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{i}

  The Catholic World.

  _Monthly Magazine_

  of

  General Literature and Science

  ------

  Vol. V., NO. 25
  April to September 1867.

  ------

  New York:

  The Catholic Publication House,
  126 Nassau Street.
  ----
  1867

{ii}

  John A. Gray & Green

  Printers,

  16 & 18 Jacob Street, New-York/

{iii}

    Contents.

  Athlone and Aughrim, 119.
  Ancor-Viatt, a New Giant City, 135.
  An Old Quarrel, 145.
  A Naturalist's Home, 189.
  Animals, The Souls of, 510.
  Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus, 6ll.
  An Irish Saint, 664.

  Birds, Architecture of, 349.
  Bible, Protestant Attacks upon the, 789.
  Bride of Eberstein, The, 848.

  Church and State, 1
  Conversions to the Catholic Church, Dr. Bacon on, 104
  Conscience, The Revenge of, 236.
  Catholic Doctrine and Natural Science, 280.
  Cousin, Victor, 338.
  Church and the Roman Empire, The, 362.
  Christianity and Social Happiness, 414.
  Congresses, Catholic, 433.
  Crucifix of Baden, The, 480, 672.
  Catholic Church and Modern Art, The, 546.
  Christianity and its Conflicts, 701.

  Decimated, 794.

  Early Rising, 754.
  Eberstein, The Bride of, 848.

  Father Ignatius of St. Paul, 174.
  Father of Waters, The, 354.
  Flavia Domitilla, The Two Lovers of, 386, 529, 651, 815.
  Fathers of the Desert, Sayings of, 814.

  Godfrey Family, The, 34.

  Holy Sepulchre, Procession in the Church of, 232.
  He went about Doing Good, 258.

  Ireland, Invasions of, by the Danes, 768.
  Ireland, The Churches of, 828.

  Lady of La Garaye, 227.
  Lectures and Conferences among the Ancients, 289.
  Libraries of the Middle Ages, 397.
  Lorraine, Lakes of, 522

  Miscellany, 140, 284, 428, 570, 714, 856.
  Mediaeval Universities, 207.
  Mercersburg Philosophy, 253.
  Mortality of Great Capitals, 422.
  Minor Brethren, The, 495.
  Marriage, Indissolubility of, 567, 634.
  Moore, Sir Thomas, 633.
  Missionary Journey in South America, Scenes from, 807.
  Miner, The, 852.

  Paris, A Talk about, 97.
  Père Hyacinthe, Sketch of, 382.
  Papacy Schismatic, Guettée's, 463, 577.
  Plants, The Struggle for Existence among, 538.
  Procter, Adelaide Ann, 553.
  Parisian Problems, Solution of some, 691.
  Playing with Fire, 697.
  Paris, Old, 824

  Ritualism, 52.
  Robert; or, The Influence of a Good Mother, 66, 194.
  Rationalism, Lecky's History of, 77.
  Rome or Reason, 721.

  Sister, The Story of, 15.
  Spain, Modern Writers of, 26.
  Spain, Impressions of, 160, 320, 443, 594, 738.
  Speech, Visible, 417.

  The Birds' Friend, 268.
  Time-Measurers, 271.
  Three Leaves from an Old Journal, 627.
  Thermometers, 707.
  Tuscan Peasants and the Maremna, 710.
  Tetzel, John, 838.

  Verheyden's Right Hand, 309.

  Wandering Jew, The, 761.

  ----

    Poetry.

  A Dream, 94.
  Asperges Me, 134.
  At Threescore, 235.
  A Family Motto, 257.
  Abide in Me, 767.

  Blessed Sacrament, Praises of the, 347.
  Beams, 753.

  Confiteor, 206.
  Columbus, 525.
  Charles the X. at the Convent of Yuste, 671.

  Forebodings, 494.

  Gladiators' Song, The, 521.

  Hidden Crucifixion, The, 159.

  Il Duomo, 608.

  Kettle Song, 51.

  Looking Down the Road, 172.
  Laudate Pueri Dominum, 413.
  Leaf of Last Year, This, 545.

  May, A Fancy, 318.
  Mary's Dirge, 631.
  Mea Culpa, 690.

  Napoleon, The Death of; 379.

  Olive Branches in Gethsemane, 14

  Planting of the Cross, 139.

{iv}

  Regret, 442.
  Rhoda, 784.

  Sleep, My Tears in, 193.
  Sir Ralph de Blanc-Minster, 460.

  The Church and the Sinner, 25.
  The Cross, 65.

  Under the Violets, 663.

  Wasted Vigil, The, 823.

------

    New Publications.

  Art of Illuminating, Practical Hints on, 144
  American Boys and Girls, 430.
  Antoine de Boneval,574.
  Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 719.

  Bible, Literary Characters of, 576.
  Barbarossa, 719.
  Beauties of Faith, 720.

  Catholic Tracts, 142, 715.
  Christian Love, Three Phases of, 144.
  Cunningham's Catholic Library, 144.
  Christian Unity, Lectures on, 287.
  Catholic Anecdotes, 576.
  Christianity and its Conflicts, 576.
  Critical and Social Essays, 718.
  Cummiskey's Juvenile Library, 720.
  Coaina, 720.

  De Guerin, Maurice, Journal of, 288.
  Döllinger's First Age of Christianity, 716.

  Études Philologiques sur Quelques Langues Sauvages de l'Amerique, 575.
  Frithiof's Saga, 431.
  Fronde's History of England, 573.
  First Historical Transformations of Christendom, 717.
  Fathers and Sons, 718.
  Faber's Notes, 719.

  L'Echo de la France, 143.
  Labor, Sermon on the Dignity and Value of, 431.

  Mühlbach's Historical Romances, 285.
  Moore's Irish Melodies, 432.
  Monks of the West, The, 715.
  Manual of the Lives of the Popes, 720.
  Melpomene Divina, 859.

  Poems, Miss Starr's, 716.

  Roman Pontiffs, Lives and Times of, 576.

  St. Dominic, Life of, 288.
  Student of Blenheim Forest, The, 574.
  Studies in English, 574.
  Stories of the Commandments, 720.
  Science of Happiness, 860.
  Studies in the Gospels, 860.

  Tracts, Catholic, 142, 715.
  Three Phases of Christian Love, 144.
  The Man with the Broken Ear, 720.

------

{1}

  The Catholic World.

  Vol. V., NO. 25--April 1867.


      Church And State. [Footnote 1]

    [Footnote 1: Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism,
    considered in their fundamental Principles. By Donoso Cortes, Marquis
    of Valdegamas. From the original Spanish. To which is prefixed a sketch
    of the Life and Works of the Author, from the Italian of G. E. de
    Castro. Translated by Madeleine Vinton Goddard. Philadelphia:
    Lippincott and Co. 1862. 16mo. PP. 835.]


The political changes and weighty events that have occurred since, have
almost obliterated from the memory the men and the revolutions or
catastrophes of 1848 and 1849. We seem removed from them by centuries, and
have lost all recollection of the great questions which then agitated the
public mind, and on which seemed suspended the issues of the life and death
of society. Then an irreligious liberalism threatened the destruction of
all authority, of all belief in revelation, and piety toward God; and a
rampant, and apparently victorious, socialism, or more properly,
anti-socialism, threatened the destruction of society itself, and to
replunge the civilized world into the barbarism from which the church, by
long centuries of patient and unremitting toil, had been slowly recovering
it.

Among the noble and brave men who then placed themselves on the side of
religion and society, of faith and Christian civilization, and attempted to
stay the advancing tide Of infidelity and barbarism, few were more
conspicuous, or did more to stir up men's minds and hearts to a sense of
the danger, than the learned, earnest, and most eloquent Donoso Cortes,
Marquis of Valdegamas. He was then in the prime and vigor of his manhood.
Born and bred in Catholic Spain at a time when the philosophy of the
eighteenth century had not yet ceased to be in vogue, and faith, if not
extinct, was obscured and weak, he had grown up without religious fervor, a
philosophist rather than a believer--a liberal in politics, and disposed to
be a social reformer. He sustained The Christinos against the Carlists, and
rose to high favor with the court of Isabella Segunda. He was created a
marquis, was appointed a senator, held various civil and diplomatic
appointments, and was in 1848 one of the most prominent and, influential
statesmen in Spain, I might almost say, in Europe.

The death of a dearly beloved brother, some time before, had very deeply
affected him, and became the occasion of awakening his dormant religious
faith, and turning his attention to theological studies. His religious
convictions became active and fruitful, and by the aid of divine grace
vivified all his thoughts and actions, growing stronger and stronger, and
more absorbing every day.
{2}
He at length lived but for religion, and devoted his whole mind and soul to
defend it against its enemies, to diffuse it in society, and to adorn it by
his piety and deeds of charity, especially to the poor. He died in the
habit of a Jesuit at Paris, in May, 1853.

Some of our readers must still remember the remarkable speech which the
Marquis de Valdegamas pronounced in the Spanish Cortes, January 4, 1849--a
speech that produced a marked effect in France, and indeed throughout all
Europe, not to add America--in which he renounced all liberal ideas and
tendencies, denounced constitutionalism and parliamentary governments, and
demanded the dictatorship. It had great effect in preparing even the
friends of liberty, frightened by the excesses of the so-called liberals,
red republicans, socialists, and revolutionists, if not to favor, at least
to accept the _coup d'état_, and the re-establishment of the Imperial
_régime_ in France; and it, no doubt, helped to push the reaction that
was about to commence against the revolutionary movements of 1848, to a
dangerous extreme, and to favor, by another sort of reaction, that
recrudescence of infidelity that has since followed throughout nearly all
Europe. It is hardly less difficult to restrain reactionary movements
within just limits than it is the movements that provoke them.

The new American Cyclopedia says Donoso Cortes published his Essay on
Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism in French. That is a mistake. He
wrote and published it in Spanish, at Madrid, in 1851. The French work
published at Paris, the same year, was a translation, and very inferior to
the original. A presentation copy by the distinguished author of the
original Spanish edition of 1851 to the late Mr. Calderon de la Barca--so
long resident Spanish minister at Washington, and who was his life-long
personal and political friend--is now in my possession, and is the very
copy from which Mrs. Goddard, now the noble wife of Rear Admiral Dahlgren,
made the translation cited at the head of this article. Mr. Calderon--a
good judge--pronounced the work in Spanish by far the most eloquent work
that he ever read in any language; and I can say, though that may not be
much, that it far surpasses in the highest and truest order of eloquence
any work in any language that I am acquainted with. In it one meets all the
power and majesty, grace and unction of the old Castilian tongue, that
noblest of modern languages, and in which Cicero might have surprised
himself.

The work necessarily loses much in being translated, but Mrs. Goddard's
translation comes as near to the original as any translation can. It is
singularly faithful and elegant, and reproduces the thought and spirit of
the author with felicity and exactness, in idiomatic English, which one can
read without suspecting it to be not the language in which the work was
originally written. There is scarcely a sentence in which the translation
can be detected. It must have been made _con amore,_ and we can
recommend it as a model to translators, who too often do the work from the
original language into no language. The following, from the opening pages,
is a fair specimen of the thought and style of the author, and of the
clearness, force, and beauty of the translation:

  "Mr. Proudhon, in his Confession, of a Revolutionist, has written these
  remarkable words: 'It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all
  our political questions complicated with theological questions.' There is
  nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr.
  Proudhon Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains
  and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things
  are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their
  creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so
  did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from
  eternity.
{3}
  All things are in God in a profound manner in which effects are in their
  causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms
  in their eternal exemplars. In him are united the vastness of the sea,
  the glory or the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the grandeur or the
  universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens.
  In him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things
  proceed from him with number, weight, and measure. In him are the
  inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular
  law. All that lives, finds in him the laws of life; all that vegetates,
  the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws or motion; all that has
  feeling, the law or sensation; all that has understanding, the law of
  intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in
  this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things
  are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in
  proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how
  the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly
  enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been
  considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation
  of human society. _Omnis humana societatis fundamentum convellit qui
  religionem convellit_, says Plato in Book 10 of his laws. According to
  Xenophon (on Socrates), "the most pious cities and nations have always
  been the most durable, and the wisest." Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes)
  'that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society
  without a belief in the gods.' Rousseau, in his Social Contract, Book
  iv., ch. viii., observes, 'that a State was never established without
  religion as a foundation.' Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration,
  ch. xx., 'that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society
  exists.' All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of gods.
  Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free
  people than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it
  the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest,
  precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered
  certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato
  and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of
  having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a
  Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the
  Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words:
  'May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they
  make war against the Republic.'

  'The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not
  necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is
  both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not
  deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. All an
  evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious
  incredulity and of highest culture that have shown in history with a
  phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track
  behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that
  their splendor is only the inflamed glare or the lightning's flash. It is
  evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure
  but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from
  purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine
  pencil of the sovereign painter.

  "What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the
  possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth,
  neither gives them understanding nor deprives them of it. That of the
  unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very
  limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the
  second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in
  the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle
  with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those
  communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry
  of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions and sophists are succeeded
  by hangmen.

  "He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which
  governments are amenable; and he possesses social truth who comprehends,
  the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God knows
  these laws; and he knows God who listens to what he affirms of himself,
  and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object
  these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting
  society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what
  is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily
  resolves itself into a theological truth.

  "If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is
  the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated,
  theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing
  not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality,
  which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no
  existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in
  his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most
  simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from social and religious
  affirmations; while in God there is but one affirmation, indivisible and
  supreme.
{4}
  He who speaks explicitly of what thing soever, and is ignorant that he
  implicitly speaks of God; and who does not know when he discusses
  explicitly any science whatever, that he implicitly illustrates theology,
  has received from God simply the necessary amount of intelligence to
  constitute him a man. Theology, then, considered in its highest
  acceptation, is the perpetual object of all the sciences, even as God is
  the perpetual object of human speculations.

  "Every word that a man utters is a recognition of the Diety, even that
  which curses or denies God. He who rebels against God, and frantically
  exclaims, 'I abhor thee; thou art not!' illustrates a complete system of
  theology, as he does who raises to him a contrite heart, and says, 'Lord,
  have mercy on thy servant, who adores thee.' The first blasphemes him to
  his face, the second prays at his feet, yet both acknowledge him, each in
  his own way; for both pronounce his incommunicable name."

The work shows no great familiarity with the writings of the later
theologians, and no fondness for the style and method of the schools, but
it shows a profound study of the Fathers, and a perfect mastery of
contemporary theories and speculations. The author is a man of the
nineteenth century, with the profound thought of an Augustine, the
eloquence of a Chrysostom, and the tender piety of a Francis of Assissium.
He has studied the epistles of St. Paul, and been touched with the
inspiration of that great apostle's burning zeal and consuming charity. He
observes not always the technical exactness of modern theological
professors, and some French _abbés_ thought they detected in his
_Ensayo_ some grave theological errors, but only because they missed
the signs which they were accustomed to identify with the things signified,
and met with terms and illustrations with which they were unfamiliar. But
he seizes with rare sagacity and firmness the living truth, and presents us
theology as a thing of life and love.

The principles of the essay are catholic, are the real principles of
Christianity and society, set fourth with a clearness, a depth, a logical
force, a truthfulness, a richness of illustration and an eloquence which
have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. But some of the inferences be draws
from them, and some of the applications he makes of them to social and
political science are not such as every Catholic even is prepared to
accept. The author was drawn to religion by domestic afflictions, which
saddened while they softened his heart, and he writes, as he felt, amid the
ruins of a falling world. All things seemed to him gone or going, and he
looked out upon a universal wreck. His spirit is not soured, but his
feelings are tinged with the gloom of the prospect, and while he hopes in
God he well-nigh despairs of the world, of man, of society, of
civilization, above all, of liberty, and sees no means of saving European
society but in the dictatorship or pure despotism acting under the
inspiration and direction of the church. He was evidently more deeply
impressed by what was lost in the primitive fall or original sin than by
what in our nature has survived that catastrophe. He adored the justice of
God displayed in the punishment of the wicked, justified him in all his
dealings with men, but he saw in his providence no mercy for fallen
nations, or a derelict society. This life he regarded as a trial, the earth
as a scene of suffering, a vale of tears, and found in religion a support,
indeed, but hardly a consolation. The Christian has hope in God, but is a
man of sorrows, and his life an expiation. Much of this is true and
scriptural, and this world certainly is not our abiding place, and can
afford us no abiding joy. But this is not saying that there are no
consolations, no abiding joys for us even in this life. Consolations and
joys a Christian has in this world, though they proceed not from it. It can
neither give them nor take them away; yet we taste them even while in it.
This world is not the contradictory of the world to come; it is not heaven,
indeed, and cannot be heaven, yet it is related to heaven as a medium, and
the medium must partake, in some measure, of both the principle and the
end.

{5}

The great merit of the essay is in deducing political and social from
theological principles. This is undoubtedly not only the teaching of the
church, but of all sound philosophy; and what I regard as the principal
error of the book is the desire to transfer to the state the immobility and
unchangeableness which belong to the church, an institution existing by the
direct and immediate appointment of God. The author seems to be as
unwilling to recognize the intervention of man and man's nature in
government and society as in the direct and immediate works of the Creator.
He is no pantheist or Jansenist, and yet be seems to me to make too little
account of the part of second causes, or the activity of creatures; and
sometimes to forget, or almost forget, that grace does not supersede
nature, but supports it, strengthens it, elevates it, and completes it. He
sees only the Divine action in events; or in plain words, he does not make
enough of nature, and does not sufficiently bring out the fact that natural
and supernatural, nature and grace, reason and faith, earth and heaven, are
not antagonistic forces, to be reconciled only by the suppression of the
one or the other, but really parts of one dialectic whole, which, to the
eye that can take in the whole in all its parts, and all the parts in the
whole, in which they are integrated, would appear perfectly consistent with
each other, living the same life in God, and directed by him to one and the
same end. He, therefore, unconsciously and unintentionally, favors or
appears to favor a dualism as un-christian as it is unphilosophical. God
being in his essence dialectical, nothing proceeding from him can be
sophistical, or wanting in logical unity, and one part of his works can
never be opposed to another, or demand its suppression. The one must always
be the complement of the other. Christianity was given to fulfil nature,
not to destroy it. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." (St. Matt. v. 17.)

The misapprehension on this subject arises from the ambiguity of the word
_world_. This word is generally used by ascetic writers not to
designate the natural order, but the principles, spirit, and conduct of
those who live for this world alone; who look not beyond this life; who
take the earth not as a medium, but as the end, and seek only the goods
this world offers. These are called worldly, sensual, or carnal-minded
people, and as such contrast with the spiritually minded, or those who look
above and beyond merely sensible goods--to heaven beyond the earth, to a
life beyond the grave, a life of spiritual bliss in indissoluble union with
God, the end of their existence, and their supreme good as well as the
supreme good in itself. In this sense there is a real antagonism between
this world and the next; but when the world is taken in its proper place,
and for what it really is, in the plan of the Creator, there is no
antagonism in the case; and to despise it would be to despise the work of
God, and to neglect it would be not a virtue, but even a sin. This world
has its temptations and its snares, and as long as we remain in the flesh
we are in danger of mistaking it for the end of our existence, and
therefore it is necessary that we be on our guard against its seductions.
But the chief motive that leads souls hungering and bursting for perfection
to retire to the desert or to the monastery is not that they may fly its
temptations, or the enemies to their virtue, for they find greater
temptations to struggle against and fiercer enemies to combat in solitude
than in the thronged city; it is the love of sacrifice, and the longing to
take part with our Lord in his great work of expiation that moves them.
Simply to get rid of the world, to turn the back on society, or to get away
from the duties and cares of the world, is no proper motive for retirement
from the world, and the church permits not her children to do it and enter
a religious order so long as they have duties to their family or their
country to perform.
{6}
Nothing could better prove that the church does not suffer us to contemn or
neglect the natural or temporal order, or regard as of slight importance
the proper discharge of our duties to our families, our country, or natural
society. The same thing is proved by the fact that the process for
canonization cannot go on in a case where the individual has not fulfilled
all his natural duties, growing out of his state or relations in society.
_Gratia supponit naturam_.

In consequence of his tendency to an exclusive asceticism, a tendency which
he owed to the unsettled times in which he lived, and the reaction in his
own mind against the liberalism be had at one time favored, Donoso Cortes
countenanced, to some extent, political absolutism; and had great influence
in leading even eminent Catholics to denounce constitutionalism,
legislative assemblies, publicity, and free political discussion, as if
these things were un-catholic, and inseparable from the political atheism
of the age. There was a moment when the writer of this article himself,
under the charm of his eloquence, and the force of the arguments he drew
from the individual and social crimes committed in the name of liberty and
progress, was almost converted to his side of the question, and supported
popular institutions only because cause they were the law in his own
country. But without pretending that the church enjoins any particular form
of civil polity, or maintaining the infallibility or impeccability of the
people, either collectively or individually, a calmer study of history, and
the recent experience of our own country, have restored me to my early
faith in popular forms of government, or democracy as organized under our
American system, which, though it has its dangers and attendant evils, is,
wherever practicable, the form of government that, upon the whole, best
conforms to those great Catholic principles on which the church herself is
founded.

But the people cannot govern well, any more than kings or kaisers, unless
trained to the exercise of power, and subjected to moral and religious
discipline. It is precisely here that the work of Donoso Cortes has its
value. The reaction which has for a century or two been going on against
that mixture of civil and ecclesiastical government which grew up after the
downfall of the Roman empire in the west, and which was not only natural
but necessary, since the clergy had nearly all the learning, science, and
cultivation of the times, and to which modern society is so deeply indebted
for its civilization, has carried modern statesmen to an opposite extreme,
and resulted in almost universal political atheism. The separation of
church and state in our age means not merely the separation of the church
and the state as corporations or governments, which the popes have always
insisted on, but the separation of political principles from theological
principles, and the subjection of the church and ecclesiastical affairs to
the state. Where monarchy, in its proper sense, obtains, the king or
emperor, and where democracy, save in its American sense, is asserted, the
people, takes the place of God, at least in the political order. Statolatry
is almost as prevalent in our days as idolatry was with the ancient Greeks
and Romans.

Even in our own country, it may be remarked that the general sympathy is
with anti-Christian--especially anti-papal insurrections and revolutions.
We should witness little sympathy with the Cretans and Christians of the
Turkish empire, if they were not understood to be schismatics, who reject
the authority of the pope in spirituals as well as in temporals. Yet, prior
to the treaty of Paris in 1856, the Greek prelates were, under the Turkish
sovereignty, the temporal lords of their people, and the design of that
treaty, so far as relates to the Eastern Christians, was to deprive them of
the last remains of temporal independence, and to complete the conquest of
Mahomet II. The complete subjection of religion to the state is called
religious liberty, the emancipation of conscience.
{7}
Our American press applauds the Italian ministry for laying down the law
for the Italian bishops, restored their sees, from which the state exiled
them, and prescribing them their bounds, beyond which they must not pass.
The Italian State does not, as with us, recognize the freedom and
independence of the Spiritual order, but at best only tolerates it. It
asserts not only the freedom and independence of the state in face of the
church, but its supremacy, its right to govern the church, or at least to
define the limits within which it may exist and operate.

This is what our age understands by the separation of church and state. If
it foregoes, at any time or place, the authority to govern the church, it
still holds that it has the right to govern churchmen the same as any other
class of persons; that the civil law is the supreme law of the land; and
that religion, when it happens to conflict with it, must give way to it.
The law of the state is the supreme law. This is everywhere the doctrine of
European liberals, and the doctrine they reduce to practice wherever they
have the power, and hence the reason why the church visits them with her
censures. Many devout believers think the separation of church and state
must mean this, and can mean nothing else, and therefore that the union of
church and state must mean a return to the old mixture of civil and
ecclesiastical government of the middle ages. Hence a Donoso Cortes and a
Baron Ricasoli are on this point in singular accord. Our American press,
which takes its cue principally from European liberals, takes the same
view, and understands both the separation and the union of church and state
in the same sense.

Yet the American solution of the mutual relations of church and state is a
living proof, a practical demonstration that they are wrong. Here the state
does not tolerate the church, nor the church either enslave or tolerate the
state, because the state recognizes the freedom or conscience, and its
independence of all secular control. My church is my conscience, and my
conscience being free here, my church is free, and for me and all
Catholics, in the free exercise of her full spiritual authority. Here it is
not the state that bounds conscience, but conscience that bounds the state.
The state here is bound by its own constitution to respect and protect the
rights of the citizen. Among these rights, the most precious is the right
of conscience--the right to the free exercise of my religion. This right
does not decide what the civil law shall be, but it does decide what it
shall not be. Any law abridging my right of conscience--that is, the
freedom of my church--is unconstitutional, and, so far, null and void.
This, which is my right, is equally the right of every other citizen,
whether his conscience--that is, his church--agrees with mine or not. The
Catholic and the Protestant stand on the same footing before the law, and
the conscience of each is free before the state, and a limit beyond which
the civil law cannot extend its jurisdiction. Here, then, is a separation
of church and state that does not enslave the church, and a union of church
and state that does not enslave the state, or interfere with its free and
independent action in its own proper sphere. The church maintains her
independence and her superiority as representing the spiritual order, for
she governs those who are within, not those who are without, and the state
acts in harmony, not in conflict with her, because it confines its action--
where it has power--to things temporal.

The only restriction, on any side, is, that the citizen must so assert his
own right of conscience as not to abridge the equal right of conscience in
his fellow-citizen who differs from him. Of course the freedom of
conscience cannot be made a pretext for disturbing the public peace, or
outraging public decency, nor can it be suffered to be worn as a cloak to
cover dissoluteness of manners or the transgression of the universal moral
law; when it is so made or worn it ceases to be the _right_ of
conscience, ceases to be conscience at all, and the state has authority to
intervene and protect the public peace and public decency.
{8}
It may, therefore, suppress the Mormon concubinage, and require the Latter
Day Saints to conform to the marriage law as recognized by the whole
civilized world, alike in the interests of religion and of civilization.
But beyond this the state cannot go, at least with us.

It may be doubted whether this American system is practicable in any but a
republican country--under a government based on equal rights, not on
privilege, whether the privilege of the one, the few, or the many.
Democracy, as Europeans understand it, is not based on equal rights, but is
only the system of privilege, if I may so speak, expanded. It recognizes no
equal rights, because it recognizes no rights of the individual at all
before the state. It is the pagan republic which asserts the universal and
absolute supremacy of the state. The American democracy is Christian, not
pagan, and asserts, for every citizen, even the meanest, equal rights,
which the state must treated as sacred and inviolable. It is because our
system is based on equal rights, not on privilege--on rights held not from
the state, but which the state is bound to recognize and protect, that
American democracy, instead of subjecting religion to the state, secures
its freedom and independence.

Donoso Cortes can no more understand this than can the European democrat,
because he has no conception of the equal rights of all men before the
state; or rather, because he has no conception of the rights of man. Man,
he says, has no rights; he has only duties. This is true, when we speak of
man in relation to his Maker. The thing made has no right to say to the
maker, "Why hast thou made me thus?" Man has only duties before God,
because he owes to him all he is, has, or can do, and he finds beatitude in
discharging his duties to God, because God is good, the good in itself, and
would not be God and could not be creator if be were not. But that man has
no rights in relation to society, to the state, or to his fellow man, is
not true. Otherwise there could be no justice between man and man, between
the individual and society, or the citizen and the state, and no injustice,
for there is no injustice where no right is violated. Denying or
misconceiving the rights of man, and conceiving the state as based on
privilege, not on equal rights, the Spaniard is unable to conceive it
possible to assert the freedom and independence of the state, without
denying the freedom and independence of the church.

But, if republican institutions based on equal rights are necessary to
secure the freedom and independence of the church, the freedom and
independence of the church, on the other hand, are no less necessary to the
maintenance of such institutions. I say, _of the church_, rather than
of religion, because I choose to speak of things in the concrete rather
than in the abstract, and because it is only as concreted in the church
that the freedom and independence of religion can be assailed, or that
religion has power to protect or give security to institutions based on
equal rights. The church is concrete religion. Whether there is more than
one church, or which of the thousand and one claimants is the true church,
is not now the question. The answer of the Catholic is not doubtful. At
present I am treating the question of equal rights, and asking no more for
the church before the state than for the several sects. Of course, I
recognize none of the sects as the church, but I am free to say that I
regard even the lowest of them as better for society than any form of
downright infidelity. There is something in common between Catholics and
the sects that confess Christ as the Son of God, incarnate for our
redemption and salvation, which there is not, and cannot be, between us and
those who confess not Christ at all. But this is a digression.

{9}

Equal rights must have a foundation, something on which to stand. They
cannot stand on the state or civil society, for that would deny them to be
rights at all, and reduce them to simple privileges granted by the state
and revocable at its will. This is precisely the error of the European
liberals, who invariably confound right with privilege. All European
society has been, and still is to a great extent, based on privilege, not
right. Thus in England you have the rights--more properly, the privileges
or franchises--of Englishman, but no rights of man which parliament is
bound to recognize and protect as such. There is no right or freedom of
conscience which the state must respect as sacred and inviolable; there is
only toleration, more or less general. In the new kingdom of Italy there
are the privileges and franchises of Italians, and, within certain limits,
toleration for the church. Her bishops may exercise their spiritual
functions so long as they do not incur the displeasure of the state. The
supremacy of the state is asserted, and the ecclesiastical administration
is at the mercy of the civil. It is so in every European state, because in
none of them is the state based on equal rights. The United States are the
only state in the world that is so based. Our political system is based on
right, not privilege, and the equal rights of all men.

The state with us rests on equal rights of all men; but on what do the
equal rights themselves rest? What supports or upholds them? The state
covers or represents the whole temporal order, and they, therefore, have
not, and cannot have, their basis or support in that order. Besides the
temporal there is no order but the spiritual, covered or represented by the
church. The equal rights, then, which are with us the basis of the state,
depend themselves on the church or spiritual order for their support. Take
away that order or remove the church, or even suppress the freedom and
independence of the church, and you leave them without any support at all.
The absolutism of the state follows, then, as a necessary consequence, and
might usurps the place of right. Hence political principles must find their
support in theology, and the separation of church and state in the sense of
separating political from theological principles is as hostile to the state
as to the church, and to liberty as to religion. It is not easy to
controvert this conclusion, if we consider whence our rights are derived,
and on what they depend for their reality and support. These rights, which
we do not derive from the state or civil society, and hold independently of
it, among which the Declaration of Independence enumerates "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness," which it asserts to be "inalienable," whence
do we hold them but from God, our Creator? This is what is meant when they
are called the natural rights of man. They are called natural rights,
because rights held under the natural law, but the natural law in the sense
of the jurists and theologians, not in the sense of the physicists or
natural philosophers--a moral law addressed to reason and free-will, and
binding upon all men, whatever their state or position; not a physical law,
like that by which clouds are formed, seeds germinate, or heavy bodies tend
to the centre of the earth; for it is a law that does not execute itself
and is not executed at all without the action of the reason and will of
society. It is necessarily a law prescribed by the Author of nature, and is
called the natural law, the law of natural justice, or the moral law, in
distinction from the revealed or supernatural law, because promulgated by
the supreme Lawgiver through natural reason, or the reason common to all
men, which is itself in intimate relation with the Divine Reason.

{10}

These natural equal rights are the law for the state or civil authority,
and every law of the state that violates them violates natural justice, and
is by that fact null and void; is, as St. Augustine says, and St. Thomas
after him, "Violence rather than law," and can never be binding on the
civil courts, though human courts not unfrequently enforce such laws. Not
being derived from the state or civil society, these rights are evidently
not in the temporal order, or the same order with the state, and therefore
must have, as we have seen, their basis in the spiritual order, that is, in
theology, or have no basis at all.

The existence of God as the creator and upholder of nature, I do not here
undertake to prove; for that has been done in the papers on _The Problems
of the Age_, which have appeared in this magazine. I am not arguing
against atheism in general, but only against what is called political
atheism, or the doctrine that theology, and therefore the church, has
nothing to do with politics. The state, with us, is based on the equal
rights, not equal privileges, of all men; and if these equal rights have no
real and solid basis beyond and independent of civil society, the state
itself has no real basis, and is a _chateau d'Espagne_, or a mere
castle in the air. Hence political atheism is not only the exclusion of the
church from politics, but the denial of the state itself, and the
substitution for it of mere physical force. Political atheism cannot be
asserted without atheism in general, without, in fact, denying all
existence, and, therefore, of necessity, all right. Political atheism is,
then, alike destructive of religion and politics, church and state, of
authority and liberty. Deny all right independent of the state, and the
citizen can have no right not derived from the state, which denies all
liberty; deny all right independent of the state, the state itself can have
no right to govern, unless the state itself be God, which would be
statolatry, alike absurd and blasphemous.

The rights of the state and of the citizen, alike must be derived from God,
and have a theological basis, or be no rights at all, but words without
meaning. There is then no such separation between politics and theology as
European democracy asserts. Such separation is unphilosophical, and against
the truth of things. It has been so held in all ages and nations of the
world. All the great theologians, philosophers, and moralists of the human
race have always held polities to be a branch of ethics, or morals, and
that branch which treats of the application of the catholic principles of
theology to society, or the social relations of mankind. The permanent,
universal, and invariable principles of civil society are all theological
principles, for there are no such principles outside of theology, and the
office of the state is to apply these principles only to what is local,
temporal, and variable. It is evident then that principles, properly so
called, lie in the theological order, and come within the province of the
theologian, not of the statesman, and are therefore to be determined by the
spiritual society, not by the civil.

It is, then, the spiritual not the temporal, religion not politics, that
asserts and maintains these rights, and religion does it in asserting and
maintaining the right of conscience, which is the right of God, and the
basis of all rights. The right of conscience is exemption from all merely
human authority--a right to be held by all civil society as sacred and
inviolable; and is the first and impassable barrier to the power of the
state. The state cannot pass it without violence, without the most
outrageous tyranny. It is then religion, not the state, that asserts and
maintains freedom; for the state when it acts, acts as authority, not as
liberty. So, on the other hand, is it religion that asserts and maintains
the authority, I say, not the force, of the state. The authority of the
state is its right to govern. In respect to civil society itself, it is
liberty; in respect to citizens, it is authority. Being a right on the part
of the state or society, it, like all other rights, lies in the spiritual
order, and is equally sacred and inviolable.
{11}
Religion, then, while it makes it the duty of the state to recognize and
protect the rights of the individual citizen, makes it the duty of the
individual citizen to recognize, respect, and defend the rights of the
state or society. The duty in both cases is a religious duty, because all
right is held from God, and only God can enjoin duty, or bind conscience.
Deny God, and you deny religion; deny religion, and you deny all duty and
all right;--alike the rights and duties of the state and the rights and
duties of the individual citizen, and, therefore, alike both liberty and
authority, which being correlatives can never exist the one without the
other. There is no denying this conclusion without denying reason itself.

But religion, as an abstract theory, is powerless, as are all abstractions,
and exists only as concreted, and religion in the concrete is the church.
In the state and in the individual, God operates indeed, but mediately,
through natural or secondary causes; but in the church immediately, for the
church is his body, and her vitality is the Holy Ghost, who dwells in her,
and is to her something like what the soul is to the body, _forma
corporis_. Religion without the church is a theory or a vague sentiment;
religion concreted in the church is a living reality, a power, and is
efficient in vindicating both rights and duties, and affording a solid
support to both liberty and authority. The sects, as far as they go, are
concrete religion, but not religion in its unity and integrity. They are
better than nothing; but lacking the unity and catholicity of truth, and
being divided and subdivided among themselves, they can very imperfectly
perform the office of religion or the Catholic Church. They are unable to
make head against material force, and to maintain with any efficiency the
rights of the spiritual against the encroachments of the temporal, or to
prevent the state from asserting its own absolute supremacy. They exist not
by a recognized right, but by state tolerance; they are suffered to exist
and are protected, because they become auxiliaries of the state in its
efforts to break the power and influence of the church, whose authority in
spirituals is more repugnant to them then is state supremacy. Hence we find
that wherever, except in the United States, the spiritual power is broken
and divided into a great variety of sects, the state claims to be supreme
alike in spirituals and temporals; and it is very doubtful if the freedom
and independence of the spiritual order could long be preserved even in our
country should our sectarian divisions continue. These divisions are
already generating a wide-spread indifference to religion, almost a
contempt for it; while there are manifest and growing tendencies to extend
the authority of the state beyond its legitimate bounds into the domain of
individual liberty. The unity and catholicity of the church, representing
the unity and catholicity of the spiritual order, will soon be seen to be
necessary to preserve our free institutions.

It was concrete religion, in its unity and catholicity embodied in the
church as an institution, that was able during the middle ages to assert
the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, which is only another
term for the freedom and independence of conscience, against the political
order. She was thus constituted a living reality, a concrete power, and the
powers of the earth had to reckon with her. Constituted as society then
was, she needed and exercised more positive power in the temporal order
than was agreeable to her, or than is necessary in a society constituted
like ours. The republic, then, was pagan, and sought to be supreme
everywhere and in everything, or in other words, to subject the spiritual
order to the temporal, as it was in pagan Rome, and for the most part
continued to be even in Christian Rome of the East, till its conquest by
the Turks. Hence the relation between Peter and Cesar, between the pope and
emperor, was ordinarily that of antagonism.
{12}
It was necessary that the pope should be clothed with a power that could
control princes, and force them to respect the rights of conscience, or the
independence of the church, which to be sufficient must be positive as well
as negative. The temporal authority, or the authority of the church over
the temporal, claimed and exercised over secular princes seeking to combine
in themselves both the imperial and the pontifical power, was no
usurpation, and rested on no grant of civil society, or _jus
publicum_, as has sometimes been asserted, but grew out of the necessity
of the case; its justification was in its necessity to maintain her own
independence in spirituals, or the freedom of conscience. It was her right
as representing the spiritual order, and would be her right still in a
similarly constituted society, and the modern world is reaping in its
advanced civilization the fruits of her having claimed and exercised it.

The necessity for claiming and exercising that power in a society
constituted as is the American does not exist, because in our society the
state frankly concedes all that she was in those ages struggling for. There
was nothing which Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and other
great popes struggled for against the German emperors, the kings of France,
Aragon, and England, and the Italian republics, that is not recognized here
by our republic to be the right of the spiritual order. Here the old
antagonism between church and state does not exist. There is here a certain
antagonism, no doubt, between the church and the sects, but none between
the church and the state or civil society. Here the church has, so far as
civil society is concerned, all that she has ever claimed, all that she has
ever struggled for. Here she is perfectly free. She summons her prelates to
meet in council when she pleases, and promulgates her decrees for the
spiritual government of her children without leave asked or obtained. The
_placet_ of the civil power is not needed, is neither solicited nor
accepted. She erects and fills sees as she judges proper, founds and
conducts schools, colleges, and seminaries in her own way, without let or
hindrance; she manages her own temporalities, not by virtue of a grant or
concession of the state, but as her acknowledged right, held as the right
of conscience, independently of the state. Here she has nothing to conquer
from the state, for the civil law affords her the same protection for her
property that it does to the citizen for his; and therefore all that she
can seek in relation to the constitution of our civil society, is that it
should remain unaltered.

True, the sects have before civil society the same freedom that she has,
but the state protects her from any violence they might be disposed to
offer her. They are not permitted to rob her of her churches, desecrate her
altars, molest her worship, or interfere with her management of her own
affairs. Their freedom in no respect whatever abridges hers, and whatever
controversy she may have with them, it is entirely on questions with which
civil society has nothing to do, which are wholly within the spiritual
order, and which could not be settled by physical force, if she had it at
her command, and was disposed to use it. Lying in the spiritual order, they
are independent of the state, and it has no right to interfere with them.
There is nothing, then, in the freedom of the sects to interfere with the
fullest liberty of the church, so long as the state recognizes and protect
her freedom and independence as well as theirs. There is nothing, then,
that the church can receive from civil society, that she has not in the
United States, and guaranteed to her by the whole force of the civil
constitution.

{13}

It is one of the mysteries of Providence that what the popes for ages
struggled for and still struggle for in the old world, and in all parts of
the new world originally colonized by Catholic states, should for the first
time in history be fully realized in a society founded by the most
anti-papal people on earth, who held the church to be the Scarlet Lady of
the Apocalypse. Surely, they builded better than they knew. But explain it
as you will, such is the fact. The United States is the only country in the
world where the church is really free. It would seem that both state and
church had to emigrate to the new world to escape the antagonisms of the
old, and to find a field for the free and untrammeled development of each.
It is idle to fear that the church will ever seek to disturb the order
established here, for she supports no principle and has no interest that
would lead her to do it. Individual Catholics, affected by the relations
that have subsisted between church and state in the old world, and not
aware that the church has here all that she has ever struggled for against
kings and princes, may think that the church lacks here some advantages
which she ought to have, or may think it desirable to reproduce here the
order of things which they have been accustomed to elsewhere, and which in
fact the church has submitted to as the best she could get, but has never
fully approved. These, however, are few, and are soon corrected by
experience, soon convinced that the real solution of the questions which
have so long and often so fearfully agitated the nations of Europe, has
been providentially obtained by the American people. The church has no wish
to alter the relation that exists with us between her and the state.

But there is a very important question for the American people to ask
themselves. With the multiplicity of sects, the growing indifference to
religion, and the political atheism consciously or unconsciously fostered
by a large portion of the secular press and but feebly resisted by the
religious press, will they be able to reserve the freedom and independence
of the spiritual order, or protect the equal rights on which our political
institutions are founded? Instead of asking, as some do, are the presence
and extension of the church dangerous to our institutions, should they not
rather ask, is she not necessary to their safety? The higher question to be
addressed to the sects undoubtedly is, can men save their souls without the
church? but in addressing politicians and patriots, it is not beneath the
Catholic even to ask if the republic, the authority of the state, and the
liberty of the citizen, both of which rest on the freedom and authority of
conscience, can be saved or preserved without her? Are not the unity and
catholicity which she asserts and represents, and which the sects break and
discard, necessary to maintain the freedom and independence of the
spiritual order against the constant tendency of the political order and
material interests to invade and subject it?

This is the great question for American patriots and statesman, and I have
written in vain, if this article does not at least suggest the answer.
Hitherto almost everywhere Catholics have found themselves obliged to
contend against the civil power to gain the freedom and independence of
their church, and at the same time, in these later centuries, to sustain
that power, even though hostile to liberty, in order to save society from
dissolution. Here they have to do neither, for here church and state,
liberty and authority, are in harmonious relation, and form really, as they
should, but two distinct parts of one whole; _distinct_, I say, not
_separate_ parts. There is here a true _union_, not _unity_,
of church and state--a union without which neither the liberty of the
citizen nor the authority of the state has any solid basis or support. The
duty of the Catholic on this question is, it seems to me, to do his best to
preserve this union as it is, and to combat every influence or tendency
hostile to it.

{14}

Donoso Cortes demonstrates most clearly that religion is the basis of
society and politics, but he is apparently disposed to assert the unity of
church and state, with European liberals, but differing from them by
absorbing the state in the church, or by virtually suppressing it; while
they would suppress the church or absorb her in the state. My endeavor in
what I have written has been to preserve both, and to defend not the unity,
but the union of church and state. This union in my judgment, has never
existed or been practicable in the old world, and I do not believe it is
even yet practicable there, and consequently, I regard whatever tends there
to weaken the political influence of the church as unfavorable to
civilization, and favorable only to political atheism, virtually asserted
by every European state, unless Belgium be an exception. But here the union
really exists, in the most perfect form that I am able to conceive it; and
for the harmonious progress of real civilization, we only need the church,
the real guardian of all rights that exist independently of civil society,
to become sufficiently diffused or to embrace a sufficient number of the
people in her communion; to preserve that union intact, from whatever
quarter it may be assailed.

This, we are permitted to hope, will ere long be the case. The sects,
seeing their freedom and independence require its maintenance, must in this
respect make common cause with us; and hence the spiritual power is
probably already nearly, if not quite strong enough to maintain it against
any and every enemy that may arise. As to the controversy between the
church and the sects, I do not expect that to end very soon; but truth is
mighty and in the end will prevail They will, no doubt, struggle to the
last, but as the state cannot intervene in the dispute, and must maintain
an open field for the combatants, I have no doubt that they will yield at
last, because the church has the truth in its unity and integrity, and they
have it only as disunited or broken in scattered fragments. Reason demands
unity and catholicity, and where reason is free, and assisted by grace, she
must win the victory.

------

    Original

    On The Olive-branches In The Garden Of Gethsemane.


  Unto the spreading olive-branches thus spake I:
    "Emblems of peace!
  Why do ye mock His bitter grief?
  He cometh here to seek relief:
    And ye His woes increase!"

  When for the silent trees my Jesus made reply:
    "It should be so;
  To men the sign of peace and life,
  To Me should be of death and strife,
    Who save them by My woe."

------

{15}

    Translated from Le Correspondant

    The Story of A Sister.
    by Augustin Cochin.

Would you wish to see happiness realized on earth? It reigned in the palace
of Simonetti at Rome, in the family of the ambassador of France, in the
month of May, 1830. The ambassador was the Count de la Ferronaya. He had
been for a long time ambassador in Russia, where his character, his natural
gifts, his integrity, had triumphed over the reserve and _hauteur_ of
the Emperor Nicholas, who treated him as a friend. He was also the friend
of the King of France, who, in 1828, appointed him minister of foreign
affairs. Handsome, brilliant, brave, intelligent, he bore in his heart and
in his appearance the qualities which constitute the true French gentleman.
He had married the niece of the devoted, faithful Duchess of Tourzel, who
accompanied the king and queen to Varennes as governess to their children.
Three boys and four girls were the result of this happy marriage. This
family, endowed with birth, rank, and so many gifts of this world, were
united at Rome, under the most beautiful sky, in the most beautiful month
of the year, in the sunny brightness of an unclouded existence. The
revolution of July, 1830, having wrested the monarchy from the Bourbons,
the Ferronays were not unhappy. God had not yet taken everything from them,
he had only taken their riches. The father, by his fidelity, had grown in
public respect; his sons and daughters had been prepared by a solid
education for industry and self-sacrifice. For fifteen years the parents
had enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, but they had not forgotten their days
of exile; and when poverty overtook them they met her as an old friend,
meekly bowing to the hand from whom all changes come. They went to live in
retirement at Castellamare, where their house was the image of their life,
a small chamber and a magnificent view, a radiant horizon seen from a
narrow dwelling. Soon after we find them at Chiaja, gay, happy, the
brothers quitting home for an active life, the sisters loving each other
devotedly, gathering flowers in Lady Acton's garden to wear them at the
next ball, presented at court, deprived of their fortune, but still happy;
tasting the pleasure that we find in traveling, and that we ought to find
in the journey of life--the pleasure which consists in admiring ardently
what we do process without the vanity of personal possession. However, this
delightful life was not exempt from danger: a stranger has too much
liberty; he is not subject to the supervision of relatives, friends,
neighbors, or rivals, who exercise a control which, though often trying, is
more often useful. Diplomatic families, above all, accustomed to be treated
with consideration, to form transient acquaintances, passing from court to
court, from St. Petersburg to London, from London to Rome, live in a
cosmopolitan world, the most delightful, the most amusing, but by far the
most dangerous. The family of M. de la Ferronays had not long escaped this
danger, which was rendered still more seductive under the charming sky and
in the luxurious climate of Italy. However, we do not pretend that this
story introduces us to exceptional creatures; this is not a voyage to the
country of the angels; we are still upon earth with common mortals. Albert,
one of the younger brothers, was the first to perceive the dangers of this
too self-indulgent life, and he had the courage to escape from it.
{16}
He was a brave heart in a frail body; be was capable of making a mistake,
but utterly incapable of excusing an unworthy action by an unworthy
doctrine. Providence gave him the support of two friends, who drew him at
eighteen from the enervating influences which he held in such horror, and
the elevating power of whose example transformed the child into a man. Both
survived him. M. Rio had been placed in the foreign office by M. de la
Ferronays; he refused to change his opinions to please M. Polignac, or to
abjure his oath to satisfy M. Guizot. M. de Polignac and M. Guizot,
respecting his courage and firmness, had not forsaken him; and making use
of his leisure to gratify his tastes as well as to show his gratitude, he
begged his old chief to allow him to return to his son the favors that he
had received from himself, and to permit him to take Albert to be his
companion in that delightful journey among the churches and classical
associations of Italy, to which we owe his great work on Christian Art. The
other friend, the Count de Montalembert, was younger, his heart was filled
with love of the church and of liberty; and devoting himself to their
service, with an eloquence and activity which nothing could tire, he
arrived in Italy to rejoin MM de Lamennais and Lacordaire. They set out all
three for Rome in the month of January, 1832, and nothing appears more rare
and more touching than the position of the gifted trio who arrived in the
eternal city, the first in search of beauty, the second in pursuit of
truth, and the third going unconsciously to encounter the pure love of his
life. At St. Petersburg M. de la Ferronays had become acquainted with the
family of the Count d'Alopeus, Russian minister at Berlin, whose daughter,
Alexandrine, was much attached to Albert's sisters. After the death of her
husband, in 1831, the Countess d'Alopeus came to Rome, and the young people
met for the first time on the 1st of January, 1832.

We must read in Le Recit d'une Soeur, or rather in the story of
Alexandrine, a journal which begins at this date, the origin, the progress,
the incidents, and the development of the pure, innocent love of
Alexandrine and Albert de Ferronays; those conversations which touch so
deeply the heart; the friendship which changes into a warmer sentiment the
name of brother which no longer satisfies; and at last the words "I love
you" whispered on the steps of St. Peter's one beautiful evening in spring.
A journey to Naples united the two families at Vomero, in the pretty villa
of Trecase. We passed the greatest parts of our evenings on the terrace.
Everything was enchanting; the two gulfs, the shores, Vesuvius, the sky
gleaming with stars, the air breathing perfume above all to love--to love,
yet to be able to speak of God. Delightful and innocent hours, who would
wish to efface you from these pages, and who would wish not to have known
your happiness!

But I hear stern voices cry out in alarm, lest this book should fall into
the hands of young girls. "This book," they say, "is not written for them."
Is it then necessary because we are Christians, to cast down our eyes and
blush, when we hear those sacred words:  Reason, love, liberty? What would
life be without these words? Ah! you may allow your daughters' eyes,
without fear, to wander over these brilliant pages, if they will only turn
the leaves, and read to the end, to learn the uncertainty of  human hope,
the length of human suffering, the gentle consolations of faith, and the
beauty of this holy union of tenderness and purity, under the protection of
God.

In the month of November, it was thought better that Albert and Alexandrine
should separate. They were engaged, but one was without fortune, the other
was a Protestant. Their friends wished them to reflect, to try the strength
of their attachment. It was absence without pain, full of hope. After three
months Albert came back.
{17}
The same family life recommenced, full of little home scenes; _naïve_,
tender, sweet. This continued for three more months, short but happy, sunny
days without clouds; and doubtless the beauty of nature, the enchantment of
an innocent affection, the presence of God, formed a paradise around and
above them.

"On Holy Thursday," wrote Alexandrine, "my mother allowed me to go with my
friends, to _Tenebrae_ at the chapel of the palace, to hear the
charming music. In spite of my frivolity, the beautiful chapel, the
singing, and above all, perhaps, the happiness of praying with Albert,
inspired me to such a degree, that I prayed with gentleness and
recollection. I was pleased to have the air of a Catholic. M. de La
Ferronays took us there, and the return on foot was delightful. It was
bright moonlight, and the air was heavy with the perfumes of spring. We
went into several churches to pray before the holy tomb. Albert and I threw
ourselves upon our knees, one besides the other, on the pavement of the
church. I remember that I felt an indescribable calm; and I don't know what
I asked from God, but I felt that we both implored his protection for us,
and that, we felt it realized." The two families separated on the 30th of
April. Alexandrine went with her mother to Germany, Madame de Ferronays
took her two oldest daughters and Albert to France, and their father placed
the two youngest in the convent de la Trinité du Mont at Rome. They left
Naples together, but separated at Civita Vecchia. Albert not feeling well,
his father kept him with him; leaving him at the inn, while he took his
wife and children to the wharf for embarkation. He embraced them, following
with his eyes the receding vessel, sending kisses from afar to the
fast-fading shadows; and then when the last faint smoke of the steamer
disappears in the circle of the horizon, he sighs, oppressed with a weight
to which all are familiar, the heavy weight of loneliness which is
inseparable from farewell words to those we love. He returned silently and
sadly to the inn, where a frightful spectacle met his eyes. Albert is
dying! They are bleeding him; one moment later he would be dead. It is
necessary to read for oneself in his own words, the letters of a father to
a mother. A father alone, a stranger in an inn, beside the deathbed of his
child. "We were kept in an agony of suspense from three o'clock until
seven. At seven the perspiration which, until then, had resisted all our
efforts, this welcome perspiration showed itself, and became excessive. O
my friend! with what faith, with what fervor of gratitude, I thanked
heaven! How everything changes its nature and aspect when we nurse an
invalid whom we love! The physicians say that this dreadful crisis will
re-establish his health. He is saved! O my God! I Frank thee! for today I
can feel only joy. O all you who are loved by heaven! give thanks for me,
and ask God to smite me, but to spare my poor children." During this time
Mademoiselle Alopeus had arrived in Rome, and was once more amid the scenes
and associates where she first met Albert, when she learned that, instead
of returning to France, he was dying at Civita Vecchia. In despair, she
wrote to him, and wished to fly to him; she could not do so, and she
quitted Rome without seeing him, feeling that he was only more dear to her
because she had so nearly lost him. "At Viterbo," she writes, "where we
slept, I heard them speak of the death of a young man, whose body was
exposed in the neighboring church; this distressed me. I could not bear to
hear anything that reminded me that Albert could die."


  Eugenie To Alexandrine.

"I pray for you, for you and Pauline, for Pauline and you. I do not mention
Albert. Albert is comprehended in you; it is the same prayer. God has loved
him; God has spared him. God will bless him, and to bless him is to bless
you. With what fervor have I repeated my favorite prayer that God would
take my share of happiness and unite it to yours, that you may have a
double portion.
{18}
This desire realized would insure my bliss." In order that nothing might be
wanting in this union of noble souls, Albert, just convalescent, writes to
his friends, Montalembert and Rio, letters full of energy and confidence.
Calm and serenity succeeded to this anxiety and disquiet. We find the two
families united at Rome in September, 1833, where the young sister, Olga,
makes her first communion. They then went to Naples, where Albert met them,
looking so well that his health had never seemed so perfectly established.
It was Alexandrine's health which, at this time, gave them cause for
anxiety. Her mind was distressed, though she did her best to conceal her
trouble. Her mother had not failed during their travels in Germany to
represent to her Albert's bad health and his poverty. Happily he had
recovered his health, but he was still poor. I do not know what prudent
parents will say, but I agree with Monsieur de la Ferronays, who wrote thus
to his wife: "They will be poor, but they will be truly happy. I have
neither the courage nor the wish to oppose them; you will not be more cruel
than I am." Alexandrine was still suffering. She was lying sadly on the
sofa one evening at twilight, when her sister came to her, and told her
that her wishes were realized; that she might look upon Albert as her
future husband. These joyful tidings worked her cure--happiness is the best
medicine. The marriage of Monsieur and Madame Albert de la Ferronays was
preceded by that of the Countess d'Alopeus with the Prince Paul Lepoukhyn.
Many dreary months of waiting elapsed, but I will not resume the letters at
this period--one word is sufficient. Lovers are always permitted to repeat
the same things. It was at this time that the sad revolt of M. de Lamennais
took place, and Albert causelessly, but nobly anxious, writes thus to his
friend: "Let us throw ourselves at the foot of the cross, which is the
foundation of the church, not to undermine her, but to support and defend
her; but, above all, I pray you do not commit yourself to M. de Lamennais.
You know the happiness which is to be mine in the spring; but I will
postpone it and fly to you if you wish me to do so." To these enthusiastic
words his friend replied: "There is not a word in your letter which does
not accord with all I have thought and desired. I used every effort to
induce M. de Lamennais to do as I have done--to bow to the inscrutable
dispensations of providence; and humbly, and with docility, to await the
will of heaven." But we must leave the two friends to return to the
preparations for the marriage, which was at last celebrated on the 17th of
April, 1834. In the evening a carriage took Albert and Alexandrine to
Castellamare. They were handsome, talented, good, and happy, and they
loved.

Blissful dream! which as yet knew no awakening. If we could judge of life
by outward appearances, we would believe that these bright anticipations
would last for ever. All the family rejoined the newly married couple at
Castellamare. "A staircase, embowered by vines and roses, led to the pretty
house, the ground floor of which, occupied by Albert and Alexandrine,
opened by large windows into the garden. Charles and Emma occupied the
first floor; my parents, Fernand, my sisters and myself the second, and at
each story these terraces communicated by outside staircases. We were
always in communication by these terraces, and were only too glad of an
excuse to be together, for never was a family more perfectly, more happily
united." The sister who painted this little picture, which seems bathed in
sunlight, added to the happiness of all during this pleasant summer, by her
marriage; and her younger sister, Eugenie, melancholy and enthusiastic,
overpowered with happiness, exclaimed, "Oh! if life is so delightful, what
must be the joy of heaven; death is then better than all!"
{19}
From Castellamare they went to Sorrento, thence to Rome, then to Pisa,
where they spent the winter, and where they were joined by their faithful
friend, like themselves young, intelligent, and amiable. "You can imagine,"
wrote Albert to his sister, "that he does not render our life less
charming." "He left us in tears," writes Alexandrine. This friend was the
Count de Montalembert. From Pisa M. and Madame de la Ferronays embarked for
Naples in the month of March, and thence a month later for Malta, _en
route_ for the east. This journey was full of amusing and piquant little
incidents. Friendship and affection followed them wherever they went. What
delight to visit Castellamare, Sorrento, Pisa, Naples, Malta, Smyrna,
Constantinople, Odessa, Vienna, Venice, at twenty years of age with hearts
full of love! "The dim light of my lamp falling on her dear head--is not
this worth all the world?" writes Albert. Alexandrine was filled with
enthusiasm on returning to Italy. "O dear Italy!" she cries, "I return to
thee for the ninetieth time, and always with renewed pleasure." But alas!
this journey, made under these happy auspices, resembled the course of the
inhabitant of the seas whom the harpoon of the fisherman has wounded, and
who plunges and escapes in agitation and affright, carrying the iron in his
side. The health of Albert and the religion of Alexandrine were the two
poisons hidden under this smiling exterior. Ten days after his marriage,
Albert in putting his handkerchief to his mouth, drew it away covered with
blood. At Pisa he was better, at Constantinople quite well, at Rouen he was
at death's-door. At Venice he was again better, and the husband and wife
went together to Lido.

While the wife was disturbed for the health of her husband, he was
trembling for more important interests. From the commencement of their
love, Albert's most ardent desire had been to see Alexandrine kneel at the
same altar, and practice the same faith, as himself. This hope seemed sure
of realization when they married, for God was ever with them in their
happiest hours; since their marriage a feeling of delicacy had kept them
silent on the great subjects of conversion. Albert did not wish that
Alexandrine should be constrained by her affection for him, and she feared
for herself the same powerful influence. She was not willing to sacrifice
her reason to the dictates of her heart, and dreading the displeasure of
her mother, she dreaded still more the censures of conscience. She desired
to submit to conviction, and to resist the pleadings of her love. We
recognize here the transparent sincerity of a character of which Albert
said truly, "I never saw in her the slightest affectation."

Thus Albert's health and Alexandrine's religion agitated them both with a
constant, silent anxiety, which introduces something tragical and sorrowful
into their history. Being prevented by his health from devoting himself to
the service of his country and his church, Albert had concentrated all his
desires on the establishment of truth in the heart dearest to him. Nothing
could be more touching than Alexandrine's care for Albert's health. The
charming Swede, the graceful daughter of the North, the belle of the
Neapolitan _fêtes_, was transformed into the attentive nurse, hiding
her fears, and accepting disagreeable duties. Shut up in a sick room,
closing with her delicate fingers the curtains, while Albert was asleep,
weeping while he slept, and, smiling when he woke. At this cruel moment
hope is absent; sorrow extends still more and more her heavy icy hand over
this hitherto so happy pair. Albert, at Venice, became so ill that they
sent for his family. They come, they see him, he is dying, but he is
consumed with an irresistible desire to revisit his country. They set out
in a carriage at short journeys. They leave Venice the 10th of April, and
arrive in Paris on the 11th of May.
{20}
On the 26th Albert is established 13 Rue de Madame, in a hired room near
the Luxembourg. He is a little better and much happier, for he is in
France, surrounded by his friends. They are young, they are good, they are
happy--why then, death, sickness, and the crushing sorrow of approaching
separation? Why all this anguish at once--conversion refused to the prayers
of Albert--recovery refused to the tears of Alexandrine? O God! where art
thou? Thou art absent when they all wait for thee. Thou wert the witness of
their innocent love, the author of their union. Thou wert with them when
they were happy, and now they suffer, they cry, and thou dost not hear, and
yet they have had days of perfect happiness and a youth without clouds.
Thou didst create them. Thou hast forsaken them.

Thou permittest that they should be afflicted, and when they cry, thou wilt
not answer. Why didst thou say by thy prophet, "Before they call I will
answer. As they are yet speaking, I will hear." Thy promises but add to
their sufferings the pain of disappointed hope. O God! where art thou? With
their hearts wrung by the same sorrow, the disciples were walking on the
road to Emmaus, when meeting a stranger they confided to him their trouble.
"We hoped that it was he who would have redeemed Israel, and to-day is the
third day since these things were done." They did not know that God was
present, though hidden from them in the silence of the little chamber,
where these poor Jews, who represent too well our patience so soon
exhausted, and our unworthy dejection, were sadly assembled together.
Suddenly their hearts awoke and they recognized in the breaking of bread
this ever-present God who gives himself to us as the pledge of future
immortality. The miracle of the little cottage of Emmaus is enacted every
day, and was visible at the death-bed of Albert de La Ferronays. Already at
Venice, during the night of the 6th of March, Albert appeared oppressed in
his sleep, and Alexandrine, overwhelmed by the agony of the coming
separation, watched by his bed. "At half-past five," she writes, "the color
left his lips, he spoke with effort and desired me to send for his
confessor. 'Has it come to this? Has it come to this?' I cried; then I
added at the same moment, 'now I am a Catholic.' In pronouncing these
words, firmness, if not happiness, filled my heart." On the 14th of March
she wrote to her mother a truly sublime letter, which I will quote at
length. "From love and respect to you, my mother, I have not inquired into
the claims of the Catholic religion for fear that I should find it true,
and I should be forced to embrace it. But now I am possessed with an
irresistible desire to belong to the same faith as my Albert. At no price,
however, not even to soften the death-bed of my husband, would I act
disloyally toward God. Be assured, I shall not act without conviction. Dear
mother, allow me to be instructed, and when you meet again your poor
widowed daughter, ah! you will not repine at her being a Catholic. If the
Catholic Church had no other advantage over ours than that she prays for
the dead, I should prefer her." On his side Albert, with his dying hand,
traced in his journal these words, which were his last: "O Lord! I implored
thee by day and by night, Give her to me, grant me this joy if it only
lasts for one day. Thou heardest me, O God! why should I complain. My
happiness was complete, if it was short, and now thou hast granted the rest
of my prayers, and my dear one is about to enter the bosom of the church,
thus giving me the assurance that I shall see her again in that happy home
where we shall both be lost in the beatific vision of thy boundless love."
On the 27th of May, 1836, Madame de Ferronays knelt before an altar,
arranged in her husband's room, on which the Abbé Martin de Mourien
celebrated mass, and made her profession of the Catholic faith.
{21}
On the night of the 5th or 7th of June, she received her first communion at
the same mass where Albert received his last. I will describe this pathetic
scene in the words of Alexandrine herself. "Albert was in bed, be had not
been able to rise. I knelt beside him, I took his hand, it was thus that we
commenced the mass of Abbé Gerbert. As the mass advanced, Albert made me
let fall his hand, this dear hand that was to me so sacred that in the most
solemn hour of life I felt that I did not offend God in retaining it.
Albert drew it from me, exclaiming, 'Go, go, belong only to God.' The Abbé
Gerbert addressed a few words to me before giving me communion, then be
gave it to Albert, then again I took his beloved hand; we expected every
moment would be his last." No book could contain, no imagination could
depict a scene more tenderly, more profoundly pathetic. At this point we
read no more, we weep; it is to thee, O God! that the soul turns, to thee
that the soul ascends, to thee who truly and really wert present in his
chamber of suffering, walking so to speak on the waves of death, and
saying, "Fear not, I am with thee." O my Protestant brethren: it is to you
that this page seems to be dedicated; it is you who have formed the
character of this young girl; it is to you that she owes the habit of
living in the presence of God, to you she owes the loyalty, the perfect
sincerity of her intentions and the zeal with which she purifies her
conscience; at each moment guarding it as a stainless mirror which must
ever reflect the image of God. She followed _you_ on the road to
Emmaus, where Jesus explained to his disciples the sacred Scriptures; but
like the disciples she has thrown down the book, it could not satisfy her;
she has followed God to his holy table. By the bed of death, on the edge of
the yawning abyss of irreparable separation, hymns and words disappear like
useless sounds and barren discourses. Famished for hope and for
consolation, the soul has need of stronger food. She must tear down the
veil, and lay hold of God. O my Protestant brethren! read this history of a
Christian, who was yours until the moment when stretching out her
despairing hands toward nothingness, she came to us to be united in God
with her dying husband. Read the sad but striking description of the days
that follow the first communion. It is to you that I would dedicate the
story of this sublime agony, accompanied so tenderly by the church to the
last sigh of the passing soul.

On the 27th of June, after two years of married life, at twenty-two years
of age, Albert returned to God!

Is not this sad enough? Why should we continue after such scenes? What new
spectacle can move us? We have known the bride, the wife. We are going to
follow the widow; to follow her from the extremity of human sorrow, to
consolation, even to joy and love, reformed again in God. The only
difference between the widow of India burned in the ashes of her husband
and the Christian widow, is that the Christian is consumed more slowly. She
waits for death, instead of seeking it; from the first day of bereavement
an invisible fire, which nothing can extinguish, saps the spring of her
life.

The first moments are the most cruel, but they are not the hardest to
endure; when one can say yesterday, the day before yesterday, it is only
absence, it is not the abyss of an irreparable adieu.


    Alexandrine to Pauline.
      "Boury, July 10, 1836.

  "Pauline--Pauline! I could have written to you on the 29th of June, had I
  not been occupied with other things. I repeat, I could have done it. God
  has given me the power to do and to endure much far beyond all I ever
  believed possible, for have I not seen the eyes of Albert close in death?
  have I not felt his hand grow cold for ever? Eugenie will tell you that
  God has granted me that which I asked of him. He died resting in my arms,
  my hand in his.
{22}
  Alone, and very quietly, I closed his dear eyes, deprived of sight, and
  perhaps of feeling. I whispered close into his ear the name so beloved,
  Albert! I had nothing more tender to say to him than this word which
  expressed everything I felt. I wished that the last sound which should
  fall upon his ear should be my voice, growing fainter and fainter until
  it was lost in the distance and darkness of that gloomy passage, which
  leads at last into the light. Alas! my voice, like myself, was obliged to
  remain on the confines, obliged for the first time to be separated from
  him. O Pauline! I was strong then, unnaturally strong. I was still
  stronger for three days, then I commenced to grow weaker and weaker, and
  each morning I seemed feebler than the night before."

This estimable widow of twenty years, always ardent and always perfectly
natural, expresses a truth even in her first sensations. Little by little
sorrow intensifies, courage fails, despair commences. The sympathy of
friends, which had until then a little occupied, distracted, and deadened
the pain, without healing it, becomes colder and more distant, and the soul
is enveloped in the icy shades of silence and solitude.


    Alexandrine to Pauline.

  "To tell me at my age that all happiness is passed, that makes me
  shudder, and yet my only rest will be to feel entirely inconsolable, for
  I should loathe myself if I felt that I could again enjoy the amusements
  of life, or look upon the world otherwise than I do now. Albert was to me
  the light which colored everything. With him pearls, jewels, pretty
  rooms, beautiful scenery, appeared to me lovely. Now, nothing charms me.
  I have but one wish, to know where he is. To see if he is happy, if he
  loves me still; to share all things with him _now_ as I promised to
  do on earth before God."

Yes, the faithful widow sees nothing, she is ever with the absent; it is
not he who is dead, it is the world which has gone from her, which is
shrouded in darkness. But in the long weary hours, when she listens to the
plaintive murmurings of her own heart, the Christian widow hears another
voice of heavenly music, and angels whisper in her ear those gentle words,
"Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted." "Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God." It is not only in heaven that pure
hearts see God, they see him everywhere on earth, in all objects, in all
creatures--in all events they recognize him, they contemplate him. An
unexpected brightness is introduced little by little into this desolate
life. The world is colored anew; obscured by sorrow, it is transfigured by
faith.

She who is afflicted is not consoled, she is accepted, supported; from this
day a miracle commences. She whose affections have been riven, seeks to
love again in making friends for him whom she has lost, in interesting for
him the saints whom she invokes, the poor whom she assists. Some days after
the death of Albert, Alexandrine sold a beautiful pearl collar, a relic of
happy days, and she wrote:

  "Pearls! symbol of tears!
   Pearls! tears of the sea,
   Gathered with tears in the depths of the ocean,
   Worn often with tears in the midst of the pleasures of the world;
   Resigned to-day with tears in the greatest of human sorrows,
   Go, dry tears, by changing into bread."

The love of the poor became for this young Christian a sublime
consolation--the love of Jesus Christ in the persons of the poor--the love
of the poor in the thought of Albert. To love the unhappy when we are
unhappy is an exquisite sign of perfection in our poor human nature, but a
sign happily very common. Is it not much more difficult when we suffer to
love the happy--not to be impatient of their pleasures, to lend ourselves
to them, and though our own hearts are for ever shut against joy, to be
able to rejoice with those who rejoice? Le Récit d'une Soeur shows us the
Christian widow in the midst of her family, among her young sisters and
brothers, smiling, amiable, communicating, no doubt, by her presence to the
pleasures of the house the tinge of melancholy which ever belongs to the
joys or earth.

{23}

The commencement of the second volume of Madame Craven's history is
occupied with the _tableau_ of the interior of her family, who were
united at the Chateau of Boury during the years 1836, '37, and '38, which
followed the death of M. Albert de la Ferronays. Obliged, by the diplomatic
career of her husband, to change frequently her residence--to go from
Naples to Lisbon, to London, to Carlsruhe, to Brussels--Madame Craven was
almost always separated from her parents and her sisters. To this
separation we owe the correspondence which serves today to interest and
console us.

The description of the interior of the Chateau de Boury, depicted in these
letters, resembles a conversation, where each speaks in his turn and with
his own peculiar accent. But I will pass over this family picture to return
to Madame Albert de la Ferronays, the principal character in my story.

In the month of October, 1837, they removed the body of Albert to Boury, in
order to bury it in a sepulchre, where they had arranged two places without
separation.

  "Yesterday, alone with Julia, by the aid or a little ladder, Alexandrine
  descended into the excavation in order to touch and to kiss, for the last
  time, the coffin in which is enclosed all that she loves. In doing this
  she was on her knees in her own tomb. On the stone she had engraved:
  'What God hath put together, let no man put asunder.'"

In 1838 she rejoined her mother in Germany, where she spent the second
anniversary of the 29th of June. From Ischl she wrote to her sister a
touching description of the death of a young priest, who died of
consumption eleven months after his ordination. From Germany Madame de la
Ferronays went to Lumigny, from thence to Boury; and when the family
resolved to pass the winter of 1839 in Italy, she returned with a sad
delight to this beautiful country, where she had been so happy. She wished
to revisit all the scenes of her past happiness--to see again the rocks,
the trees, the mountains, which had been witnesses of her felicity--not
without tears, but without complaining; with the sweet serenity of perfect
resignation. "It is here," she said, "that I have been so full of bliss
that this world and life appeared too beautiful." After the description of
the second journey to Italy, there follows the account of the successive
deaths of M. de la Ferronays and the young daughters, Olga and Eugenie. At
this time, always absolutely sincere, incapable in anything of being
carried away by feeling, Alexandrine thought of entering a convent; she
relinquished the idea, but resolved to live in poverty for the poor. From
this day she dreams no more, she writes no more, she acts. Her love
expresses itself in joyous accents, in words of heavenly sweetness,
accompanied by austere virtues. It is the miracle and the triumph of true
piety, What is this? demands a disdainful world. Who is this devotee,
draped in black, who ventures out in the most inclement season, laden with
bundles? Has she paralyzed her heart? Does she love no one? Is she a piece
of mechanism, passing from the dreary garret to the dark cellar in the poor
neighborhood which surrounds her? No; this widow is a great lady, bearing
one of the oldest names of France. She is going to visit the dying, to
supply them with clothes and food, to teach their ignorant children; and on
her return she takes her pen, and from this heart, which you believe cold
and frozen, flow forth these words: "O my dear sister! can I fill you with
joy and courage in writing? Would that it were in my power; you do not know
how I love you, but you will know in eternity, where we shall enjoy each
other's love fully and completely."

{24}

This devotee paid a visit to another devotee, an old Russian lady, of whom
she writes: "I have seen Madame Swetchine; this delightful, excellent woman
told me that we ought not to speak ill of life, for it is full of beauty;
and yet this woman, so tender and so pious, is overwhelmed with moral and
physical suffering. She said to me, 'I love what _is_, because it is
true; I am contented.' The longer I live the more I wish to have my heart
filled with love, and only with love." Of all Alexandrine's former
pleasures, the sole relaxations she permitted herself were music and
reading. Part of her time she spent in Paris in the hospitals, which she
entered with the joyous, animated air of a young girl who sets out for a
_fête_, or a warrior who returns from battle. She ended by hiring a
little room in the Rue de Sèvres in order to live more plainly. Her
sisters, in looking into her wardrobe, found that it contained nothing. She
had robbed herself to give to the poor. This noble woman had but one cause
--the cause of God. She became the generous servant, almost the soldier of
the church, interesting herself in the cause of freedom, contributing to
foreign missions, seconding the educational projects of her friend, M. de
Montalembert; and, from the quiet of her little chamber, giving forth her
money and her prayers for the service of God. Madame Craven, in a letter,
dated the 31st of July, thus writes: "The evening of my departure from
Boury we went into the cemetery to pray. Alexandrine knelt beside Albert's
tomb, on the spot which, twelve years before, had been prepared for
herself. I was on my knees, by Olga. The night was warm and beautiful. As
we strolled slowly home, I turned and admired the setting sun, which was
embellishing, with its many colored rays, this sad spot. 'I love the
setting sun,' I exclaimed. 'Since my sorrow,' replied Alexandrine, 'the
setting sun makes me sad. It is the precursor of night. I do not like the
night. I love the morning and the spring--they bring before me the reality
of life that never ends. Night represents to me darkness and sin; evening
the transitory nature of the world; but morning and spring give me promise
of the resurrection and renewal of all things.' As we continued our walk,
Alexandrine said: 'Rest assured that all that pleases us most upon earth is
but a shadow; that the reality is alone in heaven. What is there upon earth
so sweet as to love? And I ask you if it is not easy to conceive that the
love of the divine love ought to be the perfection of this sweetness?--and
is not this the love of Jesus Christ? I should never have been comforted if
I had not learnt that this love exists for God, and is everlasting.' I
replied, 'You are very happy so to love God.' She answered me--and her
words, her expression, her attitude will remain ever engraved on my
memory--'O Pauline! should I not love God? should I not be transported
with joy when I think of him? How can you imagine there is any merit in
this, even that of faith, when I think of the miracle that he has wrought
in my soul? I loved, and desired the joy of earth--it was given to me. I
lost it, and I was overwhelmed with despair. Yet, to-day my soul is so
transformed that all the happiness I have ever known pales and grows dim in
comparison with the felicity with which God has filled my soul.' Surprised
to hear her speak thus, I said: 'If you had offered to you a long life to
be spent with Albert, would you accept it?' She replied, without
hesitation. 'I would not take it.' This was our last conversation, and as I
saw her then I see her now, with a flower of jessamine in her hand, her
face lighted up with heavenly beauty; and so she will ever appear to me
until I meet her again where there will be no more parting.' Alexandrine
died some months after, on the 9th of February, 1848.

If the angels could die, they would die as she did. Her last words to
Albert's mother were: "Tell Pauline it is so sweet to die."

{25}

On the 14th of November of the same year, Madame de la Ferronays rejoined
her husband, her son, and her three daughters. On the tombs of Albert,
Alexandrine, Olga, and Eugenie, and of their father and mother, one single
epitaph is necessary. It comprehends their life; it is the epitome of their
faith; it is the conclusion, the explanation, the design of this book:
"Love is stronger than death."

------

      Original

      The Church And The Sinner.


    The Church

  Prithee, why continue eating,
    Child, the husks of swine?
  Thou thy soul art only cheating
    With this food of thine.


    The Sinner.

  Other food hath long been wasted,
    Mother, by my sin;
  All its empty joys are tasted,
    Sorrows now begin.


    The Church.

  Hadst thou not a loving Father,
    Child, and happy home?
  There with him have rested, rather
    Shouldst thou than to roam.


    The Sinner.

  Yes; but he his now degraded
    Son would never know;
  From his memory I have faded,
    Mother, long ago.


    The Church.

  Child, the Father ne'er forgetteth
    Whom he called his son,
  To him naught but pride now letteth
    Not thy feet to run.


    The Sinner.

  Worthy for his lowly servant
    Am I not, I know;
  Yet with love and sorrow fervent
    Will arise, and go!

------

{26}

    From The Dublin University Magazine.

    Modern Writers Of Spain.

The literary portion of English and French people take little interest
about what philosophers and romance writers are doing on the outer borders
of Europe. Scarcely does an editor of a literary journal direct his
subscribers' attention to the current literature of Russia, Norway, Spain,
or Portugal. The most universally-read Englishman would be puzzled if you
asked him who is the Dickens or the Braddon of Transylvania, or if anything
worth reading has lately appeared in the Portuguese province of Alentejo.
Thanks to the talents and the genial disposition of Frederica Bremer, and
the vigorous and original character of Emily Carlen's novels, and the
interest excited for Norse literature by William and Mary Howitt, we have
become familiarized with the popular literature of Sweden. Worsae and
Andersen have made us attend to literary sayings and doings among the
meadows and beech woods and _havns_ of the Danish Isles. The efforts
of Count Sollogub and one or two other enlightened Russians have failed to
dispel our apathy on the subject of native Russian literature, and at this
moment we can recollect among the contents of our own reviews and magazines
for five or six years back, only two notices of the productions of living
Spanish novelist or romancist. Either we (English and French) are too much
absorbed in our own literature, and consequently negligent of that of our
neighbors, or those neighbors are producing nothing worthy [of] notice, and
in either case our efforts will scarcely turn public attention into a new
channel. Our intention is merely to advert to some literary features in the
life of the Spain of the present day. We shall not find her altogether
neglectful of the claims of her children who are at the moment striving to
add to her literary renown.


  Cervantes Remembered Too Late.

There is something very saddening in those solemnities held in honor of
departed genius. We see much time taken from necessary business, much
eloquence wasted--often with a side glance toward self-glorification, and
much money thrown away, which, if once timely and prudently used, would
have relieved the anxieties and cheered the existence of the ill-favored
son of genius.

In the article on Cervantes which appeared in the University for August,
[Footnote 2] allusion was made to his imprisonment and harsh treatment in a
certain town of La Mancha. It is the same whose name, he says, in the
commencement of Don Quixote, he does not choose to remember. It has been
ascertained that this village of unenviable reputation is Argamasilla; and
the very house where he resided against his will, and dreamily arranged the
plan of his prose epic, has been identified. The Infanta Don Sebastian has
purchased it, with a view to its preservation, and a patriotic and spirited
printer, Don Manuel de Ribadeneira, has obtained permission to work off two
impressions there of the Life and Adventures of the ingenious Hidalgo, Don
Quixote. One is, in the Paris idiom, an edition of luxury, intended for the
libraries and _salons_ of the great, the other a carefully executed
but low-priced edition for the populace.

    [Footnote 2: See Catholic World for October, 1886.]

{27}

The English cannot be accused of having neglected their own Cervantes in
his need. He appears to have united to his comprehensive and mighty genius,
good business habits, consulted the tastes of his public while endeavoring
to improve them, watched the behavior of his door-keepers, and though
probably not a rigid self-denier, made his outlay fall far short of his
income, and enjoyed some years of life in respectable retirement. So his
countrymen feeling no remorse on his account, show their respect for his
memory by eating and drinking heartily on stated occasions, and boring each
other with stereotyped speeches. When suitable days for jubilees or
centenaries or tercentenaries arrive, they take more trouble on themselves.
They journey to a small town in Warwickshire, and celebrate the event in as
tiresome a fashion as if they were members of the "British Association for
bettering the Universe," under all the inconveniences of crowded rooms,
crowded vehicles going and coming, and dear hotels. They manage matters of
the kind in Spain with a difference.

Some years since a statue was erected to Cervantes in front of the Congress
building, and the historian, Antonio Cavanilles, took occasion to mention
the opinion of the ghost of the great Spaniard on the matter in a dialogue
held between them.

  "During my life they left me in poverty. Now they raise statues which are
  of no manner of use to me, and they never celebrate a mass for the repose
  of my soul--a thing of which I have much need."

Whether the Marquis of Molins, the same gentleman who superintended the
editions of Don Quixote at Argamasilla, took this appeal to heart or not,
it is certain that since the year 1862 a solemn high mass and office have
been celebrated for the above-mentioned purpose before the Royal Academy of
Madrid. M. Antoine de Latour, [Footnote 3] in his Études Littéraires sur
l'Espagne Moderne, has left an account of one of these solemnities, some
particulars of which are worth being presented.

    [Footnote 3: This gifted and agreeable writer was born at Sainte Yrieix
    (Haute Vienne) in 1818, and educated at the college of Dijon. He held
    professorships at the College Bourbon and the college Henri Quatre.
    Louis Philippe confided to him the education of the young Duc de
    Montpensier, and in 1848 he shared the exile of the house of Orleans.
    He made his literary _début_ in poetry, his other productions
    being an Essay on the History of France in the Nineteenth Century, an
    Account of the Duc de Montpensier's Journey to the East, and and essays
    on Luther, Racan, Vertot, Malherbe. &c. He has resided for a
    considerable time in Spain, and written four or five works Spanish
    subjects.]

In 1616 Cervantes was interred in the church of the Convent of the
Trinitarians, where his daughter had taken the veil. Some fifteen years
afterward the community removed to the site now occupied by them, and the
impression is strong that in the removal the remains of the poet were
brought to their own house, his daughter being alive, or but recently dead
at the time. In the chapel of their convent the annual solemnity takes
place on the 16th April. The convent stands in the street called after
Cervantes' contemporary and dramatic rival, Lope de Vega. We proceed with
M. de Latour's account of what he witnessed.

Our visitor found the chapel hung with black cloth trimmed with gold
fringe. In the centre was a catafalque on which rested the habit of St.
Francis borne by Cervantes during the last three years of his life, a
sword, prison-fetters, a crown of laurel, and a copy of the first edition
of Don Quixote. At each corner of the catafalque stood a disabled soldier,
and at each side, and extending the whole length of the chapel, ran two
lines of seats for the members of the various academies.

At the lower end of the chapel, on seats connecting the extremities of the
long rows mentioned, sat the Alcaid, the rector of the University, and the
curé of Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace, where the record of his
baptism was discovered some time since.

{28}

Among the remarkable personages met to celebrate the occasion, M. de Latour
noticed the Marquis de Molins, its institutor; M. Hartzembuch, a dramatic
poet, an idolizer of Cervantes, and the zealous superintendent of the two
Argamasilla editions of the Don; Ventum de la Vega, the Marquis de Santa
Cruz, whose ancestor fought at Lepanto, and Antonio Cavanilles, the eminent
historian before mentioned. Seated behind the academicians were the most
illustrious ladies of Spain, all appropriately attired in mourning dress.

The Archbishop of Seville celebrated high mass, the different parts of
which were accompanied with music as old as the days of Cervantes himself.
The distinguished composer, Don Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, had sought these
pieces out with much trouble, some of them having for a long time been only
heard in the Sistine chapel at Rome. We subjoin the openings of some of
these, with the authors and dates.

_Regem cui omnia vivunt_ (the king by whom all things live) was
composed by Don Melchior Robledo, chapel master in Saragossa in 1569, the
same year when Cervantes' little collection of elegiac poems on Queen
Isabel appeared.

_Domine in furore tuo_ (Lord (rebuke) me not in thy fury) was the
composition of Don Andres Lorente, organist in Alcala de Henares,
Cervantes' birthplace. He himself probably heard it sung there in his
youth.

_Versa est in luctum cithara mea_ (my harp has changed to sorrow) was
composed for the funeral of Philip II. by Don Alfonso Lobo.

_Libera me_ (deliver me), the composition of Don Matias Romero, Chapel
Master to Philip III., dates from about the death of Cervantes.

Don Francisco de Paula Benavides, the young bishop of Siguenza, preached
the sermon. Taking his text from St. Paul, "Being dead he still speaketh
through faith," he proceeded with the panegyric of the great-souled poet
and soldier, and of all the illustrious dead who have honourcd Spain by
their writings. He did not neglect to interest the nuns, who were listening
with all their might behind their lattices. Their order had been
instrumental in restoring the brave Saavedra to his country, and to their
exertions Spain and the world were in part indebted for the Don Quixote and
the Exemplary Novels. They possessed the remains of the poet in their
house, and thus bound to his memory they must not omit the care of his
salvation to their prayers. The delivery of the discourse, according to M.
Latour, was marked with a noble simplicity, and a manner combining
sweetness with vigour.

Next morning he returned to the convent, hoping to be gratified with the
sight of Cervantes' tomb. Alas! he learned that when the remains were
transferred from the old house, sufficient attention was not paid to keep
them apart from those of others who were removed along with them. So,
though it is morally certain that the present convent of the Trinitarians
guards all that remains of the body, once so full of life and active
energy, they are now undistinguishable from the relics of the nameless
individuals who had received interment in the same building.


    The Modern Novel:
    Donna Caecelia De Faber.

We are not to imagine Spain insensible to the merits of her living gifted
sons and daughters, and ever employed in shedding tears over the tombs of
her Cervantes, her Lope de Vega, or her Mendoza. No. She possesses living
writers whose names are not only known from Andaluçia to Biscay, but are
even spoken of in Paris _salons_. The most distinguished among these
is the lady who chooses to style herself _Fernan Caballero_, her real
name being Caecilia de Faber, her birthplace Alorges in Switzerland, and
her father, M. Bohl de Faber, a Hamburgh merchant, and consul for that city
at Cadiz.

{29}

She has been married more than once, and thus enabled to combine experience
with natural ability in her pictures of life and manners. Through the favor
of the queen she holds apartments in the Alcazar of Seville, and the
splendid old Moorish city could not possess a writer better qualified to
paint the manners of the little-doing, much-enjoying people of that
southern paradise, Andalulçia, and the delights of the happy climate, where
life is not only supportable, but enjoyable at very small expense.

Besides happily seizing and vividly sketching what takes place among the
aristocracy of Seville in their Patios [Footnote 4] and Tertulias (reunions
in their _salons_), this authoress has made herself thoroughly
acquainted with the circumstances and characters and peculiar customs of
the country laborers and shepherds. Melodramatic situations abound in some
of them, and perhaps these are more relished by her Spanish readers than
others whose chief merit consists in truthful and picturesque tableaux of
the order of things among which they are placed, and which consequently
possesses no novelty for them. We can readily conceive how French and
English students of her novels and romances would prefer this latter class
for their entertainment. Who would not rather listen to a couple of
Andaluçian peasants discussing the clime and people of Britain than to some
terrible, exciting though undignified, domestic tragedy? (_A_. is
dissuading _B_. from making the voyage to Britain.)

  "_A_. The earth is there covered with so deep a crust of snow that
  people are buried in it.

  "_B_. Most Blessed Mary! But they are quiet folk, and do not carry
  stilettoes.

  "_A_. They have no olives, no gaspacho, [footnote 5]   and must put
  up with black bread, potatoes, and milk.

  "_B_. Much good may it do them.

    [Footnote  4: The Patios are the interior flagged courts surrounded by
    colonnades from the roof of which lamps are suspended. In the centre of
    the court is a fountain surrounded by shrubs in fruit or flower. Seated
    on sofas in the corridor, or on carpets near the fountain, the princely
    owners enjoy an elysium during hot weather.]

    [Footnote 5: Soup made up of olive oil, vinegar, spices, etc.]

  "_A_. The worst is, there are neither monks nor nuns there; the
  churches are few, and the walls of them as bare as if they were
  hospitals; no private chapels, no altars, no crucifixion.

  "_B_. Oh, my sun, my white bread, my church, my Maria Santissima, my
  delightful land, my Dios Sacramentado! How could I think to change you
  for that land of snow, of black bread, of bare-walled churches, of
  heretics? Horrible!"

Fernan Caballero enters with warm-hearted sympathy into the pleasures and
troubles of her country people. Few could read without interest her sketch
of the peasants returning at evening from their work. We fancy Sancho Panza
and a neighbor coming home to meet the greeting of Tereza and his children,
himself mounted on _Dapple_, while the little foal frolics about,
unconscious of its own future life of labor. Sancho carries a basket of
fruit and vegetables covered with the sappy maize stalks, which will
furnish a delightful supper to the patient _burra_. Sancho's neighbor
is riding beside him, and you will hear in a quarter of an hour of their
conversation more proverbs than John Smith and Tom Brown would quote in
seven years. The burras quicken their pace as they approach the village,
for the children of both men are running to meet them, while their wives
are looking out for them from the porches of their doors. Sancho dismounts
and sets his younger child on Dapple, while his elder frolics about her and
makes free with her ears. Sancho's neighbor gets his youngest into his lap,
while one of the elder boys takes the halter and the other gambols about
with the trusty house dog, asses and dog being much better treated than if
their lot lay in Berkshire or Donegal.

With their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their
happy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants,
and lively and happy temperaments, the Andaluçian peasants afford suitable
subjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil.
{30}
They see in the many natural advantages they possess, the goodness of God
and the favors of the saints; and their pious legends, in connection with
every object round them, are innumerable. "Toads and serpents are useful in
absorbing the poisonous exhalations of the earth; the serpent attempted to
bite the Holy Infant on the journey into Egypt, so Saint Joseph appointed
him to creep on his belly thenceforth. Some trees have the privilege of
permanent foliage because they sheltered the HOLY FAMILY on the same
journey. The Blessed Virgin hung the clothes of the Infant Jesus on a
rosemary bush to dry, so its sweetest perfume and brightest blossoms are
reserved for Friday. The swallow plucked some of the thorns out of the
Saviour's crown, therefore he is a favorite bird with all Christians, while
the owl is obliged to keep his eyes shut and whimper out, '_cruz,
cruz,_' because he irreverently stared at our suffering Lord on the
cross. The hedgehog should be well treated, because he presented to the
Blessed Virgin some sweet apples on the tips of his prickles, while the
earwig is deservedly hated for boring his way into, and effectually
spoiling the nicest of them." Most of these poetically develop fancies are
or were familiar with the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and probably
amongst the populace of moat continental countries.

Perhaps the most powerful of our authoress's stories is La Gaviota (the
sea-gull), giving the career of a selfish, ill-disposed country girl,
gifted with some beauty and a fine voice. She obtains a gentle German
doctor for husband, is patronized by a duke, trained for the office of a
prima donna, becomes fascinated by a bull fighter, proves false to her
estimable husband, and ends badly of course. Devout and moral as the
authoress undoubtedly is, she does not avoid strong and exciting situations
no more than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Oliphant. Such is the scene
where the betrayed husband sees her seated beside the bullfighter among his
unedifying associates, and that other of the death of her paramour by a
furious animal in the arena before her eyes, and these are matched by
passages in the Alvareda Family.[Footnote 6] This story, which is entirely
occupied with country folk, and incidents of the war in Buonaparte's time,
and scenes of brigandage, is next to La Gaviota in power. The match-making
scene between the garrulous and saving Pedro and his relative that is to
be, the _Tia_ Maria, fully as provident as himself, might have
happened in a country farmhouse in Wexford or Carlow, and would have been
described by Banim or Griffin or Carleton, nearly in the same terms.

    [Footnote 6: A translation of this story was given in The Catholic
    World of last year, as Perico the Sad; or, The Alvareda Family.]

The Andalusians are as partial to bantering each other as the natives of
Kilcullen or Bantry, but all is taken in good humor.

In reading the country business in this and others of our authoress's tales
we have been forcibly reminded of corresponding pictures so truthfully
painted in Adam Bede. We could scarcely fancy such a piece of extravagance
as the following to be uttered by a Spanish lady, till assured of the fact
by Fernan Caballero. _Casta_ wishes to induce her elderly lover, Don
Judas Taddeo Barbo, to cease his persecutions. He does not read, and
entertains feelings of repugnance to literary ladies in general; so she
takes him into her confidence.

  "'Yes, yes I am a poet, but do not mention it, I beg. Some of my works
  are printed, but I have put the names of my friends to them. Martinez de
  la Rosa's poems are mine, not his. I have also tried my hand on
  theatrical pieces. The Consolations of a Prisoner, attributed to the Duke
  de Rivas, is my composition.'

  "'Who would have suspected a lady, so young, so beautiful, so womanly, so
  attractive? Why, a writing woman ought to be old, ugly, and slovenly--a
  man-woman!'

  "'All prejudices, Don Judas. Have you read my Tell?'

  "'Miguel Tell, the Treasurer? No. I never read; it injures my sight.'

{31}

  "'Well I must read an extract from my great historical work on William
  Tell, not Miguel the Treasurer.' (Here poor Don Judas began to meditate
  an escape, the very thing the lady wished.)

  "'William Tell, my hero, was a native of Scotland who refused to bow down
  to the beaver hat of the English General, _Malbrun_, set up on a
  high pole. Out of this circumstance arose the thirty years' war, at the
  end of which Tell was proclaimed King of England under the title of
  William the Conqueror. He brought disgrace on his royal name by causing
  his wife, the beautiful Anne Boleyn, to be beheaded. Struck with remorse
  he sent his son Richard Lion-heart on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On
  his return he was imprisoned for his great admiration of Luther, Calvin,
  Voltaire, and Rousseau, members of the Revolutionary Directory which put
  the pious King Louis XIV. to death. About that time Don Pedro the Cruel
  established the inquisition in Spain to prevent such proceedings in his
  kingdom, and thus he obtained his surname'"

Poor Don Judas was terrified by the erudition of the cunning lady, who thus
got rid of him.

The collected works of this lady have been printed at the expense of the
queen. It is only seventeen or eighteen years since she began to write,
and, if we can trust the accuracy of foreign biographers, she is now in her
seventieth year. Two volumes of selections from her works entitled The
Castle and Cottage in Spain, have appeared in an English dress.


    Rustic Tales: Don Antonio De Trueba.

The writer next to be noticed, by birth a Biscayan peasant, is now or was
lately a sub-editor of a newspaper. Don Antonio de Trueba y la Quintana was
born 24th December, 1821. In the preface to one of his works he presents
this picture of his birthplace and his early life.

  "On the slope of one of the mountains of Biscay stand four white houses
  nearly hidden in a wood of walnut and chestnut trees, and which cannot be
  seen at any distance till winter has deprived the trees of their foliage.
  There I passed the first fifteen years of my life.

  "In the valley is a church whose spire pierces the surrounding canopy of
  foliage, and is seen above the chestnut and ash trees. In this church
  they celebrate two masses, one at the rising of the sun, the other two
  hours afterward.

  "We, the young boys of the hamlet rose every Sunday with the song of the
  birds, and went down to the early mass, singing and jumping over the
  bushes. The elders of the families attended the later devotions. While
  the fathers and grandfathers were so occupied, I took my seat under a
  cherry tree opposite the door, and had a full view of the entire vale
  till it approached the shore. I was soon joined by four or five young
  girls with cheeks as blooming as the cherries which hung over our beads,
  or the red ribbons which bound the long braids of their hair. They would
  request me to make some verses for them to sing in the evening to the
  accompaniment of the basque tambourine, when the young would be dancing,
  and the aged looking on in sympathy with their enjoyment."

Don Antonio was already a poet, though his material sources of information
and inspiration were very easily counted. His library consisted of the
Fueros (Customs) of Biscay, Samanego's Fables, Don Quixote, a book of
ballads, and two or three volumes of the Lives of the Saints. At fifteen
years of age (1836), the Carlist cause gathering the youth of Biscay to its
side, Antonio's parents not being enthusiastic partisans of that party,
sent their son to a distant relative in Madrid, who could do nothing better
for the future poet and novelist than employ him in his hardware shop to
take down door-hinges, pokers, and frying-pans for his customers.

For ten tedious years did our poet in embryo do the duty of a shopman by
day, treat himself the to a book when be could, and spend in study great
part of the time that should be given to sleep. Bad business or failure
obliged him at the end of the time mentioned to look out for other
occupation, and since that time he has been connected with journalism, the
evenings still being devoted to poetry and romance.

The ordinary vehicle in which the nameless poets of Spain utter their
thoughts to the people is the quatrain, in which the second and fourth
lines rhyme after a fashion, the accented vowels corresponding without
exception, the consonants when it pleases Apollo. This is what they call
the _Romance_, and in which Trueba has endeavored to improve the taste
of the people by a genuine poetic feeling, and perfection in the structure
of the verse.

{32}

But our Biscayan thought a poet's life incomplete without the sympathy
which only a loving and intelligent wife can afford. So he incurred the
expense of a household, as well as gave support to his aged parents. Along
with laboring at the public press and writing and publishing Los Cantares,
he found time to compose his Rose-colored Tales, all concerned with the
ordinary life of the country in which his boyhood was passed, and all seen
through that softly colored magic medium through which mature age loves to
look back to the period of careless hopeful youth. These stories are called
The Resurrection of the Soul, The Stepmother, From our Country to Heaven.
The Judas of the House, and Juan Palamo. All end happily, all are imbued
with the purest morality, and breathe an atmosphere in which live the best
feelings of our nature.

While writing the dedication of them to his wife, he was enlivened by the
anticipation of a visit they would shortly make to his natal village.

  "While I write this, the most cherished wish of my life is about to be
  gratified. Before the July sun withers up the flowers, the breezes and
  the flowers of my native hills shall cool our foreheads, and perfume our
  hair. The venerable man who honors himself and thee in calling thee his
  daughter, is now going from house to house in the village, and telling
  the companions of my boyhood, while tears of joy find their way down his
  check, 'My children are coming; my son is about revisiting his native
  valleys as lovingly as he bade them adieu twenty years ago.'

  "And our father and our brothers are thinking on us every moment, and
  doing all in their humble means to beautify and cheer the apartments
  destined for us. Every time they come to the windows, they expect to see
  my form on the hillock where they caught the last site of me seventeen
  years ago."

Alas! what disappointments wait on such pleasant anticipations! Paying a
tardy visit to the scenes so lovingly and pleasurably remembered, the
careworn elderly man finds dear old houses levelled; new, raw ones reared
on their site; old paths and ways deserted, and new roads laid down; new
and uninteresting topics filling up conversation, the once fresh and fair
romantic boys and girls now common-place husbands and wives, except such as
have been removed by death or change of residence. His former comrades,
youths and maids once buoyant with bright hopes, are now gray-haired and
wrinkled, or distressed, or departed, and of the revered and loved old
people of long ago not one has been left to bid him welcome. There are now
no ties to detain him in his long regretted native place; he hastens back
to his ordinary colorless occupation and cares, rendered agreeable or
tolerable by habit, and wishes he had not gone on that sorrowful journey.

In the greater part of these tales figures the Indian, that is, one who has
spent some time in Mexico or the West Indies, and returns to cheer or
disturb the former companions of his early life. The narratives are made up
of simple village annals, loves and jealousies, injustices and their
punishments, generous deeds and their recompenses, constancy sharply tried
and victorious, unions at the threshing floors, Sunday morning devotions,
Sunday evening recreations, troubles of good housewives with their
play-loving little boys, and all the worries and comforts and joys and
griefs that attend on the lives of those whose lot is to cultivate the
earth, the curé always filling the office of the good fairy in household
tales.


    Satire: Don Jose Gonzalez De Tejada.

Don José Gonzalez de Tejada may be taken as the representative man of the
living Spanish satirists. Few looking on the steady, easy-going, fat, and
florid young man with good-nature playing about the corners of his mouth,
would suspect the keen spirit of satire which inspires his verses.
{33}
Making use of the romance form before explained, he celebrated in the
public papers the late triumphs of his country over the Moors, and these
verses were in every one's mouth. In his satires he never condescends to
personalities. He lashes selfishness, rage for wealth, worldliness, lack of
patriotism, etc. He calls his collection "Anacreontic Poems of the latest
Fashion," but they have nothing of the genuine Anacreontics but the form.
The classic student, or even the reader of Moore's translation, recollects
the bibulous old poet's direction to the painter about his mistress's
portrait. Here is the Spanish equivalent:

  "Figure to me, O photographer of my soul!
  the beauty who holds me in thrall.

  "As to countenance, let her be dark or fair,
  to me it's all the same.

  "But let sparkling diamonds give lustre to her tresses,
  and two golden lamps hang from her ears.

  "Let her neck be dark, or possess the whiteness of alabaster,
  but for decency's sake cover it with pearls or sapphires.

  "Let her graceful form be shrouded with rich valuable stuffs.
  A rich binding always enhances the value of books.

  "While she rolls along in her _calèche_ my
  attention is occupied with her rich liveries
  and the cost of the equipage.

  "Happy he who, prancing along by the carriage,
  or seated by her side, cigar in mouth,
  can exclaim, 'All that surrounds me is mine!'

  "Paint her for me in ball costume, at the mass,
  or the _retiro_, ever richly dressed,
  ever surrounded by opulent charms.

  "But alas! her greatest charms you cannot
  see to portray--her father's crowns!
  On these is my heart fixed."

Don José is somewhat old fashioned in his notions. He does not attribute
all the qualities of and overruling Providence to the mere progress of
science and the additions to our corporal conveniences. Here is his vision
of the origin of printing:

  "Turning the earth into a sponge with his tears,
  man presented himself all dreeping at the throne of Jupiter.

  "And cried, 'Good evening, O powerful god,
  maker of stars, of worlds, and of domestic fowl!

  "Thou createdst us one day from nothing
  mixed with a little mud; thou hast bestowed
  on us genius enveloped in a soft covering of flesh.

  "'The world is a cage, and each of us a
  parrot climbing and balancing himself over
  his neighbor's head.

. . . . .

  "'Thou hast bestowed us ears which to
  the deaf are a mere ornament, and a tongue,
  best gift of all.

  "'Placed between the teeth she gives
  them to understand that unless she lies, they
  can have nothing to chew.

  "'But alas! in our time she is incapable to
  express all that the fruitful brain conceives
  and brings forth.

  "'Lengthen it then the third of a perch, or
  give it for aid an additional organ.

  "'Juppy made a grimace, and the affrighted
  hills sunk, and the poles trembled.

  "'Well,' said the deity, always prodigal of gifts,
  'I shall convert into tongues sundry vile things of this lower world.

  "'Of old shirts, of disgusting rags, I shall
  make gay clothes for the press,
  flesh and blood for the daily paper.

  "'In the feathered garb of the goose are
  cannons sufficient to win treasures.

  "'Let your arms cease to brandish the war-like steel,
  and turn inert and fat bodies of men into sieves.

  "'Iron fashioned into slender tongues
  which sing along the paper, shall there engrave
  the conceptions of genius.

  "'And in order that you may attain the steepest summits,
  I shall furnish your heads with pride and envy in abundance.

  "'Advance, throw shame behind, flatter the proud,
  copy, deride, calumniate, and be
  sure to burn incense in your own honor.

  "'I have spoken.' And he added, rubbing his chin,
  'Henceforth you are a man; hitherto you were but an ape.'"


    History: Don Antonio Cavanilles.

Don Antonio Cavanilles, an advocate and member or the Academy, has
distinguished himself by his yet unfinished history of Spain, an
interesting narrative, evincing the most patient research, and attractive
from the adjuncts of customs and phases of the different eras, and personal
traits of the historical personages. Don Modesto Lafuente is engaged on
another history of the same country. Don Antonio belongs to the school of
Livy and Herodotus, Don Modesto writes in the spirit and with the pen of a
Manchester radical.

{34}

    The Drama: Don Adelardo Lopez De Ayala.

Zealous as the first historian for the preservation of the heroic and
unselfish character of the genuine Hidalgo, Don Adelardo Lopez de Ayala
writes his drama of "So Much per Cent," in which he excites unmeasured
contempt for the greed of gold, and the rage of speculation, whose visit to
the old soil of chivalry the author deprecates with all his might.

Don Gaspar Bono Serrano, a brave and devout military chaplain, once
attending the wounded in Don Carlos's camp, and an Arragonese by birth, has
given the lie to the public impression that no poet is born outside of
Castile and Andalulçia.

While it must be owned with regret that pestilent French novels have found
their way in abundance across the Pyrenees, the native literature of Spain,
with scarce an exception, maintains its ancient _prestige_ for
Christian morality. Long may the word continue to be said!

Want of space prevents any notice of the _feuilleton_ and the drama of
Spain at the present day, and other literary topics interesting the Spanish
capital. An instance of the interest taken in sound fictional literature in
high quarters is furnished by the publication of the complete collected
novels of Fernan Caballero, and of Antonio Trueba at the expense of the
Queen. Meanwhile Fernan, or rather Doña Caecilia, (_née_) de Faber,
dwells in the Royal Alcazar of Seville in apartments granted by her queen,
employs herself writing an educational work for the junior portion of the
royal family, and enjoys an extensive view from her windows over the old
Moorish buildings, the Guadalquiver, and the charming Andaluçian landscape
through which it winds.

------

    Original.

    The Godfrey Family; or, Questions Of The Day

  Chapter XXVIII.

With a woman's tact, Adelaide set to work to provide some powerful
attraction for her father; and luckily the proposed formation of a
scientific society brought many men of his own way of thinking to town just
then: and among them Mr. Spence, and a lord or two of "promotion of
knowledge" celebrity. Having managed thoroughly to interest her father in
this society, Adelaide told him that sea-air would benefit Hester's health,
that she intended to go with her for a few weeks to try it, that meantime
Mr. Spence would keep him company in the house, which Lucy Fairfield would
take charge of. To this Mr. Godfrey, though somewhat taken by surprise,
assented: he had already, at Adelaide's request, invited Mr. Spence to
spend a few weeks with him; but that gentleman was not exactly well pleased
to find on his arrival that the ladies were already preparing for
departure. He had intended to win a bride during his visit, thinking that
even if Hester proved obdurate, he might have a chance with the fair young
widow. But the carriage was already at the door. "I shall send the carriage
back, father, in a day or two;" said Adelaide. "I do not care to have my
horses at a livery stable; Hester and I are going to rusticate, ride
donkeys, climb hills, and throw pebbles into the sea: we take only Norah
with us, and you will have to see that the carriage horses are duly
exercised every day." She waved her hand in adieu, giving no time for
reply. The gentlemen could only bow their assent. Mr. Godfrey was too well
acquainted with Adelaide's imperious temperament to think of disputing her
commands; he had long learned to respect even her eccentricities. Was she
not a duchess?

{35}

The journey went on well enough the first day, but on the second, Adelaide
surprised her retinue by sending them back with the carriage, telling them
she would proceed onward with a hired vehicle. The coachman and footman
looked as if they would like to remonstrate, but it had been proved to be
somewhat dangerous to argue with this very positive lady, accustomed to
obey no will except her own. They submitted in silence, therefore, though
much against their inclination. "Now," said Adelaide, when they had
departed, "we can enjoy the luxury of being ourselves, unencumbered by
state and trappings. Hester, do you think you can teach Norah to call me
plain 'ma'am,' for a little while, till we return home? I am again Adelaide
Godfrey, that name will tell nothing and will enable us to act as we like,
observed by any."

It was not found difficult to initiate Norah into the idea that the great
duchess wanted to lay aside her dignity for a while, for the truth was
Norah's difficulty had ever been to get herself to say "your grace," on
requisite occasions. These preliminaries settled, the ladies proceeded on
their journey, took ready furnished lodgings in H----, and prepared to lead
the quiet life of the middle classes of society when out on a "bathing for
health" excursion.

The location of the Catholic chapel was soon examined, the priest's house
communicating with it. In neat straw bonnets trimmed with white, and plain
muslin dresses, Adelaide and Hester assisted at the daily mass. In the
priest they recognized at once the Abbé Martigni, and in the noble-featured
youth who knelt by his side Adelaide traced the likeness, now first
becoming dear to her, of her late husband. A day or two elapsed ere she
could summon courage to call at the house. At length the moment arrived for
the looked-for visit; the sisters had, however, scarcely gained entrance to
the outer court, when their attention was attracted by loud sobs from a
little boy and girl, who stood weeping as if their hearts would break. The
abbé was speaking to the woman with whom they came; he then turned to the
children, and patting them on the heads, said tenderly: "I will come
directly, my poor children." He turned hastily away without receiving his
visitors. Adelaide took the boy's hand kindly. "What is the matter?" she
asked. The boy could not speak for weeping, but the woman answered: "His
mother, my lady, poor Biddy, shure, she has fallen from her seat, on to the
stone pavement, while she was cleaning the windows of a large house in
Queen street, and they say she must die."

Adelaide whispered, "take me to your mother;" the boy looked at the woman;
"aye," said she, "do you and Sissy go home with the ladies, I will wait to
show his reverence the way." Led by Adelaide and Hester, the girl and boy
threaded back the way to their wretched home, and entered it some time
before the priest arrived. In one of those dreary places of large cities
called a "blind alley"--where the houses nearly meet in the upper stories,
and where the sunshine of heaven is excluded; surrounded by bad smells, and
the very atmosphere of which makes us shrink and shudder as we enter the
damp and dirty houses, the inhabitants of which are for the most part very
dirty also--here in a cellar, darker even than its neighbors, lay a poor
widow with four children weeping around her. The woman was barely sensible;
her brain and spine were injured; the doctor had said she could not live
till night; two women, neighbors, were with her trying "to get sense out of
her," as they said. It was the first time the sisters had ever witnessed
such a scene. The very walls were covered with dirt; the floor was partly
brick, and where these were broken away, the foot slipped into holes of the
bare earth; the windows were so covered with dust and cobwebs it was
difficult to find out what they were made of.
{36}
On a low pallet, on a dirty straw-bed, with no blankets, no sheets, naught
save one dirty coverlet, lay a figure with long, dark, lank hair, almost
covering her face and person. Adelaide approached, but the woman heeded her
not; her large dark eyes were set: she moaned from time to time, but spoke
not. "Where do you feel pain?" kindly inquired the lady. "Oh I bless you,
my lady, she cannot spake," said one of the women. "The Lord be praised,
here comes his reverence," said the other. "May the sweet Jesus lend her
her senses a few minutes, to let her spake to the priest!" The abbé
entered; he looked very grave; he sat down on the bed (there was no other
seat in the room) to examine the pulse and breathing of the patient. He
spoke to her. She answered not. "Try to rouse her," he said to the women.
They called to her: "Biddy, dear, shure here's his reverence. Biddy, won't
you spake to the priest?" She continued unconscious. "Have you a
smelling-bottle?" he said to Adelaide. "We must bring her to consciousness,
I wish I had some _eau-de Cologne_." "I will fetch you some," laid
Adelaide.

The sisters went out and purchased the _eau-de-Cologne_, also bread
and refreshments for the children; and then in that damp, unwholesome den,
the duchess watched long hours by the side of the unfortunate woman. She
was unattended too, for Hester had grown faint, and Adelaide had insisted
on her going home, and the abbé had left for a while. At length
consciousness returned, and the poor mother opened her eyes again. The
priest was immediately sent for, as he had desired to be, and the first
words she whispered betrayed a consciousness of his presence, for they
were: "Bring me my God! O my sweet Jesus, come!" The room was cleared for a
few moments. Biddy had been a faithful member of the church--she was a
monthly communicant, and the last sacraments brought unspeakable
consolation to her. She had remained silent and in prayer for some time. A
change came over her, and she motioned the father to come near to her. "I
am dying, father, and but for one thought it were sweet to die. My
children--oh! my children! I have struggled--father, you know I have
struggled to keep them in the true faith, to make them love Jesus and Mary;
and _now_, must they go to the scoffers? must they hear their faith
laughed at? O my God! O my Jesus! have pity on my children! Mary, my
mother, send a mother to my children. Let me come to thee in love and not
in fear. O mother of God, pity my children!" Agony caused the drops to
stand on the poor woman's brow; tears streamed down her cheeks; her hands
were clasped convulsively together; it was as though the soul were anxious
to depart, but delayed in order to plead with heaven in favor of the dear
little ones it left behind. There was a solemn pause within that dreary
chamber. The dim candle seemed to take a bright unearthly light. The
spirits of all were hushed in awe. Surely angels were hovering near,
whispering to the mother that her prayer was heard, for a smile broke over
the features, the hands unclenched themselves, peace overshadowed the room;
and then, as if moved by a power she could not withstand, Adelaide came
forward and knelt down in solemnity by the dying woman's side. Taking
within her own that now almost lifeless hand, she said: "I promise you, my
sister, before God and this holy priest, that I will take care of your
children while I live, and that they shall be carefully brought up in the
holy Catholic Faith." The woman's eyes were no longer sensible to sight,
but her spirit beard the promise. "I thank thee, O my God!" she uttered.
Shortly after a ray of indescribable rapture lighted up her features,
"Jesus, Mary, I come!" she said; and the soul had flown to its home in the
bright, bright realms of everlasting bliss.

· · · · ·

{37}

"This must be a pauper's funeral," said Adelaide, as she rose from her
knees. "Father, I am a stranger here; will you appoint some one to see to
it?" She placed her purse in his hand as she spoke. The father looked at
her. "Surely I have seen you before," he said; "your face is familiar to
me, but I cannot remember where we met." Adelaide blushed. "I will see you
after the funeral," she said; "meanwhile, may I ask you to point out some
woman to go home with me, and take charge of these children? I will pay her
well for her trouble." The abbé sent for a woman; a coach was called, and
Adelaide took the poor children to her lodgings. Here they were fed,
washed, clothed in neat mourning, and made ready to do the last sad honors
to their mother's remains.

A large concourse of Irish neighbors attended the funeral, though of course
all eyes were attracted to the stranger ladies, who walked up the aisle
with a child at each side of them. The priest was evidently moved as he
turned to address the assembly; and ever and anon his eye would glance to
Adelaide, as if trying in vain to make out who she was. His discourse was
on the history of poor Bridget, who lay before them. It ran something after
this fashion: "My friends, as we pass through life, and the actions and
thoughts of _real_ human beings come under our notice, one reflection
seems to strike us more forcibly than all the rest; it is this: that the
_real_ heroism of the earth is often overlooked, not only by the world
at large, but also by the actors themselves. The greatest acts of virtue
are performed by those who are unconscious of their greatness--the
greatest works done in this miserable world are done by those who never
dream that they are heroines at all. A lady is thought wondrously
condescending if, from charity, she sit for a few hours in an atmosphere
which the poor one she is tending endures always. She is deemed charitable
if, from her abundance, she bestows alms on the naked and starting. Now,
all this is _well_, very well; I would encourage such efforts to the
utmost; they bring a blessing both to the giver and receiver: but for
heroism, it is oftenest with the sufferer. I will relate to you a history
with which I have only been made acquainted within these few hours. I had
it from the lips of a friend who arrived from Ireland two days ago, in
search of her who now lies before us. Bridget Norton was the daughter of an
Irish farmer, who was somewhat better off than the majority; the farm-house
was well kept; the dairy was a picture of neatness. Everything around the
place was so fixed that they added to the completeness of the landscape.
Bridget was a fine handsome girl, sought after by many, and unfortunately
among her suitors was one base enough to vow revenge for the preference she
gave to the man she married. Bad times came; the rejected suitor became
agent for the landlord, and he perpetually harassed Norton for cash on
every possible pretense; while he made base proposals to the wife, which
were rejected with the scorn they deserved, and the rage of the deceiver
increased. The landlord was unluckily a proselytizer. He conferred great
gifts to all who would go to the English church, but was relentless against
all who held out. Young Norton took sick; when he was at the worst, the
agent found a flaw in his lease, and served an ejectment on the family at
the very time that the husband was unable to leave his bed. Then his cattle
died, some said by poison, and his crops failed. The man sank under these
reverses, and died. The landlord made many offers to Bridget of assistance
if she would send her children to his school and to church, and the agent
contrived many species of persecution to get her into his power. Bridget
fled to Liverpool, and by sheer hard work contrived to maintain her family
decently for some time; but her persecutor traced her, followed her,
blackened her character, so that she lost her employment.
{38}
Again she fled, but sickness overtook her ere she had made herself known;
she lost one of her children by sickness also, and, lastly, was compelled
to sell her little furniture to buy bread; last week she moved to the
cellar where she died. You know in what state she was found there. Yet
throughout these trials her confidence in God never has faltered; she has
for the last five years suffered hardship, penury, want, and persecution.
Amid all she has kept faithful to God, forgiven her enemy, and taught her
children the catechism. They have often wanted food, but never missed their
prayers; they have often been clothed in rags, but never neglected a mass
of obligation. This, for one brought up as Bridget had been to love
neatness and take pride in appearing respectable, argues no small victory
over human respect. But the love of God was deeply rooted in her heart; she
knew that exercise elicits virtue; she felt herself at school to an
all-wise Father, who appointed for her the lessons best suited to bring out
that unfailing trust which was conspicuous in her character, and which, in
spite of her many trials, bore her cheerily throughout them all. Yes,
cheerfulness was (as is attested by all who knew her) Bridget's most
amiable characteristic, and it proceeded from her implicit trust in God.
She had a martyr's courage and a martyr's love, and I think it would be
risking little to suppose that even now she may be wearing in heaven the
martyr's crown. Yet she passed through the world unnoticed, and certainly
was not counted among its heroines."


  CHAPTER XXIX.

Immediately after the funeral Adelaide called on the abbé, according to her
promise. She was accompanied by Hester.

"Well," said the good father as soon as the preliminary compliments had
passed, "as you have taken possession of four of my spiritual children, to
whom I am in some sort a guardian, you must allow me to ask your name and
state. You are a stranger in this city, it appears.'

"I am. My name is Adelaide: I am a widow."

"And the name of your husband?"

"My husband was the late Duke of Durimond."

The father started: he looked again. "That accounts for my fancy," he said.
"I was sure I had seen you before. I recognize you perfectly now:' but what
can bring your grace hither, and in this guise?"

"Father," said Adelaide, "I came to apologize to you for my conduct on that
dreary occasion that you know of; to beg your pardon and your prayers."

The good priest raised the lady, for Adelaide had knelt to him as she
uttered the last words. "You have my prayers, my child," he said; "you have
long had them: it was his last request that I should daily pray for you.
And as for pardon, such an act of humility would redeem a worse offence. Be
at peace, I beg of you."

"And did the duke really interest himself on my account?"

"He did, and most sincerely; it was a constant topic with him. He ever
maintained that, with your nobility of character, you must eventually
follow in your brother's footsteps. I presume I may conclude you have now
done so."

"Not so, father. Hester (whom you probably also recognize) and myself are
but inquirers as yet, and the difficulty is that our inquiry must not be
suspected just now. We came to request assistance from your charity; but we
beg you not to name us otherwise than as ladies of your acquaintance. The
Misses Godfrey will pass unheeded by, but if you address me as your grace
again, you will bring upon us the attention we are trying to avoid."

"I will try to remember Miss Godfrey; it will be a little difficult, I
fear, but I need not tell you my services are at your disposal."

{39}

"This is indeed returning good for evil," said Adelaide.

"Do not speak of it; good has already come of that to which you allude, as
is usually the case if we wait long enough. Let the past be past. But
surely I have seen you both at mass; you have, then, lost your prejudice
against the church."

"Indeed, yes," said Adelaide. "Our great regret is that we have not faith.
The system which you propose is beautiful in all its bearings. It is our
torment to feel that all that is beautiful in poetry or in art, nay, even
in ethics, belongs to Catholicity, yet we do not belong to it. A hall of
sculpture representing the Catholic ideal, as the figures of the duke's
pantheon represent the pagan myth, would form the most sublime elucidation
of the high triumphs of soul over self that could be imagined. There is no
act of heroism, mental, moral, or physical, that would not find a
representative in some authenticated historic personage. From martyrdom
endured to maintain the truth of alleged facts, to voluntary poverty chosen
as the best preservative of the disposition to receive and maintain truth,
there is a regular chain of virtue personified. There is a reality about
Catholicity (in books at least) which we find nowhere else."

"Where is your difficulty, seeing that you admit all this?"

"I can hardly explain it, yet it seems to shape itself thus: Why, if men
are so blessed with a divine religion, is the world so bad? History gives
us saints, sublime ones, who make our very souls thrill with the recital of
their unselfish spirt, exemplified in act; but, on the other hand, the same
history tells us of multitudes of bad men for one good one. The men who
attempted to poison St. Benedict, were monks, men who had renounced all for
Christ; and the multitudes were Catholic up to the fifteenth century, yet
what fearful struggles for power, and indulgence of luxury in high places,
and of crime among all, high and low! Most of the saints were reformers,
combating with their fellow-Catholics for virtue; and now, are all
Catholics unselfish, unworldly?"

"It seems," said Hester, "that a very definite amount of good has been
achieved by Christianity, in giving an impetus to the spirit of the masses
to claim intellectual rights by the recognition of man's spiritual equality
before God; and to strip off illegitimate uses of power from the sense of
justice thus evolved. It has also placed our sex on a footing permitted by
no other religion--this is much, very much; but here it seems to stop, and
these are but indirect results. Religion professes to inculcate higher
motives than the improvement of earthly position, desirable as this may be.
Men are now selfish in their avowed principle, and this, I think, must
ultimately destroy all that has been achieved. Self-gratification as a
motive, and the only motive recognized, must lead back to want of
discipline, and from that the step to barbarism is easy. Only under the
Christian dispensation has labor been honored; in all other civilizations,
slaves, captives of the sword and spear, have performed by compulsion the
work of tilling the soil and so forth; and yet men now seek to avoid labor,
the real labor of producing, as if they still thought it fit for slaves
only; any other kind of occupation is preferred, as more noble. If this is
the result of eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching, I own it
puzzles me. Where are the direct results of unselfishness and of corporal
sacrifice for the attainment of spiritual good, that books teach us to
expect?"

"These are very painful facts," said the abbé, "which distress the heart of
many a Catholic priest; but with reference to their influence on faith, I
think a little reflection will explain most of the phenomena without
prejudice to such souls as are earnestly seeking truth. We must remember
that there was a time when whole nations suddenly assumed the name of
Christians under the influence of the ruling powers.
{40}
The majority of these people were not only ignorant, but many did not care
to learn high spiritual truths; the conversion was necessarily partial,
even that which was genuine. But because all divine truth is positive and
co-relative to natural truth, some degree of enlightenment followed even in
the natural order; and worldly minds, who had no affinity for spiritual
revelations laid hold, notwithstanding this, of the types that presented
spiritual truths, and, finding they bore an earthly signification also (as
all real enlightenment does, the body being the mate for the soul), they
seized on the lower meaning, and hence the civilization of that ilk. This
is not wrong, but it is defective; as far as it is moral, it is the
material expression of a spiritual idea; but it does not touch the first
step of the ladder by which we rise to God--it is the lesser influence of a
principle comprehending affinities of an infinitely higher character."

"But this does not explain the corruption in high places."

"Power and greatness and wealth do not confer spirituality; no, nor does
intellect. When the church grew wealthy and powerful, many a wolf entered
in sheep's clothing for the sake of the perquisites. The miracle is that
the church survived such destructive influences, not that she suffered by
them."

"And the more immediate trouble with the present conduct of Catholics?"

"May be referred to similar causes. They inherit their religion without
giving its real conditions a thought; to this may be added the fact that,
for the last three hundred years, the attention of immense numbers has been
directed to polemics instead of to the requirements of religion. There have
been so many disputes about which is the true faith, that practically faith
has been assumed to mean 'holding a correct intellectual creed.' Now,
without derogating, in the least degree, from the importance of holding the
right faith, even in this light, it is certain that these controversies
have drawn the soul from that more serious business to which a right
intellectual creed is but the first step, though an important, a very
important one. The object of religion is, the union of the soul to the will
of God. This is an individual matter, one which cannot be laid hold of
_en masse_, but must be personally brought home to every individual.
To effect this, there must be;
  1. Desire of good--real, earnest, sincere.
  2. Prayer for good, arising from the firm conviction that in God
     only resides all good--from him only all good can come.
  3. Co-operation in act, including not only correct moral action,
     but a constant endeavor to instruct ourselves, more and more, in
     divine lore, with an earnest zeal of rising continually in spiritual
     life.
Now, if you examine these conditions, you will find that few observe them,
compared with the numbers who bear the name of Catholics--and the power of
Catholicity must he judged of by its effect on those who observe its
precepts, not by the multitudes who conform by halves, or by less than that
proportion, to its teachings. You would not judge of the effect of a
medicine by those who keep it in their houses, but by those who take it."

"Are not those Catholics, then, who do not act up to their religion?"

"In as far as they neglect their religion they are imperfect Catholics. It
would, however, be very dangerous for us to judge how far their
imperfections arise from culpability on their part. All men are wounded by
the fall in some shape or other; some have this faculty impaired, some
that; consequently there will be gradations of virtue apparent everywhere,
the cause of which we cannot fathom, and the delinquencies of which we
cannot judge. As regards judgment, all we have to do with is with
ourselves; our faculties, great or little, with imperfections greater or
less, must, as far as in us lies be devoted to God--be improved for him--be
exercised in accordance with his will as manifested to us. 'This do and ye
shall live.'"

{41}

    Chapter XXX.

    An Interview And A Letter.

It were superfluous to reiterate the instructions given by the good abbé to
the neophytes under his guidance; where the instructor is learned, patient,
and gentle, and the learner docile and humble, the result may be easily
predicted. One day, in the course of conversation, the abbé said to
Adelaide: "If you are looking for examples in Christian life, I could name
one living in this neighborhood, living so simple and beautiful a life,
that those who have the happiness of knowing her, half believe her to be an
angel in disguise."

"I think I know whom you mean," said Adelaide; "already have I paused at
the threshold of her dwelling, wishing to enter, but hardly knowing whether
I dared."

"She will be glad to see you. She has a better memory than I; she
recognized you at church, and has interested herself warmly in your
conversion."

Thus encouraged Adelaide ventured on the visit. The greeting between the
two ladies was that of _sisters_; they wept together, clasping each
other's hand in silence. We pass over the exciting scene. Adelaide was
completely fascinated by all she saw. For the first time in her life she
felt that glow of thrilling interest that binds heart to heart, and makes
us know what real love is, when that love is founded in God. Ellen was one
of those happy temperaments, so rare on earth, that seem formed to dispense
the sunshine of happiness on all who came under their influence. Heaven
seemed to have descended to earth to dwell with her, and in that heaven she
had learned to live--out of herself altogether. Her life was passed in
doing good, but, so unconsciously to herself was that good done, that she
seemed but to be following her own pleasure all the time. The one great
sorrow of her life surmounted, she had resigned herself (no! resignation
would not express the depth of her devotedness); rather had she thrown her
whole being into the profound abyss of the mystery of God, seeking only his
will, mysterious as it was to her. She came at last to live as a child on
the daily promise, forming no plans, asking nothing of the morrow, but ever
seeking to pour out her great love in making others happy. The poor, the
sick, the wretched, were her friends, her children, the objects of her
tenderness, and her presence was to them as a ray of sunshine to lighten
every woe. There are few Ellens on this weary earth, for nature and grace
seemed to combine in her to diffuse their charms. Those who knew her asked
themselves, where was her share of the original taint, "of that trail of
the serpent which is over us all"? Though Adelaide's senior by many years,
she had so youthful, so buoyant an expression, albeit chastened by the
atmosphere of purity and sanctity in which she moved, that you could not
connect the idea of _age_ with her frame at all. Adelaide felt that
she had obtained a friend, a sister, a guide for the future, and a
friendship was quickly cemented between the two that ended but with life.

Meantime the hour approached when the sisters were to be received into the
church. Hester was not a little agitated as she thought of the effect that
would be produced upon her father: it was as much as Adelaide and Ellen
could do with their united efforts to calm her fears. Adelaide's firm mind
bade her take her resolution according to her conviction, and face the
consequences like a soldier.

"Yes, if they were consequences to myself," sighed Hester; "but my future,
will it not suffer from it? Suppose he should sicken as my mother did!"

"Dear Hester," said Ellen, "you must leave off trusting yourself, in this
manner, and apprehending consequences, as if you had the control of events.
Do you not believe God reigns omnipotent?"

"Why, yes, certainly I do."

"Then let your first offering to him be a practical recognition of that
belief; trust him for your father as well as for yourself."

{42}

Hester had had deeds prepared, restoring, as best she might, the property
which had been appropriated to her experiments, to its former destination.
To her father during life was the income of the estate assigned; to her
brother the reversion. For herself she reserved only that portion which she
had a right to consider as her share.

The deeds were handed to Eugene for his inspection the night on which he
arrived at the abbé's abode, on the day previous to that on which the
ceremony was to take place.

"This was not necessary," he said to the abbé, "I had already given up my
right, and was reconciled to the result."

"That is a question for you to settle with your sister, my young friend,"
said the abbé. "The young lady has acted on her own sense of what was
fitting in the matter. She did not consult me, and if she had I should have
declined interference in family matters; but I think you will hurt her
feelings if you make objections. Wait at least till her mind is more
composed; she is just now agitated on her father's account: best let the
first excitement pass away, ere you disturb her mind again."

The ceremony was a private one, for it was a matter yet to be considered
how to break the matter to Mr. Godfrey. After its performance, the brother
and sisters were yet in consultation about the advisability of setting out
at once for London, when a courier was announced from the Marquis de
Villeneuve, with a letter to Hester. The young lady glanced over the
contents, then suddenly rose, and locked herself in her own room. Eugene
invited the man to wait. But it was some hours ere Hester admitted even her
sister to her apartment. Thus ran the letter:

  To Miss Hester Godfrey.
  "Most Honored Lady:

  I have been many times at H*** lately, but dared not ventured to see you,
  although from some words which my friend the abbé let fall, I rejoiced to
  learn that the object of your visit was the realization of anticipations
  I had long indulged in. I have long felt convinced that a mind so earnest
  as yours must finally seek refuge in the ark of the true church. I dared
  not disturb your retreat; I dared not intrude on the visible work of God.
  But let me be the first to offer my congratulations; let me now express
  the high regard, esteem, nay, may I use a softer word, and say love, with
  which I have long regarded you.

  "Lady, I will not speak to you in the language of passion; for a long
  time past I have had to keep my feelings under control, for deep as has
  been my admiration of yourself I dared not make you aware of it while the
  obstacle of faith stood between us. A Catholic man seeks in marriage a
  HELP-MEET for him, a partner in joy, a soother in sorrow, a confidant and
  co-operator in his views, a companion and a friend under every reverse.
  To set out with diverse sustaining powers would mar this idea in the
  outset, to say nothing of the want of that special blessing which God
  confers on those he himself joins together.

  "Dear lady, when I came to Europe some few years ago, it was with the
  special intention of taking back a wife. When my friend De Meglior in
  that most solemn hour before his death confided to me the care of his
  daughter, I thought the companion I sought for was found; but Euphrasie
  soon showed herself so visibly the elected bride of heaven that all my
  anxiety was quickly directed to preserving her from sacrilege. You then
  came before me, with your earnest mind, your indomitable courage, your
  high intellect and intensity of zeal. From that time my heart was no
  longer my own, though I dared not give utterance to its desires. The
  obstacle which stood between us is removed, yet I dare not venture into
  your presence without your sanction; I should feel a repulse too keenly.

  "Lady, my father was an enthusiast like yourself. He went to America in
  the hope of doing his part to sanctify the career of intelligence and of
  liberty opened for the first time in the world's history for the laboring
  classes as a body. He helped to build churches, to found schools in
  conjunction with ecclesiastical authority, and did whatever a secular
  could do to guide a movement which he respected and sympathized with, but
  one which he felt would be exposed to great peril, unless that divine
  principle which is the true source of government both in the family and
  in the state, could be brought to bear upon it.
{43}
  He feared that 'liberty' on a mere rationalistic principle, that is,
  standing on purely human strength, severed from the divine idea which
  gave it being, would, however beautiful in its poetry, soon degenerate
  into license; soon succumb beneath the empire of passion, and be led to
  tolerate laws subversive of true progress. It was the aim of his life to
  inculcate that 'Truth is one;' that the human idea cannot be disjoined
  from the divine idea without fatal results; that real earthly happiness,
  through differing in intensity, is the same in essence as that we look to
  enjoy hereafter in heaven. That all earthly intelligence, an earthly
  beneficence which seeks permanence, must be founded on the repression of
  such inordinate desire as impede and frustrate the development and
  employment of our higher faculties. For all beauty, harmony, and love
  must be brought out in accordance with that law of the spirit, which he
  has given us, as our rule of action, we being children of the spirit.

  "The working out of this purpose is the legacy which my dear father,
  lately deceased, has bequeathed unto his children. To this purpose I have
  consecrated myself; and because I know your high power of intellect,
  because I have witnessed your zeal, your energy, your devotedness to
  good, I ask you to become the help-meet to carry out this purpose.

  "In all ages of the church, since the first miracle was performed at the
  request of Mary, woman's aid has been in requisition for high purposes.
  The conversion of every nation of Europe is associated with the name of a
  woman, and woman gives the tone to society in every Christian land. I
  feel then that without the aid thus specially appointed for man, my
  father's purposes would lose more than half the influence necessary to
  carry them out. But working together, under the sanction of the church,
  surely two earnest minds might hope to effect something. If we cannot
  make an impression on a world of infidelity, it will yet be something if
  we are allowed to instill into the minds of Catholic children, that
  'Credo' means something more than an intellectual assent to a series of
  metaphysical dogmas. If we can assist the self-sacrificing pastors of the
  church in rehabilitating the idea of the divine institution of the family
  and of the state which is fast vanishing beneath the crude notions of
  human progress which sanction so easily the dissolution of sacred
  ties--if we can throw whatever influence we do possess into the right
  scale, we shall then have ample reason to begin a rejoicing which shall
  last for ever. For there is the promise that however gloomy the
  appearance, error shall not ultimately prevail, and happy are they who
  here on earth shall have formed the royal guard of honor around the
  citadel of Truth, who shall have stood as sentinels appointed to watch
  beneath its glorious standard, when the combat is at highest.

  "Dear lady, may I hope you will think this an object worthy of your
  ambition? may I hope you will regard with favor one who has loved you so
  long, though he dared not confess it until to-day?

  "One word from you will bring me to your feet. May I hope that word will
  be spoken?

    Edward De Villeneuve."

"Well," said Adelaide, when at length she gained admission, and had taken
the letter from her sister's unresisting hand, "I think you have kept the
courier waiting long enough, and 'tis not a long answer the poor man wants,
since one word is all he asks."

"What will my father say, Adelaide?"

"The old marquis was my father's most dearly loved friend. He will accept
the son for the father's sake; the question is, will you accept him?"

"I have never thought of marrying at all."

"No, but you admire this gentleman. Your eyes, your voice betray you. I
shall send him the one word he asks for so prettily."

"You will do no such thing;" but Adelaide had glided from the room, and
shortly after Eugene set forth with the courier in quest of his friend,
whom he finally succeeded in persuading to return with him, without
awaiting a response to his missive.

It is not our intention to present to our readers the details of the scenes
that followed within the next few weeks; we leave to their more vivid
imaginations to fancy the arguments by which M. de Villeneuve won the
consent of his ideal lady. A few days more, and he was travelling to London
with Eugene to obtain the formal consent of Mr. Godfrey.

"Is that the secret of Hester's dejection?" thought the father, and that
thought made his consent the readier.

"But how can you, so staunch a member of the church, resolve to marry a
heretic?"

"Hester it no heretic," replied the marquis.

"Love covers all faults, I see," said Mr. Godfrey, smiling. "Well, settle
that matter between yourselves, only you must put no constraint on Hester
on the score of religion. She is a spoiled child, and would ill brook
opposition; it would break her heart if it came from one she loved."

{44}

The arrival of the carriage which brought Hester and the duchess back to
the mansion, put an end to the colloquy, and at the next consultation with
the ladies the marquis suggested that, seeing Mr. Godfrey had already laid
hold of the wrong idea, it was as well to let time undeceive him in a
natural way. "Your English law," said he, "compels marriage to be legalized
by the English establishment. We will receive the sacrament of marriage
privately in the morning and legalize it in your drawing-room afterward,
before an English minister.[Footnote 7] After Hester is once my wife, Mr.
Godfrey will not take it to heart that she should follow her husband's
religion, even if he inquire about the matter." And thus the matter was
managed, and the marquis and his lovely bride were already on the point of
starting on their wedding tour, when a startling missive from Annie threw
all the circle in commotion. Sir Philip Conway had been thrown from his
horse while hunting, and had broken his neck. But his wickedness had
outlived him; he had left orders in his will that his wife should be
debarred access to his house, or to his children, further providing that
neither of those children should inherit one acre of land or one shilling
of his property unless they were brought up apart from their mother.
Annie's letter was dated from a hotel near to her late husband's
dwelling-house.

    [Footnote 7: This was the case before the passing of the Catholic
    Emancipation Bill.]

"I doubt their power to enforce that will," said Eugene, as be handed the
letter to his father, after reading it aloud.

"And so do I," said Adelaide; "at all events, Annie shall have her
children, property or no property."

The marquis, Hester, all the party present expressed in varied tones their
indignation, and Mr. Godfrey, borne along by the current of family opinion,
at length joined in the resolve to see Annie replaced in possession of the
children _coute qui coute_. The wedding trip took the direction of Sir
Philip's dwelling, and as soon as it was ascertained that the funeral was
over, Adelaide, with that determination that marked her character, drove up
to the house, accompanied by the party comprising her father, brother, the
marquis, and Hester. She demanded to see the children. The dowager Lady
Conway appeared with her daughter. The duchess bowed, and requested to see
the children.

The lady hemmed--hesitated--did not know. "The children were under the
guardianship of Mr. Brookbank," she said; she supposed he must be
consulted.

The name seemed to strike the marquis. "What Brookbank?" he asked.

"He was Sir Philip's agent and man of business, and is left his executor."

"Is he any relative to the family at Estcourt?"

"Why, yes, it is the same family; they have moved here."

The entrance of the gentleman in question put an end to the questioning,
but the marquis kept a sharp eye upon him.

With smooth, bland words and deprecating gestures, Alfred Brookbank
proceeded to explain to the duchess that it was his duty, his very painful
duty, to deny her grace's request at the present moment, until measures had
been taken to secure the due and legal administration of Sir Philip's will.
Adelaide's indignant remonstrances were unheeded, and a very painful
feeling was pervading the party, when suddenly M. de Villeneuve rose and
said: "Mr. Brookbank, may I beg the favor of a few words in private?"
Alfred rose, and led the way to another apartment. Half an-hour elapsed;
the party awaited the event in silence. Alfred did not return, but the
marquis did, and with him entered the two children and their nurse,
equipped for a drive.
{45}
With a bow, the marquis addressed the ladies of the house: "Mr. Brookbank
has consented to entrust the guardianship of these two children to me for
the present. I have the honor to wish you good morning." His wife and the
rest of the party rose at his signal, and departed, carrying off the
children with them.

"Now," said he, when they were once more together, "let no one ask me how
this was managed, because I have passed my word that so long as Lady Conway
is not molested in her custody of these children, I will explain nothing. I
do not know how the law will decide respecting the property; Mr. Godfrey
will, perhaps, see to that. But I wish Lady Conway and her children could
be prevailed upon to cross the Atlantic with us; I fear leaving that fellow
any legal power, when I am out of the way to hold him to the bargain he
made with me to-day."

"I will go with you, Annie, if you like to take the trip," said Eugene.

"And Euphrasie and the dear nuns are going," said Annie; "I am willing to
travel in such good company."

. . . . . .


    Chapter XXXI.

    America.

Two years have passed since the events happened which we last presented to
our readers: it is on the other side of the Atlantic that our view now
opens, but the friends we greet are of those we left behind.

The scene is in a beautiful extensive garden, well planted with trees;
behind, on an eminence, rises a large white house with numerous piazzas
which contrast pleasingly with the green sward and shrubs before it. The
slope before the house is covered with groups of children weaving garlands,
for it is a holiday, the feast of St. Aloysius; and all the schools have
freed their pupils great and small. Feeling the privilege of the day, the
children have bounded into the grounds of their patrons, M. and Madame de
Villeneuve. They knew that a strawberry festival was preparing for them,
and on their parts were anxious to be busy. Festoons were hung from pillar
to pillar. The large refectory was opened, and the walls garlanded; merry
voices were singing childish hymns and songs, and good humor was visible
everywhere.

The grounds were very spacious; far away might be seen grown persons in
holiday-trim; lads and lasses preparing the tables, and a band of music
sending up, every now and then, cheery notes to gladden all around.

In yonder silent glade too, half hid by the thickness of the foliage,
Eugene Godfrey is walking with his young bride; they are not yet past the
honeymoon, and are bound for England. To-morrow is the day fixed for their
departure, and the lady-bride; formerly Elise de Villeneuve, the youngest
and fairest daughter of the house of De Villeneuve, is sentimentalizing
very prettily her regrets at leaving, perhaps for ever, the paternal
mansion.

Clotilde de Villeneuve, who has already entered as a postulant at the
convent which is visible on that eminence to the right--rising majestically
above the world and backed in the distance by the interminable forest; from
which it is separated by that lovely series of lakes which lie at the foot
of the hill on which the building stands--Clotilde de Villeneuve has for
this one day consented to break inclosure that she may bid good-by to the
young sister she brought up so carefully since her mother died.

There is another lady there, looking fairer and younger than when we saw
her last, giving directions in a very pleasing tone; and ever and anon
looking back, a little anxiously perhaps, to see what two young girls were
doing with a something in a bundle of white muslin, which seemed very
animated, and which the nurses are trying to kill with kindness.

{46}

The pastor approaches, a fine old man with mild eyes, white hair, and a
very benevolent aspect. All the little ones rise and courtesy, and Hester,
yes, our old friend Hester, comes forward to greet him affectionately.

"Where is your husband, my dear lady?" asked the good priest, after
returning the preliminary greeting.

"Well, I hardly know, he has been on the _qui vive_ all day, here and
there and everywhere. I hardly know where he is now. Do you want him
particularly, father? You seem uneasy."

"Let us go in out of this hot sun," said the pastor, wiping his forehead.

They adjourned to the parlor, which opened on both sides to a piazza shaded
by climbing plants, and thus promised a cool retreat. Hester handed the old
gentleman a refreshing drink, for he seemed weary and excited. On setting
down the glass, be whispered: "Are we alone here? Is anyone listening?"

"Not that I am aware of." said Hester, glancing in all directions. "I see
no one, father, what is the matter?"

"There is mischief brewing in the city yonder; I want to see your husband.
For the last six weeks there has been a strange man there, of singular
eloquence, fomenting discord about Catholics, getting up a no-popery cry,
uttering fearful scandals concerning the convent; to-night the people
threaten to burn it down."

"Can this be true? Who is your informant?"

"My man Walter. It seems he knew the stranger in England."

"I know Edward has been annoyed with reports of some plots, but he thought
as little about it as he could; he never harmed any body, and cannot
imagine any body would harm him."

"This is a religions or rather a fanatical plot. What the purpose is, it is
difficult to discover. The designer means something dark, you may be sure,
the multitude are but his tools. He has used all the plea he could find;
have not your committees refused many applications to receive pupils?"

"Yes, Edward acts on his father's plan, and he says the old marquis always
insisted that a child was more formed by his companions than by his
teachers; that one dissipated worldly companion would contaminate a school.
It seems he loved real children, and hated the little bits of affectation,
aping men and women, which we now so often see; so Edward will positively
not have a child in the schools unless he knows the home influence they are
under. In fact, our schools are not only exclusively Catholic, those we
call normal schools are open only to picked Catholics. Edward wants them to
turn out good and efficient teachers of practical Catholicity, and before
he receives a pupil he not only exacts certain promises from the children,
but from the parents also, as to the influence they will exercise from a
distance. As long as they attend his schools they are under certain
restrictions, at home as well as abroad."

"All this is good for the children, but it has made enemies. Those out of
the pale pretend something must be wrong in so exclusive a system; they are
jealous of advantages from which their children are excluded."

"But a great deal of the influence exerted is purely religious; how can we
bring that influence to bear on such as are not Catholics, or who are
worldly Catholics, who come merely for secular advantages?"

"I am not saying you are not right; I only say you have made enemies."

"I believe my husband would rather give up the schools than compromise his
principles. He has been intimately acquainted with the management of some
Catholic schools in which all parties were admitted: the rule was to all
alike, it was difficult to make a distinction. Children, non-Catholics,
were admitted to religious societies, services, and processions.
{47}
He has a very firm conviction that the result was that they were led to
believe that assisting with due outward decorum, without the internal
feeling of reverence, was all that Catholicity required; while the
Catholics themselves, seeing others without faith were thus admitted,
naturally ceased to regard faith as so essential a matter as the sermons
heard in church proclaim it to be, and became liberal Catholics when they
retained their faith at all. My husband knows he is called bigoted, but I
do not think it has changed his feeling. He thinks the Catholic school a
sacred place; and the soul of a little baptized child a thing to be guarded
with reverential awe."

"Yes, I know De Villeneuve's reverence: he should have lived in the times
when the catechumens were driven out of the church before the sacred
mysteries could be performed."

"Indeed, father, I have seen his whole frame quiver with terror when any
one, Catholic or non-Catholic, behaved irreverently in the presence of the
blessed sacrament. He maintains that the worldliness of the age springs
from the want of this reverence."

"He may be right, but meantime we must provide for the present safety. Your
brother is not gone?"

"No, he starts to-morrow. I will send for him to come and see you."

M. de Villeneuve was not to be found, for the very cause that brought the
priest to his dwelling. He was in earnest conference with the priest's man
Walter on the subject of the projected attack. "Are you sure it was your
brother that you saw?"

"Quite sure, sir."

"You did not let him see you?"

"I did not; I was very careful on that point."

"And you are sure they fixed tonight?"

"Quite sure, but if disappointed tonight they will try some other night."

"Did you hear of any one person marked out for any special object."

"There will be an attempt made to carry off Lady Conway and her children."

"I suspected as much. Well, we must be prepared; I will row Lady Conway
across the lake, and you can drive her up the country to neighbor
Friendly's house, without anyone suspecting the matter. Be silent and
cautious, I will prepare watches secretly. You get home as quickly as you
can from the drive."

"I will, sir."

The _fête_ passed off without any alarm: no one would have dreamed
that an attack was expected. The nuns one by one left the convent, which
was supposed to be the object aimed at by the attack, and let the watchers
guard the dwelling, while they took refuge at M. de Villeneuve's mansion.
They dared not alarm the inmates of the school-house, which they thought
was left out of the plot, lest their plan of safety should be frustrated.
But an armed band watched over its safety in the hovels, and wherever they
could be stationed unseen.

It was a dreary watch, though a lovely night; the round, full moon threw
its splendid light over hill and and valley, lake and forest glades. Not a
sound was heard. The watchers did not trust themselves to speak, lest they
should give the alarm outside. Eleven, twelve, one, two; shall we wait
longer? Yes, there is a sound outside; the out-houses are already on fire,
and the school-house and the convent--all at once. A whole multitude of
rioters are in the grounds; they force the convent doors, and, to their
surprise, are met by armed men.

"Save, save the children," is the cry; "let everything go, even the
prisoners, till they are saved." There is no engine, the city is so far
away, and rioters are all around; but ladders had been prepared during the
day, and everyone was soon in requisition. But the fire seemed then the
least evil, for as each young lady was borne from the flames a mob
surrounded her, and a fight ensued for possession. It was a terrible scene,
the more terrible as it was impossible to get the children and teachers
together to see if all were there.
{48}
There was no resource but to fire on the assailants, and accordingly a
volley was discharged. This sobered the people somewhat; they loosed their
hold and fled. One man, with a few followers, lingered awhile, apparently
very anxious still to examine the parties saved; he was observed and seized
by a strong hand and bound. Alfred Brookbank was the prisoner of his
brother Walter.

And now are the pupils all saved? for the house is burning fast. How
anxiously they were counted! What a relief to find them all there! There
were no lives lost, and but that the building had been fired in many places
at once, that could have been saved by the valiant arms who were there to
defend it. But the evil work had been done effectually, the convent and
school-house were level with the ground. Many of the valuables had been
removed the day before; but the furniture was destroyed. The newspapers
said it was the work of the mob; yes, but that mob was excited by one man's
revengeful soul, which had animated the spirit of that mob to frenzy.
Americans are too generous to make war upon defenceless women, unless
incited thereto by some false tale of wickedness.

To bring the poor frightened children into the house, and to send to the
city for police, occupied nearly all the night, and part of the next day;
and then they took time to examine the prisoner who had been cast bound
into the cellar. He was crest-fallen and terror-smitten at last! He knew
the tale of terror his brother would have to tell; the quarrel about the
estate; the offer to compromise; the attempt to drown him by throwing him
over-board near the falls; and, finally, the belief on Alfred's part that
the crime had been consummated when a body, disfigured and shapeless, had
been picked up below the falls. He did not wait long in jail to have this
and a long catalogue brought out against him--he died by his own hand.

Walter Brookbank wandering, restless, and dissipated, had been seized with
fever in a wretched hovel, where he was found by some poor Catholics, who
brought the priest (then on a mission in that district) to see him. The
priest had him tended and cared for till he was well, then invited him to
his house, and converted him to a Christian life; redeemed him doubly,
first from the death of this life, then from that of the next. Walter had
been grateful, and preferred to live henceforth as servant of the church,
than to re-encounter the perils of the world by claiming his inheritance;
it passed by default to his mother and sisters.

Our tale draws to its conclusion.

The multitude who, deceived by Alfred Brookbank's inflammatory tongue, had
fired the convent, slunk away to their homes, ashamed, at length, of having
expended all their energy in a cowardly attack on defenceless women and
children. Would I could say they repented and endeavored to repair the
mischief; but it was not so, the convent was rebuilt, but it was by
Catholic money, by Catholic hands, and by Catholic hearts; and save the
ring-leader, who, as we have seen, judged himself, the perpetrators of the
dastardly deed remained unsought for by the authorities, undiscovered and
unpunished.

This event checked for a while the work of the good society which M. de
Villeneuve had founded, and of which he was the president and the "animus."
This society was composed of enlightened Catholic fathers and mothers, who
were fervent in their desires of establishing high Catholic education on a
firm and practical basis. It was a committee formed to aid the practice of
those precepts delivered by the zealous pastors of the church; to examine
the books put into the hands of children, and to have them written, if none
suitable were found, on the subjects required; to discuss all points of
discipline recommended to them by the teachers, and provide that the
financial department should not harass those who had charge of the
intellectual department.
{49}
They were outside co-operators in the good work of education; valuable
coadjutors in a matter in which it concerns every good Catholic to interest
himself, for society is made up of individuals, and on the good training of
those individuals depends the public welfare.

Their schools comprised both sexes; I will now speak of the girls only, as
it was the matter in which our friend Hester most interested herself, for
the reason that she thought that the formation of good women, wives and
mothers, is lost sight of in the fashionable circles of our large cities.
She had discovered that the fathers and husbands (men of large wealth and
of thriving business) were, through the extravagance and non-domesticity of
their families (more particularly of their wives and daughters), leading a
life of torture under the appearance of prosperity; and that young men,
with incomes of from $1,500 to $2,000 a year, shrank from marrying, because
of the extravagance and selfishness they daily witnessed among the ladies.
"Now," said Hester, with something of her old positiveness, "if this is so,
the responsibility of the shame and degradation of so many unfortunate
women lies at the door of the rich and honored ladies who turn aside from
them in disgust, and the education of true women must be the basis of the
renovation of society: for to woman's influence is confided the happiness
of the family, as to family influence is committed the guardianship of the
state. Where the family is out of joint, the state will be out of joint
too. O my dear Edward! I now comprehend the prophecy you think so much of:
'That the worship of the blessed mother of God will be in after times one
such as is not dreamed of in the present age of disruption. The blessed
Virgin is the example of all womanhood; the family of Nazareth the true
type of the Christian family; labor, purity, intelligence, submission, such
must be the watchwords of all womanly training; such will form happy
households and forward true progress.'"

The objects of the educational institutions at Villeneuve were in strict
accordance with these views; they comprised several classes, and in each
class were several departments.

The highest was that of a boarding-school, regulated by the nuns
themselves; it was within the enclosure, though apart from the convent, and
having its own allotted grounds. It was a normal school, the object of
which was to prepare efficient school teachers for the parochial schools
throughout the country. No pupil could enter this establishment under
fifteen years of age, or for a shorter period than three years; and if at
the end of that time she had won her diploma, she was expected for the two
years following to place herself at the disposal of the church, to teach
any parochial school that might require such assistance. Besides the
thorough course of instruction given during these three years, to enable
the pupils to fulfil their duties efficiently as school-teachers, and to
keep pace with the secular knowledge required by the age, the pupils were
required to do all their own work: they took it by turns to provide for the
household; the cooking, washing, every part of the household work, and
making their own clothes, were all done by themselves; so that at the end
of the five years, when their term of teaching had expired, they were ready
to become either efficient members of society, fit to perform the duty of
wife, mother, or teacher, or to enter religion, should such prove to be
their vocation.

The second class of schools were named the probation schools; these, in
their various departments, received children of all ages under fifteen, but
Catholics only. The parents of the children attending these schools were
required to give a guarantee that, during the children's attendance at
these schools, they should not be allowed to read either novels or any
other books not approved by the committee, nor attend any place of
amusement disapproved by the church.
{50}
In fact, during their attendance at school, it was a part of the labor of
the directors to provide suitable relaxation within the school grounds,
that they might the more easily discourage all dissipation outside. There
were also regulations concerning deportment and dress, which formed very
efficient aids in inculcating Christian manners, but the details of which
it is not necessary to give here.

These schools are supposed to be the Christian schools _par
pre-eminence_. The young ladies of the first-named schools were much
sought as wives, when their excellence became known; most of them could
have married rich men, had they chosen to marry out of the church, but
this, I need hardly say, they refused to do. Many entered teaching
sisterhoods, and proved very efficient members of the society which they
joined.

The children of the second series were, on the other hand, simple, joyous,
affectionate, pious, and obedient. The age for childhood was renewed, and
the results were very pleasing.

Besides these, the committee prevailed on M. de Villeneuve to establish
(after the incendiary fire) general schools open to the community at large.
In these schools the routine was Catholic; none but Catholic books were
admitted, and as much Catholic training was introduced as the public mind
would bear. These institutions were thronged, for the teachers were
efficient, and the discipline much approved of. These were the best
remunerating schools of the series. But M. de Villeneuve could never be
brought to be satisfied with the results, and only in deference to the
wishes of his friends did he tolerate them at all. His chief care was to
prevent children from these schools being admitted to serve in the church
or to take part in religious processions, until they had been well proved,
and then he wished them removed to the Christian schools before he
presented them to the pastor. Many thought the man a monomaniac, he had so
great a horror of sacrilege, or indeed of witnessing any irreverence in the
church at all. Strangely enough, his wife Hester saw in this only an
additional virtue, which she endeavored to assist her husband in enforcing,
as indeed she did in all his regulations.

A week or two after the fire, when the excitement had somewhat subsided,
Eugene took his young wife to England. He found that Adelaide had been so
busy during the past two years in providing orphan asylums, refuges, and
hospitals, and so forth, that Mr. Godfrey had been very frequently alone,
and this rendered him very glad to welcome his pretty, gentle
daughter-in-law, and he persuaded Eugene to establish himself at Estcourt
Hall, that he himself might have a home for his old age. In due time he
learnt to amuse himself with his, little grand-children, utterly forgetful
that they were members of a hated church. I never heard that be became a
Catholic himself.

Eugene soon found interest and employment in aiding the Catholic movement
which first agitated for emancipation, and then employed earnest minds in
co-operating with the declared will of the church, to give efficiency to
the measures which soon after provided a Catholic hierarchy for England.

As soon as Mr. Godfrey's comfort was provided for in Eugene's household,
Adelaide united her efforts to those of Ellen, and together they
established a society, which in after years developed itself as one of the
many orders of Mercy which bless the great city of London. Without a
uniform, though living under a rule, these ladies and their associates
perform countless deeds of charity and kindness, the origin of which is
often unknown to the recipients. Few among that saintly community are more
anxious to obey, or to humble themselves, than the once proud duchess.
Generous to all, to herself alone she became sparing and non-indulgent, and
if the voice of praise, often publicly lauding her, met her ear in private,
she would say, with a sigh, "Ah! how easy is all this, to give when we have
more than we want, and to love those who spend their life in toil for the
comfort and luxury of the wealthy.
{51}
But to love God as Bridget Norton loved him; to trust him when nothing but
clouds and darkness were around; to face starvation, disgrace, and all, in
trust that God would bring up those dear little ones for himself--this is
heroism. Oh! talk not of the goodness of the rich; they are great people in
this world of false show, but Bridget Norton called down the angels to
witness her death and bear her noble martyr soul to heaven."

. . . .

Annie's children rewarded her care; the boy became a worthy priest, and the
girl, after witnessing the consecration of her brother, requested
permission to enter the convent in which she was brought up. Mother and
daughter received the veil on the same day. All efforts to recover the
property for the children proved fruitless. But they had long since learned
that happiness does not consist in wealth.

------

    Original


    Kettle Song.


    Sing, kettle, sing!
    Busily boil away!
  My goodman to the field has gone,
    The children are out at play.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    Sing me a merry song!
  You and I have company kept
    This many a year along.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    I'll join with a low refrain--
  Needle and thread drawn through my work,
    Like steadily falling rain.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    The far-off fancies come,
  But never a sad or a weary thought
    Along with your cheery hum.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    The hearth is swept and clean,
  And the tidy broom in the corner stands
    Like a little household queen.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    Evening is drawing nigh,
  The shadows are coming down the hill
    And coming up in the sky.

{52}

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    Shadows are on the wall--
  The last stitch done! a merry shout!
    And here are the rovers all!

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    By the merry candle-light,
  And you and I'll keep company
    Again to-morrow night!

           Fanny Fielding.

-------------

    Original.

    Ritualism.

    by John R. G. Hassard.


In one of the up-town streets of New-York there is a Protestant Episcopal
Church dedicated to St. Alban. It is externally a plain, unattractive
little building of brick and stone, in the early English style, with a
modest little porch, and a sharp high roof, surmounted by a belfry and a
cross. Within there is little to be seen in the way of ornament about the
body of the church. The seats are plain benches rather than pews, and are
free to all comers. But any one who should enter St. Alban's, not knowing
to what denomination it belonged, and should look toward the sanctuary,
would be very apt to fancy for a moment that he had got into a Catholic
Church. Let us imagine ourselves among the crowd of curious spectators who
fill the edifice of a Sunday morning. In place of the reading-desk
conspicuous in most Protestant meeting-houses, there is a very
proper-looking altar set back against the chancel wall, and ornamented with
a colored and embroidered antependium. Behind it, instead of a painting,
there is an illuminated screen-work, with inscriptions in old English
ecclesiastical text, not much easier to be read than if they were in Latin.
Where the tabernacle ought to be, stands a large gilt cross; on each side
of it are vases and ornaments. On a shelf which runs along the wall back of
the altar there are candlesticks, three tall ones at each side, and two
others just over the altar itself. We see altar-cards, such as are used at
mass; a burse for holding the corporal; and a chalice covered with a veil,
the color of which varies with the season of the ecclesiastical year. Today
not being a festival, the hue is green. At one end of the altar is a big
book on a movable stand. At the epistle side is a credence table with a
silver paten, on which is the wafer-bread for communion, and with vessels
of wine and water that might be called cruets if they were only a little
smaller. The pulpit stands just outside the railings on the left. There is
a little raised desk on it for the preachers's book or manuscript, and this
desk is covered with a green veil. Opposite the pulpit on the right hand
side is a lectern with a bible on it. The lectern likewise has green
hangings. On one side of the sanctuary is a row of stalls, precisely like
those we see in some of our cathedrals and seminary-chapels. On the other
are benches for the choristers. The organ is in a recess just behind them,
and the organist sits in the chancel, in full view of the people, with his
back to the instrument. He wears a white surplice, and presents altogether
a very respectable and ecclesiastical appearance.

{53}

The appointments of St. Alban's being so very much like those of a real
church, we shall not be surprised to find the service almost equally like a
real mass. At the appointed hour an acolyte in cassock and surplice lights
the two candles on the altar. Then we hear a chorus of male voices--
principally boys--intoning a chant, and presently a procession issues from
the vestry door and files into the chancel. First comes a lad wearing a
black cassock and short surplice, and carrying a cross on a tall staff.
Then follow the chanters, men and boys, similarly attired; then one or two
clergymen, or perhaps theological students, also in cassock and surplice;
next two little boys in red cassocks; and finally two officiating
ministers, wearing long albs. The "priest" has a green stole, crossed on
his breast, and confined at the sides by a cincture; the "deacon's" stole
is worn over the left shoulder. The clerks take their places in the stalls;
the singers proceed to their benches. The cross-bearer kneels at one side
of the altar; the "priest" kneels at the foot of the steps, with the deacon
behind him and the acolytes at his side. The service about to be performed
is not the "Order of Morning Prayer" prescribed by the prayer-book, but
simply the communion service. The officiating minister (for the sake of
convenience let us call him what he calls himself--the priest; though
without, of course, admitting his sacerdotal character) chants a short
prayer, very much in the style of the chanting we hear at mass, and the
choir respond "Amen." Then the litany is chanted antiphonally, by one of
the clergy and the choristers alternately; it is in the main a translation
of that part of our litany of the saints in which we address Almighty God
directly, without asking the intercession of his blessed. This over, the
ministers and acolytes retire in the same order in which they entered, and
the organist plays a voluntary, during which the other six altar-candles
are lighted. When the clergy return the priest is seen in a green maniple
and chasuble. The latter differs from the vestment worn by the Catholic
priest at mass only in being less stiff in texture, pointed behind, and
covering the arm nearly to the elbow; and instead of being embroidered with
a cross on the back it is marked with a figure nearly resembling the letter
Y. With hands clasped before his breast the priest now ascends the steps,
and standing before the altar, with his back to the people, goes on with
the second part of the service. We need not describe it, for it is
principally translated from the missal. The words are all repeated in a
tone which is half reading and half chanting, and whenever the minister
says "Let us Pray," or "The Lord be with you," he turns round to the people
like a priest chanting "Oremus" or "Dominus Vobiscum." The epistle and
gospel are read by the deacon. The sermon follows; a rather vague and wordy
discourse, chiefly remarkable for the frequent and affectionate use of the
term "Catholic." The preacher begins by saying "In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," and the more devoutly disposed of
the congregation thereupon cross themselves. After the sermon comes the
most solemn part of the service, taken nearly verbatim from the canon of
the mass; and at the commencement a great many of the congregation who
apparently are not communicants, leave the church with reverential faces,
as if they supposed the old law forbidding catechumens to witness the more
sacred mysteries were still in force. But the curious spectators, who
compose a large proportion of the audience, are under no such scruple about
remaining.

{54}

We need not describe the order of the service in detail, because the words
are almost exactly those to which we are ourselves accustomed, and the
ceremonies come as close to those of the mass as it is possible to make
them come. Whenever the ministers or attendants pass before the altar they
make a low bow to the cross. As the time of consecration approaches, the
deacon goes to the corner of the altar, and the acolytes bring him there
the bread and water and wine, which he hands to the priest, the wine and
water being mixed in the chalice. The prayer of consecration (a translation
of our own) is chanted like the rest of the service, until the priest
reaches the words, "This is my body," etc., "This is my blood," etc.;
those, suddenly dropping his voice, he repeats in a low voice, bending
over, and immediately afterward lifting up the elements on high. The
attendants, during this ceremony, hold up the corners of his vestment.
After the consecration all make genuflections, instead of bows, when they
have occasion to pass before the altar.

After receiving communion himself, the priest administers it to the deacon
and clergy and the altar boys. The people then approach the railing and the
priest gives them the consecrated wafer, using the formula prescribed in
the Catholic and the Protestant Episcopal liturgies alike--"The body of our
Lord Jesus Christ," etc.; but with each morsel of bread before he gives it
he makes the sign of the cross, which is a striking innovation in the
Protestant service. The deacon follows with the chalice. Before the
communion, however, a general confession is recited, and then the priest,
turning toward the people with great solemnity, repeats the form of
absolution, making the sign of the cross as he does so with outstretched
arm. After communion the celebrant scrapes the crumbs from the paten into
the chalice, and takes the ablutions at the corner of the altar exactly as
the priest does at mass. And when the congregation is dismissed at the
close, it is with a blessing and the sign of the cross, just as we are
dismissed after the _Ite, Missa est_ at the end of the mass.

On specially solemn occasions incense is used at St. Alban's, and various
other ceremonies are performed which have been borrowed from the Catholic
ritual. For example, candles are placed about the corpse when the burial
service is read.

We have described a service at St. Alban's, because that is the church in
which the ritualistic ideas, as they are called, are carried out to the
fullest development they have thus far attained in the United States. But
the rector and congregation of St. Alban's are by no means the only persons
of the Protestant Episcopal denomination who entertain those ideas. They
are only a little more advanced in their views than the majority of the
High Church Episcopal party. There are many places in New York where Sunday
services are conducted more or less in conformity with the practices of the
ritualists; and antiphonal chanting and other popish abominations have been
introduced, even into sober old Trinity Church itself. The number of those
who believe that divine service ought to be conducted with a more elaborate
ceremonial than any Protestant sect has thus far admitted is rapidly
increasing, and among them are many of the most distinguished and
influential of the Episcopal clergy.

But if so many strange things are done in our own country, they are nothing
to the innovations which are rapidly gaining ground in the Church of
England. The ritualistic movement in Great Britain is not so much the
struggle of an enthusiastic party for change or reform as it is the
spontaneous working of a logical doctrinal development which is gradually
spreading throughout the community. There is a struggle attending it; but
it is the struggle of the let-alone party for its repression, not of the
apostles of ritualism for its extension. And in spite, perhaps partly in
consequence, of the bitterness of the opposition, the number of churches in
which the good old Catholic ceremonies are revived in their ancient
splendor is, daily augmenting, and the zeal of the congregations is
increasing.
{55}
Ritualism in England is not what Punch is so fond of representing it--a
mere system of ecclesiastical millinery, born of the sick brains of foolish
and fanciful young curates; but it is a genuine expression of the sentiment
of a respectable minority of the Protestant laity. The numerous
prayer-books and similar works, prepared for the use of laymen under
ritualistic inspiration, are sold by _millions_ of copies. One
entitled "The Churchman's Guide to Faith and Piety," contains formulas for
morning and evening prayer, with an examination of conscience; devotions
for saints' days; instructions for systematic sacramental confession, and
for devoutly receiving the holy Eucharist and assisting at the sacred
mysteries; and _prayers for the faithful departed_. The real presence
and the sacrificial character of the holy Eucharist are expressed in the
clearest possible manner. There are several hand-books of devotion toward
the blessed sacrament, and manuals of religious exercises in honor of
certain particular manifestations of the divine goodness, such, for
instance, as the passion of our Saviour. A collection of "Hymns, Ancient
and Modern," of which it was stated some time ago that over one and a half
millions of copies had been sold, contains simply the principal hymns of
the Breviary, and in a work entitled "An Appendix to the Hymnal Noted," the
advanced Puseyite will find complete directions for using those hymns in
public worship, according to the rubrics of the Breviary. An English
publisher has just announced a new manual containing "the offices of prime
and compline and the vigils for the dead; the forms of blessing and
sprinkling holy water; the _Missa in nocte Nativitatis Domini_; the
Lenten litanies; the blessing of the ashes and the palm branches; the
washing of the altars and the _Maundy_; the benediction of the fonts
on Holy Saturday, and the like: translated from the Latin, with an
introduction and explanatory notes, and illustrated with extracts from the
consuetudinary of the church of Sarnm and the plain-song of the Mechlin
office-books."

"Matins" and "vespers" are chanted in many of the English churches by
choristers robed in surplices and ranged on each side of the chancel. The
Gregorian tones are used to a great extent. The officiating clergyman wears
a cope on festival days, and it has been the custom until lately to incense
the altar during the chanting of the _Magnificat_. The most complete
return, however, to the practice of the ancient church is seen in the
celebration of the Eucharist. All the Catholic vestments--the amice, alb,
cincture, maniple, stole, and chasuble--have been restored. The regulations
of the rubrics respecting different colors for different days and seasons
are followed. Sometimes the celebrant is attended by a deacon and a
subdeacon, acolytes, and censer bearers; and the use of candles on the
altar is very common. Even in churches where candles, incense, and colored
vestments are unknown, the Introit, taken from the Roman missal or the
missal of Salisbury, is frequently chanted at the beginning of the service,
and it is a very common practice to add to the regular liturgy contained in
the Book of Common Prayer various prayers taken from the ordinary and the
canon of the mass. For example, the minister often prefixes to the service
the psalm _Judica me, Deus_ with the antiphon, the _Confiteor_,
etc., which we hear every day at mass. So, too, when the celebrant is
placing the bread and wine on the altar, he borrows our offertory and the
prayers which follow it, his own liturgy not having furnished him with
anything appropriate to the occasion. The Anglican office sets down no
prayers for the priest's own communion; he, therefore, supplies the
omission by reciting in a low voice the _unde et memores_ of the
missal.

{56}

The use of crucifixes and images, and especially the image of the blessed
virgin, holding her divine Son in her arms, is by no means uncommon among
the more advanced ritualists; and some clergymen are in the habit of
blessing objects of devotion, such as medals and crosses, and even of
blessing holy water. A correspondent of a London newspaper writes a letter
of indignant complaint about the Christmas celebrations this season, at
some of the "advanced" churches, in one of which he declares that
"numberless tapers shed their halo of glory upon a veritable
_Bambino_," or figure of the infant Saviour lying in the manger. An
Anglican Missal has been published at Oxford, containing the order of the
Communion service, without any other part of the Liturgy. This service is
commonly spoken of as the "mass," and we even hear of "high mass," and "low
mass," to say nothing of matins and vespers. A few weeks ago we read an
account in an English paper of a nuptial mass in one of the ritualistic
churches. The faithful address their ministers as Father John, Father
Peter, or whatever the Christian name may be, and talk of their
"confessors" and "spiritual directors" with all the composure of genuine
Catholics.

The following description of a service at St. Alban's in London in holy
week, is taken from an English newspaper:

  The altar on Maundy Thursday was vested in white and the holy Eucharist
  was solemnly celebrated at 7 A.M. when many of the members of a
  confraternity attached to the church communicated. After the morning
  service the altar was entirely stripped of all its vestings and ornaments
  except the candlesticks, and so remained until Easter eve. On Good
  Friday, there was a meditation at 8 A.M., which was well attended. The
  church was full at 10.30, when matins and the ante-communion office were
  said. The sermon was followed by the chanting of the Reproaches, and the
  hymn _Pange Lingua_. At 2 P.M., after the singing of the litany, the
  Rev. A. H. Mackonochie preached the three hours' agony, the order of
  which was as follows: (1.) One of the words of our Lord on the cross, was
  chanted by the choir; (2.) A short sermon on the word was next
  pronounced; (3.) All knelt in silent meditation, the organ playing
  softly; (4.) A hymn was sung. This order was observed for each of the
  words on the cross, the whole service lasting three hours and a half. At
  3 o'clock, the hour of our Lord's death, the bell was tolled for five
  minutes, while all knelt in silence. Even-song, or vespers, took place at
  7 P.M. The sermon was followed by the chanting of the _Stabat Mater_
  and _Miserere_. A meditation on the taking down from the cross
  closed the evening. All through the day the bell was tolled solemnly, and
  most of the congregation appeared in mourning. On Easter eve there was
  service at 9 P.M. The church was elaborately decorated for the coming
  festival with white and scarlet hangings, hot-house flowers, and candles.
  The service opened with a procession, the chanters singing the old Easter
  hymn _O filii et filiae_, and three of the attendants carrying
  banners. Then vespers were chanted, and after the reading of the second
  lesson the sacrament of baptism was administered to twenty-eight persons.
  On Easter Sunday the Eucharist was celebrated at 7, 8, and 9 A.M.; at
  10.30, matins were sung; and at 11.15 there was a grand Easter service
  which we suppose the high and dry "Anglo-Catholics" would call high mass.
  The ministers and attendants, with lights and banners, entered in
  procession, while the choristers chanted the hymn _Ad Caenam Agni_.
  As soon as they reached the altar, the Introit was sung, and the "mass"
  or communion service, was then celebrated in the usual manner, another
  breviary hymn, the _victimae Paschali_, being chanted at the
  offertory.

In an account of the holy week services at St. Philip's, Clerkenwell, we
read that on Palm Sunday the altar was vested in black, the cross veiled
with crape, and the retable strewn with palm branches.
{57}
The choir, bearing palms, entered the church, singing the hymn "Ride on,
etc.," preceded by the processional cross which was also veiled with crape.
At a church in the diocese of Manchester recently, the services for Good
Friday began at midnight, with a litany and sermon. At 6 A. M. there was a
litany again, with a second sermon. At 9 A. M. followed matins and a
sermon; at noon a special service and sermon; at 3 P. M. litany and sermon;
at 6, evensong, and sermon, at 9, litany, sermon and benediction. The
Church Times, a ritualist periodical, remarked that it was "cheering to
find the Catholic view of the observance of the great fast so admirably
developed in a diocese so terribly over-ridden by Puritanism."

Some of our readers may remember the circumstances attending the funeral of
the Rev. John Mason Neale at East Grinstead, England, in August 1866. Dr.
Neale was well known as the author of some admirable translations of
Breviary hymns, as one of the most earnest apostles of ritualism, and as
the founder of a convent of women. The burial ceremonies, in the chapel of
Sackville College, included what might be called a high mass of requiem,
with priest, deacon, and sub-deacon, habited in magnificent vestments of
black silk trimmed with silver; an assistant priest; and a master of
ceremonies, or _ceremoniarius_. The service commenced with the introit
"Grant them eternal rest, O Lord." After the epistle the _Dies Irae_
was chanted in Grergorian melody, as the gradual. When choir and
congregation assembled after communion in the college quadrangle, there to
form themselves into a procession, one of the clergy repeated the prayer,
_Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili_, which is always chanted in
the Catholic church at the benediction of the blessed Sacrament. In the
procession, besides clerks, chanters, acolytes, and cross-bearer, appeared
the "sisters of the third order;" novices; "sisters of the second order" in
white veils edged with blue; "professed sisters;" the mother superior,
assistant mother, and mistress of novices of Dr. Neale's convent; superiors
of other orders; "brothers associate;" etc. The corpse "was vested in
cassock, surplice, and black stole; a crucifix was in his crossed hands,
the same one which he was in the habit of having before him when hearing
confessions." In an appendix to a virulent little treatise against
ritualism by the Rev. Robert Vaughan, D.D., [Footnote 8] there are
descriptions of services in several of the advanced churches; and the
author says: "This is the course of things in a large number of our city
and suburban churches over the kingdom; and not a few churches in our
smaller towns, and even in our villages, do their best, as before
intimated, toward imitating the example set them by their more fashionable
and wealthy neighbors. The editor of The Church Times filled some thirty
columns of that journal with such reports as we have cited, relating to the
celebrations of last Easter, and stated that the accounts he had published
were 'only a small selection from the overwhelming mass' which had reached
him," Proof enough that the movement, as we said before, is very widely
extended and essentially popular.

    [Footnote 8: Ritualism in the English Church in its Relation to
    Scripture, Piety, and Law. By Robert Vaughan, D.D. 12mo. London: 1866.]

Everybody remembers the commotion raised a year or two ago by an
enthusiastic gentleman named Lyne who called himself "Brother Ignatius,"
and made a very foolish and unfortunate attempt to establish a Protestant
order of Benedictines in England. But other efforts to introduce religious
communities into the Church of England have been more prosperous, and there
are now at least 400 or 500 members of various sisterhoods, who take vows,
some for life, some for three years. [Footnote 9]

    [Footnote 9: Sisterhood have obtained a precarious footing in the
    United States. There is one in New York, whose members wear a costume
    suggested somewhat of the cloister and somewhat of the mantua-maker's
    shop. They have neat little things, between caps and veils, on their
    heads; make-believe rosaries hanging from their girdles; and black
    bombazine gown's distended to fashionable dimensions by means of
    hoop-skirts.]

{58}

In all cases there is a novitiate of one or two years, and it is said that
women who take the vows almost always adhere to them. Brotherhoods are not
at all flourishing, but there is a loud call for them among the ritualists,
and we see no reason to doubt that they will soon follow in the general
progress of the Catholic revival. Of the number of congregations in which
ritualistic practices are followed, we have no exact account; but a
disinterested authority in which we have confidence estimates the number of
the clergy who entertain the advanced views at about 2000. Among them are a
few of the bishops, the most prominent being Dr. Wilberforce, bishop of
Oxford, and Dr. Hamilton, bishop of Salisbury. Indeed, the rapid progress
of the new ideas seems to have thrown the thorough-going Protestants into a
fever of alarm. Courses of lectures are got up to counteract the growing
spirit, and monster petitions and memorials are presented to the bishops by
the clergy and people of their dioceses. A remonstrance with five hundred
signatures has been laid before the Bishop of Salisbury; a memorial with
two thousand and three hundred names has been presented to the Bishop of
Gloucester; and four hundred and twenty-three of the clergy of London have
united in a protest. Colored vestments are worn in twelve of the London
churches, incense is used in six, and colored stoles have been introduced
in three, which have not yet adopted the full "Eucharistic vestments."

Not very long ago a grand exhibition of ecclesiastical ornaments and
vestments from churches of the establishment in  various parts of the
kingdom was held at Norwich. Eucharistic (that is, colored) vestments were
contributed by a hundred churches, and it was estimated that there were two
hundred and fifty or three hundred other churches in which they were
habitually used. The number is probably now larger. Many of these vestments
were of extraordinary richness. There were silks and velvets covered with
delicate and elaborate embroideries, and bedecked with a literal profusion
of diamonds, pearls, and various precious stones. One chasuble, not
jeweled, was valued at £220, Or $1,100. There were crosiers, mitres,
stoles, and superb crimson copes--all in use at the present day--not to
speak of numerous relics of antiquity, even relics of the saints and the
twelve apostles, and a fragment of the true cross.

The confessional in the Anglican Church is not an innovation by any means;
but under the protecting wings of ritualism it is assuming much greater
prominence than it has ever enjoyed before. In St. Alban's, New-York, you
will not find a confessional box; but you may make a confession there, if
you feel so disposed, and the reverend pastor is ready to absolve penitents
with the usual formularies. At St. Alban's in London, however, they do
things in a much more complete style, with a box and a grating, and all the
other Catholic accessories--with the trifling exceptions of sacerdotal
character and jurisdiction on the part of the confessor. An Anglican
minister of Protestant proclivities, named Ormiston, recently made an
experimental visit of investigation to the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie's
confessional at St. Alban's, and at a meeting of the National Protestants
Institute on the 28th of January last, was cruel enough to tell all that
happened there. He went on one of the days set apart for receiving the
confessions of men, took his turn with a number of others who were waiting,
and in course of time found himself in the confessional box, peering
through a hole at the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie, who was vested in a surplice
and purple stole. Mr. Ormiston stated that he wished to make a "special"
confession, and was thereupon requested to kneel. He could not bring
himself to do this, but he made believe do it--probably he squatted--and
then proceeded to his unbosoming. The Rev. Mr. Mackonochie must have been
rather unpleasantly amazed by what followed.
{59}
Pulling out a written paper Mr. Ormiston read, in a loud tone so as to be
heard by the people outside, this humble confession of sins: "I have but
too imperfectly discharged my solemn ordination vow of being ready with all
faithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange
doctrines contrary to God's word,' and _especially the damnable doctrine
now maintained by those priests in the Church of England, commonly called
'Puseyites,' together with their popish practices_, whereby they are
seeking to dethrone the blessed gospel of God's free grace, and to set up
in its stead the 'burning lies' of anti-christ." He asked for absolution,
but Mr. Mackonochie could not be persuaded of his penitence (though the
sinner vowed that he never was more sorry in his life), and refused to give
it. So Mr. Ormiston handed his card to the confessor, and came away, "bowed
down and crushed," as he said, "with a sense of the evil which this awful
system is working."

The question of the legality of the ritualistic innovations, or, to speak
more accurately, of these restorations of ancient practice, has been before
the law courts and the houses of convocation, but thus far without decided
result. The Church Union in England, have published the opinions of nine
eminent lawyers to whom the matter was referred, including Sir R.
Phillimore, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Sir W. Bovill, and Mr. Coleridge, all of
whom are in favor of the legality of the "Eucharistic vestments," six in
favor of two lights on the altar during the communion service, four in
favor of wafer bread, and all more or less against the incensing of
"persons or things." A committee of the lower house of convocation made a
report on these subjects, which was presented to the upper house last June;
and in view of the position taken by the authors of this report, and of the
legal opinions above referred to, as well as the opposition of Dr. Tait,
bishop of London, to the practices therein condemned, the rector of St.
Alban's, Holborn, has felt himself compelled to discontinue, under protest,
the objectionable manner of using incense, and the elevation of the bread
and wine at the consecration. In an address to his congregation on the
feast of the Epiphany, be declares his persuasion that the house of
convocation is wrong, but he thinks it better to yield. "I must tell you,"
he adds, "for your own satisfaction, that the less obtrusive elevation
indicated in the words of the prayer-book, 'here the priest is to take the
paten into his hand,' and 'here he is to take the cup into his hand,' is
quite sufficient for the ritual purpose, that, namely, of making the
oblation of the holy sacrifice to God. The use of incense will now be
discontinued at the beginning of the service, at the gospel, and at the
offertory. Before the consecration prayer the censer will be brought in. At
the consecration, incense will be put into it by the thurifer, but it will
not be used, as at present, 'for censing persons and things.' This is a
mode of using incense allowed by the ecclesiastical opinion, and not
disallowed by the legal one."

Some time ago a number of prominent clergymen and laymen of the American
Episcopal Church, addressed a letter to Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, asking
his opinion "whether an increase of ritualism would be advisable," or
whether it was best to be satisfied with "the ordinary average of present
parochial practice"? The reply of Bishop Hopkins is contained in a little
volume published last year.[Footnote 10] It is an elaborate defence of the
lawfulness and reasonableness of the ritualistic practices, though it
deprecates any authoritative infringement on the liberty which the
Episcopal body has heretofore exercised in such matters.
{60}
"I incline to regard it as most probable," the bishop says, "that this
ritualism will grow into favor by degrees until it becomes the prevailing
system. The old, the fixed, and the fearful, will resist it. But the young,
the ardent, and the impressible will follow it more and more. The spirit of
the age will favor it because it is an age of excitement and sensation. The
lovers of 'glory and of beauty' will favor it, because it appeals with far
more effect to the natural tastes and feelings of humanity. The rising
generation of the clergy will favor it, because it adds so much to the
solemn character of their office and the interest of their service in the
house of God." And as for the effect of the movement upon the low
churchmen, he believes that it will only become a more marked distinction
between parties which have long existed, and which might well be allowed to
appear in a more decided form without danger to the peace and prosperity of
the denomination.

    [Footnote 10: The Law of Ritualism. By the Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins,
    D.D., LL. D., Bishop of Vermont. New York: Hurd & Houghton.]

As might be supposed, Bishop Hopkins says a great many sensible things
about ritualism in general, though their application to the particular case
before him is not always of the clearest. The ceremonial part of divine
worship is not, he declares, a matter of indifference. God gave the most
explicit instructions for the performance of public worship under the
Levitical law. He described the tabernacle that was to be erected in the
wilderness and the temple of Solomon which succeeded it, giving minute
directions for the fashioning of all their parts; for the incense, the
golden censers, the candlesticks, and the rich priestly vestments that were
to be used when the descendants of Aaron approached his presence. And under
the new dispensation this beautiful and elaborate system, so often
pronounced by Almighty God "an ordinance for ever," was not swept wholly
out of existence, though certain parts of it passed away into a higher and
more extensive form of divine arrangement. The animal sacrifices ceased,
because they were only types of the great sacrifice which the cross of
Christ fulfilled. The restriction of the priesthood to the family of Aaron
was abolished, because the new covenant was not restricted to a single
nation, like the old, but was made with all the peoples of the earth. The
rest of the Mosaic law, Dr. Hopkins argues, remained in force. His argument
is not a good one, for it would lead him to absurdities. If the old ritual
was not abolished, why do modern Christians not observe it? What authority
have they for omitting all the more onerous parts of the ceremonial, and
retaining only the rich garments and lights and fragrant incense, which
please the senses without imposing any particular burden? If ritualism had
no better argument in its favor than the book of Leviticus, there would be
little to say in its defence. Dr. Vaughan, who reasons that ritualism is
unlawful in the Christian church, because there is no book of rites in the
New Testament corresponding to the book of Leviticus in the old, is as
logical as Dr. Hopkins. The Bishop of Vermont, however, is apparently
sensible that there must be some authoritative enactment on the subject;
that God, either by his church or by some other inspired mouthpiece, must
have abolished or modified the Jewish ritual, and substituted a new one, or
else we ought still to observe the full Mosaic ceremonial, on the principle
that laws are binding until they are repealed. To us, Catholics, the case
is clear enough. We have the authority of the church of God for all we do;
she abolished the old Jewish rites, and she ordained the Christian
ceremonial. And Dr. Hopkins is sensible enough of the importance of this
authorization, for he tries to apply it to his own denomination, and
thereby, of course, admits that the church has uniformly followed the
rightful practice, and that the Protestant sects have been all wrong.
{61}
He shows, from the writings of the early fathers and from other ancient
documents, that the term "altar" was constantly used in primitive times in
connection with the celebration of divine services; that the altars were
both of wood and or stone, and that hence there is no reason for the
restriction which many Protestants would lay upon the Lord's Table; that it
should be "an honest table, with legs to it;" and that candles and incense
were habitually used at the celebration of the divine mysteries. A much
more important matter, Bishop Hopkins says, is the use of oil or chrism in
confirmation; and this, he admits, "is plainly stated by Tertullian to have
been the established practice in the year 200." And he quotes a remarkable
passage from Bingham's" Antiquities of the Christian Church" (a Protestant
work), to the effect that "it was this unction at the completion of baptism
to which they [the early Christians] ascribed the power of making every
Christian, in some sense, partaker of a royal priesthood, which is not only
said by Origen, but by Pope Leo, St. Jerome, and many others." His remarks
on the subject of sacerdotal vestments are not less striking. He mentions
the proofs brought forward by Baronius, that St. James the Just, first
bishop of Jerusalem, and St. John the Evangelist "wore the golden ornament
which was prescribed for the mitre of the high priest in the Mosaic
ritual." He refers to Constantine's gift of "a rich vestment, embroidered
with gold," to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, to be worn by him in the
celebration of the sacred offices. He cites ancient decrees concerning the
_orarium_, or stole, and the different manner in which it was to be
worn by priests and by deacons; mentions the ring and staff prescribed for
a bishop; and especially refers to the fact that black, as the symbol of
sin and mourning, was everywhere excluded. Bishop Hopkins brings forward
these things by way of showing the multitude of points of conformity
between the early Christian and the ancient Jewish ritual; but they do not
seem to have awakened in his mind the question, "Which, then, is the true
Christian church?" nor does he perceive that, however strongly they may
support the Catholic practice, they do little good to the Episcopalians.
The first Church of England men understood the propriety of ritualistic
magnificence a great deal better than their descendants do. When they cast
off faith and obedience they did not at the same time cast off the rich
priestly robes, nor put out the altar lights, nor stop the swinging of
censers and chanting of psalms. The ritual of the primitive Protestants was
hardly less gorgeous than that of mother church herself. When Archbishop
Parker was consecrated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he wore "a long
scarlet gown and a hood, with four torches carried before him: Bishop
Barlow had a silk cope, being to administer the sacrament; four
arch-deacons, who attended him, wearing silk copes also." And a puritanical
Protestant, Thomas Sampson, complained to Peter Martyr in 1550 that the
ministry of Christ was banished from the English court, because the image
of the crucifix was allowed there, with lights burning before it. Dr.
Hopkins is at pains to show that the custom and unrepealed law of the
Church of England justify the use of a processional cross, two lights on
the altar, incense, surplice, alb, girdle, stole, dalmatic, tunicle,
chasuble, cope, amice, cape or tippet, maniple, hood, and cassock; that the
use of oil in confirmation and extreme unction, and of _prayers for the
dead_, which are found in the first Prayer-book of Edward VI., though
they were subsequently omitted from the liturgy, has never been prohibited
and is still lawful. We suspect that to many Protestants this statement
will be a little startling.

It will not be more startling, however, than a view of what the liturgy of
the Church of England was in the first years of her heresy, and what,
according to the ritualistic party, it ought rightly to be now.
{62}
It seems to be generally admitted that what is known as the first
Prayer-book of Edward VI., published in 1549, is the standard to which the
ceremonial of the Establishment ought to be referred; that whatever was
sanctioned or permitted under the rubrics of that work may be lawfully used
or done now; and that the subsequent revisions of the Prayer-book, inasmuch
as they have authoritatively condemned none of the ancient forms and
expressions of doctrine embodied in that earlier ritual, have no
restrictive force upon the liberty of the modern revivers of old Catholic
practices. Let us see, then, what the first Prayer-book of Edward. VI. was,
in its order of the communion service, the present battle-ground of
ritualism.

This portion of the liturgy was entitled, "The Supper of the Lord and the
Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." It is divided into "the
Ordinary," and "the Canon." The first part begins with the Lord's Prayer;
and then follow the Collect for purity, the Introit (now omitted), the
_Kyrie Eleison_, the _Gloria in Excelsis, Dominus Vobiscum_,
Collects for the day and for the king, the Epistle, Gospel, and Nicene
Creed, the sermon, Exhortation, Offertory, and Oblation; _Dominus
Vobiscum, Sursum Corda_, the Preface, and the _Sanctus_. The canon
now consists of one long prayer of consecration, but in the Prayer-book of
1549 it comprised many other parts copied pretty closely from the missal;
and the confession and absolution, which are now transferred to an early
part of the ordinary, came in their proper place immediately before the
communion. After communion were the _Agnus Dei_ and Post-Communion,
the Collects, and other prayers and ceremonies, very much as we have them
in the mass. The rubric of 1549 says: "When the clerks have done singing
the _Sanctus_, then shall the priest or deacon turn himself to the
people and say, 'Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's church;'" to
which the present office adds the words, "militant here on earth." An able
paper in a collection of essays by advanced ritualists, published in London
last year, [Footnote 11] argues from this that prayers for the dead
formerly had place and are still allowable in the English liturgy. If this
be not so, the author says, "we shall find ourselves placed in a dilemma
which to a Catholic mind is inexpressibly painful. For.... it follows that
the liturgy of the English Church is the only living liturgy, the only
known extant liturgy which is wanting in remembrance of its faithful
departed. From which dilemma we may devoutly say, Good Lord, deliver us."

    [Footnote 11: The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day.
    By various writers. First series. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley, M.
    A. Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyre. 1866.]

In the consecration prayers there is an important part found in the book Of
1549, but now left out, of which the same writer says: "We can scarcely too
deeply deplore the loss, or earnestly desire that it may be restored to
us." This is the invocation of the Holy Ghost, and it reads as follows:
"Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech thee, and with thy holy spirit and
word vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these thy gifts and creatures of
bread and wine, that they may be to us the body and blood of thy most
dearly beloved son Jesus Christ." Here we have not only an authorization
but an explicit direction for the use of the sign of the cross, at which
many good Episcopalians shudder nervously as at a diabolical popish
invention. It was left out of the later Prayer-books, but never prohibited.

Before the communion there is a formula of invitation which the minister is
to read to the people, bidding them to the Lord's table. In the present
Prayer-book it contains nothing which calls for special remark; but in that
of 1549 it embraced the following passage: "And if there be any of you
whose conscience is troubled and grieved in anything, lacking comfort or
counsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned priest,
taught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and grief secretly
.... _that of us he may receive comfort and absolution_," etc.

{63}

The writer of the essay above quoted favors not only a return to the old
Edwardian liturgy, but a revival of various other usages to which we need
not more particularly refer than by saying that they all have a genuine
Catholic flavor. He sees no reason, apart from prejudice, why Anglicans
should not call their communion service by "the old English word 'Mass;"
and he deprecates the Protestant custom of consuming at once all the bread
and wine which are blessed for the Lord's Supper, without reserving any for
the visitation of the sick. "Those who minister among the lowest poor in
missionary work," he says, "can bear witness how distressing oftentimes are
celebrations in the crowded and sick rooms of a town population." And he
quotes an instance in which the Eucharist had to be consecrated for a dying
man who occupied one corner of a crowded room tenanted by several other
families. In another corner crouched a woman of the vilest class, and
during the consecration unclean insects were crawling over the "fair white
linen cloth" upon which the elements were laid. Can we wonder that to a
minister who believes in the Real Presence, and in his own power to
consecrate, a celebration such as this must seem like profanation?

If there were nothing in this ritualistic revival but an attempt to borrow
the rich robes of faith and dress up in them the shrunken form of heresy,
it would hardly be worth our attention. It is little to us whether the
human laws of the realm of England permit the ministers of the Established
Church to stand with their backs to the congregation or not; whether they
may legally burn candles in daylight, or swing censers, or chant their
prayers instead of saying them, or wear colored and embroidered vestments
instead of the plain surplice and the black gown. Since they have taken the
liberty to discard faith and obedience, one would think it of little matter
that they should discard ceremonies also. After they have lost the
substance, why should they care for the form? If they could abolish, for
instance, the celibacy of the clergy, they had surely as good a right to
abolish a red or green chasuble. Indeed, to be logical, they ought to
ordain, alter, and abolish just what they please. But it is impossible not
to see that there is a great deal more in this movement than a mere
striving after beautiful and impressive forms. There is first a reawakening
of the Catholic idea of public worship, and a rejection of the common
Protestant theory. It is the Protestant principle, not always expressly
acknowledged, but practically acted upon, that the primary object of a
religious service is the edification of the people; it is the Catholic idea
that the chief purpose of that service is the worship of Almighty God. The
Englishman, Thomas Sampson, whose complaint to Peter Martyr touching lights
and crucifixes, we quoted just now, says in the same letter: "What hope is
there of any good when our friends are disposed to look for religion in
those dumb remnants of idolatry, and not in the _preaching_ of the
lively word of God?" And what is it but a recognition of this principle
which causes most of the Protestant sects to lay such stress upon sermons
as to make them the predominating feature of every service, and often gives
their public prayers such a doctrinal and exhortatory character that they
can hardly be distinguished from sermons except by the substitution of the
phrase "Almighty God" for "Beloved brethren"? Now, the ritualists, whatever
their shortcomings, are at any rate free from this absurdity.
Sermon-hearing or meditation, says one of their late writers, may be
salutary enough in its proper time and place, but it is not worship. Here,
no doubt, is a great advance in the right direction.
But this is not all.
{64}
An essay "On the Eucharistic Sacrifice" in The Church and the World gives
the Catholic doctrine still more explicitly, and acknowledges "that
Christian worship is really the earthly exhibition of Christ's perpetual
intercession as the sole high priest of his church, the sole acceptable
presenter of the one worship of his one body in heaven and in earth, and
that as such it culminates in his own mysterious presence, in and by the
sacrament of his most precious body and blood."

In this recognition of the true functions of the Christian ministry, the
true character of the worship which ought to be offered in God's holy
temple, we may suppose the ritualists to be pretty well agreed. But
doctrinally, they may be divided into two classes. With the one class, a
gorgeous ritual is merely the gratification of an aesthetic or antiquarian
taste; with the other it is the logical development of an advance in
doctrine. The one class would bring back the practice of the Anglican
Church to what it used to be in old days; the other would imitate the rites
and ceremonies which were followed in the Catholic Church ages before
Anglicanism was heard of.

The second class is, we believe, the more numerous, as it certainly is by
far the more important of the two. Its views are set forth with frankness
and decided ability in the volume which we have already quoted; and we are
certain that no one can read these essays without feeling that the
ritualists are legitimate successors of the tractarians of thirty years
ago, and that there is promise of as much good from the agitation which
they are leading as came from the great movement of Dr. Newman and Dr.
Pusey. "Ritualism," says one of the essayists, "is not employed as a
side-wind, by which to bring in certain tenets surreptitiously, but as the
natural complement of those tenets after they have been long and sedulously
inculcated." The burning of candles and incense is of very little moment,
considered as a mere form, but it is of great moment when it is done as the
ritualists do it for the sake of rendering honor to the real presence of
our Lord. It is of no consequence what order of words or what gestures or
what dress the Anglican minister uses in reading the communion office,
because he has not the priestly character, and if he followed literally the
missal itself, he could not celebrate a valid mass. But if he comes as
close to the missal as he can, by way of testifying that he believes in the
doctrines stated and symbolized in the missal; if he imitates the
ceremonies of the daily Christian sacrifice, in order to show his belief in
the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, that fact becomes of serious
importance, and indicates a genuine progress toward truth, at which every
good Catholic ought to rejoice. The practice of auricular confession is not
new in the Anglican Church; but it acquires additional significance when it
is spoken of, as it is in the Church and the Word, by the name of "the
sacrament of penance," for the Church of England recognizes no sacraments
except baptism and the supper of the Lord.

If there is any name which a genuine ritualist really hates it is that of
Protestant. The avowed purpose of the advanced school is to unprotestantize
the Church of England; and the writer just quoted speaks of having found
comfort at a time of spiritual doubt and trial, in the belief that the
English Church was still a part of the Catholic Church, "unless she sinned
sufficiently at the reformation to justify Rome in cutting her off." "Our
place is appointed us," says the same essayist, "among Protestants and in a
communion deeply tainted in its practical system by Protestant heresy; but
our duty is the expulsion of the evil, and not flight from it, any more
than it is a duty for those to leave the Roman Church who become conscious
also of abuses within her system." The Church of England indeed, has but a
weak hold upon the faith or affection of the ritualists of this school.
{65}
We find the XXXIX. Articles spoken of as "those Protestant articles
tacked on to a Catholic liturgy, those forty stripes save one, as some have
called them,

laid on the back of the Anglican priesthood;" and in the same book we are
told that "the universal church, and not the Church of England, is becoming
the standard to which doctrine and practice must be conformed, and the
advantages in many respects of other divisions of it over our own are
becoming recognized." Prepared as many of these men are to accept the
doctrines of the church in every particular except the supremacy of the
Pope and the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, and to follow her
discipline even to clerical celibacy, religious vows, and sacramental
confession, can we doubt that there is hope of their overcoming the
remaining obstacles to their conversion, and that the London Weekly
Register is right when it calls this "the most important religious crisis
that England has witnessed since the so-called Reformation."

And even in the vagaries of the other branch of ritualists, the church
milliners, if we may be allowed the expression, who imagine they are
bringing back their errant sect to the honest life of old, when they copy
the forms and ceremonies, the lights and vestures, the incense and the
chants of the primitive liturgy, without conforming to the doctrines which
these observances are intended to symbolize; who set up as their standard
of conformity not the universal church as she has been through all ages,
but the Anglican establishment as it was in its infancy, before it had
quite forgotten Catholic truth and propriety; even in the hollow ritualism
of this school, we say, there is cause for gratification. Unlike the
builders of material temples, who must work up from base to summit, these
ecclesiastical architects can sometimes construct their foundation after
the superstructure is finished. The mere copying of sacred forms is apt to
lead them to the sacred faith and spirit; and, any way, it is something
gained to know that one can bend before a crucifix without breaking the
commandments, and that frankincense is not an abomination in the sight of
the Lord.

------

    Original.

    The Cross.


  O Tree, how strong thy branches are,
  To bear such wondrous, weighty fruit!
     "_He_ strength imparts."

  Than all, thy fruit is sweeter far.
  What genial soil doth feed thy root?
     "Men's loving hearts."

------

{66}

    Translated from the French.


    Robert; Or, The Influence Of A Good Mother.

    Chapter VII.

    "To be an artist . . . .
     It is his hope, his faith, his ambition."


Genius, however great, will not make a man famous unless he works for fame.
Robert felt this and had strength, perseverance, and courage to labor, for
he was poor and of obscure name, and he knew what he could do, and was
determined to do it. But, like all who struggle through this life, he had
his depressions and his griefs, which he bore bravely; and if
discouragement ever glided into his soul, he instantly resorted to prayer,
and peace and repose would then spread their wings over him. He imposed
upon himself the strict obligation of never wasting a moment of time, and
chained himself to his work, as a galley slave is chained; accepting his
present life, mercenary and prosaic as it is, with perfect resignation and
happiness, feeling that God has made it thus, and that he must be thankful
for it. Existence was a happiness to him, for his heart was good, and duty
was to him perfect joy; and knowing he was necessary to the happiness of
Madame Gaudin, he devoted himself to her as a son. By degrees her strength
returned, and at last she was able to resume the management of the
household, which placed more time at Robert's disposition, and his mind,
rid of these cares, regains its elasticity and primitive vigor. Artistic
reveries come back, the fire of creative inspiration fills his soul, and he
stands before his canvas, on which the faint outlines of the Virgin are
traced. Then another dream seizes him, and hours and days and weeks of
patient labor are necessary to faithfully bring out his ideas, and at first
all is chaos; but slowly the canvas becomes animated, and finally Robert,
like Pygmalion, stands in ecstasy before his work. His body trembles with
enthusiasm, his eyes moisten, his knees give way under him--and why this
emotion? He has faithfully presented the scene where, between God and his
mother, his happy childhood was passed. The picture is astonishingly and
wonderfully true. Here stands out boldly the savage grandeur of Ecorcharde,
with its rugged sides and deep ravines--there the valley through which the
silver waters of the Dordogne run--the village of Bains--the church spire,
the rectory--and all the crowning glory of this mountain, its woods and
sombre verdure. There the little house where Robert had lived for twelve
years, and, at the extremity of the valley, the peak of Sauci, which
majestically crowned the whole. The memory of the young artist is faithful,
and he forgets nothing. Standing on a clearing on the mountain side is a
woman, and a child is playing near her; it is Robert and his mother. The
sun is just sinking below the horizon, and sheds upon the scene the glory
of its waves of gold and purple. Each day Robert gave many hours to this
picture, in which he relived his childhood's days; and, when completed, it
was a perfect masterpiece of grace and taste, and finished with much care.
His touch was fresh and bold--the animals that reposed in the valley were
perfect, the trees of exquisite foliage, and the lights and shades of
delicious harmony.

One morning the young painter was at work, bringing out a stronger effect
of light on his picture, when a loud knock at the door drew him from his
work. He opened it, and standing before him was his late master.

{67}

"Where have you been, my dear Robert?" asked the illustrious artist; "I
have been so uneasy about you. Tell me why you have not been in my studio
for so long a time?"

Robert, touched by this mark of interest, given with so much affability and
simplicity, replied by a recital of the painful position in which he had
been thrown by the sickness of Madame Gaudin, and told in such warm terms
of her generous conduct to him, that the artist did not know which to
admire most--the lively gratitude of the one, or beautiful devotion of the
other.

The artist grasped his hand, and, pressing it warmly, said, "You have done
your duty, and can never reproach yourself with ingratitude." Then, turning
toward the picture, he explained, "Can this be your work? It is wonderful?"
After a few moments, in which he was perfectly absorbed, he said, "Robert,
you are ignorant of your talent; you know more than I do, and must be a
great painter ere long." Then, clasping the stupefied young man in his
arms, be pressed him to his heart in a generous transport of admiration.

Madame Gaudin, who had gone out to buy provisions for the day, stopped at
the open door to ask what it could all mean; and when she understood what
they were speaking about, she felt a great joy, and exclaimed, "I knew it;
I knew he would be a great painter." Her excess of happiness made her steps
a little trembling and uncertain; and, without caring for the presence of
the stranger, she said to Robert, "God will bless thee, my boy; God will
recompense thy Christian virtues, and all the affection thou hast had for a
poor old woman like me." Then, noticing the artist, she said, "I cannot
help it; excuse me, sir, but I must embrace him, I must press him to my
heart, and then I will be content."

Robert yielded to her caresses in a manner which attested better than words
the sincerity of his attachment for the worthy woman.

The approbation and praises given his work by his master made a profound
impression on the mind of Robert.

"My dear boy," said the artist, "I will buy your picture at a good price.
Each one of us should aid others to find the road on which he has gathered
the flowers of fortune. God has blessed my work and made me rich, but I
cannot enjoy the favors of fortune alone; I must aid others, and share with
them the riches that God has loaned me. My purse, my credit, my protection
are yours to-day, and I want you to use them without hesitation, for I
cherish you as a pupil and love you as a friend. When I pay the debt of
life, I hope to endow a great painter. Work, then, my boy; work for glory;
you are now on the road to fame, and it will lead you to fortune." Before
leaving he put in Madame Gaudin's hand a well-filled purse, and said, "Keep
silence; say nothing of this to Robert."

Robert had another joy on this eventful day. Toward night he was going on
an errand for Madame Gaudin, and near the Pont Neuf, by the Place Dauphine,
he heard the voice of a man uttering a kind of lament for Napoleon. The
voice was loud and strong, and in its modulations there was so much sorrow
that he hastened toward the man, to see if his features verified a
suspicion that came across his mind. He knew he had seen this man before.
He was a street singer; and the longer he listened to him, the more
convinced was he in his belief. Soon his eyes were fixed on a large wound
in his forehead, and, no longer doubting, he called out, "O Cyprien! my
good Cyprien!" at the same time holding out his hand.

"Pardon--excuse me--I do not know you."

"But are you not Cyprien Hardy, ex-grenadier of the Imperial Guards?" said
Robert.

"I am no other person; but I can't remember to have seen you before."

{68}

"I remember you," said Robert, with expression. "The little orphan that you
took before the palace at Fontainebleau and conducted to Paris, although
eight years ago, has not forgotten his protector and friend, and now wishes
to shake hands with him; you will not refuse me that pleasure surely?"

"Ah! truly no--a thousand times no--I cannot refuse. Touched there," said
he, putting his hand on his heart, "I know it is Robert who speaks to me;
my little Robert, grown to be a man. You have changed much, young man, and
so have I; but that does not matter; I have suffered cruelly. Oh my loved
emperor! if I could only go to him."

"Come with me," said Robert; "we can talk entirely as we please when alone;
come with me and I will take you to a person who knows you already, and
who, I am certain beforehand, will be glad to see you."

The idle and curious people who were standing by when this touching
recognition took place all walked off and left the place clear to our
friends.

"A thousand thunders, Mister Robert, you are no prouder now in Paris than
when we came in together, but you walk too fast for my old legs."

"Pardon me, Cyprien," said he, stopping quickly, "but I am so anxious to
get you home that I forget you may be fatigued and may need my arm. Take
it, my friend, for it is sure, like my affection for you; take it and we
can walk faster. I am afraid Madame Gaudin will be uneasy if I stay out so
long, and I do not like to give her the least uneasiness."

"Oh!" said the soldier, stretching up, for he was bent more by grief than
years, "you are a worthy young man, and not proud at all. You do not blush
to give your arm to a brigand of the Loire; for that is what we poor
soldiers who regret our emperor are called. But tell me, who is this Madame
Gaudin--what in the deuce do you call her?"

"Gaudin, my good Cyprien."

"Gaudin! Oh! well, I suppose she is some particular person, is she?"

"She is a good and excellent woman, to whom I owe all that I am, and who
has made every sacrifice for me, and whom I love with all my heart."

"Ah! I understand; it is a widow that wants to catch you?"

"Oh! no, my good Cyprien," said Robert, laughing; "it is a person that you
know, the old housekeeper of the lamented Abbé Verneuil. You know the
priest who gave me so sweet a welcome when I arrived in Paris, and who
placed me at the house of Madame de Vernanges?"

"Yes, yes; it comes back to my memory now, and I took a bitter hatred
against her the day I pulled the door bell at the curé's. She looked at me
with a pair of eyes that shone like balls of fire, because I twisted my
mustache when I spoke to her. Well, what has become of the priest?"

"Alas! he is dead, and much too soon for me. Oh! it was one of my dark
days, Cyprien."

"The same as mine for my emperor. I weep for him as you weep for the curé."

"We have good reason, my friend, to remember such men, and to forget them
would be to forget ourselves."

"So you tell me, old Gaudin is living with you?"

"No, no; I should have told you I lived with the dear, good woman; for
since the death of the abbé this generous woman has provided for all my
wants, spent for me her hard savings, and in every way tried to console me
for what I had lost. Yes, my friend, this good Madame Gaudin pushed forward
my taste for drawing and painting; and I thank her from the depths of my
heart, and can say without vanity that these sacrifices have not been lost.
I am rejoiced that I can give her some happiness, and it may be that in the
turning of the wheel of fortune I may gain wealth, and all that I have and
all that I may ever have shall be hers, for she has done everything for
me."

{69}

"Certainly," said Cyprien, "and I embrace the good woman with my heart,"
mounting slowly as he said it, the four steps that led to their house.
Robert had gone in ahead of him and returned with Madame Gaudin, who
received the old soldier kindly, and feasted him as a friend, making his
lonely and bruised heart feel happier than it had for a long time. After
supper Robert asked him to tell them all that had happened him since they
last met.

"There is but one subject for me, my dear Robert," said he, "and that is my
emperor. I have so much joy and so much sorrow when I pronounce this
cherished name; I am so moved when I recall the days when fortune abandoned
him, that it is almost better for me not to revert to the subject; but,
since you wish it, I will commence. When we had seen the last of the Little
Corporal, and I found I could do nothing more for him, I commenced singing
his praises through the streets, even at the risk of being imprisoned; and
now he is dead," said he, with a melancholy air--"died on that lonely rock
where he was held a captive, and the only hope I have left is in heaven."

He looked so tired now that Robert made him go to bed, and before he was up
in the morning ran out and brought him suitable clothes, so that when he
awakened he found new ones instead of the rags he had laid on his bed. "I
want Cyprien to stay with me," said Robert, "for he has been a faithful
soldier, and I am young, and can work for us both;" but it was a difficult
matter to get his consent for this arrangement, and he had to tell him many
times that he would be so useful to him, and that he really needed him
before he would accept the offer. Finally he agreed to become an inmate of
the modest household. He mixed colors for the young painter, rendered
little services to Madame Gaudin, who did all she could to aid Robert to
make him happy. From this time God seemed to open to him the treasures of
the choicest favors, and to spread them in profusion on the head of the
young painter. Warmly recommended to the world by the great artist who had
been his master, esteemed for his excellent conduct, and justly appreciated
for his talent, which was now burning in all its lustre, he could look
forward to a happy future. His mother's prediction was being gradually
accomplished, and this aided him. Whenever he sat down to composing, he
first implored the assistance of God, with the firm belief that it would
not be refused; and it was not, for the blessed Lord crowns with benefits
those who serve him with love. Nothing gives courage like the certainty of
success; and, full of an indefatigable ardor for his art, he worked hard,
disdaining the vain pleasures of the world, and his labor was recompensed.
As he advanced in age, the love of his art consumed him the more, and in
place of the wild enthusiasm he felt at first he was filled with a deep and
serious sentiment, and wanted to study the old masters under the bright sky
of Italy. The only drawback he had ever had to his dreams of studying there
was the thought of leaving Madame Gaudin alone; but now that Cyprien was
with her, he would keep her company during his absence. He was too firmly
convinced of the old man's affection to doubt for a moment that he would
fail to fulfill any instructions he might give him; but before leaving
France he wished to visit his native mountain, and pray on the grave of his
mother. He was now twenty-one years of age, and had not forgotten the
package he was to receive when he attained his majority, and which he felt
sure contained some instructions from his well-beloved mother, which it
would he a pleasure for him to obey. After quieting his fears about Cyprien
and poor Madame Gaudin, he wiped away the tears of the good woman, embraced
her tenderly, and, after receiving Cyprien's promise to take good care of
the charge confided to his friendship, Robert set out for l'Auvergne.

{70}

    Chapter VIII.

    * * * * * *

    "She sleeps--all is silent now,
      No more heart-beats."


The most touching and beautiful affection in the world is that for parents,
for their homes, and their graves. A child who reveres his mother's memory
will keep his name free from blemish; for a good name is a precious
heritage, and the remembrance of virtues in either father or mother will
shield against bad actions like an impenetrable buckler. But, alas! a
veneration for the names of our fathers is no longer in honor among men.
Family homesteads are ruthlessly destroyed by those who forget that every
stone is sacred to some tender memory; and it seems now that cool
indifference has replaced that sweet affection which of old united parents
and children. How common a thing it is in the present day to see children
disrespectful to those who have given them birth; and to what can this
perversion of heart, which chills all natural feelings, be attributed but a
want of religious training, that sanctifying, purifying power which is
based upon God's holy will and divine commandments; and faith, hope, and
charity, the celestial virtues which ought to fill all hearts?

With Robert, advancing years had not weakened in his soul the tender
veneration be avowed for the memory of his mother and her virtues. It was
to the principles she had instilled into his mind that he was indebted for
his present prosperity and happiness, for, though genius is the inestimable
gift of God, it needs guidance and consecration; and all the pious
sentiments which were afterward developed in his soul were from the seeds
sown by that angel mother.

Robert took the road to Clermont, and could have flown the entire distance,
so eager was he to get to his old home. And again and again doubts would
fill his mind as to whether he would find the loved grave; whether pitiless
time would not in nine years, have effaced the letters which traced the
name of his mother? Clermont at last appeared in the distance, then the
village of Bains, and then he was at the door of the rectory, standing with
a beating heart to see a loved face, but the door is opened by a strange
priest, from whom he learns that the venerable curé whom he sought was
dead, but in dying he left instructions to his successor; begging that
Madame Dormeuil's grave should not be neglected, which gave Robert but
another proof of his imperishable love. After obeying the first wish of his
heart and visiting his mother's grave, he obtained the papers which
concerned him, and, opening them with emotion, read as follows:

  "My dear son: I did not wish you to know the contents of these papers
  until you were twenty-one, because it seemed to me that before this time
  you would hardly comprehend them, and I thought it best to wait until you
  had experience and maturity of judgment. You know we are rarely willing
  to take the experience of others for our instruction; believing that what
  shipwrecked them we would have been wise enough to have avoided; that we
  would have acted better, reasoned better, than those who have preceded us
  on the perilous sea called the world. The blind lead the blind, and when
  we fall we are astonished. It is so with all men. Being feeble, they
  think they are strong; being dependent, they think they are free; being
  powerless, they think they are creatures of genius. But thou, my dear
  child, wilt have more strength than those who repose in themselves the
  care of their conduct, and do not invoke God to light them with his
  divine rays. In the moment of trial they fall; it happened so to me, my
  son, when I took my own feeble reason for my guide. But, though I have no
  grave faults to reproach myself for, it is not the less true that I have
  compromised thy future, and forgotten my duties as a wife and my duties
  as a Christian, for I have not been indulgent and forgetful of injuries.
{71}
  To-day, by God's grace, I am calm. I judge myself more severely then he
  will judge me, and I feel guilty and cannot excuse myself to thy eyes, by
  my youth, inexperience, and the isolation in which I found myself, when I
  claimed the right of breaking the links which I ought to have respected
  for my son. But it was my fault, and I will have the courage to tell you
  all--to confess all my sins, and then ask for pardon. Dormeuil is not thy
  name, my child; it is mine, the name of my father, a plebeian name, but
  without blemish. Thy name is De Verceil, and thy father is the Count
  Sosthène de Verceil. At ten years of age, I lost my father; my mother
  died in giving me birth, and I was left to the charge of an aunt who was
  my only relative. This worthy woman was not rich, but an annuity left her
  by her husband and the revenue from some savings placed her above want,
  and her kind heart pitied my orphanage, and she shared everything with
  me. I owe to her five years of happiness, and oh! that it were more; her
  counsels and her tenderness would have spared me the regrets I feel at
  this hour. She had placed me in a school of great renown, wishing, she
  said, to leave me, in lieu of fortune, a good education. Notwithstanding
  my plebeian name I had a crowd of friends of rich and noble heritage, for
  youth never thinks of the differences in rank or the prerogatives of
  birth; and it was thus that I became the friend of an amiable young girl,
  Helena de Verceil. Her brother came to see her often, and, as we were
  inseparable, I was generally present at these visits. I was a simple and
  candid girl, and these traits made a profound impression on the young
  count, and when I left the school some months after Helena I continued to
  see him from time to time, at his sister's house, for she was married
  immediately after leaving school. Young, ardent, impetuous, and unused to
  any resistance, the count fell easily into the snare which was held out
  to his inexperience by an irresistible tenderness. His passion, far from
  calming, grew stronger each day, and he resolved to overcome all
  obstacles and ask to marry me, although his age and his tastes were far
  from this grave determination. With his fortune and hand, he came to beg
  my aunt's consent, and to pray that she would not defer his happiness.
  Overwhelmed with joy at so brilliant and advantageous an offer for her
  niece, she gave her consent, for in all her dreams for the daughter of
  her cherished brother she had never caressed so sweet an illusion as
  this. She accepted it with the more gratitude as she knew she had a
  mortal malady which would soon leave me alone, in the midst of the
  manifold dangers that assail youth. In taking for his wife an obscure and
  poor girl the count was alienated from all his family, and his proud and
  noble parents would not pardon this unworthy _mesalliance_. He
  could, they said, have married a woman of rank and wealth, but this
  unprofitable union to the eyes of people blinded by their titles,
  whatever may have been the qualities of heart, was nothing and worse than
  nothing. He could obtain no favor from them, after putting so dark a spot
  on their escutcheon. These humiliations and insults would have had no
  effect upon me, could I have been consoled by the tender affection of my
  aunt, who saw but too late that wealth does not give happiness; and in
  less than two years after my marriage I was called to mourn her loss. The
  love of the count was soon extinguished, and men are very apt to be
  ungrateful and cruel when they cease to love. His conduct soon proved
  that he had only formed for me an ephemeral attachment, but I loved him
  above everything, and with all the energy of my soul; and this love
  increased when I became a mother, and I dared to believe that this title
  imposed by nature, and so dear to most men, would touch the heart of my
  husband, but the paternal sentiment could not triumph over the aversion
  the count felt for her whom, in a moment of insensate passion, he had
  taken for his wife.
{72}
  For one moment a ray of joy burned in his eyes when he saw that he had an
  inheritor; it was the pride of having a son, nothing more. He soon left
  my side, and I saw no more of him, except in the rare moments he
  consecrated to thee. Carried away in a round of pleasures, stifling in
  the noise of revelry the cries of conscience, regretting his liberty,
  furious at finding himself tied to a woman who was the only obstacle to
  his ambitious desires, be wished to give the half of his fortune to get
  clear of me; he overwhelmed me with reproaches, and flew into furious
  rages about my being the cause of his misfortunes.

  "One day, after a fit of fury, in which he had treated me most cruelly,
  he said, 'I do not wish you to nourish this child any more; I am not
  going to have him raised by you!' These words struck me dumb. I had you
  in my arms, my dear Robert, and I resolved to keep you there, and fly
  with you to where he could not find me. I had laid by the sum of four
  thousand francs, which my aunt had left me, and some savings from my
  father's pension, with the jewels my husband gave me at our marriage.
  These I sold, and that, added to the rest, made ten thousand francs. I
  filled a trunk with the clothing which was absolutely necessary for us,
  leaving behind all luxuries, and all ornaments and jewels, save a
  portrait of thy father, which is in a small medallion set in pearls, and
  may aid you to recognize him. All my preparations being made, I waited
  until the servants had gone to their evening meal, and then, with a
  thousand precautions, left by a stairway which led to the vestibule. It
  was scarcely night when I came out and found a stage to take my baggage
  and myself. I did not know at first where to go, but I wanted to fly far
  from the city where I had suffered so much, and to assure myself of
  keeping my child; this was my only thought, my only desire. In thinking
  over where I should go, I remembered that my parents were originally of
  l'Auvergne, and in my childhood I had heard my father describe this part
  of France, and, above all, the baths of Mount Dore. I hesitated no
  longer, taking the road to Clermont, but filled with the most horrid
  fears. Each time the stage stopped I fancied I saw the angry figure of
  thy father, and that he jerked thee from my arms. What I suffered during
  this journey I can never express to you. A thousand terrors, shudderings,
  and anguishes of all kinds agitated me, until I feared I should lose my
  reason. If anyone looked at me, I thought they knew my secret, and was
  ready to scream with horror. The gallop of a horse made me tremble and
  think I was overtaken, and my emotion would have betrayed me had the
  passengers been interested in watching my movements. Every unknown person
  I suspected as an enemy, and the remembrance of those hours of my life is
  still so vivid that they even now fill me with horror. However, I arrived
  at Clermont without accident, and remained there long enough to inform
  myself of the chances of being able to find a small house to let, in the
  neighborhood of the baths of Mount Dore. Here the first years of thy life
  were passed, and no remarkable event has ever troubled our happy
  solitude. What I have most dreaded was that I might have to return to the
  world, but God spares me this; he will take me soon. Thou canst now judge
  of my anguish at the thought of being separated from thee, and the
  desolation of my soul, that I know will soon leave thee alone in the
  world. O my child! in this hour, when my love redoubles its strength and
  struggles against death to enjoy some moments more of thy sweet society,
  I weep bitterly at the loneliness I have made for thee. I may, perhaps,
  exaggerate my wrongs; I may have acted badly; but when the moment comes
  when I will appear before my sovereign Judge, to render an account for
  all my actions, if I reproach myself with voluntarily throwing off the
  yoke which weighed me down, I will say also, with the same frankness,
  that I rejoice to have raised thee far from the world's corruptions and
  would rather leave thee alone in life than surrounded by wicked men.
{73}
  I have tried to instil good principles into thy mind, and I know that
  thou fearest and lovest God and will cherish my memory, and the heart is
  the talisman that will preserve thee from evil. I have the firm
  conviction that thou wilt never forget the sublime teachings of religion,
  and that it will ever guide thee in the right way. Pardon me, my son, for
  having deprived thee of thy father's caresses and protection; and as I
  have need of thy indulgence, I will be indulgent to others, and efface
  all remembrance of what I have suffered, and will think only of the
  happiness thou hast given me. Then, if it pleases God that thou shouldst
  ever find thy father, tell him that I pardoned him long ago, but that I
  never forgave myself for my conduct to him. Tell him that to the last
  hour of my life I regretted I could not make him happy; and, if remorse
  should fill his heart, console him, my child, be to him an angel of
  mercy, be prodigal of thy cares and tenderness, for repentance is a
  second baptism; it is the regeneration of the soul. When thou wilt read
  the lines I now trace with trembling hand, it will be long after I have
  bid adieu to the transitory things of time. Thou wilt be a man and
  subject to passions. If thou art pure, God be blessed a thousand times;
  if thou art feeble, repent sincerely and call upon God to assist thee.
  Respect, above all things, the purity of affection. Hold out thy hand to
  help all who need encouragement and pity. A word of compassion does more
  good than severity and reproach. What can I say more, but what thou
  knowest better than I do? for I have seen little of the world, and what I
  have seen makes me regard it with horror. Flee from the wicked, from whom
  nothing can be gained and all lost. Whatever career you may choose, fill
  it with honor and credit. Happiness consists neither in feasting nor the
  brilliancy of riches; it is in the life within, in doing good and making
  others happy, and in laying up treasures in heaven. Recall often the
  sweet and peaceful joys of thy childhood, the twelve years of thy life
  which will forever be engraven in thy heart. May these simple pleasures
  inspire thee with wisdom to choose between the burning, wasting pleasures
  of a vain world, and the pure joys of retirement."

Thus finished the letter.

  "O my precious mother!" cried Robert, raising his eyes toward heaven, "if
  thou wert living, I would say to thee, with lively gratitude, 'Thou hast
  done well;' for, if I am exempt from the passions of youth, it is to thy
  tender care that I owe it; it is to thy love and thy virtues that I am
  indebted for that peace of mind which makes my whole life happy. O my
  good mother! thy memory will ever be for me a precious talisman, and thy
  least desires and wishes will be sacred orders for thy son; and I swear
  by thy revered memory to try and find my father, if the Lord will permit
  me."

To the confession of his mother were joined the register of the birth of
Robert and the marriage of Mlle. Stephanie Dormeuil with the Count Sosthène
de Verceil. Though Robert had the right to take his father's name, be did
not wish it. He preferred the more humble one of his mother, and hoped, by
his talent, to raise it above the noble one of his father; to efface its
original plebeianism under a crown of fame. This was the generous idea of a
good son, who wished to avenge the contempt his mother had received from
his noble grandparents. He had now but this desire, and determined the
maternal name should be cited among the illustrious.

After one more visit to the grave of his mother, and another to his loved
mountain, the little house, and all the place, which spoke so eloquently of
her, he set out for the classic land of Italy, the cradle of the arts and
sciences.

{74}

    Chapter IX.

    "A man may lose in a moment
    His glory, empire, and dazzling throne."
        --Victor Hugo.


Robert, after having lingered long on the shores of Lake Geneva, in the
city and its environs, so rich in natural beauties, and having admired the
grandeur of the Alps, and, above all, Mount Blanc, the Jura, and Mount
Salère, arrived at Saint René, a small village at the foot of the Great St.
Bernard. This was the 20th of May, 1824.

The young painter wished to pass the night at the convent with the monks,
so he asked for a guide, but was told that they only started in the morning
to take travellers to that high point, and the innkeeper advised him to
wait until the next day; but he was not willing to take this advice, as
time was so precious to him that a day passed in inaction was an
irreparable loss. So be started out through the village to look for a
guide, but the man had told him the truth--there was not a guide to be
found. Robert expressed so much regret at his disappointment to a worthy
old man that he replied:

"If it were any other day Joseph would conduct monsieur better than anyone
else, for be was the oldest guide, but unfortunately he could not do it,
for it was the 20th of May, and this day he always spends at church in
praying for his benefactor. But if you will go to his house you can see
him; it is down there," at the same time pointing to a pretty little
cottage with a garden in front. "A famous history, monsieur, that of
Joseph, and if he goes up with you, be will tell it you, and I must not
take up more of your time."

"I am much obliged for your information, my good man, and will try and put
it to profit." Then he took the road toward the house, and soon reached it,
but imagine his disappointment to find it closed! As he was turning to
leave, he met a man of about fifty years of age, with a woman, still fresh
and beautiful, leaning on his arm, and they seemed to be absorbed in each
other; and in looking at them Robert forgot for a moment the guide he was
seeking. They stopped at the gate, and were about entering it when he
asked, "Is this the man Joseph of whom I was told--the guide up the
mountain?"

"At your service, sir," replied he. "I am the person; do you wish to be
taken there?"

"I do, but they told me at the village that you could not be induced to go
on the 20th of May, but I thought I would ask for myself, and I assure you
I will be very grateful if you can make this sacrifice in my favor, for I
have the greatest desire to pass the night with the good monks." His
amiable and polite manner had won the favor of the guide, but still he was
undecided. Robert, seeing his hesitation, begged him to give his consent.

"It seems a little late to start," said the guide, reflecting and looking
as if he did not care to go.

"Oh, we can walk fast," said Robert gayly.

"Well, I find I must give up to you," said he, half sadly, half smiling.
"Come in the house, sir, while I change my clothes, and you may flatter
yourself with having gained a victory. It has been many years since I put
my foot on the mountain on the anniversary of this great day. It has been
twenty-four years since then."

Robert was looking at a picture while he spoke, representing Napoleon
mounted on a mule, climbing up the Saint Bernard, escorted by a guide.

"Aye, aye," said Joseph with emphasis, "this is my history--that guide who
walks by the side of the first consul is me, I had the honor of conducting
him."

"Indeed," cried Robert, "oh! do tell me about it. If my poor Cyprien was
only here, how delighted he would be to hear of the emperor he loves so
much."

"Is this Cyprien one of his faithful soldiers, sir?"

{75}

"Yes, and he is more than that; he is one of those soldier heroes who would
give the last drop of their heart's blood for the emperor. I have had the
happiness, with God's aid, to have saved from misery this noble wreck of
imperial glory, for he was indeed miserable when he lost his emperor."

"Well, my good young man, that decides me at once, for, since you have
saved one of the old soldiers of the emperor, I can refuse you nothing, for
I loved him also, and had good reasons for so doing. We will start, and on
the way I will tell you to whom I am indebted for this pretty little house,
so good a wife, and children, that make all my joy. We must go rapidly, or
we will run the risk of a storm, for we have only time to arrive before
night, and in our mountains storms come up very suddenly." Then turning to
his wife, he embraced her and said, "Don't be uneasy, Margaret, I will
return to-morrow." They walked briskly, and soon left the village behind
them, and the guide commenced his history.

"Twenty-four years ago, our valley was not so peaceful as it now is. It was
invaded by French troops, whose tumult was rather a strange contrast to the
usual noise of the mountains--the roar of the tempest and the moving of
the avalanches. The guides all became worn out with fatigue, and one
morning I was ordered out. I did not receive the order with much pleasure,
but I was young, poor, and unfortunately in love with the most beautiful
girl in the valley. The officer whom I was to guide wore a three-cornered
hat, and enveloped in a sort of gray riding coat. He had with him two other
gentlemen, but be rode first, and I was at his side. He was rather
singular, and did not seem to know or care where he was, though we were
above frightful precipices which gave the bravest a vertigo, but he was as
tranquil as if on a lounge in his chamber. It seemed so strange to me that
he had no fear and was so silent. But after awhile he spoke to me,
questioned me about my life, my pleasures, my troubles. His manner was so
winning that I told him everything, and when on the chapter of my loves
told him I would die if I could not marry Margaret.

"Well," said he, smiling, "why not marry her then?"

"For a very simple reason," I replied. "I am poor and she is rich, and I
cannot obtain the prize until I have a house and garden."

He listened eagerly, then questioned me a great deal, and at last fell into
a a reverie, and remained silent and absorbed, until we arrived at the
convent, where the good monks came out to receive us. I did not pay much
attention to this, I was so chagrined. A little time after, the officer
came to me with a letter, which he directed me to take to the headquarters
of the army, on the other side of the mountain. I went and returned in the
evening from Saint Pierre with the answer. Imagine my surprise and
mortification when I found that the person with whom I had spoken so
familiarly was none other than the first consul, and his companions were
General Duroe and Secretary Bourrienne. I was terrified, thinking I should
be thrown into prison for daring to speak so familiarly to my superior.
What an end to my fears! The first consul gave me for my trouble a house,
garden, and money, so that all my dreams were in an instant realized. I
could now marry Margaret, and I was so completely overcome with joy that I
thought it was a miracle. This great man did all for me, and you can now
see why I love the emperor, and why all my happy remembrances are dated
from the 20th of May.

This was only one of the many kind acts of Napoleon during his glorious
life; and if we are electrified in reading of his high military deeds, how
much more touching are those simple charities which show the beauty of his
soul, and the goodness and generosity of his heart, that will ever render
his memory immortal.

{76}

Joseph had related with so much spirit and animation his astonishing
adventure, and Robert had listened with such eagerness, that neither
thought of hastening their steps. The guide had necessarily consumed more
time in relating it than we take, and night was fast coming on. The sun had
long gone down, and the guide listened uneasily to a kind of rolling noise
that sounded like distant thunder.

"The deuce!" he cried, "it will not be long before it is upon us. It is the
voice of the storm; don't you hear it? Oh! mercy! we have lost time, and I
have been the cause of it. O holy Virgin, come to our help!"

Robert could not conceive the cause of his fright, but, stopping to listen,
he felt the same terror. "O Lord my God, protect me!" was his simple
prayer, which gave him strength to follow the guide, and the consciousness
of danger gave them wings.

A violent wind filled the air with the snow that was loosened by the
mildness of the atmosphere, and it was so thick that they could scarcely
see. Then the tempest flapped its strongest wings, and moved huge masses of
snow, which threatened at each moment to ingulf them. These frightful
avalanches, these precipices, these abysses without bottom, these peaks
almost lost to sight, these eternal glaciers, and the imminent peril which
appeared on all sides, and presented, above all, the image of death; all
these sublime horrors, which freeze with fear the heart of guilty man,
Robert contemplated with joyous tranquillity. Before the awful majesty of
this grand scene, he adored God, whose powerful hand can raise the anger of
the elements or calm them at his pleasure. But the tempest increased so
much in fury that he was obliged to concentrate all his faculties to
preserve his equilibrium. The snow was blinding, and the guide, in terror
of making false steps that might plunge them into some abyss, went along
hesitatingly, lamenting and believing they were lost. More uneasy for the
guide than himself, in their alarming position, Robert tried to raise his
courage by speaking of his wife and children, when in an opening of the
path a large sign appeared.

"Oh! we are saved:" said the guide in a faltering voice, and, with a hand
made stronger by hope, rang a large bell, which had a clear, vibrating
sound.

This was the signal of distress that told the good monks that travellers
needed their help. But in the raging of the storm the sound of the bell is
not heard at the convent, and, numbed with cold and fatigue, Joseph swoons
on the snow. Robert tries to warm him and bring him back to consciousness,
but without avail, and at last he is seized with vertigo and dreadful
shiverings, and his numbed limbs refuse to take him further. But the
strength of his soul is greater than his body, and he falls breathing a
prayer to God. Not a sound but the noise of the elements is heard, and the
sliding of the snow that covers their inanimate bodies, and threatens to
leave no trace of them.

"O God! will you let the orphan, whom you have taken under the wings of
your love, perish in this mountain solitude? Will not his pious invocation
be carried to your throne by the angel of prayer?"

Listen! The liberators come; the snow is scratched away with precaution,
and they are found by the noble dogs, gifted with almost sublime instincts
which they consecrate to man, with a devotion and fidelity that puts to
shame many of the human species. Yes; it was "Help" and "Saviour" who had
found the spot where Robert and the guide lay, and breathed on their hands
and faces to try to relieve them; but, being unable to do it, they made the
mountain re-echo with their barks, which brought out the monks, whom they
guided to the spot. The bodies were then carried to the convent, and after
a few hours restored to consciousness; and the kind monks heartily gave
thanks that they were permitted to rescue from certain death two of their
fellow-beings. Could any mission be more noble than theirs; any devotion
more self-sacrificing?
{77}
Impossible; and in all the known world they are honored for their sublime
virtues, and acknowledged as noble martyrs of Christian charity.

Robert passed eight days at the convent, and on each one saw the touching
piety and indefatigable solicitude of the monks. The last few days he made
several excursions over the mountain, where perpetual winter reigns; and
was dazzled by the lustre of the immense glaciers, and the glory of his
lonely surroundings. He sometimes thought if he were not an artist he would
consecrate the remainder of his life to the practice of charity, but his
love of art was too strong, and sunny Italy held out such attractions that
be was lured on, carrying with him the benediction and good wishes of those
noble men who had brought him back to life.


------

    From the Dublin Review


    Lecky's History Of Rationalism.[Footnote 12]

    [Footnote 12: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
    Rationalism in Europe. By W. E. Lecky, M.A., London: Longmans, Green &
    Co.]


It has been said by a very high authority that the study of history is
destined to assume a new aspect, from the application to it of a higher
order of minds and a more philosophical method of treatment. We are passing
out of the age of speciality into the age of generalization. Innumerable
observers have collected facts, and innumerable speculators have multiplied
theories; and we now seem to have arrived at that period when it becomes
the proper function of the thinker to co-ordinate the stores of knowledge
which have been set apart for him by others; evolve laws from the multitude
of instances; separate the truth from the falsehood of conflicting
theories; conjoin effects with their causes, and trace the half-revealed
and far-reaching relations between distant and apparently unconnected
phenomena. The influence of such a spirit--long felt in the less
complicated sciences--is now, even in England, beginning to act on those
which are more intricate. For history the time is rapidly passing away
during which a great but much erring thinker could say that it was the
unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man that, although its separate
parts had each been handled with considerable ability, hardly anyone had
hitherto attempted to combine them into a whole, or to ascertain the way in
which they are connected with each other. On the contrary, he said, a
strange idea prevailed among historians that their business was merely to
narrate events; so that, according to the notion of history in his day
prevalent, any writer who, from indolence of thought or from natural
incapacity, was unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, had
only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he
was, _ipso facto_, qualified to be a historian. The time is fast
coming when those dreary and monotonous narratives of court intrigues and
party cabals will exist only to memorialize an age when the history of
kings was substituted for the history of nations, and the consideration of
the actions of a few individuals for the exposition of the life of the
whole social organization.
{78}
History is growing to be less of a chronicle and more of a science; her
office is no longer thought to be confined to the registration of a few
superficially prominent facts; but the discovery, by a scientific
induction, of historical laws, and the investigation of causes, is chiefly
aimed at; and, as the circumstances which have to be taken into account in
such a method of writing history are often dismissed by the older school of
writers as almost unworthy of notice, and are, moreover, exceedingly
numerous and of almost infinite complication, a far wider and more
diversified range of learning and a far greater power of analysis than were
formerly either required or expected are supposed in the historian.

It would be idle to imagine that the influence of this more philosophical
way of writing history will not extend, or has not extended, to theology.
One of its first results has been the unpremeditated vindication by
non-Catholic writers of the mediaeval church. And that naturally; for the
action of the church in the middle ages was founded on their social state,
and it was therefore only when history descended into the bosom of society
that she could receive a fuller meed of justice. The Catholic Church has
been more philosophically treated, and her primary attribute, that she is a
kingdom, more perfectly realized; while a flood of light has been thrown on
the historical character of Protestantism, and to that farrago of heresies
the conclusions arrived at have been almost uniformly unfavorable. Nor must
we suppose that it will affect only the treatment of the external history
of Christianity, and leave untouched the history of its dogmas. It has
effected, and will hereafter, to a still greater extent effect, that both
Catholic doctrines and heretical opinions will be studied not only, as
heretofore, in their objective aspect--with respect to their evidence and
connections one with another--but more and more in their subjective aspect,
as to their influence on the minds of those who hold them. We have, to a
great extent, yet to see the results of a profound and extensive study of
dogmas in this light; but to study them in this light is undoubtedly the
tendency of the present age. We have thus opened to us a field of
investigation almost new, and in its nature very different from the beaten
tracks in which controversialists have hitherto followed one another.
Whatever be the results that may be thus finally arrived at, there cannot
be a doubt but that they will be fraught with immense advantage to the
cause of truth; and in the course of any researches that may be made into
the subjective influence of individual dogmas a number of facts hitherto
but little attended to--will be brought forward from the most various
sources; so that it will exceedingly behove those who have to attend to the
defence of Christianity to make sure that these are truly alleged and
represented.

Mr. Lecky, as we have before noticed, endeavors to apply to religious the
more advanced method or secular history. He attempts to trace the
subjective influence of religious opinions, the manner in which they
mutually affected each other, and in which they acted or were reacted on by
the other influences of their time. He does not pay much attention to the
question of _evidence_, or to the arguments by which they were
supported, except in so far as the use of particular arguments or lines of
argument affords him some indication of the temper of the times of which he
writes. The very idea of his work--a history of religious
opinions--compelled him to attend to this rather than to the alleged
evidence of particular doctrines: the latter being the proper province of
the theologian as the former is of the historian. But from this necessary
one-sidedness of his work Mr. Lecky seems to have been led into a
corresponding one-sidedness of mind. Every one will grant that education,
disposition, the opinions, and, still more, the tone of those around us
make it exceedingly difficult to treat religious questions on the sole
ground of evidence; and Catholics are continually urging this against the
Protestants who, by their denial of the infallibility of the church,
multiply indefinitely the number of questions which have to be thus
decided; but Mr. Lecky goes further, and says that there really is not
sufficient evidence for us, situated as we are, to come to a reliable
conclusion at all.
{79}
It is natural, therefore, that he should now and then take occasion to sift
supposititious evidence and fallacious arguments; and in several places he
states with great force the nature and logical value of the reasons given
against some or other of the old doctrines now denied by Protestants. An
instance of this may be interesting to our readers; the subjoined passage
is taken from his second chapter On the Miracles of the Church:

  "If we ask, what are the grounds on which the cessation the of miracles
  is commonly maintained; they may, I suppose, be summed up such as
  follows:

  "Miracles, it is said, are the divine credentials of an inspired
  messenger announcing doctrines which could not otherwise be established.
  They prove that he is neither an imposter nor an enthusiast; that his
  teaching is neither the work of a designing intellect nor of an
  overheated imagination. From the nature of the case, this could not be
  proved in any other way. ... Miracles are, therefore, no more improbable
  than a revelation; for a revelation would be ineffectual without
  miracles. But, while this consideration destroys the common objection to
  the gospel miracles, it separates them clearly from those of the Church
  of Rome. The former were avowedly exceptional; they were designed to
  introduce a new religion, and to establish a supernatural message. The
  latter were simply means of edification; they were directed to no object
  that could not otherwise be attained, and they were represented as taking
  place in a dispensation that was intended to be not of sight but of
  faith. Besides this, miracles should be regarded as the most awful and
  impressive manifestations of divine power. To make them habitual and
  commonplace would be to degrade if not to destroy their character, which
  would be still further abased if we admitted those which appear trivial
  and puerile. The miracles of the New Testament were always characterized
  by dignity and solemnity; they always conveyed some spiritual lesson, and
  conferred some actual benefit, besides attesting the character or the
  worker. The mediaeval miracles, on the contrary, were often trivial,
  purposeless, and unimpressive; constantly verging on the grotesque, and
  not unfrequently passing the border.

  "Such is, I think, a fair epitome of the common arguments in favor of the
  cessation of miracles; and they are undoubtedly very plausible and very
  cogent; but, after all, what do they prove? Not that miracles have
  ceased, but that, _supposing_ them to have ceased, there is nothing
  surprising or alarming in the fact. ... This is the full extent to which
  they can legitimately be carried. As an _à priori_ proof, they are
  far too weak to withstand the smallest amount of positive testimony.
  Miracles, it is said, are intended exclusively to accredit an inspired
  messenger. But, after all, what proof is there of this? It is simply an
  hypothesis, plausible and consistent it may be, but entirely unsupported
  by positive testimony. Indeed, we may go further, and say that it is
  distinctly opposed by your own facts. ... You must admit that the Old
  Testament relates many miracles which will not fall under your canon. ...
  But the ecclesiastical miracles, it is said, are often grotesque; and
  appear _primâ facie_ absurd, and excite an irresistible repugnance.
  A sufficiently dangerous test in an age when men find it more and more
  difficult to believe any miracles whatever. A sufficiently dangerous test
  for those who know the tone that has been long adopted, over an immense
  part of Europe, toward such narratives as the deluge or the exploits of
  Samson, the speaking ass or the possessed pigs! Besides this, a great
  proportion of the ecclesiastical miracles are simply reproductions of
  those which are recorded in the Bible; and if there are mingled with them
  some that appear manifest impostures, this may be a very good reason for
  treating these narratives with a more jealous scrutiny, but is certainly
  no reason for maintaining that they are all below contempt. The Bible
  neither asserts nor implies the revocation of supernatural gifts; and if
  the general promise that these gifts should be conferred may have been
  intended to apply only to the apostles, it is at least as susceptible of
  a different interpretation. If these miracles were actually continued, it
  is surely not difficult to discover the beneficial purpose which they
  would fulfil. They would stimulate a languid piety; they would prove
  invaluable auxiliaries to missionaries laboring among barbarous and
  unreasoning savages, who, from their circumstances and habits of mind,
  are utterly incapable of forming any just estimate of the evidences of
  the religion they are called upon to embrace. .... To say that these
  miracles are false because they are Roman Catholic is to assume the very
  question at issue."--Vol. i. pp. 173-177.

{80}

There is nothing, indeed, that is particularly new in this reasoning; our
readers must have frequently seen or heard it urged against Protestants;
but it is valuable in Mr. Lecky's history, as showing the view taken of the
ordinary Protestant arguments by the higher class of anti-Catholic writers.
In a similar manner he disposes of the vulgar arguments against magic and
sorcery in a passage which, however, is, we regret to say, too long for
quotation (Vol. i. pp. 9-16). He there concludes by saying that the
evidence on that subject is so vast and so varied, that it is impossible to
disbelieve it without what, on any other subject, we should consider the
most extraordinary rashness. The subject was examined in tens of thousands
of cases, in almost every country in Europe, by tribunals which included
the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the age, on the scene and at the
time when the alleged acts had taken place, and with the assistance of
innumerable sworn witnesses. As condemnation would be followed by a fearful
death, and the accused were, for the most part, miserable beings whose
destruction can have been an object to no one, the judges can have had no
sinister motives in convicting, and had, on the contrary, the most urgent
reasons for exercising their power with the utmost caution and
deliberation. The accusations were often of such a character that all must
have known the truth or falsehood of what was alleged. _The evidence is
essentially cumulative._ Some cases, it is added, may be explained by
monomania, others by imposture, others by chance coincidences, and others
by optical delusions; but, when we consider the multitudes of strange
statements that were sworn to and registered in legal documents, he
confesses that it is very difficult to frame a general rationalistic
explanation which will not involve an extreme improbability.

And now, passing to another subject, even Catholics may find in the
following passage something worthy of being dwelt on:

  "The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been
  one which has exercised a more profound and on the whole a more salutary
  influence than the mediaeval conception of the Virgin. For the first time
  woman was elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weakness
  was recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No longer the slave or
  toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and of
  sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new
  sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage of which antiquity
  had had no conception. Love was idealized. The moral charm and beauty of
  female excellence was for the first time felt. A new type of character
  was called into being; a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a
  harsh and ignorant and benighted age this ideal type infused a type of
  gentleness and of purity unknown to the proudest civilizations of the
  past. In the pages of living tenderness which many a monkish writer has
  left in honor of his celestial patron; in the millions who, in many lands
  and in many ages, have sought with no barren desire to mould their
  character into her image; in those holy maidens who, for the love of
  Mary, have separated themselves from all the glories and pleasures of the
  world, to seek in fastings and vigils and humble charity to render
  themselves worthy of her benediction; in the new sense of honor, in the
  chivalrous respect, in the softening of manners, in the refinement of
  tastes displayed in all the walks of society; in these and in many other
  ways we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered
  around it, and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our
  civilization,"--Vol. i. pp. 234-235.

"But," he is pleased to add, "the price, and perhaps the necessary price,
of this was the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of
infinite power as well as of infinite condescension." Here we have an
example of the extraordinary mistakes which are occasionally made by Mr.
Lecky. We by no means accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; and in a
work of nearly a thousand pages, of which there is scarcely a page without
a note, and scarcely a note without six or seven references or quotations,
it was impossible but that some inaccuracies should creep in. But he
unfortunately often uses a looseness and generality of reference which
makes his notes almost useless to anyone desirous of verifying them, and
his inaccuracies, some of which bear with them an appearance of great
carelessness, are incredibly frequent; while we desiderate in him that
fulness of theological knowledge which a writer ought to possess who
criticises dogmatic systems so dogmatically as he does.
{81}
In the present case he actually seems to think that the Blessed Virgin was
regarded as an omnipresent deity because it was believed that she could
hear prayers anywhere addressed to her. But the teaching of Catholic
theologians makes a very great difference between the omnipresence of God
and the manner in which the Blessed Virgin and the saints are cognizant of
the prayers poured out to them on earth. The Scotists ordinarily teach that
God reveals to the saints in glory whatever it is expedient that they
should know; the Thomists that they see in the vision of God the prayers
and the necessities of men; some have urged the elevation and expansion of
even their natural faculties consequent on their entrance into the state of
glory; but none have ever supposed them to be present, as God is, to the
whole created universe. Mr. Lecky, proceeds to state that before the belief
that a finite spirit could hear prayer wherever offered was firmly
established, it was believed that at least they hovered round the places
where their relics had been deposited, and there, at least, attended to the
prayers of their suppliants. In support of this assertion he quotes the
following words as from St. Jerome: "Ergo cineres suos amant animae
martyrum, et circumvolant eos, semperque praesentes sunt; ne forte si
aliquis precator advenerit absentes audire non possint," to which he gives
the extraordinary reference, "Epistolae, 1. iii. c. 13." These words indeed
occur in St. Jerome; but they occur as the sarcasm of an opponent which St.
Jerome gives only in order to refute it. The passage is quoted from
Vigilantius in St. Jerome's book against that heretic; but the saint
himself calls it a "portent worthy of hell," and argues, in reply to the
idea expressed in it, that we cannot set laws to God; that the martyrs
follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth; that the demons wander over the whole
world; and are the martyrs to be shut up in a box? As to the Blessed Virgin
being regarded as a deity of infinite power and infinite condescension,
those Catholic writers who in their devotional writings have spoken the
most strongly of her power, have merely said that God will never refuse her
anything she asks, and that she will never ask anything inconsistent with
his Providence. Mr. Lecky shows in many other places the grossest ignorance
of Catholic theology. He quotes, in evidence of the present belief of the
Roman Church in demoniacal possession, a ritual which, he says, "is used in
the diocese of Tarbes." He need not have gone to an obscure provincial
ritual for proof of his assertion; he will hardly find any Catholic
theologian who denies it; and the most used, and best known of our modern
theological writers has devoted a special chapter to the subject (Perrone,
De Deo Creatore, Part I., c. v.) The doctrine of punishment by a material
fire "still lingers," he tells us, "in the Roman Catholic manuals for the
poor." If by this he meant that it does not remain also among theologians,
this is not true; Perrone, one of the most moderate, calls it, "sententia
communiter reccpta." (De Deo Creatore, Part III., c. vi. a. 3.)

In the latter part of his chapter "on the Developments of Rationalism," Mr.
Lecky has put forward an opinion that the doctrine of the material
character of the penal fire is closely connected with the ancient opinion,
that the soul is in some sense material. The doctrine of a material fire
became, he says, the foundation of all opinion that the soul is of a
material nature; and he refers to Tertullian, citing De Anima, c. viii.
This assertion is, however, utterly without foundation. It nowhere appears
that this was the chief foundation on which this error was rested. Far from
making this material conception of punishment the chief ground of his
argument, Tertullian, in the passage quoted by Mr. Lecky, does not argue
from the materiality of the fire at all.
{82}
What he does argue from is the corporeal manner in which Abraham, Dives,
and Lazarus, are represented in the Gospel; from Abraham's bosom the tongue
or Dives, and the finger of Lazarus; and he mentions the "ignis" merely in
an incidental manner, and not to argue from its material nature, but to
found his reasoning on the general proposition that whatever is susceptible
of "fovela" or of "passio" must be corporeal. It is, of course, quite
conceivable that a writer, who believed the soul to be of a material
nature, might argue from the commonly received opinion of a material fire;
but the origin of this opinion was in fact quite different. Some of those
who held it even believed the "fire" of hell to be metaphorical. But before
the advent of Christianity the minds of the people had been constantly and
persistently directed to the sensible and the material; from the ranks of
the people Christianity was recruited; and it is not wonderful if somewhat
of their former habits of thought clung to those who were converted. It was
only by degrees, and after a patient and silent opposition to prevailing
habits of thought, that Christianity succeeded in spiritualizing religious
conceptions; and the time which elapsed before this had been effected--a
period of more than three hundred years--was one of no little confusion in
this regard. But no one seems to have been led into the error of supposing
the human soul to be material by the notion of a material fire. Some
believed this to be the case because they could not see how it could
possibly be otherwise; they were unable to rise to the idea of a spirit,
properly so called; they could not conceive anything to be real, and not
material. That this was the case, in particular, with Tertullian, cannot be
doubted, whether we consider his way of speaking in the whole book _De
Anienâ_, in the book _Adv. Praxeam_, c. xi., and in the _De Carne
Christi_, c. xi., or the pre-eminently sensuous and realistic character
of his mind. The Platonic philosophy was another foundation of this opinion
respecting the human soul. Some writers who were especially attached to
Platonism, as Origen, explained the Platonic doctrine of emanation as
meaning that God alone is a pure Spirit, all beings proceeding from God
having a trace of materiality greater or less as they are more or less
removed from him. They therefore believed all created spirits to be in some
sense material; and forms of expression which may seem properly to belong
to this opinion remained, as is often the case, long after the opinion
itself had vanished. But the source of the whole error was, as is evident,
the materialized method of conception of pre-Christian times.

But Mr. Lecky goes much further than this. He tells us that this opinion of
the materiality of the human soul--which, if we except at most two or
three writers, had certainly died out in the sixth, if not in the fifth
century--was the dominant opinion in the middle ages:

  "Under the influence of mediaeval habits of thought, every spiritual
  conception was materialized, and what at an earlier and a later period
  was generally deemed the language of metaphor, was universally regarded
  as the language of fact. The realizations of the people were all derived
  from paintings, sculpture, or ceremonies that appealed to the senses, and
  all subjects were therefore reduced to palpable images. The angel in the
  last judgment was constantly represented weighing the souls in a literal
  balance, while devils clinging to the scales endeavored to disturb the
  equilibrium. Sometimes the soul was portrayed as a sexless child, rising
  out of the mouth of the corpse. But, above all, the doctrine of purgatory
  arrested and enchained the imagination. ... Men who believed in a
  physical soul readily believed in a physical punishment, men who
  materialized their view of the punishment, materialized their view of the
  sufferers.

  "We find, however," he proceeds, "some time before the reformation,
  evident signs of an endeavor on the part of a few writers to rise to a
  purer conception of the soul." And he goes on to attribute this to "the
  pantheistic writings that flowed from the school of Averrhoes;" and to
  ascribe to the Cartesian philosophy "the final downfall of the
  materialistic hypothesis." Vol. i. pp. 373-378.

{83}

It is not too much to say that the whole of this is entirely unsupported by
evidence. Anyone who likes to glance over the Coimbricenses _De
Animâ_, the beginning of the second book of the Sentences, the questions
_De Animâ_ in the Summa of St. Thomas, the recapitulation of the
scholastic theology on that subject in the third volume of Suarez, or the
very earliest treatises _De Angelis_, will see that, far from there
being merely "a few writers" who maintained the spirituality of the soul,
the notion of immateriality was as well defined in the dominant scholastic
philosophy as ever it was by Descartes; whose doctrine that the essence of
the soul is thought, was clearly stated by the scholastics in the sense
that intellection can only belong to the spiritual, and not to the material
and the extended. [Footnote 13] The manner in which the Scholastics
explained the punishment of a spiritual being by a material fire affords us
a test-question on this subject. _Did_ their "intense realization" of
this doctrine lead them to infer the materiality of the soul? Certainly
not. On the contrary; _because_ all thoroughly realized the
spirituality of the soul, all felt this difficulty regarding the manner of
its punishment; but, although there was sufficient diversity among them as
to its explanation, not one had recourse to the materialistic hypothesis.

    [Footnote 13: See St. Thomas Contra Gentiles, 1.2, c. 49, 50, 51, 65,
    cf. 66, where an immense number of arguments, in great part, of course,
    drawn from the philosophy of the day, is heaped up to prove the
    spirituality of the soul.]

Nor is Mr. Lecky correct in stating that the Arabian philosophy had a
spiritualizing influence on philosophy and theology. That philosophy
eminently favored the "_multiplicatio entium sine necessitate_," than
which nothing is more unspiritualizing. Some of those who held it expounded
the doctrine of matter and form in a manner dangerous to the spirituality
of the soul. [Footnote 14] They held the perilous doctrine of emanation,
and it would be quite a mistake to suppose that the description of error
which they taught had any conformity of spirit with the poetical and
sentimental pantheistic theories of the present day.

    [Footnote 14: See  St. Thomas, Op. de Angelis, cap 5.]

It is chiefly from the character of the then religious art, which (of
course) represented spiritual subjects by material symbols, that Mr. Lecky
argues that the middle ages materialized all spiritual conceptions. Thus,
in a note to p. 232, vol. 1., he speaks thus:

  "The strong desire natural to the middle ages to give a palpable form to
  the mystery of the Incarnation, was shown curiously in the notion of a
  conception by the ear. In a hymn, ascribed to St. Thomas à Becket, occur
  the lines:--

    "Ave Virgo, Mater Christi,
     Quae per aurem concepisti,
       Gabriele nuntio."

  And in an old glass window, now I believe in one of the museums of Paris,
  the Holy Ghost is represented hovering over the Virgin in the form of a
  dove, while a ray of light passes from his beak to her ear, along which
  ray an infant Christ is descending."--Langlois, _Peinture sur
  Verre_, p. 157.

And our readers will remember remarks of a like bearing in the quotation
last given. Such criticisms are, however, to us merely evidence of so many
curious misapprehensions. They merely show that an acquaintance with the
history of religious art is but a very inadequate preparation for writing
the history of religious dogmas. It is perfectly impossible to represent
spiritual things in painting and sculpture otherwise than by material
images. Nothing is more common than so to represent them even among
Protestants of the present day; nothing was more common in the Old
Testament, the very stronghold of the ancient anthropomorphites. We feel no
inclination to deny that it is exceedingly difficult for the poor and the
ignorant to rise to the conception of a spirit, and almost all mankind
represent to themselves even the very Deity under some refined material
image; but when such representations occupied a prominent position in
public worship, there was an opportunity, and that frequently made use of,
of correcting an untruthful imagination.

{84}

We have no hesitation in saying that there is far more unconscious
anthropomorphism among the Protestant than among the Catholic poor. The
doctrines of revelation make known a world akin to, yet not the same as,
this; they tell of an order of things itself unseen, but possessing
counterparts and shadows here. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there
exists a constant tendency to forget that these are but imperfect types and
symbols, and to remodel the truths of faith into conformity with what we
see around us. To correct this tendency is one of the functions of the
science of theology; and the conclusions of theology, infiltrating among
the people, keep them from sinking into earthly and anthropomorphic views
of religion, these conclusions being communicated by the ordinary resources
in the hands of the church, which, certainly, are far more efficacious in
the Catholic than in the Protestant system. Indeed, of all the reproaches
which have been directed against the theology of the middle ages, that of
being in its spirit gross and material is one of the most unfounded and the
most unjust. With far greater truth might such a reproach be directed
against the Protestant theology of the last three centuries. In the middle
ages, theology had a code and a standard of her own; she was the queen of
the sciences; she regulated and moulded the ideas of the time. Now,
condemned to occupy a subordinate position, she is content to take her
ideas from those current in the world, and to use her terms, not in their
proper and theological signification, but in the meanings derived from the
manner of their present use in physical science and in common life. An
example of this occurs in the case of the word _person_, the loss of
the theological meaning of which among Protestants has confused, if not
obliterated, the doctrine of the Trinity. In Protestantism, the belief of
the people lives chiefly by a tradition propagated through no recognized
theological channel; a tradition which, consequently, daily grows more
feeble and less definite; which is continually becoming more and more
corrupted, more low, and earthly, and anthropomorphous. Look at the common
Protestant idea of the happiness of the blessed. The great Catholic
doctrine which places the essence of the beatitude of man, not in a
prolongation and refinement of the pleasures of this world, not even in the
sight of Christ's humanity, but in that vision of God as God which is
emphatically called beatific, had almost faded out of sight. They look
forward to an earthly millennium, which is little better than a
glorification of commerce, material prosperity, and natural virtue, to be
succeeded by a heaven of which the joys very much resemble those which some
Catholic theologians with Suarez [Footnote 15] assign to infants who die
without baptism. But against the reproach of lowness and materialism of
conception being ever directed against the theologians of mediaeval times,
the doctrine of the beatific vision, which they so fully and so beautifully
evolved, stands a perpetual protest. For in what was this coarseness and
lowness of thought more likely to appear, than in their conception of the
greatest happiness of man? Or who were more likely to teach what is far
removed from vulgar and worldly conceptions than men who placed the sum of
all happiness in the vision and fruition of divine essence, which,
according to them, could be seen by no corporal eye, [Footnote 16] and in
which was, they said, that joy which eye had not seen nor ear heard,
neither had it entered into the heart of man to conceive? The whole of the
scholastic treatise _De Deo Uno_ is but another magnificent protest
against such an accusation.
{85}
The heresy of Gilbert Porretanus [Footnote 17] would never be condemned by
the Protestants of the present day; nor has ever the conception of the
divine simplicity in perfection been so fully realized as it was by those
much-abused theologians. The mediatorship of our blessed Lord is now
commonly apprehended by Protestants in a manner which makes a real
difference of character between the father and son; but no one who knows
anything of the scholastic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation can
imagine that these theologians would have tolerated for a moment a notion
so frightfully heretical. With respect to psychology, the scholastic age
saw the death of Traducianism; and anyone who has attended to the earlier
scholastic opinions respecting the manner in which spirits suffer in the
penal fire, will have seen that they are of a more "spiritual" tendency
than those of most Protestant theologians. [Footnote 18]

    [Footnote 15: De Peccato Originall.]

    [Footnote 16: St. Thomas, in ima & q.12, a. 3; and other older authors
    in Sent. i. 1, d.1, & l. 4, d.49]

    [Footnote 17: Lombardus in Sent. i. 1, d.33, 34; and the commentators
    _ad loc_.]

    [Footnote 18: Sensation and "sensitive imagination" appeared to the
    scholastic to be of sole material a character, that they would not
    admit that these and other sensitive affections can exist in a separate
    spirit; and, consequently, those theologians who explain the punishment
    of separate spirits by the analogy of the soul and body, were compelled
    to admit that the pain must be different in kind from the "passio
    conjuncti."]

Mr. Lecky's criticisms on the opinion that the penal fire is literal and
material, and on the supposed general materialism of religious conception
in the middle ages, have led us into somewhat of a digression. We have yet,
however, one more remark to make. While he concedes that after the time of
Averrhoes "a few writers" endeavored to rise to a more spiritual manner of
conceiving the truths of faith, he asserts that in the preceding period,
before his influence and that of such sects as the Beguins had begun to be
felt, the state of things was infinitely worse. From the sixth to the
twelfth century materialism in religion was absolutely dominant. That the
period preceding the advent of the scholastic epoch was one of great
depression of theological science, cannot be doubted; and the amount of
what may in a general way be called anthropomorphism current at any period
is to a great extent conditioned by the want of general cultivation. But it
is very easy to overrate this depression. The episcopal and synodical
letters, for instance, which were exchanged concerning the subject of
adoptionism do not present to us theological science at, by any means, a
low ebb. The same may be said respecting the controversy in the ninth
century on the Eucharist; and the controversy on Predestination, if it do
not reveal any large amount of historical learning, at least exhibits
considerable activity of mind. Such of the writings of authors of that
period as the present writer has looked into, show an amount of learning
and acuteness which was certainly unexpected by him. That period was
necessarily uncritical; but we regard the taste for allegorizing, then as
formerly prevalent, to be an indication of something very different from a
degraded and material habit of thought. The great teacher of the
pre-scholastic age was St. Augustine, one of the most spiritual of the
fathers; and the writer who was chosen to supplement him was St. Gregory
the Great, who went farther than, and improved on, St. Augustine himself.
And, as to the religious art of that period, Mr. Lecky has himself alluded
to a peculiarity which, strangely enough, seems to have given him no
disquietude as to his general conclusion. In that period, he says:

  "We do not find the smallest tendency to represent God the Father.
  [Footnote 19] Scenes, indeed, in which he acted were frequently depicted,
  but the First Person of the Trinity was invariably superseded by the
  Second. Christ, in the dress and with the features appropriated to him in
  the representations of scenes from the New Testament, and often with the
  monogram underneath his figure, is represented creating man, condemning
  Adam and Eve to labor, ... or giving the law to Moses. With the exception
  of a hand sometimes extended from the cloud, and occasionally encircled
  with a nimbus, we find in this period no traces in art of the Creator.
{86}
  At first we can easily imagine that a purely spiritual conception of the
  Deity, and also the hatred that was inspired by the type of Jupiter,
  would have discouraged artists from attempting such a subject, and
  Gnosticism, which exercised a very great influence over Christian art,
  and which emphatically denied the divinity of the God of the Old
  Testament, tended in the same direction; but it is very unlikely that
  these reasons can have had any weight between the sixth and the twelfth
  centuries. For the more those centuries are studied, the more evident it
  becomes that the universal and irresistible tendency was then to
  materialize every spiritual conception, to form a palpable image of
  everything that was reverenced, to reduce all subjects within the domain
  of the senses."--(Vol. i. pp. 224-5.)

    [Footnote 19: We cannot ourselves, as Catholics, admit that there is
    necessarily the smallest impropriety or inexpediency in picture or
    sculptured representations of God the Father (See Denzinger, n. 1182
    and 1482); yet we may fairly argue that the absence of such, at the
    period in question, disproves Mr. Lecky's assertion that the dominant
    tendency of that period was anthropomorphous.]

The most celebrated of the theologians of the middle ages is undoubtedly
St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas, however, comes in for an extra share of
misrepresentation. At p. 72, vol. ii., we read of him, that he was one of
the ablest writers of the fourteenth century--he died in the thirteenth--
and that "he assures us that diseases and tempests are the direct acts of
the devil, that he can transport men at his pleasure through the air," and
that "omnes angeli, boni, et mali, ex naturali virtute habent potestatem
transmutandi corpora nostra." Now all this is precisely what St. Thomas
denies. In the first place, anyone would imagine from the manner in which
our author writes, that the great mediaeval theologian imagined that, in
the ordinary course of things, diseases and tempests are produced by
Satanic agency. St. Thomas never taught any such thing, but over and over
again refers both the one and the other to natural causes. [Footnote 20]

    [Footnote 20: V.g., Comm. in Ps. xvii., and in Arist. Meteor. i. 2,
    lect xvi.; cf. Summa, i. 2, q. 50, a. 2.]

Mr. Lecky ought to have written "may be;" but the meaning of the words
would have been very different, and their point would have been taken away.
Secondly, while St. Thomas teaches, in accordance with Holy Writ, that the
demons can exercise power over material things, he also teaches that they
cannot directly change the qualities of things, nor produce any
preternatural change except local motion: nor that at their pleasure; for
it is a principle with him that God does not permit them to do all that
which they have _per se_ the power of doing. [Footnote 21]

    [Footnote 21: Questiones de Malo, q. 16, art. 9, etc.; Questiones de
    Potentia Dei, q 6. art. 5.]

Thirdly, as to their natural power of transmuting our bodies. We have not
been able to find the exact words quoted above, but many similar phrases
occur in the _objections_ in the ninth article of the _Quaestio de
Daemonibus_, which, it is sufficient to say, St. Thomas solves by
saying:

  But on the other hand, St. Augustine [Footnote 22] says "Non solum animam
  sed nec corpus quidem nulla ratione crediderim daemonom arte vel
  potestate in brutalia lineamenta poese converti." ... I reply that, as
  the apostle says, "all things made by God in order," whence, as St.
  Augustine says, "the excellence of the universe is the excellence of
  order. ... and therefore Satan always uses natural agents as his
  instruments in the production of physical effects, and can so produce
  effects which exceed the efficacy of the natural agents; [Footnote 23]
  but he cannot cause the form of the human body to be changed into that of
  an animal, because this would be contrary to the order established by
  God; and all such conversions are, therefore, as Augustine shows in the
  place quoted, according to phantastical appearance rather than truth.

    [Footnote 22: De Civ. Dei. 1. 18, c. 88.]

    [Footnote 23: I.e., which exceeds their ordinary effects, because he
    can use them more skillfully (cf. ad. 11).]

At p. 350 of vol. I., Mr. Lecky tells us that the mediaeval writers taught
that God would make the contemplation of the sufferings of the lost an
essential elements in the happiness of the blessed. He does not know of
what he writes. It was taught that the essential element in their happiness
--the _Essentia Beatitudinis_,--is the vision of God; all else
accessory and subordinate. In a note to justify his assertion, he adds
these words:--"St. Thomas Aquinas says, 'Beati in regno coelesti videbunt
poenas damnatorum ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat.'" The quotation is
not accurate.
{87}
After quoting Isaias, ult. 24, be says, "Respondeo dicendum ad primam
questionem quòd a beatis nihil subtrahi debet quod _ad perfectionem
beatitudinis_ eorum pertineat: _unumquodque autem ex comparatione
contrarii magis cognoscitur_, quia contraria juxta se posita magis
elucescunt; et ideò, ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis complaceat, _et de
eá uberiores gratias Deo agant_, datur eis ut poenam impiorum perfecte
intueantur." [Footnote 24] The passage of St. Thomas, as given by Mr.
Lecky, is just one of those which may very well bear either of two
meanings. It might mean something very repulsive and very cruel. But the
unmutilated passage can bear but one interpretation. St. Thomas does not
say that they rejoice in the sufferings themselves; but that they are
permitted to see them, in order that they may feel yet more intensely how
precious is their own beatitude, and thank God the more heartily for their
own escape.

    [Footnote 24: supplementum ad tertiam partem Summa, q.94, a. 1.]

In a note to his chapter on the Industrial History of Rationalism, Mr.
Lecky charges St. Thomas with what is nothing less than moral obliquity.
The Duchess of Brabant, he says, had a scruple of conscience about
tolerating the Jews. She therefore consulted St. Thomas; "who replied,
among other things that the Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude, and
that all their property being derived from usury might lawfully be taken
from them." Mr. Lecky is inaccurate both as to the confiscation of their
property and as to the perpetual servitude. St. Thomas does not say that
all their property was derived from usury, and it would, indeed, have been
rather a rash judgment in him to say so. But the Duchess of Brabant had
apparently desired to impose new burdens on the Jews, and in writing to St.
Thomas had stated that all their property seemed to be derived from usury;
to which he replied, that _if this were so_, they might lawfully be
compelled to make restitution. Nor does this by any means imply that all
their property was to be taken away from them, as appears from St. Thomas's
letter among his opuscula, [Footnote 25] and from his general doctrine
respecting restitution. [Footnote 26] With respect to the perpetual
servitude what St. Thomas does say is this: "_Although according to the
laws_ the Jews be, or were, through their own fault doomed to perpetual
servitude, and thus princes could appropriate their possessions as their
own, yet this is to be understood leniently, so that the necessaries of
life be by no means taken from them. _But since we ought, as the apostle
declares, to walk honestly in the sight of those who are without, of Jews
and Gentiles, and the Church of God, as the laws declare, compulsory
service is not to be required of them, which they were not wont to perform
in time past._" He goes on to say that if ill-gotten goods were taken
from the Jews, it would be unlawful for her to retain them, but they would
have to be restored to those from whom they had been unjustly taken; and
even under these conditions he declines to sanction any proceeding against
them, but only "si nihil aliud obsistat." Mr. Lecky also quotes, he says,
the Histriones of St. Thomas. What the Histriones of St. Thomas are, we
have not, we confess, the most remote idea.

    [Footnote 25: Opusc. xxii, in calce Opusculi de Regimine Principum.]

    [Footnote 26: Summa, 2, 2, q. 61-62, etc.]

Mr. Lecky professes to give the analyses of various theological beliefs and
tones of thought which have prevailed in other times. Of these, however, he
has had but little or no practical experience. He consequently puts before
us only certain restricted points of view, which have strongly impressed
themselves on his mind in the course of his studies and meditations. We are
hurried along by his words as by a flood; but while the effects which some
particular doctrine possibly _might_ produce if it were held alone are
vividly set before us, he totally loses sight of those other doctrines,
which were organically connected with it, and modified and regulated its
action. To evade one difficulty be falls into another: he concentrates his
gaze on a point that he may see more clearly; but, confining it there,
loses sight of those harmonies and contrasts, which make up the beauty of
the whole. In one direction this defect has had very great influence.
{88}
"Veritas" is, it is said, "in medio;" the present age has gone wrong all on
one side; and Mr. Lecky, who is an advanced disciple of the present age,
consequently considers that preceding ages have gone wrong all on the
other. He sees that there is a very great difficulty in adequately
realizing phases of thought so very different from those which now prevail.
And, because of this, he expends his strength on the points of difference,
neglecting for their sake things nearer to his apprehension; and the very
natural consequence is that he gives us a distorted and exaggerated picture
in which the common elements are not sufficiently brought out.

An instance of this occurs in his treatment of the subject of eternal
punishment. The general organization and want of order which pervades his
work is quite insufficient to account for the pertinacity with which he
again and again recurs to the subject. Like the whole anti-Christian party,
and very naturally, he detests the doctrine with his whole spirit; and he
allows this detestation to color his whole views of the middle ages. He
attributes to its influence whatever he finds, or imagines himself to have
found, of a hard, cruel, and repulsive character in their theory and
practice. He begins by misrepresenting the character of the doctrine
itself. He separates it from the conditioning doctrines which were taught
along with it, and which regulated and directed its influence. He dwells
almost entirely on the terrible side of the then existing Christianity, and
almost altogether neglects the operation of the concurring principle of
love, the opposite pole of the Christian motives. And then he concludes
that to its influence was due the severity of punishments in the middle
ages. A universal terrorism was produced. The sense of the divine mercy was
destroyed. The sufferings of the lost were at first regarded with horror;
but as men became more used to the thing, the horror was changed to
indifference, and the indifference to a barbarous delight in the
contemplation and even the infliction of pain. It will not require many
arguments to show that such a method of treatment is monstrous. Mr. Lecky
ought to have noticed that the causes which in the middle ages led to
peculiar stress being laid on the doctrine of eternal punishment, were
causes external to, and mostly in direct opposition, to the church; and
that their tendency was met by a corresponding realization of an opposite
pole of Christian feeling.

We cannot better introduce what
we have to say on the severity of punishments,
and the alleged callousness
of disposition in mediaeval times, and,
indeed, on Mr. Lecky's whole criticism
of the subject of eternal punishment,
than by a passage from a most able
writer:

  "One of the effects of civilization (not to say one of the ingredients in
  it) is, that the spectacle, and even the very idea, of pain, is kept more
  and more out of sight of those classes who enjoy in their full the
  benefits of civilization. The state of perpetual personal conflict,
  rendered necessary by the circumstances of former times, and from which
  it was hardly possible for any person, in whatever rank of society, to be
  exempt, necessarily habituated everyone to the spectacle of harshness,
  rudeness, and violence, to the struggle of one indomitable will against
  another, and to the alternate suffering  and infliction of pain. These
  things, consequently, were not as revolting even to the best and most
  actively benevolent men of former days, as they are to our own; and we
  find the recorded conduct of those men frequently such as would be
  universally considered very unfeeling in a person of our own day. They,
  however, thought less of the infliction of pain, because they thought
  less of pain altogether. When we read of actions of the Greeks and
  Romans, or of our own ancestors, denoting callousness to human suffering,
  we must not think that those who committed these actions were as cruel as
  we must become before we could do the like. The pain which they
  inflicted, they were in the habit of voluntarily undergoing from slight
  causes; it did not appear to them as great an evil as it appears, and as
  it really is, to us, nor did it in any way degrade their minds."
  [Footnote 27]

    [Footnote 27: J.S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions; Art
    Civilization.]

{89}

The scale, in fact, according to which degrees of pain were computed, was
much less minute then than now. This arose from the imperfect subdivision
of labor in society, and the consequently more frequently recurring
necessity of personally putting forth powers of endurance and of action;
from the continual wars and commotions; from the imperfection of the
mechanical appliances which now alleviate suffering; from a sterner and
rougher manner of living, necessitated by the undeveloped state of the
social arts; from the intimate intermingling of the civil and the military
life, arising out of the feudal system; and from a multitude of other
causes. To these, however, we must add another of far more potent
influence. The inchoate mediaeval nations were only emerging from a state
of barbarism; and the associations of that barbarism still tenaciously
clung to them in the gloomy superstitions common among northern nations, in
cruel ordeals, in internecine warfare, in the whole texture of their social
and national traditions. The causes referred to by Mr. Mill were in
operation almost as much in the civilization of Greece and Rome as in the
middle ages; but this circumstance, which is one on which we need not
dilate, increased, and must have increased, to an enormous extent the
activity of the tendencies on which be remarks. If indeed, there were two
nations exactly alike in every particular, except that the one believed
eternal punishment and set small store by pain, so as severely and even
barbarously to punish offenses, while the other did neither of these
things--we should in that case plausibly assert a direct causal connexion
between holding the eternity of future punishment and a hardness and
callousness of temper. But we cannot argue in this free and easy manner,
where the instances from which we have to make our induction are so
multifariously different as are the social condition of the present day and
the social condition of mediaeval times. We must not thus arbitrarily
single one from out of a multitude of causes. Reasoning from the known
principles of human nature, we can say with all confidence that the causes
just enumerated must have operated, and operated very powerfully, to
produce many and severe punishments, the carelessness for and of suffering,
the trials by ordeal and by torture, which existed at the period of which
we write. And thus we also see that those representations of the torments
of the lost, on which Mr. Lecky expends such a vast amount of rhetoric,
must have produced these effects immeasurably less than they would now
produce; far more powerful means had to be resorted to then to produce an
amount of feeling for which gentler methods now suffice.

Nor has Mr. Lecky fairly represented the doctrine of eternal punishment in
itself. To contemplate the infliction of pain naturally produces, he says,
a callousness and hardness of feeling. This statement embodies only a half
truth, and the reasoning founded on it is in the highest degree fallacious.
When the Catholics of ancient times contemplated the anguish of the lost,
the habits which they endeavoured to form were habits of horror for the sin
which entailed that anguish. There is a great difference between thus
actively contemplating suffering, and beholding it merely in a passive
manner, and with a view to some other end. The surgical operator, the
public executioner, the soldier, who look at it in this latter light, may
and do in time become hardened and indifferent. But it is far otherwise in
the former case; and there is a great difference between reflecting on the
pains of others, and reflecting on the pains which may one day be our own.
It is reasonable and natural to suppose, and is found to be in reality the
case, that one who contemplates the sufferings of others merely and purely
as of others, and habitually avoids referring them in any way to himself,
will in the end become hard and cruel.
{90}
But the very essence of sympathy consists in an unconscious association of
ourselves with others in their sufferings. The Calvinist, therefore, the
believer in "assurance," who fancies himself to be one of the elect, and
from his security safely thinks of all the torments of the reprobate as
things in which it would be sinful for him even for a moment to imagine
that he can have part, may but grow callous at the thought of hell--may
even delight to think of it, and revel in the representation of the anguish
there. But such a spirit is altogether opposed to the whole bent of
Catholic meditation on that subject. The Catholic, when he meditates on
these torments, thinks of them as of others, only that the thought may more
vividly come home to himself; he thinks of them as of what he may one day
have to endure. And again, the thought of our own personal suffering can
make us hard and firm only when we consider it as a thing not to be
avoided, but to be braved. It is almost a truism to say, that those men are
of all the most soft and timid, who are continually representing to
themselves means of escape from vividly imagined dangers. And no Catholic
would meditate on these torments that he might nerve himself to brave them,
but that he might seek means to avoid them. Catholics, of course, accept,
on the ground of God's Word, that awful doctrine of our faith which we are
now contemplating. So far as they argue for it from reason at all, they say
that this doctrine is the necessary sanction of the moral law; and the
force of that argument will be felt by none more strongly than by Catholics
themselves, who, from holding the existence both of a future temporal and
of a future eternal punishment for sin, are better able to judge what
effects would be likely to be produced, if hell were, in the common
teaching, resolved into a kind of purgatory. But it must never be forgotten
that in the Catholic religion the doctrine of eternal punishment, is taught
under certain accompanying conditions, which intimately affect its
practical bearing. The first of these conditions is the doctrine of
purgatory, of which M. Comte thus speaks:

  Il serait facile de reconnaître que l'institution, si amèrement
  critiquée, du purgatoire fut, au contraire, très-heureusement introduite,
  dans la pratique sociale du Catholicisme, à titre d'indispensable
  correctif fondamental de l'eternité des peines futures; oar, autrement,
  cette éternité, sans laquelle les prescriptions religieuses ne pouvaient
  être efficaces, eût évidemment déterminé souvent ou un relâchement
  funeste, ou un effroyable désespoir, égalemeut dangereux l'un et l'autre
  pour l'individu et pour la société, et entre lesquels le génie Catholique
  est parvenu à organiser cette ingénieuse issue, qui permettait de graduer
  immédiatement, avec une scrupuleuse précision, l'application effective du
  procédé religieux aux convenances de chaque cas réel. [Footnote 28]

    [Footnote 28: Philosophie Positive, vol. v. p. 269 (Ed. 1864).]

In reading this quotation, it must be remembered that M. Comte was not a
Catholic, and regarded the Catholic Church as merely a human institution.
But, the truths to which that unhappy thinker here draws attention, are so
evident, that they hardly require proof. If the sole future punishment of
sin be believed to be an eternal punishment, such as is that of hell, it is
not difficult to perceive what effects will follow. The timid, and those
who are naturally religiously minded, will form a gloomy and austere notion
of religion, which will produce some of the effects noted by Mr. Lecky, and
in the end, by provoking a necessary reaction, work the destruction of all
religion whatever. Those, on the contrary, who are irreligiously inclined,
will be still further moved to give up all ideas of religion as
impracticable, and will be disgusted by its tone and spirit; while the
doctrine of eternal punishment will lose its force by being applied to
light and trivial offences.

But we must also notice another condition of the realization of this
doctrine; which is provided in the Catholic system; and which, like that of
purgatory, has been rather neglected by Protestantism.
{91}
It has been noticed by some writers that the sacramental system of the
church provides an admirable safeguard, and one in an especial manner
necessary in the middle ages, against outbreaks of fanaticism. According to
the teaching of the Catholic Church, the sacraments are the great means,
channels, and conditions of grace. And this produces a system and an order,
a definite method of procedure in the spiritual life, which, assisted by
the ascetical and mystical theology so minutely cultivated, abundantly
directs enthusiasm and represses fanaticism. And we do not doubt that if
Protestantism, with its doctrine of private judgment and private direction,
had been the form of Christianity existing in the middle ages, Christianity
would have sunk into a condition of which paganism and the Gnostic heresies
alone afford a parallel. But this sacramental system has also another,
though a co-ordinate effect. Grace is insensible and unfelt, to confound it
with the natural religious feelings and emotions is to make religion no
longer a discipline and a duty, but a sentiment. And because it is unfelt,
it is necessary that it should ordinarily be given through some external
and sensible rite, in order to ward off undue and pernicious doubt and
anxiety. Now, according to Catholic teaching, while, on the one hand, it is
impossible for any one to know with absolute certainty what is his
spiritual state before God; on the other hand, the doctrine of confession
and absolution supplies all with a means of knowing, with a greater of less
amount of probability, what their real condition is. On the morally
beneficial tendency of the first part of this teaching it is unnecessary to
dilate, and any scrupulosity or vain terror which, if it stood alone, it
might excite, is amply provided against by the second. And thus, through
the correlative doctrines of purgatory, of the consequent distinction
between mortal and venial sins, of confession and absolution, and by means
of its moral theology, Catholicism provides that the doctrine of eternal
punishment shall press with greater or less force, exactly as its influence
is more or less required. It does not leave the believer to the diseased
imaginations of his own mind, but provides an external code to which he
must submit, and an external direction by which he will be guided. It
provides a means by which he may know whether he is or is not in a state of
sin, and a definite remedy whereby he may extricate himself from it; while
it holds out a hope of salvation to all, and teaches that no man ever
existed whose case was so desperate that he could not, if he co-operated
with grace, as he has the power of co-operating, look for pardon. With the
heretical sects the case is widely different. The very name of Calvinism
calls up associations on which it would be painful to dwell. The
conjunction of the doctrines of eternal punishment and necessitarianism
must always, even where these doctrines are but to a very inadequate extent
realized, produce a type of religious thought and feeling as repulsive as
it is degrading. Of this it would be superfluous to speak. But
Protestantism repudiates the practice of confession and the doctrine of
absolution. Then, indeed, wherever the eternity of punishment was realized,
it produced a diseased and unhealthy state of mind. Anxiety, doubt, terror,
were necessarily the predominating feelings in the minds of men; an anxiety
which could be calmed no longer now that there was no confessional, and a
doubt which admitted of no direction now that each man had to be almost
entirely his own counsellor, while all were faltering and divided as to the
"direction of the ways of life." The "doctrine of final assurance" was,
indeed, put forward to remedy the evil. But that doctrine only served to
aggravate it. For to one class of minds it only supplied a new cause of
terror; and to another it gave a very fruitful occasion of cultivating a
disposition perhaps the most detestably proud, callous, and selfish, which
has ever appeared among mankind.

{92}

We must not, however, be supposed to deny that, through causes the
character of which may partially be gathered from the preceding remarks,
the doctrine of eternal punishment was very prominent in the middle ages.
And how, it will be asked, did the church of those ages meet this
extraordinary prominence? To have met it by merely insisting on the
blessedness of heaven, would obviously have been most inadequate. Our
natural constitution, and the circumstances of our life here, are such that
our ideas of happiness, and especially of permanent happiness, are, as it
has often been urged, far less definite and far less acute than our ideas
of pain; and for this reason it has been wisely brought about that what has
been made known to us of the blessedness of heaven is far less definite and
complete, than is what we know of the punishment of the wicked. But for
this very reason, the prominence of the doctrine of their eternal
punishment could not be efficaciously met by insisting on this blessedness.
But there is another set of ideas and feelings directly opposed to the
despair and unmitigated fear which would be produced by the sole
contemplation of the torments of the lost; and it is a set of ideas and
feelings which nowhere find so natural a home as in Catholicism. From the
manner in which the doctrine of the Incarnation is dwelt on in the Catholic
system, and from the consequently almost human character which is given to
the love of God and to the contemplation of the divine perfections as set
forth in Christ, there results an ardor, an intensity, an active continuity
of that love, which is simply incomprehensible to those who are external to
the machinery of the Catholic Church. If it be asked, then, how did the
church of those times meet the extraordinary, development of the doctrine
we have been considering, the answer is patent to the most superficial
reader of the mediaeval saints and theologians. They met it by an, at
least, equal development of the doctrine of divine love. St. Bernard, Hugo
of St. Victor, St. Anselm, all especially breathe in their works this sweet
and devout spirit. The writings of St. Bernard, and those passages of such
exquisitely tender devotion which occur in the writings of St. Augustine,
became, in particular, the texts on which succeeding writers expanded and
dilated. A spirit of meekness and tenderness of devotion, an intense and
fervid love of God, are the themes on which they peculiarly delight to
dwell, and the virtues on which they peculiarly love to insist. It was this
age that produced the Imitation; toward the close of it appeared the
Paradisus Animae: and whoever was the actual author of the former work, it
possesses remarkable affinity with the spirit and even the style of Gerson.
Nor was this temper of mind confined to purely mystical writers. The
writings of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Bridget, St. Catherine of Sienna,
and others, attest, indeed, that the type of sanctity was, in some sense,
changing under its influence; but it passed on to the great theological
teachers of the age. St. Thomas of Aquino, the best and greatest of them
all, lived and struggled in the very midst of the conflict with infidelity
which was then agitating the church, and yet even he found time to write a
number of short spiritual treatises which display the most tender and the
most delicate devotion. This is especially seen in his book De Beatitudine.
Richard of St. Victor wrote a work De Gradibus Violentae Charitatis, "On
the degrees of violent charity." St. Bonaventure received the name of "The
Seraphic Doctor" from the ardor of his piety; the titles of a few of his
works--De Septem Itineribus AEternitatis, Stimulus Amoris, Amatorium,
Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum--will be sufficient to show its character. The
tender and loving spirit which those great doctors manifested in their
devotion, broke out also in their correspondence with their friends, as may
be perceived even from the extracts from the letters and sermons of certain
of them which the Count de Montalembert has inserted in his Monks of the
West.
{93}
Other momenta of a more general nature show the operation of the same
tendency. For the first time detailed lives of our blessed Lord came into
general circulation. Devotion to the passion assumed a far more prominent
position than before; of the spirit which animated it we have a most
touching example in the little book attributed to St. Juliana of Norwich.
The Canticle of Canticles suddenly took a place in the affections of the
pious, which even in the primitive church it had never known. St. Bernard
composed on it his celebrated Sermones super Cantica, St. Bonaventure and
Richard of St. Victor both wrote commentaries on it; St. Thomas has left us
two, and it was while dictating the second of these that he passed out of
this world, celebrating the blessedness of divine love. Nor can we
altogether omit to notice three devotions, two of which certainly exercised
a very considerable influence. In an age in which the spirit of love and
devotion to our blessed Lord had assumed such large proportions, in which
the doctrine of the Incarnation was for the first time completely treated
in a scientific manner, and in which the subject of original sin was more
profoundly investigated, and the questions concerning the Immaculate
Conception consequently began to be cleared up and to assume a definite
form and coherence, it was natural that a great devotion should manifest
itself to our Blessed Lady. And of the tendency and the effects of this
devotion Mr. Lecky has himself spoken. The character of the devotion to St.
Joseph, also, is sufficiently well known, and it was first, we believe,
treated at length by Albertus Magnus. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was
to an indefinite extent stimulated by the institution of the Feast of
Corpus Christi; and it, of a truth, is a devotion which of all others
breathes a spirit of tenderness and of love.

We can now only make a few concluding remarks. We have already given a
general estimate of the work, on a few points of which we have here
touched; for we considered it better to speak of two or three connected
subjects more fully, than to distract ourselves and our readers by flying
comments on the many and very diverse subjects there treated. We have only
explicitly to add what we have before implied, that we consider it a very
dangerous book. It is all the more dangerous, because Mr. Lecky is not a
furious fanatic; because of his spurious candor; because of his partial
admissions; because of his engaging style. And in an age like the present,
when the dogmatic principle is so bitterly attacked by those without, and
sits so lightly on the necks even of believers, it is exceedingly
dangerous. For, as was to be expected, it sets the dogmatic principle
utterly at defiance, and from beginning to end is a continued protest
against it. Mr. Lecky's idea of education, and his theory of the manner of
formation of religious opinions, are alike thoroughly opposed to it. In
education he would have the bare principles of morality only, as far as
possible, inculcated; dogma, as far as possible, excluded; and if any
amount of dogmatic teaching is unavoidably admitted, it is to be taught
only so as to rest as lightly as possible on the mind, and with the proviso
that the opinions then taught will have to be reconsidered in after life.
With respect to the formation of religious opinions, his book teaches a
kind of Hegelianism. Society is continually changing, and the best thing we
can do is to follow the most advanced minds in society. There is an
everlasting process, in which we can never be sure that we have definitely
attained to the truth. The end of this, of course, is to make all opinions
uncertain. We may know what we like best, or what the tendencies of society
incline it and us to believe; but we can never, as to religious opinions,
know what is objectively true.

{94}

It is not very difficult to discover what is the nature of this process
which is called rationalism. In former times the religious spirit
predominated over the secular; but from a variety of causes, and in
particular on account of the immense development of secular science since
the time of Bacon and Descartes, the secular scientific spirit has since
predominated over the religious. And rationalism is merely one of the
results of this predominance; a consequence of the application to religious
subjects of secular habits of thought. This may manifest itself, now in one
way, now in another; in the denial now of transubstantiation, now of the
doctrine of the Trinity; but its root and origin is the same: it tends (and
this quite takes the romance out of it) to the elimination of the religious
ideas, and it is strengthened by whatever strengthens what we have called
the secular scientific, or weakens the religious, spirit. Hence that
dislike of authority and that over-clouding of the moral character of
religious truth; hence that distaste for the miraculous and the mysterious,
and that tendency to put into the background, and even to deny, the
doctrine of grace; and if the internal wants of those who have just
"escaped from the wilderness of Christianity, and still have some of the
thorns and brambles sticking to their clothes," make it necessary that
something should be substituted for that which is being taken away--a
baseless and often unreal sentimentalism is substituted for honest
religious duty and earnest devotion. It is only too much to be feared that
the world will educate itself out of this also; and that, in the case of
those who refuse submission to the Catholic Church, the secular spirit will
more and more grow toward its full ascendancy, and therefore toward a total
extinction of the already weakened religious ideas.

-------

  Original.

  A DREAM.


  A procession passed by in my fitful dreams,
  So strange that it now like a nightmare seems.
  I beheld a long line of wifeless men
  Whom their living wives might claim again.
  And widows and orphans who never gave
  Husband or parent up to the grave.
  In the hands of each of this motley train
  Was a broken heart and a broken chain:
  And a veil hung down over every face
  Hiding the shame of a deep disgrace.
  A figure they bore on a funeral bier,
  Of a form that belonged to another sphere.
  Not a line of humanity could I trace
  In its ghastly, shadowy, hideous face.
  From its jaws came a noisome, poisonous breath,
  That hung o'er the bier like the mist of death;
  Then spread like a pestilence through the air,
  And husbands and wives standing here and there

{95}

  Its magical circle of mischief within--
  Opened their mouths and sucked it in.
  Then, straightway, like beasts, grovelled prone in the dust,
  Burning with jealousy, anger, and lust.
  I marvelled to see as I looked again
  All these were now widows and wifeless men.
  In their hands, like those in the funeral train,
  Was the broken heart and the broken chain.
  And as the strange throng passed hurriedly by,
  They chanted this dirge with a savage cry:

      Dig its grave deep.
    Hide it well out of sight,
    Lest it come to the light,
    And our hearths and homes smite
    With a curse and a blight.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    Lest its treacherous smile
    May our reason beguile;
    Lest its rottenness vile
    May the nation defile.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    For lust and for gold
    It has bartered and sold
    All that dearest we hold;
    Let its death-knell be tolled.
      Dig its grave deep,

      Dig its grave deep.
    The land has been rife
    With its bloodshed and strife
    Between husband and wife.
    Crush, crush out its life.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    It has stood by the side.
    Of bridegroom and bride
    Whom it meant to divide,
    And their troth falsified.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    It feedeth on lies.
    It breaketh all ties;
    And all innocence dies
    'Neath the glance of its eyes.
      Dig its grave deep.

{96}

      Dig its grave deep.
    'Tis an offspring of shame
    Deserving no name;
    From the devil it came,
    To return to the same.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    'Tis a curse and a bane:
    Its touch is profane;
    And brings sorrow and pain
    In its murderous train.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    'Tis a damning disgrace
    To a people or race,
    Who there nature abase
    To give this thing place.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    Pile earth, rocks, and stones
    On its festering bones:
    Naught for it atones:
    Hell its parentage owns.
      Dig its grave deep.

  As I looked once again on what funeral bier,
  My limbs became rigid through horror and fear;
  For the hideous form breathed its breath in my face,
  And spreading its arms to invite an embrace,
  Beckoned me on with an ominous nod;
  I cried, Fiend, avaunt! in the name of God!
  And awoke.--On that bier I had seen the foul corse
  Of the scourge of our country, THE LAW OF DIVORCE.

{97}

  Original.

  A Talk About Paris.
  By An Old Bachelor.

So much has been said, written, thought, and exaggerated about Paris, that
little remains to be said, written, thought, or exaggerated about it.
Still, keeping clear of the broad road reserved to guide-books and
travellers, I flatter myself that a comfortable, easy chat about it and its
inhabitants, may not be unwelcome to my friends across the broad Atlantic.

If you hope some day to visit this great city--and what American does not
cherish that hope?--pray that that day may not be made a dark one by the
unceasing rain, and slippery, sloshy mud, which often usher in the winter.
No place so wretched as Paris in the rainy season; elsewhere one may make
up one's mind philosophically to india rubbers, umbrellas, and the blues,
but here it seems a sort of personal insult when the sun does not shine,
and brighten the long rows of while houses. Was not Paris made for
enjoyment, light-heartedness, and sunshine? At this season, it is not
unfrequent to hear visitors, with a grave shake of the head, declare that
they are really quite disappointed; that it is not at all what they had
expected, and that other places are much more interesting. They quarrel
with the emperor for his great work of regenerating and beautifying the
Paris of crooked, narrow, but picturesque memory. The changes he has
wrought are indeed marvellous; and though he may well grumble at the
wholesale destruction of old places, and also at the discomfort attendant
on constant pulling down and building up, yet the unprejudiced traveller
cannot but stand amazed at all that has been done during one man's reign,
and also feel a certain degree of gratitude for the comfort of wide,
well-paved streets, and well-built modern houses.

My first visit to Paris was some twenty years ago, when I was sent on my
travels, before settling down to a hum-drum law office. I remember well
many quaint nooks and corners, which I look for in vain now. Among other
places, I see in my mind's eye a certain queer old tavern restaurant, famed
for its English dishes, its gray-haired waiters, and its cheapness; it
stood in Rue St. Lazarre, at the head of the Chaussée d'Antin, a wide and
populace thoroughfare. Here, escaping from my establishment "de garçon"
hard by, I used to find myself at about six o'clock waiting for my slice of
"Ros bif." Well I remember the old room, with its comfortable half light,
and white-covered tables; well, too, do I remember the old gentleman who
invariably took the cosiest nook, and secured the paper over which he
invariably dozed; and the student of medicine who carved his chicken with a
skill that made my blood run cold. But more vividly than all do I remember
a young countryman of mine, an artist, with his English wife, a young
girlish creature, who particularly interested me; they seemed so happy,
made so light of that hard struggle with poverty--which so often turns the
strength of young men to despair, and the love of young wives to sourness--
that I made an effort, notwithstanding my shyness, to become acquainted
with them. We have been friends ever since, and as I write, the young
artist, having conquered in the battle of life, is both known and respected
in his native country; as to his wife, though she certainly is no longer
girlish, she is as merry as ever, surrounded by her bevy of grown and
growing daughters.

{98}

Remembering all these things, one of my first excursions was to this place,
hoping to live these memories over again, and thereby perhaps to feel young
once more. But I looked in vain; on the very spot where the humble
restaurant stood, towers at this moment a beautiful new church, with wealth
of statues and ornaments; it is called "La Ste. Trinité," and is the pride
of the neighborhood. But I looked at its highly decorated white façade with
a feeling of disappointment. I should so have liked another slice of that
famed "Ros Bif!" Everybody has heard about the boulevards of Paris,
encircling the city, and intersecting it in every direction, giving it
fresh air and beauty. Every one, too, has heard of the straight new
avenues, radiating from the Arc de Triomphe like rays from a sun, and of
the manifold new streets which have swallowed up so many old ones; and,
above all, of the wonderful opera house, which stands just opposite Rue de
la Paix, and which is to be one of the wonders of the world. I have heard
and read that it is almost finished, therefore conclude that it is my own
want of perceptive powers which makes it still appear to me like a huge,
uniform mass; lately, however, through the breaks in the scaffolding I have
perceived parts nearly finished, with ornaments of color and white marble,
and from these glimpses I conclude that when the time comes, I shall be
able to indulge in the ecstasies of admiration expected from all beholders
of this mammoth enterprise.

But all this is not Paris, Paris of olden times, of history; it is
beautiful, but it is terribly new, and the old fogies of the Faubourg St.
Germain, emerging from their narrow streets, shake their heads at the broad
new avenues, with their unmitigated straightness and meaningless
uniformity.

The other night I went to hear a play now much in vogue, called La Maison
Neuve, a capital satire on this "Nouveau Paris," and full of local hits.
But why should I attempt to tell you anything about it? Americans know
everything about everything, and probably while you are reading this, The
New House is figuring in large letters on the play bills at Wallack's, and
managers "out West" are conning over the possibilities of adapting this
nice little tid-bit of novelty to their stage. All the French shading, all
the palpable hits, will, alas! be made limpingly to apply to New-York,
Chicago, St. Louis, etc. We are a great people, there is no doubt; but do
we not, sometimes, in our great hurry to be ahead of everybody else, make
little mistakes? In a recent conversation with some French friends, I
mentioned that La Famille Benoiton was figuring East and West. "Mais
comment! how can they understand it? even Frenchmen, if not Parisians,
would have difficulty! mais c'est impayable." I quietly replied that we
were a great nation, which is a convenient answer on many occasions; but
between ourselves, is it not a pity that we do not aim at a little
originality? that we must ape Paris quite so much?

But, to return to La Maison Neuve. It was hissed at first, its satire was
perhaps a little too piquant; but some of the thorns being removed, it
blooms in glory, and Frenchman clap furiously at the merciless cutting up
of Boulevard Malesherbes, and the upstart fashions of young France. From
what I have seen and observed, I fancy the play is an exaggerated, but on
the whole a tolerably faithful picture of modern French life, with its want
of depth, its tinsel, its sham, and its immorality. But let us leave the
theatre--though the charming, light, natural acting, which we heavier
Americans cannot imitate, make it wonderfully attractive--in turn once more
to Paris streets.

{99}

After all, life is not in the houses, or rather slices of houses, which
people call apartments, but in the streets. At this season, one does not
feel astonished at it; every body, even the rheumatic old bachelor, feels
tempted to leave the smoky chimney--why do French chimneys always
smoke?--and wander up and down peering into all the shop windows, with
their wealth of beautiful things, tempting one to buy a Christmas or New
Year's gift for every body under the sun. We must acknowledge that our
cousins of France have a most wonderful art of displaying their merchandise
to the best advantage. Did anyone ever imagine anything more seductive than
a French confectioner's? It is really dangerous to pass the establishments
of Boissier and others on the Boulevard, with their beautiful display of
boxes, caskets, vases, and quaintly dressed figures of grand ladies, etc.,
all filled with delicious bonbons. As to the toys, there is positive genius
displayed in these pleasures of a moment; indeed, these shop-keepers are
not only artists, they are satirists. Approach, dear ladies, look at these
dolls, and sigh for fashion, if you can; these unimaginable gew-gaws, these
extraordinarily long robes, which give the dear creatures the appearance of
being half on the floor, and half above it, these--these ... but I lack the
milliner vocabulary, or I would stun you with the etceteras; then the turn
of the head, the stare through the miniature eye-glass, and the little
curly dog led by a ribbon! Messieurs the shop-keepers! I bow to you, you
are greater satirists even than those sharp-penned writers of a certain New
York literary review.

The other day, having reached the upper part of the Boulevard, near the
Porte St. Dennis, I could not but stop and gaze down that long stream of
human life which lay before me; not a particle of the pavement was to be
seen, nothing but a living mass of bustling, pushing, quarreling humanity.
All classes, all ages, almost all countries, were there. Men in blouses.
and men in broad-cloth; beggars and nobles; innocent children, and men with
the inevitable marks of an ill-spent life on care-worn faces; silk attired
dames, and white-capped _bonnes_; loud-voiced ladies with unimaginable
boots, and the shortest possible walking dresses; anxious mothers trying in
vain to keep their excited little ones from running against portly
gentlemen, or loaded _commissionaires_. Fancy all this, with a Babel
of German, Italian, Spanish, and much more frequent English, with the noise
of street organists and Italian harpists, the screaming of itinerant
merchants, the dashing of carriages, the swearing of drivers, and you will
have some idea of the scene. As I stood in a sheltered nook observing, I
could not but think of Kribble Krabble, Hans Andersen's philosopher, who
showed his friend what seemed to be a city full of fighting, devouring
monsters, in a drop of water. I wonder if from those quiet stars, so calm
and pure, this busy scene does not also appear like that drop of ditch
water; whether some beings gifted with a penetrating vision denied to us,
do not see into the true natures of this elbowing host, and weep over the
monsters of cruelty, of cunning, of hypocrisy, of degradation
disclosed--inevitable adjuncts of a large city. Let us look again; we, less
gifted, see only beings one much like the other, all seemingly busy in
enjoying the gay scene around them, eagerly prying into the glittering
shops, or passing quickly by the thousand booths that during Christmas week
transform the street into a real Vanity Fair. They laugh, chat, seem happy,
and surely to be happy one must be innocent! Let us believe them so; let us
pass on, brushing by yon gaudily dressed woman, yon sinister-eyed man, and
thank heaven that we are not cursed with the magical glass of Kribble
Krabble. After all, do not those slashing satirists do more harm than good,
in bringing so vividly to the light of day things that might as well be
kept in the background? Is it not better philosophy to shut one's eyes to
much that passes around one, at this season especially, for it is Christmas
time, when there should be peace on earth?

{100}

Speaking of Christmas, reminds me to speak of the churches, which I have as
yet neglected. Paintings, engravings, and photographs have already made the
outside of these churches familiar to you, therefore I will not dwell on
that branch of the subject. Notre Dame, grand old Gothic Notre Dame, is on
an island in the Seine. It seems to look down, in its grandeur, on both old
and new Paris. On one side it seems sadly to recall the bloody memories of
years gone by; the rise and downfall of dynasties; the rise and downfall of
families still sheltered in the old streets of the old St. Germain quarter;
the death of the old _régime_, the breaking of hearts. On the other
hand, it seems to frown on gorgeous new Paris; on the beautiful panorama of
buildings along the bank of the river, the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Hotel
de Ville, etc., and beyond these, scores of new white buildings, and the
ruins of others, comparatively new, which are to give place to still finer
ones. The old church, with its quaintly carved monsters and old towers,
seems to stand as a warning of the time that is to come, when all these
great works of man shall be but vanity, and as chaff. This is a solemn
church, as it should be, and gloom seems to dwell in its lofty arches.

It is the Madeleine, the beautiful, bright Madeleine, which seems to be the
favorite church of the Parisians. It was here that, with great difficulty,
I found a seat on Christmas morning. As I entered the services had begun,
and a beautifully clear boy's voice was holding a high note, while a full
orchestral band was playing the accompaniment. The church was crowded, and
I noticed that a great many Protestants, both English and American, were
present. I have heard much and read much of the impropriety and want of
respect evinced by these in sacred places, but, except for a little more
staring, and perhaps some little more whispering, their conduct, as far as
I could observe, did not differ essentially from that of their Catholic
neighbors. In these large churches there is always an amount of bustle, and
a want of reverence, which, to an American Catholic, is, I confess, very
shocking. The constant coming in and going out is occasioned, in some
degree, by the fact that often, during high mass, several low masses are
going on at the side altars; but still the want of reverence evinced by
numbers and numbers of these French Catholics, is a fact too apparent to be
denied. I do not mean to say that I have not observed many who seemed to
realize what was going on before them, but most of these had "old
_régime_" written on their faces. With young France it is the fashion
to doubt, to scoff, or to be utterly indifferent, and who dares to disobey
fashion? But let us return to the ceremony.

The altar of this famed church has often been described. The marble group
above it is singularly beautiful, it represents Mary Magdalen, supported by
angels; the figures are of heroic size, and of the purest white marble. At
this altar ministered a large number of golden-robed priests, surrounded by
a bevy of boys in scarlet and white. Had I, too, been a Protestant,
ignorant of the deep and holy meaning hidden under these symbols, and
seeing in them but the glitter of gold and rich colors, I dare say I
should, like them, have pronounced it but a gorgeous show, a theatrical
display; as it was, my thoughts flew eagerly back to a certain well
remembered chapel across the Atlantic, where I had often assisted at the
same ceremony performed with a simplicity and devotion which contrasted
pleasingly with this grand high mass at the Madeleine. Persecution and
poverty are wonderful safeguards to the virtue of man; they are, perhaps,
also necessary to the perfection of churches. Religion--faith--must always
remain pure, but the professors thereof may easily be influenced by the
accidents of wealth and splendor.
{101}
While making these reflections, and indoctrinating myself with charity
toward our Protestant brethren, the mass went on, and the really beautiful
music filled the lofty church. But there was something discordant to my
ears in the harmony of the violins and brass instruments; to my mind the
organ alone, that most holy of instruments, is worthy of ministering to the
service of God. Still, the music was beautiful, and after all true music is
always sacred; and when at the elevation the loud instruments held their
breath, and a rich barytone voice alone was heard, I had to confess that,
whatever its surroundings, religion and religious spirit are always to be
found by him who really seeks them.

Remember, also, that I have been talking of the Madeleine, which is
essentially the worldly church of Paris. At St. Roch, situated in Rue St.
Honoré, and from whose steps the blood-thirsty crowd jeered at Marie
Antoinette as she was being led to the Place de la Concorde, where stood
the awful guillotine; at Notre Dame de Lorette, and many others, there is
less glitter, less parade, and apparently more devotion. At St. Roch, the
beautifully trained choir of boys, and the good music given, attract many
Protestants; still the feeling of the church is more Catholic than that of
the Madeleine. Here, as elsewhere, I was struck by the vast number of
priests in the sanctuary. I thought of our own overworked, faithful
priests, and could not help wondering whether a little of their hard work
would not be good for those before me.

As I look over what I have written I find that there is no small amount of
grumbling and fault-finding in the foregoing pages; I smile to myself as I
discover that I have fallen into the little peculiarity which I have so
often noticed in my countrymen and countrywomen in Paris: that of finding
fault. No American, or Englishman either, whom you may question, will utter
ten words on the subject, without abusing the French. "There's no trust to
be put in them; they are a lying, mean set," are among the mildest
accusations poured forth; and there certainly is some truth in the charges.
Americans, with the people at large, are a flock of rich fools, sent over
by their lucky stars, on purpose to be fleeced; consequently all the
tradespeople you employ, your servants and their ally the _concierge_,
invariably ask you about double as much as they would ask a Frenchman, and
laugh at you while pocketing your gold. The art of cheapening things, so
well understood by the people here, is a new experience to you. You do not
like to walk into a handsome shop and offer half the price asked for an
article, you are not accustomed to it, feel awkward; all of which the wily
shopman sees well enough, and, of course, you end by giving the price
required. But that French lady next to you, so handsomely dressed, does not
hesitate an instant; you think she at least would have disdained that art
of the _bourgeoisie_; not a bit of it; she insists, the clerk, bowing
much more respectfully than he did to you, wraps up the article, and the
lady sails out in triumph.

But for all this, Americans seem to find wondrous charms in this city, and
prolong their stay for one month to two, then to six, and not unfrequently
rush back to New York, settle up their affairs, and return to live here
permanently, despising the French more and more every year, of course! At
this present moment, if all our countrymen and countrywomen, now residing
here, were suddenly transplanted to the western prairies, they would form
quite a respectable sized city, which would, according to the invariable
western custom, begin to defy its sister cities to show a bigger figure
when the census came to be taken. But I fancy very few of these Americans,
if the question were put to them, would be willing thus to be transported
for the good of their country. We are undoubtedly a very patriotic people;
but we believe, most devoutly, that charity begins at home.
{102}
Among these same countrymen of ours I notice the names of a number of
well-known artists, who, I understand are well thought of in the artistic
world. It is pleasant to hear them praised by our cousins of France, but I
cannot help thinking that America, still so young in art, can ill spare her
gifted children.

Talking of artists, let me tell you of a sad little incident that came
under my own observation. We are all dimly conscious that poverty,
sometimes in its direst aspect, harasses the beginning or nearly all artist
lives. We have heard that N., whose beautiful picture drew crowds at the
last exhibition, and who cannot fulfil all the commissions that pour in
upon him--that the same man, not many years ago, might have starved but
for the aid of his fellow students; we know this, but, surrounded by
comforts and luxuries, it is the hardest thing in the world to realize
poverty. We walk the streets, brush by numbers of ragged women, throw a
copper to a bare-footed little beggar, but how often do we in our thoughts
follow those poor creatures to the hovels or garrets or cellars which serve
them as homes? how little we can imagine the cold and damp which chill
their bones, or the hunger which gnaws them! Still less do we realize, I
think, that beings with the education and feelings of gentlemen, should
have to endure these same horrors. I have before my mind, as I write, the
face of a young man, an enthusiast in his art, who, while engaged on a long
dreamt-of, cherished work, found that in consequence of the war in America,
the supplies on which he had calculated gave out. What to do? abandon his
work, his career perhaps? return beggared to his native western town,
without the promised work which was to show that his time had not been
wasted? Never, better starve! and starve he actually would have done, but
for the help of a student friend, almost as poor as himself, who shared his
daily loaf with him; and so the young man finished his picture, took it
over to America, where artists who saw it, seeing that it showed more than
ordinary talent, bestirred themselves, and making up a sufficient sum, sent
the young man back to his studies, feeling sure that the world would hear
of him some day. But I am wondering, let us return to Paris, and to the
incident which I was about to relate.

Some few weeks ago I was invited to dinner by some friends settled here for
the winter. The meeting was a pleasant one, and I left the brilliantly
lighted, handsome rooms with a pleasing glow over me, a reflection perhaps
from the good cheer which both mind and body had enjoyed. As I was passing
the inevitable _concierge_ lodge, the Cerberus kennel of every French
house, I was stopped by the sound of plaintive voice, and looking around I
saw a little girl, a child of some ten years, pleading evidently for some
great favor with the gruff _concierge_ himself, who, notwithstanding
all his decided negative shakes of the head, seemed to be struggling with a
certain degree of pity. The child was wretchedly dressed, and her little
hands were blue with cold, but in her upturned, pitifully old child's face,
there was a certain look of refinement that struck me. I approached and
asked what the matter was.

"Ah, pardon, monsieur! it is not of my fault; orders you see must be
obeyed, and the landlord ..."

Then he told me the story. It seemed that a month or two before he had been
a witness to the turning out from a miserable hole of a poor family; the
father called himself an artist, poor devil! his wife had a baby in her
arms, and there was a little girl. Seeing their utter distress, and
remembering a couple of miserable rooms dignified by the name of
"Appartements de garçon," but which did not let easily as they were dark
and uncomfortable, he had asked the landlord to allow them to occupy them
temporarily.
{103}
Shortly afterward the poor wife, a delicate, consumptive creature, died;
the baby did not survive her many hours, and the two were buried at the
expense of the parish, "But now it is impossible that they stay longer, the
rooms are let, and they must leave. What will you? monsieur perceives that
it is not of my fault." Monsieur feels a pang cut to his very heart. In
that same house, where such a short time since he was feasting and
laughing, a weary heart, perhaps, was breaking, and a young child
struggling with sorrow that made it old.

I asked the man if I might be allowed to see this unfortunate artist, and I
saw the child's face brighten as she slipped from his side to mine. I took
her hand and we went up, not the broad, handsome staircase which led to my
friends' apartments, but a dingy flight of stairs at the back of the court.
I was quite out of breath when we at last reached the door of this
"appartement de garçon." The child ran in, crying out: "Papa, papa I voici
an monsieur qui vient te voir."

A man dressed in miserable, ragged clothes, with a pitiful remnant of
gentility about him, was sitting at a rickety white wood table, his face
buried in his poor, thin hands, which I noticed were white and finely
shaped. At the sound of his child's voice be hastily got up, and seeing me,
bowed and offered me the only chair in the room, with a grace worthy of a
drawing room. I felt the tears well up to my eyes as I looked at this poor
wreck, and thought to myself how many dead hopes and dead aspirations lay
buried on that heart. I did not accept the chair, but held out my hand.
Something in the simple action, or in my face, perhaps, expressed the
sympathy I felt; it was too much for the poor man; be threw himself on the
bed sobbing convulsively; you see he was weakened by hunger and cold and
sickness. I put some money in the _concierge's_ hand, and he left us,
bowing respectfully.

When I turned I saw that the child had thrown herself by the side of her
father; he was moaning, but the sobs had already ceased. I felt his
forehead and hands, and found that he was in a raging fever. I looked
around, the place was miserable enough, and utterly unfit to be a sick
room. The _concierge_ shall be gratified, thought I, they shall leave
to-night; and sending the little girl out for a carriage, I was left alone
with my patient.

His face was much flushed, his eyes wild, and all my efforts to keep him
quiet were vain; I was obliged to let him talk. I soon gathered his whole
history from his incoherent words. There was nothing very new in it, it was
the old story of a respectable father, with a prejudice against the fine
arts; of a weary struggle first for fame, and then, forsooth, for bread; of
a foolish marriage with a girl as poor as himself, of children born to want
and misery, of unappreciated talent, etc. There was an unfinished picture
on the easel, and several others about the room; the poor man's eager eye
followed my movement as I looked at them, and he sank back comforted as I
praised his works. Heaven forgive, the charitable falsehoods! for that
glance sufficed to show me that I was comforting one of those wretched
beings who had just talent enough to conceive great things, without the
power of executing them, which is about the saddest of sad states.

The child soon returned, and I caused my poor invalid to be transported to
the Hotel Dieu, until I could make some other arrangement for him; his
little girl I put under the care of an honest woman who lived hard by,
where she slept; the days she spent by her poor father's bed. That bed he
never left, the hard struggle had been too much for him; the death of his
wife and child had been too severe a blow to the weak, loving, unfortunate
man. Brain fever soon declared itself and one dark, sad December day, his
little daughter and I followed his poor coffin to the nearest cemetery. The
child was very quiet, but her tearless eyes were unutterably sad.

{104}

I interested my friends in the sad story, and no happy mother, as she drew
her own dear ones to her heart, refused to help this bereaved one. So, we
made up a purse for her, and the other day I took her to a good school
where she is to remain until she is old enough to support herself, poor
little orphan! As I was about to leave her, she turned and said in her
quiet, undemonstrative way, a few words which I shall not put down here,
but which caused me to turn toward the door rather quickly, and to pretend
that I had a bad cold in my head.

This is no mere fancy sketch; I only wish it were a solitary instance.
Alas! for the poor in this great, rich, bustling, worldly city! But we must
bid adieu to it, with its delights, its wonderful sights, its wild
merriment, and its dumb misery. Adieu to it, and to you, my readers, a
happy, happy New-Year!


-------

    Original.

    Dr. Bacon On Conversions To The Catholic Church. [Footnote 29]

      [Footnote 29: A Roman Philosopher. A Review of an Article on
      Conversion in The Catholic World. By Rev. Dr. Bacon of Yale College.
      "New Englander." January, 1867.]


We embrace the opportunity of saying a few words on the topics of
controversy which have been started between the author of the article which
appeared in our columns on the "Philosophy of Conversion" and his
distinguished opponent; not with the view of following up the line of
attack opened by our able corresponded; but rather, in order to express our
own independent judgment, as a reviewer, on the question discussed, in some
of its important bearings.

Minor questions and side issues we leave to the opinions of those who have
read both sides, and we do not intend to meddle with them ourselves. The
gentleman attacked by Dr. Bacon has presented his view of what
Protestantism is, reduced to its logical elements and constitutive
principles. His opponent says: "I do not recognize that which you describe
as genuine Protestantism." This is all very fair. But he proceeds to infer
that the "Roman philosopher," as he designates the author of the essay in
question, either does not know what Protestantism is, or wilfully
misrepresents it. The doctor also, in turn, attempts to make a statement of
Catholic doctrine, as it appears to his mind, when reduced to its logical
elements. We, on our part, do not recognize this as a true representation.
We might, therefore, with just as much reason recriminate upon Dr. Bacon
his own accusations. We shall not do this, however; if for no other reason,
because these mutual recriminations in controversy are useless. Those who
love the truth can have no motive for misrepresenting the belief and
opinions of any class of men. Sincere Catholics and sincere Protestants
must alike desire that the principles and grounds of both Catholicity and
Protestantism should be placed in the clearest light possible and discussed
upon their naked merits, with as little mixture as may be of questions
concerning the intellectual or moral qualifications of individuals.

The original and genuine religion of New-England was the Calvinistic
Congregationalism of the Puritans, which still survives, with more or less
of modifications among the Orthodox Congregationalists, and has its
principal seat at New-Haven. The temper and tone of mind prevailing among
the clergy and members of this denomination place them at an extremely
remote distance from the Catholic mind, and make any interchange of thought
between the two very difficult.
{105}
With the exception of a slight movement started, without much effect that
we have ever heard of, by the learned and accomplished Dr. Woods, at
Bowdoin College, there has been no tendency in this body of the clergy to
return to any higher church principles than those of the Protestant
Episcopal denomination. It is this latter body which is the medium of
contact between the Catholic Church and the remoter Protestant bodies. It
has therefore first felt the effect of the increased inter-communication of
thought and influence between the two great divisions of Western
Christendom which is characteristic of our time. It is the hierarchical
principle, distinguishing this body from other Protestant communions, upon
which the influence of the Catholic church has been felt, and most of the
controversy has taken this principle as its starting-point. Of course,
therefore, it is in a great measure irrelevant to the question as it stands
between us and the non-episcopal communions, whether these are what is
called evangelical, or liberal, in their theology. We are disposed,
therefore, in addressing members of these communions to give the
_transeat_ to the whole Oxford controversy, and to allow them to think
what they please of the causes which have produced the current setting from
Anglicanism toward Rome. The controversy as between us has to be commenced
_de novo_, and to be carried on upon an entirely different basis.
Circumstances over which neither of us have any control, make this
controversy inevitable. We will confine ourselves, for the present, in
order to simplify the question, to the relations existing between Catholics
and Congregationalists in the State of Connecticut. We say, then, that
these relations make a controversy between us inevitable, just as much as
other circumstances and relations have made it inevitable between Anglicans
and Catholics in England and the United States. The reason of this
necessity is, that we have so many things in common, and so many points of
difference, that we cannot remain quiescent toward each other, except from
isolation in distinct communities, or from mutual apathy to the interests
of Christianity. Forty years ago, when Dr. Bacon was commencing his long
and distinguished career as a pastor in New-Haven, the question of
Catholicity had but little living and present interest for a Connecticut
theologian. It was a question of by-gone ages and distant countries. There
was not a Catholic in New-Haven, and there were few, if any, in the state,
excepting a small handful at Hartford, where the first feeble parish was
collected in a small frame church, purchased by Bishop Fenwick from Bishop
Brownell and dragged on rollers to a new site. We believe there were no
Catholics at that time in Rhode-Island; there were none in Vermont, Maine
or New-Hampshire. There were a few thousands in Massachusetts, mostly
congregated in Boston. The Bishop of Boston, whose diocese included all
New-England, had hardly half a dozen churches besides his very modest
cathedral, or more than a dozen priests. When the saintly Cheverus went to
Boston, his only cathedral was an old barn. As a matter of course, then,
the Catholic religion was looked upon merely as the religion of a few poor
immigrants, a bit of wreck from the institutions of the middle ages cast on
the New-England shore by the caprice of the waves. This habit of looking at
the matter has remained to a great extent unchanged, on account of the
almost complete social segregation of the rapidly increasing Catholic
community. That it cannot remain unchanged, however, is evident to
everyone. There are now fifty priests, one hundred congregations, four
religious orders, and a population of 75,000, belonging to the Catholic
Church in Connecticut. Although, therefore, isolation has rendered the
professors of the traditional religion of the State in a great measure
indifferent to the religion of this new element in the population, thus
far, it cannot continue; and this is apparent from Dr. Bacon's own
statements and views, as expressed in his article.
{106}
Apathy is also out of the question, especially as regards the clergy. It is
evident that the religious and moral doctrines and teachings of the pastors
of one fifth of the people of the State cannot be a matter of apathetic
indifference to anyone who takes an interest in the religious and moral
welfare of his fellow citizens. It follows then, necessarily, that the
leading clergy and theologians of the Congregational body in Connecticut
must engage with great application and industry in the study of the
Catholic system of doctrine and polity, not in second-hand works, but at
the original and authentic sources. They must pay attention also to the
cotemporary Catholic literature, both in the English and in foreign
languages. Studying and thinking on these topics, they will necessarily
write, speak, and converse upon them, and thus the same topics will engage
the attention of of all their brethren in the clerical profession, and of
the intelligent laity. We, on our part, cannot be indifferent to anything
written or spoken by men of learning and high position on the great topics
of religion. Consequently, we say, there must be controversy between us. In
point of fact, a little preliminary controversy has already commenced
between ourselves and the organ of the New-Haven literati.

We will not indulge in any premature gratulations over victories we may
hope to gain for the Catholic cause in controversy with the
Congregationalists, or conversions which may be looked for from among their
ranks. We shall on both sides agree that the truth is likely to prevail in
the end, and that whatever conquests truth may make redound more to the
honor and advantage of the vanquished than of the victors. In expressing
our satisfaction that this controversy is inevitable, we do not intend to
indicate a desire for a _polemical_ controversy in the rigorous sense
of the word. We do not wish to see the Catholic and Protestant pulpits
waging a theological artillery duel against each other; or a violent strife
for mastery, with all the bitter, hostile feelings which it engenders,
inaugurated between the Catholic and Protestant portions of the population.
On the contrary, we have particularly in view in what we are writing at
present, to bring forward certain considerations tending in an entirely
opposite direction. We desire, so far as our humble influence extends, to
forestall controversy of the sort alluded to, and to point out what we
conceive to be the true spirit and manner in which both sides should
approach the subject of the differences which unhappily divide us.

There are two ways in which we may carry on controversy. One way is, for
each side to place its own exclusive truth and right in the strongest
light, to affirm its doctrines in its own peculiar phraseology in the most
positive and dogmatic manner, and to take a position as far remote from
that of the other side, and as unintelligible to its opponents as possible;
moreover, to take the worst and most unfavorable view possible of the
doctrines and positions of the other side, and to impute to them all the
most extreme consequences of their principles which seem to ourselves to
follow logically from them.

Another way, is to conduct controversy, not from the two opposite extremes
of doctrine where the differences is widest and most palpable, but from
those middle terms in which both parties agree, and in relation to which
they are intelligible to each other. From these middle terms we may proceed
to the extremes, and thus endeavor to settle the points in which we differ,
by the aid of those in which we agree. The points of difference also, may
be perhaps reduced by mutual explanations, and a substantial agreement be
proved to exist in some doctrines where there is an apparent contradiction
in the terms used to express them.

{107}

In point of fact, these terms of agreement are numerous, and include the
most fundamental articles of the Catholic faith. The trinity, the
incarnation, the redemption, original sin, the regenerating, sanctifying
grace of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection and eternal life; the necessity
of repentance for sin, and of good works, the canonicity of the principal
books of the Old Testament, and of all those of the New Testament, their
divine inspiration, the obligation of believing all the truths revealed by
God, even if they arc super-intelligible mysteries, on the motive of the
divine veracity; these are all doctrines and principles in which there is a
substantial agreement. Moreover, the New-Haven school has brought the
Calvinistic doctrines in those respect in which it has modified them, into
a nearer approximation to the Catholic doctrines, than they were before. In
regard to the cardinal point of justification, the difference is really
less than it would appear. Although, in the New-Haven theology, faith is
made to include what Catholics call the theological virtue of hope, yet it
includes also that which we call faith, and which the Council of Trent
defines to be the "root of all justification;" that is, a firm, explicit
belief in those revealed truths which are necessary _ex necessitate
medii_, and a belief at least implicit in all other revealed truths. As
Dr. Bacon says, it is held that faith, in order to justify, must be
accompanied by charity, or the love of God. It is our opinion, therefore,
that the New-Haven divines really hold that it is _fides formata_, or
faith informed and vivified by love which justifies, and that this doctrine
is practically preached by the Congregational clergy generally. This is
identically the Catholic doctrine. In this case and in others, the sayings
of the learned Döllinger is verified, that "Protestants and Catholics have
theologically come nearer to each other."

Perhaps we may now be able to explain to Dr. Bacon our notion of
conversion, in a way which will make it appear not quite so repugnant to
his reason and feelings, as it is at present. In order to do this, we will
resort to an illustration, which will make our meaning plain.

We suppose Dr. Bacon will admit that the Jews before the time of our Lord
did not generally have an explicit belief in the trinity or in the divinity
of the Messiah; and that probably the apostles, when they were first called
did not have this explicit belief; although these doctrines, especially the
latter, are really contained in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, all who
were Israelites indeed were in the state of grace, and the children of God.
Let us suppose now, the case of a pious Jew, after the ascension of our
Lord, who neither believed in Jesus as the true Messiah, nor had culpably
and wilfully rejected his claims when sufficiently proposed to him. We
suppose Dr. Bacon will admit that this good man had already saving faith,
justification, the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, was spiritually
united to the universal church of which Christ is the head, and was united
therefore in faith and love with St. Peter, and all the members of the
apostolic communion. St. Peter preaches to him Jesus Christ, and he
believes his word, submits to his authority as the apostle of the Lord, is
baptized, joins himself to the Christian community, and partakes of the
communion. Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that this was the
case with Stephen, who became the first martyr.

Let us now take the case of Saul of Tarsus. Without deciding positively
whether Saul was morally culpable or not, for his opposition to
Christianity, we will suppose that he was so. At the time of his going to
Damascus, he was therefore without saving faith, unjustified, destitute of
sanctifying grace, and therefore not spiritually united with the church of
Christ, and with St. Peter and his brethren. By the grace of God Saul
believes in Jesus Christ, is baptized, and openly joins the Christian
communion governed and taught by the apostles.

{108}

Now, in those two cases, we have instances of an interior change of the
intellect and will followed by an exterior change of ecclesiastical
relations, which is properly called a conversion to Christianity. Stephen
and Saul are treated by the apostles and elders of the church in precisely
the same manner, when they apply for baptism. Yet, in the former case, the
interior change is not a conversion of the mind from unbelief to divine
faith, or of the will from sin to the love of God. It is a conversion of
the mind from an inchoate, imperfect apprehension of the revealed object of
faith to a complete and perfect apprehension of the same object more
clearly revealed. It is a conversion of the will from an implicit
determination to submit to the rightful authority of the Messiah, to an
explicit, actual obedience to the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, the
Prophet, Priest and King of the Jews and of the Gentiles.

In the other case, conversion included in itself the renunciation of a
proud, intellectual self-reliance which excluded the spirit of submission
to the authority of God over the mind, and the substitution of the humble,
docile habit of faith; together with a change of the will or heart from a
selfish, cruel devotion to the purely national glory of Judea to a
disinterested and divine love of God and all mankind.

In general terms, however, we speak of conversion from Judaism to
Christianity in reference to all, who have been born and brought up Jews,
and from conviction profess their belief in Jesus Christ, without
discriminating among different persons, in regard to their subjective
state. If we should undertake to give the philosophy of this conversion, we
should probably suppose our subject to represent subjectively what we
consider to be objective Judaism, whose logical basis is a denial of the
Christ foretold in the Old Testament, and personally made known in the new,
as Jesus of Nazareth. We should correctly describe this conversion as a
surrender of the mind and will to the authority of Jesus Christ; and should
correctly say that no person was thoroughly converted into a Christian, who
merely approved of such doctrines, and practiced such precepts of Jesus
Christ as he might choose, or select, by his own personal judgment and
will; but, who did not submit his mind to all the truth which Christ has
taught, on the motive of his divine infallibility, and his will to all he
has commanded, on the motive of his divine authority.

It is plain that Stephen must have acknowledged St. Peter as the accredited
representative of Jesus Christ, through whom he received the doctrine he
was to believe, and the precepts he was to obey, as a Christian. The New
Testament was yet unwritten, and the divine word could only be learned from
the lips or the apostles. Stephen could not, therefore, submit his mind and
will to Jesus Christ, except by submitting to their authority. Now, if this
authority has really been transmitted to the successors of St. Peter, and
to their colleagues in the episcopate, it is plain that it is by submission
to this authority that we are to submit the mind and will to Jesus Christ,
who has delegated it to them. "He that heareth you heareth me;" "As my
Father hath sent me, even so send I you," Therefore, when a person who has
not hitherto formally and explicitly recognized and submitted to this
authority, makes his submission to it, we call it a conversion, because it
betokens a real interior change of the intellect and will; accompanied by
an exterior change of ecclesiastical relations, if he has belonged to any
other visible communion before, or, if not, by the assumption of these
relations for the first time. This is without respect to his former
subjective state of interior relation to Christ and the church. If he had a
divine faith before, conversion does not include the passage from a state
of unbelief to faith. If this faith was previously vivified by charity, it
does not include the passage from a state of sin to the state or grace.
{109}
If, on the contrary, he was before an infidel, or a wilful heretic, and
destitute of charity, conversion includes both these transitions. We do not
limit the application of the word conversion to a mere interior and
exterior submission to the authority of the church. We employ it also to
designate conversion from sin, and continually preach to Catholics who are
living in sin the necessity of being converted to a holy life. We apply the
term also to a change from a tepid condition of the spiritual life to a
habit of more fervent piety. It is used as a general term to denote any
marked religious change for the better, and its specific meaning must be
determined by the connection in which it is employed. Its indiscriminate
use in denoting the act of transition from a Protestant communion to the
Catholic church does not necessarily imply that no discrimination can be
made among those who make this transition. Nor does it follow that all the
language of the writer whom Dr. Bacon criticizes, can be fully verified in
regard to all Catholic converts. Numbers of them have had from childhood a
firm faith in the principal Christian mysteries, and an habitual
determination of the will, at least for many years, to the love of God. In
such instances, what is technically called "conversion," is like what we
have supposed the conversion of Stephen to have been, the evolution of the
principle of faith and obedience into a more perfect and complete
actuation. Stephen had _fides formata_ before he was baptized, and so
have converts of the kind we are describing, _fides formata_, that is
faith which worketh by love, before their external union to the body of the
Catholic church is consummated.

