separated
from his commander, he was looked upon as a deserter from Virginia, and
put in prison, from which he was released only on the testimony of the
Jesuits. After this time, he was unwearied in publishing the virtue
of the missionaries, twice his liberators, and especially the service
they had done him at Fayal, where they returned good for evil as they
so generously did, foregoing all the advantages which they might have
obtained by making themselves known. Nothing, indeed, was omitted to
compensate for them in England, where they were very kindly treated as
long as they remained.”

The settlements in Canada proper, however, were now firmly established,
and Quebec was rapidly becoming prosperous. The early history of this
town, the adventures and discoveries of Champlain, the expeditions
of the settlers against the Iroquois, and the surrender of Quebec
to the English under Kirk (or Kertk), who was a Frenchman by birth,
though an officer in the English service, are told by F. Charlevoix
at considerable length. It was in 1629 that Quebec fell, and three
years afterwards the whole colony was restored to France by the treaty
of St. Germain. Champlain returned with the title of Governor of
New France in 1633, and began at once that zealous and enlightened
career of missionary labor by which he has won so glorious a fame.
For we may well style him a missionary. Entrusted with the temporal
government of the young colony, it was not his part to explore the
wilderness with crucifix and missal, to venture into the cabins of the
savages as a teacher of the Gospel, to brave martyrdom, to suffer
unheard-of tortures, even to the stake; but he nevertheless fulfilled
an important, an almost indispensable, function in the establishment of
the Canada missions. He was the best friend and patron of the Jesuits
and other heroes who gave their lives so freely among the Indians. He
took care that a number of these devoted priests should be invited to
the colony, and that the settlers themselves should give an example
of Christian demeanor that might do credit to their teachers. “In a
short time,” says Charlevoix, “almost all who composed the new colony
were seen to follow the example of their governor, and make an open
and sincere profession of piety. The same attention was continued
in subsequent years, and there soon arose in this part of America a
generation of true Christians, among whom reigned the simplicity of the
primitive ages of the church, and whose posterity have not lost sight
of the great example left them by their ancestors. The consolation
which such a change afforded the laborers appointed to cultivate this
transplanted vineyard so sweetened the crosses of the most painful
mission ever perhaps established in the New World, that what they wrote
to their brethren in France created among them a real eagerness to go
and share their labors. The annual _Relations_ which we have of these
happy times, and the constant tradition preserved in the country,
both attest that there was an indescribable unction attached to this
Indian mission which made it preferred to many others infinitely more
brilliant and even more fruitful.” Champlain’s career, however, as
governor was unhappily too short. He died on Christmas day, in 1635.
“He may well be called,” says the historian, “the father of New France.
He had good sense, much penetration, very upright views, and no man
was ever more skilled in adopting a course in the most complicated
affairs. What all admired most in him was his constancy in following
up his enterprises; his firmness in the greatest dangers; a courage
proof against the most unforeseen reverses and disappointments; ardent
and disinterested patriotism; a heart tender and compassionate for the
unhappy, and more attentive to the interests of his friends than his
own; a high sense of honor, and great probity. His memoirs show that he
was not ignorant of anything that one of his profession should know;
and we find in him a faithful and sincere historian, an attentively
observant traveller, a judicious writer, a good mathematician, and an
able mariner. But what crowns all these good qualities is the fact that
in his life, as well as in his writings, he shows himself always a
truly Christian man, zealous for the service of God, full of candor and
religion. He was accustomed to say, what we read in his memoirs, ‘that
the salvation of a single soul was worth more than the conquest of an
empire, and that kings should seek to extend their domain in heathen
countries only to subject them to Christ.’”

We have insensibly gone deeper into these attractive volumes than we
intended, and we must pass over the remaining books, which record the
growth of the Canadian settlements, the wars with the Indians after
Champlain’s death, the hostilities with the English, and the progress
of the missions. Neither can we linger over the fascinating story of
Marquette’s voyage down the Mississippi, or the expeditions, of La
Salle, or the various attempts at colonizing the shores of the Mexican
Gulf. What little space remains for us we must give to an examination
of a portion of Mr. Shea’s labor which has not yet been duly estimated.
He has given much more than a translation of F. Charlevoix’s
_Histoire_. The text is rendered with great care, and we presume with
great faithfulness, into simple, graceful, and idiomatic English. The
peculiarities of the original, in the orthography of proper names and
in other particulars, are all preserved. It is indeed Charlevoix’s
work, as exactly as any work can be reproduced in a language different
from its author’s. But Mr. Shea has bestowed upon it an editorial
supervision which nearly doubles its value. With extraordinary zeal,
learning, and intelligence, he has traced almost every statement to
its source, collated rare authorities, and in modest and compact
foot-notes, whose number must amount to several thousands, has
corrected errors, identified localities, and thrown a perfect flood of
light upon doubtful passages and controverted statements. The patient
industry, the rare judgment, and the unassuming scholarship which
Mr. Shea has brought to the execution of this noble task can only be
appreciated by one who has studied his work with some care, and to whom
familiarity with the subject has taught something of its difficulties.
He has not only been at the pains of consulting the authors to whom F.
Charlevoix expressly refers, weighing the soundness of F. Charlevoix’s
conclusions from their testimony, and correcting his citations, but he
has made it a point to discover the authorities whom the good father
followed without quoting, and he has often pursued devious statements
backward through a score of forgotten books, until he has reached
at last the sober truth from which they started. Doing this without
parade, without verbosity, and with an icy impartiality, Mr. Shea has
approved himself a model editor.

The outward appearance of the six volumes will delight the heart of
the fastidious collector. Such beautiful and symmetrical arrangement
of the generous pages, such royal elegance of type, such rich and
refined tints, such noble margins, and such magnificent paper—every
leaf stout enough to stand alone—these things make up the gorgeous
apparel in which the work has been dressed, we may say, by Mr. Shea’s
own hands. Excellent engravings add not merely to its appearance but
its value. There are steel-plate portraits of governors, adventurers,
and missionaries; there are fac-similes of autographs; there are
copies of curious old maps and plans. Finally, the book is furnished
with a copious and systematic index—and so Mr. Shea shows himself
conscientious alike as an editor and publisher.




MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.


CHAPTER XXII.

THE ENEMY ON EITHER HAND.


WHAT I have just related took place in the month of August. I was at
that time extremely anxious about Victor, but an unexpected improvement
took place in his condition after Louis’ visit. Alas! he was never to
rally again.

Louis sent every morning for some time to know how his sick friend was,
but he only came to see us once, and then merely for a few minutes. He
only left St. M—— with regret. He seemed to feel that, in absenting
himself, he left the field clear to his bold rival, as it was now
evident he was, and at a time when an attack was threatened against
what he cherished the most—the good work he had begun, and Eugénie’s
affection. He did not, therefore, inform us at that time of all I have
just related. On the contrary, we were left in a state of painful
incertitude. But I had every detail at a later day, even the very
thoughts of both parties, and from their own lips.

However, Albert was not fitted to play the part of a man of gravity or
that of a hypocrite for a long time. For that, more perseverance and
ability than he had were required. A frivolous man like him may, by
careful watch over himself, assume an appearance of thoughtfulness,
but he will soon show himself in his true colors through weariness, or
at an unguarded moment. He had hardly been in the house a fortnight
before he unconsciously showed what he was at the bottom of his heart.
He rose at a late hour, he resumed his habit of careful attention to
his toilet, he lounged about from morning till night, conversing only
of trivial things or discussing points he was ignorant of, and read
romances of a doubtful character, which, so far from hiding, he left
about in his room. Eugénie kept an eye open to all these things. She
watched her cousin with the natural persistency she inherited from
her father; she drew her own conclusions, and ended by treating him
just as she used to do, like a spoiled child she loved because he was
a relative, but would not, on any account, have for a husband. Albert
tried now and then to resume his gravity; he went to church, and
discussed the loftiest themes. Vain efforts! His uncle and cousin knew
what to think of it all. Albert perceived it, and was inwardly furious.

Mme. Smithson alone manifested an ever-increasing fondness for him. Her
affection for his mother as well as himself, and her acknowledged but
constant wish for Mr. Smithson’s property to come into the possession
of her own family by the marriage of the two cousins, inclined her
towards her nephew. But of what account was Mme. Smithson in the house?
Very little. Albert was under no illusion on this point, and therefore
had never attached much importance to his aunt’s support. For two or
three days he exulted over the stratagem he had formed for awakening
unfavorable sentiments in his cousin’s heart toward the engineer.
But Eugénie’s suspicions could not last long without her seeking an
explanation. Then all would be lost, for Albert felt that Louis did not
love Madeleine. If, on the other hand, Eugénie was not in love with
Louis, she would keep her conjectures to herself, and merely withdraw
her favor from him.

Albert’s affairs, therefore, had not in any respect taken the turn he
hoped in the beginning. “What can be done? What can be done?” he said
to himself. “I must devise some way of getting rid of this fellow who
is disturbing my uncle and Eugénie’s peace of mind so much. Things
must be brought to a crisis. If Louis were only dismissed, my cousin
in her despair would accept me as her husband. My uncle would manifest
no opposition out of regard for his wife, and because, after all, I
should not be a troublesome son-in-law. At all events, I should have
the satisfaction of routing a creature I detest. Whether Eugénie loves
him or not, I can never, no, never suffer this artful man to marry her.
If my coming only serves to drive him away, I shall be glad I came.”

Such calculations were extremely base and dishonorable, but it must be
remembered that Albert was devoid of piety, he coveted his cousin’s
dowry, and his antipathy to Louis became stronger every day. People
destitute of moral principle and religious faith hate those who possess
the good qualities they lack themselves. Albert had tried in vain to
blind himself with regard to Louis; but the more he studied him, the
more clearly he saw he was incontestably a man of great depth, sincere
piety, and uncommon energy. At first he doubted his worth, but he could
question it no longer.

Eugénie during this time was extremely sad and preoccupied, though no
one would have suspected what was passing in the depths of her soul.
The poor girl could no longer conceal it from herself: she loved
Louis. But she was still uncertain as to his love for her. She even
asked herself—and this was an additional torture—if he was worthy
of the affection she bore him. You will not be astonished if I add
that, romantic as Eugénie was, she was a woman to be driven in such a
conjuncture to the very step Albert was aiming at. Only one thing was
wanting to effect this—the necessity of withdrawing her esteem from
Louis. In a noble nature like hers, it would have quenched her love and
broken her very heart to despise the object of her affections.

Affairs were in this condition when a new incident came to the aid
of Albert’s schemes. Mr. Smithson, it will be well to recall, was
not originally a manufacturer of paper. A dishonest broker, or one
who lacked shrewdness, led him into a succession of unfortunate
speculations. Repeated losses were the result. Mr. Smithson perceived
his property was diminishing in an alarming manner. He at once settled
up his affairs, and, by the advice of Louis’ father, bought the mill
at St. M——, the proprietor of which had just died. This was in every
respect an advantageous investment: First, it withdrew him from the
arena of stock speculations, where fortune, conscience, and honor are
daily risked; in the next place, the mill he purchased brought in a
fine income. But it was no small affair to conduct such an enterprise,
employing as it did five or six hundred workmen.

Mr. Smithson’s predecessor, a man perfectly familiar with the business,
directed the establishment himself. Everything went on prosperously,
and Mr. Smithson wished to imitate him. In a few months, he saw he was
going wrong. The workmen were indolent, the machinery deteriorated,
everything was going to ruin. It is not sufficient to be methodical,
intelligent, and energetic, in order to conduct a manufacturing
concern; a man must have a special knowledge of mechanics and a
faculty of adaptation which Mr. Smithson did not possess. He became
conscious of this, and resolved to obtain a book-keeper of probity
and intelligence to keep his accounts, and an engineer equally versed
in his business. They were both soon found, but the book-keeper alone
proved suitable. The engineer had practical knowledge enough, but was
deficient in energy. The workmen and overseers soon perceived it, and
profited by it to do less and less. The engineer was discharged and
Louis chosen to fill his place.

From the time of Louis’ arrival, the aspect of everything changed.
The workmen felt they now had a superintendent to deal with that was
inflexible but just. The overseers alone were inclined to resist
his authority. They were sharply reprimanded, and the most mutinous
discharged. Mr. Smithson, warned by his previous experience, seconded
Louis with all the weight of his authority. He gave him absolute
control of the manufactory when he was absent, and never failed to come
to his support whenever Louis found severe measures necessary.

All this did not take place, it may well be supposed, without exciting
some murmurs and secret rancor. Among the foremost of those most
dissatisfied with this necessary rigor was an overseer by the name
of Durand, who came to the mill some months before Louis. He was a
man of about forty years of age, of lofty stature, a sombre face
expressive of energy, and grave and fluent of speech. He came provided
with the best recommendations, but it was afterwards learned they
were forged. This man succeeded both in intimidating the engineer who
preceded Louis, and acquiring his favor. Half through fear, and half
weakness, he allowed Durand to assume an authority he abused in many
ways. When Louis replaced this weak man so afraid of Durand, there
was more than one contest between him and the overseer. Their last
altercation had been very violent. Durand insulted the engineer before
all the workmen, and in so bold a manner that Mr. Smithson, informed
of what had taken place, at once discharged him. Rather than give up
his situation, Durand submitted to the humiliation of begging Louis’
pardon. Notwithstanding this, he was merely kept on sufferance, though
he was well paid, for he was clever in his way, and in one sense a
model overseer: no one kept better discipline.

Astonishing as it may seem, when Louis instituted the evening-school,
Durand was the first to offer his assistance, and was appointed
monitor. One thing, however, tried Louis: his monitor, always polite
and respectful to his face, was in the habit of whispering behind his
back, as if secretly conniving with the men. But nothing occurred
to justify his suspicions, and Louis at length ceased to attach any
importance to the overseer’s strange ways. When the night-school
closed, about half-past eight, Durand went away a little before
Louis to finish the evening at the St. M—— café, which was greatly
frequented by the inhabitants of the place. There he gambled and
harangued at his ease, and acquired the reputation of being the ablest
talker in the country around. As to his political opinions, they were
not positively known. He was suspected of being a demagogue, and even
an ultra one, but there was no proof of it. He was less secret about
his religious belief. He called himself a Protestant, and a thorough
one.

Meanwhile, Albert began to find the life he was leading at his uncle’s
wearisome and monotonous. The evenings especially seemed interminable.
Mr. Smithson read, Mme. Smithson was absorbed in her tapestry, and
Eugénie played on the piano. Albert did not know what to do with
himself. He did not dare have recourse to a novel; conversation with
his aunt was not very enlivening; and, if he addressed himself to
Eugénie, she showed so much skill in embarrassing him on every subject
that he avoided the occasion of appearing to so much disadvantage.
Besides, Eugénie’s superiority irritated him. Had it not been for her
fortune, which he found more and more attractive, and her beauty, to
which he could not remain insensible, he would at once have given up
all thoughts of marrying her. But her property on the one hand, and her
beauty on the other, deterred him. However, with his frivolous mind,
he soon found it intolerable to be confined to his cousin’s society
every evening, even for the purpose of paying court to her. One night,
it suddenly occurred to him to go to the café, and after that he went
there regularly after dinner to pass an hour. He was welcomed very
cordially, especially by Durand, who at once made every effort to win
his favor. The wily overseer was so profuse in respectful attentions
that in a few evenings they were friends. Durand, with his uncommon
penetration, soon discovered from some indiscreet words Albert dropped
what was troubling his shallow mind. He could see he was desirous of
marrying his cousin, and so suspicious of Louis that he detested him
and asked for nothing better than to see him dismissed. Durand at once
resolved to gain Albert’s friendship and profit by it to involve Louis
in some inextricable embarrassment. He was determined to have his
revenge at whatever cost, but it was necessary to proceed with caution.
He began by sounding Albert to make sure of his antipathy to Louis,
that he really wished for his dismissal, and if he cared what means
were employed provided the end was attained.

Durand gave himself no rest till he was sure of all this—a certitude
he acquired the day when Albert, impatient at the unfavorable progress
of his affairs, resolved to bring things to a sudden crisis by having
Louis dismissed, if possible. The overseer waited till Albert left the
café, and then proposed he should accompany him to the manufactory,
where he lodged.

“Willingly, my good fellow,” said Albert. It was a fine evening in the
month of September. They set off together by the road that ran along
the river half-hidden among trees, through which the moon diffused its
purest radiance.

“We do not see you any more at the mill,” said Durand. “I daresay I
could guess why you have stopped visiting the school.... Would there be
any indiscretion in telling you the reason that has occurred to me?”

“Not the least in the world.”

“Well, then, if I am not mistaken, there is some one at the mill not
exactly to your liking.... Yes, somebody keeps you away....”

“That may be.”

“Ah! I am no fool. I think I have found out the cause of our being
deprived of your visits. It must have been something serious. See if
I haven’t some wit left.... The person you dislike is M. Louis, is it
not?”

“You are right, my friend,” replied Albert, patting Durand on the
shoulder in a familiar manner.

“There are others who do not like him any better than you.”

“Not you? You are his assistant at the school, and seem on the best of
terms with him.”

“_Seem?_ Yes, I seem; but to seem and be are sometimes very different
things. Listen: the very instant I saw you—excuse my frankness—you
inspired me with so much confidence that, faith, I feel inclined to
tell you all that is on my mind. It would do me good.”

“Do not be afraid of my betraying you, _mon cher_; speak to me as a
friend.”

“O monsieur! you are too kind. Well, since you allow me, I tell you
plainly I do not like that man; no, not at all.”

“He has been insolent and overbearing towards you, I know.”

“If that were all, I could forgive him. But it is not a question of
myself. I dislike, I detest him for another reason. Whoever likes Mr.
Smithson cannot like the engineer, as I can convince anybody who wishes
it.”

“Explain yourself; I do not exactly understand you.”

“Well—but swear you will never repeat what I am going to say.”

“I give you my word, which I never break.”

“Well, then, this M. Louis is a Tartuffe—a Jesuit; such men are
dangerous. Woe to the houses they enter! He has wasted all his
property, we know how! It is a shame!... Then he artfully obtained
a place in your uncle’s mill, where he has assumed more and more
authority; he tries to influence the minds of the workmen; he ...
wishes to marry your cousin.... _Parbleu!_ I may as well say aloud what
everybody is saying in secret.”

“Do they say that, Durand?”

“Yes, that is the report. But his art and hypocrisy are in vain. More
than one of us understand his projects.... And let me assure you we
tremble lest he succeed! There will be fine doings when the mill passes
into the hands of this Jesuit, who will spend all of Mr. Smithson’s
property, and prepare him a pitiful old age. Do you see now why I
cannot endure that man? Oh! if I were master I would soon set him
a-flying.... But I am not the master, ... it is he who is likely to be.
If somebody could only get him dismissed!”

“Yes, yes,” said Albert, in a conceited tone. “There is some truth
in what you say—a great deal, in fact.... Since I have been here, I
have watched and studied his movements, and agree with you that it was
rather an unlucky day for my uncle when he admitted this intriguer into
his house. His schemes make me anxious.”

“Is there no way of defeating them?”

“It would be no easy matter.”

“Come, now! As if you, Mr. Smithson’s nephew; you who have more
learning than all of us put together—who have more wit than I, though
I am no fool—as if you could not send him adrift if you wished to!...
You could never make me believe that.”

“What can I do? I certainly ask for nothing better than to get him into
some difficulty; but how? He performs his duties with exasperating
fidelity.”

“Oh! it is not on that score you must attack him; he is too cunning to
be at fault there.”

“Well, if he is not at fault, do you wish me to make him out so?”

“Precisely. That is what must be done. See here, M. Albert, as you
know of no way, I will tell you an idea that has come into my head;
for I have been a long time contriving some means of driving that man
away. But I must first warn you not to take my plan for more than it is
worth. If it is not a good one, we will try to discover a better one.”

“Let us hear it.”

“We have an Englishman at the mill who tells me he does not intend to
remain. This man has been to the evening-school several times. M. Louis
has lent him religious books.... Can’t you guess what I am at?”

“No.”

“Well, this is my plan. The man I refer to and I are linked together.
It would be a long story to tell how and why. If I should go to
him—to-morrow, for instance—and say: ‘Adams, I know you intend
leaving St. M——. Will you do your friend a favor before you go? Rid
me of that engineer. I do not mean for you to kill him or do him any
harm: we are neither of us murderers. I simply propose you should play
him some trick, as they call it. You are on good terms with him: he
lends you books. Go and tell him you have come to consult him about
some doubts on the subject of religion. Beg him to enlighten you. Ask
for some controversial works, and cautiously insinuate the possibility
of abjuring your religion. You will naturally be open in your projects.
You will even talk of them with an air of profound conviction. This
will cause some noise. I shall then take hold of it. In case of
necessity, I shall have a violent dispute with the engineer, which
of course will oblige Mr. Smithson to interfere.’ I know he is not
disposed to jest about such matters. Once the affair is brought before
him, the engineer is lost. I will not give him a week to remain at the
mill after that.... Such is my idea; what do you think of it?”

“Durand, you are a genius. Your plan is admirable. The moment my uncle
finds the engineer is trying to propagate his religion, he is lost, as
you say. You must put your project into execution without any delay.”

“I am glad to see you approve of it, not only because it flatters my
self-love, but because it makes me more hopeful of success. I should be
better satisfied, however, if you would promise to help us in case you
are needed.... We are not sure of succeeding in our plan. The engineer
is cunning, and Mr. Smithson’s way of acting is not always easy to
foresee. And if we should fail—if I get into difficulty!...”

“I promise to stand by you. Rest assured I shall not be backward in
trying my utmost to influence my uncle against him. This will be
easy, for he already distrusts the engineer. Nevertheless, admonish
your friend to be extremely cautious. No one must have the slightest
suspicion of the scheme. Success then would be impossible.”

“Adams does not lack wit. He will know how to manage. But one thing
alarms me, and will him. If his conversion were to offend Mr. Smithson
to such a degree as to cause his dismissal in disgrace! Where could he
go without recommendations?”

“Why, how simple you are! All this can be turned to his advantage.
As soon as he sees my uncle irritated, he must ask for a private
interview, consult him as to his belief, and pretend to yield to
his arguments. He must end by avowing his determination to remain a
Protestant, and declaring he had been led away by the engineer. The
result is evident.”

“You are sharper than I. I did not think of that. Your idea makes
everything safe, and settles the matter.”

“And when shall the first shot be fired?”

“To-morrow.”

“But one question more.... It would be vexatious if the engineer
refused the bait and sent Adams a-walking.”

“No danger of that. The engineer is a genuine fanatic. I am sure of
that, and I have had an opportunity of judging.”

While thus conversing, our two conspirators had nearly reached the
mill. They separated without being seen. Albert was radiant. As he
retired, he said to himself: “Why did I not think of this scheme
myself?... It is so simple, and cannot fail! A saint like the engineer
will risk everything to gain a soul.... And yet, if he should be
afraid, as Durand said; if he is only a Catholic outwardly!... That
would be embarrassing! Strange! for once, I hope the fellow is
sincere!...”

The following morning, Durand took a private opportunity of giving his
associate his instructions, and that night Adams begged Louis to grant
him an interview in his room after school.

The interview took place. Durand had only told the truth: Adams was an
artful fellow—one of those men who conceal uncommon duplicity under
the appearance of perfect candor. He had been Durand’s tool for a long
time. The latter had rendered him more than one service, and employed
him in numerous fraudulent transactions, which he generously rewarded
him for. Durand lent money upon pledge to workmen in difficulty. He
unlawfully appropriated a thousand small objects in the manufactory,
and had them sold. His assistant in this dishonest traffic, his man of
business, as he called him, was Adams, who was well paid, as may be
supposed.

The Englishman, cunning as he was, had some difficulty in persuading
Louis he was serious in his intention of abjuring his religion. But
he dwelt on his doubts with such apparent sincerity, he manifested
so strong a desire to be rescued from error, if he was in error,
that Louis immediately proposed he should consult the _curé_. Adams
pretended the _curé_ intimidated him; he was more at his ease with
Louis, and could talk to him with perfect openness of heart. “If I
have to go to the _curé_” said he, “well, then, I shall defer it. I do
not wish to expose myself to observations that would not fail to be
made. After all, monsieur,” he added, “I am only in doubt. I am not yet
convinced of being in error. When I see clearly I am, oh! then I will
no longer conceal my sentiments. But meanwhile, I do not wish everybody
to know what is passing in my soul.”

These plausible statements banished Louis’ suspicions. He received the
young man in his room several evenings in succession. He lent him a
small book, easy of comprehension, that contained a thorough refutation
of Protestantism. Poor Louis! he behaved with genuine heroism on this
occasion. From the first he foresaw all the trouble such an affair was
likely to cause him. He did not deceive himself as to the result of
this abjuration. He had an immediate presentiment of Mr. Smithson’s
anger, and the difficult, nay, intolerable position he would be in if
this conversion took place. No matter, he would brave everything rather
than neglect his duty as a Christian, which obliged him to point out
the true religion to all who sought it.

He was also preoccupied at this time by the remembrance of what had
taken place at Vinceneau’s, and suffered from the coolness Eugénie
manifested towards him. He saw he was kept more at a distance than
ever by Mr. Smithson, who looked upon him as a dangerous man. Louis’
situation, it must be confessed, was distressing. He would have given
much to have at least one consoling word from the lips of her whom he
loved, and before whom he saw he had been calumniated. This unhoped-for
happiness was at last granted him under peculiar circumstances. Louis
had just been to see the Vinceneau family, which was in a worse plight
than ever. The father had taken to drink with fresh madness, and
the mother had a fit of indolence that kept her away from the mill.
Madeleine alone worked for the whole family. Louis had been there to
reason with the mother, who gave him the worst possible reception.
He tried to encourage the daughter, but without success. Madeleine
had also, to some degree, the family weakness—a lack of energy of
character.

Louis had come away unusually dejected. On his way back to the
manufactory, while dwelling, first on these unfortunate people, then on
Adams, who that very day had spoken of soon abjuring his religion, and
finally on Victor, about whom he had just received the most alarming
intelligence, he met Eugénie face to face. She turned pale at seeing
him, and replied to his greeting with extreme coldness as she kept
on....

Louis’ sadness redoubled. He took a sudden resolution. “I must justify
myself,” he said, ... and, intimidated as he was—the man who loves
with a pure affection is always timid—he stopped and turned back.

“Mademoiselle,” said he, addressing Eugénie, “I have a favor to ask.”

“What is it, monsieur?”

“Among the poor families I am interested in is one I have never spoken
to you about.”

“You are under no obligation, monsieur, to inform me of all the
families you visit.”

“I know it, mademoiselle; but, as I am not ashamed of any of the
places I go to, I have no interest in concealing them. If I have
not heretofore spoken of this family, it was for a special reason.
These people, of the name of Vinceneau, were recommended to me by old
Françoise. She took the liveliest interest in one of the members of the
household—a girl by the name of Madeleine. She feared lest poverty and
her parents’ bad example might be a source of danger to one of her age.
Madeleine is irreproachable in her conduct, but weak in character, like
her father and mother. Françoise made me promise to watch over her. She
would have begged this favor of you, mademoiselle, had not a special
reason prevented her. She knew Madeleine’s parents were envious,
and regarded the rich with an evil eye. She feared exposing you to
impertinence if she brought you in contact with them. Consequently,
she recommended them to me. Madeleine has told me of your call at
the house. Your kindness touched the mother. As to the father, his
shameful passion for drink has brutalized him.”

Eugénie listened with undisguised interest, and softened as Louis
continued. When he had finished, she said: “What do you wish me to do?
to show some interest in them?”

“It would be a very timely act of charity. The mother has not done any
work for several days, the father is gone from morning till night, and
the daughter is discouraged. You can rouse her courage much better than
I. And allow me to say, mademoiselle, that the difficulties that once
might have hindered you being removed, this work, for many reasons, is
much more suitable for you than for me.”

“I will go to see them.”

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” replied Louis. “I am overwhelmed with cares
and occupations, and give the family up to you with pleasure.”

“Do you not mean to visit them any more?”

“I have a great mind not to.”

“Why not?”

“It is a delicate subject, but I think the less I go there, the better.”

“I understand you, ... but still I do not think you are right. _Fais ce
que dois, advienne que pourra_,[196] is my motto. Is it not yours?”

“It would be, mademoiselle, if the world were not so malicious.
As it is, people even of the best intentions cannot take too many
precautions. I confess there is nothing I dread more than calumny. It
always does injury, and it is hard to feel we are losing the esteem of
those whose good opinion we desire the most.”

“People who allow themselves to be influenced by calumny cannot have
much character.”

“Do you think so, mademoiselle?”

“I am sure of it. Before doubting a person I have once esteemed, I
wait till their acts openly condemn them. If I have the misfortune to
despise them then, it is because they force me to do so.”

These words were uttered in a significant tone. Eugénie then left Louis
abruptly with a gracious and dignified salutation.

Louis stood looking at her as she went away, admiring her slender
form and the exquisite distinction of her whole person. This sudden
meeting with her seemed like one of those glimpses of the sun that
sometimes occur in the midst of the most violent storms. He thanked
God; he felt happy at her indirect assurance that she still regarded
him with esteem. He asked himself if she did not love him. He did not
dare believe it, but was almost ready to do so. One fear alone remained
in all its strength—the fear of incurring Mr. Smithson’s anger by
co-operating in the conversion of Adams.

Ah! if Louis had not been heartily devoted to his faith, how soon he
would have despatched this troublesome neophyte! But, no; he ought not,
he could not. He consoled himself by repeating Eugénie’s words, which
had struck him in a peculiar manner: _Fais ce que dois, advienne que
pourra_.... “Well,” thought he, “what I ought to do is to enlighten
those who seek the truth.... I yield to a sense of duty. Eugénie is
a Catholic as well as I, and cannot help approving of my course. If
Mr. Smithson is displeased, his daughter, to be consistent with her
principles, must confess that I am right.”

As Louis entered his room, a note was given him from me, imploring him
to come to us as soon as possible.


CHAPTER XXIII.

VICTOR’S DEATH.—PLOTS AGAINST LOUIS.

For ten long months, Victor had suffered from a terrible malady that
never lets go. Every remedy had been tried in vain. His disease was
phthisis of a peculiar kind and of the most alarming character. The two
physicians we consulted could only reply when their patient insisted on
knowing the truth: “Your illness is of an extremely serious nature; but
you are young, and at your age nature often finds unexpected resources
in a time of danger.”

It was impossible to cure him. They could only prolong his life, and
this was the aim of the physicians. By dint of care, they succeeded
in keeping him alive till the beginning of September. Then the
disease, whose ravages we had not realized, suddenly came to a crisis.
Throughout the whole course of his sufferings, I had, in spite of
everything, cherished a secret hope in the depths of my heart. When one
of those favorable turns came peculiar to such complaints, I flattered
myself that he would get well, and abandoned myself to a foolish joy.
This joy, so natural, and yet so unreasonable, gave Victor pain. He
endeavored to moderate it in a thousand ingenious and delicate ways. He
himself was never under any illusion. His illness was fatal: he knew
it, and calmly prepared himself for what he called the great journey.
He was greatly afflicted to see I was not, like himself, preparing for
our separation, the thought of which became more painful in proportion
to the horror with which I regarded it. He tried to banish all my false
hopes, but his efforts were in vain. I clung to them without owning
it. I only gave them up at the time I have arrived at in my sad story.
Then I began to realize the frightful truth, and, as I saw his alarming
symptoms increase, I thought I should die.

Victor at length succeeded in restoring somewhat of calmness to my
soul. With a strength of mind that increased in proportion to the
nearness of that awful moment, he made his final preparations. He
gave himself up to the contemplation of eternal things. His friend,
the good Abbé Merlin, administered the last consolations of religion.
Louis received them with a faith that edified every one, and a joy that
showed how he had profited by his illness to prepare for heaven. He
was already there in spirit, and longed to be there in reality. This
touched me, and I confess, to my great shame, I reproached him in my
excessive grief with some expressions of bitterness. This was the last
sorrow I caused my poor husband. Such reproaches could only come from a
selfish soul. I now blush at the remembrance.

All these necessary steps having been taken, Victor told me I must
send for Louis. As you know, he received my note in the evening. That
very night he arrived. It was high time. We all three passed the night
together talking, praying, and weeping by turns. Victor consoled us. He
even forced himself to express anxiety as to Louis’ affairs. The latter
spoke of them very unwillingly, for his grief overpowered his sense of
love. When Victor learned the trials he was undergoing, he said:

“My friend, I fear they are contriving some new plot against you.
Eugénie loves you; there is no doubt of that in my mind; but does she
love you well enough to withstand all the difficulties that are rising
up around you? I know not. If, with her knowledge of you, she allows
herself to be influenced by people of evil intentions, it seems to me
you will have a right to judge her severely.”

“Even then I could not,” said Louis.

“Your answer does not surprise me. It proves I was right in my
impressions. You love her as much as a good man ought to love. You
even love her too well; for I believe your affection would render you
insensible to the truth rather than blame the object of your love.”

“That is true.”

“I cannot approve of that. It is not right. There is only one
thing, there is only one Being, a noble and well-balanced soul, a
soul thoroughly imbued with piety, allows itself to love above all
things—that thing is truth, that Being is God. Believe me, if Eugénie
allows herself to be alienated from you, it will be a proof she has not
the worth you give her credit for, and also that it is not the will of
God she should become your wife. Well, I will not oppose the indulgence
you feel towards her. I consent to it. Say to yourself she has been
deceived, that she is innocent, but submit to the divine will. Do not
attempt impossibilities to link together the chain God himself breaks,
however dear she may be to you.”

Victor seemed to have recalled all the energy of his manly nature to
utter these words. His firmness and judicious counsel were not lost on
Louis.

“I will follow your advice,” said he; “but promise to pray this sorrow
may be spared me. God has endowed the one I love with a soul so
elevated that it would be easy to make her as pious as an angel.... And
I love her so much!”

“My poor friend! I do not know that I shall be permitted to pray at
once for you in yonder world. If I can, I will pray God you may be
united with her, if this union will render you happy—happy, understand
me, in the Christian sense of the word; that is to say, happy and
better, both of you.”

In the middle of the night, Victor requested me to go into the
next chamber for some papers he wanted. He availed himself of this
opportunity to recommend me to Louis’ care, as I afterwards learned.

“Agnes,” said he, “has exhausted her strength in taking care of me
so many months. Her physical and mental strength are now merely
factitious. It is the very excess of her grief that sustains her. As
soon as I am gone, she will be sensible of her weakness. I fear the
reaction may prove fatal to her. I implore you to take her and her
mother to some place near you in the country. Find them a temporary
residence that is healthy and pleasant. Change of scene and pure
country air will do her more good than anything else, especially if you
add the benefit of your efforts to console her, on which I depend.”

Louis made the required promise.... But these recollections are still
too painful. Alas! they will always be so. You will excuse me from
dwelling on them.

The next day, I lost the companion of my life. That pure soul, so full
of intelligence, sweetness, and energy, took flight for heaven, leaving
me for ever sad and desolate upon earth.... Oh! how happy are those
women who to the very hour of death are permitted by God to retain the
companionship of a husband tenderly loved, and worthy of being so!...

The first moments of overpowering grief had scarcely passed before
that which Victor had foreseen took place. All at once I lost my
apparent strength. I was weighed down with a dull despair. My poor
mother trembled for my life. Throughout the day I sat motionless in an
arm-chair, interested in no person or subject. My lips alone made an
effort from time to time to murmur the words at once so bitter and so
sweet: “O Lord! thou gavest him to me; thou hast taken him away; thy
will be done!” That was my only prayer. I repeated it from morning till
night. Thus lifting my soul heavenward, I found strength to resist the
temptation to rebel which constantly assailed me.

During that sad time, Louis’ sister joined him in unceasing attentions
to me. Louis gave himself entirely up to my service, and notified Mr.
Smithson he should be absent several days longer from the manufactory.
You can realize how generous this was in him. To absent himself at a
time his dearest interests were at stake, and leave the field clear for
his enemies, was making an heroic sacrifice to friendship. It was not
till a subsequent period I fully appreciated it. At that time, I was
wholly absorbed in myself. Extreme grief becomes a kind of passion,
and, like all passions, it renders us selfish.

When Louis at last saw me a little calmer, he told me of Victor’s wish.
“His last request was,” said he, “that you should go into the country
awhile with your mother. The air is purer there, and you will regain
your strength.”

I exclaimed against the proposition. I declared I would not leave the
house in which Victor died—where everything recalled his presence.
Louis insisted, urged on by the physicians, who declared the change
indispensable.

“Victor himself implores you through me to consent,” said he. “Remember
you will be still obeying him in so doing.”

I ended by yielding to their persuasions. “But where shall I go?” said
I.

“To St. M——, where you will be near me. My sister went there
yesterday, and found you pleasant lodgings. You can easily go that far
with your mother and sister.”

We went there the next day. It was Louis who made all the arrangements,
and with how much solicitude and affection I need not say. At length
he left us to resume his duties at the mill. The last favor I begged
of him was to come and see me often, but not to mention to any one
the place of my retirement. Like all who are in real affliction,
solitude alone pleased me. The first time for a week, Louis’ thoughts,
after leaving me, recurred to the subjects that had absorbed his mind
previous to Victor’s death. He began to be alarmed. He wondered if
Eugénie had not forgotten him, if she really loved him, if Mr. Smithson
was disposed to regard him with more or with less favor, and if Albert
had not profited by his absence to injure him in the estimation of
Eugénie’s family. But he could only form conjectures as to all this.

Now that these events have passed away, I can seize all the details at
a glance. I shall therefore tell you many things Louis was necessarily
ignorant of when he returned to the manufactory. He would have trembled
had he been aware of them. He had scarcely left his post in order to
be with Victor during his last moments, when his enemies, thinking the
time propitious, resolved to profit by his absence to effect his ruin.
They all set to work at once.

The deceitful Adams, who had sought to be enlightened as to his
religious doubts, went around telling everybody the engineer had
convinced him of the falseness of his religion, which he resolved to
abjure, and only waited for Louis’ return. People began by laughing at
what he said. They had no great opinion of the fellow. They suspected
his connection with Durand, who was regarded with fear. Some even
thought it was all a trick. But Adams returned to the charge; he spoke
with an air of conviction, he seemed changed. To carry out the scheme,
he apparently broke off with his former friend, Durand.

All these things were repeated from one to another till they reached
Mr. Smithson’s ears. He had been obliged to superintend the workmen
during Louis’ absence from the manufactory. Already inclined to be
suspicious of the engineer, and ignorant of the ties that bound him to
Victor, Mr. Smithson interiorly accused him of first manifesting an
ultra, I may say, fanatical zeal, and then falling into an indifference
and carelessness unworthy of a consistent man. “Because one of his
friends is ill,” he said, “is that a sufficient reason for abandoning
his post, leaving me overwhelmed with work, and interrupting the
school he had begun?... And all this without making any arrangement
beforehand!... The man is inconsistent!”

Mr. Smithson was therefore unfavorably disposed towards Louis, when, to
complete his dissatisfaction, came the news, at first doubtful, then
certain, of Adams’ intended abjuration. He became so angry that he
could not contain himself, though generally so capable of self-control.
The interests of his national religion were at stake. He at once became
furious, and made no effort to conceal it.

Mme. Smithson and Albert of course took Mr. Smithson’s part against
Louis. He was berated as a man of no discretion, deceitful, fanatical,
and a Jesuit in disguise. Mme. Smithson was one of those people who
boldly say: “I don’t think much of a person who changes his religion!”
As if it were not merely reasonable for a man to give up error for
truth when the truth is revealed to him. Albert was influenced by
motives you are already aware of. He was triumphant. He had never
expected such success from so simple a trick. Circumstances had indeed
favored him but too well. Seeing Mr. Smithson in such a frame of mind,
he had no doubts of his dismissing Louis as soon as he returned.

But his joy was strangely diminished by an unexpected incident. They
were discussing the affair one evening in the _salon_. “Excuse me,
father,” said Eugénie, “for meddling with what does not concern me, but
you know I always was the advocate of a bad cause.”

Every one looked up at this unexpected interruption. Eugénie was not
a woman to be intimidated when she foresaw opposition: rather, the
contrary. She continued, without being troubled in the least: “I find
a great many are disposed to attack M. Louis, but no one thinks of
defending him. It were to be wished some one would be his defender,
though I do not say his conduct is irreproachable.”

“Very far from that,” said Mr. Smithson.

“But if he is not innocent, is he as culpable as he may have appeared?
What is he accused of? He has been absent several days from the mill.
This adds greatly to your labors, my dear father, but his absence is
justifiable to a certain degree. Do you know M. Louis’ history?”

“As well as you, I suppose, child.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Has he related it to you?”

“No; Fanny took pains to do that. Fanny is at once curious and a
gossip.”

“My cousin is very severe towards so devoted a servant. Is she
indulgent only to the culpable?”

This ill-timed interruption gave Eugénie a glimpse of light. “There is
an understanding between them,” she said to herself, “and that explains
many things.” She continued, addressing her father: “M. Louis made
an attempt at his own life. He was drowning, when a brave man and an
invalid—M. Barnier—at the risk of his own life, threw himself into
the river, and saved him. This was the origin of their friendship,
which does honor to M. Louis and to the person so devoted to him. This
M. Barnier is dying to-day.”

“Who told you so, my child?” asked Mr. Smithson.

“The newspapers from town allude to it. M. Barnier is a well-known man,
and esteemed by his very enemies themselves. It is to be with him M.
Louis is gone. Does not such a motive justify his absence?”

Mr. Smithson had attentively listened to what his daughter said. If we
except what related to religious subjects, he was an impartial and even
kindly disposed man. “With such a reason for his absence,” he replied,
“I shall cease to regard it as inexcusable. Nevertheless, he ought to
have made me aware of what had taken place. He simply said he was going
to stay with a sick friend: that was not a sufficient explanation. What
I dislike in the man is his dissimulation.”

“I acknowledge there may be some reason for distrust,” resumed Eugénie,
“but he has given no proofs of duplicity since he came here that I am
aware of. He certainly has done nothing without consulting you, father.”

“He did, to be sure, propose several things he wished to do; but did he
reveal his real aim, his ultimate object?”

“Had he any?”

“Had he any?... The Adams affair proves it. The evening-school and the
library were only founded to propagate Catholicism.”

“With what object?”

“The aim of these enthusiasts is always the same. They wish to impart
their belief to others, that they may afterwards exercise authority
over their disciples. Louis and the _curé_ are linked together. Their
project is to make my manufactory like a convent, where they can reign
in spite of me. But I will settle that matter.”

“And you will do right, uncle,” said Albert. “There is no tyranny more
artful and more encroaching than that of the priesthood.”

“I did not know my cousin detested the clergy to such a degree,” said
Eugénie, with an air of mockery and disdain which convinced Albert
he had made a fresh blunder. “I thought, on the contrary, you had a
sincere respect for priests. It seems I was deceived....”

“Enough on this point,” said Mr. Smithson. “I will see Adams, and
learn from him what has occurred. And I will speak to the engineer
accordingly when he returns.”

This conversation took place in the evening. Mme. Smithson was present.
She did not speak, but was extremely irritated. Eugénie little thought
she had caused her mother as great an affliction as she had ever
experienced in her life. For ten, perhaps fifteen, years, Mme. Smithson
had clung to the idea of a match between her daughter and nephew. She
had taken comfort in the thought of uniting the two beings she loved
best on earth. Besides, it was a good way, and the only one in her
power, of securing to Albert a fortune he had need of; for the career
he had embraced, and the tastes he had imbibed, made it necessary he
should be wealthy, which was by no means the case. This plan till
lately had been confined to Mme. Smithson’s own breast; but, since
Albert’s arrival, she had ventured to allude to it in her conversations
with him. The latter responded with enthusiastic gratitude, expressing
an ardent desire to have the proposed union realized. Alas! from the
beginning there had been one difficulty which fretted Mme. Smithson.
Would her husband approve of her scheme? As Albert approached manhood,
this consent became more and more doubtful. Mr. Smithson treated his
nephew kindly, but had no great opinion of him, and did not like him.
How overcome this obstacle? There was only one way: Eugénie herself
must desire the marriage. Mr. Smithson never opposed his daughter,
and would then overlook his antipathy to the object of her choice.
Things were having a very different tendency. Mme. Smithson had long
tried to hide the fact from herself, but she must at last acknowledge
it: Eugénie manifested no partiality for her cousin. This evening’s
occurrence banished all illusion. She not only saw Eugénie had not
the least thought of marrying Albert, but she suspected her of loving
another, ... a man Mme. Smithson could no longer endure. He had in her
eyes three faults, any one of which would have set her against him:
he was her dear nephew’s rival, he had no property, and he was grave
and pious to a degree that could not fail to be repulsive to a trivial
woman and a half-way Christian like her. To complete her despair,
Albert came secretly to see her that very same evening.

“Aunt,” said he, “our affairs are getting on badly!... Confess that I
had more penetration than you were willing to allow.”

“What! what! what do you mean? Do you think Eugénie loves that
spendthrift, that bigot?... Nonsense! she only wishes to tease you.”

“I am of a different opinion. I have long been aware of her fancy for
him. What she said in his favor this evening was very judicious and
moderate, but there was in the tone of her voice, ... in her look, a
something I could not mistake. For the first time, she betrayed her
feelings. I tell you she loves him!”

“Why, that would be dreadful!”

“I foresaw it.”

“Foresaw!—such a thing?”

“Eugénie is romantic, and the rogue puts on the air of a hero of
romance.”

“Set your heart at rest, Albert. I promise to watch over your
interests. I assure you, in case of need, I will bring your uncle
himself to your aid.”

“I will talk to Eugénie to-morrow morning,” she said to herself. “I
shall never believe in such presumption till she confesses it herself.”

The next morning, Mme. Smithson went, full of anxiety, to her
daughter’s chamber. Eugénie was that very moment thinking of Louis.
The more she examined her own heart, the more clearly she saw herself
forced to acknowledge her esteem for him. She had inwardly condemned
him many times, but had as often found her suspicions were groundless.
Without showing the least partiality for Louis, she could not help
seeing he was intelligent, energetic, and sincerely pious. She even
acknowledged that, of all the men she had ever met, not one was to be
compared to him; he was superior to them all in every respect. From
this, it was not a long step to confess him worthy of her affection.
But he—did he love her?... Not a word, not a sign, had escaped him
to indicate such a thing, and yet there was in his bearing towards
her, in the tone of his voice, and in the value he attached to her
good opinion, a something that assured her she had made a profound
impression on him. But, then, why this coldness so rigorously
maintained?... He was poor—and through his own fault—while she was
rich. His coldness perhaps resulted from extreme delicacy.

Eugénie cut short her reflections by repeating: “Does he love me?... It
may be. Do I love him?... I dare not say no. But we are in a peculiar
position. If I find him, at the end of the account, worthy of being
my husband, doubtless I should have to make the advances! But I like
originality in everything. My father alone excites my fears. M. Louis
would not be his choice. Why does he show himself so zealous a Catholic
at present? Why not wait till he is married—if married we ever are?
Then he could be as devoted to the church as he pleases.”

Mme. Smithson was hardly to be recognized when she entered her
daughter’s room. She was generally affable and smiling, but now her
face was lowering and agitated. She was evidently very nervous, as
was usually the case when she had some disagreeable communication to
make to her daughter. Eugénie at once divined what was passing in her
mother’s heart. She was careful, however, not to aid her in unburdening
herself.

After speaking of several things of no importance, Mme. Smithson
assumed an unconcerned air—a sign of her extreme embarrassment—and
broached the subject with a boldness peculiar to timid people when they
see there is no way of receding.

“I must confess that was a strange notion of yours last evening.”

“What notion do you refer to, mother?” said Eugénie, in a tone at once
dignified and ingenuous. She felt the storm was coming. As usual on
such occasions, she laid aside the familiar _thou_ for the respectful
_you_. There was a spice of mischief in her tactics which I do not
intend to applaud. She thus redoubled her mother’s embarrassment, and
by the politeness of her manner increased her hesitation.