The change which takes place in a convert of this kind, is not a transfer
of mental allegiance from the word of God to the arbitrary, irresponsible
dictation of a hierarchy. It is simply an increased intelligence of the
actual contents of the word of God, and of the nature of the medium through
which the knowledge of that word is transmitted. The object of faith, upon
which the intellectual act of believing terminates, is the revealed truth
considered as revealed, or as credible on the veracity of God. The medium
or instrument is the testimony by which we are authentically informed of
the fact of revelation and of its contents. In the case supposed, the
person has received from the testimony of the Church, which reaches him
through the Christian tradition, the knowledge of the principal facts and
mysteries revealed by Jesus Christ. Having, therefore, a reasonable motive
for believing, and the aid of divine grace, he was able, when he attained
the use of reason, to elicit explicit acts of faith in the Trinity, the
Incarnation, and other doctrines sufficiently proposed to him, to exercise
continually the habit of faith, and to persevere in the same without any
lapse. In this explicit faith, or faith in actual exercise, was contained
an implicit faith in all that God has revealed, but which was not known to
the subject in an explicit manner. When he examined into that testimony
through which the doctrine of Christ had been proposed to him, he found
that his undoubting belief in that testimony contained all implicit
recognition of the infallibility of the witness, and that he must either
draw the logical conclusion, or renounce the premises. He also found that
the article of the creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," as
revealed in the Scripture, and explained by the living, concrete sense of
the primitive Christians, contains in itself the idea of infallibility.
Convinced, therefore, that the Catholic Church, together with her testimony
and instruction respecting the person of the incarnate God and Saviour,
testifies and teaches her own infallibility as a witness, teacher, and
judge of controversies, and that this doctrine is contained in the word of
God, he perceives that he must believe on the veracity of God all that the
church proposes to him as contained in the material object of faith, the
_objectum materiale quod_ of theologians.
{110}
When he is further convinced that the bishop who occupies the See of Peter,
together with his colleagues, constitutes the _ecclesia docens_, the
teaching church, and that the infallible church has, therefore, proclaimed
her doctrine in the decrees of the Council of Trent; of course, nothing
remains for him to do but to seek admission into the fold of the Catholic
Church. This act has not, however, changed the essence of his faith. The
_objectum materiale quod_ of faith need not include explicitly the
infallibility of the church, since all theologians maintain that the
knowledge of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, is all that is
necessary _ex necessitate medii_, or by an absolute necessity, to
saving faith; and many maintain that it is the knowledge of God as the
supernatural rewarder which is alone to be placed in this category. Nor is
the infallibility of the church included in the _objectum materiale
quo_ of faith, that is in the objective motive or determining cause of
belief, which is the veracity of God. Billuart and De Lugo may be consulted
on this point by any who wish to ascertain the germane sense of Catholic
theology. Archbishop Manning, in a letter to Dr. Pusey, on the Workings of
the Holy Spirit in the Church of England, has brought out this doctrine
with appropriate proofs and citations in a very lucid and admirable manner.
The letter can be found in the Catholic World for June, 1865. The same had
been previously done by Father Walworth, in a sermon entitled Good
Samaritans, published in the Volume of Paulist Sermons for 1864.

The church is the medium through which the object of faith is
intellectually beheld, and the only medium. It is, therefore, impossible
for her to substitute any other material object of faith in lieu of the
true object, and equally impossible that the material object of faith
should be seen at all through any other medium. Whoever, therefore,
believes what the church proposes to his belief, necessarily believes in
the true object of faith, and whoever believes in the true object of faith
necessarily believes in it through the proposition of the church.

The first conclusion we draw from this postulate is, that the notion of
Catholics being subject to an arbitrary authority of the hierarchy or the
pope to impose whatever articles or belief they may choose, is a pure
misapprehension. The church is a witness to the doctrines and facts once
for all revealed at her original foundation. These doctrines and facts are
on record, The testimony of the church in regard to them has been publicly
given, and she cannot retract her testimony without manifestly falsifying
her claim to be an infallible witness. As a judge of controversies, she can
only judge of controversies relating to these very facts and doctrines.
These judgments, once given, are irrevocable. They have been already
pronounced respecting all the great facts and doctrines of Christianity,
and are on record. One who submits to these judgments knows to what he is
submitting. The synopsis of all Catholic doctrine is given to him in the
decrees of the Council of Trent. Since that Council there has been but one
definition of faith made, and that was the definition of a doctrine already
universally believed before it was defined. The notion that a Catholic is
subject to capricious, arbitrary, and unlimited decrees binding his faith
is altogether chimerical. There is no room for further definitions except
in regard to certain theological questions relating to doctrines already
defined, and the practice of the church has proved how slow she is to limit
the liberty of opinion in the schools by a final decision of questions of
this kind. The argument from the tyrannical nature of church authority is
therefore a mere begging of the question in dispute between Catholics and
Protestants. If the church, as Catholics define the church, be not
infallible, her judicial decisions of doctrine are tyrannical. If she is
infallible, they are not, and do not enslave either faith or reason.
{111}
It is no tyranny over faith, to make known with unerring certainty what God
has revealed, or what is a deduction from that which he has revealed. It is
no tyranny over reason to furnish it with certain universal principles and
indisputable data, from which to make its deductions. The only real
question, therefore, respects the infallibility of the church. So far as
the great mysteries of faith which are believed by orthodox Protestants are
concerned, they must admit that the Catholic Church holds and teaches them;
is compelled by her own formal principle to hold them, because she has long
ago put on record her testimony respecting them; and can never change her
doctrine on any of these vital points.

Our second conclusion is, that the notion of Catholic doctrine which
conceives of it as requiring one to believe that there is no true faith or
holiness outside of the visible communion of the See of Peter, is equally
erroneous. All that Archbishop Manning has said of the workings of the Holy
Spirit in the Church of England is equally applicable to the Congregational
Church of Connecticut. We have no just reason for regarding the original
colonists as formal heretics or schismatics, and even less reason for
including the subsequent generations in that category. All who have lived
and died in that faith which worketh by charity we acknowledge as the
children of God and our brethren in Jesus Christ. Those now living who have
this _fides formata_, are spiritually united to the Holy Catholic
Church, the communion of saints. Consequently, if any of these shall
hereafter enter the visible body of the church, not only will they not be
required to deny the validity of their baptismal covenant with God, and to
abjure their former spiritual life, but they will find in the tribunal of
penance that both will be recognized.

We repeat, therefore, once more, that the proper basis on which we may
confer together concerning the faith, is to be found in those doctrines in
which we agree, and not in those in which we differ. We may not make a
positive judgment in regard to the interior and subjective relation of
individuals toward God or the true Church of God. We leave that to him who
is the only judge of hearts and consciences. We are sure of this, however,
that we are bound to cultivate the spirit of Christian charity toward those
who profess allegiances to our common Lord, to the utmost possible extent.
This charity forbids us to make an arrogant and harsh judgment that they
are, _en masse_ and by the simple fact of their outward profession,
aliens from the household of faith, or that any particular individual is
so, unless he makes it plainly manifest in his conduct. We are agreed on
both sides that we are responsible to God for our belief; and bound, as
teachers and theologians, to study conscientiously the truths of the divine
revelation. We have also a common interest in endeavoring to come to an
agreement, so far as this is necessary in order to establish unity of faith
and of ecclesiastical fellowship. Let us suppose for a moment that Dr.
Bacon represents the Congregational clergy of Connecticut, and that we have
the honor to represent the Catholic clergy. We shall agree that it is our
common interest to defend the authenticity and inspiration of all those
books of the Holy Scripture which we revere in common as canonical, and the
historic truth of the Mosaic and Evangelical records, against infidel
rationalism. Also, to solve the difficulties raised by modern science in
relation to the harmony between rational and revealed truth. Also, to
preserve the faith of the people in the Trinity, the Incarnation, and other
doctrines which we hold in common, and which are strongly attacked by many
popular preachers and writers in New-England. Also, to counteract the
tendency to indifferentism and apathy in regard to religion which is so
common.
{112}
Also, to take all possible means to bring the mass of the people under the
influence of the spiritual and moral truths of the Gospel. Also, to protect
the Christian ordinance of marriage from being to a great extent subverted
by the practice of divorce. Also, to suppress intemperance, licentiousness,
and immoralities destructive of the well-being of society. Also, to protect
the religious liberties and rights of all religious societies, and the
property, which is devoted to religious, charitable, and scientific
purposes. Also, to do all in our power to blend the various elements of the
population into one homogeneous body, and to educate them in an enlightened
and devoted attachment to the political principles of the founders of the
state.

We will not go any further with our enumeration, for fear of assuming too
much in respect to the sentiments of our respected friend, Dr. Bacon. We
speak for our individual self alone, in saying that we cannot but deplore
the obstacle which is put in the way of carrying out into practical results
our common desire for the spiritual, moral, and social well-being of the
people of our native and ancestral State, by the schism which exists among
those who profess in common so large a portion of the Christian faith. The
spectacle presented by a divided Christianity is to us extremely painful.
We think it ought to be, also, to a member of the church founded by the
Puritans. The forefathers of New-England undoubtedly intended to plant the
pure church and faith of Christ. They made the greatest sacrifices and the
most heroic exertions in order to do it. They expected their church to
flourish, to remain, and to include in its fold all their posterity. They
took somewhat stringent measures to secure the success of their plan, and
notwithstanding our difference of judgment from them as to the justice or
wisdom of their policy, we must allow that they were conscientious. Things
have turned out, however, quite otherwise than they sanguinely expected.
Not to speak of the more extreme change which has taken place at the
headquarters of Puritanism, Connecticut is divided up among
Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Baptists, to say nothing
of the small sects which exist there. Rival colleges and seminaries have
been established, and even rival schools of theology among the
Congregationalists dispute over their respective interpretations of the
ancient standards of doctrine. Dr. Bacon and his friends have had no little
to suffer during their public career as ministers and professors of
theology, from the imputation of heterodoxy, and they know well how
frequently and how deeply religious differences have interfered with the
peace of families, the union of friends, and the success of religions
efforts. The Catholic Church we say nothing about, for this has been almost
exclusively the church of a late immigration of poor people, who have
sought an asylum from English tyranny among the descendants of those who
long ago fled from that same tyranny, and so nobly broke its yoke from
their necks.

However tolerable and unavoidable such a state of things may appear to
some, we cannot but think that the foresight of it would have made the
stern old Puritans of the ancient times groan in spirit. We confess that we
sympathize with them, and that it occasions mournful thoughts to look on
the failure of such a high-souled undertaking as theirs. We sympathize with
their strong affirmation of strict dogmatic and ecclesiastical principles,
and with the same affirmation as made by those who have adhered to the
doctrine handed down from them. We cannot help looking on division
respecting that which pertains to the true, orthodox faith, and the
essential terms of Christian communion, as a great evil. The complaint made
by the late eminent president of Brown University, Dr. Wayland, of the
extensive and growing scepticism of educated men, and the general decay of
practical faith, must be well known to the educated religious public of New
England.
{113}
It is our opinion, that the separation and disagreement among the professed
teachers of Christianity is one great cause of this, and that it breaks the
moral force of the evidence of Christianity in the minds of a large portion
of the most intelligent class, and in the popular mind also. It
disintegrates and neutralizes that power which a united body would have,
and which would give it an irresistible moral force against infidelity,
irreligion, and public immorality. We cannot help longing for the time,
when all those who are now disunited shall be brought together in one fold,
professing one faith, exhibiting the divine truth of the religion of Jesus
Christ by their charity and peace, training up their children from infancy
in the practice of religion, worshipping at the same altar, participating
in life and at the hour of death in the same holy rites, and fully
realizing what a Christian people ought to be.

The Puritan fathers of New-England had a foreshadowing of this state of
things, a foreshadowing, as we hope, of a reality to come. In our opinion,
"they builded better than they knew." We believe they were led here by the
providence of God, and guided by a higher power than their own. So far as
their work was merely human and defective, it was temporary and must pass
away. So far as it was divine, it was lasting and must stand forever. They
have founded noble institutions of learning and general education. They
have transmitted a Christian tradition, which has entered into the very
roots and fibres of intellectual and social life so strongly as to be
ineradicable. However the plant may languish, the root is still vital. Even
those who have wandered far beyond the region of Unitarianism into
speculations so vague and misty that they are almost atheistic, show in
their language, habits of thought, and entire mental structure, that they
have come from a Christian stock. The question of questions is always, what
is the religion of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his life and death upon
the earth? We hope, therefore, that the work commenced by these sternly
earnest men may be completed. In our view of the matter, it was necessary
for divine Providence to interfere, after a long lapse of time, to carry
out its own far-seeing purposes, into which this first and human plan was
to be made to blend and lose itself. The first refugees from the spiritual
tyranny of the British crown sought only an asylum for themselves and their
progeny, where they might realize their own peculiar ideal of a Christian
state and church, in a condition of colonial dependence on the mother
country. As in the political order, the results of the colonization of
America have taken an unforeseen form and magnitude, so in the spiritual.
Roger Williams led out a new band of _Puritanissimi_ from among the
Puritans, which made one division among them. The Church of England
stretched her roots also over to the virgin soil of New-England, and her
vigorous offshoot, Methodism, followed. Rationalism, too, has run its
course, as we all know, from the starting point of Channing, to the most
advanced position of Emerson. Finally, another race, distinct from the
English race by a difference of origin running back to the deluge, whose
origin as a people dates from the period of the grandfather of Moses, and
as a Christian people from the period of the Fathers of the Church, has
transplanted that form of Christianity which it has kept unaltered for
fourteen centuries, to the same soil, where it grows and flourishes "like a
green bay-tree." It is our opinion, that the Providence of God will bring
something out of this far grander and more perfect than the ideal church of
our ancestors. We think that the blending of races will produce a more
perfect type of manhood and a stronger people. We think, also, that the
religion of this people will contain all the positive qualities of the
different elements that will combine to form it.
{114}
Catholic dogma and discipline, which contains in itself all that is
positive in every form of religion, will assimilate whatever is good in all
it finds around it, integrating the noble fragments which have been rent
from the great edifice of Christianity into a perfect unity with
architectonic skill. The collision, intershock, abrasion, and melting
together of these various intellectual and spiritual forces will result in
the harmonizing of all into a unity in which the opposite tendencies
counterbalance each other. Depth and simplicity of interior life with a
rich and varied ritualism, moral strictness and self-abnegation with a
noble magnificence, taste and sobriety with fervor of devotion, unwavering
orthodoxy with a genuine rationalism, stability of forms with a genial
variety, hierarchical order with a manly liberty of personal action, form
the grand features of the type of Christianity destined to be realized in
the future. This is merely _our_ opinion, and we do not expect that it
will be generally received by those who will read these words at the
present time. We are confident, however, that their truth and force will be
recognized hereafter, long after we are numbered with the dead. We have no
expectation that the schism among those who profess the Christian name will
be healed in a summary manner, or as the simple result of discussion and
conference. It must be the work of the Creative Spirit, and cannot be
accomplished without an extraordinary communication of grace. It requires
time, also, and a gradual process. We have no intention of making an
arrogant claim of immediate submission to the authority of the Catholic
Church upon those who are not reasonably and calmly convinced of its
legitimate foundation. We are simply desirous of making a beginning in the
explanation of our own belief, in order to promote a better mutual
understanding of the question at issue between us. We ask simply, what we
are willing to concede to fair and honorable opponents, a hearing and a
candid consideration. The only weight we profess to give to the conversions
out of which this discussion has arisen is a moral weight entitling the
reasons and causes which have produced them to a serious examination. Dr.
Bacon has placed in the opposite scale the notorious fact of the great
losses the Catholic Church has sustained by the defection of her own
members. We beg leave to suggest, however, that there is no parity between
the two facts he endeavors to balance against each other. Those who lapse
into infidelity have first extinguished their conscience. They are not
seeking to draw near to God and to serve Jesus Christ, but to escape from
the dominion of both. Those who have become Protestants have not been
instructed and pious Catholics who were seeking for more light and grace,
but the offspring of parents through whose negligence or misfortune they
had been left to grow up without instruction or practical religion. On the
contrary, a large number of intelligent, well-instructed Protestants, some
of whom were clergymen of the highest standing, like Dr. Newman, Dr.
Manning, and Dr. Ives, have been led by the very effort they have made to
come up to the highest standard of faith and piety presented by their
church, after long and careful deliberation, to the threshold of the
Catholic Church, and have crossed that threshold. Dr. Bacon denies that
this fact has any particular moment for those who are not in the _viâ
mediâ_ of the Anglican Church, but are standing on what he deems the
surer foundation of the Reformed religion as established by Luther and
Calvin. Let his exception have its full value. Nevertheless, the same thing
has occurred on a lesser scale in the Lutheran and other churches of
Switzerland and Germany. Haller, Schlegel, Hurter, and Phillips are names
probably not unknown to the learned Protestants of our country.
{115}
In our own country, among the German Reformed Presbyterians, Dr. Nevin and
others have advanced to a position whose logical direction is straight into
the Catholic Church. The efforts of the illustrious Leibnitz in a former
century, and of Guizot at the present moment, to span the chasm between
Protestant orthodoxy and Catholicism are well known. The beginning of a
reactionary movement of the orthodox Protestants toward Rome is indicated
in the most terse and decisive manner by the great historian Leo, whose
authority is indisputable. Leo is the friend of Hengatenberg the
illustrious vindicator of the Bible against neology; a professor in the
Protestant University of Halle; and the author of a Text Book of Universal
History, which is both a scientific masterpiece and also one of the most
splendid arguments for divine revelation and the truth of Christianity
which this century has produced. These are his words taken from the work
just mentioned:

  "We shall be obliged to seek for the authorization of Protestantism and
  its mission in something widely different from church development, and
  forced to concede that Protestantism in the main forms only an
  exceptional case in the shape of a place of shelter from ecclesiastical
  difficulties, and that the Roman Church, when once released from the
  duties of her mission in other quarters, will also turn her attention,
  not to the abolition of papal authority, but to its more distinct
  definition, and secure it from arbitrary acts of administration, such,
  for example, as occur in the statement of the Thomist theses regarding
  the connection between indulgences and the doctrines of the church, and
  in one of the decrees against the Jansenists, and then will the
  possibility of the Protestant world returning to the church be realized."
  [Footnote 30]

  [Footnote 30: Univ. Geschichte, vol. iii., p.181.]

We have nothing to say on the particular point the learned historian raises
about doctrinal decisions of the Holy See, but have quoted his words just
as they stand in order to show the similarity of his position to that of
Dr. Pusey, and to prove that thoughtful minds in Germany as well as in
England are beginning to desire a reconciliation of the separate communions
with the great body of Christendom. The Catholic tendency is, therefore,
not one which has sprung solely out of the hierarchical and sacramental
doctrines preserved by a kind of semi-Catholic tradition in the high church
school of the Anglicans. It has a deeper seat and a wider extension. It is
not possible to nullify its importance by qualifying converts to the
Catholic Church as men who have made an "abnegation of reason, of the
faculty which discerns right and wrong, and even of choice and personal
responsibility to God," stifled their faculties of thinking for themselves
and of discerning between truth and falsehood. This theory will not hold
water, as the judgment of the English press on the controversy between Mr.
Kingsley and Dr. Newman amply proves. The prejudice against Catholics is
wearing away. Many, even devout Protestants, have no longer any objection
to join in the prayers or listen to the sermons or read the books of
Catholic priests. Catholics and Protestants are becoming connected by ties
of blood or marriage, they mingle in the social circle, and they have
fought side by side on the bloody battle-field. The impressions made on the
imagination of childhood must necessarily be effaced by contact with the
reality. The Catholic religion will become known for what it is, and its
advocates will receive the respectful hearing to which they are entitled.

We have all along intimated that it is not so much the mere exterior
argument for the authority of the church, as the dogmatic theology and the
interior spiritual doctrine preserved and transmitted by her authoritative
teaching, to which we desire to see the attention of our evangelical
brethren directed. The soul of the church is the noblest of its parts, and
the vivifying principle of the body. The really cardinal question at issue
concerns the method by which the individual soul is united with this soul
of the church, nourished and perfected in divine knowledge and love. In
this is included the nature of that manifestation of itself which the soul
of the church makes in its visible body.
{116}
We have no time to go into this subject at present. Courtesy to both the
writers whose articles we are reviewing requires, however, that we should
notice some of the topics over which their polemical weapons have clashed
so vigorously.

The writer of the article in this magazine denies that Protestants hold the
doctrine of the visibility of the church, while the writer in the "New
Englander" indignantly affirms that they do hold it. Both are in the right,
because each has an entirely different idea of the visible church from the
other. The Catholic idea will be found very ably exhibited in an essay on
the Two Sides of Catholicism, translated from the German, and published in
some of the earliest numbers of this magazine. Want of time and the
necessity of keeping our article within proper limits oblige us to leave
the matter without further remark, simply observing that no Catholic
theologian would ever think of denying that orthodox Protestants hold to a
visible, universal church, in the sense explained by Dr. Bacon.

In regard to justification, the first writer asserts that, according to the
Protestant doctrine, every man who believes he is saved by Christ is by
that sole belief united to the invisible church, which his opponent also
vehemently denies. It is the original, genuine Lutheran doctrine, _Sola
fides formaliter justificat_, Faith alone formally justifies, which is
in question. We do not think Dr. Bacon either understands or believes this
doctrine. The New England theology has from the beginning had a character
of its own, in which the subjective change called regeneration, a change of
heart, or conversion, consisting in an inward, supernatural transformation
of the soul through the grace of the Holy Spirit, has been made very
prominent. The Catholic formula, _Fides, una cum aliis requisitis,
dispositive justificat_, Faith, together with other requisites,
dispositively justifies, expresses better the spirit of this theology than
the Lutheran formula. That the merits of Christ are the meritorious cause
of justification is agreed upon by all parties. The exact sense of the
Lutheran formula is difficult of apprehension and of expression in clear
terms. As we understand it, it imports that the justification of the
sinner, which is, in this system, a mere forensic justification, and is
from eternity objectively perfect, is subjectively applied by an act of the
mind firmly believing on Christ as the substitute and ransom of the
particular subject making this act. In the strict Calvinistic system, the
doctrine that Christ redeemed only the elect is distinctly made the basis
of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Saving faith, therefore,
implies that the subject believes that Christ died for him in particular,
and that consequently he is entitled to the favor of God and eternal life,
irrespective of his personal acts, although he cannot receive this favor or
be prepared for the happiness of heaven without the gift of a grace which
gradually sanctifies him. Fletcher of Madely, the great theologian of the
Methodists, wrote most ably against this Solifidian system. It has also
been strongly combated within the past few months by Dr. Young, of
Edinburgh. It is our opinion that this doctrine tends to reduce religion to
pure individualism, and thus to obliterate both dogma and church. It
concentrates the method of salvation into a mental or spiritual act by
which Christ is apprehended in the relation of Saviour. This act is
supposed to be excited by a supernatural inspiration of the Holy Spirit;
but, as there is no test by which the reality of the inspiration can be
certainly verified, it reduces personal religion to a subjective sentiment.
A subjective personal trust in and affection to Jesus Christ becomes,
therefore, the principal mark of a Christian and of a member of the true
church. All who have this ought, therefore, to fraternize and commune
together. The principle of private judgment on matters of doctrine is
closely connected with this principle of individualism in the relation of
the soul to Christ.
{117}
Intellectual and spiritual individualism is the metaphysical note of
Protestantism. Spiritual illumination not being anything which can be
verified, except by miracles, the principle of individualism has a tendency
to eliminate it, and to substitute pure rationalism. Hence, the great
Protestant writer Leo says, in the immediate context of the passage above
cited from his history, that "entire Protestantism has continually
complained of its inability ever to arrive at any union as regards the
question whether the Scripture is to be interpreted by reason alone or
through interior illumination." When we talk about Protestantism, we
include the whole nominal Protestant world, and do not restrict our remarks
to the comparatively small number of faithful adherents to the old orthodox
confessions. We speak of the logical principles which distinguish
Protestantism from Catholicity, as they are in their abstract essence, and
as they work out their effects of negation and individualization. As to the
actual, concrete condition of Protestant bodies, it is very easy to use
loose expressions, and to make hasty generalizations, which can easily be
criticised. The writer attacked by Dr. Bacon may have fallen into some
inaccuracies of this kind. They afford no ground, however, for the charge
of either ignorance or wilful misrepresentation. We do not care to analyze
either his statements or the counter statements of his opponent. The
manifest fact that a considerable body of Protestants do hold to the
dogmatic formularies of their churches, and to strict practical rules of
moral and religious duty, is one which we not only acknowledge, but take a
great pleasure in knowing to exist. We are glad to estimate the Christian
faith and piety which exist among them at its highest probable maximum.

Another point to be noticed is the estimation in which the Holy Scriptures
are held among Catholics. This is a point of great importance in our
estimation, and one in which it gives us great pain that the true Catholic
sentiment should be misunderstood. Controversialists may sometimes
exaggerate the difficulty of understanding the meaning of the Scriptures,
when they are intent on proving the necessity of Catholic tradition and a
teaching authority, or use expressions which would at first view appear to
a devout Protestant like Richard Baxter or Dr. Bacon, lacking in due
reverence for the written word of God. It is only, however, a want of
acquaintance with the real doctrine and spirit of the Catholic Church which
causes a person to be scandalized by such things. It is in the works of the
fathers, of the doctors, of the great theologians, of the saints, that we
find the just and adequate expression of the mind of the church. It is
impossible to exaggerate the sentiment of reverence for the Holy Scriptures
with which these great writers are filled. It is the perennial source, pure
and undefiled, from which their inspiration is drawn. The Bible is the work
of God, as the firmament of heaven is his work. It has the precedence of
dignity over tradition, decrees of councils, theology, science, literature,
every other work in which man concurs with the spirit of God; because in
the production of the Bible the Spirit of God has concurred with the spirit
of man in a higher and more immediate manner. There is but one question to
be asked: How shall we ascertain the true sense of the Scripture? For, as
soon as it is ascertained, it demands the homage of the mind _per se_
as the revelation of infinite truth.

We concur in what Dr. Bacon has written on this point, so far as its
general scope is concerned. He establishes all we desire to maintain,
namely, that the truths of revelation are not given in the form of
systematized dogmatic teachings in the Scripture. Therefore it is that we
need to be imbued with the sense of the Scripture by traditional teaching,
and to be furnished with a dogmatic formula in which its doctrines are
clearly defined, in order to be able easily and certainly to perceive in
their sublimity and completeness the divine truths contained in it.
{118}
Hence, the Jews, for want of this, cannot see Christ in the Old Testament.
Unitarians cannot see the Trinity or Incarnation in the New Testament.
Catholics, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Calvinists, Armenians,
Rationalists, Friends, Campbellites, and many others, cannot agree as to
the combination principle which will unlock the whole meaning of the
Scripture. We do not attribute this to the Scriptures themselves, but to
the incapability of the individual mind or spirit to take the place of the
divinely appointed, infallible witness, teacher, and judge of
controversies, to whose keeping the sacred Scriptures have been committed.
When faith is fixed as regards the great universal dogmas, and the canon
authoritatively settled, a perfect universe is opened to the student of the
Holy Scriptures, where he may prosecute his studies uncontrolled by
anything except reason, conscience, and a just humility. We have no
question whatever that all the articles of the Catholic Faith can be
conclusively proved by Scripture. None whatever that the principles on
which sound criticism and exegesis are conducted are truly scientific. We
believe that the books of Scripture are intelligible, and a perfect mine of
intellectual, spiritual, and moral treasure. This is true, eminently, of
the sacred books as they are studied in their original languages. It is no
less true, however, that its most important treasures of knowledge are
equally open to those who can read the best versions. No book has ever been
so many times well translated as the Bible. Let a version be warranted by a
competent authority, and one may expatiate in it with as much freedom and
confidence that his mind is really borne up on the ocean of divine truth,
as if he could read the Hebrew and Greek with the readiness of a Mai or a
Hengstenberg. It is, therefore, without doubt, a most excellent and
profitable exercise for good, plain people, able to read and understand the
English Bible, to read it continually and attentively. In proportion as one
become capable of understanding the Holy Scriptures, and has the means of
prosecuting his studies, in the same proportion will the advantage to be
gained increase. We have no fear of any intelligent, instructed Catholic
being injured by reading the Bible. Nor do we consider the very general and
high esteem of King James's version among English-speaking Protestants, and
their general familiarity with it, as an evil, or as an obstacle to the
spread of Catholic doctrines. We regard that version as among the best in
literary excellence, and as substantially accurate. We would as soon argue
from it with a Protestant as from the original texts. Indeed, we think it a
special blessing of God that one version, and that one so generally
faithful to the true sense of the Scripture, should be almost universally
diffused through the English-speaking world. Would that all who have
inherited the Christian name were firmly persuaded of the divine
inspiration of the Scriptures and sincerely desirous to learn their true
meaning! With all those who acknowledge Jesus Christ to be an infallible
Teacher sent from God, we feel that we have one firm spot to stand upon.
Where not only this truth is held, but, also, that he is the true and
eternal Son of God, and that the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ is so inspired by his Spirit that every statement it contains
respecting doctrine, morals, and the facts connected with them is
infallibly true, we have another firm spot broader than the first. As for
those who have altogether lost their footing upon even the first of these
solid Christian principles, we may well shudder at the magnitude and
difficulty of the work of their re-conversion to Christianity. Yet, this is
the great work really impending, unless we would see a large portion of
Christendom swept away into infidelity, and involved in all its appalling
consequences.
{119}
For this reason we desire with all our heart that the differences among
those who believe that all the hopes of the human race are contained in the
Christian revelation should be finally settled, and that all should agree
as to what that Christianity is, which shall be proposed to the acceptance
of all mankind. This desire has been our motive for endeavoring to pierce
through the special and personal issues of the controversy before us, and
to bring it upon broader and more open ground. We have endeavored to get
the question out of a region where we conceive that misunderstanding and
useless contention will be interminable. There is an antecedent difficulty
in the way which we know very well, and did know before we were so
distinctly reminded of it by our learned friends of New-Haven. It is the
preconceived opinion they hold respecting the end and object which the
advocates of the Catholic religion have in view, and the policy according
to which they act. We have not been sanguine enough to suppose that
anything we can say will remove this difficulty. Until our respected
friends become familiar with the works of our great theologians and
spiritual writers, and come into closer intellectual contact with the
general Catholic mind and heart, there must be a non-conducting medium
between us, which will obstruct the communication of thought and sentiment.
We aim only to recommend this study, on grounds of reason, policy, and
Christian charity. We have already seen its effects in many instances in
bringing nearer together those who are widely sundered, and therefore we
will cherish the hope that its ultimate result may be a complete and
universal reconciliation.

-----

    Abridged from the Dublin University Magazine.

    Athlone And Aughrim.


    Preparations for the Struggle.


During the winter and spring of 1691, General Ginckel had the comfort or
seeing the forces under his command tolerably well clothed and fed, and
housed in different cities and towns, while their antagonists in Connaught
enjoyed these advantages but sparingly. Tyrconnell returned from France in
January, leaving 10,000 louis d'or at Brest to purchase provisions, etc.,
and bringing to Limerick about 18,000. He established public confidence to
some extent by reducing copper crowns and half-crowns to their just value.
He gratified the Irish party by producing a royal patent, creating
Sarsfield Earl of Lucan, Viscount of Tully, and Baron of Rosberry.

In May of the same year arrived in the Shannon the French fleet, laden with
provisions, arms, ammunition, and clothing, but neither men nor money.
However, what they did bring must have been a great boon to the poor
soldiers, whose pay, when money was available, had hitherto not exceeded a
penny a day. With these supplies came General St. Ruth to assume the
command of James's forces in Ireland, which at and from that time included
no French soldiers. The main strength of William's, armies was concentrated
about Mulingar, and the Dutch commander was ably seconded by his officers--
Talmash, Mackay, and De Ruvigny, names familiar to the readers of Richard
Ashton's play of the "Battle of Aughrim." St. Ruth had for assistants
Majors-General d'Usson and De Tesse, and Lieutenant-General Patrick
Sarsfield, but unhappily for the cause he came to maintain he assumed airs
of reserve and superiority with the Irish nobleman, which the latter could
ill brook.

{120}

On June the 6th of that eventful year the campaign may be said to have
begun with the march from Mullingar. We learn from "Tristram Shandy" that
the army in Flanders swore frightfully, and indeed it was not much better
in Westmeath. We find Baron de Ginckel giving strict orders, while the army
was proceeding westward, that the chaplain should read prayers at the head
of each regiment at ten in the morning, and again at seven in the evening,
and exhort their flocks to desist from swearing, "a vice (as Rev. Mr. Story
complains) too common among us." "Stealing" seems to have been another
prevalent weakness; the chaplain relates how "a fellow stole a horse and
was hanged for it, which wrought some reformation for a time." The
following order implies considerable demoralization among the varied
populace in arms ruled by the able Dutch general: "No sutler or other
person whatever should buy any ammunition, arms, or accoutrements, or any
thing that belonged to the soldiers on pain of death; because the soldiers
for a little money would be apt to sell their cloaths or shoes; and if as
great care were not taken of most of them as of children, they would soon
be in a very indifferent condition."

The only incident that varied their march to Athlone was the taking of the
strong fort of Ballymore. Mr. Story censures the commander, Myles Burke,
for "not listening to the general's mild proposals." After vigorous
salutations of powder and shot on both sides, Ginckel sent a verbal demand
to surrender within two hours or else--! Governor Burke requested the
message to be conveyed to him in writing, but gained nothing by the motion.
The following missive was immediately sent in writing:

  "Since the governour desires to see in writing the message which I just
  now sent him by word of mouth, he may know that if he surrenders the fort
  of Ballymore to me within two hours, I will give him and his garrison
  their lives and make them prisoners of war. If not, neither he nor they
  shall have any quarter, nor another opportunity of saving themselves.
  However, if in that time their women and children will go out they have
  my leave.
    "Given in the camp, this
    8th day of June, 1691,
    at eight a clock in the
    morning.
      Bar. De Ginckell."

The general was not so severe in deed as in word, for though resistance
continued to be made with two Turkish cannon mounted on cart-wheels, much
beyond the stipulated two hours, he still treated the defenders as
prisoners of war.


  The Siege of Athlone.

On the 19th of June the English cannon began to thunder on the devoted
outworks of the English town of Athlone, to wit, that portion of it which
stands on the eastern side of the Shannon. Story gives the number of the
English army at this time as eighteen thousand, well provided with all
warlike appurtenances. A breach was made in the indifferent defence, and
next day the assault was made by four thousand men. The defenders after
losing two hundred men made their way into the Irish town on the western
bank, taking care to leave behind them toward their own side two wide
chasms, below which flowed the Shannon deep and rapid. This was the amount
of the destructive work done on the second day. St. Ruth, hearing of the
taking of the English town that evening, advanced within three miles of the
still untaken portion, having about fifteen thousand men, horse and foot,
under his command.

{121}

The next things done were the erection of batteries on the eastern side of
the river, and the subsequent demolition of the eastern wall of the castle,
and other fortifications on the Irish side, by the incessant storm of
cannon-balls from the strong defence on the eastern bank. A horrible
incident of this siege was connected with a mill resting on the bridge,
which, being fired by the English grenades, its sixty-four defenders were
burnt alive. Two only escaped by springing into the river.

As fast as castle walls and other fortifications were demolished, new posts
of defence and annoyance were set up on the Irish side, and the breaches in
the bridge could not be floored over, owing to the unwelcome neighborhood
of the Irish guns. The English general, weighing the difficulty of an
effectual transit, bethought of sending a lieutenant with an exploring
party to examine a reported ford toward Lanesborough:

  "Where there might be an easy and undiscovered passage for most of our
  army, while our cannon amused the enemy at the town. This party went and
  found the pass according to information, but tho' he (the lieutenant) was
  positively ordered to return as soon as he had passed the river, yet such
  are the powerful charms of black cattle to some sorts of people, that the
  lieutenant, espying a prey some distance from him on the other side, must
  needs be scampering after them, by which means our design was discovered,
  and the enemy immediately provided against it by throwing up strong works
  on the other side. The lieutenant, I heard, was afterward try'd, and
  suffer'd for it."

Good-hearted as we imagine our chaplain to have been, he could never bring
himself up to the point of impartial laudation of the good qualities of his
opponents. The ford toward Lanesborough being out of the question, the most
vigorous efforts were made to get possession of the bridge; but the stern
determination of the Irish party foiled every attempt.

At last the Irish breastwork, which prevented the English engineers from
laying a flooring over the now solitary chasm, was destroyed. It consisted
in great part of fascines (fagots), which being in an unlucky moment set on
fire by English grenades, were quickly consumed, owing to the dryness and
heat of the weather. The opportunity was not lost, planks were thrown
across, and even a flooring laid on in part, when a heroic band of ten men
of Maxwell's regiment, commanded by a sergeant, and all in armor, advanced
from the western end of the bridge, and began to tear up planks and boards,
and fling them into the river. A storm of bullets soon levelled them
despite their harness before they had completed the daring deed; but their
places were taken by another devoted eleven. They succeeded in
precipitating the remaining beams into the river at the sacrifice of the
lives of nine of their number. Two escaped, and the bridge was once more
impassable.

The name and fame of the historic or mythic Horatius Coeles has been
preserved for upward of two thousand years. There is not a verse extant to
the praise of these score of heroic men, martyrs to their cause. Their very
names are lost, if we except the sergeant, and probably _Custume_, the
name by which his memory is preserved, is either a mistake or a nickname.

The next attempt to pass the river was well arranged beforehand. It was
decided that at an early hour in the day efforts should be made at three
different points--the bridge, a ford lately discovered below the bridge,
and a point still lower to be crossed on pontoons. However, the boats
required more time to reach their places than was calculated on, and a
covered gallery, intended to facilitate the passage at the bridge, was
destroyed at the commencement of the advance. The Irish and English
grenadiers on the bridge began to fling their peculiar weapons at each
other, and luck being with the Irish on this occasion, their grenades set
fire to the enemy's fascines and to the covered gallery. There being a
strong westerly wind at the time, the flames spread rapidly, and caused
much confusion.
{122}
St. Ruth had received previous intimation of the design, and the flower of
the Irish troops were ready to receive the unwelcome visitors. Detachments
had poured into the garrison, and the main army remained under the cover of
the western ramparts of the Irish town, to rush in on the storming body if
they succeeded in crossing the river. The event of the strife on the bridge
prevented the attempt by the ford or the pontoons.

This check had a very disheartening effect upon the besieging forces; for,
though their cannon ceaselessly continued to play on the defences of the
Irish town, a council of war was held, wherein the difficulties of staying
there any longer were represented.

The council came to a wise resolution under the circumstances. It was
dangerous to retire, it was dangerous to advance; but glory and honor might
wait on the latter alterative, and it was adopted. The report of two
deserters who succeeded in coming across encouraged them in their
courageous resolve. They represented St. Ruth and his officers as put off
their guard, and expected to hear of the retreat of the English at any
moment. They also reported the garrison at that moment as consisting of
three of the rawest regiments in the whole force.

The report was in the main correct. St. Ruth had given a large party to the
ladies and gentlemen of the country, and universal joy and negligence ruled
in the army. The general, wishing to season the latest recruits, sent them
to keep garrison, directing that the fortifications in the rear, chiefly
consisting of earth works, should be levelled, so as to afford facility for
the new hands to retire, if they found themselves crowded by the foe, and
also facility to the tried men in the camp to come to their relief under
the same undesirable circumstances. D'Usson represented the want of wisdom
in the appointment of the raw hands to the post of danger, and further
objected to the destruction of the ramparts. The Irish chiefs did not
cordially co-operate; and there was a palpable want of wisdom in their
councils. The earthworks remained untouched, and the inexperienced soldiers
were set to learn their first dangerous lesson, a fierce foe in front, no
means of safe retreat in the rear, and a prodigious stake depending on
their firmness. [Footnote 31]


    [Footnote 31: It is mentioned in some accounts that when these new men
    found themselves at their posts they were unprovided with powder.
    Having after some delay got this article, they had to apply again for
    bullets. Captain Maxwell, to whom the application came, thinking they
    were already provided, jestingly asked, "Was it to shoot larks?"]

The ford already mentioned had been tried in the first instance by three
Dutchmen in armor, the English guns firing volleys apparently at them, but
in reality over their heads during the transit. This device protected them
from the Irish bullets, as they were supposed to be deserters. However,
when they turned round after a reasonably near approach to the Irish side,
they began to find the leaden shower pelting about their ears from that
quarter. They made their escape with some slight wounds, the water at the
deepest having only reached their waists. The season was a remarkably dry
one, and that ford had never been so shallow in the memory of man.

De Ginckel and his chiefs, having come to the resolution of trying another
bold assault, did not defer its execution till the enemy should become
apprised of their intention. The hour of relieving guard at six o'clock was
chosen, when the Irishtown men saw nothing very unusual in the crowding of
the English soldiers into the garrison. Everything being minutely arranged
between the Dutch general and his officers, a body of determined men moved
toward the ford. This was the critical movement on the success of which
depended the action to be taken at the other two passages. And here a
quotation from the memoir of Patrick Sarsfield, by J. W. Cole, Esq., will
help to make the state of things at that hour more clear:

{123}

  "Sarsfield apprised St. Ruth of the enemy's intention. He turned a deaf
  ear to the messenger who found him dressing for a shooting excursion,
  laughed at the idea of bringing up the army to repel an imaginary attack,
  and said scoffingly that his officers were tired with dancing at last
  night's ball. Sarsfield repeated the intelligence, representing in the
  most urgent terms that not a moment was to be lost. 'They dare not do
  it,' said the confident Frenchman, 'and I so near,' adding that he would
  give a thousand louis to hear that the English durst attempt to pass.
  'Spare your money and mind your business,' was the gruff retort of
  Sarsfield. 'I know the English better than you do. There is no enterprise
  too desperate for their courage to attempt.'"

Col. Charles O'Kelly gives it as his opinion that the Scotch Colonel
Maxwell "sold the pass." Here is a translation of his Latin:

  "One of his legions having swam over the Lycus that afternoon, no sooner
  came to Ororis (Ginekel) and delivered him a private message than the
  party was immediately detached to attack the river. When the soldiers
  called out to Maxilles for arrows (bullets), he would give them none, but
  asked them whether they should shoot against the birds of the air. He
  ordered the men to lie down and take their rest, saying there would be no
  action till night. So that when the enemy entered, the soldiers for the
  most part were asleep, and few or none in their posts. When the first man
  of the enemy mounted the breach, be boldly asked him, 'Do you know me?'
  whereupon he got quarter, and all the rest were put to the sword; this it
  seems being the signal to distinguish the betrayer from the rest, and it
  is supposed that Ororis commanded those who were upon the attack, to use
  the officer well who should put that question. ... Lysander (Sarsfield)
  accused him a few days before in the general's presence, and it is
  certain it was not prudently done, after giving you such a public
  affront, to intrust to him the command of a post of that importance, but
  it seems Corydon (Tyrconnel) would have it so, and Pyrrhus (St. Ruth) did
  not think fit to disoblige the viceroy."

We are not convinced of Maxwell's treachery, Col. O'Kelly's surmises
notwithstanding. He intensely disliked Tyrconnel, and this dislike was
shared in by all who enjoyed his favor. The public accusation, and the
important post intrusted soon after to the accused are the reverse of cause
and effect. We shall presently set his behavior at the assault in a better
light.


  The Passage of the Shannon.

A few minutes after the tolling of the church bell at 6 o'clock P.M., the
English batteries commenced playing furiously on the town, seconded by
numerous volleys from marksman who were stationed on ladders placed against
the inside of the wall in English town. In directing this deafening uproar
Ginckel seems to have badly co-operated with Colonel Maxwell in putting the
poor raw recruits to sleep. Simultaneously with this flourish, the trial of
the ford was made, to describe which we prefer the words of the
eye-witness, Story, to those of any other, including our own.

  "About 2,000 detach't men were now ready, and Major-General Mackay to
  command them. Major-General Tettcau, the Prince of Hesse, and Brigadeer
  La Molliner were likewise of the party, and Major-General Talmarsh went a
  volunteer with a party of grannadeers, commanded by Collonel Gustavus
  Hambleton. And for the greater encouragement to the soldiers, the general
  distributed a sum of guinea's amongst them, knowing the powerful
  influence of gold, though our armies had as little occasion for such
  gratuities (I mean as to that point of whetting their courage) as any in
  all the world, and have done as much without them.

  "The ford was over against a bastion of the enemies where a breach was
  made already, and the river being try'd three days before, ... and found
  passable; so that all things being in this order, six minutes past six a
  clock, Captain Sandys and two lieutenants led the first party of 60
  granadeers, all in armour and 20 a breast, seconded by another good body,
  who all with an amazing resolution took the river, the stream being very
  rapid and deep (?) at which time our great and small shot began to play
  from our batteries and works on our side upon the enemies works on the
  other, and they fired as thick as possible upon our men that were passing
  the river, who forced their way thro fire and smoak, and gaining the
  other bank the rest laid planks over the broken part of the bridge, and
  others were laying the bridge of boats, by which our men passed over so
  fast that in less than half an hour we were masters of the town. ... A
  great many of the Irish were killed in their works, and yet its
  observable that our men when they saw themselves really masters of the
  town, were not at all forward to kill those at their mercy, though it was
  in a manner in the heat of action. But the rubbish and stuff thrown down
  by our cannon was more difficult to climb over than a great part of the
  enemies works which occasioned our soldiers to swear and curse even among
  the bullets themselves, upon which Major-General Mackay told them that
  they had more reason to fall upon their knees and thank God for their
  victory, and that they were brave men and the best of men if they would
  swear less. ...
{124}
  Among the (Irish officers) were slain during the siege and attack, Col.
  O'Gara, [Footnote 32] Col. Richard Grace, Col. Art. Oge Mackmahon, two of
  the Mack Genness, and several others."

    [Footnote 32: This is probably a mistake, as there is record but of one
    Col. O'Gara in King James's forces, and he is afterward heard of at
    Limerick. Col. Richard Grace had fought vigorously for Charles I. till
    the surrender at Oxford in 1646. Returning to Ireland he raised at his
    own expense a force estimated at from three to five thousand men, and
    enjoyed the honor of having his head valued at £500 by Cromwell. In
    1652 he was permitted to retire to the continent with a contingent of
    1200 men. The Duke of York always treated him with the greatest
    friendship. After the restoration his estates in the King's County and
    were restored to him. He had defendant Athlone during Cromwell's wars,
    and again in 1690 against Douglas. During his government of this
    garrison he was rigid in repressing any outrages on the country people
    by the military, and on one occasion he had 10 soldiers hung at the
    same time from the outer wall for such offenses. He was killed the day
    preceding the capture, and his body discovered when the English got
    possession. His activity and energy could not be surpassed. In bringing
    up forces from a part of Kilkenny to Athlone he walked with the men
    seventy miles in two days. Another time he rode from Dublin to Athlone
    and back, 116 Irish miles in twenty-four hours.]

Notwithstanding the treachery imputed to Col. Maxwell, he exerted himself
gallantly to cover the retreat of the poor recruits, who found the rear
fortifications sadly in their way. St. Ruth, on receiving the fatal news,
sent off Major-General John Hamilton with two brigades of infantry to drive
out the enemy. But as the western ramparts had been considerately left for
the protection and comfort of this same enemy, the scrambling over these
works, and the subsequent driving out of the numerous and flushed forces
behind them, was not to be accomplished by a mere _coup de main_, and
two infantry brigades. They did what in them lay. They covered the retreat
of the fugitives, and gave the vanguard of their pursuers a warm reception.
Col. Maxwell, now a prisoner, and a passive spectator, afterward declared
that he had entertained great hopes of being rescued during the short but
deadly strife between the combatants. St. Ruth's feelings were not to be
envied the night of that dismal day; for he must have been sensible that,
owing to his contempt of the enemy, over-weaning confidence, and neglecting
necessary precautions, or not insisting on their execution, he wretchedly
permitted the great stronghold of the king for whom he commanded to be
taken out of his bands.

  "At Ballinasloe (we quote Mr. Cole) he drew up his forces intending to
  make a stand. Sarsfield, backed by the other general officers,
  represented that it was madness to risk a certain defeat there by
  engaging a superior and better disciplined army, flushed with the recent
  conquest of Athlone; that the wiser plan would be to hold Galway and
  Limerick with strong garrisons, to march with the remainder of the
  infantry and all the cavalry into Munster and Leinster, intercept the
  enemy's communications, and perhaps make a dash upon Dublin, which was
  left in a state unprepared for resistance. St. Ruth yielded to their
  remonstrances, and retreated to Aughrim; but here he suddenly and in evil
  hour for his own cause changed his determination, and resolved to risk a
  battle. He was either stung by the loss of Athlone, or prompted by
  personal vanity which whispered to him that he was destined to
  immortalize his name by a great victory."

Having made up his mind to abide the brunt of Ginckel's well-appointed and
well-disciplined and numerous forces, he halted his dispirited but
determined troops on the hill-side of Kilcomedan, about three miles
south-west of Ballinasloe.


  The Field of Aughrim.

Probably most of our readers are in the same predicament with relation to
this hill of dismal memory. They have not looked over that battle-field,
and probably never will, the Great Western railway notwithstanding. So we
borrow the graphic account of a writer who examined the ridge from end to
end, the Danish fort on its summit, and the unlucky old castle, conversed
with an aged man of the village, who had long since spoken with an aged
woman, who when a very young girl had brought some country produce to King
James's soldiers, and had witnessed with terror and curiosity some of the
occurrences of the fatal 12th of July, 1691.

  "The hill of Kilcomedan is in no part very steep. It forms a gradual
  slope extending almost due north and from end to end, a distance of about
  a mile and a half; and at the time of which we speak it was perfectly
  open and covered with heath. Along the crest or this hill was perched the
  Irish camp, and the position in which St. Ruth was resolved to await the
  enemy extended along its base.

{125}

  "The foremost line of the Irish composed entirely of musketeers, occupied
  a series of small enclosures, and was covered in front throughout its
  entire extent by a morass through which flows a little stream, and this
  swamp with difficulty passable by infantry, was wholly so for cavalry.
  Through two passes only was the Irish position thus covered assailable
  upon firm ground, the one at the extreme right much the more open of the
  two, and called the pass of Urrachree from an old house and demesne which
  lay close to it, and the other at the extreme left, by the long straight
  road leading into the town of Aughrim. This road was broken, and so
  narrow that some annalists state that two horses could not pass it
  abreast; in addition to which it was commanded by the castle of Aughrim,
  then as now it is true but a ruin, but whose walls and enclosures
  nevertheless afforded effectual cover, and a position such as ought to
  have rendered the pass impregnable. Beyond those passes at either side
  were extensive bogs, and dividing them the interposing morass. The
  enclosures in which the advanced musketeers were posted, afforded
  excellent cover, and from one to the other communications had been cut,
  and at certain intervals their whole length was traversed by broad
  passages, intended to admit the flanking charge of the Irish cavalry in
  case the enemy's infantry should succeed in forcing their way thus far.
  The main line extended in a double row of columns parallel to the
  advanced position of the musketeers, and the reserve of the cavalry was
  drawn up on a small plain a little behind the castle of Aughrim, which
  was occupied by a force of about two thousand men. The Irish army
  numbered in all, perhaps, about twenty thousand men, and the position
  they held extended more than an English mile, and was indeed as powerful
  a one as could possibly have been selected."

Begging the author's indulgence for this needful theft, we own ourselves
unable to resist the temptation of committing another, especially as, if he
had been under harness himself that day in the Irish camp, he would not
have voluntarily shared in the solemn function so vividly describes:

  "Many of our readers are doubtless aware that the field of Aughrim was
  fought upon a Sunday, a circumstance which added one to the many
  thrilling incidents of the martial scene. The army had hardly moved into
  that position which was that day to be so hardly and devotedly
  maintained, when the solemn service of high mass was commenced at the
  head of every regiment by its respective chaplain; and during this solemn
  ceremonial were arriving at every moment fresh messengers from the
  outposts, their horses covered with dust and foam, with the stern
  intelligence that the enemy were steadily approaching; and amid all this
  excitement and suspense, in silence and bare-beaded, kneeled the devoted
  thousands in the ranks in which they were to receive the foe, and on the
  very ground on which they were in a few hours so desperately to contend.
  This solemn and striking ceremonial under circumstances which even the
  bravest admit to be full of awe, and amid the tramp and neighing of
  horses, and jingling of accoutrements, and the distant trumpet signals
  from the outposts, invested the scene with a wildness and sublimity of
  grandeur, which blanched many a cheek, and fluttered many a heart with
  feelings very different from those of fear."


  The Pass of Urrachree.

A thick vapor, called up from the surrounding bogs and marshes by the hot
morning sun, kept the rival armies concealed from each other's sight till
about 12 o'clock, when, all becoming clear, the men on Kilcomedan had a
full sight of the allied forces, commanded by eight majors-general, and
arranged in double columns, their rich appointments presenting an
unpleasant contrast to their own much more modest if not shabby garb and
accoutrements. As soon as General Ginckel could command a distinct view
from a height toward the left of his lines, he was enabled to judge of the
strength of the position held by the Irish, and the skill shown in the
disposition of the forces adverted to above. He could see one portion of
the cavalry prepared to dispute the pass at Urrachree, another watching the
pass at Aughrim, the main body of horse posted below the crest of the hill,
the infantry still lower disposed in two columns, and he could guess the
presence of musketeers in the ditches at the bottom of the hill, prepared
to receive the hardy infantry who would venture across the morass to
exchange shots with them. Sarsfield's horse beyond the brow of Kilcomedan
on the Irish left, he probably did not observe. There was the shrewd and
fiery chief placed, with strict orders from his unfriendly superior not to
stir from that spot till expressly ordered.
{126}
Had the gallant Dutchman at that moment known that St. Ruth had not
communicated to any of his general officers the scheme be intended to
observe through the engagement, his hopes of victory would have been much
more sanguine. Feeling the inexpediency of commencing a general engagement,
yet impatient of the scene of inactivity before him, he gave orders to a
Danish captain of horse commanding sixteen men to attempt the pass of
Urrachree. The small body was warmly received by some watching cavalry
still fewer in number, and though the brave officer justified the
reputation of his country for dogged courage, his men were deserted by that
virtue so essential to every soldier, and "ran like men."

Ginckel, fully aware of the importance of the pass in case a general
engagement should take place, next directed Colonel Albert Conyngham to
take possession of some ditches near where one branch of the stream entered
the morass. The chief of this party had received orders not to advance
beyond the mere boundary, lest he should be intercepted, and thus bring on
a premature engagement. The Irish party, after receiving the enemy's fire
and returning it, showed their backs, and their assailants pursued them
beyond the limits pointed out by the sagacious De Ginckel. An ambush had
been prepared in expectation of this proceeding, and, while they were least
expecting it, a destructive fire was opened on them from behind cover. Many
immediately dismounted, and, taking advantage of a hedge, returned the fire
with deadly interest. They had little time to enjoy the success of this
move, when they were startled by the rush of a strong cavalry force
sweeping down on them from behind the extremity of the hill, and the old
manor-house of Urrachree. They were obliged to retire in disorder before
this new enemy, but the watchful eye of the justly displeased general had
well marked the progress of the action, and provided for the expected
repulse. D'Eppinger's royal regiment of Holland dragoons came on amain to
get between the pursuing Irish horse and the hill. But other detachments of
Irish cavalry were at hand to frustrate this design; the Earl of Portland's
horse were sent to support the forcing party, and a stern combat was waged
for about an hour, fresh parties joining the strife from the natural
impatience of men of heart to remain still while blows are bandying before
their eyes. At three o'clock this contention came to an end, both sides
having lost several stout partisans, and the relative positions being much
the same as at the beginning of the skirmish.

For the next hour and a half nothing was done on either aide. The English
generals were in close consultation as to whether it were better to renew
the attack or defer it till next morning. The brave old Scotchman, Mackay,
decided his fellow commanders for present action. He counselled a renewed
and more effective attempt at Urrachree, which, causing re-enforcements to
be drawn from the Irish centre and the neighborhood of Aughrim, would
enable the infantry to try the morass where it was narrowest, and also
enable the cavalry on the right wing to force the dangerous pass at
Aughrim, watched by the garrison of the ruined castle.


  The Morass And The Hedges.

At this time (half-past four in the evening) the main body of the English
formed two lines directly before the morass, the generals on each side
having a pretty correct idea of the state and efficiency of their foes. In
other respects the advantage was with the allied army. There was a perfect
cordiality and understanding between De Ginckel and his generals, and even
in the case of his death and that of his second in command the Duke of
Wirtemberg, Mackay, or Talmash, or De Ruvigny were perfectly apprised of
the general plan of the action.

{127}

The Danish horse and a body of infantry were ordered to the extreme left,
with the apparent design to out-flank the enemy on that side, and thus draw
away from the Irish centre and left wing much of the strength there needed.
This body (the Dutch, to wit) kept that postilion during the remainder of
the battle, doing as good service as if actually engaged. Three French
regiments, namely, those of La Mellonière, Du Cambon, and Belcassel,
commenced to assail the advanced forces of the Irish in the neighborhood of
these inactive troops, and obliged St. Ruth to weaken his left and centre
to support them. Except the cannonading from both sides there was no
fighting going on until six o'clock along the entire line, except this in
the neighborhood of Urrachree.

Mackay, in order to weaken still more the Irish left wing, advised Ginckel
to separate a considerable body of horse from Talmash's troops, who were
waiting for a favorable opportunity to tempt the narrow pass toward
Aughrim, and to send them toward Urrachree. This had the desired effect,
and now preparations were made to cross the morass at the narrowest part
and attack the Irish centre.

While detachments of the second line of the left centre of the Irish were
marching to defend the pass at Urrachree, and thus leaving their late
positions comparatively weak, four English regiments, commanded by Colonels
Erie, Herbert, Creighton, and Brewer, effected the passage of the marsh,
and were received by a volley from the men ensconced behind the lowest
fence. Openings (as before mentioned) being ready, these marksman, as soon
as they were dislodged, retired behind the next shelter, and repeated the
process till they had drawn the British soldiers nearly half a mile up the
hill.

Now their orders had been to wait till a much greater force had crossed at
a wider portion of the morass lower down (that is, near Aughrim, the stream
in the centre of the morass flowing in that direction), and effected a
junction with them. So when they saw their cunning enemies, joined by the
main central force, and these again backed by cavalry, all preparing to
sweep down on them, they remembered too late the wise orders they had
received. However, if the charging party were Irish wolf-hounds, the
charged were English bull-dogs, and determined to make courage repair evil
done by rashness. The gallant Colonel Erie cried out: "There is no way to
come off but to be brave!" But neither the courage of the men nor the
ability of the leaders could resist the downward charge of horse and foot,
and the flanking bullets that rained on them. Colonels Erie and Herbert and
some captains were taken prisoners and rescued, and recaptured, and we are
sorry to record that Colonel Herbert was killed while prisoner, from
apprehension of his rescue. The English did not or could not make use of
the fences in their downward flight, as their pursuers had done when
enticing them upward, but were driven, as it were, by press of men till the
survivors once more gained the bog.

Meantime five regiments, for whose safe lodgment these rash men ought to
have waited, had crossed the wider part of the morass lower down, under the
command of the veteran Major-General Mackay and Prince George of Hesse.
This fiery young warrior was ordered by his senior to keep his division
stationary in a cornfield until he himself should have made a sufficient
_detour_ to the right among difficult ground and to attack the enemy
in flank while Prince George was assailing them in front.

The same error as that just previously committed by the staid English
colonels was repeated by the impetuous young German prince. Being fired at
and probably jeered or mocked by the ditch holders he advanced to chastise
them, and both parties came to such close quarters that the ends of their
muskets nearly touched.
{128}
Back went the Irish musketeers, after them pushed the assailants, new
shelter taken, fresh shots fired, fresh dislodgments, no attention paid by
Englander or foreigner till they found themselves surrounded and assailed
front, flank, and rear, by the Irish. There was a skirmishing retreat made
till the corn-field was reached by the survivors, some even whose care for
self overpowered love of fame or fighting, never stayed till they had put
the morass between themselves and the pestilent hedgemen.

General Mackay, having mastered the difficulties before him, was in hopes
of having the Irish foe between himself and the holders of the cornfield,
but was thunderstruck on his return at the demoralized condition of his
rash friends. He sent to request aid from General Talmash, and the three
parties renewed a desperate onslaught on the musketeers who occupied the
fences. They were received with the same determined resolution and deadly
fire as on the two former occasions, and were obliged by the close and
uninterrupted musket volleys and flank charges of horse to fall back on the
cornfield, the marsh, and even to the dry ground on the eastern side on a
line with the English batteries.

Three times did the tide of battle flow and ebb across the bog on that
memorable afternoon, each party inspired with the dogged determination and
hate that a struggle for life and for a darling cause inspired. Even the
Williamite chaplain was obliged in a manner to do justice to the bravery of
the Irish enemy. Describing the beginning of the attack, he says:--

  "The _Irish_ in the meantime laid so close in their ditches that
  several were doubtful whether they had any men at that place or not, but
  they were convinced of it at last, for no sooner were the _French_
  and the rest got within twenty yards or less of the ditches, but the
  _Irish_ fired most furiously upon them, which our men as bravely
  sustained, and pressed forward, though they could scarce see one another
  for smoak. And now the thing seemed so doubtful for some time that the
  by-standers would rather have given it on the Irish side, for they had
  driven our foot in the centre so far that they were got almost in a line
  with some of our great guns planted near the bog, which we had not the
  benefit of at that juncture, because of the mixture of our men and
  theirs."

During the continuance of this deadly strife in the centre, De Ginckel was
directing the efforts of the foreign auxiliaries against the defenders of
Urrachree. The general himself, regardless of his own safety, exposed his
life on more than one occasion. He was re-enforced more than once from the
left, but all that the greatest skill and energy on the part of himself and
his generals, and bravery on the part of their men could effect, were
insufficient to remove the Irish cavalry from their ground of vantage. Next
to this mingled war of cavalry and infantry, and nearer the centre, the
French infantry regiments of La Mellonière, Du Camben, and Belcassel
struggled, like the fiery stout fellows they were, to drive the Irish
infantry opposed to them from their ditches. They (the French) fortified
their positions when any advantage was gained by _chevaux de frise_,
but these were again and again taken and destroyed by their opponents.
Scarcely did any portion of the mingled peoples suffer so much in the
deadly struggle at Aughrim as these gallant Frenchmen. Had De Ginckel's
cavalry, and these French infantry, succeeded in dislodging their
opponents, they would then be in a position to take the Irish centre in
flank, and bring the struggle to a speedy close, but this was not the mode
in which it was the will of Providence to decide the day.

Where was St. Ruth employed during these momentous struggles? Just where he
should have been, in front of his camp near the crest of the hill, watching
the fluctuations of the battle, issuing orders, and sending aid wherever
they were needed. Our chaplain says that he was so pleasurably excited by
the charges of his central infantry to the very line of the British
batteries that he flung his gold-laced hat into the air, extolling the
bravery of the Irish infantry, and exclaiming that "he would now drive back
the English to the gates of Dublin."

{129}

  How the Pass of Aughrim was Forced.

So far the Irish forces were sustained in their gallant struggle; but now
the scale of fortune began to waiver. Their final defeat began in a quarter
from which it was totally unlooked for by either themselves or their
antagonists. The castle of Aughrim, so well garrisoned, looked on a narrow
pass crossed by the stream before mentioned, but a little to the S. E. this
isthmus of firm land opened out to a tolerably wide space "in the shape of
a spindle furnished with its complement of thread." Here at about this time
of the fight, the extreme right of the English force planted some cannon,
and cleared of its defenders the gorge of the isthmus just between them and
the space before the castle. So far a step was made in the right direction;
they were enabled to make the next by the stupidity or treachery of an
officer who had been directed to send to Urrachree a detachment from the
second or rear line of the army toward the left. Along with this complement
he sent away a battalion from the front line; [Footnote 33] and this being
remarked by the English officers, three infantry battalions making use of
hurdles, slipped across the edge of the morass in front of the castle,
[Footnote 34] and took possession of a cornfield on the Irish side. The
Irish musketeers stationed behind the hedges in that quarter, aware of the
wide breach in the main columns behind them, retreated after delivering one
discharge, and took refuge in the hollow near the castle, the post of the
reserve cavalry. A troop of these coming to the rescue, the Englishmen took
to the shelter of the hedges where they had little to fear from a charge.

    [Footnote 33: Colonel Henry Luttrell having had to do in this transfer
    of the front line force where they were needed, gave a color to the
    tradition of his having "sold the pass at Aughrim."]

    [Footnote 34: Let it be borne in mind that the castle was on the north
    side of the narrow road or pass, and that its defenders had before
    their eyes the N.E. side of Kilcomedan and the morass so often
    mentioned. The village of Aughrim lay to the west of the castle, and
    Irish reserve force partly between castle and village.]

This successful manoeuver encouraged the passage of two other regiments
nearer to the centre, namely, those commanded by Lord George Hamilton and
Sir Henry Belasyse, and the moment seemed favorable for the approach of the
cavalry through the defile which they had cleared of its guards as already
mentioned. They were accompanied by infantry, who not being restricted to
the narrow limit of the boggy road, were prepared to fire on all the
visible defenders of the occupants of the outer works of the place. After
all, it is really difficult to account for the apparently rash movement.
There were 2,000 men in and about the castle, and two field-pieces were in
readiness to rake the pass in front. What possibility was there that a line
of horsemen two or three abreast, unable to return the fire of the
protected enemy, could escape destruction? We knew that small parties of
men have exposed their lives as on forlorn-hope enterprises, but here were
whole regiments.

Could it be that the leaders were aware that the danger to be incurred did
not exceed in degree the ordinary risks of warfare?

The chaplain says in reference to the apparent danger of the attempt:

  "The French general seeing our men attempt to do this, askt, '_What
  they meant by it?_ and being answered that they would certainly
  endeavor to pass there, and attack him on the left, he is said to reply
  with an oath, 'They are brave fellows; it's a pity they should be so
  exposed.'"

It is very probable that the words were uttered by the general, for the
long file of horses and cavaliers were distant only thirty yards from the
sheltered marksmen.

The adventurous bands owed their safety to a direct interposition of
Providence, to a detestable deed of treachery, or to the grossest piece of
negligence or stupidity in the annals of warfare.

{130}

We are told that Colonel Walter Bourke, commander of the garrison, having
sent to the camp for ammunition, four barrels of gunpowder and four of
bullets were sent to him. But when the barrels of ball were opened, on the
approach of the enemy, the eyes of the men engaged in the operation were
blasted by the sight of cannon-balls! The confusion and misery of the
defenders, officers and men, may scarcely be comprehended. However, they
resorted to the only means in their power. To supply ammunition they loaded
with buttons, with nails, with bits of stone, with their ramrods when all
else was expended, and did what execution they could.

The infantry regiments of Hamilton and Kirke, having found materials at
hand, barricaded a wide opening on the east side of the castle, in order to
prevent a charge on the cannon when passing from the Irish reserve in the
rere, and then they took possession of a dry ditch, whence they dislodged
the defenders of the castle's outworks, whose ammunition was expended, and
who for their misfortune lived before the bayonet was invented.

The Irish reserve, hearing from the fugitives how things were going on,
sped round to the opening on their left, through which they might charge on
the advancing artillery train; but there they found themselves checkmated
by the barrier set up by the English infantry. They wheeled round, and,
having made the circuit of the castle, they found themselves face to face
with Lord Oxford's regiment, who, under Sir Francis Compton, had already
gained the open ground. A brisk engagement took place, and the English
cavalry were twice driven back, but, being soon re-enforced by the horse
and dragoons of De Rouvigny, Langston, Byerly, and Levingston, they made
good their footing, several being slain on both sides.

It may well be supposed that St. Ruth was not a little surprised to see the
narrow and dangerous passage so well and safely achieved, and the lodgment
effected at the bottom of the hill by the English infantry. Still there was
nothing very disheartening in all this. He was at the head of a fine body
of cavalry; only four squadrons of the enemy had as yet effected a standing
at the north-east extremity of the hill; he and his troopers would charge
down and annihilate the rash intruders; and if need were, he could easily
summon the brave Earl of Lucan and his horse, who had been kept inactive to
this moment, and dared not stir till the word was given.

Here a tirade might very appropriately come in against the spite of fortune
toward the Irish cause, and particularly toward the aspirations of the
single-minded and heroic Patrick Sarsfield. He had been kept at the fight
of the Boyne in attendance on the king; at Aughrim he sat his horse on one
side of Kilcomedan while the exciting battle game was being played at the
other, and in neither case had he an opportunity of charging, or ordering
to charge, or directing a movement, or striking a blow. A complete insight
into the workings of his troubled and ireful heart on these days would not
be desirable.


  One Shot Decides the Victory.

The general, doomed to enjoy but a few minutes more of existence, was
radiant with confident hope. Preparing for the final swoop, he cried, "They
are beaten; let us beat them to the purpose!" He gave some directions to an
artillery officer, placed himself at the head of his guard, and was about
to give the command to charge when his head was blown to pieces by a
cannon-ball!

Does not it now seem an easy thing for the next in command then to have
sent at once to Lord Lucan, inform him of the fatal accident, and summon
him to take the chief command? It was a simple matter to charge on the
advancing columns, and through superiority in number and fresh untired
forces render what they had effected of no avail. No. A cloak was laid over
the body, and it was conveyed to the rere; part of the guard accompanied
it, and the rest soon followed.

{131}

The historians do not agree on the final resting-place of the body of the
gallant but ill-advised Frenchman, but the probability is that it was
conveyed to Athenry and interred in its roofless church; peace to his
memory! [Footnote 35]

    [Footnote 35: From the Green Book of Mr. O'Callachan, we extract
    (abridged) a curious traditional passage connected with the death of
    St. Ruth. The day before the battle, a neighboring gentlemen, by name
    O'Kelly, presented himself before him demanding payment of sundry sheep
    driven off his lands by the soldiers. The general refused, alleging
    that he should not grudge food to the men who were fighting for him and
    his country. O'Kelly persisting, the general used harsh language, and
    the other turning to his herdsman, bade him in Irish to mark St. Ruth
    and his appearance. "You are robbed, master," said the herd, "but
    anyhow, ask for the skins." These were needed by the soldiers for bed
    furniture, and all that master and herd obtained by the second request
    was a preemptory order to be gone. They obeyed and sought the English
    general, who recommended them to the care of a certain artillery
    officer named Trench. When the passage before the castle was made,
    Trench got his piece of ordinance fixed in an advantageous place on the
    edge of the marsh by means of planking, and as soon as the treacherous
    herd caught sight of St. Ruth he cried out, "Take aim! There he is, a
    man dressed like a bandsman." One wheel of the carriage being lower
    than was requisite, Trench put his boot under it, and everything being
    adjusted aim was taken, and O'Kelly and his herd got their revenge, and
    the favor of the ruling powers.]

However unaccountable it may seem, Sarsfield received no intelligence of
St. Ruth's death till it was too late to repair the mischance. Meanwhile
the English who had crossed at Aughrim found time to assist their
struggling friends in the centre, and the musketeers were gradually driven
upward. The main body of Irish infantry on right of the centre were as much
discouraged by the death of Rev. Dr. Stafford, an energetic chaplain, as
the guards had been by that of the commander-in-chief. The right wing at
Urrachree, after incessant fighting, were obliged to retreat before the
increasing numbers of their assailants released from duty elsewhere, and
the English and Danish cavalry at Urrachree were at leisure to relieve the
Huguenot infantry on their right from the fierce attacks of the Irish
infantry to whom they had been opposed.

It was now past sunset and the rout of King James's adherents had become
general, the last to retreat being the infantry next to Urrachree, who had
done such good service against the regiments of La Mellonière, Du Cambon,
and Belcassel.


  After the Battle.

The infantry fled to the protection of the large red bog on their left, and
the cavalry made an orderly retreat south-west, along the road to Loughrea.
The poor infantry were slaughtered without mercy by the pursuing cavalry,
but a thick mist mercifully sent saved the lives of many. An ingenious
diversion in their favor was made by a brave and thoughtful officer of the
old race of O'Reilly, who, getting on a small eminence, sounded the charge
for battle, and stopped for a few minutes the bloody pursuit. One skilled
in the domestic economy of battles may explain why the Irish cavalry did
not combine and present a strong and effective obstacle to the English
horse, while the poor fellows on foot were getting away under their
shelter. The present writer being a mere civilian can allege no sufficient
reason. Neither does he seek to excuse the party to whom the garrison in
the old castle surrendered. Two thousand living men occupied the premises
in the morning, and of these (the few killed excepted) only the commander,
Walter Bourke, eleven officers, and forty soldiers, were granted their
lives. To account for the absence of mercy on the English side it was
asserted that NO QUARTER was among the instructions given to the Irish
before the battle. We are not in condition to decide whether the fact was
so or not.

The number of killed and wounded on both sides is variously estimated.
Story says the Irish loss was 7,000. Others state it at 4,000. Captain
Parker, on the English side, says that there were slain of the allied
troops, about 3,000. This is a problem in the solution of which we feel no
interest.
{132}
We are gratified by the heroism displayed on both sides, and our
gratification would be much enhanced by finding it recorded that when
resistance ceased, quarter was generously granted. With few exceptions this
was not the case. Ardent partisan as the chaplain was, we are sure that his
better feelings were stirred by what he looked on "three days after when
all our own and some of theirs were interred."

  "I reckoned in some small enclosures 150, in others 120, &c., lying most
  of them by the ditches where they were shot, and the rest from the top of
  the hill, where their camp had been, looked like a great flock of sheep,
  shattered up and down the countrey for almost four miles round."

Were we sure of keeping our temper we would here commence a lay sermon on
the iniquity of those, whether emperors, kings, presidents, or evil
oouncillors, who for wretched objects, in which vanity or covetousness has
chief share, arm myriads of children of the great human family against each
others' lives, and feel neither pity nor remorse at the sight of poor naked
human remains, flung broadcast over heath, and moors, and hill-sides, like
grey stones, or the scattered sheep of our chaplain's illustration.

The English occupiers of the ground after the battle buried only their own
dead, unless where the presence of the other bodies interfered with their
convenience, and as the inhabitants of the neighborhood had quitted their
homes when the expectation of a battle became strong, the bodies of the
Irish soldiers remained above ground till nothing but the bones were left.
We quote an affecting incident from our chaplain relative to this sad
condition of things:

  "Many dogges frequented the place long afterwards, and became so fierce
  by feeding upon man's flesh, that it became dangerous for any single man
  to pass that way. And there is a true and remarkable story of a greyhound
  (wolfhound?) belonging to an _Irish_ officer. The gentleman was
  killed and stripped in the battle, whose body the dog remained by, night
  and day; and though he fed upon other corps with the rest of the dogs,
  yet, he would not allow them or anything else to touch that of his
  master. When all the corps were consumed all the dogs departed, but this
  used to go in the night to the adjacent villages for food, and presently
  to return to the place where his master's bones were only then left. And
  thus he continued till January following, when one of Col. Faulk's
  soldiers being quartered nigh hand, and going that that way by chance,
  the dog, fearing he came to disturb his master's bones, flew upon the
  soldier, who being surprised at the suddenness of the thing, unslung his
  piece thereupon his back and killed the poor dog."

Though our drama cannot conclude till the articles come to be signed at
Limerick, the fight we have endeavored to describe with full justice to
both parties, may be considered the catastrophe or _denouement_ of the
piece, no engagement of its magnitude or so decisive in its results having
taken place afterward.


  From Aughrim to Limerick

Sarsfield, at the head of the cavalry and some infantry, proceeded to
Limerick after the defeat of Aughrim; D'Usson conducted the main body of
the infantry to Galway, before which city De Ginckel arrived on the 20th of
the month. D'Usson had but few of the qualities requisite for a good
military chief, and negotiations were entered on next day, the Irish
evacuating the city, and the English general allowing them to proceed to
Limerick with the honors of war, and all the conveniences in his power to
afford them.

After Baldearg O'Donnel had much excited the expectations of the country
being freed through his valor and wisdom, he is found at this time a mere
chief of straggling parties, a greater terror to the natives by their
exactions than to the common enemy. He opened a correspondence with the
English general, and like some modern patriots was rewarded for the
annoyance he had hitherto given the English Government by a valuable
pension for life.

{133}

Such was not the system acted on by our brave old acquaintance, Thigue
O'Regan, now a knight, and Governor of Sligo. Baldearg having deserted his
old-fashioned and loyal associate, Sir Thigue found himself on the 13th of
September at the head of 600 men and provided with twelve days' food, the
town and part of the citadel in the enemy's hands, and 5,000 fresh men sent
against him by Lord Granard ready to smash his fortifications, or starve
him into a sense of his condition. The little man of the long periwig, red
cloak, and plumed hat, had a head as well as a heart. He capitulated and
received all the respect due to loyalty and courage. He and his garrison
were conducted out with honor, their twelve days' provisions (their own
residue) given them, and all conveniences supplied them for their march to
Limerick. To honor the peppery old knight, the same terms were granted to
all the little garrisons in that country.

Omitting negotiations, marches, and petty affairs, important only to those
concerned, we come to De Ginckel's camp at Cariganless (as our chaplain
spells the name) in his progress to Limerick. On August 25th, the army left
that town.


  Limerick's Last Defence.

On the 26th of August the besiegers of Limerick were at their posts, and on
the 30th the bombardment commenced. It was so severe and spread such
devastation within Irish town that many inhabitants took their beds and
migrated to the English town within the arms of the river, and Lords
Justices and delicate ladies and sundry lovers of quiet set up their rest
two miles inland in Clare. On the 10th of September forty yards of the
defending wall of English town were reduced to rubbish, but the arm of the
river was in the way, and no assault followed.

September 15th a bridge of boats was laid across the Shannon toward
Annabeg, and a large detachment of English horse and foot crossed to the
right bank of the Shannon. These took up their station beyond
Thomond-bridge, the Irish cavalry, whose place that was, being obliged to
remove to Sixmile-bridge. The laying of the bridge and the passage of the
detachment were effected through the gross negligence or treachery of
Brigadier Clifford, who was tried by a court martial for the offence. He
acknowledged the negligence, but stoutly denied the treason. Colonel Henry
Luttrell [Footnote 36] proved traitor without any doubt, and was kept close
prisoner till King James's will could be ascertained. Before that time came
the fortress was given up and Luttrell set at liberty. England rewarded him
for his intentions; and his name has since been a word of ill-omen in the
mouths of the Irish peasantry.

    [Footnote 36: This is the same Colonel Luttrell who sold the pass at
    Aughrim, as before mentioned. Ed. C. W.]

22d. De Ginckel attacked the Irish post on the Clare side of
Thomond-bridge. The three regiments of Kirke, Tiffin, and Lord George
Hamilton, overpowered Colonel Lacy with his 700 men, and when these sought
shelter in the city, they found themselves shut out by the town major, a
Frenchman, who feared that the foes would enter pell-mell with the friends.
Little quarter was given, and only 130 got the privilege of being made
prisoners of war. This is one of those instances in which the Irish party
suffered so fatally from the treachery or detestable negligence of some
among themselves.

The Duke of Tyrconnel died at the residence of D'Usson during the siege.

This was the last trial of arms between the friends of William and James in
Ireland. Next day a truce was agreed on and preliminaries of peace
commenced. With the "Conditions of Limerick," a dismal household word with
the peasantry of Ireland from that hour to the present, we shall not
meddle. They do not come within our scope, which merely embraces the
stirring events of the three years' campaign, our design being to present
these in a picturesque and interesting light, and in a spirit of genuine
impartiality. This being our design, we have seized on everything that
could reflect honor or credit on the chiefs of both parties, or the conduct
of the common soldiers. We have found much more rancor and want of humanity
distinguishing both parties, the military chiefs excepted, then we could
wish. These we have softened as much as truth would permit. No one reading
our sketches but will, as we hope, think better of the party whose
principles he repudiates, than he did before the perusal.

------

{134}

    Original


    Asperges Me.

    by Richard Storrs Willis.


  I

  Prostrate at thy altar kneeling,
  Not a thought or fault concealing,
  Hear me cry with inmost feeling,
    _Domine, asperges me!_
  Ah! What sins I come confessing,
  Since I last received thy blessing!
  Yet with all this guilt oppressing,
    Still I pled _asperges me!_

  II

  Sins of thought, of word, of action,
  Many a righteous law's infraction,
  Many an hour of wild distraction--
    _Domine, asperges me!_
    Oft I think can Christ forgive me--
    With such guilt can he receive me?
    What if my fond heart deceive me--
      _Dare_ I plead _asperges me!_

  III

  Come I must, for thou dost bid me!
  Ne'er for coming hast thou chid me!
  From my guilt, ah! quickly rid me--
    _Domine, asperges me!_
  That my heavy heart grow lighter.
  That my love for thee burn brighter,
  That my soul than snow grow whiter,
    _Domine, asperges me!_

------

{135}

    From The Month.

    Ancor-Viat--A New Giant City.


If any would-be discoverer of ancient monuments is envious of the laurels
of Mr. Layard and other celebrities of the same class, let him at once set
out by the overland route, and make his way as fast as he can to
Ancor-Viat. Few people have yet heard of it, but if what is said of it be
true, it must be simply the most stupendous collection of magnificent
monuments in the world. If the traveller in Central America, who, like Mr.
Stephens, quits the beaten tracks and plunges into the depths of vast
forests, is amazed at the ruins of Copan, Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen,
with their huge truncated pyramids, palaces, corridors, and sculptured
bas-reliefs, he would, it seems, be still more surprised if he extended his
researches to the Empire of Annam, and, advancing toward the utmost
boundary of Cambodia, where it skirts Thibet, he came, mounted on an
elephant, to the gigantic temples and forests of marble pillars which mark
the site of which we speak. It was thus that a French officer in the
service of the King of Siam recently visited the spot; and the account he
has given of it may be found in the Revue de l'Architecture, and is in
great part reproduced in the Revue Contemporaine of December, 1866. No
European writer before him has ever mentioned it, and in reading his
letters we must make allowances for possible exaggeration. He is a mandarin
of the third class, and has obtained the rank of general in command of the
Siamese army. M. Perrin (for such is his name) proposes revisiting
Ancor-Viat with a complete photographic apparatus; and when he has done
this, and had given us the pleasure of examining his photographs, we shall
be better able to judge of his veracity. Meanwhile the editor of the Revue
Contemporaine is of opinion that the clearness and simplicity of his
account leaves little room for doubting its truth.

When M. Perrin first visited Ancor-Viat, he saw nothing of its ancient
splendor; for in "Indian China," as in Central America, monuments of large
dimensions and great beauty are often unknown to the people who dwell
within a few hundred yards of them. The concourse of intelligent and
wealthy travellers alone teaches ignorant natives the value of their own
surroundings. On his second journey M. Perrin's attention was directed to
the ruins by a curious circumstance. The King of Kokien pays a yearly
tribute to the King of Siam in kind, and among the articles saltpetre
figures largely. In the whole of India beyond the Ganges--in the Birman
Empire, Siam, Malacca, and Annam--the people, children-like, have a
passion for fireworks, and consequently consume a large quantity of
saltpetre. Now the excrement of bats and night-birds that haunt in great
abundance the cities of the dead furnishes, it seems, a copious supply of
this substance, and is, in fact, as fruitful in the production of squibs
and rockets as guano--the dung of Peruvian sea-birds--is in the cultivation
of corn and rye. It is collected by malefactors who work in chains, and is
dissolved in water mixed with ashes. After some days the water and ashes,
with the macerated dung strongly impregnated with ammonia, is passed
through tight sieves, and exposed in big caldrons to the action of huge
fires.
{136}
The entire substance then evaporates leaving behind it crystals of
saltpetre. The East was famous of old for the manufacture of nitre; and we
have all have noticed how it forms spontaneously on the walls of stables,
slaughter-houses, cellars, and the like, from the decomposition of animal
matter, and even from the breath and sweat of beasts.

No wonder M. Perrin was struck as a foreigner by the strange spectacle of
convicts collecting bird-dung. The birds of night have a strong affinity
for ruins, and crumbling towers and terraces are--to use an expression of
Virgil's--

  "Dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum."

It was along the northern part of the great city of Ancor-Viat that M.
Perrin halted frequently to watch the culprits of Cambodia plying their
foul task. During six days of elephant march he travelled on without coming
to the end of the city. Here and there be penetrated into the ruins where
explorers had opened a passage. No one, he says, would believe him if he
told all be saw. The monuments, the palaces, the temples, the pillars,
stairs, and blocks of marble pass description. The circle of the ruins was
computed by the people of the country at ten or twelve leagues in diameter.
Now considering that London, with its three millions of inhabitants,
measures about eleven miles from east to west, and that Ancor-Viat by this
calculation covered about three times as much ground, there must have been
a pretty large concourse of human beings under the shadow of its colossal
halls. It may have been the capital of an empire; it may have been an
empire in itself. There, doubtless, as in the ancient cities of Mexico, the
rich and the great dwelt in spacious edifices, with gardens and groves
enclosed, while the poorer sort herded together in huts like those of the
rudest tribes of Indians. There were no parliaments and philanthropic
societies then to look after the dwellings of the poor; as space was no
object in those days, they made up for straitened accommodation at home by
plenty of spare room for building within the walls. Subaltern officers in
the British army in Ceylon, who have surveyed that island of late years,
report cities of enormous size, and covered in with jungle, as inviting
excavation. Anarajaphpoorra, they tell us, must have been larger than
London, and Polonarooa (be indulgent to the spelling, ye students of
Cingalee!) contains statues of Anak height. The recumbent Buddha in the
last of these two cities is 24 feet in length, and the Buddhist temples,
built of a kind of granite, are huge in proportion. What bullock-power and
elephant-power it must have required to move blocks of stone so unwieldy in
an age when machinery and engineering were unknown! What thews must these
Titans have had, before the time of eastern effeminacy, to build their
towers of uncemented ashlars piled up like "Pelion upon Ossa"! M. Perrin
assures us that he saw in Ancor-Viat temples in a good state of
preservation, but overrun with weeds and shrubs, which measured a league in
circuit. Pillars rose around him on every side, tall as cedars, and all in
marble. The stairs, though partly buried under the soil, still mounted much
higher than the noble flights one sees at Versailles or on the Piazza di
Spagna at Rome. The buildings in some places were as solid as if they had
been raised yesterday. According to local tradition, they are four or five
thousand years old; and yet, but for lightning and the overgrowth of
luxuriant vegetation, they would even at this day be perfect and intact.
"Oh! that I had brought a photographic apparatus with me!" exclaims this
traveller. "I assure you, whether you believe it or no, that the most
famous monuments ancient or modern which we can boast of are mere sheds
compared with what I have seen: our palaces, our basilicas, the Vatican,
Colosseum, and the like, are just dog-kennels to it, and nothing more!"

{137}

If we had never heard of the Indian cities of Central America which the
tribes are supposed to have deserted six or seven hundred years ago, when
warned by their priests of the coming of the Spaniards, we might feel
disposed to reject M. Perrin's account as no less fabulous than the travels
of Baron Munchausen. But when we follow the steps of Captain Del Rio and
Captain Du Paix, and still more those of Mr. Stephens in Chiapas and
Yucatan; when we see them working their way through dense forests in
Honduras with fire and axe, and arriving at a wall six hundred feet long
and from sixty to ninety in height, forming one side of an oblong enclosure
called the Temple, while the other three sides are formed by a succession
of pyramids and terraced walls that measure from thirty to a hundred and
forty feet in height, we are not easily repelled by any report of ancient
cities merely because the measurements in it run very high. There was a
phase in the history of civilization when half barbarous races who knew not
the use of iron, delighted in constructing lasting monuments, and made up
for beauty of detail by huge proportions, and for writing and hieroglyphics
by picture-painting. M. Perrin may be guilty of great exaggeration, but we
ought not to charge him with it too hastily. Modern research has more than
verified all that the Spaniards vaguely reported of the cities of the West,
where immense artificial mounds are crowned with stately palaces, and the
dauntless industry of former races is proved by the provision they made for
water supply in a dry and thirsty land--by the vast reservoirs for water
which have been excavated, and are found to be paved and lined with
stone--by the pits around the ponds intended to furnish supplies or water
when the upper basin was empty in the height of summer--by the wells hidden
deep in the rock, and reached by the patient water-carriers by pathways cut
in the mountain to a depth or 450 feet, and conducting them to that depth
by windings 1400 feet in length--by the long ladders, made of rough rounds
of wood and bound together with osiers, up which the Indians carried, and
still carry, on their backs from these deep sources the water requisite for
the consumption of 7,000 persons or more, according to the size of the
villages, during four months of the year--and by the subterranean chambers,
which the Indians of old probably used as granaries for maize, and which
were made, like the ingenious cisterns just spoken of, by slaves obedient
to more intelligent masters. These and similar discoveries in America add a
color of probability to the description M. Perrin has given of Ancor-Viat
in Asia. At the same time we would rather he had not forgotten his
photographic machine.

"I was anxious," he says, "to ascend to a temple that seemed tolerably
perfect. There were eleven staircases, of I know not how many stairs each,
to reach the first five only of peristyles! I began climbing at half-past
six in the morning, and at half-past seven I had barely been able to
examine two or three of the lower apartments. I was obliged to shorten my
stay, fearing that I should have to descend the stairs while the sun was
hot. All the walls are sculptured and ornamented. The first effect the
ruins produced on me was that of stupefaction. Yet I am not a man to cry
out with astonishment at trifles. The following day I went up by a winding
staircase to the top of an immense tower situated on a height, from whence
I enjoyed a good view of the surrounding remains. In hollows and parts
where one cannot penetrate there are palaces of colossal height and
grandeur. I had an excellent opera-glass, and could observe the details. An
untold store of architectural treasures was before me, stretching as far as
the frontier of Cambodia, which is ten or twelve leagues off! Just think
what Paris would be in ruins. Heaps of stones and ashlars scattered over a
surface no more than two or three leagues in diameter. Here there is on the
ground, and under the ground, marble, already hewn, enough to build after
the fashion of giants all the cities in the universe!"

{138}

This is indeed a climax; and one needs to pause and take breath before
following M. Perrin any further up his winding stairs. Can we attach any
credit to one who is so lavish in the use of words and figures? He has
evidently a supreme disregard for nice distinctions, and ordinary measures
of time and place. Marble enough in Ancor-Viat to build all the cities in
the world? _C'est un peu fort, M. Perrin._ But let us hear him to the
end. We can believe a good deal about cities excavated or still
underground, for we have seen several such with our own eyes; but credulity
itself has its limits. "I saw," M. Perrin continues, "the leg of a statue
the great toe of which measured eleven times my fowling-piece in the
length. It is in marble, like the rest of the figure; there is no other
stones here used for building, except colored stones, which are employed as
borders or for the eyes of statues. There are pedestals with flights of
steps, of which the crowning images have disappeared, as high and as large
as St. Germain l'Auxerrois. Fancy octagonal pyramids cut short at half
their proper height--all in marble, recollect. Who the devil raised all
this? If it was some famous dynasty, it cannot be very well satisfied with
the oblivion into which it has fallen, in spite of its sumptuous monuments.
What are the ruins of Palenque, or even Thebes with its hundred gates, or
of Babylon, compared with this unknown city without history and without
name?"

Now, setting aside Thebes and Babylon, it may be well to compare what we
really know of Palenque with the general's singular account of Ancor-Viat.
It is more than a hundred years since the Spaniards first heard of it from
the Indians, and the reports of its extent differ as widely now as they did
then. The natives say the ruins cover an area of sixty miles; Du Paix and
Del Rio seven leagues; and Waldeck about three miles. But though travellers
are not agreed as to their extent, they are quite unanimous as to the
remains themselves. All admit that they are "unique, extraordinary, and
mournfully beautiful." The largest building is on a mound forty feet high,
raised by the hands of man, originally faced with stones, and measuring 310
feet by 260 at the base. It is richly adorned with paintings in the style
proper to the ancient cities of Mexico; the corridors are sumptuous, the
flights of steps broad, and the figures of giant proportions, uncouth and
expressive of suffering. The tallest statue, however, that has been
discovered is only ten feet six inches high, by which it appears that the
stone figures of Mexican Indians were dwarfish compared with the huge
heroes and idols of the East. M. Perrin had been questioned about the
existence of religious monuments in the eastern Peninsula of India, and the
answers which he returned are as follows: "Sacred stones are found here.
Some of them are simply rocks which at some period or other were
sufficiently soft to receive very clearly the impressions of the feet of
men and animals. Of this sort the one most highly venerated is that of the
Buddhist monastery at Phrabat. An immense number of pilgrims visit it
annually. Others are enormous monoliths raised on socles roughly quarried.
If there ever were any inscriptions, they have been effaced. I have also
seen here gateways or arches of triumph built of huge stones laid one upon
another. What giants or what machines moved these immense blocks? They
stand alone. Not a vestige of any building is near them. Sometimes there
are not even any quarries to be found within a great distance. I saw two
such monuments as those I now speak of among the Stiengs, when I conducted
a military expedition against them. They stood in the midst of marshy and
almost impassable forests, and had certainly never before been seen by any
European.
{139}
Some of the people of Laos had spoken to me of these remains, but I very
nearly missed seeing them. The difficulties in the way of getting to them
were so great that at first I did not think they would be worth the
trouble. But they amply repaid me. I examined them most carefully with a
powerful glass. They did not appear to bear any inscriptions. Even the
luxuriant vegetation of the tropics had been unable to disjoint them. What
roots could rend asunder these stones laid one upon the other without
cement, and raise so heavy a weight? The side-supports were, I believe, as
high as the top-stone laid across was long. The soil is evidently raised by
the vigorous growth that marks the vegetation of these forests. These
remains must rest on monolith socles or on the rock, or on gigantic
foundations; for the ground on the surface is so soft and wet that you may
easily thrust a cane into it up to the handle."

When M. Perrin inquired of the natives who reared these monuments, they
replied the Gai; and by the Gai they meant some barbarous white men, who
came from the land of perpetual snow, who were as tall as three Siamese,
and whose fingers and toes, though articulated, were not separate from one
another. They rode on horses double the size of those now seen, but bones
of which are often found in the earth. Impious men were these Gai; they
hunted elephants, and feasted on their flesh; they offered sacrifices of
blood to their gods. Chinese merchants informed the general that monuments
of the same huge description are to be found in the north and west of
China, and that the people there call them "giants' stones." The traveller
in Central America is, we know, sometimes amazed to find monstrous blocks
evidently hewn by the hands of men, yet hundreds of leagues distant from
any calcareous strata. Men in the neighborhood who are learned in other
matters are quite at fault when their opinion respecting them is asked.
Some will tell you that the nature of the soil is changed from what it was
before the conquest, and others that the Incas had means of transport
unknown to us. Probably there are quarries of granite under the surface of
the savannas; but how the Indians could extract the stone without gunpowder
or machinery is a problem we are unable to solve.

Important discoveries are not always due to scientific and discerning men.
The earliest accounts of anything new and surprising are likely to be
overdrawn; but they are not the less valuable from this circumstance. Their
very exaggeration may stimulate inquiry, and thus be an advantage rather
than otherwise in the outset. It was a poor Tungusian fisherman who
discovered the most perfect specimen of the mammoth near the mouth of the
river Lena, nearly seventy years ago, and his sale of the creature's tusks
for fifty rubles led to an accurate knowledge of the monster's structure
and habits, as well as to a great extension of the trade in ivory derived
from mammoths' tusks. General Perrin's testimony appears to us well worthy
of attention, in spite of its being highly colored here and there. It may,
on the whole, fall far short of the reality, and may lead to the solution
of questions of importance in oriental history.


--------

    Original

    On the Planting of the Cross.

  Dig deep: the tree will surely grow,
    And spread its branches far and wide;
  No tree had e'er such fruit to show,
    Nor with its shade so much to hide.

--------

{140}


    Miscellany.

_The Cathedral Library at Cologne._--In the year 1794, when the French
Revolutionary army advanced to the Rhine, the valuable library attached to
the Cologne Cathedral was conveyed for safety to Darmstadt. Among its
treasures are one hundred and ninety volumes, chiefly in manuscript. A
careful catalogue of them was made so far back as 1752, by Harzheim, a
learned Jesuit, under the title of "An Historical and Critical Catalogue of
the Manuscripts of the Library of the Metropolitan Church of Cologne." This
valuable collection dates as far back as Charlemagne. It was commenced by
Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne, and archchancellor of that monarch, in
the year 783. It was considerably increased by gifts from Pope Leo the
Third to the Emperor Charles in 804. The Archbishops Heribertus, Evergerus,
Hanno, and their successors, continued the collection by the purchase of
rare manuscripts and copies of ancient parchments. In the year 1568,
Hiltorp, in the preface of his work "On Divine Offices," dedicated to
Archbishop Salentin, alludes more than once to this rare collection. We
might quote many other authorities to authenticate the manuscripts. Jacob
Pamelius, in a work published at Cologne in 1577, entitled "The Liturgy of
the Latin Church" (who is quoted by Harzheim in his book "The old Codexes
of Cologne"), distinctly gives their date and origin. The collection
consists of eight parts, namely: 1. Bibles; 2. The Fathers; 3.
Ecclesiastical Law; 4. Writers on Sacrifices, Sacraments, Offices of the
Church, and Liturgies; 5. Histories; 6. Ascetics; 7. Scholastics; 8.
Philosophical, Rhetorical, and Grammatical writers. Some of these
manuscripts are richly illuminated, and some set with precious stones. The
first codex dates from the ninth century, if not earlier, which is
indicated by the capital letters, which are in gold. The seventh codex
contains the Gallic, Roman, Hebrew, and Greek Psalmody, as edited by St.
Jerome--"a most rare and valuable codex." The twelfth codex, in elegant
folio, adorned with many illuminations and annotations of the eighth
century, comprises the four Gospels. Codex one hundred and forty-three
deserves particular mention. As frontispiece, there is a portrait of
Archbishop Evergerus in his episcopal robes. It is richly illuminated and
set with jewels. The above quotations, which we have translated from the
Latin, in which language the catalogue is written, will suffice to give
such of our readers as are bibliophiles some idea of a treasures which will
shortly be restored to the shelves of the library attached to the Cologne
Cathedral. We may mention another restoration which is on the eve of
accomplishment. The celebrated collection of pictures, known as the
Dusseldorf collection, will shortly be returned to Prussia, negotiations
having already commenced for that purpose. The collection, which comprises
some of the finest specimens of the German and Dutch schools, is at present
at Munich.--_All the Year Round_.


_On the Movements of the Heart_.--In a recent memoir Dr. Sibson
describes his experiments on the movements of the heart, which were made on
the ass under the influence of wourali, and on dogs subjected to
chloroform. He found that the contraction of the ventricles takes please in
every direction toward a region of rest, which in the right ventricle
corresponds with the anterior papillary muscle in the left ventricle, with
a situation about midway between apex and base. Simultaneously with the
universal contraction of the ventricles there is universal distention of
both auricles, the pulmonary artery, and the aortae. The total amount of
blood contained in the heart and great vessels is the same during both
systole and diastole. During the ventricular contraction, however, the
distribution of the blood, lessened toward the region of the apex, balances
itself by being increased in that of the base, since the auricles and great
vessels are enlarged, not only toward the ventricles, but also outward and
upward. During ventricular dilatation the reverse takes place.

{141}

_The Physics of a Meteorite_.-In a recent note in the proceedings of
the Royal Society, the Rev. Samuel Haughton, of Trinity College, Dublin,
gives a very graphic account of the fall of an aërolite. The fire-ball was
seen by two peasants, who have given the following written statement of
their observations; and since the facts described by these ignorant men
correspond exactly with the facts theoretically believed to present
themselves, we think the description of the highest interest. It is headed,
The Statement of Eye-witnesses, and runs as follows: "I, John Johnson, of
the parish of Clonoulty, near Cashel, Tipperary, was walking across my
potato-garden at the back of my house, in company with Michael Falvy and
William Furlong, on August 12, 1865, at 7 P.M., when I heard a clap, like
the shot out of a cannon, very quick and not like thunder; this was
followed by a buzzing noise, which continued for about a quarter of an
hour, when it came over our heads, and, looking up, we saw an object
falling down in a slanting direction; we were frightened at the speed,
which was so great that we could scarcely notice it; but after it fell we
proceeded to look for it, and found it at a distance of forty yards, half
buried in the ground, where it had struck the top of a potato-drill. We
were some time looking for it (a longer time than that during which we
heard the noise). On taking up the stone we found it warm (milk warm), but
not enough to be inconvenient. The next day it was given up to Lord
Hawarden."--_Popular Science Review_.



_The Earth and Moon in Collision_.--Mr. James Croll, who some time
since asserted that, owing to peculiar solar and lunar action, the above
extraordinary condition will eventually take place, has just published a
paper reasserting the truth of his proposition. The theory was opposed by
the astronomer royal and Professor William Thomson, who showed that, owing
to the position of the tidal wave, the moon is drawn not exactly in the
direction of the earth's centre of gravity, but a little to the east of
that centre, and that in consequence of this she is made to recede from the
earth. Her orbit is enlarged and her angular motion diminished. This
argument does not, in Mr. Croll's opinion, affect his view. The conditions
described by Professor Thomson and the astronomer royal do not in the least
degree prevent the consumption of the _vis viva_ of the earth's motion
round the common centre of gravity, although to a certain extent, at least,
it must prevent this consumption from diminishing the moon's distance, and
increasing her angular motion. But as this consumption of _vis viva_
will go on through indefinite ages, if the present order of things remains
unchanged, the earth and the moon must therefore ultimately come
together.--_Ibid_.

  [Transcribers note: The moon is _receding_ from the earth at about 4
  cm. per year, based on _lunar laser ranging_ (2015).]


_Sanskrit Library_.--Prof. Goldstücker lately communicated to a
scientific meeting at London the intelligence he had received from Lahore
of the existence in that city of a most extensive Sanskrit Library in the
possession of Pandit Radha Kishen. From an examination of the catalogue
that had been sent to him, he was able to state that that library contained
a great many rare and valuable works, some of which had hitherto been
supposed to be lost. He had also been promised catalogues of similar
collections of Sanskrit MS. in other parts or India, of the contents of
which he would keep the Society informed as they came to hand. The paper
read was by Prof. Max Müller, "On the Hymns of the Gaupàyanas, and the
Legend of King Asamâti." After some remarks on the proper use to be made of
Sanskrit MSS., in general, and on the principles of criticism by which the
writer was guided in his edition of Sàyana's Commentary on the Rig-veda, he
proceeded to show by an example the characters of the three classes of MSS.
he had made use of, and the manner in which the growth of legends was
favored by the traditional interpretation of the Vedic Hymns. He had
selected for this purpose the four hymns of the Gaupâyanas (Mandala x.,
57-60), and the Legend of King Asamâti quoted by Sàyana in explanation of
them; and then related the latter, according to the various forms in which
it has been handed down to us, from the simple account given in the Tàndya
Brahmana and Katyàyana's Sarvânukrama, to the more expanded one in the
Satyâyanaka Brahmana, the Brehaddevatà and the Nitiananjarî. He then gives
a double translation of the hymns in question--one in strict conformity to
Sàyana's interpretation, and another in accordance with his own principles
of translation--the latter as a specimen of what he intends to give in his
forthcoming translation of the whole of the Rig-veda.
{142}
The writer concluded with a _resumé_ of the different points of
interest which these hymns, though by no means fair specimens of the best
religious poetry of the Brahmans, present; the healing powers of the hands,
the constant dwelling on divinities which govern the life of man, and the
clear conception of a soul as separate from the body--of a soul after death
going to Yama Vanasvata, the ruler of the departed, or hovering about
heaven or earth ready to be called back to a new life.--_Ibid_

--------

    Original

    New Publications.


  A Conversation on Union Among Christians;
  The Gospels Door of Mercy;
  What Shall I do to Become a Christian?
  The Church and Children;
  A Voice In The Night, Or Lessons of the Sick Room;
  The Gospel Church;
  Who is Jesus Christ?

  Tracts Nos. 13-19;
  Catholic Publication Society,
  145 Nassau St., New-York


The number of Tracts issued and distributed by the Catholic Publication
Society through direct sales and the aid of auxiliary societies is so great
that its noble and zealous project must, by this time, have become a
subject of interest to every Catholic in the country. It is hardly one year
since the first steps were taken to establish it, and already over _half
a million_ Tracts have been distributed through the length and breadth
of the land. This distribution goes on increasing; that made in the month
of February alone amounted to _seventy-five thousand_. Large orders
are constantly coming in for the books and tracts issued by the Society
from the Rt. Rev. Bishops, the Rev. Clergy, and zealous laymen of every
condition of life.

Encouraged by these marks of universal approbation, and accredited with the
high sanction of our late Plenary Council, the Society will enter upon its
work this spring, upon a scale commensurate with the increasing demands
made upon it for its publications and the magnitude of its enterprise. A
Publication House will be obtained, supplied with its own types and presses
and bindery, which will enable it to conduct its operations with greater
rapidity, and furnish its publications at the lowest possible cost. Not a
few have expressed themselves surprised at its present unparalleled
success, and are anxious to know by what means so much has been
accomplished in so short a time.

For the information of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD, who, we are sure,
are all deeply interested in the work, it may be stated that a good fund
was contributed by a number of wealthy gentlemen, principally in New York,
that enabled it to begin its work, and which has been increased by the
proceeds of lectures delivered in the diocese of Boston, Albany, and
New-York, the aid of auxiliary societies, and the sales of tracts and
books.

It cannot be denied that within even the last five years, our holy religion
has made great advances in the spiritual care of its own children, in the
multiplication of churches, the foundation of seminaries for the
priesthood, the greater interest shown in the working of Sunday schools and
religious associations of both sexes, as well as in the numerous
conversions that have been made from the different denominations of
Protestants, and in the earnest consideration of the claims of the Catholic
Church manifested by the people of our country, of whom so many have
hitherto been either indifferent to, or ignorant of it.

The Catholic Publication Society being by its very character a ready arm
for the diffusion of Catholic truth, must therefore commend itself to the
warmest sympathies and generous co-operation of every Catholic who rejoices
to see his holy faith spreading abroad and winning a multitude of souls to
a knowledge of Christian truth and the practice of Christian virtues. In
fact, the Society owes its existence to the ardently cherished wish of a
large class for such an organization, which found an almost simultaneous
expression.
{143}
Letters of encouragement and inquiry are being constantly received from the
venerable bishops and clergy, heads of literary and benevolent
associations, superintendents of Sunday-schools, and from different
individuals in the humblest walks of life. The news of the enterprise has
even penetrated to some of the most distant parts of the world; as is shown
by a letter of sympathy containing an offer of inter-communion sent to the
Society by a zealous priest in Bombay, India, who had started a Publication
Society in that far-off city.

It may not be judged out of place to repeat here the article of the
constitution referring to the conditions of membership. It will show any of
our readers who desire to become copartners in this great work, and thereby
secure for themselves the blessing of having aided in the "instruction of
many unto salvation," how they may practically bring that aid to bear upon
the realization of their pious desires.

  "Any person paying, at one time, one hundred dollars into the treasury of
  the Society, may by request, become a 'Patron,' and shall be entitled to
  receive three dollars' worth of the Society's publications annually.

  "Any person paying fifty dollars at one time may become a Life Member,
  and shall be entitled to receive two dollars' worth of the Society's
  publications annually.

  "Any person paying thirty dollars may become a member for five years, and
  shall be entitled to receive one dollar's worth of the Society's
  publications for five years.

  "Persons paying five dollars at one time shall be members for one year,
  and be entitled to receive of the Society's publications to the value of
  half a dollar."

It is plain, however, that while many will be found to associate themselves
as members of the General Society, in order to carry on the work in other
places, auxiliary societies should be formed which receive all the
publications at cost price. It is to the rapid formation of these auxiliary
associations that those many zealous friends of the work should turn their
attention. The same object will also be gained by making it one of the
labors of Societies of St. Vincent de Paul, guilds, confraternities,
sodalities, and the like.

We have seen many communications in which inquiries have been made in
reference to the publication of illustrated tracts and Sunday-school books,
and the establishment of a cheap and attractive Sunday-school paper. The
Society has all these objects in contemplation, and will proceed to their
execution as soon as the Publication House is in operation.

We would suggest, therefore, that each and every one who has this matter at
heart, will make personal efforts to aid the Society in the establishment
of the Publication House, by sending at once their own names as members
with as many more as they can procure, and take measures to found at least
one auxiliary society for home distribution in the community where they
reside.

Our people have shown the greatest interest in the diffusion of Catholic
literature, and are ever ready to make heroic sacrifices, if necessary, for
any work of charity; and in the present aspect of affairs it must be
evident that one of the most urgent calls upon our Christian zeal and love
is that of bringing instruction home to the thousands who need it, and who,
experience has proved, receive it gladly. One little thought we cannot
refrain from expressing, suggested by a remark made in our hearing, that it
will be for us and our children, when time shall show us and them the happy
fruits of this truly Apostolic work, a most consoling reflection that we
were among those who first encouraged and aided it, and bade it "God speed"
as it started upon its high and glorious mission.


  L'echo De La France.
  Revue étrangère de Science et de Littérature.
  Montreal: Louis Ricard, Directeur.

By the Canadian public and the French-speaking portion of our population of
the States, this well-edited eclectic has, we are glad to know, received a
hearty welcome and a liberal support. It purposes to afford its readers a
choice selection of articles culled from the best European magazines and
reviews, chiefly those of France, and it certainly has accomplished its
task hitherto with much ability. It is not to everyone we would care to
confide the duty of choosing our literary repast from the current
literature of the day; and, to anyone at all acquainted with the French
periodicals, it must be evident that it would require a caterer, who is
himself possessed of high intellectual culture, to make from their pages a
judicious and worthy selection of articles suited to the varied tastes of
the American literary public.
{144}
The "Echo de la Franco" is happily conducted by a gentleman upon whose
judgment and taste in this matter we can confidently rely, if we may judge
from the numbers already issued.

We have only to add that it has our best wishes, and we recommend it
especially to the notice of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD who are
acquainted with the French language.


  Practical Hints On The Art Of Illumination.
  By Alice Donlevy.
  New-York: A. D. F. Randolph. 1867.

Together with this useful and elegant publication we have received a set of
plates, designed by the same author, to illustrate the poem of Miss
Rossetti, called "Consider."

The work is intended, as we are told in its preface, to instruct those who
wish to study illumination; to assist those who, having commenced, find
many stumbling-blocks in the way, and require aid in the minutiae of the
art; to furnish those who can paint, yet are unable to design with
outlines, to illuminate, etc. This beautiful art is fast becoming with our
young people a favorite recreation, and, with not a few, a remunerative
study. To such as desire to engage in its pursuit, whether for pleasure or
profit, we heartily recommend this volume as one calculated to give them
much desirable information on the subject.


  Three Phases of Christian Love,
  By Lady Herbert. L. Kehoe. 1867.

We have received advanced sheets of this volume, which is to be presented
to the public in a few days. It is not our purpose to speak of it at length
in this place, but reserve it for a more extended and appreciative review
which we hope to give of it in the future pages of the CATHOLIC WORLD.

It is a remarkable book; the purity and beauty of its style fitly according
with the saintly biographies which the distinguished authoress has so
happily chosen to illustrate the three phases of a Christian woman's life
and love. We have given as the life of St. Monica as the mother; of
Victorine de Galard Terraube, a young French lady of rank, as the maiden;
and of the Venerable Mère Devos, superior of the Sisters of Charity, as the
religious. It is a book we would wish to see placed in the hands of every
woman in our country; for, whatever be her position in society, or
whichsoever state of life she may have chosen, she will find in it an
example of high Christian and womanly perfection, the view of which must
claim her homage, and in turn exalt and refine her own character.

Mr. Kehoe, in republishing Bentley's superb English edition, offers us a
volume of equal beauty and finish. As a publication it must claim the
attention of every connoisseur and lover of first-class books.


  Lauretta and the Fables,
  Compiled by the author of Philip Hartley, etc.

  Alice; or, The Rose of the Black Forest.
  By the author of Grace Morton, etc.

  Three Petitions. A tale of Poland and
  Trevor Hall. A Christmas story.

  Conrad and Gertrude: the Little Wanderers.
  Peter F. Cunningham,  Catholic Bookseller, Philadelphia.

These four 16mo volumes form a very acceptable addition to our list of
Catholic tales for children. Their appearance is creditable to the
publisher. We hope those who have ability and leisure will furnish a larger
number of such stories for Sunday-school libraries.


    Books Received.

From Leypoldt & Holt. New-York.

  The Journal of Maurice de Guérin,
  with an essay by Matthew Arnold,
  and a memoir by Sainte-Beuve. Edited by
  G. S. Trebutien. Translated by Edward Thornton
  Fisher. 1 vol. 12mo., pp. 153. Price $1.25.

  Easy German Reading after a New System, by George Storme.
  Revised by Edward A. Open. 1 vol. l2mo, pp.206. Price $1.


From P. F. Cunningham. Philadelphia.

  Conrad and Gertrude;
  The Three Petitions, a Tale of Poland;
  Alice, or the Rose of the Black Forest;
  Lauretta and the Fables.
  4 vols. of the Young Catholics Library,
  pp. 143, 141, 124, 126
  Price 50 cents each.

From D. Appleton, New-York.

  The Merchant of Berlin;
  an Historical Novel L. Mühlbach.
  Translated from the German by Amory Coflin, M.D.
  pp. 394. Price $2.

  Berlin and San Souci; or, Frederick the Great
  and Friends. An Historical
  Romance. By L. Mühlbach. Translated from
  the German by Mrs. Chapman and her daughters.
  pp. 391. Price $2.

From J. J. O'Connor & Co., Newark.

  The exclusion of Protestant Worship from the City of Rome.
  By the Rev. George H, Doane, pastor of St. Patrick's
  Cathedral, Newark, N.J.  Pamphlets. Price 20 cents.

--------

{145}

    The Catholic World.

    Vol. V., No. 26.--May, 1867.


  Original.

  An Old Quarrel.


Those of our readers who have studied with the care their importance
demands the papers on the "Problems of the Age" which have appeared in this
magazine, can not have failed to perceive that the great questions now in
discussion between Catholics and non-Catholics lie, for the most part, in
the field of philosophy, and require for their solution a broader and
profounder philosophy than any which obtains general currency outside of
the church. We think, also, that no one can read and understand them
without finding the elements or fundamental principles of a really Catholic
philosophy, which, while it rests on scientific truth for its basis,
enables us to see the innate correspondence or harmony of reason and faith,
science and revelation, and nature and grace--the principles of a
philosophy, too, that is no modern invention or new-fangled theory which is
brought forward to meet a present emergency, but in substance the very
philosophy that has always been held by the great fathers and doctors of
the church, and professed in Catholic schools and seminaries.

Yet there is one point which the writer necessarily touches upon and
demonstrates as far as necessary to his purpose, which was theological
rather than purely philosophical, that, without interfering in the least
with his argument, already complete, may admit of a more special treatment
and further development. We refer to the objectivity and reality of ideas.
The reader acquainted with the history of philosophy in the middle ages
will perceive at once that the question of the reality of ideas asserted by
the writer takes up the subject-matter of the old quarrel of the
nominalists, conceptualists, and realists, provoked by the Proslogium of
St. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, in the eleventh century, really one
of the profoundest thinkers, greatest theologians, and ingenious
philosophers of any age.

St. Anselm wished to render an account to himself of his faith, and to know
and understand the reasons for believing in God. He did not doubt the
existence of God; he indeed held that God cannot be thought not to be; he
did not seek to know the arguments which prove that God is, that he might
believe, but that he might the better know and understand what he already
believed.
{146}
Thus he says: "Necque enim quero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut
intelligam. Nam et hoc credo quia nisi credidero, non intelligam." We
believe that we may understand, and we cannot understand unless we
believe--a great truth which modern speculators do not recognize. They
reverse the process, and seek to know that they may believe, and hold that
the first step to knowledge is to doubt or to deny.

In his Monologium, St. Anselm had proved that God is, and determined his
attributes by way of induction from the ideas in the human mind, but it
would seem not wholly to his satisfaction, or, at least, that in writing
that work he discovered, or thought he discovered, a briefer and more
conclusive, method of demonstrating that God is. He had already proved by
psychological analysis, in the way Cousin and others have since done, that
the human mind thinks most perfect being, a greater than which cannot be
thought. This he had done in his Monologium. In his Proslogium he starts
with this idea, that of _ens perfectissimum_, which is, in fact, the
idea of God. "The fool says in his heart there is no God;" not because he
has no idea of God, not because he does not think most perfect being, a
greater than which cannot be thought, but because he does not understand
that, if he thinks it, such being really is. It is greater and more perfect
to be _in re_ than it is to be only _in intellectu_, and
therefore the most perfect being existing only in the mind is not a greater
than which cannot be thought, for I can think most perfect existing _in
re_. Moreover, if most perfect being does not exist _in re_, my
thought is greater and more perfect than reality, and consequently I can
rise above God, and judge him, _quod valde est absurdum_.

Leibnitz somewhere remarks that this argument is conclusive, if we first
prove that most perfect being is possible; but Leibnitz should have
remembered that the argument _ab esse ad posse_ is always valid, and
that God is both his own possibility and reality. Cousin accepts the
argument, and says St. Anselm robbed Descartes of the glory of having
produced it. But it is evident to every philosophical student that the
validity of the argument, if valid it is, depends on the fact that ideas
are objective and real, that is, depends on the identity of the ideal and
the real.

Roscelinus, or Rosceline, did not concede this, and pronounced the argument
of St. Anselm worthless. Confounding, it would seem, ideas with universals,
he denied their reality, and maintained that they are mere words without
anything either in the mind or out of it to respond to them, and thus
founded Nominalism, substantially what is now called materialism. He
rejects the universals and the categories of the peripatetics, and
recognizes only individual existences and words, which words, when not the
names of individual things, are void of meaning. Hence he denied the whole
ideal or intelligible world, and admitted only sensibles. Hobbes and Locke
were nominalists, and so is the author of Mill's Logic. Mr. Herbert Spencer
is a nominalist, but is better described as an atomist of the school of
Leucippus and Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. We know very little of
Rosceline, except that he lived in the eleventh century, was born in
Brittany, the native land of Abelard and Descartes, and incurred, for some
of his speculations concerning the Trinity, the censures of the church.
None of his writings have come down to us, and we know his doctrine only
from the representations of others.

Guillaume de Champeaux, in the following century, who professed philosophy
for a time at St. Victor, and was subsequently Archbishop of Paris, is the
founder, in the middle ages, of what is called Realism, and which counts
among its disciples Duns Scotus and William of Occam.
{147}
He is said to have maintained the exact opposite of Rosceline's doctrine,
and to have held that ideas, or universals, as they then said, are not
empty words, but entities, existing _a parte rei_. He held, if we may
believe Abelard, that not only genera and species, but such abstractions as
whiteness, soundness, squareness, etc., are real entities. But from a
passage cited from his writings by Abelard, from which Abelard infers he
had changed his doctrine, Cousin, in his Philosophie Scholastique, argues
that this must have been an exaggeration and that Guillaume only held that
such so-called universals as are really genera and species have an
entitative existence. This is most probably the fact; and instead, then, of
being driven to change his doctrine from what it was at first, as Abelard
boasts, it is most likely that he never held any other doctrine. However
this may be, his doctrine, as represented by Abelard, is that which the old
realists are generally supposed to have maintained.

Abelard follows Guillaume de Champeaux, with whom he was for the earlier
part of his career a contemporary. Confounding, as it would seem, ideas
with universals, and universals with abstractions, he denied alike
Rosceline's doctrine that they are mere words, and Guillaume de Champeaux's
doctrine that they are entities or existences _a parte rei_, and
maintained that they are conceptions, really existing _in mente_, but
not _in re_. Hence his philosophy is called Conceptualism. He would
seem to have held that universals are formed by the mind operating on the
concrete objects presented by experience, not, as since maintained by Kant,
that they are necessary forms of the understanding. Thus, _humanitas_,
humanity, is formed by the mind from the concrete man, or _homo_.
There is no humanity _in re_; there are only individual men. In the
word humanity the mind expresses the qualities which it observes to be
common to all men, without paying attention to any particular man. The idea
humanity, then, is simply the abstraction or generalization of these
qualities. Abelard, it would appear from this, makes what we call the race
a property or quality of individuals, which, of course, excludes the idea
of generation. There is, as far as we can see, no essential difference
between the conceptualism of Abelard and the nominalism of Rosceline; for,
by denying the existence _in re_ of genera and species, and making
them only conceptions, it recognizes as really existing only individuals or
particulars.

St. Thomas Aquinas, than whom no higher authority in philosophy can be
named, and from whose conclusions few who understand them will be disposed
to dissent, differs from each of these schools, and maintains that
universals are conceptions existing _in mente cum fundamento in re_,
or conceptions with a basis in reality, which is true of all abstractions;
for the mind can form no conceptions except from objects presented by
experience. I could form no conception of whiteness if I had no experience
of white things, or of roundness if I had seen nothing round. I imagine a
golden mountain, but only on condition that gold and mountain are to me
objects of experience. This is certain, and accords with the peripatetic
maxim, _Nihil est in intellectu, quod prius non fuerit in sensu_,
which Leibnitz would amend by adding, _nisi ipse intellectus_, an
amendment which, perhaps, contains in germ the whole Kantian philosophy.

But St. Thomas, as we shall see further on, does not confound ideal with
universals, nor does he hold genera and species to be simply the
abstraction or generalization of the qualities of individuals or
particulars. Genera and species are real, or there could be no generation.
But the genus or species does not exist apart from its individualization,
or as a separate entity. There are no individuals without the race, and no
race without individuals. Thus the whole race was individualized in Adam,
so that in his sin all men sinned.
{148}
But as genera and species, the only real universals, do not exist apart
from their particulars, and are distinctly possessed or apprehended only as
disengaged from their particulars, which is done only by a mental
operation, St. Thomas might say they exist _in mente cum fundamento in
re_, without asserting them to be real only as properties or qualities
of particulars.

Plato is commonly held to be the father of the ideal philosophy or ideal
realism. We know very little of the philosophy that prevailed before him,
and cannot say how much of the Platonic philosophy is original with him, or
how much of it he took from his predecessors, but he is its originator as
far as our knowledge extends. It is from him that we have the word
_idea_, and his whole philosophy is said to be in his doctrine of
ideas; but what his doctrine of ideas really was is a question. He seems
when treating the question, What is it necessary to know in order to have
real science? to understand by idea _causa essentialis_, or the thing
itself, or what in anything is real, stable, and permanent, in distinction
from the sensible, the phenomenal, the variable, and the transitory. The
real existence of things is their ideas, and ideas are in the Logos or
divine mind. These ideas God impresses on an eternally existing matter, as
the seal upon wax, and so impressed they constitute particulars. Aristotle
accuses Plato of placing the ideas _extra Deum_, and making them
objects of the divine contemplation, but the accusation is not easily
sustained; and we think all that Plato does is to represent the ideas as
_extra Deum_ only as the idea or design of a picture or a temple in
the mind of the artist is distinguishable from the artist himself. But in
God all ideas must be eternal, and therefore really his essence, as is
maintained by St. Thomas. If this is really Plato's doctrine, it is dualism
inasmuch as it asserts the eternity of matter, and pantheism inasmuch as
the ideas, the reality of things, are identical with the divine mind, and
therefore with God himself. On this doctrine, what is that soul the
immortality of which Plato so strenuously maintains? Is it the divine idea,
or the copy of the idea on matter?

When treating the question, How we know? Plato seems to understand by ideas
not the ideas in the divine mind, but their copies impressed on matter, as
the seal on wax. According to him, all knowing is by similitude, and as the
idea leaves its exact image or form on matter, so by studying that image or
copy we arrive at an exact knowledge of the idea or archetype in the divine
mind. This is plain enough; but who are _we_ who study and know? Are
we the archetypal idea, or are we its image or copy impressed on matter?
Here is the difficulty we find in understanding Plato's doctrine of ideas.
According to him all reality is in the idea, and what is not idea is
phenomenal, unsubstantial, variable, and evanescent. The impress or copy on
matter is not the idea itself, and is no more the thing itself than the
reflection I see in a mirror is myself. Plato speaks of the soul as
imprisoned in matter, and ascribes all evil to the intractableness of
matter. Hence he originates or justifies that false asceticism which treats
matter as impure or unclean, and makes the proper discipline of the soul
consist in despising and maltreating the body, and in seeking deliverance
from it, as if our bodies were not destined to rise again, and, reunited to
the soul, to live forever. The real source of Manichaeism is in the
Platonic philosophy. We confess that we are not able to make out from Plato
a complete, coherent, and self-consistent doctrine of ideas. St. Thomas
corrects Plato, and makes ideas the archetypes, exemplars, or models in the
divine mind, and identical with the essence of God, after which God creates
or may create existences. He holds the idea, as idea, to be _causa
exemplaris_, not _causa essentialis_, and thus escapes both
pantheism and dualism, and all tendency to either.

{149}

Aristotle, a much more systematic genius, and, in my judgment, a much
profounder philosopher than Plato, rejects Plato's doctrine of ideas, and
substitutes for them substantial forms, which in his philosophy mean real
existences distinct from God; and which are not merely phenomenal, like
Plato's copies on wax. True, he, as Plato, recognizes an eternal matter,
and makes all existences consist of matter and form. But the matter is
purely passive; and, as nothing, according to his philosophy, exists, save
in so far as active, it is really nothing, exists only _in potentia ad
formam_, and can only mean the ability of God to place existences after
the models eternal in his own mind. His philosophy is, at any rate, more
easily reconciled with Christian theology than is Plato's.

Yet Aristotle and the schoolmen after him adopt Plato's doctrine that we
know by similitude, or by ideas in the sense of images, or representations,
interposed between the mind and the object, or thing existing _a parte
rei_. They suppose these images, or intelligible species, form a sort of
intermediary world, called the _mundus logicus_, distinguished from
the _mundus physicus_, or real world, which they are not, but which
they image or represent to the understanding. Hence the categories or
praedicaments are neither forms of the subject nor forms of the object, but
the forms or laws of logic or this intermediary world. Hence has arisen the
question whether our knowledge has any objective validity, that is, whether
there is any objective reality that responds to the idea. Perhaps it is in
this doctrine, misunderstood, that we are to seek the origin of scepticism,
which always originates in the speculations of philosophers, never in the
plain sense of the people, who never want, when they know, any proof that
they know.

This Platonic and peripatetic doctrine, that ideas are not the reality,
but, as Locke says, that "with which the understanding is immediately
conversant," has been vigorously assailed by the Scottish school, which
denies intermediary ideas, and maintains that we perceive directly and
immediately things themselves. Still the old doctrine obtains to a very
considerable extent, and respectable schools teach that ideas, if not
precisely images, are nevertheless representative, and that the idea is the
first object of mental apprehension. Balmes never treats ideas as the
object existing _in re_, but as its representation to the mind. Hence
the importance attached to the question of certainty, or the objective
validity of our knowledge, around which Balmes says turn all the questions
of philosophy; that is, the great labor of philosophers is to prove that in
knowing we know something, or that to know is to know. This is really the
_pons asinorum_ of modern philosophy as it was of ancient philosophy:
How know I that knowing is knowing, or that in knowing I know? The question
as asked is unanswerable and absurd, for I have only to know with which to
prove that I know, and he who knows knows that he knows. I know that I know
says no more than I know.

The quarrel has arisen from confounding ideas, universals, genera and
species, and abstractions or generalizations, and treating them all as if
pertaining to the same category. These three things are different, and
cannot be scientifically treated as if they were the same; yet nominalists,
realists, and conceptualists recognize no differences among them, nor do
the Platonists. These hold all the essential qualities, properties, or
attributes of things to be ideas, objective and real. Hippias visits
Athens, and proposes during his stay in the city to give the eager
Athenians a discourse, or, as they say nowadays, a lecture, on beautiful
things. Socrates is delighted to hear it, and assures Hippias that he will
be one of his audience; but as he is slow of understanding, and has a
friend who will be sure to question him very closely, he begs Hippias to
answer beforehand a few of the questions this friend is certain to ask.
Hippias consents.
{150}
You propose to discourse on beautiful things, but tell me, if you please,
what are beautiful things? Hippias mentions several things, and finally
answers, a handsome girl. But that is not what my friend wants to know.
Tell me, by what are beautiful things beautiful? Hippias does not quite
understand. Socrates explains. All just things, are they not just by
participation of justice? Agreed. And all wise things by participation of
wisdom? It cannot be denied. And all beautiful things by participation of
beauty? So it seems. Now tell me, dear Hippias, what is beauty, that which
is so not by participation but in itself, and by participation of which all
beautiful things are beautiful? Hippias, of course, is puzzled, and neither
he nor Socrates answers the question.

But we get here a clue to Plato's doctrine, the doctrine of the methexis,
to use his own term. He would seem to teach that whatever particular thing
exists, it does so by the methexis, or participation of the idea. The idea
is that which makes the thing what it is, _causa essentialis_. Thus, a
man is man by participation of the man-idea, or the ideal man, humanity; a
horse is a horse by participation of the horse-idea, or ideal horse; a cow
is a cow by participation of the cow-idea, ideal cow, or _bovisty_;
and so of a sheep, a weazel, an eagle, a heron, a robin, a swallow, a wren,
an oak, a pine, a juniper. To know any particular thing is to know its idea
or ideal, and to know its idea or ideal is to have true science, for it is
science of that in the thing which is real, stable, invariable, and
permanent. This doctrine is very true when by ideas we understand genera
and species, but not, as we have already seen, and as both Rosceline and
Abelard prove, when we take as ideas the abstract qualities of things. Man
is man by participation of humanity; but is a thing white by participation
of whiteness, round by participation of roundness, hard by participation of
hardness, beautiful by participation of beauty, or just by participation of
justice, wise by participation of wisdom? What is whiteness, roundness,
hardness, beauty, justice, or wisdom in the abstract, or abstracted from
their respective concretes? Mere conceptions, as said Abelard, or, rather,
empty words, as said Rosceline. When Plato calls these ideas, and calls
them real, he confounds ideas with genera and species, and asserts what is
manifestly untenable.

Genera and species are not abstractions; they are real, though subsisting
never apart from individuals. Their reality is evinced by the process
called generation, by which every kind generates its like. The race
continues itself, and does not die with the individual. Men die, humanity
survives. It is all very well to say with Plato individuals are mimetic,
and exist as individuals by participation of the idea, if we assume ideas
are genera and species, and created after the models or archetypes in the
divine mind; but it will not do to say so when we identify ideas with the
divine mind, that is, with God himself: We then make genera and species
ideas in God, and since ideas in God are God, we identify them with the
divine essence--a doctrine which the Holy See has recently condemned, and
which would deny all reality distinguishable from God, and make all
existences merely phenomenal, and reduce all the categories, as Cousin
does, to being and phenomenon, which is pure pantheism. The _ideae
exemplares_, or archetypes of genera and species, after which God
creates them, are in the divine mind, but the genera and species, the real
universals, are creatures, and as much so as individuals or particulars
themselves. They are creatures by the direct creation of God, without the
intervention of the plastic soul asserted by Plato, accepted by Cudworth,
and, in his posthumous essay on the Methexis and Mimesis, even by Gioberti.
{151}
God creates all living creatures in genera and species, as the Scripture
plainly hints when it says: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the
green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after
its _kind_, which may have seed in itself upon the earth." Not only in
the vegetable but also in the animal world, each living creature brings
forth its kind--a fact without which generation would be unintelligible,
and which our scientific men who dream of the formation of species by
natural selection, and are laboring hard to prove that man has been
developed from the tadpole or monkey, would do well to remember.

Genera and species are real, and so far, if we call them ideas, ideas or
universals are real, as Plato and the old realists asserted. But when we
understand by ideas or universals the simple abstractions or
generalizations of the essential qualities or attributes of things, as
whiteness, redness, roundness, hardness, beauty, justice, goodness, they
are real only in their concretes or subject. Objects may be really white,
red, hard, heavy; things may be really beautiful; actions may be really
just, wise, and good; but what we call beauty, justice, wisdom, goodness,
can exist only as attributes or qualities of being, and are real only in
their concretes. They can be reflected by creatures, but have no reality as
abstractions. Abstractions, as St. Thomas says, have a foundation in
reality, because they are formed by the mind by way of abstraction from
objects presented by experience, and experience can present only that which
is real; but as abstractions they are nullities, as Rosceline rightly held.

It is necessary, then, to distinguish between genera and species and
abstractions, and it would save much confusion to drop the name of ideas as
applied to them, and even as applied to the intermediary world supposed to
be inserted between the object and subject, as that world is commonly
represented. This intermediary world, we think, has been successfully
assailed by the Scottish school as ordinarily understood; but we do not
think that the scholastics meant by it what is commonly supposed. These
intermediary ideas, or intelligible species, seem to me in St. Thomas to
perform in intellectual apprehension the office performed by light in
external vision, and to be very defensible. They are not the understanding
itself, but they are, if we may be allowed the expression, the light of the
understanding. St. Thomas holds that we know by similitude. But God, he
says, is the similitude of all things, _Deus est similitudo omnium
rerum_. Now say, with him and all great theologians, that God, who is
light itself, is the light of the understanding, the light of reason, the
true light that lighteth every man coming into this world, and the whole
difficulty is solved, and the scholastics and the philosophy so long taught
in our Catholic schools and seminaries are freed at once from the censures
so freely bestowed on them by the Scottish school and others. We suspect
that we shall find seldom any reason to dissent from the scholastic
philosophy as represented by St. Thomas, when once we really understand it,
and adjust it to our own habits of thought and expression.

Supposing this interpretation to be admissible, the Scottish school, after
all, must modify its doctrine that we know things directly and immediately;
for as in external things light is necessary as the medium of vision, why
should not an intelligible light be necessary as the medium of the
intellectual apprehension of intelligibles? Now, as this light has in it
the similitude of the things apprehensible by it, and is for that same
reason light to our understanding, it may, as Plato held, very properly be
expressed by the word _idea_, which means likeness, image, or
representation. The error of Plato would not then be in holding that we
know only _per ideam_ or _per similitudinem_, but in confounding
creator and creature, and recognizing nothing except the idea either to
know or to be known. On this interpretation, the light may be identical
with the object, or it may not be. Being is its own light, and is
intelligible _per se_; objects distinguishable from being are not, and
are intelligible only in the light of being, or a light distinguishable
from themselves.
{152}
As being in its full sense is God, we may say with Malebranche that we see
all things in God, but must add, _and by the light of God_, or _in
Deo et per Deum_.

Assuming ideas as the light by which we see to be the real doctrine of the
scholastics, we can readily understand the relation of ideas to the
peripatetic categories or praedicaments, or forms under which all objects
are and must be apprehended, and thus connect the old quarrel of the
philosophers with their present quarrel. The categories, according to the
Platonists, are ideas; according to the peripatetics, they are the forms of
the _mundus logicus_, which, as we have seen, they distinguish from
the _mundus physicus_. The Scottish school having demolished this
_mundus logicus_, by exploding the doctrine of intermediary ideas
which compose it, if we take that world as formal, and fail to identify it
with the divine light, the question comes up, Are the categories or
self-evident truths which precede all experience, and without which no fact
of experience is possible, really objective, or only subjective? The
question is, if we duly consider it, Is the light by which we see or know
on the side of the subject or on that of the object? Or, in other words,
are things intelligible because we know them, or do we know them because
they are intelligible? Thus stated, the question seems to be no question at
all; but it is made a very serious question, and on the answer to it
depends the validity or invalidity of St. Anselm's argument.

We have already expressed the opinion that the scholastics as represented
by St. Thomas really mean by their phantasms and intelligible species, or
intermediary ideas by which we attain to the knowledge of sensibles and
intelligibles, simply the mediating light furnished by God himself, who is
himself light and the Father of lights. In this case the light is
objective, and by illumining the object renders it intelligible, and at the
same time the subject intelligent. But Reid, who denied intermediary ideas,
seemed to suppose that the light emanates from the subject, and that it is
our powers that render the object intelligible. Hence he calls the
categories first principles of science, constituent principles of belief,
or common sense, and sometimes constituent principles of human nature. He
seems to have supposed that all the light and activity is on the side of
the subject, forgetting that the light shineth in darkness, and the
darkness comprehendeth it not, or that the light shines, and the darkness
does not compress it, or hinder it from shining, without our perceiving it
or the objects it illumines.

Kant, a German, but, on one side, of Scottish descent, adopts the
principles of Reid, but sets them forth with greater precision and more
scientific depth. Denying with Reid the mediating ideas, he makes the
categories, which, according to Aristotle, are forms of the _mundus
logicus_, or intermediary world, forms of the subject or the subjective
laws of thought. He does not say with Rosceline that they are mere words,
with Abelard that they are mere conceptions, nor with St. Thomas that they
are, taken as universals, conceptions, _cum fundamento in re_, but
forms of the reason, understanding, and sensibility, without any objective
validity. They are not derivable from experience, because without them no
experience is possible. Without what he calls synthetic judgments _à
priori_, such as, Every phenomenon that begins to exist must have a
cause, which includes the judgment of cause, of universal cause, and of
necessary cause, we can form no synthetic judgment _à posteriori_.
Hence he concludes that the categories, what some philosophers call first
principles, necessary truths, necessary ideas, without which we do not and
cannot think, are inherent forms of the subject, and are constitutive of
reason and understanding. He thus placed the intelligibleness of things in
the elemental constitution of the subject, whence it follows that the
subject may be its own object, or think without thinking anything distinct
from himself.
{153}
We think God, man, and nature, not because they are, and think them as we
do not because they are really such as we think them, but because such is
our mental constitution, and we are compelled by it to think them as we do.
This the reader must see is hardly disguised scepticism, and Kant never
pretended to the contrary. The only escape from scepticism, he himself
contends, is to fall back from the pure or speculative reason on the
practical reason, or the moral necessities of our nature, and yield to the
moral imperative, which commands us to believe in God, nature, and duty.
Kant has been followed by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who differ more or
less from one another, but all follow the fundamental principle he
asserted, and end in the doctrine of absolute identity of subject and
object. "_Cogito, ergo sum_," said Descartes: "I think, therefore I
am." "To think," used to say our old friend Bronson Alcott, "is to
_thing_; to thing is to give or produce reality. My thought is
creative: I think, therefore I am; I think God, therefore he is; nature,
and therefore nature exists. I by thinking make them, that is, _thing_
them, render them real." No bad statement, as far as it goes, of the
development Kant's doctrine received from his disciple Fichte. The only
defect is that his later disciples, instead of making thought creative,
have made it identical with the object. St. Anselm says: "I think most
perfect being, therefore most perfect being is;" and so does Descartes,
only Descartes substitutes God for most perfect being; but St. Anselm never
said it in the sense that most perfect being is because I by my thought
make it. Only a modern transcendentalist gone to seed could say that. The
trouble with this whole scheme is that it puts me in the place of God, and
makes me myself God, which I am quite sure I am not. It would be much more
philosophical to say: I exist, therefore I think; I think being because it
is, not that it is because I think it. Things do not exist because I think
them, but I think them because they exist; they are not intelligible
because I think them, but I think them because they are intelligible. Yet
the germ of our friend Alcott's philosophy was in Kant's doctrine, which
places the _forma_ of the thought in the subject instead of the
object.

Whether the categories, as given by Aristotle, are inexact, as Kant
alleges, or whether, as given by Kant himself, they are reducible in number
to two, as M. Cousin pretends, or to one, as Rosmini maintains, enters not
into the present enquiry, which relates not to their number, but their
objective reality. Kant in regard to philosophy has done simply what Reid
did, only he has done it better or more scientifically. He has fully
demonstrated that in every fact of experience there enters a non-empirical
element, and, if he holds with Leibnitz that that element is the human
understanding itself, he has still demonstrated that it is not an
abstraction or generalization of the concrete qualities of the objects
presented by experience.

Take the ideas or categories of the necessary, the perfect, the universal,
the infinite, the perfect, the immutable, the eternal. These ideas, it is
willingly conceded, never exist in the human mind, or are never thought,
without their opposites, the contingent, the finite, the imperfect, the
particular, the variable, the temporal; but they do not, even in our
thought, depend on them, and are not derived or derivable from them by
abstraction or generalization. Take the synthetic judgment instanced by
Kant, Everything that begins to exist must have a cause. The idea of cause
itself, Hume has shown, is not derivable from any fact of experience, and
Reid and Kant say the same. The notion we have of power which founds the
relation of cause and effect, or that what we call the cause actually
produces or places the effect, these philosophers tell us, is not an object
of experience, and is not obtainable from any empirical facts.
{154}
Experience gives only the relation of what we call cause and effect in
time, that is, the relation of antecedence and consequence. Main de Biran
and Victor Cousin, it is true, deny this, and maintain that the idea of
cause is derived from the acts of our own will, which we are conscious of
in ourselves, and which not merely precede their effects, but actually
produce them. I will to raise my arm, and even if my arm be paralytic or
held down by a [force] stronger than I, so that I cannot raise it, I still
by willing produce an effect, the volition to raise it, which is none the
less real because, owing to external circumstances not under my control, it
does not pass beyond my own interior.

But even granting this, how from this particular act of causation conclude
universal cause, or even from universal cause necessary cause? I by willing
produce the volition to raise my arm, therefore everything that begins to
exist must have a cause. The argument from the particular to the universal,
_non volet_, say the logicians, and still less the argument from the
contingent to the necessary.

Take the idea of the perfect. That we have the idea or category in the mind
is indisputable, and it evidently is not derivable by abstraction or
generalization from the facts of experience. We have experience only of
imperfect things, and no generalizing of imperfection can give perfection.
Indeed, without the category of the perfect, the imperfect cannot even be
thought. We think a thing imperfect, that is, judge it to be imperfect--and
every thought is a judgment, and contains an affirmation--because it falls
short of the ideal standard with which the mind compares it. The universal
is not derivable from the particular, for the particular is not conceivable
without the universal. We may say the same of the immutable, the eternal,
the infinite, the one, or unity.

By abstraction or generalization we simply consider in the concrete a
particular property, quality, or attribute by itself, and take it _in
universo_, without regard to anything else in the concrete thing. It
must then be a real property, quality, or attribute of the concrete thing,
or the abstraction will have no foundation in reality. But the universal is
no property, quality, or attribute of particulars, the immutable of
mutables, the eternal of things temporary, the necessary of contingents,
the infinite of finites, or unity of multiples, otherwise particulars would
be universals, mutables immutables, temporals eternals, contingents
necessary, finites infinite, and multiples one--a manifest contradiction in
terms. The generalization or abstraction of particulars is particularity,
of mutables is mutability, of temporals temporality, of contingents
contingency, of finites finiteness, of multiples plurality or multiplicity.
The overlooking of this obvious fact, and regarding the universal,
immutable, eternal, etc., as abstractions or generalizations of
particulars, mutables, temporals, and so on, has given birth to the
pantheistic philosophy, than which nothing can be more sophistical.

The ideas or categories of the universal, the immutable, and the eternal,
the necessary, the infinite, the one or unity, are so far from being
abstractions from particular concretes that in point of fact we cannot even
think things as particular, changeable, temporal, contingent, finite, or
multiple without them. Hence, they are called necessary ideas, because
without them no synthetic judgment _à posteriori_ or fact of
experience is possible. They are not abstractions formed by the human mind
by contemplating concrete things, because the human mind cannot operate or
even exist without them, and without them human intelligence, even if
supposable, could not differ from the intelligence of the brute, which,
though many eminent men in modern science are endeavoring to prove it,
cannot be accepted, because in proving we should disprove it.

{155}

The question now for philosophy to answer, as we have already intimated,
is, Are these ideas or categories, which precede and enter into every fact
of experience, forms of the subject or human understanding, as Kant
alleges, or are they objective and real, and, though necessary to the
existence and operation of the human mind, are yet really distinct from it,
and independent of it, as much so as if no human mind had been created?
This is the problem.

St. Thomas evidently holds them to be objective, for he holds them to be
necessary and self-evident principles, principles _per se nota_, as
may be seen in his answer to the question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per se
notum?_ and we need strong reasons to induce us to dissent from any
philosophical conclusion of the angelic doctor. Moreover, Kant by no means
proves his own conclusion, that they are forms of the subject. All he
proves is that there is and can be no fact of human knowledge without them,
which may be true without their being subjective. He proves, if you will,
that they are constituent principles of the human understanding, in the
sense that the human understanding cannot exist and operate without their
initiative and concurrence; but this no more proves that they are forms of
the subject than the fact that the creature can neither exist nor act
without the creative and concurrent act of the creator proves that the
creator is an inherent law or form of the creature. To our mind, Kant
confirms a conclusion contrary to his own. His masterly _Kritik der
reinen Vernunft_ establishes simply this fact, that man's own subjective
reason alone does not suffice for science, and that man, in science as in
existence, is dependent on that which is not himself; or, in a word, that
man depends on the intelligibleness of the object, or that which renders it
intelligible, to be himself intelligent, or knowing. Man is, no doubt,
created with the power or faculty of intelligence, but that power or
faculty is not the power or faculty to know without an intelligible object,
or to know what is not knowable independently of it. Hence, from Kant's
facts, we conclude that the ideas or categories, without which no object is
intelligible and no fact of intelligence possible, are not subjective, but
objective, real, and independent of the subject.

The matter is simple enough if we look at it freed from the obscurity with
which philosophers have surrounded it. Thought is a complex fact, the joint
product of subject and object. God is his own object, because he is self
existent and self-sufficing: is in himself, as say the theologians,
_actus purissimus_, most pure act, which permits us up to a certain
point to understand the eternal generation of the Son and the procession of
the Holy Ghost. God, being self-existent and self-sufficing, needs and can
receive nothing from without his own most perfect being. But man is a
dependent being, a creature, and does not and cannot suffice in himself for
either his own existence or his own intelligence. He cannot think by
himself alone or without the concurrence of the object, which is not
himself. If the concurrence of the object be essential to the production of
my thought, then that concurrence must be active, for a passive concurrence
is the same as no concurrence at all. Then the object must be active,
therefore real, for what is not real cannot act or be active. Then the
object in my thought is not and cannot be myself, but stands over against
me. Now, I know that I think these ideas, and that they are the object in
my thought without which I cannot think at all. Therefore, they are
objective and real, and neither myself nor my creations, as are
abstractions.

This conclusion is questioned only by those persons who have not duly
considered the fact that there can be no thought without both subject and
object, and that man can never be his own object. To assume that he can
act, think, or know with himself alone, without the concurrence of that
which is not himself and is independent of him, is to deny his dependence
and to assume him to be God--a conclusion which some think follows from the
famous "_Cogito, ergo sum_" of Descartes, and which is accepted and
defended by the whole German pantheistic school of the present day.
{156}
Indeed, as atheism was in the last century, so pantheism is in the present
century the real enemy philosophy has to combat. In concluding the reality
of the object from the fact that I think it, I am far from pretending that
thought cannot err; but the error is not in regard to what I really think,
but in regard to that which I do not think, but infer from my thought. I
think only what is intelligible, and what is intelligible is real, and
therefore true, for falsehood, being unreal, is unintelligible, and
therefore cannot be thought. But in converting my thought into a
proposition, I may include in the proposition not only what I thought, but
what I did not think. Hence the part of error, which is always the part not
of knowledge, but of ignorance. It is so we understand St. Augustine and
St. Thomas.[Footnote 37]

    [Footnote 37: Vide St. Augustine, in lib lxxxiii. Qq., quaest. xxii.,
    and St. Thomas, Summa p.1 quaest. xvii, a. 3 ln. c. The words of St.
    Augustine are, "Omnis qui fallitur, id quo fallitur, non intelligit."
    Hence the Intellect is always true.]

These considerations authorize, or we are much mistaken, the conclusion
that the ideas or categories, which the schoolmen hold to be forms of the
intermediary or logical world, and Kant to be forms of the subject, are
objective and real, and either the intelligible object itself or the
objective light by which it is rendered intelligible or knowable. Plato,
Aristotle, and the scholastics, if we have not misapprehended them, regard
them, in explaining the fact of knowledge, rather as the light which
illumines the object than the object itself. Yet, when the object is
intelligible in itself, or by its own light, St. Thomas clearly identifies
it with the object, and distinguishes it from the object only when the
object is not intelligible _per se_. Thus, he maintains with St.
Augustine that God knows things _per ideam_; but to the objection that
God knows them by his essence, he answers that God in his own essence is
the similitude, that is, the idea, of all things: _Unde idea in Deo nihil
est aliud quam essentia Dei_. Therefore, idea in God is nothing else
than the essence of God. [Footnote 38]

    [Footnote 38: Summa, p.1, quaest, xv. a. 1 ad 3. The question is _de
    Ideis_, and we think the reader, by consulting what St. Thomas says
    in the body of the first article, will agree that, though we have used
    a different phraseology, we have simply given his sense.]

The doctrine of St. Thomas is that all knowledge is by ideas, in the sense
of image, likeness, or similitude. In God the idea, image, likeness, or
similitude, the _species_, is not distinguishable from the divine
essence, for he is in his essence _similitudo omnium rerum_. Now,
though we are created after the _idea exemplaris_, or model eternal in
his essence, and therefore in our degree copy or imitate him, we have not
in us the types or models of all things, are not in ourselves _similitudo
omnium rerum_, and therefore are not intelligent in ourselves alone. The
ideas by which things are intelligible and we intelligent must be distinct
from us, and exist independent of us. As no creature any more than we has
in itself the likeness of all things, or is in itself its own _idea
exemplaris_, no creature can be in itself alone intelligible. Hence what
the schoolmen call idea or intelligible species must be equally distinct
from and independent of the object when the object is _aliquid
creatum_, or creature. Hence, while both the created subject and the
created object depend on the idea, the one to be intelligible, the other to
be intelligent, the idea, intelligible species, the light--as we prefer to
say--is independent of them both. The idea _in re_ is not something
intermediary between subject and object, as is sometimes supposed, but the
light that intervenes between them, as the necessary condition of knowledge
in creatures. This seems to us to be the real doctrine of the scholastics,
as represented by St. Thomas, and is, in our judgment, indisputable.

{157}

We call the idea, regarded as intervening in the fact of knowledge, the
light, and thus avoid the question whether all knowledge is by similitude
or not. It may be that the idea is light because it contains the image or
likeness of the object, but that seems to us a question more curious than
practically important. We cannot see that the explication of the mystery of
knowing is carried any further by calling the idea image or similitude than
by simply calling it the intelligible light. The Platonists and
peripatetics seem to us to come no nearer the secret of knowledge by so
calling it than do our philosophers to the secret of external vision, when
they tell us that we do not see the visible object itself, but its image
painted by the external light on the retina of the eye. How do I see the
image or picture, and connect it with the external object? When I have
called the object or the idea light, I seem to myself to have said all that
can be said on the point, and to retain substantially the scholastic
doctrine of ideas, or intelligible species, which asserts, I add, by the
way, what is perhaps very true, but which after all brings us no nearer to
the secret of knowledge, or the explanation of how in the last analysis we
do or can know at all.

How we do or can know seems to us an inexplicable mystery, as is our
existence itself. That we do know is certain. Every man knows, and in
knowing knows that be knows; but how he knows no man knows. To deny is as
much an act of reason as is to affirm, and no one can deny without knowing
that he denies. Men may doubt many things, but universal doubt is a simple
impossibility, for whoever doubts knows that be doubts, and never doubts
that he doubts or that doubt is doubting. In all things and in all science
we arrive at last, if we think long and deep enough, at a mystery which it
is in no human power to deny or to explain, and which is explicable only in
God by his divine science. Hence it is that philosophy never fully suffices
for itself, and always needs to be supplemented by revelation, as nature to
attain its end must not only be redeemed from the fall, but supplemented by
grace. Man never suffices for himself, since his very being is not in
himself; and how, then, shall philosophy, which is his creation, suffice
for itself? Let philosophy go as far as it can, but let the philosopher
never for a moment imagine that human reason will ever be able to explain
itself. The secret as of all things is in God and with him. Would man be
God, the creature the Creator?

If we have seized the sense of the scholastic philosophy as represented by
St. Thomas, and are right in understanding by the intelligible species of
the schoolmen the light by which the object is intelligible, therefore the
object itself when the object is intelligible _per se_, and the
intelligible light when it is not, the ideal is objective and real, and
both the old quarrel and the new are voided. Abstractions are null; genera
and species are real, but creatures; ideas, as the intelligible light by
which we know, are not forms of the subject, but objective and real, and in
fact the light of the divine being, which, intelligible by itself, is the
intelligibility of all created existences. St. Anselm's argument is, then,
rigidly sound and conclusive: I think most perfect being _in re_; and
therefore such being is, or I could not think it, since what is not cannot
be thought. If the most perfect being, a greater than which and the
contrary of which cannot be thought, be only in my thought, then I am
myself greater than the most perfect being, and my thought becomes the
criterion of perfection, and I am greater than God, and can judge him.

This follows from the fact that the ideal is real. The ideas of the
universal, the infinite, the perfect, the necessary, the immutable, the
eternal cannot be either the intelligible object or the intelligible light,
unless they are being. As abstractions, or as abstracted from being, they
are simple nullities.
{158}
To think them is to think real, universal, infinite, perfect, necessary,
immutable, and eternal being, the _ens perfectissimum_ of St. Anselm,
the _ens necessarium et reale_ of the theologians, a greater than
which or the contrary of which cannot be thought. That this _ens_,
intuitively affirmed to every intellect, is God, is amply shown in the
papers on "The Problems of the Age," and also that _ens_ or being
creates existences, and hence there is no occasion for us to show it over
again.

But it will not do to say, as many do, that we have intuition of God. The
idea is intuitive; and we know by intuition that which is God, and that he
is would be indemonstrable if we did not; but we do not know by intuition
that what is affirmed or presented in intuition is God. When Descartes
says, "I think God, therefore God is," he misapprehends St. Anselm, and
assumes what is not tenable. St. Anselm does not say he thinks God, and
therefore God is; he says, "I think most perfect being, a greater than
which cannot be thought," and therefore most perfect being is. The
intuition is not God, but most perfect being. So the ideal formula, _ens
creat existentias_ so ably defended in the papers on "The Problems of
the Age," would be indefensible, if _Deus _were substituted for
_ens_, and it read, God creates existences. That is true, and
_ens_, no doubt, is _Deus_; but we know not that by intuition,
and it would be wrong to understand St. Augustine, who seems to teach that
we know that God is by intuition, in any other sense than that we have
intuition of that which can be demonstrated to be God. We know by intuition
that which is God, but not that it is God.

St. Thomas seems to us to set this matter right in his answer to the
question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per notum?_--He holds that _ens_
is _per se notum_, or self-evident, and that first principles in
knowing, as well as in being, evidence themselves, but denies that _Deum
esse sit per se notum_, because the meaning of the word _Deus_ or
God is not self-evident and known by all. His own words are: "_Dico ergo
haec propositio, DEUS EST, quantum in se est, per se nota est, quia
praedicatum est idem cum subjecto Deus enim est suum esse, ut infra
patebit. Sed qua nos non scimus de Deo QUID EST, non est per se nota est,
sed indiget demonstrari._" [Footnote 39]

    [Footnote 39: Summa, pars. 1, quaest. 1 a. ln c.]

St. Thomas adds, indeed, "Sed indiget demonstrari, per ea quae sunt magis
nota quoad nos, et minus secundam naturam, scilicet per effectus;" but this
is easily explained. The saint argues that it is not self-evident that God
is, because it is not self-evident what he is; for, according to the
scholastic philosophy, to be able to affirm that a thing is, it is
necessary to know its quidity [Footnote 40], since without knowing what the
thing is we cannot know that it is. What God is can be demonstrated only by
his works, and that it can be so demonstrated St. Paul assures us, Rom.
1:20: "Invisibilia ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt,
intellecta, conspiciuntur: sempiterna quoqne virtus et divinitas;" or as we
venture to English it: "The invisible things of God, even his eternal power
and divinity, are clearly seen from the foundation of the world, being
understood (or known) by the things that are made." St. Paul appeals to the
things that are made not to prove that God is, but to show what he is, or
rather, if we may so express ourself, to prove that he is God, and leaves
us, as does St. Thomas, to prove, with St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Fénelon,
and others, that he is, by the argument derived from intuitive ideas, or
first principles, commonly called the _argumentum a priori_, though
that, strictly speaking, it is not, for there is nothing more ultimate or
universal in science than is God himself, or, rather, that which is God.

    [Transcribers footnote 40: quidity--Real nature of a thing; the
    essence.]

{159}

The ideal formula is true, for it is contained in the first verse of
Genesis, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," and in the first
article of the creed, "I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and
all things visible and invisible;" and what it formulates is, as we have
shown, and as is shown more at length in "The Problems of the Age,"
intuitive, and the human mind could not exists and operate if it were not
so; but the formula itself, or, rather, the formulation as an intellectual
judgment, is not so. The judgment was beyond the reach of all Gentile
philosophy, which nowhere asserts or recognizes the fact of creation; it is
beyond the reach of the mass even of the Christian people, who hold that
God creates the world as an article of faith rather than as a scientific
truth; it is denied by nearly all the systems of philosophy constructed by
non-Catholics even in our own day, and it may well be doubted if science,
unaided by revelation, could ever have attained to it.

This relieves the formula of the principal objections urged against it. The
ideas formulated are the first principles in science with which all
philosophy must commence, but the formulation, instead of being at the
beginning, does not always appear even at its conclusion. The explanations
we have offered show that there is no discrepancy between its assertion and
the philosophy of St. Thomas. Indeed, the formula in substance is the
common doctrine of all great Catholic theologians in all ages of the
church, and may be seen to be so if we will only take the pains to
understand them and ourselves. The objection, that the doctrine that we
have intuition of most perfect being assumes that we have the intuitive
vision of God even in this life, cannot stand, because that vision is
vision of God as he is in himself, and this asserts only intuition of him
as idea, which we even know not by intuition is God. The result of our
discussion is to show that the sounder and better philosophy of our day is
in reality nothing but the philosophy of St. Anselm and St. Thomas, and
which in substance has been always, and still is, taught with more or less
clearness and depth in all our Catholic schools.

------

      Original

      The Hidden Crucifixion.

      "And they crucified him there."


  Say not 'twas on dread Calvary's mountain top,
      And in the broad and glaring light
        Of noonday sun;
    With hooting rabble crowded 'round
        To show
      The Holy One despite.

  No, no! But in this guilty breast, alone--
      God of my love, how could I dare!--
        The deed was done.
      Ye angels, look upon this heart;
        Ye know
      I crucified him there!

------

{160}

    Impressions Of Spain.

    By Lady Herbert.


    St. Sebastian and Burgos.

What is it that we seek for, we Englishmen and Englishwomen, who year by
year, about the month of November, are seen crowding the Folkestone and
Dover steamboats, with that unmistakable "going abroad" look of
travelling--bags and wide-awakes and bundles of wraps and alpaca gowns? I
think it may be comprised in one word--_sunshine_. This dear old land
of ours, with all its luxuries and all its comforts and all its
associations of home and people, still lacks one thing--and that is
climate. For climate means health to one half of us; and health means power
of enjoyment; for, without it, the most perfect of homes (and nowhere is
that word understood so well as in England) is spoiled and saddened. So, in
pursuit of this great boon, a widow lady and her children, with a doctor
and two other friends, started off in the winter of 186-, in spite of
ominous warnings of revolutions, and grim stories of brigands, for that
comparatively unvisited country called Spain. As far as St. Sebastian the
journey was absolutely without interest or adventure of any kind. The
express train dashed them past houses and villages, and picturesque old
towns with fine church towers, from Paris to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to
Bayonne, and so on past the awful frontier, the scene of so many
passages-at-arms between officials and ladies' maids, till they found
themselves crossing the picturesque bridge which leads to the little town
of St. Sebastian, with its beach of fine sand, washed by the long billowy
waves of the Atlantic on the one hand, and its riant, well-cultivated
little Basque farms on the other. As to the town itself, time and the
prefect may eventually make it a second Biarritz, as in every direction
lodging-houses are springing up, till it will become what one of Dickens's
heroes would call "the most sea-bathingest place" that ever was! But at
present it is a mass of rough stone and lime and scaffolding; and the one
straight street leading from the hotel to the church of St. Maria, with the
castle above, are almost all that remains of the old town which stood so
many sieges, and was looked upon as the key of Northern Spain. The hotel
appeared but tolerably comfortable to our travellers, fresh from the
luxuries of Paris. When they returned, four or five months later, they
thought it a perfect paradise of comfort and cleanliness. After wandering
through the narrow streets, and walking into one or two uninteresting
churches, it was resolved to climb up to the citadel which commands the
town, and to which the ascent is by the fair zigzag road, like that which
leads to Dover Castle. A small garrison remains in the keep, which is also
a military prison. The officers receiving our party very courteously,
inviting them to walk on the battlements, and climb up to the flag-staff,
and offering them the use of their large telescope for the view, which is
certainly magnificent, especially toward the sea. There is a tiny chapel in
the fortress, in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. It was pleasant
to see the sentinel presenting arms to it each time his round brought him
past the ever open door. On the hill side, a few monumental slabs, let in
here and there into the rock, and one or two square tombs, mark the graves
of the Englishmen killed during the siege, and also in the Don Carlos
revolution.
{161}
Of the siege itself, and of the historical interest attached to St.
Sebastian, we will say nothing: are they not written in the book of the
chronicles of Napier and Napoleon?

The following morning, after a fine and crowded service at the church of
St. Maria, where they first saw the beautiful Spanish custom of the women
being all veiled, and in black, two of the party started at seven in the
morning, in a light carriage, for Loyola. The road throughout is beautiful,
reminding one of the Tyrol, with picturesque villages, old Roman bridges,
quaint manor-houses, with coats of arms emblazoned over their porticoes;
rapid, clear trout-streams and fine glimpses of snowy mountains on the
left, and of the bright blue sea on the right. The flowers, too, were
lovely. There was a dwarf blue bugloss of an intensity of color which is
only equalled by the large forget-me-not on the mountainsides of Lebanon.
The peasants are all small proprietors. They were cultivating their fields
in the most primitive way, father, mother, and children working the ground
with a two-pronged fork, called by them a "laya;" but the result was
certainly satisfactory. They speak a language as utterly hopeless for a
foreigner to understand as Welsh or Gaelic. The saying among the
Andalusians is that the devil, who is no fool, spent seven years in Bilboa
studying the Basque dialect, and learned three words only; and of their
pronunciation they add that the Basque write "Solomon," and pronounce it
"Nebuchadnezzar!" Be this as it may, they are a contented, happy,
prosperous, sober race, rarely leaving their own country, to which they are
passionately attached, and deserving, by their independence and
self-reliance, their name of "Bayascogara"--"Somos bastantes."

Passing through the baths Certosa, the mineral springs of which are much
frequented by the Spaniards in summer, our travellers came, after a four
hours' drive, to Azpeitia, a walled town, with a fine church containing the
"pila," or font, in which St. Ignatius was baptized. Here the good-natured
curé, Padre G--, met them, and insisted on escorting them to the great
college of Loyola, which is about a mile from the town. It has a fine
Italian façade, and is built in a fertile valley round the house of St.
Ignatius, the college for missionary priests being on one side, and a
florid, domed, circular marble church on the other. The whole is thoroughly
Roman in its aspect, but not so beautiful as the Gothic buildings of the
south. They first went into the church, which is very rich in jaspers,
marbles, and mosaics, the marbles being brought from the neighboring
mountains. The cloisters at the back are still unfurnished; but the
entrance to the monastery is of fine and good proportions, and the
corridors and staircase are very handsome. Between the church and the
convent is a kind of covered cloister, leading to the "Santuario," the
actual house in which the saint was born and lived. The outside is in
raised brickwork, of curious old geometrical patterns; and across the door
is the identical wooden bar which in old times served as protection to the
château. Entering the low door, you see on your right a staircase; and on
your left a long low room on the ground floor, in which is a picture of the
Blessed Virgin. Here the saint was born: his mother, having a particular
devotion to the Virgin, insisted on being brought down here to be confined.
Going up the stairs, to a kind of corridor used as a confessional, you come
first to the chapel of St. Francis Borgia, where he said his first mass.
Next to it is one dedicated to Marianne di Jesu, the "Lily of Quito," with
a beautiful picture of the South American saint over the high altar. To the
left, again, is another chapel, and here St. François Xavier, the Apostle
of the Indies, said his mass before starting on his glorious evangelical
mission.
{162}
Ascending a few steps higher, their guide led them into a long low room,
richly decorated and gilt, and full of pictures of the different events of
the life of the saint. A gilt screen divided the ante-chapel from the
altar, raised on the very spot where he lay so long with his wounded leg,
and where he was inspired by the Blessed Virgin to renounce the world, and
devote himself, body and soul, to the work of God. There is a
representation of him in white marble under the altar as he lay; and
opposite, a portrait, in his soldier's dress, said to be taken from life,
and another of him afterward, when he had become a priest. It is a
beautiful face, with strong purpose and high resolve in every line of the
features.

In the sacristy is the "baldachino," or tester of his bed, in red silk. It
was in this room that he first fell sick and took to reading the Lives of
the Saints to amuse himself, there being no other book within reach. Such
are the "common ways," which we blindly call "accidents," in which God
leads those whom he chooses, like Saul, for his special service. The
convent contains thirty fathers and twenty-five lay brothers. There are
about 120 students, a fine library, refectory, etc. They have a large
day-school of poor children, whom they instruct in Basque and Spanish; and
distribute daily a certain number of dinners, soup, and bread, to the sick
poor of the neighboring villages, about twenty of whom were waiting at the
buttery door for their daily supply.

The English strangers, taking leave of the kind and courteous fathers, had
luncheon at a little "posada" close by, where the hostess insisted on their
drinking some of the cider of the country, which the doctor, himself a
Devonshire man, was obliged to confess excelled that of his own country.
The good curé entertained them meanwhile with stories of his people, who
appear to be very like the Highlanders, both in their merits and their
faults. Some of their customs seemed to be derived from pagan times, such
as that of offering bread and wine on the tombs of those they love on the
anniversary of their death; a custom in vogue in the early days of
Christianity, and mentioned by St. Augustine in his Confessions as being
first put a stop to by St. Ambrose, at Milan, on account of the abuses
which had crept into the practice. The drive back was, if possible, even
more beautiful than that of the morning, and they reached St. Sebastian at
eight o'clock, delighted with their expedition.

The next day they started for Burgos, by rail, only stopping for a few
minutes on their way to the station to see the "Albergo dei Poveri," a
hospital and home for incurables, nursed by the Spanish sisters of charity.
They are affiliated to the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, and follow their
rule, but do not wear the "white cornette" of the French sisters.

The railroad in this part of Spain has been carried through most
magnificent scenery, which appeared to our travellers like a mixture of
Poussin and Salvator Rosa. Fine purple mountains, still sprinkled with
snow, with rugged and jagged peaks standing out against the clear blue sky,
and with waterfalls and beautiful streams rushing down their sides; an
underwood of chestnut and beach trees; deep valleys, with little brown
villages and bright white convents perched on rising knolls, and
picturesque bridges spanning the little streams as they dashed through the
gorges; and then long tracks of bright rose-colored heather, out of which
rose big boulder-stones or the wayside cross; the whole forming, as it
were, a succession of beautiful pictures such as would delight the heart of
a painter, both as to composition and coloring. No one can say much for the
pace at which the Spanish railways travel; yet are they all too quick in
scenery such as this, when one longs to stop and sketch
at every turn.
{163}
Suddenly, however, the train came to a stand-still: an enormous fragment of
rock had fallen across the line in the night, burying a luggage-train, but
fortunately without injury to its drivers; and our party had no alternative
but to get out, with their manifold bags and packages, and walk across the
_débris_ to another train, which, fortunately, was waiting for them on
the opposite side of the chasm. A little experience of Spanish travelling
taught them to expect such incidents half a dozen times in the course of
the day's journey; but at first it seemed startling and strange. They
reached Burgos at six, and found themselves in a small but very decent
"fonda," where the daughter of the landlord spoke a little French, to their
great relief. They had had visions of Italian serving nearly as well as
Spanish for making themselves understood by the people; but this idea was
rudely dispelled the very first day of their arrival in Spain. Great as the
similarity may be in reading, the accent of the Spaniard makes him utterly
incomprehensible to the bewildered Italian scholar; and the very likeness
of some words increases the difficulty when he finds that, according to the
pronunciation, a totally different meaning is attached to them. For
instance, one of the English ladies, thinking to please the mistress of the
house, made a little speech to her about the beauty and cleanliness of her
kitchen, using the right word (_cocina_), but pronouncing it with the
Italian accent. She saw directly she had committed a blunder, though
Spanish civility suppressed the laugh at her expense. She found afterward
that the word she had used, with the "ci" _soft_, meant a female pig.
And this was only a specimen of mistakes hourly committed by all who
adventured themselves in this unknown tongue.

A letter of introduction procured for our travellers an instant admission
to the cardinal archbishop, who received them most kindly, and volunteered
to be their escort over the cathedral. He had been educated at Ushaw, and
spoke English fluently and well. He had a very pretty little chapel in his
palace, with a picture in it of Sta. Maria della Pace at Rome, from whence
he derives his cardinal's title.

The cathedral at Burgos, with the exception of Toledo, is the most
beautiful Gothic building in Spain. It was begun by Bishop Maurice, an
Englishman, and a great friend of St. Ferdinand's, in the year 1220. The
spires, with their lacework carving; the doorways, so rich in sculpture;
the rose-windows, with their exquisite tracery; the beautiful
lantern-shaped clerestory; the curious double staircase of Diego de Siloe;
the wonderful "retablos" behind the altars, of the finest wood-carving; the
magnificent marble and alabaster monuments in the side chapels, vying with
one another in beauty and richness of detail; the wonderful wood-carving of
the stalls in the choir; the bas reliefs carved in every portion of the
stone; in fact, every detail of this glorious building is equally perfect;
and even in Southern Spain, that paradise for lovers of cathedrals, can
scarcely be surpassed. The finest of the monuments are those of the Velasco
family, the hereditary high-constable of Castile. They are of Carrara
marble, resting upon blocks of jasper: at the feet of the lady lies a
little dog, as the emblem of "Fidelity." Over the doorway of this chapel,
leading to a tiny sacristy, are carved the arms of Jerusalem. In the large
sacristy is a Magdalen, by Leonardo da Vinci; and some exquisite church
plate, in gold and enamel, especially a chalice, a processional cross, a
pax, etc. In the first chapel on the right, as you enter by the west door,
is a very curious figure of Christ, brought from the Holy Land, with real
hair and skin; but painful in the extreme, and almost grotesque from the
manner in which it has been dressed. This remark, however, applies to
almost all the images of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin throughout Spain,
which are rendered both sad and ludicrous to English eyes from the
petticoats and finery with which modern devotion has disfigured them.
{164}
This crucifix, however, is greatly venerated by the people, who call it
"The Christ of Burgos," and on Sundays or holidays there is no possibility
of getting near it, on account of the crowd. In the Chapel of the
Visitation are three more beautiful monuments, and a very fine picture of
the Virgin and Child, by Sebastian del Piombo. But it was impossible to
take in every portion of this cathedral at once; and so our travellers went
on to the cloisters, passing through a beautiful pointed doorway, richly
carved, which leads to the chapter-house, now a receptacle for lumber, but
containing the chest of the Cid, regarding which the old chronicle says:
"He filled it with sand, and then, telling the Jews it contained gold,
raised money on security." In justice to the hero, however, we are bound to
add, that when the necessities of the war were over, he repaid both
principal and interest. Leaving, at last, the cloisters and cathedral, and
taking leave of the kind archbishop, our party drove to the Town Hall,
where, in a walnut-wood urn, are kept the bones of the Cid, which were
removed twenty years ago from their original resting-place at Cardena. The
sight of them strengthened their resolve to make a pilgrimage to his real
tomb, which is in a Benedictine convent about eight miles from the town.
Starting, therefore, in two primitive little carriages, guiltless of
springs, they crossed the river and wound up a steep hill till they came in
sight of _Miraflores_, the great Carthusian convent, which, seen from
a distance, strongly resembles Eton College Chapel. It was built by John
II. for a royal burial-place, and was finished by Isabella of Castile.
Arriving at the monastery, from whence the monks have been expelled, and
which is now tenanted by only one or two lay brothers of the order, they
passed through a long cloister, shaded by fine cypresses, into the church,
in the chancel of which is that which may really be called one of the seven
wonders of the world. This is the alabaster sepulcher of John II. and his
wife, the father and mother of Queen Isabella, with their son, the Infante
Alonso, who died young. In richness of detail, delicacy of carving, and
beauty of execution, the work of these monuments is perfectly
unrivalled--the very material seems to be changed into Mechlin lace. The
artist was Maestro Gil, the father of the famous Diego de Siloe, who carved
the staircase in the cathedral. He finished it in 1493; and one does not
wonder at Philip II.'s exclamation when he saw it: "_We_ have done
nothing at the Escurial." In the sacristy is a wonderful statue of St.
Bruno, carved in wood, and so beautiful and life-like in expression that it
was difficult to look at anything else.

Leaving Miraflores, our travellers broke tenderly to their coachmen their
wish to go on to Cardena. One of them utterly refused, saying the road was
impassable; the other, _moyennant_ an extra gratuity, undertook to try
it, but stipulated that the gentlemen should walk, and the ladies do the
same, if necessary. Winding round the convent garden walls, and then across
a bleak wild moor, they started, and soon found themselves involved in a
succession of ruts and sloughs of despond which more than justified the
hesitation of their driver. On the coach-box was an imp of a boy, whose
delights consisted in quickening the fears of the most timid among the
ladies by invariably making the horses gallop at the most difficult and
precipitous parts of the road, and then turning round and grinning at the
fright he had given them. It is needless to say that the carriage was not
his property. At last, the horses came to a stand-still; they could go no
further, and the rest of the way had to be done on foot. But our travellers
were not to be pitied; for the day was lovely, and the path across the moor
was studded with flowers. At last, on climbing over a steep hill which had
intercepted their view, they came on a lovely panorama, with a background
of blue mountains tipped with snow; a wooded glen, in which the brown
convent nestled, and a wild moor foreground, across which long strings of
mules with gay trappings, driven by peasants in Spanish costumes, exactly
as represented in Ansdell's paintings, were wending their way toward the
city.
{165}
Tired as some of our party were, this glorious view seemed to give them
fresh strength, and they rapidly descended the hill by the hollow path
leading to the convent. Over the great entrance is a statue of the Cid,
mounted on his favorite horse, "Babicca," who bore him to his last
resting-place, and was afterward buried beside the master he loved so well.
But the grand old building seemed utterly deserted, and a big mastiff,
fastened by an ominously slight chain to the doorway, appeared determined
to defy their attempts to enter. At last, one of them, more courageous than
the rest, tempting the Cerberus with the remains of her luncheon, got past
him, and wandered through the cloister, up a fine staircase to a spacious
corridor, in hopes of finding a guide to show them the way to the chapel,
where lay the object of their expedition, that is, the monument of the Cid.
But she was only answered by the echo of her own footsteps. The cells were
empty; the once beautiful library gutted and destroyed; the refectory had
nothing in it but bare walls--the whole place was like a city of the dead.
At last, she discovered a staircase lending down to a cloister on the side
opposite the great entrance, and there a low-arched door, which she found
ajar, admitted her into the deserted church. The tomb of the Cid has been
removed from the high altar to a side Chapel; and there is interred
likewise, his faithful and devoted wife Ximena, and their two daughters. On
his shield is emblazoned the "tizona," or sparkling brand, which the
legends affirm he always carried in his hand, and with which he struck
terror into the hearts of the infidels. This church and convent, built for
the Benedictines by the Princess Sancho, in memory of her son Theodoric,
who was killed out hunting, was sacked by the Moors in the ninth century,
when 200 of the monks were murdered. A tablet in the south transept still
remains, recording the massacre; but the monument of Theodoric has been
mutilated and destroyed. The Christian spoilers have done their work more
effectually than the Moslem! Sorrowfully our travellers left this beautiful
spot, thinking bitterly on the so-called age of progress which had left the
abode of so much learning and piety to the owls and the bats; and partly
walking, partly driving, returned without accident to the city. One more
memento of the Cid at Burgos deserves mention. It is the lock on which he
compelled the king, Alonso VI., to swear that he had had no part in his
brother Sancho's assassination at Zamora. All who wished to confirm their
word with a solemn oath used to touch it, till the practice was abolished
by Isabella, and the lock itself hung up in the old church of St. Gadea, on
the way to the castle hill, where it still rests. This is the origin of the
peasant custom of closing the hand and raising the thumb, which they kiss
in token of asseveration; and in like manner we have the old Highland
saying: "There's my thumb. I'll not betray you."

Another charming expedition was made on the following day to Las Huelgas,
the famous Cistercian nunnery, built in some gardens outside the town by
Alonso VIII. and his wife Leonora, daughter of our King Henry II.

When one of the ladies had asked the cardinal for a note of introduction to
the abbess, be had replied laughing: "I am afraid it would not be of much
use to you. She certainly is not under my jurisdiction, and I am not sure
whether she does not think I am under hers!" No lady abbess certainly ever
had more extraordinary privileges. She is a Princess Palatine--styled "By
the grace of God"--and has feudal power over all the lands and villages
round. She appoints her own priests and confessors, and has a hospital
about a mile from the convent, nursed by the sisters, and entirely under
her control.
{166}
After some little delay at the porter's lodge, owing to their having come
at the inconvenient hour of dinner, our party were ushered into the parlor,
and there, behind a grille, saw a beautiful old lady, dressed in wimple and
coif, exactly like a picture in the time of Chaucer. This was the
redoubtable lady abbess. There are twenty-seven choir nuns and twenty-five
lay sisters in the convent, and they follow the rule of St. Bernard. The
abbess first showed them the Moorish standard, beautifully embroidered,
taken at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, in 1180. A curious old fresco
representing this battle remains over the arch of the church. She then took
them to the choir, which is very rich in carving, and contains the tombs of
the founders, Alonso and Leonora, and also of a number of infantas, whose
royal bodies are placed in richly carved Gothic sepulchres, resting on
lions, on each side of the choir. In the church is a curious hammered iron
gilt pulpit, in which St. Vincent de Ferrer preached. Here St. Ferdinand
and Alonso XI. knighted themselves, and here our own king, Edward I.,
received the honor of knighthood at the hands of Alonso el Sabio.

The church is a curious jumble of different dates of architecture; but
there is a beautiful tower and doorway, some very interesting old
monuments, and a fine double rose-window. The cloisters are very beautiful,
with round-beaded arches, grouped pillars, and Norman capitals. The lady
abbess then ordered one of the priests of the convent to take her English
visitors to see their hospital, called "Del Rey," the walk to which from
the convent is through pleasant fields like English meadows. It is
admirably managed and nursed by the nuns. Each patient has a bed in a
recess, which makes, as it were, a little private room for each, and this
is lined with "azulejos," or colored tiles, up to a certain height, giving
that clean bright look which distinguishes the Spanish hospitals from all
others. At the end of each ward was a little altar, where mass is daily
performed for the sick. There are fifty men and fifty women, and the
surgical department was carefully supplied with all the best and newest
instruments, which the surgeon was eager to show off to the doctor, the
only one of the party worthy of the privilege. The wards opened into a
"patio," or court, with seats and bright flowers, where the patients who
could leave their beds were sitting out and sunning themselves. Altogether,
it is a noble institution; and one must hope that the ruthless hand of
government will not destroy it in common with the other charitable
foundations of Spain.


  Madrid.

But the cold winds blew sharply, and our travellers resolved to hurry
south, and reserve the further treasures of Burgos for inspection on their
return. The night train conveyed them safely to Madrid, where they found a
most comfortable hotel in the "Ville de Paris," lately opened by an
enterprising Frenchman, in the "Puelta del Sol;" and received the kindest
of welcomes from the English minister, the Count T. D., and other old
friends. It was Sunday morning, and the first object was to find a church
near at hand. These are not wanting in Madrid, but all are modern, and few
in good taste: the nicest and best served is undoubtedly that of "St. Louis
des Français," though the approach to it through the crowded market is
rather disagreeable early in the morning. The witty writer of "Les Lettres
d'Espagne" says truly: "Madrid _ne me dit rien:_ c'est moderne,
aligné, propre et civilisé." As for the climate, it is detestable: bitterly
cold in winter, the east wind searching out every rheumatic joint in one's
frame, and pitilessly driving round the corners of every street; burning
hot in summer, with a glare and dust which nearly equal that of Cairo in a
simoom.

{167}

The Gallery, however, compensates for all. Our travellers had spent months
at Florence, at Rome, at Dresden, and fancied that nothing could come up to
the Pitti, the Uffizi, or the Vatican--that no picture could equal the "San
Sisto;" but they found they had yet much to learn. No one who has not been
in Spain can so much as imagine what Murillo is. In England he is looked
upon as the clever painter of picturesque brown beggar-boys: there is not
one of these subjects to be found in Spain, from St. Sebastian to
Gibraltar! At Madrid, at Cadiz, but especially at Seville, one learns to
know him as he is--that is, the great mystical religious painter of the
seventeenth century, embodying in his wonderful conceptions all that is
most sublime and ecstatic in devotion, and in the representation of divine
love. The English minister, speaking of this one day to a lady of the
party, explained it very simply, by saying that the English generally only
carried off those of his works in which the Catholic feeling was not so
strongly displayed. It would be hopeless to attempt to describe all his
pictures in the Madrid Gallery. The Saviour and St. John, as boys, drinking
out of a shell, is perhaps the most delicate and exquisite in coloring and
expression; but the "Conception" surpasses all. No one should compare it
with the Louvre pictures of the same subject. There is a refinement, a
tenderness, and a beauty in the Madrid "Conception" entirely wanting in the
one stolen by the French. Then there is Velasquez, with his inimitable
portraits; full of droll originality, as the "AEsop;" or of deep historical
interest, as his "Philip IV.;" or of sublime piety, as in his
"Crucifixion," with the hair falling over one side of the Saviour's face,
which the pierced and fastened hands cannot push aside: each and all are
priceless treasures, and there must be sixty or seventy in that one long
room. Ford says that "Velasquez is the Homer of the Spanish school, of
which Murillo is the Virgil." Then there are Riberas, and Zurbarans, Divino
Morales, Juan Joanes, Alonso Caño, and half-a-dozen other artists, whose
very names are scarcely known out of Spain, and all of whose works are
impregnated with that mystic, devotional self-sacrificing spirit which is
the essence of Catholicism. The Italian school is equally magnificently
represented. There are exquisite Raphaels, one especially, "La Perla," once
belonging to our Charles I., and sold by the Puritans to the Spanish king;
the "Spasimo," the "Vergin del Pesce," etc.; beautiful Titians, not only
portraits, but one, a "Magdalen," which is unknown to us by engravings or
photographs in England, where, in a green robe, she is flying from the
assaults of the devil, represented by a monstrous dragon, and in which the
drawing is as wonderful as the coloring; beautiful G. Bellinis, and Luinis,
and Andrea del Sartos (especially one of his wife), and Paul Veronese, and
others of the Venetian and Milanese schools. In a lower room there are
Dutch and Flemish chefs-d'oeuvre without end: Rubens, and Vandyke, and
Teniers, and Breughel, and Holbein, and the rest. It is a gallery
bewildering from the number of its pictures, but with the rare merit of
almost all being good; and they are so arranged that the visitor can see
them with perfect comfort at any hour of the day. In the ante-room to the
long gallery are some pictures of the present century, but none are worth
looking at save Goya's pictures of the wholesale massacre of the Spanish
prisoners by the French, which are not likely to soften the public feeling
of bitterness and hostility toward that nation.

There is nothing very good in sculpture, only two of the antiques being
worth looking at; but there is a fine statue of Charles V., and a
wonderfully beautiful St. John of God, carrying a sick man out of the
burning hospital on his back, which is modern, but in admirable taste.
{168}
Neglected, in some side cupboards, and several of them broken and covered
with dust and dirt, are some exquisite tazzas of Benvenuto Cellini,
D'Arphes, and Beceriles, in lapis, jade, agate, and enamel, finer than any
to be seen even in the Grüne Gewölbe of Dresden. There is a gold mermaid,
studded with rubies, and with an emerald tail, and a cup with an enamelled
jewelled border and stand, which are perfectly unrivalled in beauty of
workmanship. Then, in addition to this matchless gallery, Madrid has its
"Academia," containing three of Murillo's most magnificent conceptions. One
is "St. Elizabeth of Hungary," washing the wounds of the sick, her fair
young face and delicate white hands forming a beautiful contrast with the
shrivelled brown old woman in the foreground. The expression of the saint's
countenance is that of one absorbed in her work and yet looking beyond it.
[Footnote 41] The other is the "Dream," in which the Blessed Virgin appears
to the founder of the church of St. Maria della Neve (afterward called St.
Maria Maggiore) and his wife, and suggests to them the building of a church
on a spot at Rome, which would be indicated to them by a fall of snow,
though it was then in the month of August. In the third picture the founder
and his wife are kneeling at the feet of the Pope, telling him of their
vision, and imploring his benediction on their work. These two famous
pictures were taken by Soult from Seville, and are of a lunette shape,
being made to fit the original niche for which they were painted: both are
unequalled for beauty of color and design, and have recently been
magnificently engraved, by order of the government.

    [Footnote 41: This picture was stolen from the Carldad, at Seville, by
    the French, and afterward sent back to Madrid, where it still remains.]

But apart from its galleries, Madrid is a disappointment; there is no
antiquity or interest attached to any of its churches or public buildings.
The daily afternoon diversion is the drive on the Prado; amusing from the
crowd, perhaps, but where, with the exception of the nurses, all national
costume has disappeared. There are scarcely any mantillas; but Faubourg
St.-Germain bonnets, in badly assorted colors, and horrible and exaggerated
crinolines, replacing the soft, black, flowing dresses of the south. It is,
in fact, a bad _réchauffé_ of the Bois de Boulogne. The queen, in a
carriage drawn by six or eight mules, surrounded by her escort, and
announced by trumpeters, and the infantas, following in similar carriages,
form the only "event" of the afternoon. Poor lady! how heartily sick she
must be of this promenade! She is far more pleasing-looking than her
pictures give her credit for, and has a frank kind manner which is an
indication of her good and simple nature. Her children are most carefully
brought up, and very well educated by the charming English authoress,
Madame Calderon de la Barca, well known by her interesting work on Mexico.
On Saturdays, the queen and the royal family always drive to Atocha, a
church at the extreme end of the Prado, in vile taste, but containing the
famous image of the Virgin, the patroness of Spain, to whom all the
royalties are specially devoted. It is a black image, but almost invisible
from the gorgeous jewels and dresses with which it is adorned.

One of the shows of Madrid is the royal stables, which are well worth a
visit. There are upward of two hundred and fifty horses, and two hundred
fine mules; the backs of the latter are invariably shaved down to a certain
point, which gives them an uncomfortable appearance to English eyes, but is
the custom throughout Spain. One lady writer asserts that "it is more
modest!" There is a charming little stud belonging to the prince imperial,
which includes two tiny mules not bigger than dogs, but in perfect
proportions, about the size required to drag a perambulator. Some of the
horses are English and thoroughbred, but a good many are of the
heavy-crested Velasquez type. The carriages are of every date, and very
curious. Among them is one in which Philip I. (le Bel) was said to have
been poisoned, and in which his wife, Jeanne la Folle, still insisted on
dragging him out, believing he was only asleep.

{169}

More interesting to some of our party than horses and stables were the
charitable institutions in Madrid, which are admirable and very numerous.
It was on the 12th of November, 1856, that the Mère Dévos, afterward Mère
Générale of the order of St. Vincent de Paul, started with four or five of
her sisters of charity to establish their first house in Madrid. They had
many hardships and difficulties to encounter, but loving perseverance
conquered them all. The sisters now number between forty and fifty,
distributed in three houses in different parts of the city, with more than
one thousand children in their schools and orphanages, the whole being
under the superintendence of the Soeur Gottofrey, the able and charming
French "provincial" of Spain. The queen takes a lively interest in their
success, and most of the ladies of her court are more or less affiliated to
them. There are branch houses of these French sisters at Malaga, Granada,
Barcelona, and other towns; and they are now beginning to undertake
district visiting, as well as the care of the sick and the education of
children--a proceeding which they were obliged to adopt with caution, owing
to the strong prejudice felt in Spain toward any religious order's being
seen outside their "clausura," and also toward their dress, the white
cornette, which, to eyes unaccustomed to anything but black veils, appeared
outrageous and unsuitable. The Spanish sisters of charity, though
affiliated to them, following the rule of St. Vincent, and acknowledging N.
T. H. Père Étienne as their superior, still refuse to wear the cornette,
and substitute a simple white cap and black veil. These Spanish sisters
have the charge of the magnificent Foundling Hospital, which receives
upward or one thousand children; of the hospital called Las Recogidas, for
penitence; of the General Hospital, where the sick are admirably cared for
and to which is attached a wing for patients of an upper class, who pay a
small sum weekly, and have all the advantages of the clever surgery and
careful nursing of the hospital (an arrangement sadly needed in our English
hospitals); of the Hospicio de St. Maria del Cármen, founded by private
charity, for the old and incurables; of the infant school, or "salle
d'asile," where the children are fed as well as taught; and of the Albergo
dei Poveri, equivalent to what we should call a workhouse in England, but
which we cannot desecrate by such a name when speaking of an establishment
conducted on the highest and noblest rules of Christian charity, and where
the orphans find not only loving care and tender watchfulness, but
admirable industrial training, fitting them to fill worthily any
employments to which their natural inclination may lead them. The Sacré
Coeur have a large establishment for the education of the upper classes at
Chaumartin de la Rosa, a suburb of Madrid, about four miles from the town.
It was founded by the Marquesa de Villa Nueva, a most saint-like person,
whose house adjoins, and in fact forms part of the convent--her bedroom
leading into a tribune overlooking the chapel and the blessed sacrament.
The view from the large garden, with the mountains on the one hand, and the
stone pine woods on the other, is very pretty, and unlike anything else in
the neighborhood of Madrid. The superior, a charming person, showed the
ladies all over the house, which is large, commodious, and airy, and in
which they have already upward of eighty pupils. They have a very pretty
chapel, and in the parlor a very beautiful picture of St. Elizabeth, by a
modern artist.

One more "lion" was visited before leaving Madrid, and that was the armory,
which is indeed well worth a long and careful examination. The objects it
contains are all of deep historical interest.
{170}
There is a collar-piece belonging to Philip II., with scenes from the
battle of St. Quentin exquisitely carved; a helmet taken from the
unfortunate Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada; beautiful Moorish
arms and Turkish banners taken at the battle of Lepanto, in old Damascus
inlaid-work; the swords of Boabdil, and of Ferdinand and Isabella; the
armor of the Cid, of Christopher Columbus, of Charles V., of St. Ferdinand,
and of Philip II.; the carriage of Charles V., looking like a large
bassinet; exquisite shields, rapiers, swords, and helmets; some very
curious gold ornaments, votive crowns, and crosses of the seventh century;
and heaps of other treasures too numerous to be here detailed. But our
travellers were fairly exhausted by their previous sight-seeing, and gladly
reserved their examination of the rest to a future day. At all times, a
return to a place is more interesting than a first visit; for in the latter
one is oppressed by the feeling of the quantity to be seen and the short
time there is to see it in, and so the intense anxiety and fatigue destroy
half one's enjoyment of the objects themselves. That evening they were to
leave the biting east winds of Madrid for the more genial climate of sunny
Malaga; and so, having made sundry very necessary purchases, including
mantillas and chocolate, and having eaten what turned out to be their last
good dinner for a very long time, they started off by an eight o'clock
train for Cordova, which was to be their halting place midway. On reaching
Alcazar, about one o'clock in the morning, they had to change trains, as
the one in which they were branched off to Valencia; and for two hours they
were kept waiting for the Cordova train. Oh! the misery of those wayside
stations in Spain! One long low room filled with smokers and passengers of
every class, struggling for chocolate, served in dirty cups by uncivil
waiters, with insufficient seats and scant courtesy: no wonder that the
Spaniards consider our waiting-rooms real palaces. You have no alternative
in the winter season but to endure this foetid, stifling atmosphere, and be
blinded with smoke, or else to freeze and shiver outside, where there are
no benches at all, and your only hope is to get a corner of a wall against
which you can lean and be sheltered from the bitter wind. The arrival of
the up train brought, therefore, unmixed joy to our party, who managed to
secure a compartment to themselves without any smokers (a rare privilege in
Spain), and thus got some sleep for a few hours. At six o'clock the train
stopped, the railroad went no further; so the passengers turned out
somewhat ruefully, in the cold, and gazed with dismay at the lumbering
dirty diligences, looking as if they had come out of the Ark, which were
drawn up, all in a row, at the station door, with ten, twelve, or fourteen
mules harnessed to each, and by which they and their luggage were to be
conveyed for the next eight hours. The station master was a Frenchman, and
with great civility, during the lading of the diligences, gave up to the
ladies his own tiny bedroom, and some fresh water to wash themselves a
little, and make themselves comfortable after their long night journey, for
there was no pretence of a waiting-room at this station.

Reader, did you ever go in a Spanish diligence? It was the first experience
of most of our party of this means of locomotion, and at first seemed
simply impossible. The excessive lowness of the carriages, the way in which
the unhappy passengers are jammed in, either into the _coupé_ in
front, or into the square box behind, unable to move or sit upright in
either; while the mules plunge and start off in every direction but the
right one, their drivers every instant jumping down and running by the side
of the poor beasts, which they flog unmercifully, vociferating in every
key; and that, not at first starting, but all the way, up hill and down
dale, with an energy which is as inexhaustible as it is despairing, till
either a pole cracks or a trace breaks, or some accident happens to a
wheel, and the whole lumbering concern stops with a jerk and a lurch which
threaten to roll everything and everybody into the gorge below.
{171}
Each diligence is accompanied by a "mayoral," or conductor, who has charge
of the whole equipage, and is a very important personage. This functionary
is generally gorgeously dressed, with embroidered jacket, scarlet sash
round the waist, gaiters with silver buttons and hanging leather strips,
and round his head a gay-colored handkerchief and a round black felt hat
with broad brim and feather, or else of the kind denominated "pork pie" in
England; he is here, there, and everywhere during the journey, arranging
the places of the passengers, the stations for halts, and the like. Besides
this dignitary, there is the "moto" or driver, whose business is to be
perpetually jumping down and flogging the far-off mules into a trot, which
he did with such cruelly that our travellers often hoped he would himself
get into trouble in jumping up again, which, unfortunately, he was always
too expert to do. Every mule has its name, and answers to it. They are
harnessed two abreast, a small boy riding on the leaders; and it is on his
presence of mind and skill that the guidance and safety of the whole team
depend. On this occasion, the "mayoral" and "moto" leant with their backs
against what was left of the windows of the _coupé_, which they
instantly smashed, the cold wind rushed in, and the passengers were
alternately splashed from head to foot with the mud cast up in their faces
by the mules' heels, or choked and blinded with dust. For neither
misfortune is there either redress or sympathy. The lower panels of the
floor and doors have holes cut in them to let out the water and mud; but
the same agreeable arrangement, in winter, lets in a wind which threatens
to freeze off your feet as you sit. A small boy, who, it is to be supposed,
was learning his trade, held on by his eyelids to a ledge below, and was
perpetually assisting in screaming and flogging. A struggle at some kind of
vain resistance, and then a sullen despair and a final making up one's mind
that, after all, it can't last forever, are the phases through which the
unhappy travellers pass during these agreeable diligence journeys. It was
some little time before our party could get sufficiently reconciled to
their misery to enjoy the scenery. But when they could look about them,
they found themselves passing through a beautiful gorge, and up a zigzag
road, like the lower spurs of an Alpine pass, over the Sierra Morena. Then
began the descent, during which some of the ladies held their breath,
expecting to be dashed over the parapet at each sharp turn in the road; the
pace of the mules was never relaxed, and the unwieldy top-heavy mass
oscillated over the precipice below in a decidedly unpleasant manner. Then
they came into a fertile region of olives and aloes, and so on by divers
villages and through roads which the late rains had made almost impassable,
and in passing over which every bone in their bodies seemed dislocated in
their springless vehicle, till, at two o'clock in the afternoon, they
reached the station, where, to their intense relief, they again came upon a
railroad. Hastily swallowing some doubtful chocolate, they established
themselves once more comfortably in the railway carriage; but after being
in the enjoyment of this luxury for half an hour, the train came, all of a
sudden, to a stand-still; and the doors being opened, they were politely
told that they must _walk_, as a landslip had destroyed the line for
some distance. Coming at last to a picturesque town with a fine bridge over
the Guadalquiver, they were allowed once more to take their seats in the
carriages, and finally arrived at Cordova at eight o'clock at night, after
twenty-four hours of travelling, alternating from intense cold to intense
heat, very tired indeed, horribly dusty and dirty, and without having had
any church all day.

  To be continued

--------

{172}

    From All the Year Round.

    Looking Down The Road.


  In the early spring-time
    My long watch began;
  Through the daisied meadows
    Merry children ran;
  Happy lovers wandered
    Through the forest deep,
  Seeking mossy corners
    Where the violets sleep.
  I in one small chamber
    Patiently abode--
  At my garret window
    Looking down the road.

  Watching, watching, watching,
    For what came not back!
  Summer marked in flowers
    All her sunny track,
  Hid the dim blue distance
    With her robe of green,
  Bathed the nearer meadows
    In a golden sheen.
  Full the fierce sure arrows
    Glanced and gleamed and glowed
  On my garret window
    Looking down the road.

  Watching, watching, watching,
    Oh! the pain of hope!
  Autumn's shadows lengthened
    On the breezy slope;
  Groups of tired reapers
    Led the loaded wains
  From the golden meadows,
    Through the dusky lanes;
  Home-returning footsteps
    O'er the pathway strode--
  Not the one I looked for.
    Coming down the road.

{173}

  Winter stripped the branches
    Of the roadside tree:
  But the frosty hours
    Brought no change for me--
  Save that I could better,
    Through the branches brown.
  See the tired travellers
    Coming from the town.
  Pitiless December
    Rained and hailed and snowed.
  On my garret window
    Looking down the road.

  At the last I saw it
    (Not the form I sought),
  Something brighter, purer,
    Blessed my sleeping thought.
  'Twas a white-robed angel--
    At his steadfast eyes
  Paled the wild-fire brightness
    Of old memories.
  Nearer drew the vision,
    While with bated breath
  Some one seemed to whisper,
    The Deliverer, "Death."
  Then my dreaming spirit,
    Eased of half its load,
  Saw the white wings lessen
    Down the dusty road.

  God has soothed my sorrow,
    He has purged my sin;
  Earthly hopes have perished--
    Heavenly rest I win.
  Dull and dead endurance
    Is no portion here;
  I am strong to labor,
    And my rest is near.
  Lifting my dull glances
    From the fields below,
  So the light of heaven
    Settles on my brow.
  O my God. I thank thee,
    Who that angel showed,
  From my garret window
    Looking down the road.

--------

{174}

  Original.

  Father Ignatius of St. Paul,[Footnote 42]

  Hon. and Rev. George Spencer.

    [Footnote 42: Life of F. Ignatius of St. Paul, Passionist. By the Rev.
    F. Pius a Sancto, Passionist. 1 vol. 12mo. Dublin, James Duffy.]

Fresh from the perusal of this book, we would gladly convey to others the
agreeable impression it has left on our imagination. It is an interesting
and impartial biography, full of pleasant incidents, simply narrated; with
the view of throwing light upon the character of F. Ignatius, and not upon
the personal views of his biographer. But we would rather dwell upon its
value as the life of a saintly man, whose circumstances were so nearly akin
to those of common Christians that no one can assert the impossibility of
imitating his example. We have observed, in reading the lives of the
saints, that one must himself be a saint to appreciate them aright.
Generally severed from us (to our shame be it spoken) by time, race, and
national habits, we are startled by strange details, and while wondering
over individual idiosyncrasies we lose sight of the heroic purity of
intention that hallowed almost every action of their mature lives.

In F. Ignatius we have a warm-hearted, frank, humorous Englishman, whose
memory is fresh in the hearts of thousands now living. Though belonging to
one of the noblest families in England, his training was simple, and his
position as rector in a country parish was not so dazzling as to set him
above the sympathies of those who read his life. His natural virtues were
weighed down by a love of approbation that has ruined many a soul before
now. He was accomplished, but not learned. Keen, sympathetic, and
perceptive, but neither a philosopher nor a logician. In short, he was not
set apart from the rest of humanity by any natural endowment; and yet one
lays down his biography with a sense of having made acquaintance with one
of the remarkable men of this century. Why? We cannot but suppose that it
was because he placed every faculty under the guidance of God, who worked
wonders with capacities by no means rare; and from an unready utterance
brought forth fruits of conversion that probably surprised no one so much
as the preacher himself.

Hon. George Spencer was the youngest child of John George, Earl Spencer,
and Lavinin, daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, afterward Earl of Lucan.

Earl Spencer was successively member of parliament, one of the lords of the
treasury, and first lord of the admiralty, succeeding Lord Chatham in the
last-named office in the year 1794. It was while Earl Spencer was lord of
the admiralty, in London, December 21, 1799, that the subject of our
narrative first saw the light, or what goes by the name of light, during a
December in London.

His first recollections, oddly enough, are of his six-year-old birthday,
when his sister's governess, a Swiss lady, took him aside as for serious
conversation, and told him of the existence of God, and some other truths
of religion. Possibly he had heard these things before, but the room at
Althorp where the scene took place, and the tender solicitude of the lady's
manner, were ever after imprinted on his memory as if connected with a
momentous occasion.

{175}

At nine years old, with his favorite brother, Frederick, be was carried in
a grand equipage to Eton, and placed under the charge of a private tutor,
the Rev. Richard Godley, who lived at the "Wharf," about half a mile from
the college buildings. Mr. Godley's rule was a severe but blessed one, and
young Spencer owed four years of marvellous innocence to its restrictions.
"Egyptian bondage" he thought it, poor little fellow, that several times a
day, summer and winter, be must run across the playgrounds to report
himself to the tutor. He lived between two fires: the wrath of elder boys
who called upon him to fag for them as he rushed through the
cricket-ground, and the terror of Mr. Godley's awful countenance if he and
Frederick arrived a few minutes late. "As might be expected," he says, in
his autobiography, "the more we were required to observe rules and customs
different from others, the more did a certain class of big bullies in the
school seem to count it their especial business to watch over us, as though
they might be our evil geniuses. A certain set of faces, consequently, I
looked upon with a kind of mysterious dread, and I was under a constant
sense of being as though in an enemy's country, obliged to guard against
dangers on all sides. Shrinking and skulking became my occupation beyond
the ordinary lot of little schoolboys, and my natural disposition to be
cowardly and spiritless was perhaps increased. I say perhaps, for other
circumstances might have made me worse; for what I was in the eyes of the
masters of public opinion in the school I really was--a chicken-hearted
creature, what in Eton language is called a _sawney_. It may be that
had I been from the first in free intercourse among the boys, instead of
being a good innocent one I might have been, what I suppose must be
reckoned one of the worst varieties of public school characters, a mean,
dishonorable one."

The experiment of close contact with other boys was too soon to be tried.
Mr. Godley's influence appeared to be dangerously evangelical. "The
Pilgrim's Progress" and "Alleine's Alarm" were recommended to George by his
tutor's sisters, and did not find favor at Althorp in the holidays. We next
hear of him at the Rev. ----'s, performing most of the duties of a footman
to one or two big boys, and enduring initiation in the iniquities of public
school-life. Everyone knows how valuable a prize to youthful tyrants is a
child in whom innocence and moral cowardice are combined; and such a prize
was George Spencer, blushing at immodest words, and ignorant of the nice
distinction between thieving and orchard robbing that exists in the minds
of school-boys only. Evening after evening the little boys' rooms were
invaded, their occupations broken up, and persecution carried on against
one or other of their set. For a little while Spencer used to find a little
time of peace when, after such a turmoil, be got into bed, said his
prayers, and cried himself to sleep. But the atmosphere was anti-religious,
and in the course of ten days be had given up all attempt to pray. A moment
of bitter self reproach awaited him. One day he was present when one of the
rudest of his tormentors was dressing himself. "To my surprise," he says,
"he turned to me, and with his usual civility said some such words as 'Now
hold your jaw,' and then, down on his knees near the bed, and his face
between his hands, said his prayers. I then saw for a moment to what I had
fallen, when even this fellow had more religion than unhappy I had
retained, but I had no grain of strength now left to rise. ..."

  "When I had ceased attempting to maintain my pious feelings, the best
  consolation I had was in the company of a few boys of a spirit congenial
  to what mine was now become. All the time that I remained at Eton I never
  learnt to take pleasure in the manly, active games for which it is so
  famous. It is not that I was without some natural talent for such things.
{176}
  I have since had my time of most ardent attachment to cricket, to tennis,
  shooting, hunting, and all active exercises: but my spirit was bent down
  at Eton; and among the boys who led the way in all manly pursuits, I was
  always shy and miserable, which was partly a cause and partly an effect
  of my being looked down upon by them. My pleasure there was in being with
  a few boys like myself, without spirit for these things, retired apart
  from the sight of others, amusing ourselves with making arbors and
  catching little fishes in the streams; and many were the hours I wasted
  in such childish things when I was grown far too old for them.

  "Oh! the happiness of a Catholic child, whose inmost soul is known to one
  whom God has charged with his salvation. Supposing I had been a Catholic
  child in such a situation--if such a supposition be possible--the pious
  feelings with which God inspired me would have been under the guidance of
  a tender spiritual father, who would have supplied exactly what I needed,
  when about to fall under the sense of unassisted weakness which I have
  described. He would have taught me to be innocent and firm in the midst
  of my trials, which would then have tended to exalt instead of oppressing
  my character. I would have kept my character not only clear in the sight
  of God, but honorable among my fellows, who soon would have given up
  their persecution when they found me steadfast; and I might have brought
  with me in the path of peace and justice many whom I followed in the dark
  ways of sin. But it is in vain to calculate on what I might have been had
  I been then a Catholic. God be praised, my losses I may yet recover, and
  perhaps even reap advantages from them."

So much for the sad and puny childhood of one who in after-life freed
himself absolutely from the bondage of public opinion. He who can truly
say, "Tu solus Domine!" has reached the sublimest height of dignity and
freedom.

If George Spencer's early years gave small promise of moral heroism, still
less would his youth lead one to look for great virtues in him. His
autobiography tells us that he yielded to the degrading temptations of
student life at Cambridge, not from inclination so much as because other
men set him the example. Two years of misery he endured, too, from the fear
that a courteous and merited apology made by him to a gentleman whom he had
unwittingly offended might have laid him open to the charge of cowardice.

As a scholar he ranked high, and held, at the same time, a good place among
athletes; thus showing advance in mind and body, while his soul was still
cramped by the fear of ridicule.

Then comes the continental tour, made after a grand and uninteresting
fashion; courier, servants, maids, and family physician. George's journal
is full of the sneers with which a well-bred English tourist is wont to
exorcise the demon of popery. He is much amused at the street-preaching of
a passionist father in Terracina; little dreaming that one day he himself
would perform the duties of a _svegliarino_, and with only partial
success too.

One admires constantly the good sense and high tone of Lord and Lady
Spencer. Invaluable was the example they gave their children; wonderful to
an American reader, the sway they exercised over their grown-up sons.

Soon after returning to England, Mr. Spencer took orders and entered upon
the life of a country clergyman. By fulfilling in person the arduous duties
which are too often left to a curate, he gave evidence of true nobility of
character; but so deficient in judgment and in deference to superiors was
his general conduct, that the world wondered more at his lack of common
sense than at his courage. Viewed from the present time, the germs of
sanctity are plainly visible in these vague struggles after perfection. He
practised great mortifications, concealing them as far as was possible. He
inveighed against tepidity wherever shown with an independence as valiant
as it was unpleasant to the objects of his condemnation. No very
comfortable member of a diocese was the Hon. Mr. Spencer in those days.
Bishop Bloomfield, his former tutor, bore his vagaries with fatherly
patience, and, looking through the mist of Methodism that hung about his
views, acutely detected the true difficulty, and recommended as a cure The
Poor Man's Preservative against Popery, by Blanco White.
{177}
On one occasion when Dr. Bloomfield read prayers in his own church, St.
Botolph's, Bishopsgate, Mr. Spencer, who was invited to preach, took the
occasion to explain these evangelical views of religion, intimating that
the congregation were not in the habit of hearing the gospel fully and
faithfully expounded. The bishop was wounded, but he only said: "George,
how could you preach such a sermon as that? In future I must look over your
sermon before you go into the pulpit."

Here is a scrap from his journal about the same time, 1824, or thereabout:
"The Bishop of Bristol preached in the morning for the schools a sermon
worthy of Plato rather than St. Paul." And another day: "Went with all
speed to Craven chapel, where I heard Irving, the Scotch minister, preach
nearly two hours. I was greatly delighted with his eloquence and stout
Christian doctrine, though his manner is most blamably extravagant." And
again: "I went with Mr. A---- and Miss B---- to hear Mrs. Fry perform, and
was delighted to hear her expounding to the prisoners in Newgate."

Among evangelical believers, Mr. Spencer found an energy and a missionary
spirit which harmonized with his own zealous nature. In theological matters
he was dissatisfied whithersoever he turned. In 1822, soon after being made
deacon, his early tendencies to high church principles had received a blow
from which they never recovered. He shall tell the circumstances in his own
simple words.

  "I was at the time living at Althorp, my Father's principal residence in
  the country, serving as a curate to the parish to which it was attached,
  though the park itself is extraparochial. Among the visitors who resorted
  there was one of the most distinguished scholars of the day, to whom, as
  to many more of the Anglican Church, I owe a debt of gratitude for the
  interest which he took in me, and for the help I actually received from
  him in the course of inquiry, which has happily terminated in the haven
  of the true church. I should like to make a grateful and honorable
  mention of his name, but as this has been found fault with I forbear,
  [Footnote 43] I was one day explaining to him with earnestness the line
  of argument which I was pursuing with dissenters, and my hopes from it; I
  suppose I expected encouragement, such as I had received from many
  others. But he simply and candidly said: 'These would be very convenient
  doctrines if we could make use of them, but they are available only for
  Roman Catholics; they will not serve us.' I saw in a moment the truth of
  his remark, and his character and position gave it additional weight. I
  did not answer him; but as a soldier who has received what he feels to be
  a mortal wound will suddenly stand still, and then quietly retire out of
  the mélée, and seek a quiet spot to die in, so I went away with my high
  churchism mortally wounded in the very prime of its vigor and youth, to
  die forever to the character of an Anglican high churchman. Why did not
  this open my eyes, you will say, to the truth of Catholicity? I answer,
  simply because my early prejudices were too strong. The unanswerable
  remark of my friend was like a _reductio ad absurdum_ of all high
  church ideas. If they were true, the Catholic would be so; which is
  absurd, as I remember Euclid would say, 'Therefore,' etc. The grand
  support of the high church system, church authority, having been thus
  overthrown, it was an easy though gradual work to get out of my mind all
  its minor details and accomplishments, one after another; such as regard
  for holy places, for holy days, for consecrated persons, for
  ecclesiastical writers; finally, almost all definite dogmatic notions. It
  would seem that all was slipping away, when, coming to the conviction of
  the truth of Catholicity, some years after, it was with extraordinary
  delight I found myself picking up again the shattered dispersed pieces of
  the beautiful fabric, and placing them now in better order on the right
  foundation, solid and firm, no longer exposed to such a catastrophe as
  had upset my card-castle of Anglican churchhmanship."

    [Footnote 43: This distinguished scholar was Dr. Elmaly.]

The divided state of his own parish occupied Mr. Spencer's thoughts, and he
devoted himself to winning dissenters into the fold by other means than
high church arguments. He tried to stretch open the gates of the
establishment so as to admit all classes of religionists to her communion.
Another system seemed more likely to prove efficacious, namely, the
beautiful example he set of devotion in his parish; making great sacrifices
for the poor, and qualifying himself to perform the offices of a physician
to the body as well as to the soul.

{178}

But new difficulties were in store for him in matters of faith. The
Athanasian creed begins to disturb him, not because of its doctrines, but
because of the condemnatory clauses at the beginning and end. He is now
rector of Brington, with excellent prospects of advancement. Is he not
bound to resign his position, since he cannot agree in full with the
Establishment? "No," says the Bishop of Peterborough; "there is a
difference between an open attack upon the liturgy and thirty-nine
articles, and the entertaining of private doubts to be confided to a friend
with the hope of having them removed. It would have been a sufficient cause
for choosing another profession than that of the ministry; but, being
already in holy orders, it is not a sufficient reason for resignation."
"No," said Dr. Blomfield; "it is one thing to doubt the truth of a
doctrine, and another to believe it false. Besides, the Protestant Church
does not pretend to pronounce a sentence of condemnation like the Church of
Rome. These clauses are merely intended to assert the truth of certain
dogmas very emphatically."

That this line of argument was not convincing it is easy to see. The result
was that Mr. Spencer informed his superiors that he should give up reading
the Athanasian creed in his church. Then feeling certain that he was no
longer in danger of promotion, he threw himself with renewed ardor into the
work of reconciling all sects to each other.

His family as a last resource bethought them of marrying him to a lady who
had charmed him in his college days. No; his conviction was that he ought
not to marry. One pities the disappointment of Lord and Lady Spencer. This
son, whom they had placed in an admirable position in life, who had every
attraction of manner and person that could insure worldly success, seemed
determined to thwart their efforts for his happiness, and to disappoint
parental ambition. But they little imagined how far his reckless
unworldliness would finally carry him.

On the 23d of November, 1827, when he returned from his parochial
visitation, he found a letter purporting to come from a gentlemen in Lille,
who was "grievously troubled about the arguments for popery." Ever desirous
to strengthen the wavering, Rev. Mr. Spencer entered into a long
correspondence, which resulted in a promise on his own part to follow his
correspondent into the Catholic Church if he would acknowledge his true
name and pause awhile before joining the Catholics. He tells us:

  "I heard no more of him till after my conversion and arrival at Rome,
  when I discovered that my correspondent was a lady, who had herself been
  converted a short time before she wrote to me. I never heard her name
  before (Miss Dolling), nor am I aware that she had ever seen me; but God
  moved her to desire and pray for my salvation, which she also undertook
  to bring about in the way I have related. I cannot say that I entirely
  approve of the stratagem to which she had recourse, but her motive was
  good, and God gave success to her attempt, for it was this that first
  directed my attention particularly to inquire about the Catholic
  religion, though she lived not to know the accomplishment of her wishes
  and prayers. She died at Paris, a year before my conversion, when about
  to take the veil as a nun of the Sacred Heart; and I trust I have in her
  an intercessor in heaven, as she prayed for me so fervently on earth."

Not being restrained, as was Mr. Spencer, by a sense of personal gratitude,
we may be allowed to express entire disapproval of the stratagem of the
"Maid of Lille." Like most other plots, it was quite unnecessary. Rev. Mr.
Spencer would have listened with profound attention to any person who
claimed to possess the truth, and it was offering him an indignity to trick
him into attention, as foolish mothers decoy their children to the
dentist's.

None the less, however, were Miss Dolling's arguments strong and
convincing: "That Scripture without tradition is quite insufficient for
salvation.
{179}
We cannot know anything about the Scriptures themselves, their composition,
inspiration, interpretation, without tradition. Besides, the New Testament
was not the text-book of the apostles. It is a collection of some things
they were inspired to write for the edification of the first Christians and
others who had not seen our Lord; and the epistles are a number of letters
from inspired men bound up together in one volume. The body of doctrine,
with its bearings, symmetry, extent, and obligation, was delivered orally
by the apostles, and the epistles must be consonant to that system as well
as explanatory of portions of it. Only by the unbroken succession of
pastors from the apostles to the present time can we have any safeguard as
to what we shall believe, and how we are to believe. The apostles and their
successors were 'to teach all nations,' and Christ promised them, and them
alone, the unerring guide of the Holy Spirit." She then assigns to
tradition the office of bearing testimony to what the doctrines of the
church have been and are at present. The definitions of councils are simple
declarations that such and such is the belief then, and from the beginning
of the Catholic Church. They state what is, not invent what is to be. Now,
history or written tradition, as contradistinguished from Scripture,
testifies to every simple tenet of the Catholic Church--her creeds,
liturgy, sacraments, jurisdiction. It testifies unerringly, too, even from
the objections of heretics, to the fact that this church has been always
believed divine in her origin, divine in her teaching, infallible and
unerring in her solemn pronouncements. This is fact, and who can gainsay
it?

Toward the end of the year 1829, Rev. Mr. Spencer made the acquaintance of
Mr. Ambrose Lisle Phillips, who was then seventeen years old. A few weeks
later he visited this new friend at Garendon Park, Loughbro', a visit the
result of which is best given in his own words:

  "On Sunday, Jan. 24, 1830, I preached in my church, and in the evening
  took leave of my family for the week, intending to return on the Saturday
  following to my ordinary duties at home. But our Lord ordered better for
  me. During the week I spent on this visit, I passed many hours daily in
  conversation with Phillips, and was satisfied beyond all my expectations
  with the answers he gave to the different questions I proposed about the
  principal tenets and practices of the Catholics. During the week we were
  in company with several other Protestants, and among them some
  distinguished clergymen of the Church of England, who occasionally joined
  in our discussions. I was struck with observing how the advantage always
  appeared on his side in the arguments which took place between them,
  notwithstanding their superior age and experience; and I saw how weak was
  the cause in behalf of which I had hitherto been engaged; I felt ashamed
  of arguing any longer against what I began to see clearly could not be
  fairly disproved. I now openly declared myself completely shaken, and,
  though I determined to take no decided step until I was entirely
  convinced, I determined to give myself no rest till I was satisfied, and
  had little doubt now of what the result would be. But yet I thought not
  how soon God would make the truth clear to me. I was to return home, as I
  have said, on Saturday. Phillips agreed to accompany me on the day
  previous to Leicester, where we might have further conversation with
  Father Caestryck, the Catholic missionary established in that place. I
  imagined that I might take some weeks longer for consideration, but Mr.
  Caestryck's conversation that afternoon overcame all my opposition. He
  explained to me, and made me see, that the way to come at the knowledge
  of the true religion is not to contend, as men are disposed to do, about
  each individual point, but to submit implicitly to the authority of
  Christ, and of those to whom he has committed the charge of his flock. He
  set before me the undeniable but wonderful fact of the agreement of the
  Catholic Church all over the world, in one faith, under one head; he
  showed me the assertions of Protestants that the Catholic Church had
  altered her doctrines were not supported by evidence; he pointed out the
  wonderful, unbroken chain of the Roman pontiffs; he observed to me how in
  all ages the church, under their guidance, had exercised an authority,
  indisputed by her children, of cutting off from her communion all who
  opposed her faith and disobeyed her discipline. I saw that her assumption
  of this power was consistent with Christ's commission to his apostles to
  teach all men to the end of the world; and his declaration that those who
  would not hear the pastors of his church rejected him. What right, then,
  thought I, had Luther and his companions to set themselves against the
  united voice of the church?
{180}
  I saw that he rebelled against the authority of God when he set himself
  up as an independent guide. He was bound to obey the Catholic Church--how
  then should I not be equally bound to return to it? And need I fear that
  I should be led into error by trusting to those guides to whom Christ
  himself thus directed me? No! I thought this impossible. Full of these
  impressions, I left Mr. Caestryck's house to go to my inn, whence I was
  to to return home next morning. Phillips accompanied me, and took this
  last occasion to impress on me the awful importance of the decision which
  I was called upon to make. At length I answered:

  "'I am overcome. There is no doubt of the truth. One more Sunday I will
  preach to my congregation, and then put myself into Mr. Foley's hands,
  and conclude this business.'

  "It may be thought with what joyful ardor he embraced this declaration,
  and warned me to declare my sentiments faithfully in these my last
  discourses. The next minute led me to this reflection: Have I any right
  to stand in that pulpit, being once convinced that the church is
  heretical to which it belongs? Am I safe in exposing myself to the danger
  which may attend one day's travelling while I turn my back on the church
  of God, which now calls upon me to unite myself to her forever? I said to
  Phillips, 'If this step is right for me to take next week, it is my duty
  to take it now. My resolution is made; to-morrow I will be received into
  the church.' We lost no time in despatching a messenger to my father, to
  inform him of this unexpected event. As I was forming my last resolution,
  the thought of him came across me; will it not be said that I endanger
  his very life by so sudden and severe a shock? The words of our Lord rose
  before me and answered all my doubts: 'He that hateth not father and
  mother, and brothers and sisters, and houses and lands, and his own life
  too, cannot be my disciple.' To the Lord, then, I trusted for the support
  and comfort of my dear father under the trial which, in obedience to his
  call, I was about to inflict upon him. I had no further anxiety to
  disturb me. God alone knows the peace and joy with which I laid me down
  that night to rest. The next day, at nine o'clock, the church received me
  for her child."

Far from finding himself harshly received by his family after his
conversion, Mr. Spencer's domestic relations remained quite undisturbed. It
was in the early days of conversions in England; Tractarianism was in its
very infancy, and Earl Spencer had always shown kindness to Catholics, as
to a vanquished enemy.

When his son returned from Rome as a priest in 1832 and took possession of
his parish at West Bromwich, one of the poorest in the diocese, Lord
Spencer made ample provision for his support. In 1834 this excellent
nobleman died, and with the legacy left by him to Father Spencer, several
churches and missions were established. It was a theory of Father Spencer's
that the evangelical counsels could be practiced as well in the world as in
a religious life. In order to carry out this experiment he placed all his
possessions at the command of Right Rev. Dr. Walsh, his bishop, who
appointed an _économe_ to supply his necessities and those of his
church.

That his conversion was not allowed to pass without sharp criticism from
Protestants can be easily imagined. He was pensive partly by nature,
partly, perhaps, from the feeling that his actions were misunderstood by
his old companions and friends. All the more attractive was the quaint
humor that lighted up his conversation. "One day when speaking with a
brother priest with sad earnestness about the spiritual destitution of the
poor people around him, who neither knew God nor would listen to those who
were willing to teach them, a poor woman knocked at the sacristy door, and
was ordered to come in; she fell on her knees very reverently to get Father
Spencer's blessing as soon as she approached him. His companion observed
that this poor woman reminded him of the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who
came to our Savior _adorans_. 'Yes,' replied Father Spencer, with a
very arch smile, 'and not only _adorans_, but _petens aliquid ab
eo_.'"

Though so harshly handled sometimes by Protestants, Mr. Spencer exercised a
forbearance toward them that all converts would do well to imitate.
Remembering his own honest delusions, he attributed sincerity to the
adherents of every sect.
{181}
"Some were supposing once in his presence that it was impossible for
followers of Joanna Southcote, and the like, not to be fully aware that
they were being deluded. Father Ignatius said it was not so, and related a
peculiar case that he witnessed himself. He happened to be passing through
Birmingham, and had occasion to enter a shop there to order something. The
shopkeeper asked him if he had heard of the great light that had arisen in
these modern times. He said no. 'Well, then,' repeated the shopman, 'here,
sir, is something to enlighten you,' handing him a neatly got up pamphlet.
He had not time to glance at the title when his friend behind the counter
ran on at a great rate in a speech something to the following effect: That
the four gospels were all figures and myths, that the epistles were only
faint foreshadowings of the real sun of justice that was now at length
arisen. The Messias was come in the person of a Mr. Ward, and he would see
the truth demonstrated beyond the possibility of a doubt by looking at the
gospel he held in his hand. While the shopman was expressing hopes of
converting him, he took the opportunity of looking at the pamphlet, and
found that all this new theory of religion was built upon a particular way
of printing the text: _'Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace
to--Ward's men._' On turning away in disgust from his fruitless
remonstrances with this specimen of _Ward's men_, he found some of
_Ward's women_, also, in the same place, and overheard them
exclaiming: 'Oh, little England knows what a treasure they have in ----
jail!' The pretended Messias happened to be in prison for felony at the
time." He declared that these poor creatures were entirely sincere and
earnest in the faith they had in this malefactor.

This belief in the genuineness of all kinds of religious convictions,
joined to his passionate love of country, led Father Spencer to engage in
the great work of his life--the forming of an Association of Prayers for
the Conversion of England. Mr. Phillips joined with him heartily in the
project, and it was a new element of joy in their beautiful friendship.
From the year 1838 to the day of his death, Father Spencer labored
unceasingly for this end. Many persons grew sick of the very sound of the
words, and did not hesitate to tell him so either; but through praise,
blame, success, or ridicule he labored unceasingly,--and works now, we may
be sure, in heaven this very day for the same end. Who can doubt that such
petitions will be granted?

After nine years of hardship, persecution, and loving labor as a parish
priest, Father Spencer was called to Oscott College to take charge of the
spiritual affairs of the students.

By education he was well suited to hold so distinguished a position. He was
admirably versed in the French, Italian, and German languages; a good
classical and mathematical scholar of course (having been a first-class
Cambridge man), and well read both in Protestant and Catholic theology. His
intercourse with the young men was very charming. He would make up a game
at cricket, go heartily into all their youthful sports, and even give
lessons to beginners. In spiritual matters he had a very fascinating way of
throwing a certain poetry into what is usually considered the prosaic part
of priestly duties. Between these two moods there was a third, in which,
with a kindly assumption of equality, as it were, he would take them into
his interests as genially as he entered into theirs.

In 1844 Father Spencer went abroad for his health, and accomplished much
for the Association of Prayers. In the following year he returned to
England, and entered at once into retreat under the direction of Father
Thomas Clarke, S.J., in Hodder place. From this retreat he came forth with
a fixed determination to join the order of the Passionists, lately
established in England by his friend Padre Domenico. How happy the results
of this decision were the following pages will show.

{182}

The Congregation of the Passion was founded by Blessed Paul of the Cross
about the middle of the last century, and approved by Benedict XIV.,
Clement XIV., and Pius VI. Its object is to work for the sanctification of
the souls of the faithful; to which end it uses, not only preaching and the
sacraments, but the diffusion of devotion to the passion of Christ. This
work is accomplished by means of missions, retreats, and parish work in
passionist houses. If necessary, the fathers take charge of a parish;
otherwise they work in their own churches as missioners. They teach only
their own younger members, and they go on foreign missions when sent by the
Holy Father or the Propaganda.

  "To keep the members of an order always ready for their out-door work,"
  says F. Pius, "there are certain rules for their interior life which may
  be likened to the drill or parade of soldiers in their quarters. This
  discipline varies according to the spirit of each order.

  "The idea of a passionist's work will lead us to expect what his
  discipline must be. The spirit of a passionist is a spirit of atonement.
  He says with St. Paul: 'I rejoice in my sufferings, and fill up those
  things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for his
  body, which is the church.' Coloss. i.24. For this cause the interior
  life of a passionist is rather austere. He has to rise shortly after
  midnight from a bed of straw to chaunt matins and lauds, and spend some
  time in meditation. He has two hours more meditation during the day, and
  altogether about five hours of choir work in the twenty-four. He fasts
  and abstains from flesh meat three times in the week, all the year round,
  besides Lent and Advent. He is clad in a coarse black garment; wears
  sandals instead of shoes; and practises other acts of penance of minor
  importance.

  "This seems rather a hard life; but an ordinary constitution does not
  find the least difficulty in complying with the letter of the rule. It is
  withal a happy, cheerful life; for it seems the nature of penance to make
  the heart of the penitent light and gladsome, 'rejoicing in suffering.'"

The fathers are bound by these rules only when living in the houses of
their order. Outside they accommodate themselves to circumstances and take
life as they find it; not very easy, as we shall see by the experiences of
F. Ignatius. The superior has, moreover, the right to relax the rule for
those who are ill or overworked.

At forty-seven Hon. and Rev. George Spencer entered upon this austere life.
There was little to attract human nature to the order. Four foreigners,
living in a wretched house, friendless and nearly penniless, were the
principal occupants of Aston Hall, and even this unenviable position they
had reached only after four years of labor and trial.

The noble novice submitted to more than ordinary tests of vocation. Rank,
age, and education made him especially the object of distrust to F.
Constantine, master of novices, who knew that true kindness must turn the
rough side of discipline to a candidate for admission.

  "A day or two after his arrival he was ordered to wash down an old dirty
  flight of stairs. He tucked up his sleeves and fell to using his brush,
  tub, and soapsuds with as much zest and good-will as if he had been a
  maid-of-all-work. Of course he was no great adept at this sort of
  employment, and probably his want of skill drew down some sharp rebukes
  from his overseer. Some tender-hearted religious never could forget the
  sight of this venerable ecclesiastic, trying to scour the crevices and
  crannies to the satisfaction of his new master. He got through it well
  and took the corrections so beautifully that in a few days he was voted
  to the habit."

A little suffering there was for F. Ignatius (as we must now call him) from
homesickness and the difficulty of adapting himself to the small items of
novice discipline. Chilled feet, a hard bed, and meagre diet were not quite
easy to bear. But his hardest trial was the consideration of his
companions, who tried to spare him humiliations, and take upon themselves
works that seemed degrading for one of his standing. Austerities were soon
forgotten, but dispensations were true afflictions to one whose wish with
regard to life was ceaseless labor, and with regard to death "to die unseen
and unknown in a ditch."

{183}

The story of his fifteen years of religious life is beautifully told by his
biographer. Only under the restrain& of a religious role did his gifts and
virtues receive their right development. It was like a second youth, a
second training for life; undue impetuosity was restrained, zeal,
generosity, charity, tenderness, all found an object and a wise direction.
Surely never was sanctity made more attractive than in the person of the
noble and gentle F. Ignatius. Great was the rejoicing among postulants and
novices when his arrival was announced at any one of the passionist houses.
Anecdote, mirth, kind and sympathizing intercourse were in store for the
recreation wherever he appeared, clad in his coarse attire, with a brace of
rough drogget bags slung over his broad shoulders. The journey had been
made, they might be sure, in the third-class cars, "because there was no
fourth class." The spirit of holy poverty had grown to be a sort of passion
with him, only to be surpassed by his zeal for the salvation of souls. He
treated himself, and wished others to treat him, like a beggar; thankful
for any favor, but cheerfully submissive to refusal. When he had a long
journey before him, if anyone offered him a "lift" in a cart or wagon, he
gladly accepted it; if not, he was quite contented. He seldom refused a
meal when travelling, and would ask for something to eat at any house upon
the road, if necessary. At home he generally washed and mended his own
clothes, and when he was superior would allow no one to perform menial
offices for him. In dress he dreaded overnicety, and would as gladly wear a
cast-off tartan as anything else, if it did not tend to throw discredit
upon his order. For several years he wore an old mantle belonging to a
religious who had died, and only left it off at the desire of the
provincial. This was by no means his natural bent. Those who knew him as a
young man say that he would hunt through the hosiers' shops in a dozen
streets in London to find articles that could satisfy his fastidious taste.
But, to return to the pleasure which his presence in a community always
gave:

  "His visits at home were like meteor flashes, bright and beautiful, and
  always made us regret that we could not enjoy his edifying company for a
  longer time. Those who are much away on the external duties of the order
  find the rule a little severe when they return; to Father Ignatius it
  seemed a small heaven of refreshing satisfaction. His coming home was
  usually announced to the community a day or two before, and all were
  promising themselves rare treats from his presence among them. It was
  cheering to see the porter run in beaming with joy as he announced the
  glad tidings, 'Father Ignatius is come!' The exuberance of his own
  delight, as he greeted first one and then another of his companions,
  added to our own joy. In fact the day Father Ignatius came home almost
  became a holiday by custom. Those days were; and we feel inclined to tire
  our readers by expatiating on them, as if writing brought them back.

  "Whenever he arrived at one of our houses, and had a day or two to stay,
  it was usual for the younger religious, such as novices and students, to
  go to him, one by one, for conference. He liked this very much, and would
  write to higher superiors for permission to turn off at Broadway, for
  instance, on his way to London, in order to make acquaintance with the
  young religious. His counsels had often a lasting effect; many who were
  inclined to leave the life they had chosen remained steadfast after a
  conference with him. He did not give commonplace solutions to
  difficulties, but he had some peculiar phrase, some quaint axiom, some
  droll piece of spirituality to apply to every little trouble that came
  before him. He was specially happy in his fund of anecdote, and could
  tell one, it was believed, on any subject that came before him. This
  extraordinary gift of conversational power made the conferences
  delightful. The novices, when they assembled for recreation, and gave
  their opinions on F. Ignatius, whom many had spoken to for the first time
  in their life, nearly all would conclude, 'If ever there was a saint,
  he's one.'

  "It was amusing to observe how they prepared themselves for forming their
  opinion. They all heard of his being a great saint, and some fancied he
  would eat nothing at all for one day, and might attempt a little
  vegetables on the next. One novice, in particular, had made up his mind
  to this, and to his great surprise he saw Father Ignatius eat an extra
  good breakfast; and when about to settle into a rash judgment, he saw the
  old man preparing to walk seven miles to a railway station on the
  strength of his meal. Another novice thought such a saint would never
  laugh or make anyone else laugh; to his agreeable disappointment, he
  found that Father Ignatius brought more cheerfulness into the recreation
  than had been there for some time.
{184}
  We gathered around him, by a kind of instinct, and so entertaining was he
  that one felt it a mortification to be called away from the recreation
  room while Father Ignatius was in it. He used to recount with peculiar
  grace and fascinating wit scenes he went through in his life. There is
  scarcely an anecdote in this book we have not heard him relate. He was
  most ingenuous. Ask him what question you pleased, he would answer it if
  he knew it. In relating an anecdote he often spoke in five or six
  different tones of voices; he imitated the manner and action of those he
  knew to such perfection that laughter had to pass into admiration. He
  seldom laughed outright, and even if he did he would very soon stop. If
  he came across a number of Punch, he ran over some of the sketches at
  once and then he would be observed to stop, laugh, and lay it down at
  once as if to deny himself further enjoyment. It is needless to say there
  was nothing rollicking or off-handed in his wit--never; it was subdued,
  sweet, delicate, and lively. ... In fact, a recreation presided over by
  Father Ignatius was the most innocent and gladsome one could imagine.

  "In one thing Father Ignatius did not go against anticipation, he was
  most exact in the observance of our rules. He would always be the first
  in for midnight office. Many a time the younger portion of the community
  used to make arrangements over night to be in before him, but it was no
  use. Once, indeed, a student arrived in choir before him, and Father
  Ignatius appeared so crestfallen at being beaten that the student would
  never be in before him again, and would delay on the way if he thought
  Father Ignatius had not yet passed. He seemed particularly happy when he
  could light the lamps or gas for matins. He was child-like in his
  obedience. He would not transgress the most trifling regulation. It was
  usual with him to say, 'I cannot understand those persons who say, Oh! I
  am all right if I get to purgatory. We should be more generous with
  Almighty God. I don't intend to go to purgatory, and if I do I must know
  what for.' 'But, Father Ignatius,' a father would say, 'we fall into so
  many imperfections that it seems presumptuous to attempt to escape scot
  free.' 'Well,' he would reply, 'nothing can send us to purgatory but a
  wilful, venial sin, and may the Lord preserve us from such a thing as
  that; a religious ought to die before being guilty of the least wilful
  fault.'"

In the year 1850, Father Ignatius made the resolution of never being idle a
moment, and carried it out to the end of his life. Bergamo's Pensieri ed
Affetti he translated in railway stations while waiting for trains, before
and after dinner, and in intervals between confessions. Of letter-writing
he made a kind of duty, and on one occasion he wrote seventy-eight in the
course of two free days. Not mere notes, either, were his letters, but
epistles full of thought and sympathy for his correspondent.

  "His days were indeed full days, and he scarcely ever went to bed until
  he had shaken himself out of nodding asleep over his table three or four
  times. No one ever heard him say that he was tired and required rest;
  rest he never had, except on his hard bed or in his quiet grave. If any
  man ever ate his bread in the sweat of his brow, it was Father Ignatius
  of St. Paul, the ever-toiling passionist."

Illness, unless it kept him in his bed, never interfered with the
performance of his duties. When superior, he used his power to secure the
hardest work for himself. During the time of his rectorship in Sutton, he
would preach and sing mass after hearing confessions all the morning;
attend sick calls, preach in the evening at some distant parish, come home
perhaps at eleven o'clock, say his office, and be the first to come to
matins at two o'clock. The Father Provincial found him so ingenious in
eluding privileges that he placed him under obedience in matters of health
to one of the priests of his community, whom he strictly obeyed ever after.

Once a cramp or some accident had made him fall into a ditch where he got
drenched and covered with mud. On returning from the sick call which he was
attending, he found a friend at the house, who sympathized with his
especial interests. Down he sat for a good talk upon the conversion of
England, and at the end of two hours was frightened off by one of the
religious to change his clothes.

When giving a retreat somewhere in midwinter, the shameful carelessness of
his entertainers allowed him to sleep in a room where there was neither bed
nor fire, and where the snow drifted in under the door. In the morning it
occurred to some one that perhaps Father Ignatius had occupied this
apartment.
{185}
"A person ran down to see, and there was the old saint amusing himself by
gathering up the snow that came into his room, and making little balls of
it for kitten to run after. The kitten and himself seem to have become
friends by having slept together in his rug the night before, and both were
disappointed by the intrusion of the wandering visitor."

But though the good passionist was utterly forgetful of his "own rights,"
as the saying goes, he well knew how to administer a rebuke if justice
demanded it:

  "Once he was fiercely abused when begging, and as the reviler came to a
  full stop in his froward speech, Father Ignatius quietly retorted: 'Well,
  as you have been so generous to me personally, perhaps you would be so
  kind as to give me something now for my community.' This had a remarkable
  effect. It procured him a handsome offering then, as well as many others
  ever since."

On another occasion his knock was answered by a very superb footman. Father
Ignatius gave his errand and religious name, with a request to see the lady
or gentleman of the house. The servant returned in a moment with the
information that the gentleman was out and the lady engaged and also unable
to help him. "Perhaps she is not aware that I am the Honorable Mr.
Spencer," said the mendicant. Mercury bowed courteously and retired. In a
minute or two came a rustling of silks and the sound of quick steps
tripping down stairs. The lady entered with blush and courtesy and apology.
She had not known that it was he, and there were so many impostors. "But
what will you take, my dear sir?" she exclaimed, ringing the bell, before
he could accept or decline the proposal. Father Ignatius said that he did
not stand in need of anything to eat, and that he never took wine; but that
he was in need of money for a good purpose, and would be glad to accept
anything that she could give him of that kind. The lady instantly handed
him a five-pound note, with many regrets that she could not make it more.
He took the note, and, folding it carefully away in his pocket, made his
acknowledgments after this fashion: "Now, I am very sorry to have to tell
you that the alms you have given me will do you very little good. If I had
not been born of a noble family, you would have turned me away with
coldness and contempt. I take the money because it will be as useful to me
as if it were given from a good motive; but I would advise you for the
future, if you have any regard for your soul, to let the love of God, and
not human respect, prompt your almsgiving." Then taking his hat, he bade
his amazed benefactress good morning, and left her to meditate upon purity
of intention.

Notwithstanding his fortitude and independence of spirit, we may gather
from the following extract from his letters that begging cost him some
effort:

  "My present life is pleasant when money comes kindly; but when I get
  refused or walk a long way and find everyone out, it is a bit mortifying.
  That is best gain for me I suppose, though not what I am travelling for.
  ... I should not have had the time this morning to write to you had it
  not been for a disappointment in meeting a young man, who was to have
  been my begging guide for part of the day; and so I had to come home and
  stay until it is time to go and try my fortune in the enormous
  market-house, where there are innumerable stalls with poultry, eggs,
  fruit, meat, etc., kept in great part by Irishmen and women, on whom I
  have to-day presently to go and dance attendance, as this is the great
  market-day. I feel when going out on a job like this, as a poor child
  going in a bathing machine to be dipped in the sea, _frissonnant_;
  but the Irish are so good-natured and generous that they generally make
  the work among them full of pleasure when once I am in it."

These expeditions extended not only through Great Britain, but even to the
Continent sometimes. As he was passing through Cologne one day, he met his
brother Frederick, then Earl Spencer. At first his lordship looked
wonderingly at him, and then, recognizing his features, exclaimed: "Hilloa,
George, what are you doing here?" "Begging," was the prompt reply, and then
the two fell into a friendly chat about old times.

{186}

Strangely enough, the only member of the Spencer family who ever treated
Father Ignatius with the least harshness was this favorite brother, who, on
succeeding to the title, laid such conditions upon his visiting the family
estate that priestly dignity forbade his going home. "Twelve years have I
been an exile from Althorp," he said in 1857. But in that same year the
earl relented and invited his brother to make him a visit. The letter
joyfully accepting this tardy invitation was read by Lord Spencer upon his
death-bed. This bereavement was a grievous blow to Father Ignatius.

In 1862 he visited Althorp. The present earl carried out his father's good
resolutions to the utmost, and even restored a part of the annuity which
had been diverted from Father Ignatius to other objects. Before leaving the
community for this visit the religious saw him looking for a lock for one
of his bags, and asked why he was so very particular all at once. "Why,
don't you know," said he, "that the servant at the big house will open it,
in order to put my shaving tackle, brush, and so forth, in their proper
places? and I should not like to have a general stare at my beads, sandals,
and habit." But fashions had changed at Althorp. When the company who had
been invited, especially in his honor, went to dress for dinner, Father
Ignatius remarked to the countess that his full dress would perhaps, not be
quite in place at the table. "On the contrary," she answered,
good-humoredly, "all his old friends would be delighted to see a specimen
of the fashions he had adopted since his old days of whist and repartee in
the same hall." The volunteers were entertained by the earl during his
uncle's visit. The passionist appeared in full costume, and sat next Lord
Spencer, whom nothing would satisfy but a speech from the old man's lips. A
very patriotic speech it was too, and greeted by a cheer that gave pleasure
to both uncle and nephew.

And so one of the crosses of his life was gently removed, leaving many
others, however, to be endured. For a heart so tender, a conscience so
sensitive, a temperament so vivid and excitable as his, the world had many
trials. His simplicity was mistaken for egotism; his zeal looked to many
persons like unbridled impetuosity; his broad sympathies again seemed like
indifferentism, and even calumny dared to attack his spotless character.

All this he bore very patiently, but the suffering was often acute. A deep
abstraction of manner would come over him at such times, making him quite
unconscious of his own actions and of the impression they made upon those
around him. One day when he was going through the streets of Rome with a
brother religious, they passed a fountain. "He went over and put his hand
so far into one of the jets that he squirted the water over a number of
poor persons who were basking in in the sun a few steps beneath him. They
made a stir, and uttered a few oaths as the water kept dashing down on
them. The companion awoke Father Ignatius out of his reverie, and so
unconscious did he seem of the disturbance he had unwittingly created, that
he passed on without alluding to it."

But whoever might blame Father Ignatius for his projects and his peculiar
pertinacity in carrying them into execution, one consoler never failed him.
The Holy Father was ever ready to speak with him of the conversion of
England, merely requesting him to endeavor to interest persons to pray also
for all those separated from the faith in all countries. His Holiness has
granted an indulgence of three hundred days to any one who shall say a
devout prayer for the conversion of England. The preaching of Father
Ignatius was peculiar to himself; he could not be said to possess the gifts
of human eloquence in the highest degree, but there was something like
inspiration in his most commonplace discourse.
{187}
He put the point of his sermon clearly before his audience, and he proved
it most admirably. His acquaintance with the Scriptures was something
marvellous; not only could he quote texts in support of doctrines, but be
applied the facts of the sacred volume in such a happy why, with such a
flood of new ideas, that one would imagine he lived in the midst of them,
or had been told by the sacred writers what they were intended for. Besides
this, he brought a fund of illustrations to carry conviction through the
mind. His illustrations were taken from every phase of life and every kind
of employment; persons listening to him always found the peculiar gist of
his discourse carried into their very homestead; nay, the objections they
themselves were prepared to advance against it were answered before they
could have been thought out. To add to this, there was an earnestness in
his manner that made you see his whole soul, as it were, bent upon your
spiritual good. His holiness of life, which report published before
him--and one look was enough to convince you of its being true--compelled
you to set a value on what he said far above the dicta of ordinary priests.

His style was formed on the gospel. He loved the parables and the similes
of our Lord, and rightly judged that the style of his divine Master was the
most worthy of imitation. So far as the matter of his discourses was
concerned, he was inimitable; his manner was peculiar to himself, deeply
earnest and touching. He abstained from the rousing, thundering style, and
his attempts that way to suit the taste and thus work upon the convictions
of certain congregations, showed him that his forte did not lie there. The
consequence was, that when the words of what he jocosely termed a "crack"
preacher would die with the sound of his own voice or the exclamations of
the multitude, Father Ignatius's words lived with their lives, and helped
them to bear trials that came thirty years after they had heard him. Toward
the end of his life he became rather tiresome to those who knew not his
spirit; but it was the tiresomeness of St. John the Evangelist. We are told
that "the disciple whom Jesus loved" used to be carried in his old age
before the people, and that his only sermon was "My little children, love
one another." He preached no more and no less, but kept perpetually
repeating these few words. Father Ignatius, in like manner, was continually
repeating "the conversion of England." No matter what the subject of his
sermon was he brought this in. He told us often that it became a second
nature with him; that he could not quit thinking or speaking of it even if
he tried, and believed he could speak for ten days consecutively on the
conversion of England without having to repeat an idea.

"He got on very well in the missions: he took all the different parts as
they were assigned him; but he was more successful in the lectures than in
the great sermons of the evening. His confessional was always besieged with
penitents, and he never spared himself."

His last mission was given in the beautiful little church of St. Patrick,
Coatbridge (eight miles from Glasgow). Crowds came to hear the saintly old
father plead for the conversion of England and the sanctification of
Ireland. The first two days he heard confessions from six A.M. to eleven
P.M., excepting the time needed for devotions and meals. On the third day
he remained in the confessional until after midnight. When he came into the
house, his host said: "I am afraid, Father Ignatius, you are overexerting
yourself, and that you must feel tired and fatigued:' "No, no," he answered
with a smile, "I am not fatigued. There is no use in saying I am tired,
for, you know, I must be at the same work to-night in Leith." He was in the
confessional again at six o'clock in the morning, said mass at seven;
breakfasted at half-past eight, and left Coatbridge about nine o'clock.
{188}
Father O'Keefe remarked to him that he looked much better and younger in
secular dress than in his habit. This made him laugh heartily. "When Father
Thomas Doyle," he replied, "saw me in secular dress, he said, 'Father
Ignatius, you look like a broken-down old gentleman.'" And the frankness of
the observation seemed to amuse him immensely.

The rest is easily told. He reached Carstairs Junction at half-past ten,
and, leaving his luggage with the station-master, walked toward Carstairs
House, the residence of his friend and godson, Mr. Monteith. Half a mile
from the entrance to the estate, the long avenue is crossed at right angles
by a second, which leads to the grand entrance of the house. Father
Ignatius had just passed the "rectangle," when he turned off into a
by-path. Then seeing he had lost his way, he asked a child which was the
right road. He never spoke to mortal again. On a little corner in the
avenue, just within sight of the house, and about a hundred paces from the
door, he fell suddenly and yielded up his spirit into the hands of his
Creator. May we all die doing God's work, and as well prepared as Father
Ignatius of St. Paul! "It was God's will that angels instead of men should
surround his lonely bed of death." It was simply by an after-thought that
he had gone to Carstairs House to pass the time between the arrival and
departure of two trains, and thus died at the threshold of an old friend's
door, instead of in the station.

Very tenderly did Mr. Monteith receive the weary burden that the grand old
missionary laid down at his gates. The remains lay in religious state at
Carstairs House for the greater part of three days. Fathers came from
various retreats to look once more upon his beloved face, never so noble as
in its last repose; and looked with silent wonder on all that now remained
of one whom the world was not worthy of possessing longer. Everyone, on
hearing of his death, appeared to have lost a special friend; no one could
lament, for they felt that he was happy; few could pray for him, because
they were more inclined to ask his intercession. The greatest respect and
attention were shown by the railway officials all along the route, and
special ordinances were made in deference to the respected burden that was
carried.

Lord Spencer's letter with regard to his uncle's death is so pleasing that
we transcribe it entire. He was in Denmark, and could not reach England for
the obsequies:

     Denmark, Oct. 16th, 1864
  Rev. Sir: I was much shocked to hear of the death of my excellent Uncle
  George. I received the sad intelligence last Sunday, and subsequently
  received the letter which you had the goodness to write to me. My absence
  from England prevented my doing what I should have wished to have done,
  to have attended to the grave the remains of my uncle, if it had been so
  permitted by your order.

  I assure you that, much as I may have differed from my uncle on points of
  doctrine, no one could have admired more than I did the beautiful
  simplicity, earnest religion, and faith of my uncle. For his God he
  renounced all the pleasures of the world; his death, sad as it is to us,
  was, as his life, apart from the world, but with God.

  His family will respect his memory as much as I am sure you and the
  brethren of his order do.

  I should be much obliged to you if you let me know the particulars of the
  last days of his life, and also where he is buried, as I should like to
  place them among family records at Althorp.

  I venture to trouble you with these questions, as I suppose you will be
  able to furnish them better than anyone else.

    Yours faithfully,
      Spencer.

Thus in the end did Father Ignatius, in the simple pursuance of his duties,
pierce through the prejudices of caste and tradition, harder to penetrate
in England than elsewhere.

Mr. Monteith has erected a cross on the corner of the avenue where his
saintly friend fell. It bears this inscription:

  "On this spot the Hon. and Rev. GEORGE SPENCER,
    in religion, Father Ignatius of St. Paul,
      Passionist, while in the midst of his labors
        for the salvation or souls, and the
          restoration of his countrymen to the
            unity of the faith, was suddenly
              called by his heavenly Master
                to his eternal home.
                  October 1st, 1864.
                      R. I. P."

--------

{189}

  From Chambers's Journal.

  A Naturalist's Home.


There is no place like England for a rich man to live in exactly as he
pleases. It is the appropriate exercising-ground for the hobbies of all
mankind. You may join an Agapemone, or you may live alone in dirt and
squalor, and call yourself a hermit. The whim of the late Charles Waterton,
naturalist, was a very innocent one, namely, to make his home a city of
refuge for all persecuted birds--a sanctuary inviolate from net and snare
and gun; and he effected his humane purpose. An intimate associate and
fervent admirer of his, one Dr. Richard Hobson, has given to the world
[Footnote 44] an account of this ornithological asylum; and it is certainly
very curious. The name of the place was Walton Hall, near Wakefield; and it
seems to have been peculiarly well adapted for the purpose to which it was
put. It was situated on an island, approachable only by an iron
foot-bridge, and having no other dwellings in its immediate neighborhood.
The lake in which it stood gave the means of harboring waterfowl of all
kinds, while the "packing" of carrion crows in the park exhibits a proof of
the protection afforded by even the mainland portion of the estate; it was
sufficiently extensive to allow of portions being devoted to absolute
seclusion, for those birds which are naturally disposed to avoid the haunts
of man. "Two thirds of the lake, with its adjacent wood and pasture land,
were kept free from all intrusion whatever for six successive months every
year; even visitors at the house, of whatever rank, being 'warned off'
those portions set apart for natural history purposes. Even the marsh
occupied by the herons was forbidden ground throughout the whole
breeding-season, unless in case of accident to a young heron by falling
from its nest; in which case aid was afforded with all the promptitude
exhibited by the fire escape conductors for the safety of human life."

    [Footnote 44: Charles Waterton: his Home, Habits, and Handiwork. By
    Richard Hobson, M.D.]

The surroundings of the mansion itself were quaint and exceptional,
exhibiting the eccentric character of their proprietor. Item, a magnificent
sundial--constructed, however, by a common mason in the
neighborhood--composed of twenty equilateral triangles, so disposed as to
form a similar number of individual dials, ten of which, whenever the sun
shone, and whatever its altitude, were faithful timekeepers. On these dials
were engraved the names of cities in all parts of the globe, placed in
accordance with their different degrees of longitude, so that the solar
time of each could be simultaneously ascertained. Near this sundial was a
subterraneous passage leading to two boat-houses, entirely concealed under
the island, furnished with arched roofs lined with zinc-plate, and
arrangements for slinging the boats out of water when they required
painting or repair. Four sycamores, with roosting branches for peahens, and
a fifth, whose decayed trunk was always occupied by jackdaws, screened the
house from the north winds. Close to the cast-iron-bridge entrance was a
ruin, on the top of whose gable, at the foot of a stone-cross, twenty-four
feet above the lake, a wild duck built her nest, and hatched her young for
years. A great yew-fence enclosed this ruin on one side, so that within its
barrier birds might find a secure place for building their nests and
incubation.
{190}
For the special encouragement and protection of the starling and the
jackdaw, there was erected within this fence a thirteen feet high
stone-and-mortar-built tower, pierced with about sixty resting-berths. To
each berth there was an aperture of about five inches square. A few, near
the top, were set apart for the jackdaw and the white owl. The remaining
number were each supplied at the entrance with a square loose stone, having
one of its inferior angles cut away, so that the starling could enter, but
the jackdaw and owl were excluded. The landlord of these convenient
tenements only reserved to himself the privilege of inspection, which he
could always effect by removing the loose stone.

The lake had an artificial underground sluice, which issuing out at a
little distance into sight, furnished the means of cultivating a knowledge
of the mysterious habits of the water-rat; this stream then passed through
one of the loveliest grottoes in England. Near this place were two
pheasantries, the central portion of each consisting of a clump of
yew-trees, while the whole mass was surrounded by an impenetrable holly
fence; the stable-yard was not far off; and hence the squire had infinite
opportunities of establishing the important fact, as he considered it, that
the game-cock always claps his wings and crows, whereas the cock-pheasant
always crows and claps his wings. Mr. Waterton's interest in natural
history was, however, by no means confined to the animal creation. He
concerned himself greatly with the culture of trees (though by no means of
land), and hailed any _lusus naturae_ that occurred in his grounds as
other men welcomed the birth of a son and heir. Walton Hall had at one time
its own corn-mill, and when that inconvenient necessity no longer existed,
the mill-stone was laid by in an orchard and forgotten. The diameter of
this circular stone measured five feet and a half, while its depth averaged
seven inches throughout; its central hole had a diameter of eleven inches.
By mere accident, some bird or squirrel had dropped the fruit of the
filbert tree through this hole on to the earth, and in 1812 the seedling
was seen rising up through that unwonted channel. As its trunk gradually
grew through this aperture and increased, its power to raise the ponderous
mass of stone was speculated upon by many. Would the filbert tree die in
the attempt? Would it burst the millstone? Or would it lift it? In the end,
the little filbert tree lifted the millstone, and in 1868 wore it like a
crinoline about its trunk, and Mr. Waterton used to sit upon it under the
branching shade. This extraordinary combination it was the great
naturalist's humor to liken to John Bull and the national debt.

In no tree-fancier's grounds was there ever one tenth of the hollow trunks
which were to be found at Walton Hall; the fact being that the owner
encouraged and fostered decay for the purposes of his birds' paradise.
These trees were protected by artificial roofs in order to keep their
hollows dry, and fitted thus for the reception of any feathered couple
inclined to marry and settle. Holes were also pierced in the stems, to
afford ingress and egress; and one really would scarcely be surprised if
they had been furnished with bells for "servants" and "visitors." In an ash
tree trunk thus artificially prepared, and set apart for owls (the squire's
favorite bird), an ox-eyed titmouse took the liberty of nesting, hatching,
and maturing her young. Mr. Waterton attached a door, hung on hinges, to
exactly fit the opening in the trunk, having a hole in its inferior portion
for the passage of the titmouse. The squire would daily visit the his
little tenant, and opening the door delicately draw his hand over the back
of the sitting bird, as though to assure it of his protection. But
unfortunately, after the bird had flown, one year, a squirrel took
possession of this eligible tenement, and although every vestige of the
lining of its nest was carefully removed, no titmouse or any other bird
ever occupied it again.

{191}

In May, 1862, the squire pointed out to the author no less than three
birds' nests in one cavity--a jackdaw's with five eggs; a barn-owl's with
three young ones, close to which lay several dead mice and a half grown
rat, as in a larder; and, eighteen inches above the owl's nest, a
redstart's, containing six eggs! Our author deduces from this circumstance,
that in an unreclaimed state birds, although of different species, are not
disposed to quarrel; and the fact that near this "happy family" a pair of
water-hens hatched their eggs in a perfectly exposed nest, under the very
eyes of two carrion crows who occupied the first floor of the same tree--an
alder--without the least molestation, seems to confirm this view.

In this Garden of Eden, however, all sorts of anomalous things seem to have
been done by birds. In a cleft branch of a fir tree, twenty-four feet from
the ground, a peahen built her nest, through which piece of ambition, since
falling is much easier to learn than flying, she lost all her young ones.
In the branch of an oak, twelve feet from the ground, a wild-duck nested
and brought down all her brood in safety to their natural element. A pair
of coots built their nest on the extreme end of a willow-branch closely
overhanging the water; but the weight of the materials, and especially of
the birds themselves, depressed it so that their habitation rested on the
very surface of the water, and its contents rose and fell with every
ripple; and, finally, another pair of coots, who had built their house upon
what they considered _terra firma_, found themselves altogether adrift
one stormy morning, and continued so, veering with the fickle breeze for
many days, until at last the eggs were hatched, and their young family
became independent, and could shift for themselves. All these minutiae were
carefully watched by the squire. An excellent telescope enabled him to
perceive from his drawing-room window the manoeuvres of both land and water
fowls. "You could carefully scrutinize their form, their color, their
plumage, the color of their legs, the precise form and hue of their
mandibles, and not unfrequently even the color of the iris of the eye: also
their mode of walking, of swimming, and of resting. You could distinctly
ascertain the various kinds of food on which they lived and fed their
young. .... You could see the herons, the water-hens, the coots, the
Egyptian and the Canada geese, the carrion crows, the ringdoves
(occasionally on their nests), the wild-duck, teal, and widgeon." No less
than eighty-nine descriptions of land-bird and thirty of water-fowl
sojourned in the grounds or about the lake of Walton Hall. In winter, when
the lake was frozen, it was literally a fact that the ice could sometimes
not be discerned, it was so crowded by the thousands of water-fowl that
huddled together upon it without sound or motion.

Mr. Waterton, it may be easily imagined, was himself no sportsman; but it
was his custom to supply his own table on a fast-day (he was a Roman
Catholic) with fish shot by himself with a bow and arrow. Otherwise, he
made war on no living creature, except the rat: the "Hanoverian" rat, as he
designated him with bitterness: and even him he preferred to exile rather
than destroy. But having caught a fine specimen of the "Hanoverian" in a
"harmless trap," he carefully smeared him over with tar, and let him
depart. This astonished and highly scented animal immediately scoured all
the rat-passages, and thus impregnated them with the odor of all others
most offensive to his brethren, who fled by hundreds in the night across
the narrow portion of the lake, and were no more seen. The squire was
indeed a most tolerant and tender-hearted man. He built a shelter upon a
certain part of the lake expressly for poor folks, who were permitted to
fish whether for purposes of sale or for their own dinners; and
notwithstanding that it was his custom to dress like a miser and a
scarecrow, and to live like an ascetic--sleeping upon bare boards with a
hollowed piece of wood for a pillow, and fasting much longer than was good
for him--he was very charitable and open-handed to others.

{192}

It must be confessed, however, we gather from this volume that the great
naturalist was, out of his profession, by no means a wise man, and
certainly not a witty one. He loved jokes of a schoolboy sort, and indulged
in sarcasms more practical than theoretical. The two knockers of his
front-door were cast, from bell-metal, in the similitude of human faces,
the one representing mirth, and the other misery. The former was immovably
fixed to the door, and seemed to grin with delight at your fruitless
efforts to raise it; the latter appeared to suffer agonies from the blows
you inflicted on it. In the vestibule was a singularly conceived model of a
nightmare, with a human face, grinning and showing the tusks of a wild
boar, the hands of a man, Satanic horns, elephant's ears, bat's wings, one
cloven foot, one eagle's talon, and with the tail of a serpent; beneath it
was the following motto:

    "Assidens praecordiis
  Pavore soinnos auferam." [Footnote 45]

    [Footnote 45: Sitting on the region of the heart,
    I take away sleep by fear.]

It was his humor, more than once, when between seventy and eighty years of
age, to welcome the author, when he came to dinner, by hiding on all-fours
under the hall-table, and pretending to be a doll. He made use of his
wonderful taxidermic talents to represent many individuals who took a
leading part in the Reformation by loathsome objects from the animal and
vegetable creation, and completed the artistic group with a sprinkling of
"composite" demons. He was seriously vexed at a stranger under his own
roof, who had profanely designated his favorite (stuffed) Bahia toad as "an
ugly brute." These and similar instances of bad taste we think Dr. Hobson
might have left unrecorded with advantage. Still, there was much to like as
well as to admire about the great naturalist. He could show good taste as
well as bad. No museum of natural history elsewhere could compare with the
beauty and finish of the specimens, prepared by the squire's own hand with
wonderful skill and patience, which adorned the inside of Walton Hall. "Not
even _living_ nature," says our author, "could surpass the
representations there displayed." In attitude, you had life itself; in
plumage, the lustrous beauty that death could not dim; "in anatomy, every
local prominence, every depression, every curve, nay, the slightest
elevation or depression of each feather." The great staircase glowed with
tropic splendor. At the top of it was the veritable cayman mentioned in the
Wanderings, on which the squire mounted in Essequibo, and a huge snake with
which he contended in single combat. Doubts have been thrown on both these
feats, but Dr. Hobson relates instances of presence of mind and courage
shown by the squire in his own presence quite as marvellous as these.
Wishing to make experiment as to whether his Woorali poison, obtained in
1812 from the Macoushi Indians, was more efficacious than the bite of the
rattlesnake, he got an American showman to bring him twenty-four of these
dangerous reptiles, and took them out of their cases, one by one, with his
own hand, while the Yankee fled from the room in terror, accompanied by
very many members of the faculty, who had assembled to witness the
operation. In his old age, he alone could be found to enter the cage of the
Borneo orangoutang at the Zoological Gardens, in order minutely to inspect
the palm of its hand during life, and also the teeth. It was with
difficulty he obtained permission to run this hazard, the keepers insisting
upon it that the beast would "make very short work of him." However,
nothing daunted, the squire entered the palisaded enclosure.
{193}
"The meeting of these two celebrities was clearly a case of love at first
sight, as the strangers embraced most affectionately, kissing one another
many times, to the great amusement of the spectators. The squire's
investigations were freely permitted, and his fingers allowed to enter his
jaws; his apeship then claimed a similar privilege, which was as
courteously granted; after which the orang-outang began an elaborate
_search_ of the squire's head."

The strength and activity of Waterton were equal to his physical courage,
notwithstanding that he was wont to indulge in venesection to a dangerous
extent, always performing that operation himself, even to the subsequent
bandaging. At eighty-one, the suppleness of his limbs was marvellous; and
at seventy-seven years of age our author was witness to his scratching the
back part of his head with the toe of his right foot! Death, however,
claimed his rights at last in the squire's eighty-third year.

Charles Waterton lies buried in a secluded part of his own beautiful
domain, at the foot of a little cross, with this inscription, written by
himself:

         Orate
  Pro anima Caroll Waterton,
        Viatoris:
     Cujus jam fessa
    Juxta hanc crucem
   Hic sepelluntur ossa.

Even those iron limbs of his, it seems, grew weary at last.


------

    Original.


    My Tears in Sleep.


 "And He said: Weep not; the maid is not dead, but sleepeth."


    "Whence come these tears upon thy face?
  What sorrow craved these scalding drops of woe
        In peaceful sleep?
    Didst dream of pain or dire disgrace?
  Sob not so bitterly. I fain would know
        What made thee weep!"

    "Not for the woes which life may bring--
  The life, in sooth, that doth just now begin--
        These tears were shed.
    But memory hath a bitter sting,
  And dreaming bade me mourn the time of sin
        When I was dead."

--------

{194}


    Translated from the French.

    Robert; or, The Influence of a Good Mother.

    Chapter X.


  "O Rome, Mistress of the world,
  red with the blood or martyrs,
  white with the innocence of virgins,
  we salute and bless thee in all ages, and forever."


The first real stopping-place Robert made under the cloudless sky of Italy
was at Milan, and its magnificent cathedral was the first place visited.
This church, after St. Peter's at Rome, is the finest in Italy, and is
built of pure white marble. There are few Gothic edifices so rich in
ornament, or of so light and airy an appearance. His next visit was to one
of the old Dominican convents, named Sainte Marie des Graces, where he saw
"The Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the great Italian painters
and the _protégé_ of François I.

The ancient capital of Lombardy does not present a very agreeable
appearance, notwithstanding its numerous palaces, which is owing to the
arrangement of the streets, which are so long and narrow that nothing shows
its real magnificence, not even the cathedral. The memory of Eugene
Beauharnais is always dear here, where as the delegate of Napoleon he
exercised sovereign power, and Robert saw with pleasure that the glory and
benefits of the one and the wise conduct of the other were not effaced from
the hearts of the Milanese. From Milan he went to Parma, where he saw a
number of choice paintings by Correggio, Lanfranc, and Mazzola, and at the
cathedral the magnificent fresco of the Assumption; at the church of Saint
Sepulchre, the Madonna and Child. He also visited the Farnese gallery, and
the tomb of this family in the church of the Madonna Steceata. From Parma
he went to Genoa, surnamed the superb. This rich city is the rival of
Venice, and is proud of her antiquities, and the power she has always held
on the seas. She has almost entire the schools of Michael Angelo and
Bernini, and has a prodigious number of paintings and sculptures. Thus was
Robert obliged at each step to stop and pay his tribute of admiration to
what be saw. And Genoa has produced so many distinguished artists that for
a long time science and art have flourished there and acquired a high
degree of renown. Robert passed three months of study there, which was
longer than he intended, as he was burning with a desire to get to Rome,
for it was there that he intended seriously to open his studies, but he
could not resist the charm which held him in first one, then another place.
From Genoa he sailed for Leghorn, and from there to Florence, which all
travellers unite in considering one of the most beautiful of Italian
cities. It is situated at the foot of the Apennines, and the number of its
gardens and their beauty, its public squares, ornamented with fountains and
statues, the shores of the Arno, with their charming quays, and the
grandeur of the palaces, designed and embellished by Sanzio and Buonarroti,
its smiling suburbs, and the brilliant titles of its citizens, combine to
make it a most attractive place. Its largest gallery was commenced by
Cardinal Leopold de Medicis, and is built in two parallel galleries, and at
their end a third is placed, which stands on the right bank of the Arno.
Here are classed in perfect order the master works of modern art.
{195}
If the name of Medicis has odious remembrances in France since the massacre
of Saint Bartholomew, it is not so in Florence or any part of Italy; on the
contrary, it recalls there all that is most dazzling and generous in
literature, art, and science. Talent always finds an asylum and a welcome
in Florence, and Robert was favorably received by the persons to whom he
had been recommended by his master, who, more for his genuine affection for
him than for the honor of having such a pupil, had given him letters to men
of high positions. What could be a more powerful stimulant for him than the
flattering encouragement he received from persons of known taste and hearty
appreciation? Believing that nothing that we wish to accomplish is
impossible, Robert, with increased passion for his art, studied the old
masters with determined energy, though never daring to hope he could
approach their perfection. Mediocrity is always vain and boastful, while
true merit is modest and mistrustful, and this was why Robert was ignorant
of his wonderful talent. He left Florence with many regrets both as a man
and an artist, but Rome was the crowning glory of his ambition, and he must
go on. In passing through the gates of the sacred city be felt an emotion
that it would be impossible to express; for the soul of the artist and the
Christian were equally moved, and in his enthusiasm he cried with Tasso:
"It is not to thy proud columns, thy arches of triumph, or thy baths, that
I come to render homage; it is to the blood of martyrs shed for Christ on
this consecrated ground!" At last he was really in Rome, whose walls
enclose so many scattered leaves of the history of all nations, and the
very name of which fills us with reverence. On the mutilated fragments here
and there, and on the wrecks of past greatness, the artist deplored the too
short duration of all earthly things, but the Christian reads there a
salutary lesson which told of the early and of worldly joys. In this grand
old city he settled himself and commenced to work, giving himself up with
ardor to composition as the highest and truest art. In the beginning his
ideas were not truly expressed, but still his pictures were full of talent.
He preferred working at home and did not often go to the academy, but was
aided in his studies by the advice of artists and connoisseurs. After a few
years he composed works of wonderful power, and his genius seemed to take
every turn; sometimes his conceptions were noble and sublime, then, again,
delicate and tender, every passion being rendered with fidelity. As he
became conscious of his rapid progress, the more his desire to find his
father tormented him. It was not a sentiment of pride, still less of
vengence, that made him wish it; it was the need he felt of a heart that
responded to his own. It was the voice of nature crying unto him, "Thou
hast a father; he lives, and thou dost not know him; search for him, and
throw at his feet thy love and talent; speak to him of thy mother! See the
task which is thine, now that thou art worthy of the name thou bearest."
The young painter was admitted into many distinguished houses, and learned
of his father, but could obtain no information which would put him on his
track; yet he buoyed himself up with the uncertain hope that he might meet
him in this city of repose and resignation. It is a place of sweet sojourn
for those whose fortunes are cast down, and a dear asylum for troubled
souls, the end of the artist's pilgrimage as well as that of the invalid,
the tourist, and the savant. There all misfortunes are respected and all
sufferings are consoled; and it is possible that the Count de Verceuil had
been overtaken by some of the sorrows from which no one in this world is
exempt; and surely he could not flatter himself that he would pass through
life without the chastisement that falls on the heads of the guilty! God's
patience is long-suffering, but sometimes his anger falls with a sudden
blow on the hardened sinner, and makes him cry for pardon.
{196}
The impressions made upon Robert in this city of majestic ruins and antique
monuments, and where the arts speak so noble a language, could not be other
than exalted and religious. Before so many wrecks the soul is predisposed
to pity all things here below; the projects we nourish appear so puerile,
we conceive another glory and adore God and his imperishable glory. Faith
gives to man a moment of calm in every trial, and opens to him the doors of
a blissful eternity. These stones cry aloud to all, "Passing away!" but it
is in a consoling and solemn accent, and brings down all our pity upon the
worldlings who have forgotten Jesus our divine Master, who said, "Heaven
and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away." With the
exactitude with which he always fulfilled his promises, he knew that the
time for his return to France was drawing near, and that there were two
persons there who counted with sorrow the days which were passed far from
him. He was not ignorant of the fact that time hung heavily upon these poor
old people, and that it was difficult for them to support the long hours.
The remembrance of these friends followed him everywhere; they were near
him in his excursions through Rome, at the Colosseum, at the Capitol; day
and night he found them in his thoughts and his heart, and knew that they
were impatient for his return, and would amply repay him for the regrets he
would leave behind; and as he wished to visit Venice and remain there some
time, he bade farewell to the ancient city of the Senate of the Caesars,
now the residence of the Pope and the seat of the church militant. From
there he goes to Venice, the queen of the Adriatic. From a distance,
resting tranquilly on the surface of the sea, it resembles a number of
vessels with countless masts, but on a nearer approach the charm is broken,
and it stands boldly above the waves, revealing its wonderful beauty to the
astonished eye of the traveller. Formed of more than sixty small islands,
Venice is interspersed with canals without number, the largest of which is
in the form of an S, and divides the city into two nearly equal parts.
Everything in it has an original character, and silence reigns supreme over
the city; no vehicles, and no pavements for them to rattle on, and the
population, not being an industrious or commercial people, have nothing to
make a noise at. But the great charm to Robert was in the magnificent
palaces, nearly all of which were built by the great artists of Italy; and
the churches, rich in pictures, frescoes, statues, and bas-reliefs,
together with marble columns of rare workmanship. Before commencing his
studies he visited the principal buildings, the church of St. Mark, on the
front of which are four bronze horses, attributed to the celebrated
sculptor Lysippus; then to the ancient palace of the doge, and to see the
subterranean vaults, which are separated from the palace by the Bridge of
Sighs, and then to the Arsenal, which occupies an island almost a league in
circumference. This edifice is a citadel surrounded by high ramparts, and
guarding its entrance are two colossal antique lions brought from Athens
and Corinth. After seeing the city Robert renewed his favorite occupations,
and, as in Florence and Rome, was inspired by the models in the Venetian
galleries. Milan, Parma, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Venice he had seen in
turn, and they had each opened to him their treasures and their teachings.
There was not a master the secret of whose genius he had not sought to
discover; there was not one of his works he had not studied in its minutest
details. Thus the object of his journey was attained, and his talent was
ripened under the generous sun of Italy. He could now go home and
consecrate the knowledge he had obtained to the glory of his art. "Only
fourteen days," he said to himself, "before I set out for France." But
_the_ event of the year was coming on, the general confusion of which
inspires the goddess Folly, and makes her ring her bells more noisily.
{197}
It puts every one in a complete vertigo, in which they think of nothing but
giddy pleasure and dancing and feasting. There is not a village which does
not take part in the rejoicings of the carnival, and it was something so
new to Robert, that he could not return to Paris without seeing and taking
part in it, an excusable curiosity in one of his age, and we will follow in
the train of this festive season, which animates everything.


  Chapter XI.

  "What are misfortunes and despair?"


Toward the end of the carnival license has no limit, and each one is
eagerly drinking the cup of pleasure and rushing thoughtlessly into all
kinds of amusements. Yet there is in this _mélange_ of ranks, manners,
and customs something so fantastic and extraordinary that Robert,
unaccustomed to scenes of this kind, is perfectly confounded. He is dragged
on by the popular current, which, in its course, made a thousand circuits,
and carried him along, in spite of his wish to the contrary. He was,
perhaps, the only person who was serious in the midst of all this
nonsense--the only one who did not exchange a phrase or word with
others--the only one who did not reply to the provoking questions put him
by the laughing crowd abandoned to the freest gayety.

As night came on, exhausted with fatigue, be returns to his hotel, and,
hearing cries not far from him, started in the direction from whence they
came. The darkness was profound, and he could scarcely distinguish what
passed him at any distance. But a few moments accustomed him to it, and,
following the cries, he found a woman struggling to release herself from a
man who was trying to drag her toward a gondola he had near. He advanced to
defend her, when a fourth person appeared and struck the man with a
poniard. He staggered and fell, uttering a horrible groan, and as Robert
went to his assistance, the man, and the woman he had avenged, disappeared,
leaving him alone to help their victim. Seeing no one near, he carried the
wounded man to the door of his hotel, and what was his surprise to find it
was Gustave de Vernanges, the son of his loved benefactress. Although he
had nothing but painful remembrances of this young man, he was not the less
sorrowfully affected in seeing the end to which his wickedness had brought
him, nor less prodigal in his care of Gustave. The more he saw that his
soul was exposed to peril, the more he desired to save his body, that both
might at last be saved. But the days of the wicked are numbered, and God
strikes them down. Woe unto them then if they are unprepared for their
doom. Gustave sank rapidly, and the physician's art could not avail. Robert
unceasingly prayed to God to give a few more days to this poor sinner, that
he might be reconciled to his Judge before appearing in his presence. He
wept with anguish when he found the shades of death were fast drawing round
him. A deep-drawn sigh was heard in the room, and the unfortunate young man
opened his eyes and looked round him. A second sigh, then a horrible groan,
and thinking he was not recognized, he articulated in a feeble voice, "Who
are you? Where am I?"

"Be tranquil," replied Robert sweetly, "you are at the house of a friend.
You have been wounded, and, not knowing where you lived, I brought you
here. You must be perfectly calm and quiet, for your wound is dangerous. If
you have any messages to send your friends, I will faithfully execute
them."

"Yes," replied Gustave painfully, "I feel that I am badly wounded, and
will, perhaps, die, and so young too. I have no parents, but had a number
of friends, who shared my pleasures and excited me to do foolish things,
but where are they now? Oh! it is frightful to die when one is rich and has
so much pleasure to look forward to.
{198}
Must I give up all these things, my titles, my wealth, and all, to go--
where? I, the rich Gustave de Vernanges, must I die at twenty-seven, struck
by the hand of a common man?"

"You must not speak so," replied Robert. "In God's hand is the life you so
much regret to give up, and, if he wills it, you will be saved; his power
and goodness are great, but you must submit yourself to his divine will,
and repent in all sincerity of heart. You are not without sin, for we are
all sinners; but ask God's pardon for them, and you will then be tranquil,
and peace of mind is necessary to health of body."

"For what must I repent," said the troubled voice of the unhappy Gustave.
"What have I done? What are my faults? They are only what thousands of
others have done. I have amused myself, and laughed at the sorrows of my
victim. I gave them gold and rejoiced in their tears; passing my years in
feasts and follies, and never trying to dry the tears I caused. Oh!" he
cried in delirium, "I see it now through the mists of death. My mother! oh!
how I treated her! The veil falls from my eyes! Remorse! remorse! I have
sinned, and my mother that I did not love calls me now to repent. O God, my
God, pardon me!" And in his fever and on his bed of sickness and pain he
called upon his mother, whom he had killed by his wickedness, and upon God,
whom be had renounced all his life, to save him.

The physician came in at this moment, and, looking at him, shook his head
sadly, saying to Robert that death was near, and a priest had better be
sent for to prepare him for the last change. He soon arrived, but Gustave
was in a violent delirium, and could not understand his saintly
exhortations.

"Pray the Lord," said the man of God to Robert, "pray that he will give
this unfortunate young man enough consciousness that he may confess and
receive absolution; and may his example, my son, teach you to fly from the
vain pleasures of this world and its impure passions."

Robert then told him of the obligations he was under to the mother of
Gustave, and how well he had known her for two years, and how he had since
been separated from her son.

"And see," replied the man of God, "what would have been his end if God had
not made you an instrument of reconciliation between him and his Maker. He
led you near your enemy just at the moment when death struck the hardened
sinner, to make him repent. The designs of the Almighty are impenetrable,
but in their execution there is grace and pardon. Oh! let us pray, my son,
and God will give both faith and hope, and will regenerate this poor heart,
tortured by remorse."

The venerable priest and the young painter passed several hours in prayer,
and the old man supplicated heaven with fervor for the conversion of one of
his brothers to Christ.

Toward morning Gustave became conscious, and the persuasive and eloquent
words of the priest moved the dying heart. He comprehended his sins, the
greatness of his faults, and wept bitterly for his errors, and repented for
the fatal passions that tempted him to commit so many crimes. He confessed,
with heart-broken repentance, the many griefs he had caused his mother, and
the name of Robert was spoken with hers, and his regrets at the sorrows he
had given him. But when he commenced to avow all his follies of debauchery
and infamous seductions, vanquished by shame, and the frightful remembrance
of the hateful past, he cried out: "O God, do not pardon me, I am too
guilty!"

"What do you say, my son?" said the priest? "You are guilty, it is true,
but have confidence in God, and you will be pardoned. He has struck you
down, to draw you more truly to himself."

{199}

Gustave listened attentively, and was much moved at the goodness of a God
justly irritated against him, and he felt the deepest sorrow at having been
for so long an offender against his word; but his soul, full of the most
bitter vices and most detestable wickedness, is now baptized in the waters
of repentance. The body dies, but the soul lives; the Lord has ratified in
heaven the absolution that his minister pronounced on earth. Gustave's
strength was fast failing, and he felt that he was dying. The recognition
between Robert and himself was touching, and the priest wept with joy and
regret, blessing the one who was to leave life, and also the one who
remained, to practise on earth every Christian virtue.

"Do not let me die alone, kind father," said Gustave to the priest. "I have
lived so badly that I have need of your pious assistance to finish life
more worthily."

The end was almost come. The physician could not retract his fatal
sentence, nor give any hope, for the wound was mortal. The blade of the
poniard had penetrated near the heart, and it was a miracle that he had
survived so long. He heard his sentence pronounced with resignation, and
accepted death as a just expiation for his sins, praying God to make it
such. He suffered some days longer, testifying by his patience and his
pious prayers the sincerity of his repentance, expiring with sentiments of
burning contrition and sorrow for his sins on his lips. Robert was grieved
to lose him so soon after his conversion and his return to virtue; and his
sad and premature end was a grave warning of the result of worldly passions
and giving way to vice, though Robert hardly needed such an example, his
chaste and pure soul had always turned with horror and aversion from the
licentiousness which beats the imagination and sullies its purity. Yet he
was always on his guard, for be knew the feebleness of human nature and the
dangers to which it is exposed, and the more he avoided the corrupting
vices of the world, the better could he resist them, for no one is so brave
in danger but that he may perish; and Gustave's death convinced him that
Christianity is the only basis on which we can build immortal happiness, to
which we all look forward after terrestrial joys lose their power of
satisfying the desire for happiness which agitates man from the cradle to
the grave, and which makes him attach such glorious hopes to religion, the
only vessel that is never wrecked and that takes us safely to the eternal
kingdom of perfect peace.

After having rendered the last sad duties to the unfortunate Gustave,
Robert left Venice, but with very different feelings from those be promised
himself. He traversed rapidly the Venetian Lombardy kingdom, then Piedmont,
and, stopping some days at Turin, went on to Susa at the foot of Mont
Cenis. There were two other travellers crossing this mountain at the same
time, a man of about sixty years of age, and a young woman, either his wife
or daughter. Their carriage followed them at some distance, but from either
fear or curiosity they preferred going on foot or on a mule. Robert had
bowed respectfully and exchanged a few polite salutations with them, but
after that all effort to renew the conversation had been in vain, and he
had renounced the hope of making any further acquaintance with the
stranger, whose face of manly and severe beauty, though expressive of much
mental suffering, had not escaped the eye of the artist, habitually
accustomed to read all the emotions on the face. His sad countenance moved
Robert so much that he turned round several times, not simply from
compassion, but from a sentiment of irresistible and strange interest.

A mysterious and sympathetic influence was felt by the two others, who had
certainly never seen him before; for the gentleman followed him with a
pleasure for which he could not account, and watched his light and easy
step, urging his mule on to keep near him, when the animal gives a sudden
spring and throws him into a deep ravine.

{200}

  Chapter XII.

  "Extend to them the hand of pardon:
  They have sinned, but heaven forgives!"
      Lamartine.


Our young hero, wishing to have a view from the highest point of the
mountain, was pushing on to reach the spot from where he thought it would
be most extensive. When he had almost attained it, his foot slipped and for
a moment he lost his balance, and it was this appearance of danger that
kept the other traveller watching him, and led to his fall. But Robert was
light and active, and raised himself by holding on to the rugged sides of
the mountain and getting on a kind of plateau, when the cries, first of the
man, then the lady, and then the guide attracted his attention and made him
turn quickly. Then at great risk he leaned almost his whole body over the
side of the precipice, and saw that imminent and terrible death menaced the
man for whom his heart had conceived so much affection. The lady and the
guide were both afraid to descend, for there was nothing to hold on to but
some loose stones projecting out of the earth. The gentleman's position is
both critical and perilous, but Robert descends cautiously to his side and
assists him to climb up; and indeed it is almost a miracle that he is
saved; and with a face radiant with joy Robert receives the thanks of the
lady and the traveller, who, remarking a medallion Robert always wore, and
of which he had obtained glimpses in the vivacity of his movements, said to
him, in a trembling voice: "Where did you get that medallion, speak
quickly!" And as if the reply he would receive was a sentence of life and
death, he waited in horrible anxiety, as if his soul was suspended on the
lips of Robert. Though surprised at this question, he was too polite not to
answer without hesitation when he saw the agitation of the stranger. "This
portrait," said he, "comes from my mother; it represents--" "Oh!
pardon--the name of your mother?" eagerly interrupted the stranger.
"Stephanie Dormeuil." "But what was her other name?" Robert hesitated a
moment, then replied, "She was called Madame de Verceuil." At this answer a
dazzling fire burned in the eyes of the stranger, and he made such a quick,
impetuous movement that the cord which held the medallion was broken, and
it fell to the ground. Robert stooped to pick it up, and heard these words,
which overwhelmed him with astonishment: "O my God, the remorse I have
suffered for twenty-five years!" and fainted, but the care of the lady and
Robert soon brought back consciousness, and when he opened his eyes be
caught Robert in his arms, and cried, "Oh! thou art my son, my own Robert!
and I am thy father. Wilt thou pardon me, my son, my dear child, wilt thou
pardon me?" "What! you are my father!" cried the artist, delirious with
joy. "If you are, I must press you to my heart, which has so long called
for you and needed you. I curse you?--for what? My saintly mother did not
teach me this, but the contrary. O my God!" he said on bended knee, "you
have fulfilled my prayers, you have given me my father." It is in vain that
we can find words to express this touching scene. Robert was folded in his
father's arms, repeating in a tender voice, "My father, my father!" He
covered him with caresses and kisses, and calls his name with a joy so
expressive, and a love so profound, that the count wept bitterly, and
cried, raising his eyes to heaven, "O Stephanie, what noble vengeance thou
hast given me!" Then gazing on his son, he was filled with pride at seeing
the child whom he had lost when an infant, and found when a young man of
splendid genius and glorious intellect. He said to him, with some
embarrassment but with a lively interest, "My son, where is thy mother?
What does she now?"

{201}

"Alas!" said Robert, pointing to heaven, "she is there! She sees us, and
her noble soul rejoices in our happiness."

The count understood it, his head was cast down, overwhelmed by the
bitterness of his remembrances and his remorse. Robert had seized his hand
and was pressing it affectionately, when he took the young woman and
presented her to Robert, saying: "This is thy cousin, Julia de Moranges,
who has been to me the best and most indulgent of nieces. I know you will
love each other." They shook hands with frank cordiality, but here both
filled with emotion at this strange meeting, and as this was not a
favorable place for more extended explanations, and the guides were already
impatient of so long a delay, they concluded to go on, and God knows the
most tender sentiments filled Robert's mind. Filial love had ever been his
first and strongest sentiment, and it burned in his heart with a passionate
energy that charmed the count, and made him stop each moment to embrace his
son, who had been the constant object of his regrets, for whom he had wept
so much, and whose loss was the cause of the sorrow which had brought on
premature old age.

Arriving at the top of this mountain, which is more than 2000 feet above
the level of the sea, our travellers are on a plateau four leagues in
circumference and covered with green pasture that charms the eyes, and in
the middle of it was a large lake about thirty feet deep, filled with
several varieties of fish.

The count was a man of extensive and varied information, and it was a
pleasure for Robert to hear him talk, so charming and attractive was his
conversation; and questioned by his son, the count related many things
concerning Mont Cenis. "There is a certain celebrity," said he, "attached
to the mountain we are crossing. Some authors pretend that Hannibal crossed
here to enter Italy, and it is certain that Augustus opened a route, that
was enlarged by Charlemagne. Thou hast before thee," added he, "the still
more recent traces of the work that Napoleon commenced, and which is truly
worthy of the great man who brought it thus far to perfection." It was not
until they were descending the mountain that the count commenced to relate
his life to his son, which we already know from his mother, but we cannot
pass over in silence his poignant regrets at the loss of such saintly and
sweet intercourse. When he looked at his son, left an orphan at twelve
years of age, with no resources but his perseverance and good conduct, and
reflected that he had come out of obscurity and made friends and a name, he
blessed the wife whom he had so cruelly injured and who had given him a
son, the glory of his white hairs and the love of his old age. But his
remorse for his treatment of his wife was nothing to the fear that his son
would refuse him his esteem and tenderness and would not consent to live
with him. But these dread thoughts could not remain long in his mind; the
respectful manner and caressing words of his son effaced them. The more he
studied the character of Robert the more he felt the need of his love and
of pleasing him, and the stronger was his desire to win the heart on which
he set so high a price. To obtain this he gave him his entire confidence,
and let him read his heart as he would an open book, and Robert saw the
remorse his guilty conduct toward his mother had caused him. It was a
painful avowal to make his son, but he had the courage; and the next day,
after Robert had related to him the principal events of his life, he drew
him to him, saying:

"I owe to thee, my child, a history of the years I have passed far from
thee and thy mother, but it is not that I wish to make a parade of my
regrets and my sufferings, but simply to tell thee in what way God called
me to himself and to virtue."

{202}

"My father," said Robert, "if the recital gives you pain, if it recalls too
vividly your sorrows, do not tell me, I pray you, for I would rather you
should chase away all sadness and smile yourself to life. I know I shall
love you, and I want you to forget what you have suffered. It is not for me
to judge you, and believe me, that, no matter what you say, my respect and
love for you will always be the same."

The count took the hand of his son, but could not reply for some moments,
then commenced thus: "If thy mother has not spoken to thee of my cruelty
and injustice toward her, and, still more, if she has rather exculpated
than accused me to thee, I owe it to her memory to avow that I alone was
the guilty one, and that she was to me, to the last moment, a model of
goodness, patience, and gentleness. She was right to leave me, for I was
then so blinded by my passions that the threat which decided her to go I
would without doubt have executed, if she had not taken the desperate part
which has turned so happily to thy advantage. I say it to my shame, I was
barbarous, wicked, and ungrateful to thy mother, and what is more frightful
is that I was so with premeditation. Incapable of controlling my temper,
and my pride wounded by the reproaches of my family, and by the railleries
of the young fools I called my friends, I carried my treatment to blows and
insults to her who gave thee birth. I know I make thee shudder and fill
thee with horror, but I have cruelly expiated these moments of passion, for
at heart I loved thy mother, and, when I reflected, I cursed my feebleness
and self-love. Unfortunately these moments were of short duration, and the
world and its attractions acted in a fatal manner on my heart, filled with
the deplorable maxims of a corrupt, irreligious, frivolous, and mocking
society. What, then, could stop me in the mad career which would soon bring
me to the abyss already yawning under my feet? Nothing, for I hardly
believed there was a God, and had none of the faith which thy mother has
planted in thy heart. I was as blind and insensate as a drunken man, who
knows neither where he is nor what he says. No curb could be put to my
passions, for I was like the brute that obeys his instincts, only more
miserable, as I had the voice of conscience to enlighten me while he is
deprived of the soul, which is the divine essence. See, then, what I was
when thy mother took thee far from me; and I was in a perfect transport of
fury when on my return to the house I leaned from the servants that thy
mother had gone, taking thee with her. At first, rage was the only passion
that possessed my soul, and it was perfectly incomprehensible to me that a
being as gentle as thy mother had ever proved herself should have the
courage to take such a step; but maternal love was stronger than all things
else to her, and when I found thy empty cradle, I wept and tore my hair in
despair. It was the first time I had really felt as if I was a father; for
when I kissed thy fresh young face, it was more from pride than from
paternal tenderness; but when I knew thou wert gone forever, my heart was
broken. I awoke at once, under the shock of this most agonizing, torturing
sorrow, and from that moment my life of expiation commenced. But I do not
date my return to God from that day, for it was a long time before my lips
uttered a prayer. I suffered more than tongue can tell in the delirious
life into which I was plunged, and which soon destroyed my health and left
me with a sickness which was long and dangerous. In my hours of suffering
and anguish you were always present to my mind, and I knew no one to whom I
could confide my sorrow, and feared to die without seeing you. Days
succeeded each other, until they became years; my despair increased and my
loneliness was horrible.
{203}
The sign of a reprobate was marked like the curse of Cain upon my brow, and
I was consuming myself in useless regrets, without having recourse to the
love and compassion of God, when a providential accident brought near me
one of those angels of charity who consecrate their lives to the care of
the sick and sorrowing.

"A good sister of the order of St. Vincent de Paul came one day to excite
my interest in favor of the poor, and her angelic face and her tender and
persuasive voice touched me deeply. I was strangely attracted to her, and
could not help contrasting her manner with the means used by women of the
world to obtain what they desire. It was with pleasure, I might even say
joy, that I gave her my purse, and we became engaged in conversation. She
had read in my face the ravages of passion and the storms of the heart;
and, as all sorrows were familiar to her, she easily guessed those of my
soul, and forced me by her winning manner to confess to her the cause of my
sufferings. Then when she knew all, she spoke to me in a language so filled
with faith and charity that my frozen soul thawed under the warmth of her
burning words. The name of God was so eloquent in her pure mouth that
before she left me I pronounced it with faith and confidence. From this
moment I prayed, and the saintly woman came several times to finish her
work of grace. By her cares my body regained some strength, and my soul
felt all the hopes of a Christian, all the salutary truths of our sublime
religion. My repentance took the character of resignation, which gave some
calmness and tranquillity to my desolate days. I bade adieu to the world,
putting far from me its perfidious and deceitful charms, which I had before
so eagerly sought, and all the illusions which had appeared seductive and
worthy of my homage were dispelled. The veil had fallen from my eyes, and I
loved now what I had hated. Thy mother appeared to me with her virtues and
her touching simplicity and her charming candor and purity, and, now that I
was in a state to appreciate her, I could behold her no more. At this time
I lost my sister Helena, of whom thy mother has spoken to thee, and she
left a daughter, thy cousin Julia. I took her to my home and heart, but
still she did not console me for thy loss; for, good and amiable as she
was, she was not my son, and the lost happiness is what we always sigh for,
and which can never be replaced. My niece married and soon became a widow,
when she returned to me, and, finding all her efforts to diminish my
sadness without effect, she proposed our traveling. We have been all over
Europe, and everywhere I looked for you and enquired for you, for a secret
voice said to me always, 'Go on! go on! thou wilt find him.' I had already
explored Italy from one end to the other, had visited cold England, crossed
the German States, been through Spain and Portugal, when the fiery
inquietude which kept me always moving made me turn my steps a second time
toward Italy. It was doubtless a presentiment, since it was on this earth,
a thousand times blessed, that I found thee--that we met! I feel that God
as pardoned me, and my sorrows are at an end. Thou art the conciliating
angel, the treasure and consolation and the last happiness of a penitent
old man who has lost and suffered much. Oh! may thy love be the sign of the
forgiveness thy mother has sent me, and a bond of peace and felicity. But,"
said the count, in a suppliant tone, in terminating this long and painful
confession, "thou wilt not leave me, Robert? thou wilt live with me, my
son? It would be too cruel to deprive me of thy presence, and, after having
found my earthly heaven, thou wilt not plunge me into the depths of hell;
for if I lose thy tenderness, I lose all."

"My father," replied Robert, "I could not leave you. I am too happy to
possess your love to deprive myself of so sweet a joy. God has reunited us,
and we will never again separate!"


{204}


  Chapter XIII.

  "Nothing can be dearer to a man
  than a father he is proud of."


Some days after this interview, Robert, the count, and Julia were
travelling toward l'Auvergne. If the dead could feel in their cold graves,
certainly Robert's mother would have felt a deep and holy joy in seeing her
son and her husband kneeling on her tomb. But their eyes were not on the
grave, but raised toward heaven, and Robert saw the same vision which had
appeared to him in his youth, and he cried out: "I see it! O my father, I
see it! She blesses us."

The name of Dormeuil was effaced from the modest stone, and that of
Countess de Verceuil substituted, to the great astonishment of the people
of the surrounding country. Then the count visited the little house which
had fallen in ruins, and here Robert called up a thousand tender memories,
and thanked God for the manifestation of his love in permitting him to find
his father. But it was not for the rank he would have in the world, nor for
the titles society would look upon with jealous eyes, nor for this
wonderful elevation of his talent, which dazzled and made him happy. It was
the power which God had put into his hands, to enable him to do good to
others, and the knowledge of the future of repose and comfort he could
ensure to the two objects of his early affection, good Madame Gaudin and
the old soldier of the guard. It was of them that he thought when he said.
"I am rich." How he longed to see Paris, and to be folded again to the
hearts of his friends, from whom he had so long been separated. His father,
seeing his impatience, smiled at the projects he formed for them, but was
none the less anxious to know them and thank them for the cares they had
bestowed on his son. At last they arrived, and when they reached the house
a cruel thought crossed Robert's mind, that they might be "no more." His
heart beat, and he scarcely dared to knock, but listened a moment, and--oh!
what happiness--two well-known voices fell upon his ear. One said: "Six
months have passed since his last letter, and no news of our dear child.
What can have happened him?" "You must have patience, good woman," said the
other voice, "he can't always find opportunities to write. I believe the
reason he does not write is, that be intends to come some day soon." "Ah! I
know he is not sick, and it is the faith of Cyprien says it. The Lord is
too just to make so good a boy ill."

Completely reassured, Robert knocked and entered immediately. Two cries
came at the same time from two hearts that joy suffocated. Robert raised
Madame Gaudin in his arms; her too sudden surprise had overwhelmed her with
emotion, and Cyprien cried, "It is you, it is you!" wiping away a tear. "I
am happy, now, Mister Robert. I knew you would come back, but I have had a
time consoling this poor woman, who saw everything in blackness and
despair."

Robert pressed the faithful soldier to his heart, then covered Madame
Gaudin with caresses, enquired for her health, and wished to know if either
of them had suffered in any way since he left them. When the confusion of
this sudden meeting had subsided a little, both Cyprien and dame Gaudin
perceived that Robert had no luggage. "Where are your effects, my child?"
said the good woman. Robert smiled, and said he had left them at home, "How
at home? And do you not intend to remain with us, my dear Robert?" "Yes, of
course, but we will live in another house, and I will take you to your new
home." She opened her astonished eyes, and followed Robert, who descended
the steps, and, calling a carriage, made his friends get in, and directed
the coachman to drive them all to No. 110, rue Grenelle, Saint Germain.

{205}

On the way Madame Gaudin tried to draw from him his secret, but all
attempts were useless, for he took delight now in teasing her. Stopping in
front of the hotel where his father was, he took the arm of his worthy
benefactress and conducted her to the saloon where the Count de Verceuil
waited. "Father," said he, as he entered, "here is the excellent woman who
has taken the place of a mother to me, and who for my sake generously
sacrificed all she had." "Madam," said the count with amiable courtesy,
"excuse me that I did not come for you myself, as it was my duty to do, but
I wished to allow Robert the pleasure of surprising you. You are at home
here, madam, in the house of my son, and I hope you will always be his
friend." "Your son?" she said, half stupefied. "Who, then, is your son? Ah!
I know," she cried with lively anguish, a secret sentiment of jealousy
coming into her heart; "it is Robert. God is just, and has given him this
recompense. What I have done for your son, monsieur, anyone else would have
done in my place, for no one could have helped loving so good and generous
a child. But I do not merit so much kindness at your hands. I am only a
poor creature, without either education or manners, so how can I live with
you?" "These things are of little value in my eyes, my dear madam. What I
honor in you, and what all honest and virtuous people would consider above
everything else, is the nobleness of your soul and the virtues of which you
have given so bright an example. You will give me great pain if you refuse
an offer that comes from the heart, and that I make you in my name and the
name of my son. We will live and enjoy together the favors God has been
pleased to bestow upon us. And you will be ours, my brave Cyprien" said the
count, taking the hand of the old soldier. "I know you love my son, and
this entitles you to my friendship. Will you accept it?" "Oh! yes; with all
my heart," replied Cyprien, looking affectionately at Robert, who was
watching silently the interview between his father and his friends.

His father was kind and good, and often he blessed the day they met.
Nothing can be dearer to a man's heart than a father he is proud of. Robert
had experienced this feeling for his mother, whom he venerated almost as
much as God. She was to him the type of every virtue. His misfortunes and
affliction had entirely changed his father, and to the vain pleasures of
the world had succeeded the practices of religion and the duties of the
Christian. All the virtues he admired in his mother he found in the
paternal heart, tried in the crucible of adversity. In a word, the father
was worthy of the son as the son was worthy of the father, and a sweet
harmony reigned in this family, bound to each other by the tenderest ties.
All rank was effaced, and the noble count, the heir of a great name and an
immense fortune, and the old woman and the old soldier lived with no other
desire than to make each other happy. Robert did not give up his
profession, and his name is now illustrious in the world of art! He married
his cousin Julia de Moranges, and crowned with joy and happiness the last
days of his father, who now sleeps the sleep of the just. Thus ends our
story. We have tried to trace the struggling life of Robert, and its
glorious recompense. We have tried faithfully to reproduce his touching
virtues and the noble and beautiful sentiments that adorned his soul, and
also to inspire our young readers with a desire to imitate him. We have
tried to show the efficacious and all-powerful help of religion in
nourishing the teachings of a Christian mother, and that a good and
persevering child can overcome all obstacles. Have we, then, succeeded and
obtained your approbation? If there are among you, my dear readers, some
poor little orphans like Robert, call down the blessings of your mother
upon your heads, and, though she lives in heaven, she will watch over you
with tender solicitude, and the God of the motherless will be your sure
refuge and your final Saviour.
{206}
Think not that you can live without constant prayer to God, the author of
your beings and the giver of every good and perfect gift. Put your whole
trust and confidence in him and his mercy, and whether obscurity or fame be
yours, always remember that he knows best, and places you in whatever
position best suits you. Should he give you the transcendent gift of
genius, you must struggle hard to obtain its rewards, and, whatsoever you
do, remember to do it for the honor and glory of God and the good of
mankind; and then, when you are called to leave this life for that better
world where all cares cease, you can welcome death, which will open for you
the gate of life, and exchange with joy the changing scenes of earth for
the unfading bliss of heaven!


------

    Original.

    Confiteor.

    "Confess therefore your sins
    one to another."--St. James v. 16.

    By Richard Storrs Willis.


  When to God alone I make confession,
    Why, my shameful heart! so light thy task?
  While so deep the shame and the emotion
    When to man thou must thy guilt unmask?

  Only here we find the true abasement:
    More than God we dread the eye of man!
  Hence the justice that, by heaven's ordaining,
    Human guilt a human eye should scan!

  Ah! how oft, by some great sin o'ermastered,
    Hearts in secret pray, but all in vain!
  Not till human ear has heard the story
    Peace descends and Guilt can smile again!

  Thus must sin requite both earth and heaven;
    Since 'gainst man the wrong as well as God!
  Just amends are due the Heavenly Father--
    Due my brother of this earthly sod!

  Ye who fain would find a peace that's vanished.
    Heaven demands no long, desponding search!
  Seek the kind, attentive ear of Jesus,
    Seek his listening human ear--the Church!

------

{207}

  From The Contemporary Review.

  Mediaeval Universities. [Footnote 46]

    [Footnote 46: This article is not written by a Catholic, which the
    reader will easily see from some of its expressions. With these
    exceptions the article is very interesting.--C. W.]


Universities are not mentioned in mediaeval documents before the beginning
of the thirteenth century. At that period, however, they stand before the
eyes of the historian already fully developed, and in the very prime of
vigorous manhood, without offering any clue as to their birth and lineage,
except such as they bear visibly imprinted in their very nature. This
remark holds good only for the most ancient universities--_Paris,
Oxford_, and _Bologna_--all the other institutions of the kind
being easily traced to their foundation, and recognized as copies of the
ancient types. There are, indeed, documents extant which refer the
foundation of the three mentioned universities to a very respectable
antiquity, and according to which Paris claims Charlemagne as its founder;
Oxford, Alfred the Great; Bologna, the Emperor Theodosius II.; and Naples,
the Emperor Augustus. But these documents are each and all the fabrications
of later times, which, agreeably to mediaeval disregard of critical
investigation, could easily spring up and find credence, because they
supplied by fables what could not be gained by historic evidence, the halo
of remote antiquity. Setting, therefore, apart these spurious credentials,
we prefer to trace the lineage of our venerable institutions as near as
possible to their source by reading and interpreting the record they bear
of themselves.

Twice during the middle ages the church saved literature from utter ruin:
first when barbarous nations overflooded Europe in the great migration, and
a second time during the confusion which arose upon the death of
Charlemagne. Science was indeed the _enfant trouvé_, to take care of
which there was no one in the wide world but the church alone. Under its
fostering care literature and learning started on a new career in the
asylums erected in the schools of abbeys, monasteries, and convents--a
career, however, characterized by a peculiar timidity, which shrank from a
critical analysis of sacred and profane literature alike--abhorring the
latter for its savor of heathenism, revering the former with too much awe
to subject it to dissecting criticism. In this narrowness of space, this
timidity of development, the youthful plant might have been stunted in its
growth, but for the breath of life which the genius of human civilization
imparted to its feeble offshoot to rear it to the full vigor of manhood.
This inspiration again proceeded from the church, which made the very
marrow of her substance over to the school, that it might feed on it and
wax strong, so as to become the bearer of mediaeval civilization, the
leader of society in science and education. At a period when the church had
given form to its doctrines by investing them in a dogmatic garb, so as to
remove them from beneath the ruder or careless touch of experimenting
heresy, faith was satisfied, and in its satisfaction felt secure from any
perilous raid on its domain. Hence, it became less timid in facing the
dissecting-knife of the philosopher; nay, on the contrary, it soon detected
the new additional strength it might derive from the disquisitions of
philosophical science; and thus it came to pass that the dogma of the
church left the bosom of the mother that gave it birth, and placed itself
under the guardianship of the school.
{208}
The result of this transmigration is but too evident. First of all, the
interest of philosophical inquiry was duly regarded by obtaining by the
side of faith its share in the cultivation of the human mind, and, on the
other hand, the dogma or symbol of faith, which hitherto had evaded the
grasp of human intellect, and therefore assumed the position of a power
which, though not hostile, was yet not friendly to the aspirations of the
human mind, now turned its most intimate and faithful ally. The motto of
this alliance between dogma and philosophy--the well-known "Credo ut
intelligam"--is the key-note of scholasticism. Thus, then, theology became
the science of the school, when the dogma was completely confirmed and
established, and the school sufficiently developed to receive it within its
precincts; and this alliance, which produced a Christian philosophy in
scholasticism, was the principal agent also in bringing about a new phase
of the mediaeval school in the _Studium Generale_ or
_University_.

From the earliest centuries it had been a practice with the Christian
church in newly converted countries to erect schools by the side of
cathedrals. Where our Lord had his temple, science had a chapel close by.
These cathedral schools became in the course of time less exclusively
clerical, at the same rate as the chapters of cathedrals turned more
secular in their tendencies. In consequence of this metamorphosis the
cathedral school attracted a large number of secular students, while the
monastic schools more properly limited themselves to the education of the
clerical order. But for all that the cathedral school bore a decidedly
clerical character. The bishop continued to be the head of the schools in
his diocese, and through his chancellor _(cancellarius)_ exercised
over the students the same authority as over all others that stood under
episcopal jurisdiction. Very often we meet with several or many schools
connected with different churches of one and the same diocese. In this case
each school had its own "rector," but all of them were subject to the
supervision and jurisdiction of the bishop, or his representative the
chancellor. Though they followed their literary and educational pursuits
each within its own walls and independently of the others, yet on certain
occasions they were reminded of their consanguinity of birth and their
relationship to the church, when on festive celebrations, such as the feast
of the patron saint of the diocese, rectors, teachers, and students of the
different schools rallied round the banner of their diocesan, and appeared
as one body under their common head, the bishop. Thus we see the cathedral
schools brought nearer to each other by two agencies of a uniting
tendency--the jurisdiction of the bishop and their relation to the church.
That which had grown spontaneously out of the circumstances of the time
awaited only the "fiat" of the mighty to accomplish its metamorphosis, and
assume its final shape in the _Studium Generale_. The church required
an able expositor of her dogmas, a subtle defender of her canonical
presumptions, and both she found in the school. Popes then granted
privileges and immunities to the cathedral and monastic schools of certain
cities, and these schools, following the impulse and tendencies of the age,
united in corporations and became universities. Under the circumstances it
must appear a vain attempt to search for documentary evidence as to the
first foundation of the three ancient universities. We can only adduce
facts to show when and where such establishments are first mentioned, and
yet we must not draw the conclusion that universities are contemporary with
those documents which first bear direct testimony to their existence. For
we all know that in primitive ages, when new institutions are gradually
being developed, centuries may pass before the new-born child of a new
civilization is christened, and receives that name which shall bear record
of its existence to future generations.
{209}
As far back as the eleventh century, we find at _Paris_ schools
connected with the churches of _Notre Dame, St. Geneviève, St.
Victor,_ and _Petit Pont_, but it appears doubtful whether they had
been united in a _Studium Generale_ before the end of the twelfth
century. The first direct mention of a "_university_" at Paris is made
in a document of the year 1209. _Oxford_ may, in point of antiquity,
claim equality at least with Paris; and the assumption that Alfred the
Great planted there, as elsewhere, educational establishments is certainly
not without some plausibility. Concerning the existence of monastic schools
in that town previously to the twelfth century, not a doubt can be
entertained; but to refer the foundation of Oxford University to the times
of Alfred the Great is simply an anachronism. Oxford, quite as much as
Paris, or rather more so, bears in the rudimentary elements of its
constitution the unmistakable traces of its origin in the cathedral and
monastic schools. _Bologna_ was one of the most ancient law schools in
Italy. Roman law had never become quite extinct in that country; and in the
great struggles between spiritual and temporal power, ever and again
renewed since the eleventh century, it was ransacked with great eagerness
for the purpose of propping up the claims of either pope or emperor, as the
case might be. The Italian law schools, therefore, enjoyed the patronage of
powers spiritual and temporal, which raised them to the summit of fame and
prosperity, and then again dragged them to the very verge of ruin by
involving them in the struggles and consequent miseries of the two parties.
The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa well understood how to appreciate the
vantage-ground which presented itself in the codices of the ancients for
the support of imperial presumptions, and consequently he expressed his
favor and good-will to the lawyers of Italy by confirming the ancient law
school at Bologna--a confirmation which was combined with extraordinary
privileges to professors and students sojourning in that town, or engaged
on their journey there or back. Bologna may, therefore, be regarded as a
privileged school or university since the year 1158, without, however,
being such in the later acceptation of the term, that is, endowed with the
four faculties. Concerning this distinction we shall have to advance a few
remarks hereafter.

The term university (universitas), in its ancient signification, denotes
simply a community, and may, therefore, be applied to the commune of a
city. Hence, the distinction will be evident between the expression
"_Universitas Bolognae_" and "_Universitas Studii
Bonnensis_"--the commune of Bologna, and the community of the university
of Bologna. The elder title of a university is _Studium_, a term
applied to every higher school, and supplied with the epithet
_Generale_ either from the fact of divers faculties being taught, or
students of all nations being admitted within its pale. The most
distinctive trait of the Generale Studium is manifested in the social
position it had gained as a corporate institution invested with certain
rights and privileges, like all other guilds or corporations of the middle
ages. The university was the privileged guild, the sole competent body from
which every authority and license to teach science and literature emanated.
The man upon whom it conferred its degrees was, by the very fact of gaining
such distinction, stamped as the scholar, competent to profess and teach
the liberal arts. The graduate, however, gained his social position not by
the act of promotion, but by the privileges which the governing heads of
church and state had connected with that act. Hence, it was considered an
indispensable condition that a newly erected university should be confirmed
in its statutes and privileges by the pope, the representative of the whole
community of Christians. The universities having gained a social position,
their members were henceforth not merely scholars declared as such by a
competent body of men, but they also derived social advantages which lay
beyond the reach of those who stood outside the pale of the university.

{210}

A short sketch of the universities erected in different European countries
after the pattern of the three parent establishments may suffice to give
our readers an idea of the zeal and emulation displayed by popes and
emperors, princes and citizens, in the promotion of learning and
civilization.

In the year 1204 an unfortunate event befell Bologna. Several professors,
with a great number of scholars, removed from that place to _Vicenza_,
where they opened their schools. This dismemberment of the university of
Bologna must have had its cause in some--we do not learn exactly what--
internal commotion. The secession was apparently of very little effect, for
the university of Vicenza, to which it had given rise in 1204, ceased to
exist in the year 1209, most probably in consequence of the professors and
scholars returning to the alma of Bologna as soon as this could be
opportunely done. A more detailed account has been handed down to us
concerning the secession of 1215, when Rofredo da Benevento, professor of
civil law, emigrated from Bologna to _Arezzo_, and erected his chair
in the cathedral of that city. A crowd of scholars followed the course of
the great master. From letters written by Pope Honorius between 1216 and
1220, it would appear that the citizens of Bologna, in order to prevent the
dismemberment of their university, tried to impose upon the scholars an
oath, by which they were to pledge themselves never, in any way, to further
the removal of the Studium from Bologna, or to leave that school for the
purpose of settling elsewhere. The students, however, refused to take this
oath of allegiance, a refusal in which they were justified by the pope, who
advised them rather to leave the city than undertake any engagement
prejudicial to their liberties. The result was the rise of the university
of Arezzo, where, besides the ancient schools of law, we find in the year
1255 the faculties of arts and medicine. From a similar dissension between
the citizens and scholars seems to have been caused the emigration to
_Padua_, where the secessionist professors and scholars established a
university which soon became the successful rival of Bologna.

In the year 1222 the Emperor Frederick II., from spite to the Bolognese,
and a desire of promoting the interests of his newly erected university of
_Naples_, commanded all the students and professors at Bologna who
belonged as subjects to his Sicilian dominions to repair to Naples. The
non-Sicilian members of the Alma Bonnensis he endeavored to allure by
making them the most liberal promises. At any other time this ungenerous
stratagem might have resulted in the entire ruin of the university of
Bologna; this city, however, being a member of the powerful Lombard League,
could afford to laugh at Frederick's decrees of annihilation. As long as
its founder and benefactor was alive, the university of Naples enjoyed a
high degree of fame and excellence among the studia of Italy, for Frederick
spared neither expense nor labor in the propagation of science and
literature.

Pope Innocent IV. erected the university of _Rome_ about the year
1250, and conferred upon it all the privileges enjoyed by other
establishments of the kind. But the praise of having raised that university
to its most flourishing condition, and endowed it with all the faculties,
is due to Pope Boniface VIII.

Lombardy owed its literary fame to the noble Galeazzo Visconti, who formed
the design of erecting a university close to Milan which should provide for
the increased wants in science and education among the population of that
capital and the surrounding cities.
{211}
The site chosen for the purpose was _Pavia_, which had for a long time
been the resort of literati of every description who had been educated in
the neighboring university of Bologna. The new university soon acquired
great fame, enjoying the special patronage of the Emperor Charles IV. of
Germany.

The French universities were organized after the model of Paris, but most
of them had to be contented with one or several of the faculties, exclusive
of theology, which was, and continued to be, a privileged science reserved
to Paris and a few of the more ancient universities. Thus we see that
_Orleans_, where a flourishing school of law had existed since 1284,
was provided in 1312 with the charters and privilege of of the Studium
Generale. _Montpelier_ University, according to some historians, was
founded in 1196 by Pope Urban V.; but with certainty we can trace its
famous school of medicine only as far back as the year 1221. To this was
added the faculty of law in 1230, and Nicolas IV. finally established, in
1286, the faculties of civil and canon law, medicine and arts.
_Grenoble_, _Anjou_, and a few others, though entitled to claim
the privileges of the Studium Generale, hardly ever exceeded the limits of
ordinary schools, whether in arts, law, or medicine.

The system of centralization, which at that time had already gained the
upper hand in the church and state of France, impressed its type on social
and scientific life as well. Paris became the all-absorbing vortex which
engulfed every symptom of provincial independence; and the Alma Parisiensis
developed in her bosom, as spontaneous productions of her own body, the
colleges which were founded on so grand a scale as to outweigh in
importance all the minor universities, each college forming, so to say, a
"universitas in universitate." This observation holds good for England and
the English universities.

Turning our attention to Germany, we find, in accordance with the social
conditions of the country, the development of academic life taking a
somewhat intermediate course between the Italian universities on the one
side, and Paris and Oxford on the other. Though emperors and territorial
princes vie with each other in the promotion of educational establishments,
Germany nevertheless bears a close resemblance to Italy in so far as in
both countries the opulent citizens are among the first to exert themselves
in the propagation of science and the diffusion of knowledge. The
university of _Prague_, founded by the Emperor Charles IV. in 1318,
was soon followed by that of _Vienna_, founded in 1365 by Albertus
Contraetus, duke of Austria, and _Heidelberg_, erected by Rupert of
the Palatinate, and confirmed by the pope in 1386. The university of
Cologne owed its origin to the exertions made by the municipal council, who
succeeded in gaining a charter from Pope Urban VI. in 1388. _Erfurt_
also is mainly indebted to the zeal of the citizens and the town council
for its erection, which took place in 1392. _Leipzig_ was founded, in
its rudiments at least, in 1409 by the Elector Frederick I. of Saxony, but
it started into the full vigor of academic life under the impulse imparted
to it by the immigration of two thousand students, Catholic Germans, who,
to escape Hussite persecution, had departed in a body from the university
of Prague.

Spain, which we should expect to see forward in promoting institutions of
learning, did not much avail herself of those fruits of science which had
ripened to unequalled splendor under the Arabs in the eleventh century.
Recalling, however, to mind the fearful struggles between the Christian and
Arab population, struggles which for centuries shook that country to its
very foundations, we can readily make allowance for the slow advance of
learning in this state of bellicose turmoil. Yet, in spite of these
unfavorable conditions, the schools received no inconsiderable attention
from the Christian rulers of the country.
{212}
The ancient school of _Osca_, or _Huesca_, was revived;
_Saragossa_, which is said to have been founded in 990 by Roderico à
S. AElia, began to thrive again; _Valentia_ was founded by Alphonse of
Leon, and _Salamanca_ in 1239 by Ferdinand of Castile and Leon, both
of which schools arrived at their greatest splendor and the position of
universities at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as did also those
of _Valladolid, Barcelona, Saragossa_ and _Alcala_.

In order to give a general survey of the progress of academic
establishments in the different European countries, we subjoin a list of
all mediaeval universities, with the dates of foundation, which in doubtful
cases are accompanied by a note of interrogation. The dates of the most
ancient universities require no further remark after our previous
observations:

  England and Scotland.

  Oxford           11-
  Cambridge        11-
  St. Andrews      1412
  Glasgow          1451
  Aberdeen         1494
  Edinburgh        1520

  Italy.

  Bologna          11-
  Piacenza         1248
  Padua            1222
  Piza             1339
  Vercelli         1228
  Arezzo           1356
  Vicenza          1204
  Rome             1250 (?)
  Naples           1224
  Fermo            1391
  Perugia          1307
  Pavia            1361
  Siena            1420
  Parma            1412
  Turin            1405
  Florence         1348
  Verona           1339
  Salerno          1250 (?)

  France.

  Paris            11-
  Montpelier       1286
  Avignon          1809 (?)
  Cahors           1332
  Anjou            1348
  Lyons            1300
  Grenoble         1339
  Perpignan        1340
  Poitiers         1431
  Caen             1433
  Bordeaux         1442
  Nantes           1448

  Germany.

  Prague           1348
  Vienna           1365
  Heidelberg       1386
  Cologne          1388
  Erfurt           1392
  Leipzig          1409
  Rostock          1419
  Greifswalde      1456
  Freiburg         1457 (?)
  Trier, (Treves)  1472
  Ingoldstadt      1472
  Basle            1460
  Mayence          1482
  Tübingen         1482
  Würzburg         1400

  Spain and Portugal

  Huesca                 (?)
  Coimbra          1279
  Lisbon           1283
  Valentia         1210
  Salamanca        1239
  Valladolid       1346
  Barcelona        1500
  Saragossa        1474
  Toledo           1499
  Alcala            508

  Other Countries.

  Louvain          1425
  Buda             1465
  Upsala           1477
  Copenhagen       1478
  Cracow           1364


Entering upon the subject of the constitution or organization of the
universities, we need hardly remind our readers that, in accordance with
the nature of their origin and with the spirit of uniformity which pervaded
the middle ages, the constitution of the different universities was
everywhere essentially the same. The university of the most ancient date
was not an exclusive school or establishment existing only for the higher
branches of erudition, but it was a system or various schools, which
chiefly aimed at the education of a competent body of teachers, a
corporation of scientific men. This purpose could be, and indeed was,
attained without splendidly endowed colleges or spacious lecture-rooms. The
university, in its first rudimentary appearance, is an ideal rather than a
reality. There are no traces of buildings exclusively appropriated to
academic purposes, but the first house or cottage or barn, if need were,
was made subservient to scientific pursuits, whenever a licensed teacher or
magister pleased to erect his throne there. Nor did the Studium Generale
confine itself to giving finishing touches of education, but it comprised
the whole sphere of development from boyhood to manhood, so that the boy
still "living under the rod" could boast of being a member of the
university with the same right as the bearded scholar of thirty or forty
years of age. The same academic privileges which were enjoyed by the
magister or doctor extended to the lowest of the "famuli" that trod in the
train of the academical _cortége_.
{213}
A _Corpus Academicum_, with its various degrees of membership, its
distinction of nations and faculties, its peculiar organization and
constitution--such are the characteristic traits of all the mediaeval
universities which we are about to examine. To the Corpus Academicum
belonged the _students_ (scholares), _bachelors_ (baccalaurei),
_licentiates, masters_ (magistri), and doctors, with the governing
heads, the proctors (procuratores), the _deans_ (decani), and the
_rector_ and _chancellor_ (cancellarius). To these were added
officials and servants of various denominations, and finally the
trades-people of the university, designated as _academic citizens_.
Every student was obliged to present himself within a certain time before
the rector of the university in order to have his name put down in the
album of the university (matricula), to be matriculated. He pledged his
word by oath to submit to the laws and statutes of the university, and to
the rector in all that is right and lawful (licitis et honestis), and to
promote the welfare of his university by every means in his power. At the
same time he had to deposit a fee in the box (archa) of the academic
community, the amount of which was fixed according to the rank of the
candidate, as it was not unusual for bishops, canons, abbots, noblemen,
doctors, and other graduates to apply for membership in some university.
After being matriculated and recognized as a member of the body, the
student had to assume the academic dress, which characterized him as such
to the world at large. The dress was identical with that of the clergy, and
from this and other incidents every member of the school was termed
_clericus_, and all the members collectively _clerus
universitatis_ whence _clericus_ (clerc) came to designate a
_scholar_, and _laicus_ a layman and a _dunce_ as well. The
wearing of secular dress was strictly prohibited, and we can appreciate the
benefit of this arrangement on considering the exorbitant fashions which
prevailed in those days, to the prejudice of propriety and the ruin of
pecuniary means. To carry arms, chiefly a kind of long sword, was a matter
allowed sometimes, more often connived at, but frequently prohibited at
times of disturbances among the scholars themselves, or during feuds with
the citizens. Against visiting gambling-houses or other places of bad
repute, passing the nights in taverns, engaging in dances or revels, or
other diversions unseemly in a "clerc," we find repeated and earnest
injunctions in the statutes of the universities. Where scholars were living
together in the same house under proper surveillance, they formed a
community known as _bursa_. Bursa originally denoted the contribution
which each scholar had to pay toward the maintenance of the community,
whence the term was applied to the community itself. The bursae had, like
inns and public-houses, their proper devices and appellations, commonly
derived from the name and character of the house-owner or _hospes_
(host). Corresponding with the Continental bursae were the English hospitia
and aulae, or halls, which, however, may be traced to higher antiquity than
the former. It is not difficult to recognize in these institutes the germs
of the later colleges. At the head of the hospitium or bursa stood the
_conventor_, who was commonly appointed by the rector, in some places
elected by the members of the bursa, and who had to direct the course of
study, guard the morals of the students, etc. If the hospes or host was a
master or bachelor, the functions of conventor naturally devolved upon him.
The _provisor_ took charge of the victuals, watched over the purchase
and preparation of the same, and settled the pecuniary affairs with the
hospes. Discipline in the bursae and halls was rigorous and severe, and it
could not be otherwise at a time when the individual man was not restrained
by a thousand formalities and conventionalities, but allowed to develop
freely his inherent faculties and powers, often to such a degree as to
prove prejudicial to the peace of society, unless they were curbed by the
severe punishment which followed transgression.
{214}
We meet in the earliest times of the universities with but very few
systematic regulations as far as internal discipline is concerned. This was
a matter of practice, and left rather to be settled according to the
requirements of each case as it arose. Practice, again, taught the pupil a
lesson of abstemiousness and self-denial which might go far to outdo in its
effect our best text-books on moral philosophy. The convictorial houses, as
well as the university at large, were poor, being without any funds but
those which flowed from the contributions of the scholars and members of
the university. A life of toil and endurance was that of the scholar. If he
had a fire in the winter season to warm his limbs, and just sufficient food
to satisfy his gastronomic cravings, be found himself entitled to praise
his stars. The lecture-rooms did not boast of anything like luxury in the
outfitting. Some rough structure of the carpenter's making which
represented the pulpit was the only requisite piece of furniture; chairs
were not wanted, as the pupils found sitting accommodation on the floor,
which was strewn with straw or some other substance of nature's own
providing, and on which ardent disciples cowered down to listen to the
words of wisdom flowing from the lips of some celebrated master. When, at a
later period, the university of Paris went so far in fastidious innovations
as to procure wooden stools for the pupils to sit upon, the papal legates
who had come on a visitation severely censured the authorities for their
indiscretion in opening the university to the current of luxury, which
would not fail, they affirmed, to have an enervating effect on the mind and
body of the pupil; and for a time the scholars had to descend again from
the stool to the floor. Early rising was so general a habit in those days
as to make it almost superfluous to mention that the pupils had gone
through their morning worship and several lessons by the time the more
refined student of modern days is accustomed to rise.

The lowest of academical degrees was that of _Bachelor_
(Baccalaureus). [Footnote 47] Certain historical evidence of the creation
of bachelors at Paris appears in the bull of Pope Gregory IX., of the year
1281, though the degree must be of a remoter date, for the pope alludes to
it not as a novel institution, but in terms which induce us to admit its
previous existence. When a scholar had attended the course of lectures
prescribed by his faculty, and gone through a certain number of
disputations, he might present himself as a candidate for the bachelorship.
Having passed his examination before the doctors (magistri) of his faculty
to their satisfaction, and taken the usual oath of fidelity and obedience
to the university, he gained the actual promotion by the chancellor.
Hereupon be proceeded with his friends and others whom he chose to invite,
in a more or less brilliant _cortége_, to the banquet which he
provided in honor of the occasion. In the procession the staff or sceptre
(baculus, sceptrum, virga) of the university was carried in front of the
new-made bachelor, as the emblem of his recently gained academical dignity.
The bachelors were still only a higher class of students, and as such they
are frequently called _Archischolares_. They, of course, preceded the
students in rank, were allowed to wear a gown of choicer material, and the
cap called _Quadtatum_, while the _Birrettum_ [Footnote 48] was
reserved for the doctors.

    [Footnote 47: As to the derivation of this term hardly a doubt can be
    entertained. The ancient custom of carrying the academic staff or
    scepter (baculus) before the candidates on his promotion to the first
    degree, undoubtedly gave origin to the terms _Bacularius_ and
    _Baculariatus_, which only in later times were corrupted into
    _Baccularius_ and _Baccalaureus_. Thus with Kink against
    Balaeus, Voight, and others, who give the most fantastic derivations,
    such as _bataille_ (batalarius), _bas-chevalier_, etc.]

    [Footnote 48: _Quadratum_, the square cap; _birrettum_, a
    term still preserved in the French _barrette_, a cardinal's hat;
    in German the term _barrett_ is used for the cap worn by priests
    when in official dress.]

{215}

The bachelors were closely connected with their respective faculties, and
could not renounce this connection, or even choose another place of
residence, without special permission. They formed the transition from the
students to the masters, as they participated in the functions of both.
They had to direct the private study and repetitions of the scholars, and
work out the doctor's system, which the latter merely sketched in its
principal theses and rudimentary outline. The bachelors, in fact,
represented the hardest worked people of the body academic. In later
centuries they were actually ill treated by the doctors of Paris, who
confined themselves to deliver one single lecture in the whole year,
leaving all the rest of the work to their inferior fellow-graduates.
Besides their share in teaching the students, they performed other
important duties. They were the industrious copyists of classical works,
and while they thus toiled for the instruction of others in narrower or
wider circles, they at the same time qualified themselves for the
attainment of higher degrees. Opportunities for the advancement of their
own erudition were given in the _disputations_. It was incumbent upon
every doctor or master (magister) from time to time to hold and direct a
public disputation, at which the doctors, bachelors, and students were
present. The doctors, clad in the furred doctor-gown (cappa, taphardum),
and with the _birrettum_, took their places on elevated chairs, which
were arranged in a circle round the walls of the hall. The cross seats were
occupied by the bachelors, behind whom mustered the plebeian students, in
earlier times cowering on the floor, later on provided with the luxury of
seats.

The presiding doctor, who directed the disputation, having entered the
pulpit, chose from the text-book a certain passage and formed it into an
argument (quaestio), the development or exposition of which was called
_determinatio_. Now the task of the bachelors commenced, who, with
respect to their functions, were called _respondentes_ and divided
into _defendentes_ and _opponentes_. They had their own pulpit,
from which one or other individual of their class delivered his
_argumentatio, pro_ or _con_, and then awaited the response of
his antagonist. When, however, the contest required a rapid succession of
questions and answers, both occupied the same pulpit, facing each other in
a contest which very often did not lack the stimulus of personal animosity.
When they became extravagant in their argumentation, strayed from the
original question, or in the heat of the combat fell into excesses of
language, it was the office of the presiding doctor to recall them to the
point at issue, or, if need were, to impose silence. Sometimes, and perhaps
not unfrequently, matters became so complicated as to leave a solution of
the question more than doubtful, in which case the doctor, on his own
authority, pronounced a decision, to which the contending parties had to
submit. Similarly to the practice prevalent in tournaments, the
disputations were wound up with a courtesy (recommendatio), a harangue in
favor of the opponent. Students were not allowed to take part in the
disputations directed by a doctor; but they had their own combats of the
kind, presided over by a bachelor.

While promotion to the bachelorship took place four times a year, the
competition for the _license_ could occur only once or twice, commonly
at the opening of the new scholastic year. The scientific requirements
differed in different universities and faculties, and the course of
promotion was not everywhere the same in all its details, but the following
outlines will, we hope, give a fair picture of the generality of cases. The
day of competition for the license (licentia docendi) being agreed upon
between the chancellor and the respective faculties, it was publicly
announced by placards at the entrance of churches and other conspicuous
places, and several times pronounced from the pulpits of the clergy.
{216}
On the appointed day the candidates presented themselves before their
respective faculties, and on the morrow they were introduced to the
chancellor, to petition him that he would graciously accept them as
candidates, and appoint the day of examination. Hereupon they pledged
themselves by oath to be obedient to the chancellor, to promote the welfare
of the university, to further peace and concord among the nations and
faculties, to deliver lectures at least during the first year of their
license, to be faithful to the doctrines of the church, and to defend them
against every hostile aggression. Then the functions of the faculties began
and ended with the examination of the candidate, who, upon having passed
satisfactorily, was recommended to the chancellor for the actual reception
of the license. Thus it becomes evident that the license was not the gift
of the faculty, but emanated from the chancellor as the representative of
the bishop, the church; nay, more, in several Italian universities it was,
in spite of their democratic character, customary for the bishop himself to
preside at the examination for the license and the promotion of the
successful competitors. When the chancellor withheld his confirmation (as
on several occasions of differences having arisen between him and the
university it did happen), the most brilliantly sustained examination
failed to make a licentiate out of a bachelor. The examination for the
three higher faculties was held in the presence of all the doctors, any one
of whom had a right to examine the candidate on the previously appointed
"theses." In the theological faculty the questions were everywhere fixed by
the episcopal representative, the chancellor, who even might interfere in
the examination itself. The same right could be claimed by him in the
faculty of law.

To pronounce judgment on the scientific qualifications of the candidate was
the task of the whole faculty. On the appointed day the successful
competitors appeared in the church in the presence of the chancellor, and,
kneeling down before him (_ob reverentium Dei et sedis apostolicae_),
they received the license, the chancellor using the formula: "By the
authority of God Almighty, the apostles Peter and Paul, and the Apostolic
See, in whose name I act, I grant you the license of teaching, lecturing,
disputing, here and everywhere throughout the world, in the name," etc.
(Ego, auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, et apostolorum Petri et Pauli, et
apostolicae sedis, qua fungor in hac parte, do tibi licentiam, legendi,
regendi, disputandi, hic et ubique terrarum, in nomine Patris et Filii et
Spiritus Sancti. Amen.)

After the act was over there followed the payment of fees and the
inevitable banquet. The arts faculty conferred with the license the degree
of the magisterium at the same time. The license enabled the candidate to
teach in public at all the universities of Western Europe. In the earlier
centuries this prerogative of universal recognition of the license was not
enjoyed by all the universities. That of Paris was honored with it as early
as the year 1279 by Pope Nicolas III.; Oxford did not receive it until the
year 1319; while the university of Vienna enjoyed it ever since its
foundation by the bull of Pope Urban V. of the year 1365. When the church
had performed her functions by bestowing the license upon the candidate, he
was not therewith a member of the faculty. For this purpose he had to seek
approval and reception from the respective faculty itself (petere licentiam
incipiendi in artibus, in medicina, etc.), which, in the regular course of
events, was never withheld. There was in this proceeding a manifestation of
corporate right and independence which the faculties loved to display on
this occasion. Though hardly more than a formality, it tended to give
expression to their consciousness of being free corporations upon which no
candidate could be intruded, though it were by the highest functionary of
the university.
{217}
The bachelors, as we intimated before, may be considered a higher degree of
students, and the licentiates, we may add, formed a lower degree of
masters. They, therefore, sat in the same compartments with the masters,
but in the rear; they might, like the doctors, wear the _cappa_
(gown), but not the _birrettum_; nor were they allowed to deliver
lectures on their own responsibility, but had to do so under the direction
of a doctor. Licentiates, however, if reading by appointment of a doctor,
or in his stead, were considered independent lecturers. To make the
licentiate a doctor, nothing was required but the act of _promotion_
--a mere formality again, but of no slight importance, for it was the final
transaction which stamped the candidate as a man of learning, the
legitimate and competent teacher.

The act of promotion was celebrated with the greatest possible splendor.
The tolling of the church bells gave the signal for the procession to
prepare. All the doctors, licentiates, bachelors, and students, having
previously assembled in front of the candidate's house, they, upon the
second signal being given by the bells, move in a pompous _cortége_
toward the church, where the sound of trumpets and timbrels received them
upon their entrance. For the court, the judges, the magistrates, and the
members of the different faculties, separate accommodation was provided,
the populace filling the remaining space. The doctors of the respective
faculties having taken their seats, the chancellor opened the proceedings
by a brief allocution, in which he permitted the candidate to ascend the
pulpit (_auctoritate cancellarii_). The candidate delivered a speech
(pulchram et decentem arengam) in honor of the faculty, and finally
petitioned for the insignia of doctor. Upon this the promoter (one of the
doctors of the faculty) ascended the pulpit and held an oration
recommendatory of the candidate, and then, following his invitation, all
the doctors formed a circle and received the _doctorandus_ in their
centre, where the promoter transmitted into his hands an open and a closed
volume as the symbols of his scientific avocations, gave him the kiss of
peace as the mark of friendship and fraternity, and placed on his head the
_birrettum_ in manifestation of his new dignity. Immediately after
these ceremonies the new doctor ascended the pulpit (now _sua
auctoritate_) and delivered a lecture on any theme fitting the occasion,
thus availing himself at once of the acquired privilege. From this it would
appear that the act of promotion belonged to the chancellor and faculty
jointly, and not to the university as such, for its actual head, the
rector, took no part whatever in the proceedings. The doctor alone had the
right of wearing a gown ornamented with silk and fur, and the birrettum as
indicative of his rank. In his social position he was considered of equal
rank with noblemen, and therefore wore the golden ring and other attributes
of the nobility, and in public manifestoes he always appears included in
the aristocratic class of society. The titles of _doctor_ and
_magister_ designated one and the same degree, and yet there was a
shade of difference in their meaning, magister (master) being applied to
scientific superiority or mastership, while doctor signified the person
who, in consequence of this degree, exercised the functions of teacher or
professor; hence, magister was the title of courtesy, doctor that of the
professional man, a distinction which will become evident from phrases such
as this: Magister Johannes, doctor in theologia, etc. Every doctor enjoyed
the right, and during the first year of his license undertook the duty, of
lecturing in that faculty which had promoted him.

The officials and servants formed no inconsiderable appendage to the
university. They are mentioned under the names of _notarii, syndici,
thesaurarii,_ and the lower orders of beadles or famuli of various
descriptions. More important, if not in position, yet in number, were the
_academic citizens_.
{218}
To these belonged tailors, shoemakers, laundresses, booksellers,
stationers, and a host of different trades, which had to provide for the
wants of university men exclusively, and formed a body distinct altogether
from the city tradesmen. All these servants of the university, the academic
citizens and their servants, together with the servants of each individual
belonging to the university, counted as members of this community. If we
take into consideration that dignitaries of the church and of the state,
and noblemen, visited the universities, accompanied by a numerous retinue
of attendants and servants; that even scholars of the wealthier middle
classes were followed by two servants at least (and in this case called
"tenentes locum nobilium"--gentlemen commoners?), we can form an idea of
the immense crowd of academic individuals resident in the great
universities. As to the number of academic members in different places, the
opinions of modern historians are at variance, and in spite of their
controversies the real facts of the case have not been ultimately elicited.
Wood, in his history of the university of Oxford, relates that in the year
1250 the number of members of that university amounted to 30,000! This
fabulous number scarcely ever found credence among modern historians until
Huber, the German historian of the English universities, entered the lists
as the champion of Wood's thirty thousand. Though, historically, he has no
new light to throw upon the subject, he makes his deduction in favor of the
thirty thousand plausible enough. Taking into consideration the facts we
have just advanced concerning the wide range of the term of academic
members, adducing, further, the circumstance of Oxford having at that time
attained the meridian of its glory by the immigration of Paris scholars in
1209, and the settlement of the mendicant friars there, he certainly urges
on our minds the belief that the number of academic people must have been
amazingly great. But looking apart from the circumstance that Wood's
assertion is not confirmed by direct documentary evidence, that the average
numbers mentioned before and after the year indicated turn in the scale
between 3,000 and 5,000, we have scarcely any other measure by which to
judge the above statement but the highest mark of numbers related of the
other great universities. Allowing the most favorable circumstances to have
worked in unison toward assembling a large crowd at Oxford University, we
yet believe no one will be likely to uphold the assertion that Oxford
University was at that time, or at any time, more densely populated than
Paris or Bologna. In the year 1250, we know for a fact Germany was not in
possession of one single university, and yet the number of academic
scholars in that country was not inconsiderable. From want of a Studium
Generale in their own country, German scholars had to visit foreign
universities, and the current is clearly distinguishable in two directions,
one to Italy for the study of law, the other to Paris for arts and
theology. Even admitting Oxford's fame for its dialectic and theological
schools having been on an equality with that of Paris, we cannot conceive
how, in its insular position, it could rival with the great continental
universities which offered ready access to students from all parts of
Europe. Now the greatest number ever mentioned at the university of Paris
is 10,000, when in the year 1394 _all_ the members of the university
had to vote in the case of the papal schism, and even this number cannot be
relied on, as, according to Gerson's admission, several members gave more
than one vote, and others voted who had no right to be on the academic
suffrage. Admitting, however, that the gross sum may be an approximately
fair estimate, we turn our attention to Bologna. This university
undoubtedly contained all the advantages of celebrity, easy access, freedom
of constitution, and whatever else may conduce to attract numerous
visitors.
{219}
Yet the highest number is 10,000, mentioned in the year 1262. The
universities of Salamanca and Vienna, certainly not the least among
academic establishments, even in the time of their greatest success and
most flourishing condition, could not boast of a number exceeding 7,000.
From these data it may become sufficiently evident what we have to believe
of Oxford's thirty thousand, a number which must stand on its own merits
until it can be supported and confirmed by direct historic evidence. It is
true the line of demarcation between trustworthy and fabulous accounts
concerning numbers is very difficult to draw in mediaeval records,
especially when they refer to institutions which, exposed to the
vicissitudes of fortune, experienced a continual influx and reflux of
scholars, so that the famous Bologna, which numbered 10,000 members in
1262, had fallen to 500 in the year 1431, not to mention the intermediate
degrees in the scale of numbers.

The whole body academic, numerous and complicated though it was, did not
require any considerable amount of regulating and governing agents. By the
simplicity of rule and government the middle ages characteristically differ
from our own wonderful machineries which claim for every touch that is
wanted the experienced hands of hundreds of officials, and even then they
are oftentimes served badly enough. Self-government was the ruling idea in
the middle ages, and consequently we see the universities directed in their
complicated progress by a number of officials comparatively so small as to
fill the modern observer with amazement. The university being divided into
different bodies or corporations (the nations and faculties), it left the
direction and management or these different institutions chiefly to
themselves. At the head of the nations stood the _proctors_
(procuratores), and the faculties were governed by their deans (decani).
The range of their official rights and duties will be illustrated later on.
The president of the different nations and of the four faculties was the
rector. He was elected for the space of a year, or six months only, by the
proctors or presidents of the nations, and in earlier times regularly out
of the arts faculty; at a later period, and in the younger universities,
out of one of the nations and one of the faculties alternately. The rector
was not to be a married man--at Vienna no monk either; Prague required him
to be a member of the clerical profession, imitating in this, as in almost
everything else, the university of Paris, where even the professors were
bound to celibacy (nullus uxoratus admittebatur ad regentiam). The rector
was the head, the president (caput, principale) of the whole university.
Oxford and Prague alone, where the supreme power was invested in the
chancellor, form in this respect an exception, but only so far as names are
concerned, for the Oxford chancellor was _eo ipso_ rector of the
university. The rector's high dignity found expression in the title of
_Magnificus_, which, in the middle ages, was allowed to none but
princes imperial and royal, and a suitable dress distinguished the highest
official of the university whatever he appeared in public. It is surprising
to learn what an important figure a university rector played on public
occasions. At Paris, and later on at Vienna, the rector, when officiating
in his avocation, preceded in rank even the bishops. The rector of the
university of Louvain (Loewen) Was allowed a life guard of his own; and
even Charles V., attending on one occasion the convention of the
university, took his place after the rector. At Leyden, the stadtholder,
when appearing in the name of the states-general, allowed the precedence to
the rector of the university; and whenever the rector of Padua visited the
republic of Venice he was received by the senate with the highest marks of
honor.
{220}
When at Vienna the court was prevented from attending at the procession on
Corpus Christi, the rector of the university took the place of the
sovereign immediately behind the _sanctissimum_. From the exalted
station which a university rector occupied in society the fact is easily
explained that dignitaries of the church, nobleman of the highest rank, and
even princes of blood royal, did not slight the rectorial purple of the
university. The rector wore, like the deans, a black gown, but on festive
occasions he was dressed in a long robe of scarlet velvet. He acted as the
president of the highest academic tribunal, and held his judicial sessions,
assisted by the proctors, and if he so pleased he might invite the deans as
well. In criminal cases occurring within the bounds of the university, he
could inflict any, from the slightest to the severest penalties of the law.
Hence, a _sword_ and a _sceptre_, were carried before him when he
traversed the streets or appeared on public occasions. He convened the
meetings of the university corporations, and conventions held under any
other authority (even that of the chancellor) had no legal power in
carrying resolutions. What we have just stated concerning the rector holds
good for the chancellor of Oxford. When Paris and other universities
contrived to free themselves from the influence of their diocesan, Oxford
never loosened the close ties which bound it to the church, and received
without opposition its governing head from the bishop. But it must be borne
in mind that the chancellor of the university had nothing whatever to do
with the church of Lincoln, which had its own chancellor. Once appointed by
the bishop, Oxford's chancellor entered upon all the functions, and the
same independent position as the rector elsewhere. On the other hand,
however, he represented the chancellor of the other continental
universities, who formed the connecting links between the university and
the church. During the middle ages the functions of the continental
chancellor were restricted to the few cases of promotion at which be acted
as the representative of the bishop, to give the sanction and blessing of
the church to proceedings which were deemed as naturally belonging to her
proper sphere of supervision and authority. Having so far finished our
sketch of the different members of the Corpus Academicum, we may finally
let them pass in review as they appeared at processions and other public
occasions, according to rank and precedence. At the head of the train we
see, of course, the rector followed by the dean, doctors and licentiates of
theology, with whom went in equal rank the sons of dukes and counts, and
the higher nobility generally. These were succeeded by the dean, doctors
and licentiates of the law faculty, and the students belonging to the
baronial order, and with the medical faculty proceeded the students of the
lower nobility. The fourth division was formed by the dean and professors
(magistri regentes) of the arts faculty and those bachelors of other
faculties who were masters of arts, while the bachelors of arts followed,
and the students closed the procession, they also being divided and
following each other according to the succession of the faculties just
described, where, _ceteris paribus_, seniority gave the precedence. As
in all institutions of medieval society the division of ranks was strictly
observed, and in case of need enforced in the most rigorous manner, a
transgression in this respect being visited on any member with severe,
sometimes the severest penalty, that is, expulsion from the university.

All the different degrees of individuals we have now examined were united
in corporations, representing a union either according to local divisions
in _nations_, or arranged with respect to scientific pursuits in
_faculties_. Concerning the nations of the universities, former
writers intricated [sic] themselves in great difficulties by recurring to
hypotheses in which historical records did not bear them out. According to
Bulseus and Huber the nations of the university represented the different
tribes or nationalities which inhabited a country, and found a rallying
point at the centre of science and education.
{221}
Now, this assertion is in open contradiction to the character and nature of
academic nations, as may become evident from the following data which we
have to advance. The nations of the English universities were, and always
continued to be, those of the _Boreales_ or _northerners_, and
the _Australes_ or _southerners_. Among the Boreales were
included the Scotch, and with the Australes figured the Irish and Welsh. If
it had lain in the plan of those institutions to preserve and foster the
difference of national extraction and to develop it to the highest degree
or contrast, how could this end be obtained by a corporation of men which
contained in itself the contradictory elements of Celtic and Saxon
derivation, elements then more sharply defined and opposed to each other
than now? Directing our attention to Paris, we find at an earlier epoch
there also only two distinct nations, the French and the English, the
former comprising Southern, and the latter Northern Europe. When these two
nations were multiplied into four no regard whatever was paid to the
different nationalities, for the divisions were the _English, French,
Picardian_, and _Norman_. Why, we may ask, was the nation of the
Normans to hold a separate position from that of the English, with whom
they were one body from a political point of view, or from the French, whom
they resembled closely enough in language and manners? When at the
University of Vienna the _Austrian_ nation comprised the Italians, and
the _Rhenish_ nation, besides Southern Germans, the Burgundians,
French, and Spaniards, where is the principle of nationality preserved?
Turning finally to the Italian universities, we meet with hardly any other
distinction but that of _Cisalpine_ and _Transalpine_. How wide
the difference between the nationalities of these academic nations must
have been we may leave it with our readers to conclude, when we state the
fact that in the Transalpine nation we find Germans, Scandinavians,
Frenchmen, Normans, Englishmen, and Spaniards. What then, will be the
question naturally proposed, was the meaning, tendency, and  character of
academic nations? The middle ages, in defining and separating the members
of the university into nations, did not intend to sharpen the national
contrasts and differences, but, on the contrary, to soften them down,
perhaps to destroy them altogether. Not natural _natural extraction_,
but the geographical situation it was which proffered the criterion for
such division. If it were otherwise, they would have applied to these
divisions not the term of _Nationes_ (that is, ubi natus), but that of
_Gentes_. Its chief support our view will derive from the fact that in
the middle ages the distinction of rank and avocations far outweighed that
of nationalities in our acceptation of the term. Just as chivalrous
knighthood represented, without respect to the different countries, an
institution coalesced into one body or corporation, so likewise the school
had its centres of unity, independent of nationalities. The chief criterion
of nationalities, _language_, formed in the scholastic establishments
a centre of unity, Latin being the medium of conversation and literature,
from the Baltic to the Adriatic, and from Cracow to Lisbon. The division
into nations consequently aimed at _uniting_ the different tribes
according to the different quarters of the globe whence they had come.
Every university was looked upon as a geographical centre, and the
different nationalities were grouped into nations, and designated by the
names of those peoples which resided nearest to the central point, the
university. It is true, the division recognized by the university did not
object to secondary combinations among students of the same nationality if
they wished to enter into a league with their countrymen, so that the
Germans, for instance, who belonged to the English nation at Paris, and to
the Transalpine nation of the Italian universities, might at any place form
a separate corporation known as a _province_.
{222}
These provinces, however, were not recognized by, or in any official
relation to the _proctors_ (procuratores). The name itself implies the
nature of their office, that of being the representatives, the advocates,
the attorneys of their respective nations. Not only graduates, but even
students were eligible to the office, because doctrine or learning was not
at all concerned where academic relationship offered the sole guide in the
election. When the whole university was convened, each nation voted
separately, and the majority out of the four votes (of the four nations)
decided. Questions which concern the pecuniary contributions of all the
members, or the external relations of the university and the like, were
discussed and settled in the convention of the nations. The proctors, with
the rector as their head, formed the court of academic jurisdiction, and
they also elected the rector, who in early times was nothing but the
supreme magistrate, the mayor, as it were, of the academic community.

The nations of which we have treated in the preceding paragraph formed the
first and natural division of the Corpus Academicum into independent
corporations, and may therefore outreach in antiquity the faculties. As
soon, however, as the different branches of learning had fully grown into
distinct sciences, it was merely in accordance with the corporate spirit of
the times that the scholars of each respective science separated into
independent bodies and assumed the form and constitution of corporations.
The origin of these scientific corporations or faculties is, like that of
the nations, and of the first universities themselves, shrouded in
obscurity. The sciences represented in the different faculties may surely
be traced back to the early centuries of mediaeval education, having their
prototype in the Trivium and Quadrivium of the monastic schools; but
without entering any further upon probabilities and conjectures about their
origin, we proceed at once to a characterization of the faculties at the
time of their full development, which is historically authenticated. In all
universities the faculties represented the same quadripartite cyclus of
sciences, that is, the _Facultus Artium, Jurisprudentiae, Medicinae_,
and _Theologiae_. It was not requisite for a Studium Generale or
university to comprise all the four faculties; on the contrary, we find at
the early epoch of academic life hardly any university which professed the
four branches of knowledge. Paris and Oxford, for instance, were originally
confined to arts and theology, to which the schools of medicine and law
were added at a later period, probably copied from the model schools of law
and medicine in Italy. Turning to the peninsula of the Apennines we find
there in the earlier times not a single university combining the
theological with the other three faculties. Bologna did not gain the
privilege of a theological faculty before the year 1362, when Pope Innocent
VI. decreed that in the law university the faculty of theology should be
established, and theological degrees conferred by the same. Till then it
had been customary for Italians to betake themselves to Paris, for the sake
of obtaining promotion in theology. Of other Italian universities, Padua
received a theological faculty by Pope Urban V., upon the intercession of
Francesco da Carrara, then, Signor of Padua. Pisa, when obtaining the
confirmation of Pope Benedict XII., was allowed the "studium sacrae
paginae;" but the right of promotion was a case altogether separately
treated, and therefore expressly mentioned where it was bestowed, which,
with regard to Pisa, did not take place. Ferrara also had a theological
school exclusive of the right of promotion; but in the year 1391 it
succeeded in gaining the privilege of promotion in theology, which, by the
end of the fourteenth century, was more universally conceded.
{223}
But even then we find famous schools, such as Piacenza, Pavia, Lucca,
Naples, Perugia, and even that of Rome itself, not participating in the
said prerogative. The university of Montpellier (like most of the French
schools, Paris excepted) had no theological faculty; and Vienna, confirmed
by Pope Urban in 1365, was not favored with a theological faculty
previously to the year 1384. These exceptions were owing to various causes,
partly of a local, partly of a higher and more important nature. The
interests of neighboring universities, for instance, might threaten a
collision (as in the case of Prague and Vienna), or the pursuits of
theological studies could be amply provided for by monastic and cathedral
schools. But the principal cause of this system appears to lie in quite a
different circumstance. The method of Scholastic sophisms had, in spite of
the opposing movements of the popes, gained day by day more ground in the
theological department, a fact which made a strict supervision, and
therefore a more limited scene for theological operations a real
desideratum. The greatest caution was deemed necessary, owing to the fact
that even at Paris, since the scholastic method had gained superiority,
startling doctrines were advanced, divergent from the traditional teaching
of the church, and sufficient to cause apprehension.

Admission to degrees depended first of all on the diligent attendance at
lectures, which the candidate had to prove by testimonials, and secondly on
a certain number of years which he had to devote to the special studies of
his faculty. For the bachelorship of arts a study of two, for the
magisterium a study of three years was required. In the faculty of law the
bachelor had, previously to his promotion, to go through a course of three
years, and after seven years of study the license would be granted; while
the medical faculty imposed for the bachelorship two or three, for the
license five or six years, differing in proportion to the candidate's
previous studies in the faculty of arts. After six years of theological
study the candidate could attain the bachelorship in theology, whereupon
his faculty pointed out one or other chapter of Holy Scripture on which he
had to lecture under the superintendence of a doctor. Having passed three
years in these pursuits he might gain permission to read on "dogmatics" or
doctrinal theology (libri sententiarii). Bachelors were, therefore, divided
into _baccalaurei biblici_ and _baccalaurei sententiarii_, and
both designated as _cursores_. A bachelor who had begun the third book
of the sentences became _baccalaurens formatus_, and after three
years' further practice, that is, after _eleven_ years of theological
study, he presented himself for the license. The head of each faculty, the
_dean_ (decanus), was elected by the graduates out of his respective
faculty, in some cases for six, in others for twelve months. The community
of the university was represented in three different conventions: the
consistory (consistorium), the congregation (congregatio universitatis),
and the general assembly (plena concio). The first was originally the
judicial tribunal, and though its functions became more varied at a later
time, it continued to be the representative assembly of the academic
nations. The congregation was a meeting of a more scientific, and, as it
were, aristocratic character, including only the doctors and licentiates of
the different faculties. It formed the court of appeal from the sentence of
the respective faculties. The general assembly, comprising all the members
of the university, was convened on but few occasions, and then only for the
celebration of academic festivals, or for the publication of new statutes,
or especially in cases when contributions were to be levied from all the
members of the university. On the last-mentioned occasion only had the
students or undergraduates the right of voting; in every other instance
they were restricted to silence, or the more passive though uproarious mode
of participation, by applauding or hissing the proposals and discussions of
their elders and betters.
{224}
Here, again, we have to point out a characteristic difference between the
Cismontane and Transmontane universities. While the whole constitution of
the universities on this side of the Alps, with their laws, statutes, etc.,
was dependent on the aristocratic body of the graduates, the universities
of Italy, and chiefly that of Bologna, display a thoroughly democratic
character. At Bologna the students were the gentlemen who, out of their
number, elected the rectors. The Italian rector was, in fact, identical
with our proctor, though his functions extended over a wider range. The
aristocratic congregation of faculties is almost totally unknown in Italian
universities, where the nations preserved their predominant position all
through the middle ages. The professors were hardly more than the officials
of the students, and in their service, though in the pay of the citizens.
In the documents we never read of any legal transaction being performed by
the faculties, but always by the rectors and the nations, or the rectors
and the students, and even the papal bulls with respect to the Italian
universities freely use the expression of a _universitas magistrorum et
scholarium_. In short, the Italian universities were democracies, while
the western, and chiefly the English universities present traits of a
decidedly aristocratic character.

To complete the sketch of the organization of mediaeval universities we
must add a few remarks concerning their position in society, and the
relation in which they stood to civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The
members of the body academic were subject to three distinct tribunals:
internal discipline and jurisdiction belonged to the functions of the
rector and proctors; violations of the common law which were committed
outside the pale of the university, and required the apprehension of the
delinquent, lay within the pale of the bishop's jurisdiction; and all cases
falling under the head of _atrocia_ were, for final decision, reserved
to the law courts of the crown. The bounds of ecclesiastical jurisdiction
being rather vague and undefined, collisions between the ecclesiastical and
secular authorities would naturally arise. In order to provide for all
emergencies the pope appointed _conservatores_, individuals who had no
direct connection with the university, and could therefore the more
effectually step forward as mediators when they considered its immunities
and liberties endangered. The university of Oxford, for example, was placed
under the guardianship of the episcopal sees of London and Salisbury, and
the "ward," it would appear, contrived to get into so many scrapes that the
charge of _conservators_ was rendered anything but a sinecure. At one
time we find them in a controversy with the crown, at another in a deadly
feud with the city magistrates, and again occasionally exchanging not very
friendly wishes with the bishop of Lincoln, the diocesan of Oxford. When
they found their opponents refractory, they appealed to the pope, who at
once despatched a legate to the scene of action, where, in nine cases out
of ten, the controversy was decided in favor of the university, the darling
child of the church. By the constitution of Pope Gregory IX., granted to
Paris University in the year 1231, and soon extended to Oxford, the
functions of the academic by the side of civil and ecclesiastic authorities
were more clearly and satisfactorily defined. Most conspicuous in that
constitution is a statute, according to which the chancellor of Paris as
well as the municipal authorities had to take an oath to honor and maintain
the privileges of the university. The relations between the academic
authorities and the city magistrates, or, to use an academic phrase,
between gown and town, remained at all times in an unsatisfactory state. In
Italy the universities to a great extent owed their existence to the
liberality of opulent citizens, who valued the institutions far too highly
to disgust them by any infringement of their privileges.
{225}
Should, however, the city of Bologna show difficulties in their path, the
scholars, well aware of a friendly reception elsewhere, packed up their
valuables, or pawned them in case of need, and emigrated to Padua. If the
commune of Padua grew in any way obnoxious to the university, the rectors
and students at once decided on an excursion to Vercelli. The good citizens
of Vercelli received them with open arms, and in the fulness of their joy
assigned five hundred of the best houses in the town for the accommodation
of their guests, paid the professors decent salaries, and to make the
gentlemen students comfortable to the utmost the city engaged two copyists
to provide them with books at a trifling price fixed by the rector. If the
Bolognese emigrants did not feel comfortable at Imola, there was its
neighboring rival Siena, which allured the capricious sons of the Muses
with prospects far too substantial to be slighted by the philosophical
students. These gentlemen having pawned their books, their "omnia sua," the
city of Siena paid six thousand florins to recover them, defrayed the
expenses of the academic migration, settled on each of the professors three
hundred gold florins, and--to crown these acts of generosity--allowed the
students gratuitous lodgings for eighteen months. However much an Italian
student might have relished an occasional brawl in the streets, there was
hardly an opportunity given him to gratify his pugilistic tendencies, while
in this country the street fights between students and citizens often
assumed the most fearful proportions. The more English citizens fostered a
feeling of independence, derived from increased wealth and social progress,
the less were they inclined to expose themselves to the taunts, and their
wives and daughters to the impudence, of some lascivious youth or other.
The students, on the other hand, able with each successive campaign to
point out a new privilege gained, a new advantage won over their
antagonists, would naturally find an occasional fight tend to the promotion
of the interests of the body academic, besides gratifying their private
taste for a match, which in those days, and in this country especially, may
well-nigh have attained the pitch of excellent performance. We do not think
it necessary or desirable to enter into the details of these riots between
_town_ and _gown_ which are very minutely narrated in Huber's
history of the English Universities. From the position which they had
gained in England, it will easily be understood that the universities could
not keep aloof from the great political contests of the times, so that as
far back as King John's reign the political parties had their
representatives at the academic schools, where the two nations of Australes
and Boreales fought many a miniature battle, certainly not always with a
clear discernment as to the political principles which they pretended to
uphold.

It is very curious to observe the manner of self-defence which those
gigantic establishments adopted when they were pressed by the supreme
powers of church or state. In the first instance, they had recourse to
suspension of lectures and all other public functions, a step sufficiently
coercive on most occasions to force even the crown into compliance with
their wishes. Should, however, this remedy fail, they applied to still more
impressive means, which consisted in dissolution of the university or its
secession to another town. Even the most despotic monarch could not abide
without apprehension the consequences of such a step, if resorted to by a
powerful community such as Paris and Oxford, for it had received legal
sanction in the constitution granted by Gregory IX., and its results were
far too important to be easily forecast or estimated.
{226}
We have already alluded to the frequent migrations of Italian universities,
and need, therefore, only point out the impulse imparted to Oxford by the
immigration in 1209 of a host of secessionist students and professors from
Paris, the unmistakable influence on the development of Cambridge exercised
by secessionist scholars of Oxford, and the rise of the university of
Leipzig upon the immigration of several thousand German students who, with
their professors, seceded from Prague, where Slavonic nationality and
Hussite doctrines had gained the ascendency over Germans and Catholics.

The universities gradually emancipated themselves, rose higher and higher
in the estimation of society, and thus became the sole leaders and guides
of public opinion. Popes and emperors forwarded their decrees to the most
famous universities in order to have them inserted in the codes of canon
and civil law, discussed in the lectures of the professors, and thus
commended to a favorable reception among the public. As the highest
authorities of church and state, so did individual scholars appreciate the
influence of Alma Mater. It was not uncommon for literary men to read their
compositions before the assembled university, in order to receive its
sanction and approval before publication. So did Giraldus, for example,
recite his Topography of Ireland in the convention of the university of
Oxford, and Bolandino his chronicle in the presence of the professors and
scholars of Padua.

We cannot more fitly conclude our remarks on the social position of the
mediaeval universities than by shortly narrating the occasion on which they
displayed, for the last time in the middle ages, the immense power of their
social position. The university of Paris, as it behoved the most ancient
and eminent theological school, took the lead in the movements which were
made in the case of the papal schism. Ever memorable will be the occasion
when, on Epiphany, 1391, Gerson, the celebrated chancellor of the
university of Paris, delivered his address on the subject before the king,
the court, and a numerous and brilliant assembly. Owing to his exertions
and the co-operation of the professors and members of the university,
certain proposals were agreed upon which tended to restore peace and unity
in the church. The king, for a time, was inclined to listen to these
proposals, but being influenced again by the party of Clement VII., he
ordered the chancellor to prevent the university from taking any further
step in the matter. All petitions directed to the king for a revocation of
the sentence proving futile, the university proceeded to apply means of
coercion. All lectures, sermons, and public functions whatsoever were
suspended until it should have gained a redress of its grievances.

In the year 1409 the Synod of Pisa was opened to take the long-desired
steps against the schism. The universities were strongly represented by
their delegates, not the least in importance among the venerable
constituencies of the Occidental Church, the number of doctors falling
little short of a thousand. Reformation of the church in its head and
members, and a revision of its discipline and hierarchic organization, were
loudly proclaimed by the representatives of the universities, foremost
among all by Gerson, the chancellor of Paris, the most brilliant star in
the splendid array of venerable doctors and prelates of the church.

Mediaeval universities were truly _universal_ in their character,
being united by one language, literature, and faith. With the sixteenth
century nationalities were growing into overwhelming dimensions; national
literature rose in defiant rivalry and joined revived antiquity in marked
hostility against the scions of scholasticism; and, to give the final
stroke, the unity of faith was crumbling; piecemeal under the reforming
spirit of the age. The ties which had bound mediaeval universities to each
other and to their common centre were sundered. Some became defunct; others
led a precarious existence; all had a hard and troublesome time of it--a
fact touchingly recorded in the annals of Vienna: "Ann. 1528: Propter
ruinam universitatis nullus incorporatus est."

{227}

This sad epitaph might have been written over the portals of more than one
university and public school by the middle of the sixteenth century.


  Literature.

  Bulaerus, "Historia Universitatis Paris." Paris, 1665

  Wood, "Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxon." Ox., 1668.

  Herrnanni Corringii Opera (tom. v., "Antiquitatis, Academicae"). 1730.

  Guia, "Historia de las Universidades, Colegios, Academias y demas Cuerpos
  Literarios de España," etc. Madrid, 1786.

  Huber, "Die Englischen Universitäten." Cassel, 1839.

  Dyer, "History of the University Colleges of Cambridge."

  Dyer, "The Privileges of the University of Cambridge."

  Fabranius, "Historia Academiae Pisanae." 1791.

  Vincenzio Bini, "Memorie Istoriche della Perugina Università." Perug.,
  1816.

  Francesco Colie, "Storia dello Studio di Padova" Pad., 1825.

  Pietro Napoli-Signorelii, "Vicende della Coltura nolle Due Sicilie."
  Napoli, 1784.

  Jacobus Faccioiatus, "Fasti Gymnasil Patavini," Patav., 1757.

  Serafino Mazetti, "Memorie Storiche sopra l'Università di Bologna."
  Bolog., 1840.

  G. Origila, "Storia dello Studio di Napoli." Nap., 1753.

  F. M. Renazzi, "Storia dell' Università de Roma." Roma, 1804.

  J. Bouillard, "Histoire de l'Abbaye Royale de St. Germain des Prez."
  Paris, 1724.

  J. E. Bimbenet, "Histoire de l'Université de Lois d'Orléans." Paris,
  1850.

  F. Nève, "Le College des Trois Langues à l'Université de Louvain."
  Bruxelles, 1856.

  Meiners, "Verfassung und Verwaltung Deutscher Universitäten." Göttingen,
  1831.

  R. Kink, "Geschichte der Kalserlichen Universität zu Wein."  Wein, 1854.

  Walaszki, "Conspectus Relpublicae Literariae in Hungaria." Budae, 1808.

  C. J. Hefele, "Der Cardinal Ximenes." Tübingen, 1851.

  J. P. Charpentier, "Histoire de la Rennissance des Lettres en Europe."
  Paris, 1843.

  S. Voight, "Die Wiederbelebung des Classischen Alterthums." Berlin, 1859

  J. B. Schwab, "Johannes Gerson," etc. Würsburg, 1858.

  G. Tiraboschi, "Storia della Letteratura Italians." Venezia, 1828.


------

  Original.


  The Lady of La Garaye. [Footnote 49]

    [Footnote 49: The Lady of La Garaye. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. 12mo, pp.
    115. New-York: Anson D. F. Randolph.]


Two hundred years ago there dwelt in the lordly castle of Dinan, in
Brittany, the chivalric Claud Marot, Count de la Garaye, and his gracious
lady. Its fortress-like walls and majestic battlements reared themselves
against the sky and frowned upon the woods and vales around as if with
conscious dignity and power. Fair Dinan's town nestled in its protecting
shadow as a gentle maid might seek security beside the burly form of some
rough-appearing but tender-hearted giant. The porter kept its gates with a
jealous yet a kindly eye, as should befit the keeper of his master's home,
which was at once the sanctuary of his knightly honor and the hall of his
knightly bounty. The gray-haired old seneschal, with shoulders slightly
stooped by age and reverence, met the courtly guests, and bowed them
welcome with a paternal smile and bustling orders to the underlings to
prepare all needful things for their better cheer. The courtyard echoed to
the baying of the hounds all eager for the chase, and men at arms in
troublous times assembled here, mustered by the doughty

       "Captains, then of warlike fame,
  Clanking and glittering as they came."

{228}

A retinue of well-fed servants and buxom maids prepared the goodly feast,
and ordered well the halls and chambers with their quaint and comfortable
furniture. Its noble master and mistress held sway within their castle with
fitting grandeur of demeanor, albeit with that graciousness which marks the
gentlefolk. Honored by all the country round, rich in worldly goods, yet
richer in virtue, happy in each other's love, the young count and his lady
had but one thing to mourn, and that was that God had left them childless.
A cruel accident banished for ever all hope of any heir: and so they lived
and died, yet leaving a name behind them "better than sons and daughters;"
and on this our English poetess has weaved a poem of surpassing beauty. We
propose to present some idea of it to our readers, merely saying by way of
preface that if anyone will read it as it is, he may dispense himself the
further perusal of this article, which cannot convey in partial extracts
that charm which pervades these flowing pages when undisturbed by the rude
comments of a stranger.

The poem opens with the preparations for the chase, in which the lady is to
take a part, and at once the noble pair are described to us:

  "Cheerful the host, whatever sport befalls,
   Cheerful and courteous, full of manly grace,
   His heart's frank welcome written in his face;
   So eager, that his pleasure never cloys,
   But glad to share whatever he enjoys;
   Rich, liberal, gaily dressed, of noble mien;
   Clear eyes--full, curving mouth--and brow serene;
   Master of speech in many a foreign tongue,
   And famed for feats of arms, although too young;
   Dexterous in fencing, skills in horsemanship--
   His voice and hand preferred to spur or whip;
   Quick at a jest and smiling repartee,
   With a sweet laugh that sounded frank and free,
   But holding satire an accursed thing,
   A poisoned javelin or a serpent's sting;
   Pitiful to the poor; of courage high;
   A soul that could all turns of fate defy;
   Gentle to woman; reverent to old age."--

We hasten at once to add the second portrait, painted with a delicacy of
outline and warmth of coloring which display the touch of the master hand:

  "Like a sweet picture doth the ladies stand,
   Still blushing as she bows; one tiny hand,
   Hid by a pearl-embroidered gauntlet, holds
   Her whip, and her long robe's exuberant folds.
   The other hand is bare, and from her eyes
   Shades now and then the sun, or softly lies,
   With a caressing touch, upon the neck
   Of the dear glossy steed she loves to deck
   With saddle-housings worked in golden thread,
   And golden bands upon his noble head.
   White is the little hand whose taper fingers
   Smooth his fine coat--and still the lady lingers,
   Leaning against his side; nor lifts her head,
   But gently turns as gathering footsteps tread;
   Reminding you of doves with shifting throats,
   Brooding in sunshine by their sheltering cotes.
   Under her plumèd hat her wealth of curls
   Falls down in golden links among pearls,
   And the rich purple of her velvet vest
   Slims the young waist and rounds the graceful breast."

The invited guests having all arrived, the merry party set off with cheers
and laughter, little dreaming of the sad ending of so joyful a day. The
game secured, Count Claud and his lady, returning together, meet with a
roaring stream over which they must leap their horses:

  "Across the water full of peakèd stones--
   Across the water where it chafes and moans--
   Across the water at its widest part--
   Which wilt thou leap, O lady of brave heart?"

Now comes one of the finest passages in the whole volume. Who can read it
without finding at the last line that he has been holding his breath?

  "He rides--reins in--looks down the torrent's course,
   Pats the sleek neck of his sure-footed horse--
   Stops--measures spaces with his eagle eye,
   Tries a new track, and yet returns to try.
   Sudden, while pausing at the very brink,
   The damp, leaf-covered ground appears to sink,
   And keen instinct of the wise dumb brute
   Escapes the yielding earth, the slippery root;
   With a wild effort as if taking wing,
   The monstrous gap he clears with one safe spring;
   Reaches--(and barely reaches)--past the roar
   Of the wild stream, the further lower shore--
   Scrambles--recovers--rears--and panting stands
   Safe 'neath his masters nerveless, trembling hands."

But one word mars the power of these lines; the word _safe_ in the
line,

   "The monstrous gap he clears with one safe spring."

The safety of the unexpected leap is told us just one instant too soon.
There is an indescribable pleasure derived by the mind in being held in
suspense in the contemplation of one passing through imminent perils, and
that suspense cannot be broken, though it were but for the short time that
one takes to pass from one side of the page to the other, without loss of
power in the description, and of interest to the reader.

{229}

But the lady! will she attempt to follow? Did she not mark his hair-breadth
escape? The confusion of thought in the mind of the count caused by his own
peril, the sudden, unlooked-for leap, the fear lest his wife should try to
follow ere he can turn to warn her of the danger, the dumb horror which
seizes him as he sees her horse in the air leaping to his certain death;
are told in a few rapid lines, and then follows the thrilling tableau:

  "Forward they leaped! They leaped--a colored flash
  Of life and beauty. Hark! A sudden crash--
  Blent with that dreadful sound, a man's sharp cry--
  Prone--'neath the crumbling bank--the horse and lady lie!"

Like a madman he rushes to her relief, clambering "as some wild ape" from
branch to branch, trampling the lithe saplings under foot with giant tread.
His love, his fear, his trembling excitement are told in one line:

  "The strength is in his heart of twenty lives."

What a depth of meaning there is in that one sentence, and how happy the
choice of words. When, in reading, we came upon the word _heart_ where
we expected to find "arm" or "frame," or some similar term which would
express the increase of muscular and nervous power consequent upon strong
mental emotion, we confess to having been startled by its originality, and
we admire the line as it stands as a master stroke of true poetic genius.

Claud is so shocked at finding his beautiful and passionately loved wife
apparently dead that he is struck deaf and dumb with grief. The noise of
the passing hunt, the baying of the hounds, the cheery calls of the
huntsmen, and shouts of the merry guests he neither hears nor heeds. It is
some time ere he realizes the terrible accident. At last the thoughts shape
themselves in his disordered brain, and, with one wild glance at her
prostrate form, be catches her in his arms, and

    "Parts the masses of her golden hair,
  He lifts her, helpless, with a shuddering care,
  He looks into her face with awe-struck eyes:
  She dies--the darling of his soul--she dies!"

Then follows one of those passages marked by that deep pathos for which
this poem is so remarkable:

  "You might have heard, through that thought's fearful shock,
   The beating of his heart, like some huge clock;
   And then the strong pulse falter and stand still
   When lifted from that fear with sudden thrill
   He bent to catch faint murmurs of his name,
   Which from those blanched lips low and trembling came:
   'O Claud!' She said: no more--
                            But never yet,
   Through all the loving days since first they met,
   Leaped his heart's blood with such a yearning vow
   That she was all in all to him, as now."

Some passing herdsmen came to their relief, and the bruised and corpse-like
form of the lady is borne back to the castle on a rude litter of branches.
It is impossible for us to refrain giving the strongly drawn contrast in
the following description:

  "The starry lights shine forth from tower and fall,
   Stream through the gateway, glimmer on the wall,
   And the loud pleasant stir of busy men
   In courtyard and in stables sounds again.
   And through the windows, as that death-bier passes,
   They see the shining of the ruby glasses
   Set at brief intervals for many a guest
   Prepared to share the laugh, the song, the jest;
   Prepared to drink, with many a courtly phrase,
   Their host and hostess--' Health to the Garayes!'
   Health to the slender, lithe, yet stalwart frame
   Of Claud Marot--count of that noble name;
   Health to the lovely countess: health--to her!
   _Scarce seems she now with faintest breath to stir._"

And thus the first part of this exquisite poem ends. The second part is the
"Convalescence" of the wounded lady. Her life returns, but she learns that
she is an incurable invalid, that while life lasts she must remain maimed
and sick, and, most cruel thought of all,

  "Never could she, at close or some long day
   Of pain that strove with hope, exulting lay
   A tiny new-born infant on her breast."

She draws her fate from the unwilling lips of the physician, in whose
friendly eyes the tears are glimmering as he pronounces

  "The doom that sounds to her like funeral bells."

And now she hurriedly glances in her mind at all the dreaded consequences,
among which arises the jealous fear lest she should lose the love of her
beloved Claud. His wife, indeed, but no longer his companion; only to have
the hours his pity spared. Heart-broken and crushed, she murmurs against
the holy will of God and prays for death.

{230}

The poetess here introduces a thought which shows her deep acquaintance
with the human heart. We shrink from sympathy for our wounded pride, and
strive to smile when our hearts are aching:

  "Wan Shine such smiles; as the evening sunlight falls
   On a deserted house whose empty walls
   No longer echo to the children's play,
   Or voice of ruined inmates fled away;
   Where wintry winds alone, with idle state,
   Move the slow swinging of its rusty gate."

Her high-souled husband grieves to see her drooping under the jealous loss
of her strength and beauty, and, in his undoubting love, unable to suspect
that she fears to lose that love,

      "Wonders evermore that beauty's loss
  To such a soul should seem so sore a cross,
  Until one evening in that quiet hush
  That lulls the failing day, when all the gush
  Of various sounds seem buried with the sun,
  He told his thought.
                   As winter streamlets run,
  Freed by some sudden thaw, and swift make way
  Into the natural channels where they play,
  So leaped her young heart to his tender tone,
  So answering to his warmth, resumed her own;
  And all her doubt and all her grief confest."

The unburdening of the sore, doubting heart and the tender, comforting,
loving assurance of Claud is one of the choicest scenes in the poem. Never
did youthful lover pour forth more impassioned utterances than fell from
the lips of that true man and noble husband. He tells her that her beauty
was but one of the "bright ripples dancing to the sun" glancing upon the
silver stream of his happy life, and continues the metaphor:

  "River of all my hopes thou wert and art;
   The current of thy being bears my heart."

And last of all, when she, still incredulous of his unswerving faith, sighs
her girlish doubts and moans for death, he with full heart and fervent
words repeats his tale of love and makes profession of love's boldest
offering, the sacrifice of his life, if it were the will of God, could she
return again "to walk in beauty as she did before;" and then he whispers to
her the thought that has arisen in his soul to answer the "wherefore" of
the dreadful accident:

  "It may be God, saw our careless life,
   Not sinful, yet not blameless, my sweet wife
   (Since all we thought of in our youth's bright May
   Was but the coming joy from day to day),
   Hath blotted out all joy to bid us learn
   Now this is not our home; and make us turn
   From the enchanted earth, where much was given,
   To higher aims and a forgotten heaven."

It is no little comfort in this age of sensual worldliness and practical
unbelief in the providence of God to find the voice of Christian philosophy
sounding yet clear above the grovelling utterances of a too often degraded
muse.

The third part of our poem continues and exemplifies this thought. This
world is God's world; we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of
his hand. Bereavement, pain, unforeseen and unexplained sorrow belong to
life, and play their part in schooling the soul to higher aims. The heart
must learn to wait on God. "Peace will come in that day which is known unto
the Lord," says the author of the Imitation of Christ. We, too, can bring
our own experience to the proof, and know that a stronger hand and a wiser
heart has led and loved us. We quote but one extract from this third part;
it is the summary of the whole:

  "All that our wisdom knows, or ever can,
   Is this: that God hath pity upon man;
   And when his Spirit shines in Holy Writ,
   The great word COMFORTER comes after it."

To these sorrowing ones, bending beneath the cruel blow, and mourning over
blighted hopes, God sent a friend; His friend, the minister of His counsel
and His comfort, a holy monk. Let us transcribe his portrait:

  "Tender his words and eloquently wise;
   Mild pure fervor of his watchful eyes;
   Meet with serenity of constant prayer
   The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare;
   The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still;
   With the 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 will hold the soul."

Words of holy counsel, lessons of humble sanctifying obedience, mingled
with mild reproof, yet full of the deepest and friendliest sympathy, fall
from the lips of the good priest and charm the unquiet spirit to rest.
{231}
Such words had doubtless fallen upon her ears before, but she had only been
a hearer; now she was perforce a learner. How natural her complaint:

  "What had I done to earn such fate from Heaven?"

And how deftly does the priest, wise in the counsels of God and in the
sorrows of the human heart, catch up the text and bring its argument home
to the questioner! "What have the poor done?" he asks in return, "what has
the babe done that is just born to die? .... what has the idiot done? ....
what have the hard-worked factory girls done?" (the verse says not
_factory_ girls, but implies it, a pretty little anachronism which we
blame not, for the lesson of the Lady of La Garaye was meant for our own
times.).... "what have the slandered innocent done?" And then he tells her,
in strong contrast to her own luxury and ease, of the number who sicken and
die, forsaken, uncheered by kind words, unaided by kind hands, wanting the
commonest comforts of health which become craving necessities for the sick,
and bids her know that

 "What we must suffer proves not what was done."

The lady listened, and in her heart arose the wish to help the sick, the
aged, and the poor. God had chosen her to be one of his angels of mercy to
the suffering, and a minister of benediction to those that mourn. And,
choosing her, he called her to the trial, and led her, all unwilling yet,
through the fire of affliction. How her wish was accomplished and what
fruit it bore is quickly told:

  "Where once the shifting throng
   Of merry playmates met, with dance and song,
   Long rows of simple beds the place proclaim
   A hospital, in all things but the name.
   In that same castle where the lavish feast
   Lay spread that fatal night, for many a guest
   The sickly poor are fed! Beneath that porch
   Where Claud shed tears that seemed the lids to scorch,
   Seeing her broken beauty carried by,
   Like a crushed flower that now has but to die,
   The self-same Claud now stands and helps to guide
   Some ragged wretch to rest and warm inside.
   But most to those, the hopeless ones, on whom,
   Early or late, her own sad-spoken doom
   Hath been pronounced--the incurables--she spends
   Her lavish pity, and their couch attends.
   Her home is made their home; her wealth their dole;
   Her busy courtyard hears no more the roll
   Of gilded vehicles, or pawing steeds,
   But feeble steps of those whose bitter needs
   Are their sole passport. Through that gateway press
   All varying forms of sickness and distress,
   And many a poor worn face that hath not smiled
   For years; and many a crippled child,
   Blesses the tall white portal where they stand,
   And the dear lady of the liberal hand."

Nothing, we think, could be added to increase the beauty of this picture.
In noting the impressions made by the perusal of this charming poem one
cannot help calling attention to its healthful, elevated tone, and the
purity of thought which pervades the whole. It is a gem of poetic art which
all lovers of the true and beautiful must admire. It were needless to say
that even by our copious extracts we have not presented all that is worthy
of comment. There are very few verses, indeed, in the poem which do not
possess equal merit with those of our quotations. The deep pathos which
reigns throughout as its flowing rhythm glides smoothly along, is like the
murmuring of a brook through quiet woods on a sunny day, compelling the
chance wanderer to stop and pass a dreamy hour away by its leafy banks.
There is a singular air of peacefulness and repose pervading it that we
think to be its peculiar charm, and we envy not the reader who can rise
from its perusal without feeling that he has enjoyed a delightful feast for
both mind and heart.

--------

{232}

  Original

  Procession in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.


A pilgrimage to the places consecrated by the events in the life of our
Lord is, of necessity, full of the deepest interest. However familiar we
may be at home with the narrative of all that Christ has done for us, that
mighty work of love is invested with new force and power when we kneel at
the places where it was wrought--when we meditate on the incidents of our
redemption on the spot where it was effected. The offices of the Passion,
in Jerusalem, have, therefore, a more striking character than in other
lands. The ritual observances of the Catholic Church, everywhere so
touching, have in the Holy City the additional impressiveness of recalling
to memory events in the places where they occurred.

Every day in the year there is a procession in the church of the Holy
Sepulchre, which is one of almost startling solemnity. Those who have been
privileged to take part in it can never forget the emotions it excited, and
which are renewed daily as the function proceeds. Although no language can
adequately express these feelings, yet a description of the procession
itself, with a reference to the circumstances in which it is made, may be
of advantage, and aid, however imperfectly, in the understanding of this
most impressive devotion. The detail of a liturgical service involving many
repetitions and sentences in Latin is necessarily somewhat dull; yet it is
hoped that the unusual character of the office about to be described will
have sufficient attraction for the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD to induce
them to peruse these pages. Should the writer furnish other sketches of his
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, they will probably be found of more general
interest than this paper.

Late in the afternoon, compline being finished, the procession is formed in
the chapel of the Franciscans. Each person is furnished with a lighted
taper, which serves the double purpose of honoring the function and for
reading the book of the hymns and prayers. The first time anyone is present
a large wax candle is given him, and this he is permitted to take away as a
remembrance of the office; on subsequent occasions the smaller one is used,
which burns until the close of the service. The church being dark, it is
difficult to read without this light, which also adds much to the
impressiveness of the scene as the line of pilgrims stretches along. The
number of persons in the procession varies, being, of course, larger when
many strangers are in Jerusalem, as is the case at Easter. Some of the
Catholics of the city, and occasionally the sisters of St. Joseph, are
present, the priests and brothers of the convent being always there; thus
the whole office has dignity and is reverently gone through.

While on the way from one station to the next, a hymn is sung; when the
place is reached, incense is used; the people all kneel; a versicle and
responsory are said, followed by a prayer, concluding with _Our
Father_ and _Hail Mary_. Of course, the whole office is in Latin,
and thus to ecclesiastics from every part of the world it has a familiar
appearance.

Beginning in the Latin chapel, in front of the altar of the blessed
sacrament, the function opens with the antiphon, _O sacrum convivium_,
and the versicle, "Thou hast given them bread from heaven, having in itself
all sweetness." The prayer of the blessed sacrament, _Deus qui nobis_,
is said. In the same chapel, a few feet to the right of the high altar, is
the station and altar of the column of the flagellation of Christ.
{233}
A recess in the wall contains a portion of the column behind a grating of
iron. In going to this, the hymn _Trophos a crucis mystica_ is sung;
the antiphon and prayer, "Pilate took Jesus and scourged him, and delivered
him to them that he might be crucified. I was scourged all the day, and my
castigation was in the morning, Look down, we beseech thee, O Lord, upon
thy church which thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood, that it, being
always enriched, may obtain eternal rewards: who livest and reigneet
forever and ever. Amen."

With the hymn _Jam crucem propter hominem_ the procession goes to the
prison of Christ, a dark place where, according to tradition, our Lord was
detained some time. Antiphon and prayer: "I brought thee forth from the
captivity of Egypt, Pharaoh being drowned in the Red sea, and thou hast
delivered me to this dark prison. Thou, O Lord, hast broken my bonds; to
thee will I sacrifice the host of praise. Loosen, we beseech thee, O Lord,
the chains of our sins, that, having been freed from the prison of this
body, we may behold the light of glory, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

The hymn _Ecce nunc Joseph mysticus_ is sung as the procession moves
to the place of the division of the garments of Christ. Antiphon, etc.:
"The soldiers, therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took his vestments
and made HERE four parts, to each soldier a part, and the tunic. They
divided HERE my vestments for themselves, and on my clothing they cast
lots. O God, who, through thine only-begotten Son, didst confer the
remedies of salvation on a fallen world, grant to us that, being freed from
vices and adorned with virtues, we may be presented in white clothing
before the tribunal of thy majesty. Amen."

The procession, chanting the hymn _Crux fidelis inter omnes_, now
descends a flight of stone steps, passes through the chapel of St. Helena,
and down a second flight to the place where was found the holy cross, the
reward of the pious search of the mother of Constantine. Antiphon, etc.: "O
blessed cross, which alone wast worthy to bear the Lord and King of heaven!
Alleluia. This sign of the cross shall be in heaven when the Lord shall
come to judgment. O God, who didst HERE raise up a miracle of thy passion
in the finding of the glorious cross of salvation, grant that by the price
of this wood we may obtain the favor of eternal life. Amen."

Returning now to the chapel of St. Helena, with the hymn, _Fortem virili
pectore laudemus omnes Helenam_, the people kneel in the centre of this
edifice, while the priest who leads the devotion goes to the chief altar,
which is near the place where the saintly empress waited while the search
for the holy cross was made below. This chapel belongs to the Armenians.
The antiphon, etc., are as follows: "Helena, the mother of Constantine,
came to Jerusalem that she might find the cross of the Lord. Alleluia! Pray
for us, O blessed Helena, that we may be made worthy of the promises of
Christ. Mercifully hear the prayers of thy family, O Lord, that as it
everywhere rejoices in the fervid study of blessed Helena, who here
joyfully found the wood of the holy cross so much desired, so, by her
merits and prayers, it may be able always to rejoice in heavenly glory.
Amen."

The next station is that of the column of the crowning and mocking, in
going to which the hymn _Caoetus piorum exeat_ is sung. Antiphon,
etc.: "I gave thee a royal sceptre, and thou hast put on my head a crown of
thorns. Plaiting a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. O God, who, in
the humility of thy Son, hast lifted up the fallen world, mercifully grant
that, casting away the crown of pride, we may obtain the unfading crown of
glory, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

The procession now ascends the flight of step leading to Calvary, going
first to the place of the crucifixion, properly so called, where our Lord
was nailed to the cross.
{234}
The hymn _Vexilla Regis prodeunt_ is sung on the way from the place of
mocking. The antiphon, etc.: "They took Jesus, and led him forth, bearing
his cross: he went to the place called Calvary, in the Hebrew Golgotha,
where they crucified him. HERE they pierced my hands and my feet, and they
numbered all my bones. O Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, who, for
the salvation of the world, at the sixth hour, didst ascend the gibbet of
the cross on THIS Calvary, and for the redemption of our sins didst shed
thy precious blood, we humbly beseech thee that after our death thou mayest
grant to us joyfully to enter the gate of paradise: who livest and reignest
for ever and ever. Amen."

A few steps to the left of this place is the spot where the cross was set
up, and where the great High Priest offered the sacrifice which taketh away
the sin of the world. Going to this, the hymn _Lustris sex qui jam
peractis_ is sung, the second verse of which recounts, word by word,
some of the incidents of the gospel narrative:

  "Hic acetum, fel, arundo,
   Sputa, clavi, lancea,
   Mite corpus perforatur,
   Sanguis, unda profluit:
   Terra, pontus, astra, mundus
   Quo lavantur flumine!"

The antiphon, etc.: "Now it was about the sixth hour, and darkness was over
all the land even to the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened, and the veil
or the temple was rent in the midst; and Jesus, crying with a loud voice,
said, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit;' and, saying these
words, he HERE expired. We adore thee, O Christ, and we bless thee because
by thy holy cross thou didst HERE redeem the world." The prayer (said in a
low voice): "Look down, we beseech thee, O Jesus, upon this thy family for
which our Lord Jesus Christ did not hesitate to be delivered into the hands
of the executioners and made to undergo the torment of the cross: who with
thee liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen."

Chanting the hymn _Pange lingua gloriosi_, the priests and people now
descend to the stone of unction, where the Redeemer was wrapped in fine
linen after he had been taken down from the cross. This is midway between
Calvary and the scpulchre, and on a level with the floor of the great
church and the holy tomb. The nine verses of the hymn admirably express the
thoughts and feelings which crowd the mind and heart. Redemption is
accomplished, and through Christ's death we live. Antiphon, etc.: "Joseph
and Nicodemus took the body of Jesus, and HERE bound it in linen with
spices, as is the custom of the Jews to bury. Thy name is as oil poured
out; therefore have the young loved thee. O Lord Jesus Christ, who,
condescending to the devotion of thy faithful in thy most holy body, didst
permit it HERE to be anointed by them, that they might reverence thee the
true God, King, and Priest, grant that by the unction of thy grace our
hearts may be preserved from all infection of sin: who livest and reignest
for ever and ever. Amen."

The joyful hymn _Aurora lucis rutilat_ is sung as the procession moves
on to the most glorious scpulchre where was laid the Hope of the world, and
whence he rose on Easter morn, triumphant over death and the grave.
Antiphon, etc.: "The angel here said to the women, 'Fear not; ye seek Jesus
of Nazareth crucified; he hath risen, he is not here: behold the place
where they laid him. Alleluia.' The Lord hath risen from this sepulchre,
alleluia, who for us hung upon the wood, alleluia. O God, who by the
triumphant resurrection of thy Son, didst here bestow the remedy of
salvation on the world, and, having conquered death, hast unlocked for us
the way of eternal life, by thine assistance further our earnest desires
which thou hast put into our hearts; through the same Christ our Lord.
Amen."

{235}

Then, going to the place where Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the
habit of the gardener, the hymn _Christus triumphum gloriae_ is sung.
Antiphon, etc.: "Jesus, rising early on the morning of the first day of the
week, appeared HERE to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven
demons, 'Mary, touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.' We
beseech thee, O Lord God, that we may be helped by the prayers of blessed
Mary Magdalene, at whose entreaty thou didst not only raise up her brother
who had been four days dead, but didst show thyself after thy resurrection
here as the living Lord: who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen."

Lastly, going to the place where, according to tradition, Jesus appeared to
his holy mother (this station being in the chapel of the Latins, in front
of the altar of the blessed sacrament), the procession returns to the spot
whence it started, singing the hymn,

  "Jesum Christum crucifixum
   Ob peccatorum crimina,
   Hunc vidisti et flevisti,
   O gloriosa Domina," etc.

The above is an outline of the procession which is made every day in the
church of the Holy Sepulchre. But to have a full understanding of its
impressiveness, one must be in Jerusalem, and take part in it. In other
countries, when reading of the passion and death of our Lord, we are left
to imagine the appearance of places which are thousands of miles away; and
this consciousness of distance will ever hinder that vivid realization of
the incidents which may be had on the spot where they occurred. When the
word HIC (here) is said by the officiating priest, all bow down and kiss
the floor; and it is enough to melt a heart of stone to be so close to
these most sacred spots when the mention of what our Lord has here done and
suffered for our sins is made. There is no attempt to work upon the
imagination or excite the feelings. The singing and praying are in a
natural but reverent tone. It is felt that the devout Christian needs only
to be _here_ when the prayers are said, to have his heart subdued and
filled with penitence and adoring gratitude and love.


------

  Original.

  At Threescore.


  There was but one in all the world,
                Fond heart,
  To whom thou gayest all, nor kept
                A part;
        And that was John.
  None e'er so gentle, nor so brave as he,
  None other's arm so strong or sweet to me
        To lean upon.

  'Twas down upon the ocean shore
                One day,
  The heart I once had some one took
                Away;
        And that was John.
  Strange moment! for it seemèd then to me
  As if the rocks and sands and clouds and sea
        And all were gone.

{236}

  You understand, I do not mean
                Quite all:
  Some one was there, so handsome, straight,
                And tall;
        And that was John:
  But he was all to me, and nothing there
  Nor aught in this wide world with him could bear
        Comparison.

  Long years have passed, and now my step
                Is slow.
  Though weak his arm, yet strong his heart,
                I know,
        To lean upon.
  Beside me seated in his high-backed chair,
  I see a tall old man with silvered hair;
        And that is John.

  My day of life has always been
                Most bright,
  But now the shadows longer grow,
                And night
        Is coming on.
  I fear it not, for when my course is run,
  I look beyond the grave to meet with One
        More dear than John.


------

    Translated from the Spanish.

    The Revenge Of Conscience.


  Though one brief spring restores to earth the flowers
  Swept from her lap by autumn's stormy hours,
  Back to man's breast a lifetime will not win
  The heart's ease lost through one frail moment's sin.


White as a nest of gulls, in the cleft of a rock on the wild sea-shore,
gleams Cadiz from the concavity of her walls. So audaciously is she seated
in the very midst of the billows that the land reaches out an arm to retain
her. This slender arm of stone and sand, wearing La Cortadura, a fortress
constructed during the glorious war of independence, as a bracelet,
separates the violent waves of the ocean from the tranquil waters of the
harbor, and conducts to the city of San Fernando, which, situated in the
curve of the bay, opens its dock-yards of La Carraca as hospitals to the
vessels that return home, maltreated and bruised, from their perilous
expeditions.

Poor wanderers, to whom the tempests are ever repeating what the blasts of
the world unceasingly say to mortals, "On, on!" When they reach their
country, they lay hold of her with their anchors, as children clasp the
necks of their mothers with their little hands.

{237}

Beyond the city of San Fernando, the beautiful and worthy neighbor of
Cadiz, with its splendid Calle Larga, and its houses solid and shining as
if built of massive silver, and beyond the bridge Zuazo, so ancient that
its construction is attributed to the Phoenicians, the road divides into
two branches the one on the left continuing to follow the curve of the bay,
and that on the right taking the direction of Chiclana. It enters this
pleasant town through a grove of white poplars, which, settled like hoary
patriarchs in the midst of green fields, seem by their whisperings to be
encouraging the weaker plants to strengthen themselves and stand like them
against the heavy south-west winds. The town is large, and divided into two
parts by the river Liro.

From two neighboring heights it was overlooked in former times by a Moorish
tower on the one, and a Christian chapel on the other; symbols of its past
and present. Within a few years the tower has disappeared and the chapel
has become a ruin.

  There was a temple and an altar, where
  The lonely heart might weep and lay its care:
  I wept. Once more I passed that way,
  And it was fallen to decay:
  Whereat I wept again!

The chapel was under the invocation of St. Anna. It was round and encircled
by a colonnade, which commanded the view, in all directions, of a
magnificent landscape.

At the foot of the isolated and abandoned tower lay a cemetery. Mouldering
humanity creeping sympathetically into the shadow of the decaying ruin.
This tower--this seal of stone upon the archives of the place; this
inheritance of generations, which the district had guarded like the remains
of a dead chief, embalmed by the aroma of the flowers of the field; this
austere ruin, which had no longer any relations except with the departed,
who were turning to skeletons at its feet; with the birds of night which
hid themselves in its obscure recesses from the noise and light of day, and
with the winds that came to moan sadly through its branches--this
inoffensive tower could not escape modern vandalism.

Neither respect for the memories it evoked, nor reverence for the burial
place it so appropriately guarded, nor the romantic in its aspect, nor the
historic in its origin, could avail it. They demolished it under the sage
protest that it was "ruinous." A ruin "ruinous!" A tower that bore the
centuries as you wear days, "ruinous, ruinous!" That petrified mass which
would have outlasted all your constructions of wood and clay!

The chapel, also, closed and forsaken, has become the prey of destruction,
and its noble colonnade has fallen. Groves, convents, feudal castles, and
palaces, the very ruins are disappearing, and they are not even building
factories or planting orchards where they stood; to clothe the noble matron
Spain, at least with muslin and flowers, instead of the tissues and jewels
of which they despoil her. What, then, will remain to us? Pastures wherein
to breed the ferocious beast, whose contests afford the refined and gentle
diversion that enjoys, above all others, the favor of the people. My God!
can it be that the natural ferocity and cruelty of man, like the atmosphere
that discharges its electricity in thunder, lightning, and tempest, must
have vent and expression?

In the times when Cadiz was the Rothschild among cities, times in which,
according to strangers of note and credibility, her merchants lived with
the pomp and splendor of ambassadors of kings, the greater part of them had
in Chiclana country houses, built and furnished with marvellous richness
and taste. Tarnished vestiges still remain of that elegant luxury to which
the coming of Napoleon's Frenchmen gave the death-blow.

In the present epoch, in which we often see fulfilled the saying, "Ramparts
fall and dust heaps exalt themselves," when old men recount the splendors
of those days, _new_--we will not say _young_--men receive their
stories as tales of the thousand and one nights, with incredulity and
criticism alternating upon their lips.

{238}

In their opinion, gallantry, generosity, and munificence afford material
for an appendix to Don Quixote as fantastic virtues which can only exist in
over-excited brains.

At the close of the last century, when the events which we are about to
relate began to take place, Chiclana was at the zenith of her splendor.
Cadiz shone with gold, and, like the sun, shed glory upon all her environs.
Nowhere now do they throw away doubloons as they then did here, with the
simple indifference of children tossing soap-bubbles into the air, and the
lordliness of princes who neither count nor value what they spend in
compliment to others. In this epoch occurred the incident which is told of
the celebrated Duchess of Alba and the youth, who, seeing twenty thousand
dollars upon her table, observed, in her hearing, that this sum, which to
her was such a trifle, would make a man's fortune. "Would you like to have
it?" asked the duchess. The youth admitted that he would. The lady sent him
the money and--closed her doors upon him. In these days the contrary would
have succeeded. The money would not have been given, nor would the doors
have been closed upon one who, by any means whatever, had acquired it.

In one of the wide, cheerful streets of the above-named town stood a house
of more distinguished appearance than the others, though it consisted of
but one story, which was somewhat elevated from the ground and reached by a
flight of marble steps. The door was of mahogany, studded with great nails
of shining metal. The front of the house was surmounted by the arms of the
family, carved in marble. Nobility and riches seek each other; in former
times they were sisters, in these they are not even cousins. The house
porch, the court, and all the apartments, even to the inferior offices,
were paved with magnificent blocks of blue and white marble. Columns of
jasper supported the four galleries which surrounded the court, and in the
area, in the midst of towering plants and alabaster statues, a fountain
flowed unceasingly, singing the same pure and infantile melody to the bud
half opened in hope, and to the flower falling in leafless despair. Between
column and column, embowered in green and flowery tapestries of jassamine
and musk rose, hung the gilded cages of bright-hued birds. A canvas awning,
cut in points at the edges, and bound with red, shaded the court and
preserved its refreshing coolness. The walls of the parlor were of white
stucco upon a blue ground; the chairs and sofa were made of ebony, with
heavy silver ornaments and coverings of azure _gros de Tours_. The
furniture was of slight and simple form and in the Greek style, which the
Revolution had brought into favor, making it the order of the day, as it
had also introduced the Phrygian cap, the names of Antenor, Anacharsis,
Themistocles, Aristides, and other things less inoffensive than these. Upon
the table, which was supported by four straight-fluted legs, stood a clock,
constructed of white marble and bronze. At that time the taste for the
pastoral and idyllic in art had passed, dispossessed by the grave and
classic allegories which were presently to be superseded by the cannon,
banners, and warlike laurel wreaths with which Napoleon would dispel in
wide air the ardor and zeal of the Revolution. In its turn the epoch of the
Restoration, which put an end to the supremacy of the sword as the sword
had terminated the rule of the democracy, brought back monarchical ideas
and religious sentiments with the chivalry, loyalty, and ancient faith
which were to introduce the Romantic in literature and the Gothic in arts
and customs. Following closely upon these came the taste for the fashions
of the times called "of Louis the Fourteenth" and "Louis the Fifteenth."
For men are, like children, enthusiasts of the new, and ever trampling with
contempt upon the idol of the moment before. Shakespeare has said.
"Frailty, thy name is woman!" Well might he have added, "Fickleness, thy
name is man!"

{239}

The clock formed a group, composed of an effigy of time, under the figure
of an old man; two nude young girls with arms interlaced, leaning upon the
old man, and representing innocence and truth; and two other figures,
wrapped in dark veils, symbolizing sin and mystery flying from time, who,
with raised finger, appeared to threaten them. The effigy of time was well
and expressively executed; and when the clear and sonorous voice of the
hour, counting its dead sisters, was added to its expressive gesture, it
seemed like the warning voice of an austere patriarch, and could not fail
to affect him who, meditating upon the sense of the allegory, heard the
measured echo of its strokes. On each side of the clock was a bronze
candlestick, in the form of a negro standing upon a marble pedestal and
adorned with brazen chains. The negro carried upon his head and in his
hands baskets of flowers. In the centres of the flowers the candles were
set. The ceiling was painted to represent light, floating clouds of gray
and white, through which was seen a nymph of the air, apparently holding in
her hands the tasselled cords of azure silk which sustained an alabaster
lamp, destined to filter a light as mild and soft as that of the moon, a
light extremely flattering to female beauty, and therefore adopted for
select reunions. In the middle of the room, upon a mosaic stand, rested a
great glass globe. In it swam fishes of those lovely colors which the water
displays in emulation of the air that has its gorgeous birds, and the earth
that parades its charming flowers. Here they lived, silent and gentle,
unvexed by the circuit which bounded their action, like pretty idiots,
seeing everything with their great eyes, and comprehending nothing. The
globe was surmounted by a smaller one filled with flowers, of which there
was also a profusion arranged in jars in the recesses of the windows. The
windows were hung with lace-edged muslin curtains, like those now used,
except that the muslin was Indian instead of English, and the lace thread,
made by hand, instead of cotton woven. As it was summer time, only a dim
light was allowed to penetrate the drawn blinds. The atmosphere of the
apartment was perfumed with flowers and pastilles of Lima.

Upon the sofa reclined a woman of extraordinary beauty. One alabaster hand,
hidden in a mass of auburn curls, supported her head upon the pillow of the
sofa. A loose cambric dress, adorned with Flanders lace, robed her youthful
and perfect form. Through the lace of her robe just peeped the point of a
little foot encased in a silken stocking and white satin slipper. At that
time no other shoe was used by ladies of distinction upon any occasion, and
luxury reached even to the wearing of lace slippers lined with colored
satin.

The apostles of the last foreign fashion, admirers of the buskin, regard
with sovereign contempt this rich and elegant custom, which, in their eyes,
is guilty of two mortal sins--that of being old-fashioned, and that of
being Spanish. The lady's left hand was adorned with a splendid brilliant,
and held a cambric handkerchief of Mexican embroidery, with which, from
time to time, she dried a tear that slid slowly down her pearly cheek.

The reader thinks that he divines the cause of this solitary tear shed by a
woman, young, beautiful, and surrounded by the evidences of a luxurious and
enviable position. He has decided that it must be the token of wounded
affection, and has guessed wrong. Respect for truth, even at the sacrifice
of admiration for the heroine of our story, obliges us to confess that this
tear was not of love, but of spite. Yes, that brilliant drop, falling from
eyes as blue as the sky of evening, gliding between those long, dark
lashes, and across those delicately glowing cheeks, was the evidence of
spite.

{240}

But before we proceed it is necessary to explain the cause of the ill-humor
of our heroine.


  Chapter II.


The young lady we have been describing was called Ismena, and was the only
child of Don Iago O'Donnell, whose family, in common with many others, had
emigrated from Ireland in the time of William of Orange. After the
capitulation of Limerick, the troops, who belonged to the most noble
families of Ireland, entered the service of France and Spain. Philip the
First, as was to have been expected, welcomed them, and they formed, in
1709, the regiments of Ibernia and Ultonia, and, later, a third called the
Irlanda. These troops were commanded by James Stuart, duke of Berwick,
natural son of James the Second by Arabella Churchill, sister of the famous
Duke of Marlborough. The Duke of Berwick gained the battle of Almansa and
took Barcelona by assault, and the king rewarded his great services with
the dukedoms of Liria and Jerica, and made him a grandee of Spain. This
gallant general had two sons, the elder was naturalized in Spain and
inherited the titles of Berwick, Liria, and Jerica, to which he afterward
united, by his marriage, that of the noble house of Alba, which had
descended to a female. The second son established himself in France, where
his descendants still exist and bear the title of dukes of Fitz-James.

The above-mentioned regiments are represented in our days by the
descendants of the loyal men who composed them, for, as we have been
informed, there are now ninety Irish surnames in the Spanish army, names
which, for their traditional loyalty and bravery, and their hereditary
nobility, honor those who bear them.

Don Iago O'Donnell married a Spanish lady, and his daughter, Ismena, united
in her person the beauty of both types. Her slight and graceful Andalusian
form was clothed in the white rose-tinted skin of the daughters of misty
Erin, to which the impassible coldness of its possessor gave a transparent
pearliness and purity that nothing ever disturbed. Her large violet eyes
beamed from beneath their dark lashes with the haughty and expressive
glance of the south. Her carriage, though somewhat lofty, was free and
natural. Naturalness is, indeed, but another name for that "Spanish grace"
which has been so justly famed and eulogized. The irresistible attraction
which is born of it, and which, in former times, women shed around them as
the flame sheds light and the flowers perfume, they owed to the men, who
used to abhor whatever was put on, affected, or studied; anathematizing it
in a masculine way under the expressive epithet "monadas." [Footnote 50] In
naturalness there is truth, and without truth there is no perfection; in
naturalness there is grace, and without grace there is no real elegance.
Taste at present appears to lie in the opposite extreme, as if the
Florentines should dress their _Venus di Medicis_ as a show figure.

    [Footnote 50: Monkey airs, splashness.]

The spirit of Ismena was far less richly endowed than her person. She
possessed the cold, calm temperament of her father united to the haughty
and domineering disposition she had inherited from her mother, and these
qualities were exaggerated in her by the overbearing pride of the rich,
beautiful, and spoiled child. Her mind was ever occupied in framing for
herself a future as illustrious and brilliant as those which
fortune-tellers prognosticate, and so she rejected all the lovers who
offered her their affections, not one of them appearing likely to realize
her dreams of greatness. But changes of fortune, like the transformations
in magic comedies, come unlooked for and suddenly. Ismena's father lost his
whole fortune within a few months; thanks to the treachery of the English,
who seized so many of our ships and so much treasure before making a formal
declaration of war with Spain.
{241}
The fatal war which brought upon us the fatal family compact! Don Iago, who
had just lost his wife, retired, ruined, to his country house in Chiclana.
But this retreat did not long remain to him, for the house was advertised
for sale by his creditors. The first person who presented himself as a
purchaser was the General Count of Alcira. General Alcira had just returned
from a long residence in America. Though he counted but fifty-five years,
he appeared much older in consequence of the destructive action of that
climate, which, with its hot miasms, impairs the European even as it
corrodes iron. Notwithstanding his age, the general had become the heir of
a young nephew, from whose title the rule of succession excluded females.
On his return he went to Seville, his native city, where he was received by
his sister-in-law (who looked upon him as one come to deprive her and her
daughters of the riches and title they had possessed) with such bitterness
and hostility that, although he was one of the most generous of men, he was
justly indignant, and determined to leave Seville and establish himself in
Cadiz, and he decided well.

At that period, Seville, the staid, religious matron, with rosary in hand,
still more the buckram stays and the high powdered promontory--that,
without the hair, must have been a weight in itself--and the hoops with
which a lady could pass with ease only through a very wide door. At her
austere entertainments she played Baciga or Ombre with her canons, her
judges, her aldermen; and her cavaliers. She had no theatre, being withheld
therefrom by a religious vow. She had for illumination only the pious
lights that burned before her numerous pictures of saints. She had no
pavements, no _Paseo de Cristiana_.

Of course there were no steamboats, those swift news-bearers which have
since united in such close friendship these sister cities, the twin jewels
of Andalusia, Cadiz, even more beautiful than she is now, wore her drapery
in the low-necked Greek fashion which we still see in portraits of the
beauties of those days. Cadiz, the seductive siren of naked bosom and
silver scales, bathed in a sea of water, a sea of pleasure, and a sea of
riches. She knew well how to unite the art and culture of foreign elegance
with the dignity, ease, and spontaneity of Spanish grace, and, though the
fair Andalusian had adopted certain things and forms that were foreign, she
was none the less essentially Spanish in her delicate taste and
circumspection, and her attachment to her own nationality.

For, strange to tell, in those days the pompous and high-sounding
assumption of the "Spanish" which now fills the unholy sheets of the public
press, and resounds through all discourses like hollow and incessant
thunders, was unknown. It did not blare in lyric compositions, nor was it
made the instrument of a party for the promotion of such or such ideas, nor
was the bull Señorito [Footnote 51] chosen with enthusiasm as its symbol.

    [Footnote 51: The famous bull that, in 1850, in Seville, fought and
    killed a large tiger.]

But that which was Spanish was had with simplicity, as the brave man has
his intrepidity without proclaiming it, and as the fields have their
flowers without parading them, Spanish patriotism was not upon the lips,
but in the blood, in the being; it was the genius of the people; and it
became them so well, was so refined and generous, so gentle and chivalric,
so in harmony with the gracious southern type, that it came to be the
admiration and delight of strangers. But we have apostatized from it, do
not understand it, hold it in slight esteem, and, unlike the ass that
covered himself with the rich golden skin of the lion, we, more stupid than
he, instead of smoothing and cultivating that which nature has bestowed
upon us, wrap ourselves in one that is inferior to it.
{242}
Then the most candid gayety blended with an exquisite refinement pervaded
social intercourse. There were neither clubs nor casinos, only reunions, in
which gallantry was governed by the code contained in these ancient verses
of Suarez:

  "You are feared and worshiped;
   You to be obeyed:
   We saw humble worshipers,
   Of your frowns afraid.
   You the lovely conquerors;
   We your bondsman true:
   Ladies dear in vanquishers,
   We are slaves to you.
   You the praised and honored;
   Fairest under sun:
   We the lowly servitors,
   By your smiles undone."

The expression "to acquire a manner" was not then in use, but the practice
of good manners was a matter of course and of instinct. The officers of the
marine, brave and gentlemanly as they are now, but richer and more gallant,
constituted the chief ornament of the society of Cadiz. They had formed
themselves into a gay fraternity, at the head of which were the officers of
the man-of-war San Francisco de Paula, and which, in playful allusion to
the motto of the saint of this name--Caritas bonitas--styled itself "La
devota Hermandad de las Caritas Bonitas" [Footnote 52] (The devoted
Brotherhood of Beauty). In the theatre the national pieces of our own poets
were played, and the farces of Don Ramon de la Cruz were enthusiastically
applauded: at the brilliant fairs of Chiclana the inhabitants of Cadiz and
Puerto congregated like flocks of gorgeous birds; and Cadiz retained, long
years after, charms sufficient to inspire the song of Byron, that
discriminating appreciator of the beautiful.

    [Footnote 52: Caritas bonitas, Pretty faces.]

The General Count of Alcira desiring to buy a country house, that of Don
Iago O'Donnell was proposed to him, and be went to look at it. The
unfortunate proprietor threw it open to his inspection as soon as he
presented himself. The count was charmed with all that he saw in the
elegant mansion we have already described, and, above all, with the
daughter of its master, whom they encountered writing in a retired cabinet
that received light and fragrance from the garden. She was dressed in deep
mourning, and weeping bitterly while she answered letters from two of her
friends who had just married--one an English lord, and the other a nobleman
of Madrid. How bitterly those letters caused Ismena to feel the contrast
between the lot of her friends and that which compelled her, single and
poor, to abandon even this house, the only thing that remained to her of
the brilliant past.

Her tears moved and interested the good general to such an extent that,
having bought the house, he begged the occupant to remain in it and admit
him, the buyer, as a member of his family and the husband of his daughter.
It is hardly necessary to add that Don Iago received this proposition as a
message of felicity, and that his daughter hailed it as a means of escaping
lower depths of the abyss into which fortune had hurled her. To paint the
rage of the aunt's sister-in-law when she heard of the projected alliance
would be a difficult task. She spread calumnies upon Ismena, ridiculed the
marriage, and spit out her venom in bitter sarcasms, prophesying that the
union of the ambitious beggar with the worn-out valetudinarian would remain
without issue; in short, that Providence would mock their calculations, and
cause the title, for lack of a male inheritor, to return to her own family.
The excessive pride of Ismena, more than ever susceptible since her
misfortune, was stung beyond endurance by those gibes and revilings. And
she was still more chagrined when, after having been married two years
without giving birth to a child, she seemed to see the prophecies of her
enemy realized. It appeared that God would deny the blessing of children to
the wife who desired them not from the holy instinct of maternal love, but
to satisfy a base pride and a contemptible covetousness; not for the
blessed glory of seeing herself surrounded by her offspring, but from the
haughty and miserable desire of humiliating a rival--of triumphing over an
enemy.
{243}
It is at this time and under the influence of these feelings that we have
introduced Ismena, Countess of Alcira, bathed in tears. And for this we say
that these drops, so cold and bitter, were not tokens of wounded love, but
of rage and spite.


  Chapter III.


The general had learned that the house in Chiclana was for sale from his
secretary, who was the son of Don Iago's housekeeper. A few words will
explain this.

The general, when young, had for many years an orderly whom he loved well.
The Spanish orderly is the model domestic, the ideal servant. He is wanting
in nothing, has always more than enough, and does whatever is asked of him
unquestioningly and with pleasure. If he were bidden, he would, like St.
Theresa, plant rotten onions through the same spirit of blind obedience. He
has the heart of a child, the patience of a saint, and the attachment of
that type of devoted affection, the dog. Like him he loves and cares for
all that belongs to his master, and, most of all, for his children, if he
has any. And to such a degree does he carry this devotion, that one of our
celebrated generals has said that "an orderly makes the very best of dry
nurses." He has no will of his own, does not know what laziness is, is
humble and brave, grateful and obliging. And in the household, where his
coming may have occasioned the natural irritation and repulsion caused by
whatever invades the domestic circle, his departure is always sincerely
felt.

Before he left Spain the general, then a captain, had lived for a long time
with his orderly in the greatest friendship, without the latter having lost
the least grain of his respect for his chief. When the general went to
America, his orderly, to the great grief of both, left him, and returned to
his native town of Chiclana to marry the bride who, with a constancy not
unusual in Spain, had waited for him fifteen years. A few years later the
orderly died leaving one child, a son, to the care of his disconsolate
widow. The poor woman, accompanied by a little niece she had adopted, took
service with Don Iago O'Donnell. As for the boy, who was godson to the
general, the latter sent for him, had him educated under his own care, and
afterward made him his secretary. In this capacity he brought him back to
Spain. Lázaro--so he was named--was one of those beings who are sealed by
nature with the stamp of nobility, and who, aided by circumstances, become
unconscious heroes by simply following their natural instincts.

Having learned from his mother that the house in which she lived was for
sale, he had informed the general, who bought it, and with it his young and
beautiful wife.

A beautiful woman she was; as fair and delicate as an alabaster nymph; as
cold, also, and as void of feeling; a being who had never loved anything
but herself; insipid and without sweetness; a jessamine flower that had
never felt the rays of the sun.

Later in the afternoon, an attendant called Nora entered the room in which
we found Ismena, to open the windows. Nora had been Ismena's nurse, and had
never left her. She was a proud and cunning woman, and had done much to
develop the perverse dispositions of the girl.

"Always weeping," she said with a gesture of impatience at the sight of
Ismena's tears. "You will lose your good looks, and when your husband dies,
all you have beside will be gone, youth, consideration, and wealth. You
will then have no recourse but to turn pious and spend your days dressing
up the holy images."

"I know too well that I shall lose everything, that is why I weep," replied
Ismena.

{244}

"And who says that your lot may not be different?" answered Nora. "It is
not your sister-in-law that has the disposition of your future; you
yourself can do more to make your fortune than she to unmake it. Hope is
the last thing lost, but then one must not cross one's arms while they can
be of use."

"Idle talk," returned Ismena. "You know that my hopes are as vain as my
marriage is sterile."

"It will amount to the same thing," said Nora, "whether you give birth to a
son or adopt one."

The lady fixed her great blue eyes upon the woman as she exclaimed, "The
count would never consent!"

"He need not know it," replied Nora.

"A fraud, a crime, a robbery! Are you beside yourself?"

"All that sounds very lofty, yet in reality you will only be doing some
poor wretch an act of charity. Your nieces are well married; your
sister-in-law has a rich jointure, and does not need the count's money. If
they desire to have it, it is through ambition, and that you may not enjoy
it."

"Never! never!" said Ismena. "Better to lose rank and position than become
the slave of a secret which may bring us to dishonor. Never!" she repeated,
shaking her head as if she wished to shake the fatal thought from her mind.

"I only shall know the secret, and I alone will be responsible. So it will
be more secure in my breast than in your own."

"You will have to employ another person."

"Yes, but without confiding in him. I have already found the person. Your
husband is about to embark for Havana. When he returns, be will find a son
here."

"Nora, Nora! there is no wickedness of which you are not capable!"

"I am capable of anything that may result in benefit to you."

"But to deceive a man like the count would be the most unpardonable of
crimes!"

"Ismena, I have often heard you sing:

  'Deceit, a faithful friend art thou;
    'Tis truth that is our bane.
   Pain without sickness she doth give;
     Thou, sickness without pain.'

But to-day you appear to be more high flown than the poets themselves."

"But the text alludes to love quarrels."

"It is very applicable to everything else in life. As if you had never
known the case I have suggested to be put into practice; and is it not a
thousand times worse when combined with infidelity?"

At this moment the count entered. "Ismena, my child," he said, approaching
his wife, "I have come to take you out, your friends are already waiting
for you in the Cañada. How is it that these lovely spring afternoons do not
inspire you with a desire to go out and enjoy the free, balmy air?"

"I dislike to walk, and people worry me," answered Ismena, who had lost
color at sight of her husband.

"You look pale, my child," replied the count with tenderness, "and for some
time past you have seemed low-spirited. Are you not well?"

"There is nothing the matter with me," answered Ismena.

"At most," said Nora, "your sickness is not one that requires the attention
of a doctor." And she glanced at the count with a meaning smile.

Irritation and shame sent the hot blood mounting to Ismena's face.

"Nora," she exclaimed, "are you crazy? Be silent!"

"I will be silent, sir count, for, as the saying is, 'the more silent the
coming the more welcome the comer.'"

In the general's benevolent face glowed the light of a pure paternal hope.

"Is this certain?" he said, looking tenderly at his wife.

{245}

"Sir," said Nora, "have you not noticed for some time past her want of
appetite and her general languor without apparent cause? _She_ does
not believe it, and will not be convinced, but I who have more experience
am sure."

"Nora, it is false!" exclaimed Ismena, appalled.

"Time will show," replied Nora, with perfect composure.

"Time!" repeated Ismena indignantly.

At this moment they were interrupted by six deep measured strokes of the
clock.

"That fixes the time for the event," said Nora, with an affected laugh;
"six months from now, it says."


  Chapter IV.

Six months after these scenes the general, in an affectionate letter to his
wife, announced his return from Havana, whither he had been upon important
business. Ismena went to Cadiz to meet him, accompanied by a nurse who
carried in her arms the supposed heir.

This child had been brought from the Iocluso, [Footnote 53] and the secret
of the deception was known only to Ismena, to Nora, and to Lázaro; the
latter being the person selected by Nora to obtain the infant from the
asylum. How she had been able to persuade the good young man to bend
himself to her wicked plot can be understood only when it is known that he
believed it to have been sanctioned and arranged by his master. Lázaro
doubted until Nora, who had foreseen his opposition, and was prepared to
meet it, showed him the following passages in the last letter the general
had written to his wife:

    [Footnote 53: Establishment for the reception of abandoned infants.]

  "The sails which are to bear me from you, and, with you, from all the
  sweetness of my life, are already spread. Adieu, therefore: I hope on my
  return to find you with a child in your arms, which will render our
  happiness complete.

  "As I have told you before, you may, in the affair of which we know, and
  in all other's, trust Lázaro, in whom I place the most implicit
  confidence."

The letter ended with some tender expressions and the signature of the
general.

Nora, quick to perceive the use she could make of the above passages in
proving to Lázaro that the "affair of which we know," which was in reality
a matter relating to money, was the same she had in hand, had kept the
letter.

Lázaro, therefore, with the deepest sorrow, but the most entire devotion to
his benefactor, brought the innocent little one; which thus passed from the
bosom of an abandoned woman into the hands of a traitoress.

A little before the time at which we take up the thread of our story the
babe had been reclaimed, and the administrator of the asylum had demanded
it of Lázaro. Nora could find no means of escape from the difficulty this
demand occasioned them but to send Lázaro out of the country. Ismena also
vehemently urged his departure, and the devoted victim consented to go,
knowing that his absence, without apparent cause and without explanation,
would break the heart of his mother and of his young cousin, to whom he was
soon to have been married.

He embarked secretly in a small coasting vessel bound for Gibraltar, which,
being overtaken by a tempest off the perilous coast of Conil, was capsized,
and all on board were lost.

This catastrophe, of which she believed herself to be the cause, overcame
Ismena, and her suffering was augmented by a threatening presentiment that
would allow her to fix her thoughts neither upon the past nor future
without shuddering. The one reproached and the other appalled her.

{246}

Alas for the wretch that between these two phantoms drags out a miserable
existence! Happy is he who, by keeping his conscience pure, preserves, amid
misfortunes and sorrows, his peace of soul, the supreme good which God has
promised man in this exiled state.


  Chapter V.

For many years the beautiful house at Chiclana remained unoccupied, the
countess obstinately refusing to go there to enjoy the spring. Alas! for
her there was neither spring nor pleasure, for, through divine justice, the
results of her crime, a crime committed in cold blood and without a single
excuse, weighed heavily upon her, as if the Most High had wished, by the
force of circumstances, to impress upon her hard and daring spirit that
which the sentiments of humanity had failed to communicate.

And these circumstances were indeed terrible, for she had borne the count,
successively, two sons, whose birth filled the heart of their mother with
consternation. To increase her chagrin, she saw the oldest of the three
boys was growing up beautiful, brave, and sincere, occupying the first
place in her husband's heart. For not only did Ramon--so the boy was
called--sympathize with the general, but the equitable old man, seeing the
hostility with which the countess regarded him, redoubled his
manifestations of interest and affection toward the victim of her ill
temper, and thus, by the force of a terrible retribution, God had brought
remorse to that hard heart, and remorse had driven her from the house in
which everything reminded her of her crime.

Remorse! Thou that bindest the temples with a crown of thorns, and the
heart with a girdle of iron prongs; thou that makest the sleep so light and
the vigil so heavy; thou that interposest thyself to cloud the clear glance
that comes from the soul to the eyes, and to embitter the pure smile that
rises from the heart to the lips; thou so silent in face of the seductive
fault, so loud in thy denunciations when it is past, and there is no
recalling it. Cruel and inexorable remorse! by whom art thou sent? Is it by
the spirit of evil, that he may rejoice in his work and drive guilty man to
despair; or by God, to warn him, in order that he may yet expiate his
faults? For through thee two ways are opened to the soul--the way of death
and the way of repentance. Weak wills and lukewarm spirits fluctuate
between the two, shrinking alike from the furnace which would purify them,
and the bottomless sea of anguish in whose bitter abysses the impenitent
soul must writhe eternally.

These agonies to which Ismena was a prey, this remorse, this undying worm,
had gnawed at her heart and life like an incurable cancer, and her tortures
augmented in proportion as she felt her end approaching. In a continual
struggle with conscience, which cannot be compounded with by human reasons
or worldly purposes, because it is in itself a reason from God; every day
more undecided whether to enter upon the course it indicated or to follow
the path into which her pride had led her, Ismena, tearful alike of the
fiery furnace and of the dreadful abyss, was approaching death as a
criminal approaches the scaffold, wishing at the same time to lengthen the
distance and to shorten it. When her end seemed near, the doctors insisted,
as a last recourse, that she should try the air of the country, and the
house at Chiclana was prepared for the reception of its proprietors. The
most exquisite neatness was restored throughout. The awning once more
covered the court, the birds twittered in their gilded cages, and the
plants throve and bloomed, though Maria no longer sang as she watered them.

Announced by the sound of its bells, the carriage slowly approached and
stopped at the door. But she who descended from it, and, supported by the
general and a physician, dragged herself wearily through the marble portal
like a corpse entering its sumptuous mausoleum, is only the wasted shadow
of the once brilliant Ismena.
{247}
At twenty-eight she had lost all the brightness of youth, her splendid eyes
were dimmed and cast down, her golden locks had become gray, and her white
and faded skin was like a shroud that covers a skeleton. A few years had
sufficed to produce this change; for, instead of the gentle and reluctant
hand of time, it had been wrought by the destructive talon of suffering.
The countess was borne to a sofa, upon which she lay for a long while so
prostrated that she appeared unconscious of all that surrounded her. But
when left alone with Nora, she became feverish and agitated, and called for
Maria. Nora, foreseeing the violent shock the sight of this poor old woman,
the unfortunate victim of her fatality, must produce, would have put her
off; but the countess repeated the demand with so much exasperation that it
was necessary to obey. When Maria came in, Ismena extended her arms, and,
embracing her convulsively, laid her burning head upon the bosom of the
faithful friend who had witnessed her birth. But Maria was serene, for in
that bosom beat a pure heart. Her eyes had lost their former expression or
cheerful happiness, but still shone with the light of inward peace.

"Maria," exclaimed Ismena at last, "how have you been able to bear your
misfortune?"

"With the resignation which God gives when he is asked for it, my lady,"
replied the good woman.

"O blessed sorrows with which it is not incompatible!" was the agonized cry
of Ismena's heart.

"I told you one day, my lady, that my son filled me with pride; and God has
permitted that this son, my boast and my glory, should be defamed by all
the appearances of a crime."

"Appearances!" said Nora. "Who says that?"

"Every one," answered Maria with gentle firmness, and, after a moments'
pause, she continued with the same serenity: "A profound mystery hides from
my eyes, as from those of all others, the circumstances of his flight; but,
if anyone has foully caused it, may God forgive him, as I do! He and I know
that my son was not--could not be--a criminal; this is enough for me; I
will be silent and submit."

"And your motherly conviction does not deceive you!" exclaimed Ismena,
falling back upon the pillows of the sofa.

They carried her to her couch, attributing her exhaustion to the excitement
and fatigue of the journey.

Her agitation having been gradually calmed by a narcotic, she was once more
left in the care of the nurse.

The general, with delicate fore-thought, had caused the flow of the
fountain to be stopped, in order that the uncertain repose of his wile
might not be disturbed by the murmur of its water. But the clock in the
parlor struck twelve--twelve warning notes from the lips of time. As if the
old man had counted with inflexible memory the twelve years she had
survived her crime; the twelve years passed in luxury and surrounded by an
areola of respect and public consideration, since, in sacrificing
conscience to pride, she had also sacrificed the life and fair fame of a
noble and innocent man.

Ismena awoke with a start and sat upright in her bed, her perplexed glances
wandering in all directions, and a wild fever burning in her veins. A
devouring inquietude possessed her; the weight upon her breast suffocated
her. She sprang from the couch and rushed to the window; for, like Margret
in the "Faust" of Goethe, she was suffocating for air. Moonlight and
silence reposed without in a tranquil embrace. So profound was the calm
that it weighed upon the burdened soul of Ismena like the still but
oppressive atmosphere which precedes the tempest.

{248}

She leaned her burning forehead against the window bars. The court lay
black beneath--black but gilded; an emblem of her life. Then from a
distance there came to her ears two voices, blended, like faith and hope,
in prayer. They were the voices of Maria and Piedad reciting the rosary.
There was something deeply solemn in the sweet monotony with which the
words, without passion, without variation, without terrestrial modulations,
rose to heaven, as the smoke rises from the incense of the altar, gently,
without color, without impetuosity, as if drawn upward by celestial
attraction. Something very impressive in those words, thousands of times
repeated because thousands of times felt, in those petitions which are a
verbal tradition from Jesus Christ and his apostles; words so perfect and
complete in themselves, that all the progress and all the enlightenment of
the human mind have vainly endeavored to improve them.

At what wretched variance was Ismena's soul with the grave and tranquil
spirit of those words! She longed to unite in them, but could not!

"O my God!" she cried, withdrawing from the window, "I cannot pray."

But presently, drawn by the sacred and irresistible attraction, she
returned. She heard Maria pronounce these words: "For the repose of the
soul of my son Lázaro." And then the prayer of the two pious women
continued without other departure from the accustomed words.

"Ah! holy God!" exclaimed Ismena, wringing her hands, "my voice is not
worthy to unite with these pure tones which rise to thee unsoiled by guilt
and unchecked by remorse!" She prostrated herself with her face to the
floor, and remained until the last "amen" had mounted to heaven; then, as
she rose, shrinking from herself as from a spectre, her eyes fell upon
Nora, who had fallen asleep in a chair. She approached, and, clutching her
with that right hand, once so beautiful, but now like the claw of a bird of
prey, "You asleep!" she cried. "Iniquity asleep while innocence watches and
prays! Wake up, for your repose is more horrible than your crime! You see
her whom you rocked in her peaceful cradle entering--led by your infamous
suggestions--into her coffin, and you sleep while she is agonizing! What do
you see in the past? An unpunished crime; and you sleep! What do you see in
the present? A usurpation, a robbery, a crime committed and continued from
day to day in cold blood; and you sleep! What do you behold in the future?
The divine and universal justice of God; so sweet to the upright, so
terrible to the criminal; and you sleep! But this justice will yet cause to
fall upon your head some of the weight, which oppresses mine! Bear, then,
in addition to God's condemnation, the curse of her you corrupted! For I am
the most guilty of women, and, Nora, Nora, but for you I should never have
been what I am!"

Alarmed by Nora's cries, all the household hurried to the room to find the
countess in a frightful and convulsed state bordering upon madness. Nora,
too, was confused and incoherent, but this was attributed to her grief for
the approaching death of her mistress.


  Chapter VI.

During the following day the sick woman remained in a state of terrible
agitation, and at night the doctors were obliged again to administer a
powerful narcotic, which caused her to fall into a deep sleep.

The count was occupied in arranging some papers that were scattered upon an
antique ebony escritoire, ornamented in its various compartments with
exquisite carved work and paintings. In it Ismena kept her papers. It had
been opened that afternoon by her order to take out the writing materials
she had demanded.

{249}

Ismena had learned English from her father, to whom that tongue was
perfectly familiar, and, as the husband replaced the papers, he fixed his
eyes sadly upon a translation she had begun, grieved to think that she
would never finish it. It was from "Hamlet," and his glance rested upon the
last lines she had written--the monologue of King Claudius in the third
act. The writing was indistinct, as if traced by a trembling hand. The
translation, in which one familiar with the original would have noted some
voluntary omissions, ran as follows:

  "My crime is already rank; it calls to heaven. Upon it weighs the first
  curse that entered the world--that of the fratricide! My desire and my
  will impel me to pray, and yet I cannot, for the weight of my crime is
  greater than the force of my intention, and, like a man in whom two
  powers contend, I vacillate between ceding to the pressure of my guilt or
  giving myself up to my good intentions. But for what is mercy, if not to
  descend upon the brow of the sinner? And has not prayer the double virtue
  of preventing a fall and of lifting the fallen by obtaining his pardon?
  Then will I lift my eyes to heaven. But what form of prayer is
  appropriate to my crime? Can I ask and hope for forgiveness? Is there
  water enough in the gentle clouds to wash the blood from the hand of the
  fratricide? Is there remission for him who continues in the enjoyment of
  the benefits of his sin--his queen, his crown, his vain-glory? Ah! no,
  there cannot be! The gilded hand of iniquity may sink justice in the
  corrupted currents of the world, and the very price of guilt may buy the
  law of man. But there, on high, it is not so: there artifice obtains
  nothing and falsehood is of no avail: there, in the kingdom of truth, the
  deed will stand naked, and the sinner will have to be his own accuser.
  What, then, remains to us? To try the virtue or repentance? Ah! yes, it
  can do all. But, alas! if the sinner would repent and cannot? O wretched
  state! O bosom black as death! O soul, that in trying to free thyself
  entangled thyself the more in the meshes of thy sin!--angels, hasten to
  its aid!--melt, heart of steel!--inflexible knees, be bent! Alas! the
  words have flown, but wings are wanting to the heart; and the words that
  reach heaven without the heart find no entrance there!"

This imperfect translation, though it gave but a faint idea of the
beautiful and elevated poetry of the writer, filled the general with
admiration, for his was a mind accessible to all things beautiful and good.
But when he glanced at his wife, who lay so pale upon her white bed, like a
withered lily upon the snow, he reflected in all simplicity: "Why seek
these pictures of crime and passion? Why should the dove imitate the boding
cry of the owl? Why should the gentle lamb try to repeat the roar of the
wounded and bloody lion?"

Having put the papers in their place, he seated himself at the foot of his
wife's bed, and lifted his heart to God in a fervent petition for the life
of her he loved.

The alcove in which Ismena lay opened into the parlor, and at this moment,
with the pertinacity of a recollection always repulsed yet for ever
returning, the clock struck eleven. Its metallic strokes, vibrating and
pausing in the silence, suggested the idea of justice knocking at a closed
door--justice, against whom there is no door that can remain for ever
closed!

These clear sounds startled Ismena, and she awoke with a smothered moan.

The general, alarmed by her wild looks and confused words, approached, and,
encircling her with his arms, said:

"Compose yourself, Ismena, for you are better; the healthy sleep you have
had for several hours is restoring your strength."

"Have I been asleep?" she murmured. "Asleep on the brink of my sepulchre as
if it offered me rest! Asleep when so little time remains to arrange my
accounts in this world! Sit down, sir, for so I will address you, and not
as my husband. I am not worthy to be your wife. I do not wish to talk to
you as to a companion, but as a judge whose clemency I implore."

{250}

The general, taking no notice of these strange words, which he attributed
to delirium, endeavored to tranquillize his wife, telling her to put off
the explanations she wished to make until she should be stronger; but
Ismena persisted in being heard, and continued:

"I am about to die, and I leave all the good things of this world without
sorrow; all except one, that I still desire and would fain carry with me to
the grave. You, who have been to me father, husband, and benefactor, do not
deny what none but you can give! For that which I implore, sir, is your
forgiveness."

The general, as he listened, became more and more confirmed in the belief
that his wife was raving, and again begged her not to agitate herself as
she was doing. But Ismena only implored him the more earnestly to listen
without interrupting her.

"If a woman," she said, "who has expiated a crime by all that remorse can
inflict of torture and ruin; by the loss of health, of peace, and of life;
if this wretch, in her dying agony and despair, can inspire the least
compassion, oh! you who have been the most generous of men, you who have
strewn my life with flowers, have one branch of olive for the hour of my
death! Hear, without repulsing me, without deserting me in my last moments,
without making my last agony more intolerable by your curse, a confession
which will prove to you that my heart is not entirely perverted, since I
have the courage to make it."

A cold sweat stood upon the forehead of the dying woman; her stiffening
fingers worked convulsively; the words issued from her lips more
interruptedly and fainter, like the last drops of blood from a mortal
wound. Nevertheless, making one last heroic effort, she went on.

"I know that I am about to stab you to the heart, but by this means only
can I die at peace with God. Here," she continued, drawing a sealed paper
from under her pillow, "is a declaration made by me, for the purpose of
preventing a dishonest usurpation, and signed by two reverend witnesses,
which will prove to you that--Ramon--is not our son!" On hearing these
words, the general sprang from his chair, but, overwhelmed with grief and
astonishment, sank back again, exclaiming:

"Ramon! Ramon not my son! Whose, then, is he?"

"Only God knows, for his wretched parents abandoned him; he is a
foundling."

"But with what motive?" The general paused a moment and then continued with
indignation: "I see the motive!--ambition!--pride! Oh! what iniquity!"

"Have pity on my misery!" implored Ismena, wringing her hands.

"You are a base woman!" cried the general, with all the indignation of
probity against dishonesty, and all the aversion of virtue to the thought
of a crime.

Ismena had never before heard the paternal voice of her husband assume the
firm and terrible tone with which he now cast her treachery in her face,
and she sank under it as if struck by lightning. His profound sorrow and
stern condemnation seemed to open an abyss between him and her, and render
it impossible for the lips which had pronounced that severe sentence ever
to utter the pardon she craved more than life. Pardon! most beautiful and
perfect fruit of love, of which the value is so great that God's Son gave
his blood to buy it, and which, therefore, his Father grants for a single
tear, so great is his mercy! Pardon, divine gift, that pride neither asks
nor yields, but that humility both implores and concedes. Pardon, that,
like an efficacious intercession, lifts the sinner to heaven.

Had she perchance waited too long to ask it? For one moment the torrent of
angry blood had swept generosity and sacred mercy from the heart of him she
had injured; and must she die in that moment?
{251}
She sprang from the bed, and, falling upon her knees, laid her clenched
hands against his breast, shrieking in a voice intercepted by the
death-rattle:

"Pardon!"

Her last thought, her last feeling, her last breath dissolved in that last
word. It reached the heart of her husband. Bending forward, he caught her
in his arms, and lifted--a corpse.

And from the clock, as if time had waited for this moment to toll a
voluntary and pious passing bell, there issued twelve slow and measured
strokes.


  Chapter VII.

A secret fault, drawing with it its terrible consequences, interlaced one
with another, like a nest of venomous serpents, had already cost the one
who committed it her happiness and life, and the one who conceived it her
reason; for Nora, shocked into insanity by the fearful curse and death of
her mistress, was the inmate of a madhouse. But its hideous trail continued
still, entangling and envenoming the hitherto tranquil life of the General
Count of Alcira. The good old man never ceased to reproach himself for the
cruel epithet indignation had forced from his lips; the only expression he
had ever uttered that could wound the poor worn heart that implored but one
pious word to permit it to cease its beating in peace. Instead of that
word, he had cast the cruel taunt under which it had burst in despair. He
wept burning tears for not having conceded the pardon which could have been
but one instant wanting to his generous soul. And that instant had been her
last. His forgiveness might have soothed her anguish, prolonged her life,
and sweetened her death; and he had refused it. This remembrance became in
its turn a remorse, and poisoned his existence.

The reaction he experienced, with his natural goodness of heart, had the
effect to render almost excusable in his eyes a fault counterbalanced by so
many shining qualities, and blotted out by such unparalleled remorse and by
mortal sufferings; for death, when it takes its prey, has the sweet
prerogative of carrying with it under the earth the evil it has done,
leaving the good behind for an epitaph.

The general atoned for that one moment in which he had forgotten to be a
Christian by multiplied works of charity, offered in sacrifice to obtain
from heaven the pardon earth had denied the penitent, and by incessant
offerings for the repose of her soul. Offerings which the Eternal would
receive; for the Creator has not left man a foundling. He has acknowledged
him as a son, has given him precepts, and promised him, from the cross, a
glorious inheritance.

Every morning a mass was offered for the rest of her whose image dwelt in
the heart of the old man who knelt at the foot of the altar, uniting his
fervent petitions with those of the priest that was sacrificing.

The general's life was still more embittered by the painful secret which
oppressed and involved him and his sons with him, as the serpent in the
group of the Laocoon makes both father and sons his prey. He could not
break the arcanum without sacrificing the one to whom his kind heart clung
with tender affection, without defaming the sacred ashes of the mother of
his children. He, therefore, respecting the youth and innocence of his
boys, kept the fatal secret, which, in truth, he had not the courage to
reveal. The time, he argued within himself, when the veil must be withdrawn
from such a sad and cruel reality will come soon enough. Sometimes he
resolved to let it be buried with him. But what right had he, a man of such
strict principles, to deprive his heirs of their inheritance in favor of a
stranger? Could he make an alien the head of his noble house?
{252}
Allow a foundling to usurp the rights of its lawful representatives?
Worldly fathers would rather listen to the opinion of the world than to the
voice of conscience, placing social considerations above its decisions,
persuading it that they are compelled thereto by circumstances. But let no
one compound with conscience, lest she cease to be conscience; lest she
become a conniver instead of a sentinel, a weather-cock instead of a
foundation; lest she lose the respect and confidence she is bound to
inspire. For she should give her decisions as the sun sends forth his rays,
with nothing to hinder them or turn them from their direction.

The years sped onward. The count grew infirm and saw his end approaching.
Wishing to pass the last days of his life in the society of his children,
and feeling that he ought to reveal the secret he had kept so long, he sent
for them to join him in Chiclana, where he wished to die, in order to be
buried beside his wife, thereby giving her, even after he was dead, a last
public testimony of affection and respect.

The word enlightenment had not then been brought into use, nor had the
colleges been modernized. Yet this did not prevent the three brothers from
being such finished and accomplished gentlemen that the sight of them
filled their father's heart with pleasure and pride.

Ramon, the eldest, came from the school of artillery, where he had been the
companion of Daoiz and Velarde. The second came from the academy of marine
guards, the academy which produced the heroes of Trafalgar, those Titans
who contended with a powerful adversary, with the treachery of an ally, and
with the unchained fury of the elements, and who were crushed, not
vanquished, by the three united. The youngest arrived from the university
of Seville, in which, at that time, or a little before, the Listas,
Reinosas, Blaneos, Carvajales, Arjonos, Roldanes, and the worthy, wise, and
exemplary Maestre, were students. For though Spain has lacked railroads,
hotels, and refined and sensual means of entertainment, she has never, in
any epoch, lacked wise men and heroes.

The general looked at the three in turn with an indefinable expression of
tenderness; but when his glance fell upon Ramon, he lowered his eyes to
hide the tears that filled them.

His vivid pleasure at the sight of his children, mingled with the anguish
of knowing that over the head of the unconscious Ramon the sword of
Damocles was suspended, agitated the old man so much that he passed the
night in feverish wakefulness, and his state on the following morning was
such that his doctors advised him to make his last preparations. The grief
of his children, by whom he was adored, was heart-rending. But the general
was so well prepared to leave the world and appear before the bar of God,
that his last dispositions, though solemn, were short and serene.

Toward night, feeling himself grow weaker every moment, he made
arrangements to be left alone with his sons, who drew near his bed,
repressing their tears in order not to afflict him.

He looked long at them, and then said: "My children, I am about to tell you
a cruel secret, which will make one of you wretched. It has lain for many
years buried deep in my soul; but I am dying, and can be its repository no
longer. O my God! my heart gives the lie to my lips; and, nevertheless, one
of you is not my son, and the mother at whose grave you go to pray never
bore you."

The grieved astonishment which manifested itself in the countenances of the
three youths, left them pale, speechless, and overwhelmed.

"You know well," continued the father, after a pause, "that my interest and
tenderness, in and toward you all have been the same, and that it cannot be
known, even to yourselves, which of you has no right to bear my name. And
you, my children, which one of you is it that does not feel for me the
affection of a son?"

The simultaneous and eloquent reply of the three was to throw themselves,
suffocated by their sobs, into the arms of the good old man.

{253}

"Alas! then," he proceeded, "if your own hearts do not tell you, it is my
cruel duty to declare it."

The youths regarded each other for a moment, and then, with one impulse
embracing each other, exclaimed with one voice:

"Father, we will not know it!"

The father raised his hands and eyes to heaven. "My God," he cried, "I
thank thee! I die contented. My sons, my sons! may the satisfaction of
having hidden for ever an unhappy secret, may the remembrance of having
covered with a mantle of holy fraternal love the misfortune of one of
yourselves, make your lives as happy and tranquil as you have made my
death."

And laying his hands upon the heads of the three brothers, who had knelt at
his bedside, he said: "Let my last words be your recompense. My sons, I
leave you my blessing!"


------

  Mercersburg Philosophy.

  By A. Protestant.


  [As allusion having been made in the article on Dr. Bacon, which appeared
  in our April number, "to the German Reformed Presbyterians and Dr.
  Nevin," has called forth the following communication. We publish it as
  interesting to our readers who will bear in mind in its perusal that it
  is from a Protestant source, and while making, therefore, an allowance
  for some of its statements, will at the same time be not a little
  surprised that one who sees so much Catholic truth should fail to
  identify what he sees with the Catholic Church.--Ed. C. W.]


From the mountain village of Mercersburg in Pennsylvania emanated a
philosophy--theology we, who are its prophets and adherents, call it--which
has done much, and is destined to do more, to unprotestantize
Protestantism. Nor do we, who are Protestants, regret this. The longer we
ponder our work the more are we convinced of its utility, and confirmed in
our resolution to pursue it. Well aware, as we are, that the Reformation
has proved a failure, except it be as a preparation for a higher form of
Christianity to follow nearer the old landmarks, and free from the
democratic tendencies that have crept into the Protestant Church from the
institutions of the state, or which, perhaps, more properly have moulded
the institutions of the state themselves as the natural outgrowth of the
system taught by Luther and Calvin, we cannot but rejoice that this is so.
Our people have a natural desire to worship, instead of being compelled to
give an intellectual assent to arguments on points of doctrine, and the
teachers of the Mercersburg philosophy are determined to gratify them.

We see clearly, what many others have failed to see, that New England
Unitarianism, and after it infidelity, to which it leads, are not only the
logical but the actual consequences of Protestantism. But we believe in
historical development; and as this is development in the wrong direction,
we see nothing before us but to profit by the lesson and retrace our steps.
We know that a cult which rejects the Christ and elevates the Jesus will
soon degrade the Jesus too, and that, following an attempt to attain to
merely human excellence, will be a society distorted by the vices of
vanity, avarice, and selfishness, and then a gradual obliteration of all
the virtues. Men are beginning to see, dimly enough, that this age is a
transition period in the world's history, when all our conceptions of
truth, that is, Protestant conceptions of truth, are unsettled and passing
through crucible, as it were, to come out in new and untried forms.
{254}
But they do not understand the law of transition periods, and, while they
acknowledge that the last great transition was the Reformation, they fail
to perceive that the theories embraced at that time have failed. A certain
feeling of disappointment at the work sectarianism has wrought sometimes
oppresses them, but, instead of attempting to bridge over the chasm, they
endeavor to tear away the broken arches which remain.

Everybody can see that Protestantism had a grand start during the first
thirty years of its existence. That Rome would soon give its last
convulsive gasp seemed patent to the eyes of all reformers; but now, after
three hundred years of Protestant endeavor, a leading Protestant clergyman
of New York is constrained to say that "Protestant Christendom betrays
signs of weakness in every part," and to declare, and rejoice in the
declaration, that "Modern life is not 'Christian' in any intelligible
sense. The industrial interest is openly averse to it both at home and
abroad. Political life is, if possible, still more unchristian." But
continues the same authority: "If industry, politics, literature, art, have
abandoned Christ, they have as fully and unreservedly embraced Jesus." Now
this is either sheer nonsense or it is downright infidelity. About the
premises there can be no doubt. It is but a small part of the so-called
Christian church that looks to Christ as the central fact of the
system--the super-natural agency working through the church for the
salvation of men. But the broad churchmen, when they have as fully and
unreservedly embraced what they understand by Jesus as they now believe
they have, will discover that the "touching devotion to the cause of
humanity," about which they talk so eloquently, will develop itself into
pure selfishness, and the rapacity of Wall street and the heartlessness of
Madison square will extend their ramifications through every order of
society.

Seeing that ostentatious wealth is about to be at a premium, and
unobtrusive piety at a discount, we, who believe in the Mercersburg
philosophy, are endeavoring to interpose our hands to stay the sweeping
tide.

I hope I have now laid the grounds with the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD
for an enunciation of what we believe and teach.

The cardinal principle of the system we inculcate is the incarnation,
viewed not as a mere speculative fact, but as a real transaction of God in
the world. Thus, our belief is peculiarly christological in its character,
all things being looked at through the person of the crucified and risen
Saviour. The church which he founded is an object of faith--a new creation
in the natural world working through the body of Christ and mediating
super-naturally between him and his people. Its ministers hold a divine
commission from him by apostolical succession. Its sacraments are not mere
signs, but seals of the grace they represent. Baptism is for the remission
of sins. The Eucharist includes the mystical presence of Christ by the
power of the Holy Ghost; that is, the real presence in a mystery. With
these dogmas we started, contending that we had all the attributes that
were ascribed to the church in the beginning--unity, sanctity, catholicity,
and apostolicity.

It is now many years since the work was started--as many, indeed, as were
required for the Reformation in Europe to reach the acme of its success.
Since then a growing culture and enlarged views of doctrine and of worship
have seemed to require an enlargement of the range within which the
movement was originally intended to be confined, and beyond which we did
not conceive of its expansion. The time has been spent in educating the
backward up to the starting-point, and in preparing a better form of
worship for them when they are sufficiently advanced to receive it.
{255}
The movement commenced at Marshall College. "Old Marshall," which started
as a high school for boys and was soon after endowed, though sparingly, as
a college, has since been merged with another with more money, but without
the prestige, and, alas! without the true spirit of the philosophy of the
mountain college. In the same village with this institution is the
theological seminary of a church, respectable for numbers and influence,
though without fashionable appointments or pretensions to popular favor,
which still retains the true ring of the old metal. Some time after its
foundation, it came to be presided over by a man of rare genius as a
theological writer and thinker, who was also president of the college.
Profound in his conceptions of truth and logical in his reasoning, be
possessed an unbounded influence over those who came under his
instructions, and but few young men have sat at the feet of this Gamaliel
without going away fully indoctrinated with his peculiar opinions, and
zealous standard-bearers in carrying forward the work which he had begun.

Many prejudices had to be encountered and overcome in carrying forward this
work. Bigotry and prejudice are barriers against which reason and religion
strike in vain. Many who placed their hands to the plough turned back in
the furrow. Opposition made the seed strike deeper root, and in the very
slowness of the work is an earnest of its ultimate triumph. It may take us
us nearer to Rome than we contemplate just now; it may bring Rome nearer to
us than she at present desires. Come what will of it, it is plain sailing
to us, although we cannot see land on either horizon. Nor do we see such
cause for terror in the "horrors and superstitions of popery" which many
men believe constantly lurks there. It seems to us that what men call
Romanism may not be such a bad thing after all. We know it has done much
good. A church that was a power in the days of the old Roman empire, and
could not be overwhelmed by the tide of barbarism that overturned the power
of the Caesars, but could finally roll back that tide of darkness,
preserving Christianity through ages which have not left a vestige of the
universal wreck behind, has certainly claims upon our profoundest gratitude
and most reverential awe. To us, it would seem strange, indeed, that the
vehicle for the preservation of Christianity through ages when civilization
was blotted out, and which did preserve not only its essence but its form,
should be the mystical Babylon and the man of sin.

Were this, indeed, so, we know in what desperate straits we would be
placed. The form of the primitive church is generally flippantly declared
by Protestants to have been nearer the system of New England than old
England; and the Roman hierarchy is regarded as a long distance from
either, which it certainly is. It is easy to assume that in the earlier
ages of the church there was no papacy, no priesthood, no liturgy, no
belief in a supernatural virtue in baptism, nor of the real presence in the
sacrament, and that everything was quite in accordance with modern ideas of
private judgment, popular freedom, and common sense; but it is not so easy
to prove it, nor indeed is it desirable even for Protestants that it should
be proved. The Reformation has always been understood to have been the
historical product of the church itself; but if these assumptions were well
founded, the church out of whose bosom the Reformation sprang would be no
church at all, and the Reformation no reformation, but only a revolution.
Thus, indeed, Christianity would be the theory of a philosopher, but not
the life of a Christian.

The work we have been doing is different from Puseyism even in its spirit.
The simplicity of Keble and the earnestness and power of Newman, in the
days of their early zeal when these two wrought together, is nearer to what
we intend if different from what we have accomplished or may yet
accomplish. We thank the Roman Catholic Church for its Christian year, its
symbols of faith, its traditions of battle and of conquest, its early
martyrology, and its unceasing and undying purpose.
{256}
Nor do we conceal that there are some things in the Roman Catholic Church
to which we object. These are rather historical defects than present
imperfections, and we see as much in our own history to regret and to
condemn.

I well remember the unpretending little church in which it was my privilege
to worship in a country town of Pennsylvania. The Episcopalians had no
foothold there, and the Presbyterians consequently, combining together at
once the imperiousness and the exclusiveness for which they have ever been
distinguished, pretended to monopolize the fashion and the piety, the
society and the religion, of the village. They, of course, contemned us,
and opened wide their doors for our disorganizers, who were crying out
against innovation when we were seeking to make our church a place of
worship, instead of a bazaar for the display of fine clothing and false
curls. The Methodists, living only the false life of a sickly
sentimentality, and the Lutherans degraded even from the doctrines and
practices Luther taught in his fiery zeal, were absorbed in their childish
schemes of marrying and giving in marriage, engaged in special efforts at
reform by revivals and meetings of religious inquiry, and busied in raising
subscriptions for objects like Mrs. Jellaby's mission at Borrioboola-Gha or
Sunday-school libraries which would not be sectarian, had little time to
think of us after they received their quietus in the "anxious bench"
controversy of 1843. There were, indeed, many solemn conclaves over our
affairs by gossips who neither understood nor wished to understand the work
we were doing, and half in fear that we should be lost for too much
reverence for mother church, and half in joy at the prospect of a few
proselytes, everybody affected to commiserate us. But these, though often
working mischief among our "weaker vessels," were not seriously opposed by
us. Our purpose was steadily kept in view, notwithstanding.

It was by preaching principally that we hoped to accomplish our task, and,
after the stubborn fallow of an unworked field had been broken, to recur
gradually to the forms of the church. But the furrows, we felt, would be an
empty mockery without the teachings that give them force. To inculcate
truth was then our first duty. This was often done by the more earnest and
intelligent of our clergy, by following up the seasons of the Christian
calendar and deriving lessons from each. Incidentally was urged, with more
or less boldness according to the courage and temper of the man whose duty
it was to enforce them, doctrines which for many years sounded strangely to
Protestant ears. Among these, besides those already noticed in this paper,
I may instance, as an example least expected by Catholics to be urged
anywhere outside of mother church itself, the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception. Starting with the proposition that that which is holy cannot be
born of that which is unclean and sinful, I have time and again heard this
theme urged upon his people with force and fervor by an earnest and fervent
pastor. Not with equal boldness, perhaps, but with no less sincerity and
fervor have I heard him urge the ministrations of the Virgin. Often in
declaring these doctrines he would enforce a proposition by putting it in
the form of a question, and one of these, I believe, I shall continue to
hear ringing in my ears while the words of men remain intelligible to me:
Why should we not reverence the mother of our Lord?

These things may be news to Catholics, and may be news even to many in
whose ears they have been thundered for a quarter of a century. The latter
hear without understanding, but the words will be re-echoed in their
hearing until they are not terms without meaning.
{257}
The Mercersburg philosophy is the antagonism in thought and in its social
aspects of New England transcendentalism and Plymouth Rock
conventionalisms, and receives no favor, and merits none, from a people
among whom Dr. Holmes's Elsie Venner is an exponent of the life and
practice of the present, as Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World
was of past generations. And Pennsylvania, where this philosophy has its
stronghold, being unlike New England, of which Dr. Mather said, "Being a
country whose interests are remarkably inwrapped in ecclesiastical
circumstances, ministers ought to concern themselves in politics," the body
of the people who compose the German Reformed Church, and who look back to
the Heidelberg Catechism as their earliest enunciation of faith, and the
Mercersberg theology as their latest development of truth, have never felt
the need of political preaching. A simple motto includes all their
aspirations, their hopes, and their fears, their preaching, their practice,
and their eternal reward--CHRIST CRUCIFIED.


------

    Original.

    A Family Motto.


  A well proportioned ancient shield,
  And on the azure-tinted field
        The red crusader's cross:
  Words scarce could tell at what a loss
        The well-read scholar stood--
  In what an earnest, startled mood,
  Beneath the ancient, comely shield,
  And red cross on the azure field,
        This motto's thread
        He whispering read,
        "_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

  A true crusader, staunch and bold,
  Was he, my good ancestor old,
        Who thus could boast his cross
  He bore unmindful of the loss:
        "Strong, strong his cross to bear,"
  Comes down in characters most fair;
  Comes down a glory unto me
  Through many a bloody century;
        The good seed kept
        Though old faith slept,
        "_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

{258}

  Though old faith slept! a deep blush came
  Across his cheek, a blush of shame:
        That bold crusader's cross,
  Borne in the very teeth of loss,
        No longer worn with pride;
  His conscience told him, laid aside
  Like some base superstitions's sign:
  That cross which from high heaven will shine.
            When men shall hear,
            With joy or fear,
            "_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

  Years passed; his quickened eye had scanned
  The archives rich of many a land.
            Yet still a purpose, named
  Not to himself, each spoil had claimed;
            And day by day to hail
  On truth's horizon some new sail,
  Strange sweetness sent through all his veins,
  Till to his contrite breast he strains
            That cross severe,
            While angels hear,
            "_Fortiter gerit crucem_."


------

  From The Month.

  "He Went About Doing Good."


The memory of the French _émigrés_ in England must be almost extinct.
A few survivors may remain among us, who can just remember the marquis with
faded decorations who taught them French or drawing, or the venerable abbé
who patted them on the head and whispered his blessing. But the horrors
that led to the sudden appearance on our shores of several thousand French
exiles, the burst of compassion and friendliness with which they were
welcomed, the sustained respect which they continued to excite, the noble
efforts successfully made, under the crushing pressure of a fearfully
expensive war, to provide for their wants, and the recompense that came in
the shape of prejudices cleared away and preparation for the reception of
truth--these things are now matters of history, and we have few traditions
of them to supply the place of recollection. They do not even enter much
into our current literature. In our own younger days the courteous and
dignified, although threadbare, French nobleman, and even the snuff-box and
shoe-buckles and silver hairs of the kind-hearted French priests, not
unfrequently figured in the moderate supply--very different from the
present inundation--of tales and works of fiction which sufficed for the
wants of that remote epoch. We know of no work of note of the present day
in which use is made of the character of an _émigré_, except the Tale
of Two Cities; and that is hardly an exception, since the exiles there
introduced are little more than pegs to the story. We would gladly know
more of the intercourse of our grandfathers with these confessors for the
faith, of the homage which their courage and cheerfulness extorted, and
especially of the working of that influence for good, which, indirectly,
must have had vast effects, and have tended greatly both to accelerate the
removal of the penal laws, and to bring about that reaction toward the
church of which we are now reaping the harvest; and which, even directly,
was probably the cause of very numerous conversions.
{259}
A memorandum found among the papers of Abbé Carron, with the title, "A
little memorandum most precious to my heart and to my faith," contained a
list of fifty-five Protestants received by him into the church before the
year 1803; and many more, whose names did not appear in that list, were
known to have been converted by his ministry. The simple fact that, within
twelve years after the public burning of Catholic chapels and the houses of
Catholics in London, our parliament was voting money by acclamation to
support several thousands of foreign priests who were in exile purely for
their loyalty to the Catholic Church, is at first sight almost startling.
The British lion must surely have worn rather a puzzled expression of
countenance when he found himself bringing bread to popish priests of the
most thoroughly popish kind, and respectfully licking their hands. While
great admiration is really due to the generosity of the noble animal on
this occasion, it is perhaps only fair, as well as obvious, to remark, that
he probably somewhat confounded the cause of the clergy, who suffered only
for their faith, with that of the exiles in general, and was somewhat
influenced by his hatred first of the _sans-culottes_, and afterward
of Bonaparte. The clergy, however, although for the most part very strongly
attached to the French throne, were quite ready to work on under any
government, and in whatever privations, and were driven into exile or
threatened with death solely for the same sort of offence as that of St.
Thomas of Canterbury, of Fisher and More; that is, for their repudiation of
the wry principle which is the essential basis of the so-called Church of
England.

An exceedingly interesting life,[Footnote 54] notwithstanding its somewhat
superfluous diffuseness, has lately been published at Paris of the
venerable Abbé Carron, to whom the Catholics of London are indebted for the
chapel and schools of the Somers-town Mission, and indirectly, through his
successor Abbé Nerinckx, for the establishment among us of the "Faithful
Companions of Jesus."

    [Footnote 54: Vie de l'Abbé Carron, par un Bénédictin de la
    Congrégation de France. Paris, 1866.]

We can hardly help envying the good religious who has sent forth this huge
volume of nearly 700 pages, the thorough roominess in which he carries on
his labor of love; omitting no detail that in any way furthers his purpose,
describing not only the holy priest himself, but most of his relations and
intimate friends, and freely inserting letters and documents at full
length. Some of these, such as letters of commendation from royal
personages, and other notabilities, and the official answers, which show
that the "Circumlocution Office" was a French quite as much as an English
institution, we could perhaps forego. But the letters of the abbé himself,
numerous as they are, do not contain a line too many for our taste; for
every line exhales the fragrance of a love the strength of which, as a
natural affection, could seldom have been surpassed, and which, at the same
time, although not so thoroughly predominated over by the supernatural as
in the highest order of saints, is yet always under its influence, and
ready to pass into it. Few men have ever lived less in or for themselves.
He lived for his mother, brother, and sisters, for his nephews and nieces
and adopted children, for his king and country, for his fellow-exiles, and,
above all, for the poor, to whose special service he bound himself by
repeated vows, which were gloriously fulfilled. We cannot see in his most
confidential letters or in his most private memoranda a trace of indulgence
in a single natural pleasure, except that of being loved. Although a very
voluminous writer, he seems to have been absolutely free from literary
vanity. He allowed the Abbé Gérard, the author of Valmont--to whom he
submitted most of his productions--to go on criticising and correcting
without mercy, and was ready to suppress anything at a word from him.
{260}
As he had no vulnerable point, so to speak, but in his affections, it was
here, as is usual with those whom God would train for great things, that
the sharpest wounds were inflicted. The early death of a younger sister
born soon after himself, who had been his confidante and associate in piety
and in all his schemes of devotion and devotedness as a child; the death of
his mother, whom he would have idolized if he could have idolized anything,
but from whose death-bed he went back calmly to sit all the evening in the
confessional; the deaths of several others of those nearest and dearest to
him, and the defection of a few; the overthrow of his gigantic and
successful undertakings in behalf of the poor of his native town; two
deportations and nearly half a life spent in banishment from his beloved
France; banishment from Normandy and from home even after his return to
France; frequent contact with distress greater than even _his_
wonderful ability to relieve; and, perhaps worst of all, his own share,
however innocently, in the ruin of an intimate friend whom he had
encouraged to invest all his property in his favorite undertaking of
workshops at Rennes, and who died broken-hearted, leaving a widow and seven
children destitute: these were the things that made his _way of the
cross_, and moulded his loving and bleeding heart to a greater likeness
of the Crucified.

It was on the 16th of September, 1792, that Abbé Carron, then in the
thirty-third year of his age, and the tenth of his priesthood, landed in
Jersey with 250 other priests, after a tempestuous passage of forty-eight
hours from St. Malo, in which they had narrowly escaped the fate to which
those who forced them to put to sea in a storm had apparently destined
them. These were nearly the last of the exiles. The September massacres
gave the crown of martyrdom to most of the clergy faithful to their vows,
who had not either been alarmed into flight or forcibly banished. The Abbé
Carron, and those who accompanied him, were not, properly speaking,
_émigrés_ but _déportés_. Of the _émigrés_ or fugitives,
again, there were two classes: those who, like most of the nobility, had
fled when their property was seized and their privileges taken away; and
those who, as was the case with most of the clergy, had remained at their
posts till they were exposed to indignities and outrages, and their lives
endangered. But nothing would induce the Abbé Carron and those who were
influenced by his example to fly. The civil character of the clergy had
been decreed by the National Assembly on the 12th of July, 1790, and
unfortunately accepted by Louis XVI on the 24th of August. On the 4th of
January, 1791, the oath which was the test of confessorship had been
demanded of the bishops, and almost unanimously refused; and soon afterward
began the persecution of the priests and the religious who followed their
noble example. On the 11th of May the municipality of Rennes endeavored to
install the schismatical clergy in the chief parishes of the town, and
threatened summary proceedings against all who had refused the oath for any
attempt to discharge their ministry any more. The Abbé Carron, the chief
curate of the large parish of St. Germain, in which he had labored from the
time of his ordination, was one of those specially interdicted. At the same
time, the violent republicans of the town, who, although comparatively
few--for the mass of the inhabitants continued Catholic and loyal--were
prevailing, as elsewhere, over the more moderate, had begun to threaten his
life. He preached the last course of Lent sermons that were heard for many
years to come in his native town, although parties of armed men were known
to be in wait for him; but after Easter, by order of the vicar-general, he
retired to the house of a brother a few leagues out of the town.
{261}
On his way, early in the morning, he was met by forty armed men who had
been searching for him at the very house to which he was going, with the
intention of murdering him, and whose violence had so agitated his brother,
who was in weak health, that he died not long after; but although they
spoke to the abbé, they did not touch him. His life had been still more
wonderfully preserved several years before, when three men--one of whom was
enraged at the conversion by the abbé's preaching of a woman whom he had
seduced--had laid a plot for his assassination, and had entrapped him,
under pretence of his services being required for a wounded man, into a
solitary house on the bank of the river. When he approached the bed in
which his pretended penitent had laid himself ready to strike the murderous
blow, he exclaimed, "You have sent for me too late: the unfortunate man is
no more;" and his companions found that the wretch had suddenly expired.
Carron had not yet finished his work; and, although in a less signally
supernatural manner, the divine hand that had then fallen on his would-be
murderer interposed again and again to protect him. From his retirement,
where he had composed and published a vigorous and pathetic remonstrance to
those religious who were yielding to the storm and breaking their vows, he
returned to his perish, and did not intermit his work till he was seized
and carried to prison, and into forced exile in the August of the next
year. He continued to carry on and even to extend, in addition to his
sacerdotal labors, the weaving, rope and sail-making, and other
manufactures that he had established for the benefit of the poor, and was
actually giving employment and subsistence to 1500 artisans when he was
arrested. At the same time he had expended 100,000 francs on the buildings
where the works were carried on; and when they were taken possession of by
the republicans, the stock in hand was valued at more than 94,000 francs,
and 90,000 more were due to him for sails supplied to the navy from his
establishment. His success in this undertaking was probably the reason for
which, although he was unflinching in his zeal, and resolutely refused to
allow any constitutional priest to officiate in his church, his arrest was
so long delayed. While inflexibly firm in matters of conscience, he was
ready enough to accommodate himself in everything else to the new state of
things, in order to carry on his work. He was willing to be known as
_citoyen Carron_, and to be _tutoyed_ to any extent. He obeyed
the law which ordered all the _imermentés_ to present themselves every
day to the municipal authorities. He implored that, if they thought fit to
imprison him, he might still be permitted to carry on his works of charity,
and offered to visit them accompanied by an officer, and to live
contentedly in confinement. "Although breathing infected air," he said, "I
may still manage to live a few years, and discharge the sacred obligation
of reimbursing the friends who lent me money to do good with. Then I will
make a present of my establishment to my country, and I shall die satisfied
with having undeceived those who think that I had in view to enrich myself
or my family."

But the fatal blow, though delayed, was not very long in coming. On the
10th of August a party of the national guard took him to the _hôtel de
ville_, and thence to the Abbey of St. Melaine, which had been turned
into a prison; and on the 8th of September he and his fellow-prisoners were
escorted to St. Malo to be shipped for Jersey. His bishop, his rector, and
many of his clerical friends had fled months before; but he had kept to his
resolution, more expressively, his biographer says, than grammatically
worded, "_Jamais je n'ai voulu consentir à m'émigrer._" He was in bad
health, and suffering besides from a violent toothache; but neither of
this, nor of his being made to share the single mattress of a prisoner in a
high fever, nor of any of the brutal insults which he received in prison
and on the journey to the coast, does he say a word in the letters which he
managed to send to his sister and nephews.
{262}
He addresses them all by name, longs to fold them to his breast, hopes one
day to see them again, consoles and advises them, and sends the little ones
the few sous that he happened to have in his possession. But his thoughts
of his own sufferings are only such as these:

  "Believe me, I do not suffer the hundredth part of what I have deserved.
  An unfortunate sinner, a base and too frequent transgressor, such as I
  know myself to be, ought not to think anything of such slight drops of
  bitterness. My God, when we love you, how sweet, how consoling, how
  delicious it is to suffer for you; and how magnificently does the love
  which we bear you recompense us for all the miseries of life! Do not, my
  dear child, think of your friend's imprisonment, without remembering at
  the same time that I deserve to be at the bottom of the most loathsome
  dungeon, and under a thousand chains, to bewail the sins of my youth."

His last message, when on the point of embarking, was to M. Paris, whom be
had commissioned to watch over his factories.

  "I hope that this letter, in which I enclose my heart, will find you in
  good health. Mine has had some variations, but it is at present quite
  sound; and I desire, if my God preserves me in it, to consecrate it again
  one day entirely to the service of my dear fellow-citizens; for I shall
  always love them, and shall always sigh for the moment when, recovering
  from their unfounded prejudices, they cease to close their heart to me.
  Speak of me now and then to the members of that dear colony whose
  prosperity formed the sweetest enjoyment of my youth. Tell them that I
  shall always be their father and their friend, and that I shall seek all
  my life for the means of making them happy. If I can gain any practical
  knowledge of manufactures in England, I shall make haste to apply it to
  the improvement of La Piletière,"

He was never permitted to revisit his work at Rennes; but his indefatigable
activity and burning zeal found a still wider field, and achieved still
greater wonders in exile.

It was no slight task that awaited him. The two hundred and fifty penniless
outcasts--of whom he was one--came to swell a crowd of more than three
thousand priests and religious, living in discomfort and distress in the
midst of a population far more bitterly opposed to the Catholic religion
than the people of England, and in danger, from the want of occupation, and
from the cessation of all outward practices of piety, of falling into
disorder. Only the year before, a Catholic lady had tried to get permission
to have mass celebrated in private, and the good people of Jersey had
threatened to throw any priest who ventured to celebrate mass into a
caldron of boiling oil; and when after some time she got a brave Irish
priest to run the risk, her husband, who served his mass, held a naked
sword to be ready for an attack. The Abbé Carron had not been long in the
island before nine masses were said every morning in her parlor. After a
short visit to London, whither he went to consult with the Bishop of Léon
and the rector of his old parish at Rennes--not forgetting at the same time
his promise to obtain information that would be useful at La Piletière--he
settled himself to his work on the 8th of October. He opened an oratory at
once, in which he said mass every day, and preached on Sunday, with some
secrecy at first, but very soon, as the dispositions of the people changed,
without the necessity of any precautions. He gave several courses of
spiritual exercises to the clergy, by which their fervor was rekindled. He
set on foot a large dispensary, in which a priest, who had been a surgeon
before his ordination, made up and administered remedies, and in which
another priest dispensed soup, wine, linen, and other necessaries. Then he
collected a great quantity of books, and opened a library and reading-room,
where the clergy could come from their over-crowded barrack-rooms to study
or pray in silence and in comfort. He provided another collection of books
to form a circulating library for the emigrant laity, many of whom had been
hurried into exile without being able to bring anything with them; and
Catholic books were, of course, unattainable at that time in Jersey.
{263}
By the June after his arrival he had two schools at work for their sons and
daughters, and constituted himself master of the upper division of the
boys' school, but taught the catechism and explained the epistles and
gospels to all the classes in each institution. These were the only
Catholic places of instruction in the whole island. He was, besides, the
common refuge for all the wants, spiritual and temporal, of the whole
colony; he was hard at work at the composition of some of the numerous
volumes which he published to increase his resources of charity; and he
continued, till war broke off the communication between England and France,
to direct, as far as was possible, the factories of La Piletière. Yet, with
all these undertakings on hand, he was living himself in a state of almost
destitution. One room served him for a second chapel, for confessional,
class-room, reception-room, and bedchamber; and having no servant, he had
to move and replace the tables and benches, and sweep and dust several
times a day. And, with all this multifarious work, he made it a rule to
read two chapters of Holy Scripture on his knees every day, to make a visit
every afternoon to the blessed sacrament, to make at least half an hour's
mental prayer, and to read a chapter in the Imitation, another in the
Spiritual Combat, and at least fifteen pages of a manual of theology,
however pressing his occupations might be. He prescribed to himself in a
rule of life, drawn up in Jersey, and found after his death, to rise at
four, however late he might have retired to rest; to say office after his
meditation, and then to celebrate; to fast every day, never taking anything
before dinner, and only milk for his collation, and on Fridays only bread;
never to touch wine, and to confine himself to bread and vegetables when be
dined alone; and in various other ways to deprive himself of comfort, and
to bring his standard of what was necessary far below that which is usual
even with the pious and charitable. The only expensive article that he
retained was a watch, the alarum of which he found needful to wake him; but
be promised, as soon as be had thoroughly acquired the habit of waking
before four o'clock, to give this also away to his "dear friends the poor;
who," he said, "shall have everything that I can deny myself." His rule of
life, which contains also devout aspirations for every different act of the
day, and for times of wakefulness at night, ends with this fervent
petition:

  "O incomprehensible and eternal treasure of my soul, the one adorable
  object of all the feelings, affections, and emotions of my heart, Jesus,
  my Jesus, my love and my all, oh! that I may love you, that I may live
  only to love you, and to cause you to be loved upon earth! Grant me, O
  Lord! days well filled, a pure life, and a happy death, that may conduct
  me to your bosom!"

That such a man should exercise great influence for good, and work wonders,
we cease to be surprised. When his undertakings assumed soon afterward a
still more extended range of responsibility in London, Bishop Douglas
expressed to the Bishop of Léon his amazement and alarm, and was answered:
"Reassure yourself, my lord; I have known Abbé Carron a long time, and I am
accustomed to see him work miracles." Yet we should hardly, perhaps, be
prepared for what he actually effected. When the republican forces under
General Hoche were massed on the coast, apparently for an invasion of our
territories, the English government resolved to fortify Jersey, and deemed
it expedient to transfer the exiles to London. A curious proposal had just
been made by the military commander, that the clergy should take up arms;
which was, however, courteously refused, and the refusal courteously
accepted. In August, 1796, the abbé came to London, charged with the task
of finding accommodation and providing for the wants of the French colony
from Jersey.
{264}
Besides the herculean task of finding lodgings for most of them, he at once
hired two houses in Tottenham-court road and reopened his two schools, and
soon after opened two rooms for public chapels, and established again his
libraries. In less than three years he had also under his care a hospital
for forty aged and infirm ecclesiastics, and another for twenty-five female
patients, an ecclesiastical seminary containing twenty-five students in
training for the priesthood, and a Maison de Providence, on the plan of the
houses of the Sisters of Charity, provided with all necessary supplies for
visiting and relieving the poor. In 1799, to his two day-schools were added
_pensionnats_--the one for eighty boys, and the other for sixty
girls--all the expenses of which, in excess of the twelve or eighteen
guineas per head granted by the British government, fell on the abbé. His
way of returning thanks was to promise some additional work of charity.
Thus, in an effusion of gratitude for the opening of the hospice for old
priests, he bound himself to give a dinner to six poor old men every 28th
of October; when the seminary was opened, he promised to give a dinner
every 1st of December to twelve poor children, to wait on them himself, and
to send them home with new clothes and bread in their hands; and when the
female hospital was opened, to give a marriage portion every 25th of
October to three virtuous young women.

When in peculiarly great difficulties, his plan, like that of many saints,
was to give in alms any little money that remained, in order, as he said,
"to draw down dew from heaven;" and this never failed. Rich Protestants
called and left bank-notes, without giving him time to discover who they
were, or sent anonymous donations. Two gentlemen in drab-colored attire
astonished the pupils, trained to the most exquisite politeness, by coming
in one day without removing their hats; and one of them, who turned out to
be that torment of our infancy, Lindsey Murray, after seeing the whole
establishment, deposited £10 in the abbé's hands. The leading Catholics
were, of course, profuse in their offerings, and all ready to place
themselves at his disposal. The hoarded jewels of the richer exiles melted
into alms for the poor. Actors read plays for his benefit, and the great
Catalani gave a concert for him. He had been encouraged at the outset by
even more striking dispositions of Divine Providence. A rich Englishman,
living at St. Aubin in Jersey, had entreated him to accept his house and
estate and become his heir; but, as the offer involved the condition of
being naturalized and abandoning France, his love for his country, that had
used him so cruelly, prevented his listening to it. Soon after his
settlement in London he found himself without resources, and heavily in
debt. Mr. Desprez, his former rector, met him coming out of his oratory in
a state of great depression, and proposed a walk in the park. It was early,
and no one was to be seen. A man passed them at a rapid pace, and, when a
little in advance of them, drew some packages out of his pocket, one of
which fell to the ground. The abbé picked it up, and found a bundle of
notes. He ran after the man, shouting to him, but in vain, to stop, and at
last overtook him. The other refused to stop, and declared that the notes
did not belong to him, and that he was in a great hurry. "Where do they
come from, then?" was the natural question. "From there, sir," said the
stranger, pointing upward. They amounted, Mr. Desprez recorded, to the
value of some scores of thousands of francs. The abbé used to say that,
while in England, more than a million guineas had passed through his hands.
Yet he was inexorable in his rule of never receiving anything of value for
himself. He refused whatever was clogged with the condition of keeping it
himself.

In 1797, an amnesty for the exiles was voted, and for a week he was hoping
to return to France, and had even closed his schools; but the government,
who were better acquainted with the state of things, refused him a
passport, and the _coup d'état_ of the 4th of September revoked the
amnesty.
{265}
In November, 1799, he settled with all his establishments, except the
seminary for priests, which was now not so much required, at Somers-town.
They occupied ten large houses, the rent of three being paid by the
government, and that of the others by himself. A French journal describes
them as situated outside of London, in good air, and _quite in the
country_.

In 1801, he might have returned to France. The famous concordat was signed
on the 15th of July, and made public on the following Easter, the 12th of
April, 1802. The Bishop of Rennes, who yielded, although with rather too
much of protest, to the invitation from the Holy See addressed to all the
old bishops to resign their sees, in order to facilitate the working of the
concordat, earnestly entreated that Abbé Carron might be his successor; and
the First Consul desired himself to secure him. But the articles
fraudulently added by Napoleon, and against which the pope, when he became
aware of them, vehemently protested, made the abbé feel it to be impossible
to work satisfactorily in France while they were in force.

The schism of the _Petite Eglise_, or Blanchardism as it was called in
England, was a terrible blow to him. More than half the bishops still in
exile and many of the clergy--and among them his dearest friends--held out
against the Holy See. But his fidelity never wavered, not even while the
vicar-apostolic of the London district was acting timidly, and weakening
the effect of Dr. Milner's more energetic measures. The _organic
articles_ were a sore puzzle and distress to him; but he would never
countenance a word of disrespect to the Holy See. In a synod of bishops he
was chosen by Dr. Milner for his theologian, but rejected on the ground of
his being a foreigner. This firmness of his drew upon him ultimately a
fierce persecution, and great attempts were made, but with only partial
success, to alienate from him Louis XVIII. and the other members of the
exiled dynasty, who had themselves remonstrated with the Holy See on the
concordat. But no ecclesiastical dignity was ever offered him after the
restoration. A storm of abusive pamphlets, anonymous letters, and
slanderous reports of the worst kind fell for some time keenly upon him.
Yet in his correspondence with his dear relations in Normandy, which was
now resumed and carried on till war broke out again, there is no allusion
to any of his trials, except that of his continual separation from them. He
longs to see them; he interests himself in all the details of their
families, and gives them advice and encouragement; but he has no space for
his own afflictions. The only thing that disputes with them for his love
--for his love of God is supreme over all--is his love of the poor. "I love
you," he cries; "yes, certainly, I love you with all my heart, and all the
dear ones by whom you are surrounded; but I love my poor still more; they
are my numerous and best-beloved family."

In 1807, the popularity of the French clergy was so great, and had so
increased the favorable feeling toward Catholics generally, that he thought
it time to build a regular church. Hitherto he had officiated in the
largest room of one of the schools. The impossibility of raising
4000_l_. for the purpose was soon surmounted by one to whom nothing
was impossible that the glory of God seemed to require. So the church in
the Polygon soon rose, and was crowded at once on its being opened; and he
added to his other labors the task of giving sermons in English, which it
cost him immense pains to elaborate and learn by heart. As his little flock
of exiles, who were now making their way back to France diminished, his
ministry both among the French settled in London and among the English
increased. He made it a rule to visit all his sick--of whom he had a large
number--at least once a week, and those seriously ill every day.
{266}
He visited one daily, and often twice a day, for six months together. His
poor schools were enlarged and admitted English as well as French
Catholics. His records of conversions became more and more numerous; and
each cost him weeks, and generally months, of careful preliminary
instruction. He was constantly engaged in writing, and published twelve or
thirteen different works in London. He was carrying on also a
correspondence with many Protestants and sceptics; to whose difficulties he
was never weary of replying. Part of his correspondence with one alone
extended to twenty-seven letters, mostly of eight or ten pages each. How he
could multiply himself sufficiently for all that he was doing is one of
those mysteries which we find in the lives of saints alone. When the
demands of the _émigrés_ on his purse were less heavy, he began to
distribute soup and coals to the poor Catholics of London; an express
prohibition from government preventing him from extending this charity to
Protestants, _for fear of conversion_. As the war went on, immense
donations both of money and of all kinds of necessaries were made by him to
the increasing crowds of French prisoners.

In April, 1814, Louis XVIII., who had been nearly seven years in England,
and under whose patronage the abbé's _pensionnats_ for the children of
the _émigrés_ had acquired a sort of title to be deemed royal
institutions, returned to the throne, vacant by the banishment of Napoleon
to Elba; and the abbé only waited for the royal commands respecting the
young French nobility under his care to terminate his twenty-two years of
exile. On the 14th of July he said mass for the last time at Somers-town,
and set off at five in the morning, to escape any attempts of his flock to
prevent his departure. He left England, after all the hundreds of thousands
of pounds that had passed through his hands, as poor as he had come to it,
and was beholden to his friends the Jerninghams for part of the expense of
the journey. A solidly built chapel and two poor schools, containing a
hundred children, with all necessary appliances, were his legacy to the
Catholics of England. What were his feelings toward those whom he was
leaving, and those whom he was expecting to see again, how the sight of
France affected him, and what were his intentions for the future, we must
leave him to express, by extracting some portion of one of several letters
which be wrote on landing:

      Calais, Sunday, July 17, 1814.
  "Ursula, my dearly loved sister, daughter, and friend--I arrived here
  last night, after a difficult passage. Here I am, then, on the precious
  soil that gave me birth. .... Ah! my dear ones, if I could clasp you all
  in my arms, my heart would be less bruised, less in anguish than it is!
  Alas! I have lost Somers-town, for me a land of benediction; and in my
  own country, I look for France in vain. In twenty-four hours, what have I
  not seen already! This holy day of rest made a working day; not a shop
  that is not open; not a street-vender that is not crying his wares. What
  a sight! How it pierces any heart that retains the faith! ... All the
  difference between the twenty-two last years and those that it may please
  the Lord to add to me will only be in the outward utterance of my
  feelings. I was silent, and I loved; I shall speak, but I cannot love
  more. Oh! what a pure and innocent enjoyment it will be to bless your
  children and your grandchildren, and to chat together about the days of
  our youth! I so need some distraction, some nourishment to my poor heart.
  But do you know the way to procure it the most delicious nourishment? It
  is to assure me that you wish to live and breathe only for God and for
  his love; for this is the true life of man--to have a sinner's awe and a
  child's love for the most tender and compassionate of fathers. If it were
  granted me to gain him some hearts before dying, this would be a balm
  that would heal all my wounds. Ah, my child, if you knew what angelic
  souls I have left on the soil of my second country! Excellent Christians,
  you are not heard of on earth; but what a festival is in preparation for
  you in heaven! The love of God for ever! Let us talk of this love; let us
  act in everything for the sake of it; let us act only through it. To live
  without loving is to languish; to live without loving is to die. Ah! let
  us live to love, and let us desire death in order to love still more. Let
  us live to get love for what is alone supremely lovable, our dear Master,
  our best of fathers.
{267}
  By his side, and in his bosom, all pains lose their bitterness; and how
  much of it do they not lose! He forgets nothing that can embellish our
  crown; and to suffer for so good a Master has its own special charm;
  suffering love is the best love. Adieu, my beloved child; your father
  will always love you, as the old curate of St. Germain loved you, and--to
  end with that sweet title--as _the Missioner of Somers-town_ loved
  you."

In November he was installed with the orphans, whom he had left in England
until he was ready for them, and the ladies who instructed them, in what
was to be his home henceforth, with the exception of his second brief
exile, until death, a house in the _Impasse des Feuillantines_ in the
Faubourg St. Jacques. Thirty of his pupils were paid for by the king, and
others received at his own risk. On the 1st of the following March Napoleon
landed from Elba, and at Lyons, on his way to Paris, ordered all returned
exiles who had come back without his leave to quit France within a
fortnight, under pain of death. On the 4th, all unconscious of what had
happened, the merry old lady who was at the head of the establishment, and
styled herself _Religieuse indigne du Monastère des Feuillantines_,
was writing a letter, sparkling with fun, to invite the abbé's nephew to
come in June and keep with them the _triplex-majus_ feast of St. Guy.
Before the end of the month she and the abbé and most of the orphans were
again in banishment in London, and a crowd of fugitives were looking to him
again for help. An appeal to his "generous friends, the citizens of Great
Britain," brought in £500.

At Kensington, whither he retired to avoid any appearance of interference
at Somers-town, he gave shelter to a young man, who was afterward too well
known as the Abbé de la Mennais. A great friendship sprang up between them;
and when the battle of Waterloo allowed of his return, Féli, as he was
familiarly called, clung to the Abbé de Carron, whom uncertainties about
his orphans detained in London, and accompanied him back to the
Feuillantines in December. "What a man!" he wrote to a common friend of the
abbé, whom he always called his good father, "or rather what a saint! I
hope, by the help of his advice, to settle at last to something. It is high
time. Thirty-three years lost, and worse than lost!" Happy would it have
been for him if be had been guided by his venerable friend's counsels. The
instincts of faith in the abbé made him suspect even the first volume of
the Essai sur l'Indifférence. When the second came out, he wrote a most
affectionate and touching letter, appealing from his head to his heart, and
imploring him not to go on writing. But it was too late.

We regret that we cannot linger longer over the last days of the abbé. The
difficulties about his establishment at Rennes, which were not settled till
just before his death, prevented the return to his native place for which
he had hoped, and he remained at Paris. We intended to confine ourselves
mainly to his labors in England; and we have not space to dwell, as we
could wish, on that wonderful institution of the Feuillantines, where the
pupils never met a mistress without an embrace; where the great treat,
after some months of study, was a week of what our foolish would-be
governesses often call "menial drudgery," and the greatest treat of all was
to wait at table on parties of poor people and play with their children;
where Mr. (afterward Cardinal) Weld, whose daughter was married to Lord
Clifford in the chapel of the institution, and all the most pious priests
in Paris, came for edification and recreation; and whence relief flowed to
all the destitute in the city. The good old abbé died worn out with toil
and austerities, the chief of which, such as the wearing of spiked belts
and haircloths, were not known till after his death, on the 15th of March,
1821.
{268}
His memory was fresh at Somers-town; and at the requiem sung for him there
the chapel was crowded with rich and poor, all in mourning attire; and the
voice of the bishop preaching was interrupted by sobs and cries of grief.
The simple motto on his grave is _Pertransiit benifaciendo;_ and to
few could the words be more truly applied. "Needy, yet enriching many,"
might be added as equally appropriate. The Catholics of England, as well as
of France, have good reason to thank God for the life and labors of Abbé
Carron.

------

  Translated From the French.

  The Birds' Friend.


For some years past, in the garden of the Tuileries, is seen, daily, a man
of middle height, with a respectable and roundness of figure, thick
mustaches, and beard slightly gray and bushy, who, as soon as he appears in
one of the walks bordering the terrace of the water, is surrounded by a
numerous brood of pigeons. He throws them a morsel of bread or cake which
he brings with him, and the birds are so familiar with him that, far from
flying away, they surround him, and dispute for his favors and liberality.
Some of them, even, his favorites, flying around his head, perch on his
shoulders, his arm or hand, and dip their bills in his mouth for their
accustomed nourishment. He is the subject of admiration for young mothers,
babies great and small, truant apprentices, and child nurses, generally. As
soon as the bird man arrives, they precipitate themselves in his train. He
advances majestically, and with quite an imposing air, followed by his
impromptu court, which holds back slightly, from respect, no doubt, and
fear of frightening the birds. Idle people who come every day to lounge in
the garden of the Tuileries take their daily walk or read the papers, join
the crowd of courtiers, and even Guignol himself, in presence of this
redoubtable concourse, sees his representations deserted, and the Petite
Provençe forsaken by the rheumatisms who come to seek a ray of sun on his
benches. The friend of the birds walks with a sense of his own importance,
and enjoys greatly the astonishment and homage of the crowd. With his cane
under his arm, his hat on his head, and as immovable as the dervish on his
minaret, or the little joist of the fable, he gravely accomplishes his
daily office. The young mothers are astonished, the children open their
large eyes, and I saw one of the smallest ones, Master Guguste, so terribly
frightened, because the birds were not afraid of him, that he hid himself
behind his big brother Aymer, and took in the whole scene by stealth, in
bo-peep style. Master Guguste will certainly ask his father, whom he has
led by the hand toward the place where the friend of the birds dines his
pets, how is it the pigeons fly around this man's head, and when he, Master
Guguste, runs toward them, they always fly away? The good little fellow
forgets to add that he throws stones at them--his age has no mercy--and
that the pigeons have the bad taste to prefer cake.

{269}

The birds' friend has become one of the sights of the Tuileries, and one of
the pleasures of the Parisians. They come from the marshes to see him; and
the provincial who arranges his programme for his visit to Paris never
forgets to write in his note-book: "To go and see the wild beasts breakfast
in the Garden of Plants; to go and see the hippopotamus bathe; to go and
see the pigeons eat in the garden of the Tuileries." Innocent people ask by
what talisman this man of the Tuileries has succeeded in taming the
pigeons.

I think his method is a simple one, and that he has nothing in common with
the charmers of India, nor even with Madame Vandermersch, who has
astonished the saloons of Paris by the singular empire she exercises over
the feathered tribe.

Then, the pigeons of the Tuileries, like all animals not tormented and
accustomed to a crowd, are not easily frightened. If you have ever been to
Venice, you have certainly seen the pigeons of the square of St. Mark.
These pigeons, whose history is very curious, date their origin from the
ancient republic of Venice. At that time, it was the custom on Palm Sunday
to let fly from the top of the principal door of the church of St. Mark a
large number of birds, with little rolls of paper so attached to their
claws as to force them to fall into the hands of the crowd who filled the
court, and disputed among themselves for this living prey. Some of these
birds, having succeeded in ridding themselves of their fetters, and
training the thread like the pigeon of La Fontaine, sought an asylum on the
roof of the church of St. Mark, and on that of the ducal palace, not far
from the celebrated leads that Silvio Pellico has described in "My
Prisons," and Lord Byron has cursed in his immortal verses. They multiplied
rapidly, and became the favorites of the population to such a degree that,
to respect popular opinion, the senate of Venice issued a decree, stating
that the pigeons of the square of St. Mark had become the guests of the
republic, and as such should be respected and nourished at the cost of the
state. While the republic of Venice existed, a man employed by the corn
administration of the city came every morning to distribute the rations of
the pigeons on the place of St. Mark and the Piazza. Since the
establishment of Austrian rule, the Venetians support their favorite birds
by voluntary contributions. Accustomed to live in peace with man, the
pigeons of the place of St. Mark have become exceedingly familiar. They
never fly away at the approach of the promenaders, and I have seen them
perched on the edge of the buckets of the water-carriers, to quench their
thirst, and not even take flight when these women took their buckets by the
handle. In truth, the whole secret of taming animals consists in not
frightening them by movements too sudden or by noise, never injuring them,
and always treating them well.

If you have never seen the pigeons of the place of St. Mark at Venice, you
have certainly seen the fishes of the large pond at Fontainebleau come in
bands to dispute the bread thrown to them; the swans of the basins of the
Tuileries swim toward the children who throw them crumbs of their cakes;
the small elephants of the Garden of Plants put forth their trunks gently
to seize a piece of rye bread; and more than one young girl has amused
herself during the winter in spreading the crumbs from her table on her
balcony, to see flocks of sparrows tumble down and help themselves at the
well-set table, doing honor to the banquet, without considering in the
least the pretty blonde head and the laughing mouth assisting their repast.

You see, it is always the same process. What frightens animals is noise,
sudden movements, and especially bad treatment.

When man makes friends of them, it is rarely they do not respond to his
advances. You know the history of Androcles and his lion, of Pellisson and
his spider, and a hundred others of the same kind. I do not speak of
domestic animals, the dog especially, our faithful companion.
{270}
The Bible itself, the book of books, in relating the return of the young
Tobias conducted by the angel to his father, has in honor of this faithful
animal these charming lines: "Then the dog, who had followed them all the
way, ran before them, and, like a courier who might have preceded them, he
testified his joy by the wagging of his tail." The grand poet of paganism,
Homer, in his turn, has described in the most touching and heartfelt
verses, Ulysses, on his return to Ithaca, unknown to Penelope, Telemachus,
and his retainers, but recognized by the dog, who died of joy at his feet.
But passing by the dog who is our friend, savage animals show themselves no
less sensible to man's goodness, and as we read the legends of monks of the
Merovingian time, who lived hid in the depths of forests, it seems that
virtue can give man the same empire over animals which he had in his first
days of innocence. M. de Montalembert, in his Moines d'Occident, has
recounted many legends of this nature. A huge boar, pursued by hunters,
fled for asylum to the cell of St. Basil, which he had constructed in the
thickest part of the mountain forest of Rheims. Again, St. Laumer,
wandering in the forest of Perche, and chanting psalms, met a hind flying
before several wolves. To him, she was the symbol and image of the
Christian soul pursued by demons; he wept for pity, and cried to the
wolves: "Enraged executioners, return to your dens, and leave this poor
little beast; the Lord arrest this prey from your bloodthirsty mouths." The
wolves stopped at his voice, and retraced their steps. "Behold," said the
saint to his companion, "how the devil, of all wolves the most ferocious,
seeks ever some one to strangle and devour in the church of Christ."
Meanwhile the hind followed him, and he passed nearly two hours in
caressing her before returning to his home.

Recitals of this nature are numerous. It was the lion of the Abbé Gérasime,
whose monastery was on the borders of the Jordan, who, having loved the
monk during his life, came to die on his tomb. The wolf of another solitary
waited at his door for the remains of his humble repast, and never retired
without licking his hand. Irish legends tell us of stags of the forests
coming to present their heads to the yoke to draw the plough. Everywhere we
find man's power over animals established by sanctity. "Can we be
astonished," said Bède on this subject, "if he who faithfully and loyally
obeys his Creator sees in his turn inferior creatures subject to his
command?"

Among the legendary recitals we find none more touching than those written
of St. François d'Assise, whose heart overflowed with tenderness to
animals. We read in a legend that this great saint, who had a beautiful and
harmonious voice, hearing one evening the song of a nightingale, was
tempted to respond, so that he passed the night in chanting, alternately
with the bird, the praises of God. The legend adds that François was
exhausted the first, and praised the bird that had so completely vanquished
him.

Who has not read in the Franciscan Poets the miracle of the saint who
converted the ferocious wolf of Gubbio, and how he tamed the wild
turtle-doves, a present from a pious young man, while saying to them: "O my
simple and innocent doves! how will you ever be tamed? But I must save you
from death, and make you nests, that you may obey the command of our
Creator." And the turtle-doves, by degrees less wild, commenced to deposit
their eggs, like hens, covering them before the brothers, and nourished by
their hands. In conclusion, let us recall the exordium of a delightful
sermon related in the Franciscan Poets, and addressed by the saint to a
multitude of birds, attentive to his voice, a sermon related to Brother
Jacques de Massa by Brother Massio, one of St. Francis's favorite
disciples: "My birds, you are extremely obliged to God, our Creator, and
always and in every place you ought to praise him, because he has given you
liberty to fly everywhere, has clothed you with double and triple
vestments, and has preserved your species in the ark of Noah.
{271}
Besides, you neither sow nor reap, and God cares for you; gives you streams
and fountains to quench your thirst, mountains and valleys for your refuge,
and large trees in which to make your nests." But we have rambled from the
commencement of our story. We began in the garden of the Tuileries, and end
in another garden, a mystical one, where we gather flowers from St.
Francis.


------

  From Chambers's Journal

  Time-Measurers.


There is, perhaps, no subject more interesting to human nature than that of
time. Like eternity, it concerns us all; and, unlike it, exacts as well as
demands our attention. True, as Sir Walter Scott writes, "it is but a
shadowy name, a succession of breathings measured forth by night with the
clank of a bell, by day with a shadow crossing along a dial stone;" but we
cannot shut our eyes for very long to the fact of its passage. If in our
youth we strive to kill it, so all the more in our age do we strive to
lengthen its too brief hours out. Even the means by which to note its
course have naturally engaged the minds of men in all ages; they have been
very diverse and ingenious, and a due record of them cannot fail to contain
many curious particulars. Such a work has been recently published in Mr.
Wood's Curiosities of Clocks and Watches. Even the diligence of our author,
however, does not seem to have discovered at what period the present method
of beginning the day at midnight came into use; but it is supposed to have
been an ecclesiastical invention. Among the early Romans, the day was
divided into twelve hours, from sunrise to sunset, the length of which,
therefore, varied with the seasons. The Egyptians, Mexicans, and Persians
reckoned the day to begin from sunrise, and divided it into four intervals,
determined by the rising and setting of the sun, and its two passages over
the meridian. Our own uniform hours of sixty minutes each could scarcely
have come into use until something like the wheel-clock was invented: the
ancient sun-dial represented hours of a length varying with the seasons,
and the clepsydra (or water-clock) was adjusted to furnish hours of fifty
to seventy minutes each, to suit the changing lengths of day and night.
Clocks, even so late as the reign of James I., were often called horologes;
and, up to the fourteenth century, the word clock was applied only to the
bell which rang out the hours, or certain periods determined by the
sun-dial or sand-glass. To this day, the bell of Wells cathedral is still
called the horologe.

The clepsydra is said to have been invented by the censor Scipio Nasica,
595 B.C. The principle of these early time-measurers was a very simple one.
"In those of the common kind, the water issued drop by drop through a small
hole in the vessel that contained it, and fell into a receiver, in which
some light floating body marked the height of the water as it rose, and by
these means the time that had elapsed. In a bas-relief of the date of the
lower empire, figuring the Hippodrome in Constantinople, a clepsydra, in
the shape of an oviform vase, appears. It is very simply mounted, being
traversed by an axis, and turned with a crooked handle.
{272}
By this contrivance, the instantaneous inversion of the vase was secured,
and the contents, escaping in a certain definite time, showed the number of
minutes which were taken up by each _missus_, or course. Vitruvius
tells us of the construction of a clepsydra which, besides the hours, told
the moon's age, the zodiacal sign for the month, and several other things;
in fact, it was a regular astronomical clock. His details now read somewhat
obscure and complicated; but the principle was that a float, as it moved
upward by means of a vertical column fixed in it, drove different sets of
cog-wheels, which impelled in their turn other sets, by means of which
figures were made to move, obelisks to twirl round, pebbles to be
discharged, trumpets to sound, and many other tricks to be put into action.
The admission-pipe for the water was made either of gold or a perforated
gem, in order that it might not wear away, or be liable to get foul." The
floats sometimes communicated with wheels which worked hands on dials, or
supported human figures which pointed with hands to certain numbers as the
water rose; and in some ingenious water-clocks the fluid flowed as tears
from eyes of automata; but all these _clepsydrae_ had two great
defects: the one being that the flow varied with the density of the
atmosphere; the other, that the water flowed quicker at last than at first.
They were, however, put to one excellent use, which has, unhappily, fallen
into decay: they were set up in the law-courts to time counsel; "to prevent
babbling, that such as spoke ought to be brief in their speeches." For this
custom, the world was indebted to the Romans (especially Pompey), and from
it Martial is supplied with a pleasant sarcasm: perceiving a dull declaimer
moistening his lips with a glass of water, he suggests that it would be a
relief to the audience as well as to himself if he would take his liquor
from the clepsydra.

With some mechanical additions, the ancient clepsydras were made to do
wonderful things besides stopping lawyers' tongues. Haroun-al-Raschid sent
(in 807), by two monks of Jerusalem, to the Emperor Charlemagne a brass
water-clock, the dial of which was composed of twelve small doors
representing the divisions of the hours; each door opened at the hour it
was intended to represent, and out of it came the same number of little
balls, which fell one by one, at equal distances of time, on a brass drum.
It might be told by the eye what hour it was by the number of doors that
were open, and by the ear by the number of balls that fell. When it was
twelve o'clock, twelve horsemen in miniature issued forth at the same time,
and, marching round the dial, shut all the doors.

Hour-glasses, called clepsammia, in which sand took the place of water,
were modifications of the clepsydrae. Candle-clocks were used as
time-measurers by some, and especially by our own Alfred the Great. "To
rightly divide his time, be adopted the following simple expedient: he
procured as much wax as weighed seventy-two pennyweights, which he
commanded to be made into six candles, each twelve inches in length, with
the divisions of inches distinctly marked upon it. These being lighted one
after another regularly, burned four hours each, at the rate of an inch for
every twenty minutes. Thus the six candles lasted twenty-four hours. The
tending of these candle-clocks he confided to one of his domestic
chaplains, who constantly from time to time gave him notice of their
wasting. But when the winds blew, the air, rushing in through the doors,
windows, and crevices of his rude habitation, caused his candles to gutter,
and, by fanning the flame, to burn faster. The ingenious king, in order to
remedy this serious inconvenience, caused some fine white horn to be
scraped so thin as to be transparent, which he let into close frames of
wood; and in these primitive lanthorns his wax-clocks burned steadily in
all weathers."

{273}

The invention of wheel-clocks is attributed by some to Archimedes so early
as 200 B.C.; by others to Wallingford so late as the beginning of the
fourteenth century; but in the Book of Landaff, describing the life of St.
Teilavus, who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the end of the fifth
century, it is stated that he returned to Britain with three precious
gifts, and among them "a bell greater in fame than in size, and in value
than in beauty. It convicts the perjured, and cures the infirm; and what
seems still more wonderful is, that _it did sound every hour without
being touched_, until it was prevented by the sin of men, who rashly
handled it with polluted hands, and it ceased from so delightful an
office." They looked their gift-clock in the mouth, and probably disturbed
the works.

St. Paul's had a clock of some sort at a very early period; in the year
1286, allowances to "Bartholomo Orologiario" (the clock-keeper) being
entered, in its accounts, of so much bread and beer. Iron and steel were
used for the wheels and frames until the end of the sixteenth century, and
blacksmiths were the chief clock-makers. Chaucer, who died in 1400, remarks
of a punctual cock of his acquaintance:

  "Full sikerer was his crowing and his loge
  Then his a clock or any abbey orologe;"

or:

  "As certain was is crowing in his roost
   As any clock or abbey orologe;"

which might probably have been truthfully said of many a less punctual
bird; for, to judge by the old parish account-books, these blacksmiths'
clocks were not good goers, and were for ever being rectified. That of St.
Alban's abbey, however, was an exception. It was constructed at a great
cost by Richard de Wallingford, son of a blacksmith in the town in
question, but afterward made abbot for his learning (1330), and his clock
was "going" in Henry VIII.'s reign. It noted the course of the sun and
moon, the rising and setting of the planets and fixed stars, and the ebb
and flow of the tide. When the good abbot felt his end drawing nigh, his
thoughts being fixed on time as well as eternity, he left a book of
directions for keeping this piece of mechanism in order.

For ingenuity and complication, however, all ancient clocks must hide their
dials in the presence of that of Strasburg cathedral. "Before this clock
stands a globe on the ground, showing the motions of the heavens, stars,
and planets. The heavens are carried about by the first mover in
twenty-four hours. Saturn, by it proper motion, is carried about in thirty
years; Jupiter, in twelve; Mars, in two; the Sun, Mercury, and Venus, in
one year; and the moon in one month. In the clock itself are two tables on
the right and left hand, showing the eclipses of the sun and moon for the
year 1573 to 1624. The third table in the middle is divided into two parts.
In the first part, the statues of Apollo and Diana show the course of the
year and the day thereof, being carried about one year. The second part
shows the year of our Lord, and the equinoctial days, the hours of each
day, and the minutes of each hour, Easter-day, and all the other feasts,
and the dominical letter; and the third part hath the geographical
description of all Germany, and particularly of Strasburg, and the names of
the inventor and the workmen. In the middle frame of the clock is an
astrolabe, showing the sign in which each planet is every day; and there
are statues of the seven planets upon a circular plate of iron; so that
every day the planet that rules the day comes forth, the rest being hid
within the frames, till they come out, of course, at their day, as the sun
upon Sunday, and so for all the week. There is a terrestrial globe, which
shows the quarter, the half hour, and the minutes. There is a figure of a
human skull, and statues of two boys, whereof one turns the hour-glass when
the clock has struck, and the other puts forth the rod in his hand at each
stroke of the clock. Moreover, there are statues of spring, summer, autumn,
and winter, and many observation of the moon.
{274}
In the upper part of the clock are four old men's statues, which strike the
quarters of the hour. The statue of death comes out at each quarter to
strike, but is driven back by the statue of Christ, with a spear in his
hand, for three quarters; but in the fourth quarter death strikes the hour
with the bone in his hand, and then the chimes sound. On the top of the
clock is the image of a cock, which twice in a day crows aloud and claps
his wings. Besides, this clock is decked with many rare pictures, and,
being on the inside of the church, carries another frame to the outside of
the walls, whereon the hours of the sun, the courses of the moon, the
length of the day, and such other things are set out with much art." But
perhaps the most striking part of the history of this famous Strasburg
clock was that it was made, or, at all events, perfected, by a blind man.
The artisan who contrived it lost his sight, and was superseded; but since
nobody else would carry out his ideas, and he refused to communicate them,
he was reinstated in his work, and actually carried out the affair, in all
its intricate delicacy, to the end. There are several other examples of
blind clockmakers, and even watchmakers. "The Illustrated London News of
August 23, 1851, tells us that there was then living at Holbeach,
Lincolnshire, a watchmaker named Rippin, who was completely blind. He was a
first-rate hand at his business, and it was truly surprising to observe
with what ease he could take to pieces and place together again watches of
the most delicate mechanism. Some years previously, Rippin was robbed, and
the property taken from him consisted of watch-wheels, hair springs, and
other tiny things belonging to the trade. The thief was traced, and
convicted at Spalding sessions, the blind man having sworn to his property
by feeling."

Those who are accustomed only to eight-day clocks will be astonished to
learn that some time-pieces have been made to go for a hundred years! The
Marquis of Bute had one at Luton Park; and "in Sir John Moore's account of
his 'large sphere-going clock-work' (Mathem. Compend.) we read that it made
a revolution of once in seventeen thousand one hundred years, by means of
six wheels and five pinions, for the sun's apogeum." Instead of "it made,"
one should surely here read "it was made to make," since the oldest
inhabitant could scarcely certify to the fact having been performed. In
1859, after years of labor, James White, of Wickham Market, completed a
self-winding clock, which determined the time with unfailing accuracy,
continuing a constant motion by itself, never requiring to be wound up, and
being capable of perpetuating its movements so long as its component parts
should exist.

Italy boasts of some curious native clockwork. Early in the last century,
at the Palazzo di Colonna at Rome, was a portable clock, which was wound up
only once a year, and showed the hour of the day, the month, and the year;
and the popes possessed for two centuries a horological marvel, which,
passing through the hands of King William I. of the Netherlands, was
exhibited to our Royal Society so late as 1848. This was produced solely by
manual labor, without any other help than the bench of the turner and the
file; yet it shows the date of the month and all the Catholic feasts and
holidays throughout the year. Seven heathen gods make their appearance,
each on his proper week-day, exactly in front, and is relieved, after
twenty-four hours' duty, by the next. "In the centre of the second division
(the clock being a tower of three stories) is an image of the Virgin,
holding her son Jesus in her arms; two angels are seen placing crowns and
garlands on her head; and during the performance of the bells, several
angels appear making their obeisance before the image of Mary and the
Saviour. Within the centre of the third division is a metal bell hanging on
a gilt plate of copper, on which is represented the judgment-day.
{275}
Round this metal plate move four silver figures, set in motion by
mechanism, representing the four states of social life. These images point
out the quarters of the hour by striking the bell; the first quarter is
represented by a youth, the second by a grave citizen, the third by a Roman
soldier, and the fourth by a priest. In the fourth division is likewise a
metal bell, on the sides of which are chambers; on the left side is the
representation of death, proclaiming the hours of day and night by striking
the bell; above it is seen a Latin inscription, from Romans, chapter vii.
verse 23. At the right side is the image of the Saviour, stepping forward,
with the globe in his hand, and above it the cross. This figure proceeds
every two minutes in a slow manner, and then, for a moment, hides itself
from view; above it is a Latin verse from the prophet Hosea, chapter xiii.
These two figures are of massive silver. Behind the bell is inscribed the
name of the artist, and the date 1589." Many ancient clocks upon the
continent exhibit processions of saints and various other religious
automata; but the most singular of all, perhaps, is one in the cathedral of
St. John at Lyon. On the top of it stands a cock, that every three hours
claps his wings and crows thrice. In a gallery underneath, a door opens on
one side, and out comes the Virgin Mary; and from a door on the other side
the angel Gabriel, who meets and salutes her. At the same time a door opens
in the alcove part, out of which the form of a dove, representing the Holy
Ghost, descends upon the Virgin's head. After this, these figures retire,
and from a door in the middle comes forth the figure of a reverend father,
lifting up his hand and giving his benediction to the spectators. The days
of the week are represented by seven figures, each of which takes its place
in a niche on the morning of the day that it represents, and continues
there until midnight. The greatest curiosity is an oval plate marked with
the minutes of an hour, which are exactly pointed out by a hand reaching
the circumference, that insensibly dilates and contracts itself during the
revolution. This curious machine, although not so perfect now in all its
movements as when it was originally constructed, has suffered but little
injury during a long course of years, owing to the care and skill of those
who were appointed to look after it. It appears from an inscription on the
clock itself that it was repaired and improved by one Morrison in 1661; but
it was contrived long before that time by Nicholas Lipp, a native of Basle,
who finished it in 1598, when he was about thirty years of age. The oval
minute motion was invented by M. Servier, and is of later date. There is a
tradition that the ingenious artist, Lipp, had his eyes put out by order of
the magistrates of Lyon, that he might not be able to make another clock
like this; but so far from this being true, the justices of Lyon engaged
him to take care of his own machine, at a handsome salary.

Ingenious, however, as are the quasi-religious automata above mentioned,
how inferior are they in human interest when compared with the time-piece
possessed by Mrs. Forester at Great Brickhill, Bucks, "the identical clock
which was at Whitehall at the time of the execution of Charles I., and by
which the fatal moment was regulated." At that period (the seventeenth
century), there was a great taste for striking-clocks. "Several of them,
made by Thomas Tompion, who invented many useful things in clock-work, not
only struck the quarters on eight bells, but also the hour after each
quarter. At twelve o'clock, forty-four blows were struck, and one hundred
and thirteen between twelve and one o'clock. Failures in the striking
mechanism of these clocks were attended with much annoyance to the owners
of them, for they would go on striking without cessation until the weight
or spring had gone down, and they were frequently contrived to go for a
month.

{276}

In 1696, a very remarkable clock was made for "Le Grand Monarque," whom
science as well as literature, it seems, delighted to flatter. Louis was
therein represented upon his throne, surrounded by the electors of the
German states and the princes of Italy, who advanced toward him doing
homage, and retired chiming the quarters of the hours with their canes. The
kings of Europe did the same, except that they struck the hours instead of
the quarters. The maker, Burdeau, advertised his intention of exhibiting
this work of art in public, and knowing the stubborn resistance offered to
his sovereign by William III., be determined to make the English monarch's
effigy particularly pliant, so that when its turn came he should show an
especial humility. "William, thus compelled, bowed very low indeed; but, at
the same moment, some part of the machinery snapped asunder, and threw 'Le
Grand Monarque' prostrate from his chair at the feet of the British king.
The news of the accident spread in every direction as an omen; the king was
informed of it, and poor Burdeau was confined in the Bastille."

Clock-omens, it seems, have not been confined to the work of this
unfortunate Frenchman, "A correspondent of Notes and Queries" for March 28,
1861, relates the following account of a curious omen or coincidence: 'On
Wednesday night, or rather Thursday morning, at three o'clock, the
inhabitants of the metropolis were roused by repeated strokes of the new
great bell at Westminster, and most persons supposed it was for a death in
the royal family. There might have been about twenty slow strokes when it
ceased. It proved, however, to be due to some derangement of the clock, for
at four and five o'clock, ten or twelve strokes were struck instead of the
proper number. On mentioning this in the morning to a friend who is deep in
London antiquities, he observed that there is an opinion in the city that
anything the matter with St. Paul's great bell is an omen of ill to the
royal family; and he added: "I hope the opinion will not extend to the
Westminster bell." This was at eleven on Friday morning. I see by the Times
this morning, that it was not till 1 A.M. the lamented Duchess of Kent was
considered in the least danger, and, as you are aware, she expired in less
than twenty-four hours. ... I am told the same notion obtains at Windsor.'"

A century after Burdeau's masterpiece, a much more useful work, and one
perhaps equally characteristic of the nationality of its maker, was
executed for George III. by Alexander Cumming, of Edinburgh, which
registered the height of the barometer. "This was effected by a circular
card, of about two feet in diameter, being made to turn once in a year, the
card was divided by radii lines into three hundred and sixty-five
divisions, the months and days being marked round the edge, while the usual
range of the barometer was indicated in inches and tenths by circular lines
described from the centre. A pencil, with a fine point pressed on the card
by a spring, and held by an upright rod floating on the mercury, accurately
marked the state of the barometer; the card, being carried forward by the
clock, brought each day to the pencil. It was not even necessary to change
the card at the year's end, as a pencil with a different-colored lead would
make a distinction between two years. This barometer-clock cost nearly two
thousand pounds, and the maker was allowed a salary of two hundred pounds
per annum to keep it in repair."

{277}

Taking leave of these ingenious complications, we may say indeed that in
nothing has "man sought out many inventions," or exhibited his diligence
and patience, more than in the science of clockmaking. Earth, air, fire,
and water have been pressed into his service for his purpose; the sand or
earth clock being worked like the water-clock; the air-clock consisting in
the pumping of a bellows, like those of an organ, the gradual escape of the
air regulating the descent of a weight, which carried round the wheels; and
the fire-clock being formed upon the principle of the smoke-jack, the
"wheels being moved by means of a lamp, which also gave light to the dial;
this clock was made to announce the several hours by placing at each a
corresponding number of crackers, which were exploded at proper times."
This very alarming time-piece was outdone by a cannon-clock placed in 1832
in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. "A burning-glass was fixed over the
vent of a cannon, so that the sun's rays at the moment of its passing the
meridian were contracted by the glass on the priming, and the piece was
fired; the burning-glass being regulated for this purpose every month." At
Greenwich Observatory there is a most ingenious wind-clock, which, however,
is not a time-measurer, but registers for itself, with pencil and paper,
the wayward action of the wind. "Each minute and each hour has its written
record, without human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant
comes to put a new blank sheet in the place of that which has been covered
by the moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound up in a
volume. This book might with truth be lettered, The History of the Wind;
written by Itself: an AEolian Autobiography."

The well-known and simple piece of mechanism called a cuckoo-clock has been
the cause of some spiritual mischief. An assortment of them was taken by
certain missionaries to the Friendly Islands, the inhabitants of which
resolutely refused to attribute them to science; they believed that each
contained a spirit, which would detect a thief if anything were stolen from
their English visitors. When a native was sick, a cuckoo-clock was always
sent for, as being "great medicine." Unfortunately, however, one of the
clocks got out of order, and since the missionaries did not understand how
to set it right, they fell into contempt, and lost their usefulness.

The two most curious examples of clock-work--apart from intricacy--to which
Mr. Wood has introduced us are the clock-lock and the clock-bed. The
former, made by a locksmith of Frankfort in 1859, consisted of a strong box
without any keyhole at all, and which even its owner could not open. Inside
was a clock-work, the hand of which, when the box was open, the owner
placed at the hour and minute when he again wanted to have access to the
interior of the box. The works began to move as soon as the lid was shut,
and time alone was the key. The clock-bed was the invention of a Bohemian
in 1858, and was so constructed that a pressure upon it caused a soft and
gentle air of Auber's to be played, which continued long enough to lull to
sleep the most wakeful. At the head was a clock, the hand of which being
placed at the hour that the sleeper wished to rise, when the time arrived
the bed played a march of Spontoni's (spontaneously) with drums and
cymbals, enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.

The great time-piece of Westminster, which receives Greenwich time by
electricity, exhibits no sensible error in less than a month. Mr. Airy's
last report upon its rate was that the first blow of the hour may be relied
on within less than one second a week; which is a seven times greater
accuracy than was required in the original conditions under which the clock
was built.

{278}

A proportionate part of Mr. Wood's interesting volume is devoted to the
smaller subject of watches. The invention of the coiled spring as a motive
power instead of the weight used in clocks seems to have taken place in
1477, at Nuremberg, where watches were first made, and called, from their
oval shape, Nuremberg eggs. In 1530. we find Charles V., in his retirement
at the monastery of St. Yuste, amusing himself with "portable clocks;"
reflecting: "How foolish I was to have squandered so much blood and
treasure to make men think alike, when I can't even make a few watches keep
uniform time;" and good naturedly observing, when a monk overthrew them
all: "I have been laboring for some time to make these watches go together,
and now you have effected it in one instant." This emperor possessed one
watch that was made "in the jewel or collet of his ring," so that
diminutiveness of construction must have been rapidly attained. George
III., however, had a repeating watch presented to him (by Arnold of
Devereux Court, in the Strand) whose size did not exceed that of a silver
twopenny-piece. "It contained one hundred and twenty different parts, but
altogether weighed not more than five pennyweights, seven grains and
three-fourths. ... For this delicate and exquisite specimen of his art,
Arnold had to make nearly all the tools used in its manufacture. This tiny
watch contained the first ruby cylinder ever made, The king presented
Arnold with five hundred guineas; and when the Emperor of Russia offered a
thousand guineas for a similar one, the watchmaker refused to make it lest
he should depreciate the value of his gift."

Sir John Dick Lauder possesses a skull-watch that belonged to Mary Queen of
Scots; this is of silver gilt, and ornamented with representations of death
between the palace and the cottage; the garden of Eden, and the
crucifixion; the holy family at Bethlehem, etc. The works are as brains in
the skull, the hollow of which is filled by a silver bell; the dial-plate
being on a flat upon the roof of the mouth. With reference to this ghastly
subject, Mr. Wood relates that, in a French engraving of 1830, death enters
a watchmaker's shop, and shows his hour-glass to the master, saying:
"_Vais-je bien?_" to which the latter answers: "_Vous avancez
horriblement._" Many persons addicted to the science of watchmaking
seem, indeed, to have been on unusually familiar terms with the king of
terrors; and some have left epitaphs behind them of a very characteristic
nature. In the churchyard of Lydford, in Devonshire, is to be read the
following:

  "Here lies in a _horizontal_ position,
     the outside _case_ of
   George Rautleigh, watchmaker,
   whose abilities in that line were an honor to his profession.
   Integrity was the _mainspring_, and prudence the
     _regulator_ of all the _actions_ of his life;
   Humane, generous, and liberal, his _hand_ never
     _stopped_ till he had relieved distress;
   So nicely _regulated_ was his _movements_,
     that he never _went wrong_,
     except when _set-agoing_
   by people who did not know his _key_;
   Even then he was easily _set right_ again.
     He had the art of disposing of his _time_ so well,
     That his _hours_ glided away in one
   continual _round_ of pleasure and delight,
   Till an unlucky _moment_ put a _period_ to his existence.
     He departed this life November 14, 1802,
       Aged 57, _wound up_.
   In hopes of being taken in hand by his Maker;
   And of being thoroughly _cleaned, repaired_, and
     _set-agoing_ for the world to come."

Of course, watches could not be made to imitate the feats of the Strasburg
clock; but in the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg there is a watch
which was made by a Russian peasant, named Kulubin, in the reign of
Catharine II., which is sufficiently wonderful. It is about the size of an
egg, and contains a representation of the tomb of Christ, with the Roman
sentinels. On pressing a spring, the stone is rolled from the tomb, the
sentinels fall down, the angels appear, the holy women enter the sepulchre,
and the same chant which is sung in the Greek Church on Easter eve is
accurately performed.

The most costly and elaborate watch ever produced by British workmen, up to
1844, was made in that year by Hart & Son of Cornhill, for the Sultan Abdul
Medschid; the brilliancy of its colors and exquisiteness of its pencilling
seem to have surpassed anything of the kind of foreign manufacture. It
struck the hours and quarters by itself, and repeated them with the minutes
upon pressing a small gold slide; and the sound, produced by wires instead
of a bell, resembled that of a powerful and harmonious cathedral clock. Its
price was one thousand two hundred guineas.

{279}

The most accurately exact watch is probably Mr. Benson's Chronograph, used
for timing the Derby. "It consists of an ordinary quick train lever
movement, on a scale sufficiently large to carry the hands for an
eight-inch dial, and with the addition of a long seconds-hand, which
traverses the dial, instead of being, as usual, just above the figure VI.
The peculiarity of the chronograph consists in this seconds-hand and the
mechanism connected with it. The hand itself is double, or formed of two
distinct hands, one lying over the other. The lower one, at its extreme
end, is furnished with a small cup or reservoir, with a minute orifice at
the bottom. The corresponding extremity of the upper hand is bent over so
as to rest exactly over this puncture, and the reservoir having been filled
with ink of a thickness between ordinary writing fluid and printer's ink,
the chronograph is ready for action. The operator, who holds tightly
grasped in his hand a stout string connected with the mechanism peculiar to
this instrument, keeps a steady lookout for the fall of the starter's flag.
Simultaneously, therefore, with the start of the race, the string he holds
is pulled by him, and at the same moment the upper hand dips down through
the reservoir in the lower, and leaves a little dot or speck of ink upon
the dial. This is repeated as the horses pass the winning-post, so that a
lasting and indisputable record is afforded by the dots on the dial of the
time--exact to the tenth of a second--which is occupied in running the
race. As an example of the results of this instrument's operations, we may
add that it timed the start and arrival of the Derby race in 1866 as
follows: Start, 3 hours 34 min, 0 sec,; arrival, 3 hours 36 min. 49 sec.;
duration of race, 2 min. 49 sec."

To give an idea of the extraordinary division of labor in this delicate
science, it was stated in evidence before a committee of the House of
Commons, that there are one hundred and two distinct branches of the art of
watchmaking, and that the watch finisher, whose duty it is to put together
the scattered parts, is the only one of the hundred and two persons who can
work in any other department than his own. The hair-spring gives a very
curious proof of the value that can be given to a small piece of steel by
manual labor. Four thousand hair-springs scarcely weigh more than a single
ounce, but often cost more than a thousand pounds. "The pendulum-spring of
a watch, which governs the vibrations of the balance, costs, at the retail
price, two-pence, and weighs three-twentieths of a grain; while the retail
price of a pound of the best iron, the raw material out of which fifty
thousand such springs are made, is the same sum of two-pence." Mr.
Bennett--whose advocacy of female labor in the watch-trade has rendered him
obnoxious to some persons--states that he found at Neufchâtel, where the
Swiss watches are chiefly made, twenty thousand women employed upon the
more delicate parts of the watch-movement.

The last part of this very interesting volume is devoted to that perfection
of timekeepers, the chronometer, by which is found the longitude of a ship
at sea. Twenty thousand pounds was offered by the British government for
the invention of this instrument, which was awarded to John Harrison in
1765. His chronometer, in the first instance, was discredited on a voyage
to Jamaica, since it differed with the chart by a degree and a half, but it
was eventually discovered that it was the chart that was wrong. Of how
accurately chronometers are made, there are numberless instances; here is
one with which we must conclude. "After several months spent at sea,"
writes Dr. Arnott, "in a long passage from South America to Asia, my
pocket-chronometer, and others on board, announced one morning that a
certain point of land was then bearing north from the ship, at a distance
of fifty miles.
{280}
In an hour afterward, when a mist had cleared away, the looker-out on the
mast gave the joyous call of 'Land ahead!' verifying the reports of the
chronometers almost to one mile, after a voyage of thousands of miles. It
is allowable at such a moment, with the dangers and uncertainties of
ancient navigation before the mind, to exult in contemplating what man has
now achieved. Had the rate of the wonderful little instrument in an that
time quickened or slackened ever so slightly, its announcement would have
been useless, or even worse; but in the night and in the day, in storm and
in calm, in heat and in cold, its steady beat went on, keeping exact
account of the rolling of the earth and stars; and in the midst of the
trackless waves, which retain no mark, it was always ready to tell its
magic tale, indicating the very spot on the globe over which it had
arrived."

Among the relics of the Franklin expedition brought home from the arctic
regions by M'Clintock was a pocket-chronometer in excellent preservation;
it had stopped at four o'clock. The owner probably had done with time ere
that.

------

  Translated from Revue Génétale, Brussels.

  Catholic Doctrine and Natural Science.

M. D'Omalius D'Halloy, in a discourse recently delivered at a general
annual meeting of the class of sciences of the Royal Academy of Belgium
(December 16th, 1866), treated the question which has frequently and
seriously occupied learned minds. Director of an order which has for the
past fifty years been signalized by assiduous labors and patient
researches, he has once again attested, with that superior authority which
none can deny, that "the pretence is shameful, that our religious teachings
are in opposition to the progress of natural science." We receive, with
respect and attention, this frank declaration as the testimony of a noble
mind surrounded with the double glory of science and faith. After the
exordium, the speaker thus pursued his demonstration:

If we commence with that which related to the creation, we shall see, on
the one side, those men who, not wishing to forsake the ideas which were
formed in their early years, have profited by their influence in religious
matters to condemn others who do not desire to follow their conclusions in
regard to the phenomena of the natural development of the world; meanwhile,
on the other side, those men who, inflated by their pride, or prompted by
their desire to divest themselves of the restraint that religion imposes
upon their passions, have profited all they could in whatever they found
obscure or contradictory in the explanations of their adversaries to deny
divine inspiration to the sacred books, and consequently to the fundamental
principles of our religious belief.

I am, on the contrary, led to believe that we can see nothing in the
cosmogony of the book of Genesis but the consecration of several grand
principles; namely, the existence of an all-powerful God anterior to
matter, and its creation by him. I acknowledge that our minds conceive with
difficulty these two principles, but it is more difficult to conceive the
existence of the universe and its admirable arrangement without the
pre-existence of [an] omnipotent being; one against whom neither science
nor reason could raise an objection, or refuse to admit the existence of
its two component principles.
{281}
When we say that God inspired our sacred books, we mean to convey that he
has caused certain men to understand the great truths which they contain;
we do not wish to assert that he has endowed these men with a complete
scientific knowledge. Besides, to comprehend all that study has revealed to
modern _savans_, they should speak or understand the rude language of
the age in question; even at this period, though civilization and the art
of printing have greatly increased the instruction of the masses, we find
astronomers speaking of the _rising_ and the _setting_ of the
sun.

We should not take the sacred writings for other than what they really are;
namely, as the medium through which we are to understand the great
principles which form the basis of our religious belief; and not as
treatises upon natural science.

The long periods, the existence of which has been revealed by the study of
the terrestrial globe, have also been placed in opposition to the recent
period which we find named in the Bible as the epoch of the creation. But
it is to be remarked, in the first place, that the term translated
_day_ has been erroneously rendered; the seven successive periods
indicated in the Bible as the limits of events were not confined to
twenty-four hours; and, in the second place, that the calculations derived
from the age and genealogy of the patriarchs should not be regarded as
imperative; first, because we do not possess the positive value of the
expression translated as _year_, and, further, because it appears that
a portion of the terms of the genealogical series has been lost in the
lapse of time.

The question of the deluge has also given rise to numerous contradictions;
but it seems to me that we can say, on the one side, that these
contradictions support themselves upon the susceptible hypotheses of
discussion, and, on the other, upon the interpretations of modified nature
which they will eventually acknowledge. It is thus that, while there exist
in geology schools which deny the great cataclysms, there are others which
admit them; and we cannot deny that the theory which attributes the origin
of our high mountains to swellings of the crust of the earth relatively
recent, destroys the objections raised against the return of the waters
upon the materials forming the summits of our most elevated plateaux.
Notwithstanding the objections which anthropologists make against the
opinion that all mankind are descended from Noah, which agrees with pure
hypothesis, can we not say that the contrary opinion is founded upon but
one interpretation of Genesis, which cannot be very exact? Indeed, it
appears to me that the book, after the account of the creation, which
should be applied to the entire universe, does, while it always teaches the
power of God and the origin of things, assume: an especial character;
namely, it becomes a history of a people whom God had chosen to serve him
in a particular manner. Thus the history of the Bible does not relate to
any other people than the Hebrews, although these people had relations with
the most powerful races on the earth; the races that are willing to admit
that the deluge of which they speak submerged all the countries known to
the Hebrews, but not all the terrestrial globe. They object in this manner
to see that the book of Genesis gives to the deluge the title of universal;
but is not this one of those expressions often employed to designate
something understood? Do we not often say, All the world was united, all
Europe is afraid, all the world listens? Expressions of this kind are very
common in the florid style of the orientals; and, without leaving the
sacred books, do we not read of the Pentecost, that there were in the
assembly who listened to the apostles "Jews of all the nations under
heaven;" and in the enumeration of the countries from which they came,
"Rome was the most distant?"

{282}

If I here recall the hypotheses of the anthropology of all men who did not
actually descend from Noah, I am far from saying that they were not
descended from one couple. I have had, on the contrary, occasion to declare
that, according to my views, science, in its present state, is powerless to
resolve the question whether the human race is descended from one or from
several sources. However, I am convinced that the differences which
actually present themselves in the diverse human races have not manifested
themselves since the deluge of Noah. I have said, long since, that
paleontology has led me to admit that hereditary transformations are much
more important than the differences which exist in the human race. At all
times admitting that man has hardly suffered the transformations analogous
to those described in the paleontological order, I am far from concluding
that he descends from a beast. Existing observations do not disprove the
distinct creation attributed by the Bible to man. The opinion of some
authors, that all living beings derive their origin from a monad, is a
gratuitous hypothesis, which cannot be supported by facts. Quite to the
contrary, we learn, by paleontology, that all the great organic types
existed in the silurian period; and, if the vertebral type had not yet been
observed in the anterior deposits, this negative circumstance is considered
of small importance. For it is only a short time since that the existence
of organic remains in these deposits has been revealed; that these remains
are very rare, and that even they differ but slightly from those of the
silurian soil. Now, if the present state of observation leads us to admit
that the Creator originally and distinctly formed the great types of
organization, nothing authorizes us to deny that he created in a distinct
manner the only being endowed with the faculty of knowing and adoring him.

On the other side, we do not see why the special origin of man is denied,
even if he should have changed his form with time, as I suppose other
living creatures may have done. Genesis tells us truly that God created man
in his own image; but we cannot understand this phrase to signify that he
himself actuated a material form. God has taken the human form under
certain circumstances to communicate with man, but no one maintains that
this is the normal form of an essentially spiritual being. The Bible, in
speaking of the image of the Deity, scarcely alludes to the material and
decomposable part of man, but always to the spiritual part; which, to be
the _image of God_, should be endowed with immortality. But this
spiritual part, which we call the soul, may have been placed in a being who
had a different form to that worn by man at the present time; one more
appropriate to the sphere in which he lived. Because God now permits the
existence of men, who, by their brutishness, assimilate to the beasts, we
see no reason for supposing that the first men had forms unsuited to the
development of the faculties which characterize the civilized world of
to-day.

They have also denied particular immortality to human souls in assimilating
them to vital force, but this is one of those hypotheses unfounded upon any
observation.

I am convinced that the life, that is to say, the vital force, or the union
of forces which gives to matter the attributes characteristic of organized
bodies, can be assimilated, to a certain degree, to the forces which
determine physical phenomena; because the condition of its effects are more
restrained, and only develop by continuation with the body with which it
was originally endowed, and is not a sufficient reason for concluding that
it belongs to an entirely different order of things. We see, in effect,
that the order of forces presents phenomena which becomes successively less
general; it is thus that attraction constantly acts upon all bodies, while
there exist circumstances where affinity acts upon certain bodies; and the
manifestation of electricity is due to conditions again less general.
{283}
On the other side, we cannot conceive the movement of the stars without the
first cause of impulsion, any more than we can conceive the birth of a
living being without the intervention of a pre-existing cause; we cannot
give to these connections any consequence contrary to the dogma of the
immortality of the soul. Nor can science decide whether physical phenomena
are owing to diverse forces, or to a single force that manifests itself in
various ways; neither resolve the question whether life is composed of an
individual force or the union of many. It is certain that _vegetable
life_, a term which we consider applicable to all living things, is
something different from _animal life_, a term applied to all sensible
beings. It is contended no longer that man has attributes not possessed by
beasts. Now we see nothing in physiology which opposes itself to these
aptitudes being determined by a particular force named the soul, and that
this force be endowed with immortality; that is to say, the power of
preserving eternally its individuality after separation from the matter
which it once animated.

Although I am unfamiliar with physiological studies, I will add that these
considerations compel me to say that I have no right to apply the name of
soul to that force which animates beasts; not that I wish to rob certain
animals of the faculties which they enjoy, but whatever may be the
intelligence or social capacity with which these animals are endowed, they
cannot pretend to perform the _rôle_ that man maintains upon earth.
And neither physiology nor the sacred writings lead us to believe that the
force which animates beasts should be endowed with immortality. I can only
avow that the birth, the existence, and the death of an animal are but the
manifestation of a vital force determined by particular circumstances, as
lightning and thunder are but the manifestations of electricity.

Again, according to my views, a religious sense has hardly been given to
the admission or the rejection of a human kingdom, a question frequently
agitated in these modern times. In fact, the division of natural bodies
into three kingdoms, with their inferior subdivisions, has only been made
to facilitate the knowledge of these beings, and to designate by name the
different groups of which we would speak. We cannot deny that by the
mineral, the animal, and the vegetable kingdoms we understand three
divisions, which include all bodies on the terrestrial globe; and that each
one has common attributes which are not found in the two others; it follows
that, when we admit a human kingdom, we have no term to designate the class
of beings possessing the attributes which distinguish man and the beasts
from the two other kingdoms. This consideration causes me to reject the
human kingdom, without always classing man in the animal; the enlargement
of the vertebrae and the mammiferous class appear to me to oppose
themselves in another order of ideas; we must, therefore, believe that man
is endowed with a soul enjoying attributes different from the force which
animates beasts.

In conclusion, I do not hesitate to say that there exists in my mind no
real opposition between our religious belief and the demonstrations
afforded by the present state of the natural sciences.

------

{284}

    Miscellany.

_Meteoric Stones_.--M. Daubrée records his observations on a great
shower of meteoric stones which fell on the 30th of May, in the territory
of Saint Mesmin, in the Department of the Aube. Mr. Daubrée gives the
following account of the phenomenon: The weather being fine and dry, and
only a few clouds in the sky, at about 4,45 in the morning a luminous mass
was seen to cross the sky with great rapidity, and shedding a great light
between Mesgrigny and Payns. A few seconds after this appearance, three
loud explosions, like the report of cannon, were heard at intervals of one
or two seconds. Several minor explosions, like those of muskets, followed
the first, and succeeded one another like the discharge of skirmishers.
After the detonations a tongue of fire darted toward the earth, and at the
same time a hissing noise was heard like that of a squib, but much louder.
This again was followed by a dull, heavy sound, which a person compared to
that of a shell striking the earth near him. After a long search he
perceived, at the distance of about two hundred feet from the place where
he was when he heard the noise, a spot where the earth had been newly
disturbed; he examined the place, and saw a black stone at the bottom of a
hole nine inches deep, which it seemed to have formed. This stone weighs
nearly ten pounds. On the following day a gendarme named Framonnot picked
up another meteoric stone of the same nature, weighing nearly seven pounds,
at about two thousand feet distant from where it first fell. A third stone
was found on the first of June by a man named Prosat, five to six thousand
feet from the two spots above referred to. This last meteorite weighed
nearly four pounds and a half.-_Science Review._



_Father Secchi_.--A new spectroscope has been constructed by Father
Secchi, S.J., and seems to be a very excellent instrument. It absorbs a
very small quantity of light, and is therefore admirably adapted for
stellar observations. The inventor has analyzed with it the spectrum of the
light emitted by the star Antarés. It is of a red color; the luminous bands
have been resolved into bright lines, and the dark ones are checkered with
light and dark lines, so there is no black foundation.--_The Reader._


_The Heat-conductibility of Mercury_.--M. Gripon, who has been making
experiments after Peclet's method, thinks he has demonstrated that if the
conducting power of silver be regarded as 100, that of mercury is equal to
3.54. He places mercury, therefore, the lowest in the scale of metals, as
far as the conductibility of heat is concerned. It is strange that electric
conductivity is quite different, being represented by the figures
1.80.--_Science Review_.


_Penetration of Platinum and Iron by Hydrogen_.--From time to time we
have reported the discoveries of Troost and Deville in this field of
research. These conclusions have recently been collected by the master of
the mint, Mr. Thomas Graham, in an admirable paper published in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society. He thinks that this wonderful penetration
is connected with a power resident in the above-mentioned and certain other
metals to liquefy and absorb hydrogen, which latter is possibly in the
condition of a metallic vapor. Platinum in the form of wire or plate at a
low, red heat may take up and hold 3.8 volumes of hydrogen, measured cold;
but it is by palladium that the property in question appears to be
possessed in the highest degree. Palladium foil from the hammered metal,
condensed so much as 643 times its volume of hydrogen, at a temperature
under 100° C. The same metal had not the slightest absorbent power for
either oxygen or nitrogen. The capacity of fused palladium (as also of
fused platinum) is considerably reduced, but foil or fused palladium, a
specimen of which Mr. Graham obtained from Mr. G. Matthey, absorbed 68
volumes of the gas. Mr. Graham thinks that a certain degree of porosity may
be admitted to exist in all these metals.--_Science Review_.

{285}

_Improvements in the Barometer_.--Some important improvements have
recently been effected in the Aneroid barometer by Messrs. Cook &; Sons,
the opticians. Although the Aneroid, under ordinary circumstances, has been
shown by Mr. Glaisher and others to be very much more effective and
satisfactory in its results than could have been hoped, still, under
conditions which bring rapid changes of pressure into play, the instrument
when it returns to the nominal pressure does not always indicate correctly.
This results from the motion being communicated to the index axle by a
chain, and this chain, from other considerations, is the weakest part of
the instrument, and is the first acted upon by climactic influences, rust,
etc. Mr. Cook has abolished this chain altogether, substituting for it an
almost invisible driving-band of gold or platinum, and the result of this
great improvement is that the Aneroid may now be looked upon as an almost
perfect instrument for scientific research. Several such Aneroids, placed
under the receiver an air-pump, not only match absolutely together, but all
return unfailingly to one and the same indication--_The Reader_

------

     Original.

     New Publications.

1. Frederick The Great And His Court.
   An Historical Romance. By L. Mühlbach.
   Translated from the German
   by Mrs. Chapman Coleman and her
   daughters. New York: Appleton & Co.
   1867. 12mo, pp. 434.

2. Berlin And Sans-Souci; or, Frederick
   The Great and His Friends.
   An Historical Romance. Author,
   translators, and publishers the same.
   New York. 1867. 12mo, pp. 391.

3. Joseph II. and His Court.
   An Historical Romance. By the same.
   Translated from the German by
   Adelaide de V. Chaudbron; complete
   in one volume. New York: Appleton & Co.
   1867. 8vo, double columns, pp. 343.

We know nothing of the writer of these works, save the works themselves,
and even them we know only in the translations before us. The last-named
volume reads more like an original work in English than the others. Mrs.
Chapman Coleman and her daughters appear not to have learned the proper use
of _shall_ and _will_, and make now and then the same sort of
blunder the Frenchman did when he fell into the river and exclaimed: "I
_will_ be drowned, and nobody _shall_ help me out." The use of
_shall_ and _will_ is a little arbitrary in English. _Shall_
in the first person simply foretells, in the second and third persons it
commands; _will_ in the first person promises or expresses a
determination or resolution, in the second and third persons it simply
foretells. The same rule applies to _should_ and _would_. The
Scotch, Irish, and most foreigners are very apt to reverse the rule, as do
some New-Yorkers and most western writers and speakers.

These works themselves are too historical for romances, and too romantic
for histories. Unless one is exceedingly familiar with the real history of
the times, one never knows whether he is reading history or only romance.
The historical predominates in them, and most people will read them as
histories rather than romances, and thus imbibe many erroneous views of
real persons and events. The Empress Maria Theresa is praised enough and
more than enough, so far as words go, both as a woman and as a sovereign,
but she is, after all, represented very untruthfully as weak, sentimental,
permitting her ministers to persuade her to adopt measures to which she is
conscientiously opposed, and really ruinous to the empire. She is
arbitrary, despotic, and the slave of her confessor. The author even
repeats the silly story that Kaunitz persuaded her, in order to further his
policy, to write an autograph letter to Madame Pompadour, the mistress of
Louis XV., and to praise her for her virtue and modesty, a story invented,
it is said, by Frederick the Great. The _béte noir_ of the writer is
the clergy, and alike whether Catholic or Protestant.
{286}
The author sympathizes from first to last with Joseph II.; thinks the
Josephine reforms or pretended reforms very just, very wise in themselves,
but that the people were too ignorant and superstitious to appreciate them.
From first to last humanity takes precedence of God and the state of the
church. The great divinity the author worships is the mutual love of man
and woman, and the greatest evil that afflicts humanity, or at least
princes and princesses, is that they cannot follow the inclinations of
their own heart, but must sacrifice their affections to the demands of
state policy.

Joseph II. is a great favorite with the author, but Frederick the Great is
her hero. He is always great, noble, wise, just, with a most loving heart,
which he sacrifices to the necessities of state. No censure is breathed
against his infamous conduct in invading and taking possession of Silesia,
without even a color of right, and without even the formality of declaring
war against Austria, and while Austria, unsuspicious of any invasion, is
wholly unprepared to resist it, and embarrassed by a disputed succession.
He was successful, and in our times success is proof of right. Frederick
was utterly without principle, without faith of any sort, a
_philosophe_, corresponded with Voltaire, invited him to his court,
and even paid him a salary, and detested the clergy, and therefore was a
fitting idol of our modern liberals and humanitarians, and worshippers of
FORCE like Carlyle.

Joseph the Second, we are inclined to believe, was sincere, and really
wished to benefit the nation committed to his charge, and he gave proof of
it in revoking most of the changes he attempted, and dying as a Christian.
He was vain and ambitious, and was led astray by the philosophy of his
times, and his unprincipled minister, Prince Kaunitz, a legacy from his
mother. He, like all the philosophers of the eighteenth century, understood
nothing of the laws of continuity, and supposed anything he decided to be
for the good of his people, however contrary to all their most deeply
cherished convictions and their most inveterate habits, could be forced
upon them by power, and should be received with grateful hearts. Two things
he appears to never have known, that despotism cannot found liberty, and
that power must, if it would make people happy, suffer them to be happy in
their own. There was, in the eighteenth century, with the European rulers
and the upper classes much sincere and active benevolence--a real and
earnest desire to lighten the burdens of government and ameliorate the
condition of the people; and no one can read these volumes, with sufficient
knowledge to distinguish what in them is history from what is mere romance,
without being persuaded that real reforms would have gone much further, and
European society would have been far in advance of what it now is, if the
revolution of 1789 had never been attempted. All that was true in the
so-called principles of 1789 was favorably accepted by nearly all European
statesmen and sovereigns who were laboring peaceably and earnestly to
develop and apply it. The statesmen and sovereigns, unhappily, had utterly
false and mischievous views of the relation of the church to the state, and
imagined that the only way to reform society was to begin by subjecting the
spiritual to the temporal; but they went in this direction not so far as
went the old French revolution. Indeed, the great lesson of history is that
the attempt to effect real social reforms by raising the people against
legitimate authority, whether civil or ecclesiastical, always turns out a
failure. Some good may be gained on one side, but is sure to be more than
overbalanced by the evils effected on another side.

As purely literary works, these historical romances possess a high degree
of merit, and prove that the writer has rare powers of description and
analysis. They read like the genuine histories, and from them alone it is
impossible to say where the real history ends and the romance begins, so
completely is the verisimilitude maintained throughout. If, as we are told,
they are the production of a female pen, as they bear indubitable evidence
of being, they are truly remarkable productions. The characters introduced
are all, or nearly all, historical, and if not all or always faithfully
reproduced, they are presented without any violence to the generally
received history of the two courts described. There is a little too much
German sentimentality in them, if faithfully translated, to suit our taste,
and more than we believe is usually to be found in imperial or royal
courts; and the _liaisons_ of princes are treated with too much
lenity, if not downright approbation, to have a good moral effect; but they
indicate a rare mastery of the subjects they treat, and intellectual powers
of a very high order.
{287}
They are by no means faultless, and their spirit and tone are pagan rather
than Christian; but they who are familiar with the history of the two
courts described, and are accustomed to master the works they read instead
of being mastered by them, may read them even with profit.


  Lectures On Christian Unity,
  delivered in St. Ann's Church, Eighth Street, during the season of
  Advent, 1866, with an appendix on the condition of the Anglican
  Communion, and of the Eastern Churches. By the Rev. Thomas S. Preston,
  Pastor of St. Ann's Church and Chancellor of the diocese. 12mo, pp. 264.
  New-York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

Father Preston's style is natural, earnest, and direct. He is too anxious
to impress truth on the minds of his readers to load his pages with
rhetorical ornaments; too resolute in his opinions to hesitate at the most
downright and unmistakable expression of them. His ideas are clear, and
therefore his style has the two chief requisites of all good writing,
clearness and simplicity. It has also the beauty which invariably radiates
from a devout heart. Love of God, love of the Blessed Virgin and the
saints, love of the holy church and all her teachings and her ways,
illuminate every chapter with the light of an unaffected piety. And like
the majority of really devout controversialists, he writes without rancor
or bitterness. "No true Catholic," he says, "can be intemperate in speech,
much less in heart. .... When we speak of the claims of our religion or
announce our doctrines and urge them upon men, it is not to advance our own
opinions so much as to benefit mankind, and promote their best happiness,
temporal and spiritual. We feel that the church answers the very questions
which are agitating their souls; that it responds to the wants of their
spiritual being, now unsatisfied; that it is the only and the divine
barrier to infidelity so fast increasing among us. ... It is in this spirit
that these lectures are begun, with the earnest desire for truth, and a
comprehensive charity for all who differ from us."

The first of the four lectures comprised in this volume proves from reason,
Scripture, and the writings of the primitive fathers the necessity of unity
among all who profess the Christian faith. The second shows how impossible
it is of attainment under the theory of Protestantism, which holds that
everything concerning faith and salvation must be left to the private
judgment of each individual, and that no external authority has power to
bind the conscience or compel the obedience of believing men. There can be
no unity of belief unless there be an admitted standard of truth; and under
the Protestant theory such a standard cannot be found. There is no church
which can be such an authority, for, according to the doctrines of all the
reformed bodies, a church has no authority except that given to it by the
members. As then the members are not infallible, the church cannot be. The
Bible cannot be the authority; for history shows that the Scriptures,
subjected to private interpretation, have never been able to effect any
agreement whatever; and, moreover, it is practically impossible to prove
either the authenticity or inspiration of the sacred books without falling
back upon the authority of the church. The objections to setting up the
consent of the majority or the opinions of antiquity as a standard of
doctrine are likewise exposed with clearness, though very briefly. The
third lecture is devoted to an examination of the claims of Protestantism
to represent the Church of Christ, and a survey of the present condition
and history of the principal reformed bodies. In lecture the fourth the
claims of the Catholic Church upon the obedience of mankind are summarized
with beautiful lucidity and eloquence.

An appendix of 100 pages contains an interesting and valuable note on the
position of the Anglican churches, and some welcome information respecting
the church union movement, from which it is hardly necessary to say that
Father Preston expects no good. Neither is he so sanguine of happy results
from the ritualistic movement as a writer in a recent number of this
magazine; but of these, as of all other matters, he speaks with his
accustomed charity. A second part of the appendix gives an account of the
present position of the Eastern churches.

We regard this as the best work Father Preston has written, and we
earnestly join in the hope he expresses in his modest preface, that it "may
reach some minds who are seeking the truth, and lead them to the haven of
rest."

{288}

Lectures on doctrines of the Catholic Church are a powerful means of
conversion to the faith. Never were the public better disposed to inquire,
and more ready to listen to the claims of the church, than at present, and,
wherever lectures of this character have been given, their fruits have been
found more abundant than was anticipated.


  The Life Of St. Dominic And A Sketch Of The Dominican Order.
  With an introduction by the most Rev. J. S. Alemany, D.D., Archbishop of
  San Francisco. P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street.

This is not a reprint of F. Lacordaire's Life, but an original biography,
accompanied by a history of the Dominican order brought down to the present
day. It is from the pen of an anonymous English author, and resembles the
best works of the modern school of English Catholic writers in the care and
elegance with which it has been prepared. No one could have introduced it
more suitably to the American public than the illustrious Archbishop of San
Francisco, who is himself one of the brightest ornaments of the Dominican
order in modern times. It is the history of a great man and of a great
order, given in a moderate compass and an attractive style, and, of course,
well worth the perusal of every intelligent reader, whether Catholic or
Protestant.


  The Journal Of Maurice De Guérin.
  With an Essay by Matthew Arnold, and a Memoir by Saint-Beuve. Edited by
  G. S. Trebutien. Translated by Edward Thornton Fisher. 12mo. pp. 153. New
  York, Leypoldt & Hoyt. 1867.

Our readers, already so familiar with the character and writings of Eugénie
de Guérin from the frequent notices they have received, especially of her
Journal and Letters, will be glad to know that this journal of her so much
loved brother Maurice has been brought before the public.

In perusing the charming journal and mournful letters of Eugénie our
curiosity must needs be awakened to know more of her gifted brother, of
whom these pages of love speak so constantly. We have only to say that in
this volume that curiosity may be satisfied. Our readers will see depicted
the efforts of a soul vainly striving to find God outside of God in the
worship of nature, and at last returning, wearied and disappointed, like
the prodigal son to his father's home and embrace. Maurice de Guérin, who
had fallen away into heartless and godless pantheism, died kissing the
crucifix.



"The Catholic Publication Society" announces an American edition of a book
just published in London: "The Clergy and the Pulpit, in their relations to
the People,"
M. l'Abbé Mallois, chaplain to Napoleon III.

------

  Books Received.

From Hon. W. H. Seward, Secretary of State. Washington, D. C, Diplomatic
Correspondence, relating to Foreign Affairs for 1865. Parts I., II., and
III.; also Part IV., being an appendix to the other three parts, containing
letters and documents with reference to the assassination of President
Lincoln, and the attempted assassination of Secretary Seward, with extracts
from the press of Europe, and letters from public communities, of
condolence and sympathy, inspired by inspired by these events. 8vo.


From Kelly & Piet. Baltimore, Md, Devotion to the Holy Guardian Angels, in
the form of Considerations, Prayers, etc. Translated from the Italian of
Rev. P. de Mattel. S. J. 32mo. pp. 229. Price 50 cts.



From P. O'Shea, New York. The Life of St. Dominic and a Sketch of the
Dominican Order, with an introduction by Most Rev. J. S. Alemany, D.D. 1
vol. 12mo. pp. 370. Price $1.50.--The Gentle Skeptics; or, Essays and
Conversations of a Country Justice on the Authenticity in Truthfulness of
the Old Testament Records. By Rev. C. Walworth. New edition, revised. 1
vol. 12mo. Price $1.50.


From Ruttenberg & Co., Newberg, New York. An Address in behalf of Universal
Education with Religious Toleration. By the Hon. J. Monell. Pamphlet.



From Lawrence Kehoe, New York. Three Phases of Christian Love. By Lady
Herbert, of Lea. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 315. Price $1.50


From Dayton Ohio, we have received two pamphlets namely: the Divinity of
Christ, a sermon preached in the Holy Trinity Church, Dayton, Ohio, at the
conclusion of the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ; St.
Antony: Alban Butler and Local Gossip of the Dayton Journal. By X.


From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New. York, Lectures on Christian unity,
delivered in St. Ann's Church, New York, during the season of Advent, 1866,
with an Appendix on the condition of the Anglican Communion, etc. By Thomas
S. Preston, Pastor of St. Ann's Church. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 264. Price
$1.50--The Christian armed against the Seductions of the World, etc.
Translated from the Italian by Father Ignatius Spencer. 1 vol. 18mo. pp.
320, 50 cts.--Devotion to St. Joseph By Rev. Father Joseph Anthony
Patrignani, S. J. Translated from the French. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 360. Price
the 63 cts.--Fourth Annual Report of the Society for the Protection of the
Destitute.


From the author. Reconstruction of the Union., in a letter to Hon. E. D.
Morgan. U. S. Senator from New York, from Judge Edmonds. New York American
News Co. 8vo. Pamphlet, pp. 89.


From John Murphy & Co., Baltimore. Manual of the Lives of the Popes, from
St. Peter to Pius IX. By John Charles Earle, B.A. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 332.
Price $1.25.

------

{289}

  The Catholic World.

  Vol. NO. 27, June 1867


  Translated from Le Correspondant

  Lectures and Public Conferences Among the Ancients.

  I.

_Nil sub sole novum;_ there is nothing absolutely new under the sun.
Apart from the sciences and their application, our age differs less than we
suppose from the ages that preceded it. Fancying ourselves pure Frenchmen
of the nineteenth century, we discern upon a nearer view numerous traits of
resemblance to the contemporaries of Pliny and Plutarch.

"Who will deliver us from Greek and Roman shackles?" cried the author of
Gastronomie, in a fit of witty ill-humor. It is to be feared that for many
a long year we are condemned to imitate the Latins and Athenians whom we
love to slander even while copying them. What matter how unconsciously we
borrow from them? Many things besides the game that made the amusement of
our infancy may be considered renovations of Greek originals. Fashions,
customs, pleasures even, are ours, not by right of invention, but of
inheritance; and what we take for new is sometimes merely the old
refurbished.

If there be a novelty, for the mass of the people who do not pride
themselves on erudition, it is to be found in the lectures or conferences,
to which the public is bidden every winter. Tested first successfully in
Paris, through the enterprise of a few private individuals, they afterward,
favored by the influence of higher powers, reached the provinces--invaded
them, I should have said, if the word had not an offensive signification,
far from my thoughts. It is surprising to watch the rapid development of
this custom, exhibited as it is in the fact that since the second year a
thousand _chaires_ have sprung up in various parts of France. Modest
townships, no less than great cities, have their course of lectures, and
one peruses with interest the list of lecturers, [Footnote 55] some of whom
are accustomed by profession to communicating their ideas to an audience,
while others essay for the first time the public expression of their
opinions.

    [Footnote 55: The _chaires_ have been lately interdicted to Prince
    Albert de Brogile and to MM. Saint Marc Girardin, Cochin, Laboulaye,
    and Jules Simon. We cannot help, while recording this ostracism,
    deploring its effect upon French literature.--_Note of French
    Editor_.]

{290}

In the ranks of volunteer instructors (without mentioning professors, who
are naturally called to assume such a position) lawyers elbow physicians,
the Catholic priest finds himself next to the Protestant minister, and
officers march abreast with men of letters. Nay more: women too are seen
taking part in these manly exercises, anxious to prove good the equality of
their sex with ours.

'Tis undeniably an odd spectacle to unaccustomed eyes, and there is no lack
of discussion and outcry upon the matter. But one need only read a few
pages from the pen of ancient authors to discover that what startles us
to-day as a thing without precedent, had passed into a well-known custom in
the earliest ages of Christianity. It is into the subject of lectures and
conferences among the ancients that I propose to inquire, as a topic
offering interest if not profit to those who like to compare antiquity with
our own times.

  II.

Nowadays, thanks to the printing-press, which multiplies thought and
scatters it to the four winds of heaven, an author can enter into
communication with the public without going beyond the threshold of his
study. But among the ancients, when every copy of a work was painfully
executed by hand, who can estimate the pains, fatigue, and expense that
went to build up an incomplete publicity? What wonder then that an
historian like Herodotus introduced his book to public notice by reading it
aloud to the crowds assembled for the Olympic games, or that the people
paused to listen to him for days together? The author entered without delay
upon the enjoyment of his glory--the public into possession of a
masterpiece. Later, we learn that Prodicus, the sophist of Ceos, went from
city to city, reciting his allegory of Hercules between Virtue and
Pleasure, and engraving it upon the memory of all Greece.

Other similar instances might be cited, but merely as exceptions to the
customs anterior to the Christian era; nor was it in Greece but at Rome
that public lecturing first became a popular usage.

In the reign of Augustus, when eloquence had become _pacifice_ (or
narrow-minded, as the bitter spirits who pined for ancient laxity would
have said), Asinius Pollio, having been transformed from a republican into
a courtier without sacrificing his love of letters, bethought himself to
replace the oratorical combats, for ever banished from senate and forum, by
establishing a school of declamation, and assemblies whither authors should
resort to read their works in public.[Footnote 56] It was erecting a stage
for the exhibition of wits who longed for notoriety, and the plan could not
fail to succeed. Augustus, in harmony, on this occasion, with popular
desire, lent a hearty consent to the innovation. Not only did he sit among
the audience without giving evidence of weariness or _ennui_, but he
took an active part in the literary exercises, reading in person, or
letting; Tiberius read for him, various compositions of his own.[Footnote
57]

     [Footnote 56: Seneca the Rhetorician, Controv. V. Procem.]

     [Footnote 57: Sustonius, Augustus, 85, 89.]

Without doubting that Augustus really enjoyed these intellectual
entertainments, I believe the encouragement of a harmless literature to
have been in accordance with his policy. Every pursuit that could turn
aside the Romans from too importunate an interest in state affairs was
favorably received. What time remained for meddling in public matters to
any man occupied with polishing poetical phrases or rounding rhetorical
periods? The chair replaced the tribune advantageously. While bread and
circus games satisfied the lower classes, distractions and diversions of a
nobler stamp were provided for more enlightened minds. In both cases the
conduct of Augustus was actuated by the same motive.
{291}
So well did public lectures second his designs that be might perhaps have
introduced the fashion if it had not already existed. Under the
circumstances his countenance only was required to elevate what seemed like
a modish caprice to the dignity and durability of an imperial institution.
Even the most suspicious and distrustful of this prince's successors
forbore to disturb an amusement so conducive to their own advantage. The
least favorably inclined were contented with depriving the assemblies of
their presence, and others esteemed it an honor to be counted among the
most attentive listeners. Nero especially, imperial artist and metromaniac,
seems to have honestly regarded these exercises as one of the glories of
his reign.

Every one who fancied himself a man of talent (and illusions upon such
points are common to the literary world in all ages) was glad to win renown
by exhibiting the fruits of midnight toil. With few exceptions, all authors
claimed the public ear: Lucan to recite his Pharsalia; Silius Italicus, his
Punic War; Statius, his Thebald, Achilleïd, and Silvae; Pliny, his
Panegyric of Trajan.[Footnote 58] I mention those authors only whose
writings have remained to us; but many others sought to charm a Roman
audience. The list would be long, of lecturers whose names, without their
works, have come down to posterity; orators of whom Pliny has introduced a
large number to us in enumerating his personal friends. Princes followed
the contagious example of Augustus. Claudius and Nero enjoyed the display
or their acquirements;[Footnote 59] Domitian recited poems which he
certainly never wrote; but what matter for that? he liked to give himself
the airs of a poet, and of a successful poet, we may be sure. Nero, at
least, did not solicit applause in borrowed plumes. In short, no verses
were too bad to seek a hearing. A mania for reading and writing raged
abroad. Horace satirizes this madness, but after Horace's own sweet,
graceful fashion. Juvenal exclaims with wrathful bitterness: "Am I for ever
to be a listener? Shall I never retaliate, (I who have been) so often
teased with the Theseïd of husky Codrus? One man recites his comedies with
impunity, and another his elegies. Shall huge Telephus consume my day
unpunished; or Orestes, full to the extremest margin of the book, written
even on the reversed pages, and not finished then?" [Footnote 60]

    [Footnote 58: Suetonius; Lucan; Pliny the Younger, Let. III. 7, 18;
    Juvenal, vii. 79]

    [Footnote 59: Suetonius; Claudius, 41; Nero, 10.]

    [Footnote 60: Juvenal, i, 1.]

The time for retaliation came at last. A desire seized him during the reign
of Adrian to bring forward the satires so long kept under lock and key, and
to emulate those whom he had ridiculed. He bored no one, it is true, but
none the less fatal were the results to himself: Several passages,
cordially received by the public, and invidiously interpreted among
courtiers, seemed to contain hostile allusions to an imperial favorite; and
the emperor, under pretext of appointing the poetic octogenarian to a
military command, sent the satirist to the extreme recesses of Egypt to
finish his days in honorable exile. [Footnote 61]

    [Footnote 61: Suetonius, Juvenal]

The subjects of Roman lectures were exceedingly various; sometimes serious
and long-winded poems like those we have mentioned; sometimes comedies; but
oftener short poems, light and trifling, or sweet and tender, according to
the poet's vein. On exceptional occasions, some eloquent voice, disdaining
vulgar platitudes, aroused, with its noble accents, genuine Roman
sentiments; as on that day, in the Augustan era, when Cornelius Severus
deplored the death of Cicero and cursed his assassin in the glorious lines
that have been preserved to us. [Footnote 62]

   [Footnote 62: Pliny the Younger, Letters, iv, 27; v. 17; vi. 15, 21;
   viii.21.]

{292}

We notice as a singular fact that a lecturer endowed with a fine voice,
would sometimes content himself with reading passages from some ancient
poet, Ennius, for example; and with success too, if he read with taste.
[Footnote 63] But this was too low an aim to satisfy ambition. Men desired
fame and applause for themselves, and cared little to offer any works but
their own to the public.

    [Footnote 63: Seneca, the Rhetor, Suasor, 7.]

No style was banished from these assemblies. One day an audience listened
to dialogues, or to philosophical and moral dissertations; on the next,
some lawyer, already well known to fame through important law-suits,
claimed a hearing. The lawyer who had gained his client's cause before the
tribunal, came to argue in behalf of his own intellect before the public,
[Footnote 64] caring more, perhaps, to win in the second suit than in the
first. History, too, seems to have held an important place in lectures, nor
did the speaker limit himself to events long since gone by. Rome within a
few years had lost several distinguished men, whose death Titinius Capito
commemorated. [Footnote 65] Strictly speaking, it might be considered a
funeral oration, intended to console friends and relatives without wounding
any individual. But the intrepid lecturer ventured upon volcanic soil, and
portrayed the history of recent years with so great liberty of speech that,
at the close of the first assembly, he was surrounded and urged to silence:
why wound the feelings of auditors who blushed to hear of acts they had not
blushed to commit? [Footnote 66]

    [Footnote 64: Pliny the Younger, Lett. ii. 19; vii. 17.]

    [Footnote 65: Ibid., viii, 12.]

    [Footnote 66: Ibid., Lett. ix. 27.]

Probably he had reference to those informers who were expiating under
Trajan the favor and prosperity they had enjoyed under Domitian. That they
deserved scorn, there can be no doubt; but is it always easy to pass just
and impartial judgment upon contemporaries? Does not history run a chance
of resembling one of those retrospective reviews, before which, after a
change of rulers, the men of to-day lay complaints against the men of
yesterday?

Occasionally the choice of subjects was even more remarkable. The orator
Regulus, whom Pliny (usually so full of good will toward the subjects of
his criticism) unceasingly pursued with scornful hatred, loses his only
son. Not content with bestowing upon him magnificent obsequies, in which,
to strike all eyes with the spectacle of pompous woe, be sacrifices, upon
the funeral pile, the nightingales, parrots, dogs, and horses that the
child had loved; he would perpetuate his son's memory and spread abroad the
proofs of his own grief. Portraits and images wrought in wax, or copper, or
marble, ivory, silver, or gold--the most varied works of painter or
sculptor, suffice him not. It occurs to him that he himself is an artist--a
word-artist, and now or never his powers should be utilized. His son's life
and death would be an admirable text for a lecture. Quick to the work!
Great griefs are mute, says Seneca, but Regulus thinks otherwise; and in a
few days he gives forth to a numerous assembly an address which cannot fail
to do credit to his literary talents and his paternal sentiments. The
comedy (for what else can we call it?) met with success. So fine a piece
was not composed to delight a single audience, and Regulus, being rich
enough to pay the expenses of glory, addressed a sort of circular to the
magistrates of every important town throughout Italy and the provinces,
begging them to select their best declaimer and confide to him the reading
of this precious work of art. The wish of Regulus was gratified. [Footnote
67]

    [Footnote 67: Pliny the Younger, iv. 2, 7.]

Pliny's letter, giving these curious details, shows also that the fashion
of recitations had spread beyond Rome. Testimony to the same effect abounds
in ancient authors. Few cities were without public lectures. In imitation
of Italy, the practice was adopted in Africa, Gaul and Spain. Of Greece I
do not speak, for Greece is _par excellence_ the land of literary
recreations, and we will go thither all in good time.

{293}

  III.

It would appear from various texts that Rome at least had certain seasons
for lectures: the months of April and August, and sometimes of July, being
especially selected, no doubt because affairs before the tribunals were
then less frequent. Authors took advantage of these periods of leisure to
supplant the magistrates. But that each aspirant might have his turn,
meeting succeeded meeting. "Poets abound this year," writes Pliny; "we have
had recitations almost every day this month." Innocent satisfaction of a
mind enjoying the triumph of good taste and literature in these
exhibitions, or _osentationes_, as they were termed by severe judges!
Seneca advises his pupil Lucilius not to stoop to objects so paltry. One
would suppose that the frequency of public lectures would have led to the
erection of a public edifice--of an amphitheatre especially devoted to
these exercises. We find, however, that such a thing was never thought of,
and that each lecturer was expected to provide his platform as best he
could. Poor poets, a never-failing race, spoke in public squares or at the
baths. [Footnote 68] Petronius in his Satyricon depicts the old poet
Eumolpus declaiming anywhere and everywhere, in the streets or under
peristyles, spouting his verses to every comer, at the risk of being driven
away by the wearied crowd or of driving them away, a circumstance not more
flattering to a poet. Eumolpus is but a fictitious personage, but he is no
doubt drawn from life. Petronius describes what he has often witnessed; and
even if we could doubt this, Horace and Juvenal would bear witness to the
fidelity of the portrait.

    [Footnote 68: Horace, Sat. I. iv. 75.]

Even when the crowd was attentive, these meetings in the open air had their
inconveniences. Apuleius was to speak in Carthage, and great was his
reputation. The people crowded and pushed and hustled to get a front place.
So far so good, for what can be pleasanter than to see one's fellow
creatures suffocated in one's honor? Apuleius began in his finest tones,
the lecture marched apace, the most striking point was reached, enthusiasm
stood on tip-toe--when, alas for the vanity of human hopes! a pelting
shower fell upon all this success, dampening eloquence, putting the excited
audience to flight, and sending the orator home wet to the skin, with his
triumph changed to disaster. [Footnote 69]

    [Footnote 69: Apuleius, Florides.]

Accidents of this nature rarely occurred, at least to men of reputation
like Apuleius, for addresses were usually delivered under cover in a hall.
A suitable apartment was easily found by any one who could afford to hire
one. Sometimes, too, a friend would kindly lend his house, as for instance
Titinius Capito, who liked to render services of this kind. "His mansion,"
says Pliny, "belongs to all those who have addresses to deliver." A simple
dining-room sufficed for the occasions when only a few persons were
expected; but these were exceptional. [Footnote 70] The place of meeting
being selected, seats and benches were placed for the audience. A stage was
erected for the lecturer, raised above the public, so that none of his
gestures might be lost, and that he might judge correctly of the effect
produced. The audience consisted of men only, it being contrary to received
customs that a woman should appear in a lecture room. But an ingenious plan
was devised by which literary Roman ladies could enjoy the entertainment.
One part of the hall was sometimes curtained off with draperies, and behind
this shelter, a woman could listen at her ease, without wounding
conventional ideas. [Footnote 71]

    [Footnote 70: Tacitus, Dial. de Or. 9.]

    [Footnote 71: Pliny the Younger Letters viii. 12, 21]

The lecture was announced several days in advance, and ceremonious
invitations were issued to friends and personages of distinction. This
precaution proved useful in securing an audience, and fulfilled at the same
time a duty of politeness, the neglect of which implied indifference to the
courteous usages of the time. While slaves were carrying invitations
through the city, the host remained at home, and, in order to make his
voice clearer and more flexible, enveloped his throat in woolen cloths, and
imbibed soothing beverages.

{294}

The great day comes at last. The benches are filled. The lecturer only is
wanting. He appears, and at sight of him a murmur of satisfaction passes
round the hall. He takes the chair, often surrounded by his best friends,
who sit beside him to encourage him with their presence and to enjoy his
success. [Footnote 72] In order to appear in full lustre, he has arrayed
himself in a new white toga, dressed his hair and beard carefully, and
placed upon his finger a ring adorned with a precious stone. He unrolls a
manuscript; utters a few modest phrases in apology for his temerity, asking
of course the indulgence of the audience, but soliciting their justice
also, since he seeks before all things an exact criticism, revealing the
defects in his work, that he may correct them. This preamble being well
received, he enters upon the discourse. In reading he tries to give effect
to the words by a varied intonation of voice, by turns of his head and
movement of his eyes. Soon faint cries of "Excellent perfect!" arise in
various parts of the hall to charm his ear; but he feigns not to hear them.
He pauses, remarking, "I am afraid all this bores you. Perhaps I ought to
suppress a few passages, lest you should be wearied." But the audience are
too polite to admit that a short lecture would not displease them. "Oh! no,
no, skip nothing; we do not wish to lose a word." He proceeds, only to go
through the same farce a little later. "I have already abused your
patience; it is time to stop and release you from the remainder." "Read on,
read on! it is charming to hear you." He reads to the end; the admiration
grows, rises, bubbles over! where will it end? Thunders of applause follow,
and the lecturer is inwardly overjoyed, but his modesty never deserts him.
"Enough friends, enough!" he murmurs, "This is too much," Of course the
transports are redoubled, and our lecturer returns home, believing himself
a Virgil, a Sallust, or a Cicero.

    [Footnote 72: Pliny the Younger, Letters, vi. 6.]

We have described here a successful lecture; but not always, it must be
confessed, did the hero of the occasion carry away with him impressions so
agreeable. Sometimes an author had to renounce the pleasure of reading his
own composition, because of a weak or unpleasing voice, leaving the task of
delivery to a reader, near whom he sat, accompanying the recitation with
glance and gesture. [Footnote 73]

    [Footnote 73: Pliny the Younger, Letters, viii. 1; ix. 34.]

Then, too, there were a thousand petty mishaps, impossible to foresee or
avoid, one of which sufficed to spoil the occasion. Passierus Paulus, a
Roman knight, was addicted to the composition of elegiac verses; a family
peculiarity, it would seem, as he counted Propertius among his ancestors.
One day, among the numerous assemblage of invited guests, sat Javolenus
Priscus, a friend of the poet, though a little crazy. Paulus opened the
recitation of his elegies with one commencing: "Priscus, you order me--"
"I! faith! I ordered nothing," cried the crack-brained Javolenus, amid
explosions of laughter from the audience. Behold Passierus Paulus greatly
disconcerted! The absurdity of Javolenus had thrown a cloud over the
entertainment, which proves, observes Pliny, that not only should a
lecturer be himself of sane mind, but he should take care that his
listeners be so too.

Paulus grieved over the ill success of his lecture; not so Claudius when an
accident chanced to trouble the course of his recitation. He was at the
first pages of the address, when a remarkably stout auditor cracked and
brought to the ground a bench with his weight. The assembly roared with
laughter. The good-natured emperor was not in the least annoyed; and, when
silence was at last reestablished, he broke it again and again with peals
of merriment, carrying the audience along with him, at the thought of the
fat man's downfall.

{295}

But a graver difficulty presented itself occasionally in the unwillingness
of the public to partake of the feast of reason prepared for their
enjoyment. The frequency and length of these lectures, which would last
sometimes through two or three meetings, had tired many people, who came no
more, except under protest, saying with Juvenal (iii. 9), "No desert but
would be more endurable than Rome in lecturing times." Pliny bemoans this
falling off and sees therein a grievous sign for literature--decline and
decay. "The guests," he says, "stand about public places amusing themselves
with frivolous talk. From time to time they send to ask if the lecturer has
arrived, or if the preface is over, or the lecture far advanced. Then they
go in, but slowly and with regret. Nor do they remain to the close. One
slips out adroitly; another stalks unceremoniously away with his head in
the air. It is said that, in our fathers' time, Claudius, while walking
through his palace one day, heard a great noise, and, on asking the cause,
was told that Nonianus was reading one of his works. The prince went
immediately to join the assembly; but to-day prayers and entreaties will
not induce the most unoccupied man to come, or, if he does come, it is only
to complain of having lost a day because he has not lost it." [Footnote 74]

    [Footnote 74: Pliny the Younger, Letters, i. 13; iii. 18.]

To go away before the close was a mark of ill breeding, as Pliny
demonstrates; an infringement of that code of proprieties to which auditors
were expected to adapt themselves. Attention was, of course, required, but
many other things were prescribed. The excellent Plutarch, who seems to
have shared Pliny's weakness for this kind of exercise, was at the pains to
compose a treatise for his disciples upon the art of listening. "In a
listener," he says, "a supercilious air, a severe face, wandering eyes, a
stooping attitude, legs carelessly crossed, nay, more, a wink or nod, a
word in a neighbor's ear, an affected smile, a sad and dreamy look,
indecent yawns, and all other things of that nature, are reprehensible
defects to be scrupulously avoided." [Footnote 75]

    [Footnote 75: How to Listen, 13.]

Elsewhere he cites with approbation the conduct of Rusticus Arulenus: "One
day when I was making a public address in Rome, Arulenus sat among the
audience. In the middle of the conference, a soldier brought him a letter
from the emperor. A profound silence prevailed in an instant, and I myself
paused to give him time to read the despatches. This he declined to do, and
only opened his letter when the address was ended and the audience had
dispersed; conduct which won for him the admiration of every one." _Of
every one_, and especially, I imagine, of Plutarch, who must have been
flattered, indeed, to see that so grand a personage would not let his
attention wander even to state affairs.

Plutarch at least exacts of his audience only what may be called good
breeding. In this he agrees with Epictetus, who, while advising his
disciple not to attend the public readings of poets and orators (believing,
in his austere philosophy, that time might be better employed), recommends
him, if he must go, to preserve decency and gravity, not indulging in
boisterous and disorderly demonstrations, or wounding his host by giving
evidence of weariness. But Pliny is not satisfied with this. In maintaining
a religious attention at the lecture, the listener had fulfilled only half
his duties, the other half being applause. To leave without exhibiting
lively satisfaction was simply significant of boorish ill breeding. We find
Pliny in despair when one of his friends has not obtained the meed of
praise he had a right to expect from the audience. "For my own part," he
says, "I could not refuse my esteem and admiration to those who interest
themselves in literary labors." Before the lecture, he predicts in all
sincerity the most startling success; and at its close, pronounces upon it
in equally good faith a pompous eulogium. [Footnote 76]

   [Footnote 76: Epictetus, Manual, 51.]

Sometimes the facile admiration borders on simplicity. Sentius Angurinus
reads a poem, and the benevolent critic exclaims, "In my judgment, there
has been nothing better done for years;" giving a specimen of the lines,
that the reader may pass his own judgment. It is a little piece in which
he, Pliny, is compared to Calvus and Catullus and ranked, of course, above
both, without taking into consideration that he has the wisdom of a Cato
into the bargain. "What delicacy!" cries the tickled critic, "what nicety
of expression what vivacity!" Of course, who would not see charms in a
madrigal containing these pleasant sentiments about one's self? It would be
fastidious indeed to fail in admiration of such a production.

Sentius loudly proclaims the poetic talent of Pliny; and Pliny reciprocates
with the announcement that Sentius is one of those rare geniuses who do
honor to their age. It was an exchange of good offices--a mutual adulation
in which the lecturer of to-day received back all that he had generously
lavished about him yesterday. Vanity more than the love of letters found
its meed in this interchange of courtesies.

We have already seen that on one side the disdain of serious thinkers, and
on the other public satiety, had ended by injuring the success of these
exhibitions. Solitude reigned about the lecturer, but should he on that
account desert his post? It was an extreme case not to be easily met, but
necessity is ingenious. New plans were invented for filling the hall. If an
audience would not come, an audience must be hunted up--recruited at any
cost. Clients and freedmen were borrowed from personal friends to fill the
benches. One orator gathered together a troop of famished wretches and gave
them a plentiful dinner. The guests, having eaten and rejoiced, were fired
with gastric gratitude, and vigorously clapped the poems of their
Amphitryon. This trade was carried on every day, and those who said their
admiration for a good dinner were called by the expressive name of
_laudicoeni_. Others bought applause cash down; but at a low price, if
they were not particular as to quality; contented, for instance, with
servants, who could be had for three _denarii_ apiece. At this rate,
persons of low estate could drive a lucrative business by hiring out their
services. A more simple method, however, than that of paying listeners by
the day, was making use of debtors if one had any; for what debtor, with
any sense of duty, could help attending the lectures of his creditors?

An audience collected thus did not trouble themselves much about listening,
but no matter for that if they would but applaud; and applaud they did, and
all the more vigorously in proportion to their inattention, as Pliny tells
us, and we may well believe. All that the orchestra needed was a leader to
give the signal to his docile troop, at the fine points, and to regulate
the degrees of enthusiasm. Applause was no mere trade; it had risen to the
dignity of a science. A skilful manager could provide every suitable
emotion, from a discreet and low-voiced approbation up to passionately
tumultuous enthusiasm. First came murmurs of pleasure, starts of gratified
surprise and involuntary exclamations, followed by a silence no less
flattering. Gradually the excitement got beyond control, and manifested
itself by stamping of feet; by cries, nay, howls; to use the words of
Pliny, _ululatus large supersunt_. Togas were shaken; benches trembled
beneath the blows of trampling feet. Persons who sat near the lecturer, and
could take such a liberty, ran to embrace him in token of gratitude at the
delight he had afforded them. If perchance the speaker was an emperor,
respect did not allow them to kiss his sacred lips, but only to pour forth
expressions of gratitude.
{297}
The joy would become so universal, as we see in the case of Nero, that the
senate decreed solemn thanksgiving to be offered to the gods; and the
verses of the prince, graven in golden letters on the walls of the capitol,
to be dedicated to Jupiter, as the noblest offering earth could consecrate
to heaven. [Footnote 77]

    [Footnote 77: Pliny the Younger, Letters, ii. 10, 14; Martial, i. 77;
    Suetonius, Nero, 10.]

  IV.

We see by Pliny's lamentations that lectures in his day were not in vogue
as they had been formerly. But it must be remembered that, even when
lectures were at the height of popularity, they attracted only the
cultivated class, so-called; that is to say, the minority. The Roman people
did not pride themselves upon a marked taste for refined intellectual
pleasures, finding more fascination in spectacles and circus games.
Statius, according to contemporary accounts, appears to have been the poet
most eagerly sought; but numerous as was the audience that thronged to hear
him, there is little doubt, that, if some famous gladiator had appeared in
the arena, Statius would have stood a fair chance of addressing empty
benches. While the seats of the small lecture-room filled slowly with
hardly earned auditors, the amphitheatre steps were never vast enough to
accommodate the struggling multitude.

Only in Greece do we find a nation truly sensitive to purely intellectual
enjoyments. There the simple artisan understood and appreciated
philosophers, poets, and orators. The art of eloquence never left him
indifferent, and he would leave his trade to run to a discourse as to a
feast. With this disposition, what seemed to the Romans a pastime for the
few, was the chief interest of many members of Greek society. Public
speaking was but an accident in the lives of Pliny and his friends, while
to the clever men of Athens or Alexandria it became a profession. Anyone
who believed himself gifted with eloquence became a sophist or rhetor, and
with a little tact and assurance could count upon that kind of success
which is measured by a numerous audience. Some distinction between these
two classes of men, the sophist and the rhetor, should be made here. The
former claimed to have succeeded the philosophers, with the right to teach
the people, and to develop the commonplaces of politics, morals, and even
of religion. They made themselves preachers to the populace, and sometimes
to princes, as, for instance, when we find Dion Chrysostom holding forth
concerning the duties of royalty in Trajan's palace. Rhetors, on the other
hand, were professors of eloquence. Their avowed aim was to please, but,
while less proud in pretensions than the sophists, they were in reality
equally presumptuous, assuming to teach art not only by explaining its
roles, but also by offering in their own compositions finished models of
rhetoric, in the genuine belief that they had garnered up the heritage of
Demosthenes and Eschines. As all pretensions belong together, the sophist
often combined his duties with those of the rhetor; witness the Dion above
mentioned.

This race of public speakers lingered about the towns of Greece, and also
of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Lybia. Then, finding these limits too narrow,
they burst beyond them and invaded the Latin countries.

About the time of the Antonines, that is to say, when exhausted Roman
genius seemed doomed to barrenness, there came a _renaissance_ of
Greek letters. Many Romans preferred Greek to Latin for writing, and not
merely as a caprice or literary foppishness, loving to deck itself in
public with the riches of a foreign language. Marcus Aurelius converse with
himself in Greek in the memoirs where be makes his examination of
conscience. Why should we wonder that an audience should most readily
collect in Rome to listen to some elegant rhetorician from the East?

The reputation to be gained from public speaking was too enviable to admit
of delay in its acquisition. All persons did not even wait for manhood
before claiming the attention of the public.
{298}
Far from pleading youth as an excuse, they gloried in it. Hermogenes of
Tarsus made his _début_ at fifteen, as Marcus Aurelius tells us in his
travels. "In me," says Hermogenes haughtily, "you see an orator who has had
no master, an orator to whom years are still wanting." A sterile precocity
it proved to be, making him, according to his enemies, an old man among
youths, and a youth among old men.

Emulation fired women also. Many, and among their number young girls,
undertook to speak in public, and spoke effectively too, and with success.
History has left us the names of several of these muses, as the Greeks
sometimes called them. The muses did not reveal themselves too visibly to
their worshippers. A large curtain veiled them from the audience, lest
their beauty should make too dazzling an impression. No longer as at Rome
did draperies shelter the woman from the public; it was the public screened
from feminine attractions.

In Italy we have seen that poets were among the most eager aspirants for
recognition; but among the Greeks prose held public attention almost
exclusively, for a reason which we hope to make clear. The crowd rushed to
hear sophists and rhetors. Of historians there is no call to speak. The
name was claimed by some, but on weak pretensions. They babbled of military
art without understanding its first rules, and of geography while
transplanting towns and rivers from one country to another. They took
dragons stamped upon the Parthian standards for veritable dragons, of
monstrous dimensions, fastened to pikes and destined to be launched upon
the enemy, and to strangle and devour him. To give more credibility to
these accounts, they assure us that, perched upon a tree, they themselves
had seen the monsters and witnessed the frightful carnage. Elsewhere we
learn that a general slew twenty-seven Armenians by uttering one cry, or (a
statement no less remarkable) that, in a grand battle fought in Media, the
Romans had only two dead and nine wounded, while the enemy lost (observe
the exactness of the calculation) 70,236 men. [Footnote 78] And many more
such tales indulged in by Greek historians,

     "Quidquid Graecia mendax
  Audet in historia," (_Juvenal_,)

and detailed to credulous hearers. It is true that these authors of rare
imagination laid great stress upon fine language, if not upon veracity,
striving to gain distinction as polished writers. Lucian, however, who had
heard them, believed as little in their eloquence as in their truthfulness,
and laughed unmercifully at rhetors disguised as historians.

     [Footnote 78: Lucian, "Of the Way to write History."]

On another point the Greeks differed from the Romans. With the exception of
these written recitations, they did not read their orations. While in Rome
we find public lectures, in Greece we have conferences or oral exercises.
The theme was no doubt contemplated in private, and ideas were brought
forward which habit had made familiar to the orator, but he spoke without
manuscript gaining in vivacity of delivery and gesture by this liberty of
action. Pliny complains of the inconvenience of reading an address: "Since
neither hand nor eye is free, on which a declaimer should especially rely,
what wonder that the attention wanders?" The Greek threw off all fetters,
and spoke at once to eye and ear; unlike the lecturer who read his address,
seated, in a voice whose inflections were monotonous in comparison to the
modulations we are now about to describe. Our actor, for the platform was
in fact a stage to him, was wont to call violent gesticulation to the aid
of speech. He paced up and down in agitation, smiting his thighs,
perspiring and panting. Again, if the subject demanded calmness and
tranquillity, his actions grew melodious as a song to charm the audience,
throwing into the sweet, harmonious language of Greece new suavity and
unknown grace.
{299}
When Adrian of Tyre spoke, it was like the warbling of a nightingale, and
even those who were ignorant of Greek came to listen. Herodias Atticus had
more variety of tone than flutes and lyres; and, supreme above all, Varus
possessed a voice so flexible that one could have danced to it, as to the
sound of musical instruments. [Footnote 79]

    [Footnote 79: Lucian, Master of Rhetoric, 19, 20; Plutarch, How to
    Listen, 7; Philostratus, Life of the Soph. II. v. 8; x, 8, xxviii.]

One can fancy with what facility the fervid Greek imagination lent itself
to this enthusiasm. The state of religious belief contributed to bring
spirits under the dominion of eloquence. The ancient faith was singularly
weakened among pagan nations; and the priests who offered sacrifice to the
deities of Olympus never dreamed of giving instruction to the people whom
they gathered together in the temples. Men feel the need of moral teaching,
however faulty may be their practice. They thirst for it, and seek it,
though perhaps not at its true source. If pure waters are denied them, they
draw from troubled streams. Preaching, which had been neglected by the
ministers of paganism, was taken up by sophists. One had but to show
himself abroad, manifesting a desire to speak, and straightway a circle
gathered about him. To a renowned orator who wished to be silent, the
privilege of silence was denied; speech was not his to refuse. As, for
example, when Dion Chrysostom came as a spectator to the Olympic games,
hardly was he recognized before they forced him to address them; when,
taking for his theme the god they celebrated, he discoursed upon the
attributes of Jupiter.

Another peculiarity of the time was that an emperor even did not disdain to
inculcate virtue in public, guided, we may boldly assert, by no impulse of
vanity, but by a more generous motive than that of exhibiting his
eloquence. Marcus Aurelius, for it is of him we are speaking, was going to
war with the Marcomanni. It was feared, and with too good cause, that he
might die on this expedition, and he was implored earnestly, and without
flattery, to address the people, and leave to them, by way of farewell, the
moral precept that had guided his own career. He consented, and for three
days in succession his people learned, from the imperial philosopher, duty
as he himself understood and practised it. A curious and touching spectacle
it must have been to see a sovereign regarding the instruction of his
subjects as one of the functions of royalty. In unveiling his great soul,
Marcus Aurelius revealed to his people the secret of an administration
judged previously only by its beneficial effects; and left to his
successors a model that was to find, alas! few imitators.[Footnote 80]

    [Footnote 80: Vulcatius Gallicanus, Life of Aridius Cassius, 3.]

  V.

In all ages, even the most degraded, a few souls have found a source of
happy inspiration in moral truth. Whether among such self-appointed guides
in spiritual matters there were many really worthy of their mission, we may
be permitted to doubt. The instance, Lucian (I do not speak of Christians,
whose veracity might be doubted), shows the conduct of these teachers of
virtue to have been little in accordance with their language. Morality was
in danger of being stricken with sterility under such tillage, but the
field remained fertile though ill cultivated.

What can eloquence accomplish if the matter itself of eloquence be wanting?
All cannot be orators for the choosing, nor even all who are endowed by
heaven with those precious gifts that make an orator. There must be great
interests to defend and great questions to debate. Place Demosthenes or
Mirabeau in a chair of rhetoric, and what would they do with their genius?
{300}
A time came when there was no call but for school harangues; when
professors trained their pupils in reading and speaking upon hackneyed
themes familiar to every classroom. That such exercises may be useful for
children of fifteen years of age, I will not deny; but here we have masters
of eloquence descanting upon these venerable subjects, and impersonating
Alexander or Themistocles, Miltiades, Menelaus, or Priam. They were
scholars whose schooling was never ended. Gray heads betokened no
emancipation from childish leading-strings, and death found them far
removed from the maturity of manly oratory.

Would you know the subjects that attracted a delighted audience? A
Lacedaemonian urging the Greeks to destroy trophies raised during the
Peloponnesian war; or a Scythian conjuring his countrymen to abandon the
life of cities for a wandering existence. One while we have Athenians
wounded in Sicily praying for death at the hands of their companions;
again, Demosthenes justifying himself against Demades for receiving Persian
gold; with a hundred such trite themes, preserved to us by the complaisant
biographers of the rhetors. It is unlucky that they have not transmitted
for our edification any of these marvellous harangues entire, but we know
enough of them to be sure that the style then in vogue was that sonorous
Asiatic eloquence, pompous and commonplace in tone, compared by Dionysius
of Halicarnassus to a courtesan entering an honest household to drive
thence the mother of the family. Demosthenes is not to be recognized in the
flowery declamation put into his mouth in common with other great
personages. There were usages of style and rhetorical receipts, adapted to
all circumstances, serviceable for none.

The glory of ancient Greece was another text on which rhetors loved to
exercise their skill. They consoled themselves for achieving no exploits by
celebrating those of their ancestors; boasting of victories only when the
day of victory was long gone by. One orator was pleasantly nicknamed
Marathon from his inability to pronounce any discourse without referring to
the warriors killed at Marathon. Platea, Salamis, and Mycale had become
rhetorical commonplaces. "Why," asks Plutarch sadly, "why recall triumphs
that serve only to inspire us with useless pride? We should propose only
imitable examples. Are we not like children walking about in their fathers'
shoes?"

The eulogium of a city, a god, or some grand personage afforded matter for
ample development. Socrates tells us that speech makes trifles important
and great things trifling. This false definition of eloquence was received
as a precept, as an axiom. Panegyrists no longer confined their
commendation to heroes and great men, but pleaded the cause of the tyrant
Phalaris or the cowardly Thersites. One vaunted the merits of long hair,
another of bald heads. The praises were sung of parasites, parrots, gnats,
and fleas. "_In tenui labor_," said Virgil, when about to sing of
bees; but he could add, "_at tenuis, non gloria;_" for who can help
admiring the labors of these intelligent republicans? The rhetor promised
himself no less glory in celebrating the almost invisible wonders of the
flea. This kind of discourse received a name which may be translated
"paradoxical or unsustainable causes." Yet, strange to say, clever men did
not disapprove of such topics. Aulus Gellius considers them suited to
awaken talent, to sharpen wit, and inure it to difficulties. [Footnote 81]

    [Footnote 81: Lucian, Phalaris, The Gnat; Dion Chrysostom,
    _passim_; Plutarch, Art of Listening, 13; Synesius,  Praise of
    Baldness; Aulus Geilius, xvii. 12.]

To bring something out of nothing is a success of which one may justly be
proud. But rhetors, like conquerors, possessed an insatiable ambition. They
wished to astonish the world with new feats of prowess, and possibility has
no limits for adventurous and valiant spirits.
{301}
To speak without preparation, sagely, long-windedly, without error or
hesitation, being the noblest triumph attainable by man, improvisation
became the exercise _par excellence_. [Footnote 82] There stood the
orator, erect and tranquil, sure of himself and of his powers, waiting
until the audience should throw him the text selected for his dissertation.
The word given, he plunged into the discourse; words flowed in a
self-supplying stream, pure and abundant; and periods unrolled themselves
with admirable facility. No obstacle was insuperable; the stream flowed on
and on, straying perchance into side channels here and there; but the
listener followed its wanderings contentedly, for the paths were flowery
and came quickly to a termination. Phrases ready for all times, and served
up on all occasions, with a facility that knew neither pause nor
obstruction--such was the supreme merit or the age. But if we may believe
certain cavillers, it often sufficed to bring to the work audacity, to push
on boldly, careless of ideas, prompt in the creation of new and odd
expressions, regardless of solecisms, and anxious to avoid but one
thing--silence. [Footnote 83] To acquire this noble art, one needed little
study. Ignorance was no longer an obstacle, for it gave greater intrepidity
and audacity. "Would you have your son a good orator," says an epigram of
the Anthology, "do not let him learn his letters." [Footnote 84]

    [Footnote 82: Pliny peaks admiringly of one Isaeus, and improvisatore.
    But it was an exception in Rome. Lett. ii. 8.]

    [Footnote 83: Lucian, Master of Rhetoric, 18.]

  [Footnote 84: Anthology, vi. 152.]

We feel far removed from the time when Demosthenes thought it no blot on
his glory that his orations smelt of the oil! Greece has ever loved words.
Take away her eloquence, and she remains gossiping and loquacious. If I may
be allowed the comparison, she is like the princess in the fairy story,
dropping pearls from her lips. The true pearls being exhausted, only waxen
pearls remained.

And now, having proved an absence of apparent labor to be a condition of
success in these exhibitions, we can understand why poets did not resort
thither for the recitation of their works. Improvisations in verse had not
then been invented, but the enthusiasm they would have excited one may
easily fancy.

Spoiled by public favor, these fluent geniuses could not fail to hold their
own merits in high estimation. We will not take literally Lucian's
assertion that they set themselves above Demosthenes: "Who was your orator
of Paeania compared to me? Must I conquer all the ancients one by one?"
[Footnote 85] But they frequently speak in magnificent terms of their own
talents, elated at the tricks of the tongue so thoroughly mastered. Praise
them as one would, their self-praise was louder still. The sophists hid
their vanity more skillfully perhaps, affecting sober vestments and an air
of austerity, but it was merely a stage trick suited to the character to be
sustained. Sometimes, in order to produce a better effect on their hearers,
they appeared clad in the skins of wild beasts, with hair and beard
dishevelled, or wearing simply an old tunic and carrying a wallet and
staff. [Footnote 86] The rhetor was more dainty in his toilette; his
garments were of a white stuff woven with flowers, brought from the looms
of Tarentum, and so fine in texture as to show the outlines of the form
through its gauzy tissue. He wore Attic sandals like those of women,
covered here and there, or a Sicyonian buskin decorated with white fringe.
He did not disdain those external signs of luxury that betoken rank; and
went from town to town followed by numerous servants leading horses and
packs of hounds. One in particular drove a chariot with silvered reins,
and, passing lingeringly along the ranks of spectators on his way to the
chair, allowed them to contemplate his gorgeous robe covered with diamonds.
[Footnote 87]

    [Footnote 85: Lucian, Master of Rhetoric, 21.]

    [Footnote 86: Lucian, Peregrinus, Eunapius, Prohaeresius.]

    [Footnote 87: Philostratus, Life of the Sophists, I. xxv. 4; II. x. 4.]

{302}

Philostratus, the biographer and fervent admirer of the sophists, remarks
concerning one among them (the only one to whom he accords the praise) that
he was always modest, and never spoke boastingly of himself. The vanity of
many of them was simply ludicrous. Philagrius, newly arrived in Athens, was
indignant because a young man had ventured to ask his name, and shuddered
at the idea of meeting an individual unacquainted with Philagrius. In an
assembly he let fall an expression that shocked the ear of a purist. "Who
authorizes the use of that word?" asked the critic. "Philagrius," was the
haughty answer. Words sufficed that day to express his sentiments, but it
was not always so. One day an auditor presumed to fall asleep, an act of
irreverence soon detected by the orator. He paused, stupefied to perceive
that the audience were not all ears to hear him. Then, eager to avenge the
wound inflicted on literature in his person, he descended from the stage,
approached the unhappy sleeper, and roused him with a vigorous cuff. This
severe but merited reproof was not without a certain eloquence; and we
imagine that never again was anyone caught napping during the discourses of
the irascible Philagrius. [Footnote 88]

    [Footnote 88: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. viii. 1; xxvii. 3.]

A Phoenician rhetorician arrived in Attica. "With me," he explained to his
audience, "literature comes to you a second time from Phoenicia." Polemon,
the Carian, speaking for the first time in Athens, opened his address thus:
"Athenians, you are said to be good judges. I shall ascertain the truth of
the report by your manner of receiving my discourse." Forewarned is
forearmed. The audience were to applaud Polemon under pain of appearing
dull in Polemon's eyes. His genius, according to his own estimate, placed
him above the rank of kingdoms, on a level with kings and even with gods.
And as a great man must die after a fashion of his own, he had himself
buried alive, in his old age, lest years should impair his success. Hie
weeping friends delayed to seal the stone over the cavern. "Close the
tomb," he called out from below--"Close the tomb. Let it not be said that
the sun beheld Polemon silent." [Footnote 89]

    [Footnote 89: Philostratus, Life of the Sophists,
    I. xxv, 9, 27; II. x. 4.]


  VI.

Did worshippers so convinced of their own merit recognize and honor the
gifts of others? We shall see that they could mutually esteem and praise
each other. Herodius Atticus had been declaiming at the Olympic games: "You
are a second Demosthenes," he was told. "I would rather be a second
Polemon," was the reply. An odd desire, and one that showed the bad taste
of that day; but it expressed homage to a rival. Herodius in his turn saw
his superiority recognized in the exclamation of another rhetor: "We are
small change (_menue monnaie_) beside you." [Footnote 90] But these
instances of modesty are rare. They were usually indisposed to yield the
palm of eloquence so generously. Jealous one of another, they regarded all
praise not personal to themselves as so much stolen from them. Their
self-esteem was equalled only by their disdain of all rivals. Lucian gives
a recipe of a method often employed to injure a rival. "Ridicule every
other orator. Has he talent? Affect to believe that the sentiments are not
his own; that he decks himself in borrowed spoils. Is he commonplace? Think
him odious. Come late to his exhibitions. It will make you conspicuous.
Choose a moment of silence to utter a eulogium in singular language,
calculated to distract and startle the audience. Your exaggerated praises
will disgust them with the object of your praise and make them stop their
ears. Almost invariably smile scornfully, and never appear pleased with
what is said." [Footnote 91]

    [Footnote 90: Ibid. I. xxv. 17; II. v.8.]

    [Footnote 91: Lucian, Master of Rhetoric, 22.]

Meantime the orator, seeing his success threatened, was wont to meet the
skilful attack with a defence no less skilful. He managed his resources
prudently, gathering about him devoted friends to assist in the manoeuvres.
{303}
Under all circumstances he must count upon these faithful satellites.
Marcus Aurelius was to attend the exercises of Aristides. "Will you let me
bring my disciples?" asked the prudent rhetor. "Certainly," said the
emperor, "if it is customary." "And will you allow them to shout and
applaud with all their might?" added Aristides ingenuously. "Oh!
certainly," replied Marcus Aurelius, laughing, "that depends entirely upon
yourself." When the master spoke, the scholars must stamp enthusiastically.
If he were about to fail, they must reach out a helping hand, and give him
by applause the time to recover his self-possession.

Happy he who could count among his admirers some high and puissant
celebrity; for who can fail to discern the grandeur of an oration stamped
with the approbation of an imposing authority? When Heliodorus declaimed,
the emperor, holding him in great affection (who was that emperor, by the
way? The historian does not tell us, but no matter!), regarded with an air
of irritation anyone disinclined to applaud the speaker. And the laggards
took the hint, we may be sure, and adapted their impressions thenceforth to
the emotions of royalty. [Footnote 92]

   [Footnote 92: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. xxxii. 3]

But when an orator had reached the highest rank in the city, it is not to
be supposed that his reign was free from rivalry. Combatants came from a
distance to compete with him. Many lecturers, and by no means the least
brilliant, have a taste for travelling, and would extend their reputation
in any direction where there are ears to listen to them. Knights errant of
the rhetorical art wandered from province to province, seeking adversaries
and flinging challenges as they went. If victories heralded their approach,
the crowd ran to greet them, and the most illustrious citizens met them at
the city gates.

Conceive the uneasiness and agitation of the unlucky sophist or rhetor thus
disturbed in the possession of his glory. He had labored long to attain the
position of eminence, now threatened by the approaching aspirant. O
nothingness of glory! A single day might suffice to destroy the edifice of
many years. What was to be done? To refuse the challenge was to declare
himself vanquished. Rather death than such humiliation!

Death might follow a similar struggle. Niger, the famous declaimer, had
swallowed a fishbone which stuck in his throat. There came a stranger to
pronounce a public harangue, and Niger, fearing that his silence might be
construed into a desire to fly from the lists, declaimed in his turn, with
the fishbone still in his throat. The effort caused an inflammation so
violent as to result in his death.[Footnote 93]

    [Footnote 93: Plutarch, Precepts of Health, 16.]

The time having arrived for the new speaker to be heard, he opened his
address with a eulogium of the audience, as the exordium best calculated to
ensure success. "In this place one should bend the knee," [Footnote 94]
cried one of these orators, as if struck with a religious awe of the city
where he was to speak. We have two declamations of Lucian's that give a
good idea of the precautions peculiar to the trade. "The chosen of every
city are before me, the flower of Macedonia. This assemblage consists not
of an ignorant rabble, but of orators, historians, and sophists of the
highest distinction." This satirical Lucian was not sparing of compliments
to his Macedonian public; what was left for the Athenians? "I have long
desired an audience such as this. What approbation could I look for after
passing through your city without obtaining a hearing?" Then follows the
panegyric of the city, endowed not only with especial magnificence, but
with more men of power and talent than fell to the lot of any other city.
He exalts their benevolence and affability, and likens himself to the
Scythian Anacharsis, so fascinated with the charms of Athens as to be
unable to tear himself away.[Footnote 95]

    [Footnote 94: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. v. 3.]

    [Footnote 95: Herodotus, 8, The Scyth, 10, 11,]

{304}

I spoke just now of knights errant. Do you remember in accounts of the
tournament the disguised cavalier who enters the lists and is recognized by
the weight of his blows? The champions of rhetoric were sometimes the
heroes of similar adventures.

Hippodromus of Larissa landed at Smyrna, and, following the crowd, entered
a hall where one Megistias had drawn together an audience. Hippodromus was
in travelling gear. Approaching Megistias, he said: "Change clothes with
me. Lend me your mantle for a moment." The other looked at him to see if he
might be a maniac; but the exchange was made. "And now give me a subject of
declamation," continued Hippodromus. They gave him one, which he treated so
skilfully that Megistias exclaimed with surprise: "But who are you?" "I am
Hippodromus the Thessalian." In a few moments the report of the illustrious
rhetor's arrival had spread through the town, and the whole population
rushed to see and hear him. [Footnote 96]

    [Footnote 96: Philostratus, Life of the Sophists, I. xxiv.4.]

Again the challenger would be some great celebrity. Anatolius, prefect of
the praetorium, and gifted with remarkable eloquence, announced his speedy
arrival at Athens, challenging all speech-makers to an encounter, and
proposing one of the most difficult questions capable of discussion by
trained intelligences. Great agitation ensued. Anatolius was a formidable
judge, both by his science and by his exalted position in the state.
Eunapus tells us that Greece trembled more on that occasion than at the
approach of the Persians. He was Prohaeresius, the great Prohaeresius,
victor in every battle, to whom Rome was to erect a statue bearing the
inscription: _Rome, queen of the world, to Prohaeresius, king of
eloquence._ The Greeks decreed even a grander title to him. He was no
mere mortal; he was Mercury disguised in human form. One day when he had
finished speaking, the people gathered round him and kissed his hands and
feet, nay, licked his breast, as if he had been in very deed a god. And
would you know by what manifestation of power he had deserved this
idolatry? After improvising a long discourse, he had forthwith repeated it
word for word, without missing a single syllable. The prodigy could not be
denied, for reporters had been provided for the occasion, who had noted
down every expression. [Footnote 97]

    [Footnote 97: Eunapus, Prohaeresius.]

These transports on the part of the public, these passionate
demonstrations, bordering sometimes on delirium, are so foreign to our
habits that we should be inclined to suspect exaggeration in the recital of
Eunapus, if many other authorities did not testify also to the ecstasies
excited in the populace by eloquence. Habits of mind are, perhaps, harder
to eradicate than those of the soul, and Christianity succeeded in
introducing austere ideas in the spiritual life without immediately curing
this excessive love of eloquence. Applause was heard sometimes in churches,
and St. John Chrysostom had to impose silence more than once upon his
hearers, who clapped him, forgetful of the sanctity of the place in their
enthusiasm for the orator.

We have seen the bright side of the subject, but every medal has two sides.
Without speaking of the jealousies and enmities inherent to the profession,
can one be sure of being equal to one's self every day and all day? You
appear before an imposing assembly; all eyes are fixed upon you. Let
emotion seize you, a little lapse of memory, a slight absence of mind, and
you are lost. The thought is enough to intimidate the most intrepid rhetor.
And it was a misfortune not without example. Herodius Atticus, on one
occasion, stopped short in the presence of the emperor, and thought for an
instant of drowning himself in the Ister.
{305}
A similar accident happened to Heraclides, who took the accident more
philosophically, and sought consolation for his disgrace in abusing
improvisation, and composing a work in praise of labor. [Footnote 98]

    [Footnote 98: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. i. 36; xxvi. 3, 5. Here
    belongs an anecdote showing the pleasure taken by rhetors in insulting
    each other. Heraclides sent his Panegyric of Labor (Greek text) to one
    Ptolemaeus, and adept in improvisation. Ptolemaeus returned it to him,
    after erasing the first letter, so that the title stood, "Panegyric of
    an Ass." The biographer does not mention that Heraclides found the
    epigram to his taste.]

And who can count on the good nature of his audience? Listeners have a
certain malice of their own at times, as Philagrius once discovered to his
cost. He had composed a discourse in Asia, and learned it by heart. On
arriving in Athens, he presented himself before the amateurs and burst
forth into improvisation. By a wonderful coincidence, they had given him
precisely the subject which he had so carefully treated. Philagrius, sure
of his ground, began boldly, and wandered on like one led by the moment's
inspiration. He grew diffusive and pathetic; but, strange to relate, as the
discourse proceeded, the audience gave evidence of merriment, first by
subdued tittering, finally by uproarious bursts of laughter. Philagrius
paused in wrath and amazement. To calm this excitement, his hearers
produced a copy of the address which he had repeated without altering a
single word. Philagrius had been caught in a trap.[Footnote 99]

    [Footnote 99: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. viii. 3.]

The abuse of this false eloquence could not fail in the end to produce
disgust. Serious men began to ask themselves if these brilliant exercises
were true oratorical art or merely a vain tissue of words. A few even of
those who had yielded to the fascination began to look pityingly on
declaimers. Lucian lavished satire upon them, but the trade was still
prosperous in his day. Synesius, coming later, spared them as little. From
him we learn their misery as well as their presumption. We see that the
palmy days of the profession had passed away.

"I will not wander from door to door, attracting the townspeople with the
promise of a charming speech. O sad profession! Speaking for the crowd;
attempting the impossible in trying to please so many different minds! The
stage orator, no longer belonging to himself, is in truth a slave to the
public, subject to the caprice of every individual. If an auditor begins to
laugh, the sophist is lost. He dreads a morose visage; too close attention
seems to him to imply criticism, a restless turning of the head to signify
weariness. And yet he surely merits indulgent masters who sacrifices sleep
at night, spends his days in toil, consuming himself, as it were, with
hunger and fatigue, in order to compose a fine address. He comes before the
disdainful crowd to charm their ears, concealing his indisposition with an
affectation of health. Having bathed the day before, he presents himself to
the public at the appointed time, blooming, dimpling, displaying every
grace. He turns to the audience, wreathed in smiles, joyous in appearance,
but torn with secret pangs. He chews gum to make his voice clear and
strong, for even the most serious sophist lays great stress upon a fine
voice, and lavishes upon it much ill-concealed care. In the middle of the
oration, he pauses to ask for a beverage, previously prepared. A servant
offers it, and he drinks, moistening his throat, the better to pronounce
his melodious sentences. But the poor wretch cannot with all this gain the
good will of his hearers. The audience await the final clause impatiently,
that they may laugh in liberty. They would gladly see him with
out-stretched arm and parted lips, preserving the attitude and silence of a
statue: then, when worn out with weariness, they could escape." [Footnote
100]

    [Footnote 100: Synesius, Dion]

But of all the perils that menaced their very existence, sophists and
rhetoricians had most cause to dread the growing strength of Christianity.
The new religion proposed to its disciples, as the aim of life, an object
far more elevated than the pleasures of eloquence. It was no longer a
question of noble words, but of noble actions.
{306}
What were intellectual satisfactions in comparison to the joys of
conscience? The Christian sought the eloquence that should teach him his
duties, and the sophist with uncertain and contradictory answers was no
longer an authority. He must appeal to the priest for precepts of
unfailing, unchanging wisdom. Let some solitary, in repute for sanctity and
for familiarity with the things of God, leave his desert for a moment to
mingle among men, and the crowd rushed to greet him. St. John Chrysostom
proudly contrasts the entrance of a monk with that of a sophist. A few days
more, and the revolution was consummated. Sophists saw no one following
them, while the troop of the faithful, that is to say, the entire nation,
pressed upon the steps of the humble monk. A preacher of the gospel, even
if recommended only by soundness of doctrine and morality, was sure of
seeing listeners seated at the foot of the pulpit. But preachers who think
only of the triumph of the faith attain the true glory of oratory, that of
arousing emotion. Not only may a great thought come from the heart, but the
expression with which it is given forth. Why listen to elegant but empty
amplifications in schools, when in a neighboring basilica one could enjoy a
magnificent oration, whose brilliancy should remain untarnished through
fifteen centuries? No rhetor, but a young priest from Antioch, received
from contemporary admirers as well as from posterity the glorious name of
Chrysostom--Golden Mouth. The church is fertile in orators as in martyrs.
Christianity did not smother eloquence. She assigned to it new destinies;
regenerating, or rather (for it existed no longer) resuscitating it.


  VII.

And now we ask ourselves, what good and what evil these exercises have
done? The mischief is not far to seek. It is exhibited in every page of the
present article. Invented by vanity, these literary and philosophical
exhibitions had seldom any better object than the satisfaction of vanity;
hence their vitality and duration, but also their sterility.

But does this imply that they answered no useful end? By no means. I do not
believe with Ovid, a great amateur of public lectures, as it appears
(perhaps he used them himself), that they excite poetic genius. [Footnote
101] His contemporaries Horace and Virgil had no need of the stimulant of
public praise in the composition of their masterpieces. Pliny saw another
advantage in lectures, as giving a writer the opportunity to consult the
public, and to invite criticism with the view of correcting defects.
[Footnote 102] But an audience thus convoked is no severe and judicious
Aristarchus, overlooking no defect, [Footnote 103] but forever crying
"Correct." It is there to approve, and any lack of commendation is
generally criticised by the author as a want of good manners. Pliny's
friends applauded him, and Pliny, with singular simplicity, confessed
himself charmed with their good taste. [Footnote 104] What is he thinking
of when he speaks of the free judgment of auditors, and yet complains of
those who deny him applause? In fact, he says, whether you are the
inferior, equal, or superior of the lecturer, you have an interest in
praising him whom you surpass or who equals or surpasses you. Your
superior, because you merit no praise if he deserves none; your equal or
inferior, because the glory lavished upon him tends to raise your
reputation. With this convenient theory criticism loses its rights. We need
not wonder that Lucan, [Footnote 105] whose brilliant defects are easily
pardoned, allowed himself to be elated by the boisterous applause accorded
to his Pharsalia; or that, comparing his age and _débuts_ with those
of Virgil, be exclaimed! "My friends, am I so far behind the great?"
[Footnote 106] Seneca wisely decided that nothing had injured literature so
much as popular acclamations. [Footnote 107]

    [Footnote 101: Pont. iv. 2.]

    [Footnote 102: Letters, v, 3; vii. 17.]

    [Footnote 103: Horace, Poetic Art, 445.]

    [Footnote 104: Letters, iii. 18.]

    [Footnote 105: Letters, vi. 17.]

    [Footnote 106: Saetonius, Lucan.]

    [Footnote 107: Letters, 102.]

{307}

Far from thinking, as Pliny does, the system of lectures a finishing
school, I believe the author to be confirmed in his defects by applause and
adulation. But I agree with Pliny as to the efficiency of these assemblies
in preserving and propagating a taste for intellectual things. Mental
labor, even when bestowed on trivial matters, is of use in fostering
intelligence. Rhetors and sophists were generally inferior orators and
philosophers, but they deserve our thanks for their fidelity to study and
to the preservation of literary traditions. But for them the maturity of
Christian eloquence might have been long delayed. We must remember that
Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Ambrose had passed through their
schools before entering the church. The disciples effaced their masters,
while profiting by lessons received from them.

And, turning to a different view of the subject, it is no matter of
indifference to continue beyond the usual period assigned to serious labors
one's devotion to literature, so softening and humanizing in its influence
on the heart. This especially applies to a nation, unprovided by religion
or morality with any remedy against evil instincts. To write little verses
and polish periods is no great affair, I confess; but it is better than
wallowing in low and sometimes cruel sensuality, like the rabble. In point
of religious and moral convictions, the Greeks had fallen to a level with
the Romans. But one thing elevated them: an untiring love of poetry,
eloquence, and philosophy. In default of the reality, they pursued its
shadow. Ixion, so say their mythologists, embraced only the phantom of
Juno. True; but, while striving to win this phantom, he had not stooped to
base and ignoble loves. The astute and polished Greek avoided that
barbarism which engulfed the coarse, unlettered Roman.

We must not forget that Christian preaching has been served to a limited
extent, but yet effectively, by habits introduced by sophists. The first
comers freely explained their doctrines in public places without exciting
surprise. Every system received a hearing. Stoics, epicureans, and cynics
all sought to win converts to their various theories. Beneath the mantle of
philosophy, the Christian could mingle with the crowd, and, while teaching
a morality hitherto unknown, prepare the way for novel doctrines. When St.
Paul arrived in Athens, that city where all men, strangers or citizens,
were occupied only with hearing or uttering something new, [Footnote 108]
the multitude at first mistook the apostle for some wandering sophist, and
lent him an attentive ear so long as he did not openly shock their
preconceived ideas. Peregrinus, whose life and death Lucian gives us,
became a cynic after having been a Christian, and continued to address the
people. Lucian does not clearly mark the change nor the distinction between
the two systems of instruction, which seem to him equally strange. A
similar confusion must have often arisen, not in the minds of Christians
turned philosophers (there were fewer apostasies than conversions), but of
philosophers who became Christians.

    [Footnote 108: Acts of the Apostles, xvii. 21.]

Our study is ended. I had merely thought of writing a chapter on literary
history, without seeking in the past an attack or a defence of the present.
It is difficult to compare two periods justly. Our lectures and conferences
differ in many respects from those in vogue among the ancients, but who can
deny the various points of resemblance? If we wish, as everyone indeed must
wish, to secure a durable and legitimate success to the system, we must
remember it is not established merely for the recreation and diversion of
the public, like the theatre or the concert-room, but also and above all
for their instruction. It is a question of education.
{308}
I would have the lecture, whether literary or scientific, given in an
attractive style, not after the severe, didactic fashion or a _cours de
faculté;_ but it should be distinctly a lecture, so that the hearer may
carry away with him some profitable ideas with the memory of an agreeable
hour. In my humble opinion, it is only on these conditions that the system
of public conferences will obtain not merely a passing popularity, but
freedom of the city. If this be true, are we to encourage authors to read
their unpublished works, poems, dramas, odes, romances, or what not? In
these days there are other roads to publicity, and it is not by a single
hearing that intellectual works are to be judged. Still less must it be
allowed (for even improbabilities should be anticipated) that an author,
speculating in fame, should announce his arrival on such a day and hour:
"To speak about what? I have not the least idea, but no matter! I shall
speak, and you will have seen and heard me." A mere matter of curiosity,
making one think of the tight rope.

Another danger is, that conferences may become a sort of intellectual
gymnasium, only good for the development of suppleness and agility of mind.
Hitherto, in running over the lists of subjects under discussion, we have
met none of the frivolous and insignificant themes that rhetors revelled in
handling. The titles at least announce a serious purpose. We should be glad
to attribute the merit of this to the wisdom of the choosers, but the
thought suggests itself that the administrative control may deserve part of
the praise. It is well known that no one can deliver lectures without
especial permission, and a especial approval of the subject of his address.
It is also well known that certain orators find it impossible to obtain
this permission. Whether this exercise of authority has inconveniences as
well as advantages is a question we will not here investigate. But there is
one among the conditions imposed on public lectures that must suit every
sensible person, the restrictions with regard to age. It is not difficult
to find young persons who, mistaking temerity for talent, are eager for an
opportunity to display their presumptuous ignorance. Can we even be quite
certain that among those who have passed their twenty-fifth year there may
not be some who would do well to preserve a discreet silence? "Weigh
carefully the burdens your shoulders are to bear," said Horace to the
Romans of his day. The precept is old, but sound even now. Remember, all
you who present yourselves for public speaking, that it is not merely an
honor, but a responsibility also. Consult your strength. Neither diploma
nor certificate of capacity is demanded of you. Do not, however, imagine
that no quality is needed to fit you for this professorship (for the post
is nothing less than a professorship) except unbounded self-confidence. The
least we can ask is that those who would teach us should be well informed
themselves. Good sense, ever successful in the end, would do justice sooner
or later to all such vain pretensions; but meantime the oft-deluded public
might have learned to avoid the recreation prepared for them. We earnestly
desire the long life and prosperity of the system, and therefore trust that
no lecturers likely to injure it should be tolerated. Is our wish to be
fulfilled? The future must answer.

--------

{309}

    Original.

    Verheyden's Right Hand.


If there were no music, I think there would have been no Verheyden. He was
an obligato.

The child of a violin-player and a singer, both professional, he had been
born into an atmosphere of sweet sounds. His baby eyelids had drooped in
slumber to a flute-voice lullaby, or some ethereal strain from his father's
precious little Cremona. Every breeze that swept over the rippling Neckar
or down the wooded mountain-sides, playing mournfully through the wind-harp
in the window, caught the child at his play, hushing him. As soon as he
could reach them, his fingers sought the keys of the piano; and from that
thrilling moment when first a musical sound woke at his touch, Verheyden
had found his occupation. It became his life. Every feeling found
expression at the tips of his fingers, and his fiercest passions culminated
in a discord.

It is said that a violin long played upon will show in the wood flutings
worn by the "continual dropping" of musical sounds from the strings. So
Verheyden seemed wrought upon by his art. He looked like a man who might
have stepped from some wild German tale; of Walpurgis, or other. He was
called tall, being slight, and appeared to be made of nerves and as little
as possible besides. His dark hair rose like the hair in Sir Godfrey
Kneller's portraits, and streamed back from his forehead as if blown. His
thin face was alive with restless gray eyes--the eyes of a listener, not a
seer--with fiery nostrils to the slightly aquiline nose, and with an
unsteady mouth. He had frequent flitting motions, apparently inconsequent,
really timed to some tune in his mind. He was moody, absent, abrupt; he was
too much in earnest about everything. He had little perception of wit or
humor, and he never laughed except with delight. He could be bold, yet he
was simple and ingenuous as a child. An enthusiast, with room in his
narrow, intense brain for but one idea at a time; a man who would take life
by the blade rather than the handle; a man in _alto relievo_.

On the breath of some unaccountable impulse, he would have said--fulfilling
his destiny, say we--Verheyden came to the New World, wandered about a
little, dazed and homesick, at length engaged to take the place of Laurie,
the organist, who was about going to Europe for further instruction.

He went into the church one afternoon with Laurie to try the organ. A
sultry afternoon it was, the eve of the Assumption; but inside the church
all was coolness and silence and shadow, most home-like to the stranger of
any place he had seen this side the ocean. While the organist played, be
leaned from the choir and looked down into the nave. Laurie played with
great sweetness and delicacy, and chose first one of those yearning things
that touch, but do not rouse; and Verheyden leaned and listened, dreaming
himself at home.

Ah! the green, cool Neckar flowing downward to the Rhine; all the rafts and
all the barges, all the wet and mossy rock; the overlooking mountains dense
with forests to their summits; the gray outstanding castle crumbling lothly
from its post; the red roofs of the houses, the churches fair and many; all
the quiet and the color of that home in fatherland.

{310}

When the organist ceased playing, the dreamer felt as though he had been in
motion and were suddenly stopped. He perceived that he was waving his hand,
and became aware of a little maiden dressed in white who had been going
about placing flowers, and who, at the first sound of music, had sunk upon
the altar-steps, and sat there listening, her eyes upturned and fixed on
the crucifix.

"Who, then, is she?" asked Verheyden, as Laurie trifled with the keys,
holding the clew while he searched what next to play.

Laurie glanced into the mirror before him. "Oh! she belongs in a frame on
the wall, but sometimes steps out and wanders about the church. She sings
at service. Call her up here if you can."

Verheyden hastily took a seat at the organ, and, as the girl rose and
prepared to leave the church, a smooth strain sprang like a lasso from
under his fingers, and caught her. She went upstairs, and, standing by the
organist, sang Lambillot's _Quam Dilecta_. Her voice was not powerful,
but a pure soprano, clear and sweet, making up in earnestness what it
lacked in volume. She sang with exquisite finish, having taken the kernel
of science and thrown away the husk. Musical ornamentation was not with
Alice Rothsay vocal gymnastics, but seemed to grow upon the melody as
spontaneously as tendrils upon the vine. Verheyden laughed with delight
when, at the climax of the song, she touched the silver C in alt.

What had been a little maiden in the distance was a small young woman when
near by. She was blonde; her oval face had the lustrous paleness of a
pearl; she looked as she sang, pure, sweet, and earnest. One knowing the
signs in faces would say that sharp tools must have wrought there to make
the eyelids and the mouth so steady. Strangers called her cold; but those
who had once seen her pale gray eyes grow luminous thought her fervid.

Then began again Verheyden's life, growing richer everyday. Musical
_cognoscenti_ grew enthusiastic about him: he was a genius, they said,
no one before had so well interpreted the old masterpieces of song. Laurie
was charming; but Verheyden was inspiring. The Scottish laddie was sweet
and bright as one of his own dancing burns; but the German brought
reminiscences of torrents and avalanches, and lightnings tangled among the
mountain-tops. Laurie saw music as in a glass darkly, and strove to tell
them how she looked; but Verheyden grasped the goddess with compelling
fingers, and led her out before their eyes to dazzle them. His slight form
below the towering organ-pipes they compared to Samson between the pillars
of the temple of Gaza.

Verheyden was extremely happy in his art: pleased, too, to feel the wreath
of fame settling on his brow with tingling touches; and when that August
day had slipped back three years, he was thirty years old.

John Maynard, the machinist, drew into his mind various abortive notions
conceived by men who had lived, or who were still in the sun--drew them in
mistrustfully, and found them stray sparks of genius whose kindred dwelt
with him. Uniting, they played pranks on the man; they made his brain swell
and snap as they pushed open the portals of unsuspected chambers; they
sailed through his dreams in the trains of vast shadows, whose shapes he
panted to catch as they eluded him in the labyrinths of sleep; they grouped
and they scattered, forming here and there a salient or receding angle,
leaving voids to be filled; they got into his eyes till he forgot his
friends and to brush his hat; they salted his coffee and sugared his beef;
they took him on long rambles, where he would wake to find himself standing
stock-still, staring at nothing; they burned up questions and answers
before they could reach his lips, and they dislocated his sentences. They
wooed, and eluded, and tormented, and enraptured him, till, darting on them
unawares, he caught a shadow and copied it out on paper. Finally, fused
into one shape, it sprang from his brain, like Minerva from Jove's, armed
_cap-à-pie_. The machinist's invention was clad in iron, and stood
shining and winking in the unaccustomed sunshine for everybody to admire.

{311}

Which finishes the story of John Maynard's only love.

Among the many visitors who flocked to see this wonderful invention came
one day Verheyden, Alice Rothsay, and her cousin Rose.

They stood and watched smoothly slipping cylinders that coquetted with a
hand of gold from every gazing window, large wheels that turned
deliberately on their dizzy centres, and little families of cogged wheels
that made them feel cross-eyed--all the deceitful gentleness and guileful
glitter of the creature.

Alice Rothsay stretched a venturesome pink finger-tip toward a lazily
rocking bar, then with a shiver, drew it back. "But I like to look at
machinery," she said; "it is so self-possessed. Besides, it is full of
curves, which are amiable as well as graceful. Parallels are unsocial, and
angles are disagreeable."

"Parallels are faithful if not fond," remarked the machinist, "and straight
lines have an aim and arrive at places. They are the honest lines, the
working lines, the strong lines. The reasoner's thought goes like an arrow,
the dreamer's like smoke on a heavy day. I would rather see a cat pounce
upon a mouse than run round after her own tail."

"But the spiral," she ventured.

"Oh! that's the supernatural," said the machinist.

"For my part," said Rose, "I don't see why the cat, after having caught her
mouse, should not amuse herself by running round after her own tail. It
keeps her out of the cream."

Miss Rothsay turned to look at Verheyden, who was examining another part of
the machine. As she looked, he stretched his right hand to point a
question, and stretched it too far. The cruel teeth caught it, there was a
sharp breath that was not quite a cry. John Maynard sprang to stop the
machine, and in a moment Verheyden drew back, wild-eyed, but silent,
holding up a crushed and bleeding hand.

"There is no pain," he said as Maynard knotted the handkerchief about his
arm. But he staggered while speaking, and the next moment fell.

Miss Rothsay had news of him that evening. His hand had been amputated, and
he was wild. He wanted to tear the ligatures from his arm and bleed to
death, had to be restrained and drugged into quiet. Her messenger had left
him in a morphia-sleep, pale as the dead, and with only the faintest
breathing.

Weeks passed, and the reports were scarcely more cheering. The patient had
to be watched lest be should do himself harm; and as he resented such
watching with savage impatience, his attendant's place was no sinecure.

Indeed, Verheyden writhed in his circumstances as upon burning fagots.
Wrapped in his art as in an atmosphere, the wrench that tore his hand away
left him breathless. Music, the glory and the sweetness of his life,
floated back only just out of reach, tantalizing him with remembered and
almost possible bliss. Melodies brushed his lips and left a sting; chords
stretched broad, golden, electric, and, reaching to grasp them, he fell
into darkness. His passionate heart rose and swelled, and found no outlet,
but beat and broke against an impossibility, like the sea on its rocks.
Verheyden's occupation was gone.

True, he could study phenomena. He was haunted by the ghost of a hand that
he could clench but could not see, that sometimes itched at the
finger-tips. It would seem that the nerves, confounded at being cut short
from their usual station, had not yet learned to send new messages, even
sent the old ones blunderingly, overdoing in their anxiety to do the best
they could. He had sometimes to recollect that this troublesome hand was
preserved in spirits in a glass jar set in Dr. Herne's laboratory, on a
shelf just behind his pet skeleton.

{312}

Verheyden read treatises on nerves till his own were no longer telegraphic
lines under control, but the wires of a rack to which he was bound. He
studied spiritualism till in dim night-watches the veil before the unseen
seemed to glide back. He dived into mesmerism till all the powers of his
mind centred in a will that glittered hard and bright in his eyes, causing
the timid to shrink and the pugilistic to make fists.

But through all these noxious parasites of the tree of knowledge which he
recklessly gathered about him moaned ceaselessly his unforgotten
bereavement. Or, if he forgot for a moment, it was like drawing the knife
from a wound to drive it back again.

Having exhausted every other distraction, he started one day for a long
walk in the country. He could not walk the city streets without meeting at
every step some piercing reminder of his loss. It was Scylla and Charybdis.
His fancy had caught a spark from everything beautiful in nature, and there
was not an outline nor motion, not a sound nor a tint, but found in him
some echo. Stately, swaying trees in his path waved the grave movement of
an Andante; the shrill little bird that slid down on a sunbeam through the
branches mimicked a twittering strain of Rossini's; a sigh of air that
rose, and swelled, and sank again, echoed a phrase of Beethoven; and an
unseen rivulet played one of Chopin's murmuring soliloquies.

Verheyden trod savagely on yielding moss, and crackling twigs, and dry
leaves of last year, and on the bluest of blue violets that bloomed bathed
in the noon sunshine. He plunged into a by-path, and came to a brook that
fled as though pursued. It stumbled dizzily over shining pebbles, glided
with suspended breath around grassy curves; it was all a-tremble with
inextricably tangled sunshine and shadow; it gushed here and there into
sweet complaining; it leaped with white feet down the rocks. Verheyden
threw himself upon the bank beside it. He had played such dances, measures
that made the dancers giddy, and sent the ladies dazed and laughing to
their seats.

"Does he think we are dervishes? Do take me into the air."

Verheyden laughed; and the fingers in Dr. Herne's glass jar behind the
skeleton played a caprice as saucy as Puck plunging with headlong
somersaults and alighting on tiptoe. Then, with a groan, he recollected.

As he crouched there, half wishing the water were deep enough to drown him,
be heard a low-voiced singing near by, and, taking a step presently, he saw
a picture among the pine shadows. Alice Rothsay, with a red rose in her
bosom, sat in the moss, and the green, thready grasses, looking fair as
Titania, her small figure showing smaller by the boles and branches of the
trees. She was hushing herself silent and smiling, her lucent eyes intent
on a humming-bird that wandered in the flickering shade and shine of the
woods. It foraged for a moment among the shrinking blossoms, the bold
little robber! it snapped at a round bright drop dashed up by the fretted
waters, and got a sip, half spray, half sunshine, that turned it clean
tipsy; then it made a dart at the red rose in Alice Rothsay's bosom, and
hung there, a little blue buzz with a long bill. The rose trembled over the
girl's suppressed laughter, and the winged mite flung itself petulantly
breast deep in the fragrant petals. Then it reeled away, scared at the
bound her heart gave; for, looking up, she saw Verheyden. It was the first
time they had met since his accident.

"I dare not pity you," she said; "the hand of God shows too plainly." But
the moistened eyes, and the unsteadiness of her soft, loitering voice,
contradicted the words she spoke.

He looked at her in a dazed, lost way, wondering who then might be
deserving of pity.

"We miss you at church," she went on. "We have a different organist every
Sunday, and I am not used to their accompaniments. I broke down last
Sunday.
{313}
Mrs. Wilder played, and at the _sucipe_ that you always played
_legato_, she threw in half a dozen bars of explosives. The
'deprecationem' was fired off, every syllable of it, as from a mortar. I
jumped as if I'd been blown up. So few know how to accompany. It will be
better when Laurie comes. But we want to see you at church, Verheyden."

His face lost its momentary gentleness. "I don't go to church now," he
said; "that is, to what we call church. I've been invoking 'black spirits
and white, blue spirits and gray'--all but the white. I've been calling
back the soul of Mesmer. I could tell stories that would frighten you."

"Oh! no, you couldn't," she said. "'If armies in camp should stand together
against me, my heart shall not fear.' I might fear for you, though. I have
reason to fear for you when you give thought to such delusions."

Verheyden began defending himself with the impatience of one who knows his
position to be weak, going over that hackneyed talk about progress and
freedom of thought. "Ah!" she sighed, "there are heights and heights; and
Babel is not Pisgah."

The fragment of woods in which they had been walking belonged to the estate
of Monsieur Leon, at whose house Alice was visiting; and, as she saw the
two approaching, madame herself came out to meet them. An amiable, worldly
woman, a patroness of the arts, graceful, cordial, and full of charming
little enthusiasms. Not least among her aesthetic devotions was that to the
toilette, by the help of which she managed to appear forty instead or
sixty.

She stepped to meet Verheyden with both her hands extended, tears swimming
in her fine dusky eyes. "My dear friend!" she said. "At last you remember
us. You are welcome. Where have you been all summer?"

"Summer?" repeated Verheyden. "I haven't seen any summer."

And truly the three months had for him been beautiful in vain. He had not
seen their glad, pelting showers, their dim, soft rains, nor the glory of
their sunshine, and their moonlights had been to him as spilt wine.

He could not help being soothed by these friends. There was no obtrusive
sympathy, no condolence hard to answer to, no affected reserve concerning
his affliction. He was free to speak of it or not, as he should choose.
They went on with some trifling employment while they talked to him; or, if
silent, he felt their kindly, homelike presence. Then the large, cool house
was refreshing after the dust and heat of the city.

Silence was sweetest in that sultry noon; and, presently perceiving it,
they did not speak. But the oaks outside rustled like oaks of Dodona, and
what had seemed silence grew to be fullest sound. There was a stir of
plants uneasy with growing, multitudinous tiny voices of insects in the
grasses, bee and bird and the murmur of waters, the wings of doves that
half flew, half dropped, in purple flocks from the eaves, the fall of an
over-ripe peach, the shrill cicala, the fond sighing of the brooding air in
whose bosom all these sounds nestled.

Alice rose to lower the crimson curtain over an intrusive sunbeam, (madame
kept her crimson draperies up all summer, knowing that her complexion
needed deep, warm lights,) and out of revenge the brightness poured through
the tissue, its gold changed to a rosy fire. Pausing in that light to
listen, she stood aglow, her pale-brown hair, her clear eyes, her white
dress.

"It is a Guido!" whispered Verheyden, with a flash of light across his
face.

"No," said madame; "it is the Charity for which Ruskin longed, floating all
pink and beautiful down to earth, the clouds blushing as she passes."

The sun went lingeringly down the west, a breeze fluttered up from the
south, and they roused themselves to open the windows.

{314}

A piano drew Verheyden by all his aching heart-strings. He seated himself
before it and played the base of Rossini's Cujus Animam. As he played, a
fair hand stole to the keys at his right and played the Aria.

"It kills me! Alice, it kills me!" he moaned out, turning his haggard face
toward her.

"Verheyden," she said, "do something heroic: submit!"

"To writhe on the rack is not to resist," he said bitterly.

"But how sublime," she urged, "if, instead of writhing, one could, in the
midst of pain, wear a serene face, and rejoice in a serene heart."

"It is easy for you to talk of serenity," he said impatiently. "You have
all you want. You live in music as I lived in it. And what an enchanted
life we lived together! Do you remember the first time I saw you? Three
years ago, it was, on the eve of the Assumption. You sat on the steps of
the altar and listened while Laurie played. I told him you looked like a
soprano, and he said you were one, that you had a voice like a violin. Do
you remember how I called you up?"

"Yes," she said, smiling at the remembrance. "No one ever accompanied like
you. The voice went floating on your music like a shallop on the water.
Your interludes were nothing more than spray or little wavelets, or like a
half-hushed bubbling laughter underneath the bows."

"And you," he said, "you never learned: you sing of nature, and 'tis art
that tries to reach you. Laurie always said your _roulades_ were as if
you couldn't help them; that he had to look at the score to be sure you
didn't make them up as you went along. Come, now, let us try."

In the act of turning eagerly to the piano, he recollected and stopped.

She touched his arm with an earnest hand. "Delight is dear," she said; "but
never so dear as when we find it in dark places. Let me speak to you of
myself, Verheyden, as I have never spoken to anyone else. You think my life
has been a tranquil one, but you mistake. None, or but few, knowing, I have
gone through tragedies that would delight a romance writer. What I read is
dull to what I have experienced. If I am calm, it is because I have nothing
left to suffer. At twenty-five--you didn't think me so old because I am
small and blonde--at twenty five I have exhausted the pains of life. And,
Verheyden, believe me, contradictory as it may sound, the highest rapture
that earth can give is distilled from its sharpest pains. It is true, even
here, that those who weep are blessed. When the strong man, Jesus, rends
this ravenous nature of ours, after some days we find sweetness. O
Verheyden! go to the Lord with your burden, and he will give you rest. Do
not fill your soul with discord because your hand can no more awaken
harmony. That loftier harmony nothing can disturb without your consent. Is
it not beautiful to think of--the security of the soul? Remember,
Verheyden, the lightnings may strike us, but our souls shall not be
smitten; and they shall not be drowned though the waters cover us; the
earth may burn, but our souls shall not be consumed; and they shall not be
crushed though the heavens fall on us. When I think of these things, I
laugh at fear of anything save sin; I am lifted; my body seems dissolving
like frost in fire. I cannot comprehend the sadness of your face. I am
glad! I am glad!"

He looked at her as she stood there pale and shining, then stretched his
hand, and, at a venture, touched the scarf she wore. It didn't scorch him.

Monsieur Léon came home at sunset, and with him Auguste, the son of the
house. Monsieur was one of his wife's enthusiasms. "He is a misanthrope,"
she would say delightedly. "What a listless air! he cares for nothing. How
mournful and hopeless his eyes! And though his hair is white, he is but
little over fifty. He is full of poetry and sublimity and learning; but it
is frozen in. His early days were unfortunate--a poor gentleman, you
know--and all his life till he was forty was a struggle for bread.
{315}
At forty be inherited his property. Then he thought to live, my poor
Auguste! We went to Paris, which we had left as children. Ah! well. But he
had aspirations, and pressed on toward Italy. There was the Medean
chaldron, he said. He was ill when we reached there, and saw nothing till
one evening he was convalescent, and I took him by the hand and led him out
on to our balcony. It was a May-moonlight in Venice. The earth can do
nothing more. He stood and looked till I thought he had lost his breath,
then clasped his hands over his heart as though he had a great pang, and
cried out, 'O my lost youth!' He would look no more. He went in and sat
with his face hidden in his hands. It was too late. The next day we started
and came back. He looked at nothing as we passed, but sat in the gondola or
carriage with his face hidden. He said it was like setting a feast before
the corpse of a man who had died of starvation. So romantic!" sighs madame,
smoothing the lace ruffles from her little hands.

Presently, when evening deepened, Auguste put his head in at the window and
called them out to see an eclipse of Venus.

They stood in the dewy dusk and fragrance of the garden, and watched the
star hover, moth-like, near and nearer to the moon, seeming to grow larger
and more brilliant as it approached extinction, shining in audacious
beauty. Then it touched, trembled, and disappeared.

"Served her right!" cried Auguste, fresh from the classics.

"But, Alice, where is Verheyden?" asked madame.

"He recollected Laurie's concert, and would go. I tried to detain him, but
could not."

Verheyden hurried into town to the concert-hall, though by no means certain
he might not be tempted to fling himself over the balcony. Avoiding
acquaintances, he took a seat high up and apart, and looked down upon the
audience. Such crowds had flocked to hear him in that lost life of his. Was
it indeed lost, or did he dream?

Presently there was music. There came his fugues rolling in like
overlapping billows. How he had played them when his mood had been to
plunge in such a surge, he solitary, everything else washed away like
sea-weed! He would never breast that tide again! Symphonies sailed over his
head; but he could no more reach to touch their pinions. There was one he
had named St. Michael's, from a sharp brightness that swung through it,
sword-like. How he had wrestled with those angels!

Then Laurie, being loudly called, stood out, blushing before their praises.

Bless the boy! Only that day, bursting into tears, he had clasped Verheyden
around the neck, saying: "Dear friend, my success hurts me like failure
when I think of you."

To an encore he played "Comin' through the Rye," improvising variations in
which the lovely melody hovered like Undine in the fountain, half veiled in
that spray of music: an arch, enchanting thing.

As Laurie stood up again, his friend leaned over the balcony and looked
down on the young, lifted brow. For one instant their eyes met; then
Verheyden started up and fled out into the night.

Father Vinton sat alone in his room meditating on a text which was
gradually expanding, budding, and blossoming into a sermon. He tried not to
be vexed when some one knocked at his door at that late hour, and was just
controlling his voice to give a charitable summons when the door opened,
and Verheyden, or his ghost, came in, and, without a word of greeting, fell
on his knees beside the priest, dropping his face to the arm of the chair.

"My poor friend," said the father, "have you not yet forgiven God for
loving you better than you can understand?"

{316}

Verheyden shivered, but said nothing.

"Remember whose hands were pierced, not one, but both, and his feet, and
his side. He never shrank."

Verheyden's shaking hand held out a little vial "I shall take this unless
you prevent me," he said. "Help me if there is any help. I dare not be
alone."

Father Vinton unstopped the vial, and, taking deliberate aim, flung it
through the open window into the street. Then he laid his hand tenderly
upon the bowed head. "You shall not be alone," he said. "Stay here
to-night."

Blessed are all peace-makers; but thrice blessed are those who make peace
between the soul and God. Blessed are they in whose care we breathe the
tales else unspoken, whose hands lead us back from the brink of many a
precipice where no one dreamed we stood, whose voices soothe the pains
hidden to all besides, and inspire with hope hearts that were filled with
despair. May such peace-makers be for ever blessed!

Verheyden's religion had been a recollection rather than a remembrance. He
had made a point of going to confession and communion once a year; and had
one looked into his mind while he was preparing for these sacraments,
something like the following might have been seen: "Well, what have I been
doing this year? I haven't committed any sins. I've done nothing but play
tunes. To be sure, I broke Smith's fiddle over his head for playing false
and spoiling a chorus. Don't suppose that was just right; though I must say
I think the chorus of more consequence than Smith's head. But I must have
done something. I'm not a saint yet. Guess I'll say a prayer.

"Oh! I remember!--; that was mean. I wouldn't believe I could do such a
thing if I didn't know I had. I'll be hanged if I do it again. Then
there's--, and--, and--. Well, confession does put a fellow out of conceit
with himself. And there's--; a dishonest deed, I must own. I don't wonder
the Lord gets angry with us; and how he does wait for us to come round! I'm
glad I didn't drop dead to-day. I'm thankful I didn't drop dead to-day! The
Lord is good. What am I lounging on a seat for? Why don't I go on my knees?
Then there's ----. I'm sorry for that. I wish somebody would give me a
thrashing for it. I've been sorry for the same sin dozens of times, and
accused myself of it, and promised not to commit it again. My resolutions
are not worth much. Suppose I can't keep myself out of sin without the
Lord's help. I'll ask for it."

At the end, Verheyden, sobered and humbled, would present himself to the
priest and make a clear and sincere confession.

But now religion was to be no more an incident, but the business of his
life. He was fortunate in his director, for Father Vinton was not only
prudent, but sympathetic. If, when he read lives of the saints, Verheyden
longed for ecstasies which should thrill him as sensibly as music could,
the father did not reprove his presumption, but said: "My son, such favors
do not come when they are looked and asked for, they are unexpected. Strive
to render yourself worthy of God's friendship, and forget the reward till
he shall please to bestow it." If, kneeling before the altar, his eyes full
of tears, the intensity of his gaze defeating itself, Verheyden fancied
that the cross before him quivered with its burden, and that the aureoled
head grew to be the head of a living, suffering man whose eyes turned
pitifully on him--the father did not call his penitent crazy.

"Perhaps he grieves to find you so unreconciled," he said. "When with a
loving violence he tore the idol from your grasp in order to give you a
work wherein the end would not be forgotten in the means, he expected your
submission. Perhaps he grieves to see that you reject all work."

{317}

Verheyden blushed painfully as he extended his mutilated arm. "What can
_I_ do?"

"Take charge of your singing-class again."

For one instant he faced the priest with a sudden fierceness, the last
spark of rebellion in him. Then his face faded and drooped.

"I will, sir."

"Miss Rothsay will play for you when you need her."

"Yes, father."

And Verheyden went back to the drudgery of his profession, missing its
delights, and did his duty faithfully if not cheerfully. There could have
been no severer test.

There was no more talk of visions and trances. But every morning a shadow
of a man stole into the chapel, knelt near the door, and went out as
quietly after the mass was over. Once a fortnight the same shadow came to
Father Vinton's side and made a sincere but disheartening confession. The
spring of the musician's spirit was broken.

"You are ill," the priest said to him one day.

"No," answered Verheyden dreamily. "My heart troubles me a little. It beats
too fast. There's nothing else the matter with me."

He was told that he ought to consult a doctor.

"I thought I would," was the answer; "but I forgot it. What is in the
church?"

"Laurie with the choir practising a new mass. To-morrow is the Assumption,
you know."

"Oh! yes, I'll go in and listen awhile; shall I?"

"My poor boy!" said the priest. "Will it not give you more pain than
pleasure?"

"No, father, it doesn't hurt me now."

Going into the choir, Verheyden took a seat apart and unseen. He leaned
wearily, closed his eyes and listened, hearing the voices more than the
instrument, hearing one voice through all. When Alice Rothsay uplifted her
pure voice and sang the _Dona nobis pacem_, tears dropped slowly down
his face; but they were not tears of bitterness.

Presently all but Alice left the church. As on that day, four years before,
when he had first seen her, she had flowers for the altars.

It was a delight for her to get into the church alone, as she now believed
herself to be. If she were good, she knew not. No matter: God is good. She
felt as though she were among dear friends with nobody by to criticise, Her
delight bubbled up almost over the verge of reverence. But perfect love
casteth away fear; and she loved.

"Rosa Mystica, here are roses. Pray for me. And lilies for St. Joseph, whom
I often forget. He is so near you he is lost, like the morning-star in the
morning. St. Paul, I bring you fine plumes, and cardinal flowers like
living coals. But you look as though you would scorch them up with a push
from the point of your pen, writing epistles toward the four winds. O
Unseen One! what shall I offer you? The earth is yours, and the fulness
thereof. I cannot offer myself, for I am not mine to give. But if you love
me, take me. O Sweetness!"

Sunset flashed through the windows, and every saint caught an aureola. Then
the day went out, bright and loth. When the sanctuary lamp began to show
its flame in the gathering twilight, Alice Rothsay rose with a happy heart,
and went home.

Verheyden was happy, too; he scarce knew why, perhaps because the happiness
of another made his own seem possible. He groped his way down to the
chapel, and found Father Vinton hearing confessions.

"God is with him," thought the priest when Verheyden had left him. "He is
like a child."

The same child-like sweetness shone in the face raised the next morning for
communion.

{318}

Going out of the chapel after his thanksgiving, Father Vinton saw his
penitent still kneeling there. "I wished I had asked him to pray for me,"
he said. "I must see him when he comes out."

He waited half an hour, watching, but no one appeared. The father would not
for anything disturb so sacred a devotion; but he felt like looking again.
Going back: to the chapel, he saw the lonely worshipper still in place, but
in a slightly changed attitude. He was leaning a little wearily on the desk
before him, and his shoulder and head rested against a pillar beside. His
pale face was lifted, as though some one above had spoken, and he had
looked up to answer.

Father Vinton hesitated, then went nearer. A morning sunbeam came in
through an eastern window, stole in tender, tremulous gold over the
musician's hair and brow, and looked into his eyes. So Magdalene might have
looked into the sepulchre. The father bent and looked also.

Ah, Verheyden! Some One above _had_ spoken, and he had answered.


------

    Original.

    May: A Fancy.


  I cannot sing to thee a song, O May!
  New-born of beauties never sung before.
  On all the tourneyed fields of poesy
  Bright souls have broken lance to do thee honor.
  And yet (so hard it is for youth and life
  To deem to-day not brighter than the past)
  I cannot think they loved thee more than I,
  Those silent poets in their silent graves.
  I cannot think their sunshine was as golden,
  Their meads as green, their wilding flowers as rife
  With the low music of the laden bee,
  Their clouds as soft upon the summering sky,
  Their gales as wooing in the wakened forests--
  Their May as much of May as thou to us.
  Moreover, this I know: the tiny bark
  Of the frail nautilus may crest the wave
  That swelled to clasp the bosomed argosy,
  Or chafed the warrior-ship's embattled side.
  And so, beneath thy deep serenity
  Of sunlit blue, as, thrilled and filled with May,
  I lie on earth and gaze up into heaven,
  Sprite Fancy doth embody me a dream;
  And I dare utter it, for I am bold
  On kindly Nature's mother-breast to lay
  My head, and prattle of the love I bear her.
  As little, earnest children deck them dolls,
  And name them for the fair ones whom they love,
  I prank an image out, and call it--May.

{319}

  Thou shin'st, O May! upon my visioned hours,
  A maiden in the prime of maidenhood,
  Poised on the summer boundary of blooms,
  Disparting child and woman; blent of each;
  The child-smile pure upon the perfect lip,
  And girlhood in the wavy wealth of curls
  So lavish on the toying, amorous air,
  And deep'ning in the blue uplifted eyes,
  Like stainless heaven reflect from silent lakes,
  The mystic, dawning holiness of woman.

  She, o'er the cycled earth imperious,
  Throned on the morning candor of the clouds,
  Sits haloed with the worship of the sun.
  Chosen is she of all her sister months
  To be the bride of the imperial sun.
  Disdainful suitor, he did pass unwooed
  The paly elder beauties of the year,
  Nor in the hoyden March, nor sportive April,
  Nor majesty of June, his pleasure found:
  He toyed familiar, yet scarce lovingly,
  With the swart, sparkling nymphs of summer tide,
  He schooled the autumn oreads in their tasks,
  And, smiling, passed, and left them all, to shower
  The splendid unrestraint of all his love,
  And choice, and tenderness on May, his own.

  This is the bridal season, and the earth,
  Fondest of mothers, and the ardent bridegroom
  Have ta'en all gems of earth, all rays of heaven,
  Have beggared all the universe for charms
  To deck the bride withal. She sits in beauty,
  Crowned with the rarest radiance of morn,
  Robed in the tissued blooms of all the world,
  Yet loveliest for her own proud modesty;
  Her glorious eyes the fairest of her jewels,
  Her bridal blush her brightest ornament.
  Thus maidenly, thus queenly in the skies
  She waits against the coming of the bridegroom.
  He, o'er the orient wave now eminent,
  Through the concoursing rosy clouds of morn
  Strides like a monarch 'mid a courtier throng,
  Pushing soft adulation out of way;
  Presses in grandeur up the noon-day height,
  Half haste, all stateliness and majesty.

  And over all the vastness of the world
  Goes forth the tale of bliss. The roseate clouds
  Blush down the tidings to the raptured sea,
  Till all his crested waves are musical
  With murmured joyfulness. The courier birds
  Thrill myriad melodies through all the woods,
  With this their joyous burden: "May is bride!"
  The hoary oaks, and all the ancient trees,
  On the high, rippling winds commune together,
  Saying one to another: "May is bride!"

{320}

  And from her throne float forth cloud-messengers,
  The white-winged spirits of the unborn rain:
  They stoop and whisper to the dreaming flowers
  Bidding their choicest petals venture out;
  Then die to sight amid the morning shine,
  As sudden angels, their high missions done,
  Rapt from our days, resume their viewless shapes.
  But the fair blossoms wake and look about them,
  And find all May, and all things lapped in sunshine,
  And softly call their kindred to arise,
  Till every turf in all the happy fields
  Is garish with their bloom, and atmospheres
  Of perfume waft their homage to the seat
  Of their dear sovereign. And the loving earth,
  The great, dumb mother of the happy May,
  With all her waving continents of trees,
  Makes murmurous gestures full of ecstasy;
  And up from land, and sea, and air, and sky,
  Rise choral hallelujahs: "May is bride!"

------

    Impressions of Spain.

    by Lady Herbert.

    Cordova and Malaga.

A comfortable little old-fashioned inn, with a "patio" full of
orange-trees, leading to a public "sala," rather like a room at Damascus,
with alcoves and fountains, gladdened the hearts of our wearied travellers.
After a good night's rest (and one advantage in Spain is, that except
mosquitoes, your beds are generally free from other inhabitants), they
started down the narrow, badly paved streets to visit the cathedral. The
exterior is disappointing, as all you see is a buttressed wall, with square
towers sixty feet high, opposite which is the gateway and wall of the
archepiscopal palace. But on passing through a beautiful oriental court, in
the centre of which is a picturesque Moorish fountain, the rest of the
space being filled with orange-trees and palms, and on the north side an
exquisite giralda, or tower, from whence there is a beautiful view over the
whole town and neighborhood. All the entrances to the mosque (now the
cathedral) from this court are closed, except the centre one. Entering by
that, a whole forest of pillars bursts upon you, with horseshoe arches
interlacing one another and forming altogether the most wonderful building
in the world. The Moors collected these pillars, of which there are upwards
of a thousand, from the temples of Carthage, of Nismes, and of Rome, and
adapted them to their mosque. Some are of jasper, some of verde-antique,
some of porphyry--no two are alike. The pillars have no plinths, and divide
the mosque into nineteen longitudinal and twenty-nine transverse aisles;
hence the immense variety and beauty of the intersection of the arches.
This mosque was built in the eighth century, and ranked in sanctity with
the "Alaksa" of Jerusalem and the "Caaba" of Mecca.

{321}

A pilgrimage to it was, indeed, considered equivalent to that of Mecca, and
hence the Spanish proverb to express distant wanderings, "Andar de zeca en
Meca." The roof is of arbor-vitae, and is in perfect preservation. Two of
the moresque chapels are exquisite in carving and richness of detail, one
being that of the Caliphs, and the other the "Holy of Holies," where the
Koran was kept. The beauty and delicacy of the moresque work, with its gold
enamel and lovely trefoiled patterns, its quaint lions and bright-colored
"azulejos" (tiles), exceeds anything of the sort in Europe. The roof is in
the form of a shell, and exquisitely wrought out of one single piece of
marble. The mosaic border was sent to Cordova by Romanus II., from
Constantinople. When the brother of the king of Morocco came there a year
or two ago, he went round this "Holy of Holies" seven times on his knees,
crying bitterly all the time. The inscriptions in this mosque are in Cufic,
and not in Arabic. The whole carries one back to Damascus and the East in a
way which makes it difficult to realize that one is still in Europe. The
choir is a horrible modern "churriqueresque" innovation, stuck in the
centre of the beautiful forest of Saracenic columns, many of which were
destroyed to make room for it. Even Charles V. protested against the bad
taste of the chapter when he saw it completed in 1526, and exclaimed: "You
have built a thing which one can see anywhere; and to do so, you have
destroyed what was unique in the world." The carving of the choir is
certainly fine, but the incongruity of the whole jars on one's taste too
keenly for any kind of admiration. The only beautiful and solemn modernized
portion of the building is the chapel of the cardinal, with fine tombs and
a deep recess for the Blessed Sacrament, with a magnificent silver
tabernacle. From the cathedral, some of the party went to visit the bishop,
who received them very kindly, and sent his secretary to show them the
treasures of the cathedral. The "custodia," of the fifteenth century, is in
silver-gilt, with beautiful emeralds, and exquisitely carved; it is the
work of Arphe, the Benvenuto Cellini of Spain. There are also some
beautiful processional crosses, reliquaries, chalices, and pax, secreted at
the time of Dupont's French invasion, and so saved from the universal
plunder.

Having spent the morning in the cathedral, our travellers wandered down to
the fine Roman bridge, of sixteen arches, over the Guadalquiver, looking
upon some picturesque Moorish mills and orange gardens. To the left is a
statue of St. Raphael, the guardian angel of Cordova; and close by is the
Alcazar, now a ruin, formerly the palace of Roderick, the last of the
Goths, whose father was duke of Cordova. Nothing can be more melancholy
than the neglected gardens, the broken fountains and statues, the empty
fish-ponds, and grass-grown walks, despite the palms and orange-trees and
luxuriant creeping roses, which seemed to be striving to conceal the
desolation around. The first palm ever planted in Cordova was by the
Moorish king Abdulrrahman, who brought it from his much-loved and
always-regretted Damascus.

After luncheon, having obtained special permission from the archbishop, our
party started off in two carriages for the hermitages in the Sierra Morena,
stopping first at a picturesque ruined villa, called the "Arrizafa," once
the favorite residence of the Moorish king. The gardens are beautiful;
passion-flowers and jessamine hung in festoons over all the broken walls,
and the ground was carpeted with violets, narcissus, and other spring
flowers. The view from the terrace is lovely, the town, when seen from a
distance, being very like Verona. Here the road became so steep that the
party had to leave their carriages and walk the remainder of the way.
{322}
The mountain-path reminded them of Mount Carmel, with the same underwood of
cistus, lilac and white, and heaps of flowering and aromatic shrubs.
Beautiful wild iris grew among the rocks, and half-way up a rushing stream
tumbled over the boulder-stones into a picturesque basin, covered with
maiden-hair fern, which served as a resting-place for the tired travellers.
After a fatiguing climb of two hours, they reached the postern gate of the
hermitage, into which, after some demur as to their sex, the ladies, by
special permission of the archbishop, were admitted. There are at present
seventeen hermits, all gentlemen, and many of high birth and large fortune,
living each in a little separate cabin, with a patch of garden round it,
and entirely alone. They never see one another but at mass and in choir, or
speak but once a month. In their chapel they have a beautiful oil painting
of St. Paul the first hermit, whose rule they follow in all its primitive
severity. One of the cabins was vacant, and the party entered. It was
composed of two tiny rooms: in the inner one was a bed formed of three
boards, with a sheepskin and a pillow of straw; the rest of the furniture
consisted of a crucifix, a jug of water, a terrible discipline with iron
points, and Rodriguez' essay on "Christian Perfection," published in 1606,
at Valladolid, and evidently much read. This cell was that of Count ----, a
man of great wealth and high rank, and of a still wider reputation for
ability and talent. He had lost his wife some years ago, to whom he was
passionately attached; and remaining in the world only till he had settled
his children, then took leave of it for ever, and resolved to spend the
rest of his days in penitence and prayer. Their habit is composed of a
course grey stuff, with a leathern girdle, drawers, and a shirt of serge.
No linen is allowed, or stockings, and they wear sandals on their feet.
They are not permitted to possess anything, or to keep anything in their
cells but a glazed earthenware pot, a wooden plate, a pitcher, a lamp, and
instruments of penance and devotion. They keep a perpetual fast on beans
and lentils, only on high days and holidays being allowed fish. They are
not allowed to write or receive letters, or to go into one another's cells,
or to go out of the enclosure, except once a month, when they may walk in
the mountains round, which they generally do together, reciting litanies.
Seven hours of each day must be given to prayer, and they take the
discipline twice a week. [Footnote 109] How strange a life for one
accustomed to live in the world and in society! Yet there is no lack of
candidates for each vacancy; and the prior told our travellers that the
number of vocations of late years had increased. There is a fine old marble
seat and cross in the garden, erected by the late bishop, from whence there
is a magnificent view over the whole country. The cold in winter is
intense, and they are not allowed any fires, except what is absolutely
necessary for the cooking of their miserable meal. Taking leave of the
prior in his little "parloir," and receiving a rosary from him made of the
wood of the "carouba" by the hermits themselves, the visitors retraced
their steps down the hill, feeling as if they had been spending the last
couple of hours in another world; and, rejoining their carriages at the
villa, made the circuit of the city walls, which are partly Moorish, built
of tapia, and described by Julius Caesar.

    [Transcriber's note: The image of the following footnote is blurred.
    "Pardon my French."]

    [Footnote 109: The Rev. Père Félix, the famous Paris preacher, in one
    of his Notre Dame conferences, speaking of asceticism of this sort,
    says: "Les paiens avaient épuisé la volupté: les chrétiens ont épuisé
    les souffrances. De ce creuset de la douleur l'homme nouveau a sorti,
    et c'est un homme plus grand que l'homme ancien. Ah! je le sais, la
    pénitence corporelle, le jeûne, l'abstinence, la discipline, la
    flagelation, prètent à rire à des penseurs de ce temps, qui se croieat
    trop sages pour pratiquer de telles folies. Ils out plus d'égurd pour
    la chair, plus de respect surtoui pour le corps, et ils disent en
    souriant à l'austérité chrétienne: 'Ascétisme! Moyen àge! Fanatisme!
    Démence!' La vérité est, que chátier volontairement son corps pour
    venger la dignité de l'homme outragés par les révoltes, est une sainte
    et sublime chose. La vérité est que pour accorder à son corps le
    plaiair, il suffit d'ètre lâche, et que pour infliger à son corps la
    douleur volontaire dans un but de restauration morale, il faut ètre
    courageux, il faut ètre veaiment grand. La vérité est enfin que cette
    race de mortifiés, mieux que tout autre, maintient à sa vraie hauteur
    le niveau de l'humanité, et tient dans sa main intrépide, avec le fouet
    dont elle se frappe ell-même, le drapeau du progrès. Le chemin du
    progrès, comme ceiul du Calvaire, est un chemin douloureax. Le drapeau
    de l'austérité chrétienne triomphera une fois de plus dans le monde du
    seusualisme paien de nos joura."]

{323}

Then one of the party went to see the Carmelite convent of St. Theresa; not
one of the saint's own foundation, but one built soon after her death. It
contains twenty-four nuns, the cheeriest and merriest of women, proving how
little external circumstances contribute to personal cheerfulness.

The German gentleman who had so kindly served as escort to our travellers
during their stay at Cordova dined with them in the evening, and gave them
several very interesting details of the place and people. The next morning
mass had been promised them at five, but it was six before the priest made
his appearance in the fine old Jesuit church, now bereft of its pastors and
frequent services; and it was only thanks to the unpunctuality of the
Spanish railways that the train which was to convey our party to Malaga was
reached in time.

Passing through a very fine gorge of the Sierra Nevada, with magnificent
Alpine scenery, the train suddenly stopped: the guard came to the
carriages, and civilly suggested to the passengers that the government
could not answer for the safety of the tunnels, and, therefore, had
provided carriages and mules to take them round; or else, if they preferred
it, that they might _walk_, as there would be plenty of time. This
sounded ludicrous enough to English ears, but, after all, they thought it
more prudent to comply than to run any risk, and accordingly bundled out
with their bags and manifold packages. On the recurrence of a similar
warning, however, a little later, they voted that they would remain and
take their chance; and nothing disastrous occurred. At the station they
were met by the kind and obliging English consul, who had ordered rooms for
them at the hotel called the "Alameda," pleasantly situated on the
promenade, and who had done everything in his power to insure their
comfort. The first days of their arrival were spent in settling themselves
in their new quarters, which required a good deal of preliminary cleaning,
and in seeing the so-called "lions" of the place. These are soon visited.
In truth, except for climate, Malaga is as dull and uninteresting a place
as can be well imagined. There is a cathedral, originally a mosque, but now
converted into an ugly Corinthian pile with two towers. Only one fine old
Gothic door remains, with curious "azulejos." The rest, both inside and
out, is modern, heavy, and in bad taste. The high altar, however, is by
Alonso Caño; and there is some fine wood-carving of the sixteenth century
in the choir and on the screen, commemorating different scenes in the life
of St. Turibius, archbishop of Lima, whose apostolic labors among the
Indians were crowned with such wonderful success. There are one or two good
pictures and monuments, especially the recumbent figure of a bishop, in
bronze, of the fifteenth century. In the sacristy is a valuable relic of
St. Sebastian, and some fine silver vases for the holy oils; but everything
else was plundered by the French. Afterward our travellers went, with an
order from the governor, to see the castle and Moorish fortress overlooking
the town, built in 1279. Passing under a fine Moorish horse-shoe arched
gateway, they scrambled up to the keep, from whence there is a magnificent
view over sea and land. It is now used as a military prison, and about
twenty-six men were confined there. The officers were extremely civil, and
showed them everything. The men's barracks seemed clean and comfortable,
and their rations good; their arms and knapsacks were, however, of the most
old-fashioned kind. That day a detachment of troops were starting for
Morocco, whose embarkation in the steamers below was eagerly watched by the
garrison.

But if Malaga be dull in the way of sights, it is very pleasant from the
kind and sociable character of its inhabitants. Nowhere will the stranger
find more genuine kindness, hospitality, or courtesy.
{324}
Their houses, their villas, their horses, their flowers, their time, all
are placed, not figuratively, but really, "á vuestra disposicion." Some of
the villas in the neighborhood are lovely, especially those of Madame de
H----, the Marquise L----, etc. Here one finds all kinds of tropical
vegetation: the date palm, the banana, the plantain and India-rubber trees,
sugar, cotton, and other oriental products, all grow luxuriantly; while the
beds are filled with masses of violets, tulips, roses, arums, scarlet
hybiscus, and geraniums; and beautiful jessamine, _scarlet_
passion-flowers, and other creepers, trail over every wall.

But the chief interest to the winter resident at Malaga will be derived
from its charitable institutions. The French sisters of charity of St.
Vincent de Paul have the care of three large establishments here. One--an
industrial school for the children and orphans connected with a neighboring
factory--is a marvel of beauty, order, and good management. The girls are
taught every kind of industrial work; a Belgian has been imported to give
them instruction in making Valenciennes lace, and their needlework is the
most beautiful to be seen out of Paris. Any profit arising from their work
is sold, and kept for their "dot" when they marry or leave the
establishment. Attached to this school is also a little home for widows,
incurables, and sick, equally tended by the sisters. This admirable
institution is the offspring of individual charity and of a life
wrecked--according to human parlance--but which has taken heart again for
the sake of the widow and the orphan, the sorrowful and the suffering. Her
name is a household word in Malaga to the sad and the miserable; and in
order to carry out her magnificent charities (for she has also an
industrial school for boys in the country), she has given up her luxurious
home, and lives in a small lodging up three pair of stairs. She reminded
one of St. Jerome's description of St. Melania, who, having lost her
husband and two children in one day, casting herself at the foot of the
cross, exclaimed: "I see, my God! that thou requirest of me my whole heart
and love, which was too much fixed on my husband and children. With joy I
resign all to thee." The sight of her wonderful cheerfulness and courage,
after sorrows so unparalleled, must strengthen every one to follow in her
steps, and strive to learn, in self-abnegation, her secret of true
happiness. The French sisters have likewise the charge of the great
hospital of St. Juan de Dios, containing between 400 and 500 patients, now
about to be removed to a new and more commodious building; and also of a
large day and infant school near the river, with a "salle d'asile,"
containing upward of 500 children, who are daily fed with soup and bread.
They also visit the poor and sick in their homes, and everywhere their
steps are hailed with thankfulness and joy.