“What notion do I refer to?... You need not ask that. You know
well enough what I allude to.... Yes; why should you, without any
obligation, set yourself up to defend a man who is no relation of ours
or even one of our friends, but a mere employé of your father’s; one
who suits him certainly, but who is likely to cause trouble in the
house; ... who is, in short, a dangerous man?...”

“You astonish me to the last degree, mother! I never, no, never should
have suspected M. Louis of dangerous designs, or that he even had the
power to disturb us.”

“Raillery, my dear, is in this case quite out of place. What secret
motive have you for undertaking his defence?”

“I? I have none. What motive could I have?”

“Then, why take sides against us?”

“Why, I have not taken sides against you!”

“How can you deny it?”

“I do deny it, mother, with your permission. My father imputed
intentions to M. Louis which perhaps he never had. I merely observed it
would be more just to wait for proofs before condemning him. That is
all, and a very small affair.”

“Wait for proofs before condemning him, do you say?... Well, he has
them. Adams has confessed everything.... He acknowledges that M. Louis
endeavored to convert him, lent him books, taught him the catechism,
and, what was worse, dwelt a great deal on hell as a place he could
not fail to go to if he, Adams, remained a Protestant. The poor fellow
has not recovered from his terror yet!... Your father has talked to
him very kindly, given him good advice, mingled with kind reproaches.
Adams was affected, and ended by saying he never wished to see M. Louis
again; and he did a lucky thing!”

“It seems to me that Adams is either a simpleton or a hypocrite.”

“Eugénie, that is altogether too much!”

“I do not see anything very astonishing in what I have said. Please
listen to me a moment, mother. To hesitate between two creeds, without
being able to decide on either, seems to me a proof of weakness. But
if, on the contrary, Adams invented this story of his conversion in
order to yield at a favorable moment and gain the good-will of my
father more than ever, would not this show a duplicity and artfulness
that could only belong to a hypocrite?...”

“Adams could not have invented such a thing. It would have rendered him
liable to dismissal.”

“I beg your pardon, mother. Adams did not risk anything. The course he
has taken proves it. And that is precisely what makes me distrust him.”

“How can you impute such motives to anybody!... Adams has renounced his
intention, because he was convinced by your father’s arguments. He has
behaved like an honest man!”

“Excuse me, mother; we are in more danger than ever of not
understanding each other. Why! you seem to rejoice that Adams has
returned to his errors! You appear to think his course very natural,
and to approve of it!”

“Yes, I do approve of it; people ought not to change their religion.”

“You might as well say a person ought not to acknowledge his error when
he is mistaken. I am by no means of your opinion, though I am not very
religious.”

“_A propos_ of religion, my dear, you seem to have taken a strange
turn. You have grown so rigorous as to astonish me; there is not
an ultra notion you do not approve of. You have completely changed
since.... But I will not make you angry.”

“Since M. Louis came here?... A pretty idea. But I am not surprised.”

“You said it yourself, but it is true. Since that man came here, you
have changed every way. I know not why or wherefore, but it is a fact.
Your cousin himself has observed it, and it grieves him. You are no
longer towards him as you once were. You keep him at a distance. You
are not lively as you used to be. You only talk of things serious
enough to put one asleep.”

“It is nearly ten years since I was brought in such close contact with
my cousin as now. I was very young then. I have grown older and more
sensible. Why has not he done the same?”

“Your sarcasm is malicious and unmerited. Albert is a charming fellow.”

“Oh! I agree with you! But this very fact injures him in my estimation.
A charming fellow is one who requires an hour to dress; is skilled in
paying a multitude of compliments he does not mean; has a petty mind
that only takes interest in trifles; in short, a useless being it is
impossible to rely on. When Albert came, he seemed to be conscious
of the absurdity of being a charming fellow. He tried to put on a
semblance of gravity, but it did not last long. Once more the proverb
held good: _Chasser le naturel, il revient au galop_.”[197]

“Wonderful, my dear. You have every qualification for a _dévote_:
especially one characteristic—maliciousness. Poor Albert! how you have
set him off! Happily, there is not a word of truth in all you have
said. He a man on whom you cannot rely! He has a heart of gold.”

“I do not dispute the goodness of his heart. I have never put it to the
proof.”

“What a wicked insinuation! How dreadful it is to always believe the
worst of everybody.”

“Well, let it be so: he has a kind heart!... But is there any depth to
him?”

“As much as is necessary. This would be a sad world if we were always
obliged to live with moody people like some one I know of. I really
believe he is your beau ideal.”

“I do not say that; but, if he is really what he appears to be, he
merits my good opinion. I wish all I live with resembled him.”

“Well done! A little more, and you will tell me he is the realization
of all your dreams.”

“I do not know him well enough to accord him all your words seem to
imply.”

“At all events, you know him well enough to take an interest in him,
and much more than would suit your father.... Your cousin even was
scandalized at your daring to defend him against your father, who had
good reason to blame him.”

“My cousin would do well to attend to his own affairs, and not meddle
with mine. If he came here to watch me, sneer at me, and give me
advice, he had better have remained in Paris.”

“He came here hoping to find the friend of his childhood glad to see
him, and ready to show him the affection he merits. Everybody does not
judge him as severely as you do. I know many girls who....”

“Who would be glad to marry him! Well, they may have him!”

“That is too much! The son of my sister whom I love with all my heart!
A child whom I brought up and love almost as much as I do you!”

“But, mother, I am not displeased because you love him. I do not
dislike him. I wish him well, and would do him all the good in my
power. But when I make choice of a husband, I shall choose one with
qualities Albert will never possess.”

“I have suspected it for a long time. Yes; I thought long ago, seeing
the turn your mind was taking, that, when you married, it would be
foolishly.”

“What do you mean by foolishly?”

“Marrying a man without property, or one with eccentric notions, or
some prosy creature of more or less sincerity. I am very much afraid
you are infatuated about an individual who has all these defects
combined. Fortunately.... You understand me....”

“What, mother?”

“Yes; we shall watch over your interests, your father and I, and if
you are disposed to make a foolish match, like one that occurs to me,
we shall know how to prevent it. We shall not hesitate if obliged to
render you happy in spite of yourself.”

“Render me happy?... At all events, it would not be by forcing me to
marry Albert.”

“Anyhow, you shall marry no one else.... It is I who say so, and your
father will show you he is of my opinion.”

Upon this, Mme. Smithson went out, violently shutting the door after
her. Like all people of weak character, she must either yield or fall
into a rage. It was beyond her ability to discuss or oppose anything
calmly.

It was all over! All her plans were overthrown! She must bid farewell
to her dearest hopes! She must no longer think of retaining Albert
and sending for his mother—for Mme. Smithson’s desires went as
far as that! Her dream was to unite the two families by marrying
Eugénie and Albert. Instead of that, what a perspective opened before
her!—a marriage between her daughter and Louis, which roused all her
antipathies at once! She was beside herself at the bare thought of
seeing herself connected with a son-in-law she could not endure, and
who was no less repulsive to Mr. Smithson.... Her maternal heart was
kind when no one contradicted her, but there was in its depths, as
often happens in weak natures, a dash of spitefulness. Having returned
to her chamber, Mme. Smithson began to reflect. She seldom gave herself
up to reflection, and then only when she was troubled, as is the case
with some people. As might be supposed, she was too excited to reflect
advantageously.

“Oh! oh!” she said to herself, “Eugénie dares resist me the only time I
ever asked her to obey! She despises Albert. She speaks scornfully of
him! And that is not sufficient: she carries her audacity so far as to
sing the praises of a man I detest!... See what it is to be indulgent
to one’s children! The day comes when, for a mere caprice, they tread
under foot what was dearest to you.... Well, since she will do nothing
for me, I will do nothing for her.... She rejects Albert. I will have
the other one driven away.... Since that meddler came, everything has
gone wrong here.... What a nuisance that man is! If he had not come
here, everything would have gone on as I wished.... I will go in search
of my husband. It will be easy to have the engineer sent off, after
committing so many blunders. When he is gone, we shall have to endure
my daughter’s ill-humor, but everything comes to an end in this world.
The time will come when, realizing her folly, Eugénie will listen to
reason.”

The interview between Mr. Smithson and his wife took place a little
while after. What was said I never knew. Mme. Smithson alluded to it
once or twice at a later day, but merely acknowledged she did very
wrong. The remembrance was evidently painful, and she said no more.

Eugénie at once foresaw this private interview between her parents. The
conversation she had just had with her mother only served to enlighten
her more fully as to the state of her feelings. Forced to express her
opinion of Albert and Louis, she had spoken from her heart. She was
herself in a measure astonished at seeing so clearly she did not love
Albert—that there was a possibility of loving Louis—that perhaps
she already loved him.... And she also comprehended more clearly all
the difficulties such an attachment would meet with. Her mother’s
opposition had hitherto been doubtful. It was now certain, and the
consequence was to be feared.

“My mother is so much offended,” she said to herself, “that she will
try to unburden her mind to my father at once, and perhaps influence
him against me. Before the day is over, she will tell him all I said,
and the thousand inferences she has drawn from it. This interview fills
me with alarm! I wish I knew what they will decide upon, if they come
to any decision....”

Eugénie tried in vain to get some light on the point, but was not able
to obtain much. The interview took place. Mr. Smithson seemed vexed and
thoughtful after his wife left the office. Mme. Smithson went directly
to give the porter orders to send the engineer to her husband as soon
as he arrived. Louis had sent word the evening before he should return
the following day.

 TO BE CONTINUED.




SONNET.

THE RUINS OF EMANIA (NEAR ARMAGH).

BY AUBREY DE VERE.


  Why seek we thus the living ‘mid the dead?
  Beneath yon mound—within yon circle wide—
  Emania’s palace, festive as a bride
  For centuries six, had found its wormy bed
  When Patrick lifted here his royal head,
  And round him gazed. Perhaps the Apostle sighed
  Even then, to note the fall of mortal pride—
  Full fourteen hundred years since then have fled!
  Then, too, old Ulster’s hundred kings were clay;
  Then, too, the Red Branch warriors slept forlorn;
  Autumn, perhaps, as now, a pilgrim gray,
  Her red beads counted on the berried thorn,
  Making her rounds; while from the daisied sod
  The undiscountenanced lark upsoared, and praised her God.




APPEAL TO WORKINGMEN.

FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON GAUTIER IN THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED JANUARY 13, 1873, TO INAUGURATE THE LECTURES
INTENDED FOR THE WORKING-CLASSES.[198]


TO-DAY we inaugurate the lectures specially consecrated to workingmen.
We are full of joyous hopes, and believe that this work of light
will be at the same time a work of reconciliation, of love, and of
peace. The cross, which we have placed conspicuously in all our places
of reunion—the cross, that we elevate and display everywhere as a
magnificent standard—the cross, that we will never consent to hide,
indicates clearly what is our faith and what is our aim. We wish to
enlighten your understandings, dilate your hearts, direct your wills
in the way of the good, the beautiful, and the true. In a word, we
wish to conquer you for Christ, and we say it here with a frankness
which profoundly abhors all cunning of speech. You will give us credit
for sincerity, which you have always loved; for, as has been said by
a great contemporary orator,[199] “The people are not deceived; they
feel when they are approached with faith in them and in their eminent
dignity.”

We come, then, to you with this cross of Constantine, which has
converted the world. This glorious sign we have surrounded with rays,
to show you that light proceeds from Christianity, as the stream flows
from its source, and the beams radiate from a star. If possible, we
would have adopted as a flag the beautiful cross in the catacomb of
S. Pontian, from which spring roses—symbols of joy. We would have
chosen it, to show you that in Christ is found not only the repose of
the enlightened understanding, but also the repose, the joy, and the
alleluia of the satisfied heart. It is by this sign we will conquer.

In this first lecture, which will serve as an humble preface to the
discourses of so many eminent orators, we intend only to take up the
working question, to tell you our entire thought on the subject,
to open to you our whole heart. Do not hope to hear an academic
speech; do not expect those vain compliments to which you have been
accustomed from flatterers who did not love you. We say at first and
without circumlocution that between Christian society and the working
world there exists to-day a certain misunderstanding, and it is this
misunderstanding we would wish to dissipate, and we beg of the divine
Workman of Nazareth to direct our words, blessed by him, to the
understanding and heart of the workmen of Paris.

In the first part of this discourse, which will be brief, we will say
what we are; in the second, what we wish; and in the third, we will
reply to certain objections to the church which are current among
workingmen, and cause the deplorable misunderstanding from which we
wish to deliver your minds and hearts, equally oppressed. It is time
that the truth should free you.


I.

In order that you may better understand what we are, we wish to
commence by showing you what we are not.

We are not politicians; this we desire to declare openly. Never, never
will there be pronounced in this precinct one word that may even
remotely touch upon our old or recent discords. We will never deserve
to be called partisans. Whatever may be our intimate convictions (and
we have the right to have them), we only wish to be and we will only
be Christians. We suppose there may be in the bosom of all the avowed
parties sincere Catholics who are by no means _independents_. When we
tread upon the threshold of her basilicas, the church, which rises
before us, does not ask if we are monarchists or republicans, but only
if we believe in the eternal Word, who created heaven and earth, who
became man in the crib of Bethlehem, and who saved us on a cross. Thus
will we do, and the only popular song you will hear in this place will
be the Credo; come, come, and sing it with us.

Thank God, we do not belong to the group, too numerous, of pretended
conservatives, who only see in the labor question a painful
preoccupation which might trouble the calm of their digestion; who do
not wish to impose upon themselves any real sacrifice, and are easily
astonished that the working-classes complain of their sufferings. We
are not like the fashionable and delicate egoists who for several
centuries have given the fatal example of indifference, of doubt,
and of negation in religion, who have followed Voltaire, who have
wickedly laughed in the face of outraged truth, who have torn God from
the heart of the workman, and who nevertheless persist in affirming
that “religion is good for the people”—men of refinement, who to-day
edit journals full of talent, where on the first page is offered
ultra-conservative articles, and on the second ultra-obscene romances.
No; we are not of this class. Away with those sceptics whose fears make
them pretend to have the faith! Away with those who doubt the people,
and who do not love them!

We are not of those who are led to you by this vile fear or by a still
viler interest; we are not of those who see in you an armed force
before which they must tremble, or an electoral majority before whom
they must kneel. We will never come to solicit your votes, and we are
bent upon serving you with absolute disinterestedness. Briefly, we are
for you and will always be your friends and servants, but will never
condescend to court you. Besides, the victory which we desire is not
that which can be gained by force, consequently we do not count on
force. We only wish to win your understandings with our faith, your
hearts with our love.

We do not place the golden age in a past too superstitiously loved.
Whatever affection I may feel in my heart for those dear middle ages,
to which I have consecrated all my studies and all my life, I do not
find them sufficiently Christian to be the only ideal. We know that
those centuries, so differently judged, were the theatre of a gigantic
struggle between paganism, more and more conquered, and the church,
more and more victorious; and we draw a fundamental distinction
between the chivalry that so heroically defended the truth and the
feudality that did it such injury. We do not ignore the fact that
paganism, in dying, left to the Christian ages, as a frightful legacy,
the traditions of slavery, impurity, and violence; and we confess that
Christianity could not in one day decapitate the hundred-headed hydra.

If we regard especially the workmen’s guilds or corporations, we will
go so far as to own that their organization, so admirably Christian
in some respects, nevertheless left too much room for certain abuses
that we hate; and, as a decisive example, we assert that the material
condition of the members was not then what a Christian heart would wish
to-day. We have the religion, not the superstition, of the middle ages;
of that epoch so unworthily calumniated we preserve all the elements
truly Christian, and reject the others. We recognize in that rude and
laborious age the dawn, the beautiful dawn, of Catholic civilization
so scandalously interrupted by the Renaissance. In those centuries, so
slighted and misunderstood, we salute above all the cycle of the saints.

We ardently love the sublime period when S. Benedict gave to a hundred
thousand men and to twenty generations the order and signal to clear
the minds and the fields, equally sterile; when S. Francis conversed
with the birds of the air, reconciled all nature with humanity
Christianized, and gave to his contemporaries the love of “our lady,
poverty!” We love the period made joyful by the death of slavery under
the font of the church; when all the institutions of the state and of
the family were energetically Catholic; when royalty was represented by
a S. Louis, love by a S. Elizabeth, science by a S. Thomas of Aquinas.
But our soul has still stronger wings, and would fly still higher. We
wish still more, we wish still better, and we will build up the future
with two kinds of materials—with the past undoubtedly, but also with
our desires, which are vast.

We are not of those who ingenuously think the world at present is
organized as one would wish. Doubtless there are in the working-class
of our time illegitimate desires, guilty jealousies, unrighteous
thirsts; but we also know all that the world of laborers can offer to
the eyes of God, of cruel sufferings, of noble sighs, and of honest
tears. God preserve us from ever laughing at one of those griefs,
even should they be merited! On the contrary, we hope that Christian
society will one day come, through peace and prayer, the sacraments and
love, to a better disposition, a more profound pacification, a happier
distribution of riches, a wider-spread prosperity, and to something
more resembling the reign of God. But, alas! we are convinced that
the definitive repartition and equality will only be consummated in
eternity. Those who do not believe in a future life will never see
their desire of infinite justice satisfied—they condemn themselves to
this punishment.

We do not despise the work of the hands; far from it, we seek to
place the mechanic close to the artist. For centuries, there have
been Pyrenees between art and industry; these Pyrenees we wish to
remove, and we will succeed. In truth, the workman is an august being;
and the title of his nobility will be easily found in the depths of
faith and of theology. Listen: the eternal type, the adorable type,
of the workman is the Heavenly Father, the _Faber divinus_, who, not
content with making obedient matter spring from nothing, like a
sublime goldsmith chiselled it into a splendid jewel. Beauty, Goodness,
personal and living Truth—such, to the letter, was the first Workman.
God joined, framed, hewed, cemented, carved the whole universe, the
firmament, the stars. His gracious and magnificent hand, armed with an
invisible chisel, is discovered in every part of the creation which
has been wonderfully sculptured by this marvellous Workman. Workmen
of every condition, here contemplate the work of your Model, of your
Master, of your divine Patron. The sombre forests, the transparent
foliage, the flowers whose wonders are only revealed by the microscope,
the mountains, the ocean, the infinite depths—all, all were made by
the great Workman.

Incomparable Artificer! he conceived the plan of all these beings in
His eternal Word, and one day, to realize this design, he pronounced
these words: “Be they!” and they were. But it was not enough to show
himself the workman; God feared, if I may be allowed so to speak, that
his calling might be despised; and he desired so truly to be a workman
that of a God he made himself a carpenter as well as man. He chose a
noble position, perfectly characteristic, and, with his divine hands,
sawed, planed, polished, worked the wood that in the first hour of
the world he had worked in the design of the creation. Workmen, my
brethren, it is not a fable, it is not a symbol: Jesus, the Son of God,
was the apprentice, the companion, the workman, the carpenter; and the
venerable monuments of tradition show him to us making ploughs, perhaps
crosses. What can I not say to you of the Holy Ghost, considered as
the Workman of the spiritual world, which he had really cemented,
hewed, and framed? What can I not explain of the beautiful realities
of symbolism? With regret I leave this workshop of the church, and now
content myself with the workshop of the creation, and with that of
Nazareth.

But you question me more earnestly, and ask what I think of the
contemporary workman. And I reply that, notwithstanding his faults and
errors, I feel for him a great love, invincibly aroused by Christ. Yes;
I close my eyes, I abstract myself. I forget so many ignoble flames, so
much blood, the pure blood so sacrilegiously shed. I wish to separate
my thoughts from so many ruins, so many scandals. I come to you, pagan
workman, rebellious to God, and, in the midst of your rebellious and
Satanic orgies, I approach you, who formerly were baptized, and place
my hand upon your heart, that I may not despair. Your mind is darkened,
your will misled; but there are yet some pulsations which allow me
still to hope, and I willingly repeat the words of that great bishop
who has devoted so much time to the social question: “The people love
that which is beautiful, they understand what is great; know that they
have high aspirations, and that they seek to rise.” And again: “The
workman of our day has eliminated the generous ideas from the Gospel,
and yet borrows from Christianity his noble and holy sentiments.”

Nothing is truer; if chemistry could analyze souls, what Christian
elements would be found in those of workmen! I readily see in each the
admirable material of one of those poor men so powerfully sketched
by Victor Hugo. He speaks of a miserable fisherman on the sea-shore,
who already has five children, perishing from hunger; when one day at
market, he sees and adopts two orphans poorer than he, and thus he
reasons: “We have five children, these will make seven; we will mingle
them together, and they will climb at night on our knees. They will
live, and will be brother and sister to the five others. When God sees
that we must feed this little boy and this little girl with the others,
he will make us catch more fish, that is all!” Workmen of Paris, read
these lines; they are worth more than those of the _Année terrible_,
and paint you exactly. You are capable of this sublime devotion, and I
recall you to the true nobility of your nature.

You know now what we are not, and I think that we have never failed for
an instant to be truly sincere. On the contrary, we have designedly
multiplied all the difficulties with perfect frankness. It is scarcely
necessary to add that we are not of those who disdain the social and
labor questions, and who, while hiding themselves in the graceful
domain of fancy, repeat with Alfred de Musset:

  “If two names by chance mingle in my song,
  They will always be Ninette or Ninon.”

This charming indifference is but a form of selfishness. Let us go
further, and although in our quality of Catholics (the only nobility,
the only title to which we are really attached) we place a higher
estimate on the future life than the present, we do not think only of
the heavenly destiny of the workman. For more than eighteen hundred
years, the church has not ceased for an instant to occupy herself with
the temporal condition of all the working-classes. In her firmament,
there are fourteen magnificent constellations, which are called the
seven corporal works of mercy, and the seven spiritual. She has made
them all shine on the brow of the workman, and it is for him, above
all, that she preserves the light. This example of our mother, the
church, we always wish to imitate. We know, besides, and it is a
powerful argument, that misery is a poor counsellor, and, if it is
badly accepted, turns souls from duty and eternity.

Therefore, we declare a mortal war against want and misery, and it is
thus that, in ameliorating the earth, we hope to prepare heaven.

We wish at this moment our heart were an open book, written in large
characters, and readable for all. Our brothers, the workmen, would see
that we do not blindly accuse them of all the crimes and mistakes of
modern society, and that we very well know how to comment severely on
the other classes. They would there read the programme of our work,
as recently sketched by a great bishop of the holy church: “We should
believe in the people, hope in them, love them.” For you must not
imagine that alms will here suffice, and that the people will accept
them; they exact all our heart, our esteem, our respect. He who does
not respect the workman can do nothing. Thus, this doctrine of respect
for the workman, the truly Christian doctrine, is the base upon which
the Catholic Circle of Workingmen has erected its edifice: may God
prosper and bless it!

Ask us now with frankness what we are, what is our faith, and listen
well to our reply, which will not be less sincere.

We believe in one only God, the supreme and sovereign Workman, whom we
do not confound with his work; the work is divine, but it is not God.
Beyond the world, above the world, in an inaccessible region, lives
and reigns from everlasting to everlasting the majesty of God, the
Infinite and Absolute, the Justice and Mercy, the Good, the True, and
the Beautiful, living and personal, the eternal Providence, who watches
over the workmen of all races and of all times. There are among you
some who refuse to this God the free adhesion of their faith, and it is
this negation which we come here to combat with the arms of reason and
of light. All depends upon your faith; even though you may be atheists,
we will love you, but, alas! you will not return our love, and the
reconciliation so ardently desired will not be easily realized; for you
can only be dissolved in love, and God is love.

We believe, then, in God the Creator, and we bow before him with
the simple and magnificent faith of the humble stone-cutter of whom
Lamartine speaks, and who one day said to our great poet, “I do not
know how other men are made; but, as for me, I cannot see, I do not say
a star, but even an ant, the leaf of a tree, a grain of sand, without
asking who made it; and the reply is, God. I understand it well, for,
before being, it was not; therefore, it could not make itself.” I
quote these beautiful words with great joy under the roof of a chapel
especially consecrated to workmen. Meditate upon them, workmen, who
listen to me; and, if you are republicans, respect, love, believe in
what this republican of 1848 respected, loved, and believed. Then the
workman believed in God; this time must return, and for this necessary
work we will expend our time, our strength, our life. But it is not
enough to believe in God; we must render to the Creator the act of the
creature, and offer him respect, homage, confidence, prayer, and love.
Blessed be this little chapel of _Jésus-Ouvrier_, if this night one of
these sentiments will be offered by one of the souls who are here and
listen to me.

We also believe in the Son of God, the Word, the interior Speech,
the creative Word of the Father, and we affirm that this Word, at a
determined moment of history, came down on our earth that sin had
stained, and that had to be purified. To arrive at God, who is absolute
purity, we must be white or whitened. Are we white of ourselves? Look
into your souls, and answer. Christ, then, came to suffer, to expiate,
to die for us all, and especially for all workmen, past, present, and
to come. Such is the admirable doctrine of the solidarity of expiation;
and it is here that Jesus is again the type of workmen. Oh! who can
complain of work, when God for thirty years submitted to the rigorous
law of manual labor! Who can complain of suffering, when he bore the
weight of all the sufferings of the body and of the human soul! Who
can complain of loneliness and abandonment, when this God was betrayed
by his tenderest friends, and abandoned by all except his mother, who
remained standing at the foot of the cross! Who can complain of dying
in solitude, in grief, and in shame, on the pallet of a garret or the
bed of a hospital, when he, the Creator of so many millions of suns and
of the universe, gave us the example of the most cruel death, after
having offered us as model the most wretched life! Ah! they had reason
to decree the suppression of the crucifix in the hospitals and schools;
for a true workman cannot look at the crucifix without being moved to
the bottom of his soul, without extending to it his arms, without being
profoundly consoled, without crying, “Behold my Master, my Example, and
my Father!”

We believe that Christianity is contained in these words, which we
should ponder: “Imitation of Christ,” and, in particular, “Imitation
of Jesus the workman.” It is by that means we will be led to give
a place to private virtues, which our adversaries do not wish to
accord to us. Nowadays it is fashionable among workmen and others to
repeat this ill-sounding proposition, which is an exact summary of
Victor Hugo’s last work: that “Society is bad, and man is good.” Do
not believe it; man is an intelligent, free, responsible being, who
can, when he wishes, and with the aid of God, conquer the evil in
him, and do good. As society is only a composition of men, it follows
and will ever be that, if each one of us becomes purer, more humble,
more charitable, better, society will itself become less savage,
more enlightened, better organized, every way improved. In political
economy, we cannot too highly exalt the _rôle_ of private virtues.

It can be demonstrated mathematically, and it will soon be shown, that
everything socially springs from sacrifice. If you wish to know here
what distinguishes the Catholics from their enemies, I will tell you
very simply that they place duty before right, and that the enemies of
the church place right before duty. Certainly, we believe in right as
strongly as you can; but we make it the logical consequence and, if I
may say so, the reward of accomplished duty. Weigh well this doctrine,
to which is attached the destiny of the world.

Finally, we believe in the life everlasting. Doubtless it is to be
desired that all men should make every effort for the reign of justice
on this earth; in this, the Catholics have not been wanting, nor ever
will be. But whatever may be the legitimate beauty of these attempts,
I think that the perfection of ideal justice will only be found in the
future life, and that, to make the definitive balance of the fate of
each man, heaven must always enter in the calculation. Here below there
are too many inconsolable sorrows, more suffering than social equality
can ever suppress. Alas! there will always be the passions that ravage
the heart; always ingratitude and abandonment; always sickness and
the death of those whom we love best. Paradise of my God! you will
re-establish the equilibrium; paradise of my God! if you are, above
all, destined for those who have suffered, you will be assuredly opened
to workmen. In this hope I live.

And here I am led to recapitulate, not without emotion, all the
benefits that Providence has more especially reserved for you. “A
heavenly Father, who merits above all the title of workman, and who
made the earth; a God, who comes on earth to take up the plane, the
saw, and the hammer, and become the prototype of workmen; an infallible
church that for eighteen hundred years has bent over workmen, to
enlighten, console, and love them; an eternity of happiness, where all
present injustice will be superabundantly repaired.”

Workmen, my brethren, what can you ask further? In the place of God,
what could you make better? Answer.


II.

What do we wish, however? In other words, what can we promise you?

First of all, there are twenty promises we cannot make you, and it is
our duty here to warn you of our _non possumus_.

We cannot promise you ever to consider armed revolt as a duty or a
right. We cling with all the strength of our understanding to the
doctrine that even against injustice the protest should be martyrdom,
heroically accepted, heroically submitted. Thus did the first
Christians; they allowed themselves to be slaughtered like beautiful
sheep, covered with generous blood. This sublimely passive resistance
will not take from us, as it never did from them, the liberty of
speech; they died declaring their belief in God, the supreme Principle,
and in the Son of God, the sovereign Expiator. And when fifteen or
eighteen millions had been killed, the church triumphed; she then came
forth from the catacombs, and to her was given the mission to enlighten
the world.

We do not promise you the liberty of doing evil, and it would be false
if we even appeared to make such an engagement. At this instant, there
are five hundred men in France who pervert, corrupt, putrefy France;
among these are four hundred and ninety writers and ten caricaturists;
according to our idea, it is deplorable that they can freely exercise
their trade, and destroy with impunity so many millions of souls among
young girls, young men, and workmen.

We cannot with sincerity promise you absolute equality on this earth.
What we can promise you hereafter is that beautiful equality of
Christians who are sprung from the same God-Creator, saved by the
same God-Redeemer, enlightened by the same God-Illuminator. It is the
equality, the profound equality, of baptism and the eucharist; the
equality of souls in trials and reward; it is, in fine, equality in
heaven. As for the other, we will exhaust ourselves in the effort to
obtain it; but we have two obstacles before us, over which we do not
hope to triumph—sickness and vice. No equality is possible with these
two scourges, and they are ineradicable. We cannot promise you either
illegitimate pleasure or even the end of suffering. In taking suffering
from man—which is impossible—they would take from him his resemblance
to God, and consequently his true greatness and his titles to heaven.
The more we suffer, the more we resemble our Father, the more we merit
eternal joy. In suffering will be found the Christian principle, which
we cannot efface from the Gospel, and which is even the essence of
the Christian life. But we promise to suffer with you, and, as the
church has done for eighteen hundred years, to alleviate your sorrows,
to heal your wounds, to satisfy your material and moral hunger, and
to quench your thirst for truth. The fathers of the church invite us
only to consider ourselves as “depositaries of riches.” All property
is but a deposit in our hands—a deposit which we are strictly obliged
to communicate to you, and for which we must render an account to the
Master.

We promise you also faith, which gives to the soul a noble attribute
and a happy tranquillity. And with faith we can give you what has
been well called the _intelligence of life_—the intelligence thanks
to which the workman knows how to accept inequality, because he sees
in the horizon the beautiful perspective of eternity. We promise you
calmness in certainty, the consolation that every workman can feel
in regarding his divine type; and, in giving you this type, you will
possess a rare treasure, for which your souls are justly eager.

We promise you the sweetness of work Christianly accepted. Says a
great Christian: “What matters work when Jesus Christ is there?” It is
here that we must recall those splendid verses of the greatest of our
poets—those verses which we would wish to see written on the walls
of all our transfigured workshops: “God, look you—let the senseless
reject—causes to be born of labor two daughters: Virtue which makes
cheerfulness sweet, and Cheerfulness which makes virtue charming.” And
with work, you will conquer also the “courage of life”; for you will be
convinced that all beings are subjected to this great law, and that the
blows of your hammers are the notes of a universal chant. “All work,
each one is at his post; he who governs the state; the savant, who
extends the limits of human explorations; the sculptor, who makes the
statue spring from his chisel; the poet, who sings between his tears
and his sighs; the priest, who punishes and pardons—all, down to you,
poor workman, in your smoky workshop. We are all living stones of that
cathedral formed of souls and of centuries for the glory of God.”[200]
With such thoughts, the day appears short, and labor assumes an
exquisite character. What joy to say, “I work with the entire universe;
I work as God himself has set me the example.”

Still further, we promise you honor and pride. The Christian workman,
he whom we hope to see multiplied in Paris, loves his trade; he is
proud of it, and would blush if he did not prefer it to all others. He
contemplates with satisfaction the work which he has just accomplished,
and, like the Creator, with innocent simplicity, finds it beautiful. He
attempts without jealousy to equal and even surpass the best workmen
of his kind. He thinks that his country should be the most honorable
and the most honored of all, and that France should be the equal of all
other powers. On this subject he will not jest, but becomes grave. If
he belongs to a corporation, he is enthusiastic for the glory of his
banner, and will not allow it to be insulted. When a man thus respects
his position, he respects himself, and is led to respect God. Such are
the elements of what I willingly term the workman’s honor.

We promise you peace of conscience, the happiness that follows
accomplished duty, the repose in joy. Every workman among us should
say to his children what one of the most learned men of the day, the
illustrious Emmanuel de Rougé, wrote in his will: “May my children
preserve the faith. Repose of mind and heart can only be found in
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Saviour of man.” To work, says a
contemporary philosopher, is easy; to repose is difficult. Man works
without repose when he labors relying only upon himself; he works and
reposes when he commences by first confiding himself to God. This is
the repose we offer you; it is supremely delicious, and the workman
will be led to repose, in working for others, like good Claude des
Huttes, the stone-cutter of St. Point, the friend of Lamartine, who,
poor as he was, worked gratuitously for those poorer than he, and said
to himself, when retiring to rest: “I have earned a good day’s wages;
for the poor pay me in friendship, my heart pays me in contentment,
and the good God will pay me in mercy.” O greatness of the Christian
workman!

We promise to labor as unceasingly for the amelioration of your
material condition as for the enlargement of your understanding. Evil
be to us if we did not think of the lodging, warming, nourishment of
the workman’s family; if we would confiscate science to our profit, and
not extend to you the treasure; if we ceased for a single instant to
open schools, asylums, circles, conferences, institutions of peace and
of light. We do not recoil before progress; no light terrifies us. From
texts of the Gospel, we have and ever will produce new consequences,
religious, philosophical, and social; and these conclusions constitute
a progress incessant and ever new—our progress, the only true progress.

Finally, we promise to organize with your aid the workingmen’s
associations. Association only frightens us when it leans towards
despotism, and we wish principally to give it a religious character.
The confraternity! an old word, which is ridiculed, but which in
reality is a great thing; men reunited for one temporal aim under the
protection of God, their angel guardians, and their celestial patrons;
free men, discussing with all loyalty the interests of their trade,
and knowing how to govern themselves. You will invent nothing better,
provided always that, in this enlarged institution, the Catholic spirit
is harmoniously mingled with the positive rules of social science. We
are in the midst of a crisis which cannot last long; to our mutual aid
and co-operative societies others will succeed more scientifically
organized, and, above all, more Christian. We hope in this future,
and believe it very near; it is the ideal for this world now, and for
heaven hereafter—heaven, which is the great association of the happy
...


III.

It would seem impossible, in the face of such doctrines, that any
misunderstanding could exist between the church and the workman; but
Satan has not understood it in this manner, and objections pour against
the church.

It has been said repeatedly that the church has done nothing for the
workman. It is the conclusion that Victor Hugo has given to his _Les
Misérables_, and this book has singularly contributed to develop hatred
in the hearts of the people. Numerous writers, animated with the same
ardent hate, affirm daily that, to find society well organized, we must
go back to antiquity, or take 1789 as the place of departure.

To refute these assertions, we will first say that, in regard to
antiquity, they forget that it was devoured by the frightful cancer
of slavery; among the greater part of nations before Christ, the
workmen were for a long time principally slaves. Manual labor,
which was universally despised, was performed by entire nations
of slaves, who were paid with lashes of the whip. Thus were built
many of the magnificent monuments of the Greeks, and, above all, of
the Romans—monuments which they place so far above those of the
present. I remember, one beautiful October night in the Eternal City,
contemplating with stupefaction the immense mass of the Coliseum; the
gigantic shafts of the columns which lay pell-mell at my feet; the
colossal aqueducts defined against the horizon—all the splendors
which are still grand even in their ruins. A priest who accompanied me
exclaimed, in astonished admiration, “You must acknowledge that the
Christian races have never produced such great works.”

“‘Tis true,” I replied, “and I thank God for it; for these monuments
you behold were chiefly constructed by the hands of slaves, and we now
only employ free workmen, whom we pay for their labor.”

We do not sufficiently reflect on this. Obelisks, immense pyramids,
splendid porticos, hippodromes where so much plebeian blood flowed;
theatres where modesty was brutally violated; temples where they
adored so many passions, so many vices; tombs where so much vanity is
revealed; elegant houses, but where the wife and child were so little
valued; astonishing monuments of incomparable art, I admire you much
less since I know by whose hands you were raised. It is not thus that
they have built since the advent of Jesus Christ and the church.

There is in history a proposition of more than mathematical clearness,
which I declare solemnly to be true; it is that _the church destroyed
slavery_. It is the church that gradually transformed the slave into
the serf; that by degrees compelled society, formed by her, to change
the serf into the freeman. This is established by the records, century
after century, year after year, day after day. It is true, the church
did not improvise in an hour this admirable change, this marvellous
progress; it is not her custom to improvise, and, truth to say, she
improvises nothing; she moves slowly but surely. She never roused the
slaves to revolt, but she recalled the masters to their duty. She
gave great care to the question of marriage between slaves; for, with
intelligent foresight, she knew that the whole future depended on it:
briefly, in 300, there were millions of slaves—in 1000, not one.

Everywhere existed admirable confraternities of workmen, who worked
without pay on the numerous cathedrals scattered throughout Europe;
thousands of men labored gratuitously for God, or nobly earned their
living in working for their brothers. Will you deny this fact? I defy
you to do it. The church conquered for the workmen two inappreciable
things—liberty and dignity; and, for so many benefits, she too
often receives but ingratitude and forgetfulness. One day, while
rambling through the wide streets of Oxford, that city of twenty-four
colleges, formerly founded by the church, and which live to-day on
those foundations of our fathers, I inquired if there could be found
a Catholic Church. I was conducted into a kind of room, narrow and
low, which many of your employers would not use for a factory or shop.
That was what they condescended to lease the holy church of God in the
splendid city, built with her hands, and bathed in her sweat. It is
thus with the working-class, which is also a creation of the church;
its mother is forgotten, and it is with difficulty that she is left
a little corner in the workshop; but it is there we will endeavor to
replace her with honor, and then each one of you can say with the poet
Jasmin: “I remember that, when I was young, the church found me naked,
and clothed me; now that I am a man, I find her naked, in my turn I
will cover her.” It is this cry we wish to hear from you.

Again, we hear that “the church is not the same to the rich and to the
poor.” When will it be proved, when can it be shown, that there are
two Creeds, two Decalogues, two codes of morality, two families of
sacraments, two dogmas, two disciplines, two altars—one for the use
of the great ones of the earth, the other destined for the poor? It
can never be done. They can bring forward a certain number of facts;
they can cite abuses more or less deplorable, and which we condemn
implacably; but the equality remains entire. I go further, and affirm
that the church has unceasingly favored the humble, the weak, and the
laborers. They are her privileged ones, and she has well shown it.

Another objection current among the working-class, another calumny
which has triumphed over the minds of the people, unworthily deceived,
is the scandalous assertion that “the church is the enemy of
instruction,” and this abominable falsehood is, above all, applied to
primary instruction. Now, it is mathematically proved that, before the
establishment of the church, there did not exist in the much-lauded
antiquity a single school for workmen. This first proposition is
clearly evident, and it is not less mathematically demonstrated that,
since the advent of the church, “free schools have been attached to
each parish, and confided to the direction of the clergy.” Such are
the words of a learned man of our day, who has best appreciated this
question, and who, in order to establish his conclusion, appeals to
texts the most luminously authentic.[201] We will not pause here to
speak of the profound love of Christ for the ignorant—that love which
shines forth in every page of the Gospel; nor will we linger over the
epoch of the persecution of the early church; but we will transport
ourselves to France in the first period of our history.

At the commencement of the VIth century, the Council of Vaison declares
that for a _long time_ in Italy “the priests had brought up young
students in their own houses, and instructed them like good fathers in
faith and sound knowledge.” In the year 700, a Council of Rouen goes
further, and commands _all Christians_ to send their children to the
city school: is not that instruction Christianly free and Christianly
obligatory? Meanwhile, Charlemagne appears, and watches energetically
that these noble lights shall not be extinguished, or that they may be
relighted. In 797, a capitulary of Theodulph offers these admirable
words: “That the priests should establish schools in the villages
and boroughs, and that no pay should be exacted from the children in
return.” The same decrees are found in the canons of the Council of
Rome in 826, in the bulls of Pope Leo IV., and in the capitulary of
Hérard, Archbishop of Tours, in 858.

Observe that these last quotations belong to the darkest, most savage
epoch of our history. Feudalism reigned supreme; that redoubtable
institution had recently come into existence, without having yet at
its side the Christian counterpoise of chivalry. But if we make a leap
of two or three hundred years, and arrive at the XIIth and XIIIth
centuries, all becomes brilliant, and history can furnish the list
of all the schools that then existed even in the smallest villages.
These statistics are extant, and can be consulted; and from so many
accumulated documents, which extend from 529 to 1790, the conclusion,
rigorously scientific, must be drawn that “from a distant period, even
at the foundation of our parishes, the clergy in the country dispensed
instruction to the agricultural classes. It was thus throughout the
middle ages; and even at a recent epoch we have seen the priests in
many parishes perform the functions of teachers.”[202] What do our
adversaries think of such exact testimony? All the schools, then,
having been founded by the church, what satanic skill was needed to
persuade the people that the church had not established one!

Still more scandalous is the objection that the church has failed in
her errand of mercy; for they accuse her of not having sufficiently
loved the poor and abandoned. We were stupefied, several years ago,
to find this strange assertion in a celebrated review: that the church
owed to the Protestants the idea of the Sisters of Charity. Now, we
have before our eyes acts truly innumerable, establishing clearly
that there were many thousand institutions of charity in France in
the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. During the first ages of the church,
in the midst of the persecution, the poor, _all poor_, were assisted
in their homes by the deacons; and, after the persecutions, these
same poor were reunited in splendid palaces, which were divided into
as many classes as there were miseries to relieve. But for the fear
of being called pedants, we would cite here the _Bretotrophia_, or
asylums for children; the _Nosocomia_, or houses for the sick; the
_Orphanotrophia_, reserved for orphans; and the _Gerontocomia_,
consecrated to old age.

Such establishments continued to exist from the XIIth and XIIIth
centuries in all the episcopal cities, in the monastic centres,
and in the humblest parishes, where they never ceased, during the
Christian ages, to soothe the suffering, feed the hungry, counsel the
erring, and instruct the ignorant. By these we are easily led to the
XIVth and XVth centuries, when we behold so many hospitals, so many
charitable institutions, flourishing on the surface of the Christian
soil. Where are the tears the church has not dried? the nakedness she
has not covered? the captives she has not redeemed? the sick she has
not visited? the strangers she has not received? the dead she has
not buried with her tears? the sinners she has not pressed to her
heart? the children she has not made smile, and has not instructed and
consoled? the laborers she has not loved? This is a blow to error and
misrepresentation; the proofs are clear—you can, you _must_ read them.

Again, they object that “the church does not occupy herself at the
present time with the _social, the labor question_.” I can show
a hundred books, bearing the greatest Catholic names, entirely
consecrated to this new science. For eighteen hundred years, the church
has not ceased for an instant to put political economy into action; for
she has not ceased an instant to lean towards all miseries to relieve
them; towards all enjoyments to purify them. Without ever having
regarded sacrifice and resignation as the last solution of the social
problem; without ever having renounced the hope of seeing the reign of
God in a happier future, she has never ceased to preach resignation to
the weak, and sacrifice to the powerful. For eighteen hundred years,
the church has also written her economical theory; for, on account
of the intimate connection between the social question and theology,
it can be said with all truth that, up to the XIXth century, there
have been as many books written of political economy as treatises of
theology.

Thanks be to God, the day has arrived when a science has been founded
entirely consecrated to the study of the social question. Far from
recoiling before it, the church has valiantly advanced to the charge.
Undoubtedly she has a hundred other works on hand, and is obliged to
choose the hour when she commences the task; the hour has sounded in
this same house, where you listen to me with so much patience; every
Monday a modest council is held, which also wishes to take the name
of _Jésus-Ouvrier_. From all parts of Paris come representatives of
the religious orders, and for that they joyfully sacrifice every
occupation; they occupy themselves with the labor question and the
workman. These meetings last two, three, and even four hours. They
seek to study the principles which govern this question; the history
of the efforts that have been made until the present day in favor of
the workman; the obstacles which oppose the solution of this grand
problem; and, finally, the remedies which can be brought to bear upon
these accumulated evils. This is what is done by these priests, these
religious, these Catholics; they will review one after the other the
workman, the workingman’s family, the workingman’s association. This is
the plan of the book whose materials they are gathering; these are the
three parts of a species of theology of labor which they are preparing
in concert. In twenty other places in Paris are held twenty other
assemblies, not less Catholic, animated by the same spirit, pursuing
the same end; and we can now say that the principle of Catholic social
economy is erected.

I will now conclude, and throw a last glance over the space we have
traversed together. I commenced with the cross, and will finish with it.

In one of our romances of chivalry, it is related that the wood of
the cross borne in front of the Christian army in a battle against
the Saracens suddenly assumed gigantic and miraculous proportions; it
touched the sky, and was more luminous than the sun. The infidels,
seized with terror, broke and fled, and the Christians counted another
victory. The cross of the Circles of Workingmen is small, very small,
and will not probably be the subject of such a prodigy; nevertheless,
I hope that its gentle light will end by assuring the victory; and the
victory that we desire is that the workman may be thrown in the arms of
Jesus Christ.




THE TEMPLE.

  “Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost?”—1
      Cor. vi. 19.


  Come, I have found a temple where to dwell:
  Sealed up and watched by spirits day and night;
  Behind the veil there is a crystal well;
  The glorious cedar pillars sparkle bright,
  All gemmed with big and glistening drops of dew
  That work their way from out yon hidden flood
  By mystic virtue through the fragrant wood,
  Making it shed a faint, unearthly smell;
  And from beneath the curtain that doth lie
  In rich and glossy folds of various hue,
  Soft showers of pearly light run streamingly
  Over the checkered floor and pavement blue.
  Oh! that our eyes might see that fount of grace!
  But none hath entered yet his own heart’s holy place.

  —_Faber._




AN EVENING IN CHAMBLY.

SOME years ago, upon occasion of a visit to Rev. F. Mignault, at
Chambly, we were most agreeably surprised to meet an old and valued
friend whom we had not seen or even heard from for many years. We had
known him as a Protestant physician in Upper Canada, and our surprise
was none the less to see him now in the habit of a Catholic priest.

After the first salutations, tea was served, when we all withdrew to
the cosey parlor of our reverend host—which none can ever forget who
have once participated in its genial warmth, and inhaled the kindly
atmosphere of its old-time hospitality—and settled ourselves for a
long winter evening of social delight.

Our chat was opened by eager inquiries of the friend, whom we had known
as Dr. Morris, touching the change in his religion and profession.
After some hesitation, and smiling at the urgency of our request for
his narrative, he complied, saying:

  “Should the tale tire you, let this challenge stand
          For my excuse.”

My medical course was completed in a Scotch university, at an earlier
age than was usual with students of the profession.

Immediately after receiving my diploma, I joined a colony of my
countrymen who were leaving for the wild regions of Upper Canada. After
our arrival, not relishing the rough life in “the bush,” I decided to
settle in the little village of Brockville, instead of remaining with
the colony.

During the progress of the last war between Great Britain and the
United States, I had a professional call to go up the St. Lawrence, a
two days’ journey.

It was a glorious morning in June when, having accomplished the object
of my visit, I set out on my return trip. I was then a stranger to
that region, and, attracted by the peculiar beauty of the scenery
on the river, I determined to leave the dusty highway, and enjoy a
stroll along its banks for a few miles. Accordingly, dismissing my man
with the carriage, and directing him to await my arrival at a little
inn some miles below, I turned my steps towards the majestic stream,
whose flowing waters and wide expanse formed a leading feature of the
charming landscape before me, and an appropriate finish or boundary
upon which the eye rested with ever-increasing satisfaction and delight.