The "Little Sisters of the Poor" have likewise established themselves in
Malaga, and have a large house, containing seventy old and incurable
people, which is very well supplied by the richer inhabitants. The nuns of
the "Assumption" have lately started a "pension" for the daughters of the
upper classes, which was immensely wanted (education being at a very low
ebb in Spain), and which has been most joyfully hailed by the Malaga ladies
for their children. The superior, a charming person, is an English woman;
and the frequent benediction services in their beautiful little chapel were
a great boon to some of our party. They paid a visit also to the
archbishop, a kind and venerable old man, with the most benevolent smile
and aspect, and who is really looked upon as the father of his people. At a
grand Te Deum service, given in the church of S. Pietro dei Martiri, one of
the most interesting churches in Malaga, as a thanksgiving for the
preservation of the city from cholera, he officiated pontifically, which
his great age generally prevents, and gave the benediction with mitre and
crosier to the devout and kneeling multitude.

{325}

There is a very touching "Via Crucis" service performed every Friday in
Malaga, up to a chapel on the top of a high mountain overlooking the whole
town and bay. The peasants chaunt the most plaintive and beautiful hymns,
the words of which they "improviser" on the way, both up and down. It
begins at a very beautiful church and convent called Notre Dame des
Victoires, now converted into a military hospital, nursed by the Spanish
sisters of charity. The family of the Alcazars is buried in the crypt of
this church, and beautiful palms grow in the convent garden. In the old
refectory are some fine azulejos tiles and some good specimens of Raphael
ware.

As to diversions, Malaga offers but few resources. Those who like boating
may go out daily along the beautiful coast; but the rides are few, the
ground hard and dusty, and the "rivière à sec," like that at Nice, must be
traversed before any mountain expeditions could be reached. There is a
bull-ring, as in every Spanish town, and occasionally the additional
excitement of elephants being used in the fights: but the bulls will rarely
face them.

After about a month, therefore, spent in this quiet little place, it was
decided to start for Granada, which promised to afford greater interest and
variety.


  Granada.

Taking leave rather sorrowfully of their many kind friends, and of the
sisters of charity who had been their constant companions during their stay
in Malaga, our travellers started one stormy evening, and found themselves
once more cooped up in one of those terrible diligences, and slowly
ascending the mountains at the back of the town. Their intention had been
to go on horseback, riding by Velez-Malaga and the baths of Alhama; but the
late heavy rains had converted the mountain streams into torrents, and some
of the party who attempted it were compelled to return. After ascending for
about three hours, leaving on their left the picturesque cemetery, with its
fine cypresses, they came to a plateau 3000 feet above the sea, from whence
they had a magnificent view, the whole of Malaga and its bay being
stretched out at their feet, the lights glistening in the town, and the
moon, breaking through the clouds, shedding a soft light over the sea-line,
which was covered with tiny fishing-vessels. Beautiful aloes and cacti
starting out of the bold rocks on either side formed the foreground, while
a rapid river rushed and tumbled in the gorge below. But with this fine
panoramic view the enjoyment of our travellers came to an end. When night
came on, and they had reached the highest and loneliest part of the bleak
sierra, it began to pour with rain and blow a regular gale; the heavy mud
was dashed into their faces; the icy cold wind whistled through the broken
panes and under the floor of the carriage, and froze them to the bone.
There was some difficulty about a relay of mules at the next stage, and so
our party were left on an exposed part of the road without drivers or
beasts for more than an hour. Altogether, it was impossible to conceive a
more disagreeable journey; and it was therefore with intense joy that they
found themselves, after sixteen hours of imprisonment, at last released,
and once more able to stretch their legs in the _Alameda_ of Granada.
Tired, hungry, dirty, and cold, a fresh disappointment here awaited them.
All the hotels were full (their letters ordering rooms had miscarried), and
only one tiny bedroom could be found in which they could take refuge, and
scrape the mud off their clothes and hair. One of the party found her way
to the cathedral; the rest held a council of war, and finally determined to
try their fate at the new "Alhambra" hotel outside the town, where an
apartment was to be had, the cold and wet of the season having deterred the
usual visitors to this purely summer residence.
{326}
They had every reason to congratulate themselves on this decision; for
though the cold was certainly great, the snow hanging still on all the
hills around, and the house being unprovided with any kind of fire-places
or stoves, still the cleanliness and comfort of the whole amply compensated
for these drawbacks, to say nothing of the immense advantage of being close
to the Alhambra, that great object of attraction to every traveller who
visits Granada. The way up to it is very picturesque, but very steep. After
leaving the wretched, narrow, ill-paved streets, which dislocate almost
every bone in your body when attempted on wheels, and passing by the Sala
de la Audiencia and other fine public buildings, you arrive at an arched
gateway, which at once brings you into a kind of public garden, planted
with fine English elms, and abounding in walks and fountains and seats, and
in which the paths and drives, in spite of their precipitous character, are
carefully and beautifully kept by convict labor, under the superintendence
of a body of park-keepers dressed in full Andalusian costume. The hotel is
placed on the very crest of the hill, overlooking the magnificent range of
snowy mountains to the right. To the left the first thing which strikes the
eye is the Torre de Justicia. Over the outer horse-shoe arch is carved an
open hand, upon the meaning of which the learned are divided; some saying
it is an emblem of the power of God, others a talisman against the Evil
Eye. Over the inner arch is sculptured a key, which typified the power of
the Prophet over the gates of heaven and hell. A double gate protects this
entrance, which no donkey may pass: in the recess is a very beautiful
little picture, framed and glazed, of the Virgin and Child. Passing through
this arch, you come to an open "plaza," out of which rise two towers; one
has been bought by an Englishman, who has converted the lower part of it
into his private residence. (Where shall we not find our ubiquitous
country-men?) [Footnote 110]

    [Footnote 110: This unexpected rencontre reminded one of our party of a
    similar surprise, some years ago, in the mountains of the Tyrol. She
    was riding with her husband, when they came on a very picturesque old
    "Schloss," in an out-of-the-way gorge of a mountain pass. Stopping to
    look at it, and pushing open a half-open door in what appeared to be
    only habitable part of the ruling, they came on a group of chubby-faced
    English children, sitting around a table in their white pinafores,
    eating an undeniably English tea; and were told by the nurse, in answer
    to their inquiries, that the present owner of this Austrian Schloss was
    a London tradesman, who brought his children over every year to spend
    the summer--a most sensible arrangement, as the healthy bright looks of
    his little ones testified.]

The other is called the Torre de la Vela, because on this watch-tower hangs
the bell which gives warning to the irrigators in the vega below. The view
from hence is the most enchanting thing possible, commanding the whole
country. Below lies Granada with its towers and sparkling rivers, the Darro
and the Xenil. Beyond stretches the beautiful rich "vega" (or plain),
studded with villas and villages, and encircled by snowy mountains, with
the Sierra of Albama on one side, and the Gorge of Loja on the other.
Descending the tower, and standing again in the "plaza" below, you see
opposite to you a large ruined Doric palace, a monument of the bad taste of
Charles V., who pulled down a large portion of the Moorish building to
erect this hideous edifice, which, like most other things in Spain, remains
unfinished. Passing through a low door to the right, our travellers were
perfectly dazzled at the beauty which suddenly burst upon them. It is
impossible to conceive anything more exquisite than the Alhambra, of which
no drawings, no Crystal Palace models, not even Washington Irving's
poetical descriptions, give one the faintest idea. "J'essaie en vain de
penser: je ne peux que sentir!" exclaimed the authoress of "Les Lettres
d'Espagne" on entering; but the predominant feeling is one of regret for
the Moors, whose dynasty produced such marvels of beauty and of art.
{327}
Entering by the fish-pond "patio," and visiting first the Whispering
Gallery, you pass through the Hall of the Ambassadors, and the Court of
Lions, out of which lead the Hall of the Abencerrages, and that of Justice,
with its two curious monuments and wonderful fretted roof, and then come to
the gem of the whole, the private apartments of the Moorish kings, with the
recessed bedroom of the king and queen, the boudoir and lovely latticed
windows overlooking the beautiful little garden of Lindaraja (the violets
and orange-blossoms of which scented the whole air), and the exquisite
baths below. [Footnote 111] It is a thing to dream of, and exceeds every
previous expectation. Again and again did our travellers return, and always
discovered some fresh beauties. The governor resides in a modernized corner
of the building, not far from the mosque, which has suffered from the bad
taste of the Christian spoilers. He is not a good specimen of Spanish
courtesy, as, in spite of letters of introduction from the highest
quarters, it was with very great difficulty that our party were admitted to
see anything beyond the portions of the building open to the general
public. At last, however, he condescended to find the keys of the Tower of
the Infantas, once the residence of the Moorish princesses whose tragical
fate is so touchingly recorded by Washington Irving. It is a beautiful
little cage, overlooking the ravine, with its fine aqueduct below, and rich
in the delicate moresque carving of both ceilings and walls. Afterward,
crossing a garden, they came to the gate by which Boabdil left his palace
for the last time, and which was afterward, by his special request, walled
up. The tower at this corner was mined and destroyed by the French. Our
party then descended to a little mosque lately purchased by Colonel ----,
and beautifully restored. This completed the circuit of the Alhambra, which
is girdled with walls and towers of that rich red-brown hue which stands
out so beautifully against the deep blue sky, but the greater portion of
which was ruthlessly destroyed by Sebastiani, at the time of his occupation
of Granada.

    [Footnote 111: Few have described this enchanting palace as well as the
    French lady already quoted. She says, speaking of the feelings it calls
    forth: "J'aimerais autant étre broyée dans la gueule de ces jolis
    monstres qui ont des nez en noeud de oravate, appelés _Lions_ par
    la grâce de Mahomet, que de te parier de l'Alhambra, tant cette
    description est difficile. Les murailles ne sont que guipures délicates
    et compilquées: les plus hardies stalactites ne peuvent donner une idée
    des coupoles. Le tout est une merveille, un travail d'abeilles ou de
    fées. Les sculptures sont d'une délicatesse ravissante, d'un goût
    parfait, d'une richesse qui vous fait songer à tout ce que les contes
    de fées vous décrivalent jadis à l'heureux àge où l'imagination a des
    ailes d'or. Hélas! la mienne n'a pius d'alle, elle est de plomb. Les
    Arabes n'employaient que quatre couleurs: le bleu, le rouge, le noir et
    l'or. Cette richesse, ces teintes vives, sont visibles encore partout.
    Enfin, mon ami, ce n'est point un palais ceci: c'est la ville d'un
    enchanteur!"]

The restoration of this matchless palace has been undertaken by the present
queen, who has put it in the hands of a first-rate artist named Contreras;
and this confidence has been well bestowed, for it is impossible to see
work executed in a more perfect manner, so that it is very difficult to
tell the old portions from the new. If he be spared to complete it, future
generations will see the Alhambra restored very nearly to its pristine
beauty. This gentleman makes exquisite models of different parts of the
building, done to a scale, which are the most perfect miniature fac-similes
possible of the different portions of this beautiful palace, and a most
agreeable memento of a visit to it. Our travellers purchased several, and
only regretted they had not chosen some of the same size, as they would
make charming panels for a cabinet or screen.

In the afternoon, the party started to see the cathedral, escorted by the
kind and good-natured dean, who engaged the venerable mother of the "Little
Sisters of the Poor" to act as his interpreter, his Andalusian Spanish
being utterly unintelligible to most of the party. The first feeling on
entering is of unmixed disappointment. It is a pagan Greco-Roman building,
very much what our London churches are which were erected in the time of
the Georges. But it has one redeeming point--the Capilla de los Reyes,
containing the wonderful monuments of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Philip
and Joan.
{328}
The alabaster sepulchres of the former, wrought at Genoa by Peralta, are
magnificent, both in design and execution. Isabella's statue is especially
beautiful:

                      In questa forma
  Passa la bella donna, e par che dorma.

The faces are both portraits, and have a simple dignity which arrests the
attention of the most unobservant. A low door and a few steep steps below
the monuments lead to their last resting-place. The royal coffins are of
lead, lapped over, rude and plain (only the letter F distinguishes that of
the king), but they are genuine, and untouched since the day when their
bodies, so justly revered by the Spaniards, were deposited in this humble
vault. Among the treasures of this chapel are likewise shown the identical
royal standards used at the conquest of Granada; the kings sword; the
queen's own missal; their crosier and crown of silver-gilt; the picture of
the Virgin and Child by St. Luke, given to Isabella by Pope Innocent VIII.,
and before which mass is said every 2d of January, the anniversary of the
taking of the city; and the portrait of the knight who, during the siege,
rode into Granada, and affixed a taper and an "Ave Maria" on the very door
of the principal mosque. In the sacristy is a "Conception," exquisitely
carved, by Alonso Caño; an "Adoration of the Kings," by Hemling, of Bruges;
a curious ring of Sixtus II.; a chasuble embroidered by Queen Isabella;
some very valuable relics and reliquaries, and a letter of St. Charles
Borromeo, which the good-natured dean allowed one of the party to copy.
Besides these treasures, and the Capilla de los Reyes, there is really
nothing to look at in the cathedral, but one or two good painted glass
windows, some clustered columns, and a curious arch in the dome, which was
made to bend downward.

The following morning, after an early service at the Capuchin convent of
St. Antonio, one of the party started on an expedition with the sisters of
the town, and winding up a beautiful and steep ravine, in the holes and
caverns of which gypsies live and congregate, they came to a picturesque
wood planted on the side of the mountain. Here they left their carriages,
and scrambled up a zigzag path cut in the hill, with low steps or
"gradini," till they reached a plateau, on which stands both convent and
church. The view from the terrace in front is the most magnificent which
can be conceived. On one side are the snowy mountains of the Sierra Nevada,
with a rapid river tumbling into the gorge below, the valleys being lined
on both sides with stone-pine woods, amid which little convents and
villages are clustered. On the other is the town of Granada, with its domes
and towers; and sharply standing out on the rocks above the ruins, against
the bright blue sky, are the coffee-colored towers of the beautiful
Alhambra. There is a Via Crucis up to this spot, the very crosses seeming
to start up out of the rocks, which are clothed with aloes and prickly
pear; while in the centre of the terrace is a beautiful fountain and cross,
shaded by magnificent cypresses. The church is built over some catacombs,
where the bodies of St. Cecilia and eleven other martyrs were found, who
suffered in the persecution under Nero. The superior of this convent, now
converted into a college, is Don José Martin, a very holy man, though quite
young, and revered by the whole country as a saint. He is a wonderful
preacher, and by his austere and penitential life works miracles in
bringing souls to God. His manner is singularly gentle, simple, and humble.
He kindly came to escort the party through the catacombs, and to show them
the relics. The sites of the different martyrdoms have been converted into
small chapels or oratories: in one, where the victim perished by fire, his
ashes still remain. Little leaden tablets mark the different spots.
{329}
Here also is the great wooden cross of St. John of the Cross, from the foot
of which he preached a sermon on the "Love of God" during his visit to
Granada, which is said to have converted upward of three thousand people.
"I always come here to pray for a few minutes before preaching," said
simply Don José Martin, "so that a portion of his spirit may rest upon me."
After spending some time in this sanctuary, the party reluctantly retraced
their steps, and returned to the town, where they had promised to visit the
great hospital of San Juan de Dios. It is a magnificent establishment,
entirely under the care of the Spanish sisters of charity of St. Vincent de
Paul, with a "patio" or quadrangle in the centre, and double cloisters
round, into which the wards open: all round the cloisters are frescoes
describing different scenes in the life of the saint. The church is
gorgeous in its decorations, and in a chapel above rests the body of San
Juan, in a magnificent silver shrine, with his clothes, his hat, the basket
in which he used daily to go and collect food for his sick and dying poor,
and other like personalities.

This saint is immensely revered in Granada. He was the first founder of the
order of Brothers of Charity, now spread all over Europe, beginning his
great work, as all saints have done, in the humblest manner possible, by
hiring a small house (now converted into a wayside oratory), in which he
could place four or five poor people, nursing them himself night and day,
and only going out to beg, sell, and chop wood, or do anything to obtain
the necessary food and medicines for them. The archbishop, touched with his
burning charity, assisted him to build a larger hospital. This house soon
after took fire, when San Juan carried out the sick one by one on his back,
without receiving any hurt. It is thus that he is represented in the Statue
Gallery of Madrid. The people, inflamed by his loving zeal, and in
admiration of his great wisdom, humility, and prudence, came forward as one
man to help him to build the present hospital, which remains to this day as
a monument of what may be done by one poor man of humble birth, if really
moved by the love of God. His death was caused by rescuing a man in danger
of drowning from the sudden rising of the river, and then remaining, wet
and worn out as he was, while caring for the family. He died on his knees,
repeating the "Miserere," amidst the tears of the whole city, to whom, by
the special command of the archbishop, he gave his dying benediction. His
favorite saying was: "Labor without intermission to do all the good works
in your power while time is allowed you;" and this sentence is engraved in
Spanish on the door of the hospital.

The following day happened to be the anniversary of his death, or rather of
his birthday in heaven, when a touching and beautiful ceremonial is
observed. The archbishop and his clergy come to the hospital to give the
holy communion to the sick in each ward. A procession is formed of the
ecclesiastics and the sisters of charity, each bearing lighted tapers, and
little altars are arranged at the end of each ward, beautifully decorated
with real flowers, while everything in and about the hospital is fresh and
clean for the occasion. A touching incident occurred in the male ward on
that day, where one poor man lay in the last stage of disease. The
eagerness of his look when the archbishop drew near his bed will never be
forgotten by those who were kneeling there; nor the way in which his face
lighted up with joy when he received his Lord. The attendant sister bent
forward to give him a cordial afterward: he shook his head, and turned his
face away; he would have nothing after _that_. Before the last notes
of the "Pange Lingua" or the curling smoke of the incense had died out of
the ward, all was over; but the smile on the lips and the peace on the face
spoke of the rest he had found. Afterward there was a magnificent service
in the church, and a dinner to all the orphans in the sisters' schools.

{330}

Another interesting expedition made by our travellers was to the Carthusian
convent outside the town. Sebastiani desecrated and pillaged the wonderful
treasures it contained; but the tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl doors
and presses remain, reminding one of those in the Armenian church at
Jerusalem, at the shrine of St. James. There are also two statues of St.
Bruno, by Alonso Caño; wonderful for their life-like appearance and
expression, but still not equal to the incomparable one at Miraflores.
There are some beautiful alabaster and agate pillars still left in the
chapel behind the high altar, which it is to be supposed were too heavy for
the spoilers to carry off. In the cloister are some curious frescoes of the
martyrdoms of the Carthusians, at the time of the Protestant Reformation,
by Henry VIII. of England. The guide who accompanied our travellers said
slyly to the only Catholic of the party: "We had better not explain the
subject of these. Let them imagine they are some of the horrors of of the
Inquisition--_that always takes with English people!_" Another picture
was startling both in subject and coloring; it was that of a dead doctor,
much venerated in life, who, on a funeral panegyric being pronounced over
him, started from his coffin, exclaiming that "his life had been a lie, and
that be was among the damned!" The friar who showed our party over the now
deserted convent was like Fray Gabriel in Fernan Caballero's novel of La
Gaviota. When the rest of the Carthusians were turned out by the
government, he would not go. "I was brought here as a little child," he
said, "and know no one in the world;" and so he sat himself down by the
cross and sobbed. They let him stay and keep the garden and the church, but
his life is over. "The blood does not run in his veins--it walks!" Like
Fray Gabriel, he will die kneeling before the Christ to whom he daily prays
for those who have so cruelly wronged and robbed him. The view from the
terrace in front of the church is beautiful, overlooking the rich and
cultivated plain of Soto de Roma, the property of the Duke of Wellington,
with the mountain of Parapanda above, the hills of Elvira, and the pass of
Moelin, which forms the bridle-road to Cordova. The gardens also are
delightful: no wonder the poor monks clung to their convent home!

In the afternoon our travellers walked up to the Generalife, a villa now
belonging to the Panavicini family, a branch of the great Genoa house, but
formerly the palace of the Sultana. Passing through vineyards and
fig-trees, they arrived at the gate of the fairy garden, with its long
straight borders, fringed with myrtle, irrigated by the Darro, which is
carried in a little canal between the flower-beds, and with a beautiful
open colonnade overlooking the Alhambra, while a less formal garden sent up
a shower of sweet scents from the orange trees and jessamine trellises
below. Through this colonnade they passed into the living-rooms, exquisite
in their Moorish carvings and decorations. In one of them there are a
number of curious though somewhat apocryphal portraits, including one of
Boabdil, and of another Moorish king of Granada, with his wife and
daughter, who turned Christians, and were baptized at Santa Fé. In the
outer room are portraits of an the "bluest blood" of Granada. But the
gardens form the greatest charm. The ground was covered with Neapolitan
violets and other spring flowers. Roses climbed over every wall, and
magnificent cypresses, and aloes in full flower, shaded the beds from the
burning sun. The largest of these cypresses, called the Sultana, is twelve
feet in circumference, and to this tree the fatal legend of the fair Zoraya
is attached. Behind these cypresses is a flight of Italian-looking steps,
leading to another raised garden, full of terraces and fountains. On the
steep brow of the hill is an alcove, or summer-house, from whence the views
over Granada and the Alhambra are quite enchanting, every arch being, as it
were, the setting or frame of a new and beautiful picture.
{331}
Above this again, is a Moorish fortress, and a knoll called the Moors
Chair, from whence the last Moorish king is said to have sadly contemplated
the defeat of his troops by the better-disciplined armies of Ferdinand and
Isabella grouped in the plains below. Scrambling still higher up, our
travellers came to the ruins of a chapel, and to some curious caverns, with
a peep into a wild gorge to the right leading into the very heart of this
mountainous and little-visited region. Boabdil's sword, and other relics
and pictures of the fifteenth century belonging to the Pallavicini family,
are carefully preserved by their agent in their house in the town, and had
been courteously shown to our travellers when they called to obtain
permission to visit the villa. Returning toward their hotel, they thought
they would prolong their walk by visiting the great cemetery, or "Campo
Santo," which is a little to the north of the Generalife. Long files of
mourners had been perpetually passing by their windows, the bier being
carried on men's shoulders, and uncovered, as in the East, so that the face
of the dead was visible. Each bier was followed by the confraternity to
which he or she belonged, chanting hymns and litanies as they wound up the
long steep hill from the town to the burial-ground. But all appearance of
reverence, or even of decency, disappears at the spot itself, where the
corpse is stripped, taken out of its temporary coffin, and brutally cast
into a pit, which is kept open till filled, and then, with quicklime thrown
in, closed up, and a fresh one opened to be treated in a similar manner. It
is a disgrace to Catholic Spain that such scenes should be of daily
recurrence.

Another villa worth visiting in the neighborhood of the Alhambra is that of
Madame Calderon, where the obliging French gardener took our travellers all
over the gardens and terraces, the hot houses and aviaries, the artificial
streams and bridges, till they came to the great attraction of the place--
a magnificent arbor-vitae, or hanging cypress, falsely called a cedar of
Lebanon, which was planted by St. John of the Cross, this site being
originally occupied by a convent of St. Theresa's. The house is thoroughly
comfortable inside, with charming views over the "vega," and altogether
more like an English house than anything else in Spain. If anyone wished to
spend a delightful summer out of England, they could find no more agreeable
retreat; perfect as to climate, and with the most enjoyable and beautiful
expeditions to be made in every direction. It is worth remembering, as
Madame Calderon, being now a widow, is anxious to let her residence, having
another house in Madrid. There is a church close by, and a dairy attached
to the garden, which is a rarity in Spain, and a public benefit to the
visitors at the Alhambra; and the clever and notable French wife of the
gardener makes delicious butter, and sells both that and the cream in her
mistress's absence--luxuries utterly unknown anywhere else in the
Peninsula.

Bad weather and heavy snow (for they had visited Granada too early in the
year) prevented our travellers from accomplishing different expeditions
which they had planned for the ascent of the Sierra Nevada, and visiting
Alhama and Adea, and other interesting spots in the neighborhood. But they
drove one day to the Alameda, where all Granada congregates in the evening,
and from whence the view looking on the mountains is beautiful.

Returning by the Moorish gateway, called the Puerta de Monayma, they came
to an open space, in the centre of which is a statue of the Virgin. Here
public executions used to take place, and here, in 1881, Mariana Pineda, a
lady of high birth and great beauty, was strangled. A simple cross marks
the spot. Her crime was the finding in her house a flag, maliciously placed
there by a man whose addresses she had rejected.

{332}

From this "plaza" our travellers drove to the conflux of the rivers Darro
and Xenil, which together form the Guadalquiver; and from thence proceeded
to a mosque, where a tablet records the fact of its having been the place
where the unfortunate king Boabdil gave the keys of the town to the
Christian conquerors, Ferdinand and Isabella, and then himself rode slowly
and sadly away from his beautiful palace by a mountain still called the
"Last Sigh of the Moor," immortalized both in verse and song. The
accompanying ballad, with its plaintive wailing sound, still echoes in the
hearts and on the lips of the people:

  Ay de mi Alhama
  Paseabase el Rey Moro
  Por la ciudad de Granada
  Desde la puerta de Elvira
  Hasta la de Bibarrambla
  Ay de mi Alhama!

Returning, they visited the church of Las Angustias, where there is a
wonderful but tawdrily dressed image of the Blessed Virgin, who is the
patroness of the town. The French sisters of charity have a large orphanage
and day-school here, established originally by Madame Calderon; but the
situation, in the street called Recogidas, is low and damp, and their
chapel being almost underground, and into which no sun can ever enter,
seriously affects the health of the sisters. Here, as everywhere, they are
universally beloved and respected, and the present superior is one
eminently qualified, by her loving gentleness and evenness of temper, to
win the hearts of all around her. The dress of the people of Granada is
singularly picturesque: the women wear crape shawls of the brightest
colors, yellow, orange, or red, with flowers stuck jauntily on one side of
the head just above the ear; the men have short velvet jackets, waistcoats
with beautiful hanging silver buttons (which have descended from father to
son, and are not to be bought except by chance), hats with large borders,
turned up at the edge, red sashes round the waist, and gaiters of untanned
leather, daintily embroidered, open at the knee, with hanging strips of
leather and silver buttons. Over the whole, in cold weather, is thrown the
"capa," or large cloak, which often conceals the threadbare garments of a
beggar, but which is worn with the air of the proudest Spanish 'hidalgo.'
This evening, the last which our travellers were to spend in Granada, they
had a visit from the king and captain of the gypsies, a very remarkable
man, between thirty and forty years of age, and a blacksmith by trade. He
brought his guitar, and played in the most marvellous and beautiful way
possible: first tenderly and softly; then bursting into the wildest
exultation; then again plaintive and wailing, ending with a strain of
triumph and rejoicing and victory which completely entranced his hearers.
It was like a beautiful poem or a love-tale, told with a pathos
indescribable.
{333}
It was a fitting last remembrance of a place so full of poetry and of the
past, with a tinge in it of that sorrowful dark thread which always seems
woven into the tissue of earthly lives. Sorrowfully, the next morning, our
travellers paid their last visit to the matchless Alhambra, which had grown
upon them at every turn. Then came the "good-by" to their good and faithful
guide, _Bensaken_, that name so well known to all Granada tourists;
and to the kind sisters of charity, whose white "cornettes" stood grouped
round the fatal diligence which was to convey them back to Malaga. And so
they bade adieu to this beautiful city, with many a hope of a return on
some future day, and with a whole train of new thoughts and new pictures in
their mind's eye, called forth by the wonders they had seen.

------

    Original.

    Victor Cousin And His Philosophy.


The papers some months since announced the death at Paris of M. Victor
Cousin, the well-known eclectic philosopher and Orleanist statesman. The
reëstablishment of the Imperial _régime_ in France had deprived him of
his political career, never much distinguished; and whatever interest he
may have continued to take in philosophy, he produced, as far as we are
aware, no new philosophical work after the revolution of July, 1830, except
prefaces to new editions of his previous writings, or to other writers
whose works he edited, and some "Rapports" to the Academy, among which the
most notable is that on the unpublished works of Abelard, preceded by a
valuable introduction on the scholastic philosophy, which he afterward
published in a separate volume under the title of La Philosophie
Scholastique.

M. Cousin was born at Paris in 1792, and was, the New American Cyclopedia
says, the son of a clock maker, a great admirer of Jean Jacques Rousseau,
and he was, of course, brought up without any religious faith or culture,
as were no small portion of the youth of France born during the Revolution.
Pierre Leroux maliciously accuses Cousin, after he had quarreled with him,
of having been, when they were fellow-students together, a great admirer of
_L'Ami du Peuple_, the journal in which Marat gained his infamous
notoriety. His early destination was literature, and he was always the
littérateur rather than the philosopher; but early falling under the
influence of M. Royer-Collard, a stanch disciple of the Scottish school,
founded by Reid and closed by Sir William Hamilton, he directed his
attention to the study of philosophy, became master of conferences in the
Normal School, and, while yet very young, professor of the history of
philosophy in the Faculté des Lettres at Paris. His course for 1818, and a
part of is course for 1819 and 1820, have been published from notes taken
by his pupils. Being too liberal to suit the government, he was suspended
from his professorship in 1824, but was restored in 1828, and continued his
lectures up to the Revolution of 1830. Since then he has made no important
contributions to philosophical science.

The greater part of M. Cousin's philosophical works are left as fragments
or as unfinished courses.
{334}
His course of 1829-30 ends with the sensist school, and the critical
examination of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. His translation of
Plato was completed indeed; but the arguments or introductions, except to a
few of the Dialogues, and the Life of Plato promised, have never appeared.
He seems to have exhausted his philosophical forces at an early day, and
after publishing a new and revised edition of his previous writings, to
have devoted himself chiefly to literature, especially to the literary
history of the first half of the seventeenth century, and the biography of
certain eminent ladies that played a very distinguished part in the
political intrigues and insurrections of the period. It is doubtful if any
man living had so thorough and minute a knowledge of the literature, the
religious controversies, the philosophy, the polities, and the biography of
the period from the accession of Louis XIII. to the end of the wars of the
Fronde, and the triumph of Mazarin over his enemies, as he possessed. His
Duchesse de Longueville, Madame de Sablé, Duchesse de Chevreuse, and Madame
de Hautefort, and his history of the conclusion of the wars of the Fronde,
are, as literary works, unrivalled, written with rare simplicity, purity,
grace, and delicacy of expression and style, and have an easy natural
eloquence and charm never surpassed by any writer even in the French
language. He has resuscitated those great dames of the seventeenth century,
who live, love, sin, repent, and do penance in his pages as they did in
real life. He seems, as a Parisian has said, to have really fallen in love
with them, and to have regarded each of them as his mistress, whose honor
be must defend at the risk of his life.

The French, we believe, usually count M. Villemain as the most perfect
master of their beautiful language; but to our taste he was surpassed by
Cousin, if not in the delicacy of phrase, which only a Frenchman born or
bred can appreciate, in all the higher qualities of style, as much as he
was in depth and richness of feeling, and variety and comprehensiveness of
thought. Cousin was by far the greater man, endowed with the richer genius,
and, as far as we can judge, equally polished and graceful as a writer. As
a philosophical writer, for beauty, grace, elegance, and eloquence he has
had no equal since Plato; and he wrote on philosophical subjects with ease
and grace, charmed and interested his readers in the dryest and most
abstruse speculations of metaphysics. His rhetoric was captivating even if
his philosophy was faulty.

M. Cousin called his philosophical system eclecticism. He starts with the
assumption that each philosophical school has its special point of view,
its special truth, which the others neglect or unduly depress, and that the
true philosopher weds himself to no particular school, but studies them all
with impartiality, accepts what each has that is positive, and rejects what
each has that is exclusive or negative. He resolves all possible schools
into four--1st. The Sensist; 2d, the Idealistic--subjectivistic; 3d, the
Sceptical; 4th, the Mystic. Each of these four systems has its part of
truth, and its part of error. Take the truth of each, and exclude the
error, and you have true philosophy, and the whole of it. Truth is always
something positive, affirmative; what then is the truth of scepticism,
which is a system of pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but
denies that anything can be affirmed? How, moreover, can scepticism, which
is universal nescience, be called a system of philosophy? Finally, if you
know not the truth in its unity and integrity beforehand, how are you, in
studying those several systems, to determine which is the part of truth and
which the part of error?

There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their part of truth,
as well as their part of error; for the human mind cannot embrace pure
unmixed error any more than the will can pure unmixed evil; but the
eclectic method is not the method of constructing true philosophy any more
than it is the method of constructing true Christian theology.
{335}
The Catholic acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold;
but he does not derived it from them, nor arrived at it by studying their
systems. He holds it independently of them; and having it already in its
unity and integrity, he is able, in studying them, to distinguish what they
have that is true from the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same
with the philosopher. M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he finally
asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical verification, than as
the real and original method of constructing philosophy. The name was
therefore unhappily chosen, and is now seldom heard.

Eclecticism can never be a philosophy. All it can be is a method, and is,
as Cousin held, a method of verification rather than  of construction.
Cousin's own method was not the eclectic, but avowedly the psychological;
that is, by careful observation and profound study of the phenomena of
consciousness, to attain to a real ontological science, or science of the
soul, of God, and nature. This method was severely criticised by Schelling
and other German philosophers, and has been objected to by ontologists
generally, as giving not a real ontology, but only a generalization. Dr.
Channing called the God asserted by Cousin "a splendid generalization"--a
very just criticism, but perhaps not for the precise reason the eloquent
Unitarian preacher assigned. Cousin does not maintain, theoretically at
least, that we can, by way of induction or deduction from purely
psychological facts, attain to a real ontological order. His real error was
in the misapplication of his method, which led him to deny what he calls
necessary and absolute ideas, and terms the idea of the true, the idea of
the beautiful, and the idea of the good, are being, and therefore God, and
to represent them as the word of God--the precise error which, Gioberti
rightly or wrongly maintains, was committed by Rosmini. It must be admitted
that Cousin is not on this point very clear, and that he often speaks of
ontology as an induction from psychology, in which case the God he asserts
would be, for the reason Channing supposes, only a generalization.

But we think it is possible to clear him from this charge, so far as his
intention went, and to defend the psychological method as he professed to
apply it. He professed to attain to ontology from the phenomena of
consciousness, or the facts revealed to consciousness; but he labors long
and hard, as does every psychologist who admits ontology at all, to show,
by a careful analysis and classification of these phenomena or facts, that
there are among them some, at least, which are not derived from the soul
itself, which do not depend on it, and do actually extend beyond the region
of psychology, and lead at once into the ontological order. In other words,
he claims to find in his psychological observation and analysis real
ontological facts. It is from these, not from purely psychological
phenomenon, that he professes to rise to ontology. So understood, what is
called the psychological method is strictly defensible. Every philosopher
does and must begin by the analysis of thought, that is, in the language of
Cousin, the fact of consciousness, and there is no other way possible. That
the ideal formula enters into every one of my thoughts is not a fact that I
know without thought, and it can be determined only by analyzing the
thought one thinks, that is, the fact of consciousness. The quarrel here
between the psychologists and the ontologists is quite unnecessary.

What is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert, or, in fact,
can assert, that ontology is neither an induction nor a deduction from
psychological data. God is not, and cannot be, the generalization of our
own souls.
{336}
But it does not follow from this that we do not think that which is God,
and that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it from thought
and by thinking. What is objected to in the psychologists is the assumption
that thought is a purely psychological or subjective fact, and that from
this psychological or subjective fact we can by way of induction attain to
ontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin, and we studied his works
with some care thirty or thirty-five years ago, and had the honor of his
private correspondence, this he never pretends to do. What he claims is
that in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas
which are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do
actually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology.
That his account of these facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or
adequate we do not pretend, but that he professes to recognize them and
distinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.

The defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing, as we have
already observed, to identify the absolute or necessary ideas he detects
and asserts with God, the only _ens necessarium et reale_, and in
failing to assert their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting
them only as objective to the human personality. He never succeeded in
cutting himself wholly loose from the German nonsense of a
subjective-object or objective-subject, and when he had clearly proved an
idea to be objective to the reflective reason and the human personality, he
did dare assert it to be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was
impersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained
with regard to the categories. There always seemed to remain in his mind
some confusion between the subject and object, and hence his translator in
Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, never ventures to translate _le
moi et le non-moi_, subject and object, or the soul and the world, but
introduces into the language such barbarisms as the _me_ and the
_not-me_. Indeed, at the time those Specimens were published, there
were few, if any, of the scholars of the modern Athens that understood or
could be made to understand the real distinction between objective and
subjective; and we observed the other day, in looking over the
_Einleitung_ of a German professor, that he speaks of the
objective-object, the objective-subject, the subjective-object, and the
subjective-subject.

It is very easy to understand why Kant should assert objective-subjective,
for he held that the categories are necessary, irresistible, and
indestructible forms of the subject, but independent of the human will or
personality, or of proper human activity, nay, the very conditions of that
activity, imposed on us not by our will, but by the very constitution all
of our intellectual nature. But why Cousin should have hesitated to assert
the complete disjunction between subject and object in thought is what we
are unable to explain. He maintains strenuously that the object is distinct
from the personality of the subject, or that it is always, in his own
language, _le-non-moi_, but not that it is distinct from the whole
soul. He  distinguishes the subject between personal activity and
impersonal. The personal is subjective, the impersonal is objective, but
objective in relation to what? To the personal only. There is, no doubt,
the distinction he asserts, and it is recognized by all our theologians in
their distinction between _actus humanus_ and _actus hominis_.
The _actus humanus_ is an act of free will, the _actus hominis_
is an involuntary act; but both are acts of the subject, man. All action of
man, whether personal or impersonal, voluntary or involuntary, is
subjective, but for involuntary acts he is not held morally accountable.

{337}

This same failure to mark the real distinction between subjective and
objective, and making it simply the distinction between personal and
impersonal, _le moi_ and _le non-moi_, has greatly deprecated the
value in his philosophy of the distinction M. Cousin notes between
intuition and reflection. According to him they are but two modes of the
activity of one in the same reason--which reason, he asserts is our faculty
of intelligence. Reason, he says, is our only faculty of knowing, by which
we know all that we do know, whatever the sphere or object of our
knowledge. Reason, then, is subjective, and consequently so are all its
modes of activity. Intuition is as subjective as reflection, and hence the
distinction between intuition and reflections, really so important when
rightly understood, says nothing in favor of the objectivity of what M.
Cousin calls absolute or necessary ideas. It is in his philosophy simply a
distinction between personal and impersonal, between the spontaneous
activity and the reflective of the same subject; yet it is on this very
distinction that he bases the validity of his ontology and his whole
metaphysical system. By it he explains genius, inspiration, revelation, and
religious faith. These are operations of the spontaneous reason, and divine
because the activity of the spontaneous reason is not personal. In this
way, he legitimates all the religions of all ages and nations. He places
prophetic and apostolic inspiration and the inspiration of genius in the
same category, and resolves them all, in the last analysis, into what we
commonly called enthusiasm. But as reason, whether personal or impersonal,
is subjective, a faculty of the human soul, it is not easy to see why its
spontaneous activity should be more divine or authoritative then its
reflective activity. Does M. Cousin hold with the Arabs that the ravings of
the maniac are divine inspirations?

Cousin seems to us never to have clearly understood the real character of
the distinction between intuition and reflection, on which he rightly
insists. Intuition is impersonal, divine, infallible, authoritative, he
maintains, while reflection, partaking of the imperfections and pettiness
of our own personality, is individual, fallible, and without authority,
save as supported by intuition. All that we ever do or can know is given us
primarily in intuition, and what is so given constitutes the common sense,
the common faith or belief of the race. There is less, but there can never
be more, in reflection than in intuition. The difference between the two is
the difference between _seeing_ and _beholding_. I see what is
before me, but to behold it I look. I look that I may determine what it is
I see. But it is clear from this illustration that the intuition is as much
the act of the subject as is the reflection. The only difference between
them is that asserted by Leibnitz between simple perception and
apperception. In simple perception I perceive all the objects before me,
without noting or distinguishing them; in apperception I note that it is I
who perceive them, and distinguish them both from myself and from one
another. The intuition is _à posteriori_, and is no synthetic judgment
_à priori_, as Kant terms what must precede experience in order to
render experience possible.

Nor is it true to say that all our knowledge is given in the primitive
intuition. What is given in the primitive intuition is simply the ideal,
self-evident truths, as say some, first principles of all science, which
are at the same time the first principles of all reality, and could not be
the first principles of science if they were not the first principles of
reality, say others. Even they who assert that the ideal formula, _Ens
creat existentias_, is intuitive, never pretend that anything more than
the ideal element of thought or experience is intuitive. The ideal formula
is simply the scientific reduction of the categories of Aristotle and Kant
to three, and their identification with reality; that is, their reduction
to being, existence, and the creative act of being, which is the real nexus
between them. These three categories must be given intuitively, or _à
priori_, because without them the intelligence is not constituted, and
no science, no experience, is possible.
{338}
But in them, while the principles of all science are given, no knowledge or
apprehension of particular things is given. The intuition constitutes, we
would say creates, the faculty of intelligence, but all science is acquired
either by the exercise of that faculty or by divine revelation addressed to
it.

Reduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin, intuition is
empirical, and stands opposed not to reflection, but to discursion, and is
simply the immediate and direct perception of the object without the
intervention of any process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is,
indeed, not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common sense,
but it is a sense that renders the distinction between intuition and
reflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it does not carry him out of
the sphere of the subject, or afford any basis for his ontological
inductions. He has still the question as to the objectivity and reality of
the ideal to solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological
conclusions, therefore, as a writer in The Christian Examiner told him as
long ago as 1836, rest simply on the credibility of reason or faith in its
trustworthiness, which can never be established, because it is assumed that
to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, since the
object, if impersonal, may for aught that appears be included in the
subject. Notwithstanding his struggles and efforts of all sorts, we think,
therefore, that it must be conceded that Cousin remained in the sphere of
psychology, and that the facts the study and analysis of consciousness gave
him, have in his system no ontological value, for he fails to establish
their real objectivity. His passage from psychology is a leap over a gulf
by main strength, not a regular dialectic passage, which he professes to
have found, or which he promises to provide, and which the true analysis of
thought discloses.

M. Cousin professes to have reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to
two, substance and cause, or substance and phenomenon. But, as he in fact
identifies cause with substance, declaring substance to be substance only
in so much as it is cause, and cause to be cause only in so much as it is
substance, he really reduces them to the single category of substance,
which you may call indifferently substance or cause. But though every
substance is intrinsically and essentially a cause, yet, as it may be
something more than cause, it is not necessary to insist on this, and it
may be admitted that he recognizes two categories. Under the head of
substance he ranges all that is substantial, or that pertains to real and
necessary being, and under the head of cause the phenomenal, or the effects
of the causative action of substance. He says he understands by substance
the universal and absolute substance, the universal, necessary, and real
being of the theologians, and by phenomena not mere modes or appearances of
substance, but finite and relative substances, and calls them phenomena
only in opposition to the one absolute substance. They are created or
produced by the causative action of substance. If this has any real
meaning, he should recognize three categories, as in the ideal formula,
_Ens creat existentias_, that is, being, existence, or creature, and
the creative act of being, the real nexus between substance or being and
contingent existences, for it is that which places them and binds them to
the creator. In the ideal formula the categories are all reduced to three,
which really include them all and in their real relation. Whatever there is
to be known must be arranged under one or another of the three terms of the
formula, for whatever is conceivable must be being, the creative act of
being, or the product of that act, that is to say, existences. The ideal
formula is complete, for it asserts in their logical relation the first
principles of all the knowable (_omne scibile_) and all the real
(_omne reale_), and of all the knowable because of all the real, for
what is not real is not knowable. M. Cousin's reduction to substance and
cause, or being and phenomena, besides being not accurately expressed, is
unscientific and defective.

{339}

We do not think M. Cousin ever intended to deny the creative act of being,
or the reality of existences, or what he calls phenomena, but he includes
the act in his conception of substance. God is in his own intrinsic nature,
he maintains, causative or creative, and cannot, therefore, not cause or
create. Hence, creation is necessary. Being causative in his essence,
essentially a cause, and cause being a cause only inasmuch as it causes or
is actually a cause, God is, if we may so speak, forced to create, and to
be continuously creating, by the intrinsic and eternal necessity of his own
being. This smacks a little of Hegelianism, which teaches that God perfects
or fills out his own being, or realizes the possibilities of his own
nature, in creating, and arrives at self-consciousness first in man--a
doctrine which our Boston transcendentalists embodied in their favorite
aphorism, "In order to be you must do"--as if without being it is possible
to do, as if imperfection could make itself perfection, or anything by
itself alone could make itself more than it is!

But the doctrine that substance is essentially cause, and must from
intrinsic necessity cause in the sense of creating, is not tenable. We are
aware that Leibnitz, a great name in philosophy, defines substance to be an
active force, a _vis activa_, but we do not recollect that he anywhere
pretends that its activity necessarily extends beyond itself. God is _vis
activa_, if you will, in a supereminent degree; he is essentially
active, and would be neither being nor substance if he were not; he is, as
say Aristotle and the schoolmen, most pure act; and hence the theologians
discover in him a reason for the eternal generation of the Son, and the
eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, or why God is necessarily indivisible
Trinity; but nothing in this implies that he must necessarily act _ad
extra_, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his own
divine nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his own infinite
being, for he is complete in himself, the plenitude of being, and always
and everywhere suffices for himself, and therefore for his own activity.
Creation, or the production of effects exterior to himself, is not
necessary to the perfection of his activity, adds and can add nothing to
him, as it does and can take nothing from him. Hence, though we cannot
conceive of him without conceiving him as infinitely, eternally, and
essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance or being
without conceiving him to be necessarily acting or creating _ad
extra_.

M. Cousin evidently confounds the interior act of the divine being with his
exterior acts, or acts _ad extra_, or creative acts. God being most
pure act, says the eclectic philosopher, he must be infinitely active, and
if infinitely active he must develop himself in creation; therefore,
creation is necessary, and God cannot but create. This denies while it
asserts that God is in himself most pure act, and assumes that his nature
has possibilities that can be realized only in external acts. It makes the
creation necessary to the perfection of his being, and assumes either that
he is not in himself _ens perfectissimum_, or most perfect being, or
that the creation, the world, or universe, is itself God; that is, the
conception of God as most perfect being includes both substance and cause,
both being and phenomenon. Hence, with the contradiction of which M. Cousin
gives more than one example, and which no pantheistic philosopher does or
can escape, in asserting creation to be necessary, he declares it to be
impossible; for the phenomena substantially considered are God himself,
indistinguishable from him, and necessary to complete our conception of him
as absolute substance, or most perfect being.

{340}

In the preface to the third edition of his Philosophical Fragments, M.
Cousin says the expression, "Creation is necessary," is objectionable, as
irreverent, and appearing to imply that God in creating is not free, and he
willingly consents to retract it. But we cannot find that he does retract
it, and, if he retracts the expression, he nowhere retracts the thought. He
denies that he favors a system of fatalism, and labors hard to prove that
though God cannot but create, yet that in creating he is free. God, he
says, must act according to his own essential nature, and cannot act
contrary to his own wisdom and goodness; yet in acting he acts freely.
There is a distinction between liberty and free will. Free will is liberty
accompanied by deliberation and struggles between opposite motives and
tendencies. In God there can be no hesitancy, no deliberation, no struggle
of choice between good and evil. Yet is he none the less free for that.
There are sublime moments when the soul acts spontaneously, with terrible
energy, without any deliberation. Is the soul in these sublime moments
deprived of liberty? The saint, when, by long struggles and severe
discipline, he has overcome all his internal enemies, and henceforth acts
right spontaneously, without deliberating--is he less free than he who is
still in the agony of the struggle, or are his acts less meritorious? Is
the liberty of God taken away by denying that he is free to act contrary to
his nature?

Whether the distinction here asserted between liberty and free will is
admissible or not, or whether all that is alleged be true or much of it
only error, we pass over, as the discussion of the question of liberty
would lead further than we can now go; but in all he says he avoids the
real question at issue. Certainly, there can be no hesitancy on the part of
God, no interior struggle as to choice between good and evil, no
deliberation as to what he shall do or not do; nothing that implies the
least possible imperfection can be in him. Certain, again, is it that God
is not free to alter his own nature, to change his own attributes, or to
act contrary to them, to the eternal essences of things, or to his own
eternal ideas. But that is not the question. The real question is, Is be
free to create or not create at his own will and pleasure? Among the
infinite number of contingents possible, and all according with his own
essential attributes, is he free to select such as he chooses, and at his
own will and pleasure give them existence? This is the only question he had
to answer, and this question he studiously avoids, and fails, therefore, to
show that they are wrong who accuse him of asserting creation as the
necessary and not the free act of God. The charge of asserting universal
fatalism and pantheism he therefore fails to meet. He fails to vindicate
the liberty of God, and therefore, though he asserts it, the liberty of
man. All pantheism is fatalistic, and the doctrine of Spinoza is not more
decidedly pantheistic than the system adopted and defended by Cousin.

We are far from believing that M. Cousin thought himself a pantheist, for
we do not think he ever understood his own system. He was more than most
men the dupe of words, and, though not destitute of philosophical genius,
philosophy was never his natural vocation, any more than it was his
original destination. He was always, as we have said, the littérateur
rather than the philosopher. Much allowance should also, no doubt, be made
for the unsettled state of philosophy in France when he became, under
Royer-Collard, master of conferences in the Normal School of Paris, and the
confused state of philosophical language that was then in use. Throughout
his whole ontology, he is misled by taking the word substance instead of
_ens_ or being. He says that he understands by substance, when he
asserts, as he does, that there is only one substance, what the fathers and
doctors of the church mean by the one supreme, necessary, absolute, and
eternal being, the _Ego sum Qui sum_, I am that I am, of Exodus, the
name under which God revealed himself to Moses. This is an improper use of
the word.
{341}
No doubt being is substance, or substantial, but the two terms are not
equivalents. Being has primary reference to that which is, as opposed to
that which is not, or nothing; substance is something, and so far coincides
with being, but something in opposition to attribute, mode, or accident, or
something capable of supporting attributes, modes, or accidents. Being is
absolute in and of itself, and therefore strictly speaking one, and it is
only in a loose sense that we speak of beings in the plural number, or call
creatures beings. There is and can be but one only being, God, for he only
can say, _Ego sum Qui sum_, and whatever existences there may be
distinguished from him have their being not in themselves, but in him,
according to what St. Paul says, "in him we live, and move, and have our
being: in _ipso vivimus, et movemur, et sumus._" There is in this view
nothing pantheistic, for being is complete in itself and sufficient for
itself. Consequently, there can be nothing distinguishable from being
except placed by the free creative act of being, that is, creation or
creatures. The creature is not being, but it holds from being by the
creative act, and may be and is a substance, distinct from the divine
substance. Being is one, substances may be manifold. Hence, in the ideal
formula, the first term or category is _ens_, not _substans_ or
_substantia_.

Cousin, misled by Descartes and Spinoza, and only imperfectly acquainted
with the scholastic philosophy, adopts the term substance instead of being,
and maintains sturdily, from first to last, that there is and can be but
one substance. Whence it follows that all not in that one substance is
unsubstantial and phenomenal, without attributes, modes, or activity.
Creatures may have their being in God and yet be substances and capable of
acting from their own centre as second causes; but, if there is only one
substance, they cannot themselves be substances in any sense at all, and
can be only attributes, modes, or phenomena of the one only substance, or
God. God alone is in himself their substance and reality, and their
activity is really his activity. By taking for his first category substance
instead of _ens_ or being, M. Cousin found himself obliged virtually
to deny the second. He says he calls the second category phenomena, only in
opposition to the one universal substance, that he holds them to relative
or finite substances. This shows his honorable intentions, but it cannot
avail him, for he says over and over again that there is and can be but one
substance. Either substance is one and one only, he says formally, or it is
nothing. The unity of substance is vital in his system, and unity of
substance is the essential principle, of pantheism. He himself defines
substance as that which exists in itself and not in another.

M. Cousin say pantheism is the divinization of nature, or nature taken in
its totality as God. But this is sheer atheism or naturalism, not
pantheism. The essence of pantheism is in the denial of substantial
creation or the creation of substances. The pantheist can, in a certain
manner, even admit creation, the creation of modes or phenomena, and there
are few pantheists who do not assert as much. The test is as to the
creation of substance, or existences that can support attributes, modes, or
accidents of their own, instead of being simply attributes, modes, or
accidents of the one substance, and thus capable of acting from their own
centre as proper second causes. He who denies the creation of such
existences is a pantheist, and he who affirms it is a theist and no
pantheist, however he may err in other matters. Had M. Cousin understood
this, he would have seen that he had not escaped the error of Spinoza. With
only one substance, it is impossible to assert the creation of substances.
The substance of the soul and of the world, if there is only one substance,
is God, and they are only phenomenal or mere appearances; the only activity
in the universe is that of God; and what we call our acts are his acts.
{342}
Whatever is done, whether good or evil, he does it, not only as _causa
eminens_ or _causa causarum_, but as direct and immediate actor.
The moral consequences of such a doctrine are easy to be seen, and need not
be dwelt upon.

No doubt M. Cousin, when repelling the charge of pantheism preferred
against him, on the ground of his maintaining that there is only one
substance, thought he had said enough in saying that he used the word
phenomena in the sense of finite or relative substances; but if there is
only one substance, how can there be any finite and relative substances?
And he, also, should have considered that his use of the word phenomena was
the worst word he could have chosen to convey the idea of substance,
however finite, for it stands opposed to substance. He says _le moi_
and _le non-moi_ are in relation to substance phenomenal. Who from
this could conclude them to be themselves substances? He says he could not
maintain that they are modes or appearances of substance only, because he
maintains that they are forces, causes. But it sometimes happens to a
philosopher to be in contradiction with himself, and always to the
pantheist, because pantheism is supremely sophistical and
self-contradictory. It admits of no clear, consistent, logical statement.
Besides, no man can always be on his guard, and when his system is false,
the force of truth and his good sense and just feeling will often get the
better of his system. He has, indeed, said the soul (_le moi_) and the
world (_le non-moi_) are forces, causes; but he has also said, as his
system requires him to say, that their substantial activity is the activity
of the one only substance, which is God.

It were easy to justify these criticisms by any number of citations from M.
Cousin's several works, but it is not necessary, for we are attempting
neither a formal exposition nor a formal refutation of his system; we are
merely pointing out some of his errors and mistakes, for the benefit of
young and ingenuous students of philosophy, who need to be shown what it is
necessary to shun on the points taken up. Most, if not all, of M. Cousin's
mistakes and errors arose from his having considered the question of method
before he had settled that of principles. He says a philosopher's whole
philosophy is in his method. Tell me what is such or such a philosopher's
method, and I will tell you his philosophy. But this is not true, unless by
method he means both principles and method taken together. Method is the
application of principles, and presupposes them, and till they are
determined it is impossible to determine the method to be adopted or
pursued. The human mind has a method given it in its very constitution, and
we cannot treat the question of method till we have ascertained the
principles of that constitution. Principles are not found or obtained by
the exercise of our faculties, because without them the mind can neither
operate nor even exist. Principles are and must be given by the creator of
the mind itself. To treat the question of method before we have ascertained
what principles are thus given, is to proceed in the dark and to lose our
way.

Undoubtedly, every philosopher must begin the construction of his
philosophy by the analysis of thought, either as presented him in
consciousness or as represented in language, or both together. This is a
mental necessity. Since philosophy deals only with thought or what is
presented in thought, its first step must be to ascertain what are the
elements of thought. So far as this analysis is psychological, philosophy
begins in psychology; but whether what is called the psychological method
is or is not to be adopted, we cannot determine till we have ascertained
the elements, and ascertained whether they are all psychological or not. If
on inquiry it should turn out that in every thought there is both a
psychological and an ontological element given simultaneously and in an
indissoluble synthesis, it is manifest that the exclusively psychological
method would lead only to error.
{343}
It would leave out the onto logical element, and be unable to present in
its true character even the psychological; for, if the psychological
element in the real order and in thought exists only in relation with the
ontological, it can be apprehended and treated in its true character only
in that relation. Whether such be the fact or not, how are we to determine
till we know what are the principles alike of all the knowable and of all
the real--that is, have determined the categories?

The error of the psychological method is not that it asserts the necessity
of beginning our philosophizing with the analysis of thought, or what M.
Cousin calls, not very properly, the fact of consciousness, but in
proceeding to study the facts of the human soul, as if man were an isolated
existence, and the only thing existing; and after having observed and
classified these facts, either stopping with them, as does Sir William
Hamilton, or proceeding by way of induction, as most psychologists do, to
the conclusion of ontological principles--an induction which both Sir
William Hamilton and Schelling have proved, in their criticisms of Cousin's
method, is invalid, because no induction is valid that concludes beyond the
facts or particulars from which it is made. The facts being all
psychological, nothing not psychological can be concluded from them. Cousin
feels the force of this criticism, but, without conceding that his method
is wrong or defective, seeks to avoid it by alleging that among the facts
of consciousness are some which, though revealed by consciousness or
contained in thought, are some which are not psychological, and hence
psychology leads of itself not by way of induction, but directly, to
ontology. The answer is pertinent, for if it be true that there is an
ontological element in every thought, the analysis of thought discloses it.
But, hampered and blinded by his method, Cousin fails, as we have seen, to
disengage a really ontological element, and in his blundering explanation
of it deprives it of all real ontological character. His God is
anthropomorphous, when not a generalization or a pure abstraction. What
deceives the exclusive psychologists, and makes them regard their
inductions of ontology from psychological facts as valid, is the very
important fact that there are no exclusively psychological facts; and in
their psychology, though not recognized by them as such, and according to
their method ought not to be such, there are real ontological
elements--elements which are not psychological, and without which there
could be no psychological elements. These elements place us directly in
relation with the ontological reality, and the mistake is in not seeing or
recognizing this fact, and in assuming that the ontological reality,
instead of being given, as it is, intuitively, is obtained by induction
from the psychological. Ontology as an induction or a logical conclusion is
sophistical and false; as given intuitively in the first principles of
thought, it is well founded and true. The mistake arises from having
attempted to settle the question of method before having settled the
question of principles. The simple fact is that the soul is not the only
existence, nor an isolated existence. It exists and operates only in
relation with its creator and upholder, with the external world, and with
other men or society, so that there are and can be no purely psychological
facts. The soul severed from God, or the creative act of God, cannot live,
cannot exist, but drops into the nothing it was before it was created.
Principles are given, not found or obtained by our own activity, for, as we
have said, the mind cannot operate without principles. The principles, as
most philosophers tell us, are self-evident, or evidence themselves. If
real principles, they are and must be alike the principles of being and of
knowing, of science and reality. They must include in their real relations
both the psychological and the ontological. As the psychological does not
and cannot exist without the ontological, and, indeed, not without the
creative act of the ontological, science is possible only on condition that
the ontological and the psychological, as to their ideal principles, are
intuitively given, and given in their real synthesis, as it has been
abundantly shown they are given in the ideal formula.
{344}
The ontological and psychological being given intuitively and
simultaneously in their real relation, it follows necessarily that neither
the exclusively psychological method nor the exclusively ontological method
can be accepted, and that the method must be synthetic, because the
principles themselves are given in their real synthesis. Clearly, then, the
principles must determine the method, not the method the principles. It is
not true, then, to say that all one's philosophy is in one's method, but
that it is all in one's principles. If M. Cousin had begun by ascertaining
what are the principles of thought, necessarily asserted in every thought
and without which no thought is possible, he could never have fallen into
his pantheism, which every thought repudiates, and which cannot even be
asserted without self-contradiction, because in every thought there is
given as essential to the very existence of thought the express
contradictory of pantheism of every form.

M. Cousin professes to be able, from the method a philosopher follows in
philosophizing, to foretell his philosophy; but although we would speak
with the greatest respect of our former master, from whom we received no
little benefit, we must say that we have never met a man, equally learned
and equally able, so singularly unhappy in explaining the systems of the
various schools of philosophy of which he professes to give the history. We
cannot now call to mind a single instance in which he has seized and
presented the kernel of the philosophical system he has undertaken to
explain. He makes the Theaetetus of Plato an argument against the sensists,
or the doctrine of the origin of all our ideas in sensation--when one has
but to read that Dialogue to perceive that what Plato is seeking to prove
is that the knowledge of the sensible, which is multiple, variable, and
evanescent, is no real science at all. Plato is not discussing at all the
question of how we know, but what we must know in order to have real
science. Cousin's exposition of what he calls the Alexandrian theodicy, or
of neoplatonism, is, notwithstanding he had edited the works of Proclus, a
marvel of misapprehension alike of the Alexandrian doctrine and of
Christian theology. He describes with a sneer the scholastic philosophy as
being merely "a commentary on the Holy Scriptures and texts from the
fathers." He edited the works of Descartes, but never understood more of
that celebrated philosopher than enough to imbibe some of his worst errors.
He has borrowed much, directly or indirectly, from Spinoza, but never
comprehended his system of pantheism, as is evident from his judgment that
Spinoza erred only in being too devout and too filled and penetrated with
God!

He misapprehends entirely Leibnitz's doctrine of substance, as we have
already seen. His own system is in its psychological part borrowed chiefly
from Kant, and in its ontological part from Hegel, neither of whom has he
ever understood. He has the errors of these two distinguished Germans
without their truths or their logical firmness. And perhaps there was no
system of philosophy, of which he undertook to give an account, that he
less understood than his own. He seems, after having learned something of
the great mediaeval philosophers in preparing his work, Philosophic
Scholastique, to have had some suspicions that he had talked very
foolishly, and had been the dupe of his own youthful zeal and enthusiasm;
for, though he afterward published a new edition of his works without any
essential alteration, as we infer from the fact that they were placed at
Rome on the Index, he published, as far as we are aware, no new
philosophical work, and turned his attention to other subjects. Even in his
work on the Scholastics, as well as in his account of Jansenism in his work
on Madame de Sablé, we recollect no re-assertion of his pantheism, nor even
an unorthodox opinion.

{345}

It was a great misfortune for M. Cousin as a philosopher that he knew so
little of Catholic theology, and that what little he did know, apparently
caught up at second-hand, only served to mislead him. We are far from
building science on faith or founding philosophy on revelation, in the
sense of the traditionalists; yet we dare affirm that no man who has not
studied profoundly the Gospel of St. John, the Epistles of St. Paul, the
great Greek and Latin fathers, and the mediaeval doctors of the church, is
in a condition to write anything deserving of serious consideration on
philosophy. The great controversies that have been called forth from time
to time on the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the two natures
and the two wills in the one person of our Lord, the Real Presence of our
Lord's body, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist, liberty and necessity,
the relations of nature and grace, and of reason and faith, throw a
brilliant light on philosophy far surpassing all the light to be derived
from Gentile sources, or by the most careful analysis of the facts of our
own consciousness. The effort, on the one hand, to demolish, and on the
other to sustain, Catholic dogma, has enlightened the darkest and most
hidden passages of both psychology and ontology, and placed the Catholic
theologian, really master of the history of his science, on a vantage
ground which they who know it not are incapable of conceiving. Before him
your Descartes, Spinozas, Kants, Fichtes, Schellings, Hegels, Cousins,
dwindle to philosophical pigmies.

The excellent M. Augustin Cochin thinks that M. Cousin rendered great
service to the cause of religion by the sturdy warfare he carried in
defence of spiritualism against the gross sensism and materialism of the
eighteenth century, and nobody can deny very considerable merit to his
Critical Examination of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. Dr. C. S.
Henry translated it some years ago, in this country, and published it under
the rather inappropriate title of Consin's Psychology, and it has no doubt
had much influence in unseating Locke from the philosophical throne he
formerly occupied. But the reaction against Locke and Condillac, as well as
the philosophers of Auteuil, had commenced long before Consin became master
of conferences in L'Ecole Normale; and we much doubt if the subtiler and
more refined rationalism be has favored is a less dangerous enemy to
religion and society than the sensism of Condillac, or the gross
materialism of Cabanis, Garat, and Destutt de Tracy. Under his influence
infidelity in France has modified its form, but only, as it seems to me, to
render itself more difficult of detection and refutation. Pantheism is a
far more dangerous enemy than materialism, for its refutation demands an
order of thought and reasoning above the comprehension of the great mass of
those who are not incapable of being misled by its sophistries. The
refutation of the pantheism of our days requires a mental culture and a
philosophical capacity by no means common. Thousands could comprehend the
refutation of Locke or Condillac, where there is hardly one who can
understand the refutation of Hegel or Spinoza.

Besides, we do not think Cousin can be said to have in all cases opposed
the truth to sensism. His spiritualism is not more true than sensism
itself. He pretends that we have immediate and direct apprehension of
spiritual reality--that is, pure intellections. True, he says that we
apprehend the noetic only on occasion of sensible affection, but on such
occasion we do apprehend it pure and simple. This is as to the apprehension
itself exaggerated spiritualism, and would almost justify the fair pupil of
Margaret Fuller in her exclamation, "O Miss Fuller! I see right into the
abyss of being." Man, not being a pure intelligence, but intelligence
clothed with sensibility, has and can have no pure intellections.
{346}
M. Cousin would have been more correct if instead of saying that the
affection of the sensibility is necessary as the occasion, he had said, we
know the supersensible indeed, but only as sensibly represented.

In this sense we understand the peripatetics when they say: "Nihil est in
intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu." The medium of this sensible
representation of the intelligible or spiritual truth to the understanding
is language of some sort, which is its sensible sign. M. Cousin would have
done well to have studied more carefully on this subject the remarkable
work of De Bonald, a work, though it has some errors, of an original genius
of the first order, and of a really profound thinker. Had he done this, he
might have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate without language,
and understood something of the necessity of the infallible church to
maintain the unity and integrity of language, whose corruption by
philosophers invariably involves the loss of the unity and integrity of the
idea. It might also have taught him that a philosophy worth anything cannot
be spun by the philosopher out of his own consciousness as the spider spins
her web out of her own bowels, and that without as much at least of
primitive revelation or the primitive instruction given by God himself to
the race, as is embodied in language, no man can successfully cultivate
philosophy.

As minister of public instruction under Louis Philippe, M. Cousin labored
hard and with some success, we know not how much, to extend primary schools
in France; but he in part neutralized his services in this respect by his
defence of the university monopoly, his opposition to the freedom of
education, his efforts to force his pantheistic or at best rationalistic
philosophy into the colleges of the university, and his intense hatred and
unrelenting hostility to the Jesuits, who have first and last done so much
for education and religion in France as well as elsewhere. Ordinarily a man
of great candor, and of a most kindly disposition, his whole nature seemed
to change the moment a Jesuit was in question. He was no friend to the
Catholic religion, and after the writer of this became a Catholic, he
forgot his French politeness, and refused to answer a single one of his
letters. To him we were either dead or had become an enemy. He moreover
never liked to have his views questioned. In politics he belonged to the
_Doctrinaire_ school, and supported the _juste milieu_. In the
Revolution of 1848, and under the Republic, he opposed earnestly socialism,
and attempted to stay its progress by writing and publishing a series of
philosophical tracts, as if philosophy could cure an evil which it had
helped to create. When society is in disorder, old institutions are
falling, and civilization is rapidly lapsing into barbarism, it is only
religion, speaking from on high with the power of truth and the authority
of God, that can arrest the downward tendency. "Religion," said Lamennais
in the first volume of his Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion,
"is found at the cradle of nations; philosophy at their tomb." Woe to the
nation that exchanges faith for philosophy! its ruin is at hand, for it has
lost the principle of life. After the _coup d'état_ little was heard
of Cousin either in the world of politics or philosophy, and his last years
appear to have flowed away in the peaceful pursuits of literature.

Rumors from time to time reached us during the last dozen years that M.
Cousin had become a Catholic, and for his sake we regret that they have
remained unconfirmed. It is reported, on good authority, that he regularly
attended mass, and was accustomed to say his morning and evening prayers
before an image of Our Lady; but it is agreed by his most intimate Catholic
friends that he never made any formal profession of Catholic faith, and
died without receiving or asking the sacraments of the church.
{347}
That in his later years his mind turned at times toward the church, that
his feelings toward religion were softened, and that he felt the need of
faith, is very probable; but we have seen no evidence that he ever avowed
publicly or privately any essential change in his doctrine. He always held
that the Catholic faith is the form under which the people do and must
receive the truth; but he held that the truth thus received does not
transcend the natural order, and is transformed with the _élite_ of
the race into philosophy.

We have found in his works no recognition of the supernatural order, or the
admission of any other revelation than the inspiration of the impersonal
reason. Providence for him was fate, and God was not free to interpose in a
supernatural way for the redemption and salvation of men. Creation itself
was necessary, and the universe only the evolution of his substance. There
is no evidence that we have seen that he ever attained to the conviction
that creation is the free act of the creator, or felt even for a moment the
deep joy of believing that GOD IS FREE. Yet it is not ours to judge the
man. We follow him to the mouth of the grave, and there leave him to the
mercy as well as the justice of him whose very justice is love.

We are not the biographer of Victor Cousin; we have only felt that we could
not let one so distinguished in life, who had many of the elements of a
really great man, and whom the present writer once thought a great
philosopher, pass away in total silence. Genius has always the right to
exact a certain homage, and Victor Consin had genius, though not, in our
judgment, the true philosophical genius. We have attempted no regular
exposition or refutation of his philosophy; our only aim has been to call
attention to his teachings on those points where he seemed to approach
nearest the truth, and on which the young and ardent philosophical student
most needs to be placed on his guard, to bring out and place in a clear
light certain elements of philosophic truth which he failed to grasp. We
place not philosophy above faith, but we do not believe it possible to
construct it without faith; we yet hold that it is necessary to every one
who would understand the faith or defend it against those who impugn it. If
on any point what we have said on the occasion of the departure of the
founder of French eclecticism shall serve to make the truth clearer to a
single ingenuous and earnest inquirer, we shall thank God that he has
permitted us to live not wholly in vain.


------

    Original.

    Praises Of The Blessed Sacrament.

    Imitated from Madame Swetchine.


  O vault of heaven, clear and bright!
  All spangled o'er with stars to-night,
  Canst say how many worlds of light
    Adorn thy glorious firmament?

  For here I long my voice to raise
  To him who hath my heart always.
  And fain would know how oft to praise
    The sweet, All Holy Sacrament.

{348}

  O shining sun! for every ray
  That from thee beamed since Eden's day,
  And shall, till this world pass away,
    And all thy light and heat be spent:

  For each bright ray my voice I'd raise
  To him who hath my heart always,
  And sing a canticle of praise
    To this Most Holy Sacrament.

  O trackless sea! could I but save
  And count each short-lived glist'ning wave;
  Their sum would tell how oft I crave
    To praise the Blessed Sacrament.

  O fields! for every grassy blade
  Of which thy beauteous robe is made,
  Let offerings sweet of praise be laid
    Before the Blessed Sacrament.

  O pleasant gardens! could I know
  How many flowers within you grow:
  So many flowers of praise I'd strew
    Before the Blessed Sacrament.

  O wide, wide world! canst tell to me
  How many grains of dust in thee?
  So many would my praises be
    To this Most Holy Sacrament.

  O earth! thy praises have an end;
  To seraphs I the task commend.
  Their tireless voices they must lend
    To praise the Blessed Sacrament.

  Eternity! duration long!
  To thee alone it doth belong
  To measure when should cease the song
    That lauds the Blessed Sacrament!

------

{349}

    From Chambers's Journal.

    Architecture Of Birds.


If we desire to look upon something which the first inhabitants of our
planet saw exactly as it is to-day, we have only to stand before a bird's
nest. Your bird is no innovator: he laid down the plan of his dwelling at
the creation of the world, and, while everything around him has been
changing, assuming new forms, yielding to the influence of fashion, has
remained content with his primitive architecture ever since. He calculates
the number, and considers the necessities of his family, and with unerring
sagacity provides for them all. He imitates none of his neighbors, and his
neighbors, in their turn, display no inclination to imitate him. There is
in our rural districts a tradition of a farmer's daughter, who, having
observed her mother winnow at a certain barn-door, stuck to the same
locality through life, without the slightest reference to the quarter from
whence the wind blew. So exactly is it with the bird. He cares for nothing
but his own ideas of comfort, convenience, suitability--whether the
original type of his mansion necessitated its being built on the summit of
a rook or a tree, under the eaves of a house, or in the thick foliage of a
bush, in the crevice of a cliff, or amid the rustling grass of a meadow.

To study the habitations of birds is to traverse the whole extent of man's
universal habitation, through every zone from the equator to the polar
circle; from the tops of the highest ranges, amid unscalable crags and
snows, to the sedgy margin of the sea, and the mossy banks of streams.
Whenever the air is fanned by a wing--wherever eggs are deposited--
wherever little bills are opened almost hourly for food--wherever the hen
sits, and the male bird roves and toils to support her--wherever, from
bough or twig, he pours music into the woods, to cheer his helpmate during
her labor of love, there is poetry; whether, as on the lofty surface of
Danger Island, or amid the flowery bogs of the Orinoco, the airy artisan
works in solitude, or, on village roof and church spire, clings to the
vicinity of man. Naturalists gravely inform us that birds are bipeds like
ourselves, which in some cases may be thought to account for their fondness
for our society, as with the sparrow, the swallow, the red-breast, and the
martin; but, on the other hand, several members of this numerous family,
though they boast of no more legs than we, make careful use of those they
have to keep out of our way. Even among the swallow tribe, there is one
remarkable branch which abjures the man-loving qualities of his
congeners--we mean the sea-swallow of the Twelve Thousand Islands, which in
breeding-time mounts high into the air, takes a scrutinizing survey of the
earth beneath, and, selecting for his quarters the least frequented,
descends, skims into some lofty cave, and there builds his procreant
cradle. In this way he hopes to elude observation. Flattering himself that
his whereabouts will remain undiscovered, he darts away with his wife to
their favorite element the ocean, where it breaks upon solitary shores,
and, flying along its crested surges, gathers from amid the foam and spray
the materials of its dwelling, the nature of which still remains unknown.
Whatever it may be, it forms a delicate bassinet in which to deposit its
eggs and rear its young. Less white than alabaster, the nest of the
sea-swallow is of a light color, and semi-transparent, odoriferous in
smell, glutinous, and rather sweet to the taste.
{350}
Rows of these little bowls, which look like so many vessels of porcelain,
run along the rocky walls of caverns, and are filled with a thickly
bedropped with spots of celestial blue. To the people of the Flowery Land,
these nests are a delicacy, which, when of the best quality, are weighed in
the market against gold. What, however, renders some nests better than
others is uncertain; it may be that in parts of the ocean the ingredient
which imparts the most delicate flavor to the substance is not to be found;
or else, on shore, the flowers that supply the perfume are too few, so that
the swallow is compelled to have recourse to blossoms of inferior
sweetness.

From the mouth of the swallow's cave, you may sometimes, from a long
distance, discern another and very different specimen of ornithological
building. This is a mound, sometimes sixty or seventy feet in length,
almost as much in diameter, and about six feet high. This also is a nest,
or rather a city of nests, for it is constructed so as to receive a whole
republic of birds, who, as in a well-ordered state, have all their separate
dwellings, with streets, highways, common chambers, breeding apartments,
and so on. In some, there you find callow citizens, or fledglings, or eggs,
or the grave parents of the state, discussing or meditating upon its common
interests. Nothing can be more curious than a section of such a bird mound,
with its various cells and compartments laid open to the view.

From this cyclopean style of architecture, the distance is prodigious to
the house of the tailor-bird, which selects for its habitation the inside
of a leaf, and with its bill and claws sews its house to it. It takes a
filament of fine grass, and, steadying the leaf with one of its feet, uses
its bill for a needle, or rather for a borer; then, having made a little
hole, it introduces the grassy filament into the edge of the leaf, and
afterward doing as much for the other edge, weaves between both a sort of
herring-bone netting, strong enough to support its nest. Within this net it
immediately begins building until it has wrought a small soft purse,
sufficiently capacious to contain the female and her eggs. The habitation
being completed, she enters tail foremost, leaving her little head and bill
visible at the top of the purse, situated directly under the leaf's stem,
and forthwith commences her maternal duties. Now begins the business of the
male, which flies backward and forward in search of such delicacies as his
lady loves; and, having been successful, approaches the leaf, and, with
true martial tenderness, puts them gently into the female's mouth. He then
seats himself upon a branch overhead, and, watching his helpmate as she
swings to and fro in her airy couch, twitters or sings incessantly to keep
up her spirit's.

Among us, the most accomplished bird-architect is the wren, which, in
compliment to his building powers, is by our neighbors called the
_roitelet_, or little king; and certainly no king has a more
comfortable dwelling. The most flexible grass roots, the finest grass, the
softest moss, the most delicate down from its own breast, constitute the
materials of this beautiful structure, which forms a perfect sphere of dark
emerald green. This edifice has two doors, one at which the little king or
queen enters, the other through which it emerges when it desires to stretch
its wings or plume its feathers. When at home, the point of the bill and
the tip of the tail are visible at the opposite entrances, while the
vaulted roof protects it from raindrops, and assists in concentrating the
heat by which the regal fledglings are hatched. The builder of St. Paul's,
when projecting his magnificent dome, may have taken a hint from his
ancestors the wrens. But, unwilling to accumulate all her gifts on one of
her children, nature has left the _roitelet_ quite without the power
of charming Madame Wren by his voice, a fact to which Shakespeare alludes
where he says:

  "The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
   When every goose is cackling, would be thought
   No better musician then the wren."

{351}

But this unmusical character does not belong to all the varieties of the
wren, since there is one kind which may be regarded as a songster. With
respect to external appearance, there are few northern birds more favored
than the golden-crested wren, the feathers of whose crest, as they glance
and quiver, look like sprays of burnished gold in the sunbeams. The war
recently declared against these little people is as absurd as it is cruel.
Supposed to be the gardener's enemies, they have been hunted down without
pity or remorse; whereas, instead of destroying the fruit, they only eat
the insects which do really destroy it, and should therefore be esteemed as
little winged scavengers, who clear away from gardens very much that is
pernicious. If we understood our own interest, we should look upon our
diminutive ally, not exceeding two drachms in weight, much as the Turks do
upon the stork, which they reverence for its filial piety. If contempt can
dwell within breasts so small, the wren must surely feel it for the stone
curlew, which, too ignorant or too lazy to build a nest at all, lays its
eggs on the bare ground, where they are crushed by Hodge's foot or by the
plough.

The country people in France love the song of the wren, which is most
agreeable in the month of May, that being the breeding-season. In many
French provinces, the rustics entertain so great a respect for the
_roitelet_, that they not only abstain from injuring it, but will not
so much as touch its nest, built sometimes against the sides of their
houses or stables, though generally a thick bush or full-foliaged tree is
preferred. Like nearly all other birds, the wren takes a fancy to some
particular locality, where it will construct its habitation, in spite of
dangers and difficulties. Its eggs, from ten to twelve in number, are about
the size of peas, and when they are hatched it becomes so fierce and
pugnacious that it will attack large birds, and put them to flight by the
punctures of its sharp bill. It is the smallest of European birds, and
holds, therefore, with us the place which the humming-bird occupies in Asia
and America. This diminutive creature, which is as ingenious as it is
affectionate, forms its tiny nest with cotton or fine, silky filaments,
which it twines and arranges so as to afford the softest conceivable couch
for its eggs, which never exceed two in number, and resemble small white
beads, dotted with bright yellow. The young, when they first emerge from
the shell, are little larger than flies, and perfectly naked, though a fine
down soon appears upon the skin, which gradually ripens into feathers so
brilliant and dazzling in color as not to be exceeded by the rarest gems,
or even by the tints of the rainbow. So great, in fact, is the beauty of
these birds, that the ladies of the countries in which they abound suspend
them instead of diamonds as drops to their earings.

Tiny as the humming-bird is, neither the eagle nor the condor exceeds it in
love for its young. A French missionary, during his residence in Surinam,
took a humming-bird's nest in which the young were just hatched, and placed
it on the sill of an open window in a cage. The parents, as he conjectured,
followed their young, and brought them food, the male and female by turns,
which they introduced between the bars of the cage. At length, finding that
no attempt was made to harm them, they grew fond of the place, and perching
upon the top of the cage, or flying about the room, rewarded the worthy
priest by their music for the delicate fare he soon learned to provide for
them. This was a sort of soft paste made of biscuit, Spanish wine, and
sugar, and nearly transparent. Over this they passed their long tongues,
and when they had satisfied their hunger, either fell asleep or burst forth
into song. Familiarity, if it did not in their case breed contempt, at
least banished all apprehension, for they alighted on the priest's head, or
perched on his finger, where their long rainbow-like tails floated like
little ribbons in the air. But all earthly pleasures have an end; a rat ate
up the humming-birds, nest and all, and left the poor missionary to seek
for new companions.

{352}

Down among the coral-reefs in the Southern Pacific you meet with other bird
structures, which in their way deserve equal attention. Here the sea-eagles
build their nests, always, if possible, in the same islet, and, if there be
such a convenience, on the same tree. On a small wild flat in the ocean,
too confined to allure inhabitants, and apparently too arid for vegetation,
there grew nevertheless one tree, on which a pair of fishing-eagles erected
their dwelling. There these lords of the waves, contemplating their vast
empire, sat aloft in their eyrie, male and female, looking at their eggs,
and dreaming of the future. Our readers will remember the Raven's Oak,
which the woodman, whose brow like a penthouse hung over his eyes, felled
and floated down the course of the river. So it was with the tree of the
fishing-eagles; some savage applied his axe to the stem, and down it came,
though, it is to be presumed, not while the young eagles were in the nest,
for the mother did not break her heart, neither did the father follow the
timber with vindictive pertinacity. On the contrary, having consulted his
helpmate, he took up his lodgings in a bush, and there provided as well as
he could for the support and comfort of his heirs and successors. There
might be tall trees at no great distance, there might also be islands
larger and prettier; but he was born on this sandy flat; he therefore loved
it, and stuck to it, and, had it not provided him with a bush, he would
have built his nest on the sand. Such, over some creatures, is the power of
locality. The higher the nature, the more extensive become the sympathies,
so that to some it is enough if they can rest anywhere on this globe. They
love the planet in general, but would like, if they could, to make a
country excursion from it to Jupiter, Sirius, or Canopus, just by way of
exercising their wings.

We have seen the humming-bird building in a little garden shrub, the
tailor-bird in the folds of a leaf; but there is one of their family which
selects a far more extraordinary situation, in order to place its young
beyond the reach of vermin. Selecting the tallest tree within the range of
its experience, it weaves for itself a sort of long pouch with a narrow
neck, and suspends it to the point of a bare twig some sixty or seventy
feet from the ground. There, in its pensile habitation, it lays its eggs,
warms them into life, and when the callow brood begin to open their bills,
feeds them fifty or sixty times in the day with such dainties as their
constitutions require. This bird is the _Aplonis metallica_, about the
size of a starling, with plumage of a dark glossy green, interfused with
purple, which gives forth as it flies bright metallic reflections. The
aplonis is gregarious, like man, since it loves to build its nest in the
close neighborhood of other creatures of its own species, so that you may
often behold fifty nests on the same tree, waving and balancing in the air.
On the plain beneath, the aplonis sees from its nest the long necked emu
flying like the wind before the hunter, immense flights of white pigeons,
or the shy and active bower-bird constructing its palace, four feet long by
almost two feet in height, where it eats berries with its harem, brings up
its offspring, and, darting hither and thither before the savage, seeks to
allure him away from its home. All the shrubs, and vines, and low thickets
in the vicinity are haunted by perroquets no larger than sparrows, whose
plumage, gorgeous as the brightest flowers, may be said to light up the
woods.

The only European bird that builds a pensile nest is one of the family that
we familiarly denominate toun-tits. This liliputian architect is as choice
in his materials as he is skilful in the arrangement of them--his bases,
his arches, his metopes, and architraves consist of cobwebs, the finest
mosses, the most silky grasses, which are woven, and twisted, and matted
together, so as to defy the drenching of the most pitiless storms, while
within, his wife and little ones recline on beds of down as soft as the
breast of a swan.
{353}
Scarcely less genius is displayed by the magpie, which, having constructed
its dwelling with extraordinary care, covers it with a sheath of thorns,
which, bristling all round like quills upon the fretful porcupine,
effectually defend it from the approach of insidious enemies. The portal to
this airy palace is at a little distance scarcely visible; but if you
diligently observe, you will perceive the magpie dart swiftly between the
thorns, and disappear beneath his formidable _chevaux de-frise_. To
this stronghold he sometimes carries his strange thefts--his gold and
silver coins, his spoons, his sugar-tongs, and any other bright article
that strikes his fancy. Birds of the dove kind are proverbial for the
slovenly style in which they provide for their families. Putting together a
few sticks, which form a sort of rack to support their eggs, they think
they have done enough for posterity, and forthwith lay without scruple upon
this frail cradle. It may be fairly conjectured that they say to
themselves: "If man will eat my eggs, my young ones, and me, upon him be
the charge of seeing that I have decent accommodation." In the same spirit
act all the barn-door fowls, hardly taking the trouble to find a soft place
for their eggs, but laying anywhere, like the stone curlew. This reckless
depravity of the maternal instinct has generally been attributed to the
ostrich as well as to the domestic hen--but unjustly. She lays, it is true,
her eggs in the sand, but not without knowing where she puts them, and not
without visiting the same spot daily to lay a new egg, till, as the French
say, she has finished her _ponte_. If the case were otherwise, how
could we account for finding all her eggs together? Nature has informed
her, that in those warm latitudes in which she shakes her feathers, it is
quite unnecessary for her to squat upon her eggs, which the solar heat
amply suffices to hatch; indeed, so scorching is the sand of the desert,
that if she did not lay her family hopes tolerably deep, her eggs would be
roasted instead of hatched. To the superficial observation of man, the
surface of the desert looks all alike--smooth, undulating, or blown up into
hillocks; but the ostrich's practised eye is able to detect the minutest
elevations in the arenaceous plain, so that she can go straight to the spot
where her first egg has been left, to deposit a second and a third close to
it. Indeed, the Arabs, who habitually traverse the waste, sometimes rival
her in keenness of perception, and take forth her treasures, while in
maternal confidence she is scouring hither and thither in search of food.

To many others among the inferior animals, man deals forth his unthinking
reproaches. To the cuckoo, for example, he objects to her habit of
obtruding her egg or eggs into other people's premises, and leaving them
there to be hatched by sparrow, wry-neck, or starling, as the case may be.
But while bearing thus hard upon the cuckoo, he forgets the terrible curse,
under which, like another Cain, she walks about the earth, urged forward by
some resistless impulse, and condemned to the eternal repetition of two
analogous notes--cuckoo, cuckoo. What do those syllables mean? The Abbé de
Nemours, who devoted twenty years to the language of birds, or one of the
original doctors of the Hellenic mythology, might perhaps have explained,
but has not; so we must be content to regard as a mystery the secret of the
cuckoo, which in some respects resembles those _ames damnées_ which
fly for ever over the Black Sea, according to inconsiderate tradition, for
if they never paused to build nests or lay eggs, it must have been all over
with them long before this time. The cuckoo has some odd tricks which have
seldom been noted; for instance, she seems to find out some small bird's
nest, say, in a hole in the wall, too small by far for her to enter. In
this case, she squats upon the ground, lays her egg, and then, with bill or
claws, takes it up, and pokes it into the hole, after which she flies away,
shrieking her awfully monotonous song.
{354}
In a forest in France, we used day after day to watch this smoky-blue
traveller, as, in the dawn of a summer's morning, she flew across the leafy
glades, or down the glens, resting her weary feet for a moment on some
giant bough, and then shooting away through the soft green light, repeating
her strange and ominous cry. What is the original country of the cuckoo?
Has she any original country? Or is she not one of those wretched
cosmopolites who know no attachment to any hallowed spot, no love or
knowledge of parents, having been brought up by strangers, who regarded her
from her birth as an ugly changeling, thrust by some evil spirit into their
nest? Surely the cuckoo is to be pitied, since she knows no home, has never
seen a hearth, or experienced the soft care of fabricating a nest or
hatching an egg.


------

    Original.

    The Father of Waters.


Some one has said that rivers are the great moving highways of the world.
In the earlier ages, when, from a restless and feverish impulse, whole
nations became nomadic, their migrations were doubtless influenced by the
rivers lying in their track. History tells of barbaric people that wandered
around the Euxine and along the banks of the lower Danube found their way
to central Europe.

Before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, rivers, and especially the
Rhine, played a considerable part in that extensive commerce which found
its way from India to the cities of the Hanseatic League. Weary caravans
brought the spices, gems, and rich fabrics of the East to the shore of the
Mediterranean, whence they were carried westward mainly by Venetian traders
timidly skirting the coast in their frail barks, venturing up rivers or
making long journeys wherever the prospect of traffic invited. The old
castles on the Rhine were built by feudal robbers, who were wont to descend
from their strongholds to plunder merchants travelling on this great
thoroughfare of mediaeval commerce.

In time they were induced to forego the chances of occasional booty for the
payment of a stipulated toll. Doubtless the princely Hohenzollern could
trace back their genealogy to the feudal _high-toll_ barons of the
Rhine, who furnished the original idea of the modern _Zollverein_ of
Germany. _La mer, c'est l'empire_, and, after the great maritime
discoveries had opened a new route to India, it, in good part, diverted
that distant commerce from the rivers, which the ocean reaches like shining
arms over the continents as if to grasp dominion. As the elements of modern
civilization became developed, societies crystallized, and the
nationalities hitherto disturbed by migrations and conquests settled down
where we now find them, rivers came gradually to serve their legitimate
purpose of internal and international communication--a purpose resembling
that which they fulfil in the physical economy of the earth, they are the
veins which bring back to the ocean, through innumerable brooks and rills,
seeming to have their sources in the ground, yet having unseen springs in
the air, the moisture that the sun has already drawn up from the seas in
invisible buckets, and wafted away in shining clouds to be poured out in
rain or dew upon the thirsty hills.

{355}

Our own country, however, furnishes the best illustration of the importance
and use of rivers. Its great physical features, of which the river system
is perhaps the most striking, seem to make it a fit arena for those
wonderful triumphs over the elements and the forces of nature which it is
our privilege to enjoy. Their vastness would have intimidated races of men,
weak and cowardly from long habits of servility, superstitious, torn with
fierce passions and hatreds, and able to contend with the fatality of
material things only on that diminutive scale afforded by the physical
conformation of Europe.

The traveller descending the lower Danube finds the ruins of old Roman
towns, Trajan's way cut for a distance of thirty miles in the steep solid
rock of the Carpathians for the passage of his Roman legions, and, below
the Iron Gate, the piers of Trajan's bridge, erected by him for the same
purpose nearly eighteen centuries ago. Hardly less remarkable are the
memorials of the bloody wars between the Christians and the Turks, the
places made memorable by the campaigns of Eugene and Suwarrow and the
Eastern war. But, excepting now and then a walled town, there are to be
seen comparatively few habitations of men, and none of that active,
sleepless life which lines the banks of our great rivers.

There are no richer plains in the world than those of the lower Danube. Why
is it that the pent-up millions of Western Europe do not find their way
thither, as in the time of Trajan vast multitudes emigrated from slavery
impoverished Italy to that Eldorado of the Roman world? The very facility
afforded by the river for hostile inroads has driven or kept the
inhabitants from its banks, and to a great extent left them desolate
wastes. The feverish restlessness which once made barbarous nations nomadic
now seizes upon the individual; and a constant stream of immigration,
oppressed by the despotisms of the Old World, bursts forth in the midst of
us like a new fountain of Arethusa.

And in our own country the astonishing facilities of communication afforded
by the telegraph and long lines of railroads seem to detract somewhat from
the importance of rivers. We can only appreciate their value when we think
of them in connection with the toil requisite for subduing the wilderness
and laying under contribution the resources of our country. How earnestly
and bravely our forefathers battled in this warfare, one generation taking
up the task where it was left by another, so as to subdue the land and
render possible such marvels as the Pacific railroad! Whatever may be the
social development of the human race hereafter, and however wonderful the
applications of art and science to the uses of life, will not our own age
be looked back upon as perhaps the grandest in its history? To have lived
in a period that saw the mysteries of Central Africa explained, the
continents united with telegraphic nerves, the oceans traversed with
steamships and monitors, the seas clasped together with railways, and, as
we hope, the thin air made a navigable element, will be to have enjoyed the
most startling triumphs of emotion of which the soul is capable.

What first strikes the attention upon comparing the rivers of the New and
the Old World is the diminutive size of the latter, especially of many in
the most civilized portions of Europe, or rendered famous in classical
times. The Nile, with its ancient mysteries, its dim historic memorials of
one of the oldest civilizations, its stupendous monuments of human wisdom
and of human folly over which the centuries have brooded in solemn silence,
and its wonderful physical peculiarities, is, indeed, a magnificent river.
{356}
Reaching from the Mediterranean to the central regions of Africa, and
forming an intimate connection with its great lake and river system, it
will doubtless accomplish for that portion of Africa what the Mississippi
has done, and is now doing, in the material development of the United
States--what the Danube may also accomplish in Eastern Europe, the Amazon
in South America, and the Hoang Ho in Eastern Asia, when their expiring
strata of civilizations shall have been aroused by the restless, aggressive
spirit of modern times. The Jordan is only a mountain torrent. The Tiber
and the Po can be swum with a single arm. The Simois and Scamander, the
sacred rivers of Troy, are, like the Rubicon, the merest brooks, and would
hardly drive a saw-mill. The Cephisus can be leaped across, and the Ilissus
scarcely suffices for a few Athenian washerwomen, sorry representatives of
its nymphs and graces of old.

The Mississippi river drains not far from a million and a quarter square
miles of territory, equal to about one third of the extent of Europe. From
the source of the Missouri, on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, to
the Balize, is, following the windings of the river, a distance of four
thousand five hundred miles. A circular line drawn through the head waters
of the Mississippi and its chief tributaries would not be less than six
thousand miles in length. With all of its confluents the Mississippi forms
a great moving sinuous highway fully twenty-five thousand miles long, and
ploughed by many thousand steamboats. They stretch out as if to embrace the
beauty, to grasp the wealth, and gather, as into a lap, the products of the
vast region between the two mountain chains of the continent; the coal and
oil of the Alleghanies, the gold of the Rocky Mountains, the grain, lumber,
and lead of the North, and the cotton, sugar, and tropical fruits of the
South. Equally well will they serve for the distribution of the Asiatic
commerce and travel which will be poured across the continent on the
completion of the Pacific railroad. St. Louis may then become a great
distributing centre, and the same causes which have made London, Paris,
Vienna, and Pekin the commercial capitals of their respective countries,
may, in time, give that favored and opulent city the supremacy now enjoyed
by the great marts of trade on the Atlantic coast. It is hardly safe to
predict what may be the social and material, much less the intellectual
possibilities of that near period, when, gliding on "the pale iron edge,"
we may jostle Chinese mandarins _en route_ for Europe, and European
money kings on their way to the Golcondas of the East.

The lotus-eating tourist of the Nile floats dreamily along the river
between quaint villages and graceful palm-trees, past the pyramids, past
the deserted sites of ancient cities, past the stupendous ruins of Luxor
and Thebes. The monotony of the desert is broken by gloomy hills of
sunburnt rock, and by the narrow strip of verdure which fringes both banks
of the river. Should he push his explorations further, he will come in
contact with the barbarous negro tribes of the upper Nile, and may
encounter troops of giraffes and elephants.

How different the objects that attract the attention of the voyage up the
Mississippi! The eye is charmed with the prospect of orange groves, of vast
fields of sugar-cane of the deepest green, and of cotton plantations whose
verdure and bloom at the proper season are only equalled in beauty by the
snow-like whiteness of the opened balls. The forests are hung with long
festoons of moss, giving them a sombre, funereal aspect. For between two
and three hundred miles, both river banks, called coasts in Louisiana, are
lined almost continuously with plantations, which, before the war, were in
a high state of cultivation and furnished homes of luxury. The region now
teeming with such active and varied life, inspired by the adjacent city of
New Orleans, is made romantic by the adventures of De Soto and La Salle,
and the wandering hither of the Acadians, known as _Cagians_ by the
Louisianians, whose sufferings in the wilderness excited even the
compassion of hostile savages.
{357}
Further up the river vast forests intervene, with here and there a
straggling town or settlement on the banks. The monotony is broken by the
sight of enormous flat-boats and rafts floating lazily down the current;
and an occasional column of black smoke rising high above the trees in the
distance indicates the presence of a steamboat, but, so crooked is the
river, it is often impossible to say whether above or below. In consequence
of the great bends, approaching boats are sometimes moving in parallel
lines in the same direction, or are absolutely diverging and running from
each other. Now and then the huge steamboat stops to land, perhaps, a
single passenger, or, at long intervals, at a wood-yard where some settler
is laying the foundation of a future fortune, the stump being usually the
first product of American industry. The rude, vigorous, untamed aspect of
the region seems, to a certain degree, to be reflected in the
characteristics of the passengers on board. Still further north the
traveller begins first to feel the pulses of that wonderful life which is
throbbing throughout the great West. Here are vast prairies waving with
fields of grain, and dotted with mounds built perhaps before the pyramids
of Egypt. Up the Missouri one will soon reach the great plains on which
roam herds of buffaloes and tribes of red men. About the head-waters of the
Mississippi and its chief confluents is to be found some of the wildest
mountain scenery on the continent. Where, upon the banks of a single river,
are to be seen such varieties of climate, scenery, and animated life?

Very remarkable are the physical, it might almost be said paradoxical,
characteristics of the Mississippi. Its average width below Natchez is not
so great as from Natchez to Cairo. At Vicksburg, the river rises and falls
about forty feet; at New Orleans not more than twelve feet. During the
lowest stage of water, the largest ships experience but little difficulty
in crossing the bar at the passes; when the great floods have filled the
banks above to overflowing, deep-draught vessels can hardly be got over the
bar. Below the mouth of Red river streams run out of the Mississippi
instead of into it. Much of the distance below Cairo the river runs, not in
an ordinary channel between the hills, but on the crest of a ridge of its
own formation. The source of the Mississippi is about two and a half miles
nearer the centre of the earth than the mouth, thereby causing it to run
actually uphill.

The delta of the Mississippi, properly, extends from the mouth of the Red
river to the gulf, a distance of about three hundred miles, following the
windings of the river. It has an area of about fourteen thousand square
miles, and its numerous bayous form an admirable system of natural canals.
To the delta really belongs the left bank of the river below Manshac, where
the bayou Manshac formed an outlet from the Mississippi to lake
Pontchartrain, until it was closed by General Jackson in the war of 1812,
to prevent the British getting into the river above New Orleans. The bayou
could not be reopened without jeopardizing the safety of the city. A
crevasse some distance above New Orleans, a few years ago, inundated the
back streets. Skiffs took the place of omnibuses, and when the waters
subsided some of the residents were surprised to find alligators
"herbivorating" in their gardens. There is also a large partially alluvial
tract west of the Atchafalaya, which covers the wonderful salt mine of
Petit Aunce Island, and out through which ooze the petroleum springs of
Calcasieu, where the Cagians have long been in the habit or greasing the
axles of their rude carts.

Extending from the mouth of the Red river to a point above Cairo is the
great alluvial plain of the Mississippi, varying from thirty to fifty miles
in width, and containing a territory of about seventeen thousand square
miles.
{358}
The bluffs retreat from the east side of the river in many places, making
room for rich bottom lands, and touch the river only at one point on the
west side, namely, at Helena, Arkansas. From Cairo to the Balize is by the
river almost twelve hundred miles, while in a straight line it is only five
hundred. The frequent changes in the bed of the Mississippi, caused by
"cut-offs," where it forces a channel through a narrow neck of land around
which it has hitherto flowed in a wide circuit, have left numerous
semicircular lakes and _fausses rivières_, whose tranquil waters
abound with alligators and wild fowl.

The soil of the delta is filled with whole trees deposited while it was in
process of formation. A sudden change in the direction of the river
sometimes unearths the trunks, standing erect and close together, as if
they had grown where they are found. While boring an artesian well in New
Orleans, they came upon a solid cypress log nearly five hundred feet below
the surface. The Mississippi is said to be, geologically, one of the oldest
rivers on the globe. We happened to be with Professor Hyrtl of Vienna a few
years ago, when be received, as a contribution to his unequalled museum of
natural history, a couple of _ganoid_ fishes, now to be found only in
the "father of waters." They were clad in coats of mail, fitting them for
existence in bodies of water dashed about by conflicting tempests and
currents and convulsed by the upheavals of the earth. At the base of the
obelisk of Heliopolis, erected by Sesostris four thousand years ago, one
can see that, during that long interval of time, the valley of the Nile has
been raised about nine feet around the monument. A friend of mine, engaged
in sinking a shaft in the alluvium over the salt mine of Petit Aunce
Island, recently exhumed the skeleton of a mastodon, and the rude
implements and traces of the habitation of a people that must have passed
away centuries ago. Skirting the delta on the gulf shore are vast
shell-banks, consisting entirely of millions upon millions of cubic yards
of small sea-shells. The popular superstition of the country ascribes their
origin to the Indians, who came down to the coast for subsistence and
deposited the shells where they are now found. But their existence in such
vast quantities, in a purely alluvial region, is one of the curious
problems of geology. In view of these facts, what ages upon ages is the
mind carried back by the formation of the delta and the great alluvial
plain of the Mississippi, to that far-off time when the place they now
occupy was covered with a silent sea in which floundered the ichthyosauri
of the pre-Adamic period!

The most remarkable feature of the lower Mississippi, and that which gives
origin to very many of the peculiarities already mentioned, is the annual
rise of its waters in consequence of the rain and melting of the snow
above. Egypt owes its fruitfulness in great part to the sediment yearly
deposited by the Nile wherever it overflows the land. We saw _fellahs_
scattering seed upon the fresh and scarcely uncovered ooze, almost in the
shadow of the Great Pyramid, and treading it in with oxen, as mentioned by
Herodotus. The side canals are filled when the flood is at its height, and
every possible means is employed to retard the fertilizing waters for
irrigation, as rain very rarely falls. Just below the head of the delta an
immense _barrage_, or dam, has been built across both the Damietta and
Rosetta branches of the Nile, for the purpose of keeping back the flood.
When the Nilometer indicates that the river has risen to a certain height,
there is rejoicing throughout Egypt, a plentiful harvest being safely
predicted from a full river.

It is directly the reverse along the Mississippi. The planter depends upon
the rains, not upon irrigation; upon the accumulated alluvial richness of
former ages, and not upon the annual deposit of the river. He does not
invite an overflow, but labors to prevent it by every means in his power.
{359}
A low stage of water, like that of 1864, is hailed as a providential
blessing. The unprecedented floods of the present year have swept away
millions of dollars worth of property, and produced extreme misery.

The lower Mississippi generally begins to rise in November or early in
December, and, with rare exceptions, attains the maximum volume in April or
May. The rise is at first gradual, and usually comes from the tributaries
below the Ohio. As the season advances, the rains and the melting of the
winter snows enlarge the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the upper
Mississippi, whose freshets, often amounting to devastating floods, and
sometimes becoming vast inundations, are successively poured into the lower
Mississippi. Finally, and sometimes as late as June, the Missouri
contributes the drainage of the great plains and of the eastern slope of
the Rocky Mountains. Descending steamboats, which have overtaken and passed
the rise, announce the coming of a great tidal wave bringing possible
destruction with it. The _bottures_ of the lower river are first
covered, the banks are rapidly filled, and the torrent of foaming and
turbid waters begins to rush down with accumulated velocity. Immense
quantities of driftwood are drawn into the swiftest part of the current, in
a continuous line that twists and writhes in the tortuous channel like a
great black serpent, or is, day after day, whirled round in vast eddies, as
at Port Hudson. Many a Federal soldier who has stood guard on the banks of
the Mississippi will remember the great trees, with roots and branches high
in the air, that floated down in grim processions, and in the gloom and
darkness of the night seemed to glide past like spectral fleets. As the
river rises, immense bodies of water escape from the natural channel and
flow away into the swamps of Arkansas, Mississippi, and upper Louisiana.
The low alluvial plain of the Mississippi becomes a vast reservoir. Without
this, it would be impossible to control the flood below. The banks are
entirely covered, and the voyager beholds an immense lake spread out before
him, whose waters rush through the forest with a subdued and angry roar,
the wide open space between the trees alone indicating the course of the
river. And now, wherever in this vast region civilization has planted her
foot, begins that conflict between man and the elements and the forces of
nature, which in one form or another is as old as the human race. In Egypt
it was typified in the never-ending contest of Typhon and Osiris. Osiris
represented the fertile land of Egypt, the product of the Nile; Typhon, the
encroaching desert, as solitary and incomprehensible as the ocean itself,
the desert whose storms and waves or shifting sand, respecting only the
places they cannot reach, have destroyed armies and caravans, depopulated
immense regions, and turned the course of mighty rivers. The old
civilization of Egypt, the giant Antaeus of mythology, who could not be
vanquished so long as his foot touched the solid, fertile earth, interposed
enormous obstacles to the advances and inroads of the desert. Count de
Persigny wrote a book during his political imprisonment to prove that the
pyramids were built as barriers to protect the alluvial land of the Nile
from the encroaching sand of the desert.

To progress is, everywhere, to combat. The human race maintains a perpetual
and tremendous strife with the fatality of material things, whether it be
in the form of the stubborn elements, the overwhelming forces of nature, or
the subtle, inexorable laws that govern the material world. Barbarism is a
defeat, from cowardice of spirit; civilization, a triumph over them. And
nowhere else is the conflict more terrible than where it is attempted to
control the floods that sweep down the valley of the Mississippi from the
very heart of the continent. The forces of the winds and of the ocean are
not so irresistible. It is a hand-to-hand combat, in which to be vanquished
is to be destroyed.
{360}
The thousands of miles of levees built on the banks of the Mississippi and
its great bayous, at an expense of many million dollars, are the means
employed to arrest the watery element. In some places they are between
fifteen and eighteen feet high, with a base of one hundred and twenty feet.
As the threatening river rises against them, they are put in the best
condition, and watched with the utmost care, lest the little crawfish, or
accident, a storm, or some malicious enemy should make an opening which,
ever so small at first, would rapidly enlarge into a crevasse. Sometimes
the river bank caves in, carrying away the levee, and permitting the water
to rush in uninterruptedly. In the spring of 1863 the writer of this
article rode in a carriage one evening around a point of land a few miles
above Baton Rouge, which, to the extent of several acres, disappeared
during the night. The following day the fields in the rear resembled a
large lake. Shortly after the capture of Port Hudson, a portion of the bank
slid into the river with a battery of guns. The famous citadel and many of
the rebel earthworks on those historical bluffs have since shared the same
fate.

Should the levee, from any cause, give way, every possible effort is made
to close the breach. Planters from miles above and below hurry to the
crevasse with all their available help. Piles are driven into the ground
close together, and in two parallel rows a few feet apart, both above and
below the opening, and in such a direction as gradually to have the lines
approach each other at no great distance in the rear of the crevasse.
Between these rows of piles are thrown sacks of earth, hay, or anything
that will arrest the rushing flood. Presently the narrowing space between
the dams can be spanned with pieces of timber, and then the torrent is soon
checked and the levee replaced.

The State of Louisiana paid last year thirty thousand dollars for closing
the Bouligny crevasse, a few miles below New Orleans. Crevasses above the
city, owing to their greater magnitude, are, however, rarely closed. An
effort was made in 1865 to rebuild the great Chim and Robinson levee, on
the right bank of the river, a short distance below Port Hudson. This
crevasse occurred in 1863, and was of such enormous extent that, through
it, a river more than a mile wide and several feet deep rushed out of the
Mississippi. A steamboat, several flatboats and rafts, and vast quantities
of driftwood were swept into the irresistible torrent. It required over
three hundred thousand cubic yards of earth to replace the levee, and an
outlay or nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The tremendous
flood of last April broke through the newly constructed work. The levee
commissioners refused an offer to close the crevasse for eighty thousand
dollars, and in a few days a great part of the new levee was swept away.
Deep gulches were cut in the plantations where the disaster occurred. The
ditches were filled, sandbanks formed in many places, and the sugar-cane
fields covered with the _débris_ of the Mississippi. There were two or
three crevasses of nearly equal magnitude between Port Hudson and the mouth
of Red river, and upper Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi suffered
terribly from the overflow, caused in great part by the breaking away of
the newly built levees. The entire valley of Red river, whose bottoms
furnish perhaps the best cotton lands in the world, was inundated below
Jefferson, Texas. Many of the best buildings in Shreveport and Alexandria
were undermined. The planters betook themselves to the upper rooms of their
houses, and the cattle crowded together on the little knolls found here and
there on the river bank. A friend who came down during the inundation
stated that he saw at least twenty thousand animals thus perishing from
hunger, and being gradually swept away by the rising flood. At one time
thirteen parishes were said to be in great part under water.
{361}
Many millions' worth of property was destroyed, and the unstinted charity
of the Federal government to the sufferers, through the Freedmen's Bureau,
was measured only by cargoes of provisions sent to their relief.

But the overflows of the Mississippi have this year been still more
disastrous. Instead of pouring out successive floods, Red river, the
Arkansas, the Ohio and its great tributaries, and even the upper
Mississippi have risen simultaneously and poured their mighty inundations
into the lower river. The Mississippi was at one time fifty miles wide at
Memphis, and the great alluvial plain or basin became an inland sea several
hundred miles in length. There have for some time been but few places where
landings could be made between Cairo and the mouth of Red river. Days and
even weeks must elapse after the river begins to recede at Cairo before it
can be affected at New Orleans or even at Vicksburg, so enormous is the
body of water that must find its way to the gulf. The bottom-lands of
Mississippi, especially those of the Yazoo region, and of upper Louisiana,
were nearly all under water before the delta people suffered from the
inundation. But as the irresistible flood swept down toward the gulf, levee
after levee gave way, and at present the tracts overflowed can be estimated
only by parishes and counties, the plantations only by thousands, and the
loss of property only by millions of dollars. There are nearly a dozen
crevasses between the mouth of Red river and New Orleans, not one of which
it has been possible to stop. The crevasse at Grand Levee, Morganza, is a
mile wide, and through it rushes a river twelve feet deep. To restrain the
mighty flood would require immense levees through the entire delta, several
feet higher than those already constructed.

The parish of Tensas, the finest cotton district of Louisiana, is almost
entirely under water. The inundation extends far up the Cortableau and
almost to the rich prairies of Opelousas. The sugar plantations of
Terrebonne and Lafourche are invaded by the flood, and the Opelousas
railroad rendered useless. The rich lands of Grosse Tête, Fordoce, and the
Marangouin, for the first time in the memory of Creoles, are almost
entirely inundated. Thousands of families have been driven from their
homes. Certain districts, overflowed for three successive years, begin to
assume the appearance of a wilderness. The garfish, the alligator, and
wildfowl have, in fact, resumed possession of many of the choicest portions
of the state. Should the waters not soon subside, the product of cotton on
the bottom-lands of Louisiana and Mississippi will be very small. April is
the month for planting, and from present appearances the floods will not
begin to recede before the month of May.

So great is the interest of the Northern States in the cotton and sugar
produced an the bottom-lands of the Mississippi, that evidently the general
government ought to assume the responsibility of rebuilding the levees on a
scale that will insure protection. This policy would be at variance with
the traditions of the government as regards internal improvements. But
neither the planters who have hitherto been assessed for nearly the entire
outlay, nor the impoverished states, are now in a condition to do what is
required.

Of the two plans proposed far leveeing the delta of the Mississippi, one
consists in increasing the number of the bayous, or lateral outlets, and
thereby diminishing the volume of water in the main channel; the other, in
closing up all the bayous, and, with levees of sufficient strength,
retaining the floods in the natural bed of the river. In some remarks made
upon the subject by Mr. Banks in Congress, he expressed his preference for
the former theory, and intimated his intention, should the proper occasion
occur, of advocating a large appropriation by the general government to put
it in practical execution. The general government has, in fact, virtually
pledged itself to undertake the work as soon as the Southern States again
come into the Union.
{362}
Mr. Banks is well acquainted with the topography of Louisiana, and can
estimate the enormous outlay required for leveeing the bayous Lafourche and
Plaquemine, to say nothing of the Atchafalaya, and opening new outlets,
upon each of which, however small, the work would have to be done as
thoroughly and upon as vast a scale as upon the Mississippi itself. This
theory is based upon the false assumption that, in case of a bayou or a
crevasse, the depth of the river at any point below the outlet is
diminished exactly in proportion to the quantity of water taken by it from
the main channel. When the great crevasse, over a mile wide, occurred last
spring above Baton Rouge, I could not see that the volume of water at Baton
Rouge was much diminished thereby, but the current of the river was
materially lessened. When several large crevasses occur, of course, both
the volume and the current of the river below must be diminished. And the
slower the current, the greater the deposit of sediment on the bed of the
river, the effect of which is to lift up the whole body of water and
increase the tendency to overflow. The great _desideratum_ is to
prevent the formation of deposit, which can be done only by maintaining a
certain rapidity of current. The more effective and scientific plan would,
therefore, seen to be to confine the floods to a single channel by means of
levees built sufficiently far back to prevent their destruction by the
caving in of the river banks, and strong enough for any emergency. The work
of leveeing would thus be concentrated, vast areas of now useless
swamp-land would be made available, and the bayous could be used as canals
for internal communication. Nor should it be forgotten that, as the regions
bordering the tributaries of the Mississippi are settled and the forests
cleared up, the actual quantity of water drained from them is from year to
year diminished. The floods of the upper Mississippi have already been
notably affected by this general law. But disasters like those of the
present year, although exceptional, can be averted only by levees
constructed upon a gigantic scale, and, as the wilderness of the great
alluvial plain whose swamps now receive such vast quantities of water
becomes settled like the delta, the levees will have to be proportionally
enlarged.

------

    From The Dublin Review;

    The Church and the Roman Empire.
    [Footnote 112]

      [Footnote 112: _L'Eglise et l'Empire romain au l Ve Siécle._ Par
      M. Albert de Brogile, de l'Academie Francaise. Troisième
      partie--Valentinien et Théodose. Paris: Didier.]


When we opened the two last volumes of this noble work, we fancied that,
after devoting a considerable degree of attention and study to the fruitful
events of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, we had little to learn
about its government, its institutions, manners, customs, and modes of
thought. We had felt, indeed, a strange interest in watching the slow but
sure development of Christianity, as it tumbled down, one by one, every
landmark of ancient heathenism; here forcing back the ugly iceberg into its
olden limits, there bringing forth a new and verdant vegetation to conceal
the blackening ruins of the past; now enchasing, within its virgin gold,
some relic of primitive wisdom, or again planting its wooden cross among
the wastes and forests of Germania, as a beacon for a future world.
{363}
And yet, after all, in these last volumes of Prince de Broglie we have
found much to admire and much to remember.

Are there many books of which we could say the same? Or, in other words,
are there many that would so amply repay the trouble of perusing them?

Whoever undertakes to read any work of serious importance, whatever its
nature and subject, will do well to ask himself, when he comes to the
conclusion, How has the author fulfilled his promises? How far has he
carried out his plan, how far justified his pretensions to impartiality, if
we have to do with a historian? The reader will not therefore be astonished
that we should apply the same rule to the work now before us. When Prince
Albert de Broglie started upon his now completed undertaking, what was his
main view and object he himself shall answer
in the words he penned in 1852:

  "The mild and intelligent influence of the church was never more striking
  than when she came forth for the first time on the stage of the world.
  ... In the days when Jesus Christ was born in an obscure town of Judaea,
  the empire was pacified, the Roman laws established on a sound basis, the
  Roman manners polished and refined unto corruption; the Roman empire had
  acquired its utmost development beyond the pale of Christianity, under
  the shadow of a false worship and of false gods. Everything bore the
  stamp of idolatry. The civil and political laws, founded first of all by
  those patricians who were alike priests and lawyers, and then by those
  Caesars whose supreme pontificate was deemed their prime dignity, were in
  every direction pervaded by polytheism. Arts, letters, private manners,
  all was heathen. Not a temple but acknowledged the protection of a
  divinity--not a poem but embalmed its memory--not a banquet but began
  with a libation--not a home but kindled a fire sacred to the Lares. Being
  thus totally independent of Christianity, this civilization was
  foredoomed to become its enemy--fate, indeed, to which it had not been
  found wanting. Roman society, giving up for once its usual habits of
  political toleration, had heaped upon Christianity contempt and insults
  and persecutions without end. For three long centuries, Christianity had
  grown up through ignominy and bloodshed. Wise men had scoffed at it,
  politicians chastised it, the mob hooted it fiercely and savagely. The
  blood of the martyrs had defiled the basis of the finest edifices in
  Rome, whilst the smoke of the burning stake had blackened their crowning
  frontispieces.

  "So, when the progress of truth, supported by the revolutions of
  politics, had at last made the church triumphant with Constantine, what a
  favorable opportunity and how many excellent reasons had she for
  overthrowing all this profane and sacrilegious civilization! If, on the
  very morrow of her triumph, the church had declared open war to Roman
  society, if she had fired its monuments, broken to pieces its statues,
  burnt its libraries, overthrown its laws--all this would have been but a
  lawful deed of reprisal. ... Both means and motives were equally
  plentiful for this summary justice. Without any appeal to the ardor of
  new converts, the forests of Germany held within their wastes a reserve
  of wild auxiliaries, ever ready to undertake the task on their own
  account. The empire had already received its death-blow, through its own
  internal anarchy, and through the barbarian invasions. The church stood
  in no need of dealing the fatal blow--she had but to let it fall. ...
  This, however, the prudent and tender mother of the human race did by no
  means do. She looked upon Roman civilization not as the cursed gift of an
  evil spirit, but as the motley product of human labor. As is the case
  with every creation of a fallen being, there must needs be found hidden
  behind the mists of error certain rays of light which were not to be
  extinguished, but, on the contrary, brought back within the ever-burning
  focus of eternal truth. Peacefully settling down in the midst of the
  imperial society, taking up her abode in Rome itself, whilst Constantine
  flew from the city, as if afraid of the old genius of the republic, the
  church, far from destroying anything, adopted all, correcting and
  reforming all by her own insensible influence, raising the victorious
  sign of the cross above every monument, and breathing the healthy warmth
  of Christian inspiration into every law. The fourth century of the
  Christian era is not only remarkable for the men of genius by whom it was
  illustrated. What is a constant subject of admiration, and what I should
  not be astonished to see some future historian investigate hereafter more
  deeply, is that slow labor of purification and absorption to which the
  Christian religion subjected heathen civilization. It is this
  transformation of a whole society, not by any material conquest, but
  through the influence of a moral doctrine, which I shall attempt to bring
  forth in the following picture." [Footnote 113]

    [Footnote 113: V. i., Avertissement, pp. i-v.]

{364}

Most certainly the whole work is but the grand demonstration of the above
outline, but nowhere does it come forth in such glowing characters as in
the two last volumes. There is hardly a page in which you do not meet with
this silent yet ever-rising tide of Christian ascendency, which ends in
mastery over every relic of Roman civilization. In vain does the temporal
power struggle to maintain its own ground; it is itself hurried on with the
stream, and forced to give up the contest in sheer despair. At the distance
of sixteen centuries, we are often reminded of what took place at the dawn
of our own age; and, could we but change names, we might almost imagine we
have before us certain modern figures familiar to every reader. Let us
take, for instance, Valentinian I., who ascended the imperial throne in 364
A.C., and chose for associate his brother Valens, as the ruler of the East.
Valentinian was a sturdy soldier, an austere Christian, of no original
genius, but yet endowed with such qualities as were not unequal to his
difficult task.

   "Of a cold disposition, inclined to enforce the laws and good order--no
   less severe to himself than to others--he was sober, upright, and
   chaste. Though a good soldier and a good speaker, he had not the
   slightest pretension to wit, nor even to glory. He was a plain
   matter-of-fact ruler, governing the empire just as he would have done a
   legion, with a simplicity and a roughness of character exclusively
   military; showing a harshness that bordered upon cruelty, when he deemed
   it necessary to the interests of the public service, and yet by no means
   prompt to avenge his own personal injuries; a man, in fact, having but
   few wants and no taste for pomp or display, though rigorous beyond
   measure to replenish the coffers of the state, and to balance the
   receipts with the outlays of the treasury," (pp. 8, 9.)

Valentinian was in the height of manhood when he was clothed with the
imperial purple; but if he felt no exultation, he evinced a keen jealousy
for the maintenance of his newly acquired power, hardly allowing a mere
suggestion as to its use and exercise. That jealousy and mistrust were
extended even to the high influence of the church itself. The very first
year of his reign offers numerous traces of that spirit of universal
toleration which has become the idol of our modern reformers, yet which was
so repugnant to the ideas and feelings of the old Roman world.

Succeeding to Jovian, having witnessed the vagaries of Julian, under whom
he had even suffered persecution, the new emperor indeed began by relieving
his fellow-believers from their sundry disabilities, but at the same time
he put every other form of religious belief on a footing of rigorous
equality with Christianity. Thus, if he takes from the heathens the temples
which the Apostate had bestowed upon them, these temples became state
property, instead of being restored to the Christians--Valentinian so
establishing, observes Prince de Broglie, a sort of neutral power between
the two contending doctrines. Thus, again, the public schools are opened to
all, the clerical immunities and privileges are kept within narrow bounds,
the heathen sacrifices are scarcely prohibited; in fact, the most assiduous
precautions were taken in order to prevent the very appearance of any
subordination of the temporal government to sacerdotal influence. This was,
doubtless, a new feature in the sovereign, which took every one by
surprise, though many considered it to show a sound policy and practical
wisdom. And yet, this very attitude of Valentinian toward the church was
but a proof of his real weakness, as the general incidents of his reign
were destined to show in strong colors. Valentinian's immediate object was
to establish the full and total independence of the secular government. In
reality, he rendered still more evident in the eyes of the world its utter
helplessness to guard and defend its most important privileges.
Thenceforward, to stand aloof from the church on the plea of state policy
was an utter impossibility.
{365}
On the contrary, an alliance with the church was a matter of positive
necessity, for no other power in the world could, like her, play the part
of a most useful and efficient auxiliary. Valentinian was to learn this at
the outset of his reign.

He had hardly arrived at Milan, the capital of the western empire, when he
had to encounter the insuperable difficulties of his finely balanced
system. A contest had arisen between the Arian bishop Auxentius and the
great Hilary of Poitiers. The latter used his utmost endeavors to correct
the evils attendant upon the persecution lately raised by the Emperor
Constans; but Hilary was by no means disposed to overlook the delinquencies
of courtier prelates, who changed their belief according to the whim and
will of every new sovereign. Such was Auxentius, who after showing himself
a zealous Arian, now displayed no less zeal in his recantations, which did
not, however, at all deceive his own flock. The Milanese were steadfast in
their opposition to the ever-changing prelate, and Hilary no less staunchly
encouraged them in their resistance.

According to Valentinian's system, he should and would have remained
neutral between the two antagonists. But such an amount of indifference was
not in the habits of the Roman administration. There was nothing so
contrary to public order, said many an imperial adviser, as these
conventicles of the flock against their pastor, above all when backed by
the influence of a foreigner. Since Auxentius consented to sign the
orthodox formula, and thus to do away with every vestige of past
dissensions, why should others obstinately endeavor to perpetuate them?
This was a matter of police regulations, not a question of belief. When
people were all of the same opinion, why should not they meet together to
pray in the same church?

We can almost imagine that we are reading a memoir sent up by a French
prefect to his minister, for the purpose of playing the umpire between some
priest and his bishop. At any rate, Valentinian found the advice so
conformable to his own ideas, that he unwittingly issued an edict
prohibiting the Christians to attend at any ceremony of their worship,
except in such places as were subjected to the bishop's jurisdiction.
Hilary immediately applied to the emperor himself, and soon showed him his
error, which was, however, followed by another step of a still graver
character. He ordered that the question should be examined by a committee
of ten bishops and two secular magistrates. Auxentius, on being confronted
with Hilary, made every admission that was required; yet the latter had
scarcely turned his back when the equivocating prelate recanted once more
his recantations, and maligned the Bishop of Poitiers to the emperor. His
aspersions were but too successful, for Hilary was denied a second
audience, and was commanded to leave the town immediately.

The prelate obeyed as a subject, but as a bishop he had a right to speak,
and he spoke with a freedom worthy of such a man. His letter, apparently
addressed to the public, in reality was a bold protest against the
emperor's interference in religious affairs. We doubt whether Constantine
would have submitted to such language, which, however, is a landmark
showing the progress of Christian ideas as to the relations of the
spiritual and the temporal power. But it was the last episcopal act of the
great pontiff, who died shortly after.

It is not merely in this direction that we see Christianity gradually
asserting its ascendency in the Roman world. Slowly, but surely, the
patriciate was yielding to its influence. Accustomed, as we are, to
consider the Roman aristocracy as totally effete during the latter period
previous to the fall of the empire, we can hardly fancy to ourselves that
its grandees were anything else but the degenerate posterity of the
Cornelii, the Anicii, and other illustrious _gentes_, of ancient Rome.
There were, indeed, so many links connecting them with olden forms and
idolatrous ordinances, that to couple them with the new belief seems
something bordering on anachronism.
{366}
And yet the fact really stands thus: Partly through the effect of example,
partly through ambition, and partly through an imperious conviction, whole
races had embraced the doctrines and practices of Christianity, and soon
found out, to their own astonishment, that they recovered at once an
unexpected share of illustration and power.

  "Christianity, says Prince de Broglie, renewed their influence, by
  throwing over it a sort of second youth. The day before their baptism,
  they were wont to squander away their wealth among a motley _plebs_
  to gain the bauble of a useless title; on the morrow their charities,
  scarcely more abundant, but distributed by the discerning hand of the
  priest, insured them, on the part of the less degraded Christians, a
  prouder yet more lasting gratitude. Their slaves being gradually
  emancipated, and prepared for freedom by a pious education, soon formed
  around them a devoted army. They were no more that vile race of
  freed-men, a true scourge to the empire, ever ready to pass from an
  abject servility to the basest treachery. They were all the children of
  Adam, redeemed by Jesus Christ, in whom their masters revered the
  remembrance of a primitive equality and the stamp of a newly restored
  dignity. Within a short time, the authority of the Christian patricians
  extended far beyond Rome. Having once become members of an association
  the most extensive and, indeed, the only one then organized throughout
  the empire, they found themselves by the very fact placed at the head of
  a powerful party. Since Athanasius, in the days of his exile, had found
  an asylum in the dwellings of the Roman senators, the Christians of every
  country were in the habit of applying from the depths of Egypt or of
  distant Asia to the illustrious families in the capital, whenever they
  had a church to build, a convent to establish, some ruin to prevent, or
  some disaster to retrieve; and the alms which usually followed the
  application were abundantly repaid in popularity and thankfulness. One
  might compare them to some old trunks falling into decay through the
  effect of time; should their roots, whilst shooting forth, meet with a
  rich vein of alluvial soil, they send up a youthful sap, which adorns
  with a wreath of verdure their dying branches and their blackening
  limbs." (pp. 23, 24.)

Such was the society in which an Ambrose and a Jerome were formed and
brought up--the one learning all those arts and traditions that made him
hereafter such an attractive compound (if we may be allowed the term) of
sanctity and statesmanship; the other of a more ardent and restless
disposition, as if he had brought from his native forests of Dalmatia
something of the fierce wildness of the barbarian. Jerome, though a sincere
Christian, did not then conform his conduct to his belief; he rather
yielded alternately to the allurements of pleasure or to the suggestions of
a repentant spirit. He himself tells us that be thirsted for knowledge,
being ever on the wing, passing from the Capitol to the Catacombs; almost
equally impassioned for the Gospel or for Homer; reading by turns the
Scriptures with the fervor of an anchoret or the disdain of an Athenian
orator. But still he clung with fondness to the best Roman society, where
he was an habitual guest and companion. There is hardly any part of the
empire, or any one of its institutions, in which we do not find this
all-pervading influence of Christianity. But nowhere, perhaps, is it more
evident than in the laws. Volumes have been written upon this subject, and
the most lamentable pictures have been drawn of the wretched state of the
Roman population, ground down at once by heavy taxation, by the oppression
of local governors, and exposed to all the horrors of repeated invasions.
Their condition was so melancholy that they fled to the barbarians, among
whom they enjoyed more real freedom and greater security than under the
rule of their lawful sovereign. Valentinian distinguished himself among
many other princes by his extreme severity in the enforcement of the fiscal
laws; he hardly admitted any plea or excuse when the treasury was to be
replenished; far better than anyone he felt the difficulties of his
position, when he had to encounter the numberless enemies of his empire.
But he had hardly secured by the most severe measures the public resources
in men and money when a reaction ensued. An immense complaint and wailing,
says our author, ascended to the throne from every region, and the prince
was obliged to bind the very wounds he had inflicted--nay, to countermand
the measures which he had adopted under the imperious claims of the public
security.

{367}

Among these laws or decrees tending to soothe the pangs of a suffering
nation, we must note several that bear evident traces of a Christian
inspiration. Thus, close to a law binding the tenant to the land on which
he is condemned to live and die, we find another defending him against the
excessive pretensions of the landowner. Elsewhere, if the authority of the
judges is duly enforced, minute precautions are taken against their
accidental or interested errors; they are ordered to enact their sentences
in public, prohibited from holding property within the limits of their
residence, and threatened with severe penalties if they should listen to
the insinuations of informers. At the same time, physicians were appointed
to attend the poor in large towns at the expense of the treasury, and other
measures of a similar character were carried, all betraying a benevolent
disposition totally unknown to the heathen world.

We must refer to the author's pages for many other instances of innovations
in which we detect the increasing influence of Christianity, and draw the
reader's notice to one of the most remarkable institutions of those times,
out of which grew perhaps the ecclesiastical principalities of the feudal
ages. As there was a constant stream of grievances and claims sent up from
the provinces to the crown, Valentinian thought proper to appoint an
official defender of their rights, _defensor civitatis_.

  "Such was the title of a new office, which appears for the first time in
  365, filling an intermediate station between the _curia_, or
  municipality, and the treasury. The duties of this new agent were
  twofold, and well adapted to the high-pressure mechanism which held the
  _curiae_ responsible for the total amount of taxes due to the fiscus
  and allowed them at the same time to fall back on the small proprietors
  of the city. On the defender incumbs the duty, as a representative of the
  curiales, of discussing with the state the amount of the whole
  contingent; and then, with the curiales themselves, the aliquot part of
  each rate-payer. Himself a stranger to the curia, he is obliged at once
  to protect and keep it within bounds; to speak for it and against it; to
  defend it, to lighten its burden, and to prevent it from throwing that
  burden on other people's shoulders. In fact, the defender was something
  like the popular tribune, whose _veto_ is now directed, not against
  aristocratical influence, but against the tyranny of the administration.
  In its decrepitude, the empire was returning, like many an old man, to
  the habits and ways of its childhood," (p. 51, _seq_.)

But the difficulty was to find a man of sufficient integrity, power, and
influence to hold this delicate position between the crown and the nation.
In the general downfall of public virtue, there was hardly a citizen or a
landowner capable of fulfilling such arduous duties. His magistracy was
elective; but it was soon found out that the bishop alone had both virtue
and power to withstand the fitful caprices of imperial despotism, no less
than the raging passions of the barbarians. Did Valentinian dream of such a
result when be instituted the _defensores?_ Doubtless not: and this
very fact throws a flood of light upon the real state of things at the
period we have before our eyes.

It is not merely in the West that we thus meet with the irresistible
ascendency of Christianity, making its way both with and against temporal
power; the same spectacle awaits us in a still more striking manner in the
East. Every one is more or less familiar with the great struggle between
Arianism and the illustrious Athanasius. That contest, however, bore more
of a purely theological than of a political character, and we shall
therefore pass on to scenes of a different nature, and perhaps less known
to the general reader. The famous heresy, so like Protestantism in its main
features, was fast dwindling into a court intrigue, though fostered by the
weak arm of a Valens. Under that degenerate prince the orthodox bishops
were once more banished from their sees; but the church had already
overcome two recent persecutions, whilst the state had well nigh succumbed
to four successive revolutions.
{368}
Every man could now see with his own eyes where resided true influence and
power, so that, even in a worldly view, it was no longer safe to trust
solely to the sovereign's whim and pleasure. Valens himself was destined to
experience, in his fatal downfall, that he would have to deal alike with a
true bishop and a true statesman in the person of St. Basil, who ruled over
the diocese of Caesarea.

The importance of Caesarea, as the ecclesiastical metropolis of Asia Minor,
was very considerable, extending its jurisdiction over the independent
exarchate of Pontus, and even beyond the limits of the empire, over Armenia
and certain parts of Persia. Valens was desirous of placing at the head of
this large see one of his Arian creatures; but at the very first rumor of
such a scandal the whole population called for Basil, who had not yet been
raised to the episcopal dignity. Shortly after, however, the old Bishop of
Caesarea offered a share of his power to the popular candidate, who thus
was brought forth to the foremost rank in the impending struggle between
the church and the emperor.

Valens, after many delays, at last set out upon his progress through Asia
Minor. He journeyed slowly, in order to make himself acquainted with the
real feelings of the surrounding population. To secure a favorable
reception, he sent before him his prefect Modestus, who took good care that
no hostile figure should meet the eye of the sovereign. On entering any
town, with a numerous retinue of courtiers, the prefect immediately sent
for the bishop, and questioned him as to his dispositions in regard to the
emperor's views. If the answer proved satisfactory, the prelate was loaded
with honors and privileges; if, on the contrary, he adhered to the true
faith, banishment or even death was awarded against him. The whole of
Bithynia and Galatia was thus traversed by the imperial cortége, which met
everywhere that silent attitude on the part of the people so often mistaken
for a sincere feeling of satisfaction. At last Modestus entered Cappadocia,
on his way to the city inhabited, one might almost say governed, by Basil.
And here we must give way to our author's narrative, for no words of ours
could supply the interest of the following scene:

   "On his arrival in town, the prefect sent for the bishop. Basil obeyed
   the summons; when he entered the prefect's room, he maintained an
   attitude of calm superiority, which gave him, says Gregory Nyssa, far
   more the appearance of a physician visiting a patient than that of a
   delinquent before his judge. This firmness intimidated the prefect, who
   had recourse at first to mildness. 'The emperor is coming,' said he;
   'pray beware, for he is highly irritated; and, for a mere scruple about
   a dogma, do not jeopardize wantonly the interests of your church: if, on
the contrary, you show yourself submissive, you will feel the effects of
   his good-will' 'Pay attention yourself,' replied Basil, 'to the fact
   that you have no power over such men as seek for nothing else but the
   kingdom of God, and pray do not talk to me as you would to children.'
   'Well, but won't you do anything for the emperor?' asked the prefect.
   'Is it nothing in your eyes to see the emperor mingling with your flock
   and becoming one of your auditors? This is what you may gain by yielding
   a little, and by sacrificing one single word of the symbol.' 'Doubtless,
   it is a great thing to see an emperor at church, for it is a great thing
   to save a soul, not only the soul of an emperor, but the soul of any
   man, whatever it may be. And yet, far from adding to or taking from the
   symbol one single word, I would not even alter the disposition of the
   letters that make up the syllables.' 'What, will you forget so far the
   respect you owe to the emperor?' exclaimed Modestus in a loud voice, and
   giving way to impatience. 'But in what I do really offend him,' retorted
   Basil, 'is more than I can understand.' 'Why, you don't adopt his faith,
   when all around you submit to it.' 'But my own emperor wills it not; I
   can never worship a creature, having myself been created by God, and
   called to become one like unto him.' 'Well, but we who command in this
   place, what do you think of us! Are we nothing in your eyes? and would
   you not deem yourself happy to be our equal, and to be associated to our
   dignity?' 'You may lord it over us, and I by no means dispute your
   exalted rank. To be your equal is, doubtless, a fine thing; but I am
   already your equal, since you are, like myself, the creature of God, and
   since I am likewise the equal, which I deem an honor, of those whom you
   rule.' 'At least, don't you fear my power?'
{369}
   'What can you do to me?' 'What?--why, inflict upon you any degree of
   suffering I may command.' 'Pray speak out clearly and tell me what?'
   'Confiscation, banishment, tortures--death itself.' 'None of those
   things can reach me; a man who has nothing leaves nothing for
   confiscation; a man who is attached to no place, and looks upon himself
   everywhere as a stranger, is beyond the reach of banishment. What
   tortures can you inflict upon this weak body, when the very first blow
   will do for it at once? Indeed, indeed,' added Basil, pointing to his
   chest, 'you would do me a good service were you to rid me of this
   miserable pair of bellows. As for death, I should deem it a favor, as
   leading me to that God for whom I wish to live, and for whose cause I am
   already half dead.' 'Nobody ever dared,' interrupted Modestus, 'to speak
   to me in this way.' 'Because you never met a bishop.' Bewildered and
   angry, yet still afraid of carrying matters to the last extremities,
   Modestus put an end to the interview by giving the bishop one day for
   reflection. 'To-morrow you will find me what I am to-day,' concluded
   Basil, 'and I don't wish that you should yourself change in regard to
   me.'

   "On the morrow, and on the following days, Valens was expected every
   hour. The bishop was besieged with parleys and entreaties of every
   description. There was not one noble personage who did not undertake to
   argue with the prelate. The head cook, Demosthenes--an influential man,
   by the by--returned constantly to the attack. Modestus, on the other
   hand, feeling vexed at having no better result to bring before the
   emperor, and anxious to avoid any charge of weakness, made public
   preparations for an execution. Heralds, lictors, executioners--every
   judicial agent was summoned, ready at a signal to seize upon the
   factious priest. Having thus taken every precaution, the prefect,
   somewhat abashed, yet confident at least in his preventive measures,
   repaired to the prince. 'Emperor,' said he, 'I have failed in my
   attempt; this man is unmanageable; threats, entreaties, kindness, are
   all unavailing with him. This is a matter of stern severity; do but give
   the order, and it shall be fulfilled.' But this was exactly what Valens
   was not inclined to do. Though no less incensed than bewildered, still
   be did not dare to shed such illustrious blood on the path he was about
   to enter. He reprieved the execution, and penetrated into the city in a
   sort of wavering state of mind, just like a piece of iron, says Gregory
   Nyssa, already melting in the fire; but nevertheless still remaining a
   bit of iron.

   "He continued in this mood, irresolute as to his line of conduct, and
   without holding any communication with the bishop's dwelling. A meeting,
   however, became unavoidable, for the festival of the Epiphany was
   approaching; and, unless he chose to put himself outside of the church,
   Valens could not do otherwise than attend at divine service. On the
   morning of the feast, he therefore came to a determination, and went to
   the temple with an escort of soldiers, himself doubting whether he would
   be received peacefully, or would have to force an entry through
   violence. He entered: the crowd was most numerous, and had just begun
   the choral psalms; the chant was both harmonious and powerful, the whole
   service offering that appearance of majesty and order which Basil
   excelled in maintaining in his church. At the bottom of the nave stood
   Basil himself, facing the people, but motionless like a pillar of the
   sanctuary, and with his eyes fixed upon the altar. There he remained
   standing, just as the acts of the saints represent him, his tall or
   rather towering stature showing off his spare and slender figure, while
   his aquiline features were strongly brought forth by his thin, emaciated
   cheeks; a latent fire flashed from under his prominent forehead and his
   arched eyebrows, whilst now and then a somewhat disdainful smile parted
   on each side of his mouth his long white beard. All around him stood his
   clergy in an attitude of fear and respect. At this imposing sight Valens
   stopped, as if suddenly seized with a sort of bewilderment. The service
   continued as though his presence had passed unperceived. At the
   offertory, he stepped forward to present the gift which he had prepared;
   but no hand was held out to receive it; nobody came forward to meet him.
   A cloud passed before his eyes; he staggered on his legs; and, had not
   one of the attendants supported him, he would have fallen to the ground.
   Basil had pity on his anguish, and waved with his hand that the offering
   should be accepted.

   "The next day, the emperor having recovered his composure, returned to
   the church, and, feeling bolder, resolved to speak to his terrible
   antagonist. The service being over, he passed behind the velum where the
   officiating priest was wont to retire. Basil received him with kindness,
   in the presence of his faithful friend Gregory, who had hastened to his
   side. The interview was a long and peaceful one. Basil fully explained
   to the monarch his reasons for not conforming to his wishes, and even
   entered into many theological developments. By thus flattering his
   vanity, and by appearing to set some value on his opinion, he kept him
   for several hours spellbound by his lucid and powerful eloquence. This,
   by no means, satisfied many of the by-standers, who had already gone
   over to Arianism, and some of them endeavored to interfere. Among these
   was the unfortunate Demosthenes, who made an attempt at a theological
   argument, but in the midst of his demonstration he unwittingly coined a
   most ridiculous barbarism. 'Strange,' exclaimed Basil, smiling, 'here we
   have caught Demosthenes blundering in Greek!' The emperor departed,
   somewhat pacified, and bestowed upon Basil a piece of land for a
   hospital which he had founded," (pp. 94-103.)

{370}

What a picture! what a lesson for every one! How it brings home to every
mind the fact that a new power had arisen, which was more than a match for
worldly rulers, though clothed with even imperial purple. In the present
instance, the lesson became still more apparent, when Valens left Caesarea
without having dared to sign a decree of banishment against Basil, and
fully convinced that a supernatural agency interfered to protect him. In
the West, observes Prince de Broglie, Valentinian endeavored to maintain a
neutral position between the church and heathenism; but he found it
impossible to keep his ground, and his own measures turned against him. In
the East, Valens aimed at governing against the church, but was overcome by
the sole ascendency of sanctity combined with genius. The time, in fact,
was come when the temporal power proved to be utterly helpless to save a
crumbling state of society from its utter downfall, and when the
fundamental principles on which all society must ever rest were to be
recast and remodelled by more skilful hands, though even through a dark,
chaotic period, to serve again in future days as the substratum of modern
Christendom. Geologists plunging into the bowels of the earth tell us of
primitive periods, and primitive creations, that appear to our wondering
eyes as the forerunners or foreshadows of our own world. We read something
of the same kind in the facts and incidents of the fourth century: the
priestly power makes itself already felt in a Basil, or in Augustin, much
as it was hereafter displayed in a Gregory I., or a Lanfranc, or an Anselm,
or even a Hildebrand. Doubtless, Basil and Ambrose were no Hildebrands, but
they are of the same race and genus--there is a family likeness between
them all, because, perhaps, the same spirit burns within them, whatever may
be their outward figure or robe. To convey our meaning through another
simile. You enter a gallery, containing the portraits of some eminent
family, whose deeds have left their imprint for ages on the country to
which they belong. You take your stand at the founder of the illustrious
stock, and probably his large, open, noble figure sinks at once into your
memory, as if you had before you some huge relic of the fossil world. And
then you go on, following, one by one, each successive representative of
the time-honored generations. The ancestral likeness becomes almost
extinct, and you vainly endeavor to retrace in the effeminate lineaments of
a courtier the eagle-eye and haughty traits of his forefathers. But all of
a sudden you are riveted to the spot by the portrait of a youth, who seems
to embody within himself every distinctive mark of the whole race. You
would almost mistake him for a son of the original founder, and yet he
bears so completely about him the peculiarities of his own time that to
place him anywhere else would be committing an utter anachronism. Your mind
is, as it were, thrown off its balance, and you hardly know how to account
for the delusion. Something of the same kind occurs when you compare
certain prelates of the middle age, or even of later times, with the last
bishops of the Roman empire; and nowhere does this highly interesting fact
come forth in stronger relief than in the work before us. It would be easy
to demonstrate the assertion by other incidents belonging to the life of
St. Basil; we prefer giving a still better proof in St. Ambrose, the
celebrated bishop of Milan.

He was the last Roman statesman, just as Theodosius might be termed the
first Christian emperor. He had been brought up in the familiarity of
Probus, one of the most eminent patricians of the great city. As he himself
belonged to a noble family, he had learned at an early age all the
traditions and arts of the Roman government, whilst the austerity of his
religious principles guarded him against the allurements of pleasure.
{371}
Of an open, commanding exterior, a good speaker, well versed in literature,
no less proficient in the laws of his country, it seemed natural that with
such eminent qualifications, backed with excellent connections, he should
attract the sovereign's notice. This actually took place, and he was
appointed to the consular government of Milan. But the times were
dangerous, for the unbending disposition of Valentinian had now become
tyrannical. Probus was by no means blind to the peril incurred by his
youthful _protégé_; and on taking leave of him the veteran politician
simply said, "Child, I have but one piece of advice to give you. Behave,
not like a governor, but like a bishop." The advice was characteristic and
pithy: Ambrose remembered it well. In the midst of the universal confusion
and terror caused by the emperor's cruelty, Milan enjoyed the greatest
order and tranquillity. No riots, no insurrections, no complaints; the
thing was in itself a wonder, more particularly, if we recollect the
dissensions existing between the Arian bishop Auxentius, and the better
part of his flock. In fact, a young governor setting an example of
chastity, integrity, and humanity--showing himself affable, just, or
merciful according to the occasion--never sacrificing to his own ambition
or private interests the time and property of others; such a man, says
Prince de Broglie, was, in the eyes of the population, fit to grace the
episcopal seat far better than the praetorium of the civil magistrate.

The popular election of Ambrose to the episcopacy is too well known for us
to relate once more a story that has been so often and so ably told. What
we wish particularly to bring forward is the secular character which is
constantly enforced upon a bishop of those times, whether he wills it or
not, from the very simple reason that he could do what no other could
accomplish.

Ambrose had scarcely been consecrated--he had scarcely bestowed the whole
of his large fortune upon the poor, he had scarcely given himself up to the
absorbing duties of his new position, when be was called upon to guide the
first steps of his own sovereign, young Gratian, who had just succeeded to
his father Valentinian, and raised Theodosius to the throne of the East.
Both these princes were sincere Christians, but Theodosius had been brought
up in the camp, had tasted the bitter cup of adversity, and added to the
qualities of a good soldier those of a cool judgment and a sound heart.
Gratian, on the contrary, was a mere stripling, whose intentions were
upright, but who had hardly any experience in public affairs. He thus was
naturally disposed to lean on Ambrose, whose advice, both as a pastor and a
statesman, might be so eminently useful. That advice was not wanting, and
for some time the policy of the Western Empire was in reality the policy of
Ambrose. We use the word advisedly, for no other could better answer to our
meaning and to the real state of things. At the same time we beg the reader
to remember that not for one minute does the bishop separate his strong,
manly adherence to the gospel from his views as to the secular government;
both are, indeed, so blended, so utterly identified, that it becomes as
impossible to distinguish them one from another, as it is to mark where the
influence of our bodily organs terminates, and where that of our soul
begins. The evils of the times were too frequent, and too poignant, not to
require the interference of Ambrose--not to make him bold, even as a
bishop, a sort of civil magistracy, of which his flock would have been the
very last to complain. Though he had not the slightest idea of using his
sober but penetrating eloquence for anything like popular demonstrations,
yet he was not the man to refuse the part or an intercessor, if a
population, suffering from oppression, claimed his support; or if the
sovereign asked of him to strengthen his wavering counsels, he would
readily hold out a helping hand.

{372}

And here we may find, with our author, manifest indications of that great
Christian doctrine, the "_de jure_" alliance of church and state.
Ambrose had been formed from childhood upward to a certain course of ideas,
which led him naturally to assume a large share in the direction of public
affairs.

   "He could not apprehend the notion that the empire should have no
   official form of worship, or rather that it should have two religions
   together at one and the same time. He was shocked at the sight of an
   incoherent confusion of Christianity and heathenism to be met with at
   every step throughout the West, and nowhere more than at Rome itself.
   The churches and their rival temples, both opened on the same day, by
   order of the senate or emperor, for the same official ceremonies;
   Jupiter and Mars, two glorified demons, associated with the one jealous
   God, as the protectors of the commonwealth; invoked in the same
   language, thanked for the same favors; and then the monuments covered
   with profane inscriptions, the statues of idols towering over the
   basilicas, or defying on the public squares and at the corner of every
   street the cross triumphant; all this adulterous mixture of truth and
   error, which the Christian emperors had never dared to proscribe
   completely, scandalized the jealous purity of his faith quite as much as
   his taste for administrative regularity. As a prefect, he would have
   gladly put an end to such confusion, as being a public nuisance; as a a
   bishop, he felt indignant against so poisonous a profanation. The empire
   acknowledging but one master, and there being but one God in heaven, why
   should not these two unities be linked together by an indissoluble
   union? Why should the state tolerate within its limits anything beyond
   those two grand unities? On this central point Gratian and the bishop
   agreed even before they had seen each other. The alliance of the church
   and state, which the timorous conscience of a Gratian had looked for,
   Ambrose was ready not only to recommend, but enforce as a duty," (vol.
   ii. p. 18.)

It would hardly be possible to point out in more positive terms the
doctrine which became the groundwork of Christendom in after times, a
doctrine which a St. Gregory VII. and an Innocent III. were to carry to its
extreme consequences. This was the germ, destined to unfold itself slowly
underground, until it should rise and develop its branches in the feudal
times, serving as a stay and prop for an anarchical state of society. But
let us not wander beyond our subject. Gratian and Ambrose were soon closely
knit together in the greatest intimacy, and ere long the influence of the
master mind became apparent. Between 378 and 381 Gratian dwelt almost
constantly at Milan, issuing new laws, which all bear the stamp of a
priestly impulse, which all are inspired by a man who could not forget that
_he_ likewise had held civil power. In everyone of these enactments,
justly observes our author, we perceive certain dispositions tempering
rigor by clemency. Thus it is, for instance, with those privileged
corporations of the Roman empire, which were at once a resource and a
source of ruin for its very existence by their extortionary tendencies;
thus, again, with a more equitable distribution of the annona, which is
modified according to the dictates of charity. Elsewhere measures are
adopted against burglary or brigandage, but at the same time qualified by
certain humane clauses, as to the mode of repression. In fact, the civil
ruler shows himself less authoritative, less imperious, less harsh and
arbitrary in the display of his power; and yet we meet with a greater
firmness, never baulked by alternatives of weakness and helplessness.

In other directions these laws assume the form of what we might call public
manifestations of the imperial conscience. Let us supply a few instructive
instances.

Milan, August 3, 379.--General law against heretics, expressly modifying
the edict enacted at Sirmium in the preceding year, and extending to such
sects as shall debase _by their sophistry_ the notion of God, the
prohibition of propagandism, which had already been laid upon those who
_annulled baptism by renewing it_, (Donatist.)

{373}

Milan, April 24, 380.--Women of low extraction, and condemned by that very
fact to appear on the stage are freed from any such obligation as soon as
they embrace Christianity; "because," says the law, "the better mode of
living they have adopted liberated them from the bond of their natural
condition: _Melior vivendi usus vinculo naturalis conditionis
evaluit_."

May, 381.--The above law is restricted; "for such women as abandon the
purity of a Christian life shall not enjoy the above exemption."

July 21st.--Liberation of certain criminals, in honor of Easter.

May 2, 382.--Penal measures are denounced against those apostates who shall
preach apostasy. Whoever abandons the Christian law to embrace idolatry,
Judaism, or Manichaeism, is declared incapable of making a will, one of the
greatest penalties to which a Roman could be subjected. And all these
measures were crowned by another, which made a deep impression throughout
the whole empire: the statue of Victory was definitively removed from the
hall where the senate assembled at Rome for its deliberations. This was
perhaps the greatest proof of the influence which Ambrose had over the
imperial mind, and not one heathen, of high or low degree, mistook the hand
that had dealt the blow.

At any rate, Ambrose was not the man to deny it. Symmachus, one of the most
illustrious patricians, who belonged to the heathen party, having sent up
to the throne a petition, whose object was to obtain the restoration of the
statue, Ambrose himself entered the lists in a counter petition, or rather
manifesto, in which we see at once the bishop and the statesman.

  "Every man [says he] who acknowledges the Roman rule bears arms for the
  emperors and princes; you are verily the militia of an all-powerful God,
  and of the most holy faith. For there is no security for man himself if
  he does not worship the true God--the God of the Christians, who governs
  all things; he alone is the true God, and demands that we should adore
  him from the bottom of our souls. The gods of nations, say the
  Scriptures, are nothing else but devils.

  "Now whosoever serves that God ought to bear within him no dissimulation,
  no reserve, but devote his whole being to him. If he does not entertain
  such feelings, he ought at least to offer no external consent to
  idolatrous worship, or to a profane worship; for no one can deceive God,
  to whom the secret of our hearts lies open. ... I am really astonished
  that any man should hope to see you restore the altars of the Gentiles,
  and give money from your coffers for profane sacrifices. .... O emperor!
  do not allow any man to deceive your youth. ... And I likewise, I am for
  following the experience of the wise, but God's counsels must rule
  supreme over all others. If we had to do here with some military concern,
  you should consult and follow the opinion of the best approved generals.
  But in religious matters you are bound to listen to God. Is the man who
  gives you this piece of advice a heathen? Well, don't force him to
  believe what he won't believe; but then let him allow you, O emperor! the
  same freedom: let him not attempt to force upon the sovereign an act of
  violence that he would not himself endure at his hands. The very heathen
  does not like a man to belie his own creed; every one ought to maintain
  the free and sincere convictions of his own mind. Should those who hurry
  you on to such a decision be but nominal Christians, pray, do not allow
  yourself to be deluded by a name. Whoever advises you in this way
  sacrifices to the gods, whether he admits it or not. ..."

Ambrose wound up by requesting to
obtain communication of the petition, with a view of answering it. "In a
worldly suit," said he, "you would listen to both parties. This is a matter
of religion. I, the bishop, I come forth to defend her. ... If you refuse
me, no bishop will submit peacefully to such an iniquity; you may still
apply to the church, but you will not meet any more with priests, or at
least with any who will not be ready to resist you."

Thoroughly to appreciate the weight of this strong language, it must be
remembered that many a lukewarm Christian within the imperial council
inclined to the restoration of the famous statue. To refuse the request of
Ambrose would, however, have been imprudent, and besides, Valentinian the
Younger revered and loved the venerable bishop, who had shown him great
kindness in trying circumstances. Once in possession of the pagan
manifesto, the great prelate of the West dealt with it in a manner which
scattered to the four winds both its arguments and rhetorical flourishes.
{374}
The whole composition is a masterpiece of sound reason and gentlemanly
satire, forming a thorough defence of Christianity against idolatry. When
it was read before the council, every wavering mind was struck dumb with
astonishment, whilst the youthful sovereign broke forth in the following
impassioned words: "It's the voice of Daniel; I will not undo what my
brother did." Of course the cause of the goddess Victory was lost for ever.

But something was not and could not be lost--we mean the contest between
the church and idolatry, that survived even the final crash of the empire.
Yet that crash, though imminent, could not yet be foreseen by either party,
still less perhaps by Ambrose himself, who was a true type of the old
Roman. His constant object seems to have been to revive the pristine policy
of his forefathers, by instilling new life into them, thanks to the sublime
doctrines of the new faith. So things went on just in the same way,
Christianity impregnating more and more the habits, institutions, and laws
of ancient society, but for purposes that were still the secret of
Providence. In the mean time Gratian was murdered by the usurper Maximus,
and Ambrose was once more called to negotiate with the murderer, and to
defend the last relics of the Valentinian family. A short time yet runs on,
and Theodosius remains sole ruler of the whole civilized world--a ruler
according to the heart of the holy bishop of Milan. With an Ambrose and a
Theodosius to prop the tottering edifice, what might not be expected? And
yet it was not to be. These two bright figures are but a transient gleam
between two storms. Alaric was born--nay, more, he had been a silent
spectator in the glittering crowd of courtiers who attended at the
coronation of Theodosius. How many wild dreams of invasion, and burning
cities, and bloody battles were teeming at that very moment in the brain of
that young barbarian!

Singular enough, the first occasion on which Ambrose and Theodosius met, as
it were, in public, gave rise to a contest. The emperor, irritated at the
summary destruction of a Jewish synagogue by one of the Eastern prelates,
had ordered it to be rebuilt at the expense of the prelate. The bishop was
absent from Milan when the order was given and sent; on his return, he felt
indignant that a Christian prelate should be bound to rebuild a temple
dedicated to the execration of Jesus Christ. It was in his eyes a sort of
prevarication far more guilty than the violation of any civil law. He
immediately wrote to the emperor in the strongest language; and here again
he sets forth that great Christian doctrine which was afterward so fully
developed and exemplified in the middle age. The whole incident is so
striking that we shall give it in the words of Prince de Broglie:

   "Ambrose begins by a short insinuative exordium: 'Listen to me, O
   emperor! as you wish that God may listen to me when I am praying for
   you. If I am not worthy of being heard by you, how should I be worthy of
   transmitting your wishes and prayers? If it be not proper for an emperor
   to fear plain speaking, it is not likewise proper for a priest to
   disassemble his thoughts.'

   "He then enters fully and unreservedly into his own doctrine: he
   maintains the unlawfulness of any help given by Christians for the
   construction of an edifice destined to error; and the faithful, but,
   above all, the bishops, have no more the right to do it than the emperor
   to impose it upon them. If the bishop yields to the imperial order, he
   becomes guilty, and the emperor responsible before God for the bishop's
   weakness. 'So you must see,' pursues Ambrose, 'whither you are going.
   You ought to fear quite as much the bishop's obedience as his
   resistance. If he is steadfast, fear to make a martyr of him; if he
   shows weakness, fear that you may bear the weight of his fall. And,
   indeed, how will your order be fulfilled? Should the Christians refuse
   to accomplish it, will you force them to it through violence? So you
   will be obliged to confide to the Count of the East your victorious
   standards, your labarum; nay, the very standard of Christ himself, with
   the mission of restoring a temple, wherein Christ will be denied.
{375}
   Well, pray order that the labarum shall be carried into the synagogue,
   and then see whether anyone will obey you. ... History tells us that
   idolatrous temples were erected in Rome with the spoils of the
   Cimbrians. In our days, the Jews may engrave on the frontispiece of
   their synagogue: Temple built with the spoils of the Christians. Public
   order requires it, will you say? So the appearance of outward order must
   lord it over the interests of faith! No; authority must yield to piety.'

   "It would be impossible to assert in language of more rigorous cogency
   the supremacy of the religious law over every civil law. The church, in
   her maternal prudence, is far from having ratified on these delicate
   points the tenets of Ambrose: as she never imposed upon the faithful the
   obligation of building temples to error, so has she not forbidden them
   to contribute to their material preservation whenever equity, previous
   engagements, or the necessity of repairing wrongs requires it of them.
   It is, therefore, by no means astonishing that Theodosius, arguing like
   a civil lawgiver, should have deemed these demands excessive, or even
   that he should have given way to an unusual fit of ill humor. He allowed
   the letter to remain unanswered. And yet it contained toward the end two
   lines which offered matter for consideration. 'Such is my request,' said
   the prelate; 'I have done all in my power to present it with that
   respect which is due to you: pray, do not force me to speak out in the
   church.'

   "Indeed, as soon as he returned to Milan, Ambrose availed himself of the
   very first opportunity to speak out at church, and before Theodosius. He
   chose for his text the words of Jeremiah: 'Take up thy walnut staff, and
   walk forth.' He boldly asserted that the staff mentioned by the prophet
   was the sacerdotal rod, intended far less to be agreeable than useful to
   those whom it scourges. He then recalled several examples of the old
   law, such as Nathan and David, thus showing that in all times the
   ministers of God had never spared the truth to kings. The comparison was
   in itself clear enough, and Theodosius must have felt somewhat
   uncomfortable at the very first words; but still he could hardly expect
   that the orator should address him personally. And yet such was the
   case, when Ambrose said by way of conclusion: 'And now, O emperor! after
   speaking of you, I must speak to you; reflect that the more God has
   raised you up in glory, the more you ought to show deference to him who
   has given you all. .... It is the mercy of Christ which has made you
   what you are. So you must love Christ's body, or the church, you must
   wash her feet, kiss them, perfume them, so that the whole dwelling of
   Christ shall be filled with your good odor; in other words, you must
   honor the meanest of his disciples, and forgive them their faults, since
   the repentance of one single sinner gives joy in heaven to all the
   prophets and apostles. The eye cannot say to the hand, I do not want
   thee, thou art unnecessary. Every member of the body of Jesus Christ is
   necessary, and to every one of them you owe protection.'

   "The bishop came down from the altar after uttering these words in a
   tone of severity, and in the midst of the general amazement, for all
   were aware that the emperor was accused, but no one knew the motive of
   the reprimand. Theodosius, of course, could not for one instant remain
   doubtful. Stopping the prelate as he passed by, 'So you have made me the
   subject of your speech,' said he in an angry tone. 'I said what I deemed
   of use to yourself,' replied Ambrose. 'I see very well,' resumed the
   emperor, more moved than ever, 'that you have been speaking of the
   synagogue. I admit that my orders were somewhat harsh, but I have
   already mitigated them; and then those monks yonder are so
   wrong-headed.' [Footnote 114] Here a courtier thought fit to inveigh
   against the monks, but he was soon stopped by Ambrose, who, once more
   addressing the emperor, 'I am going to offer the sacrifice!' exclaimed
   he; 'allow me to offer it for you fearlessly: free me from the burden
   which weighs down my soul.' 'Well, well,' replied Theodosius, as he sat
   down again, 'the orders shall be modified, I promise you.' But such a
   vague promise, and made as it was in a sullen mood, was not deemed
   sufficient. 'Cancel the whole affair,' insisted Ambrose; 'for, if you
   allow one tittle of it to remain, your magistrates will take advantage
   of it to grind down the poor Christians.' The dialogue proceeded in the
   midst of the whole assembly, and the situation became at last downright
   intolerable. The emperor gave way, and promised whatever was exacted.
   'You swear to it,' said Ambrose; 'I am about to offer the sacrifice on
   your word. Mind, on your word,' he repeated a second time. 'Yes, on my
   word,' replied Theodosius, who wanted, at any cost, to put an end to
   such a scene. The holy sacrifice began; 'and never,' said Ambrose the
   next day to his sister, 'never did I feel so sensibly the real presence
   of God in prayer.'" (Vol. ii. pp. 247-254.)

     [Footnote 114: The Emperor's expression is far stronger: _Menachi
     multa scelera faciunt._.]

What a scene indeed! And how it brings out at once the rapid progress which
Christian feeling had made of late throughout the empire. Better than the
famous penance of Theodosius in the cathedral of Milan, it shows us how
strongly the slightest deviation from the general range of Christian
opinion worked upon the people. For, in fact, we do not detect here the
slightest mark of disapprobation, far less of indignation, among the
audience.
{376}
Any other feeling but astonishment is not once perceptible, and even that
is caused by ignorance of the case, not by any want of sympathy for
Ambrose. His conduct seems to be taken for granted on the part of his
flock, however extreme and out of place it may appear to modern readers. We
are justified in considering such cases as signs of the times; fifty years
before they could not have taken place, and we doubt whether Constantine
would have allowed himself to be thus browbeaten in an open church; sixty
years after--the world had fallen a prey to the barbarians, and it was all
over with the Roman empire.

Another observation of no less importance is the fact that conduct like
this on the part of Ambrose did not in the slightest degree deprive him of
any influence with the emperor. Quite the contrary; as long as Theodosius
remained in Italy, there prevailed the greatest intimacy between these two
illustrious personages. Ambrose naturally resumed the station of a
confidential advisor, to whom every political affair is freely
communicated. No doubt that his opinions might be followed in a less
servile manner than under Gratian, but the sovereign himself was a man of
mature years, accustomed to all the arts of government, and thus a better
appreciator of the bishop's lucid views and truly Christian politics. On
both sides there sprang up a sort of mutual understanding, closely
bordering on a footing of equality, as one might expect between two master
minds. It is indeed probable that to Ambrose we owe the permanent
establishment of an Eastern and Western Empire, a division founded upon
necessity, and well calculated to avert its imminent ruin.

            "Si Pergama dextra
  Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent."

Nor was this all, for other measures reveal the same influence. Contrary to
what took place on such occasions, the revolution which placed Theodosius
at the head of the whole empire cost no other blood but that spilt on the
field of battle against the usurper Maximus. There were no executions, no
confiscations, no acts of vengeance; for the first time, Christian mildness
and charity had the day to themselves. Such policy, good in all times, was
excellent at a time when hardly any monarch could reckon upon transmitting
his imperial crown to his immediate descendants.

The reader may now, we trust, form a definite notion of what he may expect
to find in the _church and the Roman empire during the fourth
century_. It is a general review of what the church maintained,
preserved, and appropriated to herself among the confused elements of which
was made up ancient civilization. Among that huge mass of elements we have
purposely selected the most striking, as offering the best instances of
that constant though silent transformation which society itself was
undergoing previous to the creation of feudal Christendom. That, in the six
octavo volumes before us, there are numberless instances of the same kind,
must be evident to every intelligent mind. As another inducement to study
the book, we may add that the holy father has bestowed upon it the highest
praise in a brief addressed to the author--the best reward, assuredly,
which his truly Catholic mind could have wished.

And now, lastly, for one most important application of those historical
facts which the Prince de Broglie has placed before the world. To those who
are familiar with the annals of the two centuries which preceded the utter
downfall of the Roman empire, there is a striking resemblance, in a moral
view, with what is going on in our own times. Wherever we cast our eyes, we
find a motley assemblage of high-flown philosophical doctrines blended with
the most degrading superstitions of polytheism; or at Alexandria, the
Neo-Platonic schools borrowing a few partial tenets of Christianity, which
it mixes up with a sort of juggler's theurgy.
{377}
After listening to the apostles of this celebrated school, we had but to
cross the street to attend at one of those instructions or lectures--how
shall we call them?--in which the Christian teachers, priests, and bishops
developed the sublime tenets of the redemption. And again, a little further
on, we might have stepped into the Serapeum, and there witnessed the
immoral mysteries of the Egyptian worship. And so was it, more or less,
over all the Roman world.

Doubtless between our own times and those there are many differences, but
how many no less striking points of resemblance? We meet with no immoral
mysteries in the public worship, but how many cesspools of the same kind in
the lower ranks of society--cesspools emitting such loathsome exhalations
as would have shocked more than one heathen philosopher? There are no
barbarians at our doors, ready to rush in through every gap and weak point
of the body politic; but kings put forth their armies, in order to
establish the supremacy of might over right; and their attempts are
successful, and on the footsteps of their victorious legions an intoxicated
multitude of admirers hurry on, shouting, "Hurrah, hurrah!"

And well may they shout "_Hurrah!_" for they, in their wild ovations,
do but foreshadow the advent of a still wilder democracy, animated by all
the insensate passions of self-worship. Such, indeed, is the form of
idolatry which modern nations have assumed, in defiance of the living God,
in defiance of a blessed Redeemer, in defiance of every dogma held sacred
to mankind. Such are the barbarians, henceforward to be subdued, converted,
baptized once more by Christianity, unless the world itself be condemned to
rock and totter to and fro between anarchy and despotism. Take it as you
will--consider it as you please--run over England, or France, or Germany,
or Italy, or the eastern wastes of Russia,--everywhere you will descry and
bear the ground-swell of the huge human tides as if awaiting but the breath
of the blast to foam, and surge, and lash itself into fury. Again, the
forthcoming invasion is of a far more alarming character than that of the
German savages; for, born and nurtured in the bosom of Christianity itself,
it has profited by all its lights, benefited by all the forces of modern
science. Nay, more, our rising democracy is backed by a host of learned
infidels, whose only aim and end is to annihilate revelation, so as to
raise in its stead the adoration of man as God. Who will dare to deny that
such a situation is fraught with imminent peril or refuse to repeat with an
ancient, "_Corruptio optimi pessima_"?

And now as to our helps. An eminent French writer lately remarked in the
Revue des Deux Mondes that, after all, in the present state of society
there is nothing more alarming than in what has ever taken place since the
very birthday of the new dispensation. Has it not ever been its fate to
struggle against evil doctrines, evil practices, and evil doers? But, then,
in all times it successively modified and tempered anew its weapons,
according to the wants and exigencies of every age. This indeed is the very
secret, in a human view of the subject; this is the secret of its
ascendency over heathen corruption, feudal violence, monarchical despotism,
or even revolutionary anarchy. Now, one of the most extraordinary features
of the present age is that of thirsting after civil and political
liberties, which seem destined to become the ground-work of every future
state or government. Let us observe that this very feeling--however
vitiated and disturbed it may be--is an offspring of the gospel, and, as
such, worthy of our respect. So why should it be so difficult for
Catholicism to bring about a conciliation between its sublime doctrines and
the new cravings of civilized Europe?

{378}

  "Is the notion of liberty (asks M. Vitet) alien and unknown to
  Christianity? Was it never enforced within its bosom? Did the church
  never practise it? On the contrary, did not liberty surround her cradle?
  Was it not in the church that arose a whole system of elections, debates,
  and control, which has become both the glory and rightful goal of our
  modern institutions? To make peace with liberty, to live cheerfully in
  its company, to understand and bless its favors, is that the same thing
  as to absolve its errors? Is that to concede one jot to misrule and
  anarchy? 'No,' will reply some good people; 'for God's sake, don't mix up
  religion with party questions. Don't drag her into such quarrels. The
  more she keeps aloof from the affairs of this world the more steadfast
  will be her empire.' Granted; and above we have insisted upon this truth;
  but still, however disengaged from politics, from worldly interests
  however absorbed in prayer and good works we may suppose religious people
  and the clergy, still how could they live here below in an utter state of
  ignorance as to what was going on? Were it but to attack the vices, the
  baseness, the disorders of our age, must they not know them, witness
  them, with their own eyes? We put the question to those pious souls who
  are scared at the very association of the two words--liberty and
  religion. Are we not delighted that eloquent voices should condemn and
  brand in the holy pulpit the vagaries of our modern spirit, the
  revolutionary frenzy, and all those impious doctrines which are a scourge
  to society? Well, if religion is right in waging war against false
  liberty, why should not she be entitled to speak of sound liberty? Why
  not encourage her to speak of it with kindness and sympathy, duly
  appreciating its generous tendencies, making it both beloved and fully
  understood? Otherwise, what sort of Christianity is yours, and what do
  you believe to be its fate? Are you not making of it a narrow, contracted
  doctrine--a privilege of the few--the tardy and solitary consolation of
  old age or grief? If of Christianity you ask nothing more, if you are
  satisfied with allowing it to live on just enough to show that it is not
  dying, like one of those ruins protected by antiquarians, and never used,
  though objects of general reverence--why then you must separate it from
  the rising generations, from an overflowing democracy; you must allow it
  to become isolated and to grow old--to bury itself complacently in the
  past, in contempt for the present, just like a scolding, querulous,
  morose, unpopular old gentleman. But if better apprehending its true
  destiny, you wish Christianity to obtain a salutary influence not only
  over yourself and your friends, but over all mankind, let it penetrate
  into the hearts of all your brethren, young and old, low and high; let it
  fire them with the spirit of justice and truth; let it transform them,
  straighten their paths, purify them, regenerate them, by speaking their
  own language, by taking interest in their ideas, by yielding to their
  wishes, without either weakness or flattery, just as a kind father draws
  around him all his children by making himself once more young among them,
  by consenting to their requests while he corrects their faults, guards
  them against the dangers of life, and teaches them the narrow, severe
  paths of wisdom and truth." [Footnote 115]

    [Footnote 115: Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 1, 1867. The above article,
    written by M. Vitet, member of the French Academy, will certainly well
    repay the reader's perusal, and enlighten him as to the situation of
    Catholicism in France. It is indeed astonishing that such a paper
    should have been published by that truly infidel periodical; in fact,
    Paris readers are fully aware that the editor consented with the
    greatest difficulty to its insertion. But then he had of late lost so
    many Catholic subscribers.]

A leaning, then, toward the cause of civil and political freedom might
probably become a powerful help to Catholics in the present and future
crisis by which the world is now threatened. As M. Vitet very properly
remarks, they would not have to sacrifice one single principle; and such an
attitude on their part might pave the way for many a conversion. Yet such a
help is evidently but a poor one after all--a mere matter of expediency. It
is from above and in herself that the church must look for her real helps.
And here we are brought round at once to a strong resemblance between the
actual state of society and that of the fourth century after Christ. The
result of a most extraordinary progress in physical science has bent the
minds of men toward sensual enjoyment and money making. "Put money in your
purse" seems now the motto of almost every living man, and in England more
than in any country. But we may already see what are the effects of this
ruling passion, and how it gnaws at the very vitals of our social body. The
only means of counteracting this fatal craving are the same through which
Christianity conquered the heathen world. Evidently Catholicism alone
commands those means, for it is hardly worth while to take into account
that bastard, inconsistent system, yeleped Protestantism, which has arrived
at its lowest period as a spiritual doctrine, and rather promotes than
checks the materialistic tendencies of the day.
{379}
So to set, as in olden times, bright example of asceticism, humility,
charity, self-renouncement, strong faith, and a no less strong love of the
poor--such are the chief weapons of the church in her warfare against her
antagonists. Most fortunately, she appears at present to put forth her best
approved armory in this respect; for never, whether among the clergy or
laity, did there exist a more exalted ideal of Christian perfection, nor a
stronger will to carry that ideal into execution. Half the work is done,
and we have but to maintain our ground manfully in front of our common
enemy to win the day.

And yet the day may not be ours. Another world, another form of society may
reap the harvest that we have sown. When St. Ambrose and Theodosius, like
two brave swimmers, breasted the wave of corruption, quickly followed by
the wave of invasion, they fondly imagined, perhaps, that they were
securing once more the props of Roman society, or founding a thoroughly
Christian empire. Ambrose above all, a true Roman of the old stock, could
apprehend no other institutions, no other government but those which had
borne the test of a thousand years. Though a saint and a statesman, he
could not read the signs of the times; and if he could not, who could? The
future was in the hands of God; Ambrose labored and toiled for nations yet
unborn, but which were already bursting the womb of their mother Europe.
Yea! and so may it be with the men of our own generation.


------

  From the Italian of Manzoni.

  The Death of Napoleon.  [Footnote 116]

    [Footnote 116: The translation of this poem from the Italian of
    Alexander Manzoni was made by the late Rev. Thomas Mulledy, Provincial
    Superior of the Jesuits of Maryland. Manzoni is a standard writer in
    Italy, and the ode "Il Cinque di Maggio" is a household poem with the
    Italians.]


  MAY 5, 1821.

  He's gone: as void of motion lay,
    When the last breath had winged its way,
    His stiffened corse--of such a soul
    Bereft so struck from pole to pole,
    The astonished world astounded hung,
    When in its ears his death knell rung:
      Silent in dumb reflective power
    It mused upon the final hour
    Of that great man--that man of fate,
    And knows not, if with equal weight
    A mortal foot shall ever press
    Its bloody dust with such success.

{380}

  Him shining on a gorgeous throne
    My muse beheld--nor struck one tone
    While fortune's wheel its circles flies.
    He falls, gets up--then prostrate lies;
    While thousand voices rend the air,
    Her voice amongst them none can hear.
      Exempt from every servile praise,
    For outrage base she forms no lays;
    But now, when such a beam had fled,
    She quickly rears her drooping head,
    And round his urn, with heaving sigh,
    She weaves a song that may not die.


  From Alpine heights to Egypt's shrine,
    From Mansanares to the Rhine,
    His thunderbolts unerring flew
    Close to his vivid lightning's hue,
    From Scylla to the Tanais roars,
    From Asia's bounds to Adria's shores.
      Was this true glory? undefiled?
    Posterity, just, unbeguiled,
    The arduous sentence must proclaim,
    Whilst we before our Maker's name
    Must bow--who wished in him to shine
    An impress vast of _hands divine_.


  He felt the stormy, trepid joy
    Of great _designs_--without alloy;
    The anxious heart--its feverish pains--
    That eager burn--to seize the reins
    _That guide to power's airy height_.
    He grasped them, _and with hardy might_
    He gained the proud reward--which seemed
    To all a folly e'en t' have dreamed.
      All things he tried: bright glory's sweet
    _Increased by frightful danger's heat,_
    _Fair_ vict'ry's _smiles_, and _sadd'ning_ flight,
    The _sunny_ throne, and exile's night:
    Twice prostrate in the dust he lay,
    And twice he blazed in _glory's day_.

  His name was _heard_: submissive turned
    Two ages--that with fury burned--
    And, trembling, stood before his seat,
    In expectation of their fate:
    He bade them hush with lordly frown,
    And as their umpire sat him down.
      He disappeared: his shortened days
    He closed, far from the busy gaze
    Of men--a mark for envy's dart,
    For purest piety of heart,
    For hate, that can no act approve,
    And for indomitable love.

{381}

  As o'er the shipwrecked sailor's head
    The wave rolls up, with terror dread,
    That wave, from whose bleak top before
    He searched, in vain, for distant shore;
    Soon that soul the sick'ning weight
    Of mem'ry felt, and brooding sat.
      How oft be undertook to paint
    Himself to future days--when faint
    Upon the eternal pages sunk
    His hand, and in himself he shrunk.

  How oft, upon the silent close
    Of some dull, tedious days, he rose,
    And bending down his lightning eyes--
    His hand thrust in his bosom lies--
    He stood: and gloomy mem'ry's roll
    Of days gone by attacked his soul!
      He thought upon the tented field,
    The sounding plain with bayonets steeled,
    The splendor of his marshalled brave,
    The chargers rolling in a wave,
    The throbbing breast, the quick command,
    And prompt obedience of his band.

  Perhaps with torturing cares opprest,
    His wearied spirit found no rest,
    And he despaired: but quick was given
    An aiding hand from piteous heaven,
    To lift him up--from this dark sphere,
    And place him in more genial air.
      And through hope's smiling, flow'ry way
    To guide him to the fields of day;
    To those rewards that far transcend
    The hope that vast desires lend:
    Where gulfed in darkness sinks each ray
    Of glory that has passed away.

  O faith immortal! beauteous! kind!
    Turn'd to triumphs o'er the mind!
    Write this one too--rejoice! be glad!
    For never yet a prouder head,
    Or one on loftier deeds intent,
    To Calv'ry's infamy has bent!
      Off from his ashes do thou guard
    All malice black--each venomed word
    The God who overthrows--and when
    To pity moved--rears up again--
    Who scatters terror to the poles!
    The God who, when he wills, consoles;
    That God has placed himself beside
    The desert couch--on which he died.

{382}

    Translated from Le Mousquetaire.

    Sketch of Père Hyacinthe.

The discourses of Père Hyacinthe, in the church of Notre Dame, have been
numerously attended, and the sacred eloquence of the orator has furnished
subjects for the strangest criticisms that have appeared in what has been
called, in the nineteenth century, the profane world.

It is not my intention to give you a portrait of Père Hyacinthe. It has
already been drawn by a master hand. I wish merely to sketch the features,
the figure, and the personalities of this great saver of souls.

The preacher, who now attracts to Notre Dame the thinking minds of Paris,
is in stature above the middle size; his head is closely shaven, like all
those of the order of barefooted Carmelites. It is well known that the
disciples of St. Teresa wear but a circlet of hair. It is their earthly
crown. His form is too large for the size of his head; his face is monkish;
his forehead recalls to mind that of St. Augustine; his eyes have rather
the expression of seeking truth than of imparting it; but the mouth opens
freely to let fall the word of God upon his hearers; the chin, without
being aristocratic, is not wanting in a certain nobility that redeems his
appearance, which at first sight is ordinary.

On the whole, Père Hyacinthe carries one's thoughts back to those monks of
the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, who, regardless of
personal safety, fearlessly crossed the thresholds of palaces to make the
dignitaries of earth listen to the teachings of charity, love, and of
liberty. This preacher has been accused of voluntarily laying aside
spiritual subjects to descend to the things of earth. This reproach is
unjust.

It is necessary to speak of what interests people the most; meet them at
their own doors, live their lives, and suffer with them. Christ spoke in
parables that the ignorant might understand him better, and the poor
flocked in crowds to hear these admirable teachings which transformed the
old world and regenerated humanity. For different times we must take
different means. In this age the man of God desires to enlighten both
Scribes and Pharisees, and to warn noble ladies of the seductive
temptations of Bael. What can be found objectionable in the earthly
character of these teachings? In spite of philosophical reasonings, we must
fall back upon the old adage, "The end justifies the means."

I do not wish to institute a comparison between Père Hyacinthe and the
sacred orators who have preceded him, but I have heard two of his sermons
in Notre Dame. Not being able to judge which was the best, I can only
decide which pleased me the more. Père Hyacinthe possesses in the highest
degree the gift of awakening man to a proper estimate of himself. Elevate
the creature, and he approaches the Creator.

I have the honor of knowing a priest who exercises his holy ministry in the
vicinity of our Lady of Loretto. He is the most amiable and benevolent man
that I have ever had the good fortune to meet.

He speaks to the humblest sinner as St. Charles Borromeo spoke to the
thoughtless Milanese. He has words of consolation and charity for all
classes of unfortunates. His door is open to them at all hours of the day
or night. Thus has he labored for several years, and God alone knows how
many wandering sheep this minister of Christ has brought back to the fold,
and how many erring hearts he has reconciled to God, to their families, and
to society.
{383}
Certainly there do not exist two kinds of morality, but the application of
morality can and ought to vary according to the situation in which they who
are in need of instruction are placed.

The church of Notre Dame is to my mind one of the churches in the world
which most elevates the soul and brings it nearer to God. I like the Gothic
church; it seems to me that prayers ascend more easily to heaven through
steeples whose spires are lost in the clouds.

The Greek Byzantine style is both rich and beautiful; but I think it
wanting in majesty. My soul is more deeply impressed upon entering the
portal of one of the cathedrals upon the Rhine than upon ascending the
steps of the Vatican.

The other day, upon listening to the touching eloquence of Père Hyacinthe,
I could not drive from my thoughts the sad remembrance of a sermon I heard
several years ago in the same place from another celebrated preacher. I had
then for a neighbor in the church of Notre Dame an abbé whose memoirs have
formed the subject of one of my best works. The orator selected for his
discourse the subject of devotion, "Thou shouldst love thy God with all thy
heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." All is contained in these admirable
words; the law and the prophets.

Such were the first words of the preacher, who from this starting-point
caused his hearers to traverse ages, tracing at length the great efforts of
those noble hearts who devoted themselves for the good of humanity.

The subject was beautiful, and the orator was truly convincing, every heart
beat in unison.

I looked at my neighbor, he was inspired. Before me was an apostle who
asked no greater happiness than to suffer martyrdom for the glory of God
and the good of his fellow-creatures.

Subsequently I learned the precise details of the life of the priest, who
called himself the Abbé Bernard.

His history is so interesting that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of
writing it a second time. The father of the abbé had accumulated great
wealth in lending money with interest. He was one of those practical men
who shut up their hearts in their money chest.

Widowed in early life, he sent his only son to college, where he remained
until he had attained the age of seventeen; he then removed him to finish
his studies by travelling for two years in England and eighteen months in
Germany.

In translating the works of Shakespeare and Goethe, the young Bernard had
acquired a knowledge of the two living languages that are now the keys of
the commercial world.

He then returned to Paris, with his thoughts more filled with poetry and
philosophy than with a mind prepared for the sterile labors of an
accountant.

His father, upon placing him in his counting-house, generously allowed him
a salary of 2,000 francs. Forced into acquiescence, Bernard began the life
of an accountant, in which he continued for several years. Unhappily, the
young man fell in love with the daughter of his father's cashier. She was a
beautiful blonde, had every desirable quality, but possessed no greater
fortune than modesty. Bernard's father, who had other views, dismissed the
cashier from his employment and commanded his son never to speak to him
again upon the subject of that foolish union. The young man fell ill, but
his father remained inflexible, "I would rather," said he, "see him laid in
his coffin than give him in marriage to an inferior. I have not worked like
a horse and economized for forty years for the bright eyes of Mademoiselle
Marie Closet; more than that, it is the extreme of folly; the time has
passed ages ago since anyone died for love."

{384}

The father was right, nature triumphed over the malady, and the young
Bernard's health was soon restored. The first day he went out during
convalescence, he hastened to the father of his beloved, who declined
seeing him, not wishing to give a pretext for calumny. Despairing on all
sides, the young Bernard resolved to put an end to his existence; a
frequent recourse for despairing lovers of twenty and twenty-five years!

His mother, a holy woman, had before her death inculcated in the
spring-time of his life religious precepts, of which be retained the
faithful remembrance. Strange caprice of the human heart! at the moment he
determined to offend God the most, be felt unwilling to die before entering
a church.

Finding himself within two steps of the church of St. Vincent de Paul, he
entered the temple. Lights burned before the two altars. At his right, a
marriage was being celebrated, and at the end of the chapel a funeral
service was being performed. The bridal party was not numerous; but the
deceased must have occupied a high position in society, judging from the
numbers who followed his remains to their last resting-place. Bernard
became absorbed in prayer. When he raised his eyes, he saw before him a
young priest blessing the assemblage. An idea quick as lightning crossed
the mind of the self-destroyer. It is noble, thought he, to console others,
even when there is no hope of happiness for one's self. A week had not
elapsed before Jean Léon Bernard entered a theological seminary. Two years
after be received ordination; he never saw his father again, but the banker
settled upon him an annuity of three thousand francs. The young Levite was
sent to a small village to begin the exercise of his holy ministry. After
celebrating his first mass, he found upon entering the sacristy a letter
awaiting him sealed with black. His father had just died and left him an
inheritance of over four millions.

Remember Christ himself has said, "The poor and those who lead sinful lives
are in great need of being encouraged and consoled." Bernard returned to
Paris, the great centre of glory and the abode of every misery.

When I first saw him at Notre Dame, the Abbé Bernard had been administering
his admirable charities in that capital for ten years. From the time he put
on the soutane he lived the life of a saint, his days and nights were at
the disposal of suffering humanity. He passed his time and consecrated his
life to healing the wounds of the soul and curing those of the body. He
multiplied himself, as it were, to accomplish his hard task. He was soon
everywhere, carrying words of peace to the dying, of hope to the occupants
of prisons, and alms to the afflicted of all classes.

Indefatigable in well-doing, with charity for the faults of others, this
worthy disciple of Christ exercised severity only toward himself.

Though scarcely forty years of age, he appeared more than fifty; in the
vigor of life he was bent like an old man. The worn features and the
cadaverous paleness of his countenance would have given him a doomed look,
had not his whole aspect been illumined by the divine halo of charity.

I will relate a few more particulars, in the brief space allotted me, of
the life of this priest and the manner of his death. In order to fulfil a
great mission of charity this abbé set out for Rome. Arriving at
Marseilles, he learned that a change consequent upon the state of the tide
would compel him to wait three days for a boat leaving for Civita Vecchia.

Patience being a Christian virtue, the worthy priest submitted to the
necessity without a murmur. Having nothing better to do, he set out upon a
tour of investigation through this interesting city, which, thanks to the
conquest of Algeria and the opening of the isthmus of Suez, should become
at some future day the first maritime city of the world. Pursuing his walk,
he took a cross street dividing the port from the oldest quarter of
Marseilles. He had hardly advanced thirty steps, when be found himself
among a crowd assembled before a house of humble appearance. A horrible
sight burst upon his vision. A woman stood before the door uttering the
most piercing shrieks.

{385}

The priest asked, "What is the matter?"

"What! Monsieur le Curé!" replied the porter at the gate. "Do you not
understand that here lies another victim to the terrible epidemic which is
ravaging the city, and that this woman is shrieking for help for her
husband who is dying?" Without waiting for the sentence to be finished, the
Abbé Bernard made his way through the crowd and directed his steps toward
the unhappy woman. "Take me to your husband," said he, extending his hand
toward her.

The woman regarded him earnestly, but, prevented from replying by choking
sobs, she showed him the way to the third floor. Upon a rough bed a naked
man was prostrated. Two of his comrades were rubbing him with woollen
cloths.

Finding himself in the presence of cholera the abbé reflected a second,
then wrote some words upon a detached leaf of his note-book. "Here," said
he to the elder of the two porters, "is an order and five francs. Run
quickly to the apothecary's! I will take your place until you return." The
priest took the cloths and rubbed the poor unfortunate. Under his skilfully
applied friction the sick man became calm; but upon seeing the costume of
the priest he could hardly contain himself with terror. "My God!" cried he,
"must I die? Yes, they have brought me a confessor." The abbé assured him
he would be better. The messenger returned bringing the medicines. The
priest remained three hours by his bedside, and when the doctor arrived he
declared him out of danger.

In the south, the people are sensational and carry their feelings to great
excess. We can hardly wonder, then, that in their enthusiasm the woman and
porters carried the Abbé Bernard out to the street in triumph. Unhappily,
while enthusiastic, they are superstitious. The crowd immediately spread
the report that the priest had power to cure the cholera. At the end of the
street, a woman, upon seeing the abbé, threw herself upon her knees,
exclaiming with sobs: "Father, my child is dying; I have only him on earth;
in the name of the Holy Virgin save him." The indefatigable apostle of
charity followed her to the poor little creature only five or six years of
age, whom he found rolling in agony. God has not given to man the power of
staying the angel of death when he turns from his path to strike the infant
in its cradle. Prayers and science are often powerless. Notwithstanding,
the child was saved.

The worthy abbé did not regain his hotel until a late hour, greatly
overcome with fatigue. The next morning he did not leave his room. Toward
noon, fearing he was ill, they visited him, and found him with closed eyes
and a smile upon his lips. He was dead. The good pastor had given his life
for his flock.

Such was the man I had for a neighbor at one of the sermons of Père
Lacordaire. Such was the man whom memory recalled to my thoughts yesterday
while listening to the last discourse of Père Hyacinthe.

------

{386}

    Original.

    The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.

    By Clonfert.


  Chapter I.

  The Emperor's Feast

It is now over seventeen hundred years since late on an evening about the
Ides of December, two men, with flowing palliums drawn closely about them,
met near the statue of Janus, in the street of the same name in Rome.

"Ho! well met, Sisinnius. Coming from the baths, and, like myself, bound
for the emperor's feast!"

"No, Aurelian, I've had a previous engagement to meet at my own house a man
who is a celebrity in the city for his charity and skill in healing
medicines. When my wife, Theodora, was so very ill last season, the old
Grecian slave that nursed her said that, if permitted, she would seek
Clement--that is his name--and told us of some wonderful cures he had
wrought in her native country by an application of oil. I gladly accepted
the offer. Clement, a venerable old man, effected Theodora's recovery.
Since then he has been a frequent and welcome visitor at my house. If not
too late, drop in when returning from the emperor's, and you will hear
anecdotes of strange scenes and travels in many lands. Clement spends the
evening with us."

"This, then, is what prevented your acceptance of Domitian's invitation?"

"Yes, and I assure you I look forward with more pleasure to an evening's
conversation with my friend Clement than I would to the imperial
festivities, although I understand no expense has been spared to make them
surpass anything before witnessed, even the magnificence of Nero."

"Are you not afraid that your absence from the senatorial party will be
noticed? Take care, lest, like the late Consul Clemens Domitilla, who
scrupulously avoided those entertainments of the Saturnalia, you be
suspected of a leaning toward the Jews. If so, your great popularity and
worth would scarcely save you, as they did not save him, who was, moreover,
cousin german of the emperor."

"Not I, Sisinnius! Afraid? Why, I am ready at any moment to sacrifice to
the gods of my country and of my family. _I_ to acknowledge as the
only son of the supreme Jupiter a Jew, of whom we know nothing save that he
was nailed on a cross by the procurator Pilate! Poor Clemens Domitilla! So
unaffected, so earnest, so honorable! May his manes enjoy elysium! It has
been always a mystery to me how a man of his education, of his
intelligence, of his high position and practical sense, could have been
infected with this Christian leprosy. To deny the gods worshipped by his
forefathers since the days of Romulus and Numa, and to adore in their stead
this crucified Jew, of whom we are beginning to hear so much of late--it is
inexplicable."

"It is part of the infatuation which clouds betimes the greatest
intellects," said Aurelian; and then, lowering his voice, he added: "Pardon
me for introducing a subject which you must not mention to your wife
Theodora, nor to my affianced, Flavia?"

"I have no secrets from my wife, Aurelian, nor should you from your
betrothed. No two men in Rome have more reason to trust a wife and an
affianced than have you and I."

"There was a time, Sisinnius, when I thought as you. Would I had no cause
to think otherwise now! What if _they_ are infected, as you express
it, with this Christian leprosy, which led to the death of my betrothed's
uncle, Clemens Domitilla?"

{387}

"But you know," whispered Sisinnius, "there was another motive for Clemens'
execution--_he_ was the most popular member of the imperial family.
Domitian was jealous of his popularity and influence, as he is now jealous
of this Jesus who is called King of the Jews, whose relatives he is seeking
out in every quarter."

"Would not the same motive have force with regard to Clemens' niece--my
betrothed, Flavia, if only a fair excuse could be found for the destruction
of one so young, so fair, and so innocent? Would not you and I be involved
in the ruin, if she and Theodora had the misfortune of leaning to
Christianity?"

"By Jupiter, it is impossible," broke in Sisinnius. "My wife is a model, a
very Lucretia in devotion to her lord, and attention to her household
duties. The slaves are cheerful and obedient; the laborers set to work,
stewarded and paid; the clients met and satisfied without long interviews
with me. How one so young and gentle can manage to get through so much
business and make our home so peaceful and happy is a wonder to me! I bless
the gods for the treasure they have given me in her! When tired with the
labors of office in the forum or in the senate, I am cheered by her
welcoming smile on my return home. It is impossible that one of her
business habits, so wrapt up in her husband and in her home, could have
time or folly enough to trouble her head about this crucified Jew. Perhaps
Flavia, who is rich, unoccupied, and, like all young people, romantic, may
be silly enough to lend an ear to his sorcery. If so, the sooner you make
her a wife, and give her business to attend to, the better."

"Was not Clemens Domitilla a sensible man, Sisinnius, most attentive to the
duties of his consular office, and least likely to be led astray by a mere
idea?"

"Undoubtedly he was considered a cool councillor, a practical commander,
and the ablest statesman of our time."

"And yet he yielded himself up a captive to this new religion; nay, yielded
up his life sooner than admit that Jesus was not the true God. You are
still incredulous? I hope you may be right, and my suspicions unfounded,
for both our sakes and the sakes of those we love like our own lives. But
meet me at the third watch of the night of the 8th, before the Kalends of
January, and I will promise you the means of sifting this matter to the
bottom."

"Agreed. Don't forget to drop in at our place on your return from the
emperor's banquet. You will meet Clement; and perhaps some one else, whose
name I will not tell you lest I might have to consider myself indebted for
your visit to the attraction of its owner. _Vale!_"

Leaving Sisinnius to ponder over what he had heard, we will follow
Aurelian, as he wends his way to the palace of Domitian at the foot of the
Esquiline. Aurelian was a young noble of high rank and vast wealth. The
waxen images in his paternal atrium represented many who had sat on the
curule chair; and brought his family history, stamped with the badge of
nobility, back beyond the days of the Fabii and Cincinnatus. His Etrurian
estates alone brought him in a yearly revenue, which in modern times would
be considered fabulous by those not aware of the immense wealth of even
private Roman citizens under the republic and the empire. His dress made
known his rank to those who met him as he passed along the streets. The
toga of whitest woollen cloth, the _latus clavus_, or broad purple
stripe on his uncinctured outer tunic, and the golden "C" riveted on the
upper leather of his short boots, were worn only by senators. Many stood to
admire his tall figure, stately bearing, and rich dress; and some uttered
words of praise. One remark fell upon his ears with ominous sound:

"Truly a Roman in birth and in appearance, and well worthy to be the mate
of that beautiful creature, the niece of the late consul Domitilla!"

{388}

"I saw the solitary raven flap his wings to-day on a tree in the vestibule
of her palace."

Aurelian passed on quickly as if he had not heard these words. But he was
influenced like most Romans by the superstition which from the gestures and
flight of birds would trace the adverse or prosperous course of futurity.
Once only did he pause, as a Greek clad in sable tunic carolled in broken
Latin a ditty, the burden of which, as it may throw some light upon our
story, we shall attempt to inadequately render:

  "She loved her lord as her lord loved her;
   But him she will not love any more;
   To-night to the feast she will not stir,
   But she'll sup with the Christian called Theodore,
   She will sup with the Christian called Theodore,
   And her lover Aurelian she'll love no more;
   Another, another has got him before--
   A Christian, a Christian whom she'll adore!"

"What now, slave! Again taking liberties with noble names! Do you want to
publish me to the whole city, Zoilus?"

"I admit it. Zoilus is my cognomen, master. It was an ugly mishap,
considering my poetical turn, that made me namesake of the man who maligned
Homer and got burned for his criticism. What a pity they did not give me
the cognomen Homerus or Virgilius. By the lyre of Orpheus! if they did, I
would write an epos like the Iliad or the AEneid, of which you, Aurelian,
would be the hero, and Flavia Domitilla the heroine. You would see into
what hair-breadth 'scapes you would be brought to be rescued by the sharp
end of my poetical stylus. The only thing to be regretted now is that you
will, likely enough, be brought into scrapes and find no escapes from
them."

"Be silent, slave! I have no time for your jokes," exclaimed the nobleman
in an excited tone.

"All right, then," said the imperturbable slave, "as you have no time to
receive, I cannot have time to communicate news that does not concern
_me_."

"Excuse my hasty temper, good Zoilus! I am going to the emperor's feast,
and I fear I am after the appointed hour. Take this," and he slipped into
the other's hand a silver denarius, "it will help to buy a pallium to cover
your unkempt tunic. What about Flavia?" he said in lower but more earnest
tones.

The silver piece had worked its effect upon the slave's manner, who
replied: "She will not go to the imperial feast. She dislikes the emperor,
though she is his adopted child; and naturally, on account of her uncle's
execution. Moreover, she will not partake of meats blessed in the name of
Jupiter, the father of gods and men, nor of wine poured out in libation to
Bacchus. I suspect she has lost her attachment to you, and is falling in
love with one of those Christians whom she is never done admiring. Look to
it, my noble master! For, from expressions she has let fall, my informant
suspects she has already been espoused to this admirer."

"And she engaged to me by the emperor himself?"

"Even this, notwithstanding; she has given herself over to this Christian,
whom she declares she adores."

"Zoilus! if you are deceiving me, by that oath held sacred in heaven and in
hell, I swear--"

"Swear not, my lord, until you have put me to the proof: Have I not engaged
to meet you on the night of the 8th of next kalends, to give you an
opportunity of judging on the testimony of your own eyesight? Until then,
farewell And the slave bounded away before Aurelian could say another word,
and chanted as he went:

  "She'll sup with the Christian called Theodore,
   And her lover Aurelian shell love no more;
   Another, another has got him before--
   A Christian, a Christian, whom she'll adore,
     Adore, adore," etc.

Aurelian, though filled with bitter thoughts, paused to listen, and
muttered as he heard the receding strain, which was now being chanted in
doggerel Greek: "Well, we Romans are called masters of the world; but we
shall yet be mastered by our slaves." There was great reason for the
reflection.
{389}
For the slaves had now grown so numerous in Rome that the Senate feared to
pass a law appointing them a distinctive dress, lest they should thereby
come to the knowledge of their own strength. A law had been also proposed,
though not passed in the legislative council, with the view of lessening
their numbers by employing them in the public quarries and mines and other
severe works, as the Jews had been long before employed as hewers of wood
and drawers of water in the Egyptian bondage. Moreover, about this period
writing and book-knowledge generally were, with very few exceptions,
confined to the slaves in Rome. It was the sunset of the literature whose
noon was lit up by luminaries such as Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and Sallust;
and the few stray rays which yet lingered behind were either confined to
the slave population of the city or, glancing over the Alps and the
Pyrenees, rested upon favored spots in the ultramontane provinces.

As Aurelian thought over these and other matters he did not notice the
places by which he passed, and soon found himself at the gate of the
vestibule before the emperor's palace. He went through the massive bronze
door into the atrium or hall. Here he waited while the slave, whose office
it was, went to announce his arrival. His thoughts were diverted from the
subjects which had engaged them to the magnificence of the scene around.
The blue sky and brilliant stars above the _compluvium_, which was an
open space through the roof of the atrium, were shut out and eclipsed by
the many-colored lights attached to the marble pillars, white, black, and
variegated, by which the slanting tiles of the roof were supported.
Underneath the _impluvium_, which was an enclosed space corresponding
and proportioned to the open one above, sent up interwoven ellipses of
divers-colored waters through brazen tubes so arranged as to cast a
rainbow-like halo over the whole place. Between the rows of pillars thus
lighted up, receding in lofty and majestic file far as the eye could reach,
and through the _fauces_, or corridors, formed by the chambers beyond
them, there appeared the mellow glow of the lamps around the peristyle in
the distance; while the sound of rushing waters fell agreeably on the ear.
Nearer to him around the walls of the atrium Aurelian observed that the
niches, where were deposited the images of the Emperor's friends and
ancestors, were draped in veils of black, as if in mourning for his cousin
the late consul Domitilla, but in reality because the family history did
not afford many remarkable names beyond those of Vespasian and Titus.

While Aurelian was thus engaged in examining the splendor of the imperial
residence, the slave who had gone to announce his arrival returned, and
with him the "distributor of seats" in the royal _triclinium_. Led by
the latter, Aurelian entered the _triclinium_, the Roman dining hall,
which was decorated and lighted up in the same manner as the atrium. At the
end of it, on an elevated platform of cedar wood, Domitian was seated on a
throne of ivory inwrought and decorated with gold. The young noble made a
low prostration on bended knees until permitted by touch of the golden
sceptre to arise.

"Arise, Aurelian!" said the emperor. "To evidence our high consideration
for you, we have delayed our guests ten strokes of the clepsydra. But be
not distressed; we shall hear your explanations at another time. Where"
(these words were added in an undertone) "have you left our fair cousin and
child, Flavia? We expected her to accompany her accepted suitor and future
husband."

"My sovereign lord and master! the most noble Flavia has been indisposed
for some time, and regrets she cannot be present at the festivities this
evening. Her friend the noble Theodora, wife of the Senator Sisinnius, has
induced her, for change of air, to visit at their residence for some days,
where she will have the advantage of meeting an old and experienced
physician named Clement, who has travelled much in the East and thereby
become acquainted with herbs and drugs that have acquired for him the
repute of a mastery over bodily disease."

{390}

"Clement, Clement!" repeated the emperor, striving to recollect himself; "I
have heard of him somewhere before; but we shall talk of these things at a
more fitting time;" and be waved his sceptre to the steward of the banquet.

Scarcely had the sceptre waved when the eastern side of the immense banquet
hall was opened by some unseen agency, and an archway of vast proportions,
without rent or flaw, was formed, through which the loose-robed slaves were
seen driving a brazen elephant, on whose back was placed the huge abacus on
which the banquet was served. This abacus, of solid silver, had admirable
contrivances for the preservation of the warmth and flavor of every dish;
and the whole repast "from the egg to the apple," including three courses,
was served upon it. The number and nature of the dishes became at a glance
known to the guests, for over each dish the silver or golden likeness of
the fish, bird, or beast which supplied it was supported upon a very thin
wire, so colored as to be invisible in lamplight. Here was the brazen image
of the flamingo; there the golden plumage of the guinea-hen, the famous
_Afra avis_, of the Romans, was outspread without any visible support
in air. At another part the star-eyed tail of the peacock was extended
fan-like, while a turtle and a sturgeon seemed to swim on either side of
it. Every bird, fish, and beast held in repute by the Roman gourmands was
represented floating or flying over this monster server. The slaves, who
pushed it on golden rollers into the triclinium, danced as they advanced to
the music of the flute, the harp, and other instruments. At the sound of a
gong, struck by the head steward, "the distributor of seats" led the guests
to the couches on which they were to recline. Having resigned their boots,
or slippers, to the slaves appointed to receive them, they leaned back,
supporting themselves on their left elbows on the soft couches covered with
purple, embroidered with gold, and bearing the imperial arms. Many of the
females preferred to sit, and for them suitable seats were provided. At
another sound of the gong twenty slaves, in purple tunics and white aprons
sustained on black cinctures, moved into the hall, with motions of head and
foot and hands to suit the music, and removed the covers under which were
placed the materials for the feast. The same movements took place before
and after each of the courses. As soon as the covers for the second course
were taken off, the _scissores_ or carvers cut the solid dishes and
served the various meats according as the servants in waiting on the guests
presented the plates. To show the extent of refined luxury to which the old
Romans of the republic and empire carried things, it may be observed that
the carvers so managed while cutting the dishes as to keep time with the
knives to the music. In fact, the art of carving was a profession in Rome.

The writer of this hurriedly sketched tale may pause for a little here to
assure the indulgent reader that he has made it a rule in the descriptions,
in the substantial facts of the narrative, and in the lives of the leading
characters to make imagination wholly the handmaid of truth. He is sure
that in the scenes he endeavors to paint he is using the colors supplied
him by pagan and Christian writers of the times. He might point specially
to Polybius, Lampridius, and Plutarch as vouchers for his accuracy in
describing a Roman banquet in the last ages of the republic and the first
of the empire.

When the third course was over, the elephant and abacus were rolled with
the same accompaniment of music and dance from the room. Then began the
symposium, or drinking-feast. As the repositorium bearing the goblets and
wines was introduced, the ceiling or the triclinium seemed suddenly as if
by magic to disappear, and an immense stage with gorgeous scenery was
lowered into the apartment.
{391}
As it quietly and slowly descended, the voices were heard singing as if
from heaven:

  "Strike the tympan, beat the drum!
   Down from heaven we come.
   Jupiter nodded--it must be so--
   Down, down to earth below,
        To greet the God, Domitian!

  "Domitian is Jove upon earth we know,
   Jupiter wills it-it must be so--
   So, we'll beat our shields and our trumpets blow,
   We'll launch the spear and we'll draw the bow.
   And  we'll dance 'mid the flying missiles, O!
        Before the God, Domitian!

  "We'll play as we play on Olympus' height,
  Where Jupiter grasps the thunder's might
  And hurls to earth its lances bright,
  And sends from his throne the broad daylight--
  We'll dance as we dance on Olympus' height,
         Before the God, Domitian!"

By the time these lines were ended the stage had taken a stationary
position about six feet from the ground, so that every guest from his bench
or couch could have a full view of the performance. The first thing that
struck the eye was a group of figures, male and female, dressed in various
styles to represent the immortals. Here was Apollo with his lyre and halo;
there was Diana in her huntress garb. Mercury, with his wand and winged
sandals, was flying over the helmeted head of Minerva; while Vulcan, with
the red glow of the furnace on his face, was, with the assistance of the
Cyclops' hammers, forging thunderbolts for Jove. In another part the rustic
Pan, with his goat-ears and oaten pipe, was playing, while the naiads and
fauns in cloud-like Ionic tunics kept dancing as they fled from the
pursuing satyrs.

Suddenly the scenery is shifted and the stage is filled with
narrow-pointed, straight and double-edged swords fixed perpendicularly with
the blades upward; while a number of persons in close-fitting garments
dance alternately on their feet and hands, in the execution of which they
somersault over the sharp weapons. Again, they time with martial tread to
the quick measure of the Pyrrhic dance, the accompaniment to which was the
rattle of their flying spears on the bronze shields they bore. The scene is
again changed. The lamps are suddenly put out; and a vast chamber with
vaulted roof, through which a subterranean damp oozes, is dimly seen by the
light of a muffled lamp, which only helps to make "the darkness visible."
[Footnote 117]

    [Footnote 117: Tillemont and other historians relate this substantially
    in the same way.]

Along the sides, which are draped in sable cloth, are ranged a number of
coffins equal to the number of guests, each of whom reads his own name in
fiery letters shining out upon one or other of them from the surrounding
gloom; while demons, with snake-like locks and flame-like garments and
black faces, ran in horrible frenzy about, shrieking out the names of the
principal senators present. And a deep, sonorous voice, which seemed to
rise out of the earth, pronounced the following:

  "Hail, monarch of monarchs! whose mighty sway
   The nations and tribes of the earth obey,
   From the rising sun to the setting day!

  "From the highest Alp to the island cove,
   Thy power is felt like the power of Jove
   When Olympus shakes at his frown above.

  "The Celtic shout does not pierce the sky,
   The Parthian arrows pause as they fly,
   When thy name is heard 'mid the battle's cry.

  "When heard from the height of Caucasian snow,
   The beard-like woods on its chin bend low,
   And the rivers cease down its cheeks to flow.

  "When breathed abroad o'er the ocean waves,
   The sea-monsters sink to the rocky caves,
   Where, continents under, they scoop their graves.

  "When uttered by spirits among the clouds,
   They gather like flocks into frightened crowds,
   And bind up the tempest in sable shrouds.

  "The word of thy mouth is the simoom's breath,
   Thy sceptre's wave is the scythe of death
   Which sweeps all life to the domes beneath.

  "Then how can aught mortal in earth or air,
   The might or the power of thy sceptre dare
   With the crown or a crucified Jew compare?
   Domitian, Domitian! Beware, beware!"

As the last verse was being chanted, the stage, the voice, and awful
chamber began slowly to ascend, until the last words seemed to fall from
the sky!

  "Domitian! Domitian!! Beware! beware!!"

{392}

A hushed terror pervaded the spectators. The cruel character of Domitian
was well known. History records that he could spend whole days in killing
flies with a bodkin; which gave occasion to the witty reply of Vibius
Crispus, who, being asked, "Who is with the emperor?" said, "Not as much as
a fly." It is well known that he had at times ordered the execution of his
most intimate friends and most favored officers; nay, that he had left his
banquet to witness the death-throes of those who had partaken it with him.
Lately he had become more and more suspicious of everyone and everything.
He had conceived a great jealousy of the family and descendants of David,
one of whom he had heard was worshipped by his numerous family as Lord of
lords and King of kings. So much did this fear influence him that he sent
out orders to his civil and military officers in the East to have every
descendant of David, every relative of the Redeemer, arrested and brought
to Rome. In accordance with this order two grandsons of St. Jude, who were,
according to Jewish custom, called "brothers," whereas they were in reality
only cousins, of our Lord, were sent from Judea to Rome, and examined by
the emperor. Having questioned them about their family and about the empire
of their relative, who by his adherents was adored as God, he laid aside
his fears of their rivalry for the throne and dismissed them ignominiously.
[Footnote 118]

    [Footnote 118: Eusebius, Hist. Eccles.]

They had told him they were only poor peasants living on the proceeds of a
small farm near Jerusalem; and in proof they raised their hands and showed
him the palms roughened and the nails dirty from toil. But though he had
laid aside his fears of these friends of our Lord, he did not cease to
dread the increasing number of true believers. Therefore, as if to be on an
equal elevation, he had some time before the date of the incidents of our
tale issued an edict by which he commanded all his subjects to address him
as a god, and to offer divine worship to his statue! Many citizens who gave
evidence of their appreciating the absurdity of this edict had been put to
death under his own eyes.

We may imagine, then, the secret feelings of the guests after viewing the
scene that had been presented on the stage. The pantomimic art, which in
ancient Rome and Athens had reached a height of perfection and magnificence
now unknown, had applied all its resources on the occasion to suit the
imperial mood. During the recitation of the verses descriptive of his power
over animate and inanimate nature--whether in air, in earth, or in the
sea--he held his head and sceptre erect as if with the conscious dignity of
the godhead. But when the allusion to an opponent, to "the crown of a
crucified Jew," fell on his ears, his brow lowered, his face darkened and
his eyes flamed. His excitement was increased by observing the impulsive
movements of many present, especially of a young officer of the court who,
as the same allusion was being made, laid his hand upon his sword and
advanced a step to the stage, until drawn back by a lady of mild aspect and
of retiring demeanor. The only person else besides the emperor who noticed
the motions of the young officer was Aurelian, who had conceived a jealousy
of him for some kind attentions paid to Flavia Domitilla. These attentions
were easily accounted for; the officer, as was customary with young
noblemen of wealth, had been out for some years in the suite of the
proconsul of Judea, a relative of Flavia. This circumstance led to an
acquaintance between them. But it was observed by every one except Aurelian
that the young man studiously endeavored to avoid as much as politeness
would allow the company of Flavia as well as of other ladies of the court.
This was the more remarkable considering her youth, her beauty, and her
connection with the imperial family.

{393}

The other guests were too engrossed with their fears to observe what had
not escaped the jealous eyes of Domitian and Aurelian. After an interval or
suspense, to enjoy the effects produced by fear upon the guests, Domitian
ordered them to continue the banquet--that the scene they had witnessed was
the work of the pantomimes. This allayed their anxiety; but there was no
zest remaining for enjoyment. Each one saw his own likeness in his
neighbor's pallid face long after the stage had vanished. As soon as the
usual formulas were gone through, they quickly and quietly took leave at an
earlier hour than usual on such occasions, and left the emperor seated amid
his magnificence.

Aurelian, having with the other guests left the palace at so early an hour,
was glad to have so much time for visiting the house of Sisinnius. He had
not seen Flavia Domitilla for nearly a month. She had been unwell; and, as
often as he called, she sent word that she was not able to leave her room.
He had called each day, and each day received the same answer. He was all
anxiety for her health; for, her ways so artless, and yet so artful, had
woven round his heart a network of loving thoughts and wishes for her
welfare. She had been betrothed to him by the emperor, her cousin,
guardian, and adopted father; and had avowed her attachment for him, and
proved it by the affectionate kindness of her manner. But latterly he
thought she had begun to treat him with coolness and to avoid his society.
Jealousy suggested that her previously avowed affection had been diverted
into another channel, to a different object. Could it be that after all his
efforts to secure her love, after all her professions, she had withdrawn
her affections and bestowed them on that young officer? Such were the
thoughts that held longest possession of Aurelian's mind as he bent his
steps toward the house of Sisinnius.

As soon as he touched the knocker, which was a ring grasped in a lion's
mouth, the hall door was opened by Nereus, one of Flavia's most favored
slaves. The little dog, the usual inmate of the Roman atrium, bounded in
familiar gumbols about the purple band which bound the lower edge of his
senatorial toga.

"Down, Hylax!" And he waved away the dog with the pallium he had just taken
off to intrust to the servants until his departure. "I hope your mistress
has recovered from her late indisposition?" said he, addressing Nereus,
who, though humble and respectful in manner and language, seemed to have a
dislike for Aurelian.

"Not quite recovered, my noble lord. The confinement at home was increasing
the depression of spirits, under which she has been suffering since her
uncle's death."

The door of an apartment off the atrium--not the triclinium, but a small
_diaeta_, or parlor, where the family spent the winter
evenings--opened and presented Sisinnius to view.

"Welcome, Aurelian! How so early from the feast? I heard that Apollonius of
Tyana himself was brought from Corinth to aid in the entertainment; and I
wonder to find you here before the sixth hour!"

"It is true, indeed, that Apollonius was in Rome some time ago. Either he
or the infernal imps must have been there to-night!"

"You were highly amused, then?"

"Amused! Domitian's amusements are not likely to suit all tastes."

He laid aside his pallium and wide-leafed carpentum, and was arranging the
folds of his toga, while Sisinnius in a whisper told him that Theodora,
Flavia, and Clement were inside. After the usual salutations and courtesy
he was introduced to the last named, whose venerable appearance impressed
him deeply. The hand of time had polished the upper part of the stranger's
head to a transparent whiteness through which the blue veins were visible,
and had scattered the snows of some eighty years on the hairs, which, like
a silver crown, encircled his neck and flowed down on his shoulders. His
face was bronzed by long exposure to suns in many lands.
{394}
But there was about it an indescribable sweetness, and a charity beamed in
his piercing eye sure to win the attention and good-will of all. He wore
goat-skin sandals without stockings. The other parts of his dress, though
indicative of citizenship and noble birth, were old and threadbare. The
only ornament he wore was a plain gold ring, on which a cross was engraven.

Aurelian recognized in Clement the person who, some weeks before, when a
physician was sought to attend one of the human [Footnote 119] victims in
the capitol sacrificed to propitiate the god of war, presented himself and
said: "I am not a physician by profession. But during a long life spent in
foreign lands I have learned some secrets of the healing art. If permitted,
I can relieve the pains of yonder victim." Leave was given; for according
to the augurs it would be a bad omen if the victim expired before the
conclusion of the sacrificial rite. Clement spoke in language which
Aurelian did not understand, and raised his hand over the head of the
sufferer, who, seeing it, brightened into smiles. He then took out a silver
case from his side-pocket and rubbed its contents over parts of the wounded
body; and immediately, before all present, the wounds inflicted by the fire
were healed, and the victim was strong as ever. Recognizing now in the
guest of Sisinnius the visitor of the capitol, Aurelian rejoiced to make
his acquaintance. He rejoiced, too, on account of Flavia, whose health,
dear to him as his own, would, no doubt, be soon restored by the skill of
Clement.

    [Footnote 119: Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities. _Vide
    Sacrificium_.]

"Come, Aurelian," said Sisinnius, "help yourself to some of those Calabrian
pomegranates and to a cyathus of Falernian. You seem to want it sadly, for
you look as pale as if you had seen the ghost of Nero. While you help
yourself, tell us how you fared at the emperor's. Did he by way of disport
order any of those Jews or Christians to be executed?" The Jews and
Christians were during the first centuries considered the same by the
pagans.

"No! But it might have come to that had the entertainment been prolonged!"
And be related the incidents we have already laid before the reader. When
he spoke of the effect produced on the emperor by the allusion to the
"Crucified Jew," the eyes of Flavia and Theodora met and turned to the face
of Clement. The latter seemed for a time lost to the thought of all about
him. Tears glistened in his eyes, which were sad and thoughtful, while his
white head was bent and his lips moved silently. Sisinnius was too wrapt in
the description of the banquet, and Aurelian too much complimented by the
silence in which they listened to him, to observe the old man. Otherwise,
they, like the two women, would have easily construed the motion of his
lips into the words: "Father, not my will, but thine, be done. But give
wisdom and strength to thy servant."

"This bodes ill for the Christians," said Sisinnius when Aurelian had
finished.

"I would not wonder to find a worse edict than that of Nero posted on
brazen tablets in the Campus Martius in a few days. Domitian is under the
impression that they in their private meetings are plotting against his
life and throne. He has already ordered one of the most intimate and
trusted friends of Jesus to be arrested at Ephesus and to be brought in
chains to Rome," said Aurelian.

At this announcement Clement, who had been a quiet listener, started as if
with sudden pain; then as suddenly recovering his composure, he asked: "Is
it possible they could think of dragging the good old man across the sea in
this wintry weather? The journey would kill him."

"It is not only possible, but it is a fact," said Aurelian.

"You know this good old man, then?" asked Sisinnius.

{395}

"Know him! Yes, good right have I to know him. There is not a country from
the Pillars of Hercules or the Tin Islands of the North to the sunny steeps
of Asia and syrtes of Africa, in which I have not been and met with many
friends. Most of those I loved and labored with are gone"--he wiped away a
tear--"but of all that remain there is none more worthy, none more
venerated, none more dear to my heart and to the heart of one far greater
than I, than John of Ephesus. He is the last of a generation now almost
passed away--a generation of mighty workers--giants in their way--sent on
earth to lay the foundations of an edifice, the stories of which are to be
laid on age after age until they reach the sky. When he is gone, the last
direct link between that generation and the present will be taken away.
Already the work they commenced has fallen on frail and feeble shoulders."
Here the speaker, who had forgotten his company in the warmth of his
language, bent his head upon his breast, and again his lips moved silently.
All present looked on wonderingly: there was something in the old man's
appearance to excite their admiration.

Soon after, Clement rose to depart. Theodora and Sisinnius endeavored to
induce him to remain. He had spent nights from time to time in their house,
when the former had been sick; but now he was not to be moved.

"Young men!" he said as be rose, "we may or we may not meet again, No one
can count on another day; it is better to arrange tonight what the morrow
might not dawn upon." Theodora and Flavia bent their eyes inquiringly upon
him: addressing them, he said: "To you I address the words often said to me
by one I journeyed with for many years: 'Be always ready with lamps
trimmed. The shadow of this world is passing away. The night is at hand;
but remember there is a bright and lasting dawn beyond it.' Allow an old
man, whose pilgrimage in this world will not be long, to invoke his
blessing upon you all." He raised his outspread hands, and the ring with
the engraven cross shone out as he solemnly said, "May my blessing and the
blessing of the unknown God descend upon you. May he soon gather you all
into that glorious edifice he has sent his workmen to build on earth, and
there manifest to you the _admirable light_ and beauty of his
countenance!" While he spoke, Flavia and Theodora bent their heads, as if
some unseen influence was descending upon them; while Sisinnius and
Aurelian attributed the manner of Clement to an eccentricities not
previously noticed.

After Clement's departure, Aurelian approached Flavia to express his
anxiety about her health. She was agitated. He saw that her face did not
wear the sunshine welcome and the loving smile with which it heretofore
brightened at his approach. She seemed sad, yet not unhappy, but anxious to
avoid his presence and his look. Could the insinuations of Zoilus be true?
Formerly when she went from home, or when she expected to meet him, she
took trouble to heighten her great natural beauty of appearance and manner
by artificial assistance. Her toilet table and attendants were models for
the Roman ladies, who spent enormous sums on Asiatic cosmetics and Ionian
female slaves to aid them in dressing. All seemed now changed with Flavia.
Her dress was a mourning one of brown cloth, such as the wives of Roman
shopkeepers might wear, drawn modestly about her from chin to feet, without
a single ornament. Her hair was bound in no Persian head-dress, as was then
the fashion with high-born dames; but was folded unpretendingly about her
head, so as to conceal as much as possible the fair proportions of her full
and polished forehead. Her dark eyes, usually so full of hearty affection,
were not upturned as of old to his. He saw something was out of joint.
Could it be the effect of sickness? If so, he would pour out all his
fortune, melt down the silver and golden images of his ancestors, at
Clement's feet, and beseech him to cure her. Or could it be that she had
transferred her affections from himself to the young officer lately
returned from Judea? Such were the thoughts flitting through the mind of
Aurelian as he found himself alone with Flavia. Sisinnius had beckoned
Theodora away.

{396}

"Flavia!" he at length said, "in what have I offended? You appear
distressed at my approach. Who can have a better right to that affection
you always professed for me than I, who shall call you by a new endearing
title on the next Kalends?"

"The next Kalends! You cannot be in earnest, Aurelian!" she said.

"Your guardian and adopted father, the emperor, has chosen that day for the
fulfilment of the promise you have made me. It is a day to be for ever
marked with Cretan chalk in my memory," he replied.

"But it cannot be! It is impossible!"

"Why not? How?" he asked.

"O Aurelian! you are too noble, too generous, you have been always too kind
to me to force me to fulfil a promise which can never bring me aught but
misery!"

"Misery? Why, have you not always professed the greatest confidence and
love of me? Have I done anything to lose them? You admit I have not. How,
then, can the fulfilment of your engagement make you miserable?"

"I shall never," she answered, "forget your kindness day after day to me,
and I shall always love you as my brother. But any other relationship there
cannot be!"

"I see it all plainly," he said. "You too have been infected by this new
plague: you have withdrawn your affections to bestow them on another?"

"And suppose I have," said Flavia, grasping at another mode of calming his
excitement. "You are too high in rank, too proud to accept the hand of one
who cannot bestow her heart with it?"

"By Hercules! I know who this Christian enchanter is, and by the honor of a
Roman knight--"

"Then, if you know him well, you cannot blame me for bestowing my
affections on him. He is so beautiful, so noble, so glorious beyond the
sons of men. His teeth are whiter than milk, and the words of his mouth are
like the dripping of the honey-comb. He is encompassed with perpetual
youth, and crowned with a comeliness which shall never fade. All these
enduring qualities he promises to confer on me if I will love and serve
him!"

"Love him then, infatuated girl! But serve him you never shall, if the
sword and fortune of Aurelian can prevent it!"

"Aurelian, my brother! I will pray and ask him that you also may know him;
for, if you did, you could not help loving and serving him."

"Do you wish to mock my misery," he bitterly asked, "now that you have
blighted all on which my hopes of happiness rested? But, Flavia! remember I
am not to be put off, if the power of Domitian can crush this Christian
viper! Remember your uncle's fate!"

And turning be left the room.

TO BE CONTINUED.

------

{397}

    From The Dublin University Magazine.

    The Libraries Of The Middle Ages And Their Contents.


  Father Hardouin On The Classics.

The fourteenth century was doubtlessly an era of great literary activity
with regard to transcribing and filling libraries with copies of the Latin
Scriptures, of theological works in general, and of the classics. The
learned and eccentric Jesuit, Father John Hardouin, fixed on it for the
composition of all the supposed classic treasures of antiquity which we
possess, except the works of Cicero, Pliny's Natural History, the Satires
and Epistles of Horace, the Georgics and nine Eclogues of Virgil, the
comedies of Plautus, the poems of Homer, and the history of Herodotus. All
the rest were the brain-produce of the cloistered scholars of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially the latter, as being
distinguished by the rage for collecting manuscripts and forming libraries.
Not only were these supposed fruits of the classic pagan tree the growth of
the Christian intellect of that late time, but the works of St. Augustin
and his disciples were composed for them nine hundred years after their
funerals.[Footnote 120]

    [Footnote 120: John Hardouin, the son of a bookseller of Quimper, was
    born in 1646. He entered at an early age into the Society of Jesus. He
    soon distinguished himself by acute perception and a great memory, but
    still more by cherishing such paradoxes as the above. The AEneid,
    according to him, was the work of a Benedictine of the thirteenth
    century, and was an allegorical description of St. Peter's journey to
    Rome; and Horace's _Lalage_ was a type of the Christian religion.
    The antique metals were all modern inventions, each letter representing
    a word. "You are quite right, father," said an antiquary to him one
    day. "These letters found on so many metals, Con. Os.,  and supposed to
    stand for 'Constantinopli Obsignatum,' (stamped [sealed] at
    Constantinople,) are evidently intended to read, 'Cusi Omnes Nummi
    Officina Benedictina'--all moneys struck in the Benedictine Mint." He
    was a most firm believer in all the dogmas of revealed religion, but a
    thorough Pyrrhonist in human traditions. He classed Jansenism,
    Thomassin, Malebranche, Quesnel, Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Descartes, Le
    Grand, and Regis among the atheists. They were Cartesians, merely
    another name for unbelievers. His learning was most extensive and his
    works numerous. He died in Paris in 1729 at the age of 88.]

There was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a literary warfare
between the Classicists and Romancists as real as that which sprung up in
Paris before the three days of July, but much less noisy. We find among the
145 volumes bequeathed to the library of the church of Langres in 1365, by
Jean de Saffres, about two dozen of romances whose titles deserve to be
remembered. They were Renart, (Reynard the Fox,) Girart de Roussillon,
Garin la Loherain, Aimeri de Narbonne, Raoul de Cambrai, Bueves de
Barbastre,[Footnote 121] Jean dit le Lanson, Parise la Duchesse, Merlin,
Courberau d'Oliferne, Gibert dit Desrée, les Sept Sages, les Machabées,
Troie la Grant, (Troy the Great,) Florimont, la Rose, Beaudoux, (Sweet
Beauty or Beautifully Sweet.) Clyges, Perceval le Gallois, Basin et
Gombaud, Amadas, (Amadis, qu.,) Galaad, Lancelot, Tristan, (Sir Tristrem.)

    [Footnote 121: A cherished manual of our youth was Wild Roses or
    Cottage Tales, published by Anne Lemoine in some court whose name has
    escaped our memory. One of the stories was "Barbastal, or the Magician
    of the Forest of Bloody Ash!" Was _Bueves de Barbastre_ the
    original of that terrible and interesting narrative?]


  The Care Bestowed On The Libraries.

We may be certain that St. Benedict had not such books as these in his mind
when he composed the following prayer of blessing on the works to be copied
by his monks, a prayer which has been preserved in the Abbey of
Fleuri-sur-Loire:

  "O Lord, let the virtue of thy Holy Spirit descend on these books; let it
  purify them, bless them, sanctify them. Sweetly enlighten the hearts of
  those who read them, and impart their true sense to them. Grant us also
  to be faithful to the precepts emanating from thy light, in accomplishing
  them by good works, according to thy will"

{398}

The same respect for good books is found in an the abbeys of the
Benedictines. The very high value the religious communities set on rare
works connected with their order, subjected the monks of the abbey of St.
Denis to a cruel imposition in 1389. An imposter, such as some who have
practised mighty deceptions in our times, a supple Greek named Paul Tagari,
passing himself off for the patriarch of Constantinople, obtained thirty
thousand crowns of gold from the king of Cyprus, on imparting the royal
unction to his majesty, and a magnificent reception from the pope at
Avignon, as he held out strong assurances of the return of the Greek schism
to the faith. He announced to the simple monks of St. Denis the existence
of some manuscripts from the hand of the very patron of their order, Saint
Dionysius the Areopagite, who had heard the words of life from the lips of
St. Paul himself, when he spoke to the news loving people of Athens on the
hill of Mars. Two brothers set out on foot to Marseilles, and, deluded by
the knave's representations, journeyed on from that to Rome. The Greek had
got their money, but they got nothing by their long journey but the labor
and expenses of performing it, and the chagrin of the disappointment.

The monks of Cluni were particular in the illustrating and the binding of
their volumes. As a general rule the outsides of the volumes in the abbey
libraries were not attractive. The Bernardine houses of Citeaux and
Clairvaux affected the plainest style. We may here give an instance of the
care taken of the precious volumes, by quoting the library rules of the
canons regular: "The _armarius_ (literally, guardian of shelves or
presses) should apply labels to the backs, catalogue the volumes, go over
them twice or thrice in the year, see that they were not crowded, and that
every volume was in its place." In case of a loan he was to record the
borrower's address, the title of the volume, and the deposit received,
which in all cases should be the registered value of the book. When the
book was highly prized, he was not to give it out without the express
sanction of the prior or abbot. He had charge of the parchment, the ink,
the pens, the bodkins, and the penknives, and he kept an eye on the intern
and extern copyists. The writers of funeral billets and of business letters
were also under his control. He provided his indoor copiers with a quiet
apartment where no one had right of ingress but the abbot, the prior, or
the sub-prior. He examined the purity of the texts, the binding, the
condition of the volumes. He kept the volumes in daily use, such as the
Bibles, the accounts of the passion, the lives of the saints, and the
homilies in a place accessible to all, regulated the readings during meal
times, and corrected faults committed in reading or chanting, and arranged
processions. Our Benedictine librarian had no sinecure.


  The Rich Libraries Of the Begging Brothers.

The Dominicans were no less careful of their literary treasures. In a
general chapter of the order, held at Saragossa in 1309, it was forbidden
to every prior, sub-prior, or officer commissioned by them, to bestow,
sell, lend, or pledge any book of which there was but one copy in the
respective houses. Whoever was guilty of infraction was to be deprived of
his faculties (official to wit) for three years. The theological works
should not be sold out of the order. Whoever disobeyed should, till the
restitution of the property, fast on bread and water one day in every week.
A student was privileged, in cases of urgent necessity, to sell a book, the
Bible and the great work of St. Thomas of Aquino excepted.

The English Richard de Bury before mentioned found the Dominicans the most
keen-scented and zealous retrievers of rare treasures in bibliography.

{399}

  "When," said he, "they traverse seas and deserts, when they search the
  recesses of convents, they never forget me. What beast of chase can
  escape these keen hunters? What fish so small can wriggle out of their
  nets?"

He goes on, mentioning how they despatch to him sermons lately preached in
Rome, discourses delivered at a Paris university, and adds:

  "We are now about visiting their convents and their books. There in a
  profound poverty we shall discover untold of treasures. We shall find in
  their baskets and their wallets, along with such crumbs as men fling to
  the dogs, the unleavened bread of proposition, the bread of angels, the
  granaries of Joseph filled with wheat, all the riches of Egypt, all the
  sumptuous presents which the queen of Sheba offered to Solomon. Yes!
  having come into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, the friars-preachers
  have secured the richest vintage." (Victor le Clerc.)

These Begging Brothers, being a rich and numerous branch, secured the most
valuable works everywhere. The Archbishop of Armagh having sent four
theological students to complete their course at Oxford, they were obliged
to return as they went, the Mendicant friars having bought up all the
books: so that the poor Irishmen could neither borrow nor buy the Bible nor
any theological work.

Divers presents were made from time to time to these lovers of books. In
the end of a MS. of the Dominicans at Clermont, containing the pastoral of
St. Gregory, and some tracts of St. Jerome and St. Isadore of Seville, is
found the following note:

  "The Seigneur Peter d'Andre, citizen of Clermont, licentiate in both
  laws, (LL.D.,) at first bishop of Noyon, then of Clermont, and finally of
  Cambrai, has given us this book and many others. Wherefore we bind
  ourselves to Celebrate his anniversary [Footnote 122] in perpetuity. You
  who read in this book, pray to God for him, for he has done us great
  kindnesses, and we owe much to him, as well as to his family. Let him who
  shall wickedly efface these words be Anathema! So be it! Dated on St.
  George's day, the 23d of the month of April, 1377."

    [Footnote 122: That is, celebrate divine offices for the repose of
    soul.]

The Franciscans possessed poor libraries compared with those of the
Dominicans. Indeed the accumulation of the profane writers seemed
inconsistent with the spirit of the order. The following story was put in
currency either to advance the views of the body or throw ridicule on their
fear or neglect of classic literature. We incline to the first theory, and
will give the outline of the little drama with as little irreverence as we
can.

There were two Friars Minors in a convent at Marseilles, one the guardian
of the library, the other the reader, and both attentive students of the
rare old pagan classics. On the same night the summons came to both, and a
monk of their order, but living in a distant province, had a vision at the
moment of their departure which terrified him not a little. He saw them
passing to judgment, preceded by two mules heavily laden with books, and it
appeared to him that their patron, St. Francis, was commissioned to examine
into their lives, and pass sentence. The awe-struck monk then heard the
following questions and answers: "What use made you of these books?" "We
read them." "Did you act as they recommended?" "By no means." "Then as it
was through a principle of vanity and in contempt of your holy law of
poverty you amassed so many volumes, and left neglected that which God
ordained, you and your books shall!" ...... The poor monk awoke terrified
beyond expression, and was confirmed in his utter neglect of Homer, Virgil,
and Horace, and in his predilection for the study of the Bible and the
early fathers.


  The Sorbonne.

If the universities had heard the above narrative, it did not make much
impression on them. They multiplied books--the university of Paris
particularly; but this last was unprovided with a suitable lodgment for
them as well as for itself, and was obliged to borrow accommodation for its
assemblies from the establishment of the Mathurins, and for its sermons on
great occasions, the pulpit of the Dominicans, corner of the Rue Saint
Jacques.
{400}
It left to posterity only one library of importance, that of the
Sorbonne. [Footnote 123]

    [Footnote 123: This much spoken of institution was founded by Robert, a
    canon of Cambrai, born in the village of Sarbon, in the Ardennes, in
    1201. He was much endeared to Louis IX, (St. Louis) by his learning and
    piety, and became his chaplain. He conceived the project of an
    institution in which clergymen supported by government might
    gratuitously instruct poor students in theology, and thus give great
    assistance to the university. St. Louis warmly approving his design,
    the institution was opened in 1252 with sixteen poor scholars selected
    from England, Gaul, Normandy, and Picardy, the four nations so called.
    Four German scholars were afterward affiliated. Each candidate for
    admission was obliged to maintain these propositions against all
    opponents one day from five A.M. to seven P.M. The institution
    continued to maintain its reputation for theological science down to
    the first revolution. It was reestablished, and still exists.]

Among the rare old collections of manuscripts, that of the Sorbonne
deserves honorable mention. In 1290 it included 1017 volumes. About that
time a heroic socius simply calling himself "John," seeing so many volumes
never taken off the shelves nor opened, owing to the want of a catalogue,
set to the work, and made out one to the best of his abilities, assorting
the books into a few general classes. He arranged the works in each class
by the authors' names, and after the title he copied a few words of the
commencement--a very useful proceeding. Generally the books in the convents
were only lent to the brothers or other inmates of the house, or to some
one of the order; but in the Sorbonne library the volumes were freely lent
to all applicants on depositing somewhat more than the value of the work in
gold, silver, or some more valuable book, the rule being _Extraneo sub
juramento_-to an extern--under oath, (to return the work.)

We find the lending system in full vigor with most of the libraries either
gratis or at a very trifling charge. Besides the catalogues, they possessed
at the Sorbonne a registry for the lending department. In this registry
were not only marked the opening words of the first page, but also those of
the third, sometimes those of the last leaf but one, in order that, if the
borrower was rogue enough to return a volume different from the one
borrowed, he might be easily detected. It is a matter worth attention, the
low prices set on books in common use by ordinary folk or by students.
Tullius de Officiis, de Senectute et de Amicitia was valued at decem
sols--say five pence sterling. Allowing even for the high value of money at
the time in relation to that of our day, the price seems out of all
proportion with the materials of the book and the time bestowed on the
writing. Baron Tauchnitz at this moment would make the poorest student pay
about half a florin for it, notwithstanding the aid of movable type and
steam presses.

Some of the works in this register were distinguished by the word
_catenatus_, (chained to its place,) others by _deficit_. Among
books in this category were most of the Libri in Gallico. These were called
romances, whatever the subject. Thus we find Romancium de Rosa, Romancium
quod incipit Miserere mei, (one of the Seven Penitential Psalms;) Romancium
de decem praeceptis, sine rigmo, et dicitur Gallice, (romance of the Ten
Commandments unrhymed and issued in the French language;) Le libre roiaus
(roiaulx, royal) de Vices et Virtus (sic): Incipit Ce sont li X
commandemens.

From the year 1321 they began to bestow or sell numbers of the less
important works, for the library had outgrown the calculated proportions,
and such things as the students' _cahiers_ (copy books) and old
sermons only took up valuable space.

The learned Bishop of Durham bequeathed his valuable library to the
university of Oxford in 1344; and actuated by the same good spirit, left
directions that the books should be lent even as the works in the Sorbonne
on receiving sufficient security.

{401}

  Unprincipled Book Borrowers.

Many were the deplorable losses of valuable books incurred by lending but
yet the practice was productive of too many and too great benefits to be
discontinued. No one in our days, except a true bibliomaniac or the keeper
of a circulating library, can enter into the sore feelings of abbot or
rector of a university when the invaluable MS. was either lost or returned
damaged. Such a heart-scald was inflicted on Peter called Monoculus,
(one-eyed,) abbot of Clairvaux, when a book lent to a neighboring abbot was
returned as wet as if it had been placed under a water-pipe. Observe the
rascality of the messenger! He came by night, made a great bustle, turned
off the attention of the unsuspicious librarian, got another volume
instead, and departed at a very early hour to escape a perquisition. This
was in 1187. In the next century the Abbot Philip, with feelings soured by
such instances of want of principle, would not lend the tracts of St.
Augustin, humbly and earnestly demanded. No; there they were--too large to
be carried away. "His dear brother was welcome to send an accredited writer
to make a copy."

Proprietors of valuable books became so chary from sad experience, that
unless the messenger who came to borrow was provided with a good steed, he
would not be entrusted with the treasure. This supposes some distance to
separate lender from borrower.

Saint Louis and Charles the Wise were liberal in bestowing and lending.
Borrowers, as has been their custom since the days of Job, were found
frequently false in their vows, and after the reign of poor Charles VI.,
_deficit_ was found in multiplied instances in the royal register
after the names of works in request. So strong was the desire among
lettered people to be the owners of valuable works that a certain learned
monk was not considered above the temptation of what some lawyers have
termed _conveyancing_. In a life of St. Bernard it is related that one
day at Clairvaux he thus addressed three novices: "One of you will make his
escape this night: let the others watch and not allow him to take away
anything." Two fell asleep, the spirit of evil sitting very heavy on their
eyelids. The third, who staid awake, saw about daybreak two giants enter,
and place under the nostrils of one of the sleepers a roast fowl encircled
by a serpent. Roused by the deluding smell, he got up, approached the
library, forced open the door, and was about making off with some of the
literary treasures. Being stopped by his fellow-students, he attempted to
scale the wall, but being prevented and still remaining impenitent, he lost
his reason, and continued in that state till be died.

In some of the old abbeys the place of the library is still to be found
sunk in the thickness of the wall, as well as the desks of wood or stone
before it, fixed there for the behoof of the copyists.

Fires aided the class of knavish borrowers in destroying the labors of the
learned and their copiers. Twenty-two thousand volumes were reported as
burned at Saint Vicent at Laon. The entire books of Livy were lost, if some
people are to be trusted, at the Benedictine abbey of Malmesbury. A savant
said he saw the Treatises on the Republic, by Cicero, in a certain convent
in 1517, and when he inquired some time after for it, the reply was, that
they had been _furto praerepti_, [Footnote 124] (thievishly
abstracted.)

    [Footnote 124: Cardinal de Mai was enabled to rescue a portion of the
    work. A copy of his edition was published in London in 1828, with a
    fac-simile of a page of the palimpsest exhibiting the ancient and
    modern letters.]

Besides strong locks and vigorous anathemas, chains were used to secure
some of the most valued volumes from pilfering fingers. Some suspected
books were even fastened to their shelves with stout nails, as tradition
relates to have happened to Roger Bacon's works at the hands of his
unscientific brethren, Lord Litton's Friar Bungay being probably the most
active on the occasion. Under the treatment of the nails the book could not
be read. A relic of the old custom has remained till now in some churches
of Florence, where missals and rituals may be read under wire gratings, and
even the leaves turned over.

{402}

  Unworthy Curators.

As a rule libraries in the possession of kings and lords were not as
carefully watched as those in convents. A remarkable exception to
conventual care is recorded by Boccaccio when relating a visit to the
Benedictines of Mount Cassino. He found the door of the library left open,
and the books covered by a thick coat of dust, grass growing on the
windows, the volumes imperfect, the margins clipped, and everything
denoting the greatest negligence. On inquiring the cause of the injury to
the volumes, he learned that they erased the writing from the vellum to
write psalters (the Seven Penitential Psalms) for young people on them, and
clipped off the margins to receive short prayers. About the same time the
French king's library was not better secured. It was near the falconry, and
the new librarian Giles Malet, apprehensive that the "birds and other
beasts" would take the liberty of coming in and injuring the volumes, the
wire-worker got eighteen golden francs for applying wire screens to the
windows.

At the same convent of Mount Cassino, Mabillon saw the remains of a
manuscript of the tenth century, converted to covers. Montfaucon was
informed by the archbishop of Rosano that one of his predecessors being
rather annoyed by a succession of curious scholars to inspect some Greek
documents in his possession, hid them in the earth to get rid of the
annoyance. [Footnote 125]

    [Footnote 125: The first of these two eminent scholars was born in the
    diocese of Rheims in 1632, and became a Benedictine monk at St. Maur,
    same diocese, at the age of 21. Being employed at Saint Denys to show
    the curiosities of the place, he fortunately broke a glass which had
    once belonged to Virgil! He received his _congé_ in consequence.
    His next employment was on the lives of the Saints of the Benedictine
    order, the Spicilegium, and when his brethren of St. Maur were editing
    the works of the fathers he was entrusted with those of St. Bernard.
    Being sent by Colbert into Germany to collect for the library archives
    of France, he made many valuable acquisitions. The celebrated abbot of
    La Trappe, De Rancé, having contended that many in a religious state
    should not distract their attention with literature, Mabillon was
    appointed to answer him, a duty which he performed with great effect,
    but in a very mild manner. Le Tellier presented him to Louis XIV., by
    whom he was graciously received. The learned Du Cange being consulted
    by a stranger on some abstruse points, sent him to Dom Mabillon. "You
    have applied to an ignorant person," said D. M. "Go to my master in
    erudition, M. de Cange." "Why!" said the other, "it was he who directed
    me to you." This modest and devout and learned man died in Paris in
    1707 at the age of seventy-five. Among his chief works is that history
    of the Benedictine order, and a work on diplomacy.]

Notwithstanding the care shown in influential quarters by heads of
religious houses, by kings, by universities, and even the threats of
excommunication issued against all pilferers or destroyers of good books,
many instances of cruel neglect such as those quoted occurred. The curators
of the Sainte Chapelle of Bourges felt so little interest in their literary
property that the library was converted into a fowl-house, and valuable
works were discovered there by sorrowful visitors, lying open on the desks,
it being hard to say whether they were worse treated by the feathered or
the unfeathered two-legged animals. These negligences notwithstanding, the
work of conserving and reproducing standard works in the classics, and
others in the native tongue, went on vigorously, the brave laborers little
aware of the mighty aid near at hand for lightening and abridging the labor
of hands and pens, and even unable to conceive the possibility of the
results of a few mechanical appliances to the rapid and almost infinite
multiplication of literary works, a single copy of which required such
close application, and such a length of time for its production.

If Saint Louis, when painfully increasing his library in the Sainte
Chapelle, volume by volume, and at slow intervals, had been vouchsafed in
one of his nightly visions the knowledge of the art and mystery of
printing, and, while his whole being was filled with joy and admiration,
suddenly awoke, and found all the steps of the process completely vanished
from his memory, what anguish would have seized on him for a time, and with
what disgust he would continue to witness the snail-like progress of a
book, word by word, and line by line, till the writer reached the colophon.
{403}
However, the possibility of what we now look on as a commonplace privilege
and convenience never disturbed the equanimity of the earnest laborers of
the fourteenth century, and they performed their daily tasks with patient
content, and frequently with enjoyment.


  Lay Libraries and Popular Fictions.

The Bibliotheque Royal dates its origin from a collection in the Sainte
Chapelle of Saint Louis's palace, made by the good king for his own special
reading, as well as for that of his friends of good taste. Something was
done by his successors, but the real history of the royal library begins
with Charles V., surnamed the "Wise."

Old house-keeping accounts preserved till the great fire on 27th October,
1737, and then partially destroyed, have put it into the power of
archaeologists to point out that particular tower of the Louvre called the
Library Tower. There were two floors wainscotted with _boìs
d'Irlande_--shillela oak, as we may suppose--vaulted with cypress wood,
and all ornamented with bas-reliefs. The painted windows were furnished
with brass wire and iron bars. There were _lutrines_, (choristers'
desks,)' _pupitres tournants_, (desks revolving on pivots,) and some
of these were brought from the palace. Thirty small chandeliers and a
silver lamp were lighted when evening came, and thus the students were
enabled to study at night.

From some of the household accounts of Charles V. still in preservation, we
learn that this Irish oak, to the amount of four hundred and eighty pieces,
was presented in 1364 to the Wise King, to be used in the building of his
castle, the donor being the seneschal of Hainault. The chief part of the
volumes in the library of the Louvre were in the French tongue.

Besides the pieces of native literature already mentioned, we may here
quote the following as the established favorites:

  Romances About Charlemagne And His Peers:
    Berte, Roland et Olivier, Roncevaux, Merlin, Gaidon, le Voyage à
    Jerusalem, Ferabras, Garin de Monglane, Dame Aye, Amis et Amile,
    Jordain de Blaives, Ogier le Danois, (Holger the Dane,) Beuve
    d'Aigremont, les Quartre Fils d'Aymon, Maugis, Aubri le Bourgoing, Gui
    de Nanteuil, Beuve de Hanstone, Basin, Carlon, Anseis de Carthage,
    Guillaume au Court Nez.

  Tales Of The Round Table:
    La Mort d'Artus, le Saint Graal, Gauvain, l'Atre Perilleux, (Castle
    Perilous,) Glorion de Bretagne, Giron le Courtois (Sir Gawain, qu.)
    Meliadus, and those already mentioned.

  Poems And Romances:
    Cleomedes, Blancandin, Gerart de Nevers, le Comte de Poitiers, Flore et
    Blanche-fleur, Gautier d'Aupais, Gui de Warwick, Meraugia, la Manckine,
    Robert le Diable.

  Poems On Classic Subjects:
    Troie, Enéas, Narcissus, la Prise de Thèbes, (the Taking of Thebes,) le
    Siège d'Athènes, Ypomedon, Thesalus, Alexandre, Jules César, Vespasien.

  Poems On Religious Traditions:
    les Machabées, la Passion, les Trois Maries, Barlaam et Josaphat, Lives
    of the Saints and Miracles.

  Poems On Modern Subjects:
    Godefroi de Bouillon, le Voeu du Paon, (the Vow of the Peacock,) Songs,
    Fabliaux, collections of stories, such as the Dolopathos, allegorical
    compositions, as la Rose, le Renart, la Poire, l'Escoufle, instructive
    compositions like l'Image du Monde, le Livre de Charité, les
    Bestiaires, les Lapidaires, books of hunting, etc.

Many of these volumes were richly bound, and liberally paid for. The
Duchess of Brabant, in 1369, paid to Maitre Jean six sheep for binding a
French book.
{404}
In 1376, Godfrey Bloc (suitable name!) charged his patron, the Duke of
Brabant, seven sheep and a half for binding Meliadus, and in 1383, twelve
sheep for binding the Saint Graal, called in the bill by its other title,
Joseph of Arimathea.

In the age of which we are treating Greek was little studied or known. The
scholars were ignorant of the Greek historians, of the dramatic poets, even
of Homer, of whom the poet Petrarch said, when his eyes first rested on a
copy, "Your Homer is dumb to me, or rather I understand him not."
Boccaccio, when young, attempted to translate him. Some Dominicans studied
the language, but it was for the sake of their sermons, not to be able to
peruse Homer, or even St. Chrysostom or St. Basil. The Greeks were
schismatics, and everything coming from them was liable to a moral
quarantine. The works of Aristotle and some others were accessible in Latin
translations.

It is time to glance at the other subjects which, along with the classics
and the romances in the native tongue, occupied the minds of the scholars
of the fourteenth century, and filled the books they produced with such
care and patience.


  The Educational Cursus of the Fourteenth Century.

All the humanities of the day were included in the Trivium and the
Quadrivium, the first comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, and the
second, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. This was apparently a
strait circle for human intelligence to move in at freedom, but the prime
masters in the intellectual craft endeavored to enlarge the various
compartments to their widest extent. Thus into rhetoric crept poetry,
epistolary correspondence, didactics, and translation. With dialectics came
in philosophy entire. "Aristotle and his numerous interpreters," among whom
were many saints, authorized free discussions on the highest abstractions
of thought, on the natural sciences, on physiology and the curative art, on
politics, and even on common law. Thus, without going out of the Trivium,
see what a vast amount of facts were lugged in, analyzed, and discussed. In
dialectics no subject was let drop till it was turned in every point of
view, analyzed, and established in true or fancied relation to every other
thing.


  Grammar.

They were not at all scant--these earnest seekers--in grammatic manuals.
They had their "Large Donatus," their "Small Donatus," and the commentary
on Donatus by Remy of Anxerre; Priscian, entire and in abridgments; Bede's
metres, and several modern works. Those not content with the mere
enunciation of the old rules, would moralize them something in this style:

  "'What is a prenomen?' [Footnote 126] _Man_ is thy nomen,
  _sinner_ is thy prenomen. So when you pray to God, make use only of
  thy prenomen, and say, 'O Heavenly Father, I invoke not thy name as man,
  but I implore thy pardon as sinner.'"

    [Footnote 126: In Caius Julius Caesar, _Caius_ is the prenomen,
    corresponding to our Christian name, _Julius_ is the nomen or
    family name, _Caesar_ the adnomen, derived from some particular
    event or circumstance.]

Wonderful were the applications of even such simple things as the four
(five) declensions. The first declension was from the obedience of God to
the suggestion of the devil. Eve made this declension. The second is from
the obedience of God to the obedience to the woman. This declension was
made by Adam. The third declension is from Paradise to this world; the
fourth from this world to hell.

Analogies of grammar and piety were often of a slight and whimsical tissue.
Some of them might be classed with modern conundrums, thus. "Why is the
preposition a theme of pleasure to the elect? Because _Illi praeponuntur
damnandis._" "Why does an interjection resemble the sufferings of the
damned? Because it is the expression of the soul by an unmeaning sound."

{405}

Such was the tendency of the time for extracting moral conclusions, that
Ovid's Metamorphoses served as an excellent text-book for the learned
Dominican Thomas Walleis, for the enunciation of a series of moral axioms
which the Epicurean poet of Augustus's court never dreamed of for a moment.
Philippe de Vitri, friend to Petrarch, made a Latin prose version of the
book, and educed Christian dogmas from the least austere of the tales.

The attention paid by our fourteenth century scholars to their Latin
grammar, and their aptitude to convert it to as many uses as the Knave in
the folk story did his pack of cards, ceases to excite much wonder when it
is recollected that a practical grammar of the native language at the time
was a complete desideratum. What a falling was that from the state of
things when the Canterbury pilgrims may be supposed to have collected at
the Tabard Inn in Southwark, and when the trouvères told and sung their
lays. Every Chaucerian will recall at once the sweet nun, Madame
Englentyne:

  "That of hire smylyng was ful simple and coy;
   Hire grettest ooth was but by Seint Loy;
   Entuned (the service) in hire nose ful semyly.
   And Frensch she spak ful faire and fetyaly.
   After the scole of Strattford atte Bowe.
   For Frensch of Paris was to hire unknowe."

French must consequently have been taught with more or less attention to
grammar rules long before the period with which this paper is occupied, and
it is a case of comfort to archaeologists that a French grammar exists
written by Gautier de Biblesworth in the thirteenth century, for the
instruction of English natives in that language, and principally for Lady
Dionysia de Monchensi, of the county of Kent, wife to Count Hugh de Vere.
The author in his preface modestly announced it as "Le Tretys Ke (qui)
Mounsire Gauter de Bibelesworth fist (fit) a ma Dame Dionysie de Mounchenay
pur aprise de Language." [Footnote 127] Master Biblesworth, if that was his
name, mixed his grammatical rules with educational precepts, beginning very
properly at the birth of his pupil, and naming the different parts of the
body, terms of agriculture, domestic economy, hunting, fishing, and
gardening, and all conveyed in octosyllabic verse, with the slightest
possible pretension to poetry.

    [Footnote 127: "The treatise which Monsieur Walter de Blblesworth has
    composed for My Lady, Dionysie de Mounchenay, to learn the language,"
    etc.]

That people with some pretensions to education took pride in speaking the
"Frensch of Paris" with propriety long before the fourteenth century, is
evinced by the boast of the Picard trouvère, Guernes, who recited his poem
at the tomb of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in 1173:

  "Mes languages est buens car en France ful nez." [Footnote 128]

    [Footnote 128: "My language is good, for in France was I born." The
    reader will remark the Latin instead of the modern French form for the
    verb _was_.]

Quenes de Bethunes, a contemporary and authoress of several fine songs,
excused herself for using provincial words, for "she was of Artois, not of
Pontoise." A century later, the poets mention the request in which
professors of French were among foreigners. They relate how "good Queen
Bertha of the long feet spoke French like any lady of Paris"--more favored
in this than Chaucer's good prioress. There was a humorous poem current
among the people, in which _Dom. Barbarisme_ played a ludicrous part,
and which would not have circulated among the laity if they had no notion
of French grammar.

Domestic troubles and other causes, for whose introduction we have not
space, had effected the destruction of grammatical treatises previous to
1400. About that date the translator of the psalter into the vulgar tongue
thus bewailed the general ignorance:

  "Et pour ceu que, nulz ne tient eu son parlier, ne rigle certenne,
  mesure, ne raison. Est langue romance si corrompue qu' à poinne li uns
  eutent l'aultres, et à poinne puet on trouveir à jour d'ieu personne qui
  saiche escrire, anteir,(_Chanter_,) ne prononcieir en une meisme
  semblant menieir, mais eseript, ante, et prononce, li uns en une guise,
  et li aultre eu une aultre." [Footnote 129]

    [Footnote 129: And because no one observes in his speech either a
    certain rule, measure, or reason, the romance tongue is so corrupted
    that scarcely one understands another, and scarcely can a person be
    found to-day who knows how to write, sing, and pronounce in the same
    manner; but they write, sing, and pronounce--one in one way, another in
    a different way.]

{406}

The strong predilection of churchmen and princes for the Latin tongue was
one of the chief causes of the tardy amelioration of the French language
and French grammar. In a council held in the palace in 1398, where the
vulgar tongue was spoken, a learned ecclesiastic, by name Pierre Plaoul,
excused his indifferent style of speaking by his want of familiarity with
the tongue. Others spoke as bad or worse, but made no apology. It was as
late as 1345 that the government thought it advisable to put forth in the
language of the people laws respecting the tanners, curriers, and makers of
baldrics and shoes in Paris, as they were ignorant of Latin.

The early composers of French grammars under the new order, instead of
studying the spirit of the language as it was then spoken by educated
people, subjected it to the rules of the Latin tongue as given by Donatus
and others. Much time was lost and much linguistic error propagated by this
arrangement. As time went on, and that attention which had been entirely
given to a foreign tongue began to be shared with the language of the
country, some philologists took to study its construction, and frame
suitable rules for the government and concord of its chief parts; and by
degrees the orthography and the syntax of the language became subject to
laws which fitted its character.


  Rhetoric.

Under the name rhetoric, as already mentioned, were joined to eloquence
historic recitals, letter writing, didactic teaching, translations, and
poetry. Few treatises on the art have survived. The Dominicans were fonder
of practising than teaching it, and some who taught it correctly could not
refrain from allegorizing on it in the style already alluded to. Under
Molenier's management, three kings, Barbarisme, Solecisme [Footnote 130],
and Allebolé, make war on three queens, Diction, Oration, and Sentence.

    [Footnote 130: The Greek inhabitants of _Soli_ in Cillcia suffered
    "their parts of speech" to be affected for the worse by intercourse
    with the neighboring barbarians. So the fastidious Athenians began to
    designate all infractions of grammar as _solecisms_.]

They possess in common ten arrows--pleonasm, tautology, ellipse, tapinosis,
(obscurity, qu.,) etc. Allebolé has thirteen daughters, Barbarisme
fourteen, and Solecisme twenty-two, and the number of grandchildren is not
small. If any reader desires to see how men of some talent can lose
themselves in matters trifling and intricate at the same time, let him
procure Molenier's treatise, or even that of the chronicler Chastellain,
where he will find Dame Rhetoric accompanied by science, gravity, multiform
riches, flowery memory, noble nature, precious possession, laudable
deduction, old acquisition, etc.

The professors of rhetoric in the middle ages had sundry classic writers to
fall back on, such as Quintilian, Aristotle, Cicero, etc. They had also the
aid of Priscian, Donatus, and Isadore of Seville. Among the earliest
specimens of eloquence assuming the garb of the vulgar tongue was the
eulogium pronounced on the brave Bertrand du Gueselin by the bishop of
Auxerre, Ferrie Cassinel, at the request of Charles VI. A poet of the
century thus described its effects:

  "Les princes fondolent en larmes,
   Des mots que l'evesque monstroit;
   Quar il disoit, 'Plorez gens d'armes
   Bertrant qui trestant vos amoit.
   On doit regreter les fex d'armes
   Qu'il fist au temps qu'il vivoit.
   Dieux ait pitie sur toutes ames;
   De la sienne quar bonne estoit.'"
   [Footnote 131]

    [Footnote 131:
    "The princes melted in tears
     At the words which the bishop spoke;
     for he said, 'Weep, ye men of arms,
     Bertrand, who so much loved you.
     We should regret those feats of arms
     Which he performed in the time he lived.
     O God! have pity on all souls;
     and in _his_, for he was good.'"]

Four men of that era distinguished themselves by eloquence at the bar, and
in addressing assemblies in the tumultuous days of the poor demented king.
Jean Faure and Guillaume le Breul besides their speeches, left behind them
valuable works on jurisprudence; and their learned contemporary, Yves de
Kaermarten, acquired such a good name that he was promoted to the Calendar
of Saints.
{407}
We are unable to quote any other gentleman of the bar whose sanctity
attained the heroic degree. Renault d'Acie and Jean des Marès ventured
among the political tempests of the day, and perished in their patriotic
efforts.

Few instances of eloquence, ancient or modern, could surpass that of
Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, if we can trust the chroniclers. Having
been released from prison, and brought to Paris, 29th November, 1357, he
ascended a platform near the Pre aux-cleres (the Clerk's Meadow) in the
morning, and kept a considerable portion of his ten thousand auditors
either crying at, or deeply sympathizing with, his pretended wrongs, till
the dinner hour of the citizens had passed. He afterward scattered his
poison among multitudes at the Greve and the Halles. His oration made to a
deputation at St. Denis bears an annoying resemblance to some delivered not
very long since in various American cities, by patriots of our own time:

  "Gentlemen and friends," said he, "no ill luck can befall you which I
  will not freely share. But I strongly counsel you, while you govern
  Paris, to provide yourselves well with gold and silver. Confide in me.
  Send me here freely all that you can put together. I shall give you a
  good account of it, and will have at your service numerous men at arms,
  many comrades who shall defend you from your enemies."

The speeches of the wicked king were mostly prefaced by texts, but it is
not rightly known whether this _argumentum ad crumenam_ was so
garnished.

While some exhibited their eloquence in defending or accusing prisoners,
and others spoke against king, or chiefs of obnoxious parties, some
minstrels were still to be found chanting the old romances for ready money.
In 1368, the municipal authorities of Valenciennes are found allowing
Colart de Maubeuge, "xii gros, in value vi sols ix deniers, for playing on
his instrument, and singing gests of arms." The ancient romances of
Charlemagne, of King Arthur, and of the wars of Troy, were still in
possession of the popular mind, but such poets as there were did not fail
to seize on recent or passing events, and do their best to immortalize
them, as well as perpetuate their own fame. The raising of the walls of New
Ross, on the Barrow, was celebrated by a poet of the day in two hundred and
nineteen verses, in which the patriotism of the citizens, and the clergy,
and the ladies, was sung, not forgetting the beauty of the women of all
degrees, whose delicate hands did not disdain to bring materials to the
masons. "Yet in no part of the earth, where the minstrel had been, did he
ever see such beauty."

  "Kique la fu pur regarder
   Meint bele dame, y put veer
   Ke unke en terre ou jal esté,
   Tants belies ne vi in fossé."

The siege of Carlaverock by King Edward I., in 1300, where six hundred men
defended the place against three thousand assailants, was sung by an
eye-witness in octo-syllabic rhyme.

The Vow of the Heron, commencing the war between Edward III. and Philippe
de Valois, was not neglected by the rhymers. Collins, trouvere of John of
Hainault, Lord of Beaumont, in a poem of five hundred and sixty-six
eight-syllable verses, lamented the fate of the brave old king of Bohemia,
and his ostrich plume and the other victims of the battle of Creci,
signalized by the minstrels of the era as in

  "L'an mil iij.c.xl.vj.,
   Que nos seigneurs furent occis
   En la bataille de Creci;
   Jhü Cris leur face mierci!"
   [Footnote 132]

    [Footnote 132:
    "The year one thousand, three hundred, forty, and six,
     When our lords were slain
     In the battle of Creci;
     Jesus Christ show them mercy!"]

{408}

The life and deeds of the Black Prince were commemorated by Chandos, the
herald of Sir John Chandos, Constable of Aquitaine, in five thousand and
forty-six verses, of the same measure as those others recorded. We quote a
few lines of the courteous communications between the captive king and the
chivalric prince.

  "Li rois Johan lui ad dit,
  'Beaux douis cosins pur Dieu mercit.
   Laissez; il n'apartient a moi,
   Car par la foi que jeo vous doi,
   Plus avez ei jour d'hul d'honour
   Qu'onques n'éust prince a un jour.'
   Dont dist il prince, 'Sire douls,
   Dieux l'ad fait et non mie nous.
   Si l'en devons remercier,
   Et de bon coer vers lui prier,
   Qu'll nous ottroier sa gloire,
   Et pardonner cesto victoire,'" etc.
   [Footnote 133]

    [Footnote 133:
    "But King John to him said,
    'Fair, sweet cousin, God-a-mercy,
     Let be; it belongs to me not,
     For, by the faith which I owe thee,
     More honor this day you've won
     Than ever did prince in any one day (of fight)'
     Then to him said the prince, Sweet sire,
     God has achieved it, not we ourselves,
     So to him we should give thanks,
     And with good heart thus pray to him,
     That he would give us his glory,
     And pardon this victory.'"]

The single-minded and patriotic Du Guesclin was not forgotten by the poetic
chroniclers. Jean Cuvelier, in 1384, put his deeds in verse.

Judicious historians have not disdained to avail themselves of these
productions of the rhymers. They have extracted those passages from them
which were despised by the matter-of-fact chroniclers, but which had an air
of probability, and were calculated to add picturesque and interesting
features to the narrative.

It is highly probable that every ancient narrative poem which was not
inspired by mere emulation of former poets had some foundation in fact. The
mere invention of subjects, as well as their treatment, is a feature of
comparatively modern times. The personages figured by _Reynard, Bruin,
Isgrim_, and the other animals of the great beast-epic of the middle
ages, once lived and acted some way in the spirit of their four-footed
substitutes.

Toward the end of the century, the taste for the old rhymes, romances, and
narratives began to veer round to more trivial and simple subjects, and to
take more interest in the distinctions between the different classes of the
shorter pieces of poetry. Prosody had been in process of cultivation for
some time, and now the attention of such dilettanti as filled courts and
the castles of the nobles was more strongly arrested upon feet, accents,
lengths, measures, and number of lines in each piece, than in the deed
recorded or sentiments expressed.

While Froissart was searching for material for his chronicle, in 1392,
Eustache des Champs was instructing poetic students in the difference
between _chansons, balades, virelais,_ and _rondeaux_. He was
well entitled to do so, having himself composed 80 virelais, 171 rondeaux,
1,175 balades. These ballads he divided into _Leonines, Sonnantes,
equivoques, retrogrades,_ etc., etc.; but in the next century his merits
were forgotten in presence of Henri de Croy, who subdivided his ballads
into _communes, balladantes, fatrisées_, and the rondeaux into simple,
twin, and double. Then care should be taken not to mix the rhymes beaten,
broken, re-linked, doubled tailed, etc., in form of amorous complaint. The
combination denominated _ricquerac_, and that called _baguenaude_
we would explain but for the misfortune of being ignorant of their
structure. The first, perhaps, was a disjointed affair, like some negro
melody, the other, a perpetual hovering round the predominant idea,
whatever it might be.

That was the golden age of bouts rimés, logogriphes, enigmas,
chronographes, achrostiches, and fatfasies, (unmeaning combinations of
words.) In Henri de Croy's great work, even the single fatrasies were
distinguished from the double ones. The reign of these egregious morsels
still lingers in some almanacs, people's penny periodicals, and even in the
Paris Illustrated News, where the logogriph, consisting partly of letters
and partly of pictured objects, keeps the subscribers in misery till next
Saturday, when the solution appears.

{409}

The taste of the public with regard to spectacles was not superior to that
of the readers of the time for such trifles as have been just mentioned. In
1313, when the young princes, sons of Philip the Fair, received the order
of knighthood, a grand mystery was exhibited to the people of Paris, where
the Infant Saviour was presented smiling on his mother and eating an apple,
surrounded by the three kings of Cologne, (the Magi,) the twelve apostles
saying their paternosters, the souls of the blessed in paradise singing
hymns in unison with ninety angels, and the reprobate in hell howling for
the entertainment of about a hundred demons.

Of translations, which were also included under the head rhetoric, we have
already spoken. As Latin was almost the only language from which the
versions were made, the spirit of that language must have had considerable
influence on future compositions in the vulgar tongue.


  Dialectics.

In teaching and learning the dialectics, which embraced metaphysics,
jurisprudence, political economy, and even claimed physics for its
jurisdiction, the object seemed rather a victory in a war of words and
ideas than discoveries of new truths or the establishment of old ones.
Hair-splitting and sophistry flourished in all the contests. So useless and
even criminal seemed this amazing waste of time to quiet-minded and earnest
people, that a legend was current in the twelfth century of a dead scholar
appearing to a comrade in a robe of hell all covered with sophisms. Another
displayed himself wrapped round and oppressed with a heavy parchment all
covered with closely written exercises in the _dialectique_. Both
attributed their present sufferings to the sort of logic they had acquired
in the Paris schools.

Irish students were as redoubtable in these witty duels in the Sorbonne and
in Salamanca as Irish colonels and generals of later times in the armies of
France and Spain and Austria. In metaphysics, the realists, with John Duns
Scotus for leader, warred with the nominalists, using such arms as were
supplied by substantial forms, quiddities, heccéites, polycarpéites, and
other such chimeras, the result being nothing but obscurity of the
understanding from these clashings in the dark. Sometimes the sharp-witted
dialecticians intruded rashly on the domains of theology and morality, and
were smartly pulled up, as in the case of the great interpreter of
Aristotle, Nicolas d'Autrecourt, in 1348, for this ingenious proposition:

  "A young man of good birth met with a sage who undertook to communicate
  the 'universal science' to him without delay, for a hundred crowns; but
  the young man had no other means to procure the money than by stealing
  it. Was he justified in this theft? Certainly; for we must do what is
  agreeable to God; but it was agreeable to God that this young man should
  get instruction, and he had no other means to get it than theft; ergo,"
  etc.

A sharp condemnation by the Theological Faculty of Paris was all the honor
awarded to Mr. Nicolas's plausible conclusion.

In physics and natural history, our philosophers of the middle ages were
more prone to depend on Aristotle and Pliny, and later dreamy sages, than
to resort to careful observation. Theory, not induction, was their darling
mode of enlarging the domain of human knowledge, and no fact fitted
comfortably in its place without being moralized. Far away in the realms of
Prester John were to be found giants, pigmies, men with one eye in front
and three behind, female warriors, griffins, licorns, and alerions, animals
well adapted to point a moral.

The learned Pierre Bercheure, who translated Livy, informed his readers
that the toad was mute in every country but France. _Moral_: The
Frenchman, a babbler at home, is perforce mute when he goes abroad. The
learned Bercheure either intended to hint that the Gaul too much neglected
the study of foreign languages, or that, while vainglorious at home, he
became meek and humble when he crossed the frontier.

{410}

Still proceeding in this moral strain, Dr. Bercheure asked, "Why, in the
territory of Orange, was utterance by sound denied to all toads, one only
excepted?" No answer being received, he gave this explanation: The holy
bishop, Florent, being much disturbed in his meditations by the
disagreeable songs of the toads, ordered them to be silent. They obeyed on
the moment, and the good bishop was so touched by their prompt attention to
his command that he revoked his order. However, the stupid messenger who
brought the news, instead of using the plural form of the
verb--_cantate_--merely said _canta_, and thus only one of the
community ever after could avail itself of the privilege: nasty Mercury!
say we. These additions to Pliny could scarcely be called improvements in
the science of natural history.

For a long time the healing art was nearly monopolized by the religious
houses, but it was not so without an occasional scruple of conscience on
the part of the chiefs in the various orders. They feared that their art
might too much engross the attention of the practitioners. To moderate
their mere scientific ardor, the following legend was sent abroad among
them: There was a skilful medical man among the monks of Citeaux, whose
time was so much taken up in provincial excursions that he was not found in
the convent unless at the great festivals. As he was employed on one of the
feasts of the Blessed Virgin, singing in choir with the rest, he was
favored with a vision of his heavenly patroness distributing a spoonful of
elixir to every one of the singers, himself alone excepted. He made a
gesture of supplication not to be treated to such an unenviable
distinction, but this reply reached the recesses of his understanding
without any action of the senses: "Physician, thou hast no need for my
elixir, for you do not deny to yourself any consolation." A radical change
was wrought in the man, and on the next solemnity he was favored as the
rest. Such was the rapture into which he was thrown, that for the future
his healing excursions were as short and as few as possible.

There was no college of physicians at Paris nor Montpellier in the
beginning of the twelfth century, but considerable progress was made in
founding medical establishments during the next two hundred years. Some
enthusiastic pill-taker thus expanded in commendation of the faculty of
Paris in 1323:

  "In this city, where there is no want or consolation or succor, the
  physicians appointed to look after our health and the cure of our
  maladies, and whom the sage orders us to honor as being created by the
  Most High for our needs, are so numerous that, when they pass through the
  streets to discharge their duty in their rich dresses and in their
  doctoral caps, those who have need of them have little trouble to get an
  interview. Oh! how we should love these good physicians, who, in the
  practice of their profession, philosophically conform themselves to the
  rules of science and long experience!"

We have seen a copy of the Medical Review, a brochure, in rhyme, issued in
Dublin circa 1775, eulogizing by name the several physicians and surgeons
who practised in our city at that period. It was written throughout in the
spirit of the above extract, and, but for the evident good faith of the
writer, would be supremely ludicrous.

All the old writers on the subject were not so complimentary to the
faculty. Some of the members deserved what they got if they were of the
sect of the impudent Arnaud de Villeneuve, some of whose counsels to his
students took this shape: "You examine perhaps the ... of a patient without
being anything the wiser for it, but say, 'There is an obstruction in the
liver.' The patient may perhaps answer, 'But, master, it is in my head I
feel the illness.' You answer without hesitation, 'It is from the liver it
comes.' Always make use of the word obstruction. They don't know the
meaning of it, and it's all for the best that they should not."

{411}

But skilful or the reverse, the doctors of the fourteenth century found all
their resources powerless to arrest the epidemic which about the middle of
it swept across Europe. Its visitations were more appalling than those of
cholera in our times. The physicians behaved as feeling and heroic men, and
were swept off in thousands, while doing their duty by their patients.
There was no writer found to introduce a series of licentious stories as
sequel to a harrowing account of the scourge.

Among those who essayed to cure Charles VI. of his mental malady was Arnaud
Guillem, who came in 1393 from Languedoc to Paris, bringing with him the
volume Smagorad, which "Adam had received by way of consolation a century
after the death of Abel." There is some doubt about his being put to death
for failure; but two Augustine monks suffered in 1398, and four sorcerers
in 1403, for the same liberty taken with sick majesty. It is probable that
the heads stuck on spikes over palace gates for similar failures in our
Household Stories had some foundation in pre-historic times. In one of his
lucid intervals the poor king directed that once in the year the dead body
of a criminal should be delivered to the Faculty of Medicine at
Montpellier, a proof that he set more value on the study of the human
subject than the virtue of charms or other superstitious processes. Among
medical treatises of the fourteenth century, some disfigured by the dreams
of the astrologer, the alchymist, and the sorcerer, that of Gui de Chauliai
stands pre-eminent for scientific attainment.


  Arithmetic Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.

At first scholars were careful to avoid the title of mathematicians.
Something magical and occult was attached to it, as in the old Roman times.
Mathematician and felon were synonymous terms. Mere arithmetic was in
better odor; it was useful in concocting the ordinary tables set in the
beginning of prayer-books, and including the golden number, the epact, the
dominical letter, etc.[Footnote 134] Calendars were carefully compiled all
through the era in question. It has often puzzled us to know how
calculations to any extent could be effected by the Xs and Vs and Is which
denoted numbers previous to the eleventh century. Wretched was the pupil's
lot (if such an incident ever took place) required to perform an operation
in long division, in multiplication by tens of thousands, or to extract the
cube root of a large number. Great are our obligations to the Arabians for
the use of their system of notation.

    [Footnote 134: These names mysterious to scholars of city and
    university, were household words with the masters of Hedge schools and
    their advanced pupils half a century ago.]

A household joke of the day throws light on the incapacity of the wives of
small citizens to manage deep calculations. A few of the husbands drinking
agree that he whose wife could not count up to four accurately should pay
the reckoning. The calculation of Robin's wife was "One, two, three, seven,
twelve, and fourteen." John's wife began at two. Tassin's wife tossed her
head, and said she was not a baby, and would not count at all. We cannot
find out which of the husbands paid the scot.

The geometry of the day chiefly confined itself to the measurement of land,
but there were treatises on perspective, and portions of the Latin Euclid
extant.

Charles the Wise was not without charts and maps of the world. Many such
existed, but, as may be supposed, tolerably incorrect. The earth was
supposed to consist of two hemispheres, glued, as it were, to each other,
and the globe somehow maintained its place in the void like a suspended
lamp.

In 1366, King Charles V., in order to prevail on Pope Urban V. not to
remove to Rome, urged that Marseilles was in the centre of the civilized
world. This would be rendered still more sensible by cutting off Greece
from the general map.
{412}
"The schismatic Greeks cut themselves off from the spiritual world by their
separation from the church: let their land be removed from the material
world." It does not appear that this ingenious proposition was put in
practice.

Of accounts of foreign parts there was no lack, and it must be said that
the early books of travels and accounts of countries, if less strictly
confined to facts than ours, were much more entertaining. A copy of Marco
Polo's travels was presented in 1307 to Charles Count of Valois by John de
Cepoy, son of the Venetian ambassador. John de Meun translated into French
the Wonders of Ireland. They had also the Wonders of England, India, the
World, etc.

Several works were composed in the fourteenth century on the subject of
music, but chiefly in Latin and with reference to the established canons of
sacred melody.

Astronomy had a hard strife with the impostor astrology, which had been so
long in possession of the general intellect. However, some glimmerings of
the true state of heavenly things had been gradually entering the minds of
the astrologers themselves. The total eclipse of the moon on the night of
the 15th of January, 1305, terrified the Parisians. It was mentioned as an
_Eclipsis Lunae horribilis_. But an eclipse of the sun, 31st January,
1310, was predicted by the Faculty of Astronomy. Another in 1337 was
treated of by John of Genoa, who, in 1332, had composed his canon of
eclipses. Comets gave considerable disturbance to the public mind during
this century. They predicted the death of Louis X., and the destruction of
France, the plague, and all varieties of deceit, lies, hatred, and
insubordination, etc. However, science was making a sure though slow
progress, and toward the close of the century the learned were in
possession of many astronomical facts unknown at the beginning. The comets
made their fearful visits at these dates--March, 1315, July, 1337. April,
1338, 1340, 1346, 1360, 1368, 1378.

Several voyages and land journeys were performed during this century, and
among the rest that by our own Sir John Mandeyille, some of whose
discoveries were inferior to those of the truth-loving Lemuel Gulliver
alone. The Holy Land possessed strong attractions for devout and cultivated
souls. Of all these the most enthusiastic was the Tuscan Dominican,
Riccoldo di Monte da Croce. Having gained the valley of Josaphat, he
believed himself at the end of the world, and thus gave vent to his burning
thoughts:

  "We saw about the middle or the valley the tomb of the Blessed Virgin
  Mary, and, considering it to be the place of the final Judgment, we
  passed between the Mount of Olives and Mount Cavalry, weeping, and
  trembling with fear, as if the Supreme Judge was already above our heads.
  In this sentiment of awe we thought within ourselves, and we said to each
  other--'It is from above this hill that the most Just of Judges will
  pronounce his decision. Here is the right hand, there is the left. We
  then selected, to the best of our judgment, our places on the right, and
  each sunk in the ground a stone to denote his own. I sunk mine, and I
  retain that spot for myself, and for all those who, after receiving from
  me the word of God, shall persevere in faith, in charity, and in the
  truth of the holy gospel, and we marked the stone in the presence of many
  of the faithful, who wept with us, and whom I call on as witnesses this
  day."

We have come to the end of our sketch of the progress of intelligence
during a brief portion of its course, namely, that portion immediately
preceding the epoch of the invention of the printing-press. The impediments
in the way of scientific progress were great and humorous. Many weak
spirits were discouraged, and did nothing; others, some few of whom we have
particularized, wrought like giants, and thus benefited themselves and
their kind. Among these benefits we do not reckon in chief the conveniences
and luxuries which distinguish our existence from that of the Samoyeds or
dog-ribbed Indians. The Mussulman, well to do, and spending the eleven
twelfths of his time in mere indolence and indulgence of the senses, would
be better off discharging the duties of porter or ferryman.
{413}
No, the chief advantages we derive from the advance of human knowledge is
the easier and swifter communication between the scattered members of the
great human family, the advance of education among the working classes, and
the healthy occupation of so many active and energetic minds, which,
without suitable work to do, would prey on themselves, and become a curse
to their possessors.

------

    Original.

    Laudate Pueri Dominum. [Footnote 135]

      [Footnote 135: Died at the Convent of the Visitation, Georgetown,
      D.C. on the 18th of April, .... a young girl thirteen years of age,
      who was received into the bosom of the Holy Church October 2d, 1866.]


  "I will wash my hands among the Innocent,
  and so will I compass thy altar, O Lord!"


Oct. 2d. Feast Of The Holy Guardian Angels. Baptism

  In snowy robe and spotless veil
  Stands the fair child at the altar rail.
  "Of Holy Church what askest thou?"
  "The FAITH," she murmured. Upon her brow
  The bright drops fell. An angel smiled
  In the face of God, all he said: "Thy Child!"

Dec. 8th. Feast Of The Immaculate Conception. First Communion.

  In snowy robe and spotless veil
  Kneels the fair child at the altar rail.
  "Of Holy Chinch what cravest thou,
  On suppliant knee and with rev'rent brow?"
  "My Lord, my Hope, in whom I live."
  "'Tis thy Child!" said the angel. "Master, give!"

April 14th. Palm Sunday. Burial.

  In snowy robe and spotless veil
  Lies the fair child at the altar rail.
  "Of Holy Church what askest thou,
  Palm-branch in hand, and with flower-crowned brow?"
  "In robe baptismal yet undefiled,
  MY LOVE!" Said the angel: "He waits thee, Child!"

------

{414}

    Translated from Paris l'Union.

    Christianity And Social Happiness.

It is the fate of illustrious men to reproduce the tendencies of the age in
which they live--whether for good or evil. Thus, the study of characters,
that the engraver of fame has impressed on the memory of humanity, leads
frequently to a knowledge of the age to which they belonged, and from this
knowledge much that is useful can be elicited.

A man has lived among us, whose noble character, generous aspirations,
illusions even, or exaggerations, are reflected in his contemporaries.
Lacordaire is France of the nineteenth century, and the thought that
germinated in the soul of the celebrated Dominican, and until his time
awaited its development, borne down by the weight of intellectual ruin
which the school of Voltaire had amassed, this thought harmonizes so well
with the genius of the day, and with its research, that it seems impossible
not to recognize the ray of light destined to dissipate for ever the
shadows of doubt and unbelief, which lead astray and weaken the life of our
generation.

"I have attained to my catholic belief," writes Lacordaire, "through my
social beliefs, and today nothing appears plainer to me than such a
consequence. Society is necessary, therefore the Christian religion is
divine; for it is the means of leading society to perfection by accepting
man with all his weaknesses, and social order with its every condition."

Such words cannot be too deeply considered; and the truths that they
express are in such close affinity with the tendencies of our time that it
is easy and profitable to meditate upon them. We wish for the happiness of
the masses, social prosperity, and the advancement of civilization;
therefore, we wish for Christianity. Humanity is called upon to peaceably
develop its strength, while releasing itself from the bonds of the monster
called pauperism, with whom physical misery is only the clothing of moral.
Therefore humanity is called upon to germinate in a reviving sun all
Christian teachings.

Do you wish for facts? You are children of an age that acts only by
experience. Well, then, light the torch of history, and, throwing its rays
over the annals of the world, read the observations spread before your
eyes, and compare the actual state of an ancient and modern people. In
instructing and bringing man to a sense of his greatness and duty, who has
raised and elevated social relations? Who has broken the chains of pagan
slavery? Who has sown the seed of all intellectual and moral virtue in
those vast regions that barbarian night had enveloped? Who, then, has given
servants to weakness, to suffering, to the disinherited by fortune, to all
those that grief had touched with an unpitying hand? Who has founded large
schools, asylums of science and art; great centres from which have parted
in radiating those who, by gigantic works, accomplished under the
observation of astonished generations, have merited the appellation of the
Cultivators of Europe? Who has done all these things, if not the church,
that is to say, Christianity teaching, directing, and moralizing humanity?

Christianity, then, not only elevates man to a moral grandeur unknown to
pagan nations, but through its influence society exists in a material
prosperity to which Greece and Rome never attained. Profane history shows
us a few privileged ones, satiated, we may say, with riches, but beneath
and around them, we see only a servile mass vegetating in degrading misery.
{415}
What a difference, say we, with a modern wise economist, M. Perin,
professor in the university or Louvain--what a difference in the riches of
the sun between the Roman empire in its happiest time and contemporary
Europe! What difference in products, in the multiplicity and rapidity of
communication, in the cheapness of transportation, and in the extent of
relations which to-day embrace the entire world!

What a difference, again, in the financial resources of states, in their
armies, in their material. What a difference and what superiority on the
side of modern nations, not only in that which constitutes their individual
happiness, but in that which makes the material power of nations and their
true force. What superiority especially in the mass of wealth destined for
the consumption of a people. Time, since the thirteenth century, has rolled
on in the full power of Christian civilization, and has evidenced a period
of prosperity which has had no equal in history. These are the facts. But
science does not stop at facts. Its mission is to investigate by labor of
which it only has the secret and the glorious trouble, the why as well as
the end of things.

Science is the knowledge of objects of observation studied by their causes:
cognitio rerum per causas. We ask of it, therefore, the reason of the
marvellous power we have just proved in Christianity; and in order not to
extend our investigations, we will content ourselves by seeking with it how
material prosperity and the wealth of nations come from a religion which
preaches the doctrine of renunciation.

The reason of the prosperity of nations truly Christian is, it seems to us,
evident. We find them practising generally the virtues of which
Christianity is the apostle and propagator. Economists will tell, you
without capital, that is to say, without expenditure with the view of
reproduction, there can be no social riches. But is this expenditure
compatible with vice, that never has enough to satisfy its brutal
appetites?

Virtue, then, is the source of social ease, and in it only the remedy for
pauperism. "If you do not give a people virtue, the only serious guarantee
of present expenditure and future capital, you can never entirely defend it
against an invasion of misery. In vain you may accumulate well-being and
ease around the domestic hearth; in vain make and increase capital from
growing wealth, if you do not accumulate a capital conservative of all
other, that of virtue." We are happy to quote these beautiful words, only a
few days since fallen from the pulpit of Notre Dame.

Just now we pronounced the word renunciation. Well, it is necessary that
all understand that Christian self-denial is a dispensing force, the
results of which are incalculable. It elevates the poor man beyond
discouragement, and preserves for him the energy with which he diminishes
the privations of his family. To him it comes to destroy the individuality
which absorbs the opulence of the rich. To him it leads the beneficent
current of fortune, which flows from those who have toward those who have
not. To him, at last, it brings riches in every way, since under its mild
influence each one profits by its thousand sacrifices, although he
individually may make none. Let us be permitted to borrow some lines from
the beautiful book of M. Périn, De la Richesse dans les Sociétés
Chrétiennes:

"Follow the course of ages," said this wise economist, "and you will ever
find Christianity accomplish through the virtue of self-denial the work of
each epoch, forcing humanity toward progress, and even saving it from the
perils of success. Run through the society of to-day, and in every degree
of civilization that a contemporary world presents us, in the same picture
and at a single glance, and in the varied phases that pervade our different
societies, you will find Christianity proportion its action to
circumstances; you will find it endeavoring to impress all countries and
races with the salutary impulse for progress by the power of self-denial,
while it is ever the same in principle, and ever infinitely varied in its
applications and fertile in its effects."

{416}

Self-denial! Yes, it is this which gives Christian souls that holy love of
work which is the productive element of social riches. To make a sacrifice
of one's repose to God, while bending under the yoke of painful labor, is
the joy of the Scripture disciple. He wishes for such joy, he loves it, and
it was to obtain it that the children of Saint Benedict have sown its seed
in the uncultivated deserts of the old Europe or under the murderous sun of
Africa.

At the time of its decay and corruption Rome, it is said, was at the same
time lazy and servile. But, even in the days of its grandeur, can we
believe that labor showed itself to the eyes of the Roman people
transfigured by that aureole which gives it incomparable beauty, so grand
that one loves it with a love which might seem folly if it were not supreme
wisdom? Such a sentiment can only be born with the doctrine of renunciation
and the thought of the Saviour. "To re-establish labor and the condition of
the workman, it was necessary that Christ, making himself a laborer, should
wield with his own royal and divine hands, in the workshop of Nazareth, the
axe and the tools of the carpenter."

These words, which we borrow from a course of political economy, delivered
with so much eloquence to the Faculté de Droit de Caen, by M. Alexandre
Carel, finish by exemplifying how labor, and, by consequence, the wealth of
society, owes so much to Christianity.

The limits of an article do not permit us to develop further the ideas
necessary to understand all its power and truth. We can only resume them in
saying:

To occupy one's self with social and political studies is to follow the
impulse that our age impresses on intelligence. To find the condition
necessary for the well-being of society, of which we form a part, would be
from the point of view of contemporary aspirations one of the finest
victories that the public mind could carry with it, one of the greatest
satisfactions that the heart can obtain. Well! may our eyes open at last.
Let us learn to see that, without neglecting secondary means, it is
necessary, to attain the end desired, to christianize the people.

Christianity with its virtues, its doctrine of self-renunciation, its labor
transfigured by freedom and love, behold the agent, and the only one
capable of producing the prosperity with which we would wish to endow
nations. Let us understand these things, and we shall march with success to
the conquest of social happiness. But we shall do better still. Penetrating
the harmonious connection that unites effects to causes, we shall ask of it
the secret of the superhuman power that escapes from it by submission to
the Scripture; and soon we can repeat again the conviction of Lacordaire:
"Christianity is the means of leading society to its perfection, by
accepting man with all his weaknesses, and social order with its even
condition. Society is necessary; therefore the Christian religion is
divine."

------

{417}

    From The Lamp.

    Visible Speech.


Mr. Alexander Melville Bell has recently brought under the notice of the
Society of Arts his very remarkable system of Visible Speech or Universal
Language, which is (says Chamber's Journal) intended to remove an absurdity
which vitiates all ordinary alphabets and languages. This absurdity is the
utter want of agreement between the appearance of a letter or word and the
sound which it is intended to convey; between the visible form of the
symbol and the sound and meaning of the thing symbolized; between (for
instance) the shape of the letter C and the value of that letter in the
alphabets which contain it. This is an old difficulty--how old, we do not
know; but to understand the proposed remedy, it will be necessary to have a
clear idea of the defect to which the remedy is to be applied.

Spoken language may, for aught we know, have had its origin in an attempt
to imitate, by the organs of the voice, the different sounds which animate
and inanimate nature presents. Man could thus recall to the minds of those
around him those notions of absent objects and past actions with which the
sounds are connected. The expression of abstract qualities by the same
means would be a later object, and one more difficult of attainment. When
the eye instead of the ear had to be appealed to, or the signs rendered
visible instead of audible, the system of hieroglyphics would at once
suggest itself, by marking on a tablet or paper, a piece of ground or a
smooth surface of sand, a rude picture of the object intended. When we get
beyond these preliminary stages, however, the difficulty rapidly increases.
There is no visible picture by which we could convey the meaning of such
sentiments as are called in English virtue, justice, fear, and the like,
except by so elaborate a composition as it would require an artist to
produce; nor could an audible symbol for each of these sentiments be
framed. It would take a Max Müller to trace how the present complication
gradually arose. That there _is_ a complication, anyone may see in a
moment. What is there in the shape of the five letters forming the word
table, in these particular combinations of curved and straight lines, to
denote either the sound of the word or the movements of the mouth and other
vocal organs which produce its utterance? Nothing whatever. Any other
combination of straight and curved lines might be made familiar by common
use, and substituted for our plain English word, with as little attention
to any analogy between the visible symbol and the sound of the thing
symbolized.

Numerous attempts have been made to devise some sort of alphabet in which
the shapes of the letters should in some way be dependent on the movements
of the vocal organs--not actual pictures of them, but analogies, more or
less complete. Without going to earlier labors, we may adduce those of
Professor Willis. Nearly forty years ago, he showed that the ordinary vowel
sounds--_a, e, i, o, u_--are produced on regular acoustic principles;
that "the different vowel sounds may be produced artificially, by throwing
a current of air upon a reed in a pipe; and that, as the pipe is lengthened
or shortened, the vowels are successively produced"--not in the order
familiar to us, but in the order _i, e, a, o, u_, (and with the
continental sounds,
_i_ like _ee_,
_e_ like _ay_,
_a_ like _ah_,
_u_ like _oo_.)
{418}
Eighty or ninety years ago, Mr. Kratzenstein contrived an apparatus for
imitating the various vowel sounds. He adapted a vibrating reed to a set of
pipes of peculiar forms. Soon afterward, Mr. Kempelen succeeded in
producing the vowel sounds by adapting a reed to the bottom of a
funnel-shaped cavity, and placing his hand in various positions within the
funnel. He also contrived a hollow oval box, divided into two portions, so
attached by a hinge as to resemble jaws; by opening and closing the jaws,
he produced various vowel sounds; and by using jaws of different shapes, be
produced imperfect imitations of the consonant sounds _l, m_, and
_p_. By constructing an imitative mouth of a bell-shaped piece of
caoutchouc, imitative nostrils of two tin tubes, and imitative lungs in the
form of a rectangular wind-chest, he produced with more or less
completeness the familiar sounds of _n, d, g, k, s, j, v, t_, and
_r_. By combining these he produced the words _opera, astronomy,_
etc., and the sentences _Vous etes mon ami--Je vous aime de tout mon
coeur_. By introducing various changes in some such apparatus as this,
Professor Willis has developed many remarkable facts concerning the mode in
which wind passes through the vocal organs during oral speech.

The useful work would be, however, not to imitate vocal sounds by means of
mechanism, but to write them so that they should give more information as
to their mode of production than our present alphabet affords. Such was the
purport of the _Phonetic_ system, which had a life of great activity
from ten to twenty years ago, but which has since fallen into comparative
obscurity. Mr. Ellis and the Messrs. Pitman published very numerous works,
either printed in the phonetic language itself, or intended to develop its
principles. Bible Histories, the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount,
Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, Macbeth, The Tempest--all were printed
in the new form; and there were numerous works under such titles as
Phonetic or Phonographic Alphabets. Almanacs, Journals, Miscellanies,
Hymn-books, Note-books, Primers, Lesson-books, and the like. The intention
was not so much to introduce new forms of letters, as new selections of
existing letters to convey the proper sounds of words. There was an
unfortunate publication, the Fonetik Nuz, which worked more harm than good
to the system, seeing that it was made a butt for laughter and
ridicule--more formidable to contend against than logical argument.

Mr. Bell contemplates something more than this. He has been known in
Edinburgh for twenty years in connection with numerous works relating to
reading, spelling, articulation, orthoëpy, elocution, the language of the
passions, the relations between letters and sounds, logograms for
shorthand, and the like. As a writer and teacher on these subjects, he had
felt, with many other persons, how useful it would be if we could have a
system of letters of universal application; letters which, when learned in
connection with any one language, could be vocalized with uniformity in
every other. There are two obstacles to the attainment of this end: first,
that the association between the existing letters and sounds is merely
arbitrary; and second, that international uniformity of association is
impracticable, because the sounds of different languages, and their mutual
relations, have not hitherto been ascertained with exactitude or
completeness.

Mr. Bell, as he tells us, feeling that all attempted collations of existing
alphabets have failed to yield the elements of a complete alphabet, tried
in a new direction. Instead of going to languages to discover the elements
of utterance, he went to the apparatus of speech itself, endeavoring to
classify all the movements of tongue, teeth, lips, palate, etc., concerned
in the pronunciation of vocal sounds. By this means, he hoped to obtain,
from the physiological basis of speech, an organic scale of sounds which
should include all varieties, known and unknown.
{419}
To transfer these sounds to paper, in the form of visible characters, a new
alphabet was necessary. To have adopted letters from the Roman, Greek, or
other alphabets, constructed on no common principle of symbolization, would
have been to introduce complexity and confusion, and to create a conflict
between old and new associations. He therefore discarded old letters and
alphabets of every kind. He set himself the task of inventing a new scheme
of symbols, each of which should form a definite part of a complete design;
insomuch that, if the plan of the alphabet were communicated by diagrams,
each letter would teach its own sound, by expressing to the reader's eye
the exact position of the sound in the physiological circuit. Could this
object be attained, not only would there be a universal alphabet; there
would be a scheme of letters representative of sounds, and not, like
ordinary alphabets, associated with sounds only by arbitrary conventions.

Mr. Bell believes that he has achieved this result, and his expositions
before the Ethnological Society, the College of Preceptors, and the Society
of Arts, have had for their object the presentation of various phases of
the system. The fitness of the term _visible_ speech may, be urges, be
shown by the analogy of an artist, who, wishing to depict a laughing face,
draws the lines of the face as seen under the influence of mirth; be
depicts, in fact, _visible_ laughter. Every passion and sentiment,
emotion and feeling, has this kind of facial writing; and an idea of it
might be expressed on paper by a picture of the muscular arrangements of
the face, so that all persons seeing the symbols would have a common
knowledge of their meaning. In forming any sound, we adjust the parts of
the mouth to certain definite attitudes; and the sound is the necessary
result of our putting the mouth in such a shape. If, then, we could
represent the various positions of the mouth, we should have in those
symbols a representation of the sounds which cannot but result from putting
the mouth in the positions symbolized. Now, Mr. Bell claims to have applied
this system of symbolization to every possible arrangement of the mouth: he
claims that, whatever your language, and whether you speak a refined or a
rustic dialect, he can show, in the forms of his new letters, the exact
sounds you make use of. If this be so, a Chinaman may read English, or an
Englishman Chinese, without any difficulty or uncertainty, after he has
learned to form his mouth in accordance with the directions given him by
the letters. Nearly all the existing alphabets contain vestiges of a
similar relation between letters and sounds--a relation which has nearly
disappeared during the changes which alphabetic characters have gradually
undergone. Mr. Bell gave the following anecdote illustrating this relation:
"Shortly before I left Edinburgh, in the early part of last year, an
elderly lady called on me, accompanied by two young ladies, who were going
out to India as missionaries. The elderly lady had been for upward of
twenty years engaged in mission work, and she spoke the language of the
district like a native. Nevertheless, she could not teach the English girls
to pronounce some of the peculiar sounds which she had acquired by habit.
They had been for some time under her instruction, but they could not catch
the knack of certain characteristic elements. Having heard of 'Visible
Speech,' the lady called to solicit my assistance. I know nothing of the
language she pronounced before me. Some of the sounds I had never heard in
linguistic combinations, though, of course, I am acquainted with them
theoretically. I saw the young ladies for half an hour, but this proved
long enough to give them the power of pronouncing the difficult sounds
which, while they did not know precisely what to do, they could not
articulate. Strangely enough, since I came to reside in London, I heard a
clergyman and former missionary, speaking of these very girls, remark on
the great success with which they pronounced the Canarese language before
they left this country; and the speaker knew nothing of their previous
difficulty, or how it had been overcome."

{420}

The system analyzes all sounds according to the mode in which they are
produced. The number of sounds discriminated in various languages amounts
to several times the number of letters in the English alphabet; and even in
English, although there are only twenty-six letters, there are at least
forty different sounds. The Church Missionary Society employ nearly two
hundred different letters or symbols in their several printed books; and
the list is even then imperfect as regards many of the languages.

Mr. Bell finds thirty symbols sufficient to denote all the two hundred
varieties of vowel and consonant sounds. What kind of symbols they are, we
do not know, (for a reason presently to be explained;) but he states that,
while each elementary sound has its own single type to express it in
printing, he requires only thirty actual types to express them as used in
language. Each symbol has a name, which does not include the sound of the
letter, but merely describes its form. The learner has thus at first only
to recognize pictures. But the name of the symbol also expresses the
arrangement of the mouth which produces the sound; so that, when the symbol
is named, the organic formation of its sound is named at the same time. In
order that thirty symbols may denote two hundred sounds, Mr. Bell has
adopted certain modes of classification. All vowels receive a common
generic symbol, all consonants another; vocality and whisper have their
respective symbols; so have inspiration, retention, and expulsion of
breath; so have the touching and the vibration of the several vocal organs;
so have the lips, the palate, the pharynx, the glottis, and the different
parts of the tongue; so has the breathing of sounds through the nostrils,
or through nearly closed teeth. There are thirty of these generic meanings
altogether, and they are combined to make up letters, every part of every
letter having a meaning. The thirty symbols need not be represented
mechanically by exactly thirty types; they may be embodied in a larger or
smaller number, according to taste or convenience; such of the symbols as
together represent simple elements of speech being properly combined in
single types. "The highest possible advantages of the system," we are told,
"would be secured by extending the number of types to about sixty. At
present, I and my sons--as yet the only experts in the use of visible
speech--write the alphabet in a form that would be cast on between forty
and fifty types, which is but little more than the number in an ordinary
English fount, including diphthongs and accented letters. This number does
not require to be exceeded in order to print, with typographic simplicity,
the myriad dialects of all nations."

Mr. Bell pointed out the prospective usefulness of his system in
telegraphic communication. The symbols of speech may, in all their
varieties, be transmitted by telegraph, through any country, without the
necessity for a knowledge of the language adopted on the part of the
signaller. He would only have to discriminate forms of letters; he may be
totally ignorant of the value of a single letter, and yet may convey the
telegram so as to be intelligible to the person to whom it is virtually
addressed. It is known that the telegrams from India now reach London in a
sadly mutilated and unintelligible state, owing to their passing through
the hands of Turkish and Persian agents who do not know the English
alphabet; an evil which, it is contended, would be removed by the adoption
of the new system.

{421}

The mode in which Mr. Bell illustrated his method was curious and
interesting. His son uttered a great variety of sounds--whispered
consonants, vocal consonants, vowels, diphthongs, nasal vowels,
interjections, inarticulate sounds, animal sounds, mechanical sounds--all
of which are susceptible of being represented in printed or written
symbols. Then, the son being out of the room, several gentlemen came
forward and repeated short sentences to Mr. Bell, some in Arabic, some in
Persian, some in Bengali, some in Negro patois, some in Gaelic, some in
Lowland Scotch, some in Norfolk dialect; Mr. Bell wrote down the sounds as
he heard them, without, except in one or two cases, knowing the purport of
the words. The son was called in, and, looking attentively at the writing,
repeated the sentences with an accuracy of sound and intonation which
seemed to strike those who were best able to judge as being very
remarkable.

There is something a little tantalizing in the present state of the
subject. We know that there is _a_ system of symbols, but we do not
know the symbols themselves. Mr. Bell states that, besides the members of
his own family, only three persons have been made acquainted with the
symbols, and the details of their formation--namely, Sir David Brewster,
Professor de Morgan, and Mr. Ellis. He has not intended, and does not
intend, to secure his system to himself by any kind of patent or copyright;
and yet, if he made it fully public at once, he would lose any legitimate
hold over it to which he is rightly entitled. He has submitted his plan to
certain government departments, but has found that it is "nobody's
business" to take up a subject which is not included in any definite sphere
of duty. He has next endeavored to interest scientific societies in the
matter, so far as to induce them to urge the trial of his plan by the
government. He says: "I am willing to surrender my private rights in the
invention _pro bono publico_, on the simple condition that the costs
of so introducing the system may be undertaken at the public charge."
Teachers there must be, because "the publication of the theory of the
system and the scheme of symbols must necessarily be supplemented by oral
teaching of the scales of sound, in order that the invention may be applied
with uniformity." The reading of the paper gave rise to some discussion at
the Society of Arts, not as to the value and merit of the system itself,
but as to anything which the society can do in the matter. It is one rule
of the society that no new invention shall be brought forward without a
full explanation of the _modus operandi_ as well as of the leading
principles; and in this case, the objection lay that the inventor declined
to make public, unless under some government agreement, the actual secret
of his method. Mr. Bell replied that, if even he were to write a sentence
in view of the audience, it would add very little to their real knowledge
of the subject; but he furthermore said he was ready to explain the details
of the system to any committee whom the council of the society, or any
other scientific body, may appoint. To us it appears that neither Mr. Bell
nor the society is open to blame in the matter. He has the right to name
the conditions under which he will make his system public; while they have
the right to lay down rules for the governance of their own proceedings.
The results actually produced struck the auditors generally with surprise;
and there can be little doubt that the system will in some way or other, at
all events, work itself into public notice.

------

{422}


  Comparative Mortality of Great Capitals.

Our recent alarm at the appearance and progress of the cholera in London
may have drawn the attention of many who had before been accustomed to pass
them by with indifference, to those columns in the papers in which the
reports of the Registrar-General on the state of the public health are from
time to time recorded. But we are perhaps hardly yet sufficiently awake to
the importance and interest of the statistics there contained, any more
than to the value of the short and, at first sight, rather unintelligible
tables which embody, day after day, the meteorological phenomenon collected
in London from so many different points on our own coast and those of
adjacent countries. These last statistics have an interest which does not
yet belong to those which relate to the public health, in that they embrace
reports from so many distinct places which can be compared together. We, of
course, only publish our own statistics of health, disease, births, and
deaths; and we have not yet seen our way to the information that might be
gathered by a comparison of our own condition in these respects with that
of others under similar circumstances. The interest and value of such a
comparison is obvious enough; and some of the results which might be hoped
from it, if it were systematically and scientifically made, may be guessed
at by the perusal of a thin volume of less than two hundred pages, lately
published in Paris by M. Vacher, [Footnote 136] which at first sight may
seem not to promise very much except to professional readers, but from
which we shall take the liberty of drawing a few facts which certainly seem
worthy of the attention of the more general public.

    [Footnote 136: Etude Médicale et Statistique sur la Mortalité à Paris,
    à Londres, à Vienne et à New-York en 1865. D'aprés les Documens
    officiels, avec une Carte Météorologique et Mortuaire. Par le docteur
    L. Vacher. Paris: F. Savy, 1866.]

Canning once said, in answer to some one who alleged "a well-known fact"
against him, that there was but one thing more fallacious than a fact, and
that was a figure. We must all be ready to allow that the results which we
see embodied so neatly in a set of figures in statistical tables are, after
all, but approaches to the truth; and they are not put forward as anything
more. Still, there is often a wonderful accuracy about the average results
given by statistical inquiries; and it is obvious that when the result of
one calculation is confirmed by that of another independent of the former,
or when one uniform result is given by a continued series of inquiries, or
when there is a very decided preponderance on one side of a comparison,
such as cannot be accounted for by chance, it would be absurd to refuse to
assent to conclusions thus obtained. With this single preliminary remark,
let us proceed to some of the facts collected for us by M. Vacher.

He begins by giving due credit to this country for having taken the lead in
the publication of the kind of statistics with which he has to deal. The
reports of the Registrar-General are all that he can desire. New York and
Vienna have followed, more or less fully, the example set in London. It has
also been copied in St. Petersburg, as far as the registration of deaths is
concerned; and it is hoped that a weekly publication of the results will
soon be made in that city. Paris joined the movement at the end of 1864 or
the beginning of 1865.
{423}
There is, however, some difference of system. The chief point is, that in
England the medical man who attends a sick person reports the cause of
death; in Paris there are certain official physicians, _vérificateurs des
décès_, and these, instead of the attending physician, assign the cause.
The superiority of the English system seems to be acknowledged. M. Vacher's
book is founded on the reports thus produced.

His first business is, of course, to settle approximately the population of
the four capitals with whose statistics he deals--a matter of considerable
difficulty, even with all the results of the census before him. He
calculates the number of the inhabitants of Paris in 1865 at 1,863,000;
those of London were 3,028,600; those of Vienna, 560,000; and those of New
York, 1,025,000, (in 1864.) At the present rate of increase, Paris will
double its population in 32 years, London in 40, Vienna in 44, and New York
in 13½. On the other hand, this increase is not to be set down to the
excess of births over deaths, which in London, in 20 years before 1861, was
only 328,189--about a third of the actual increase, (35 per cent.) In a
similar period, the births exceed the deaths in Paris by only 13 (and a
fraction) per cent of the whole increase. Immigration has therefore the
largest share in the increase of the population. A flow is continually
setting in from the country to the town in the age in which we live, and it
enriches the largest towns, and the capitals especially. New York,
receiving annually so many immigrants from Europe, is, of course, beyond
the others in its gains from this source. Paris has undergone great
vicissitudes as to the number of its inhabitants. In 1762, the population
seems to have been about 600,000. It fell off immensely during the
Revolution; even in 1800 it was only 547,756. From 1790 to 1810 the number
of deaths exceeded the number of births. Since that time the proportion has
been reversed, except in years of great epidemics.

Of the four capitals with which M. Vacher deals, Vienna, the smallest, had
the largest proportion of deaths in 1865. In Vienna the proportion was 1 to
31 of the inhabitants; in Paris, notwithstanding the ravages of the cholera
in October--causing 6591 deaths (nearly an eighth of the whole)--it was 1
to 36; in New York, 1 to 40; in London, 1 to 41. In Paris, London, and New
York, the death rate has diminished in its proportion to the population for
some time past. In Paris, in the three decades of years from 1830 to 1860,
it fell successively from 1 to 31, to 1 to 34, and then to 1 to 38. There
has been the same improvement in the other two cities. In New York, fifteen
years ago, the rate of deaths was 1 to 22--nearly twice as high as at
present. We do not see any statement in M. Vacher's pages as to the case of
Vienna. He attributes the improvement in Paris to some extent to the great
public works and measures for securing the health of the population which
have marked the second empire; but much more, it would seem, to the better
management of the hospitals. In Paris and Vienna a much larger proportion
of the inhabitants die in hospitals than in New York and London; and, as
far as we are concerned, M. Vacher includes workhouses and asylums of all
kinds under the general name of hospitals. He finds, on comparing some
scanty statistics of the last century with the facts of the present, that
in old times the number of deaths in hospitals was far greater in
proportion to the cases admitted than now; and he thinks that, in Paris at
least, this almost explains the improvement in the death-rate. In New York
the same improvement may have had many causes, but it is remarkably
coincident as to time with the magnificent changes made, at an immense
cost, in the water supply of that city. From some meteorological tables
compiled with great care by M. Vacher, we gather the rather surprising
result that the variations of temperature during the year, which have
considerable influence on the death-rate, are greatest at Vienna, (nearly
27°,) next at New York, (25°,) much lower in Paris (17°,) and lowest of all
in London, (15°.)

{424}

One of the most interesting questions at the present time on this subject
is that of the water supply. M. Vacher begins with a cordial tribute to the
Romans on this head. The magnificent aqueducts by which the city of Rome
was supplied date from the time of the early republic, though the emperors
increased their number. At an early point of their history, therefore, the
Romans were wise and liberal enough to dispense with the waters of the
Tiber for drinking. They carried their system everywhere when they became
the masters of the world; in France, in Spain, and in Italy many aqueducts
can still be traced which were their work. We may be quite certain that if
Britain were now a Roman province, the Thames water companies would never
be allowed to supply water except for the streets, and great aqueducts
would long since have brought us the pure water of Bala Lake or Windermere.
Thanks to the popes, modern Rome though not so profusely supplied as in
imperial times, is still very far in advance of all other cities in the
world in this respect. [Footnote 137] M. Vacher reckons the water supply in
ancient Rome as 1492 _litres_ a day for each inhabitant; in modern
Rome it is 1040; in New York, 159; in Vienna. 134; [Footnote 138] in Paris,
according to the new system, 109; in London, 132. But no city seems to have
its _houses_ so well supplied as London; in Rome a great quantity of
water is wasted, being left to run away from the fountains, while the
houses are not conveniently provided with water. We suppose that our old
friend the house-cistern, against which we have heard so many complaints
lately, is not an essential feature in our system of house supply.

    [Footnote 137: M. Vacher attributes the salubrity of Rome--for,
    considering its position, it enjoys remarkable salubrity--to the
    abundance and good quality of its water. Lancisi, who practiced there
    as a physician in the last century, accounts for the longevity of its
    inhabitants in the same way. At all events, remarks M. Vacher, "il est
    impossible de n'étre pas frappé de ce fait, que les historiens ne
    mentionnent pas un seul example de peste à Rome, et qu'au moyen age et
    dans les temps modernes elle a constainment échappé aux atteintes de la
    pests et du choléra, qui ont sévi à plusteurs reprises en Italie." But
    Rome has certainly been visited by the cholera more than once, and the
    rest of the statement is surely contrary to history.]

    [Footnote 138: This statement is, however, an anticipation. The
    municipality of the Vienna has undertaken some immense works in order
    to improve the water supply, at a cost of 16,000,000 florins. The works
    are not yet completed: but M. Vacher gives the quantity of water for
    each inhabitant which they are expected to furnish. Hitherto the city
    has been supplied, it would seem, partly from the Danube, partly by
    wells. The new supply will be drawn from three different sources among
    the neighboring mountains.]

M. Vacher gives the following conclusions as to the sanitary effect of good
and abundant water. He tells us that inorganic substances contained in
water are comparatively innocuous to the health of those who drink it; on
the other hand, great injury is caused by the presence of organic matter.
The best water in Paris--that of the springs on the north--contains nine
times as much of calcareous salts as the water of the Seine; but it is
justly preferred for drinking purposes. On the other hand, M. Vacher quotes
the testimony of M. Bouchut, a professor at the Ecole de Médecine, for the
fact that he noticed the frequency of epidemic diarrhoea during the summer
months in the Quartier de Sèvres and that it had been almost stopped in
cases where the doctors had ordered the water of the Seine to be no longer
used, and had substituted for it water from the artesian well of Grenelle.
He adds his own experience at the Lycée Napoleon, which is supplied from
the reservoir of the Pantheon, which receives its water from the Seine and
the aqueduct d' Arcueil. He had known as many as fifteen students at once
ill of diarrhoea, and the disease was stopped by the "alcoholization of all
the water." [Footnote 139]

    [Footnote 139: P, 106. M. Vacher here cites the Indian case quoted by
    Mr. Farre in is cholera report. The natives in India drink boiled water
    as a preventative against cholera; and it has been found that out of a
    great number in the family of a single proprietor in Calcutta, all of
    whom took this precaution, not a single person had been attacked even
    in the worst times of the prevalence of cholera. But Dr. Frank has
    disapproved at least the universality of this fact.]

As regards cholera, the proof is even more striking than that lately
furnished in the case of London by the great and almost exclusive ravages
of that disease in the eastern districts.
{425}
Mortality by cholera seems ordinarily, as M. Vacher tells us, to follow the
laws of general mortality, that is, it prevails most in those districts
which are ordinarily the most unhealthy. But the one element of good or bad
water supply seems to be enough to counterbalance the influence of the
other causes which affect the comparative mortality of districts. For
instance, difference of elevation is supposed to be one of these causes.
Mr. Farre tells us that the mortality of a district is in inverse
proportion to the elevation: that in nineteen high districts the proportion
of deaths by cholera was as 33 to 10,000; in the same number of low
districts, as 100 to 10,000. This law, however, is not enough, nor is it
free from exception. Sometimes places loftily situated are attacked and
lower places are spared. The elevation of Montmartre is almost equal to
that of Belleville; but Montmartre had last year 3.6 cholera cases to 1000,
Belleville only 1.1. Again, a rich quarter has ordinarily immense
advantages over a poor quarter. The mean mortality by cholera in the poorer
_arrondissements_ of Paris was almost three times as great as that in
the rich _arrondissements_. The reason is obvious: the poor work hard,
have insufficient food, and are crowded together in discomfort and want;
the rich are well fed, not overworked, well and healthily housed. Yet there
was one _arrondissement_ of Paris, and that one of the very poorest,
which in the three first visitations of cholera (1832, 1849, 1854) had
actually the lowest proportion of deaths by cholera of all these districts.
In 1865, it had barely more deaths than the very richest of all, that of
the Opéra, which headed the list on that occasion as the most lightly
visited. This _arrondissement_ was Belleville. Another cause of
comparatively greater mortality is density of population; but here again we
are met by the fact that this fortunate Belleville is very densely
populated. The nature of the soil is another. M. Vacher mentions a number
of departments in the centre of France which have never yet been attacked
by cholera. They are those which consist of a huge granitic mass, like an
island in the midst of the more recent formations around them.
Nevertheless, though this will explain much, and though Belleville has an
advantage in this respect over many of the _arrondissements_ of Paris,
still it has the same geological formation as Montmartre, which had three
times as many deaths (in proportion) from cholera. In short, there is no
way left of accounting for its comparative exemption, except that which we
have already mentioned, the superior character of the water consumed by its
inhabitants. The argument certainly seems as complete as it can possibly
be, and we know that it has been strongly confirmed by our own late
experience. Let us hope that no time may be lost in acting on the lesson
which we have received.

We pass over some interesting statements on the meteorological phenomena
which were observed during the prevalence of the cholera last year in
Paris. [Footnote 140]


    [Footnote 140: M. Vacher here tells a story of his endeavor to make
    some ozonometrical observations in the Paris hospitals, which were
    prohibited by the Directeur de l'Assistance publique--an officer of
    whom M. Vacher is continually complaining on the ground that they would
    frighten the patients. He remarks that on one occasion when travelling
    in the pontifical states, some gendarmes found in his possession a
    psychrometer and an aneroid barometer, and thought they were weapons of
    destruction. He would have been arrested but for M. Matteucci, then
    Director of Police. He complains bitterly of the comparative want of
    enlightenment in the "administration" of his own country. But no
    hospital would have allowed his experiments.]

M. Vacher rather contradicts current opinion by some remarks he has made as
to the relation of cholera to other diseases. Sydenham has remarked that
when several epidemic diseases are rife during the same season, one of them
usually absorbs to itself, as it were, the bulk of the mortality,
diminishing the influence of the rest even below the ordinary level. Thus
in the year of the great plague in London, just two centuries ago, the
smallpox was fatal to only thirty-eight persons, its average being about
eleven hundred.
{426}
However, the general fact is now questioned. In October last, though
4653 persons were carried off by cholera, the mortality by other diseases
in Paris was greater than in any other month of the year. Yet October is
usually one of the most healthy of all the months; and the epidemic
maladies which ordinarily rage during the autumn--typhoid fever, small-pox,
diphtheria, croup, whooping-cough, erysipelas, and puerperal fever--were
prevalent to an extraordinary degree. It is curious also that there was an
unusual number of children born dead.

The most destructive of all ordinary complaints is undoubtedly consumption.
At Vienna it actually causes 25 per cent of the deaths, at Paris 16 per
cent, at London nearly 12 per cent, at New York 14 per cent. It is more
frequent in women than men; it is twice as destructive in poor quarters as
in rich quarters; the age which suffers most from it is between 25 and 40.
The difference between the sexes M. Vacher attributes to the more confined
and retired life led by women. If observations in Paris are to be taken as
enough to furnish a general conclusion, it would appear that more
consumptive patients die in the spring than in the autumn. Here again a
common opinion is overthrown. The most destructive months are March, April,
and May: the least destructive are September, October, and November. We
believe that in this country the fewest consumptive patients die in winter,
and the most in summer. M. Vacher also attacks the notion that maritime
climates are the best for consumptive cases. New York is situated on the
sea, but it loses as many by consumption as London; and in the maritime
counties of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, and Devonshire, the deaths by
consumption are as 1 in 7 of the whole; while in the Midland counties of
Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire, Worcestershire, and Oxfordshire, they are as
1 in 9. "Les phthisiques qu'on envoie à Nice et à Cannes, ou même sur les
bords du Nil, sur la foi d'un passage de Celse, y meurent comme ceux qui
restent sous le ciel natal. Ceux-la, seuls en reviennent guéris, chez qui
le mal n'était pas sans ressources et qui auraient guéri partout ailleurs,"
(p. 129.) We must remember, however, that if such patients are sent to the
seaside, and die there, they raise the death-rate there unfairly. M. Vacher
insists that the guiding principle in selecting a place for the residence
of a consumptive patient should be the absence of great variations in the
temperature rather than the actual number of deaths by the disease.
Consumption, he says, is unknown in Iceland; but that is not a reason for
sending a consumptive patient to that island. As to New York, we have
already quoted his observation as to the variableness of the temperature
there, notwithstanding its maritime position.

Although we have already stated the results of a general comparison of the
mortality in the four capitals--results very favorable to the salubrity of
London--it may be interesting to our readers to learn the state of the case
with regard to particular classes of disease. In most cases, of course, we
have the list in actual numbers: our comparative immunity is only evident
when the great excess of our population is considered. In zymotic diseases
we have little more than a majority of a thousand over Paris; but then we
must remember that in the year of which M. Vacher speaks between 5000 and
6000 persons in Paris died of cholera. This, therefore, would seem to be
one of the classes of disease as to which we are really worst off. As to
constitutional diseases, consumption, cancer, scrofula, gout, rheumatism,
and others, Paris exceeds us in proportion; and it is the same with
diseases of the nervous system. From diseases of the heart we lose between
two and three times as many as the Parisians; this proportion, therefore,
is greatly against us. On the other hand, in diseases of the digestive
organs, Paris, notwithstanding its inferior population, exceeded London by
a hundred deaths in the last year.
{427}
London, however, regains a sad preeminence when we come to diseases of the
respiratory organs, asthma, bronchitis, influenza, and the like: Paris
losing between 7000 and 8000 a year against our 12,500. It is in the
commoner diseases that the worst features of London mortality in 1865 were
found. Typhoid was nearly three times as fatal last year in London as in
Paris; measles four times as fatal; scarlatina not far short of twenty
times; whooping-cough more than thirteen times. As the population of London
is to that of Paris as five to three, it is clear to how great an extent
the balance was against us. It was probably an accident. These diseases
prevail very generally for a time, and then retire: and we have lately been
visited by a period of their prevalence.

We have hitherto spoken only of diseases; but M. Vacher's researches extend
to the comparative frequency of deaths of other kinds. In suicides, New
York has the best account to give, Paris the worst. To speak roughly,
London has twice as many suicides as New York, Vienna twice as many as
London, Paris more than twice as many as Vienna--in comparison, that is,
with the total number of deaths of all kinds. The _actual_ numbers
stand thus: Paris 716, London 267, Vienna 813, New York 36. For the last
nine years there has been little change in the number in London; in New
York it has diminished, in Paris it has increased, having more than doubled
itself since 1839. The two years, 1848 and 1830, which were marked by
revolutionary movements, were also marked by a diminution in the number of
suicides. The relative proportion of suicides increases with age; that is,
it is four times as frequent with people above 70 as with people between 20
and 30. Paris has for a long time been noted as a city in which there were
more suicides than any other. More than eighty years ago, Mercier noted
this, and attributed it to the rage for speculation. Other writers have
since attempted to find a reason for it in the prevalence of democratic
ideas. We suppose that both democratic ideas and speculation are not
unknown in New York, yet that city (and indeed the State itself) is
remarkably free from suicides, and a great number of those that occur are
said to be of Europeans.

But if Paris bears the palm in self-slaughter, no city can vie with London
in slaughter of another kind. Violent deaths are nearly three times as
frequent in London as in Paris. As many as 2241 persons were slain in
London last year; as many, that is, as would be enough for the number of
the killed in a sanguinary battle: 328 were burnt, 405 were suffocated,
(this probably includes children overlaid by their mothers,) 40 were
poisoned, 767 disposed of by "fractures and contusions," 232 were killed by
carriage accidents; leaving 469 to be laid to the account of other
accidents. In the other three capitals the proportion of deaths by
accidents to the whole number of deaths ranges from under one per cent to
under two per cent; in London it is just three per cent. Finally, London
had 132 murders to give an account of in 1865, Paris had 10, and New York
only 5.

We are sorry that the last fact which we glean from M. Vacher's interesting
tables must be one rather disparaging to the great Transatlantic city which
we have last named. Disparaging, that is, positively rather than
comparatively; and we fear that, if the statistics which we are now to
quote do not reveal a terrible state of things in London also, it is
because on this head our admirable system of registration has given M.
Vacher no assistance at all. "Quant à la ville de Londres," he says, "il
m'a été impossible d'arriver à connaitre le chiffre de ses _mort-nés_.
Le Bulletin des Naissances et des Morts ne donne d'ailleurs aucun
renseignement à ce sujet." He expresses his opinion that, if the numbers
were given, London would have quite as bad a tale to tell as Paris or New
York. But the figures in these cities are sufficiently startling.
{428}
In Paris the children "born dead" are to the whole number of deaths as one
to ten; in New York as one to fifteen; in Vienna they are as one to
twenty-three. Twenty years ago, the Préfet of the Seine addressed a
circular to the _maires_ of Paris, in which he drew their attention to
the great number of these children, and pointed out that it was natural to
conclude that their deaths were too often the result of crime. In New York
similar complaints have been made, and we are significantly told that full
reports cannot be obtained on the subject. As to London, we find a large
number of deaths, 1400 or 1500 a year, set down to "premature birth and
debility." We fear it would be quite impossible to give an account of the
number of births which are _prevented_--contrary to the laws of God
and man alike. We need hardly do more than allude to the frightful increase
of infanticide, on which Dr. Lankester has lately spoken so strongly. Mr.
Humble's Essay on the subject in Mr. Orby Shipley's volume contains some
very startling statistics. There are as many as 12,000 women in London to
whom this crime may be imputed. "In other words," says Mr. Humble, "one in
every thirty women (I presume, between fifteen and forty-five) is a
murderess." We must hope that there is exaggeration about this; but if it
were one in every thirty thousand, it would be bad enough--a state of
things calling down the judgments of heaven on the land.

The Anglican writer to whom we have just alluded speaks with some apparent
prejudice against the most obvious remedy for infanticide--the
establishment of foundling hospitals, perfectly free. There may be some
objections to these institutions, but we must confess that, in the face of
the facts on which we are commenting, they seem to us rather like arguments
against life-boats because they may encourage oversecurity in exposure to
the dangers of the sea. If Mr. Humble will read, or read again, Dr. Burke
Ryan's Essay on Infanticide, which gained the Fothergillian prize medal
some time ago, and in which the fact seems to be proved that the crime is
more common in England than anywhere else, he will perhaps see reason to
conclude, from the French statistics there adduced, that foundling
hospitals are more effectual in preventing this abominable evil than
anything else that has ever been devised.

------

    Miscellany.


_New Electric Machines_.--At the conversazione given by the president
of the Royal Society at Burlington House, London, the display of newly
constructed astronomical, optical, and other philosophical instruments
afforded a gratifying proof of improvements in the mode of construction,
and of increased skill on the part of the constructors. The large
spectroscope, which is to be used in combination with Lord Rosse's monster
telescope, was a triumph of workmanship and of philosophical adaptation of
means to ends; and we may expect ere long to hear of important discoveries
in spectroscopic phenomena. Mr. C. W. Siemens and Professor Wheatstone
exhibited each one a remarkable electric machine of his own invention,
which demonstrated in a surprising way the convertibility of mechanical
force into electricity. In these machines, a bar of soft iron, wrapped
lengthwise in copper wire, is made to rotate between two other bars of soft
iron, which are fixed. The rotating bar is inoculated, so to speak, with a
small touch of magnetism, and then being set spinning very rapidly, the
small touch is generated into a stream of electricity, which passes off
with a crackling noise, increasing or diminishing in proportion to the
rotation.
{429}
In a laboratory, such a machine would be highly serviceable, as it could be
used to generate large quantities of electricity very cheaply, and there is
no doubt but that many other ways of turning it to account will be
discovered. Mr. Siemens has already discovered one most important way,
namely, the lighting-up of buoys and beacons at a distance from the shore,
by sending a current of electricity to them through a submarine cable. That
is the way in which he purposes to employ the electricity generated by his
machine: his method has been approved by the Commissioners of Northern
Light-houses, who intend to apply it to light the buoys and beacons that
mark the most dangerous spots round the coast of Scotland. But of all
wonderful electric machines, the one invented by Mr. H. Wilde of Manchester
is the most wonderful. A machine which weighs about four and a half tons,
including one ton of copper wire, and which requires an eight-horse
steam-engine to keep its armature in rotation, must necessarily produce
tremendous effects. It gives off electric fire in torrents: the light
produced is intense, and is quite as useful to photographers as sunlight,
with the advantage over the sun, that it can be used on dark days and at
night. This light, as we hear, is already employed in manufacturing
establishments, and is to be introduced into light-houses. A French
company, who have purchased the right to use it in France, will try it
first in the light-house on Cape Grisnez, whence, as is said, the light
will radiate not only all across the Channel, but some distance into the
southern counties of England. Besides the production of light, the new
machine is applicable to important manufacturing purposes; the size of the
machine being altered to suit special circumstances. A well-known firm at
Birmingham are about to use it, instead of a galvanic battery, for the
deposition of copper on articles required to be coated with that metal. In
this case, the electricity of the machine is substituted for the acid and
zinc of the battery, and will cost less. In another instance, the machine
is to be used for the production of ozone in large quantities for
employment in bleaching operations. Professor Tyndall exhibited the
sensitive flame, on which he had given a lecture at the Royal Institution:
or, to be more explicit, he made experiments to show the action of sound on
flame. The results are remarkable. A tall flame, looking like an ordinary
gas-flame, issuing from a circular orifice in an iron nipple, behaves in an
extraordinary way when, by increased pressure, it is raised to fourteen or
sixteen inches in length. If a shrill whistle be blown in any part of the
room, it suddenly drops down to about half the length, and rises again
immediately on cessation of the sound. A blow of a hammer on a board
produces a similar effect; and still more so when the blow is on an anvil:
the flame then jumps with surprising briskness, the reason being that the
ring of the anvil combines those higher tones to which the flame is most
sensitive. So tuning-forks, at the ordinary pitch, produce no effect; but
if made to vibrate one thousand six hundred, or two thousand, or more times
in a second, the flame responds energetically. In another experiment, a
fiddle is played in presence of a flame twenty inches in length--the low
notes produce no effect; but when the highest string is sounded, "the jet,"
to quote Professor Tyndall's own words, "instantly squats down to a
tumultuous bushy flame, eight inches long." And the same effect is produced
by strokes on a bell at twenty yards' distance: at every stroke the flame
drops instantaneously. This last experiment is a good illustration of the
rapidity with which sound is propagated through air, for there is no
sensible interval between the bell-stroke and the shortening of the flame.
Another flame, nearly twenty inches long, is yet more sensitive, for the
rustle of a silk dress, a step on the floor, creaking of boots, dropping of
a small coin, all make it drop down suddenly to eight inches, or become
violently agitated. At twenty yards' distance, the rattle of a bunch of
keys in the hand shortens the flame, and it is affected even by the fall of
a piece of paper, or the plashing of a raindrop. To the vowel U, it makes
no response; to O, it shakes; E makes it flutter strongly; and S breaks it
up into a tumultuous mass. Many more instances might be given, but these
will suffice to show that surprising effects are produced by sound. To the
scientific inquirer they will be serviceable as fresh illustrations in the
science of acoustics. _Chambers's Journal_.

------

{430}

    Original.

    New Publications.


  American Boys And Girls.
  Two Essays from the recently published volume,
  "American Leaves." By Samuel Osgood,
  Minister of the Church of the
  Messiah, New-York. Harpers. 1867.

These essays were reprinted, the author tells us, at the request of a lady,
for general circulation, with the hope of doing some good to the rising
generation, and those who have the charge of bringing them up. We hope they
may do good, and they certainly will if they exercise any practical
influence at all upon either parents or young people. Their literary merit
is undeniable. The topics they touch upon are, however, so painfully
momentous that it is impossible to dwell with mere critical enjoyment upon
their readable qualities as essays to be amused with during a leisure hour.
Their charm of style is only to be appreciated as a means of alluring
attention to the very grave and alarming truths which they contain. The
author touches with a light and delicate hand upon a very sore and diseased
spot in our social system, and hints, in a manner which is intelligible to
the instructed without being dangerous to the innocent, at evils which may
well awaken the alarm of every one who is solicitous for the well-being of
the family, the community, and the race. We are especially pleased with his
very sound remarks upon the luxury, extravagance, and effeminacy which are
exercising such a corrupting influence upon American society. We think,
however, the doctor is more successful in pointing out the evils which
exist than in proposing a remedy for them. The sacramental doctrine of
matrimony, the Catholic law maintaining its absolute indissolubility, the
sacrament of penance, and the authority of a church which is a supreme
judge and lawgiver, executed by a priesthood who are independent of the
opinions, caprices, and trammels of worldly society, are alone sufficient
to reform the vitiated, or preserve the integrity of youth. It were as easy
to catch the devil in a mouse-trap as to renovate society by any means
which Unitarian Christianity has at its disposal.

The author's very irrelevant digression upon the Catholic doctrine of
celibacy adds one more to the numberless instances in which respectable
writers criticise rashly without understanding their subject. He says, (p.
109,) "We know very well that theorists of extreme classes, who have noted
the decrease in the number of marriages in high life, are inclined to
rejoice at it, and for opposite reasons: the one class because they think
celibacy to be the higher condition." After several more passages, in which
the language is very ambiguous, and may easily be understood as veiling a
covert insinuation against the Catholic clergy and religious communities,
the author concludes his remarks thus: "We believe that a true Christian
wife has a purity that angels may not scorn and many a nun might covet, and
that the man who keeps his marriage vows need not ask of any ghostly monk
for lessons in manly virtue. The longer we live the more we reverence God's
obvious law, and the less we admire the devices of men who forbid marriage,
and so undertake to be wiser than God."

It is quite the reverse of truth that a Catholic moralist, whether
"ghostly" or otherwise, approves of or recommends or rejoices in a general
practice of celibacy among either the wealthy or the poorer classes. The
Catholic clergy recommend and favor marriage for the generality of persons
as by far the best and happiest state for them. The Catholic doctrine does
not disparage the purity of Christian wives, or the virtue of married men
who are faithful to their matrimonial obligations. The spectral gentleman,
whose lessons the doctor politely declines in advance, would probably, if
he had the chance to give one, pass over the evangelical counsels, and
enlarge on the moral duty of representing things as they are. The Catholic
Church does not "forbid marriage." She teaches that it is a sacrament. The
Greek Church has corrupted it by permitting divorce; every Protestant
Church has done the same; the civil law has laid its barbarous hand upon it
to drag it from the protecting power of the church. The Roman Church alone
has first raised it to its proper elevation and indissolubility, and
afterward defended it by her uncompromising law from desecration.
{431}
We advise the doctor to turn his attention more undividedly to the work of
rehabilitating marriage in the rights of which corrupt morals and
legislation have deprived it, and not to distress himself with the fear
lest the sacrament should be despised or neglected by Catholics.