I had loitered on, absorbed in contemplation of the shifting scene,
pausing occasionally to watch the changes wrought by the wing of the
passing zephyr as it touched the polished mirror here and there,
leaving a ripple more like a magic shadow upon its surface than any
ruffling of its peaceful bosom, and peering into its abysses, with the
eye of an eager enthusiast, to see—

  “Within the depths of its capacious breast
  Inverted trees, and rocks, and azure skies,”

lulled, the while, by the blissful consciousness of present beauty, to
forget that—

          “Garry’s hills were far remote,
  The streams far distant of my native glens”—

over the thoughts of which my homesick spirit was but too prone to
brood.

I had reached a close thicket of low bushes that skirted the water’s
edge, when my steps were suddenly arrested by a rustling sound a little
in advance of me. Peeping cautiously through the leafy screen of my
secure hiding-place, I saw what seemed to my excited fancy more like an
apparition from another world than aught that belonged to this. Upon
the gentle slope of a hill which descended to the water, and close upon
the bank, stood a gigantic tree that threw its shadows far into the
stream, and at the foot of it sat a youthful maiden with a book in her
hand, the rustling leaves of which had first attracted my attention.
She seemed at times to pore intently over its pages, and at others to
be lost in reverie, while her eyes roamed anxiously up and down the
river.

As she reclined on the bank, her slight form enveloped in the
cloud-like folds of a white morning-dress, it was easy to imagine her
the _Undine_ of those wild solitudes, conning the mystic page that was
unfolding to her the mysterious lore, hidden from mortal ken, through
which the power of her enchantments should be gained and exercised.
While I gazed with admiring wonder upon the serene intelligence and
varying light which played about her fair features, and rested like a
glory upon her uplifted brow, I was surprised by the soft tones of a
voice proceeding from the tangled underwood that clothed the upward
sweep of the hill: “Sits the pale-face alone on this bright summer
morning?”

“O Magawiska! how you startled me, breaking so suddenly upon my dreams!
I was indeed sitting alone under the shade of this old tree, pondering
over a page in history; counting the white sails far up and down among
the Thousand Islands; watching the boiling whirlpools in the waters of
our dear old St. Lawrence; and thinking of more things than I should
care to enumerate, when your voice broke the spell, and disenchanted
me. How is it, Magawiska, that my sisters of the wilderness always
approach so softly, taking us, as it were, unawares?”

“In that, we do but follow the example given by all things which the
Great Spirit has created to inhabit the forest. But come away with
me, my White Dove, to the wigwam. That page in history is turned, and
strong hands are even now writing the next one in letters of blood!
Many a white sail has glanced through the mazes of the Thousand Islands
that will never thread that fairy dance again, and the waters, so pure
below, are already tinged further toward their source with the heart’s
blood of many a brave soldier! Let my fair one come away; for old Honey
Bee, the medicine-woman, has just returned from Chippewa, and may bring
some news of the gallant young captain who commands the _Water-witch_.
Floated not the thoughts of my pale sister to him from the folds of the
white sails she was so busy counting?”

“Nonsense, Magawiska! But your words alarm me. Surely the Honey Bee has
no bad tidings for me from him you name! What can she know of him?”

“I know not; only I heard her whispering to my mother in the Indian
tongue, and was sure she uttered the name of the Lightfoot more than
once.”

“Well, I will go with you, and hear whatever news she has for me.”

“Will my sister venture through the Vale of the Spirit-flowers, by
crossing which the distance to the wigwam is so greatly shortened?”

“Yes, if you are sure you know the way perfectly; for I have never
traversed its dreary depths myself.”

“Never fear! the Dove shall be as safe in the home of the wild bird as
in the nest of its mother.” Saying which, the young daughter of the
woods glided away over the hill, followed by her fair companion.

As they vanished, I quietly emerged from my hiding-place and followed
them at a distance, creeping cautiously along to avoid awakening any
sounds in the echoing forests, into which we soon entered, that would
reach the quick ear of the young native, and at the same time making a
passing note of her appearance. She was quite young and beautiful for
one of her race. Her form was very slight and graceful in every motion,
while her light, elastic step seemed scarcely to press the tender
herbage and moss under her feet in her noiseless course. As she passed
along, she ever and anon cast a sly glance over her shoulder, smiling
mischievously to see the difficulty with which her companion kept pace
with her rapid movements through the tangled recesses of the forest.
After descending the opposite side of the hill, they entered the dingle
at its base to which the young squaw had alluded. I was startled
when I found myself enshrouded in its dim shadows. So faint was the
light therein on this cloudless June morning as to make it difficult
to realize that the hour was not midnight! I could discern something
white upon the ground that I conjectured was mould which had gathered
in those damp shades. Upon examining more closely, I found it to be a
vegetable growth, embracing in form every variety of wild flowers that
abounded in the neighboring woods, but entirely colorless, owing to
the total absence of light. I gathered a quantity of these singular
“spirit-flowers,” which presented the appearance of transparent
crystallizations, hoping to inspect them by the full light of day; but
the moment they were exposed to the sun, to my great surprise they
melted like snowflakes, leaving only fine fibres, like wet strings, in
my hands.[203]

When they reached the wigwam, I secreted myself in a thicket near
by, where I could hear the conversation between the old squaw and
the beautiful stranger; for having then less knowledge of the Indian
character than I afterwards acquired, I could not feel quite safe to
leave her so entirely in their power. “Magawiska tells me,” she said,
with the blushing hesitation of maidenly reserve, “that you have just
returned from a distant voyage, and may know something of events which
are taking place far up the wilderness of waters.”

“And if the Honey Bee knows, and should fill your ear with tales of
bitterness, would not the pale-face say she was more ready to sting the
child she loves than to nourish her with sweetness? No, my White Dove!
return to the nest of thy mother, and seek not to hear of ills for
which there is no cure!”

“I must know, and I will not go until you have told me!” she vehemently
cried. “For the love of heaven! my mother, if you know aught of the
Lightfoot, tell me; for I can bear any ills I know better than the
dread of those I know not!”

“Even so; if the Bee must wound the heart she would rather die than
grieve, even so; the will of the Great Spirit must be done, and may he
heal what he has broken! There has been a mighty battle; the foes of
thy father are the victors. The _Water-witch_ went down in the midst
of the fight. The Lightfoot was known to be on deck and wounded when it
sank. Thy father is maddened at the triumph of his foes, but rejoices
over the fall of him whom he hated for his bravery in their cause, for
his religion, and for the love the young brave had won from the only
daughter of the old man’s heart and home.”

How my bosom throbbed in painful sympathy with the moans and stifled
sobs that burst from the young heart, crushed under the weight of this
series of dire calamities, knowing that no human aid or pity could
avail for its relief! After some time, she whispered faintly: “Is
there, then, no hope for the poor broken heart, so suddenly bereft of
its betrothed? Oh! tell me, my good mother of the wilderness, is there
no possibility that he may have escaped? If I could but see him, and
hear his gentle voice utter one assurance of constancy and affection,
even if it were his last, I think I could be reconciled. But this
terrible, unlooked-for parting! Say, mother, may he not have escaped?
May I not see him once again in life?”

“The hand of the Great Spirit is powerful to heal as to bruise! Since
it was not raised to protect and snatch thy beloved from death when
no other could have saved him, look to it alone, my child, for the
comfort thou wilt seek elsewhere in vain! Were there not hundreds of my
brethren who would gladly have given their heart’s blood for the life
that was dearer than their own, and had been offered in many conflicts
to shield them and theirs from danger? I tell thee, pale daughter of a
cruel foe, that wailing and lamentation went up from the camp of the
red men when the eyes of its fiercest warriors were melted to women’s
tears at the sight I have told thee of!”

Nothing more was said, and soon after the young stranger departed,
accompanied by Magawiska.

A few days later, I was summoned in the night to attend upon a
wounded soldier on the American shore of the St. Lawrence. I entered
a bark canoe with a tall Indian, whose powerful arm soon impelled
the light vessel across the broad, swift stream. After landing, he
conducted me into a dense and pathless forest, through which I had
extreme difficulty in making my way with sufficient speed to keep
within ear-shot of my guide. To see him was out of the question; the
interlaced and overhanging foliage, though the moon was shining,
excluded every ray of light, so that my course was buried in
bewildering darkness. A long and fatiguing tramp through the woods
brought us at length to a cluster of wigwams, and I was conducted to
the most spacious one—the lodge of the “Leader of Prayer”—where I
found a remarkably fine-looking young officer lying, faint from loss
of blood and the fatigue of removal. A Catholic missionary, whom I
had frequently met by the bedside of the sick, and in the course of
his journeys from one encampment to another of his Indian missions,
was sitting by him, bathing his hands and face in cold water, and
whispering words of encouragement and consolation during every interval
of momentary consciousness.

From him I learned that the Indians from the scene of action up the
lake had brought the wounded man thus far on the way to his friends,
at his earnest request. So anxious was he to reach home that he would
not consent to stop for rest after they left their boat, although the
increased motion renewed the bleeding of the wound, which had been
partially checked, until he was so far exhausted as to become wholly
unconscious, when they halted here, having brought him through the
woods on a litter. The priest had given him some restoratives, but had
been unable to check the flow of blood, which was fast draining the
vital current. He had administered the last sacraments to the young
man, who belonged to a family of Catholics who had recently removed
from Utica to a new settlement on the borders of Black Lake.

I made a hasty examination, and soon discovered the position of the
bullet. I succeeded in extracting it, after which the bleeding was
speedily and in a great measure staunched.

From the moment I looked upon him, however, I regarded his recovery as
more than doubtful. Had the case received earlier attention, and the
fatigue of removal been avoided, there was a possibility that youthful
energy might have carried him through the severe ordeal; though the
wound would have been critical under the most favorable circumstances.

When he became conscious for a moment during the operation, and looked
in my face, he comprehended the office I was performing, and read in my
countenance the fears and doubts which possessed my mind.

“Do not leave me, doctor, until all is over,” he faintly said. “This
reverend father will acquaint my friends with my fate, for he knows
them.”

I assured him I would remain with him, and he relapsed into the stupor
which I feared would be final.

We watched by him with silent solicitude. While the priest was deeply
absorbed over the pages of his breviary, my thoughts wandered from the
painful present back to the dear old land from which I was a lonely,
homesick exile; to bright scenes of the past, fond memories of which
neither time nor absence could obliterate, and drew a vivid contrast
between them and the circumstances of my new life, especially at this
hour. What would the dear friends with whom I had parted for ever
think if they could see me in the midst of this wild and dismal scene,
surrounded by the rudest features of savage life? With what dismay
would they not listen to the howling of wolves and the shrieking of
catamounts in the woods around us? How sadly would the continually
repeated plaint of the “whippoorwill” fall upon their ear; while, to
heighten the gloomy effect of the weird concert, the echoing forests
resounded with the shrill notes of the screech-owl, answered, as if
in derision, by their multitudinous laughing brothers, whose frantic
“Ha! ha! ha!” seemed like the exulting mockery of a thousand demons
over the anxious vigil in that Indian wigwam. I was gloomily pursuing
this train of thought, when a slight movement near the entrance of the
lodge arrested my attention, and aroused me from my reverie. Turning
my eye in that direction, I perceived by the dim light the form of
old Honey Bee entering softly, accompanied by a female, in whom, as
she approached the wounded man and the light fell upon her face, I
recognized, to my astonishment, the _Undine_ of my former adventure.
But, oh! the change a few short days had wrought in that fair face! The
very lineaments had been so transformed from their radiant expression
of careless joy to the settled pallor and marble-like impress of
poignant anguish that I could scarcely bring myself to believe it was
the same.

Calmly she approached and knelt by the sufferer, taking his hand and
bowing her fair forehead upon it. Thus she remained for some time in
speechless agony, when my ears caught the whispered prayer: “O my God!
if there is pity in heaven for a poor broken heart, let him look upon
me once more! Let me hear his gentle voice once again!” Then, placing
her mouth to his ear, she said clearly, in a low, pleading tone:

“Will you not speak to me once again, my own betrothed?”

Slowly, as if by a painful effort, the drooping eyelids lifted the long
lashes from his cheek, and his eyes rested with unutterable tenderness
upon the pale face which was bending over him. “Oh! speak to me! Say if
you know me!” she pleaded, with convulsive earnestness.

Repeatedly did the colorless lips vainly essay to speak, and at length
the words were wrenched from them, as it were, in broken sentences, by
the agonized endeavor:

“My own, my best beloved! May God bless and comfort you! I leave you
with him! He is good to the living and the dying. Trust in him, my own
love, and he will never fail you. I am going to him, but I will pray
for you ever, ever!” Then, with another strong effort, while a sweet
smile stole over the features upon which death had set his seal, “Tell
your father I forgive all!” A gurgling sound—a faint gasp—and the
light went out from the large dark eyes, the hand which had held hers
relapsed its grasp, and, before the holy priest had closed the prayers
for the departing spirit, all was over!

It was the old, old story, repeated again and again, alike in every
village and hamlet, on the bosom of old ocean, in the city and in the
wilderness, through all the ages since the angel of death first spread
his wings over a fallen world, and carried their dark shadow into
happy homes, banishing the sunlight, leaving only the cloud. The same
story, “ever ancient and ever new,” which will be repeated again and
again for every inhabitant of earth until “time shall be no longer,”
yet will always fall with new surprise upon the ears of heart-stricken
survivors, as if they had never before heard of its dread mysteries!
Thank God that it closes for those souls whose loved ones “rest in
hope” with consolations that become, in time, ministering angels over
life’s dark pathway, smoothing the ruggedness, lighting up the gloom,
even unto the entrance of the valley whose shadows are those of death,
and supporting them with tender aid through the dread passage.

Long did we remain in a silence broken only by bitter sobs pressed
from the bleeding heart of that youthful mourner. One by one the
Indians, each with his rosary in his hand, had entered noiselessly and
reverently knelt, until the lodge was filled with a pious and prayerful
assemblage.

In the course of my profession, I had witnessed many death-bed scenes,
but had never become so familiar with the countenance of the pallid
messenger as to be a mere looker-on. A sense of the “awfulness of life”
deepened upon me with each repetition of the vision of death. But I had
never before been present at one that so entirely melted my whole being
as this—so striking in all the attributes of wild and touching pathos!

God forgive me! I had hitherto lived without a thought of him or his
requirements, and wholly indifferent to all religion. My life, though
unstained by vice, had been regulated by no religious motives, and,
so far as any interest in religion was in question, beyond a certain
measure of decent outward respect, I might as well have claimed to be
a pagan as a Christian. I resolved by that death-bed, while I held the
cold hand of that lifeless hero in mine, and mingled my tears with
those of the broken-hearted mourner, that it should be so no longer!
Then and there I resolved to begin a new life, and offered myself to
God and to his service in whatever paths it should please his hand to
point out to me.

As the morning dawned, old Honey Bee, with gentle persuasions and
affectionate urgency, drew the afflicted maiden away, and I saw her no
more. I assisted the good priest to prepare the remains of the young
officer for the removal, which he was to conduct, and then sought his
advice and guidance in my own spiritual affairs, freely opening to him
the history of my whole life. After receiving such directions as I
required, and promising to see him again soon at Brockville, I returned
by the way I went, and never revisited that vicinity.

Some weeks later, I was called to the residence of a well-known
British officer, a leader of the Orangemen in Upper Canada, to attend
a consultation with several older physicians upon the case of his
daughter, who was lying in a very alarming state with a fever. Upon
entering the apartment of the patient, I was again surprised to
discover in this victim of disease the lovely mourner of that sad scene
in the wilderness. She lay in a partial stupor, and, when slightly
roused, would utter incoherent and mysterious expressions connected
with the events of that night, and painful appeals, which were
understood by none but myself, who alone had the key to their meaning.

If I had formerly been amazed to see the change a few days had
accomplished, how much more was I now shocked at the ravages wrought
by sorrow and disease! Could it be possible that the shrivelled and
hollow mask before me represented the fair face that had been so lately
blooming in beauty—shining with the joy of a glad and innocent heart?

The anguish of her haughty father was pitiful to see! Determined not to
yield to the pressure of a grief which was crushing his proud spirit,
his effort to maintain a cool and dignified demeanor unsustained by
any aid, human or divine, was a spectacle to make angels weep. Alas!
for the heart of poor humanity! In whatever petrifactions of paltry
pride it may be encrusted, there are times when its warm emotions will
burst the shell, and assert their own with volcanic power! When the
attending physician announced the result of the consultation, in the
unanimous opinion that no further medical aid could be of any avail, he
stalked up and down the room for some time with rapid strides; then,
pausing before me, and fixing his bloodshot eyes on my face, exclaimed
violently, “It is _better so_! I tell you, it is _better_ even so, than
that I should have seen her married to that Yankee Jacobin and Papist!
At least, I have been spared that disgrace! But my daughter! Oh! she
was my only one; peerless in mind, in person, and in goodness; and must
she die? Ha! it is mockery to say so! It cannot be that such perfection
was created only to be food for worms! As God is good, it may not,
_shall not_, be!”

While he was uttering these frantic exclamations, a thought struck me
like an inspiration. The image of old Honey Bee arose suddenly before
my mind. I remembered that she had gained the reputation among the
settlers of performing marvellous cures in cases of this kind by the
use of such simples as her knowledge of all the productions of the
fields and forests and their medicinal properties had enabled her to
obtain and apply.

Therefore, when the haughty officer paused, I ventured to suggest to
his ear and her mother’s only, that the Indian woman might possibly be
able to make such applications as might at least alleviate the violence
of the painful and alarming symptoms. He was at first highly indignant
at the proposal of even bringing one of that hated race into his house,
much less would he permit one to minister to his daughter. But when
I respectfully urged that she be brought merely as a nurse, in which
vocation many of her people were known to excel, and which I had known
her to exercise with great skill in the course of my practice, failing
not to mention her love and admiration for the sufferer, the entreaties
of the sorrow-stricken, anxious mother were joined with mine, and
prevailed to obtain his consent. I was requested to remain until she
should arrive. Nothing was said of the matter to the other physicians,
who soon took their leave.

When the old friend of the hapless maiden arrived, she consented to
take charge of the case only upon condition that she should be left
entirely alone with the patient, and be permitted to pursue her own
course without interruption or interference. It was difficult to bring
the imperious officer to these terms; but my confidence in the fidelity
of the old squaw, and increasing assurance that the only hope of relief
for the sufferer lay in the remedies she might use, combined with
the prayers of her mother, won his reluctant consent, if I could be
permitted to see his daughter daily, and report her condition. This I
promised to do, and found no difficulty in obtaining the permission of
the new practitioner to that effect.

Whether the presence of a sympathizing friend assisted the treatment
pursued I do not know. There are often mysterious sympathies and
influences whose potency baffles the wisdom of philosophers and the
researches of science. Certain it is that, to my own astonishment,
no less than to that of the gratified parents, there was a manifest
improvement in the condition of their daughter from the hour her new
nurse undertook the charge.

In a few weeks, the attendance of old Honey Bee was no longer
necessary. The joy and gratitude of the father knew no bounds. He would
gladly have forced a large reward upon her for services which had
proved so successful, but she rejected it, saying: “The gifts that the
Great Spirit has guided the Honey Bee to gather are not the price of
silver and gold. Freely he gives them; as freely do his red children
dispense them. They would scorn to barter the lore he imparts for gold.
Enough that the daughter of the white chief lives. Let him see that he
quench not the light of her young life again in his home!”

“What does she mean?” he muttered, as she departed. “Does she know? But
no, she cannot; it must be some surmise gathered from expressions of my
daughter in her delirium.”

In accordance with my promise, I had called daily during the attendance
of the Indian woman, who found opportunity, from time to time, to
explain to me the circumstances attending the rescue of the Lightfoot.

The Indians, by whom he was greatly beloved, supposed, when they saw
his vessel go down, that he was lost, as they knew him to have been
badly wounded. A solitary Indian from another detachment was a witness
of the catastrophe while he was guiding his canoe in a direction
opposite to that of the encampment, and on the other side of the scene
of action. He dashed at once with his frail bark into the midst of
the affray, to render assistance, if possible, to any who might have
escaped from the ill-fated vessel. While he was watching, to his great
joy he saw the young officer rise to the surface, and was able to seize
and draw him into the canoe. As he was passing to the shore, he was
noticed by the father of the officer’s betrothed, and the nature of his
prize discovered. A volley of musketry was immediately directed upon
the canoe, and the Indian received a mortal wound. He was so near the
shore that he was rescued by his party, but died soon after landing.

I told her that I had heard the remainder of the story from the
missionary at the wigwam.

She then informed me that, after she came to take charge of the maiden,
as soon as her patient became sufficiently conscious to realize her
critical condition, she had implored so piteously that the priest might
be sent for that it was impossible to refuse. When he came—privately,
of course, for it was too well known that her father would never
consent to such a visit—she entreated permission to profess the
Catholic faith without delay. After some hesitation, the priest
consented when he found her well instructed in its great and important
truths, heard her confession, her solemn profession of faith, and
administered conditional baptism; following the rite by the consoling
and transcendent gift which is at once the life and nourishment of the
Catholic soul and the sun of the Catholic firmament.

The squaw dreaded the violence of her father when he should discover
what had transpired, and enjoined it upon me to shield the victim, if
possible, from the storm of his wrath. Alas! she little dreamed how
powerless I should prove in such a conflict!

Before the strength of the invalid was established, that discovery was
made. I had known much of the unreasoning bigotry and black animosity
which was cherished by the Orange faction against Catholics; but I was
still wholly unprepared for his savage outbreak. He heaped curses upon
his daughter’s head, and poured forth the most bitter and blasphemous
lamentations that she had been permitted to live only to bring such
hopeless disgrace upon his gray hairs.

Despite the mother’s tears and prayers, he ordered her from the
house, and forbade her ever to return or to call him father again.
Once more did old Honey Bee come to the rescue of her _protégée_. Her
affectionate fears had made her vigilant, and, when the maiden was
driven from her father’s house, she was received and conducted to a
wigwam which had been carefully prepared for her reception. Here she
was served with the most tender assiduity until able to be removed to
Montreal, whither her kind nurse attended her, and she entered at once
upon her novitiate in a convent there.

The day after her departure, I also took my leave of that part of the
country, and, proceeding to a distant city, entered the ecclesiastical
state. In due time, I was ordained to the new office of ministering to
spiritual instead of physical ills, my vocation to which was clearly
made known to me by that death-bed in the wilderness.

And now that I have related to you how the Protestant doctor became a
Catholic priest, I must ask, in my turn, how it happened that you and
your family became Catholics.

“The story is soon told,” we replied. “Very probably our attention
might never have been called to the subject but for a great affliction
which was laid upon us in the sufferings of our only and tenderly
cherished daughter. She was blest with rosy health until her tenth
year, and a merrier little sprite the sun never shone upon.

“Suddenly disease in its most painful and hopeless form fastened itself
upon her, and, while sinking under its oppressive weight, she felt
more and more deeply day by day, with a thoughtfulness rapidly matured
by suffering, the necessity for such aid and support as Protestantism
failed to furnish. It was, humanly speaking, by a mere accident that
she discovered where it might be found.

“During an interval between the paroxysms of the disease, and a little
more than a year after the first attack, a missionary priest visited
our place, and her Catholic nurse obtained our permission to take her
to the house of a neighbor where Mass was to be celebrated.

“She was deeply impressed with what she saw, and the fervent address
of that devoted and saintly priest melted her young heart. She
obtained from him a catechism and some books of devotion. From that
time her conviction grew and strengthened that here was the healing
balm her wounded spirit so much needed. After long persuasion and many
entreaties, we gave our reluctant consent that she might avail herself
of its benefits by making profession of the Catholic faith. To the
sustaining power of its holy influences we owe it that her life, from
which every earthly hope had been stricken, was made thenceforth so
happy and cheerful as to shed perpetual sunshine over her home and its
neighborhood.

“By degrees she drew us, at first unwillingly, and at length
irresistibly, to the consideration of Catholic verities. Through the
grace of God operating upon these considerations, our whole family,
old and young, were soon united within the peaceful enclosure of the
‘household of faith.’

“When the work of our dear little missionary was thus happily
accomplished, she was removed from the home for which she had been
the means of procuring such priceless blessings to that other and
better home, the joys of which may not even be imagined here. With
grateful hearts we have proved and realized that for those whom God
sorely afflicts his bountiful hand also provides great and abundant
consolations.”




THE STORIES OF TWO WORLDS:

MIDDLEMARCH AND FLEURANGE.


BETWEEN the world of _Middlemarch_ and the world of _Fleurange_ there
yawns as wide a moral gulf as that which nature has set between the
continents. The one is a world with God, the other without. It is
not that George Eliot’s story partakes of the characteristics which
usually attach to female novelists, with their vague interpretations
of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments; nor, on the other hand, that
_Fleurange_ is in any sense a goody-goody book. But the authors
occupying essentially different stand-points, all things naturally wear
a different aspect; their characters are subject to a different order;
all life has a different meaning; so that, though the subject of each
is humanity, its crosses and loads of sorrow and pain, rather than its
laughter and gladness; though the men and women breathe the same air,
are warmed by the same sun their, faces wet with human tears, their
hearts sore with human sorrows; nevertheless, through either book runs
an abiding tone felt rather than heard, like an unseen odor pervading
the atmosphere, which affects the reader differently throughout. The
characters in the one believe in, pray to, love, obey, or rebel against
a definite, personal God; the presiding spirit in the other veils his
face, and it is not for man to say who he is. The author only sees men
and women gathered together in this world—how, they know not; why, it
is difficult to conceive—and all we know for certain is that here they
are, coming in contact one with the other, increasing, multiplying,
and dropping out after each one has added his necessary mite to the
immensity of the universe.

There are books and writings which seem rather the production of an age
than of any particular author; which seem to take up and gather into
one voice the long inarticulate breathing of a portion of humanity,
dumb hitherto for want of an oracle. Such were the writings previous to
the first French Revolution; such are the songs of Ireland; such, after
a certain fashion, is _Middlemarch_. It is measuring daily life by the
favorite doctrines of the day, whose holders profess to see things as
they are, and to judge of them purely and solely by what they see,
explaining them as best they may. To remind such people that often the
visible is the appearance only, the invisible the reality, is to speak
to them a language they will not understand.

_Middlemarch_ is a story of English provincial life as English
provincial life obtained fifty years ago; at the dawn, that is,
practically speaking, of this wonderful XIXth century; before
California and Australia had discovered their golden secret, when steam
was still in its infancy, electric telegraphs unknown, and the sciences
just beginning to take a bolder flight. In England, O’Connell was
thundering for Catholic emancipation, and the nation clamoring for that
vague thing in the mouth of the masses—reform.

Just as matters were in this chrysalis state, whilst the masses were
still undisturbed by the wonders of the century, or, if the phrase
is better, not educated up to them, George Eliot settles down in that
dullest of places, an English provincial district, to give us

  “The story of its life from year to year.”

The story covers very extensive ground; all Middlemarch, in fact,
with its parishes and towns, its churches and taverns, its clergy and
magistrates, its physicians and shopkeepers, its gentry and its yokels,
its good men and its rascals, its maidens young and old, its loves
and its hates, its hopes and its fears, its marriages and deaths, its
thoughts, words, and deeds, from high to low—such is the broad scope
of the book, and the author has gathered all in in a manner to make
the reader wonder. Nothing has escaped her eye. One seems to have been
living in Middlemarch all his life, and every character comes and goes
with the face of an old acquaintance. It is not the author’s fault if
the district be a narrow one—narrow, that is, in ideas, in knowledge,
in faith, in all that ennobles man. It is not her fault if its great
ideas take the shape of “keys to all mythologies”; if its religion is
a poor affair at the best; if its leading men are religious hypocrites
like Mr. Bulstrode, or philanthropic asses like Mr. Brooke, who “goes
in” for everything, and talks the broadest and vaguest philanthropy
whilst he pinches his tenants. It is not the author’s fault if
generosity find no place in Middlemarch; if honesty is misunderstood
or at a discount; if the local physicians throw discredit upon Lydgate
with his youth, his burning desire to achieve, his cleverness, and
his genuine enthusiasm; if they call his ideas quackery, because they
threaten their pockets, as the yokels in turn look upon the railway
as destruction, and hold that steam takes the handle from the plough
and the pitchfork; as Middlemarch receives Dorothea Brooke’s generous
aspirations after a higher life than that which, in response to the
question of an ardent nature, “What can I do?” says, “Whatever you
please, my dear”—as “notions” which are wrong in themselves, because
undreamed of in Middlemarch philosophy, which, in Miss Brooke are odd,
and which, if carried a little farther, would find their fitting sphere
of action in the lunatic asylum.

It is not the author’s fault if all this be so; if there be nothing
in Middlemarch beyond the common good, and very little even of that,
whilst all the rest is mean, sordid, crooked, narrow, and outspokenly
wicked. Such is Middlemarch, and such is it given to us. The only
question is, How far does Middlemarch extend? Is it restricted to the
English county, or is it a miniature photograph of the world as seen by
George Eliot?

In the keynote to the whole book, the prelude, the author cries out
bitterly that in this world and in these days there is no place for
a S. Teresa. In this assertion, in this wail rather, the author does
not limit her district to Middlemarch. It is a doctrine meant to
apply to the broad world. Throughout the book the same thing is to
be observed. Though with wonderful consistency and truth of local
coloring, and continual recurrence of petty local questions and local
ideas, the author keeps the reader in Middlemarch from beginning to
end, nevertheless, whether with or without intention, from time to
time she strikes out with broader aim, and flings her sarcasm, or her
observation, or her moral, such as it may be, in the face of humanity.

Therefore, though it would be unfair to infer that George Eliot’s views
of the world, its possibilities, its hopes, its all that makes it what
it is, are confined to the cramped, narrow, provincial district chosen
as the subject of her story; to allege that she believes in nothing
nobler _now_ in humanity than what Middlemarch affords; yet so wide
is the district embraced, so various the subjects entered into, not
merely touched upon—religion, politics, the bettering of the poor,
marriage, preparation for the married state, and the effect of such
preparation on married life, the thousand conflicts that meet, and
jostle, and combine to make everyday life what it is—it is not unfair
to say that the author, in drawing within this somewhat narrow circle
the main elements which compose humanity, has taken Middlemarch up as a
scientist would take a basin of water from the sea to examine it—not
for the sake of that sample only, but with a view to the whole.

The chief interest of the story, if story it can be called, lies in
this: From the outstart, the author warns you that a S. Teresa has no
place in the world now; and, to prove that her warning is correct, she
takes up a character, Dorothea Brooke, endows her with the aspirations
after a great life, fits her naturally, as far as she can, with every
attribute, physical and moral, which she considers a S. Teresa ought
to possess; with religious feelings, with the continual desire to do
good, with charity, with purity, with the spirit of self-sacrifice,
with simplicity, and truth, and utter unconsciousness of self, with
wealth enough even, as the author says of Mr. Casaubon, “to lend a
lustre to her piety,” and sets her down in the narrow Middlemarch set,
where everything runs in a groove, and life is measured by all the
pettinesses, to see what will become of her.

The result may as well be told at once. S. Teresa proves a miserable
failure in Middlemarch. Instead of marrying, as the world—that
is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader—had ordained she should do, the
handsome, florid, conventional English baronet, Sir James Chettam,
a sort of aristocratic “Mr. Toots,” who is so amiable and admires
her so much that he brings her triumphs of nature in the shape of
marvellous Maltese puppies as presents, and says “exactly” to all her
observations, even when she desires him to say the contrary—out of
a spirit of religion, self-sacrifice, and veneration, and honestly
because she admires the man, or rather the being dressed out to suit
by her own imagination, she marries Mr. Casaubon, with his sallow
complexion, his moles, his blinking eyes, and his age, which is more
than double her own. Unsympathetic to the loving nature of the girl
as a wooden doll whose complexion has suffered and whose form is
battered by age, but which notwithstanding the girl invests with all
the qualities and beauty of a Prince Charming—a deception that time
alone and that ugly thing, common sense, can remove—S. Teresa speedily
discovers that her “divine Hooker,” as she fondly imagined him, is
after all only “a poor creature,” and she is probably saved from the
divorce court only by the timely death of the “divine Hooker.” She
discovered that she had married the wrong man—exactly what Middlemarch
told her; and there lies the provoking part of the story. Middlemarch
was right in its degree, and the woman, whose ideas soared so high
above it, was all the worse off for not taking its advice at the
outstart. S. Teresa repents of her sin, and characteristically atones
for it by marrying the right man—at least, the man she loves and who
loves her—and is dismissed in the following remarks, which close the
book:

“Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally
beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse
struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on
her mistakes, it was never said in the neighborhood of Middlemarch
that such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which
she was born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly
man to a girl less than half his own age, on modes of education
which make a woman’s knowledge another name for motley ignorance, on
rules of conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly
asserted beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin
to breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea’s life,
where great feelings will take the aspect of error, and great faith the
aspect of illusion; for there is no creature whose inward being is so
strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new
Teresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life
any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all
for the sake of a brother’s burial; the medium in which their ardent
deeds took shape is for ever gone. But we insignificant people, with
our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas,
some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of Dorothea
whose story we know.

“Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were
not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name
on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was
incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you
and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived
faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

George Eliot writes too earnestly to laugh at. Besides, she is not
a Catholic—very far from it; and therefore her views of what a S.
Teresa is or ought to be must be radically different from those of the
church from which S. Teresa sprang, in which she lived, labored, became
_Saint_ Teresa, and died. Were a Catholic to have written certain
portions of the extract quoted, he would only provoke laughter; but
with this author, the case is different.

It never seems to have occurred to her that S. Teresas are not
self-made; as little as the prophets were self-made prophets, or the
apostles self-made apostles. Neither were they made by the society
which surrounded them. The supernatural state of sanctity in its
fulness does not spring from humanity merely; else might we have
had eras of sanctity as there have been other eras, and there might
be truth in George Eliot’s words that there will be no place for a
“new Teresa.” Saints are the very opposite to that growing class so
glibly dubbed “providential men,” who seem to come from that vast
but rather undefined region which goes by the name of “manifest
destiny.” The individuals forming that happy class are set willy-nilly
by “Providence” in this world to accomplish some destiny—a theory
laughed at long ago by one of Mr. Disraeli’s worldly-wise characters
in the words, “We make our fortunes, and we call them fate.” What the
saints do they do very consciously. Sanctity consists in not being
merely blameless in life, but in devoting life to God, and turning
every thought, word, and action to him for his sake. The feeling that
produces this state of life may be influenced at the beginning by
earthly surroundings, may be shaped by good example or wise teachings,
but is essentially independent of them. Sanctity comes from a direct
call, as direct as the call of the apostles. It knows neither time nor
place, and is therefore as possible in the XIXth as in the XVIth or the
Ist century. But it is unknown outside of the church, because the head
of the church, “Christ Jesus our Lord,” alone has the power to call
his children to the sanctified state in this life. And if it be asked,
Why, then, does he not call all to be saints here? it is as though one
asked, Why did he not call all men to be apostles directly?

George Eliot’s difficulty springs from not knowing precisely what
constitutes a saint.

If she only reads the life of S. Teresa, she will find that the saint
of her admiration had to encounter a Middlemarch circle even in
Catholic Spain. She will find her “young and noble impulse struggling
under prosaic conditions”; that she had to stand the brunt of being
misunderstood and misrepresented; her schemes of reform, of good works,
her noble aspirations and ardent self-sacrifice, set down as “notions.”
In fact, the opposition which meets her heroine at every step in her
desire to do good and to be perfect, not only to herself but to others,
is puny compared with that which S. Teresa had to sustain all through
her life.

As a matter of fact, S. Teresa was much more of the ordinary woman than
George Eliot, with a novelist’s love, makes her heroine. In her youth,
she was subject to all the ordinary fancies of “the sex,” and has left
us the record of her vanities, which were neither more nor less than
those of ten thousand very excellent ladies living at this moment,
who are no more S. Teresas than they are Aspasias; but good Christian
women, girls with a happy future before them, or smiling mothers of
families. It was not her surroundings which made Teresa a saint: it was
her clear conception of duty, which no “prosaic conditions” could dim,
and her profound and very definite faith, not in that obscure creation
which George Eliot calls “the perfect Right,” but in Jesus Christ, her
God.

It was perfectly natural that George Eliot’s Teresa should fail; but
the mistake of the author consists in making the failure come from
without rather than from within—a mistake easily understood when it is
borne in mind that the author has no firm faith, possibly none at all,
in Christianity. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, all failed to make the
world better, not because they may not have wished it, but because they
had not the power. They were themselves uncertain of their schemes.
Their highest flights, like those of the best of modern philosophers
who possess no faith, never pass beyond intellectual excellence devoid
of soul. They may daze the intellect, but they do not touch the soul;
and the life of a man is never regulated by pure intellect. So they
fail, whilst the ignorant fishermen, who lose their personality in God,
move and convert the world.

In taking issue on these fundamental points with the author of
_Middlemarch_, many of the subjects touched upon would require
elaborate elucidation when read by those who are not of the Catholic
faith. But space does not allow of this, and, therefore, it is to be
understood that this article is supposed only to meet the eyes of
persons fully acquainted at least with the Catholic manner of looking
at things.

Dorothea Brooke fails in becoming a S. Teresa, as the author seems to
consider she should have become, not because she has lighted on evil
days and on a less congenial set than S. Teresa did, but because, in
Catholic phrase, she had no _vocation_.

To find out what is meant by a vocation, let us anticipate, and turn
a moment to _Fleurange_ at that point in the heroine’s history where,
having “tasted beforehand the bitter pleasures of sacrifice,” she
retires heart-broken to the convent where she spent her youth, to find
the rest and peace which seemed banished from the world after the
voluntary sacrifice she had made of her affections.

“Mother Maddalena stood with her arms folded, and listened without
interrupting her. Standing thus motionless in this place, at this
evening hour, the noble outlines of her countenance and the long folds
of her robe clearly defined against the blue mountains in the distance
and the violet heavens above, she might easily have been mistaken for
one of the visions of that country which have been depicted for us and
all generations. The illusion would not have been dispelled by the
aspect of her who, seated on the low wall of the terrace, was talking
with her eyes raised, and with an expression and attitude perfectly
adapted to one of those young saints often represented by the inspired
artist before the divine and majestic form of the Mother of God.

“‘Well, my dear mother, what do you say?’ asked Fleurange, after
waiting a long time, and seeing the Madre looking at her and gently
shaking her head without any other reply.

“‘Before answering you,’ replied she at last, ‘let me ask this
question: Do you think it allowable to consecrate one’s self to God in
the religious life without a vocation?’

“‘Assuredly not.’

“‘And do you know what a vocation is?’ said she very slowly.

“Fleurange hesitated. ‘I thought I knew, but you ask in such a way as
to make me feel now I do not.’

“‘I am going to tell you: a vocation,’ said the Madre, as her eyes lit
up with an expression Fleurange had never seen before—’a vocation to
the religious life is to love God more than we love any creature in the
world, however dear; it is to be unable to give anything or any person
on earth a love comparable to that; to feel the tendency of all our
faculties incline us towards him alone; finally,’ pursued she, while
her eyes seemed looking beyond the visible heavens on which they were
fastened, ‘it is the full persuasion, even in this life, that he is
_all_, our all, in the past, the present, and the future; in this world
and in another, for ever, and to the exclusion of everything besides.’”

The carrying out of this feeling made Teresa a saint. It is doubtful
whether such thoughts ever entered into George Eliot’s conception of
the character she is continually holding up before her readers as
impossible in these days. Certainly Dorothea Brooke, with all her
natural goodness, never conceived such a life as that possible. The
author may be right in attributing her defects to her Calvinistic
education, but that does not warrant the inference that anything
higher than a life which merely aims at an uncertain good, capable
of influencing those coming within its circle in a certain way, is
impossible in these days. When the author speaks of “great faith taking
the aspect of illusion,” before conceding, one would like to see the
“great faith.” Dorothea Brooke never knew what real faith was; from
beginning to end, all is uncertainty with her. From girlhood up she
lives in an atmosphere of self-delusion and imagination which can
find no other possible vent than aimless aspirations after imaginary
perfection, which must come into collision with the rough, practical
world, and must finally go to the wall. But when the world sees a man
or a woman acting steadily up to a practical belief which guides them
in all their actions, and meets every contingency, however unexpected,
and every calamity, however great, if it does not fall in and follow,
it will at least respect it and acknowledge that there is something in
it.

It may sound “a hard saying,” but practically there is no such thing
as “ideal beauty”; and those who, like George Eliot, strive after it
as the great good, pursue a phantom, a nothing, an emanation of their
own imagination, and, like the poet in Shelley’s “Alastor,” waste their
life in profitless longings, and when death comes—

                                  “All
  Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
  Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
  Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans,
  The passionate tumult of a clinging hope,
  But pale despair and cold tranquillity.”

Persons of an undefined faith, women particularly, are very much
attached to this ideal beauty, and, not finding it in man, are apt
to rebel against “prosaic conditions”; and those who regulate their
actions by their thoughts find issue in absurdities, often in crime,
more or less gross. It would be well for these theorists to remember
that man after all has a considerable admixture of clay in his
composition, which may explain many of those vulgar but necessary
“prosaic conditions”; and until the human race comes to be fed on
“vril,” the world must continue to count upon and accommodate itself
to a vast amount of flesh-and-blood reality. And a beauty, far higher
than any ideal beauty, is visible in the everlasting struggle between
spirit and clay. There was no ideal in the death upon the cross, the
consummation of Christian sacrifice. All was terribly real there, and
flesh suffered as well as mind while a flutter of the spirit remained.
Here lies something greater than any ideal—the spirit bracing the
flesh, sustaining it when it faints, enabling it to bear all things,
not blindly and as coming by fate from the hands of a blind destiny or
careless power, but as trials sent from heaven to lead to heaven and
prepare for heaven.

That is the fault with Middlemarch. It has all the “prosaic conditions”
and nothing else. It wants nothing else; it positively revels in them.
And when anything higher comes to it, it sets the higher down as
“notions” in religion, or “quackery” in medicine, “or swallowing up” of
the little traffic by the big in railroads.

Into these “prosaic conditions” and surroundings the author drops
another character similar to that of Dorothea, as far as a man can
be similar in nature to a woman, save that his religion consists in
the passion for his profession, the ardent aspiration after the glory
of achievement, aided by all natural gifts, and strengthened by what
have been well called the “pagan virtues.” This is Lydgate, the young
physician, a stranger to Middlemarch, who is possessed by the desire
common to all young ambition of educating Middlemarch up to a lofty
standard, and using it as a lever to move a slow world. Though perhaps
as well fitted as man—considered merely as an intellectual animal
endowed with Christian instincts, moved by a generous if somewhat
impetuous nature, and void of the vices—could be for that purpose,
the result in his case is the same as in that of Dorothea. Instead of
lifting Middlemarch up to the level of his ideal, he finds himself
dragged down to it; and, strangely and perhaps truthfully enough, he
finds, in common with Dorothea, that the very being to whom he linked
his life is the stumbling-block in the way of his achievement. Dorothea
receives a fatal jar to her imaginings in the person of the husband she
adored by anticipation. Lydgate finds his nature crushed and resisted
at all points by the passive resistance of his wife. The woman is
mercifully relieved from her incubus by death; the strong man gives way
before his “so charming wife, mild in her temper, inflexible in her
judgment, disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him
by stratagem.”

“Lydgate’s hair never became white. He died when he was only fifty,
leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance on
his life. He had gained an excellent practice, ... having written a
treatise on gout—a disease which has a good deal of wealth on its
side. His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he always
regarded himself as a failure: he had not done what he once meant to
do. As the years went on, he opposed his wife less and less, whence
Rosamond concluded that he had learnt the value of her opinion. In
brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful man. But he died
prematurely of diphtheria. He once called his wife his basil-plant,
and, when she asked for an explanation, said that _basil was a plant
which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man’s brains_.”

Such is the end of the naturally noble man who marries fair Rosamond,
“the flower of Middlemarch.” This fair Rosamond, like her historical
namesake, lives in a crooked labyrinth of devious ways, where she
fetters her knight, her king, who would fain go forth to conquer
kingdoms, and, if need be, take her with him. But her kingdom is
bounded by her own narrow domain, and she carries him on from labyrinth
to labyrinth, till he is lost and resigns himself to his fate.

When the lady who is pleased to assume the name of George Eliot first
startled the English reading world, there was great doubt as to the
sex of the new author. Certainly all such doubt, if any still existed,
would be set at rest for ever by the portrait of Rosamond Vincy. No
man could ever have executed that. No man could ever have gone down
into the very fibres of a woman’s nature, and drawn them all out one by
one, and laid them bare before us, to show what constitutes “that best
marble of which goddesses are made.” If Dorothea, with the strong touch
of Calvinism leading her noble nature astray, prove a failure, what
shall be said of “the flower of Mrs. Lemon’s school, the chief school
in the county, where the teaching included all that was demanded in the
accomplished female—even to extras, such as the getting in and out of
the carriage”?

Rosamond Vincy is, perhaps, the most finished portrait ever presented
of the intelligent animal of the female sex; clever enough to despise
Middlemarch, not because it is low, and mean, and sordid, but because
it is too narrow and unworthy to hold so fair and accomplished a
specimen of humanity as Rosamond Vincy. All young Middlemarch breaks
its heart about her. She refuses it quietly and persistently, wins
Lydgate in spite of himself, not because he is Lydgate, the generous,
ardent, high-souled young man, but because he brings with him the
atmosphere of an outer world, with a hint of great relations, a
distinguished person, and an unconscious air of superiority which
Middlemarch cannot offer. The result of the wedding of two such natures
may be imagined. George Eliot’s version of it is horribly real and
miserably natural; and perhaps the most powerful part of the book
is the struggle going on between the generous nature of the man and
the demon of self incarnate in the perfect form and the narrow but
acute intellect of the woman, who is so supremely selfish that she is
absolutely unconscious of her selfishness, and therefore incurable.
“Lydgate,” after vainly endeavoring to break down this barrier which
lay between them, invisible to the eyes of her who raised it, “had
accepted his narrowed lot with sad resignation. He had chosen this
fragile creature, and had taken the burden of her life upon his arms.
He must walk as he could, carrying that burden pitifully.”

And she, his “bird-of-paradise,” only once called his “basil-plant,”
when the man whose life had been lost on her died, “married an elderly
and wealthy physician, who took kindly to her four children. She made
a very pretty show with her daughters, driving out in her carriage,
and often spoke of her happiness as ‘a reward’—she did not say for
what, but probably she meant that it was a reward for her patience
with Tertius, whose temper never became faultless, and to the last
occasionally let slip a bitter speech which was more memorable than
the signs he made of his repentance. Rosamond had a placid but strong
answer to such speeches: Why, then, had he chosen her? It was a pity he
had not had Mrs. Ladislaw—Dorothea—whom he was always praising and
placing above her.”

With regret the examination into this wonderful book, of which three
of the salient characters only have been touched upon, must now close.
The story abounds in other characters, each perfect in its way, as
far as drawing and execution go. It forms quite a study in parsons as
in physicians; and those who quarrel with the author of _My Clerical
Friends_ must feel sore aggrieved at the clerical friends of George
Eliot. There is not a _priestly_ character among them; not a single
devoted man whose heart is given wholly to God, and whose mind is bent
solely on doing God’s work for God’s sake. The Middlemarch parsons are
a narrow set of men of undefined belief and cramped charity; their
belief being measured by their salary, and their charity beginning and
often ending at home with their wives and families. The only agreeable
characters among them as men are Mr. Cadwallader and Mr. Farebrother.
The first of these is a “good, easy man,” whose Gospel is as elastic
as his fishing-rod, of whom the author says, “His conscience was large
and easy like the rest of him; it did only what it could without any
trouble,” and whom his wife characteristically hits off in the sentence
that, “as long as the fish rise to his bait, everybody is what he ought
to be”; whilst she complains: “He will even speak well of the bishop,
though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman. What can
one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies?” The
other, Mr. Farebrother, is the best preacher in Middlemarch, and really
a man of a noble nature; yet his poverty leads him to play whist for
money and even an occasional game of billiards at the Green Dragon. He
leads us to infer that he knows he has assumed the wrong profession,
but that it is too late to get rid of it.

The only man who really possesses anything in the semblance of
religion is Mr. Bulstrode, the Methodist banker, of whom wicked old
Featherstone, whose death is so powerfully told, says:

“What’s he? He’s got no land hereabout that ever I heard tell of. A
speckilating fellow! He may come down any day, when the devil leaves
off backing him. And that’s what his religion means: he wants God
A’mighty to come in. That’s nonsense! There’s one thing I made out
pretty clear when I used to go to church, and it’s this: God A’mighty
sticks to the land. He promises land, and he gives land, and he makes
chaps rich with corn and cattle.” That sounds very like the religion
of Tennyson’s Northern Farmer of the new style. As a matter of fact,
old Featherstone turns out to be right. Bulstrode is a hypocrite. His
life and his fortune have been built upon hypocrisy. He is rich on
money that does not belong to him and by wealth ill-gotten; he strives
to silence his conscience by a life of external mortification and by
works set on foot for the improvement of the poor and carried out in
his own way. Yet rather than lose his character for respectability and
goodness, he murders an old associate; that is, he consciously does
what the physician warned him might cause death.

Mrs. Cadwallader, spite of her wit and her mind, “active as phosphorus,
biting everything that came near into the form that suited it,” must
be dismissed in her own words, though she is the life of Middlemarch,
as one who “set a bad example—married a poor clergyman, and made
herself a pitiable object among the De Bracys—obliged to get her coals
by stratagem, and pray to heaven for her salad-oil”; as must also
Ladislaw, whom Mr. Brooke, who takes him up and transfers him to the
_Pioneer_, characterizes as “a kind of Shelley, you know,” whom he (Mr.
Brooke) may be able to put on the right tack; who has “a way of putting
things,” which is just the sort of thing Mr. Brooke wants—“not ideas,
you know, but a way of putting them.” Lydgate characterizes him best
as “a likable fellow, but bric-a-brac.” He is just the material out of
which Charles Lever constructed “Joe Atlee,” that prince of Bohemians.

It is difficult also to pass unnoticed by the Vincy and the Garth
families; thriftless Fred. Vincy, who is only saved from taking to that
last resort of an ignoble mind—“the cloth”—by honest Caleb Garth
and his merry, true-hearted daughter Mary, who is, perhaps, after
all the best and jolliest girl in the book, and whose plain, womanly
wit and common sense, plain and undisguised as her open face, is an
excellent foil to the pretty animalism of Rosamond Vincy and the vague
religiousness of Dorothea. What could be better than this by way of
preparation for old Featherstone’s decease?—

“‘Oh! my dear, you must do things handsomely where there’s last illness
and a property. God knows, _I_ don’t grudge them [the relatives on the
watch] every ham in the house—_only save the best for the funeral_.
Have some stuffed veal always, and a fine cheese in cut. You must
expect to keep open house in these last illnesses,’ said liberal
Mrs. Vincy.” Or than this picture of one of George Eliot’s favorite
characters?—

“Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the
indispensable might, of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by
which the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of
his imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof
or keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of
the furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music
to him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating
star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the
wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety
of muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out—all these
sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of
poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers,
a religion without the aid of theology. His early ambition had been to
have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was
peculiarly dignified by him with the name of ‘business.’”

After all, notwithstanding its wit and power, and fund of worldly
wisdom, one turns almost with a sense of relief from this
disheartening Middlemarch world to the world as seen in _Fleurange_.
Considered merely as a story, for unity of plot and rapidity of
action, _Fleurange_ is, to our thinking, far more interesting than
_Middlemarch_. A young girl who has been educated in an Italian convent
finds herself soon after leaving it thrown almost entirely upon the
world by the death of her father, an artist, to fight the battle of
life single-handed. “Young, beautiful, poor, and alone in Paris,
what will become of her?” With this question the book opens, and,
indeed, the whole story is plainly evolved from this idea. Instead
of wasting her efforts on an impossible S. Teresa, Mme. Craven takes
up the practical case of a young and religious girl, whose training
and education, whatever they may have amounted to in the point of
accomplishments, were built upon religion, not a vague unreality,
but a religion which in the plainest words taught her to kneel down
and pray, not to “the perfect Right,” as did Dorothea, but to God,
to Jesus Christ—a being, it may here be mentioned, who is carefully
excluded from _Middlemarch_. The reader need not infer that this inner
life of the heroine is insisted upon severely, and that he always
finds Fleurange upon her knees. Nothing of the sort. You only feel
unconsciously, by little touches here and there, by the tone of the
whole story, that the girl lives up to the practical accomplishment
of what she was taught in the convent by Madre Maddalena; that she
carries her religion out with her into the world as her only guide
amidst its manifold dangers; that she has not flung it aside with her
leading-strings; and that it is this and this alone which sustains her
in the midst of terrible suffering, and saves her from sinking under
the pressure of trial.

Fleurange goes first to her uncle’s family in Germany. Their loss of
fortune drives her out again from them into the service of a Russian
princess, where she is surrounded and flattered by all that the world
considers witty, brave, brilliant, and captivating. Her singular
beauty and innate nobility enable her to grace the lofty station to
which the Princess Catherine assigns her. Here, in Florence, in the
very household of his mother, she encounters for the second time Count
George de Walden, a handsome and highly accomplished young gentleman,
the adoration of his mother and possibly of himself, who is just
loitering around Europe, “seeing life.” He met Fleurange before in her
father’s studio as she sat for a picture of “Cordelia.” Of course, he
fell in love with her, as such young gentlemen will do whose time is
heavy on their hands. Father and daughter disappeared. He retained
the picture, but what he wanted was the original; and here, after
feeding on the memory of his unknown love for a year or so, he finds
her actually domesticated in his mother’s household. This is what a
playwright would consider “an excellent situation,” particularly as
the princess suspects nothing of what is passing under her eyes. As
a matter of course, they fall in love, and, equally as a matter of
course, they contrive to make their love known. And this is the trying
time for Fleurange.

It is not that she is dazzled with the prince, but with what she
considers the perfect man. And indeed, in the eyes of the world, Count
George is a perfect man, whilst, in the eyes of his mother, he is
something still more; and therefore a _mésalliance_ would to her, whose
heart was entirely her son’s—all the rest of her being divided between
the _modiste_, the physician, and the _salon_—seem a greater crime
than many of those which bring men to the scaffold. Fleurange knows
this, and therefore—though, when the confession is forced from her,
she does not even to himself deny her love for George and her desire
to be his wife—she is convinced that their union is impossible. She
does the best thing under the circumstances: she determines to leave
the household of the princess; and thus, not for the first time, do
the promptings of _duty_, of what one ought to do, of what God would
have us do, correspond with those of common sense. George has avowed
his love for Fleurange to his mother, and the confession has such an
effect upon her that she is cured for the time from an attack of one
of those incurable maladies not uncommon with ladies who are blessed
with everything that this world can offer. There is _caste_ even in
illnesses, and fashion in a complaint as in a bonnet. Thus, when some
years back the eye-glass became a fashionable ornament, all young
England, fashionable and would-be fashionable, suddenly grew weak
in one eye, whilst the “sons of industry” remained in their normal
condition.

The princess rises to the gravity of the situation, and extracts a
promise from her son that he will never marry Fleurange without her
consent. But all her difficulties are smoothed away by Fleurange
herself, who, even though the count has asked her to be his wife,
determines to sacrifice herself for his sake, and go.

“‘Fleurange,’ said the count, with a grave accent of sincerity far
more dangerous than that of passion, ‘you shall be my wife if you will
consent to be—if you will accept this hand I offer you.’

“‘With your mother’s consent?’ said Fleurange slowly, and in a low
tone. ‘Can you assure me of that?’

“After a moment’s hesitation, George replied: ‘No, not to-day; but she
will yield her consent, I assure you.’

“Fleurange hesitated in her turn. She knew only too well to what a
degree this hope was illusory, but this was her last opportunity
of conversing with him. The next day would commence their lifelong
separation, which time, distance, and prolonged absence would
continually widen. There was no longer any danger in telling the
truth—the truth, alas! so devoid of importance now, but which would,
perhaps, second the duty she had to accomplish quite as well as
contradiction.

“‘Ah! well,’ she at last replied, with simplicity. ‘Yes, why should I
deny it? Should life prove more favorable to us; if by some unforeseen
circumstance, impossible to conceive, your mother should cheerfully
consent to receive me as a daughter, oh! then what an answer I would
make you know without my telling you. You are likewise perfectly aware
that until that day I will never listen to you.’

“‘But that day will come,’ cried George vehemently, ‘and that speedily.’

“‘Perhaps,’ said Fleurange. ‘Who knows what time has in store for us?
And who knows that in time the obstacle may not come from yourself?’

“She endeavored to say these last words in a playful tone. They were
hardly uttered before she suddenly stopped; but the shade of the large
cypresses that bordered the road prevented George from seeing the tears
that inundated her face.”

Thus they part, under the cypresses. George thinks she is only leaving
for a short time, to return again. She goes back to the convent, to
bury there her broken heart and the hopes her own strong will has
blighted. But convents are not built on broken hearts; and Madre
Maddalena, who is none the less gifted with common sense and worldly
prudence for leading a retired and saintly life, sends her back into
the world “to continue the contest,” for the reasons already given,
with these words:

“O my poor child! it would be much easier for me to tell you to remain
and never leave us again. It would be sweeter for me to preserve you
thus from all the sufferings that yet await you. But, believe me,
the day will come when you will rejoice you were not spared these
sufferings; and you will acknowledge that she who is now speaking to
you knew you better than you knew yourself.”

Fleurange goes back to the world, to her uncle’s family, which is
gradually recovering its fall through the efforts of Clement, her
cousin, who was the first to welcome her among them. Notwithstanding
her suffering, she carries on all the duties of life like a Christian
woman, without despondency as though God were blotted out of the world,
and equally without that foolish ostentation of gaiety sometimes
assumed. She never thought with Dorothea that she had suffered “all the
troubles of all the people on the face of the earth.” The hour never
came to her “in which the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly
to leave any power of thought”; not that she suffered or loved less
than Dorothea, but because she saw through all something higher than
human suffering and more lovely than human love. That pagan hour never
came to her, when Dorothea “repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude
have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man”; when “she
besought hardness, and coldness, and aching weariness to bring her
relief from the mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish”; nor did
“she lie on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her,
while her grand woman’s frame was shaken by sobs as if she had been a
despairing child.” Fleurange never, as did Dorothea, “yearned toward
_the perfect Right_, that it might make a throne within her, and rule
her errant wrong.” Whether she yearned or not, she knew what was right
and what was wrong, and, by praying to God for help and strength, she
did right. If women in love stop to ask themselves what is the “perfect
right,” in nine cases out of ten in love matters the perfect right will
be the absolute wrong. Right is fixed; there is a law in those things,
as in all questions of the soul, not evolved out of the individual’s
brains, but out of the heart of Christian charity, which is in Christ.
Duty does not depend on feeling “the largeness of the world,” and on
being “a part of that involuntary, palpitating life,” but on being
a creation of God. George Eliot tends to pantheism, and, spite of
herself, Christian instinct only prompts her heroine to do what is
right. If we are “a part of that involuntary and palpitating life,” and
_nothing more_, there is no _necessary_ reason for charity.

The difference between Dorothea and Fleurange, two characters which,
allowing for side differences of clime, are naturally similar, consists
in all the sufferings of the one bearing the aspect of self-torture,
whilst those of the other are a sacrifice. The sorrows of Fleurange,
which, after all, are much greater than those of Dorothea, are endured
for God’s sake and as coming from God. They are not a whit less
painful to nature on this account; but they are explicable, and have
a meaning which Dorothea never seems to realize. One suffers because
she cannot help herself; the other because it is God’s will. On George
Eliot’s principle, there is no guarantee for a person doing right at
all, inasmuch as it is so very difficult to determine what is right.
If right be “a part of that involuntary and palpitating life” _only_,
it has no meaning beyond what is contained in the word accident;
that is to say, right and wrong are effects of circumstance. Nor is
this forcing a meaning, as may be seen from various passages in the
book—unless, indeed, we have read them very wrongly. Thus, she speaks
of the spirit struggling “against _universal pressure_, which will
one day be too heavy for it, and bring the heart to its final pause.”
She sneers at our referring a man “to the divine regard with perfect
confidence,” and says: “Nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor
to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us.”
And in another place: “Any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence
of human lots sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on
another, which tells like _a calculated irony_ on the indifference or
frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Destiny
stands by sarcastic, with our _dramatis personæ_ folded in her hand.”

This sounds very fine, and that last sentence might have been written
by one of the Greek poets. It is beautifully pagan; but, after all,
human life is regulated in man and woman by a will that is free to use
or reject the “slow preparation of effects,” to laugh at the phantom,
destiny; and when it pleases God to bring this lesser life of time to
“a final pause,” man goes before his Creator to give an account of his
servitude indeed, but not of his slavery.

Fleurange writes from the convent to the princess. She herself had
arranged the plot which was to blind George to her final departure, and
this is how the princess receives the letter of the girl who had so
freely offered up her heart on the altar of duty. The princess knew of
the sacrifice. It is doubtful whether Rosamond Vincy ever displayed her
unconscious selfishness so thoroughly as this:

“The Princess Catherine, in an elegant morning _négligé_, was alone
with the Marquis Adelardi in her small _salon_, when a letter was
brought her on a silver salver. She glanced at the address.

“‘Ah! from Gabrielle’ [Fleurange], she exclaimed. ‘The very letter I
was expecting to-day.’

“She opened it and hastily ran over its contents. ‘Very well
done—very,’ she said. ‘Nothing could be more natural. She hit upon the
very best thing to say.... Here, Adelardi,’ continued she, throwing him
the letter, ‘read it. It must be owned that this Gabrielle is reliable
and true to her word. Moreover, she has a good deal of wit.’

“Adelardi attentively read the letter.

“‘What you have just remarked, princess, is very true; but this time
circumstances have favored you. This letter was not written for the
occasion; it is sincere from beginning to end. This young girl can keep
a secret, but is incapable of prevarication. This is not the kind of a
letter she would have written if the contents were not absolutely true.”

“‘Do you think so?’ said the princess. “It is of no consequence,
however, as to that, though it would simplify everything still more.
But in that case—ah! _ciel!_ let me look at the letter again.’

“She now read it entirely through, instead of merely glancing at the
contents.

“‘But in that case, I have lost my physician, and the only one who
ever understood my case. This, _par exemple!_ is a real misfortune. If
he had had time, at least, to answer my last letter, and tell me what
springs I should go to this year! Whom shall I consult now? May is
nearly gone, and next month I ought to be there. Really, I am unlucky!’

“‘What do you expect, princess?’ said the marquis, in a tone
imperceptibly ironical. ‘One cannot always have good luck.’”

In the quiet of her German retreat, Fleurange suddenly receives the
news that an insurrection has broken out in Russia, in which George is
implicated. He is taken prisoner, and only awaits in St. Petersburg the
sentence which is to banish him to that living tomb, Siberia. Fleurange
now sees the opportunity of uniting herself to her lover by burying
herself with him. As his hopes in this world are for ever blasted, she
obtains the consent of the princess to their union, and sets out for
St. Petersburg under the guidance of her young cousin Clement, who
knows the object of her mission. This journey and its results complete
the fourth book, entitled “The Immolation,” and in it the author rises
to a height of power in pathos, description, and incident which is all
the more telling that it was altogether unsuspected: The long ride
along the dreary strand through the day and through the night; the
crossing of the frozen river in the darkness, with the ice cracking
ominously beneath them; the scene where Clement and Fleurange are left
alone in the face of eternity and immediate death, and where, for the
first and last time, when hope of life seems banished, the confession
of his love bursts out of his young heart to the half-conscious
girl; the last struggle to carry her safe through on her mission of
self-immolation to the man she loves—all told in the same simple,
unpretentious style, but with an inner force that carries the reader
along, and absorbs him as though he were witnessing a tragedy.
The strain is sustained to the close of the story. Amid all the
fascination, and glitter, and glare of the imperial court of the Czar,
when the late Emperor Nicholas was in his “golden prime,” creeps the
oppressive sense of a mute but awful terrorism through an atmosphere
of combustible human passion all the more dangerous for being so
constrained. The petition of Fleurange is about to be granted; but, as
it passes through the hands of Vera, a favorite maid of the empress, it
is represented as coming from her, between whom and George a sort of
betrothal had taken place, and who is in love with him. His sentence,
through the instrumentality of Fleurange, is commuted to pardon on
condition that he should pass four years on his estates in Livonia,
and that he marry Vera before setting out. George is ignorant of the
arrival of Fleurange, of her petition, of her desire to bury herself
alive with him in Siberia. Vera sees Fleurange, and implores her to
save him by the still greater sacrifice of renouncing him for ever.
Fleurange goes back again without a word. The man for whom she made so
many sacrifices was utterly unworthy of her, and congratulates himself
that he escaped committing the foolishness of marrying her, though
really in love with her for a time. The selfishness of the mother
comes out in the son. As Fleurange and her cousin turn homewards, they
meet the bridal party leaving the church. Once more she seeks to bury
herself in the convent, and once more Madre Maddalena warns her back.
She tells her that, at her first visit, her sufferings appeared as the
expiation of an idolatry the extent of which she did not realize; but
that something more was essential—the shattering of the idol, though
its destruction seemed to involve the very breaking of her own heart.

The shattering of Dorothea’s idol brings a blank despair; and although
she marries Ladislaw, and is presumably happy with him, nevertheless
she felt “that there was always something better which she might
have done, if she had only been better and known better.” The final
shattering of Fleurange’s idol brings peace and opens her eyes to the
silent heroism that had stood at her side all through, and for every
pang of hers suffered a thousand. There is a vast amount of latent
power in this story that stands out the more it is considered. Clement
is kept in the background through much of the action. We only know that
he loves Fleurange, and, prominently as her self-sacrifice is advanced,
the shadow of his always overreaches it with the quiet that becomes a
true man. At last her eyes are opened, and she sees, no longer Clement,
“her brother,” but Clement, the man who has loved her all the while.
The closeness of their relationship—that of first cousins—was almost
necessary to bring out this part of the story, their almost continual
intercourse after their first seeing each other, without the idea ever
occurring to Fleurange that her cousin, who was a stranger to her up
to the age of eighteen, might possibly fall in love with her. It is no
encouragement to marriage within the prohibited degrees to hit upon
such an incident once in a story; as little as it is necessary to
inform the Catholic reader of what he or she will know beforehand: that
the dispensation of the church is necessary to the contracting such a
marriage.

The book, which has only been touched upon in its leading character,
will afford an excellent foil to _Middlemarch_ in many ways. The
latter, as perhaps the very title indicates, devotes itself chiefly
to the English _middle_ class. _Fleurange_ gives pleasant glimpses
of German and Italian life with what, from intrinsic evidence, might
be judged to be a very true picture of the Russian court and social
atmosphere. Though there are plenty of titled folk, it is a consolation
for once to find a princess talking like a rational being; not
always addressing her attendant as “minion,” her butler as “slave,”
and terrifying the ears and eyes of the groundlings by the splendor
of her cheap tragedy rhetoric, the glory of her equipages, or the
coruscations of her diamonds. Her son, the count, does not, as do most
of his class in the titled novel, divide his time between the stable
and the green-room. The marquis is not “a villain of the deepest dye,”
whether natural or artificial. Though an Italian, he does not carry a
poison philter about with him; he employs no bravos, he never carries
off Chastity in the shape of a milliner, to be finally chastised by
Virtue in a smock-frock. In fact, all these titled folk are very
unlike the article one is accustomed to find within flaming covers.
The heartlessness and artificiality almost necessarily evoked in the
high social atmosphere which Fleurange breathes for a time, is none the
less strikingly brought out because it is not taken in epigrammatic
parcels, as it were, and flung in your face, after the manner of the
author of _Middlemarch_. The lesson of Felix Dornthall’s wicked life
is none the less impressive because, when dying in the hospital ward,
Charity stands by his bedside and prays for him as the ill-spent life
flickers out in the darkness. It is no shock to human feelings to see
Fleurange in her bitter hours kneel down and pray for help to a God she
believes can help her. If life is not all “beer and skittles,” neither
is it all a continual mistake and a bitter trial. If we cannot have
“ideal perfection,” it may be a consolation to some to feel assured
that we can do very well without it, and that there is something in the
striving after _real_ perfection worthy of human endeavor. To George
Eliot, the world was born yesterday, and only grew with her growing
faculties. Christianity has practically gone by, and this is not the
age for its heroes and heroines. The sham and the cant of it only
remain. As long as the sham and the cant produce such characters as
Madre Maddalena, Fleurange, Dr. Leblanc, and Clement, we shall welcome
the sham and the cant in preference to the reality which can only give
us Dorothea and Lydgate as types of true nobility and all that the
perfection of manhood and womanhood may expect to come to nowadays.
Whilst admiring the wit, and the worldly wisdom, and that power which
only ripened genius can give of saying the best thing in the best
way which _Middlemarch_ displays throughout, we confess to a little
heartsickness at seeing all the nature of a woman author going out over
Rosamond Vincy.

_Fleurange_ is certainly a relief after the unnatural atmosphere
of _Middlemarch_, where all is false, uncertain, cold, hard, and
brilliant. Though the story is very human, and in this respect has
not a whit less of earth than the other, it suffers nothing by an
occasional glimpse of heaven. Poor humanity likes a little hope,
particularly when it has a very sound title to hope. These two authors
traverse it as a hospital; the one surgeon-like, knife in hand, cutting
and lopping the useless and unsightly limbs with bright, keen weapon
and merciless precision, leaving the dead to bury their dead; the
other, like a sister of charity, to bandage the wound, and comfort
the sick, and pray by the dying. How different is the same scene to
the eyes of each, and how different is each in the eyes of the sick
patients! While they admire the skill of the one, they shudder and
turn instinctively from her; on the other streaming eyes are bent, and
troubled hearts murmur, “God bless you!”




GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”


CHAPTER IV.

AN INCH OF FRINGE.

MR. SCHÖNINGER had been in such haste to keep his engagement the
evening before that he had made the rehearsal a short one, and the
company did not remain long after he went. Perhaps the family did not
seem to them quite so gay and pleasant as usual. Certainly no one
objected much to their going. The only remonstrance was that uttered by
Annette, when Lawrence Gerald took his hat to follow the last visitor.

“What! are you going, too?” she exclaimed involuntarily. She was
learning not to reproach him for anything, but it was impossible to
conceal her disappointment.

He showed no impatience. On the contrary, his voice was quiet and even
kind when he answered her.

“You cannot think it would be very pleasant for me to stay this
evening,” he said. “I want to wipe away some disagreeable impressions
before I come again. Besides, I must finish my afternoon’s writing
to-night.”

She had to own that he might well shrink from meeting her mother again
just then, particularly as the lady did not seem to have recovered
her good-humor. In fact, while they were standing together near the
conservatory, she crossed the front hall from one room to another, and
cast a watchful glance back at them, as if she would have liked to come
nearer, but hesitated to do so.

At sight of her, they turned away, and went out through the garden
door at the rear of the long hall, and came round the house instead of
going through it. This garden was extensive, occupying nearly or quite
two acres of land, and was surrounded by a low stone wall overgrown in
some places with vines, in others shaded by shrubs or trees. Crichton
was so well governed that high walls were not necessary to protect the
gardens, especially when people were so well known to be perfectly
willing and able to protect their rights as the Ferriers. A few notable
examples, made in a very spirited manner at the beginning of their
residence, had inspired transgressors with a wholesome awe of them
and their premises. Not a flower was broken, not a cherry nor a plum
disappeared from their trees, not an intruding footstep printed their
walks.

These grounds were now sweet with a profusion of June roses, and so
pink that, as Annette walked through them with her lover, they appeared
to be flushed with sunset, though sunset had quite faded, leaving only
a pure twilight behind. Besides the newly planted trees, which were
small, a few large maples had been left from the original forest, and
shaded here and there a circle of velvet sward. A superb border of blue
flower-de-luce enclosed the whole with its band of fragrant sapphire.

The two walked slowly round the house without speaking, and Lawrence
stepped through the gate, then, turning, leaned on it. Once out of Mrs.
Ferrier’s presence, he was not in such haste to go. Two linden-trees in
bloom screened them from observation as they stood there; and, since
pride no longer compelled him to keep up an indifferent or a defiant
manner, the young man yielded to his mood. He was sad, and seemed to
feel even a sort of despair. In a weak way he had admired all that
was admirable, and despised all that was ignoble, yet he had lacked
the resolution necessary to secure his own approval. He was still
noble enough to feel the loss of that more bitterly than any outside
condemnation. When he could, he deceived himself, and excused his own
shortcomings; but when some outward attack tore aside the flimsy veil,
and showed him how he might be criticised, or when some stirring appeal
revived the half-smothered ideal within him, then he needed all the
soothing that friendship or flattery could bestow. While listening
to Mrs. Ferrier that afternoon, he had not been able to exclude the
humiliating conviction that he had himself forged the chains that
held him in that ignoble dependence, and that ten years of earnest
endeavor would have set him in a position to command the fulfilment
of his wishes. But now, he assured himself, it was too late to begin.
His earliest foe, his own nature, had allied itself with one scarcely
less strong, a pernicious habit, and it was now two to one. He must be
helped, must go on with this engagement, and patch up the life which he
could not renew.

“If she would give up the point of our living with her, all would
be well,” he said presently. “Why couldn’t we board at the Crichton
House? I don’t mean to be idle, and don’t wish to be. I wouldn’t make
any promises to her, Annette, and I won’t make them to any one who
threatens me; but I am willing to tell you that I really mean to try.
All I want is to get out of my little way of living, and have a fair
start. You know I never had a chance.”

His lip and voice were unsteady, and, as he looked up appealingly
into her face, she saw that his eyes were full of tears. A grief and
self-pity too great for words possessed him. That element of childlike
tenderness and dependence which survives the time of childhood in some
men, as well as in most women, made him long for the pity and sympathy
of one to whom he had never given either sympathy or pity.

Annette, woman-like, found no fault, or at least expressed none. It
was enough if he needed her sympathy. She had thought that he only
needed her wealth. Her heart ached with pity for him, and swelled with
indignation against all who would censure him. His foes were her foes.

“I know you never had a chance, Lawrence,” she said fervently; “but
never mind that now. You shall have one. F. Chevreuse shall talk to
mamma, and make her give me at once what I am to have. It is my right.
Don’t be unhappy about the past, nor blame yourself in anything.
All lives are not to follow one plan. Why should you have begun as a
drudge, and spent all these years in laying up a little money? What
better would you be now for having the experience of an errand-boy
and a clerk, and for the memory of a thousand mortifications and
self-denials? You might have two or three thousand dollars capital,
and be, at best, a junior partner in some paltry firm, which I should
insist on your leaving. Is that so much to regret?”

He smiled faintly, and, his cause being so well defended, ventured to
attack it. “To be mortified is not necessarily to be degraded,” he
said. “I shouldn’t have been obliged to listen to the lecture I heard
this afternoon.”

“The degradation of that rests with me!” she exclaimed hastily, with
a painful blush on her face. “I do not like to think nor speak of it,
and I wish you would try to forget it. The time is come for me to tell
mamma that I am not a child. Leave all to me. I never fail when I am
roused, and I promise you, Lawrence, you shall not bear more than one
other insult for my sake. And for the past, I charge you again, do not
suffer any one to dictate to you what you should have done. Let them
correct themselves, which will, perhaps, be sufficient to employ their
time.”

She could see he was cheered, not much, but a little. He tossed his
head back, and glanced about with an air of renewed courage and
determination. But no thought for the heart that he had burdened with
his pain and care entered his mind. She had given her help eagerly,
glad to give, and he accepted it as a matter of course, and, having got
what he wanted, went away with a careless good-night.

Annette went into the house, and soon the doors were locked. Mrs.
Ferrier always went to bed early, and the servants usually followed her
example.

Annette leaned from her window, and counted the city lights going out,
and the noises sinking into silence. As it grew later, the sound of the
Cocheco became fitfully audible, borne on the cool northwestern breeze,
and presently grew steadier, till only one other sound, the pulse of a
far-away steam-mill, was heard tossing on that spray-like murmur like a
little ball on the water-column of a fountain.

Cool as it was, the room seemed close to her. She was restless, too,
yet could not move about without being heard by her mother. So she
opened her door, and crept softly down-stairs. The long drawing-room
windows looking into the conservatory had been left open, and some
of the sashes in the conservatory were still lowered from the top. A
light and fragrant breeze came through, bringing a sound of rustling
leaves. She stepped over the sill, and threw herself down on a sofa
just outside. The large space was a relief from that cramped feeling
that had brought her down-stairs. Besides, there was only glass between
her and all out-doors. She saw the star-lighted skies, those languid
stars of summer, soft as humid eyes, and the dark trees of the garden,
and the faint outline of hills against the near southwestern horizon.
The flowering plants showed like black shadows lurking about the bases
of the pillars, and the pillars themselves appeared to stretch upward
to the sky, and curl over in capitals of purple acanthus-leaves fringed
with stars.

Annette rested her head on the sofa-cushions. The space and motion
outside and the waving boughs and vines had a quieting effect; yet she
was in that state of feverish wakefulness wherein one can be quiet only
in a position from which it is possible to start at any moment.

Her life was changing in its hopes and aims, and she was in all the
tumult of that revolution. The vague, sweet expectations and rosy hopes
which are planted in the heart of every female infant, which spring
up and bud in the maiden’s soul, which blossom or are nipped in the
woman’s, as God shall will, were withered in hers, had withered long
ago, and she was only now owning it to herself. There was to be no
tender homage and care for her. No one was to take delight in her, to
seek her for herself, to think anxiously lest she be grieved or hurt.
Whatever pain might come to her in life, she must bear it in silence.
To tell it where alone sympathy would be precious and helpful to her
would be to bore her listener. Hers was the part to give, not to
receive. Without a man’s strength and hardness, she was to take the
man’s portion, support, cheer, encourage, and defend, and all without
thanks.

An awful sense of isolation seized upon her. There had come to her that
moment which comes to some, perhaps to most people, once in a life,
when all the universe seems to withdraw, and the soul hangs desolate in
the midst of space, the whole of creation alien. One shrinks from life
then, and would gladly hide in death.

Annette was too sad and weary to cry out. She lay quiet, and looked
at the tree-shadows. Some good thought crossed her mind, a whisper of
her guardian angel, or an inspiration of the Comforter—“Fall down and
pray to God for help!” it said; but found her insensible. A human love
inexpressibly bitter and engrossing blunted her heart to all else. She
mutely asked God to be merciful to her, but formed no other petition.

While she gazed without abstractedly, only half conscious of what she
saw, a darker shadow appeared under a tree just visible past the angle
of the house. What seemed to be a man’s form leaned forward partially
into her view, drew something from a garden-chair under the tree,
then disappeared. She was too much occupied by her own thoughts to be
alarmed, and, moreover, was not in any danger. She only wondered a
little what it might mean, and presently understood. Mr. Schöninger,
coming from a long drive that afternoon, had brought a shawl over his
arm, and she had noticed after he went away that it had been forgotten
on the garden-chair where he had thrown it on entering. It might be
that, returning home now, he had recollected, and come into the garden
for it.

Slight as the incident was, it broke the train of her painful thoughts.
She sat up with a gesture that flung the past with all its beautiful
hopes and wishes behind her, and welcomed the one thought that came
in their stead, sad yet sweet, like a smile half quenched in tears.
Lawrence Gerald did not love her, but he needed her, and she took up
her cross, this time with an upward glance.

When we have set self aside, from whatever motive, the appeal to God
for help is instinctive, and seems less a call than the answer to a
call. As though Infinite Love, which for love’s sake sacrificed a God,
could not see a trembling human soul binding itself for the altar
without claiming kindred with it. “My child, the spark that lights thy
pyre is from my heart. Hold by me, and it shall not burn in vain.”

Yet that the happiness of giving love and help is nobler and more
elevating than the pleasure of receiving them Annette did not then
realize, perhaps would not have believed. Who does believe it, or, at
least, who acts upon the belief till after long and severe discipline,
till the world has lost its hold on the heart, and it has placed all
its hopes in the future? Fine sentiments drop easily from the lips of
those to whom they cost nothing, or who have forgotten the struggles by
which their own peace was won. Those who are fed can talk eloquently
of patience under starvation, and those who are warmed can cry out on
the folly of the poor traveller who sinks to sleep under the snowdrift.
Verily, preaching is easy, and there is no one who has such breath to
utter heroic sentiments as he who never puts them in practice.

As Annette lay there, growing quieter now that all was settled, clouds
came up from behind the hills, and slowly extinguished the stars.
Opaline lightnings quivered and expanded inside those heavy mists
without piercing them, as though some winged creature of fire were
imprisoned there, and fluttering to escape; and every time the air grew
luminous, the azaleas and rhododendrons bloomed rose-red out of their
shadows. Deep and mellow thunders rolled incessantly, and a thick rain
came down in drops so fine that the sound of their falling was but a
whisper. It was a thunder-storm played _piano_. Annette was lulled to
a light sleep, through which she still heard the storm, as in a dream,
growing softer till it ceased. And no sooner did she dream it had
ceased than she dreamed it had recommenced, with a clamor of rain and
thunder, and a wind that shook the doors and windows, and a flash like
a shriek that syllabled her name.

She started up in affright. The sky was clear and calm, and the storm
had all passed by; but the wet trees in the garden shone with a red
light from the windows, and there was noise and a hurrying to and fro
in the house, and her mother was calling her with hysterical cries.

Annette would have answered, but her tongue was paralyzed with that
sudden fear. She could only hasten into the house with what speed the
deathly sickness of such an awakening allowed her.

Mrs. Ferrier was walking through the rooms, wringing her hands, and
calling for her daughter. “Where is Annette? What has become of
Annette?” The servants stood about, silent and confounded by the noisy
grief of their mistress, unable to do anything but stare at her.

There is usually but one chief mourner on such occasions, however many
candidates there may be for the office. The one who first raises the
voice of lamentation leaves the others _hors de combat_.

In one of her turns, Mrs. Ferrier saw Annette leaning pale and mute on
a chair near by.

“O Annette, Annette! do you know what has happened? Oh! what shall I
do?” she cried.

Annette could only cling to the chair for support. Her mouth and throat
were too dry for speech.

“Somebody has killed Mother Chevreuse!” The girl slipped down to her
knees, and hid her face a moment. Nothing had happened to Lawrence,
thank God! Then she stood up, shocked and grieved indeed, but no longer
powerless.

“Will you tell me what it is, John?” she asked, turning to the man.
“Tell me all you know about it.”

Her mother’s noise and volubility were too irritating.

John’s story was soon told. Lawrence Gerald, having been awakened by
a messenger from the priest’s house, had been up there to call them
before going for F. Chevreuse. He wished some of them to come down
immediately.

Annette’s mind was clear and prompt in any emergency which did not
touch her too nearly. She saw at once all that was necessary to be done.

“Ma, please don’t take all the attention to yourself,” she said rather
impatiently. “It isn’t you who are killed. Try to think of what should
be done. John, you and Bettie will go down with me. The rest of you
lock the house securely, and let no one in whom you don’t know. Louis
and Jack will take care of you.”

Bettie flew with alacrity to prepare herself, willing to brave all
perils in the company of John; but, coming down again, found that her
mistress was also going. There was no help for it. The servant-maid
fell humbly into the rear, while Mrs. Ferrier clung to the arm of
the footman, and saw an assassin in every shadow. At sight of a man
hurrying up the hill toward them, she cried out, and would have fled if
her daughter had not held her.

“Nonsense, ma! it’s Lawrence,” Annette said, and went to meet the
breathless messenger.

“I’m going after F. Chevreuse,” he explained. “Can I have one of your
horses?”

He stopped only for Annette’s reply: “Take anything you want!” then
hurried on up the hill.

The little cottage by the church was all alight, and people were
hurrying about, and standing in the open door and the entry.

“Now, recollect, ma, you must keep quiet, and not get in anybody’s
way,” was the daughter’s last charge as they drew near; then they went
into the house.

Honora Pembroke met Annette at the door of the inner room. The two
girls clasped hands in silence. They understood each other. The one was
strong to endure with calmness, the other strong to do with calmness;
and, till F. Chevreuse should come, all rested on them. Mrs. Gerald,
weaker of nerve, could only sit and gaze about her, and do what she was
told to do. Jane was in the hands of officers, who were trying to find
out what she knew, and prevent her saying too much to others. It was
not an easy task; for what the woman knew and what she suspected were
mingled in inextricable confusion, and the only relief her excitement
could find was in pouring out the whole to whoever would listen. An
argument was, however, found to silence her.

“You will help the rogue to escape if you tell one word,” the detective
said. “If you want him to be punished, you must hold your tongue. Have
you told any one?”

“Nobody but Lawrence Gerald,” Jane answered, recovering her
self-control. It would be hard to keep silence, but she could do it for
the sake of punishing _that man_.

“Well, say nothing to any one else. Look now, and remember how it
looks, then forget all about it till you are asked in court.”

Jane and the two policemen in the little room with them drew nearer and
scrutinized closely the contents of a slip of paper that the detective
held in his hand. It was an inch or so of grey worsted fringe torn
from a shawl; and, clinging to the fragment, a single human hair, of a
peculiar light-brown shade.

Poor Mother Chevreuse! This little clue had been found clenched in her
stiffening fingers when they took her up.

The three looked intently, then drew back, and the detective carefully
folded the paper again, and placed it in his pocket-book.

An hour later, F. Chevreuse arrived. We will not enter the house with
him. The two guests that there await him, death and an unspeakable
grief, demand that homage of us, that we do not intrude.

As Lawrence Gerald was driving away from the door after having brought
the priest, Jane called out to him, and, when he stopped, leaned over
the wheel into the carriage.

“Don’t let a soul on earth know what I told you we found in her hand,
nor what I saw,” she whispered.

He muttered some half-stifled word about not being a tattler.

“Promise me you won’t,” she persisted, laying her hand on his arm.

He gave the promise impatiently—women’s ways are so annoying when one
is excited and in haste—shook her hand off, and drove away.

Let us pass over the first days that followed. The gossip, the
wonderment, the show of grief that is merely excitement, and, still
more, the grief that is real, and shrinks from showing itself—who
would not wish to escape sight and sound of them? We may well believe
that one so beloved and honored was followed to her last home by the
tears and blessings of a crowd, and that one so bereaved was the object
of an immense sympathy and affection. We may also be sure that those
to whom the law gives in charge the search for such offenders did not
neglect their task. We will not fraternize with the detectives nor with
the gossips. Let them do their work, each after his kind.

When weeks had passed away, Mrs. Gerald had not yet dared to mention
his loss to F. Chevreuse; but he spoke of it to her; and, having
once spoken, she felt sure that he wished the subject to be avoided
thereafter.

“It seems to me that I never was a real priest till now,” he said. “I
was not conscious of making any sacrifice. I had a pleasant home, and
one there to whom I was all in all. Now I have no earthly tie, nothing
to come between me and my Master’s work. I don’t mean to say that she
was an obstacle; on the contrary, she was a great help; but she was
also an immense comfort, more a comfort than I deserve, perhaps. I do
not deny that it is sad, but I know also that it is well. There are no
accidents in God’s providence. The only thought almost too hard for me
to bear is that I took her affection so carelessly. She gave her all,
and I did not remember to tell her that it was precious to me. She was
a tender, loving creature, and, when I was a child, she gave me that
fondness that children need. I forgot that she might need fondness as
much when she grew old. I forgot that, while I had a thousand duties,
and interests, and friends, she had nothing but me.

“It is too late to talk of it now; but if I could have been permitted
one minute to go on my knees to her, and bless and thank her for all
her love, I could bear this better. For that man, whoever he may be, I
have no feeling but pity. Unless the safety of others should require
it, I hope he may not be taken. I haven’t a doubt the unfortunate
wretch wanted the money, but didn’t mean to hurt any one, except in
self-defence. I do not wish to know who he is.”

Mrs. Gerald was too much affected to utter a word in reply. It did not
seem to be F. Chevreuse who was speaking to her in that sad voice, from
which the ringing tone had quite gone, and that pale face was not like
his. It seemed, too, that in those few weeks his hair had grown white.

He resumed after a moment: “There are some things at the house I would
like to have you see to. Whatever is valuable in money, the silver
and a few other things, I mean shall go toward a new altar-service.
She wished it. But there are some trinkets and things that she used,
and clothing and books, that I would like to have you take away. I
don’t want to see them about. Let Honora choose whatever she likes for
herself. My mother was fond of her. Keep what you wish, and give some
little _souvenirs_ to those who would value them for her sake. And now
let us set our faces forward, and waste no time in vain lamentations.”

“O Mrs. Gerald!” Jane cried, when the lady went there in compliance
with the priest’s request, “my heart is broke! All the light is gone
out of the house.”

“Don’t speak of that,” Mrs. Gerald said. “Tell me of F. Chevreuse. Is
he quiet? Does he eat anything?”

“He eats about as much as would keep a fly,” the housekeeper sighed.
“But he sits at the table, and tries the best he can. If you’d seen him
the first night after it was all over! I came up and poured the tea
out for him, and, indeed, my eyes were so full I came near scalding
myself with it. He took something on his plate, and made believe taste
of it, and talked in a cheerful sort of way about the weather and about
something he wanted to have done. But when he saw my hand holding the
cup out to him, he stopped short in what he was saying, and choked up,
and then he leaned back in his chair and burst out a-crying. It was
the same little cup and spoon she always gave him, but it wasn’t the
same woman that held it across the table for him to take. And I set
the cup down and cried too: what else? And, ‘Jane,’ says he, ‘where’s
the little hand that for years has been stretched out to me every
evening?’ What could the like of me say, ma’am, to comfort a priest
in his sorrow? I couldn’t help speaking, though, and says I, ‘May be
there isn’t the length of the table between you,’ says I, ‘and the
little hand is holding out the first bitter cup it ever offered you
to drink. But, oh! drink it, father dear,’ says I, ‘and may be you’ll
find a blessing at the bottom.’ And then I was so ashamed of myself
for preaching to the priest that I ran out of the room. After a little
while his bell rang, and I wiped my eyes, and went in. And there he sat
with a trembling kind of a smile on his face, and says he, ‘Jane, how
am I to get my tea at all?’ So I gave him the cup, and went and stood
by the fireplace. And he talked about things in the house, and asked me
if I didn’t want my mother to come and live with me. The Lord knows I
didn’t, ma’am, through my mother not being overneat, besides taking a
drop now and then. But it’s decenter, and so I said yes. And when I was
cheered up a little, he sent me out. But when I was going through the
door, he spoke to me, and says he, ‘Jane!’ And when I looked back, and
said ‘Sir!’ says he, ‘Jane, you’re right. There is a blessing at the
bottom of it.’ And he smiled in a way that was sadder than tears. Since
that he has the tray set at his elbow, and pours the tea for himself.
And now, ma’am, I’m going to tell you something that you mustn’t let
anybody know, for may be I oughtn’t to speak of it. That first night
following the funeral I heard him walking about his room after I went
to bed, and I knew he couldn’t sleep; though, indeed, it was little
that any of us slept that night. Well, by-and-by, when I’d been drowsy
like, I heard him go out into the entry, and I thought that perhaps
some one had rung the bell. I was frightened for fear of who it might
be; so I got up, and threw something on, and crept up the stairs, and
peeped through the rail, all ready to scream for help. I watched him
open the door, with the street-lamp shining not far off; and, O Mrs.
Gerald! if he didn’t kneel down there and kiss the threshold where she
stood that night watching him drive away; and he cried that pitiful
that it was all I could do not to cry out loud myself, and let him know
I was there.”

The first sharpness of the impression made by this event wore away,
and people began to talk of other things. Some wealthy Protestants
of Crichton made up for F. Chevreuse the money he had lost, and thus
soothed their regret for the loss which they could not repair to him.
Even those who were most grieved felt their lives closing over the
wound. Duties and plans that had been interrupted were resumed, among
them that for a concert in aid of the new convent. Miss Ferrier’s
rehearsal had been a last preparation for this concert, which had been
postponed on account of the death of Mother Chevreuse, and it was
necessary to have another.

Annette threw herself into these preparations with spirit. Her affairs
were prospering as well as she could expect. F. Chevreuse had talked
with Mrs. Ferrier, and brought her to reason, and Lawrence had been
induced to yield a little. It was settled that the marriage should
take place on the first of September, and the young couple spend one
year with the mother. After that they were to be free to go where they
liked, Annette with an ample allowance assured her, and a promise that
the property should be equally divided in case of her mother’s death.

“The young man is behaving very well,” F. Chevreuse said, “and he ought
to be trusted and encouraged. He goes regularly to Mass, and attends
closely to his business. I shall not soon forget how much he did for me
when—when I was away that night. The shock seems to have awakened him.
He sees what indolence and unfixed principles may lead to, and that a
man who rocks like a boat on the tide of his own passions may drift
anywhere. We must be good to him.”

“If you would only give him a plain talking to, father,” Mrs. Ferrier
said. She had an immense faith in the power of talk. “If you would tell
him what he ought to do, and what he ought not to do. Just warn him.”

The priest shook his head.

“I believe in sometimes leaving God to warn in his own way,” he said.
“It is a mistake for even the wisest man to be perpetually thrusting
his clumsy fingers into the delicate workings of the human soul. We are
priests, but we are not Gods; and men and women are not fools. They
should be left to themselves sometimes. God has occasional messages for
his children which do not need our intervention. Too much direction is
degrading to an intelligent soul.”

F. Chevreuse had been involuntarily expressing the thought that
started up in his own mind rather than addressing his companion; and,
seeing at a glance that she had not understood a word of what he had
been saying, he smilingly adapted his talk to her comprehension.

“I heard a story once,” he said, “of a careful mother who was going
away from home to spend the day. Before starting, she called her
children about her, and, after telling them of certain things which
they were not to do, she concluded in this wise: ‘And don’t you go up
into the back attic, to the dark corner behind the big chimney, and
take up a loose board in the floor, and pull out a bag of dry beans
there is there, and get beans in your noses.’ Then she went away,
having forbidden every evil which she could imagine might happen to
them. When she came home at night, every child had a bean up its nose.
Don’t you see she had better not have said anything about those beans?
The children didn’t know where they were. No; if you want to keep
any one from evil, talk to him of what is good. The more you look at
evil, even to abuse it, the less shocking it is to you. The more you
talk about it, the more people will do it. Sometimes it must be spoken
of; but beware of saying too much. Do you know when darkness appears
darkest? When you have been looking at light. Therefore, my lady, say
all that is pleasant to this young man, and try to forget that there
ever was anything unpleasant.”

Mrs. Ferrier was not one to oppose the earnestly expressed wish of a
clergyman, and, at this time, all F. Chevreuse’s people felt an unusual
desire to show him their love and obedience. Besides, she was rather
proud of having been considered so implacable that no one but a priest
could influence her, and of being able to say, in defence of her change
of plan: “I did it for the sake of F. Chevreuse.” She even boasted a
little of this intercession, and took care it should be known that the
church had begged her to be lenient, and had for a moment anxiously
awaited her decision.

“Besides,” she would add, “he takes a good deal more pains to be
pleasant now.”

Lawrence, indeed, took no such pains, and, perhaps, liked Annette’s
mother less than ever. The only change was in herself. She had, by
being civil to him, rendered it possible for him to be agreeable. When
he was spoken of slightingly, she had insulted him; when he was praised
to her, she conciliated. It was not necessary that there should be any
change in him.