  Sermon On The Dignity And Value Of Labor.
  By the Rev. Joseph Fransioli,
  Pastor of St. Peter's Church, Brooklyn, L.I.

This is a first-class popular sermon; plain, practical, and encouraging.
That Christianity has redeemed the masses in elevating and dignifying
manual labor is plain enough to the student of history. That which was a
curse in Adam is turned into a blessing in Christ. It is equally true that
when men forget the Christian aim of life and suffer themselves to be
guided, as too large a class of our modern society does, by heathen
principles, labor becomes contemptible, poverty becomes a misfortune, and
the wearing of patches and rags a crime. The preacher thus fitly
characterizes labor: "Work is of divine origin. It is not a human
invention, or a system adopted by civil society for its wants in the
different classes; it is a divine institution, an obligation imposed by
God's eternal wisdom upon all men without distinction whatsoever. It is a
divine institution distributing labor in its various branches among all
men, not creating, properly speaking, different classes. Work is leading
men towards God, the centre of perfection. Work, then, ennobles man, and
the true dignity and worthiness of a man is to be measured by the
proportion of his work."

Again, he is justly severe upon the modern distinction of "low" and
"respectable" classes in this false sense. "The father who carries the
shovel on his shoulders to dig the foundation of your buildings; the son
who, early in the morning, is seen walking, tools in hand; the washerwoman
and the servant girl who clean your clothes and honestly and faithfully do
the work of your houses, are not low. They discharge a noble task which
their families appreciate and which God will reward. Do you know who belong
to the very lowest classes of men and Christians? Those that speculate on
the lives of the poor laborers by building monstrous tenement houses, where
bad ventilation, poor light, scarcity of water, and dilapidated rooms lead
the over-crowded and over-taxed inmates to misery and a premature death.
Those that sue for divorces in the courts, ride in carriages, and display
themselves in public with more than one wife, more than one family, more
than one God; trampling on human and divine law. Those that spend their
nights in gambling, their days in hypocritical schemes, who never balance
their expenses with their revenues, and consume double the amount of their
salaries, and leave their bills unpaid or shamefully defraud their
employers. These and many others of the same stamp, whose number is
countless; these swell the figures of the low classes." This is preaching
which reasons "of judgment and justice," and tells the truth without fear
or favor. It is a refreshing sermon, and lacks in nothing but in having
been too hastily printed, being full of typographical errors.


  Frithiof's Saga.
  From the Swedish of Esaias Tegnér, Bishop of Wexiö. By the Rev. William
  Lewery Blackley, M.A. First American edition, edited by Bayard Taylor:
  pp. 201, 12mo. New-York, Leypoldt & Holt. 1867.

Several translations of this beautiful poem have been made in English, each
of which had its own peculiar merit. An accurately literal translation of a
foreign book possesses the value of presenting to us just what the author
says; but the manner of his speech, the true spirit which gives life and
character to his work, must necessarily be wanting. Such was the
translation of Tegnér's poem, by Prof. George Stephens, published at London
in 1839. Prof. Longfellow was more successful in the poetic versions he
gave in an article on the poet contributed by him to the North American
Review of July, 1837. That of Mr. Blackley before us is not only a faithful
translation, but is also English poetry, preserving in its style enough of
the wild Scandinavian spirit to mark its origin. As a specimen we subjoin
the following extract from "Frithiof at Sea." The hero is compelled to make
a dangerous voyage by two kings, Helge and Halfdan, whose sister Ingeborg
he is wooing contrary to their consent:

{432}

      "Now, King Helge stood
         In fury on the strand,
       And in embittered mood
         Adjured the storm-fiend's hand.

  "Gloomy is the heaven growing,
     Through desert skies the thunders roar,
   In the deep the billows brewing
     Cream with foam the surface o'er.
   Lightnings cleave the storm-cloud, seeming
     Blood-red gashes in its side;
   And all the sea-birds, wildly screaming,
     Fly the terrors of the tide.

        "Storm is coming, comrades;
         Its angry wings I hear
         Flapping in the distance,
         But fearless we may be.
         Sit tranquil in the grove,
         And fondly think on me,
         Lovely in thy sorrow,
         Beauteous Ingeborg.

    "Now two storm-fiends came
       Against Ellida's side;
     One was wind-cold Ham,
       One was snowy Heyd.

  "Loose set they the tempest's pinions,
     Down diving in ocean deep;
   Billows, from unseen dominions,
     To the god's abode they sweep.
   All the powers of frightful death,
     Astride upon the rapid wave,
   Rise from the foaming depths beneath,
     The bottomless, unfathomed grave.

      "Fairer was our journey
       Beneath the shining moon,
       Over the mirrory ocean,
       To Balder's sacred grove.
       Warmer far than here
       Was Ingeborg's loving heart;
       Whiter than the sea-foam
       Heaved her gentle breast.

       ......

    "Now ocean fierce battles:
       The wave-troughs deeper grow,
     The whistling cordage rattles,
       The planks creak loud below.

  "But though higher waves appearing
     Seem like mountains to engage,
   Brave Ellida, never fearing,
     Mocks the angry ocean's rage.
   Like a meteor, flashing brightness,
     Darts she forth with dauntless breast,
   Bounding with a roebuck's lightness
     Over trough and over crest.

      "Sweeter were the kisses
       Of Ingeborg in the grove,
       Than here to taste in tempest
       High-sprinkled, briny foam.
       Better the royal daughter
       Of Bele to embrace,
       Than here in anxious labor
       The tiller fast to hold.

    "Whirling cold and fast,
       Snow-wreaths fill the sail;
     Over deck and mast
       Patters heavy hail.

  "The very stern they see no more,
     So thick is darkness spread,
   As gloom and horror hovers o'er
     The chamber of the dead.
   Still, to sink the sailor, dashes
     Implacable each angry wave;
   Gray, as if bestrewn with ashes,
     Yawns the endless, awful grave."

The Swedish language is full of melody and of imitative harmony; as the
author himself calls it:

  "Language of honor and conquest,
     how manly thy accents, and noble!
   Ring'st like the smitten steel,
     and mov'st like the march of the planets."

It is, therefore, difficult of translation, and one who would attempt it
must not only be well versed in that language, but must also possess a more
than ordinary knowledge of English. Mr. Blackley has, we think,
accomplished his task with no small degree of success.



  Moore's Irish Melodies.
  With a Memoir of the poet.
  Illustrated by D. Maclise, R.A., and William Riches. Columbus, Ohio:
  Riches & Moore, Engravers, Printers, and Publishers.

The enterprising publishers of this work have certainly spared no pains in
its profuse illustration, the engravings being of such a character as to
occupy at least two thirds of the space in each page. The many admirers of
the melodious verses of the great Irish poet will welcome this new and
elegant edition of them.

A copy of the designs, if furnished by the pencil of Maclise, should alone
be worth the price of the book. It is sold only by subscription.



  Eug. Cummiskey, Philadelphia, announces
  for immediate publication the first
  series of his Juvenile Library, in twelve
  vols. The following are the titles of
  the volumes of the first series:
    The Great Tenabraka;
    Miss Touch-All;
    The Young Raiders;
    The Old Beggar;
    George, the Little Chimney-Sweep;
    The Lost Child;
    The Desert Island;
    Bethlehem;
    Pat, the Little Emigrant;
    Idleness;
    Negligence;
    The Little Gardeners.
  These tales will
  form a collection of stories for children.
  The price of the set is to be $5.40. He
  has also in press Barbarossa; an Historical
  Tale of the Twelfth Century, and The
  Vengeance of a Jew.


--------

{433}

  The Catholic World

  Vol. V., No. 28 July, 1867.

------

  Original.

  Catholic Congresses.


We do not hesitate to say that but few Catholics in this country are aware
of one of the most important events in the modern history of the church in
Europe, the meeting of the Catholic congresses.

Inaugurated by a council of twenty-six bishops at Würzburg, and a general
convention of the clergy and laity at Mayence in 1848, the Catholic
congresses became an accomplished fact, and since that time each succeeding
year has recorded the meeting of one or more of these assemblies held in
different cities of Belgium and Germany.

The renewal of Catholic life, the strengthening of Catholic principles, and
the steady and sure return of the people of those countries to the faith,
is, in a great measure, due to the influence which these reunions have
exerted on the public mind. In the beginning they appear to have received
their impetus chiefly from a desire to place the church, so long enslaved
in Germany beneath the tyranny of Protestantism, trammelled by state
interference, and so desperately attacked by the wide-spread infidelity of
the day, upon a free and independent footing.

Feeling themselves strong enough to speak, they spoke and demanded the
freedom of the church. An universal response was thus elicited, not only
from the clergy, who are the ordinary mouth-pieces in matters of the
welfare of the church, but there started up at once zealous and devoted
laymen, who were competent to take part in the discussion of questions of
interest to Catholic society. Expression stimulated thought, and the
influence of these conventions soon permeated every class of society,
awakening in all minds a desire to contribute something to the general
stock of information and experience which these assemblies began to gather
in, like so much latent force, wherewith to repel the attack of
adversaries, and to advance the cause of truth and pure morality.

It was truly a Catholic project, and which none but Catholics could attempt
without weakening the cause they would undertake by a certain manifestation
of discordant and irreconcilable principles and the consequent loss of
power. But Catholics may unite for mutual edification and enlightenment,
joined as they are as brethren in a common faith, whose principles and aims
are alike in every country and with all people, and be sure of reaping
thereby solid fruits, and of adding new triumphs for religion.

{434}

These general conventions in Germany culminated finally in the great
Catholic congresses of Malines and Würzburg, the first of which opened at
the former city in 1863. "This congress," says a writer, "exerted a magic
influence; the drowsy were aroused from their lethargy, and the
faint-hearted were inspired with confidence: they saw their strength and
felt it. In that congress we see the beginning of a new epoch in the
religious history of Belgium."

The great benefits arising from this movement were recognized and
encouraged from the start by the Holy Father, in honor of whose approval
the different associations took the name of "Piusvereine," a name still
retained by those held in Switzerland. The first great congress of Malines
was opened under the auspices of his eminence, Cardinal Sterckz, archbishop
of that city, to which the Pope also sent an autograph letter containing
his august sanction and words of benediction.

Everywhere and by all classes the most lively interest was shown in the
work, and men of merit flocked to take part in the deliberations, members
of the clergy, secular and regular, the nobility, statesmen, philosophers,
editors, professors in every department of science, painters, sculptors,
musicians, architects, builders, heads of pious and charitable societies;
each and all vying with one another in bringing in the fruits of their
learning and experience, that their brethren in the faith might be
benefited by them, and the Catholic cause be strengthened and advanced by
the results of their united efforts. The sentiments with which they were
inspired may be gathered from the following extract of the reply sent by
the congress of Malines to the Holy Father:

  "It is true the trials of our times are great and grievous, and if they
  be, they at least should make us Catholics understand the necessity of
  organizing with more union and with greater energy than ever, to assure
  the liberty of the church and of all the works which she inspires. If
  associations are formed from one end of the world to the other for all
  the interests of life, and too often for the propagation of evil, we
  Catholics have the right, and are in duty bound, to associate ourselves
  together for the interests of the good and the true. This sacred right we
  intend to exercise with that perseverance and self denial which become
  the disciples of Christ.

  "On every hand the enemies of our faith league together to shake the
  foundations of the church of God. We, devoted children of that church,
  will put together all our forces to defend it. We wish to strengthen the
  bonds of charity between us, fortify ourselves against the seductions of
  the age, enlighten and encourage one another--to seek, in fine, the means
  of comforting and consoling the little ones and the poor, whom our Lord
  Jesus Christ loved with such a tender love."

The report of the assembly records that the reading of this was received
with unanimous and prolonged acclamations.

That the members of these congresses meant work in coming together is
evident from the report of their proceedings. We have before us two large
octavo volumes of 400 pages each, closely printed, which contain the
accounts of only the congress of Malines, held in 1863. It gives the
speeches, discussions, reports of committees, etc., at length, and is a
record of immense and patient labor, of deep scientific research, and of
earnest and devoted effort. Another volume of equal size is the published
report of the department of religious music alone. In this as well as in
other branches of art and science prizes have been offered of a notable
value for original productions. We observe in a late report of the congress
of Malines of 1866, that the prize offered for a mass, composed according
to the rules adopted by a former congress, brought in seventy-six original
compositions, of which the musical critics (of whose severity there can be
little doubt) reported twenty-one as of first class, and twenty-six of
medium merit.
{435}
The programme of the next congress in the same city, to be opened next
September, offers among others a prize of 1000 francs for the design of a
church. We hope that, among the many of our bishops and distinguished
laymen who will visit Europe this summer, some will be able to find the
time to be present at this great Catholic assembly, and examine its
projects and working.

The clergy have from the start seconded these congresses with all their
influence, and a very large number of them are regular and active members.
Discourses were pronounced before them by several distinguished prelates,
among whom we remark the names of Cardinal Wiseman and Bishop Dupanloup.
Yet all the members meet upon a perfect equality. The title to membership
is that of merit alone, and the guarantee that one has something positive
to offer for the furtherance of the objects for which the congress is
convened. No one appears as a general delegate of veto, or as a committee
of one on objections; but each one comes well posted up in the department
in which he is interested, well prepared with his documents, notes of
experience, authorities, etc., and hence their deliberations are based upon
solid matter and not upon visionary ideas or imaginary schemes. It is easy
to see how these congresses have produced such practical results as the
advanced state of Catholicity has shown in the last few years throughout
Germany and Belgium. Art in its relations to religion and the church has
been so well encouraged that the congress of 1864 saw over one hundred
artists and archaeologists assembled in council. All that contributes to
the propriety and majesty of the divine service in church decoration and
furniture received special attention, and numerous works have been
published in consequence.

Catholic journalism received such an impetus that Belgium, small as it is,
now boasts of fifty Catholic periodicals. In Europe they understand the
importance of fostering and purifying this department of public
instruction. A late German writer says: "Journalism is an important
profession, whose members should be conscientious and honorable men. The
journalist addresses his language to an audience far more numerous than the
professors, and at present his influence is, so to say, unlimited; he
reaches every part of educated society, and sways public opinion. He is
called to be the standard-bearer of liberty and truth. He must, therefore,
implant sound principles in the popular mind, and, standing above the reach
of paltry prejudice, unite in himself a high degree of intelligence and
true devotion to the eternal laws of the church. Without independence,
dignity, and moral freedom he cannot do justice to the task imposed on him
by God. _'Impavidum ferient ruinae.'_ In England, America, and
Belgium, the press wields a powerful influence; it has become sovereign,
and is necessary to the nation's life. Science feels that, unless it is
diffused, it is powerless, and that the school-room is too narrow a field."
The foundation of a great Catholic university for Germany is now under
consideration, and a large sum is already subscribed toward it. In this
respect Belgium is far in advance of its more populous and powerful
neighbor. By persistent and united effort the university of Louvain was
established, and it now numbers 800 more students than those of the three
state universities put together. We cannot refrain from transcribing the
following earnest words of the writer already quoted. Speaking of Germany,
he says:

  "We must found a new university, a purely Catholic and free institution,
  untrammelled by state dictation, and entirely under the direction of the
  church. To do this, the bishops, the nobles, and the clergy must use
  their best endeavors; but the professors, too, must do their share, and
  not look on with cool indifference, as is the case with most of them. ...
  There is neither truce nor rest for us until we are _not only equal,
  but superior_ to our opponents in every branch of science."

{436}

The congress of Würzburg founded a "Society for the Publication of Catholic
Pamphlets," and it was so well received that in two years' time the number
of its subscribers amounted to 25,000. Few of its many projects proposed
and discussed appear to have met with such an enthusiastic reception and
inspired such lively interest as this. In passing, let us be permitted to
hope that a similar society lately founded in the United States may meet
with a like encouragement, and that our people will appreciate the
necessity of supporting with all their energies this truly apostolic work.

It is not surprising that the attention of these congresses was turned in
an especial manner to the subject of charity, both corporal and spiritual.
It is the spirit of Catholic charity that prompted these reunions and gave
to them both their life and fruit. Says the writer above quoted, on this
subject:

  "Charity is the culminating point of all activity, for what is religion
  but practical love of God and of our neighbor? Truth must not only be
  proved, but felt; science and art are the necessary fruits of true
  religion; science is not the light, but is to give testimony of the
  light. The object of art is the beautiful; of science, the true; and of
  charity, the good; but the beautiful, the true, and the good are the
  three highest categories--the indispensable conditions of intellectual
  activity--the connecting links between the intellect and God, who is the
  fountain head and prototype of all being, as well as the last end of
  human investigations and aspirations."

The deliberations of these congresses, therefore, embraced every form of
charity, while they confined themselves to such branches of art and science
as have more or less direct relation to religion. The report of the
congress of Malines before us refers to discussions, resolutions, etc.,
upon a vast number of charitable projects, the titles of some of which we
are tempted to lay before our readers, that they have some adequate idea of
the herculean labors of these zealous assemblies.

  Catholic Society for the Burial of the Poor;
  Society for the Propagation of the Faith;
  Establishment at London of a Seminary for
    Missions among the Heathen;
  Missions of Herzégovines in Turkey;
  Erection of a Catholic Church and Schools in St. Petersburg;
  Foundation of a Belgian Mission in China;
  Pilgrimages to Rome;
  Means of consolidating and developing Catholic
    Charitable Institutions;
  Extension of the Society of St. Vincent of Paul;
  Societies of St. Francis Xavier and
    St. John the Baptist for workmen;
  OEuvre of the Ladies of Mercy;
  OEuvre of Mothers of Families;
  Means of extending and propagating Instruction in Free Schools;
  Diffusion of Good Books;
  Foundation of Public Libraries;
  Schools for Deaf-Mutes;
  Foundation of a Chair, in the University of
    Louvain, of Industry and Mining;
  The Subject of the Marriage of Soldiers;
  Protectorates of Children;
  Protectorates of Students;
  do. of Apprentices;
  do. of Young Journeymen;
  Young Men's Societies in Ireland and elsewhere;
  Orphanages;
  Hospitals, etc., etc.

If so much in the matter of charity alone forms the subject of
consideration at one of these congresses, our readers will naturally be led
to suppose that a large number of persons must be brought together on these
occasions. In this they are not mistaken, for at the congress at Würzburg,
in 1864 the number of delegates amounted 7000. What a truly magnificent and
inspiring spectacle must have been presented at the opening of this
assembly, when those _seven thousand_ Catholic men, one in faith, and
united in charity, full of zeal and whole souled devotion to the holy
church, assisted in a body at the grand solemn mass of the Holy Ghost, and
implored on bended knees the benediction of God upon their future labors!

{437}

With this scene before our eyes, are not we Catholics of America tempted to
envy them with a holy envy the glorious work in which they are engaged, and
to wish that it was in our own land and for the good of our own people that
all this was done? Is there one who glances at the titles we have given
above of some of their labors, who does not see that we too need, even more
than our brethren in Europe, to have all these subjects relating to the
advancement of religion, the instruction of the people, and the comfort of
the poor brought under consideration, the best means of their
accomplishment discussed, the knowledge and experience of our best Catholic
men, both clergy and laity, brought under contribution, unity and
organization furthered, and, by combining our forces, strike a good blow
for the glory of God and the good of our fellow-men? The laity think of
nothing but of contributing their money when called upon to aid some good
work, and our over-tasked clergy are left to devise, plan, superintend, and
carry out every religious project under heaven.

Now, it cannot be denied that there are thousands of our laymen fully
competent to co-operate with the clergy in every branch of religious
science, art, and charity. If they would add their minds to their money,
and put their own individual energies to the wheel, a power would at once
be created in the church of the United States irresistible to its enemies,
and a certain guarantee of the glory and triumph of our holy faith.

The want of such a congress has already been the subject of much serious
reflection with many persons, whose position and duties oblige them to
recognize the necessity of union and cooperation in carrying out the
various good works in which they are engaged. If we are truly imbued with
the spirit of our holy religion, we should not only be far from grudging
the communication of our knowledge and experience to our brethren, but
should rather burn to impart it, to make it profitable to the church at
large; and we are convinced that in no other way could this be so
effectually done as in a congress modelled upon those of Belgium and
Germany.

The form of their congress is precisely that to which we are well
accustomed here in organized assemblies. All projects are first referred to
particular committees and put in proper shape to be presented before the
whole congress, where they are quickly disposed of according to their
merits. The statutes or rules under which they meet are of such a character
as to produce perfect harmony in their discussions, and the subjects which
are admitted as proper for deliberation and deserving of encouragement are
just such as the good of religion demands attention to and united action
upon at our hands.

Not a few of the first scientific men in the United States are Catholics.
True science must necessarily be in harmony with the true religion. It has
been the fashion of late to consider that they are in no way related to or
dependent one upon the other.

The doctrine of Luther, that reason must be left out of account in
religion, and that its judgments are not to be sought for nor relied upon
in matters of faith, has resulted in turning scientific men out of the
church.

Men will reason, will claim and use their reason as they should, by divine
right; and if you divorce reason from religion, what wonder that they will
accept the decision and look upon science as a department of human
knowledge and belief over which religion has no control? The Catholic
Church has never professed this degrading doctrine; on the contrary, she
has stoutly condemned all propositions implying it in any sense; but still,
Catholic men of science must associate with scientific infidels as
scientific men; they must correspond, deliberate, examine, and discuss
questions of vital importance with them, who make no hesitation in assuming
premises and forming theories the conclusions of which are contradictory to
faith. We are not here accusing our brethren, or casting suspicion upon
their orthodoxy.
{438}
What we intend to imply is simply this, that for want of fraternal
co-operation and mutual recognition and encouragement the false principle
we have alluded to above is gradually gaining ascendency in the popular as
well as in the scientific mind. Had we a "Catholic Academy" composed of the
men who stand high in intellectual culture and scientific research, such an
"academy" as the European congresses are now striving to found, we should
be able to present a bold front in the arena of science, and compel
attention to its true principles and to the fact of their consonance with
the teachings of faith. Thus a right arm of power would be given to the
church from a source which now practically ignores it. It has been our
pleasure to meet in different cities of the Union with many men, devout
Catholics, whose names would grace an academic roll of first class merit.
Indeed, and we say it knowingly, in every profession--in philosophy,
medicine, law, geology, as well as in the army and navy, Catholics rank
with the foremost. What they need, and what the church needs on their
account, we say again, is union, opportunity, and mutual acquaintance and
support. It is impossible to estimate what influence a body of such men
would exert, or with what respect for our holy religion they would inspire
the American public.

Neither must it be forgotten that the church alone possesses an universal
and complete system of Christian philosophy. For the want of this,
Protestantism has in the main abandoned all attempts to reconcile the
deductions of reason with the dogmas of revelation. Hence, its systems of
dogmatic theology are extremely jejune and discordant. Let us bring this
fact before the minds of the intellectual men of our age and country, and
at once Protestantism as a reasonable system of religion must fall below
their contempt.

But the institution of a Catholic academy must be consequent upon the
foundation of a Catholic university. We have some good schools, where a
more scholarly knowledge of the classics can be acquired than in
professedly Protestant colleges, but they surpass us in all other branches
of science and intellectual culture. And the reason is plain. Their
professorial chairs are filled by men of superior attainments, whose
services are secured by good salaries.

Their standard for graduation is, however, extremely low compared to that
required by the European colleges and universities. Indeed, most of our
Protestant and Catholic colleges, too, accord the diploma to all their
students, irrespective of their merits. We ourselves have been called upon,
by a graduate of one of the oldest and most respectable Protestant colleges
in the country, to translate his diploma into English, that the old folks
at home might know what it meant. We need to raise our own colleges to a
higher standard than they now possess, and to offer to our men of talent
the means of completing the imperfect education of an ordinary college
course. To do this we must have an university whose requirements for
matriculation shall demand a rigid examination, in which the candidate must
come off thoroughly successful; whose chairs shall be filled with
first-class professors, and which shall possess an ample endowment for its
purposes.

This great work, which is the hope of all the scholars in the country, can
only be carried out by united effort on the part of the episcopate and the
wealthy laity, and a congress would be a most fitting opportunity for
bringing the matter to a definitive and practical conclusion. Great men in
council will do great things, and generous souls will be stimulated to
emulate examples of heroic sacrifice. It is a word to the wise.

Of all the departments of public instruction, the press needs amongst us
the improvement, encouragement, and sanction which a congress is calculated
to give.
{439}
Think of Belgium, with only 5,000,000 inhabitants, supporting over
_fifty_ Catholic periodicals, and possessing numerous societies for
the publication of cheap religious books and pamphlets! Our Catholic
population of the United States is at least equal in number to that of the
whole of Belgium. Yet with all our numbers and means we have not one daily
paper under Catholic supervision, a most important work, to the
establishment of which one of the first efforts of a Catholic congress with
us should be directed. Those who complain of our Catholic press, and make
invidious comparisons between the literary merit of our periodicals and our
neighbors', should remember that editors are professional men, and not to
be obtained for the wages of a day laborer; and that a first-class
periodical must have a first-class circulation. A congress of editors would
tend to elevate the tone of the Catholic press, and its voice would
stimulate all classes to greater effort in promoting a more generous
diffusion of this kind of literature. An increased circulation would enable
the conductors of our journals to pay for original contributions, and
engage the services of first-class writers; an outlay which very few of
them have now the means of making.

That the Catholic Publication Society, now successfully founded, needs the
influence of a congress to extend its operations to the different cities
and towns of the Union, is plain to be seen. There are hundreds of zealous
persons of every condition of life who are waiting to be told what to do to
advance its interests, who want to see some system of local organization
proposed and sanctioned by some proper authority. Its friends wish to meet
together, to know each other, and after due deliberation to frame fitting
resolutions for action, which upon their return to their respective homes
they may carry into effect.

This important project cannot be fully realized, and be fruitful, under
God, in instructing and edifying thousands of souls unto salvation, unless
a public and general interest be excited in its success, and with the
active co-operation of the great charitable associations and pious
confraternities now established amongst us.

There is also a pressing necessity for us to obtain fuller information, and
come to a decision about the subject of church architecture, and all that
relates to the exterior of divine worship. We are building cathedrals and
churches in every style, and on principles which are as various as there
are fancies and theories in the brains of architects. Immense sums of money
are needed and collected for this purpose, and it is of the greatest moment
that they be wisely expended.

The time has come when every church we erect should be an honor to us for
its architectural beauty, its substantial character, and adaptability to
our needs, and when the generous alms of the faithful should no longer be
thrown away upon unsightly, badly planned, and worse built edifices, of
which so many exist in our country, to the great discomfort of both priest
and people, and monuments (happily not lasting ones) of the want of
knowledge and experience of those who constructed them.

It becomes us, therefore, to encourage our Catholic architects who
understand the meaning and use of a church. We cannot look for Protestants
to care much for the requirements of the ritual in their designs, or to
appreciate the necessity of insisting upon what the church insists. Their
chief aim is to please their patrons, and carry out whatever is proposed to
them. Few of our Protestant architects know any more about the proper
interior disposition of a Catholic church than they do of a Moslem mosque.

See, again, how much we suffer from the wretched altar furniture and
sacerdotal vestments imported for our use, and which our clergy are obliged
to take and make a display in their sanctuaries of things belonging in
style to every age of the church.
{440}
How often have we not seen a priest clothed in Roman vestments celebrating
mass at a Gothic altar furnished with Byzantine crucifix and candlesticks,
and a miscellaneous job lot of tawdry French artificial flowers, while the
sacred precinct of the sanctuary would be furnished with carpet and chairs
that smack of the drawing-room or the kitchen?

These evils existed and do exist in other countries besides our own, and we
see that the congresses of Belgium have done a great deal to correct them
by calling Catholic architects together in council, and offering prizes for
designs of perfect churches built and furnished according to the Ritual,
the Ceremoniale Episcoporum, the Missal, and the decrees of the
Congregation of Rites.

The music of our churches, what shall we say of it? Are our city churches
to be turned into fashionable concert-rooms where hired Protestant, Jewish,
and infidel artists are to sing their _morceaux de l'opera_ for our
edification? Are our country churches never to witness a high mass
celebrated in them, and the people in those localities never to be convened
for the Vesper service or comforted with the Benediction of the Blessed
Sacrament because there is no one to teach the children at least to sing a
Tantum Ergo? Are our organists always to be irresponsible musicians, guided
by no rubrics, ignorant of fast days and festivals, outraging every sense
of propriety, and banishing all sentiment of piety and devotion by their ad
libitum roulades and fantasias of the most degraded taste? If we must pay
others to sing the praises of God for us, why not also engage others to do
our praying likewise? Cannot we have, as other countries have, voluntary
choirs? Why cannot all the people sing at proper times and seasons, and
join in that part of worship which from its very nature is the best
calculated to awaken the deepest emotions of the soul!

The question of the feasibility of voluntary choirs or of congregational
singing is no longer wholly a doubtful one. We know of several churches in
the country that have always had voluntary choirs, and we were present
during the past Lent at the services of one of our city churches where the
whole congregation joined with full voices in a popular Lenten service, and
in the solemn recitation of the Way of the Cross, for which they were
prepared at a single public rehearsal in the church.

The subject of church music, as we have already said, was one to which the
Belgium congresses paid a great deal of attention. The March number of the
Revue Generale of Brussels gives a most interesting report, by Canon
Devroye, of the proceedings of the jury to whom were referred the
adjudication of the prizes offered for an original popular mass, composed,
as says the worthy canon, "according to the rules laid down by the church,
and enforced by our general assembly;" and he observes in another place
that they must "redouble their efforts to procure universal observation of
the rules adopted by the congress, and which are also the rules of the
church and of common sense." Let us hasten to imitate this example of zeal
for the glory of God's house and for the decency and dignity of divine
worship. If we have not many original composers, we have, at any rate,
several good judges among our organists and directors of choirs. Their
united opinion would have a powerful influence in bringing about, what we
do not fear to say is greatly needed, a thorough reformation in our church
music.

In works of charity we have done a great deal already--enough, it may be,
to hide a multitude of sins; but charity is never content with what it has
done, nor will the objects of its care ever be wanting. "The poor ye have
always with you," said our Lord. They take his place in our midst, and by
their helplessness and suffering soften our selfish hearts, and win from us
those things in the inordinate love of which we are too apt to forget our
true destiny.
{441}
Men may give themselves up with too great ardor to the pursuit of science
and devotion to art, but charity has no dangerous limits which we may not
overpass. What we do for the poor we do for God, and no one can do too much
for him. Yet charity needs wisdom, demands thought, and profits by good
counsel. So that we see men instinctively band themselves together in
associations, that the ignorant, the suffering, the tempted, and the sinful
may be more wisely aided, and more speedily comforted. The religious orders
of charity have their own special rules and organization, and know how to
do their work well. But there are many forms of suffering and of corporal
and spiritual destitution which they cannot reach, or which their rule of
life prevents them from attending to. Enterprises that can embrace these
needy cases for charity in their scope must, therefore, be conducted more
or less entirely by the laity. To be truly effective, these enterprises
need rules and organization, as much as an order of Sisters of Charity or
of Mercy; and organization demands cooperation, deliberation, and union.
The glorious society of St. Vincent de Paul is one of these, and its works
are manifest. Millions of God's beloved poor will rise up at the last day
to praise these devoted children of the church and call them blessed. But
they cannot do all that is to be done. There is great need, especially in
our larger cities and towns, of patronages, protectorates, associations of
young apprentices and workmen, and what are called in Europe "Catholic
Circles," and with us "Young Men's Institutes," which enable our Catholic
youth particularly to enjoy honest recreation and amusement in honest
society, and at the same time improve their minds and refine their manners.
Such institutes have been already founded among us by several zealous
pastors with the most signal success. Our Sunday-schools also have been of
late much improved by the establishment of Sunday-School Unions, which
might be extended to every diocese in the country. To give a proper impetus
to all these works of charity, to make their character and working known,
and encourage their establishment throughout the country, would be one of
the principal subjects to come up for consideration before a congress.

We have shown enough reasons, we think, why such an assembly should be
convened. Many persons have the matter at heart; and we have perused with
great pleasure some communications on the subject which show a thoughtful
appreciation of its great importance. We trust that what we have written
may help to encourage them and others to give expression to their
sentiments, and thus prepare the public mind, so that the whole body of our
clergy and intelligent laity may be ready to take an active part in it as
soon as the proper authorities shall summon them to meet. A good proposal
has been made, which merits consideration: that the meeting of a congress
be made coincident with the assembling of the General Council of the
Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which now does so much of the work of a
congress in the matter of charity, and which brings together so many men of
the right stamp from all portions of our vast country. This would enable
the congress to profit by the fruits of their experience and influence in a
department where none are more competent than they to give advice and aid.

Our holy religion is making such rapid advances that there is an urgent
call upon every Catholic to bestir himself, and do all that lies in his
power to aid and support the clergy in their herculean efforts to feed and
comfort the flock of Christ. Converts are pouring in from all quarters, out
of all classes of society. Many of them have been earnest laborers in their
way in the cause of religion and of charity. Let them not find us idle,
neither must we allow them to be idle. Their influence with their
Protestant brethren is great, and we should give them the means of using it
and bringing it to good account.

{442}

The charitable power in the church, and the devotion of the clergy to the
spiritual good of the people, has in an especial manner been brought before
the minds of the American public by the events of the late war. Prejudice
is dying out on all sides, and we begin to find it easier to obtain a
hearing from those who have hitherto considered it a duty to turn a deaf
ear to our words of truth. Our hands are full of work, and if we are alive
to our opportunity, we shall accomplish glorious things for God, and not
fail of placing our divine faith, always so fruitful in good works, first
in rank and the highest in esteem before all those fragmentary, defective,
and inefficient forms of Christianity that have up to the present held sway
over the minds and hearts of so large a portion of the American people, and
kept them from the knowledge of that church which, as the church of God, is
Catholic, perfect, and, therefore, alone able to do the work which humanity
claims at the hands of religion.

------

    Original.

    Regret.


  They say she says, "I have no heart."
    Could she have seen my tears,
  She'd know I keenly felt the smart
    That broke the loving tie of years.

  They say she says, "I have no heart."
    'Twere cruel thus to say,
  When I, to act the firmer part,
    Keep from her sight away.

  They say she says, "I have no heart,"
    When sight, with tears grows dim;
  To think that pride should keep apart
    Such friends as we have been.

  They say she says, "I have no heart,"
    For her, to whom my soul had grown
  So closely--that, even when apart,
    I felt no joy--because alone.

  Again she says, "I have no heart,"
    When oft she staid the swelling tear;
  As those who loved I saw depart,
    I felt they left a sister here.

  How can she say, "I have no heart,"
    When night and morn I ask in prayer
  That we may not be called apart,
    Till both breathe forth forgiveness here?

------

{443}


     Impressions Of Spain.

     By Lady Herbert.


  Gibraltar And Cadiz.

The journey from Granada was, if possible, more wearying than before, for
the constant heavy rains had reduced the roads to a perfect Slough of
Despond, in which the wretched mules perpetually sank and fell, and were
flogged up again in a way which, to a nature fond of animals, is the most
insupportable of physical miseries. Is there a greater suffering than that
of witnessing cruelty and wrong which you are powerless to redress? It was
not till nearly eleven o'clock the following day that our travellers found
themselves once more in their old quarters on the Alameda of Malaga. By the
kindness of the superior of the hospital, the usual nine o'clock mass had
been postponed till the arrival of the diligence: and very joyfully did one
of the party afterwards take her old place at the refectory of the
community, whose loving welcome made her forget that she was still in a
strange land. The following three or four days were spent almost entirely
in making preparations for their journey to Gibraltar, _via_ Ronda,
that eagle's nest, perched on two separate rocks, divided by a rapid
torrent, but united by a picturesque bridge, which crowns the range of
mountains forming the limits of the kingdom of Granada. The accounts of the
mountain-path were not encouraging; but to those who had ridden for four
months through the Holy Land, no track, however rugged and precipitous,
offered any terrors. But when the time came, to their intense
disappointment, the road was found to be impassable on the Gibraltar side,
owing to the tremendous torrents, which the heavy rains had swollen to a
most unusual extent. Two officers had attempted to swim their horses over,
but in so doing one of them was drowned; so that there seemed no
alternative but to give up their pleasant riding expedition, and, with it,
the sight of that gem of the whole country which had been one of their main
objects in returning to Malaga. Comforting themselves, however, by the hope
of going there later from Seville, our travellers took berths in the
steamer Cadiz, bound for Gibraltar; and after a beautiful parting
benediction at the little convent of the Nuns of the Assumption, they took
leave of their many kind friends, and, at six o'clock, (accompanied by
Madame de Q---- and her brother to the water's edge,) stepped on board the
boat which was to convey them to their steamer. Their captain, however,
proved faithless as to time; and it was not till morning that the cargo was
all on board and the vessel under weigh for their destination. After a
tedious and rough passage of nineteen hours, they rounded at last the
Europa Point, and found themselves a few minutes later landing on the Water
Port quay of the famous rock. Of all places in Spain, Gibraltar is the
least interesting, except from the British and national point of view. Its
houses, its people, its streets, its language, all are of a detestably
mongrel character.

The weather, too, during our travellers' stay, was essentially British,
incessant pouring rain and fog alternating with gales so tremendous that
twenty vessels went ashore in one day. Nothing was to be seen from the
windows of the Club-House Hotel but mist and spray, or heard but the boom
of the distress gun from the wrecking ships, answered by the more cheering
cannon of the port.
{444}
But there is a bright side to every picture: and one of the bright sides of
Gibraltar is to be found in its kind and hospitable governor and his wife,
who, nobly laying aside all indulgence in the life-long sorrow which family
events have caused, devote themselves morning, noon, and night to the
welfare and enjoyment of every one around them. Their hospitality is
natural to their duties and position; but the kind consideration which ever
anticipates the wishes of their guests, whether residents or, as our
travellers were, birds of passage, here to-day and gone to-morrow, springs
from a rarer and a purer source.

Another object of interest to some of our party was the charitable
institutions of the place. The white "cornettes" of the Sisters of Charity
are not seen as yet; but the sisters of the "Bon Secours" have supplied
their place in nursing the sick and tending all the serious cases of every
class in the garrison. Their value only became fully known at the late
fearful outbreak of cholera, to which two of them fell victims: but they
seemed rather encouraged than deterred by this fact. They live in a house
half-way up the hill on the way to Europa Point, which contains a certain
number of old and incurable people and a few orphan children. They visit
also the sick poor in their homes, and in the Civil Hospital, which is
divided, drolly enough, not into surgical and medical wards, but according
to the _religion_ of the patients! one half being Catholic, the other
Protestant, and small wards being reserved likewise for Jews and Moors. It
is admirably managed, the patients are supplied with every necessary and
well cared for by the kind-hearted superintendent, Dr. G----. The "Dames de
Lorette" have a convent towards the Europa Point, where they board and
educate between twenty and thirty young ladies. They have also a large
day-school in the town for both rich and poor, the latter being below and
the former above. The children seem well taught, and the poorer ones were
remarkable for great neatness and cleanliness. The excellent and charming
Catholic bishop, Dr. Scandella, vicar apostolic of Gibraltar, has built a
college for boys on the ground adjoining his palace, above the convent,
from whence the view is glorious; the gardens are very extensive. This
college, which was immensely needed in Gibraltar, is rapidly filling with
students, and is about to be affiliated to the London University. In the
garden above, a chapel is being built to receive the Virgin of "Europa,"
whose image, broken and despoiled by the English in 1704, was carried over
to Algeciras, and there concealed in the hermitage; but has now been given
back by Don Eugenio Romero to the bishop, to be placed in this new and
beautiful little sanctuary overlooking the Straits, where it will soon be
once more exposed to the veneration of the faithful. The bishop has lately
built another little church below the convent, dedicated to St. Joseph, but
which, from some defect in the materials, has been a very expensive
undertaking.

It was very pleasant to see the simple, hearty, manly devotion of the large
body of Catholic soldiers in the garrison, among whom his influence has had
the happiest effect in checking every kind of dissatisfaction and
drunkenness. His personal influence has doubtless been greatly enhanced by
his conduct during the cholera, when he devoted himself, with his clergy,
to the sick and dying, taking regular turns with them in the administration
of the Last Sacraments, and only claiming as his privilege that of being
the one always called up in the night, so that the others might get some
rest. He has two little rooms adjoining the church, where he remains during
the day, and receives any one who needs his fatherly care.

The Protestant bishop of Gibraltar, a very kind and benevolent man, resides
at Malta, and has a cathedral near the governor's house, lately beautified
by convict labor, and said to be well attended. It is the only Protestant
church in Spain.

{445}

Of the sights of Gibraltar it is needless to speak. Our travellers, in
spite of the weather, which rarely condescended to smile upon them, visited
almost everything: the North Fort, Spanish Lines, and Catalan Bay, one day;
Europa Point, with the cool summer residence of the governor, (sadly in
need of government repair,) and St. Michael's Cave, on the next; and last,
not least, the galleries and heights. From the signal tower the view is
unrivalled; and the aloes, prickly pear, and geranium, springing out of
every cleft in the rock, up which the road is beautifully and skilfully
engineered, add to the enjoyment of the ride. The gentlemen of the party
hunted in the cork woods when the weather would allow of it; and the only
"lion" unseen by them were the monkeys, who resolutely kept in their caves
or on the African side of the water during their stay at Gibraltar. The
garden of the governor's palace is very enjoyable, and contains one of
those wonderful dragon-trees of which the bark is said to bleed when an
incision is made. The white arums grow like a weed in this country, and
form most beautiful bouquets when mixed with scarlet geranium and edged by
their large, bright, shining green leaves.

The time of our travellers was, however, limited, especially as they wished
to spend the Holy Week in Seville. So, after a ten days' stay, reluctantly
giving up the kind offer of the port admiral to take them across to Africa,
and contenting themselves with buying a few Tetuan pots from the Moors at
Gibraltar, they took their passages on board the "London" steamer for
Cadiz.

By permission of the governor, they were allowed to pass through the gates
after gun-fire, and got to the mole; but there, from some mistake, no boat
could be found to take them off to their vessel, and they had the pleasure
of seeing it steam away out of the harbor without them, although their
passages had been paid for, and, as they thought, secured. In despair, shut
out of the town, where a state of siege, for fear of a surprise, is always
rigorously maintained by the English garrison, they at last bribed a little
boat to take them to a Spanish vessel, the "Allegri," likewise bound for
Cadiz, and which was advertised to start an hour later. In getting on board
of her, however, they found she was a wretched tub, heavily laden with
paraffine, among other combustibles, and with no accommodation whatever for
passengers. There was, however, no alternative but going in her or
remaining all night tossing about the harbor in their cockle-shell of a
boat; so they made up their minds to the least of the two evils, and a few
minutes later saw them steaming rapidly out of the harbor toward Cadiz. The
younger portion of the party found a cabin in which they could lie down:
the elder lay on the cordage of the deck, and prayed for a cessation of the
recent fearful storms, the captain having quietly informed them that in the
event of its coming on to blow again he must throw all their luggage
overboard as well as a good deal of his cargo, as he was already too
heavily laden to be safe. However, the night was calm, though very cold,
and the following morning saw them safely rounding the forts of Cadiz, and
staring at its long, low shores. But then a new alarm seized them. The
quarantine officers came on board with a horrible yellow flag, and talked
big about the cholera having reappeared at Alexandria, and the consequent
impossibility of their being able to produce a clean bill of health. The
prospect of spending a week in that miserable vessel, or in the still more
dismal lazaretto on the shore, was anything but agreeable to our
travellers. However, on the assurance of the captain that the only vessel
arrived from Egypt before they left Gibraltar had been instantly put into
quarantine by the governor, they were at last allowed to land in peace, and
found very comfortable rooms at Blanco's hotel, on the promenade, their
windows and balconies looking on the sea.
{446}
In the absence of the bishop, who was gone to Tetuan, Canon L---- kindly
offered his services to show them the curiosities of the town, and took
them first to the Capuchin convent, now converted into a madhouse, in the
church adjoining which are two very fine Murillos: one, "St. Francis
receiving the Stigmata," which, for spirituality of expression, is really
unrivalled; the other, "The Marriage of St. Catherine," which was his
_last_ work, and is unfinished. The great painter fell from the
scaffolding in 1682, and died very soon after, at Seville, in consequence
of the internal injuries he had received. From this convent they proceeded
to the cathedral, which is ugly enough, but where the organ and singing
were admirable. The stalls in the choir, which are beautifully carved, were
stolen from the Cartucha at Seville. There is a spacious crypt under the
high altar, with a curious flat roof, unsupported by any arches or columns,
but at present it is bare and empty. Their guide then took them to see the
workhouse, or "Albergo dei Poveri," an enormous building, which is even
more admirably managed than the one at Madrid. It contains upwards of a
thousand inmates. The boys are all taught different trades, and the girls
every kind of industrial and needle work. The dormitories and washing
arrangements are excellent; and all the walls being lined, up to a certain
height, with the invariable blue and white "azulejos," or glazed tiles,
gives a clean, bright appearance to the whole. The dress of the children
was also striking to English eyes, accustomed to the hideous workhouse
livery at home. On Sundays they have a pretty and varied costume for both
boys and girls, and their little tastes are considered in every way. They
have a large and handsome church, and also a chapel for the children's
daily prayers, which they themselves keep nice and pretty, and ornament
with flowers from their gardens. The whole thing is like a "_home_"
for these poor little orphans, and in painful contrast to the views which
Protestant England takes of charity in her workhouses, where poverty seems
invariably treated as a crime. The children are in a separate wing of the
building--the girls above, the boys below. On the other side are the sick
wards, and those for the old and incurable, where the same minute care for
their comfort and pleasure is observed in every arrangement. Nor is there
that horrible prison atmosphere, and that locking of doors as one passes
through each ward, which jars so painfully on one's heart in going through
an English workhouse. There are very few able bodied paupers; and those are
employed in the work of the house and garden. There is a spacious "patio,"
or court, with an open colonnade of marble columns, running round the
quadrangle, the centre of which is filled with orange-trees and flowers.
This beautiful palace was founded and endowed by the private benevolence of
one man, who dedicated it to St. Helena, in memory of his mother, and
placed in it the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who have the
entire care of the whole establishment. There are fifteen sisters, all
Spaniards, but affiliated to the French ones, and with the portrait of N.
T. H. Père Etienne in the place of honor in their "parloir" and refectory.
The superior is a most remarkable woman, little and "contrefaite," but with
a soul in her eyes which it is impossible to forget. The institution is now
in the hands of the government, who have wisely not attempted to make any
alterations in the administration. There are upward of fifty of these
Sisters of Charity in Cadiz, they having the sole charge of the hospitals,
schools, workhouses, etc.; and the admirable cleanliness, order, and
comfort in each which is the result, must commend them to the intelligent
approval of every visitor, even should he be unmoved by the evidence of
that unpaid charity which, with its soft finger-touch, stamps all their
works with the very essence of divine love.

{447}

The next day being Palm Sunday, our travellers went to service in the
cathedral. It was very fine, but extremely fatiguing. There are no chairs
or seats in Spanish churches. Every one kneels on the floor the whole time,
not even rising for the Gospel or Creed. On one of the party attempting to
stand up at the long Gospel of the Passion, she was somewhat indignantly
pulled down again by her neighbors. During the sermon, the Spanish women
have a peculiar way of sitting on their heels--a process which they learn
from childhood, but which to strangers is an almost intolerable penance.
Here, as everywhere in Spain, the hideous fashion of bonnets or hats was
unknown, and the universal black mantilla, with its graceful folds and
modest covering of the face, and the absence of all colors to distract
attention in the house of God, made our English ladies sigh more eagerly
than ever for a similar reverent and decent fashion to be adopted at home.
On returning for the vesper service in the afternoon, a beautiful, and, to
them, novel, custom was observed. At the singing of the "Vexilla Regis,"
the canons, in long black robes, knelt prostrate in a semicircle before the
high altar, and were covered by a black flag with a red cross. This they
saw repeated daily during the Passion Week services at Seville. In the
evening there was a magnificent benediction and processional service round
the cloisters of the church called "Delle Scalze." It was impossible to
imagine anything more picturesque than the multitude kneeling in the open
"patio," or court, shaded by orange-trees, and full of beautiful flowers,
while round the arches swept the gorgeous procession carrying the Host, the
choir and people singing alternate verses of the "Lauda Sion," the curling
smoke of the incense reflecting prismatic colors in the bright sunshine,
and the whole procession finally disappearing in the sombre, dark old
church, of which the centre doors had been thrown wide open to receive it.
One longed only for Roberts's paint-brush to depict the scene. Returning to
their hotel, our party found the Alameda gay with holiday folk, and full of
the ladies whose beauty and charm have been the pride of Cadiz for so many
generations. Do not let our readers think it invidious if we venture on the
opinion that their beautiful and becoming dress has a great deal to do with
this, just as, in the East, every turbaned Turk or burnoused Arab would
make a perfect picture. Dress your Oriental in one of Poole's best-fitting
coats and trousers, and give him a chimney-pot hat, and where would be his
beauty? In the same way, if--which good taste forefend--the Spanish ladies
come to imagine that a bonnet stuck on the back of the head, and every
color in the rainbow, is prettier than the flowing black robe and softly
folded lace mantilla, shading modestly their bright dark eyes and hair,
they will find, to their cost, that their charm has vanished for ever.

Nothing more remained to be seen or done in Cadiz but to purchase some of
the beautiful mats which are its great industry, and which are made of a
flat reed or "junco," growing in the neighborhood; and these the kind and,
good-natured English consul undertook to forward to them, when ready, to
England.


  Seville.

Armed with sundry letters of introduction sent them from Madrid, our
travellers started by early train for Seville, the amiable Canon L----
having given them a five o'clock mass before starting, in his interesting
old circular church dedicated to S. Filippo Neri, he being one of the
Oratorians. They passed by Xeres, famous for its sherry cellars, called
"bodegas," supplying more wine to England than to all the rest of the world
put together, and for its Carthusian convent, once remarkable for its
Zurbaran pictures, the greater portion of which have now followed the
sherry to the British Isles; then by Alcalà, noted for its delicious bread,
with which it supplies the whole of Seville; for its Moorish castle and
beautiful river Aira, the waters of which, after flowing round the walls of
the little town, are carried by an aqueduct to Seville; and so on and on,
through orange and olive groves, and wheat plains, and vineyards, till the
train brought them by mid-day to the wonderful and beautiful city which had
been the main object of their Spanish tour.

{448}

The saying is strictly true:

  Quien no ha visto Sevilla,
  No ha visto maravilla.

Scarcely had they set foot in their comfortable hotel, the "Fonda de
Londres," when an obliging aide-de-camp of the Spanish general came to tell
them that, if they wanted to see the Alcazar, they must go with him at
once, as the infanta, who had married the sister of the king's consort, was
expected with his wife to occupy the palace that evening, when it would
naturally be closed to visitors. Dusty, dirty, and hot as they were,
therefore, they at once sallied forth with their kind cicerone and the
English consul for this fairy palace of the Moors. Entering by the Plaza
del Triunfo, under an arched gateway, where hangs, day and night, a lamp
throwing its soft light on the beautiful little picture of the Virgin and
Child, they came into a long court, in the midst of which are orange-trees
and fountains, and this again led them by a side door into the inner court
or "patio" of the palace.

Like the Alhambra, it is an exquisite succession of delicate columns, with
beautifully carved capitals, walls, and balconies, which look as if worked
in Mechlin lace; charmingly cool "patios," with marble floors and
fountains; doors whose geometrical patterns defy the patience of the
painter; horse-shoe arches, with edges fringed like guipure; fretted
ceilings, the arabesques of which are painted in the most harmonious
colors, and tipped with gold; lattices every one of which seems to tell of
a romance of beauty and of love: such are these moresque creations,
unrivalled in modern art, and before which our most beautiful nineteenth
century palaces sink into coarse and commonplace buildings. They are the
realization of the descriptions in the "Arabian Nights," and the exquisite
delicacy of the work is not its sole charm. The _proportions_ of every
room, of every staircase, of every door and window, are perfect: nothing
offends the eye by being too short or too wide. In point of sound, also,
they, as well as the Romans, knew the secret which our modern builders have
lost; and in harmony of color, no "azulejos" of the present day can
approach the beauty and brilliancy of the Moorish tints. Nor are historical
romances wanting to enhance the interest of this wonderful place. In the
bed-chamber of the king, Pedro the Cruel, are painted three dead heads, and
thereon hangs a tale of savage justice. The king overheard three of his
judges combining to give a false judgment in a certain case about which
they had been bribed, and then quarrel about their respective shares of
their ill gotten spoils. He suddenly appeared before them, and causing them
to be instantly beheaded, placed their heads in the niches where now the
paintings perpetuate the remembrance of the punishment. Less excusable was
another tragedy enacted within these walls, in the assassination of the
brother of king, who had been invited as a guest and came unsuspicious of
treachery. A deep red stain of blood in the marble floor still marks the
spot of the murder. Well may Spain's most popular modern poet, the Duque de
Rivas, in his beautiful poem, exclaim:

  "Ann en las losas se mira
   Una tenaz mancha oscura; ...
   Ni las edades la limpian! ...
   Sangre! sangre! Oh cielos! cuantos,
   Sin saber que lo es, la pisan!" [Footnote 141]

    [Footnote 141:
    "One still sees on the pavement a dark
    spot--the lapse of ages has not effaced it!
    Blood! blood! O Heaven! how many tread
    it under foot without knowing it!"]

{449}

The gardens adjoining the palace are quaintly beautiful, the borders edged
with myrtle and box, cut low and thick, with terraces and fountains, and
kiosks, and, "surprises" of "jets d'eau," and arched walls festooned with
beautiful hanging creepers, and a "luxe" of oriental vegetation. On one
side are the white marble baths, cool and sombre, where the beautiful Maria
de Padilla forgot the heat and glare of the Seville sun. It was the custom
of the courtiers in her day to _drink_ the water in which the ladies
had bathed. Pedro the Cruel reproached one of his knights for not complying
with this custom. "Sire," he replied, "I should fear lest, having tasted
the sauce, I should covet the bird!"

The Alcazar formerly extended far beyond its present limits; but the ruined
towers by the water-side are all that now remain to mark the course of the
old walls.

Our travellers could not resist one walk through the matchless cathedral on
their way home; but reserved their real visit to that and to the Giralda
till the following day. The kind Regente de la Audiencia and his wife, to
whom they had brought letters of introduction, came to them in the evening,
and arranged various expeditions for the ensuing week.

Early the next morning the Countess L---- de R---- came to fetch one of the
party to the church of S. Felipe Neri, which, like all the churches of the
Oratorians, is beautifully decorated, and most devout and reverent in its
services. It is no easy matter to go on wheels in the streets of Seville.
There are but two or three streets in which a carriage can go at all, or
attempt to turn; and so to arrive at any given place, it is generally
necessary to make the circuit of half the town. In addition to this, the
so-called pavement, angular, pointed, and broken, shakes every bone in
one's body. To reach their destination on this particular morning, our
friends had to traverse the market place, and make an immense _détour_
through various squares, passing meanwhile by several very interesting
churches; but it was all so much gain to the stranger.

After mass, one of the fathers, who spoke English, kindly showed them the
treasures of his church, and amongst other things a beautiful silver-chased
chapel behind the high altar, containing some exquisite bénitières,
crucifixes, and relics. The wooden crucifixes of Spain, mostly carved by
great men, such as Alonso Caño or Montanés, are quite wonderful in beauty
and force of expression; but they are very difficult to obtain. They have a
pretty custom in this church of offering two turtle doves in a pure white
basket when a child is devoted to the Blessed Virgin, which are left on the
altar, as in the old days of the Purification, and the white basket is
afterward laid up in the chapel. After breakfast the whole party arrived at
the cathedral. How describe this wonderful building! To say it is such and
such a height, and such and such a width, that it has so many columns, and
so many chapels, and so many doors, and so many windows. ... Why, Murray
has done that far better than any one else! But to understand the cathedral
at Seville, you must know it; you must feel it; you must live in it; you
must see it at the moment of the setting sun, when the light streams in
golden showers through those wonderful painted glass windows, (those
_chefs d'oeuvre_ of Arnold of Flanders,) jewelling the curling smoke
of the incense still hanging round the choir; or else go there in the dim
twilight, when the aisles seem to lengthen out into infinite space, and the
only bright spot is from the ever-burning silver lamps which hang before
the tabernacle.

One of the party, certainly not given to admiration of either churches or
Catholicity, exclaimed on leaving it: "It is a place where I could not help
saying my prayers!" The good-natured Canon P---- showed them all the
treasures and pictures. They are too numerous to describe in detail; but
some leave an indelible impression. Among these is Murillo's wonderful St.
Antony, in the baptistery; Alonso Caño's delicious little Virgin and Child,
(called Nuestra Señora de Belem;) Morales's Dead Christ;
{450}
a very curious old Byzantine picture of the Virgin; and in the sacristy,
the exquisite portraits by Murillo of St. Leander, archbishop of Seville,
the great reformer of the Spanish liturgy, whose bones rest in a silver
coffin in the Capilla Real, and of St. Isadore, his brother, who succeeded
him in the see, called the "Excellent Doctor," and whose body rests at
Leon. Here also is a wonderful "Descent from the Cross," by Campana, before
which Murillo used to sit, and say "he waited till he was taken down;" and
here, by his own particular wish, the great painter is buried. There is,
besides, a fine portrait of St. Teresa; and round the handsome chapter-room
are a whole series of beautiful oval portraits by Murillo, and also one of
his best "Conceptions." Among the treasures is the cross made from the gold
which Christopher Columbus brought home from America, and presented to the
king; the keys of the town given up to Ferdinand by the Moorish king at the
conquest of Seville; two beautiful ostensorios of the fifteenth century,
covered with precious stones and magnificent pearls; beautiful Cinquecento
reliquaries presented by different popes; finely illuminated missals in
admirable preservation; an exquisitely carved ivory crucifix; wonderful
vestments, heavy with embroidery and seed-pearls; the crown of King
Ferdinand; and last, not least, a magnificent tabernacle altar-front,
angels and candle-sticks, all in solid silver, beautiful in workmanship and
design, used for Corpus Christi, and other solemn feasts of the Blessed
Sacrament. One asks one's self very often: "How came all these treasures to
escape the rapacity of the French spoilers?"

The Royal Chapel contains the body of St. Ferdinand, the pious conqueror of
Seville, which town, as well as Cordova, he rescued from the hands of the
Moors, after it had been in their possession five hundred and twenty-four
years. This pious king, son to Alphonse, king of Leon, bore witness by his
conduct to the truth of his words on going into battle: "Thou, O Lord! who
searchest the hearts of men, knowest that I desire but thy glory, and not
mine." To his saint-like mother, Berangera, he owed all the good and holy
impressions of his life. He helped to build the cathedral of Toledo, of
which he laid the first stone, and, in the midst of the splendors of the
court, led a most ascetic and penitential life. Seville surrendered to him
in 1249, after a siege of sixteen months, on which occasion the Moorish
general exclaimed that "only a saint who, by his justice and piety, had won
heaven over to his interest, could have taken so strong a city with so
small an army." By the archbishop's permission, the body of the saint was
exposed for our travellers. It is in a magnificent silver shrine; and the
features still retain a remarkable resemblance to his portraits. His
banner, crown, and sword were likewise shown to them, and the little ivory
Virgin which he always fastened to the front of his saddle when going to
battle. The cedar coffin still remains in which his body rested previous to
its removal to this more gorgeous shrine. On the three days in the year
when his body is exposed, the troops all attend the mass, and lower their
arms and colors to the great Christian conqueror. A little staircase at the
back of the tomb brings you down into a tiny crypt, where, arranged on
shelves, are the coffins of the beautiful Maria Padilla, of Pedro the
Cruel, and of their two sons: latterly, those of the children of the Duc
and Duchesse de Montpensier have been added. Over the altar of the chapel
above hangs a very curious wooden statue of the Virgin, given to St.
Ferdinand by the good king Louis of France. King Ferdinand adorned her with
a crown of emeralds and a stomacher of diamonds, belonging to his mother,
on condition that they should never be removed from the image.

{451}

The organs are among the wonders of this cathedral, with their thousands of
pipes, placed horizontally, in a fan-like shape. The "retablo" at the back
of the high altar is a marvel of wood-carving; and the hundreds of lamps
which burn before the different shrines are all of pure and massive silver.
One is tempted to ask: "Was it by men and women like ourselves that
cathedrals such as this were planned and built and furnished?" The chapter
who undertook it are said to have deprived themselves even of the
necessaries of life to erect a basilica worthy of the name; and in this
spirit of voluntary poverty and self-abnegation was it begun and completed.
Never was there a moment when money was so plentiful in England as now, yet
where will a cathedral be found built since the fifteenth century?

At the west end lies Fernando, son of the great Christopher Columbus, who
himself died at Valladolid, and is said to rest in the Havana. The motto on
the tomb is simple but touching:

  A Castilla y á Leon,
  mundo nuevo dió Colon.

Over this stone, during holy week, is placed the "monumento," an enormous
tabernacle, more than 100 feet high, which is erected to contain the sacred
host on Holy Thursday: when lighted up, with the magnificent silver
custodia, massive silver candlesticks, and a profusion of flowers and
candles, it forms a "sepulchre" unequalled in the world for beauty and
splendor.

Passing at last under the Moorish arch toward the north-east end of the
cathedral, our travellers found themselves in a beautiful cloistered
"patio," full of orange-trees in full blossom, with a magnificent fountain
in the centre. In one corner is the old stone pulpit from which St. Vincent
Ferrer, St. John of Avila, and other saints preached to the people: an
inscription records the fact. Over the beautiful door which leads into the
cathedral hang various curious emblems: a horn, a crocodile, a rod, and a
bit, said to represent plenty, prudence, justice, and temperance. To the
left is the staircase leading to the Columbine library, given by Fernando,
and containing some very interesting MSS. of Christopher Columbus. One book
is full of quotations, in his own handwriting, from the Psalms and the
Prophets, proving the existence of the New World; another is a plan of the
globe and of the zodiac drawn out by him. There is also a universal
history, with copious notes, in the same bold, clear, fine handwriting; and
a series of his letters to the king, written in Latin. Above the
bookshelves are a succession of curious portraits, including those of
Christopher Columbus and his son Fernando, which were given by Louis
Philippe to the library; of Velasquez; of Cardinal Mendoza; of S. Fernando,
by Murillo; and of our own Cardinal Wiseman, who, a native of Seville, is
held in the greatest love and veneration here. A touching little account of
his life and death has lately been published in Seville by the talented
Spanish author, Don Leon Carbonero y Sol, with the appropriate heading,
"Sicut vita finis ita." Our party were also shown the sword of Fernand
Gonsalves, a fine two-edged blade, which did good service in rescuing
Seville from the Moors.

Redescending the stairs, our travellers mounted the beautiful Moorish tower
of the Giralda, built in the twelfth century by Abu Yusuf Yacub, who was
also the constructor of the bridge of boats across the Guadalquiver. This
tower forms the great feature in every view of Seville, and is matchless
both from its rich yellow and red-brown color, its sunken Moorish
decorations, and the extreme beauty of its proportions. It was originally
250 feet high, and built as a minaret, from whence the muezzin summoned the
faithful to prayers in the mosque hard by; but Ferdinand Riaz added another
100 feet, and, fortunately, in perfect harmony with the original design. He
girdled it with a motto from Proverbs xviii.: "Nomen Domini fortissima
turris."

{452}

The ascent is very easy, being by ramps sloping gently upward. The Giralda
is under the special patronage of SS. Justina and Rufina, daughters of a
potter in the town, who suffered martyrdom in 304 for refusing to sell
their vessels for the use of the heathen sacrifices. Sta. Justina expired
on the rack, while Sta. Rufina was strangled. The figure which crowns the
tower is that of Faith, and is in bronze, and beautifully carved.

The bells are very fine in tone; but what repays one for the ascent is the
view, not only over the whole town and neighborhood, but over the whole
body of the huge cathedral, with its forest of pinnacles and its
wonderfully constructed roof, which looks massive enough to outlast the
world. The delicate Gothic balustrades are the home of a multitude of
hawks, (the _Falco tinunculoides_,) who career round and round the
beautiful tower, and are looked upon almost as sacred birds.

The thing which strikes one most in the look of the town from hence is the
absence of streets. From their excessive narrowness, they are invisible at
this great height, and the houses seem all massed together, without any
means of egress or ingress. The view of the setting sun from this tower is
a thing never to be forgotten; nor the effect of it lit up at night, when
it seems to hang like a brilliant chandelier from the dark blue vault
above.

Tired as our travellers were, they could not resist one short visit that
afternoon to the Museum, and to that wonderful little room below, which
contains a few pictures only, but those few unrivalled in the world.

Here, indeed, one sees what Murillo could do. The "St. Thomas of
Villanueva," giving alms to the beggar, (called by the painter himself his
_own_ picture;) the "St. Francis" embracing the crucified Saviour; the
"St. Antony," with a lily in adoration before the infant Jesus; the
"Nativity;" the "San Felix de Cantalicia," holding the infant Saviour in
his arms, which the blessed Virgin is coming down to receive; the "SS.
Rufina and Justina;" and last, not least, the Virgin, which earned him the
title of "El Pintor de las Concepciones." Each and all are matchless in
taste, in expression, in feeling; above all, in devotion. It is impossible
to meditate on any one of these mysteries in our blessed Lord's life
without the recollection of one of these pictures rising up instantly in
one's mind, as the purest embodiment of the love, or the adoration, or the
compunction, which such meditations are meant to call forth; they are in
themselves a prayer.

In the evening one of the party went with the regent to call on the
venerable cardinal archbishop, whose fine palace is exactly opposite the
east front of the cathedral. It was very sad to wind up that fine
staircase, and see him in that noble room, groping his way, holding on by
the wall, for he is quite blind. It is hoped, however, that an operation
for cataract, which is contemplated, may be successful. He was most kind,
and gave the English stranger a place in the choir of the cathedral for the
processional services of the holy week and Easter--a great favor, generally
only accorded to royalty, and of which the lady did not fail to take
advantage. M. Leon Carbonero y Sol, the author and clever editor of the
"Crux," paid them a visit that evening. By his energy and perseverance this
monthly periodical has been started at Seville, which is an event in this
non-literary country; and he has written several works, both biographical
and devotional, which deserve a wider reputation than they have yet
obtained.

The following, day, being Wednesday in holy week, the whole party returned
to the cathedral, to see the impressive and beautiful ceremony of the
Rending of the White Veil, and the "Rocks being rent," at the moment when
that passage is chanted in the Gospel of the Passion. The effect was very
fine; and all the more from the sombre light of the cathedral, every window
in which was shaded by black curtains, and every picture and image shrouded
in black. [Footnote 142]

     [Footnote 142: Faber says very beautifully: "Passion-tide veils the
     face of the crucifix, only that it may be more vivid in our hearts."]

{453}

At vespers, the canons, as at Cadiz, knelt prostrate before the altar, and
were covered with a black red-cross flag. At four o'clock our travellers
went to the Audiencia, where the regent and his kind wife had given them
all seats to see the processions. How are these to be described? They are
certainly appreciated by the people themselves; but they are not suited to
English taste, especially in the glare of a Seville sun: and unless
representations of the terrible and awful events connected with our Lord's
passion be depicted with the skill of a great artist, they become simply
intensely painful. The thing which was touching and beautiful was the
orderly arrangement of the processions themselves, and the way in which men
of the highest rank, of royal blood, and of the noblest orders, did not
hesitate to walk for hours through the dusty, crowded, burning streets for
three successive days, with the sole motive of doing honor to their Lord,
whose badge they wore.

The processions invariably ended by passing through the cathedral and
stopping for some minutes in the open space between the high altar and the
choir. The effect of the brilliant mass of light thrown by thousands of wax
tapers, as the great unwieldy catafalque was borne through the profound
darkness of the long aisles, was beautiful in the extreme; and
representations which looked gaudy in the sunshine were mellowed and
softened by the contrast with the night. The best were "The Sacred
Infancy," the "Bearing of the Cross," and the "Descent from the Cross." In
all, the figures were the size of life, and these three were beautifully
and naturally designed. Less pleasing to English eyes, in spite of their
wonderful splendor, were those of the blessed Virgin, decked out in
gorgeous velvet robes, embroidered in gold, and covered with jewels, with
lace pocket-handkerchiefs in the hand, and all the paraphernalia of a fine
lady of the nineteenth century! It is contrary to our purer taste, which
thinks of her as represented in one of Raphael's chaste and modest
pictures, with the simple robe and headdress of her land and people; or
else in the glistening white marble, chosen by our late beloved cardinal as
the fittest material for a representation of her in his "Ex Voto," and
which speaks of the spotless purity of her holy life. Leaving the house of
the regent, the party made their way with difficulty through the dense
crowd to the cathedral, where the Tenebrae began, followed by the Miserere,
beautifully and touchingly sung, without any organ accompaniments, at the
high altar. It was as if the priests were pleading for their people's sins
before the throne of God. The next day was spent altogether in these solemn
holy Thursday services. After early communion at the fine church of S.
Maria Magdalena, thronged, like all the rest, with devout worshippers, our
party went to high mass at the cathedral, after which the blessed
sacrament, according to custom, was carried to the gigantic "monumento." or
sepulchre, before mentioned, erected at the west door of the cathedral, and
dazzling with light. Then came the "Cena" in the archbishop's palace, at
which his blindness prevented his officiating; and then our travellers went
round the town to visit the "sepulchres" in the different churches, one
more beautiful than the other, and thronged with such kneeling crowds that
going from one to the other was a matter of no small difficulty. The heat
also increased the fatigue; and here, as at Palermo, no carriages are
allowed from holy Thursday till Easter day: every one must perform these
pious pilgrimages on foot. At half past two, they went back to the
cathedral for the washing of the feet. An eloquent sermon followed, and
then began the Tenebrae and the Miserere as before, with the entry of the
processions between: the whole lasted till half-past eleven at night.

{454}

Good Friday was as solemn as the same day is at Rome or at Jerusalem. The
adoration of the cross in the cathedral was very fine: but women were not
allowed to kiss it as in the Holy City. After that was over, some of the
party, by the kind invitation of the Duc and Duchesse de Montpensier, went
to their private chapel, at St. Elmo, for the "Tre Ore d'Agonic," being
from twelve to three o'clock, or the hours when our Saviour hung upon the
cross. It was a most striking and impressive service. The beautiful chapel
was entirely hung with black, and pitch dark. On entering, it was
impossible to see one's way among the kneeling figures on the floor, all,
of course, in deep mourning. The sole light was very powerfully thrown on a
most beautiful picture of the crucifixion, in which the figures were the
size of life. The sermon, or rather meditation on the seven words of our
Lord on the cross, was preached by the superior of the oratory of S.
Felippo Neri, a man of great eloquence and personal holiness. It would be
impossible to exaggerate the beauty and pathos of two of these meditations;
the one on the charity of our blessed Lord, the other on his desolation. A
long low sob burst from the hearts of his hearers at the conclusion of the
latter. The wailing minor music between was equally beautiful and
appropriate; it was as the lament of the angels over the lost, in spite of
the tremendous sacrifice! At half-past three, the party returned to the
cathedral, where the services lasted till nine in the evening, and then
came home in the state of mind and feeling so wonderfully represented by De
la Roche, in the last portion of his "Good Friday" picture. Beautifully
does Faber exclaim: "The hearts of the saints, like sea-shells, murmur of
the passion evermore."

The holy Saturday functions began soon after five the next morning, and
were as admirably conducted as all the rest. Immense praise was due to the
"maestro de ceremonias," who had arranged services so varied and so
complicated with such perfect order and precision: and the conduct of the
black-veiled kneeling multitude throughout was equally admirable; one and
all seemed absorbed by the devotions of the time and season.

That evening, the Vigil of Easter was spent in the cathedral by some of our
party in much the same manner as they had done on a preceding one in the
Holy City two years before. The night was lovely. The moon was streaming
through the cloisters on the orange-trees of the beautiful "patio," across
which the Giralda threw a deep sharp shadow, the silver light catching the
tips of the arches, and shining with almost startling brightness on the
"Pietà" in the little wayside chapel at the south entrance of the court.
All spoke of beauty, and of peace, and of rest, and of stillness, and of
the majesty of God. Inside the church were groups of black or veiled
figures, mostly women, (were not women the first at the sepulchre?)
kneeling before the tabernacle, or by the little lamps burning here and
there in the side chapels. Each heart was pouring forth its secret burden
of sorrow or of sin into the sacred heart which had been so lately pierced
to receive it. At two in the morning matins began, "Haec dies quam fecit
Dominus;" and after matins a magnificent Te Deum, pealed forth by those
gigantic organs, and sung by the whole strength of the choir and by the
whole body of voices of the crowd, which by that time had filled every
available kneeling space in the vast cathedral. Then came a procession; all
the choristers in red cassocks, with white cottas and little gold diadems.
High mass followed, and then low masses at all the side altars, with
hundreds of communicants, and the Russian salutation of "Christ is risen!"
on every tongue. It was "a night to be remembered," as indeed was all this
holy week: and now people seemed too happy to speak; joy says short words
and few ones.
{455}
Many have asked: "Is it equal to Jerusalem or Rome?" In point of services,
"Yes;" in point of interest, "No;" for the presence of the Holy Father in
the one place, and the vividness of recollection which the actual scenes of
our blessed Lord's passion inspires in the other, must ever make the holy
and eternal cities things apart and sacred from all besides. But nowhere
else can "fonctions" be seen in such perfection or with such solemnity as
at Seville. Everything is reverently and well done, and nothing has changed
in the ceremonial for the last three hundred years.

A domestic sorrow had closed the palace of the Duc and Duchesse de
Montpensier as far as their receptions were concerned; but they kindly gave
our party permission to see both house and gardens, which well deserve a
visit. The palace itself reminded them a little of the Duc d'Aumale's at
Twickenham: not in point of architecture, but in its beautiful and
interesting contents; in its choice collections of pictures, and books, and
works of art, and in the general tone which pervaded the whole. There are
two exquisite Murillos; a "St. Joseph" and a "Holy Family;" a "Divino
Morales;" a "Pieta;" some beautiful "Zurbarans;" and some very clever and
characteristic sketches by Goya. They have some curious historical
portraits also, and some very pretty modern pictures. The rooms and
passages abound in beautiful cabinets, rare china, sets of armor, African
trappings, and oriental costumes. In the snug low rooms looking on the
garden, and reminding one of Sion or of Chiswick, there are little
fountains in the centre of each, combining oriental luxury and freshness
with European comfort. The gardens are delicious. They contain a
magnificent specimen of the "palma regis," and quantities of rare and
beautiful shrubs; also an aviary of curious and scarce birds. You wander
for ever through groves of orange, and palms, and aloes, and under
trellises covered with luxuriant creepers and clustering roses, with a
feeling of something like envy at the climate, which seems to produce
everything with comparatively little trouble or culture. To be sure there
is "le revers de la médaille," when the scorching July sun has burnt up all
this lovely vegetation. But the spring in the garden of St. Elmo is a thing
to dream about.

From this enjoyable palace our party went on to visit "Pilate's House," so
called because built by Don Enrique de Ribera, of the exact proportions of
the original, in commemoration of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1519. It
is now the property of the Duque de Medina Sidonia. Passing into a cool
"patio," you see a black cross, marking the first of the stations of a very
famous Via Crucis, which begins here and ends at the Cruz del Campo outside
the town. There is a pretty little chapel opening out of the "patio,"
ornamented with Alhambra work, as is all the rest of this lovely little
moresque palace. It is a thorough bit of Damascus, with its wonderful
arabesqued ceilings, and lace-like carvings on the walls and staircases,
and cloistered "patios," and marble floors and fountains. Behind is a
little garden full of palms, orange-trees, and roses in full flower, and,
at the time our travellers saw it, carpeted with Neapolitan violets; quaint
low hedges, as in the Alcazar gardens, divided the beds, and broken
sculpture lay here and there.

One of the great treasures of Seville had yet been unvisited by our party,
and that was the Lonja, formerly the Exchange, a noble work of Herrera's.
It stands between the cathedral and the Alcazar, and is built in the shape
of a great quadrangle, each side being about two hundred feet wide.
Ascending the fine marble staircase, they came to the long "sala"
containing the famous "Indian Archives," that is, all the letters and
papers concerning the discovery of South America.
{456}
There are thousands of MS. letters, beautifully arranged and docketed; and
among them the autographs of Fernando Cortes, Pizarro, Magellan, Americo
Vespuzio, (who could not write his own name, and signed with a mark,) Fra
Bartolomeo de las Cazas, and many others. There is also the original bull
of the pope, granting the new South American discoveries to the Spaniards;
and another, defining the rights between the Spaniards and the Portuguese
in the matter of the conquered lands. The librarian, a very intelligent and
good-natured personage, also showed them a curious list, sent home and
signed by Fernando Cortes, of the silks, painted calabashes, feathers, and
costumes presented by him to the king; and a quantity of autograph letters
of Charles V., Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Philip IV. Fernando Cortes
died at Castilleja, on December 3, 1547, and the following day his body was
transported to the family vault of the Duque de Medina Sidonia, in the
monastery of San Isidoro del Campo. The Duc de Montpensier has purchased
the house, and made a collection of everything belonging to the great
discoverer, including his books, his letters, various objects of natural
history, and some very curious portraits, not only of Cortes himself, but
of Christopher Columbus, Pizarro, Magellan, the Marques del Valle, (of the
Sicilian family of Monteleone,) Bernal Diaz, Velasquez, of the historian of
the conquest of Mexico, Don Antonio Solis, and many others.

In the afternoon, the Marques de P---- called for our travellers to take
them to the university, and to introduce them to the rector and to the
librarian, whose name was the well-deserved one of Don José Bueno, a most
clever and agreeable man, whose pure Castilian accent made his Spanish
perfectly intelligible to his English visitors. He very good-naturedly
undertook to show them all the most interesting MSS. himself, together with
some beautiful missals, rare first editions of various classical works, and
some very clever etchings of Goya's of bull-fights and ladies--the latter
of doubtful propriety. In the church belonging to the university are some
fine pictures by Roelas and Alonso Cafio, some beautiful carvings by
Montanés, and several very fine monuments. In the rector's own room is a
magnificent "St. Jerome," by Lucas Kranach, the finest work of that artist
that exists. There are 1,200 students in this university, which rivals that
of Salamanca in importance.

Taking leave of the kind librarian, the Marques de P---- went on to show
them a private collection of pictures belonging to the Marques Cessera.
Amidst a quantity of rubbish were a magnificent "Crucifixion," by Alonso
Caño; a Crucifix, painted on wood, by Murillo, for an infirmary, and
concealed by a Franciscan during the French occupation in 1812; a Zurbaran,
with his own signature in the corner; and, above all, a "Christ bound with
the Crown of Thorns," by Murillo, which is the gem of the whole collection,
and perfectly beautiful both in coloring and expression.

Coming home, they went to see the house to which Murillo was taken after
his accident at Cadiz, and where he finally died; also the site of his
original burial, before his body was removed to the cathedral where it now
rests.

But one of the principal charms of our travellers' residence in Seville has
not yet been mentioned; and that was their acquaintance, through the kind
Bishop of Antinoe, with Fernan Caballero. She may be called the Lady
Georgiana Fullerton of Spain, in the sense of refinement of taste and
catholicity of feeling. But her works are less what are commonly called
novels than pictures of home life in Spain, like Hans Andersen's
"Improvisatore," or Tourgeneff's "Scènes de la Vie en Russie."

This charming lady, by birth a German on the father's side, and by marriage
connected with all the "bluest blood" in Spain, lives in apartments given
her by the queen in the palace of the Alcazar.
{457}
Great trials and sorrows have not dimmed the fire of her genius or
extinguished one spark of the loving charity which extends itself to all
that suffer. Her tenderness toward animals, unfortunately a rare virtue in
Spain, is one of her marked characteristics. She has lately been striving
to establish a society in Seville for the prevention of cruelty to animals,
after the model of the London one, and often told one of our party that she
never left her home without praying that she might not see or hear any
ill-usage to God's creatures. She is no longer young, but still preserves
traces of a beauty which in former years made her the admiration of the
court. Her playfulness and wit, always tempered by a kind thoughtfulness
for the feelings of others, and her agreeableness in conversation, seem
only to have increased with lengthened experience of people and things.
Nothing was pleasanter than to sit in the corner of her little
drawing-room, or, still better, in her tiny study, and hear her pour out
anecdote after anecdote of Spanish life and Spanish peculiarities,
especially among the poor. But if one wished to excite her, one had but to
touch on questions regarding her faith and the so-called "progress" of her
country. Then all her Andalusian blood would be roused, and she would
declaim for hours in no measured terms against the spoliation of the
monasteries, those centres of education and civilization in the villages
and outlying districts; against the introduction of schools without
religion, and colleges without faith; and the propagation of infidel
opinions through the current literature of the day.

Previous acquaintance with the people had already made some of our
travellers aware of the justice of many of her remarks. Catholicism in
Spain is not merely the religion of the people; _it is their life_. It
is so mixed up with their common expressions and daily habits, that, at
first, there seems to a stranger almost an irreverence in their ways. It is
not till you get thoroughly at home, both with them and their language,
that you begin to perceive that holy familiarity, if one may so speak, with
our divine Lord and his Mother which impregnates their lives and colors all
their actions. Theirs is a world of traditions, which familiarity from the
cradle have turned into faith, and for that faith they are ready to die.
Ask a Spanish peasant why she plants rosemary in her garden. She will
directly tell you that it was on a rosemary-bush that the blessed Virgin
hung our Saviour's clothes out to dry as a baby. Why will a Spaniard never
shoot a swallow? Because it was a swallow that tried to pluck the thorns
out of the crown of Christ as he hung on the cross. Why does the owl no
longer sing? Because he was by when our Saviour expired, and since then his
only cry is "Crux! crux!" Why are dogs so often called Melampo in Spain?
Because it was the name of the dog of the shepherds who worshipped at the
manger at Bethlehem. What is the origin of the red rose? A drop of the
Saviour's blood fell on the white roses growing at the foot of the cross
and so on, for ever! Call it folly, superstition--what you will. You will
never eradicate it from the heart of the people, for it is as their flesh
and blood, and their whole habits of thought, manners, and customs run in
the same groove. They have, like the Italians, a wonderful talent for
"improvising" both stories and songs; but the same beautiful thread of
tender piety runs through the whole.

One day, Fernan Caballero told them, an old beggar was sitting on the steps
of the Alcazar: two or three children, tired of play, came and sat by him,
and asked him, child-like, for "a story." He answered as follows: "There
was once a hermit, who lived in a cave near the sea. He was a very good and
charitable man, and he heard that in a village on the mountain above there
was a very bad fever, and that no one would go and nurse the people for
fear of infection.
{458}
So up he toiled, day after day, to tend the sick, and look after their
wants. At last he began to get tired, and to think it would be far better
if he were to move his hermitage up the hill, and save himself the daily
toil. As he walked up one day, turning this idea over in his mind, he heard
some one behind him saying: 'One, two, three.' He looked round, and saw no
one. He walked on, and again heard: 'Four, five, six, seven.' Turning short
round this time, he beheld one in white and glistening raiment, who gently
spoke as follows: 'I am your guardian angel, and am _counting the steps
which you take for Christ's poor_.'"

The children understood the drift of it as well as you or I, reader! and
this is a sample of their daily talk. Their reverence for age is also a
striking and touching characteristic. The poorest beggar is addressed by
them as "tio" or "tia," answering to our "daddy" or "granny;" and should
one pass their cottage as they are sitting down to their daily meal, they
always rise and offer him a place, and ask him to say grace for them,
"echar la benedicion." They are, indeed, a most lovable race, and their
very pride increases one's respect for them. Often in their travels did one
of the party lose her way, either in going to some distant church in the
early morning, or in visiting the sick; and often was she obliged to have
recourse to her bad Spanish to be put in the right road. An invariable
courtesy, and generally an insistence on accompanying her home, was the
result. But if any money or fee were offered for the service, the indignant
refusal, or, still worse, the _hurt_ look which the veriest child
would put on at what it considered the height of insult and unkindness,
very soon cured her of renewing the attempt.

Another touching trait in their character is their intense reverence for
the blessed sacrament. In the great ceremonies of the church, or when it is
passing down the street to a sick person, the same veneration is shown. One
day, one of the English ladies was buying some photographs in a shop, and
the tradesman was explaining to her the different prices and sizes of each,
when, all of a sudden, he stopped short, exclaiming: "Sua Maestà viene!"
and leaving the astonished lady at the counter, rushed out of his
shop-door. She, thinking it was the royalties, who were then at the
Alcazar, went out too to look, when, to her pleasure and surprise, she saw
the shopman and all the rest of the world, gentle and simple, kneeling
reverently in the mud before the messenger of the Great King, who was
bearing the host to a dying man. On the day when it is carried
processionally to the hospitals, (one of which is the first Sunday after
Easter,) every window and balcony is "parata," or hung with red, as in
Italy at the passage of the Holy Father; every one throws flowers and
bouquets on the baldachino, and that to such an extent that the choir-boys
are forced to carry great clothes-baskets to receive them: the people
declare that the very horses kneel! The feast of Corpus Christi was
unfortunately not witnessed by our travellers. Calderon, in his Autos
Sacramentales, speaking of it, says:

  "Que en el gran dia de Dios,
   Quien no está loco, no es cuerdo!"

Here is indeed "a voice from the land of faith." The choir on the occasion
dance before the host a dance so solemn, so suggestive, and so peculiar,
that no one who has witnessed it can speak of it without emotion. Fernan
Caballero talked much also of the great purity of morals among the
peasantry. Infanticide, that curse of England, is _absolutely unknown in
Spain_; whether from the number of foundling hospitals, or from what
other reasons, we leave it to the political economists to discover. A
well-known Spanish writer describes the women as having "Corazones
delectos, minas de amores," and being "puros y santos modelos de esposas y
de madres." (Exceptional hearts, mines of love, and being pure and holy
models of wives and mothers.)
{459}
They are also wonderfully cleanly, both in their houses and their persons.
There are never any bad smells in the streets or lodgings. Fleas abound
from the great heat; but no other vermin is to be met with either in the
inns or beds, or in visiting among the sick poor, in all of which they form
a marked contrast to the Italian peasantry, and, I fear we must add, to the
English!

Their courtesy toward one another is also widely different from the
ordinary gruff, boorish intercourse of our own poor people; and the very
refusal to a beggar, "Perdone, Usted, por Dios, hermano!" [Footnote 143]
speaks of the same gentle consideration for the feelings of their neighbors
which characterizes the race, and emanates from that divine charity which
dwells not only on their lips, but in their hearts. One peculiarity in
their conversation has not yet been alluded to, and that is their passion
for proverbs. They cannot frame a sentence without one, and they are mostly
such as illustrate the kindly, trustful, pious nature the people. "_Haz
lo bien, y no mira á quien._" (Do good, and don't look to whom.)
"_Quien no es agradecido, no es bien nacido._" (He who is not
courteous is not well born.) "_Cosa cumplida solo en la otra vida_."
(The end of all things is only seen in the future life.) And so on _ad
infinitum_.

    [Footnote 143: "Forgive me, for the love of God, brother!"]

No description of Seville would be complete without mention of the "patio,"
so important a feature in every Andalusian house; and no words can be so
good for the purpose as those of Fernan Caballero, which we translate
almost literally from her "Familia de Alvareda:"

  "The house was spacious and scrupulously clean; on each side of the door
  was a bench of stone. In the porch hung a little lamp before the image of
  our Lord, in a niche over the entrance, according to the Catholic custom
  of placing all things under holy protection. In the middle was the
  'patio,' a necessity to the Andalusian; and in the centre of this
  spacious court, an enormous orange-tree raised its leafy head from its
  robust and clean trunk. For an infinity of generations had this beautiful
  tree been a source of delight to the family. The women made tonic
  concoctions of its leaves, the daughters adorned themselves with its
  flowers, the boys cooled their blood with its fruits, the birds made
  their home in its boughs. The rooms opened out of the 'patio,' and
  borrowed their light from thence. This 'patio' was the centre of all--
  the 'home,' the place of gathering when the day's work was over. The
  orange-tree loaded the air with its heavy perfume, and the waters of the
  fountain fell in soft showers on the marble basin, fringed with the
  delicate maiden hair fern; and the father, leaning against the tree,
  smoked his 'cigarro de papel;' and the mother sat at her work; while the
  little ones played at her feet, the eldest resting his head on a big dog
  stretched at full length on the cool marble slabs. All was still, and
  peaceful, and beautiful."

------

{460}


      From Once a Week.

      Sir Ralph De Blanc-Minster.

      The Vow.

   Hush! 'tis a tale of the elder time,
   Caught from an old barbaric rhyme,
   How the fierce Sir Ralph of the haughty hand
   Harnessed him for our Saviour's land!

  "Time trieth troth!" thus the lady said,
  "And a warrior must rest in Bertha's bed;
   Three years let the severing seas divide,
   And strike thou for Christ and thy trusting bride!"

   So he buckled on the beamy blade,
   That Gaspar of Spanish Leon made,
   Whose hilted cross is the awful sign:
   It must burn for the Lord and his tarnished shrine!


     The Adieu.

  "Now a long farewell! tall Stratton tower,
     Dark Bude! thy fatal sea:
   And God thee speed, in hall and bower,
     My manor of Bien-aimè!

  "Thou, too, farewell! my chosen bride,
     Thou rose of Rou-tor land:
   Though all on earth were false beside,
     I trust thy plighted hand.

  "Dark seas may swell, and tempests lower,
     And surging billows foam;
   The cresset of thy bridal bower
     Shall guide the wanderer home!

  "On! for the cross! in Jesu's land,
     When Syrian armies flee,
   One thought shall thrill my lifted hand,
     I strike for God and thee!"

{461}

    The Battle.

   Hark! how the brattling trumpets blare!
   Lo! the red banners flaunt the air!
   And see! his good sword girded on,
   The stern Sir Ralph to the war is gone!

   Hurrah! for the Syrian dastards flee:
   Charge! charge! ye western chivalry!
   Sweet is the strife for God's renown,
   The Cross is up and the Crescent down!

   The weary warrior seeks his tent:
   For the good Sir Ralph is pale and spent;
   Five wounds he reaped in the field of fame,
   Five in his blessèd Master's name.

   The solemn leech looks sad and grim,
   As he binds and soothes each gory limb;
   And the girded priest must chant and pray,
   Lest the soul unhouseled pass away.

     The Treachery.

   A sound of horsehoofs on the sand!
   And ha! a page from Cornish land.
  "Tidings," he said, as he bent the knee;
  "Tidings, my lord, from Bien-aimè.

  "The owl shrieked thrice from the warder's tower:
   The crown-rose withered in her bower:
   Thy good gray foal, at evening fed.
   Lay in the sunrise stark and dead!"

  "Dark omens three!" the sick man cried;
  "Say on the woe thy looks betide."
  "Master! at bold Sir Rupert's call,
   Thy Lady Bertha fled the hall!"

    The Scroll.

  "Bring me," he said, "that scribe of fame,
   Symeon el Siddekah his name;
   With parchment skin, and pen in hand,
   I would devise my Cornish land!

  "Seven goodly manors, fair and wide,
   Stretch from the sea to Tamar-side,
   And Bien-aimè, my hall and bower,
   Nestles beneath tall Stratton tower!

{462}

  "All these I render to my God!
   By seal and signet, knife and sod:
   I give and grant to church and poor,
   In franc almoign for evermore!

  "Choose ye seven men among the just,
   And bid them hold my lands in trust,
   On Michael's morn and Mary's day
   To deal the dole and watch and pray!

  "Then bear me, coldly, o'er the deep,
   'Mid my own people I would sleep:
   Their hearts shall melt, their prayers will breathe,
   Where he who loved them rests beneath.

  "Mould me in stone, as here I lie,
   My face upturned to Syria's sky;
   Carve ye this good sword at my side,
   And write the legend, 'True and tried!'

  "Let mass be said, and requiem sung;
   And that sweet chime I loved be rung:
   Those sounds along the northern wall
   Shall thrill me like a trumpet-call!"

   Thus said he and at set of sun
   The bold crusader's race was run.
   Seek ye his ruined hall and bower?
   Then stand beneath tall Stratton tower!

     The Mort-main.

   Now the demon watched for the warrior's soul
   'Mid the din of war where blood-streams roll;
   He had waited long on the dabbled sand
   Ere the priest had cleansed the gory hand.

   Then as he heard the stately dole
   Wherewith Sir Ralph had soothed his soul,
   The unclean spirit turned away
   With a baffled glare of grim dismay.

   But when he caught those words of trust,
   That sevenfold choice among the just,
  "Ho! ho!" cried the fiend, with a mock at heaven,
  "I have lost but one I shall win the seven!"

------

{463}

    Original.

    Guettée's Papacy Schismatic. [Footnote 144]

  [Footnote 144: The Papacy: Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations
  with the Eastern Churches. By the Abbé-Guettée, D.D. Translated from the
  French, and prefaced by an original biographical notice of the author,
  with an Introduction by A. Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of Western New York.
  New York: Carleton. 1867, pp.383.]

This volume purports to be the translation of a late French work entitled,
"The Papacy Schismatic; or, Rome in her Relations with the Eastern
Church--_La Papauté Schismatique; ou Rome dans ses Rapports avec I'Eglise
Orientate_." Why the translator or editor has changed the title we know
not, unless it has been done to disguise the real character of the work,
and induce Catholics to buy it under the impression that it is written by a
learned divine of their own communion.

Whether equal liberty has been taken with the text throughout we are unable
to say, for we have not had the patience to compare the translation with
the original, except in a very few instances; but there is in the whole get
up of the English work a lack of honesty and frank dealing. On the
title-page we are promised an Introduction by the Protestant Episcopal
Bishop of Western New York, but in the book itself we find only the
"Editor's Preface" of a few pages. Even this preface lacks frankness, and
seems intended to deceive. "The author of this work," writes the editor,
"is not a Protestant. He is a French divine reared in the communion of
Rome, and devoted to her cause in purpose of heart and life." This gives
the impression that the author is still a member, and a devoted member, of
the communion of Rome, which is not the case. "But his great learning
having led him to conclusions contrary to those of the Jesuits, he fell
under the ban;" that is, we suppose, was interdicted. This carries on the
same deception, making believe that he was interdicted because he rejected
some of the conclusions of the Jesuits, while he remained substantially
orthodox and obedient to the church, a thing which could not have happened,
unless he had impugned the Catholic faith, the authority, or discipline of
the church in communion with the apostolic See of Rome.

We read on: "Proscribed by the papacy, ... he accepts at last the logical
consequences of his position, ... receiving the communion in both kinds at
the hand of the Greeks in the church of the Russian Embassy at Paris." Why
not have said simply: The author of this work was reared in the communion
of Rome, but, falling under censure for opinions emitted in his writings,
he left that communion, or was cut off from it, and has now been received
into the Russian Church, or the communion of the non-united Greeks, and has
written this book to prove that the communion, that has received him is
not, and the one in which he was reared is, schismatic? That would have
told the simple truth; but we forget, the editor is a poet, and accustomed
to deal in fiction.

The editor, who has a rare genius for embellishing the truth, tells us that
"the biographical notice prefixed to the work ... gives assurance of the
author's ability to treat the subject of the papacy with the most intimate
knowledge of its practical character." It does no such thing, but, on the
contrary, proves that he never was devoted in purpose and life to the
communion of Rome, and that even from his boyhood he assumed an attitude of
real though covert hostility to the papacy. His first work was a history of
the church in France, the plan of which was conceived and formed while he
was in the seminary, and that work is hardly less unfavorable to the papacy
than the one before us.
{464}
Its spirit is anti-Roman, anti-papal, full of venom against the popes, and
he appears to have carried on his war against the papacy under the guise of
Gallicanism, till even his Gallican bishop could tolerate him no longer,
and forbade him to say mass.

His biographer gives a fuller insight into his character, perhaps, than he
intended. "From a very early age," he says, "his mind seems to have
revolted against the wearisome routine" of instruction prescribed for
seminarians, "and, in its ardent desire for knowledge and its rapid
acquisition, worked out of the prescribed limits ... and read and studied
in secret." That is, in plain English, he was impatient of direction in his
studies, revolted against making the necessary preparation to read and
study with advantage, rejected the prescribed course of studies, and
followed his own taste or inclination in broaching questions that he lacked
the previous knowledge and mental and spiritual discipline to broach with
safety. There are questions in great variety and of great importance which
it is very necessary to study, but only in their place, and after that very
routine of studies prescribed by the seminary has been successfully
pursued. Most of the errors into which men fall arise from the attempt to
solve questions without the necessary preparatory knowledge and discipline.
The studies and discipline of the college and the seminary may seem to
impatient and inexperienced youth wearisome and unnecessary, but they are
prescribed by wisdom and experience, and he who has never submitted to them
or had their advantage feels the want of them through his whole life, to
whatever degree of eminence he may have risen without them. It is a great
loss to any one not to have borne the yoke in his youth.

It is clear from M. Guettée's biography that he never studied the papal
question as a friend to the papacy, and therefore he is no better able to
treat it than if he had been brought up in Anglicanism or in the bosom of
the Greek schism. He is not a man who has once firmly believed in the
primacy of the Holy See, and by his study and great learning found himself
reluctantly forced to reject it; but is one who, having fallen under the
papal censure, tries to vindicate himself by proving that the pope who
condemned him has no jurisdiction, and never received from God any
authority to judge him. He is no unsuspected witness, is no impartial
judge, for he judges in his own cause. His condemnation preceded his change
of communion.

The editor speaks of the great learning of the author, and says "he writes
with science and precision, and with the pen of a man of genius." It may be
so, but we have not discovered it. His book we have found very dull, and it
has required all the effort we are capable of to read it through. To our
understanding it is lacking in both science and precision. It is a book of
details which are attached to no principles, and its arguments rest wholly
on loose and inaccurate statements or bold assumptions. A work more
deficient in real logic, or more glaringly sophistical, it has seldom been
our hard fortune to meet with. As for learning, we certainly are not
learned ourselves, but the author has told us nothing that we did not know
before, and nothing more than may be found in any one of our Catholic
treatises on the authority of the see of Peter and the Roman pontiff. All
his objections to the papacy worth noticing may be found with their answers
in The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, by the lamented Francis
Patrick Kenrick, late archbishop of Baltimore, a work of modest
pretensions, but of a real merit difficult to exaggerate.

Though M. Guettée's book is far from bewildering us by its learning or
overwhelming us by its logic, we yet find it no easy matter to compress an
adequate reply to it within any reasonable compass.
{465}
It is not a scientific work. The author lays down no principles which he
labors to establish and develop, but dwells on details, detached
statements, assertions, and criticisms, which cannot be replied to
separately without extending the reply some two or three times the length
of the work itself, for an objection can be made in far fewer words than it
takes to refute it. The author writes without method, and seems never to
have dreamed of classifying his proofs, and arranging all he has to say
under appropriate heads. Indeed, he has no principles, and he adduces no
proofs; he only comments on the proofs of the papacy urged by our
theologians, and endeavors to prove that they do not mean what we say they
do, or that they may be understood in a different sense. Hence, taking
these up one after another, he is constantly saying the same things over
and over again, with most tiresome repetition, which require an equally
tiresome repetition in reply. Had the author taken the time, if he had the
ability, to reduce his objections to order, and to their real value, a few
pages would have sufficed both to state and to refute them. As it is, we
can only do the best we can within the limited space at our command.

The author professes to write from the point of view of a non-united Greek,
who has little quarrel with Rome, save on the single question of the
papacy. He concedes in some sense the primacy of Peter, and that the bishop
of Rome is the first bishop of the church, nay, that by ecclesiastical
right he has the primacy of jurisdiction, though not universal
jurisdiction; but denies that the Roman pontiff has the sovereignty of the
universal church by _divine right_. He says his study of the subject
has brought him to these conclusions:

  "1. The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the authority
  of divine right that he has since sought to exercise;

  2. The pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of divine
  right over the whole church was the real cause of the division," or
  schism between the East and the West. (P. 31.)

These very propositions in the original, to say nothing of the translation,
show great lack of precision in the writer. He would have better expressed
his own meaning if he had said: The bishop of Rome did not for eight
centuries hold by divine right the authority he has since claimed, and the
pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of the whole church by
divine right has been the real cause of the schism. We shall soon object to
this word _sovereignty_, but for the moment let it pass.

These two propositions the author undertakes to prove, and he attempts to
prove them by showing or asserting that the proofs which our theologians
allege from the Holy Scriptures, the fathers, and the councils, do not
prove the primacy claimed by the bishop of Rome. This, if done, would be to
the purpose if the question turned on admitting the claims of the Roman
pontiff, but by no means when the question turns on rejecting these claims
and ousting the pope from his possession. The author must go further. It is
not enough to show that our evidences of title are insufficient; he must
disprove the title itself, either by proving that no such title ever
issued, or that it vests in an adverse claimant. This, as we shall see, he
utterly fails to do. He sets up, properly speaking, no adverse claimant,
and fails to prove that no such title ever issued.

It suffices us, in reply, to plead possession. The pope is, and long has
been, in possession by the acknowledgment of both East and West, and it is
for the author to show reasons why he should be ousted, and, if those
reasons do not necessarily invalidate his possessions, the pope is not
obliged to show his titles. All he need reply is, _Olim possideo_.

That the pope is in possession of all he claims is evident not only from
the fact that he has from the earliest times exercised the primacy of
jurisdiction claimed for him, but from the council of Florence held in 1439.
{466}
"We define," say the fathers of the council, "that the holy apostolic see
and the Roman pontiff hold the primacy in all the world, and that the Roman
pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles and true
vicar of Christ, and head of the whole church, the father and teacher of
all Christians, and that to him is given in blessed Peter, by our Lord
Jesus Christ, full power to feed, direct, and govern the universal church;
_et ipsi B. Petro pascendi, regendi, et gubernandi plenam potestatem
traditam esse._"

This definition was made by the universal church, for it was subscribed by
the bishops of both the East and the West, and among the bishops of the
East that accepted it were the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria,
and the metropolitans of Russia, with those of Nicaea, Trebizond,
Lacedaemon, and Mytilene. We know very well that the non-united Greeks
reject this council, although the Eastern Church was more fully represented
in it than the Western Church was in that at Nicaea, the first of
Constantinople, Ephesus, or Chalcedon; but it is for the non united Greeks
to prove that, in rejecting it and refusing obedience to its decrees, they
are not schismatic. At any rate, the council is sufficient to prove that
the pope is in possession by the judgment of both East and West, and to
throw the burden of proof on those who deny the papal authority and assert
that the papacy is schismatic.

Before producing his proofs, the author examines the Holy Scriptures to
ascertain "whether the pretensions of the bishop of Rome to a universal
sovereignty of the church have, as is alleged, any ground in the word of
God." (P. 31.) The translation here is inexact; it should be: "Whether the
pretensions, etc., to _the_ universal sovereignty of the church have,
as is alleged, _their_ foundation in the word of God." The author
himself would have expressed himself better if he had written "the
sovereignty of the universal church," instead of "universal sovereignty of
the church." But the author mistakes the real question he has to consider.
The real question for him is not whether the primacy we assert for the
Roman pontiff has its ground in the written word, but whether anything in
the written word denies or contradicts it. The primacy may exist as a fact,
and yet no record of it be made in the Scriptures. The constitution of the
church is older than any portion of the New Testament, and it is very
conceivable that, as the church must know her own constitution, it was not
thought necessary to give an account of it in the written word. The church
holds the written word, but does not hold from it or under it, but from the
direct and immediate appointment of Jesus Christ himself, and is
inconceivable without her constitution.

The author makes another mistake, in using the word _sovereignty_
instead of _primacy_. Roman theologians assert the primacy, but not,
in the ecclesiastical order, the _sovereignty_ of the Roman pontiff.
Sovereignty is a political, not an ecclesiastical term; it is, moreover,
exclusive, and it is not pretended that there is no authority in the church
by divine right but that of the Roman pontiff. It is not pretended that
bishops are simply his vicars or deputies. In feudal times there may have
been writers who regarded him as suzerain, but we know of none that held
him to be sovereign. He is indeed by some writers, chiefly French, called
_sovereign_ pontiff, but only in the sense of _supreme_ pontiff,
Pontifex maximus, or summus pontifex, to indicate that he is the highest
but not the exclusive authority in the church. The council of Florence, on
which we plant ourselves, defines him to be primate, not sovereign, and
ascribes to him plenary authority to feed, direct, and govern the whole
church, but does not exclude other and subordinate pontiffs, who, though
they receive their sees from him, yet within them govern by a divine right
no less immediate than his. The real and only sovereign of the church, in
the proper sense of the term, is Jesus Christ himself.
{467}
The pope is his vicar, and as much bound by his law as the humblest
Christian. He is not above the law, nor is he its source, but is its chief
minister and supreme judge, and his legislative power is restricted to such
rescripts, edicts, or canons as he judges necessary to its proper
administration. The sovereign makes the law, and the difference, therefore,
between the power of the sovereign and that claimed for the Roman pontiff
is very obvious and very great. Could the author, then, prove from the
written word that the pope or the Holy See is not the universal sovereign
of the church, he would prove nothing to his purpose. Yet this, as we shall
see, is all he does prove.

The author pretends, p. 32, that the papal authority, sovereignty he means,
is condemned by the word of God. The assertion, understanding the papal
authority as defined by the council of Florence, is to his purpose, if he
proves it. What, then, are his proofs? The Roman theologians, that is,
Catholic theologians, say the church is founded on Peter, and cite in proof
the words of our Lord, St. Matt. xvi. 18: "I say unto thee that thou art
Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it." But this does not prove that Peter is the
rock on which the church is founded. The church is not founded on Peter,
or, if on Peter, in no other sense than it is on him and the other
apostles. The rock on which the church is built is Jesus Christ, who is the
only foundation of the church. St. Paul says, 1 Cor. iii. 11: "Other
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ
himself."

That Jesus Christ is the sole foundation of the church in the primary and
absolute sense, nobody denies or questions, and we have asserted it in
asserting that he is the real and only sovereign of the church; but this
does not exclude Peter from being its foundation in a secondary and
vicarial sense, the only sense asserted by the most thorough-going papists,
as is evident from what St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, ii. 20, as cited
by the author: "You are built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Jesus Christ being himself the chief cornerstone." The principal,
primary, absolute foundation is Christ, but the prophets and apostles are
also the foundation on which the church, the mystic temple, is built. The
author says, same page: "The prophets and apostles form the first layers of
this mystic edifice. The faithful are raised on these _foundations_,
and form the edifice itself; finally, Jesus Christ is the principal stone,
the corner-stone, which gives solidity to the monument." This is very true,
and we maintain, as well as he, that there is "no other foundation" in the
primary sense, "no other principal corner-stone than Jesus Christ;" but he
himself asserts, as does St. Paul, other "foundation" in a secondary sense.
So, though our Lord is the principal or first foundation in the sense in
which God is the first cause of all creatures and their acts, yet nothing
hinders Peter from being a secondary foundation, as creatures may be and
are what philosophers terms second causes.

But in this secondary sense, "all the apostles are the foundation, and the
church is no more founded on Peter than on the rest of the apostles." Not
founded on Peter to the exclusion of the other apostles certainly, but not
founded on Peter as the prince of the apostles, or chief of the apostolic
college, does not appear, and it is never pretended that Peter excludes the
other apostles. Our Lord gave, indeed, to Peter alone the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, thereby constituting him his steward or the chief of his
household; but he gave to all authority to teach all nations all things
whatsoever he had commanded them, the same power of binding and loosing
that he had given to Peter, and promised to be with them as well as with
him all days to the consummation of the world. There is in this nothing
that excludes or denies the primacy claimed for Peter, or that implies that
our Lord, as the author says, merely "gave to Peter an important ministry
in his church."

{468}

The author labors to refute the argument drawn in favor of the primacy of
Peter from the command of our Lord to Peter to "confirm his brethren," and
the thrice repeated command to "feed his sheep;" but as we are not now
seeking to prove the primacy, but simply repelling the arguments adduced
against it, we pass it over. He attempts to construct an argument against
the primacy of Peter from the words of our Lord to his disciples, St. Matt,
xxiii. 8: "Be ye not called Rabbi; for one is your Master, and all you are
brethren. And call none your father on earth; for one is your Father, who
is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters; for one is your master, Christ.
He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." "Christ, therefore,"
p. 48, "forbade the apostles to take, in relation to one another, the
titles of master, doctor, or even father, or pope, which is the same
thing." Why, then, does the author take the title of _Abbé_, which
means father, or suffer his editor to give him the title of Doctor of
Divinity? His non-united Greek friends also come in for his censure; for
they call their simple priests _papas_ or popes, that is, fathers;
nay, if he construes the words of our Lord strictly, he must deny all
ecclesiastical authority, and, indeed, all human government, and even
forbid the son to call his sire father. This would prove a little too much
for him as well as for us.

The key to the meaning of our Lord is not difficult to discover. He
commands his disciples not to call any one master, teacher, or father, that
is, not to recognize as binding on them any authority that does not come
from God, and to remember that they are all brethren, and must obey God
rather than men. God alone is sovereign, and we are bound to obey him, and
no one else; for, in obeying our prelates whom the Holy Ghost has set over
us, it is him and him only, that we obey. He commands his disciples to
suffer no man to call them masters: for their authority to teach or govern
comes not from them, but from their Master who is in heaven, and therefore
they are not to lord it over their brethren, but to govern only so as to
serve them. "Let him that is greatest among you be your servant." Power is
not for him who governs, but for them who are governed, and he is greatest
who best serves his brethren. The pope, in reference to the admonition of
our Lord, and from the humility with which all power given to men should be
held and exercised, calls himself "servant of servants." The words so
understood--and they _may_ be so understood--convey no prohibition of
the authority claimed for the Roman pontiff as the vicar of Christ, and
father and teacher of all Christians, by divine authority, not by his own
personal right.

Here is all the author adduces from the Scriptures, that amounts to any
thing, to prove "that the papal authority" is "condemned by the word of
God," and nothing in all this condemns it in the sense defined by the
council of Florence, which is all we have to show.

From the Scriptures the author passes to tradition, and first to "the views
of the papal authority taken by the fathers of the first three centuries."
He does not deny that our Lord treated Peter with great personal
consideration, and thinks Peter may be regarded in relation to the other
apostles as _primus inter pares_, the first among equals, but without
jurisdiction; and he says, p. 48, "We can affirm that no father of the
church has seen in the primacy of Peter any title to jurisdiction or
absolute authority in the church." But the first father he finds who, as he
pretends, absolutely denies the primacy Catholics claim for Peter, and
consequently for his successor, is St. Cyprian, who seems to us very
positively to affirm it.

{469}

The author has a theory, which he pretends is supported by St. Cyprian, and
which explains all the facts in the early ages which have been supposed by
Roman theologians to be favorable to their doctrine of the papacy. He does
not bring it out very clearly or systematically, and we can collect it only
from scattered assertions. He denies that Peter had any authority not
shared equally by the other apostles; or that the bishop of Rome had or has
by divine right any pre-eminence above any other bishop; or that the church
of Rome has any authority not possessed equally by the other churches that
had apostles for their founders. He concedes that Peter and Paul founded
the church of Rome, but denies that St. Peter was ever its bishop or bishop
of any other particular see. How, then, explain the many passages of the
fathers of the first three centuries, which undeniably assert Peter as "the
prince of the apostles," "the chief of the apostolic college," the
superiority and authority of "the see of Peter," "the chair of Peter." and
recognize the jurisdiction actually exercised in all parts of the church by
the bishop of Rome? No man can read the early fathers, and deny that the
church of Rome was regarded as the church that "presides," as St. Ignatius
calls it, as the root and matrix, as St. Cyprian says, of the church, as
holding the pre-eminence over all other churches, with whose bishop it was
necessary that all others should agree or be in communion. The author does
not deny it; but Peter meant "the faith of Peter," "the chair of Peter
meant the entire episcopate," which was one and held by all the bishops
_in solido_, and the pre-eminence ascribed to the church of Rome was
in consequence of her exterior importance as the see of the capital of the
empire. This is the author's theory, and he pretends that he finds it in
the Treatise on the Unity of the Church, by St. Cyprian.

"In fact," he says, p. 79, "he (St. Cyprian) positively denies the primacy
of St. Peter himself; he makes the apostle merely the type of unity which
resided in the apostolic college as a whole, and by succession in the whole
episcopal body, which he calls the See of Peter." "After mentioning the
powers promised to St. Peter, St. Cyprian remarks that Jesus Christ
promised them to him alone, though they were _given to all_. 'In order
to show forth unity,' he says, 'the Lord has wished that unity might draw
its origin from one only.' 'The other apostles certainly were just what
Peter was, having the same honor and power as he.' 'All are shepherds, and
the flock nourished by all the apostles together is one, in order that the
church of Christ may appear in its unity.'"

But to this explanation of St. Cyprian there is a slight objection; for we
are not able to see from this how the unity of the apostolic college or of
the church of Christ is shown forth, manifested, or made to appear, that
is, rendered visible, which is the sense of St. Cyprian, or how it can be
said to draw the origin of unity from one when it only draws its origin
from many conjointly. St. Cyprian says our Lord, "ut unitatem manifestaret,
unam cathedram constituit, unitatis ejusdem originem ab uno incipientem sua
auctoritate disposuit;" that is, that our Lord established by his authority
one chair, made the origin of unity begin from one, that the unity of the
body might be manifested or shown forth. St. Cyprian evidently teaches that
the unity of the church derives, as the author holds, from the unity of the
episcopate, and the unity of the episcopate from the unity of the apostolic
college; but that the unity of the apostolic college or apostolate may be
manifested, and hence the unity of the church be shown forth, or rendered
visible, our Lord made its origin begin from one, that is, Peter. All the
apostles, indeed, had what Peter had, that is, the apostolate, partook of
the same gift, honor, and power; but the beginning proceeded from unity,
and the primacy was given to Peter, that the church of Christ and the
chair, the apostolate, by succession the episcopal body, if you will, may
be shown to be one.
{470}
All are pastors, and the flock, which is fed by all the apostles in
unanimity, is shown to be one, that the unity of the church of Christ may
be demonstrated. "Hoc erant utique et caeteri apostoli quod fuit Petrus,
pari consortio praediti et honoris et potestatis, sed exordium ab unitate
profiscatur; et _primatus Petro datur_, ut una Christi ecclesia et
cathedra una monstretur. Et pastores sunt omnes, et grex unus ostenditur,
qui ab apostolis omnbus [omnibus?] unanimi consensione pascatur, ut
ecclesia Christi, una monstretur." [Footnote 145]

    [Footnote 145: Opp. Cypriani, Migne's Edition, De Unitate Ecclesiae,
    pp. 498-500. The words primatus Petro datur, are wanting in some
    manuscripts, and are rejected by Baluze and some others as an
    interpolation, and Archbishop Kenrick does not cite them in his
    Primacy, when they would have been much to his purpose. It is thought
    that they were originally a marginal note, and have crept into the text
    through some ignorant copyist; but it is just as easy to suppose that
    they were omitted from the text by some careless copyist, and placed in
    the margin by way of correction, and afterward restored to their proper
    place in the text. When several years ago we examined the question with
    what ability we possess, we came to the conclusion that they are
    genuine, or, at least, that there is no sufficient reason for regarding
    them as spurious. They express what is obviously the sense of St.
    Cyprian, and seem to us to be necessary to carry on and complete his
    argument. Nevertheless, we have made none of our reasoning against M.
    Guettée rest on their genuineness.]

St. Cyprian endeavors to show not simply that the church is one and the
episcopate also one, but that our Lord has so arranged it that the unity of
each may be made to appear and both be seen to be one. The unity of the
apostles, of the pastors, or of the church, regarded as a collective body,
is invisible. How, then, if it does not arise from one, or if it has no
visible centre and beginning in the visible order, is it to be made to
appear? St. Cyprian evidently holds that the unity of the apostolic body
establishes the unity of the episcopal body, since he holds the bishops to
be the successors of the apostles; and the unity of the episcopal body
establishes the unity of the flock, which in union with the body each
pastor feeds, and therefore the unity of the entire church of Christ. But
he just as evidently holds that the apostolic unity in order to exist must
begin from a central point, or have its centre and source whence it
proceeds, and radiates, so to speak, through the whole apostolic body,
making of the apostolate not an aggregation, but a body really one, with
its own central source of life and authority; an organic and not simply an
organized body, for an organized body has no real unity. Hence, he makes
the unity start and radiate from one, as it must if unity at all. This one,
this central point, he holds, is, by the ordination of the Lord, Peter. Of
this there can be no doubt.

As we understand St. Cyprian, whose treatise on the Unity of the Church is,
perhaps, the profoundest and most philosophical ever written on that
subject, the church is an organism with Jesus Christ himself for its
invisible and ultimate centre and source of life. But as the church is to
deal with the world and operate in time and space, it must be visible as
well as invisible. Then the invisible must be visibly expressed or
represented. But this cannot be done unless there is a visible expression
or representation in the exterior organic body of this interior and
invisible centre and source of unity, life, and authority, which our Lord
himself is. To establish this exterior or visible representation, our Lord
institutes the apostolic college and through that the episcopal body,
through whom the whole flock becomes in union with their pastors, who are,
in union with the apostles, one organic body; but only on condition of the
unity of the apostolic college which unity must start from one, from a
visible centre and source of unity. Hence, our Lord chose Peter as the
central point of union for the apostolic college, and Peter's chair, the
"una cathedra," as the visible centre of union for the episcopal body, and
through them of the whole church, so that the whole church in the
apostolate, in the episcopate, and in the flock is shown to be one,
represented with the unity and authority it has in Jesus Christ.

{471}

The trouble here with the author's theory is, not that it makes Peter the
sign and type of the unity or authority of the apostolic college, and the
chair of Peter the type and figure, as he says, of the unity and authority
of the episcopate, but that it does not do so; for it recognizes no visible
apostolic or episcopal unity, since it recognizes no visible centre or
source from which it originates; and hence neither the apostolate nor the
episcopate, save as Jesus Christ, is a unity, but an aggregation, as we
have said, a collection, or at least, a sort of round robin. By denying the
primacy or centre and beginning of unity to Peter and Peter's chair
individually, it denies what St. Cyprian maintains was instituted to
manifest or show forth unity. It denies both the manifestation of unity and
external unity itself, both of which are strenuously insisted on by St.
Cyprian, who, indeed, says expressly in his letter to St. Cornelius, the
Roman pontiff, that "the Church of Rome," that is, "the chair of Peter," is
the centre whence sacerdotal unity arose.

The author says, p. 67, that "St. Cyprian was right in calling the Church
of Rome the chair of Peter, the _principal_ church, whence sacerdotal
unity emanated. But for all that, did he pretend that the bishop enjoyed
authority by divine right? He believed it so little that, in his De Unitate
Ecclesiae, he understands by the chair of Peter the entire episcopate,
regards St. Peter as the equal of the other apostles, denies his primacy,
and makes him the simple type of the unity of the apostolic college." The
Church of Rome "was the source of sacerdotal unity in this sense, that
Peter was the sign and type of the unity of the apostolic college." St.
Cyprian makes St. Peter, p. 79, "merely the type of the unity that resided
in the apostolic college as a whole, and, by succession, in the episcopal
body, which he calls "the see of Peter." "The see of Peter, in St.
Cyprian's idea, is the authority of the apostolic body, and, by succession,
of the episcopal body. All the bishops had the same honor and the same
authority in all that relates to their order, as all the apostles had the
same honor and authority as Peter." (Pp. 79, 80.)

Peter, then, is the sign and type of apostolic and episcopal unity, and
"the chair of Peter," or "the see of Peter," is the sign and type of
apostolic authority. But supposing this to be so, and Peter to have been in
no respect distinguished from the other apostles, or to have held no
peculiar position in the apostolic body, how came he to be regarded as the
sign and type of apostolic unity, and his chair as the sign and type of
apostolic authority? There is a logic in language as well as in the human
mind of which it is the expression, and there is a reason for every
symbolical locution that gains currency. If the fathers and the church had
not held Peter to be the prince of the apostles and his see the centre and
source of apostolic authority, would they or could they have made his see
or chair the symbol of apostolic authority, or Peter himself the symbol,
"the sign and type," of apostolic unity? Why the see of Peter rather than
that of Andrew, James, or John? or Peter rather than any other apostle? The
fact, then, that St. Peter and his see or chair were taken as symbolic, the
sign and type, the one of apostolic unity, and the other of apostolic
authority, is a very conclusive proof that the primacy was given to him and
his see by our Lord, and by succession to the holy apostolic see and the
Roman pontiff, as the fathers of Florence define and Roman theologians
hold.

Again, how could Peter be a sign and type of apostolic unity or his see the
sign and type of apostolic authority, if he, Peter, had no relation, and
his see none, to that authority not held equally by all the apostles and
their sees? In the church of God there are and can be no shams, no
make-believes, no false signs or types, no unrealities, no calling things
which are not as if they were. Signs which signify nothing are not signs,
and types which represent nothing are simply no types at all. The real
apostolic unity and authority are internal, invisible in Jesus Christ
himself, who, in the primary and absolute sense, as we have seen, is the
rock on which the church is founded, the sole basis of its solidity and
permanence, the sole ground of its existence and fountain of its life,
unity, and authority.
{472}
Peter and Peter's see, if the sign and type of this invisible unity, must
represent it or show it forth in the visible order. But how can Peter
represent that unity, unless he is in the visible order its real centre and
source, in which it begins and from which it emanates? Or how can the see
or chair of Peter be the sign and type of the invisible apostolic
authority, unless it really be its source and centre in the visible order?
The external can represent the internal, the visible the invisible, only in
so far as it copies or imitates it. In calling Peter the sign and type of
apostolic unity, the author then concedes that Peter represents our Lord,
and that he is, as the council of Florence defines, "the true vicar of
Christ;" and in making Peter's see the sign and type of apostolic
authority, he makes it the real centre in the visible order of that
authority, and consequently concedes the very points which he rejects, and
undertakes to prove from St. Cyprian are only the unfounded pretensions of
the bishop of Rome.

That the primacy here unwittingly conceded by the author is not that
absolute and isolated sovereignty which the author accuses Catholic
theologians of asserting for Peter and for the bishop of Rome as his
successor, we readily admit, but we have already shown that such a
sovereignty is not claimed. The pope is not the sovereign, but the vicar or
chief minister of the sovereign. He governs the church in apostolic unity,
not as isolated from the episcopal body, but as its real head or supreme
chief. His authority is said to be _loquens ex cathedra_, speaking
from the seat of apostolic and episcopal unity and authority. He is the
chief or supreme pastor, not the only pastor, nor pastor at all regarded as
separate from the church. He is the visible head of the church united by a
living union with the body; for it is as necessary to the head to be in
living union with the body, as it is to the body to be in living union with
the head. Neither can live and perform its functions without the other; but
the directing, controlling, or governing power is in the head. St. Ambrose
says, "Where Peter is, there is the church;" but he does not say Peter is
the church, nor does the pope say, "L'Eglise, c'est moi," I am the church.
Succeeding to Peter as chief of the apostolic college, he is the chief or
head of the church. The author's theory makes the church in the visible
order as a whole, acephalous, headless, and therefore brainless.

The author bases his assertion that St. Cyprian denies the primacy of Peter
on the fact that he says, "All the other apostles had what he had, the same
honor and the same power." This is with Mr. Guettée a capital point. His
doctrine, so far as doctrine he has, is that the church has no visible
chief; that all the apostles had equal honor and authority; that all
bishops as successors of the apostles are equal; that one bishop has by
divine right no pre-eminence above another; and that, if one is more
influential than another, he owes it to his personal character or to the
external importance of his see. And this he contends is the doctrine of St.
Cyprian. But, if he had understood St. Cyprian's argument, he would have
never done that great saint such flagrant injustice. St. Cyprian's argument
is, as is evident from the passage we have cited at length, that, although
all the apostles received the same gift, the same honor, and the same
power, yet, for the sake of manifesting unity, our Lord constituted one
chair from which unity should begin, and gave the primacy to Peter, that
the unity of the apostolic or episcopal body and of the whole church of
Christ might be shown. The author himself contends that the apostolate, and
by succession the episcopate, is one and indivisible, and held by the
apostles or bishops _in solido_.
{473}
Then, if all the other apostles had the apostolate, they must have had
precisely what Peter had, and if the other bishops have the episcopate at
all, they must have precisely what the Roman pontiff has, yet without
having another apostolate or another episcopate than that which they all
equally receive and hold in its invisible unity, or anything in addition
thereto. He may, nevertheless, be the head or chief of the episcopal body
and the centre in which episcopal unity and authority in the visible order
originate, and from which they radiate through the body, and from the
bishops to their respective flocks, and bind them and the whole church
together in one, which, as we understand it, is the precise doctrine of St.
Cyprian, and certainly is the doctrine of the Roman and Catholic Church.

The author, even if a learned man, does not appear to be much of a
philosopher or much of a theologian. There are depths in St. Cyprian's
philosophy and theology which he seems unable to sound, and heights which
are certainly above his flight. He is, we should judge, utterly unaware of
the real constitution of the church, the profound significance of the
gospel, the vast reach of the Christian system, its relation to the
universal system of creation, or the reasons in the very nature of things
there are for its existence, and for the existence and constitution of the
church. All the works of the Creator are strictly logical, and together
form but one dialectic whole, are but the expression of one divine Thought.
Nothing can appear more petty or worthless than the author's shallow cavils
to a man who has a little real theological science.

The author cites the controversy on the baptism of heretics, in proof that
St. Cyprian denied the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, or his authority
to govern as supreme pontiff the whole church, but unsuccessfully. St.
Cyprian found the custom established in Carthage, as it was also in certain
churches in Asia, to rebaptize persons who had been baptized by heretics,
and he insisted on observing the custom. He complained, therefore, of St.
Stephen, the Roman pontiff, who wrote to him to conform to the ancient and
general custom of the church. Whether he conformed or not is uncertain, but
there is no evidence that he denied the authority of the Roman pontiff, and
he certainly did not break communion with him, though he may have regarded
his exercise of his authority in that particular case as oppressive and
tyranical. It would seem from the letter of St. Firmilianus to St. Cyprian,
if genuine, of which there is some doubt, as there is of several letters
ascribed to Cyprian, and from the address of St. Cyprian to the last
council he held on the subject, which Mr. Guettée cites at some length,
that the question was regarded as one of discipline, or as coming within
the category of those matters on which diversity of usage in different
churches and countries is allowable or can be tolerated, and on which
uniformity has never been exacted. He insisted not that all the world
should conform to the custom he observed, but defended, as our bishops
would to-day, what he believed to be the customary rights of his church or
province. That he was wrong we know, for the universal church has sustained
the Roman pontiff.

We do not think the author has been very happy in placing St. Cyprian on
the stand against the primacy of the holy apostolic see and the Roman
pontiff. The saint is a much better witness for us than for him.

The author, unable to deny the preponderating influence of the Roman
pontiff and his see in the government of the church, and the importance
everywhere attached to being in communion with the bishop of Rome, seeks to
evade the force of the fact by attributing it not to the belief in the
primacy of the Church of Rome, but to the superior importance of the city
of Rome as the capital of the empire, as if the Catholic Church were merely
a Roman Church, and not founded for the whole world.
{474}
We, indeed hear something of this when Constantinople, the New Rome, became
the rival of Old Rome, and its bishop, on account of the civil and
political importance of the city, set up to be oecumenical bishop, and
claimed the first place after the bishop of Rome; but we hear nothing of it
during the first three centuries, and the author adduces nothing to justify
his assumption. All the fathers, alike in the East and the West, attribute
the primacy held by the Church of Rome not to the importance of the city of
Rome in the empire, but to the fact that she is "the church that presides,"
is "the principal" or governing "church," is "the see of Peter," holds the
chair of Peter, "prince of the apostles," is "the root and matrix of the
Catholic Church," and that Peter "lives" and "speaks" in its bishops. Now,
whatever our learned author may say, we think these great fathers, some of
whom were only one remove from the apostles themselves, and nearly all of
whom gained the crown of martyrdom, knew the facts in the case as well as
he knows them, and that there is every probability that they meant what
they said and wrote.

"We see," says the author, p. 48, "that as early as the third century the
bishops of Rome, because St. Peter had been one of the founders of that
see, claimed to exercise a certain authority over the rest of the church,
giving themselves sometimes the title of 'bishop of bishops'; but we also
see that the whole church protested against these ambitious pretensions,
and held them of no account." That the bishop of Rome was accused by those
whom the exercise of his authority offended of assuming the title of bishop
of bishops, by way of a sneer, may be very true, but that he ever gave
himself that title, there is, so far as we are aware, no trustworthy
evidence.

"The church protested against these ambitious pretensions." Where is that
protest recorded? That bishops were then as now jealous of their real or
supposed rights, and ever well disposed to resist any encroachment upon
them, is by no means improbable; and this, if the bishops generally held
that the Roman pontiff had no more authority by divine right over the
church than any other bishop, must have made it exceedingly difficult for
him to grasp the primacy of jurisdiction over them. Their power to resist,
in case they believed they could resist with a good conscience, must have
been, being, as they were in the fourth century, eighteen hundred to one,
somewhat greater than his to encroach. That the bishops or simple priests
whom the Roman pontiff admonished or censured protested sometimes, not
against his authority, but against what they regarded as its unjust,
arbitrary, or tyrannical exercise, is no doubt true, and the same thing
happens still, even with those who have no doubt of the papal authority;
but that the whole church protested is not proven; and in all the instances
in which protests were offered on the part of individual bishops that came
before an ecclesiastical council, the universal church uniformly sustained
the Roman pontiff. When St. Victor excommunicated the Quartodecimans, some
bishops remonstrated with him as being too severe, and others opposed his
act, but the council of Nicaea sustained it. Even before that council, the
author of the Philosophumena, whose work must have been composed in the
early part of the third century, treats the Quartodecimans as heretics,
although, except as to the time of keeping Easter, their faith was
irreproachable. So on the question of the baptism of heretics, the whole
church, instead of protesting against the decision of St. Stephen, approved
it, and follows it to this day. It will not do to say the whole church
treated the acts of these popes "as of no account."

The writers of the letters attributed to St. Cyprian and Firmilianus are
good evidence that the popes claimed and exercised jurisdiction over the
whole church in the controversy on the baptism of heretics, and Tertullian
affords no mean proof of the same fact at a yet earlier date.
{475}
In a work written after he had fallen into some of the heresies of the
Montanists, he writes, as cited by our author, p. 78, "I learn that a new
edict has been given, a peremptory edict. The sovereign pontiff, that is,
the bishop of bishops, has said: 'I remit the sins of impurity and
fornication.' O edict! not less can be done than to ticket it--GOOD WORK!
But where shall such an edict be posted? Surely, I think, upon the doors of
the houses of prostitution." This passage undoubtedly proves that
Tertullian himself, fallen into heresy, did not relish the papal decision
that condemned him, and perhaps that he was disposed to deny the authority
of the Roman pontiff; but if it had been generally held that the Roman
pontiff was no more in the church than any other bishop, and therefore that
his decision could have no authority out of his diocese or province, would
his decision have so deeply moved him, and called forth such an outburst of
wrath? If the claim to the primacy of authority in the whole church, and
therefore to jurisdiction over all bishops, was not generally recognized
and held, what occasion was there for so much indignation? What point would
there have been in the sneer, or force in the irony, of calling him the
sovereign pontiff, or the bishop of bishops? Tertullian's language, which
was evidently intended to exaggerate the authority claimed by the Roman
pontiff, plainly enough implies that he was generally held to have
authority to make decisions in doctrine and discipline for the whole
church, and that a censure from him was something of far more importance
than that from any other bishop or patriarch.

The author cites to the same effect as Tertullian the work published at
Paris a few years ago under the name of Origin, entitled Philosophumena,
"justly attributed," he says, "to St. Hyppolytus, Bishop of Ostia, or to
the learned priest Caius." The authorship of the work is unknown, and no
documents have yet been discovered that enable the learned to determine
with any degree of certainty by whom it was or could have been written. The
work, however, bears internal evidence of having been written by some one
belonging to the East, and who lived during the pontificates of St. Victor,
St. Zephyrinus, St. Callistus, St. Urban, and perhaps St. Pontian, bishops
of Rome, that is to say, from 180 to 235, certainly not later. The work,
when published by M. Miller at Paris, in 1851, attracted the attention of
English and German Protestants by its gross charges against the two
venerated Roman pontiffs and martyrs, St. Zephyrinus and St.
Callistus--charges which for the most part refute themselves. But though
Protestants have not been able to make much of it against the papacy,
Catholics have found in it new and unexpected proofs of the authority
extending over the church in all parts of the world, exercised by the popes
of that early period. "In his invectives," says the Abbé Cruice, "the
adversary of Callistus acknowledges his great power, and furnishes new and
unexpected proofs of the supremacy of the holy see." The Abbé Cruice, who,
we think, we have heard recently died Bishop of Marseilles, published at
Paris, in 1851, an interesting History of the Church of Rome under the
pontificates of St. Victor, St. Zephyrinus, and St. Callistus, in which he
has incorporated these proofs with great judgment and effect. As we are not
now considering the affirmative proofs of the primacy of the Holy See, but
the arguments intended to prove the papacy schismatic, we can only refer
the reader to this learned work and to the Philosophumena itself. We will
only remark that the unknown author is far more bitter against the popes
than his contemporary Tertullian, and leaves more unequivocal evidence to
the extent of the papal power. No one can read the Philosophumena without
perceiving in the complaints and incidental remarks of the author that the
hierarchy at the end of the second century was as regularly organized as
now, and precisely in the same manner, with the Roman pontiff at its
summit.

{476}

The author, p. 82, says Tertullian, who in several passages refers to the
Church of Rome as a witness to the apostolic tradition, "does not esteem
her witness testimony superior to that of others." Perhaps so, for in the
cases referred to Tertullian had no occasion to discriminate between one
apostolic church and another. He is using against heretics the argument
from prescription. Their doctrines are adverse to the apostolic tradition,
and therefore false. If any one would know what is the apostolic tradition,
he may learn it from any of the churches founded by apostles "where their
sees still remain, where their epistles are still read, where their voice
still resounds, and their face, as it were, is still seen. Is it Achaia
that is near thee? thou hast Corinth; if thou art not far from Macedonia,
thou hast the Philippians; if thou canst go to Asia, thou hast Ephesus; if
thou dwellest near Italy, thou hast Rome, whose authority is near us," that
is, near us in Africa. It is true Tertullian pronounces a eulogium on the
Church of Rome that he does not on the others, but no great stress need be
laid on that. Any one of the apostolic churches was sufficient for
determining the apostolic tradition, and there was no reason why he should
mention the primacy of the see of Peter if he held it, and it would have
weakened his argument if he had appealed to that primacy, doubtless then as
now rejected by heretics.

But this leads us to a remark which it may be well to bear in mind. All the
churches founded by the apostles were during the whole of the first three
centuries in existence, and preserved the apostolic doctrine or tradition,
and it could be learned from Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus, etc.,
without the necessity, at least on ordinary occasions, of recurring to the
supreme authority of Rome. The author quotes several of the fathers who
call the see of Antioch Peter's see; he might have gone further, and shown
that each of the four great patriarchal sees, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch,
and Jerusalem, were so-called, and because they were held to have been
founded by Peter. This is the reason why they received the dignity and
authority of patriarchal churches. Peter was held to survive and govern in
each one of them, but more especially in Rome, where he gave his life for
his faith, and where stands his tomb. It is Peter who governs one and
indivisible in them all, and consequently, to get Peter's authority, it was
not, except in the last resort, necessary to apply to his successor in the
see of Rome. It is this fact, misapprehended by the author, that has made
him assert that the see of Peter, or the chair of Peter, means the
universal episcopate which all the bishops, as St. Cyprian says, hold _in
solido_. Every bishop in communion with Peter's see, no doubt, was
regarded as _solidaire_ with the whole episcopal and apostolic body,
as we have already explained; but we have not found the "see of Peter," or
"chair of Peter" applied to any particular churches, except those tradition
asserted were founded by Peter, and only those sees had originally
patriarchal jurisdiction, and this fact is in itself no slight proof that
the primacy was held to be vested in Peter as we have already explained,
and the author has given us the opportunity of proving from St. Cyprian.

This fact that Peter was held to govern in the four great patriarchal sees,
though supremely only in the Church of Rome, explains why it is that in the
early ages we find not more frequent instances of the exercise of
jurisdiction beyond his own patriarchate of the West by the Roman pontiff.
The bishops of these Petrine churches were not originally called
patriarchs, but they exercised the patriarchal power long before receiving
the name, and probably from times immediately succeeding the apostles. So
long as these patriarchs remained in communion with the bishop of Rome,
their head and chief, most of the questions of discipline, and many of
those of faith, could be, and were, settled by the patriarch, or local
authority, without resort to the Roman pontiff.
{477}
But when these sees fell off from unity into heresy or schism, Peter
remained only in the Roman see, and all causes that had previously been
disposed of by the patriarchs of the East had to be carried at once to
Rome, before the supreme court.

Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were the three chief cities of the empire,
and the capitals the first of the empire itself, and the others of its two
largest and most important prefectures. This fact may seem to favor the
author's theory that the ecclesiastical superiority is derived from the
civil superiority; but had this been so, Jerusalem would hardly have been
selected as the seat of the third patriarchate of the East. The
geographical position and civil and political importance of these cities
may have influenced the apostle in selecting them to be the chief seats of
the ecclesiastical government he under Christ was founding, but could not
have been the ground of their superior ecclesiastical jurisdiction, because
the church was not organized as a national religion, or with a view to the
Roman empire alone, and the apostles themselves carried the gospel beyond
the farthest limits of that empire, into regions never penetrated by the
Roman eagles. The church was catholic, and was to subsist in all ages and
teach all nations, as well as all truth. Our Lord said, "My kingdom is not
of this world;" it does not hold from the kingdoms of this world, and is
independent of them, both in its constitution and in its bowers. These
remain always and everywhere the same, whatever the revolutions or the rise
and fall of states and empire. The authority of the church is immediately
from God; her grandeur and glory are spiritual, and not derived from the
greatness, grandeur, wealth, or power of earthly cities. St. Augustine
makes the city of Rome the type of the city of the world, which he
contrasts with the church or city of God. The idea that the rank or the
authority of the bishop derived from the civil rank and importance of the
city in which he held his see was a Constantinopolitan idea not heard of
till the fifth century, and, as we shall see in its place, one of the chief
causes of the schism between the East and the West.

The author denies that St. Peter was ever, in the proper sense of the word,
bishop of Rome, or of any particular see. If he is right, how could the
unity of the church have a visible starting-point or centre? or how could
it be said to begin from Peter or the chair of Peter, as his own witness,
St. Cyprian, asserts? If Peter had no particular see, established his see,
or set up his chair, his cathedra, nowhere in particular, the whole
argument of St. Cyrian [Cyprian?] as to the origin and manifestation of
unity is baseless, and goes for nothing. Besides, it is contradicted by
universal tradition. The testimony that Peter had his chair at Rome is
ample, and leaves nothing to be desired. But this is not the point. It is
for the author to prove that he was not bishop of Rome; for he has
undertaken to prove the papacy is schismatic, and at every step he takes,
the burden of proof is on him. Where are his proofs?

The author says St. Linus was bishop of Rome when Peter first arrived in
that city. A church which has a bishop is already a church founded and
constituted. Yet the author allows and cites authorities that prove that
Peter was the founder, or at least one of the founders, of the Roman
Church! That St. Linus was the first bishop of Rome after St. Peter there
is no doubt; that he was the first bishop, or bishop of Rome, before the
arrival of St. Peter in the city, there is no evidence, but any amount of
testimony to the contrary. We say there is no evidence. The lists given by
the fathers sometimes enumerate him as first and sometimes as second, as
they do or do not include the apostle; but all make him the successor of
St. Peter. The fathers, in giving the lists of other apostolic sees, are
not uniform, and sometimes they include and sometimes they exclude the
apostle, and reckon only from his death.
{478}
Eusebius says, as cited by the author, p. 144, "After the martyrdom of Paul
and Peter, Linus was the first that received the episcopate at Rome."
Tertullian, as also cited by the author, p. 145, says that "Peter sat on
the chair of Rome;" but he contends that Tertullian "does not mean that he
was bishop, but that he taught there," that is, St. Peter was a professor
of theology at Rome! This might do if Tertullian had been treating of the
Sorbonne, or of the French university, but will not answer here. In
ecclesiastical language, _chair, cathedra_, means simply the seat of
the bishop, and, figuratively, the episcopal authority. To say Peter sat in
the chair or cathedra of Rome is saying simply he was bishop of Rome. The
presumption is, that Tertullian meant what he said, understood according to
the usages of the language he used. Besides, if chair _may_ sometimes
be used figuratively for teaching, it is the author's business to prove
that it must mean so in this particular case. This he does not and cannot
do.

The author pretends that the tradition which makes Peter seven years bishop
of Antioch and twenty-five years bishop of Rome is obviously false; for any
one can see by counting that there was not time enough for it between the
day of Pentecost and the martyrdom of Peter. We do not pretend to be very
good at counting, but as we count, seven years bishop of Antioch and
twenty-five years bishop of Rome make in all thirty-two years. The day of
Pentecost, according to the usual reckoning, was in A.D. 33, and St. Peter
suffered martyrdom at Rome under Nero, A.D. 66, or at the earliest 65.
Tillemont says 66, which leaves thirty-three, at least thirty-two years;
and we see no reason to suppose that the organization of the church at
Jerusalem and committing it to the care of James, its first bishop, and the
setting up of his chair at Antioch, might not all have been done before the
close of the year of the crucifixion. But even an error in the chronology
would not prove that Peter was not bishop of Rome.

The pretence that it was incompatible with the dignity of an apostle to be
the bishop of a particular see has nothing to sustain it. It is not
necessary to suppose Peter, by establishing his see at Rome, was obliged to
confine his whole attention and labor to that particular church, or that he
remained constantly at Rome. Indeed, it is very possible, and thought by
many to be very probable, that he committed the care of that church daring
his absences to St. Linus as his vicar, and there are several authorities
to that effect. Some of them join St. Anacletus, Cletus, or, as the Greeks
say, Anencletus, and St. Clement, successively bishops of Rome, with St.
Linus in the government of the Roman Church under Peter during his
lifetime; but, however this may have been, tradition is constant that St.
Linus was the immediate successor of Peter, which at least implies that
Peter was regarded as having held the see as well as having assisted in
founding it; for otherwise St. Linus could not have been regarded as his
successor, and no reason could be assigned why he was called the successor
of Peter rather than of Paul, who also assisted in founding it, and is
honored even to-day by the Roman Church as one of its founders.

We have taken up the author's theory point by point, and we find him
utterly failing to establish it in whole or in part. His allegations are
set forth with great confidence, but the authorities he cites do not
sustain them, and are either not to his purpose or, like St. Cyprian, point
blank against him. He may have demolished the man of straw which he himself
had set up, but he leaves standing the papacy as held by the Catholic
Church and defined by the council of Florence.
{479}
He has asserted in very strong terms the ignorance, the chicanery, the
sophistry, and the dishonesty of the Roman theologians, and leaves no doubt
in the minds of intelligent readers that he greatly excels them in the
qualities and practices he ascribes to them; but he adduces nothing beyond
his own assertions and misrepresentations against their fairness and
candor, and their intelligence and learning. His sneers at them are pointed
only by his own ignorance or malice, and present him in a most unfavorable
light. His cant, so abundant against them, is very stale and simply
disgusting. From first to last he proves that he lacks, we will not say the
humility of the Christian, but the modesty and reserve of real learning and
science, and that he is moved not by love of truth, but by a spirit of
hatred and revenge.

Here we might well close, for the author has refuted from St. Cyprian
himself, by proving by his own witness the primacy of jurisdiction by
divine right was possessed even in the third century, while he has left all
the arguments and authorities adduced by the Roman theologians from
Scripture and tradition to prove affirmatively the papal authority by
divine right, or by the positive appointment of Jesus Christ in their full
force. But the reasons which induced us in the first place to begin the
examination of the author's lucubrations induce us to go through with them.
The work has been translated and published here under Protestant auspices,
set up as an important work against the papal authority and the Church of
Rome, "the root and matrix of the Catholic Church," as says St. Cyprian,
and, were it left unnoticed or unreplied to, many people might take it to
be really what it is represented to be, and conclude that we cannot answer
it because we have not done it.

Besides, the controversy between large classes of Protestants and Catholics
is narrowed down to two questions, the honor we render to Mary the mother
of God, and the authority we attribute to the Holy See and the Roman
pontiff. M. Guettée, having been reared in our communion and gone out from
us because he was not of us, and having in this work done his best to prove
the papacy schismatic, and that its assertion has been the cause of the
schism between the East and the West, affords us as good an occasion as we
can expect to discuss the latter question, and to consider the arguments,
facts, and authorities alleged in their defence by those who refuse their
obedience to St. Peter in his successor. The work is rambling, and made up
of details most wearisome to read, and difficult to bring into a shape in
which its real value can be brought to the test, but it is a fair specimen
in spirit and arrangement of the works written against the Roman and
Catholic Church, and contains in some form all that schismatics allege
first and last against her. We may as well make it our text-book for the
discussion as any other. But we have already trespassed long enough on the
patience of our readers for this month.

------

{480}


    Translated from the French.


    The Crucifix of Baden.

    A Legend of the Middle Ages.


Will you follow me to Baden? Not to that elegant and wild and whirling
Baden of painted faces and flashy toilettes, where gentlemen of the turf
display their horsemanship on the plain of Iffezheim; where the majesty of
old Germany elbows, in the Trinkhalle, the princes of Bohemia; but to the
fresh, dark, silent, almost unknown nooks of that Baden which God has made
and which man has yet left untouched; where the artist wanders for his
picture, the poet for his inspiration, the dreamer for his vision, the
Christian to murmur his prayer; for it is to a burial-ground that I am
about to lead you. But fear not on that account; this burial-place of Baden
has comparatively but little of the mournful in its appearance; it is
truly, as its name declares, the _Fried Hof_--the Court of Peace.
Under that green turf, under those flower-clad hillocks, there lie bodies
that suffer no more, but sleep in quiet; their souls may suffer, indeed,
and be in pain, but their souls are no longer there; and can repose alone
be frightful? Look around, and, as far as the eye can reach, what beauty
shines in the landscape, what a charm invests the distant meeting of earth
and sky! Look up to the gray blue heaven, pale and transparent, as is ever
that sky which stretches over the valley of the Rhine; to those pure white
clouds floating like distant sails on a stormless sea; to those distant
hills, with outlines softening as they recede; to the green woods that
fringe their sides; to those walls which time has breached; those crumbling
towers; those ruined castles which seem to overhang the plain of the
dead--man's work, and the hands that created it, becoming dust together.
These sights may, indeed, be melancholy, but they are peace-giving too; for
there in the midst hangs Christ bowing his weary head and stretching out
his bruised arms in yonder great crucifix of stone.

In a churchyard, nothing is more frequent, nor, so to speak, more natural,
than to see a crucifix. It is there like the flag on the bastion, the mast
on the vessel. Without it the place would be accursed and desolate, for
hope would be wanting there. All know and acknowledge this, but,
nevertheless, few passers-by bestow a glance on the holy image. Some
faithful ones may, when they see it, make the sign of the cross; others
bend slightly before it; well-bred people uncover; free-thinkers, with
proud look and step, with unbending knee and body erect, pass it by, they
who would bow so low before the coronet of a prince or even the key of a
chamberlain.

And certainly indifferent, timid, and free-thinking ones come to the
_Fried Hof_ of Baden; but _there_, few stop not and marvel, if by
chance their eyes fall upon its crucifix. There is upon that rigid
face--those features of stone--a look of life, of flesh and blood, which
enchains you, moves the depths of your heart, speaks to you. To understand
that gaze, it is not necessary to be a Christian; alas! it is enough to be
a man. Those lips, half parted in a sigh, tremble in the stone; those
half-closed eyes seem really to weep; agony sits upon every feature;
bitterness of soul has worn every one of those furrows, the arch of the
brows has been contracted, the pure lines of the profile broken, the calm
of the forehead destroyed by a sorrow, overwhelming, silent, inconsolable;
and you would have before you the image of human misery the most complete,
the deepest, the most horrible, if a ray from the Majesty on high did not
come to elevate and illumine that petrifaction of grief.

{481}

When you have long studied those features and contemplated their agony, you
involuntarily ask yourself: Where did the sculptor find so suffering a
face, so living an agony? whence came his model? for you feel that those
features once were the flesh of one to whom ordinary grief were as nothing.
That look of life, that pain so real, came certainly from a human heart
that once beat beneath them, and in them painted its wounds, its tortures,
and its agony. They were _seen_, and not merely created in the
artist's brain.

Yes; you are right. Those features are those of a suffering, repentant, and
miserable man. If you approach the base of the crucifix, you will see
graven in the once soft stone, in long Gothic letters, and in the Suabian
dialect of the fifteenth century, these short and simple words, which are
the explanation and the ending of its story:

    "MINA, OTHO.
  "May God receive you and pardon me."

Nothing more; no signature to the work, nor name added to the prayer. But
young souls, simple hearts, poetic spirits, which still may be found at
Baden, in spite of "sport" and "the turf," will relate to you the birth of
the work and the fate of the artist; for, alas! the story of the crucifix
is also the story of the sculptor.

----

  Chapter I.


It was a populous, busy, and bright city, Baden of old, as it flourished in
the fifteenth century, in the days of the Margrave Bernard of Staehberg.
Less noisy than to-day, it was more picturesque. Where great hotels, white
villas, and regular edifices now rise, then only narrow crooked streets
were seen; where Gothic houses, those old German dwellings, of which a few
still stand at Augsburg, at Ulm, and especially at Nuremberg, reared their
sculptured gables and pointed roofs, wherein were set windows looking like
half-opened eyes, while beams projected from the wall beneath and supported
little balconies, and long, narrow windows with leaden sashes glistened in
the glory of their little, thick, greenish hued and diamond-shaped panes.

Nevertheless, those streets in which the sun-rays rarely penetrated,
(caught as they were in their way by the projecting fronts of the houses,)
were one day of the beautiful month of May, 1435, filled with people in
holiday dress, bearing curious and smiling faces, with fluttering pennons,
shining armor, and broad banners. It was the day of the tournament, and the
gossips grouped themselves together to see pass the barons of the mountains
and plains, and to relate to each other the high achievements of each
doughty noble and the traditions of his family, while they awaited the
return from the _burg_ of the proud victors or humbled vanquished.

But of the general joy, the cries that rang through the town, only a few
faint and expiring echoes reached a lonely and distant street, where the
houses, lower and more scattered, no longer stood close together, but began
to grow scattered through the fields. One of these houses, the largest and
almost the last, was distinguished from its neighbors by two peculiarities.
The front of the first story, instead of being cut by those narrow
leaden-sashed openings joined one to the other, through which the light of
day might scarcely enter, offered to the gaze a huge window with larger,
neater, and more regular panes than any around. Through the openings on the
ground floor a narrow spiral staircase might be seen winding its polished
steps and balustrade of stone, carved like lace, beneath a roof of wood
delicately cut in graceful flowers, branches, arabesques, and interlaced
figures.
{482}
Above all, in a little wooden niche, a little carved shrine, which
surmounted the pointed gable, was the form of an angel with folded wings,
chiselled in pure white marble. One might imagine that the heavenly
messenger had stopped there to rest in the middle of some long journey;
that he gazed calmly down and protected with his frail hands the high gray
house which he seemed to bless; so that the gossips, who all knew the
dwelling and held its master in high esteem, called his abode The House of
the Angel.

And the good burgesses wondered not to see the white statue on that gray
front, nor did they marvel at the graceful scrolls and arabesques of the
pretty staircase, and that huge dazzling window, for they knew that the
last served to light the studio of the sculptor Sebald Koerner, and that
the two ornaments of the house, the marble angel and the carved roof, were
his work.

Sebald Koerner was justly esteemed and even admired by the burgesses of
Baden. It was not that he was very famous or very rich; that he earned much
money or made much noise in the world. But it was because he was honest,
patient, true; at once pious and dreamy, modest and intelligent. He lived
only for his art, and scarcely partook at all of the passions, the aims,
the entrancements of the crowd. He did not place himself above it, but
without it, and men hold in high respect those who from a calm retreat
behold the torrent of human life rush by. As an artist, he had rivals, but
no enemies; as a man, he had his failings, but no vices; as a father, he
had a treasure, a fair-haired daughter, named Mina, who had seen the
flowers of seventeen springs bloom. Sebald Koerner might call himself a
happy man.

But he was not only a happy man, he was a wise one, and what God had given
him of strength, genius, calm, and happiness he guarded carefully, lest he
might lose it in the tumult of the life of men. Therefore the day of the
tournament, which had so stirred the peaceful city of Baden with rumors of
pleasure and joy, saw old Sebald shut himself up in his atelier. He had
worked since dawn, while the swords of others were clashing and shields and
breastplates resounding, while plumes and banners flashed through the air,
and horns and clarions awoke the echoes; and he had first prayed, for such
was his custom, and he imagined that prayer brightened his
inspirations--men were so ignorant and barbarous in those "dark ages"! Then
with a skilful and pious hand he wielded hammer and chisel through long
hours well employed, and now, although the sun was sinking behind the
mountains, he still worked, standing before his great stone bas-relief,
only interrupting himself from time to time to cast a glance full of
parental love on his daughter Mina.

Upon Mina fell the last ray of the sun, which, after kissing the verdure of
the mountain, shone through the panes and made her long silver-gray gown
glitter like silver itself, and seemed to light a beam of dark light in the
centre of each of her large black eyes. Those were splendid eyes, and
rarely seen in one so fair, for Mina was a blonde, and the golden threads
of her purse were not brighter than those her hair, but only less soft and
close. Nothing could equal the perfect purity and grace of her forehead and
cheeks, the whiteness of her skin, the delicacy of the lines of her face:
she seemed a beauteous statue, to which God, in reward to its designer, had
given life and motion, and a loving heart and golden hair.

The bas-relief which the old sculptor was finishing seemed indeed as if
long and difficult labor had been spent upon it. It represented a religious
subject, for any but religious subjects were scarcely known, in those times
when minds were so simple, imagination so quiet, and intelligence so
limited, according to our strong-minded ones of this age; in those times
when pilgrims marvelled at the beauty of a Child Jesus, or the chaste grace
of a Virgin Mary; when the Apollos, the Minervas, the Venuses and Adonises,
forgotten or unknown, were yet buried in the darkness of centuries and
under the dust of ruins.

{483}

What Sebald Koerner wished to represent was the dawn of the resurrection
day.

The cave of the sepulchre was there, rocky, vaulted, and low. At the
entrance knelt Peter, with wide-opened eyes and trembling lips, and
Magdalene wept, stretching forth her arms. Yes, she wept, for the sepulchre
was empty. The stone which closed the tomb moved to one side, allowed the
scattered bands which wrapped the sacred body and the abandoned
winding-sheet to be seen, and the angel seemed to announce to the two
faithful followers the glad and great tidings--the tidings of triumph and
of consolation--_Resurrexit: non est hic:_ words graven on the
banderole which hung from his hand.

Old Sebald's angel was noble, radiant, and beautiful, as became a messenger
of heaven. The sculptor, with something of artistic caprice, had placed a
golden star upon his forehead, and with the fond pride of a father had
given to his face the features of his beautiful Mina, so that, when he
smiled upon his angel, it seemed to him that he smiled upon his daughter,
and, when he turned to his daughter, he became grave, and moved as if he
looked upon a celestial visitant.

"I am satisfied with thee, my daughter," said he, after silently comparing
for some moments the two faces. "I find nothing to change in thy pure brow,
thy modest attitude, or thy soft gaze. All that I cannot copy is thy smile.
And thy smile is sweet, my Mina, but it is too lively, too childish, too
mocking; it is earthly, and not, I am sure, the smile of the bright ones
above."

"Marvel not that it should be so, my father," replied Mina, while her eyes
glistened: "Above, angels smile in ecstasy, love, and piety, while I here
can only bear the smile of youth and hope."

"Thou art right, my child; I would not blame thee. Hope is natural to the
young. Long years are before them; they may expect to see their projects
accomplished, their brightest dreams realized. Melancholy and weariness are
the lot of old fathers, old dreamers, and old workers such as I."

"And why, father," returned Mina gayly, "shouldst thou be sad? Hast thou
not an art which is better than a fortune? a name which is known throughout
Baden as well as those of our oldest barons and bravest knights? Thou art
never idle; thou lackest a companion never. Noble ladies and proud lords
offer thee a respectful salute as they pass the door of the House of the
Angel; and, when they are not here, thy little Mina remains; and thou
thyself makest holy companions for thyself when carving some beautiful
Virgin or sweet child-Jesus."

"'Tis that which often makes me tremble, my child. Hath my spirit enough of
inspiration, are my hands pure enough to reproduce those holy features? to
give to stone, or marble, or wood the charm and majesty of those divine
forms which from their golden halos call and smile on me? to express the
sweetness of the Christ-child, the tenderness of Christ the Mediator, or
the virginal motherhood of his holy mother? No; to inspiration must be
added the heart of a Christian; and if I have dared too much and but ill
succeeded; if to those sacred faces I have given too much of man's fall and
misery, then am I guilty, and then have I failed in my aim--in more than my
aim, for then my peace of conscience and repose of soul, too, are lost.
These, Mina, are the fears that weaken and the questions that disquiet me,
and so often render my hand unsteady, and mark care upon my brow."

"Thou art very wrong to be so troubled, my father," said Mina, lifting her
head with a little air of triumph. "From Strasburg to Nuremburg, from
Constance to Augsburg, all who have hearts and eyes and frequent the
churches say there is in this world no man like thee to carve angels and
saints."

{484}

"Ay; so say men," replied Sebald, "but God hath not yet said it, he who
sees and judges my works; and from him must come my courage and my
strength, for I would destroy all the works of my hands if by them I knew
that he was offended. Look, my child, this bas-relief is nearly completed,
and until now I was satisfied with it, but a scruple comes and weighs
heavily upon my mind. This angel is very beautiful, Mina, since he bears
thy face, but have I not presumed too much in giving him thy features? As
one of the host of heaven he is perfect, so far as aught beneath God
himself can be perfect. But thou art but a child of earth; thou art good,
thou art tender to thy old father; thou art his only treasure, and yet more
beautiful than this angel, but wilt thou be always calm, pure, and radiant
as he?"

"I will try, my father," answered Mina, with an air of half rebellious
resolution, mingled at the same time with deep tenderness.

"Promise me, Mina, that thou wilt ever seek to be angelic and joyous, and
in the midst of the world to live retired from it, that the weaknesses and
griefs of men may ever remain far from thee and never afflict thee. I am
old, and, when I shall rest in the tomb, thou wilt be the heiress of my
name and the guardian of my memory. Then learned men, princes, travellers,
who may perchance have heard of my fame, may come. Thou wilt salute them at
the threshold, and when they ask for old Sebald, thou, pointing to my
deserted studio and empty seat, wilt reply, '_Resurrexit: non est
hic_: He hath succeeded; he hath finished his years of toil, and
reposeth in his fatherland.' And I, my Saviour!" continued old Koerner, "I
will then know whether I knew thee on earth. After thou hast done this, my
daughter, dismiss the travellers and bid the princes farewell. Live in
simplicity and retirement with a few old friends, my poor child, for thou
hast no mother, or with some faithful companion whom thou mayest wed.'

"Father, father!"' cried the young girl, "why speak of sorrow and death in
the beautiful spring, when the sun shines so brightly, and when thou art
finishing the beautiful angel to whom thou hast given such radiance and
youth? If thou couldst give him youth, my father, it is because thou yet
possessest youth and long wilt possess it. And thinkest thou that, if thou
wert no longer on earth, many would give a thought to thy little Mina, who
is young and ignorant, and who is not a lady? No, those to whom strangers
would come to speak of thy fame, whom, after thy departure, they would
seek, are sure to be thy pupils Johann Muller, Franz Steinbach, and
even--and even--Sir Otho of Arneck, who carves so bravely, and wears such
glistening arms."

"As to the two first, thou art perhaps right, my daughter," said Koerner,
who had again begun to work, and was lightly polishing the tunic of the
angel with the edge of his chisel. "Franz hath ardor and Johann almost
genius. But for the knight, Sir Otho, he amuses himself with sculpture as
with training his hawks or with the wrestling of his varlets."

"Art not too severe?" asked Mina lowering her eyes and puckering her rosy
lips into a little pout. "I thought the knight of Arneck had something of
talent; that thou thyself saidst the day he modelled the great St.
Michael."

"In good truth, he might have talent, were he more pious, more humble, and
were he not a noble. Thinkest thou, Mina, that inspiration will come in the
midst of the clamors of a passage-at arms, the charms of a concert of
lutes, or of a circle of great ladies listening to the words of a handsome
cavalier, or the lays of a minnesinger? No; who would consecrate his labors
to the honor of God and the saints must seek his inspiration, looking
upward to heaven, studying the mountains and the fields, or praying in the
churches. Then let him return and work and adore, lest the holy vision fly
or the sweet fervor grow cold."

{485}

"Nevertheless, my father, the Chevalier Otho, is very assiduous, and I have
more than once heard thee marvel at his zeal."

"Assuredly, he has been zealous. But can he really bear that zeal in his
heart, wherein he bears the pride of his high lineage, the gallantry of a
courteous knight, and all the cares of his seigneury? No; his ardor is but
the flame of burning straw, which quickly dies. I cannot even understand
why the knight of Arneck should take up the chisel--he who should content
himself with the sword."

"Yes, yes, father, he wields it marvellously!" cried Mina, in a burst of
enthusiasm.

"And therefore should be content with it. But Sir Otho knows not what he
wants. To day he practises a new thrust, and to-morrow he cuts stone or
models a statue. See, he has not finished the fine armor of his archangel,
and yet he could not keep from the tournament. And nevertheless, he
promised to be here before evening."

Mina did not reply to these last words, but threw a vague, sorrowful glance
toward the sun, which yet shone, but was fast sinking.

Sebald, yet touching up various parts of his bas-relief, did not turn his
head, and for some moments silence reigned in the atelier.

Soon the fall of a light and vigorous step was heard on the little pointed
black stones which formed the pavement of the street.

"It is perhaps Sir Otho," said Sebald, and continued his work.

"If it were he, he would come on horseback," replied Mina, whose cheeks,
despite her, were covered with the blush of expectant happiness, and in a
moment she had left her seat, opened a portion of the large window, and was
leaning joyfully over the sculptured balcony.

But she soon returned, looking sad.

"No, father, it is not he; it is only Johann," said she, and she seemed to
awake from a dream.

"Then let him come up quickly," replied the old man, well pleased with the
news, but still working on.

A moment after he arose, as he heard the footfalls on the stair, and turned
to greet the most beloved and studious of all his pupils.



  Chapter II.

The new-comer was a young man of perhaps twenty-eight years, pale,
delicate, and slightly stooped. His large blue eyes, candid and
intelligent, gave a charm to his young though thoughtful face, whence light
emotions seemed to be banished to give place to the workings of a vigorous
mind. Johann, at first sight, did not seem handsome, but he became more and
more interesting on acquaintance. The simplicity of this look and costume--
a dark gray doublet, leathern belt, and cap without either clasp or plume--
certainly neither attracted nor retained the gaze. Johann saluted the
beautiful Mina, who returned his greeting with a look of playful anger, and
then hastened to greet his master.

"Well, Johann, what news?" asked Sebald, advancing with outstretched hand.

"That I have not come alone, master. Your business is done; the prior of
the monastery of Fremersberg is here. I have spoken in your name, and he
binds you neither by designs nor advice. You will be at full liberty to
execute according to your own will the sculpture of the chapel. You need
only confer with him as to the time and conditions of the work. The prior
wished much to visit your atelier and see your beautiful bas-relief, of
which the fame has spread far and wide, but you know that he is old and
infirm. The stair was too steep for him to mount, and I left him in the
hall below, where he awaits you."

{486}

"Very good; I go, my brave boy and thanks to thee. Hast been in the city,
Johann?"

"Yes, master, I was carried away by the crowd and could not avoid the
tournament."

"Very well, then, amuse Mina with the story of all the fine things that
thou hast seen. An old father and his statues are not very joyous company
for a girl of seventeen."

With these words Koerner left the room, and Mina, who until now had
remained silent and pouting, came forward with animated looks and flashing
eyes:

"Then you saw the tournament, Johann?" she began.

"Yes, Demoiselle Mina."

"Who were the victors?"

"There were three, as there were three encounters. The Gaugrave Siegfried
of Ehrenfels; the old Count of Arenheim; and our acquaintance, our fellow
of the studio, Otho of Arneck, who triumphed on foot and on horse, and
received the finest of all the crowns."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mina, with a joyous sigh, while a sudden blush overspread
her countenance.

"And," continued Johann, "it was the richest and most beautiful of the
ladies of the Margravate who gave it him--the Countess Gertrude of
Horsheim, whose father possesses the entire valley of the Murg."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mina again, but this time her sigh was one of anguish, and
she grew pale.

Johann Muller gazed on her a moment in silence, then turned away and walked
a few paces with the air of one who meditates some resolution or prepares a
discourse; then he returned, and stood with downcast eyes before the young
girl.

"Demoiselle Mina," said he, "we have known each other since infancy. Would
you, for the sake of our old friendship, allow me to ask you one question,
and then to offer you a single counsel?"

"I will reply to your question, if it be suitable for me to do so, and I
will list your counsel if it be good," replied the girl with a slight
haughtiness in her manner.

"You shall judge," said Johann. "Demoiselle, you take much interest in all
that passes in the city."

"I seek not to conceal it. I am young and full of life, and I love to gaze
upon brilliant cavalcades, shining breast-plates, floating plumes and
broidered doublets; I like to hear of the nuptials of such a baron, or the
mourning of such a castellan. My father forbids it not, nor think I that
you will blame it. Such tastes are far from marvellous at my age."

"Nor marvel I at them; but if they are imprudent, demoiselle?" asked Johann
with a look of affliction.

"Imprudent! Why?" returned Mina quickly, a flash gleaming from beneath her
long lashes.

"Because--because," stammered Johann, "to me it seemeth that the happiness
of a young maiden like thee, beautiful, good, and virtuous as thou art, is
better assured when it flourishes beneath the shadow of her home.
Baronesses and countesses may display their great names and fine apparel at
courts and tourneys; but for thee, demoiselle, _thy_ pride, _thy_
rich apparel, and _thy_ true dignity are thy sweet virtue in the first
place, and, after, the renown of thy father, and such gifts are but little
prized by the great ones of the world. Thou wilt better enjoy them and
better preserve them by not exposing them without thy dwelling."

"And have I not remained there?" cried Mina, almost in tears. "Go I ever to
rejoicings unless my father bears me company? Was I ever seen, while he
works here, to babble or even to smile without?"

"'Tis not that I would charge," replied Johann, "All see thee ever here,
tranquil, smiling, and pure, like yon bright marble cherubim, which hovers
over thy house, and, even if he were not there, still might thy dwelling be
called the House of the Angel.
{487}
But if thy thoughts wander abroad whilst thou remainest here; if thou dost
always desire ardently to see those rejoicings of which thou knowest
naught, or that world which thou scarcely knowest, thou wilt become
unhappy, demoiselle, and it is that evil I wished--that thou must escape."

"But why, my good Johann, disquiet thyself about my happiness?" asked Mina
in a kinder tone.

"Why, Mina, why? Because from childhood I have grown by thy side; because
for long years it seemed thou wert my sister; because later I thought thee
my friend; because I would gladly bear the burden of thy sorrows, and count
thy hopes as mine own."

"I thank thee, Johann; thy heart is good and true," replied the girl, while
her eye sought the distant mountain behind which the setting sun was soon
to sink.

"Sayest thou so, Mina? I know nothing of that; I but feel that I have a
heart that loves thee that would regard no effort, recoil from no sacrifice
that would bring to thee joy, glory, or happiness."

"Truly art thou generous, Johann," replied the girl, nodding her fair head.
"But I need naught; I am tranquil and happy, and will probably never find
occasion for the exercise of thy devotion."

"Ah! if some day thou mayst find aught of consolation in my tenderness!"
cried Johann, clasping his hands and fixing a timid glance full of emotion
upon her. "Mina--I sometimes dreamt--pardon me--but thy father was always
so affectionate to me, and thou hast often been so kind--I sometimes dreamt
that some day Sebald Koerner might call me son--that thou, Mina--thou
mightest give me a name dearer, tenderer, holier yet. But your looks tell
me I have hoped in vain before your mouth has spoken--and yet, to thee
would I have consecrated so much of devotion and love, if thou hadst become
my wife!"

The maiden motioned with her hand and turned away with a sigh.

"We would be neither rich nor powerful," continued Johann, "but
nevertheless I thought we might be happy. If thou shouldst desire fine
apparel, Mina, I would have given thee them from the rewards of my toil; if
thou shouldst desire glory, I would have worked until thou wouldst bear my
name with pride. For thee would I have strained my uttermost strength, what
talent I may own, my youth--and of thee I would have asked only that thou
shouldst remain joyous and beautiful, and shouldst love me a little. And
how peacefully would thy old father live--how happily die, seeing thee
happy and beloved, ay, adored! Yes--adored, Mina; I have said the word and
will not unsay it."

Uttering these last words, Johann lowered his eyes and bent his head before
her, as if to express by his mien the deep tenderness of his heart. She
stretched forth her hand, moved by these simple declarations of a love
almost hopeless, but yet so full of life.

"Dear Johann--faithful Johann," said she at length, "thou art good and
kind, but--speak no more thus. Thou hast said that in our childhood thou
lovedst me as a sister. Let me still be thy sister. I will never be thy
wife. I will neither lie nor forswear myself. I would shelter myself behind
the grating of the cloister of Lichtenthal or sleep in yonder cemetery
rather than give thee my hand, because with it I should not give my heart,
and thou wouldst not see remorse and regret in the heart of thy wife.
Johann! let us be friends, and, if thou lovest me, try to forget thy
dream."

"I may never forget it," murmured the young sculptor. "My love is as old as
I, Mina; it forms part of my life. But if God, some day allows its flame to
be quenched, it will be because he will light in its place a purer and
loftier one, and God alone may console me, Mina, when I shall have lost--"

At this instant the joyous notes of far off-trumpets broke the calm silence
of the air.

"What sounds are those?" asked Mina, turning to the window.

{488}

"Probably the departure of the vanquishers of the tourney. After the
distribution of the crowns, they were invited to the _burg_, and are
now separating, doubtless to change their costume for the ball of the
evening. Perhaps, too, some of the barons may be returning to their
castles, and, if so, their banners will soon appear at the end of the
street."

"I am very curious to see them pass," said Mina, and, leaving Johann alone
in the atelier, she pushed a stool upon the balcony, and there, leaning
upon the railing, her little head with its golden hair supported by her
white hand, she awaited the coming of the brilliant _cortege_.


  Chapter III.

Toward evening, indeed, knights, bannerets, squires, and men-at-arms
scattered themselves through the roads and the streets of the town. One of
the most brilliant, though least numerous parties were making their way
toward where the town became confounded with the country. Two nobles rode
in advance, helmet on head and lance in hand, attired in brilliant armor,
over which were thrown pourpoints of fine velvet. Behind, their squires
bore their banners, one showing gilt battlements in a field gules, the
armorial bearings of the barons of Arneck, the other the green oak and
argent field of the rich counts of Broeck.

"My dear Otho," said the last named, throwing upon his young companion a
glance of almost paternal affection, "I am well satisfied with thee; thy
deeds shone bright in to-day's joustings. Thy brothers-in-arms had begun to
laugh at thee, and to say thou hadst become but an image-maker. But to-day
showed that the noble remained in thee."

"You are very kind, my lord count," replied the young knight.

"Not so, in sooth; I but look to thy interest, as in duty bound. Although
thy domains, my friend, be of limited extent, thou hast a name ancient
enough, a brilliant fame, and a brave enough form to make it a pleasure for
many a rich and proud demoiselle to give thee her hand and dowry, and to
change name and title for those of the barons of Arneck."

"You flatter me, lord count," replied Otho, raising himself in his saddle
and joyfully stroking his mustache. "Hath one of those fair ladies of whom
you speak deigned to cast a glance upon me?"

"More than one has done so, as well thou knowest," returned he of Broeck;
"and even to-day the richest and most beautiful of them all, Gertrude of
Horsheim, spoke and smiled graciously as she placed the crown upon thy
brows."

"Lady Gertrude," said Otho, "hath truly a sweet voice and teeth of
exceeding whiteness."

"Moreover, she hath two castles in the valley of the Murg and a thriving
village in the plain. Her father is a stout lord, who, I well know, will
not object to thee for a son-in-law. I know, Otho, that Master Sebald
Koerner has a pretty daughter, and that thou art sometimes charged with
wishing to espouse her. But wouldst thou truly, in the lightness of thy
heart, add to the battlements of thy shield the chisel of such a
father-in-law? They say that you make between you a complete company of
stone-cutters, and that thou art the mason and he the sculptor. I wish thee
well, my friend, and therefore do I scold and mock thee. I know that in thy
heart's depth thou art as proud as thou art brave. So far thou art Sir
Otho, Baron Otho, and all noble ladies smile upon and salute thee. Wouldst
be called Otho the citizen, Otho the image-maker, and have all ladies turn
their backs upon thee or point thee out as some wonder?"

"Truly, not so: and never will I give them reason for so doing," replied
the young knight, with a face scarlet with shame.

{489}

"Then," said De Broeck, "reply suitably to the invitation I am about to
offer thee. In a fortnight I give a festival at my castle. There will be
jousts in the great court, banquets in the great hall, balls and hunts,
tilting for the ring, and shooting with the bow. The Countess Gertrude will
be there, and thou canst enroll thyself among the number of her suitors.
Siegfried of Thunn will be there, too; he bore the ring from thee lately,
and thou hast thy revenge to take. All this, I hope, promises enough of
pleasure, and is better than thy statues and images. So, Otho, thou wilt
come? I may count upon thee!"

"Assuredly, my lord count, it is an honor and happiness to obey you,"
replied the young knight, taking leave of his protector with a courteous
inclination.

The two escorts separated, and Otho, dismissing his, took the direction of
the house of the old sculptor.

A few moments after, Mina and Johann saw him enter the atelier.

"Here I am at last, my dear master," said he, pressing the old artist's
hands with real affection. "Did you think I had forgotten you in the midst
of tiltings and passages-at-arms?"

"There was certainly reason that you might," replied Sebald, smiling. "In
the midst of thrusts of lance and crushing of helms, you could scarce think
of kneading clay or cutting statues."

"That may be, but a pupil can always find time to give his dearest, his
oldest friend and most excellent master pleasure. And what think you,
Master Koerner, I bring to-day?"

"Firstly, a crown, if rumor speaks truth," answered the sculptor;
"secondly, some broken casques and battered harness. Those, I believe, are
the gleanings of the tilt-yard."

"Then, master, you are wrong. I bring something different from all these.
Would you know what? An order from the margrave, written with his own hand
and sealed with his own seal, for Master Sebald Koerner to begin, with no
greater delay than a month at most, the decoration of the chapel and the
grand hall of his castle of Eberstein."

"How! The margrave choose me!" cried Sebald, his eyes lighting up with joy.

"And certes, my master, could he have made a better choice? After the
tournament we met in his castle, and he there spoke of his castle of
Eberstein and the embellishments he proposed, but he had not yet fixed his
choice upon a sculptor. In short, I brought forward your name; I praised
your St. Christopher; I recalled your Virgin Mary to his mind; some other
nobles seconded me, and--here is the order written upon parchment."

"Thanks! thanks! my true friend! my dear pupil!" cried the old master,
pressing the young knight's hand. "Through your good offices some memories
of me may remain in my country. The thick walls of the castle of Eberstein
will protect and preserve my statues, and they may perhaps be gazed on when
time shall have crumbled into dust the saints I have carved for the
pediments of the houses of the city, and the Christs I have raised by the
roadsides. And it is you, noble Otho, who have brought to me the brightest
crown, the sweetest joy, a sculptor can wear or taste--the assurance of the
duration--mayhap the glory of his works!"

"Dear master, why so much of compliment and gratitude? Would I not do much
more for the love of art and of you?"

And while he spoke, the knight's eyes sought those of Mina, smiling and
blushing in a corner, and repeated in their silent language, "And for the
love of thee, too, fair girl."

"This day is a day of gladness for me," continued old Sebald. "Johann
conducted hither after vespers the prior of the Augustines, who hath
confided to me the decoration of his chapel."

"Pah! a monastery of poor monks!" exclaimed Otho, shrugging his shoulders
slightly, and throwing a disdainful glance on the humble Johann and his
gray doublet.
{490}
"Not a very brilliant or lucrative undertaking, I should say. You will
neither win a load of glory nor mountains of gold there, my dear master.
But each brings what he finds and gives what he has," said the young
knight, withdrawing his gaze from Johann and turning on his heel.

"I could find nothing better," said Johann in a tone of discouragement,
"although I, too, would work for the glory and fortune of my master."

"And thy master accepts thy good intentions with joy, my son," answered old
Sebald, taking his hand, "for he knows that they come from a devoted soul
and a sincere heart. I have not only a noble art and a good daughter; I
have also two brave pupils, two true friends. God be thanked, he hath made
me a happy man!"

Happy, O poor Sebald! Ay, if thou hadst no daughter. Alas! why does Mina
gaze with such simple admiration upon the noble countenance and gilt spurs
of the knight? Why does she hang enchanted upon the sweet accents of his
voice?

As long as he came regularly to the studio, Mina was smiling and happy; but
one day he came not, and on the next she received a letter.


  Chapter IV.

From the day Mina received that letter she lost her freshness and gayety.

Then commenced a long and bitter series of nights without repose and days
without hope. She sometimes said sadly to herself that, as the sun shines
not always clearly, as the sky is not for ever blue, so the smiles and joys
of maidens are of short life; and that, while timid women remain around the
hearthstone, young and valiant knights must depart to the wars or on long
journeys, like the great silver herons which pass a season on the borders
of limpid waters, and then depart on outspread wing to return, when the
gloomy winter has passed, to find once more their nests in the long grass,
and their clean bath among the budding reeds. She thought all this, and
then reasoned a little and prayed much more; but she often trembled; she
ever was in pain, and, becoming weak, she became unhappy.

Her cheeks grew pale; her brow clouded; her eyes ceased to sparkle. She no
longer took pleasure in seeing from her balcony the archers of the margrave
pass, nor in confining with golden cords and tassels her shining hair or
waving robe. Her sadness and languor at last attracted the attention of her
father. He thought that his frequent absences, the solitude of the house,
alone caused his daughter's weariness and illness. Ceasing for a while his
labor, he passed a few days with her, or brought her with him from time to
time, hoping to wean her thoughts from their melancholy by the sight of the
great ornamented halls and the beautiful park of the castle of Eberstein.

But often, when he had led her to the great park and allowed her to wander
there, going himself to finish a keystone, to carve a capital, or decorate
a moulding, he found her not on his return crowned with wild flowers, or
culling odorous berries and grapes, or following with eager eye the
bounding deer. No; almost always Mina sat by the margin of some solitary
pond, plucking the leaves from willow branch or pulling a wild rose to
pieces. But her gaze bent not to the branch or to the flower. It wandered
over the surface of the water, slowly and sadly, and ofttimes seemed to
seek some invisible form in its depths, and then turned tearful from the
waves, as if sorrowing at not therein perceiving the object of its
longings.

The old sculptor wondered and grew sad, as a good father would, and then
consoled himself with the reflection that often tender hearts were subject
to passing griefs, and that it takes but little to trouble the gayety of
the happiest maidens.
{491}
But it was the weariness of idleness he feared most for Mina, and he made
every effort to distract her thoughts.

"Listen, my child," said he one beautiful morning in July, when the earth
smiled fresh and glittering in the dew--"listen. It is too fine a day for
me to wish to work in. In my old age I must have from time to time a little
recreation--fresh air and sun-light; if it please thee, we will go to the
city."

"As thou wishest, father," replied Mina, rising with vacant eye and dreamy
air.

"And methinks a little walk and a few cheerful visits would do thee
wondrous good. It is long since I have seen Master Hans Barthing, the
gold-smith, mine ancient neighbor and old friend, and his daughters Jeanne
and Bertha will not be vexed to have thee their companion for a day. Let us
start, then, my daughter. Ah! here is Johann! Well, let him come. Johann is
an excellent youth, and is always welcome with Master Barthing as with me.
Johann, my son," continued the old sculptor, turning to the young man, "it
is useless to take up the chisel to-day. Thou shalt help me to buckle my
mantle. We are going to take a walk, and I invite thee to accompany us."

"I will go willingly," replied Johann, who rarely went out in Mina's
company, and who, poor boy, marked with a white mark those days when the
pretty girl deigned him a friendly look or word.

Soon the three visitors arrived at the house of Master Barthing, the
jeweller, whose talent was well known and valued even beyond the frontiers
of the margravate of Baden, and whose frank cordiality and joyous humor
were justly prized by his friends and neighbors.

"You here at last, Master Koerner!" cried the old goldsmith, rising from
his leathern arm-chair and doffing his furred cap as soon as he perceived
his visitors. "Come you to examine my treasures or to ask a diamond from my
shop? But, pshaw, my old Sebald, you need them not; you have other
treasures and owe no man for them; and here," he continued, looking on
Mina, "is your most brilliant, your most precious diamond. Come. Jeanne!
Bertha! here is a happy visit a charming friend."

The two girls rushed forward and gave their ancient neighbor a thousand
caresses and a thousand kisses.

"How changed thou art, Mina!" exclaimed Jeanne suddenly.

"Thou art wearied, I am sure," added Bertha, "in thy great lonely house. It
cannot be very diverting to have ever around thee but marble and stone, and
plaster and statues. Why dost come so seldom to visit us? Together we can
amuse each other; we can recount legends as we spin; or Jeanne, who hath a
good voice, can trill some love-lay of the minnesingers. And what will
amuse thee perhaps more than aught else will be to see the beautiful and
shining jewels in our father's workshop. I know well, my dear friend, that
many fine things are to be seen in thy father's atelier, but there
everything is white for ever white, and that must be somewhat saddening.
But a young girl is always rejoiced and glad when she contemplates at her
leisure rich diadems and rings, enamelled flasks, and glittering
necklaces."

"Courage, child! courage, Bertha!" cried the goldsmith, laughing. "It is a
dutiful daughter who to love of her father joins love of his trade. Well,
if thou thinkest Mademoiselle Mina will take pleasure in seeing my enamels,
my jewels, and my diamonds, as soon as our collation is finished thou shalt
take her to my atelier. I have there something I think exceeding fine, in
fact a veritable master-piece. But it becomes me not to praise myself. You
will see; you will judge, and you will give me your opinion."

Half an hour after they entered the long and narrow gallery where the
goldsmith showed forth his richest jewels, his most massive and skilfully
chiseled pieces of silver, his best finished and most precious works.
{492}
Brilliant lights seemed to sparkle and shine from all sides in this room of
wonders. Everywhere glittered gold, rubies, sapphires, while pearls lent
their soft white light, and diamonds and opals their thousand colors. Great
show-cases full of enamellings shone like the sun; rings, reliquaires,
clasps, laid out on tables, seemed to form a vast train of sparks whose
fires mingled in shining light, and chains and necklaces formed slender
garlands of stars and variegated flame.

And while the two old men followed, chatting, behind, the three young girls
wandered with light step in advance hither and thither, trying on this
necklace, toying with these rings, admiring that reliquaire, tearing their
entranced eyes from those wildernesses of beautiful forms, of rays and
colors. Between the two groups came Johann, the poor youth feeling no
inclination to join one and not daring to approach the other; lonely
Johann, who admired alone, and from time to time sighed.

Suddenly Master Hans advanced before the girls, and, taking a key from the
huge purse which hung at his belt, he unlocked a casket of cedar wood, and
unrolled a carpet of emeralds on a field of glittering gold, before the
eyes of the spectators.

"How beautiful! how dazzling!" cried the maidens.

"Whence came such splendid jewels, such magnificent stones?" asked Master
Sebald. "One would think the treasures of the Eastern magicians, of whom
crusaders' legends tell, were spread before him."

"This," replied Master Hans, plunging his hand into the casket and drawing
forth a chain set with emeralds, "is the treasure of the house of Horsheim,
to which I have added, by the order of the present lord, some of my rarest
stones. The count is about to celebrate the marriage of his daughter, and,
besides her dowry of beauty and of castles, he wishes to give her a
splendid one of jewels."

"Ah! then beauteous Lady Gertrude is to be married at last," said Mina,
with a sigh of relief, for she had not yet forgotten how on the day of the
tournament Johann had told her that Otho had received the crown from the
hands of the young countess.

"Yes, Demoiselle Mina; and the wedding, they say, takes place in a
fortnight, and will be one of the most brilliant ever celebrated in the
margravate of Baden."

"But whom doth the countess marry?" asked Johann, who, without knowing why,
felt his heart beat painfully.

"If rumor speaks sooth, a knight of but moderate fortune, but of goodly
form, large heart, and name of renown. They say 'tis the Baron of Arneck;
but of this I am not sure, for I have never seen the count and lady
together when they come the city."

"What! Otho, my pupil?" interrupted Master Sebald.

"And why not, old friend? If, as I think, it be he, thou wilt henceforth
see him but rarely, for hereafter he will have much else to do besides
moulding clay or chiselling statues."

"Ah! I fear me much the brave knight is lost to sculpture," replied Sebald,
smiling.

But Johann smiled not. He drew near Mina and followed her movements with
looks of anguish. He saw her cheek blanch and a cloud come over her eyes,
and, fearing lest she should faint, pushed a seat to her.

But Mina refused it with a resolute gesture, and without trembling
approached the casket.

"Are you sure that it is Otho of Arneck she marries?" asked she in a
strange tone, gazing fixedly upon Hans Barthing. "In any event, the bride
will be brave in this glistening chain. Ah! if it were I--if I were rich
and possessed castles, and were a countess--think you that I would not be
beautiful with these green flashings and diamonds in my hair and about my
neck?"

Mina, speaking thus with a bitter laugh and vacant stare, twined the chain
around her neck and through her wavy tresses, and, in doing so, her little
fingers moved so fast that none could see how they trembled.

{493}

But suddenly her words ceased, her eyes closed, her hands fell by her side,
and with a feeble cry she fell upon the chair.

"My daughter! O my daughter! What aileth thee?" cried old Sebald, running
to her.

"'Tis naught; a weakness; nothing more." said the goldsmith. "The heat of
to-day was, indeed, enough to make a young girl faint. Quick, Bertha!
Jeanne! bring hither the Queen of Hungary's water and open the windows."

"It is doubtless the influence of the stones that hath made poor Mina ill."
murmured one of the jeweller's daughters, who seemed to stand
terror-stricken. "Thou knowest, father, that the sapphire brings happy
dreams, the opal misfortune on its possessor, and the beryl can cause
faintings. It is then perhaps, the emeralds which cause Mina's illness. She
is not accustomed to gaze upon them, and they glitter so--the shining
stones!"

"Yes, it is certainly the jewels and their light and the heat," stammered
Johann, who, on his knees, was holding the fainting girl's hands within his
own, and trying to restore their warmth. "But Demoiselle Mina recovers not.
Think you not, Master Sebald, that it would be well to take a litter and
return to your dwelling?"

"Assuredly," replied Master Koerner, surprised and anxious at his
daughter's swoon.


  Chapter V.

On the way home Mina opened her eyes, but she remained mute and mournful.
But when, after she had been placed on a lounge in the lower hall of her
dwelling, she saw that her father was about to direct Johann to hasten the
arrival of a leech, she bent over to the old sculptor and retained him with
a hand cold as ice.

"I would speak a word with Johann alone," she murmured. "Wilt thou permit
me, my father?"

"Surely," replied the old man, fixing upon her a look of wonder, but
hastening to leave the chamber.

Then Mina feebly called Johann, and made him a sign to sit at her feet.

"Thou saidst one day, my good brother Johann," said she, "that thou wouldst
spare no effort, recoil from no risk to procure me joy or happiness."

"So said I; so will I do," answered the poor youth, bending on her a look
full of emotion.

"Then, Johann, thou canst preserve my greatest happiness, cause my greatest
joy. I know that I cannot deceive thee; I noted thy gaze when Hans Barthing
spoke of the marriage of Otho and Gertrude. Know then, Johann, that the
knight of Arneck is my true--my only love; and now I would know if he hath
betrayed me. It is peace of heart I need for my cure, Johann, and not the
skill of the leech. Depart then, good Johann, and go to Horsheim. There
thou wilt easily learn who is the countess's betrothed. And thou mayest
even, without being perceived, see them pass by together, speaking low,
walking hand in hand, believing themselves alone. Thou wilt return and tell
me all, Johann, and I will gain strength to live until thy return; for it
would be too bitter to die if Otho remaineth faithful. Thou wilt go--wilt
thou not, my brother--my only friend?"

Johann's only reply was a kiss imprinted on Mina's hand and a silent
pressure of her taper fingers, while two great tears rolled from his eyes.
Then he departed from the House of the Angel, and, after having called the
physician, saddled his horse and left the town that very evening, following
the line of the high hills which stretched away toward the Rauhe Alps, at
the foot of which was the castle of Horsheim.


  To be Continued.

------

{494}


    Original.


    Forebodings.


  Pretty Nan to Flora said,
    "Prithee, why so gay?"
  Dark-eyed Flora bent her head:
    "_He_ is gone away."

  "Strange!" quoth Nan. "If 'twere my heart,
    None could be more sad.
  Absence gives the keenest smart.
    Tell me, why art glad?"

  Dark-eyed Flora, with a sigh,
    'Gan to braid her hair,
  Whilst to Nan she made reply:
    "Hark! my sister dear.

  "Chanced it on a summer morn,
    Laughingly I chose
  These long tresses to adorn
    With a beauteous rose.

  "Of the flower he made request,
    I in wilfulness
  Did refuse, and as a jest
    Gave _it_ a caress.

  "But I did not long deny.
    Said I: Plucked for you,
  Take; but care it tenderly,
    'Tis my rose-love true.

  "Nameless was the pain and dread
    Filled my aching heart.
  Soon I saw my rose-love dead,
    Idly torn apart.

  "Thus he would my heart's love fling
    Coldly, idly by.
  Than to wear his wedding-ring,
    Rather would I die.

  "Ah! the cruel, ugly smart!
    Fear my love did slay.
  Pined I sadly in my heart
    Till he went away.

  "'Gainst the power of his voice
    All in vain I strove.
  Freed by absence, I rejoice,
    Now I dare to love!"

------

{495}

    Abridged from The Dublin University Magazine.

    The Minor Brethren.


  [The ensuing portion of an article from which we have stricken out the
  remainder on account of its objectionable statements, although not
  strictly in conformity with the Catholic view of the lives of the saints,
  furnishes a graphic sketch of the life of St. Francis, and an evidence of
  the approximation many Protestants are making toward a more candid and
  reasonable view of Catholic subjects.--ED. C. W.]


The towns of Italy were in advance of those of other countries; many of
them were beautifully built, and celebrated for their wealthy and powerful
citizens. Such a town was Assisi in Umbria, and such a citizen was Pietro
Bernadone when his son Francisco was born--Francisco Bernadone, afterward
Pater Minorum, Pater Seraphicus, then St. Francis, with a place among the
saints in the hagiology of the church, now high up on stained-glass windows
of thousands of churches, in illuminated missals, imperishable in history,
and honored by men of all subsequent times and creeds as a great reformer
and benefactor to humanity, an ardent, enthusiastic Christian. We shall
contemplate the character and work of St. Francis as the "SALT" infused
into the world at one of those periods of its corruption, and in order to
do this we shall endeavor to delineate the man as clearly as we can from
the acts of his life and the emanations of his mind; then examine his great
work, and its effect upon the church in general, and upon that of our own
country in particular.

We shall endeavor to portray St. Francis, the founder of the Friars Minors,
not according to the phantoms of imagination, or the caricatures of
prejudice, but from the records of his life, and still more efficiently
from his works and sayings. Fortunately the materials are ample. There is a
life of St. Francis, written by Thomas of Celano, the probable author of
the sublime mediaeval hymn, the "Dies Irae," and, as he was a follower and
an intimate friend of the saint, he writes with authority. At the command
of Gregory IX., he committed to writing his knowledge of the life of St.
Francis, which work was called the "Legenda."

A second life was written by John of Ceperano; a third by an Englishman,
being a metrical version of that of Celano; a fourth by three companions of
the saint, (_a Tribus Sociis_,) Leo, Angelus, and Ruffinus, compiled
at the command of the minister-general of the order, Father Crescentius; a
fifth by the same Thomas of Celano, being a fuller sketch, at the request
also of Crescentius; and a sixth, written at the request of nearly the
whole order by St. Bonaventura, who, when a child, had seen the saint.

All of these biographies are extant in the Acta Sanctorum, written in what
Carlyle would term "monk or dog Latin, still readable to mankind."
[Footnote 146] His works are scanty, but such as they are, they bear the
impress of the man's mind. It must be remembered that St. Francis made no
pretensions to being a scholar, a theologian, or an author; in fact, he was
a little inclined to deprecate these things; therefore, his literary
remains are only a few letters, hymns, addresses, colloquies, predictions,
and apothegms.

    [Footnote 146: Past and Present.]

His father, though an avaricious man, yet lived in the profuse style
characteristic of the leading Italian merchants, and young Francisco was
brought up accordingly, so that his youth, up to the age of twenty-five,
was spent in vanity.
{496}
During that time, he excelled all his companions in gay frivolity, and the
vices common to a young man with a rich father, proud of his son. He was
the admiration of all, and led many astray by his example. He dressed in
soft and flowing robes, spent his time in jesting, wanton conversation, and
singing songs. Being rich, he was not avaricious, but prodigal; not having
to work for his fortune, he cheerfully set about spending that of his
father.

An incident is recorded in the life by the three companions which is not
mentioned by Thomas of Celano nor Bonaventura.[Footnote 147] It is, that
during a disturbance between the citizens of Assisi and the people of
Perugia, young Francisco was captured, and, with others, placed in prison.
Whilst there his manner was so different from the rest, they being sad and
he more gay than ever, that they asked him the reason. "What do you take me
for?" said he. "I shall yet be adored all over the world." He spent nearly
a year in this durance, and, when peace was declared, returned to Assisi,
and devoted his attention to the sale of his father's wares, until his
conversion, which happened some years later. During the interval he fell
ill, and began to lament for the sin of his past life, and to make
resolutions of amendment. He recovered, and, with the recovery, the
penitence and the resolutions all vanished.

    [Footnote 147: It is alluded to, however, in the life of St. Columba
    Reatina.]

He pursued his former life until a circumstance happened which very nearly
changed his whole career. A certain nobleman of Assisi was about to
undertake a military expedition against Apulia, and young Francisco was
immediately fired with the longing to become a soldier. He had a mysterious
dream, which he misinterpreted into an encouragement. After making all
preparations, he set out and reached as far as Spoleto, where he had
another dream which convinced him of his mistake, and sent him back to
Assisi. From that time he began to reflect, and in the embarrassment of his
thoughts would retire into solitary places, and pray to God to guide him
and direct him what to do.

He spoke in enigmas, and told his friends that he should not go to Apulia,
but would make his name famous at home. In reply, they demanded what were
his plans? was he going to take a wife? "I am"--said Francisco--"I am going
to take a more beautiful and noble wife than you have ever seen, who will
excel in beauty and wisdom all women."

He now took to fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. The mysterious work had
commenced; his whole nature changed; he isolated himself from all his
companions, began to hear voices from heaven, to see visions, and to listen
to calls from the Invisible.

Whilst in this state, he was one day returning from a neighboring market,
where he had sold some of his father's goods, and passed by the church of
St. Damian, which had fallen into ruins. A light flashed upon his mind. He
had previously, when praying in the fields, heard a voice say to him,
"Francis, go and repair my house," and therefore, without a moment's
hesitation, he entered the church, found the old priest, bowed before him,
kissed his hands, implored him to accept the money which he was taking
home, and permit him to remain there. The cautious priest allowed him to
remain, but refused to take his father's money, when Francisco, in a fit of
indignation, threw it aside contemptuously.

By this time the father began to be uneasy about the fate of his eccentric
son and set out to make inquiries for him. Francisco then retired to a
neighboring cavern. Here he staid some time, but at last, resolving to
brave it out, he returned, wasted and wan, to Assisi. The people thought
him mad, and pelted him through the streets, when his father, hearing a
noise, went out, and, recognizing his son, seized him, dragged him home
chastised him severely, shut him up in a dark place, and firmly bound him,
that he might be safe till he returned from a journey he was about to take.

{497}

In the father's absence, however, the mother, after trying in vain to
reason with him, let him go, and he immediately returned to the church
where he had been hiding. His father, upon his return, upbraided his wife
for releasing his disobedient son, and resolved upon bringing the matter to
a settlement.

To this end he went to the church, saw Francisco, and, finding him more
obstinate than ever, decided upon letting him have his own way, but, with
characteristic prudence, demanded the money from his son which he had
received for his goods. This being restored, he was appeased, and then
suggested that, as Francisco had devoted himself to poverty, he would not
require any patrimony, and might release his father from all claim upon
him. To this Francisco willingly consented. A formal document was prepared,
and the parties appeared before the bishop, when Francisco not only
renounced his inheritance, but, taking off his clothes, threw them to his
father, with these words: "Up to now I have called thee my father on earth,
but now I can securely say, My Father, who art in heaven." The bishop was
so delighted that he embraced him, and gave him his cloak.

Thus was Francisco divorced from the world, from father, mother, and
kindred, and married to poverty, to whom from this time forth he devoted
his life. An incident is recorded of him here which was indicative of one
portion of his great work. He was out alone on a certain day, when a
wretched leper crossed his path. Francisco instinctively shrunk from the
sight, but, suddenly recollecting that his object was to subdue himself, he
ran after the leper, seized his hand, and kissed it.

From that time he resolved to adopt the care of the lepers as a peculiar
portion of his work, and we find him shortly afterward entering the leper
hospital and devoting himself to their service, washing their sores with
his own hands, dressing them, and once even kissing them.[Footnote 148]
Then he returned once more to Assisi, the scene of his youthful revelry,
and in the garb of a mendicant begged in the streets from those who once
knew him in luxury, for money to rebuild the church of St. Damian, as he
felt the injunction to do so was still upon him.

  [Footnote 148: Bonaventura says: "Educebat plagarum putredinem et saniem
  abstergebat."]

His enthusiasm told upon men's minds, and money flowed in rapidly, so that
he not only rebuilt that church, but another also, St. Mary of Porzioncula,
which he then frequented, and to which he was ever afterward deeply
attached. One day when attending mass in this church, and the gospel was
read, the words, "Take nothing for your journey, neither staves nor scrip,
neither bread nor money, neither have two coats apiece," sank deep into his
soul. He went out of the church, took off his shoes, laid aside his staff,
threw away his wallet, contented himself with a small tunic and a rope for
a girdle, struck out for the strict apostolic rule, and endeavored to
persuade others to follow his example.

The first instance of the mighty contagion of that example occurred in the
conversion of one Bernard de Quintavalle, a man of wealth and repute, who
came to Francisco, and offered himself and his all to him. The saint
proposed that they should go to the church of St. Nicholas and seek for
guidance. They did so, and, when the mass was over, the priest opened the
missal, after making the sign of the cross. The first response was, "If
thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor;"
the second, "Take nothing for your journey;" and the third, "If any man
will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
me." "Let us obey the divine command," said Francis. Bernard immediately
did so to the letter, and adopted the same dress as his master.

{498}

Thus was the foundation laid of that great order of Minor Brethren. It is
possible that St. Francis, for we must call him now by his canonized name,
had not dreamt of such a thing as founding an order; but converts
increased; Peter of Catania and four others. Egidius Sabbatini, John de
Capella, and Sylvester were then added, and they all retired to a hut in
the plain of Rivo Torto.

When they numbered eight, St. Francis gave them a solemn charge, and
dismissed them by twos in different directions to preach the gospel of
peace and forgiveness. They met after a short time, and, as their numbers
increased so rapidly, St. Francis drew up his first rule, which differed
very little from that of the Benedictines, save that it enjoined at the
outset a solemn injunction, ingeniously evaded afterward, that they should
have no property, but live in obedience and chastity. "Regula et vita
istorum patrum haec est scilicet vivere in obedientia et in castitate et
sine proprio." Their clothing was to be of the poorest kind; for novices
for one year, "duas tunicas sine caputio et cingulum et braccas et
caparonem usque ad cingulum;" for those who were finally admitted, "unicam
tunicam cum caputio et aliam sine caputio, in necesse, fuerit et cingulum
et braccas." No brother should be called "prior," but all should be termed
Minor Brethren, "fratres minores," and the one should wash the other's
feet.

Humility was strictly enjoined. They were to live on charity; to beg their
bread if necessary, and not to be ashamed, but rather to remember that our
Lord Jesus Christ was not ashamed, was poor and a stranger, and lived on
charity, both he and his disciples. They were stringently cautioned against
women, or, as St. Francis ungallantly puts it, "A malo visu et frequentia
mulierum." Wherever they went, they were to remember that, and no one of
them was to counsel women in secret. They were to travel on foot; not to
have any beast, save from extreme infirmity, or the most urgent necessity.
[Footnote 149]

    [Footnote 149: Quod nullo modo apud se nec apud alium, nec aliquo modo
    bestiam aliquam habeant.]

Having drawn up this rule, St. Francis, with two or three of his followers,
went to Rome to procure the pope's sanction to the order. They met the pope
on a terrace of the Lateran Palace, and threw themselves at his feet. He,
annoyed at the interruption, turned away indignantly from these men with
bare, unwashed feet and coarse attire, and bid them begone. They retired to
pray, whilst Innocent III. in the night had a vision which induced him to
send the next morning for those strange men whom he had repulsed. He
received them graciously, approved of their rule, and they departed in joy
to Assisi. His march back was a triumph. The people came out to meet him
from the villages, and many deserted their homes to join him on the spot.
The next step taken by St. Francis was to make a modification in his rule:
he found many people were converted to his views, but from the ties of
children and business occupations could not possibly follow him.

To meet such wants, he instituted what was called an Order of Penitents, by
which those who joined were compelled to pray, to fast, and to live
according to certain rules, and wore beneath their ordinary garb the
penitential girdle. This Order included both sexes, and people of all
classes. One member of it was, however, destined to greater things, the
young and beautiful Clara, a daughter of the house of Ortolana. She had,
from childhood, been brought up most religiously by her mother, and the
weird eloquence of St. Francis finished the task.

An interview was arranged, and the saint suggested an elopement, which was
successfully effected, and Clara was abducted by St. Francis to the church
of Porzioncula. Many other young ladies soon followed, and it was then
necessary to institute new rules for these fair converts.
{499}
The church of St. Damian, which St. Francis had rebuilt, was turned into a
convent, with Clara (who was afterward canonized as St. Clara) as its
abbess. A letter is extant in the works of the saint, which runs as
follows: "Francis, to his very dear Sister Clara, and the Convent of the
Sisters of St. Damian, health in Christ. Because by the inspiration of our
Lord ye have made yourselves daughters and handmaidens of the Highest, of
the most high King and heavenly Father, and have betrothed yourselves to
the Holy Spirit to live according to the teaching of the gospel; it is my
will, and I promise that I and my brethren will have always for you the
same diligent care and special solicitude as for ourselves. Farewell in the
Lord."

In the year 1216, the first general council of the new order was held in
the Porzioncula, when Tuscany, Lombardy, Provence, Spain, and Germany were
assigned to the principal followers of St. Francis as mission grounds. The
saint himself took France as his own field of operations. At this point a
meeting took place between St. Francis and one who stands in the church
almost on an equality with him, Dominic, the founder of the order of Friars
Preachers.

Three years after the first, the second council was held, and a grand sight
it was--five thousand brethren encamped around the church. To this great
body, infused with the spirit of one man, Ugolino was introduced, and made
such a flattering speech, and gave such glowing predictions of their future
power and glory, that St. Francis became alarmed, and quickly perceived
that, if the protector were allowed to have free play, he would soon ruin
his charge. He therefore interfered, reiterated the severity of their rule
which forbade all dreams of glory or power, told them they must always be
the Minor Brethren, the poor of the world, and after redistributing them
amongst several countries, broke up the assembly never more to venture on
another gathering into one spot of such inflammable materials. When they
were all dispersed, their great founder went upon a holy mission to the
army then under the walls of Damietta. He advised the Christians not to
engage with the Saracens, and predicted their defeat if they did, but the
army were too eager for plunder and bloodshed. They engaged, and six
thousand slaughtered Christians fulfilled the prophecy.

Then St. Francis resolved upon taking a step which made his name still more
famous in history. Confiding his project to only one, who was to accompany
him, Illuminatus [Footnote 150] by name, St. Francis, although a reward was
set upon the head of every Christian, wandered up to the lines of the
enemy, was seized, and taken before the sultan. Strange to say, instead of
ordering him to be executed, the sultan received him courteously, listened
to his preaching patiently, and asked him to remain with him in his tent.
St. Francis replied, "I will remain willingly with you, if you and your
people will only become converted to Christ; but if you doubt, order a fire
to be kindled, and I will enter into it with your priests, and see who is
right." The sultan, who had perceived that one of the chief priests had
vanished at these words, replied: "I do not think any of my priests would
submit to the torture for the sake of their religion." Then said St.
Francis: "If you will promise for yourself and your people to adopt the
Christian religion if I come out uninjured, I will enter it alone." The
sultan, however, declined, and after vainly offering rich presents to St.
Francis, sent him back in safety to the Christian camp.

    [Footnote 150: It is sometimes stated that St. Francis went alone, but
    the lives by St. Bonaventura, by the Tres Socii, and by St. Thomas of
    Celano, all mention this Illuminatus as his companion.]

{500}

After this memorable interview. St. Francis returned, preaching in all the
countries as he passed through. One day after his return, as he was praying
in the church of St. Mary, Porzioncula, a vision of our Saviour appeared,
and promised that, to all who should thereafter confess their sins in that
church, plenary remission should be granted. St. Francis immediately went
to the pope at Perugia, and procured the granting of the indulgence, in
consequence of which a ceremony is held to this day annually, in the church
of St. Mary of the Angels, when the peasantry assemble to confess their
sins and receive the promised indulgence.

Then comes the last great tradition of his life--the receiving the
stigmata. It is recorded, and firmly attested by the great men who wrote
his biography, that, on a certain morning, at the hour of the holy
sacrifice, when St. Francis was praying on the side of Mount Avernia, Jesus
Christ appeared to him under the form of a seraph crucified on the cross,
and when the vision had disappeared, St. Francis was marked with the wounds
of Christ in his hands, his feet, and his side.

Various grave discussions arose amongst the faithful about the truth of
this legend. Only nineteen years after its presumed occurrence a Dominican
preacher had declared openly his disbelief of it, but then he was a
Dominican. The Bishop of Olmutz, however, followed in the wake, when Pope
Gregory IX. (Ugolino of old) wrote, reproaching them with their want of
faith; and Alexander IV., who succeeded, declared he had seen with his own
eyes the stigmata of St. Francis.

Shortly after this incident, St. Francis sickened, and, exhausted by long
fastings and vigils, wasted gradually, until, as Bonaventura says, he was
only skin and bone--"quasi sola cutis ossibus cohaereret." One day, during
his illness, a companion said to him: "Brother, pray to God that he may
have mercy upon thee, and not lay his hand so severely upon thee." St.
Francis reproved him for such a speech, and, though he was very weak, threw
himself on the ground, and, kissing the earth, said: "I thank thee, O Lord
God, for all my pains; and I pray thee, if it be thy will, multiply them a
hundred-fold, because it will be most acceptable to me; for the fulfilment
of thy will in me will be my supreme consolation." And his brethren noticed
that, as his bodily pains increased, his joy was greater. He predicted the
day of his death, and begged to be carried to his beloved Porzioncula, that
he might yield up his spirit at that spot where he had first received
divine grace. It was done, and he insisted upon being laid naked upon the
bare ground, when he turned to his companions and said: "I have done my
part; what yours is, may Christ teach you." When his last hour was come, he
had all the brethren on the spot called to him, addressed them kindly on
preserving their vows of poverty, and upholding the faith of the Catholic
Church; he then laid his hands upon them, and pronounced his blessing upon
all present and absent. "Farewell," said he, "all my sons; be strong in the
fear of God, and remain in that always; and since future temptation and
tribulation are near, blessed are they who continue in the things they have
begun. But I hasten to God, to whose grace I commend you all." Then he
called for a copy of the gospels, and asked them to read him that of St.
John, beginning at the words, "Before the day of the passover," etc., when
he suddenly broke out into the psalm: "Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi, voce
mea ad Dominum deprecatus sum," continued to the words, "Me expect justi
donec retribuas mihi," when, as they died away on his lips, the spirit of
the great founder passed gently out of his poor emaciated body, and
returned to its Maker.

Thus died St. Francis, in the odor of sanctity; and perhaps we cannot more
appropriately conclude this brief outline of his life than by giving a
translation of a sketch of his character and personal appearance, as
written by one who knew him, Thomas of Celano, the author of the Dies Irae.
{501}
It forms a graphic portrait of the man, and may serve as a fair specimen of
hagiography. In his life of the saint, he thus writes:

  "Oh! how beautiful, how splendid, how glorious did he appear in the
  innocence of his life, in the simplicity of his words, in the purity of
  his heart, in his love of God, in brotherly charity, in fragrant
  obedience, in angelic aspect! Gentle in manners, placid in nature,
  affable in conversation, faithful in undertakings, of admirable foresight
  in counsel, able in business, gracious to all, serene in mind, gentle in
  temper, sober in spirit, stable in contemplation, persevering in grace,
  and in all things the same; swift to indulge, to anger slow, free in
  intellect, in memory bright, subtle in dissertation, circumspect in
  choice, simple in all things; rigid toward himself, pious toward others,
  discreet to everybody; a most eloquent man, of cheerful aspect, and
  benevolent countenance, free from idleness, void of insolence. He was of
  the middle stature, rather inclined to shortness; his head was of the
  medium size, and round, with an oblong and extended face, a small smooth
  forehead, black and simple eyes, dark brown hair and straight eyebrows;
  his nose was thin, well proportioned, and straight; his ears erect and
  small, and his temples were smooth; his tongue was placable, though fiery
  and sharp; his voice was vehement, though sweet, clear, and sonorous; his
  teeth well set, regular, and white; his lips of moderate size; his beard
  was black, and not very thick; his neck thin; his shoulders straight,
  with small arms, thin hands, long fingers and nails; he had thin legs,
  small feet, a delicate skin, and very little flesh. He wore a rough vest,
  took very little sleep, and though he was most humble, he showed every
  courtesy to all men, conforming himself to the manners of every one. As
  he was holy amongst the holy, so amongst sinners he was as one of them."
  [Footnote 151]

    [Footnote 151: Thomas de Celano in Vita Sti. Francisci. Acta Sanct.]

Before we advance further, we must say a few words upon a subject well
known to all who have investigated the originals of ecclesiastical
history--the miracles attributed to the saints. Their biographies are
spangled with miracles--that of St. Francis especially. The Acta Sanctorum
is a compilation of some fifty or sixty folio volumes, containing sometimes
five or six different lives of each saint, written by men in different ages
and countries, ranging from the eighth to the fourteenth century. All these
writers unite in one thing, the ascription of miraculous powers to the
saints. The question then arises, can this be wholly and entirely false?
can it be utterly without one grain of truth in it?--a tissue of falsehoods
wilful, wanton falsehoods consistently written by men at vastly different
times, and in remotely distant countries? We must premise at once that we
are not for a moment going to defend the absolute truth of the wonders
attributed to the saints. We do not believe for an instant that their
bodies were sometimes lifted from the earth, and carried up into the sky,
like St. Francis; or that they walked dry-footed over the sea, as did St.
Birim, when he left the corporalia behind him at Boulogne; nor that
commands and directions were given them direct from heaven, through the
medium of crosses, images, or pictures; but we cannot help reflecting as to
whether it is possible for such a systematic body of history to be handed
down to posterity in one continuity of falsehood for some eight or nine
centuries; or whether we may come to the conclusion that it is a
superstructure of exaggeration built up upon some basis of truth. It may
help us, perhaps, at the outset, to notice what were the characters of the
writers of these lives; were they men likely to be deluded by fanaticism,
or likely to lend themselves to the perpetration and perpetuation of wanton
falsehood?

{502}

If we turn over the volumes of the Acta Sanctorum, we shall find, on the
contrary, some of the brightest names in the annals of literature, piety,
and philanthropy; some of the deepest scholars, the most acute reasoners,
the most elaborate thinkers recorded in the annals of fame; of men whose
works have been and still are the guiding lights of theological and
philosophical investigation. There are Bridferth, Eadmer, Lanfranc, Anselm,
William of Malmesbury, Thomas à Kempis, Bonaventura, and many others, all
distinguished for intellect and piety. Some of them, too, were honored by a
personal acquaintance with the subjects of their memoirs, as in the case of
Bridferth, the contemporary of Dunstan, of Eadmer of Anselm, of Thomas of
Celano and St. Francis. Can it be that these scholars, trained to
philosophical investigation--these profound thinkers--these holy
archbishops and bishops should connive together to delude posterity with a
tissue of lies--of wanton lies, which might have been easily contradicted
by contemporary writers, many of whom were bitter enemies both of the
writers and their religion? Yet we find no such contradiction.

We have plenty of contemporary history handed down tolerably perfect as
regards incidents, dates, accurate reports of great councils, descriptions
of battles and sieges, lives of statesmen, warriors, and scholars, with
views of both sides, debated, refuted, or confirmed. And are we to believe
that in this matter of the lives of the saints only have all contemporary
writers, friends and foes, scholars, holy men, great benefactors of their
age, conspired successfully together to hand down an enormous fabric of
falsehood, and at the same time secure the silence of all contemporary
history? This is the great difficulty.

A distinguished English writer, the elder D'Israeli, has endeavored to
account for these strange tales in the lives of the saints by suggesting
they were written as exercises and religious theses, when each student
filled up his outline with all the wonders he could invent to invest his
subject with greater glory. That is a theory accepted by many who are
already prejudiced toward its acceptation; but it is a frivolous theory, to
which we object the improbability of these great men, whose names are
already mentioned, being set down, some of them in the maturity of their
lives, to write religious exercises of that nature. Is it not rather
possible that there may be something in all this history which we can
neither understand nor explain?

Let us examine for a moment into what we may venture to call the natural
history of miracles. We find the Bible itself is an immense repertoire of
miracles from Moses down to the apostles, and it contains no distinct
announcement of a withdrawal of that power from the church. It was
confirmed by Christ, who endowed his apostles with the same power, and who
said one or two things in his addresses to them which, we think, will throw
some light upon this vexed question.

It is quite certain that there have never been any miracles wrought in the
world by any who did not receive the power from God. We are not prepared to
estimate what degree of change was produced in the relations between man
and God by the fall; we are certain of this, that a gap was placed between
the two, so wide that Christ was sent to bridge it over; that an apostasy
ensued, and a disunion so complete that his death alone was able to provide
the means of reunion and reconciliation. Then it follows that faith was the
only possible mode to man of recovery of what was lost by man; faith before
the promise and faith after its fulfilment, and in the proportion of the
strength of that faith, and the consequent change of life in the heart and
nature of him who possessed it, was the reunion with God promised. But how
does this bear on miracles? In this way. Turn to the Bible, and it will be
seen that of every man who is recorded to have performed miracles, it is
also recorded that he had this immovable faith, and that his life was
ordered accordingly.
{503}
Faith, prayer, and fasting have ever been the elements of the life
necessary to miracles, and we are not prepared, nor are we able to estimate
what would be the result of such a course of severe discipline as some of
the saints went through toward a recovery of that lost union with God. It
is a singular fact that, in the life of Christ, we find it was only after
his fasting and prayer in the wilderness that he began to perform miracles,
as though during that severe trial of temptation, fasting, and prayer the
perfect union between himself and his Father had been sealed by the final
gift of miraculous power. And thus was it that, when in after times his
disciples were unable to cast out the devils, and appealed to him for the
reason of their inability, he replied, "This sort goeth not out but by
fasting and prayer;" and we are told elsewhere that the disciples of Jesus
did not fast. So that we find in the Bible there is a close connection
between the active development of the spiritual, and the subjugation of the
corporeal life, and the working of miracles.

All the prophets led that life, they were given to prayer, fasting, and
solitude. It was the peculiar life of Jesus; retired to the mountains, the
deserts, and by-places for prayer, and he attributed the miraculous power
to the results of this life. [Footnote 152] Is it, then, possible for a man
by strong faith, accompanied by fasting and prayer, in these later days to
regain that close, mysterious communion with his Maker which should give
him a supernatural power? We reply that we have not the means of answering
the question, for the simple reason that we never have an opportunity of
seeing it tried. Without wishing to insinuate anything invidious, have we
any record in ecclesiastical or other history, of bishops, priests, or men
of any class during the last 400 years spending whole nights in prayer, or
consecutive days in fasting, such as we read, upon indisputable authority,
was the practice in the olden times of the prophets, and the later times of
men who devoted their lives to the imitation of Christ? [Footnote 153]

    [Footnote 152: In the life of St. Francis we are told that "solitaria
    loca quaerebat," "una die dum sic sequestratus oraret," "cum die quadam
    egressus ad meditandum in agro," "dum per sylvam iter faciens."]

    [Footnote 153: Our Protestant fasts are a "lucus a non lucendo,"
    consisting of fish of various descriptions, curiously prepared by the
    protean art of cookery, with very substantial adjuncts, and accompanied
    by good wine. No miracles were ever wrought upon that diet.]

There are plenty of hints scattered throughout the Bible and Testament that
there is a mysterious connection yet to be recovered between man and God,
if men will only fulfil the required condition, and we repeat that it is
not in our power to estimate the results of such a life as we have
mentioned--a life of spiritual discipline, of development of the soul, and
subjugation of the body--because we have no examples around us; but we ask,
if such life were pursued, what is there to prevent our believing that to
some extent the words of our Divine Master, who led that life himself,
would yet be verified, and "this sort" would still "go out through fasting
and prayer"? Nay, further, we may add in illustration that the phenomena
which are recorded as attending the careers of such men as Whitefield,
Wesley, and Irving have never yet been explained away by any scientific
theory or law; so that, in conclusion, as we find in the Bible an emphatic
and reiterated record of miraculous power accorded to persons of a certain
habit of life and thought, as our Lord, when on earth, attributed that
power to the pursuing of that peculiar life--as in every instance where
miracles are attributed to men, they are proved to have led such lives--it
cannot be thought too much to suggest that, making great deductions and
allowances for exaggeration, there may be some basis of truth underlying
that fabric of historical and traditional record of the lives of the
saints.

Many of those incidents described so mysteriously are capable of
explanation. It is often recorded of these men that they saw visions and
heard voices.
{504}
For instance, it is said of St. Francis that, on one occasion, when he was
long praying in a solitary place, the Lord appeared to him as if on the
cross, and so visible was this [Greek text] to him that ever afterward,
when any thought of Christ's sufferings came into his mind, he could not
help bursting into tears; also, that one night the Lord appeared to him,
and said, "Francisce, quis potest melius facere tibi dominus aut servus?"
And again, on another occasion, "Francisce, vade et repara domum meam."
Within the range of our own experience, who is there amongst us who has not
had similar visions in the slumbers of the night, or heard similar voices
in the day? Have we not had sweet converse with dear departed friends, and
heard voices that have long been silent? What bereaved mother has not often
heard the cry of her lost infant, or solitary widow seen the form of a lost
husband in the phantasms of the night? If such things happen to ordinary
men, we submit that we are unable to estimate the result of the mode of
life and the severity of spiritual training which those men underwent,
because it is foreign to our habits, and not within the range of our
experience.

We now proceed to give a brief criticism upon the intellect of St. Francis.
He has left very little behind him. Only a few sermons, hymns, letters, and
sayings, from which we can glean that he must have been an earnest preacher
of the true popular type, driving home his truths by familiar
illustrations, the type of that peculiar preaching which rendered his order
so popular, and paved the way for their marvellous success. We subjoin a
few extracts, which illustrate not only his style, but the design of his
order. In one of his epistles he says: [Footnote 154]

    [Footnote 154: Ep. ii. Ad universes Christi fideles.]

  "Let us not be wise and prudent according to the flesh, but simple,
  humble, and poor; and let us hold our bodies in contempt, because we are
  all miserable and putrid; as the Lord says through the prophet, I am a
  worm and not a man. We should never desire to be above others, but
  subjected and submissive to every human creature, for the sake of God.
  And upon all who do so, and persevere unto the end, the holy spirit will
  rest, and make in them his tabernacle and his mansion, and they shall be
  sons of the heavenly Father, whose works they do, and shall be the
  brides, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. Brides are we,
  since faithful souls are joined to the Holy Spirit; brothers are we of
  Jesus Christ, when we do the will of his Father who is in heaven; mothers
  are we, when we bear him in our hearts and bodies through love, and bring
  him forth by the sacred operation of our example, which ought to shine
  before others. Oh! how glorious and great to have a Father in heaven! Oh!
  how holy to have a betrothal of the Spirit! Oh! how sacred, how
  delightful, well pleasing, peaceful, sweet, loving, desirable above all,
  is it to have a brother who has laid down his life for the sheep, and has
  prayed his Father for us, saying, 'Father, keep through thine own name
  those whom thou hast given me. Father, all those whom thou hast given me
  in the world are thine, and thou hast given them to me, and the word
  which thou hast given me I have given them, and they have received it,
  and know well that I came from thee, and have believed that thou hast
  sent me. I pray for them: I sanctify myself, that they may be sanctified
  as we are. And I will, O Father! that where I am there they may be also,
  and see my glory in my kingdom.'" [Footnote 155]

    [Footnote 155: We translate from the Latin of St. Francis, which is
    somewhat different from our version.]

A graphic picture of a death-bed scene follows soon after the above
beautiful passage in the same epistle.

{505}

  "The body droops, death draws near, relatives and friends come, and say,
  'Arrange thy house.' And behold, his wife and his sons, his relatives and
  friends, pretend to weep; and he, looking up, sees them weeping, and is
  moved, and says, my soul and my body, and all my goods, I place in your
  hands. Verily, that man is cursed who deposits his soul, his body, and
  all his goods in such hands; or, as the Lord says by the prophet, cursed
  is that man who places his trust in man. And then they send for the
  priest, who says to him, 'Dost thou wish to receive absolution from all
  thy sins?' he replies, 'I do.' Wilt thou make restitution from thy
  substance for those things which thou hast obtained through fraud and
  deception?' He says, 'No.' 'Why not?' asks the priest. 'Because I have
  divided all amongst my relations.' And then his speech begins to fail,
  and he dies miserably. But let all men know that wherever any man dies in
  sin, without making satisfaction, which he can, but will not make, such a
  demon seizes his soul, and drags it from the body with such agony that no
  one can conceive who has not experienced it. And all his money, power,
  and knowledge, which he thought he had, are taken from him; and his
  relations and friends, to whom he has given his goods, take them, and
  divide them, and then say, Cursed be his soul, who might have given us
  more, and did not; who might have hoarded more, and did not. Worms
  destroy his body, demons his soul; and thus he loses both soul and body
  for the sake of this brief life."

Humility, deep and sincere, was the great characteristic of his life. He
was in his own words, "Franciscus parvulus et vester servus in Domino;"
"Homo vilis et caducus;" "minus servorum;" "indigna creatura Domini." Being
asked, one day, why he wore such scanty clothing in the depth of winter, he
replied, "If we are clothed within with the flame of our heavenly country,
we shall easily bear this external cold." One of the brethren asked him why
he scarcely took anything to sustain nature. "Because," said St. Francis,
"it is difficult to satisfy the necessity of the body without indulging the
longing of the senses."

On an occasion a brother asked him if he might have a psalter. "When you
have got a psalter," replied St. Francis, "then you will want a breviary;
and when you have got a breviary, you will sit in your chair as great as a
lord, and you will say to your brother, 'Friar, fetch me my breviary.'"
There was a competition amongst the brethren as to who should bring in the
greatest number of female devotees, when St. Francis checked their ardor by
the caustic remark, "I am afraid, my brethren, that when God forbade us
wives the devil gave us sisters." Here we must take our farewell of the
saint. Willingly would we devote more space to him; but we have much yet to
say about his work, especially as it influenced the destinies of our own
land. He was a great man, an enthusiast in the highest sense of the word;
his character and career remind us forcibly of John the Baptist; his food
was locusts and wild honey, his raiment was scanty, he was a voice crying
in the wilderness of a wicked world, and his name will last for ever.

But we advance to investigate the doings of the order in England. At the
second general chapter held by St. Francis, at Porzioncula, in the year
1219, when the brethren were divided into parties and sent out on their
missions, England was one of the first mission stations assigned. France
was the first, then came England, chiefly, it is thought, through the
influence of an Englishman, one William, who was a follower of St. Francis.
The honor of leading this mission was assigned to Brother Angnello
[Footnote 156] de Pisa, who was made minister-general of the order in
England.

    [Footnote 156: _Angnellus_ sic, in Eccleston MSS., and in
    Monumenta Franciscana.]

His authority was as follows: "Ego Frater Franciscus de Assisio minister,
generalis praecipio tibi Fratri Angnello de Pisa per obedientiam, ut vadas
in Angliam et ibi facias officium ministeriatus. Vale. Anno 1219.
Franciscus de Assisio." [Footnote 157]

    [Footnote 157: Collectanea Anglo-Minoritica, p. 5.]

{506}

They were also fortified with letters recommendatory from Pope Honorius,
addressed to all "archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other prelates
of the church," enjoining them to receive the bearers as Catholics and true
believers, and to "show them favor and courtesy." The actual date of their
landing in England is disputed. Eccleston in his MSS., "De Primo Adventu
Minorum," gives the year 1224, but the more probable date is 1220, which is
given by Wadding, the annalist of the order, and confirmed by Matthew
Paris, who under the year 1243 speaks of the Friars Minors, "who began to
build their first habitations in England scarcely _twenty-four_ years
ago." As they had no money of their own, and lived upon what was given
them, they were transported to England from France by the charity of some
monks of Fécamp. They were nine in number, four clergymen and five laymen.
The former were Angnellus, a native of Pisa, Richard de Ingeworth, Richard
of Devonshire, and William Esseby. The laymen were Henry de Cernise, a
native of Lombardy, Laurence de Belvaco, William de Florentia, Melioratus,
and James Ultramontanus. They landed at Dover and proceeded to Canterbury,
where they were hospitably received and staid two days at the Priory of the
Holy Trinity. Then four of them set out for London to present the
apostolical letters to Henry III., who received them very kindly, which, as
they did not want any money, he would be most likely to do.

The other five were housed at Canterbury at the Priests' Hospital, where
they remained until a place could be procured for them; such accommodation
was found in a small chamber beneath the school-house, where they remained
shut up all day, and at evening, when the scholars had gone home, they
entered the room, kindled a fire, and sat round it. The four monks who went
to London were kindly received by the Dominicans, with whom they staid a
fortnight, until one John Travers hired a house for them in Cornhill, which
they divided into cells by stuffing the interstices with straw.

The citizens, at the instigation of one Irwin, who afterward became a lay
brother, removed them to the butchery or shambles of St. Nicholas, in the
Ward of Farringdon-within, close to a place called Stinking-lane, where
they built a convent for them. The foundations were laid at Christmas,
1220, and it was five years in course of building. The different portions
were built by different citizens. William Joyner built the choir, William
Walleys the nave, Alderman Porter the chapter-house, Bartholomew de
Castello the refectory, Peter de Haliland the infirmary, and Roger Bond the
library; even in those days the citizens, when they did anything in the way
of charity, did it royally. Two brethren, however, were sent on to Oxford,
where they were also kindly received by Dominican friars, according to
Eccleston; but a story is told in the annals of the order of the two
brethren who were making their way toward Oxford, when they came to a sort
of manor-house, about six miles from Oxford, which was a cell of
Benedictine monks, belonging to the abbey of Abingdon.

Being very hungry and tired, they knocked at the gate; and the monks, from
their strange dress and extraordinary appearance, taking them for
masqueraders, admitted them, hoping for some diversion. But, when they
found they were a new order of friars, they turned them out of doors; but
one, more gentle than the rest, went after them, brought them back, and
persuaded the porter to let them sleep in the hay-loft. Both versions may
be right, as the circumstance occurred outside Oxford; and Eccleston's
account commences with their advent in that city when they were received by
the Dominicans, with whom they remained for about eight days, until a rich
citizen, Richard Mercer, let them a house in the parish of St. Ebbs. Then
the two brethren go on to Northampton, where they were received into an
hospital. They procured a house in the parish of St. Giles, over which they
appointed one Peter Hispanus as guardian.

{507}

Then they went to Cambridge, where the townspeople gave them an old
synagogue, adjoining the common prison; but afterward, ten marks being
given them from the king's exchequer, they built a rough sort of oratory on
a plot of ground in the city. After that another settlement was made in
Lincoln, and gradually in many other cities; so that in thirty-two years
from their arrival they numbered 1242 brethren in forty-nine different
settlements. Their first convert was one Solomon, of good birth and
connections.

When only a novice, he was appointed procurator of his house; that is, he
had to go out to beg for it. The first place he went to was the residence
of a sister, who gave him some bread, with the following remark: "Cursed be
the hour when I ever saw thee!" So strict was their poverty, that one of
the brethren being ill, and they having no means to make a fire, got round
him, clung to him, and warmed him with their bodies, "sicut porcis mos
est." [Footnote 158]

    [Footnote 158: Eccleston de Adventu Minorum.]

They walked about barefooted through the snow, to the horror of the
spectators. Brother Solomon injured his foot so severely that he was laid
up for two years; and whilst ill the Lord appeared to him, accompanied by
the apostle Peter. And by way of contrast, we are told shortly after that
the devil appeared to one Brother Gilbert de Vyz, when he was alone, and
said to him, "Do you think to avoid me? At least you shall have this," and
threw at him a fistful of vermin, and then vanished: "et projecit super eum
plenum pugillum suum pediculorum et evanuit," so states Master Eccleston.

The second convert was William of London; then followed Jocius of Cornhill,
a clerk, who went to Spain, labored, and died; John, another clerk; Philip,
a priest, who, being a good preacher, was sent to Ireland, and died there.
Then came several magistrates, amongst whom were Walter de Burg, Richard
Norman, Vincent of Coventry, Adam of Oxford; but one of the greatest
accessions was in the person of Adam Marsh, better know as Adae de Marisco,
who was destined to found that distinguished school at Oxford which boasts
such names as Scotus, Occam, Roger Bacon, and others. Adam was called
Doctor Illustris. After him came John of Reading, abbot of Ozeneyae, and
Richard Rufus. Then came some military men, Dominus R. Gobion, Giles de
Merc, Thomas Hispanus, and Henry de Walpole.

As their numbers continued to increase, people built churches and convents
for them in all parts of the country. The master of the Priests' Hospital
at Canterbury built them a chapel; Simon de Longeton, archdeacon of
Canterbury, helped them; so Henry de Sandwyg, and a certain noble lady,
Inclusa de Baginton, who cherished them in all things, as a mother her
sons: "quae sicut mater filios sic fovit eos in omnibus."

Angnellus now set out upon an inspection of the different settlements, and,
after pausing for a time at London, came on to Oxford, where, as things
were promising and converts gradually coming in, he founded a community,
over which he placed William Esseby as guardian of the house, which
Ingeworth and Devonshire had hired. Adam of Oxonia joined the company, and
then Alexander Hales, whom St. Francis, it is thought, admitted in the year
1219, as Hales passed through France on his way to England. Angnellus then
conceived the idea of having a school of friars at Oxford, and built one
near their house. He then addressed himself to Doctor Robert Grostete, one
of the most distinguished lecturers in the university, to beg him to
instruct the brethren. Grostete consented, and the school was soon thronged
with ardent Franciscan converts, who listened with delight to the lectures
of that man who, as bishop of Lincoln, was destined to such a glorious
career.

{508}

And now Angnellus was instant in encouraging the brethren to attend the
lectures, and make progress in the study of the Decretals and canon law;
and as he found them very diligent, he thought he would honor them with his
presence at one of their meetings and see how they progressed; but when he
arrived there, he was horrified, to hear that the subject under discussion
by these young monks was whether there was a God!! _Utrum esset Deus_!
Frightened out of his propriety, the good man exclaimed: "Alas! alas!
simple brethren are penetrating the heavens, and the learned dispute
whether there may be a God!" [Footnote 159] It was with great difficulty
they calmed his agitation. He only submitted upon their promise that, if he
sent to Rome for a copy of the Decretals, they would avoid such mighty
questions, and keep to them.

     [Footnote 159: "Hei mihi, hei mihi, fratres simplices coelos penetrant
     et literati disputant utrum sit Deus." See Wood, Antiq. Oxon, lib. i.
     p. x.]

The first Franciscan who taught in the school was William Eton, under the
direction of Grostete, who was not a Franciscan: he was succeeded by Adam
de Marisco, who is sometimes called the first of the order who taught; he
was, however, the first who taught alone, the others teaching under the
direction of Grostete. Sixty-seven distinguished men filled this chair,
some of whose names have been immortalized.

The influence of the study of Aristotle was telling vitally upon the
theology of the schools. At first his writings were studied through very
imperfect translations made from the Arabic, with Arabic commentaries--then
a mixture of Neo Platonism was infused, and the devotees of scholastic
theology at Paris fell into such errors that the study of his works was
prohibited by the synod of that place in the year 1209. Six years afterward
this prohibition was renewed by the Papal Legate; but as men began to find
that there was a great difference between the philosophy of Aristotle,
filtered through Arabic commentators and Arabic translators, and Aristotle
himself, a revival took place in favor of the Stagyrite, and Gregory IX.,
in 1231, by a bull modified the restriction. New translations were now made
and purged from errors.

A new era in scholasticism commenced; the two rival orders, the Dominicans
and Franciscans, began to apply the Aristotelian method to theological
questions; Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas [Footnote 160] taking the
lead in the former order, in opposition to the teaching of Alexander
Hales.[Footnote 161] the Franciscan, who lectured at Paris. Bonaventura
[Footnote 162] endeavored to amalgamate scholasticism with mysticism; but
at length appeared John Duns Scotus, [Footnote 163] who lectured at Oxford,
Paris, and Cologne, a Franciscan, and worthy opponent of the Dominican,
Thomas Aquinas. We must not omit another distinguished member of the Oxford
school who flourished at the same time, Roger Bacon, [Footnote 164] perhaps
the most distinguished man of the age.

    [Footnote 160: Doctor Angelicas.]

    [Footnote 161: Doctor Irrefragabilis.]

    [Footnote 162: Doctor Seraphicus.]

    [Footnote 163: Doctor Subtilis.]

    [Footnote 164: Doctor Mirabilis.]

He taught at Oxford. He, however, saw the prominent errors of the
disputation of the times, and has left on record, in the preface to his
Opus Majus, the following criticism, which is worthy of attention: "There
never was such an appearance of wisdom, nor such activity in study in so
many faculties, and so many regions, as during the last forty years; for
even the doctors are divided in every state, in every camp, and in every
burgh, especially through the two studious orders, (Dominicans and
Franciscans,) when neither, perhaps, was there ever so much ignorance and
error. The mob of students languishes and stupefies itself over things
badly translated; it loses time and study; appearances only hold them, and
they do not care what they know so much as what they seem to know before
the insensate multitude."

{509}

Again, in lib. ii., he says: "If I had power over the books of Aristotle, I
would have them all burnt, because it is only a loss of time to study in
them, a cause of error and multiplication of ignorance beyond what I am
able to explain." We must give Roger Bacon the credit of speaking more
particularly of the wretched translations in use, though his view of
Aristotelian philosophy was strangely confirmed centuries afterward by his
still greater namesake, Lord Bacon, who said, after many years of devotion
to Aristotelianism, that it was "a philosophy only strong for disputations
and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of
the life of man." Thus were ranged under two scholastic standards the two
great orders of mendicant friars, the Dominicans and the Franciscans; the
former being called Thomists, and the latter Scotists. A fierce doctrinal
controversy then raged between them, the animosity of which was heightened
by a jealousy which had always existed on the part of the Dominicans from
the time when St. Francis rejected their founder's overtures to unite the
two orders.

In the year 1400 England maintained and included sixty convents; and at the
time of the dissolution, the Franciscans alone of the mendicant orders had
ninety convents in England, besides vicarships, residences, and nunneries.

To a generation of men who had heard no preaching, or, if any, nothing they
could understand, the enthusiastic discourses of these men were like
refreshing showers on a parched soil; for in the thirteenth century the
sermon had fallen into such disuse that an obscure and insignificant
preacher created a great sensation in Paris, although his preaching was
rude and simple. Both doctors and disciples ran after him, one dragging the
other, and saying, "Come and hear Fulco, the presbyter, he is another
Paul." [Footnote 165] The Franciscans diligently cultivated that talent,
and from the general favor in which they were held by nearly all classes of
the community, especially by the common people, we may conclude that the
style they adopted was essentially a popular and engaging style, in direct
contradistinction to the scholastic discourses delivered at rare intervals
from the pulpits of the churches. Then a Franciscan mingled amongst the
poor; he too was poor, one of the poorest, and the poor saw their condition
elevated to an apostolic sanctity; his raiment was coarse like theirs; his
food also as coarse, for it was their food shared often with him at their
own tables; they sat at his feet and listened to him, not in trembling
servitude, as at the feet of one whom they had been taught to regard with
superstitious awe, but as at the feet of a dear brother, one of themselves,
who had hungered with them and sorrowed with them.

   [Footnote 165: Vide Jacobi, a Vitriaco Hist. Occident, c, 6.]

Then the Franciscan preached everywhere--at the street corner, in the
fields, on the hill-side; his portable altar was set up, the sacrament
administered to the people, and the gospel preached as in the old apostolic
times, by the river-side, in the high roads and by-ways, under the bare
heavens. No wonder that they won the hearts of the degraded populations of
the countries in which they settled, that the poor ran to them and flocked
round them, and that the good and great were soon drawn over to their side;
it was the revival of apostolic simplicity, and as the excited crowds were
swayed under their fervent eloquence, and myriads of tearful eyes were
turned up to their gaze, it was like the miracle in the wilderness, the
rock had been smitten, and the waters gushed forth.

------

{510}


  The Souls of Animals


A number of years ago, when the census enumerators were going through
Canada, they found an old lady in Quebec, who, to the question what
religion she professed, replied that she believed in the transmigration of
souls. To what particular form of the doctrine she clung; whether she
believed, with the sages of the Ganges, that the soul begins its life in
the mineral or vegetable world, and must pass through no fewer than
eighty-eight progressive stages before it rises to human consciousness; or,
with the priests of the Nile, that the spiritual part of a man has lived
for three thousand years in the forms of lower animals before it gets a
human body; whether she was a Pythagorean, or a Neo-Platonist, or a
Cabalist; whether she refused animal food for fear of eating unwittingly
the flesh of some deceased friend or relative, and could not see a roast
chicken without thinking of a cannibal; these are curious questions which
we fear will never be answered. Plato believed in ten grades of migrations,
each of a thousand years, in which souls were purified and punished before
their return to an incorporeal existence with God; and the more virtuously
they lived, the fewer grades they had to pass through. For a good, honest
philosopher, about three grades were thought sufficient. Porphyry taught
that bodies themselves are punishments imposed upon souls for offences
committed in a previous state of which we retain no consciousness. A gross,
sensual, very material body indicated a very criminal career in the
previous existence. A virtuous life led by degrees through the states of
heroes, angels, and archangels; and an archangel, if he behaved himself,
might hope to be absorbed, in the course of time, into the divine essence
itself; while for the wicked there was a similar but descending scale of
transformations into devils of various degrees of moral blackness. The
Cabalists held that God created originally a certain number of Jewish
souls, some of which are still on earth in human form, while there are
always many others doing penance for their sins in the bodies of animals.
So they were careful, we trust, in their treatment of dumb beasts, not
knowing but any pig or jackass they encountered might be a Jew in disguise.
A conscientious Cabalist would not dare turn a dog out of doors, for fear
he might be kicking his grandfather, and ought to shun fish, flesh, and
fowl as religiously as he would object to dining off a blood relation. The
great Christian philosopher, Origen, himself believed in the transmigration
of the souls of men into the bodies of the lower animals; and adopted this
doctrine as the readiest way of explaining why there are so many
imperfections in animated nature; the divine Creator purposely made animals
imperfect, because he meant that bodies should be the instruments of
punishment and expiation for sinful souls. The Gnostics, and Manichaeans,
and some other heretical sects, had the same idea, and it was also a part
of the doctrine of the ancient British Druids, as it is at the present day
of the Druses and other tribes of Asia, as well as of some of the African
nations. Fourier allowed the soul no fewer than eight hundred and ten
lives, each of them averaging a hundred years in duration, and it was to
pass one third, or twenty-seven thousand of all these years, on our earth.
When all the transmigrations had been accomplished, the soul was to lose
its separate existence, and become confounded with the soul of the planet.
But the French philosopher did not stop here.
{511}
The body of the planet was to be in its turn destroyed, and its soul to
transmigrate into a new earth, rising by successive stages to the highest
degrees in the hierarchy of worlds.

Which of these many systems of metempsychosis was the one embraced by the
eccentric old lady of Quebec we have, as we said before, no means of
deciding, nor perhaps, since she appears to have founded no school of
disciples, is the problem worth investigation. We can imagine what a
singular position the solitary adherent of that old pagan creed must have
occupied in the society of the quaint French city; how pious Catholics must
have stared at her with mingled awe and horror as a relic of the times of
Pythagoras and Plato, or perchance as an Indian Buddhist some centuries
old, whom Time in his flight had forgotten to gather into his garner, where
all her kith and kin had been laid asleep for ages. It was certainly a very
uncomfortable belief, and, if it ever became general, it would play the
mischief with family relations. Just think of the possibility of a man's
being his own grandmother or his own posthumous son! It may have had its
conveniences, but, upon the whole, we are glad it has died out.

We once heard an accomplished theologian maintain that, however
philosophically absurd that doctrine might be, and however inconsistent
with the spirit of Catholic teaching, there was yet no dogmatic decision
which forbade a man's holding it, if he chose to be such a fool. A man
might be a good Catholic and still believe that one of God's ways of
punishing sin was to imprison the offending soul after death in the body of
a beast; this might be a sort of purgatory. Perhaps he was right; but so we
might say there is no article of faith which forbids us to believe that the
moon is made of green cheese, that the earth is flat instead of round, that
the Rocky Mountains are five thousand miles high, or that King Arthur was
the first President of the United States. There is a sort of
transmigration, however, in which reputable Catholic theologians are not
altogether unwilling to believe; and this brings us to the statement of a
fact which, for all that it is admitted by the mass of authorities on such
subjects, will, no doubt, sound paradoxical to a great many of our readers;
that is, that dumb beasts, if they have not borrowed the souls of human
beings, have, at any rate, souls of their own. In our loose way of talking
about things, we are but too apt to speak of the soul as one of the
distinguishing prerogatives of man, and reason as another; whereas the fact
is that man shares both these in common with the brute kingdom. Every
animal has a soul, though not an immortal soul; and all the higher
animals--probably _all_ animals--are gifted to a greater or less
extent with reason. Deny souls to beasts, and you reduce them to a level
with the vegetable creation, in which life and motion are merely the
necessary operations of external laws which the plant has no power either
to further or obstruct. Nor need we fear that, by admitting they have
souls, we raise them too near an equality with ourselves. The divine gift
of immortality, the power of knowing and loving God, the right to
participate in his everlasting glory--these are distinctions which must
separate us by an immeasurable gulf from all inferior creatures. If beasts
have no souls, it will puzzle us to define the exact difference between a
dead dog and a live one.

But we have wandered away, from our speculations about metempsychosis, and
are apparently in danger of forgetting the proposition which we set forth
in the last paragraph, namely, that there is a certain kind of
transmigration of souls in which many good theologians seem very much
inclined to believe. It is an open question whether the souls of animals
pass from body to body; whether, for instance, when a dog dies, its soul is
annihilated, or is transferred to the body of another brute just that
moment born; whether the souls of the lower orders of creatures have only
the brief life which appears to be granted them, or whether their existence
may not be prolonged to the end of this world.
{512}
It certainly accords with what we know of the divine economy, in which
everything has its permanent use and no created object seems ever to be
destroyed, to suppose that, after a soul has performed its functions in the
body of one beast, it may be designed by Almighty God to perform similar
functions in the body of another. The plant which springs up, and blossoms,
and withers, returns to life in other forms; a part of it is consumed as
food and passes into the tissue of animals; a part crumbles away into
vegetable mould and is assimilated by the parent earth; a part, dissolving
into the constituents of the atmosphere, serves to nourish and increase
other plants. The animal body itself, which decays and is changed to dust,
is destined to live again in other shapes. Modern science has discovered
that not even a motion is lost. The blow of the hammer which is struck upon
the anvil is perpetuated in one form or another through all time. The heat
of the fire which blazes for an hour and is then extinct was not created at
the moment the fire was kindled, and will not be lost when the fire goes
out. The sum of all the forces which act in nature is constant,
unchangeable. Heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, may be
expended and apparently lost, but it is only to manifest themselves in
other ways. Nothing, in a word, seems to be destroyed, and, so far as our
knowledge enables us to judge, God has never annihilated any material
object which he has once created. And if matter is thus preserved through
various changes, processes of decay and processes of renovation, why should
not spirit be likewise kept in existence? The soul of man, after it leaves
this body, has still eternal functions to perform in another world, either
of punishment or of reward. What objection is there, then, to believing
that the incorporeal part of the brute has permanent use in this world as
long as the world endures?

Perhaps when we have learned to look upon the brute soul as something
rather more honorable than we have been wont to regard it; as something
which it is quite possible (we won't say probable) God may have designed to
last till the very end of time, and not as the creature of one short day,
we may be prepared to recognize in its true dignity the brute's power of
reason, which seems naturally to follow from the possession of a soul. It
is a common fallacy to distinguish the intelligent faculty in man as
reason, and in dumb animals as instinct. The truth is, reason and instinct
are two things quite different in kind; neither takes the place of the
other, and each of them belongs both to man and to beast. Without aiming at
strict philosophical accuracy, we may define reason as the faculty by which
we weigh the relations of things, and freely and deliberately choose what
we deem eligible, and reject what we consider hurtful. Instinct is an
innate force or impulse inciting us under certain circumstances to act in a
certain way. For example, if a man walking on a plank should feel it
unexpectedly shift under his feet, he would catch at the nearest object, or
endeavor to balance his body by stretching out his hands. These acts would
be acts of instinct, done on the impulse of the moment, before reason had
time to consider whether they ought to be done or not. Max Müller has some
excellent remarks on this subject in his Lectures on the Science of
Language. Instinct, he observes, is more prominent in brutes than in man;
but it exists in both, as much as intellect is shared by both. "A child
takes his mother's breast by instinct; the spider weaves its net by
instinct; the bee builds her cell by instinct. No one would ascribe to the
child a knowledge of physiology because it employs the exact muscles which
are required for sucking; nor shall we claim for the spider a knowledge of
mechanics, or for the bee an acquaintance with geometry, because _we_
could not do what they do without a study of these sciences.
{513}
But what if we tear a spider's web, and see the spider examining the
mischief that is done, and either giving up his work in despair, or
endeavoring to mend it as well as may be? Surely here we have the instinct
of weaving controlled by observation, by comparison, by reflection, by
judgment." Brutes indeed have all the faculties which pertain to reasoning
beings. They have sensation, perception, will, memory, and intellect. They
see, hear, taste, smell, and feel, just like ourselves. They experience
sensations of pleasure and pain, a dog that is fondled or chastised
behaving exactly as a child would behave under the same circumstances. They
are able to compare and distinguish; they show signs of shame and pride, of
love and hatred. To admit all this, and deny that they have souls and
reason, is merely to dispute about terms.

An interesting little book has just been published in England on The
Reasoning Power in Animals, by the Rev. John Selby Watson, and we purpose
giving our readers a few illustrative anecdotes from this work, together
with some instances that have fallen under our own observation,
confirmatory of the principles we have stated in the preceding pages.

Seneca denied memory to beasts. When a horse, he says, for instance, has
travelled along a road and is brought the same way again, he recognizes it;
but in the stable he remembers nothing of it. This, however, cannot be
proved. Almost every one has seen a dog dreaming, and acting over in his
dreams what he has done in his waking moments. If he thinks of events and
places in his sleep, why should he not think of them awake? And if a dog
can think of them, why cannot a horse? The stories of the memory of
elephants are numberless. One of these animals was being exhibited some
years ago in the west of England, when a practical joker among the
spectators dealt out to him in small quantities some gingerbread nuts, and,
after he had secured the elephant's confidence, presented him with a large
parcel weighing several pounds. The beast swallowed it at once, but,
finding it too hot, roared with pain, and handed his bucket to the keeper,
as if asking for water, and, as soon as he had quenched his thirst, hurled
the bucket with great force at the joker's head, fortunately missing his
aim. A year afterward the elephant returned to the same place, and among
the spectators was the joker, again provided with sweet cakes and hot
cakes. He gave the elephant two or three from the best packet, and then
offered a hot one. But no sooner had the animal proved the pungency of it
than he seized the coat-tails of his tormentor, and whirled him aloft in
the air, until, the tails giving way, he fell prostrate to the ground, half
dead with fright. The elephant then quietly inserted his trunk into the
pocket containing the best nuts, and, with his foot on the coat-tails,
leisurely despatched every one of them. When he had finished, he trampled
the hot nuts to a mash, tore the coat-tails to tatters, and flung the rags
at the discomfited joker. The old story of the elephant revenging himself
by spirting dirty water over a tailor who had wounded him with a needle is
too well known to be repeated. A similar story is related in Captain
Shipp's Memoirs. The captain had given an elephant cayenne pepper with
bread and butter, and six weeks afterward the animal remembered it and
punished Captain Shipp by drenching him with dirty water.

Dogs have excellent memories, and every child is familiar with narratives
of their recollecting murderers and leading to their detection. The
celebrated story of the dog of Montargis, who killed the assassin of his
master; of the dog who pointed out to Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, two soldiers
who had slain his master, as related by Plutarch; of the dog of Antioch,
commemorated by St. Ambrose; and of a dog who, according to Giraldus
Cambrensis, in the thirteenth century, fought a public combat with a
suspected murderer, a sort of wager-of-battle, in fact, in which the dog
proved his case, are examples of this memory.
{514}
Benvenuto Cellini had a watch-dog that drove away a burglar who tried one
night to break into the house, and some time afterward recognized the thief
in the street and seized him. A lady removing from Poitou to Paris left a
spaniel behind her. Ten years afterward she sent some clothes packed by
herself to the person who had charge of the dog. The little creature no
sooner smelt them than he gambolled round them and showed every mark of
excessive joy.

The horse has an excellent memory both for persons and places. He never
forgets a road he has once travelled. A horse accustomed to be employed
once a week on a journey with the newsman of a provincial paper always
stopped at the houses of the several customers, sixty or seventy in number.
There were two persons on the route who took one paper between them, and
each claimed the privilege of having it first on the alternate Sunday. The
horse soon became accustomed to this regulation; and, though the parties
lived two miles apart, he stopped at the door of each in his regular turn.
Here was certainly a very remarkable exercise of memory. A wonderful
example of the use of the same faculty is seen in the facility with which
animals that have been carried away from home find their way back. The
writer had a Newfoundland slut which was sent away with one of her pups a
considerable distance by railroad, shut up in a box-car. A fortnight
afterward Jet and her offspring were found at their old home, foot-sore and
half starved. How they had made their way back over roads which they could
only have seen in occasional glimpses from the door of the car always
remained a mystery. But far more wonderful instances of canine memory than
this are on record. A terrier that was taken from Arundel to London in a
close cart, and tied up in the evening in a yard near Grosvenor square, was
found at Arundel, sixty miles distant, the following afternoon. A Scotch
dog having been taken to Frankfort, and having there seen its master
drowned in the Oder, after having made ineffectual efforts to save him,
found its way from Frankfort to Hamburg, from Hamburg to Hull, and from
Hull to Edinburgh. Lord Lonsdale sent two hounds from Leicestershire to
Ireland, and at the end of three weeks they reappeared in Leicestershire. A
Mr. Edward Cook, having lived some time with his brother at Togsten in
Northumberland, came to America, bringing with him a pointer dog, which,
while shooting in the woods near Baltimore, he lost. Some time afterward
Mr. Cook's brother, who continued to reside at Togsten, was aroused one
night by the barking of a dog, which, on being let in, proved to be the
lost pointer. He remained there until his master came back from America. By
what vessel he had made his way across the Atlantic was never ascertained.
The persistency with which cats will return to places from which they have
been sent away is well known. Lord Brougham, in his Letters on Instinct,
mentions one that was taken to the West Indies, and on the return of the
ship to London, found her way through the city to Brompton, whence she had
been taken. Mrs. Lee tells the following story in her Anecdotes of Animals:

  "When living at Four Paths, Clarendon, Jamaica, I wanted a cat, and had
  one given to me which was nearly full-grown. It was brought from Morgan's
  Valley estate, where it was bred, and had never been removed from that
  place before. The distance was five miles. It was put into a canvas bag,
  and carried by a man on horseback. Between the two places there are two
  rivers, one of them about eighty feet broad and two and a half deep, and
  over these rivers there are no bridges. The cat was shut up at Four Paths
  for some days, and when considered to be reconciled to her new dwelling
  she was allowed to go about the house.
{515}
  The day after obtaining her liberty she was missing, and upon my next
  visiting the estate she was brought from, I was quite amazed to learn
  that the cat had come back again. Did she swim over the rivers at the
  fords where the horse came through with her, or did she ascend the banks
  for a considerable distance in search of a more shallow place, and where
  the stream was less powerful? At all events, she must have crossed the
  rivers in opposition to her natural habits."

A farmer living on the borders of the New Forest in Hampshire, bought a
mare near Newport, in the Isle of Wight, and took it home with him,
crossing to the main-land in a boat. During the night the animal escaped
from the enclosure in which the farmer had fastened it, and made its way
home again, swimming across the strait. The nearest distance from the
Hampshire coast to the Isle of Wight is five miles. A cow which had been
sent to grass at a place twenty-one miles from her owner's residence
remained there contentedly all summer; but, as soon as the grass began to
fail, travelled home to her old pasturage. A cow was separated from her
young calf and driven twelve miles to Smithfield to be sold, but early the
next morning she was found at home, having escaped from the market and made
her way through all the intricacies of London. Dr. John Brown, in one of
his inimitable dog-papers, gives an instance of a dog finding his way home
from a distance, under circumstances which almost seem to justify his
notion that the canine race have an idea of humor. A Scottish shepherd,
having sold his sheep at a market, was asked by the buyer to lend him his
dog to take them home. "'By a' manner o' means take Birkie, and when ye'r
dune wi' him just play so,' (making a movement with his arm,) 'and he'll be
hame in a jiffy.' Birkie was so clever, and useful, and gay, that the
borrower coveted him; and on getting to his farm shut him up, intending to
keep him. Birkie escaped during the night, and took the entire hirsel
(flock) back to his own master! Fancy him trotting across the moor with
them, they as willing as he."

There are some well-authenticated instances of animals finding their way
home by roads they never travelled before which are difficult of
explanation. In March, 1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R. N.,
was shipped at Gibraltar on board the Ister frigate, bound for Malta. The
vessel having grounded off Point de Gat, the animal was thrown overboard to
give it a chance of swimming ashore--a poor one, for the land was some
distance off and the sea running very high. A few days afterward, however,
when the gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the ass presented
himself for admittance, and proceeded to a stable which he had formerly
occupied. He had not only swum ashore, but, without guide, compass, or
travelling map, and with no previous knowledge of the route, had travelled
from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles,
through a mountainous and intricate country intersected by streams; and he
had done it in so short a time that he could hardly have made single false
turn. What directed him on this wonderful journey it is impossible to
conjecture, unless we suppose that he had the good sense to follow the line
of the coast; and that he should have known that such a course would lead
him home certainly argues a very large share of the reasoning faculty. In
point of fact, however, there is a curious and incomprehensible instinct
for finding the way which belongs not only to the lower animals, but to man
himself in the savage state. The migrations of birds afford familiar
examples of it, swallows especially, returning year after year to build
their nests in the same place. Two or three years ago six swallows were
taken from their nests at Paris, and conveyed to Vienna, where a small roll
of paper with a few words written on it was affixed to the wing of each;
and they were let go one morning at a quarter past seven. Two arrived at
Paris a little before one; one at a quarter past two; and one at four.
{516}
The other two did not return at all, having perhaps met with some mishap. A
falcon was taken from the Canaries to Andalusia and returned in sixteen
hours, a distance of six hundred miles. Salmon are supposed to return in
all cases to the river where they were bred. Crabs may be carried two or
three miles out to sea, and they will find their way back to their old
haunts. Mr. Jesse, in his Gleanings in Natural History, relates an
extraordinary story of a tortoise which was captured at the Island of
Ascension in the South Atlantic, and carried with several others to
England. It had lost one fin, and was consequently named by the sailors the
Lord Nelson. The voyage was very long, and most of the turtles died, and as
the Lord Nelson seemed sickly when they drew near port, the sailors, in
order "to give it a chance," threw it overboard in the English Channel,
after it had been branded in the usual way, with certain letters and
numbers burnt upon its under shell with a hot iron. Wonderful to relate,
the same turtle was taken at the Island of Ascension two years afterward,
having found its way three thousand five hundred miles through the watery
waste to that little speck in the midst of the ocean. The unerring
certainty with which bees fly in a straight line to their hives is
proverbial, and bee-hunters discover the nests by catching two of the
insects, carrying them to some distance apart, and letting them go. Each
will at once take a straight line toward the nest, and by observing these
lines and calculating where they ought to intersect, the honey is found.
This instinct is the more remarkable as bees are very near-sighted, not
being able, it is supposed, to see more than a yard before them. We have
mentioned that savages have something of the same instinct, finding their
way for long distances, not always by their acuteness of observation, but
by an indescribable faculty which is like nothing so much as the instinct
of birds. Mr. Jesse tells a story of a traveller in Australia, who lost his
way in the interior, and was guided by one of the natives more than a
hundred miles in a straight line to the place he wanted to reach. The
savage, he was assured, could have led him almost as well blindfold, for he
travelled as accurately when the sun was obscured as when it was visible,
and was not assisted by marks on the barks of trees, or any of the other
familiar landmarks of the wilderness. Our own frontiersmen have the same
faculty to a greater or lesser degree. We ourselves, on two occasions,
after a long day's hunt in the far West, in which we followed the game
through so many twists and turns as to lose all idea of the points of the
compass, were conducted by a trapper twelve or fifteen miles back to camp,
on a perfectly dark night, across an utterly trackless prairie. There was
neither tree, nor hill, nor footprint to mark the way, but our course was
as straight as the bee flies. The trapper could not explain how he did it:
it was by a species of instinct. The Newfoundland slut Jet, mentioned on a
preceding page, once found her way to the writer's house, under
circumstances which indicated the exercise of reason much more unmistakably
than the instances just cited. The family were about moving from one house
to another some two miles distant; but as the new dwelling was not ready
for occupation when the lease of the old one expired, the furniture was
stored in the neighborhood, and we all went away for a few weeks, leaving
Jet behind. When we came to take possession of the new house, we found Jet
there before us, although nothing belonging to us had yet been carried to
the premises, and, so far as we knew, she had never been there in our
company. Another dog belonging to us had been there, however, once or twice
with one of the servants, and Jet perhaps had learned the secret from him.
But it certainly showed great mental acuteness in the animal that she
should not have followed the furniture, knowing apparently that it was only
stowed away for a time, but, by putting this and that together, should have
found out where her master meant to establish himself.

{517}

The power of putting this and that together is emphatically a reasoning
faculty; in other words, it is the power of tracing the relation between
cause and effect. The literature of natural history abounds in examples of
the possession of this faculty by animals, and so does the experience of
every one who has ever kept dogs or horses. Jet had it to an eminent
degree. When she was about to bring forth a litter, she always tried to dig
a cave for them under the steps of the front door. This, of course, was
forbidden, but she was resolute, and many a time she had her cavern nearly
finished before she was detected. The bell-wire passed under the steps, so
that in the course of her digging she was very apt to ring the bell, and it
was some time before the servants found out whence the mysterious ringing
originated; but, when the secret was discovered, Jet was pulled out and
punished. Punishment did not break her of the habit; indeed, she was an
incorrigibly obstinate dog, and never was broken of any trick she once set
her mind upon; but after that, whenever she heard the bell, she ran out of
the hole and hid at the corner of the house until the coast was clear, when
she would go back to work, taking more pains to avoid the wire. If her
master was at home and suspected who rang the bell, he often answered the
door himself, and looking toward the side of the house he was sure to see
Jet peeping cautiously round the corner with such a mischievous and comical
expression in her eyes that he rarely refrained from a hearty laugh;
whereupon the dog would pluck up heart, and come forward, grinning and
apologizing, as if to say, "I am very sorry I've given you so much trouble;
I didn't know it was wrong, and I won't do so again." She was a dreadful
liar, (for dogs can lie with their eyes and faces, as well as men can lie
with their tongues.) but it was all very funny. Her understanding the use
of a door-bell reminds us of a story told of an Italian greyhound at
Bologna, which was accustomed every morning to visit a dog of its own
species at a neighboring house. At first it used to wait in the street
until the door was opened, but after a time it learned to use the knocker.
Mr. Nassau Senior, in one of his articles in The Quarterly Review, gives an
instance from his own knowledge of the way in which a terrier used to
obtain admission to the common-room at Merton College, Oxford, whose sacred
threshold, be it known, dogs are strictly forbidden to cross. "The animal's
cunning," says Mr. Senior, "would have done honor to an Old Bailey
attorney." We give the narrative in his own language: "It happened one
evening that a couple of terriers had followed their masters to the door,
and while they remained excluded, unhappily followed the habits rather of
biped than of quadruped animals, and began to quarrel like a couple of
Christians. The noise of the fight summoned their masters to separate them,
and as it appeared that the hero of our tale had been much mauled by a
superior adversary, the severe _bienséances_ of the place were for
once relaxed, and he was allowed to enjoy during the rest of the night the
softness of a monastic rug and the blaze of a monastic fire, luxuries which
every initiated dog and man will duly appreciate. The next day, soon after
the common-room party had been assembled, the sounds of the preceding
evening were renewed with tenfold violence. There was such snapping and
tearing, and snarling and howling, as could be accounted for only by a
general engagement:

  'The noise alarmed the festive hall,
   And started forth the fellows all.'

But, instead of a battle royal, they found at the door their former guest,
in solitude sitting on his rump, and acting a furious dog-fight, in the
hope of again gaining admittance among the _quieti ordines deorum_.
{518}
We have heard that he was rewarded with both the _grandes_ and the
_petites entrées_; but this does not rest on the same authority as the
rest of the narrative."

Mr. Watson's book abounds with other instances of intelligence in animals,
which it is almost impossible to avoid attributing to the operation of
reason. He gives an anecdote, for instance, of an elephant which, seeing an
artillery-man fall from the tumbril of a gun, in such a situation that in a
second or two the wheel of the gun carriage must have gone over him,
instantly, without any warning from its keeper, lifted the wheel with its
trunk and kept it suspended until the carriage had passed clear of the
soldier. Here the elephant manifestly reasoned for himself. A still more
remarkable manifestation of the reasoning faculty is recorded of an animal
of the same species. An elephant in a menagerie was trained to pick up
coins with his trunk. On one occasion a sixpence was thrown down which fell
a little beyond his reach (he was chained) and near the wall. After several
vain attempts to pick it up, he stood motionless a few seconds, evidently
considering how to act; he then stretched his proboscis as far as he could
in a straight line, a little distance above the coin, and blew with great
force against the wall. The blast of air, rebounding from the wall, caught
up the sixpence and drove it toward him, as he evidently intended it
should. Another elephant was once seen to blow a potato which was just
beyond his reach against the wall, and catch it when it rebounded. The
ingenuity displayed in these cases is something akin to the use of tools
which has been declared a characteristic of man alone. This, however, is a
mistake. The club which the gorilla is known to wield with such terrible
power, the palm-branches with which elephants brush away flies, the stones
which monkeys and even birds have been seen to use either in breaking open
shells or keeping them distended while they extracted the shell-fish--what
are these but tools? Foxes have been seen to set cods' heads as baits for
crows, and pounce upon the birds when they came to eat them. The ingenuity
of rats in getting at toothsome morsels is well known; there are many
instances of their using their tails to extract oil from narrow-necked
bottles--all these cases being equivalent to the use of tools. A
Newfoundland dog at Torquay, wanting water, took a pail from the kitchen
and carried it to the pump, where he sat down until one of the men-servants
came out, to whom he made such significant gestures that the man pumped the
pail full for him. The most remarkable part of the story is that, when the
dog had finished, he carried back the pail to the place in the kitchen from
which he had taken it. That was something all the same as a tool which the
eagle of St. Kilda, mentioned by Macgillivray, used when, attacking two
boys who had robbed her nest, she dipped her pinions first in water and
then in sand, to give greater force to the blows which she struck with
them. A rat has been seen conducting a blind companion by means of a stick,
each of the animals holding one end of it in his mouth. Cats have often
been known to learn the use of a latch; and a terrier pup, only two months
old, belonging to the writer of this article, has so good an idea of the
purpose of the same article that he manifests a desire to get out of the
room by ineffectual jumps at the door-handle. A London pastry-cook had a
number of eggs stolen from a store room at the top of the house; a watch
being set for the thief, two rats were detected carrying an egg downstairs.
One of the rats, going down one step, would stand on his hind-legs with his
fore paws resting on the stair above, while the other rolled the egg toward
him; then, putting his fore-legs tightly round it, he lifted it down to the
step on which he was standing, and held it there till the other came down
to take charge of it. Rats have been known to convey eggs up-stairs by a
somewhat similar process.

{519}

A very clear example of reasoning occurs in a story told of a water-hen,
which, having observed a pheasant feed out of a box which opened when the
bird stood on a rail in front of it, went and stood in the same place as
soon as the pheasant quitted it. Finding that its weight was not sufficient
to raise the lid of the box, it kept jumping on the rail to give additional
impetus. This only succeeded partially; so the clever bird went away and
fetched another of its own species, and the weight of the two had the
desired effect. An anecdote is told by Mrs. Lee of a magpie which is almost
enough to persuade one that the creature had the gift of language. The bird
used to watch about a neighboring toll-gate at times when he expected the
toll-keeper's wife to be making pastry; and, if he observed her so
employed, he would perch upon the gate and shout, "Gate ahoy!" when, of
course, if her husband were absent, she would run out to open it; the bird
would then dart into the house and carry away a billful of her pie-crust,
eating and chattering over it with the greatest glee. Surely no one will
deny that in this case the bird exercised the faculty of reason.

Somewhat analogous to this case are the many stories related of animals
apparently understanding what is said in their presence. In reality they
probably have no conception of the meaning of the words uttered, but their
keenness of observation enables them to detect slight changes in the tone
of voice and notice little things which escape our coarser vision; and from
trifling signs they draw reasonable conclusions. The writer had a cat which
always knew when the servant was told to fetch food for her, though the
experiment was often tried of giving the order in various tones of voice
and without any look or sign that would be likely to attract pussy's
attention. During our last war with England there was an old Newfoundland
dog on board the British ship Leander, stationed at Halifax. He had been
attached to the ship several years, and the sailors one and all believed
that he understood what was said. He was lying on the deck one day when the
captain in passing remarked: "I shall be sorry to do it, but I must have
Neptune shot, he is getting so old and infirm." The dog immediately jumped
overboard and swam to another ship, where being taken on board he remained
till he died. Nothing could ever induce him to go near the Leander again,
and if he happened to meet any of her boats or crew on shore, he made off
as fast as he could.

Animals certainly have the power of communicating thoughts to each other,
as the following story proves: "At Horton, in Buckinghamshire, (a village
where Milton passed some of his early days,) about the year 1818, a
gentleman from London took possession of a house, the former tenant of
which had moved to a farm about half a mile off. The new inmate brought
with him a large French poodle, to take the duty of watchman in the place
of a fine Newfoundland dog which went away with his master; but a puppy of
the same breed was left behind; and he was incessantly persecuted by the
poodle. As the puppy grew up, the persecution still continued. At length he
was one day missing for some hours; but he did not come back alone; he
returned with his old friend, the large house-dog, to whom he had made a
communication; and in an instant the two fell upon the unhappy poodle and
killed him before he could be rescued from their fury. In this case the
injuries of the young dog must have been made known to his friend, a plan
of revenge concerted, and the determination formed to carry the plan into
effect with equal promptitude." Count Tilesius, a Russian traveller, who
wrote at the beginning of the present century, tells a wonderful anecdote
of a dog of his which had been sadly worried by a larger and stronger
animal. For some days it was observed that he saved half his food and laid
it up as a private store.
{520}
When he had accumulated a large supply, he went out and gathered around him
several dogs of the neighborhood, whom he brought to his home and feasted
on his hoard. The singular spectacle of a dog giving a supper-party
attracted the count's attention, and he determined to watch their
proceedings. As soon as the feast was over, they went out in a body,
marched deliberately through the streets to the outskirts of the town, and
there, under the leadership of their entertainer, fell upon a large dog and
punished him severely. This incident not only shows that dogs can
communicate their thoughts to one another, and can follow out a fixed plan
of action, but it looks very much as if they had what is generally supposed
to be peculiar to man--namely, some idea of a bargain. They can be
magnanimous in their behavior toward their fellows, and the measures which
large dogs occasionally adopt to get rid of the annoyance of little curs
display a great deal of judgment and good feeling. In Mr. Youatt's book, On
the Dog, we have a story of a Newfoundland dog in the city of Cork which
had been greatly worried by a number of noisy curs. He took no notice of
them until one carried his presumption so far as to bite him in the leg,
whereupon the large animal ran after the offender, caught him by the back
of the neck, and carried him to the quay. There, after holding him
suspended over the edge for a few moments, he dropped him into the river.
But he had no purpose to inflict more than a mild punishment, for after the
cur had been well ducked and frightened and was beginning to struggle for
his life, the Newfoundland dog plunged into the water and brought him safe
to land. That animal certainly showed good sense, a good heart, and a
lively appreciation of what was just and proper. A very comical example of
a dog's feeling of propriety is quoted by Mr. Watson from Jesse's Gleanings
in Natural History. "A gentleman going out shooting obtained the loan of a
pointer from a friend, who told him that the dog would behave very well as
long as he killed his birds: but that, if he frequently missed, it would
leave him and run home. Unhappily the borrower was extremely unskilful.
Bird after bird was put up and fired at, but flew off untouched, till the
pointer grew careless. As if willing, however, to give his client one
chance more, he made a dead stop at a fern bush, with big nose pointed
downward, his forefoot bent, and his tail straight and steady. In this
position he remained firm till the sportsman was close to him, with both
barrels cocked; he then moved steadily forward for a few paces, and at last
stood still near a bunch of heather, his tail expressing his anxiety by
moving slowly backward and forward. At last out sprang a fine old black
cock. Bang, bang, went both barrels, but the bird escaped unhurt. This was
more than the dog could bear; he turned boldly round, placed his tail
between his legs, gave one long, loud howl, and set off homeward as fast as
he could."

Perhaps, after all, one of the most curious exhibitions of reason is
afforded by the crows, which, in the northern parts of Scotland and in the
Faroe Islands, hold extraordinary meetings every now and then, apparently
for the purpose of judging and punishing evil-doers among their community.
The sessions are sometimes prolonged two or three days; and as long as they
last, flocks of crows continue to arrive in great numbers from all quarters
of the heavens. In the mean while, some of the assembly are active and
noisy; others sit with drooping heads as grave as judges. When the
gathering is complete, a very general noise ensues--we are tempted to call
it _talking_--and then the whole body fall upon one or two individuals
and put them to death. Justice thus vindicated, the convention straightway
disperses.
{521}
Now, the crows show every appearance of having been summoned to these
councils; indeed, it is almost inconceivable that they should meet by
chance; but how the summons is given; how they know when all have arrived;
what are the offences they punish; whether the criminals know the fate that
awaits them, and are restrained by force from making their escape; and how
the knowledge of the crime is dispersed amongst the whole assembly--these
are curious questions to which we fear no satisfactory answer will ever be
given. The idea of hundreds of birds sitting in deliberation, like a court
of justice, is indeed marvellous. We can only say that the narrative, as we
have given it, seems to be well authenticated, and we leave our readers to
draw their own conclusions.

We think we have quoted anecdotes enough to prove that brutes have souls
and reason; or, if they have not, that they are much more wonderfully made
than man, since they can perform without assistance from the reasoning
faculty actions which in us require the exercise of the highest
intelligence. And although we do not go to the length of saying, with the
Rabbi Manasseh of old, and Dr. John Brown, the author of Spare Hours, in
our own day, that there is a next world for the brute creation; and do not
believe with another modern writer (the Rev. J. G. Wood) that divine
justice absolutely requires that God should make amends to animals in the
future life for the sufferings they endure in this--perhaps our readers
will agree with us that we have shown it to be no ways impossible that God
may have designed the souls of dumb beasts to outlast in this world their
perishable bodies; that the intelligent part of the sagacious dog may
animate a long succession of Rabs and Pontos; and the spirit of the dead
pet may return into bodily form to delight new generations of masters.

------

  From The Month.

  The Gladiators' Song.


  Round about this grim arena, by the ghosts of thousands haunted,
  Beckoned by our slaughtered comrades, move we on with hearts undaunted--
    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_
  Dark the world and always darker, none to comfort, none to love us,
  Grisly hell beneath us yawning, deaf or dead the gods above us--
    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_
  Life and flesh and soul and sinew, beating heart and thought upsoaring--
  Was the goblet of our being crowned but for this wild outpouring?
    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_
  Voices come through dreary silence, still for righteous vengeance calling--
  So we chant our stern defiance false relentless Rome is falling!
    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_
  Countless years have tortured nations learned the truth of Roman mercies--
  Ah! she falls in waste and carnage, 'mid the world's triumphant curses!
    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_
  Gleams of vengeance, long delaying, scantly sate the spirit's yearning--
  Guessing, groping, craving, hoping, must we go without returning?
    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_
  Onward to our slaughtered comrades, round the arena, shadow-haunted,
  On to endless night or morning pass we on with hearts undaunted!
    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_

------

{522}


    From Once a Week

    Lakes of Lorraine.


On certain sultry and thunderous days in the middle of July, 1866, was
celebrated, with fêtes and fireworks, illuminations by night, and brilliant
shows by day, the first centenary of the union of the province of Lorraine
to France. The scene was the city of Nancy, and splendor was added to the
festival by the presence of the Empress Eugénie and the imperial prince,
who lodged in the former palace of King Stanislaus of Poland, the last duke
of Lorraine, and witnessed from its balcony the defiling of a long
allegorical procession, representing in order the historical personages of
the province, conspicuous among whom was the Maid of Orleans, personated by
a youth of the town bearing in his hand a facsimile of her consecrated
banner. The romance of the mediaeval spectacle was a little marred by
certain laughable incongruities which the critical eye might detect; for
instance, the arquebusiers of the sixteenth century were armed with
percussion muskets; and the portly nymphs representing France and Lorraine
seemed in consequence of the heat to be in somewhat too melting a mood for
perfect dignity. The spectacle as a whole was, however, very imposing, and
went off with a success peculiarly French, the clean and handsome city
being crowded with well-behaved strangers from all the neighborhood, in
such vast numbers that, in spite of their good behavior and good temper,
they were fain to fight for their places in the trains, and one party had
to wait till two A.M. at the station, after being in time to get away by
ten at night. In bearing patiently such inconveniences in the pursuit of
pleasure, our neighbors of the other side of the channel most undeniably
surpass us. It was pleasant as a contrast to pass without let or hinderance
the same station a few days later, following the line which runs parallel
to the course of the Moselle past Épinal to Remiremont, on a visit to the
lakes which lie in the country between that town and the terminus of St.
Dié, which ends another branch of the Paris and Strasburg railway. Between
Nancy and Épinal the stream of the Moselle is met winding through fertile
meadows in a broad valley with low elevations on each side; near Épinal the
scenery becomes more picturesque; there are more trees near the river, and
the long level reaches are broken by occasional rapids with rocks about
them. When Épinal is passed, the valley becomes narrower and prettier, shut
in between two spurs of the Vosges, until the basin is reached, where
Remiremont itself lies, and the waters of the Mosellote join those of the
Moselle, each branch of the river from this point to the source having the
character of a considerable mountain brook. The town of Remiremont itself
resembles Freiburg in the Breisgau, minus its magnificent cathedral, in its
size and general character, and especially in the abundance of fountains
and runnels permeating the streets, which in their main portions are
fronted with arcades like those of Bern or Bologna, a pleasant protection
against sun and shower, and duly appreciated in the tempestuous summer of
1866.

The busy little town derives its euphonious name from one Saint Romary. In
the circle of mountains enclosing the town one of conical shape is
remarked, called Mont Habend, from _Castrum Habendi_, a camp erected
on its site by the Romans.

{523}

In the seventh century this holy mountain was the chosen retreat of two
anchorites, Amé and Romary, who founded there two monasteries, one for
women, another for men, and were canonized after their deaths. The
monasteries were destroyed by the Huns in the tenth century, but the site
of one was repeopled again by monks a century later, while the nuns,
abandoning the mountain, fixed themselves in the valley. The convent of
Remiremont was governed during its long existence by sixty-four abbesses,
the last of whom, Louise Adélaide de Bourbon Condé, died in 1824. It was a
foundation even more exclusive and aristocratic in its character than All
Souls', Oxford. The abbesses were generally princesses, and royal honors
were accorded them. When each abbess entered the town for the first time, a
great holiday was kept, and the mayor, instead of presenting the keys of
the city, offered her the wine of the spot in a cup of gold, which she just
touched with her lips before she passed within the walls to be enthroned
with great state in the palatial apartments prepared for her. One of the
number of these religious princesses, Catherine de Lorraine, distinguished
herself in 1637 beating off from the walls of Remiremont the great Turenne,
who was endeavoring to take the town from the Duke of Lorraine.

The town is now famous chiefly for the production of some excellent cakes
with the quaint name of "_quiches_" probably only a corruption of the
German Küchlein.

To the guests at the baths of Plombières, the lake region which lies
between Remiremont and St. Dié is better known than to the general world,
as it lies out of the way of tourists' thoroughfares; but though it cannot
quite compete in beauty with the English or Scotch lakes, or Killarney, it
is well worth a visit to those who are not obliged to go a great distance
to see it. Instead of going due east to the source of the Moselle and the
pass over the main chain of the Vosges which leads to Wesserling, and
thence by rail to Basel, the road to Gérardmer turns to the left along a
valley parallel to the line of the mountains, and flanked by lower hills,
well wooded, on its other side. The foregrounds have the usual broken and
diversified character of a granitic country, and the height of the hills is
sufficient to make the distant views in many parts highly pleasing. There
is enough picturesque incident to beguile very pleasantly the eighteen
miles or so which the diligence traverses to Gérardmer. The name, derived
from Gérard, a duke of Lorraine, has been given to a fine oblong sheet of
clear water, about two miles long, and half a mile broad, bounded for the
greatest part of its circumstance by long slopes covered with meadows and
white cottages at intervals, but on the east by a pine forest and rocks,
which give a more savage aspect to its further banks. From the Swiss villas
built on its banks, the numerous pleasure-boats, and the general lively
aspect, it brings to mind the lake of Zurich in miniature. At its further
end is an immensely long village, also called Gérardmer, the most
distinguishing mark of which is an enormous wych elm of unknown antiquity,
standing in the market place.

In the summer, Gérardmer is full of visitors, who are well entertained at
the Hôtel de la Poste and the Hôtel des Vosges at a moderate rate. The
latter of these is conducted by an indefatigable little landlady, who is
full of civilities, assisted by a good-natured, gigantic husband, who seems
to superintend the kitchen department, and generally was seen during our
visit lounging somewhere about the entrance, conspicuous in white trousers
and a shirt of violet flannel, trimmed with scarlet. The wide road beyond
Gérardmer branches to the right and left. The left branch leads into a
valley choked with a primaeval pine forest, in the depths of which roars
the torrent of the Vologne. The trees are of immense size, and completely
clad with pendants of moss and lichen, telling of a considerable elevation
of site, and of such weird and grand forms as to make one wish that the art
of forest culture which fells the trees at a premature age had never been
introduced.
{524}
In one spot, not far from the so-called "Basse des Ours," or Bear Bottom,
where the huge granite-blocks that have fallen from the crest of a mountain
have been huddled together, a natural ice-house has been formed in the
interstices, called "La glacière," and the fact of our finding no ice in it
was accounted for by the summer not having been sufficiently hot to produce
the necessary amount of evaporation. The road to the right passes over the
torrent, by a bridge, and then divides again, its right branch leading over
the mountains into the valley of Münster in Alsace, and its left to St.
Dié. On the road to St. Dié two pines are seen which have grown together
like Siamese twins.

Near the bridge is a cascade of singular beauty, which, from a peculiarity
it possesses in changing its entire aspect as the spectator changes his
ground, is called the _Cascade des Fées_. Not far from this cascade is
a large slab of granite, and a fountain where Charlemagne is said to have
dined when he passed out of Alsace over the Vosges into Lorraine, at a time
when all the country was wild forest. A rough bridle road to the right
leaves the main road to the Schlucht pass and the valley of Münster, and,
making for a gap in the hill, soon discloses the beautiful piece of water
called Longemer, or "The Long Lake," the Ullswater, as Gérardmer is the
Windermere of Lorraine. It runs in a long trough between beautifully wooded
steeps for about two miles, with a slightly serpentine direction, prettily
broken by spits of grassy land with a few low trees upon them. At the upper
end is seen, above woody heights, the bald summit of the Honeck, (Hoheneck,
"The High Corner",) an eminence about four thousand feet high. At the lower
end, shaded by lofty trees, is a little chapel on a tongue of land,
dedicated to St. Bartholomew by an anchorite named Bilon, and near it a
solitary villa belonging to a medical gentleman of the neighborhood, who
spends his summer holidays in this Arcadian seclusion, boating and fishing
in the lake and the clear stream that runs out of it. By a path to the
right, following the sinuosities of the lake, a rocky barrier is reached,
down whose face tumbles, among rocks and trees, a lovely waterfall; and
when this is passed, another lake is disclosed, a round, low-lying basin,
among dense woods and frowning escarpments, one of them called the Rock of
the Devil, which bears the name of Retournemer, or "The Lake of Return." A
solitary dwelling, backed by fine beeches and other trees, stands on the
brink, the cottage of the forester, where the wanderer to this end of the
world finds hospitable entertainment. But notwithstanding the impassable
look of the scenery round, a zig-zag path through the trees climbs the
height behind the house, and joins the road which leads to the Col de la
Schlucht, where a beautiful view opens into Alsace, its most prominent
objects being that long spur of the Vosges which terminates by Colmar, and
on the other side a broken granite wall, crowned by a peculiarly imposing
cap of rock, under which the road descends to the green slopes about
Münster, which are variegated with acres of bleaching linen, the product of
the weaving industry which pervades the whole country. On the Col itself is
a spacious chalet or hotel, with excellent accommodation and abundant fare,
to which appetites whetted by the bracing mountain air are inclined to do
full justice. From this point, by walking up a long slope in a southerly
direction, the top of the Honeck is reached, grazed over by herds of cattle
tinkling with Alpine bells, and commanding a spacious view over the valley
of the Rhine to the distant Black Forest, with tremendous precipices in the
foreground on the side of Alsace. Instead of returning from this point
direct to Gérardmer, I walked through a forest of apparently blasted
horn-beam, as grisly as the trees in Gustave Doré's drawings, into a long
valley, which led in course of time to a busy place called La Bresse, and
thence, turning to the right, over a moderately high pass back to
Gérardmer.
{525}
Besides the three lakes already mentioned, there is Blanchemer, or the
"White Lake," in the valley of the Mosellote; the Lac de Corbeaux,
so-called from an overhanging cliff frequented by ravens; the Lac de
Lispach, rich in fish, divided by a ridge from Longemer, and the Lac de
Marchet, on the flank of a mountain not far from Bresse. The so-called
White, Black, and Green lakes belonging to Alsace are situated further to
the north on that side of the Vosges chain which looks toward the Rhine. On
one of the mounds of the Honeck mountain there is an abundant and perennial
spring, called La Fontaine de la Duchesse, which perhaps possesses a higher
claim to be the source of the Moselle than the more trifling stream which
descends by Bussang, though the latter pours its contribution in a more
direct line. The sources of rivers, whether small or great, are generally
controvertible. Some consider the Inn, which rises in the Grisons, as
having more claim to be the real Danube than the river which rises at
Donaueschingen, and, between the rival claims of the Victoria Nyanza of
Speke and the Albert Nyanza of Baker, the real head of mighty Nilus himself
still remains an open question for geographers.

------

    Original.

    Columbus


  Three Scenes.

  'Tis midnight; through the lozenge panes
    Flashes a southern storm;
  And the lightning flings its livid stains
    O'er a bowed and wearied form.
  He stands, like a ship once staunch and stout
    By billows too long opprest;
  And a fiercer storm than whirls without
    Tears through his heaving breast.
  His hand is pressed on his aching brow,
    And veils his eyes' dark light,
  And a twinkling cresset's dim red glow,
  When the lightning pales, doth sadly flow
  O'er locks where many a thread of snow
    Tells of time's troubled flight.
  He stands--a fading, a clouded star,
  Half-hid in the rack of heaven's war;
  Or, like a vanquished warrior, one
  Whose heart is crushed, whose hopes are gone
    After many a gallant fight.

{526}

  He turns and he paces the damp stone floor,
    And his glance seeks the damper wall,
  Where the charts, o'er which he had loved to pore,
    Like arras rise and fall.
  There is his heart's most cherished store,
  There lie the fruits of his deepest lore,
  And his lips, as he views them o'er and o'er,
    His withered life recall:

  "And was it all a dream?
    Is this the bitter waking?
   And is hope's heavenly beam
     For aye my soul forsaking?
  I thought to see the cross unfurled
  Upon the hills of a far-off world!
  To bear the faith of the Crucified
  Far o'er the wild Atlantic's tide!
  To see adored the Christian's God
  Where Christian foot hath never trod!
    Sure brighter dreams from heaven ne'er fell
    And I wake in this cold, dim cell!

   "And were they, too, but dreams----
      Those lands far in the West,
    Where robed in sunset beams
      The Seven Cities rest?
  Far, far beyond the blue Azores,
  I thought to press the ocean's shores;
  The heaving, restless main to span,
  And give--and give--a world to man!
  A new-born world of vernal skies
  Fresh with the breath of paradise--
  A world that yet would place my name
  The foremost on the scroll of fame.
  And now I wake, poor, friendless, lone,
  'Mid these dripping walls of stone.

    "And was it but a dream
       I left fair Italy?
     To chase the churchyard gleam
       Of false expectancy--
  That light which, like the swamp's pale glare,
  Lures but to darkness and despair?
  To crush the visions youth built up?
  Drink to its poisoned dregs the cup
  Of hope deferred and trust misplaced?
  To feel heart shrink and body waste?
  And still like drowning wretch to cry,
  'One more effort and I die!'"


{527}

  II.

  The drear, chill gray of dawning day
    Dies in a golden glow,
  And merrily on the dancing sea
    The rippling sunbeams flow;
  And they glance and glint, in many a tint,
    Over minaret and tower,
  Where the lofty cross shows the Paynim's loss
    And the wane of Moslem power.
  And waving high in the brightening sky,
    Floating o'er town and sea,
  And gleaming bright in the morning light,
     Spain's flag flaunts haughtily.

  Who passes through the antique street
    Worshipped by all around?
  Whom do the thousand voices greet
    That to the heavens resound?
  Proud is the flash of his dark eye,
  Yet tempered with humility;
  The softened radiance, high yet meek,
  That doth the Christian soul bespeak;
  Proud is his heaving bosom's swell,
  And proud his seat in velvet selle;
  His very courser paws the earth
  As conscious of its master's worth.

  And now his armed heel loud rings
    Through a high, carved hall,
  Where blazoned shields of queens and kings
    Hang fluttering on the wall.
  Around, the noblest of the land
  In deepest awe uncovered stand:
  Princes, whose proud sires had well
  Upheld the cross with Charles Martel;
  And knights, whose scutcheons flashed amid
  The fiercest fights where blazed the Cid;
  Soldiers, who by their sovereign's side
  Hurled back in blood the seething tide
  Of Moslem war; and churchmen sage,
  The men who smoothed that iron age.
  And all alone, 'mid that bright throng,
  _His_ voice arises clear and strong.
  He stands before a throne; even now
  His dark plume waves above his brow,
  As he, of all the courtier train,
  Rivalled the majesty of Spain.
  Fortune like this, what fate can mar?
  He stands--a cloudless, risen star.

{528}

  III.

  Once more 'tis the mid hour of night;
    Once more the storm beats high;
  But now it whirls its fearful might
    Along the cloud-fraught sky
  Which spans the drear Atlantic's waste,
    All whitened with wild foam,
  That cleaves the air, as sea-birds haste
    At even to their home.

  But even there, where nature's power
    Laughs puny man to scorn,
  Man lords it for his little hour
    O'er fellow-man forlorn.
  Within a Vessel's creaking sides
    A chained prisoner sits;
  Drooped, weary, careless what betides
    His tired soul, ere it flits
  Far from a world where gratitude
  Yields ever to the selfish brood
  That gold and thirst for honor bring
  To breast of peasant and of king.
  What now avails the world he gave
  To thankless Spain? It cannot save
  From slavish chains its whilom lord,
  Nor shield him from the hatred poured
  O'er his bowed head by those who late
  But formed the puppets of his state.
  Gone is his kindly mistress--laid
  To sleep among Spain's royal dead.
  Dead is her smile, her beaming gaze
  So full of hope when darkening days
  Hung o'er the crown she wore so well;
  Yea, dead is queenly Isabel!
  And where are now the crowds that hung
  Upon his steps when every tongue
  Shouted his praise? The station high
  Above all Spain's plumed chivalry?
  The high commands? Away! each thought
  With saddening memory so deep fraught!
  Call not pale flashes from afar
  To mock with light a fallen star!
  The past is dead, the future read,
  Ay! see a broken, moss-grown stone,
  And on it view a kingly meed
      Of thanks to genius shown--
    Ay! trace o'er that forgotten grave--
    "ANOTHER WORLD COLUMBUS GAVE
       TO CASTILE AND LÉON."

                         Front-de-boeuf.

------

{529}


    Original.

    The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.

    by Clonfert.



  Chapter II.

  The Slaves' Feast.


The great Festival called _Saturnalia_ was being celebrated in Rome
when these events took place. The occurrence of this feast enabled the
Christians from many parts of the world to assemble in the city, and to
celebrate under cover of it the feast of Christmas. History does not light
us with certainty to the precise time at which this latter feast was
instituted, but shows it in matured existence at a very early period.
Tradition has surmised that it had its birth in the first century, and that
it was celebrated in secret and security under shadow of the pagan
festivities of the _Saturnalia_.

The _Saturnalia_, in honor of _Saturnus_, to whom the Latins
traced the introduction into Italy of agriculture and the civilizing arts,
fell toward the end of December. The agricultural labors of the year being
then over, it became a kind of harvest-home with the rural population.
After the Julian addition of two days to the month of December, it
commenced on the 16th of the Kalends of January, that is, on the 17th
December, and continued for three days. But the people generally
anticipated the time and prolonged it to the end of the month, especially
to the 24th, when it became merged in another feast called
_Sigillaria_, on account of the earthenware figures then hawked about
as toys for children.

During the feast the slaves were allowed great liberty of act and of
speech. Throwing off their sombre garments of brown and black, which,
together with their slippers, made up the servile dress, (_vestis
servilis_,) they donned their masters' clothes, assumed like freedmen
the _pileus_, or felten cap, considered the badge of freedom. Their
allowance of bread and salt and oil was increased and made palatable by the
addition of wine. Their masters often waited on them at table, where
thoughts were freely uttered in joke and song as well as in sober earnest
without restraint or blame. The whole people made merry; the toga was laid
aside, and the loose-fitting garment _synthesis_ put on with a
high-peaked skull-cap without brim, (_pileus_.) Wax-tapers were given
as presents, particularly by slaves to their owners and by the clients to
their patrons; with these lighted in their hands, they went along the
streets shouting "_Io Saturnalia!_" Stores and courts were closed;
schools kept holiday; war could not be proclaimed; evil-doers could not be
punished; gambling, prevented by law at other times, was permitted. In
private circles mock-kings were chosen, who ruled the sports with right
royal dignity. All these and greater privileges, were granted the slaves.

Aurelian was in no mood for enjoyment since his interview with Flavia.
Knowing that many strangers would be calling at his Roman palace, he
avoided them by betaking himself to his suburban villa. There, too, he
could with less fear of discovery keep his engagements with Zoilus and
Sisinnius for the 8th of the Kalends of January. He was nervously anxious
to prove the truth of what the former had told him.

He retired, therefore, to the country. Thither he invited Sisinnius to meet
him on the day agreed on with Zoilus, under plea of seeing his slaves
celebrate the feast in rural style.
{530}
Sisinnius found him in the _Tablinum_, a room opposite the hall door,
where family records and archives were kept. Seeing Aurelian, thin, pale,
and dull, writing on a parchment roll, he asked:

"Is it making your will you are? You remind me of the shade of Dido! This
comes of neglecting the gods and their feasts, and shutting yourself up
among those woods and stone-walls like a vestal. If you staid in the city,
and lighted your wax-taper, and sang your song to Saturn like a good jolly
fellow, you would be far more cheerful and comely!"

"Perhaps so. But the three destinies are not all and always kind. I have
had my happy times; it is fair my sad ones should come."

"Pshaw, Aurelian! Pour out a libation to Bacchus and then empty off the
goblet yourself, and you shall find the jolly god will stiffen up your
drooping spirits! I know the cause of all this--your interview with that
wilful girl! Cheer up! women are like the summer clouds, one time damp and
dark, the next beaming with the sunshine of love and beauty."

"Very poetical, Sisinnius, but Flavia is not after the ordinary mould.
Tonight, however, will decide my doubts and hopes for ever. You remember
our engagement with Zoilus?"

"Yes, I am half sorry I made it. I cannot read that slave. He seems to know
every one and everything; and one can scarcely distinguish between his
jocose and his serious moods. Do you know where I met him as I came to the
crossway of the Appian and Latin roads? Talking to that Jewish beggar who
sits morning, noon, and night asking pennies from the passers-by near the
Egerian fountain."

"I allowed him into the city to arrange for our admission to the
meeting-place of the Christians. He certainly does know a great deal, and
must be a clever deceiver. Otherwise he could not have crept into the
secrets of those mysterious, plotting Jewish sects without being
distrusted. However, in the present instance he is serious and to be
trusted; for I have promised him and a female slave--a Jewess also, who has
fascinated him--their liberty, in case he convinces me that Flavia has
become a Christian. But, hush! here he comes. Well, Zoilus, you have
returned sooner than I expected. What news from the city?"

"Hail, noble Sisinnius!" said the Greek, bowing. "Well, master, the divine
Domitian is in a fury; the exhibition of games in the new amphitheatre has
been a failure. He had ordered, it is said, nearly ten thousand beasts and
a proportionate number of gladiators, a number exceeding that with which
his brother Titus had dedicated it. The play of Hercules and Omphale was to
be enacted before the people. A gladiator was under training for many weeks
to sustain the character of Hercules, and was to have been burned alive at
the end in a skirt set on fire with vitriol and tar. The gladiator went
through the preparatory training well, and seemed to enjoy the good things
ordered him by the emperor with the view of making him fleshier and fatter
for the burning. But, while being brought to the amphitheatre this morning,
he slipped his head between the spokes of the cart-wheel, and, without
gratitude for the good things, or feeling for the disappointment of the
imperial god, suffered his neck to broken. This was really too bad of mere
slave! [Footnote 166]

   [Footnote 166: An historical fact. _Friedlander_.]

"So another had to substituted; what comfort or cause of laughter would
there be in witnessing the burning of the corpse? A live substitute was
found, who most ungraciously refused to move either hand or foot in the
love-making of Hercules and Omphale. However, this could be borne in
anticipation of the fiery ending; but, wonderful to relate, when the skirt
was put on and the flames were lighted, he stood unscorched in their midst,
calling on the Christian God. Was not the emperor in a rage!
{531}
The water was let into the arena and the crocodiles and other amphibious
monsters were swimming about, devouring each other; and the man was thrown
in, but they would not touch him! Floating on the surface of the water,
with upturned face and clasped hands, he prayed the Christian God to have
pity on Domitian. This so angered the latter that, standing up from his
seat above the arena, he cursed the Christian and the Christian's God, in
the name of his own and of Jupiter's divinity. When, lo! as if Jupiter was
provoked, a thunderbolt like a burning globe came flashing as if from
highest heaven, and went hissing through the water in the arena, killing
every living thing within it except the floating Christian! The veil of the
amphitheatre, with the machinery by which it was sustained, was set on fire
and torn away. The people rushed from their seats; it is not known how many
lives were lost. The emperor himself was terrified, and, running from his
throne to his chariot, drove furiously to his palace, to find it also
struck by the lightning." [Footnote 167]

    [Footnote 167: These facts are substantially true. Tillemont's Lives of
    the Emperors, and the History of the Flavian Amphitheatre, or
    Colosseum, relate things as wonderful of Domitian's reign.]

"This will hasten the edict of persecution against the Christians; and it
is time," observed Aurelian.

The villa stood on a farm of many hundred acres. A wooded hill, from which
it was separated by a stream emptying into the Tiber, sheltered it from the
wintry winds. The stream drained the land, which otherwise would have been
a marsh, and thus prevented the unhealthy effluvia which unfitted many
parts near the city for human resilience. Its distance of some miles from
the great southern road saved it from many visitors, and thereby rendered
it a secure retreat for a mind seeking solitude. Attached to the villa, but
at some hundred yards from it, were the dwelling-places of the outdoor
slaves, in and around which they were now feasting. It consisted of two
open courts, [Footnote 168] an outer and an inner one.

    [Footnote 168: Cohortes, chortes, cortes--courts.]

In the buildings around the former was the kitchen, an apartment large
enough to contain the whole _family_ employed on the farm.
_Family_ (_familia_) was the word used to designate the total
number of slaves employed on an estate or in a household. Near the kitchen
were the baths, the oil and wine-presses, the cellars, and in the upper
stories the granaries, carefully protected from damp, heat, and insects. At
the entrance-gate of this court were the apartments for the
_Villicus_, or chief steward, and for the _Procurator_ of the
_family_. In the inner court were the stables, stalls, and sheds,
(_equilia, bubilia,_ and _ovilia_.) In the centre of each court
was a large reservoir, into which the water from the stream was carried
through terra-cotta pipes, or Roman-arched drains. The reservoir in the
outer court was generally used for cleansing and soaking vegetables; that
in the inner was carefully supplied with fresh water for poultry and
cattle. Around both courts were the chambers (_cellae_) of the slaves,
which fronted southward so as to catch the sun's light and heat. Near these
chambers, but partly underground, was the prison for refractory or fugitive
slaves; it was partially lighted by long and narrow windows.

Aurelian and Sisinnius strolled leisurely from the villa, accompanied by
Zoilus, and discussing the wonderful events he had related. When they
reached the courts, they found the slaves engaged in different amusements.
It was a bright, bracing day; the sun shone in a cloudless sky, which had
been swept by the wind. There was nothing to remind them of December, save
only the long, dry branches of the trees rustling and swaying on the
hillside, and the gusts sweeping at times in eddies round the courts as if
they had lost their way. Some of the slaves were playing at quoits; others
at draughts (_latrunculi_) in sheltered nooks. Some indulged in the
usually forbidden game of dice, while younger ones took a boyish pleasure
in rattling the cylindrical dice-boxes of bone or ivory,
(_fritillus_.)
{532}
A group in the central area of the outer court played at odd and even,
(_par impar ludere_;) while another was gathered around a slave with
long-flowing philosophic beard, who proposed puzzles on the abacus, or
calculating tray. Many sat quietly apart; others walked moodily about,
wrapped in thoughts that seemed tinged with disappointment and gloom. But
the great body of the family was in the kitchen, which resounded with
singing, music, and dancing. As soon as Aurelian and his companions had
entered the last-named apartment, a little slave with hunchback, wiry frame
bounded from a couch and seized the skirt of his master's toga, which was
slung in walking style over the left shoulder.

"The gods will be angry with the senator for wearing his toga during the
feast, and for not waiting on Caipor as he did last year," exclaimed the
dwarf.

"No, no, Caipor! Saturnus has given me leave to retain the toga; because I
am not well, and he fears I would catch cold if I laid it aside for a
lighter dress."

The face of Caipor darkened and tears brightened through his eyelashes.

"Poor master is not well and shall die! Then what will Caipor do? Villicus
will whip him and put him in the _furca_ for ringing his bells; or
they will sell him and he will never more see or love good master or
beautiful Flavia."

Aurelian assured him that there was no danger of his own death, and that he
might ring his bells and should not be whipped. The little fellow shook his
Phrygian cap, and rang a tiny peal from the tiny bells attached around it.
The jingle caused him to laugh out with idiotic delight.

"Villicus cannot whip Caipor for shaking his bells, ha, ha! Villicus
whipped Lucius to-day until the big drops of blood came from between the
shoulders, and put him on the mill in the prison."

"Impossible!" said Sisinnius. "It is not lawful to punish or imprison
during the feast."

"Lucius said so. But Villicus would not listen. Lucius is a big, strong man
--why did he not kill Villicus? He did not cry or stir, but he kept calling
on Jesus to help him; but Jesus did not come. Master, who is Jesus?" asked
the fool.

Aurelian's curiosity was aroused. On questioning the steward, he was told
that Lucius, with many other slaves, refused to join in honoring Saturn or
any of the gods, or to award divinity to the emperor; that it was necessary
to punish some one for example's sake, and that Lucius, other wise quiet
and inoffensive, was chosen as being principal among the recusants.

"What is to come next?" said Aurelian bitterly to Sisinnius. "Our wives and
daughters, and now our lowest slaves, are lured by this Christian seducer!
Like the pestilence from the marshes, his influence is creeping into every
corner and poisoning the whole atmosphere of our social system. Something
must be done to check its deadly progress. A stronger dose than that
administered by Nero is requisite to kill it."

Caipor was clinging affectionately to his master's side. At length, drawing
the toga by a sudden jerk, he looked up into Aurelian's face and said:

"Caipor waits upon the senator the year round. Will not the senate wait
upon Caipor during the festival?"

"Certainly, I will be your slave and wait on you, my Caipor! Where is your
couch?"

Couches with, small tables for the guests had been arranged in form of a
triclinium at one end of the large apartment. Leading Aurelian to one of
these seats, the hunchback fool reclined upon his elbow in [a] most
approved dining attitude; and, as Aurelian rolled the table to his side and
helped him to wine and fruit, looked around the room with mingled pride and
pleasure at being the only one so honored.

Meantime Zoilus told Sisinnius the history and character of several slaves.
There were about four hundred present.
{533}
Our readers may give us credit for exaggeration if we draw attention to the
vast numbers, the varied origin, and occupations of slaves owned by noble
Romans in the age of Domitian. Slavery arose from three causes, namely,
from birth, from civil punishment, and captivity in war. The captives by
war alone would swell the number enormously. In the reign of Augustus a
freedman died leaving by will over four thousand slaves, after having lost
other thousands in the civil wars. Historians say that many Romans had from
ten to twenty thousand. Juvenal puts the test of a person's fortune in the
question, "_Quot pascit servos?_" "How many slaves does he support?"
During the empire they filled every position, from the most menial to the
most literary. They were tillers and caretakers of the territories of the
patricians in Italy, Sicily, and in the provinces beyond the mountains and
the seas. They were employed as bakers, barbers, cooks, stewards, and
artisans; as tutors, clerks, amanuenses, readers, teachers, physicians,
astronomers, rhetoricians, poets, and philosophers. The literature and
science of the Roman world, the "Orbis terrarum" found many a worthy
representative in their ranks. Hence it has been well said that the martial
prowess of Rome conquered that of foreign nations, but that the
civilization and learning of foreigners conquered or rather produced hers.

We need not wonder, therefore to find hundreds of slaves in the household
of Aurelian. His family was among the oldest and noblest of the city.
Counting those on his Italian and foreign estates, they numbered many
thousands. In the assemblage which Sisinnius was scanning, many
nationalities had representatives--Phrygians, Cappadocians, Thracians,
Britons, Greeks, and Jews.

"Whence was Caipor purchased?" asked Sisinnius.

"The mother of Aurelian," answered Zoilus, "was driving in her four-wheeled
chariot (_rheda_) through the streets of Rome. Her attention was drawn
to a dwarfish figure, who, emerging from the forum of Augustus, followed
the chariot-wheels, clapping his hands and crying out, 'Well done! little
wheel. Run fast! Big wheel can't catch you; well done, little wheel!' He
was in ecstasies on seeing the smaller wheels of the carriage, as it rolled
quickly on, keep their position at the same distance from the larger. The
slave-dealer from whom he had wandered came up and scourged him severely.
He cried piteously and called on the lady for protection. Moved with pity,
she made her husband buy him at a cost of ten thousand sestertia,
($50,000.) [Footnote 169] Since that time he has been the pet fool of the
household (_morio_,) and was, according to custom, named Caipor
(_Caii puer_) after my noble master's father."

    [Footnote 169: A _morio_, or fool, in the reign of Nero cost
    $15,000! _Dio_.]

"What is the name of that female yonder? How beautiful is the symmetry of
her face and figure! But there is determined purpose in her lip and eye."

"That is Judith the Jewess," said Zoilus, slightly confused. "She was
bought like myself from among the slaves left by the late Consul Domitilla.
She was a little girl during the siege of Jerusalem; and, having
miraculously escaped was, like other girls of her age and beauty, brought
to grace the triumphal return of the conqueror Titus. During the procession
she was perched like a winged Iris on the same chariot with Venus and
Apollo."

"And that other near her?"

"Is the daughter of a Roman plebeian, and by birth a free woman. But,
having secretly married a slave, she was on discovery reduced to his level.
She bears her lot patiently, however, because she cannot be separated by
sale from her husband."

"I see two strongly built slaves sitting near each other. One of them wears
his beard; and the fair locks of the other are down to his shoulders. They
seem to look contemptuously on the amusements."

{534}

"One of these is a Getulian, the other a Briton. They were both chiefs and
warriors in their respective countries. You perceive the mark
(_stigma_) burned into the former's forehead? When first exposed in
the slave-market, having on his neck the tablet (_titulus_) describing
his various qualities, a physician was brought, before whom he was to be
stripped and examined. Before they had time to so treat him he snatched up
a staff, and, having prostrated slave dealer and physician, with a sweep
bounded over the railing of the area and escaped among the buildings of the
old forum. It cost the lives of three slave-hunters before he was captured.
He was branded as a dangerous character and condemned to die as a
gladiator. But Aurelian succeeded in procuring him. Since he came on this
estate he has made no attempt at escape. Being allowed a percentage
(_peculium_) on his work like many others employed by our master, he
has become industrious, and hopes after some years to be able to purchase
his liberty by his savings. The Briton is similarly situated. If they
succeed in procuring freedom, depend upon it, they will return to their
native hills and relight the torch of war."

"Who is that old man with bald head and long white beard, to whom Aurelian
is now speaking?"

"That is Bathus, the tutor and caretaker of Aurelian's youthhood. He wears
the long beard and cloak of a philosopher by license of the festival. He
hates the emperor on account of his late edict of expulsion against the
philosophic tribe. He also professes grammar and rhetoric. Next [to] him is
Tritonios, a disciple of Hippocrates. He is famous for his skill in
bleeding and in amulets. His bored ears show his Eastern origin, probably
in Arabia. You may find him any morning before sunrise gathering herbs for
charms. There is scarcely a slave, or a tree on the estate that has not a
triangular Abracadabra, or some other amulet suspended on him or it, as a
protection against disease and the evil genii."

While Zoilus and Sisinnius were thus conversing, those in the other parts
of the apartment were not without their own topics and amusements. It was
observable that they instinctively took their places according to their
position and rank in the family. Those born in the household, the
_vernae_, were more forward and talkative than the others; they well
deserved the character given of them by the poet as the "_vernae
procaces_."

A Roman slave-family contained all the sources of social enjoyment and
happiness, such as was possible for persons in their condition, provided
the owner and the superintendents were not inclined to tyranny. Their
marriage was not indeed sanctioned by law; but the _contubernium_,
which permitted them to live as man and wife under the same roof, was
respected in its relations as much perhaps among the pagan, as among
Christian nations, among whom slavery flourished. [Footnote 170]

    [Footnote 170: Cod. iii. 23.]

An enactment was passed by the senate that in sales and divisions of
property husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, should not
be sundered. Roman jurists, no doubt, defined slavery to be a
"_constitutio juris gentium, quâ quis contra naturam alterius dominis
subjicitur_," thus strictly giving the master power to do much as he
liked with the slave; to sell, punish, and put to death. In consequence
great cruelties were often inflicted. But generally social intercourse and
positive morality softened down their severity. Positive legislation also
came to the aid of the slave. Under the Antonines, a man putting his slave
to death without a justifying cause was subject to a heavy penalty. If a
slave were treated too harshly, he might bring the case before the public
tribunal and claim to be sold to another master. If a sickly or aged slave
were exposed by the owner, he became free; and, if put to death, the crime
was punished as murder. Christianity, though it did not proclaim slavery to
be an essential evil, made way for emancipation.
{535}
The great principles of charity were urged by the first Christian writers
and fathers of the church. Clement of Alexandria devoted much of his
eloquence to this subject. Gradually this Christian spirit impregnated
society, especially after the triumph of the cross under Constantine.
Slaves who became priests, monks, nuns, or were promoted to any clerical
order, were made free by law. Owing to these circumstances, the number of
slaves became very much lessened. Many Christian masters emancipated all
they possessed; others kept them, until they were instructed and converted,
and then gave them freedom. Justinian particularly did much for the
overthrow of slavery: his legislation, inspired by the Catholic Church,
would have wholly extinguished it, but for the invasion of the northern
barbarians. These brought with them their slaves, who were mostly
Sclavonians, (_sclavi_, or _slaves_,) and reduced many of the
conquered to the same level. The church was true to her policy of not
suddenly tearing up any of the foundations of society when not essentially
wrong; but she never ceased to preach, "in season and out of season," the
great principle of "doing unto others as we would have them do unto us."
This is the mirror she has always held up before master and slave. Seeing
their duties here reflected, the evils of slavery, and finally the system
itself, began to fade like snow under the softening influence of the sun.
The voice of the Catholic Church was the herald of freedom from the
beginning. Wondrous changes were brought about without those calamities
accompanying sudden transitions. The echoes of her teaching have been taken
up by religious and political parties. But they have had the injustice of
appropriating it as their own, and the ingratitude to forget that the
Catholic Church was the mother at whose knees mankind learned the lessons
of Christian charity and liberty! But we must return.

During the conversation between Zoilus and Sisinnius, the jests and
laughter of the "vernae" were heard above all other sounds.

"Observe Zoilus," said one, "he looks as sober and serious as Rhadamanthus
on the judgment-seat. What is the matter with him?"

"He is expecting to be a freedman one of these days, and thinks it time to
become a gentleman and quit his old habits and associates."

"Why, as to that matter, he is as free as the wind on the hill-side. He is
in and out of the city as often as he likes. What induces master to give
him so much freedom? There is something in it."

"See Murena, too! He expects in a few months to buy himself out with the
profits of his peculium."

"That accounts for his being so great a miser. The barber told me that,
after having his hair cut and nails pared the other day, Murena gathered
the cuttings in order to make a denarius on them!"

This observation of the physician Tritonios caused laughter and was not
unheard by Murena, who replied:

"O doctor! that is a stale joke stolen from Plautus. Next time I will
preserve the parings for your amulets, they may be as good for the
toothache or the colic as the hairs on the goat's chin which you hung upon
the arm of Marcus!"

"Take care, Murena!" said a third, "you don't know how soon you may require
Tritonios to assist you."

"Yes, and share the fate of Procax, who only saw the doctor in a dream, and
awoke no more, though he carried an amulet."

The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of two slaves, a male and
female, dressed in short and close garments for the dance. They wore
leathern skull-caps for protection of the head in case of falling, because
as they danced they flung themselves on their heads and alighted again upon
their feet. Another slave played appropriate airs on the flute.
{536}
After engaging in this dance, in which, after Spartan style, the hands and
head and eyes were in motion as well as the feet, a rope was extended
across the room. The female dancer ascended, carrying a thyrsus bound with
white fillet and ending in a bunch of vine and ivy leaves mixed with
berries. Balancing herself with this, she danced in many graceful
attitudes, representing satyrs, fauns, bacchanals, and other mythological
beings. Then exchanging the thyrsus for a crater of wine and a small
drinking-cup, she danced and meantime poured the wine from one vessel into
the other, balancing herself by the action, and then descended amid great
applause. After the dance the amanuensis of Aurelian declaimed with great
spirit the beautiful passage of Homer in which the death of Hector at the
hands of Achilles is described. Here some one remarked that Zoilus had not
sung or improvised during the evening, and a unanimous call was made on
turn, with which, after some hesitation, he complied by singing the
following:

    The Song of Saturnus.

  A hymn to Saturnus, a grateful hymn,
  With goblets festooned to the bead-crowned brim,
      On his festival we sing:
    Who once in the year
    Doth freedom and cheer
      To slave and to master bring,
          Bring,
      To slave and to master bring.

  He taught unto men how to till the hard soil,
  To plant the green grape and to draw the fat oil
      Which flows in the olive's heart,
    To prune the vine
    And to tap the mine,
      And every useful art.

  He breathed on the earth; and his breath is the spring
  Which flowers and fruits on its bosom doth fling,
      And sweetens the summer breeze
    As it freshly blows
    Where the water flows
      Through the roots of the leaf-clad trees.

  He breathed on the sea; and the ripples came
  Like smiles o'er its face, and its amorous frame
      Kissed with its cooling lip
    The shore in the hours
    When the sky sends its showers
      For the thirsty earth to sip.

  He breathed on the air; and its brow grew white
  With rays scarce concealed by the veil of night;
      And the sun from its blue looked down
    With a smile so bland
    As to free the land
      From the chill of his winter frown.

  He breathed on the springs; and the streams rushed out
  From their mother's lap with a mirthful shout:
      "Oh! come to the fields," they sang,
    "For the parched meads
    Need our limpid beads,"
      And they laughed as they onward sprang.

  Then a hymn to Saturnus, a grateful hymn,
  With goblets festooned to the wine-crowned brim,
      On his festival we sing:
    Who once in the year
    Doth freedom and cheer
      To slave and to master bring!

"Why, Zoilus, you rival Martial the Spaniard in wooing the virgin Nine,"
said Bathus. "If the emperor only knew your powers, he would patronize you
as well as Juvenal, Quinctilian, and the Jew Josephus."

"The renegade from his race and creed!" said Ephrem, a Jewish slave, in an
underbreath to Judith, who sat beside him.

"The golden age of poesy, like that of philosophy, has departed," remarked
Zoilus in answer to Bathus. "The emperor has lost his early love of
verse-making, and betaken himself to the burning of vestals [Footnote 171]
and of Christians.

    [Footnote 171: Vestals were burned in the reign of Domitian for
    violation of their vows.]

"By the way, Bathus, have you heard that Epictetus and the whole host of
philosophers have been exiled? They say that Dio Chrysostom is consoling
himself in the Getulian desert with a tract of Plato and a speech of
Demosthenes. I would advise you strongly to shave your beard and lay aside
the philosopher's cloak, or the beard may be cut off with the head attached
to it. Genius is at a low ebb nowadays; that is my reason for having ceased
to be one."

"Beware, lest you might share a like fate; your tongue wags very freely,"
observed Aurelian, who overheard the conversation.

"Noble master, this is the feast of free speech. To-morrow I will padlock
my lips, and nothing but a golden key will open them." said the slave,
glancing knowingly at his master. Then turning to Ephrem the Jew, "Sing us
that ode to your native land I heard you repeat the other day, Ephrem."

"It is in Hebrew, and would not be understood."

{537}

"No matter; the metre and air are sweet and melancholy. I will have it
translated into Latin hexameter by your countryman Josephus, one of these
days, if you like."

"Name him not, the arch-sycophant, who lives by flattering tyrants,"
whispered Judith with a fierce tone and glance, before which Zoilus
blanched and trembled.

"Fair Judith, be not angry; I meant it only in joke."

"Jokes at the expense of others' feelings deserve not the award of wit,"
said Ephrem, who, standing up, declaimed the following with a vehement
earnestness:

  Ode of the Exiled Jew to Jerusalem.

  I.

  Thy heart, Jerusalem! is desert and drear,
  Thy children no more in thy bosom appear;
  In the land of the Gentiles they sigh and they moan,
  While thou, dear mother! dost pine all alone.

  II.

  Thy turrets, and temple, and beautiful gate--
  The gems that shone bright in the crown of thy state--
  Like the ark of the prophets, no longer remain,
  And the Philistine foxes thy beauty profane!

  III.

  The gold harp of David awakens no more
  Thy echoes where pontiff and people adore;
  Thy silver-voiced trumpets are silent and dead,
  No smoke from thy temple ascends overhead.

  IV.

  Like the weeds on the beach by the ocean-tide hurled,
  Thy daughters are cast on the shores of the world;
  Thy eye's filled with weeping, thy heart's filled with woe,
  And thy brow once so fair in the dust is laid low!

  V.

  The dust of thy kings in thy bosom remains
  Where the hoofs of the Gentiles insult thy sad plains,
  And their lamps sacrilegious invade the deep glooms
  That wrap them to rest in thy Valley of Tombs!

  VI.

  Jerusalem, mother! we pray unto Him
  Who has filled up thy chalice of woe to the brim:
  "A curse on the tyrants whose impious hands
  Have seized thee, denied thee, and bound thee in bands!

  VII.

  "O send down, Jehovah! by night and by day,
  Thy blight on apostate impostors, we pray;
  The Christian deceivers, whose God we nailed fast [Footnote 172]
  To the tree of the cross as a sail to the mast!

    [Footnote 172: The Jews cursed the Christians three times a day in
    their synagogues, says Epiphanius in this direful form, "Send down thy
    curse, God! on the Christians."]

  VIII.

  "Since the hour he was crucified outside thy gate,
  His blood like a poison has mixed in thy fate!
  May the God of thy fathers, the God of our race,
  From thy forehead, Jerusalem, wipe the disgrace!

During the delivery of the first verses tears flowed down the cheeks of
Judith. During the last part fire seemed to flash from her eyes.

After Ephrem others were induced to sing or deliver pieces in the languages
of their respective countries. In the reign of Domitian, the Sarmatians,
Dacians, Parthians, and the German tribes beyond the Rhine had been
completely subdued. Agricola had broken on the Grampians the fierce
hardihood of the tribes beyond the Tay and Tweed. The success of the Jewish
war in the two preceding reigns had scattered that unfortunate race over
the earth. We can thence understand how on a large estate like that of
Aurelian so many nationalities met. Leaving them to amuse themselves, we
will follow Zoilus.

He left the hall quietly, crossed the outer court and a paddock between it
and the villa, and entered through a low-arched door into the garden behind
it. Between this garden and the villa was the peristyle, a rectangular area
so named from having stone pillars around it. In its centre was a xystus
with box and other shrubs, shaped like tigers, lions, and galleys. The
deepening shades of evening brought out their figures with weird-like
indistinctness. Judith the Jewess stood between two pillars, and as she
stood, tall, straight, and motionless, might have passed for the guardian
goddess of the place.

"I have been expecting you, Zoilus."

"You do not forget your promise, then?"

"No! my part shall be fulfilled as soon as you have complied with the
conditions."

"Judith! these conditions are hard. I have my misgivings and fears about
the part I have to play."

"Fears and misgivings?" she repeated. "These account for your changed
manner this evening?"

{538}

"Yes, I have never known any one to end well who interfered with the
Christians."

"Ha, ha!" she laughed ironically. "You fear the uncircumcised dogs!"

"Not them; but I fear their God."

"_Their_ God! Is it the Galilean impostor?"

"Moreover," he went on, not noticing her question, "I do not like to betray
the niece of our former owner Domitilla the consul. She was always good and
kind to me."

"Look here," said the Jewess, baring her right arm, "see that scar, which
after many years leaves a red seam behind. It was that girl, so good and
kind, that drove her ivory hair-pin into the very bone, because I did not
plat her hair to her liking. Was she not good and kind to me, Zoilus?"

"She was then young and thoughtless, but she is now different," he said.

"You see that tiger," she pointed to a shrub shaped like that animal, "does
not the young cub betray the instincts of the full grown beast? But she is
different, you will perhaps say, since she became a Christian. As well
might you expect the drugs of Locusta [Footnote 173] to cure the leprosy.
Have you heard what takes place in the private meetings of those fully
initiated? Ah! _there_ she can indulge her liking for human blood!"

    [Footnote 173: A famous poisoner in the time of Nero.]

Zoilus was silent. Some struggle of feeling with principle was going on.
Judith, observing him, exclaimed:

"A lustrum of five long years has gone by since you asked me to become your
wife. I told you I would never be a wife, or have a husband, in slavery. It
is in your power now to procure freedom for both. Do so, and Judith will be
yours to-morrow. Hesitate now, and she takes back for ever the promise and
the pledge she made you!" She left the peristyle before he had time to
answer.

  To Be Continued.

------

    From The Popular Science Review.

    On the Struggle for Existence Amongst Plants.


The quaint dictum, "Plants do not grow where they like best, but where
other plants will let them," which is credited to the late eminent
horticulturalist, Dean Herbert of Manchester, expresses a truth not yet
half appreciated by botanists. It is a protest against the prevalent belief
that circumstances of climate and soil are the omnipotent regulators of the
distribution of vegetables, and that all other considerations are
comparatively powerless. The dean's crude axiom has lately found a
philosophical exposition and expression in Mr. Darwin's more celebrated
doctrine of the "struggle for life, and preservation thereby of the favored
races," and if to it we add that great naturalist's more fruitful discovery
of the necessity for insect and other foreign agencies in ensuring
fertility, and hence perpetuating the species, we shall find that the
powers of climate and soil are reduced to comparatively very narrow limits.
Before proceeding to show what are the causes that do materially limit the
distribution of species, it may be well to inquire how far the hard pressed
soil and climate theory really helps us to a practical understanding of one
or two great questions that fall under our daily observation; of these, the
following are the most prominent.

{539}

That very similar soils and climates, in different geographical areas, are
not inhabited naturally either by like species or like genera; that very
different soils and climates will produce almost equally abundant crops of
the same cultivated plants; and that, in the same soil and climate, many
hundreds, nay, thousands of species, from other very different soils and
climates, may be grown and propagated for an indefinite number of
successive generations.

Of the first of these statements, the examples embrace some of the best
known facts in geographical botany; as, for example, that the flora of
Europe differs wholly from that of temperate North America, South Africa,
Australia, and temperate South America, and all these from one another. And
that neither soil nor climate is the cause of this difference is
illustrated by the fact that thousands of acres in each of these countries
are covered, year after year, by crops of the same plant, introduced from
one to the other; and by annually increasing numbers of trees, shrubs, and
herbs, that have either run wild or are successfully cultivated in each and
all of them. The third proposition follows from the two others, and of this
the best example is afforded by a good garden, wherein, on the same soil
and under identical conditions, we grow, side by side, plants from very
various soils and climates, and ripen their seeds too, provided only that
their fertilization is insured. The Cape geraniums, London pride, and
Lysimachia nummularia in our London areas, the pendent American cacti in
the cottage windows of Southwalk and Lambeth, are even more striking
examples of the comparative indifference of many plants to good or bad
climate or soil; and what can be more unlike their natural conditions than
those to which ferns are exposed in those invaluable contrivances, Ward's
cases, in the heart of the city? True, the conditions suit them well, and,
with respect to humidity and equability of temperature, are natural to
them; but neither is the absolute temperature, nor the constitution, nor
freshness of the air, the same as of the places the ferns are brought from;
nor is any systematic attempt made to suit the soil to the species
cultivated; for, as Mr. Ward himself well shows, the arctic saxifrage, the
English rose, the tropical palm, and desert cactus live side by side in the
same box, and under precisely similar circumstances, and, as it were, in
defiance of their natal conditions.

Let it not be supposed that we at all underrate such power as soil and
climate really possess. In some cases, as those of chalk, sand, bog, and
saline and water plants, soil is very potent; but the number of plants
actually dependent on these or other peculiarities of the soil is much more
limited than is supposed. Of _bonâ-fide_ water-plants there are few
amongst phaenogams. Sand plants, as a rule, grow equally well on stiffer
soils, but are there turned out by more sturdy competitors; and with regard
to the calcareous soils, it is their warmth and dryness that fits them, to
so great an extent, for many plants that are almost confined to them, or
are absolutely peculiar to them. So, too, with regard to temperature, there
are limits, as regards heat, cold, and humidity, that species will not
overstep and live; but, on the other hand, so much has been done by
selection in procuring hardy races of tender plants, and so much may be
done by regulating the distribution of earth-temperature, etc., that we
already grow tropical plants in the open air during a portion of the year,
and eventually may do so for longer periods.

Amongst the most striking examples of apparent indifference to natural
conditions of soil and climate, I would especially adduce two. One is the
_Salicornia Arabica_, a plant never found in its natural state, except
in most saline situations, but which has flourished for years in the
Succulent House at Kew, in a pot full of common soil, to which no salt has
ever been added; the other is the tea-plant, which luxuriates in the hot,
humid valleys of Assam, where the thermometer ranges between 70° and 85°,
and the atmosphere is so perennially humid that watches are said to be
destroyed after a few months of wear; and it is no less at home in
north-western India, where the summers are as hot and cloudless as any in
the world, and the winters very cold.
{540}
I may add that the tea-plant has survived the intense cold of this last
January, at Kew, on the same wall where many hardy and half-hardy plants
have been killed.

It is, further, a great mistake to suppose that the native vegetation of a
country suffers little and very exceptionally by abnormal seasons. The most
conspicuous instance of the contrary that ever fell under my observation
was the destruction of the gigantic gum-tree (_Eucalyptus_) forests in
the central districts of Tasmania, which occurred, if I remember right,
about the year 1837. In 1840, I rode over many square miles of country,
through stupendous forests, in which every tree was, to all appearance,
absolutely lifeless. The district was totally uninhabited, consisting of
low mountain ranges, 2,000 feet above the sea, separating marshy tracts
interspersed with broad fresh-water lakes. The trees, much like the great
gaunt elms in Kensington Gardens during winter, but much larger, were in
countless multitudes, 80 to 180 feet high, close set, and ten to twenty
feet in girth; their weird and ghostly aspect being heightened by the fact
of most being charred for a considerable distance up the trunk, the effects
of the native practice of firing the grass in summer during the kangaroo
hunting season; and by the bark above hanging from their trunks in
streaming shreds, that waved dismally in the wind; for the species was the
stringy-bark gum, that sheds its bark after this fashion. And not only had
the gum-trees suffered, but the hardier _Leptospermum_ (tea tree bush)
and many others were killed, some to the ground and some altogether; so
that, though my journey was in spring and the weather was delightful, the
aspect of the vegetation was desolate in the extreme.

In such climates as our own, similar devastations are unknown, and, though
we know that our island was once covered with other timber than now clothes
it, we have every reason to suppose that the change was slow, and the
effect either of a gradually altered climate, or of the immigration of
trees equally well or better suited to the conditions of the soil and
climate, but which had not previously had the opportunity of contesting the
ground with the ruling monarchs of the forest.

Making every allowance, then, for the influence of soil and climate in
checking the multiplication of individuals, we have still two classes of
facts to account for: the one, that plants which succeed so well, when
cultivated, that we are assured both soil and climate are favorable to
their propagation, nevertheless become immediately or soon extinct when the
cultivator's care is withdrawn; the other, that plants of one country, when
introduced into another, even with a very different soil and climate, will
overrun it, destroy the native vegetation, and prove themselves better
suited to local circumstances than the aboriginal plants of the country. In
the first case, the reasons are very various, all of them relating to the
conditions of the plant's existence. Of these the two most potent are, the
absence of fertilizing agents, and the destruction of seeds and seeding
plants. In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say which
of these is most fatal in its effect. In the case of our annual plants or
our cereals, which never run wild, it is the latter certainly; for they
seed freely enough; in the case of many perennials, shrubs, and trees, it
may be the former, as with the common elm and lime, which rarely or never
seed in England, though the latter is so notably frequented by insects
during its flowering season; whilst a third cause is to be found in their
seedling plants being smothered by others, of which we have numerous
examples in our common pasture grasses, which are, perhaps, the most
prejudicial in this respect.
{541}
A most conspicuous example of this is afforded by the common maple, of
which the seedlings come up early in spring by thousands in the
neighborhood of the parent tree, in lawns and plantations, but scarcely
ever survive the smothering effects of the common summer grasses as soon as
these begin to shoot.

When I visited the cedar grove on Mount Lebanon, in the autumn of 1860, I
found thousands of seedling plants, but every one of them dead; and so
effectual is the annual slaughter of the yearlings in that grove, that,
though the seeds are shed in millions, and innumerable seedlings annually
spring up, there is not a plant in the grove less than about sixty years
old. It may hence have been sixty years since a cedar there survived the
first year of its existence; that is to say, has struggled through its
infancy, and reached the age even of childhood!

On the other hand, when once the natural conditions of a country have been
disturbed, the spread and multiplication of immigrants is so rapid that it
shortly becomes impossible to discover the limits of the old, indigenous
flora. Take the English flora, for example. If we contrast the cultivated
counties with the uncultivated, the difference of their vegetation is so
great that I have often been compelled to doubt whether many of the most
familiar so called wild flowers of the cultivated counties are indigenous
at all; nay, more, I have been tempted to suspect that some of the more
variable of them, as some species of _chenopodium_ and fumitory, may
have originated since cultivation began. In the uncultivated counties the
proportion of annual plants is exceedingly small, whereas in the cultivated
counties annuals are very numerous; and the further we go from cultivation,
roads, and made ground, the rarer they become, till at last, in the
uninhabited islets of the west coast of Scotland, and in its mountainous
glens, annuals are extremely rare, and confined to the immediate vicinity
of cottages. Let any one who doubts this contrast between the floras of
cultivated and uncultivated regions compare the annuals in such florae as
those of Suffolk or Essex, the North Riding or Cumberland, with those of
the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Arran. And it is not only that annuals
abound in the cultivated districts, but that so many are nearly confined to
ground that is annually or frequently disturbed. The three commonest of all
British plants, for example, are, perhaps, groundsel, shepherd's purse, and
_Poa annua_. I do not remember ever having seen any of these plants
established where the soil was undisturbed, or where, if undisturbed, they
had not been obviously brought by man or the lower animals; and yet I have
gathered one of these, the shepherd's purse, in various parts of Europe, in
Syria, in the Himalayas, in Australia, New Zealand, and the Falkland
Islands. Were England to be depopulated, I believe that in a very few years
these plants, and a large proportion of our common annual "wild flowers,"
would become exceedingly rare or extinct, such as the poppies, fumitories,
trefoils, fedias, various species of speed-well, polygonum, mallow,
euphorbia, thlaspi, senebiera, medicago, anthemis, centaurea, linaria,
lamium, etc., etc.

It is usually said of some of the above-named plants that they prefer
cultivated ground, nitrogenous soil, and so forth; and this is no doubt
true, but that they will flourish where no such advantages attend them, a
very little observation shows; and that they do not continue to flourish
elsewhere is due mainly to the fact that, being annuals, their room is
taken as soon as they die, and the next year's seedling has no chance of
success in the struggle with perennials.

{542}

For good instances of this rapid replacement of annuals by perennials, the
new railroad embankments should be examined. Whence the plants come from
which spring up like magic in the cuttings many feet below the surface of
the soil, is a complete mystery, and reminds us of the so-called
spontaneous generation of protozoa in newly made infusions or in distilled
water. In the south of Scotland in 1840-50, and many parts of the north of
England, the first plant that made its appearance was _Equisetum
arvense_, which covered the new-formed banks, for miles and miles, with
the most lovely green forest of miniature pines. In the following year
comparatively few of these were to be seen, and coltsfoot, dandelions, and
other biennials, especially umbelliferae, with a great number of annuals,
presented themselves. For many successive years I had no opportunity of
watching the struggle for life on these banks, but when I last saw them
they were clothed with perennial grasses, docks, plantains, and other
perennial rooted plants.