Annette, too, had taken his cause up with a high hand. The passion
of love, which had sometimes made her timid in speaking of him, was
unconsciously giving place to a passion of pity, which made her
fearless. Woe to the servant who was dilatory in waiting on Mr. Gerald,
or lacking in any sign of respect for him. He was consulted about
everything. Not a curtain, nor chair, nor spoon could be bought till
he had approved. A cool “I will see what Lawrence thinks of it,” was
enough to postpone a decision on any subject. “He has taste, and we
have nothing but money.” If the phrase is not a contradiction, it
might be said that she abased herself haughtily in order to exalt him.
If they had company to dinner, Lawrence must glance over the list of
dishes; if a new plant arrived, he must advise where it should be set;
if a stranger came to town, it was for Lawrence to decide whether the
Ferriers should show him hospitality.

“I think our rehearsal may as well be also a little garden-party,”
Annette said to him. “We need scarcely any practice, nothing to speak
of, everything went so well the last time.”

She was tying on her bonnet before a mirror in the drawing room, and
Lawrence stood by a window, hat in hand, looking out at the carriage
waiting at the gate. He did not seem to have heard her.

“I should only ask a few persons who will be sure to go to the concert
and help along,” she continued, twirling lightly about to see if the
voluminous folds of her black silk train fell properly. She wanted
Lawrence to notice her, for she was looking uncommonly well. Black was
becoming to her; and the delicate lavender gloves, and bunch of scarlet
geranium-flowers half lost in lace just behind her left ear, gave
precisely the touch of color that was needed. But he stood immovable,
watching the horses, perhaps, or watching nothing.

Seeing him so abstracted, she looked at him a moment, remembering an
old story she had read of Apollo apprenticed to a swine-herd. Here was
one, she thought, who might have graced Olympus, yet who had been bound
down to poverty, and labor, and disappointment. His pale and melancholy
face showed that he might be mourning even now his ignominious
captivity. Thank God, she could help him! He should not always be so
sorrowful.

He moved slightly, without looking toward her, aware of her silence,
though he had not noticed her speech. She checked, with an effort, the
impulse to go to him with some affectionate inquiry, and went on with
what she had been saying. “We need the editors, of course, and I can
ask Dr. Porson to bring Mr. Sales. They say he is very clever, and will
bring _The Aurora_ up again. They will give us puffs, you know. If I
send the doctor a note this afternoon, he will tell Mr. Sales this
evening, and he can write a nice little report of the rehearsal before
he comes to it, and have it out to-morrow morning.”

“Are you ready?” asked Lawrence, turning round from the window.

“All but this.” She gave him a little gold glove-buttoner; and held out
her hand.

“By the way,” she said suddenly, “have you heard the story about Mr.
Schöninger?”

Lawrence let slip the tiny button he had just caught, and stared at her
in silence. Perhaps he remembered something that Jane, the priest’s
housekeeper, had charged him not to tell.

“Such a romantic story!” she said, smiling at having won his attention.
“I forgot to tell you. They say that he has a lawsuit going on in
England about an immense property to which he is the rightful heir.
It is from some very distant relative who left Germany for England a
hundred years ago. He has no personal acquaintance with any of the
family there now; but ten years ago, he learned that the heirs had died
out leaving him nearest to the estate. He was then in Germany, and had
a little property, on which he lived like a gentleman. He spent every
dollar he had in the effort to obtain his rights, but did not succeed.
Neither did he fail; but more money was needed. And that’s the reason
why he came to this country and became a music-teacher, and why he
lives so plainly, and works all the time. Lily Carthusen told me she
heard that he sent money to England every quarter, and that all his
earnings go into that lawsuit.”

“Lily Carthusen knows a great deal about other people’s business,”
the young man remarked ungraciously. “She is one of the kind who peep
into letters and listen at doors. I wouldn’t repeat any of her stories,
Annette.”

“I only tell you, Lawrence,” she replied humbly.

“Well, I don’t believe a word of it,” he said. “Schöninger is a fine
fellow; and people imagine there is some mystery about him, simply
because he won’t tell everybody his business, and who his grandfather
and grandmother were. There are thousands of persons in this city who,
if you should keep one room in your house locked, would believe that it
was full of stolen goods.”

They were going out through the door now, and Annette assumed a bright
smile. No one must see her looking mortified or sad, least of all when
she was with Lawrence. She stepped lightly into the carriage, and gave
her order with the air of one anticipating a charming drive. “To the
convent, Jack, straight through the town, and slowly.”

Which meant that they intended to have some conversation, and were not
unwilling to be observed.

“I always like to see the sisters when I am out of tune,” Miss Ferrier
said. “They are so soothing and cheerful. Besides, they are brave. They
fear nothing. They are not always quaking, as people in the world are.
They have the courage of children who know that they will be taken care
of. I always feel stronger after being with them. Not that I am usually
timid, though. I think I have more courage than you, Lawrence.”

She smiled playfully, giving her true words the air of a jest.

He looked straight ahead, and ignored the jest. “You have a clear
conscience, that is the reason,” he replied. “It’s the old serpent in
the tree that makes it shaky.”

“It is very true,” she said calmly, after a moment’s consideration. “I
do not believe I ever did anything wicked.”

“As a rule, I don’t like religious people,” the young man observed;
“but I’ve no objection to any of the nuns. The fact that they will wear
unbecoming dresses and cut off their hair proves them sincere. It’s the
strongest proof a good-looking woman could give. You needn’t laugh,
Annette. Just think a minute, and you’ll find it is so. Now, look at
that little Anita I saw up there once. She’s as pink and white as the
inside of a sea-shell, and her hair must be a yard long, and beautiful
hair at that. Yet she is going to have those braids cut off, and hide
her face under a black bonnet. That means something. I only hope she
may not be sorry when it is too late. I’d like to talk with her. Ask to
see her to-day, won’t you?”

Annette’s answer was very gravely uttered. “Certainly, if you wish,”
she said. “But you will not have much opportunity for conversation with
her.”

He roused himself, just beginning to take some interest in their talk.
“You can manage it, Annette. Get her singing for me, then take Sister
Cecilia off out of the room.”

He spoke coaxingly, and with a faint smile; but she did not lift her
eyes. “You know there must be no trifling with such a person, Lawrence.
Why need you wish to speak to Anita? Is it impossible for you to see an
interesting girl without trying to captivate her? You need not be proud
of such success.”

He threw himself back on the cushions again. “Oh! if you are jealous,
there is no more to be said about it.”

As she remained silent, he presently stole a questioning glance into
her face, and, seeing the cloud on it, smiled again. It always amused
him to see any evidence of his power over women, and no proof could be
stronger than the sight of their pain.

“Don’t be silly now, Ninon!” he said softly. “You know I don’t mean to
trifle nor flirt, but only to satisfy my curiosity. I never spoke to a
young vestal like that, and I would like to know what sort of language
they use. Be good, dear!”

That coaxing voice could still make her smile, though it could no
longer cheat her into delight. She looked at him indulgently, as one
looks at a spoilt child whom one has no desire to reprove, yet sighs
over. “I will do what I can, Lawrence; but you must be careful not to
behave so that the sisters will wish to exclude you in future.”

“That’s a good girl!”

Then his momentary gaiety dropped off like a mask.

“Yes, I like to see that kind of religion,” he resumed. “But I hate a
gilt-edged piety. I despise those people who are so nice that they call
the devil ‘the D., you know,’ and whose religion is all promenade-dress
and genuflections. I suspect them. I was talking the other day with a
lady who said something about the ‘D., you know,’ and I answered, ‘No,
I don’t know. What do you mean?’ She had to say it; and I haven’t a
doubt she always says it when she is angry. Bah!”

They had reached the gate, and, seeing no one, alighted and left the
carriage there. But Sister Cecilia met them at the entrance, her
welcoming smile like a benediction.

As they entered the parlor, they surprised a little domestic tableau.
The door leading to an inner room was partly open, and braced against
a chair in which were a pail of steaming water and a bar of soap.
Sister Bernadette, the chief music-teacher, held the door-knob in one
hand, while with the other she was vigorously scouring the panels. Her
sleeves were rolled up to the shoulders, a large apron covered her from
chin to slipper, and her veil was removed. As she scoured, her full,
sweet face was uplifted, and her large blue eyes watched the success of
her labor with perfect earnestness and good-will.

A burst of laughter revealed the spectators to her. Mr. Gerald stood
just within the room, bowing profoundly, with gravity and some
diffidence, but the two ladies were thoroughly amused.

“Would you not think,” cried Sister Cecilia, “that she expected to see
that dingy old door turn between her hands into the great pearl of the
New Jerusalem gate? You certainly did expect a miracle, Bernadette.”

Sister Bernadette’s blush was but momentary, only the rapid color of
surprise that faded away in dimples as she smiled. Her sleeves were
pulled down and her veil snatched on in a trice, and she went to meet
their visitors with an air that would have adorned a drawing-room.

“Sister is a witch,” she said. “I was thinking of the gates of the New
Jerusalem, though not expecting a miracle.”

This lady, whom we find scrubbing a door, with her sleeves rolled up,
was the child of wealth and gentle blood. She had beauty, talents, and
culture, and her life had been without a cloud, save those light ones
that only enhance the surrounding brightness. Yet she had turned away
from the world, not in bitterness and disappointment, nor because it
was to her unbeautiful, but because its fragments of beauty served
only to remind her of the infinite loveliness. She had not Sister
Cecilia’s enthusiasm; but her heart was a fountain for ever full of
love, and cheerfulness, and a gentle courage. She seemed to live in a
sunny, spiritual calm above the storms of life.

After a few graceful words, she took leave, promising to send Anita
to them. Miss Ferrier wished Mr. Gerald to hear the girl play on the
piano, and Miss Ferrier was a benefactor to their community, and,
therefore, a person to be obliged. Otherwise they might not have
thought it profitable for the child to receive a morning-call from
fashionable people who were neither related to nor intimate with her.

Anita came in presently, as a moonbeam comes in when you lift the
curtain at night. Softly luminous and without sound, it is there. This
girl was rather small and dark-haired, and had a dazzling fairness of
complexion to which her simple brown dress was in admirable contrast.
Her eyes were blue and almost always downcast, as if she would wish
to hide that full, unsteady radiance that shone out through them.
Nothing could have been more charming than her manner—timid without
awkwardness, and showing that innocent reserve of a child which springs
neither from fear nor distrust. She met Miss Ferrier sweetly, but was
not the first to extend her hand; and Annette’s kiss, to which she
only submitted, left a red spot on her cheek which lingered for some
time after. She was one of those sensitive flowers that shrink from
the lightest touch. No love was delicate enough for her except that
ineffable love of the “Spouse of virgins.”

Lawrence Gerald watched her with enchantment. The immense gravity and
respect of her salutation to him had made him smile. It was a new
study for him. How sunburnt and hackneyed Annette seemed beside this
fair little cloistered snowdrop! Poor Annette, with her grieved and
disappointed heart, which surely had not chosen the rough ways of the
world, and would gladly have been loved and shielded as this girl had
been, received scant charity from the man whose sole hope she was. So
are our misfortunes imputed to us as crimes!

Anita played admirably on the piano, turning the music for herself.
After her first gentle refusal of his help, Lawrence did not venture to
press the matter, fearing to alarm her timidity; but he seated himself
near, and, affecting not to observe her, watched every movement.

After the first piece, Miss Ferrier and Sister Cecilia, seated by
a distant window, began to talk in whispers about various business
affairs; but as the gentleman by the piano was listening, and pushed
toward her a second sheet of music when she laid the first aside, the
performer did not rise.

“Yes,” Sister Cecilia was saying, her eyes fixed on a rough sofa the
nuns had themselves stuffed cushions for, “I think there is something
up-stairs that will do to cover it. We have several large packages
that have not been opened. They were sent here the day after Mother
Chevreuse died, and we have had no heart to touch them since. There are
some shawls, and blankets, and quilts that Mrs. Macon gathered for us
from any one who would give. I am sure we shall find something there
that will do very well.”

“And now sing for me,” Lawrence said gently, as Anita ended her
second piece. “I am sure you sing. You....” He checked himself there,
not daring to finish his speech. “You have the full throat of a
singing-bird,” he was going to say.

He placed on the music-rack a simple little _Ave Maria_, and she sang
it in a pure, flute-toned voice, and with a composed painstaking to do
her best that provoked him. He leaned a little, only a little, nearer
when she had ended, and sat with her eyes downcast, the lashes making a
shadow on her smooth, colorless cheeks.

“It is a sweet song,” he said; “but you can sing what is far more
difficult and expressive. Sing once again, something stronger. Give me
a love-song.”

He trembled at his own audacity, and his face reddened as he brought
out the last words. Would she start up and rush out of the room? Would
she blush, or burst into tears? Nothing of the kind. She merely sat
with her eyes downcast, and her fingers resting lightly on the keys,
and tried to recollect something.

Then a little smile, faint from within, touched the corners of her
mouth, her eyes were lifted fully and fixed on air, and she sang that
hymn beloved by S. Francis Xaverius:

  “O Deus! ego amo te.”

It was no longer the pale and timid novice. Fire shone from her
uplifted eyes, a roseate color warmed her transparent face, and the
soul of a smile hovered about her lips. It was the bride singing to her
Beloved.

When she had finished the last words, the singer turned toward the
window, as if looking to Sister Cecilia for sympathy, knowing well that
only with her could she find it, and perceived then that she was alone
with Lawrence Gerald.

Annette, half ashamed of herself for doing it, had kept her promise,
and lured the sister out of the parlor on some pretext.

Anita rose immediately, made the gentleman a slight obeisance, and
glided from the room without uttering a word.

When she had gone, he sat there confounded. “She a child!” he muttered.
“She is the most self-possessed and determined woman I ever met.”

The love-song he had asked for addressed to God, and her abrupt
departure, were to his mind proofs of the most mortifying rebuff he had
ever received.

But he mistook, not knowing the difference between a child of earth
and a child of heaven. That he could mean any other kind of love-song
than the one she had sung never entered Anita’s mind. Love was to her
an everyday word, oftener on her lips than any other. She spoke of love
in the last waking moment at night and the first one in the morning.
There was no reason why she should fear the word. As to the rest, it
was nothing but obedience.

“Why did you come out, my dear?” asked Sister Cecilia, meeting her in
the entry.

“Sister Bernadette told me never to remain alone with a gentleman,”
Anita replied simply.

Lawrence was just saying to himself that, after all, her fear of
staying with him was rather flattering, when she re-entered the room
with Annette and the sister, and came to the piano again. It was
impossible for vanity to blind him. He had not stirred the faintest
ripple on the surface of her heart. It was a salutary mortification.

Sister Cecilia carried in her hands a man’s large gray shawl. Opening
it out, she threw it over their improvised sofa, and tucked it in
around the arms and the cushions. “It will do nicely,” she said. “And
we do not need it for a wrap or a spread.”

Annette viewed it a little. “So it will,” she acquiesced. “A few large
pins will keep it in place. But here is a little tear in the corner.
Let me turn it the other way. There! that does nicely, doesn’t it,
Lawrence?”

She turned in speaking to him, but he was not there. He had stepped out
into the porch, and was beckoning Jack to drive the carriage up inside
the grounds.

They took leave after a minute.

“Be sure you all pray for the success of our concert,” was Annette’s
farewell charge to the sister. “We are to have our last rehearsal
to-night.”

She glanced into her companion’s face as they drove along, but
refrained from asking him any questions about his interview with Anita.
His expression did not indicate that he had derived much pleasure from
it.

 TO BE CONTINUED.




MUSIC.


  WHEN the heart is overflowing,
    Now with sorrow, now with joy,
  And its fulness mocks our showing,
    Like a spell that words destroy:

  When the soul is all devotion,
    Till its rapture grows a pain
  And to free the pent emotion
    Even prayer’s wings spread in vain:

  Then but one relief is given:
    Not a voice of mortal birth,
  But a language born in heaven,
    And in mercy lent to earth:

  Lent to consecrate our sighing,
    Shed a glory on our tears,
  And uplift us without dying
    To the Vision-circled spheres.




AN ART PILGRIMAGE THROUGH ROME.

ROME as we saw it in 1863 was already so far modernized as to possess
two railway lines, one on the Neapolitan and one on the Civita Vecchia
side. The old and more romantic entrance was by the Porta del Popolo,
which was reached by crossing the Ponte Molle. Two traditions help to
invest this plain, strong bridge with peculiar interest. It was within
sight of it that the great battle was fought which decided the triumph
of Constantine and Christianity in the already tottering Roman Empire.
Here the miraculous cross appeared to the great leader the night before
the battle, lighting up the horizon with its mystic radiance, and
blazoning forth those prophetic words: _In hoc signo vinces_—“In this
sign shalt thou conquer”—which were afterwards graven as the motto of
the emperor on his new standard, or _labarum_. Near the Ponte Molle,
too, then called Pons Milviensis, were the spoils of the temple, and
notably the seven-branched candlestick, thrown into the Tiber to save
them from the hands of the invading Huns; and it is seriously believed
that, were the river to be drained and carefully dredged in that spot,
many rare and valuable historical relics would be found. It is supposed
that, the flow of the water being very sluggish, and the mud, with
its tawny color, oozy and detaining, these treasures may easily have
remained embedded in their unsavory hiding-place.

The modern entrance from the Civita Vecchia side is unattractive in
the extreme, but the new depot at the Piazza de’ Termini affords a
very fair first view of Rome. Before reaching the city, a beautiful
spectacle is presented by the long rows of aqueducts standing sharply
defined out of the low, olive-spotted plain, and by the massive tomb
of Cecilia Metella, rising in towering prominence among the lesser
monuments of the Appian Way. Beautiful at all times, this scene of
lovely and suggestive grandeur is still more beautiful by moonlight;
and, if one could forget the unfortunate details of that most prosaic
of modern buildings, a railway-station, the Piazza de’ Termini would
hardly break the spell. On one side are the ruins of the baths of
Diocletian, their brick walls covered with golden wall-flowers, and
just beyond them the cloister and church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.
The interior of this church is supported by huge monolith columns
of granite, still bearing the marks of the fire which destroyed the
baths, from whose adjoining halls they were taken. On the opposite
side are the prisons for women—a far happier and more peaceful abode
than most places of the sort, the _jailers_ being cloistered sisters
specially vowed to this heroic work of self-devotion. A little further
on is the great fountain, divided into three compartments, each backed
by a _basso-rilievo_ of great merit, the centre one representing in
gigantic proportions Moses striking the rock. The small domed church
of the Vittoria, which faces the fountain, is the national _ex-voto_
commemorating the battle of Lepanto, and boasts a masterpiece of one of
the sculptors of the Renaissance—a term too often convertible with
artistic decadence. This is a languishing and affected but marvellously
correct statue of S. Teresa on her death-bed; and the church is served
by barefooted Carmelite friars. The streets branching from the Piazza,
though not so narrow, are to the full as crooked as those in the lower
portion of the city; but, to the practised Italian traveller, they will
appear almost wide. Those of Genoa and Venice are veritable lanes,
through which two wheelbarrows could not pass each other, and across
which you could literally shake hands out of the windows of each floor;
so that the Roman streets do not strike you as uncommonly narrow,
unless you are fresh from Paris or Munich.

Here are the same peculiarities as in most other Italian towns, but
fraught with a deeper meaning, since we are at the headquarters of
the religion which gives them birth: the frequent shrines at the
street-corners, chiefly of the Blessed Virgin and the divine Infant,
rudely enough represented, but denoting the steadfast faith of the
people, and kept perpetually adorned by a lighted oil-lamp in a blue
or red glass; the stalls in the markets, which, by the way, stand only
in the dingier thoroughfares round the Pantheon and S. Eustachio;
the strange medley of meat, vegetables, flowers, antiquities; in
summer, the mounds of cut water-melons (the Roman’s favorite fruit),
and the ricketty stands piled with figs in all the confused shades
of purple, black, green, and white; in winter, the _scaldini_, or
little square boxes filled with charcoal, which the market-women carry
about everywhere—to market, to church, and very often to bed; the
curious antique lamps of brass with two or three beaks, each bearing
a weak flame, and the whole thing a copy, line for line, of the old
Roman lamps of two thousand years ago; on S. Joseph’s day, the 19th
of March, the stalls decorated with garlands of green, and heaped
with _fritellette_ (fried fish under various disguises); the peasant
funeral winding slowly through the crowd, with the corpse, that of a
young girl, lying uncovered, but enwreathed in simple flowers, on an
open bier borne by the cowled members of a pious brotherhood specially
dedicated to this work, and whose faces even are covered, leaving only
the eyes visible through two narrow slits; the droves of Campagna oxen,
cream-colored, mild, Juno-eyed, and with thick, smooth, branching
horns; the flocks of Campagna buffaloes, shaggy and fierce, with eyes
like pigs, humps on their necks, and short, crooked horns—a very
fair impersonation of the evil one for an imaginary “temptation of S.
Anthony”; then, finally, at Christmas time, the _pifferari_, peasants
of the Abruzzi, whose immemorial custom it is to come on an annual
musical pilgrimage to Rome, and play their mountain airs before every
street-shrine in the city.

These latter are deserving of a more lengthened notice, and, indeed,
no traveller can fail to be struck by the rugged picturesqueness of
their appearance. Some one has not inappropriately called them the
“satyrs of the Campagna,” though they belong rather to the mountain
than to the plain. Their dress is that which we are erroneously taught
to connect with the traditional ideal of a brigand (an ideal, by the
way, very unjustly supposed to be realized by the honest, industrious,
and deluded peasants of whom New York has recently said such hard
things)—a high, conical felt hat, with a frayed feather or red band
and tassels; a red waistcoat; a coarse blue jacket and leggings,
sometimes of the shaggy hair of white goats (hence the title satyr),
sometimes of tanned skin bound round with cords that interlace as
far as the knee. The ample cloak common to all Roman and Neapolitan
peasants completes the costume, and gives it a dignity which sits
well upon them. Their instruments are very primitive, and the tunes
they perform are among the oldest national airs of Italy, transmitted
intact from father to son by purely oral teaching. They always go in
couples, and, while one plays the _zampogna_, or bagpipe, the other
accompanies him on the _piffero_, or pastoral pipe—a short, flute-like
instrument. These are the men who make the fortunes of many an artist,
and who, as models, are transformed as often as Proteus or Jupiter of
old. The broad flight of steps leading from the Piazza di Spagna to
the Pincian hill is their chief resort when off duty as _pifferari_,
and on the lookout as models; and any guide could show you among them
Signor So-and-So’s “Moses,” or Madame Such-a-one’s “S. Joseph,” besides
innumerable other characters, Biblical and classical, sustained by at
most only a dozen men of flesh and blood. A few women there are among
them, some in the characteristic but rare costume which is erroneously
supposed to be the only one worn in the neighborhood of Rome, namely,
the square fold of spotless linen on the head (a style almost Egyptian
in its massiveness) and narrow skirt of darkest blue, with an apron of
carpet-like pattern and texture. A row of heavy coral beads encircles
their throats, and the ample folds of their loose chemise of white
cotton are confined by a blue bodice laced up the front. These figures
suggest themselves as splendid models for a set of Caryatides, but they
are more usually painted as typical peasant women, and sometimes, when
old, as S. Elizabeth, S. Anne, or the Sibyls.

The confusion of gaily-attired or dark-robed figures in the streets is
at first bewildering to the stranger, especially on a festival day,
when one would think that the middle ages had broken up through the
thin crust of levelling modern decorum. Here are Capuchin friars, in
their coarse brown tunics confined round the waist by a white knotted
cord, hurrying with large baskets on their arms from house to house to
collect their meal of broken refuse; further on is a Papal zouave in
his uniform of gray and his white half-leggings—a foreigner and very
likely a noble, fair, slight, and dignified, like Col. de Charrette,
the grandson of the great Vendean leader of 1793; here, again, comes an
_abbate_, with his enormous black three-cornered hat and his long and
ample cloak or garment gathered in a line of full, close folds at his
back, and sweeping thence around his person with all the picturesque
dignity of a Roman toga; jostling against this dark figure is the
lithe, cat-like French soldier, cheery and open-faced; beyond him
hurry lackeys in rich but faded liveries that look as if they had been
fashioned out of tapestry; peasants in every garb, some clustering
round a _scrivano_, or public letter-writer, established in the open
air at a rickety table, with a few sheets of dirty paper and a heap of
limp red wafers for his stock in trade; and others intent upon their
birthright, _i.e._ noisy and successful begging.

Perhaps one of the most curious sights to a stranger is to be found
in the back yards of houses inhabited by swarms of families who have
but one well among them from which to draw water. The well is in the
middle of the courtyard, and from it to every window of the house (and
often of several adjoining houses) runs a strong wire cord. On this
is slung a bucket, which is let down or drawn up by a pulley easily
managed from the window; and all day long this ingenious manœuvre is
constantly repeated with sundry whirring noises quite novel to the
northern ear. It would need volumes to give any idea of the mere outer
picturesqueness of Roman scenes, much more of the varied beauties that
do not at once catch the eye. The Ghetto, or Jews’ quarter, affords
one of the most peculiar street-sights. The streets here are narrower,
darker, filthier than elsewhere, the stalls are dingier, the poverty
more apparent. Rags everywhere and in every stage of dilapidation—rags
hung out over your head like banners; rags spread on the knees of the
industrious women, who with deft fingers are mending and darning them;
rags laid in shelves and coffers; rags clothing the swarthy children
that tumble about the grimy door-steps—a very nightmare of rags. And
among them, exiles: gorgeous robes hidden away where you would least
expect them, rare laces of gossamer texture and historical interest,
brocades that once graced a coronation, and even gems that the Queen
of Sheba might have envied. Mingled in race and broken in spirit
as are these Jews, weak descendants of the stern old Bible heroes,
one touching evidence of their loyalty to their ancient traditions
remains. We were told of it by Dr. O——, of the Propaganda College,
who had many friends among the Hebrew Rabbis. The Arch of Titus in
the Forum, or what is now vulgarly called the Campo Vaccino (oxen’s
field or market), is a magnificent trophy commemorating the last
victory of Rome over Jerusalem. Its _bassorilievi_, both exterior and
interior, represent the sacking of the Holy City and the despoiling
of the temple. The carvings of the triumphal procession bearing aloft
the rifled treasures of the Holy of Holies, the great seven-branched
candlestick, the mystic table of the “loaves of proposition,” the
golden bowls and censers, naturally enough excite feelings of bitter
regret in the breast of the exiled and wandering race. So it happens
that no good and true Jew passing through the Forum will ever follow
the road that leads under this beautiful sculptured monument of his
country’s fall, nor even let its shadow fall upon his head as he
passes it by. This sign of faithful mourning certainly struck us as
very significant and poetical. There are two synagogues in the Ghetto,
and it is curious to reflect that these Hebrew temples were tolerated
within the walls of Rome by a government which proscribed Anglican
chapels and relegated the worship of the English visitors beyond the
Porta del Popolo. This restriction may have unheedingly been called
intolerant; but let us stay for a moment to examine its reason.
Rome was a theocracy and swayed by directly opposite principles to
any other existing state, and it could no more allow of promiscuous
worship within its domain than of old the Hebrew high-priest could
have allowed the Moabitish altars to be erected at the doors of the
Ark of God. In speaking of the Rome of the popes, it is absolutely
necessary for a non-Catholic to set his mind to a different focus from
that which answers the ordinary purposes of travel and observation;
it is necessary to do as Hawthorne says somewhere in his romance of
the _Marble Faun_—that is, to look at the pictured window of a great
cathedral _from the inside_, where the harmony of form, of color, and
of distribution is plainly visible; not from the _outside_, where an
unmeaning network of dark, irregular patches of glass vexes the eye of
the gazer.

One is apt at first to wander through these Roman streets in the
indecision brought on by _l’embarras des richesses_. Shall we seek the
Rome of religion, of history, or of art? Shall we make a tour of the
churches or the studios first? Or shall we go at once to the colossal
ruins, and bury ourselves in the annals of the old republic? All these
regions have been thoroughly explored, and there are guides, both
living and dead, to lead one through the divers cities existing within
the bosom of the whilom mistress of the world. The streets themselves
are a series of pictures, from the Via Condotti—where the most
finished masterpieces of antique jewellery are successfully imitated,
and where wealthy strangers crowd round the counters, eager to take
home keepsakes for less fortunate friends—to the Piazza Montanara,
where the handsome peasants from the country mingle with the stalwart
Frasteverini, who boast of being lineal descendants of the ancient
Romans. One thing which is very apt to strike any thoughtful observer
upon a first saunter through Rome (we speak of 1863) is the sovereignty
of religion in every department of life. Art is wholly moulded by it,
domestic life pervaded by it, municipal life simply founded on it.
Every monument of note is stamped with its impress, as the Pantheon;
every ruin is consecrated to its service, as the Coliseum. Every public
building bears on its walls the keys and tiara of the Papacy side by
side with the “S. P. Q. R.” of the city arms (_Senatus Populusque
Romanus_). Even the private galleries are under government protection,
and not one of the pictures can be sold without the leave of the
authorities. The very collections of classic statuary are the work of
successive ecclesiastical rulers. Education is essentially religious
(as it always is in any country whose ideal still remains civilized
and does not approximate to that of the irresponsible denizen of the
forests), and at the same time national, since every nation has here
its own representative college. The archæological discoveries in the
catacombs and at the Dominican Convent of San Clemente open a new
branch of research peculiar to Rome, while modern art instinctively
follows in the same religious groove, and spends itself chiefly on the
imitation of Christian mosaics, the manufacture of costly articles of
devotion, such as reliquaries, crucifixes, rosaries, and the rivalry of
both foreign and native artists to invent new æsthetical expositions
of religious truth, new embodiments of religious symbols. From the
street-shrines which we have passed to the studios of Christian artists
and the examination of ancient Christian art there is, therefore, less
distance than one would think. The same idea has created them, and
the faith which keeps the lamp alight and inspires the _pifferaro’s_
tribute is the same that guides the chisel of the sculptor and the
brush of the painter. It is certainly a remarkable fact that in Rome
there is perhaps less landscape-painting than in many other schools and
centres of art, and that, too, in a country so picturesque, so full
of that pathetic southern beauty of luminous atmosphere and intense
coloring. The human element, and, above all, the religious, seems, as
by divine right, to blot out every other in this mystic capital, not
of the world alone, but of the whole realm of intellect. Classicism
itself, the child of the soil, seems an alien growth here, and one
wanders through miles of antique statuary as one would through some
gigantic collection of exotics in a northern clime, expecting every
moment to return to a different and more normal atmosphere. So it is
not to be wondered at, when exploring the field of modern art, that
so many of those wild-looking Germans, with long, fair hair and bushy
beards, extravagance of costume, and universal abundance of the plaid
shawl serving as an overcoat, should be engaged on S. Jeromes or S.
Catherines rather than on Apollos or Minervas.

The Italians are best represented among the sculptors, and Tenerani,
Giacometti, and Benzoni have made their religious statuary famous
through the Christian world. Discarding the influence of the
Renaissance, they have returned to the austere ideal so well understood
by Canova and exemplified in his figures of Justice and Mercy on the
tomb of Clement XIV. in S. Peter’s—the ideal which Michael Angelo
forsook when he introduced “muscular Christianity” into art. Tenerani’s
“Angel of Judgment,” intended for the tomb of a Prussian princess, is
a magnificent conception. Colossal in size, and divinely impassible
in expression, this grand figure stands as if in the last dread pause
before the call, holding uplifted in his mighty hand the trumpet
that is to awaken the dead. It is impossible to give an adequate
impression of this statue, so majestic and so simple, with its massive
drapery falling straight to the feet, not tortured with a thousand
undignified wrappings, nor flying like a stiffly frozen scarf around
the bared limbs, as it does on the wretched angels whom Bernini has
perched upon the bridge opposite the Mole of Adrian. The two lifelike
statues of Christ and his betrayer, Judas, which are placed at the
foot of the Scala Santa, one of the most venerated shrines of Rome,
are also Tenerani’s handiwork. Judas clutches a bag of money in his
left hand, which he tries to hide behind his back, while his bent body
and the low animal cunning in his look betray the sordid eagerness
that prompts him. Opposite this statue is that of our Saviour, whose
attitude, full of dignity and repose, is more that of a lenient judge
than of an entrapped victim. As far as marble can be god-like, this
figure borrows something of the lofty characteristics of its original;
and it is to be noticed that sculpture can more easily than painting
attain such quasi-perfection. We have all been repeatedly struck by the
effeminacy of almost every representation of our Lord, but this danger
is much diminished in marble, the material itself being more or less
incapable of sensuous interpretation. This is very evident in entirely
or partially undraped figures, which are redeemed from the alluring
repulsiveness of the same subjects on canvas by a certain firmness
of outline and breadth of contour suggestive of strength rather than
tenderness, dignity rather than charm.

One very beautiful group in marble was the “Taking down from the
Cross,” which in 1863 was still in the _atelier_ of a German sculptor,
whose name we have forgotten. The realistic details, such as the
nails still embedded in the sacred hands of the Redeemer, the crown
of thorns, the tears of the Magdalen who is embracing his feet,
were marvellously and yet not painfully correct, while the whole
expression of the artistically grouped figures was touchingly
Christian. Benzoni’s Eve was another well-known masterpiece, of which
many fac-similes by the sculptor himself were constantly sold to rich
English or Russian patrons; but its chief merit was the wonderful hair,
upon which the “mother of all the living” half sits, and which is
chiselled with minute accuracy. The statue might be that of a beautiful
bather or a grandly moulded Venus, save for the symbolic serpent twined
around the stump of the tree on which she leans.

Gibson, the English sculptor, was the apostle of the revived art of
tinting statues. He contended that such was the custom of the ancients,
and brought forward many proofs in favor of his assertion, notably a
statue of Augustus discovered at the baths of Livia during our stay in
Rome, and which bore marks of gilding and vermilion on the fringes of
its drapery. Gibson’s studio was a pagan temple, the representative of
classic naturalism, very beautiful, but equally soulless. His tinted
Venus was the marvel of the London Exhibition of 1862, and now he
was at work giving the finishing touch to a very lovely tinted Hebe.
The flesh was skilfully tinged to a faint pink hue, so faint that it
suggested ivory with a glow upon it rather than actual flesh; and
here and there, for instance, round the short kirtle and on the band
around the forehead, ran a pencil-line of gold in delicate tracery.
The artist, gray and withered, and pacing among his statues in a loose
sort of _déshabillé_, reminded one of the ancient Greek philosophers
discoursing on their favorite theories. He was altogether a cultivated
and charming pagan, and had conceptions of the Greek myths which
would have delighted Phidias. He explained his Bacchus to us most
enthusiastically, dwelling on the mistake often made of delineating him
as the bloated god of intemperance and coarse indulgence. “I have made
him,” he said, pointing to his statue, crowned with vine-leaves, “not
less beautiful than Apollo; for he was the god of youth and pleasure,
of dance and song, and not the type of brutal revelry some people would
have us believe. He left that to Silenus.” This statue was not tinted.
Whether the ancients did or did not as a rule use color as an adjunct
of sculpture, or whether, if they did, it was only in the degenerate
stage of art, we cannot pretend to say; but, to our mind, such a
practice seriously detracts from the severe beauty of statuary. It
seems a pandering to passion, a compromise to allure the imagination,
and even a confession of weakness on the part of the artist.

Story, the American sculptor, was and is by far the ablest
representative of secular art in Rome. His two magnificent statues of
Cleopatra and the Libyan Sibyl were the gems of the “Roman Court” in
the London Exhibition of 1862. The former (or a _replica_ of it) is
in Mr. Johnston’s gallery of modern pictures in New York. Story has
given his heroine something of the Egyptian type, thereby forsaking
the arbitrary rule that decreed the Greek type only to be admissible
in sculpture; and, if he has lost in mere physical beauty, he has
amply gained in power. In his Cleopatra, he has not given us the
voluptuous woman, but the captive queen, brooding over the fall of
her sovereignty, looking into futurity with gloomy apprehension; for
she sees her empire enslaved, her nationality wiped out, her dynasty
forgotten. We dare not pity her, for she is above such a tribute; we
cannot despise her, for we feel that contempt would not reach her. She
is here the tangible embodiment of a principle rather than the splendid
sinner of flesh and blood; and involuntarily we admire and reverence
her, and are silent before her imperial woe. The Libyan Sibyl is not
unlike the Cleopatra in general effect, and bears the same stamp of
loftiness of mind on the part of the artist.

Of Hoffman, a very different sculptor, and the adopted son of Overbeck,
we remember but one work, as he died between our first and second
visits to Rome, and our recollection of him dates, therefore, from
a somewhat childish period. This work was the bust of a Madonna,
in which seemed blended in some indescribable way the softness of
the painter’s art and the firmness of the sculptor’s. The head is
slightly bent forward, and the eyes look modestly down. Over the back
of the head falls a veil, and the brow is bound by a simple crown of
_fleur-de-lis_. The expression is radiant yet grave, and the artist has
ventured to use the help of gilding to embellish the veil and circlet.
But how different the effect from that produced by Gibson’s tinting!
The thread-like mediæval tracery that forms the half-inch border to the
veil, and the line of gold that just defines the contour of the crown,
have not the least disturbing effect in the harmony of the whole pure
composition. One would think that this was the head of the white-robed
Virgin in Beato Angelico’s fresco in the Convent of San Marco at
Florence, translated into marble.

Christian art in the department of painting is chiefly represented
by the new German school of Overbeck. The master himself, a worthy
follower of the religious painters of the XIVth and XVth centuries, was
quite a study. His enthusiastic explanations of his cartoons of the
Seven Sacraments, which were in his _atelier_ at the time we visited
him, were very impressive. His own appearance was singularly in harmony
with the tone of his works, and, by its dignified asceticism, could
not fail to remind one that to paint as he did is to pray. One of his
most beautiful productions is now at Munich—a half-length Madonna—in
whose draperies he has managed to combine the most richly varied tints,
all subdued to that velvety depth and mellowness which is so peculiar
to some of the old Pre-Raphaelite masters, and which always suggests
to our mind the tints seen in mediæval stained glass. The Christian
revival linked with his name has spread far and wide, and all over
England, Germany, and France are found memorials of its inspiration.
The nudities of the Renaissance, the anatomies of the school of Michael
Angelo, and the handsome, robust materialities of even the later manner
of Raphael were banished to the realm of secular art, and the revived
ideal of religious chivalry was no longer the muscular athlete, the
handsome peasant, or the graceful _odalisque_. Many disciples followed
the new artistic school, and one of these, Seitz, of whom we have had
personal knowledge, may well find a place here. Seitz had his studio
near the Piazza Barberini, and, when we went in a party to see him, he
was at work on a beautiful group of saints arrayed round the throne
of the Virgin and Child. It was a thoroughly characteristic picture,
designed according to the mediæval custom of representing the family
of the owner by their respective patron saints. It was destined for a
Gothic chapel in England, and has since been transferred there, having
been ordered by a connoisseur in religious art and ecclesiastical
archæology. The minuteness and accuracy of detail, such as are required
by the costumes of S. Charles Borromeo (cardinal), of S. Francis of
Sales, (bishop), and S. Ida (a Benedictine nun), are perfect, yet
without a trace of that pagan naturalism which, since the days of the
Medici, has uncrowned every ideal, and lowered even historical dignity
to the level of vulgar domesticity. The researches necessary to a
correct representation of such royal garments as are distinctive of
S. Constance, the daughter of the Emperor Constantine; S. Edith, the
royal Saxon abbess; S. Edward the Confessor, who holds in his hand a
model of his foundation, Westminster Abbey; and of S. Elizabeth of
Hungary, the queenly almsgiver, whose loaves of bread were turned to
wreaths of red roses as her husband was about to upbraid her for her
too lavish generosity, are also shown, by the success of these figures,
to have been deep and painstaking. S. Thomas of Canterbury, patron
of the chapel for which the altar-piece was intended, is also very
beautifully represented, the pallium and crozier faithfully copied,
while a knife, placed transversely in the interstices of the pastoral
staff, points out symbolically the manner of his heroic death. The
main figures, the Virgin and Child, are radiant with heavenly grace
as well as dignity, the tints of the former’s robe being exquisitely
delicate, almost transparent in their ethereal suggestiveness, while
the disposition of the folds is both grave and modest. The picture
is on a gold ground, and divided into three panels by XIIth century
_colonnettes_ of twisted gold, while the names of the saints are
inscribed in Lombardic characters on the breadth of the frame. Before
we take our leave of modern art, of which, of course, we do not pretend
to have given more than a very superficial summary, we must not forget
the restored mosaics in the Basilica of S. Paul. This is outside the
walls of Rome, and has been in continual process of rebuilding and
embellishment for over forty years. The great fire of 1822, which
destroyed the old Basilica, and swept away the carved cedar roof which
was one of its chief glories, only spared the apse containing some
valuable mosaics of the Theodosian period—an enthroned Christ, around
which was an inscription recounting how the Empress Galla Placidia and
Pope Leo the Great had finished the decorations of the church, and
several medallions purporting to represent the first twenty or thirty
popes. Among the renovating tasks to be undertaken, that of continuing
the series of Papal mosaics became one of the foremost. Those pontiffs
of whom some authentic likeness remained, whether in casts, busts,
medals, or on canvas, were represented according to these data; while,
for the earlier popes of whom no reliable memorial was left, tradition
and symbolism were appealed to. The artists took great pains in
collecting and arranging their models, the ecclesiastical authorities
gave them every help and encouragement in their power, and the result
was a series of new mosaic medallions running all round the nave above
the granite columns, hardly distinguishable from the IVth century work,
and in every respect true to the almost forgotten traditions of this
ancient branch of art.

Among other praiseworthy restorations of antique industry is the
establishment of Signor Castellani, a true artist and enthusiast, who
stands unrivalled in his application to the study of Etruscan and
Roman jewellery. Here may be seen wonderful and exact reproductions
of Roman _bullæ_, or golden ornaments, hung round the necks of youths
before they attained the age at which they assumed the _toga virilis_,
indicative of manhood and citizenship; _figulæ_, or brooches of gold,
wrought with the heads of lions or leopards, or chased with vine-leaf
patterns; plain, massive rings, armlets and golden waistbelts, delicate
crowns of golden myrtle leaves, hair-pins and ornaments (those with
which Roman ladies are said to have often struck their female slaves in
capricious anger), and various nondescript jewellery. Engrafting upon
these ornaments such later conceits as were appropriate, Castellani
produced rings and brooches bearing the Greek word _Αει_ (for ever)
in plain Etruscan letters, or the reversible words, _Amor_, _Roma_,
etc. Perhaps the most perfect objects of art were the necklaces, with
their little amphora-shaped pendants copied from those found in ancient
tombs, and which are now so well known. The granulated gold-work
used in many of the more solid pieces of jewellery is peculiar to
Castellani’s new antique style, and cost much time, research, and
patience to bring to the old standard, of which the results were also
for a long time the only recipes.

To return to Christian art and its early origin, we cannot do better
than go straight to the catacombs. Apart from their historical
interest, they have the additional merit of being the birthplace
of Christian symbolism. It should always be borne in mind that art
is a means, not an end. If it aims only at mere physical beauty,
it degrades itself to the level of a common trade. Its inspiration
should come from on high, and its object be to lift the soul from
vulgar to sublime thoughts. Thus began the art of the catacombs. It
was eminently symbolical, like the language of Christ himself in the
parables, and like the venerable traditions of the Old Testament.
We should detain our readers too long were we to propose anything
like an adequate examination of the various types found in the
catacombs. The good shepherd surrounded by his flock, symbolizing
the church; Moses striking the rock, symbolizing the grace of the
sacraments, particularly baptism; and Jonas saved from the whale,
and reposing under the miraculous gourd, typifying the resurrection
and life everlasting, are some of the most oft-repeated subjects.
The multiplication of the loaves and fishes also constantly recurs,
meaning the eucharistic sacrifice and sacrament, the sacrifice of the
Mass, and the sacrament of the body of the Lord under the appearance
of bread. The Deluge and Noe’s ark are frequently depicted, for the
sake of the symbol they contain—that of the church alone saving the
human race amid the general corruption of sin. The fish is a double
symbol, the five letters of the Greek word _Ιχθύς_ being the initials
of the following words: Jesus, Christ, Son (of) God, Saviour, which
form a complete confession of faith; and the animal itself, capable
of existing only in the water, typifying that by baptism alone does
the Christian soul live. Sometimes the fish is put for Christ himself;
as in two very ancient catacomb frescos, where it is seen in the one
swimming in the water, bearing a ship (the church) upon its back, and
in the other bearing a basket of bread, the type of the Holy Eucharist.
This symbol of the fish was so universally accepted, and became so
fixed in men’s minds, that it originated the shape of the episcopal
seal, which was and is still fashioned like a pointed oval or ogive.
In many frescos, a female figure is depicted with outstretched hands,
signifying, as some think, the church in prayer, or, as others say,
the Mother of God interceding for the church. Among the Christian
hieroglyphics, palms and crowns were frequent; a dove often represented
the spirit at peace in Christ (this was frequently the only epitaph
on a Christian’s tomb), and a peacock or a phœnix, immortality. Here
the recollections of paganism were suited to Christian doctrines,
and, like the converted temples, did duty in the service of truth. A
curious instance of this is seen in the frequent recurrence of the
myth of Orpheus depicted in the frescos of the catacombs, the Greek
shepherd with his lyre standing for Christ, who by the magic of his
doctrine and his grace tames the evil passions of man, as Orpheus tamed
the wild beasts of the forest. In the earlier frescos, we see traces
of the pure Greek models of ancient painting; the graceful draperies,
the delicate borders remind us of Pompeian art, but there is nothing
immodest, and the figures themselves are already of a graver and nobler
type. In the later paintings, the beauty of detail and ornamentation
grows less, but the grand ideal is yet more prominent. There is a
transition in art, but the indelible stamp of Christianity is already
impressed on the struggling types of a more perfect future. It was
fitting that Christianity should only use pagan civilization with
all its products as a pedestal—a noble basis, it is true, but still
only a pedestal—and should rear above it a structure wholly her own.
Thus from her inspiration rose a new architecture purely Christian;
new arts, such as stained glass-making; in literature, new languages
capable of more spiritual expressions. It is interesting to find
in Rome the tradition of Christian art so unbroken, and especially
to be able to compare the earliest efforts at a reverent and lucid
illustration of the truths of faith with the latest development of
the same sentiment in the new German pictures. From the catacombs and
San Clemente to the school of Overbeck the transition is natural, and
we find the same master-spirit guiding both pictorial expositions.
The seed that produced such painters as Gian Bellini, Fra Angelico,
Masaccio, Orcagna, Giotto, and Perugino was destined indeed to be
crushed for full four centuries, but what a glorious harvest has the
bruised grain yielded in this age! Of all the productions of the XIXth
century, none to our mind ever deserved its reputation one-quarter so
well as the Christian and Gothic revival, which is leading the human
mind back to the spirit of the early church.[204]

We do not speak of the much-frequented galleries of the Borghese,
Doria, or Corsini palaces, because every visitor to Rome knows them
as well as we do; nor of the Stanza of Raphael in the Vatican—which
we studied perhaps less than we ought—because we should probably
offend many established predilections by so doing. The pictures most
often under our eyes were those in the Sistine chapel and in S.
Peter’s, and of the former a most painful impression remains upon
our mind. The Christian ideal of art is there utterly violated by
a painter who, as a man, was a most fervent and austere Christian.
The taint of the Renaissance was upon Michael Angelo when he gave
us an athlete enthroned, in the place of Christ the Judge; and we
are happy to reflect that his spiritual conception of divine majesty
was far different from his artistic conception. The _pictures_ in S.
Peter’s, except one, are all mosaics, and a most marvellous triumph
of artistic illusion. Domenichino’s Communion of S. Jerome especially
is so accurately copied in this perplexing material that any one not
forewarned will never dream that he is looking on anything but canvas.
The single exception is the picture opposite the Porta Santa Marta, and
represents the judgment that befell Ananias and Sapphira.