The destruction of native vegetations by introduced is a subject that has
only lately attracted much attention, but it has already assumed an aspect
that has startled the most careless observer. Some thirty years ago the
fecundity of the horse and European cardoon in the Argentine provinces of
South America, so graphically described by Sir Edmund Head, drew the
attention of naturalists to the fact that animals and plants did not
necessarily thrive best where found in an indigenous condition; and the
spread of the common Dutch clover, _Trifolium repens_, in North
America, where it follows the footsteps of man through the pathless
forests, has long afforded an equally remarkable instance of vegetable
colonization. Still more recently in South Africa, Australia, and Tasmania,
the Scotch thistle, brier rose, xanthium, plantain, docks, etc., have all
become noxious weeds; and this leads me to the last and most curious point
to which I shall allude in this article, namely, that the same annuals and
other weeds that are held so well in check by the indigenous perennial
plants of our country, when transplanted to others, show themselves
superior to the perennial vegetation of the latter. Of this New Zealand
furnishes the most conspicuous example; it was first visited scarcely more
than 100 years ago, and it is not yet fifty since the missionaries first
settled in it, and scarce thirty since it received its earliest colonists.
The islands contain about 1,000 species of flowering plants, amongst which
no fewer than 180 European weeds have been recorded as intruding themselves
and having become thoroughly naturalized; and probably double that number
will yet be found, as they have never been systematically collected; but
the most curious part of the history is this, that whereas of indigenous
New Zealand plants scarcely any are annual, no less than half the
naturalized European ones are annual.

Of the effect of these introduced European plants in destroying the native
vegetation, I have given examples in an article that appeared in the
Natural History Review, (January, 1864,) from which I quote the following:

  In Australia and New Zealand, the noisy train of English emigration is
  not more surely doing its work than the stealthy tide of English weeds,
  which are creeping over the surface of the waste, cultivated, and virgin
  soil, in annually increasing numbers of genera, species, and individuals.
  Apropos of this subject, a correspondent, (W. T. Locke Travers, Esq.,
  F.L.S.,) a most active New Zealand botanist, writing from Canterbury,
  says: "You would be surprised at the rapid spread of European and other
  foreign plants in this country. All along the sides of the main lines of
  road through the plains, a _Polygonum_, (_aviculare_,) called
  'cow-grass,' grows most luxuriantly, the roots sometimes two feet in
  depth, and the plants spreading over an area from four to five feet in
  diameter. The dock (_Rumex obtusifolius_ or _R. crispus_) is to
  be found in every river-bed, extending into the valleys of the mountain
  rivers until these became mere torrents.
{543}
  The sow-thistle is spread all over the country, growing luxuriantly
  nearly up to 6,000 feet. The watercress increases in our still rivers to
  such an extent as to threaten to choke them altogether; in fact, in the
  Avon, a still, deep stream running through Christ Church, the annual cost
  of keeping the river free for boat navigation and for purposes of
  drainage exceeds £300. I have measured stems twelve feet long and three
  quarters of an inch in diameter. In some of the mountain districts, where
  the soil is loose, the white clover is completely displacing the native
  grasses, forming a close sward. Foreign trees are also very luxuriant in
  growth. The gum-trees of Australia, the poplars, and willows particularly
  grow most rapidly. In fact, the young native vegetation appears to shrink
  from competition with these more vigorous intruders."

Dr. Haast, F.L.S., the eminent explorer and geologist, also writes to me as
follows:

  "The native (Maori) saying is, 'As the white man's rat has driven away
  the native rat, as the European fly drives away our own, and the clover
  kills our fern, so will the Maoris disappear before the white man
  himself." It is wonderful to behold the botanical and zoological changes
  which have taken place since first Captain Cook set foot in New Zealand.
  Some pigs, which he and other navigators left with the natives, have
  increased and run wild in such a way that it is impossible to destroy
  them. There are large tracts of country where they reign supreme. The
  soil looks as if ploughed by their burrowing. Some station-holders of one
  hundred thousand acres have had to make contracts for killing them at
  sixpence per tail, and as many as twenty-two thousand on a single run
  have been killed by adventurous parties without any diminution being
  discernible. Not only are they obnoxious by occupying the ground which
  the sheep farmer needs for his flocks, but they assiduously follow the
  ewes when lambing, and devour the poor lambs as soon as they make their
  appearance. They do not exist on the western side of the Alps, and only
  on the lower grounds on the eastern side where snow seldom falls, so that
  the explorer has not the advantage of profiting by their existence, where
  food is scarcest. The boars are sometimes very large, covered with long
  black bristles, and have enormous tusks, resembling closely the wild boar
  of the Ardennes, and they are equally savage and courageous,

  "Another interesting fact is the appearance of the Norwegian rat. It has
  thoroughly extirpated the native rat, and is to be found everywhere, even
  in the very heart of the Alps, growing to a very large size. The European
  mouse follows it closely, and, what is more surprising, where it makes
  its appearance, it drives, in a great degree, the Norway rat away.
  Amongst other quadrupeds, cattle, dogs, and cats are found in a wild
  state, but not abundantly.

  "The European house-fly is another importation. When it arrives, it
  repels the blue-bottle of New Zealand, which seems to shun its company.
  But the spread of the European insect goes on very slowly, so that
  settlers, knowing its utility, have carried it in boxes and bottles to
  their new inland stations."

But the most remarkable fact of all has been communicated to me since the
above was printed, namely, that the little white clover and other herbs are
actually strangling and killing outright the New Zealand flax, (_Phormium
tenax_,) a plant of the coarsest, hardest, and toughest description,
that forms huge matted patches of woody rhizomes, which send up tufts of
sword-like leaves six to ten feet high, and inconceivably strong in texture
and fibre. I know of no English plant to which the New Zealand flax can be
likened so as to give any idea of its robust constitution and habit to
those who do not know it; in some respects the great matted _tussocks_
of _Carex paniculata_ approach it.
{544}
It is difficult enough to imagine the possibility of white clover invading
our bogs, and smothering the tussocks of this carex, but this would be
child's play in comparison with the resistance the phormium would seem to
offer.

The causes of this prepotency of the European weeds are probably many and
complicated; one very powerful one is the nature of the New Zealand
climate, which favors the duration of life in individuals, and hence gives
both perennials and annuals a lengthened growing season, and, in the case
of some, more than one seed crop in the year. This is seen in the tendency
of mignonette and annual stocks to become biennial and even perennial, in
the indigenous form of _Cardamine hirsuta_ being perennial, and in the
fact that many weeds that seed but once with us seed during a greater part
of the year in New Zealand. Another cause must be sought in the fact that
more of their seeds escape the ravages of birds and insects in New Zealand
than in England; the granivorous birds and insects that follow cultivation
not having been transported to the antipodes with the weeds, or, at least,
not in proportionate numbers.

Still the fact remains as yet unaccounted for, that annual weeds, which,
except for the interference of man, would with us have no chance in the
struggle with perennials, in New Zealand have spread in inconceivable
quantities into the wildest glens long before either white men or even
their cattle and flocks penetrate to their recesses. Such is the testimony
of Drs. Haast and Hector, and Mr. Travers, the original explorers of large
areas of different parts of the almost uninhabited middle island, and who
have sent to me, as native plants, from hitherto unvisited tracts, British
weeds that were not found in the island by the careful botanists (Banks,
Solander, Forster, and Sparrmann) who accompanied Captain Cook in his
voyages; and which were not found by the earlier missionaries, but which of
late years have abounded on the lowlands near every settlement.

This subject of the comparative great vis-vitae of European plants, as
compared with those of other countries, involves problems of the highest
interest in botanical science, and the subject is as novel as it is
interesting; it is quite a virgin one, and requires the calmest and most
unprejudiced judgment to treat it well. It cannot be doubted that the
progress of civilization in Europe and Asia has, whilst it has led to the
incessant harassing of the soil, led also to the abundant development of a
class of plants, annual, biennial, and perennial, which increase more
rapidly and obtain a greater development when transplanted to the Southern
hemisphere than they have hitherto done in the Northern, and that, in this
respect, they contrast strikingly with the behavior of plants of the
Southern hemisphere when transplanted to the Northern; and hitherto no
considerations of climate, soil, or circumstance have sufficed to explain
this phenomenon.

------

{545}

      Original.

      The Leaf of Last Year

  I know I am dry and decayed;
    My skin is all yellow and sere;
  I know I ought not to have staid
    To become an old leaf of last year.

  You are youthful, and merry, and green.
    I feel like a stranger up here;
  And can see you're ashamed to be seen
    By the side of a leaf of last year.

  My wrinkled and shrivelled up face
    Excites you to laugh and to sneer;
  And the branch thinks that this is no place
    For an old-fashioned leaf of last year.

  I can tell, as you toss your proud heads,
    What you whisper in each other's ear:
  "Old leaves should be gone to their beds,
    'Tis no time for a leaf of last year."

  You may flirt with the amorous winds;
    With your joys I will not interfere:
  But I'm sad; for my heart it reminds
    How they jilted a leaf of last year.

  Ay! flatter and laugh with the breeze,
    You may think that its love is sincere,
  But I know what it said to the trees
    When I was a young leaf last year.

  "Each one of these silly green leaves
    Is so flattered if I but come near,
  That she dances, and smiles, and believes
    I most surely will wed her this year.

  "With soft kisses the hours I beguile;
    And their prattling is pleasant to hear.
  When I tire, I depart with a smile
    And a promise to meet them next year."

  Then it came to my side with a bow,
    Embraced me, and called me its 'dear.'
  I was foolish to trust it, and now
    It forgets its old love of last year.

{546}

  Away the false summer breeze hied;
    And my fibres all quivered with fear.
  One by one my mates withered and died,
    And left me alone till this year.

  Soon autumn will come with its blast.
    And your beauty will, too, disappear.
  When you think on the joys that are past,
    You'll remember the leaf of last year.

  This morn, when the sun rose, I wept;
    On my cheek lingers yet a bright tear:
  'Twas a dew-drop fell there whilst I slept
    And was dreaming about the last year.

  Not long will I cumber the tree,
    For my hour of departure is near;
  And your beautiful branch will be free
    Of its faded old leaf of last year.

------

    Original.

    The Influence of the Catholic Church Upon Modern Art.


As in many a sacred painting the divine persons are seen descending upon
earth, attended by angels who, with trumpets, unheard by men, announce the
visitation; so religion, revealed to prepare men for the next world, sits
enthroned in this with all the arts, its ministers and servants. It is a
glory of the Catholic Church that it has recognized to the utmost the
spirituality of art. It has denied the dogma, of all dogmas the most
absurd, that with the use of the highest powers of the imagination, and
with delight in the beauty with which God has clothed the world, his
worship is incompatible. It has not made piety a thing ugly, repulsive,
barren; a mere assent of the will to an abstraction. The child of the
church, standing in a world where the rainbow bends above him, and sunset
opens the burning gates of heaven, is not taught to believe the seven
colors the seven sins, or, at least, but secular beauty, to be banished
from the house of worship; with the voices of birds' and winds, and waters,
and the gothic grandeur of forests around him, he is not taught that music
and architecture interfere with piety, or, if used at all in worship, must
be limited to their lowest and simplest forms. Of creeds I do not need to
speak; but this much it is necessary to say in the strict limits of my
subject, that the world owes to Catholicism so much of its music, and
painting, and architecture, that, had the world been without the church,
these arts, though of human origin, and though highly developed before the
Christian era, would in their modern forms probably be still in their
infancy. In sculpture, undoubtedly, the Greeks surpassed even Michael
Angelo; the statues of Phidias, though in ruins, are the wonder and despair
of artists. The Roman empire built temples, roads, aqueducts, the
Colosseum, and, when it fell, the arts, even in these less imaginative
forms, seem to have fallen with it.
{547}
For a long time there was no art worthy of the name in Europe. Apollo,
blind and dumb, wandered without a home or a temple; for, though in those
centuries there must have been men born to be composers, or painters, or
sculptors, they were born too soon or too late. Athens had fallen;
Christian Rome had not arisen to her destined greatness. So the world
slumbered in darkness till the Catholic Church wrought the miracle by which
the arts were raised from their tombs and made her interpreters and
ministers. This cannot be denied, that she gave the impulse to the revival
of art, encouraged its development, inspired it with energy, and purpose,
and faith, and so sent it forth to bless and transfigure the world. In
every city in Europe she built a cathedral. In Rome, St. Peter's; in Paris,
Notre Dame; in Vienna, the Dom Kirche; in Milan, La Duomo. No town was
without its church, few of them, without beauty, many monuments of the
genius of their builders. Because the Saviour was born in a stable, it was
not held an article of faith that he should be worshipped in barn. The
church believed that the temple should show that it was built not for the
service of man, but of God. To adorn these majestic buildings she summoned
the sister arts. Through the stained windows,

        "The panes
  Of ancient churches, passionate
  With martyred saints, whom angels wait,
  With Virgin and with Crucified,"

the light shone holier for that transfiguration. There the painter told in
language all could read the solemn story of the religion they believed. How
in a manger the Christ was born, and worshipped by the wise men whom the
mysterious star had led from the Chaldean plains; how the holy mother
journeyed with Joseph into Egypt, bearing in her arms the babe who came
into the world himself to bear the burden of its grief; how he taught the
poor and healed the sick, raised Lazarus from the grave, and bade the
Magdalene sin no more; how he spake with God upon the mount, and was
tempted by the fiend, betrayed by Judas, tried by Pilate, and crucified
upon Calvary; how at the foot of the cross the Marys wept all night; and
how, when he was buried, angels rolled away the stone from the sepulchre,
and apostles beheld him ascend into the depths of heaven. Upon the sacred
walls, which were to these pious, worshippers as windows opening into the
Holy Land, they saw miracles, transfigurations, ascensions, the agonies of
martyrs, the adorations of saints, and--vision of all visions fairest--the
tender face of the Virgin bending in prophetic sadness above the infant
Christ. But with other than silent teachers the church appealed to the
soul. Music, whose miraculous voice utters all passions, pains, delights,
and truths, breathed her beautiful religion on the air. She sang of what
Raphael and Titian painted; of the birth, and the death, and the
resurrection; of the prayers of penitence, the anguish of strife, the
rapture of heaven, the torments of hell; and in her voice were heard sobs,
and cries, and supplications, thunders of divine wrath, trumpets of doom
and of redemption, and choruses upon choruses of angels proclaiming the
glory of God. In all the arts the church embodied Christianity; as she
converted souls, so she converted music and painting. By the twelfth
century, nay, before that, all the art of Europe was Catholic. In Italy,
Spain, Germany, wherever a school of art existed, however humble, its
highest aspirations were through the Catholic Church. The ideality of art,
as we may see in its remaining works, was then almost exclusively
religious; to be imaginative was to be pious. Centuries before the dawn of
modern painting, in the silence and seclusion of cloisters, laborious
monks, slowly perfecting their wonderful illuminated missals, were unawares
preparing the advent of Cimabue and Giotto. The tradition that St. Luke was
a painter was carefully cherished by his disciples, who may have found
inspiration in the legend that he painted the portrait of the Saviour.
{548}
Thus it is probable, and other reasons might be cited, that modern art was
not adopted by the church, but, born within its monasteries, was cherished
till it grew too great for them alone, and then, as the child of the
church, turned in natural faith and gratitude to the service of its parent.

The church was the chief patron of the early painters; it furnished not
only their inspiration, but their occupation. There is little trace of the
earliest Christian art; but Eusebius, whose history was written in the
reign of Constantine, mentions that images of Christ were then common. In
the third century pictures had been generally introduced in the churches of
Palestine. But it was scarcely before the twelfth century that Catholic art
gave promise of that splendor which in later days exalted it above all
rivalry. We find Cimabue famous about the year 1250, and after him Giotto,
almost the father of Italian art, whose portrait of Dante, recently
discovered, is acknowledged as the best likeness we possess of the author
of the greatest Christian poem. He painted the Last Supper of Christ, at
Florence, and an idea of his influence may be formed from the fact that he
had one hundred pupils, some of whom were afterward renowned. To catalogue
the painters of this period would be unnecessary, but their close sympathy
with the church, and the encouragement they received from it, are
unquestionable. In 1308, Duccio, an artist of Sienna, was called upon to
paint an altar-piece, and in his contract pledged himself thus: "I will
execute it according to my best ability, and as the Lord shall grant me
skill." The picture when completed was carried in solemn procession to the
church. When, in 1438, it was proposed to build the Sienna Cathedral, it
was ordained that "no one even suspected of immorality shall be eligible"
to the position of its architect. A more earnest expression of the faith of
the early artists in the dignity of their work, and their religious duty,
is found in the rules adopted by the painters of Sienna in 1335. They held
that, "since we are teachers to ignorant men, and since in God every
perfection is united, we will in our work earnestly ask the aid of the
divine grace." This spirit of devotion gave a higher direction to genius
that might without it have wasted itself in empty and unmeaning tasks; and,
whatever the artist was born to do, he found in the church his opportunity.
To paint, in those days, for the best of those men, was to serve God; to
build, was to build his temples. The purpose ennobled the work. Not merely
with intellect Lorenzo Gbiberti labored when he wrought the doors of the
baptistery in the rear of the cathedral at Florence--doors of which
Michael Angelo exclaimed in his enthusiasm, "Worthy to be the gates of
paradise!" Casts of these wonderful carvings of scriptural subjects, are
exhibited in the Academy of the Fine Arts at Philadelphia. These artists
were the worthy forerunners of greater men--of Domenichino, of Guido, of
Titian, of Murillo, of Correggio, and of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and
Michael Angelo. The greatest works of the three latter were upon Christian
themes. The Las Supper, painted by Da Vinci, in 1497, for the Dominican
convent at Milan, is accepted as the crowning proof of genius. The statue
of Moses in St. Peter's, the Last Judgment, and the Dome of St. Peter's are
the master works of the mighty Angelo. Raphael, who began his beautiful
career by painting altar-pieces, in the Transfiguration reached its highest
point, and questionings of the model who sat for his divine madonnas is
idle, for not the loveliness of the face, but the holiness of the spirit
gives them immortality. But I need cite no other instances. The highest
subjects of the Italian painters were found in their religion, and the
church was their most generous patron.
{549}
And not only was this dedication of art to spirituality of direct value to
its intellectual progress, but indirectly it ennobled art that aimed merely
to paint the things of earth and not the dreams of heaven. The less gained
dignity from the sacred office of the greater, and art became more strongly
rooted in that which was of the world, because of its aspiration to that
which was celestial.

The vast influence of religion upon art is signally exhibited in the
history of English art. Neither painting nor architecture, it is true, had
made much progress in England up to the seventeenth century, as compared
with their success on the continent; for, when Italy was civilized, Great
Britain was still rude, and in certain respects barbarian. Yet the
cathedrals which still exist in ruins, monuments of Gothic grandeur, were
the expressions of a national art in close relation with religion. In
England as in all other countries the Catholic Church gathered around her
the arts. But with a religion which professed to see in images nothing but
idols, in paintings of Christ and the apostles and the prophets nothing but
profanity and blasphemy, came desolation and destruction. The Roundhead was
not satisfied with the downfall of a throne, with the death of one Stuart
and the banishment of that royal line, nor with the proscription of the
Catholic religion. The men who followed Cromwell were iconoclasts, who
destroyed Christian images to set up in their stead an idol of barbarian
bigotry. They fired the churches, they shattered the statues, they made war
upon the pictures of madonnas and martyrs without remorse or fear. They had
driven out the Cavaliers, they were resolved to drive out the saints; and,
as they had banished the church, they were bent upon sending art to keep it
company. They succeeded but too well. Puritan enmity to the employment of
painting in church decoration--the sweeping principle that art and
religion could not be united and had different aims struck a blow at
English art which almost ended it for three reigns. It did not, indeed,
fully recover from the effect until near the close of the eighteenth
century, when, as little more than portraiture, it was re-established by
Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. To this day it is only in portraiture
and in landscape that a great English school exists. There are many fine
Vandykes, and Lelys, and Reynolds in the galleries of England, and many
landscapes and marines by Gainsborough, Wilson, and Turner; but where is
the historical painter who can be compared with Turner? Haydon, who
bitterly complained that historical painting was not appreciated in
England, and that those who by their wealth and position should have
encouraged it cared only for their own faces on canvas, might have found
the cause of its decline in the absence of any religious inspiration in
English art. He admitted this truth, unconsciously perhaps, when he chose
for his own subjects of "high art" Christ in the Temple and Lazarus coming
from the Tomb. In the landscapes and marines of Turner there is imagination
grander than Claude, or Poussin, or Salvator Rosa possessed; in Wilkie
unsurpassed character is given to humble themes. But the English historical
school is infinitely below English landscape and portraiture. The Boydell
gallery, in which the best artists of the time were employed to illustrate
Shakespeare, is an utter failure. Fuseli was fanciful and coarse; and,
though I know little of Blake's pictures, it is safe to presume they were
not equal to his strange and beautiful poetry. Did he ever realize with the
brush such verses as

  "Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
  In the forests of the night"?

Reynolds failed when he sought to be imaginative, as the Death of Dido and
the Deathbed of Cardinal Beaufort are proof.
{550}
The defeat of the repeated efforts to establish an historical school of art
in England must not be ascribed solely to a deficiency of genius in the men
or in the character of the nation. Art and religion were divorced. Men
worshipped God in one way, and painted in another. It is a significant fact
that the pre-Raphaelite school, however objectionable in some respects,
owes its highest success to the religious element which inspires it.
Millais and Hunt proclaim that the rudest art must be spiritual, and thus
seek to atone for centuries of infidelity to that truth.

Upon music the influence of the church has probably been even greater than
upon painting, certainly as great. With no exaggeration, it may be said
that to write the history of the composers who have written for the church
is to write the history of modern music. What this fact implies will be
understood by those who know that in none other of the arts has the term
modern such significance; for, while ancient painting, sculpture, and
architecture were based upon the same general laws which are now recognized
as absolute, the principles of music, like her own sweet sounds, have
changed and passed away from age to age. There is a known difference
between what may be called the musical ear of this century and that of the
sixteenth. What was then felt to be harmony, and embodied in the works of
the great masters, is now discord. There was a time when consecutive fifths
were common, a fact almost incredible to the musician of to-day. If such
changes have occurred within four or five hundred years, the gulf which
divides ancient and modern music must be deep and wide; and the latter,
having little visible connection or known sympathy with the former, and
originating in Christian Europe, must inevitably owe much of its character
to Catholic civilization.

The oldest form of music known to us belongs to the church; it is the
Ecclesiastical Chant of St. Ambrose and St. Gregory. The former, near the
close of the fourth century, endeavored to give a fixed form to church
music, and we may judge of his success from his Te Deum. The words and the
the music of this noble canticle are still sung. Of the Ambrosian chant,
St. Augustine wrote: "As the voices flowed into mine ears, truth was
instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears of
joy." It is said that St. Ambrose composed the Te Deum upon the conversion
of St. Augustine. Two centuries later Pope Gregory vastly improved the
system of sacred music; from him we have the celebrated Gregorian chant,
solemn, severe, and pure, and still heard in Lent and in the Holy Week.
Such value did St. Gregory place upon music that he established a school
for singers at Rome, which flourished till the tenth century. After the
Gregorian chant little reformation in music was accomplished for centuries;
but the next step was also taken within the church when Guido, a
Benedictine monk, early in the eleventh century, discovered the musical
scale now used. Modern rhythm was invented by a French priest about the
same time, and for many years music owed all its progress to religious
enthusiasm. Thus, Odington, an English Benedictine monk, in 1240, wrote De
Speculatione Musicae, and John Muris in the fourteenth century did much to
establish fixed rules of harmony. Counterpoint was slowly developed; the
canon and the fugue were introduced; and the laws of music were gradually
established as the basis of the grander and more ideal genius of the
strictly modern system. We need not follow the history of the art from that
great master Palestrina through the long succession of famous names
destined to be remembered when those of kings are half forgotten.

From the first it has been seen the church recognized the sacred offices of
music, and did not merely permit, but authorized and developed its use. It
is true that at one time use led to abuse. In the sixteenth century
composers for the church frequently forgot religion in science.
{551}
"In this kind of composition," says Alexander Cheron, "the meaning of the
words was entirely overlooked, and its tendencies were only to the display
of the genius of the composers or the powers of the singers." The evil
became so great that the Council of Trent even deliberated upon the
suppression of music in religious service. Pope Marcellus II. had, indeed,
resolved to banish all music but the Gregorian chant, when Palestrina
composed a mass which made that step unnecessary. It was a revolution.
Solemnity, grandeur, and purity were the elements of the new style, from
which mere bravuras and all levities were excluded. Thus the power which
authorized the employment of music had the influence to redeem it from
degradation, till now the sacred music we possess embodies the genius of
three centuries, and will, perhaps, endure longer than the finest lyric
dramas. That the religious purposes of great masters have had vast
influence upon the merely lyric composition is not to be doubted. We cannot
raise one form of art without raising all. The author of Don Giovanni might
not have achieved the full grandeur of that work had he not also composed
his marvellous masses. Of the influence of Catholic music upon such minds,
an incident in Mozart's life is proof. In his youth he heard the famous
Miserere sung in the Sistine chapel at Rome--that strange and solemn
harmony, composed two hundred years ago by Gregorio Allegri, for the
sublime ceremonial of the Passion week. Pontiff and cardinals, when the
Miserere begins, kneel around the altar, the church is darkened, the voices
swell in tenor, and die into silence. Mozart twice heard this wonderful
work, and then reproduced it note for note, and sang it with the exact
method and feeling of the Sistine choir. And it is said that the effect of
this Miserere upon him may be traced in all his other works. Haydn's piety
is found in all of his music, chiefly in those masses which are known to
all lovers of music. "In nomine Domini," "Soli Deo Gloria," he invariably
wrote at the beginning of his scores, and "Laus Deo" at their end. When
composing, if his imagination failed, he repeated his rosary, and, before
beginning his greater works, he prayed to God for inspiration to praise him
worthily. Of the composers inspired by religion, the list is long; longer,
perhaps, that of those who unconsciously were influenced by it. When Haydn
was asked which of his works he considered the greatest, he replied, The
Seven Words. It was written for the service called the "Funeral of the
Redeemer" at Madrid, in which the seven words uttered by the Saviour on the
cross were uttered by the bishop, who explained each, and between each
exposition Haydn's music in sympathy with the word was given. Upon his
masses he lavished his pains, and generally required twice the time for a
mass that he needed for a symphony.

Palestrina, Porpora, Clementi, Haydn, Mozart, Rossini, Beethoven, are but a
few of the illustrious masters whose sacred music was dedicated to the
Catholic Church. Handel's religious music was chiefly written for the
English, and is embodied, as well as that of Mendelssohn, in oratorio. But,
for my part, I do not think the form of the oratorio as well fitted for
sacred music as that of the mass. An oratorio is generally sung in a
concert-room; the words are frequently poor adaptations of the language of
the Scriptures; its auditors expect to be entertained. Therefore, though
the music may be perfect in itself, as in the "Total Eclipse" or "I know
that my Redeemer liveth" of Handel, it does not seem that the form is
suited to express the deepest emotions of worship. It is in the Catholic
Church alone that music and religion are wedded. Who can translate into
words the profound devotion inspired by the solemn mass in the cathedral
service? Over the kneeling worshippers, the illuminated altar, the pictures
of the crucifixion and the ascension, the intonation of the priest, "the
dim religious light" shining through the stained windows, Music breathes
her voice.
{552}
As the great organ swells, and the deep-toned choir utters the despair of
the Miserere, the heavenly beauty of the Agnus Dei, the exultation of the
Gloria, the devotion of the Credo, etc., what soul is not bowed in sympathy
with grief, raised with gratitude, or bathed in heavenly peace? I know no
music that has a more profound effect. It is a part of worship. It
expresses something to which words the most eloquent are inadequate. It is
the glory of the Catholic Church, I repeat, that she has so freely
recognized the spirituality of this act, and these who reject her creed are
compelled to admit the propriety and supremacy of her service. How cold are
the musical exercises of other churches, how little they express of this
intense and passionate devotion. I do not think God is served by the
exclusion of his greatest gifts from the ceremonial of worship, and that
point is conceded by all sects which sing his praise. But, if any music is
used, why not the best? If a hymn, why not a mass? If an organ, why not an
orchestra? The objection that the Catholic Church would have its choirs
composed of the best voices, its music written by the greatest composers,
is too absurd to be answered; for, if the highest art is unfit for the
purposes of worship, then by inevitable logic it must be shown that all art
is unfit; those who hold such objections should consistently agree with the
Quakers, and banish the simplest hymn. [Footnote 174]

    [Footnote 174: The writer of this article is not a Catholic.--ED. C.W.]

More than this, if music may be worthily used, why not painting? The value
of architecture is universally admitted, ever since it was shown by the
Catholic Church, and music is more or less accepted as a mode of adoration
by nearly all sects. Pictures, however, are admitted into Catholic churches
alone. Is, then, the genius of Titian and Raphael less holy than that of
Beethoven or Mozart? Is it right to sing the praise of God in his temple,
wrong to paint the story of the Son of God upon the consecrated walls? We
need not answer such questions, which are only introduced to show how it is
by the Catholic Church alone that the religious influences of the arts have
been first and fully understood, and by it alone that they have been made
agencies of worship.

Further examination of this important subject cannot now be made, for in
these limits it can be little more than suggested. If we generalize, we
discover that all the great artists, in architecture, painting, and music
have found their highest employment in the church, and that its history
includes their biographies. Of its present influence it is unnecessary to
speak, but it is felt most in architecture, at least in this country; the
noblest church edifice in Philadelphia, perhaps in any American city, is
incomparably the new cathedral. From what has been said, the depth, and
extent, and value of the influence of the church upon art may be inferred;
but no one can imagine the condition of our art had it been without the
inspiration of religion. Majestic and venerable stands the Church of Rome;
upon her walls the arts have registered their victories; for her the muses
have forsaken the summits of Parnassus; to her the poet, painter, and
musician have dedicated their genius; and, giving all they brought to her
humblest and poorest worshipper, she has repaid the masters with perpetual
recognition and universal fame. Far as her realm extends are known the
glories of Raphael, and Angelo, and Mozart.

------

{553}


    Original.

    Adelaide Anne Procter.


Next to imagination, genius is, perhaps, the faculty of the human mind
about which we have had the most instructiveness and the least instruction.
Yet every one who knows anything of it at all knows the two great types of
genius that appear in history--extremes between which lie all minds of
mark. One is the familiar form that the word itself at once suggests--the
regular fashion, as it were, of being exceptional. This is the erratic,
fitful, uncontrolled, keen, brilliant, sensitive, sympathetic, eccentric
character, who wears regardless collars, fights his publisher on less than
no provocation, eats opium if he chooses, and sometimes chooses--or, if not
opium, some other stimulant--has whims and moods and irritabilities, and
the biggest heart, and the best tongue, and the most heedless head, with
the most brilliant oddities in it, wherever he goes--a totally lopsided
organism, where the soul cannot be kept from wearing its way through the
body, and where a few faculties, preternaturally developed, domineer over a
warped and stunted system, to the ultimate ruin of the whole man.

The other kind, calm, clear, broad, poised, equable, powerful, seems
exactly the opposite of the first type. The strength of the one is in
balance, the force of the other in overbalance. Yet the difference is only
that the man of balance is symmetrically developed; it is the difference
between the autumn maturity of the full-grown fruit and the hectic
ripeness, with the worm at the core, of the August windfall.

Of these two types, the first is vastly the more frequent, the other the
higher in history. The reason is simply this, that a moderate degree of
uniform development gives neither more nor less than mediocrity, while
disproportionate preponderance of the intellect, even where all the
faculties are below the average, will reproduce in miniature all the
phenomena of the overbalanced kind of genius. Between Byron Don-Juanning it
over his gin-and-water, and the brilliant Bohemian who dashes off the
cleverest leader of the next day, fresh from the convivial influences of a
roystering champagne supper, and the gentle youth who floods the rural
poet's corner with heaven-scaling hankerings inspired by green tea, the
difference is not in kind, but in degree.

Men of this order are the ones who achieve fame and famine. Their blossoms
of promise are bright, their early graves are green on all the paths of
human progress. History kindles at their high hopes and deeds, and blushes
for the petty failings that suffice to drag them down. Literature, above
all, is a very Golgotha, all the ghastlier for its glory, of their
self-conscious sensitiveness, their refined self-torture, their blasted
lives and miserable deaths. Yet there is hardly one but has his little day,
longer or shorter, but with always some little sunshine and flowers of
popular favor. Stimulated to their utmost by susceptibility to praise, they
are the most brilliant and _bizarre_ in effects, and the most blindly
admired. Besides, their eccentricities are an advertisement in themselves,
and very often first attract the attention which afterward discovers the
powers underneath. The world, on the contrary, finds nothing about the
other sort of genius to display any peculiar capabilities--a sort of
pleasant self-completeness, it may be, but no salient points and queer
angles--and passes on, to gape at the man with half the brains and nothing
to balance them.
{554}
Byron woke up one morning and found himself famous: some one in Elizabeth's
reign made a list (is it not D'Israeli who preserves it?) of the best
writers of his day, whereon the _thirteenth_ name is that of the
successful London manager and decidedly good fellow, William Shakspeare.

In fact, this latter type of genius is not only rare as all well-poised
organisms are rare, but seems to evade public appreciation by some hidden
inherent law of its nature. It has often happened with men of this order
that not only their families--of course, it is the exception, if a man's
family ever discover his powers till the rest of the world thunders his
fame into their ears--but their daily acquaintance, their most intimate
friends, nay, themselves, never suspect their greatness.

But, if such a man of genius is an event of his generation, and, with all a
man's opportunities for appreciation, activity, acquaintance, and, above
all, women and their ennobling influence, to bring out his best energies,
often dies undiscovered, what chance is there for a woman of kindred
abilities to struggle into the light of recognition? In literature, men are
the severest judges of women possible, except, of course, their own sex. To
the best of them the expression "woman of genius" is the mythical relic of
some lost tradition as old as Sappho's day, and "women's thought" a
contradiction in terms. All their experience teaches them to disbelieve in
it utterly. The truth is, most women think very ill in print. The cause
lies less in their nature than in their second nature of education. Their
thought is beautiful enough--beauty is their mental as their bodily
characteristic--but seldom strong, and then its strength is that of the
tempered Toledo rather than the shearing Andrea Ferrara. It comes in April
gleams from behind cloud after cloud. They lack concentration, terseness,
sequence; in a word, training. This breeds, with mainly correct thought,
constant loose digressions, diffuseness of expression, and dilution of
ideas. (Hence that saddest thing on the earth, wherein women writers so
abound, the _unexceptionable_ poem.) It seems as though women wrote as
if conversing, forgetting how much of the charm is in themselves and
evaporates on the pen. Every reader has noticed how the writings, and,
above all, the poems, of really extraordinary women--women that men of mind
looked up to--are to us such monuments of apparent mediocrity that we
wonder what they found to worship. The most impartial critic's nose
inclines involuntarily heavenward the moment a woman comes forward to claim
any intellectual place of honor. And genius, the highest quality, man's
special prerogative--horror of horrors! All reason says it cannot be; and
underneath a subtle male _esprit de corps_ too often adds that it
shall not be. Of course, the intruder cannot climb the heights, but to
avoid accidents and disappointment she is seldom suffered to try. Such are
the difficulties which beset the path of even the most favored female
aspirant.

It ought not to surprise us, then, that Adelaide Anne Procter, even had she
been the most pushing and irrepressible of blue-stockings, with every
vantage-ground of circumstance, was not appreciated as she deserved. But,
in addition to the original sin of being a woman, several reasons peculiar
to herself concurred to render her, what we think she has been, one of the
most underrated writers of her day.

First, she was an Englishwoman. Had she not been, she might never have been
anything; but once being something, we do not think it was an utterly
inestimable advantage. For, as being English, every one took for granted
that she must be a Protestant, and every one was disappointed and provoked
to find her a Catholic. Now one of the circumstances which mitigate the
glory of being English is that there is very little _achromatic_
criticism in England. As a wise and keen analyst [Footnote 175] complains,
each of the reviews has some set of theses nailed to its doors, whose
upholding is the first thing, to which all their criticism proper must
stand subordinate.

    [Footnote 175: Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism.]


{555}
English bigotry, under nineteenth century forms, is to-day as patent, as
understood, as calculable a mainspring and motive of public judgment as in
Archbishop Laud's era. Miss Procter's chance of any high praise was thus
never very great. But appearing as she did on the scene of letters at a
time when the Church of England was yet in the full sanctimoniousness of
righteous reaction against the dismembering logic of the Puseyites, any
good there was in her was very safe from discovery by most of the critics.
Had she been a self asserting sectarian, cramming her dogmas, as some of us
did their abolitionism, down her readers' throats, she might have been
hunted down to fame by the indignant zeal of the saintly star-chamberers of
letters, who lead public opinion much as the foam leads the wave.
Unfortunately for this opening, Miss Procter was a lady, and such
self-assertion the most foreign of traits to her nature. Not loud enough
for martyrdom, she was just firmly Catholic enough for misjudgment, or
rather for denial of judgment. While the tribunals of criticism could not
avoid taking notice of a book by Barry Cornwall's daughter, still, with all
the little good and ill the reviewers said of her, they never did her the
one essential service they could render, of putting her name where the
reading public would see it and pass judgment on her. There is a way of
praising that keeps off, and a way of blaming that attracts, the mass of
readers.

With the returning tide of ritualism, she has begun to be more appreciated,
but it is only a beginning. We are so strongly inclined to think her poems
at the outset of a new career in public favor, and we consider that so
little justice has been done her in the critical journals of this country,
that we cannot help feeling toward them accordingly; and so, in range of
our attempted discussion of her merits, and copiousness of citation, we
have treated her in all respects precisely as a new author.

For we believe sincerely that the clouds of circumstance and prejudice
about Miss Procter's entrance into literary life have obscured from us
poetical powers not only of no common order, but of that calm, self-centred
kind we have spoken of as rare enough in man, and the feminine counterpart
of which is almost unknown in literary history. Her mind is not
Shakespeare's, nor Coleridge's, nor Goethe's, but the resistless river and
the fountain of the rocks may both be the overflow of the same sunless
reservoir in the deep bosom of the mountains. And her poetry is indeed a
fountain of the rocks; pure, placid, deep of source, shaded yet sparkling,
"making a quiet music all its own;" with no torrent nor show of force, yet
musically passing all obstacles, and emerging, clear, bright, and
beautiful, in the sunlight beyond. Most varied and versatile in her choice
of subjects, she brings to all a poetic insight, a freedom and fancy of
expression, a grasp of the topic, and, above all, a strange, noble
earnestness, that altogether make up a style whose quiet charm we had
rather easily illustrate than elaborately fail in describing.

The key-note of all her writings is thoughtfulness, and withal a peculiar
kind of thoroughness of thought such as we have found in no other woman.
Mrs. Browning (perhaps we ought to add the new Mrs. Augusta Webster, whose
perceptive powers are the theme of the English reviews) is the only one who
ever has analyzed nearly so well, and she and all the others seem only
incidentally, while Miss Procter is habitually, analytical. Her entire
superiority, indeed, is the consequence and corollary of this curious depth
of mind. Bold in abstractions, tender in revealings of the heart, ingenious
in incident and invention, she is sure to have a well-defined thought at
bottom, always suggestive, often philosophic, sometimes profound. The rare
combination of entire femininity with this thinking habit is an originality
in itself. Very novel and very charming is the effect of seeing together
with this strong, clear, searching introspection, all the woman's delicacy
of touch.

{556}

But the reader is tired of our generalities, and would much rather see for
himself how well Miss Procter thinks. So we give him a fair example in the
poem called


    Incompleteness.

  Nothing resting in its own completeness
    Can have power or beauty; but alone
  Because it leads and tends to further sweetness,
    Fuller, higher, deeper than its own.

  _Spring's real glory dwells not in the meaning,
    Gracious though it be, of her blue hours,
  But is hidden in her tender leaning
    To the summer's richer wealth of flowers.

  Dawn is fair because the mists fade slowly
    Into day, which floods the world with light;
  Twilight's mystery is so sweet and holy
    Just because it ends in starry night._

  Childhood's smiles unconscious graces borrow
    From strife that in a far-off future lies;
  _And angel glances (veiled now by life's sorrow)
    Draw our hearts to some beloved eyes._

  Life is only bright when it proceedeth
    Toward a truer, deeper life above;
  Human love is sweetest when it leadeth
    To a more divine and perfect love.

  Learn the mystery of progression duly:
    Do not call each glorious change decay;
  But know we only hold our treasures truly,
    When it seems as if they passed away.

  Nor dare to blame God's gifts for incompleteness;
    In that want their beauty lies; they roll
  Toward some infinite depth of love and sweetness,
    Bearing onward man's reluctant soul.

This poem holds one of the great principles in Miss Procter's very noble
theory of life--a theory abundantly developed in her poems. Her cardinal
axioms would seem to be three: The great rule of life is progression; its
great agent, sorrow; its great fact and end, love. On these pillars she
builds, and 'Incompleteness' is one of the most direct statements of one
part of her creed. Another fine poem, in thought a kind of companion-piece
to this, in which we readily recognize the same underlying thought, is


    Beyond.

  We must not doubt, or fear, or dread that love for
      life is only given,
  And that the calm and sainted dead will meet
      estranged and cold in heaven:
  Oh! love were poor and vain, indeed, based on so
      harsh and stern a creed.

  True that this earth must pass away
      with all the starry worlds of light,
  With all the glory of the day, and calmer tenderness
      of night,
  For in that radiant home can shine alone
      the immortal and divine.

  Earth's lower things--her pride, her fame,
      her science, learning, wealth, and power,
  Slow growths that through long ages came,
      or fruits of some convulsive hour,
  Whose very memory must decay--heaven is
      too pure for such as they.

  They are complete; their work done.
      So let them sleep in endless rest.
  Love's life is only here begun, nor is,
      nor can be, fully blest;
  It has no room to spread its wings,
      amid this crowd of meaner things.

  Just for the very shadow thrown upon its
      sweetness here below,
  The cross that it must bear alone,
      and bloody baptism of woe,
  Crowned and completed through its pain,
      we know that it shall rise again.

  So, if its flame burn pure and bright,
      here where our air is dark and dense,
  (And nothing in this world of night
      lives with a living so intense,)
  When it shall reach its home at length,
      how bright its light! how strong its strength!

  And while the vain weak loves of earth
      (for such base counterfeits abound)
  Shall perish with what gave them birth--
      their graves are green and fresh around--
  No funeral song shall need to rise
      for the true love that never dies.

  If in my heart I now could fear that,
      risen again, we should not know
  What was our life of life when here--the
      hearts we loved so much below
  I would arise this very day
      and cast so poor a thing away.

  But love is no such soulless clod;
      living, perfected it shall rise,
  Transfigured in the light, of God,
      and giving glory to the skies:
  And that which makes this life so sweet
      shall render heaven's joy complete.


As a poem, this latter is superior, because it applies beautifully to a
beautiful subject the principle which the other merely enunciates. And the
style is not less remarkable than the ideas. Can anything be more clearly,
calmly _right_ than the thought, more easy, lucid, _real_ than
its utterance? And it is not the bald perspicuity, either, of mere logical
disquisition, but full of suggestion and spirit; and it does not flag;
especially in Beyond there is not a weak line nor lower thought. Now is not
all this refreshing after the diffuse grace and dilute sweetness of female
poetry in general? It is to the run of it as a copse of May's arbutus to a
meadow strewn with buttercups.

_Apropos_ of this superiority, we find another poem which illustrates
it even more strongly, because so very many women have fluttered about the
same thought.
{557}
Every _femme incomprise_--and what poetess does not think she is one?
is full of it; why have none of them said it so broadly and well as this?


    Unexpressed.

  Dwells within the soul of every artist
    More than all his effort can express,
  And he knows the best remains unaltered,
    Sighing at what we call his success.

  Vainly he may strive; he dare not tell us
    All the sacred mysteries of the skies:
  Vainly he may strive; the deepest beauty
    Cannot be unveiled to mortal eyes.

  And the more devoutly that he listens,
    And the holier message that is sent,
  Still the more his soul must struggle vainly,
    Bowed beneath a noble discontent.

  No great thinker ever lived and taught you
    All the wonder that his soul received;
  No true painter ever set on canvas
    All the glorious vision he conceived.

  No musician ever held your spirit
    Charmed and bound in his melodious chains,
  But be sure he heard, and strove to render
    Feeble echoes of celestial strains.

  No real poet ever wove in numbers
    All his dream, but the diviner part,
  Hidden from all the world, spake to him only
    In the voiceless silence of his heart.

  So with love; for love and art united
    Are twin mysteries; different, yet the same:
  Poor, indeed, would be the love of any
    Who could find its full and perfect name.

  Love may strive, but vain is the endeavor
    All its boundless riches to unfold;
  Still its tenderest, truest secret lingers
    Ever in its deepest depths untold.

  Things of time have voices, speak and perish:
    Art and love speak, but their words must be
  Sighings of illimitable forests,
    Waves of an unfathomable sea.

The positive merit of this--passing the odious business of comparison--is,
to our mind, the well-managed amplification of the main thought, and the
swell both of sense and sound at the close, which we find a beauty of high
order. The last two lines especially seize the melodic principle of the
metre, which, beyond almost any other we know, calls for long musical
words. Only "voiceless silence" strikes one as tautological to the last
degree. Miss Proctor very rarely makes outright mistakes, and she may have
seen some subtle sense added by the word "voiceless" that we cannot. All
the silences we have ever known were strictly voiceless, and decidedly apt
to terminate about the time any voice began.

The next great topic with our poetess is the sweet uses of adversity. She
is never weary of celebrating the beauty and benignity of sorrow. In fact,
she appears to have a personal friendship for misfortune, as the great
elevating and purifying dispensation of earthly existence. Grief,
disappointment, death, are to her philosophy but natural incidents, to be
expected and met without fear--processes tending to the higher result
hereafter. But here is her whole thought, better set forth than we can say
it:


    Friend Sorrow.

  Do not cheat thy heart and tell her
    Grief will pass away,
  Hope for fairer times in future
    And forget to-day.
  Tell her, if you will, that sorrow
    Need not come in vain,
  Tell her that the lesson taught her
    Far outweighs the pain.

  Cheat her not with the old comfort,
    "Soon she will forget:"
  Bitter truth, alas! but matter
    Rather for regret.
  Bid her not "Seek other pleasures,
    Turn to other things:"
  Rather nurse her caged sorrow
    Till the captive sings.

  Rather bid her go forth bravely
    And the stranger greet,
  Not as foes with spear and buckler,
    But as dear friends meet;
  Bid her with a strong clasp hold her
    By her dusky wings,
  Listening for the murmured blessing
    Sorrow always brings.

This is only one of a large number of poems full of varied exposition of
these same views. Some are so ingenious and happy that we can hardly resist
quoting them, were it not that, if those were the only qualifications, we
should have to cite the major part of her poems. In fact, this conception
of sorrow as a hidden blessing is peculiarly strong in all she has written.
And yet, while recognizing in tribulation an elevating grace that wins it a
welcome from her heart, she fully feels the sadness, the weariness, the
poverty and pain of earthly lives. A strong instance of this is the "Cradle
Song of the Poor," with its singular, sad refrain:

  "Sleep, my darling, thou art weary,
  God is good, but life is dreary."

{558}

And the miseries of the poor have evoked the only bitter lines she ever
wrote, which, coming, as they do, the very last in her book, seem almost
like an after-addition--the strange strong lines called "Homeless." There
is a force in some of the lines that reminds us of Hood:

  It is cold, dark midnight, yet listen
    To that patter of tiny feet!
  Is it one of your dogs, fair lady,
    Who whines in the bleak, cold street?
  Is it one of your silken spaniels
    Shut out in the snow and the sleet?

  My dogs sleep warm in their baskets,
    Safe from the darkness and snow;
  All the beasts in our Christian England
    Find pity wherever they go.
  (Those are only the homeless children
    Who are wandering to and fro.)

  Look out in the gusty darkness:
    I have seen it again and again,
  That shadow, that flits so slowly
    Up and down past the window-pane:
  It is surely some criminal lurking
    Out there in the frozen rain!

  Nay, our criminals all are sheltered,
    They are pitied and taught and fed:
  That is only a sister-woman,
    Who has got neither food nor bed:
  _And the Night cries, "Sin to be living;"
    And the River cries, "Sin to be dead."_

   .....

There is one other piece perhaps even sadder than this when we penetrate
its full, stern significance:


    The Requital.

  Loud roared the tempest, fast fell the sleet;
  A little child-angel passed down the street
  With trailing pinions and weary feet.

  The moon was hidden; no stars were bright;
  So she could not shelter in heaven that night,
  _For the angels' ladders are rays of light._

  She beat her wings at each window-pane,
  And pleaded for shelter, but all in vain:
  "Listen," they said, "to the pelting rain!"

  She sobbed, as the laughter and mirth grew higher,
  "Give me rest and shelter beside your fire,
  And I will give you your heart's desire."

  The dreamer sat watching his embers gleam,
  While his heart was floating down hope's bright stream,
  So he wove her wailing into his dream.

  The worker toiled on, for his time was brief;
  The mourner was nursing her own pale grief:
  They heard not the promise that brought relief.

  But fiercer the tempest rose than before,
  When the angel paused at a humble door
  And asked for shelter and help once more.

  A weary woman, pale, worn, and thin,
  With the brand upon her of want and sin,
  Heard the child-angel and took her in.

  Took her in gently, and did her best
  To dry her pinions; and made her rest
  With tender pity upon her breast.

  When the eastern morning grew bright and red,
  Up the first sunbeam the angel fled,
  Having kissed the woman, and left her--dead.

Human waifs forgotten by all their kind are a sorrowful picture enough, but
this of a human heart so desolate, so blank, so seared, so far from all
hope or joy in life, that even God its Creator does not deny its supreme
wish to die, is inexpressibly dreary. This is worthy to stand beside
Tennyson's "Mariana in the Moated Grange."

One touch worth noticing is the fiction by which the angel is detained on
earth; that "the angels' ladders are rays of light." It strikes us as one
of the most ingenious we have ever met, and no less beautiful than happy.
The whole structure of the narrative indeed, is admirable; it is difficult
to see how the parts could be fitted more nicely. This skill Miss Procter
has in an uncommon degree, and all her longer narrative poems exemplify it.

Of course, such thoughts on life as these last verses contain blend
naturally with noble thoughts on death. Here, again, Miss Procter's
prevailing thoughtfulness has developed her ideas into many beautiful
applications. The lines called "The Angel of Death," which so touchingly
close Charles Dickens's late sketch of her, the sweet, weary "Tryst with
Death," and many others, are examples of this. But among them all there is
none which more truly embodies her conceptions, or which, at the same time,
is more deeply instinct with the hopefulness which underlies all her graver
utterances, than the admirable lines:


    Our Dead.

  Nothing is our own; we hold our treasures
   Just a little time ere they are fled:
  One by one life robs us of our treasures:
    Nothing is our own except our dead.

  They are ours, and hold in faithful keeping,
    Safe for ever, all they took away.
  Cruel life can never stir that sleeping;
    Cruel time can never seize that prey.

  Justice pales, truth fades, stars fall from heaven:
    Human are the great whom we revere;
  No true crown of honor can be given,
    Till we place it on a funeral bier.

  How the children leave us, and no traces
    Linger of that smiling angel hand;
  Gone, for ever gone; and in their places
    Weary men and anxious women stand.

{559}

  _Yet, we have some little ones, still ours;
    They have kept the baby smile, we know,
  Which we kissed one day, and hid with flowers,
    On their dead white faces, long ago._

  When our joy is lost--and life will take it--
    Then no memory of the past remains,
  Save with some strange, cruel sting, to make it
    Bitterness beyond all present pains.

  _Death, more tender-hearted, leaves to sorrow
    Still the radiant shadow, fond regret;_
  We shall find, in some far bright to-morrow
    Joy that he has taken, living yet.

  "Is love ours, and do we dream we know it
    Bound with all our heart-strings all our own?
  Any cold and cruel dawn may show it
    Shattered, desecrated, overthrown.

  _Only the dead hearts forsake us never:
    Death's last kiss has been the mystic sign
  Consecrating love our own for ever,
    Crowning it eternal and divine._

  _So when Fate would fain besiege our city,
    Dim our gold or make our flowers fall,
  Death, the angel, comes in love and pity
    And, to save our treasures, claims them all._

Her ideas regarding death are very lofty. They are equally removed from the
timorous, painful harping on dissolution that characterizes the
_underdone_ poetic organism, from the graphic grimness of Miss
Rossetti's class of thinkers, who seem to take a ghastly delight in
anatomizing the subject, and last from the passionate weak welcoming of the
end--the coward courage which dares not live. In a word, Miss Procter was a
Christian.

In quitting her poems of thought, it will perhaps be well to pretermit our
long course of praise, and speak of the faults of her writing, most of
which are strongest in these very poems. In verbal correctness, she is far
above the average; for so voluminous a writer, singularly free from them.
Still, by G. Washington-Moon-light, we can discover certain errors,
principally of accent or collocation. Some few appear in the verses we have
cited. In "Beyond," "baptism" is made a trisyllable; though, standing where
it does, an appeal might well be taken to the higher equity of rhythm
against the arbitrary technicality of the law of orthoepy. Also, we doubt
if "perfécted" be the best pronunciation to-day. And in "Homeless," in the
expression,

  "Is it one of your dogs, fair lady,
  Who whines in the bleak, cold street?"

it might with all respect for the intelligence of the race at large, and,
above all, for the prodigious latent capabilities of all ladies' dogs--it
might be seriously questioned whether the canine personality is so marked
as to admit of the relative "who." We feel quite sure that the original
idea was to reserve this particular pronoun for selfish mankind, and we
fear that the slow science of grammar is still fettered, even as to the
most marvellous of the dog kind, by the trammelling traditions of
comparative anatomy.

But such flaws as these are venial, occurring as they do at rare intervals,
in a very large number of verses, written young, and crowded into the
compass of a few years. Many of them were mere passing contributions to the
periodical press of the day, and, taken as a whole, compare to advantage
with the hasty emanations of almost any author.

In metre Miss Procter achieves no high effects, and attempts none. With
very fair taste in selection of metre, she is by no means an artist in
rhythm, and appears to aim at little or nothing beyond passable metrical
correctness. She is carelessly harsh and incidentally melodious. Once or
twice she tries some sort of irregular or lyric measure, and it appears
rather to impede than aid her accustomed clear flow of thought.

In style she has two prominent though not great faults. One is her
refinement. She is so refined that it would, even had she reached the full
promise of her life, have prevented her, in all probability, from ever
being broadly popular. Her field is too high and narrow: she deals mainly
with sentiments and sympathies which interest only those who have not only
sorrowed, but reflected. But this blame is praise in itself. The other is
more of a real fault. Miss Procter tempts us to believe that the
diffuseness which we have attributed chiefly to their education has some
foundation in woman's nature itself.
{560}
Different as she is from the ordinary type, her womanhood vindicates
itself, though still in a way of her own. The effect on her style is not
what we spoke of--dilution--but amplification. Sometimes she is led away by
her fertility of illustration to illustrate too much. She holds up the idea
in too many lights, more than are needful to understand her. There is a
little of this even in "Incompleteness," before cited, but the
illustrations are so happy that the effect is not perceived: it is seldom
we are troubled with too many good things in a poem. Very often, however,
this practice of ramifying thoughts into so many applications--one natural
result of her thorough thinking--greatly injures the whole, and almost
always, where there is much of this amplification, it passes beyond the
strict limits of the strongest effect.

There are, furthermore, some few poems liable to cavil which seem to have
been mere exercises or experiments, and call for other criticism than her
finished performances. Others suffer from their author's inveterate habit
of seizing on every-day subjects. Now and then she takes up one so trite
that all the charm of her manner cannot mend it. The result is like a
pebble set in filigree.

The only grave artistic fault we ever found in her poems occurs in the
Legend of Provence, one of her best narrative pieces, founded on the
exquisite Legend of the Virgin Mary's assuming the personality and filling
the place of a nun who has proved false to her vows and fled her convent.
Repentant at last, she returns, a worn-out beggar, to die where her
religion died, meets her semblance, recognizes it as what she might have
been, and implores Mary's aid.

  And Mary answered: "From thy bitter past,
  Welcome, my child! Oh! welcome home at last!
  I filled thy place: thy flight is known to none,
  For all thy daily duties I have done;
  Gathered thy flowers and prayed, and sung, and slept;
  Didst thou not know, poor child, thy place was kept?"

This strikes us as a tremendous blunder. For the nun to know that her place
was kept would knock the bottom out of the entire legend. Who wouldn't sin
with his pardon drawn up in advance, and entire secrecy and perfect
restoration awaiting the first active twinge of repentance? We cannot
imagine for an instant how Miss Procter could overlook this; unless we have
made some equally egregious error in our understanding of the poem and its
scope.

We find, or fancy we find, in her writings, a shade of resemblance to the
taste and tact of her father, "Barry Cornwall." Perhaps it was because she
feared her generic tendencies of style, that she has written few or no
songs, and none at all like his sort. If her object was to avoid suspicious
resemblance, she has succeeded. The likeness is utterly intangible, and
there is not a trace anywhere of an imitation most natural to her relations
with him, and which must have proved easy to talent like hers.

Another noteworthy fact about her is also alluded to by Mr. Dickens. It is
the total absence of humor, and the sober and shaded style of what she has
written. He takes occasion, while speaking of this prevailing seriousness
in one so young, expressly to bar the inference that she was of the
melancholy moonlit sort, and mentions her abundant wit, and keen sense of
the ludicrous, and the joyous quality of her laugh. We do not think an
observant reader would misconceive her, as her kind-hearted biographer
apprehended. She lacks the distinctive element of morbidness. There is a
soundness in her sadness, so to speak, that makes us feel it to be the
shadow of a soul that knows the sunshine also. Mournful people of the true
chronic mournfulness show it far more by taking dismal views of ordinary
subjects than by dealing only in dismal things. But the fact itself
suggests a curious question which our aphorists have not yet answered. How
is it that some men naturally rollick in print, while others, not less
humorous, write nothing but the gravest stuff?
{561}
What made Hood's pen merry on his death-bed, and took the wit so out of
Sydney Smiths's sermons? These two classes are so marked that one would
think there must be a principle of some sort dividing them. Yet no one has
ever laid down this principle. We no more pretend to do this than the rest,
but merely raise the question, leaving it to some future critic to
disentangle us from a most Cartesian dubitation.

Thus far we have quoted mainly in illustration of Miss Procter's
characteristics. It must not be inferred, however, that there are not in
her books excellences not specially arising out of her peculiar ideas of
life. On the contrary, there are a number of pieces of that provoking class
of good things which we might just as well have written ourselves--only we
didn't. Very few of our friends, though, would think of looking in an
English author for the following strong, spirited protest, written in 1861,
when it was proposed to "strengthen the hands" of the mission for the
conversion of Irish Catholics:

    An Appeal.

  Spare her, O cruel England!
    Thy sister lieth low:
  Chained and oppressed she lieth;
    Spare her that cruel blow.
  We ask not for the freedom
    Heaven has vouchsafed to thee,
  Nor bid thee share with Ireland
    The empire of the sea.
  Her children ask no shelter--
    Leave them the stormy sky;
  They ask not for thy harvests,
    For they know how to die;
  Deny them, if it please thee,
    A grave beneath the sod;
  But we do cry, O England,
    Leave them their faith in God!

  Take, if thou wilt, the earnings
    Of the poor peasant's toil;
  Take all the scanty produce
    That grows on Irish soil,
  To pay the alien preachers
    Whom Ireland will not hear--
  To pay the scoffers at the creed
    Which Irish hearts hold dear:
  But leave them, cruel England,
    The gift their God has given;
  Leave them their ancient worship,
    Leave them their faith in heaven.

  You come and offer learning--
    A mighty gift, 'tis true,
  Perchance the greatest blessing,
    That now is known to you;
  But not to see the wonders
    Sages of old beheld
  Can they peril a priceless treasure,
    The faith their fathers held.

  For in learning and in science
    They may forget to pray:
  _God will not ask for knowledge
    On the great judgment day._

  When, in their wretched cabins,
    Racked by the fever pain.
  And the weak cries of their children
    Who ask for food in vain;
  When, starving, naked, helpless,
    From the shed that keeps them warm
  Man has driven them forth to perish
    In a less cruel storm;
  Then, then we plead for mercy;
    Then, sister, hear our cry;
  For all we ask, O England,
    Is--leave them there to die!
  Cursed is the food and raiment
    For which a soul is sold;
  Tempt not another Judas
    To barter God for gold.
  You offer food and shelter
    If they their faith deny;
  What do you gain, O England!
    By such a shallow lie?
  We will not judge the tempted--
    May God blot out their shame--
  He sees the misery round them,
    He knows man's feeble frame.
  His pity still may save them.
    In his strength they must trust
  Who calls us all his children.
    Yet knows we are but dust.

  Then leave them the kind tending,
    Which helped their childish years;
  Leave them the gracious comfort
    Which dries their mourner's tears;
  Leave them to that great mother
    In whose bosom they were born,
  Leave them the holy mysteries
    That comfort the forlorn;
  And, amid all their trials,
    Let the great gift abide,
  Which you, O prosperous England!
    Have dared to cast aside.
  Leave them the pitying angels,
    And Mary's gentle aid,
  For which earth's dearest treasures
    Were not too dearly paid.
  Take back your bribes, then, England,
    Your gold is black and dim;
  _And if God sends plague and famine,
    They can die and go to him._

This is by far the most unpolished and unequal thing Miss Procter has ever
written, and full of faults of detail. But, spite of loose texture and
repetition, and weak lines, and identical rhymes, there is a strength in
all the essential features, and a spirit everywhere, that contrast strongly
with the patriotic effusions that we have had so much of these last few
years.

Another poem which has incidentally attracted no little notice is Homeward
Bound, which anticipates the whole plot of Enoch Arden so completely that
some shallow people felt called upon to say a number of very foolish things
about the coincidence when Enoch Arden came out.
{562}
The chief differences are that the ship-wrecked hero is thrown on a desert
island in the one and captured by Moors in the other. Enoch Arden also
turns away from the agonizing picture of his forfeited home in silence,
while Miss Procter's mariner reveals himself, kisses his wife once more
_as if_ she were his, and departs, leaving the very awkward bigamy
question wide open behind him, and in general evincing a noble ignorance of
the law of England. He also perpetrates the dramatic error of surviving in
a state of marine vagrancy for a quarter of a century. But, though inferior
to Tennyson's, this poem has many excellent touches of pathos and nature,
and must claim, equally with Enoch Arden, the full merit of its simple yet
most telling conception.

_Apropos_ of resemblances, we are tempted to quote another of her best
known poems, both for its real beauty and because it subtly reminds us of
Longfellow, and we should be thankful if some one would only tell us why:


    The Storm.

  The tempest rages wild and high;
  The waves lift up their voice and cry
  Fierce answers to the angry sky.
                _Miserere Domine_

  Through the black night and driving rain,
  A ship is struggling, all in vain,
  To live upon the stormy main.
                _Miserere Domine_

  The thunders roar, the lightnings glare,
  Vain is it now to strive or dare;
  A cry goes up of great despair.
                _Miserere Domine_

  The stormy voices of the main,
  The moaning wind and pelting rain
  Beat on the nursery window-pane,
                _Miserere Domine_

  Warm curtained was the little bed,
  Soft pillowed was the little head:
  "The storm will wake the child," they said.
                _Miserere Domine_

  Cowering among his pillows white,
  He prays, his blue eyes dim with fright,
  "Father, save those at sea to-night!"
                _Miserere Domine_

  The morning shone all clear and gay
  On a ship at anchor in the bay,
  And on a little child at play.
                _Gloria tibi Domine!_


Out of many which commend themselves, we select only one more, a little gem
which we were surprised and pleased to find copied the other day in a
little New York evening paper. We think it very suggestive and sweet.


    A Lost Chord

  Seated one day at the organ,
    I was weary and ill at ease,
  And my fingers wandered idly
    Over the noisy keys.

  I do not know what I was playing,
    Or what I was dreaming then,
  But I struck one chord of music
    Like the sound of a great Amen.

  It flooded the crimson twilight
    Like the close of an angel's psalm,
  And it lay on my fevered spirit
    With a touch of infinite calm.

  It quieted pain and sorrow,
    Like love overcoming strife;
  It seemed the harmonious echo
    From our discordant life.

  It linked all perplexed meanings
    Into one perfect peace,
  And trembled away into silence
    As if it were loth to cease.

  I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
    That one lost chord divine,
  That came from the soul of the organ,
    And entered into mine.

  It may be that Death's bright angel
    Will speak in that chord again,
  It may be that only in heaven
    I shall hear that grand Amen.


We have yet to speak of one great element in these poems, their religion.
With those who are born and bred in a church, their belief sits on them
like their clothes--becomes a part of themselves. With converts it is
oftener like a badge which they are proud to wear, and which some are fond
of displaying. Miss Procter's was one of those rare natures in which
religion seems to stain back, as it were, and color the very fountain-heads
of all thought and impulse, as they are colored by the associations of
childhood. In her, it was not like regalia for the processions of life or a
reserve fund for emergencies, but thoroughly assimilated and vitalized; a
_living_ faith; an actual, practical element in her daily doings, as
present in her consciousness as her own individuality. Nor had she any of
the combativeness of converts, whose zeal is apt sometimes to be
aggressively meek and intolerantly lowly. Hers was a faith full of the
charity that judges not.
{563}
Like all real feeling, it never obtrudes itself, and never shrinks from
appearing in its proper place. Thus she has very few devotional and no
sectarian pieces at all in her Legends and Lyrics, but once professedly
entering on that line of thought, in her Chaplet of Verses, she is both
Christian and Catholic throughout.

Yet among the few devotional pieces in the earlier series we find one of
the best:


    The Peace of God.

  We ask for peace, O Lord!
    Thy children ask thy peace;
  Not what the world calls rest,
    That toil and care should cease;
  That through bright sunny hours
    Calm life should fleet away,
  And tranquil night should fade
    In smiling day:
  It is not for such peace that we would pray.

  We ask for peace, Lord!
    Yet not to stand secure,
  Girt round with iron pride,
    Contented to endure;
  Crushing the gentle strings
    That human hearts should know,
  Untouched by others' joy
    Or others' woe:
  Thou, dear Lord! wilt never teach us so.

  We ask thy peace, Lord!
    Through storm, and fear, and strife,
  To light and guide us on
    Through a long, struggling life:
  While no success or gain
    Shall cheer the desperate fight,
  Or nerve what the world calls
    Our wasted might;
  Yet pressing through the darkness to the light.

  It is thine own, Lord!
    Who toil while others sleep;
  Who sow with loving care
    What other hands shall reap:
  They lean on thee entranced
    In calm and perfect rest:
  Give us that peace, Lord!
    Divine and blest,
  Thou keepest for those hearts who love thee best.


Very like this in sentiment are several of her best pieces, "Per Pacem ad
Lucem," "Ministering Angels," and "Thankfulness." There are a number also
addressed to the Virgin Mary, the best of which are too long for insertion.
It is this which will restrict our quotations to one more piece, which
breathes that lofty ardor that every struggling Christian has felt in his
brighter hours of exaltation, and sighed to know that common moods cannot
rise to it.


    Our Titles.

  Are we not Nobles? we who trace
    Our pedigree so high
  That God for us and for our race
    Created earth and sky,
  And light and air and time and space,
    To serve us and then die?

  Are we not Princes? we who stand
    As heirs beside the throne,
  We who can call the promised land
    Our heritage, our own;
  And answer to no less command
    Than God's, and his alone?

  Are we not Kings? both night and day,
    From early until late,
  About our bed, about our way,
    A guard of angels wait;
  And so we watch and work and pray
    In more than royal state.

 ......

  Are we not more? our life shall be
    Immortal and divine.
  The nature Mary gave to thee,
    Dear Jesus, still is thine:
  Adoring in thy heart I see
    Such blood as beats in mine.

  O God! that we can dare to fail
    And dare to say we must!
  O God! that we can ever trail
    Such banners in the dust,
  Can let such starry honors pale
    And such a blazon rust!

  Shall we upon such titles bring
    The taint of sin and shame?
  Shall we, the children of the King,
    Who hold so grand a claim,
  Tarnish by any meaner thing
    The glory of our name?


But, although just to-day, in the present undeveloped state of woman's
intellect, Miss Procter may strike us most by her advance in thought beyond
her sex, she has a far higher claim on us for the admiration due to true
womanhood. Where do these poets school their souls, that they come forth
full of the experience of threescore years and ten? We know that Miss
Procter died in the prime and summer of her days, with most of the great
epochs and experiences of a woman's life yet before her. It is not even
said that she ever loved; for the sake of him who should lose her, we hope
it may be so. Yet her poems hold more tenderness and truth, more of real
love, its anxiety, faith, fulfilment, more of woman's inner life, than any
ten of the sweet soft natures who have taken these things to be their sole
province; who fancy their inkstands are in their souls, and devote a
lifetime of harmless harpings to rhyming some flutterings of heart and more
flutterings of nerves.
{564}
Here, as everywhere, we meet with Miss Procter's unfailing force and
clearness, and tremble at first to meet it. For of all agonizing things (as
many a sensitive nature can testify) there is none like the unconscious
cruelty of pure intellect when it comes to deal with the strange
intuitions, the noble unreason, the holy follies of the heart. But hand in
hand with her inborn analysis comes such a womanhood, so deep, so delicate,
so full of sympathy and sweet counsel, as passes words. This union it is,
as we said before, that stamps Miss Procter a poet. We men cannot half
appreciate this; the sisterhood of sex that her poems must establish with
women who have loved and suffered is for some woman only to set forth.

It is difficult to choose any one poem which stands pre-eminent in these
qualities. One which will show her insight into the seemingly contradictory
impulses of a woman's breast is


    A Woman's Question.

  Before I trust my fate to thee,
    Or place my hand in thine;
  Before I let thy future give
    Color and form to mine,
  Before I peril all for thee.
  Question thy soul to-night for me.

  I break all slighter bonds, nor feel
    A shadow of regret:
  Is there one link within the past
    That holds thy spirit yet?
  Or is thy faith as clear and free
  As that which I can pledge to thee?

  Does there within thy dimmest dreams
    A possible future shine,
  Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe
    Untouched, unshared by mine?
  If so, at any pain or cost,
  Oh! tell me before all is lost.

  Look deeper still. If thou canst feel
    Within thy inmost soul
  That thou hast kept a portion back,
    While I have staked the whole,
  Let no false pity spare the blow,
  But in true mercy tell me so.

  Is there within thy heart a need
    That mine cannot fulfil?
  One chord that any other hand
    Could better wake or still?
  Speak now--lest at some future day
  My whole life wither and decay.

  Lives there within thy nature hid
    The demon-spirit Change,
  Shedding a passing glory still
    On all things new and strange?
  It may not be thy fault alone--
  But shield my heart against thy own.

  Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day,
    And answer to my claim
  That fate, and that to day's mistake--
    Not thou had been to blame?
  Some soothe their conscience thus; but thou
  Wilt surely warn and save me now.

  Nay, answer _not_--I dare not hear,
    The words would come too late;
  Yet I would spare thee all remorse,
    So comfort thee, my fate--
  Whatever on my heart may fall,
  Remember, I _would_ risk it all.


The strength of this is in the rendering of that eloquent instinct of love
which intuitively strikes the most responsive chord. Here it hits on the
strongest appeal a woman can make to a man--to save her against himself.
And no one can deny the boldness and beauty of the closing turn of thought.

The following poem bears a strong resemblance to the last in tone and train
of analysis, with an element of calm fruition instead of the utter
devotion. The one is love's June of trust; the other its September of
fulfilment.


    A Retrospect.

  From this fair point of present bliss,
    Where we together stand,
  Let me look back once more, and trace
    That long and desert land
  Wherein till now was cast my lot,
  And I could live, and thou wert not.

  ......

  What had I then? A hope that grew
    Each hour more bright and dear,
  The flush upon the eastern skies
    That showed the sun was near.
  Now night has faded far away,
  My sun has risen, and it is day.

  A dim ideal of tender grace
    In my soul reigned supreme;
  Too noble and too sweet, I thought,
    To live save in a dream;
  Within thy heart to-day it lies,
  And looks on me from thy dear eyes.

  Some gentle spirit--love, I thought--
    Built many a shrine of pain;
  Though each false idol fell to dust,
    The worship was not vain,
  But a faint radiant shadow, cast
  Back from our love upon the past.

  And grief, too, held her vigil there;
    With unrelenting sway,
  Breaking my cloudy visions down,
    Throwing my flowers away:
  I owe to her fond care alone
  That I may now be all thine own.

  Fair joy was there: her fluttering wings
    At time she strove to raise;
  Watching through long and patient nights,
    Listening long eager days:
  I know now that her heart and mine
  Were waiting, love, to welcome thine.

  Thus I can read thy name throughout,
    And, now her task is done,
  Can see that even that faded past
    Was thine, beloved one.
  And so rejoice my life may be
  All consecrated, dear, to thee.


{565}

There could scarcely be a truer sign of poetic power than the fidelity and
finish of some of these heart-pictures. Out of many others we select two
for contrast: one tracing the deep, dreary introspection of passive
suffering; the other following out the subtle, restless impulses of pain
with pangs. The first we take from a longer poem, "Philip and Mildred."


  Dawn of day saw Philip speeding on his road to the great city,
  Thinking how the stars gazed downward just with Mildred's patient eyes.
  Dreams of work and fame and honor struggling with a tender pity,
  Till the loving past receding saw the conquering future rise.

  Daybreak still found Mildred watching, with the wonder of first sorrow,
  How the outward world unaltered shone the same this very day,
  How unpitying and relentless human life met this new morrow--
  Earth, and sky, and man unheeding that her joy had passed away.

  Then the round of weary duties, cold and formal, came to meet her,
  With the life within departed that had given them each a soul;
  And her sick heart even slighted gentle words that came to greet her;
  For grief spread its shadowy pinions, like a blight, upon the whole.

  _Jar one chord, the harp is silent; move one stone, the arch is shattered;
  One small clarion-cry of sorrow bids an armed host awake.
  One dark cloud can hide the sunlight; loose one string, the pearls are scattered;
  Think one thought, a soul may perish; say one word, a heart may break._

  Life went on, the two lives running side by side, the outward seeming,
  And the truer and diviner hidden in the heart and brain:
  Dreams grow holy put in action, work grows fair through starry dreaming:
  But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.


We hardly know which to like the better, the description itself or the
moralizing. Very different, very far from moralizing, and yet even more to
the life, is


    A Comforter.

  "Will she come to me, little Effie,
     Will she come to my arms to rest,
   And nestle her head on my shoulder,
     While the sun goes down in the west?

  "I and Effie will sit together
     All alone in this great arm-chair:
   Is it silly to mind it, darling,
     When life is so hard to bear?

  "No one comforts me like my Effie.
     Just, I think, that she does not try,
   Only looks with a wistful wonder
     Why grown people should ever cry;

  "While the little soft arms close tighter
     Round my neck in their clinging hold:
   Well, I must not cry on your hair, dear,
     For my tears might tarnish the gold.

  "I am tired of trying to read, dear;
     It is worse to talk and seem gay;
   There are some kinds of sorrow, Effie,
     It is useless to thrust away.

  "Ah! advice may be wise, my darling,
     But one always knows it before;
   And the reasoning down one's sorrow
     Seems to make one suffer the more.

  "But my Effie won't reason, will she?
     Or endeavor to understand;
   Only holds up her mouth to kiss me,
     As she strokes my face with her hand.

  "If you break your plaything yourself, dear,
     Don't you cry for it all the same?
   I don't think it is such a comfort,
     One has only one's self to blame.

  "People say things cannot be helped, dear,
     But then that is the reason why;
   For, if things could be helped or altered
     One would never sit down to cry.

  "They say, too, that tears are quite useless
     To undo, amend, or restore:
   When I think _how_ useless, my Effie,
     Then my tears only fall the more.

  "All to-day I struggled against it,
     But that does not make sorrow cease;
   And now, dear, it such a comfort
     To be able to cry in peace.

  "Though wise people would call that folly,
     And remonstrate with grave surprise,
   We won't mind what they say, my Effie;
     We never professed to be wise.

  "But my comforter knows a lesson
     Wiser, truer than all the rest,
   That to help and to heal a sorrow,
     Love and silence are always best.

  "Well, who is my comforter tell me!
     Effie smiles, but she will not speak,
   Or look up through the long, curled lashes
     That are shading her rosy cheek.

  "Is she thinking of talking fishes,
     The blue-bird, or magical tree?
   Perhaps I am thinking, my darling,
     Of something that never can be.

  "You long, don't you, dear, for the genii,
     Who were slaves of lamps and of rings?
   And I--I am sometimes afraid, dear,
     I want as impossible things.

  "But, hark! there is nurse calling Effie!
     It is bedtime, so run away;
   And I must go back, or the others
     Will be wondering why I stay.

  "So good-night to my darling Effie;
     Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise:
   There's one kiss for her golden tresses
     And two for her sleepy eyes."


We do not know where to look for anything like this. It is so graphic, so
simple, so true. We, at least, never _realized_ a scene so vividly, so
minutely, with all the details we would notice if it actually happened, and
not a touch beyond, unless perhaps after reading Maud Müller.
{566}
The kind of force is in many respects the same, except that the woman-poet,
as usual, says what the man-poet suggests of the inner life underlying. But
it is excellently said, so well that one mentally declines to apply the
principles of aesthetics, which would dictate Whittier's method as the more
thoroughly artistic. How well the whole logic, or illogic, of that grand
solace, a good cry, is given, and how natural and how sweet if one could
only chance on an Effie that would not tell nurse all about it, to have a
little "comforter" that would only know the grief and never care for the
causes!

We have only one more poem to quote--one which we consider in many respects
Miss Procter's best. If feeling, delicacy, pathos, truth, make beauty and
poetry, this alone ought to entitle its author to distinction. Bare of all
factitious ornament, carrying no overload of elegances, it goes straight to
the heart of every mother, and strikes the deepest key-note in the organism
of the world--motherhood. And it seems to us that, if all men today were to
league against her memory, this poem should win her an immortality in the
hearts of womankind:


    Links With Heaven.

  Our God in heaven, from that holy place
    To each of us an angel guide has given;
  But mothers of dead children have more grace,
    For they give angels to their God and heaven.

  How can a mother's heart feel cold or weary,
    Knowing her dearer self safe, happy, warm?
  How can she feel her road too dark or dreary,
    Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm?

  How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding,
    Our God forgot, our holy saints defied;
  But can a mother hear her dead child pleading,
    And thrust those little angel hands aside?

  Those little hands stretched down to draw her ever
    Nearer to God by mother love: we all
  Are blind and weak, yet surely she can never,
    With such a stake in heaven, fail or fall.

  She knows that, when the mighty angels raise
    Chorus in heaven, one little silver tone
  Is hers forever; that one little praise,
    One little happy voice, is all her own.

  We may not see her sacred crown of honor,
    But all the angels flitting to and fro
  Pause smiling as they pass--they look upon her
    As mother of an angel whom they know;

  One whom they left nestled at Mary's feet--
    The children's place in heaven--who softly sings
  A little chant to please them, slow and sweet,
    Or, smiling, strokes their little folded wings;

  Or gives them her white lilies or her beads
    To play with: yet, in spite of flower or song,
  They often lift a wistful look that pleads
    And asks them why their mother stays so long.

  Then our dear Queen makes answer she will call
    Her very soon: meanwhile they are beguiled
  To wait and listen while she tells them all
    A story of her Jesus as a child.

  Ah! saints in heaven may pray with earnest will
    And pity for their weak and erring brothers;
  Yet there is prayer in heaven more tender still,
    The little children pleading for their mothers.


In conclusion, we think the world will not know for a while yet how much it
has lost in Adelaide Anne Procter. Her time to be missed will come when
Catholic England will need to be represented in the national literature.
For those who will force it into recognition, there will of necessity be
strong rather than fine intellects. Then the world will turn back to her
pages, and wish she were but there to represent Catholicity in England;
then she will be carefully read, and, once this happens, her place is
assured. And yet, even then, we can never know her as she was; for beyond
almost any author we recall, Miss Procter impresses us as being far
superior to her works. She is the best of examples of her own doctrine of
imperfect expression. The fulness and fineness of her nature strike one
from the beginning as being immeasurable by what she has written. There is
something exalted and tender, rich and yet reserved, about the life which
animates her poems, that interests us uncommonly. And when we come to read
of her, what was her life and what its aims, and, above all, when we see
how she is mourned by those who held her dear here, we recognize her for
one of those rare and beautiful hearts whom God loves too well to leave us
long, and conclude, in laying down these broken reflections of her spirit,
that her noblest poem was herself.

------

{567}


    The Indissolubility of Christian Marriage.


    Number One.

The frightful corruption in the legislation and practice respecting divorce
which has spread so widely during the past few years in our country has at
last aroused the attention of those who are interested in the preservation
of the public morals. They are beginning to write on the subject, and are
casting about for the means of protecting the endangered institution of
marriage. We feel it to be our duty to exercise what little influence we
may possess in the community at large, in the same direction. At present,
we shall restrict our remarks to one single point, which is the theological
question of the lawfulness of divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_, for the
cause of adultery, under the law of Christ. In order to make our intent and
meaning plain, we shall begin by stating the proposition we wish to
maintain. The marriage of Christians, validly ratified and consummated, is
absolutely indissoluble; and therefore there can be no legal and valid
divorce of the parties to such a marriage _a vinculo matrimonii_. The
best and ablest Protestant writers admit this with one exception, that is,
of the innocent party in the case of a marriage which has been violated by
adultery. We leave them, therefore, to defend the indissolubility of
marriage in all other cases, and confine ourselves to the one case in which
they permit divorce.

The sole argument for the lawfulness of divorce in this instance is derived
from the following texts in St. Matthew's gospel. "Whosoever shall put away
his wife, _excepting for the cause of fornication_, causeth her to
commit adultery." (v. 32.) "Whosoever shall put away his wife, _except it
be for fornication_, and shall marry another, committeth adultery."
(xix. 9.) The Catholic interpretation of these passages is, that our Lord
permits a final separation _a mensâ et thoro_, for one cause, and one
only, which is the grievous crime mentioned in these texts. In accordance
with this interpretation, we explain these passages by the following
paraphrase: "Whoever, for any lesser cause than the crime of adultery,
separates himself finally from his wife, places both her and himself in the
danger of sinning, and is guilty of creating a proximate occasion of
adultery. If he separates himself from her on account of the grievous crime
above mentioned, he is not responsible for her future crimes, nor is he
guilty of placing himself without just cause in a condition in which the
observance of his marriage vows becomes more difficult. Nevertheless, if he
marries another, he commits adultery."

In order to sustain the truth of this interpretation, it is necessary to
defend three propositions. First. That our Lord declared the bond of
marriage indissoluble. Second. That he condemned all _soi-disant_
marriages of persons who were divorced, as adulterous. Third. That he
permitted a final divorce _a mensâ et thoro_ simply, for the cause of
adultery, and for no other.

The first proposition is established by all the texts of the New Testament
which speak on the subject. We will first examine the text of St. Matthew,
which includes the passage that is in dispute:

  "And the Pharisees came to him, tempting him, and saying: Is it lawful
  for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said
  to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man in the beginning, made
  them male and female?
{568}
  And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and
  shall cleave unto his wife: and they two shall be in one flesh. Wherefore
  they are no more two, but one flesh. _What therefore God hath joined
  together, let not man put asunder_. They say to him: why then did
  Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away? He saith to
  them: Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to put
  away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so."

It is evident from these words of our Lord that the reason for the marriage
of one man with only one woman, and for the perpetuity of this union, is
founded in the law of nature and the primitive revelation of God to the
founders of the human race. Also, that our Lord intended to restore
marriage to its primitive and perfect law, abrogating all temporary
dispensations in favor of polygamy and divorce. His commandment not to put
asunder what God hath joined is universal, and establishes the principle
that marriage is not dissoluble by human law. In the gospel of St. Mark we
are further informed that "in the house again his disciples asked him
concerning the same thing. And he said to them: Whosoever shall put away
his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if the
wife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth
adultery." (x. 11.) St. Luke also relates the words of our Lord with the
same explicitness: "Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth
another, committeth adultery; and he that marrieth her that is put away
from her husband, committeth adultery." (xvi. 18.) The same doctrine is
established by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans: "For the woman that
hath a husband, whilst her husband liveth, is bound to the law: but if her
husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. Wherefore,
whilst her husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress if she be with
another man: but if her husband be dead, she is free from the law of her
husband: so that she is not an adulteress if she be with another man."
(vii. 2, 3.) This passage lays down clearly and without exception the law
that the bond of marriage can only be dissolved by death. It is confirmed
by other texts in the first epistle to the Corinthians: "But to them that
are married, not I, but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from
her husband: and if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled
to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife." "A woman is
bound by the law as long as her husband liveth: but if her husband die, she
is at liberty: let her marry to whom she will; only in the Lord." (vii. 10,
11, 39.)

There can be no question between us and that class of strict Protestant
moralists who allow of divorce only in one case, and of re-marriage even in
that one case only by the innocent party, that the passages we have cited
lay down in general terms the indissolubility of Christian marriage. The
only point to be discussed, therefore, is, whether they are right or wrong
in so interpreting our Lord's words as to permit re-marriage in this one
particular case. If it cannot be shown that our Lord distinctly and
positively releases the innocent party in this case from the _vinculum
matrimonii_, our proposition stands firm that this _vinculum_ is in
all cases indissoluble except by death.

In regard to this point we remark, first, that obscure passages ought to be
interpreted in conformity with those which are clear, and not the reverse.
The passages we have cited which proclaim the indissolubility of the
marriage-bond are clear. Those which are cited in proof of the exception
are obscure. It is not clear on the face of them how far the permission to
dismiss the guilty wife extends, and the conclusion that this permission
includes the permission to marry another woman is a mere inference.
{569}
The Catholic interpretation, that the permission extends no further than a
divorce _a mensâ et thoro_, harmonizes those passages with all others
in the New Testament which speak on the subject, and is, therefore, in
itself more probable.

We remark, secondly, that the opposite interpretation is intrinsically
improbable, because it contravenes the evident scope and intention of our
Lord's words, which were to abrogate the special dispensations of the
Mosaic law, and introduce a stricter law in conformity with the original
institution of matrimony. Our opponents explain the law as giving the wife
an equal privilege of divorcing her husband with that conceded to the
husband. But, according to the law of Moses, the woman could not divorce
her husband for any cause whatever. If, now, our Lord gave her this
privilege, he relaxed the Mosaic law in an important respect. This is
highly improbable, seeing that it is only by inference that we can apply
the permission given the injured husband to dismiss his wife to the injured
woman in similar circumstances. We admit fully that, our Lord did intend to
give woman an equal right in the premises with that which he conceded to
man. But, if that right had been the one claimed by our opponents it is not
to be supposed that he would have failed to express it in clear and
distinct terms. We argue that, as his whole scope was to make the law of
marriage stricter, and as the law of Moses gave women no right of divorce,
our Lord did not concede to Christian women that right. Our opponents admit
that no more was conceded to men than to women, therefore no right of
divorce was conceded to men.

We remark, thirdly, that the divorce permitted by our Lord cannot have been
a divorce _a vinculo_, from the concession of our opponents, who admit
that the guilty party is not released from it so as to be capable of
contracting a second marriage.

They admit that the guilty party commits adultery by attempting another
marriage, and that the person marrying the one divorced commits adultery.
Adultery is not possible where there is no _vinculum matrimonii_
subsisting. But there can be no vinculum except between two parties. It is
absurd that a woman should be bound to keep faith with the man who has
another lawful wife. Therefore, on the principles of our opponents, since
the guilty party is still in the bonds of the first marriage, the innocent
party is so also.

Let us now examine the passage itself, which permits the dismissal of a
guilty consort, to see if it can fairly be interpreted in accordance with
the doctrine we have endeavored to establish. Our opponents argue that the
sense of the passage is as follows: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, and
marry another, commits adultery, unless the cause of his putting her away
was adultery on her part." Therefore, they say, if she was put away for the
crime above mentioned, he does not commit adultery, though he marries
another. The mere verbal construction admits of this interpretation, but
does not positively require it. It may fairly be understood to mean this:
"Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, commits
adultery, and whosoever shall marry another commits adultery." That is, he
who puts away his wife for any lesser cause, causes her to commit adultery,
and exposes himself to the danger of committing the same sin, on account of
the facility given by the civil law to both parties to contract second
marriages, and also because of the danger in which a woman is placed, when
cast off by her husband, of giving herself up to a bad life through want
and desperation, especially in a state of society which is morally corrupt.
And, much more, the one who actually does contract a second marriage during
the lifetime of the wife whom he has repudiated commits adultery, by
contracting an invalid marriage. Both acts are a violation of the marriage
vows, the desertion of the wife, and the formation of a second, unlawful
union with another; and, therefore, both are classed together, although it
is only the latter which is strictly and technically called adultery.

{570}

Our opponents may justly say that the text does not require this
interpretation, and that, if this really was the sense and meaning of our
Lord, the apostle has expressed it in an elliptical and obscure manner.
Very true. And if we had no other information than that which is furnished
by St. Matthew, the real doctrine of our Lord would be doubtful. This is
nothing strange or surprising. The sacred writers frequently speak in an
obscure, in artificial, and elliptical manner, which obliges us to
interpret their meaning from sources extraneous to the text. There is no
evidence that all the words used by our Lord himself to explain his
doctrine to the by-standers in public, or to his disciples in private, have
been recorded with verbal accuracy or completeness. St. Matthew gave a
brief summary of Christ's doctrine in his own language, which was
intelligible to his readers at the time, because they already knew the law
which had been promulgated in the Christian church. We hope to show
hereafter what this law was, from evidence furnished by the early Christian
writers and by the uniform canonical practice of the church. Meanwhile, we
think we have proved that the general scope of the language of the New
Testament sustains the doctrine of the indissolubility of Christian
marriage.

Our second and third propositions have been established in the process of
maintaining the first, and flow from it obviously. It is evident that,
where the _vinculum matrimonii_ subsists between two persons, either
of them who attempts marriage with a third party violates the rights of the
lawful consort, and makes an invalid contract, whatever the civil law may
decide to the contrary. It is also evident that our Lord did permit a final
dissolution of the _connubium_ between married persons for one cause,
and one only. If this dissolution is not a divorce _a vinculo_, it
must be _a mensâ et thoro_. We leave the subject here for the present,
hoping to resume it again at a convenient opportunity; and we respectfully
recommend to our learned readers, who are desirous of investigating it
fully, the work of Perrone, _De Matrimonio Christiano_, 3 vols. Rome,
1858.

------

    Miscellany.


_The Magnetic Polarity of Rifles_. Mr. J. Spiller has lately made some
very interesting observations respecting the magnetic power assumed by
rifles. He finds that all the long Enfield barrels of the arms in the
possession of the volunteers of his company exhibit magnetic polarity as
the result of the violent and repeated concussions attending their
discharge in a direction parallel to the magnetic meridian. The Royal
Arsenal range runs nearly north and south, and the rifles, when in use, are
always pointed either due north or a few degrees toward the west--in fact,
nearly in the direction indicated by a compass-needle--so that the
repeated shocks brought about by the explosion of the powder may, Mr.
Spiller thinks, be considered equivalent to so many hard blows from a
hammer, which, as is well known, have a similar effect. Mr. Spiller goes on
to say that the magnetic character appears to be permanent, which would not
be the case if the gun-barrels were of the softest description of malleable
iron; and the region of the breech is, in every instance, possessed of
north polarity, since it strongly attracts the south pole of the compass
needle.
{571}
These effects should not be noticed at all, or only to an inferior degree,
in arms ordinarily fired in directions east and west; and it is supposed
that by reversing the usual practice, if it were possible, and firing
towards the south, the indications of polarity would be changed.


_Mont Cenis Railway_.--In a paper read before the Institute of Civil
Engineers, Capt. H. W. Tyler has fully described the results of experiments
with Mr. Fell's locomotive, which has been adopted for surmounting the
steep gradients and sharp curves of the Mont Cenis route. On Mr. Fell's
system an intermediate or centre rail is adopted, against which horizontal
wheels worked by the engine are pressed by springs, so as to yield any
requisite amount of adhesion. The engine constructed for the Mont Cenis
line is partly of steel; its weight fully loaded does not exceed 17 tons.
There are two 15-inch cylinders working both the four coupled horizontal
and the four coupled bearing wheels. The pressure on the additional
horizontal wheels can be varied by the engine-driver at pleasure; during
the experiments it amounted to from 2½ to 3 tons on each wheel, or 10 tons
altogether, but provision was made for increasing this pressure to 24 tons
if necessary. During the official trials, with a load of 24 tons exclusive
of the engine, on an average gradient of 1 in 13, with curves of 2 to 4
chains radius, the speed of 6.65 miles to 7.46 miles per hour was attained
in ascending. With a load of 16 tons the speed was 10 miles.


_Fossil Man in the Rhine Valley_.--In the Lehm of the valley of the
Rhine, near Colmar, there is a marly deposit composed of a mixture of clay,
fine sand, and carbonate of lime. It forms part of the diluvial beds, and
in it M. Faudel has found a number of human and other remains. These
consisted of shells, bones of a huge stag, teeth of _Elephas
primigenuis_, and a human frontal and right parietal bone of a man of
middle size. M. Faudel concludes that man was contemporaneous with the
mammoth fossil stag and bison.


_Tobacco Smoking Injurious to the Eyes_.--In a recent number (February
15) of the Bulletin de Thérapeutique, M. Viardin describes two cases of
serious eye affection (amblyopia) resulting from the habit of smoking. M.
Viardin at once, on learning the habits of the patients, induced them to
smoke a much smaller quantity of tobacco than usual, and the result was a
complete restoration of vision in a few weeks from the date of their
application.


_Intermittent Fevers produced by Vegetable Organisms_.--Some time
since, we called attention to Dr. Salisbury's observations, tending to
support the theory expressed above. More recently these ideas have been, in
some measure, confirmed by Professor Hannon, of the University of Brussels.
In 1843, says M. Hannon, "I studied at the University of Liege; Professor
Charles Morsen had created in me such an enthusiasm in the study of the
fresh-water algae that the windows and mantel-piece of my chamber were
encumbered with plates filled with vaucheria, oscillatoria, and confervae.
My preceptor said to me: 'Take care at the period of their fructification,
for the spores of the algae give intermittent fever. I have had it every
time I have studied them too closely.' As I cultivated my algae in pure
water, and not in the water of the marsh where I had gathered them, I did
not attach any importance to his remark. I suffered for my carelessness a
month later, at the period of their fructification. I was taken with
shivering; my teeth chattered; I had the fever, which lasted six weeks."



_Origin of Petroleum_.--Although nearly all geologists are agreed as
to the organic origin of petroleum, a great many are of opinion that the
rock-oil is the result of a natural distillation of coal. Professor
Hitchcock, however, no mean authority, comes to a different conclusion.
Admitting, with all who have carefully studied the matter, that petroleum
is of organic origin, he says that, in his opinion, it comes from plants,
and that it is not, as some have suggested, a fish-oil or a substance
altered to adipocere. It does not appear to be the result of a natural
distillation of coal, since its chemical composition is different from the
oil manufactured artificially from the cannels, containing neither
nitro-benzole nor aniline. Moreover, petroleum occupied fissures in the
silurian and devonian strata long before the trees of the coal period were
growing in their native forests. The nearly universal association of brine
with petroleum, and the fact of the slight solubility of hydrocarbons in
fresh, but insolubility in salt water, excite the inquiry whether the salt
water of primeval lagoons may not have prevented the escape of the
vegetable gases beneath, and condensed them into liquids.

{572}

_Structure of the Liver._--Dr. Lionel Beale's opinion as to the
structure of the vertebrate liver has been recently substantiated by the
researches of Herr Hering. This histologist states that the liver is
constructed like the other secreting glands. It is of the tubular type,
with canals, anastomosing in every direction, and having a tendency to form
a series of networks. Like other secretions, the bile travels along
glandular canals surrounded by glandular cells. It is easy (he says) to
observe this arrangement in the livers of vertebrates. Five or more cells
are disposed in simple layers around the circular and minute aperture of a
hepatic utricle seen in transverse section. This arrangement loses itself
insensibly in that variety of structure in which there are no utricles
properly so called. Occasionally may be seen four, three, or even only two
cells, uniting to form a biliary canal. The Russian anatomist denies the
existence of hepatic trabeculae of biliferous capillaries, and believes
that the biliary cells are persistent. He looks upon serpents' livers as
the only organs for minute inquiries upon the subject.



_The Cometary Theory of Shooting-Stars--to whom does it belong?_--The
Abbé Moigno, who has broached this question, and who evidently feels
strongly on the point, makes the following observations in our
contemporary, the Chemical News, of March 15th: "In a quite recent note
inserted on March 3d, in the International Bulletin of the Imperial
Observatory, and on the 8th inst. in the Bulletin of the Scientific
Association of France, M. Le Verrier resumes on the cometary theory of
shooting-stars, and persists in attributing the honor of it to himself,
without condescending to mention the name of Schiaparelli, whose letters,
however, have been published in a journal of great authority, the
Meteorological Bulletin of the College of Rome, issued under the
superintendence of the Rev. P. Secchi, and were translated by the writer
before M. Le Verrier had published a single word of his researches. We are
really frightened by this system of organized cool-blooded appropriation,
and more so by these lines, the effect of which has been even more coolly
calculated: _'Sir John Herschel, who, along with his son, Alexander
Herschel, has paid great attention to shooting-stars, gives his complete
assent to_ the theory of the swarms of November.' Poor M. Schiaparelli!
Happily the Astronomische Nachrichten have collected the necessary papers,
and he will soon be in a position of having his revenge."


_New Form of Telegraphy._--An invention for the transmission of
despatches by an automatic electro-chemical method has been devised by MM.
Vavin and Fribourg. Its object is to utilize all the velocity of the
current on telegraphic lines. The Abbé Moigno, who has called attention to
it in England, gives the following description of it: It consists in the
distribution of the current through as many small wires, very short and
isolated, as there are signals to be transmitted, all the while only
employing one wire on the main line. Each of these small isolated wires
communicates, on the one hand, with a metallic plate, of a particular form,
fixed in gutta-percha; and, on the other, with a metallic division of a
disc, which is also formed of an insulating substance. A group of eleven of
those small laminae form a sort of cipher, which will give all the letters
of the alphabet by the suppression of certain portions of the fundamental
form. "Now," says the abbé, "suppose rows of these compound characters to
be placed on a sheet of prepared paper of a metallic nature, the words of
the telegram to be sent are written on them with isolating ink, leaving the
other parts of the small 'stereotyped' blocks untouched. The consequence is
that the current is intercepted at every point touched by the ink, and a
letter is, imprinted on the prepared paper at the other end of the line
where the telegram is to be received."


_A Cheap and Ingenious Ice Machine._--M. Tonelli, says the Abbé
Moigno, has just devised an ice-making machine which bids fair to become
very popular in this country, since it is convenient, cheap, and efficient.
The inventor calls it the "_glacier roulante_." It is a simple
metallic cylinder mounted on a foot. The salt of soda and the salt of
ammonia are added in two operations, the smaller cylinder, containing the
water to be frozen, is introduced into the interior, and the orifice is
close by an india-rubber disc, and then by a cover fastened with a catch;
the cylinder is then placed in a sac, or case of cloth, and it is made to
roll on the table with a slight oscillatory movement given by the hand.
{573}
After a lapse of ten minutes, the water in the interior of the cylinder
becomes a beautiful cylinder of ice. Nothing is more simple, more
economical, or more efficacious than the new "glacier roulante" which costs
10 fr., and gives us, moreover, what could not hitherto be obtained with an
apparatus containing freezing mixtures the means of freezing a decanter of
water or a bottle of champagne. The apparatus, in a case, packed for
travelling, with 20 kilogrammes of refrigerating materials and a measure,
costs, at present, only 1_l._--_Popular Science Review._


_The "Cybele Hibernica."_--The invaluable work which Mr. Watson
achieved for England is being imitated on the other side of the Irish
Channel. Messrs. Moore & More have issued a volume upon the subject of the
distribution of Irish plants, and the facts it lays before the botanical
public are both numerous and interesting. Taking the number of species for
Britain proper at Mr. Watson's estimate of 1,425 species, the authors of
the "Cybele Hibernica" claim for Ireland about 1,000 species. Of the 532
plants of the British type, Ireland has all, or very nearly so. The
Atlantic type is the only other one where she has decidedly more than half,
forty-one species out of seventy. Of the boreal species, (Highland,
Scottish, and intermediate types taken together,) although there is not a
single one of the twelve provinces in which there is not a hill of upward
of 2,000 feet in altitude, Ireland has only 106 species out of 238. Of the
458 English and local species she has just over one half; and, finally, out
of the 127 Germanic species only 18.

------

    Original.

    New Publications.


  History Of England,
  from the Fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony
  Froude, M. A. Vols. VII., VIII., IX. and X. 12mo. New York: Charles
  Scribner & Co.

The four volumes of this work which are now before us carry the history of
the reign of Elizabeth from her accession to the death of Maitland and
Grange, and the consequent extinction of the Mary Stuart party in 1573. The
wars and troubles in Ireland, the invasion of Ulster, the insurrections and
death of Shan O'Neil, the quarrels of the Ormonds and the Desmonds; the
career of John Knox; the reign of Mary Queen of Scots; the English maritime
adventures of the sixteenth century; and the St. Bartholomew massacre, are
some of the exciting topics which Mr. Froude touches with his brilliant
pen, and upon which he lavishes his wonderful powers of narration and his
skill of dramatic arrangement. That our readers should be satisfied with
the pictures he presents to them is not to be expected. They must not look
in his pages for candor or judicial calmness. They will find Mary Stuart
painted here in darker and more horrible colors than in any other modern
work; John Knox lauded as "the one supremely great man that Scotland
possessed;" and the Huguenot massacre detailed with all the exaggerations
and harrowing circumstances which the partisan spirit of former historians
has spread about it. Mr. Froude is too anxious to make an effective story
ever to be an honest historian. A picturesque grouping of events and
persons has a temptation for his refined literary taste which often
overcomes the cardinal principle of historical composition, to tell the
truth and the whole truth. The extravagant admiration of the Tudor dynasty
with which he began to write has not cooled with the progress of his
labors. The fealty which he held to Henry and Edward he has now transferred
unshaken to Elizabeth; but there is this to be said for him, that
Elizabeth, with all her many faults, (and now and again even Mr. Froude
recognizes some of them,) possessed many really great qualities, which the
most uncompromising of her enemies must admire.

{574}

We have no purpose to go into the vexed question of the character of Mary
Queen of Scots; but it is only fair to mention that Mr. Froude fortifies
his unfavorable conclusions by copious references to authorities which have
only recently been brought to light, and that he has enjoyed in particular
a free use of the important manuscript archives of Simancas to which
historians were so long denied access.


  The Student Of Blenheim Forest; or,
  The Trials of a Convert.
  By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. John Murphy & Co. Baltimore.

This is a new and revised edition of an old work. It is a narrative of the
trials of a convert from Protestantism to the Catholic Church at the time
it was written. These trials, thank God, are daily becoming less as the
doctrine and practice of the church become better known, and prejudice and
misrepresentation disappear. Not every convert is called to pass through
such trials as the hero of this tale, although all should have the same
willingness to suffer for Christ, to give up friends and worldly hopes
rather than be untrue to one's conviction.

The scene is laid in Virginia, and gives us a vivid picture of Southern
life. We think, in a book intended for general reading and the diffusion of
Catholic truth, it would be better to omit unfriendly allusion to what the
authoress calls the "cold customs of the North."


  Studies In English; Or,
  Glimpses Of The Inner Life Of Our Language.
  By M. Schele de Vere, LL.D., Professor of Modern Languages in the
  University of Virginia. London: Trübner & Co. New-York: Charles Scribner
  & Co. Printed at the Riverside Press, Cambridge.

This is one of the few American books we are called upon to notice which
make a real and important addition to any solid and useful branch of
learning outside of the circle of the physical sciences. It is a thoroughly
scholarly production, full of the most instructive information regarding
the history, formation, and component elements of the English language.
This information is communicated not in a dry, technical, and
college-text-book manner, but in a graceful, charming, and entertaining
style, rich in illustrations and apt references to classic authors, which
makes the reading of the book a true pleasure. Happily, the author does not
ride the Anglo-Saxon or any other hobby, but does full justice to the
Latin, Celtic, and other elements of the language. It is especially
interesting to the Catholic reader to notice the abundant evidence the
author furnishes of the ineffaceable impress the Catholic religion has
stamped upon the English language. It is impossible to overestimate the
importance of a thorough study and right understanding of _words_ as
the signs of thoughts, the vehicles of the transmission of truths, the
current coin of the intellectual kingdom. It is this which is one great
secret of the power possessed by such great masters of the divine faculty
of speech as Dr. Brownson and Dr. Newman. Sophists, like Carlyle, corrupt
thought by corrupting language, and confused, inconsistent reasoners, like
Dr. Pusey, obscure truth by obscuring language. The volume before us will
prove an invaluable aid to the scholar who wishes to study the pure, good,
sound sense, and correct use of our mother tongue. We think the author
betrays some English prejudice, in ascribing a peculiar faculty of
understanding the genuine doctrine of the Scriptures to the English people.
This is a spice of the Anglican "True Church" theory, which all the rest of
mankind laugh at. We think, also, that he somewhat exaggerates the
excellence of the English language, and its influence on the world. We were
reminded while reading his eulogium on the English language of the verse of
Kenelm Digby:

  "Greek's a harp we like to hear,
  Latin hath a trumpet clear,
  Italian rings like marriage-bells,
  While Spain her solemn organ swells,
  French with many a frolic mien
  Tunes her jocund violin,
  The German beats her heavy drum
  As Russian's clashing symbols come;
  But Britain's sons may well rejoice,
  _For English is the human voice._"

The English people are proud, and the American people are vain of a fancied
superiority in all things, except the fine arts, over the rest of mankind.
Neither are aware how far behind some other nations they are in many of the
highest branches of science and literature. A little boasting will,
therefore, add to the popularity of an author in the English language, as
indeed it will in any other.
{575}
We will not quarrel over this point with Professor De Vere, for nothing is
more difficult than a precisely accurate judgment concerning the relative
merits of the principal modern languages. We have a mother tongue with
which we have every reason to be satisfied, and therefore let us try to use
it well, and preserve it from corruption. On this head, we have great
reason to fear for the future, and therefore we give a hearty welcome to
the learned professor's suggestion that an English Academy should be
constituted, which shall decide all questions respecting the spelling,
pronunciation, and right use of English words.

It is enough to say that this volume is from the Riverside press to
guarantee its typographical excellence, and we hope this circumstance will
counterbalance, in those minds disposed to be rigid in excluding everything
which has not the Boston stamp, the fact that the author hails from
Virginia.


  Antoine De Bonneval.
  A Tale of Paris in the days of St. Vincent de Paul. By Rev. W. H.
  Anderdon. Kelly & Piet, Baltimore.

In this narrative are portrayed some of the most exciting scenes in French
history. It tells of that period in which Richelieu, Mazarin, St. Vincent
de Paul, and Monsieur Olier figured so largely, and whose history is so
suggestive to the thoughtful reader. The style is vigorous and the volume
worthy of a place in a Sunday-school or parochial library.


  Etudes Philologiques Sur Quelques
  Langues Sauvages De L'amerique.
  Par N. O., Ancien Missionnaire.
  Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 55 Grande Rue St. Jacques. 1866.

The Indian dialects of North America deserve a more attentive study than
they have yet received. If the inquirer did no more than confine his
researches to the languages spoken by the Algic tribes, (to use an epithet
happily devised by Schoolcraft to designate the native races found east of
the Alleghanies,) the compensation would be fairly worth the work. Resolved
into two groups, the Algonquin and Iroquois, these varieties of speech
present contrasts so striking and analogies so rare as to forbid the theory
of a derivation from a common stock. The words of these two families of
tongues are not only wholly dissimilar, but are, for the most part,
mutually unpronounceable. The Algonquin cannot articulate an _f_ or an
_r_; while the Iroquois, to whom these sounds are familiar, can make
nothing of a _b_ or an _m_. The two languages, with the doubtful
exception of a corrupt dialect, and then in words evidently borrowed from
the conqueror, agree in little else than an odd aversion to the letter
_l_, and, we may add perhaps, in a plentiful lack of adjectives and a
most oppressive multiplicity of _verbs_.

It is in this last-mentioned field (the analysis of Algic verbs) that our
author N. O. has exerted his main strength, and has given the best proofs
of his linguistic skill. The Algonquin verb to love, _sakih_,
expatiates, in the course of twenty-two pages of this treatise, into two
active and three passive voices, served by eight moods, three past tenses,
two futures, and two first persons plural, with participles and gerunds to
match; and all subject to fifteen accidents, corresponding to the various
modifications of Semitic verbs. The Iroquois verb, though in quite another
way, rejoices also in conjugations, moods, tenses, and numbers not unworthy
of comparison with the Greek, subject to secondary forms more or less
resembling the Semitic. The Algonquin participle may assume a negative
shape, and it is this nullifying syllable _si_ that mainly
distinguishes the two words which in that language signify Catholic and
Protestant. The Catholics are _tcipaiatikonamatizodjik_, literally,
"they who make upon their own persons the sign of the wood of the dead body
of Christ." "Protestants" (having as usual failed to make themselves
understood except as deniers of Catholicity, and who are _nothing if not
negative_) are _tcipaiatikonamatizosigok_, "those who do _not_
make upon themselves the sign of the wood of the dead body of Christ." It
is to be hoped that the theologians of the two professions have shorter and
more convenient terms when they resort, as they have been known to do, to
the refreshment of reciprocal objurgation.

We regret that we cannot go into details. The book is pleasantly written,
lucidly arranged, and full of satisfactory evidence of a keen perception of
philological distinctions. We cordially recommend it to those who are
ambitious to gain an insight into the philosophy of the languages, before
they also (we mean the languages) take their inevitable turn to be numbered
with the dead.


{576}

  The Literary Character Of The Bible.
  A Lecture delivered before the Wilmington Institute.
  By H. Beecher Swoope, Attorney-at-law.

The author delivered and now publishes this as "A Lawyer's tribute to the
Bible," and it is surely a very graceful one. It shows a just appreciation
of the literary excellences of the sacred volume, of the grandeur of its
history, the depth of its philosophy, the sublimity of its poetry. We
dislike, however, this consideration of the inspired volume merely as a
literary production, without keeping in view its sacred character as the
word of God. Containing as it does, the revelation of God's infinite
perfections, it must necessarily contain all that is most beautiful,
profound, sublime. We agree with the author that, "in order to bring out
all the hidden beauties of the original Scriptures, we need a new
translation brought fully up to the present standard of our language," and
that "our present version of the Bible is sublime, grand, and beautiful,
only because many of the ideas and conceptions are so essentially great and
lofty that they necessarily appear magnificent in the most artless dress."


  Catholic Anecdotes; Or, The Catechism In Examples.
  Illustrating the Sacraments.
  By the Brothers of the Christian Schools.
  Translated from the French by Mrs. J. Sadlier.
  New-York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

This is the third and last part of this series of anecdotes. They are
intended to assist those engaged in teaching the Christian doctrine, by
giving them examples illustrative of the subject they may be teaching. They
are arranged in the same order as the subject matter of the Catechism, and
are well adapted for this purpose.


  Lives And Times Of The Roman Pontiffs.
  2 vols. Sadliers.

This great work, in two large quarto volumes of nearly 1000 pages each, is
a translation from the French of the Chevalier Artaud de Montor. The author
is both a well-informed historian and an elegant writer. Although there are
some faults in the translation, and some typographical errors, the value of
the work is nevertheless very great, and it is a noble addition to our
Catholic literature. There is much beauty in the mechanical execution, and
the illustrations are numerous. Many of the portraits and other
illustrations are excellent, though a few are quite indifferent. The
preface is carelessly written, and has not the excellence which ought to
characterize the introduction to such a great work. The hand of a finished
scholar would have done great good in retouching the whole work, which is,
notwithstanding its minor defects, on the whole a superb one and a credit
to its publishers.


  Christianity And Its Conflicts, Ancient And Modern.
  By E. E. Marcy, A.M.
  New-York: Appleton & Co.
  For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street.

This work comes upon our table just as we are going to press. A rapid
glance over its contents shows us that it presents a comprehensive view of
the church and its work, contrasted with the vain and fruitless attempts
made by her enemies to set up a rival system of Christianity. It is a work
which will be widely read and excite no little interest, and deserves at
our hands a more extended critical notice, which we propose to give it in
our next issue. It is not an ordinary book of controversy, and we advise
our readers in the mean time to get a copy and read
it.


H. McGrath, Philadelphia, announces a new and illustrated volume of Poems,
by E. A. S.


  Books Received.

From P. O'Shea, New-York.
The Beauties of Faith; or, Power of Mary's Patronage.
Leaves from the Ave Maria. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 272 and 145. Price, $2.


From Charles Scribner & Co., New-York.
  Liber Librorum; its Structure, Limitations, and Purpose.
  A friendly communication to a reluctant sceptic.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 232. Price, $1.50.

  Studies in English; or, Glimpses of the Inner Life of our Language.
  By M. Schele de Vere, LL.D. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $2.50.


From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New-York.
Peter of Castle and the Fetches.
By the Brothers Banim.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 348. Price, $1.50.


From M. Doolady, New-York.
The History of Pendennis, etc.
By W. M. Thackeray.
1 vol. 16mo, pp. 479. Diamond Ed.


From the author.
Dion and the Sibyls; a Romance of the First Century.
By Miles Gerald O'Reilly, H. M. Colonial Secretary in Bermuda. 2 vols. 8vo
Richard Bentlev, London.


From Leypoldt & Holt, New-York.
  Fathers and Sons. A Novel.
  By Ivan Sergheievitch Turgeneff.
  Translated from the Russian by Eugene Schuyler, Ph.D.
  1 vol. 12mo. Price, $1.50.

  The Man with the Broken Ear;
  from the French of Edmond About.
  By Henry Holt. 1 vol. l2mo. Price, $1.50.


From P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia.
  Stories of the Commandments;
  The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy;
  Caroline, or Self-Conquest.
  Being vols. 16, 17, and 18 of the Young Catholic's Library. Price, 50
  cents each.

------

{577}

    The Catholic World.

    Vol. V., No. 29.--August, 1867.


  Original.

  Guettée's Papacy Schismatic. [Footnote 176]

  [Footnote 176: See The Catholic World, July, 1867.]


M. Guettée, it will be remembered, undertakes to establish two propositions
--first, "The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the
authority of divine right which he has since sought to exercise; and
second, The pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of divine
right over the whole church was the real cause of the division," or schism
between the East and the West. To the first proposition, we have replied,
the bishop of Rome is in possession, and it is for the author to prove that
he is not rightfully in possession. This he can do only by proving either,
first, that no such title by divine right was ever issued; or, second, that
it vests in an adverse claimant. He sets up no adverse claimant, but
attempts to make it appear that no such title as is claimed was ever
issued. This he attempts to do by showing that the proofs of title usually
relied on by Catholic writers are negatived by the Holy Scriptures and the
testimony of the fathers and councils of the first eight centuries. We have
seen that he has signally failed so far as the Holy Scriptures and the
fathers of the first three centuries are concerned; nay, that instead of
proving his proposition, he has by his own witnesses refuted it, and proved
that the title did issue, and did vest in St. Peter, and consequently now
vests in the bishop of Rome as Peter's successor.

This alone is enough for us, and renders any further discussion of the
first proposition unnecessary. After the testimony of St. Cyprian, who is
his own witness, the author really has nothing more to say. He has lost his
case. But, ignorant of this, he proceeds in the fourth division of his work
to interrogate the fathers and councils of the fourth and fifth centuries,
but even less successfully, as we now proceed to show. We only beg the
reader to bear in mind that we are not adducing our proofs of the papacy by
divine right, but are simply examining the proofs the author adduces
against it. We do not put forth the strength of our cause, which is not
necessary in the present argument; we are only showing the weakness of the
case the author makes against us.

The author attempts to devise an argument against the papal authority from
the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea. This canon, as he cites it,
reads: "Let the ancient custom be preserved that exists in Egypt, Lybia,
and Pentapolis, that the bishop of Alexandria have authority in all these
countries, since that has also passed into a custom for the bishop of Rome.
{578}
Let the churches at Antioch and in the other provinces preserve also their
privileges." It must not be supposed that the author cites the canon with
any degree of exactness, or faithfully renders it; but let that pass. From
this canon two consequences, he contends, necessarily follow: first, That
"the council declared that the authority of the bishop of Rome extended
over a limited district, like that of the bishop of Alexandria; and second,
That this authority was only based on usage," (p. 95.)

But the authority of the bishop of Rome was not in question before the
council, for that nobody disputed. "The object of the canon," the author
himself says, pp. 93, 94, "was to defend the authority of the bishop of
Alexandria against the partisans of Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, who
refused to recognize it in episcopal ordinations; .... therefore was merely
to confirm the ancient customs respecting these ordinations, and, in
general, the privileges consecrated by ancient usages. Now, according to an
ancient custom Rome enjoyed certain prerogatives that no one contested. The
council makes use of this fact in order to confirm the similar prerogatives
of Alexandria, Antioch, and other churches."

The question before the council, and which it met by this canon, evidently
was not the primacy of the see of Rome--although it would seem from the
form in which the papal legate, Paschasinus, quoted it, without
contradiction, in the council of Chalcedon, that the council of Nicaea took
care to reserve that primacy--but certain customary rights, privileges, and
dignities which the bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and some other churches
held in common with the bishop of Rome. As the ancient custom was preserved
in the Roman Church, the council says, so let it be in Alexandria, Antioch,
and other churches. The council refers to the custom in Rome as a reason
for confirming the similar custom which had obtained elsewhere, and which
had been violated by Meletius of Lycopolis in Egypt, and by his partisans.

To understand this, we must recollect that prior to the fall of the great
patriarchates of Alexandria and the East, the administration of
ecclesiastical affairs was less centralized than at present. Now nearly
all, if not all bishops depend immediately on the Holy See, but in the
early ages they depended on it only mediately. The bishops of a province or
of a patriarchate depended immediately on their exarch, metropolitan, or
patriarch, and only mediately through him on the bishop of Rome. The
appointment or election of the patriarch, and of the exarch or metropolitan
of a church independent of any patriarch, as were the churches of Asia
Minor, Pontus, and Thrace, needed the papal confirmation, but not their
suffragans, or the bishops subject to their immediate jurisdiction. The
patriarch or metropolitan confirmed their election, ordained or deposed
them by his own authority, subject of course to appeal to Rome. Lycopolis,
by ancient custom or canons of the fathers, depended on the bishop of
Alexandria, who was its bishop's immediate superior. For some reason,
Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, had been deposed by the bishop of
Alexandria, and deprived of his functions; but he refused to submit,
ordained bishops by his own authority, contrary to the ancient custom, and
created a schism, was to meet this case, and others like it, that the
council decreed the sixth canon.

The authority confirmed by that canon was the authority of patriarchs, as
they were subsequently called, and of metropolitans by usage independent of
any patriarchal jurisdiction, and therefore the authority of the bishop of
Rome which it recognized as derived from usage, could have been only his
authority as metropolitan of the Suburbicarian churches, called the Roman
territory, or as patriarch of the West.
{579}
That this authority was limited, and dependent on ancient usage or custom,
nobody disputes; but this is distinct from his authority as supreme pontiff
or governor of the whole church. There are instances enough on record of
metropolitan churches, like Aquileia, and those of Illyrium and Bulgaria,
disputing their immediate dependence on the bishop of Rome, that never
dreamed of calling in question his authority as supreme pontiff, or
governor of the whole church. The schismatic Armenians do not deny and
never have denied the supreme authority in the whole church of the bishop
of Rome; they only assert that the pope gave to their apostle, Gregory the
Illuminator, and to his successors, the independent government of the
church in Armenia. St. Cyprian depended on the bishop of Rome, and
acknowledged the papal authority, but it is questionable if he depended on
him as patriarch of the West. We suspect Carthage was independent of
patriarchal jurisdiction, and that St. Cyprian had no superior but the
pope. However this may have been, the fact that churches did not depend
immediately on the bishop of Rome did not in any sense deny or impair his
universal authority as supreme pontiff. So the argument against the papacy
from the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea, like the author's other
arguments, proves nothing to his purpose.

M. Guettée, in his blind hatred of Rome, after having alleged the authority
of the council of Nicaea in his own favor, undertakes to prove that it was
no council of the church at all, but merely a council of the empire. He
labors hard to prove that it was convoked by the Emperor Constantine by
virtue of his imperial authority alone, that the emperor presided in its
sessions, and confirmed and promulgated its acts. Does he not see that if
it was so, the council had no ecclesiastical authority, and therefore that
its acts have no bearing on the question before us? If anything is certain,
it is that the church, as a polity, is independent of the state, and that
civil rulers or magistrates, as such, have no authority in her government.
Civil rulers have often usurped authority over the church and oppressed
her: they did so at Constantinople, as Gregory III. complains; they
attempted to do so all through the middle ages in the West, and they do so
now to a most fearful extent in the Russian empire, as in all European
Protestant states; but the authority they exercise is usurped, and is
repugnant to the very nature and constitution of the church. Our Lord said,
"My kingdom is not of this world." The Non-united Greeks as well as
Catholics hold that there is and can be no oecumenical council without the
bishop of Rome to convoke it, preside over it, and to confirm and
promulgate its acts; and hence they confess their inability to hold an
oecumenical council, and therefore really acknowledge that they are not the
Catholic Church in its integrity though they claim to hold the orthodox
faith. They admit the Roman Church is the primatial see, and that the
presidency of a general council belongs to the bishop of Rome by the right
and dignity of his see. If he did not preside in the council of Nicaea in
person or by his legates or representatives, and approve formally or
virtually its acts, it could not, by their own doctrine, have the authority
of a general council. The confirmation and promulgation of its canons by
the emperor might make them laws or edicts of the empire, but could not
make them canons of the church.

It would be no difficult matter to prove that the author is as much out in
his facts as in his inferences. The universal church has recognized the
council of Nicaea as a legitimate council, and there are ample authorities
to prove that its convocation and indiction were at the request or with the
assent of the Roman pontiff, that he presided over it by his legates,
Osius, bishop of Cordova, and Vitus and Vincentius, two Roman presbyters;
that he virtually, if not formally, confirmed and published its acts; and
that whatever the emperor did was merely executory; but the question is
foreign to our present argument, and we have no space to indulge in
extraneous or irrelevant discussions.
{580}
If we were endeavoring to prove the papacy, we should adduce the proofs;
but our line of argument requires us only to refute the reasons the author
alleges for asserting that the papacy is schismatic. If the council of
Nicaea was simply an imperial council, we have nothing to do with it; if it
was a true general council of the church, it makes nothing for the author,
for the sixth canon, the only one relied on, has, as the author cites it,
no reference to the jurisdiction of the Holy Apostolic See of Rome.

M. Guettée pretends that the third canon of the second general council, the
first of Constantinople, contains a denial of the papal authority by divine
right. The canon, as he cites it, which is only the concluding part of it,
says: "Let the bishop of Constantinople have the primacy of honor
(_priores honoris partes_) after the bishop of Rome, _because
Constantinople is the new Rome._" Hence he concludes that as the primacy
conferred on the bishop of Constantinople was only a primacy of honor, the
bishop of Rome had only a primacy of honor; and as the primacy of honor was
conferred on the bishop of Constantinople because that city was the new
Rome, so the primacy of the bishop of Rome was conferred because he was the
bishop of old Rome, or the capital of the empire. The reasoning, which is
Guettéean, if we may coin a word, is admirable, and we shall soon see what
St. Leo the Great thinks of it. But the canon does not affect the
authority, rank, or dignity of the bishop of Rome; it simply gives the
bishop of Constantinople the precedence of the bishop of Alexandria, who
had hitherto held the first rank after the bishop of Rome. It conferred on
him no power, and took nothing from the authority of any one else. It was
simply a matter of politeness. Besides, the canon remained without effect.

From the second general council the author rushes, pp. 96, 97, to the
fourth, the council of Chalcedon, held under the pontificate of St. Leo
Magnus, in 451, and lights upon the twenty-eighth canon of that council,
which, as he gives it, reads: "In all things following the decrees of the
holy fathers, and recognizing the canon just read (the third of the second
council) by the one hundred and fifty bishops well beloved of God, we
decree and establish the same thing touching the most holy church of
Constantinople, the new Rome. Most justly did the fathers grant privileges
to the see of ancient Rome, because she was the reigning (capital) city.
Moved by the same motive the one hundred and fifty bishops well beloved of
God grant equal privileges to the most holy see of the new Rome, thinking,
very properly, that the city that has the honor to be the seat of the
empire and the senate should enjoy in ecclesiastical things the same
privileges as Rome, the ancient queen city, since the former, although of
later origin, has been raised and honored as much as the former. In
consequence of this decree the council subjected the dioceses of Pontus,
Asia, (Asia Minor,) and Thrace to the jurisdiction of Constantinople."

Of course the author cites the canon with his usual inexactness, and makes
it appear even more illogical and absurd than it really was. The alleged
canon professes to decree and establish the same thing decreed and
established by the one hundred and fifty bishops who composed the second
council, in their third canon, which as we have seen, was simply that the
bishop of Constantinople should have the primacy of honor after the bishop
of Rome, that is the second rank in the church. The canon, therefore, does
not deprive the Roman pontiff of his rank, dignity, and authority as
primate of the whole church, and therefore did not, as it could not, raise
the see of Constantinople to an equal rank and dignity with the see of
Rome. This was never pretended, and is not pretended by the author himself.
{581}
The council never could, without stultifying itself, have intended anything
of the sort, for it gave to the bishop of Rome the title of "universal
bishop," and it says expressly: "We consider the primacy of all and the
chief honor, according to the canons, should be preserved to the most
beloved of God, the archbishop of Rome." [Footnote 177] The Non-united
Greeks and the author himself concede that the Church of Rome was and is
the first church in rank and dignity.

    [Footnote 177: Act, xvi. col. 637. _Apud_ Kenrick.]

Whatever value, then, is to be attached to this twenty-eighth canon it did
not and was not designed to affect in any respect the rank, dignity, or
authority of the Roman pontiff. What was attempted by it was to erect the
non-apostolic see of Constantinople or Byzantium into a patriarchal see,
with jurisdiction over the metropolitans of Pontus, Asia Minor, Thrace, and
such as should be ordained in barbarous countries, that is, in countries
lying beyond the limits of the empire, and to give its bishop the first
rank after the patriarch of the West. It sought to reduce the bishop of
Alexandria from the second to the third, and the bishop of Antioch from the
third to the fourth rank, but it did not touch the power or authority of
either. It violated the rights and privileges of the metropolitans of
Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace, by subjecting them to a patriarchal
jurisdiction from which, by ancient usage, confirmed by the sixth canon of
the council of Nicaea, they were exempt.

The author relies on this canon because it asserts that the privileges of
the see of Rome were granted by the fathers, and granted _because_
Rome was the capital city of the empire. This sustains his position, that
the importance the fathers attached to the see of Rome was not because it
was the see of Peter, but because it was the see of the capital--a position
we showed, in our previous article, to be untenable and also that the
authority exercised by the Roman pontiff over the whole church, which he
cannot deny, was not by divine right, but by ecclesiastical right. But even
if this last were so, since there is confessedly no act of the universal
church revoking the grant, the power would be legitimate, and the author
and his friends the Non-united Greeks would be bound by a law of the church
to obey the Roman pontiff, and clearly schismatics in refusing to obey him.
But we have seen from St. Cyprian, the author's own witness, that the
primacy was conferred by our Lord himself on the Roman pontiff as the
successor of Peter to constitute him the visible centre and source of unity
and authority. Besides, a canon, beyond what it decrees or defines, is not
authoritative, and it is lawful to dispute the logic of a general council,
and even the historical facts it alleges, at least so far as they can be
separated from the definition or decree itself. The purpose of the canon of
Chalcedon was not to define or decree that the privileges of the see of
Rome were granted by the fathers, and because it was the see of the capital
of the empire, but to elevate the see of Constantinople to the rank and
authority of a patriarchal see, immediately after the see of Rome, and
simply assigns this as a reason for doing so; and a very poor reason it
was, too, at least in the judgment of St. Leo the Great, as we shall soon
see.

But there is something more to be said in regard to this twenty-eighth
canon of the council of Chalcedon. The council is generally accepted as the
fourth general council, but only by virtue of the papal confirmation, and
only so far as the pope confirmed its acts. In many respects the council
was a scandalous assembly, almost wholly controlled by the emperor and the
Byzantine lawyers or magistrates, who have no authority in the church of
God. The part taken by the emperor and civil magistrates wholly vitiated it
as a council of the church, and all the authority its acts had or could
have for the church was derived from their confirmation by St. Leo the
Great. But bad as the council was, the twenty-eighth canon never received
its sanction.
{582}
It was introduced by the civil magistrates, and when only one hundred and
fifty bishops, all orientals, out of the six hundred composing the council,
were present, and no more subscribed it. It was resisted by the legates of
the Roman pontiff and protested against; the patriarchal churches of
Alexandria and Antioch were unrepresented. Dioscurus, bishop of the former,
was excluded for his crimes, and Macarius of Antioch had just been deposed
by the emperor and council for heresy and expelled; a large number of
prelates had withdrawn, and only the rump of the council remained. It is
idle to pretend that the canon in question was the act even of the council,
far less of the universal church.

Now, either Leo the Roman pontiff had authority to confirm the acts of the
council of Chalcedon, and by his authority as supreme pastor of the church
to heal their defects and make them binding on the universal church, or he
had not. If he had, the controversy is ended, for that is precisely what
Mr. Guettée denies; if he had not, as Mr. Guettée contends, then the acts
of Chalcedon have in themselves no authority for the church, since through
the tyranny of the emperor Marcian and the civil magistrates it was not a
free council, and, though legally convoked and presided over, was not
capable of binding the church. The author may take which horn of the
dilemma he chooses, for the pope refused to confirm the twenty-eighth
canon, and declared it null and void from the beginning.

The fathers of the council, or a portion of them, in the name of the
council, addressed a letter to the Roman pontiff in which they recognize
him as the constituted interpreter of the words and faith of Peter for all,
explain what they have done, the motives from which they have acted, and
pray him "to honor their judgment by his _decrees_"--that is, confirm
their acts. St. Leo confirmed those of their acts that pertained to the
definition of faith, but refused to confirm the twenty-eighth canon, which
he annulled and declared void, as enacted without authority, and against
the canons.

Mr. Guettée says, pp. 97, 98, that the council did not ask the Roman
pontiff to confirm the canon in question, "but by his own decrees to honor
the judgment which had been rendered. If the confirmation of the bishop of
Rome had been necessary, would the decree of Chalcedon have been a
judgment, a promulgated decision, before that confirmation?" An
authoritatively "promulgated decision" certainly not; but the author
forgets that the canon had not been promulgated, and never became "a
promulgated decision." As to its being a judgment, a final or complete
judgment it was not, and the council, by calling it _nostrum
judicium_, do not pretend that it was. They present it to the Roman
pontiff only as an inchoate judgment, to be completed by his confirmation.
They tell the pope that his legates have protested against it, probably
because they wished to preserve to him its initiation, and that in adopting
it they "had deferred to the emperor, to the senate, and the whole imperial
city, thinking only to finish the work which his holiness, who always
delights to diffuse his favors, had begun." The plain English of which is,
We have enacted the canon out of deference to the civil authority and the
wishes of the imperial city, subject to your approval. "Rogamus igitur,
honora et tuis sententiis nostrum judicium. We pray you, therefore, to
honor our judgment by your decrees." [Footnote 178] If this does not mean
asking the pope to confirm their act or judgment, we know not what would so
mean. It is certain that St. Leo himself, who is one of the author's
anti-papal authorities, so understood it, as is evident from his replies to
the emperor, the empress, and Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople, the
assertion of M. Guettée to the contrary notwithstanding.

    [Footnote 178: Opp. S. Leo, tom. i. col. 960-962. Migne's edition.]

{583}

The Emperor Marcian wrote expressly to St. Leo, begging him to confirm by
his apostolic authority the acts of the council, and especially the
twenty-eighth canon, because without his confirmation they would have no
authority. The Empress Pulcheria wrote him to the same effect, and finally
Anatolius did the same. To the emperor the Roman pontiff replied, and set
forth the reasons why he could not confirm the canon in question. He makes
short work with M. Guettée's doctrine, broached in the second council, and
extended in the twenty eighth canon of Chalcedon, that the rank and
authority of the see derive from the rank, authority, or importance of the
city in which it is established. He denies that the fact that
Constantinople was the second capital of the empire, or the new Rome, was
any reason for elevating its bishop to the patriarchal rank and authority.
"Let, as we desire, the city of Constantinople have its glory, and,
protected by the right hand of God, may it long enjoy the reign of your
clemency; but different is the reason of secular things from the reason of
divine things, and no edifice will be stable unless it is built on that
rock (St. Matthew xvi. 18) which the Lord has laid for a foundation. Who
covets what is not his due shall lose what is his own. Let it suffice this
man, (Anatolius,) that by the aid of your piety and my assent and favor, he
has obtained the episcopate of so great a city. Let him not disdain the
imperial city because he cannot make it an apostolic see; and let him by no
means hope to enlarge his power at the expense of others."

It is very clear from this that St. Leo did by no means concede that the
bishop of Constantinople was entitled to be clothed with patriarchal power
and take precedence of the patriarch of Alexandria, because he had his see
in what had become the second capital of the empire. "Alia ratio est rerum
secularium, alia divinarum; nec prater illam petram quam Dominus in
fundamento posuit, stabilis erit nulla constructio;" that is, only what is
built on Peter, the rock, will stand, and in vain do you build on the
greatness, splendor, and dignity of earthly cities. [Footnote 179] If M.
Guettée had remembered this, he would never have turned from the chair of
Peter, or allowed himself to be seduced by the nationalism of the Greek
sophists, and the misguided ambition of the bishop of Constantinople. Alas!
he left his father's house, and, famished in the far country to which he
has wandered, he is forced to feed on husks with the swine he tends. What
can that man think of the church of God who holds that the dignity and
authority of its prelates have only a secular origin?

    [Footnote 179: Ibidem, ad Marcianum Augustum, epist. civ.]

St. Leo unequivocally refuses, in his reply to the solicitations of the
emperor, to confirm the twenty-eighth canon. "And why," asks the author, p.
98, "did he refuse his assent? Because the decree of Chalcedon took from
the bishop of Alexandria the second rank, and the third from the bishop of
Antioch, and was in so far forth contrary to the sixth canon of Nicaea, and
because the same decree prejudiced the rights of several primates or
metropolitans," that is, of Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace. This we think
was reason enough, and proves that the Roman pontiff was not only the chief
custodian of the faith, but also of the canons. "The bishop of
Constantinople," says St. Leo, as cited by the author, "in spite of the
glory of his church, cannot make it apostolic; he has no right to
aggrandize it at the expense of churches whose privileges, established by
the canons of the holy fathers, and settled by the decrees of the venerable
council of Nicaea, cannot be unsettled by perversity nor violated by
innovation." St. Leo in the whole controversy appears as the defender of
the canons against innovation, and of the catholicity of the church against
Greek nationalism.

{584}

The author continues, same page, "In his letter to the Empress Pulcheria,
St. Leo declares that he has 'annulled the decree of Chalcedon by the
authority of St. Peter.' These words seem at first sight to mean that he
claimed for himself a sovereign [supreme] authority in the church in the
name of St. Peter." Undoubtedly, not only at first sight, but at every
sight. The Pope uses the strongest terms to be found in the Latin language,
and terms which can be used only by one having the supreme authority,
_irritus_ and _cassare_. He refuses to ratify it, declares it
null, and says, "per auctoritatem Beati Petri apostoli," he makes it void.
He could make no greater assumption of authority. "But," adds the author,
upon a more careful and unbiased examination of his letter and other
writings, "we are convinced that St. Leo only spoke as the bishop of an
apostolic see, and that in this character he claimed the right, in the name
of the apostles who founded his church, and of the Western countries which
he represented, to resist any attempt of the Eastern Church to decide alone
matters of general interest to the whole church," pp. 98, 99. If he is
convinced, we are not. If such was St. Leo's meaning, why did he not say
so? Why did he annul when he only meant that the canon was null, because
decreed by Orientals alone; or why did he not assign that reason for
annulling it, and not the reason that it was repugnant to the canons of the
holy fathers and the decrees of the Council of Nicaea?

"The proof that he regarded matters in this light," (p. 99,) "is that he
does not claim for himself any personal authority of divine origin,
descended to him from St. Peter, but that, on the contrary, he presents
himself as the defender of the canons, and looks upon the rights and
reciprocal duties of the churches as having been established by the fathers
and fixed by the council of Nicaea. He does not pretend that his church has
any exceptional rights, emanating from another source." This proof is
inconclusive. St. Leo had no occasion to claim personal authority for
himself, for whatever authority he had was official, not personal, and
inhered in him as the successor of Peter in the apostolic see of Rome, and
in this capacity he most assuredly did claim to have authority, when he
declared to the Empress Pulcheria, as we have seen, that, "by authority of
Peter, he annulled and made void and of none effect," the decree of
Chalcedon. What the author says he did not do, is precisely what he did do.
He does not annul and make void the decree by authority vested in him by
the canons, or which he holds by ecclesiastical right, but "by the
authority of Peter." He, moreover, was not defending the rights and
prerogatives of his own see, nor his authority as metropolitan, patriarch,
or supreme pontiff, for this was not called in question; the council most
fully recognized it, and in his letter defining the faith against Eutyches,
it professed to hear the voice of Peter. He was defending the canons, not
for himself, nor for churches subjected to him as patriarch of the West,
but for Alexandria, Antioch, and the metropolitans of Pontus, Asia Minor,
and Thrace, which the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon sought to subject to
the bishop of Constantinople; and he therefore had no occasion to dwell on
the exceptional rights, or rights not derived from the canons, but from God
through Peter, of the Roman Church. It sufficed him to exercise them, which
he did do effectually.

"By ecclesiastical right he is the first bishop of the church," the author
continues; "besides, he occupies the apostolic see of the West; in these
characters he _must_ interfere and prevent the ambition of one
particular church from impairing rights that the canons have accorded to
other bishops too feeble to resist." Wherefore must he do so? In these
characters he might offer his advice, he might even refuse his assent to
acts he disapproved; but he could not authoritatively interfere in any
matters outside of his own particular diocese, or his own patriarchate, far
less to annul and make void acts which did not concern him in either of
these characters.
{585}
He had no right to interfere in the way he did, except as supreme pontiff
and head of the whole church, and Roman theologians have never claimed for
the Roman pontiff greater power than St. Leo exercised in the case of the
council of Chalcedon.

"After reading all that St. Leo has written against the canon of the
council of Chalcedon, it cannot be doubtful what he meant." We agree to
that, nor is it doubtful what he did. He annulled and made void by
authority of Peter an act of a general council, and null and void it
remained.

"He does not claim for himself the autocracy which Roman theologians make
the groundwork of the papal authority." Very likely not, for nobody claims
it for the Roman pontiff, as we showed in our former article. He is the
supreme pastor, not the autocrat, of the church. "In his letter to the
fathers of the council of Chalcedon he only styles himself 'guardian of the
Catholic faith and of the constitutions of the fathers,' and not chief and
master of the church by divine right." Does he deny that he is chief and
master by divine right? Certainly not, and no one can read his letters
without feeling that in every word and syllable he speaks as a superior, in
the language and tone of supreme authority. His reply to Anatolius is such
as could be written only by a superior not only in rank, but in authority,
and while replete with the affection of a father, it is marked by the
majestic severity of supreme power.

The refusal of St. Leo to confirm the twenty-eighth canon gave rise to the
report that he had refused to confirm the acts of the council, and the
Eutychians, against whom its definitions of faith were directed, began to
raise their heads and boldly assert that they were not condemned, that the
definitions of the council against them counted for nothing, since the
Roman pontiff had refused to confirm them, as he refused to confirm the
doings of the Ephesian Latrocinium. The imperial court became alarmed, and
the emperor wrote to St. Leo for an explicit statement of what he had done.
St. Leo answers that he has confirmed all the decrees of Chalcedon defining
the faith, but that he has not confirmed the decree erecting the church of
Constantinople into a patriarchal church. This fact does not seem to favor
the author's theory that the Roman pontiff was held to have only a primacy
of honor, nor that St. Leo did not claim universal jurisdiction.

It will have been observed that the council of Chalcedon undertakes to
support, very illogically indeed, the twenty-eighth canon on the authority
of the third canon of the first council of Constantinople, which gave the
bishop of Constantinople simply the primacy of honor after the bishop of
Rome. But St. Leo, in the letter to the empress just cited, denies the
authority of that canon, on the ground that it had never been communicated
to Rome, and therefore could have no effect.

We have dwelt at great length on the sixth canon of Nicaea, the third canon
of Constantinople, and twenty-eighth of Chalcedon, because they are the
author's three strongholds, and we have wished to show that they do not in
the least aid him--do in no sense contradict the papal authority, but, as
far as they go, tend to confirm it. The author claims St. Leo as a witness
against the Catholic doctrine of the papal supremacy, and we have thought
it well to show that he has in him about such a witness as he had in St.
Cyprian, or as he would have in our holy father, Pius IX., now gloriously
reigning. Leo Magnus is our ideal of a pope, or visible head of the
universal church, and we cannot sufficiently admire the hardihood or the
stupidity that would claim him as a witness against the primacy he adorned,
and the papal authority which he so gracefully and so majestically wielded,
and with such grand effects for the church and the empire.
{586}
No nobler man, no truer saint, no greater pontiff ever sat in the chair of
Peter, and no higher or more magnificent character is to be found in all
history. _Sancte Leo Magne, ora pro nobis_.

The author says, p. 102: "The canons of the first oecumenical councils
throw incontestably a strong light upon the prerogatives of the bishop of
Rome. They are the complement to each other. The twenty-eighth canon
contains nothing less than the doctrine we defend, even though the
opposition of the West in the person of the bishop of Rome should strip it
of its oecumenical character, as certain theologians maintain." M. Guettée
finds but two canons that in any respect favor his doctrine, the third of
the second general council, and the twenty-eighth of the fourth, neither of
which was ever accepted by the universal church, and both of which have
remained from the first without Catholic authority. A doctrine sustained or
favored only by irregularity and violent innovation needs no refutation.
"St. Leo," the author continues, "did not protest against it, (the
twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon,) as opposed to the divine and universal
authority of the see of Rome, _for which he claimed only an
ecclesiastical primacy_, but simply because it infringed upon the sixth
canon of the council of Nicaea." That he claimed only an ecclesiastical
primacy for his see is not true, for he claimed to annul the canon _by
authority of Peter_. Nor did he object to it only because it infringed
the sixth canon of Nicaea, but because it contained a grave innovation in
the constitution of the church, and attempted to found the authority of
bishops on a temporal instead of a spiritual and apostolic basis. It
proposed to change entirely the basis of the pontifical authority, which
had hitherto rested on Peter, and to make it rest on the empire. The church
of Constantinople was not an apostolic see, and only the bishop of an
apostolic see could be clothed with patriarchal authority. This seems to us
to be the great objection of St. Leo. Therefore, he writes to the emperor,
as already cited: "Let not the bishop of Constantinople disdain the
imperial city, which he cannot make an apostolic see." Hitherto only
apostolic sees, and indeed only sees founded by Peter, had been clothed
with the authority of patriarchal sees; and to give to a non-apostolic and
non-Petrine church authority over other metropolitan churches was to strike
at apostolic authority itself, and especially at that of Peter. The whole
organization of the church was from the first based on Peter as the
immediate representative of Christ and prince of the apostles. The
twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon was therefore aimed at Peter, and in the
name and by the authority of Peter, whom he fully represented, St. Leo
annulled it, and declared it void, and the author, without knowing well
what he concedes, says: "St. Leo was right."

"One fact is certain, that they (the Roman pontiffs) did not convoke the
first four oecumenical councils, that they did not preside over them, and
that they did not confirm them." This is certain only of the second general
council, or first of Constantinople. But suppose it, what follows? Simply
that they were not councils of the church at all--which will be very
pleasant news to Unitarians and Rationalists, who wish a Christianity
without Christ--and can have the authority of general councils only by the
_ex-post facto_ sanction of the universal church; but, as the two
canons on which the author bases his anti-papal theory have never received
that sanction, they have no authority, and never have had any. Hence, the
author's theory, on any ground he chooses, has nothing in the church to
sustain it. We shall, therefore, pass over what he adduces to prove the
part taken by the civil authority in the councils, with the simple remark
that the acts of several of them depend entirely on the confirmation of the
Roman pontiff and the _ex-post facto_ sanction of the church for their
authority.

{587}

M. Guettée's proofs are not seldom proofs of the contrary of what he
alleges. "It is undeniable fact," he says, p. 118, "that the dogmatic
letter addressed by St. Leo to the fathers of the council was there
examined, and approved for this reason: that it agreed with the doctrine of
Celestine [his predecessor] and Cyril, confirmed by the council of
Ephesus." That the letter was read in the council, and that the council
adopted its definitions of faith, is true; but that it was approved for the
reason alleged does not appear from the proofs the author adduces. He
continues, pp. 118, 119: "At the close of the reading, the bishops
exclaimed: 'Such is the faith of the fathers; this is the faith of the
apostles. We all believe thus. Anathema to those who do not thus believe.
Peter has spoken by Leo. Thus taught the apostles. Leo teaches according to
piety and truth, and thus has Cyril taught.'" Any one not bent on proving
the papacy schismatic would gather from this that the bishops approved of
the letter because they recognized in it the doctrine of the apostles and
the tradition of the fathers.

The author imagines that he gets an argument against the papacy from St.
Leo's refusal to accept the title of _universal bishop_ offered him by
the council of Chalcedon, as we learn from Pope St. Gregory the Great. He
also thinks the argument is strengthened by the fact that St. Gregory
himself disclaimed it; and he therefore claims both of these great pontiffs
and great saints as witnesses against the pretensions of the bishops of
Rome. If they had believed in their jurisdiction by divine right over the
whole church, would they have refused the title of universal bishop?

John the Faster, Bishop of Constantinople, on some occasion summoned a
particular council, and signed its acts, which he transmitted to Pope
Pelagius II. as universal patriarch, for which, as St. Gregory says,
Pelagius, "in virtue of the authority of the apostle St. Peter, nullified
the acts of the synod." Gregory succeeded Pelagius, and immediately on his
accession to the pontificate wrote to the patriarchs of Alexandria,
Antioch, and Jerusalem, condemning the title, and warning them and the
whole church of the danger it threatened; and also he wrote to John the
Faster himself, admonishing him of the impropriety of the title, not only
as savoring of pride and vanity, but as involving a most serious error
against faith, and beseeching him to lay it aside, lest he be obliged to
cut him off from the communion of the church, and depose him from his
bishopric. He does not at all disclaim his own authority as supreme pastor
and governor of the universal church, but quietly assumes it. Thus, he
writes to the emperor Maurice, as cited by the author: "All who know the
gospel know that the care of the whole church was confided by our Lord
himself to Peter, the first (St. Gregory says _prince_) of all the
apostles. Indeed, he said to him, 'Peter, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep.'
Again he said to him: 'Satan has desired to sift thee as wheat; but I have
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and when thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren.' It was also said to him: 'Thou art Peter, and
upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it; and I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' He thus
received the keys of the celestial kingdom; the power to bind and loose was
given him; the care of all the church and the primacy
[_principatus_--principality, or primacy of jurisdiction] were
committed to him, and yet he did not call himself _universal apostle_.
But that holy man John, (bishop of Constantinople,) my brother in the
priesthood, [cosacerdos,] would fain assume the title of _universal
bishop_! O tempora! O mores!" (Pp. 212, 213.)

"It is certain," St. Gregory continues, "that this title was offered to the
Roman pontiff by the venerable council of Chalcedon, to honor Blessed
Peter, prince of the apostles.
{588}
But none of us has consented to use this particular title, [title of
singularity,] lest by conferring a special matter on one alone, all priests
would be deprived of the honor which is their due. How, then, while we are
not ambitious of the glory of a title which has been offered us, does
another, to whom no one has offered it, have the presumption to take it?"
(Pp. 214, 215.)

In his letter to Eulogius of Alexandria and Anastatius of Antioch, St.
Gregory is more explicit still, "As your holiness, whom I particularly
venerate, well knows, this title of _universal_, was offered by the
council of Chalcedon to the bishop [pontiff] of the apostolic see, which by
God's grace I serve. But none of my predecessors would use this impious
word, because in reality, if a patriarch be called _universal_, it
takes from all others the title of patriarch." The author, after quoting a
passage from another letter to Eulogius, adds: "Thus did Pope Gregory
condemn even in the person of the bishops of Rome the title of pope and
universal." But in this he is mistaken, as his own quotation shows.
Eulogius answers that he will not give the title of universal patriarch to
the bishop of Constantinople, but that he gives that of universal pope to
the Roman pontiff. "No," says St. Gregory, "if your holiness calls me
universal pope, you deny yourself what I should then be altogether." The
author interpolates in his quotation the copulative _and_, which is
not in St. Gregory's text. It is not to the title of pope that St. Gregory
objects, which was and is applied to simple presbyters, but the title
_universal_, which he will not permit to be applied to any man,
because it excludes others from all participation in the hierarchy, or even
the priesthood. If you call a man a universal presbyter, you deny that any
others are presbyters; if you call any one universal bishop, you exclude
all others from the episcopate; if you call any one universal patriarch,
you deny the patriarchate to all others; and if you call the bishop of Rome
universal pope, since as such he possesses the priesthood, and both the
apostolate and the episcopate in their plenitude, you exclude all others
from sharing the priesthood, the episcopate, or the apostolate, even the
pope himself from the church, and deny the solidarity of apostles, bishops,
and presbyters, asserted, as we have seen, by St. Cyprian.

Eulogius was priest, bishop, and patriarch, and as such was the brother of
the Roman pontiff. This brotherhood remained all the same, whether the
Roman pontiff had or not supreme jurisdiction over the whole church. When
Eulogius called St. Gregory, not, as the author says, pope _and_
universal, but universal pope, he denied this brotherhood, and deprived
himself of his own priestly, episcopal, and apostolic character. Hence, St.
Gregory, after saying to him and other bishops. "I know what I am, and what
you are; by your place or office, you are my brothers, by your virtues, my
fathers," he adds, in reference to the title of universal which Eulogius
had given him, "I beseech your holiness to do so no more in future, for you
take from yourself what you give in excess to another. I do not ask to
increase in dignities, but in virtues. I do not esteem that an honor by
which my brethren are deprived of theirs. For my honor is the honor of the
universal church, my honor is the unshaken firmness of my brethren. Then am
I truly honored when to no one is denied the honor that is his due. For, if
your holiness calls me universal pope, you deny that you are yourself what
I should be confessed to be universally. Sed absit hoc, Recedant verba quae
vanitatem inflant, et charitatem vulnerant." [Footnote 180]

    [Footnote 180: Opp. S. Gregorii Magni, lib. viii. epist. xxx. Migne's
    edition, tom, iii. col. 953.]

We may call the bishop of Rome pope of the universal church, but not
universal pope, nor universal bishop, because he only possesses in its
plenitude what is possessed in a degree by every member of the hierarchy,
and even now, as always, the pope addresses the bishops in communion with
him as "Venerable Brethren."
{589}
The argument against the claim of the bishop of Rome to jurisdiction in the
universal church, which the author attempts to build on the refusal of the
title of universal bishop by St. Leo, and that of universal pope, _papa
universalis_, by St. Gregory, is refuted by St. Gregory himself, as
cited in the volume before us, pp. 212, 213. The holy pontiff and doctor,
after asserting that our Lord had given to Peter the primacy of
jurisdiction, and confided to him the care of the universal church, adds
that Peter "did not call himself _universal apostle_." Peter was not
the only apostle, and the others could not be excluded from the
apostleship. He was prince of the apostles, their chief, the centre of
apostolic unity and authority, as St. Cyprian explains, and had the care
and jurisdiction (_principatus_) of the universal church, as Gregory
asserts, but inclusive, not exclusive of the other apostles. Peter held in
relation to the other apostles and the whole church all the supremacy
claimed by Catholics for the bishop of Rome. If, then, the refusal of the
title of universal apostle by St. Peter did not negative his supreme
authority, why should the refusal of the title of universal bishop or
universal pope by the bishops of Rome negative their supremacy, or their
primacy of jurisdiction in the whole church? Peter held that primacy, and
yet was not universal apostle, and why not, then, the bishop of Rome,
without being universal bishop or universal pope?

The author is unhappy in his witnesses, and they are all too decidedly
Roman to testify otherwise than against him. He cites other eminent fathers
of the fourth and fifth centuries, but he raises no new questions, and
makes no points in his favor not already met and disposed of; and we may,
therefore, pass over what he adduces, since, as we continue to remind our
readers, we are not adducing our proofs of the papal authority, but
refuting his arguments or pretended arguments against it.

In his fifth division, chapter, or section, the author examines "the
authority of the bishop of Rome in the sixth, seventh, and eighth
centuries." We have anticipated him in regard to St. Gregory the Great, the
most prominent papal figure in these centuries, and shown that this great
pontiff and doctor, who justly ranks along with St. Leo, offers no
testimony in support of the author's vain attempt to prove the papacy
schismatic. We have read this section of his book with care, but we find
that, while he shows very clearly that the Roman pontiff, to save the faith
and the constitution and canons of the church from the attacks of the
heretics and schismatics of the East, was obliged to intervene with his
supreme authority in the affairs of the Eastern churches more frequently
than in earlier ages, he brings forward nothing different from what has
already been refuted to prove that they did not possess the authority which
they exercised by divine right. We may say, then, that the author has
totally failed to establish his first conclusion, that "the bishop of Rome
did not for eight centuries possess the sovereignty of divine right which
he has since sought to exercise." The facts he adduces prove that during
those centuries the popes did exercise all the authority they have as
supreme pontiffs since exercised, and that they professed to exercise it by
divine right, and without any contradiction by the universal church. No
doubt the author has adduced instances in which general councils have
recognized it, and made it the basis of their action; but this does not
prove that the papal authority was conferred by the church, and was held
only by ecclesiastical right. No doubt the civil authority on more than one
occasion recognized it and made it the law of the empire, but this does not
prove that it was held as a grant of the emperor, but the reverse rather.
{590}
The author, then, has not refuted the argument from possession, turned the
presumption against the papacy, or proved that he and his friends the
Non-united Greeks are not decidedly schismatics in resisting the council of
Florence, in which both the East and West were represented and united.

The author, having failed to establish his first conclusion,
notwithstanding his misquotations, mistranslations, and misrepresentations
of facts, which are numerous and barefaced enough to excite the envy of his
editor, the Protestant Episcopal bishop of Western New-York, cannot prove
his second conclusion, namely: The pretension of the bishops of Rome to the
sovereignty of divine right over the whole church was the cause of the
division. This depends on the first, and falls with it; for it is necessary
to deny the divine authority of the pope to govern the whole church before
his assumption and exercise of that authority can be held to be a
usurpation, and the cause of the divisions which result from resistance to
it. Resistance otherwise is illegal, unauthorized, and conclusive evidence
of schism, or, rather, is undeniably itself schism. The resistance on the
part of the Eastern bishops and prelates to the Roman pontiff in the
exercise of his legitimate authority was schism, as much so as an armed
insurrection against the political sovereign is rebellion, and the rebels
cannot allege that the sovereign in the exercise of his legitimate
authority is the cause of their rebellion, and hold him responsible for it.

The author, forgetting that the pope is in possession, and that throughout
the presumption is in favor of his authority, argues as if the presumption
was on the other side, and the _onus probandi_ was on us. He,
therefore, concludes that every exercise of papal jurisdiction beyond the
patriarchate of the West is a usurpation, and resistance to it justifiable,
unless we are able to prove the contrary. We deny it, and maintain that it
is for him to prove that jurisdiction is usurped, and not held by divine
right. The laboring oar is in his hands. It is always for those who resist
authority to justify their resistance. The author can justify his
resistance to papal authority only by producing some law of God or some
canon of the universal church that restricts the jurisdiction of the Roman
pontiff to the Western patriarchate, and forbids him to exercise
jurisdiction over the whole church. A law or edict to that effect of the
empire or canon of the Eastern churches alone, could it be produced, would
not avail him; it must be a decision of the universal church, even
according to his own doctrine. He alleges no such act or canon, and can
allege none, for all the acts or canons of the universal church bearing on
the question, unhappily for him, are the other way.

The author adduces the third canon of the second general council, and the
twenty-eighth of the fourth, but these canons, having never been assented
to by the West, are without the authority of the universal church. And,
besides they do not distinctly deny the supreme authority of the bishop of
Rome, and only profess to confer the first rank and authority after the
Roman pontiff on the bishop of Constantinople. It is a strong presumption
against the author that he does not even allege any law or canon of the
universal church which the popes have violated, and his charge against them
is that of presenting themselves as defenders of the canons against
innovation, as in the refusal of St. Leo to accept the twenty-eighth canon
of Chalcedon.

But the author, with his usual facility, refutes himself, and shows that it
was not the pretension of the bishops of Rome, but the pretensions of the
bishop of Constantinople and of the secular government that caused the
division. We have seen that the third canon of the second general council,
and the twenty-eighth of the fourth, which was annulled by St. Leo, were in
violation of the canons, but were prompted by the ambition of the bishop of
Constantinople and the secular authority.
{591}
"We can perceive," says the author, p. 100. "in the struggles between the
bishops of Rome and Constantinople, respecting the twenty-eighth canon of
the council of Chalcedon, the origin of the dissensions which afterward led
to an entire rupture." And why did these dissensions lead to an entire
rupture? Certainly because the same parties continued to maintain the same
claims in relation to each other. The ground of the dissension remained
always the same. The question, then, is, which party in the beginning was
in the right, and which was in the wrong? "In principle," says the author
on the same page, "St. Leo was right;" that is, right in defending the
canons of the holy fathers and the decrees of the venerable council of
Nicaea against their violation and subversion by the innovations of
Constantinople and Chalcedon. St. Leo, the author himself says, presented
himself as the defender of antiquity and the canons of Nicaea; he must,
then, have been right not only in principle, but in fact. The real cause of
the division was not the pretension of the bishops of Rome to an authority
which they did not possess, but their refusal to assent to the violent and
shameless usurpations of Constantinople. The attitude of the popes and the
ground on which they resisted from first to last, were distinctly taken by
St. Leo in his letter to the emperor, Marcian, already cited: "Privilegia
ecclesiarum, sanctorum Patrum canonibus instituta et venerabilis Nicaenae
synodi fixa decretis, nulla possunt improbitate convelli, nulla mutari
novitate." [Footnote 181]

    [Footnote 181: Ad Marcianum Augustum, epist. 105, edit. Migne.]

But St. Leo "could not deny," says the author, "that one general council
had the same rights as another that had preceded it." But, even if so, none
of the innovations proposed by the East and opposed by the bishops of Rome
have ever had the authority of a general council. There is and can be, even
according to the author and his schismatic Greek friends, no general
council without the bishop of Rome; and the canons on which the author
relies were from the first resisted by the Roman pontiff, and, therefore,
could not override or abrogate the decrees of the council of Nicaea.

The whole controversy originated in the attempt to raise the see of
Constantinople, which was not an apostolic, a patriarchal or even a
metropolitan see, to the rank and authority of the first see in the church
after that of the see of Rome, contrary to the sixth canon of Nicaea, to
the constitution of the church, to ancient usage, and to the prejudice of
the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, and the metropolitans of Pontus,
Asia, (Minor.) and Thrace. On what ground does the author seek to defend
this attempt, always resisted by the Roman pontiffs and the whole West?
Simply on the ground that the rank and authority of a see are derived from
the splendor and importance of the city in the empire. He assigns and
pretends to assign no other ground. "The Nicaean council," he says, "in
consecrating the usage by which the bishop of Rome was regarded as the
first in honor in the church, had in view not as much the apostolic origin
of his see as the splendor which he acquired from the importance of the
city of Rome. ... Why, then, should not the bishop of Constantinople have
been received as second in rank, Constantinople having become the second
capital of the empire; since the bishop of Rome was first in rank, only
because of its position as the first capital?" (Pp. 100, 101.)

The argument is worthless, because its premises are false. In the first
place, the question is one of authority as well as of rank. In the second
place, the council of Nicaea did not consecrate the usage by which the
primacy, whether of honor or jurisdiction, was ascribed to the bishop of
Rome, but confirmed the usage by which the bishop of Alexandria, the bishop
of Antioch, and other metropolitans held a certain rank, and enjoyed
certain privileges, and gave as their reason that a like usage or custom
obtained with the bishop of Rome.
{592}
In the third place, the council says not one word about the splendor
acquired by the Roman pontiff from the importance of the city of Rome; and
we have proved that, whatever his rank and authority, he derived it from
the fact that his see was held to be the see of Peter, and he the successor
of Peter, the prince of the apostles. Finally, the author has no ground for
his assertion, except the third canon of the second general council and the
twenty-eighth of the fourth, the latter authoritatively annulled and the
former declared to be without effect by St. Leo, and neither ever receiving
the sanction or assent of the universal church. The ground on which the
bishop of Constantinople based his ambitious pretensions, that of being
bishop of the second capital of the empire, is wholly untenable. "Alia
ratio est rerum secularium, alia divinarum," says St. Leo. "We laughed,"
says Pope St. Gelasius as cited by the author, p. 198, "at what they (the
Eastern bishops) claim for Acacius (bishop of Constantinople) because he
was bishop of the imperial city. ... The power of the secular empire is one
thing, the distribution of ecclesiastical dignities is quite a different
thing. However small a city may be, it does not diminish the greatness of
the prince who dwells there; but it is quite as true that the presence of
the emperor does not change the order of religion; and such a city should
rather profit by its advantages to preserve the freedom of religion, by
keeping peaceably within its proper limits."

From first to last, one is struck, in reading the history of the
controversy, not only with the superior calmness and dignity of the Roman
pontiffs, but with their profound wisdom and catholic sense. They defend
throughout the catholicity of the church against Greek nationalism, and the
independence of the kingdom of Christ on earth against its subjection to
the secular empire, which was attempted and finally succeeded at
Constantinople, and is the case in Russia, Great Britain, and all modern
schismatical and heretical states and empires. The author sees and
appreciates nothing of this; he comprehends nothing of the church as the
mystic body of Christ, the continuous representation of the Incarnation;
his ideas are external, political, unspiritual, and, as far as appears from
his book, pagan rather than Christian. The church he recognizes, as far as
he recognizes any, is national, not catholic, and holds from the imperial
authority, not from Christ, and has no completeness in itself.

It was precisely in nationalism, in regarding the church as organized for
the Roman empire, not for the whole world, and in recognizing the authority
of the civil power in theological and ecclesiastical matters, as the author
himself unwittingly shows, that the Greek schism originated. The bishop of
Constantinople, having in the hierarchy no apostolic, patriarchal, or
metropolitan rank or authority beyond that which is held by every suffragan
bishop, was obliged, in order to defend his ambitious aspirations to the
second rank in the church, to give the hierarchy a secular origin, and to
fall back on the imperial authority to support him. The idea was pagan, not
Christian, and was but too acceptable to the Byzantine Caesars. In pagan
Rome the emperor was at once imperator and pontifex maximus, and held in
his own person the supreme authority in both civil and religious matters.
He preserved the tradition of this in Christian Rome, and continually
struggled to be under Christianity what he had been under paganism. In the
West the imperial pretensions were in the main successfully resisted,
though not without long and bitter struggles, which have not even yet
completely ended; but in the East, owing to the ambition and frequent
heresy of the bishop of Constantinople, rarely faithful to the church after
Constantinople became an imperial capital, and the great patriarchates of
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, weakened by the Arian, Nestorian,
monophysite, and monothelite heresies, and betrayed by the heretics, had
fallen, through the pride, treachery, and imbecility of the Byzantine
court, under the power of the Mohammedans, those bitter enemies of the
cross, the emperor was enabled to grasp the pontifical power, to bring the
administration of religion under his despotic control, to make and unmake,
murder or exile bishops at his will or the caprices of the ladies of his
court. Hence the Greek schism.

{593}

And this is what M. Guettée defends; and because the Roman pontiffs did all
in their power to resist such open profanation and secularizing of the
church, he has the impudence to contend that it was the usurpations of Rome
that caused the schism, and he has found a Protestant Episcopal bishop in
Western New-York ignorant enough or shameless enough to endorse him, and to
assure us that he is a Catholic in the true sense of the word!

Notwithstanding the author defends the usurpations of the imperial
authority and the ambitious pretensions of the courtly bishops of
Constantinople, and maintains that all the general councils held in the
East were convoked and presided over by the emperors, he does not blush to
object to the council of Florence on the ground that the reunion effected
in that council was brought about by the ambition of a few Eastern prelates
and the undue pressure of the emperor of Constantinople. If the
intervention of the emperor did not in his judgment vitiate the third canon
of the first council of Constantinople, or the twenty-eighth canon of
Chalcedon, or the fifth or sixth general council, what right has he to
pretend that a far less intervention on the emperor's part vitiated the
canons of the council of Florence? On the principles he has defended
throughout, the emperor may convoke, preside over a council, dictate and
confirm its acts, without detriment to its authority as a general council.
He is by his own principles, then, bound to accept the canons of Florence
as the voice of the universal church, for they were adopted by the East and
West united, and are and have been constantly adhered to by the West and
the Eastern churches proper, and resisted only by heretics and schismatics,
who have no voice in the church.

We need proceed no further. We have said enough to refute the author in
principle, and are tired of him, as must be our readers. We said in the
beginning that he had told us nothing in his book that we did not know
before; but we are obliged to confess that the examination of authorities
into which it has forced us has made us feel as we never felt before how
truly the church is founded on Peter, brought home to us the deep debt of
gratitude the world owes to the Roman pontiffs, and enabled us to see more
clearly than we ever had done the utter groundlessness, the glaring
iniquity, and the open paganism of the Greek schism. The author has made
us, we almost fear, an ultra-papist, and certainly has strengthened our
attachment, already strong, to the Holy Apostolic See. He has served to us
the office of the drunken Helotae to the Spartan youth. It is in relation
to its purpose the weakest and absurdest book we have ever read, and has
not, so far as the author is concerned, a Christian thought from beginning
to end. If this book fairly represents the Christian intelligence and
sentiments of the Non-united Greeks, it is hard to see wherein they are to
be preferred to the Turks, or why Christendom should seek their deliverance
from the Mohammedan yoke.

If M. Guettée's readers will weigh well the arguments for the papacy he
reproduces for the sake of refuting them, and his quotations from the
fathers and the Roman pontiffs for the sake of blunting their force, they
will find that, in spite of misquotations, mistranslations, and
misrepresentations, the book carries with it its own antidote. It can do
real harm only to those who cannot weigh testimony, who never think, and
are utterly unable to reason.

------

{594}


    Impressions of Spain.

    By Lady Herbert.


  Excursions Near Seville.

The excursions in the neighborhood of Seville are full of beauty and
interest of various kinds. One of the first undertaken by our travellers
was to the ruins of Italica, the ancient Seville, formerly an important
Roman city, and the birthplace of Trajan and of Adrian. In the church, half
convent and half fortress, are two very fine statues of St. Isidore and St.
Jerome, by Montanés. Here St. Isidore began his studies. He was hopelessly
dull and slow, and was tempted to give up the whole thing in despair, when
one day, being in a brown study, his eye fell on an old well, the marble
sides of which were worn into grooves by the continual friction of the cord
which let down the bucket. "If a cord can thus indent marble," he said to
himself, "why should not constant study and perseverance make an impression
on my mind?" His resolution was taken, and he became the light of his age
and country. The well which gave him this useful lesson is still shown near
the south door of the church. Here also is the monument of Doña Uraca
Osorio, a lady who was burnt to death by order of King Pedro the Cruel, for
having resisted his addresses. The flames having consumed the lower part of
her dress, her faithful maid rushed into the fire, and died in endeavoring
to conceal her mistress. In the sacristy is a very curious Byzantine
picture of the Virgin. Leaving the church our party went on to the
amphitheatre, which has recently been excavated, and must have contained
ten or twelve thousand people. A fine mosaic has lately been discovered,
which evidently formed part of the ancient pavement. The custode was a
character, and lived in a primitive little cabin at the entrance of the
circus: a moss bed and a big cat seemed the only furniture. He was very
proud of his tiny garden, poor old man! and of his wall-flowers, of which
he gave the ladies a large bunch, together with a few silver coins which
had been dug up in the excavations.

On their way home they passed by a cemetery in which was a very beautiful
though simple marble cross. On it were engraved these three lines:

    Creo en Dios.
  Espero en Dies.
    Amo á Dios.

It was the grave of a poor boy, the only son of a widow. He was not exactly
an idiot, but what people call a "natural." Good, simple, humble every one
loved him; but no one could teach him anything. His intelligence was in
some way at fault. He could remember nothing. In vain the poor mother put
him first to school, and then to a trade; he could not learn. At last, in
despair, she took him to a neighboring monastery, and implored the abbot,
who was a most charitable holy man, to take him in and keep him as a lay
brother. Touched by her grief, the abbot consented, and the boy entered the
convent. There, all possible pains were taken with him by the good monks to
give him at least some ideas of religion; but he could remember nothing but
these three sentences. Still, he was so patient, so laborious, and so good,
that the community decided to keep him. When he had finished his hard
out-of-door work, instead of coming in to rest, he would go straight to the
church, and there remain on his knees for hours. "But what does he do?"
exclaimed one of the novices.
{595}
"He does not know how to pray. He neither understands the office, nor the
sacraments, nor the ceremonies of the church." They therefore hid
themselves in a side chapel, close to where he always knelt, and watched
him when he came in. Devoutly kneeling, with his hands clasped, his eyes
fastened on the tabernacle, he did nothing but repeat over and over again:
"Creo en Dios; espero en Dios; amo á Dios." One day he was missing: they
went to his cell, and found him dead on the straw, with his hands joined
and an expression of the same ineffable peace and joy they had remarked on
his face when in church. They buried him in this quiet cemetery, and the
abbot caused these words to be graven on his cross. Soon, a lily was seen
flowering by the grave, where no one had sown it; the grave was opened, and
the root of the flower was found in the heart of the orphan boy. [Footnote
182]

    [Footnote 182: This anecdote is from the lips of Fernan Caballero.]

Another morning our party visited the Cartucha, the once magnificent
Carthusian convent, with its glorious ruined church and beautiful and
extensive orange-gardens. Now all is deserted. The only thing remaining of
the church is a fine west wall and rose-window, with a chapel which the
proprietor has preserved for the use of his workpeople, and in the choir of
which are some finely carved wooden stalls; the rest have been removed to
Cadiz, where they form the great ornament of the cathedral. Here and there
are some fine "azulejos," and a magnificently carved doorway, speaking of
glories long since departed. This convent, once the very centre of all that
was most cultivated and literary in Spain, a museum of painting,
architecture, and sculpture, is now converted into a porcelain manufactory,
where a good-natured Englishman has run up a tall chimney, and makes ugly
cheap pots and pans to suit the taste and pockets of the Sevillians. O for
this age of "progress"! It is fair to say that the proprietor, who kindly
accompanied the party over the building, and into the beautiful gardens,
and to the ruined pagoda or summer house, lamented that no encouragement
was given by the Spanish nobles of the present day to any species of taste
or beauty in design, and that his attempts to introduce a higher class of
china, in imitation of Minton's, had met with decided failure; no one would
buy anything so dear. They had imported English workmen and modellers in
the first instance; but he said, that the Spaniards were apt scholars, and
had quickly learned the trade, so that his workmen are now almost
exclusively from the country itself. The only pretty thing our travellers
could find, and which was kindly presented to one of the party, was one of
the cool picturesque-shaped bottles made, like the "goolehs" of Egypt, of
porous clay, which maintains the coldness and freshness of any liquid
poured into it.

Among the many charming expeditions from Seville, is one to Castilleja,
(the village before alluded to as the scene of the death of Fernan Cortes)
through the fertile plains and vine yards of Aljarafa. Here begins the
region which the Romans call the gardens of Hercules. It produces one of
the best and rarest wines in Spain: the plants having been originally
brought from Flanders by a poor soldier named Pedro Ximenes, who discovered
that the Rhine vines, when transplanted to the sunny climate of Andalusia,
lose their acidity, and yield the luscious fruit which still bears his
name. In the centre of this fertile plain stands a small house and garden,
to which is attached one of those tales of crime, divine vengeance, and
godlike forgiveness, which are so characteristic of the people and country.
About twenty years ago it was inhabited by a family consisting of a man
named Juan Pedro Alfaro, with his wife and a son of nineteen or twenty.
Their quiet and peaceable lives were spent in cultivating their vineyard
and selling its produce in the neighboring town.
{596}
They were good and respectable people, living in peace with their
neighbors, and perfectly contented with their occupation and position. One
thing only was felt as a grievance. A lawyer, of the character of the
"Attorney Case" in our childhood's story, had lately started an obnoxious
new tax on every cargo of wine brought into the city; and this tax, being
both unjust and illegal, they resolved to dispute. One day, therefore, when
the good man and his son were driving their mules to market with their
fruity burden, they were stopped by the attorney, who demanded the usual
payment. The younger man firmly but respectfully refused, stating his
reasons. The attorney tried first fair words, and then foul, without
effect, upon which he vowed to be revenged. The son, pointing to his
Albacetan poniard, on which was the inscription, "I know how to defend my
master." defied his vengeance; and so they parted. But never again was the
poor wife and mother's heart gladdened by the sight of their returning
faces. In vain she waited, hour after hour, that first terrible evening.
The mules returned, but masterless. Then, beside herself with fear, the
poor woman rushed off to the town to make inquiries as to their fate. No
one knew anything further than that they had been at Seville the day
before, had sold their wine for a good price, and been seen, as usual,
returning cheerfully home. She then went to the Audiencia, or legal supreme
court of the city, where the magistrates, touched by her tale, and alarmed
also at the disappearance of the men, who were known throughout the country
for their high character and respectability, caused a rigorous search to be
made in the whole neighborhood; but in vain. No trace of them could be
discovered. By degrees, the excitement in the town on the subject passed
away, and the poor muleteers were forgotten; but in the heart of the
widowed mother there could be no rest and no peace. The mystery in which
their fate was involved was so inexplicable that, the hope of their return,
however faint, would not die out; and for twenty years she spent her life
and her substance in seeking for her lost ones. At last, reduced to utter
misery, and worn out both in mind and body, she was forced to beg her daily
bread of the charity of the peasants: the "bolsa de Dios," as the people
poetically call it, a "bolsa" which, to do the Spaniards justice, is never
empty. The little children would bring her eggs and pennies; the fathers
and husbands would give her a corner by the "brasero" in winter, or under
the vine-covered trellis in summer; the wives and mothers knew what had
brought her to such misery, and had ever an extra loaf or a dish of
"garbanzos" set aside for the "Madre Ana," as she was called by the
villagers. She, humble, prayerful, hopeful, ever grateful for the least
kindness, and willing in any way to oblige others, at last fell dangerously
ill. The curé, who had been striving to calm and soothe that sorely tried
soul, was one day leaving her cottage, when his attention was attracted by
a crowd of people, with the mayor at their head, who were hurrying toward
an olive wood near the village. He followed, and, to his horror, found that
the cause of the sensation was the discovery of two human skeletons under
an olive-tree, the finger of one of which was pointing through the earth to
heaven, as if for vengeance. The mayor ordered the earth to be removed: the
surgeon examined the bodies, and gave it as his opinion that they must have
been dead many years. But on examining the clothes, a paper was found which
a waterproof pocket had preserved from decay. The attorney, who was
likewise present, seized it; but no sooner had his eyes lighted on the
words than he fell backward in a swoon. "What is the matter? what has he
read?" exclaimed the bystanders as with one voice. "It is a certificate
such as used to be carried by our muleteers," exclaimed the mayor, taking
the paper from the lawyer's hand; and opening it, he read out loud the
following words: "_Pass for Juan Pedro Alfaro._"

{597}

Here, then, was the unravelling of the terrible mystery: the men had
evidently been murdered on their way home. The attorney recovered from his
fainting fit, but fever followed, and in his delirium he did nothing but
exclaim: "It is not I!--my hands are free from blood. It is Juan Caño and
Joseph Salas." These words, repeated by the people, caused the arrest of
the two men named, who no sooner found themselves in the hands of justice
than they confessed their crime, and described how, having been excited to
do so by the attorney, they had shot both Juan Alfaro and his son, from
behind some olive-trees, on their way home from market, had robbed, and
afterward buried them in the place where the bodies had been found.
Sentence of death was passed upon the murderers, while the attorney was
condemned to hard labor for life, and to witness, with a rope round his
neck, the execution of his accomplices in the fatal deed. The poor "Madre
Ana" had hardly recovered from her severe illness when these terrible
events transpired. The indignation of the peasantry, and their compassion
for her, knew no bounds: they would have torn the attorney in pieces if
they could. The widow herself, overwhelmed with grief at this confirmation
of her worst fears, remained silent as the grave. At last, when those
around her were breathing nothing but maledictions on the heads of the
murderers, and counting the days to the one fixed for the execution of
their sentence, she suddenly spoke, and asked that the curé should be sent
for. He at once obeyed the summons. She raised herself in the bed with some
effort, and then said: "My father, is it not true that, if pardon be
implored for a crime by the one most nearly related to the victims, the
judges generally mitigate the severity of the punishment?" He replied in
the affirmative. "Then to-morrow," she replied, "I will go to Seville."
"God bless you! my daughter," replied the old priest, much moved; "the
pardon you have so freely given in your heart will be more acceptable to
God than the deaths of these men." A murmur of surprise and admiration, and
yet of hearty approval, passed through the lips of the bystanders. The next
day, mounted carefully by the peasants on their best mule, the poor widow
arrived at the Audiencia. Her entrance caused a stir and an emotion in the
whole court. Bent with age, and worn with sickness and misery, she advanced
in front of the judges, who, seeing her extreme weakness, instantly ordered
a comfortable chair to be brought for her. But the effort had been too
much; she could not speak. The judge, then addressing her, said: "Senora,
is it true that you are come to plead for the pardon of Juan Caño and
Joseph Salas, convicted of the assassination of your husband and son? and
also for the pardon of the lawyer, who, by his instigation, led them to
commit the crime?" She bowed her head in token of assent. A murmur of
admiration and pity spread through the court; and a relation of the
lawyer's, who saw his family thus rescued from the last stage of
degradation, eagerly bent forward, exclaiming: "Senora, do not fear for
your future. I swear that every want of yours shall henceforth be provided
for."

The momentary feebleness of the woman now passed away. She rose to her full
height, and, casting on the speaker a look of mingled indignation and
scorn, exclaimed: "You offer me payment for my pardon? I do not _sell_
the blood of my son!"

No account of "life in Seville" would be complete without a bull-fight,
"corrida de toros;" and so one afternoon saw our travellers in a tolerably
spacious loggia on the shady side of the circus, preparing, though with
some qualms of conscience, to see, for the first time, this, the great
national sport of Spain. The roof of the cathedral towered above the arena,
and the sound of the bells just ringing for vespers made at least one of
the party regret the decision which had led her to so uncongenial a place.
{598}
But it was too late to recede. No one could escape from the mass of human
beings tightly wedged on every side, all eager for the fight. Partly,
perhaps, owing to the mourning and consequent absence of the court, there
were very few ladies; which, it is to be hoped, is also a sign that the
"corrida" has no longer such attractions for them. Presently the trumpets
sounded. One of the barriers which enclosed the arena was thrown open, and
in came a procession of "toreros," "banderilleros," and "chulos," all
attired in gay and glittering costumes, chiefly blue and silver, the hair
of each tied in a net, with a great bow behind, and with tight pink silk
stockings and buckled shoes. With them came the "picadores," dressed in
yellow, with large broad-brimmed hats and iron-cased legs, riding the most
miserable horses that could be seen, but which, being generally
thoroughbred, arched their necks and endeavored, poor beasts! to show what
once they had been. They were blindfolded, without which they could not
have been induced to face the bull. The procession stopped opposite the
president's box when the principal "torero" knelt and received in his hat
the key of the bull's den, which was forthwith opened; and now the sport
began. A magnificent brownish red animal dashed out into the centre of the
arena, shaking his crest and looking round him as if to defy his
adversaries, pawing the ground the while. The men were all watching him
with intense eagerness. Suddenly the bull singled out one as his adversary,
and made a dash at a "banderillero" who was agitating a scarlet cloak to
the left. The man vaulted over the wooden fence into the pit. The bull,
foiled, and knocking his horns against the wooden palings with a force
which seemed as if it would bring the whole thing down, now rushed at a
"picador" to the right, from whose lance he received a wound in the
shoulder. But the bull, lowering his head, drove his horns right into the
wretched horse's entrails, and, with almost miraculous strength, galloped
with both horse and rider on his neck round the whole arena, finally
dropping both, when the "picador" was saved by the "chulos," but the horse
was left to be still further gored by the bull, and then to die in agony on
the sand. This kind of thing was repeated with one after the other, till
the bull, exhausted and covered with lance-wounds, paused as if to take
breath. The "banderilleros" chose this moment, and with great skill and
address advanced in front of him, with their hands and arms raised, and
threw forward arrows, ornamented with fringed paper, which they fixed into
his neck. This again made him furious, and, in eager pursuit of one of his
enemies, the poor beast leapt out of the arena over the six-feet high
barrier into the very middle of the crowded pit. The "sauve qui peut" may
be imagined; but no one was hurt, and the din raised by the multitude
seemed to have alarmed the bull, who trotted back quietly into the circus
by a side-door which had been opened for the purpose. Now came the exciting
moment. The judge gave the signal, and one of the most famous "matadores,"
Cuchares by name, beautifully dressed in blue and silver, and armed with a
short sharp sword, advanced to give the _coup de grâce_. This requires
both immense skill and great agility; and at this very moment, when our
party were wound up to the highest pitch of interest and excitement, a
similar scene had ended fatally for the "matador"' at Cadiz. But Cuchares
seemed to play with his danger; and though the bull, mad with rage, pursued
him with the greatest fury, tearing his scarlet scarf into ribbons, and
nearly throwing down the wooden screens placed at the sides of the arena as
places of refuge for the men when too closely pressed to escape in other
ways, he chose a favorable moment, and, leaping forward, dug his short
sword right into the fatal spot above the shoulder.
{599}
With scarcely a struggle, the noble beast fell, first on his knees, and
then rolled over dead. The people cheered vociferously, the trumpets
sounded. Four mules, gayly caparisoned, were driven furiously into the
arena; the huge carcass, fastened to them by ropes, was dragged out,
together with those of such of the horses as death had mercifully released,
and then the whole thing began over again. Twenty horses and six bulls were
killed in two hours and a half, and the more horrible the disembowelled
state of the animals, the greater seemed the delight of the spectators. It
is impossible, without disgusting our readers, to give a truthful
description of the horrible state of the horses. One, especially, caused a
sensation even among the "habitués" of the ring. He belonged to one of the
richest gentlemen in Seville, had been his favorite hack, and was as well
known in the Prado as his master. Yet this gentleman had the brutality,
when the poor beast's work was ended, to condemn him to this terrible fate!
The gallant horse, disembowelled as he was, _would not die_: he
survived one bull after the other, though his entrails were hanging in
festoons on their horns, and finally, when the gates were opened to drag
out the carcasses of the rest, he managed to crawl away also and to drag
himself where? To the very door of his master's house, which he reached,
and where he finally lay down and died. His instinct, unhappily wrong in
this case, had evidently made him fancy that _there_, at any rate, he
would have pity and relief from his agony: for the wounds inflicted by the
horns of the bull are, it is said, horrible in their burning, smarting
pain. Fernan Caballero was with the wife of a famous "matador," whose chest
was transfixed by the bull at the moment when, thinking the beast's
strength was spent, he had leant forward to deal the fatal stroke, He
lingered for some hours, but in an agony which she said must have been seen
to be believed. Generally speaking, however, such accidents to the men are
very rare. Carlo Puerto, one of the "picadores," was killed last year by a
very wary bull, who turned suddenly, and, catching him on his horns in the
stomach, ran with him in that way three times round the arena!--but that
was the fault of the president, who had insisted on his attacking the bull
in the centre of the ring, the "picadores" always remaining close to the
screen, so that their escape may be more easily managed. If the sport could
be conducted, as it is said to be in Salamanca and in Portugal, without
injury to the horses, the intense interest caused by a combat where the
skill, intelligence, and agility of the man are pitted against the
instinct, quickness, and force of the bull, would make it perhaps a
legitimate as well as a most exciting amusement; but, as it is at present
conducted, it is simply horrible, and inexcusably cruel and revolting. It
is difficult to understand how any woman can go to it a second time. The
effect on the people must be brutalizing to a frightful extent, and
accounts in a great measure for their utter absence of feeling for animals,
especially horses and mules, which they ill use in a manner perfectly
shocking to an Englishman, and apparently without the slightest sense of
shame. But there is no indication of this sport becoming less popular in
Spain. Combats with "novillos," or young bulls, whose horns are tipped to
avoid accidents, are a common amusement among the young aristocracy, who
are said to bet frightfully on their respective favorites; and thus the
taste is fostered from their cradles.

{600}

  The Charitable Institutions and Convents of Seville.

A few days after the holy week, our travellers decided on visiting some of
the far-famed charitable institutions of Seville; and, taking the kind and
benevolent Padre B---- as their interpreter, they went first to the
Hospital del Sangre, or of the "Five Wounds," a magnificent building of the
sixteenth century, with a Doric façade 600 feet long, a beautiful portal,
and a "patio," in the centre of which is the church, a fine building, built
in the shape of a Latin cross, and containing one or two good Zurbarans.
There are between 300 and 400 patients; and in addition to the large wards,
there are--what is so much needed in our great London hospitals, and which
we have before alluded to at Madrid--a number of nicely-furnished little
separate rooms for a higher class of patients, who pay about two shillings
a day, and have both the skill of the doctors and the tender care of the
sisters of charity, instead of being neglected in their own homes. There
was a poor priest in one of these apartments, in another a painter, and in
a third a naval captain, a Swede, and so on. The hospital is abundantly
supplied with everything ordered by the doctors, including wine, brandy,
chickens, or the like; and in this respect is a great contrast to that at
Malaga, where the patients literally die for want of the necessary extra
diets and stimulants which the parsimony of the administration denies them.
In each quadrangle is a nice garden, with seats and fountains, and full of
sweet flowers, where the patients, when well enough, can sit out and enjoy
the sunshine. There is not the slightest _hospital smell_ in any one
of the wards. The whole is under the administration of the Spanish sisters
of charity of St. Vincent de Paul; and knowing that, no surprise was felt
at the perfection of the "lingerie," or the admirable arrangement and order
of the hospital. They have a touching custom when one of the patients is
dying, and has received the viaticum, to place above his head a special
cross, so that he may be left undisturbed by casual visitors. The sisters
have a little oratory up-stairs, near the woman's ward, beautifully fitted
up. An air of refinement, of comfort, and of _home_ pervades the whole
establishment.

Close to this hospital is the old tower where St. Hermengilde was put to
death, on Easter eve, by order of his unnatural father, because he would
not join the Arian heresy, or receive his paschal communion from the hands
of an Arian bishop. This was in the sixth century; and is not the same
persecution, and for the same cause, going on in Poland in the nineteenth?
[Footnote 183] The old Gothic tower still remains, and in it his close
dungeon. A church has been built adjoining, but the actual prison remains
intact. There are some good pictures in the church, especially a Madonna,
by Murillo; and a clever picture of St. Ignatius in his room, meditating on
his conversion. There is also a fine statue of St. Hermengilde himself, by
Montanés, over the high altar. The good old priest who had the care of this
church lived in a little room adjoining, like a hermit in his cell,
entirely devoted to painting and to the "culte" of his patron saint. St.
Gregory the Great attributes to the merits of this martyr the conversion of
his brother, afterward King Recared, the penitence of his father, and the
christianizing of the whole kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain.

    [Footnote 183: The manner in which, during this very last Easter, the
    poor Polish Catholics have been treated and forced to receive
    schismatical communions through a system of treachery unparalleled in
    the annals of the church, is unfortunately not sufficiently known in
    England, where alone public opinion could be brought to bear on the
    instigators of such tyranny. The strife between Russia and Poland has
    ceased to be anything but a religious struggle: Russia is determined to
    quench Catholicism out of the land. But the cry of hundreds of exiled
    pastors of the flock is rising to heaven from the forests and mines of
    Siberia; in the holy sacrifice (offered in earthenware cups on common
    stones) they still plead for their people before the throne of the
    great Intercessor. And that cry and those prayers will be answered in
    God's own time and way.]

From thence our travellers went on to the orphanage managed by the
"Trinitarian sisters." The house was built in the last century, by a
charitable lady, who richly endowed it, and placed 200 children there; now,
the government, without a shadow of right has taken the whole of the funds
of the institution, and allows them barely enough to purchase bread. The
superior is in despair, and has scarcely heart to go on with the work.
{601}
She has diminished the number of the child and has been obliged to curtail
their food, giving them neither milk nor meat except on great festivals.
But for the intervention of the Duc de Montpensier, and other charitable
persons, the whole establishment must long since have been given up. There
are twenty four sisters. The children work and embroider beautifully, and
are trained to every kind of industrial occupation. From this orphanage our
party went to the Hospital for Women, managed by the sisters of the third
order of St. Francis. It is one of the best hospitals in Seville. There are
about 100 women, admirably kept and cared for, and a ward of old and
incurable patients besides. The superior, a most motherly, loving soul, to
whom every one seemed much attached, took them over every part of the
building. She has a passion for cats, and beautiful "Angoras" were seen
basking in the sun in every window-sill.

This hospital, like the orphanage, is a private foundation; but the
government has given notice that they mean to appropriate its funds, and
the poor sisters are in terror lest their supplies should cease for their
sick. It is a positive satisfaction to think that the government which has
dealt in this wholesale robbery of the widow and orphan is not a bit the
better for it. One feels inclined to exclaim twenty times a day: "Thy money
perish with thee!"

But of all the charitable institutions of Seville, the finest is the
Caridad, a magnificent hospital, or rather "asilo," for poor and incurable
patients, nursed and tended by the Spanish sisters of St. Vincent de Paul.
It was founded in the seventeenth century, by Don Miguel de Mañara, a man
eminent for his high birth and large fortune, and one of the knights of
Calatrava, an order only given to people whose quarterings showed nobility
for several generations. He was in his youth the Don Juan of Seville,
abandoning himself to every kind of luxury and excess, although many
strange warnings were sent to him from time to time, to arrest him in his
headlong, downward course. On one occasion especially, he had followed a
young and apparently beautiful figure through the streets and into the
cathedral, where, regardless of the sanctity of the place, he insisted on
her listening to his addresses. What was his horror, on turning round, in
answer to his repeated solicitations, when the face behind the mask proved
to be that of a skeleton! So strongly was this circumstance impressed on
his mind, that he caused it afterward to be painted by Valdés, and hung in
the council-room of the hospital. Another time, when returning from one of
his nocturnal orgies, he lost his way, and, passing by the church of
Santiago, saw, to his surprise, that the doors were open, the church lit,
and a number of priests were kneeling with lighted tapers round a bier in
perfect silence. He went in and asked "whose was the funeral?" The answer
of one after the other was: "Don Miguel de Mañara." Thinking this a bad
joke, he approached the coffin, and hastily lifted up the black pall which
covered the features of the dead. To his horror he recognized himself. This
event produced a complete change in his life. He resolved to abandon his
vicious courses, and marry, choosing the only daughter of a noble house, as
much noted for her piety as for her beauty. But God had higher designs in
store for him, and, after a few years spent in the enjoyment of the purest
happiness, his young wife died suddenly. In the first violence of his
grief, Don Miguel thought but of escaping from the world altogether, and
burying himself in a monastery. But God willed it otherwise. There was at
that time, on the right bank of the Guadalquivir, a little hermitage
dedicated to St. George, which was the resort of a confraternity of young
men who had formed themselves into brothers of charity, and devoted
themselves to the care of the sick and dying poor.
{602}
Don Diego Mirafuentes was their "hermano mayor," or chief brother, and,
being an old friend of Don Miguel's, invited him to stay with him, and by
degrees enlisted all his sympathies in their labors of love. He desired to
be enrolled in their confraternity, but his reputation was so bad that the
brotherhood hesitated to admit him; and, when at last they yielded,
determined to put his sincerity and humility to the test by ordering him to
go out at once from door to door throughout Seville (where he was so well
known) with the bodies of certain paupers, and to crave alms for their
interment. Grace triumphed over all natural repugnance to such a task; and
with his penitence had come that natural thirst for penance which made all
things appear easy and light to bear, so that very soon he became the
leader in all noble and charitable works.

Finding that an asylum or home was sadly needed in winter for the reception
of the houseless poor, he purchased a large warehouse, which he converted
into rooms for this purpose; and, by dint of begging, got together a few
beds and necessaries, so that by the Christmas following more than two
hundred sick or destitute persons were here boarded and lodged. From this
humble beginning arose one of the most magnificent charitable institutions
in Spain. The example of Don Miguel, his burning charity, his austere
self-denial, his simple faith won all hearts. Money poured in on every
side; every day fresh candidates from the highest classes pleaded for
admission into the confraternity. It was necessary to draw up certain rules
for their guidance, and this work was entrusted to Don Miguel, who had been
unanimously elected as their superior. Nowhere did his wisdom, prudence,
and zeal appear more strongly than in these regulations, which still form
the constitutions of this noble foundation. Defining, first, the nature of
their work the seeking out and succoring the miserable, nursing the sick,
burying the dead, and attending criminals to their execution--he goes on to
insist on the value of personal service, both private and public; on the
humility and self-abnegation required of each brother; that each, on
entering the hospital, should forget his rank, and style himself simply
"servant of the poor," kissing the hand of the oldest among the sufferers,
and serving them as seeing Jesus Christ in the persons of each. The notices
of certain monthly meetings and church services which formed part of the
rule of the community were couched in the following terms: "This notice is
sent you lest you should neglect these holy exercises, which may be the
last at which God will allow you to assist." Sermons and meditations on the
passion of our Lord, and on the nearness of death and of eternity, formed
the principal religious exercises of the confraternity; in fact, the
Passion is the abiding devotion of the order.

His hospital built, and his poor comfortably housed and cared for, Miguel
turned his attention to the church, which was in ruins. A letter of his,
still extant, will show the difficulties which he had to overcome in this
undertaking. "We had hoped," he writes, "that one of our brothers, who was
rich and childless, would have given us something to begin the restoration;
but he died without thinking of the church, and so vanished our golden
hopes, as they always will when we put our trust in human means to
accomplish God's ends. I was inclined to despond about it; when, the next
morning, at eight o'clock, a poor beggar named Luis asked to speak to me.
'My wife is just dead,' he said. 'She sold chestnuts on the Plaza, and
realized a little sum of eighty ducats. To bury her I have spent thirty:
fifty remain; they are all I have; but I bring them to you, that you may
lay the first stone of the new church. I want nothing for myself but a bit
of bread, which I can always beg from door to door.'"
Don Miguel refused, the beggar insisted; and so the church was begun: and
the story spread, and half a million of ducats were poured into the laps of
the brothers; but, as Mañara added, "the first stone was laid by God
himself in the 'little all' of the poor beggar." [Footnote 184]

    [Footnote 184: How often, when buying chestnuts of one of the old women
    in the Plaza of the Caridad, did the recollection of this story come
    into the mind of our traveller!]


{603}

This church was filled in 1680 with the chefs-d'oeuvre of Murillo and of
Valdés Leal: an autograph letter from the great religious painter is still
shown in the Sala Capitular of the hospital, asking to be admitted as a
member of the confraternity. "Our Saviour as a child;" "St. John and the
lamb;" "San Juan de Dios with an angel;" the "Miracle of the Loaves and
Fishes;" but, above all, "Moses striking the Rock," called "La Sed," (so
admirably is _thirst_ represented in the multitudes crowding round the
prophet in the wilderness,) were the magnificent offerings of the new
"brother" toward the decoration of God's house and the cause of charity.
Equally striking, but more painful in their choice of subjects, are the
productions of Valdés, especially a "Dead Bishop," awful in its contrast of
gorgeous robes with the visible work of the worms beneath, and of which
Murillo said "that he could not look at it without holding his nose." Other
pictures by Murillo formerly decorated these walls; but they were stolen by
the French, and afterward sold to English collectors, the Duke of
Sutherland and Mr. Tomline being among the purchasers. After the church,
the most remarkable thing in the Caridad is the "patio," divided into two
by a double marble colonnade. Here the poor patients sit out half the day,
enjoying the sunshine and the flowers. On the wall is the following
inscription, from the pen of Mañara himself, but which loses in the
translation: "This house will last as long as God shall be feared in it,
and Jesus Christ be served in the persons of his poor. Whoever enters here
must leave at the door both avarice and pride."

The cloisters and passages are full of texts and pious thoughts, but all
associated with the two ideas ever prominent in the founders mind--charity
and death. Over what was his own cell is the following, in Spanish: "What
is it that we mean when we speak of death? It is being free from the body
of sin, and from the yoke of our passions: therefore, to live is a bitter
death, and to die is a sweet life."

The wards are charmingly large and airy, and lined with gay "azulejos." The
kitchen is large and spacious, with a curious roof, supported by a single
pillar in the middle. Over the president's chair, in the Sala Capitular, is
the original portrait of Don Miguel Mañara, by his friend Valdés Leal, and,
at the side, a cast taken of his face after death, presented to the
confraternity by Vicentelo de Leca. Both have the same expression of
dignity and austerity, mingled with tenderness, especially about the mouth;
and the features have a strong resemblance to those of the great Condé. He
died on May 19th, 1679, amidst the tears of the whole city, being only
fifty-three years of age: but a nature such as his could not last long. A
very interesting collection of his letters is still shown in the hospital,
and his life has been lately admirably translated into French by M. Antoine
de Latour.

The "Sacré Coeur" have established themselves lately in Seville, through
the kindness of the Marquesa de V----, and are about to open a ladies'
school--which is very much needed--on the site of a disused Franciscan
convent. The archbishop has given them the large church adjoining the
convent; and it was almost comical to see the three or four charming
sisters, who are beginning this most useful and charitable work, singing
their benediction _alone_ in the vast chancel, until the building can
be got ready for the reception of their pupils.

{604}

Another convent visited by the ladies of the party was that of Sta. Ines,
which stands in a narrow street near the church of St. Felipe Neri. The
great treasure of this convent is the body of _Sta. Maria Coronel_,
which remains as fresh and as life-like as if she had died but yesterday.
Her history is a tragical one. Pedro the Cruel, falling madly in love with
her great beauty, condemned her husband, who was governor of the Balearic
Islands, to an ignominious death; but then, with a refinement of cruelty,
promised his pardon to his wife on condition that she would yield to his
passion. Maria Coronel, preferring death to dishonor, permitted the
execution of her husband, and fled for refuge to this convent, where the
king, violating all rights, human and divine, pursued her. One night he
penetrated into her cell. Maria, seeing no other mode of escape, seized the
lamp which burnt on the table before her, and poured the boiling oil over
her face, thus destroying her beauty for ever. The king, enraged and
disappointed, relinquished his suit; and the poor lady lived and died in
the convent. In the library of the university is an ancient MS. describing
Pedro the Cruel as "tall, fair, good-looking, and full of spirit, valor,
and talent!" but his execrable deeds speak for themselves. The curious
thing is, that the marks of the boiling oil are as clearly seen on Maria
Coronel's face now as on the day when the heroic deed was committed. The
sisters of this convent are dressed in blue, with a long black veil, and
their cloisters contain some very curious pictures and relics.

The most interesting visit, however, paid by one of the party in Seville,
was to the strictly enclosed convent of Sta. Teresa, to enter which the
English lady had obtained special papal permission. Of the sorrows and
perils which St. Theresa experienced in founding this house, she herself
speaks in writing to her niece, Mary of Ocampo: "I assure you that of all
the persecutions we have had to endure, none can bear the least comparison
with what we have suffered at Seville." [Footnote 185]

    [Footnote 185: For both this and other quotations regarding St.
    Theresa's foundations, the writer is indebted to the charming life of
    the saint published by Hurst & Blackett in 1865, and which, from its
    wonderful truth and accuracy, is a perfect handbook to anyone visiting
    the Carmelite convents of Spain. She trusts that its author will
    forgive her for having, often unintentionally, used her actual
    expressions in speaking of places and of things, from the impossibility
    of their being described by an eye-witness in any other manner.]

Suffering from violent fever, calumniated by one of her own postulants,
denounced to the inquisition, persecuted incessantly by the fathers of the
mitigated rule, with no prospect of buying a house, and no money for the
purchase, the saint could yet find courage to add; "Notwithstanding all
these evils, my heart is filled with joy. What blessed things are peace of
conscience and liberty of soul!" It reminds one of another occasion, when
it was necessary to begin a foundation which was to cost a great, deal of
money, and the saint had but twopence-halfpenny. "Never mind," she replied
courageously, "twopence halfpenny and Theresa are nothing; but
twopence-halfpenny and God are everything!" And the work was accomplished.
In the case of the Seville house her patience and faith met with a like
reward. On the Feast of the Ascension, 1576, the blessed sacrament was
placed in the chapel of the new convent by the archbishop himself,
accompanied by all his clergy, who wished to make public amends to St.
Theresa and her nuns for the persecutions they had endured; and when
Theresa knelt to ask for his pastoral benediction, the archbishop, in the
presence of all the people, knelt to ask for hers in return, thus
testifying to the high estimation in which he held both her and her work.

It was this convent, untouched since those days of trial, which our
visitors now entered. There are twenty two sisters, of whom three are
novices, and their rule is maintained in all its primitive severity. They
keep a perpetual fast, living chiefly on the dried "cabala," or stockfish,
of the country, and only on festivals and at Easter tide allowing
themselves eggs and milk.

{605}

They have no beds, only a hard mattress, stuffed with straw; this, with an
iron lamp, a pitcher of water, a crucifix, and a discipline, constitutes
the only furniture of each cell, all of which are alike. One or two common
prints were pasted on the walls, and over the doors hung various little
ejaculations: "Jesu, superabundo gaudio;" "O crux! ave, spes unica!"
"Domine, quid me vis facere?" or else a little card in Spanish, like the
following, which the English lady carried off with her as a memorial:

      Aplaca, mi Dios, tu ira,
      Tu justicia y tu rigor.
      Por los ruegos de Maria,
      Misericordia, Señor!
  Santo Dios, Santo fuerte, Santo inmortal,
    Liberanos, Senor, de todo mal.

At the refectory, each sister has an earthenware plate and jug, with a
wooden cover, an earthenware salt-cellar, and a wooden spoon. Opposite the
place of the superior is a skull, the only distinction. They are allowed no
linen except in sickness, and wear only a brown mantle and white serge
scapular, with a black veil, which covers them from head to foot. They are
rarely allowed to walk in the garden, or to go out in the corridor in the
sun to warm themselves. Their house is like a cellar, cold and damp; and
they have no fires. Even at recreation they are not allowed to sit, except
on the floor; and silence is rigidly observed, except for two hours during
the day. They have only five hours sleep, not going to bed till half-past
eleven, on account of the office. At eleven, one of the novices seizes the
wooden clapper, (or crecella,) which she strikes three times, pronouncing
the words: "Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Blessed Virgin
Mary, his Mother; my sisters, let us go to matins to glorify our Lord."
Then they go to the choir, singing the Miserere. They are called again in
the same manner at half-past four by a sister who chaunts a verse in the
Psalms. At night a sentence is pronounced aloud, to serve as meditation. It
is generally this:

  My sisters, think of this:
  a little suffering,
  and then an eternal recompense.

They see absolutely _no one_, receiving the holy communion through a
slit in the wall. The English lady was the first person they had seen face
to face, or with lifted veils, for twelve years. They play the organ of the
chapel, which is a public one, though they themselves are entirely
invisible; and they are not even allowed to see the altar, which is
concealed by a heavy black curtain drawn across the grating looking into
the church. They have an image of their great foundress, the size of life,
dressed in the habit of the order, and to her they go night and morning and
salute her, as to a mother. Their convent is rich in relics, beautiful
pictures, and crucifixes, brought in by different religious, especially the
Duchesse de Bega, who became a Carmelite about fifty years ago. But their
chief treasure is an original picture of St. Theresa, for which she sat by
command of the archbishop, and which has lately been photographed for the
Duc de Montpensier. It is a very striking and beautiful face, but quite
different from the conventional representations of the saint. When it was
finished, she looked at it, and exclaimed naively: "I did not know I was
grown so old or so ugly!" There is also in this sacristy a very beautiful
Morales of the "Virgin and a Dead Christ," and a curious portrait of Padre
Garcia, the saint's confessor. Up-stairs, in her own cell, they have her
cloak and shoes, and the glass out of which she drank in her last illness.
The stranger was courteously made to drink out of it also, and then to put
on the saint's cloak, in which she was told "to kneel and pray for her
heart's desire, and it would be granted to her."

{606}

But the most interesting thing in the convent is the collection of MSS.
They have the whole of the "Interior Mansion," written in her own firm and
beautiful handwriting, with scarcely an erasure; besides quantities of her
letters and answers from St. John of the Cross, from St. John of Avila,
from Padre Garcia, and a multitude of others. The superior is elected every
three years, and the same one cannot be reelected till three years have
elapsed. They require a "dot" of 8000 reals, or about a hundred pounds; but
their number is full, and several candidates are now waiting their turn for
admission. The government has taken what little property they once had and
gives them at the rate of a peseta (two reals) a day, so that, poor as
their food is, they are often on the verge of starvation.

It was with a feeling almost of relief that the English lady found herself
once more in the sunshine outside these gloomy walls; yet those who lived
within them seemed cheerful and happy, and able to realize in the fullest
degree, without any external aid, those mysteries of divine love and that
beauty of holiness which, to our weaker faith, would seem impossible when
deprived of all sight of our Lord in his tabernacle or in his glorious
creations. We are tempted to ask, why it is that convents of this nature
are so repugnant to English taste? Every one is ready to appreciate those
of the sisters of charity. People talk of their good deeds, of the blessing
they are in the hospitals, of the advantages of united work, etc. etc.; but
as for the enclosed orders, "They wish they were all abolished." "What is
the good of a set of women shutting themselves up and _doing
nothing_?" Reader, _do_ they "do nothing"? We will not speak of the
schools; of the evening classes for working women; of the preparations for
first communions and confirmations; of the retreats within their sheltering
walls for those of us who, wearied with this world's toil and bustle, wish
to pause now and then and gain breath for the daily fight, and take stock,
as it were, of our state before God. These and other works like these, form
almost invariably a very important portion of the daily occupation of the
cloistered orders. But we will dismiss the thoughts of any external work,
and come to the highest and noblest part of their vocation. What is it that
is to "move mountains"? What is it that, over and over again in Holy
Scripture, has saved individuals, and cities, and nations? Is it not united
intercessory prayer? Is it nothing to us, in the whirl and turmoil of this
work-a-day life, that holy hands should ever be lifted up for us to the
Great Intercessor? Is there no _reparation_ needed for the sins, and
the follies, and the insults to the majesty of God, and to his sacraments,
and to his Mother, which are ever going on in this our native country? Does
it not touch the most indifferent among us to think of our self-indulgence
being, as it were, atoned for by their self-denial?--our pampered appetites
by their fasts and vigils? It is true that our present habits of life and
thought lead to an obvious want of sympathy with such an existence. It has
no public results on which we can look complacently, or which can be
paraded boastfully. Everything seems waste which is not visible; and all is
disappointment which is not obvious success. It is supernatural principles
especially which are at a discount in modern days! Surely the time will
come when we shall judge these things very differently; when our eyes will
be opened like the eyes of the prophet's servant; and we shall see from
what miseries, from what sorrows we and our country have been preserved by
lives like these, which save our Sodom, and avert God's righteous anger
from his people. [Footnote 186]

    [Footnote 186: In a simple but touching French biography of a young
    English lady who lately died in the convent of the "Poor Clares" at
    Amiens, the writer's idea is far more beautifully expressed: "A cette
    heure de la nuit, peut-ètre qu'une jenne fille du monde, martyre (sans
    couronne) de ses lois et de ses exigences, rentre chez elle, épulsée
    d'emotions et de fatigues. En longeant le mur du monastère et en
    entendant le son de la cloche qui appelle les recluses volontaires à la
    prière elle se sera adressée cette question: 'A quoi servent done les
    religieuses?' Je vais vous le dire: à _expier_. Après cette nuit
    de plaisir que vous venez de passer au théatre ou au bal, viendra une
    autre nuit--nuit d'angoisses et de supréme douleur. Vous étes la
    étendue sur votre couche de mort en face de l'éternité ou vous allez
    entrer seule, et sans appui. Peut-étre vous n'osez, ou vous ne pouvez
    prier; mals quelqu'un a prié pour vous, et faisant violence au ciel, a
    obtenu ce que vous n'etiez pas digne d'espérer. _Voila d quoi servent
    les religieuses._"]

{607}

One more curious establishment was visited by our party at Seville before
their departure, and that was the cigar manufactory, an enormous government
establishment, occupying an immense yellow building, which looks like a
palace, and employing 1,000 men and 5,000 women. The rapidity with which
cigars are turned out by those women's fingers is not the least astonishing
part. The workers are almost all young, and some very beautiful. They take
off their gowns and their crinolines as soon as they come in, hanging them
up in a long gallery, and take the flowers out of their hair and put them
in water, so that they may be fresh when they come out; and then work away
in their petticoats with wonderful zeal and good humor the whole day long.
The government makes 90,000,000 reals a year from the profits of this
establishment, though the dearest cigar made costs but twopence!

And now the sad time came for our travellers to leave Seville. In fact, the
exorbitant prices of everything at the hotel made a longer stay impossible,
though it was difficult to say what it was that they paid for: certainly
_not food_; for, excepting the chocolate and bread, which are
invariably good throughout Spain, the dinners were uneatable, the oil
rancid, the eggs stale; even "el cocido," the popular dish, was composed of
indescribable articles, and of kids which seemed to have died a natural
death. One of the party, a Belgian, exclaimed when her first dish of this
so-called meat was given her at Easter: "Vraiment, je crois que nous autres
nous n'avons pas tant perdu pendant le Carême!" An establishment has lately
been started by an enterprising peasant to sell milk fresh from the cow, a
great luxury in Spain, where goat's milk is the universal substitute; and
four very pretty Alderneys are kept, stall-fed, in a nice little dairy, "à
l'Anglaise," at one corner of the principal square, which is both clean and
tempting to strangers. At every corner of the streets, water, in cool,
porous jars, is offered to the passers by, mixed with a sugary substance
looking like what is used by confectioners for "meringues," but which melts
in the water and leaves no trace. This is the universal beverage of every
class in Spain.

There is little to tempt foreigners in the shops of Seville, and, with the
exception of photographs and fans, there is nothing to buy which has any
particular character or "chique" about it. The fans are beautiful, and
form, in fact, one of the staple trades of the place; there is also a sweet
kind of incense manufactured of flowers, mixed with resinous gums, which
resembles that made at Damascus. But the ordinary contents of the shops
look like the sweepings-out of all the "quincaillerie" of the Faubourg St.
Denis.

It was on a more lovely evening than usual that our travellers went, for
the last time, to that glorious cathedral. The sorrow was even greater than
what they had felt the year before in leaving St. Peter's: for Rome one
lives in hopes of seeing again; Seville, in all human probability, never!
The services were over, but the usual proportion of veiled figures knelt on
the marble pavement, on which the light from those beautiful painted
windows threw gorgeous colors. Never had that magnificent temple appeared
more solemn or more worthy of its purpose; one realized as one had never
done before one's own littleness and God's ineffable greatness, mercy, and
love. Still they lingered, when the inexorable courier came to remind them
that the train was on the point of starting, and with a last prayer, which
was more like a sob, our travellers left the sacred building. At the
station all their kind Seville friends had assembled to bid them once more
good-by, and to re-echo kind hopes of a speedy return; and then the train
started, and the last gleam of sunshine died out on the tower of the
Giralda.

------

{608}

        Original.

        Il Duomo


      A Vision.

    IL DUOMO, being interpreted, signifies "The Cathedral," and the subject
    of the following poem is the picturesque and beautiful cathedral of
    Milan. This splendid building is adorned externally by nearly five
    thousand white marble statues, life size, of knights, martyrs, monks,
    etc. etc., the roof being ornamented also externally with sculptured
    buds and flowers in great profusion. Upward of fifty massive pillars
    support the roof internally, and over the grand altar is suspended a
    casket containing a nail from the true cross, and other relics. On the
    topmost pinnacle of the cathedral stands, serene and splendid, a
    glittering, gilded statue of the Madonna, who, with her eighteen feet
    of stature, towers nobly above her magnificent body-guard of saints,
    knights, and martyrs.


  Faint with the sunny splendors of the king of light,
  Nature disrobes, and from her wearied shoulders casts
  The oppressive mantle of the burning day;
  Flings to the glowing west her regal diadem of fire;
  Upon her drooping brow all gladly binds
  The calm and holy moon;
  And with a zone of stars loops round her languid form
  The cool sweet robe of night:
  The placid moonbeams, o'er that stately fane,
  Pour the rich affluence of their silvery light,
  And with a chaste soft lustre, tint
  The graceful slender spires,
  The marble phalanx of the white-robed saints,
  The silent knights, the multitudinous flowers,
  The mother of our Lord,
  And all the wonders of that wondrous roof!
  With hushed and reverent step, through the wide doors I passed!
  Passed from the outer splendors to the inner mystic gloom
  Of the majestic pile;
  Through the emblazoned windows streams the tempered light,
  Showing dimly forth the shrines of holy men,
  The sacred emblems, and the fifty marvellous pillars,
  Dumb stony giants, who, with patient strength,
  Bear up the ponderous roof;
  Upon the altar steps I bend me down, and, awe-struck, rest.
  Suddenly, through the deep stillness
  Breathed a solemn sound, as sweet as mournful;
  A hand unseen ran o'er the organ's keys,
  And o'er the broad, dark air the harmonious waves
  Rolled grandly on!
  Entranced I heard, and soon the subtle strains
  Distilled within my soul a deep oblivion
  Of things terrestrial.

{609}

  A vision came upon me, and I saw
  The darkness melt, the shades opaque dissolve,
  And the dull, sombre midnight change
  To day bright lustre!
  With soft and lambent flame the fifty columns glowed
  From base to branching head,
  And with supernal light pierced the thick denseness
  Of the arched roof:
  And I saw the innumerable leaves,
  The sculptured garlands of fair buds and flowers--
  Strewn with such lavish hand o'er all that broad parterre--
  With life-renewing tints endowed:
  The sacred vessels on the altar ranged,
  The pious gifts of ages passed away,
  And all the saintly relics of that holy place
  Glittered with new effulgence!
  Mine unused eyes drank in amazed the dazzling scene,
  And now upon mine ears arose the clang of music,
  And the sound of men rejoicing!
  From their huge stanchions 'scaped the massy doors,
  And through the enfranchised portal paced
  A wondrous train!
  A thousand mailèd knights, the Duomo's guards,
  Strode proudly in!
  As when in life they marched, so came they now;
  No marble corslets still their lofty hearts,
  Rich suits of Milan steel enclasp them round,
  Through the gold helmets' bars their dark eyes flash,
  Bright banners wave above them, and their hands
  Clasp as of old the trenchant blade!
  A stately white-robed troop, the Duomo's priests,
  The pageant swells.
  No rigid garb of stone impedes their solemn steps;
  Girt round with high, ecclesial pomp,
  The sacred aisles they pace,
  The jewelled crosiers grasp, the censers swing,
  And, as of yore, the glad "Hosannas" raise!
  Again the clash of steel, the armed tread,
  The banners' silken folds--
  And twice five hundred warriors
  Pass the gaping doors!
  Hark! in the air, a choir angelic sings:

    Wake, jubilant harps! peal, ye clarions of silver!
    Swell, ye loud organs! for mighty's the theme!
    Bend lowly the knee, ye saints, knights, and martyrs,
    With offerings of gold let the high altar gleam!
    Fill the gemmed censers with myrrh and with amber,
    Deck the rich shrines with a splendor ne'er seen,
    Raise high the song, the loud hymn of devotion,
    Give homage to Mary, our lady, our queen!

{610}

  Loud glorias peal, and with reverberant blast,
  Throughout the illumined space,
  The silver trumpets clang!
  Doffed is the casque, the mitred head bent low,
  The song subsides, and on that marvellous crowd
  An awful silence dwells!
  A Presence is among them--
  A Being gracious as resplendent.
  And the resuscitate host is filled with holy terror!
  She smiles benignly on the kneeling throng,
  And melts with heavenly look the still, deep fear!
  Again the hymn breaks forth,
  With heavenly, earthly voices join,
  Monks, warriors, martyrs swell the raptured strain!

    Lo! where she comes, all meek, yet all noble,
    The glory celestial encircling her brows.
    Fall prostrate, ye thousands, all lowly adore her;
    Bare your swords, valiant knights, yet once make your vows;
    Chant paeans, ye priests; let the harmonies roll
    Till the gorgeous temple resounds to its veil.
    Through our midst she is moving, the chosen, the holy:
    Hail, Mary, Madonna, blest Virgin, all hail!

  The voices ceased, the echoes died away,
  The mighty pillars throbbed no more with flame;
  The roof closed in, the pageant vanished,
  And the darkness swathed once more
  The sombre nave.
  Still on the air the organ's notes float sad and wailing,
  Still through the storied windows streams the moon's soft light,
  Still rest the things of earth;
  The mute Colossi yet bear up
  The vaulted roof;
  The shrines still glimmer in the dim night air,
  The mystic glories of my vision
  Gone!

      Arthur Matthison.

------

{611}

  Translated from Revue des Questions Historiques.

  Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus.

  The True Origin of the Name of America.


  I.

For three centuries, the world has regarded it as an historical fact that
Christopher Columbus, after enduring many wrongs at the hands of ungrateful
Spain, had the unspeakable mortification of seeing a usurper, screened
behind public injustice, wrest from him not only the honor of bestowing his
name on the world he had discovered, but the reward of glory, and the
supreme consolation of his last days. Fortunately this belief is erroneous.
Neither was Americus Vespucius a despoiler, nor was Columbus the victim of
so poignant an affront. It is true that the great navigator became after
death the subject of shameful misapprehensions; but his countrymen should
be held as free from the responsibility of this injustice as Columbus was
free from suspicion or presentiment of coming evil. The facts are fully
explained by the illustrious Prussian _savant_, who has consecrated
his glorious career in great part to the study of the New World. [Footnote
187]

    [Footnote 187: M. Alexander Von Humboldt, Critical Examination of the
    History and Geography of the New World. Vols. iii. and iv. are entirely
    devoted to an examination of this problem. We merely offer here an
    abstract of this work, which is little known, and, while exceedingly
    interesting, demands a very attentive perusal. See also Washington
    Irving, History of Christopher Columbus, vol. iv. app. 9, Americus
    Vespucius.]

Americus or Alberic Vespucius, (Amerigo Vespucci,) born at Florence, March
9th, 1451, of an important family, was educated by his uncle, Giorgio
Antonio Vespucci, a Dominican monk, and one of the honorable personages
connected with the _Renaissance_. His fellow-student was René de
Vaudémont, who, later in life, after gloriously defending his duchy of
Lorraine against Charles the Bold, exercised in peace a noble patronage of
science and letters.

Americus, when about forty years of age, left Italy for Spain, and entered
the flourishing commercial house founded at Seville by his countrymen the
Berardi. At this period a large number of Italians established themselves
in Spain, in Portugal, and even in England. Some became promoters of the
commerce fed by Portuguese discoveries, (the Marchioni at Lisbon;) others
(Cadomosto, the Corte reali) traced out a route along the African coast or
explored the icy barrier that guards the north-west passage; while others
again, (Christopher Columbus, John and Sebastian Cabot,) crossed the
Atlantic ocean, bringing back a wondrous discovery. This was one of the
glories of Italy, so rich in all glory during the fifteenth century.

At first a clerk, and in 1496 the general accountant of the Berardi,
Americus Vespucius listened with passionate interest to narrations uttered
by the lips of Christopher Columbus himself. He studied astronomy and the
science of navigation, and made four voyages; the first two under
protection of the Spanish flag, the last two under that of Portugal.

He naturally drew up an account of these expeditions. Like Columbus he
related his foreign experiences to friends and patrons; first, in three
successive letters, describing his first three voyages, written to the
Florentine, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici; and later, after his
fourth expedition, in a single narrative, containing a _résumé_ of all
his travels, addressed simultaneously, but not in the same form, to another
countryman, the gonfalonniere Piero Soderini, and to the Duke of Lorraine,
René II. This last was similar in tenor to a narrative sent by him a short
time before to Ferdinand the Catholic.

{612}

These four voyages, so soon made famous, are extracts, varied by Vespucius
according to the correspondents for whom they were destined. He drew them
from a complete and detailed account, written according "to the weakness of
his puny talent," [Footnote 188] as his overstrained modesty expresses it;
a work executed with assiduous care, "in order that coming generations
might remember him," but which he never published. It has not yet been
brought to light.

    [Footnote 188: "Juxta ingenioli mel tenuitatem." Crit. Exam, vol. iv.
    p. 170, n. 1.]

It is, then, only by those of his printed letters that have come down to
us--and they are not all preserved--that we know the dates and
circumstances of his voyages.

In the first voyage, which took place between May 20th, 1497, and October
15th, 1499, he recognized the coasts of Surinam and of Paria, at the mouth
of the Orinoco. In the second, dated from May 6th, 1499, to September 8th,
1500, he crossed the equator and saw Cape St. Augustine off Brazil; and
from there sailed north to Paria and Hispaniola. The dates of these two
expeditions contradict each other; for, according to them, his second
voyage must have begun five months before the first ended. Moreover, the
date 1497 for the beginning of the first voyage is inadmissible. The
registers of the Spanish administration (La Casa de Contratacion at
Seville) prove that, from April, 1497, to May, 1498, Americus Vespucius was
detained at Seville and San Lucar, occupied with preparations for the third
voyage of Christopher Columbus. [Footnote 189]

    [Footnote 189: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 267, 268. This third voyage
    took place from May 30th. 1498, to November 25th, 1500.]

For this reason the Florentine has been accused of fabricating this
pretended voyage by disguising a few incidents drawn from the second; and
of having antedated his departure from Spain, in order at one stroke to
earn the credit of first touching terra firma at Paria, and deprive
Christopher Columbus of that honor. We shall discuss this question later.

It is a singular fact that, without attributing to himself any share in the
command, and even while distinctly stating that he was there under orders
"to aid in making discoveries," [Footnote 190] he does not name the chiefs
under whose authority he was placed.

    [Footnote 190: M. Von Humboldt supposes him to have been the astronomer
    of the expedition. Crit. Exam, vol. iv. p. 189, and following. In
    several instances the other mariners failed to mention the name of
    their captains.]

But, in spite of this reticence, we gather from the deposition of Alonzo de
Hojeda in the lawsuit brought against the crown by the son of Columbus in
1508, that Vespucius served on the squadron of Hojeda. [Footnote 191]

    [Footnote 191: He states that on this voyage (May 20th, 1499, to June,
    1500) he took with him Juan de la Cosa, pilot, Morigo Vespuche, and
    other pilots. (Crit. Ex; vol. iv. p. 188.)]

A comparison between the narratives left by both leads to the conclusion
that the first voyage of Americus, so inaccurately dated, must be
identified with that of Alonzo. [Footnote 192]

    [Footnote 192: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 195-200.]

But, instead of accompanying the latter during the entire expedition,
Vespucius, after exploring the coast of Paria with him, left him at
Hispaniola at the end five months. Then, having been absent only from May
5th to October 15th, 1499, he must have returned to Spain in time to embark
in the December of that year with the expedition Vicente Yanez Pinzon.
[Footnote 193]

    [Footnote 193: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 290.]

This expedition, which ended in September, 1500 agrees in a host of details
with the second voyage of Vespucius. [Footnote 194]

    [Footnote 194: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 293-316; vol. v. pp. 61-69,
    212-213. M. Von Humboldt shows that the circumstances of each of the
    two first voyages of Vespucius bear too distinctive a character to
    render admissible the idea that they were but one voyage, that is, the
    voyage which the Florentine is accused of calling the second, while its
    elements, divided by him with more or less art, furnished fallaciously
    the material for a first supposed voyage, bearing the false date of
    1497. The first voyage was confined entirely in the northern
    hemisphere, the second extended to southern regions.]

{613}

These enterprises aroused the attention of the King of Portugal, Emmanuel
le Fortune, in whose service our traveller let himself be enrolled. He
joined a squadron (May, 1501, to Sept. 1501) sent to reconnoitre the land
of Santa Cruz, or Brazil, discovered April 22d, 1500, by the Portuguese
Admiral Alvarez Cabral, who, while on his way to the Cape of Good Hope and
the East-Indies, had been dragged westward by winds and currents. In this
voyage Americus Vespucius passed the equator by a distance which he values
at 52°. On this he boasts of having traversed one fourth of the world (40°
lat. north of Lisbon to the equator 50° lat. south; total 90°, or the
quarter of a meridian.) He gives a brilliant description of the
inhabitants, of natural features in that region, and of southern
constellations. The leader of this expedition is not known. One remarkable
fact, the encounter at Cape Verd with the vessels of Alvarez Cabral,
returning from Malabar to Lisbon, and the details which Vespucius received
from a member of that expedition concerning the admiral's adventures in the
Indies, and transmitted to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, [Footnote 195] prove
the habitual veracity of the Florentine navigator, confirmed and attested
in this instance by Portuguese documents. [Footnote 196]

    [Footnote 195: Letter dated at Cape Verd, June 4th, 1501.]

    [Footnote 196: Crit. Exam. vol. v. pp. 69-107 and 213-215.]

The fourth voyage, (June, 1503, to June, 1504,) made probably under the
direction of Gonzalo Coelho, had an object which Americus extols beforehand
without clearly explaining it: "I shall do many things," he writes to
Medicis, "for the glory of God, the good of my country, and the perpetual
commemoration of my name." It appears that the king of Portugal wished to
discover a passage to the Indies further south than Brazil; and, if it be
true that Vespucius had already penetrated to the fiftieth degree of
southern latitude, he must have just missed giving his name to the straits,
whose discovery twenty years later immortalized Magellan. But results
disappointed these cherished hopes and anticipations. The incapacity of the
commander-in-chief, whose name the narrator conceals while roundly abusing
his presumption and folly, rendered it disastrous.

Emmanuel, occupied at that period with grand projects of conquest in
Oriental India, abandoned all attempts directed to the West. Vespucius on
his side, disgusted with the barren service of Portugal, lent ear to King
Ferdinand's solicitations, and, with a facile change of patron not without
precedent among his contemporaries, returned to Castile. We find him
leaving Seville for Valladolid, where the court was assembled, bearing an
introduction to Diego, son of Christopher Columbus, from the admiral
himself. Columbus recommends him (February 5th, 1505) as a man "to whom
fortune has been adverse, and who has not enjoyed the legitimate fruit of
his labors."

He received a commission to equip a squadron destined to seek a western
route to the "land of spices." But after two years of preparation,
Ferdinand, wearied with dissensions with his son-in-law Philippe le Beau,
abandoned the design. At all events, on the 2d of March, 1508, he appointed
Americus Vespucius to be pilot-in-chief (_piloto mayor_) at Seville,
with a salary of fifty thousand maravedis, with these duties: first, to
make sure that the pilots understood the use of astrolabe and quadrant;
second, to make out a table of positions, to bear the name of _Padron
real,_ and serve the sole purpose of fixing maritime routes; third, to
oblige pilots after each voyage to explain, in the presence of the officers
of _La Casa de Contratacion_ and of the _piloto mayor_, the exact
position of the newly discovered lands, and also any corrections in the
bearings of coasts, in order that all necessary changes might be recorded
in the _Padron real_.[Footnote 197]

    [Footnote 197: Crit. Exam. vol. v. pp. 167, 168.]

It was while filling this eminent position that Americus Vespucius died at
Seville, on the 22d of February, 1512, aged sixty-one years, without having
made another voyage.

{614}

  II.

Thus lived Americus Vespucius, joining actively and honorably for the last
twenty years of his life in the gigantic labors by which the mariners of
Castile and Portugal wrenched one by one her secrets from the sea.

Valued and sought by kings as well as by the most illustrious men, a little
vain himself, proud of the early education that had raised him above the
generality of navigators, with a mind rather commonplace than brilliant,
nowhere does he give evidence in his narratives of a dishonest leaning
toward usurpation; nor does a single act accuse him of such desires.

And yet usurpation there was. Let us discover its source and the manner of
its consummation.

The Italian friends with whom Americus was in correspondence probably took
upon themselves to publish his letters. The first one put in print was the
letter to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, containing an account of his third
voyage. Rich in curious details, and in vivid pictures of habits and
manners, this little work was the more striking to imaginations already
overwrought, that the narrator's explorations had embraced vast coast
regions of southern latitudes. [Footnote 198]

    [Footnote 198: The fact that these discoveries of Americus had taken
    place in southern regions added to their interest. Many persons still
    persisted in the error of ancient cosmography, that the two temperate
    zones, north and south of the equator, were alone habitable, and could
    never hold communication with each other because of the burning
    atmosphere of the torrid zone. We find a ludicrous and remarkable
    specimen of this blind spirit of conservatism in a certain Zachariah
    Sillus, who writes at Paris in 1515, that is to say, twenty-three years
    after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus and seventeen years
    after Vasco de Gama's expedition to the Indies: "Between the torrid
    zone and the glacial zones, two zones only are habitable. By whom is
    the one corresponding to our own inhabited? Macrobius affirms it; no
    one has ever known, no one ever will know. For the torrid zone placed
    between them interdicts all intercourse between the men of these two
    regions. The superior zone, then, only is inhabited, I mean the one
    lying between the northern and equatorial regions." (Bibliothèque
    Magazine, No. 16169.) Others understood no better the antipodes, the
    men of the opposite hemisphere standing head downward. The voyages of
    Vespucius contributed largely toward the solution of these problems.]

The first publication of this third voyage appears to have been made in
Italy. The Latin language served it for a passport beyond the Alps, and
furnished the type for numerous French and German translations. The first
Latin edition known is without date, and bears the name of the publisher
Lambert, in Paris. Afterward came those of Otmar, in Augsburg, 1504,
published previously under the title of _Mundus Nova_, an expression
used by Americus himself; and those of Strasburg, published by Hupfuff, in
1505; those of Leipzig, 1506.

Soon the Italians with their _génie d'ensemble_ gather together into
ever-increasing collections various narratives published separately. First
appeared the "Book of all the Expeditions of the King of Spain among the
newly discovered Islands and Mainlands," (printed in Venice, 1504, in
quarto,) by Albertine Vercellese di Lisona. This collection comprises only
the first three voyages of Christopher Columbus, with those of Pietro
Alonzo, and of Pinzon. Three years later, the great collection of Vicenzo
absorbs all these, adding to the voyages made by Spaniards those made by
the Portuguese, and placing _en vedette_, as we say nowadays, the name
of Americus Vespucius: _Mondo Novo e Paesi Nuovamente ritrovati da
Alberico Vespuxio, Florentine_, 1507. The author, who writes
anonymously, was Alessandro Zorzi.

This book was also translated into Latin at Milan, 1508; into German by
Jobst Ruchamer, of Nuremberg, 1508; and into French, by Mathurin du
Redouer, of Paris, without date. Of the French version, several editions
followed each other in rapid succession about the year 1516.

Thus popularity became rapidly attached to the name of Americus Vespucius.
These collections, disseminated through the learned nations of Europe, gave
the Florentine the fame of having traversed a greater extent of newly
discovered country than any other man, and predisposed public opinion to
give him all the credit of the essential discovery.

{615}

But the decisive influence came from a remote corner of the Vosges.

René II., Duke of Lorraine, the old school companion of Vespucius, shared,
as has been already said, the elevated tastes natural to princes of the
Renaissance. He followed with attentive eye the explorations of navigators,
and favored the progress of geographical science.

Americus Vespucius addressed to him, as we know, from Lisbon, in 1504, an
account or rather an abstract of his four voyages.

There lived in those days in Lorraine, in the little town of Saint Dié, a
learned bookseller, a native of Fribourg-en-Brisgau, and an ancient student
in the university of that town. Following a custom of the time, he had, by
a Greek transformation, translated his name from Martin Waldsee Muller to
Martinus Hylacomylus. [Footnote 199] He prepared an edition of Ptolemaeus.
The mathematician of Alexandria, the last exponent of geographical
knowledge and of cosmography among the ancients, had been successively the
oracle of the immovable middle ages and of the invincible pioneers who
opened the modern era. The world was never weary of making reprints of his
writings, adding in a supplement what antiquity had not known of our globe,
or as the saying went, of lands outside Ptolemaeus, (_regiones extra
Ptolemaeum._)

    [Footnote 199: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 99 and following. See the
    positive and sagacious researches which led M. Von Humboldt to discover
    the true name of Hylacomylus. The passage is of great interest, not
    only on account of the problem whose solution it presents, but as
    showing with what persevering ardor the illustrious author devoted
    himself to the elucidation of the truth.]

But before entering upon his great work, Hylacomylus published an
introduction to the cosmography, and as an addition precious as it was
novel, enriched it with the four voyages of Americus Vespucius, under this
title "Cosmographiae introductio cum qui busdam geometriae ac astronomiae
principlis ad eam rem necessariis. Insuper quatuor Americi Vespucii
navigationes." He wrote anonymously, revealing his name only with the
second edition in 1509.

From whom did he obtain these four voyages, never before printed? No doubt
from the Duke of Lorraine. But he is silent upon that point, limiting
himself to the information that they had been translated from Italian into
French and from French into Latin.

Here and there in the nine chapters that compose his work Hylacomylus
alludes to the discoveries of Americus Vespucius, extolling their extent
and their scientific importance. "The torrid zone," he says, "is habitable
and inhabited. The Golden Chersonesus and Taprobane contain many human
beings, as well as a very considerable portion of the country entirely
unknown until lately, when it was discovered by Americus Vespucius."

Further on, in a more decided manner, after mentioning the seven climates
described by Ptolemaeus, and named after several remarkable towns,
mountains, or rivers of the northern hemisphere, Hylacomylus opposes to
them six others recently recognized in the southern hemisphere. The names
of the first five repeat those of the north in symmetrical opposition.
[Footnote 200] In the sixth, toward the antarctic region and the extremity
of Africa, he places Zanzibar, discovered shortly before, the islands of
Java Minor, (Sumatra,) Seula, (Ceylon,) with the fourth part of the world;
"and this quarter, since Americus discovered it, we may be allowed to call
the land of Americus, or America."

    [Footnote 200: "Pari modo dicendum est de eis quae sunt ultra
    sequinoctialem ad austrum quorum sex contraria nomina habentia sunt
    lustrata: et dici possunt antidia Meroes, antidia Alexandrias, antidia
    Rhodon, antidia Rhomes, (sic,) antidia Borischener, (sic,) a graeca
    particula antiquae oppositum vel contra denotat."-Ch. vii.]

Finally, and it is here that this obscure author decides the question for
future ages, he enumerates the countries comprised in Europe, Asia, and
Africa.
{616}
He reminds us that Europe and Asia are the names of two queens, and
continues: "Now these three portions have been explored to their utmost
limits; and another, a fourth, has been discovered by Americus Vespucius,
(as we shall see later.) Now I see no grounds upon which opposition can be
made to naming it America, or the land of Americus, after its discoverer,
Americus, a man of sagacious genius, since Europe and Asia owe their names
to women."

Two series of distichs precede and announce the four navigations. We
mention them merely for the characteristic enthusiasm that they exhale in
honor of the fortunate mariner. He alone who sang the maritime adventures
of the Trojan hero, says the poet in closing his verses, could worthily
celebrate this theme. [Footnote 201]

    [Footnote 201: The poetical part of the Cosmographiae Introductio is by
    Philesius, (Ringmann,) a friend of the editor.]

This, then, was the baptism of the new-born world. It was in one of the
humblest cities of Lorraine that an unknown bookseller bade Europe and Asia
hold it with him over the font, inscribing it in the classic family by a
name thenceforth imperishable.


  III.

This name became quickly famous in the Old World. Its birth in Lorraine was
an advantage in the beginning. This country was fortunately placed for
facilities of intercourse between France and Germany, very near the Rhine,
along whose banks were crowded so many famous towns from Bâle to Rotterdam,
and close to Strasburg, that centre of powerful radiation.

From the presses of Grieninger, or Gruninger, issued, in 1509, the second
edition of the Cosmography, bearing this time the author's name affixed to
the dedication. Piquant selections were made from the four voyages of
Americus, and many persons, allured by its success, falsely claimed the
paternity of the book. [Footnote 202] Long after the death of Hylacomylus
his work was destined to be reprinted at Venice in 1535 and in 1554. The
suffrage of Italy served not a little the popularity of the navigator and
the name of America.

    [Footnote 202: Hylacomylus complains of this in a letter to Philesius,
    dated 1509.]

Everywhere an irresistible and universal concurrence enhanced the renown of
Americus Vespucius, as wave after wave bears its tribute to the rising
tide. From the time of the appearance of that first edition, (1507,) maps
and globes were printed in Strasburg and sold at low prices, bearing
indication of the discoveries of Americus Vespucius, with his name.
[Footnote 203]

    [Footnote 203: Crit. Exam, vol iv. pp. 140-142. Letters of the
    Benedictine Trithemius, Aug. 12th, 1507. Humboldt shows that this
    letter is often dated incorrectly 1510. Trithemius makes Vespucius a
    Spaniard.]

In 1509, the same year when the second edition of Hylacomylus appeared, an
anonymous _opvscule_, another product of John Grieninger's active
press, called, "Globus mundi declaratio, sive descriptio mundi et totius
orbis terrarum," sanctions the proposition of the scholar of Saint-Dié.
This is the first geographical treatise in which the name of America takes
undisputed possession as the designation of the New World. The phraseology
in which it is couched is fantastic, and, independently of its
significance, merits a moment's attention.

"Doctors," saith the cosmography "compare our earth to the human frame as
possessing all the parts contained in a body. First, the flesh is the earth
itself; blood corresponds to water, bones to stones, veins to mountains.
The head is the East, or Asia; the feet are the West and America lately
discovered. Africa is the right arm, and our own continent of Europe the
left."

Science in her first essays was sometimes satisfied with very naive
puerilities, and young America was received under strange auspices. But at
that time, perhaps, this was an advantage. The author of the Globus shows
himself more rational while undertaking to demonstrate clearly, even to
persons of small education, the existence of antipodes whose feet are
opposed ours; and the possibility of life in any portion of the globe,
because the sun shines upon all parts of the earth--problems that disturbed
many minds.

{617}

Nevertheless, great as is his admiration for Americus Vespucius, and for
"the fourth part of the world by him discovered, that island larger than
Europe whose shores develop westward with relation to Europe and Africa,"
the geographer of Strasburg does not inscribe the name of America on his
map. He is content with the appellation of the _New World_. [Footnote
204] Pierre Apier, in 1520, was the first to enroll the name of America on
a map of the world added to an edition of Solinus. [Footnote 205]

    [Footnote 204: Newe Welt. The indications on this map of the Globus are
    in German.]

    [Footnote 205: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 255; vol. v. pp. 174, 188.]

Then comes the author who, adding practice to precept, should have
anticipated others--we mean Hylacomylus.

His ambition, like that of every cosmographer, was to re-edit the
mathematician of Alexandria. The magnificent bounty of René II. furnished
the funds for the preparatory labors and provided for the engraving of
maps. But death interrupted the work in 1508 by snatching away its noble
patron. [Footnote 206]

    [Footnote 206: We find in a treatise of 1511, composed of a tract chart
    of Europe by Hylacomylus, with a description of the same continent by
    his friend Philesius, an interesting tribute to the memory of René II.
    Hylacomylus dedicates this map, of which he is very proud, to Duke
    Antony, René's son and successor. He observes that the late duke was
    "the first among the first of princes to favor the liberal arts, full
    of the love of letters and of lettered men. We ourselves remember the
    indulgent ear, the smiling countenance, and the good grace with which
    he received the general description of the globe, and other monuments
    of our literary labors offered by us to him." This book (Biblio.
    Magazine, No. 16169) is entitled: Instructio manuductionem praestans in
    cartam itinerariam Martini Hilacomile, cum luculentiori ipsius Europae
    enarratione à Ringmanno Philesio conscripta. Strasbourg Imprimerie
    Grieninger, April, 1511.]

In the language of the editors, two ecclesiastical dignitaries of
Strasburg, it was aroused from its sleep among the rocks of the Vosges only
after six years of neglect. It was published at Strasburg in the year 1513,
under the superintendence of Philesius. The maps do not present the name of
Americus, nor the body of the work that of Hylacomylus. But, following
those belonging to the geography proper of Ptolemaeus, there is a rich
supplementary atlas, which represents the geographical state of the world
in the sixteenth century, and offers us two very curious maps; a map of the
world, entitled "Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem,"
with the profile of the western mainland and several islands of the
Antilles and a special map of discoveries, Tabula Terre Nove, loaded with
names that mount in a grand scale up to the fortieth degree of south
latitude. This place is eminently suited to introduce the name of America,
[Footnote 207] but we seek it in vain. It was destined to appear in a
posthumous work of the bookseller of Saint-Dié.

    [Footnote 207: On the contrary, we find this inscription: _Haec terra
    cum adjacentibua insulis inventa est per Columbum Januensem ex mandate
    Regis Castellae._ Elsewhere the preface of the supplement contains
    this singular phrase _à propos_ of the map of the world: "Charta
    autem marina quam hydrographiam vocant per admiralem quondam
    serenissimum _Portugaliae regis Ferdinandi_ caeteros denique
    lustratores verissimis peragrationibus lustrata." (Folio, Imperial
    Lib., G. 10.) How place Ferdinand on the Portuguese throne then
    occupied by Emmanuel? Who is this admiral? Remark that the names of
    locality on the second map are Spanish. This extraordinary confusion of
    names of kings will serve to explain other errors in after times.]

In 1522, Laurentius Phrisius, who must not be confounded with Philesius,
published a new edition of Ptolemaeus at John Grieninger's in Strasburg.
Hylacomylus was dead; but how could they do better than employ the maps
prepared by him in his lifetime? "That we may not seem," says Phrisius to
the reader, "to arrogate to ourselves another's merit, know that these maps
have been lately prepared by Martin Hylacomylus, dead in Christ, and
reduced to dimensions smaller than their first form. If they are good, to
him then, and not to us, peace and place among the celestial hierarchy, in
the bosom of him who separated the edifice of this world by spaces so
marvellous. For the remainder that follows, know that it is our own work."
[Footnote 208]

    [Footnote 208: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 116.]

Now, upon this map of the world, which is the work of Hylacomylus, and, is
entitled as in the Ptolemaeus of 1513, "Orbis typus universalis juxta
hydrographorum traditionem," is displayed the name of America.
{618}
And what a triumphant commentary upon it is given in the preface written by
Thomas Aucuparius! "Not less worthy of panegyric are those who, since the
days of Ptolemaeus, have succeeded by an incredible effort of genius in
exploring new countries and islands. And in the first rank among them, and
deserving an extraordinary fame, stands Americus Vespucius, the illustrious
and eminent man who discovered and explored and was the first guest of the
land of America, called to-day America, or the New World, or the fourth
part of the world; as well as of other new islands adjacent to it or lying
at no great distance."

This enthusiasm was not free from confusion. The _savans_ on the
borders of the Rhine received by repercussion the echoed reports of these
wonderful Portuguese and Spanish discoveries, without distinguishing quite
clearly the name and extent of each one. For instance, this Ptolemaeus of
1522 repeats the map of 1513, with the indication that the continent in
question with its neighboring islands was discovered by the Genoese
Columbus under orders of the King of Castile. [Footnote 209]

    [Footnote 209: We have not been fortunate enough to find the Ptolemaeus
    of 1522. But there exists in the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève (G. 8)
    an edition of 1525, made by Bilinald Pirckeymer, at Grieninger, in
    Strasburg. The atlas, in the second part of the volume, evidently
    repeats in a smaller form that of 1513. The maps are identical. Now,
    the last Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem
    exactissime depicta bears, with the sacramental date of 1522, the name
    of America upon the great tract of country in the south-western part of
    the Western ocean. This, then, is the first document. After the date
    come the initials L. P. (Laurentius Frisius. Frisius, another form of
    Phrisius.)]

The same legend, under date of 1497, adjoining the words America provincia,
on Apian's map, appears in the edition of Pomponius Mela, by Vadianus,
(Joacquin de Watt,) Bâle, 1522. Yet the first pages in the book reproduce a
letter from Vadianus to a friend, concerning the discovery of America by
Vespucius, and the remarkable proficiency in mathematics of this navigator.
The editor does not remark that the name of America upon the map is in
contradiction with that of Columbus in the legend, or that elsewhere he
attaches erroneously to the third voyage of Columbus, during which the
great navigator touched Paria, the pretended date (1497) of the discovery
of Americus Vespucius. [Footnote 210]

    [Footnote 210: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 144. Columbus discovered the
    terra firma of the delta of the Orinoco, (Isla Santa,) August 1st,
    1498. The third voyage lasted from May 30th, 1498, to November 25th,
    1500.]

This discrepancy among Rhenish geographers was not of long duration.

Simon Grynaeus, author of a collection of voyages, (Orbis Novus, Bâle,
March, 1532,) in which he inserts the four voyages of Americus Vespucius
and only the first of Columbus, does not hesitate in deciding their
respective importance; witness the following words in a little treatise by
Sebastian Munster, placed at the head of the collection: "There has been
discovered in our own day in the Western ocean, by Americus Vespucius and
Christopher Columbus, what one may call a new world, and very correctly the
fourth part of the globe, so that our earth no longer consists of three
parts, but of four; because these Indian islands surpass Europe in size,
especially the one which takes its name of America from Americus, who
discovered it." The same Munster writes in his Cosmography: "What shall I
say of these great islands America, of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, Yucatan?"
And again, upon a map giving the southern part of the New World: "Atlantic
Island, called Brazil and America."

The collection of Grynaeus was reprinted in Paris about the month of
November, 1532, and several times afterward.

Apian and Phrisius, the same who worked upon the Ptolemaeus of 1522, say in
their Cosmography: "America takes its name from Americus Vespucius, who
discovered it: others call it Brazil. Is it a continent or an island? We do
not yet know." Of Columbus not one word.

These references to Christopher Columbus, evoked _à contretemps_, are
only exceptions of ever lessening frequency.
{619}
The name of America in a few years had taken possession of maps and of
science, and passed into a brilliant and resonant notoriety with the
public. The erudite, those who controlled the printing press, and those
who, in the centre of Europe, formed opinions almost uninfluenced by Spain,
and whose admiration, more or less enlightened, created fame, were fairly
dazzled by Americus Vespucius. Columbus, after being faintly discerned from
time to time, at last disappeared, and was lost like a satellite in the
nimbus of a principal star planet. No doubt he could lay claim to a few
islands; but he who, unveiling the vast expanse of southern shores, had
discovered a new world, was beyond dispute Americus Vespucius, the noble,
the illustrious traveller _par excellence_--egregius et nobilissimus
inventor, visitator et primus hospes.


  IV.

But why this silence respecting Christopher Columbus? Whence this apparent
conspiracy against a man who in our own day rears himself like a giant
above all those who navigated the route opened by his genius? Where shall
we seek the cause of the ingratitude no longer peculiar of Spain, but
attributable to all Europe, that pains our hearts?

The truth must be told: he himself was one of its principal causes.

The illustrious Genoese never courted publicity. The only papers printed
during his life, concerning his discoveries, were his first voyage, taken
from his letter of March 14th, 1493, to the treasurer Sanchez; and his
fourth, an account of which he addressed to the kings in a letter from
Jamaica, (July 7th, 1503;) [Footnote 211] the one in Latin at Rome, (1493,)
the other at Venice, translated into Italian, (1505.) The title of
_Lettera rarissima_ by which this last document is designated, shows
plainly that it was not for general distribution. Of the writings of
Columbus these are all that were published up to the close of the
eighteenth century. [Footnote 212]

    [Footnote 211: First voyage from August 3d, 1492, to March 15, 1493:
    discovery of the Bahama islands, and of Hayti. Fourth voyage from May
    11th, 1502, to November 7th, 1504; discovery of the coast of the
    continent from Honduras to Puerto de Mosquitos, at the end of the
    Isthmus of Panama. First notion of the existence of another sea to the
    west.]

    [Footnote 212: Crit. Exam. vol. ii. p. 330; vol. iv. p. 72 and note.]

This great man thought it for his interest to keep the secret, if not of
his discoveries, at least of the route he had followed. As his treaty of
Santa Fé with Isabella and Ferdinand secured to him the government and a
part of the fruits of the lands discovered by him, he had not cared to
provoke or facilitate competition. Indeed we have two letters from
Isabella, (September 5th, 1493, and August 16th, 1494,) reproaching him for
leaving the degrees of latitude blank, and asking for a complete chart of
the islands with their names and distances. [Footnote 213] He became still
less communicative after the crown of Castile violated its engagements with
him, (1495,) and when his enemy Fonseca gave up his charts to the navigator
Hojeda. They had reduced him, he said, to the position of a man who opens
the door for others to pass through. Silence may, then, have seemed to him
a means of defending his legitimate possessions, or, at least, of
diminishing the force of attacks upon his just rights.

    [Footnote 213: Crit. Exam. vol. iii. p. 340. We hear of a chart given
    at Rome, in 1505, by Bartholemew Columbus, the admiral's brother, to a
    canon of St. John of Lateran, and given by him to Alessandro Zozi,
    author of the collection of 1507. Its fate is unknown. Crit. Exam. vol.
    iv. p. 80, note. This does not look like publicity.]

Besides, though his discovery anticipated by six years the arrival of the
Portuguese in the East-Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, it was eclipsed by
the brilliant voyages of Vasco de Gama and Alvares Cabral, followed as they
were by immediate results. What were Spaniards and Portuguese in search of?
The Indies, the empire of Cathay, or of China, those regions depicted by
antiquity and by the travellers of the middle ages as gorged with precious
metals, with pearls and diamonds, with spices and glittering tissues.
{620}
Now, the Portuguese had been wafted to the very source of these treasures.
In the earliest years of the sixteenth century, their fleets returned laden
with spoils from kingdoms of sonorous names, rendered famous by the songs
or by the ambition of the poets and conquerors of classic antiquity. All
this time the Spaniards, following the steps of Christopher Columbus, were
groping in the western seas among remote regions supposed by them to belong
to extreme Asia, finding only savage tribes where they had looked for
imposing monarchies. They had picked up a few pearls, a little gold, and
some slaves, and had returned to Europe, unable to conceal from themselves
the fact that their rivals of Lisbon owed more to Vasco de Gama than
Castile to Christopher Columbus.

If, then, in the eyes of history, the glory of the immortal Genoese lies in
having sought with a reflective and discerning boldness, and discovered
more than he sought, namely, an unknown world independent of all other
lands, at a time when the only aim in view was to open a western route to
the "land of spices," in the beginning his voyage looked like a half
successful enterprise. Was the talk of discoveries, properly speaking? What
were a small number of islands compared with that southern country coasted
by Americus to the fiftieth degree of south latitude without finding its
termination?

The discovery of the Southern sea by Balboa at the Isthmus of Panama,
(1513,) the extraordinary conquests of Mexico and Peru, the adventures of a
Cortez and of a Pizarro, chilled yet more the public opinion toward him
whose works, considered then so humble, had given the impetus to these
prodigious enterprises.

A little while yet, and he was considered a simpleton for believing that
his navigation from east to west had brought him to Asia, and for having
found what he did not seek. John Beller, in reprinting at Anvers (1584) the
Cosmography of Apian and Frisius, adds a description of the Indies, drawn
from the Cosmography of Jerome Girava, of Tarragona. The latter, _à
propos_ of Cuba, explains that under the name of Indies are comprehended
all the lands recently discovered. "This name," he says, "comes from the
fact that the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, a distinguished mariner and a
poor cosmographer, [Footnote 214] having obtained in 1492 the favor and aid
of Ferdinand the Catholic and of Isabella to go in search of regions until
then unseen and unknown, called them the Indies. After making the
discovery, he returned in the same year, saying that he had found the
Indies. Therefore have these lands retained the name."

   [Footnote 214:  Naucierus insignia ac mediocriter cosmographia peritus,
   p. 167, Biblioth Magazine, 15824.]

Thus did Christopher Columbus lose ground so materially in the admiration
of his contemporaries that his end was obscure and almost overlooked. Peter
Martyr of Anghiera, who is called his friend, but hardly seems to have
merited the title, for two months and a half saw him upon the bed of pain
to which the last great crisis nailed him at Valladolid. He does not speak
of this illness in his letters, nor of his death which took place May 20th,
1506, short time after his own departure. His Oceanic Decades mention it
incidentally several years later.[Footnote 215]

    [Footnote 215: It was between the years 1510 and 1514 that Pierre
    Martyr thought proper to remember the great man's death.]

Why wonder, then, that the editors of Vicenzo's collection in 1507, and the
translator of this collection into Latin in 1508, inform us that at the
moment they write the admiral and his brother are living honorably in the
splendid court of Castile? Grynaeus in 1532 speaks in the same terms in his
Orbis Novus. [Footnote 216] So had fame abandoned the life and the grave of
Christopher Columbus.

    [Footnote 216: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 24, 124.]

{621}

  V.

So far we have traced the principal features of the nautical career of
Americus Vespucius. Still following the light of Humboldt's brilliant
researches, we have found in the bookstore of Saint-Dié, the inventor of
the name of America; we have shown how and at what period this appellation
passed from the _Introduction of the Cosmography_ on to maps and into
public use; and how motives personal to Christopher Columbus, and the
astounding exploits of Portuguese or Spanish conquerors, threw into the
shade the services and genius of the most daring mariner the world has ever
seen.

We have shown that a strong current of public opinion, self-formed in a
certain sense, had developed, without leaving room to suppose or suspect
any culpable participation in Americus Vespucius. Strictly speaking, this
should absolve us from all obligation to justify him further from the
reproach of usurpation. Yet it is our intention to conclude with a review
of that side of the question.

To begin with, there exists no proof or presumption that he had any hand in
the publication of his voyage. The work contains details such as he would
certainly not have consigned to a writing intended for the public; as, for
example, when speaking of the second voyage, he complains, in a letter to
Soderini, that the Queen Isabella had taken from him a shell to which were
found attached one hundred and thirty pearls. "After that," he continues:
"I took good care how I showed her such precious things."

Does not he himself tell us that he has in reserve the project of
publishing a complete and extended narrative, the object of his assiduous
cares, and the hope of his future glory? So scrupulously, it appears, he
observed Horace's precept, (nonumque prematur in annum,) that death
surprised him while still hesitating to bring it to the light. Its destiny
is unknown.

Living and writing at Seville, in the very centre of the excitement of
discoveries, among a crowd of seafaring men who had seen, accompanied, or
talked with Christopher Columbus, whom he survived only six years, how can
we suppose that he could conceive the plan of attributing to himself an
honor known by all to belong to the admiral? And if he had dared to do so,
how could he with impunity have attempted it before such judges, without
calling forth a cry of indignation that should resound to the furthest
extremities of Europe?

It is said that he gave to his first voyage, which really dates from May
20th, 1499, the fraudulent date of May 20th, 1497, in order to rob Columbus
of priority in the discovery of terra firma. [Footnote 217] But in that
case, would he not have adjusted his dates more adroitly? Would he have
committed the gross blunder of assigning the end of this voyage to October
15th, 1499, mentioning directly afterward that he began the second in May,
1499, [Footnote 218] that is to say, five months before his return from the
first? What answer could he have made to those who had the registers of La
Casa de Contratacion in hand, [Footnote 219] and, armed with universal
testimony, would have told him that, pending the pretended duration of this
first expedition, all Seville and Cadiz had seen him occupied with
preparations for the third voyage of Columbus, who set sail May 30th. 1498.

    [Footnote 217: Remember that Columbus touched terra firma at the delta
    of the Orinoco, August 1st, 1498.]

    [Footnote 218: The edition of Hylacomylus bears date 1489, a printer's
    error.]

    [Footnote 219: These registers bear their testimony at the present day.
    We had occasion to refer to them in the first part of this article.]

Moreover, these errors in dates were extremely common at the commencement
of the sixteenth century. Education was incomplete. The means of
verification were hard to obtain concerning expeditions that crossed each
other in every sense. Thus, in the eighteen years following Vasco de Gama's
expedition, the king of Portugal sent no less than 294 vessels to India and
to the land of the Holy Cross, (Brazil.) The fourteen expeditions that
sailed from Spanish ports between 1496 and 1509, though less numerous,
followed each other as closely, and were no less difficult to disentangle.

{622}

The hurry of copying and of printing multiplied errors.

The different editions of the voyages of Vespucius are full of
contradictions in dates, a confusion that seems to exclude all reasonable
suspicion of intentional falsification. [Footnote 220]  Christopher
Columbus erred as to the duration of the two passages of his first
expedition, and that at the very moment, when toward its close, he
approached the shores of Europe. [Footnote 221] The most exact and
attentive historians err constantly as to well-authenticated facts, as, for
instance, Orviédo, the official historian of the Indies, in asserting as a
notorious fact that Columbus discovered the Indies in 1491. [Footnote 222]

    [Footnote 220: Crit. Exam. vol. v. p. 111.]

    [Footnote 221: Ibid. vol. v. p. 201.]

    [Footnote 222: Instead of 1492. M. Humboldt cites many similar errors.]

Not daring to misrepresent the facts in Andalusia, did Americus induce the
editors in Lorraine to tell falsehoods at a distance, acting in his stead?
Or, to speak more correctly, did he get them to decree to him the honors of
the discovery, and suggest to them the name of America? We have absolutely
no ground for the supposition. Nowhere do the numerous publications taking
their origin from the Cosmography of Hylacomylus allude to any relation
direct or indirect with the Florentine. If the maps of the editions of
Ptolemaeus in 1513 and 1522, had resulted from interested suggestions on
the part of Americus Vespucius, we should not find upon them, in large
characters, the indication that the great southern country was discovered
by Christopher Columbus, the Genoese. This southern country would assuredly
have extended to that famous fiftieth degree of south latitude, of which
Americus was so proud, instead of ending somewhere about the fortieth
degree. The editors of 1513 would not have fallen into the singular blunder
of making Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Portugal. Some explanation would
be needed, too, of the impostor's having selected as an accomplice an
obscure scholar in a still more obscure town of Lorraine, (which an eminent
representative of the scientific world tried lately to locate in the depths
of Hungary,) [Footnote 223] where he had many Italian friends to whom he
would more naturally have addressed himself. And one might reasonably ask
why the good people of Saint-Dié and Strasburg (whom one cannot know
through their writings without conceiving a high opinion of their character
and of their devotion to science) could have participated so coolly in a
dishonest action, or even have entered hoodwinked into a snare spread for
their ingenuousness--a snare, too, of which no trace remains.

    [Footnote 223: Navarrete. Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 103.]

To this accusation consisting of gratuitous and baseless assertions, there
is a crowd of real motives to be opposed.

It is far more natural to admit, taking into consideration the extreme
difficulties of communication at that period, that the enthusiasm of
Hylacomylus and his Strasburg neighbors was spontaneous. Such is certainly
the character of the extracts we have presented to the reader. It is
extremely probable that Americus Vespucius never saw the Cosmography of
1507 or the Globus of 1509, and that he was to the end unconscious of the
dangerous honor bestowed upon him at Saint-Dié. As to the maps illustrated
with his name, they appeared in 1520 and 1522, eight and ten years after
his death.

But for the tyranny of habit, which demands a response, point for point, to
charges once preferred against an individual, we should have suddenly
adopted a more radical system, and have declared not only that Americus
Vespucius did not entertain the vile and criminal intentions ascribed to
him with regard to Christopher Columbus, but that, at the stage of ideas
and of science existing in his day, he could not have conceived them.

{623}

In using the expression New World, or the fourth part of the world, we
attach to it the precise sense of the vast American continent. Our eyes
instinctively behold that colossal dike, which, stretching, so to speak,
from pole to pole, restrains and divides the two oceans facing easterly
toward Europe and Africa, and westerly toward Asia, but separated by
enormous distances from all three.

We must set aside this preconceived idea, and return in thought to the
latter days of the fifteenth century.

The ancients and the travellers of the middle ages prolonged Asia
indefinitely eastward; and when at last they set a term to that country by
India, the Mangi and Cathay, (China,) they continued it again by sowing in
handfuls through the neighboring seas innumerable archipelagoes. It was
while more especially acting upon the words of antiquity that Christopher
Columbus braved the awful solitudes of the Atlantic, and, bearing directly
westward, sought the Indies by another route than that used by the
Portuguese. When the unknown land, the prize of his divination, rose from
the bosom of the waters, the admiral never for an instant doubted that he
was about to plant the standard of Castile upon an Asiatic island. He took
Cuba for the very continent of Asia, _the end and the beginning of the
Indies_. "I have discovered," wrote he to Pope Alexander VI. (February,
1502,) "333 leagues of the terra firma of Asia." On his third voyage, the
spectacle of the immense flood of the Orinoco having suggested to him the
very rational idea that such a river must belong to a large country, he
made of it the India of the Ganges. In this conviction he lived and died.

In the same way Americus Vespucius, during his second voyage, coasting
along the country destined to bear his name, fully believed himself to be
in Asia. He tried to find Cape Cattigara in the great gulf of Ptolemaeus;
[Footnote 224] and followed for 400 leagues a shore which was, he said, the
end of Asia, by the eastern side, and the commencement by the western side.
"This expedition has lasted thirteen months, during which we have run the
greatest risks, and discovered an infinite stretch of the land of Asia as
well as a number of islands." [Footnote 225] In passing over to the
Portuguese service afterward, it was with a hope of pursuing his
investigations, and of "finding the Island of Taprobana, (Ceylon,) situated
between the sea of the Indus and the sea of the Ganges." His fourth had for
its object the Molucca Islands, the land of spices, and Malacca.

    [Footnote 224: Sinus Magnus. Ptolemaeus took the Indian ocean for a
    sea, bounded on the north by Asia, and on the south by Africa, the
    latter continent widening from west to east, to form the southern
    barrier of the Indian ocean.]

    [Footnote 225: "Discoprendo infinitissima terra de l'Asia e gran copia
    d'isole."--Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 299 and note, et passim.]

The conviction of these two men decided general opinion, as is attested by
the name of the Indies applied to the western lands. Both had passed away
before Balboa's march to the great ocean (1513) and Magellan's voyage
unsealed all eyes and dissipated the dreams of Ptolemaeus.

Now, since it is an indisputable fact that Christopher Columbus and
Americus Vespucius never had an intuition of their veritable discovery, and
that for the rest of their lives both of them firmly believed that they had
reached the extreme end of the continent of Asia, how could the one have
planned to frustrate the other of the glory of having revealed a new world
whose existence they neither of them suspected? How could Vespucius
undertake to slip surreptitiously into history, and impose a contraband
name upon a continent that only seemed to him susceptible of bearing the
name of Asia? Moreover, what personal advantage could he hope to reap from
fraudulently dating his arrival at Paria during his first expedition, 1497,
when the discovery of Oriental Asia was looked upon as accomplished by
Christopher Columbus five years before?

{624}

Let us also take these expressions of _fourth part of the world_ and
_new world_ according to their original sense, and not with the
absolute signification attached to them at the present day. In the mouth of
Americus Vespucius, the former meant simply that he had passed over,
between Lisbon and the extreme point of his explorations, an arc of 90°,
whether the quarter of a grand circle or of the terrestrial circumference
from one pole to the other. As to the latter, it was quite natural that the
extraordinary and unexpected extent of the Asiatic lands, contemplated for
the first time, and the aspect of a nature of which nothing European could
give an idea, with inhabitants of a strange color and of cannibal habits;
it was quite natural, we repeat, that the navigator should exclaim that
before him lay a new world.

Cosmographers in their turn were struck by the interminable succession of
shores, whose development south of the equator resolved, contrary to old
prejudices, the problems so long agitated concerning the torrid zone and
the second temperate zone, and the question whether or not the sun
enlightened the southern hemisphere in the same manner as the northern.
Such a theatre suddenly thrown open to geographic science appeared to them
worthy to rival Europe by its gigantic proportions, and to be accounted a
new part of the world. And yet it was not considered the New World, as we
understand it, until the time when, explorations being completed, it was
known to have nothing in common with the continent or the archipelagoes of
Asia. If precaution had been taken to disengage this idea, the accusation
against Americus Vespucius would have died a natural death in the
beginning.

But we are told that he abused his office of _piloto mayor_, and his
right of rectifying the maps by inserting his own name upon them.

This assertion is not sustained by the shadow of a proof. Mariners were not
in the habit of giving their own names to the lands they discovered,
whether Americus Vespucius, Columbus, Balboa, or Magellan. Had he done so,
it would have had only the very restricted and allowable signification of a
name applied to one of the numerous islands near Asia that seemed to spring
from the sea on all sides to greet the eyes of navigators. The scholars of
Lorraine and Alsace had no other view in selecting for this destiny the
largest southern country. They treated as coequals in importance the great
island of America and the islands of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, and Yucatan.
[Footnote 226] Finally, the name of America, applied to the whole of the
New World, resulted from the mistake by which the island (Cuba) was taken
for the mainland, and the mainland (Paria) for the island. When with time
the first error was recognized, they extended to the whole the appellation
given to what had proved to be the principal part.

   [Footnote 226: Cosmography of Munster, quoted above.]

For this Americus Vespucius could not have been responsible. He deserves,
then, to preserve in the estimation of posterity the esteem accorded to him
by all his contemporaries. He was loved and respected during his life, and
from this fact we shall in conclusion draw a new testimony.


  VI.

In the first place, Americus Vespucius possessed the friendship of
Christopher Columbus. At the commencement of our article we saw Vespucius
going to Toro, (where was assembled the court of Castile,) recommended by
the admiral to his son Diego. We give the letter entire:

{625}

    SEVILLE, Feb. 5, 1505.

  "My Dear Son: Diego Mendez [Footnote 227] left here Monday, the 3d of
  this month. Since his departure I have talked with Amerigo Vespuchy, who
  is going to court, called thither by business concerning navigation. He
  has always shown a desire to please me; and he is a very able man.
  Fortune has shown herself adverse to him as to many others. His labors
  have not proved so profitable to him as should have naturally been the
  case. He is going to court in my behalf, and with an ardent desire of
  effecting something useful to me, if occasion should offer. While in this
  place I cannot specify in what way he can serve us, not knowing how they
  stand affected toward him, but he is quite determined to do all in his
  power for my good. You will see for yourself how you can best employ him,
  for he will speak and set everything at work; I want it to be done
  secretly, that nothing may be suspected. I told him everything I could
  concerning our interests." [Footnote 228]

    [Footnote 227: A faithful servant of Columbus.]

    [Footnote 228: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 29,30, and Washington Irving,
    vol. iv. App. No. 9.]

He who expressed himself thus concerning Americus had known him not merely
a day or two, but for long years.

But let us admit that he was the dupe of a consummate hypocrite. The
traitor was to be unmasked when death should relieve him of the obstacle
who had been a source of such insupportable impatience to him. Witnesses
there were, however, to denounce him. Let us hear them:

Sebastian Cabot, a worthy rival of the most illustrious navigators of his
day, had been summoned from England to Spain about the year 1512, to
succeed Americus as corrector of geographic tables. Three years later he
took occasion to bear testimony to his expertness in the determination of
latitudes.

Peter Martyr, whose hand falls willingly on all whom he suspects of
intrigue, whether correctly or incorrectly, has only words of praise for
Vespucius, _à propos_ of his knowledge of nautical astronomy and of
the art of navigation.

Ramusio, who employed thirty-four years of his life (1523-1557) in
preparing and publishing his great collection of travels, and knew how to
wither with his indignation all who enviously cavilled at Columbus,
[Footnote 229] speaks five times in terms of high esteem, "of that high
intelligence, of the excellent Florentine endowed with such fair genius,
_il signor_ Amerigo Vespucio."

    [Footnote 229: Those who maintained that Columbus had stolen the
    knowledge of the New World from a pilot who died in his house. Oviedo
    echoed this calumnious report. (History of the West-Indies, 1535.)]

But a discordant voice arose. Michel Servet, in re-editing the geography of
Ptolemaeus at Lyons (1535, 1541,) says severe things of Americus, but not
without making mistakes. "Columbus," he says, "discovered during a new
voyage the continent and many more islands, of which the Spaniards are now
completely masters. They then are totally misled who would call this
continent America, since Americus never touched it until long after
Columbus, and since he went there not with the Spaniards, but with the
Portuguese, and to make trade."

Without pausing to notice details, we will confine ourselves to the
morality of Vespucius which the author does not attack. He only blames
those who invented the name of America. [Footnote 230]

    [Footnote 230: M. Von Humboldt, vol. iv. p. 137, note, corrects
    Servet's inaccuracies. Vespucius made a voyage for Spain with Hojeda in
    1499. It was assuredly not in the character of a merchant, but probably
    of an astronomer. A striking circumstance! this edition of 1535
    contains after all the map of 1522, bearing the name of Americus.]

To this accusation, such as it is, the History of India, by Gomara, (1551,)
answered contemptuously: "There are persons who enjoy blackening Alberico
Vespucio's reputation, as may be seen by some editions of Ptolemaeus in
Lyons."

Now, having seen the proofs drawn from those who have spoken, let us look
at the counter-proofs of those who have not spoken--a testimony not without
significance.

Witness, for example, Oviedo, who systematically cries down Christopher
Columbus. He is silent as to the supposed pretension of Vespucius to
priority in the discovery of the mainland. Is it to be supposed that, if
the Florentine had actually claimed this honor, Oviedo would not have taken
him under his protection, and used his claim to make a breach in a
reputation that annoyed him?

{626}

But there is another silence more decisive. Two years after the death of
Christopher Columbus, that is to say in 1508, Don Diego, his eldest son,
brought a lawsuit against the crown before the council of the Indies, to
recover dignities and privileges that had been guaranteed to the admiral in
the treaties acceded to by Ferdinand and Isabella. It was essentially
important to the fiscal to prove that Columbus had been anticipated by some
one else in Paria, in order to deprive the heirs of all claim to the
revenues drawn from that country at least. Nor, although in this debate
efforts were made to draw from the seamen testimony inimical to Columbus,
and although the fiscal disdained to use no rumor, however vague or futile
it might be--descending to every refinement of deceit and fraud, and
pushing the hostility of the investigation even to extravagance, according
to Las Casas; yet neither Americus Vespucius, who was still alive during
the first four years, nor John Vespucius, his nephew, a renowned pilot,
ever brought forward any claim to priority in the discovery. They were not
called up as witnesses; the cosmographies printed in other countries in his
honor were not mentioned; [Footnote 231] and the lawsuit came to an end in
1527, after nineteen mortal years, without the name of Vespucius having
been brought forward in opposition to the great victim of injustice.

    [Footnote 231: It is quite possible that they had not been seen in
    Seville. This furnishes a strong though indirect proof that Vespucius
    did not know of their existence.]

About the year 1513, Fernando Columbus, the admiral's second son, put the
last touches to the history of his father. An openly expressed and pious
indignation animated him against those who had embittered with so many
mortifications that illustrious career. He leaves the memory of Americus
Vespucius in peaceful repose. Evidently there was nothing to avenge in that
quarter.

Sole and last of his contemporaries, finishing in extreme old age, at
eighty-five, in the year 1559, a general history of the Indies, Las Casas
accuses Vespucius of having falsified the date of his first voyage, and
given the number 1497 to the editors of Lorraine, with the premeditated
design of robbing Christopher Columbus of a glory so dearly acquired.
[Footnote 232] Nevertheless, he does not prove this, nor try to do so. Las
Casas was in fact mistaken. Americus Vespucius was a posthumous usurper,
and absolutely irresponsible.

    [Footnote 232: Humboldt shows that mistakes in dates occur in Las Casas
    as in all the works of that day. Vol. iv. p. 139; vol. v. p. 191.
    Charlevoix (History of St. Domingo,) says that Diego Columbus, in
    gaining the suit raised by the fiscal, condemned Vespucius. Diego
    simply proved that the admiral was the first to touch the coast of
    Paria, 1498. He never thought of condemning Vespucius, who did not
    appear in the case. The records of the lawsuit were not printed before
    1829. Crit. Exam. vol. v. p. 204, and note 2.]

But a reaction came to the public conscience in favor of Christopher
Columbus. To ingratitude, to the base passions and mean motives so cruelly
leagued against him, there succeeded a more sound appreciation, in
proportion as, further removed by time, perspective views re-established
matters in their true position. He, who in 1492, had found the small island
of San Salvador in the little group of the Bahamas, was not known to have
that day discovered the New World. And yet it was another man's name that
his discovery was destined to immortalize! Then opinion, deceived in the
first instance about Christopher Columbus, erred in regard to Americus
Vespucius. The latter had to bear the weight of an error he had not
provoked, and, condemned without a hearing by a sort of universal consent,
to incur the sad celebrity of imposture unveiled.

But to-day, we believe, a more enlightened judgment has acquitted him. His
fame is pure. Christopher Columbus does not accuse one who was his friend.
One glory does not mar another. It is sweet to have at least one injustice
less to inscribe in the martyrology of great initiators.

------

{627}

  Translated from the German.

  Three Leaves From an Old Journal.


  I.

  Milan, May 4, 1811.

I arrived at Milan, at eight P.M., two days ago. I had never before seen
the magnificent cathedral, and I had everything to set off the picture on
which I came unexpectedly. The slender sickle of the new moon hung in the
violet sky, crimsoned in the west with the lingering sunlight: the
street-lamps, just lighted, threw before me a line of red glow; the bronze
statue surmounting the lofty obelisk rose in the clear blue above; around
it silence, with a tumult below of a crowd hurrying to the theatre. While I
stood lost in admiration, I saw two men, dressed for travel like myself,
emerge from the shadow of one of the pillars. Their voices as they
approached told me who they were, though I had not seen them in five years.

"Hermann! Adolph!" I exclaimed; and they greeted me with joy.

In a few moments we were seated at a table near the door of the nearest
cafe, flasks of the Lombard champagne, the foaming wine of Asti, before us,
each telling his adventures since our separation. From the same Fatherland,
we had travelled far in different directions. They had just come from the
Tyrol; from beholding the holy strife waged against the overbearing power
of France by those brave sons of the mountains. We talked of those events,
of those true-hearted patriots, and of our trust in justice human and
divine. Adolph had visited the noble hero, Hofer, and read us a poem he had
composed in his dwelling. I took a copy of the verses.

We had little thought of our imprudence in thus discoursing, as we talked
till midnight, when the people were returning from the theatre. With
promises of another meeting, we then parted and I went to my lodgings.
Before I had walked far, I heard heavy, jingling steps close behind me,
and, turning, saw a French gendarme. I crossed toward a side street; he
followed, and suddenly seized me by the arm. "_Monsieur, votre
portefeuille_." he said; and, when I gave it up, bade me follow him.

He led me to a lofty old building, the large door of which was secured with
heavy bolts. When it swung open, I saw French soldiers on guard. My captor
spoke apart with an officer, who presently gave me in charge to two
soldiers. A turnkey, bearing a lamp, preceded us, and, going up-stairs, we
entered a gloomy gallery. An iron-barred door was opened, and I was thrust
into a narrow cell, ventilated only by a small grated window, through which
gleamed a ray of starlight. The gendarme then came in, searched me, and
took away my papers, handing back my watch and purse. I was then asked if I
wanted anything; to which I replied with a bitter laugh; and with a not
uncourteous "_au revoir_," the soldiers departed.

I threw myself on the straw mattress, and ruminated in the darkness on my
own imprudence and my probable fate. I was only twenty-one, and full of the
hope of great deeds in my country's service. I had parents, sisters, and
one dearer than all; yet, for my love to them and to my native land, I
should, no doubt, on the morrow be forced to kneel and receive the fire of
the soldiers. Thought was agony, but I could not help thinking. Suddenly
the dead silence of night was broken by a tone of melody so soft, so
exquisite, so melancholy, that it penetrated my soul. It was no song; it
was simply a strain of melody--such as brought tears to my eyes--such as
was never heard before.
{628}
Orpheus might have drawn it forth! It was--yes, I was sure it was--the
sound of a violin!

Only a violin and yet such music--in my cold despair, with the galleys or
death before me--it raised me to the summit of rapture! With the
profoundest feelings of solemnity, it blended all the joy of freedom! How
it stole on the stillness of night, wafted through the bars of my window;
clear, softly swelling, plaintive, imploring like a prayer of
love--yielding like the timid bride--how did that wondrous harmony possess
my soul! Various airs were apparently improvised; sometimes the tones
glided like magic; then rising into power, they melted into the most
enchanting melody; ever clear, as if the notes had been distinct
pearl-drops. Then the rhapsodical strains passed, by a strange but charming
transition, into deep and wonderful pathos. It was full of sadness sweet
and tender, like a mourner's sigh; now it rose into silvery richness, now
gradually faded away; the melancholy plaint of an imprisoned king! It
filled me with calmness and trust in the midst of misfortunes.

The music continued at intervals. I knew not whether to wonder most at the
composition or the execution of the player. Then he passed into strange
combinations, into bolder and wilder flights; his music was full of fire;
he seemed under the influence of inspiration. He seemed to create
difficulties only to triumph over them, and surpassing harmony was in all.
I had played the violin, (I have never attempted it since,) and could never
have imagined the instrument capable of what I heard. When the music
ceased, it lingered unforgotten in my soul.

At daylight I heard the beating of a drum, and I climbed to my window to
see what was going on. It overlooked the court, and I saw a company of
soldiers, with three prisoners standing in front of them. The officer gave
a sign, and they marched away. Just then, my cell door was opened by the
jailer, who, in reply to my questions, said: "Those prisoners are to die in
an hour. They are suspected of treason; of having favored the insurrection
among the Tyrolese."

These words were my death-warrant. I listened, shuddering, but with
composure. The jailer then informed me that the prisoners were allowed to
go into the court at that hour, and I could descend if I chose. I did so. I
found myself in a crowd of rough men, collected out of Lombardy, as its
scum, by the energy of the French government. At a distance from the
others, leaning against a pillar, his eyes turned toward the rising sun, I
saw a young man about twenty-five, apparently worn out with suffering. His
form was emaciated, his face deadly pale; his eyes were sunken; his nose
was aquiline; his forehead broad and high; and his tangled mass of black
hair, with a long beard, gave him a wild aspect. But there was a touching
interest in the sorrowful expression of his chiselled mouth and the lines
of his blanched face. He noticed no one, and was quite unconscious of my
long, earnest gaze.

Suddenly he went up to the guard who had charge of the cells, and spoke to
him earnestly in Italian. I heard his voice in moving accents of entreaty.

"No, you cannot!" replied the old man, sternly. "And if you are not quiet
of nights, I will even cut your last string for you."

"It is the musician!" I cried to myself, and I hastened to speak to him.
But my steps were checked by hearing my own name pronounced behind me. The
gendarme who had arrested me stood there, and sternly bade me follow him. I
dared not hesitate. We went out of the door, and I saw a carriage in
waiting. My conductor motioned me to get in, and followed me. After a short
drive the carriage stopped before a handsome house. The French soldier
alighted, held the door open for me, and led me up the steps and into the
house. We stood in the hall some time; at length a door opened, and a voice
cried, "_Entrez!_" I went in alone.

{629}

A gentleman in military dress stood in the room, and extended his hand to
me. I recognized him at once. Four years before, in Berlin, General K. had
been brought wounded to the house of my father. Though a political enemy,
he had received tender care and nursing till restored to strength.

He grasped my hand cordially. "You have been imprudent, my young friend,"
he cried. "Had I not occupied this post, nothing could have saved your
life. You are now at liberty."

"And Hermann--and Adolph," I questioned.

"They are free also."

I poured out thanks, which the general interrupted. "You must all be my
guests to-day," he said. "To-morrow I leave Milan with my troops, and you
must depart, or your adventure might still have serious consequences. I
have had your passports made out--to Germany."


  II.

  Paris, April 13, 1814.

A distinguished musical amateur--an intimate friend, to whom I had told
the story of my imprisoned violinist, and who thought it a romance highly
colored by imagination--sent me a note to say that I was to be treated to a
violin concert, by way of curing my enthusiasm. Lafont had promised to give
it; my friend took him at his word. It was to come off that evening, and
Baillot, Kreuzer, and Rode were invited to take part in the music.

During the last four years I had heard the best violin players in the
different cities where I had sojourned, but none even approached the
unknown performer. Now, my ideal was to be tested by hearing the four most
celebrated masters in the world!

The saloon was brilliantly lighted, and filled with a crowd of the artistic
and fashionable. The splendor was distasteful to me; I thought of the
dungeon in Milan, and the melody that seemed wafted from heaven.

After the overture, Lafont opened the concert. He displayed the most
finished grace in andante as in allegro; the most exquisite polish and
silvery clearness of tone; but his playing--compared to my prisoner's--was
like a delicate miniature beside a grand historical painting.

Kreuzer played next. His tones were full and clear, and rose into rare
boldness and strength; many passages were brilliant as a string of
diamonds; but it was the brilliancy of polished metal or jewels, not the
living beam that penetrates the soul.

Next we heard Baillot. His performance glowed with a noble fire. He drew
forth a full, energetic harmony that thrilled me; it was glorious! He ruled
the realm of sound like a monarch. But my prisoner ruled it like a god!

Rode appeared last. His form was impressive in grace and dignity; his
features were expressive and full of magnetic attraction. I started when he
began to play; for he stirred memory to its depths. He seemed to embody the
picture that had been floating before my fantasy. His music breathed the
same fire and fervor, restrained by kindred power. At one moment, he rose
to a height that seemed to equal the stranger's; but he could not sustain
it. I felt the difference. In Rode it was a wonderful, a masterly effort--
that which my prisoner accomplished with perfect ease. _His_ chainless
spirit would have soared upward and onward, seeking prouder heights, more
fathomless depths. _He_ swept the empyrean till nearing the confines
of purer worlds, and gave back to men in unrivalled melodies the music
heard from other spheres.

After the concert was over, my friend M---- introduced me to the celebrated
artists, to whom I was bound to praise their admirable performances. I said
nothing of my adventure in Milan; but Lafont, who had heard of it from
M----, questioned me, and then I related the occurrence.
{630}
They all laughed except Rode. I tried to describe the mysterious music,
mentioning peculiar difficulties overcome in a wonderful manner by the
prisoner. "Oh! you are jesting!" exclaimed Lafont. They did not believe me.
I was not well pleased, and soon after took my leave. Some one followed me
as I walked from the house. It was Rode.

He expressed himself deeply affected by what I had told them, and asked me
if it was certainly true. I assured him it was.

"I can believe you," he said, "and, furthermore, I am sure there is but one
man on earth who can be your mysterious prisoner. I heard him myself
fifteen years ago. I was in Genoa, and going home late one evening, when I
heard a violin played in a manner that filled me with surprise. The music
was enchanting. At length I discovered the performer to be a youth hardly
grown out of boyhood. He stood on a garden wall, and was looking up toward
a window, while he drew from the instrument sounds which revealed mysteries
in music of which I had never dreamed before. I stood in the shadow and
listened. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and shone full on the
boy's face and form; he was like what you have described.

"When he ceased playing, the window was softly opened, and the face of a
young girl appeared. The next moment I heard a harsh voice exclaim:
'_Traditore! pel diavolo!_' The boy sprang from the wall into the
street, plunged into a dark alley, and disappeared. A head peered over the
wall, and oaths and menaces were profusely poured forth. The light in the
window had been quickly extinguished. Some love affair, of course! After
waiting some time, I went on, and as I passed by the wall trod upon
something. It was a violin bow, no doubt dropped by the lad as he leaped
from the wall. I kept the bow in hopes of finding the owner. It was marked
with a P. But I could not trace him; I had to leave Genoa, and have heard
nothing of him since. But to him I owe the improvements I have introduced
into my performance, for I never lost the impression of his music. I call
it a revelation: I owe to it the best part of my fame!"

I listened to the great artist with astonishment. Then I told him of the
strange, fitful resemblances I had found in his playing to that of the
stranger. Both of us cherish the hope that we shall yet discover him. So
mighty a genius must one day sway the world.


  III.

  Berlin, March 30, 1829.

After my long residence in the north, I returned here yesterday. It was
half-past eight when I had changed my travelling dress and dined. I asked
the butler if there was anything new at the theatre. "Nothing, _mein
Herr_," he replied. "But the concert is an attraction. There is a violin
player--"

"I have had enough of violin players."

"This one, sir, is called a wonder. See, in the paper, here, what the
critic--Rellstab--says of him."

"Never mind, I care little for the critic's praise. What is the name of
this wonderful performer?"

"His name? I will tell you directly. Strange--it has just gone out of my
head! He is an Italian--"

"An Italian?" I exclaimed, starting up.

"Yes--and the name .... it begins with a P."

"With a P! I must go instantly Where can I procure a ticket?"

"At the bureau opposite."

In a moment I had rushed across the street, and had the ticket.

At the door of the concert hall I found the crowd so great I could not
force my way in. I was compelled to stand outside with the others.
Gradually I edged myself nearer. The tutti of the last composition was
ended; the solo--apollacca--began.

{631}

The tones struck deep in my heart. I had heard them before; they were
unforgotten. But what a miracle! Do two play--or three? That I have never
heard. No, I could not trust my ears. If I might but see the player! but
gain one look! In vain! the crowd surged against the open door, yet none
could make way through the swaying mass. At least I could hear now--and I
lost not one note.

The music ceased, and a thunder-burst of applause shook the building. I
pressed forward again, striving to get a sight of the player; but others,
equally eager, pushed before me. I was again disappointed. With swelling
heart I waited, impatient to hear him commence again.

At last: "Now he plays on the G string," said some one near me. He began. I
was not deceived. That was the very melody I heard in prison! Those were
the self-same tones that once--calming, elevating, faith-inspiring, as if
sent direct from heaven--sent light into my gloomy soul!

With renewed efforts I forced my way into the hall. I saw once more the
pale, melancholy brow, the sunken eyes, the long, dark hair, the attenuated
cheeks, the enfeebled aspect of the whole person. It was HE! The mystery of
eighteen years was at length solved. The stranger who had so charmed my
soul, filling me with feelings unutterable--who had ceaselessly accompanied
me since, like a veiled phantom--familiar, yet from which I could not tear
the covering stood before me. I heard--I saw--PAGANINI!

------

    Original.

    Mary's Dirge.

    By Carolus.


    "Manibus date lilia plenis."

  O THOU, whose awful mandate goes
  Throughout a wondering world of woes,
      Mysterious, still the same,
  In moments such as this, we feel,
  When grief is boundless, we must kneel
      And bless THY holy name.

  Ah, MARY! what avails thee now
  Thy radiant eyes, thy classic brow,
      And form of queenly mould;
  The charms of polished culture's art,
  Thy trusting, noble woman's heart,
  Now pulseless, senseless, cold?

  What now avails it to have stood,
  In mind's keen conquest of the good,
      Peerless among thy mates?
  Or that a widowed mother wound,
  Like NIOBE, her arms around
      Her last, whom death awaits?

{632}

  Alas! when heaven such gifts bestows,
  It would, to earth-stained souls, disclose
      A gleam of its own light,
  But ere we learn how dear the prize,
  All fades before our longing eyes,
      Save sorrow, dreams, and night.

  But where can friends so stricken find
  A solace for the anguished mind,
      Except in Him who sends
  The grief that clouds, the joy that cheers,
  The course of checkered, fleeting years.
      And whilst he smites befriends?

  As now I stand beside thy form,
  So late in youth and beauty warm,
      And sad, hushed vigil keep,
  The eye would be as rayless grown,
  As tearless, MARY, as thine own,
      Could see--and could not weep.

  Behold that lovely ruined shrine,
  That marble waste where thought divine
      Still seems to sit enthroned;
  Those pallid lips whose every word,
  Like sweet aëolian music heard,
      A hymn to nature toned.

  In pity, strew the virgin flower,
  By virgin hands, in tender shower
      Upon her virgin breast;
  There sleeps she, purity's picked rose--
  An angel snatched from earthly woes
      To calm, eternal rest.

  Though death's resistless, ruthless might
  Sweeps beauty's loveliest forms from sight,
      The soul retains her love,
  And MARY'S spirit, ever near
  The friends her young life cherished here,
      Will lead their thoughts above.


Pittsburg, Jan. 21, 1867.

------

{633}

  Abridged from the Dublin University Magazine.

  Sir Thomas More.


Sir Thomas More did not account his own death an evil; not only, in his
last moments, did he mention the king with sweet loyalty, but he also
displayed a cheerfulness which has scandalized some writers. Holinshed, for
instance, charges him with having been "a jester and scoffer at the houre
of his death." This mirthful disposition of More's has made his character
an interesting subject of inquiry. But irreverence has nothing in common
with that genial tendency which Southey has called pantagruelism, and the
desirability of which he has advocated. For pantagruelism is not
buffoonery, levity, cynical insensibility; neither does it consist in mere
play of wit, intellectual tumbling, and playful freaks of fancy. Jests are
but its effects, the ripples, fitfully reflecting the sunlight on the
surface, and showing that the underlying mass is a running stream and not a
stagnant fen. Music and prayer are sisters; cheerfulness is the music of
life, and harmonizes human passions into rest; it is most consistent with
that holy creed, the apostle of which taught men to "rejoice evermore;" it
is an ascensional force, a verbum, as the old mystics would have said,
which carries the spirit upward, and turns human nature toward the bright
side of things. He who was the teacher of its outwardly most grotesque
aspect has by implication defined pantagruelism as a "marvellous contempt
and holding cheap of fortuitous things," (Introd. to Gargantua;) its basis
is a want of love for the things that are in the world; its effect is,
therefore, a sweet smile at the contrast, perpetual in this earthly life,
between aspirations and realities. Hence More's pleasantry, always harmless
and free from sarcasm--sparks issuing from a healthy and beautiful spirit.
Pantagruelism itself becomes linked, in some natures, to a gentle
melancholy, the sadness of the soul exiled from its eternal birthplace; in
northern minds especially is this solemnity of reverie frequent; More, to
whom religion was a daily food, evinced this dreamy pensiveness, side by
side with his mirth, from his youth to his death. It also seemed as if,
gifted with the sagacity of a Machiavel, but without craft, he had in the
most prosperous moments of his life a power of intuition which could divine
his fate, and thus cast a softening radiance over what to other men would
have appeared a most dazzling brightness of worldly success. Hence there is
in the expression of his features a sort of anxiety mixed with
cheerfulness; the penetrative and humorous nose is like that of Erasmus;
but the bony, caustic traits of the humorist have otherwise an expression
very different from the melancholy which tempers More's face, the open gray
eyes, that seem anxiously anticipating the future or contemplating
religious things, the lips that half project in that pouting way to be
noticed on many Saxon types of countenances.

When Henry VIII. ascended the throne, More ventured to express, in a poem
which attracted the royal favor, a conceit which was at once a criticism of
the past reign, a hope, and a foreboding for the future:

  "So after six and thirty thousand year All things shal be the same which
  once they were; After the Golden came the Silver age: Then came the
  Brass, and Iron the last stage. The Golden age is revolv'd to your reign:
  I now conceive that Plato did not feign."

From that time began the prosperity of More; but his previous life had been
both happy in a domestic capacity, and remarkable in a literary point of
view. He had already been an ascetic, a husband, and a poet.
{634}
As Disraeli remarks, "More in his youth was a true poet; but in his active
life he soon deserted these shadows of the imagination."

Whether in poetry or in prose, More was to fulfil Cardinal Morton's
observation, that "The child here waiting at table, whomever shall live to
see it, will prove a marvellous man." It was at the archbishop's that More
won his first spurs in wit, devising pageants and allegories. But while his
airy character early manifested itself, his early poems also reflect a vein
of ascetic thoughtfulness; as in the Ruful Lamentacion he wrote on the
death of Queen Elizabeth, mother to King Henry VIII:

  "O ye that put your trust and confidence
  In worldly joy and frayle prosperite,
  That so lyve here as ye should never hence,
  Remember death, and joke here uppon me.
  Ensaumple, I thinke there may no better be.
  Yourself wotte well that in this realme was I
  Your quene but late, and lo, now here I lye.

  "If worship myght have kept me, I had not gone;
  If wyt myght have me saved, I neded not fere;
  If money myght have helpe, I lacked none.
  But, good God, what vayleth all this gere?
  When deth is come, thy mighty messengere,
  Obey we must there is no remedy.
  Me hath he summoned, and now here I ly.

  "Yet was I late promised otherwyse,
  This yere to live in welth and delice.
  Lo, whereto cometh thy blandishyng promyse,
  O false astrology and devynatrice,
  Of Goddes secrets makyng thyselfe so wyse.
  How true is for this yere thy prophecy--
  The yere yet lasteth, and lo, nowe here I ly."

Rhenanus, Brixius, Erasmus, commended his early poems; he was admitted
among the brotherhood of those who cultivated lettered lore. This was a
period of general renovation throughout Europe. For good or for evil, the
torch of knowledge had been lighted. Vocabularies and lexicons had reached
a fearful multiplication in Germany and Italy toward the close of the
fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. Nuremberg, Spires, Basil,
teemed with rudimentary treatises, dictionaries, and grammars; men were
feeding on Latin and Greek, studying eight or ten hours at a stretch.
England and Italy surpassed France in the literary movement; and Budé
complained that, in his countrymen's estimation, philological studies were
the hobbies of a few monomaniacs. More began his contributions to the
learning of the age by translating Lucian and Augustine's City of God.
Erasmus, in a letter to Hutten, described him as a unique genius in
England. But he gave his attention to religion no less than to literature.
"Erudition," Stapleton quaintly remarks, "however varied and extensive, is,
without piety, like a golden ring in the nostrils; there is nothing more
absurd than to set a precious jewel in a decaying piece of wood. Knowledge
is ill suited to a corrupt breast." To knowledge without goodness, Plato
had denied the name of wisdom, and given the inferior designation of
cleverness. But the youthful More was no less eager to attain piety than to
become proficient in learning. He manifested these aspirations according to
the tenets of his creed; he wore a hair-shirt, he slept on the bare floor,
his head resting on a wooden block; he restricted his hours of rest to four
or five at longest; acquainted with watchings and fastings, he nevertheless
made no ostentatious display of these and similar austerities--often, on
the other hand, concealing them under as conventional an appearance as it
was possible to bear.

Finding it useful to have some great man as an ideal, he translated Pico
della Mirandola's life. At that time, Colet, dean of St. Paul's, was
preaching in London; More derived much comfort from his friendship, and
compared himself to Eurydice following Orpheus, but in danger of falling
back into the realms of darkness. In a letter to the dean he thus
expatiates upon the annoyances of life in London: "The roofs intercept a
great portion of the light, and do not allow a free view of the sky. The
air is not bounded by the circle of the horizon, but by the housetops.
Therefore I the more willingly bear with you for not repenting of your
residence in the country, where you see good people around you, void of the
cunning of towns; where, whithersoever you turn your eyes, the bland face
of the earth delights you.
{635}
There you see nothing but the benignant gifts of nature, and, as it were,
the sacred vestiges of innocence." As for his literary study, Lilly and
Tonstall were his associates--Linacre and Grocinus his tutors. Now began
that series of friendships which he was through life always willing to
contract with educated men, such as Crooke, or Croke, one of the greatest
students of the sixteenth century, who wrangled at Leipzig, "de
dogmatibilitatibus" and other long things--schools then disputed on the
weight of Hercules's club and the size of Diogenes's tub--who taught Greek
to Henry VIII., and succeeded Erasmus in the chair of Greek at Cambridge;
Lee, who wrote against Erasmus; Fisher, who wrote sturdily against
reformers; Dorpius, who was shocked at the new classical studies, hearing
people swear "by Jove," and was desirous of limiting Grecian studies to the
works of Chrysostom and the Eastern fathers; Goclenius, who professed for
twenty years; Cornelius Crocus, who wrote Latin with Terentian elegance,
and became a Jesuit when fifty years old; Grynaeus, who taught Greek, who,
although a reformer, never insulted his antagonists and discovered six
books of Livy; Peter AEgidius, or Giles, whom Erasmus called a most
agreeable host, and who wrote a Greek lexicon while Luther was bewailing
his sins in a convent cell; Paulus Jovius, who spent twenty-seven years in
writing his Latin history, was esteemed by Leo. X. above Livy, and wanted a
great lady to send him some jam from Naples, because he was getting sick of
new-laid eggs; Vives, who was one of the literary triumvirs of the age, and
who, at his lectures at Corpus Christi College, was often applauded by
Henry and Queen Catherine. In the mean while he had, in a more practical
sphere, taken the virile gown, before practising as a barrister, and at
twenty-eight years of age been elected to the office of perpetual
"shyrevus" or sheriff. His business was to "administer justice" for the
subordinate sheriffs, "_pro istis shyrevis_" (Stapleton,) who were
incompetent in matters of law. While he was filling this office, a riot
took place in the city. For several years past there had been a great
increase of foreign workmen, to the great annoyance of the native working
classes. A popular preacher of the day, Dr. Bell, preached a sermon, in
which he urged the people to expel the foreign usurpers. Apprentices and
artisans, therefore, agreed that on the first of May, after business, there
should be a massacre of the foreigners. This trades' demonstration,
however, was baffled through the foresight of More. He issued an edict,
enjoining all well-disposed persons to stay within doors after nine o'clock
on the first of May. On that day there was no disturbance. A few days
after, however, several riotous crowds of working-men gathered in their
thousands, rushed to Newgate, and set free some tiny minorities of swains
who had been locked up for robbing, murdering, or otherwise annoying the
foreigners. Hour by hour they mustered in huger strength; angry shouts in
homeliest Saxon rang through the air; the whirligig was getting louder and
louder to one's ears. It seemed at one time rather hard to say how all this
would end. More, being loved by the town mob, tried to speak to the crowd
of small boys, big men, and roughs. Was it a Saturday night, that there
should be such noise in the streets? Did the working-men forget their duty?
They did; and it was at last needful to send for the red coats, who, with
queer-looking harquebuses, soon put the mob to flight. Thirteen ringleaders
were arrested and condemned to death; one only, however, was executed, the
others being saved through the intercession of three queens and the
influence of More.

In 1503 he was made a member of Parliament, and opposed a grant of money to
Henry VII. That monarch, who has been compared to Louis XI. of France, was
not to be bearded in this manner, and More was obliged to fly to the
continent.
{636}
But when Henry VIII. began his reign, More became the object of royal
favor. His literary talent and jovial mood were qualities too valuable not
to be appreciated by the king, who was surrounding himself with all
varieties of genius. Like Gargantua, the young king was athirst of all that
could adorn his court; More was therefore bound to the court by a golden
chain. He was made a knight, and one of the privy council. In return for
the royal favor he had to enliven the king with witty sayings, until this
yoke became almost too heavy for him. He had scarcely any time left for his
home enjoyments and his literary pursuits. In self-defence he was at last
driven to a kind of stratagem; he affected dulness, and tried as much as he
possibly could to become a bore. At last he succeeded and was allowed more
freedom and privacy.

At that period he resided in Chelsea, then a fashionable suburb. There Sir
Thomas lived in a semi-patriarchal fashion. So strict was he in religious
observances in his family that his house has been compared to a kind of
convent or religious abode. Meekness, order, industry characterized the
inmates. He set every one an example of gentleness and wisdom. Roper says
that, during sixteen years spent with Sir Thomas, he never saw the latter
in a "fume." A young lady who had been brought up in the family used to
behave badly for the sole purpose of being chid by More, whose gentle pity
and gravity were delightful to observe. In his second wife, Mrs. Alice
Middleton, who had an acrid and disagreeable temper, he had an opportunity
for taming a shrew, and had performed that feat with more credit to his
skill and patience than pleasantness to himself. He used to give his wife
and children plenty of sound ethical advice: "It is now no mastery
(difficulty) for you children to goe to heaven," he would say, "for
everybody giveth you good counsel and good example. You see virtue rewarded
and vice punished, so that you are carried up to heaven as it were by the
chins." He would encourage them to bear diseases and afflictions with
patience, and to resist the devil, whom he would compare to an ape--"for as
the ape, not well looked to, will be busie and bold to do shrewde turnes,
and contrarily being spyed and checkt for them, will suddenly leap back and
adventure no further; so the devil," etc. Thus at dinner and supper did he
entertain his family with high moral purpose; he allowed them, for their
recreation, to sing or to play on "violes." Some biographers allege that he
once cured his daughter of the sweating sickness. Ellis Haywood published
at Florence a little book called "Il Moro," in which many details are given
respecting the home life of More. Thus he is represented as entertaining
six guests at dinner. After the meal the party ascend the mound in the
garden, and, sitting on a greensward, they admire the meanderings of the
river, the hills undulating on the horizon, the turf and flowers of the
river side. His establishment, in its simplicity, greatly contrasted with
Wolsey's household, and its five hundred dependents, chancellors,
chaplains, doctors, ushers, valets, and others. More, however, a jester,
the middle-ages custom of keeping a "fool" not yet having been
discontinued. Henry VIII. had his Somers, Wolsey his Path, and More his
Patterson.

Sir Thomas was desirous of appropriating his leisure to the production of
some notable work. Already, while still unnoticed by Henry, he had written
a History of Richard III., in which he gave the following portrait of that
king:

  "Ill fetured of limmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than
  his right, hard-favoured of visage ... he was malicious wrathful,
  envious, and from afore his birth, ever frowarde. ... Hee was close and
  secrete, a deepe dissimuler, lowlye of countenance, arrogaunt of heart,
  outwardly coumpinable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kisse whome
  hee thoughte to kyll; dispitious and cruell, not for evill well alway,
  but after for ambition, and either for the suretee or encrease of his
  estate. Frende and foo was muche what indifferent, where his advantage
  grew; he spared no man's deathe whose life withstoode his purpose. He
  slewe with his owne handes King Henry the Sixt, being prisoner in the
  Tower, as menne constantly saye."

{637}

Shakespeare no doubt borrowed from this sketch some of the traits with
which he depicted the ambitious monarch. On the other hand, Horace Walpole,
in his "Historic Doubts," will have it that this history was written "from
a most corrupted source."

More now began to concentrate his energies for a work of more universal
interest. He became more abstemious than ever in his food and sleep; he
snatched as many hours as possible from his official pursuits, in order to
cultivate literature. The result of this labor was the famous "Utopia,"
composed in 1516. In a letter to Peter Giles or AEgidius, he describes the
manner in which that work was written: "After having been engaged in
pleading or hearing causes, either as judge or arbiter, there is left me
but scant opportunity for literature. I return home; I must talk with my
wife, amuse my children, confer of household affairs with my dependents. It
is necessary to do all this unless you are to be a stranger in your own
house. ... When therefore can I write? Neither have I mentioned the time
necessary for sleep or food." ... In fact he used at that time to rise at
two o'clock in the morning, writing till seven. Under these difficulties he
effected his purpose--he completed a work which won him a European
reputation.

Poets and philosophical dreamers react in their speculations against the
barrenness or terror of reality; and the more striking is this background,
the more impressive is the effect of the whole. More's book had an
appropriate practical contrast in the political circumstances of the time.
There were rumors of great wars; the Moslem emperor was threatening
Christendom. This fact, perhaps, not less than the intrinsic merit of the
book, explains the brilliant success of the "Utopia." Every educated man
read it. Morus [sic] was greatly delighted, and candidly gave expression to
his feelings. He was, he averred, more pleased with Tunstall's appreciation
than if he had received an Attic talent. Sometimes he fancied that his
Utopians were about to elect him their king for ever. In reality, he was
highly praised by AEgidius, Jovius, Busleyden, Paludanus, and others. The
new republic, these friendly critics averred, transcended the polity of
ancient Athens or Rome. A way had been shown toward the attainment of true
happiness. The book was a masterpiece of erudition, philosophy, knowledge
of the world. All this approbation was the more acceptable to More, that he
had been somewhat diffident concerning the reception of his work. In a
letter to Peter AEgidius, or Giles, of Antwerp, he had indulged in that
superciliousness toward the multitude which is the besetting temptation of
solitary thinkers. He complained of the discordances of criticism, the
small qualification of many for the exercise of lettered appreciation:

  "The tastes of men are very different; some are of so morose a temper, so
  sour a disposition, and make, such absurd judgments of things, that men
  of cheerful and lively tempers, who indulge their genius, seem much more
  happy than those who waste their time and strength in order to publishing
  a book; which, though of itself it might be useful or pleasant, yet
  instead of being well received, will be sure to be either laughed at or
  censured. Many know nothing of learning, others despise it; a man that is
  accustomed to a coarse and harsh style thinks everything is rough that is
  not barbarous. Our trifling pretenders to learning think all is slight
  that is not dress'd up in words that are worn out of use; some love only
  old things, and many like nothing but what is their own. Some are so sour
  that they can allow no jests, and others so dull that they can endure
  nothing that is sharp; while some are as much afraid of anything gay and
  lively, as a man with a mad dog is of water; others are so light and
  unsettled, that their thoughts change as quick as they do their postures.
  Some, again, when they meet in taverns, take upon them, among their cups,
  to pass censures very freely on all writers, and with a supercilious
  liberty to condemn everything they do not like; in which they have an
  advantage, like that of a bald man, who can catch hold of another by the
  hair, while the other cannot return the like upon him. They are safe, as
  it were, from gunshot, since there is nothing in them solid enough to be
  taken hold of; others are so unthankful, that even when they are well
  pleased with a book, yet they think they owe nothing to the author."

{638}

Although More did meet with some of these ignorant or malevolent critics,
he must have been gratified at finding himself exalted into a modern Plato.
Nor was the praise he received partial or exaggerated. He had expressed the
leading idea of the time. Casting a general glance over the social field,
he had applied the newly arisen spirit of research and criticism to the
survey of society. Judging the actual, he had also evolved the ideal, which
the humanitarians of the age had more dimly viewed. Being a man of genius,
he had expressed a certain order of thought--concisely, but not the less
comprehensively--for all ages; and modern Positivists, Owenists,
Fourierists, and many other ists, might, from a study of the "Utopia,"
gather another illustration of the great truth that there is nothing new
under the sun.

The plan of the work is as follows: More supposes himself in Flanders, in
the capacity of ambassador to Charles the Fifth, and in the company of
"that incomparable man, Cuthbert Tonstal, whom the king, with such
universal applause, lately made master of the roles." At Antwerp, they
become acquainted with Peter Giles, or AEgidius, "a man of great honor and
of good rank in his town, though less than he deserves;" and they make
another acquaintance in this wise: "One day, as I was returning home from
mass at St. Mary's, which is the chief church, and the most frequented of
any in Antwerp, I saw him (Petrus AEgidius, or Giles) by accident, talking
with a stranger, who seemed past the flower of his age; his face was
tanned, he had a long beard, and his cloak was hanging carelessly about
him; so that by his looks and habits I concluded he was a seaman." This
ancient mariner, however, turns out to have travelled as an observer and
philosopher as well as a naval man; his name is Raphael Hythloday. He is a
Portuguese, who has travelled with Americus Vespucius. It is in
conversation with the stranger that More becomes acquainted with the
history and manners of the Utopians. In the first part of the book, Raphael
censures the polity of ordinary countries; he complains that "most princes
apply themselves more to affairs of war than to the useful arts of peace;
they are generally set more on acquiring new kingdoms, right or wrong, than
on governing well those they possess." Such opinions had a peculiar
pungency at a time when Selim was threatening to root out the Christian
name from Europe. Raphael criticises those in power, and their conservative
spirit; he betrays an implacable hostility toward those who "cover
themselves obstinately with this excuse, of reverence to past times;" he
had, he said, met with them chiefly in England, where he happened to be
when the rebellion in the west was suppressed, "with a great slaughter of
the poor people that were engaged in it." When relating his sojourn in
England, Raphael also indulges in the eulogy of that reverend prelate, John
Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury--in whose house More had been brought up--
"A man, Peter, (for Mr. More knows well what he was,) who was not less
venerable for his wisdom and virtues, for the high character he bore: he
was of a middle stature, not broke with age: his looks begot reverence
rather than fear; his conversation was easy, but serious and grave; he
sometimes took pleasure to try the force of those that came as suitors to
him upon business, by speaking sharply though decently to them, and by that
he discovered their spirit and presence of mind, with which he was much
delighted, when it did not grow up to impudence, as bearing a great
resemblance to his own temper, and he looked on such persons as the fittest
men for affairs.
{639}
He spoke both gracefully and weightily; he was eminently skilled in the
law; had a vast understanding, and a prodigious memory; and those excellent
talents with which nature had furnished him were improved by study and
experience. When I was in England, the king depended much on his councils,
and the government seemed to be chiefly supported by him; for from his
youth he had been all along practised in affairs; and, having passed
through many traverses of fortune, he had with great cost acquired a vast
stock of wisdom; which is not soon lost, when it is purchased so dear."
More's talent for keen observation and portraiture is also evinced in the
delightful sketch of the lawyer whom Raphael observes at Archbishop
Morton's. This gentleman "took occasion to run out in a high commendation
of the severe execution of justice upon thieves, who, as he said, were then
hanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty on one gibbet; and upon
that he said he could not wonder enough how it came to pass that, since so
few escaped, there were yet so many thieves left who were still robbing in
all places." Raphael, who in that nineteenth century which takes upon
itself to realize almost all the visions of dreamers, would have been a
zealous advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, objects that
"this way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself, nor good for the
public; for as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual;
simple theft not being so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his
life; no punishment, how severe soever, being able to restrain those from
robbing who can find out no other way of livelihood. Not only you in
England, but a great part of the world, imitate some ill masters that are
readier to chastise their scholars than to teach them." Here is included
the modern fallacy about reforming criminals, which has been so much
insisted on, as if that reformation was so easy a task, as if so many
probabilities were not against it, as if it was not better for poor
criminals to be sent to a better world, than to be left open in this life
to almost irresistible temptations. However, that form of sentiment called
humanitarianism--which would spare the wicked and lost, while the honest
and useful are left to slow tortures, as in the case of merchant
sailors--that humanitarianism is continually displayed by this Raphael, in
a completeness and energy beyond which no later speculations have attained.
The lawyer maintains about the thieves that "there are many handicrafts,
and there is husbandry, by which they may make a shift to live, unless they
have a greater mind to follow ill courses;" and Raphael's rejoinder
discloses a state of things which was not very well calculated to make the
army popular: "That will not serve your turn, for many lose their limbs in
civil or foreign wars, as lately in the Cornish rebellion, and some time
ago in your wars with France, who, being thus mutilated in the service of
their king and country, can no more follow their old trades, and are too
old to learn new ones. He owns, however, that wars do not occur every day.
The following opinion of his may be advantageously recommended to the
careful study of enlightened and disinterested democrats, who, by the
magical power of their thought, can amplify it, transmogrify it, intensify
it for the benefit of their country's flesh and blood: "There is a great
number of noblemen among you, that are themselves as idle as drones; that
subsist on other men's labors, on the labor of their tenants, whom, to
raise their revenues, they pare to the quick." Applying this to his theory
of thieves, Hythlodoeus says that these noblemen keep a great number of
servants who, on their master's death, are turned out of doors and betake
themselves to larceny. The lawyer, in nowise disconcerted, answers that
these tatterdemalions, constitute a capital recruiting-ground for the army.
Raphael retorts that a converse metamorphosis of efficient soldiers into
able robbers is liable to take place.
{640}
He also inveighs against France for keeping up a ruinous military
establishment: "But this bad custom, so common among you, of keeping many
servants, is not peculiar to this nation. In France there is yet a more
pestiferous sort of people; for the whole country is full of soldiers,
still kept up in time of peace, if such a state of a nation can be called
peace; and these are kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for
those idle retainers about noblemen, this being a maxim of those pretended
statesmen, that it is necessary for the public safety to have a good body
of veteran soldiers ever in readiness. They think raw men are not to be
depended upon, and they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they
may train up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats; or, as Sallust
observed, for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow dull by
too long an intermission. But France has learned to its cost how dangerous
it is to feed such beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians, and
Syrians, and many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and
quite ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser." And
Hythloday in his enthusiasm adds a stinging taunt, the truth of which,
however, subsequent agitations and rebellions have not confirmed: "Every
day's experience shows that the mechanics in the towns or the clowns in the
country are not afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen." He further
attributes the great number of thieves to the increase of pasture, "by
which your sheep, which are naturally mild and easily kept in order, may be
said now to devour men and unpeople not only villages, but towns;" land was
enclosed, tenants turned away, and Hythlodoeus points out a cattle plague
among the results of this state of things, adding somewhat fiercely: "To us
it might have seemed more just had it fell on the owners themselves." He
does not seem to perceive that by this enclosure the land is saved from
that exhaustion which must ultimately reduce Europe to a barren state, and
thus annihilate civilization; but humanitarianism was never remarkable for
excess of foresight. The lawyer is about to reply in a speech divided into
four points, but the humane archbishop interferes, and "eases him of the
trouble of answering;" unfortunately, however, or perhaps from a relish for
humor, he allows Raphael to indulge in a long speech on the reasons against
putting thieves to death. Hythloday recommends a punishment which no
sensible thief would prefer to death, namely, that the criminal should be
made to work all his life in quarries or mines. But as this was the ancient
Roman method, it is not perfect enough for the ingenious Raphael, who would
much prefer a scheme according to which the thieves are let loose in the
daytime, engaged in working for the public; and, although liable to be
whipped for idleness, these debonair convicts punctually return to prison
every evening, and answer to their names before being locked up for the
night. The reformer adds somewhat naively, "the only danger to be feared
from them is their conspiring against the government." The unfortunate
lawyer, rather taken aback at the idea of London being full of convicts
with cropped ears and a peculiar dress, playing the part of commissionaires
or otherwise making themselves generally useful to Londoners, says that he
fears this could not take place without the whole nation being endangered;
the sensible cardinal avoids this slight exaggeration, and answers with
quiet irony that it is not easy to form a judgment with respect to the
success of this scheme, since it is a method that has never yet been tried.
If, in this exquisite scene, which evinces such dramatic genius, there is
any trace of a lyrical element, this is most likely to be found in the
cardinal's verdict, who is confessedly the most honored and reverend
personage, and withal one with a real prototype. There is no reason to
suppose that Morus was a Hythloday; of course, reflecting the thoughts of
his age, he had entertained similar ideas; but instead of petrifying them
in his mind, he vaporized them, dramatized them, as it were, in the
character of Hythloday, contemplated their embodiment or type in an
objective, extraneous form, and thus remained, as to his inner self,
impartial and moderate.

{641}

Now, however, the Pantagruelistic element tends to predominate, and More
will expend some humor in satirizing friars, those _bétes noires_ of
educated men in the sixteenth century. A jester who is standing by gives it
as his opinion that mendicants should become monks and nuns. A friar says
that even that transformation would not save the kingdom from beggars; the
jester calls the friars vagabonds; the friar falls into a passion and
overwhelms the fool with epithets. Notwithstanding a scriptural reminder
from the jester, "in patience possess ye your souls," the friar wrests the
words of Scripture to the purposes of his anger. The cardinal courteously
exhorts him to govern his passions; "but," answers the friar, "holy men
have had a good zeal--as it is said; the zeal of thine house hath eaten me
up." "You do this perhaps with a good intention," replies the cardinal;
"but in my opinion, it were wiser in you, and perhaps better for you, not
to engage in so ridiculous a contest with a fool." The friar retorts that
"Solomon, the wisest of men, said to answer a fool according to his folly,"
and asserts that "if the many mockers of Elisha, who was but one bald man,
felt the effect of his zeal, what will become of one mocker of so many
friars, among whom there are so many bald men? We have likewise a bull, by
which all that jeer at us are excommunicated." Seeing the matter is not
likely soon to end, the archbishop sends the jester away and changes the
subject.

After criticising the policy by which Henry VII. extorted money from his
subjects, Raphael Hythlodoeus, the radical, freely avows his opinion, that
"as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all
other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or
happily; not justly, because the best things will fall to the share of the
worst men; nor happily, because all things will be divided among a few,
(and even those are not in all respects happy,) the rest being left to be
absolutely miserable." An Owenite of the nineteenth century could not
express himself more plainly. Again, he asserts that "till property is
taken away, there can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor
can the world be happily governed; for, as long as that is maintained, the
greatest and the far best part of mankind will be still oppressed with a
load of cares and anxieties. I confess that, without taking it quite away,
those pressures that lie on a great part of mankind may be made lighter;
but they can never be quite removed."

In the second book Raphael gives up criticising the established order of
things, and describes the condition of Utopia. That island, once called
Abraxa, lies on the other side of the Atlantic. In days of yore it was
conquered and redeemed from a barbarous condition by the great legistor
Utopus. There are fifty-four cities in the island, and Amaurot is the
metropolis. All these towns are as like one another, in outward
conformation, laws, and customs, as possibility will admit. Farm-houses
fill up the rural part of the island. Agricultural business is carried on
by means of a kind of transportation from the cities; parties of
inhabitants, in families of forty, are sent to rusticate for two years,
after which lapse of time they return to town and others are sent out.
There is in this manner a continual and well regulated supply and demand in
agricultural labor; and the pursuits of tillage are conducted so
intelligently as to avoid that scarcity of corn which would occasion
unpleasant complications in so well-regulated a country. Among these
husbandmen's devices is a plan for the artificial hatching of eggs.
{642}
So wonderful a system of Fetichism prevails in Utopia that "he that knows
one of their towns knows them all, they are so like one another, except
where the situation makes some difference." Raphael describes Amaurot,
where he has resided for not less than four years. "Their buildings are
good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one
house. The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie gardens behind all
their houses, which are large but inclosed with buildings, that on all
hands face the street, so that every house has both a door to the street
and a back door to the garden." The magistrate was, of old, called the
syphogrant, but is now designated as the philarch; and over every ten
syphogrants is a higher functionary anciently called the tranibore, and now
the archphilarch. The syphogrants elect the prince by ballot--"they give
their voices secretly so that it is not known for whom every one gives his
suffrage." The prince is elected for life, with, however, this
reservation--"unless he is removed upon suspicion of some design to enslave
the people." The syphogrants in their council have it for their peculiar
mission to prevent any conspiration being formed by the prince and the
tranibores for the enslavement of the nation. Mechanics in Utopia have
their day's work limited to six hours; the rest of the twenty-four hours
being by them devoted to hearing lectures if they are of a studious turn,
or to reading, eating, sleeping, etc. After supper, they go in winter to
music halls; in summer, to gardens; or they divert themselves with games,
"not unlike our chess," between "virtues and vices," in which are
represented, in a manner combining instruction with amusement, "the methods
by which vice either openly assaults or secretly undermines virtue; and
virtue on the other hand resists it." There are no taverns or ale-houses.
The Utopians prefer iron to gold or silver; they make their commonest
utensils of what to other nations are the precious metals; of silver and
gold they also make chains for slaves, adding to the infamy of convicts by
making them wear golden earrings or coronets. Pearls they find on the
coast, and diamonds on the rocks. The ambassadors of Anemolia were
therefore disappointed when, thinking to astonish the Utopians by a profuse
display of gold ornaments, they were only derided by this utilitarian race
as wearers of useless metal.

As to knowledge, the Utopians are fortunate in having all the wisdom of the
ancients without the trouble of being acquainted with dead languages; for
it seems that they themselves have made "the same discoveries as the
Greeks, both in musick, logick, arithmetick, and geometry." Their habit of
mind, unlike that of the Scotch, is rather outer than inner, objective than
subjective, inclined to practical science rather than to metaphysics; they
would be unable to understand a definition of man in the "aibstract." They
are acquainted with astronomy, but eschew divination by the stars. Touching
the causes of things, and the problems of moral philosophy, there is by no
means a perfect agreement among them: they have a tendency toward the
'happiness' principle. Such is their aversion to war that, when compelled
to enter the field, they immediately set a price on the head of the enemy's
king, or of any of his ministers who may have been instrumental in bringing
about the outbreak of hostilities. The admirers of More have been somewhat
shocked at this practice, more utilitarian than honorable; but there is no
reason to suppose he would have consented to such a course in a similar
conjuncture; it is as an artist, and to complete the necessary development
of the Utopian character, that he has imputed to them this utilitarian,
positivistic device; a nation which could be brought to regard war as an
evil, damaging the happiness of the greatest number, would not stick at
sacrificing a few princes in a quiet way in order to secure the advantage
of the many through the ruin of the few.
{643}
Here's account of the high esteem in which the Utopians hold their priests,
is, perhaps, more lyrical than consistent with the character of that
imaginary nation; he makes them go so far in their reverence as to bring no
sacerdotal criminals to account, the punishment of these offenders being
"left to God and to their own consciences." It must be recollected,
however, that they have but few priests, and those chosen with great
caution. The Utopians have ritualistic tendencies. "They burn incense, and
other sweet odors, and have a great number of wax lights during their
worship; not out of any imagination that such oblations can add anything to
the divine nature, which even prayers cannot do; but as it is a harmless
and pure way of worshipping God, so they think those sweet savors and
lights, together with some other ceremonies, by a secret and unaccountable
virtue elevate men's souls and inflame them with greater energy and
cheerfulness during the divine worship." The priests' vestments "are
parti-colored; and both the work and colors are wonderful. ... They say
that, in the ordering and placing those plumes, some dark mysteries are
represented, which pass down among their priests in a secret tradition
concerning them; and that they are as hieroglyphics, putting them in mind
of the blessings that they have received from God, and of their duties both
to him and to their neighbors." Raphael concludes the book by saying that
"there are many things in Utopia which I rather wish than hope to see
followed in our governments;" and this hint shows the dreamy nature of the
scheme. The Utopia is, indeed, a mere philosophical romance, in which More
sacrificed to the humanitarian tendencies of the age, but which left his
deep and inner convictions unshaken. His after life showed that he was free
from any tendency to realize the Utopian idea; and the more so, perhaps,
because he had written the Utopia; for there is in the utterance of thought
a peculiar virtue which clears the mind from the effects of a lingering and
stagnating condition of ideas. Like Plato's Atlantis, the Utopia is an
ingenious play of fancy rather than a production intended to convey serious
truths under a veil; it is alike removed from the earnest intensity of
thought pervading Cicero's Republic, and the semi-prophetic rapture of
Bacon's New Atlantis. And in relation to our age, the Utopia serves to show
that what enthusiasts have imagined, under the influence of the modern
sceptical spirit, had been foreshadowed and included at the very dawn of
that spirit, by the comprehensiveness of genius; and that the class of
schemes which are designated by the name of Sir T. More's production, are
as far from their practical fulfilment now as they were three hundred or
three thousand years ago.

Like every successful author, More had his literary quarrels. The favor
with which the Utopia had been received, excited the gall of a French man
of letters, who had already broken a few lances with More. This Brixius,
Brice, or Brie according to Rabelais, published a book called Anti-Morus,
in which he carefully raked up every mistake in grammar and quantity to be
found in More's early Latin poem. He punned on More's name, likening it to
Môros, the Greek word for madman. Erasmus wrote to this critic, charging
him with being a very child compared with More. Sir Thomas speedily
prepared an answer, but Erasmus advised him to meet the attack with silent
contempt. There is nothing so galling to fools. More perceived that to be
attacked by dunces is an advantage rather than otherwise.

It was about that period that Oxford was convulsed by the introduction of
Grecian studies. The "Trojans," as they called themselves, evinced an
implacable hostility toward the "new learning." Priam, Hector, Paris, waged
war against Hellenic writings.
{644}
But the tide of grammars, aorists, accents, was no more to be staid than
the hosts of real invaders at the siege of Troy. More played the part of
Sinon. He wrote to the Oxonians that Greek was being learned at Cambridge,
that the king and Wolsey were in favor of Greek; that in the end the
Trojans would have to be wise; and at last the reactionists gave in.

In 1523, Sir T. More was appointed speaker of the house of commons. This
advancement he accepted with some reluctance. In his opening speech, he
besought the clemency of the king in behalf of any man who, in the house,
should chance to speak unadvisedly and roughly: "Such is the weight of the
matter, such is the reverent dread that the timorous hearts of your
naturall subjects conceive towards your highnesse, (our most undoubted
soveraign,) that they cannot in this point rest satisfied, except your
gracious bounty therein declared, put away the scruple of their timorous
mindes, and animate and encourage them from all doubt; may it therefore
please your majesty, (our most gracious king ) of your great goodnesse, to
pardon freely, without doubt of your dreadful displeasure, whatsoever shall
happen any man to speak in the discharging of his conscience, interpreting
every man's words, how unseemly soever couched, yet to proceed of good zeal
to the prosperity of the kingdome, and the honour of your royall person."
Not long after, a grant of money being before parliament, the cardinal,
fearing it would not pass the lower house, bethought himself of attending
the debate. Previously there had been a slight disagreement or "garboyle"
between the cardinal and the honorable members, with whom Wolsey was
displeased, because they were addicted to revealing in ale-houses what had
been said within the walls of parliament. On this occasion, therefore, the
new speaker urged the necessity of the cardinal's entering the house in
full pomp: "Masters," said Sir Thomas, "for as much as my lord cardinall,
not long since, as ye all know, laid to our charge the lightnesse of our
tongues, for things spoken out of this house; it shall not, in my judgment,
be amisse to receive him with all his pomp; his maces, his pillars, his
pole axes, his crosses, his hat, and great seal, too; that so if he blame
us hereafter, we may be the bolder to excuse ourselves, and lay it upon
those that his grace bringeth hither with him." The house agreed to this,
and the cardinal, in a "solemn oration," gave many reasons for granting the
money; but the house remained silent. He made another appeal: "Masters, you
have many wise and learned men among you, and since I am, by the king's own
person, sent hither unto you for the preservation of yourselves and all the
kingdome, I think it fit you give me some reasonable answer." Still every
man held his peace, so that he called them by name. Mr. Murray (afterward
Lord Murray) and several others of "the wisest of the house," when
challenged in this way, returned no answer, "being before agreed." The
cardinal expressed his surprise at "this marvellous obstinate silence," and
called on the speaker to answer. Sir Thomas, first meekly kneeling upon his
knees, pleaded that the house was abashed by so illustrious a presence as
the cardinal's; showed that, besides, the ancient liberty of the house
allowed the members to be silent; averred that he was quite unable to speak
in their name, "except every one of them could put their several wits into
his head." The poor cardinal retired in despair, and afterward gave vent to
his grief by saying to More, in the gallery at Whitehall: "Would to God,
Mr. More, you had been to Rome when I made you speaker!" "Your grace not
offended, so would I too, my lord." rejoined Sir Thomas. Then, with his
usual kindly tact, he changed the subject.

{645}

And now More was to enter on the fiercer struggles of the theological
arena. He was to write in a weighty, but also nervous and popular manner,
often condescending to the humorous anecdote, or "merrie tale," those ample
controversial treatises in which was laid the broad foundation stone of
English prose. Even for so dreamy and gentle a thinker, there could be no
avoiding the contests of the age. The times were too stirring for mere
literary dilettanteism. As Le Bas has remarked, "Things which, for many a
century, had been deemed by multitudes immutable as the laws of nature,
were now found to contain within themselves the elements of a change. The
supremacy of the Roman pontiff, more especially, had till then been very
generally regarded as a fundamental principle of revealed religion. Yet
this was precisely the principle against which the first violence of the
spirit now abroad was vehemently directed; and, what was still more
astounding, the assault against it was either directed or assisted by men
who had pledged themselves to its maintenance by the most solemn sanctions
which religion can impose. All this cannot have happened without a perilous
convulsion of the public mind. It may be said, without the smallest
exaggeration, that no disturbance in the order of the physical world could
have produced, in many a heart, much more confusion and dismay than that
which was occasioned by this rupture of immemorial prejudices and
associations. The fountains of the great deep were breaking up before their
eyes, and the summits of ancient institutions seemed in danger of
disappearing beneath the deluge." (Le Bas's Life of Cranmer.) More answered
an attack which Luther had made on the king. In 1525, he wrote a very acrid
letter against the Reformers, urging Erasmus to more decided action. But
the humanitarian had small anxiety for engaging in these disputes. More
soon found abundant work for himself. In 1524 or 1525, there was published
an anonymous tract, entitled the Supplycacion of Beggers, which was a
virulent attack on the clergy.

Erasmus had said that, under a religious veil, the Reformation movement was
the quarrel of those who had not against those who had. This, the opinion
of most educated men in the sixteenth century, appeared to be confirmed by
this tract, which urges a severe blow against the church, not on religious
grounds, but in behalf of the poor. In the Supplycacion the king is advised
to take the wealth of the monasteries and give it to the poor. In this
singular production the long-winded sentences of the opening are the very
whine of mendicants:

  "Most lamentably complayneth theyre wofull misery unto your highness,
  your poore, the wretched hidous monsters, (on whom scarcely for horror
  any dare loke,) the foule unhappy sort of lepers, and other sore people,
  nedy, impotent, blinde, lame, and sike, that live only by almesse, name
  that theyre nombre is daily so sore increased that all the almesse of all
  the well-disposed people of this youre realme is not halfe ynough for to
  susteine theim, but that for very constreint they die for hunger. And
  this most pestilent mischief comen uppon youre saide poore by the reason
  that there is yn the tyrnes of youre noble predecessours passed craftily
  creypt ynto this your realme another sort (not of impotent but) of strong
  puissant and counterfeit holy and idell beggers and vacabundes, which
  syns the tyme of theyre first entre by all the craft and wilinesse of
  satan are nowe encreased under your sight not onely into a great nobre
  but also ynto a kingdome. These are (not the herdes, but the ravinous
  wolves going in herdes clothing devouring the flocke) the bisshoppes,
  abbottes, priours, deacons, archedeacones, suffraganes, prestes, monkes,
  chanons, freres, pardoners, and somners. ... The goodliest lordshippes,
  maners, landes, and teritories, are theyrs. Besides this they have the
  tenth part of all the corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, colts, calves,
  lambes, pigges, gese, and chickens."

He calculates the salaries paid to the clergy as amounting to one hundred
and thirty thousand angels. "Whereof not foure hundreth yeres passed they
had not one peny." He gives historical illustrations to show the
desirableness of being freed from such tributes: "The nobill king Arthur
had never ben abill to have caried his armie to the fote of the mountains
to resist the coming downe of Lucius the emperoure if such yerely exactions
had ben taken of his people.
{646}
The Grekes had never ben abill to have so long continued at the siege of
Troie if they had had at home such an idell sort of cormorantes to finde.
The auncient Romains had never ben abil to have put all the hole world
under theyre obeisance if theyre people had byn thus yerely oppressed. The
Turke nowe yn your tyme shulde never be abill to get so moche groande of
Cristendome if he had yn his empire such a sort of locustes to devoure his
substance." As it proceeds, the tract becomes more and more nervous and
truculent. Irritated by the utterance of this "beggars' proctour," More in
1529 replied in his Supplycacion of Soules.