Of all monuments of early Christianity, whose interest is joined with
that of art, none stands more conspicuous than the church of San
Clemente, served by the Irish Dominicans, and under English protection.
The discovery of the subterranean church and frescos, dating from the
days of S. Clement, the _third_ successor of S. Peter, was an era in
the history of ecclesiastical archæology. Believed to have been the
site of S. Clement’s own dwelling, and to have originated in an oratory
established there by himself, the Basilica of S. Clement is of a high
antiquity. There are proofs of its existence in 417, when Pope Zosimus
chose it as the scene of his condemnation of the Pelagian heresy. To
this date or thereabouts may be referred a certain Byzantine Madonna
in fresco; and the learned and enthusiastic F. Mullooly has built upon
this apparent coincidence a very beautiful and possibly correct theory.
“The very difference,” he says, “between the heads of S. Catherine and
S. Euphemia, with hair flowing down from their jewelled crowns—_i.e._
human nature decked with the jewels of virginity and martyrdom—and
the countenance of Our Lady, enshrined in a mass of ornaments, without
a single lock appearing—_i.e._ human nature totally transformed by
grace—indicates the limner’s scope.” And again: “_All_ the gifts of
grace are signified by the necklace, breastplate, and the immense
jewelled head-dress, with its triple crown, borne by Our Lady.” We
hear of S. Clement’s Basilica again in 600, of its being restored in
795, and, a century later (855), of its being in “good order.” It is
not accurately known whether it was destroyed by the earthquake of 896
or in the wars of Robert Guiscard and Pope Gregory VII. in 1084. At
any rate, it disappears from history after this last convulsion, and
not until 1857 was its existence proved by F. Mullooly’s successful
excavations. He has published a book upon the subject, conspicuous for
enthusiasm and archæological accuracy. Many portions of the Basilica
were found in almost perfect preservation, the columns especially
being of great beauty, variety, and costliness, both as to material
and workmanship. But the frescos are the most important part of the
silent testimony to Christian truth borne by this unearthed antiquity
dating almost from the apostolic age. One in particular we commend
to the notice of such advanced Anglicans as proclaim the “Roman”
church of to-day to be other than the apostolic church of the first
four centuries. It represents S. Clement celebrating Mass at a small,
square altar. We quote F. Mullooly’s literal description: “The central
compartment represents the interior of a church, from the arches of
which are suspended _seven_ lamps, symbolizing the seven gifts of the
Holy Ghost. That over the altar is circular in form,[205] much larger
than the other six, and contains _seven_ lights, probably typical of
the seven gifts of the same Holy Spirit. Anastasius the librarian, who
lived in the IXth century, makes mention of this form of lamp, and
calls it a _pharum cum corona_—a lighthouse with a crown—a crown from
its form, a lighthouse from the brilliancy of the light it emitted.”
He also says that it was in common use in all the Christian churches.
S. Clement, in his pontifical robes (_i.e._ a chasuble, an alb, etc.,
and more particularly a _pallium_), is officiating at the altar, over
which his name, _S. Clemens, Papa_—Pope S. Clement—is written in the
form of a cross. He has the maniple between the thumb and forefinger
of the left hand. The altar is covered with a plain white cloth, and
on it are the missal, the chalice, and paten. The missal is open, and
on one page of it are the words, _Dominus vobiscum_ (“The Lord be with
you”), which the saint is pronouncing, his arms extended, as Catholic
priests do even to this day when celebrating Mass. On the other page
are the words, _Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum_ (“The peace of the
Lord be ever with you”). These two phrases were introduced into the
liturgy of the church by S. Clement himself, and are still retained.
On the right of the saint are his ministers—namely, two bishops with
croziers in their left hands, a deacon, and a subdeacon. They all have
the circular tonsure (the distinguishing mark of the Latin rite),
and the pope, in addition to the tonsure, has the nimbus, or glory,
the symbol of sanctity.[206] In the neighboring fresco of the life
and death of S. Alexius, the Pope, S. Boniface, is depicted again in
similar pontifical garments, and is attended by two cross-bearers.
Here, too, are the hanging lamps, four in number; the clerics, to the
number of twenty, all wear the circular tonsure, and the pope has on
his head a conical white mitre. It is noticeable in these early frescos
that the shape of the lamps, chalice, crosses, and the fashion of the
vestments, chasuble, alb, altar-cloth, and mitre, are exactly such as
are now reproduced in the English establishments of Hardman & Co., and
the Browns, of Manchester and Birmingham—the style now called Gothic.
F. Mullooly notices the lavishness of these mural decorations in these
significant words: “They appear to have been part of a series painted
about the same time; and, when the colors were fresh, the Basilica
must have presented a brilliant appearance very different from that
Puritanical baldness which some suppose, but very falsely, to have
been the _undefiled condition_ of church walls in the _early ages_.”
A fuller investigation would reveal many interesting facts going far
to prove, by human means alone, the identity of the church of Clement
and that of Pius IX.; and, indeed, it is chiefly this that strikes all
candid English-speaking visitors to the subterranean church. In the
late Basilica built over the ruins of this early one are many objects
of artistic interest, notably the chapel of S. Catherine of Alexandria,
with her life painted in a series of frescos on the walls, and the
curious marble enclosure, four feet in height, round the choir, with
the two _ambones_, or marble desks, for the reading of the Gospel and
the Epistle. These, together with the enclosure, which is raised a
step or two above the level of the nave, are beautifully sculptured;
and already, in these unusual types of birds, beasts, and flowers, we
trace that departure from the tradition of the monotonous acanthus-leaf
which was to blossom forth into such wonders at the Cathedrals of
Cologne, Chartres, York, and Burgos. The frescos in S. Catherine’s
chapel it would take too long to describe; a medallion head of the
saint is especially noticeable for its great purity of outline and
expression, and the heavenly suggestiveness which hallows and rarefies
its human beauty. In a cursory sketch such as this, it is impossible
to do justice to a subject so vast as Roman art, and we have therefore
embodied in it but a few of our personal recollections. The deepest
impressions, however, can never be told in words. No one who has
visited Rome can ever succeed in fully expressing all his sentiments;
there are undefinable sensations that will assert themselves, though
the visitor should strive to the utmost to resist and stifle them;
there are vivid influences which are felt by the infidel, the Puritan,
and the Catholic alike, though the first will not acknowledge them, and
the second has too much human respect to put them into tangible shape;
still, they exist none the less strongly and may bear fruit when least
expected.

Rome is too much of a landmark in the tale of any traveller’s life to
be passed over in silence, and one might say of its charm and influence
what Rousseau caused to be graven on the pedestal of a statue of Eros
set up in his grounds near Geneva:

  “Passant, adore; voici ton maître;
  Il l’est, le fut, ou le doit être.”

  (“Passing, adore; behold thy master.
  He is, he was, or he ought to be.”)




TO BE FORGIVEN.


  I CALL thee “love”—“my sweet, my dearest love,”
    Nor feel it bold, nor fear it a deceit:
  Yet I forget not that, in realms above,
    The thrones of Seraphs are beneath thy feet.

  If Queen of angels thou, of hearts no less:
    And so of mine—a poet’s, which must needs
  Adore to all melodious excess
    What cannot sate the rapture that it feeds.

  And then thou art my Mother: God’s, yet mine!
    Of mothers, as of virgins, first and best;
  And I as tenderly, intimately thine
    As He, my Brother, carried at the breast.

  My Mother! ‘Tis enough. If mine the right
    To call thee this, much more to muse and sigh
  All other honeyed names. A slave, I _might_—
    A son, I _must_. And both of these am I.




TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING.

CONCLUDED.


ANOTHER shrine most welcome to all who have made a retreat in a
house of the Jesuits is the grotto of Manresa. I went to Spain to
visit this holy spot. I was enchanted with the wondrous appearance
of Montserrat, the most unique mountain, perhaps, on the globe. It
looks like some enormous temple or Valhalla built by the Scandinavians
in honor of their gods. Picture to yourself a high table-land, and
imagine this surmounted by the Giant’s Causeway (wherewith doubtless
you are familiar from the geography plates), and this again crowned by
a multitude of icebergs or by colossal models of the Milan Cathedral,
all forming a structure four thousand feet in height and some miles
in extent, situated in a beautiful country of rounded hills—the
Switzerland of Spain—which make the great mountain more singular and
imposing by the contrast. You may thus form an idea of Montserrat,
which the pious Catalonians say was thus rent by the thunderbolts of
God at the Crucifixion. A famous shrine of the Blessed Virgin lies
far up the mount; thirteen hermitages formerly existed, but were
destroyed by the French revolutionists. To the shrine of Mary the
converted Knight of Loyola repaired for his general confession, and
then, retiring to an open cavern in the side of a rocky hill, and
having the sublime mountain in view, he entered on the famous retreat
which resulted in that great work, the _Spiritual Exercises_. It was
delightful to say Mass in that cavern, preserved in its original narrow
nakedness, and the Mass served by a gentleman from New Granada, himself
a pilgrim to this holy place; to see the same shelf of rock on which
was written that celebrated book praised by so many popes, and which
worked such wonders in the perfecting of soldiers in the spiritual
warfare. But the House of Retreat, which still stands on the roof of
that rocky cavern, was changed from its original purpose, and, having
for a while been used as a hospital, lies now, since the expulsion
of the Jesuits, in empty desolation; its altar literally stripped,
its chapel in ruins, its library scattered, its corridors open to the
elements. Here, at the shrine to which all the novices of the order in
the noble church of Spain used to come on foot to refresh their spirit
at the Mount of God, where Ignatius had received a message from on
high, no one now remains but a lay brother in secular dress, who is
allowed, by connivance of the police, to sweep the church and care for
the chapels. Two other churches of the society and their colleges have
now no trace of their possession; and of two hundred Jesuits who were
formerly here, only three priests and two lay brethren are left, living
on alms, and residing in a more wretched lane than could be found in
New York.

No Jesuit, Dominican, Franciscan, or other religious, can to-day wear
the dress of his order. Their property was confiscated, their libraries
broken up; they are forbidden to live in community or receive novices,
and no compensation is given them for the means of living whereof they
were deprived. Such is a picture of religious life in that once most
noble country, which controlled the empire of the world when she was
most devoted to the church. In conversing with a young ecclesiastic,
who guided me to the mean dwelling of the Jesuits, up three pairs
of dark stairs, he said: “Every one notices the decay of faith and
increasing corruption of morals, and all acknowledge that the church
militant is practically weak when deprived of the services of her
religious orders.” I might relate visits to other places, and describe
other peoples—tell you of the Cathedral at Burgos, the bearishness of
some people I met, the politeness characteristic of others, the beauty
of Switzerland, the fresh simplicity of the Tyrol, the peculiar charm
of Venice, the prison of SS. Peter and Paul at Rome, the Propaganda
College, and so on endlessly; but I have only desired to illustrate
a little the pleasure of travel, not to describe everything, which
were impossible. So great is the attraction of travelling that a whole
people, the gypsies, spend their lives in constant roaming over the
world; but their condition, like that of certain classes in civilized
communities, shows abundantly that continual wandering is conducive to
advancement neither in morals, learning, nor real happiness.

Travellers for health, business, or pleasure are not excluded from
the advantages sought by those who travel expressly in pursuit of
knowledge. If one but keeps his head cool and his temper quiet, he
cannot but pick up a great deal of useful information during his
sojourn abroad. Indeed, so true is this that a trip abroad has always
been considered the necessary finish to a young man’s education; and I
would go so far as to say that no one can pretend to the appellative
of educated, in its best sense, unless he has travelled, or at least
mingled with the people and observed the institutions of other nations.
“The proper study of mankind is man”; and it is excellence in the
knowledge of mankind, after the knowledge of God and of self, that
constitutes learning. It is not mathematics alone, nor yet languages,
nor skill in trades nor navigation: it is to know our condition, and
capacity, and progress, and that of other countries; to know what in
law and government is most conducive to the social happiness, not
simply the material advancement; to the eternal weal, not the temporal
aggrandizement only of our race.

The desire of increasing in knowledge, as well as the pleasure the sage
finds in the pursuit of wisdom, doubtless it was that sent our great
Secretary, Seward, in his white old age, on a tour of the whole world.
It was this that made those collectors of learned lore, Anacharsis and
Herodotus, leave their polished home-circles, and travel amongst other
peoples. It is this that makes the heirs of princely houses set out on
the tour of Europe and America, and even Asia, on the completion of
their college course, that they may understand their position amongst
the nations. It is this that brings the acute and ambitious Japanese
across the globe in search of what is desirable in our products; that
they may see the truth and value of institutions different from their
own.

In order to attain the object of such a journey, we must observe
certain conditions. In the first place, we should, if possible, know
some of the languages of the countries through which we intend to pass,
or at least some which will most likely be understood therein; such
as, for instance, the French in Italy, Germany, etc., the Italian in
Spain, Greece, and Egypt. We are otherwise necessitated to depend on
the mediation of a class often found faithless in its duty of exact
interpretation. The interpreter, or _cicerone_, is very likely to
digest the information he obtains or to qualify that which he imparts
according to the supposed capacity or prejudice of his employer; and,
for fear of offending one from whom he expects more money, he will
sometimes tell an acceptable lie rather than an unwelcome truth. Most
unlucky is he who is thus fed with the sweet poison of falsehood rather
than the wholesome plainness of truth. What can he gain by travel?

An Irish bishop, standing before the picture of the martyrdom of SS.
Processus and Martinianus in the Vatican, heard a young lady behind
ask her father what was the subject of the painting. “That’s the
Inquisition, my dear; they are torturing people in the Inquisition.”
He looked like a man who should know how to read, and the name of the
picture was on the frame under it; but it is quite possible that his
information came from a _cicerone_, as they have been known to give it
just as false and malicious.

In the second place, the traveller must bear in mind that his own
nation does not monopolize the goodness or common sense of the world,
and that, however unintelligible or absurd the customs of other
countries may appear to him, the presumption is in their favor;
hence, he must never ridicule anything, never judge rashly, but wait
till his ignorance is removed and his little experience enlarged to
the knowledge of many excellent things that he dreamt not of before,
remembering that, while it is pardonable in children and peculiar to
boors to laugh at a strange dress or a foreign custom, it is unworthy
of an educated person. We should never be ashamed to learn, nor
therefore to ask questions. Benjamin Franklin (or Dr. Johnson) said it
was by this means he gained so much information. A doctor should be no
more ashamed to ask a farmer about potatoes than he to ask him about
pills. Every man should be supposed to know his own trade better than
others not of it. It is the folly of supposing themselves all-wise and
others know-nothings, that keeps many men bigoted and ignorant.

Finally, a great secret for acquiring knowledge of strange peoples and
understanding their ways is contained in that advice to “put yourself
in their place.” We will find that, if we were in their place, we would
do just the same, or perhaps would not have done so well as we find
them doing, and it will prevent us forming very wrong impressions of
a government or a people. For instance, when travelling in France,
we were subjected to some inconvenience by the police regulations,
and were tempted to think these French a narrow-minded, suspicious,
timid people, until some one reminded the rest of the surveillance our
government had felt itself constrained to exercise on the line of the
Potomac, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and the imprisonment of
editors under our own flag; and we were persuaded that France was also
excusable, filled as she was with the adherents of three contending
political parties, and her territory in part occupied by a conqueror.
When we notice something apparently inconvenient, we must wait and see
what is the corresponding advantage. Thus, one may dislike the brick
and marble floors of Italy. Let him wait till summer, and he will like
them; or let him reflect on the immunity from conflagrations which is
due to them, and then say if the adoption of this flooring instead of
wood is not a cheap price to pay for safety. “During a residence of
thirty-five years in Florence, I know not a single house to have been
burnt.” This is what Hiram Powers, the sculptor, testifies. In like
manner, Dickens was not very much taken with the narrow streets and
peculiar build of Genoa the Superb, yet he adds: “I little thought that
in one year I would love the very stones of the streets of Genoa.” When
he reached Switzerland on his return home, he was no doubt pleased with
the neatness of the people, etc.; but still ... “the beautiful Italian
manners, the sweet language, the quick recognition of a pleasant look
or cheerful word, the captivating expression of a desire to oblige in
everything, are left behind the Alps. Remembering them, I sighed for
the dirt again, the brick floors, bare walls, unplastered ceilings, and
broken windows.”

One of the great advantages we Americans, just as others, gain
by travelling is improvement in self-knowledge, which is the
foundation-stone of wisdom—beginning to look at ourselves as it were
from a distance, and to see ourselves as we are seen by others. It is
the great profit of this that made the poet exclaim:

  “Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us
    To see oursels as ithers see us!
  It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
    And foolish notion.”

When we compare the institutions of foreign lands and their results
with our own, we learn a juster appreciation of each, and to remedy
the defects of our own, if need be. On the one hand, the nothingness
of the individual in many parts of Continental Europe, and the
“everythingness” of the state, is very intolerable. The way, too,
the police stare at every one in France, as if you had a suspicious
look, while the people side with the officer, not apparently from love
of the law, but out of fear, just as all the school-boys quake when
one is subjected to the pedagogue’s scrutiny. I was in France during
Napoleon’s despotism, and now under the republic, and it seemed to me
that to the people it was all one; they fear whoever is in power. On
landing at Calais, our names were peremptorily demanded, as if the
nation feared the entrance of some certain individuals who were only
known to it by name. I guess such persons would hardly give their names
in such a case. In Ireland, so little respect is had for the people
that they are not trusted with arms; but, to keep a gun, one must
have a written license from the agents of the inexorable government.
Then, in most of those countries, the huge barracks of the standing
armies, swallowing up hundreds of thousands of strong, healthy youth,
and corrupting the morals of the district wherein they are stationed,
seemed to insult the people, and to say: “If you don’t be quiet, we’ll
cut you to pieces.” And then again their officers strut along in
idleness, or kill time by balls, parties, and cricket-playing, while
the masses are sweating to support them, or dying in the poor-houses,
worn out in the struggle for existence. Of course, there is some
palliation for this. The governments of Europe are afraid of each
other, and many of them are afraid of their people, too. God grant that
we may never fear a foreign foe, or, what is worse, have a government
or laws which the people do not love! But if it is insulting to our
manhood to be forbidden to keep arms, it is certainly wrong for us to
allow every ruffian to have his loaded revolver always in his pocket.
It is worse to have a statute forbidding the carriage of concealed
weapons, and not to enforce it.

From the exactness wherewith the public honor is guarded and the
criminal laws administered in England—one of those circumstances which
make her paper pass as gold in any part of the world—we may learn
to correct some of our insane, suicidal looseness in these respects
at home, which is destroying all security for life and property, and
making us a by-word among the nations. When we see the learning,
maturity, and integrity required for the judgeship in other lands,
we begin to see how wrong it is to render competition for this high
station subject to the bribery of low politicians, whereby, as we all
know, men who should be punished as criminals are sometimes found
seated on the bench. O my friends! if you but knew what ridicule and
contempt for democratic institutions some of these things cause in
Europe! It is for this that many excellent persons look with horror on
their approach, and cannot appreciate their worth or beauty when they
behold these, howsoever accidental, results of their working. Often had
we to try and correct unfavorable impressions arising from the fact of
known swindlers being allowed to flourish amongst us, and to ruin our
public credit by their gambling speculations or bribery; and when one
of them is, out of private and lawless revenge, murdered by another,
how uncertain it is whether the criminal shall be hanged or restored
to society! When they see how we assemble to hear lectures from women
divorced from their husbands, and shamelessly living with a paramour,
while professing Christian ministers bless such a union, associated
though it be with adultery and murder, is it a wonder that Europeans
should not increase in their respect for democracy? But the American
abroad rouses from the lethargy which the commonness of these things
throws over him at home; and to see the disorder as others see it is
the first step toward reform. God grant it come not too late!

Until one goes abroad, he is apt to imagine that no country enjoys
as much liberty in any sense as our own, and that, how objectionable
soever some of our practices may appear, still the corresponding
ones in Europe must be intolerably more so. How surprised we are,
for instance, when, having encountered the gentlemanly custom-house
regulations of England, France, and other nations, the politeness of
whose officers is often greater than you often meet with here even
in persons who expect to gain by your visit, we return home, and are
confronted with the hostile demonstrations of our New York institution!
At Liverpool, the officer approaches, and, with a single glance at
your appearance, frequently puts the chalk cross on your baggage; or
gently asks if you have anything dutiable, and takes your word for an
answer; or, at most, slightly examines your baggage, and almost begs
pardon for the trouble he is giving. In France likewise, only that you
are asked to open your valise, “if you please,” and thanked afterwards.
How different in our supposed free atmosphere! Every traveller, citizen
or alien, is obliged to sign a statement, liable to be confirmed with
an oath, to the effect that he carries nothing dutiable, not even a
present for his wife or sister; and then his baggage is examined as if
he had made no declaration at all. If the examination is to follow,
the oath is unnecessary and therefore sinful. If the oath is accepted
as true testimony, is it not insulting to examine, as if it were not
believed, or as if the government wished to detect people in perjury.
I read the experience of a priest in a Holland custom-house, where the
officer insultingly took a crucifix—an image of the crucified Son of
God!—out of the valise, and, holding it on high, asked him what it
was! In Alexandria of Egypt, they examined his person, pocket, and
sounded his stomach, so that he cried out: “What! Is it contraband to
have a stomach? Is there any particular size fixed for it? Are there
any duties to be paid on it?” At least there was no tampering with an
oath in these cases. Such excesses are blamable anywhere, but they are
intolerable in a republic.

Another contrast unfavorable to us is the independence of the
traveller, at least in this regard: in Continental Europe, no man has
to stand even in an omnibus; while here, not only in the street-cars,
where it may be explained, but often on the cars of some of our
principal railroads, you must stand in travelling. The lawful number
of places is marked in Europe, and the people behave as if they were
what we claim to be—“individual sovereigns”; if one man is without
a seat, the company must either find him one or put on an extra car.
Far different from us, who seem to be the slaves of monopoly, or
“dead-heads” under a compliment, so that we dare not open our mouths.

When we see how the people of Europe enjoy life, and lengthen their
days, and increase their innocent pleasures by moderation in seeking
after wealth, by observing occasional holidays, by popular amusements,
foot and boatracing, coursing, holding cricket-matches open to the
public (free of charge, just as the rest of the sports in Great
Britain), we begin to feel how absurd it is for us to be burning out
our brains at forty years of age, to break down our bodies by excessive
labor, heaping up riches which we thus inhibit ourselves from enjoying,
to rush through our work as if we were laying up capital for a thousand
years, instead of for ten, twenty, or thirty. By experience of all
these things we find that we have much to learn and to improve; and
while, on the one hand, we feel our own advantages, we are convinced,
on the other, that it was a very silly saying, that of the schoolboy:
“That no one should stay in Europe now, since it is so easy to come to
America.”

The non-Catholic is disabused of his prejudices by going abroad and
finding Catholic institutions so different from what he had been led
by his training to expect; and their journey to Rome in particular
used formerly to lead many an educated person to the truth. An English
lady of high rank and great repute in her day said to Cardinal
Pacca, the celebrated minister of Pius VII., “There is one thing in
your system which I cannot possibly get over, it is so cruel and
shocking.” “What is it that so excites your ladyship’s indignation?”
“Your Inquisition. I have been told all kinds of terrible things
about it—its punishments, its tortures, and, in fact, all kinds of
abominations.” The cardinal endeavored to remove from the lady’s mind
the absurd notions which fiction and calumny had associated with the
very harmless institution of modern times; but his success was not
altogether complete. “Well,” said he, “would your ladyship wish to see
the head of this dreaded tribunal?” “Above all things; and I should be
most grateful to you for affording me the opportunity.” “Then you had
better come here on such an evening (which he named), and you shall see
this tremendous personage, and you can then judge of the institution
from its chief.” The lady was true to her appointment, all anxiety for
her promised interview with the grand inquisitor. The cardinal, who was
alone at the time of her arrival, received his visitor with his usual
courtly manner, and engaged her in conversation on the various matters
of the day. The lady soon became _distrait_, and at length said: “Your
eminence will pardon me, but you led me to expect that you were to
gratify a woman’s curiosity.” “How was that, my lady?” “Why, don’t you
remember you assured me I was to see the Grand Inquisitor of the Holy
Office?” “Certainly, and you have seen him,” the cardinal said, in the
quietest possible manner. “Seen him!” exclaimed the lady, looking round
the apartment. “I see no one but yourself, cardinal.” “Quite true, my
child; I did promise you that you should meet the head of the tribunal
of which you have been told such wonderful tales; and I have kept my
word, for in me you behold your grand inquisitor! From what you know
of him, you may judge of the institution.” “You, cardinal—you the
inquisitor! Well, I am surprised!” Her ladyship might have added: “And
converted, too,” which she was.

The Catholic is confirmed in his faith when he witnesses the piety
of Ireland and Belgium; sees the wealth, position, and learning of
the children of the church in other nations. When he visits the
chapter-house in the Abbey of Westminster, where, under the wings of
the church, the House of Commons long held its sessions, the testimony
of its mute walls does more to convince him of the stand of the church
in regard to free institutions than all that has been written on the
subject. When he beholds, in the famous College of the Propaganda,
students of every color, tongue, and clime, united in prayer and study,
preparing to preach the one same faith in every land, he realizes
what he had always held by faith—the Catholicity of the church—and
he understands and feels what some one has expressed: “Elsewhere we
believe, but in Rome we see.” Even from the practice of heretics he
takes a lesson of attachment to his church; and when he sees how
Protestants in Ireland, to avoid the contact with Catholics which they
consider dangerous to their belief, support schools of their own all
the while they are taxed for the national education, he feels still
more the wisdom of the Catholic prelates in condemning mixed education.

The public man of our country, the member of the legislature, the
priest, finds much to learn in the customs which centuries have
sanctioned; and thus the experience of each supplies the want of this
important and all-testing article at home. He sees by the condition
of Switzerland, Bavaria, the south and west of France, etc., that
people are just as prosperous, as happy and healthy, without the
machines and various inventions on which we are apt to pride ourselves;
while his visit to English manufacturing towns will make him slow
to place much trust in institutions which have generated so much
mental weakness and bodily disease; have tended so much to destroy
the liberty and independence of the people by eliminating the private
tradesman and creating vast tyrannous monopolies; and have, by their
very circumstances and discipline, occasioned such an increase of
immorality in populations heretofore uncorrupted. Having observed them
in their homes, he understands better the circumstances and motives
which influence men of different nationality and religion, and is
enabled to form a more correct judgment of our adopted citizens, no
matter from what land. When he sees the misery of the Irish people
at home—a consequence of English misrule—he can better understand
why they take refuge in the delusive cup, deprived as they are by
their poverty of the commonest conveniences and much more of the
purer pleasures of life; nay, he is even astonished to find that,
with the unspeakable wretchedness of the people, they are so honest
that, in the maritime city of Cork, the doors are often scarce more
than latched; and so wanting in cool, calculating malice that, with
all the strictness of the English, and with judges like Keogh, it is
forty years since a man has been found guilty of wilful murder in that
handsome town. Even the agrarian outrages are mitigated to our view
when we consider that they partake of the “wild justice of revenge,”
and the political disturbances have their spring of action in one of
the noblest aspirations of the human soul. He is even disposed to
pity rather than condemn or despise the Irish when they here become
the tools of infamous politicians; reflecting how easily explained
this is in the case of country people, such as most of them are (not
one in five of whom ever voted before or entered a town except on a
fair day), suddenly exalted to the comparative wealth of the American
laborer, to the lordly exercise of political rights, and exposed to
the new and captivating influences of a great capital. But when the
American traveller meets the city people of Ireland, and learns to
respect their justice, intelligence, and urbanity; when he sees what
a dutiful, sober, conscientious man the Irish peasant can be, as
exemplified in the constabulary, of whom I always heard their priests
and all travellers speak in the highest terms, he will look kindly on
the faults of the emigrant, in the sure expectation that, when his
novitiate is passed, he will stand in the first rank of the citizens of
the republic.

It will be a pleasure for me, and I trust may not be unacceptable to
the reader, if I digress slightly here as I touch on this subject of
the Irish people. Having Irish blood in my own veins, I naturally had a
great sympathy with the country, especially after hearing the voice of
Catholic Ireland crying in our American wilderness so eloquently, and
was delighted when, on the 21st of June, her shores rose from the sea
in all the charm of sunlight, balmy and verdant freshness, like Venus
from the deep. From four in the morning, we had that long-desired land
in view, and all day long our eyes feasted on its charms, as we stopped
to land passengers and buy fresh meat, entertained by the beautiful
Cove of Cork and the magic shores adjacent; and, when the full moon
mirrored her beauty in the calm Atlantic, we enjoyed the spectacle at
midnight of departing light in the west and the first faint streaks of
day in the east. It was such a day and such a night as one might well
go three thousand miles to enjoy. I do not wish to speak of the scenery
of the country; that is well enough known. I only desire to testify to
my experience of the people.

Nearly six months we dwelt in the fair city of Cork, one of the most
beautifully situated I ever beheld and I never by any accident
heard profane or obscene language in this town of ninety thousand
inhabitants. Who could walk New York for a week, and relate such an
experience? I was edified by the venerable presence of the faith in
this people, as fresh and strong as ever to-day. You might compare
it to a flourishing young oak that springs out from the body of an
old, and furrowed, and blasted trunk, itself as beauteous as if it
did not come from such ancient roots, and were not vegetating with
the self-same inextinguished life of the patriarchal tree. How much
to the honor of the nation that she has transmitted without a break
the consecration which the hands of Patrick, Malachy, and Laurence
laid upon her hierarchy, while neighboring people have been obliged
to send abroad for pastoral unction! It is most edifying to see the
congregations at Mass, and to hear the loud murmur of faith and
adoration at the elevation of the Host. It is beautiful to see them
stop at the church to pay a visit of a minute as they pass on their
way to work, or at least to take the holy water at the door. Drivers,
policemen, men cleaning the streets, all classes are seen to do this. I
was coming out of a church one day in winter, and found a child’s maid
with a child in her arms, kneeling in the damp, wet porch, praying.
“Why don’t you go inside? ‘Tis quite wet here,” I said. “I was afraid
the child would make too much noise, sir!” It was a week-day, and there
were only a few persons inside.

The good, simple, peaceable man of _The Imitation of Christ_ is found
in Ireland. I met one of these—a learned, pious, prudent priest, yet
as simple in worldly ways as a child, and amusingly ignorant of our
modern progress, but courageous as a martyr when called on in court
for testimony involving his priestly character. I met another man, a
layman, a pure Celt, strong and vigorous, eighty years of age, simple
in his diet and dress, speaking English poorly, but Irish fluently and
well; he walked at sixty years of age as many miles in three days;
and when at last his son, a man of twenty-three, got tired, he took
him on his back, and kept on. Such a man might Abraham have been. No
wonder his parish priest said to him before me: “I’m glad to see you,
James. I hope to see you often, and that you may live long to inspire
and encourage me and our people by your example!” His daughter died in
Lawrence, Mass., and thus the grandson wrote to the old man at home:
“Mother asked for the holy water, and washed her face with it, and
sprinkled us, blessing us. She then directed that her body should be
carried to the grave on the shoulders of her own flesh and blood, and
asked us to turn her face to the east. We turned her, and we thought
she had gone asleep, but it was the long sleep of death!” Such is
Irish faith. These people are most edifyingly patient and cheerful in
sickness and misery. They never complain, but always say, “‘Tis the
will of God.” In Waterford, one awful, snowy day, I was much struck by
this dialogue between two old persons: “How are you, Mary?” “Oh! then,
pretty well, Denis, only I have the rheumatics.” “Oh! then, ‘tis God’s
will; and you can’t complain, as you’re able to be about!” My friends,
if you had the wretched rags that she and he had on, and their probably
empty stomachs, I think you would have been neither inclined to preach
nor disposed to practise resignation. I never, by any accident, met
any one so ill-clad here as I saw there. Even in the snow they had no
shoes nor underclothing.

Is it any wonder, then, that the great spirit of Montalembert was
inflamed by visiting such a country? As Mrs. Oliphant says in her
_Memoir_, “He had seen a worshipping nation, and his imagination had
been inspired by the sight, and all his resolutions had burst into
flower.”

Another spectacle that entertained us here was that of an artless
maiden. Such a treat for an American! To see a girl of eighteen or
twenty years so modest and artless in her ways. There is a charm
about such an one; she seems God’s fairest work, as an honest man is
his noblest. At the convent schools in Ireland one notices the same
gentleness, which contrasts beautifully with what we have so much of at
home, and that feature of which Shakespeare says, speaking of Perdita:

          “... Her voice was ever soft,
  Gentle, and low—an excellent thing in woman.”

I heard an American express his notion of it characteristically by
saying: “How quick these girls would find a husband in America!” An
English writer, speaking of a city which was remarkably Irish, though
not in Ireland, first indulges in some of his usual pokes and jokes
about its inhabitants, and then says: “Nowhere did I ever meet better
bred ladies”; and a lady well acquainted with the high society of one
of our sister cities told me that the ladies in Ireland were far better
educated. Indeed, the love of education is very great amongst the Irish
people.

I never saw finer schools than those of the Christian Brothers in
Cork, and all supported by the voluntary contributions of the people,
without a cent from the government, and in a very poor country.
Although a poor Protestant is rare in Ireland, the statistics of the
Dublin census for 1872 show that the number of illiterates amongst the
Catholics is smaller than amongst the adherents of any other religious
denomination. And still people will talk of the ignorant Irish, and
the opposition of the priests to education! The ignorance, whatever it
is, of the Irish, like the rags that hang on their limbs, is a sad but
glorious sign of their fidelity to God’s truth! If they had wished to
sell their heavenly treasure, they might have got the mess of pottage
called godless education. All honor to them and to their priests for
the inestimable value they place on the deposit of faith handed down
by saints and scholars! There is a good deal of carelessness and want
of enterprise amongst the Irish people, no doubt; but as for the
former, as F. Burke says: “God help us! Much they’ve left us to be
careless with.” The less a man has, the more thriftless he is likely to
be. Having in this country a sure title to his own and a prospect of
success, I maintain that the Irishman will become as thrifty, without
being niggardly, as any other citizen.

Their wit is proverbial, their good-nature under all circumstances most
remarkable. In Kilkenny, one Sunday, I saw a party in miserable uniform
marching about playing rather unskilfully on a few musical instruments,
and calling themselves a band. A crowd followed them through the wet,
snow-covered streets, and continually assailed the musicians and each
other indifferently with snow-balls. A policeman standing on a corner
got one behind his ear, but, like most of the rest, laughed and made
nothing of it. Imagine a New York M. P. under similar circumstances! On
one occasion, I watched a group of men bantering a rather old seaman
who complained of toothache; one suggested that he should take a sup
of cold water, and sit on the fire until it boiled; another advised him
to hang his night-cap on the bed-post, and, mixing a little whiskey and
hot water, etc., should drink until he saw two night-caps; a third said
the best thing was to tie the tooth to a tree, and run away from it. He
heard them all very good-humoredly, but simply remarked, as if it were
not worth while now at his time of life to learn cures: “Faix, I can’t
have many more o’ them.”

A jolly, witty, careless bachelor lived on his own property in
Blackpool. His houses were two; that which he occupied was open to the
weather, and the adjoining one looked as if it had been burned. It was
a complete ruin. They were in such a state that some friend remarked
that they were likely to fall in and bury him. “Faith,” said the poor
lonely bachelor, “‘twould be the best thing that could happen me, if I
was prepared.” We must repeat here the story of an Irish Protestant,
who went to church with his Catholic friend. His surprise at the
strange sights and sounds soon got the better of him, and he whispered:
“Why, Pat, this beats the very ould divil.” “That’s the intention,”
said Pat, and kept on blessing himself all the same.

Americans, who are not taxed to support a foreign despotic master, who
have a sure and enduring title to their property, and who stand or fall
by their own free, unimpeded efforts, sometimes wonder at the want of
enterprise, neatness, and care of the Irish people. But a visit to the
country and a look into its circumstances explain why this is the case.
The man who feels that his house may be taken from him to-morrow is
not likely to spend much on its decoration; the father who knows that
his children are destined to the lowest servitude is even tempted to
be careless about sending them to school, and no doubt reprehensible
habits which may take several generations to eradicate are naturally
formed in such a condition of things. I have said enough, however, to
show—and a visit to Ireland, combined with a knowledge of her people
under a free and favorable government, will convince us—that these
faults of some of the Irish are their misfortune rather than their
natural character, and that, when they are free from the iron shackles
of a barbarous conqueror, they will shine forth in all the virtues
which adorn a great Catholic nation.

All the advantages undoubtedly derivable from going abroad are attended
with a danger which sometimes overtakes men of limited education
and small mind, and which experience teaches we are all obliged to
guard against. Contact with the institutions of most parts of Europe
has a tendency to undermine the simple, independent qualities of
the republican. The splendor of the throne, the tinsel of rank, the
worship of mammon, family pride, etc., by which the sterling worth
of the individual is overlooked and individual virtue is disregarded
for the glitter which often covers the rottenness and impurity of
caste—all these appeal temptingly to the wealthy but otherwise
undistinguished American. His daughters are sought in marriage by
members of broken-down princely houses, because they have money; his
sons are courted by noble gamblers, because they are rich; and I need
not tell why it is that principle in these cases is often sacrificed to
that base tendency of our fallen nature which makes us aspire to power,
rank, and title, just as a little boy does to the possession of a whip,
a sash, and a cocked hat.

I recall now the case of one of our American admirals, who, when
patriotic New Hampshire objected to changing the Indian names of our
men-of-war to Saxon ones, defended his action by saying: “He did not
see why England should have all the fine names.” The poor man was
actually so infatuated by the style, pretension, and wealth of England
that he thought even the stale nomenclature of her vessels preferable
to the fresh, historically endeared ones taken from our native land—a
piece of weakness and folly which drew out the merited protest of the
Granite State, which had given some of those fine old Indian names
to ships that under them gained glory in war, and won admiration and
respect when they visited the coasts of Europe. Imagine exchanging
such names as Tuscarora, Niagara, Oneida, for such ones as Vixen,
Hornet, Viper, Spitfire, or even for Hector, Ajax, and Captain! It
were unjust, however, to the rude health of our republican atmosphere
to suppose that weakness such as this can be called characteristic
of those nurtured on our soil, and were conclusive against hope in
the perpetuity of our institutions. Such exceptional and deplorable
examples need not make us fear the consequences of travel to the
majority of travellers. The really educated, reflecting man knows the
lessons of history too well to be deceived by the glitter of such
institutions, which, like the _ignis fatuus_ itself, is a token of
the underlying rottenness. The religious man feels deeply that, while
obedience to authority is essential to all government, still modesty
and simplicity have given life and vigor, while pride and luxury have
been the bane and caused the death of nations; and he knows that the
conscientious, willing adhesion of the democrat to the laws he has had
an influence in making is more trustworthy, as it is more noble, than
the abject, servile submission of the slave, disgusting to God, as well
as dishonorable to his image. The priest cannot but feel deeply that
the only system and the only land which allows the church to stand or
fall by her own strength and merits is America; and his consciousness
of her increasing prosperity, in contrast to her maimed and bleeding
condition in other lands, must only attach him still more to his
country and her institutions. And while he adverts, as I have done, to
her faults, and wishes her to take pattern by the virtues and warning
by the sins of other nations, it is because his heart as well as his
interest are bound up with her fate:

  “... Sail on, O ship of state!
  Sail on, thou Union strong and great
      .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
  Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
  Our faith, triumphant o’er our fears,
  Are all with thee—are all with thee.”

We may theorize about patriotism by our firesides at home, but you
feel what it is when you are in a foreign land. The beating of your
heart, the brilliancy of your glance, the warmth of your grasp,
all without reflection and spontaneously occurring when you meet a
fellow-countryman, while they afford a most pure and exquisite delight,
prompt us, with the force of unerring instinct, to love our country.

I remember, when out on the broad Atlantic, with the monotonous waste
of waters in every direction, to have noticed something in the kiss
of the sunbeams, in the familiar sweetness of the air, denoting the
nearness of home by these embraces, so to speak, of our own clime.
The lifting up of the heart, the light gladness of the spirits that
succeeded, were not even due to the thought of home and friends The
magic influence of atmosphere alone had been enough to produce them.
And is it not natural?

  “Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
  Who never to himself hath said,
  This is my own, my native land?
  Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
  As home his footsteps he hath turned,
  From wandering on a foreign strand?”

If such an one there be, he is a rare and monstrous exception. The
feeling of common humanity is expressed with universal truth in the
lines of sweet-singing Goldsmith in his classic poem, “The Traveller”:

  “Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see,
  My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee:
  Still to _my country_ turns with ceaseless pain,
  And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”




CHARTRES.


IT is the hour of pilgrimages. Probably never since the middle ages
were they so numerous, or, with regard to the public ones, so carefully
organized as at the present time; whether to the favored localities to
which in these latter days heavenly manifestations have been accorded,
or to the ancient sanctuaries whose history is coeval with that of the
whole Christian era.

At this moment, when a vast concourse of pilgrims from various parts of
France, and especially from its capital, are gone to pay their homage
to our Lady of Chartres, and beg her intercession on behalf of their
country, it may not be uninteresting to some among our readers if we
endeavor briefly to trace the history of this celebrated shrine.

On entering the richly sculptured entrance—too large to be called a
porch, and too truly Gothic to be called a portico—of the church of S.
Germain l’Auxerrois in Paris, the visitor is struck with the beauty of
the ancient frescos with which its interior is adorned; so effective in
composition, so spiritual in expression, and in execution so delicate,
simple, and refined. In one of these, which fills the tympanum of a
closed arch forming part of the north side, is depicted the form of a
venerable, white-bearded sage, who might without difficulty serve to
represent a Druid (though in all probability it is the prophet Isaias),
kneeling, with an expression of wonder and joy on his aged countenance,
while an angel, opening a window, shows him a distant vision of the
Virgin Mother and her divine Son.

The connection between the subject of this fresco and that of the
present article will shortly be apparent. The ancient city, which was
formerly the capital of the Carnutes, claims the honor of having been
the first in the world to consecrate a temple to the Blessed Virgin.

Chartres, before the Christian era dawned upon the earth, foresaw from
the midnight darkness the shining of the “Morning Star” which should
precede its rising, and by anticipation did homage to the Virgin who
was to bring forth—_Virgini Parituræ_.

It was previous to the subjugation of the Gauls by the Roman arms
that this homage began. They were still a free, wild, and haughty
race; _Mala gens_, according to the _Commentaries_ of their conqueror;
living little in their towns, much in their pathless forests; they
are, moreover, by the same author reported to be a religious people;
that is to say, submissive to their priests, from whom they had not
only their faith, but also their laws and government.

These priests were the Druids. If old Armorica was the cradle of their
worship, it is no less true that it had at a very early period spread
not only into Britain, but also over the whole of Gaul, establishing at
Chartres the central point of its continental empire. There the solemn
sacrifices were offered, and there were held the tribunals of justice;
_in loco consecrato_,[207] which expression, by a slight variation,
might fittingly be rendered, _in luco consecrato_, considering the
veneration in which woods and groves were held, and that it was in
these that the assemblies met.

Not until after the Roman invasion was polytheism gradually and with
difficulty engrafted on the more primitive Druidic worship, which was
evidently neither of Greek nor Latin origin, but rather the offspring
of Egypt or Chaldea, with occasional indications of affinity with the
belief of the Hebrews. The Galli and Cymri had originally come from the
East, being alike descendants of Gomer, the son of Japhet.[208]

As some writers have imagined the Egyptian cross in the form of the
Greek _Τ_, the _signum vitæ futuræ_, to have proved the expectation
among that nation of the coming of the Messias, so others have seen in
the venerated mistletoe attached to the oak an image of the Redeemer on
the cross, and in the offerings of bread and wine a foreshadowing of
the sacrament of the altar. In any case, these were but vague notions
or veiled presentiments of truths of which Israel alone possessed the
certainty; yet some stray gleam from the light of Hebrew prophecy may
have shown to others than the chosen people a faint and distant vision
of that great second Mother of the human race who should repair the
ills brought on it by the first.

According to the oldest traditions, it was a hundred years before the
birth of our Saviour that this expectation manifested itself in a
public manner among the Druids of the Carnutes, by the consecration of
a grotto, for a long time previous famous among them, to the “Virgin
who was to bring forth.”

No written document of equal antiquity to this epoch exists in support
of the tradition; nor would it be possible, from the fact that the
Druids committed nothing to writing, but transmitted the doctrines of
their religion and the facts of history solely by oral teaching.

The Cathedral of Chartres, however, from the time of its foundation
by the Blessed Aventinus, who is said to have been the disciple of S.
Peter, faithfully guarded the memory of an event which was its peculiar
glory, by consigning the history thereof to its archives. These were
carefully consulted by the Abbé Sébastien Rouillard, especially a very
ancient chronicle which was translated from Latin into French in 1262,
during the reign of S. Louis, and of which he gives the following
account, although, in rendering it into English, we lose the charm
of the quaint original: “Wherefore the Druids having arrived at this
last centenary which immediately preceded the birth of Our Lord, ...
the said Druids being assembled together by the revolution of the
new year to perform their accustomed ceremonies for gathering in the
mistletoe, which, coming from heaven and attaching itself to oaks and
divers other trees, was a figure of the Messias; at that time, in the
assembly of the aforesaid Druids, all being vested in their mantles of
white wool, after their custom, in the presence of Priscus, King of
Chartres, and of the princes, lords, and other estates of the province,
the Archdruid, having made the sacrifice of bread and wine according
to custom, and praying the God of heaven that the sacrifice aforesaid
might be salutary to all the people of the Carnutes, declared that the
divine inbreathing (afflatus) with which he felt himself filled so
greatly overpowered him as well-nigh to take away the power of speech,
causing his heart to beat with vehement blows, and overwhelming it with
extraordinary joy, seeing that he had to announce, by the revolution
of the new century, the presage of her approach who should restore
the golden age, and bring forth Him for whom the nations waited.”
“Wherefore, O heaven! is thy tardy movement slower than the longing of
my desires?... If old age, which has brought my steps to the brink of
the grave, forbids me to behold with my own eyes that which I foresee,
nevertheless I render thanks, O Deity Supreme, to thee, who hast
inspired our sacred college with its expectation. In the midst of this
grotto, and hard by this well, shall be raised an altar and an image to
the Virgin who shall bring forth a Son. And do ye, princes and lords
here present, declare whether this thing is pleasing to you.” Thus
spoke the pontiff, while tears rolled down his long white beard. The
whole assembly, being seized with a spirit of joy and devotion, eagerly
corresponded with the desires of its high-priest. The altar was raised
and the image dedicated—_Virgini Parituræ_.

The place where this solemn assembly was held is none other than the
hill whereon now stands the Cathedral of Chartres. At that period, a
thick wood surrounded the grotto, which resembled the _Grottes des
Fées_ still to be seen in many secluded country-places in France, and
which were not unfrequently the abodes of Druidesses, the remembrance
of whom is preserved under this popular appellation.

We have here, according to this tradition, the most ancient pilgrimage,
which was Christian in spirit before being so in reality. The other
Druidic virgins, venerated in various places, as at Nogent, Longpont,
and Châlons-sur-Marne, were all later and in imitation of the Virgin of
Chartres.