This purports to be an appeal from the "holy souls in purgatory" to all
good Christians. The Supplicacion of Beggars is called "an unhappy boke."
It is urged that "lacke of belief in purgatory bringeth a man to hell." He
refutes the "beggars' proctour" by showing that Peter's pence was paid
before the conquest, and exclaims: "Oh! the grevouse shipwrak of the comen
weale; he sayeth that in auncient time before the coming of the clergye
there were but few pore people, and yet thei did not begge, but there was
gyven them ynough unasked, because at that time he saith there was no
clargy. ... In thys place we let pas his threfold foly." He says that this
"beggars' proctour" should have concluded his "supplycacion" in such terms
as these: "After ye the clergy is thus destroied and cast out, then shall
Luther's ghospel come in; then shal Tyndal's testament be taken up; then
shal false heresies bee preached; then shal the sacramentes be set at
naught; than shal fasting and prayour be neglected; then shal holy saints
be blasphemed;... then shal the servantes set naught by theyr maysters, and
vnruly people rebell against their rulers; then wyll ryse vp ryflyng and
robbery, murther and mischief, and playn insurreccion. ... all which
mischief may yet be withstanden easilye, and with Godde's grace so shal it,
yf ye suffer no such bold beggars to seduce you with sedycyouse billes."
More girds on the most substantial armor in the Dialogue concerning
Heresies, and other polemical treatises. He maintains that the church
cannot err in the interpretations of Scripture; that according to the
teaching of early doctors it is lawful to venerate images and render homage
to relics. He argues for the real presence, comparing it with St.
Chrysostom to one man's face reflected in several mirrors; all the hosts,
although in different places, are but one body and divine oblation. He
adduces as one of the reasons for which Tyndal's New Testament was burned,
that in that version the words priests, church and charity, are
respectively rendered "seniours," "congregation," and "love." The word
senior, he maintains, would apply "Englishly" rather to aldermen of towns
than to priests of the church. The word congregation can be applied equally
to a company of Christians and a company of Turks though the church is
indeed a congregation, yet every congregation is not the church. "Lyke
wysedom was there in the change of this word (charitie) into love. For
though charitie be alway love, yet is not, ye wote well, love alway
charitie." He blames that "greate arche heretike Wickliffe" for having
taken it upon himself to make a new translation of the Scriptures. "Whereas
ye hole byble was long before his dayes by vertuous and wel learned men
translated into ye English tong, and by good and godly people with devocion
and sobrenes wel and reverently red." He sees no reason why Scripture
should not be read in the vulgar tongue. Luther's books, however, should be
proscribed, "because his heresies be so many and so abominable;" a "ich and
tikling of vanite and vain glory has set hym besyde hys minde." He shows
that "it is a great token that the world is nere at an ende while we se
people so farre fallen fro God, that they can abide it to be content with
this pestilent frantike secte;" that "fayth may be without charitie, and so
fervent that it may suffer a payneful death, and yet for fault of charitie
not sufficient to salvacion."
{647}
He establishes that "princes be bounden to punish heretykes." He charges
heretics with being wont to perpetrate "outrages, and temporall harmes"
with "destroying Christe's holy sacramentes, pulling down Christ's crosse,
blaspheming his blessed saints, destroying all devocion." He contrasts
"Saynt Cypryane, Saynt Chrisostome, Saynt Gregory, and al the vertuous and
cunning doctours by rowe," with the doctors "of this newe secte, frere
Luther and his wyfe, frere Lambert and his wife, and frantike Tyndall." It
must be remembered that the excesses and seditions brought forth by the
Reformation in Germany were calculated to establish an association between
the ideas of religious reformer and of rebel; nor does the experience of
succeeding centuries go very far toward destroying this link. As a
statesman, therefore, if on no other ground, More was inclined toward the
display of an uncompromising severity. Nor was he alone in this tendency.
Both in England and on the continent, heresy was a crime punishable by law.
At the same time, there is no reason for thinking that More carried his
doctrines on that point into practice, as Fox, Burnet, and others have
asserted. This theory is based on a passage of Erasmus, which declares that
while More was chancellor no one was put to death in England for adherence
to the new doctrines. (Nisard.) In his apology, written after his fall,
More candidly exposes both his opinions and the facts of his
administration. He vindicates himself from the "lies neither fewe nor
small" which certain "blessed brethren" had industriously spread concerning
him. "Dyvers of them have said that of suche as were in my house while I
was chauncellour, I used to examine theym with tormentes, causynge them to
bee bounden to a tree in my gardeine, and there pituously beaten." "Of very
truth, albeit that for a greate robbery, or an heighnous murder, or
sacriledge in a church, I caused sometyme suche thynges to be done by some
officers of the marshalsie, with which orderynge of them by their well
deserved paine, and without any great hurt that afterward should sticke by
them, I founde out and repressed many such desperate wretches as elles had
not failed to have gone farther abrode, and to have done to many good folke
a greate deale much more harme."

Only twice did he punish any heretic in this manner--a boy and a lunatic,
whose case he thus relates:

  "Another was one whiche, after that he had fallen into that frantik
  heresies, fell soone after into plaine, open fransy beside; and albeit
  that he had therefore bene put up in Bedelem, and afterward by beating
  and corecion, gathered his remembrance to him, and begaune to come again
  to himself, being thereupon set at liberty, and walkinge aboute abrode,
  his olde fransies begaune to fall againe in his heade, and I was fro
  dyvers good holy places advertised, that he used in his wandering about
  to come into the churche, and there make many mad toies and trifles, to
  the trouble of the good people in the divine service, and specially would
  he be most busye at the time of most silence, while the priest was at the
  secretes of the masse, about the levacion. ... whereupon I, being
  advertised of these pageauntes, and being sent unto and required by very
  devout, religious folke, to take some other order with him, caused him as
  he came wanderinge by my doore, to be taken by the counstables and
  bounden to a tree in the streete before the whole towne and ther they
  stripped him with roddes therefore till he wared weary, and somewhat
  longer; and it appeared wel that his remembrance was goode enoughe, save
  that it went about in grasing till it was beaten home; for he could than
  verie well reherse his fautes himselfe, and speake and treate very well,
  and promise to doe afterward as well, and verylye, God be thanked, I
  heare none harme of him now; and of al that ever came into my hand for
  heresye, as helpe me God, saving, as I said, the sure keping of them, and
  yet no so sure neither, but that George Constantine could stele away; els
  had never any of them any stripe or stroke given them, so much as a
  fylyppe on the forehead."

{648}

He also gives an amusing instance of the manner in which slanderous
accusations were fabricated against him. Simon Fryth, author of the
"Supplication of Beggars," charged More with having said that "his heresye
shoulde coste him the best blude in his body." More answers that:

  "Some truthe they might happe to heare, whereupon they myghte buylde
  theyr lye. For so was it that on a tyme one came and showed me that
  Frithe laboured so sore that he sweat agayne, in studieng and writing
  against the blessed sacrament; and I was of trouth verie heavy to heare
  that the younge fooly the felowe shoulde bestowe suche labour about suche
  a develyshe woorke. For if that Fryth (quoth I) swete in laboring to
  quench that faith that al true Christen people have in Christe's blessed
  body and bloude, which all Christen folke veryly, and all good folke
  frutfuly receive in the fourme of bread, he shal laboure more than in
  vayne; for I am sure that Frith and al his felowes, with al the friendes
  that are of theyr affiniti, shal neither be able to quench and put out
  that faith, and over that if Frythe labour about the quenching thereof
  till he sweate, I would some good friend of his shoulde showe hym that I
  feare me sore that Christe wyll kyndle a fyre of fagottes for hym, and
  make hym therin sweate the bloud out of his bodye here, and straight from
  hence send hys soule for ever into the fyre of hell. Nowe in these wordes
  I neyther ment nor meane that I would it wer so. For so help me God and
  none otherwyse, but as I would be glad to take more labour, losse, and
  bodelye payne also, then peradventure many a man would wene to winne that
  yonge man to Christe and hys true faythe agayne, and thereby to preserve
  and keepe hym from the losse and peryll of soule and body both."

And in another part of the same treatise he declares that

  "as touching heretikes, I hate that vice of theirs, and not their
  persons, and very faine would I that the one were destroied, and the
  tother saved ... and if all the favour and pity that I have vsed among
  them to theire amendement were knowen, it woulde I warrant you well and
  plaine appere, whereof if it were requysite I could bring forth witnesses
  more than men would wene."

In these earnest words is reflected his innocence of persecution. These
apologies for his career as chancellor were written after his fall.

In 1529, More had been made lord high chancellor of England. The new
dignitary had been sounded by the king concerning the matrimonial cause.
Although Sir Thomas excused himself from giving an opinion, on the plea
that he was no divine, he was evidently expected ultimately to concur in
forwarding the accomplishment of the king's wishes. But More was too candid
and unworldly to adopt a policy of self-interest. He had foreseen the
danger of his elevation, and in his opening speech had alluded to the sword
of Damocles. One evening he had confided to Roper that he would gladly be
tied up in a sack, and thrown into the Thames, if only there could be peace
on earth, unity in the church, and a good termination of the divorce
question. At last the decisive moment came, and Henry requested More to
take the proposed divorce into consideration. The chancellor, falling on
his knees, lamented his inability to serve the king in this matter with a
safe conscience; he had, he said, borne in mind the words uttered by his
majesty on More's first entering office, namely, first to look unto God,
and after God unto the king. Henry, concealing his vexation, expressed a
hope that More could serve him in other instances.

Then Cranmer broached his plan, and the universities began to dust folios
and hold grave deliberations on the matrimonial cause. Not only Oxford and
Cambridge, but Paris, Anjou, Bruges, Orleans, Padua, Toulouse, summoned
their doctors, regents, and canons, to weigh and consider the important
question. There was "much turning and searching of bookes;" divine law,
civil law, were carefully discussed and examined. "There was in the realme
much preching, one lerned man holding against another," (Holinshed.)
Foreseeing the impending harvest of determinations and arbitraments, More
perceived that the king would marry Anne Boleyn at any cost. In May, 1532,
he tendered his resignation. Henry accepted it in an affable manner, and a
weight fell from More's heart--for the nonce he gave himself up to his
harmless gaiety.
{649}
Lady More lectured him severely for not having taken care of his pecuniary
interests when in office, and for relinquishing place through a selfish
love of ease, without thinking of the children. "Tilly vally, what will you
do, Mr. More?" cried Lady Alice; "will you sit and make goslings in the
ashes? it is better to rule than to be ruled." More, quietly turning to his
daughters, asked whether they did not see "that her nose standeth somewhat
awry."

With calm dignity he proceeded to reduce his establishment; sent his jester
to the lord mayor; and consulted with his children on the best means of
avoiding the breaking up of the family. His income was little more than
£100 a year; Lady More must have been hard up for pin money wherewith to
buy gowns, coifs, and stomachers. He wrote to Erasmus that he had at last
obtained freedom from public business; and he had his epitaph inscribed in
the parish church of Chelsea. He was beginning to have a foreboding of
approaching danger; whether from the declining state of his health--he had
been liable, through much writing, to an "ache" in his breast--or his
acquaintance with the king's character, At the height of his friendship
with the monarch, when congratulated by Roper on the marks of favor he was
receiving, More had mournfully answered that if Henry, by beheading him,
could get one castle more in France, he would not scruple to do so. During
several nights, it is said, he had been sleepless under the influence of a
strange, haunting anticipation; he prayed for strength, his delicate frame
being averse to bodily pain--or, as he said, "his flesh could not endure a
fillip."

In the mean while the king married Anne Boleyn; Cheapside ran with claret.
Sir Thomas received an order to attend the procession, with twenty pounds
to buy a gown; but he declined to be present. The king's displeasure began
to arise. More was much esteemed, had considerable influence, and his
prolonged opposition was anything but agreeable to Henry. More's enemies
began to cast about for a ground of accusation against him. The adventure
of the Maid of Kent furnished them with an opportunity. Elizabeth Barton
was a girl of cataleptic temperament, who had visions and uttered
prophecies. Unfortunately for herself and others, she meddled with politics
and inveighed against the king. More complained to Cromwell that he had
been accused of communicating with that "nun of Canterbury;" whereas he had
written to her, "Good madam, I will hear nothing of other men's matters;
and least of all of any matter of princes or of the realm." The poor "good
madam" was executed at "Tiburne." More's name had been included in the act
of attainder, and a royal commission was appointed to examine him. It soon
became apparent that the Maid of Kent's case had little to do with this
prosecution of Sir T. More, and that the real question at issue was, that
he should remember the king's former favors and give his consent to that
divorce which the hierarchy, parliament, and the universities had approved.
More answered, meekly but firmly, that he had hoped to hear no more of that
matter. In the Maid of Kent affair, his innocence was so evident that Henry
was obliged to yield to the pressure of the commissioners, who besought him
on their knees to dismiss More from the accusation. But More knew this was
only a reprieve. The commissioners had assured the king that they would in
time find another opportunity that would serve the royal turn better. "Quod
differtur non aufertur," answered More, when his "Megg" congratulated him
on the bill being withdrawn. There had been no chance of getting a verdict
against him. But a "meet matter" for his enemies to act upon was not long
in supervening. The succession to the crown for the issue of the new
marriage, and the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, became law. An oath of
allegiance was required. Sir T. More and Bishop Fisher were recusants. More
could not be brought to imply that the marriage with Catherine had been
illegal.
{650}
His innate nobleness made him very little anxious as to the consequences of
his opposition. The Duke of Norfolk gave him advice one day. "By the mass,
Mr. More, it is perilous striving with princes; therefore I would wish you
somewhat to incline to the king's pleasure, for, Mr. More, 'indignatio
principis mors est." We can imagine the sweet smile with which More
answered, "Is that all, my lord? then in good faith the difference between
your grace and me is but this, that I shall die to-day and you to-morrow."

He was too brave and merry not to despise death; but, the day he was
summoned to Lambeth, he was afraid to face his family on his departure.
Whenever he went down the river, they used to accompany him to the boat and
be dismissed with kisses; but that morning he did not allow them to follow
him. With Roper he took boat to Lambeth. There the vicar of Croydon, and
many London clergy were sworn; after which proceeding, the reverend the
vicar, "Either for gladness or dryness, or else that it might be seen 'quod
ille notus erat pontifici,' went to my lord's buttery-bar and called for
drink, and drank 'valde familiariter.'" (Sir T. More's Letters.) Sancho is
ever near Quixote. Without blaming those who took the oath, More maintained
that his conscience would not be satisfied if he allowed himself to be
sworn. In vain did "my lord of Westminster" charge him to "change" his
conscience, because the great council of the realm had determined on
acknowledging the points at issue. More said his opinion was backed by the
general council of Christendom. He and Roper were committed to the Tower,
probably through the influence of Queen Anne, who was herself "behedded" a
few years afterward.

And now his greatness showed itself in adversity, as it had before
brightened his prosperity. He had something worse than a _vultus
instantis tyranni_ to endure, namely, the expostulations of his wife.
Having obtained leave to visit him, she gave him a lecture in her
positivistic philosophy: "I marvel that you, who hitherto have been taken
for a wise man, will now so play the fool to lie here in this close, filthy
prison, and be content thus to be shut up among mice and rats, when you
might be abroad at your liberty, and with the favour and good-will both of
the king and his council, if you would but do as all the bishops and best
learned of this realme have done; and seeing you have at Chelsea a right
fair house, your library, your gallery, garden, orchard, and all other
necessaries so handsome about you, where you might, in the company of me,
your wife, your children, and household, be merry, I muse what a God's name
you mean here still thus fondly to tarry." His daughter Margaret, however,
proved a better comfort to him. She, too, attempted to persuade him to take
the oath; he playfully compared her to Eve, thinking more of his body than
his soul. She quoted all the instances of great doctors who had taken the
oath. At last she said that, like Cressida in Chaucer, she was at her wit's
end; what could she say more but that his jester had said, "Why does not he
take the oath? I have done so," and that she herself had taken it? More
than a year did he stay in that prison, to the detriment of his health. He
was then tried and found guilty. On his return from the trial, when he
landed at the Tower-wharf, his poor daughter rushed from the crowd and
kissed him frantically several times. One more letter did he write to her
with a coal. As he had once written, pecks of "cole" would not have
sufficed to express all his love for her. He expressed himself much
indebted to the king, who was sending him out of this wretched world. He
wanted to go on the scaffold in his best clothes, and sent the executioner
a piece of gold. On the platform he evinced that mixture of gayety and
piety which was characteristic of him. The structure being somewhat cranky,
"I pray see me up safe," he said, "and for my coming down, let me shift for
myself."
{651}
He then knelt down and said a psalm. He then addressed the executioner:
"Thou will do me this day a greater benefit than ever any mortal man can be
able to give me. Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thy
office. My neck is very short; take heed, therefore, that thou strike not
awry, for saving thy honesty." When about to lay his head on the block, he
craved time to remove his beard, "as that had never committed treason."
"So, with great alacrity and spiritual joy, he received the fatal blow of
the axe, which, no sooner had severed the head from the body, but his soul
was carried by angels into everlasting glory."

Margaret bought his head, enclosed it in a leaden box, and it was afterward
buried with her at Canterbury. In the nineteenth century, the head was
found, with the metal covering corroded away in front. (See Gentleman's
Magazine, 1837.)

Dr. Lark, rector of Chelsea, and More's friend, was so influenced by More's
death that he soon after denied the supremacy, and was executed. More's
death made a deep impression on men's minds throughout Europe. When the
report of the execution reached the king, he looked steadfastly on Anne,
and said, "Thou art the cause of this man's death," and soon after retired
in sadness to his chamber. Scarcely, however, can readers of history
deplore a death which brought out the beauty of such a character.

------

    The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.

    By Clonfert.


  Chapter III.

  The Christian's Feast.


The large clepsydra in the atrium of the villa indicated the fourth watch
of the night, an hour corresponding at the winter solstice to one o'clock
in the morning, of the 8th of the Kalends, that is, the 25th of December.
The slaves had ended their merry-making and retired to rest, when Aurelian
and Sisinnius, led by Zoilus, took their way by a by-path over the fields
toward the Latin road. The path crossed the stream and wooded hill near the
villa.

Standing on the further slope of the hill, they paused to view the city and
the surrounding country. The darkness of the early night had been relieved
by the rays of the moon. Her white disc was painted on the sky between the
luminous edges of the thin clouds, which were driven by the wind, as if in
review, before her face. On the earth beneath, moonlight and shadow pursued
each other over the woods and uplands. The palaces and monuments bordering
the Latin and Appian Ways showed at times as if they were roofed with
silver. Now and again her beams, stretching down like white bars between
the clouds, rested on the roofs, cupolas, and steeples of the distant city,
which stretched in illimitable magnificence before them, flashed out, and
the next moment faded like a mirage into indistinctness and shadow. The
lights in the streets and country villas flickered feebly "few and far
between."
{652}
The hum of life and business was not, as in the daytime, borne on the wind
to their ears from the metropolis, whose great heart, that in a few hours
would throb with the pulses of renewed activity through all its arteries,
was at rest, save only where the voice of the watchman or of the midnight
reveller disturbed its slumber. Turning toward the Appian Way, which for
fourteen miles was lined by a double row of monuments--homes for the
living and homes for the dead--the trees bowed and tossed their branches in
the fitful gusts like hearse-plumes above the tombs. In the lulls it was
heard wandering and moaning within the vaults and the _columbaria_;
[Footnote 233] so called because the ashes of the departed reposed in
bronze and earthenware urns, ranged in hundreds, tier over tier, as in the
cells of a dove-cote. The branches, dry and leafless, pointing their
skeleton fingers skyward and creaking dolefully, might well remind a Greek
or Roman imagination of imprisoned genii. And the melancholy wail of the
breeze might be mistaken for that of unearthly visitants weeping over the
remains of the dead.

    [Footnote 233: From _columba_, a dove.]

Having delayed to survey this sombre scene, they continued their journey,
and soon reached the Latin road, along which they proceeded to the
Crossway, formed by it and the Appian Way about a quarter of a mile outside
the Capena Gate. The old walls built by Servius Tullius around the city
still remained; through these the gate opened between the Aventine and
Coelian hills, nearly a mile from the present entrance of the "Queen of
Highways" into the forum through the walls built subsequently by the
Emperor Aurelian. The Appian aqueduct, of which scarce a stone remains
to-day, rose before them from the ground some sixty paces from the gate,
and, travelling on high arches, emptied itself into the reservoir within
the walls. The lofty parapets of this gigantic structure, which carried the
water underground for eight miles, were marked in the moonlight against the
sky as if they had been cut from pasteboard. Turning their backs to the
gate and facing southward, they saw that great military highway, built by
and named after the Censor Appius four hundred years previously, as it
topped the undulations of the country until it was lost in darkness and
distance. Its pavement, made of solid blocks of basaltic lava, as the
fitful moonlight rested on its receding line, might by a stranger be
mistaken for the surface of a glancing stream. The death-like stillness of
the sepulchral monuments and of the mysterious _columbaria_, and the
motion of the cypress and other funereal trees interspersed among them,
contrasted with the living magnificence and luxury of the villas, temples,
and villages by which it passed. It was death beside life. The etymology of
the word _monuments_ [Footnote 234] proves that they were built
designedly beside the public roads to warn travellers of the goal at which
all their earthly journeyings would surely end. Thoughts like these passed
through the minds of the three companions; nor were they put to flight by
what followed.

    [Footnote 234: Monumentum, _moners mentem_, to warn the mind.]

A funeral procession was issuing from the gate as they arrived at the
Crossway. They concealed themselves among the trees of the gardens known
for ages afterward as those of the poet Terence. Without being seen, they
observed the procession as it wended near them. In front of and at
intervals through it were slaves carrying torches, whose glare colored the
sky and the monuments on either side with a red glow. Musicians, playing
mournful strains on the flute, the pipes, and the horn, startled the
silence of the time and place. They were aided by mourning females hired to
chant the funeral song. After these came the mimics, directed by a
principal, who represented the life and character of the deceased by
imitations of his words and actions; slaves wearing the cap of freedom, as
a sign that they had been emancipated before his death, followed.
{653}
Some of these bore the images of himself and of his ancestors; others, the
civil and military crowns he had won, which proved him to have been
distinguished as a citizen and a soldier. The remains rested on an ivory
couch covered with drapery of purple and gold. Behind them were the
children of the deceased, the sons in black mourning, with heads veiled;
the daughters in white, with heads bare, and hair dishevelled. The quick
march of the procession, the restless flames of the torches, and the acting
of the mimics seemed strangely out of place with the sad occasion, and
music, with the dirge of the female mourners and the silence or suppressed
sobs of the children of the departed. It was another picture of life and
death beside each other--a union so frequent with the ancients.

"There goes the funeral of Senecio," said Zoilus.

"Herenius Senecio, the senator! What, did he too incur the imperial anger?"
asked Aurelian.

"He wrote a life of the proconsul Priscus, at the request of the widow
Faunia."

"Is it Priscus who was put to death for the poem in which he was suspected
to have caricatured under fictitious names the emperor's divorce from his
wife?"

"The very same."

"Senecio," said Sisinnius, "ought to have been taught by the fate of
Rusticus, who was executed for having written the life of Thrasea at the
request of Arria, Faunia's mother. But he was always outspoken and
headstrong in defence of friendship and truth. Hermogenes of Tarsus, who
met a like fate for a like offence, was another example to warn him."

"Well, well," said Aurelian, "I do not wonder that Tacitus prefers to
drudge as a civil officer in a distant province to remaining at Rome,
although his great father-in-law Agricola, the conqueror of Britain, needs
him to cheer his sinking spirits; nor that Pliny keeps himself so quiet and
hidden."

"It was reported that Pliny was to have delivered Senecio's funeral
oration," said Zoilus.

"Pliny in the affair of Bebius Masia showed himself a man of courage. But
he has too much sense, I think, to do such an unnecessary thing in the
present state of the imperial temper," said Aurelian.

"Yes, indeed, when we see the poetess Sulpicia in danger of her head for
her ode on the expulsion of the philosophers; when booksellers are
crucified; and when only those escape who, like Josephus, Juvenal, Martial,
and Quinctilian, lay the unction of flattery unblushingly on, it were
madness to attempt it. Alas!" continued Sisinnius, "are we not returning to
a worse barbarism than that of the iron age? Philosophy, history, and poesy
divine in exile, in prison, or in the tombs! Never was there an age that
had more, purer, or nobler names to inscribe on the roll of fame! And all
at the whim of one man who calls himself a god, and who thinks he proves
his divinity by having the road to the capitol crowded with the flocks to
be immolated to his statue!"

"It is the story of arbitrary authority invested in individuals from the
monarch to the slave-owner, when its influence is not directed by humanity
or religion," said Aurelian.

"Ay," interposed Zoilus, "and to the slave himself, who is by law allowed a
vicarious ownership (_dominium vacarium_) over others. The little
tyrant who has not the fulness of power is the worst; he always strives to
swell himself to the bull size, like the frog in the fable, and tramples on
the feelings where he cannot tread out the lives of his victims, just as
recklessly as the elephant in the arena tramples on the corns of the
gladiators. One of these, whom I know well to my cost, compassed the death
of Senecio, and is likely to bring red ruin to many others before he dies
himself."

"Who is he?" asked Aurelian.

{654}

"Arthus, who has crept up from low life to high favor with the powers that
be."

"Arthus!" exclaimed Sisinnius, "the poor wretch! whose suspiciousness and
unbridled impulsiveness of tongue and passion have left him without a
sincere friend in the profession, into which he has worked his upward way
without any education to fit him for it. He is only a craze of one idea;
every one secretly laughs at his assumption of rank, knowing his origin; at
his assumption of professional knowledge, knowing his Boeotic ignorance;
and at his assumption of power, knowing how he acquired it."

"I can tell you, it is no laughing matter for the poor slaves, most of whom
are his own countrymen, whose very blood he is coining into stone for that
labyrinthine temple of which Domitian has permitted him to be the architect
and builder. A joke perpetrated by Senecio in the life of Crispus with
regard to this building is said to have angered him. Senecio compared the
temple to the Cretan labyrinth, and said the congregation would require a
thread to find their way out."

"There was another cause of Arthus's hatred of Senecio. In early life he
proposed for the hand of Senecio's cousin. The first moment she saw him,
she afterward declared she would as soon marry one of the brick walls he
has since been building; because his heart, filled only with facts,
figures, and money, seemed as cold, hard, and bloodless as the bricks and
stones themselves. It is reported that she has since become a Christian.
Unfortunately this creature Arthus has somehow found access to Domitian's
ear, and manages with unsuspicious adroitness to have the first story about
those who displease him. Less cruel natures than Domitian's find it hard to
rise above prejudices that have once preoccupied their judgments."

"Well, well, it is a sad state of things. The Christians have, I often
imagine, been sent in punishment for our having fallen away from the stern
virtues of our ancestors, as the locust-clouds are sent in the East. But,"
continued Aurelian, "the less we say in this style the better, if we do not
wish to join Senecio in his voyage over the Stygian lake. Even here the
proverb may apply: 'Silvae habent aures.'"

"Yes," said Sisinnius, "here we are at the beginning of the ancient tombs,
amid the mighty dead whose names are the morning-stars of our history!"

They walked silently and passed the monument of Horatia. Of cut stone, it
was, after more than seven centuries, in good preservation: nay more, in
the nineteenth century, after twenty-seven hundred years, it is
comparatively untouched by the hands of time and weather. She had been
killed by her victorious brother, the last of the three Horatii, because
she wept for her betrothed, one of the Curiatii, slain by him in the
contest of Rome and Alba for superiority. The sepulchres of the Metelli, of
the Scipios, and of other noble families stood near the Cross road not far
from the gate.

Pointing to these, Sisinnius spoke as if giving utterance to a train of
thought that had occupied his mind:

"Where are they now the great, the noble, the heroic men, by whose martial
deeds and unselfish patriotism the foundations of Roman greatness were
placed? Is this all that remains of them--a hollow tomb raised as in
mockery over a little ashes, if even so much of them after five or six
hundred years be left? Alas! Aurelian, does not death make you sad to think
on it?"

"Yes; and therefore I put it away, on the epicurean principle that it
increases the misery of the destiny that inflicts it on us."

"Yet our ancestors did not take that view, and they have had repute for
wisdom. They built their tombs in public places to remind living
generations of the fleeting character of all things human. They placed a
horse's head over the inscriptions as a symbol that death is only the
commencement of another and a longer journey.
{655}
If the epicurean philosophy be true, they were deceived; but, if they were
right, we are wrong in turning our gaze away from death, which, alas! is a
terrible reality! Would it not be wiser to try and pierce the mystery of
that horse's head, to draw aside the veil that shrouds that journey from
our sight?"

"Men like Plato, and Socrates, and Cicero, have endeavored to do so in
every age, and have failed. The great doubt, whether there be a hereafter
or not, still puzzles the world. How can we hope to remove it when these
giants fail? It is much better for our peace and happiness to follow the
common belief in elysium and in the gods, and to drown the thought of death
in forgetfulness, and to enjoy the pleasures of the present."

"It is a hard alternative, especially when the insecurity of the present is
brought so strikingly before us by the passing away of men like Senecio and
Priscus, and those of whom we were speaking. To believe in elysium and the
gods is to rest our faith and hope on the creations of the poets. Enjoyment
of the present does not bring happiness; and, even if it did, when these
pleasures are over, (and we don't know how soon,) what is to follow? But
yesterday Senecio, whose funeral we have witnessed, swayed the senate by
his reason and eloquence. Does nothing of him remain now but the ashes
gathered from the pyre? Why have the generations gone before erected those
vast monuments, if all that is left be the dust in the urn? Fitter let it
be borne by the wind over the face of the earth, if no spirit remain to
take an interest in its preservation! Are the souls of the mighty dead, who
slumber in those tombs around, 'nothing but a name'? Like the blast which
bends the forest, and then, dispersed in air, is felt and heard no more?
Oh! my blood runs cold to think it!

"And yet there is no certainty it is not so--no hope, after so many
attempts, of now obtaining it. Better, then, enjoy the present and leave
the future to fate," said Aurelian.

"No hope, no certainty!" repeated Sisinnius twice over, "no hope, no
certainty! And death approaching with his inevitable lance set! It may be
to-day, it may be to-morrow. Oh! is it not a wretched destiny that keeps us
thus in the dark? We come we know not whence, we go we know not whither.
Like persons lowered into a deep pit, we see a little sky above, but our
gaze cannot penetrate on either side of us. Is there no delivery from this
state of prison and anguish? What wretchedness is equal to that of the last
sad moment? Who but the fool or madman, with such daily reminders of
earthly life's vanity and shortness, can be deaf to the approaching
footfalls of death?"

They had now arrived at the valley extending to the left, and watered by
the fountain of Egeria. Here it was that the nymph dictated the laws to
Numa. The valley contained also a temple of the Camoenae, and a sacred
grove. At a little distance was a large village. The poet Juvenal complains
that in the reign of Domitian pompous marble had displaced the grass of the
vale and concealed the rock from which the water gurgled; and that the
fountain, the temple, and the wood were owned and occupied by Jewish
beggars:

  "Hoc sacri fontis nemus, et delubra locantur
   _Judaeis_, quorum cophinus foenumque supellex.
   Omnis enim populo mercedem penrtere jussa est
   Arbor, et ejectis meudicat sylva Camoenis."
      _Juv_. Sat. iii.

Juvenal and the pagans of his time frequently confounded the Christians
with the Jews. But the acts of early martyrs, like those of St. Cecilia,
clearly show that the Jews alluded to in these verses were Christians,
perhaps converted from Judaism. The surmise of the Abbé Gueranger is most
likely true, that, when the Emperor Claudius banished "the Jews' from Rome
on account of their dissensions, the Christians also were forced to leave
the capital for a short time; but after their return many of them settled
in this place outside the walls, and occupied the village called _Vicus
Camaenarum_, where they seem to have rented the fountain as well as the
temple and grove.
{656}
Here they could dig vaults, open subterranean galleries wherein to bury
their dead, and to hide themselves in times of persecution. What confirms
this supposition is, that here within the bowels of the earth commence the
sombre galleries of the Christian catacombs. The statesmen and soldiers of
pagan Rome sleep the long sleep of ages above, in monuments rising to the
face of heaven, with all the surroundings of material greatness; while the
champions and martyrs of the church repose in their lowly niches beneath,
where a ray of sunlight never penetrates. What a contrast is here
symbolized, and how true! The pride of the world raising itself like
Lucifer to heaven, and the lowliness of the church bowing its head with
Christian humility, and submitting to be trampled in the earth! As it was
in the beginning, so it is, so it will be to the end.

At this point of the road Zoilus paused to impress upon his companions the
rules by which they were to be guided. They were to pretend to be converts
to the faith. He had succeeded in convincing those who had guard of the
avenues to the Christian meeting-place that Aurelian and Sisinnius would
make open profession of the new religion but for the dangers with which
such a step would surround them and those dear to them; that they were
eager to be instructed privately as neophytes; and that they asked to be
admitted to the Christmas celebration in order to witness the ceremony by
which one so dear to them as Flavia Domitilla was about consecrating
herself to God. They did not wish, however, that Flavia or Theodora should
be aware of their presence or of their conversion. Zoilus, who had been
baptized by St. Polycarp at Smyrna, and who had made the Roman Christians
believe that he was a zealous member of the church, succeeded in convincing
them of the truth of his representations, and in obtaining admission for
Aurelian and Sisinnius to the feast. The visits of Clement to the house of
the latter, together with the conversion of Theodora and Flavia, rendered
these representations plausible.

Not far from the Egerian valley is a semicircular underground chamber of
large dimensions. It was the only one, to which at this early time the name
of _cata-tomb_, (meaning a place _near the tombs_,) or
_catacomb_, (meaning a _deep_ and _low_ place, or place of
_temporary rest_,) was given. In after times the name has been applied
to all the cemeteries radiating from the Vatican and underlying the city
and the country for many miles. Some authors ascribe this chamber to a
pagan origin. However this may be, it presents interiorly the appearance of
a chapel much more spacious than most of those which have been dug out of
the Roman campagna. Opening into it is a room which is said to have been
occupied by many popes during the persecutions. In a corner of it there is
a pontifical throne in marble. A circular bench, also of marble, still
clings to its ruined walls; this is supposed to have been used by the
priests and other ministers. In its centre is an ancient altar, at the base
of which the orifice of a pit, or well, over which it was erected, is
visible. Twelve arched tombs built into the walls form a cincture round it.
In this well, according to an old tradition preserved and believed by St.
Gregory, the bodies of Saints Peter and Paul were hidden by the oriental
Christians, who attempted to steal these precious relics from the Roman
city, but were prevented by a thunder-storm. After having been transferred
thence to the Vatican grotto, they were a second time, in the reign of
Heliogabalus, brought back for preservation, and for a time to the same
place of concealment.

Here, on the occasion of which we write, we find the chiefs of the
Christian church assembled. The rumors and near approach of persecution
induced Pope Clement to select it for the celebration of the feast.
{657}
Here they could better avoid suspicion: their coming and going would be
easily mistaken by outsiders for the visits of those whom curiosity or
affection drew to the pagan monuments.

Many missionary churches in Asia, Africa, Gaul, and other countries had
sent delegates, who were now conversing with Pope Clement in the room next
the chapel. These delegates carried letters from the bishops and churches
by whom they were delegated; and, having set out long before the festival
and visited other churches on their way, they were able to give a faithful
report of the progress and condition of the faith in the countries through
which they journeyed. There was Andronicus, a priest of Corinth, who
brought the sad tidings of the apostle St. John's arrest at Ephesus.

"Have you heard," said the pope, "when he is likely to be in Rome?"

"No; but the galley in which he sailed left the port of Corinth two days
before my departure. Owing to the crowds coming to the _Saturnalia_ at
Rome, it was thought she was delayed at Ostium until after the festivities,
when he is to be brought before the emperor himself."

"O my children! let us pray that God may soften the tyrant's heart, and
that this last golden link between our time and that of our divine Master
may not be yet taken away by martyrdom."

"I have been told by one of the brethren who was in Ephesus on the day of
his arrest that the blessed John himself assured the faithful that he had
much yet to do and suffer before his hour would come."

"Thanks and glory be to God for this glad tidings," fervently ejaculated
Clement. "We shall try, and, if possible, have an interview with him."

The churches of Antioch and of Alexandria had also representatives in the
meeting. The latter see, founded by St. Mark, who had been commissioned by
St. Peter for that purpose, was described as being in a most flourishing
state. From Gaul had come the missionary priest Galbinus, who had travelled
through the Black Forest, and found many Christian communities among its
fastnesses and along the Rhine and Rhone. He had delayed for a week at
Marseilles, where he was entertained by Lazarus and Martha. Mary Magdalen
he had not met; but the fame of her penitential life in a solitude outside
of that city had spread far and wide, and filled the whole district with a
holy odor. From Marseilles he had journeyed by the coast until he reached
the Flaminian road. At the foot of the maritime Alps he had met many
Christians practising the evangelical counsels in seclusion and peace. Thus
the holy pope, through the delegates from the various churches, had full
and detailed information as to the condition, prospects, and number of the
faithful in the different regions of Christendom.

There was one visitor who more than others riveted the attention of all.
This was Nicodemus, [Footnote 235] who had taken our Lord's body down from
the cross. He arrived later than the others. When he entered, he knelt to
receive Pope Clement's blessing; but the latter, embracing, kissed him on
the cheek, and said:

    [Footnote 235: It is very probable, says Tillemont, that Nicodemus
    visited Rome toward the end of the first century.]

"My father and friend! It is I who ought to receive yours. I have heard you
were in the city for some days. Why not have come sooner to visit us?"

"Yes, holy father; [Footnote 236] I arrived in the city two days ago, and
received from the kindness of some of my own nation, who after the fall of
Sion came to reside in Rome, that hospitality and treatment which the
wearied traveller requires. The last persecution--for I was then
here--taught us all a lesson not to create suspicion by visiting
prematurely the locality in which the brethren meet or the presbyter
resides. Hence, though I had learned the secret of where you intended
celebrating the feast, I deemed it well to delay my visit to the eve of
it."

    [Footnote 236: "_Papa sancte_," a usual mode of addressing bishops
    in the early ages.]

{658}

"Always cautious, Nicodemus," said Clement, alluding to the furtive night
visit paid by Nicodemus to our divine Lord; but he checked the smile that
played on his face, as he saw the tears rolling down the old man's cheeks.

"Pardon, pardon, my friend and brother! I did not mean to say aught
painful."

"Nor have you. But I am overcome, in spite of myself, whenever I remember
the eyes which beamed out upon me through the darkness of that night, and
the face so transcendently beautiful, so tenderly compassionate, so
profoundly sorrowful! That face and look are impressed here"--he laid his
hand upon his heart--"I always bear them about with me like precious
relics, which supply ample matter for my meditations. In the brightness of
the day those sorrowful eyes shine out, in the darkness of night that
beauteous face is luminous; in the desert and in the forum they alike are
my companions, as they shall be to the grave."

He was silent. His eyes and thoughts seemed turned inward; the former as if
riveted with dazzled, loving gaze on some unseen object which wholly filled
the latter. After some moments, during which those present looked on in
wonder, he became conscious of their presence and slightly embarrassed.

Clement, not seeming to notice the embarrassment, said:

"What changes have taken place since you and I became acquainted first!
Having delayed beyond the midnight hour on Mount Calvary, I was brought by
blessed Paul, with whom I was then travelling, to your house. I regret that
altered circumstances and thickening clouds compel me to make a return of
hospitality in these poor quarters. All are welcome; none more so than
Nicodemus. I know all are satisfied while we have Him for whose love we
resign all near us under the clouds," He pointed and bowed reverently
toward the chapel, and then retired to prepare for the celebration of the
sacred mysteries.

Meanwhile the eyes of all were fixed with curiosity on Nicodemus. His
countenance was of the most decided Jewish caste. His face bore the
wrinkles of over a hundred years; but his frame, like the sturdy oak whose
surface may be serried by ages, did not present the appearance of decayed
strength or health.

The visitors and guests of Clement entertained themselves with anecdotes of
their respective missions; of the divers ways in which Providence had
enlightened them with the true faith; of the countries through which they
had preached, the people they had converted, the adventures they had met,
and the miracles by which God had aided and rescued them. A history such as
has never been, and cannot now be written, might be gathered from these
conversations. A great many, especially the younger portion, felt a wish to
question Nicodemus. They desired to hear from his own lips more of that
beautiful face and those shining eyes that affected his imagination so
much. They knew he referred to his nocturnal interview with the Redeemer;
but they longed to hear more.

"Pardon me, venerable father," said Andronicus, with more courage than the
others. "We would like to hear from yourself the history of your first
interview with _him_. We do not ask through idle curiosity, but
because we love to hear every little thing about him."

"That evening and night, my children--you will excuse the liberty one so
much older than yourselves takes in thus addressing you--that evening and
night will never leave my memory. It was summer time. I was strolling to
'drink the evening air' beyond the Taffa gate. The ringing laughter and
white garments of the young people, as they visited the springs outside the
walls, aided with the freshness and beauty of the atmosphere and scenery in
dispelling feelings of void and loneliness, which--I could not account for
it--had been for some months creeping over me.
{659}
I felt as if there were nothing in life to satisfy my heart. It was the
hour for the evening sacrifice; I heard the trumpets of the Levites ringing
out through the evening calm; and I saw the column of sacrificial smoke
rising up from the temple, like a pillar of sand in the desert, through the
clear air, until it was flattened by the far vault of heaven into fleecy
clouds, which hung about its summit like the frescoes of a Corinthian
capital. I stood to admire the beauty of its height and rounded
straightness, when I was struck by an unusual glow in the heavens. I saw
distinctly formed in the sky a golden crown, which seemed upheld over the
inner court of the temple by a chain of sparks, as if suspended from the
column of smoke. I was drawn toward the place; and after a quarter hour's
hurried walk found myself at the avenue leading up to the temple. I was
soon at the entrance, and, passing through the outer court, entered the
open one of Sacrifice, over which the crown appeared to rest. The incense
from the Levites' censers was ascending in curls about the column of
sacrificial smoke like a binding of white ribbon about a black column. The
court and side galleries were crowded. I lost sight of the golden crown;
and began to fancy it was some play of imagination working on the sunset
colors. I sought a remote corner of the hall, and, feeling a peculiar
influence over me, bowed profoundly in the depths of my own soul before the
majesty of Jehovah. Raising my eyes toward the smoking altar, I was seized
with awe and terror in beholding the self-same crown resting over the head
of a worshipper, who prayed in the shadow of a pillar. When the ceremony
was over, I managed to get a glimpse of the face, which I recognized as
that of Jesus of Nazareth. His eyes overflowed with tears. I yearned in my
heart toward him by an almost invincible impulse; but I was afraid of being
seen speaking to one so humble and so suspected. I waited and watched him
on his way home. I followed him in the dusk as he hurried along a street,
which I afterward saw him mark with footprints in his own blood. Turning
suddenly at the cross formed by the road from the palace of Herod the
Ascalonite and that now known as the 'Dolorous Way,' he addressed me:

"'What do you seek, Nicodemus?'

"I was startled by the sound of my own name, not dreaming that he knew it;
and I glanced hurriedly up and down the arms of the Crossway to see if any
one were within ear-shot.

"'Be not alarmed,' he said, in a voice which fell with velvet softness on
mine ear. 'If you wish aught of me, enter here.' And he led the way to an
humble house on the street to Calvary. There were two men, one young, with
a cheek of downy softness, and the other middle-aged, with beard of
bristling gray and fiery eye, awaiting him.

"'Rabbi!' they both exclaimed with glad surprise; but they hesitated when
they saw me. For, as I afterward learned, they both recognized me as a
member of the Jewish council, and therefore set me down as an enemy of
their Master.

"'Peter,' he said, 'John and you will retire to another room. This man
wishes to speak to me alone.'

"'But, Rabbi,' said Peter impulsively, 'do you know that he is one of--'

"'Peter! _I_ knew him before I saw him. Do as I direct.' And Peter
with reluctance left the room.

We were alone. Regarding me with a look which seemed to penetrate my whole
being to the most hidden secrets and littleness of my soul, he again asked:

"'What do you seek, Nicodemus?'

"'Rabbi!' I ventured to say, subdued as I was by the mild radiance of those
piercing eyes, 'we all know you are from God, for no one can work the
wonders you perform if God be not with him. I seek knowledge of the kingdom
that is promised.'

{660}

"'Amen, amen!' he answered solemnly, 'I say to you, no one can see that
kingdom who is not born anew of water and the Holy Spirit.'" Here Nicodemus
related the conversation the substance of which is recorded in the third
chapter of St. John's gospel.

"At parting," continued Nicodemus, "I told him that, if at any time I could
be of service. I would be glad to render it. I shall never forget the
answer: 'My hour is not yet come. When it is, your charity shall not be
forgotten. It will be your office to clothe for the last time the nakedness
of this temple!' He pointed to himself. I did not then know his meaning:
but, when I saw his bloodless body on his blessed mother's lap, and had the
happy privilege of preparing it for burial, I remembered and understood his
words."

"I have heard a varied account of our Lord's personal appearance," said
Damian, one of the missionaries, an Irishman, [Footnote 237] or, as the old
annalists have it, a _Scotus_ by birth. "My venerated master, Joseph
of Arimathea, who had many opportunities of seeing him, said that he at one
time wore on his sacred humanity all the charms of godlike beauty, and at
another presented in appearance almost the opposite extreme?"

    [Footnote 237: _Scotia_, the ancient name of Ireland. In the reign
    of Domitian an Irish prince was a guest at the court. Joseph of
    Arimathea is said to have preached the gospel in the British Isles. At
    this time Britain was first discovered to be an island.]

"I remember distinctly the night I saw him in the court of the temple. I
knelt beside him; and in the glare of the many lights saw every line and
undulation of the golden ringlets that floated down his neck and shoulders.
They were not of one color. At the summit they glowed with more than
star-like brilliancy, which faded into other dazzling hues reflected from
each undulation to their extremities. They talk of the colors of the
rainbow; these were all exhausted in the surpassing loveliness of that
noble head, above which the air-formed crown rested like a glory. When I
saw his face as he rose from his knees, though sad in its expression as
fancy in its furthest flight could paint it, it beamed with a beauty such
as lover's eye never invested the beloved with, such as I shall never see
until I gaze on it again, as I hope, in that kingdom, where, after God's
increated beauty, it increases the happiness of the glorified to behold it.
Once again I saw him. But, oh! how changed the human beauty of that face
divine and those golden ringlets. They were matted in uncombed confusion
with dried and drying clots of blood! The face was disfigured and ugly. I
could scarcely imagine him the same person I had met in the court of the
temple. These different appearances under different circumstances will no
doubt account for the varying descriptions of him given by those who saw
him." [Footnote 238]

    [Footnote 238: Tradition is divided as to our Lord's personal
    appearance; some of the holy fathers describe him as a specimen of
    manly beauty; others say the contrary. We have borrowed from the letter
    of a Roman officer then in Judea.]

During the recital the old man's cheeks were wet with tears and his voice
often trembled.

It was now after two o'clock, the hour appointed for the commencement of
the celebration.

St. Justin, in his first apology to the Antonines, describes the manner in
which the Christians celebrated their Sundays and other feasts. They met
before sunrise and sang a hymn in praise of the Redeemer; then lessons from
the Old and New Testaments were read, with the addition of prayers for the
wants of the faithful and the conversion of the unbelievers; the presiding
presbyter, who is a bishop or a priest, addressed the congregation; and
finally, taking bread, blessed and brake it, saying, '_This is my
body;_' and in like manner he blessed and consecrated the chalice,
saying, '_This is the cup of my blood._' The saint who was living at
the period of which we write states the doctrine of the real presence and
of the sacrifice as clearly as words can express them.

Clement, with his assistant deacon and subdeacons, sat in front of the
altar. On the seats on each side were Nicodemus, Andronicus, Damianus, and
the other clergy and missionaries.
{661}
Aurelian and Sisinnius were astonished to observe that their acquaintance
and friend Clement was the chief in the Christian assemblage; and that his
principal minister, in fact, his attendant deacon, was Vitus, the young
officer of the imperial household, who had made himself so remarkable the
night of the emperor's feast. But their amazement was doubly increased
when, after the clergy had taken their seats, a procession of females
veiled in black emerged from a side-door and knelt before Clement, opposite
the centre of the altar. In front were two matrons, and between them the
slender figure of a younger female, whose head and shoulders were concealed
by a white veil. Aurelian's breath came thick and fast; Sisinnius, too, was
excited. But Zoilus by a significant pressure restrained any open
manifestation of their feelings.

The hymn chanted was composed specially by one of the brethren for the time
and feast. It was as follows:

    Christmas Hymn.

  The flocks lay on the midnight plains,
    Where Jacob tended his of old, [Footnote 239]
  Where David woke his earliest strains
    And sang the Lion of Judah's fold,
      _Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo!_

    [Footnote 239: The plains of Bethlehem, where Jacob
    had tended the flocks of his father-in-law,
    and David those of his father.]

  When suddenly the skies grew bright,
    And angel choirs in countless throng,
  With flashing wings, lit up the night,
    And chanted, as they passed along,
      _Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!_

 "Now glory be to God on high,
    And peace on earth to fallen man;"
  With star-like clearness through the sky,
    'Twas thus the angel anthem ran,
      _Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!_

  We saw them by the new star's light
    Above the stable where He lay;
  We watched them through the livelong night,
    And through the heavens we heard them say,
      _Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!_


After the hymn had been sung and the lessons from the sacred Scriptures had
been read, the pope addressed the assembly in earnest words. He spoke of
the mystery of the incarnation and the birth of the Redeemer, by which the
promises made to the patriarchs and prophets were fulfilled. He said that
there were amongst them that night those who, during his earthly life, had
conversed with the "Word made flesh." He pointed out Nicodemus, who had
taken the lifeless body of the Master down from the cross, and who had the
singular privilege of seeing Christ arisen in his glorified humanity. "We,
therefore," he concluded, "have no reason to repine, for we know in whom we
trust. We may be poor in subjection, exposed to persecution. The
amphitheatre and the beasts, the prison, the rack, and other tortures may
await us. But we are not like those who have no hope, no security of the
unseen hereafter. We depend on that love which induced him to allow himself
to be nailed in agony on the cross, and, what is more, to be yoked, as it
were, not only for time, but for eternity, to a body of flesh and blood
like ours. That love is the guarantee that he will use his power to raise
us up as he has promised, if it be our happy lot to 'confess him before
men' by the shedding of our blood. And of his power how can we doubt? He
who, when dead himself, yet was able to raise himself from the tomb up to a
glorious and impassible existence, has power, now that he is seated in
glory at the Father's right hand, to do the same for us. Let us not be sad,
then, like those who have no hope. Let us gird ourselves for the contest
before us." And he proceeded to strengthen his audience by showing how
little the short sufferings of time were when balanced by the weight of
glory to follow for ever. He then continued the ceremonies. As he
approached the consecration, Aurelian and Sisinnius, despite the thoughts
that engaged their minds, were struck by the rapt devotion and fervent
prayers of the crowd of worshippers in the body of the chamber. They
themselves had taken their place behind so as not to be observed; Zoilus
had arranged this. Between them and the altar there was a large and motley
gathering: slaves, plebeians, and some whose dress belonged to the rank of
Roman knights; Jews, Greeks, and barbarians; men of different colors,
races, and countries bowed before the altar and were animated by one
spirit.
{662}
There was no distinction, save only that shown in the separation of the men
from the women on the two sides of the chapel. The words of consecration,
pronounced in a half-audible voice, fell ominously on the ears of Aurelian.
"_Hoc est CORPUS meum._" Whose body? he asked himself. "_Hic est
calix SANGUINIS mei._" Whose blood was contained in that cup? Were not
those vague rumors true about the murder of infants in those Christian
meetings? Alas! it was horrible to think that his own beloved Flavia had
been entrapped and was now a sharer in those bloody orgies. But he would
rescue her, or lose his fortune or his life in the effort. Different
somewhat were the reflections of Sisinnius. The words of Clement had
touched in his heart a chord which still vibrated with a longing to hear
more. After all, had these men solved the mystery of death and of the life
beyond the grave?

After the full completion of the sacrifice by the communion of the
celebrant, Clement resumed his seat in front of the altar, with his face to
the people. The golden plate which bound his temples flashed in the
lamplight, and reminded many of Moses after his descent from the mount,
with the rays beaming from his forehead. The three females, who had knelt
during the ceremonies, now stood before the pope. The two matrons were
turned sideways toward the congregation as they lifted the veil from the
head of the central figure. In one of these Sisinnius recognized his own
wife; and in the other a member of the imperial household, Priscilla, who
had so gently restrained Vitus on the night of the emperor's feast from
drawing the sword from his scabbard as the words fell from the stage:

"Domitian! Domitian! Beware! Beware!"

Aurelian's worst fears were confirmed as he saw, when the white veil was
lifted, the beautiful features of Flavia Domitilla! But Zoilus kept beside
him.

"My daughter!" said Clement, addressing Flavia, "have you duly and fully
considered the step you propose taking?"

"Yes, father!" she answered, in a low, tremulous voice.

"But is there no other love to divide your heart from Him whom you propose
espousing? Have you not pledged your troth and allegiance to another?"

"I did, when my eyes were shut to the eternal beauty of Him who has since
revealed himself to me. If other love I have had, I now uproot it from my
soul. I only ask to be permitted to devote myself to the service of Him
whom my heart has too lately known, too lately loved. All other allegiance
I hereby renounce."

"In the name, then, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I
receive you as the spouse of him who has loved you from the beginning." He
replaced the white veil upon her head; and, receiving a ring from Vitus,
who stood beside him opposite Flavia, placed it on her finger. Then he
administered to her the most holy sacrament. A smile played like a ray of
sunshine over her countenance, which manifested the deep and overflowing
happiness that welled upward from her soul.

Aurelian trembled like a reed as he heard her recall her promises to
himself. But she was not mistress of her actions, he reasoned. Had he not
seen her drugged with that unholy flesh and blood which were given her?
Vitus, he thought, had so far succeeded; for was not he the only one
present to whom she could be thus wedded? Zoilus watched his companions
closely; and, when the assembly was dismissed, hurried them away by the
private entrance.

------

{663}

    Under The Violets


  Under the violets blue and sweet,
    Where low the willow droops and weeps
  Where children tread with timid feet
    When twilight o'er the forest creeps
    She sleeps--my little darling sleeps.

  Breathe low and soft, O wind! breathe low
    Where so much loveliness is laid;
  Pour out thy heart in strains of woe,
    O bird! that in the willow's shade
    Sing'st till the stars do pale and fade.

  It may be that to other eyes,
    As in the happy days of old,
  The sun doth every morning rise
    O'er mountain summits tipped with gold,
    And set where sapphire seas are rolled;

  But I am so hedged round with woe,
    The glory I no more can see.
  O weary heart that throbbest so!
    Thou hast but this one wish--to be
    A little dust beneath the tree.

  I would thou hadst thy wish to-day,
    And we were lying side by side
  With her who took our life away
    That heavy day whereon she died--
    O grave! I would thy gates were wide!

------

{664}

    From The Lamp.

    An Irish Saint. [Footnote 240]

   [Footnote 240: Montalembert's Monks of the West.]

It is consoling in these gloomy days to think of the time when Ireland was
the Island of Saints, and gloried in the patronage of St. Patrick, St.
Bridget, and St. Columbkill.

It is to a foreigner that we owe the biography of St. Columbkill--named
"Columba" from the Dove of Peace, and "kill," from the many cells or
monasteries that he founded. He was descended, says Montalembert, from one
of those noble races in Ireland whose origin is lost in the night of
ages--the Nialls or O'Donnells of Tirconnel, who were monarchs of Ireland
from the sixth to the twelfth century. The child was instructed in religion
by the priest who had baptized him, and the legends tell of angels who
watched over him from his birth; and they say that he asked familiarly of
his guardian angel if all the angels were as bright and young as himself.
From the house of the priest he was sent to the monastery of St. Frinan at
Clonard, where he studied and labored like the rest, and, though a prince,
he ground the corn they ate. One of his companions, afterward a saint, was
angry at the influence which Columba naturally possessed over the rest; but
an angel appeared to him, and showed him the hatchet of his father, the
carpenter, bidding him remember that he had only left his tools, but that
Columba left a throne to enter the monastery. Clonard, says Montalembert,
was vast as the monastic cities of the Thebais, and 3000 Irish students
learnt there from the "Master of Saints." Among the crowds who came to
learn was an aged bard, who was a Christian. He asked St. Frinan to teach
him, in return for his verse, the art of cultivating the soil. Columba was
a poet, and studied with the bard. One day a young girl, pursued by a
robber, was murdered at their feet, and Columba foretold his death, and was
renowned through the island as a saint. He was ordained a priest in 546,
and became, when scarcely twenty-five, the founder of monasteries, of which
thirty-seven are reckoned in Ireland alone. The most ancient of these was
in the forest of Durrow, or the Field of Oaks, where a cross and well yet
bear the name of Columba. It stood in Clenmalire, now in King's county; and
the noble monastery, as Bede calls it, became the mother of many others; so
that Dermach as well as Hy became nurseries for the hundred monasteries
founded by Columba. It has been said that St. Patrick had kindled such a
flame of devotion that the saints were not satisfied with monastic life
without retiring to the solitude of the surrounding forests, and there,
under the canopy of the vast oaks, which had for ages possessed the
wilderness, they found a more silent and solemn cloister. Such had been the
monastery of St. Bridget at Kildare, and such was Durrow; and in the forest
of Calgachus, in his native country, Columba built Derry, in a deep bay on
the sea which separates Ireland from Scotland. There he dwelt, and he would
not permit one of the oaks to be felled unless it was injured by age or
storms, and then it was used as fuel for the stranger or the poor. Here he
wrote poems, of which, says Montalembert, only the echo has reached us. The
following verses might be written by his disciples, but they are in the
most ancient Irish dialect, and perhaps convey the thoughts, it not the
words, of Columba:

  "Had I all countries where the Scottish tribes
   Have made their dwelling, I would choose a cell
   In my own beauteous Derry, which I love
   For its unbroken peace and sanctity.
   There, seated on each leaf of those old oaks,
   I see a white-winged angel of the sky.
   O forests dear! home and cell beloved!
   O thou Eternal in the highest heaven!
   From hands profane my monasteries shield,
   My Derry and my Durrow, Rapho sweet,
   Drumhorne in forests prolific. Swords, and Kells,
   Where sea-birds scream and flutter o'er the sea,
   Sweet Derry, when my boat rows near the shore,
   All is repose and most delicious rest."

{665}

There are traces of the saint in these beloved foundations: among the ruins
of Swords are still seen the chapel of St. Columba, and a round tower and
holy well, but not the missal written by himself and given to the church.
We have the rule he wrote for the monasteries, but it is said to have been
borrowed from the oriental monasteries. He founded Kells in 550, and
dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin. St. Columba's devotion was not confined
to his own monasteries; he loved that founded not long before by St.
Eudacus in Arran, the Isle of Saints:

  "Arran, thou art like sunshine, and my heart
   Yearns on thee in thine Ocean of the West;
   To hear thy bells would be a life of bliss;
   And, if thy soil might be my last abode,
   I should not envy those who sleep secure
   Beside St. Peter and St. Paul. My light,
   My sunny Arran! all my heart's desire
   Lies in the Western Ocean and in thee!"

There are eleven Irish and three Latin poems said to be written by St.
Columba, and one of these is in praise of St. Bridget, who was living when
he was born. Columba was not only a poet himself, but the friend of the
bardic order, who held from Druidic times so high a rank in society, and
who frequented monasteries as well as palaces. Columba received even the
wandering bards of the highways into his monasteries, and especially in one
which he founded in Loch Key, which was afterward the Cistercian House of
Boyle. He employed them to write the annals of the monastery, and to sing
to the harp before the community. He loved books as well as poetry; and his
passion was transcribing manuscripts which he collected in his travels, and
he is said to have made with his own hand three hundred copies of the
gospels or psalter. One of these remains. It is a copy of St. Jerome's
translation of the four evangelists, and an inscription testifies that he
wrote it in twelve days. He was once refused by an aged hermit the sight of
his books, and the legend says that, in consequence of his anger, the books
became illegible at the hermit's death. The anger of Columba about another
manuscript led to more important consequences--his own conversion from a
literary monk to an ascetic missionary. While he visited his old master,
St. Frinan, he shut himself up by night in the church to make a secret copy
of the psalter. His light was seen, and the abbot claimed possession of the
copy. Columba appealed to his kinsman, the supreme monarch Dermot, who was
the friend of monks; for, when an exile, he had found a refuge in the
monastery of St. Kieran, the schoolfellow of Columba, which they both had
built in an islet of the Shannon, and which became Clonmacnoise. Dermot
decided that the copy belonged to the abbot. Columba was indignant. The
murder of a prince of Connaught, whom he had protected, increased his anger
against Dermot, and he foretold his ruin. His own life was in danger, he
fled toward Tirconnel, and the monks of Monasterboys told him that his path
was beset. He escaped alone, and passed through the mountains, singing as
he went his song of confidence; and, as tradition says, these verses will
protect all who repeat them on their journeys:

  "I am alone upon the mountain, O my God!
   King of the sun! direct my steps, and guard
   My fearless head among a thousand spears;
   Safer than on an islet in a lake
   I walk with thee; my life is thine to give
   Or to withhold, and none but thou canst add
   Or take an hour from its appointed time.
   What are the guards? they cannot guard from death.
   I will forget my poor and peaceful cell,
   And cast myself on the world's charity;
   For he who gives will be repaid, and he
   Who hoards will lose his treasure. God of life.
   Woe be to him who sins! The unseen world
   Will come when all he sees has passed away.
   The Druids trust to oaks and songs of birds:
   My trust is in the God who made me man,
   And will not let me perish in the night.
   Him only do I serve, the Son of God,
   The Son of Mary--Holy Trinity,
   The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with him
   Is my inheritance; my cell
   Is with the monks of Kells and Holy Moen."

{666}

Columba reached his country, and stirred up his clan, the Hy Nialls of the
north, against Dermot, and the Hy Nialls of the south; and with the aid of
the king of Connaught, whose son had been slain, Dermot was defeated, and
fled to Tara. The victory was attributed to the prayers and fasts of
Columba, and the manuscript which had caused this civil war became a
national relic with the O'Donnells. It was a Latin psalter, and was
enclosed in a portable altar, and carried by a priest into all these
battles, and has been miraculously preserved to the present times.

But in the midst of his triumphs, Columba himself was conquered. He felt
the pangs of remorse, and suffered the reproaches of the religious. He was
summoned to a synod at Tailtan, and condemned, when absent, for having shed
Christian blood. But Columba had always shared the contests of his clan,
and, though a monk, was still a prince of the O'Donnells. He went to the
synod which had condemned him unheard, to dispute their decision. When
Columba entered, the abbot Brendan, founder of Berr, rose up and gave him
the kiss of peace. All wondered, but the abbot said: "If you had seen, as I
did, the fiery column and the angels who preceded him, you would have done
the same. Columba is destined by God to be the guide of a nation to
heaven." The excommunication was reversed, and the sentence of Columba was,
that he should convert as many heathens as he had caused Christians to die
in battle. Columba was safe, but not at rest; he went from desert to
desert, and from monastery to monastery, to seek some holy teacher of
penance. One hermit reproached him as the cause of war.

"It was Diarmid," he replied.

"You are a monk," said the hermit, "and should be patient."

"But," said Columba, "it is hard for an injured man to repress his just
anger."

He went to Abban, founder of many monasteries, one of which was called the
Cell of Tears. This meek soldier of Christ had often parted warriors in
battle and gone unarmed to meet a pagan brigand, whom he converted to be a
Christian and a monk. Columba asked him to pray for those whose death he
had caused, and Abban told him their souls were saved. He then sought St.
Molaisse, who was renowned for his study of the Holy Scriptures, and whose
monastery is yet traced in the isle of Inishmurray, on the coast of Sligo.
The stern solitary renewed the sentence of the synod, and added that of
exile for life from his too beloved country. Columba obeyed. He told his
warlike kinsmen, the Nialls of Tirconnell, that an angel had bidden him go
into exile, on account of those whom they had slain on his account. None of
them opposed the sentence, and twelve disciples determined to follow him.
One was Mochouna, prince of Ulster. Columba refused at first the voluntary
sacrifice, but yielded at last; and the devoted band left Ireland for ever.

It was in 563 that Columba left Ireland. Some say that he had offended King
Diarmid by the severity with which he reproved vice. This is not the reason
given by Adamnan, who succeeded him in his monastery of Hy, and left a
collection of records, written at the end of the seventh century, which
reveals the intention of the heroic apostle; and, as it contains facts
related by competent witnesses, this precious relic of antiquity is more
valuable than a well-arranged biography. It must have been from the
traditions of his monastery that he describes the saint, who was by nature
so warlike and impatient, as retaining a tender and passionate love for his
country, and a sympathy with all his national habits, while he quitted
Erin, in expiation of the crime to which that love had led him. Columba did
more than this; he sacrificed his poetic tastes and learned pursuits to
convert not only the half-Christian Dalirads, who had early left Erin for
Scotland, but more especially the heathen Picts of the North, the
descendants of the brave opponents of Agricola under Galgacus, who were not
of his own Milesian race.

{667}

St. Columbkill was forty-two when he left his country in a wicker coracle
covered with leather, in which he trusted himself with his twelve
disciples, confiding solely in God, to brave the tempests and the enormous
waves of the sea which parts the two countries, with only the light of
faith and the strength of prayers to guide them through the rocks and
whirlpools which beset the misty archipelago of isles lying below the
mountains and deep bays, or fiords, of Lochaber. Adamnan describes his
Irish tonsure, which showed an Eastern rather than a Roman teaching; the
top of his head shaven, and his hair hanging down his back; his majestic
countenance, whose pride was softened only by religion; his princely
features, whose severity was mingled with a cast of irony; and his voice,
whose tone commanded while it penetrated the heart, so that it is
considered to have been one of the most miraculous of his gifts. Thus he
braved the future, trusting in the simplicity of charity for safety in a
savage land and savage tribes, to whom he brought the knowledge of truth
and morals and the hope of heaven. His fiery temper, and the courage that
fitted him for a soldier, and the genius which marked him for a poet or an
orator, were devoted to the conversion of hostile chiefs; and the violence
of his own feelings enabled him better to influence the people, while it
was softened by the great sorrow of his life, the exile from his country.
With a heart yearning for Erin and its noble clans, he reached the desolate
island of Oronsay; and, ascending the highest part of the rock, he saw in
the south the distant mountains of Dalreida. He rejected the consolation,
and left the island for Iona. Then, finding that he could not from its
highest point see the country he had abandoned, he fixed there his place of
exile, and a heap of stones yet marks the spot where he discovered that the
sacrifice was complete, and it is still called the Farewell to Ireland.

The island of Hy is low though rocky, and not a tree nor bush can live
there; for not only do the winds sweep over it, but the very spray of the
Atlantic moistens it with salt showers. It lies amid the islets on the
coast of Morven, already celebrated by Ossian; Staffa and its basaltic
columns are on the north, and Mull with its lofty mountains on the south.
Barren islands lie on every side, separated by deep channels; and so narrow
are the bays which run up between the mountains of the mainland that the
water becomes a lake and the land a peninsula. Forests then clothed their
sides; and the clouds, which almost always hang on their summits, fall and
rise above the precipices and waterfalls of that lofty coast, peopled by
unrecorded emigrants from Erin, whence Ossian had gone to Tara, and Fingal
had made war and peace with the kindred tribes of Inisfail.

It was within sight of this repulsive field of labor, where his penance was
to convert souls, that Columba and his missionaries founded a monastery
destined to be the centre of religion and civilization to Europe. The first
building was of twisted boughs inlaced with ivy, and it was many years
before they cut down oaks in the forest of Morven to make the wooden
edifices in use till the twelfth century. Thus Columba prepared for the
future, but he had not forgotten the past. He felt the bitterness of exile,
and wrote verses, in which he prefers "death in Erin to exile in Albania;"
and then, in a plaintive but resigned tone, he sings:

  "Alas! no more I float upon thy lakes
   Or dance upon the billows of thy gulfs,
   Sweet Erin; nor with Comgall at my side
   Hear the strange music of the wild swan's cry!
   Alas that crime has exiled me, and blood--
   Blood shed in battle--stains my guilty hand!
   My guilty foot may not with Cormac tread
   The cloisters of my Durrow, which I love;
   My guilty ears may never hear the wind
   Sound in its oaks, nor hear the blackbird's song,
   Nor cuckoo, and my eyes may never see
   The land so loved but for its hated kings.
   'Tis sweet to dance along the white-topped waves,
   And watch them break in foam on Erin's strand;
   And fast my bark would fly if once its prow
   To Erin turned and to my native oaks;
   But the great ocean may not bear my bark
   Save to Albania, land of ravens dire.
   My foot is on the deck, my bleeding heart
   Aches as I think of Erin, and my eyes
   Turn ever thither; but while life endures--
   So runs my vow--these eyes will never see
   The noble race of Erin; and the tear
   Fills my dim eyes when looking o'er the sea
   Where Erin lies--loved Erin, where the birds
   Sing such sweet music, and the chant of clerks
   Makes melody like theirs. O happy land!
   Thy youths are gentle, thine old men are wise,
   Thy princes noble, and thy daughters fair.
   Young voyager, my sorrows with thee bear
   To Comgall of 'eternal life,' and take
   My blessing and my prayer, a sevenfold part,
   To Erin; to Albania all the rest.
   My heart is broken in my breast; if death
   Should come, it is for too much love of Gaels."

{668}

Time never effaced this passionate regret, and, as the legend says, when he
was aged, he foretold that a wearied bird would be cast on Iona, and he
bade his monks feed it till it could return to Ireland. But these regrets
strengthened instead of dissipating his missionary ardor; and, while his
natural disposition was unchanged, he became the model of penitents and
ascetics and the most energetic of abbots. He received strangers and
converted sinners. He established a rule for his monks, and dwelt himself
like a hermit, lying on the bare ground upon a bed of planks. There he
prayed and fasted, and there he continued to transcribe the sacred text,
and to study the Holy Scriptures, so that three hundred copies of the
gospel were written by his hand. Crowds of pilgrims visited him there, and
many did penance; but one in particular received from him the same penance
he was performing himself, an exile to the isle of Tiree and a banishment
from the sight of Columba.

St. Columba was among his kindred in Lochaber. The Scots were a Dalradian
colony, allies of the O'Neills; and he was the kinsman of their king,
Connall, and from him he obtained a grant of the island of Iona, and he
labored among these halt-formed Christians. Then, as if he would break even
this last tie to Erin, he became the apostle of the Picts, by descent
Scythians, by habits savages and heathens. Unconquered by Romans or
Christians, they dwelt in glens, inaccessible except by water, and
deserved, like their ancestors, the description of Tacitus, as dwelling at
the extremity of the earth and of liberty; and to them he devoted the
remaining thirty-four years of his life. He crossed the mountains which
divide the Scots from the Picts, and reached the chain of lakes which
extends from sea to sea. He was the first to launch his fragile boat upon
Loch Ness, and he penetrated to the fortress of their king, Brude, which
occupied a rock north of Inverness. The king closed the doors of his
fortress; but Columba made the sign of the cross, the doors rolled back on
the bolts, and Columba entered as a victor. The king trembled in the midst
of his council, and rose to meet the missionary; he spoke to him with
respect, and became his friend, though it is not said that he became a
Christian. But the Druids were his enemies. They were not idolaters, but
worshipped the hidden powers of nature, the sun and stars, and believed the
waters and springs had the powers which were attributed by the Druids of
Gaul and Britain to oaks and forests. Columba drank their sacred water in
defiance, and they tried to hinder him when he went out of the castle to
sing vespers. He chanted the psalm "Eructavit cor meum;" and they were
silenced.

St. Columba preached and worked miracles among the Picts, and, though he
spoke by an interpreter, he made converts. One day on the banks of Loch
Ness he cried: "Let us make haste to meet the angels, who are come down
from heaven and await us beside the death-bed of a Pict, who has kept the
natural law, that we may baptize him before he dies." He was then aged
himself, but he outstripped his companions, and reached Glen Urquhart,
where the old man expected him, heard him, was baptized, and died in peace.
And once, preaching in Skye, he cried out, "You will see arrive an aged
chief, a Pict, who has kept faithfully the natural law; he will come here
to be baptized and to die;" and so it was.

{669}

He once healed a Druid by miracle; but he attempted to arouse the powers of
nature against the saint, and, as he foretold, a contrary wind opposed the
departure of Columba. But he bade the sailors spread the sail against the
wind, and sailed down the Loch Ness in safety. Nor did he end his labors
till he had planted churches and monasteries throughout these wild valleys
and islands.

In 574, Connall was succeeded by Aidan on the throne of the Scots, and he
desired to be consecrated by the abbot of Iona. Columba refused till he was
commanded by an angel to perform the sacred ceremony at Iona--the first
time it had been done in the West.

Montalembert observes that among the Celts the monastic was superior to the
episcopal office, and therefore the abbot consecrated the first of the
Scottish kings on a stone called the Stone of Destiny, which was ultimately
carried to Westminster Abbey by Edward I., and is now the pedestal of the
English throne. The Dalriads in Scotland were subject to the Irish kings,
and it was to free them from their tribute that Columba was sent to Erin,
which he thought never to see again. The new king went also, and they met
the monarch and chiefs at Drumheath. Aed or Hugue II. was now reigning, and
he it was who had given to his cousin Columba the site of Derry. Columba
and St. Colman obtained the independence of Scotland; and afterward St.
Columba attended another assembly, which was to decide the existence of the
Bardic order. There were three kinds of bards: the Fileas, who sung of
religion and war; the Brehons, who versified the laws; and the Sennachies,
who preserved the history and genealogy of the ancient races, and decided
on boundaries. These last frequented courts and even battle-fields, and
their influence was now so much feared that the monarch proposed to abolish
or to massacre the bards. They were, in truth, a Druidic order, but they
became Christians, though they were independent of all but their own laws.
Columba was a poet even to his old age, and he saved the bards from the
anger of the king by proposing to regulate and diminish, instead of
destroying, the order. His eloquence prevailed, and thenceforth the bards
and monks were united in spirit. Fergall, their blind chief, sung to
Columba his hymn of gratitude; and Baithan, one of his monks, admonished
his abbot for his self-complacence. This Baithan was declared by Fririan,
his brother monk, to be superior to any one on this side of the Alps for
the knowledge of the Scriptures and the sciences. "I do not compare him to
Columba," said he; "for he is like the patriarchs and prophets and
apostles; he is a sage of sages, a king among kings, a hermit, a monk, and
also a poor man among the poor."

Columba made afterward, several visits to his monasteries in Ireland,
working miracles as he went; as when he went from Durrow to Clonmacnoise,
and healed a dumb boy, who became St. Ernan. He was received there by the
religious, who walked in procession to meet him, chanting hymns. He had not
only a jurisdiction over all his monasteries, but a preternatural knowledge
of all that went on there; and he once interrupted his labors at Iona to
pray with his monks for the safety of some workmen at Durrow, and for
softening the heart of its abbot, who was too severe on his monks. Columba
was by nature impetuous and vindictive, and was still an O'Neill in party
spirit. Often in the monastery of Iona he would pray for victory to his
clan in battle, or he would pray for the men of his race or the kinsmen of
his mother; and once, when aged, he bade them sound the bell of the
monastery, (a little square bell, such as now hung round the necks of
cattle,) and sound it quickly. The religious hastened around him, and he
bade them pray for Aidan, his Dalraid kinsman, then in battle; and they
prayed till he said, "Aidan has conquered."

{670}

Adamnan tells us of his own sanctity. One day he retired alone to a distant
part of the island, and he was seen with his hands and eyes lifted up to
heaven, and surrounded by angels, and the place was named "The Mount of
Angels." As he grew older, he increased his austerity. He plunged himself
into frozen water; and, seeing a poor woman gathering bitter herbs to eat,
he forbade that any other food should be brought to him. He used to pray
alone in the little isle of Himba, and his hut was lighted up by night from
heaven, while he sang hymns in a tongue unknown to his hearers. Having been
there three days and three nights without food, he came out rejoicing that
he had discovered the mysterious sense of several passages of Scripture. He
returned to die at Iona, and was already surrounded by a halo of glory; so
that, when he prayed in the church at night, the brightness blinded the
beholders.

One day in his cell his attendants saw him in heavenly joy, and then in
deep sadness, and they asked the cause.

"It is thirty years," he said, "since I began my pilgrimage in Caledonia;
and I have long prayed that I might be released this year. I saw the angels
come for me, and I rejoiced; but they stood still down yonder on that rock,
as if they could not come near me; for the prayers of many churches have
prevailed, and I grieve that I must live four more years."

At the time appointed he was drawn on a car by oxen to take leave of the
monks who were working in the fields. Another day he blessed the granary of
the monastery, and foretold his death. This was on Saturday, and he said it
would be the Sabbath of his repose. As he returned he met the old horse
which carried the milk to the monastery, and the horse laid his head upon
the shoulder of his master, as if to take leave of him, and the saint
caressed and blessed him. Then, looking down from a hill on the monastery
and isle, he stretched out his hands to bless it, and prophesied its future
sanctity. Then he entered his cell, and was transcribing the thirty-third
psalm, where he came to the words, "Those who seek the Lord shall want no
good thing;" and he said, "Here I must end; Baithan will write the rest."
He went into the church for the vigil of Sunday, and, returning, he sat
down on his bed of stone, and sent a message to his monks, and exhorted
them to charity. After that he spoke no more.

Hardly had the midnight bell rung for matins when he ran first to the
church, and knelt before the altar. It was dark, and one monk followed him,
and placed his venerable head upon his knees. When the community came with
lights, they found their abbot dying. He received the last sacraments, and
opened his eyes, and raised his right hand in silence, to bless his monks.
His hand fell, and he expired. He lay calm, and with the gentle sweetness
of a man asleep in a heavenly vision. That very night two holy persons in
Ireland beheld Iona enveloped in light; and then miracles began to be done
while his body lay in the little church of Iona.

In the ninth century, when pirates ravaged the coasts, the body of the
saint was removed to Down, and laid between those of St. Patrick and St.
Bridget. The pirates were punished by sudden death. The Norman, Strongbow,
died of a wound after destroying the churches of Columba and the saints,
and De Lacy perished at Burrow while he built a castle against the
monastery.

------

{671}

    From Chambers's Journal.

    Charles V. at the Convent of Yuste.

  Shade and sunshine play alternate on the convent's massy walls;
  In the cloister's dim seclusion soft the stealthy footstep falls;
  In the quiet garden-alleys underneath the citron's shade,
  Pace the monks with open missals, downcast eyes, and silent tread.
  Birds are singing, bees are humming, trees are whispering, while through all
  Steals the silver tinkling, tinkling of the distant fountain fall.
  Far away, the wild Sierras stretch their ridges dim and high,
  Carving weird and warlike phantoms in the blue and dazzling sky;
  Rising still in savage grandeur, till they reach the bounding main;
  Mute protectors of their country, bulwarks of chivalrous Spain.
  Who comes hither, slowly sauntering, pausing oft awhile to rest;
  Arms across so calmly folded, head declining on his breast?
  More than common spirit lurketh in the bright and clear blue eye;
  More than common toil and travail in the brows' deep furrows lie.
  Weight of years and weight of trouble somewhat bow the haughty form,
  But the haughty heart within it still is beating quick and warm;
  Iron heart that knew no bending, when the storm was fierce and loud,
  Soared above the thunder's roaring, dared the lightning, braved the cloud.
  Stalwart heart that still was foremost in the serried ranks of war;
  Triumphed o'er the Gallic legions, foiled the Moslem's scimitar.
  Hardy Germans; proud Burgundians; trusty Flemings, true as steel;
  Mountaineers of wild Galicia, cavaliers of Old Castile;
  Half the empire of the Old World; half the treasures of the New--
  Mexico's gold-flowing rivers, silver mines of rich Peru;
  Wheresoe'er the sun ariseth, throwing o'er the hills his beams;
  Wheresoe'er his dying radiance lingers on the lakes and streams;
  Far as human foot can wander, far as human eye can scan,
  Bowed the nations, poured the treasures, marched the legions for one man.
  Yet he standeth there serenely underneath the chestnut bough,
  And the gentle air of summer playeth lightly on his brow.
  Gone the sceptre of the monarch, gone the priceless pearl and gem;
  Gone the purple robe of splendor, gone the regal diadem.
  March of armies, fall of kingdoms fate of war he little heeds,
  Kneeling on the chapel pavement with his missal and his beads,
  Listening to the simple brethren, chanting loud their matin hymn,
  Or the holy Ave Mary, wafted through the twilight dim.
  He hath conned life's sternest lessons he hath learned them long and well,
  And the deep experience knoweth which their silent teachings tell.
  Not the wildest hold of empire can the mind's expansion fill;
  Vain the grasp of worldly power, worldly riches vainer still.
  High o'er all that earth can offer, heaven's allurements beckon on,
  And the crown that never fadeth by the victor shall be won.

------

{672}


  Translated from the French.

  The Crucifix of Baden.

  A Legend of the Middle Ages.


CHAPTER VI.

Eight days passed since Johann's departure before the young man again stood
at the sculptor's door. Alas! in that silent and gloomy house, the click of
the hammer striking the stone, the cutting of the chisel on the marble, the
cheerful voices of the pupils, and the pure voice of Mina, singing her love
lay in the morning or canticle at eve, were no longer heard. The great
window of the atelier was opaque and black, and no spark of light appeared
in the house save where the weak and pale light of a little lamp shone
through the window of the young girl's room, at the top of the house, and
seemingly shadowed by the angel's wings.

Johann sprang from his horse, tapped lightly at the door, and, throwing
aside his travelling cloak, hastened to question the old servant.

"Where is your young lady?"

"Above in her room. Her malady hath much increased since last we saw you."

"And Master Sebald?"

"Is at her side. She speaks and weeps in her delirium, and the master
desires that we should not approach her."

"But I may enter," said Johann. "Fear nothing, Martha, I will not disturb
her--you well know that, when I departed, it was to bear a message for
Demoiselle Mina."

Martha allowed the young traveller to pass, and he ascended the stairs
rapidly yet softly, and glided noiselessly into Mina's room, of which the
door stood half open.

Beneath the thick curtains of the bed, under a canopy of dark blue damask,
the white form of the sculptor's daughter was dimly outlined, indistinct
and floating like a shadow, and scarcely perceptible, save where the yellow
ray of the silver lamp lit up two sparkling, ardent, agitated flames from
beneath her dark lashes. How dry and desolate, and even fearful, were those
late sweet glances, now glittering with the fires of fever! Tears would
bring more gladness to her father's heart than that wild splendor. So
thought Johann as he softly entered and hid behind a large arm-chair in his
eagerness to escape those burning glances.

By the side of the bed Master Sebald sat gloomy and silent in a high-backed
ebony chair. His grief-worn countenance and gray head rested upon a hand
which seemed to Johann to have grown, even in the few days of his absence,
more yellow and thin. The other hand was stretched toward the bed, and held
clasped that of Mina. The old man watched every movement, every look, every
sigh of his daughter. A moan from time to time broke from her lips; then
she pushed back with her thin fingers the waves of golden hair which fell
over her pale forehead, and began to speak in short, gasping tones:

"Wilt thou pardon me, my father?" said she. "Once thou hadst confidence in
me and wert happy. Nothing was wanting to thee; neither the grace of God
nor the respect of man; neither success nor genius. Ah! my father, when I
reflect that thou mightest always have been so, hadst thou no daughter! Why
came I ever into this world, or why died I not in my cradle? Then thou
wouldst have mourned me, but with different tears with sweet and tender
tears--tears of hope and benediction; thou wouldst have placed me in my
little coffin, and, when afterward thou wouldst think of me, thou wouldst
cease to weep, saying: I am a happy father, whose family is in
heaven--there have my pious wife and angel babe flown.'"

{673}

Here sobs interrupted her voice. A heart-broken sigh from the father
replied.

The sick girl for a moment was silent, breathing painfully, and wiping away
with her hand the drops of sweat which stood upon her brow. Then with a
still more mournful voice, she continued:

"Instead of that I grew, I lived, and I loved in vain. Father! my tombstone
must bear the thorns of grief the black cross of penitence. It will be a
sad sight--my last dwelling. Mockery will sound around it; the passer-by
will point it out scornfully, but, if thy malediction floats not over it,
my father--if thou wilt there shed a tear on the green turf--"

"O my Mina! my only child, talk not of maledictions or tombs--I love thee.
I tremble for thee, I pardon thee--and thou wilt live and yet be happy. Who
can say that Otho has proved false? Who knows that old Hans is not
mistaken? Who knows that we may not see him once more, generous, true, and
loving thee, my Mina?"

"We will never see him more. He loves me no more, my father. If old Hans
were mistaken--if the lady of Horsheim were not to wed Otho, Johann would
long ere this have returned. Thinkest thou the good youth would delay to
bring me glad tidings? No--he is generous, devoted, and tender. Why could I
not love him? I have been very weak, alas! but father, rememberest thou not
how tall and gracious was the count! How handsome he seemed with his red
plume overhanging his black hair, and his fine form encased in his steel
cuirass! And his voice that went so straight to the heart! his simple
grace! his gentle nobleness! Who would not have loved such a gentleman? And
thou, my father, didst thou not first love him?'

"Yes, I loved him, Mina; and I would yet esteem him."

"Contemn him not, father; and, above all, seek not to be avenged on him!"
cried the girl, in a fit of sudden terror. "Should a proud cavalier like
him espouse a poor maiden like me--one who is not even a lady? Thou hast
genius and glory, my father; but thou hast no escutcheon. I should have
loved Johann; he had such respect for thee--such devotion for me; he would
have given thee a happy old age, and me a peaceful life; he loved me and
would have sacrificed himself for me--he, who could find heart to see me
happy in another's arms. Oh! when Johann returns, tell him that I was not
ungrateful, and that, if heaven is opened to me, I will there pray for
him."

Again her words were interrupted by a stifled sob; she turned, and her eyes
fell upon the great arm chair. She cried out, with fixed gaze and trembling
lips:

"Johann is here--and weeping! Why speaks he not?"

Then old Sebald turned and saw the young man.

"Come hither!" he cried. "Thou hast been at Horsheim; what hast thou seen?
See how pale--how burning--how pitifully sick she is. Speak, my son; say
that old Hans erred when he named the husband of the Countess Gertrude!"

Johann, erect and pale, for a moment did not reply; he made a few timid
steps toward the old sculptor, and whispered as softly as he could:

"O master! why ask me now? Why force me to tell my tidings in her
presence?"

And seeing a gesture of Mina's, he ceased. As low as he had spoken, she had
heard. She lifted her eyes, clasped her hands, and made an effort to speak.

"Thou seest, father, that I was right," she murmured. "Thanks, Johann; thou
hast proved thy courage and thy goodness, of heart, and I rejoice that I am
yet able to bid thee farewell. But one last question--answer, if thou
lovest me. When will Otho's marriage take place?"

{674}

"In ten days," sobbed Johann.

"'Tis very soon," replied Mina, shuddering. "My heart will be scarcely
cold, and a single green bud will not have appeared over my grave. But may
the earth be green, and the sky blue, and life sweet to him."

Saying these words, she crossed her hands upon her breast, and, speaking no
more, remained thus for long hours, without even casting a look upon the
weeping Johann or upon her heart-broken father.

The physician soon came, and after him the priest. The first had marvellous
secrets to cure the body; the latter had pious consolation and words of
peace for the soul. But they sought in vain to cure the body or strengthen
the soul of Mina. Each day, each hour, each moment stole a spark of the
waning fire of life; her grief was too great for so frail a form to bear,
and one evening at the end of July, ten days after Johann's return, she
closed her eyes forever, holding her father's hand in hers and the crucifix
to her lips. Johann was at her feet and received her last look. She had
near her in dying the Supreme Consoler of heaven and her only two friends
on earth, and there was in her last moments a tenderness which the heart of
the youth never forgot.


  Chapter VII.

Two days after, when the body of Mina had been deposited at sunset in the
cemetery at Baden, Sebald and Johann, the master and pupil, found
themselves alone in the atelier. Strange! It was Johann, the younger, that
seemed the most afflicted, most crushed. His eyes were swollen, his cheeks
pale, his step tottering, and his face covered with tears. Old Sebald
seemed much less changed; a few furrows the more on his brow, a few more
white hairs on his head, were the only visible tokens of his grief. His
step was as firm, his bearing as proud as before; but a strange, steady
glare, glowing and piercing, showing little trace of weariness or tears,
shone from his eyes, and it was this look that the master fixed upon his
pupil as they entered the atelier that made Johann shudder before its clear
and threatening light.

"Johann," said the master, "it is now my turn to ask thee a question.
Sawest thou Otho of Arneck when thou wert at the castle of the Countess
Gertrude?"

"Ay, master," replied the young man, with flushed face.

"Spokest thou with him?"

"Ay, truly."

"Didst say to him that I prayed his presence, or, at least, that he should
explain himself? That I was in deepest sorrow, and Mina sick unto death?"

"Yea, truly, my master."

"And what response made he?"

"That he, too, was grieved; but that his word was pledged, and that until
his marriage he might not leave the castle of the countess. The soft
remembrances of youth, he added, mar not, among wise men, the projects of a
riper age."

"'Tis well, Johann, and I thank thee," replied the sculptor. "I now know
what I wished to know, and resolution is taken."

Then he rose from his arm-chair threw a gloomy glance around the wall of
the studio.

"I return hither no more," murmured. "Here have I toiled thirty years with
upright heart and pure hands. Nothing that I have here completed has been
sullied or profaned. I feared and served God; I honored and I loved man. I
then had a right to give purity to my virgins, the light of faith to my
martyrs, the halo of love to my cherubims. But now all is lost--faith,
renown, and child. Holy images! I cannot touch ye with bruised heart and
violent hands; hating and cursing men, I may not mould the august form of
the God of love. Therefore, no more will I appear in this retreat; its
windows shall remain darkened, its door closed. I will carry with me only
my grief, my memories, and this," he cried, seizing a sculptor's chisel
with a short, polished, and keen blade, upon which he gazed with his
strange look, as he gripped it with feverish strength in his hand.

{675}

"Speak not so. O my master! clasp not that steel so tightly," cried Johann.
"That will bring thee little of consolation or hope. Look for solace for
thy sorrows to this," he said, holding an ivory crucifix before his
master's eyes. "It was pressed to Mina's dying lips; she hath bequeathed it
to us. Recallest thou not, my master, her smile as she gazed upon it? 'Twas
because beneath the shadow of the cross even death seems sweet. There is
the only refuge, and there will I find shelter. The world hath had but
little of joy for me, and I but little of love for the world. The prior of
the Augustines hath promised me a cell, and I will be happy, there to pass
my life, praying or working beneath the poor robe of a monk, and preserving
the memory and crucifix of Mina."

"It is well, my son," replied Koerner. "To each one his own succor and
light, his own strength and safety. If, thanks to the priest's purer cross,
thou findest calm and resignation, may I not seek the encouragement and
strength of my sculptor's chisel? Who may say, that, without these walls, I
am not destined to achieve some work that will immortalize my name and
console my heart? Then, why not leave to a father's grief the hope of
glory, of triumph, and--this little sculptor's tool?" demanded the old man,
with flushed face and sparkling eyes.

"I wish thee triumph and glory, my master. But yet, if thou canst do so,
remember, when thou art active, diligent, and famous, that thy old pupil
Johann, who would not be an artist and became a monk, will never cease to
bless thee and to think of thee in his prayers."

So saying, the youth, weeping, kissed old Sebald's hand and left the
dwelling, carrying with him the crucifix, his last and only treasure. When
he had departed, Sebald Koerner, too, left the studio, after casting a last
look on the bas-reliefs, the balcony, the mouldings, and the statues. He
double-locked the door and took away the key, and, issuing from his house,
he walked for a long time through the fields. Arriving at length at the
side of a deep pool near the foot of the hills, he bent over the tranquil
waters and dropped the key therein.

The water plashed and the waves hastened in increasing rings from the spot,
and then became even more clear and peaceful than before--stilling
themselves ere the key had touched the bottom. Sebald then again stood
erect, with his icy glance and strange smile, yet grasping the chisel in
his hand, and then concealing it in his bosom as if it were a dagger.


  Chapter VIII.

One morning the Baron Otho of Arneck and the young Countess Gertrude, now
his dear lady and noble wife, were partaking in their house in Baden of
their morning collation of fruits, hydromel, and spiced cakes. How charming
seemed their repast, since they enjoyed it together. The cakes were
exquisite, the hydromel of the sweetest; the cups were of gold, the cloth
of fine brocade; Gertrude beautiful and loving. What was needed to complete
Otho's happiness?

When the young baroness had clapped her hands to order away the breakfast
service, the servant who entered approached the knight, bearing on a silver
plate a piece of parchment folded in the form of a letter.

"What have we here?" asked the noble lady. "Another invitation? Indeed,
Otho, they become wearisome. We are allowed no rest, although happiest
together."

"It is indeed an invitation, but not one for thee, my cherished one,"
replied Otho, when he had cast his eyes over the missive.

"In good sooth! And who is it who dares so soon to attempt to separate thee
from thy wife?"

{676}

"An unfortunate man, and as such thou must forgive him," replied Otho,
smiling.

"And what demands he?"

"Thou shalt hear, sweet one."

And the knight, unfolding the sheet of parchment, read these words aloud to
the baroness:

"An old friend--a once dear friend prays the Baron of Arneck to grant him a
moment's converse for the sake of their common affection and of his unhappy
lot. The Baron Otho is happy; that is a reason why he should seek to pay
his debt of gratitude to heaven by aiding the unfortunate. Let him, then,
not refuse this prayer which a friend's voice addresses to him.

"For many reasons, which the writer will explain by word of mouth, the
meeting should be in the burial-ground of Baden; for the old friend of the
Baron of Arneck can no longer have the honor of receiving him in his house,
hereafter forever closed and accursed. The Baron of Arneck is expected
tomorrow morning at six of the clock."

"How strange a letter! How strange a meeting-place!" cried Gertrude,
turning pale. "Canst imagine, Otho, who hath addressed it thee?"

"Some banished friend. Thou knowest, Gertrude, that at the accession of the
present margrave many nobles of Baden were exiled, and among them were some
old friends of my father, and without doubt it is one of them who hath
written this."

"But--but, Otho--why should he choose such a place of tryst? A place so
solemn, so fearful! where there are only the dead and their tombs?"

"'Tis the time and place that should reassure thee, my cherished one. One
harboring designs of evil would have appointed a forest, mayhap, or a
hostel; but never a burial-place, where no Christian man would do aught of
wrong, and, my sweet wife, nor my father nor I had ever friend among
infidels."

"Thou wilt go, then?" said Gertrude.

"Of a surety."

"Alone?"

"Even so, for, if it be a proscribed exile who seeks me, our varlets must
not know of his presence."

"But fearest thou no danger, Otho? When thou wert alone, thou mightest
laugh at prudence; but now, canst thou forget that I am here? that I love
and tremble for thee?"

"Fear not, my love. Even if this request should hide a snare--which I
credit not--remember that the guards of the cemetery would not give
entrance to a party of armed men, and that against one I have my skill to
defend me and this," said he, drawing from his belt a pointed and
keen-edged dagger. "But imagine not vain terrors, my Gertrude. He who hath
written me hath mayhap for long years tasted naught of tenderness or joy,
and our happiness should render us the more kind to the unfortunate."

The young wife felt proudly moved at these noble words of her husband, and
the happy pair began their preparations for the margrave's reception, and
spoke no more of the strange meeting of the morrow.

Otho, however, did not forget it; and scarcely had he perceived the first
rosy tints of day when he arose and donned his pourpoint and cloak.
Gertrude yet slept, and, after kissing his wife's forehead and tenderly
stroking her flaxen hair, he sallied gayly forth.

Half an hour later saw him in the burial ground; but, although he had
arrived before the hour appointed, saw that the unknown was already there.

A beautiful August morning spread its freshness and virginal splendor over
the earth; turtle-doves cooed in the tall yew trees; and sparrows, pursuing
each other among the lindens and lilac bushes, showered the dew drops which
glittered upon the leaves in a rain of diamonds over the green turf;
daisies lifted their little white heads and rosy crowns above the
grass-grown graves; and the grim tombstones, and even the black crosses,
seemed to cast aside their sombre look and to dress themselves almost gayly
in the growing sunlight.

{677}

"If Gertrude were here, she would cease to tremble," murmured Otho,
advancing. "Who could fear in the midst of the melody yon tiny songsters
pour forth, or surrounded by this light, this perfumed air, and walking in
so verdant a sod?"

There was, however, a dark stain amid all this splendor. In an angle at the
foot of a lofty ash stood a man whose tall form and black attire were
sharply outlined in the surrounding brightness.

"Yonder is my unknown," thought Otho, and with a few rapid strides he
approached him.

The man stood motionless, his head bowed upon his breast, his eyes fixed
upon an oblong space upon which the grass had not yet begun to grow.

"Thou art doubtless he who hath called me hither," said Otho. "I am the
Baron of Arneck."

The stranger quickly raised his head and threw back the hood of his mantle,
exhibiting to the young knight's gaze thin locks of snow-white hair, and a
face on which sorrow had traced more furrows than age.

"Master Koerner!" cried Otho, joyfully stretching forth his hand. "But why
so much mystery and solemnity? You needed but to call me to your side,
dearest master, if grief or calamity threatened, and, whatever might have
conspired to keep me back, I had obeyed the summons; and, indeed, I have
heard that you were afflicted, but I hope that the Demoiselle Mina hath
fully recovered from her illness."

"She is healed, indeed," replied old Sebald again, lowering his eyes to the
bare spot of earth.

"If I have not before presented myself at your house," continued Otho, who
felt it necessary to offer some explanation, but who could not without
blushing attempt it, "it was because I felt it well to silence by my
absence the slanders of envious tongues, and, believe me, my master, that
such a resolution cost me dear. For you, excellent master, I hold deep
respect and warm friendship, and I honor and admire your daughter, who to
me is a model of beauty, of wisdom, and of modesty. Her praises are ever
upon my lips, and sweet memories of her in my heart."

"'Tis well--very well," murmured the old sculptor; "but be careful, Sir
Knight, you are treading upon her grave!"

And with trembling hand and flashing eyes, he pushed Otho, who unwittingly
had trod upon the turfless space, back, back, far from the grave.

"Can this be true?" cried the knight, turning pale. "Mina dead! sleeping
here! She so young, so beautiful, so tenderly loved! And you called me not,
master, to accompany her to the tomb to weep with you!"

"You are very generous, Sir Knight; but what I would demand of you is not
your tears."

"Need you, then, friends or aid? You know, Master Koerner, that since I
have known you I have been but too glad to place my influence, my relations
at your service, and I would now gladly offer you the benefit of my
fortune. Speak quickly, I pray you. Command of me what you need or desire."

"I will first relate to you a tale of truth, and then demand vengeance of
you," replied the old man, in calm tones but with glittering eyes. "Sir
Knight, you presented yourself at my dwelling with the fervor of an artist
and the submission of a pupil. You sought, you said, a nobler and holier
goal than success at court or the triumphs of war; you wished with ardent
heart and zealous hand to produce the sacred images of our Saviour, his
virgin Mother, and the saints. And I believed you, Sir Knight; for to me
art was more glorious, more fruitful, more divine than aught else on earth,
because in art I found my mission, my recompense, my safety, and my life.
But you deceived me; you, who pride yourself on your name of gentleman;
and, while feigning to study my art, you were killing my daughter.
{678}
Reply not; deny not my words," continued Sebald, fixing a lurid gaze upon
Otho, whose words died on his lips. "She loved you, and for your sake died.
But before condemning you, justice commands me to hear you. You yourself
have just said Mina was wise, beautiful, and pure; that you lauded her
virtues to the world: why, then, did you not wed her?"

"Because--because--" stammered Otho, blushing--"because, Master Sebald,
your daughter was not noble. You well know, my dear master, that the
customs of the nobility are sacred. Many a one of us is forced to silence
the voice of his heart, lest, as they say, a stain should be cast on his
escutcheon. Why was Mina a burgess's daughter and not a countess? But you
yourself understand, my old master, that I, whose ancestors were counted
among the companions of Charlemagne--that I could not take for my wife the
daughter of a sculptor, without title, without crest or quarterings."

Otho pronounced these words in a low voice, with drooping head and downcast
eyes. He dared not meet the glance of the sculptor, who remained a moment
silent, and then spoke:

"Otho of Arneck, you have crushed the father and slain the child. As you
say, the sculptor has neither title nor quarterings, but he has an arm for
vengeance!"

And springing furiously forward, more rapid than thought in his movement,
the old man, his eyes gleaming, but his hand grasping firmly the glittering
chisel, flung himself upon the baron, and before the latter could draw the
dagger from his girdle, the steel disappeared in the folds of his velvet
doublet and buried itself in his breast. The hand that aimed it was firm,
the blow was sure; the chisel as of old failed not to perform its master's
will; and Otho of Arneck fell upon the bare space of ground--fell, never
more to rise, upon the very spot where Mina lay cold and dead.

"Thou dost well--thou art avenged," gasped the fallen man, fixing his
glazing eyes upon Sebald. "In thy place I had done likewise--but--in
honorable combat--for I--I am a knight and noble. But I truly loved Mina."

His head dropped back, his limbs relaxed, and he was silent. The clear red
blood of youth and health flowed from the wound and stained the bare earth.

Sebald, with his arms folded upon his breast, gazed upon his work.

"Let his blood flow on," he murmured at length; "let it moisten her coffin,
as it should. And now I shall deliver myself to justice. My vengeance as a
father and my mission as a sculptor are fulfilled."

He turned away and walked with rapid steps from the cemetery, leaving his
weapon still fixed in the baron's body.


  Chapter IX.

A few weeks after the occurrences detailed in the last chapter, on a dull,
gray day of the autumn of 1435, a crowd of the burgesses of Baden assembled
in the great hall of justice to listen to the judgment to be pronounced
against Master Koerner, the sculptor. "Who," said they, "would have
imagined a few months since that a man so peaceful and just to all, an
artist so skilful, so fervent a Christian, would be dragged to that seat of
infamy?" They would as soon have expected to hear the judges condemn them
themselves to death and to see themselves led by the grand-provost to the
gibbet. Master Sebald a criminal! Master Sebald an assassin! Alas for poor
humanity, if that were all sixty years of virtue could bring forth!

Nevertheless, there he was, the artist criminal--the white-haired murderer
standing erect before the magistrates in their robes of ermine and
carnation, before the ivory image of Christ crucified, with its black
velvet background, which hung above their seats.
{679}
There he stood while near him on a table lay the mute witnesses against
him: the velvet pourpoint, stiff with blood; the fine linen tunic, now
reddish brown in its hue; the murderous chisel, with its once gleaming
blade dark and rusty and covered with a crust of clotted blood.

Several witnesses were called: the servant who received from Master Sebald
the treacherous letter, which he delivered to Count Otho; the keeper of the
burial-ground, who testified to having seen the accused enter the field the
dead on the morning of the twenty-second of August. But tears flowed
fastest when the Countess Gertrude, the youthful widow of the baron, gave
her deposition. While relating her mournful story, the noble lady swooned
several times, and her beauty, her placid face, and long, closed lashes,
and raving flaxen hair, unfastened and rolling in masses over her black
robe, moved the auditory that more than once the life of the assassin
seemed in instant danger.

But the depositions of witnesses were almost useless. The most striking
evidence of his crime was the chisel lying there, still covered with the
victim's blood. And when the president, after declaring to Master Sebald
the crime of which he stood accused, asked, pointing to the blood-stained
weapon, "Dost thou recognize thy chisel?" the old sculptor replied:

"Yes: it is mine."

"And thou seest that with it was the life of the Baron of Arneck taken.
Canst thou say by whose hand he came to his death?"

"Yes--by mine," replied Master Sebald unhesitatingly.

"So thou hast already declared in delivering thyself up to the hands of
justice," said the president. "But that declaration, made in a moment of
trouble and grief, was insufficient. It needed a public avowal to confirm
it. But one question more: Thou hadst doubtless motives for the commission
of so barbarous an act?"

"Assuredly," replied the sculptor. "No man kills wantonly one who was for
three years his pupil and his friend."

"What cause, then, impelled thee?"

The prisoner remained silent for a moment, bowed his head still lower,
clasped his hands tight together, and bit his lips till the blood trickled
from them; then he replied:

"No; my motives were too holy. I will not tell them."

"Reflect, accused," said the president. "It is because thy motives were
grave that they should be revealed. Reflect; and say why such a crime
sullies thy once pure hands."

"No," repeated Sebald, "I am ready to die, but the history of my crime dies
with me."

Then a young man dressed in the habit of an Augustine novice, who had
obtained the favor of remaining by the side of the accused, rose, and in a
timid voice addressed the judges:

"Although, my lords, I know not fully Master Sebald's motives, I may,
perhaps, suspect them. There are moments in the lives of the wisest and of
the most just when the heart may harden and the judgment err under the goad
of some great grief. Remember, my lords, that Master Koerner has lost his
only child, and you, who knew the daughter, can conceive the grief of the
father."

"Johann! be silent!" cried old Sebald, rising, trembling and furious. "Let
the dead sleep in their graves. Their agony is past, and mine needs no
increase. I make no avowals--I desire no defence. The crime was mine--the
vengeance was mine, and I seek but to die with my secret!"

The old man fell back exhausted by this burst of indignation, and the young
friar, covering his face with his hands, sank upon his knees before his
master upon the stone floor, while the president glanced around upon his
colleagues, as if to read their judgment in their faces.

"Before such a resolution," said he, "further questions were useless."

Then he called upon the prisoner to stand erect and listen to his sentence,
which the clerk proceeded to read.

{680}

"Master Sebald Koerner, sculptor and burgess of the good city of Baden,
having been convicted of having, on the morning of August twenty-second
last past, treacherously wounded and killed the noble Otho Rayner, Baron of
Arneck, and esquire to his highness the margrave, is condemned to die by
the halter."

"Accused, hast aught to say?" asked the president when the reading of the
doom was ended.

"Nothing," replied Master Sebald, bowing with folded arms before the
judges.

The president covered his head with his black furred robe, and continued:

"Master! the justice of man hath pronounced thy doom, and will soon be
satisfied. With a common criminal our office would here end, and but a few
words of exhortation to repentance would accompany him to the executioner.
But, criminal as thou art, we cannot forget that for sixty years thou wast
our neighbor and our friend, and that those hands now red with murder have
carved many a pure and holy image to strengthen and lift our souls toward
God.

"How canst thou, whose works have so long glorified our Lord, now refuse to
repent? Hast thou not read a thousand times the command, 'Thou shalt not
kill'? Hast never reflected upon our Saviour's agony--his wounded hands,
his lance-pierced side, his crown of thorns, the blows his face received,
his shames, his griefs, avenged only by the words, 'Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do'? Thou hast thought upon all this; thou hast
even modelled with thy hands the bloody scenes of thy Redeemer's life; and
yet thou couldst not learn to forgive--thou, who wast but a man!"

Here the president was for a moment silent, overcome by his emotion, and
the old sculptor, as if shaken in his fierce resolve and gloomy pride by
the words of his judge, slowly lifted his head and cast a troubled look
around. "In the bitterness of thy heart," continued the president, "in the
madness of thy wrath, all this thou didst forget; and yet to recall it all
to mind, thou neededst but to lift thine eyes. Gaze not on us, Master
Sebald; bear thy glances higher, and see above us the pallid face, the
wounded form, the holy eyes of him who loved more than thou, who suffered
more than thou, and who only avenged himself upon his torturers by saving
them from death, albeit at the price of his own blameless life. Harken to
me, betrayed friend! that Man-God had, too, a friend, and was betrayed by
the kiss of that friend; listen, unhappy father! that Father was sold,
scourged, crucified by his children. And if this God, reviled, dishonored,
avenged not himself, was it not to set man an example of forgiveness? Thou
hast not yet expiated thy crime, Master Koerner, and the hand of the
executioner will soon deliver thee to a higher Judge. Christ will await
thee at the gibbet, just and inflexible. Gaze on him ere thy death, poor
sinner, with faith and love, for thy Judge is also thy Saviour."

So speaking, the president uncovered his head and pointed solemnly to the
ivory crucifix. The eyes of Master Koerner followed the uplifted hand and
rested on the agonized face of Christ. Then their fixed and stony glare
grew soft; their dry and burning lustre grew moist; his lips quivered; he
clasped his hands, and, after some moments of fierce struggling with
himself, the old artist murmured in a trembling voice:

"Christ! God of the wretched--God of fathers alas! since Mina's death never
have I turned mine eye to thee!"

His head fell once more upon his breast and his voice was choked in a sob,
while Johann at his side lifted his hands toward heaven in an ecstasy of
joy and gratitude.

There was a murmur and a motion in the crowd; then all was silence again as
the voice of the president arose once more:

{681}

"A ray of grace from on high hath illumined thee; let us pray that it may
conduct thee through the gates of death to eternal light, I have a few
words more to address thee. The court, while punishing as it should the
crime of the murderer, forgets not the merits of the artist. It therefore
accords thee, to lessen the bitterness of thy last moments, the favor thou
mayst most desire. Reflect, Master Sebald, ere thou fixest thy choice. Any
grace thou mayst demand shall be accorded, any save life."

A murmur of astonishment and joy ran through the crowd, which was hushed
only to hear the old sculptor's reply. Master Sebald remained long silent,
but at length rose and spoke:

"I would not ask life were I free to do so," he answered. "My life hath
already been too long, and she whom I love awaits me beyond the grave. But
you have spoken of expiation, my lord, and it seems to me that even here
below my death would not afford a complete one. My life, ended at the
gibbet, may satisfy the justice of man; but what shall I do to appease the
anger of my God? Dare I appear before him with no penitential act to plead
for my pardon; no work of reparation wherein sweat and tears I might have
washed my blood-stained hands? Repentance came while I gazed upon yon
crucifix; in carving another, pardon might perhaps descend upon me from
heaven. If the court will for a few weeks prolong my life, as I now see
Christ's image before me, so will I produce it in the stone!" cried he with
enthusiasm. "I ask not to quit my prison to live in the midst of men. No!
let me be immured in a dungeon, let my door be sealed until I leave it to
go to my death. Let but a ray of sunlight enter, that I may see to model
the august countenance of my God, while I remain there with the thoughts of
eternity and the remembrance of my crime for my only companions."

"Master Koerner," replied the judge, "thy request is that of a good
Christian and a noble artist, and the court accords it with joy, in the
hope that the work of thy last days may bring thee pardon and salvation.
Thou wilt be led back to thy dungeon, and, before its door closes upon
thee, all thou mayst require for thy work will be brought thee."

The judges arose and retired. Johann, radiant with joy, and his grief
almost consoled, accompanied his old master to the prison, and then sought
the stone, the clay--all that the sculptor could need. Even the fatal
chisel, cleansed of its stains, was brought to him bright and shining, like
the soul of the criminal which, stained by sin, would soon be cleansed by
grief and labor.

Then the old sculptor passed his hand over his seamed brow and hollow
cheeks and called for a mirror. The door was then built up with stone and
mortar, and only an opening large enough for his food to be passed through
was left, and Master Sebald stood alone in the cell which he was only to
leave to pass to the gibbet.


  Chapter X.

Solitude was the cradle of creation; solitude is the never-ceasing fountain
wherein exhausted souls are refreshed. Not without an object did the
prophets begin their mission in the desert. Who would leave after him an
immortal name must retire from the haunts of men, and in solitude examine
his soul ere he speaks to mankind from the rostrum, or with the pen, the
chisel, or the pencil. When the busy hum of the world has faded away into
silence, when he hears no voice but that of his heart within, and nature
without, and God above, he will then feel the flame which brings
immortality. The voice he hears will be that of truth; the hand which
stretches toward him that of justice; and all the strength of the one and
the charms of the other will glow in his work.

Master Sebald's dungeon was the most real, the most complete of solitudes.
Thick walls of gray granite, upon which shone green and slimy traces of the
dampness that filled the air, formed a circle around him without an angle,
a recess, an irregularity on which the weary eye might rest.
{682}
A plank and a truss of straw were his bed; a block of stone was his only
seat; there was no door, for such was old Sebald's wish. Light alone--sweet
light--was not denied the captive, but flowed abundant and golden through a
large opening in the vaulted roof. But by day only was the boon granted,
and then it bore with it no sight of that world where men dwelt, no view of
the sunlit waters, the green fields, or the feathered children of the air.
Nothing of these could he enjoy; nothing but that flood of day flowing from
the open heaven upon the criminal's brow, like the gaze of Eternal Love,
ever open to hearts that yearn for it; and nevertheless, when Master Sebald
thus found himself immured in a living tomb, when nothing of earth remained
to him save stone walls, his modelling clay, and his chisel, then
inspiration of a greater power than it had ever before felt filled his
soul, and in that inspiration and in his work he would have found joyful
companions; he would have been happy, were it not that two dark and
vengeful guests found lodgment in his breast, sorrow and remorse.

His remorse was for his crime, his sorrow for his child. They wore deeper
the furrows in his brow; they made his hair whiter, his step more feeble
and uncertain; they sunk his eyes deeper in their sockets. They tortured
him in his weary watchings; they gave form to his dreams and broke and
almost banished slumber; they stood before him when he worked or
prayed--his former hate and his former love; his victim and his child. The
golden hair of his Mina glittered in wild waves before his eyes; he saw the
manly face of Otho pale and contracted with agony, while the gushing blood
poured from his wound; he closed his eyes, but still their forms stood
before him, both beckoning to the threshold of that world where eternity
begins.

The old master commenced his work, ever surrounded by these sad companions.
Ever hearing the last murmurs of Otho, the last sighs of Mina, he carved
the holy cross and the summit of Calvary; then the shameful scroll; then
the sacred form. Ever haunted by his visions of the dead, he knew better to
give to the divine Crucified the writhing of living agony joined to the
beginning rigidity of death; he remembered the last quivering of human
strength and the mysterious folds of the winding-sheet. It was only when he
came to carve the face of Christ that imagination and memory ceased to
furnish him a model. Mina's passionate grief and pious resignation; the
mingled humiliation, repentance, grief, and rage of the murdered Otho could
give naught to be reproduced in the countenance of a God. He must seek his
model elsewhere; and Master Sebald had not asked for his mirror in vain.

Standing erect before his work, he began to chisel the face of Christ; and
for the first time since his prison walls closed upon him he gazed upon his
own reflection. The long gaze upon his white head and his grief-worn
features satisfied him.

His own face was a book, a book of sorrows speaking most eloquently,
wherein all bitterness, all failings, all regrets, and all terrors, the
dreams of the artist, the humiliation of the master, the friend betrayed,
the sufferings, of the father, the anguish of the condemned, had inscribed
their memories and left their foot-prints. The agony of Master Sebald was
already long, and had been cruel and stormy. Ah! the remembrances of Otho's
treachery were as the wounds in the hands and feet; the brand of dishonor
upon his brow was as the crown of thorns; and the last wound, the stab of
the lance, was the loss of Mina. So, that after long contemplating his own
features, the old sculptor knelt humbly before the work he had begun.

"Pardon, O Christ!" he said, "if I, a weak mortal, an unworthy and sinful
man, dare, in carving thy sacred lineaments, trace mine. But I design not,
O Lord! to show thee happy and full of peace, or radiant and glorious.
{683}
I promised to present thee suffering, suffering even the death of the
cross; I suffer that of the gibbet. A friend betrayed thee; a friend
betrayed me. Thou wast loaded with insult and ignominy; I too had good
cause to blush before my judges. Thou weepest over the sins of men, thy
children; I over my child's grave. And as, O Lord! thou wert man as well as
God, I may not offend thee in copying the anguish, the griefs, the
sufferings that have left their print upon my brow. All these thou knowest,
O Lord! but remorse thou couldst not know. That will I keep to myself, and
in its stead I will place radiance, hope, and splendor of divinity. Ay,
hope! for even on the cross didst thou hope and call upon thy Father!"

Here the old sculptor ceased, and bent before his work, while the shadows
of despair darkened his brow. Then he cast a troubled look upon the statue,
a look in which anguish mingled with prayer, confidence with terror.

"And can I hope?" he murmured. "Mina is in heaven. Shall I again see her?"

But no voice replied, and, sighing, he stood again erect. Then after a few
moments of silent meditation he seized his chisel, and, making the sign of
the cross, recommenced his work, and the stone seemed to breathe, to
quiver, to palpitate as, one by one, the suffering lines came forth. Truly
in Master Sebald's mirror were grief and unpitying and unending pain.

And he worked in spite of the gnawings of hunger, the want of sleep, the
cold of the winter. He had ever within him strength and fire--the strength
of expiation, the fire of penitence. But as he worked, his form became more
stooped, and his eye less sure; his blood flowed feebler through his veins,
and his breath grew more quick and gasping. But he needed but mind and
hand, and his mind was clear, and his hand carved bravely still. And what
cared he for the failing of an exhausted body? If, day by day, his face
grew thinner, his eyes cavernous, his lips tighter, was not his model for
all that the more real? Was it not a dying Christ he was carving?

At last his work was done. When the last blow of the chisel had been given,
when the stone had received the final touch, when Christ hung there
wounded, quivering, breathing, sublime, Master Sebald knelt before his work
and bowed his forehead to the earth. The sculptor demanded his pay; the
criminal his pardon. He prayed fervently and long; and when he rose, he
knew that his child called, and that the hour of his deliverance was nigh,
and, walking to the narrow opening which formed his only means of
communication with men, he called aloud to his jailer:

"My Christ is finished! My task is done! Unseal the door and lead me to the
executioner."

But it was not the executioner that came, but the judge; and he, the first
to enter the dungeon, when he lifted his eyes, fell upon his knees with
clasped hands; for what he saw seemed no image of stone, but a living
Christ, suffering and dying before him. Struck with astonishment and
admiration, he called his colleagues and sent for monseigneur the bishop,
and his highness the margrave, that all might see the Christ of the
condemned. The dungeon of Master Sebald was too narrow for the multitude of
visitors who crowded before the holy image; they talked of carrying it to
one of the courts of the city, or to the Grand Place, that all the faithful
might mourn and be edified by so sacred a spectacle. But Master Sebald
opposed this project and asked a further boon:

"Ah!" cried he, "if you think this work of my hands merits aught but favor,
consecrate it to a holy remembrance; place it in the cemetery where my
daughter reposes. Christ should be upon her tomb, to speak to her of hope,
and on the tomb of him--of--_him_ too, to speak to him of
forgiveness."

{684}

We may add that the sculptor's request was quickly granted, for in those
happy days there were sheriffs who believed, and judges of tender hearts.
They were very backward, and very far behind our enlightened age in those
days, although gunpowder had just been invented. Besides, the councillors
of the margrave held sacred things in respect, and did not regard
cemeteries as mere charnel-houses.

They carried, then, with great pomp, Master Sebald's statue to the
cemetery; and, for the first time since his imprisonment began, the old man
saw the crowd of men, the green leaves, the tomb of his daughter, and the
white clouds of heaven.

He saw the blessing of the cross; he saw Mina's tomb consecrated; and then,
taking his chisel, he graved upon the pedestal, as a last farewell, the
inscription which, as we have seen, yet remains, and asked the time
appointed for his execution. But murmurs arose in the crowd which soon
swelled to violent clamors. Could so repentant a man, so old and true an
artist, be given over to the gibbet! The people surrounded the magistrates;
the magistrates turned to the councillors; the councillors turned to the
margrave; and after a short deliberation the president of the tribunal
declared to Master Koerner that, in consideration of his genius, of his
piety, and of his repentance, he should still live; pardon was granted him.

"Is life a boon?" murmured the old artist, sadly bowing his head. "But I
await the mercy of God. He is more generous than man."

He had not long to wait, for two days after, in the gray, early morning,
they found him cold and dead upon his daughter's grave, his head resting
upon the base of the crucifix. His hopes were realized; God opened his
prison-doors.

......

Such is the legend of the sculptor and his work--a legend which offers a
simple and characteristic picture of the ages of confiding faith, when the
Christian placed his hopes, the injured his vengeance, the criminal his
repentance, and the artist his genius, at the foot of the cross.

------

  Original.

  The Indissolubility Of Christian Marriage.


  Number Two.


It is evident that Jesus Christ intended to legislate and did legislate in
regard to marriage. The commandment which he gave, requiring the marriage
contract to be respected as inviolable and indissoluble, is a law, has the
force of a law, and is obligatory, not only upon ecclesiastical, but also
upon civil legislators and judges. There is no power upon earth, either in
the church or in the state, which has power to abrogate or change it. We do
not pretend that this law was promulgated to the Jewish people, or to pagan
nations, directly and immediately. Our Lord legislated immediately only for
those who should become the subjects of his kingdom by baptism. For all
others, he legislated only mediately, by promulgating to all mankind the
precept to embrace his faith and be baptized into his church, and thus to
bring themselves under the entire code of Christian law. The unbaptized are
subject to the natural law only in regard to marriage, as in everything
else; and their marriage is not a sacrament, but a merely natural contract.
{685}
What we maintain is, that the law regarding _Christian_ marriage has
been established by the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ for all the
baptized, and that this law respects the very essence of marriage as a
contract, invalidating all pretended marriages which are not in accordance
with it. All ecclesiastical legislators are, therefore, bound to legislate
in conformity with this law. They must treat all marriages sanctioned and
ratified by the law of Christ as valid and binding, and all others as null
and void. All Christians must act in the same manner. And in Christian
states, as all law-givers and judges are bound to act according to their
conscience, and in conformity with the divine law, and as the revealed law
of Jesus Christ respecting marriages is the supreme rule of the Christian
conscience, having the force of a divine law, they are bound to make it the
rule of all their enactments and judgments.

Some Protestant writers deny that our Lord intended to legislate respecting
matrimony, and affirm that he merely laid down a rule of morality. This is,
however, an unmeaning statement. He could not give a moral precept
respecting matrimony without legislating. The essential morality of the
question is determined by the law determining the conditions, motives, and
obligations of the contract. Morality consists in conformity to this law,
immorality in violating it. Our Lord could not, therefore, command anything
as required by morality, or forbid anything as immoral, in relation to the
essentials of marriage, without reenacting an already existing law, or
promulgating a new law, defining the conditions by which a marriage is
rendered a valid or an invalid contract.

The very circumstances and terms of his utterance on the subject show that
he did legislate. Moses legislated on the subject, and permitted to men
divorce in certain cases, with the privilege of remarriage to both parties.
Our Lord expressly revokes this permission, so far as his own disciples are
concerned, and declares that, according to the Christian law, whoever
divorces his wife and marries another, or whoever marries a divorced party,
must be held guilty of adultery. This is an act of legislation, for it is a
law declaring null and void for the future certain marriages which, under
the Mosaic law, were valid. Now, there is no civil law which can make a
contract declared invalid by the divine law valid, binding, or lawful, or
which can invalidate a contract made valid by the divine law. It is true
that our Lord did not enact any civil law, properly so called, with civil
penalties annexed to it, for the Jewish people, or for any Gentile nation.
But he prescribed the standard according to which all legislators in
Christian states are bound to make their civil laws.

The question now comes up, How are we to ascertain what the law of Jesus
Christ is, and what is the law itself? We have discussed the last question
in part, in our former number, in which we endeavored to show that the
texts of Scripture in which we are informed concerning the precept given by
Christ concerning marriage, properly understood, sustain the Catholic
doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. We have now to show how the
Catholic doctrine and the law of the Catholic Church are established with
an infallible certainty, and with a force absolutely obligatory on the
conscience.

It is evident enough that the notion of legislators and judges attempting
to discuss and decide upon the true meaning of texts of Scripture is
absurd. Such a proceeding would never lead to any uniformity of legislation
if attempted, and it would never be attempted in any community where
principles of sound jurisprudence prevailed. Who, then, are to decide upon
the meaning of these texts, if the ultimate appeal is to them? The
Protestant clergy? They cannot agree among themselves.
{686}
Even in the earliest and best days of Puritanism in New England, when a
comparatively strict doctrine and legislation respecting marriage
prevailed, there was a serious difference among the clergy respecting the
lawful grounds of divorce. Moreover, the Protestant clergy do not claim the
right of interpreting the Scripture. The laity have an equal right, and
each individual has it for himself. Rationalists claim also the right of
making reason the criterion of the truth of the doctrine of Scripture and
the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is therefore plain that it is a futile
proceeding to attempt to make the text of Scripture a standard of
legislation or public sentiment in regard to marriage. The result which has
actually been produced is an inevitable result, namely, that the prevalent
opinion and sentiment in the community, based on their common sense, will
regulate legislation in regard to marriage and divorce. This common sense
is not an enlightened and elevated common sense, proceeding from sound,
rational, and moral principles. It is a low, irrational sense, derived from
passion, self-interest, expediency, and a perverted reason, which tends
continually to degenerate more and more, and whose logical consequences may
be seen developing themselves every day under our own eyes.

The law established by Jesus Christ is not and cannot be based upon the
texts of the sacred historians who inform us of the fact that he did
promulgate such a law. These texts are not the law, and the enacting force
does not proceed from them. They may be cited in proof of the fact that the
law was made, and in proof of what the law was. The law itself was verbally
proclaimed by our Lord, and its force dates from and depends upon that
verbal enactment. The historical account given by the evangelists added
nothing to it, and the comments of the apostles upon it are mere allusions
to it, or exhortations to keep it, which presuppose its existence. It was a
part of the unwritten law of the church handed down by tradition, whose
legitimate expositors were the apostles and their successors. Our Lord must
have instructed the apostles fully on the subject, and they must have
transmitted full and explicit instructions on the same subject to the
bishops and clergy to whom the government of the church was committed. As
occasion required, the unwritten Christian common law was embodied in
canons by episcopal councils, and thus became statute law. The true method
of fixing decisively the real scope and contents of the divine legislation
of our Lord is, therefore, to investigate the legislation of the church
from the earliest times.

The doctrine defined by the Council of Trent upon which the modern
canonical law of the Catholic Church is based, is too well known to need
any statement. It is evident that this definition was no innovation, but
merely a solemn declaration of the doctrine universally received in the
Catholic Church, levelled against the innovations of Protestants. The mere
fact that the indissolubility of marriage has been recognised in the
Catholic Church and enforced under the severest penalties, and that it has
been also recognised and protected by the civil law of Europe, until
Protestantism brought in a disastrous change, is sufficient to prove that
the church received her law from Jesus Christ or the apostles. So severe a
law, one so inconvenient to individuals, one so contrary to the established
legislation of both Jews and Gentiles, could never have been established
and enforced by any other than a divine authority, and in the origin of the
Christian community. If a milder law had ever prevailed in the church, an
attempt to establish a stricter one would have met a violent opposition.
History would record the struggle, the pages of the fathers would bear
witness to the difference of opinion and the mutual discussion of the
question by the opposing parties. Councils would have been called to decide
it, and, if any change had been generally enforced in favor of a stricter
law, either it would have been based on reasons supposed to justify or
require the abrogation of an indulgence formerly granted, or, if not, the
previous existence of this indulgence would have been denounced as a
corruption, and these who maintained it would have been condemned.
{687}
The quiet, undisturbed continuity of the tradition and practice of the
church from the earliest ages proves that no serious and widespread
difference of doctrine ever arose, but that the modern Catholic doctrine of
the indissolubility of marriage held undisputed sway from the beginning.
The opponents of this doctrine cannot pretend to establish any clear
tradition in their own favor. They can only endeavor to obscure the
evidence of the tradition sanctioning the Catholic doctrine.
Notwithstanding their efforts, the chain of evidence from St. Augustine
back to Origen, Justin Martyr, and Hermas, including all the canons which
still remain, and which were enacted by ecclesiastical councils, is
unbroken and conclusive, as may be seen by consulting those Catholic
authors who have written scientific treatises on the subject. The whole
discussion is, however, of little practical value, except as showing the
necessity of the infallibility of the church in defining doctrine and her
supreme authority in judging moral questions, and as corroborating the
proof that she possesses this infallible and supreme authority. The real
question at issue is, whether marriage is a sacrament confided to the
guardianship of the church, and regulated by a law of which the church is
the supreme judge, or whether it is a natural contract under the control of
the civil law. The Protestant world has taken the latter side of the
alternative. Consequently, the case of marriage comes to this issue; what
civil laws respecting marriage and divorce are best calculated to promote
happiness, morality, social and civil prosperity and well-being?
Legislatures and courts must decide the question, while churches,
clergymen, moralists, writers, etc., can exercise no other influence than
that of argument and persuasion. These arguments must be drawn from reason
and the natural law. They must bear upon the point that the strength and
perpetuity of the marriage bond is useful and necessary for the
preservation of society. The doctrine of Scripture and the authority of
religion can only be brought in to increase the motives and sanctions of
the natural law.

It is useless to hope that the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage
will ever be adopted either in theory or practice as the result of
reasoning on the principles of either the natural law or the moral code of
Christianity, by those who reject the infallibility of the Catholic Church.
It is also useless to hope that the Protestant clergy and jurists will ever
agree together as to the proper ground of divorce, and the proper
safeguards of marriage, much less that they will agree in adopting the
opinions of the most rigorous school among them, as sustained by their able
and learned advocate, President Woolsey, in The New-Englander. The only
thing in the power of the Protestant clergy and their lay coadjutors is, to
diminish and retard the destructive tendency of the false principle they
have admitted into theology and legislation by their denial of the Catholic
doctrine regarding marriage. In this direction they may do something, and
it is to be desired that they should exert themselves to the utmost to do
all they can. The clergy may exert a certain moral and religious influence
by acting according to some fixed principles and laws in regard to
performing the marriage ceremony and admitting or excluding persons from
communion. Also by preaching and writing on the obligations of marriage,
the blessings which flow from unions which are hallowed by perfect and
lifelong fidelity to conjugal and parental duties, and the evils which are
the consequence of infidelity and frequent separations. Jurists and
statesmen may reform the administration of law in the courts so as to
decrease the facility of obtaining divorce, and secure to all parties a
thorough protection of all the rights guaranteed to them by the civil law.
{688}
Physicians and others may do good by pointing out the physical and social
evils which flow from the violation of those laws on which the
multiplication and healthy development of the race depend. So far as
individuals are induced to marry in accordance with the dictates of pure
affection and enlightened prudence, to observe the moral laws of the
married state, and to remain faithful to each other until death, and so far
as divorces and re-marriages are rendered less numerous, so far good will
be done, and the well-being of society promoted. We desire most heartily
that the utmost possible success may attend these well-meant efforts.
Nevertheless, we cannot flatter our Protestant friends with any expression
of our own conviction that this success will be anything more than placing
a breakwater in the way of the current that is sweeping away the Christian
institution of marriage. The principles and institutions which make society
Christian, the traditions which connect it with the past and give it
Christian and moral vitality, have been received and retained from the
Catholic Church. As these are gradually abandoned and lost, society
possesses no power to recover and restore them. Christian societies outside
the church, and states composed of persons who are nominally Christian but
out of Catholic communion, bear within them the principle of dissolution,
without possessing any sufficient principle of recuperation. The Catholic
Church alone possesses a divine law given by revelation which she is
competent to explain and authorised to enforce, and which is a principle of
perpetual life, capable of resisting every tendency to disease and death,
and of renewing every decayed national constitution, restoring every
degenerate people, and continually repeating the work wrought in the first
formation of Christendom. Protestantism is a tubercular deposit in the
centre of the bosom of society. Its necessary result is spiritual, moral,
intellectual, and finally, physical death. As in the case of a person
smitten with tuberculosis, there may be for a long time many portions of
the lungs unaffected, much health and strength in the organs and limbs of
the body, and an increase of cerebral excitement and activity, although the
principle of death which will finally stop all vital activity is slowly and
surely gaining upon the principle of life; so with those portions of
Christendom which are smitten with heresy. There is much health and vigor
remaining as the effect of the original state of sound, integral, Catholic
life. Many individuals remain essentially sound in their belief and upright
in their practice. There is even a flush on the surface of society, a
hectic brilliancy in the eye of intellect, a fevered activity of thought
and action, which is mistaken for genuine, healthful vigor and vitality.
The boastful, shallow organs of public sentiment, whose real doctrines are
infidel, but who are forced to wear a little smear of popular religion on
their face, pretend, with an assurance equally sickening and ridiculous, to
read lectures and give advice to the Vicar of Christ and the bishops of the
Catholic Church on great moral and social questions. Their changes are rung
with monotonous and unmeaning repetition upon railroads, telegraphs, steam,
newspapers, heavy guns, and progress. The Catholic Church is denounced as
the great obstacle in the way of modern society, because she adheres to the
steadfast, unchanging affirmation of eternal principles of truth, law, and
justice. Her complete spoliation is urged as the great means of hastening
the march of society toward its goal. It is vain to expect an argument
which has any solidity, or even the pretence of an answer which is grave
and serious, to the reasonings and expostulations of those who point out
the deadly symptoms which are concealed beneath this hectic activity and
betrayed by this boastful demeanor. An ill-bred sneer, an unmeaning
platitude, or a frivolous display of rhetoric is all that can be expected.
{689}
Nevertheless, those who are able to think, and who have some real
solicitude for progress in truth, in sound morality, in Christian virtue,
in solid well-being and happiness, on the part of society and their
fellow-men, will not be able to shut their eyes to the evident symptoms
which prove that a deadly disease, already far advanced, is feeding on the
vitals of the social organism. These symptoms have been pointed out by
Protestant clergymen and medical writers, and we refer to their startling
statements as evidence of the virulence and extent of the moral ulcer which
is eating up the vitals of society and destroying the original, American
population of the country. It is not the matter of a few divorces granted
to married persons whose rights are judicially proved to have been violated
in a flagrant manner, which is of such great importance. While the ancient
laws of the states were rigidly enforced, and the number of divorces
granted was small, the community received no grievous injury. The great
evil which is so alarming, and is working such deplorable effects, consists
in the great number of divorces granted, the facility with which they are
obtained, and the flippant, shameless disregard of all judicial decorum by
the courts of law. Behind all this is another evil, the violation of the
morality of the conjugal state. The authors of Protestantism have opened
the door to all these disorders by their denial of the indissolubility and
sacramental character of matrimony, and their concession of the right to
judge and decide upon the whole subject of the marriage contract to the
civil power. The door which they have opened they cannot close. There is no
protection for the sacredness of marriage at all adequate to the
necessities of the case, except in a doctrine, a law, and a system of
practical morality, promulgated and enforced by a church which has power
over the conscience, and is acknowledged as possessing an authority
delegated by Jesus Christ. The utter weakness and helplessness of
Protestantism, and the absolute necessity of a return to the Catholic
Church in order to save society and civilization, has been manifested in
England and the United States in a more startling and sudden manner than
could have been anticipated twenty years ago by the most sagacious prophet
of the future. We wait with interest and anxiety to see what will be done
by those who believe that the secession of the sixteenth century was really
a reformation, and that the salvation of the human race is to be looked for
from the principles of Luther and Calvin. At present, these principles
appear to be tending to the abrogation of the institution of marriage in
the Christian sense of the word, and the introduction of a species of
polygamy worse than that of Mormonism.

------

{690}


    Original.

    Mea Culpa.

    By Richard Storrs Willis.


    I.

  All through my fault, my own most grievous fault!
  This the chagrin and inward smart of sin.
  Nor others' blame can my poor cause exalt--
  Naught but myself t' accuse, without, within!
    And thus to my God heavy-hearted I cry,
    _Mea culpa, meet maxima culpa!_
    And thus to the mother of Jesus I sigh,
    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_

    II.

  O God! the past, the wicked past forgive!
  The spectre-sins that haunt my soul dispel.
  Deeper than mirth, alas! they frowning live;
  Beneath my smiles, in memory's caves they dwell!
    And thus to Saint Michael, archangel, I plead,
    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:_
    And thus to Saint John with regret I concede,
    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_

    III.

  _Ponder my love_--a Saviour's voice would fall,
  When tempted sore, in youth's delirious hour.
  _Ponder my love_--O kind and gracious call!
  And yet from life I plucked each poison-flower!
    And thus to Saint Peter and Paul I exclaim,
    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:_
    And thus to all saints and you, brothers, proclaim,
    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_

    IV.

  Ah! well, dear Lord, here in my guilt I bow.
  What else to do, where else to go, than home?
  Joyless, distrest, a contrite suppliant now,
  Heartsick of sin, homesick for thee, I come!
    Ye saints and you, brothers, to Christ for me pray
    _Peccavi, mea maxima culpa!_
    Alas! my dear Jesus, 'tis all I can say,
    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_

------

{691}


  From The Dublin University Magazine.

  Solutions of Some Parisian Problems.

  Cabs And Their Patron.

The admirers of French novels have made acquaintance with some of the
French representatives of our own carboys and carmen in the French
metropolis. They are aware that their cabs or cabriolets are called
_Fiacres_, and they are naturally desirous to know why they should be
called by a name which by a little aspiration sounds unmistakably Irish.
This trifling question has set some archaeological antiquaries by the ears.
The following appears to be the genuine solution: Sanval, author of
"Recherches sur les Antiquités de Paris," (end of seventeenth century.)
said that, about forty years previous, a certain Nicholas Sauvage, agent to
the proprietor of the Amiens coaches, and owner of a large house in the Rue
Saint Martin, the front of which was adorned with the _enseigne_ of
Saint Fiacre, kept from forty to fifty horses in his stables, and also cabs
for the convenience of the public at rather a dear figure. His
establishment became so noted that all coaches for hire came to be called
Fiacres.

Menage, in his "Origines de la Langue Françoise," 1684, gave a like
account, but described the effigies of St. Fiacre as adorning the front of
a house in Rue Saint Antoine.

Both writers appear to have been in error. A satiric Mazarinade dating
1652, and bearing for title the "Royal Supper of Pontoise," etc., has the
following lines descriptive of the embarrassment of the worshipful
supper-eaters when they wished to return home at a late hour to Paris:

  "C'était pour avoir des Carrosses,
  Ou l'on attelle Chevaux rosses,
  Dont les cuirs tout rappetassés,
  Vilains, crasseux, et mal passés,
  Représentoient le simulacre,
  De l'ancienne Voiture à Fiacre
  Qui fut le premier du métier,
  Qui louoit carosse au Quartier
  De Monsieur de Saint Thomas à Louvre."
  [Footnote 241]

    [Footnote 241:
    It (the embarrassment) was to provide cabs
    To which they yoke poor hack horses,
    Whose leathers all shrunken,
    Ugly, greasy, and badly dressed,
    Represent the ghost
    Of the old cab belonging to Fiacre,
    Who was the first of the trade,
    That hired out carriages at the Quarter
    Of Monsieur St. Thomas of the Louvre.]

Fiacre may have prospered in his business, and unprincipled rivals have
carried out his idea, and adopted the effigies of the saint after whom the
poor cabman was called. Thus Sanval may have seen the pictured saint
presiding over the useful articles (originally let out at three sous the
drive) in Rue Saint Martin, and Menage may have seen a rival, Rue Saint
Antoine. It is more likely that the plagiarists appropriated for their
vehicles the name of the saint than that of the humble individual, the
inventor of the system.

Saint Fiachra was of that noble band of Irish missionaries who spread
themselves over the Continent soon after the island was converted. St.
Virgil became patron of Saltzburg, St. Killian of Franconia, St. Gall of
Switzerland, St. Columbanus of the Vosges and of Bobbio in Italy. St.
Fiachra was gladly welcomed by the bishop of Meaux in the seventh century,
and devoted his services to the care of an hospital. The cabriolet drivers
and (if we remember aright) the market gardeners of Paris honor him as
their patron.


  Mysteries Of The Rue D'Arbre ?ec. [Illegible]

No visitor will fail to visit the church of St. Germain d'Auxerrois, the
parish church, as it may be called, of the inmates of the Tuileries, and
within a few stones' throw of that luxurious but not very comfortable
residence.
{692}
The possession of the most finely furnished apartments will not give much
pleasure to the dweller who is uncertain whether he may not be ejected from
them to-morrow. The triple portal of the church dates from the middle of
the thirteenth century, and the low steeple from a much earlier period.
Owing to the late demolitions, the exterior of the church can now be
examined with more convenience and pleasure than of yore, and many a
saunterer will be surprised to see, arranged along the frieze of a lateral
chapel projecting into the Rue d'Arbre Sec, various portions of a carp,
separated from one another by roses, (architectural, to wit,) here a head,
there a body, and then (a rose intervening) a tail. As far as the
information got from passers-by extends, he must remain in ignorance of the
cause of the strange ornamentation, but he may learn it here at
second-hand, our authority being the archaeologist M. Didron. An individual
inhabitant of the adjoining street (perhaps a fish-monger) had got
permission to add this chapel to the old edifice; and to connect his name
(_Tronçon_, a piece cut away) with the building, he devised this
ingenious plan.

Another pious and equally ingenious dweller in the same street, who dealt
in poultry, did so well in business that she built a new house at the
corner, and in front erected a pious monument. Her name being Anne, she got
a sculptor to execute a group for her, namely, St. Anne, mother of the
Blessed Virgin, teaching her daughter to read. Having thus secured her name
from oblivion, she got her occupation transmitted to after-times by having
various fowl sculptured in bas-relief on the plinth. Alas! how are casual
visitors to know, when admiring the group, that it was executed at the
expense of Anne the poulterer of the street of the withered tree; and who
is aware of the circumstance from which the street itself got its name in
old times?

In days when pilgrimages were in fashion, a certain house of entertainment
in that street was much in favor with the really devout, as well as the
wanderers who had returned in life from the Holy Land. These had brought
home intelligence of a wonderful tree which had annually produced leaves
and fruit in the vicinity of Hebron, from the days of Adam to that on which
our Lord was crucified. [Footnote 242] On that day it withered, and,
according to the assertion of the pilgrims, would remain sapless till the
Holy City would be in the possession of a Christian power. Such a legend
was calculated to make a deep impression on the customers of the auberge,
for which an open-air artist was soon called on to execute the effigies of
the famous dry tree for a sign. Afterward the inn communicated its name to
the street.

    [Footnote 242: Near Hebron is an oak of great dimensions and of great
    age; but the acorn from which it sprung was not planted for ages after
    Abraham's time.]


  Slang Banished From The Stage.

Some objectionable things, which, when they assume troublesome proportions,
are extinguished by public opinion amongst ourselves, are stifled by the
strong hand of power in France. In 1859, a warning was given to those
theatres in Paris which were suspected of a leaning to _Argot_,
(slang,) that they should for the future accept no piece in which it
prevailed. So the poor gamins, who enjoy a play from the _Paradis_ of
the theatre, could no more relish the phraseology of their peculiar world
and their peculiar philosophy. The higher powers argued thus: "Argot is the
ordinary communication between formats of all descriptions, whether they
plot against the peace and well-being of society, or bewail their
misfortunes at the bagne; _ergo_, it is not a fit and proper dialect
to be spoken before gentlemen and ladies, honest citizens and their wives
and children; _ergo_, it must not be spoken." So the poor gamin of
vicious propensities must be content in his hours of relaxation to learn
the language of that half of the world to which he does not belong.

{693}

Yet many of his pet words are not of a low or disreputable origin. Such is
the word _Binette_, nowhere heard now except among the folk who live
by their wits, and yet presenting a noble and sublime image in the days of
the Grand Monarque, in fact, no less an object than his flowing and
majestic peruke. Binette of the Rue des Petits Champs (street of the little
fields) was his majesty's hair-dresser, and a great man would feel his
dignity outraged if a hint was given that his wig was not
_confectioned_ by the great Binette. Now from Caesar to the wisp that
stops a bung-hole, the descent is not greater than between the Binette (the
wig, not the man) of the seventeenth and that of the nineteenth century.

In thieves' Latin _ardent_ represents a candle. The thief has
accurately preserved the vocabulary of the Hotel Rambouillet, the Holland
House of the seventeenth century. One of the _Precieuses_ of that
temple of literary elegance, when directing the lackey to snuff the candle,
would thus express herself: "_Inutile, ostez le superflu de cet
ardent!_" [Footnote 243]

    [Footnote 243: This anecdote reminds us of a tradition not forgotten
    among the gyps of T.C.D. A very learned fellow, dismounting from his
    steed some time during the dark ages, said to a little boy, "Juvenile,
    circumambulate the quadruped round the quadrangle, and I shall
    recompense thee with a pecuniary remuneration."]

The gamin is not great on the subject of verbal roots: he uses the words,
but does not trouble himself about the quarter from whence they come. He is
not aware that his own name is the _galopin_ (tavern-boy) of the
middle ages. When he says that such or such article of dress, or food, or
what you will, is _chouette_, (nice,) he is merely retaining the
_souef_ (doux) of the old French poetry. His friend is his
_copin_, the _compaign_ (comrade) of old times; the boy he
despises is a _capon_, the name applied to the Jews in the days of
Philip the Fair. His _rigolo_ comes to him from the verb
_rigoler_, (to amuse one's self,) so often used in _Maistre
Pathelin_, our Village Lawyer, a farce of the fifteenth century. An
umbrella is a _rifflard_ with him, though he is little aware that it
gets that name from _Mons. Rifflard_, the "Paul Pry" of the _Petite
Ville_ of Picard.

Edouard Fournier, in his Enigmes des Rues de Paris, relates this
characteristic anecdote on the subject of slang. It is the antithesis of
O'Connell's victory over the fish-woman.

  "A lady of the Halles (Fish Market) had one day a war of words with a
  _meraicher_, (market gardener,) and, ye gods! such words as they
  were! She told off one by one her relentless rosary of abuse. A
  grave-looking man stood still, and attentively listened to the explosion
  of the wonderful vocabulary.

  "'Not bad, not bad,' said he from time to time. At last came the famous
  phrase, 'You're no better than a melon,' and it served for finale to the
  torrent of invectives--for the bouquet to the fire-work of coarse words.

  "'Very well, indeed!' cried the grave man. 'And why very well?' said I.
  'Because,' said he, 'this woman has just rendered homage to the
  literature which I profess.' 'How?' 'She has nearly spoken Greek. Yes,
  indeed, monsieur, the language of Homer. She has just honored this
  bumpkin with the epithet [Footnote 244] which Thersites, in the second
  book of the Iliad, line 235, applied to the Grecian kings in council.'"

    [Footnote 244: The word used by Thersites is [Greek text], plural of
    [Greek text], soft or ripe, as applied to fruit, and figuratively to
    inactive or effeminate persons.]


  An Unhealthy Suburb.

With any one's experience of the worst parts of the existing cities of
Europe, it would be hard for him to realize the condition of the Quartier
Montmartre in former days. The terrible description in Victor Hugo's
romance gives only one small phase of it. All the results of extreme
poverty, vice, negligence, and thorough laziness united to make a scene of
squalor and wretchedness without parallel. There was no thought of removing
nuisances, and at this day a section of some heaps of the old strata
presents as curious a variety of substances as were ever discovered by the
great Abbeville explorer himself. Some future professor, descended from Mr.
Chaillu's gorilla, finding various evidences of human workmanship so far
below the ordinary platform of the human family in A.D. 2500. will set them
down as a deposit of the year 10,000 A.C.
{694}
Many a police-raid was effected on the inhabitants of the Cour des
Miracles, of the Rue Temps-Perdu, of that of the _Vide Gousset_,
(pickpocket,) of the Bout-du-Monde, of the Ville-Neuve; many hundreds
seized and sent to the Salpetrière (house of correction) or to La Nouvelle
France, (Canada,) and yet the wretched little dens in the filthy,
ill-smelling lanes would not fail to get new tenants. "Unfeeling nobles,
bad government!" say we. At last in the days of Louis XIII. it was
announced that any artisan choosing to settle in the quarter might exercise
his trade without let or hindrance, or paying duty or incurring expenses
incidental to the carrying on of trades in other portions of the city.
Makers of articles of household furniture chiefly availed themselves of the
privilege; a better class of inhabitants took possession, and the
atmosphere improved.

This (northern) quarter of the city has been, from the earliest times,
incommoded by the number of streams arising among the northern and eastern
hills adjoining the city, (Paris lying in a natural bowl-like cavity,) and
endeavoring to find their way under houses and streets to the Seine. Many
efforts have been made from time to time, to provide courses for these
troublesome rivulets in channels arched over or open to the day; yet so
late as 1855 some houses in the Faubourg Montmartre were filled to the
ground floor by subterranean inundations; the inhabitants wondering what
could bring water into their kitchens and cellars, and they so much above
the level of the Seine. At the present time, under the strong volition of
the emperor, an effective attempt is being made at the formation of a large
subterranean river and its feeders.


  Begging A Thriving Business.

Many visitors to the existing exhibition, while exploring and admiring the
Place de Carrousel and its surroundings, will scarcely dream of the space
between the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Palais Royal having been once
occupied by an hospital for three hundred poor blind men. This at present
magnificent quarter was a poor place in the days of St. Louis, and there
were the straggling habitations built. Dust-heaps and filth of many kinds
distinguished the locality, and in this uninviting spot the three hundred
blind endured life from the days of good Saint Louis.

At its first institution, the hospital was a mere night refuge--a retreat
where the blind men were sure of a house over their heads and a sort of bed
to sleep on after their _criailleries_ all day through the streets.
The old charities were seldom complete in themselves. The pious founders
did a certain portion of the good work, leaving to the public an
opportunity of completing it. Philip the Fair added a dress stamped with
the fleur de lys, and the poor blind man thus equipped was on a level with
_Edie Ochiltree_, and so privileged, he "_tote jor ne finit de
braire,_" (the whole day he ceased not his braying,) as an old writer
coarsely expressed himself.

There was a parallel to this institution in higher quarters, even in
literary regions. In the College of Navarre, placed under the highest
patronage, the pupils went in the morning through the streets, stretching
out the hand, and crying, "Bread, bread for the poor scholars of Madame de
Navarre!"

The three hundred were well looked after, all things considered. They had a
poor-box in every church of France. They were privileged not only to beg at
the doors, but even to exercise their quest in the church itself. A
difficulty arose from the circumstance of some churches affording to the
"King's Bedesmen" a better harvest than others. All or most would naturally
crowd to fleece the richest and most charitable congregations, and dire
confusion would ensue.
{695}
But there were heads equal to the emergency. Once a year an auction
was held; a good church was set up, bedesmen bid for its possession; it was
knocked down to the best small batch of bidders, and the money they gave
then, or as they made it, put into a common fund. The least well off or
least speculative got the worst stands, but they received their share of
the money arising from the auction.

This exceptional state of things continued till within the second half of
last century, when the office of grand almoner became invested in the
Cardinal de Rohan. The wretched habitations of the three hundred, their
poor church left to ruin, the dust-heaps and pools of evil odor with which
they were surrounded, so badly harmonized with the neighborhood of the
Palais Royal, the Tuileries, and the Louvre, between which they lay, that
it entered the speculative mind of the cardinal that it would be a
profitable business to remove the poor inmates to a more cleanly and
comfortable domicile, and sell the large plot of land on which the
straggling settlement reposed. A solvent company was found, the land
disposed of for six millions of livres, and the Hotel of the Black
Musketeers, Rue de Charenton, was purchased for the blind men at somewhat
less than half a million. This took place in 1779, and since then the
churches and the streets have been relieved from the annoyance of the
_state_ beggars. They still occupy the Hotel Rue de Charenton, and the
curious traveller now passing down the magnificent Rue Rivoli, with palaces
on either hand, can scarcely persuade himself that the space round him was,
less than a century since, a dedalus of dirty lanes and ill-kept, squalid
dwellings.


  The Morgue And Its Derivation.

"Whoe'er was at Paris must needs know the Grève" was said and sung three
half-centuries ago. Whoever was or was not at Paris must have heard of the
Morgue, where the bodies of unknown persons who have met with sudden deaths
were exposed for some days, to be recognised by their friends. Perhaps he
is not aware of the cause of applying to the temporary abode of the quiet
dead a name implying such a different idea. The dismal little building is
now not to be found in its old locality, Quai du Marché Neuf, south side of
the Cité.

In the great as well as the little Chatelet (prison) of past days there was
a room called the little prison, where new-comers were brought "to sit for
their portraits," that is, undergo a rigorous inspection as to their
features by the lower officials of the place. Readers of Pickwick's
incarceration will not require an elaborate description of the process.
Now, such a sharp and supercilious scrutiny of the countenance is expressed
by the word _Morgue_. The humorist, D'Assoucy, has left a description
of the inspection he underwent on such an occasion, and the terror into
which he was thrown by a long sharp knife, wielded by a short, broad, and
fat officer, but which was only designed to cut away the ribbons that
secured his breeches, and the band of his hat, and thus remove all
available instruments of self destruction in the Grand Chatelet.

When this apartment changed its destination, and became a place of exposure
for the dead, it continued to retain its name; and, on the destruction of
the building, the title went to the sinister-looking edifice built for the
same purpose. While the Chatelet remained, the sisters of the hospital
convent of St. Catherine, corner of the streets of St. Denis and of the
Lombards, bestowed the rites of sepulture on the poor remains not
recognized. The other specialty of the good sisters was the relief of poor
women in destitute circumstances.

{696}

The easily led populace of Paris were long under the impression that a
visit to the Morgue, and the consequent withdrawal of a corpse, would cost
the friends a hundred and one crowns. So the bereaved families were seldom
in a hurry with their visit. In vain did the lieutenant of police in 1736
endeavor to undeceive them.

In 1767, a gentleman, taking the packet boat from Fontainebleau to Paris,
quitted the conveyance rather hurriedly, leaving a case behind him. After
some little delay it was opened, and much terrified were the assistants at
finding what appeared the body of a young man who had been strangled. A
commissary of police was called on, accompanied by a surgeon. A
procès-verbal was drawn up by them, and the body sent to the Morgue to be
identified. Soon after, the negligent or guilty passenger arrived in a
hurry at the office of the boat, and asked for the forgotten parcel. His
request was followed by his seizure and presentation before the worthy
magistrate, who had so laudably done his duty. On being charged with the
murder, he burst into a fit of laughter, and covered the poor official with
confusion by announcing that the corpse of the strangled man was a mummy
which he was just after bringing from Egypt, and had forgotten to carry
away with the rest of his luggage. In order to get his property out of the
dead-house, he was obliged to make application to the lieutenant of police,
and this circumstance soon scattered the news far and near. A few nights
after, all Paris was breaking its sides in the theatre laughing at an
uproarious farce by Saconnet, displaying in the richest colors the wisdom
and skill of the police commissary and the surgeon. Repeated instances were
made by these gentlemen to the minister, M. de Sartines, to restrain the
representation. On the last time he observed: "Toleration is a virtue which
I love to practise to the utmost limits allowable." The piece had a run of
forty nights.


  A King And Minister Well Matched.

Among the many puzzles met in history and biography is the retaining of his
place by Louvois, prime minister to Louis XIV. Every student of history is
aware of the great self-esteem which dwelt within the monarch; and it would
be natural to suppose that, in order to retain his favor, officer or
minister should diligently cultivate obsequiousness, and have no will or
opinion but that of his master. It was not so, however, with this minister;
and it is a historic fact that the king resolved on a great public
undertaking on account of a difference he had with his minister in their
guesses at the breadth of the window at which they were standing. Louis
said it was such a breadth, Louvois guessed it was an inch or two more or
less, and insisted on the exactness of his eye-calculation so persistently
that the king called for a ruler to decide the matter, and resolved on a
transaction which he knew would be distasteful to his opinionative
contradictor.

In Louis' reign, and under the superintendence of Louvois, was raised the
noble pile of the Invalides--a building which will be, or ought to be, at
least, visited by every one who takes interest in the well being of men who
have suffered in the defence or for the glory of their country. Mansard,
the architect, who has given his name to French attics (_Mansardes?_)
was much incommoded by the impatience of the minister, whose self
appreciation would be content with nothing less than the carving of his
bourgeois coat of arms in the neighborhood of the royal achievement
wherever it was set up. He gained only mortification by the movement, as
Louis had them all effaced. The great man was enraged at this instance of
disrespect, and was obliged to content himself with a posthumous revenge.
He would be buried at the Invalides, and, through the complaisance of the
curé, M. de Mauray, it was done. His body was laid in one of the vaults,
but, after all, was not allowed to remain there. The king's parasites gave
him information, and the corpse was removed.

{697}

Louvois, fearing that something of this kind would happen, was resolved to
attach his memory to the Invalides by surer means. In one mansarde he got
sculptured a barrel of powder in the act of explosion, signalizing the war
he had originated; in another, a plume of ostrich feathers; and, in two
others, an owl and a bat, all emblematic of his high dignity, his wisdom,
and wakefulness. The masterpiece, however, was a wolf, the upper part only
seen, surmounted by a tuft of palm-leaves, holding the _OEil de Boeuf_
between his forepaws and looking intently into the court. Thus was a pun in
marble executed: _(le) Loup voit_ (the wolf is looking)--Louvois, both
having the same sound, and the great man's name inseparably connected with
the Invalides.

------

  Original

  Playing With Fire.


There was a fine specimen in Birmingham, the other day, of a style of
theological disputation which we hoped had gone out of vogue. A poor wretch
named Murphy, a paid agent of the London Protestant Electoral Union, had
been travelling for some months about the counties of Stafford and Warwick,
circulating obscene tracts upon the confessional, ranting about priests and
nuns, retailing all the absurd and wicked stories against the Catholic
religion which have formed the stock in trade of a certain class of zealots
and religious demagogues for the last three hundred years; and very
naturally his disgusting tirades had stirred up a dangerous sort of public
feeling. The lower classes of the Protestants were taught to look upon the
Catholics as savage, wild beasts, given up to all manner of immoral
practices, enemies to all human happiness, thirsting for blood, rapine, and
revolution, and wedded to the stake, the faggot, and the thumb-screw. The
lower classes of the Catholics were compelled to bear the taunts and
insults which were certain to be provoked by this rage of popular
prejudice, and moreover to listen to the grossest attacks upon what they
held in most affectionate reverence. Of course, sensible Protestants, as
well as educated Catholics, felt nothing but pity and contempt for the
ravings of such a man as Murphy; but unfortunately it is not educated and
sensible people who make all the trouble in the world, nor were they
educated and sensible people who formed the bulk of Mr. Murphy's audiences.
Wherever he went, he made a popular disturbance. Blows and brickbats
followed in his train like dust behind rolling wheels. The magistrates in
one town confiscated his books on account of their indecency. At last he
came to Birmingham. The mayor and council refused him the use of a public
hall, but his disciples built him an immense wooden tabernacle; and there,
while an angry crowd raged and threatened about the doors, he began a five
weeks' course of lectures on the atrocities of popery. What an instructive
contrast was then presented! In the streets Catholic priests were going
about among the mob, begging and commanding them to drop their menacing
hands and withdraw peaceably to their homes. In the tabernacle this fiery
ranter was declaring that every Catholic priest was "a murderer, a
cannibal, a liar, and a pickpocket;" that the papists were thirsting for
his blood, but durst not take it; that they might pelt him with stones, but
God would put forth his arm and prevent his being hurt; they might raise
their bludgeons against him, but God would ward off the blows.
{698}
Need anybody ask what was the result of all this? A riot broke out and
raged for two days; and, as always happens in riots, the greater part of
the disorder and destruction was caused not by those who began the fray,
but by professional thieves and rowdies who seized the opportunity to
plunder.

Now, of course, we have no desire to apologize for the unwarrantable mode
taken by the Birmingham Catholics to silence this itinerant preacher.
Rioting is both a great blunder and a great crime. But who was the more to
blame? Was it the pulpit mountebank who pelted his audience with well-nigh
intolerable insults, or the uneducated laborers who resented them? Our Lord
tells us, when we are smitten upon one cheek, to turn the other; but we all
know that the custom of human nature is to smite back. If you first stir up
the angry passions of a crowd of excitable Irishmen, and then dance into
the midst of them, and dare them to come on, it will not be surprising if
you dance out again with a bloody nose and a torn coat. If you shake your
fist at a man, and assure him that he cannot hit you if he tries ever so
hard, it is very probable that he will try; and if you are hurt, you will
have yourself to blame. It is not safe to go near gunpowder with a lighted
candle. All England seems to have thought as we do about the Birmingham
affair, and Murphy has been unanimously awarded the responsibility for the
outrage by the ministers in parliament, and by all the respectable
newspapers, even by such prejudiced journals as The Times.

There have been many religious riots in Great Britain and America, but the
story is nearly always the same. They have had them in Birmingham before;
they have had them in Belfast and Dublin. Lord George Gordon got up a
famous one in London, and Gavazzi was the cause of one in Montreal. The
Native American movement in 1844 gave us two dreadful riots in
Philadelphia, and, but for the firmness and sagacity of Bishop Hughes,
would have provoked another in New-York. In the train of the Know-Nothing
excitement ten years later followed a long array of incendiary preachers,
some of whom were proved to have been expressly hired to provoke
disturbance; and what was the result? Churches were sacked, torn down,
burned, or blown up with gunpowder in Manchester and Dorchester,
New-Hampshire, in Bath, Maine, and in Newark, New-Jersey. A church in
Williamsburg was barely saved from the flames by the opportune arrival of
the military. A street-preacher in New-York named Parsons was very nearly
the cause of a riot in December, 1853; but in this instance also Archbishop
Hughes succeeded in keeping the Catholics quiet. All over the country, in
fact, rapine and incendiarism seemed rampant; but The New-York Tribune
justly observed: "It is worthy of remark that, while five or six Catholic
churches in this country have been destroyed or ruined by an excited
populace, not a single Protestant church can be pointed out which Catholics
have even thought of attacking."

No reasonable man will deny that the frantic sort of propagandism which
stirred up all these acts of violence does more harm to its own cause than
to that of its adversaries. No honest and rational Protestant wants to
trust his defence to a Murphy or a Parsons. The street ranters are
dangerous allies and despicable enemies. But the trouble is that after the
fools have made the disturbance there are always knaves ready to keep it
alive. No sooner had the excited Catholics begun to throw stories at the
Birmingham tabernacle than the scourings of the jails, the pestiferous
brood of the slums and alleys, began to sack the pawnbrokers' and jewellers
shops. And then down came from London a member of Parliament--the
notorious Mr. Whalley, whose incessant attacks upon popery in the House of
Commons are a standing matter of laughter; and he and Murphy made speeches
side by side, one not much more sensible than the other.
{699}
We shall, no doubt, see the Protestant Electoral Union, of which both these
gentlemen are pillars and ornaments, trying to make political capital out
of the affair. So, too, in the United States: there has always been a
political organization at the back of the zealots who have stirred up
religious riots, and there have always been politicians to scramble for the
fruits of bigotry, if not to plant the seed.

Is there any reason why we may not have in New-York a repetition of the
outrages of Birmingham or Philadelphia? Heaven be praised! we have not, so
far as we know, a Protestant Electoral Union; but we have Whalleys enough,
and as for Murphies, the world is full of them. There is no need to build a
tabernacle; with us they speak through the press. A lie shouted from a
platform is not more dangerous than a lie sent flying over the country in
the pages of a newspaper. If you want to produce a quick sensation with a
good bouncing calumny, the best way perhaps is to speak it out by word of
mouth; but for permanent effect commend us to print. There is an American
journal which has been acting the part of a Murphy for a long time past,
and has lately been flying at popery with more rage than ever. In a recent
number of Harper's Weekly there was a horrible story of the confessional in
Rome, which might rival the wildest romances of Mrs. Radcliffe. It showed
us a sinner getting absolution before he could summon courage to confess
his sins, and a young girl murdered by monks and buried under the church
pavement; "for in that wonderful but priest-ridden city," says the writer,
"the papal clergy act almost with impunity." And the other day, in the same
paper, there was a picture of a Roman confessional, a row of penitents
kneeling before it, while a priest leaned over the door and absolved them
by tapping each one on the head with a rod. This wonderful device, as our
Catholic readers will at once perceive, was borrowed from the symbolical
wand of office borne by the penitentiaries at the Roman court; but Harper's
Weekly puts the whole sacrament into the tap of the wand. "This," says the
editor, "is a faithful representation of the manner in which sins are
forgiven in the confessionals of St. Peter's at Rome." And then follows a
long article, in the true Murphy vein, about confession, and indulgences,
and purgatory, and many other points of Catholic doctrine. The pope, we are
told, claims the power of damning souls to _hell_, and admitting whom
he pleases into heaven. The holiness which he rewards is not Christian
holiness; the sins which he punishes with eternal fire are not the sins
which Christ denounced. "Sincere penitence as a ground of forgiveness has
been practically laid aside, and simple confession has taken its place."
Indulgences are mere merchandise, and money will at any time buy a soul out
of purgatory, just as "the performance of certain arbitrary ceremonies
which have no more connection with vital Christianity than had the rites of
pagandom" will open the gates of heaven. Then the writer, after assuring us
that the pope is afraid of America, passes on to the ridicule of relics,
and of many pious practices, and winds up his article with a prediction
that the Christian world will sooner or later be freed from all these
mummeries and superstitions, and all mankind be sensible and enlightened
Protestants.

Now, to what does all this tend? We dare say the writer of this tirade
supposed he was telling the truth, but what was his purpose in telling it?
Did he expect to make converts by it? When we seek to be reconciled with an
enemy, do we begin by insulting him? Will it dispose an adversary to listen
to your arguments with a favoring ear if you open the discussion by
spitting in his face, and calling him a fool, and reviling all that he
holds in highest respect? Billingsgate is not gospel. When the Holy Ghost
came down upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, those chosen preachers
of divine truth did not straightway begin to blackguard the Jews.
{700}
When St. Paul preached at Antioch, he did not call the pagan pontiffs
"ragamuffins," as Mr. Murphy called the Catholic clergy, nor did he try to
convert the Jews by saying of their high priest what the Birmingham
Boanerges said of the pope, that he was "the greatest old rag and bone
grubber in the universe." And does the Journal of Civilization expect to
convert Catholics by caricaturing the pope, and telling scandalous stories
about the church, and burlesquing her doctrines? As we said before, we feel
bound to presume that the writer believed all he said; but it was so easy
for him to know better. The doctrine which he ascribes to Catholics we so
earnestly repudiate in all our books, in all our pulpits, and in all our
practical life, that we have a good right to complain indignantly, and to
charge him with a carelessness hardly more pardonable than dishonesty.

We say this carelessness is a very grave offence, because such calumnies
against religious bodies never have but one effect--exasperation, and
possibly riot. There is just the same material for a riot in New-York that
there was in Birmingham. There are ignorant and hot-headed men, both
Protestants and Catholics, who are ready enough to come to blows if you
once charge them full of religious ire, and then bring them in contact; and
there are thieves and street brigands enough in any large city to push on
the work of destruction when once it has been started. We know very well
that a hundred such stories and pictures would never make a riot by
themselves. We know very well that there are not a half dozen Catholics in
New-York who would be wicked and silly enough to resent such insults with
violence. What we complain of is, that vituperation and calumny can hardly
fail to create a dangerous antagonism of feeling which, at any unforeseen
provocation may ripen into bloodshed. Once teach opposing classes of the
people to loathe each other, and how long will the public peace be safe?
Let papers like Harper's Journal of Civilization (bless the mark!) keep on
stirring up the bad old blood, reviving the dead old lies, reawakening
dormant prejudices, and filling the two denominations with mutual hatred,
and the least little spark may suddenly kindle the whole hateful mass into
a sweeping conflagration. Argue with us, if you will, and we will meet you
in the calm, gentle, Christian spirit without which all controversy must be
worse than useless. Tell us that we are wrong, if you think so, and we will
show you wherein we are right. Surely a Christian minister can discuss
mooted questions of theology without flinging his Bible at his adversary's
head. Civilized gentlemen can talk over their differences without loading
each other with vile epithets. There is only one way in which religious
disputation can be profitable or even tolerable; let us come to that way at
once; but, above all, no more lies; no more playing with fire.

------

{701}

  Original.

  Christianity And Its Conflicts. [Footnote 245]

 [Footnote 245:
  Christianity and its Conflicts, Ancient and Modern.
  By E. E. Marcy, A.M. New-York:
  D. Appleton & Co., Broadway. 1867. Pp. 480.]


The title of this work indicates that its scope is very comprehensive, and
that its execution involves a great deal of practical labor and research.
The author says in his preface that he has aimed "to display Christianity
as it was established by Jesus, as it has been developed and perpetuated by
the apostles and their successors, and to correct the erroneous impressions
which so generally exist respecting it, and also endeavored to exhibit a
general outline of the various conflicting elements which have been arrayed
against the Christian system up to the present time."

He has been as good as his word, for he has given us an instructive and
able sketch of the heathen philosophers and religions, and of the corrupt
social conditions which opposed themselves to the introduction of
Christianity; of the struggle for so many ages with the barbarism of
Europe; and, finally, in what we consider by far the most vivid and
interesting portions of his work, he has laid bare the character, effects,
and tendencies of what is called the Reformation, and the present condition
of Christendom, religious, social, and political.

To judge his work correctly, we must bear in mind that the author is a
layman, the business of whose life has not been the study of theology. A
man of liberal education, a physician, and of eminence in his profession,
his attention has been drawn to the consideration of the grand problems of
man's destiny; he has studied and reflected upon them, realized their
importance, and given us the result, as he says, "for the sole purpose of
vindicating truth and the religion of Christ."

The testimony of an intelligent and cultivated layman on the subject of
religious truths has a peculiar value; for, although it may not be so
accurate and full in a theological sense, it often presents the arguments
in a more popular form, and with a personal conviction which impresses the
minds of many with a peculiar force. The author evidently feels deeply on
the subjects on which he writes. A citizen of the world, he feels a deep
interest in both the temporal and spiritual well-being of his fellows. As
he contemplates either false principles or the evil conduct of individuals,
the sentiment of indignation rises within him, and he expresses himself
frequently in animated and glowing language, and with a sort of passionate
energy which will be considered, no doubt, by those who do not sympathize
with him, as a blemish. We wish he had toned down some of his expressions
to avoid giving needless offence, and that appearance of exaggeration which
to the minds of some might cast suspicion upon the solid merit of his
conclusions. We regret particularly his political allusions. Without
entering at all into the merits of party politics, we wish they had been
kept out of this book altogether; or, if the author must pay off one
political party, we wish he had executed an equal and impartial justice
upon the other. There is enough of political selfishness, corruption, and
bribery in either political party to excite the indignation of every honest
man.
{702}
But we must not exact too much of a layman who has his strong political
views, and who considers it timely and for the public good to give them a
decided expression. What would be unbecoming in one in holy orders may be
permitted to a layman in the busy walks of life. We are not disposed to
forgive so easily the way in which he has spoken of New England. This
section of the country contains all sorts of people and all sorts of
opinions, good, bad, and indifferent. There may be more radicalism, more
scepticism, and more fanaticism here than elsewhere. It is a question we
think it idle to enter upon. The same principles prevail and have prevailed
in other sections of the country. It is wrong to single out New England or
its inhabitants to be held up to the scorn, ridicule, or hatred of the rest
of the country. It is quite too much the fashion nowadays to do so, and we
cannot too strongly reprobate a practice which sets one section of the
country at variance with another, perpetuates ill feeling and hatred, and
aggravates the very mischief it aims to remove. But we all know that those
who take warm interest in political questions are apt to have very decided
opinions and to express them in a corresponding manner, and we can well
afford to pass them by without allowing our equanimity to be too much
ruffled by them; and whatever may be the political opinion of any man, or
however much he may differ from our author, he must, we think, give him
credit for his courage and pluck in the fearless manner he comes out with
them.

But let us come to the solid merits of the volume. The author shows us, in
the first chapter, the terrible corruption of morals and the false
philosophy prevailing at the time of the introduction of Christianity, and
the fearful struggle which it had with paganism. He deduces therefrom the
necessity of miracles and a proof of their truth. This is timely and
judicious, when a silly criticism is striving to overturn all the ideas of
common sense on this subject, and to destroy the historical testimony of
the truth of revelation. We hope this will be read and reflected upon by
those who have confused ideas on this subject.

He proceeds to give us an account of the doctrines taught by our Lord Jesus
Christ, and holds up in relief the demand which he made on our unqualified
submission and assent to all the truths which he taught and all his
precepts. This is faith, and the foundation of religion and salvation. To
believe in Christ is to believe all that he taught and to do all he
commanded. As we are more fully aware what is the real meaning of the word
"faith," we can understand better the true character of the Christian
religion. We notice some inaccuracies of expression, and sometimes desire a
more profound insight into the matter, but find embodied a great deal of
useful information which may thus be brought within the reach of many who,
if we may judge from the ignorance displayed in the religious publications
of the day, have the most erroneous ideas on the subject.

He shows the identity of the church instituted by Christ and the Catholic
Church, tracing the history of the church from its foundation up to the
time of the Reformation, and discussing those doctrines which are held in
the Catholic Church, though rejected by those who have separated from her.
The picture he portrays of the condition of the world at the commencement
of the Reformation is most opportune. Protestant writers have endeavored to
force the conviction on the minds of their readers that all or the greater
part of the progress of civilization has taken place since that event.
Nothing can be more untrue. The author proves to us that a continual
progress had been in course for centuries in a healthy and steady
advancement; and when we connect this with the account which follows of the
effects of this great historical event, in removing the restraints which
held man's pride and selfish passions within bounds; of the discord,
violence, and civil war which were the uniform result everywhere; we are
filled with regret that the harmonious development of the physical and
spiritual life of the nations, under the auspices of the church, was ever
interfered with.
{703}
It would have been a beautiful sight to have seen Europe, a commonwealth of
nations, bound together by the tie of one religious faith and the same
principles of morality, submitting their differences, without the necessity
of immense standing armies and ruinous wars, to the mild arbitration of him
whom they all acknowledged to be the Vicar of Christ, and the guardian of
Christian justice and morality. We must ask ourselves, not where we are
now, but what we would have attained had our efforts been combined, rather
than wasted in opposing one another.

The church fulfilled her duty up to this time, against the obstacles thrown
in her way by the flood of barbarism which overflowed all Europe. She
christianized and civilized the people. She was constantly occupied in
reforming abuses; and, if such existed at the time of the Reformation, we
must acknowledge that there was every disposition to reform them within the
body of the church herself, without the least need of throwing off her
legitimate authority. This book ought to clear up many misapprehensions
only too common in the public mind.

We then have an account of the doctrines of the reformers, drawn from their
own writings, followed by interesting and graphic sketches of the personal
characteristics of Luther, Calvin, and others. That of Luther is peculiarly
piquant, and is authenticated completely by copious extracts from his own
writings and those of his friends and associates.

We hope the advocates of the Reformation, for the honor of their cause,
will keep the first reformers as much out of sight as possible, and cease
to compare them to St. Paul and the apostles. Their doctrines are pretty
well exploded, and, when brought forward as distinct propositions, are
reprobated by the universal sense of mankind. Unfortunately they still live
in a covert and hidden way to work out their evil and bitter fruits, as the
author fully shows in the subsequent parts of his work.

Those who represent the reformers as saints, have a strange idea of
sanctity or even common decency. Dr. Marcy, in view of their immoral
eccentricities, adopts the most charitable construction possible in the
case of Luther and some others. We will let him speak for himself:

  "From an amiable, chaste, temperate, and devout man, he (that is, Luther)
  became violent, ferocious, intemperate, licentious, blasphemous, and
  sanguinary. From a firm, unwavering, and happy believer in the truths of
  the church, he became the victim of innumerable doubts, changes,
  perplexities, and fierce torments. From a condition of mental
  tranquillity and intellectual equilibrium, he leaped into a state of
  maniacal excitement with a very great perversion of all his intellectual
  powers and faculties. As an innovator he habitually saw spectres, men
  with tails, horns, claws, features of animals, and was pursued and
  tormented by these morbid fantasies. A volume of these abnormal
  manifestations might be cited in support of our position, but we have
  presented a sufficient number to enable the impartial reader to form a
  just conclusion of Luther's sanity or insanity."

After this account of the reformers and their opinions, we have a striking
account of the fruits of their doctrines in Europe and America up to this
present time. It deserves to be read and reread. He calls attention to a
fact of which we are all too well cognizant, the miserable religious
discussions introduced and ever on the increase since the Reformation.
"Until the innovating revolution of the sixteenth century, the faith of
Christendom had been a unit; there were no divisions, no dissensions, no
false teachers or false doctrines in the Christian household. Men, women,
and children knew only one church, one faith, and one form of worship, and
were contented and happy in their religious convictions.
{704}
So universal was this unity, so thoroughly grounded was this faith, and so
general was the practical observance of the duties of religion, that
scepticism, the novelties of individuals, irreligion, and immorality were
comparatively rare. The Christian church had been made up of converts from
numerous nations and races, and there had been a continual struggle for
more than fifteen centuries between the church on the one hand and these
elements of ignorance and evil on the other; the church had finally
triumphed, true Christian civilization had fairly gained the ascendency
over barbarism, and a universal reign of Christian unity and concord was
rapidly dawning over the whole world, when suddenly the innovations of
Germany broke in upon this unity and harmony, arrested the onward progress
of Christianity, and deluged the world with distracting novelties, creeds,
and sects." Incessant wars and rapid deterioration of morals complete the
picture, the main outlines of which we can verify from our own observation.
In this connection the author has, we are glad to see, taken up the
favorite argument and grand trump card of the opponents of the Catholic
church, which is thus expressed: "Contrast the condition of Protestant and
Catholic countries, and see how much superior in wealth, intelligence, and
progress the former are to the latter." He shows that, when the facts are
not carefully manipulated and prepared for the purpose, there is no very
great contrast after all. He says: "Macaulay has contrasted the United
States and Mexico; Italy and Scotland; Spain and Holland; Prussia and
Ireland; candor should have induced this eminent writer to have made more
equal and just comparisons, as France and England, Belgium and Holland,
Austria and Prussia, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil with the Sandwich Islands and
other recently converted nations."'

Making the comparison, not merely in regard to wealth and outward show, but
taking into account the statistics of crime, he shows that Catholic
countries are far in advance of their Protestant rivals in virtue and
morality.

It is perfectly astonishing how the current idea in Protestant society
tends to deify materialism.

Worldly prosperity and accumulation of wealth we unblushingly put forward
as the conclusive test of the truth or falsity of religious faith. Our Lord
said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust
doth corrupt, but lay up treasures in heaven;" but a host of clerical and
lay gentlemen and philosophers shout themselves hoarse with the cry; "Your
Catholics have not the religion of Christ, for you do not seek after money
half hard enough. You are a deal too simple in your way of living; you
ought to multiply your cravings and desires more, and live a deal more
artificially than you do." Listen to Lecky, one of the great modern lights;
quoted by Dr. Marcy: "An accumulation of capital is therefore the first
step of civilization, and this accumulation depends on the multiplication
of wants. ... Hence the dreary, sterile torpor that characterized those
ages in which the ascetic principle has been supreme, while the
civilizations which have attained the highest perfection have been those of
ancient Greece and modern Europe, which were most opposed to it." Liebig,
quoted in a work of Youmans recently published, gives us this queer
definition: "Man's superiority to the beast depends essentially in his
faculty of discovering inventions for the gratification of his wants, and
it is the sum of them among a people which embraces the conception of their
'civilization.'" We feel much ashamed of our old-fashioned ignorance, but
really we used to think man's superiority over the beast consisted
essentially in his possessing an immortal soul. Dr. J. W. Draper launches
out in the following grandiloquent condemnation of the "Roman Church:"
{705}
"How different the result had it abandoned the obsolete absurdities of
patristicism"--we suppose he means the teaching of the fathers of the
church handed down to them from the apostles--"and become imbued with the
spirit of true philosophy--had it lifted itself to a comprehension of the
awful magnificence of the heavens above and the glories of the earth
beneath, had it appreciated the immeasurable vastness of the universe, its
infinite multitude of worlds, its inconceivable past duration." Poor old
church, why did you not abandon the consideration of the unseen world and
the inconceivable duration of eternity, and confine your attention to
astronomy and geology? Why teach men that God takes an interest in them
personally and holds them accountable, when he has created so many worlds
and rocks to take up their attention? This is philosophy with a vengeance,
the philosophy which is summed up by St. Paul in the short phrase. "Let us
eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die."

Greece and Rome reached the acme of this material civilization before they
fell. England at present seems to occupy their place. Kay, in his social
history of the English people, exposes the misery and vice of the great
mass the population, which, like the smothered fire of a volcano, may burst
out and involve the land in a universal ruin and desolation.

It is well for us to take warning in time, for, in the headlong race after
money and material enjoyment, we are getting civilized to such a degree
that we seem to be in danger of outrunning all the antiquated notions of
honor and honesty. Our late upheaval of society, the unsettled state of
things, the insecurity of property, the enormous prices of labor and
living, are beginning to make us realize that "all is not gold that
glitters," and we feel confident that many a one will accept Dr. Marcy's
fearless _exposé_ of false civilization with thankfulness, and draw
the logical conclusions.

In this connection is shown also the reason why our own country displays so
much greater advance in material prosperity than either Mexico or the
countries of South America; a reason, we are truly sorry to say,
substantiated by overwhelming testimony. It is this: The native population
of our own country, though a simple, innocent, warm-hearted people, who
received us with open arms, were hunted down and destroyed like wild beasts
in New England, Virginia, and elsewhere. In Mexico and South America they
still live and occupy the country. Here we have made a blank to be filled
by a full-blown European civilization of the growth of centuries; there
millions of the original people have been reclaimed from barbarism, are
living, increasing in number, and steadily progressing toward the mark we
have attained. Dr. Marcy tells truth in eloquent but indignant forms when
he says: "It is quite true that this Mexican Indian race is inferior by
nature to the Anglo Saxon or the Frank. It is quite true that the children
of those who were rude savages a few generations ago have not the
intelligence, or the energy, or the enterprise of the shrewd, money-loving
Puritan. It is quite true that the souls of these simple-minded children of
Montezuma are not wholly absorbed in the love of gain and of worldly pride
and ambition; but, nevertheless, they live, and can look upon the
consecrated graves of their fathers back to the days of Cortez; they
_still live_, and can worship in spirit and truth the God who created
them and gave them their country; they _still live_, and can behold
cities, towns, churches, schools, and cultivated fields, where their
fathers only saw dense forests and savage wildernesses; they _still
live_, and bless the church and the priests who have been their
preservers and benefactors."

Our Lord Jesus Christ came to preach the gospel to the poor, and it is the
glory of the Catholic Church that her great heart has always beat warmly
and tenderly for the souls and bodies of the poor and down-trodden races of
mankind.
{706}
Her history on this continent is a history of a long line of true
imitations of Jesus Christ, and of the peaceful triumphs of his cross.
Wherever Protestantism prevailed, we have, as an unvarying result, the
speedy extermination by fire and sword of the aborigines. Even this is held
up by some writers as conclusive of the superior claims of Protestantism.
Their argument, divested of all ambiguity, would sound thus: "The red man
was in the way of our development, we shot him and cleared the track. What
is the use of making a fuss about shooting Indians or other inferior races?
It is a great deal better to do that than to try to keep the poor devils to
be a burden to themselves and to us. We Protestants understand better than
you weak-minded and superstitious Catholics how to deal with such matters,
and this proves that we, and not you, have the true Christianity." We speak
thus strongly because we feel strongly the impudence with which such
writers attribute to Christianity itself the grossest violations of its
very first principles.

Let us excuse our forefathers as much as we can, but, in the interest of
the religion of Christ, let us not call their crimes virtues. There was
nothing in their religion powerful enough to enlighten their ignorance or
to control their passions; they had no church to lay down the stern,
undeviating principles of morality, and no confessional to apply them to
the individual conscience; and, therefore, as soon as an Indian stole a
horse or a cow, or plundered a hen-roost, his death and the extermination
of his tribe was a necessary and immediate consequence. And for the want of
the same authoritative moral restraint, according to many Protestant
writers who have taken the alarm, we are now on the high road to
exterminate ourselves.

The Rev. J. Todd, D.D., a Congregational divine, all honor to him for his
conscientious candor, says, speaking of the disparity in the natural
increase of our foreign and native-born population, and of the immoral
causes of it: "There is nothing in Protestantism that encourages or
connives at it, but there is a vast ignorance as to the guilt of the thing.
But in the Catholic Church human life is guarded at all stages by the
confessional, by stern denouncement, and by fearful excommunications."

The divine wisdom of the Founder of the sacrament of confession is most
signally vindicated in these few pithy words, which we leave to the
reflection of the reader.

In the concluding portions of his work the author gives some most
interesting statistics of the growth and proportions of infidelity and
scepticism in our country, of the results of Catholic and Protestant
missions among the heathens, and of the state of religion throughout the
world. These make his work more complete, and will be received gladly by
many who have not had their attention called to these facts before. We
think they add very much to the completeness of the work, and it was a
happy idea of the author to put them in. Dr. Marcy's book ought to do a
great deal of good, and we do not doubt that it will. The number of
unpalatable truths told in it, and the direct, incisive way in which they
are told, have provoked and will provoke much unfavorable comment. Every
effort will be made to discredit it. It will be called vituperative, false,
and calumnious. Its truth--and Dr. Marcy has taken good care to back up all
his assertions with the best of evidence--is the best refutation of all
such accusations. We find every day all sorts of false and calumnious
statements, circulated without a particle of proof, in the books, the
periodicals, and newspapers of the land, against the persons and the
doctrines we hold most dear. It is of little use to reply, the lie is
circulated and the reply is left unnoticed. Our opponents take all their
representations of our doctrines and practices, at second hand, from the
writings of our deadliest enemies, and never think it worth while to verify
their statements by looking at the statements of our own councils and
standard writers.
{707}
This treatment is absolutely unfair, and the most respectable are blind to
its meanness, where we are concerned; but let the Catholic writer tell the
outspoken truth and back it up by genuine testimony of their own writers
and partisans, and the cry is at once raised of "calumnious, incendiary,
malicious," etc. etc. It will be easier to raise a cry against this book
than to answer its statements. When Marshall published his history of
Christian Missions, with its thousands of references to the most
unsuspected Protestant witnesses, we looked for a reply which would be
something more than merely throwing dust in the eyes of the public, but we
have looked in vain up to this time; its statements have never been
answered. So we feel sure it will be with this book. It may be called hard
names, but it will not be seriously answered. If it will be thoughtfully
read, we shall feel content. It will then, at least, be answered, as we
prefer to see all honest representations of the truth answered, by the
removal of prejudice, the correction of many false ideas which prevail
concerning our holy faith, and the consequent desire, which we pray may
arise in not a few sincere minds, to examine more fully into its character
and the grounds of its claims to be the true religion of Jesus Christ.

------

  From Chambers's Journal.

  Thermometers.


An ordinary thermometer consists, as everybody knows, of a glass tube,
fixed to a scale. This tube contains a fine bore, and has a bulb blown at
one extremity. Some liquid, generally mercury or alcohol, is introduced
into the tube, the air is driven out, and the tube is sealed. The quantity
of fluid, say mercury, admitted into the tube is so regulated that at
common temperatures the bulb and a portion of the bore are filled. The
remainder of the bore, which is empty, affords space for the mercury to
rise. This arrangement renders very perceptible the alterations in the
volume of the mercury due to changes of temperature, a very slight increase
or diminution of volume causing the mercury to rise or to fall appreciably
in the fine bore. After sealing, the scale has to be adjusted to the tube,
and the instrument is complete.

Thermometers of the most accurate make are called standard thermometers. In
their manufacture, numerous precautions are necessary from the very outset.
Even in so simple a matter as the choice of the tube of glass much care is
requisite. The bore has to be tested, in order to ensure that it is of
uniform capacity throughout. It is found that tubes, as they come from the
glass-house, contain a bore wider at one extremity than the other. The bore
is, in fact, a portion of a very elongated cone. In a hundredweight of
tubes, not more than half a dozen or so can be picked out in which the bore
is perfectly true. The bore is tested in a very ingenious though simple
manner. A bulb is blown, and a very small quantity of mercury is admitted
into the tube about as much as will fill an inch and a half of the bore. By
alternately cooling and heating the bulb, this delicate thread of mercury
is driven from one end of the tube to the other, and during this process
its length is carefully measured in all parts of the tube.
{708}
Should the length of the mercury alter in various situations, it is evident
that the capacity of the bore is not uniform throughout, and the tube must
be rejected. In blowing the bulb, an elastic ball, containing air, is used.
The ordinary method of blowing glass bulbs by means of the breath is found
to cause the introduction of moisture into the tube.

The size of the bulb has next to be considered. A large bulb renders the
instrument slow in its indications of change, owing to the quantity of
mercury that has to be acted on. On the other hand, if the bulb is too
small, it will not contain sufficient mercury to register high
temperatures, unless the bore is exceedingly fine.

The shape of the bulb is of importance. Spherical bulbs are best adapted to
resist the varying pressure of the atmosphere; while cylindrical bulbs
expose larger surfaces of mercury, and are therefore preferred for more
delicate instruments. Various plans have been suggested in order to obtain
thermometers of extreme sensitiveness for delicate experiments. Some have
been made with very small thin bulbs, to contain a very small quantity of
mercury; but in these the indicating column is generally so fine, that it
can only be read by the aid of a powerful lens. Instruments have been
contrived with spiral or coiled tubular bulbs; but the thickness of glass
required to keep these in shape nullifies the effect sought to be
obtained--namely, instantaneous action. Messrs. Negretti & Zambra, the
well-known meteorological instrument-makers, have recently succeeded in
constructing a thermometer which combines sensitiveness and quickness of
action, and which presents a good visible column. The bulb of this
thermometer is of a gridiron form. The reservoir is made of glass, so thin
that it cannot be blown; it can only be formed by means of a spirit-lamp;
yet its shape gives it such rigidity that its indications are not affected
by altering its position or by standing it on its bulb. The reservoirs of
the most delicate of these instruments contain about nine inches of
excessively thin cylindrical glass, the outer diameter of which is not more
than the twentieth of an inch, and, owing to the large surface thus
presented to the air, the indications are positively instantaneous. This
form of thermometer was constructed expressly to meet the requirements of
scientific balloon ascents, to enable the observer to take thermometric
readings at precise elevations. It was contemplated to procure a metallic
thermometer; but, on the production of this perfect instrument, the idea
was abandoned.

The shape and size of the bulb having been determined, the workman next
proceeds to fill the tube. This is effected by heating the bulb while the
open end of the tube is embedded in mercury. Upon allowing the bulb to
cool, the atmospheric pressure drives some mercury into the tube. The
process is continued until sufficient mercury has entered. The mercury used
in filling should be quite pure, and should have been freed from moisture
and air by recent boiling. It is again boiled in the tube after filling;
and when the expulsion of air and moisture is deemed complete, and while
the mercury fills the tube, the artist dexterously removes it from the
source of heat, and at the same moment closes it with the flame of a
blow-pipe. It sometimes happens that in spite of every care a little air
still remains in the tube. Its presence is detected by inverting the tube,
when, if the mercury falls to the extremity (or nearly so) of the bore,
some air is present, which, of course, must be removed.

The thermometer, after being filled, has to be graduated. Common
thermometers are fixed to a scale on which the degrees are marked; but the
graduation of standards is engraved on the stem itself, in order to insure
the greatest possible accuracy. The first steps in graduating are to
ascertain the exact freezing-point and the exact and to mark on the tube
the height of the mercury at these points.
{709}
The freezing-point can be determined with comparative ease. Melting ice has
always the same temperature in all places and under all circumstances,
provided only that the water from which the ice is congealed is pure. The
bulb and the lower portion of the tube are immersed in melting ice; the
mercury descends; the point where it remains stationary  is the
freezing-point, and is marked on the tube.

The determination of the boiling-point is more difficult. The boiling-point
varies with the pressure of the atmosphere. The normal boiling temperature
of water is fixed at a barometric pressure of 29.922 inches of mercury
having the temperature of melting ice, in the latitude of 45, and at the
level of the sea. Of course, these conditions rarely if ever co-exist; and
consequently the boiling-point has to be corrected for errors, and reduced
for latitude. Tables of vapor tension, as they are called, computed from
accurate experiments, are used for this purpose. Regnault's tables, the
most recent, are considered the best.

An approximate boiling-point is first obtained by actual experiment. A
copper boiler is used, which has at its top an open cylinder two or three
inches in diameter, and of sufficient length to allow a thermometer to be
introduced into it, without touching the water in the boiler. The cylinder
is surrounded by a second one, fixed to the top of the boiler, but not
entering it, the two being about an inch apart. The outer cylinder is
intended to protect the inner one from contact with the cold external air.
The thermometer to be graduated is placed in the inner cylinder, and held
there by a thong of India-rubber. As the vapor of the boiling water rises
from the boiler into the cylinder, it envelops the thermometer, and causes
the mercury to ascend. As the mercury rises, the tube is gradually lowered,
so as to keep the top of the mercury just visible above the cylinder. When
the mercury becomes stationary, the position of the top of the column is
marked on the tube; and the boiling-point, subject to corrections for
errors, is obtained.

The freezing and boiling points being determined, the scale is applied by
dividing the length between the two points into a certain number of equal
degrees. This operation is performed by a machine called a dividing-engine,
which engraves degrees of any required width with extreme accuracy.

The scale used in the United Kingdom, in the British colonies, and in North
America, is that known as Fahrenheit's. Fahrenheit was a philosophical
instrument maker of Amsterdam. About the year 1724, he invented the scale
with which his name is associated. The freezing point of his scale is 32
degrees, the boiling-point 212 degrees, and the intermediate space is
composed of 180 degrees. This peculiar division was thus derived. The
lowest cold observed in Iceland was the zero of Fahrenheit. When the
thermometer stood at zero, it was calculated to contain a volume of mercury
represented by the figures 11,124. When plunged into melting snow, the
mercury expanded to a volume represented by 11,156; hence the intermediate
space was divided into thirty-two equal portions or degrees, and thirty-two
was taken as the freezing-point of water. [Footnote 246] Similarly, at the
boiling-point, the quick-silver expanded to 11,336. Fahrenheit's scale is
convenient in some respects. The meteorological observer is seldom troubled
with negative signs, the divisions of the scale are numerous, and tenths of
degrees give all the minuteness usually requisite.

    [Footnote 246: Mr. Balfour Stewart has lately concluded a series of
    experiments at the Kew Observatory, by which he has accurately
    determined the freezing-point of mercury. The experiments, conducted
    with great care, have shown that the freezing-point of mercury, like
    that of water, is constant, and that it denotes a temperature of -37.93
    F. The freezing-point of mercury will now be used as a third point in
    graduating thermometers which are intended to register extreme
    temperatures.]

{710}

In 1742, Celsius, a Swede, proposed zero for the freezing-point, and 100
degrees for the boiling-point, all temperatures below freezing being
distinguished by the negative sign (-). This scale is known as the
Centigrade. It is in use in France, Sweden, and in the south of Europe; it
has the advantage of decimal notation, with the disadvantage of the
negative sign.

Reaumur's scale is in use in Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. It differs
from the Centigrade in this, that the freezing and boiling points are
separated by 80 degrees instead of 100 degrees.

It would not be difficult to construct a scale which should combine all the
advantages of Fahrenheit's and of the Centigrade. Freezing-point should be
fixed at 100 degrees; and boiling-point should be fixed at as many hundred
divisions or degrees above 100 degrees as might be agreed on by practical
men as most convenient. The advantages of decimal notation would thus
remain as in the Centigrade scale, and the minus sign would be got rid of.

And now, having applied the scale, and having exercised every precaution,
can we congratulate ourselves on possessing a perfect instrument?
Disheartening as it may appear, the standard instrument of to-day may not
be accurate to-morrow. It is more than probable that the freezing point
will become displaced. This curious phenomenon has never been
satisfactorily explained. Messrs. Negretti & Zambra, in their treatise on
Meteorological Instruments, (a work which abounds with information of a
most interesting nature,) say, in reference to displacement of the freezing
point, that "either the prolonged effect of the atmospheric pressure upon
the thin glass of the bulbs of thermometers, or the gradual restoration of
the equilibrium of the particles of the glass after having been greatly
disturbed by the operation of boiling the mercury, seems to be the cause of
the freezing-points of standard thermometers reading from a few tenths to a
degree higher in the course of some years." To obviate this small error, it
is the practice of the makers in question "to place the tubes aside for
about six months before fixing the freezing-point, in order to give time
for the glass to regain its former state of aggregation. The making of
accurate thermometers is a task attended with many difficulties, the
principal one being the liability of the zero or freezing-point varying
constantly; so much so, that a thermometer that is perfectly correct
to-day, if immersed in boiling-water, will be no longer accurate; at least,
it will take some time before it again settles into its normal state. Then,
again, if a thermometer is recently blown, filled, and graduated
immediately, or, at least, before some months have elapsed, though every
care may have been taken with the production of the instrument, it will
require some correction; so that the instrument, however carefully made,
should from time to time be plunged into finely-pounded ice, in order to
verify the freezing-point."

------

  From The Month.

  The Tuscan Peasants And The Maremna.


The Maremna is, in summer, the word that drives the sleep from many an
Italian woman's pillow as she thinks of the perils that her husband, her
brother, or her betrothed is encountering as he reaps the fertile harvest,
and gains, at the risk of his life, the wages that will enable him and his
to live through the winter. "A me mi pare una Maremna amara" is the burden
of the song with which many a child is rocked to sleep. And with reason.
The Maremna is the Littorale or shores of the Tuscan Sea; and there the
coasts that bound the blue waters of the Mediterranean are lined by tangled
jungles and pestilential marshes, whence at each sunset arises the baleful
fever, which, passing in scorn over the ruined cities that its pernicious
breath has depopulated, creeps along like the sleuth-hound until it finds
the hardy mountaineer returning from his day of labor, and smites him with
the wasting blight which saps his strength.
{711}
Yet year after year do the sons of Italy descend with unwearied energy to
these valleys and deadly plains, to reap the crops that have grown uncared
for but luxuriantly, death and disease stalking behind them, and the fear
of falling victims to the power of the evil air urging them to increased
exertions, in order that they may earlier return and share their scanty
gains with their wives and children. They march gayly, too, often singing
alternately in their rough monotone the songs they have composed
themselves, cheerful in the consciousness that they are fulfilling a duty;
and this although knowing that they have to fight a foe against whom
neither courage nor energy nor strength can avail, but whose damp breath
appears to draw the marrow from their bones and fill them with fever;
sometimes sending them weak and emaciated, useless as workmen, to their
native homes; sometimes in a few hours laying their bodies low, to lie, far
from family and friends, in unconsecrated ground.

When the Italian peasants speak of the Maremna, they mean that district of
Italy which runs along the shores of the Mediterranean from Monte Nebo and
the mountains south of Leghorn over the flat marshes of the Tuscan shores,
and the desolate promontory of Monte Cervino, as far as the sunny shores of
Sorento and Amalfi. To the south of the Tuscan frontier the (to English
ears) more familiar name of Campagna is applied to the whole of that
portion of the Maremna which lies within the ancient Agro Romano; still
further to the south the word Maremna becomes identical with what are
called the Pontine Marshes. The mountaineers of Modena, Parma, and Tuscany
call the country which they periodically visit, whether south or north,
Maremna: the inhabitants frequently give it a local name. Undefined as are
its boundaries, and almost unknown to geography as is its name, its
characteristics are much the same throughout; everywhere we meet the same
wide plains, tangled jungles, ruined cities, wooded hills, ever-recurring
swamps and morasses; throughout the whole district the same terrible ague,
the same desolating fever, the fatal influence of the malaria, rage with
destructive effect. Although often characterized as a swamp or a marsh, yet
the Maremna by no means consists of plains like the fens; on the contrary,
there are several high mountains, which run down even into the sea: the
land near the coast is, however, in general flat.

Part of the Maremna is cultivated, and produces grain; the greater portion,
however, is kept for pasture. As soon as the herbage begins to fail on the
mountains of Tuscany, the peasants drive their flocks down to the pastures
of the Maremna. There they remain six or seven months. The women and
children are left at home, and the men and boys during this time bear all
the privations, hardships, and dangers. An Italian poet exclaims: "Alas,
how often do they return home bowed down by fever! how often do they never
return! for, where they sought to earn the sustenance of their families,
they meet with death." While some descend with their flocks and act as
shepherds, the majority are there for the purpose of cutting wood, making
charcoal and potash; their last work is to reap the hay and corn, and then
those who are left alive return. Part of their wages has already been sent
home; the remainder they bring with them.

Halfway between Leghorn and Pisa stands the old church of St. Pier d'Arena.
It is very large, and built as nearly as possible to resemble the form of a
ship. In old days the sea reached this point, and the name 'Arena' points
to the strand on which the church was built. Tradition states it was here
St. Peter landed on his visit to Italy, and the church was built to
commemorate the event.

{712}

One October, now many years ago, after a visit to this church, I met a
troop of shepherds and their flocks on their march to the Maremna. The
procession must have covered half a mile of ground. Never yet have I looked
on a troop of these sunburnt children of the south as they were wending
their way to a land whence all would not return, without saluting them even
as I would a forlorn hope advancing to attack the breach of a fortress.
Soldiers of duty, "Morituros vos saluto." And higher is the courage and
deeper is the love that impels these brave men, singing as they go, to
encounter the fever and thirst and pestilential air of the Maremna, than
that which animates many even of those soldiers who fight for God and king
and fatherland.

Tears rose to the eyes of my companion as they passed. The flocks and herds
marched first, all "ruddled," that is, marked with red, to show to whom
they belonged. The procession was headed by the bell-wethers, with their
curved horns; in close attendance upon them are tall, handsome,
woolly-haired sheep-dogs, of a larger breed than ours, and with their necks
defended by a collar studded with nails, the projecting points of which
often turn the scale in the case of an encounter with the wolves. Nor are
these the only robbers against which these vigilant watchers defend the
sheep: if a human beast of prey, in shape of a thief, lies lurking in the
ditches that border the roadside, watching an opportunity for seizing a
lamb, they detect him and compel him to show himself. At night, too, they
march round the nets that enclose the little encampment, and give the weary
guardians time to sleep. Before they go to sleep, the peasants light a
fire, and make cheese and ricotti, (a sort of Devonshire cream,) with which
they repay the owner of the soil for leave to encamp on his grounds. As the
milk is far more plentiful on their return in May, a spirit of natural,
even-handed justice makes them generally contrive, both going and
returning, to halt at the same stations. A necessary member of this company
is the poet, or scribe, (_scrivano_.) To him is entrusted the task of
composing, or else writing down and correcting, the "Respects" which each
Tuscan shepherd is bound to send to his sweetheart. Collections of these
rustic poems have lately been made and published. They are full of pathos
and tenderness; the heart of the young exile yearns not only for his
_dama_, (sweetheart,) but for the beauties of the country he has left
behind him. Not his the harp to sing of festive banquets or goblets crowned
with flowers; he loves the streams of fresh water, the flowering grass, the
cultivated terraces, the pure air of his mountain home. Nature herself, and
sorrow, the nurses of beauty, have breathed on him a spirit of truth and
poetry as distinct from the sickly sentimentality and vice so often found
in modern verse, as is the wild rider of the Arabian desert from the puny
jockey who wins our handicaps. Strange, indeed, it would be if these poems,
written in danger, absence, and exile, possessed not a fragrance all their
own--one, however, that seems to escape not only in the most literal
translation, but even when, under a slightly different form, they appear in
the works of their more highly educated countrymen.

Independently of the troops that march almost patriarchally with their
flocks and herds, like Abraham and Jacob, peasants often go down in gangs
of five or six to look for work; sometimes, though rarely, necessity
compels them to take with them their wives, and, if grown up, their
children. In this case they almost invariably travel in one of the long,
narrow, covered cars of the country. The men trudge along in groups of five
or six, with their best clothes in a bundle slung to a stick, and, if by
any possible contrivance it can be managed, with a gun upon their shoulder;
for game of all kinds, roe, deer, wild boars, porcupines, woodcock, and
snipe abound.
{713}
I once saw these groups arriving, one after another, at a seaport town near
the Gulf of Genoa, until they reached the number of 500 or 600: these all
sailed in a steamer to Corsica, to till the rich ground of that island. In
a fortnight the steamer returned, and freighted itself with an equally
large cargo of laborers. Many go to Sardinia, a still more unhealthy
island: their chief occupation there is mostly to fell the forests which
have been bought by speculators. Some find work at the Grand Ducal
Ironworks at Follonica, and at the mines in the interior of the island of
Elba; others help to till the Maremna, the soil of which is so fertile
that, if it lies one year fallow, it requires but to have the seed thrown
broadcast over it in order to yield every alternate year, and without
further tillage, a most magnificent crop. Others help to clear away the
forest and the thicket, and prepare the ground for future years, and thus
aid in the great works for reclaiming this land of jungle and fever that
have been now carried on for so many years; others simply to make charcoal
or potash, and to live by selling game at the neighboring towns. To sing
the songs of their native villages is their chief pleasure. In the daytime
one man will begin to sing at his work, and then another catches the
refrain, and begins in turn. At night, too, round the fire, (which is said
to scare away the fever,) they sing songs and tell their old stories, and
repeat their legends of saints and miracles. Thus it happens that they
return to their native villages, speaking the pure Tuscan language
undefiled by the patois of Corsica or the miserable jargon of the other
islands.

The fever often attacks them, and they have to return home with their work
half done; often a father will have to send back his son, fearful that he
may die on the road, but conscious that, though he seems hardly able to
crawl, the lad's only chance of safety lies in his reaching the pure air of
the mountains before it is too late.

If all goes well, they arrive at home by the 24th of June, the feast of St.
John. As they near their native place, the more active and eager members of
the different parties press on; and as soon as they are descried from the
village, a group is formed to meet them and welcome them back; then, too,
do the wives learn what their husbands have earned and whether they have
had a good year.

We may fancy the inhabitants who have remained at home, assembling at the
old tower that bars the entrance to the village, eagerly asking and hearing
the news of the winter. "Old Giuseppe" has had a good year; Peppe da
Cacciono has had a touch of the maremna, but he got better; Renzo of
Cognocco's dead, died of "la perniciosa." "Poor fellow! God rest his soul!"
is the reply. "He had a bad attack last year; we never thought to see him
again." And then they will visit Renzo's family and condole with them.

Not only do they bring back news to their own, but to all the villages that
they pass through. Before the eve of St. John you may often, as the Abbé
Tigri says, "meet a group of five or six, burnt nearly black with the sun,
in their worst dress, and wearied out by the long journey. _Ben
tornati_, welcome back!" you cry. "Do you come from far? Poor fellows,
how tired you seem!" "It is nothing now, sir," they say, "for we are going
home; but it was a hard time this spring." And, with that smile of singular
brightness which no poverty or suffering seems able to drive from their
face, they pass by.

The maremna is more accessible now than when we last visited and travelled
through it. The works that were originated and so sedulously carried on by
the former government have been continued by the present, and have
fertilized and rendered comparatively healthy large portions of the country
which were formerly desolate and pestilential: a railroad has been made,
which familiarizes many a modern traveller with the country under its
present aspects, but tempts him to hurry by much that is interesting and
would have rewarded a longer sojourn.
{714}
We may endeavor in some future number to describe the impression made upon
us by this portion of Etruria, and to lead the reader

  "By lordly Volaterra,
     Where scowls the far-famed hold
   Piled by the hands of giants
     For god-like kings of old;
   By sea-girt Populonia,
     Whose sentinels descry
   Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops
     Fringing the southern sky.

  "By the drear bank of Ufens,
     Where flights of marsh-fowl play,
   And buffaloes lie wallowing
     Through the hot summer day;
   By the gigantic watch-towers,
     No work of earthly men,
   Whence Cora's sentinels o'erlook
     The never-ending fen,
   To the Laurentian jungle,
     The wild-hog's reedy home."

------

  Miscellany.


_Pagan Irish Sepulchral Pillar-Stones_.--That standing stones were
used during pagan times in Ireland as sepulchral monuments appears certain;
for we find in the description of the royal cemetery of Brugh-na-Boinne, as
given in the Dinnsenchus contained in the Book of Ballymote, fol. 190,
translated and published by the late Dr. Petrie, in his treatise on the
Round Towers of Ireland, the following: "The _pillar-stone_ of Buidi
the son of Muiredh, where his head is interred." We also find quoted by the
same eminent antiquary, from the Leabhar-na-h-hide, an account of the death
of Fothadh in the battle of Ollarba, fought, according to the Four Masters,
in A.D. 285, with a description of his grave, in which is recorded, "And
there is a _pillar-stone_ at his carn; and an ogumis on the end of the
_pillar-stone_ which is in the earth." The earliest sepulchral
monuments mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters are _carns_,
(large heaps of stones,) and _murs_ or _tuiams_, (mounds of
earth,) now more generally known by the name "barrow." However, that
pillar-stones may even then have been in use appears probable; for in the
opening paragraph of those Annals there is, "From Fintan is named Feart
Fintain" (that is, Fintain's grave) "over Loch Deirgdheire." The place is
still called by this name, and is situated on the northern slopes of the
Arra mountains, overlooking Lough Derg, county Tipperary. There is a
_pillar-stone_ at the grave, from which the hill is called
Laghtea.--G. Henry Kinahan, _in Athenoeum_.



_The Monks' Model Farm in Algeria_.--The Mois Agricole contains an
interesting account of the Trappist Model Farm at Cheragas, in Algeria. In
1843, Marshal Bugeaud granted the Trappists one thousand two hundred
hectares of land, on which, two years afterward, three hundred thousand
francs were expended by the order in buildings. The stock of animals on the
farm is now magnificent. The Trappist cows each yield sixteen quarts of
milk a day, in a country where the native cows do not yield more than
goats; and the sheep and pigs are equally fine. A large quantity of honey
is also produced at Cheragas. There are in the establishment one hundred
and eight monks, of whom twenty-two belong to the choir, and ten are
priests. Twenty lay workmen are constantly employed at the convent, and
every poor or sick wayfarer is entitled to claim or receive aid or work
there. When the emperor visited the establishment, he discovered, to his
surprise that upward of a dozen of the monks had been soldiers of the
imperial guard. They explained to him that, after the severe discipline and
simple fare of the French army, the Trappist rule, ascetic as it is, did
not appear harsh to them.

------

{715}


    Original.

    New Publications.


  The Monks Of The West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard.
  By the Count de Montalembert, Member of the French Academy.
  Authorized translation. Vols. I., II., III. William Blackwood & Sons,
  Edinburgh and London, 1861, 1867. For sale by the Catholic Publication
  Society, 126 Nassau street, New York.

These volumes bring down the history of monasticism to the year 633. The
third contains the history of monasticism in England, Ireland, and
Scotland, embracing a very full account of St. Columba and the institute of
Iona. It is very appropriately dedicated to the Earl of Demarara. The ill
health of the author has delayed the completion of his great work. We
understand, however, that two more volumes are published in France, and are
now being translated into English. The writings of Montalembert belong to
the highest class of French literature. The present work treats of a topic
of the greatest importance and interest to all students and educated
persons, but especially to all devout Catholics. English literature has
resounded for three centuries with calumnies, denunciations, and senseless,
ignorant ravings against monastic orders. Of late, we begin to hear a
different story from the most enlightened portion of Protestant writers.
These writers are, however, careful to qualify what they say in praise of
the nunneries of former times by a somewhat wearisome and monotonous
reiteration of the assurance that monastic institutions are worn out,
obsolete, contrary to progress, and unfit for the present age. It is time,
therefore, for the Catholic voice to make itself heard on the subject. The
illustrious and noble author is a believing and devout Catholic as well as
a learned historian and a most eloquent writer. His work is well
translated, and published in a style suitable to its choice excellence. It
should find a place in the library of every clergyman, every religious
house, seminary, and college, and on the table of every educated Catholic
layman. We would recommend it also to our Protestant friends, were we not
aware that most of them are afraid or ashamed to buy a Catholic book. Those
of them at least who pretend to agree with the church of the first six
centuries ought not to be afraid of it, as it comes down no later than A.D.
633.


    The Trinity

    Control Your Passions

    Heroism In The Sick-room

    Is The Sacrifice Of The Mass Of Human Or Of Divine Institution?

    Why Did God Become Man?

  Being Tracts   Nos. 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 of the Catholic Publication
  Society's Tracts. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau
  street.

The Catholic Publication Society continues to issue its useful and
instructive tracts. We give above the titles of those last published. Our
readers will find them to be in every respect equal to the former ones.
They will also be pleased to learn that the Society has obtained a House of
Publication, established in a first-class locality, No. 126 Nassau street,
New York, where all its publications can be had, together with all Catholic
books and pamphlets published either in this country or in England and
Ireland. The Society now everywhere meets with approval and encouragement.
Rev. Father Hecker lately visited the cities of Pittsburg, Cincinnati,
Wheeling, and Harrisburg, at which places he lectured in favor of the
Society. The Rt. Rev. Bishops and Rev. clergy gave him the most cordial
receptions, and very generous contributions were made for the object in
Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and Wheeling. Upon his return he lectured also at
St. Peter's church, Brooklyn, with the like success. Depots for the
Society's publications are now established at Mr. Quigley's in Pittsburg,
and at Benziger Bros. in Cincinnati, at which all that is issued by the
Society can be procured for the same price as they are sold in New-York.

Father Hecker also intends visiting Europe this summer, to form relations
with the publishing houses of Dublin, London, and Paris, and will accept
the invitation proffered him to assist at the great Catholic Congress which
is to meet at Malines next September.

{716}

Our readers are already aware, from the article on Catholic Congresses in
our last number, how much has been done by the Belgian Congresses for the
diffusion of cheap Catholic literature. We trust Father Hecker may be able
to derive much useful information from what he will see and hear at
Malines, and turn it to good account for the furtherance of our own efforts
in the same direction. We are much gratified to see that the project of a
Catholic Congress suggested by our article has been warmly applauded on all
sides. Several of our journals, among which we notice the _Freeman's
Journal_, the _Boston Pilot_, the _New York Tablet_, and the
_Catholic Standard_ of Philadelphia, have noticeable editorial
articles on the subject in its favor. It is important, in case a congress
should be convened in our own country, that some one should attend this one
in Belgium, in order to obtain a knowledge of the plan and method of
organizing and conducting these assemblies.


  The First Age of Christianity and the Church.
  By John Ignatius Döllinger, D.D.,
  Professor of Ecclesiastical History
  in the University of Munich, etc.
  Translated by H. N. Oxenham, M.A. Oxford.
  London: Allen & Co., 1860.
  2 vols. 12mo. New York: The Catholic
  Publication Society.

These two volumes are worthy of the perusal of every scholar. They form the
introductory portion of Döllinger's great work on Ecclesiastical History,
now in course of preparation, and are replete with the results of his vast
learning. At the same time, the reader of ordinary intelligence and
education need not be afraid of them. They are not dry or pedantic, but
written in a style of natural simplicity and freshness which makes them
attractive and entertaining as well as instructive. The translation, by an
excellent scholar and good writer, is extremely well done, and the
mechanical execution is in the best London style. Even the Dublin Review
has condescended to praise this work, and therefore those who might suspect
that it contains any peculiar opinions of what is called the 'Germanizing'
school need not fear anything on that score. Dr. Döllinger is a sound,
orthodox divine, and sincerely loyal to the holy see. The Roman theologians
have controverted some of his opinions very strongly, but they have never
called in question his orthodoxy, and we have good reason to believe that
the Holy Father regards him with esteem and paternal affection as a true
son of the church, who is doing her good service. The organs of that
theological school in Germany which Dr. Döllinger is supposed to sympathize
with the least always speak of him in the most respectful terms, even when
criticising some of his statements very unsparingly. Some of our Catholic
friends in England are not quite so charitable and moderate as the more
thoroughly ripened theologians of Europe. They seem disposed to erect
theological doctrines never defined or imposed by the authority of the holy
see into a standard of orthodoxy, and to question the thorough loyalty of
those who do not fully agree with themselves. Odious terms, such as the
nickname of 'mini-misers,' invented by that very dogmatical publication the
Dublin Review, are applied to them, and, in general, a quarrelsome kind of
domestic polemics seems getting quite the vogue among a portion of the
Catholic writers of England. We agree with F. Perrone, the great Roman
theologian, that this is an evil much to be deprecated, and likely to do
mischief. We do not sympathize with all that Dr. Döllinger has written, but
we feel bound to condemn the disparaging tone in which some of the writers
alluded to are wont to speak of him, and of others like him, who venture to
make use of the liberty allowed by the church respecting questions not
finally decided by authority. Happily, the present work is one about which
there can be no difference of opinion. It is a thoroughly learned, and at
the same time a readable and plain history of the first foundation of
Christianity by Christ and his apostles; and we feel sure that it will
contribute much to the edification of all who read it.


  Poems. By Eliza Allen Starr. 12mo, pp.
  224. Philadelphia: H. McGrath.

Miss Starr is already favorably known to the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD
by various poetical contributions to our pages. She writes with remarkable
grace and tenderness, with a very beautiful simplicity of style, and a
religious elevation of thought which ought to make her volume welcome in
every good Christian family.
{717}
The poetic impulse with her is neither a morbid yearning to sing imaginary
woes, nor a mere fancy for the jingle of sweet words. Her verses express
genuine and healthy feeling, and their tone is most melodious when her harp
is strung to sacred themes. There is at times a mild tinge of melancholy in
the book--a melancholy as of one who has suffered and struggled; but
through it all shines the radiance of religious happiness, as though it
were not all imaginary which the author sings in the character of "The
Sacristan":

  "Within thine altar's shade,
   Lord, I my nest have made,
       No more to roam:
   Thine own abiding-place
   Is mine for future space,
       My rest, my home.

    ....

  "The earth, the air, the sea
   Rejoice to serve with me,
       With me to wait;
   For prostrate nature sighs
   To see her Lord disguise
       His heavenly state."

The little poem entitled "Espousals" is also full of real, unaffected
piety:

  "Haste to thy nuptials sweet
     With glowing feet,
   Thy inmost chamber fair,
     O heart! prepare,
   Therein, with joy, to bring
     Thy spouse and king.

  "I see his coming light
     Disperse my night!
   O radiant orb of day!
     Thou may'st delay
   To quench thy feeble rays
     In heaven's own blaze.

  "Lo! seraph tongues of flame
     Announce that name
   Whose echoed sweetness clings
     Where'er it rings;
   And thus informs with sound
     Remotest bound.

  "O happy ears! attend,
     And lowlier bend!
   I feel his noiseless pace
     Through heaven's blue space;
   The stars but strew his floor,
     And thus adore.

  "Celestial presence dear!
     Thou Godhead near!
   I yield my soul, my sense;
     Omnipotence!
   Behold, prepared, thy throne;
     Oh! claim thine own!"

In a different strain, but very pretty and delicate, is the following
"Song of Welcome":

  "My lonely days grew lonelier,
     The shadows spread apace,
   When on me, like a morning sun,
     Arose thy smiling face:
   Sad tears, sad tears, my joyful cheeks,
     Keep not of you a trace.

  "The summer skies which o'er me bend
     In beauty so benign
   Are not so blue as the happy eyes
     Now beaming into mine!
   Heart's love, heart's love, what sun could cheer
     If thine should cease to shine!"

We commend Miss Starr's little volume with all heartiness, and we rejoice
that American Catholic literature has received so welcome an addition to
its scanty poetical stores. We ought not to omit a word of compliment to
the publisher for the liberal manner in which he has brought it out. The
rich cream paper, the clear type, and the excellent binding are signs of a
new era in the Catholic book manufacture at which we all must rejoice.


  First Historical Transformations of Christianity.
  From the French of Athanase Coquerel the Younger,
  by E. P. Evans, Ph.D. 12mo. Boston: W. V. Spencer, 1867.

This is a very weak and flippant production from the pen of a French
rationalistic Protestant, who imagines that he is a philosopher of history.
He pretends to show us various forms which pure Christianity has been made
to assume by the different apostles, doctors, or sects who in turn took
upon themselves to be its expositors. Of course, as Monsieur Coquerel the
Younger would think, they each and all made bad work of it, from St. Peter
down to the last publishing medium of spiritism. It is truly deplorable
that the pure Christianity which Monsieur Coquerel the Younger now sees in
all its simplicity should have had the misfortune to be thus Judaized,
Hellenized, Paulized, Peterized, Joannized, Romanized, and diversely
_ized_ by the Fathers of the church and heretics; and may we not also
add, Protestantized and Coquerelized?

{718}

Let us see what is the Christianity of Jesus according to Monsieur
Coquerel's gospel: "In short, the whole instruction of Jesus can be
included in the following formula: the work to be accomplished is the reign
of God in all consciences; the universal motive through which this reign is
to be established, the essential fact of this reign, is love, of which the
twofold manifestation is pardon and new or eternal life; and these two
manifestations presuppose two facts, whose certainty has no need of proof--
sin and immortality. Thus reducing all Christianity to a single formula, it
may be said that Jesus revealed to all sinners the eternal compassion of
the God of holiness, their Father." (P. 65.) This cant about pardon and the
new life in the mouth of one who rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ, who
is unwilling to impose the belief in his miracles upon any sincere
Christian, (_sic_,) and who thinks the doctrine of hell is rank
nonsense, would need explanation, did we not gather from a previous
sentence that Monsieur Coquerel the Younger is as shallow a theologian as
he is a philosopher. Speaking of our Lord, he says: "He has such an
absolute certainty of the power of God, and of the efficacy of the good and
the true; such a full confidence in the perfectibility of guilty man; such
a high esteem for human nature, _wholly sinful_ as it is, that, in his
eyes, the elevation, the healing, the salvation, the enfranchisement of
every soul that is willing to return to God and love him are not an object
of the slightest doubt." (P. 64.) Beside this we place one other quotation,
which we think will suffice: "Liberal Protestants are constantly asked
where they would fix the boundary which separates Christians from those who
are not Christians. _Each man has the right to solve this formidable
problem in the light of his own conscience!_" (P. 75.) And this man
pretends to lecture the world for transforming Christianity to suit its own
notions! We would advise Monsieur Coquerel the Younger to review his logic.



  Critical And Social Essays,
  reprinted from the New York Nation.
  12mo, pp. 230. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.

It is a good deal to say of a newspaper nowadays that it is possible to
collect from its columns in the course of two years a whole volume of
essays passably well worth preserving. And many of the essays in this neat
little book are much better than passable. Of course one does not look for
deep philosophy or strikingly original thought in the ephemeral papers
dashed off for a week's entertainment, and sent flying over the country on
the wings of the periodical press. It is enough if the subject be
attractive, the argument mainly just, the style fluent, and now and then
striking. The essays from _The Nation_ generally fulfil these
conditions, and afford very agreeable recreation for odd intervals of
leisure. The cold and almost cynical spirit of criticism, and the utter
lack of enthusiasm and sympathy, which have done so much to deprive _The
Nation_ of that influence in public affairs to which its literary merit
entitles it, appear in a more favorable light in the pages of a book than
in the columns of a periodical. Book-readers have time to appreciate graces
of style, and to roll sweet morsels of thought and phrase under their
tongues; but the journalist in America must deal with a different public,
and must serve them with coarser materials. His weapon must be not the
scalpel or the lancet, but the axe and the bludgeon.


  Fathers And Sons. A Novel.
  By Ivan Sergheievitch Turgenef.
  Translated from the Russian, with the approval
  of the author, by Eugene Schuyler, Ph. D.
  12mo, pp. 248. New-York: Leypoldt & Holt.

The object of this novel is to contrast the generation which is just
passing away in Russia with the generation that is taking its place--the
old lords of the soil, still half-bewildered by the inroads of civilization
upon their semi-savage life, and the young party of progress, intoxicated
with the new ideas of emancipation, the new learning, the new habits, and
the new morality which is fast breaking up the old Tartar feudalism. We can
well believe the translator's assertion that a tempest was raised by the
appearance of the book in Russia. The portraits are flattering to neither
generation, and they are so life-like that it is impossible to doubt they
are substantially accurate representations of both. As a work of fiction,
Fathers and Sons is particularly interesting to us. Artistically speaking,
it is a very good novel indeed, and it is moreover almost the first glimpse
we have had of the fictitious literature of a country toward which
Americans are, whether rightly or wrongly, especially attracted. It gives
us a better view of daily life in Russia than any book of travel or
observation with which we are acquainted--better not only because clearer,
but also because it is of necessity perfectly undistorted.
{719}
But the picture is painful enough. For most of the characters in the story
the author evidently has no love; but even the best of them are singularly
unamiable. And we close the volume with the reflection that, if there is no
better life in Russia than the life he paints; if the men and women whom he
brings before us are fair types of the average culture and virtue of the
empire; if the fathers have no intelligence, and the sons neither human
affection nor religion, the future of Russia must be far different from
what modern writers are fond of predicting. The morality of the story is
bad, but its badness is so transparent that it can hurt nobody. There is an
offensive tinge of sensualism in it, too, and this is less apparent, and
therefore more dangerous.



  Barbarossa: A Historical Novel of the Seventh Century.
  By Conrad Von Bolanden.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 486. Philadelphia: Eugene Cuminiskey. 1867.

The historical novel is a difficult one to write. To strictly follow the
bare facts of history will make the work dull to most readers of light
literature; and to allow the imagination full play in working out its
scenes and representing them as if they had been actual occurrences will
offend the student of history. The middle ages, however, are full of matter
for the historical novelist. We have too few gleaners in this prolific
field. We can remember only one attempt of the kind in the English language
within the last decade of years. William Bernard McCabe, in his "Bertha,"
has done good service toward making known, in a popular manner, the designs
of the Emperor Frederick to become universal emperor, or _Pontifex
Maximus_, as he hoped to be one day called.

The present work is a translation from the German, and describes the
political workings of Frederick's ambition; his conquests in Italy, and the
capture of Rome; his attempt to set up and install in that city his tool,
the antipope Pascal, in opposition to the lawful successor of St. Peter,
Alexander III.; all these events are well told. The interest of the story
is kept up by introducing two lovers--a knight, the follower of Frederick,
and an Italian lady, who, of course, marry at the conclusion of the tale.
The character of Frederick's prime minister, Dassel, is well portrayed, and
shows that, with all the emperor's strength of mind, he was, after all,
only the puppet of his wily minister.

A little more elegance might have been observed by the translator,
especially in the first part of the story, where carelessness and
incorrectness of expression occur several times. For instance, we are told
in one sentence that "Suddenly Otho of Wittelsbach advanced hurriedly,"
which sounds too much after the fashion of a _Ledger_ story. Again,
news is brought to Frederick of the surrender of Cinola to the Milanese,
when the following dialogue occurs: "What is the strength of the Milanese?"
"About three hundred men." "Have they burned the castle?" "_I am ignorant
of that fact, sire._"

But these are, after all, but slight defects, and do not mar the beauty of
the tale. We can heartily recommend the work to the readers of light
literature, as both instructive and entertaining, two things which are not
always combined in the historical novel.


  Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia for 1866.

This volume is an improvement on the preceding one, in one respect at
least, that is, in the summary which it gives of the progress of the
physical sciences. It contains, as usual, a condensed history of the year,
and is ornamented with fine, spirited engravings of three very notorious
public characters: the King of Prussia, Bismarck, and Girabaldi. It is well
worthy of a place in every library, and is, in fact, almost indispensable
as a book of reference.



  Notes On Doctrinal And Spiritual Subjects.
  By the late Frederick W. Faber, D.D., of the Oratory.
  Vol. II. London: Richardson & Son. New York:
  The Catholic Publication Society.

With the character of Father Faber's writings most of our readers are well
acquainted, and we have already given a special notice of them in a review
of the first volume of this work. The present volume contains a large
number of his hitherto unpublished writings, among which are sketches of
discourses upon the notes of the church, treatises upon the sacrament,
controversial lectures spiritual conferences, and various miscellaneous
papers.
{720}
They are of especial value to the younger members of our clergy, to whom we
commend them as furnishing ample matter for sermons, instructions, and
lectures.


  The Man With the Broken Ear.
  Translated from the French of Edmond About,
  by Henry Holt. 12mo, pp. 254. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.

The ingenuity and wit of this story cannot make amends for its grossness.
The novels of M. About's previously rendered into English were enough to
show that he cared nothing for the good opinion of Catholics, and in this
grotesque tale he has equally shown his disregard for the tastes of refined
people of every creed. Still, it is fair to say in his praise that the
contrasts of character which form the chief feature of the book are
admirably managed, and the dialogue sparkles with vivacity. Mr. Holt, who
is both publisher and translator, has acquitted himself in his double
function with noteworthy credit.


  Cummiskey's Juvenile Library: Florie's Series.
  12 vols. 16mo. Translated from the French.
  E. Cummiskey, Publisher, 1037 Chestnut street, Philadelphia.

This is a very interesting series of children's stories. They are well
translated and published in good style.


  Stories On The Commandments

  Caroline; Or, Self Conquest

  The Seven Corporal Works Of Mercy and Matie's Troubles.

  P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia.

Those three volumes are an addition to this publisher's well-selected list
of tales for the young. Although they are published in the same style as
The Young Catholic Library, the stock and workmanship is much inferior.

Books for children's use should be published in a more durable form.


  Beauties Of Faith; Or, Power Of Mary's Patronage.
  Leaves from the Ave Maria. P. O'Shea, New York.

The first part of this volume is taken up with short stories illustrative
of the power of Mary's patronage. The second part contains the beautiful
story of Cobina, by Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. Altogether it forms a volume of
very interesting matter.


  Coaina, The Rose Of The Algonquins.
  By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. P. O'Shea, New York.

Since writing the above, the story of Coaina comes on our table in another
shape from the same publisher. This is a charming Indian tale. We cannot
see the wisdom of using it to swell the bulk of the volume of selections
mentioned above, after having issued it as a separate volume. If those who
have facilities for publishing would give us translations or reprints of
the many excellent books of this kind published in France, Germany, and
England, they would do us greater service.


  Manual of the Lives of the Popes, Etc.
  By J. C. Earle. Reprinted from the
  English Edition. Baltimore: Murphy & Co.

This neatly printed little book is useful as a catalogue of the popes, and
a record of some of the principal facts in their reigns. It has no critical
value in regard to disputed or doubtful questions, and pretends to none.


  Books Received.

From P. O'Shea, New York. The Science of Happiness;
or, Beatitudes in Practice. By Madame Bourdon. 1 vol. 16mo. Price, $1.

From D. Appleton & Co., New York. Appleton's
Hand-Book of American Travel. By E. Hall. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 283.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New York. Co-operative
Stores; their History, Organization, and Management.
Based on the recent German work of Eugene Kichter. pp. 131. Price, 50
cents.

From P. O'Shea, New York. Rosa Immaculata; or,
The Tower of Ivory, or the House of Anna and Joachim.
By Mary Josephine. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 250. Price, $2.

------

{721}


    The Catholic World


    Vol. V., NO. 29. September, 1867.



  "Rome or Reason." [Footnote 247]

    [Footnote 247: The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century.
    By Francis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1867. 8vo, pp. 468.

    The Professor at the Breakfast-Table; with the Story of Iris. By Oliver
    Wendell Holmes. Boston; Ticknor & Fields. 1866. 12mo, pp. 410.

    Rationalism and Catholicism. Inquirer, Cincinnati, May 26, 1867.]


Mr. Parkman understands and describes very well the Indian character--a
very simple character, and within the range of his comprehension. There is
nothing deep or impenetrable in the Indian, and his ideas, habits, and
customs are invariable. He is a child in simplicity, but he is cunning,
fierce, treacherous, ferocious, more of a wild beast than a man--a true
savage, nothing more, nothing less. Mr. Parkman has lived with him, studied
his character and ways, and may, as to him, be trusted as a competent and
faithful guide, save when there is a question of superstition, in which the
Indian abounds, or of religion, which he accepts with more docility and
ease than many learned and scientific white men.

Mr. Parkman may also be trusted for the purely material facts of the Jesuit
missions among the Indians in the seventeenth century, and he narrates them
in a style of much artistic grace and beauty; but of the motives which
governed the missionaries, of their faith and charity, as well as of their
whole interior spiritual life, he understands less than did the "untutored
Indian." His judgments, reflections, or speculations on the spiritual
questions involved are singularly crude, marked by a gross ignorance not at
all creditable to a son of "The Hub." He claims to be enlightened, to be a
man of progress, and he has indeed advanced as far as Sadduceeism, which
believes in neither angel nor spirit; but the savage retains more of the
elements of Christian faith than he appears to have attained to. He is
struck, as every one must be, by the self-denial, the disinterestedness,
the patient toil, the unwearying kindness, superiority to danger or death,
and heroic self-sacrifices and martyrdom of the missionaries; but he sees
in them only the workings of a false faith, superstitious missions, and a
fanatic zeal. The Jesuit who left behind all the delights and riches of
civilization, gave up all that men of the world hold most dear, braved all
the dangers of the forest, of the savage, performed fatiguing journeys,
underwent the inclemencies of the climate and the seasons, suffered hunger
and thirst, in want of all things, submitted to captivity, tortures,
mutilations, and death, was, in his judgment, a poor, deluded man; his
faith, which bore him up or bore him onward, was an illusion, and his
charity, which never failed or grew cold, was only an honest but mistaken
zeal! Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?

{722}

It cannot be said that Mr. Parkman has overrated the marvellous labors and
sacrifices of the Jesuits for the conversion of the North American Indians;
but he is mistaken in supposing that they stand out as anything singular or
extraordinary in the general history of Catholic missions. They did well;
they were brave, indefatigable, self-denying, heroic, and cold must be the
heart that can read their story without emotion; but their high qualities
and virtues are due to their general character as Catholics, not to their
special character as Jesuits. Non-Catholic writers are very apt to consider
that Jesuits are a peculiar sect, in some way distinguishable from the
Catholic Church, and that their merits belong to them not as Catholic
priests and missionaries, but as Jesuits. What Mr. Parkman admires in them
is really admirable; but its glory is due to Catholic faith and charity,
which the Jesuit has in common with all Catholics, and he has toiled no
harder, braved no more dangers, suffered no greater hardships, or a more
cruel and horrid death, or met them with a spirit no more heroic than have
other Catholic missionaries among heretics and infidels, from the apostles
down to the last martyr in China, Anam, or Oceanica. It has been only by
such suffering and such deeds as Mr. Parkman narrates, that the world has
been converted to the Christian faith and retained in the Catholic Church.
At all times, since the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost,
has the Catholic Church nursed in her bosom, and sent into the world to
preach Christ and him crucified, men not at all inferior in faith and love,
in patient endurance, and heroic self sacrifice to the Jesuit missionaries
among the North American Indians. She has never wanted laborers,
confessors, martyrs; and a religion that never fails to create and inspire
them is not, and cannot be, a false religion, a delusion, a fanaticism. It
is only in the Catholic Church you find or have ever found them. Let her
have the credit of them.

The Professor at the Breakfast Table has been for some time before the
public, and every body has read it. Its author has, we believe, a high
reputation in the medical profession, and certainly has attained to
distinction as a poet and as a writer of prose fiction. He has wit and
pathos, a lively imagination, and a keen sense of the ludicrous. The snake
portion of his Elsie Vonner is horrible, but several of the characters in
that remarkable book are admirably drawn--are real New England characters,
drawn as none but a New Englander could draw them, and perhaps, none but a
New Englander can fully appreciate. He is like many of the descendants of
the old Puritans, who, having lost all faith in the Calvinism of their
ancestors, still identify it with Christianity, and float in their feelings
between the memory of it and a vague rationalism and sentimentalism which
is simply no belief at all. He would like to be a Christian, to feel that
he has faith, something on which he can rest his whole weight without fear
of its giving way under him, but he knows not where to look for it. He
finds many attractions in the Catholic Church, but, thinking that she holds
what so offends him in the faith of his ancestors, he dares not trust her.

There is a large class of educated, thinking, and even serious-minded
Americans who turn away from the church and refuse to consider her claims,
not because she differs from the Protestantism in which they have been
reared, but because she does not, in her spirit and teaching, differ enough
from it. Those outside of the church, and who credit not the evangelical
cant against her, identify her teaching with Jansenism, regard Jansenists
as the better class of Catholics, and Jansenism is a form of Calvinism, and
Calvinism is a system of pure supernaturalism, while the active American
mind cannot consent that nature should count in the
religious life for nothing.
{723}
It would, perhaps, relieve them a little if they knew that not only the
Jesuits condemned Jansenism, but the church herself condemns it, and
Jansenists are as much out of the pale of the church as are Calvinists or
Lutherans themselves. So-called orthodox Protestants were formerly in the
habit of charging Catholics with rationalism and Pelagianism, and even now
accuse them of denying the doctrines of grace or salvation through the
merits and grace of Jesus Christ. This fact alone should suffice to teach
such men as the Professor at the Breakfast-Table that the difference
between Catholicity and Puritanism is much greater than they suppose.

The Professor, in defending himself against the change of want of respect
for Puritanism, says, pp. 154-155: "I don't mind the exclamation of any old
stager who drinks Madeira worth from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns,
according to his own premises, a dozen souls a year in segars, with which
he muddles his brains. But as for the good and true and intelligent men we
see all around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful--men who know
that the active mind of the age is tending more and more to the two poles,
Rome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority or
personality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a man may by
accident _stand_ half-way between these two points, he must
_look_ one way or the other--I don't believe they would take offence
at anything I have reported." From the connection in which this is said,
and the purpose for which it is said, it is clear that the Professor holds
that the active mind of this century is tending either Romeward or
Reasonward, that the doctrines held by his Puritan ancestors and so-called
orthodox Protestants can be sustained only by the authority of a sovereign
church, and that we must accept such authority, or give up all dogmatic
belief, and allow the free, unrestricted use of reason.

The writer in the Cincinnati Inquirer seems to agree with him. A certain
Protestant minister, an Anglican, we presume, had said in a sermon, that
"the church's greatest enemies are now Catholicism and rationalism." The
writer, in commenting on this proposition, says: "Catholicism is the
theology of authority; rationalism, the theology of reason;" and
"Protestantism is Catholicism with a dash of rationalism, or rationalism
with a dash of Catholicism." Both represent Catholicity and reason as
standing opposed each to the other, as two opposite poles, and each makes
as does the age no account of the _via media_ church receiving the
shots of both reason and authority, and discharging its double battery in
return against each.

Now, is it not time that thinking men, and authors who claim intelligence
and mean to be just, should stop this contrasting of Rome or authority and
reason? The cant has become threadbare, and men of reputation and taste
should lay it aside as no longer fit for use. It does not by any means
state the fact as it is, for there is not the least discrepancy between the
church and reason, nor is there, in accepting and believing the revealed
word of God on the authority of the church proposing it, the least
surrender of reason or nature. The Catholic has all of reason that belongs
to human nature, and full opportunity to exercise it; and his soul is as
free as the soul can be, and he is, in fact, the only man that has really a
free soul. If God is in his masters, he is also in him. He has no less
internal light because he has external light, and no less internal freedom
because he has external authority. The Professor is quite mistaken in
presenting the church and reason as two opposite poles. Nay, his
illustration is not happy, for the two poles, if we speak geographically,
belong to one and the same globe, and are equally essential to its form and
completeness, and, if we speak magnetically, and mean positive and negative
poles, they are only the two modes in which one and the same substance or
force operates, and certainly in Catholic faith both authority and reason
are alike active, and mutually concur in producing one and the same result.

{724}

It is only when we borrow our views of Catholicity from the theology of the
Reformation, or suppose that it is substantially the same, that the
authority of the church can be regarded as opposed to reason or repugnant
to nature. He who has read the fathers has discovered in them no abdication
of reason or want of intellectual freedom; and he who is familiar with the
mediaeval doctors knows that no men can use reason more freely or push it
further than they did. Melchior Cano, a theologian of the sixteenth
century, in his Locis Theologicis, a work of great authority with
Catholics, enumerates natural reason as one of the common-places of
theology, whence arguments may be drawn to prove what is or is not of
faith. A school of philosophers have latterly sprung up among Catholics,
called traditionalists, who would seem to deny reason and to found science
on faith; but they have fallen under censure of the Holy See, and been
required to recognize that reason precedes faith, and that faith comes as
the complement of science, not as preceding or superseding it. By far the
larger part of the errors condemned in the syllabus of errors attached to
the Encyclical of the Holy Father, dated at Rome, 8th of December, 1864,
are errors that tend to destroy reason and society. The church has always
been vigilant in vindicating natural reason and the natural law.

But the Reformation was a complete protest against reason and nature, and
the assertion of extreme and exclusive supernaturalism. In Luther's
estimation reason was a stupid ass. The reformers all agreed in asserting
the total depravity of human nature, and in maintaining the complete moral
inability of man. According to the reformed doctrines, man never actively
concurs with grace, but in faith and justification is wholly impotent and
passive. Man can think only evil, and the works he does prior to
regeneration, however honest or benevolent, are not simply imperfect, but
positively sins. This was the reformed theology which the writer of this
article had in his boyhood and youth dinged into him till he well-nigh lost
his reason. The church has never tolerated any such theology, and they who
place her and reason in opposition are really, whether they know it or not,
charging her with the errors of Protestantism, which she has never ceased,
in the most public, formal, and solemn manner, to condemn. There are, no
doubt, large numbers included under the general name of Protestants, who
imagine that the Reformation was a great movement in behalf of intelligence
against ignorance, of reason against authority, mental freedom against
mental bondage, of rational religion against bigotry and superstition; but
whoever has studied the history of that great movement knows that it was no
such thing--the furthest from it possible. It was a retrograde movement,
and designed in its very essence to arrest the intellectual and theological
progress of the race. Its avowed purpose was the restoration of primitive
Christianity, which, whatever plausible terms might be adopted, meant, and
could mean only, to set the race back some fifteen hundred years in its
march through the ages, and to eliminate from Christendom all that
Christianity for fifteen centuries had effected for civilization. The
Protestant party, was by its own avowal, the party of the past, and, if
there are Protestants who are striving to be the party of the future, they
succeed only by leaving their Protestantism behind, or by transforming it.

The church has always been on the side of freedom and progress, and the
normal current of humanity has flowed and never ceased to flow from the
foot of the cross down through her communion; and whatever life-giving
water has flowed into Protestant cisterns, it has been from the
overflowings of that current, always full.
{725}
You who are outside of it, save in the application of the truths of science
to the material arts, have effected no progress. You have worked hard, have
been often on the point of some grand discovery, but only on the point of
making it, and are as far from the goal as you were when Luther burnt the
papal bull, or suffered the devil to convince him of the sin of saying
private masses. You have always found your works after a little while
needing to be recast, and that your systems are giving way. You have been
constantly doing and undoing, and never succeeding. Save in the physical
sciences and some achievements in the material world, you are far below
what you were when you started. Of course, you do not believe it, because
you confound change with progress, and you count getting rid of your
patrimony increasing it. It is idle to tell you this, for you have already
fallen so low that you place the material above the spiritual, and the
knowledge of the uses of of steam above the knowledge and love God.

Rome or reason, Rome or liberty, is not the true formula of the tendencies
of the age; nor is it Catholicism or rationalism, but Catholicity or
naturalism. The extremes opposed to Catholicity are, on the one hand,
exclusive supernaturalism, or a supernaturalism that condemns and excludes
the activity of nature, and, on the other, exclusive naturalism, or a
naturalism that denies and excludes all communion between God and man, save
through natural laws, or laws impressed on nature by its Creator, and held
to bind both him and it. Your evangelicals are exclusive supernaturalists,
as were the great body of the Protestant reformers; Auguste Comte, J.
Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Mr. Parkman, and the Professor are exclusive
naturalists, who deny the reality of all facts or phenomena not explicable
by natural laws or natural causes. All the sciences, since Bacon, are
constructed on naturalistic principles, and theology, philosophy, or
metaphysics, which cannot be constructed without the recognition of the
supernatural, are rejected by our _savans_ as vain speculations or
idle theories without any basis in reality. They belong to the age of
ignorance and superstition, and will never be recognized in an age of light
and science. As the church clings to them, insists upon them, she is behind
the age, and they who adhere to her are to be tolerated and pitied as we
tolerate and pity idiots and the insane, unless, indeed, they are clothed
with more or less power; then, indeed, we must make war on them and
exterminate them.

Few who have studied this age with any care will question the fidelity of
this picture. The active living mind of this age unquestionably tends
either to this exclusive naturalism or to the Catholic Church, which is the
synthesis of the natural and the supernatural, of authority and freedom,
reason and faith, science and revelation. Protestantism, which is exclusive
supernaturalism, it is becoming pretty well understood, cannot be
sustained. It cannot be sustained by reason, for it rejects reason; it
cannot be sustained by authority, for in rejecting the church it has cast
off all authority, but that of the state, which has no competency in
spirituals. It has supported its dogmas, as far as it has supported them at
all, on Catholic tradition, the validity of which it denies. This cannot
last, for, where people are free to think and have the courage to reason
without let or hinderance from the state, they will not long consent to
affirm and deny tradition in one and the same breath. They will either fall
into the naturalistic ranks or be absorbed by the Catholic Church, and it
is useless to trouble ourselves with them as Protestants.

The naturalists or rationalists, by far the most numerous, and in most
Protestant or non-Catholic states already the governing body, are repelled
from the church by their supposition that all the substantial difference
between her and Jansenists or Calvinists is, that in the one case
super-naturalism is taught and explained by a living authority, claiming a
divine commission, and in the other it is not taught at all, but collected
by grammar and lexicon from a book said to have been written by divine
inspiration.
{726}
The Catholic theory is the more logical and more attractive of the two, but
both alike discard reason, and insist on the submission of the
understanding to an external authority, and it matters little whether the
authority is that of the church or of a book written many ages ago. In
either case the faith is proposed on authority, which assumes to command
the reason and to deprive the soul of her natural freedom. I am forbidden
to think and follow my own convictions, and must, on pain of everlasting
perdition, believe what others bid me, whether it accords with my own
reason or not. This, we take it, is the view entertained by the worthy
Professor, and the writer of this many years ago preached it, and counted
the Professor himself among his hearers, if not among his disciples. Now,
we need not, after the explanation we have given, say that this view is
altogether wrong. The Protestant asserts the supernatural in a sense that
excludes or supersedes nature, and, therefore, natural reason; the Catholic
adopts as his maxim, _Gratia supponit naturam_, and asserts the
supernatural as the complement of the natural, or as healing,
strengthening, and elevating it to the plane of the supernatural, or a
destiny far superior to any possible natural beatitude. This is in the
outset a very important difference, for, if grace supposes nature, the
supernatural the natural, the authority on which we are required to believe
the supernatural may aid, may strengthen, or illumine natural reason, but
cannot supersede it or deprive it of any of its natural activity and
freedom. The supernatural adds to the natural, according to Catholic faith,
but takes nothing from it. The prejudice excited by Protestantism against
the supernatural cannot bear against it as asserted by Catholicity.

But we would remind our naturalistic friends that nature does not suffice
for itself. It is impossible by nature alone to explain the origin or
existence of nature. The ancients tried to do it, but they failed. Some
attempted to do it by the fortuitous combination of eternally existing
atoms, others made the universe originate in fire, in water, in air or
earth, as some moderns try to develop it from a primitive rock or gas, or
suppose it originally existed in a liquid or a gaseous state, whence it has
grown into its present form. But whence the primitive rock or the gas?
whence the fire, water, air, or earth? whence the original germ? Naturalism
has no answer. We have a natural tendency, strong in proportion to the
strength and activity of our reason, to seek the origin, the principles,
the causes of things, but this tendency nature can not satisfy, because
nature has not her origin, principle, or cause in herself. For this reason
Mr. Herbert Spencer relegates origin and end, principles and causes, and
whatever pertains to them to the region of the unknowable, and maintains
that we can know only phenomena, and therefore that science consists simply
in observing, collecting, and classifying phenomena, not in the explication
of phenomena by reducing them to their principle and referring them to
their cause or causes.

We can know phenomena, but not noumena, is asserted by the reigning
doctrine among physicists, which is as complete a denial of reason as can
be found in any of the reformers. It reduces our intelligence to a level
with that of the brutes that perish, for what distinguishes our
intelligence from theirs is precisely reason, which is the faculty of
attaining to principles or causes--first causes and final causes--both in
the intellectual and the moral order, while brutes have intelligence only
of phenomena. Hence, philosophers, who define things _per genus et per
differentiam_, define man a rational animal, or animal plus reason.
{727}
To our physicists, like the Lyells and the Huxleys, or to such philosophers
as Mr. Stuart Mill, who knows not whether he is Mr. Stuart Mill or somebody
else, whether he is something or nothing, this amounts to very little; for
they, the physicists, we mean, are specially engaged in collecting facts to
prove that man is only a developed chimpanzee or gorilla, and that the
human intelligence differs only in degree from the brutish. But, then, what
right have they to complain that belief in the supernatural tends to
degrade human nature, to deprive reason of its dignity, and man of his
glory? Moreover, this restriction of our power of knowing to simple
phenomena, never satisfies reason, which would know not only phenomena, but
noumena, and not only noumena, but principles, causes, the principle of
principles and the cause of causes, the origin and end of all things, that
is, God, and God as he is in himself. You cannot, except by brutalizing men
to the last degree, suppress this interior craving of reason to penetrate
all mysteries, to explore all secrets, and to know all things, nor can you
by reason alone appease it. Do you propose to suppress nature, extinguish
reason, and call it promoting science, vindicating the dignity of man?

Reason can never be made to believe that all reality is confined to what
Mr. Herbert Spencer calls the knowable, and we the intelligible. There is
nothing of which reason is better or more firmly persuaded than that there
is more reality than she herself knows or can know. Reason asserts her own
limitations, and will never allow that she can know no more because there
is nothing more to be known. The intelligible does not satisfy her, because
in the intelligible alone she cannot find the explication of the
intelligible, or, in other words, she cannot understand the intelligible
without the superintelligible; for, though she cannot without divine
revelation grasp the superintelligible, she can know this much, that the
superintelligible is, and that in it the intelligible has its root, its
origin, cause, and explication. Here is a grave difficulty that every
exclusive rationalist encounters, and which is and can be removed only by
faith. Nature, reason; science alone never suffices for itself, as all our
savans know, for where their knowledge ends they invent hypotheses. It is
not that reason is a false or deceptive light, but that it is limited, and
we have not the attribute of omniscience any more than we have that of
omnipotence.

So is it with our craving for beatitude. Whether God could or could not
have so constituted man, without changing his nature as man, that he could
rest in a natural beatitude, that is, in a finite good, we shall not
attempt to decide; but this much we may safely assert, as the united
testimony of the sages and moralists of all ages and nations, and confirmed
by every one's own experience, that nothing finite, and whatever is natural
is finite, can satisfy man's innate desire for beatitude. "Man," says Dr.
Channing, "thirsts for an unbounded good." The sum of all experience on the
subject is given us by the wise king of Israel, "_Vanitas vanitatum, et
omnia vanitas_--Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." The eye is not
satisfied with seeing, the ear with hearing, nor the heart with knowing. We
turn away with loathing from the finite good as soon as possessed, and
which the moment before possession we felt would, if we had it, make us
happy. The soul spurns it, and cries out from the depths of her agony for
something that can fill up the void within her, and complete her happiness
by completing her being. We need not multiply words, for the fact is old,
and all the world knows it. Nature cannot satisfy nature, and the soul
looks, and must look beyond it, for her beatitude. So much is certain.

Hence it is that men in all ages and nations have never been able to
satisfy either their reason or their craving for happiness with nature
alone, and have, in some form, recognized a supernatural order, or a
reality of some sort above and beyond nature, whence comes nature herself.
{728}
Neither atheism, or the resolution of God into natural laws or forces, nor
pantheism, or the absorption of natural laws or forces into the Divine
Being itself, has ever been able to satisfy the man of a real philosophic
or scientific genius, because either is sophistical and self-contradictory.
Either is repugnant to the natural logic of the human understanding or the
inherent laws of thought. Even such naturalists as Agassiz and our Dr.
Draper find it necessary to recognize in some sense a Supreme Being or God,
although, for the most part, like the old Epicureans, they leave him idle,
with little or nothing to do. But God, if he exists at all, must be
supernatural, and the author of nature. If God is supernatural and the
creator of nature, he must have created nature for himself, and then nature
must have its origin and end in him, and therefore in the supernatural.
Man, then, has neither his origin nor end in the natural, and neither
without the supernatural is explicable or knowable; without a knowledge of
our origin and end, or an answer to the questions, whence came we? why are
we, and how? and whither go we? we can have no rule of life, cannot
determine the positive or the relative value of any line of conduct, and
must commit ourselves to the mercy of the winds and waves of an unknown
sea, without pilot, chart, rudder, or compass.

Nor is even this enough. Not only is the natural inexplicable without the
supernatural, but even the intelligible, too, is not intelligible without
the superintelligible, as we have already said. We know things, indeed, not
mere phenomena, but we do not know the essences of things, and yet we know
that there is and can be nothing without its essence, and that the ground
and root of what is intelligible in a thing is in its unknown and
superintelligible essence. So in the universe throughout. God, as creator,
as universal, eternal, necessary, immutable, and self-existent being, is
intelligible to us, and the light by which all that is intelligible to us
is intelligible; but we know that what is intelligible to us is not God in
his essence, and that what in him is intelligible to us has its source, its
reality, so to speak, in this very superintelligible essence. Hence it
follows that to real science of anything we need to know the supernatural,
and by faith, or analogical science, at least, the superintelligible. We
cannot satisfy nature without the science and possession of the essences or
substances of things, and therefore not without faith, "for faith is the
substance of things to be hoped for," the evidence of things not seen.
_Fides est rerum substantia sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium_,
according to St. Paul, who, even they who deny his inspiration, must yet
admit was the profoundest philosopher that ever wrote. We think he was so
because divinely inspired, but the fact that he was so no competent judge
can dispute. St. Augustine owes his immense superiority over Plato and
Aristotle chiefly to his assiduous study of the epistles of St. Paul, which
throw so strong a light not only on the whole volume of Scripture, but on
the whole order of creation, and the divine purpose in the creation and the
redemption, regeneration, justification, and glorification of man through
the incarnation of the Word, and the cross and passion of our Lord Jesus
Christ.

But as we can know even by faith the superintelligible, the unknowable of
Mr. Herbert Spencer, which even he dares not assert is unreal or
non-existent, only by divine or supernatural revelation, it follows, that
without such revelation, no science satisfactory to natural reason herself
is possible. There is, then, and can be no antagonism between revelation
and science, faith and reason, or supernatural and natural. The two are but
parts of one whole, each the complement of the other. This dialectic
relation of the two terms asserted by Catholic theology is denied by
Protestant theology either to the exclusion of nature and reason, or to the
exclusion of both the supernatural and the superintelligible, and hence the
dualism which rends in twain the whole non-Catholic world, and presents
revelation and science, reason and faith, authority and liberty, natural
and supernatural, church and state, heaven and earth, time and eternity,
God and man, as mutually hostile terms, forever irreconcilable.
{729}
The non-Catholic world does not know or it forgets that the church presents
the middle term that unites and reconciles them, and that the Catholic
feels nothing of this interior struggle of two mutually destructive forces
which rends the hearts and souls of the wisest of non-Catholics, not
because he does not think or has abdicated reason, as the Professor
imagines, but precisely because he does think, and thinks according to the
truth and reality of things. He has unquestionably his struggles between
the flesh and the spirit, between virtue and vice, between temptations to
sin and inspirations to holiness, but presents in his life none of those
fearful internal tragedies so frequently enacted among serious and earnest
non-Catholics, and which make up so large and so distressing a portion of
the higher and more truthful portion of non-Catholic literature.
Non-Catholic poetry, when not a song to Venus or Bacchus, is either a
fanciful description of external nature, scenes, and events, or a low wail
or a loud lament over the internal tragedies caused by the struggle between
faith and reason, belief and doubt, hope and despair, or vainly to
penetrate the mysteries of life and death, God and the universe. Catholic
poetry, Catholic literature throughout, knows nothing of those tragedies,
is peaceful and serene, and is therefore less interesting to those who are
not Catholics. We have (we speak personally) had some experience of those
interior struggles, and many a tragedy has been enacted in our own soul,
but it is with difficulty we can recall them; in the peace and serenity of
Catholic faith and hope they have almost faded from the memory, and yet the
period of our life since we became a Catholic has been with us the period
of our freest and most active and energetic thought. If we have worn
chains, we have not been conscious of them, and they certainly cannot have
been very heavy, or have eaten very deeply into the flesh. The reason of it
is that we find in Catholic faith and theology the two elements which in
the non-Catholic world are in perpetual war with each other, perfectly
reconciled, and mutually harmonized.

The peace the Catholic finds is not the sort of peace that was said to
reign in Warsaw. The Professor is greatly mistaken if he supposes it is
obtained by the suppression of reason, or that reason is forgotten in the
engrossing nature or artistic perfection of the external services of the
church. The offices of the church are beautiful, grand, and, if you will,
imposing, but they are all provocative of thought, meditation, reflection,
for they all symbolize the greatest of all mysteries--God dying for the
creature's sin, God become man, that man may become God. Take away this
great mystery, and the offices of the church become meaningless,
purposeless, powerless. Without faith in that mystery to which they all
refer, and which they at every instant recall, they would be no more
imposing than the pomp and music of a military review or a concert in
Central Park. From first to last they challenge our faith, and, if there
were any discrepancy between our faith and reason, they would in a
thoughtful mind bring it up in distinct consciousness, instead of
suppressing or making us forget it. A Lord John Russell could call the
sublime services of the church "mummery," and such do the mass of
Protestants regard them. To the profane all things are profane, and the
offices of the church are really edifying only to those who believe the
mystery of the Incarnation. Unbelievers who are not scoffers may admire
their poetry and the music which accompanies them, but would admire equal
poetry and music in the theatre just as much, and perhaps even more.

{730}

No; the peace of the Catholic is a real peace. Neither faith nor reason,
revelation nor science, authority nor liberty is suppressed; but all real
antagonism between them is removed, and they are seen and felt to be but
congruous parts of one dialectic whole. Peace reigns because the mutually
hostile parties are really reconciled, and made one. The Professor, no
doubt, will smile at our assertion, and set it down to our simplicity or
enthusiasm, but we have this advantage of him, that we know both sides, and
taught or might have taught him more than thirty years ago the philosophy
he brings out so racily at the breakfast table.

Our nature was constructed by the supernatural for the supernatural, and it
can no more live its normal life without a supernatural medium than it
could have sprung into existence without a cause above and independent of
itself. Regeneration is, therefore, as necessary to enable it to attain its
destiny or beatitude as generation was to usher it into natural existence.
Hence it is that, when men cast off in their belief and affections the
supernatural, and live as natural men alone, they sink even below their
normal nature, and lose even their natural light and strength, live only a
life which the Scriptures call death, the death which Adam underwent in
consequence of his disobedience to the divine order. When men undertake by
their simple natural reason to construct a system of philosophy, they
construct systems which natural reason herself rejects. Reason disdains her
own work, and hence pure rationalists never construct anything that will
stand, and they build up systems only to be demolished by themselves or
successors. Of the systems in vogue in our youth not one is now standing,
and we have seen them replaced by two or three new generations of systems
that have each in turn gone the way of all the earth; and, unless we
speedily follow them, we may be called to write the epitaphs of those now
revelling in the heyday of their young life. The thing is inevitable,
because our nature was made to act in synthesis with the supernatural, and
is only partially itself when compelled to operate by itself alone.

This fact that man's normal life demands the supernatural, and that his own
reason, though not able to know the superintelligible, or to say what it
is, yet assures him that there is a superintelligible, fits him by nature
to receive the supernatural revelation of the superintelligible; for it
only supplies an indestructible and deeply felt want of his nature. His
reason needs it and his nature craves it, and when receiving it relishes it
as the hungry man does wholesome and appropriate food. As the natural and
supernatural, the intelligible and superintelligible, are not contradictory
or mutually repellant orders, but parts of one complete and indissoluble
whole, only ordinary evidence is required to prove the fact of revelation;
and as God is infinitely true, truth itself, his word, when we know that we
have it, is ample authority, the highest possible, and the best of all
conceivable reasons, for believing the revelation. So faith in a
supernatural revelation, in whatever is proved to be the word of God, is,
so far from being repugnant to reason or requiring an abdication of reason,
the highest and freest act of reason possible.

The Professor objects to believing on the authority of the church, but we
do not believe the revelation on the authority of the church; we take on
her authority only the fact that it is divine revelation; the revelation
itself we believe on the veracity of God. But, if we considered the church
as a mere body, collection, or company of men, however wise, learned, or
honest we might regard them, we should not hold her authority sufficient
for believing that what she proposes as the revelation really is
revelation. Every man taken individually is fallible, and no possible
number, union, or combination of fallibles can make an infallible, and only
an infallible authority is competent to declare what God has or has not
revealed. The church is more than a collection, body, or company of
individuals, as the human race, what our liberals call humanity, is more
than an aggregation of individuals.
{731}
There is, indeed, no humanity without individuals, but it is not itself
individual, or dependent on individuals for its existence. The positivists,
who would call no individual man divine, pretend that humanity is divine,
and worship it as God. What the race is to individual men in the order of
generation, that, in some sense, is the church to them in the order of
regeneration. She lives not without them, but does not live by them. She is
the regenerated race, and bears to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, who
was with God and who is God, the relation, in the order of regeneration,
that the human race bears to Adam, its natural progenitor, and therefore
she lives a divine and human life, which she receives not from her members,
but imparts to them. Jesus Christ is the progenitor of regenerated
humanity, and this regenerated humanity is in the largest sense what we
call the church, in which sense it includes all the faithful, the laity as
well as their pastors and teachers.

The church, again, is the body of our Lord, in which dwelleth the Holy
Ghost. Individuals are to her what the particles which the body assimilates
are to the body. There is no body without them, yet they are not,
individually or collectively, the body. The life of the body is not derived
from them, for the body, by a vital process, assimilates them to itself,
not they the body to themselves. The body, when suffering from a fever or
when deprived of food, assimilates them only feebly, and wastes away or
grows thin, and, when dead, assimilates them not at all, which shows that
the vital power which carries on the process of assimilation is in the
body, not in the particles, a fact far better known to the Professor than
to us, and a fact, too, which may help remove the difficulties sciolists
imagine in the way of the resurrection of the body.

The vital power or principle which gives life to the body and enables it to
carry on the process of assimilation and elimination, the church teaches,
is the soul, for she has defined that the soul is the _form_ of the
body, _Anima est forma oorporis_. But this has nothing to do with our
present purpose. The vital principle, the life of the church, is our Lord
Jesus Christ himself. The Holy Ghost dwells in her as the soul in the body,
animates her, guides and directs her, and therefore is she one, holy and
Catholic, as he is one, holy and Catholic, infallible by his perpetual
presence and assistance as he is infallible. The Word incarnate explicates
his life in her as Adam explicates his life in the race. The infallibility
is from the presence and assistance of the Holy Ghost, and is in her very
interior life. The Word is in her, a living Word, and the infallibility
attaches to her, to this interior Word which she lives, but not to
individuals as such in her communion. The pope regarded as a man,
irrespective of his office, is no more infallible than he is impeccable, or
than is any Christian believer.

But the church as a body has her organs, and as a visible body she has
visible organs, through which she teaches the truth she has received and
expresses the life she lives. These organs are the bishops or pastors in
communion with their visible head, the successor in the See of Rome of
Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. We call them organs of the
church, inasmuch as the faith and love, the truth and life, they express is
her life, which in turn is the life of him who said, "Because I live ye
shall live also," and, "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the
consummation of the world!" and who expressly declares himself "the way,
the truth, and the life." The infallibility of the church comes from the
indwelling Word and the assistance of the Holy Ghost; the infallibility of
the organs comes from the infallibility of the church.

{732}

Now, supposing the church to be what we represent her to be, we presume
even the Professor will acknowledge her to be fully competent to teach
without error the revelation supernaturally made and committed to her, for
the revelation committed to her is deposited externally with her bishops
and pastors, and internally in her living and unfailing faith, in her very
life and interior consciousness. It is both a recorded and a present living
revelation, which she is living and explicating in her continuous activity,
the Word spoken from the beginning, and the Word speaking now. "Say not,"
says St. Paul, (Rom. x. 6-8,) "in thy heart: Who shall ascend into heaven?
that is, to bring Christ down: or who shall descend into the deep? that is,
to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what saith the Scripture? The
word is near thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: this is the word of
faith, which we preach." This was addressed by St. Paul to Christian
believers, "to all that are at Rome, the beloved of God, called to be
saints," and shows that the Christian not only hears the word in his ears,
but has it in his mouth, in his heart, that is, in his very life, and he
lives and breathes it. It is the very element of his soul, and he can have
no higher certainty, not even in case of a mathematical demonstration, than
he has that his faith is true, and that it is the living God he believes.
The Professor, then, in regard to the faithful, has no ground for asserting
as he does an antithesis between "Rome and reason, the sovereign church and
the free soul, God in our masters and God in us;" for Rome is the highest
reason, the sovereign church is both external and internal, and God is both
in us and in our teachers. We have not only the veracity of God as the
ground of our faith, but a divinely constituted and assisted medium of
bringing us to it, and sustaining it in us.

The church undoubtedly teaches the faith or divine revelation which has
been committed to her through her pastors and doctors. But the competency
of these to teach follows from the fact that they can teach only in union
with the church; that she authorizes their teaching, and is ever present to
correct them if they err, and that they are even externally commissioned by
our Lord himself to teach what he has revealed. A mere external commission,
which we know historically was given to the apostles and their successors,
would not of itself give the capacity to teach or ensure infallibility in
teaching; but he who has all power in heaven and in earth, who is God as
well as man, and is himself "the way, the truth, and the life," assuredly
would not, and could not, without belying his essential and immutable
nature, issue a commission to teach and command all nations to hear and
obey them as himself, without taking care that they should have the ability
to teach his word and to teach it infallibly. That he does this is pledged
in the very issue and in the words of the commission itself: "All power is
given to me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all
nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you; and, behold, _I am with you_ all days, even to the
consummation of the world." (St. Matt xxviii. 18-20.)

This external commission is all that needs to be proved by external
evidence to the world outside of the church, and there is no more intrinsic
difficulty in proving it than there is in proving the commission of George
Washington as general of the American army in the Revolution, of Lord
Raglan as commander-in-chief to the day of his death of the British forces
employed in the Crimean war, or any other historical fact whatever. The
unbroken existence of the church founded by the apostles from their day to
ours, and the uniform testimony she has universally and uninterruptedly
borne to the fact, would suffice to prove it, even had we no other proofs
or evidence. The church, without citing her in her supernatural character,
and taking her simply as an historical witness, is all that is needed, for
she is a standing monument of the fact.
{733}
In her corporate capacity she spans the whole distance of time from the
apostles, and at each intervening moment she has been a present witness of
the fact, testifying to what was present before her. The church as a
corporation, without any appeal to her mystic character, has not been
subject to any succession of time, has known no lapse of years, and is as
present today to the events of the apostolic times as she was when those
events occurred. She is at any moment we choose their contemporary, and, as
a contemporary witness to extraordinary facts, her testimony is as good for
us as was that of the apostles themselves to their personal contemporaries.
Indeed, it is literally and truly the same, for her corporate existence
from the time of the apostles to ours, or her historical identity, is
unquestionable.

We are not now citing the continuous existence of the church for anything
but the simple external fact of the external commission given by our Lord
himself to his apostles. To that fact, whatever you think of her, she is a
competent witness, and, having constantly testified to it from that day to
this, her testimony is conclusive. Assume, then, the fact of the external
commission, to which we who are Catholics need no external testimony, since
we find the highest of all possible testimony in the internal life of the
church, all the rest follows of itself. What the church believes, and
teaches through her pastors and doctors, or what they in unison with her
and her faith teach as the revelation of God committed to her, is his
revelation, and we believe it because we believe him. Then we believe she
is what she professes to be, the living body of our Lord, who lives in her
and is her life, and through whom the Holy Ghost carries on the work of
regeneration and glorification of all souls that do not resist him, but by
his assistance coöperate with him.

Now, where in all this, from the first to the last, find you any
discrepancy between Rome and Reason, the sovereign church and the free
soul, between God in us and God in our masters? There is no discrepancy.
There is more in it than natural reason by her own light knows, but nothing
against reason, or which reason does not feel that she needs for own full
and normal development. There is in it more than there is in nature,
because our destiny, our end, that is, our supreme good, like our origin,
lies in the supernatural order, not the natural, for our nature can be
satisfied with no finite or created good, and it needs no argument to prove
that the natural is not capable of itself of attaining to the supernatural.
To assert the supernatural as the means of elevating nature to the plane of
a supernatural destiny and of enabling it to reach it, assuredly is not to
discard or to depress nature.

The difficulties which exclusive rationalists and naturalists feel in the
case grow out of their supposition that Rome teaches that the intelligible
and superintelligible are identical with the natural and supernatural, and
that the natural and supernatural are two separate worlds, each standing
opposed to the other, or two contradictory plans or systems, with no real
nexus or medium of reconciliation between them, that is, that Rome, saving
her authority to teach and govern, teaches Protestantism. The intelligible
and superintelligible are distinguishable only in relation to our limited
intelligence, but in the real order are identical, one and the same, and
would be seen to be so by an intelligence capable of taking in all reality
at one view. The natural and supernatural are distinguishable, but not
separable, any more than is the effect from the cause. They are simply
distinct parts of one complete system, or one dialectic whole, united as
well as distinguished by the creative act of God. They are expressed, in
the Christian or teleological order, by the terms generation and
regeneration. Man is created by the supernatural, but the race is
explicated in the order of generation by natural laws; in the order of
regeneration, by the election of grace. Generation is initial; regeneration
is teleological, and completes generation, or places man on the plane of
his end, as generation places the individual on the plane of his natural
existence.

{734}

Now, it is clear that without generation there can be no regeneration, as
without regeneration the end is not attainable. The two terms express two
processes, or the two itineraries of creation--the procession of existences
from God as First Cause by way of creation and their explication by natural
laws, and the return of existences by means of supernatural grace to God,
without absorption in him, as their end or Final Cause. The natural order
or generation, the order explicated by natural laws, proceeds from and is
sustained by the supernatural, for God is supernatural, since he is the
author of nature; the end, or the final cause, is supernatural, since it is
in God; the medium of return, then, must be also supernatural, since the
natural is not and cannot be adequate to a supernatural end. Evidently,
then, there is and can be no opposition between the natural and
supernatural but the opposition between the cause and effect, the medium
and the end, the part and the whole. The supernatural is necessary to
originate, sustain, and complete the natural. Hence, the difficulties
created or suggested by Protestant theology have no place in relation to
the teachings of Rome. Protestantism escapes an eternal war only by
supposing either the natural or the supernatural; Rome escapes it by
reconciling the two, or presenting in the real order the medium of their
union.

We may now dispose of the question of miracles and supernatural visions,
etc., which excite the disdain or contempt of Mr. Parkman and his class of
thinkers or no-thinkers. Man exists from, by, and for the supernatural.
Christianity is supernatural, and is the medium, and the necessary medium,
by which man attains his end, or supreme good. It is teleological, and
hence the whole teleological life of man is supernatural. The supernatural
is that which God does immediately by himself; the natural is that which he
does mediately through the action of second causes or so-called natural
laws, as generation, germination, growth, etc., which are in the secondary
order explicable by natural or created causes. Now, as the supernatural is
the origin, medium, and end of man, and as Christianity or the teleological
order unites dialectically--really unites, as God and man are really united
in the Incarnation--the natural and supernatural, there is and can be no
_à priori_ difficulty or antecedent improbability that God, in
preparing the introduction in time of the Christian order, and in carrying
it on to the end for which he creates it, should intervene more or less
frequently by his direct and immediate action--action upon nature, if you
will, but without the agency of natural causes. The whole Christian order,
on its divine side, though included in the original plan or decree of
creation, is an intervention of this sort. Grace is the direct action of
God the Holy Ghost in regenerating the human soul, elevating it to the
plane of its destiny, and enabling it to persevere to the end. The part
assigned to natural agents is ministerial only, or signs through which
grace is signified. The direct and immediate action of God is normal in the
order of Christianity, and, therefore, in no sense repugnant to the order
of nature.

What, then, is a miracle? It is not a violation or suspension of the laws
of nature, but a specific effect in the visible order produced by the
direct and immediate action of God, for some purpose connected with the
teleological order of creation, or the order of regeneration as
distinguished from the order of generation. That he should do so from time
to time, as seems to him good, is only in analogy with the very order he
sustains for the perfection or completion of creation. There are, then, no
_à priori_ objections to miracles. Hume's pretence that no testimony
can prove a miracle, for it is more probable that men will lie than it is
that nature will go out of her course, is of no weight, because nature does
not work a miracle, nor does it in a miracle go out of its course.
{735}
The miracle is worked by God himself, and is in the teleological order of
nature. Being wrought in the visible order, a miracle is as probable and as
provable as any other historical event. The only questions are, is the
event not explicable by natural causes? and are the proofs sufficient to
prove it as an historical fact? No more evidence is needed to prove it than
is required to prove any historical fact in the natural order itself. If a
real miracle, it is as easily proven as a natural event.

No doubt many things pass for miracles which are explicable by natural
causes, and many visions are taken to be supernatural which have nothing
supernatural about them. We do not hold ourselves bound by our Catholic
faith to believe all the marvellous occurrences recorded in the lives of
the saints, or treated as such in popular tradition, were really miracles,
wrought by the direct and immediate action of the Almighty. We are bound to
believe only according to the evidence in each particular case. Credulity
is as little the characteristic of Catholics as is scepticism itself. We
are in relation to alleged particular miracles as free to exercise our
reason and judgment as we are in regard to any other class of alleged
historical facts, and to sift and weigh the testimony in the case. That
miracles are possible, are not improbable, have never ceased in the church,
and are daily wrought among the faithful, we fully believe; but, when it
comes to this or that particular fact or event alleged to be a miracle, we
exercise to the full our critical judgment, and follow what seems to us the
weight of evidence. The alleged appearance of our Lady to the young
shepherds of La Salette is possible and not improbable, but before we can
be required to believe it we must have sufficient evidence of the fact.

Mr. Parkman in his quiet way smiles at the credulity of the good Jesuit
fathers, who seem to believe the stories of Indian magic, witchcraft, or
sorcery which they relate; but has he any evidence that there is no Satan,
and that evil spirits are mere _entia rationis?_ Can he prove that
magic, witchcraft, sorcery, _diablerie_, in any or all its forms, is
impossible or even improbable? All the world from the earliest and in the
most enlightened ages have believed in what the Germans call the Night-side
of Nature, and no man has any right to allege so universal a belief is
unfounded, except on very strong and convincing reasons. Has he such
reasons? Can he disprove the whole series of facts recorded? Can he deny
the facts alleged by our modern necromancers or spiritists, or prove not
that some of them are, but that all of them, are explicable without the
supposition of some superhuman agency? Doubtless there is much illusion,
delusion, cheatery, but is there not also much inexplicable without satanic
influence? Can he say that there is no Satan, that there are no fallen
creatures superior to man in strength and intellect, who harass him, beset
him, possess him, or that tempt him, and perform lying wonders well fitted
to deceive him, and to draw him away from the worship of the true God,
though, of course, unable to harm against the consent of his will? Their
deviltry is superhuman, but not by any means supernatural, and they who
speak of it as supernatural entirely mistake its character. As in the case
of miracles, while we concede the general principle, when we come to
particular facts attributed to satanic agency, we use our critical
judgment, and are, we confess, very slow to believe, and hard to be
convinced.

We think we have said enough to prove that it is time to leave off the cant
about the despotism of Rome, and to desist from placing the church in
contrast with the free soul. The two poles are rationalism and
supernaturalism; Catholicity combines both in their real synthesis, a
synthesis founded in the creative act of God which really connects creator
and creature in one harmonious whole.
{736}
They who do not perceive it are ignorant of the teachings of Rome, and are
mere sciolists. They have taken only superficial views of both reason and
religion, and have far more reason to deplore their lack of light than to
boast of their intelligence. There is infinitely more in this old church
than is dreamed of in their philosophy.

Yet nobody pretends that the church teaches the details of science, and
leaves nothing for the human intellect to observe, to investigate, to
arrange, and classify. The church is Catholic, because she teaches in her
doctrine, whether known by natural reason or only by divine revelation, the
universal ideal, or the Catholic principles of all the real and all the
knowable; but she does not teach all the details of cosmology, history,
chemistry, mechanics, geography, astronomy, geology, zoology, physiology,
pathology, philology, or anthropology. She teaches the ideal or general
principles of all the sciences, and teaches them infallibly, and thus gives
the law to all scientific investigation, which _savans_ in their
inductions and deductions are not at liberty to transgress. Our
philosophers and _savans_ are perfectly free to explore nature in all
possible directions, but they are not free to invent hypotheses and
theories not reconcilable with the universal principles she teaches, or to
oppose their conjectures to the principles she asserts, because all such
conjectures or theories are unscientific and false. The ethnologist is free
to investigate the characteristics of the different races and families of
men, but not free to deny the unity of the human race itself, or the
descent of all men from one and the same primitive pair, who must have been
immediately created and instructed by God himself. But this is saying no
more than that the mathematician is not free to reject his axioms, or the
geometrician his definitions; and we may add that, if our scientific men
would take the principles the church teaches as their guide, they would
find themselves much more successful in their observation and
classification of natural phenomena, and save themselves from the ridicule
which they now incur.

It follows from this that the sciences are not absolutely independent of
the supervision of the church, and that she goes not out of her province
when she censures officially theories, hypotheses, and conjectures which
contradict the ideal truth committed to her charge. They by contradicting
her principles are proved to be unsound and unscientific. But so long as
the scientific confine themselves to facts and real principles, and do not
run or attempt to run athwart the truth, they are perfectly free. The
church interferes with them only when they impugn by their speculations the
universal principles of things. The people, again, are free to adopt the
form of government which they judge best, and civil governments are free to
pursue the policy they judge the wisest and most prudent, so long as they
contravene no principle or dictate of moral justice; and the individual is
free to choose the calling in life he prefers, and to pursue it without let
or hinderance from the church, so long as he violates no divine precept or
law of God.

There is no doubt some restraint here, for the church excludes neither
authority nor liberty. Liberty without authority is license, and as great
an evil as authority without liberty, which is tyranny or despotism. The
scientific, if truly scientific, study to know reality, the real and
unmixed truth, which is alike independent of her and of them, and they can
obtain it only by conforming to the immutable principles of things,
according to which God has created and governs the universe. The church
approves and encourages free thought and free inquiry, but she certainly
does not permit her children, under pretence of free thought, free inquiry,
or of science, to subvert the very principles on which all science, even
thought itself, depends, or to degrade human nature and abase the dignity
of reason by theories that deprive man of his humanity and rank him with
the beasts that perish.
{737}
Such liberty is repugnant to the very essence of science, and cannot be
entertained for a moment by any one who is anything more than a developed
chimpanzee or gorilla. It is license, not liberty, and introduces only
intellectual anarchy.

There is, too, a moral order in the universe, and the good of the
individual and society can be secured only by conformity to it. No man, no
nation, no society, no government has or can have the right to do wrong.
The rejection of the restraints of the great fundamental principles of
truth in science and the sciences, and of justice in the individual and in
society, is the greatest of evils, and it is therefore that the church has
it for her office to unite in an indissoluble synthesis both liberty and
authority. To make the fact that she unites authority with liberty, and
tempers each with the other, a ground of reproach against her is no proof
of wisdom. She allows man all the liberty God gives him, and to ask for
more is absurd.

In teaching the great principles of truth in all orders, and in judging of
their explication and application, the church is infallible, but she is not
infallible in the details of science. She is infallible in teaching
whatever our Lord has commanded her, has revealed to her, and is realizing
in her life, but not necessarily in matters not included in the faith. Her
infallibility does not imply the scientific infallibility of all Catholics.
It is no objection to her and no embarrassment to Catholics, that her
children in the details of science have more or less erred. Others may be
as well acquainted with these details as Catholics, and the scientific
superiority of Catholics is in their knowledge of the great scientific
principles, or what in science is ideal and catholic. Others may know the
facts of history as well, but none can so well know the ideas or principles
which govern the historical development of the race, and the science or
philosophy of history. The same may be said of all the other sciences.

To fully develop and exhaust the great question we have touched upon in
this article would require a volume, indeed many volumes. We have aimed
rather at giving the principles and method of their solution than at giving
the solution itself. We have left much for the reader to do for himself by
his own thought and study. It is as necessary that readers should think
freely and wisely as that authors should, for mind can speak only to mind.
But we trust that we have said enough to vindicate Rome from the charges
preferred against her, and to prove that they who take pleasure in reviling
her or her faithful children have little reason to boast of their
intelligence or to claim to be the more advanced portion of the race.

------

{738}

  Impressions of Spain.

  By Lady Herbert.


The journey to Madrid was uneventful. One more day was spent in Cordova;
once more they visited that glorious mosque; one more day and night was
spent in wearisome diligences and stifling wayside stations, and then they
found themselves again established in their old comfortable quarters at the
"Puerta del Sol."

It was a relief to think that the "lions" of the place had been more or
less visited, and that all they had to do was to return to the places of
previous interest, and thoroughly enjoy them. The cold during their former
visit had precluded their making any expeditions in the neighborhood, which
omission they now prepared to rectify. Spending the first few days in
seeing their old friends, and obtaining letters of introduction from them,
our travellers resolved that their first excursion should be to the
Escurial.


  The Escurial and Toledo.

A railroad is now open from Madrid which passes by the palace; so at
half-past six, one morning, they took their places in the train, which soon
carried them away from the cultivated environs of the city to a country
which, for desolation, wildness, and grandeur, resembles the scenery at
Nicolosi in the ascent of Etna. In the midst of this rugged mass of rocks
and scrubby oak-trees, the large gloomy Escurial rises up, under the
shadow, as it were, of the snowy jagged peaks of the Sierra Guadarama,
which forms its background. There is a picture of it, by Rubens, in the
gallery at Longford Castle, near Salisbury, which gives the best possible
idea of the complete isolation of the great building itself, and of the
savage character of the whole of the surrounding country.

Leaving the train, our party went to present their letters to the
principal, Padre G----, who very kindly showed them everything most worth
seeing in the place. It is a gigantic pile of masonry, built by Philip II.
as a thanksgiving for the success of the battle of St. Quentin, and in the
shape of a grid-iron, being dedicated to St. Laurence, on the day of whose
martyrdom the vow was made. "Celui qui faisait un si grand voeu doit avoir
eu grande peur!" was the saying of the Duke of Braganza; and the gloomy,
cold, gray character of the whole place is but the reflex of the king's
temperament. He employed the famous architect Herrera, whose genius was,
however, much cramped by the king's insistence on the shape being
maintained. It was finished in 1584.

The Jeronimite monks have been scattered to the winds, and the convent has
been turned into a college; they have about 250 students. The church is
large and solemn, but bare and uninviting, dismal and sombre, like all the
rest. The choir is up-stairs, with fine carved stalls, among which is that
of Philip II., who always said office with the monks. The painted ceiling
is by Luca Giordano. The choir-books are more than 200 in number, in virgin
calf, and of gigantic size; some of them are beautifully illuminated. At
the back, in a small gallery, with a window looking on the great piazza
below, is the famous white marble Christ, the size of life, by Benvenuto
Cellini, given to Philip II. by the Grand Duke of Florence. On certain days
it is exposed to the people from the window; but wonderful as may be its
anatomy, the expression is both painful and commonplace. Beneath the church
is the famous crypt containing the bodies of all the kings and queens of
Spain since Charles V., arranged in niches round the octagonal chapel.
{739}
Each niche contains a black marble sarcophagus; the kings on the right, and
the queens on the left. Here mass is always said on All Souls' Day, and on
the anniversaries of their deaths. The present queen came once, and looked
at the empty urn waiting for her, but did not repeat the experiment. "I
have come once of my own freewill," she is supposed to have said, "but the
next time I shall be brought here without it." It is a dismal
resting-place; the damp, cold, slippery stairs by which you descend into it
from the church seem to chill one's very blood, and the profound darkness,
only lit up here and there by the flicker of the guide's torch, with the
reverberation caused by the closing of the heavy iron door, till the
thoughts with visions of death, uncheered by hope, and of a prison rather
than a grave. Ascending with a feeling of positive relief to the church
above, Padre G---- took them into the sacristy, which is a beautiful long,
low room, with arabesque ceilings, and at the further end of which is a
very fine picture by Coello, representing the apotheosis of the "Forma," or
miraculous wafer: the heads are all portraits, and admirably executed. At
the back is the little chapel or sanctuary where the "Forma" is kept and
exhibited twice a year. Charles II. erected the gorgeous altar with the
following inscription:

  En magni operis miraculum intra miraculum mundi,
  coeli miraculum consecratum.

The legend states that at the battle of Gorcum, in 1525, the Zuinglian
heretics scattered and trampled on the Sacred Host, _which bled_; and
being gathered up and carefully preserved by the faithful, was afterward
given by Rudolph II. to Philip II., which event is represented in a
bas-relief. In this sacristy are also some vestments of which the
embroidery is the most exquisite thing possible; the faces of the figures
are like beautiful miniatures, so that it is difficult to believe they are
done in needlework. [Footnote 248]

    [Footnote 248: In the Dominican convent of Stone, in Staffordshire, the
    same exquisite work is now being reproduced; which proves that the art
    is not, as is generally supposed, extinct.]

But the great treasures of this church are its relics, of which the
quantity is enormous. They are arranged in gigantic cupboards or
"étagères," stretching from the floor to the ceiling, the doors of which
are carefully concealed by the pictures which hang over them, above both
the high altar and the two side altars at the east end. There are more than
7,000 relics, of which the most interesting are those of St. Laurence
himself, (his skull, his winding-sheet, the iron bars of his gridiron,
etc..) the head of St. Hermengilde, sent to the king from Seville, and the
arm and head of St. Agatha. The reliquaries are also very beautiful, some
of them of very fine cinquecento work. These are down-stairs. Up-stairs is
a kind of secret chapel, where there are some things which were still more
interesting to our travellers. Here are four MS. books of St. Theresa's,
all written by her own hand; her Life, written by command of her confessor.
Padre Bánez, with a voucher of its authenticity from him at the end; her
Path of Perfection; her Constitutions and Foundations; also her inkstand
and pen. Her handwriting is more like a man's than a woman's, and is
beautifully clear and firm. There is also a veil worked in a kind of
crochet by St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and sent by her to St. Margaret; a
beautiful illuminated Greek missal, once belonging to St. Chrysostom; a pot
from Cana in Galilee; a beautifully carved ivory diptych; the body of one
of the Holy Innocents, sent from Bethlehem; some exquisite ivory and coral
reliquaries, etc. From the church our party went up by a magnificent
staircase to the library, which though despoiled, like everything else
during the French invasion, still contains some invaluable books and MSS.
{740}
There is an illuminated Apocalypse of the fourteenth century, most
exquisitely painted on both sides; a very fine copy of the Koran; many
other beautiful missals; and in a room down-stairs, not generally shown to
travellers, are some thousands of manuscripts, among which are a wonderful
illuminated copy of the Miracles of the Virgin, in Portuguese and Gallego,
of the eleventh century, most quaint and funny in design and execution;
also a very curious illuminated book of chess problems and other games,
written by order of the king Alonso el Sabio. It is a library where one
might spend days and days with ever-increasing pleasure, if it were not for
the cold, which, to our travellers, fresh from the burning sun of Seville,
seemed almost unendurable. The cloisters, refectory, and kitchens are all
on the most magnificent scale. In the wing set aside for the private
apartments of the royal family, but which they now rarely occupy, the thing
most worth looking at is the tapestry, made in Madrid, at the Barbara
factory, (now closed,) from drawings by Teniers and Goya. They are quite
like beautiful paintings, both in expression and color, though some of the
subjects and scenes are of questionable propriety. There is a suite of
small rooms with beautiful inlaid doors and furniture; a few good pictures,
(among a good deal of rubbish,) especially one of Bosch, known as that of
The Dog and the Fly; and a very interesting gallery or corridor, covered
with frescoes, representing the taking of Granada on the one side and the
battle of St. Quentin on the other, the victory of Lepanto occupying the
spaces at the two ends. These frescoes are very valuable, both as portraits
and as representing the costumes and arms of the period. They were said to
be facsimile copies of original drawings, done on cloths on the actual
spots. That of St. Quentin was specially interesting to one of the party,
whose ancestor fought there, and in whose house in England (Wilton Abbey)
is still shown the armor of Ann Conétable de Montmorency, of the Duc de
Montpensier, of Admiral Coligni, and of other French prisoners taken by him
in that memorable battle. Beyond this gallery is the little business-room
or study of Philip II., with his chair, his gouty stool, his writing-table,
his well-worn letter book, and two old pictures, one of the Seven Deadly
Sins, the other an etching (of 1572) of the Virgin and Saints. Out of this
tiny den is a kind of recess, with a window looking on the high altar in
which he caused his couch to be laid when he was dying. The death-struggle
was prolonged for fifty-three days of almost continuous agony, during which
time he went on holding in his hand the crucifix which Charles V. had when
he expired, and which is still religiously preserved. The gardens in front
of this magnificent palace are very quaint and pretty, the beds being cut
in a succession of terraces overlooking the plains below, and bordered with
low box hedges cut in prim shapes, with straight gravel walks, beautiful
fountains, and marble seats. But it is not difficult to understand why the
poor queen prefers the sunny slopes of La Granja, or even the dulness of
the green avenues of Aranjuez, to this gloomy pile, where the snow hardly
ever melts in the cold shade of those inner courts, and where all the
associations are of death in its most repulsive form. Above the Escurial,
half-way up the mountain, is a rude seat of boulder stones, from whence it
is said Philip II. used to watch the progress of the huge building.

Returning to the railway station, our travellers walked down the hill and
through a pleasantly wooded avenue to a little "maisonnette" of the
Infanta, built for Charles IV. when heir-apparent, and containing some
beautiful ivories and Wedgwoods. The gardens are pretty and bright, but the
whole thing is too small to be anything but a child's toy. An accident on
the line, somewhere near Avila, detained our party for six mortal hours at
a wretched little wayside station, of which the authorities flatly refused
to put on a short special train, although there were a large number of
passengers, in addition to our travellers, waiting, like them, to return to
Madrid.
{741}
But the Spanish mind cannot take in the idea of any one being in a hurry.
"Ora!" "Mañana!" (By and by! To-morrow!) are the despairing words which
meet one at every turn in this country. In this instance, neither horses
nor carriages being procurable, by which the journey to Madrid (only twenty
miles) could have been accomplished with perfect facility by road, our
travellers had nothing left for it but to wait. Patience, and such sleep as
could be got on a hard bench, were their only resource until one in the
morning, when the night express fortunately came up, and, after some demur,
agreed to take them back to Madrid.

Too tired the following day to start early again for Toledo, as they had
intended, our party took advantage of the kindness of the English minister
to see the queen's private library, which is in one of the wings of the
large but uninteresting modern palace. The librarian good-naturedly showed
them some of the rarest of his treasures: among them is a beautiful missal,
bound in shagreen, with lovely enamel clasps and exquisite illuminations,
which had belonged to Queen Isabella of Castile; her arms, Arragon on one
side and Castile on the other, were worked into the illuminations on the
cover. There was a still older missal illuminated in 1315, in which is
found the first mention of _St. Louis_ in the Kalendar. Here also are
some of the first books printed in type, and a very fine MS. Greek copy of
Aristotle.

Afterward, they came to a distant room, where Dr.---- found what he had
long sought for in vain--a quantity of the MS. letters of Gondomar,
minister from Spain to our King James I., giving an amusing and gossiping
account of people and things in England at that time. In this library is
also a very curious and interesting MS. life of Cardinal Wolsey.

In the evening, one of our party paid a visit to the Papal Nuncio,
Monsignor B----, a very kind, clever, and agreeable man, living in a quaint
old house, with a snug library, in which hangs a pretty oil painting of
Tyana, a picturesque country near Barcelona, of which he is archbishop.
From him, and from the venerable Monsignor S----, bishop of Daulia, she
obtained certain letters of introduction to prelates and convents, which
were invaluable in her future tour, and procured for her a kind and
courteous welcome wherever she went.

The following morning, after a five o'clock mass in the beautiful little
chapel of the sisters of charity, our travellers started for Toledo by
rail, passing by the Aranjuez, the "Sans-Souci" of the Spanish queen, where
all the trees in Castile seem to be collected for her special benefit, and
where the sight of the green avenues and fountains is a real refreshment
after the barren and arid features of the rest of the country.

Toledo is a most curious and beautiful old town, built on seven hills, like
Rome. The approach to it is by a picturesque bridge over the Tagus, which
rushes through a rent in the granite mountains like a vigorous Scotch
salmon-river, and encircles the walls of the ancient city as with a girdle.
Passing under a fine old Moorish horse-shoe arched gateway, a modern zigzag
road leads up the steep incline to the "plaza," out of which diverge a
multitude of narrow tortuous streets, like what in Edinburgh are called
"wynds," as painful to walk upon as the streets of Jerusalem. However,
after a vain attempt to continue in the Noah's Ark of an omnibus which had
brought them up the steep hill from the station, and which grazed the walls
of the houses on each side from its width, our travellers were compelled to
brave the slippery stones and proceed on foot. The little inn is as
primitive as all else in this quaint old town, where everything seems to
have stood still for the last five centuries. Leaving their cloaks in the
only available place dignified by the name of "Sala," and swallowing with
difficulty some very nasty coffee, they started off at once for the
cathedral, which stands in the heart of the city, surrounded by convents
and colleges, and with the archiepiscopal palace on the right.
{742}
It is a marvel of Gothic beauty and perfection. Originally a mosque, it was
rebuilt by Ferdinand, and converted by him into a Christian church, being
finished in 1490. In no part of the world can anything be seen more unique,
more beautiful, or more effective than the white marble screen, with its
row of white angels with half-folded wings, guarding the sanctuary of the
high altar, and standing out sharp and clear against the magnificent dark
background formed by the arched naves and matchless painted glass, which,
in depth and brilliancy of color and beauty of design, exceeds even that of
Seville. "Shall you ever forget the blue eyes of those rose-windows at
Toledo?" exclaimed, months after, Dr.---- to one of the party, who was
dwelling with him on the wonderful beauties of this matchless temple.
[Footnote 249]

    [Footnote 249: Incredible as it may seem, the guide-books state that
    there are no less than 750 stained glass windows in this cathedral.]

The choir is exquisitely carved, both above and below; the stalls divided
by red marble columns. Of the seventy stalls, half are carved by Vigarny
and half by Berruguete: each figure of each saint is a study in itself. The
high altar is a perfect marvel of workmanship, the "reredos" or "retablo"
representing the whole life and passion of our Lord. At the back is the
wonderful marble "trasparente," which Ford calls an "abomination of the
seventeenth century," but which, when the sun shines through it, is a
marvel for effect of color and delicacy of workmanship. The Moorish altar
still remains at which Ferdinand and Isabella heard mass after their
conquest of the Saracens; and close to this altar is the spot pointed out
by tradition as the one where the virgin appeared to St. Ildefonso and
placed the chasuble on his shoulders. It is veiled off, with this
inscription on the pillar above:

  Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus.

The fine bas-relief representing the miracle was executed by Vigarny.
Fragments of Saracenic art peep out everywhere, especially in the Sala
Capitular, or chapter-room, of which the doorway is an exquisite specimen
of the finest Moorish work, and the ceiling likewise. In this chapter-room
are two admirable portraits of Cardinal Ximenes and Cardinal Mendoza, said
to have been taken from life. The monuments in the side chapels are very
fine, especially one of St. Ildefonso, whose body had been carried by the
the Moors to Zamora, and was there discovered by a shepherd, and brought
back again; of Cardinal Mendoza; of the Constable Alvaro de Luna; and of
several Spanish kings. Here also rests the body of St. Leocadia, martyred
in the persecution under Diocletian, and to whom three churches in Toledo
are dedicated. During the wars with the Moors, her body was removed to
Italy, and thence to Mons; but was brought back by Philip II. to her native
city, and is now in an urn in the sacristy. At the west end of the
cathedral is a very curious chapel, where the Muzarabic ritual is still
used. This appears to be to the Spaniards what the Ambrosian is to the
Milanese, and was established by Cardinal Ximenes. The sacristy is a real
treasure-house, containing an exquisite tabernacle of gold brought by
Christopher Columbus, incensories, chalices, crosses, and reliquaries, in
gold and enamel, and "cristal de roche," (some given by Louis of France,)
and the missal of St. Louis, of which the illuminations are as fine as any
in the Vatican. The robes, mantles, and ornaments of the Virgin are
encrusted with pearls and jewels. Cardinal Mendoza removed one side of the
marble screen of the high altar to make room for his own monument. In
contrast to this, is another archbishop's tomb, near the altar of the
miraculous Virgin. They wanted to give him a fine carved sepulchre, and
were discussing it in his presence a short time before his death.
{743}
He insisted on a simple slab, with the following words:

  "Hic jacet pulvis, cinis, nullus."

Close to the bénitière at the south entrance, is a little marble slab
attached to the pillar, and on it a little soft leather cushion, which had
excited the curiosity of one of our party on entering. On returning for
vespers, she found laid on it a fine little baby, beautifully dressed, with
a medal round its neck, but quite dead! One of the canons explained to her
that when the parents were too poor to pay the expenses of their children's
funerals, they brought the little bodies in this way for interment by the
chapter. The cloisters to the north of the cathedral are very lofty and
fine, and decorated with frescoes; and the doors with their magnificent
bronze bas-reliefs, in the style of the Florence baptistery, and gloriously
carved portals, are on a par with all the rest. The "Puerta del Perdon,"
and the "Puerta de los Leones," especially, are unique in their gorgeous
details, and in the great beauty and life-like expression of the figures.

The chapter library is in good order, and contains some very fine editions
of Greek and Latin works: a Bible belonging to St. Isidore; the works of
St. Gregory; a fine illuminated Bible given by St. Louis; a missal of
Charles V.; a fine Talmud and Koran; and some very interesting MSS. In the
ante-room are some good pictures.

The palace of the archbishop is exactly opposite the west front of the
cathedral. No one has played a more important part in the history of his
country of late years than the present Archbishop of Toledo. High in the
favor and counsels of the queen, he at one time determined, for political
reasons, to leave Spain and settle himself in Italy, but was recalled by
the voice of both queen and people, and remains, beloved and honored by
all; and although upward of eighty years of age, and rather deaf, is still
a perfect lion of intellectual and physical strength. He received our
travellers most kindly, and in a fatherly manner invited them to breakfast,
and afterward to be present at a private confirmation in the little chapel
of his palace, at which ceremony they gladly assisted. He afterward sent
his secretary, a most clever and agreeable person, who spoke Italian with
fluency, to show the ladies the convent of Sta. Teresa, situated in the
lower part of the town. This convent was started, like all the rest of the
saint's foundations, amidst discouragements and difficulties of all kinds.
The house which had been promised her before her arrival was refused
through the intrigues of a relative of the donor; then the vicar-general
withdrew his license; and St. Theresa began to fear that she would have to
leave Toledo without accomplishing her object. Through the intervention of
a poor man, however, she at last heard of a tiny lodging where she and her
sisters could be received. It was a very humble place, and there was but
one room in it which could be turned into a chapel; but that was duly
prepared for mass, and dedicated to St. Joseph. Poor and meagre as the
sanctuary was, it struck a little child who was passing by, by its bright
and cared-for appearance, and she exclaimed: "Blessed be God! how beautiful
and clean it looks!" St. Theresa said directly to her sisters: "I account
myself well repaid for all the troubles which have attended this foundation
by that little angel's one 'Glory to God.'"

Afterward, all difficulties were smoothed; a larger house was built; and
the poor Carmelites, from being despised and rejected by all, and in want
of the commonest necessaries of life, were overwhelmed with supplies of all
kinds, so that one of them, in sorrow, exclaimed to St. Theresa: "What are
we to do, Mother? for now it seems that we are no longer poor!"

{744}

It was this very house which our travellers now visited, and a far cheerier
and brighter one it is than that of Seville. It contains twenty-four
sisters: among their treasures are the MS. copy of St. Theresa's Way of
Perfection, corrected by the saint herself, and with a short preface
written in her own hand; a quantity of her autograph letters; a long letter
from Sister Ann of St. Bartholomew; St. Theresa's seal, of which the ladies
were given an impression; the habit she had worn in the house, etc., etc.
But the most curious thing was the picture, painted by desire of the saint,
of the death of one of the community. We will tell the story in her own
words: "One of our sisters fell dangerously ill, and I went to pray for her
before the Blessed Sacrament, beseeching our Lord to give her a happy
death. I then came back to her cell to stay with her, and on my entrance
distinctly saw a figure like the representations of our Lord, at the bed's
head, with His arms outspread as if protecting her, and he said to me: 'Be
assured that in like manner I will protect all the nuns who shall die in
these monasteries, so that they shall not fear any temptation at the hour
of death.' A short time after, I spoke to her, when she said to me:
'Mother, what great things I am about to see!' and with these words she
expired, like an angel." St. Theresa had this subject represented in a
fresco, which is still on the wall of the cell. Here also she completed the
narrative of her life, now in the Escurial, by command of Padre Ibañez, and
here is her breviary, with the words (which we will give in English)
written by herself on the fly-leaf:

  "Let nothing disturb thee;
   Let nothing affright thee;
   All passeth away;
     God only shall stay.
   Patience wins all.
   Who hath God needeth nothing.
     For God is his All."

Leaving this interesting convent, our travellers proceeded to San Juan de
los Reyes, so called because built by Ferdinand and Isabella, and dedicated
to St. John. It was a magnificent Gothic building; but the only thing in
the church spared by the French are two exquisite "palcos" or balconies
overlooking the high altar, in the finest Gothic carving, from whence
Ferdinand and Isabella used to hear mass: their ciphers are beautifully
wrought in stone underneath. Outside this church hang the chains which were
taken off the Christian prisoners when they were released from the Moors.
Adjoining is the convent, now deserted, and the palace of Cardinal Ximenes,
of which the staircase and one long low room alone remain. But the gem of
the whole are the cloisters. Never was anything half so beautiful or so
delicate as the Moorish tracery and exquisite patterns of grape-vine,
thistle, and acanthus, carved round each quaint-shaped arch and window and
door-way. Festoons of real passion flowers, in full bloom, hung over the
arches from the "patio" in the centre, in which a few fine cypresses and
pomegranates were also growing, the dark foliage standing out against the
bright blue sky overhead, and beautifully contrasting with the delicate
white marble tracery of this exquisite double cloister. It is a place where
an artist might revel for a month.

Their guide then took them to see the synagogues, now converted into
Christian churches, but originally mosques. Exquisite Saracenic carvings
remain on the walls and roofs, with fine old Moorish capitals to the
pillars, of their favorite pine apple pattern, and beautiful colored
"azulejos" (tiles) on the floors and seats. Several of the private houses
which they afterward visited at Toledo might literally have been taken up
at Damascus and set down in this quaint old Spanish town, so identical are
they in design, in decorations, and in general character. The nails on the
doors are specially quaint, mostly of the shape of big mushrooms, and the
knockers are also wonderful. Could the fashion, once in vogue among "fast"
men in England, of wrenching such articles from the doors, be introduced
into Spain, what art treasures one could get! but scarcely anything of the
sort is to be bought in Toledo.
{745}
After trying in vain to swallow some of the food prepared for them at the
"fonda," in which it was hard to say whether garlic or rancid oil most
predominated, our travellers toiled again in the burning sun up the steep
hill leading to the Alcazar, the ancient palace, now a ruin, but still
retaining its fine old staircase and court-yard with very ancient Roman
pillars. From hence there is a beautiful view of the town, of the Tagus
flowing round it, and of the picturesque one-arched bridge which spans the
river in the approach from Madrid, with the ruins of the older Roman bridge
and forts below. The Tagus here rushes down a rapid with a fine fall,
looking like a salmon-leap, where there ought to be first-rate pools and
beautiful fishing; and then flows swiftly and silently along through a
grand gorge of rocks to the left. By the river-side was the Turkish
water-wheel, or "sakeel," worked by mules. The whole thing was thoroughly
Eastern; and the red, barren, arid look of the rocks and of the whole
surrounding country reminded one more of Syria than of anything European.
Our travellers were leaning over the parapet of the little terrace-garden,
looking on this glorious view, when a group of women who were sitting in
the sun near the palace-gates called to their guide, and asked if the lady
of the party were an Englishwoman, "as she walked so fast." The guide
replied in the affirmative. One of them answered, "O! qué peccado! (what a
pity!) I liked her face, and _yet she is an infidel_." The guide
indignantly pointed to a little crucifix which hung on a rosary by the
lady's side, at which the speaker, springing from her seat, impulsively
kissed both the cross and the lady. This is only a specimen of the faith of
these people, who cannot understand anything Christian that is not
Catholic, and confound all Protestants with Jews or Moors.

Going down the hill, stopping only for a few moments at a curiosity shop
where, however, nothing really old could be obtained--they came to the
Church of La Cruz, built on the site of the martyrdom of St. Leocadia. It
is now turned into a military college; but the magnificent Gothic portal
and facade remain. The streets are as narrow and dirty in this part of the
town as in the filthiest eastern city; but at every turn there is a
beautiful doorway, as at Cairo, through which you peep into a cool "patio,"
with its usual fountain and orange-trees; while a double cloister runs
round the quadrangle, and generally a picturesque side staircase, with a
beautifully carved balustrade, leading up to the cloisters above, with
their delicate tracery and varied arches. The beauty of the towers and
"campanile" is also very striking. They are generally thoroughly Roman in
their character, being built of that narrow brick (or rather tile) so
common for the purpose in Italy, but with the horse-shoe arch: that of S.
Romano is the most perfect. There is also a lovely little mosque, with a
well in the court-yard near the entrance, which has now been converted into
a church under the title of "Sta. Cruz de la Luz," with a wonderful
intersection of horse-shoe arches, like a miniature of the cathedral at
Cordova. Toledo certainly does not lack churches or convents; but those who
served and prayed in them, where are they? The terrible want of instruction
for the people, caused by the closing of all the male religious houses,
which were the centre of all missionary work, is felt throughout Spain; but
nowhere more than in this grand old town, which is absolutely _dead_.
The children are neglected, the poor without a friend, the widow and orphan
are desolate, and all seek in vain for a helper or a guide.

On the opposite side of the Tagus, and not far from the railway station,
are the ruins of a curious old chateau, to which a legend is attached, so
characteristic of the tone of thought of the people that it is given
verbatim here. [Footnote 250]

    [Footnote 250: This legend has been translated by Fernan Caballero, in
    her Fleurs des Champs.]

{746}

  "The owner had been a bad and tyrannical man, hard and unjust to his
  people, selfish in his vices as in his pleasures; the only redeeming
  point about him was his great love for his wife, a pious, gentle, loving
  woman, who spent her days and nights in deploring the orgies of her
  husband, and praying for God's mercy on his crimes. One winter's night,
  in the midst of a terrible tempest, a knocking was heard at the castle
  door, and presently a servant came in and told his mistress that two
  monks, half dead with cold and hunger, and drenched by the pitiless
  storm, had lost their way, and were begging for a night's lodging in the
  castle. The poor lady did not know what to do, for her husband hated the
  monks, and swore that none should ever cross his threshold. 'The count
  will know nothing about it, my lady,' said the old servant, who guessed
  the reason of her hesitation; 'I will conceal them somewhere in the
  stable, and they will depart at break of day.' The lady gave a joyful
  assent to the servant's proposal, and the monks were admitted. Scarcely,
  however, had they entered, when the sound of a huntsman's horn, the
  tramping of horses, and the barking of dogs, announced the return of the
  master. The sport had been good; and when he had changed his soiled and
  dripping clothes, and found himself, with his pretty wife seated opposite
  him, by a blazing fire, and with a well-covered table, his good humor
  made him almost tender toward her. 'What is the matter?' he exclaimed,
  when he saw her sad and downcast face. 'Were you frightened at the storm?
  yet you see I am come home safe and sound.' She did not answer. 'Tell me
  what vexes you; I insist upon it,' he continued; 'and it shall not be my
  fault I do not brighten that little face I love so well!' Thus encouraged
  the lady replied: 'I am sad, because, while we are enjoying every luxury
  and comfort here, others whom I know, even under this very roof, are
  perishing with cold and hunger.' 'But who are they?' exclaimed the count,
  with some impatience. 'Two poor monks,' answered the lady bravely, 'who
  came here for shelter, and have been put in the stable without food or
  firing.' The count frowned. 'Monks! Have I not told you fifty times I
  would never have those idle pestilent fellows in my house?' He rang the
  bell. 'For God's sake do not turn them out [on] such a night as this!'
  exclaimed the countess. 'Don't be afraid, I will keep my word,' replied
  her husband; and so saying, he desired the servant to bring them directly
  into the dining-room. They appeared; and the venerable, saint-like
  appearance of the elder of the two priests checked the raillery on the
  lips of the count. He made them sit down at his table; but the religious,
  faithful to his mission, would not eat till he had spoken some of God's
  words to his host. After supper, to his wife's joy and surprise, the
  count conducted the monks himself to the rooms he had prepared for them,
  which were the best in the house; but they refused to sleep on anything
  but straw. The count then himself went and fetched a truss of hay, and
  laid it on the floor. Then suddenly breaking silence, he exclaimed:
  'Father, I would return as a prodigal son to my Father's house; but I
  feel as if it were impossible that he should forgive sins like mine.'
  'Were your sins as numberless as the grains of sand on the sea-shore,'
  replied the missionary,' faithful repentance, through the blood of
  Christ, would wash them out. Therefore it is that the hardened sinner
  will have no excuse in the last day.' Seized with sudden compunction, the
  count fell on his knees, and made a full confession of his whole life,
  his tears falling on the straw he had brought. A few hours later the
  missionary, in a dream, saw himself, as it were, carried before the
  tribunal of the Great Judge. In the scales of eternal justice a soul was
  to be weighed: it was that of the count. Satan, triumphant, placed in the
  scales the countless sins of his past life: the good angels veiled their
  faces in sorrow, and pity, and shame. Then came up his guardian angel,
  that spirit so patient and so watchful, so beautiful and so good, who
  brings tears to our eyes and repentance to our hearts, alms to our hands
  and prayers to our lips.
{747}
  He brought but a few bits of straw, wet with tears, and placed them in
  the opposite scale. Strange! _they weighed down all the rest_. The
  soul was saved. The next morning, the monk, on waking, found the castle
  in confusion and sorrow. He inquired the reason: its master had died in
  the night."


    Zaragoza And Segovia.

The following morning found our travellers again in Madrid, and one of them
accompanied the sisters of charity to a beautiful fète at San Juan de
Alarçon, a convent of nuns. The rest of the day was spent in the museum;
and at half-past eight in the evening they started again by train for
Zaragoza, which they reached at six in the morning. One of the great
annoyances of Spanish travelling is, that the only good and quick trains go
at night; and it is the same with the diligences. In very hot weather it
may be pleasant; but in winter and in rain it is a very wretched proceeding
to spend half your night in an uncomfortable carriage, and the other half
waiting, perhaps for hours, at some miserable wayside station. After
breakfasting in a hotel where nothing was either eatable or drinkable, our
party started for the two cathedrals. The one called the "Seu" is a fine
gloomy old Gothic building, with a magnificent "retablo," in very fine
carving, over the high altar, and what the people call a "media naranja"
(or half-orange) dome, which is rather like the clerestory lantern of
Burgos. In the sacristy was a beautiful ostensorium, with an emerald and
pearl cross, a magnificent silver tabernacle of cinquecento work, another
ostensorium encrusted with diamonds, a nacre "nef," and some fine heads of
saints, in silver, with enamel collars. But at the sister cathedral, where
is the famous _Virgen del Pilar_, the treasury is quite priceless. The
most exquisite reliquaries in pearls, precious stones, and enamel;
magnificent necklaces; earrings with gigantic pearls; coronets of diamonds;
lockets; pictures set in precious stones; everything which is most valuable
and beautiful, has been lavished on this shrine. In the outside sacristy is
also an exquisite chalice, in gold and enamel, of the fifteenth century;
and a very fine picture, said to be by Correggio, of the Ecce Homo. The
shrine of the Miraculous Virgin is thronged with worshippers, day and
night; but no woman is allowed to penetrate beyond the railing, so that she
is very imperfectly seen. It is a _black_ figure, which is always the
favorite way of representing the Blessed Virgin in Spain: the pillar is of
the purest alabaster. There is some fine "azulejo" work in the sacristy;
but the cathedral itself is ugly, and is being restored in a bad style. Our
party left it rather with relief, and wandered down to the fine old bridge
over the Ebro, which is here a broad and rapid stream, and amused
themselves by watching the boats shooting through the piers--an operation
of some danger, owing to the rapidity of the current. There is a beautiful
leaning tower of old Moorish and Roman brickwork, in a side street, but
which you are not allowed to ascend without a special order from the
prefect. The Lonja, or Exchange, is also well worth seeing, from its
beautiful deep overhanging roof. This is, in fact, the characteristic of
all the old houses in Zaragoza, which is a quaint old town formed of a
succession of narrow tortuous streets, with curious old roofs, "patios,"
columns, and staircases. After having some luncheon, which was more eatable
than the breakfast, our travellers took a drive outside the town, and had a
beautiful view of the lower spur of the Pyrenees on the one hand, and of
the towers, bridges, and minarets of the city on the other. Then they went
to the public gardens, laid out by Pignatelli, the maker of the canal,
which are the resort of all the people on fête-days: they were very gay,
and full of beautiful flowers.
{748}
From thence they drove to the castle, or "Aljaferia," where there is a very
curious moresque chapel still existing, though sadly in ruins. Above are
the rooms occupied by Ferdinand and Isabella, and the apartment where St.
Elizabeth of Portugal was born, with the font where she was baptized. The
hall of the ambassadors is very handsome, with a glorious moresque roof,
and a gallery round. The castle is now turned into a barrack; but the
officers, who, with true Spanish courtesy, had accompanied the priest who
was showing the rooms to our travellers, _had never seen them before
themselves_. How long they had been quartered there none of our party
had the courage to ask! But this is a specimen of the very little interest
which appears to be taken by the Spaniards in the antiquities or art
treasures of their country. Not one of them was ever to be seen in the
matchless gallery of Madrid. Coming home, they visited San Pablo, a curious
and beautiful subterranean church, into which you descend by a flight of
steps. A service was going on, and an eloquent sermon, so that it was
impossible to see the pictures well; but they appeared to be above the
average. This church has a glorious tower in old Roman brickwork. The
palace of the Infanta has been converted into a school. It is the most
perfect specimen of the Renaissance style of Gothic architecture, with
beautiful arches, columns, staircase, and fretted roof. Exhausted with
their sight-seeing, our travellers went back to their inn; agreeably
surprised, however, at the vestiges of ancient beauty still left in
Zaragoza, after the frightful sieges and sacking to which the city has
twice been subjected.

In the evening, the Canon de V----, who had been their kind cicerone at the
cathedral in the absence of the bishop, came to pay them a visit, and gave
them a very interesting account of the people, and a great deal of
information about the convents and religious houses in the place,
especially that of the Ursulines, who have a very large educational
establishment in the town. He has lately written a very interesting account
of the foundress of this order.

The return to Madrid was necessarily accomplished again by night; and jaded
and tired as they were the following day, our party had not the courage for
any fresh expedition. One only visit was paid, which will ever remain in
the memory of the lady who had the privilege. It was to Monsignor Claret,
the confessor of the queen and Archbishop of Cuba, a man as remarkable for
his great personal holiness and ascetic life as for the unjust accusations
of which he is continually the object. On one occasion, these unfavorable
reports having reached his ears, and being only anxious to retire into the
obscurity which his humility makes him love so well, he went to Rome to
implore for a release from his present post; but it was refused him.
Returning through France, he happened to travel with certain gentlemen,
residents in Madrid, but unknown to him, as he was to them, who began to
speak of all the evils, real or imaginary, which reigned in the Spanish
Court, the whole of which they unhesitatingly attributed to Monsignor
Claret, very much in the spirit of the old ballad against Sir Robert Peel:

  "Who filled the butchers' shops with big blue flies?"

He listened without a word, never attempting either excuse or
justification, or betraying his identity. Struck with his saint-like manner
and appearance, and likewise very much charmed with his conversation during
their couple of days' journey together, the strangers begged, at parting,
to know his name, expressing an earnest hope of an increased acquaintance
at Madrid. He gave them his card with a smile! Let us hope they will be
less hasty and more charitable in their judgments for the future. Monsignor
Claret's room in Madrid is a fair type of himself. Simple even to severity
in its fittings, with no furniture but his books, and some photographs of
the queen and her children, it contains one only priceless object, and that
is a wooden crucifix, of the very finest Spanish workmanship, which
attracted at once the attention of his visitor.
{749}
"Yes, it is very beautiful," he replied, in answer to her words of
admiration; "and I like it because it expresses so wonderfully _victory
over suffering_. Crucifixes generally represent only the painful and
human, not the triumphant and Divine view of the Redemption. Here, He is
truly Victor over death and hell."

Contrary to the generally received idea, he never meddles in politics, and
occupies himself entirely in devotional and literary works. One of his
books, Camino recto y seguro para llegar al Cielo, would rank with Thomas à
Kempis's Imitation in suggestive and practical devotion. He keeps a
perpetual fast; and when compelled by his position to dine at the palace,
still keeps to his meagre fare of "garbanzos," or the like. He has a great
gift of preaching; and when he accompanies the queen in any of her royal
progresses, is generally met at each town when they arrive by earnest
petitions to preach, which he does instantly, without rest or apparent
preparation, sometimes delivering four or five sermons in one day. In
truth, he is always "prepared," by a hidden life of perpetual prayer and
realization of the Unseen.

After taking leave of him and the Nunzio, and of the many other kind
friends who had made their stay at Madrid so pleasant, our travellers
started at eight o'clock in the evening for Villa Alba, where they were to
take the diligence for Segovia. The night was clear and beautiful, and the
scenery through which they passed was finer than any they had seen in
Spain. At dawn they came almost suddenly on this most quaint and
picturesque of cities, standing on a rocky knoll more than 3,000 feet above
the sea, encircled by a rapid river, and with the most magnificent
aqueduct, built by Trajan to convoy the pure water of the river Frio from
the neighboring sierra to the town. This aqueduct commences with single
arches, which rise higher as the dip of the ground deepens, until they
become double. The centre ones are 102 feet high, and the whole is built of
massive blocks of granite, without cement or mortar. A succession of
picturesque towers and ancient walls remain to mark the boundaries of the
old Roman city.

The diligence unceremoniously turned our travellers out into the street at
the bottom of the town, and left them to find their way as best they could
to the little "fonda" in the square above. It was very clean and tidy, with
the box-beds opening out of the sitting-rooms, which are universal in the
old-fashioned inns of Spain, and always remind one of a Highland bothie.
The daughter of the house showed off her white linen with great pride, and
was rather affronted because two of the party preferred going to church to
trying her sheets, stoutly declaring that "no one was yet awake, and no
mass could yet be obtained." However, on leaving her, and gently pushing
open one of the low side-doors of the cathedral close by, the ladies found
that the five o'clock services had begun at most of the altars, with a very
fair sprinkling of peasants at each. The circular triple apse at the east
end of this cathedral, from the warm color of the stone, and the beauty of
its flying buttresses and Gothic pinnacles, is deservedly reckoned one of
the finest in Spain. The tower also is beautiful; and the view from the
cupola over the city, the fertile valleys beneath, and the snow-tipped
mountains beyond, is quite unrivalled. The interior has been a good deal
spoiled by modern innovations, but still contains some glorious painted
glass, a very fine "retablo" by Juni of the "Deposition from the Cross,"
and some curious monuments, especially one of the Infanta Don Pedro, son of
Henry II.. who was killed by being let fall from the window of the Alcazar
by his nurse. The Gothic cloisters are also worth seeing. After service, as
it was still very early, the two ladies wandered about this beautiful
quaint old town, in which every house is a study for a painter, and found
themselves at last at the Alameda, a public promenade on the ramparts,
shaded by fine acacias, and the approach to which, on the cathedral side,
is through a beautiful Moorish horse-shoe arched gateway.
{750}
From thence some stone steps led them up to a most curious old Norman
church, with an open cloister running round it, with beautiful circular
arches and dog-toothed mouldings; opposite is a kind of Hôtel de Ville,
with a fine gateway, cloistered "patio," and staircase carved "à jour." In
a narrow street, a little lower down, is the exquisite Gothic façade of the
Casa de Segovia, and turning to the left is another curious and beautiful
church, La Vera Cruz, built by the Templars, and with a little chapel in it
on the exact model of that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The zigzag
and billet dog-tooth mouldings round the windows and doorways are very
fine. A little higher up is the Parral, a deserted convent, with a
beautiful church, richly carved portal and choir, fine monuments,
cloisters, and gardens: the latter had such a reputation that they give
rise to the saying, "Las huertas del Parral, paraiso terrenal." Fairly
tired out with sight-seeing before breakfast, the ladies climbed up again
to the Plaza de la Constitucion, which was like the square of an old German
town, having endlessly varied and colored houses with high roofs; and were
glad to find the rest of the party awake at last, and sitting round a table
with the invariably good chocolate and white bread of the country. The meal
over, one of the ladies started off with a little boy as her guide, to
present her letters of introduction to the bishop, who lived in a
picturesque old palace in the Plaza of San Esteban, the fine church
opposite, with its beautiful tower, Saxon arches, and open cloister, being
dedicated to that saint. He received his visitor with great good nature,
and instantly countersigned the Nunzio's order for her to visit the
Carmelite convent of Sta. Teresa, sending his vicar-general to accompany
her. This house is the original one purchased for the saint, in 1574, by
Dona Ana de Ximenes, who was the first lady to receive the habit in
Segovia. It is dedicated to St. Joseph, and the first mass was said in it
by St. John of the Cross. The nuns maintain the reformed rule in all its
austerity. They showed their visitor the saint's cell, now converted into
an oratory, and also the room of St. John of the Cross, whose convent is in
the valley below, just outside the walls of the town. There his body
rests--that body still uncorrupted, of one of whom it has been truly said
that he was a "cherub in wisdom and a seraph in love." On the door of his
cell is his favorite sentence:

  Pati et contemni pro Te!

This convent is rich both in his letters and in those of St. Theresa. Here
it was that the saint received the news of the death of her favorite
brother, Laurence de Cepeda. She was quietly at work during recreation when
he appeared to her; the saint, without uttering a word, put down her work
and hastened to the choir to commend the departed spirit to our Lord. She
had no sooner knelt before the blessed sacrament than an expression of
intense peace and joy came over her face. Her sisters asked her the reason,
and she told them that our Lord had then revealed to her the assurance that
her brother was in heaven. His sudden death occurred at the very moment
when he had appeared to her in the recreation room. Over the door of her
oratory are the words, "Seek the cross," "Desire the cross;" and a little
farther on, "Let us teach more by works than by words." After spending two
or three hours with the sisters, the English lady was compelled reluctantly
to leave them and return to her party, who were waiting for her to go with
them to the Alcazar.

This palace, originally Moorish, was rebuilt by Henry IV. in the fifteenth
century. It was the favorite residence of Isabella of Castile, and from
thence, on the occasion of a revolution, she rode out alone, and "by her
sweetness of countenance more than by her majesty," as the old chronicle
says, "won over the people to return to their allegiance."
{751}
Our King Charles I. lodged here also, and is recorded to have supped on
certain "troutes of extraordinary greatness," doubtless from the beautiful
stream below. At the time of the French invasion the Alcazar was turned
into a military college, and these wretched students, in a freak of boyish
folly, set fire to a portion of one of the rooms two years ago. The fire
spread; and all that is now left of this matchless palace is a ruined
shell, the façade, the beautiful Moorish towers and battlements, one or two
sculptured arabesque ceilings, and the portcullised gateway, each and all
testifying to its former greatness and splendor. Its position, perched on a
steep plateau forming the western extremity of the town, is quite
magnificent, and the views from the windows are glorious. Our travellers
staid a long time sitting under the shade of the orange-trees in the
battlemented court below, enjoying the glorious panorama at their feet, and
watching the setting sun as it lit up the tips of the snowy sierra which
forms the background of this grand landscape; while the beautiful river
Eresma flowed swiftly round the old walls, its banks occupied at that
moment by groups of washerwomen in their bright picturesque dresses,
singing in parts the national songs of their country. In the valley below
were scattered homesteads and convents, and a group of cypresses marking
the spot where, according to the legend, Maria del Salto alighted. This
girl was a Jewess by birth, but secretly a Christian; and having thereby
excited the anger and suspicions of her family, was accused by them of
adultery, and condemned, according to the barbarous practice of those
times, to be thrown from the top of the Alcazar rock. By her faith she was
miraculously preserved from injury, and reached the ground in safety; a
church was built on the spot, of which the "retablo" tells the tale.

Segovia is famous for its flocks, and for the beauty of its wool: the water
of the Eresma is supposed to be admirable for washing and shearing.

Our travellers now began to think of pursuing their journey to Avila; but
that was not so easy. The diligence which had brought them flatly refused
to convey them back till the following night, except at a price so
exorbitant that it was impossible to give it. And here, as everywhere else
in Spain, you have no redress. There are no carriages whatever for hire,
except in the two or three large capitals, like Madrid and Seville; and
even should carriages be found, there are no horses or mules to draw
them--or, at any rate, none that they choose to let out for the purpose.
Such as they are, they are always reserved for the diligence; and if the
latter should happen to be full, the unhappy passengers may wait for days
at a wayside "posada" until their turn comes. Therefore, it is absolutely
necessary in Spain to write and make the contract for places beforehand:
and to be hard-hearted when the time comes, as it almost invariably happens
that you leave behind certain luckless travellers who have not adopted a
similar precaution; and the struggle for seats, and consequent overcrowding
of the carriages, are renewed at every station. Making a virtue of
necessity, our travellers at last made up their minds to another miserable
diligence night out of bed--the fatigue of which must be felt to be
thoroughly sympathized with--and spent the intervening hours of the evening
in dining, and then going to a religious play, which they had seen
advertised in the morning, and which was a very curious exhibition of
popular taste and religious feeling. The little theatre was really very
clean and tidy, and there was nothing approaching to irreverence in the
representations given. A similar scene in a very different place recurred
to the memory of one of the party, as having been witnessed by her in
Paris, some years ago, when on a certain occasion she accompanied a
somewhat stiff puritanical old lady to the opera.
{752}
A ballet was given as an entr'acte, in which the scenery was taken from the
book of Genesis, and Noah and his sons appeared just coming out of the Ark.
This was too much for the good lady: "If Noah either dances or sings," she
exclaimed, "I'll leave the house!" The poor Segovians, trained in a
different school, saw nothing incongruous in the representation of the
shepherds, and the wise men, and the cave of Bethlehem: and only one
comical incident occurred, when, on a child in the pit setting up a squeal,
there was a universal cry of _Where's Herod?_ At ten o'clock they left
their play, with its quiet and respectable little audience, and once more
found themselves tightly stowed in their diligence prison for the night.
The moon, however, was bright and beautiful, and enabled them to see the
royal hunting-box and woods, and the rest of the fine scenery through which
they passed, so that the journey was far less intolerable than usual, as is
often the case when a thing has been much dreaded beforehand. At four
o'clock in the morning they were turned out, shivering with cold, at a
wayside station, where they were to take the train to Avila; but were then
told, to their dismay, by a sleepy porter, that the six o'clock train had
been taken off, and that there would be none till ten the next morning, so
that all hopes of arriving at Avila in time for church (and this was
Sunday) were at an end. The station had no waiting-room, only a kind of
corridor with two hard benches. Establishing the children on these for the
moment with plaids and shawls, one of the party went off to some cottages
at a little distance off, and asked in one of them if there were no means
of getting a bedroom and some chocolate? A very civil woman got up and
volunteered both; so the tired ones of the party were able to lie down for
a few hours' rest in two wonderfully clean little rooms, while their
breakfast was preparing. The question now arose for the others: "Was there
no church anywhere near?" It was answered by the people of the place in the
negative. "The station was new; the cottages had been run up for the
accommodation of the porters and people engaged on the line; there was no
village within a league or two." Determined, however, not to be baffled,
one of the party inquired of another man, who was sleepily driving his
bullocks into a neighboring field, and he replied "that over the mountains
to the left there was a village and a curé; but that it was a long way off,
and that he only went on great "festas." It was now quite light; the lady
was strong and well; and so she determined to make the attempt to find the
church. Following the track pointed out to her by her informant, she came
to a wild and beautiful mountain path, intersected by bright rushing
streams, crossed by stepping stones, the ground perfectly carpeted with
wild narcissus and other spring flowers. Here and there she met a peasant
tending his flocks of goats, and always the courteous greeting of "Vaya
Usted con Dios!" or "Dios guarde á Usted!" as heartily given as returned.
At last, on rounding a corner of the mountain, she came on a beautiful
view, with the Escurial in the distance to the left; and to the right,
embosomed, as it were, in a little nest among the hills, a picturesque
village, with its church-tower and rushing stream and flowering
fruit-trees, toward which the path evidently led. This sight gave her fresh
courage; for the night journey and long walk, undertaken fasting, had
nearly spent her strength. Descending the hill rapidly, she reached the
village green just as the clock was striking six, and found a group of
peasants, both men and women, sitting on the steps of the picturesque stone
cross in the centre, opposite the church, waiting for the curé to come out
of his neat little house close by to say the first mass. The arrival of the
lady caused some astonishment; but, with the inborn courtesy of the people,
one after the other rose and came forward, not only to greet her, but to
offer her chocolate and bread.
{753}
She explained that she had come for communion, and would go into the
church. The old white-haired clerk ran into the house to hasten the curé,
and soon a kind and venerable old man made his appearance, and asked her if
she wished to see him first in the confessional. He could scarcely believe
she had been in Segovia only the night before! Finding that she was hurried
to return and catch the train, he instantly gave her both mass and
communion, and then sent his housekeeper to invite her to breakfast, as did
one after the other of the villagers. Escaping from their hospitality with
some difficulty, on the plea of the shortness of the time and the length of
the way back, the English lady accepted a little loaf, for which no sort of
payment would be heard of, and walked with a light heart back to the
station, feeling how close is the religious tie which binds Catholics
together as one family, and how beautiful is the hearty, simple hospitality
of the Spanish people when untainted by contact with modern innovations and
so-called progress. There was no occasion when this natural, high-bred
courtesy was not shown during the four months that our travellers spent in
this country; and those who, like the author of Over the Pyrenees into
Spain, find fault on every occasion with the manners of the people, must
either have been ignorant of their language and customs, or, having no
sympathy with their faith, have wounded their susceptibilities, and to a
certain degree justified the rudeness of which they pretend to have been
the victims.

------

      Original.

      Beams.

  "Why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye,
  but the beam that is in thine own eye
  thou considerest not?"


    Disciple.

  "How's this! And hath my brother ne'er a beam
   That may be plucked from out his eye?
   And are my brother's beams all motes,
     And none have beams but I?"


    Master.

  "E'en so, For beams enough there be, I trow;
   And who will claim them, if not thou?"


    Disciple.

  "'Tis well! I'll claim mine own.
  (Methinks it has of late much larger grown.)"


    Master.

  "Suffices it, if thou wilt claim but one.
   Then shall thy brother, in thy sight, have none.
   For beams do so prevent pride's selfish view
   That, if thy brother's beam did weigh a ton,
   It would appear the smallest mote to you."

------

{754}

  Early Rising. [Footnote 251]

    [Footnote 251: This article is translated from the Conferences
    Destinées aux Femmes du Monde, par Mgr. Landriot.]


  "De Nocte Surrexit."

Sleep was given man to sustain life, to invigorate his strength, and to
serve him as the best and most useful of medicines; one single prescription
perfectly accomplished sometimes sufficing for the cure of serious disease,
or, at least, the amelioration of violent pain. Sleep is the salutary bath
that renovates life, the entire being growing younger under its influence;
it is a station in the desert of this world; and often, after dull and
wearying journeys, one comes to repose in this oasis prepared by divine
Providence, enabled the next day to pursue the route with renewed courage
and activity. The time of sleep is not only useful to the body, but the
soul: it calms all agitation, spreads a balm over piercing grief, and
hinders the precipitation of words and actions. Thus the ancients
designated night the good counsellor; those even whom passion or bodily
infirmity keep awake are subservient to her designs, and, in the calm
which, through shade, she diffuses everywhere, she recalls man to better
sentiments. If he is Christian, she quickens within him the fibres of
prayer; a single aspiration toward heaven sufficing sometimes to crush the
bad or dangerous germs of thought, and prepare for the morrow a pure and
uncloudy sky. In other times, there was so much calmness and placidity in
the sleep of the just, said St. Ambrose, that it was like an ecstasy in
which, while the body reposed, the soul, to speak thus, was separated from
its organs, and united itself to Christ: Somnus tranquillitatem menti
invehens, placiditatem animae ut tanquam soluto nexu corporis se ablevit,
et Christo adhaereat. [Footnote 252]

    [Footnote 252: Ep. xvi. No. 4, p. 960.]

Again, sleep is an excellent preacher, because it recalls to us the image
of death: the ancients named it the brother of death, and both are sons of
night. The daily arrival of sleep should make us say: "The other brother
will come soon, and this time I will extend myself on my bed, never more to
rise. Each visit of the night should be an invitation to prepare me for the
last and solemn departure."

Sleep is, then, excellent in itself; but how greatly it may be abused; and,
if we do abuse it, it will produce effects exactly contrary to those I have
just enumerated; that is to say, it will weaken the body, stupefy the
ideas, and that, far from refreshing and repairing life, it will prepare
for it a kind of living sepulchre in which to bury it.

It is not sufficient to determine the quantity of sleep, which should be
wisely regulated, without according or refusing too much to nature. We must
also calculate the quality of sleep.

Now, according to general observation, the sleep from the real night to the
real morning, that is to say, which is taken in the interval of nine and
five or six o'clock, is the best, the most salutary, and the most favorable
to health. I do not say that it is absolutely necessary to sleep all the
time, I have indicated: this is merely the space designed to choose one's
hours of sleep. Let us willingly admit all the exceptions necessitated by
transitory relations; but, as a general thesis, it is better to retire
early and rise early in the morning. It is the best, the most favorable
time for the nocturnal bath we call sleep; the body better refreshes
itself, the repose is more conformable to the laws of nature; therefore is
it sweeter, at once lighter and more profound, and has not the heaviness
which indicates an abnormal condition.
{755}
Sleep, prolonged too much in the morning because it has been retarded at
night, has serious inconveniences. It communicates to the general system a
sickly languor which becomes the habitual condition of certain
temperaments. Life with them is a sort of perpetual convalescence, and
never do they enjoy the most precious gift of nature, a state of health,
truly and solidly established. See, on the contrary, these robust village
girls; at night at an early hour they demand of their beds the repose for
their tired members; in the morning they rise with the crow of the cock. In
winter, the fire is lighted at dawn of day on the domestic hearth; the
house-keeping is arranged, the order of the day disposed in advance, the
breakfast of the laborers is ready to be served, and the sun has not yet
appeared above the horizon. During the summer, these same children of the
village accompany the star of day in its matutinal march; their chests
dilate, and they strengthen themselves in breathing the fresh and perfumed
air shed with the rays of sun, and they seem to breathe life and health.
Later these same girls marry, and, if they are not imprudent, they may for
many years continue an existence made up of fruitful labor, and ornamented
sometimes with all the charms and freshness of a vigorous old age; for
their regimen is an excellent medicine which gives them a commission of
long life.

But whence, on the contrary, comes that weakness of temperament so
observable in women of the world? It may be deduced from various causes,
but one of the principal is the mode of life too generally adopted,
especially in large cities. A part of the night is spent in _soirées_,
to finish only with longer _matinées_; a portion of the day is given
to sleep, and from this results a general debility of constitution, fatigue
of the nervous system, a numbness of the organs, and in all an habitual and
continual prostration. There may be exceptional temperaments that resist
these effects; but it is incontestable, in the eyes of an impartial
observer, that the loss of health, especially among women, is due in great
part to the life of excess I here mention. "Prolonged night watches," said
a learned man, "necessarily bring on a fatigue which bears on the brain and
on the digestive and respiratory organs. And fatigue of this nature, far
from favoring sleep, renders it incomplete and painful. From thence, in
great measure, comes this valetudinary state which we meet with so
habitually among the women of our cities; balls and _soirées_ ruin
their health in advance, and it is often on youth even, but still oftener
in ripe and old age, that the foolish and miserable dissipations of the
world leave their sad and fatal impress." [Footnote 253]

    [Footnote 253: Leçons de la Nature, nouvelle édition, par M. Desdouits,
    1. 3. 188e considér, t. iii. p. 125.]

You would, then, condemn _soirées_? I pray you to remark that, if
there is something to condemn, it is not I who condemns them; these are
facts according to nature and the temperament of the human body. Is it not
true that the health of many women of the world is weakened? No one can
deny this. Is it not also true that one of the principal causes is the
world's manner of organizing social relations? It is a fact of which
science every day gives undeniable proof. I am far from condemning
_soirées_; and perhaps you have not forgotten that, in our reunions, I
applied myself some years ago to show you how religion was the friend of
honest pleasures and the demands of society; on condition that they should
be regulated by wisdom, and that the interests of both body and soul were
faithfully managed; for so greatly does Christianity respect our bodies
that we can sin in compromising one's health by serious imprudences. Merry
conversations in the evening have all sorts of advantages. They divert the
mind, refresh the body, bring hearts together, dissipate clouds, and bind
more closely the ties of family and friendships. In a certain degree,
pleasures are necessary to man.
{756}
I speak of innocent pleasures that virtue can admit, and those who
entertain some doubt in this respect can consult the writings of the
greatest theologians of the church, and especially St. Thomas. This great
doctor has on this point a clearness and precision, and at the same time a
reason and wisdom, at once full of reserve and condescension. The rule he
establishes is to use all pleasure with moderation, according to time,
place, and the circumstance of those with whom we live: _moderatè pro
loco, et tempore, et congruentiâ eorum quibus convivit, (temperatus.)_
[Footnote 254]

    [Footnote 254: See in particular L'Ethique et La Somme.]

"There are many people," said Fenélon, "who like to groan over everything,
and weary themselves continually by encouraging a disgust for all rational
amusement. For me, I avow I could not accommodate myself to such rigidity.
I like something more simple; and I believe that God himself likes it much
better. When diversion is innocent in itself, and is entered into according
to the rules of the state wherein Providence has placed us, then I believe
all required of us is to take part in it, as in God's sight and with
moderation. Manners more rigid and more reserved, less complaisant and less
open, only serve to give a false idea of piety to worldly people, who are
already sufficiently prejudiced against it, and who believe God is only
served through a sombre and mortified life." [Footnote 255]

    [Footnote 255: _Avis a une Personne de la Cour_. Manuel de Piété.
    Ed. Dupanloup. ]

We would wish, then, that Christian societies would adopt for their maxim
these beautiful words of St. Chrysostom: "Christians have the sense for
delicate pleasures, but decency should preside over all." It is impossible
to make more reasonable concessions to human nature, but is not religion
authorized, therefore, to show herself severe to all who exceed the bounds
of wisdom, conformity, and virtue, and even for all who compromise the
interests of health or fortune? Would it not be possible, to return to our
subject, to combine in our reunions of family and society everything for
the general good and the vigorous health of actual generations? Allowing
for exceptional circumstances, where one may be obliged to be up later,
would it not be possible to make _soirées_ shorter, rendering them, at
the same time, more agreeable and more frequent, more salutary and less
compromising to health? This is the problem I propose to solve; and is it
not a singular thing that here religion interposes to say to you, Think of
the interests of your bodies; you sin the same by seriously neglecting
them? "Hoc esset peccatum" said St. Thomas. This excess in the length of
_soirées_ comes to us from paganism. In the time of Seneca they
existed, and these are the terms which this philosopher used toward them:
"There are people who reverse the uses of day and night. Thus, nothing
looks more sad and broken-down than the appearance of such persons, who
are, so to say, dedicated to the night; their color is that of sick people,
they are pale and languishing, carrying a dead flesh in a living body. And
this is not the only evil: their minds are surrounded by shadows
apparently, benumbed, and inhabiting the clouds. Is it possible not to
deplore an irregularity which banishes the light of day, and passes life in
darkness and shade?" [Footnote 256]

    [Footnote 256: Epist. 122.]

Sometimes I am asked, if religion were to command half the sacrifice that
the world demands if it ordered a part of every night spent in fatiguing
both body and soul, what would not be said against it? What anathemas, what
bitter reproaches! But the world speaks, and no one says anything; we are
enchanted, or, at least, appear so. St. Francis de Sales has given us, on
this subject, some reflections wherein the delicate point of a pleasant
malice is touched with superior reason, and I should reproach myself did I
not present them to you: "We have seen gentlemen and ladies pass not only
one night, but several in succession at play--worldly people said nothing,
friends gave themselves no trouble concerning them; but let us give one
hour to meditation, or rise a little earlier than usual to prepare for
communion, these same friends would run for the doctor to cure us of
jaundice or hypochondria.
{757}
We may occupy thirty nights in dancing, no one complains; but for the
single watch of Christmas night every one coughs, and cries next day with
the stomach-ache."

The salutary regimen of retiring and rising early is very precious for the
soul, and the duties of life much better fulfilled. The soul is calmer at
night, calm as everything that is regular and not troubled and turned
topsy-turvy by the thousand preoccupations of a too worldly life. In the
evening, before going to sleep, we can fix our attention on ourselves,
analyze the day, its thoughts, desires, and actions, praise, blame, or
correct, and, as a skilful merchant, make an account of our losses and
gains. Do not imagine such a practice is confined to narrow minds; it is
the usage of reason and sound philosophy, as are all other practices of an
enlightened devotion. Pagans as well as Christians have given us a lesson
on this subject. Listen to Pythagoras: "Never allow sleep to close thine
eyes before having examined every action of the day. In what have I failed?
What have I done? What duty have I forgotten? Commence by the first of thy
actions, run over the others; in fine, reproach thyself with what thou hast
done ill, and rejoice in what thou hast done well." "What can be more
beautiful," said Seneca, "than this habit of inquiring into a whole day?
What sleep succeeds to such a review of one's actions! How calm, deep, and
free it is when the soul has received its share of praise or blame, and,
submitting to its own control, its own censure, it secretly tries its own
conduct! For me, I have taken this authority on myself, and every day I
cite myself to appear before the tribunal of my conscience. So soon as the
light has gone, I scan my day entirely, weigh anew my acts and my words,
dissemble nothing, and omit nothing." [Footnote 257] Adopt this habit,
everything in you will gain by it--reason and piety; a sweet serenity will
be diffused around your soul, and you will sleep in angelic peace _somnus
sanitatis in homine_. [Footnote 258] You have sometimes seen children
sleep. What calm! What sweetness of expression! What kindness of feature!
What living and silent rest! This will be the image of your sleep.

    [Footnote 257: Da la Colere, 1. 3. c. 36.]

    [Footnote 258: Ecclus. xxxi.]

But--and now we touch a delicate point--it is the result of life's
organization that you ought to get up in the morning. I hear already a deep
sigh of fear from your trembling couch. First, then, let us understand the
value of the words, Get up in the morning. I do not exhort you to imitate a
very delicate lady, who said, during her sojourn at Vichy, "I commence my
day at four o'clock in the morning, in order that my body may not take off
too much from my soul." [Footnote 259]

    [Footnote 259: Lettres de Madame Swetchine. t. ii. p. 111.]

I do not propose you this model, for I am very sure, if I opened a
register, I should find very few members for the confraternity of Madame
Swetchine. Let us leave, then, the value of the expression slightly
undecided. Get up in the morning; let it only be the earliest hour
possible, and this, perhaps may be too late. Once, however, the hour of
your rising determined, hold to it, with a firmness proportioned to the
difficulty of the step, and let the unfortunate bed shut up again the
magnetic fluid whereby one is drawn to it, I do not say in spite of one's
self, but with a sweetness of violence which nails one to the post. I avow
we are here in face of one of the most terrible of enemies, and this enemy
the pillow. When we want to leave it in the morning, it assumes the
artificial language of the siren, and caresses us with tender precaution.
It seems to say: Why do you leave me? are you not better here? what a sweet
temperature! what inappreciable well-being! don't you see it is too soon?
do you not feel your limbs too tired, and as yet enjoying a very incomplete
repose?
{758}
Touch your forehead and you will see you begin to have headache; a few
quarters of an hour more will dissipate it; to-morrow you will rise
earlier! Then it's so cold out of bed: why brave the inclemency of the
seasons? The day is long enough; you will have time enough for everything;
in truth, do not be so severe with yourself. After such eloquent language
the dear pillow extends its two arms to entangle you, and soon the victory
is consummated; true, it was easy, none are so happy as the vanquished; and
behold you fallen again and buried for several hours more.

I speak very seriously in telling you that one of the most difficult
enemies to vanquish is this pillow of the morning; and there is but one way
to conquer it: it is a prompt and decisive blow, a military charge, a jump
out of bed: charge the enemy by a vigorous sally, and the victory is yours.
An old Capuchin said that, after long years of a religious life, what cost
him most was to rise at four o'clock in the morning. It is true there is a
sacrifice to make, a real sacrifice, incontestable; but here life is full
of sacrifices, and each one is followed by a sentiment of true happiness,
and each victory gives to man an astonishing power. When I see a person who
has the courage to get up in the morning, I have immediately a high opinion
of his firmness of character, and I say to myself: This person, when
occasion demands it, will know how to develop extraordinary energy; each
morning his nature is tempered again in the struggle against his pillow,
and this combat is often more difficult, especially on account of its
continuity, than that of the soldier on the field of battle. Besides, wait
as long as you will, even if you sleep until mid-day, you will have to make
a sacrifice on leaving your bed. Sometimes the more you think of it, the
sacrifice will be greater, and increased by the sad perspective of the
approaching effort; so with one minute of decision, prompt and generous,
all is over, and the enjoyment of the active day has commenced. Long
waiting in bed when one is awake makes serious detriment to the soul; the
whole being is softened, and plunged into a sort of reverie, more or less
sensual, which may lead to the brink of certain abysses. Take care, the
butterfly flutters on its golden wings, then goes to burn itself in the
light which shines for it so treacherously; image of those aerial
promenades where, by dint of approaching certain deceitful lights, one ends
by damaging the wings of the soul, or, at least, rubbing off the velvet nap
of a pure conscience. "It is dangerous," said St. Ambrose, "for the sun to
come and trouble with its indiscreet rays the dreams of a lazy mind in its
bed." [Footnote 260]

    [Footnote 260: In Ps. 118, s. 19, No. 22, t. ii. p. 1476.]

The Italian poet, speaking of morning, says: "At the hour when one's mind
is greatest stranger to the flesh, and less near terrestrial thoughts, then
is it almost divine in its visions." [Footnote 261]

    [Footnote 261: Dante, Purgat. c. 9, v. 16-19.]

Each day, after a good night, we can renew our souls with the wonders of a
beautiful spring morning; all is fresh in mind and body, all interior
faculties are warmed; life experiences a sort of need of expansion; all
thoughts, all desires seem to tremble with cheerfulness, as plants in a
celestial garden. If the sun of prayer arises on the horizon, all the germs
of good awake, develop, and mount up in proportion as the divine heat
becomes more intense. "The manna," said the prophet, "disappearing at the
dawn of day; was to show us, my God, that we must anticipate the rising of
the sun to receive thy most precious benedictions." [Footnote 262]

    [Footnote 262: Sap. xvi. 28.]

There is something remarkable in our Lives of the Saints; morning prayer is
always specially mentioned: "My God," said the prophet "thou wilt favorably
hear my prayer in the morning." [Footnote 263]

    [Footnote 263: Ps. v. 4.]

"I will present myself before thee in the morning, and will see thy glory."
[Footnote 264]

    [Footnote 264: Ps. v. 5.]

"It is in the morning that my prayer will surprise thee." [Footnote 265]

    [Footnote 265: Ps. xxxvii. 14.]

"In the morning thy mercy is shed on us abundantly." [Footnote 266]

    [Footnote 266: Ps. lxxxix. 14.]

"Those who watch from the morning," said Wisdom, "will find me."
[Footnote 267]

    [Footnote 267: Prov. viii. 17.]

{759}

Our Lord himself is called "splendid star, star of the morning:" "_Ego
Stella splendida et matutina_." [Footnote 268]

    [Footnote 268: Apoc. xxii. 16.]

In these continual repetitions I can only see a perfectly fixed and
stationary thought: the natural relation established by divine Providence,
and which she loves to preserve in a supernatural world. The morning is the
hour when life recommences on earth; the hour when everything is reborn,
solitude favoring the first leap of life, which retakes its course where
the dew is deposited, and gives fresh nourishment to the plant. It is also
the most delightful hour for the collection of thought, for the effusion of
the dew of souls. The sky is charged with rain that night has condensed;
the manna is everywhere, but it soon disappears; and, whilst indolence
loses its power of body and mind in the swaddling-clothes of sleep, the
active soul has laid in its provision of celestial nourishment, has
disposed its interior heaven for the entire day, has dissipated in advance
the shadows of the day, and established time's serenity until the next
sleep. One of the most precious and the sweetest hours of life is the hour
of morning prayer. I do not merely speak of vocal prayer; I wish to say the
prayer of union with God, the silence and the repose of the soul in God; I
wish to say this opening of the mouth of the soul which aspires to divine
milk, drinking in silence, light, and love, and hiding itself in the bosom
of that mother _par excellence_ we call God, and that so few
Christians understand. _Os meum aperui et attraxi spiritum_. [Footnote
269] If you only realized the gift of God we call the love of morning:
_Si scires donum Dei!_ [Footnote 270]

    [Footnote 269: Ps. cxviii. 181.]

    [Footnote 270: Joan. iv. 10.]

.....

There is a freshness in it, a suavity and an energy, which come directly
from God. Have you never been on the mountains in summer, at three o'clock
in the morning, when the first rays of the sun appear? How limpidly they
seem to come! They have not passed through other breasts; the purest
essence of the planet of day is ours, and thus we seem to realize our union
with God while most men are asleep. On these divine mountains the soul has
the first-fruits of celestial favors; she is penetrated with light, love,
and strength; a gentle intoxication for the day, which, far from weakening
the soul, gives firmness to our thoughts and actions, and sheds a perfume
of joy on all our works. Were there no other reasons for rising in the
morning, I would say to you, Disengage yourself from your pillow, the Lord
comes to visit you with choice favors; but the least delay will be proof of
your indifference, and you will force him to go further to seek souls more
worthy his benefits. There is no one who would refuse to rise early if each
morning a messenger were to tell him, A prince is come among you and waits
for you. Place your God in the place of your prince, and you will do well.
If you wish to accomplish some great work in your life, get up in the
morning. The morning hours are not so deranged, the calm of a sweet
solitude surrounds you, and you more readily expedite your affairs. You can
occupy yourself with business or the regulation of your household, with
your reading, your intellectual work if you love study, and the result in
some years of these extra hours will be incalculable. By rising two hours
earlier each day, you will have gained at the end of forty years,
twenty-nine thousand hours, that is more than seven years, and solely
counting the twelve working hours of the day. To increase one's life seven
years in forty is enormous, and what can be done during this continuous
time is almost incredible. Clement of Alexandria said, "Wrest from sleep
all of our lives we can."

Sleep is truly a thief who ravishes our greatest treasures; a thief, too,
we cannot entirely chase away, but we can run him off the ground and hinder
his encroachments on our actual life. "We live but the half of our lives,"
said Pliny the elder; "the other half is consumed in a state similar to
death,.... and still we do not count the infancy which knows nothing, or
the old age of imbecility."
{760}
Then have the courage to take something each day from this brother of
death, who thus divides our life in two, and for himself would reserve the
better part; let us give to nature what is necessary, but make no
concession to indolence.

The most favorable time to commit this robbery is during the first hours of
the morning. "The quality of time is different at this hour," said Madame
Swetchine.

One hour of the morning is worth two at night, because the mind in its
freshness is naturally more collected, its strength is not yet dispersed,
and it is not exhausted by the fatigue of the day. The morning hours
resemble, in the agility of the mind and the rejuvenated forces of the
soul, the first hour of the courser just placed in the carriage. So the
same author we love to cite advised early rising, cost what it might, "in
order to reserve some hours of the morning for entire solitude." "It is not
only," said one of her friends, "to consecrate to God the first hours of
the day that she commenced it so early, but to have also considerable time
to give to study." She said to me on that day, that the pleasure it gave
her only increased with years. "I am come to this," she said, "when I
approach my table to resume my labors, my heart beats with joy." [Footnote
271]

   [Footnote 271: Lettres, t. ii. p. 443.]

She avowed, besides, that, deprived of these her accustomed hours, all the
rest of the day seemed pillaged. If you would not be pillaged, rise in the
morning; then you can do as you please, no one will come to disturb you,
you will consecrate the closest and best of your strength to the most
serious and truest duties of your existence; and, when the hour of pillage
comes, that is, the hour when you must cut your life in little pieces, to
dispense it in a thousand nothings more or less necessary, you will, at
least, have secured its better and most precious part. If you rise late,
your life will be a perpetual pillage, and whoever pleases will tear it in
shreds from you.

Plato--if you will not consider pagan morality severe--Plato said
somewhere: "It is a shame for the mistress of a household to be awakened by
her servants; she should awaken them." [Footnote 272]

    [Footnote 272: Les Lois, 1-7, p. 808.]

Such words may seem an exaggeration; but, if such were here the case, would
not everything go better in the interior of the family? Woman, as we have
said with the holy Scripture, is the sun of her household; but it should be
the sun which everywhere announces the awakening of nature. It mounts first
on the horizon, and soon everything rises in the universe, plants, animals,
and men. The sun is never awakened by his satellites; he himself gives the
signal. Let the strong woman do the same. _Sicut sol oriens in altissimis
Dei, sic mulieris bonae species in ornamentum domus ejus._[Footnote 273]

    [Footnote 273: Eccl. xxvi. 21.]

------

{761}


    The Wandering Jew. [Footnote 274]

    [Footnote 274:
    Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.
    By S. Baring Gould, M.A., London,
    Oxford, and Cambridge, Rivingtons. 1866.]


There are certain popular fables which, in one shape or another, seem to
have wandered all over the world, and to have planted themselves, and
grown, and developed progeny in the folk-lore of nearly every nation. Of
all these none has been more generally a favorite than the fiction of Time
sparing in his flight some solitary human being, before whose eyes the
centuries unroll their mighty panorama; cities and nations rise, flourish,
and decay; changes pass over the face of nature herself; seas dry up and
rocks crumble to dust; while for one man only age brings no decay and life
seems to have no termination. The early Christian legends are full of such
stories. There are rumors of mysterious witnesses, hidden for ages from the
world's eyes, not dead but sleeping, who are to come forth in the last days
of time, and bear testimony against Antichrist; and one of these was
conjectured to be the apostle St. John, of whom our Lord said to St. Peter,
"If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" So there was a
belief that the beloved disciple still slept at Ephesus, awaiting the
summons, and the earth above his breast heaved as he breathed. Joseph of
Arimathea, according to another beautiful legend, was rewarded for the last
tender offices which he performed for the dead Christ by perpetual life in
the blessed city of Sarras, where he drew divine nourishment from the holy
grail, that precious chalice which the Saviour used at the Last Supper, and
which caught the blood that trickled from his side upon the cross. The
poetical legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus, who fled from the
persecution of Decius to a cavern on Mount Celion, and slept there three
hundred and sixty years, until God raised them up to confound a growing
heresy against the immortality of the soul; and the still more beautiful
story of the monk of Hildesheim, who, doubting how with God a thousand
years could be as yesterday, listened to the melody of a bird in the
greenwood during three minutes, and found that in those minutes three
hundred years had flown away, are familiar to all our readers. But pagan
literature also abounds in stories of miraculously long slumbers. The
beautiful shepherd Endymion was condemned by Jupiter to perpetual sleep in
a cavern of Mount Latmus; or, according to another form of the story, to a
slumber of fifty years, at the end of which time he was to arise. The giant
Enceladus was imprisoned under Mount Etna, and as often as he turned his
weary body, the whole island of Sicily was shaken to its foundations. The
epic poet Epimenides, while tending his sheep, retired one hot day into a
cavern, and slept there fifty-seven years. This reminds one of the tale of
Rip Van Winkle. The Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, so an old German fable
relates, is waiting with six of his knights in the heart of a mountain in
Thuringia, for the time to release Germany from bondage and raise it to the
first place among nations. When his great red beard has wound itself thrice
around the stone table at which he sits, he will awake and rush forth to do
his appointed work. So, too, it was believed that Charlemagne survived in
some mountain recess, and would appear again at the fulfilment of the days
of Antichrist to avenge the blood of the saints.
{762}
The British King Arthur, the Portuguese Don Sebastian, Ogier the Dane, and
the three Tells of Switzerland were expected by the superstitious peasantry
to reappear at some distant day and become the deliverers of their country;
and there are even some remote parts of France where a popular belief
survives that Napoleon Bonaparte is still living, and will put himself some
day at the head of another victorious host. Who of us is not familiar with
that pretty fairy tale of the sleeping beauty?

  "Year after year unto her feet,
     She lying on her couch alone,
   Across the purple coverlet
     The maiden's jet-black hair has grown.

   ......

  "She sleeps: her breathings are not heard
     In palace chambers far apart.
   The fragrant tresses are not stirred
     That lie upon her charmed heart.
   She sleeps: on either hand upswells
     The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest;
   She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
     A perfect form in perfect rest."

And who of us in his childhood has not read with a delight which repeated
perusals could not satiate of the coming of the fairy prince, who was
fated, after a hundred years, to wake that sleeping palace into life, and
bear away the happy princess far across the hills, "in that new world which
is the old"?

  "And o'er the hills, and far away
     Beyond their utmost purple rim,
   Beyond the night, across the day,
     Through all the world she followed him."

These many stories are only the protean forms of one favorite popular
conception; the idea of one individual standing still, while the world
sweeps by, and either blest or curst with a perpetual renewal of youth, or
else awaking out of a sleep of centuries to find creation wearing a new
face and new generations acting out the great drama of history. The
different modifications of the story seem to derive their peculiar
character from the peculiarities of the time and country in which they
originate. The pagan tendency to personify all the phenomena of nature is
exemplified in the myth of Enceladus, under which were represented the
throes of Mount Etna. The wild, warlike, and semi-pagan spirit of Germany,
which peoples dark mountain recesses with mysterious forms, and fastens a
legend to each frowning crag and almost inaccessible fastness, finds apt
expression in the legend of the sleeping Barbarossa and his mailed
companions. And how beautifully the piety of the monkish chroniclers has
embellished the same fiction in the fables of the seven sleepers and the
monk of Hildesheim! In the former of these two stories, however, it is
worthy of remark that an actual fact has been blended with the fiction. The
seven sleepers are real historical personages, and their names are enrolled
in the list of canonized saints. They were martyrs whom the Emperor Decius
caused to be walled up alive in a cave, where many generations afterward
their relics were found; and this discovery of the relics has been
amplified into an actual resuscitation of the living men. The narrative in
this spurious form is given by Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legend,
and was made the subject of a poem by Goethe. The German poet adds that
there was a dog with the seven Christians, and that immediately after their
awakening, as soon as they had been seen by the king and people of Ephesus,
they disappeared for ever from the sight of man:

  "The most blessed angel Gabriel,
   By the will of God Almighty,
   Walling up the cave for ever,
   Led them into paradise."

The most remarkable of all the varieties of this fiction is the legend of
the Wandering Jew. Like the story of St. John's sleep at Ephesus, it seems
to be based upon a false interpretation of Scripture. "There are some of
them standing here," said our Lord, "who shall not taste death till they
see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom," (St. Matt. xvi. 28.) And it was
the old belief that this prophecy was being literally fulfilled in the
person of a Jew who was wandering over the face of the earth, and would
continue to wander until the day of judgment.
{763}
The earliest mention of this mythical person occurs in Matthew Paris's
Chronicle of English History, wherein he records that, in 1228, a certain
Archbishop of Greater Armenia visited the abbey of St. Albans, on a
pilgrimage to the shrines of the saints in England; and in the course of
conversation he was asked "whether he had ever seen or heard any thing of
Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who, when our Lord
suffered, was present and spoke to him, and who is still alive in evidence
of the Christian faith; in reply to which, a knight in his retinue, who was
his interpreter, replied, speaking in French, 'My lord well knows that man,
and a little before he took his way to the western countries the said
Joseph ate at the table of my lord the Archbishop of Armenia, and he has
often seen and conversed with him.'" The archbishop went on to relate that,
when Jesus had been delivered up to the Jews and they were dragging him out
to be crucified, "Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall, in Pilate's service,
as Jesus was going out of the door, impiously struck him on the back with
his hand, and said in mockery, 'Go quicker, Jesus, go quicker, why do you
loiter?' And Jesus, looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to
him, 'I am going, and you shall wait till I return.' And according as our
Lord said this Cartaphilus is still awaiting his return. At the time of our
Lord's suffering he was thirty years old, and when he attains the age of a
hundred years he always returns to the same age as he was when our Lord
suffered. After Christ's death, when the Catholic faith gained ground, this
Cartaphilus was baptized by Ananias, (who also baptized the apostle Paul,)
and was called Joseph. He dwells in one or other divisions of Armenia, and
in divers eastern countries, passing his time among the bishops and other
prelates of the church; he is a man of holy conversation and religious; a
man of few words, and very circumspect in his behavior; for he does not
speak at all unless when questioned by the bishops and religious; and then
he relates the events of olden times, and speaks of things which occurred
at the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of the witnesses of the
resurrection, namely, of those who rose with Christ, and went into the holy
city, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the apostles,
and of their separation and preaching. And all this," added the archbishop,
(though we should think the statement rather superfluous,) "he relates
_without smiling or levity of conversation_, as one who is well
practised in sorrow and the fear of God, always looking forward with dread
to the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the last judgment he should find him
in anger, whom, on his way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance."
There is something not easy to explain in this story. Matthew Paris was an
eye-witness of the events which he relates, so there can be little doubt
that the Armenian prelate or his interpreter did really tell some such
wondrous tale as this to the monks of St. Albans. Was it a pure invention?
Or did the interpreter, by a familiar species of embellishment, represent
his master as having seen the wandering Jew when he had only _heard_
of him? Or had the archbishop been deceived by some impostor who had taken
advantage of the popularity of the legend to palm himself off upon the
credulous as its veritable hero? One thing at all events is clear from the
narrative of the monk of St. Albans; and that is, that the fable was by no
means a new one in his time, though he is the earliest known writer who has
handed it down to us. The Jew, according to this narrative, refused all
gifts that were offered him, being content with a little food and scanty
raiment; but with all his humble piety he seems to have cherished an odd
sort of pride; for it is related that "numbers came to him from different
parts of the world, enjoying his society and conversation, and to them,
_if they are men of authority_, he explains all doubts on the matters
on which he is questioned."

{764}

After the Armenian had visited the shrine of "St. Tumas de Kantorbire" in
England and "Monsigour St. Jake," whereby we suppose is meant Santiago de
Compostela in Spain, he went to Cologne to see the heads of the three
kings, and there he is reported, in a rhyming chronicle by Philip Mouskes,
afterward Bishop of Tournay, as repeating the story he had told at St.
Albans, but with very slight differences.

There is no further mention of the Wandering Jew in literature for more
than two hundred and fifty years; but, in 1505, he turns up to some purpose
in Bohemia, where a poor weaver named Kokot was in great perplexity to find
a treasure that had been buried by his great-grandfather sixty years
before. The Jew had been present when the treasure was hid away, and he now
appeared opportunely to show the heir where to find it. He seemed at this
time to be about seventy years of age. About the same time we hear of him
in the East, where there was a tradition that he appeared to the Arabian
conqueror Fadhilah, and predicted the signs which were to precede the last
judgment. But this mysterious visitor, who is called Zerib Bar Elia, seems
to have been confounded in a curious way with the prophet Elijah. The most
circumstantial account of the undying one was given about the middle of the
sixteenth century by Dr. Paul von Eitzen, afterward Bishop of Schleswig,
who seems to have been thoroughly deceived by one of the many impostors who
arose during that century and the next, claiming to have been survivors of
the rabble who followed Jesus to Calvary. Dr. Von Eitzen's story is that,
being in church one Sunday in Hamburg, in the year 1547, "he observed a
tall man with his hair hanging over his shoulders, standing barefoot during
the sermon over against the pulpit, listening with deepest attention to the
discourse, and whenever the name of Jesus was mentioned bowing himself
profoundly and humbly, with sighs and beating of the breast. He had no
other clothing in the bitter cold of the winter, except a pair of hose
which were in tatters about his feet, and a coat with a girdle which
reached to his feet; and his general appearance was that of a man of fifty
years." The learned doctor was so much struck by the man's looks that after
the sermon he made inquiries about him. He found that he was a mystery to
everybody. Many people, some of them of high degree and title, had seen him
in England, Scotland, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Poland,
Hungary, Russia, Persia, and other countries, and nobody knew what to make
of him. So Dr. Von Eitzen sought him out and questioned him. "Thereupon he
replied modestly that he was a Jew by birth, a native of Jerusalem, by name
Ahasuerus, by trade a shoemaker; he had been present at the crucifixion of
Christ, and had lived ever since, travelling through various lands and
cities, the which he substantiated by accounts he gave; he related also the
circumstances of Christ's transference from Pilate to Herod, and the final
crucifixion, together with other details not recorded in the evangelists
and historians; he gave accounts of the changes of government in many
countries, especially of the East, through several centuries, and moreover
he detailed the labors and deaths of the holy apostles of Christ most
circumstantially." The stranger added that he had done his best with others
to have Christ put to death, and that, when sentence had been pronounced,
he ran home and called his family together that they might look at the
deceiver of the people as he was carried to execution. When the Lord was
led by to Calvary, he was standing at the door of his shop with his little
child on his arm. Spent with the weight of the cross which he was carrying,
Christ tried to rest a little, but Ahasuerus, for the sake of obtaining
credit among the other Jews, and also out of zeal and rage, drove the Lord
forward and bade him hasten. "Jesus, obeying, looked at him and said, 'I
shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go till the last day.'
{765}
At these words the man set down the child, and, unable to remain where he
was, he followed Christ, and saw how cruelly he was crucified, how he
suffered, how he died. As soon as this had taken place, it came upon him
suddenly that he could no more return to Jerusalem, nor see again his wife
and child, but must go forth into foreign lands, one after another, like a
mournful pilgrim. Now, when, years after, he returned to Jerusalem, he
found it ruined and utterly razed, so that not one stone was left standing
on another; and he could not recognize former localities.

.....

Dr. Paul von Eitzen, along with the rector of the school of Hamburg, who
was well read in history and a traveller, questioned him about events which
had taken place in the East since the death of Christ, and he was able to
give them much information on many ancient matters; so that it was
impossible not to be convinced of the truth of his story, and to see that
what seems impossible with men is, after all, possible with God." It does
not seem to have required Dr. Von Eitzen's investigation to prove that what
is impossible with man may be possible with God; but how any amount of
questioning could demonstrate the truth of the stranger's story we are at a
loss to see. It apparently failed to strike the reverend doctor and his
associate that the Jew could have learned the history of the East as easily
as they learned it themselves; and even if he made a good many blunders in
his narrative, it is by no means certain that his questioners were wise
enough to detect them.

This impostor, for so we may safely call him, observed the traditional
silence, modesty, temperance, and poverty which the legend uniformly
ascribes to the Wandering Jew, never accepting a larger alms than two
skillings, (about nine cents,) which he immediately gave to the poor; never
laughing; gladly listening to pious discourse; reverencing with sighs the
utterance of the divine name; and waxing very indignant whenever he heard
any one swear, especially by God's death or pains. He spoke the language of
whatever country he travelled in, and had no foreign accent; so at least
the account runs, but it does not appear how that fact was ascertained, nor
is there mention of any competent linguist having examined his abilities in
that line. He never staid long in one place.

Twenty-eight years afterward, that is, in 1575, two legates sent from
Schleswig to the court of Spain declared on their return home that they had
encountered the same mysterious person in Madrid, and conversed with him.
In appearance, manner of life, habits, and garb, he was just the same as he
had appeared in Hamburg. He spoke good Spanish. It is not said, however,
that these legates had themselves seen the man when Dr. Von Eitzen talked
with him twenty-eight years before, and the probability is, that they only
inferred from the description left of that strange traveller that the
wanderer in Madrid was the same person. In 1599, he is reported at Vienna;
in 1601, at Lubeck; and about the same date at Revel in Livonia, and Cracow
in Poland. He was also seen in Moscow, and in January, 1603, we find record
again of his appearance at Lubeck. The next year he was in Paris. Rudolph
Botoreus, who records his visit to that city in his history, apologizes for
mentioning what may seem a mere old wives' fable, but says the story was so
widely believed that he could not omit it. Bulenger, about the same date,
also mentions the report of the Jew's arrival in Paris, but confesses that
he neither saw him nor could hear anything authentic concerning him.

The frequency of the reappearance of this mythical character in different
parts of Europe during the seventeenth century seems to indicate that the
imposture was a profitable one. He assumes different names and tells his
story with several variations. In one work he is called Buttadaeus.
Elsewhere he is known as Isaac Laquedem.
{766}
In some accounts it is said that he was born of the tribe of Napluali,
seven or eight years before the birth of Christ. He ran away from his
father, who was either a carpenter or a shoemaker, to accompany the three
wise men to Bethlehem; and his description on his return of the wonders he
had seen and the rich presents which the magi laid at the feet of the babe
whom they hailed King of the Jews, led to the massacre of the innocents. He
was, according to this version, a carpenter by trade, and made the cross
upon which the Lord suffered. At the end of every hundred years he falls
into a fit or trance, from which he awakes with renewed youth, returning
always to the age at which he was when the Saviour was crucified. He has
tempted death in every conceivable form; he has courted pestilence, thrown
himself into the thickest of battles, and called upon the sea to swallow
him; but a miraculous interposition of divine power preserves him through
everything, and the curse still drives him on from land to land, and will
allow him no rest until the crucified Son of Man shall come in his glory to
judge the world. Penitent and devout, yet tortured with remorse, he sweeps
on perpetually round and round the world, and the sudden roar of a gale at
night is attributed by the vulgar to the passing of the everlasting Jew.
There is a Swiss story that he was seen one day standing on the Matterberg
contemplating the scene with mingled awe and wonder. Once before he stood
on that desolate spot, and then it was the site of a flourishing city. Once
again he will revisit it, and that will be on the eve of judgment.

So late as the beginning of the last century a man calling himself the
Wandering Jew made considerable noise in England, where many of the common
people were found ignorant enough to believe in him. Following the custom
of some of his early predecessors, he preferred the conversation of persons
of distinction, and spared no pains to thrust himself into aristocratic
company. Some of the nobility, half in jest, half out of curiosity, were
wont to talk with him, and pay him as they might a mountebank. He used to
say that he had been an officer of the sanhedrim, and that he had struck
Christ as he was led away from Pilate's judgment seat. He remembered all
the apostles, in proof of which he used to give what purported to be a
description of their appearance, dress, and peculiarities; he had been
acquainted with the father of Mohammed, and had disputed with the prophet
himself about the crucifixion of Christ; he knew Saladin, Tamerlane, and
Bajazet; he was in Rome when Nero set it on fire, and he remembered
minutely the history of the crusades. He spoke many languages, and even
conversed with an English nobleman in Arabic. Oxford and Cambridge sent
professors to discover whether he was an impostor. It does not appear that
he shrank from their examination, for it is pretty certain that he had been
a great traveller, and it is not at all improbable that he was well enough
read in history to perplex his questioners. On matters of detail it was
easy enough for him to impugn the accuracy of authorities which
contradicted him. Educated persons were not long in learning to laugh at
his assumptions, but the vulgar trusted him, and even believed in his power
of healing the sick. We are not aware that the humbug was ever thoroughly
exposed to the satisfaction of the people at large, and when he afterward
passed over to Denmark and Sweden he left probably a plenty of dupes behind
him. The last recorded appearance of a person claiming to be the Wandering
Jew was in 1774 at Brussels.

It would be a curious and interesting study to trace, if we could, the
origin of this myth, but it is a baffling inquiry. Its kinship with the
stories of long slumbers, marvellous resuscitations, and miraculous
prolongation of life is sufficiently apparent, yet it presents remarkable
differences from all these, and it is noteworthy that, during the five
centuries and more in which we know that it flourished, it underwent no
considerable modifications, such as popular legends in general are subject
to.
{767}
When we first hear of it, it is already wide spread and as completely
developed as it was when it finally dropped out of popular belief. And, as
our readers can see from the narratives we have quoted, there never was
even plausible reason to believe that the story was true. None of the
testimony as to the Jew's appearances will bear the very slightest
examination. Either the stories are manifest fabrications, or the persons
to whom they refer were merely ordinary vagabonds. No vagabond, however,
could have established such pretensions unless there had previously been
some legend in vogue to suggest them and to induce people to accept them.
Some have imagined that Ahasuerus is a type of the whole Jewish race,
which, since it rejected the Redeemer, has been driven forth to wander over
the face of the earth, yet is not to pass away until the end of time. This,
however, can hardly be; for Ahasuerus becomes a devout Christian, and,
moreover, one of his principal characteristics is contempt of money. Others
identify him with the gypsies, who are said to have been cursed in a
similar way because they refused shelter to the Virgin and child during the
flight into Egypt; but this is only a local superstition which never
obtained extensive acceptation. The more probable explanation is, that some
pious monk borrowed one of the old legends which we referred to at the
beginning of this article, and adding to it a conception taken from the
words of the Saviour, "There are some of them standing here who shall not
taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom,"
constructed an allegory which was afterward accepted for literal truth in a
not very critical age, and was kept alive by a succession of impostors.


------

{768}

    Original.

    "Abide In Me."

  "I am the vine, you the branches."


        "I AM the Vine."
  "'Tis true, dear Lord, and yet the fruit,
   And cool, green leaves that cast the grateful shade,
         Are mine."
  "Fie, silly branch! Without a root
   Deep hidden in the lowly earth,
   Thy fruit or leaves would ne'er had birth.
   How quickly would thy coronal of leaves,
   Which now from men such flattery receives,
   Lose all its glory in their sight, and fade
         And die;
   Thy fruit for tastelessness be spurned;
   Thyself be cast into the fire and burned,
         If I
   Who am, of all thou hast, the source,
   Did not with living sap the force
         Supply."
  "Lord! pardon me my foolish pride;
   Too much in my own strength I do confide.
         Decree
   That henceforth I shall bare and barren be,
   If I give not all glory unto thee;
         And chide
   My wayward spirit when it turns aside,
   And thinks to live and flourish, and yet not abide
         In thee."


------

   Abridged from The Dublin University Magazine.

   The Invasions Of Ireland By The Danes.


A knowledge of history is considered an essential portion of the mental
acquirements of every gentleman and lady, but it is for the most part a
disagreeable, and, in many respects, a slightly immoral study, if we apply
the same criterion to it which we do to its relative, romance. Moral
lecturers on fiction instruct us that any novel or romance which centres
its chief interest in wicked men or women, and devotes the greater portion
of its pages to their proceedings, is an immoral, or, at least, an
unedifying book. We need not waste pages or lines here in pointing out what
sort of designs or deeds enter into the tissue of historical narrative, but
as (the above reasoning notwithstanding) history is, and will continue to
be, a popular and engrossing study, it is of importance that we be
acquainted with the true nature of past events.


  Desiderata for a Good Irish History.

With regard to our own country we have not in this case been well favored.
Those histories which have appeared in print rest for their authority on
hitherto inedited MSS., many portions which are of a legendary and romantic
character. It is evident that it is only when all these MS. chronicles,
that are worth the trouble and expense, are published and compared with
each other and with foreign contemporary history, we can arrive with any
certainty at the truth or probability of past events, the existence or
otherwise of some semi-mythic heroes, or truthful chronological
arrangement.

For the coming history of Ireland we are thankful that preparations have
been making. We have had Keating's history badly translated for three
half-centuries. He compiled it in the seventeenth century from MS.
documents, some of which are unhappily not now in existence. Dr. O'Connor
was enabled, through the munificence of the Duke of Buckingham, to get into
print, accompanied by a Latin translation, the Annals of Tighernach, a monk
of Clonmacnois, in the eleventh century, and a portion of the Annals of
Ulster, but these books are nearly as inaccessible as the original MSS.
{769}
The Annals of the Four Masters, (the O'Clerys of Donegal Abbey, early part
of the seventeenth century,) edited by the late Dr. O'Donovan, have been
issued in a costly style by the firm of Hodges & Smith. For about a quarter
of a century our Archaeological and Celtic Societies have been publishing,
with translations, papers of great value, and at last, though at the
eleventh hour, government has lent a hand in bringing before the public
valuable materials for the future historian of Ireland. These consist of a
portion of the ancient Irish code: the Senchus Mhor, the Chronicum
Scotorum, edited by Mr. Hennessy, and the Wars of the Gael with the
Foreigners, [Footnote 275] (with translation,) edited by Rev. Dr. Todd.
This, we trust, is only an earnest of what government means to do. We hope
to see in succession the Annals of Tighernach, of Lough Cé, of Ulster,
[Footnote 276] and others issued at the moderate price adopted.

    [Footnote 275: The War of the Gaedhill with the Gaill; or The Invasions
    of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen. The Original Irish Text,
    edited with Translation and Introduction by James Henthorn Todd, D.D.,
    A.B., M.R.I.A., F.S.A., Senior Fellow T.C.D. Published by the Authority
    of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the
    Direction of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longmans & Co.]

    [Footnote 276: Tiernach O'Braoin, Abbot of Clonmacnois, died in 1088.
    The Annals that bear his name are continued to the fourteenth century.
    They exhibit great conscientiousness on the part of the writer, who
    never gives way to Bardic enthusiasm. The other chief books are the
    Annals of Inisfallen, probably begun by Maol Suthain O'Carroll,
    secretary to Brian Borumha, the Annals of Boyle, the Annals of Ulster,
    compiled by Charles Maguire, a learned ecclesiastic at the Isle of
    Shanat, in Lough Erne. His death occurred in 1493. The Annals begin at
    A.D. 441 and are continued to 1541. The Annals of Loch Cé, compiled by
    Brian MacDermot, relate events from the battle of Clontarf to 1590. The
    Annals of Connacht include all that passed from 1224 to 1562. The
    Annals of Clonmacnois were translated from the Gaelic into English in
    1627, by Connia Mac Egan; the original is not extant.]

The deeply read and zealous editor of the work just quoted below would
prefer to have been exercised on some of the others. We quote his own
words:

  "The editor cannot but regret that this tract, so full of the feelings of
  clanship,... should have been selected as the first specimen of an Irish
  chronicle, presented to the public under the sanction of the Master of
  the Rolls. His own wish and recommendation to his Honor was, that the
  purely historical chronicles, such as the Annals of Tighernach, the
  Annals of Ulster, or the Annals of Loch Cé, should have been first
  undertaken. The two former compilations, it is true, had been already
  printed [Footnote 277], although with bad translations and wretchedly
  erroneous topography; and a rule which at that time existed prohibited
  the Master of the Rolls from publishing any work which, even in part, had
  been printed before. This rule has since been judiciously rescinded, and
  it is hoped that his lordship will soon be induced to sanction a series
  of the chronicles of Ireland, especially the two just alluded to, which,
  it is not too much to say, are to the history of Ireland and of Scotland
  what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is to that of England. The Annals of Loch
  Cé (pr. Kay) belong to a later period. They begin with the battle of
  Clontarf, and continue the history, with some few gaps, to 1590."

    [Footnote 277: The Annals of Ulster are given only to the year 1131.
    The Dublin MS. extends to 1503. The Chronicum Scotorum is not here
    mentioned, because it is already on the list of the Master of the
    Rolls, edited by Mr. W. M. Hennessy.--_Note by Rev. Dr. Todd._]

Nothing can be more to the purpose or better worthy of attention than the
sequel of this passage.

  "Until these and other sources of history are made accessible, it is vain
  to expect any sober or trustworthy history of Ireland. The old romantic
  notions of a golden age, so attractive to some minds, must continue to
  prevail....

  "The authors of our popular histories were avowedly ignorant, with
  scarcely an exception, of the ancient language of Ireland--the language
  in which the real sources of Irish history are written. It was as if the
  authors of the history of Rome had been all ignorant of Latin, and the
  writers of our histories of Greece unable to read Greek. Even this would
  not, however, fully represent the real state of the case as regards
  Ireland. Livy and Tacitus, Herodotus and Thucydides, are printed books,
  and good translations of them exist. But the authorities of Irish history
  are still for the most part in manuscript, and unpublished, untranslated,
  and scattered in the public libraries in Dublin, Oxford, and London, as
  well as on the continent of Europe, Hence our popular histories leave us
  completely in the dark, and often contain erroneous information. Wherever
  the Irish names of places or persons are concerned they are at fault.
  They are entirely silent on the genealogies, relationships, and laws of
  the clans and their chieftains a subject so essential, to the right
  understanding of Irish history."

{770}

The most popular of our histories is that translated from the Irish of the
learned Dr. Geoffry Keating, by Dermod O'Connor, and first published,
Westminster, 1726. It was but indifferently done. Dr. Todd gives a decided
preference to that lately executed by O'Mahony, and published in America.
Dr. Todd gives his readers the pleasant information that two perfect copies
of the original Irish, executed by John Torna O'Mulconry, a contemporary of
Dr. Keating, are preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.


  The Mss. Of Our Danish Chronicle.

The narrative in the work under notice embraces two centuries, ending with
the battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014. Of the two hundred pages devoted to the
subject, the wars waged by Mahon of Thomond and his younger brother, Brian
Borumha, occupy a hundred and fifty. The fact is accounted for by giving
the authorship to Mac Liag, Brian's chief bard, or some other devoted filea
or seanachie of his house, who survived the great day at Clontarf. The
learned editor furnishes ample accounts of the MSS. used in the work, and
we proceed to make use of them for the information of our readers. A very
small portion of it, to wit, one leaf, folio size, closely written on both
sides in double columns, is preserved in the Book of Leinster. [Footnote
278] The contents of this leaf are given in the appendix.

    [Footnote 278: The Book of Leinster was written by Finn, Bishop of
    Kildare, for Hugh MacGriffin, tutor of that antetype of Henry VIII.,
    namely, Diarmuid MacMurroch It is a collection of narratives, tales,
    genealogies, and poems; some of these last attributed to Fionn
    MacCumball and his son Oisin. The death of its compiler in 1160 is
    noticed in the Annals of the Four Masters, under the date A.D. 1160.]

The second MS., also defective, is preserved in the library of Trinity
College. We copy Dr. Todd's reference to it:

  "This copy was found about the year 1840, by the late eminent scholar,
  Mr. O'Curry, bound up in one of the Seabright MSS., formerly in the
  possession of the celebrated antiquary, Edward Lluyd. There is nothing
  except the appearance of the MS., and its handwriting, to fix its age,
  but, judging from these criteria, we cannot be far wrong in supposing it
  to have been written about the middle of the fourteenth century. It is
  imperfect both at the beginning and at the end.... There are also some
  intervening defects, arising from a loss of leaves."

The MS. in which the valuable fragment is preserved is marked H, 2, 17.

  "The third MS. is a paper copy preserved in the Burgundian library,
  Brussels, which has the advantage of being perfect. It is in the
  handwriting of the eminent Irish scholar, Friar Michael O'Clery, by whom
  it was transcribed in the year 1635. This appears by the following note
  at the end:

    "'Out of the Book of Cueonnacht O'Daly, the poor friar, Michael
    O'Clery, wrote the copy from which this was written, in the convent of
    the friars in Baile Tighe, Farannain, (Multifarnham,) in the month of
    March of this year, 1628, and this (the present) copy was written by
    the same friar in the convent of Dun-na-n Gail, (Donegal,) in the month
    of November of this year, 1635.'"

The learned friar copied or introduced into his history catalogues and
poems not to be found in the Dublin MS., and there are passages in the last
not to be found in the Brussels copy. The chronicle now printed is, of
course, the more copious, as it contains everything to be found in either.

It was not till some time after the discovery of the Dublin MS., by Mr.
O'Curry, as recorded, that the existence of the Brussels copy became known.
Dr. Todd proceeded to that city in August, 1848, and copied all the
portions not to be found in the one at home. Afterward, as he observes:

  "Through the influence of the Earl of Clarendon, then Lord Lieutenant of
  Ireland, he obtained from the Belgian government a loan of this and some
  other MSS., and in 1833 caused a complete copy of it to be made by Mr.
  O'Curry, for the library of Trinity College, Dublin. These transcripts
  have been carefully collated in forming the text of the present edition."


  Who Wrote The Chronicle?

The authorship of the work is attributed to Muriertach Mac Liag, the chief
bard of King Brian, but no sure conclusion can be come to on this point.
{771}
It is certain, however, that it is the production of a zealous Dalcassian,
and that it was composed soon after the battle of Clontarf. We copy the
curious circumstance which proves to certainty that the original compiler
was contemporary with the concluding event of the narrative:

  "It is stated in the account given of the battle of Clontarf, that the
  full tide in Dublin Bay on the day of the battle, 23d April, 1014,
  coincided with sunrise, and that the returning tide at evening aided
  considerably in the defeat of the enemy.

  "It occurred to the editor, on considering this passage, that a criterion
  might be derived from it to test the truth of the narrative, and of the
  date assigned by the Irish to the battle of Clontarf. He, therefore,
  proposed to the Rev. Samuel Haughton, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College,
  and Professor of Geology in the University of Dublin, to solve for him
  this problem: 'What was the hour of high-water at the shore of Clontarf
  in Dublin Bay on the 23d April, 1014?' The editor did not make known to
  Dr. Haughton the object he had in view in this question, and the
  coincidence of the results obtained with the ancient narrative is
  therefore the more valuable and curious."

The result of Dr. Haughton's calculations, communicated to the Royal Irish
Academy in May, 1861, was this:

  "The tide along the Clontarf shore, when not obstructed by embankments
  and walls, could not have differed many minutes, on the 23d April, 1014,
  from 5 hours 30 minutes A.M., the evening tide being full in at 5 hours
  55 minutes P.M.

  "This proves that the author, if not himself an eye-witness, must have
  derived his information from those who were. 'None others,' as Dr.
  Haughton observes, 'could have invented the fact that the battle began at
  sunrise, and that the tide was then full in.' The importance of the time
  of tide became evident at the close of the day, when the returned tide
  prevented the escape of the Danes from the Clontarf shore to the north
  bank of the Liffey."

In the chronicle the author makes a distinction between races of the
invaders, namely, the dark-haired Danes and the fair-haired Norwegians. The
word Lochlann (lake land) is applicable to Norway with its numerous fiords,
to which the ancient Irish writers applied the name of lochs. The epithet
_gormglasa_ (bluish green) was probably applied to the plate armor
worn by some of them.


  Style and Spirit of the Work.

The following passage will furnish a fair specimen of the style of the
chronicle, besides exhibiting the misery of a country divided into small
kingdoms when a ferocious band of foreigners chose to make a lodgment in
it:

  "In a word, although there were an hundred hard-steeled iron heads on one
  neck, and an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-resting, brazen tongues in
  each head, and an hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing voices from each
  tongue, they could not recount, nor enumerate, nor tell what all the
  Gaedhil suffered in common, both men and women, laity and clergy, old and
  young, noble and ignoble, of hardship, and of injury, and oppression in
  every house from these valiant, foreign, purely pagan people. Even though
  great were this cruelty, and oppression, and tyranny--though numerous
  were the oft-victorious clans of the many-familied Erinn--though numerous
  their kings, and their royal chiefs, and their princes--though numerous
  their heroes, and champions, and their brave soldiers, their chiefs of
  valor and renown, and deeds of arms--yet not one of them was able to give
  relief, or alleviation, or deliverance from that oppression and tyranny,
  from the numbers, and the multitudes, and the cruelty, and the wrath of
  the brutal, ferocious, furious, untamed, implacable hordes by whom that
  oppression was inflicted, because of the excellence of their polished,
  ample, treble, heavy, trusty, glittering corselets, and their hard,
  strong, valiant swords, and their well-riveted long spears, and their
  ready, brilliant arms of valor besides, and because of the greatness of
  their achievements and of their deeds, their bravery and their valor,
  their strength, and their venom, and their ferocity, and because of the
  excess of their thirst and their hunger for the brave, fruitful, nobly
  inhabited, full of cataracts, rivers, bays, pure, smooth-planed, sweet,
  grassy land of Erinn."

Little can the mere English reader, who may look on much of this as mere
bombast, feel the charm which such substantives and epithets as the
following had on the original hearers or readers of the work: "Luireach,
lainndearda, luchtmara, tredualach, trom, trebhraid, taitnemach," (Loricas,
polished, ample, treble, etc.)

{772}

  Causes of the Invaders' Success.

The editor, alluding to the defeats suffered by the Irish forces on many
occasions, finds no great difficulty in accounting for them, and this
without the slightest reflection on their innate courage or skill in the
use of their arms:

  "The whole body of the clan were summoned to decide upon the question of
  war or peace. Every petty chieftain of every minor tribe, if not every
  individual clansman, had a voice not only in this primary question, but
  also, when the war was declared, in the questions arising upon subsequent
  military operations... The kings or chieftains were themselves chosen by
  the clan, although the choice was limited to those who possessed a sort
  of hereditary right, often complicated by a comparison of the personal
  merits of the rival claimants.

  "The army was a rope of sand. It consisted of a number of minor clans,
  each commanded by its own petty chieftain, receiving no pay, and bound by
  no oath of allegiance to the king or chief commander. Each clan, no
  doubt, adhered with unshaken fidelity to its own immediate chieftain, but
  he on the smallest offence could dismiss his followers to their homes
  even at the very eve of a decisive battle.... These facts must be borne
  in mind if we would rightly understand the inherent weakness of warfare
  in ancient Ireland."

Thus many of the faults we choose to impute to our ancestors and their
supposed natural propensities should be rather imputed to the circumstances
in which they were placed than to themselves. A tribe could not reckon upon
a continuance of peace with neighbors or strangers for a single week. A
chief enjoying the strength, and courage, and wisdom of manhood was
essential to their well-being, almost to their existence. The heir-apparent
of the chief for the time might be a child or an incompetent youth. In this
case it was but sound policy to elect during the chief's life his brother
or other near relative to assume the command immediately on his decease.
This was done, the election being restricted to the Duine Uasals
(gentlemen) of the tribe. The scrutiny might be distinguished on occasions
by the usual disagreeables of an election, but it prevented the
inconveniences of an interregnum.


  The Danish Proceedings Before Brian's Time.

The mere Irish were never much benefited by the nominal capital of their
country. The Norwegians, getting it into their possession in 836 or 838,
built a fortress there in 842, and the Danes, after a preliminary visit in
851, returned for reënforcements, and their king, Olaf the White, was
recognized as supreme chief of all the foreigners in Ireland in 856, and
made Dublin his headquarters.

There was a comparative rest from foreign invasions for about forty years,
but Ireland's troubles began to thicken in the early part of the tenth
century. Crowds of foreigners assembled, and the brave King of Ireland,
Nial of the Black Knee, collected all the forces he could from Meath and
the North, and attacked their united strength at Kilmashogue in the
mountains beyond Rathfarnham. But the foreigners much outnumbered the
natives, and the heroic king with twelve petty princes perished in the
battle.

The ferocious invaders did not confine their attentions to Dublin and the
north; they ravaged the pleasant south country, and feelingly does the
chronicler describe the hellish mischief they committed. Overcome by his
subjects, he sometimes even neglects his darling alliteration:

  "They rent her (Erinn's) shrines, and her reliquaries, and her books.
  They demolished her beautiful, ornamented temples; for neither
  veneration, nor honor, nor mercy for Termonn, [Footnote 279] nor
  protection for church or for sanctuary, for God or for man, was felt by
  this furious, ferocious, pagan, ruthless, wrathful people. In short,
  until the sand of the sea, or the grass of the field, or the stars of
  heaven be counted, it will not be easy to recount, or to enumerate, or to
  relate what the Gaedhil, all without distinction, suffered from them. ...
  Alas! many and frequent were the bright and brilliant eyes that were
  suffused with tears, and dimmed with grief and despair at the separation
  of son from father, and daughter from mother, and brother from brother,
  and relatives from their race and from their tribe."

    [Footnote 279: Church lands having the privilege of sanctuary.]


{773}

One of the most terrible of these southern descents was that made by
Imar--son of Imar (Ivar) and his three sons Dubhceann, and Cu-Allaidh, and
Aralt, (Black Head,) and Wild Dog, (Wolf,) and Harold. These worthies took
possession of Limerick, and high and haughty were their proceedings.

  "Such was the oppressiveness of the tribute and rent of the foreigners at
  large and generally, that there was a king from them over every
  territory, and a chief over every chieftainry, and an abbot over every
  church, and a steward over every village, and a soldier in every house,
  so that none of the men of Erinn had power to give the milk of his cow,
  nor so much as the clutch of eggs of one hen, in succor or in kindness to
  an aged man or to a friend, but was forced to preserve them for the
  foreign steward, or bailiff, or soldier. And though there were but one
  milk-giving cow in the house, she durst not be milked for an infant of
  one night, nor for a sick person, but must be kept for the steward, or
  bailiff, or soldier of the foreigners. And however long he might be from
  the house, his share or his supply durst not be lessened. And although
  there was in the house but one cow, it must be killed for the meal of one
  night, if the means of a supply could not be otherwise procured.... And
  an ounce of silver Findrunl was paid for every nose besides the royal
  tribute every year. And he who had not the means of paying it, had
  himself to go into slavery for it."

The alternative was the loss of the organ just mentioned.


  Brian's Early Struggles.

But we have got to the tenth century, and the two youthful brothers
destined to give a disabling blow to Danish tyranny are learning the
profession of arms in their father's fortress in Thomond, (_Tuaith
Muimhain_, North Munster.) These were Mathgamhain [Footnote 280] and
Brian, sons of Cennedigh, (Kennedy,) chief of the tribe of Dal-Cais.

    [Footnote 280: However the people of the tenth century pronounced this
    word, modern scholars are content to sound it Mahoun.

    An old Munster king, Oilliol Oiuim, appointed in his will that the
    descendants of his two sons, Eogan and Cormac Oas, should sway the
    sceptre of the south in alternate succession. A very unwise proceeding,
    as future events proved.]

The first naming of these princes in the chronicle brings out an
alliterative and patriotic glow on the pen of the enthusiastic chronicler.

  "There were then governing and ruling this tribe two stout, able, valiant
  pillars, two fierce, lacerating, magnificent heroes; two gates of battle,
  two poles of combat, two spreading trees of shelter, two spears of
  victory and readiness, of hospitality and munificence, of heart and
  strength, of friendship and liveliness, the most eminent of the west of
  Europe, namely, Mathgamain and Brian, the two sons of Cennedigh, son of
  Lorcan, son of Lachtna, son of Core," etc.

Their cousins, the Eoganacht, having the lion's share in the government of
Leath Mogha, the following were the principal privileges of the
Dalcassians:

  "It is the privilege of the host of Lugaidh's race
   To lead the battalions of the hosts of Mumhain,
   And afterward to be in the rere
   In coming from a hostile land.

  "It is not fealty that is required of them,
   But to preserve the freedom of Caisel. [Footnote 281]
   It is not rent, it is not tribute, as hath been heard;
   It is not fostership nor fostership's fees.

    [Footnote 281: The residence of the kings of the south assumed the
    title of Caisiol, (_Cios_, tribute, _ail_, stone.)]

  ......

  "And even when there is not a king
   Out of you over Erinn of hosts,
   Only that you would not infringe on right,
   No human power could prevail over you."

Early in their lives the princes entered on a skirmishing warfare with the
enemy; and when Mahon, weary of the resultless struggle, entered on a truce
with the enemy, Brian still continued to harass them, and as his zealous
biographer says, when he could not injure them on any day, he did it next
night, and every inactive night was followed by a destructive day. He and
his followers lived in temporary huts, and continued to kill daily and
nightly their enemies "by companies, by troops, by scores, by hundreds, and
(in case of a bad day or night) by quaternions."

  "Great were the hardship and the ruin, the bad food and bad bedding,
  which they inflicted on him in the wild huts of the desert, on the hard,
  knotty, wet roots of his native country, whilst they killed his people,
  and his trusty officers, and his comrades; sorrowful, wretched, unpitied,
  weary, for historians say that the foreigners cut off his people, so that
  he had at last but fifteen followers."

{774}

Mahon, finding his brother in this wretched state, appointed a meeting, and
a conference was held, given in verse in the text, Mahon gently chiding
Brian for exposing the lives of his brave followers to certain death; Brian
delicately hinting that such and such of their ancestors would not be so
patient of the presence of the foe in Thomond as he (Mahon) chose to be:

  "_Mahon_. Alone art them, O Brian of Banba (Erinn)!
   Thy warfare was not without valor;
   Not numerous hast thou come to our house;
   Where hast thou left thy followers?

   .....

  "_Brian_. I have left them on Craig Liath, [Footnote 282]
   In that breach where shields were cleft.
   Birnn (Biörn)--it was difficult to cut off the man--
   Fell there with his people.

     [Footnote 282: Cariglea (Gray Rock) near Killaloe, seat of
     _Aoibhin_, (_Aoine_, Venus?) the Bean Sighe of the
     Dalcassian chiefs.]

   .....

  "Our fight at the Fergus was not soft;
   Weary of it were we on both sides;
   Our fight in the combat was no weak combat,
   Thirty with Elius fell.

   .....

  "These are our adventures, O man!
   O son of Cennedigh, the fair-skinned;
   Often did we deliver ourselves with success,
   From positions in which we despaired of escape.
   Cennedigh for wealth would not have been,
   Nor would Lorcan, the faithful, have been
   So quiescent toward the foreigners,
   As thou art, Mathgamhain!"

The result of the conference was a general gathering of the native fighting
men to Cashel, and soon a general engagement took place between themselves
and the foreigners at Sulcoit, in which these last sustained a terrible
defeat. The chronicler then relates with much zest the march to Limerick,
its destruction, and the treatment of the conquered:

  "They carried off their jewels, and their best property, and their
  saddles beautiful and foreign, their gold and their silver, their
  beautiful woven cloth of all colors and of all kinds, their satins and
  silken cloth, pleasing and variegated, both scarlet and green, and all
  sorts of cloth, in like manner. They carried away their soft, youthful,
  bright, matchless girls, their blooming, silk-clad young women, and their
  active, large, and well-formed boys. The fort and the good town they
  reduced to a cloud of smoke, and to red fire afterward. The whole of the
  captives were collected on the hills of Saingel. Every one of them that
  was fit for war was killed, and every one that was fit for a slave was
  enslaved."


  Family Quarrels.

A remnant of the Danish forces maintained a position in Inis Cealtra,
(Scattery Island,) under Ivar, and six years later this chief induced the
chiefs of the O'Donovans and O'Molloys to aid him to destroy the power of
Mahon, now the acknowledged king of Munster, and even to take his life.
These princes were of the Eoganacht branch of the royal line of Cashel,
and, therefore, not friendly disposed to the present Dalcassian monarch.
There are two differing narratives of the murder, with some poems
interpolated, and a guess only can be made at the truthful succession of
incidents. The editor presents as probable a version of the facts as can be
got at among the confusion of the original accounts.

Mahon unfortunately accepted an invitation to O'Donovan's house at Bruree
on the river Maigue, probably to bring about a more friendly feeling
between the two rival branches of the descendants of their common ancestor,
Oilliol Oluim.

The Bishop of Cork being active in the matter, and the Eoganacht chiefs
having sworn neither to attempt his life nor blind him, he seems to have
been quite unsuspicious. We next find him met by O'Molloy's people in a
pass between Kilmallock and Cork, and about to be put to death. One of the
accounts says that he had the Book of the Gospels of Barri (belonging to
the cathedral of Cork) on his breast, but that, as soon as he saw his death
determined on, he flung it the distance of a bow-shot away in order that it
might not be stained with his blood. A cleric witness of the base deed
denounced this curse on the O'Molloy, (Maelmuadh):

{775}

  "It is Aedh (Hugh) that shall kill thee, a man from the border of Aifi,
   On the north of the sun with the harshness of the wind.
   The deed thou hast done shall be to thee a regret:
   That for which thou hast done it thou shalt not enjoy.
   Perpetual shall be its misfortune; thy posterity shall pass away,
    Thy history shall be forgotten, thy tribe shall be in bondage;
    The calf of a pet cow shall overthrow thee at one meeting;
    Thou shall not conquer it, Aedhan shall slay thee."

"The north of the sun with the harshness of the wind" implied the burial of
the treacherous chief on the north side of a hill, where the sun's rays
would not reach his grave.

The denunciation of the bishop noticed the erics payable for the murder of
the king, but so atrocious was the deed that Brian would not accept any
recompense but the life of the culprit.

We extract a portion of the elegy made by Mahon's blind bard on the
melancholy occasion:

  "Loud to-day the piercing wail of woe
   Throughout the land of Ui Toirdhelbhaigh, (Torloch.)
   It shall be and it is a wail not without cause,
   For the loss of the hero Mathgamhain.

  "Mathgamhain, the gem of Magh Fail,
   Son of Cennedigh, son of Lorcan;
   The western world was full of his fame--
   The fiery King of Boromha.

   .....

  "The Dal Cais of the hundred churches remember
   How we overran Gaeth Glenn,
   When upon the illustrious Fergal's shield
   Mathgamhain's meal was cooked.

   .....

  "Although calves are not suffered to go to the cows
   In lamentation for the noble Mathgamhain,
   There was inflicted much evil in his day
   By those who are in Port Arda."

The custom of the Gael in matters militant was to appoint the time and
place for battles--however enraged one party might be with the other. Brian
sent mortal defiance to Molloy, threatening to besiege him in his own dun
if he did not attend the notice. Murchad, Brian's eldest son, and the Osgur
of his day, defied the caitiff chief to single combat. So the challenge was
accepted and the battle took place, a large body of the Danes fighting
under the banner of Maelmuadh. This chief was slain either by the hand of
Murchad, or put to death in cold blood by Aedhan in a lonely hut after the
fight. In this latter case he lost his eyesight in the field of Bealach
Leachta through the curse pronounced on him, and was subsequently killed in
the hut as mentioned.

A few lines of the poetical invitation to battle sent by Brian are worth
quotation:

  "Go, Cogaran the intelligent!
   Unto Maelmuadh of the piercing blue eye,
   To the sons of Bran of enduring prosperity,
   And to the sons of the Ui Eachdach.

   .....

  "Say unto the son of Bran that he fail not
   After a full fortnight from to-morrow,
   To come to Belach Lechta hither,
   With the full muster of his army and his followers.

   .....

  "Whenever the son of Bran son of Cian shall offer
   The Cumhal (blood fine) of my brother unto myself,
   I will not accept from him hostages or studs,
   But only himself in atonement for his guilt.

   .....

  "But if he do not come from the South
   To Belach Lechta the evergreen,
   Let him answer at his house
   The Dal Cais [Footnote 283] and the son of Cennedigh.

    [Footnote 283: This name imports the "Tribe or Family of Cas."]

  "For him shall not be accepted from them
   Gold, nor silver, nor land,
   Nor hostages, nor cattle, O man:
   Tell them this, and go!"


  The Fight At Dunlavin.

There now remained no obstacle to the placing of the crown of Leath Mogha,
[Footnote 284] the southern portion of the island, on the head of the
brother and avenger of Mahon. He took hostages from the chiefs of Desmond,
(_Deas_, South, _Muimhe_, Munster,) allowed sundry Danish groups
of people to occupy places of trade, and finally, in the year 998, came to
a conference with Malachy II., King of Leath Cuinn or northern portion of
Erinn. We have no objection to Brian's triumphant procession up the
Shannon, but are not clear about the privilege assumed by his Dalcassians,
of making hostile visitations to districts on each side as they went
up-stream. However. Malachy had set them a bad example a short time before.

    [Footnote 284: The boundary line of these portions connected the bays
    of Dublin and Galway.]

{776}

The natives and Danes of Leinster getting up an insurrection soon after
this treaty with Malachy, Brian proceeded toward Dublin to bring them to
their duty. They met him at Glean-Mama (Glen of the Gap) near Dunlavin, but
sustained signal defeats at that pass and other points where they afterward
rallied. The curious in topographical details will find much to interest
them at pages cxliv., etc., of the introduction. The editor has made
himself well acquainted with the natural features of the neighborhood of
Dunlavin, having received some valuable information from Rev. Mr. Sherman,
formerly Roman Catholic curate in the neighborhood. The site of the old
fort is marked by an ancient cemetery, pagan tumuli, and fragments of stone
circles, called by the inhabitants, Pipers' Stones. We must here make use
of one of Dr. Todd's many and valuable archaeological notes:

  "The Danes expected to reach Dunlavin, and perhaps to encamp there to
  meet the forces of Meath (under Malachy) and Munster. But Brian met them
  in the narrow defile of Glen Mama, thus cutting off their retreat. Here
  there was no room for a regular engagement, and the flight must have been
  immediate. The main body of the Danish army flew across the sloping land
  through Kinsellastown, to the ford of Lemmonstown, where a stand seems to
  have been made by them, and where it is said thousands fell in the
  conflict. To this day their bones are turned up in the fields about the
  ford, and some mounds on the banks of the stream are so filled up with
  them that the people leave them untilled, as being sacred repositories of
  the dead. The remnant of the defeated army fled to Holywood, about a mile
  to the east of the ford, and thence to the ford of the Horse-pass on the
  Liffey, about Poul a Phouca, (the Pooka's Hole,) where they were utterly
  routed. At the close of the last century the wild lands of Upper Crihelpe
  were reclaimed, and many relics of this retreat were brought to light,
  chiefly in a line from _Tubber Glen_ (Well of the Glen) to
  Lemmonstown ford. The workmen, coming on the pits where the bodies of the
  slain lay buried, left them intact, closing them up again. In the defile
  of Glen Mama, during the first week of May, 1864, one of these pits was
  accidentally opened, bones were turned up, and also the fragments of a
  Danish sword, (now in the possession of Dean Graves, Pres. R. I. A.) The
  clay was found black and unctuous, as if thoroughly saturated with human
  remains."

In the now nearly unknown cemetery of Crihelpe lie the remains of Harold
the Danish prince, by the side of a granite post, furnished with an
aperture for a wooden shaft, to convert it into a cross. It is called
_Cruisloe_, (_Crois laech_, warrior's cross,) and serves as a
rubbing-post for cattle.

This was considered one of the most important victories gained over the
foreigners, both from the number of the slain and the spoils
recovered--"Gold, silver, bronze, (_finndruine_,) precious stones,
carbuncle gems, buffalo horns, and beautiful goblets. Much also of various
vestures of all colors was found there likewise;" for, in the words of the
text,

  "Never was there a fortress, or a fastness, or a mound, or a church, or a
  sacred place, or a sanctuary, when it was taken by that howling, furious,
  loathsome crew, which was not plundered.... Neither was there in
  concealment under ground in Erinn, nor in the various solitudes belonging
  to Fians [Footnote 285] or to fairies, anything that was not discovered
  by these foreign, wonderful Denmarkians through paganism and idol
  worship."

    [Footnote 285:  Here is evidence of the existence of legends of the
    Fianna in the early part of the eleventh century.]

The tables were now completely turned on the foreigners. Instead of the
state of vassalage in which they had held the natives, we now find the
following state of things:

  "There was not a winnowing sheet from Benn Edair (Howth) to Tech Duinn
  [Footnote 286] in Western Erinn that had not a foreigner in bondage on
  it, nor was there a quern (hand-mill) without a foreign woman, so that no
  son of a soldier or of an officer of the Gaedhil deigned to put his hand
  to a flail or to any labor on earth. Nor did a woman deign to put her
  hands to the grinding of a quern, or to knead a cake, or to wash her
  clothes, but had a foreign man or a foreign woman to work for them."

    [Footnote 286: _House of Donn:_ the locality of the shipwreck of
    Donn, son of Milesius, in the south-west of Kerry. Donn was venerated
    as a fairy chief after his decease, the same as Aenghus of the Brugh,
    Mananan, Mac Lir, etc.]


  Unedifying Doings at Kincora.

After a sojourn from Great to Little Christmas (February 2d) in Dublin,
Brian returned to Kincora, (_Ceann Coraidh_, head of the weir.)
{777}
Meantime Sitric, son of Anlaf, the defeated Danish prince, fled to the
court of Aedh, at Aileach, (north east of Donegal,) and afterward to that
of Achy, king of East Ulster, at Down-patrick, but neither king would
afford him protection, such was the awe of Brian's power. So, like a brave
and wise chief, he proceeded directly to the Court of his conqueror, and
requested peace and friendship. These were immediately granted, both from
the inherent nobility of Brian's disposition and his desire to have a
friendly and devoted governor for the distant city of Ath Cliath.

To strain the bonds that held his new ally to him still tighter, he gave
him his daughter in marriage. This might be prudent or the reverse, but to
take Sitric's mother Gormflaith (blue-_eyed_ noble lady) for his
second wife showed little wisdom. This lady, sister to Maelmordha, King of
Leinster, had for her first husband Olaf Cuaran, to whom she bore the
Prince Sitric. Her next spouse was Malachy, King of Leath Cuinn, already
more than once mentioned. After presenting him with a son, Prince Connor,
she was repudiated, and, very little to Brian's domestic comfort, he was
selected for her third experiment in matrimony. After sharing his royal bed
and board for a season, she was repudiated the second time, and then
probably went to add to the discomfort of the fortress of her son in
Dublin, or her brother at Naas, or Dunlavin, or Dinn Righ, (Ballyknockan,
near Leighlin Bridge.)

  "The Njal Saga calls her Kormlada, and describes her as the fairest of
  all women, and best gifted in everything that was not in her own power,
  that is, in all physical and natural endowments, but she did all things
  ill over which she had any power, that is, in her moral
  conduct."--_Burnt Njal_, ii. 323.

We find at the period in question frequent marriage alliances between Irish
and Danish families. In fact, when a foreign family or tribe had contrived
to secure a footing in the country, and the first bitter dislike had blown
over, the native chiefs began to look on them as they did each other, and
in many cases a stronger feeling of friendship connected the foreign chief
and his people to some neighboring native prince or flaith than prevailed
among themselves. This was also the case afterward between natives and
Anglo-Normans. Nothing could exceed the strength of ties that bound the
individuals of a tribe to each other and to their chief, and in most cases
the chiefs to the provincial kings, but enthusiasm for the cause of the
Ard-Righ or for the general weal of the island was an exceedingly scarce
commodity. The same indifferent spirit still exists.

The great chiefs proceedings for some time after these occurrences seem to
have been prompted as much by ambition at least as by a national spirit.
Still he did not depart from the generally observed rule among Gaelic kings
and chiefs, that is, sending warning to those on whom they intended to make
war, and appointing the time and place of battle. He gave Malachy plainly
to understand that he should cede to him the dignity of Ard-Righ. The
astonished sovereign claimed time to consult the princes of the North and
his own chiefs, but neither from the Kinel Conaill [Footnote 287] nor the
Kinel Eoghain could he get due encouragement, and he was obliged to
acknowledge the humiliating fact to the southern chief.

   [Footnote 287: In the original is given the poetical adjuration of Gilla
   Comghaill O'Sleibhin to Hugh, king of Hy Conaill, to join Malachy in his
   opposition to Brian. This King of Munster is treated in it as the King
   of Saxon-land in aftertimes by a bard of the fifteenth or sixteenth
   century. For a wonder the Ulster king did not yield to the power of
   poesy on that occasion.]

Still the latter was not disposed to take the brave prince at a
disadvantage, and gave him a twelvemonth to mature his plans. The interview
took place in Brian's camp, Malachy being accompanied by twelve score
horsemen, and, when the agreement was made, the southern king proceeded
homeward, first making a present of 240 horses to his future vassal. The
Meath warriors would not deign to conduct each a led horse back to the
royal fort, and Malachy was unwilling to offend Brian by refusing them.
[Footnote 288]

    [Footnote 288: Petty chiefs or princes paying tribute to their
    superiors received in turn gifts from the great men, in fact, were
    obliged to receive them--a genuine Irish procedure. (See the Book of
    Rights.)]

{778}

He therefore begged of Murchad to accept them in token of his good-will,
and the prince graciously assented. Malachy was not in a better condition
at the year's end, and so the sovereignty of the island passed into Brian's
hands without bloodshed. We have not space to treat in detail his after
_visitations_ to the north, and his circuit of the kingdom to receive
hostages and confirm his authority. When at Armagh, he gratified the
ecclesiastical powers there by a donation of twenty ounces of gold, and by
directing his secretary, the Abbot O' Carroll, to make this entry in their
book in the Latin language. The curious may still read the original at page
16, BB, in the Book of Armagh, a collection begun in the eighth century:

  "St. Patrick, going up to heaven, commanded that all the fruit of his
  labor, as well of baptisms as of causes and of alms, should be carried to
  the apostolic city which is called _Scotice_ (in Gaelic) ARDD MACHA.
  So I have found it in the book collections of the Scots, (the Gael.) I
  have written, (this,) that is, (I,) Calvus Perennis (_Mael-Suthain_,
  Bald for Ever) in the sight (under the eyes) of Brian, emperor of the
  Scots; and what I have written he has determined for all the kings of
  Maceriae, (Cashel or Munster.)"


  Compensations.

If there is extant a thorough believer in all the facts related by the
bards, he had better refrain from questioning the editor on the subject of
the beautiful and innocent maiden of the gold ring and snow-white wand. The
chronicler coming to this point in the history thus expressed himself:

  "After the banishment of the foreigners out of all Erinn, and after Erinn
  was reduced to a state of peace, a lone woman came from Torach in the
  North to Cliodhna [Footnote 289] (pr. Cleena) in the south of Erinn,
  carrying a ring of gold on a horse-rod, and she was neither robbed nor
  insulted. Whereupon the poet sang:

    "From Torach to pleasant Cliodhna
     And carrying with her a ring of gold,
     In the time of Brian of the bright side, fearless,
     A lone woman made the circuit of Erinn."

      [Footnote 289: Cleena was in the first rank of Munster fairies. Her
      visits were much disliked by the people. _Tonn Cliodhna_
      (Cleena's Wave) in one of the Kerry bays was the dread of the native
      seamen.]

It cannot be denied that Brian was a usurper with respect to Leath Cuinn;
but how much better was it for the people of the whole land to be under the
undivided sway of one wise, noble-minded, and energetic prince, assured of
peace, and opportunities of carrying on the ordinary business of life
undisturbed, and improving their condition, than to be merely enduring life
from day to day, not knowing the moment they should be called on to go on a
marauding expedition or to defend their corn, their cattle, and their own
lives from a marauding party. We quote a few of the peaceful exploits of
the best and greatest of our ancient princes:

  "By him were erected noble churches in Erinn and their sanctuaries. He
  sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge, and to buy
  books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because the writings and books
  in every church, etc., had been burned, and thrown into the water by the
  plunderers from the beginning. And Brian himself gave the price of books
  to every one separately who went on this service.... By him were erected
  the church of Cell Dálua, (Killaloe,) and the church of Inis Cealtra,
  (Scattery Island,) and the bell-tower of Tuam Greine, [Footnote 290] etc.
  etc. By him were made bridges and causeways and high roads. By him were
  strengthened the duns and fortresses and islands.... and royal forts of
  Mumhain. He built also the fortification of Caisel of the kings,.... and
  Cean Coradh, and Borumha in like manner. He continued in this way
  prosperously, peaceful, giving banquets, hospitable, just-judging;
  wealthily, venerated, chastely, and with devotion, and with law, and with
  rules among the clergy; with prowess and with valor, with renown among
  the laity, and fruitful, powerful, firm, secure for fifteen years in the
  chief sovereignty of Erinn, as Gilla Maduda (O'Cassidy, Abbot of
  Ardbreccan) said:

    'Brian the flame over Banbha of the variegated flowers,
     Without gloom, without guile, without treachery,
     Fifteen years in full prosperity.'"

      [Footnote 290: Fort of the Sun--Tomgreany in Clare--a copy of one of
      the Danaan round towers. There is at present not a trace of it.]

{779}

  The Gathering of the Eagles.

Toward the festival of St. Patrick in the ensuing spring, all that had
remained loyal to the reigning monarch were directing their course to the
plain before Dublin. Sitric, and his mother Gormflaith, and Maelmordha
busied themselves collecting allies from all quarters. Sigurd, Earl of
Orkney, came to the aid of his countrymen on the condition of getting the
privilege of being Gormflaith's fourth husband, the second and third still
living, and one being near eighty years of age. Brodar, about whose name
and the locality of whose earldom there is some uncertainty, was also a
postulant for her hand, and Sitric made no scruple of promising it,
expecting, as may be supposed, that one of the wooers, after doing good
service in the battle, might be very indifferent on the subject at its
close:

  "Brodar, according to the Njal Saga, had been a Christian man and a
  mass-deacon by consecration, but he had thrown off his faith, and become
  'God's dastard' and worshipped heathen fiends; and he was of all men most
  skilled in sorcery. He had that coat of mail on which no steel would
  bite. He was both tall and strong, and had such long locks that he tucked
  them under his belt. His hair was black."

This fierce-looking renegade commanded the foreign Danes and auxiliaries in
the front of the battle, being supported by Earl Sigurd and other chiefs. A
battalion of the Dublin Danes had their position in the rear of these,
supported by the chieftains of ships. Maelmordha and his chiefs occupied
the rear, commanding the North-Leinster men and the forces of Hy
Ceansalach, [Footnote 291] (Wicklow and Wexford.)

    [Footnote 291:  The first chief who bore this name had killed a druid,
    accompanying the sacrilegious deed with a fiendish grin on his
    features. "That vile expression on your face," said the dying man,
    "shall give a name to your posterity while grass grows." _Ceann
    salach_ is literally _dirty head_. Other great families have
    not escaped nick-names. _Cameron_ is crooked nose;
    _Cromwell_, crooked eye. (_Hy Kinsala_ is Kinsella's
    country.)]

Directly opposed to Brodar's front battalions were the tried men of
North-Munster, the Dalcassians under the command of the invincible
Murchadh. The battalion behind this front array consisted of other Munster
troops commanded by the Prince of the Waterford Decies. The nobles of
Connacht, with their brave tribesmen, occupied the rear of the Irish war
force.

The patriotic chronicler, having brought the combatants face to face on the
field which was to be the crown of his work, felt all his poetic rage arise
against the foreigners, whom he abuses as heartily as Goldsmith's bailiff
did the French:

  "These were the chiefs, and outlaws, and Dannars of all the west of
  Europe, having no reverence, veneration, respect, or mercy, for God or
  for man, for church or for sanctuary, at the head of cruel, villainous,
  ferocious, plundering, hard-hearted, wonderful Danmarkians, selling and
  hiring themselves for gold, and silver, and other treasures as well. And
  there was not one villain or robber of that two thousand, (the troops of
  Brodor and his brother Anlaf,) who had not polished, strong,
  triple-plated, glittering armor of refined iron, or of cool uncorroding
  brass, encasing their sides and bodies from head to foot."

In the description of the arms and armor of the combatants we suspect our
authority of some inaccuracy. Avoiding the forest of epithets bristling all
over the glowing description, we are told that the blue-green, hard-hearted
pagans used crimsoned, murderous, poisoned arrows anointed and browned in
the blood of dragons, and toads, and water-snakes, and otters, (the poor
otter! he did not deserve this,) and scorpions. They had barbarous quivers,
yellow-shining bows, green, sharp, rough, dark spears, polished, pliable,
triple-plated corselets of refined iron and uncorroding brass. Their swords
were heavy, hard-striking, strong, and powerful.

{780}

To the Gaelic warriors he allows glittering, _poisoned_, [Footnote
292] well-riveted spears, with beautiful handles of white hazel; darts
furnished with silken strings, to be cast overhand; long, glossy, white
shirts; comfortable (comfort in battle!) long vests; well-adjusted,
many-colored tunics over these; variegated, brazen-embossed shields, with
bronze chains; crested, golden helms, set with precious stones, on the
heads of chiefs and princes; glaring, broad, well-set Lochlann axes, to hew
plate and mail. Every sword had about thirty glorious qualities attached to
it. [Footnote 293]

    [Footnote 292: Venomous and poisonous in the bardic lays were mere
    epithets applied to weapons from their aptitude to inflict mortal
    wounds.]

    [Footnote 293: It is somewhat strange that the chronicler has not
    afforded even the _luirech_ (the leathern jack with its iron or
    bronze scales) to his heroes. These loricas are frequently mentioned in
    the old lays.]

The inferiority of the Irish warriors in defensive arms gave little concern
to their historian. Armed or unarmed, they were a match for the world.
(This under certain conditions is our own belief.)

  "Woe to those who attacked them if they could have avoided attacking
  them, for it was swimming against a stream, it was pummelling an oak with
  fists, it was a hedge against the swelling of a spring tide, it was a
  string upon sand or a sunbeam, it was the fist against a sunbeam to
  attempt to give them battle or combat."


  Day at Clontarf.

The battle began with a single combat, there being a previous challenge in
the case. Plait, the foreign warrior, came before his lines and shouted,
"Faras (_where is?_ an attempt at Danish) Donall?" "Here, thou
reptile!" said the Irish champion. The battle was sharp and short, the two
warriors falling on the sod at the same moment, their left hands clutching
each other's hair, and their hearts transfixed by their swords.

Heaven and earth are ransacked for sublime images to give an idea of the
dread struggle that took place between the iron-covered and the defenceless
warriors on each side:

  "To nothing small (we quote our text) could be likened the firm, stern,
  sudden, thunder motion, and the stout, valiant, haughty, billow roll of
  these people on both sides. I could compare it only to the boundless,
  variegated wonderful firmament that has cast a heavy, sparkling shower of
  flaming stars over the surface of the earth, or to the startling,
  fire-darting roar of the clouds and the heavenly orbs, confounded and
  crashed by all the winds in their contention against each other."

It was a terrible spectacle without doubt--the din and clang of sword and
axe on shields and helms, the cries of the combatants, and the lurid
flashes from the polished surfaces of the arms, and the effect of all
intensified by dying groans, and the sight of bodies writhing in agony as
life was about to quit them. It is not so easy to understand, taking
distance into account, how the following circumstance could occur:

  "It was attested by the foreigners and foreign women who were watching
  from the battlements of Ath Cliath, that they used to see flashes of fire
  from them in the air on all sides."

Malachy's forces remained inactive during the main part of the fight at
least. Dr. Todd acquits him, however, of treachery to the national cause.
We quote some passages of a description of the fight imputed to him:

  "There was a field and a ditch between us and them, and the sharp wind of
  the spring coming over them toward us. And it was not a longer time than
  a cow could be milked that we continued there, when not one person of the
  two hosts could recognize another.... We were covered, as well our heads
  as our faces, and our clothes, with the drops of the gory blood, carried
  by the force of the sharp, cold wind which passed over them to us.... Our
  spears over our heads had become clogged and bound with long locks of
  hair, which the wind forced upon us when cut away by well-aimed swords
  and gleaming axes, so that it was half occupation to us to endeavor to
  disentangle and cast them off."

Were we a powerful, well-armed warrior standing by the side of Maelseachlin
(Malachy) on that day, we would certainly have endeavored to find a better
occupation for his hands. Hear this bit of Pecksniffism uttered by him:

  "It is one of the problems of Erinn whether the valor of those who
  sustained that crushing assault was greater than ours who bore the sight
  of it without running distracted before the winds, or fainting."

{781}

Conaing, Brian's nephew, and Maelmordha, fell that day by each other's
swords. The Connacht forces and the Danes of Dublin assailed each other so
furiously that only about a hundred of the Irish survived, while the Danes
scarcely left a score. Murchadh's exploits, could we trust the chronicler
and Malachy, could be rivalled only by those of Achilles of old. He went
forward and backward through the enemies' ranks, mowing them down even as a
person might level rows of upright weeds. He got his mortal wound at last
from the knife of a Dane whom he had struck to the earth. He survived,
however, till he had received the consolations of religion.

About sunset the foreigners, notwithstanding their superiority in armor,
were utterly defeated. Striving to escape by their ships, they were
prevented by the presence of the full tide, and those who flew toward the
city were either intercepted by the same tide or by Maelseachluin's
[Footnote 294] men. Dr. Todd inclines to this last theory. The heroic youth
Torloch, son of Murchadh, pursuing the fugitive Danes into the sea, met his
death at a weir.

    [Footnote 294: This name implies the Tonsured, that is, devoted
    disciple of Saint Sechnal, contemporary with St. Patrick, and patron of
    Dunshaughlin.]

The aged monarch, while engaged at his prayers for the blessing of Heaven
on the arms of his people, was murdered just at the moment of victory by
the chief Brodar, who in a few minutes afterward was torn to pieces by the
infuriated soldiers crowding to the spot.

The power of the foreigners was certainly crushed in this great and
memorable combat, but disorder seized on the general weal of the island
again. South-Munster renewed its contentions with North-Munster, and even
its own chiefs with each other. Donnchad, Brian's remaining son, though a
brave prince, had not the abilities of his father or elder brother. Malachy
quietly resumed the sovereignty of the island, but found that the
annoyances from turbulent petty kings and the still remaining foreigners
were not at an end.

We join our regret to that of the editor that one of the unromantic books
of Annals--that of Tiernach, or Loch Cé, or that of Ulster, has not
inaugurated the publication of our ancient chronicles. Dr. Todd has done
all that could be done by the most profound and enlightened scholar to
disentangle the true from the false through the narrative by shrewd
guesses, by sound judgment in weighing the merits and probabilities of
conflicting accounts, by comparing the romantic statements with those set
forth in the genuine annals and the foreign authorities, whether Icelandic
or Anglo-Saxon. Many events in our old archives, pronounced by shallow and
supercilious critics to have had no foundation, are found to possess the
stamp of truth by the care taken by Dr. Todd and his fellow-archaeologists
in comparing our own annals and those of the European nations with whom we
had formerly either friendly or hostile relations.

Besides the anxious care bestowed on the comparison of the different MSS.
and the translation, and the very useful commentary, the editor has
furnished in the appendix the fragment (with translation) in the Book of
Leinster, the Chronology and Genealogy of the Kings of Ireland and of
Munster during the Danish period, Maelseachluin's account of the fight of
Clontarf, in full from the Brussels MS., and the genealogy of the various
Scandinavian chiefs who were mixed with our concerns for two centuries. The
accounts given in detail of the fortunes of Sitric and others of these
chiefs are highly interesting. The present volume will be more generally
read than any of the mere chronicles, into whose composition entered more
conscience and judgment--on account of the many poetic and romantic
passages scattered through it. Let us hope that it is not the last on which
the labors of the eminent scholar, its editor, will be employed, for we
cannot conceive any literary task more ably and satisfactorily executed
than the production of the Wars of the Gaedhil and the Gaill.

{782}

The Fatal Sisters, translated by Gray from the Norse, refer to the day at
Clontarf. We quote three of the verses:

  "Ere the ruddy sun be set
     Pikes must shiver, javelins sing,
   Blade with clattering buckler meet,
     Hauberk crash, and helmet ring.

   ......

  "Low the dauntless earl [Footnote 295] is laid,
     Gored with many a gaping wound;
   Fate demands a nobler head,
     Soon a king [Footnote 296] shall bite the ground.

      [Footnote 295: Earl Sigurd.]

      [Footnote 296: Brian.]

  "Long his loss shall Erinn weep,
     Ne'er again his likeness see;
   Long her strains in sorrow steep,
     Strains of immortality!"

The appendix added by Dr. Todd to the work is exceedingly interesting and
valuable, containing among other matters a carefully arranged genealogical
list of the Irish princes and the foreign chiefs during the Danish wars,
and an abstract of the fortunes of several of these kings. The accounts of
the battle of Clontarf differed so much in form in the two MSS., that is,
the Dublin and Brussels copies, that, instead of pointing out the various
readings in notes to the body of the narrative, the editor has removed the
account in the Brussels MSS., purported to have been given by Malachy, to
the end of the book. Passages are worth preservation as literary
curiosities. If Malachy felt any ill to Brian for wresting his independent
sovereignty from him, there is not a trace of it discoverable in his
narrative. Thus he speaks of the noble heir-apparent, Murchadh, who
disdained to wear even a shield.


    Malachy's Account of the Battle.

  "The royal warrior had with him two swords, that is, a sword in each
  hand, for he was the last man in Erinn who was equally expert in the use
  of the right hand and of the left... He would not retreat one foot before
  the race of all mankind for any reason in the world, except this reason
  alone, that he could not help dying of his wounds. He was the last man in
  Erinn who was a match for a hundred. He was the last man who killed a
  hundred in one day in Erinn. His step was the last step which true valor
  took. Seven like Murchadh were equal to Mac Samhain," etc.

Then the writer indulged in a heroic series in geometrical progression,
each hero being worth seven such as the man who preceded him, and the
greatest of all being Hector of Troy. All native bards, school-masters, and
school boys, who have flourished since first the siege of Troy was heard of
in Ireland, have fixed on Hector as the matchless model of heroism,
chivalric faith, courtesy, and tenderness; most of them have borne a
cordial hatred to the son of Peleus. Has the feeling originated from the
pseudo-work of Dares the Phrygian priest having arrived in the country
before Homer's "Tale of Troy Divine"? The theory in the text would make
Hector many times superior to Hercules, the heroic terms in the sevenfold
progression being Murchadh, Mac Samhain, Lugha Lagha, Conall Cearnach,
Lugha Lamhfada, (_Long Hand_,) Hector! After the list comes this
rather startling assertion: "These were the degrees of championship since
the beginning of the world, and before Hector there was no illustrious
championship."

  "Murchadh was the Hector of Erinn in valor, in championship, in
  generosity, in munificence. He was the pleasant, intelligent, affable,
  accomplished Samson of the Hebrews in his own career and in his time. He
  was the second powerful Hercules, who destroyed and exterminated the
  serpents and monsters of Erinn.... He was the gate of battle and the
  sheltering tree, the crushing sledge-hammer of the enemies of his
  fatherland and of his race during his career.

  "When this very valiant, very great, royal champion, and plundering,
  brave, powerful hero saw the crushing and the repulse that the Danars and
  pirates gave to the Dal Cais, it operated upon him like death or a
  permanent blemish; and he was seized with boiling, terrible anger, and
  his bird of valor and championship arose, and he made a brave, vigorous,
  sudden rush at a battalion of the pirates, like a violent, impetuous,
  furious ox that, is about being caught, or like a fierce, tearing, swift,
  all-powerful lioness deprived of her cubs, or like the roll of a deluging
  torrent, that shatters and smashes everything that resists it; and he
  made a hero's breach and a soldier's field through the battalions of the
  pirates. And the historians of the foreigners testified after him that
  there fell fifty by his right, and fifty by his left hand in that onset.
  Nor did he administer more than one blow to any of them; and neither
  shield, nor corselet, nor helmet, resisted any of these blows, which
  clave bodies and skulls alike. Thus three times he forced his way
  backward through the battalions in that manner."

{783}

Sitric, the Danish prince, married as before mentioned to a daughter of
Brian, is described as looking at the fight from his Dublin watch-tower,
with his wife at his side. Seeing the mass of plumages and hair shorn off
by the gleaming weapons, and flying over the heads in the wind, he
exclaimed, "Well do the foreigners reap the field, for many is the sheaf
whirled aloft over them." But in the evening he was obliged to endure the
sight of his foreign friends and allies fleeing into the sea "like a herd
of cows in heat from sultry weather, or from gnats, or from flies. And they
were pursued quickly and lightly into the sea, where they were with great
violence drowned, so that they lay in heaps and in hundreds and in
battalions." Sitric's wife had not yet learned to feel strong sympathy with
her husband's politics; and, if he had insisted on her presence in order to
be a spectator of the defeat of her countrymen, he was sadly disappointed:

  "Then it was that Brian's daughter, the wife of Amhlaibh's son, said: 'It
  appears to me,' said she, 'that the foreigners have gained their
  inheritance.' [Footnote 297] 'What is that, O girl?' said Amhlaibh's son.
  'The foreigners are only going into the sea as is hereditary to them.' 'I
  know not whether it is on them, but nevertheless they tarry not to be
  milked.'

    [Footnote 297: Sitric had used that expression at an early hour of the
    fight, when he imagined the Danes were gaining on their enemy.]

  "The son of Amhlaibh was angered with her, and he gave her a blow which
  knocked a tooth out of her head."

Murcadh's death after a fatiguing day of fight has been already related.
While the fierce struggle was going on, thus was the brave and devout old
monarch employed:

  "When the combatants met, his cushion was spread under him, and he opened
  his psalter, and he began to recite his psalms and his prayers behind the
  battle, and there was no one with him but Laideen, his own horseboy.
  Brian said to his attendant, 'Watch thou the battle and the combatants
  while I recite my psalms.' Brian then said fifty psalms, fifty prayers,
  and fifty paters, and he asked the attendant how the battalions were
  circumstanced. The attendant answered, 'I see them, and closely
  confounded are they, and each of them has come within grasp of the other.
  And not more loud to me would be the blows in Tomar's wood if seven
  battalions were cutting it down, than are the resounding blows on the
  heads, and bones, and skulls of them.' Brian asked how was the banner of
  Murchadh. 'It stands,' said the attendant, 'and the banners of the Dal
  Cais round it.'... His cushion was readjusted under Brian, and he said
  fifty psalms, fifty prayers, and fifty paters, and he asked the attendant
  how the battalions were. The attendant said, 'There lives not a man who
  could distinguish one of them from the other, for the greater part of the
  hosts on either side are fallen, and those that are alive are so
  covered--their heads, and legs, and garments, and drops of crimson
  blood--that the father could not recognize his own son there.' And again
  he asked how was the banner of Murchadh. The attendant answered, 'It is
  far from Murchadh, and has gone through the hosts westward, and it is
  stooping and inclining. Brian said, 'Erinn declines on that account.
  Nevertheless so long as the men of Erinn shall see that banner, its valor
  and its courage shall be upon every man of them.' Brian's cushion was
  readjusted, and he said fifty psalms, fifty prayers, and fifty paters,
  and the fighting continued during all that time. Brian then cried out to
  the attendant, how was the banner of Murchad, and how were the
  battalions. The attendant answered, 'It appears to me like as if Tomar's
  wood was being cut down, and set on fire, its underwood and its young
  trees, and as if the seven battalions had been unceasingly destroying it
  for a month, and its immense trees and its great oaks left standing.'"



  Later Exploits of Sitric of the Silky Beard.

A year after the battle, Malachy assaulted Dublin, and burned all the
buildings outside the fortress, within which Sitric lay secure. In 1018,
Sitric blinded Bran or Braoin, his own first cousin, son of Maelmordha,
thus incapacitating him to rule. The poor prince subsequently went abroad
and died in a monastery at Cologne. This Bran was ancestor of the _Ua
Brain_ or O'Byrn of Wicklow.
{784}
Next year he went on enlarging his bad ways by plundering Kells, slaying
many people in the very church, and carrying away spoils and prisoners. In
1021, his Danes and himself got a signal defeat at Derne Mogorog,
(Delgany,) by the son of Dunlaing, King of Leinster. In 1022, he was again
defeated by King Malachy in a land battle, and at sea by Niall, son of
Eochaidh, (_pr._ Achy or Uchy,) king of Hy Conaill. In 1027, he made
an unsuccessful raid into Meath, and next year went on a pilgrimage to
Rome. Two years later he attended the funeral of his mother Gormflaith. His
pilgrimage had not quenched his thirst for forays, for in 1031 he plundered
Ardbraccan, and carried off much cattle. Next year he was victorious at the
mouth of the Boyne over the men of Meath, Louth, and Monaghan. In 1035,
twenty-one years after the great fight, he abdicated in favor of his nephew
Eachmarcach, (Rich in Horses,) and went abroad, (where is not said.) His
death as well as that of his daughter Fineen, a nun, is recorded in 1042,
the last seven years of life having probably been spent in religious
retirement.

Irish historians and archaeologists will find valuable assistance in the
appendix, whenever they are occupied with the genealogies of the Irish or
foreign kings and chiefs who flourished during the two centuries preceding
the day at Clontarf.

------

    From The Month.

    Rhoda.

    A Devonshire Eclogue.


     "I am declined
  Into the vale of years; yet that's not much."_--Othello_.

  It was the deep midsummer; the calm lake
  Lay shining in the sun; the glittering ripples,
  That scarce bare record of the wind's light wings,
  Reached not the shore, where, shadowed by huge oaks,
  The clear still water blended with the land
  In undistinguished union. All was still,
  Save where at little distance a bright spring
  Leapt out from a fern-coroneted rock,
  And ran with cheerful prattle its short course
  (Making the silence deeper for its noise)
  To quiet slumber in the quiet lake.

      Down to the margin of the water, slow
  Pacing along the shadow-dappled grass
  Into the trees' green twilight, steadfastly
  The while his eyes bent down upon the ground,
  Sir Richard Conway came. No longer young;
  A statesman of repute; in council wise;
  Of bitter speech, but not unkindly heart;
  Of stately presence still. He in his youth
  Had wooed and wedded a fair girl; so fair,
  So gentle, and so good that when she died
  His heart and love died too, and in her grave
  Lay down, and he came forth a stricken man.

{785}

      But this was long ago: his children grew;
  He watched them, but they never saw his heart;
  They dreamed not of the proud man's tenderness,
  But went into the highway of the world,
  And left him to his utter loneliness.
  Years passed: sometimes his solitary heart
  Sent out a cry of agony for love;
  But no one heard--he sternly stifled it:
  Treading his path with dignity, he lived
  In pride and honor, and he lived alone.

      He prayed for love, and in his autumn days
  Love came upon him; but in such a sort
  As, if a man had told him it would come,
  He would have laughed in scorn. But so it is;
  God gives us our desire, and sends withal
  Sharp chastening as his wisdom sees most fit.

      Rhoda, the fairest of a sisterhood
  Who were all fair, lived hard by the great house,
  Near to the lake; the daughter of a pair
  Not rich, yet blessed with slender competence.
  And sometimes in the park, or in the house,
  Whereto chance errands brought her, she would meet
  Sir Richard, who to such as her showed ever
  A gracious kindness, and would give to her
  A friendly greeting, sometimes with a word
  Of question of her needs or her desires,
  Followed by such slight interchange of talk
  As might befit such meetings--nothing more.
  Indeed he could not fail, as time wore on,
  To note that with each year she lovelier grew:
  A pale and delicate fairy, exquisite
  As some rare picture, with pathetic eyes
  Veiled underneath long lashes; their shy glance
  Seemed to reveal a soul whose tender depths
  Were unprofaned by any earthly thought.
  Nor was it seeming only: she was good;
  And fenced her beauty with simplicity,
  Meek sense, and modest wisdom.

{786}

      This he saw--
  He could not choose but see it; and he felt,
  When she was near, as if some soothing strain
  Breathed round him; and his secret soul was swayed
  With unseen power, as sways the billowy corn
  Swept by the warm caresses of the wind.
  He knew what this portended. All in vain
  The proud man struggled with his heart: he loved,
  And knew that he loved, Rhoda; all in vain
  He strove to turn away from her fair face;
  He only gazed more tenderly: in vain
  Strove to speak coldly when he met her; still
  His deep voice trembled, as his heart beat fast,
  And from his eyes looked out his yearning soul.
  Of all this conflict Rhoda saw but little;
  The less, belike, for conflict of her own:
  Mysterious longings kindled by his voice;
  Shy pleasure in his presence; constant thought
  (Half reverence, half compassion, tender always)
  Of this grave, courteous, noble, lonely man,
  Who looked so great, so sorrowful, but still
  With many a mute yet clearly speaking sign
  Sued for her love with sad humility.
  These things she never uttered to her heart;
  And if her thoughts half spoke, unwaveringly
  She put them by, and simply went her way.
  But he could fight no longer; and to-day
  He waited by the water, for he knew
  Rhoda would pass that way, and he resolved
  To tell her all his secret, and to learn
  His future from her lips, whether they spoke
  Hope or despair.

      He had not waited long,
  When through the park, along the trembling lake,
  Into the oaks' soft shadows, Rhoda came;
  So bright, so fresh, so beautiful, she seemed
  To bring a golden light into the gloom.
  Sir Richard trembled, and his breath came quick,
  His pulse throbbed wildly, and his eyes grew dim;
  Yet, mastered by his iron will, his words
  Came calmly forth to greet her: at the sound,
  Surprised to find him here, she started back,
  Then murmuring something hurriedly, went on.
  He gently staid her, saying in tenderest tones:
  "One moment, Rhoda--one--could you but know--"
  She looked into his face with wondering eyes,
  Then bashfully withdrew them; for she knew
  At once his secret from his pleading voice
  And his dark eyes' ineffable tenderness.
  "I did not mean to startle you," he said;
  "Nay, do not tremble; could you see my soul,
  The tempest there would make your own show calm.
  Oh! stay--forgive me when the heart beats fast.
  The tongue is slow--I love you! Fewest words
  Are best for such confession. Can you love?"

{787}

      But Rhoda could not answer. Naught was heard
  Except the gurgling of the silver spring,
  When thus in saddest accents he resumed:
  "Rhoda, you see in me a man sore smitten,
  Whose youth and spring were buried long ago--
  One who has had no summer in his heart,
  Whose autumn days are lonely, and who prayed
  (Till you relumed the sunshine of his life)
  For the swift-closing winter of the grave.
  Long have I kept my secret to myself--
  From no mean shame, my girl; for well I know,
  Were you my wife, mine were the gain, not yours;
  But silver hairs blend ill with waving gold,
  Nor would I bring a blight upon your life.
  Why have I spoken? 'Twas a selfish thought
  To share with you the burden of my gloom,
  O'ershadowing your young years--an idle dream
  That one so old and desolate as I
  Could stir the heart of blessed youthfulness.
  There--you have heard my secret. Pity me:
  I know you will not mock me. So, farewell!
  Go, Rhoda, with my blessing on your head!
  I to my loveless life return alone,
  Forlorn, but uncomplaining."

      He turned to go,
  But Rhoda, who had heard him to this word,
  Could now endure no more; she caught his arm,
  She gazed at him with fond eyes full of tears.
  "Oh! not alone!" she said "we go together;
  If a poor girl like me--" She said no more,
  But turned and hid her face upon his heart.
  He clasped her, looking thankfully to heaven,
  Then stooped and kissed her: "Rhoda, my own wife,
  Bear with me for my love!" The trees stood still,
  Yielding no faintest whispering. They came forth
  Out of the solemn grove into the sun;
  The soft blue sky had not one film of cloud;
  And as they walked in silence, they could hear
  Far off the happy stockdove's brooding note.

      And so Sir Richard won his lovely wife.
  Once more the old house brightened; stately rooms
  Rang with the unaccustomed sound of mirth:
  And still as years went on, Sir Richard wore
  Always an air of serious cheerfulness;
  While baby voices gladdened all the place,
  And Rhoda's lovely face was never sad.
  Let the grim rock give forth a living stream,
  And still boon nature crowns its ruggedness
  With flowers and fairy grasses.

{788}

      Near the park
  Towers up a tract of granite; the huge hills
  Bear on their broad flanks right into the mists
  Vast sweeps of purple heath and yellow furze.
  It is the home of rivers, and the haunt
  Of great cloud-armies, borne on ocean blasts
  Far-stretching squadrons, with colossal stride
  Marching from peak to peak, or lying down
  Upon the granite beds that crown the heights.
  Yet for the dwellers near them these bleak moors
  Have some strange fascination; and I own
  That, like a strong man's sweetness, to myself
  Pent in the smoky city, worn with toil,
  When the sun rends the veil, or flames unveiled
  Over those wide waste uplands, or when mists
  Fill the great vales like lakes, then break and roll
  Slow lingering up the hills as living things,
  Then do they stir and lift the soul; and then
  Their colors, and their rainbows, and their clouds,
  And their fierce winds, and desolate liberty,
  Seem endless beauty and untold delight.

      So was it with Sir Richard: from the park
  And from the cares of state he often went
  With Rhoda, to enjoy some happy hours
  There face to face with nature--far away
  From all the din and fume of human life,
  From paltry cares and interests, that corrupt
  Or keep the soul in chains. They may be seen
  On a great hill, on cloudless summer days,
  Or when the sun in autumn melts the clouds,
  Gazing on that magnificent region, spread
  In majesty below them: teeming plains
  And wood-clothed gorges of the hills in front;
  Behind them sea-like ridges of bare moor,
  Some in brown shade, some white with blazing light;
  Above, enormous rocks piled up in play
  By giants; all around, authentic relics
  Of those drear ages, when half-naked men
  Roamed these dim regions, waging doubtful war
  With wolves and bears; and on the horizon's verge
  The pale blue waste of ocean. There they sit,
  Sir Richard and his Rhoda, side by side
  Their hearts aglow with love, their souls bowed down
  In thankful adoration, scarce recalled
  From musings deep and tender, by the shouts
  Of two fair children playing at their feet.

October, 1866.

------

{789}


  Original.

  Protestant Attacks Upon The Bible. [Footnote 298]

    [Footnote 298: Liber Librorum: Its Structure, Limitations, and Purpose.
    A Friendly Communication to a Reluctant Sceptic. New-York: C. Scribner
    & Co. 1867.]


The work, the title of which we subjoin, though pretending on the surface
to be an appeal, in favor of the Bible, is, in truth, one of the most
serious attacks made upon it that has come under our notice; and would be,
for a Protestant, one of the most dangerous books he could read. With a
Catholic its arguments would have no force whatever, being based upon the
unphilosophical principle of private judgment on revealed truth. We should
say that, take it as a whole, it is a very clever attempt to found a purely
subjective religion, which might call itself Christianity with equal
consistency as do many so-called Christian denominations of our day, and
which would consequently ignore all dogmatic authority and make use of the
Holy Scriptures only as a means of edification.

We cannot see how a Protestant can escape the conclusions drawn by the
author, unless he abandons his Protestantism for Catholic authority or for
the most irresponsible individuality; and, if the author has really been
sincere in his professed desire to reassure the troubled mind of his
reluctant sceptic, and inspire him with respect for the Bible as the
revealed word of God, we cannot but think he counts upon his sceptic's
possessing very limited reasoning powers. His entire argument throughout is
based upon postulates which we are sure no sceptic and certainly no
Catholic is prepared to grant. For it is assumed both that we are, or ought
to be, Christians as a matter of course, independent of authoritative
teaching, and that the inspiration of the Bible is to be taken for granted
without extrinsic proof. Moreover, that each individual is possessed of a
verifying faculty which enables him to appropriate of its contents just so
much and in so far as God wishes it to be true to him.

To assert that a man can be or has become a Christian without having been
so taught is simply absurd. That Christianity is, of all religious systems,
the most perfectly conformable to the reason and spiritual needs of
mankind, fulfilling, perfecting, and completing human nature, is
indisputable; but a man is not born a Christian any more than he is born a
Mohammedan or a Buddhist. What the author of this work seems contented to
take as Christianity will be found broad enough to suit any one who has a
fancy to dignify the mutilated traditions to which he yet clings by that
title; but we think very few will consent to accept their own convictions
as sufficient proof of the divine truth of what they believe, or bow to the
Holy Scriptures as the inspired word of God upon no other authority than a
sense of its harmony in doctrine and morals with what they individually
hold. The stream is not the cause of the fountain. That the stream of
Christian truth, nay, that the stagnant puddles which are the result of an
erratic overflow of its waters, are the cause of its fountain-head of
credibility is what this unphilosophical writer takes for granted on every
page of his book. Of course it is both foolish and arrogant presumption in
the church to claim infallibility, but the most reasonable thing in the
world for each and every human being to claim this prerogative as a
natural-born characteristic. However, we do not wonder at this; it is but
the logical consequence, ridiculously absurd as is the conclusion, of the
rejection of the principle of divine authority.
{790}
It is the conclusion forced upon its adherents by Protestantism, and shows
its fruits in the present wide-spread scepticism and infidelity in the
countries where it has been the dominant religion. Never did any system
prepare more surely the weapon of its own destruction than that which
promulgated to the world the principle of private judgment. The cry of
revolt is raised in the Protestant camp, and alarming its teachers--Rome or
Reason--by which is too plainly meant, "Either a divinely constituted
authority, or the divine authority of the individual soul." A choice that
leaves all the sects which have sprung from the Reformation out in the
cold.

Upon the unphilosophical basis for Christian faith which we have noted
above our author proceeds to establish the sufficient authenticity and
inspiration of the Bible. We say, _sufficient_, because, as far as we
are able to gather, he rates the entire credibility and value of the
Scriptures as the revealed word of God to man according to the intellectual
and spiritual assent of the individual, assuming, as he does, that every
man possesses a "verifying faculty" and a "spiritual insight," through
which his own belief and the Scriptures confirm one another and make him
wise unto salvation.

He holds that the Bible is inspired only in what concerns doctrine and
morals, but is forced to make his reader the judge of what is doctrine and
the censor of morality, for his highest evidence either of inspiration or
of the canonicity of the sacred books is, as he tells us on p. 136, "the
interior witness of the Spirit to the truths embodied in the accepted
books." And as he says on p. 85, "It is 'the wise' only who 'understand.'
The peasant is, in this respect, often far above the philosopher.
Everything depends on the moral condition of the recipient." We think it
sufficient to add his own damaging conclusion: "That this way of looking at
the matter makes the evidence for the truth of the Bible mainly subjective
cannot be disputed; but nothing else in the present day appears to have
much hold on men. It may, indeed, be seriously doubted whether it is now
possible to bring forward any evidence, in favor of miracles, for instance,
which could reasonably be expected to satisfy an unconcerned spectator, and
still less an opponent." (P. 86.)

For himself, therefore, the author rejects all miracles which he thinks
were needless and unworthy of the apparent end for which they were
performed, and advises his reluctant sceptic to follow his example.
Moreover, as he does not find that his interior witness convicts him of the
truth of the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus Christ, or, as we suppose,
from the tenor of his language, anything else that is a mystery, of course
the Scripture does not teach these doctrines either. No man can be blind to
the inevitable consequence of such a principle. The Bible could not have
the slightest extrinsic authority in either doctrine or morals, and is a
proof that, without the divine authority, which both authenticates and
interprets it, it is practically worthless in teaching the one or enforcing
the other.

The following passage contains a most admirable refutation of the writer's
own principle, which, however, he does not appear to see: "Looked at in
this way"--as discerned by spiritual insight--"it is of no moment that
either the uninstructed or the instructed man should be able to say
regarding each separate passage of Scripture, _this_ is inspired,
_this_ is not. How can he indeed? The revelation is not a thing
_apart_ from daily life, but _through_ its various relations:
how, then, can any man undertake to separate in each particular the
supernatural element from the natural which it irradiates and explains? To
regard anything of the kind as necessary either to confidence or
edification is absurd; as absurd, in fact, as it is to maintain that we
'require an exercise of judgment upon the written document before we can
allow men to believe in their King and Saviour.'
{791}
Every one knows that this is not the fact; that in all time the multitude
never have nor ever can enter upon any such inquiries; that the masses must
either believe in Christ directly as an actual person related to them, and
recognized by them in their inmost souls, or they will not believe at all.
They listen to the announcement that Christ is their Redeemer, and they
believe the good news _just in so far as it finds a response in their own
spiritual necessities and consciousness_. Into evidences about documents
they cannot enter." (Pp. 81, 82.)

This is the most delightful instance of begging the question we have ever
met with. Pray, _who_ announces to the multitude, who cannot enter
into evidence about documents nor even read them, that Christ is their
Redeemer? and who has any _right_ to announce that fact? Truly,
"whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved;" but, "how
shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they
believe him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a
preacher? And how shall they preach _unless they be sent?_" That it is
the end of preaching, and that saving faith is the belief of the "good news
just in so far as it finds a response in one's own spiritual necessities
and self-consciousness," is mere twaddle, since our spiritual needs however
keenly appreciated, or self-consciousness, however exalted, can never
supply the objective truths of faith or rise above their own capacity to
the ability of verifying, without the aid of extrinsic authority, the
truths when proposed. Christianity, in so far as it is anything more than
mere natural religion, is not of us, but to us. For if it were of us, what
need is there of a revelation? That the good news that Christ is my
Redeemer can be in any manner affirmed to me by my own self-consciousness
is impossible. It is an historical fact, it is true, that such a person as
Christ lived, but it is not an historical fact, by any means, that he is my
Redeemer. That is a divine fact, which the most minute history of humanity
never could demonstrate, for it is altogether out of the natural order, and
wholly supernatural, and hence requiring a divine teaching authority both
to promulgate it and enforce my belief. What this author, with many other
modern writers of the same class, needs is a good course of philosophy as
taught in our Catholic schools. It would save us a good deal of time and
paper in exposing their illogical reasonings.

We do not deny that the holy writings find a response in the heart and mind
of the Christian which no other book that was ever penned could awaken. We
know that it is full of strength and consolation, of instruction and
righteousness, and of help in the perfecting of his character; but this is
the case precisely because he is a Christian by virtue of the same
authority which declares the inspiration of its contents. That authority
for every one who can rationally call himself a Christian is the authority
of the Catholic Church. From this there is no escape. All Protestants
inasmuch as they are Christian are so in obedience to the voice of whatever
Catholic tradition is yet left to influence them. It announces that
Christianity is true and that the Bible is inspired. This tradition of
theirs finds its sanction in the Catholic Church, and would be utterly
worthless if she had no existence.

Again, it is impossible to controvert the fact that the Bible, as a
Christian revelation, depends for its authenticity and canonicity upon the
sanction of the church. To say that it does not is to claim inspiration for
every individual in order to decide upon what is and what is not inspired.
If I reject the authority of the church, how shall I be content with the
Bible as it is, as she has compiled it? Perhaps I might differ with her as
to her decision about the non-inspiration of the rejected gospels and
epistles; and if to my thinking some of the books which it now contains are
not inspired, nay more, if I reject the whole of them as such, what power
on earth is there to call me to account?
{792}
No wonder Luther had the presumption to call the epistle of St. James an
"epistle of straw," or that Dr. Colenso has no respect for the Pentateuch.
We are constrained to believe that the principles assumed by this writer
are far more pernicious, and would do more to undermine the traditional
authority which the Bible has among Protestants and reluctant sceptics,
than the weak and flippant arguments of the notorious apostle of the Zulus.

We read the chapter on the Interpretation of Scripture with no little
curiosity, knowing that this would present a test question to the author's
system of inspiration. Suppose that two men, two Christians if you will,
not only differed about the inspiration of a certain passage, but also
about the interpretation of it. Can the conclusion of both, contradictory
as they are, be the "witness of the Spirit"? As we expected, this chapter
is the weakest in the book. Let us give the author's argument: "But while
divine revelation can have but one true meaning, nothing can be more
certain than that, being a message from the Heavenly Father to his erring
and sinful creatures, it must have a power of adaptation to each and all of
them in particular which, from the very nature of the case, forbids any
exhaustive or authoritative interpretation of its contents." We confess we
are not able to put this in plain English. Let us analyze it, however, and
see what propositions it contains: 1st. Any given inspired revelation can
have but one true meaning. 2d. This inspired revelation is given as a
message of truth to the human race by the God of truth. 3d. This inspired
revelation is necessarily of such a character that it can be made to mean
anything according to the power of discernment in the individual; and
hence, 4th. No one can even be sure which interpretation is the true one.
If these absurd propositions are not contained in the quotation we have
given, we humbly acknowledge that we have learned the English language in
vain. We knew that the author must break down on this subject, and he has
most thoroughly. How one can escape the necessity of an authoritative power
of interpretation of the Scripture it is impossible for us to divine. How
_can_ two contradictory interpretations be true? How _can_ any
man in his senses believe that the Spirit of God witnesses to two
propositions, one of which gives the lie to the other? But, deny an
authoritative power of interpretation to which all men must bow, how can I
ever know that my interpretation is true and that my brother's is false? To
attempt a compromise, such as the author suggests, that each interpretation
is true for each man, is too absurd to demand a moment's consideration.
Truth is truth not because I see it, but as it is, whether I see it or not,
and the man who rejects it when it is presented to his intelligence is
either a knave or a fool. Two and two are four whether I agree to it or
not, and no possible interpretation of the process of addition can change
its truth; nor is there any loophole except that of insanity which would
ever allow me to be excused for asserting that the product of twice two was
five and not four.

It is certainly amusing to see this author refuting himself, as he
frequently does. To confide the right interpretation of Scripture to an
organized authority is to vest the final decision as to what the book says
in man. So he argues. Yet he tells us in the same breath that each
individual man is his own lawful interpreter. Does the author think that we
are simple enough to believe, with all the jarring, clashing sects which
have sprung out of this individual interpretation of the Bible before our
eyes a principle, too, which furnishes the sceptic with the means of
wresting its words to his own destruction--that, if each man interpret it
for himself, the final decision in each particular case is any less human
than the unanimous decision which a body, such as the Catholic Church is,
gives without variation for nineteen centuries?
{793}
This gratuitous assumption about the "interior witness of the Spirit" is
cant, not argument; for where does the individual find any assurance that
each and every man will be so assisted? Experience proves directly the
contrary. But, says our author, all these quarrels about the truths taught
by the Bible are not due to the Bible itself, but to the sectarian
divisions of Christianity, who each and all impose their own interpretation
on their members. This will not do. As long as the principle of
authoritative interpretation was upheld, as it is alone in the Catholic
Church, there was no quarrelling about the doctrines or morals inculcated
by the Holy Scriptures. The interpretation was but one. It was only when
the author's pet principle came into vogue, which was the apple of discord
borne by the tree of the Reformation, that men began to quarrel and dispute
about what the Bible taught. The wily sceptic with the Bible placed in his
hands, accompanied by a pious assurance that he will be guided in its
interpretation by the interior witness of the Spirit, will only laugh in
his sleeve at your simplicity. He will find in it just what pleases him,
and who has the right to accuse him of not following the witness of the
Spirit? Who finds insuperable difficulties in the sacred record? Who has
discovered, as they imagine, contradictory passages in it? Who come to the
conclusion that there is one God of the patriarchs, another God of the
Jews, and a third of the Christian? Not the Catholic Church or her doctors,
but the Protestant sects with their Colensos, their Essayists and
Reviewers, and flippant commentators. The Catholic Church finds no
difficulties or contradictions in the text of Scripture in any portion that
relates to doctrine or morals. Her interpretation is uniform and harmonious
from the first page of Genesis to the last words of the Apocalypse.
Difficulties there are, but they are only historical and of minor moment,
which affect in no way the unity of the sacred writings as the revealed
word of God. All attempts which have been made of late by Protestants to
discredit the inspiration of the Bible on the ground that these historical
difficulties are of such a nature as to render the record untrustworthy,
have signally failed. The most that has been proved, even by the most
captious critics, is, that in the recital of certain events the text is
obscure, and leaves many things untold and unexplained.

The tone of the writer when speaking of the Catholic Church is, on the
whole, pretty fair, but it seems impossible for a Protestant to write on
religious subjects without either committing some egregious blunder when we
are concerned, or inserting some piece of calumny or of wilful
misrepresentation. We note an instance of this in the letter which forms an
introduction to the body of the work. Referring to the hope expressed by
the reluctant sceptic that "one day we shall have forms of public devotion
sufficiently aesthetic to gratify the religious sentiment, without
involving dogmas that lead only to dispute," he adds: "You will perhaps be
surprised if I tell you that I think this very possible. But, believe me,
it will only be when Christendom, so long apostate, has, in retribution for
her abominations, became absolutely atheistic. That a tendency of this kind
manifests itself, from time to time, in Rome, especially among the Jesuits,
has been noticed by devout Catholics, and is regarded by them with grief
and anxiety." (P. 45.)

This is the style of lying (for what he says of the Jesuits is, we hardly
need say, wholly untrue) that disgraces the religious writings of our
opponents almost without exception. What does it mean? Simply this: "I
fear, my dear, reluctant sceptic, that you are hungering after ritualism,
which the Catholic Church possesses in beautiful harmony with all her
dogmas.
{794}
But don't look that way, or examine her claims upon your mind or religious
sentiment, for the Catholic Church herself is becoming atheistic, as is
shown by the atheistical tendencies of the Jesuits in Rome, and
(_aside_--to make the lie more plausible I will say) this tendency has
been noticed by devout Catholics, and is regarded by them with grief and
anxiety." We can do nothing but cry shame upon such wretched and base
subterfuges to withdraw the attention of sincere minds from an honest
examination of the Catholic faith.

We blush for their unscrupulous and persistent system of misrepresentation,
which quietly ignores alike our indignant denials and appeals to be heard;
but we do not fear for the final result. All blows aimed at the Rock of
Truth will only recoil with deadly force upon the aggressor. Her beauty
will come out untarnished after every attempt at defilement; her purity and
sanctity no defamation can long obscure; her divine truth is proof against
the machinations and deceit of the father of lies and his children. Not in
vain has the inspired prophet said of her: "No weapon that is formed
against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that resisteth thee in
judgment thou shall condemn." She is the divinely appointed exponent of
God's word to man, whether written or not. "He that heareth you, heareth
me," and her exposition has been uniform, harmonious, and consistent
throughout; while the sects, left to their own fanciful interpretation of
the only word which they have acknowledged as authoritative, present a
lamentable picture of dissension and disbelief--"As children tossed to and
fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine."

------

  From the French of Augustin Chevalier.

  Decimated.

  I.

It was seven in the evening when we arose from the table, where the
conversation had for an hour or more run on the civil war which had just
desolated Germany. General Bourdelaine, a tall, wiry specimen of the
_ancien officier_, whom no one would imagine to be verging upon his
eighty-fourth year, and who very probably will in the year one thousand
eight hundred and eighty-eight celebrate the eighty-second anniversary of
his leaving the military school in 1806, invited us for coffee into the
study where ordinarily none but his most intimate friends are admitted; for
the general, although on the retired list since 1845, has not yet begun to
seek the repose of inactivity, and I have seen in that study of his an
entire series of strategical plans (afterward published by the minister of
war) of the principal battles of Napoleon in Champagne against the allied
forces.

The study is large, although it seems small, so filled is every piece of
furniture, shelf, and hook with coins, arms, plans, papers, portraits,
busts, statuettes in marble and in bronze, books, globes, and drawing
instruments, and all these not in absolute disorder, but in an apparent
confusion which the general finds very convenient, inasmuch as everything
is within reach.

{795}

It was not the first time I had been there. For the first time, however, on
this particular evening, my eyes fell upon a plain boxwood frame hung on
the wall opposite the chimney-piece, in a recess formed by two large
book-cases. A brilliant point in the centre, which reflected the light of
the lamp, attracted my attention. It was the enamel of a cross of the
Legion of Honor, to which was attached, under the glass, a large band of
crape which stretched to the four corners of the frame. On the left of the
frame, on the outside, hung a huge silver watch, and on the right the
golden acorn of a sword-knot.

The daughter of the general entered at this moment, followed by a servant
bearing coffee and all the accessories upon a tray. There were now five of
us in the room: the general, his daughter and his son-in law, a government
clerk, and myself. Each one began in silence to discuss the smoking coffee;
when the general, whose glance had unconsciously taken the same direction
as mine, suddenly exclaimed:

"What a horrible thing war is! I did not enter the service until the time
had come when men no longer went forth to meet the enemy through
patriotism, but moved merely by the desire of winning rank or fortune, or
by the love of glory and honor. I was present at some frightful butcheries
and routs still more frightful; I have seen nearly all the miracles of the
emperor's genius, and I bore my part in the reverses fickle fortune
inflicted upon him. Well, after all, what did it amount to? The fortune of
war is one of the chances of the trade. You conquer or are conquered, kill
or are killed. The ranks close up, and then--room for the bravest or most
favored, the most skilful or the luckiest! But to be forced to fire upon
your own men; to be compelled to decimate pitilessly your own brave
companions; to kill in cold blood excellent soldiers, whose only crime was
a single day's mutiny, but whose example might risk the discipline and
safety of the entire army; to kill, I say, men whom the very intoxication
of victory led to believe that their fault would go unpunished; men we
sorely needed; this, this is most fearful and saddest of all; this it is
that still makes my old heart bleed more than fifty years after it
happened; and when my thoughts revert to it, even though conscience remain
tranquil, something very like remorse pursues me."

"It seems, then, general," I said, "that yonder cross and crape recall
cruel memories."

He put down his cup without replying, filled a small glass with cognac and
swallowed it at one gulp.

"Have you finished the notes I wished you to make from Jomini and
Vandoncourt?"

"Yes, _mon général_."

"Very good; give them me. And now service for service. I will confide to
you an episode in my military life of which you may make what use you think
proper. I authorize you to do so."

And General Bourdelaine thereupon related what follows.


  II.

My rank in the service dates from October, 1805. Jena and Austerlitz won me
my epaulettes of _sous-lieutenant_. In 1807 I made the Polish
campaign, and in 1808 the Spanish. The following year I was recalled to
Germany, and saw Ratisbon and Wagram. Napoleon after the battle halted in
front of my regiment to learn the names of those who had distinguished
themselves.

"All did," cried the colonel; "but, if your majesty will permit me, I would
especially recommend the Lieutenant Bourdelaine to your favor."

The emperor looked at me.

"You come from Saint-Cyr?"

"Yes, sire."

"How many campaigns?"

"Three."

"And still a lieutenant."

"I have had no chance to rise before this."

"Which do you prefer, the cross or promotion?"

"Promotion, sire."

{796}

My reply was not that of a courtier. But he loved the young men of his
schools, and those, above all, who, like me, had not awaited the end of
their course before becoming officers.

"Ah! you prefer promotion."

"Sire, they say that things are not going well in Spain since your majesty
left there. Send me thither; give me a company, and I will win death or the
cross."

"Very well."

I received the company I sought, not, however, in a French, but in an
Italian regiment. I was ordered to Arragon in November, 1810, and made part
of the army commanded by Suchet. My colonel, San-Polo, received me warmly.

"You will find more than one of your countrymen in my regiment," said he;
"and you had better have them give an account of your men. I warn you that
they are very devils. You must be vigilant and firm; just but inflexible;
if not, you will find yourself exposed to strange surprises, and I be put
to the necessity of punishing you."

The colonel was no false prophet. Those Italians are terrible soldiers.
Rash, useful principally for an assault or _coup-de main_, never
flinching under fire, but, once out of it, quarrelsome, intractable and
given to pillaging, ours, I confess, more than once seemed to sack and
destroy for the mere pleasure of doing so. I can yet see the comical though
moving scene which took place in Burgos, where my battalion, in 1808,
boiled their pots with all the mandolines and guitars they could find in
the city, notwithstanding the despair of the inhabitants, who hastened to
bring them coals and wood. But the soup, seasoned with jokes and bursts of
laughter, seemed to them the better for it.

Before I return to my story, a few words on the situation of the army of
Arragon.

General Suchet had taken one after another the towns of Mequinenza; on the
southern confines of the province of Huesca; Lareda, in Lower Catalonia, to
the north-west of Mequinenza; and Tortosa, south of Lerida, at the
extremity of the province of Tarragona. He thus commanded part of the
rivers Ebro, the Segre, and the Cinca; and, moreover, the capture of those
cities had enabled him to collect a complete park of siege artillery at
Tortosa. Unfortunately, the commandant of Figuera having allowed himself to
be surprised in Upper Catalonia, our forces there were compelled to fall
back toward Girona, and the Spanish General Campoverde, beaten before
Figueras by Baraguay d'Hilliers, had profited by our mishap, not only to
rally his troops, but also to annoy our magazines and communications.
Therefore, although he had received orders from the emperor, on the 10th of
March, to invest Tarragona, whose capture, completing our occupation of the
principality of Catalonia, would have opened the road to Valentia to us,
General Suchet did not yet dare attempt an enterprise of such importance.
The task of keeping the two districts of Mora and Alcuniz in subjection--
the first in Lower Catalonia, to the north of Tortosa, and the second in
Arragon to the north-west of Mequinenza, and in the province of Ternel--
paralyzed his forces. His artillery, too, had been retarded. In short,
instead of an effective force of over forty thousand men, which the
junction of the army of Arragon with that of Catalonia should have formed,
he had not more than thirty battalions at his service.

You are not a soldier, and you do not understand how even the lowest
officer racks his head over the probabilities of some approaching
expedition, and with what feverish impatience the men in the ranks await
the signal of departure. Headquarters were established at Lareda, and
magazines already were placed at Reus, Monblanch, and Alcobar, to the north
and west of Tarragona; but it was reported that an English fleet under
Admiral Adams was preparing to re-provision the last-named city, and to
interrupt our communications by transporting to our rear the troops of
Campoverde and Sarsfield by the mouths of the Ebro. Our park of siege
artillery remained motionless at Tortosa, and as yet Suchet had not begun
to move.

{797}

I was at Mora, where my battalion was to remain, if the jokers about camp
were to be believed; an absurd rumor, for wherever a vigorous blow was to
be struck the Italians never failed to come in for their share. I had
formed a close friendship with Lieutenant Polidoro, a reckless individual,
but one of the best-hearted fellows in the service. He was from Milan, and
had commenced life as a choir-boy. A _reverendissimo_, almost unknown
to him, was in the habit of sending him from time to time fifty
_scudi_ by way of pocket-money. The day he received this little
remittance was a gala-day for the whole battalion. Wine flowed through the
camp. Not a man was forgotten. The next day he was without a _sou_,
but he had had his fun, and drunk many times to the health of Monsignor
Capellini, as he called his friend.

His father was unknown to him, and often would he cry, twirling his shako
on his sword, when asked why he did not assume the paternal cognomen:

"Why should I recognize an old fellow who shows so little pride in having a
grenadier of my height for a son?"

The gayety of Polidoro, the friendship of his comrades for him, the
attachment of his men, whose enthusiasm was excited by his bravery and
liberality, inspired me, at last, with the most unlimited confidence in
him; and, well satisfied with never having to inflict the slightest
punishment, thanks to the excellent reports he always brought me of the
company, I placed matters of mere discipline entirely in his hands.

Suddenly, one fine morning, at roll-call, not one of my men, with the
exception of the Sous-Lieutenant Brocard--a Frenchman like myself--appeared
on the parade-ground. He, sad and crest-fallen, informed me that our
company had filed away during the night toward Batea, to the north of
Casserras, on the Arragon frontier. At the same time he handed me a letter
addressed to me by Polidoro. Judge of my astonishment when I cast my eye
upon its contents:

  "Captain: It is certainly an ill proceeding on my part to leave Mora,
  with your whole company, without first informing you of our intention.
  Life in Mora is not very lively, and our men were growing shockingly
  tired of it. I am responsible for their health, and found myself forced
  to adopt violent measures to preserve it. We are going a league from here
  to Batea, where they say good wine abounds. It is even reported that
  there is a guerilla roving through the mountains, and that he has been
  joined by some disbanded soldiers of Sarsfield and Campoverde. What a
  chance for fun! We will thus be enabled to indulge in a little diversion
  while waiting for the march on Tarragona. I do not ask you to put
  yourself at the head of our expedition. I suppose, even, that, if you
  were ordered to bring us back, your honor would only permit you to speak
  to us through the throats of muskets. Be good enough, however, to advise
  our brave colonel of our departure, and tell him that, whatever may
  happen, we are all devoted to him, for life and for death, and that each
  one of us (I was always remarkable for foresight) has ten rounds of
  cartridge at his service. If we are let alone, be assured that the entire
  company, including your humble servant, will be en route for Lareda at
  the first roll of the drum.
      "Your faithful friend,
          "The Lieutenant Polidoro."

This letter filled me with consternation. I felt that I had been guilty of
weakness and negligence. I was not only puzzled; I suspected perfidy,
treason. I did not yet understand the singular forms which insubordination
often takes among Italian troops. The Russian soldier is little more than a
savage; the German, when he quarrels with his officers in the field,
becomes gross and brutal; the Frenchman pushes familiarity to insolence;
the Spaniard heroically disbands, placing every reverse to the account of
the ignorance or cowardice of his officers, and then sets about making head
individually against the enemy in some defile of his mountains; the
Englishman shows himself, in war as in everything else, a close calculator,
weighing the _pros_ and _cons_ long together, and, above all
others, complains of the insufficiency or bad quality of his provisions, as
witness the mutiny of the fleet in the reign of George III., when it became
necessary to hang an admiral, and which was only suppressed by the coolness
of Pitt.
{798}
But, when the Italian mutinies, he does it with incredible niceness, and,
unless he has some vengeance to execute, (which he will carry out with
uncommon ferocity,) he remains an artist to the last.

"_Corbleu!_" cried I to Brocard. "We are in a pretty box; exposed,
too, to the ridicule of our comrades. And I thought this Polidoro my
friend!"

"And he is your friend, captain; doubt it not," replied Brocard; "only you
have not yet formed a true idea of the audacious recklessness and
impulsiveness of these Italians. All this would be but a pleasantry,
without evil results, if the necessity of maintaining discipline at the
outset of a new campaign did not give the affair importance; and what makes
it worse is, that they say the colonel since his return an hour ago has
been making preparations to repel an attack from Campoverde. He is furious
against you, and wishes to have a private interview with you."

Shame and anger almost choked me. I was beside myself with rage, and, if at
that moment a man had but given me a look of ridicule, I would have run him
through the body.

"I come to receive your orders, colonel," said I, as I entered San-Polo's
quarters. "I confess that I deserve no consideration. You told me what I
had to expect. Punish me. I ask of you but one favor--that you would permit
me to go alone to those mutineers and bring them back."

"What I hear is then true, sir," replied San-Polo, whose appearance of
concentrated anger boded me no good. But, having given me this thrust, he
added, softening a little:

"Listen to me, Bourdelaine, notwithstanding your fault in allowing Polidoro
to gain such a hold upon the company, you are nevertheless an officer whom
I esteem both for head and heart, and I heard a very flattering account of
you before you joined the regiment. I am sincerely sorry for you, and that
rogue of a Polidoro has so bewitched the men that after all you are not so
inexcusable."

"Thanks, my colonel."

"But," continued San-Polo, "we must lay aside such considerations in camp.
You had the want of tact to prefer a grade, when the emperor offered you
with his own hand the Cross of the Legion. That was in his eyes a fault
which, be assured, he will not soon forget, and I am sure that you would
have received both if you had chosen the cross."

I bowed my head, but did not reply.

"Your conduct after that, if you wished to rise, should have been
irreproachable, so that your mistake, which seemed to the emperor a piece
of youthful stupidity, might have changed its guise and shone forth as the
generous impulse of a soul born to command.

"I speak not now, captain, as your superior officer, but as your friend.
Speak privately to Lieutenant Brocard. Present yourself to these mutineers,
and let a bloody example recall them to duty. I have full power from the
commanding general to manage my Italians as I think proper. You will
decimate your company."

I started, horror-stricken.

"You have your orders, sir. Now, no delay or pity. Remember that prompt and
vigorous action is necessary not only to reestablish your reputation, but
to replace upon those men the yoke of discipline, so rashly broken. Under
our present _régime_ little is said and less written about army
affairs, and the news of the insubordination of a handful of Italians in an
obscure corner of the peninsula will scarcely reach the emperor's ears. I
will see that it is kept out of the bulletins. It is too small a matter for
headquarters to be troubled about, and in ten days all will be the same as
if nothing of the kind ever happened. Well! you have heard me; what more do
you desire?" asked San-Polo, astonished at my immobility and silence.

{799}

"Pardon, _mon colonel!_" I replied, with many misgivings. "How can we
decimate men of whom we have such immediate need before the enemy?" And I
showed him Polidoro's letter.

He read it through rapidly, and shrugged his shoulders; but, when he came
to the part where the lieutenant, while protesting his own devotion and
that of his men for their colonel, boasted nevertheless of his foresight in
furnishing each man with ten rounds of ammunition, San-Polo cried out, a
passing smile lighting up his face for a moment:

"Poor fellow! it is a pity, for he has the stuff soldiers are made of in
him. Unshrinking under fire, fascinating and raising the spirits of all
around him by his good humor, always ready, full of resources, yet
ridiculing glory and fortune. God grant that this trick do not cost him too
dear. What is the effective force of the company?"

"Ninety-nine men in all, with the officers and drummer."

"Very well; then it is reduced to ninety-six, since you and Brocard are not
in the affair, and the drummer, who is but a boy, does not count. This
letter will not modify my instructions. You will draw by lot four men and a
corporal for the firing party, and one man to dig the grave; ninety will
remain--nine to be shot; it is enough. As to Polidoro, if his stars should
favor him, you will put him under arrest for two weeks. I will attend to
him hereafter if necessary."

I turned with a heavy heart to leave the tent.

"Ah! one word more," said the colonel: "In case any chance should put you
on the track of the guerilla who has been seen between Casserras and Batea,
drag out the execution to the greatest possible length, without, however,
letting it seem that you do so. I love those good-for-nothings after all,
and would to God that a brush with the enemy may deliver them from their
scrape, for they would fight as they always do, and we would have a good
excuse for indulgence. Be easy, even if you find yourself surrounded by the
Spaniards, and open fire on them boldly, for I have taken my measures, and
help will be at hand. _Au revoir_, captain, and fortune favor you!"

Brocard and I immediately set out for Batea. It was yet early morning, and
the road was almost deserted. We could not perceive in the direction of
Casserras a single trace that might remind us of the recent passage of a
body of armed men. It seemed scarcely probable that the guerillas would
dare return toward Batea, which was at furthest a league to the north-west.

On the road I confided to my comrade the cruel mission with which we were
charged, and as I had never seen a military execution, and had never
expected to see so horrible a one as this, the slaying of every tenth man
in my own company, the conversation ran on the best mode of conducting the
business in which we were engaged so as to gain time, as the colonel had
recommended.

"Oh!" said Brocard, "I was 'decimated' my self once. It was in Portugal,
under Junot, for a trick our battalion played the commandant--a lion under
fire, but an ill-natured dog. We gave him a free bath in the Tagus. I was
then only a corporal. They commenced by surrounding and disarming the
mutineers; then, if any officers were found in the number, their names were
proclaimed aloud, or they were degraded. Then the ranks were broken, and we
were aligned in single file, each man taking his place according to chance.
A sergeant, drawn by lot and blindfolded, then approached the line, and,
starting from the first man he chanced to touch, without including him,
counted off ten, twenty, thirty, until he reached the end of the line, when
he continued in the other direction, commencing again with the man he first
touched, and if that poor fellow happened to be the tenth, or twentieth, or
thirtieth, psit! his doom was clear."

"Great heavens!" thought I, "how terribly cool he takes it!"

{800}

"While the counting went on," continued my imperturbable
_sous-officier_, "a roll of the drum accompanied each tenth man as he
stepped out; he was led to the edge of the trench dug for his grave; a
sufficient amount of lead lodged in his head or breast, and his affair was
ended. You see that much time is not lost, and the business even becomes
amusing sometimes; for every man's pride is up, and he chats, jokes,
laughs, appoints a _rendezvous_ under ground a year, a month, or
perhaps only a day off; and all the while the regimental band regales you
with the merriest symphonies, the most alluring marches!"

"You would not make a mockery of death!" cried I, interrupting him.

"Mockery!" he returned. "Diable! we won't have much chance to do so here.
We haven't yet even disarmed our friends, captain. San-Polo evidently
honors us both with his particular esteem, to send us two alone to decimate
more than eighty jokers, each of whom carries ten rounds of ammunition to
answer our polite proposition with."

"Nevertheless, the enterprise amuses you a little, does it not?"

"Humph! whether a man leaves his skin here or elsewhere, what matters it?
although it is disagreeable to be sent out of the world by your old
comrades, your friends at the bivouac, fellows whose elbows you are
accustomed to feel in the ranks. But, after all, those fellows haven't
treated us right; that is a consolation."

"But the other proceeding the colonel mentioned," said I--"the drawing
--you have not explained that."

"Ah! I can only teach you what I know myself; though I was something more
than a mere amateur scholar. I have heard that they sometimes mix up the
names in a helmet or shako, and shoot the man that owns every tenth name
that comes out. But, _ma foi!_ that way is shorter than the other,
but, if it suits you better, you may use it. H st!" [sic]

He stopped short in the middle of the road and brought the musket he had
brought with him from Mora to his shoulder, as a bullet whistled by our
ears, and a thread of white smoke rose from a ravine some little distance
off; a moment after, a tall, wild-looking man, enveloped in a long cloak,
and wearing a countryman's shoes and a red woollen cap, sprang toward the
mountain side, where in the twinkling of an eye he disappeared.

"Don't fire!" I cried, as Brocard was about to pull trigger; "you will give
those wretches the alarm. Wait until they attack us at Batea. That fellow
will simplify our business, and the colonel will be delighted. Forward--
gallop! Remember the mission we have to fulfil."

Ten minutes later we were in Batea. The company had stacked their arms
about a hundred paces from the mountain, and had spread themselves through
the village. The drummer alone, a boy of fifteen, stood guard over the
arms, under the protection of some old _grognards_, who,
cooler-blooded than their comrades, walked leisurely about, smoking their
pipes.

I rode straight to the drummer, and, without dismounting, said:

"Beat the recall, Zanetto, I am in haste."

The smokers at this order approached us, and stared at us with an abashed
air. The most insolent of them gave the military salute, through force of
habit, apparently. But they seemed thoughtful, twisted their mustaches
without speaking, and continued to smoke.

Zanetto, uneasy as the others, rose, hooked on his drum, and replied by a
prolonged roll, which did not cease until the whole company stood behind
their stacks.

"What is all this noise about? Are you a fool, drummer?" cried Polidoro,
coming up last of all, at a run, from the further end of the village, and
carrying a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other.

{801}

The sight of two horsemen redoubled his speed, and when he reached us, he
could scarcely gasp, in his astonishment and want of breath:

"You, Bourdelaine! You here! Glad to see you, _caro mio_. Welcome! We
scarcely expected so agreeable a surprise. What can we do for you, captain?
Will you try a glass of rum?"

I spurred my horse toward Polidoro, and, with a sudden blow breaking the
glass and bottle he held, said briefly and sternly:

"Your sword, lieutenant!"

Polidoro turned pale, and, recoiling a couple of paces, said in a husky
voice:

"My sword! Was it to demand my sword that you came from Mora, you and your
countryman Brocard?"

"We come to decimate you. The colonel has ordered it."

And I dismounted, placing myself in their power, to prove to the mutineers
the fixedness of my resolve to carry out my orders or die in the attempt.

The idea seemed, however, to excite their mirth.

"Decimate us!" cried one.

"Beautiful!" laughed another.

And cries of "Prodigious!" "What a farce!" "Whom will he do it with?" "He
hasn't even a corporal's guard!" rang on every side. The men left the
stack's of arms and began to gather round us with menacing looks and
gestures. Brocard threw himself among the most furious, but his words
availed nothing to restrain them. The situation was becoming critical.

Suddenly a thought struck me. I signed to Zanetto to beat his drum, so that
its continued roll might drown their voices, and the more desperate be thus
prevented from urging on those who hesitated.

Anything which brings the habits of discipline to the minds of old soldiers
acts with wonderful power. Before the roll of the drum ceased, every man
had regained his place; the tumult was ended and quiet reigned.

"We are come to decimate you," I continued, coldly and sternly as before,
"and we are alone. Do you ask why? Because the colonel wishes the execution
to be secret; he would not have the company dishonored before their
comrades--dishonored for having turned their backs when all was ready to
march upon the enemy."

"But we did not do so!" cried one of the men.

"Silence! The captain is right," replied several.

"Then Polidoro deceived us; he told us the captain would protect us," said
a young soldier.

Their tone had already changed. It was no longer hostile.

"I!" cried Polidoro. "Did I ever say aught to make you doubt the captain's
honor?"

"No! no!" cried voice after voice. "It is our fault. Let us suffer the
penalty! Decimate us, captain!" cried several, "and let us have it over as
soon as may be. We are ready."

"Lieutenant," I continued, advancing to Polidoro, "I demand your sword."

He moved his hand to the buckle of his belt as if to take it off, but the
struggle was too great for his proud heart; his youthful blood was in arms,
and, carried away by passion, he shouted hoarsely:

"Then come and take it!"

And drawing it from its sheath, he threw himself on guard.

"Bravo, lieutenant! Let him come and take it!" cried a voice at his side.

"Who spoke then?" I asked, feigning ignorance of the man.

"I!" cried an old soldier; one of the _grognards_ of the company.

"Very well, Matteo; I will attend to you presently."

There was no time for consideration; I at once fell on guard myself.
Polidoro awaited my attack with his blade low, after the manner of the
Italians, but at my first lunge, breaking down his parade before we had
even crossed swords, whether it was that remorse for his act prevented his
exerting his usual skill or through unlucky mischance on his part, I
disarmed him, catching his guard on the point of my sword and forcing his
weapon from his hand.

{802}

"_Maleditto!_" he exclaimed angrily, blushing with shame and wrath,
and turning to Zanetto, who could not forbear laughing at his mishap, with
a blow of his heavy boot, he crushed the drum to pieces, and, tearing off
his epaulettes, mingled with the ranks.

"Lieutenant, I have not degraded you," I said softly. "It is even possible
that, if chance favors you, I may restore your sword."

This indulgence shown to Polidoro, whose guilt was aggravated by an attack
on his superior officer, made a greater impression than severity could. The
fascination he exercised over the men, their belief in him, his prestige
were considerably lessened. I felt that I was master of the troop.

"As for you," I said to Matteo, "as a punishment for your insolence, you
must dig the trench."

"I, my captain?"

"You."

"Shoot me first, captain, I implore you," sobbed Matteo, pale with shame
and despair.

He was one of the oldest and best soldiers in the company; his mustache
almost white, and his face seamed with scars. He thought himself degraded
before his comrades, and did not see that my aim was to save him.

"Not so," I replied. "Go find a pickaxe and spade in the village and
quickly!"

"You are very hard on me, captain."

"Obey: no more words!"

All this while the _sous-lieutenant_ Brocard, who guessed my purpose,
was writing the names of the company upon slips of paper, which he threw
into a shako.

"But that is not the way it is done." cried Polidoro, in a bantering tone.
"Permit me to instruct you."

"Silence in the ranks!" I cried.

"But we will never get through at this rate, captain."

"I am not responsible to you, sir. It is the order of the colonel. Now,
come hither," said I to the drummer, "and draw four names for the firing
party."

"Am I not included, captain," returned Zanetto, drawing himself up proudly
to his full height.

"Boy, you do not count," said Brocard.

"It seems to me that I counted before the enemy," replied the boy.

"Be still, child!" cried Polidoro. "The drummer's duty is to follow the
company."

"That is true," said an old _grognard_. "Come, Zanetto, stick your
hand into the bag, but don't draw my name."

But it was the old man's name that he drew.

"The grenadier Sampierri!"

"I never had any luck," growled Sampierri, stamping angrily upon the
ground.

He took up his musket.

"The grenadiers Nicolo, Mordini, Ruspone!" continued Brocard.

Matteo, while this was going on, had returned from the village, and was
silently digging a trench to our left, about two hundred paces from the
mountain, where the earth was soft and offered but little resistance.

"Ha! Matteo! there are ninety of us," cried Corporal Campana; "nine men to
mount guard underground today. Make it wide enough, my old friend."

"A corporal is wanted to command the firing party," said Brocard, "and I
have mixed up all the names again in the shako."

"Well, let it be Campana," I replied.

"Me, _mon capitaine?_ What have I done more than my comrades? Why
choose me?"

"What have you done? Have you not three chevrons? Are you not the oldest
corporal? You should have set the example of subordination. Go!"

"So be it, then," said the corporal gloomily. "Come attention, firing
party!"

He marched to the trench at the head of his four grenadiers.

{803}

"Attention!" cried I. "Draw the names; the tenth--"

"Enough!" said Zanetto; "let him beware. The business is becoming less
amusing, captain."

He drew nine slips successively, which Brocard did not read, so that the
suspense continued to the end. The tenth he held up.

"The Sergeant Gasparini!"

"Good! This is the day of the grognards," said Gasparini, making the
military salute. "May I embrace Zanetto, _mon capitaine?_"

"Do as you will," I said; "I would rather be a hundred feet underground
than here."

"Thanks, captain. We all see how this business grieves you. Thanks!"

He bent over the drummer, and the tears, spite of his proud endeavors to
restrain them, dropped on his gray mustache.

"Here; take this for thy trouble, my boy," he said, giving the drummer his
silver watch.

He dashed the tears from his eyes shamefacedly, and with a steady step
marched to the edge of the trench.

"Ready!" cried Corporal Campana.

"Aim! Fire!" cried Gasparini.

A flash and report followed, and the old sergeant fell dead on his face in
the trench, where Matteo pushed him with his foot to the place where he was
to rest.

Zanetto continued, drawing from eleven to nineteen. Brocard, still without
reading them, tore them up one after another. Twenty reached, he took the
slip, lifted it above his head, and sobbed, rather than spoke, in his
endeavors to conceal his emotion:

"The Sergeant-Major Gambetta!"

It was the best instructed under-officer perhaps in the regiment; calm,
well knowing his duties, laborious--so useful, in fact, in the humble post
he held that his superiors through pure selfishness had never proposed him
for promotion. He was forty years of age at least, had received the cross
as far back as 1805, and with the money of his pension relieved many a
little want of his comrades.

"Ah! poor Gasparini!" he cried with a sort of mournful merriment; "if today
is the day of the old growlers, it is also the day of sergeants. What is
the matter, _mon capitaine?_" said he as he passed me. "You seem to be
in trouble."

He was not far wrong. I was in despair. My eyes were fixed upon the
mountain as if they would pierce through it, and at every changing shadow,
every breath of wind which sighed among the trees, my heart bounded
painfully with the hope that the long wished for guerilla was about making
his appearance on the heights.

"Adieu, Zanetto! take my cross, I have no watch. Show yourself some day
worthy to wear it. May it be long ere we meet again, captain. God guard
you!"

He crossed himself devoutly, and walked to the trench, his hands in his
pockets, bent one knee to the earth, and gave the word "Fire!"

We heard a report; Gambetta, his head shattered by the bullets, rolled like
a lump of lead into the trench.

"Will those beggarly Spaniards never appear?" said I to Brocard aside. "I
have had more than enough of this."

"Hush!" replied Brocard. "You do not know them yet as well as I, who have
been in the peninsula since 1807. I have just discovered the whole band in
the declivity yonder before us. They are climbing along above, so as to
attack us in front and on both flanks at once. I have counted three hundred
muskets and carbines. We will have hot enough work in a few minutes."

"God grant it! Continue, but more slowly, so that we need not kill any
more."

Slowly, however, as he proceeded to tear up the names drawn, slowly as the
drawing went on, number thirty at length came forth. He lifted it up to
read the name, but remained for an instant silent.

"Who? who?" resounded on all sides.

{804}

"To the devil with it! Let whom it concerns read it," cried Brocard,
flinging it upon the ground.

"I will wager it is I," said Polidoro, springing forward to pick it up.
"Yes, it is indeed. The Lieutenant Polidoro!"

"Did you not make a mistake, Zanetto?" asked I. "I think it is only
twenty-nine."

"Yes, yes, captain, it is only twenty-nine," cried a soldier. "Don't, for
heaven's sake, decimate an officer."

"_Corpo di Bacco_, do you take me for a fool?" shouted Polidoro. "I
counted them, and it is thirty. Come, come! Every one in his turn. No
joking! Your hand, Bourdelaine. You forgive me?"

He had scarcely spoken when a signal shot was heard on the mountain, and
following upon it two fierce blazes of fire crashed on our right and left
and concealed our assailants in their thick smoke.

It was indeed the guerilla band the colonel had spoken of, which, augmented
by some of Campoverde's men, whom the English had disembarked at the mouth
of the Ebro, had filed toward the mountain, going from Cacia, below
Tortosa, as far as Casserras, intending from that point to surprise us at
Mora. Learning that a company was at Batea, they halted on their way in the
hope of capturing us.

At the crash of the discharge, Polidoro sprang forward like a lion. The
smell of battle seemed to intoxicate him. His eyes flashed fire, and his
face glowed with ardor. His was a true warrior-soul.

"Captain," said he, "it is through my fault that the company is brought
into this danger; let it be mine to extricate it. Give me twenty men. I
know the country round, and this morning I discovered a little by-path
opening on a level space, from which we can turn the enemy's right. You
attack him in front; let Brocard see to his left, and in less than a
quarter of an hour all that rabble will be cut to pieces or dispersed. If I
remain alive, I will return and place myself at your disposal."

"If you return alive," I replied, "the colonel will decide upon your case.
San-Polo foresaw this attack and ordered me not to push the execution
further. Here is your sword, Polidoro, but be not rash; the colonel will
not deprive himself, for any whim, of an officer with such a future as
yours before him."

"I have no future, Bourdelaine," he returned gloomily. "I do not deceive
myself with false hopes. Preferment is closed against me. I will die at
least with honor, and bear with me the regret of my chief."

Corporal Campana had returned with his four grenadiers during this
colloquy, and Matteo walked slowly in the rear.

"Five men for the advance, and fifteen more for the lieutenant," I cried to
Brocard.

"All right, captain! You hold the centre and I the right, deployed as
skirmishers is that it?" asked Brocard.

"Right!"

"And I?" said Matteo, confounded as Polidoro, advancing at a run to the
mountain, gained some distance up its declivity without being perceived by
the enemy. "Am I good for nothing, captain, but to bury my comrades?"

"Thou old graybeard! March at the head of the column," I replied, "since
instead of awaiting us in their stronghold those fools have been silly
enough to come down to surround us. Thou seest I did not do ill to reserve
you for a better chance."

"Much obliged!" he returned. "Then we are going to cool their hot blood,
captain?"

The guerilla chief, not having perceived our movement, and there only being
fifty men at most before him, pressed confidently forward, never doubting
that he could easily compel us to lay down our arms. We waited until part
of his men had reached the foot of the mountain, and then we fell upon them
in a solid column, while Brocard, his men deployed as skirmishers, attacked
and drove back their left, and Polidoro, having gained his position, forced
their right to retreat, shooting down all who had not rejoined the main
body.
{805}
Suddenly I heard the drums beat the charge behind me. It was a company, led
by San-Polo himself, which had taken the Batea road, and so cut off the
advance-guard of the guerillas thrown forward toward Mora.

The Spaniard is brave, obstinate, and sober; inured to privations and
fatigues. He will fight long and well behind a rock or a wall, but in the
open field he generally lacks steadiness, and is easily discouraged if he
meets an unforeseen resistance in an attack. He will disband to meet his
fellows at some other point and plan some new surprise--the only species of
warfare which he conducts well. This, indeed, is the result of that
provincial spirit of independence, of that character of individuality,
which so deeply penetrates the masses and forms the distinguishing
characteristic of the nation.

The panic soon became general, and the village was filled with wounded and
dead.

Those who fled from the fire of one party of our men were received upon the
bayonets of another, finding no outlet through which to make their escape;
about a hundred of the guerillas, however, succeeding in forcing their way
toward Casserras, scattering as they went, and giving us a few parting
shots. All the rest were taken. San-Polo forced his way to us, pitilessly
shooting down all who refused to yield. He soon joined us, and cast his
eyes toward the open trench.

"Aha!" he cried, darting a look of intelligence to me; "you are cautious,
captain. You would not have the enemy know the number of your killed. How
many?" asked he in a low tone.

"Two, _mon colonel_; the lot unfortunately fell upon Sergeants
Gasparini and Gambetta."

San-Polo could not restrain a gesture of vexation.

"And Polidoro?"

"_Ma foi_, my colonel; he escaped well; we were going to shoot him
when the skirmish commenced. He is now upon the mountain, where I can vouch
he gave us some famous help."

"He is here," said Brocard, "and in a sad condition. Here are his men
bringing him upon their muskets."

When he reached us, Polidoro raised his head, not without great pain, and
lifting his still bantering glance to the face of San-Polo, who stood grave
and motionless, he cried with an attempt at his old gayety:

"Hit, colonel, hit! I am sorry, my colonel, that you can no longer break or
even put me under arrest."

"I will have chance enough to do both yet," replied San-Polo, with an
affected roughness which betrayed his anxiety to encourage the wounded
soldier.

"O colonel! my account is closed this time," returned Polidoro. "Six
bullets through the body, and two of them at least through my lungs. 'Tis
enough for one, _mon colonel_."

Then some long-banished remembrances seemed to return, and a sad smile
played over his features.

"_Sancta Maria, mater Dei_." he continued, in a tone still tinged with
a sort of sorrowful gayety, "_ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora
mortis nostrae. Amen_."

San-Polo threw himself from his horse, and pressed a flask of brandy to the
lips of the wounded lieutenant, holding him up in his arms for a moment to
help him to swallow a few drops.

"How kind you are to me!" murmured the dying man, in a scarcely audible
voice; "you seem to think that, in spite of my follies, I was not so bad an
officer after all. Keep, I pray you, my colonel, my sword in remembrance of
me; only unfasten the sword-knot and give it to Bourdelaine. Ah! I wish you
would give Zanetto fifteen francs for--the drum--I broke."

A cough interrupted him, and a bloody froth appeared upon his lips. His
features were pinched with pain; he gasped; his eyes grew glassy, and,
after a few slight convulsions, all that remained of Polidoro fell back in
the colonel's arms.

{806}

San-Polo took the lieutenant's sword, pulled the knot off, and hastily
handed it to me; then springing into the saddle he rode off at full gallop,
without speaking a word or even turning his head.

"Quick, Brocard! Mount and accompany the colonel," I said. "You know how
dangerous those guerillas are even in a rout. I shall not need you until we
return to Mora."


  III.

"And now that I have ended," said the general after a pause, "let us talk,
if you please, about the rain and the weather. It is strange," he
continued, pressing his hand to his brow, "how all these memories return,
at the time when, thank God, our days of joy and trouble are nearly past."

"Yours?" the government clerk hastened to reply. "You are good for twenty
years yet."

There are some honest people who always speak thus to old men.

"Good! very good!" growled the general, bending over the table to pour out
another wine-glass of cognac. "In twenty years I will be no more thought of
than if I had never lived. To the devil with wars and those who make them."

While his daughter and son-in-law were lifting their voices in protest
against such an idea, I discreetly took up the lamp, and approached the
frame to examine it more closely.

"These, very probably," I said, half to myself, "are the watch of the
grenadier Gasparini, the cross of the sergeant-major Gambetta, and
sword-knot of Lieutenant Polidoro."

"Yes, yes," replied the general, without looking toward them; "I bought the
watch and the cross from the drummer Zanetto. Poor child! The first bullet
sent him to his account in the assault on Fort Olivo, the 29th of May,
before Tarragona. For goodness' sake, let it alone."

I saw that my curiosity made him impatient, so I returned the lamp and took
up my hat to retire.

"You are leaving us very soon, my friend," said the general.

"You know, general, that I must be home by half-past nine."

"Right. Duty before all. I hope you don't intend to put all I have said
upon paper."

"You have authorized me to do so, general."

"So be it, then; but upon one condition."

"Name it."

"That you will add nothing of your own to it, as most of you men of letters
do; and that you will not pervert my words."

"I will try not to do so."

------

{807}

  From The Month.

  Scenes From a Missionary Journey in South America.


  I. Lisbon, St. Vincent, Pernambuco, Bahia.


Toward evening of the 12th of March we doubled Cape Finisterre, the
north-western extremity of Spain, and saw in the misty offing a very large
four masted iron screw steamer, homeward bound, and said to be from
Australia. We had but once seen the Spanish coast looming through the fog
several leagues off; but at sunrise on the 14th we forgot all the miseries
of the previous four days, as the sea was quite smooth, the weather
admirable, and a scene of unequalled beauty unrolled itself before our
eager gaze. We were entering the Tagus: on our left, at the river's mouth,
stood the castle of St. Julian, apparently not a very ancient or remarkable
structure. We had passed in the night, also on the left, the far-famed
wood-crowned hills and picturesque glens of Cintra, so beautifully sung by
Lord Byron in Childe Harold. Further on jutted into the stream the
yellow-walled old Moorish fortalice of Belem, so often depicted, and so
worthy of it. Its many lights and shadows, as the sunlight plays on its
richly sculptured front, give it a strangely quaint and old-world
appearance. Its garrison, a mere company or so, appeared to enjoy a
sinecure; for I beheld a single sentinel lazily pacing up and down a narrow
landing-place. Others were fishing with a rod and line, and a few more
washing in the stream their seemingly unique shirts, for they wore no other
clothing that I could see, save a pair of white canvas trowsers. This scene
I saw repeated a few weeks later in the Brazilian island of Sancta
Catharina, where a squad of black soldiers were washing their shirts and
trowsers in the waters of a small mountain stream. From the castle of Belem
the view eastward up the river is one of the most beautiful that can be
imagined, and seems at first fully to justify the pride of the Portuguese
lines:

  "Quem nâo tem visto Lisboa,
   Nâo tem visto cousa boa."

That is, he has not seen a beautiful sight who has not seen Lisbon. The
river, considerably narrowed at its extreme mouth, widens here very much,
and displays on its broad surface a forest of masts. On the left hand the
city rises from the water's edge up an amphitheatre of seven hills, house
upon house, church upon church, filling up an irregular semicircle of
considerable extent, and having for a frame the surrounding green heights,
whose tender spring verdure, here and there enlivened by the blooming
Judas-tree, [Footnote 299] agreeably contrasts with the dazzling whiteness
of most of the edifices. To the westward of the city sits the imposing mass
of the modern and yet unfinished royal palace of Ajuda; and beneath it,
near the waterside, an old convent and church, whose gray weather-beaten
walls seem to bid defiance to the mushroom structure above. This palace of
Ajuda will probably never be finished. The finances of that puny kingdom
are not, I imagine, in the most prosperous condition; and it would appear
that modern royalty is as little at ease in residences fashioned upon the
grandeur and magnificence of ancient days, as a beggar would be if he
suddenly became the owner and tenant of a nobleman's seat.

   [Footnote 299: A tree with pendulous bunches of pink flowers. It is
   probably so called from its blooming about Passion-tide. Some say that
   it was on a tree of this species that Judas hanged himself.]

{808}

On the southern side of the Tagus are to be seen scattered here and there
pleasantly enough among the green hills various white-walled
_quintas_, or country farm-houses and villas. There is also, facing
Lisbon, a small town of three or four thousand inhabitants. A little lower
down toward the sea, on the same side, is the new Lazaretto, or building
for quarantine--a certainly not very inviting abode, all white and yellow,
without a particle of verdure or a square inch of shade about it. The
harbor or bay, four or five miles wide, contains ships of almost every
nation; but chiefly British, for Portugal is now little better than a
colony or dependency of England. The Magdalena had no sooner cast anchor
than two of the respected clergy of the English college--the college _dos
Inglesinhos_, (of the dear English,) as the people call them--came on
board to welcome me. I accompanied them ashore, and visited the college,
situated on one of the highest spots of the city. On my way through the
custom-house I saw a piece of impertinence committed by one of the
underlings in the absence of his principal, which too well indicated the
little respect which is now paid to the holy see in that once so Catholic
kingdom. A secretary of the Brazilian nunciature, on his way to Rio, had
landed with a small bag containing despatches sent by Cardinal Antonelli to
the nuncio at Lisbon. Ambassadors' papers are privileged everywhere;
nevertheless, in spite of the secretary's remonstrances and mine, the said
underling broke open one of the sealed packets, and would doubtless have
proceeded further had not Padre Pedro, of the English college, at that
moment arrived, and threatened the insolent _douanier_ with the loss
of his place. I don't know if the nuncio took any notice of the affair; but
where could such a proceeding have taken place save in Lisbon, or perhaps
in Florence?

Facing the harbor, in the Praça do Commercio, is a handsome bronze statue
of one of the former kings of Portugal, whose proud and commanding attitude
half recalled the times when Portugal was mistress of the seas, and her
adventurous navigators pioneered the way through unknown oceans to
discoveries of stupendous magnitude.

The English fathers, the Revs. ----, showed me more than ordinary
politeness: one of them accompanied me to present sundry letters of
introduction I had brought with me to some notable personages of the
capital. I was very cordially received everywhere, and could have wished
that all the Portuguese resembled these worthy representatives of former
national greatness. The Marqueza de F----, among others, appeared to me the
model of a hidalgo's wife, full of grace and dignity, yet of amenity and
practical good sense. I was particularly struck with her fervid piety,
worthy of better times. At the house of the Marquess de L----, brother to
the Portuguese minister in London, I met the newly consecrated Bishop of
Oporto, who, to an ardent zeal and piety, joined the precious experience of
thirty years' apostolate in China as a Lazarist missionary. He has since
made his voice heard to some purpose in the upper house of the Lisbon
parliament, strenuously resisting and combating the antichristian measures
of the Louié ministry.

Some of the churches, of course, I visited, as far at least as the
shortness of time allowed. They bore for the most part traces of the
magnificence and gorgeous piety of other days; but were generally ill kept,
and but too empty of worshippers. The chapter mass was being chanted when I
entered the Primatial church; there were very few people assisting; near
the door stood some poor women with dead babes laid on benches; they did
not seem to be noticed by any one.

If the exterior aspect of Lisbon is truly magnificent, a nearer view of
that capital takes away all illusion. I afterward found this to be the case
also with many of the Brazilian cities.
{809}
Nature has done wonders for most of these towns, but man seems to have made
it his especial purpose to sully and disfigure everything. If we except
some really very fine buildings and noble historic monuments, all in Lisbon
is squalid, neglected, and ruinous. Most of the streets, rebuilt so lately
as eighty years ago, after the great earthquake, are narrow, tortuous,
ill-paved, and more than ordinarily dirty and fetid. The same may be said
of the houses, even of palaces of great noblemen, in which, in spite of
imposing architectural splendor, and traces of former sumptuousness, the
olfactory sense is frequently annoyed by indescribable odors of stables or
worse things. Sanitary commissions would assuredly be driven mad if at work
in that city for any time. The noisy bustle of a great capital always
gives, more or less, an appearance of energetic life to its indwellers; but
after London, Paris, or even Madrid, Lisbon appears dead. It is the torpid
metropolis of a degenerate people.

On the 21st at sunrise we cast anchor in the fine bay of St. Vincent, one
of the Cape de Verde Islands, and a coaling station for steamers. It is a
volcanic rock of frightful sterility, but possesses a wide, deep, and
secure harbor of considerable resort for ships navigating on the African
coast. Everything is brought thither from the neighboring island of Sant'
Antonio--water, oranges, bananas, yams, sugar-canes, and other
productions--for the place yields absolutely nothing, save a little
brackish water in a couple of wells. Its sole inhabitants are a few score
of starving-looking negroes, a few lean pigs, fowls, and goats. I saw,
soaring high among the mountains, a kind of vulture with a large yellow
beak, but wondered where that bird and its possible fellows would find
anything to eat, unless it came across from the neighboring islands. For
there is no sign whatever of vegetation or of wild animal life on this
spot, where it is said never to rain. The soil is reddish, and perpetually
calcined by the intolerable fierceness of an almost equatorial sun. He
ought not to complain of heat in Europe who has once visited St. Vincent.
One of my voyaging companions, the secretary of nunciature at Rio, the Rev.
Monsignore ----, who had come directly from Rome, was sighing and groaning
under the oppression of that fiery clime. The good man had, by some
mischance, left his baggage behind, and had no other clothing to wear but a
long black coat of a coarse and thick texture that would have done him fair
service amidst the snows of Canada--but here in St. Vincent! He must have
had a vivid anticipation of purgatory, I am sure; his distress was very
comical, and he could not relieve it by lighter clothing until we reached
Bahia. Far more at their ease were the dozen or two of little blacks,
perfectly naked, who played on the smooth sandy shore, jumping and tumbling
in and out of the waves, just like our own children in the new-mown hay at
home in the summer-time.

There may be at St. Vincent four or five score of so-called houses of most
wretched appearance, a set of stone-built barracks tenanted by a company or
so of Portuguese soldiers, and a small fort on a hillock, overlooking and
commanding the bay. Three or four sickly-looking palm-trees, brought from
Portugal, endeavor to grow in front of the government house. A small church
has recently been built, and is served by a black priest, who managed to
raise the funds for its erection by begging on board every ship which came
into the harbor. To the right on entering the harbor is a mountain of
somewhat fantastic form. American imagination has found in its outline some
resemblance to Washington's profile, and it has in consequence been called
"Washington's Head." Right in the middle of the entrance of the bay, and
darkly outlined against the frowning cliffs of Sant' Antonio, is a tall
conical rock of remarkable appearance. It is a capital landmark, being seen
seaward at a very great distance.
{810}
When we entered the harbor, we found at anchor, among other vessels, a
large Federal steam-frigate, which had been there four months watching the
arrival of the famous Alabama. Within the spacious bay disported two
whales, mother and cub, which were pursued for several hours, but in vain,
by the native fishermen.

We most gladly bade farewell to the desolate isle of St. Vincent, and
fairly sailed away for the New World, yet distant from us six or seven
hundred leagues. The heat now began to be terrific, especially at night in
the narrow cabins; but it was moderated most days by a gentle breeze, which
made lolling on deck in the evenings truly luxurious. About a day's sail
from St. Vincent I first noticed shoals of flying-fish, though I believe
they are to be found in a much more northerly latitude, and in another
voyage I saw some off the isle of Palma. They rise from the sea, chiefly in
the early morning and when the surface is freshly rippled, in flocks of ten
to sixty or more, and fly close to the surface, often tipping the crest of
the wavelets, and skim along with great velocity for the space of five or
six hundred yards, when they plunge again into the deep, raising a speck of
foam. These small fish, which are said to be of excellent flavor, are about
the size of herrings, and of silvery-gray color. I once or twice saw some
much larger and almost white on the coast of Brazil, between Bahia and Rio
de Janeiro. They are said to be constantly pursued by the bonita, a large
fish of the dolphin species, whose hungry maw they try to escape by rising
out of the water. But although their flight is exceedingly rapid, their
relentless enemy cuts its way through the subjacent waves with equal
swiftness, and is ready for the tiny victims as they drop exhausted into
the sea. There appear to be prodigious numbers of them all over the ocean;
and nearer the coast of Africa the sea is sometimes covered for miles and
miles with their spawn lying on the smooth surface like the duck-weed of
our ponds. In this latitude, and for many days, I also noticed swimming
along in the smooth transparent waters the gay-looking dorado, a large fish
vividly reflecting the sun's rays from its scaly back, all over green and
gold. Sharks I was anxious to see, but none appeared throughout the voyage;
scared away, I should imagine, by the noise and turmoil of the
paddle-wheels.

We had fallen into the region of the trade-winds, which blew steadily from
the north-east, wafting us rapidly over the middle Atlantic; we were eight
days reaching Pernambuco. I was surprised to meet with so few ships on the
way, yet we must have crossed the high road of a great multitude of vessels
outward or homeward bound. This apparent scarcity of ships gave me a vivid
idea of the immensity of the ocean, on whose pathless surface so many sail
wander, lost like imperceptible specks of dust on the plain. In this great
solitude, life on board ship is monotonous enough, and by its wearisomeness
almost justifies the snarling saying of Dr. Johnson: "Sir, I would rather
be in jail than on board of a ship, where you have the confinement of a
prison together with the chance of being drowned." Want of space, even in
the largest vessels, the impossibility of applying one's self to serious
occupation, to study, or to prayer, for want of quiet solitude, and also on
account of the rolling of the ship, which greatly fatigues the head--all
this makes one sigh for the end of the voyage, and find a lively interest
in the most trifling occurrences--the passing of a distant sail, the
flight of a bird, and so forth. It is especially in the evenings--and they
are long ones in the tropics--that time appears heavy, unless one be
inclined to enter into all the frivolous and noisy amusements set on foot
to beguile weariness. The passengers dance, play games, improvise concerts,
and especially eat and drink enormously, and almost all day long. How
wearisome former sea-voyages must have been, which lasted many months,
sometimes even several years! It is related, for example, in Captain Cook's
voyages that some of his crew once lost their wits for joy on seeing the
land they had not beheld for eighteen months.

{811}

A few degrees before we crossed the line, the sky became overcast with
heavy dark clouds, which French sailors call "_le pot du noir_" and
our English tars "the doldrums;" the barometer ceased to indicate any
atmospheric changes. It was on the 26th, in the evening, we passed the
equator, and for more than forty hours we had violent squalls and
occasional tremendous downpourings, which made us all uncomfortable: for
staying on deck was out of the question, and the heat below was very
oppressive. Flocks of a species of large wild goose, which came flying
round the ship, announced the proximity of the land; and on the 28th toward
dusk we passed off the rocky and picturesque island of Fernando de Noroñha.
It was at too great a distance to distinguish anything, but it is said to
contain features of great natural beauty. This island is now used as a
place of transportation for the convicts of Brazil. These were formerly
detained in the southern island of Sancta Catharina; but that spot afforded
the prisoners too many facilities of escape, being so near the mainland,
and within easy reach of the foreign state of the Banda Oriental. I could
collect but meagre notions concerning the number and the lot of the unhappy
convicts, mostly all blacks, who have only exchanged one kind of slavery
and labor for another. In most cases, when the crime committed has not been
of the most heinous nature, the convict after a year or two's confinement
is drafted into the army or navy. I have heard officers of both services
bitterly complain of this system. The island of Noroñha is mountainous, and
difficult of access.

At last, on Sunday, March the 29th, at sunrise, we touched the New World,
and the Magdalena cast anchor in Pernambuco roads, about three miles from
the land, for the harbor, whose entrance is narrow besides, is inaccessible
to ships of large tonnage. The fishermen of this place boldly navigate in
those roads, and sometimes many leagues into the offing, on strange-looking
and perilous rafts made of a few crossed bamboo-sticks, somewhat resembling
the catamarans used at Madras. It is inconceivable how those daring sailors
are not devoured by the sharks off those flimsy machines, which the least
wave upsets. It does not much concern them when this happens, for they all
swim like fishes, and the tiny craft is soon put to rights again. There is,
however, a tradition in the port that once upon a time a man was snatched
off his dancing catamaran by a monstrous shark, which devoured him before
the eyes of his affrighted companions. Pernambuco is a place of great
trade, the third city in the Brazils for population and the importance of
its productions: it is one of the great sugar-markets of the world. It
possesses some good churches and public buildings, and a school of law, the
first in the empire, where Pombalist and Jansenistic traditions have
obtained much less adhesion than at Sao Paolo or Bahia. A thesis was
maintained there with great applause a short time ago, which astonished all
the lawyers of Brazil, namely, that the pope needed not a general council
to decide infallibly any doctrine of faith; his _ipse dixit_ was
sufficient; and all true Catholics ought at once to bow interiorly and
exteriorly to it as to the word of Christ himself. This was probably the
first time this had been so boldly proclaimed in South America since the
banishment of the Society of Jesus.

The town is cut up by a number of lagoons, crossed over by bridges like at
Venice; and its first aspect from the sea reminds one very much of Hamburg.
There is, of course, the difference of a glowing sky and large tropical
vegetation. The land lies low, and the presumption is that it must be
unhealthy; but it is not so, I believe, owing to the regular sea-breezes,
which greatly cool the air and dissipate the vapors. The heat cannot but be
intense at times on a spot only six or seven degrees south of the line.

{812}

It is not always easy to land at Pernambuco, for the entrance of the harbor
does not give more than fifteen or sixteen feet of water in the best tides;
and there lies across it, and for hundreds of miles up and down and
parallel with the coast, a dangerous low coral-reef, against which the
mighty Atlantic waves dash with fury. This reef, which in many places
barely rises above the surface, would prove an excellent defence against
invasion; but it was not apparently thought sufficient in former times, for
there stands on the beach to the north of the town a square bastioned fort,
built by the Dutch under Maurice of Nassau when they occupied the country
at the beginning of the seventeenth century. To the north of this again, on
a bold rocky hill, is situated the ancient city of Olinda, so called from
the exclamations of the first Portuguese discoverers when this enchanting
land broke upon their sight: "O linda terra! lindos outeiros!" "O beautiful
country, charming hills!" It was formerly a bishop's see and the capital of
the country. It contains several churches and convents, as well as old
residences of governors and magnates, of a rather massive and imposing
architecture. The surrounding country is one vast forest of palm,
cocoa-nut, and other trees of the torrid zone. There are many flourishing
sugar and coffee plantations, surrounded by nopal and banana groves, and a
multitude of superb creepers, amidst whose luxuriant growth and glowing
flowers rise the white-walled houses of the owners. As we rode along, we
purchased some pine-apples and mangoes of immense size and exquisite
flavor. When we returned on board, numbers of Pernambuco boatmen surrounded
the ship with loads of oranges and bananas for sale, as well as tame
parrots and monkeys; but none of them, with the fear of the sharks before
their eyes, would imitate the blacks, whom we had seen at St. Vincent
diving into the sea, nine or ten fathom deep, to pick up small pieces of
money which the passengers would throw in, to witness their astonishing
power of swimming.

From Pernambuco to Bahia we had thirty-six hours' passage. We were not
nearer the land than ten or twelve leagues, the Royal Mail Company
forbidding their commanders of ships to hug the coast any closer. On the
30th of March, about noon, we met the fine steamer La Navarre, of the
French Messageries Company, on its way to Bordeaux. It was crammed full of
passengers, among whom I saw several Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. These
venerable religious women serve various hospitals in the Brazils--at Bahia,
Rio de Janeiro, and other places. They are everywhere, I need not say,
worthy of their holy founder and of their country. They have not escaped,
however, in this New World the calumnies and persecutions which they have
had to endure in some parts of Europe, and notably in Portugal and
Piedmont. Almost the first Brazilian journal I saw contained an infamous
diatribe against them; but they would very likely themselves prefer
contumely to honor, as assimilating them more perfectly to their Divine
Lord, the Man of Sorrows.

At a very early hour on the 31st we doubled the point which juts out on the
right of the harbor of Bahia, and the ship fired a gun to announce our
arrival. No description can convey a true idea of the beauty of this
celebrated bay--Bahia de todos os Sanctos, that is, "All Saints' Bay."
Covered to the water's edge with a glowing and gigantic vegetation, the
hills which rise above the roadstead are dotted with pretty-looking villas,
the residences of the city merchants. It was the commencement of what is
here called winter; yet I saw everywhere a superabundance of flowers,
especially of roses. Trees with strange forms, fruits yet more strange, a
teeming population, two thirds of which at least was composed of negroes,
the odd cries and barbarous howlings of these blacks as they hawked their
wares or carried, to the number of ten or twelve together, huge burdens
swung on the middle of long poles--everything was of a sort to interest a
stranger.
{813}
Carriages there were none, or very few at least; for the city, being built
on the steep slope of an abrupt cliff, has no level surface anywhere in its
streets, most of which resemble very much the queer uphill lanes leading to
Fourvières in the city of Lyons. The intense heat of the atmosphere made me
give up the design I had entertained of visiting the town entirely on foot.
I hired a kind of bath-chair, of which there are long stands about, and two
stout negroes conveyed me successively to the various churches and the
public garden of the city. These chairs are very ingeniously contrived to
exclude the sun and admit the air, as well as to preserve absolute privacy
within them. They swing on a long pole fore and aft, which the blacks carry
on their shoulder; but this pole is shaped like an elongated S, to secure
the sitter's equilibrium, which would be unpleasantly disturbed by the
see-saw tread of the bearers. Notwithstanding the little exercise I took,
an abundant perspiration ran from every pore. It was therefore with
exquisite pleasure that I came to a house where for a few _vintems_ (
few pence) I could exchange my stewing state for the coolness of a
shower-bath. I had previously been told to use the necessary precaution--
that is, to rub a small quantity of caixaça, or rum, over my body before
coming in contact with the water.

The trade of Bahia appears considerable, and is entirely carried on in the
lower town, which stretches along the water-side on the north for more than
a league, nearly to the western-most point of the outer bay, crowned by a
celebrated sanctuary dedicated to Nossa Señhora do Bom-Fim--Our Lady of the
Happy Death. On the eastern promontory of the harbor, on the summit of a
bold hill looking upon the Atlantic, is the oldest religious building,
perhaps, in all South America. It is the now ruinous church built by an
Indian princess, the first of her race who embraced the faith of Christ.
The beach below was often hallowed by the footsteps of the venerable Father
Anchieta, the apostle of Brazil, who would bare his breast to the
sea-breeze to cool the ardor which consumed him for the salvation of souls,
and write with a stick on the sand of the shore the beautiful Latin verses
he daily composed in honor of the Blessed Mother of God. The blacks still
cross themselves at the mention of Padre Anchieta's name, and the country
still abounds with traces and monuments of his zeal and wonderful sanctity.
The numerous churches of Bahia are generally very richly decorated, but not
cleanly kept. I saw some large black rats running across the altar of one
of them, most profusely adorned with gilt carving. It was a church
dedicated to St. Benedict the Moor, a negro saint from Africa, a monk of
the Franciscan order, who lived and died in Sicily, and it is exclusively
used by the blacks. A negro priest was loitering about its precincts, and
when I told him of the boldness of the aforesaid rats, "We cannot help it,
Señor Padre-mestre." he answered; "their numbers are so great we cannot
destroy them." The churches have no seats; the men stand round by the side
walls, and the women _squat_ down on the middle wooden floor.
Sometimes, and when the floor is of stone, the ladies are accompanied to
church by a female slave carrying a small square carpet, which she lays
down for her mistress to sit upon. I saw again here in the cathedral what I
had already seen in Lisbon: on a wooden bench near the holy-water vessel
close to the door lay several dead babies, shrouded up with the exception
of the face, and covered with fresh flowers. The mothers were waiting hard
by until a priest should come to recite the funeral prayers. I had at first
mistaken these little corpses for waxen _exvotos_. Thus adorned, death
had nothing sad or repulsive about it, especially when I thought that
these, were the remains of little angels--_anjiñhos_ they call them
in Brazil--who had flown to heaven with the purity of their baptismal
innocence.

{814}

The negroes of Bahia are numerous, and the finest in the Brazils. I admire
their robust frames, and the seeming indifference with which they carried
almost Titanic loads beneath such a burning sun. The landing-place is a
perfect Babel; these blacks are so loquacious, and they, moreover, seem to
think it adds to their importance to shout as loud as their rough, powerful
throats will let them. I have never heard a negro speak to another in a
quiet, subdued way. Why should they, indeed? They never attain the sober
sense of manhood; they are a mere set of noisy, overgrown children. We had
had as a fellow-passenger by the Magdalena, as far as Bahia, a Mr. B----, a
little, old Scotchman, long settled in the province of Minasgeraes, who
took no small pride in exhibiting a snow-white beard almost a yard in
length, and a plentiful crop of hair of the same venerable hue. A sprightly
English youth, who was one of the first to land, spread the report among
the blacks that we had on board the famous "Wandering Jew." Our ship was
soon surrounded by a multitude of boats crammed full of woolly heads, and,
when the luckless Scotchman landed, he was, to his dismay, escorted
everywhere by a long procession of shouting and screaming blackies. We
thought he paid rather dear for his eccentricity.

The market, which was near the landing-place, was abundantly supplied with
eatables of every kind; poultry, kids, lambs, sucking-pigs, all alive, and
bleating, squeaking, clucking their best; a great variety of fish and
fruits; oranges of huge size, called there _seleitas_; water-melons,
with the red, cool pulp; mangoes, bananas, jacas, a sort of large pumpkins
which grow on tall trees, goiavas, and many more species whose mostly
Indian names I cannot recollect. With the exception of oranges, limes, and
pine-apples, which are superexcellent, the fruits of Brazil do not at first
please a European palate. Those of Europe--owing, I suppose, to careful and
scientific cultivation--attain a more delicate flavor, if they do not equal
the fruits of America in size and color. The same may be said of the
flowers, which, with greater size and magnificence of color and form, lack,
for the most part, the exquisite perfume which our humblest flowers exhale.

------

  Translated.

  Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert.


Some brothers came to Abbot Antony, and said: "We wish to hear a maxim from
you by which we may save ourselves."

The father said: "You hear the Scriptures, that is enough for you."

"But we wish to hear something from you, father."

"You hear," replied Abbot Antony, "Our Lord saying: 'If any man strike you
on the left cheek, turn even the other to him.'"

Said they, "We are not able to do this."

"If you are not able to turn the other cheek, at least bear the one blow
patiently."

"We cannot do that," said they.

"If you are not strong enough for that, then do not wish to strike more
than you are struck."

"Oh!" said they, "we cannot even do that."

Then the father said to his novice: "Get ready some pap for these brothers,
for they are very weak." Then, turning to them, he said: "If you are not
able to do even this much, what can I do for you? All that you need is
prayer."

------

{815}


  The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.

  By Clonfert.


  Chapter IV.

  The Feast of Blood.


About the year ninety-two of the Christian era, Domitian visited the
theatre of the Dacian war. Not daring to show himself to the rebel army, he
plundered the towns and cities which were left unprotected. Fire and fury
surrounded his march; and desolation left its smoking trail behind him.
Carrying with him the wealth of the pillaged villages, he returned to Rome.
The tact and bravery of Julian, who directed the war against the Dacians,
in a few months brought that warlike race to terms. Officially informed of
their surrender, Domitian, who had never appeared on the battle-field,
decreed himself a triumph such as in by-gone ages were awarded only to the
conquerors of great nations. He pompously ordered the temple of Janus to be
closed for the third time, we believe, in his reign. Its gates were left
open in time of war. Its closing was a sign that universal peace prevailed
over the vast area of the Roman empire.

The temple of Janus was closed. But the peace its silent sanctuary
represented was like the calm of the sea before being lashed into fury by
the flapping wings of the tempest. The surface of the social system,
undisturbed by the rebellion of warring tribes or by the clash of arms, was
outwardly quiet and even. But the quiet and the evenness were those of the
stagnant ocean described by the poet as being overhead covered with smiling
ripples and silver sunshine, but underneath filled with filth and
corruption and the nameless things bred thereof. Taking the point of view
chosen by a great saint, we may well exclaim: "What a spectacle presented
itself to the eye of the all-seeing Creator as he gazed downward over that
vast empire! What corruption of truth and justice, of morality and religion
filled society and corroded its vitals in all its parts! Rotten and rotting
systems of philosophy and the monstrous principles and practices born
thereof swarmed and spread on every side. It was only natural that the
whole corrupted mass would swell and boil with fury as the little yeast of
Christian truth destined to impregnate and cure it was being infused."

The temple of Janus was closed. But the man who directed the destinies of
the empire was ill at ease. The legions in Gaul and Asia were clamoring for
increased pay. He had already, in order to secure their fidelity, raised it
from three to four aurei, (about $5.25.) The gigantic and shapeless temples
and other structures he erected, together with the enormous outlay on
public games and festivals, were a continual drain on the treasury. To
procure money he had appointed officials of his own choosing to
superintend, increase, and collect the taxes in the provinces and in the
city of Rome; creatures like Arthus, who ground the people with iron heel
until they bruised out the last cent from their pockets. Arthus was one of
the principal of these tax-imposers and tax-gatherers in the city:
ambitious of rising higher and higher in the imperial favor, and of
out-distancing his fellow-financiers in the neighboring districts, he spent
all his time and attention which were not engaged in building up and
pulling down parts of the labyrinthine temple, of which we have in the last
chapter spoken, in devising plans for raising money.
{816}
After bath and dinner he was to be seen each day for hours with his hand
upon his head concocting schemes as to the best and most expeditious way of
putting his hand in the pockets of the poor, plundered plebeians. The
client who came to propitiate the great man by a money-offer was received
with courteous words and slippery smiles. But if it were a wretched wife
pleading for a husband and family, whose last obolus was given already, she
was received with insult and turned, if not kicked, from the door, carrying
with her the fear of the unrelenting tyrant hanging like midnight upon her
soul!

The Jews in these as in our own times had more than an ordinary repute for,
and possessed more than an ordinary share of, the money-bags. Arthus had
suggested a tax to be levied on them for the right of residence in Rome.
This proved a mine of supply during many years for the emperor. Another
suggestion of Arthus had been an edict of persecution against the
Christians, which would at once enable the cunning official to seize on and
confiscate all their property. The exhausted condition of the treasury,
together with what we are about relating, combined in bringing forth the
edict.

At an early hour of the day, in the morning of which we have seen Aurelian
at the Christian meeting, he sought the imperial palace. He had not changed
his dress of the day before, and he betrayed by his hurried step and
restless eye the deep excitement of his feelings.

When admitted into the emperor's presence, he described what he had
witnessed in the catacombs. The number and the rank in society of those
present at the Christian assemblage were painted in colors heightened by
his imagination and fears. The words of consecration which he had heard
were instanced as undeniable proof of the truth of the rumors circulated
about the murder of infants and participation of human blood and flesh by
the Christians, The marriage of Flavia and Vitus, as Aurelian believed, was
depicted, as well as the part which Theodore, Priscilla, and Clement took
in solemnizing it. The emperor seemed wholly overwhelmed. By nature and
habit of a very nervous temperament, he was overcome with vague terrors on
discovering himself surrounded in his very palace and family by traitors.
Vitus and Priscilla! the two most trusted inmates of his household, the
most punctual in the discharge of their duties, and the most faithful, as
he thought, to his own person! They to be infected with this Christian
poison, and principal sharers in these bloody orgies! After them it was
easy to belive that many more of his servants and friends were followers
and supporters of Christ. Perhaps at that very moment the plots planned in
those sacred meetings were at work against his life and crown! Might it not
be a clever manoeuvre to have thus entrapped and drugged Flavia in order
that, through her popularity and that of her uncle, the Roman people would
willingly see the sceptre wrested from his hand and placed in that of the
Christian whom she would espouse? Such were the reflections of Domitian in
listening to Aurelian's narrative. His full, red face grew fuller and
redder; his eyebrows lowered and drew the small eyes deeper under; and his
voice, always husky and rough, sounded more huskily and roughly as it fell
in short syllables on the ear:

"By the gods--who guard the Roman capitol and state--Aurelian--we must burn
out this nest of insects--crawling in the earth--and seeking to sting us
in our very palace--" He paused for breath, which came and went in
asthmatic style, between groups of three or four words. Striking a gong, he
ordered one of the courtiers to send for Arthus. But that obsequious
functionary was already in attendance at the palace and soon appeared. With
a peculiar, twitching motion of the hands, and feet, and head, and with
dress swaying in unison with the nervous motion of his body, Arthus
approached and knelt before Domitian.

{817}

"Arthus!" said the latter, "before the vesper hour--let the edict already
drafted against the Christians--be posted in the plain of Mars and let
copies of it be sent to the Asiatic, Gallic, and African cities!" Then
addressing Aurelian, "We shall ourselves--send a guard for the
ladies--Theodora and Flavia--as well as for Clement and the others--you
mentioned, and have them with Vitus and Priscilla--examined and punished
in our own presence."

On the evening of the 25th of December, the tablets on which the edict was
graven were placed in the Campius Martins. Then there arose through the
city sounds of commotion and woe, such as might arise if it were besieged
by a hostile army, or if the Gauls were once again calling for the
surrender of its keys. There was a hurrying to and fro of citizens in fear
or in fury, of soldiers and civic officials, of informers, accusers, and
accused, many of whom were before night dragged from their peaceful hearths
and families to the public tribunals. Many Christians were also put to
death. Through the darkness, as it fell like a pall on that scene of
excitement and suffering, the yelling of the mob was heard for many miles
as they surged through the streets and assailed the houses of the
suspected. The thirst for plunder and for blood, the awful rumors afloat,
and believed, of the Christian assemblies, and the thousand petty motives
of jealousy, envy, and hatred by which wicked men are often influenced
against their honest, virtuous neighbors, gave energy to the infuriate
passions of the populace. Throughout the night and the following days they
did not rest from their unhallowed work. Women and children as well as men
were seized and carried before the prefect or into the chamber of tortures,
where the brute-crowd shouted and cheered as they saw the martyrs writhing
on the rack or on the gridiron! However, in these crowds were many of the
faithful, who watched the death-scene, treasured each word that passed
between the judge and the condemned, and carried away either a sponge
soaked in, or a vial filled with, their blood, or some other relics. These
trustworthy witnesses wrote down the history of the martyrdom on
parchment-rolls, which they gave to the secretaries appointed to revise and
take care of them. Thus the first Christian Acts of Martyrs were compiled
and preserved.

As soon as the edict was posted, troops on horseback and in vehicles were
seen hastening through the streets and gates, and directing their courses
along the Appian, Flaminian, and other roads leading to the north, south,
east, and west. They carried copies of the edict for the magistrates of the
cities on their routes, to be set up in the forums and market-places. Some
travelled without stopping, save only for rest or refreshment at the
military _stationes_, or halting-places along the roads at intervals
of twenty or thirty miles. The _pagi_, or outlying smaller villages
built about central forts or places of defence, were seldom visited by
these couriers; because the _pagani_, or inhabitants of these country
villages, were the last to embrace Christianity, and comparatively few of
them had been at this early period converted. Quickly and steadily did
these messengers of persecution speed on, until the seaports or the
mountains were reached. Counting the places at which they rested for the
night, from ancient itineraries of the great highways north and south and
west, we may compute that in ten days the edict was promulgated at
Marseilles, in fifteen at Corinth, in nineteen in Algiers, and in
twenty-four in Ephesus and the remote cities of Asia Minor. Quickly and
steadily these messengers of woe sped from Rome to the four quarters of the
empire; and, as they passed, confusion, agony, and bloodshed were left
behind them. Like a stone dropped into calm waters, the bloody edict fell
upon the empire in an interval of peace.
{818}
The circle of consternation and persecution, like the commotion caused by
the stone falling into the tranquil waters, became wider and wider as the
imperial couriers travelled on, until it surged to the far boundaries of
the empire. But, although the servants of the temporal sovereign were thus
fleet and active, the messengers of the Lord of hosts were not slow or
idle. Ignotus, the Jewish beggar of the Appian Way, was the first to bring
word to Pope Clement and the missionaries assembled in the catacombs. The
pope had already made his arrangements; the city had been divided into
fourteen districts corresponding with its partition under the first
emperors; and priests, deacons, laymen, and even women were appointed to
watch over the several parts, to find admission, if possible, to the
imprisoned confessors and administer the sacraments and other consolations
of religion, to note down carefully what took place at their trials and at
their execution, and to obtain their bodies, and, if not, whatever relics
they could, in order to their decent preservation in the subterranean
vaults. Others, principally those who were lame or otherwise maimed, or
could easily assume the role of mendicants, were appointed to act as
messengers between the city and the catacombs. The more zealous who sighed
for martyrdom were restrained and ordered to prepare the niches for the
bodies of the martyred. The anxieties of the holy pope and missionaries
were not for the preservation of their own lives, but for the perseverance
of the faithful and the conversion of the unbelievers. Prayers for this
double purpose were appointed to be constantly offered in the collects of
the mass and at other times. Oh! how those unselfish, heroic men yearned
for the time when the cross of Jesus would be emblazoned on the capitol as
a sign that the countless nations and tribes subject to the Roman sway
bowed their stubborn necks to the mild yoke it symbolized. Health, wealth,
life were nothing in their esteem compared with this glorious result.
Clement, in his care of Rome, did not forget the other churches. To the
priest Andronicus, who was setting out for his post at Ephesus, he
entrusted a letter to the people of Corinth with regard to practices and
schisms, which, despite the efforts and letters of St. Paul, still cropped
up amongst them. Ignotus, the beggarman of the Appian and Latin Crossway,
had meantime turned his face toward Ostia, and long before the moon had
crossed the meridian he had warned many Christian communities to prepare
for the combat. The messengers of Domitian rested for the night; but
Ignotus never stopped day or night until he reached the mines outside
Ostia, where many Christians were employed. Before the official
announcement of the persecution reached the sea, the docks and vessels were
watched by anxious believers, clad in many guises of concealment. Many
availed themselves of the earliest craft to cross to Illyricum, Macedonia,
Greece, and Asia Minor. In the same way the Christian dwellers beyond the
Alps and Pyrenees had due warning before the edict arrived. One herald,
like Ignotus, was in every place through which he passed, a centre from
which other messengers, like radii, branched out. Thus zeal and charity
gave wings to the humble followers of Christ, with which the wealth and
power of imperial Rome were not able to arm its servants. Thus, too,
Christendom was prepared, as well as it could be, before the vultures
pounced upon its entrails. That preparation consisted to a great extent in
secreting the rolls of the sacred Scriptures and the consecrated vessels,
so that the persecutors might not seize on or desecrate them.

After leaving the Christian assemblage, Sisinnius with his two companions
returned to Aurelian's villa, and retired to take a few hours' rest. When
he awoke, he was told that Aurelian had driven to Rome.
{819}
Returning alone, he mused, as he passed through the fields between the
Latin and Appian roads, on the events of the previous evening, and
determined to say nothing, until he saw how things went on, to his wife or
Flavia about what he had witnessed. He found both in the family parlor.
There was nothing in their appearance to betray their vigils of the night
before, no sign of weariness or excitement. Flavia wore on her head the
white veil, and on her finger the ring, with which Clement had invested
her. A spirit of peace, joy, and happiness indescribable beamed, like a
light through a lamp, through her face and whole being. Theodora seemed
also happy. As the husband opened the door of the room, he saw her on her
knees, and heard his own name mentioned in earnest tones by her as she
supplicated God for his conversion and salvation. Standing for a moment in
the half-open door-way, he gazed with a feeling of veneration on his young
wife and her companion, as the rays of the sun slanting through a window
fell upon their earnest faces and surrounded their kneeling figures with a
balmy radiance. Silently and instinctively he joined them in spirit, asking
for full light to know and believe the truth.

Neither Sisinnius nor the inmates of his house had heard anything about the
persecution until twilight, when they were visited by a troop of the
imperial guard, led by Arthus. With his usual hurried gait and style, that
functionary explained how he had been commissioned by the emperor to escort
Theodora and Flavia to Domitian's palace. Sisinnius expressed his surprise
that it was deemed fitting or necessary to send a guard for noble ladies,
when an invitation or a message would have sufficed.

"Excuse me, noble Sisinnius, if I arouse your fears or pain your feelings.
You are not aware, perhaps, that an edict against the Christians has been
this afternoon promulgated from the capital and on the plain of Mars. The
two noble dames have been accused of belonging to the Christian conspiracy,
and having been present early this morning at their secret meeting!"

This was said by Arthus in a tone of malicious insolence, which Sisinnius
at another time would have subdued with contempt. But the tidings fell like
a lightning-stroke upon him, paralyzed his self possession, and filled him
with vague fears for his wife and her young friend.

"Please to rest," he said to Arthus, "for a few minutes in the atrium while
the ladies get ready to accompany you." Then re-entering the parlor, he
cautiously broke to them the news. But it had no effect on them as it had
on him. They glanced smilingly at each other, and exclaimed, "Thanks to
God," and announced their readiness to depart. Sisinnius urged Flavia to
change her dress; but she declined.

"But this dress," he urged, "will witness against you and be your
condemnation."

"Then I shall retain it. It is my bridal dress: is it fitting for the bride
to leave it aside when going to meet her spouse?"

Addressing himself to Theodora, he found her of the same mind as Flavia.

"Alas! my poor wife!" he exclaimed, embracing her, "you too are resolved to
die! Our lives have hitherto flowed along purely and musically as two
streams which unite their currents and go laughing through the summer
meadows. But we have reached the edge of a precipice, and may be separated
for ever by death. I know the tiger-nature of Domitian. But I must gird
myself to propitiate him. Oh! tell me that you will renounce this Christian
sect! otherwise I have little hope."

"You know not, dear Sisinnius, what, you ask. Death shall not separate
those who share in the future resurrection to a glorious immortality. Would
you wish your wife to lose her hopes thereof in order to avoid a little
temporal punishment? O my husband! I should die happily if I knew that you,
too, had acknowledged the one true God and the Saviour of mankind who died
to save us from sin and shame. I shall pray with my last breath, with my
blood, that God may reveal himself to you.
{820}
Then we would be again united in the world beyond the grave, never, never
to be separated! For there is One above"--she looked and pointed upward,
and Sisinnius imagined that there was something more than mortal about
her--"there is One above who shall hereafter command the elements and force
them to deliver up the portions of these mortal bodies that will have
passed into their possession. Fire and water, earth and air, shall obey his
order; and the ashes from the urn and the mould in the coffin, and the
gaseous vapors in which our burned or corrupting flesh may evaporate will
be restored; the bones shall stand up joint over joint in the tombs, and
the flesh and nerves and sinews shall reclothe them, and the souls shall
enter the arisen tenements of our bodies, and ascend like Jesus,
triumphant, after having despised the sting of temporal death and achieved
victory over the grave, to enjoy the unending, ineffable bliss prepared for
those especially who by their blood confess him before men. Dear Sisinnius,
if you be true to your own nature, if you do not stubbornly prevent the
light from sinking into your mind and heart, I feel a presentiment that you
shall know him, and shall then appreciate the littleness of earthly
sufferings and death when endured for his love! Gladly do I proceed to
resign the life of my body in order to secure that of my soul, particularly
when it is given for him who for me, and for you, too, my husband,
permitted himself to be nailed on a cross. With my very blood I shall
beseech him to show you how great joy there is in suffering for his name,
his person, and his cause. Dearest Lord Jesus!" she fervently prayed,
sinking on her knees, "grant your unworthy servant this grace, and
strengthen us in the hour of trial and combat to win the martyrs' fadeless
palm!"

Sisinnius was affected to tears as he saw such proof of sincere devotion to
himself, and at the same time to the religion of Christ. He thought that it
could not be the religion it was described to be, when it could thus win
and fill with happiness spirits so pure, so high, so unconscious of
wickedness as those of Theodora and Flavia Domitilla.

Arthus was impatient. Impatient also was the Emperor Domitian. He was
waiting in a large chamber of his palace, where, on an ivory altar, edged
with gold, were placed two statues, one of Jupiter and the other of
himself. A smoking censer swung in front of the altar, sustained on silver
chains attached by a pulley to the ceiling. Soldiers with drawn swords
stood in files along the sides of the room, while nearer to the altar were
stalwart men, naked to the waist, and holding instruments of torture in
their hands. These were Domitian's favorite gladiators, to utter a word
against any of whom was certain death. Round their arms the veins and
muscles swelled like twisted cords. The emperor was seated on a rich
throne, the steps of which he at intervals descended and nervously paced
the room. Terror sat on many faces as they saw his sunken eyes and knit
brows. Terror, too, was in his own heart as he conjured up before his
imagination the wide-spread and the hidden nature of the Christian
conspiracy against his throne. Such he assumed it to be. Hence he had now
surrounded himself with the gladiators, to whose fidelity and prowess he
entrusted his safety against the dagger or the poisoned cup. Aurelian had
been commissioned to lead a body of soldiers to the Appian Way, and to
arrest Pope Clement and those with him. But he had returned without finding
any trace of them, to the great chagrin of himself and the emperor. Those
present heard the latter grinding his teeth like small wheels in machinery,
and muttering broken curses with livid lips.

When Sisinnius and his party arrived, they were confronted by Vitus and
Priscilla.

{821}

"Flavia Domitilla and Vitus," said the emperor, "stand forth! Is it true,
Vitus, that, despite our known will, you have espoused our ward and cousin
in the Christian assembly? Can it be that you, so favored, so honored by
us, have become a traitor to our throne and person?"

"My sovereign lord!" said Vitus, stepping boldly into the centre of the
hall and making obeisance to the emperor, "I am not a traitor. On the
contrary, I am bound by every motive of loyalty and religion to serve you
in all things lawful. I appeal to your own experience of me in the past, if
I have not hitherto acted as became a Roman and an officer of the
household. Neither, most exalted emperor, is it true that the Lady Flavia
and I have plighted troth. My troth and faith are plighted to one higher
and more beautiful than she is; to one who can never know speck, or stain,
or wrinkle, who has been washed to a spotless whiteness in the blood of the
Lamb!" As he said this he turned toward Flavia, as if deprecating a seeming
want of courtesy.

At this moment, Aurelian, excited and travel-stained, entered, accompanied
by the troop of the guard he had led to arrest Pope Clement. The only
prisoners he brought back were Damian, the missionary from Britain, and
Lucius, one of his own slaves. He had met these two wandering among the
tombs, but got no trace of others.

Domitian, motioning Aurelian to a place near Vitus and Flavia, asked the
latter:

"Is this true, Flavia Domitilla, which Vitus says?"

"It is, my lord!" she answered, in a low, tremulous voice.

"What sayest thou, Senator Aurelian? I trust you have not, through
jealousy, led us to offer indignity to gentle ladies of rank! If so, by our
crown, the high favor in which you have stood shall not save you from due
atonement."

Aurelian was confused and confounded by this address, the cause of which he
did not well comprehend. One circumstance, however, worked in his favor:
Flavia's white veil. The emperor, remarking it, asked:

"What mean these flowing robes of white? They seem more a festive costume
than an evening dress."

She answered not. But Aurelian, having recovered his presence of mind,
said:

"Was I not right, O mighty potentate? This is the bridal garment she wore
last night when she was married to Vitus, after being drugged with a cup of
human blood! See! the influence of that drug is upon her yet."

"Answer me, Flavia Domitilla, truly. Have you been in the secret meeting of
the Christians last night?"

"I have," she replied, with firm voice and unflinching eye.

"Have you withdrawn the faith you gave Aurelian by our desire, and bestowed
it on another?"

"I have."

"To whom? to Vitus?"

"No! but to One more beautiful, more lovable, more glorious than Vitus, or
than any earthly being; to One whose wisdom outdistances the accumulated
lore of sages and philosophers; to One whose years are not counted by the
sands on the ocean's shores, by the grass blades clothing the earth, or the
water-drops in the encircling seas; yet whose youth is greener, fresher,
softer, and more lovely than the eye of man has rested on or the fancy of
poet has pictured; to One whose sceptre rules the nations of the earth and
all things therein, the islands of the deep and all things thereon, whose
messengers guide the stars in their courses, whose beauty and majesty are
faintly mirrored in the universe, and whose love for me is so great that he
left all these aside and became a servant in order that he might suffer and
die for me, and thus free me from the clutches of a tyrant! Yes, O emperor!
I have plighted my faith, and hope, and love, my body and my soul, my
present and my future, to my God and my Redeemer, Jesus Christ! He is my
glorious spouse, and I am his accepted bride.
{822}
Behold the garments in which I have been betrothed to him!" As she spoke
her face became animated, her voice grew strong and eloquent, her eye
flashed with courage, her whole bearing gave proof of a soul raised by the
excitement of unusual happiness to heroic daring. She stood before the
cruel tyrant, with hand uplifted to heaven, and the white Ionic veil waving
round her face like a shifting glory; and might, in the eyes of the heathen
soldiers, have passed for the goddess Juno, as described by Virgil, or for
Iris freshly descended from Olympus. But Domitian was not moved by her
youth, her eloquence, or her beauty, but bounded from his throne as if
stung by a serpent when he heard her thus mention the Saviour's name.

"What! In my presence--to my face--declaring yourself the bride of my worst
enemy. By the manes of Vespasian and Titus! If you do not offer sacrifice
to Jupiter and to my divinity, and renounce all connection with this
Crucified Jew, your head, with all its attractions, shall not long remain
upon those rounded shoulders!" He waved his sceptre and directed the
soldiers to bring her toward the altar. But she would not raise her hand
toward the incense.

"Never! never!" she exclaimed, "by word or act, shall I deny the Lord of
lords, the God of gods, and acknowledge by the supreme worship of sacrifice
a demon that has usurped his place, or a creature to be a god because he
sits on an earthly throne. You may force my hand, but you cannot force my
will!"

Domitian was frantic: "Away with her! away with her! Her family have always
crossed my path. Let not her head," he turned to the gladiators, "remain an
instant on her body, that her tongue may no longer insult me!"

A smile rippled over the face of the virgin confessor.

"See! she smiles, she mocks me! Off with it! off with it! Craven cowards!
do you hesitate before a mere woman? Give me that executioner's sword and I
shall make short work of it. By heavens she is smiling still and calling on
Jesus. Where is he now, God of gods, as you name him? Why does he not come
forward at his beloved's bidding to resist the power and stay the arm of
Domitian?"

Aurelian interposed nervously:

"Most powerful monarch and irresistible deity! she is smiling in joy under
the infatuating belief that, when her head is severed from her body, she
shall be out of your power, freed wholly from my claims upon her, and
received into the kingdom which Jesus promises to all who die for him. Do
not allow him to triumph over you, do not gratify her desire of martyrdom;
but entrust her to me, that I may make her my own; and then both you and I
shall have triumphed over those who have driven her into this madness."

"Be it so! Ha, ha! I believe you have taken the right view. See the tears
glisten in her eyes, and her joy is changed to sadness. But take her hence,
never to enter my presence, lest her words excite me to gratify her insane
longings. Who are those that drugged her?"

"Behold them!" said Aurelian, pointing to Vitus, Priscilla, Theodora, and
Damian. "There were others, too, who took a leading part in the ceremony,
but we have not been yet able to arrest them."

"Vitus! come forward and offer sacrifice to the gods!"

"I cannot, O mighty emperor! Because there is but one God to whom the honor
of sacrifice may be paid, and that is Jesus Christ, true God and true Man."

"Are you, my ladies," the emperor turned to Priscilla and Theodora, "of a
like disposition?"

"Yes," was the low but firm answer.

"Executioners, advance and do your duty by these recusants!"

Sisinnius fell upon his knees before the emperor and pleaded hard for his
wife's life, pleaded his own long services and fidelity to the imperial
family, pleaded her youth and innocence.

{823}

Domitian at length relaxed.

"I shall spare her life as I have spared that of Flavia Domitilla, until
such time as will show whether she will return to a better sense or not;
but both must be under the surveillance of a guard, whom I shall appoint.
As to those others," he said pointing to Priscilla and Damian, "the
traitors of my household, I shall make an example of them." He gave orders
in a voice which was not to be disobeyed for the execution of Priscilla and
Vitus, Damian and Lucius, (strangers in whom no one seemed interested;) and
the command was obeyed.

As Domitian saw the heads severed from the shoulders, he gloated over the
scene with the savage cruelty peculiar to him. Theodora and Flavia covered
their faces and prayed for the victory of the martyrs, managing to saturate
pieces of cloth in the blood.

------

    Original.


    The Wasted Vigil

  Alas! what dire mischance is wrought?
  A Friend was here who gently sought
  An entrance to my humble cot,
  Whilst I--O sorrow!--heeded not.
  In meekest guise he came and went,
  And I, on trifles vain intent,
  The joyful greeting still forbore
  While he was knocking at my door.

  For me he left a regal throne,
  And came in silence, and alone;
  No shining guard his steps attend:
  O earth! hadst ever such a friend?
  And yet I did not rise to meet
  Those wearied, patient, wounded feet,
  Nor did I shield that kingly head
  On which the chill night-dews were shed.

  Oh! did I wake, or did I sleep,
  That midnight vigil not to keep?
  I knew, and yet I heeded not;
  Methought I heard, and then forgot
  That he had warned of swift surprise,
  And only termed the _watchers_ "wise."

  Dear Bridegroom of my soul! return!
  Bereft of every joy, I mourn:
  Return! my house, at last, is swept,
  And where thy feet have stood, I wept.
  Beloved Guest! I call--I wait;
  Hope whispers, "It is not too late."
  Be then that hope no more deferred,
  Speak to my soul the pardoning word,
  Then will I list in rapture sweet,
  And dwell for ever at thy feet!

      Marie.
      Beaver, Pa.

----

{824}

    From Chambers's Journal.

    Old Paris.


As with men, so with cities. Whenever one of the latter becomes famous, and
the eyes of the world are fixed upon it, we desire to know more of it than
what is presented on the surface. A thousand little details, trifling,
perhaps, in themselves, share in the interest attaching to the whole to
which they belong. And as the most interesting biographies of great men are
those which not merely make us acquainted with the prominent features of
their lives--with the great exploits which they achieved--but also follow
them into their solitude or home-life, so the most attractive chronicles of
states and cities are those which enter into the seemingly unimportant
minutiae, neglected by the general historian and the compiler of the
guide-book.

Lutetia (_civitas_) Parisiorum is first mentioned in Caesar's
Commentaries. Lutetia has had various derivations assigned to it, but most
probably it is the Latinized form of _Loutouhezi_, the Celtic for "a
city in the midst of waters," it having been built on an island in the
Seine. In the fourth century it received the name of the people whose chief
city it was. During the middle ages it was supposed that Francus, a son of
Hector, founded Paris, and also Troyes in Champagne, giving to the former
the name of his uncle. In all likelihood, it comes from the Celtic
_par_ or _bar_, a frontier.

Christianity, according to Gregory of Tours, was first preached to the
Parisians by St. Dionysius, or Denis, in the year 250; and the first synod
held in Paris took place in 360, which seems to prove that the Christian
missionaries had already made numerous converts there. Paganism, however,
was not wholly uprooted until the episcopate of St. Marcellus, who died in
436, and who, according to a legend, is said to have hurled into the Seine
a frightful dragon which desolated the city, and which, perhaps, was the
emblem of heathenism.

Julian the Apostate had a great liking for Paris, and spent five winters
there. He praises its inhabitants for their intelligence and good conduct,
and the surrounding vineyards for their excellent produce. An edifice,
improperly called the Thermes de Julien, still exists in the Rue de la
Harpe, which perpetuates his memory, and possibly served as his residence.
In his time, the Montagne Ste. Geneviève was a sort of Campus Martius; the
gardens of the Luxembourg were occupied by a Roman camp, and Roman villas
lined both sides of the Seine.

The Merovingians made Paris their capital, and Clovis constantly resided
there. His sons, while dividing his states, judged the possession of Paris
of so great importance that they shared it among themselves, and agreed
that none of them should enter it without the consent of the others. Under
this dynasty, several of the Parisian churches were founded. Childebert
built the church of St. Vincent, afterward St. Germain des Prés, the
vaulting of each window in which was supported by costly pillars of marble.
Paintings, decorated with gold, covered the ceiling and the walls. The
roof, composed of plates of gilded bronze, when struck by the rays of the
sun, dazzled the eyes of beholders with its brilliancy.

Under Louis VI. and Louis VII. Paris became celebrated for its schools. The
best known were the Cathedral School, the school of St. Germain des Prés,
and that of Ste. Geneviève. At the first mentioned, Guillaume de Champeaux
taught theology, and counted among his pupils the well-known Abélard, at
the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century.
{825}
In 1118 Abélard opened on the Montague Ste. Geneviève his famous school,
which soon eclipsed all the others, and at which no less than ten thousand
scholars attended.

Philip Augustus, judging that Paris was not sufficiently protected by its
walls, caused a tower to be built outside them, on the site of a
_Louveterie_, or wolf-hunting establishment, from which it received
the name of the Louvre. It served at once for a royal residence, a
fortress, and a state-prison, and was completed, according to the original
plan, in 1204. It was under this monarch that the streets of Paris were
first paved. One day, while standing at a window of his palace in the city,
the mud or filth in the street, shaken by some vehicles which were passing,
exhaled an unbearable stench, which invaded the royal nostrils. It was then
that Philip conceived the project of paving the streets. The work was done
at the expense of the town, the pavement consisting of rough flagstones,
about three feet and a half square, and six inches in thickness.

It was in this reign, in 1182, that the legate of the holy see consecrated
the cathedral of Notre Dame, begun in 1163 by Maurice de Sully, Bishop of
Paris. This immense edifice, however, was not finished till the reign of
Charles VII. in the fifteenth century. The original flooring of Philip
Augustus was lately found at eight or nine feet below the surface; and the
thirteen steps which in his time, it is said, led to the entrance have
disappeared. It was under Philip that the municipality of Paris received
its first developments, and assumed a regular form. Besides the provost,
who, as officer of the king, presided over the courts of justice, there was
the syndic, nominated by the community of merchants, whose duty it was to
protect the commercial interests of the town. He was afterward called the
provost of the merchants, and was assisted by _echevins_, who formed
his council. Under Philip, this officer acquired many new rights. The
police, the streets, the care of public edifices, the administration of the
lands belonging to the town, passed from the provost of Paris to this
functionary.

Philip was also the patron of learning. He instituted schools in the Rue du
Fouarre. _Fouarre_, or _foare_, from which is derived the
existing _fourrage_, (forage,) is an old French word signifying straw.
The scholars in those simple ages sat upon bundles of straw during the
lectures, and as this custom naturally resulted in the frequent appearance
of that material in the neighborhood of the schools, the street received
its title from it. During the middle ages, no traffic was permitted in this
street, in order to obviate any disturbance to the students.

Philip the Fair founded the parliament of Paris. It held its sessions in
the king's palace, (Palais de Justice,) which, in the middle of the
fifteenth century, was entirely abandoned to it. In this palace was the
vast hall which served for receiving the homage of vassals, giving audience
to ambassadors, public festivities, and other occasions of national
interest, at one of the extremities of which was an enormous marble table,
round which sovereigns alone were permitted to sit; and upon which, at
certain times of the year, the society of _clercs de la basoche_
(lawyers' clerks) gave dramatic entertainments of a farcical character.

In the fourteenth century, as now, Paris was celebrated as the seat of
fashion in dress, though those dazzling _magasins de nouveautés_ which
we now admire there did not then exist. Wearing apparel, as well as other
merchandise, was generally sold by criers in the streets. "They do not
cease to bray from morning till night," writes Guillaume de Villeneuve.
Venders of all classes swelled the discordant concert. To cry goods for
sale was the daily special occupation; among others, of the three hundred
blind men supported by the king, St. Louis. These unfortunates, it seems,
were in the habit of performing their duties without guidance, and the
consequence was that they frequently came in collision, and gave each other
severe contusions.

{826}

The first stone of the famous Bastille was laid by the provost of Paris, in
the reign of Charles V., 1369. That formidable edifice was built for the
purpose of protecting the king, who had seen his authority braved by the
Parisians while residing in his palace in the city, which on that account
he quitted. He frequently dwelt in the Louvre, of which the Bastille was a
pendant, and of which M. Vitet gives the following picturesque description
as it was in the fourteenth century:

  "The king caused to be raised outside the moats a number of buildings,
  useful and ornamental, of a middling height, forming what were then
  called _basses-cours_, and united to the chateau by gardens of
  considerable extent. One cannot imagine all the various objects that were
  heaped together in these dependencies and gardens. Besides lodgings for
  the officers of the crown, there were a menagerie of lions and panthers,
  bird-rooms, aviaries for the king's parrots, fish-ponds, basins,
  labyrinths, tunnels, trellises, leafy pavilions--the favorite decoration!
  of gardens in the middle ages. These parterres, cut in symmetrical
  compartments, and thrown in the midst of buildings varying in form and
  elevation; that chaos of towers and turrets--the former rising heavily
  from the moats, the latter as if suspended from the walls; that pell-mell
  of pointed roofs, here covered with lead, there with varnished tiles,
  some crested with heavy vanes, some with tufts of various colors--all
  this has no resemblance to a modern palace; but that disorder, these
  contrasts, which seem to us only barbarously picturesque, appealed quite
  differently to the imagination in those days, and were not without their
  grandeur and majesty. These were the bright days of the feudal Louvre,
  when it was living, peopled, and well cared for."

The space of ground which, until lately, formed the Marché des Innocents,
was, in the middle ages, the principal cemetery of Paris. It was surrounded
by a sort of vaulted gallery, which was reserved for the corpses of
distinguished persons and for dress-makers' shops. Here, in the year 1424,
the English, who were then masters of Paris, gave a grand fete of rejoicing
for the battle of Verneuil, and indulged in a frightful "dance of the dead"
over the level tombstones. In the middle of the cemetery rose an obelisk,
surmounted by a lamp, which alone feebly illumined at night the field of
the dead, and animated its solitude. But at sunrise all was
changed--daylight brought back with it noise, luxury, and pleasure.

Victor Hugo, in the chapter of his romance, Notre Dame de Paris, entitled
_Paris à vol d'oiseau_, (book iii. chapter ii.,) gives a vivid
description of the town as it was in the fifteenth century. Paris,
according to him, was at that time divided into three distinct parts--the
city, the university, and the town. The city, occupying the island, was the
oldest and smallest, and was the mother of the other two. "It stood between
these," he says, "like a little, old woman between two tall, handsome
daughters." The university was on the left bank of the Seine, stretching
between points which at present correspond with the Halles aux Vins and La
Monnaie. The town, the largest of the three divisions, was on the right
side of the river. Each of the divisions formed a town, depending for its
completeness upon the others. The city had churches; the town, palaces; the
university, colleges.

In 1539, Francis I., having given permission to the Emperor Charles V. to
traverse France, entertained the idea of receiving him at the Louvre, which
underwent, on that account, a general restoration, according to the style
of the renaissance; but as soon as the emperor departed, Francis,
perceiving that the new works were merely of a temporary character,
resolved to build a new palace on the same site as the former one, and
confided its erection to Pierre Lescot.
{827}
The building, begun in 1541, was continued till the death of Henry II. It
is the finest portion of the Louvre; the south-west angle. When Catherine
de Médicis came into power, she dismissed Lescot, engaged an Italian
architect, and caused that wing to be built which advances toward the
river.

In 1564, tired of the Louvre, Catherine bought a piece of ground called the
_Salbonière_, covered with pottery-works, the _Tuileries Saint
Honoré_, and commenced the palace which received its name from the
fabrics which had occupied its site. For six years, the new edifice
steadily progressed; but Catherine, having learned from her astrologer,
Ruggieri, that it was her fate to die under the ruins of a house near St.
Germain, suddenly gave up the works of the Tuileries, because it was in the
parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and built the Hôtel de Soissons, on the
site of the present corn-market.

The famous Pont-Neuf was begun in 1578, Henry III. laying the first stone.

The Place Royale was completed in 1612. Here Cardinal Richelieu soon
afterward built a palace, which he called the Palais Cardinal, but which,
in a spirit of regal munificence, he presented to his king, Louis XIII.
Thenceforth it became the Palais Royal. Numerous hotels of the
_noblesse_ sprang up in the same quarter, and with them first appeared
there the warehouses for _bijouterie_ and other fancy goods, for which
the Palais Royal is at present so celebrated. A writer of that time
severely blames the merchants of these shops for permitting their wives to
flirt with customers--"all to induce them to buy a fashionable collar, a
child's purse, a drachm or two of perfume for the perruques or a boy's
wooden sword." Speaking of perruques, we must not omit to mention that they
reached their full development at the time of Louis Quatorze. Their most
celebrated maker was a M. Binet, from whom they sometimes were called
_binettes_. They weighed several pounds, sometimes cost a thousand
crowns, and rose five or six inches above the brow. The word _binette_
still exists in the language of the Paris _gamin_, designating a
person with a droll countenance.

The last insurrection at Paris before the revolution was that called the
_Fronde_, (sling.) This revolt received its name in a singular manner.
In the moat of the town, near Saint Roch, the little boys of the quarter
used to fight with slings. When the constable appeared, they all took to
their heels. In the disputes of the parliament, a young counsellor,
Bauchaumont, observed the modesty and docility of the members in the
presence of the king, and their turbulence in his absence. "They are quiet
just now," said he, "but, when he is gone, they will sling (_on
frondera_) with a will." The word remained. The Fronde soon gained the
whole town, which eagerly took the side of the insurgents, as the first
cause of the troubles was a new tax on houses built outside the walls.
Afterward, when the rebellion was quelled, the Parisians paid dearly for
their share in it. Their privileges were abolished, a royal garrison took
the place of their civic guards, and magistrates dependent on the crown,
that of the municipal authorities.

Deprived of its independence, it became the sole glory of Paris to be the
stage on which the splendors of the court of Louis XIV. were revealed. In
1662, that king gave an idea of what his reign would cost by the famous
_fète du carrousel_, which has left its name to the vast _place_
between the Louvre and the Tuileries. It cost 1,200,000 francs. Gold and
silver were employed in so great profusion on the trappings of the horses,
that the material of which they were made could not be distinguished from
the embroidery with which it was covered. The king and the princes shone
with the prodigious quantity of diamonds with which their arms and the
harness of their horses were covered.
{828}
About the same time the Tuileries and the Louvre were completed, and a
garden was designed for the former by Le Nôtre. The former garden of the
Tuileries, like other ancient French gardens, comprised a strange medley;
among other objects, it contained a pretty little abode, beside the quay,
and mysteriously concealed by a thick grove, which Louis XIII. had given to
his valet-de-chambre, Renard, who had furnished it with rare and costly
articles, and had made it a secret rendezvous for young seigneurs, and the
scene of luxurious _petits soupers_.

It was in 1669 that Soliman Aga, the Turkish ambassador at the French
court, introduced the use of coffee into Paris. The first café was opened
at the _foire_ St. Germain, which was then one of the most frequented
and fashionable places of resort in the town, and the suppression of which,
toward the end of the eighteenth century, went far to destroy the industry
and commerce of the left bank of the river, to the profit of the right. An
Armenian named Pascal afterward established a _café_, which was much
in vogue, called the Manouri, upon the Quai de l'Ecole; and, in 1689, a
Sicilian, Procopio, opened the Café Procope in the present Rue de
l'Ancienne Comédie, which was for long the favorite place of reunion for
the _savans_ and _beaux-esprits_ of the period.

But the café reminds us that we are leaving Paris in old times for the
Paris of the present, and that we are close upon that blood-written page,
the revolution, which divides the chronicles of the former from those of
the latter. These notes must not be brought to a conclusion without the
acknowledgment that from M. Malte-Brun's laborious compilation, La France
Illustrée, they derive whatever archaeological interest they possess.

------

  Original.

  The Churches of Ireland--Ancient and Modern.


Students of Irish topography are sometimes at a loss to account for so many
names of places in that island bearing the prefix "Kil." The explanation of
this seeming want of inventive nomenclature is that the word Kil is an
abbreviation or corruption of the vernacular _Cill_, a church; thus,
Kilkenny means the church of St. Canice, or Kenny; Kilmore, the great
church, _more_ meaning, in the Irish, great or large; Kildare, church
of the oak, from _daire_, oak. In the early ages of Christianity the
church or abbey was to the people of Ireland what the feudal castle or
walled town was to the inhabitants of the continent of Europe, at once a
rallying point in case of danger, and a common centre where learning,
trade, and the mechanical arts found teachers and patrons.

The Irish, before and long after their conversion, were essentially an
agricultural people, caring little for large towns; and, though insular,
seem to have neglected foreign commerce, except such as flowed from their
periodical incursions in Britain and Gaul, or which necessarily arose out
of their emigration from the north of Ireland to Scotland. Hence we find
that, while most of the inland cities and towns bear the name of some
favorite saint or church, the seaports generally owe their origin and name
to the Danes and Anglo-Normans.

{829}

The first Catholic churches erected in Ireland, of which we have any
authentic account, were three in number, built in the present counties of
Wicklow and Wexford, by Palladius, A.D. 430. It seems that this missionary
landed on the Wexford coast in that year, accompanied by four priests, but,
having met with opposition from the Druids and persecution from the local
chiefs, he returned the following year to Britain, leaving, however, behind
him some converts under the care of two of his assistants. We are told by
the annalists that, before his departure, he deposited in the church of
Cellfine, some relics of Sts. Peter and Paul and other saints, the sacred
books, and his own writing-tablets, all of which were preserved with great
veneration for many years afterward.

But the great church planter in Ireland was Patrick, the son of Potitus,
who commenced his task of a nation's conversion, with all the advantages of
a personal knowledge of the people and their language, a matured judgment,
profound learning, piety chastened by exile and long-suffering, and an
unconquerable faith. His first convert after landing, in 432, was a chief
named Dicho, who in proof of his sincerity built, at his own expense, a
church near Lecale, in Down, which was called _Sabhall Padruic_,
(Patrick's Barn.) Thence the saint proceeded to Tara, in Meath, where, as
it is well known, he appeared before the monarch Leogaire, and, though his
preaching made no impression on the heart of that stern pagan, he baptized
many of the Druids, poets, and courtiers. By St. Patrick's direction two
churches were built in the neighborhood, one at Drumcondrah, and the other
at Drumshallon, near the present town of Drogheda. Having thus stormed the
enemy's citadel, he advanced confidently to capture the outworks. He passed
westward through Connaught to the sea; thence returning to Ulster, he spent
some time in Down, Antrim, Ardmagh, and other northern counties; he next
visited the different parts of Leinster, and finally entered the populous
province of Munster, then a separate kingdom, and planted the standard of
the cross in the royal city of Cashel. He remained about seven years in
Munster, when, his mission having been successfully completed, he retraced
his steps to his favorite place in Down, in 452. Three years afterward he
founded the metropolitan see of Armagh, erected a cathedral on land given
him for that purpose by Daire, and thus laid the foundation of the primacy
of Ireland, and the city of that name. "Suitable edifices were annexed to
the cathedral for the accommodation of the clergy, and adjacent to it were
several religious retreats, in which members of both sexes, forsaking the
world, made a sacrifice of all to the Great Author of their existence."
[Footnote 300]

    [Footnote 300: Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, Brenan.]

The extraordinary success of this great missionary is without a parallel in
the history of the church. In the course of twenty years a whole people,
rulers and princes, men and women, were won over to Christianity, without
the shedding of a drop of human blood, or even any serious opposition. Sees
were founded in all parts of the island, churches and monasteries built,
bishops consecrated and priests ordained, and, in fact, the moral and
social condition of the entire population revolutionized. Nor was this a
triumph over weak-minded or stolid barbarians, for we find that from his
neophytes St. Patrick chose his bishops and priests almost exclusively--men
whose genius and ability became in the service of the church second only to
his own. It might also be supposed that impressions so suddenly produced
would be transitory, did we not know how irradicably fixed in the Irish
heart is the faith he taught and the doctrine he expounded.

The sees of Ardagh, Clogher, Emly, and Elphin were founded during the
life-time of St. Patrick, and fifteen others of lesser note before the
close of the century.
{830}
The cathedral of Kildare, second only in extent and magnificence to that of
Armagh, was built about the year 490, and belonged jointly to the diocesan
and the nunnery of St. Brigid. It is described as having been divided by a
partition beyond the sanctuary; the bishop and clergy entering the church
by a door on the north, and the abbess and her community by a door on the
south side. In all the sees thus founded, cathedrals, churches,
monasteries, schools, and nunneries were erected. History records the
building of twenty-one monasteries and schools of great celebrity in the
fifth century, besides many others of minor reputation. The schools of Emly
at one time contained six hundred scholars; those of Louth are said to have
educated one hundred bishops and three hundred priests, while the great
institution of Mungret contained within its walls six churches, and,
besides its scholars, fifteen hundred religious, equally divided into
learned preachers, psalmists, and persons devoted to contemplation and
works of charity. At this time, also, St. Brigid founded several nunneries,
the most celebrated of which was that of Kildare.

The following century saw seventeen more sees founded and cathedrals built,
including those of Dromore, Ossory, Tuam, Clonfert, and Down; while, to
meet the growing demand for Christian education, four principal colleges
were erected in different parts of the kingdom--Clonard in Meath, Clonfert
in Galway, Clonmacnois in Kings county, and Bangor in Down. The number of
students educated in the last mentioned was at one time not less than three
thousand. Forty-four new monasteries and abbeys are named in the annals of
the sixth century, besides many others forgotten in history. Even the place
whereon stood the famous monastery of Inniscathy, established at the mouth
of the Shannon at this period, is now only marked by a small portion of the
ruins of its round tower, while that of Glendaloch, perhaps from its
romantic surroundings, is somewhat better preserved. Speaking of the ruins
of the latter as seen some years since, the learned author of the
Ecclesiastical History of Ireland says:

  "The venerable ruins of Glendaloch, even at this day, present an awful
  and an interesting picture to the mind of the curious and contemplative
  stranger. Among these must be noticed the church of the Trinity, standing
  on a rising ground north of the abbey. The seven churches, which in
  former days were the pride and glory of Glendaloch, and for which it will
  be celebrated even when the vestiges now remaining are no more. The
  Cathedral church, with its curious doors, jambs and lintels, and its
  round tower, one hundred and ten feet high, rising up in its ancient
  grandeur amidst the prostrate ruins which surround it. Our Lady's church,
  the most westward of the seven, and nearly opposite the cathedral, is in
  ruins; but these very ruins speak volumes, and the scattered monuments,
  crosses, and inscriptions refresh the memory, and fill the mind with new
  and painful thoughts. St. Kevin's kitchen, so called, and undoubtedly one
  of the seven churches, is entire; together with its architraves, fretted
  arches, and round belfry, forty-five feet high. The finger of time alone
  and of human neglect seem to have wrought the work of desolation in this
  part of the building. The Rhefeart, or the Sepulchre of Kings, is
  rendered famous for having seven kings interred within its walls. The Ivy
  church stands to the westward, with its unroofed walls overgrown with
  ivy. The Priory of St. Saviour is a complete ruin. Tampull-na-Skellig, in
  the recess of the mountain, was formerly called the Temple of the Desert,
  and whither the austere fathers of the abbey were wont to retire on
  vigils and days of particular mortification. The celebrated bed of St.
  Kevin, on the south side of the lough, and hanging perpendicularly at a
  frightful height over the surface of the waters, is another object in
  which the mind of the antiquary would be much gratified; and on the same
  side of the mountain are to be seen the remains of a small stone
  building, called St. Kevin's cell."

The next two centuries added Ferns, Cork, Killaloe, and eleven other sees,
with their cathedrals and churches, and fifty-five principal schools,
monasteries, and abbeys. During the ninth and tenth centuries we find only
two sees created, and no mention of additional monasteries or schools. This
may be accounted for by the continual incursions of the Northmen, a swarm
of barbarians whose native element seems to have been the ocean and whose
only end and object were bloodshed and rapine.
{831}
From 807 until the decisive battle of Clontarf in 1012, they perpetrated an
uninterrupted series of raids on Ireland, and even sometimes held the
larger portion of the country in subjection. Landing from their ships at
remote and undefended points on the coast, they marched stealthily into the
interior, marking their paths with the blood of the defenceless
inhabitants, sparing neither age, sex, nor condition in their fury, and
bearing off or destroying every species of property. Churches were given to
the flames, the relics of the saints stolen or scattered to the winds,
monks, nuns, and students put to the sword without mercy or remorse. In one
of those incursions Bangor was plundered and nine hundred monks
slaughtered. Armagh was sacked and its cathedral destroyed. Cork, Ferns,
and Taghmon shared the same fate, while the city of Kildare, its cathedral
and nunnery were razed, and their inhabitants massacred or carried into
slavery. Clonmacnois was thirteen times plundered, and scarcely a religious
house on the island but received at least one visit from the sacrilegious
invaders.

After a long and brilliant career an eclipse seemed to have fallen on the
church in Ireland, her monasteries were in ruins, her priesthood
slaughtered, and her schools deserted. But the genius of one great man was
put forth to save the people. Brian, surnamed Boroimhe, King of Munster,
and monarch of Ireland, after repeated victories drove the Danes out of his
kingdom, and, finally, by his last great battle, destroyed their power for
ever in Ireland. The remnant of the once dreaded enemy, embracing the faith
of their conquerors, were permitted, upon paying tribute, to settle along
the coast for the purpose of foreign traffic. This great king during his
long reign did much to reinstate the church in possession of her property,
and to repair the damages of two centuries of organized plunder, and his
successors continued to follow his example. Even the converted Danes
imbibed the prevailing spirit of restitution. The see of Dublin was
established in 1040, and its cathedral, consecrated to the Holy Trinity,
(now Christ's church,) was built by Bishop Donatus. The see of Waterford
was founded in 1096, and its splendid cathedral, also under the invocation
of the Holy Trinity, erected by Malchus, its first bishop; and the
celebrated priory of Selsker, in Wexford, was established by the new
converts some few years afterward. The see of Ardfert was founded in the
middle of the eleventh century, and that of Derry about one hundred years
subsequently.

It is reasonable to infer that most of the early Irish ecclesiastical
structures of any magnitude were of wood, with perhaps a stone tower or
stronghold to serve as a depository for sacred vessels, libraries, etc.,
and for defence in case of actual attack. Dr. Petrie, in his great book on
Round Towers, produces convincing proofs that these curious specimens of
architecture, some seventy of which still remain more or less well
preserved, were intended for these purposes. Ireland at the time of Saint
Patrick was densely wooded, oak being predominant, and where so many
extensive buildings had to be erected in so limited a time no more
convenient and suitable, though certainly very destructible, material could
be used. This, as well as the ravages of time and foreign invasion, will
explain the fact that so many of the sites of our primitive edifices are
recognized only by local tradition. The art of building in stone was indeed
known in the country before the introduction of Christianity, but it was
not generally applied to church purposes till about the beginning of the
twelfth century.

When Cormac McCulinan was appointed to the see of Cashel, it is recorded
that he built a cathedral in that city in the latter part of the ninth
century, which, according to the annals of the priory of the Island of all
Saints, was not long after rebuilt and consecrated with great ceremony.
{832}
Whether the beautiful ruin now called Cormac's chapel owes its origin to
the warrior bishop or to a successor of the same name is a mooted question
among antiquarians, as the records of the succession in this diocese are
very imperfect. However, it must have been erected at an early age, for we
find that in 1170 Donald O'Brian, King of North Munster, built the
cathedral of St. Patrick in his royal city of Cashel, and the former church
of Cormac was converted into a chapter-house, on the south side of the
choir. Bishop O'Heden in 1420 repaired and beautified St. Patrick's and
erected a hall for the vicars choral. In the same year that Donal O'Brian
built St. Patrick's he also caused to be constructed the beautiful
cathedral of St. Mary's in Limerick, endowing it liberally, and it existed
in great splendor until the Reformation, when it shared the general fate of
all such noble institutions.

The cathedral of St. Patrick, in Down, was rebuilt on the site of the old
one by St. Malachy in 1138, and forty years afterward was enlarged by one
of his successors and a namesake. About this time it was dedicated to St.
Patrick, having been formerly consecrated to the Most Holy Trinity, a
favorite name, it would appear, for cathedrals in the early centuries of
Christianity.

St. Mary's, at Tuam, was built in 1152, by O'Connor, King of Ireland, and
Bishop O'Hoisin, the first archbishop of that see; in 1260 it was enlarged
and a new choir added. Finally, it was given over by Henry VIII. to an
apostate named Bodkin.

St. Columba's, in Derry, was built in 1164, by King Maurice MacLaughlin. It
also had to succumb to the reformers who settled in Ulster, and the present
Protestant cathedral of that town was built on its ruins, by the "London
Company," in 1633.

The majestic cathedral of Kilkenny, dedicated to St. Canice, was commenced
in 1178, by Bishop Felix O'Dullany, and was finished by Bishop St. Leger in
1286. Some years later it was altered and beautified by Bishop Ledred, and
at the time of the Reformation was considered one of the most beautifully
situated buildings in Europe.

The cathedral of the Holy Trinity, in Waterford, was built about the
beginning of the eleventh century. Its subsequent fate is thus related by a
recent Protestant writer:  [Footnote 301]

    [Footnote 301: Ireland and her Churches, by James Godkin.]

  "The old cathedral, or rather the oldest part of the first cathedral of
  Waterford, was built in 1096, by the Ostmen, on their' conversion from
  paganism; and about two centuries later it was endowed by King John, a
  dean and chapter having been appointed under the sanction of Innocent
  III. Endowments of various kinds had accumulated from age to age, till
  the Reformation, when the old altars were thrown down and the ornaments
  defaced. During the rebellions and wars that followed, its most costly
  treasures were carried away, with the brass ornaments of the tombs, the
  great standing pelican which supported the Bible, the immense
  candlesticks, six or seven feet high, the great brazen font, which was
  ascended by three stairs made of solid brass, and various gold and
  silver-gilt vessels. In 1773 the dean and chapter pronounced the old
  building so much decayed as to be unsafe for public worship, and
  unfortunately resolved that the whole pile should be taken down and
  replaced by a new edifice."

It will be seen that some of those lasting monuments of Irish skill and
piety were raised subsequent to the English invasion, but the advent of the
Norman soldiers was destined soon to dry up the springs of public
munificence, if not to exterminate the old race, and obliterate the faith
of St. Patrick. The Anglo-Norman of the twelfth century, though professing
Christianity, was at heart as much a pagan as the race from which he
sprung. He was brave, cunning, cruel, and rapacious. His greediness could
not withstand any inducement to plunder, even though sacrilege had to be
added to robbery; and he generally had courage and skill enough to carry
out his intentions. He was neither an Englishman nor a Frenchman, but a
compound of elements common to the worst classes of both races,
super-induced on the genuine, old northern barbarism. He was, in fact, the
prototype of the modern filibuster, and, though given to fighting,
preferred the spoils to the glory of warfare.
{833}
Like most of his class in every age and country, he substituted
superstition for religion, and became only generous of his goods when death
threatened to snatch them from his grasp. When reduced to Protestantism by
act of parliament, it is unnecessary to say that even the check of remorse,
weak as it was, was removed, and the spoliation of gifts given to God and
his poor sat as lightly on his conscience as his coronet or crown sat on
his head. Consequently, from the landing of Strongbow and his friends until
the Reformation, the wars which ensued against the natives were
occasionally diversified by the plunder of a rich abbey, or the burning of
a church, while now and then we read of an institution being founded by
some repentant lord of the Pale, from which all "mere Irish" were excluded.

There were, indeed, a few men who came into Ireland in the track of its
invaders, who were men of true piety. Among these may be classed John
Cornin, archbishop of Dublin. It was he who, in 1190, built St. Patrick's
collegiate church in that city, and repaired and beautified Holy Trinity;
St. Lawrence O'Toole having, eighteen years before, added to its original
dimensions by building a choir, belfry, and three chapels. Those two noble
buildings are still in use by the Protestants of Dublin, and but little
changed since their Catholic days. St. Patrick's has been renovated and
improved through the liberality of a public-spirited merchant. Though ever
dear to the Catholic hearts of Dublin for its old memories; its fame, since
it has fallen into the possession of its present occupants, rests only in
its association with the name of the gifted and eccentric Swift, whose
flashes of wit and sly sarcasms were wont to arouse his drowsy
congregation.

Notwithstanding the impoverished condition of the people, and the
insecurity of life and property, during the wars of the twelfth,
thirteenth, fourteenth, and early part of the fifteenth centuries, we find
the following religious houses established throughout the country: Priories
of the Canons Regular of St. Augustin, 20; abbeys of the Cistercian order,
29; convents of the Dominican order, 23; of the Franciscan order, 56; of
the Augustan order, 21; of the Carmelite order, 24; commanderies of Knights
Templar, 11. This latter order was suppressed about the middle of the
fourteenth century, and its property given to the Hospitallers.

But a new era now commenced in the history of the church. To the bitterness
of national hate were to be added bloody persecution and wholesale
confiscation. Henry VIII. had commenced his quarrel with the pope, and,
with the vain intention of revenging himself on his holiness, he turned
reformer, initiated a state religion, and unanimously elected himself head
of the same. But Henry Tudor had method in his madness, and knew well that
the best way to convert his Anglo-Irish subjects was by appealing to their
old passion for plunder. Accordingly, his lord deputy, St. Ledger, in 1536,
summoned, what was in that age called a parliament, and this assembly,
representing nobody but the hirelings about the deputy, with one fell swoop
confiscated three hundred and seventy monasteries and abbeys, whose yearly
value amounted to £32,000, while their movables amounted to more than three
times that amount. A year or two later all religious houses were suppressed
and their property turned over to the king.

That this atrocious spoliation of the patrimony of the church and the
property of the poor had not even the pretext of being perpetrated to
replenish the treasury of an impoverished, state may be inferred from the
words of Ware, who, in his life of this new Defender of the Faith, says:
"Henry soon after disposed of the possessions of the religious orders to
his nobles, courtiers, and others, reserving to himself certain revenue or
annual rents."
{834}
This exhibition of royal magnificence at once convinced the aforesaid
"nobles and courtiers" that Henry was the veritable Head of the Church, not
only in England, but in Ireland also, and they hastened to accept his gifts
and his new religion with equal alacrity. The cathedrals and churches had
now to be disposed of. That portion of the laity described as nobles and
courtiers was well provided for, and the clergy had to be satisfied; a new
religion, Henry wisely thought, would not look well without churches and a
hierarchy. Pliant tools of the school of Cranmer and Cromwell were sent
over from England, who shielded by the military power of the deputy, and
aided by a few apostates of native growth, were fraudulently inducted into
Irish sees. While Brown, who had become archbishop of Dublin, was burning
in the public streets the sacred image of our crucified Redeemer, taken
from the abbey of Ballibogan, and the crosier of St. Patrick, rifled from
Holy Trinity; the lord deputy was "gutting" the old cathedral of Down,
violating the graves of Ireland's three greatest saints, and destroying
their sacred relics. As these acts did not bring enlightenment to the minds
of the benighted Catholics, a more general system of devastation was
adopted. All the churches were seized and their sacred vessels and
ornaments appropriated as legitimate spoils, by the "reformed clergy,"
while such of the buildings as were not required for the preachers of the
new evangel were converted into barracks or stables. The people, though
decimated and dispirited by long and disastrous wars, were too much
attached to the ancient faith not to resist those iniquitous proceedings;
but fire, sword, famine, and pestilence pursued them everywhere, martyred
their priests, and laid their homes and their fields desolate.

What Henry commenced, his son, and worthy daughter Elizabeth, followed up;
Cromwell's troopers nearly left the country a desert; and the vacillating
and treacherous Stuarts added, if possible, to its already degraded
condition. So abject was the state of the population in the time of William
of Orange, that his penal laws, and those of the house of Hanover
subsequently enacted, though in themselves most atrocious, were
comparatively harmless, so well had the scythe of persecution been wielded
by their predecessors. Even as late as the middle of the last century, the
Catholics, still the bulk of the population, were sunk in the most pitiful
misery and prostration; their priests churchless and outcasts before the
laws, their monks and nuns banished or fled the country; or, if any
remained of the once splendid institutions of piety and charity, they were
to be found secreted in the purlieus of the larger towns, stealthily
attending the sick and consoling, if unable to relieve, the wants of the
poor. "No places of public worship were permitted," says the author of the
History of Dublin, "and the clergyman moved his altar-books and everything
necessary for the celebration of his religious rites from house to house
among such of his flock as were enabled in this way to support an itinerant
domestic chaplain; while for the poorer part some waste house or stable in
a remote or retired situation was selected, and here the service was
silently and secretly performed, unobserved by the public eye." Indeed, in
many counties the people suffered worse; children were unbaptized, men and
women unmarried, the dying deprived of the last consolations of religion,
and the poor and infirm left to the cold charity of an unfeeling and
hostile minority. The force of persecution could go no further. The
experiment of conversion by force had been tried with a vengeance, and had
signally failed. It was evident that utter extermination or reaction must
follow.

Fortunately for the honor of humanity it was the latter. God was with his
people in their afflictions and hearkened to their prayers. Slowly the
light of toleration broke upon the darkened minds of the dominant
Protestant party, and, though but the merest glimmer at first, gradually
and steadily gained in intensity.
{835}
One hundred and twenty years ago the first chapel tolerated by law was
publicly opened in Dublin; the more atrocious of the penal laws fell into
disuse; chapels, poor indeed, and monasteries, feeble in their very sense
of insecurity, commenced to raise their humble heads. Protestant gentlemen
of liberal views found a voice in the Irish and English parliaments.
Maynooth and Carlow colleges were established; a great and fearless
Catholic, O'Connell, arrayed his coreligionists in solid phalanx in defence
of their rights; and, finally, the British government, abashed at the scorn
of Christendom, and yielding to fears of internal revolution, consented to
emancipation. Of the many causes which led to this tardy act of justice the
moral effect of religious freedom in the United States and the conduct of
our Catholic immigrants during the revolution were not among the least
effective.

Turning from the past with all its varied trials and defeats, it is
pleasant to dwell on the condition of Catholic Ireland of to-day, with its
churches, monasteries, colleges, and schools innumerable. Of the city of
Dublin, where the Reformation made its first attacks, and where, at the
beginning of the century, there were but a few poor chapels and "friaries,"
we find the following picture drawn by one who, though not a Catholic nor
of Catholic sympathies, is too clear-minded to shut his eyes to the actual
condition of affairs around him. He says: [Footnote 302]

    [Footnote 302: Ireland and Her Churches. By James Godkin. This very
    able book has just been published in England, and, though written by a
    Protestant and a devoted believer in the opinions of that sect, is full
    of very valuable information regarding the present condition of the
    Catholics of Ireland.]

  "There are now thirty-two churches and
  chapels in Dublin and its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of
  secular clergy is 287, and of regulars, 125; total, priests, 412. The
  number of nuns is 1150. Besides the Catholic university, with its ample
  staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges, seven
  superior schools for boys, fourteen superior schools for ladies, twelve
  monastic primary schools, forty convent schools, and 200 lay schools,
  without including those which are under the National Board of Education.
  The Christian Brothers have 7000 pupils under their instruction, while
  the schools connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000.
  Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and contains 500
  or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood, there is the college of
  All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which 250 young men are being trained for
  the foreign mission. The Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied
  and numerous. There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially--
  the Mater Misericordiae--has been not inappropriately called 'The Palace
  of the Sick Poor'--numerous orphanages, several widows' houses, and other
  refuges for virtuous women; ragged and industrial schools, night asylums,
  penitentiaries, reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and
  dumb; institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and
  Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these wonderful
  organizations of religion and charity are supported wholly on the
  voluntary principle, and they have nearly all sprung into existence
  within half a century."

Miss Fannie Taylor, an English lady, in a recent work entitled Irish Homes
and Irish Hearts, admirably describes, from personal and minute
examination, the efficiency, success, and untiring devotion of the numerous
orders of holy women, whose houses everywhere are to be found in and around
the capital. Every conceivable want, every ill that flesh is heir to, finds
at their busy and gentle hands an alleviation and a soothing remedy. The
daughters of the rich are taught their duties to themselves and to society;
the children of the poor are gratuitously trained in all the necessary arts
of life; the orphan has a refuge; the sick are visited and comforted; even
the outcast woman, the loathing of the worldly of her own sex, is taken by
the hand and gently led back to the path of virtue. Hospitals; asylums for
the blind, the deaf and dumb, have been built by them, generally out of
their own slender means; and even the raving maniac and drivelling idiot
find a shelter and a home. Wherever death, sickness, poverty, ignorance,
crime, or affliction is, there also is to be found the "sister," consoling,
helping, teaching, admonishing, always gentle, patient, and cheerful.
{836}
"I would speak," said the writer, in her introductory chapter, "of that
marvellous net of religious institutions spread over the land, and of those
deeds of charity which in reality form a powerful element in Irish life."
Words as truthful as they are applicable.

Following Mr. Godkin in what he calls his "Inspection of Bishoprics,"
(Protestant of course,) we come to the diocese of Ferns, embracing the
county of Wexford. "Here, then," says the inspector, "is a population that
seems naturally fitted in a preeminent degree for the reception of
Protestantism;" but he found himself mistaken. In the very cradle of
Catholicity in Ireland he could not find even one out of every ten who even
professed to be Protestants. He is equally surprised at the respect and
veneration in which our blessed mother was held in this diocese of
"industrious, self-reliant, and independent" men, and acknowledges his
astonishment gracefully enough:

  "I had plenty of proofs of this in the town of Wexford, where there are
  two splendid new churches, with grand towers, built almost exactly alike,
  in cathedral style; erected also at the same time, and chiefly through
  the exertions of the same priest. One of them is called the church of the
  Immaculate Conception, and the other the church of the Assumption; both,
  therefore, specially dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There could be no
  mistake about this in the mind of any one visiting these splendid places
  of worship, which are fitted up admirably with seats to the very doors,
  finished in the most approved style, and with a degree of taste that
  would do honor to the best cathedrals in England. Behind the high altar
  there is a very large window of stained glass, and a similar one of
  smaller dimensions at each side. To the right is Mary's chapel, with an
  altar brilliant and gorgeous in the extreme. There is a beautiful statue
  of the Virgin and Child, before which three lamps were burning during the
  day, and in the evening eight or nine dozen of candles are lighted, while
  ten or twelve vases are filled with a variety of flowers, kept constantly
  fresh, and producing the most brilliant and dazzling effects for the
  worshippers, who are nearly all attracted to this favorite altar, the
  beauty and splendor of which throw the altar of Christ completely in the
  shade. Generally, indeed, the Saviour appears only agonized on the cross,
  his hands fastened with nails, and the blood flowing from his pierced
  side, or else lying dead and ghastly in the sepulchre. It is only the
  Virgin that appears arrayed in beauty, crowned with majesty, and
  encircled with glory. Her altar in the Wexford church of the Assumption
  is decorated in the same style as the Immaculate Conception, but not with
  so much elaboration. Great local sacrifices must have been made for the
  erection and furnishing of these two churches, with their magnificent
  towers and spires, but much of the money came from Great Britain and the
  colonies; and to a question which I put on the subject to my guide, I
  received for answer that it came 'from all parts of the habitable world.'

  "But, beautiful as those two new churches are, they are surpassed in
  internal decorations by the Franciscan church of this town. This is a
  perfect gem in its way so elegantly painted and ornamented, and so nicely
  kept, so bright and cheering in its aspect, and evincing such regard to
  comfort in all its arrangements, that we can easily conceive it to be a
  very popular and fashionable place of worship. It is not cruciform, but
  built in the shape of an L. To the left of the principal altar, at the
  junction of the two portions, stands in impressive prominence the altar
  of the Virgin Mary, which is covered by an elevated canopy, resting upon
  white and blue pillars with golden capitals. Upon the altar stands a
  beautiful marble statue of the Virgin. Three lamps burn constantly before
  it. One hundred candles are lighted round it in the evening with half a
  dozen gas-burners. Floral ornaments are in the greatest profusion and
  variety. There are four large stands on the altar floor, two others
  higher up on the pedestal, and a number of small vases with bouquets
  ranged on the altar. The friary attached to the church presents a picture
  of order, neatness, and cleanliness which seemed to be a reflection of
  the characteristics of the 'English baronies,' showing how national
  idiosyncrasies and social circumstances affect religion. In fact, a
  community of Quakers could not keep their establishment in better order
  than these Franciscans keep their friary. I observed a great contrast in
  this respect in the Roman Catholic establishments of Waterford and
  Thurles. Wexford, indeed, is quite a model town in the Roman Catholic
  Church. There are three other places of worship besides those already
  mentioned--the college chapel and the nunnery chapels, and certainly
  there are no people in the world, perhaps, not excepting the Romans
  themselves, more abundantly supplied with masses. There is a mass for
  workingmen at five o'clock in the morning, there are masses daily during
  the week at later hours, and no less than six or seven on Sundays in each
  of the principal chapels, or churches as they are now generally called.
  The college is a large building, and in connection with it is the
  residence of the bishop, Dr. Furlong."

{837}

What has here been remarked of Dublin and Ferns may be said with equal
justice of other parts of Ireland. Kildare and Leighlin has its splendid
cathedral, the corner-stone of which was laid in Carlow in 1828, by the
celebrated Dr. Doyle. Cork has its fine churches, schools, and monasteries.
Of the cathedral of the diocese of Kerry, Miss Taylor says:

  "The great ornament of Killarney is the cathedral, the only one I have
  seen in Ireland worthy of the name. It is one of Pugin's happiest
  conceptions. The tower is not yet built, and this of course greatly
  detracts from the beauty of the exterior; but within, the great height of
  the roof, the noble pillars, the sense of space and grandeur, made one
  think of some of the beautiful cathedrals of old of our own and foreign
  lands."

In the archdiocese of Tuam, where some years since the Most Rev. Dr. Kelly,
the predecessor of the present patriotic prelate, said that out of one
hundred and twenty-one places of worship one hundred and six "were thatched
cabins," there are now three hundred and eighty-seven churches, three
hundred and eighty-two clergymen, and fifty-four religious houses.

Armagh has again risen from the ashes of the past, and again a beautiful
metropolitan cathedral appears on the spot hallowed by St. Patrick. The
corner-stone of this beautiful building was laid by the Most Rev. Dr.
Crolly, primate, on the 17th of March, 1840. The increase of churches in
this diocese from 1800 to 1864 has been ninety-three; convents and schools,
twenty-four.

Such is the outward visible sign of the progress of the church in Ireland
for the last hundred years. What though the wind sighs mournfully through
the broken arches of many a church and cloister, made sacred by the saintly
men who prayed and taught fourteen centuries ago; though the fern and the
ivy grow up and cement a thousand crumbling ruins, which in their
desolation attest at the same time man's passion and his impotence; let
them be as silent teachers of the past and of its glorious memories and
bitter persecution. But the people of Ireland have the present, they are
working not only for themselves, but for the future; and they, too, will be
known to after generations by the monuments they are now building as their
forefathers built; by their churches, convents, and colleges, which shall
exist, even though in ruins, in the grateful memories of coming ages.

------

{838}

  From The Dublin Review.

  John Tetzel. [Footnote 303]

    [Footnote 303: Tetzel und Luther, oder Lebensgeschichte und
    Rechtfertigung des Ablasspredigers und Inquisitors, Dr. Johann Tetzel,
    aus dem Predigerorden. Von Valentin Gröne, Doctor der Theologie. Soest
    und Olpe. Verlag der Nasse'schen Buchhandlung. 1853. (pp. 237.)]

Of all Luther's contemporary opponents none experienced so much of his
foul-mouthed vituperation as the Dominican preacher of indulgences, John
Tetzel--a vituperation which Protestant writers, down to the present day,
have not ceased, with unmitigated virulence, to heap upon his memory.

Nor have Catholic writers done much to defend Tetzel's calumniated
reputation. On the contrary, they have in general allowed themselves to be
deluded by Protestant prejudice, and so to have abstained from referring,
in his behalf, to original sources of information. This unworthy course
they have pursued as though they viewed Tetzel in the light of a personage
not worth quarrelling about, whom, without detriment to the church, they
might safely abandon to the enemy, nay, whom it might perhaps be as well
thus to abandon. They were fully aware that it was not for preaching Pope
Leo's indulgence that Luther really attacked Tetzel. The indulgence was but
the pretext seized by Luther for openly broaching the heretical opinions
which, ever since the year 1515, he had secretly formed. Neither did Luther
owe his success to the alleged abuses of the papal indulgence. He owed his
success to the wide-spread moral corruption of his times. Had Leo X.
proclaimed no indulgence at all, Luther's calamitous Reformation could
hardly have been prevented.

Three Protestant biographies of John Tetzel have been written in Germany.
The earliest, written by Godfried Hecht in Latin, appeared in 1707. About
the same time a Life of Tetzel, in German, was published by Jacob Vogel.
The third, a compilation of both, is by Friedrich Hoffmann, and appeared at
Leipsic in 1844. They are all three, more or less, just such _ex
parte_ productions as might be expected, full of obloquy founded on
garbled quotations and falsified facts. The most virulent is Hoffmann's
book, the least so Hecht's. In copiousness of original research, Vogel far
surpasses Hecht and Hoffmann. As a counterpoise to these biographies the
Catholic party produced nothing till the year 1817. An anonymous work then
appeared at Frankfort-on-the-Main, entitled Vertraute Briefe zweier
Katholiken über den Ablass Streit Dr. Martin Luthers wider Dr. Johann
Tetzel. This work is supposed to have been written by a Jesuit, and,
although it contains many strong points in vindication of Tetzel's injured
character, it would not seem to have had this object so much in view as the
defence of the doctrine of indulgences against the attacks made on it by
reason of the year 1817 being the tercentenary year of the Reformation, and
celebrated as such throughout Protestant Germany. What Audin in his Life of
Luther says in favor of Tetzel proceeds more from feeling than historical
research, and is consequently of inferior importance. Under these
circumstances it is gratifying to meet with such a book in defence of
Tetzel as Dr. Valentine Gröne has produced, in which, while he exhibits the
vilified Dominican as an able, pious, and devoted champion of the holy see,
in a manner that establishes, his title in future to that character on a
solid basis, he also contributes to the history of Luther and the
Reformation a most interesting fund of knowledge and reflection.

{839}

The true date of Tetzel's birth appears to be unknown. It is conjectured to
have fallen a little later than the middle of the fifteenth century. He was
a native of Leipsic, where his father was a citizen and goldsmith. Dr.
Gröne has much to say about the etymology of his family name. But this we
may pass over as superfluous. Of Tetzel's boyhood and youth nothing is
recorded until the year 1482. It was the year of his matriculation as a
student of the Leipsic university. He is now said to have shown superior
abilities and great application. For the art of rhetoric he soon evinced a
strong predilection. Not content with attending the lectures of Conrad
Kimpina on the theory of declamation, he sought to gain a practical
knowledge of it by assiduously frequenting the sermons of the Dominicans.
This led to his forming an attachment to the order of which, in 1490, he
became a member. Two years before, he had received his bachelor's degree,
being the sixth on a list of fifty candidates.

In the seclusion of the Dominican convent of St. Paul's, at Leipsic, Tetzel
renounced the study of humanities in order to devote himself all the more
zealously to the writings of the fathers and doctors of the church.

This course he adopted as the surest means of qualifying himself to become
a preaching friar in the true spirit of St. Dominic. "The goldsmith's son,"
says Jacob Vogel, "possessed every requisite to form a public speaker, a
clear understanding, a good memory, an eloquent tongue, an animated
delivery, a manly and sonorous voice, the charm of which was enhanced by a
tall and slender figure."

His first essays as a preacher were confined to the church of his convent.
Their effect was such that his prior, Martin Adam, soon gave him permission
to preach beyond the convent walls, at the different places belonging to
its jurisdiction. In Tetzel's day it was still customary not to confer holy
orders until, according to ancient canonical rule, the candidate had
reached the age of thirty years. This age Tetzel attained before the close
of the century. He was then ordained priest by Philo von Trotha, Bishop of
Merseburg. About the same time Pope Alexander VI. proclaimed the great
jubilee. It was the eighth proclamation since the first by Boniface VIII.
Tetzel received from his superiors the appointment to preach the jubilee
indulgence. He preached it at Leipsic, Zwickau, Nüremberg, Magdeburg,
Görlitz, Halle, and other towns. So well did he perform his duty, that he
established his fame as one of the most powerful popular preachers that had
ever appeared in Germany. "By reason of his extraordinary eloquence," says
Godfried Hecht, "he acquired great authority over the people, and rose
higher and higher in renown." Dr. Gröne adverts to various contemporary
attestations of Tetzel's surprising success with the masses. It was
ascribed to his resounding voice, his richly metaphorical language, and
logical clearness.

In 1504, Pope Julius II. proclaimed an indulgence in favor of the Teutonic
Knights in Prussia, whom the Russians and Tartars had reduced to great
straits. On this occasion Tetzel was again chosen to preach, along with
Christian Baumhauer, of Nüremberg. He preached the indulgence in Prussia,
Brandenburg, and Silesia. At the same time the Dominican priory of Glogau,
becoming vacant, was offered to him. He was little more than thirty years
old. "What stronger proof," says Dr. Gröne, "could be given him of the high
veneration in which he was held by his order?" But he did not accept the
dignity. In the early part of 1507 he returned to Leipsic. On his way he
preached for the Teutonic Knights at Dresden. So great was the desire to
hear him that the largest church in the city was found too small for the
congregation.
{840}
Duke George of Saxony caused him, in consequence, to preach from a window
of his palace. The same zealous duke, on Tetzel's arrival at Leipsic,
received him outside the gates at the head of the clergy, the civic
authorities, and dignitaries of the university, and conducted him in solemn
procession to St. Paul's convent. Here Tetzel again retired, a simple
friar, to the seclusion of his cell. In 1510, he was employed to preach an
indulgence of a peculiar sort, granted in aid of building a bridge, with a
chapel on it, over the Elbe at Torgau. The Saxon princes, being themselves
short of funds, and finding the people unwilling to contribute the money
for nothing, had obtained in 1491 from Innocent VIII. the indulgence in
question, by which all the faithful in Saxony who should give the twentieth
part of a gold florin toward the bridge and chapel at Torgau were permitted
to eat butter and drink milk in lent, on the rogation days, and the vigils
of feasts, for a term of twenty years. In 1510, Pope Julius II. renewed
this indulgence for another twenty years. Such indulgences were not
unfrequent in the middle ages. In 1310. Pope John XXII., as Dr. Gröne tells
us, granted an indulgence of forty days toward the erection of the bridge
at Dresden. When Julius II. died in 1513, the great aspiration of his
successor, Leo X., was to complete the magnificent temple of Christendom,
St. Peter's basilica, begun by Julius in 1506. But Leo found that the wars
waged by his high-minded predecessor in defence of St. Peter's patrimony,
and the independence of Italy, had exhausted the papal treasury. Julius
having raised the funds for laying the foundations of St. Peter's by means
of an indulgence, Leo resolved to do the like toward the expenses of
finishing the work. The bull which he accordingly issued, granting a
plenary indulgence to all Christendom, reached Germany in 1515. The
commission to preach it was given to the Franciscans. For Saxony and the
north of Germany this commission was divided between the guardian of the
Franciscans of Mentz and Albert of Brandenburg, the newly installed
archbishop of the city. But the guardian of the Franciscans declining to
act, the entire commission passed into the hands of the archbishop. It was
merely as a special favor that he had been included in the commission at
all. His grace, in fact, had been obliged to contract a heavy debt with the
Fuggers of Augsburg, the Rothschilds of the day, in order to pay the fees
on his pallium, which, for an archbishop of Mentz, amounted to no less a
sum than thirty thousand gold florins. As it was not customary for the
archbishops to pay this sum out of their privy purse, it had to be levied
on the faithful of the diocese. But this had been done twice within the
last ten years for the immediate predecessors of Albert of Brandenburg,
namely, Archbishops Berthold and James Uriel. To raise the sum a third time
under such circumstances seemed impossible without assistance. Wherefore,
in order to afford relief to his flock, Archbishop Albert had obtained
leave from Rome to appropriate a portion of the proceeds of the papal
indulgence in his province toward the payment of his debt. This fact
suffices, in Dr. Gröne's opinion, to clear the archbishop from the reproach
of avarice cast at him by Protestant writers, who have also not failed to
impute all sorts of unworthy motives to him for making choice of the
Dominican, John Tetzel, as his chief sub-commissioner, or quaestor, in
preaching the indulgence. But, says Dr. Gröne, is not the archbishop's
choice of Tetzel tantamount to a refutation of the calumnies heaped upon
him as one of the vilest, not only of friars, but of men? Archbishop Albert
proceeded with the greatest caution, and issued very clear and exact
instructions, both on the nature of the indulgence, and the manner in which
it should be preached. Had Tetzel really been the notoriously bad monk
Protestant writers say he was, how could the archbishop, with the knowledge
of such a fact, have ventured to choose him at all?
{841}
How could Tetzel be expected to preach with any effect, if, as is asserted,
he was a disgrace to his order, a man who did not scruple openly to
perpetrate the worst excesses? But Archbishop Albert of Mentz had, as we
have seen, very particular reasons of his own for promoting as much as
possible the success of Pope Leo's indulgence, and, accordingly, he made
choice of Tetzel as his chief quaestor, not because he thought a coarse,
sordid monk of infamous reputation the likeliest person he knew of to stir
up the religious fervor of the people, but because he judged this might
best be done by one who, while eminent alike for piety and for zeal in the
cause of the church and the holy see, enjoyed the renown of being one of
the most eloquent preachers then living in Germany. What motive could be
more natural, more just, more obvious than this?

Tetzel entered on his duties as preacher of the papal indulgence for the
Archbishop of Mentz with his accustomed zeal and ability. What he had to
announce in virtue of the Instructio Summaria of the archbishop was
substantially this: That all persons who repented of, and confessed,
fasting, their sins, who received holy communion, said certain prayers in
seven different churches, or before as many altars, and contributed
according to their means a donation toward St. Peter's basilica, should
obtain full remission of the temporal punishment due to their sins, once
for their lives, and then as often as they should be in danger of death;
that this indulgence might be applied by way of intercession to the souls
in purgatory, while bedridden people were to be able to obtain it by
devoutly confessing and communicating in their chambers before a sacred
image or picture.

In the entire document, says Dr. Gröne, there does not occur a thought
which the church at the present day would hesitate to subscribe. The
Instructio Summaria further declares, that those who cannot afford a
pecuniary donation are not, therefore, to be denied the grace of the
indulgence, which seeks not less the salvation of the faithful than the
advantage of the basilica. "Let such as have no money," it says, "replace
their donations by prayer and fasting, for the kingdom of heaven must not
stand more open to the rich than the poor." What a refutation have we here
of the slanderous clamor against Pope Leo's indulgence as an alleged
traffic in sin! With respect to the conduct of Tetzel himself and his
subordinates, they are admonished to lead an exemplary life, to avoid
taverns, and to abstain from unnecessary expense. That cases of levity
nevertheless took place, Dr. Gröne admits, but he strenuously denies that
Tetzel gave cause for animadversion. Finally, the Instructio Summaria
directed that all indulgences of a particular or local kind should be
declared, in virtue of the pope's bull, as suspended for eight years in
favor of the one now granted by his holiness; a declaration which did not
fail to excite a bitter spirit of opposition and jealousy, especially among
the religious orders and confraternities, of which Tetzel had to bear the
brunt.

In the church of All Saints, at Wittenberg, there was a costly shrine of
relics resented by the reigning elector Frederic, afterward surnamed the
Wise. At his request Pope Leo X., so recently as 1516, had attached to this
shrine an indulgence for the yearly festival of All Saints. The offerings
which this indulgence would produce Frederic designed to apply for the
benefit of the university which he had founded. Hence, he regarded the
papal indulgence for St. Peter's at Rome as a grievance, and, but for an
imperial mandate requiring all the German princes to throw no impediment in
its way, he would have forbidden its being preached in his territories.

{842}

Frederic, moreover, had a grudge against Rome on the following grounds: The
holy see had, in compliance with his request, consented to confer on his
natural son the coadjutorship to a benefice _in commendam_. But the
commendator himself dying when the diploma conferring the coadjutorship had
just been completed, a new diploma conferring the vacant commendatory had
to be prepared instead, entailing on Frederic, who was of a very
parsimonious disposition, the vexatious necessity of having to pay the fees
twice over. This he ruminated upon in his sullen way, and set it down in
his mind as a conclusive proof of that grasping, overreaching spirit which
the enemies of the church in that age accused her of in such exaggerated
terms. Frederic the Wise was also involved in a dispute with the archbishop
of Mentz respecting certain territorial rights at Erfurth.

The Augustinian hermits of Wittenberg sympathized with their munificent
patron the elector. He permitted them to make use of the funds accruing
from the local indulgence of All Saints toward the expenses of a new
convent and church which they had in course of erection. But the temporary
suspension of the latter indulgence in favor of the one preached by John
Tetzel for Pope Leo X. and Archbishop Albert inconvenienced and annoyed
them all the more, as their buildings were on the point of completion.
Neither was their ill-will toward Tetzel the less that, in his character as
a Dominican, he was their ardent opponent in the scholastic and theological
disputes of the day; and, besides being a preacher of such talent and
influence, was a dignitary of the court of Inquisition at Cologne, where,
of course, the Dominicans presided.

In spite of all obstacles, Tetzel preached the indulgence with signal
success at Leipsic, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Berlin, and other places. At
length, about the end of October. 1517, he arrived at Yüterbock, near
Wittenberg, just at the time for gaining the special indulgence of All
Saints. In vain the Augustinians secretly did what they could to prevent
the people from flocking to hear him. The very students of the new
Wittenberg university, expressly founded as it was as a rival to that of
Leipsic, deserted the lecture-halls in such numbers that the professors
were filled with alarm and indignation. In particular, Dr. Martin Luther
was exasperated to find himself so completely eclipsed by the proximity of
Tetzel, against whom he fruitlessly inveighed in the temporary church of
the Augustinian hermits. Even his own penitents, regardless of his
admonitions and refusals of absolution, forsook his confessional to obtain
the indulgence proclaimed at Yüterbock. All at once they seemed to forget
the maxims he had taken so much pains to instil into their minds respecting
divine grace and good works! Long had he waited for an opportunity to
broach his new doctrine openly, and he and his disciples resolved that now
or never was the time to do so.

Accordingly, on the 31st of October Luther posted up his famous ninety-five
theses at the door of All Saints' church in Wittenberg, and challenged all
the world to dispute with him on the doctrine they maintained. Ostensibly
they were levelled against the alleged abuses of the papal indulgence. But
attacks on the doctrine itself, as well as on the authority of the pope,
were insidiously intermingled with them.

  "Not the affair of the indulgence, not Tetzel, not the corruption and
  ignorance of the clergy, not the decay of discipline," says Dr. Gröne,
  "but the circumstance that Luther, previous to the posting up of his
  theses, was a heretic, and found support in the Elector Frederic--this it
  was that gave rise to the great schism in the church."

Dr. Gröne substantiates his assertion by authenticated facts, and a
critical examination of Luther's ninety-five theses, which, says he,

  "Were the point of transition from secret to open from timid to
  obstinate, heresy. They were the seed which, sown in the soil, contains,
  not only virtually, but really, all that, as germ and plant, it has a
  right to contain. They were the result, the production of Luther's mental
  life, corroded, as it was, by error and learned self-conceit; they were
  as intimately united with it as the stem is with the root, therefore they
  could only be abandoned in case the author himself transformed his entire
  interior life. Hence, too, is to be derived the obstinacy with which
  Luther clung to them, with which he would still have clung to them, even
  if they had not earned him general applause; hence the circumstance that,
  in defending them, he involved himself deeper and deeper in heresy."

{843}

By means of the press Luther's theses were soon spread all over Germany.
Tetzel, seeing the riotous applause they met with from the enemies of the
church generally, and from his own enemies in particular, suspended his
preaching; and, with the concurrence of the archbishop of Mentz, repaired
for advice to his former preceptor, Dr. Conrad Wimpina, at that time rector
of the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. Wimpina advised him to answer
Luther's challenge with a series of antitheses. Tetzel did so, and
published against Luther's ninety-five theses a hundred and six antitheses.
They obtained for him the degree of doctor of divinity. In the clearest
manner they set forth the true Catholic doctrine of the absolute necessity
of repentance, confession, and satisfaction for the pardon of sin,
affirming that, though an indulgence exempts the sinner from the
vindicatory penalties of the church, it leaves him just as much bound as
ever to submit to her medicinal and preservative ones; that it does not
derogate from the merits of Christ, since its whole efficacy is due to the
atoning passion of Christ; as also that the pope has power only by means of
suffrage to apply the benefits of an indulgence to the souls in purgatory.
Moreover, to say the pope cannot absolve the least venial sin is erroneous;
and equally so to deny that all vicars of Christ have the same power as
Peter had: rather to assert that Peter, in the matter of indulgences, had
more power than they, is both heretical and blasphemous. One of the many
slanders on Tetzel is, that he was not the author of the antitheses that he
published, but that Dr. Wimpina wrote them for him. Luther himself flung
this taunt in his face, and so gave it the prestige among his party of an
undoubted fact. Dr. Gröne enters fully into the case, and terminates his
inquiry with "venturing to believe that, by his vindication, he has
annihilated every substantial ground for doubting that Tetzel was the real
author of the antitheses in question." They did not, of course, silence
Luther, who replied to them with a popular compendium in German of his
ninety-five theses in twenty articles. Tetzel rejoined with twenty others,
also in German. In the nineteenth he declares of Luther's doctrine, in the
tone of a prophet, that, in consequence of it, "many people will contemn
the authority and power of his holiness the pope and the Roman see, will
intermit the works of sacramental satisfaction, will no longer believe
their pastors and teachers, but will explain, every one for himself, the
sacred Scriptures according to private fancy and whim, and believe just
what every one chooses, to the great detriment of souls throughout
Christendom."

At a time when all the most learned men in Germany regarded the matter as
nothing but a scholastic dispute, when many even in Rome deemed it a mere
monkish quarrel, Tetzel, by thus pointing out in such clear and concise
terms what Luther's principles really involved, what fatal results they
would produce, evinced, in Dr. Gröne's opinion, a more than ordinary
penetration of mind.

Luther's fundamental thought in attacking indulgences was this: That
indulgences are not of faith, because not taught in the Bible, not taught
by Christ and his apostles; they emanate, he said, only from the pope. Now,
if this thought was an erroneous one, if the pope in questions of faith and
morals is infallible, if he alone possesses the right to decide the true
sense and meaning of Scripture, every Catholic is bound on all such
questions to submit to him; and Luther, if he persisted in maintaining his
doctrine, passed sentence on himself as an apostate and a heretic, cut
himself off from all__ escape, and had no other choice left than that
of either being punished as a heretic, or making a recantation.
{844}
Hence, in order to drive him from the field, it was requisite to prove
that, besides the truths explicitly declared in holy writ, there are other
truths in the church which we are equally bound to believe; and that they
comprise all those doctrines relating to faith which are defined as such by
the holy see. By setting up those propositions the dispute would be raised
to one of principle, and Luther would be compelled to speak out on the
pope's authority in matters of faith and practice.

These considerations spurred Tetzel on to issue against Luther's fifty
theses on the power of the pope; for, indeed, it had not eluded his
observation that much the greater part of the applause received by Luther
was owing far more to his insidious attacks on the authority of the holy
see than to his reprobation of the indulgence. Tetzel's fifty theses,
published about the end of April, 1518, maintained, therefore, that the
highest power having been received by the pope exclusively from God, cannot
be extended or limited, either by any man or by the whole world, but only
by God alone. That in his power of jurisdiction the pope stands above all
other bishops separate or united. That, although, as a private man, the
pope may hold, on a point of faith, a wrong opinion, yet, when he
pronounces judgment on it _ex cathedrâ_, he is infallible. That
indulgences cannot be granted by the rest of the prelates, whether
collectively or singly, but only by the "Bridegroom of the whole church,"
namely, the pope. That what is true and of faith about indulgences, only
the pope can decide. That the church has many Catholic truths, which are
neither expressly declared in the canon of Scripture, nor explicitly stated
by the holy fathers. That all doctrines relating to faith, and defined as
such by the apostolic see, are to be reckoned among Catholic truths,
whether or not they are contained in the Bible. As a warning for the
elector of Saxony, Tetzel declares that all those who patronize heretics,
and use their power to prevent them from being put upon their trial before
the lawful judge, incur excommunication.

These fifty theses of Tetzel's were strictly in the spirit of the
scholastic theology in vogue, a spirit which the experience of such
councils as those of Basle, Constance, and Florence had contributed not a
little to evoke.

Luther at once perceived what a stumbling-block Tetzel had thrown in his
way. He did not attempt to dispute the fifty theses. Had he done so he must
have plainly acknowledged himself a heretic. As matters stood this would
have been premature, would have spoiled all, would have ruined him and his
cause. Tetzel had not designated Luther personally as a heretic. But Luther
chose to assume that he had done so, and forthwith let loose a storm
against him of such brutal and malignant invective as Luther alone was
capable of. Adopting the tone of an injured man, a man shamefully
misunderstood, he filled Germany with hypocritical asseverations of his
orthodoxy and his devotion to the see of Peter. All his party, all Tetzel's
opponents, followed in his wake. The heathen-minded humanists, in
particular, singled out Tetzel as the butt of their ribald satire, holding
him up to scorn and execration as the very impersonation of every
imaginable monastic abuse and scandal. The persecuted man found little or
no shelter from the tempest. The friends of religion and the church were
intimidated, confounded, paralyzed; apathy, indecision, cowardice,
delusion, prevailed among the guardians of the faith, prevailed among the
German bishops. Rome herself was slow and lenient in her measures. Although
she cited Luther to come and answer for himself to her, she consented, in
the persons of Cajetan and Miltiz, to go to him. Cajetan, all patience and
condescension, allowed himself to be trifled with and duped. Miltiz
truckled to Luther, reviled Tetzel, betrayed his trust.
{845}
In vain did Hermann Rab, provincial of the Saxon Dominicans, address a
touching letter in Tetzel's defence to Miltiz. It is dated at Leipsic,
January 3d, 1519, and is quoted in full by Dr. Gröne:

  "Truly I should not know where to find a man (observes Hermann Rab in
  this letter) who has done and suffered, who still suffers so much for the
  honor of the apostolic see, as our venerable father, Magister John
  Tetzel. If his holiness only knew it, I doubt not but that he would
  distinguish him in a worthy manner. With what lies and slanders beyond
  number he is overwhelmed, all the street-corners, where they resound in
  your ears, attest. I only wish your excellence had heard the sermon he
  preached on the feast of our Lord's circumcision, for then you would not
  have failed to convince yourself what his sentiments are, and always have
  been, toward the holy see."

Miltiz commanded Tetzel to retire to his cell at Leipsic. He obeyed. His
career was now terminated. He never ascended the pulpit again. The fatigues
and excitement he had undergone; the persecution he had suffered; his
deserted and forlorn condition; above all, the course of events, so ominous
for the church and the papacy, to which he clung with all his soul; these
things preyed upon his mind and body to such a degree that his health gave
way, and he died in a state of profound melancholy in the month of August
of the above-mentioned year. He is supposed to have been about sixty years
old:

  "Tetzel could not have set up a better monument to his own character
  (writes Dr. Gröne) than he did in the grief and affliction which hastened
  his end. The ruin of the church, the wild infidelity, and unspeakable
  disorders which the triumph of Luther must needs entail on Germany--this
  was the worm that gnawed his vital thread. It broke his heart to be
  forced to see how the sincere champions of the old church truths were
  left alone, were slandered, despised, and misunderstood by their own
  party, while the mockers and revilers of the immutable doctrine won
  applause on all sides."

In a chapter devoted to a refutation of the infamous calumnies and profane
anecdotes recorded of Tetzel, it is shown by Dr. Gröne that they were
mostly borrowed from the Decameron of Boccaccio and a congenial German
production, styled Der Pfaffe Amis. For example: Tetzel, being anxious to
impart extraordinary interest to the indulgence he had to preach, once told
the people he would show them a feather which the devil, in combating with
the archangel Michael, had plucked from the archangel's wing. But a couple
of godless wags, entering his chamber during his absence, stole the feather
out of the box in which it was kept, and put some coals from the fireplace
in its stead. Tetzel, ignorant of the theft, mounts the pulpit, box in
hand, and declaims with great fervor on the wonderful qualities of his
heavenly feather. Then opening the box, finds it full of coals. Nothing
abashed, he cries out, "What wonder if, among so many relic-boxes as I
possess, I have taken the wrong one?" And forthwith he extols the
miraculous power of the very coals on which St. Lawrence was broiled.

Another merry tale of the sort is the following: "Tetzel," they, say, "once
desired to lodge with the sacristan at Zwickau. But the sacristan excused
himself as being too poor to entertain so renowned a guest. 'We'll see that
you have money enough,' said Tetzel, 'only look what saint it is in the
calendar to-morrow.' The sacristan found the name of Juvenalis. 'A very
unlucky name, he regretted to say, because it was so little known.' 'But
we'll make it known,' replied Tetzel. 'Ring the bells to-morrow as if for a
festival, and let high mass be sung.' The sacristan obeyed, and the people
throng the church. After the gospel Tetzel ascends the pulpit, and speaks:
'Good people, to-day I have something to tell you which, if I were to
withhold it, would be the very ruin of your salvation. Hitherto, you know,
we have always invoked such and such saints, but now they have grown old,
and are tired of hearing and helping us. To-day you commemorate Juvenalis,
and although until now he has been unknown, let us none the less honor him
with all our hearts.
{846}
For as he is a new saint, he will be all the more indefatigable in praying
for us. Juvenalis, my friends, was a holy martyr, whose blood was
innocently shed. Now, if you would also participate in his innocence before
God, let each of you put an offering on the altar during mass. And do you,
ye great and rich ones, precede the rest with your good example.'"

Again, in 1512, Tetzel, after having preached at Zwickau, had got all his
money packed up, and was about to depart. But the parish priest, with his
chaplain and clerk, came running to him, bitterly complaining that, while
he had provided so splendidly for himself, they had not got as much by the
indulgence as would pay for one jolly day. "Truly I am very sorry," answers
Tetzel, "but why did you not tell me sooner? However, ring the bells again
to-morrow; there may still, perhaps, be something left for you." No sooner
said than done. The people all came flocking to church, and Tetzel,
ascending the pulpit, begins: "Dearly beloved, true I had intended to
depart this very day, but last night I heard in your church-yard a poor
soul moaning and weeping miserably, and imploring some one to come to her
relief, and deliver her out of purgatory. This caused me to remain here to
day, to have mass said and offerings made for this poor soul. Now, whoever
among us should neglect to make an offering would thereby prove that he has
no compassion on the poor soul, or else that he must either be a fornicator
or an adulterer, whose conscience tells him he is not worthy to take part
in this good work. And that you may know what an urgent case it is, I
myself will be the first to present my offering."

Of course all the people hasten to follow so edifying an example, they even
borrow money from one another, for no one wishes to be thought a fornicator
or an adulterer.

In citing such absurd stories as the above, along with many others of a
still more profane description, Dr. Gröne shows that, in several instances,
they were the same as were employed to slander the character of Bernardin
Samson, the Franciscan preacher of Pope Leo's indulgence in Switzerland. He
also cites two contemporary documents, one of them signed by the
authorities of the town of Halle, the other by John Pels, prior of the
Dominican convent of Nevenwerk, denying in emphatic terms that Tetzel, in
his sermons, ever blasphemed the Blessed Virgin in the shocking way he was
accused of doing. In fine, had he really been the monster of depravity, the
shameless drunkard, swindler, liar, blasphemer, and adulterer his enemies
make of him, it is but too obvious that, instead of opposing, he would have
joined Luther, whose earliest and most ardent disciples were principally
degenerate monks, in love with the Lutheran doctrine of the futility of
good works--monks, in a word, corresponding in every respect to the
Protestant descriptions, but opposite in character as day and night to the
true nature of John Tetzel.

------

{847}

  From Once a Week.

  The Bride of Eberstein.

  A Legend of Baden.


Four hours distant from the city of Baden, near the market village of
Malsch, on a bold, projecting wood-crowned eminence in the Black Forest,
stood the Castle of Waldenfels. It is now a heap of ruins, and scarcely can
the traveller discover the spot which was formerly the residence of an
opulent and powerful family.

In the thirteenth century, Sir Beringer, last of his race, inhabited the
castle of Waldenfels. His lately departed consort had bequeathed him an
only daughter, Rosowina by name. In bygone years Sir Beringer had ofttimes
felt distressed that he would leave no male heir to propagate the name and
celebrity of his ancient stock; and, in this feeling, he had adopted
Heinrich von Gertingen, an orphan boy, the son of an early friend and
companion in arms, and the representative of an ancient but impoverished
house, to whom he purposed to bequeath his inheritance and his name. Not
long, however, after this event, his daughter was born. And as Rosowina,
after her mothers early death, advanced in the blossom of youth, she became
the pride and happiness of her father's age, and never caused him sorrow,
save in the reflection that some day she would leave the paternal for the
conjugal hearth. All now that troubled him was his adopted son. The growing
boy, while manifesting a becoming taste for knightly accomplishments, and
obtaining success in their display, nourished in his breast the germ of
fiery passions, which, while they caused distress and anxiety to the Lord
of Waldenfels, impressed his daughter with terror and revolted feeling. At
length, when Rosowina had attained her sixteenth year, she became to
Heinrich the object of a wild and desperate devotion. He repressed the
sentiment awhile, but at length yielded himself its slave. He persecuted
Rosowina with his ill-timed and terrible addresses; and one day, having
found her alone in the castle garden, he cast himself at her feet, and
swore by all that was holy and dear that his life was in her hand, and that
without her he must become the victim of an agonizing despair. Rosowina's
terror and confusion were boundless; she had never experienced the smallest
feeling of affection for the youth, but rather regarded him with aversion
and alarm. She knew not at the moment how to act or what to say. At that
instant her father appeared. The confusion of both sufficiently discovered
what had occurred: in a burning rage Sir Beringer commanded the unhappy
youth instantly to quit the castle for ever. With one wild glance at
Rosowina, Heinrich obeyed; and muttering, "The misery thou hast brought
upon my life come upon thine own!" rushed despairingly away. Next morning
his body was found in the Murg, his countenance hideously distorted, and
too well expressing the despair with which he had left the world. Efforts
were made, so far as possible, to conceal the horrid truth from Rosowina,
but in vain; time, however, softened the features of the ghastly memory.
She had now completed her seventeenth year, and was already celebrated as
the beauty of the surrounding country. And not only was her beauty the
subject of universal praise; her maidenly modesty, her goodness of heart,
her prudent, thoughtful, intelligent cast of mind, were the theme of
commendation with all who had enjoyed the privilege of her society.

{848}

A few hours' distance from the Castle of Waldenfels, in the pleasant valley
through which rush the clear waters of the Alb, stood the monastery of
Herrenalb. The Holy Virgin was patroness of the foundation, and the day on
which the church celebrates the festival of her nativity was annually
observed as the grand holiday of the convent, when the monks, to do honor
to this occasion, exhibited all the splendor and magnificence which
Christian bounty had placed at their disposal, and spared no expense to
entertain their guests in the most hospitable and sumptuous manner. And now
Sir Beringer of Waldenfels had promised his Rosowina to ride over to
Herrenalb with her the next St. Mary's day. He was ever a man of his word;
how should he now be otherwise, when that word assured a pleasure to the
darling of his heart?

Bright and genial rose the autumnal morning when Sir Beringer and Rosowina,
with a small retinue, rode over the hills to Herrenalb. The knight and his
daughter were courteously and hospitably received by the abbot and his
monks. The presence of the noble heiress of Waldenfels excited much
interest and observation in the minster church; but the maiden herself
appeared unconscious of the fact. Seldom, however, as she found herself
disturbed by worldly thoughts in her devotions in the castle chapel at
Waldenfels, the splendor of the monastic church and services, and the
innumerable hosts of worshippers, were to her so new, that she felt
tempted, from time to time, to give a momentary glance around her. On one
occasion her gaze encountered a pair of eyes which seemed to rest on the
attraction of her countenance with an earnest yet respectful expression,
and, inexperienced as she was, she was at no loss to comprehend its
meaning. The gazer was a stately youth, who was leaning against a pillar.
His strong-built and well-proportioned frame, his noble and expressive
countenance, and even his rich and tasteful apparel, were well adapted to
fix the attention of a youthful maiden of seventeen, while his whole
demeanor convinced her how deeply he was smitten with the power of her
charms.

The service over, the worshippers dispersed, and the sumptuous abbey opened
its hospitable gates to all who could advance any claim to entertainment. A
sister of Rosowina's mother was a nun in the cloister of Frauenalb, and
Rosowina was permitted occasionally to visit her, and had here enjoyed the
opportunity of making the acquaintance of several noble young ladies of the
neighborhood. She met some of them on this occasion, whom she accompanied
into the spacious garden of the convent. Among these was the young Countess
Agnes of Eberstein, with whom as she was sauntering through an avenue of
umbrageous beeches, suddenly there stood before her the abbot of the
convent and the young man who had attracted her attention in the church,
who, side by side, had emerged from a side-way path into the main walk.
Rosowina trembled in joyful alarm as she recognized her admirer: her first
thought was to return or retreat, but, without a manifest discourtesy, this
was now impossible. Neither was the Countess Agnes at all willing to
escape, but rather forced forward the reluctant Rosowina, welcoming at the
same time the youthful stranger as her beloved brother, the Count Otto of
Eberstein. After mutual salutations, Agnes introduced Rosowina to her
brother, who was delighted to recognize in the object of his admiration the
friend of his sister. He made advances toward a conversation, but the
abbot, whose heart was less sensible to beauty, would not, even for a few
short minutes, postpone the subject of their discussion. At the banquet,
however, which followed, it was easy for the Count of Eberstein, from his
high connection with the monastery, to choose his place, and he placed
himself opposite Sir Beringer and his daughter.
{849}
The knights had met occasionally before, and a nearer acquaintance was soon
made. To an engaging person Sir Otto united the attractions of polished
manners, of knowledge extensive for that period, acquired by residence in
most of the courts of Europe, and of a lively conversational talent, which
rendered him everywhere a welcome addition to society. With so many claims
on her regard, it was little wonderful that Rosowina should accept with
pleasure the homage of the count, and encourage in his breast the most
delightful of hopes.

About that time the Counts of Eberstein had built a new castle above the
beautiful valley of the Murg, not far from the family residence of their
ancestors. The splendor of Neueberstein was the subject of universal
conversation, and all who had the opportunity of seeing the new palace were
eager to embrace the privilege. An invitation from Count Otto to the Knight
of Waldenfels and his daughter was only natural, and was no less naturally
accepted with especial welcome.

Warm and mild shone the bright autumn sun on the lovely valley of the Murg,
as Sir Beringer and his daughter rode on beside the crystal stream; nor
could Rosowina suppress the thought how she might ere long ascend the steep
winding pathway to the castle no longer its visitor, but its mistress. Sir
Otto met his guests at the castle-gate, and, with eyes beaming with joy,
more especially as he saw the joy was mutual, lifted Rosowina from her
palfrey. After brief rest and refreshment, the inspection of the castle
began. Halls and chambers were duly examined, and at last the party
ascended the rampart of the loftiest tower, whence an enchanting prospect
met the eye. Far below them the Murg rolled its restless waters, now
flowing peaceful between banks of lively green, now toilsomely forcing its
passage between wild masses of rock. On either side the dusky hills towered
above the scene; and here and there now glimmered out of the shadow of the
forest a solitary mountain village, now a mass of mighty cliffs; and as the
eye descended the rapid mountain stream, it rested on the blooming plain of
the Rhine, where, in the violet tints of distance, arose the awful barrier
of the Vosges. Lost in the magnificent spectacle stood Rosowina, unable to
satiate her eye on the glorious picture, and unaware that Otto was close
beside her, contemplating with secret pleasure the beautiful spectatress.
At length the involuntary exclamation escaped her, "A paradise indeed!"

Then found she herself softly clasped in a gentle arm, and her hand
affectionately pressed, while a well-known voice uttered softly, "And would
not Rosowina make this place 'a paradise indeed,' were she to share it with
me!"

Unable now to suppress her feelings, Rosowina replied by a glance more
expressive than any words. She returned that evening with her father to
Waldenfels the happy affianced bride of Count Otto of Eberstein.

On a bright spring morning, symbolizing well the feelings of the lovers,
the marriage solemnity was held at the Castle of Neueberstein, with all the
pomp and state of the period, which few understood better than Otto to
display. From towers and battlements innumerable banners, with the
Eberstein colors and blazonry, floated gallantly in the morning breeze, and
the portal, adorned with wreaths and arras, cast wide its hospitable gates.
Toward noon appeared, in the midst of a glittering pageant, the bride,
magnificently arrayed, but brighter in her incomparable beauty; and all
praised the choice of Otto, and agreed that he could have selected no
worthier object to grace his halls. Rosowina, however, felt unaccountably
distressed. It was not the confusion of maiden modesty it was not the
embarrassment of the bride that troubled the serenity of her heart. She
knew not herself what it was; but it weighed upon her mind like the
foreboding of a threatening misfortune.
{850}
An image, moreover, arose to her thought which long had seemed to have
vanished from her memory, even that of the unhappy Heinrich von Gertingen.
She endeavored to repress her anxiety, and succeeded so well that the happy
bride-groom saw not the cloud of sorrow that shaded the fair brow of his
bride. But when the priest had spoken the words of blessing, the last spark
of gloomy foreboding was extinct, and with untroubled tenderness she
returned her bridegroom's nuptial kiss, reproaching him smilingly, and yet
seriously, for exclaiming, as he did, with solemn appeals, that all the
joys of paradise and all the bliss of heaven were poor and insipid
pleasures in comparison of the happiness which he enjoyed in calling her
his own.

The nuptial banquet followed. It was served with profuse splendor; but when
the joy was at its height, and the castle resounded with jubilant voices,
and the dance was about to begin, a page announced a stranger knight, who
wished to speak to the bridegroom; and forthwith a figure walked into the
hall. The stranger's armor and mantle were black, and he wore his visor
down. He proceeded with stately advance to the place where the newly wedded
pair were seated at the table, made a low reverence, and spoke with a
hollow and solemn tone:

"I come, honored Count of Eberstein, on the part of my master, the powerful
monarch of Rachenland,  [Footnote 304] to whose court the celebrity of this
occasion and of your bride has come, to assure you of the interest which he
takes in your person, and his gratification in the event of this day."

    [Footnote 304: _Anglicè_, "The Land of Vengeance."]

His speech was interrupted by a page, who, kneeling, presented him with a
goblet of wine. But the stranger waved aside the honor, and requested, as
the highest favor that could be shown him, that he might lead the first
dance with the bride. None of the company had heard of Rachenland; but the
knowledge of distant countries was not then extensive, and the
representative of a mighty prince could not be refused the usual courtesy.
Rosowina, however, at the first appearance of the stranger knight, had
experienced an unaccountable shuddering, which amounted almost to terror,
as, leading her forth to the dance, he chilled her whole frame with the
freezing touch which, even through his gauntlet, seemed to pierce her very
heart. She was forced to summon all her strength to support herself during
the dance, and was painfully impatient for its conclusion. At length the
desired moment arrived, and her partner conducted her back to her seat,
bowing courteously, and thanking her. But at that instant she felt even
more acutely the icy coldness of his hand, while his glowing, penetrating
eye, through his visor, seemed to burn for a moment into her very soul. As
he turned to leave, a convulsive pang rent her heart, and, with a shriek,
she sank lifeless on the floor. Instant and universal was the alarm; all
rushed to the scene of the calamity; and in the confusion of the moment the
stranger knight vanished.

Inexpressible was the grief of all. In the bloom of beauty and rich fulness
of youth lay the bride, cold and inanimate, a stark and senseless corpse.
Every conceivable appliance was tried to recall departed life; but departed
it had for ever, and all attempts were vain; and when it was ascertained
beyond a doubt that not the smallest hope remained, the guests in silence
left the house of mourning, and the inhabitants of the castle were left
alone with their sorrow.

Three days had now passed away. The corpse of Rosowina rested in the vault
of the castle chapel, and the mourners, after paying the last honors to the
dead, had again departed. Otto, left alone at Eberstein, refused all human
consolation. The first stupefaction of sorrow had now given place to a
clamorous and boundless despair.
{851}
He cursed the day of his nativity, and in his wild desperation cried aloud
that he would readily sacrifice the salvation of his soul, and renounce his
claim on eternal happiness, were it only granted him to spend the rest of
life at Rosowina's side.

Before the door of the vault in which the young countess slept the wakeless
sleep, Gisbrecht kept watch and ward. Gisbrecht was an old man-at-arms of
the house of Eberstein, which he had served faithfully for more than forty
years. He was a warrior from his youth, and had stood loyally at the side
of his master, and of his master's father and grandfather, in many a bloody
conflict; fear, except the fear of God, which he diligently cultivated, was
a stranger to his soul. With slow and measured tread he paced up and down
at his station, meditating the sudden death of the young and beautiful
countess, and thence passing in thought to the instability and nothingness
of all human things. Often had his glance fallen on the entrance to the
vault; but now--what was that? Scarcely did he trust his eyes; yet it was
so. The gate opened, and a white-robed figure came forth from the depths of
the sepulchre. For a while, Gisbrecht stood motionless, with bated breath,
but fearless, while the apparition approached him. But when he gazed nearer
on the pale, ashy countenance, and recognized beyond a doubt the features
of Rosowina, the horrors of the spirit-world came upon him; and, impelled
by an unutterable terror, he rushed up the steps, and along the corridor
which led to his lord's chamber, unheeding the call of the white figure,
which followed close upon his track.

Count Otto, in his despair, was turning himself from side to side upon his
bed, when he heard a heavy knock upon the door; and, as he rose and opened
it, there stood old Gisbrecht, pale, trembling, with distorted features,
and scarcely able to stammer out from his trembling lips:

"O my lord count! the Lady of Waldenfels--"

"Art mad, Gisbrecht!" cried the count, astonished at the manner and words
of the old man.

"Pardon me, lord count," continued Gisbrecht, stammering; "I meant to say
the young departed countess--"'

"O Rosowina!" exclaimed the count, with an involuntary sigh.

"Here she is--thy Rosowina!" cried a pallid female form, which, with these
words, precipitated herself into the count's embrace.

The count knew not what to think. He was overpowered with astonishment. Was
it a dream? was it an apparition? or was it Rosowina indeed? Yes, it was
indeed she. It was her silver voice. Her heart beat, her lips breathed, the
mild and angelic features were there. It was Rosowina indeed, whom, wrapt
in the cerements of the grave, he held in his embrace.

On the morrow, the wondrous tale was everywhere told in the castle and the
neighborhood. The Countess Rosowina had not died; she had only been in a
trance. The sacristan, fortunately, had not fastened the door of the vault,
and the countess, on awakening, had been enabled by the light of the
sepulchral lamp to extricate herself from the coffin, and to follow the
affrightened sentinel to his master's chamber.

And now at Castle Eberstein once more all was liveliness and joy. But
boundless as had been the despair of the count at his loss, he did not feel
happy in his new good fortune. It seemed as though a secret unknown
something intervened between him and his youthful bride. He found no more
in her eye that deep expression of soul that so oft had awakened his heart
to transports of joy; the gaze was dead and cold. The warm kiss imprinted
on her chilly lips met never a return. Even her character was opposite to
all he had expected. As a bride, loving and gentle, trustful and devoted,
open and sincere, now was she sullen, testy, and silent. Every hour seemed
these peculiarities to unfold themselves more; every day they become mere
unendurable.
{852}
Often was his kiss rejected, sometimes with bitter mockery; if he left her
awhile through annoyance, she reproached him, and filled the castle with
complaints of his neglect and aversion; when business called him abroad,
she tortured him with the most frightful jealousy. Even in her manners and
inclinations the Countess of Eberstein was an actual contrast to the
heiress of Waldenfels; all in her was low, ignoble, and mean; one habit was
chiefly remarkable in her, always to cross her husband, to distress and
annoy him, to embitter all his joys, to darken all his pleasures. And soon
it became the common saying of the neighborhood: "The Count of Eberstein
thought he had been courting an angel, but he had brought home a dragon
from an opposite world."

With inexhaustible patience, with imperturbable equanimity, Count Otto
endured these annoyances. No complaint, no reproach, ever passed his lips.
He had loved Rosowina too faithfully, too entirely, to let the conduct of
her whom he now called his wife so soon extinguish the passion of his
heart. But these disappointed hopes, this perpetual struggle between love
and despised self-esteem, and this concealment of the sharpest pangs of his
soul, gnawed at the very germ of life, and destroyed it at its core. A slow
fever seized him, and he was now visibly decaying, and approaching the
grave. One morning he was found unexpectedly in the death-struggle. He
asked for the chaplain of the castle, in order to make his dying
confession; but the holy man only arrived in time to witness his last most
agonizing groans. At the same moment a frightful crash shook the
foundations of the castle, the doors of the burial-vault sprang open, and
some of the domestics saw the spectral form of Rosowina sweep into it, and
vanish in the darkness.

The deserted castle of Neueberstein sank in ruins, uninhabited for many
centuries; the popular belief being that Otto and Rosowina continued to
appear in its haunted apartments, and to set forth thereby the solemn
lesson, that _he makes the most foolish and wicked of bargains, who gains
even the whole world, if he lose his own soul._

------

  From The Lamp.

  The Miner.

  From The German of Novalis.


In a room of a clean inn sat a group of men, partly travellers, partly
persons that had entered to drink a glass of beer, who conversed with each
other on various subjects. The attention of the company was particularly
directed to an old man in strange attire who was seated at a table, and
answered in a friendly manner all the questions which were put to him.

"He came from foreign parts," he said; and was a native of Bohemia. From
early youth he had had a vehement longing to know what was hidden within
the mountains whence the water gushed up into the springs, and where we
found the gold, silver, and precious stones, which have attractions so
irresistible for man. In the church of the neighboring monastery he had
often gazed upon the solid brilliancy of the images and reliquaries, and
wished that they could speak and tell him of their mysterious origin.
{853}
He had heard sometimes that they came from far distant lands; but he had
asked himself why these treasures and gems should not be found in his own
district. Not without a purpose were the mountainous regions so vast, and
preserved so securely; so it seemed to him, as sometimes on the hills he
found bright and glittering stones. He had often clambered into clefts and
caverns, and beheld with unspeakable pleasure those primeval halls and
vaults. At length he once met a traveller who advised him to become a
miner, by which means he might gratify his curiosity. He had told him that
there were miners in Bohemia; and that, if he followed the downward course
of the river, he would after ten or twelve days' journey arrive at Eula;
there he had only to speak, and he might at once become a miner. He had not
sought for further information; but the next day had set out on his
journey.

"After a fatiguing walk of several days," he continued, "I arrived at Eula.
I cannot express the joy I felt when from the summit of a hill I saw large
piles of stones, overgrown with shrubs, and upon which stood little wooden
huts; and when in the valley below I saw clouds of smoke rolling over the
wood, a distant noise increased the eagerness of my expectation. With
wonderful curiosity, and full of silent devotion, I stood upon one of the
stone mounds before the black abyss, which, from the interior of the hut,
led down straight into the mountain. Then I hastened down the valley, where
I met some darkly-clad men with lamps, who, as I rightly supposed, were
miners. With bashful anxiety I mentioned my design to them; they listened
to me with kindness, and bade me go to the melting house and inquire for
the surveyor, who would at once inform me whether or not my offer would be
accepted. They thought that my wish would be fulfilled, and told me the
usual words of salutation, '_Glück auf!_' with which I should accost
the surveyor. Full of joyful expectation, I left them, and could never
cease repeating to myself the novel salutation, so full of significance.

"I found a venerable old man, who, when I told him my history, and had
informed him of my eager desire to learn his curious and mysterious art,
promised in a very friendly manner to grant my request. I seemed to please
him; and he kept me in his house. With impatience I waited for the hour
when I should descend into the mine, and see myself clothed in the costume
which had so great a charm in my eyes. That evening he brought me a suit of
miner's clothes, and taught me the use of several instruments, which he
kept locked up in a room.

"In the evening several miners came to him; and although for the most part
their language and the subjects of their conversation were unintelligible
and novel to me, I endeavored not to miss a single word of what was said.
The little, however, which I fancied I understood increased my curiosity,
and suggested strange dreams to me during the night.

"I awoke betimes, and was soon with my new host, around whom the miners
gradually assembled to receive his orders. A room in his house was fitted
up as a chapel. A monk appeared, who said mass, and afterward recited a
solemn prayer, in which he besought the Almighty to take the miners into
his holy keeping, to support them in their perilous toil, to shield them
from the assaults and malice of evil spirits, and richly to bless their
labors.

"Never before had I prayed with so much fervor, or felt in so lively a
manner the high significance of the divine office. My future companions
seemed to me, as it were, subterranean heroes who had to surmount a
thousand dangers, but whose lot was enviable from the wonderful knowledge
they possessed, and who, through their solemn and silent acquaintance with
the primeval caverns of nature, were in her dark and marvellous chambers
endued with heavenly gifts and blissfully raised above all the annoyances
of the world.

{854}

"At the close of the service the surveyor gave me a lamp and a small wooden
crucifix, and went with me to the shaft, as we call the steep entrance to
the subterranean abode. He showed me the manner of descent, and instructed
me in the names of the numerous objects and their divisions. Holding a
rope, which was attached by a knot to a side-post, with one hand, and a
lighted lamp with the other, he began to descend. I followed his example;
and, proceeding at a somewhat rapid pace, we soon arrived at a considerable
depth.

"A feeling of deep solemnity pervaded my mind, and the light which moved
before me seemed, as it were, a fortunate star which guided me to the
secret treasuries of nature. We reached below a labyrinth of paths; and my
friendly master was never wearied answering all my questions, and
instructing me in his art.

"The murmur of the water, the distance from earth's inhabited surface, the
darkness and intricacy of our route, and the sound from afar of the miners
at work, filled me with extraordinary pleasure, and I felt with joy that I
was now in full possession of that which it had ever been my earnest desire
to possess. It is impossible to explain and describe the full satisfaction
of an inborn desire--that wonderful pleasure one finds in things which have
some secret connection with one's inmost being, and in occupations to which
one is called, and for which from his cradle his nature is adapted. Perhaps
to most people these might appear obscure, vulgar, or repulsive, but to me
they seemed as necessary as air or food.

"My aged master was much pleased with my genuine satisfaction, and
predicted that my zeal and attention would insure success. With what
rapture did I see for the first time in my life, now more than
five-and-forty years ago, the king of metals lying in delicate leaves in
the clefts of the rock! It seemed to me as though he were here kept in
close imprisonment, and shone with pleasure upon the miner who with so much
danger and labor had cloven his way to him through strong walls to bring
him to the light of day, so that he might be honored in royal crowns and
vessels and holy reliquaries, and might lead and govern the world in valued
and well earned coin.

"Thenceforth I remained at Eula, and rose by degrees to the grade of
_hewer_--who alone among the miners carries on the work on the rock
itself from carrying out the loose metal in baskets, to which work I had
been at first appointed.

"On the day when I became a hewer my aged master laid his hand on his
daughter's head and on mine, and blessed us as bride and bridegroom. On the
same day before sunrise I had cut open a rich vein. The duke gave me a gold
chain with his likeness on a large medal, and promised me my step-father's
situation. What happiness was mine when on our wedding-day I hung it round
the neck of my bride, and all eyes were fixed upon her! Our old father
lived to see several grandchildren, and at length passed in peace from the
dark mine of this world to await the great day of general retribution."

Here the old miner paused awhile and wiped away some tears from his eyes.

"Oh!" he at last exclaimed, God's blessing must needs rest upon the miner's
labors; for there is no craft which makes its workers more fortunate and
more noble-minded, which tends more to excite faith in God's wisdom and
providence, and which preserves purer innocence and youthfulness of heart
than that of the miner. Poor is he born into the world, and poor he leaves
it. It is his high joy to discover where the potent minerals are to be
found, and to bring them to light; but their dazzling brilliancy has no
influence over his heart.
{855}
Free from all perilous covetousness, his pleasure is rather derived from
their wonderful formation, the singularity of their origin and their
_habitats_, than from their possession, though it promises all things.
They have no greater charm for him than if they were common wares; and he
would rather seek for them through toil and danger in the deep fastnesses
of the earth, than strive for them on its surface by illusive and
fraudulent arts. That toil keeps his heart fresh and his mind courageous;
he enjoys his scanty pay with genuine thankfulness, and ascends every day
from the dark scenes of his calling with renewed pleasure in life. He alone
knows the real charm of light and repose, the beneficent influence of the
fresh air and the prospects which meet his eye. With what zest and
thankfulness does he eat his daily bread, and with what friendly feelings
does he associate with his fellows and taste the pleasures of familiar
conversation! In his solitude he thinks with hearty good-will of his
companions and his family, and feels ever renewed in his mind the mutual
needfulness and relationship of men. His calling teaches him unwearied
patience, and never permits him to waste his attention on unprofitable
thoughts. He has to deal with wonderfully hard and inflexible power, which
can only be overcome by obstinate labor and constant vigilance.

"But what a splendid plant he finds growing and blooming in these dreadful
depths! It is real trust in his heavenly Father, whose hand and providence
are daily made visible to him by unmistakable signs. How often have I sat
down in my place of work and contemplated by the light of my lamp my rude
crucifix with the truest devotion! There for the first time did I rightly
comprehend the holy significance of that mysterious symbol; there has my
heart felt its noblest impulses, which have been of continual use to me.

"Truly he must have been a godlike man who first taught the miner's craft,
and hid in the bosom of the rocks that solemn emblem of human life. Here
the vein discloses itself wide and unworked but valueless. There the rocks
confine it within a narrow obscure cleft; but there it is found of the
noblest proportions. Other veins running into it debase it, until it is
joined by one of a similar nature, which finally enhances its value. Often
it breaks before the miner in a thousand fragments; but he is not
discouraged. He pursues his work quietly, and presently sees his
perseverance rewarded as it stretches itself before him in increased
dimensions. Sometimes an illusive fragment leads him astray, but, soon
perceiving his mistake, he vigorously breaks through it till he finds the
vein leading to the true ore. How well acquainted is the miner with all the
humors of chance! but how thoroughly does he understand that zeal and
perseverance are the only real means to manage them and to take from them
their obstinately defended treasures!"

------

{856}

    Miscellany.

_Photographs of Churches in France._--This year's issue of
transcripts from ancient Gothic buildings and portions of buildings by the
Architectural Photographic Association is unusually interesting, not only
on account of the beauty and clearness of the sun-pictures of which it
consists, but of the subjects that have been chosen for the camera. These
contain no renaissance examples or specimens of sixteenth century craft in
imposing semi-barbarous fronts on noble Gothic churches of earlier date, as
in the works at Belloy, Luzarches, and Verteuil. These changes had
remarkable interest of their own, and were acceptable to the student who
cared to see how great was the debt of the remodelling architect to his
middle age forerunner. The studies now before us range from St. Georges de
Boscherville, founded in 1050 by Ralph de Tancarville, chamberlain to
William the Conqueror, to the very beautiful and interesting west front of
the church at Civray, which, like its greater neighbor, Notre Dame de
Grande, at Poitiers, also represented here, dates from the first half of
the twelfth century, through the curious rather than important early church
of St. Ours, at Loches, at the door of which stands a Roman altar that
appears to have been used as a font; the superb portals of Notre Dame, at
Chartres, of which we have five admirable photographs; St. Julien, at Le
Mans; the interior of the church of St. Pierre, at Lisieux, the west front
of the same, with its unequal but beautiful towers; and the church of St.
Riquier, near Abbeville, which may be said to have been discovered by Dr.
Whewell, and is a splendid Flamboyant work, with certain elements of
decoration that assimilate it with those of perpendicular. Of this church
we should very much enjoy a good interior view, on account of its value in
illustrating the happy union of early French Gothic with much later
Flamboyant. To these must be added a view of the very fine Flamboyant west
front of St. Wulfram, at Abbeville, an admirable example of its kind, and
the west front of the cathedral of St. Gatien, at Tours, a work which was
begun in 1440, and brought to perfection in 1500, under Robert de
Lenoncour, then archbishop. We can only find one fault in this series, that
is, the excessive number of doorways it contains. A doorway, or series of
portals, is one of the happiest fields for architectural art; but there is
a disproportion in this respect here, where, out of twenty-two examples, we
have but one interior view, that of St. Pierre, at Lisieux, and three
general views, two of which comprise portals.

St. Georges de Boscherville is one of the best known examples of the early
Norman churches, and remarkable for the extreme simplicity of its exterior,
its fine proportions, beautiful central tower, and high octagonal spire.
Interiorly, the building is much richer than without, and comparatively
light in style; the west front is among the most highly ornamented examples
of its kind and date in Normandy, and comprises a round-headed arch with
five concentric roll-mouldings, with as many shafts in the side of the
entrance, and is decorated with beaked heads, frets, cables, and chevrons
to an unusual degree, and capital in design. The apse of this church, which
is shown in the view before us, is very curious. The western turrets are
works of the thirteenth century.

Notre Dame, at Poitiers, is too well known to the artist and antiquary to
need commendation or description here; the design is a noble one, and
happily illustrates the Romanesque of Poitou. It has been remarked that the
window, which resembles that at Civray in position, has been converted from
the original round form to a tall shape, and that this was done to admit
the introduction of painted glass. We believe this is a mistake, and the
window retains its pristine form. The window at Civray was certainly never
circular. The canopied niches of fifteenth century work, at the sides of
this window, which once disfigured the façade, have been removed by late
restorers of the edifice, obviously to the improvement of the design. We do
not see in the two views of the church of St. Ours, at Loches, enough to
demand a double illustration: one better selected view than either of those
which appear here would be enough.
{857}
A general prospect of the church would have been valuable as an
illustration of its four tourelles, with their roofs of stone, after the
manner of those in the west front of Notre Dame, at Poitiers. Doubtless the
low porch of the church at Loches, which is not shown in the photograph,
prevented the selection of a more powerful effect of light and shade, and
interfered with the choice of points of view. Mr. Petit has carefully
analyzed this church in his Architectural Studies of France. We have also a
view of the details of the doorway exterior representing the carvings of
what may be called the imperfect capitals of the jambs. The glorious
porches of Chartres, especially that magnificent one on the south side, are
admirably represented in five photographs. These give the south doorway,
north doorway, details of the north doorway, doorways of the west front;
the last represents the long-robed statues of the royal saints and other
features of the Porte Royale, (so called, probably because Henry the Fourth
entered by it to his coronation,) after they left the restorer's hands, and
is a fine, clear photograph.--_Athenaeum_.


_Newspaper Zoölogy_.--The Pall Mall Gazette has published the
following interesting note: "The Courier de Saigon reports some
extraordinary items of natural history from the land of the Anamites. There
is a certain fish, called Ca-ong in the language of the country, which has
distinguished itself to that degree that the king has bestowed upon it the
proud title of 'Nam hai dui bnong gnan,' which, as everybody knows, means
'Great General of the South Sea.' It appears that this laudable fish is in
the habit of quietly paddling round the ships near the coast until somebody
tumbles overboard. He then seizes him instantly, and, instead of eating
him, gently carries him in his mouth to the shore. At Wung-tau, near St.
James's Cape, they keep a skeleton of this extraordinary philanthropist. It
is about thirty-five feet long, possesses front teeth like an elephant,
very large eyes, a black skin very smooth, a tail like a lobster, and two
wings on the back."


_Mechanics of Flight_.--An extremely interesting paper on this subject
was read by Mr. Wenham to the Aeronautical Society. The subject is too
difficult and complex to be explained briefly, and therefore we will only
say that Mr. Wenham has brought into the explanation of flight the effect
of the forward motion in retarding descent. Imagine a parallelogram 10 ft.
long by 2 ft. broad, weighing 20 lbs. Such a body would descend in still
air at the limiting rate of 1320 ft. per minute, the resistance of the air
put in motion by the plane balancing at that velocity the effect of
gravity. If now a force be applied horizontally so as to carry the plane
with its long side forward at a speed of thirty miles per hour, then the
motion of the plane being both downward and forward, a great volume of air
will pass under the front margin of the plane, and will be carried downward
before leaving the hinder margin. The weight of air thus put in motion will
be enormous, and the descending velocity of the plane proportionately
reduced. Mr. Wenham calculates that the velocity of descent would in these
circumstances be reduced to one fifteenth of the passive rate of descent,
or would not exceed 83 ft. per minute. Each particle of air would then be
moved downward eight tenths of an inch by the passage of the plane, and
conversely, if this inclination were given to the plane, it would move
forward without descending. Mr. Wenham finds that few birds can raise
themselves vertically in the air, the exertion in that case being
excessive. The eagle can only lift itself from the ground by running with
outstretched wings till its velocity having become sufficient, it glides
into the air as if sliding on a frictionless plane.--_Popular Science
Review_.


_A New Volcano in the South Seas_.--From a letter forwarded by the
English consul at Navigators' Islands, we learn that a volcano has just
broken out at Manua, about two miles from the islands of Oloscqa. It was
preceded by a violent shock of earthquake, which commenced on the 5th of
September, and on the 12th dense thick smoke rose out of the sea. Lava was
thrown up, discoloring the water for many miles round, and destroying large
quantities of fish. Wherever the ashes fell on the adjacent island, they
destroyed all vegetation. Up to the middle of November dense smoke was
still being thrown up. It is said that the smoke rose higher than the
neighboring island, which is over 2000 feet high. The consul has been
unable to ascertain whether there is any bank thrown up in the water.

{858}

_A Chemical Method for effectually Cleaning Glass_ is given in a
recently published work on one of the processes of photography. It is
simple, reliable, and completely efficient, and will, we doubt not, be
found very useful by our readers. It is as follows: Dilute the ordinary
hydrofluoric acid sold in gutta-percha bottles, with four or five parts of
water, drop it on a cotton rubber, (not on the glass,) and rub well over,
afterward washing till the acid is removed. The action is the same as that
of sulphuric acid when used for cleaning copper; a little of the glass is
dissolved off, and a fresh surface exposed. The solution of the acid in
water does not leave a dead surface on the glass, as the vapor would; if a
strong solution is left on long enough to produce a visible depression, the
part affected will be quite bright. This method is recommended in some
cases for cleaning photographic plates.



_Nature of the Earth eaten by the People of Borneo_.--The Chemical
News gives us the composition of the clay which is eaten so extensively by
the natives of Borneo. It states that some years ago the manager of the
Orange-Nassau colliery, near Zandjermasin, in the island of Borneo, found
that many of his work-people (natives) consumed large quantities of a kind
of clay; a sample of this material was forwarded to Batavia for analysis,
and the following is the result in 100 parts:

  Pitcoal resin, (organic matter volatile
  at red heat,)----15.4

  Pure carbon,----14.9

  Silica,----38.3

  Alumina,----27.7

  Iron pyrites,----3.7

  Total,----100.0


_Photography at the Paris Exhibition_.--On the whole, the art-science
of photography plays its part well at the great French International
Exhibition, and in the collective displays of various nations we find its
numerous and diverse applications, improvements, and modifications fairly
represented. The Austrian collection is a very attractive one, and contains
some of the very best specimens of photo-lithography yet produced; its
specimens of portraiture from life-size downward are of a very excellent
character, and, like those of France, Prussia, and Russia, are decidedly
superior to the English. In the Darmstadt contributions are some
interesting specimens by Dr. Reissiz, exhibited to illustrate his theory of
photogenic action. In the Prussian department a large portrait lens
attracts attention; it is fourteen inches in diameter, and covers a square
of thirty inches. The French department contains some interesting specimens
of photographic-engraving process, of enamelled photographs, and of
enlargements from microscopical photographs, amongst which is one of a flea
enlarged to the size of a small pig. Amongst the novelties and applications
of photography to decorative art are photographs of a singular character,
illustrative of a new process called "Chrysoplasty." They represent
goldsmiths' work, ancient armor, draperies embroidered with gold and
silver, bronze statuary, philosophic instruments, etc., and are apparently
in the same metals as the originals. This process is a secret one, but the
inventor, Mr. Boeringer, is prepared to produce such photographs from any
negatives which may be sent him for that purpose. He is at present making a
large collection of specimens from antique curiosities and works of art in
metal dispersed in the public and private museums of various nations, and
with this end in view appeals to the owners and guardians of such
collections, and those who have negatives of the required description, to
render him assistance. In photographic portraiture, by universal consent,
the French stand prominently foremost, so much so that, as The Times says,
"amongst those articles which are specially called _articles de
Paris_, a good photographic portrait is now to be placed." In the
English department we miss most of our foremost photographers, amongst them
Mr. O. G. Reglandes, Mr. T. R. Williams, and but too many others. Mr.
Mayall, M. Claudet, Lock and Whitfield, Ross, and other of our chief
portraitists exhibit largely, but all show but weak and mean when
contrasted with their rival portraitists as represented in the French
collection. As landscapists English photographers, like English painters,
carry off the palm. Why landscapes by English operators so far surpass
others we cannot explain, but no one with any artistic taste or judgment
would hesitate to attribute the superiority of the French portraits purely
and simply to a more refined taste and greater knowledge of pictorial
science in their producers.
{859}
The English photographs display little merit beyond such as belongs
exclusively to the skilful management of good tools, while the French
photographers are evidently, as a rule, artists studying such things as
lighting, posing and arranging, exposing and developing with considerable
artistic knowledge and preconceived design, the former with a view to
putting a picture before the lens, and the latter with a view to its
faithful reproduction in the operating room. Two of the great secrets of
their greater success will, we believe, be found to reside in the much
longer exposures they give their plates in the camera, and in the use of a
developer not so rapid in its action as to escape control during
development. The great cry in England has been for short exposures and
powerful developers, things which war against the subtle delicacies of
gradations from light to dark, and from darks into reflected lights, which
constitute one of the most special and striking peculiarities of the best
French portraits. Refer back to past volumes of the English photographic
journals, and this craving for extraordinary rapidity coupled with frequent
mention of the extraordinary long exposures given on the continent, where
the light is more powerful and the atmosphere more pure, will be found. You
will also perceive that, while articles tending directly and indirectly to
give mechanical manipulation and good tools all the credit of increased
success crowd their pages to a wearying degree of sameness and repetition,
papers of a truly art-educational character are extremely rare, in
consequence, we have been informed, of the little real appreciation they
meet with from English photographic students. Hence probably the inartistic
and tasteless character displayed by their photographs when contrasted with
those of our more artistic and tasteful neighbors.--_Popular Science
Review._

------

  Original.

  New Publications.


  Melpomene Divina; or, Poems' on Christian Themes.
  By Christopher Laoinedon Pindar.
  Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1867.

This is an elegant little volume, but not a volume of elegant poetry. We
feel unwilling to speak adversely of the effusions of a youthful author,
(we suppose his youth from several poems given as "youthful efforts" as
late as the year 1861,) but the truth must be honestly told, if told at
all, both for young and old; and the truth is, that this book contains many
easy rhymes, but very little poetic thought. The verses, too often faulty
in rhythm, abound with sentences that can hardly be called good English,
as, for instance, (p. 90:)

  "He gazed and gazed, and deeper still
     The soft attachment grew,
   And nearer to the charmful maid
     His loving soul him drew."

And again, (p. 172;)

  "Only pray I thee, whom first saint
     In America God chose,
   Grant that countless maids may rival
     In my land thee, heavenly Rose!"

In a little translation entitled The Fisher's Wife we find a verse which
will illustrate the desire we now express that the writer had husbanded his
poetical ability, and allowed it to find expression in a lesser number of
poems more carefully worded. He might then have given us a volume of some
merit. We quote:

  "'O horror and woe! now breaks my poor heart!
     Out must I to gain relief!'
   She cries, and rushes from out the house,
     The mother in fear and grief.

  "And silently drifts a corse to the shore
     Strewn with trees and sedge and tan;
   There lies he all naked on the black sand:
     'O merciful God! my man!'"

{860}

With so many evidences of the author's acquaintance with the classic poets
upon these pages, we are surprised to meet with such words as "bluey,"
"bleaky," "browny," and the like; together with elisions, as "'T" for "it,"
to begin a line; "need'd" for "needed;" and such unwarrantable extensions
as giving three syllables to words like "Christian," "solely," etc. We feel
so much pleased, however, with his modest introduction to the volume that
we will allow him to speak here for himself: "That the book is very
imperfect, I am fully convinced of; that it be but taken by another as a
spur to elicit a more perfect one in illustration of a similar theme, is my
earnest desire. The many and almost unceasing demands of a higher order
have allowed me to bestow only a few 'tempora subseciva' on a work to which
I would have gladly devoted day and night. As such it can hardly be
anything else than deficient in many respects. Yet if I be the cause of
giving to but one person the pleasure of a moment in perusing these pages,
and still more, if one be thence inspired to send a whisper of love to the
saintly beings carolled in them, I shall consider myself happy, and my
labors more than sufficiently repaid."

----

  The Two Roads,
  Gabriel,
  Martha,
  Bread Of Forgiveness,
  Flowers From Heaven,
  Fragments Of Correspondence.
  P. O. Shea, Publisher, New York.

This is a series of beautiful stories, from the French, on the beatitudes.
They are well translated, and published in good style.

----

  Science Of Happiness; or, The Beatitudes in Practice.
  By Mader Bourdon.
  P. O. Shea, New York.

This volume contains the stories mentioned above bound together, so as to
make another book.

----

  Studies In The Gospels.
  By Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D.
  New-York: Charles Scribner & Co.

The author of this volume is well known from his valuable philological
works. This volume of Studies is composed of sixteen chapters of expository
notes on different parables and events recorded in the gospels. He has made
free use of the standard commentaries, both Catholic and Protestant. We
cannot attach any critical value to the work, as we observe that, where
Maldonatus and the fathers go against the system to which he is committed,
he passes over what they have said, and gives us instead the opinion of
Calvin or his own. The volume contains, however, many suggestive thoughts,
clothed in pure, good English. The typographical appearance of the volume
is remarkably good.


----

  Mr. P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, has in press, and will soon publish,
  The new Life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, edited by Edward Healy Thompson,
  and which has just appeared in London. It will make a volume of about
  four hundred pages.


  Messrs. Benziger Bros., New York and Cincinnati, are about to publish
  Rome and the Popes: translated from the German of Dr. Karl Brandes, by
  Rev. W. T. Wiseman, Professor of Church History in Seton Hall Seminary.