The consecrated grotto in time became the crypt of the mediæval
cathedral which now in all its majestic beauty rises above it. The
original building, in consequence of various catastrophes, changed
its form, and was more than once renewed before obtaining its present
splendor; but the Druidic image has invariably remained in the locality
first assigned to it, whither all the centuries of Christian times have
successively sent multitudes of pilgrims to do homage to _Notre Dame
de Soubs Terre_, and whither we must go to find the copy which has
replaced the ancient and venerable effigy, destroyed, not yet a century
ago, by sacrilegious hands, which, in the time of the great Revolution,
tore it from its sanctuary and threw it into the flames. The present
image is a faithful reproduction of the Druidic one, of which a minute
description is given in a chronological _History of Chartres_, written
in the XVIth century. The Virgin Mother is enthroned, with her son upon
her knees, whose right hand is raised in benediction, while in the left
he holds the globe of the world. Over the Virgin’s robe is a mantle in
form of a dalmatic; her head is covered with a veil, surmounted by a
crown, of which the ornaments somewhat resemble the leaves of the ash.
Her countenance is extremely well formed, oval, dark, and shining, and
the whole figure has much resemblance to the ancient Byzantine type.
With regard to the supposed reasons for the color of the complexion, we
will quote the words of Sébastien Rouillard:

“La dite image des Druides est de couleur mauresque, comme presque
toutes les aultres de l’Eglise de Chartres. Ce que l’on estime avoir
été fait par les Druides et aultres à leur suitte, sur la présomptive
couleur du peuple oriental, exposé plus que nous aux ardeurs du soleil,
cause que l’Espouse du Cantique des Cantiques dit que le soleil l’a
découlourée, et que pour être brune, elle ne laisse d’être belle.
Néantmoins Nicephore qui avait vue plusieurs tableaux de cette Vierge
faicte par Saint Luc après le naturel, dit que la couleur de son visage
estoit _sitochroë_, ou de couleur de froument. Si ce n’est qu’on
veuille dire que le froument estant meur tire sur le brun ou couleur de
chastaigne.”[209]

The remainder of the description is so charming that we cannot refrain
from finishing the portrait:

“La Vierge estoit de stature médiocre.... Ses cheveux tiraient sur
l’or; ses yeux estoient acres et estincellans, aiant les prunelles
jaunastres et de couleur d’olive, ses sourcils cambrez en forme
d’arcade, et d’une couleur noire leur avenant fort bien. Son nez estoit
longuet, ses lèvres vives et flories, sa face non ronde ni aiguë, mais
un peu longuette, les mains et les doigts pareillement longuets. Elle
estoit en toutes choses honneste et grave, parlant peu à peu et à
propos; facile à escouter toutes personnes, affable des plus et faisant
honneur à chascun, selon sa qualité. Elle usoit d’une honneste liberté
de parler, sans rire, sans se troubler, sans se mettre en cholère.
Elle estoit exempte de tout fast, sans se déguiser le maintien, sans
user de délicatesse, et en toutes ses actions monstrant une grande
humilité.”[210]

In presence of the numerous and invariable testimonies of tradition,
not only the great antiquity, but also the Druidic origin of the
pilgrimage of Notre Dame de Chartres appear incontestable, and this
belief is further confirmed by many historical documents, such as,
for instance, the letters-patent which in the year 1432 were granted
at Loches to the Chartrians by Charles VII., and which contain the
following declaration:

“L’Eglise de Chartres est la plus ancienne de notre roïaume, fondée
par prophétie en l’honneur de la glorieuse Vierge-Mère, avant
l’incarnation de Notre Seigneur Jhésus Christ et en laquelle icelle
glorieuse Vierge fut adorée en son vivant.”[211]

Without allowing the same degree of credence to the miracles which,
according to the archives of this church, signalized the future power
of Mary in times anterior to the Christian era, we will mention one
only of those among them which appear to be worthy of belief. This was
represented in the rich mediæval glass of the “Window of Miracles,”
destroyed at the Revolution, where also could be read the name of
Geoffrey [Gaufridus].

This Geoffrey, in the time of the Druids, was King of Montlhéry. There
were in those days kings in profusion, and this one was vassal to
Priscus, King of Chartres. Geoffrey had an only son, his chief joy,
who accidentally fell into the deep well of the castle, and was taken
out dead. The king was distracted with grief, but, having heard of
sundry miracles which had been wrought by the Virgin of Chartres (to
the amazement of the Druids, who had known nothing of the kind in
their false religion), he forthwith prayed to her with many tears,
entreating that she would restore his son to life. Little by little
the youth began to breathe, and soon was completely recovered. The
father, full of gratitude, went with large offerings to the grotto to
return thanks for the life of his son. Priscus showed himself no less
devout. He caused a statue to be made after the pattern of the one at
Chartres, and placed it at Longpont, where arose later a celebrated
abbey, and whither pilgrimages have ever since continued to be made.
Having no child, he bequeathed all his rights and possessions to the
Virgin of Chartres. Of these the Druids enjoyed the benefit, and the
French chroniclers observe that the bishops who have succeeded them are
thus, in fact, the temporal princes also of the city, and that the Holy
Virgin is by legal right Lady of Chartres.

It is, however, on entirely different and sufficient grounds for
belief that the facts must be placed which relate to the arrival of
the illustrious saints, Savinian and Potentian, two of those heroic
missioners who were called _bishops of the nations_, whom Christian
Rome, more eager to make the conquest of the world than pagan Rome had
ever been, sent to evangelize heathendom.

When these first preachers of Christianity appeared among the
Carnutes, they found them subjugated, indeed, by the Roman arms, but
exceptionally rebellious against all endeavors that were used to induce
their adoption of the Roman gods; still submissive to the Druids,
whom the conquerors persecuted as representing the party of national
resistance.

Potentian had associated with him in his labors two faithful disciples,
S. Edoald and S. Altinus. Led by the Spirit of God, and knowing the
religious belief of the Druids, he repaired at once to the renowned
grotto, where he found them assembled, together with a numerous
concourse of people; and, adapting to the occasion the words of S.
Paul at Athens, he said to them: “This Virgin whom you honor without
knowing I am come to make known unto you”; and soon the darkness
giving place to light in minds that were predisposed to receive it, a
large number of those present begged forthwith for baptism. They were
baptized in the water of the well, the Druidic image received Christian
benediction, the altar was consecrated to Mary, and the whole sanctuary
dedicated to the true God.

Mention is made of this ceremony in the breviary of Chartres, on the
17th of October.

The new Christian community was not destined to enjoy long peace.
Quirinus, the governor of the country under the Emperor Claudius, in
obedience to an edict issued by the latter against the Christians,
entered the grotto with a company of armed soldiers when the faithful
were there assembled, and, seizing S. Potentian, S. Edoald, and S.
Altinus, reserved them for more prolonged sufferings, while he caused
the rest of the worshippers to be massacred on the spot. Among these
was found his own daughter, since honored in the church as S. Modesta.
The bodies of the martyrs were thrown into the well of the grotto,
which from that time bore the name of _Le puits des Saints Forts_.

The governor, being struck with sudden death, was not permitted to
carry out his designs against S. Potentian and his companions, who,
being set at liberty, proceeded to Sens to continue their labors,
leaving S. Aventine at Chartres, of which city he was the first bishop.

Setting aside the improbable legend which relates that the people of
Chartres, upon learning that the Blessed Virgin was still living, sent
an embassy to Ephesus to convey to her their homage, and pray her to
receive the title of _Domina Carnoti_, which, according to Guillaume le
Breton, she willingly accepted, we hope in a future article to give the
eventful history of the erection of the cathedral over the primitive
grotto, which in the XIth century grew into the present vast and
massive crypt, perhaps the finest in the world.




EARLY MARRIAGE.

WHEN Dr. Johnson advocated the early marriage of young men, he spoke
the morality of the Christian, the wisdom of the philosopher, and the
knowledge of the man of the world. He knew from his own experience, and
from the wild lives of the men with whom he associated during the first
years of his London life, that early marriage is the great safeguard
of youth, the preserver of purity, and the sure promoter of domestic
happiness—“the only bliss of paradise that has survived the fall.”

Profoundly convinced of this, we deliberately declare that early
marriages should be, as a general rule, recommended and promoted by
those who have influence or authority over young people. By early
marriage, we do not mean the marriage of boys and girls, but of men and
women. Marriage is the only natural, proper, and safe state for the
majority of persons living in the world. If one-third of the angelic
host—those bright and pure spirits fresh from the divine Hand—fell
at the very first temptation, how can man, prone as he is to sin, hope
to escape? If the saints of old, who subjected their bodies to the
spirit by penances so terrible as almost to realize Byron’s remark “of
meriting heaven by making earth a hell”—if these holy men found it so
difficult to resist the allurements of the flesh, how can the pampered
and luxurious Christians of these days, living in an atmosphere
of seduction, mingling in a gay and wicked world, and thrown in
constant contact with men who break all the Commandments with perfect
indifference—how can these Christians of the latter days hope to avoid
the dangers that surround them if they refuse to seek the safety that
is presented to them in marriage, unless they make use of unusual means
and preventives which few are willing to adopt.

Byron, who had tried all pleasures, and gratified all his passions unto
satiety, declared that the “best state for morals is marriage.” This
was the mature and deliberate opinion of a man who had married most
wretchedly.

Shakespeare says, “A young man married is a man that’s marr’d.”[212]
But married, as he was, at the early age of eighteen, to a woman
eight years his senior, he was a most glorious contradiction of his
own assertion. So assured is his position as the monarch of the world
of literature, that the most daring and ambitious spirits have never
presumed to dispute his supremacy; much less has there ever been found
a man bold enough to play the part of the Lucifer of literature, and
attempt to deprive Shakespeare of his “pride of place.” Surely, the
fact of the poor Stratford boy filling the world with his name and fame
after marrying at eighteen, is an argument in favor of early marriage.

“A young man married is _not_ a man that’s marr’d.” Had Byron married
his earliest and purest love, Mary Chaworth, both the poet and the
world would have been the gainers. We would then have had more poems
like the magnificent Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_, and no poem like
the voluptuous _Don Juan_. Domestic happiness, instead of domestic
misery, would have been Byron’s earthly blessing; for the pure
affection of his noble though erring heart would have been concentrated
upon one adored object. Moore’s early marriage to his beautiful and
beloved Bessie did not “mar” his brilliant career either in literature
or in society. Her love and sympathy cheered him in his young and
struggling days, when—

            “All feverish and glowing,
  He rushed up the rugged way panting to fame.”

When success crowned his efforts, the praise and admiration of Bessie
were dearer to the young poet than all the flattery lavished upon him
by the loveliest ladies of England; and, when misfortune came which
drove away his summer friends, she was ever by his side, brightening
and encouraging the desponding poet.

The wife of Disraeli was Disraeli’s best and truest friend. Her
influence fired his latent ambition, and brought into active use his
finest talents. Sustained by her, Disraeli abandoned the idle and
aimless life of a London dandy, and became a statesman and the leader
of statesmen, as Prime Minister of Great Britain. His domestic life
was most happy. From the triumph of the senate and the pageantry of
the court, he turned with unaffected delight to his home-life and
home-love. The sweetest associations of his life all clustered around
that home, where he always found the truest sympathy and love. Fully
realizing the blessing of married life, he has written: “Whatever be
the lot of man, however inferior, however oppressed, if he only love
and be loved, he must strike a balance in favor of existence; for love
can illumine the dark roof of poverty, and lighten the fetter of the
slave.”

These few examples, which may be multiplied indefinitely, are given to
show that, so far as fame is concerned, “a young man married is _not_ a
man that’s marr’d.”

Now, to another and more practical view of the matter. How many young
men give as a reason for not marrying that they can’t afford it—that
marriage is a luxury only for the rich? We know that the sordid forms
of fashionable society have encircled this heavenly rose called love
with so many thorns that the opulent alone can gather it with safety.
We also know that, in the gay world, as Lady Modish observes in the
_Careless Husband_, “sincerity in love is as much out of fashion as
sweet snuff—nobody takes it now.” But what man of sense, what man who
longs for love and a home, would think of marrying a woman of fashion
whose mornings are passed in bed over a sensational novel, whose
afternoons are spent on the street, and whose evenings are danced away
in the ball-room?

It is a great and deplorable mistake to suppose that only the rich can
afford to marry. Dining with Chief-Justice Chase in Washington, some
one mentioned that Mr.—— had of late grown cynical and censorious,
because he was engaged and could not afford to marry. Well do we
remember the remark of the Chief-Justice, that “any young man who can
support himself can support a wife—that is, if he is wise enough to
select the right sort of person.” Mr. Chase spoke from his own personal
experience; for he had married when he was young, poor, and unknown,
and his success began with his marriage. Take any young man of average
intelligence and industry—a lawyer, clerk, or journalist—he makes
enough to live comfortably and to save, but he is not willing to
follow Mr. Micawber’s philosophy of happiness: “Income, £100 a year;
expenses, £99 19_s._—happiness. Income, £100 a year; expenses, £100
1_s._—misery.” Which, in plain English, means—make more than you
spend, and you will be happy; spend more than you make, and you will be
miserable.

Our young lawyer, clerk, or journalist is not satisfied to live
comfortably: he must live luxuriously. He must smoke the best cigars,
drink the choicest wines, wear the most fashionable clothes; he must
belong to a club, play billiards, go to the opera; he must drive
to the park, when he can ride in the city cars; he must spend his
summer holiday at Saratoga or Long Branch—in short, he must live as
extravagantly as the idle sons of rich men with whom he associates. To
do this, he must necessarily live beyond his means.

These are the young men who say they _cannot afford to marry_. They
_can_ afford to marry if they will give up expenses which are always
useless and often dangerous. Addison says with admirable truth: “All
men are not equally qualified for getting money, but it is in the power
of every one alike to practise the virtue of thrift; and I believe
there are few persons who, if they please to reflect on their own past
lives, will not find that, had they saved all those little sums which
they have spent unnecessarily, they might at present have been masters
of a competent fortune.” Certainly, if young men will practise the
habit of saving “those little sums” which are so often “unnecessarily
spent,” they will no longer have to complain that they cannot afford to
marry.

The laws of Sparta required a man to marry when he became of age; if he
did not, he was liable to prosecution. The salutary effect of this was
seen in the superior morality of the Spartans over the other people of
Greece. The morality of the people of Ireland is one of the brightest
gems in the crown of the “loved Island of Sorrow”; the practice of
early marriage among the Irish contributes, in a great measure, to
this angelic virtue of chastity. The pernicious practice of marrying
late in life, which prevails generally among Frenchmen, is one of the
chief causes of the licentiousness of that gay and gallant nation.
Unfortunately, a tendency towards late marriage has been gradually
growing among the American people, especially in our large cities. This
is one of the most dangerous and disheartening signs of the times. It
arises from the love of luxury and display which has overspread the
land and destroyed that republican simplicity of life and manners which
was once the glory and strength of this nation.

Fathers are unwilling that their daughters should marry young men who
are not rich, forgetting that they themselves were poor when they
married, and that their wealth has been amassed by long years of
constant toil. Such fathers should remember the answer of Themistocles,
when asked whether he would choose to marry his daughter to a poor man
of merit, or to a worthless man of an estate: “I would prefer a man
without an estate to an estate without a man.” Daughters are unwilling
to abandon a life of idleness and luxury in their father’s house to
share the fortunes of young men who, though poor in person, are rich
in worth, and have that within them which will command success. Such
daughters should remember that a young lady once refused to marry a
young man on account of his poverty, whose death was mourned by two
continents—the noble philanthropist, George Peabody. When the late
Emperor of France was living in poverty in London, he fell in love
with a lady of rank and beauty, and solicited her hand. The lady, who
regarded him as a mere political dreamer, rejected his suit, when he
uttered this prophetic remark: “Madame, you have refused a crown.”
Few young ladies have an opportunity of “refusing a crown,” but, in
refusing young men of talent, industry, and virtue, on account of
their present poverty, to accept worthless young men of fortune, they
frequently refuse a life of domestic peace and happiness for one of
splendid misery.

The ancient philosophers very wisely defined marriage to be a remedy
provided by Providence for the safety and preservation of youth. We all
require sympathy and love, and where can there be sympathy so perfect
and love so enchanting as that which a true wife feels for her husband?
Chateaubriand, in his magnificent work, _The Genius of Christianity_,
gives us a sweet and affecting description of the Christian husband
and wife: “The wife of a Christian is not a mere mortal: she is an
extraordinary, a mysterious, an angelic being; she is flesh of her
husband’s flesh, and bone of his bone. By his union with her, he only
takes back a portion of his substance. His soul as well as his body is
imperfect without his wife. He possesses strength; she has beauty. He
encounters afflictions, and the partner of his life is there to soothe
him. Without woman, he would be rude, unpolished, solitary. Woman
suspends around him the flowers of life, like those honeysuckles of the
forest which adorn the trunk of the oak with their perfumed garlands.”

Well might the great poet of domestic bliss exclaim of marriage:

  “Such a sacred and homefelt delight,
  Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
  I never heard till now.”

All readers will recall the exquisite description of the married life
of Albert and Alexandrina in _A Sister’s Story_; their charming home
at Castellamare, on the Bay of Naples; the soft air and brilliant
skies of Italy; excursions among the lovely islands of the bay; pious
pilgrimages to holy shrines; their summer trip to the East; their
winter in Venice, followed by the declining health of Albert; their
return to France; and the saintly death of Albert at the early age of
twenty-four.

Our American Catholic youth owe a duty to their church and their
country which they neglect with criminal indifference. What become
of the many young men of brilliant promise who each year leave our
Catholic colleges laden with honors? Why are their voices never heard
after commencement day? Why is their graduation thesis their last
literary composition? It is because the seed of learning planted in
their minds at college, like the seed of the husbandman in the Gospel
which fell among thorns, is choked with the riches and pleasures of
life, and yields no fruit.

No better example can be offered for the imitation of American Catholic
young men than that of Montalembert, the great orator of France.[213]
Even in his schoolboy days, his aim was high and beautiful: he scorned
all folly and idleness. When he was only seventeen, he solemnly
selected as his motto through life, “God and Liberty,” to which he
remained faithful until death. A young man of brilliant intellect,
vivid imagination, and noble ambition, he determined to play a man’s
part in the world, and earnestly longed for the time to commence his
glorious work. He wasted not the golden days of youth amid the gay
frivolities of fashionable amusement, for he vehemently denied that
youth was the time which should be devoted to the pleasures of society.
He contended that youth should be given up with ardor to study or to
preparation for a profession. “Ah!” he exclaims, “when one has paid
one’s tribute to one’s country; when it is possible to appear in
society crowned with the laurels of debate, or of the battle-field, or
at least of universal wisdom; when one is sure of commanding respect
and admiration everywhere—then it is the time to like society, and
enter it with satisfaction. I can imagine Pitt or Fox coming out of the
House of Commons, where they had struck their adversaries dumb by their
eloquence, and enjoying a dinner party.”

This admirable advice from one who so worthily won his way in the world
and in society should be carefully considered by the youth of America,
who too frequently rush into society half educated, and wholly unfit
for the duties and responsibilities of the world. An early marriage
is the best beginning for those not called to the ecclesiastical or
religious state. It gives at once an object and an aim to life. It
fixes the heart, and keeps it warm and bright, preventing it from
running to waste. It is a holy state, established by God as the
ordinary means for the happiness and salvation of the greatest number
of the faithful. As a rule, it is the safest state for persons living
an ordinary life, and for many it is the only one which is safe. As
there is no rule, however, without exceptions, we do not intend to
deny that there are many exceptions to this rule. Numbers of persons,
especially among the devout female sex, are called to a single life in
the world either by inclination or necessity, and are both better and
more happy in that state than they would be in any other. The reasons
which we have presented in favor of marriage and of early marriage
apply, therefore, only generally and not universally to persons in all
the ranks and conditions of society, and have their more especial force
in relation to those who live in what is called “the world,” but most
especially in reference to young men.




SCHOLARS _EN DÉSHABILLÉ_.

SCHOLARS before the world and scholars at home are often the greatest
contrast to themselves. Daily life is, after all, so levelling that
it makes a _tabula rasa_ of crowned heads and peasants, of sages and
fools, of good men and bad. There is no visible _nimbus_ round the head
of the man who towers above his fellows, as there is round the summit
of the mountain that pierces the clouds. Without the conventional
distinctions of costumes, attendance, or display, there is no means of
telling the man of giant intellect from the man of common attainments.
Not that some men lack that physical superiority which at once causes
a stranger to turn eagerly round and ask, “Who is that?” but this mark
so often accompanies other men whose interior life does not justify its
presence, or whose career has been a mistake and a failure, that it is
practically valueless. The outward sign or “ticket” requisite to denote
a man of acknowledged station is therefore as necessary in this blind
world as it is humiliating to the world’s sense of discernment. Take
an imaginary procession of magnates, financial, political, artistic,
royal, or noble, dress them in plain citizen’s garb, and then send in
a child to pick out the prizes among them, to distinguish the bishop
from the chancellor, the diplomatist from the banker, the king from
the scholar. Guided by purely natural instinct (not unlike that which
presided at the election of barbarian chieftains in the Vth century),
the child will call the tallest, strongest, manliest personage the
king, and will choose the most venerable, gentle, and serious as the
bishop. Ten to one it will have taken a soldier for king, and an artist
for bishop; and so on _ad infinitum_. Now place those great people
in suitable coaches, dress them in appropriate robes, put on them the
crowns, coronets, crosses, and insignia of their order, and the veriest
baby will recognize by the conventional instinct of civilization the
rank and importance of each; only it will then be seen that the king
is that quiet man of banker-like aspect, the bishop yonder retiring
individual with a bald head, the financier that dandy with the
unobtrusive gold ring and faultless yet severe costume, the ambassador
that commonplace-looking person hidden under stars and ribbons. Change
the slide once more, set all these good people down at their respective
homes, and look through the magic-lantern again. What do we see? A
dining-room, a table set with more or less perfection of appointments,
a few noiseless servants and romping children, a homely, middle-aged
matron, serene and placid, perhaps looking over an account-book or
hemming pocket-handkerchiefs. The bishop’s household alone will wear
a distinctive mark, but, compared with other ecclesiastical abodes,
will keep its master’s secrets as well as any secular one. God alone
knows where to point to a saint or a genius among these ordinary
surroundings, and the objects of his discernment would often surprise
any human observer who should be admitted to share his knowledge.

The craving which men have to know the details of the private life of
any one distinguished from the commonalty by talent or position is an
inexplicable phenomenon, and one that to the end will defy our solution
and persist in remaining in force long after we have decided that it
has no business to exist. Is it that we are envious of everything above
us, and wish to dim its glory by putting it to the same test as our
own dull being? Is it through a morbid desire to analyze that which,
against our will, enchants us, in order that, having done so, and
reduced it to various elements which separately are powerless to charm,
we may depreciate the whole? Or is it through that loftier feeling
that urges us to ally ourselves by sympathy with all that is noble and
exalted in human nature? Do we long to claim at least a fellowship with
intellect through the sacred instincts which intellect and mediocrity
share alike? It is unfortunately as often through the baser as through
the nobler feeling; and yet, when we have sifted the tendency to its
simplest elements, we cannot say that we have personally rid ourselves
of the foible or learned the lesson of lofty incuriousness which by
implication we have taught.

The daily life and privations, the struggles and successes, the
domestic joys, sorrows, and losses of great men have a deeper meaning
than shows on the surface; for not only have they influenced the works
or writings through which these men have become known to us, but they
show how independent of outward circumstances is their greatness.
In this sense, they present encouragement to many in whom the same
qualities are latent, but who from faintheartedness might otherwise
have neglected their gifts and wasted their powers. They teach yet
another lesson; for in them we see what compensations the mind gives
in the midst of even sordid trials, and how the higher a man’s
intellectual training is, so much the stronger is his moral endurance.
But draw what moral we will from them, the interest in them remains and
will remain to the end of time. Trivial as they are, too, they somehow
fix the personality of a man of genius better in the mind of posterity
than his greatest virtues or doughtiest deeds; as, for instance, King
Alfred is better remembered as the disguised soldier burning the cakes
of his peasant-hostess than as the wise lawgiver and heroic chieftain
of the Saxons. Prince Charlie’s romantic escapes have endeared him to
the Scottish heart and made him the centre of the later traditions of
a romantic people, while no such halo gathers round the person of the
First or Second Charles of England, even though the “Martyr-King” has
won by his tragical death a separate niche in the Valhalla of history.

In all ages and all climes, learning and wealth have seldom gone
together. Anecdotes of scholars whose daily wants were in sad contrast
with their aspirations abound in the records of all centres of
learning. Dr. Newman, in his lectures on universities, has given us
many touching as well as ludicrous examples of this truth. Among the
disciples of Pythagoras, if we recollect accurately, was one Cleanthes,
a professional boxer from Corinth, who, smitten with a love of wisdom,
came to Athens to become a philosopher. As he had not even the trifling
daily sum required by the professor of learning, he spent half of each
day in earning it by _carrying water_ and doing such like services to
the citizens, while the remaining hours he passed at the academy. One
day, the wind blew his upper garment open, and his luckier companions
most “unphilosophically” jeered him when they saw that his outer
covering was all that he had. He afterwards rose to great proficiency,
and taught a school of his own—never, however, discarding his simple
ways. The well-known story of the three students who had but one cloak
between them and wore it each in his turn in the lecture-hall while the
others stayed in bed, is told of Athenians as well as Saxons, Irish, or
Italians in the universities of the middle ages. Bp. Vaughan’s _Life of
S. Thomas_ abounds with such anecdotes of impecunious and enthusiastic
scholars. S. Thomas himself, it is related, wrote his _Summa_ (not the
great work, but a previous and less comprehensive book) on such stray
pieces of parchment, old letters, torn covers, etc., as he could pick
up or beg from his fellow-students. S. Richard of Canterbury, when
teaching in his chair at Oxford, was so careless of his _honorarium_
that he generally left it on the window-sill, unless he had need of it
to relieve some poor person. The same saint in his youth was sometimes
so frozen to the bone that he could not continue his studies and was
fain to run round the court of the school for half an hour every night
to restore circulation before he went to bed. The Oxford students
suffered hunger as well as cold in the service of philosophy, for they
often had no other resource than to beg the broken victuals from the
tables of the tradesmen, and one of them avers in a private letter
that, on a great holiday, he and his friends made merry over an unusual
feast—“a penny piece of beef between four.”

In Paris, the case was the same. The lay students suffered most, for
each of the great religious orders had its own representative house,
and the young religious lived in community. Among the seculars it
was different; they were quartered on the citizens, and, when they
were honest as well as industrious, led a terribly hard life. They
lodged in garrets, and lay on straw; their landlords extorted from
them exorbitant rents for their share of the filthy tenement, and
they often had to depend on charity for their food. Ingenious as
poverty always is, it suggested remedies to these harassed votaries of
learning, even as it has in all succeeding ages. The poorer students
took to copying books and selling them at starvation prices, working
for others when they could find patrons, for themselves when they were
forced to do so. Thus originated bookstalls and private shops for the
sale of books, parchment, wax, and ink. In the dark days of winter, the
want of light was severely felt by those who were too poor to buy oil,
and pale, shivering forms might be seen huddled in doorways, grouped on
corners, or gathered round a street-shrine, anywhere, in fact, where a
lamp could be found, all intent on their notes of yesterday’s lecture,
or busily examining the subject of to-morrow’s lesson. Beside them was
ever the other world of students—the gay, rich, and careless: those
who spent in one night’s revel what would have bought parchment and oil
for six months for the thrifty, hard-working copyist of MSS. But what
martyrdoms were undergone for knowledge’s sake in those days of earnest
search after science no man can tell. Knowing less of the details of
mediæval life than we do of the daily needs of later generations, we
can perhaps hardly appreciate the degree of privation endured by these
sturdy knowledge-seekers.

Turning to the chivalrous land of Germany, we find, in the same
century as that of S. Thomas and the students of Paris University,
the school of poor minstrels, the famous Minnesingers. Kroeger, in
his work on them and their novel art, says: “These singers led a life
most strange and romantic. At a time when cities had as yet barely
come into existence in Germany, and the castles of the lords were
the chief gathering-places of the vast floating population of the
Crusading times, these Minnesingers, with _little or nothing_ besides
their sword, fiddle, or harp and some bit of love-ribbon or the like
from their sweetheart, wandered from village to village, and castle to
castle, everywhere welcomed with gladness, and receiving their expected
remuneration with the proud unconcern of strolling vagabonds.... For
these singing knights felt no more delicacy in chronicling the good
things they received from their patrons than in immortalizing the
meanness of those who let them depart without _gifts of clothing, food,
and money_.... The young knight was by custom compelled to saunter
forth into the world, and generally by poverty to keep on sauntering in
this fashion all his lifetime. Then he perfected himself in the art of
composing songs and playing some stringed instrument, which became both
a source of infinite enjoyment and an unfailing source of revenue if
the knight was poor. With his art, he paid his boarding-bills; his art
furnished him with clothes, horses, and equipments. More than all, his
art won him the love of his lady.”

Walther von der Vogelweide—“bird’s pasture or meadow”—was one of
the foremost of these wandering troubadours, and, as he himself
tells us, was very poor. He went to Austria to better his fortunes
by the knightly art alone fit for one of gentle birth, and among his
patrons found one, the Duke of Kärnten, whose meanness has come down
to posterity, through the then obscure minstrel’s verse, in having
“withheld a promised suit of new clothes” from the poet.

Walther’s best luck seems to have been his appointment as tutor to the
son of the Emperor Frederic II. This led to his being given a small
estate with fixed income; but he had struggled long enough in gay
though hopeless poverty before fortune singled him out for her favors.
As usual, his mind was far beyond the standard of his circumstances; a
thinker, philosopher, observer of human nature, an active member of the
state when he participated in political duties, a conscientious patriot
and a true Catholic. In politics he never refused to recognize whatever
merits the opposite party held, nor to denounce any injustice on the
part of his own; in religion, he was always alive to the abuses of the
time, despite his devout faith and earnest worship. Kroeger says of
him that, though but “little tainted by the prejudices of nationality,
he is, in his thorough earnestness and rare purity of spirit, even
more truly a representative German than either Goethe or Schiller.” Of
later authors, poets, artists, there are ampler memoirs left to teach
us the inner and darker life of the spirit we know in this bright
public envelope. The Greeks, who held that all free-born men, Hellenes
by descent, had a right to become learned and elegant scholars, and
who upon this theory based their practice of having slaves to do that
work which did not comport with the calm attitude of mind necessary
to philosophical study, made use of very cogent arguments, humanly
speaking. It remained for Christianity to do something more sublime yet
than to devote an entire class of men to lofty aims and studies; it was
reserved for Christ’s law to change even menial pursuits and vulgar
necessities into employments fit for the highest intellect. The soul’s
sanctification became a loftier aim than the cultivation of the mind
alone, and every office, however lowly, was made capable of ministering
to this new aim. Thus was the stigma which the pagan world had set upon
poverty and dependence removed, but the fact of poverty was to remain
for ever. Just as by his death our Lord had taken away, not the fact of
death, but “its sting, its victory,” and its ignominy, so by his life
he took all bitterness from that inevitable condition of the majority
of mankind—physical need and suffering.

How far this century, and indeed the spirit of the world in all
centuries, has succeeded in counteracting this beneficent change, and
in fastening again upon poverty the disgrace entailed, on it by the
pagan system, each one can judge for himself. Nay, many have a personal
standard by which they can judge of it. One cannot read the life of
any person of merit in any branch of learning without this pathetic
element constantly cropping out. Here we have Kepler, the astronomer,
struggling with constant anxieties, telling fortunes for a livelihood,
and saying that astrology, as the daughter of astronomy, ought to keep
her mother. “I supplicate you,” he writes to a friend of his, “if there
is a situation vacant at Tübingen, do what you can to obtain it for me,
and let me know the prices of bread and wine, and other necessaries of
life; for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans.” He had to accept
all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served any one who would pay
him. The gentle, melancholy Schiller wasted by necessity much of his
time in literary hack-work at a period when the pay of authors was
so miserable that they could hardly exist by the pen: he translated
French books at “a shilling a page.” Even Goethe, whose fortune was
quite independent, could not add to his income by his talent; and when
Merck, the publisher, offered three pounds sterling for a drama of his,
the old poet might well ask: “If Europe praised me, what has Europe
done for me? Nothing. Even my works have been an expense to me.”

Perhaps no life has ever been so continual a struggle as that of
Oliver Goldsmith. From his very childhood he was used to starvation;
for family difficulties caused him to go to Dublin University, not as
a pensioner (as he had hoped), but as a sizar. He had to sweep the
courts, wait at table, and perform other menial tasks of the same
sort. It was a bitter price to pay for learning, but his after-life
was no sweeter in its manifold experiences. Before he left college,
his father died, and he was thrown on his own resources, when he often
had to pawn his books, and at last took to writing street-ballads,
which he disposed of at five shillings per copy. Twice the shiftless
scholar tried to make his way to America, and failed; his pretensions
to Anglican orders were crushed by his failure to pass his examination,
and his venture as a tutor was equally unsuccessful. His good genius,
his uncle, Mr. Contarine, sent him to Edinburgh to become a physician,
and this was the last of the regular professions which he tried. We
find him wandering through Flanders, singing and playing his flute at
the houses of the peasantry, in order to obtain a supper and a night’s
lodging; then attending chemical lectures at the Universities of Leyden
and Louvain; taking part in the open discussions on philosophical
subjects held on certain days in the convents and colleges of Italy,
and returning to England without a farthing in his pocket; then taking
a fortnight to reach London from Dover, begging, performing, or playing
on the road. He went among the London apothecaries, “and asked them to
let him spread plasters for them, pound in their mortars, or run with
their medicines.” It was through a poor journeyman printer, a patient
of his, that he first gained the notice of a great publisher; but his
troubles were only increased by his literary ventures. Now he is in a
garret, with the milk-woman knocking at the door, pressing him for a
trifling milk-score, which he is too poor to pay; now he repeatedly
loses the chance of good situations, because he has not a decent suit
of clothes to his back. Once a publisher provided him with clothes, in
advance, for four reviews for his magazine; but before Goldsmith has
finished his work, his landlord is dragged away by bailiffs to pass
his Christmas in prison for debt. The impulsive author has no money,
but immediately runs and pawns his clothes, liberating his miserable
host, and rejoicing the poor family. Left starving himself, he gets
a trifling loan from a friend on the four books to be reviewed, when
the publisher makes a sudden and peremptory demand for the clothes
and books, or payment for the same. Goldsmith begs him, as a favor,
“for fear of worse happening to him,” to put him in gaol. The pay he
received for his ceaseless work was ridiculously slender; for his
_Plutarch’s Lives_ he got eight pounds a volume. The novel which has
immortalized his name, the _Vicar of Wakefield_, was sold for sixty
pounds, and in the most unceremonious fashion possible. Johnson, the
author’s fast friend, gives the story of the transaction thus: “I
received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great
distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that
I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and
promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was
dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent,
at which he was in a violent passion.... I desired he would be calm;
... he then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he
produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merits, told the landlady
I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for
sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his
rent.” The famous novel, so hastily disposed of to stave off actual
starvation and imprisonment, was thought so little of by its new owner
that it was eighteen months before he published it. Although his fame
grew with years, Goldsmith remained in distress; for he never could
keep what he earned. Indiscriminate generosity, often lavished on
unworthy companions, swallowed up his growing but always transitory
income; and the week after a gorgeous supper or a tailor’s bill of
extravagant items duly receipted, we yet find him writing a short
English grammar for _five pounds_, and, later on, borrowing _one pound_
from his publisher.

The young poet Chatterton, impulsive, gifted, and unfortunate, the
contemporary and friend of Goldsmith, was another victim to the
fickleness of the muse. Starving and desperate, he at last committed
suicide in a miserable London garret, in a dirty street leading out of
Holborn, a neighborhood not much more desirable than Baxter Street, New
York. There was no one to claim his body, and it was finally taken to
the “bonehouse” of St. Andrew’s, and buried in the pauper burial-ground
in Shoe Lane.

In thriving America, the El Dorado of the untaught European
imagination, the scholar is hardly destined to a happier lot than in
the old realms where intellect is supposed to have a traditionary
value. Of Nathaniel Hawthorne we have various records of want and
manful struggle. Always brave under adverse circumstances, this is how
he words his own misfortunes in 1820, when, still a boy, he already
edited a small and obscure periodical called the _Spectator_. Among the
obituary notices one day, the following was conspicuous: “We are sorry
to be under the necessity of informing our readers that no death of any
importance has taken place, except that of the publisher of this paper,
who died of starvation, owing to the slenderness of his patronage.”
In 1839, he had been so lucky, in a worldly sense, as to have secured
the post of head-collector of the port of Salem, Mass.; and, in this
uncongenial yet lucrative situation, he felt beyond the reach of
necessity. He curiously laments his ludicrous dilemma, and comments on
his name, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” which he had fondly hoped from his
childhood to have sent forth to the world on the title-page of some
important work, now taking wing for the remotest ends of the earth,
scrawled in red chalk on the covers of packing-cases, tea-chests, and
cotton-bales. Political changes twice ousted him from his position,
and the second ejection was definitive—a starting-point in his life.
He went home one evening, and announced his dispossession to his wife.
There were no provisions in the house, save a barrel of flour and some
insignificant adjuncts. The family had hardly any money in hand, but
no one complained. Hawthorne told his wife he was going to write in
earnest, and they must trust to Providence in the meanwhile. Partly by
economy of the most rigid kind, partly by the helping hand of friendly
neighbors, the Hawthornes managed to keep the “wolf from the door”
till the novel was completed. The evening it was finished, the author,
feverish, excited, and emaciated, closeted himself with his wife, and
read her the MS. She listened intently, the interest becoming painful,
her breath came and went, her color faded gradually, and, at the
climax of the wonderful story, fell at his feet almost in convulsions,
exclaiming, “For God’s sake, do not read further; I cannot bear it.”
Next morning, he sent the novel to a friend of his, a sound judge and
unsparing critic in the literary world. The friend _raced_ through the
MS., enthralled by its powerful word-imagery, and came himself with his
answer. Meeting the author’s little boy, Julian, in the garden in front
of the house, he caught him up in his arms, exclaiming: “Child! child!
do you know what a father you have?” and rushed into the house, fairly
storming the newly revealed genius with congratulations.[214] Thus was
the _Scarlet Letter_ produced and Hawthorne’s name made. After that,
his success was rapid, and literature proved a sufficient support for
her gifted votary.

Another American genius was less fortunate. In Baltimore, a periodical
entitled the _Saturday Visitor_ offered a prize for the best poem and
story (the amount we cannot precisely recollect). When the candidates’
MSS. were examined, one of them proved to be a collection of clever
poems and a story written almost in “copper-plate” hand. The editors
looked no further, but said, in joke, “Let us give the prize to the
first of geniuses who has written legibly.” The name of the young
author was Edgar Allan Poe.

“He came just as he was,” says his biographer, “the prize-money not
having yet been sent him, with a seedy coat buttoned up to conceal the
total absence of linen, but with shoes whose gaping crevices could not
be made to hide the absence of socks.” Mr. Kennedy (the editor) took
him to the tailor, and fitted him out as comfortably and completely
as possible, after which he was installed as an inmate of his house,
and for a little time employed on the staff of the _Saturday Visitor_.
This was in 1833. The vicissitudes of fortune were perpetual, though to
his terrible propensity to intemperance much of his constant distress
was due. A gentleman despite the squalor of his appearance, a genius
despite his uncontrolled vices, he was one of the most unfortunate
of men. A few years later, he writes to a friend: “Can you not send
me five dollars? I am sick, and Virginia (his wife) is almost gone.”
In 1839, his prospects were for the moment not so hopeless, and one
who often visited him testified to his home in Philadelphia, “though
slightly and cheaply furnished,” being yet “so tasteful and refined,
so fitly disposed, that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of
genius.” Again, his biographer speaks of him as “always in pecuniary
difficulties, and his sick wife frequently in want of the merest
necessities of life.” For his poem “The Raven,” first published in the
_Whig Review_, and since become the pedestal of his worldwide fame, he
received the sum of _ten dollars_; and in 1848, while writing for the
_Southern Literary Messenger_, he was content to work for two dollars
a page. And yet, so far as fame was concerned, Poe’s name and talent
were known beyond the seas, admired by two continents; and when, upon
entering an office in New York, he would mention who he was, men turned
round to stare at the gifted poet who, all starving as he was, was
already enrolled among the great men of America.

The philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, had equal occasion to put
his philosophy to the same universal test of patience. Finding a
mercantile clerkship ill-adapted to his poetic and vagrant humor, he
left Geneva and went to Lausanne, where he tried music as a profession.
His experiences were curious. He tried to teach music, but, as he
says himself, “The scholars _did not crowd_, and two or three German
boys, luckily as stupid as I was ignorant of my business, were my only
pupils. Under my tuition they did not become great _croquenotes_. One
day, I was sent for to a house to teach a little ‘serpent of a girl,’
to whom it gave infinite pleasure to show me a quantity of music I
did not know, and then to play one piece for me, ‘just to show the
master how it should go.’ I knew absolutely so little of reading that
I could not follow a note of my own composition in such a manner as
to be able to regulate its execution.” It may be supposed the poor
man did not thrive on these means of livelihood; his fare was meagre
enough, and he paid only thirty francs a month for his board and
lodging in the little inn where he made his home. For his dinner, he
had but one dish of soup, with something a little more substantial for
his supper at night. Notwithstanding his desire for independence and
freedom from the personal thraldom (_assujettissement_) of a fixed and
sedentary occupation, he found out that “one must live.” So he took
to copying music at a small remuneration, and so fond did he become
of his self-chosen trade (for with him it was not art) that in later
life, when in comfortable circumstances, he took to it again. But his
musical mania went yet further. He composed an operetta entitled _Le
Devin du Village_—“The Village Astrologer, or Fortune-teller”—and
had it executed at Lausanne. He says of its first performance “that it
was such a _charivari_ as could not be surpassed; that every one shut
their ears and opened wide their eyes; that it was a witch’s sabbath, a
devilish hubbub, insupportable and monstrous.” The tide turned one day,
and the same play was performed in the court theatre at Versailles,
the family and courtiers of Louis XVI. calling the music dream-like,
divine, entrancing! This sounds like an anticipation of the diversity
of opinion now observable concerning Wagner and Liszt.

Real artists, like Mozart, were hardly more fortunate in their domain
of legitimate art than was Rousseau in his queer attempts at music.
Although his name was known, his music extolled to the skies, and his
person retained as a priceless court treasure at Vienna, Wolfgang
Mozart hardly made a competency by his unrivalled and acknowledged
genius. His early death was mainly the result of continual anxiety on
the score of personal necessities. When the mysterious stranger came
and gave the order for the requiem, Mozart was already ill, worn, and
exhausted. The stranger’s opportune gift, or fragment in advance, came
too late, though it was sorely needed at the time; and, before the
order was completed, the great musician was on his death-bed, his wife
Constance by his side, his friends rehearsing the finished part of the
requiem at the foot of his bed, while his haggard features were lit up
to the last by the feverish enthusiasm so soon to be quenched in death.

It would seem as though the greater the genius, the greater the
destitution. Hardly one has escaped the furnace of poverty. Curran,
the great Irish lawyer and orator, was stranded early in life, without
friends, connections, or fortune, conscious of talent above the crowd
that elbowed him, and sensitive to a painful degree. He himself thus
tells the story of the first fee of any consequence which he received
in his profession: “I then lived upon Hog Hill, Dublin; my wife and
children were the chief furniture of my apartments; as to my rent, it
stood much the same chance of its liquidation with the national debt.
Mrs. Curran, however, was a barrister’s lady, and what was wanting
in wealth she was well determined should be supplied by dignity. The
landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of any other gradation except
that of pounds, shillings, and pence. I walked out one morning, in
order to avoid the perpetual altercations on this subject, with my
mind, you may imagine, in no very enviable temperament. I fell into
gloom, to which from my infancy I had been occasionally subject. I had
a family, for whom I had no dinner, and a landlady, for whom I had
no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence; I returned home almost in
desperation. When I opened the door of my study the first object that
presented itself was an immense folio of a brief, twenty golden guineas
wrapped up beside it, and the name of _old Bob Lyons_ marked on the
back of it. I paid my landlady, bought a good dinner, gave Bob Lyons a
share of it, and that dinner was the date of my prosperity!”

One of the most Christian and sympathetic authors of France (in a
department in which it must be confessed she does not excel—poetry),
Alphonse de Lamartine, was both in his youth and in his old age
the victim of poverty. Though in his childhood his poverty was not
absolutely sordid, like that of many a scholar as talented and even
as well born, still it was such that his mother had to exercise the
strictest economy on her small property, to help her peasant-servants
in many a lowly household task, and was in such straits that the
failure or success of her slender vintage was to her the chief event
of the year. A noble woman, a Christian Cornelia, she knew how to
turn these troubles into lessons for her son; and a more genial,
lovable “great man” than Lamartine has seldom claimed our homage,
notwithstanding the foibles which necessarily qualify our admiration.
Political and diplomatic success gave him far different prospects in
middle life. His poems were the first heralds, the joy-bells, of a new
school; his name was a talisman. But the shadow of genius—relentless
poverty—fell upon him again, and his last days were little better than
a pauper’s.

The literary world of Paris presents the acme of this
combination—squalor and talent. Dramatists, poets, painters,
musicians, the smaller fry of the daily press, the heavier authors of
yellow-covered _romans_, all mingled in one inextricable _bohemia_
of distress, of recklessness, of generosity, of self-sacrifice. Good
and bad are strangely interwoven; the starving writer stints himself
to help the dying artist, or the swaggering playwright repudiates his
debts to gamble away in one night the rare remuneration of months of
toil; and amid the confusion, the din of this assemblage, amid this
fellowship of misery, remains the seemingly eternal truth that the path
of scholarship, or even its counterfeit, is _not_ the legitimate path
of success.

In France, where the intellect is so fertile that it is almost the
only land where literature is a profession, not a pastime, we may turn
to one figure more, a sweet and angelic one, very different from the
stormy and erratic geniuses among whom we have been wandering—Eugénie
de Guérin, the Catholic poetess, the devoted type of sisterly love. She
was poor, though not to destitution. The family, once famous among the
Languedoc Crusaders, and owning a great feudal estate, had dwindled
down to the possession of a patrimony hardly so large and not half
so rich as a modern farm. The woman now known throughout Europe and
America by her exquisite _Journal_ and _Letters_—the starting-point
of a new class of domestic literature—tells us simply and playfully
enough in those writings—which during life she never dreamed of giving
to the public—of her humble avocations in her father’s household. Now
we see her, having cooked the supper with her sister’s aid while the
servants were all gone to an instruction for confirmation, sitting by
the huge fire in the kitchen, because it was warm there, and making
a hearty meal of coarse soup, boiled potatoes, and a cake baked by
herself, “with the dogs and cats to wait upon us,” as she says. She
did not like these household cares, however; they were a cross to her,
and her good sister “Mimi” took much of this cross off her hands.
Another day she has been washing, but she consoles herself with the
thought of Homer’s Nausicaa washing her brother’s tunics. Once, when
she was lifting a heavy cauldron from the kitchen fire, her father
tenderly said he did not like to see her doing such work; but she
answered with a smile that S. Bonaventure was found washing the dishes
after the refectory meal when the Papal deputation came to offer him
the cardinal’s hat! So she taught herself to do “disgusting things
without feeling disgust; as, for instance, blackening her hands in the
kitchen.” Another time she makes a hasty note of her affection for her
brother and her unconquerable longing after solitude, but adds that
she has no time for it now, “as there are ducks to be plucked, a pie
to be prepared, a little carnival-dinner got up; in a word, because
the parish priest was coming, and her help was anxiously waited for
in the kitchen”; while another day she is mending old house-linen. On
the other hand, she was reading S. Augustine, S. Jerome, S. Teresa,
Bossuet, Fénélon, Plutarch, books of theology and philosophy, mysticism
and morals, the works of great thinkers; she was writing poems of
more exquisite purity and wealth of imagery than the famous young
brother whom Sainte-Beuve and George Sand declared one of the foremost
poets of the day: she was a child in her simplicity, a saint in her
abnegation—a woman in a thousand. We have dwelt with the greater
emphasis and satisfaction on this last reference for the reason that
the modern world, in its haste to find countenance for its license in
thought and morals, has brought into prominence only the less worthy
specimens of French genius, to the neglect of the many admirable
writers who are now for the first time, becoming familiar to English
readers.

This strangely mingled thread of life which we have illustrated in
these pages has its pathetic as well as its ludicrous aspect. Men are
constantly complaining of the “injustice” of God in making inequalities
among them; if they looked a little deeper, they would see that what
they call inequalities are compensations. The world has to be ballasted
like a ship; the heaviest merchandise is not always the most precious,
but it is none the less necessary. It would be preposterous to expect
_all_ men to be rich, good, and clever; gifts balance each other in
God’s plan, and, since men sigh so for riches, the wise Distributor of
earthly prizes has answered many men literally, and given them riches
alone, leaving their brains a blank. To discuss this vexed question is
not, however, our intention; a few examples, such as we have drawn from
real life, speak for themselves, and facts are ever more tolerated than
disquisitions. We may learn from those facts a new interest in books;
we may remember, when we read a new work, that a human being’s life is
sewed in with those pages; that what we carelessly toss aside after
a moment’s perusal has cost hours of trouble, of research, probably
of privation; that the pathos that draws tears from our eyes is often
transcribed and softened down from the actual experience of the writer;
while the humor we approve of and the piquancy we admire are rather
born of bitter defiance against an adverse fate than grown from the
natural soil of a healthy sense of fun. A book is often the hot-pressed
fruit of an unhappy life rather than the product of elegant leisure,
and one cannot help feeling a tender but far from disparaging pity for
the thousands of educated men and women whose very talent, in a sense,
compels them, through circumstances of privation, to write in haste and
anxiety books that are inadequate representatives of that talent.


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

 THE S. AUGUSTINE SERIES: I. On the Trinity; II. Harmony of
 the Evangelists, and the Sermon on the Mount. Edinburgh: T. & T.
 Clark. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

These two volumes continue the series of patristic translations edited
so carefully and published in such splendid style by the firm of Clark,
at Edinburgh. The publication and perusal of long and entire works of
the fathers, especially S. Augustine, must have a most happy effect
in promoting the cause of the Catholic faith. We notice with especial
pleasure the volume on the Trinity. This is one of the greatest works
of S. Augustine. His argument is wonderfully exhaustive and conclusive,
wonderfully sublime and devout, wonderfully rich in the exposition of
Holy Scripture. It is also very plain and intelligible to a patient
and attentive reader when the peculiar difficulties of the Latin style
have been overcome. In this translation, the structure and meaning of
the sentences and phrases are made very plain, and one reads with a
pleasure and facility much enhanced by the clearness and beauty of the
page. We recommend this translation to all who wish for a very valuable
help to the rendering of S. Augustine in the original, as well as to
those who desire to become acquainted with his doctrine, and can only
do so through the medium of their own language.

 A LIFE OF S. WALBURGE; WITH THE ITINERARY OF S. WILLIBALD. By
 the Rev. Thomas Meyrick, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York:
 Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

All who love the mediæval saints, and particularly those of once
Catholic England, will find a delicious treat in this simple story.
Besides the life and death of S. Walburge, an account is given of

the miraculous oil that “distils from the coffer in which her relics
are enclosed in her church of Eichstadt.” Cures are wrought by this
oil to-day. We happen to know personally of one—the instant and final
cure of a case of S. Vitus’ dance by a drop of the oil received on the
patient’s tongue, after a novena and communion in the saint’s honor.

The “Journey of S. Willibald to the Holy Land,” which forms the second
half of the little volume, was written at Heidenheim about the year
760. “It is interesting,” says F. Meyrick, “as confirming, by the
testimony of an eye-witness a thousand years since, the Catholic
traditions of some disputed localities, and as a specimen of a nun’s
composition in the VIIIth century.”

 THE QUESTION OF ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS DISCUSSED. By E. E.
 Estcourt, M.A., F.S.A., Canon of S. Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham. With
 an Appendix of Original Documents and Fac-similes. London: Burns &
 Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

A controversial work written in a calm and mild tone is sure to claim
attention and wise confidence, especially if that work deals with a
difficult question, and one involved in much obscurity and uncertainty.
Such is the style of the work before us, and such is the character of
the question the Rev. Canon Estcourt treats—Anglican Ordinations.

This is truly a masterly work, and the author exhibits throughout that
modesty which is the mark of a true scholar. But he does not condescend
to his antagonist; he is fully aware that he is at warfare, but at
warfare _pro causa veritatis_. He is a brave warrior, and wields a
heavy weapon; he studies his foe well before he strikes, but, when he
strikes, he strikes in a vital part.

We do not mean to say that he has finished the much-discussed
question of Anglican ordinations, or that Anglicans will hereafter
have nothing to say. They will always have something to say so long
as the Establishment lasts. But we believe there are a large number
of Anglicans who are serious and in earnest, and who conscientiously
believe they have a priesthood, and it is among them we hope to see
this book produce some practical result.

The present work starts out in the introduction with a “statement of
the question” it is about to treat of, in which the author says he
does not claim to bring forth much in the way of new facts or new
principles, but aims rather at a more careful application of principles
already laid down, and to show the real influence of the facts alleged
by Anglicans (as, for instance, the consecration of Parker), even if
true. It then states the Catholic doctrine on the question of holy
orders, and finally lays down the principles of evidence to be followed
in the investigation of historical facts.

The author commences with the “Origin of the Controversy,” in which,
after showing how the seeds of heresy were first planted by Wyckliffe,
and spread by the Lollards, and that the heresies on the Continent
and in England were all one and the same growth—which Anglicans have
so strenuously tried to deny—he exhibits the manner in which the
Anglican rite was compiled, and shows that the form of ordination in
the Edwardine ordinal was not primitive, but a compilation from the
ritual of the Roman Church of the middle ages, there being nothing in
it earlier than the IXth century, and most from the XIIIth and XIVth.

He then treats of the validity of the orders given in the new form, as
tested by Queen Mary’s reign and the acts of Cardinal Pole, and shows
by a number of cases, and a careful analysis of the different classes
the Cardinal Legate had to deal with, that both “the Papal brief and
the cardinal’s acts furnish the clearest possible evidence that the
Holy See regarded the Edwardine ordinations as utterly worthless” (p.
40), and therefore that the Anglican claim of Catholics admitting these
ordinations as valid is a false one.

The second, third, and fourth chapters are devoted to the “History of
the Controversy.”

First, the mere matter of fact, with regard to those much-contested
consecrations, is discussed. As to Barlow, the author, while giving
the Anglicans the full benefit of all their documents and proofs of
this poor man so involved in mist, shows that his consecration at least
cannot be proved.

The author very justly concludes respecting Barlow that while we cannot
come to any positive decision, yet, “with so many circumstances of
suspicion arising from different quarters, yet pointing the same way,
it is impossible to admit the fact of his consecration without more
direct proof of it” (p. 81).

Parker’s case is next taken up. Of course, the author discards the
Nag’s Head story; and with regard to the mere fact of Parker’s
consecration having taken place, he acknowledges it must be admitted.
But he shows that such a consecration, from the grave doubts whether
Barlow was ever consecrated, and the manner in which ordinations of the
Book of Common Prayer of 1552 were treated, was utterly worthless.

After giving the testimony of contemporary Catholics in the matter of
Parker’s consecration, he says: “But taking them all together, it must
be granted that they admit the fact of the consecration having taken
place as alleged, but it is also evident that they imply some serious
difficulty respecting it, and apparently touching the persons acting
therein; and, further, that this difficulty extended so far as not
merely to render the consecration uncanonical, unlawful, and irregular,
but also to affect its validity” (p. 126).

Then having shown the practice of the church with those who returned to
the true faith, he gives a list of the Anglican ministers who became
reconciled to the Catholic Church down to the year 1704, and thus
answers by facts the claim set up by Dr. Lee, founded on the alleged
refusal of twelve converts to be reordained because they claimed to be
true priests.

Next follows a short review of the controversy as carried on so far by
both Anglicans and Catholics, after which commences what we consider as
really the most important part of the book; for the rest of the work
deals entirely with the _validity_ of Anglican ordinations.

This second half of the work we look upon as instituting a new era
in the controversy. Heretofore, writers have occupied themselves
principally with trying to disprove the facts with regard to the
Anglican consecrations, and have done very little to prove the
invalidity of such consecrations, even if they took place. Canon
Estcourt has entered into this very thoroughly, and made it clear.

He commences by an examination of the most ancient forms of ordination,
and coming down through the various rites, and giving the teaching of
the fathers, shows what the matter and form of ordination most probably
consists in. Having established this, he gives the practice of the
church in her official decisions in two important cases.

The author has devoted a chapter to the refutation of the story of Pius
IV. and Queen Elizabeth, which is the Anglican Nag’s Head, and which we
suppose is at least well to have repeated, as there may be some on whom
this worn-out fable would still have an influence.

In the concluding chapters, the argument is summed up, and “the
inevitable conclusion follows that Anglican ordinations must be
considered as altogether invalid, and that there is neither bishop,
priest, nor deacon in the Anglican communion. And the reasons for this
conclusion may be stated in a summary way as follows:

“1. Because from the year 1554 it has been the unvarying practice of
the Catholic Church so to consider and treat them.

“2. Because there are grave doubts whether Barlow, the consecrator of
Parker, had ever himself received episcopal consecration; and, in fact,
the probabilities of the case incline more strongly against than in
favor of it.

“3. Because the Anglican forms of ordination have been altered from the
ancient forms, both by way of mutilation and addition, in such a manner
as to exclude, on the part of those participating in the acts enjoined,
any intention of conferring or receiving a sacrament, or sacramental
grace, or a spiritual character, or any sacerdotal or episcopal power.

“4. Because the same forms have been also altered purposely, with the
view of excluding the idea of the priest at his ordination receiving
power to offer sacrifice.

“5. Because Anglican bishops and priests, at the time of ordination,
join in a profession contrary to the Catholic faith in the holy
sacrifice, thus assuming on themselves, by their own act, the spirit
and erroneous intentions with which the alterations were made.

“6. Because the meaning here attributed to the Anglican forms
receives confirmation from the fact of its being doubtful whether
the word ‘priest’ in the Anglican forms of ordination means a priest
in the sense of the Catholic Church; that is to say, _sacerdos_, ‘a
sacrificing priest.’

“7. Because the meaning of the same forms is further illustrated from
the ‘Order of Administration of Holy Communion’ in the Book of Common
Prayer,

which is found to be contrary to the Catholic faith in the doctrines of
the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist and the Real Presence” (pp. 373-4).

Let us leave the author’s last words for those who are serious and in
earnest, to meditate upon:

“What, then, Anglicans have to consider, the questions they have to
ask themselves, are these: What do they really believe about the grace
of holy orders, and even about the grace of the sacraments in general?
and next, What are the conditions on which that grace is ordinarily
given? And then to look whether those conditions are fulfilled within
the Anglican communion. If they would seriously, as in the sight of
God, consider these points, we might hope to attain to truth, which is
before all things, and after truth to see peace following in her train,
and union, not based on vague terms and unharmonious professions, but
in ‘one body and one spirit, as called in one hope of our vocation, one
Lord, one faith one baptism’” (p. 379).


 LECTURES ON CERTAIN PORTIONS OF THE EARLIER OLD TESTAMENT
 HISTORY. By Philip G. Munro, Priest of the Diocese of Nottingham,
 and Domestic Chaplain to the Earl of Gainsborough. Vol. I. London:
 Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication
 Society.)

This being but the first volume of a most valuable work, we shall wait
for the whole to be completed before writing a lengthy notice. We will
only say at present that the solidity of scholarship which the work
displays, together with its entertaining style, make it a long-desired
aid to the study of the Holy Scriptures on the part of our educated
laity.

What we have been most struck with in the present volume is the
simple yet masterly proof of a visible church—_i.e._ a teaching
authority—having always existed from the time of Adam; as also of the
coeval use of place and ritual for the worship of God.

 THE PROPHET OF CARMEL. By the Rev. Chas. Garside. London:
 Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication
 Society.)

This is a peculiar work, hardly classifiable under any conventional
head in religious literature. It has the charm of refined and
elegant diction, joined to the weightier recommendation of practical
usefulness. It is a history of the prophet Elias, following the
startling yet meagre facts of his life as revealed in the Old
Testament, and drawing from them analogies wonderfully suited to our
own times, lives, temptations, and hopes. It is not one of the least
perfections of that incomparable Book, the Holy Scriptures, that
it should apply with such marvellous truth to any time, person, or
circumstance; that it should offer as living a counsel, as efficacious
a comfort, as dread a warning to every individual man in his own
obscure orbit of to-day as it did thousands of years ago to exalted
personages in unwonted trials. It is not only the political history
of one people; it is the history of the human soul at all times
and in all places. Thus, the author has drawn from the mysterious
records of Elias—who at first would seem but a colossal saint,
utterly removed from any appreciation that would seek to go beyond
admiration—parallels between human duties and human weaknesses under
the reign of Achab, and the same duties and weaknesses under the rulers
of our day. There is something in this book of the alluring style of
F. Faber’s religious works, but without that floweriness of speech of
which no one was a safe master but that prose-poet himself.

 THE VALIANT WOMAN. By Mgr. Landriot. Translated from the
 French by Helena Lyons. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1873.

This collection of discourses, addressed to women on the duties of
their daily life by the former Bishop of La Rochelle, now Archbishop of
Rheims, is a most valuable work, and contains an epitome of everything
woman should do, know, and teach. There can hardly be too much of the
same tenor written on this subject, and all that is written should be
sown broadcast over Christendom by the best translations. That before
our notice seems a very terse one, faithful but not slavish. Indeed, a
translator often has it in his power to mar the whole effect of a most
important work by dressing it in such unmistakably foreign garb that it
becomes unacceptable to the peculiar mind of this or that nationality.
Mgr. Landriot’s discourses, though addressed to French women and to
_provinciales_, are couched in such broad terms, and inspired

by so comprehensive a spirit, that they are equally applicable to women
of all nations, whether in populous cities or retired country towns.
The conditions of all classes are also so delicately brought within
the circle of his consideration that even poor and obscure women may
find in them as effectual guidance as the wife of a cabinet minister
or of a financial magnate. True Christianity alone can inspire true
cosmopolitanism, and that without violating patriotism. The spirit
of petty localism, or, in fact, of any narrow-mindedness on any
subject, is foreign to the wise prelate’s mind, and nowhere defaces
his writings; yet, at the same time, he knows how to make skilful use
of his surroundings, and take illustrations from objects constantly
before the eyes of his immediate hearers. In the fourth discourse he
expounds the text of Proverbs, “She is like the merchant’s ship, she
bringeth her bread from afar” (xxxi. 14); and speaking as the bishop
of a seaport town to a community whose interests were probably in many
cases connected with the sea, he draws the most original comparisons
between an ideal woman and a perfect ship. Masts, helm, rigging,
cargo, ballast, compass, chart, crew, etc., nothing is forgotten, and
every detail tallies with some spiritual attribute of the life of a
holy and “valiant” woman. In another place he compares woman to a
bridge, the support and link of many souls, and makes the bold simile
very plausible by his well-chosen remarks on the united flexibility
and strength required in woman’s character. There is not a point of
domestic life which he does not touch upon fearlessly, not a duty he
does not point out minutely. Sins of sloth, of vanity, of imprudent
speech, of undue susceptibility, are all unmasked; the relations
between woman and those who come in contact with her as wife, mother,
mistress, or friend are all accurately sketched; her pursuits are
regulated, but with no intolerant hand; her sphere mapped out, but with
no niggardly restrictions. Country life and occupation are commended
as healthful for the body, and leading to peace of mind and soul; good
sayings, tersely expressed, are scattered here and there; as, for
instance: “Virtue and vice are distinguished by the quantity of the
dose; put the right quantity, and you have a virtue; take away that
quantity, or exceed it, and you have a vice.” There is in the whole
work a tone of moderation singularly adapted to the needs of the day, a
shrinking from exaggeration in any form, and a hesitancy in condemning
anything the excess of which only can be styled a sin. The lecturer
leans for these moderate views on the writings of S. Francis of Sales,
that rare director of virtuous women in the world. One very beautiful
idea, with which we do not remember ever to have met before in any
shape, is that of the “divine magnetism” exercised by Providence, and
which turns the bitterest draught of human woe into a delicious nectar
for those who trust in God, while “the cup of earthly happiness” held
to the lips of the “spoiled child of fortune ... has infused therein a
poison to disturb and agitate the inmost depths of his being.”

The picture of the valiant woman of the Proverbs is thus brought before
the eyes of women of the XIXth century, not as something magnificently
inimitable, as personated by a Judith, a Jael, or an Esther, but as
a perfectly attainable state, as exemplified by S. Monica, S. Paula,
S. Elizabeth of Hungary. Neither the heroic, the learned, nor the
commercial side of life is shut out from them, although the domestic is
specially inculcated; and in Mgr. Landriot woman will find a meeter and
more dignified champion than in the prophetesses of “woman’s rights.”
Our only regret is that such “valiant” and perfect women should be so
rare among us. A few such Christian matrons would revolutionize their
sex.

 RUPERT AUBREY, OF AUBREY CHASE. By the Rev. Thos. Potter.
 Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1873.

This a short historical tale of the latter end of the XVIIth century,
and is put together from various records of known details of the Titus
Oates plot. It was quite another phase of religious persecution from
that prevalent a hundred years before under Queen Elizabeth, and Titus
Oates, in his hypocrisy and meanness, forms a contrast to the more
open though not less cruel inquisitors of Tudor days. The incidents
of the story are, as facts, quite imaginary, though fashioned in
accordance with probability and the known incidents of similar _real_
vicissitudes; the style is very clear and agreeable, and the personages
attractive in character, especially the old soldier and royalist, Sir
Aubrey Aubrey. The details of the martyrdom of the saintly Archbishop
of Armagh, Oliver Plunket, are beautifully woven in with the lesser but
hardly less touching sorrows of the young Rupert, the hero of the tale.
The end is bright and hopeful, unlike many of those solemn tragedies in
days of old, but just such as is fitted to encourage the minds of our
day. There is in the beginning of the book a very pleasant description
of an old English village of Yorkshire, and a hint to travellers who,
in frantic pursuit of distant pleasure, are whirled past such sylvan
retreats on their way to fashionable places of “repose.”

 A TREATISE ON THE PARTICULAR EXAMEN OF CONSCIENCE, ACCORDING TO
 THE METHOD OF S. IGNATIUS. By F. Luis de la Palma, S.J. With a
 Preface by F. George Porter, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New
 York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It would be almost equal to the attempt “to gild refined gold” to speak
approvingly of a work gotten up under the auspices and derived from the
sources above indicated.

The Jesuits have always been accorded a practical eminence as
father-confessors; and one who is familiar with the _Spiritual
Exercises_ of S. Ignatius and the _History of the Sacred Passion_ of F.
de la Palma will not doubt that he is, indeed, among the masters of the
spiritual life while listening to the counsels contained in the present
work.

 SKETCHES OF IRISH SOLDIERS IN EVERY LAND. By Col. James E.
 McGee. New York: James A. McGee. 1873.

The half-historic, half-conversational style in which these sketches
are written makes good display of the author’s undoubted powers; and
this, too, in spite of some carelessness. With the exception of the
unfortunate mention made of the share which Irish gentlemen took in
the practice of duelling, the book is excellent reading. The subject
is one invested with a sad charm for all who, by blood, or religion,
or love of valor, can sympathize with a cruelly oppressed yet warlike
and adventurous people. The author gives us only a small fragment of
the history of Irish military exploits—“some flowers,” as the preface
says, “culled from the immortal garlands with which modern history has
enwreathed the brow of Irish valor.” Yet it suffices to produce a vivid
impression of how Irishmen have done honor to their own race, and given
generous and valuable service to the military enterprises of nearly
every civilized nation. We hope that as good a pen and as appreciative
a mind will some day give a complete history of the Irishmen who
figured conspicuously in our late war. The author, indeed, dedicates
his book to the memory of his countrymen “who fought and fell” in that
great struggle, and refers specially to some few of them, while turning
over to the future historian the task of doing them all full justice.

 MEDITATIONS ON THE MOST BLESSED VIRGIN. By Most Hon. Brother
 Philippe, Superior General of the Brothers of the Christian Schools.
 Translated from the French. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1874.

This substantial volume bears the _imprimatur_ of His Grace
the Archbishop of Baltimore. And the other approbation, by the
Vicar-General of the Right Rev. Bishop of Versailles, says that the
writer is officially assured that the work “will prove a new and most
precious fountain from which pious souls may be abundantly supplied
with the healing waters of devotion to the Mother of God.” From what
we have had time to see of the book, we also are convinced that it is
a most solid and valuable addition to the best manuals of a devotion
which can never be exhausted, but, on the contrary, is destined to
increase till He who first came into the world by Mary shall in some
sense come again by her.

We therefore welcome this volume very gratefully, and recommend it to
our Catholic readers.


ANNOUNCEMENTS.—The Catholic Publication Society has in press,
and will publish this fall, _The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding,
D.D._, Archbishop of Baltimore, by Rev. J. L. Spalding, S.T.L. It will
make a large 8vo volume of over 500 pages, and will be brought out in
good style. Also in press, _The Life and Doctrine of S. Catharine of
Genoa_; _The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for 1874_; and _Good
Things_, a compilation from the _Almanac_ for the last five years,
making a handsomely illustrated presentation volume.




                              FOOTNOTES:

[1] 1 Cor. xiii. 1-3.

[2] We had intended to give a brief outline of what the church has
done from time to time for the various forms of human want, but found
we could not do so in the present article without departing from the
diversified character essential to a magazine. Such a sketch of the
efforts made by the church, during her long history, to alleviate
physical suffering, and for the moral elevation of the race, would
almost be a history of the church itself, inasmuch as the poor have
always been her heritage, in accordance with our Lord’s words. To the
Catholic reader this would have been unnecessary; and if this reference
serves the purpose of inducing the candid non-Catholic to look into the
record, a desirable end will have been accomplished.

[3] _Constitution of U. S._, Art. 1, of Amendments.

[4] _Kent_, ii. 24.

[5] _Story on the Constitution_, ii. 661.

[6] _Report of Special Committee_, p. 17.

[7] _Monthly Record_, p. 285.

[8] _Catholic Review_, January 11, 1873.

[9] _Twelfth Annual Report_, p. 12.

[10] See _Half a Century with Juvenile Delinquents_. By the Chaplain of
the House of Refuge, Rev Mr. Pierce.

[11] _Nineteenth Annual Report_, p. 12.

[12] _Blackstone’s Com._, part. i, p. 137.

[13] _Sunday Mercury_, June 23, 1872.

[14] _Investigation into the Management of the Providence Reform
School_, made by the Board of Aldermen, under the direction of the City
Council of the City of Providence, 1869.

[15]

  “_Indico legno, lucido e sereno_:”

Whatever kind of richly tinted wood is referred to in this passage,
_lucid_ and _serene_ do not seem very descriptive epithets, applied
to wood, and it is not much after the manner of Dante to qualify any
object with two vague adjectives. As he is presenting an assemblage of
the most beautiful and striking colors, and since we do not imagine
(as Mr. Ruskin suggests) that by “Indico legno” he could have meant
_indigo_, it seems most natural that he should have mentioned _blue_.
We have therefore ventured to translate as if the verse were written,
“Indico legno, lucido sereno.” In a preceding Canto (V.) the poet has
used _sereno_ in the same way, without the article—“_fender sereno_”
also in Canto XXIX., v. 53:

  “Più chiaro assai che Luna per sereno.”

—_Trans._

[16] A name given in derision to the German nation.

[17] One of the martyrs omitted by Foxe.

[18] _The Fuller Worthies’ Library._ The Complete Poems of Robert
Southwell, S.J., for the first time fully collected, and collated
with the original and early editions and MSS., and enlarged with
hitherto unprinted and inedited poems from MSS. at Stonyhurst College,
Lancashire. Edited, with Memorial Introduction and Notes, by the Rev.
Alexander H. Grosart, St. George’s, Blackburn, Lancashire. London:
Printed for private circulation (156 copies only). 1872.

[19] Turnbull, p. xvi.

[20] _The Condition of Catholics under James I._ Father Gerard’s
narrative. London. 1872.

[21] So printed in Strype.

[22] Topcliffe here describes what he facetiously likens to a
Tremshemarn trick with great delicacy. It was, in fact, a piece of
horrible torture, by which the prisoner was hung up for whole days by
the hands so that he could just touch the ground with the tips of his
toes.

[23] See _Annals of the Reformation_, Strype, Oxford, 1824 ed., vol.
vii. p. 185. If the reader has any curiosity to see more remarkable
proof of the infamy of this man, Topcliffe, he may peruse another
letter in Strype, vol. vii. p. 53.

[24] He was afterwards condemned and executed as a traitor.

[25] For this and many other cases see, _Martyrs Omitted by Foxe_.
London. 1872. Compiled by a member of the English Church. With a
preface by the Rev. Frederick George Lee, D.C.L., F.S.A., Vicar of All
Saints’, Lambeth.

[26] _Retrospective Review_, vol. iv., 1821, p. 270.

[27] _Specimens of the Early English Poets_, first edition, vol. ii. p.
166.

[28] Vol. i. p. 644, fourth edition.

[29] _Notes of Ben Jonson’s Conversations with William Drummond of
Hawthornden_, p. 13.

[30] Here are seven of its seventeen stanzas:

  Enough, I reckon wealth;
    A mean the surest lot,
  That lies too high for base contempt,
    Too low for envy’s shot.

  My wishes are but few,
    All easy to fulfil,
  I make the limits of my power
    The bounds unto my will.

  I feel no care of coyne,
    Well-doing is my wealth;
  My mind to me an empire is,
    While grace affordeth health.

  I clip high-climbing thoughts,
    The wings of swelling pride;
  Their fall is worst, that from the height
    Of greatest honors slide.

  Spare diet is my fare,
    My clothes more fit than fine;
  I know I feed and clothe a foe
    That, pampered, would repine.

  To rise by others’ fall
    I deem a losing gain;
  All states with others’ ruins built,
    To ruin run amain.

  No change of Fortune’s calms
    Can cast my comforts down;
  When Fortune smiles, I smile to think
    How quickly she will frown.


[31] This was a German Reformer who died in 1551. His name was Kuhhorn
(Cowshorn), but, after the fashion of that day, he Greekified it into
_Bous_ (ox) and _Keras_ (horn): the same as Melanchthon, another German
Reformer, changed his name from Schwarzed (black earth).

[32] Abbots were then, as Bishops are now, Members of the House of
Lords.

[33] Some of these “foundations” were made up with Secular Priests, who
had pensions to say Masses for the souls of the founders.

[34] “Premunire” is a punishment inflicted by Statute, and consists
of the offender’s being out of the Queen’s protection, forfeiting his
lands and goods, and imprisoned during the pleasure of the Monarch.

[35] “That which is most divine in the heart of man never finds
utterance for want of words to express it. The soul is infinite [this
is saying too much: it is one thing to be infinite, and another to
have a sense of the infinite], and language consists only of a limited
number of signs perfected by use as a means of communication among the
vulgar.”—Lamartine, _Preface des Premières Meditations_.

[36] As we are not without experience in the management of children, we
cannot agree with our contributor in the proposed banishment of the rod
from the nursery, however much we may prefer moral suasion when found
effectual.—ED. C. W.

[37] Canadian snow-shoes.

[38] Breviary.

[39] The _ex-voto_ spoken of in the beginning of our story represents
this scene.

[40] Cap worn by the peasantry.

[41] Luke xvi. 9.

[42] “A great politician is dead!”

[43] “This will be a dangerous spirit.”

[44] _Land of the Veda._ By Rev. Dr. Butler.

[45] _Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States_,
transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President,
December 4, 1871.

[46] _British Blue-Book._ China, No. 3, 1871.

[47] _Evolution of Life._ By Henry C. Chapman, M.D. Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott & Co. 1873.

[48] See _Dublin Review_, July, 1871.

[49] Hugonis Floriacensis _de Regia Potestate_ lib. i. 4 ap. Baluze
_Miscell._ ii.

[50] Petr. Blesens, _Epist._ lxxxvi.

[51] _S. Francis de Sales_, Bishop and Prince of Geneva. Rivingtons:
London, Oxford, and Cambridge.

[52] “Drink water out of thy own cistern, and the streams of thy own
well; let thy fountains be conveyed abroad, and in the streets divide
thy waters.”—_Proverbs_ v. 15,16.

[53] The title of his bishopric, by which Francis de Sales was then
generally known in Paris.

[54] “_J’ai ajouté beaucoup de petites chosettes_,” he said. “_Petites
chosettes_” is almost untranslatable in its deprecating modesty.

[55] In 1656, forty editions had already appeared.

[56] “Il met force sucre et force miel au bord du vase.”

[57] See _Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française. Préface de M.
Villemain_. He says: “En 1637, l’Académie avait discuté longtemps sur
la méthode à suivre pour dresser un Dictionnaire qui fût comme le
trésor et le magasin des termes simples et des phrases reçues. Puis,
elle s’était occupée du choix des auteurs qui avaient écrit le plus
purement notre langue, et dont les passages seraient insérés dans le
Dictionnaire. C’étaient pour la prose”—and he then gives a list of
authors, as above indicated.

[58] A translator—a traitor.

[59] Pallavicini, _History of the Council of Trent_, b. vi. ch. xi. No.
4.

[60] See Renan’s _Vie de Jésus_, Introduction; also, Albert Réville,
_Revue des Deux Mondes_, for May and June, 1866.

[61] Pallavicini, _History of the Council of Trent_, b. vi. ch. xi.
Leplat, _Monum. Conc. Trid._, vol. iii. p. 386 _et seq._

[62] M. de Pressensé means the _deutero-canonical_ books of the Old
Testament. _Deutero-canonical_ and _apocryphal_ are by no means
synonymous. The authenticity of the deutero-canonical books has been
demonstrated sufficiently often within three centuries to prevent
a writer, with any respect for himself, from alluding to them as
apocryphal.

[63] We wish M. de Pressensé would be kind enough to inform us what
Fathers of the IId and IIId centuries have questioned the origin of
the Gospel according to S. Matthew. We are well aware that French
rationalists have borrowed the German idea of a primitive Gospel,
which, perhaps, served as a basis for the other abridgments. The
promoters of this system are Eichorn, Eckermann, Gieseler, Credner,
and Ewald, in Germany; in France, Messrs. Réville and Renan have lent
to it the support of their names. They have endeavored to support it
by one or two words of Papias, which by no means prove so strange an
assertion. Where are the Fathers of the IId and IIId centuries who
had any doubt as to the authenticity of the first Gospel? As to the
Epistle to the Hebrews, we wish M. de Pressensé would read a few pages
on this question by the Rev. Père Franzelin, in his able treatise, _De
Traditione et Scriptura_. He would see how little doubt the Fathers of
the first ages had respecting this epistle. Some, on account of the
absence of S. Paul’s name, and the difference of style, have doubted it
was by the doctor of nations, but all the Fathers, unless we except two
or three of the least known, invariably asserted its canonicity. For it
is one thing to doubt whether S. Paul was the author of this epistle
and another that it is of the number of inspired books.

[64] _Histoire du Concile du Vatican_, p. 283.

[65] Pressensé, _Histoire du Concile du Vatican_, ch. xi.

[66] _Hist. Revelat. Bibl._, Auct. D. Haneberg, p. 774.

[67] Sess. XIV. _De Extr. Unct._, c. i. can. i.

[68] _Défense de la Tradition des SS. Pères.—Instruction sur la Version
de Trévoux._

[69] _Myths and Myth-Makers_: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted
by Comparative Mythology. By John Fiske, M.A., LL.B., Assistant
Librarian and Late Lecturer on Philosophy at Harvard University.

[70] Page 122.

[71] Tob. ii. 19.

[72] Eccl. xvii. 5.

[73] Ibid. xxvi. 3, 16.

[74] Prov. xix. 15.

[75] Levit. xxv. 39, 40, 53.

[76] Numb. xxx. 10.

[77] Deut. xv. 12-14.

[78] Acts. xvi. 14, 15.

[79] Ibid. xvi. 40.

[80] Rom. xvi. 1, 2.

[81] Judith viii. 7.

[82] Prov. xxxi. 10-31.

[83] “Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim.”—Modern editions of
_Romeo and Juliet_.

[84] White’s _Shakespeare’s Scholar_, 371, 372.

[85] See note 2, as to “Abraham-men,” in _King Lear_, Singer’s Edition,
act ii. sc. iii.

[86] _Satires_, b. iii. sat. 5.

[87] Perusing, while this article is in the press, Thackeray’s
ingenious story of _Catherine_, we observe that he describes one of his
characters (in the year 1705) as wearing “an enormous full-bottomed
periwig that cost him sixty pounds.”

[88] Cook’s _Voyages_, vi. 61.

[89] Browne’s _British Pastorals_, b i. s. v.

[90] _Hamlet_ (song), act iv. sc. v.

[91] Fawkes, _Apollonius Rhodius_. The Argonautics, b. iii.

[92] Sir M. Sandys’ _Essays_ (1634), p 16.

[93] Anthon’s _Classical Dictionary_.

[94] Keightley’s _Mythology_, 112.

[95] _Redgauntlet_, i., pp. 219, 220. Ticknor & Co.’s edition.

[96] _Spectator_, 129.

[97] Notes to _Dunciad_, b. i. p. 260. British Poets, Little & Brown’s
ed.

[98] “The Fair One with the Golden Locks” was a Christmas
piece produced on the stage in London, in 1843. See Planché’s
_Recollections_, etc., ii. 67.

[99] In Thackeray’s _Catherine_, already quoted, a character appears
with “a little shabby beaver cocked over a large _tow-periwig_.” Still
further on he tells us that one of his principal personages “mounted a
large chestnut-colored orange-scented pyramid of horse-hair.” Indeed,
we have reason to believe that the judges and the bar in England still
wear wigs manufactured out of the latter article.

[100] To show, by a further instance, the employment of another article
than hair for the manufacture in question some time ago. Thackeray, in
his _Book of Snobs_, chapter xxxiv., tells us of a London “coachman in
a tight _silk-floss_ wig.”

[101] 2 _Henry VI._, iv. 8.

[102] A sum estimated at about seven million francs of modern money.

[103] Fearless and stainless.

[104] Gilt door.

[105] “A guarded prisoner is not bound by any oath, nor can he be held
to any vow made under compulsion.”

[106] For the preceding articles of this series, the reader is referred
to THE CATHOLIC WORLD for December, 1868, and June, 1870.

[107] See _Myvyrian_, vol. i. p. 150.

[108] _Trioed inis Prydain_, vol. iii. s. 1.

[109] _Myvyrian._

[110] _De Schismate Donatistarum_, lib. iii. c. 2.

[111] _De Civ. Dei_, lib. xviii. c. 23.

[112] “We read everywhere that this world is a sea.”

[113] Gal. iii.; John xv. 16.

[114] Minucius Felix, _Octav._, c. 9.; Justin, _Dialogicum Tryph._, c.
10; Athenagoras, _Legatio_, c. 3. etc.

[115] In ancient usage, the Holy Eucharist was put into the hands of
the Christians.

[116] Maurus Wolter, _The Roman Catacombs, and the Sacraments of the
Catholic Church_, p. 28.

[117] Overbeck, _History of Greek Plastic Art_, ii. 29.

[118] “Nihil præter Catholicam fidem, et quidquid Sancta Romana
Ecclesia approbat, a me unquam prolatum est, cujus castigationi semper
me subjeci, et quoties oportuerit iterum atque iterum me subjicio....
Manifeste apparebit, an ego hæresium, quod absit, an Catholicæ
veritatis sim disseminator.”

“No word of mine can be produced against Catholic faith or against
whatever is approved by the Catholic Church, to whose correction I have
always submitted, and, if need be, again and for ever submit myself....
It will be made manifest whether I have disseminated heresy—far be it
from me—or Catholic truth.”

[119] _La Storia di Girolamo Savonarola e de’ suoi Tempi, Narrata da
Pasquale Villari con l’Aiuto di Nuovi Documenti. Firenze. 1859._

[120] The original is very picturesque: “A ciò ch’el diavolo non mi
salti sopra le spalle.”

[121] He ruled from 1469 to 1492.

[122] “Egli secondò il secolo in tutte le sue tendenze: di corrotto che
era, lo fece corrottissimo.” “He helped forward the period in all its
tendencies,” says Villari. “From corrupt he made it most corrupt.”

[123] M. Perrens and Dean Milman both express some doubt as to this
fact, but we prefer to follow Villari, whose explanation of the matter
is satisfactory.

[124] Here are his own words: “E mi rammento come predicando nel
Duomo l’anno 1491, ed avendo già composto il mio sermone sopra questi
visioni, deliberai di sopprimerle e nell’avvenire astenerme affatto.
Iddio mi è testimonio, che tutto il giorno di sabato e l’intera notte
sino alla nuove luce, io vegliai; ed ogni altra via, ogni dottrina
fuori di quella, mi fu tolta. In sull’alba, essendo per la lunga
vigilia stanco ed abbattuto, udii, mentre io pregava, una voce che mi
disse: Stolto, non vedi che Iddio vuole che tu sequiti la medesima via?
Perchè io feci quel giorno una predica tremenda.”

[125] The original is, “Avendo perduto ogni fiducia degli uomini,”
which the English Protestant translator (London, 1871) renders, “He had
lost all confidence in the priests.”

[126] We have followed Villari in the account of this interview. M.
Perrens questions its authenticity for several very good reasons.
If it was a confession, no one would know anything about it. But it
is claimed by some that it was merely a consultation on a case of
conscience, and that Politian was an _ocular_ though not an _auricular_
witness. If such an interview took place, we should be inclined to
admit Villari’s account of it only on the latter hypothesis.

[127] Master of the Hounds.

[128] Pavilion of Stoves.

[129] Comedian.

[130] Tragedian.

[131] 2 Thess. ii. 4.

[132] Job. x. 22.

[133] No. 360 of the journal _Il Precursore_, of Palermo, dared lately
to apply to the Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX. the names sacristan-pontiff,
blockhead, dullard, swindler, huckster, dotard, and other epithets
so coarse that the pen refuses to transcribe them. But the Italian
Exchequer, notwithstanding the law which declares the Pope to be as
inviolable as the king, found nothing to say against this foul sheet.
And the government pretends that the so-called law of guarantees is
scrupulously observed by it. We appeal to the common sense, not of
Christians, but of persons simply not barbarians like the Hottentots.

[134] Apoc. ii. 16.

[135] “Sunt quatuor persecutiones principales: prima tyrannorum,
secunda hæreticorum, tertia falsorum Christianorum, quarta erit ex
omnibus conflata, quæ erit Antichristi et suorum complicium. Et hæ
designatæ sunt in quatuor bestiis quas vidit Daniel.”—_S. Bonav. in
cap._ xvii. _Lucæ._ Again, see _Ugone card. sup. Psal._ liv.

[136] 2 Timothy iii. 1-4.

[137] _Osservatore Romano_, Jan. 8, 1873.

[138] Rev. John Henry Newman.

[139] The opinions of the Abbé Gaume are generally regarded by the most
competent judges of matters pertaining to the higher Catholic education
as exaggerated. We concur in this judgment, which is, moreover, in
accordance with the instructions on this subject emanating from the
Holy See. At the same time, we are strongly convinced that there is a
very considerable amount of truth in the criticisms of the Abbé Gaume
on the actual method of education even in strictly Catholic colleges,
and that it needs to be made more Christian.—Ed. C. W.

[140] It may well be doubted whether this was a real advantage.—Ed. C.
W.

[141] _Hieronymus Savonarola und seine Zeit. Aus den Quellen
dargestellt._ Von A. G. Rudelbach. Hamburg. 1835.

[142] Girolamo Savonarola, aus grösstentheils Handschriftlichen Quelten
dargestellt. Von Fr. Karl Meier. Berlin. 1836.

[143] This passage certainly does not prove Savonarola to have been a
great philosopher.—Ed. C. W.

[144] Translated in England more than two hundred years ago. _The Truth
of the Christian Faith; or, The Triumph of the Cross of Christ._ By
Hier. Savonarola. Done into English out of the Author’s own Italian
copy, etc. Cambridge John Field, Printer to the University. There is
also a modern translation by O’Dell Travers Hill, F.R.G.S., a handsome
edition. Hodder & Stoughton, London. 1868.

[145] “Seeing the whole world in confusion; every virtue and every
noble habit disappeared; no shining light; none ashamed of their vices.”

[146] A precisely similar vision is described by Christopher Columbus
as having appeared to him in America when he was abandoned by all his
companions. The letter in which he speaks of this vision is given by
the rationalist Libri in his _Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques_,
and he justly describes it as one of the most eloquent in Italian
literature.

[147] Cicero says: “Fuit jam a Platone accepta philosophandi ratio
triplex: una de vita et moribus; altera de natura et rebus occultis;
tertia de disserendo, et quid verum, quid falsum, quid rectum in
oratione, pravumque, quid consentiens, quid repugnans, judicando”
(_Acad._ lib. i. 6). This division is still recognizable in our modern
logic, metaphysics, and ethics.

[148] Ex. xviii. 25.

[149] London _Times_, April 19.

[150] London _Spectator_.

[151] _Saturday Review._

[152] London _Spectator_, April 26.

[153] This sentence, we wish to have it distinctly understood, is one
which we approve only in the sense that loyalty to the church takes
precedence of patriotism, but not that it is indifferent whether a man
is a patriot or not, provided he be a good Catholic.—ED. C. W.

[154] “I sleep and my Heart watcheth.”

[155] “I say, my Jesus, thou art _mad_ with love.”—_S. Mary Magdalen of
Pazzi._

[156] See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, December, 1868.

[157] _I.e._, _Ill-gotten gain never profits_. “Pol” is a contemptuous
name in Brittany for Satan, who is said to have horned hoofs shod with
silver, but he has always lost one of his shoes.

[158] The head of Morvan, after the battle, was taken to the monk
Witchar, who held on the Breton frontier an abbey, by permission of the
Frankish king.

[159] Lez-Breiz was slain A.D. 818. In seven years after that
date, Guionfarc’h, another of his family, arose, as a second Lez-Breiz,
to resist the encroachments of France, and maintain the independence of
Brittany.

[160] Ermold Nigel.

[161] This mystical plant was only to be plucked by the hand: if cut
with any blade of steel, misfortune of some kind was always supposed to
follow.

[162] Ablutions were anciently made before a repast at the sound of a
horn; thus “korna ann dour”—to horn the water.

[163] The balls (six) in the arms of the Medici.

[164] _Discorso circa il Reggimento i Governo degli Stati e
Specialmente sopra il Governo di Firenze._

[165] O’Dell Travers Hill, F.R.G.S., author of a biographical sketch
of Savonarola, and translator of _The Triumph of the Cross_. London:
Hodder and Stoughton. 1858.

[166] The most conclusive proof of the orthodoxy of Savonarola’s
doctrine is found in the fact that his works, after a rigorous official
scrutiny at Rome, were pronounced free from any error of faith or
morals deserving censure.—ED. C. W.

[167] Song of Solomon, i. 6.

[168] This pillar was destined by the first Napoleon for the decoration
of the triumphal arch at Milan, the intended monument of his Italian
victories. His fall frustrated the design. Many years later,
Wordsworth, while descending into Italy by the Simplon Pass, came upon
the unfinished mass as it lay half raised from the Alpine quarry, and
addressed to it his sublime sonnet beginning:

  “Ambition, following down the far-famed slope,”

and proceeding:

  “Rest where thy course was stayed by power Divine.”


[169] _Ann._ l. iv. ch. xlvi.

[170] This article and the one in our May number are from the pens of
two distinct writers.

[171] _The Expressions_, etc., p. 12.

[172] _Expressions_, etc., p. 30.

[173] Gen. i. 24.

[174] Gen. i. 26.

[175] Gen. ii. 7.

[176] _Tongiorgi_, pars. ii. l. ii. c. iii. p. 292.

[177] Balmes, _Fund. Phil._, v. ii. c. ii.

[178] Ibid., v. ii. c. ii. p. 9.

[179] Ibid., v. ii. c. iii.

[180] _Tong._, l. iii. c. i.

[181] S. Augustine, _De Civ. Dei_, xix. 13.

[182] Cic.,_ De Offic._, i. 40.

[183] _Histoire du Canada_. Par M. F. X. Garneau, ii. 23.

[184] Chimney-swallow.

[185] Fact.

[186] A fact. She was never heard of afterwards.

[187] Horrible as this scene is, it is nevertheless perfectly true,
even in minutest detail.

[188] Persons familiar with the Indian character well know their
thieving propensities.

[189] These reptiles were still so numerous in this part of the country
not many years ago that it was extremely dangerous to leave the windows
open in the evening. My mother related that, while she was living at
Sandwich with her father, one of the domestics was imprudent enough
to leave a window open. During the evening, they had occasion to
move a sideboard which stood against the wall, and a large snake was
discovered behind it fast asleep. Another day, when playing truant, a
snake sprang upon her, and tried to bite her waist; but happily her
clothes were so thick that its fangs could not penetrate them. While
she ran in great terror, her companions called to her to untie her
skirt. And that advice saved her life.—AUTHOR.

[190] “Weep not for me.”

[191] “For the law of his God strove even unto death, and took no fear
from the words of the impious; for he was founded upon a firm rock.”

[192] “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.”

[193] “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity.”

[194] To save disappointment to those who may desire to possess a copy
of the _Memoirs of Bp. Bruté_, we deem it proper to state that the work
is out of print, but that the author has intimated his intention to
publish a revised edition at some future day—of which the public will
doubtless be duly informed.—ED. C. W.

[195] A nickname for Spaniards.

[196] Do your duty, come what will!

[197] “Nature, when driven off, returns at a gallop.”

[198] These lectures are delivered in the chapel of Jésus-Ouvrier,
on Mont Sainte-Geneviève, every Monday and Thursday. They were
commenced by the Catholic Circle of Workingmen, and have been eminently
successful.

[199] Mgr. Mermillod, _La Question Ouvrière_, p. 25.

[200] Mgr. Mermillod.

[201] M. Ch. de Beaurepaire, _Histoire de l’Instruction publique en
Normandie_.

[202] Ch. de Beaurepaire, l. i.

[203] A fact.

[204] The reader will find this subject amplified, under some of
its aspects, in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for Aug., 1872, article
“Symbolism of the Church.”

[205] We should surmise the circular shape to be no less symbolical
than the other facts, and to denote the eternity of the church.

[206] F. Mullooly, _S. Clement, Pope and Martyr, and his Basilica at
Rome_.

[207] _Cæs. Comm._

[208] _Josephus._

[209] “This image of the Druids is of a Moorish color, as are nearly
all the others in the church of Chartres. We suppose this to have been
done by the Druids and others who followed them, on the presumptive
complexion of the oriental people, who are exposed more than we to
the heat of the sun; for which reason the Spouse in the Canticle of
Canticles says that the sun has discolored her, and that, although she
is dark, she does not cease to be beautiful. Nevertheless, Nicephorus,
who had seen several pictures of the Virgin taken by S. Luke from life,
says that the color of her countenance was _σιτοχρόε_, or the color of
wheat. This seems to mean the brown or chestnut color of wheat when
ripe.”

[210] “The Virgin was of middle height.... Her hair bordered on gold,
her eyes were bright and sparkling, with the pupils of an olive color;
her eyebrows arched, and of a black tinge, very pleasing. Her nose
was long, her lips bright red, her face neither round nor sharp, but
somewhat long; her hands and fingers equally so. She was in all things
modest and grave, speaking but seldom and to the purpose; ready to
listen to every one, affable to all, honoring each according to their
quality. She used a becoming freedom of speech, without laughter and
without perturbation, without being moved to anger. She was exempt from
all pride, without lowering her dignity, and without fastidiousness,
and showing in all her actions great humility.”

[211] “The church of Chartres is the most ancient in our kingdom,
having been founded by prophecy in honor of the glorious Virgin Mother
before the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in which the same
glorious Virgin was worshipped during her lifetime.”

[212] _All’s Well that Ends Well_, act ii. sc. iii.

[213] The mention of the name of Montalembert by the writer of the
present article gives us the occasion to make an explanation which we
think it proper to make, on account of some criticisms that have been
called forth by the manner in which we have spoken of him in former
articles. The eulogium which we give or permit others to give this
illustrious man in our pages by no means implies any approbation of
any opinions or acts of his in sympathy with the party known by the
sobriquet of “Liberal Catholics.” These were deflections from a course
which was in the main orthodox and loyal, and it is not for these
deflections that we honor his memory, but for his virtues, merits,
and services, and the cordial submission to the authority of the
Holy See at the close of life, by which he effaced the memory of his
faults.—ED. C. W.

[214] These facts are chiefly gathered from an article on Hawthorne by
Mr. Stoddard; but this anecdote is from a weekly publication, to which
we are also indebted for the incident in the life of Edgar A. Poe.